Attention

I smell the ocean on the warm breeze flowing steadily past the skin on my face and arms, which are slightly sticky from the drying salt water. The sun is headed down but the days are long and it will be hours before it sets. There is a seagull walking past, eyeing the abandoned beach blanket next to mine, likely considering if I pose a threat to her pillage of my neighbor’s lunch. Children fly toward the shore on boogie boards and frothy waves. It is summer in San Diego.

When I sit down to write, this is often how I start. I ground myself to what is in front of me, under me, around me and above me. My journal is full of descriptions of the plants, insects and animals in my backyard. It’s a way for me to shut off the constant flow of chatter in my mind and connect to the deeper things. So today, it’s the sand and the wooshing border of this vast ocean, the click of wooden paddles on balls, and the delighted screams of playing children, that  will guide me to connection. 

A couple of years ago I went back to the property that was purchased by my Great Grandma and Grandpa Whipple. It was a one acre lot in Quartzsite, Arizona, a town known for its bustling snowbird community and annual rock show. Quartzsite is the epitome of an Arizona desert with looming saguaro cacti and prickles on every living thing protruding from the earth. I was there in February but in the summer it bakes like an oven. 

My great-grandparents were snowbirds. They started heading south to escape the Idaho winters when my Grandpa Whipple was there to tend to the farm in their place. At first they wandered like nomads through southern Utah, Arizona, Nevada and into Mexico with a travel trailer and a pickup truck. As they went, they collected shells, rocks, and fragments of iron wood which they turned into beautiful pieces of art. When they finally settled into Quartzsite they put a single-wide trailer on their acre lot, complete with miniature blush-pink appliances. 

That trailer has since been replaced, but I visited it once when I was about ten years old. I remember my grandpa giving Grandma a pat on the bum as he squeezed behind her in the tiny kitchen, and smiling, as he said that was one of the good things about the small kitchen. I couldn’t go back there without remembering the quiet, peace of that place, when my grandparents wintered there. 

My mom and dad were there to retrieve any wanted objects from the property before listing it to sell. We found a diary my great-grandma, Ruby, had kept one year as the moved around in the travel trailer. It was filled with short entries about the weather and the plants and the little chores they had done, like baking bread or giving my great-grandpa a haircut. It conveyed a sense of the rhythm of their life. 

It reminded me of the visits I had with my grandparents, both my mom’s parents and my dad’s parents, on their farms in Idaho. We took joy in the land, the yards around their homes and the fields with cultivated crops. We admired the roses, even bigger than last year, and the trees with promising blossoms or ripening fruit. And were the pie cherries on? Or had the birds got to them already? And Grandma had rearranged the flowerbeds, with this one raised up on a little berm and that one reduced in a way that made everything slightly more suited to her vision. We talked about the rain and the cows and the frost and freeze. My grandparents were farmers and that connected them to the land in a way that I will never fully know. But I may carry something in my blood, in my bones, that I inherited from them, and that is attention.

“One of the great misconceptions about the artistic life is that it entails great swaths of aimlessness. The truth is the creative life involves great swaths of attention. Attention is a way to connect and survive,” Julia Cameron writes. Cameron and I have this in common, grandmothers who wrote letters and kept diaries and spoke of the “series of small miracles” unfolding in everyday life, in nature. 

Camron writes, “My grandmother was gone before I learned the lesson her letters were teaching: survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention….The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.” 

Attention is how I got through the harrowing pain of my divorce. I wandered the neighborhood, watching the passion vine blossom before turning to fruit. I watched the morning doves nest and hatch and fly away. I saw the cactus bloom an incredible white starburst. I felt the quality of the air shift as the seasons passed. My son, before my eyes, began to speak full sentences and run and climb and race pieces of chalk, like cars, on the cement in front of our apartment. I was preoccupied a lot. My brain was a savage landscape of fear and anxieties, so it became necessary for me to find an escape in the world in front of me. 

The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

“The reward for attention is always healing. It may begin as the healing of a particular pain—the lost lover, the sickly child, the shattered dream. But what is healed finally, is the pain that underlies all pain: the pain that we are all, as Rilke phrases it, ‘unutterably alone.’ More than anything else, attention is an act of connection,” Camron says. 

My Grandma Hurst’s fifth child, Brent, was born with a heart defect. He was not supposed to live two days, but he lived 18 years. After Brent passed away, Grandma Hurst took up painting. She started taking oil painting classes. She worked in chalk pastels, water color, and ceramics. She is one of the most prolific artists I know. We, all of her children and grandchildren, have her art in our homes and her basement is filled with canvases that have to be rotated because, even among all of us, there is not enough space to display her enormous collection. 

In the last five years, I have come to see Grandma Hurst’s art as an enormous labor of feeling. I have never had to endure losing a child, but I have known heartache and I can imagine that art became for her what writing has become for me: a way to confront and process and heal the the things that cannot be worked out in any other way.

Pain is the place where so much art is born because pain demands our attention. The physical pain I endured with my first laparotomy was so intense that I laid, with closed eyes, focused only on each breath. Even speech was too much of a distraction. When I gave birth to my son, the last hour of labor I was told not to push because I was not yet dilated, yet every ounce of my flesh wanted me to push that baby out that very second, and to hold that back required every bit of the presence and focus I possessed. 

Physical pain gives you something to hold onto but emotional pain has brought me to a similar place. I have crumpled to the floor, but once the wave passes I am left to feel my cheek against the hardwood, sticky with tears. I am left with the physicality of the present moment. When I see a bougainvillea I think of the hours I spent, lying in the hammock looking up at fuchsia petals backed by twilight sky, wondering how I would make it through the next minute, next hour, next day…what would save me from my suffering?

And it has mostly been art, the product of paying attention to the flashing fragments that make moonlight appear ductile, as Richard Adams must have when he described it so beautifully. Noticing the ache in my chest, the wonder of the sticky anemone closing around my finger, the beauty of the tracks chalk race cars leave on the sidewalk, the beauty wrought by my own hand. 

Attention is conduit to aliveness. Please, please, please pay attention.

I am terrified of the silence.

As children of mothers with depression, we have to teach ourselves how to cry because there is danger in the sadness. It feels like giant cavern that could swallow me whole, a darkness that I might never escape. So I flitter around saying, I’m fine! I’m fine! and going to parties and talking and drinking the wine. But I am not fine. I am terrified of this sadness. I am terrified of the silence. 

I have not learned to trust the silence. So every time I cry it feels like I am touching the hot stove, dropping into the underworld, but I always come back up. Why don’t we learn that lesson as kids? My mother came back up. I have watched her come back up over and over and over again. But I guess when you are twelve, eight years might as well be eternity without oxygen.

I think about River leaving for a couple of weeks and I am gutted. Even though I see we are both tired. We are both needing a change. It’s hard for me to trust it. It’s hard for me to trust that the times we sang, “I’ve got the Redstone in me!” at the top of our lungs will carry us through. How can a Minecraft parody hold us? The dinners we’ve eaten out on the back deck while we listened to the tinkle of the fountain and talked about aircraft carriers. He is getting more patient with me constantly bringing singing and dancing into our Lego war games. He is learning I am simply not a serious soldier. I, like Kermit T. Frog, am more likely to break out of a Russian gulag by putting on a musical than climbing through the sewer or stealing a gun and fighting my way out. 

I don’t blame my depressed mother for my fear. She was doing her best. I do feel recklessly devoted to letting my son see my full range of emotion, because it’s silence I must protect him from. I see it’s silence that puts the big questions in his mind. So I get mad when I have to tell him ten times to put his shoes on. And he cries as he asks, “Why are you rushing me?” And we both see the madness of the rush. We absorb it together for a minute. That minute is everything because it connects us instead of pushing us apart. And then his shoes are on and I am full of frustration, because I’ve told him to put his shoes on 7547 times in the past year, but also wonder—that I get another day with him, that I get to be the exhausted one telling him to put his shoes on over and over again. 

I’ve known for a while that if something happened to Rio, my feisty, loving, little purse dog, the thing I would miss the most is the little “cha cha cha” of his tiny claws on the wood floor. The sound he makes moving around the house. I cannot abide the silence.

So tonight I will drop my son off at his dad’s and say goodbye for a few weeks. And I will come home to sit with the silence. The thing I most fear. It's my work to do, that I've been doing these past five years. I am learning to transform the silence into quiet, which is much less menacing. Quiet is something I can live with. Quiet can hold the sadness.

It takes imagination.

The Nuvaring

Before I got married, I went to the student health center for a pre-marriage gynecology appointment. I was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), 20 and a virgin. I didn’t think of myself as prude or naive, but I was probably both of those things. Raised in the conservative Mormon faith, I was taught that sex was sacred, reserved for marriage, but also should be fun (Woo-hoo!), and I was looking forward to trying it out. 

At BYU I heard whisperings of women sent home from the initial gynecology appointment with devices to stretch their vaginas, something to make the wedding night more pleasurable, less painful. I wasn’t particularly worried about pain, I just knew I wasn’t ready to be pregnant.

So I got a prescription for contraception. I knew I wouldn’t be good at taking pills every day so I opted for the once-a-month Nuvaring. My fiancé was a little concerned about being able to feel it during sex, a little ring of plastic resting around my cervix. I hadn’t even considered this, but I felt good about the method I had chosen and I was undeterred.

I imagined putting on sexy underwear beneath my clothes in time for my husband to return home. He would discover this and then we would engage in hot-steamy-sex in whatever room of the apartment we happened to be in. Life never really lives up to fantasy.

Pheochromocytomas

A pheochromocytoma (pheo for short) is a tumor that causes high blood pressure by secreting hormones that are normally secreted by the adrenal glands. Pheos are extremely rare, occurring in <1% of people with high blood pressure. I joined a ragtag Facebook group for people with pheos few years back, and in this group they refer to themselves as “zebras,” after the med school adage that goes like this: “When you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras,” horses being much more common than zebras.

I was a zebra. And I had been for several years though I didn’t know it. It was these tumors that caused my chronic headaches and exercise intolerance. The first tumor was discovered in March 2005. I had a nose surgery that I hoped would solve the chronic headaches couple of months before this. During that surgery I became very hypertensive on the operating table and stayed in the recovery room all afternoon, while the attendants tried to get my blood pressure under control. I was lucky I didn’t stroke out that day. 

The initial tumor was discovered after a series of tests and I was advised to use two forms of birth control until it could be removed. They said if I were to become pregnant there was an 80% chance I would die. Since then I’ve looked back through medical journals, and I’m not sure where that statistic came from. There are only case studies of pregnant women with pheos because it occurs so rarely. There are not enough data points for a more robust study. But it was clear to me—pregnancy likely equals death. 

So we started using condoms in addition to the Nuvaring. 

I had three more surgeries that year to remove what ended up being four tumors total. One tumor remained. It was located on or in my heart (difficult to determine on cardiac MRI at that time) and I was terrified. It felt like a precarious place and the distinction between on and in felt important. Because it was small, and in a risky place, they recommended it be monitored rather than removed.

There are only case studies of pregnant women with pheos because it occurs so rarely. There are not enough data points for a more robust study. But it was clear to me—pregnancy likely equals death. 

And I didn’t become pregnant. No pregnancy scares. Nothing. My periods came like clock work. But even after the hormone-secreting tumors were removed, I was advised to continue two methods of birth control as my doctors predicted a high likelihood of recurrence. 

Insurance

The first pheo was removed two weeks before my college graduation. Right after graduation I became a full-time employee of BYU for the marketing department where I had worked as a student graphic designer. Before the tumor, I had plans to return to New York City where I had been the previous summer doing an internship for Young & Rubicam on Madison Ave, but I scrapped this in favor of the excellent employee health plan awarded to full-time 

BYU employees. It covered 90% of my medical bills. 

My husband was bothered that we had to pay for contraception (I think it was $20 per month) and asked me to write a letter to our insurance company requesting they cover the cost of contraception as I had a very legitimate medical reason for using it. 

I wrote the letter; I even had my physician write a letter. It was denied. They generously covered tens of thousands of dollars worth of diagnostics and treatment but NO to a $20/month contraceptive that was, according to all of my doctors, an essential precaution for keeping me alive and safe. 

So we paid for the Nuvaring. And we paid for the condoms. 

Preventing Pregnancy

A year or two after all the surgeries I was chatting with my mother-in-law in her kitchen. I was rattling on about what was on my mind, as I am prone to do. I brought up how I had been considering different forms of birth control and verbally weighed out the pros and cons of each method. 

When I paused she remarked, “I just knew I wanted to have children so I didn’t worry about it.” I believe what she meant by her comment was that it was something completely outside the scope of her experience. She had five children. Maybe she never prevented pregnancy. I never asked about something so personal. 

But at the time, I felt embarrassed for using contraception in the first place. Her comment was a reminder of our shared religion and culture that placed so much emphasis on a woman’s primary role as mother. Mormons do not condemn the use of contraception, but the value placed on a woman’s role as mother is so elevated, I felt I was doing something wrong by preventing pregnancy. I wanted children. But, more than the actual role of mother, I wanted to follow the righteous path. Even with the risk of recurrent tumors, I felt some guilt for playing it safe. Part of me believed I should just have faith, get a family started and hope for the best. Faith precedes the miracle, right?

I wanted the carefree sex lives that I imagined were enjoyed by my friends and family in their early years of marriage.

Another part of me felt envious. This is around the time envy became a quiet companion of mine. You see, sex had already become stressful due to the stakes around pregnancy. I was comfortable on some level with taking reasonable precautions and then letting the chips fall where they may, but my husband was not. He was scrupulous. Understandably so. But I wanted the carefree sex lives that I imagined were enjoyed by my friends and family in their early years of marriage.

Methods 

During my time using contraception (which has been almost the entirety of my adult life), I’ve tried numerous pills, rings, injections and an IUD. Trying the gamut of contraception is absolutely not unusual for women. Contraception has numerous side effects from weight gain and acne to heavy bleeding, depression and mood swings. Most of the women in my life have done the same because, in our culture, prevention of pregnancy falls upon the one with the womb—the one who has the most to lose by incurring an unwanted pregnancy. 

I gained weight and felt impossible depression on the Depo Provera shot. I felt horrible on any of the pills called Tri-. I did better on the consistent low dose pills. But my husband was terrified of impregnating me so any late pill or missed pill threw a wet blanket on our sex life. 

Even then, even while we lived in his parent’s basement, waiting for more tumors to appear, I still enjoyed sex. I just did’t have the freedom around it that I imagined I would—that I wanted.

During those years (more than a decade) I would guess many people within our conservative, Mormon cultural sphere, assumed we had fertility issues. I even had a few acquaintances ask me about infertility directly, like it was common knowledge that was the reason I had no children. I felt guilt around this too. Many of my friends struggled with infertility through those years, and they were looking for someone with whom to share the experience. But that was never the case for me. Our lack of children was due to eleven years of constant vigilance. 

A New Sex Life

I didn’t ever think my marriage was great, but I didn’t think our sex life was part of the problem. I see that differently now. 

Before we separated, and one of the last times I had sex with my ex-husband I told myself, Just enjoy this because it may be the last time you get to do this for a long time—and I did. In the event we divorced, I was planning on keeping my temple covenants by not having sex outside of marriage. I also still carried the belief that masturbation was a sin, so I was preparing for a sexless life.

The sexless life was okay for me for about six months after I separated. During that time, I was extremely stressed and terrified of all the kinds of divorce-related repercussions that might be headed my way. I worried about my physical safety. I worried about how I was perceived by friends and family. I worried about finances. I was working and caring for one-year-old son. Sex was the last thing on my mind.

But I remember when I started to notice I had a natural sex drive. I have to chalk it up to being natural because I definitely wasn’t looking for it. Esther Perel, psychotherapist and best-selling author wrote, “Eroticism is not sex per se, but the qualities of vitality, curiosity, and spontaneity that make us feel alive.” This tracks. I started to sift through my experience as a wife as I was getting out of the marriage. I became very aware of how I had become a shell of a human during those years. I was a walking to-do list, measuring life by accomplishments rather than joy. The weekends felt pressured as I tried to check off the box marked FUN.

I became curious about what would bring me back to life.

I became curious about what would bring me back to life. I was a vibrant and joyful child, and I wanted to reclaim that. So, like I said before, this absolutely tracks with Perel’s definition of the erotic. I began to focus on the present moment, in part because future and past thinking was gnarly enough to demand a reprieve! I found joy in those little moments, sensory experiences like eating breakfast, walking with my son in the stroller at night under the stars and the palm trees, putting my feet into the sand, letting the freezing winter ocean swirl around my ankles and toes. I was moving out of my head and into my body in those moments.

I waited a year and a half after our separation to start dating. I felt like enough time had passed that I was ready to move into the next relationship. I was so wrong. But, I was ready to start that process. 

I had a conversation with one of my close friends who had pre-marital sex experience (being as I had none!). Sex had been on my mind, but I also felt that desire in my body, to my core. I had been putting it off because I didn’t know what to do with it. I brought up masturbation because I was trying to figure out what to do with my sex drive as I had no outlet. She had a different opinion than I expected. She believed there was a place for masturbation. And she sort of gave me the permission slip I felt I needed to explore that which had always been forbidden, and so forbidden in my mind, I didn’t really even know how to do it. 

I sat with that for a while. Around that same time, I learned that the paraganglioma tumor in my neck was growing (paraganglioma is just a broader term for neuroendocrine tumors like mine). It was not secreting adrenal hormones like the pheochromocytoma had, but it was growing— a little reminder that life is precious, and I am not permanent here. As I said before, the whole divorce brought the preciousness of MY life to the surface. The fact that I had spent more than a decade (a decade I didn’t plan to live through at its beginning) in a marriage that didn’t make me happy seemed to punctuate time, but also life LIVED during that time, as the most precious commodity.

Sex was always a good thing in my life, even if it had never been a great thing. I wanted to explore it further. Yes, there was a part of me that was that casual about it. But there was also a deep longing in me, something beyond simple horniness. A part of me knew that it would be healing, but I resisted this because of the covenants, because of the garments I wore every day reminding me of those covenants, because I loved going to the temple, I loved my faith, and my community at church. All of that was on the line—if I chose sex. For the first time in my memory, I chose my desire over all of those other things.

The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands

I left my ex-husband once before in 2010. I felt unseen, unheard and uncared for in my marriage. But I took him back after two weeks for a couple of reasons. The first and most powerful was fear. I believed no one would want a 27-year-old, divorced, cancered woman.  That is what my culture of origin taught me. The worst thing I could be is a spinster. Divorcé wasn’t even on my radar of possibilities. 

And it stemmed from purity culture, like it or not. By purity culture, I mean placing high value on virginity. For example, teaching young women that losing their virginity effectively turns them from a fresh stick of gum into a wad of disgusting used gum. Even though I had followed the rules, I knew in my LDS community, I would be much less desirable as virginity, this one, pristine quality had been lost in my first marriage. I wanted children and a husband, and I believed that if I ended this marriage I would never have an opportunity for those things. 

The second reason was because I was convinced by my bishop (male clergy) and some family members that the problem had been that I was unclear in my communication. My ex claimed that if he had only known how I felt and what I wanted, things would have been different. He believed I kept those things from him. And it was believable to me because of the great lengths I had gone to keep the peace! I knew I had quieted some of my important desires. With the time that has passed, I now see that I had not been secretive or withholding of my desires. Simply put, a girl learns to stop asking when the answer is always No.  

I was convinced to reunite with him, and this was again related to the culture around men and women. Women are taught to expect to be patient with their husbands, to understand that men are not emotionally evolved creatures. I read Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands in my first year of marriage. I think my husband recommended it. The premise of that book is that if a woman is unhappy in her marriage it’s most often her own fault, and what she needs to do is be nice to her husband (care for and feed him and put out) and happiness will flow. 

I’m not a man hater. I love men. But also, that advice is complete horse shit. I did my best to properly care for and feed that man for years. And what I received in return was the blame for his inattentiveness. After all, we can’t expect men to be responsible for their thoughts about the naked female form, about their roll in unwed pregnancy, sometimes even sexual assault and rape, so how could I expect this man to know how to listen to me? It’s not in his chromosomes.

...how could I expect this man to know how to listen to me? It’s not in his chromosomes.

It seemed that it was also my job to carry responsibility for the success of household communication. And more precisely, to do it without being a nag, and initiate sex but only at the right time, and to pursue career and personal interests, but only as it aligned with husband’s wants and needs and his picture of womanhood.

So I invited him to move into my apartment after two weeks. He seemed repentant and I was the eternal optimist. It was almost instant after that when he began to punish me with silence and a cold shoulder. After all, it would take HIM a long time to forgive ME….for what? I guess for wounding his pride and humiliating him in front of the very small handful of people who knew about the split.

I took Celexa, an antidepressant, for about six months after the split. It took the edge off of my anxiety, made it easier for me to tolerate my wintery partner and almost impossible to have an orgasm. I regret it now because I didn’t need to be medicated into docility. I was appropriately outraged, wounded and bereft.

Optimism

I accepted that my wagon was eternally hitched to this man. He didn’t want children for many years. Not yet, he would say and then name a dollar amount we would need in the bank or the completion of school, or money for a house, and then retirement…it was always something. 

He told me just before we conceived our only child that he thought he was too selfish to have kids. I insisted we proceed, but I think he was being honest. Again, culture around men influenced my thinking. I expected men to be selfish creatures, their wild nature meant to be domesticated and improved by a wife and children. Insisting upon this next step was my role.

I was 31 at the time, and I felt my biological clock ticking. I also felt the foolishness of all of those years of, what ended up being unfounded, fear about my tumors. Plus, I was the eternal optimist, blindly hoping that a child would give him a reason to think of someone else, even if having a wife, even a wife with life-threatening illness, couldn’t. 

That sounds like I’m answering a biggest weakness question in a job interview. You know, when they want you to state what’s wrong with you so you twist a strength into the format of a weakness, something like, “I just work so hard it makes other people uncomfortable sometimes.” But the dark side of being an optimist is it is tied to the belief that, I am exceptional. I believed I had some power to transform this indifferent creature into a good husband and father. I believed I was special.

He saw me as a wife in the conventional sense, as a helpmeet, a vessel, a source of labor and income and dinner and grocery shopping. And this is why I left. The more I tried to be myself the more clear it became that there was no space for me outside of my designated role.

Why am I choosing to share this very personal story at this time?

Excellent question. I’d love to tell you. I suppose some of my readers are voyeurs and only want the dirt on my life and my marriage. I didn’t write this for them. I wrote it with hope that this meandering tale of marriage, contraception, sex and womanhood would build imagination in my readers. Imagination is the first ingredient for empathy.

I never spent any time studying feminist issues until about three years ago. I didn’t like or identify with the word feminist. It felt like a word for loud, annoying women who want to be men and don’t value family and children. I was raised in a family and religion that places the highest value on those connections, so that definitely wasn’t me, until I realized how those values (the ones I possessed) had, in a very real way, marginalized me directly.

I suspect that some women feel the way I used to feel about “feminist issues” such as abortion, access to contraception and access to sex education. Simply put, it doesn’t affect me directly, so I don’t want to think about it. I get that sentiment deeply—in my bones. Most women I know have a lot on their plate. They are properly feeding and caring for husbands, children, extended family, neighbors, congregations, and communities.

I was raised in a family and religion that places the highest value on those connections, so that definitely wasn’t me, until I realized how those values (the ones I possessed) had, in a very real way, marginalized me directly.

I don’t personally have any experience with abortion, and yet, I found myself crying in the car on my way to work after I learned about the leaked Supreme Court document that revealed a plan to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Let me explain. Women have been socialized to be a vessel. We have been socialized to believe that our central purpose is our use and our highest value is selflessness. What greater act of selflessness is there than to become a mother? A woman gives over her body, her sleep, her food, her earning potential and her hobbies to bring a baby into the world. Sometimes she must sacrifice her friends, her family of origin, work, colleagues, or possessions because she has a baby. It is beautiful. It is important. It is an experience I absolutely wanted for myself. 

The problem is that not everyone gets to do in the way they imagined. I think most of us imagine having a baby with a loving partner, someone who can support us through those major sacrifices. But we don’t all get that. I’m not sure that it’s even a majority of women who get that. 

My ex-husband has always loved our son. He always wanted to be involved, but he didn’t ask to get up in the night to help with feedings and he wasn’t the first one to jump up when the baby needed changed. I didn’t expect him to. I assumed that role. And I took it because I was socialized to do so, by my culture, but also by him who had required for so many years that I provide HIS care before the baby even came. 

I wanted to be a good wife. I believed a good wife was patient, easy-going, selfless, quiet, and small. And I did my damnedest to embody those things. Sisters, do we really believe the pinnacle of the feminine being is without a self? 

For my 20s I struggled because I was not living life for myself. I thought I was going to die of cancer by age 26 so I focused on my role as wife and tried make things easier on my someday-to-be-grieving-widower. At the time I could see that I should be living like I was dying, making the most of my time left on earth (however one does that!). But this was an impossible puzzle, because what I wanted was to be a good wife and a good wife is selfless. The resentment of this paradox festered within me. I wanted to live and I wanted to be good, but to be good, I had to be self-sacrificing. 

When my ex-husband and I started to talk in earnest about divorce, I remember he said to me one night that I had to let all of that resentment go in order for our relationship to have a chance. He was absolutely right, and I knew it. And beyond all reason, when I offered up that resentment to god, because I had no idea how to rid myself of it, it vanished instantly. It was replaced with a keen sense of what was true in the present moment. What was true was that my husband had no intention of giving me space in our relationship to have a self. What was true is that if I stayed I would shrink to nothing, like one of Ursula’s emaciated shrimp that litter the floor of her sea cave. 

Since that realization, my life has opened up. It happened gradually, but I started to believe that if god loved me as much as I loved this little boy (or even more), then my happiness might matter. That was actually my big feminist awakening. I was holding my son in the rocking chair as he nursed from a bottle and peered back into my eyes. It was a picture of selfless motherhood, mother love. Maybe it’s poetic that that is when I could finally hear the voice of my heavenly mother, the divine feminine. She told me I was important. As important as this baby boy in my arms, as my husband, as my father, as my grandfathers, as any man who has ever walked the earth or ever will.

It happened gradually, but I started to believe that if god loved me as much as I loved this little boy (or even more), then my happiness might matter.

I know we have laws for a reason. I hate the idea of killing babies. I hate the idea of abortion. I don’t think anyone, or rather extremely few (to eliminate hyperbole) feel joy about abortion.  Most of the women I know that feel strongly about abortion believe in a higher power. They love babies, others and their own. They are trying to be good and do good in the world. They are kind. They are ambitious and generous and they’ve got grit. 

My argument is that what women are asking for is not unreasonable. It’s not unrighteous. It’s simply to have the ability to direct their lives, to have babies when they are ready to have babies, to explore their ambition and creativity and vitality. 

Sex After Divorce

I chose to break my temple covenant, not because I was horny and needed an outlet, but because I felt like I was missing out on precious years of my life. I was compelled to claim my own sovereignty. I wanted sovereignty over my life in all ways. I wanted to feel the full impact of my choices. I wanted to be completely awake and alive. 

Me! Who never questioned the church, my marital vows and covenants, the culture that told me my needs were secondary if they were to be considered at all. I was complicit with all of those things for 35 years. I lived those values.

I found a man to date who was interesting and interested in me. Our physical relationship progressed quickly. I found myself drawing imaginary lines around parts of my body, places clothes had to remain, the same way I did when I was making out with my high school and college boyfriends. All the same it lit me up in an entirely new way and I found those lines slowly disappearing. 

I was terrified. I was still wearing my temple garments. I was still attending church. I didn’t even have proper panties! I was trying to figure out how to honor myself within the confines of my religion. But I gave myself the space to explore and figure out what was right for me. Sex after divorce was incredibly healing. I needed that experience. I needed to give myself the grace to be awkward, but also hot, sensual, complex and adventurous. I needed to feel whole as a woman. Sex was exactly what I needed, when I needed it.

It was my new partner’s unmitigated enthusiasm for my body that transformed me. He was a completely new exploit. I had only dated Mormon men previously, and Mormon men who were trying to stay inside the same imaginary lines I was. This man had no lines. It was freedom I had never experienced.

For most of my sex life, I was criticized—only in small ways, but a multitude of small ways. The hair on my body, that grew from my nipples, was unexpected. My vulva was described as, “so weird” (…that’s right…So weird.) I tried to make sense of that. I had no vulvas for comparison, except my mom and sisters, and I had never examined their parts up close. At the start, I was pretty sure my genitalia was in the neighborhood of normal. But years and years of anything will create ruts in the mind that are hard to grade out.

My new partner looked up at me once from between my legs. I had made some mildly apologetic comment about the state of something down there. He said point blank, “Michelle, this is a world-class pussy.” That moment is cemented into my mind. I remember the part of the bed we were on, the time of day, the lighting—I remember because it was healing.

A big, lingering question was answered: Am I defective? No.

Imagination

I used my imagination to open up life for myself. But I had lots of practice with imagination before that. For all of my 20s, I used my imagination to relate to the women around me. Women who had what I wanted. Women for whom life dealt the hand they more or less expected, a supportive partner, to raise babies with. I used my imagination on their behalf as I watched them face miscarriages and difficult pregnancies, infertility and too many children too soon. I used my imagination to care for them as they faced these difficulties, all while I waited for my own motherhood story to unfold.

It feels like a great tragedy when women don’t use their imagination on behalf of their sisters with other types of difficulties than the ones they’ve faced. I felt compelled to tell my own story so completely because I have realized that I, too, sometimes lack imagination, and I have particularly in the past. What I mean by that is I had a lot on my plate. I didn’t have the mental or emotional space to consider stories of women I didn’t know and, because I was in a fairly homogenous culture, the women I knew, were mostly facing the same things.

Now think about your own story, if you were to write an essay like this. Wouldn’t it take paragraphs and pages to flesh out the complexity? 

• How you thought about sex before you tried it. 
• What your first experiences were like.
• How you navigated sexual desire and its relationship to your own worthiness.
• Finding partners or not finding partners.
• How you handled menstruation, contraception, pregnancy and post-partum. 
• Even things like sexual assault and childhood mistreatment.
• Devastating miscarriages and the shame around an unwanted pregnancy.
• And what about menopause? I’m not even there yet and my story is already long.

Life is messy. How can we legislate the creation of life? Something so personal, something so ancient, something so sacred. Legislation around abortion is something, I am convinced, we as a society would not tolerate, if we had not been, for millennia, swimming in the ideology that a woman, at her highest use, is a vessel. 

My appeal is for the women who read this: Would you lend your imagination to the women who have walked a very different road than you? Would you consider that the lines religion draws around this very personal, ancient and sacred part of life, might not be universally applicable? Making abortion illegal places almost all of the risk of sex on the partner who has the womb. Sex. Something that is also so personal, so ancient, so sacred.

Abortion is only one part of a much larger sifting that is taking place right now. I have a Ruth Bader Ginsburg calendar on my kitchen wall because, without her, after my divorce, I would have needed a male cosigner to buy this house. I would have needed a male cosigner for my credit card, my bank account. She paved the way for me to attend college and graduate school on equal footing with my male peers. I am paid a good salary, equivalent to my male peers, and I had maternity leave and did not lose my job when I chose to have a baby, thanks to RBG and people like her. My life would look very, very different today had our legislative process gone differently in the 20th century. The lives of all women would.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how life might have been different for you. What would it cost you personally to put down the stone, and write in the sand while the crowd disperses? To give a woman her freedom? It takes a willingness to see oneself as human and fallible. 

It takes imagination.

Who is Heavenly Mother?

Note: This post is a throwback, originally published in June 2019, and it still feels true. Feels relevant to the LDS community right now. Feels relevant to the ongoing struggle for the sovereignty of women. But most of all it feels relevant to my role as mother at this point in my life, as co-creator and a witness to the life of my little one (as he become increasingly bigger!). Happy Mother's Day to the divine feminine in each of us.

I’ve been trying to understand, FOR ME, what is the most useful way to think about God.  In the Mormon theology I was raised with, God is male and usually referred to as Heavenly Father.  Mormonism has the beautiful, and added, benefit of a female counterpart to the male God, termed Heavenly Mother.  The idea is that we are all part of a massive human family with Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and all of humanity as our siblings.  There’s a lot that I like about this model.  It’s reflective of the family structure most of us have experienced so it’s familiar (it can also be fraught for the same reason).  

Little is said of Heavenly Mother in Mormon doctrine and culture.  This has usually been explained to me to be because she is so sacred that Heavenly Father protects her from the profanity of human conversation.  From a feminist perspective, this explanation is infuriating and degrading.  From the perspective one who views herself as a child with heavenly parents, it’s confusing.  Kids need their mom.  Why would you withhold that?  

Maybe strangely, this issue has been of little bother to me for most of my life.  My religious persona has been quite accepting of these sorts of problems and explanations, pushing them under the umbrella of, I’ll understand that better someday.  Sometimes that umbrella is useful because some of these topics can only be explored with time and life experience.  They live like little ghosts in the back of my psyche until an experience brings them to the foreground.  

This past week, I was talking to my parents about a problem, I’ve been trying to figure out for months.  I presented them with my current thinking about it and my dad said, “That seems really sensible.”  To which I replied, “I’m not going for sensible! That’s not how I’m making decisions anymore.  I want it to FEEL right.”  And he, so humbly and happily said, “Oh! Well that’s your mother’s domain.”  He’s so great!  I can’t remember what my mom said to this, but I remember the energy of it, and it was something about self trust.  And I’m going to come back to this in a minute. 

I want to write a little about what I’ve observed in the nature of the feminine.  And to use Elizabeth Gilbert’s term, I don’t want to get “gender-freaky” about this.  I’m talking about the iconic feminine.  

The feminine creates.  This is the energy in the universe that calls to us to experiment and imagine.  To me, the feminine creative energy feels like lying on my back looking at the clouds and seeing figures of airplanes and unicorns.  It’s not overtly practical or directional.  It might even feel superfluous, but, like air, its necessity is recognized mostly by its absence.

The feminine is the ether.  I like to think about this from the perspective of a child in the womb.  We are swimming in the feminine.  She is all around.  Think about the idea of mother earth.  She is the rock, the water, the sky and everything in between all of it.  Maybe this is why we feel close to the divine as we connect with the natural world.  It’s like pressing a fetal hand into the wall of the womb, becoming slightly aware of the being that is carrying us.  The problem is not locating the feminine, it’s becoming conscious that she is all around me. 

The feminine nurtures.  The feminine says, I will go on doing all of this, holding all of this, whether you notice or not, because I am doing it for my own purpose.  This is the subtle strength of feminine care.  All of this carrying and holding and love is not contingent upon outcomes and results, it is intrinsic. 

I’m sure there is more that could be written about this, but maybe that’s enough to nudge your mind in the direction I’m intending.  I’ve been thinking about these things in the context of Heavenly Mother.  And I’ve realized that most of the spiritual practices I’ve adopted this past year are things that put me in the way of this divine, feminine energy.   

Nature. I’ve noticed that one of the most universal ways of connecting with God or finding peace or hearing the inner voice is to be in nature.  While some are getting dressed up for church, many are heading into the mountains or the sea.  Church is sort of a masculine, direct pathway to God.  It’s like following a map to the divine father.  These are my office hours, so to speak.  But nature is always open—curious and diverse and meandering.  I believe this is where the divine mother lives.

My body.  I feel super cool about my body these days, because I feel like it is this beautiful echo of my divine mother’s voice.  I’ve come to experience this in several ways—child birth, exercise, meditation, sleep—but the yoga mat has been an excellent teacher.  There are truths embedded in my flesh that are revealed only when I am paying very close attention and yoga has given me a way to notice them.  Each time I get on the mat, I have to strip away all the expectations of myself for performance.  My intention is usually to listen or to let go—surrender, release, acceptance.  My mind becomes the servant of my body and my spirit becomes the quiet observer.  Teach me, I say to my self—to the part of me that already knows—the divine feminine.

Honesty.  Some of my most powerful connections with the divine, come during intimate conversations.  Isn’t this how it’s always been with women?  While men are hunting beasts and conquering legions, women are in the back room making dinner or folding clothes and talking about the heart of life.  The feminine divine is in these quite conversations, in the quiet honesty.  She is in the utterance of fear and uncertainty and the humble declaration of faith.  The feminine divine can hold all of this—the ugly and the beautiful, the weak and the strong.  It’s all safe with her.  

Art. Honesty is the birthplace of art.  The feminine divine cheers us on as we attempt to excavate those sacred jewels within and bring them into the world.  She is in the music and the poetry.  We do ourselves a disservice by relegating this category of expression to entertainment, because it is so much more than that.  Heavenly Mother is constantly asking us to dance with her, to sing, to write, to draw, because that is the way we can come to know ourselves in the way SHE sees us.  In the same way I encourage my son’s fledgling attempts at creativity, she is doting over my bad poetry, messy relationships and off-key singing with the hope that I will not let the world close my mouth.  

Linger and rest.  The iconic feminine meanders.  My therapist taught me this months ago and it’s something that frequently comes to mind.  The feminine is like the path along the cliff line that has amazing views but takes a little longer.  I’m someone who naturally values efficiency, so it has taken a conscious effort to allow myself to walk the scenic path.  The feminine suggests, maybe it’s okay to just sit here for a while and enjoy the beauty of this place or moment.  Maybe it’s okay to linger.  Maybe it’s okay to take a nap if you’re tired.  There may be miles to go, but there is time and it’s okay to be kind to yourself.  

Now that I better understand the feminine divine, I see that, because of her nature, she doesn’t fit easily into organized religion.  She is too big and complicated for that.  There are no instructions for breathing!  How would you teach someone to inhale?  Yet, I notice very quickly when I am becoming oxygen-deprived. 

So back to my story about the conversation with my mom and dad.  I don’t feel bad that I can’t remember my mother’s exact words because the words were not as important as the feeling.  And this is true to the feminine divine.  She doesn’t write instruction booklets.  She is unstructured and unshaped.  And because of that she can fit into the spaces where other things can’t.    

This is me in the flow: quiet mind, open heart. I think of these moments as glimpses. I just try to catch a peek of that feeling as often as I can. P.S.-- Heavenly Mother thinks SnapChat filters are fun too!

Heavenly Mother is the essence of self care.  A while back, I realized that the only thing that REALLY qualified as self-care—that really worked—was the activities that cleared the crap off of my soul.  The things that helped me to hear my inner voice.  This is Heavenly Mother.  So maybe you can pray to her.  Maybe you can visualize a heavenly being with kind eyes and a loving embrace.  If that’s helpful, then do it!  

My advice on this topic is really DO ANYTHING.  Reach out into the ether and you will find her because she is everywhere and all it takes to access her is a quiet mind and an open heart.  The practices that will be most helpful are the ones that create those two things.  And when you find her, tell me about it because I live for this stuff now! Namaste. 

Tis the Damn Season

Do I need to rethink my entire life?… Or is it just the holidays?

I found myself texting this to a friend who casually asked me how it was going? 

Not good. Not good at all. 

I mean, there are good things happening. But I think I wandered into the holidays a little off kilter. You see, I had the double whammy of Halloween and my son’s birthday this year. It’s something we probably didn’t think through very well when we set out the holiday schedule in our first parenting plan. 

These two near holidays fall to the same parent each year and this year, felt like expectations were high. I think five-going-on-six, might be the year when kids become fully aware of and have full buy-in to such events. By this age they’ve got a little track record of their prior celebrations and other celebrations they’ve attended, so they now know enough to get whether they are at a fantastic or weak-ass celebration. 

So the pressure was on.

I did the birthday party at the Air and Space Museum and invited his entire kindergarten class because we are new to these people and still making friends. It was a great success but way outside my comfort zone to invite 25 strangers and their parents to a museum to eat cake and open presents. I walked away feeling really thankful for the community we have with school. It was an enthusiastic, generous, beautiful group of people.

The week before that was Halloween. We did the regular thing of changing costumes last minute but luckily it was to the astronaut costume he wore last year. He wanted to be a fighter pilot originally and when we were looking at costumes, I asked if he thought I should be one too. He liked the idea back then (like late September!) but as Halloween grew closer, he grew out of that age where it’s cool to dress like your mom, so my Lucille-Buster Mother-Boy fantasy slipped away and not only was I not permitted to wear the fighter pilot costume, but he asked that I wear NO costume—just regular mom clothes. 

I now see how this arrow found a weak chink in my armor of self confidence. I started to ask him if he was embarrassed about how I dress. I started to rethink my bohemian Free People clothes, not just for their over-pricedness and impracticality….but was I humiliating my son….who is in kindergarten!?!

It took me a couple of days to shake that off but eventually returned to my usual mantra of, Ain’t no man gonna tell me…not even the short one who lives in my house.

Then I made the theme park mistake. 

For Veteran’s Day we were invited to go to Knott’s Berry Farm with some friends. To understand my tentativeness, you’ve gotta understand my theme park experience. I liked theme parks as a kid, but I was mostly terrified of the rides. I remember huddling on the floor of that giant rocking boat, The Tidal Wave, screaming in terror while my mom giggled and implored me that this WAS fun. 

When I graduated high school, someone advised me to make a sort of bucket list of things to do before I graduated college. Roller coasters were on the list. I grew up in Wyoming so it wasn’t like theme park rides were plentiful, but I had never chanced a ride on a big roller coaster and I wanted to face my fear. I planned a trip to Elitch Gardens in Denver. I took ginger root to ward off any motion sickness. And I rode all the roller coasters. I even paid an extra $15 to ride the SkyCoaster, which was really just a harness attached to a cable, attached to a sky arch. I strapped in with two other people and the harness raised hundreds of feet in the air until the employees counted down and one of the guys I was strapped to pulled the rip cord. We plummeted in a free fall until the cables caught, swinging us gently back up toward the sky. I liked it! It was what it should be—exhiliterating. 

After that I learned I liked rollercoasters!  It was within the same stretch of a few years I found out I had these adrenaline-producing tumors in my abdomen.  A while after they were removed, I remember visiting Lagoon in Utah on a slow night in the Fall. The park was empty and we ran from rollercoaster to rollercoaster and the adrenaline reminded me of how I used to feel somewhat regularly with all those little adrenaline-junkie tumors inside of me. 

It was when I became a single mom that theme parks changed for me. Gosh—the dark Disney Land days of 2019! I bought a discount pass via the military because I was still not divorced.  R and I would make the trip by ourselves, he would refuse to ride 99% of the rides, talk me into spending more money on overpriced toys in Cars Land and then fall asleep in the stroller, leaving me to drink alone in California Adventure, until he woke up and we could walk around for another hour before we got in the car to drive home. Those trips were a lot of work with a very minimal reward and they left me mostly feeling very alone. Dark, dark days indeed.

So in 2020, I declared NO THEME PARKS. Ummmm...I guess so did everyone else. 

So by Fall 2021, I felt like I *should* (always a dangerous word) be ready for another theme park experience. And I wouldn’t be going alone. And I wasn’t driving up and back in the same day. So it *should* have been fine. But apparently everyone thought the same thing because Knott’s Berry was packed! Literally a two hour wait for lunch. If we’d have known, we would have walked out of the park and driven to a nice restaurant and then home! It was sort of a disaster. 

So on the heels of that and in the midst of being a kindergarten parent for the first time, I find myself a little overwhelmed. 

The sun is going down at 2:30pm when I walk out of work. 

I find myself complaining about the cold when it’s 66* (but it’s humid! and there’s a breeze!—people in California are suffering!!!)

After a week-long hiatus from the mom gig, while R traveled with his dad, I thought I would be rested and ready for the business of Christmas. I planned to get a tree ASAP (terrorized by some goddammed article on Apple News that  promised they would be scarce and expensive). I took R to Lowe’s (our traditional California Christmas tree lot, since the mountains of Wyoming are no longer accessible). We picked a good tree and got a few other home essentials followed by a full on Kris-Kringle-meltdown on the drive home because I said it was bedtime and we would have to decorate the tree tomorrow.

Rather than giving toys, I have been taking them away all week because it appears I have given birth to the mouthiest kid on the planet. I am tempted to tell him that I AM Santa just so I can garner some of the awe and fear I deserve! (Don’t worry, I’m not a monster…I won’t do that—but I’m not above shoving his precious toys in the top of the closet if it buys me a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t.)

I scheduled family photos this week because the week before Thanksgiving felt too busy (Note: This week was also too busy and there is not a good time to take family photos around the holidays). My friend Nick is an artist with a camera (and a wizard apparently!) because he got several great shots even though I was struggling to look easy-breezy while my kid and dog barely held still long enough for a 1/500 shutter speed in waning light at 4pm. God bless you, Nick. 

I’ve been so out of sorts I took a pregnancy test this morning just to be sure that wasn’t it—it wasn’t. No announcements here! [Including this because it occurs to me that this is something men never have to worry about, holidays or not.]

I’m guessing you are picking up from my tone that I am sort of crash-landing into this first weekend of December, which prompted my initial question:  Do I need to rethink my entire life?… Or is it just the holidays?

In the words of Eleanor Shellstrop: “I mean somebody royally forked up. Somebody forked up. Why can’t I say ‘fork’?”

On Friday I went to the gym today for the first time in two years. It felt kind of gross to me—you know, such a collection point for viruses after the pandemic changed everything. So I was reluctant. But I did back squats and box jumps and hip thrusters and I walked out of there feeling slightly better, which bloomed into decidedly better over the course of a few hours. I suspect because, I finally put the thing that my body and soul had been asking for, for months, at the top of the list—for just an hour. 

I think the holidays are hard because we have the expectation that we can bumble into this darkest part of the year eating garbage food and giving up on the beach body of summer, substituting the religiosity of the holidays for any meaningful spiritual practice. Maybe the extra pounds become the padding we need as we attempt to embrace all the feelings of family and holidays, past, present and future, which, for many of us, are a mixture of beautiful and horrific. 

We stay busy and satiated so we don’t have to feel because some of us are haunted by loneliness and loss. Some of us are compelled to see and talk to people who have inflicted some of our deepest wounds. For most of us, there is a sense of loss that comes with the rift between the life we thought we would have and the one we had to leave behind, or left us behind. 

It feels incongruent with the tinsel T-rex sitting on my bookshelf, the happy-colored lights outside my house, even the nativity of Christ or the victory of the Maccabean army—because those are stories of hope—and sometimes hope feels dangerous.

Cheryl Strayed wrote, “Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.”

Sometimes the holidays feel like a small, quiet room to me, even as I go through the insane motions to make them noisy and crowded. Some of the bustle is just me trying not to notice the small, quiet room. The place where I have to sit with my idea of what I thought my life would be when I was a bright-eyed, silly, enthusiastic, hopeful little girl, and the reality of what it is today, which is actually something much more complex and rich and deep and interesting than what I could have imagined back then. 

That’s hard. It’s forking hard. 

So please, take care of yourself. Let the dark nights and cool whether, drive you to the small, quiet room.

Pain is on the other side of the door. But so is peace.

Meditation: The Mad-Morning Problem

I used to write a lot about meditative practice and it can look many different ways. Walking, yoga, transcendental meditation, washing the dishes, taking a bath—these are all meditative practices I have leaned on heavily to get through these past few years. 

I was facing my own dark night of the soul. I like Mark Nepo’s description of this best: That moment when it comes time to open the suitcase you’ve been carrying around, labeled Open in Case of Emergency and you realize it’s empty. 

It got pretty bleak in some of those moments. I reviewed some of my previous posts for a project I’m working on and I realized, I was much better back then at sinking into the moment. What I mean by that, is getting into my body—like what are my five senses picking up? Bird song, rain on my face, the look or feeling of leaves, the sound of wind, the sound of my breath, the beating of my heart. 

It reminded me that there is a lot of peace to be found in presence and this is something I want in my In Case of Emergency toolkit. 

So I’ve been trying to get into it more again. Partly, this is because R is in school now. I have him with me for the school days but the weeks go by with blinding speed. And still so much depends on the shoes and the teeth brushing and did you eat any breakfast or just watch TV and I know you want play and I know it feels like there is too much schedule, but there’s homework and now I’m getting external pressure from dad and teacher and that menacing crowd of parents waiting outside the kindergarten gate that I have yet to befriend. I can’t be cool! I can’t! It’s just too much. 

But then he goes away for the weekend. And the days that felt so cramped, stretch out in front of me, menacingly. Endless hours to fill where I am supposed to rest and recreate and create and catch up and clean up. There is so much to do and nothing that HAS to be done. I really enjoy some of that time but there are moments where I feel this emptiness of not having drank enough of the scent of your curly head or sunk deeply enough into play or presence. I’m not good a playing with kids so maybe just presence. Maybe that’s what I should shoot for. 

That’s where I was last weekend. The haunted look of a mother with no child but one who knows she is going to have to conjure the magic to do it all again in a few hours.

So this week, I set a gentle intention to be more present. I sat on the floor. I built ghosts out of Legos for the current Ghostbuster obsession. I read books and laid in bed with him as he succumbed to sleep. I tried not to be too upset about being late for work every. single. day. (Delayed by the panic about another school day, at the end of which, he will report he had a great day.) Repeat. Repeat. Repeat for five days followed by the crowning event of driving him 40 miles in Friday PM traffic to his dad’s house. Another thing, for which we are perpetually late.

And last night I arrived at the beach as the sun was setting. I was angry because every thing took too long and now my surf session would be cut short by the expanding night. But I told myself the water would be good for the anger. So I put on my wetsuit (brand new winter suit! btw—it was fantastic!) And I carried my board to the water. By the time my toes were wet the sun was down and the water reflected the incredible blue-gray color of the sky—not overcast but daylight fading. Sometimes I am so dazzled by the sky that I forget to look at the water as the sun disappears,  but being eye level at its surface, pulling my arms in strokes through its cool satin, made me surrender so completely to the water that I quite forgot about the sky. 

The ocean was friendly last night. It quenched my anger and pushed me gently toward the shore, like a kid on a swing, back and forth, back and forth. So much that I stayed out until only the very horizon was blue-gray and the rest of the sky began to reveal stars. 

It fixed something in me. 

And that’s what I want to show you. If you will let it work on you, presence (that skill of relying on the five senses to observe what is actually real) will fix so many things. Sometimes it takes a few days, or weeks or months and sometimes years and years. 

I don’t know how this goes for others, but for me, it eventually opens me so I can reach this place where I am lighthearted, even about the most difficult things. 

I was just considering this today at yoga because we did a kriya to release stress. This was a stressful week in a lot of ways. And at one point the teacher asked us to think of what made us the most angry, whether it be relationships, politics, physical problems—whatever. And I realized there are two times in my life I most consistently feel anger. One is the mornings getting R out the door and to school. He has so much resistance to this process and my brain tells me it’s ridiculous because he has a good time there and he knows that he must go so why all the drama!?!

And I observe myself reacting with my own drama. I blame him for making this harder than it needs to be. I blame myself that I didn’t wake up earlier so I could do my meditation and get my self together before he wakes up so I can float through his resistance like the ghost of Ghandi. It feels like I should be able to DO something about it! I have such high expectations of myself to be able to control this stuff. 

So when I was meditating in yoga and working on releasing this stored anger, I remembered one morning when I broke the pattern. It was about a month ago. And I had this moment of awareness with R in my incensed haze. I told him that I had been trying for years now, not to get mad when he gets mad about having to go to school. I’ve done the intellectual work—I know I’m just mirroring a little kid’s feelings back to him—I’ve tried the spiritual work of creating space and keeping my voice down—I’ve tried to be cool—I’ve tried to just get him in the door and then scream in my car as I drive to work. Maybe I haven’t tried everything but I have tried a lot. 

So I told him this, I have been doing my best and I can’t change this. If you get mad about going to school, more than likely, I am also going to get mad. So if you want this to change, maybe you need to try to change something too.

Obviously, that was a month ago and we still get the mad-morning problem so this was not a magic fix!

But there is really something to be said for relaxing into your anger and for sharing some of the responsibility for a relationship dynamic with the other person in the relationship. Granted, he’s five, but still, giving myself the grace that I am not solely in charge of how the mornings go—maybe it’s more accurate to say that I let go of the illusion of control over that part of my life—gives me some relief. 

Maybe I could even laugh about it —we suck at mornings! It’s comical. It’s cathartic. It’s the moment of the day when we release all of our stored anger into the world within the safety of our own home. We get to rehearse our disappointment that our time is not our own, our grief at the toys that will be left with no one to play with them, the frustration that Oreos aren’t breakfast. Maybe this anger is precious and sacred. Maybe we need it to balance out the competing energies in our lives. 

So for now, I will stop trying to change anger. 

I will feel it when I need to feel it. 

And, if I regularly return to the position of the observer, by regularly practicing meditation (presence), I have power to turn it from something that feels dark, closed and sticky, into something that flickers, breathes, dances and creates light. 

Can we talk about kindergarten?!

R started Kindergarten at the end of August. I did not know what to expect, but here are my observations so far:

1. Disclosure. Having to do family court about school start probably infinitely increases the stress level around it.
2. Benefits of being a Californian. Yes! We pay higher taxes, but in California, there are no school supply lists, every student gets a lunch for free if they want it, and they also get sent home with a sack of food. I love this because I know there are kids in my community that need that food. It also takes some of the pressure off of me. I’ve been packing lunches for R since he was one year old so it feels like a great luxury to drop him off knowing he has food—it’s there, it’s done. End. Of. Story.
3. School shopping. So school shopping consisted of three new Star Wars t-shirts, a BB8 backpack and a storm trooper lunch box (really not needed because of item #2 on this list—but I send it with him so he can put his leftovers in it). I love that he picked a good guy backpack and a bad guy lunch box, with no help from me. We are honoring the light and the shadow in this strange, little family! [See I’m the Bad Guy].
4. Making friends…and other things. On that note, in week two I learned R already had a “friend” and an “enemy.” These were his words. When we talked about the enemy, he explained how the boy was mean to him and then he was mean back, and back and forth. I offered that he could interrupt the cycle by being nice, to which he responded, “Nah, Mom. We’ve got this.” And so it begins….
5. Hands to yourself! This is the main feedback we’ve received from R’s teacher. I think this is developmentally appropriate, but I have no idea. Honestly, that’s the main thing I have learned from Kindergarten—I know almost nothing. 
6. Other parents. I moved into this neighborhood at the beginning of the covid shutdown, so we haven’t got to know neighbor kids at the same pace we might have otherwise. (That being said, I’m also increasingly introverted the older I get so that’s not to say that we would have met anyone anyway.) But the other parents are an enigma to me. Probably because I think of them that way—OTHER—an overwhelming mass of humans I have to navigate through to get the child to the gate for drop off and pickup. 
7. Other parents, part two. One thing I don’t understand! Other parents, once having navigated the insane parking, the masking, the backpacking, the walking (this all after the morning quarrels over breakfast and clothes and teeth brushing with the kindergartner, the dog AND myself)—they reach the finish line of having deposited said child, either with a hug or tears or a gentle, loving shove through the gate, and their impulse is to stand and watch the children through the fence, like a zoo exhibition. They want to remain in that space. I do not understand this. My impulse, actually my mind/body/spirit mandate is to escape that scene as quickly as I can without screaming or crying or knocking over children as I sprint in the direction of my poorly parked car. This is the main hurdle for me making friends with the other parents. I cannot even see them when I’m in that state. They are part of the mass. Part of the hive mind that might actually consume me before I get to work.
8. Other parents, part three. I’ve had three weeks of practice with this scene now and I’m just starting to soften into it a little. I noticed a woman who lives on the next block, someone we met on a walk during quarantine, with a fellow kindergartener. I noticed her and I spoke with her. I think I appeared mostly human during the interaction. I count this as a huge victory. And I think that’s the strategy I will continue to take. Try to notice one human per drop off/pick up. One bite at a time eats the elephant.
9. The emails. OMG, the emails. I got R registered for school the Friday before school start so I don’t even know what emails I missed before that time, but on the Sunday night before school started, I found myself simultaneously annoyed that I had to read several giant emails pertaining to school, AND that I didn’t already know the information contained in the emails. For this reason, I immediately understood the quandary of school officials. Every parent wants different levels of detailed information—and they don’t want to read the damn emails. I will say—adding the sender to my address book has made receiving the emails a little easier, because I’m pretty sure I missed several because they were going to my spam or promotions inbox. Pro tips left and right here!
10. After school activities. We have the good fortune of attending a school that offers after school care and after school activities, like soccer, chess, gardening, Spanish. Cool, right!? These are available for a small fee. Because of family court and our late registration, the after school care was already full by the time I was able to sign up for it. Okay, I can flex my work schedule to make that work. Then I learned about the individual classes listed above. R wanted to do chess and soccer. Great! It’s something fun for him to be involved in and meet other kids. It also gives me a little more flexibility with work. Well, three days after signups appeared, soccer is full. I went through the spiral of inadequate mom shame for a day or so. And then set my eyes doggedly on the chess club. We don’t play chess. I did watch The Queen’s Gambit, so that’s my one leg up on my 5-year-old in the chess world…but he adorably insists he will learn and then teach me and his dad to play. So I have been checking the chess club website daily. Incessantly. I have emailed them twice through the “Contact Us” form, asking about said chess club. They have politely responded within 24 hours. It now appears chess club is being pushed back to October, (but October is soon, people!) I am living in constant fear that the sign up will appear and fill up in the 24 hour period between my checks of the website. I have developed a twitch in my left eye from the stress of this. [I just checked the site again as I’m writing this…still not up. Eye twitch]
11. Homework. We don’t even have this yet. Supposed to start in October. God, help me. That’s all I have to say. 
12. The bright side.After all this recognition of the hard (let’s not call it complaining!), I have to say, I LOVE this age. I have heard other parents say this along my parenting journey. I have had moments of motherhood that have been absolutely delicious—of course! But I think this is the first time I have seen an evolution in my child’s development and thought, This is beyond cute—this is really fun! He is more independent now. He fixes his own hair in the morning. He builds legos without my help. But my absolute favorite thing is how he talks to me. We have great conversations. Not like, Oh, you’re a cute kid, but actual, real conversations about the fun things and the hard things. I love knowing what he is thinking. I love watching this little person unfold before my eyes. So I’m here for it. Even as this list grows into sports practice and science projects and homecoming dances and driver’s ed. I’m here for it all. 

If you need to find me, I’ll be the one running from the drop off gate.

I Just Want to Feel Like My Old Self

At my last job, most of my cases were people with ADHD, depression, anxiety and mild bipolar disorder.  I saw lots of people for their first ever psychiatry appointment and this was a phrase that frequently came up: “ I just want to feel like my old self.”  

At first I wasn’t sure what to say to this.  It sounded like a really reasonable request.  More reasonable for the 20 year old college student having his first bout of depression, than the 63 year old who was looking back on her 20s as the example of “old self,” but still…how do you go backwards?  

I related to it.  Some circumstances are temporary.  School feels this way.  There is always the end of the semester, a winter break, after that next test…maybe that’s part of what teaches us early on that we should just hold on until the other side of this thing.  The thing being abnormal, so once it’s over we can go back to normal.

But what about the experiences that forever changed me?  Or forever changed my circumstances?  Things that it seems there is no “other side” to get to?  Mark Nepo described this as going through a door and you turn around to go back through it but the door is gone. Where is my old self in all of this? 

When I sat across the table from patients who had been clawing or pining for the old self for years, I wanted to yell, “SHE’S DEAD!  YOU’LL NEVER FIND HER AGAIN! STOP LOOKING!”  That’s not therapeutic—and it’s not true.  What actually came out of my mouth was a nudging toward new self.  Maybe that person you used to be, maybe she had never experienced the death of a child, twenty years in a loveless marriage, sexual assault, a major professional setback, or being diagnosed with a chronic illness.  

Maybe that old self is irrelevant now.  Maybe she doesn’t know enough of the reality of life.  But irrelevant seems inaccurate too.

What I am hinting at is acceptance.  Acceptance that the world may look completely different on the other side of a major life event.  Things may shift in dramatic ways.  And my brain wants to tell me that there will be a back-to-normal moment again.  That is when I will feel like my old self. 

But what I’ve realized is that on both sides and in the middle of all of these circumstances, it’s just me.  There is no other side to get to.  I am waiting there for myself already, just as I am here with me now.  

I’ve been thinking about it with this COVID-19 noise.  I’ve been in a lot of anxiety, mostly because I’m afraid life will look different for a long time.  And I really liked my pre-pandemic life.  I am not unique in that I have had to cancel travel plans, scramble for childcare, worry about toilet paper and canned goods and old people who seem to keep going out despite the warnings.  

• 

  Normal day. R's "Grass Game" on the sidewalk outside preschool.

• 

  Commence carb loading.

• 

  Attempt to get through a weekend without the gym.

• 

  Break down and visit a friend's hot tub. No one was there. (How are we going to get used to this?!?!)

• 

  Dress purse dog in masculine buffalo plaid flannel.

• 

  Urgent haircut for purse dog when he starts running straight into walls.

• 

  Nighttime chalk art produces strange results

• 

  Sigh...feeling like my old self when we resume the old nanny share for a few days. (Can we talk about how we're going to do childcare during this?!)

Descent into pandemic.

I worry about whether I (and we) are being careful enough with this or taking it too seriously.  I worry because I’m not doing my regular fitness stuff and because I’m stress-eating more carbs.  I worry about responsibly consuming all of the produce I’ve purchased.  I worry I will fritter my time away watching TV or talking this all over for the fiftieth time on the phone with a friend or family member.  I worry I won’t take advantage of the sunshine when it’s out.  That’s right!  I have FOMO for sunshine.  

There is so much available to be worried about.  And my brain wants to tell me that when things go back to normal, then I can be my old self again.  But my old self isn’t waiting in the wings.  She’s here with me right now.  Along with the 75 other versions of my old self that I’ve been in the last 36 years. Along with the new self that is growing out of the worry and the sunshine and the produce and the yoga and conversation I am feeding her today.  

All selfs are welcome on all sides of life's challenges.  They’re all here to stay anyway.  

I heard Tracy Ellis Ross say that her most frequent prayer was, “Gentle, gentle, Tracy. Give yourself a thousand breaks and a thousand more.”  I think I will adopt this.  

Gentle, gentle, Michelle.  There is room for all of you, the old and the new, in this beautiful, chaotic world.  

Sat nam.

"Embrace the incarnation."

I’m not huge into new year’s resolutions.  If I see a change I want to make in my life, I don’t wait until January to do it, or I'll procrastinate it for the same reasons I do during the rest of the year.  But the new year does mark the passing of time and it has a way of forcing some reflection. So here’s my inventory for 2019.

I had some real growth in healing my relationship with the feminine. I learned the sensibility of rest.  I learned to stop running from pain and running at things so hard.  I learned how to sit alone and tolerate (even love) myself without having 7000 things to distract me.  Maybe learned is too strong of a word—I GLIMPSED this on more than one occasion.  And that was pretty powerful. 

I finally finally finalized my divorce.  It seems it’s never really over but I have a paper showing it’s done.  There’s still a human in the world with a seemingly large amount of animosity toward me that I am going to raise a super fun little boy with.  That animosity is a weight.  It ties us together and will probably continue to do so for years to come.  And I will live with it.  

I tried dating.  I did my best.  I got my heart broken.  I ended up confused.  I realized I still have a lot of healing to do in my relationships with men.  I carry very little judgment for how people behave during and after divorce. Marriages that don’t work are gnarly.  Marriages that do work should probably be a little gnarly too if everyone’s being honest. No benefit from judging.  Overall I learned that I like men. I probably can’t live my life out as a celibate monk or a lesbian (believe me—the thought has crossed my mind because it would be so much simpler… !?). So I will keep trying. 

I learned four is way better than three. R is four now and he is FUN! There were so many hard feelings that lifted somewhere in the transition from three to four.  I learned I really like building things with Legos—definitely my favorite of his toys.  I learned pretend play with cars and jets is my least favorite.  Jets on Navy Missions, as he loves to play, are doomed to missile attacks and death.  Cars always crash.  It’s a lot of carnage for my delicate soul.  But let me build a house, car, car wash, desert buggy, phone, record player, elephant, airplane, gas station with Legos and I am in!

Puppies are no picnic.  Even if they only way 2.7lb.  Even if they are the most adorable thing anyone has ever seen.  If you don’t like the idea of excrement everywhere or if you're not in the habit of going outside for two minutes 400 times a day—puppies are a great mental exercise. 

R has been asking for a puppy (and a dog and a cat and a kitten and a baby sister) for a while.  I realize that you don’t buy a dog for a four year old—that’s delusional. But if I’m being honest, the decision to get a puppy came out of grief from said masculine relationships.  Something about swearing off men.  It would have been seven cats except that I couldn’t tolerate the cat hair.  If I’m REALLY honest, a part of me wanted to become that old woman that crochets with her ten cats by her side and drinks chardonnay while watching Dateline and soap operas.  I saw the appeal for a minute.

But maybe this is where that masculine energy I’ve been working off of since my teens came in handy.  I couldn’t do that.  At least not now.  So I have this sweet little ball of fur that absolutely loves me even though I’m not sure why.  And we have a plan for potty training now so I am starting to love him too.

So there’s the update from 2019.  Now what about 2020? First a little story.

I took R to the swimming pool at the rec center with his cousins when I was in Utah over the holidays.  I was excited because he’s been doing swim school and has made such great progress.  We arrived at the rec center full of anticipation.  When we entered the pool area, everyone was out of the water for a swim break.  R looked over the massive play structure in the wading pool and cried, “This pool is awesome!”  We waited on the side.  The jets of water began to spray throughout the play structure. The life guards blew their whistles signaling that we could enter the pool. This followed by an eruption of delighted screams as children charged the pool from all sides.  

R screamed with terror.  I spent the next 30 minutes trying to entice him into the water, trying to get him to relax and enjoy the pool.  This concluded with me carrying my screaming child to the side where I dumped him into grandma’s capable arms.  I was angry.  As it was happening I saw how ridiculous it was.  How many of my friends and family have I observed wanting their kids to participate in “fun” things and then get frustrated when their child responds with fear and anxiety?  A lot. Maybe all. I should know better. Still here I was. Indignant thoughts about how much I had spent on swim lessons--“What are we even doing this for!?” I asked my sister.  She has four kids and with a kind, been-there-done-that attitude, she listened to my rant.

It was shortly after this I realized that maybe I should just let myself be 36.  Maybe I should let myself embrace the incarnation.  I’ve done all this soul searching and learning about consciousness, spirituality and love.  Part of this has been motivated by the hope that maybe it will help me skip some of the suffering.  I’ve realized that my suffering is all of my own creation.  So why can’t I stop creating it?  

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this of Ram Dass’ quote and I found it particularly helpful:

“Embrace the incarnation.” Essentially what he meant was this: He had spent enough time in meditation and transcendental and psychedelic states to understand that what we call “reality” is all an illusion. He knew that we are in fact not these bodies, nor are we these lives. He knew that consciousness is a divine dance—that it’s all projection, that none of this is actually TRUE. He knew that we are all ONE, all God. And yet, he also understood that on another plane we ARE here. We ARE separate beings in these weird meat bodies, with these particular personalities, dramas, and gifts, performing in this strange play. 

The trick of life, he said, was to understand that none of this is real, but to embrace the incarnation, anyhow. Throw yourself into life, despite the fact that it’s all a dream. He knew that he was not really this guy named Ram Dass (he was actually God in disguise, just like you and I are) but he played that character beautifully—with big-hearted compassion, with endless curiosity, with love and humor, and with a mischievous wink that seemed to say, “It’s all just a game, but ain’t it Grand?”

Elizabeth Gilbert, Instagram 12/23/2019

So my resolution (if this can even be called that) for 2020 is to embrace the incarnation. 

• I’ll make all the mistakes that 36 year olds make. 
• I’ll hustle in the way that 36 year olds hustle.
• I’ll spend money on stupid 36 year old things.  
• I’ll worry about vain things the way 36 year olds do.
• I’ll mistake accomplishments and material things for happiness.
• I’ll give the passionate speeches that 36 year olds give about political, religious, corporate and educational institutions. 
• I’ll make the parenting blunders that 36 year olds make.
• I will worry too much about the cleanliness and furnishings of my house.
• I’ll modify my diet in ways that probably don’t make sense.
• I’ll read the books that 36 year olds read. 
• I’ll write the stories that 36 year olds write.  
• I’ll talk to god the way 36 year olds do, in moments of pain or as I relax into sleep.  
• I’ll let my heart bleed for the suffering in the world.
• I’ll put on my big girl pants and go to work and make dinner and pay the electric bill.
• I’ll waste time watching TV.
• I’ll wash the dishes and wipe little boy bottoms and snuggle and kiss and yell…

…because I only get one year to be 36.

Who is Heavenly Mother?

I’ve been trying to understand, FOR ME, what is the most useful way to think about God.  In the Mormon theology I was raised with, God is male and usually referred to as Heavenly Father.  Mormonism has the beautiful, and added, benefit of a female counterpart to the male God, termed Heavenly Mother.  The idea is that we are all part of a massive human family with Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and all of humanity as our siblings.  There’s a lot that I like about this model.  It’s reflective of the family structure most of us have experienced so it’s familiar (it can also be fraught for the same reason).  

Little is said of Heavenly Mother in Mormon doctrine and culture.  This has usually been explained to me to be because she is so sacred that Heavenly Father protects her from the profanity of human conversation.  From a feminist perspective, this explanation is infuriating and degrading.  From the perspective one who views herself as a child with heavenly parents, it’s confusing.  Kids need their mom.  Why would you withhold that?  

Maybe strangely, this issue has been of little bother to me for most of my life.  My religious persona has been quite accepting of these sorts of problems and explanations, pushing them under the umbrella of, I’ll understand that better someday.  Sometimes that umbrella is useful because some of these topics can only be explored with time and life experience.  They live like little ghosts in the back of my psyche until an experience brings them to the foreground.  

This past week, I was talking to my parents about a problem, I’ve been trying to figure out for months.  I presented them with my current thinking about it and my dad said, “That seems really sensible.”  To which I replied, “I’m not going for sensible! That’s not how I’m making decisions anymore.  I want it to FEEL right.”  And he, so humbly and happily said, “Oh! Well that’s your mother’s domain.”  He’s so great!  I can’t remember what my mom said to this, but I remember the energy of it, and it was something about self trust.  And I’m going to come back to this in a minute. 

I want to write a little about what I’ve observed in the nature of the feminine.  And to use Elizabeth Gilbert’s term, I don’t want to get “gender-freaky” about this.  I’m talking about the iconic feminine.  

The feminine creates.  This is the energy in the universe that calls to us to experiment and imagine.  To me, the feminine creative energy feels like lying on my back looking at the clouds and seeing figures of airplanes and unicorns.  It’s not overtly practical or directional.  It might even feel superfluous, but, like air, its necessity is recognized mostly by its absence.

The feminine is the ether.  I like to think about this from the perspective of a child in the womb.  We are swimming in the feminine.  She is all around.  Think about the idea of mother earth.  She is the rock, the water, the sky and everything in between all of it.  Maybe this is why we feel close to the divine as we connect with the natural world.  It’s like pressing a fetal hand into the wall of the womb, becoming slightly aware of the being that is carrying us.  The problem is not locating the feminine, it’s becoming conscious that she is all around me. 

The feminine nurtures.  The feminine says, I will go on doing all of this, holding all of this, whether you notice or not, because I am doing it for my own purpose.  This is the subtle strength of feminine care.  All of this carrying and holding and love is not contingent upon outcomes and results, it is intrinsic. 

I’m sure there is more that could be written about this, but maybe that’s enough to nudge your mind in the direction I’m intending.  I’ve been thinking about these things in the context of Heavenly Mother.  And I’ve realized that most of the spiritual practices I’ve adopted this past year are things that put me in the way of this divine, feminine energy.   

Nature. I’ve noticed that one of the most universal ways of connecting with God or finding peace or hearing the inner voice is to be in nature.  While some are getting dressed up for church, many are heading into the mountains or the sea.  Church is sort of a masculine, direct pathway to God.  It’s like following a map to the divine father.  These are my office hours, so to speak.  But nature is always open—curious and diverse and meandering.  I believe this is where the divine mother lives.

My body.  I feel super cool about my body these days, because I feel like it is this beautiful echo of my divine mother’s voice.  I’ve come to experience this in several ways—child birth, exercise, meditation, sleep—but the yoga mat has been an excellent teacher.  There are truths embedded in my flesh that are revealed only when I am paying very close attention and yoga has given me a way to notice them.  Each time I get on the mat, I have to strip away all the expectations of myself for performance.  My intention is usually to listen or to let go—surrender, release, acceptance.  My mind becomes the servant of my body and my spirit becomes the quiet observer.  Teach me, I say to my self—to the part of me that already knows—the divine feminine.

Honesty.  Some of my most powerful connections with the divine, come during intimate conversations.  Isn’t this how it’s always been with women?  While men are hunting beasts and conquering legions, women are in the back room making dinner or folding clothes and talking about the heart of life.  The feminine divine is in these quite conversations, in the quiet honesty.  She is in the utterance of fear and uncertainty and the humble declaration of faith.  The feminine divine can hold all of this—the ugly and the beautiful, the weak and the strong.  It’s all safe with her.  

Art. Honesty is the birthplace of art.  The feminine divine cheers us on as we attempt to excavate those sacred jewels within and bring them into the world.  She is in the music and the poetry.  We do ourselves a disservice by relegating this category of expression to entertainment, because it is so much more than that.  Heavenly Mother is constantly asking us to dance with her, to sing, to write, to draw, because that is the way we can come to know ourselves in the way SHE sees us.  In the same way I encourage my son’s fledgling attempts at creativity, she is doting over my bad poetry, messy relationships and off-key singing with the hope that I will not let the world close my mouth.  

Linger and rest.  The iconic feminine meanders.  My therapist taught me this months ago and it’s something that frequently comes to mind.  The feminine is like the path along the cliff line that has amazing views but takes a little longer.  I’m someone who naturally values efficiency, so it has taken a conscious effort to allow myself to walk the scenic path.  The feminine suggests, maybe it’s okay to just sit here for a while and enjoy the beauty of this place or moment.  Maybe it’s okay to linger.  Maybe it’s okay to take a nap if you’re tired.  There may be miles to go, but there is time and it’s okay to be kind to yourself.  

Now that I better understand the feminine divine, I see that, because of her nature, she doesn’t fit easily into organized religion.  She is too big and complicated for that.  There are no instructions for breathing!  How would you teach someone to inhale?  Yet, I notice very quickly when I am becoming oxygen-deprived. 

So back to my story about the conversation with my mom and dad.  I don’t feel bad that I can’t remember my mother’s exact words because the words were not as important as the feeling.  And this is true to the feminine divine.  She doesn’t write instruction booklets.  She is unstructured and unshaped.  And because of that she can fit into the spaces where other things can’t.    

This is me in the flow: quiet mind, open heart. I think of these moments as glimpses. I just try to catch a peek of that feeling as often as I can. P.S.-- Heavenly Mother thinks SnapChat filters are fun too!

Heavenly Mother is the essence of self care.  A while back, I realized that the only thing that REALLY qualified as self-care—that really worked—was the activities that cleared the crap off of my soul.  The things that helped me to hear my inner voice.  This is Heavenly Mother.  So maybe you can pray to her.  Maybe you can visualize a heavenly being with kind eyes and a loving embrace.  If that’s helpful, then do it!  

My advice on this topic is really DO ANYTHING.  Reach out into the ether and you will find her because she is everywhere and all it takes to access her is a quiet mind and an open heart.  The practices that will be most helpful are the ones that create those two things.  And when you find her, tell me about it because I live for this stuff now! Namaste. 

Be bad at ANYTHING

I’m a big advocate of journaling.  The habit of indulging myself on the page has become a life-changing, enriching, emboldening, expansive endeavor.  I write about stupid things.  I joke that if my posterity ever read my journal they’ll be like, “Who is [fill in the blank] for whoever is causing drama in my psyche?”

“It’s not important!” I’ll reply. 

“Yeah, but that name is mentioned like 7000 times in here!” And because it's in a word document they can ctrl+F and actually get an accurate count. *Sigh.*

Then I’ll reply with some sage wisdom about how what is going on in life is always more about you and less about the other people that step in to fill certain roles.

Because it’s been such a helpful tool for me, I have trouble not advising everyone to journal all the time.   But this isn’t fair—because some of us aren’t writers!  What if someone told me, Michelle, I really need you to sculpt this life experience—like pour it all into a sculpture.  Make me know what you are feeling and doing and being in this moment with clay…or worse—marble.

I would respond with a lot of fear and drama in my head because I know nothing about sculpture.  I could do it.  I’m confident of that.  If I applied myself, I could produce some piece of sculpture that would represent a piece of me.  It might take me 30 years but I could do it.  But WRITING is so much EASIER--for me!

So there is something to are said for picking a medium of expression that feels somewhat natural.  Maybe you have some skill with drawing or photography or singing or welding metal fragments.  There are so many ways to express oneself--the point is to pick one!

What holds us back from picking one is the inner critic.  It’s the voice that develops at some point between the time we are first introduced to crayons and the seventh grade.  It’s the voice that says, You aren’t any good at this.  This is stupid.  No one wants to read this.  That drawing doesn't even look like a person.  That critic becomes somewhat helpful as we navigate school, friends, college and career selection.  That voice can push us into areas where we have natural ability.  But eventually it becomes a crippling companion.  It’s the Tanya Harding brute force that takes us out at the knees.  It’s ugly.

So the first step is in identifying the voice of that critic.  When it pipes up, just take note, hear what it says.  Then realize that you are not bound to it.  You are free to be BAD at anything you put your mind to!  

There it is.

You can do anything as long as you’re willing to be bad at it.

You are hereby liberated!

So the choice in medium becomes less important—do what fills you in this moment!  I’ll admit, writing was a natural choice for me.  I chose it because I felt I was already a little good at it.  That’s okay!  And some days I draw and I’m really VERY mediocre at drawing but, when I’m most successful is when I’m willing to be bad at it!  I like drawing and maybe some day I’ll take some classes and figure out how to be better at it, but why should that stop me from expressing myself that way now!?!

There’s an unspoken rule, once you reach real adulthood (I’m not talking age 18—I mean the time in life when you can really do you) that you should only do things you are good at.  That rule is silly.  And it sucks.  Literally it sucks all the fun out of life.

Recently, I’ve been reacquainting myself with the piano.  I took lessons from age 8-15.  I *should* be quite proficient with that amount of lessons under my belt, but I’m just okay.  That just-okayness held me back from playing for years and years!  And I LOVE playing the piano.  Finally I decided that was silly.  When I got a piano in my home, I considered taking lessons to get myself up to a proficient state, but then I chucked that idea right out.  NO!  I’m going to allow myself to be bad at it. Taking lessons so I feel worthy to grace an instrument I love with my music was so silly.  I’m worthy right now.

I’m taking opportunities to challenge myself in this way.  I selected some challenging songs that I love.  One of them is from A Star Is Born and performed by Lady Gaga.  I do my best to play and sing like Lady Gaga, which is hilarious!  But I tell you what!  I get a lot closer to sounding like Gaga by shamelessly TRYING than I ever did by playing small.  You won’t see me on America’s Got Talent EVER, but if you want a private, amateur performance in my living room—then I’m your gal!  And all that’s changed is my willingness to be bad at it.

The same thing applies to surfing.  Every time I paddle out, I face some of the same old insecurity demons.  Then I just decide I’m totally fine being the worst surfer in the water and sometimes I am, and sometimes that mentality allows me to immerse myself so fully into surfing I completely forget about the ranking system and just surf!

I love how Mark Nepo describes this.  He says that when we are gifted with something, it’s tradition to be told that we should become that thing.  If I’m decent at writing, people will say, “You should be a writer.”

“But the power is in the DOING, not the in the BEING,” Mark says.  The power is in the verb, not the noun.  So forget about being a writer, and write!  Forget about being a singer, and sing!  Forget about being a surfer, and surf!  Focus on the verb!  Do the thing!  Pick the medium!  Be the YOU doing the things that bring you to life!

This is my commitment to myself—to continue to allow me to be bad at things—because that’s where all the power and all the life is!  Here’s your permission slip to do the same!  Namaste.

Kids are the best examples of immersion. R just spent 90 minutes outside tonight relocating muddy water in cupfuls to different locations in the yard...mud might be his preferred medium...

You can make anything!

Ruby and Don

There are two places in the world where you can find evidence of my great-grandmother, Ruby Evelyn Hines.  One is a stretch of farmland situated on Marsh Creek in Southern Idaho.  I grew up visiting my grandparents on the farm every summer and every Christmas.  From the beginning of my remembering life, Great-grandma Ruby stayed in a little yellow trailer house, next to the original farmhouse where my grandparents lived.  When we arrived for a visit, we would often pass Ruby, out for a walk on the narrow lane.  My sisters and I would venture over to her trailer house after greeting my grandparents.  I remember her answering the door with a generous smile, asking, “Now, who are you?”  Ruby had Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember our names but she always invited us in to examine her trinkets and treasures and feed us a snack.

Ruby married my great-grandfather, Vivian (yes, you read that name correctly), when she was only sixteen.  Ruby didn’t seem to shy away from work.  She frequently worked along side V (as she affectionally refers to him in her journal) in the fields, kept a garden, kept bees, sewed, knitted, crocheted, and cooked for her family and the farm help.  

Four years after their marriage, my grandfather, Don, was born.  He was their only child and she was a powerful mother.  She traveled once a year with my grandpa on the train to Oregon to visit her family.  I like thinking of them as a brave, little duo, working hard and loving hard.  My grandpa speaks of his mother with such affection that I know this must be true.  With a twinkle of admiration in his eyes, my grandpa recalls that his mother had BIG arms.  “I could never milk a cow as fast as she could!”

The other place you can find Ruby is a little quarter-acre lot in Southwestern Arizona.  When my grandpa was experienced enough to take over the farming operation, V and Ruby retired to the desert in a travel trailer for the winter months.  I didn’t visit this place until several years after her passing so I don’t know, first hand, what it meant to her, but her spirit is alive and well there.     

Flowering cactus surrounded by quartz

When I visited a few weeks ago, I found a journal of hers from 1960.  Ruby recorded, in a few sentences, what she did each day of that year.  Most days there was a report of the weather, including high and low temperatures.  I imagine that spending the winter months in the mild climate of the Southwest felt like a luxury worth recording.  The weather report was usually followed by some tasks she completed, like knitting, baking bread, letter writing, cutting V’s hair or sewing.  There were days they spent on the road, days V spent fishing, evenings Ruby spent rock hunting, trips to Mexico, trips to beaches of the Baja peninsula, and evenings spent playing cards with friends.  The theme of the journal was her constant creativity.  Even in retirement, her days were spent creating.

There is a shed on the quarter-acre lot that houses a hodgepodge of artifacts, evidence of her creative life beyond the typical domestic arts.  Ruby collected hundreds of shells on the beaches of Mexico.  She drilled them and strung them on wire to make decorative baskets.  There are snuff containers of tiny colored shells that I imagine she purchased for a project that either never came to being or has since been lost.  I wonder if she collected the shells, simply for the pleasure of holding and having them, the same way I enjoy colored paperclips.   I find a tiny lizard skeleton in a lidless canning jar.  The desert holds onto him in the same way it retains these pieces of Ruby and V.  

Ruby's collection

Ruby moved around a lot as a girl.  Her father was one of those people that hated to stay in one place. During her childhood they made their way from Kansas to Colorado, back to Kansas, to Oregon, then back to Kansas, back to Oregon, then Idaho.  They moved three times while in Idaho before Ruby married V at age 16.  I imagine it felt good to stay in one place! But I also think all of this moving may have taught Ruby from a young age, to love the place that’s in front of your face.  For a woman who spent much of her life trying to make green things grow, and visiting her extended family in forested Oregon, she clearly loved the desert.  She must have been an avid rockhound because the barren ground is covered in unique mineral specimen, deliberately placed at the foot of decades old cacti.  This is the bit of Arizona that I remember from traveling there as a kid.

What Ruby created on the desert floor around her 1950s Spartan park model trailer, is completely worthy of designation as American folk art.  Mosaics constructed from naturally colored stone stretch out in each direction.  And what I love most about it, besides the fact that it still exists today, disturbed only by the spring weeds and some years of desert dust, is that she did it for the pure love of making it.  Why else?!?     

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this:

“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything.”

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Sometimes creativity feels like a crushing chore, but when I think about Ruby it feels more an attitude.  An irrepressible impulse that played out in the bread she baked, the cows she milked, the clothing she sewed, the baskets she constructed, the beets she hoed, and the rocks she laid.  Her mosaics matter enormously and not at all, in the same way that each life matters enormously and not at all.

Ruby Jr.

I have a niece who shares her great-great-grandmother’s name.  Along with the name, she bears a physical resemblance and the same penchant for artistic expression.  My 93-year-old grandfather cannot look at Ruby without tearing up, overwhelmed with memories of his mother.  I’m reminded that maybe that’s the greatest creative legacy we leave behind—the people.  I see her strong arms on my sister.  I see her precision and artistry in my father.  I see her quiet, enormous heart in my grandfather.  And I see her ability to make any place feel like home in me. To carry Ruby forward in the world in our spiritual DNA--what a sacred privilege!

The Marco Polo Prayer

Sometimes I can’t feel god.  I used to think this was because of something I had done.  That god had withdrawn from me.  I learned in church that god cannot dwell in unholy places so I assumed if I couldn’t feel god then something unholy was going on inside of me.  I felt shame about this.  I thought it meant something bad about me.  But I was wrong.

I am not sure exactly when I figured this out.  It was sometime after I had given up on doing everything correctly.  After I had shed another cage.  I observed that there were good people—people that I knew to be truly good at their essence—that didn’t keep all of the commandments, that didn’t worry about all the things.  I wondered if they felt god.  I believed they did.  I wondered if we could really distance ourselves from god.  And why would a god, who truly loved us, want distance from us?  

This didn’t make sense.  

I thought about the times when bad things happen to good people.  Like when I was diagnosed with cancer at age 21. Like when my friend’s babysitter was picked up for a DUI with her kids in the car the night she left for a trip across the country.  Like when my sister’s daughter had her first seizure the night she left on vacation.  Like when my grandmother’s oldest son was born with a heart defect.  Like when my friend’s daughter developed leukemia and was maimed by the treatment.  Like when my other friend gave birth and then broke her leg four days later at the same time as her dog was dying of cancer.  Where is god in all of this? Where are you, god!?! 

“I’m right here.  I’m right here.”

God is always here.  Right here.   

I learned this in the midst of my own suffering.  Mark Nepo related his experience with terrible sickness from chemotherapy to Oprah on her Supersoul podcast.  After a night of vomiting to the point of vomiting blood, Mark’s wife asked, “Where is god?” And Mark, in a moment of excoriated clarity, declared the knowing, “He’s right here.” 

This idea of suffering and god has formed a new kind of prayer for me.  I find myself, in moments where god feels particularly distant, asking, Are you there, god?  Then I answer for god, I’m right here.  It's like a game of Marco Polo, where I call out and god responds. And it always feels true.  God is right here, in the happy, in the suffering, in the mundane.  God is here inside of me.

God is in the peace AND in the suffering.  God is both.  God is all.  

So if god is in all of it, all of the human experience, then surely it is sacred.  Sometimes we get this confused in our minds.  We think god will preserve the righteous.  The scriptures are filled with this sentiment.  Yet bad things continue to happen to people we know and love and people we’ve never met that we only hear about in tragedy via the news.  That voice in my head that wants to distance me from god would say, If you would have done this differently then this might have gone differently, or If you were really listening to God you might have avoided tragedy.  Or prayed harder or been kinder or read more scriptures or donated more money or whatever things are on the to-do list of the "righteous."

Cheryl Strayed wrote this in a life-changing (for me) installment of her advice column, Dear Sugar.  It was in response to a letter writer who was struggling with her belief in god after her infant daughter developed a brain tumor that required invasive surgery.  Please visit this link for the full piece, as it is beautiful:

“Countless people have been devastated for reasons that cannot be explained or justified in spiritual terms. To do as you are doing in asking if there were a God why would he let my little girl have to have possibly life threatening surgery?—understandable as that question is—creates a false hierarchy of the blessed and the damned. To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising—the very half that makes rising necessary—is having first been nailed to the cross.”

The Human Scale, Dear Sugar

The very half that makes rising necessary—is first having been nailed to the cross.  Maybe we are all to be nailed to the cross in this life.  We are meant to be set ablaze.  And even as this is happening we are meant to reach out to each other and up to god.  Maybe god is the love the burns between us in such moments of vulnerability and pain.  Maybe that is a close as we get to understanding god’s love for us.  Maybe that’s when we touch it.  

What if you allowed your God to exist in the simple words of compassion others offer to you? What if faith is the way it feels to lay your hand on your daughter’s sacred body? What if the greatest beauty of the day is the shaft of sunlight through your window? What if the worst thing happened and you rose anyway? What if you trusted in the human scale? What if you listened harder to the story of the man on the cross who found a way to endure his suffering than to the one about the impossible magic of the Messiah? Would you see the miracle in that?

The Human Scale, Dear Sugar

What if god was here, right here, always?

Cover art for this piece: I saw this on display at The Broad museum in LA. It's by Edward Ruscha, The Right People and Those Other People, 2011.

Floating like a rabid ghost

There are a million reasons NOT to publish and only one reason TO publish. That reason is the commitment I made to myself to write and to be seen and not to worry about whether it was any good or not.  I’m not sure how this phase of the divorce/grieving/soul-splitting process is supposed to feel.  Most of this first week of 2019 has felt like a punch in the gut.  

Today I kept thinking of what Cheryl Strayed wrote in her Dear Sugar column:

“You let time pass. That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you’re okay.” 

Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough

Today I am floating like a rabid ghost.  

I just had the strangest stomach bug these past few days.  It was strange in that it only caused nausea.  Lest you think I misdiagnosed it, it’s been going around the family.  The kids had a fever with it.  For me, it was four days of nausea.  Last night, it was strong enough that I knew I wouldn’t sleep so I pulled out a Phenergan tablet left over from an old prescription.  It made me so sleepy that I was out before I could determine if it helped my nausea.  

I wake to my alarm at 5:30 feeling like I am waking from the dead—but not without nausea.  I will myself to rise from the bed.  Dress.  Stop off for some caffeine and drive to pick up my sweet 3 year old, R. 

On the way, I listen to a Jody Moore podcast about faith and magic.  It reminds me of how 2018 started.  I was just beginning to become conscious that my thoughts were optional and that I could direct my feelings by choosing different thoughts.  I was taking my first steps onto the path of awakening.  I wonder if it was worth it.  I wonder if life was better when I was living within the cages of what I imagined others’ expectations to be.  This morning, I am not sure.  

As I buckle R into his carseat, he looks up at me and says, “You don’t want to be with our family.”  I’m sure this is him trying to make sense of something he heard from someone at some point.  

I think, “This is how it’s going to be.”  I tell him that I want to be with him and that I love him.  He smiles at this and we get on the road heading home.  

I go through the motions of getting myself ready for work and R packed for the babysitter.  I drive to work.  I sit at my desk.  I speak to my coworkers and patients.  I picture myself as the rabid ghost floating over my body.  

I have an extensive conversation with one of my patients about his “wife, Naidu” who exists only in his mind. She directs him to use methamphetamine.  She gives him a female connection.  He speaks about her with a mixture of the love of a devoted husband and the admiration of a deity.  

He has been refusing medication since he was enrolled in our program.  He is on probation.  He uses drugs, tests dirty, goes back to jail, comes out and repeats the process again.  Case managers keep telling him he needs to be on medication but he wants to know how medication will help him.  He talks about others he has seen that take medication, “They are spent.”  He likes his manic energy.  He feels he has work to do.  Naidu gives him a purpose.  

I take all of this in and he is convincing.  I’m not sure that, for this man, the real world has more to offer him than his alternate reality.  I’ve had these conversations before though.  Risk of re-incarceration.  Risk of re-hospitalization.  Risk of harming self or others.  Grave disability.  These are the reasons for medication.

For many people the alternate reality is much worse than real life.  For many, the constant sensation of being watched, hearing other’s thoughts, feeling judged, feeling hunted presses in so close that sedation or jitteriness or insatiable hunger caused by the medication is tolerable by comparison.  But for my disciple of Naidu, that’s not the case.  

I decide that risk of re-incarceration is my best bet.  I carefully and respectfully explain how his functioning in this alternate reality plays a role in his repeated jail stays.  I offer that medication might help him to avoid those behaviors.  He names the two women who accused him of sexual crimes.  He looks me directly in the eyes and tells me that he never pimped that woman.  “All I did was ask her to sell my DVDs.”  It’s impossible for me to know the truth.  

I bring up the medication again.  He gives me a knowing look.  I’m trying to take away his fantasy.  The medication I’m offering might kill Naidu.  I remind him that our program is voluntary.  The treatment is voluntary.  He refuses the medication but he continues talking.  He likes the audience.  He likes the face time with a female who exists in the concrete world.  I stand up as he speaks and open the door.  I walk out of the office and encourage him to follow me down the hallway.  I have other patients to see and he will never stand and leave if I don’t.       

I finish my notes and drive home.  I know I should eat.  I eat six cold, cooked shrimp from the fridge.  I walk to my bedroom to change.  That’s when the tears come.  I feel the tearing ache in my chest.  The pain that comes from a broken heart, broken over and over again.  I sob and prostrate myself on the bedroom floor.  I think of the dam with all of the water behind it.  I remind myself that I need to let this water out.  So I stay there, on the bedroom floor and sob.  I’m already late picking up R so after a few moments, I pull myself together enough to finish dressing.  I grab an Rx Bar and walk out the door still crying.  

When I arrive to collect R, he is still napping.  Rachel sees my face and wants to know what happened.  I explain the recent events, but this feels hollow.  I’m crying about the pain of years.  I’m crying because, on this, my second chance at life, I’m wondering if I’m screwing it all up yet again.  I’m crying because I’ve carried so much sadness in my heart for so long.  I can’t bear it.  I pull myself together again.  I picture the rabid ghost floating over my head.  It occurs to me that maybe this is why Prozac exists. 

I finally go to wake R.  He’s out of sorts.  It’s the one time in his life when there are no Goldfish crackers available and there is nothing to quench his dissatisfaction with the world.  I bait him out of his bad mood with some chocolate chips.  We drive home and I remember that there are some toys in my closet, given to us by a kind neighbor who always thinks of R and me.  I tell R we have another Christmas present I forgot about.  He is delighted with the toys.  It’s a mix of toy tools and some real, small scale tools and flashlights.  There is a kit to build a car out of balsa wood.  R is most excited about that.  It comes with a set of paints so I put him at the kitchen table with the paints and he goes about decorating the wood car pieces.  When he’s finished, I set him up with a cartoon and some saltine crackers (maybe he is still dealing with some nausea too).  

While he is engrossed, I call my mom and dad.  The tears return.  I’m sitting in my bedroom crying softly into the phone.  My dad is quiet but present.  My mom speaks up with words of empathy.  It’s the pain of years spilling out of me.  I’m not sure why I need them on the phone but maybe sometimes one needs a witness in order to bear the pain.  After not too long, R finds me.  I say goodbye to my parents and I try to feed him some dinner.  I need to go grocery shopping.  There is no produce in my house.  I offer him a quesadilla and he puts it down after one bite.  I’m not sure I have the strength to battle over dinner tonight.  R goes back to playing and I wander around my apartment considering various things that could be cleaned up or attended to.  Then I realize that all I want to do is sit.  So I sit on the couch and R finds my lap.  We watch a cartoon together.  We play with his tools.  I am the rabid ghost, but I like the feeling of his soft, curly hair on my lips and his perfectly-sized thighs in my hands.  I sit. 

It’s time for bed.  I read him a story after teeth are brushed.  He seems tired but restless.  I sing him a song and we give kisses goodnight.  I float like a rabid ghost to the couch and write.  

This post is too long and too tedious but it’s true.  And my only hope is that after floating through the weeks and clawing up through the months, I can one day find myself alone on a bench in the sun and close my eyes and lean my head back and realize I’m okay. 

Accelerated carousel of mommy guilt

I’ve been kicking around ideas of what to write about all day today.  And now, as I am finally summoning the courage to write what I’ve been avoiding, I’ll probably get this posted about the time you are all headed to bed.  But no matter, it will be waiting for you bright and early Monday morning.

We had a non-conventional Thanksgiving.  Because it was just my mom, R and me, and because I didn’t feel like cooking, we decided to go out.  We actually had a really nice day.  We went for a walk in the morning, then to Cabrillo National Monument for some tide pool exploration.  Then we went out for dinner at a restaurant that served a nice Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a good day, even though I felt a little off all day. 

On Friday, I decided that getting a Christmas tree and decorating it would help things feel more holiday-ish so we loaded up and went to Lowe’s to pick out a tree.  We found a decent one.  The cashier gave me $20 off because the universe loves me (look for evidence—it loves you too!).  We brought it home and Mom helped me get it set up in the tree stand.  I did this all by myself last year and I’m not even sure how I did it! 

R was soooo excited.  He was down on the ground with me, tightening the supporting screws around the tree.  He was testing the branches by hitting them with a ruler.  He was chattering about Santa Claus and snow and presents.  When we opened the box of ornaments, it was all my mom and I could do to keep him from destroying the breakable ones.  He wanted to inspect them all.  We had Christmas music playing and I was frantically trying to get the lights on the tree so we could unleash R with the ornaments.  I think it was our personal record for fastest tree decorating.  R jingled all of the bells and cuddled all of the angels. 

As I’m describing it, it sounds really fun—the wonder and magic of Christmas for a 3-year-old playing out in front of me.  But the truth is, I felt held back.  Damn foreboding joy.   

I got R to sit down and eat a little lunch by putting on an Amazon Prime movie about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Then it was time to load him up to go to his dad’s house.  When I put him in the car he cried.  He looked at me with those big, brown eyes and clearly said, “I want us to be together,” meaning his dad, R and me.  “Don’t leave me, Mommy.”

Words fail to describe the heaviness, the crushing weight, of that phrase falling from his precious, innocent lips.

I paused, with him in the carseat and me standing by the open car door.  I told him that I understand his wanting that.  I told him that his dad and I love him very much.  I told him that we had a long car ride and that I would be with him in the car.  This last pieced seemed to satisfy him.  After a few minutes on the road, he asked me, “Is it okay if I take a little sleep?” He slept the rest of the drive to his dad’s house. 

Sometimes we don’t get what we want.  Even if it’s a beautiful desire.  Sometimes it’s a no.  And it’s heartbreaking.  How would I explain to a three-year-old the twelve and a half years his dad and I tried to make it work?  How could I convey the sense of self that I sacrificed to that relationship? Of course, it’s impossible.  But it’s also not his to know at three.  It’s something that he will come to know over all of the years he walks this earth.  He will add to it his own experiences.  And this might be one of them—his first Christmas with the consciousness that he doesn’t get to have it with his mom and dad together in the same house. 

There are not many perks to having a divided family, but I count this as one—perfect is not an option.  Any idea that we are carrying on a perfect life over here is immediately laughable.  We are all just people, doing the best we can.  And sometimes our best is pretty terrible.  But it is our best. 

In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown wrote a chapter called “Wholehearted parenting: Daring to be the adults we want our children to be.”  I came across this chapter at a time when I really needed it.  It’s easy to question how well I’m doing in the parenting department.  This time in my life is an intense struggle for myself, let alone the little human, with whom I’m entrusted.  I don’t always show up how I want to.  On days when I have R, I often feel overwhelmed and tired.  On the days I don’t, sometimes I miss him like a piece of my soul is gone.  It’s like being on an accelerated carousel of mommy guilt where the highs and lows are too dramatic to be fun. 

Brené encourages us to focus on becoming the adults we want our children to be, rather than parenting in the right way. 

“As Joseph Chilton Pearce, ‘What we are teaches the child more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.’  Even though the vulnerability of parenting is terrifying at times, we can’t afford to armor ourselves against it or push it away—it is our richest, most fertile ground for teaching and cultivating connection, meaning and love.”

So who do I want R to be?  I want him to be resilient and hardworking.  I want him to see the world as an abundant place where he can do and become anything he wants to.  I want him to be kind, both to himself and to others, even when they fall short.  I want him to feel connected to friends and family.  I want him to be spiritual, to see the divinity within himself.  I want him to understand respect.  I want him to feel love and to feel loved.  I want him to know that love does not require the sacrifice of self, but that it celebrates and champions the self to become as big and complicated and beautiful as this diverse, messy and wonderful earth God has set us within. 

And so this is my work—to become.  God, help me.

Just in case you ever feel ungrateful

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  I’m not thankful.  At least, I’m not thankful for probably 95% of my day.  I don’t walk around in a cloud of gratitude and satisfied bliss.  For all my talk about mindfulness and the positive spin I work to put on my life, I spend a huge amount of time buried in unimportant details and worrying about the future or the past.  I am often investing my thought energy in other people’s business (their thoughts, actions or feelings) or God’s business (things that are fully out of my control), instead of my own business.  And none of this makes me feel very thankful. 

Sometimes this fills me with incredible guilt.  Moms of small children get this a lot from older women  who say things like, “Just enjoy these moments because they go by so fast.”  Now, not only am I suffering from the barrage of toddler emotions, but also the weight of guilt that I’m not enjoying his cute little hands placed on my face after he’s just handled a public toilet seat.  Seriously people!  That IS too much to ask. 

I shared with my sister a couple of months ago that I made a short gratitude list in my journal.  I felt particularly edgy because I only put on there what I was feeling gratitude for in THAT moment.  When I told her this, she was unimpressed, “Yeah…so…what?” 

Me: “I mean, I didn’t put all the stuff on there that I’m SUPPOSED to be thankful for!”

Sis:  “Oh [pause] I guess I never think other people will read it so I don’t really worry about what's supposed to be on there.” 

Of course, then she was the empathetic genius she normally is, and tried to make me feel LESS crazy for writing gratitude lists that no one will read but anyone COULD read because they are complete and thorough and no one is left off.   Gratitude felt like a chore for a lot of years (not surprising given this little glimpse into my psyche!).  It was something I was supposed to feel but was terrible at summoning, which only resulted in more shame and it’s impossible to feel gratitude when you’re in shame.   

I think I’ve learned a little about gratitude this past year.  I’ll try to shed some light here incase you are in the same boat as me. 

First, stop living in the future.  As someone who spent seven and a half years in college and grad school, and THEN put her then-husband through four years of grad school, I know a little about this.  I spent a lot of years waiting for my life to start.  I held on to the belief that something magical would happen when school was finished.  And it would transform me from this limbo state into the rapture of fully formed adulthood.  I’m guessing no one is surprised when I say—that didn’t happen. But putting that aside, I spent a lot of years waiting for the next thing, instead of living in the now.  When I was always anticipating the next vacation or step in my education, it was impossible to feel much love for the present moment.  The truth is, there are different phases in life and they each have things that are easier and harder.  Things that I liked more and less.  But anticipating the next phase never did anything but litter the current phase with discontent.

The second is to be kind to myself—to give myself what I need to truly feel cared for.  Giving that responsibility to others is a quick path to resentment and discontent.  Ignoring my own needs leaves me feeling depleted and it’s hard to feel thankful when I’m an empty vessel.  So make yourself a sandwich, fit the workout in, go to bed early or stay up late, binge watch The Office, clean off your desk--then let go of the guilt for things that go undone while you do this.  

The third is something I’ve been learning from my therapist.  It relates to time.  There are two types of time.  Chronos is the time of the world.  It’s the actual minutes and seconds until bedtime.  It’s the hours spent crawling in traffic.  It’s the two minute time out.  It’s the time that passes slowly, that we feel. 

Kairos is the time that we don’t feel.  It’s the hour that goes by when I’m writing in the flow, where I suddenly remember to look at the clock and realize I’m going to be late for work.  It’s the quiet moments floating on the rippling ocean surface watching for the next swell and taking in the sky and the sea.  It’s catching up with a girlfriend over the phone.  It’s late night pillow talk between lovers that leaves me floating and sleepy in the morning.  It’s a long kiss on the lips from the 3-year-old love of my life. 

Chronos is always ticking away, but Kairos only visits, often just for a moment.  And Kairos is where real gratitude lives—sparkling, warm, immersive, flowing gratitude.  The key is to catch it.  To notice when I’m in it, or even after the fact, that I WAS in it. 

Gratitude is a practice, which means it takes practice.  I can’t beat it into myself with shame. I can only hope that as I gently nudge my brain back to the present, I will more readily notice all that I have and all that I am, for which I am thankful.  Namaste.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.  Eckhart Tolle

Rebellion in the sparkling line of costume gems

When I was 17 my mom made me a prom dress.  It’s still one of my favorite pieces she has created, which is saying something because this is a woman who has spent thousands of hours behind a sewing machine.  Since before I was born, she sewed dresses for herself and my sisters and me.  For Christmas, Easter, and summer at the least, every year, she would produce four new dresses.  When we were little, the dresses for my sisters and I were matching.  As we got older we would all go the fabric store to pick out a dress pattern and material so we each got a custom frock. 

I have done a little sewing.  In my 20s I received a sewing machine for Christmas from my mother-  and father-in-law.  I was living in their basement at the time and taking prereqs for PA school.  I saved my Joann’s coupons and bought material and patterns and I began to sew garments for myself.  I got some vintage material from Grandma Hurst that was passed down from her mother, who owned a fabric store at one time.  I made shirts and skirts and dresses. 

Sewing, for me, was an interesting mix of technical ability and creativity.  At times, it was really difficult to understand the pattern instructions and inevitably I would sew a seam in the wrong place and end up picking it out.  Sometimes there were hours of unpicking seams.  Sewing is an exercise in frustration and accomplishment, devastation and creativity, and and mostly perseverance.  Sometimes it’s exhilarating and sometimes it’s intolerable. 

So knowing this, when I look at my black velvet, beautifully tailored prom dress hanging in my closet, I understand a bit of what went into its creation. 

My mom was in a moderate-to-severe depressive episode for about ten years, which covered the entirety of my adolescence.  When I think about that time, it mostly feels quiet.  It was quieter in the house without her laughter and music and the hum of her sewing machine.  There were times when she didn’t function.  Times when she disappeared for days.  Her absences felt ominous and confusing.  But most of the time she was there, doing the driving and shopping and cooking and cleaning, in a quieter way.  Most of the time it wasn’t the activity in the house, but the presence of suffering that felt different. 

I have learned, in a small way, what that might have felt like for her.  There have been nights when I have wondered how I will face the following day—how I can summon the strength to get up and do the few things that must be done.  And I’m in awe that, during this time of darkness, she found the strength and desire to create a graceful, elegant dress for me.  It was a gesture of kindness and love. I see rebellion in the sparkling line of costume gems on the bodice.  An indignant strike against the oppressive darkness.

This is what I learned from my mom: 

To keep moving alongside the fear and the dark. 

To find beauty in it.

And to create in its presence. 

That is how you find the light again.