humble beginnings | hopeful future
THAT I WOULD BE FREE
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.
The Artist's Way: A Summer of Creativity!
Let's read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron!If you are creative but feel your creativity lagging, if you used to be creative but haven't used that part of yourself for some time, if you think you might be creative but never really tried--this book is medicine.
R is going to be with his dad a lot this summer. It's okay. It's in our parenting plan. But, whenever I have to go a long stretch without him I go through the five stages of grief (sometimes I can do this in a whole weekend!). So for my own sanity and because I so love this book, I'm inviting you to do something with me.
Let's read The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron!
If you are creative but feel your creativity lagging, if you used to be creative but haven't used that part of yourself for some time, if you think you might be creative but never really tried--this book is medicine.
And let me be clear, when I say creative, I mean the most broad and inclusive definition. Anything from visual art and writing, to homemaking to computer programming, to just living a creative life. Actually, that last one is the most important to me. And let me define it: living a creative life means living in the way that is most uniquely you, peeling back the layers of culture and socialization to reveal the truest version of yourself.
If that sounds good to you, or even mildly interesting. Grab a copy of this book and follow along with me for the next 12 weeks. I'm envisioning this as a kind of Julie and Julia experience, but instead of mastering the art of French cooking, I'll be going through the creativity exercises each week and posting about my experience.
So here are the ground rules:
- Be kind to yourself. This exercise does require a little discipline but if I've learned anything from my work in drug and alcohol recovery, it's this--you can't hate yourself anything. You can't hate yourself into being sober, creative, productive, or kind, at least not with any lasting effect.
- If you fall behind, just pick up where you can, or, if you intentionally set a slower pace for yourself, just come back to the posts when you get time.
That's it. Two rules.
I would LOVE to interact with you on social. Links are below, if you aren't already connected to me in that way. I'm gonna do my best to create Reels and TikToks to accompany the posts each week. And each week will run from Wednesday to Wednesday, so you can look for new content on Wednesday by end of day.
So grab a copy of this book! It's old so check a used bookstore if you like to be thrifty. This is the link on Amazon if you are convenience-motivated! I do recommend you get a paper copy of the book because you will need to refer back to the exercises and practices recommended each week. There is also a journal available--I've done this twice through and never used the journal but it might be nice--lemme know if you like it! And it is available on Audible or audio format, but like I said, the paper book will be nice to refer back to so maybe get both if you are dedicated to listening.
I'm writing this from my bathtub again! That's one of the things I figured out going through her book the last time - water helps things flow for me. So, I'll be here all summer, soaking and writing, and eager to hear about your experience!
We start next Wednesday, June 8 <3
Love (from the tub),
Michelle
Kauai is messing with you
This Kauai trip, it's been interesting. I had the extra burden of writing a book while I’ve been here. That has made the trip decidedly less zen than my typical solo retreat. Also mercury is in retrograde. The Verizon tower was down on the North side of the island for a couple of days, plus the energy feels kinda crazy. Like everything been shaken up a little bit.
But mainly, it’s been windy as hell. And when I say that, I mean literal hell because I cannot imagine a worse eternal punishment than constant, strong wind. When I’ve traveled to other islands in Hawaii, I’ve encountered this [actually—Maui—also windy, also mercury retrograde…hmmm….] but I was able to escape the bluster by going to a different part of the island. That has not worked on Kauai. I don’t know enough about wind and ocean currents and the jet stream and mountains to say why the island isn’t blocking the wind somewhere, but I didn’t find it.
Waimea Canyon
Still even with the wind, I’ve made the best of it. I did a big hike in Waimea Canyon at the beginning of the week. I descended 2.5 miles and 2300 feet down the Kuku’i trial to the river below. The views were spectacular and I treated myself to a luxurious skinny dip in an amazing swimming hole alongside of four other nymphs. Then I ascended the 2300 feet, which wasn’t nearly as fun, but I felt like having a work out so it worked!
That same day I visited Glass Beach, the site of an old landfill, which has now produced a beach filled with grains of sea glass. It was lovely, but windy and raining and I nearly stepped on a sleeping Hawaiian Monk Seal—a federally prosecutable crime—yikes! So I didn’t stay long. I also didn’t take any sea glass even though I love collecting the stuff at home in California. I get it! Glass Beach needs the glass! I stopped at an adorable used bookstore to get another copy of The Artist’s Way to help me write some of this book I’m working on.
The Men
The universe seemed to be poking fun at me when I stopped for dinner after the long day of driving and hiking and driving some more. I decided I was too tired to go back to the AirBnB for a shower, so I rifled through my available wardrobe, found a clean shirt and threw it on over my dirty self. The restaurant had no wait and I passed by a man who said hello as I followed the hostess to my table, off to the side, away from the bustle—perfect for me with my book and my journal, ready for a quiet bite.
But I hadn’t had my journal open for a minute before the same man was in front of me asking if he could sit down. Jake. From Boston. The exact name and city of origin as an ex-boyfriend who has made a pattern of resurfacing for YEARS and most recently, just before I left on this trip (I think that’s finally over now). It was all I could do to not laugh out loud, “You've gotta be kidding me!”
This guy, was young. Twenty-five, I learned. Which flattered me even though the pickings in this beach town were decidedly slim. We chatted for a bit and then he invited me to join him at the table with his brother and three friends, all men from Boston.
For once in my life, I said yes!
I am characterizing it like that because, having been married from age 20-32ish and having joined the ranks of people who consume alcohol at age 35, I feel intimidated by this scene, meeting people at bars. I don’t really go to them unless I’m with a man already. Now I found myself surrounded by five of them. All of them decidedly interested in ME. It was really fun!
We played some betting game where everyone puts their finger on a glass. I lost the first two rounds, horribly. Had to dance next to a table of two diners—but the woman diner got up and spun me around declaring she was a ballroom dancer!
We chattered away as I ate my salad and we drank beer. When it came time to leave, is when the real cock-show began. At one point they all lifted their shirts to reveal several sets of nicely toned abs. I saw biceps. My gosh! I want to say it was like nothing I have ever experienced…that’s not entirely true. It’s been a loooooong time since I experienced anything like that.
They were all so delightful and so nice and so young [the oldest was 30, and we were celebrating his birthday]. I felt to choose one would be unfair to the rest. Maybe they guessed this because, before I knew exactly what was happening, they were playing the finger on the glass game to determine who would get to enjoy a bowl of chocolate mini wheats at my place (I can’t NOT talk about chocolate mini wheats—duh!).
So the birthday boy won the glass game and offered to walk me to my car. I let him, on the grounds that he had won the game AND it was his birthday. When we got to my rental jeep he asked if he could kiss me. Yes, of course! Because I was in too deep by this point.
The way he kissed me felt like the other man I had known from Boston, the Jake from back home. Maybe that’s why I pulled back after a few minutes, wished him a happy birthday and drove myself home.
Maybe that’s why I said yes when he asked me to have coffee the next morning over text. I got coffee and he got a smoothie. We didn’t have much time because I had booked a shuttle at 8am and I was committed to not sleeping with him. But I did enjoy a fiery episode on a picnic table while old people and honeymooners looked on (I guess…I wasn’t watching!). And I wasn’t lying when I told him, “That’s the most fun I’ve had in broad daylight on a picnic table in the public square.”
He walked me to my jeep, kissed me goodbye and that’s probably the last time I will see the man from Boston.
…Not the one named Jake. I couldn’t do that! I picked his older brother, which, as a younger sibling, I feel some guilt about. [Jake, younger brother, from Boston—if you ever read this, know—I thought you were just as handsome and beguiling as that older brother of yours. But it was his birthday, and he won the glass game.]
Older brother and I carried on over text until we both left the islands. I realized regret lives on both sides of this decision. I wrote to him, “I think what we both want is to feel young and alive. We are, very much, both of those things.” I hope he brings those feelings home with him. Older brother told me he would not forget his 30th birthday.
The Beach
I went to the beach and braved the wind. The first time, it was arguably not worth it. Lying on the sand getting worked by the wind as you try to enjoy reading a book? Not my fav. Even the ocean was so churned up that I didn’t want to go in deeper than my waist. [Gosh, how do they get the Pacific Ocean so warm and so angry over here?]
The second beach outing was better. I chose a more protected spot where I did some topless sunbathing [incidentally, it’s going to take a lot of topless sunbathing to alter the blinding whiteness of my chest] and read my book in slightly more peace. This beach also had a fair amount of shells for a little beach combing, and an old man, seated on a bench who told me about the great surf break of Kauai that is perfect for goofy-footed people like me.
The Napali Coast
I also enjoyed a wonderfully muddy walk on the Kalalau Trail which, in it's entirety, traverses 11 miles across the Napali Coast. I did two miles. Partly barefoot because of the blisters I got on the Waimea Canyon hike. It was lush and lovely. And windy.
The Hell-a-copter
This brings me to the helicopter ride. I have enjoyed a good travel guidebook for my vacations in the past. They’ve aided me in having some awesome adventures and avoiding some stupid tourist traps. I am a committed fan of the “Revealed” guidebooks for the Hawaiian islands (there is one for each island).
So when the author, Andrew Doughty, recommended a helicopter tour as THE BEST WAY to see Kauai, I bit. It was expensive, but I remembered my own travel advice: You are worth it. [Yes! You are too!] So I booked a tour. It got pushed to the last day of my trip, which I think is just as well…now.
I was excited for this. They called me to confirm the flight the day before and I was on a stand-up paddle board on the Hanalei River. I missed the call, but I called them back from the paddle board, just to make sure I was in. That’s how excited I was!
I drove to the appointed location, made sure I was on time. I wore the appropriate secure footwear and jackets. I was ready!
A few observations:
Being in a helicopter is hella-loud. So it’s kind of a surprise when it lifts off because the sound doesn’t really change. I would liken the sensation to what I would expect being dangled from a stand of thread feels like. It is gentle, in a way. And the first five minutes are awesome.
I chose a flight with the doors off because I was worried about motion sickness. I knew this about myself. I took Dramamine before the flight.
Five minutes in. I surprise-throw-up in my mask.
Fifteen minutes in. Vomit is streaked on the side of my leggings because no napkins in the helicopter and I’m not sure I could hang onto it with the wind anyway.
Thirty-five minutes in, still vomiting and now fear that I might also shit myself, not because we are suspended hundreds of feet in the air with the doors off—trust me!—a catastrophic collision with the Napali coast or a sudden-death fall to the waves below would feel benevolent at this point.
Thirty six minutes in, flying over my AirBnB, I consider asking them to stop and drop me off right there. Twenty-four more minutes, Michelle. You can do this. Can—but should I?!? I start imaging where the shit goes when you are are wearing leggings and seated in a helicopter with four strangers.
Forty two minutes in. The pilot keeps mentioning me by name. I don’t think he can see me but I’m the only one sitting on his side of this contraption that inspires all of my internal organs to stop what they are supposed to be doing and vacate every possible molecule ASAP…he, the pilot, is telling me he will turn so I can see the weeping wall, the crater, this most remote part of Kauai. The wettest spot on earth, averaging 400 and some inches of rain each year (for context Seattle, averages only 46 inches per year). I’m listening, Steven. Obviously! Now let’s land this damn thing!
[To you, dear reader, I will say this—I DID open my eyes and witness the weeping wall amid dry heaves. I did NOT photograph the thing. It was green and wet and my advice to you is to watch an iMAX movie of it. DO NOT under any circumstance, get into a helicopter.]
Forty-eight minutes in, Stephen reports that we are returning to the airport. It’s at this moment, and only this moment, that I am sure I will not shit my pants in a windy helicopter with four strangers. I’m relieved I will not have to use that aircraft THAT thoroughly.
Sixty minutes in. We land with the shit still inside of me. Graciously, the woman charged with unbuckling me from the craft comes to my seat first. By this point, there is a light layer of vomit over everything in front of me. I tried to be careful! But the doors were off and it was incredibly windy and vomit is sticky! I take the vomit bag that is in my hand with me and leave one in the seat-back pocket on the helicopter. Sorry, Stephen. We all made sacrifices.
It is hard to walk. It seems the helicopter has taken my dignity AND my balance. But I am committed to find the porto-potty before I shit myself. And I’m proud to say, I do.
A woman, maybe the one who unbuckled me from my vomit, offers me a ginger ale. I accept, but then she sets it on the water cooler. I cannot summon the strength to mount the journey to the water cooler. So I find a chair and sit. I watch the rest of the passengers from the other flights return. Not one covered in vomit. Come on, people! Then this older couple in the classic Hawaii vacation clothes has the audacity to come and stand right by me while conversing with a (probably honeymooning) couple about all the wonders of New York. I get up and find a corner of cement away from everyone where I huddle into a ball.
The woman, who got me the ginger ale, who unbuckled me from my vomit—okay this woman has done enough—tells me it’s time to go and asks why I haven’t retrieved the ginger ale from the water cooler. Whatever! (In my head). May I please have a mask? out my lips because I cannot imagine putting the vomit covered mask over my face for the van ride back to my car.
God bless the woman at the van, who gives me a fresh mask from a pack she had to open. Obviously I’m the freak here. I do the walk of shame. The last person in the van. The only one with her vomit streaked on her black leggings, jacket and shirt.
Helicopter ride: Zero stars.
I wait an hour or so before I attempt the one-hour drive back to Hanalei. I make it within a couple of miles of the house, when I have to urgently pull over and vomit, first into the extra barf bags the van lady gave me and then outside the jeep in the grass. This is two hours after we stopped flying.
The AirBnB
Thankfully, my AirBnB is heaven. Five stars. It’s a perfect place to shower. Lie down. Feel solid ground beneath me. And eventually go to the laptop to compose this.
Overall:
High wind warning beach weather: Two stars.
Lush canyon hikes: Five stars.
Picnic table make out sesh: Five stars.
Yoga and journal and coffee every morning on the lanai: Five stars. [Especially when it’s raining on and off and the sun is coming up and I’m watching a gorgeous waterfall spilling into the valley miles away.]
Bottom line--don’t come to Kauai, unless you like old people and honeymooners and wind and vomit with a couple of magical hikes and make out sessions…actually don’t trust this review at all…
…because, the next day--the day I am set to return home--I do a yoga kriya for elevation. It feels fantastic. Pulls me from my post-vomit blues.
After I hustle to get everything packed and ready to go, I am short on time and I know it. Kauai is dishing out some extra rain and wind. The bagel lady makes a big deal about my rush to get out of there, because they are busy EVERY morning. I get stuck behind some MF who drives 20mph in a 25mph zone. He also stops at a non-busy intersection to let people turn out in front of him, requiring me to say, “What the actual fuck?” to myself, because I’m sure he cannot hear me in his aloha state of mind.
But I make it to the airport. Slide into my A37 spot just as the Southwest flight starts to board.
And I remember the insight from my yoga session that morning:
Kauai is just messing with you. Don’t take yourself so seriously.
I learn that wind originating from the North and completing to the East is associated with strong foundations for a new project.
Exactly what I need for my book project. Five stars. Sat nam and aloha, Kauai. I feel your magic.
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:
- Disclosure. Having to do family court about school start probably infinitely increases the stress level around it.
- 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.
- 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].
- 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….
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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]
- Homework. We don’t even have this yet. Supposed to start in October. God, help me. That’s all I have to say.
- 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.
The One Where She Starts Online Dating...Again
I’ve been dating to one extent or another since about 18 months after my ex and I separated. I naively stepped up to the plate thinking that I was basically a good wife and I should be able to find a suitable husband replacement fairly easily. People told me my most difficult job would be sifting through the suitors because I was “such a catch.” Professional, fit, kind, beautiful, blah, blah, blah.
I started out going on some blind dates with friends of friends. These were okay but didn’t give me sparks, and while that was true, I still felt rejected when there weren’t follow-up dates, texts or phone calls. I was still practicing Mormonism then and Mormon men are decidedly not into dating not-quite-divorced women. This was frustrating because the road from separation to divorce was long (almost 3 years) and I felt divorced in my heart. So the Mormon dudes were either uninteresting to me or they seemed like such microcosms of catastrophe that I was terrified to chance a second date.
Then I started online dating on a few apps. I remember spending time writing, what I felt was, a compelling profile, and then realizing I was WAY over the character limit. They want a few sentences, not a few paragraphs. So I edited that down and put up some photos. I tried to be honest but I also didn’t know myself all that well yet.
And there were some dates. Most of the men I’ve met online have been decent and kind, from what I could tell. Of course, there were some exceptions.
I had one guy, a doctor (why are so many doctors creeps!?), just ahead of our first meet up, ask me if I was “a submissive.” Had to google that. It was what I thought. I cancelled the date. Felt like we would be off on a weird foot.
I saw one man who described himself as “ammosexual” as in ammunition. Yikes!
I ventured to go on a date with a man who was 14 inches taller than me. He was handsome enough, but as I suspected, I felt like Mike Wazowski paling around with Sully in the North Park bars. This guy also worked in sales and after droning on about himself for at least one beer, I tried to help him ask a question about me by offering that my job in psychiatry often feels like sales, because I’m trying get buy-in from patients on taking medications they need but sometimes don’t want. To this, he responded, Oh! I could teach you a lot about sales. [Insert face palm emoji.]
I had meaningless flings, though I figured out I wasn’t very good at that. Maybe it’s the psychiatrist in me, or maybe it’s the level of authenticity I try to approach life with, but I’ve found that men will talk to me. Like real talk. There was the Brazilian bus boy who was handsome and fit. He had all the makings for a romance novel but his back story was full of tragedy and disappointment. I simply could not use him even if he was okay with using me.
Another who emphatically admired the “beautiful life” I created but ultimately preferred to keep his mask intact rather than join the mess of a real relationship.
And the fireman who couldn’t keep up the ruse. He was deeply sad inside. Firefighting gave his life purpose, but he still didn’t believe he was worthy without the uniform. And life is strange because one day he told me he performed a trench cut (a rarely-used technique in firefighting) on a strip mall fire. I saw that strip mall days later and realized it was where another man had taken me months before to sing at a Korean karaoke joint. The place was destroyed…metaphor?
I think that’s the thing about dating. It’s not a straight line. It is very much a web. Each interaction forms a new thread, connecting one strand to the next in a zig-zag or circular pattern. For most of my experience, it has been indistinguishable which direction things were going. Even in my longer relationships, I was riddled with questions and misgivings. Is this what it's supposed to feel like!?
Just tonight I was listening to Oprah talk to women about their “emotional style.” The segment opened with women responding casually to how they would react if their spouse forgot a birthday or Valentine’s. Women talked about silent treatment and hint dropping. Quiet resentment. I’ve been in those rooms. I’ve been that woman.
My marriage was traditional. Man wears pants. Woman’s “power” is in how she can influence (manipulate) her man. It’s covert and inherently dishonest. I sort of always assume I will be good at things, so when I was married I assumed I was good at that game. But when I look back, I see now that we both lost. I lost because I completely lost mySELF. And my ex lost because he never got to know me. I carry some of the blame for the stupid game, but he does too because he didn’t want to know me. He wanted a fulfillment of what he thought a wife should be.
Aye.
The Oprah conversation left me wondering, how does anyone find anyone at this stage of life?
It’s like I know too much. I know marriage doesn’t solve all problems. I know that loneliness thrives inside and outside of that institution. I know that people have lives secret from their spouse. They bring the baggage from childhood, the last relationship, all the relationships. And what’s funny is that if they had no baggage, that would be even scarier—because, if that’s the case, what kind of Truman Show life have you been living for the last 30+ years!?!
And yet, I still believe in magic.
Despite all odds.
I still hope to find my lobster.
I knew I needed to end my break from dating this summer when, after a gynecologist appointment (which, incidentally was immediately followed by a covid quarantine, so YOU read between the lines), I announced to my sister that I might be falling for my gynecologist. “I need to figure out how to take this off MyChart!” I joked with her. [Luckily, I slept on it and realized that if this guy did go for my advances, then what kind of skeesy gyn was I choosing to date!?!….This is waaayyyy TMI, Michelle. Reel it in!]
So I find myself dating again.
After my last relationship attempt failed. I put an update on my dating app profile (which I must say has improved dramatically since those dark and confusing early days).
[Note: The days can STILL be dark and confusing. Dating is like walking around a cave without a flashlight—actually that’s a really good metaphor! You have to trust what you feel. There are lots of groping styles. It’s painful and confusing and it reeeeaaally feels like there’s gotta be a better way to do this.]
My new profile is darn effective though.
I’ve got some active photos, but not too active. (If my family didn’t live in such granola-eating, Subaru-driving parts of the country, then I would have far less photos in such outdoorsy habitats.) I’ve got a full body shot. Not too much boobs, but not no boobs. I kept my descriptions casual and breezy but included several entry points for conversation. This was all before the revamp! And it was working pretty good.
But one of the things you have to know about dating apps, is everyone on there has multiple things going on. Every one is complicated. I know that’s a complete generalization, but this is a helpful way to think about it because dating apps can feel like a lot of rejection happening fast.
There are times when you think an interaction is going well, and then it drops off, suddenly. If you’ve met the person, I would classify this a ghosting and not cool. But if you haven’t met and you haven’t been messaging constantly, it’s probably an inbounds move.
I’ve decided, that when that happens, it just means that another piece shifted into place for them. They don’t need my possibility anymore right now. That’s it. Getting to this point has relieved me a of a lot of bad feelings about dating apps.
I’ve learned to assume the best about people when they don’t pick me (at least when they are enigma speaking from the great beyond of the internet). There is a Maya Angelou quote, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Sometimes that’s just not interested or not available.
Sometimes it’s, I dislike myself so much I won’t let anyone get close to me.
Sometimes it’s, I’m a huge asshole who works on commercial ships and thinks because you put a poem about how you have perfect breasts on your dating profile, I’m entitled to some proof, even though we’ve never met and I’m probably lying on my couch smelling of fish guts and motor oil eating a greasy burrito.
[Woah—that got specific! And you wrote what poem about perfect breasts?]
Oh, that’s my secret weapon, actually. I wrote a poem about how I have perfect breasts, and when I told my therapist that I didn’t think it was fit for publication on my blog or social media, she suggested I use it in my dating profile.
I got my money’s worth from that session, because that thing is gold! Since it’s addition, I always get a response. Of course that’s an exaggeration, but it’s not FAR from the truth. Very effective little piece of marketing, that poem is.…
Okay, you’re getting lots of information here and it’s probably prompting you to pull out a highlighter for all of these fabulous, modern dating tips, so let me try to rein it in for you—dating apps are a lead generator. That’s it. Of course some of your leads are unqualified! Some of them will choose not to purchase and some of them will get told to, “Fuck off,” by your complaint department.
And while I can get emotional about pretty much anything, I really try to keep emotion out of the dating apps. It’s not a popularity contest, it’s a marketing contest. My goal is to generate qualified leads, some of which will progress to the next round of vetting. And if swiping has taught me anything, it’s that there are a lot of different shoes out there, and supposedly every shoe has a mate. [Like even a Jesus shoe—this man was literally dressed as Jesus…I’m still so confused!]
This brings me to the next phase. The first meet up. Since Covid, sometimes this happens via FaceTime. I actually didn’t find that too bothersome. It was lower pressure. I mean, you have to worry about camera angles and lighting, but not how you smell or what pants you have on.
More commonly, it’s a face to face meetup, where first move is to act cool while you are waiting for a person you’ve only seen photos of and try to look incredible at all times and angles in case he sees you first.
Most guys here want to meet for a drink, I’m guessing because it’s cheaper than dinner. Also, easy to exit if it’s not going well. And, you have a little libation lubrication for the conversation. [Yikes! Could there be a grosser way to say alcohol loosens you up!]
Bottom line, I think this is totally fine. I get that investment in a fully planned first date has a cost that may not yield benefit. Still, bars are not a great option for alcoholics, but good news for alcoholics comes next—>
It IS impressive when a guy goes all in on a first date! All in within reason anyway. My favorite first date, hands down, was stand up paddle boarding on Mission Bay. It was a day date which, for me, feels a little friendlier. You get to check out each other’s physique in a non-creepy way. You’re doing something active, but you can also talk. Plus you’ve got the option to proceed to lunch or dinner afterward, assuming both parties are feeling it. But if it’s not going well you can part ways, still having done something fun in the sun!
What comes after the first meeting, I don’t completely understand. Really. Like, any of it. The subsequent dates, the texting, the progress of the physical relationship. I’ve walked the road a few times, but I could not tell you how it should go.
And it’s all the stuff I was talking about earlier that makes it terrifying. At first you’re just trying to rule out if he’s a sociopath or a narcissist or someone who thinks it would be cool to live in van.
There’s the things you never thought to ask about too, like was he raised in a nudist colony or a have a wife who also wants to hook up with you, and how do you feel about dating a bisexual man? Wow! I thought I was pretty woke, but being in the actual scene really brings it home.
And when you think you’ve worked through the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, then you have to decide if you’re going to let this person know where you live. Where you work? Who your friends are? It takes an enormous amount of faith to let someone in like that when you’ve seen what I’ve seen.
And strangely enough, even after working with parolees and probationers, even after hearing the wildest things from patients, and my co-residents of Walmart parking lots across the nation when I slept in a car for three months (that’s a story for another time and place), I have this curse where I tend to see people as potential. It’s like this freakishly optimistic lens.
But this, too, is where that Maya Angelou quote comes in handy, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” This has been hard-won but, I am getting better at believing the person over the potential. I like to see what a man spends his time on, because, ultimately, this is what he desires. And very little will separate a man from his desires, at least the kind of men I have experienced.
So as I embark on another round of swiping and first dates, let me remind myself what I am looking for:
- Someone who is kind to me.
- Someone who is honest.
- Someone who likes to do some of the same things as me.
- Someone who wants the important same things as me.
- Someone who realizes that people grow and change and is interested in the journey of growing and changing together.
- Holds all the space for complexity and contradiction that exists in me.
- Smoking hot bod.
- Not a picky eater.
- Does not want to live in a car.
- Cheers me on while I run in the direction of my dreams and lets me do the same for him.
That’s a starting place, at least.
And a reminder that dating in your 30s, when almost all of your friends are married, makes you a sort of exotic creature, where everyone both hates the idea and loves it at the same time. SO if you’re with me, doing this crazy rigamarole to try to find some future partner or at least a little companionship along the way, remember this:
All that comes after this part of life is more moments, more days, more feelings, more life. And that’s if we are lucky enough to persist here for a little while longer. All that romantic relationships remedy is the idea, in our mind, that we should be in one. The rest is a gamble, a ride. I like the idea of the ride, so I’m going to keep looking, but I know that life is already here happening every day. And it’s deep, and rich and beautiful right now.
Happiness: The Basics
You know, Michelle’s not happy.
A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend who recently went through divorce. She mentioned that in the course of her separation process, someone we both know, pointed to me and my situation and said THAT.
First, WTF. How does someone in another state who I talk to extremely infrequently make a judgment on something so cryptic as my level of happiness?
Secondly, I turned inward. Am I happy?
If you’ve been following my blog you probably have sensed that this is a question I throw around, of my own accord, from time to time. I am very interested in what makes a good life. Time seems finite—how do I avoid wasting mine? And what’s the end goal? Is there an end goal?
My family calls this the Deep Michelle and I’ve always been a little embarrassed about it. There’s a voice in my head telling me to lighten up quite constantly. But also—it’s just who I am! I like deep existential questions. I also like dance parties and stupid jokes and rainbows and brightly colored nail polish.
So I guess I am writing this post to myself and any other reader who may have been tracking this journey of mine and wondering, Did any of this make her happy?
What is happy?
Happy is a feeling. It’s one of the things I ask about when I am screening a patient for PTSD: Are you able to feel positive emotions like happiness or love? Yes! I feel happy from time to time. It’s happening more and more lately. I notice it when I laugh out loud at something. I think laughing at myself feels the best—when I do something so brilliant it fills me with delight or so stupid that I can’t help but laugh. I felt it today when I smiled to no one as stood on my garage roof in pajamas and slippers trimming my overgrown palm tree. Yep! There’s happy again!
How often should one feel happy?
Psychiatry has taught me that no one lives on Planet Happy. Another thing I ask my patients to do is rate their mood from 0 to 10, where ten is best and 0 is rock bottom. Where do you live most days?
I raise an eyebrow to anyone who states they live at a 10. Delusional? Manic? Lack of self awareness? I think most of us want to live between six and eight. We want to hit a ten on occasion, maybe even three times a week, but to live there would be exhausting!
And we could get picky about which words we use to describe which number. Is ten ecstatic, euphoric, delirious? While nine would be delighted, enthralled, jovial? Eight we call happy, joyful, cheery. Seven is well-fed, content, open-hearted. Six—relaxed, engaged, straight-faced. And at five we're getting into mildly worried, barely hungry, and I’m-fine-but-my-neck-is-kinda-tight. It drops off from there all the way down to zero, which is either catatonic or suicidal.
What I’ve learned from asking this question over and over again is that the answer varies depending on the person. Some of us are pleased hitting a ten once a year. Some of us feel we are in a depression if we didn’t get there at all last week. So I think the answer is, You get to decide!
And I mean that literally—no shame however you choose. I purposely avoid writing about happy too much because we have this kind of hyper-pressure on getting it and keeping it. I remember when I was a BYU student there was this culture on campus of smiling and saying hello to people as you passed them on campus. I did this most all the time, because it was my duty as a fucking delightful person.
Did it help sometimes? Probably. Was there a cost to obligatory smiling? Most certainly.
So I say this with all sincerity. YOU get to decide what your personal goal is for how often you hit happy. And there’s not a wrong answer…unless you picked catatonic, in which case your family will be annoyed by having to feed and toilet you….
Which leads me to my next very basic question—
How do I feel happy more often?
If I knew the easy answer, I would not be revealing it here for free, I would be pointing you to my book for purchase on Amazon, or better yet, from some independent, ultra-kewl hippie bookstore in Portland.
There is no easy answer.
Boo!
Okay, but I will let you in on my strange inner life and you can glean from it what you will.
First thing is to stop chasing it so hard. I stopped looking away from the things in my life that were hard and terrible. It turned out I was putting a decent amount of energy into avoidance, convincing myself and the world that I’m fine fine fine! Fine is a state of detachment. Instead of trying to make life look easy, I started to sink into it. To let life be life.
And this brings me to my second experiment—start to pay attention. Open your eyes and look at what is in front of you. My journal is filled with passages about my postage stamp backyard. The orange tree. The tiny birds that come pick the bugs off of it. I still debate in my mind whether I should know what the birds are called. (Eckhart Tolle would say, No, just notice the being-ness of the birds! And my ego is like, You are looking at those birds every day and you don’t know what they are called?!? No winners here. If you care to help, please send a bird book!)
Paying attention puts me in the moment. And most moments are pretty okay if they aren’t being wrecked by my overly analytical, anxious brain. It also puts me in my body. Noticing the feeling of the sun on my skin, the breeze, the fountain chattering away, light coming through the bamboo.
I have a confession. All these years of yoga and I still never understood how breathing was such a freaking pleasure for these granola munchers. I think it’s because inside of me was a secret yoga competition. Who is the stretchiest, breathiest, zennist yogi in all the land? Sometimes I was competing with that one girl (you know her) or the guy in the back who I’m not really into but I still hope he’s checking out my ass… or even myself at my last yoga class or when I was 19. That’s right, I am fully capable of turning a sun salutation into a full-blown tryout for the 1996 women’s olympic gymnastics team. I’m coming for you, Dominique!
But I got over that. And here’s how: I started paying attention to it. I think that’s how it shifted. At first I noticed I didn’t like thinking about how everyone else in the class felt about me. So I shifted over into being competitive with myself. But still, what was this dark cloud over yoga?
It was me.
And the watching was the answer. Because if you can get competitive about yoga (which I clearly can), then you can get competitive about the very practices that should be liberating your mind (which I clearly can). I effectively took and take myself out of contention for the Olympic Zen team and put myself in the stands. My job was and is only to watch and listen.
I watched the competitive thoughts, meaning that they came up, I tried my best to not judge them and let them go. Bless and release those precious, little demons! And what I learned on the yoga mat became meaningful in the rest of my life.
I began to watch myself at work. While I interact with my son at home. With the dog. With my family. On a date. Watching became my practice.
This was a natural pathway into happy, because watching is fun! There’s a reason we like to watch shows and movies and sporting events.
Well now my life is a big watch fest! So I can laugh out loud at the dog when he falls off the center console into the back seat because he wasn’t expecting me to make that left turn. I can notice that my nerves are fried—and this moment of reading bedtime stories is too much—and also absolutely perfect. And it can be both at the same time. All this is possible because I am the watcher.
It’s like slowing down and tasting your food. The central thought in my head has shifted from I know to I wonder. Wonder!!! What a fantastic feeling!
Instead of flailing my arms as I drown in life or militantly perfecting my backstroke, I’m sitting in a floaty with the water lapping up onto my legs and feet. The water analogy actually really works, because sometimes I get slammed by a big wave. I’m knocked off my floaty, gasping beneath the hair that’s all in my face when my head pops up above the water. But I remember that I HAVE a floaty. So I locate it and climb back on and continue to watch.
Is that happy? Feels pretty good to me.
Can we circle back to the initial WTF? You know, Michelle’s not happy…that one?
For years, I showed the world I was happy. I was really convincing—hell, I even convinced myself. I’m sure this is why some people were surprised when I jettisoned the husband. And I’m still a little sensitive about my life choices—I noticed that as I was writing this. They affect people who I love and have loved in a big way.
You know, I spend my days trying to assess patients for depression, happiness, well-being and I get it wrong. Because I’m not a psychic. All I have to work with is what the patient is showing me AND what I’m open to see. Maybe the most powerful lesson from becoming the watcher is this: life is experienced through a filter. We project, avoid, get defensive. We are coded to do this.
The practice of watching lets me glimpse the filter. My job is to wonder, not to know. And so all I will do is wonder about that WTF statement, [I’ll write a blog post about it] and then I’ll let it go. Because the only person I can really know is me and I feel pretty good about her.
Put your arms down!
As I stood in warrior II with my arms resting by my sides, I was overcome with respect and humility toward my body. MY BODY! Which is such an amazing tool for all the things I love.
I found yoga after I began to have trouble with tolerating cardiovascular exercise during my sophomore year at BYU. I enrolled in an intramural class, probably at my sister's recommendation. I didn’t know it at the time but I had several tumors growing in my body that were producing adrenal hormones. One tumor was positioned behind my pancreas, in between my aorta and vena cava. Knowing what I do now, I suspect that when my heart started pumping vigorously, the mechanical stimulation from the movement of these vessels triggered a dump of adrenal hormones into my system from the tumor. This resulted in cold sweats, a severe headache and sometimes feeling faint.
So yoga was a way for me to exercise without ticking off my tumors. And that’s really how I’ve looked at it all these years—exercise. I found it incredibly helpful for back pain. I was blessed with an ample bosom when I was young (nursing a baby and gravity have fixed that). I suspected this contributed to constant pain and tension between my shoulder blades. I also took a header off the top of the cheerleading pyramid as a high school senior. I believe this was related to the aforementioned tumor as well. The fall resulted in a concussion and a bulging cervical disc (i.e. neck pain). The gentle stretching and strengthening of yoga gave me relief that years of physical therapy and chiropractic work didn’t generate.
I had lots of reasons to practice yoga and I have been doing it with varying levels of consistency since my class at BYU.
Several weeks ago, I was talking to my therapist about cancer. She asked me if I ever resented my body through this process. I had to pause. I don’t think I’m someone who is resentful of my body. I guess I haven’t had to be. After that first year of surgery and then a couple of years of acid reflux and irritable bowels, my body has been pretty okay. It really has been able to do everything I’ve asked of it.
A couple of weeks ago I felt drawn back to yoga and have re-entered the practice in a very different way this time. The exercise benefit is secondary to me now. I am there for the spiritual benefit. I already wrote about my first experience in The Journey of the Warrior. That class opened me up to the power of an intention. I am familiar with the idea of setting an intention, but I think I rarely did it before because it felt like something I was going to be bad at. Inevitably my mind would wander and then when I noticed this I would feel shame about it. So maybe all this personal work I’ve been doing has helped my yoga practice!
The next few classes I attended resulted in me crying silently on my mat during savasana or before the class even started. I found myself able to immerse into the practice more deeply than ever before.
One day, as I sat cross-legged with my hands in prayer position, I set my intention to listen. I remember thinking, I’ve already heard from my mind and my spirit today, now it’s time to hear from my body. (It seems I have become open to all of these woo-woo types of things now...still struggling with essential oils and dietary supplements...one step at a time, people!)
As we began the vinyasa practice the instructor guided us into warrior II. This pose requires you to stand with arms outstretched in front of and behind you. It’s a pose I’ve done thousands of times. For some reason, on this day, those little tiny muscles on the front of my shoulders were on fire. They screamed at me as I held the pose.
I observed my brain say the following: You are young, you have well-developed shoulders! There is no reason why you should need to put your arms down! You can hold this pose! I heard those tiny muscles scream back, Put your arms down! This went back and forth a few times over the course of about twenty seconds. Then I remembered my intention and I responded (of course I am in conversation with my brain and my shoulders—isn’t everybody?!?). I told them, Today is about listening and I’m going to put my arms down. And then I did.
What is interesting is what followed. As I stood in warrior II with my arms resting by my sides, I was overcome with respect and humility toward my body. MY BODY! Which is such an amazing tool for all the things I love. My body! that has tolerated cancer for 14 years. My body! that was inhabited by my son for nine months. My body! That can paddle a surfboard, ride a bike, lift heavy weight, and walk long distances. My body! That holds my son close, that can smell his hair and pat his thighs. My body! That hears and tastes and sees and smells and touches.
But that word—tool—clued me into the work I need to do in relation to my body. Yes, my body is a tool but it’s more than that. It has a voice—clearly, it was speaking to me that day. It’s pretty used to me not listening but, I wonder, what would change in my life if I listened to her more. It feels like an opening into another phase of growth. When does your body speak? Namaste.