What if I decided I was safe?

When I was first married, I lived in a laundromat. 

I say it that way because the apartment was actually IN the building of the laundromat, but I wasn’t sleeping on washing machines at night. During my short time there, I encountered a man who used the bathroom sink every morning to bathe and then spent the day getting high on tire adhesive to the hum of machines and the tinny radio. 

I met a skinhead Nazi on a BMX bike and a gang of 13-year-olds who figured out how to melt the hinges off the gumball machine with a lighter. They nearly pulled off the biggest gumball heist of Utah County history…nearly. 

I assisted the landlord in covertly evicting a man who lived in his other laundromat and had constructed a giant cross from the casings of washing machines in the parking lot to advertise his church of Heavenly Mother. It stood five washers high and three across and was featured on the local news.

All of this was going on while I was diagnosed and treated with gnarly surgeries and flattening meds for a rare cancer. I bring all this up because I learned, as a young adult, that the world is a strange place. 

I considered how the glue sniffer and I would get ready for the day together with only a thin wall separating our bathrooms ,while my husband was already gone to work. I wondered if he noticed too—if he knew I was alone. 

I was brought up with traditional principles of modesty. That a man’s job was to “control his thoughts” and a woman’s job was to “protect her virtue” by covering her body. And I get where that tradition comes from. A woman’s naked body incites violence. Hell--even a woman’s clothed body will do that. And what does this say of men? They are completely vulnerable to their sexual desires, even to the point of violence? 

The shadow that’s cast from this paradigm is much larger than the actual physical acts that result. There is a cost. 

Here’s the kind of experience I waited 37 years to have because of the way we are conditioned about violence against women. (A phrase that completely fails to mention the men who perpetrate these crimes.) My hope in sharing it is that it will illustrate what women lose in a culture of violence. It’s much more than virtue. 

Last Fall my mom and dad came for a visit. I was planning to hike Half Dome, but then most of California caught fire and the air quality became so poor that they closed Yosemite National Park. And this didn’t even feel like an injustice because the thought of doing that 16 mile hike in one day, on a clear day, felt a little menacing, not to mention doing it through a cloud of ash. So the trip was cancelled. 

Mom and dad offered to watch R overnight to give me a night to myself and I booked a hotel room near the beach in Del Mar. I took myself through the shops along the 101 in Encinitas. I checked in, walked down the street and had a nice three course dinner by myself. Then walked back to the hotel to relax. 

After a couple of hours, I became restless. I decided to walk down to the beach. I was familiar with this part of the bluff because I’ve hiked it so many times, just north from Torrey Pines. There was a path from the hotel parking lot into the adjacent neighborhood. I followed it down through a street or two until I was on the railroad tracks atop the bluff overlooking the ocean. 

The whitewash reflected only the starlight on this moonless night. It danced so irresistibly, I had to go meet it. 

Because I didn’t have a light, I stayed on the tracks that gradually descended to the level of Powerhouse Beach. This beach is appointed with a spotlight that shines like a medical examiner’s lamp into the folds of the water. In this light, what is sexy and mysterious becomes naked and loud.

I turned away from the light into the darkness to the south and the bluff rose up beside me as I walked. By this time the marine layer had begun to settle in against the sandy wall. The air was thick and cool.

My thoughts kept me company as I walked. I passed a few couples holding hands, making their way back to the lighted beach. There was the occasional fisherman with a line cast into the working sea. I walked on more deeply into the darkness. 

At the beginning of my walk I considered my safety, as almost any woman would, walking alone at night. I’ve become used to nighttime walks around my neighborhood. But this place was unfamiliar and I started to calculate, the farther I walked, how unlikely it would be for someone to hear me yell if I was attacked. So for several minutes this debate played out: keep going or turn back?

Then I realized that this back and forth was ruining my walk. So I stopped myself and then this very distinctive thought appeared like a light: What if I decided I was safe? 

I wondered, What if that was true? I don’t have a weapon. If someone does attack me, worrying about it won’t protect me. And I could turn around and go back but the idea of missing this beautiful night because I am afraid that some stranger is lurking in the darkness waiting to rape or maim or kill me—look at what I’m giving up for that fear. 

I kept walking. The thought became more delicious to me. What if I was safe?! Like what if I was safe in all of the other parts of my life. What if I didn’t have to be afraid of court and my ex-husband and spending too much money and performing poorly at work and people stealing my stuff and fires and package thefts? What if I was safe from all of that? 

It was like a giant switch flipped inside me. I can just decide right here and now that I AM SAFE.

I took every piece of clothing off my body, placed them on a rock against the bluff and walked out into the black ocean. In the darkness the waves felt effervescent against my skin, like the sea, itself, was toasting me, Be free.

I WAS safe.

That night nothing happened. And now I keep wondering, how much of my mind is going to protecting myself from unseen things that actually aren't even there? How much of the collective female mind is dedicated to protecting ourselves from violence on a daily basis? How much wasted energy? How much time? How much heartache?

I'm not saying women need to stop worrying. It made sense to worry about the glue sniffer on the other side of the wall. Most people are harmless but there are ill-doers out there, seen and unseen.

I'm just dreaming of something better. A world where we are free to focus on starlight and being and breathing and the effervescent waves.

A Well-Tended Muse

Did you know I have not one muse, but several?!?

Okay, why are we talking about muses?

It’s because I get stressed about all the fun things I can do with my life. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, you know?

I'm writing poetry, learning to play the ukulele, cooking, baking, doing preschool science experiments, gardening, planning an epic, layered-rug configuration for my bedroom floor, and I love all of these things. But I’m also writing a book and I try to show up here on the blog with regularity and I work and I’m a mom and often it feels like there are not enough hours in the day.

This is how muses came on the scene. 

You see, I was talking to my therapist about how I get noise in my head that I’m not giving enough attention to each thing. It gets really heavy sometimes.

Barbara, in her brilliance, informed me that I have several muses. (Muses are the 9 goddesses of the arts and sciences, who are tasked with providing humans with inspiration for their given theme.)

“One for poetry, one for music, one for visual art, one for cooking, one for writing…” et cetera, et cetera! And they are like kids, where they get a little jealous when you spend more time with one of the siblings. “But you just have to learn how to talk to them, so they know you love them and will make time for them,” she said. 

At first this felt like relief. Okay, I’m not a bad parent to my muses, I just can’t dedicate myself to all of them simultaneously. But as I’ve thought about it more, it’s morphed into this really fun thing.  

Liz Gilbert writes about muses in Big Magic. She explains that often our muses are standing in the corner, waiting for us to sober up, wake up, clean up and get back to work. Inspiration isn’t being stingy with us, rather WE are the ones who are stingy with inspiration. And the basic premise of her book is that the healthiest life for you, is the life that will produce the most creative existence. So take care of yourself in all the ways and treat your muse like a hot date. Put on make up, wear something nice, eat a good meal and get busy with creativity. 

Ever since that little insight, I have been having so much fun with my sweetheart muses.  I would add that there is one for motherhood, one for work, one for housework—all of those kinds of things too, because those things, though they are less self-indulgent, still require inspiration and enthusiasm—or at least they are SOOOO much more fun that way. 

So, I have this little family of muses around me excited to engage with me! And I’ve been thinking about what they like. What they don’t like. What are their favorite foods, activities, times of day? What’s the best way to hang out? Where do they like to go? And here’s what I’ve got so far:

Poetry Muse: 

Likes nighttime, sometimes early morning too. She’s sexy and fun and laughs a lot. She can get into those intense brooding moods too. She likes nature, likes alcohol. And caffeine—I remembered this because one of my most prolific episodes as a poet occurred when I was camping with my family as a teenager. I drank a Coke with dinner and laid awake with my sleeping sisters in the tent until the middle of the night writing poem after poem. They were completely silly—but I remember that night all these years later—and that’s significant.

Music Muse: 

This muse is responsible for dancing and singing and playing musical instruments. She likes freedom. I think the best gift I gave her was the years I spent studying piano, not because I became a ridiculously mediocre pianist, but I gave her a way to express herself. Leaning into playing by chords came so naturally to her. And now if I can train my fingers to crimp around that tiny ukulele neck, she will have another medium to work in. Music muse works more for the joy of the experience than my others. She is less concerned about perfection. More about the experience. How does it FEEL to dance and play and sing? That’s much more important to her than the executed product. 

Work Muse: 

Likes caffeine. She does her best in the morning and everything kind of falls off after that. She lives for feeling competent and does not like being told what to do unless she asks.  She’s like a well-functioning assembly line. Yes to productivity and efficiency and effectiveness! She hates waste, likes big ideas. She hates getting bogged down with details unless she is moving through them like an assassin. 

Mother Muse: 

She loves home because it’s the best place to relax and putter. She likes the presence of child and little dog. She sounds like happy playing, dancing in the kitchen, food on the stove, clean laundry in the dryer. She likes to say yes and talking about important things, like first crushes and big feelings and airplanes. She wants kisses and cuddles and teeth brushed and toys picked up.

Visual Art Muse:

She’s got eyes! Inspired by faces, color, simple lines. Willing to experiment. She has taste. She lives for the flow state. Which seems to occur most often when seated at a table with some music, paper and color. She likes working alongside of friends. She likes challenge.

Cooking Muse:

Says, “I can do that.” She’s got a lot of confidence because she got used a lot in my last decade of life. So she’s in a kind of semi retirement. I’m happy to see her when she’s here. I’m equally happy to give her the night off and order take out. Same goes for my crafting, sewing, knitting muse.

Garden Muse:

Likes pretty flowers, soil, cool, shady vibes, power tools and big-idea thinking. Hates weeding (my neighbors are like…uh yeah—can you do something about that?). Hates getting poked by thorns. She reminds me of my mama (who just became jealous the other day when I told her about all the good weeding I have to do!).

Okay! so you get the idea and now you can go make your own list of muses. But not because it will make you more efficient or proficient. This is about fun! This is a tool for when hobbies feel heavy. Please don’t belabor them with things like efficiency. 

Once you know your muses, then you get to enjoy them. For some reason it’s easier to care for external creatures than it is for myself, so here’s how I look at it:

I get to hang out with these awesome muses. I take them shopping, we get food, we exercise, we watch TV in addition to all of the things I listed above. 

It’s completely lightened up the responsibility I take very seriously, to live an extraordinary life.

I have helpers.

I take care of them and they take care of me.

This is the beauty of a well-tended muse.

Be.

 Rest in cool water. Dance in flame. Lick up morsels lobbed onto my plate. I was born in ease, In the universe,In myself.Hung the world round my neck,Its weight pulling nearer, nearer to the floor.Stop that. Let it clatter on the floorboards.Skip into the mud forest.Find a shelf fungus,Haunt a cardinal tree.Be. 

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.

• 

  Got er done.

• 

  Megan was here!

• 

  Topanga Canyon

• 

  Rio on the Ruby quilt.

• 

  Fall skies are the best.

• 

  The ocean is cold now :(

• 

  Trimmed palms. No broken limbs.

• 

  Happy?

Conversion

I was thinking about the boom box at Baskin Robbins the other day. The tinny sound of Mix 105.5 floating over the trickle of water through the scoop basins and the chorus hum of freezers.

I can’t hear a Billy Idol song without thinking of that boom box (was every night 80s night?). Natalie Imbruglia, Alanis Morissette, Harvey Danger, Eve 6. Ryan would bring his Discman so we could add Wyclef Jean into the mix and every night he worked he would play Closing Time at 10pm to hint to the lingering customers that they needed to clear out so we could mop. 

This was my teenage job that paid well below minimum wage but dividends in free ice cream.

So. Much. Sugar.

I used to buy a large Coke at McDonald’s on my way in and then I would add vanilla syrup. I think that combo might kill me instantly now. I used to eat hot fudge topped with whipped cream with a spoon. A taste of this or that. Suffice it to say even my 17-year-old cheer captain self lost five pounds when I quit that job.

The N’sync cake. *Sigh*

I probably need to come clean about that.

So when you rise through the ranks of BR and become 17, you get some responsibility. One of them is to decorate cakes.

One day there was an order for a birthday cake with a drawing of the band members of N’sync on the top. We didn’t have photo cake technology. No—we had a device with a mirror and a light that would reflect the image on the top of the cake and I would trace the image in icing. This worked well for simple line drawings, but photographs…? Nevertheless, I attempted it. How hard could it be to freehand Justin Timberlake in icing?

The answer is—really hard.

Like, no one—especially me—should attempt to freehand Lance Bass in icing. No one. But I did it. 

So, the birthday girl’s grandma came to pick up the cake. I don’t think she even looked in the box. But she paid for it and carried it out the door. And I was like, “Phew! It worked!”

I don’t know if I imagined no one would open the box. Or maybe I had magically nailed their vision for an avant gard rendering of teenage heart throbs, but I was relieved for about 30 minutes until the mom returned with the cake. Shit!

She asked me if I could fix it. Ummm…no. That is my absolute best attempt. Pretty sure. 

She was upset. Which seemed reasonable at the time but thinking back on that, I’m not sure that was well-placed. After all, it’s just 17 year old me with a few bags of icing and a mirror light—should we be surprised that I’m not creating Pinterest worthy N’sync cakes? Seems like that one is kind of on you, lady. 

Thankfully, it’s just ice cream and I let her select a cake from the case, probably the 9” round cookies ’n’ cream with Oreos on top—always a safe bet. She took the new cake and I hastily tossed N’sync in the trash.

When I’ve told this story over the years, people ask me, Who would take an order for such a crazy cake in the first place?

I have no idea! I would exclaim. I was just doing my best!

But no—that’s a lie. I know exactly who too the order. 

It was me. 

Whatever part of me that took that order, it’s the same part that decided it was a good idea to run against Veronica Shreibeis for senior class president. (Even without knowing her, you can tell just by the sound of her name, what a fearfully, beautiful creature she was with long, blonde hair and an air of effortlessness that I would never attain.)  

It was the same part that made me jump into the swimming pool at age five even though I didn’t know how to swim, and just because some older girls told me I couldn’t do it. (I still remember the image of the tiles on the side of the swimming pool bouncing up and down as I jumped to reach the surface, and the watery silhouette of my mom as she bent over to pull me out.)

But it’s also this part that emboldened me to go back to school to become a PA (I didn’t consider myself a science person…still don’t!), choose to stay in a marriage, choose to leave that marriage, have a baby, buy a house, surf, post a video of me singing on the internet, and write this terrifying blog.

It’s a freaking bad ass part of me. 

But this is the question I am most interested in at this moment in my life: What can I control and what can’t I control?

I know I have some power, daring, courage. 

I also know how it feels to be kicked in the teeth and fail miserably.

Which, I think, leads me to elusive faith. 

Over the years I’ve observed so many church ladies who seem to be in conversation with the divine constantly. What is that? A delusional construct? God on speed dial? Some kind of coping skill?

I’ve looked on with contempt as they seemed to hand over the outcome of their lives to an unseen being. And maybe that’s because it seems to get sucked up into the martyr role that women so easily assume. Women who are told their desires don’t matter and their functions in this world are preset and predetermined. Women who are told to be quiet and small, their means to creative power leashed to covert influence on a husband.

No wonder the church ladies turn to god. 

But where does my power end and the divine begin? 

I felt the answer as I was pulling laundry from the dryer. This quiet confidence. God is in me.

The image of a god in heaven hearing and sending and receiving and cursing and blessing didn’t get me there. I had to pull god out of the sky or maybe, more accurately, I stopped worrying about that version. Because that version has so much baggage.

The version of god that gives me faith is the divine that lives in me. Only YOU know, Michelle. I say this to myself all the time. 

I know I am on my path. I know because I am listening. I am in constant conversation with myself—not my thoughts, but the deeper voice. The knowing. There is a fluid connection in my life that guides me through my desires, curiosity, envy, anger, joy and peace. They are all speaking to me.

What I have learned to do is listen. 

And believe in my ability to do that.

Maybe that’s faith.

• 

  inktober

• 

  Current stage of puppyhood

• 

  Sunday mornings

• 

  Our comic book comes out Nov 2021

• 

  I'm the bad guy...duh!

• 

  Working on our contouring

• 

  San Clemente!

I don't know.

Today when I got home, I walked into my backyard and heard a loud meow. 

MEOW. MEOW. MEOW. 

I was not expecting this. I don't own a cat.

I peeked around the side of the house and saw a GIANT, long-haired, charcoal cat. The cat had a blue collar, so I’m going to use male pronouns (but I recognized that female cats may choose blue as well).  

I greeted the cat.

I asked him if he would like to follow me through the open garage door to the world outside my fenced backyard. 

MEOW. MEOW. MEOW.

“Here, kitty, kitty!” I called in my sweetest cat lady voice. [See--I KNOW cats. Though I will admit I did not want to touch him.  He was HUGE.]

“Here, kitty, kitty!” Over and over again until he followed me through the garage and out to the tall grass in my side yard. And the giant cat was gone as mysteriously as he came. 

I did not expect that cat. 

I was talking to my sister on the phone, relaxing on my new outdoor couch, when I looked down at the deck and saw Rio, sitting with a curious look on his face glancing from my face to the dead rat at his feet. 

Now, I am proud of myself because I did NOT scream, which happened the last time he presented me with an entire rat carcass.

But this time, the rat was not completely dead. I could see a little rise and fall in its chest. Rio, seeming to read my mind, attempted to pick it up again. I stopped him. Obviously, I’m the adult here. I need to take action. I grabbed a stick from under the orange tree and returned to the rat.  The rise and fall had ceased. 

• 

  Not as big as the last rat.

• 

  Earlier that week, looking very distinguished.

I poked. Nothing. 

When R saw the rat, he said, “Now we get to look at rat bones!” 

What?!? No! 

Last week, we dissected owl pellets at our friend’s house. I did not know what an owl pellet was. In case you don’t know, I will describe. When an owl eats a mouse or rat or bird or whatever little creature, it is digested partially in the first stomach.  What can’t be digested is held in the first stomach while the digestible material passes into the second stomach.  The owl then vomits a tight packet made of the contents of the first stomach (hair and bones). This is what makes an owl pellet.   

I knew none of this until Rachel presented me with a paper plate holding three clumps of matted hair. With the kids and me looking on, she pulled apart the pellets to reveal evidence of three rat skeletons. And I knew that her daughter was going to be just fine in online kindergarten this fall. 

• 

• 

But back to the undigested rat on my deck. 

Because this isn’t my first rodeo, I knowledgeably covered my hand in a poo bag, picked the deceased rat up by the tail and carried him to the trash can. He left a small pool of blood on the decking, which I doused in hydrogen peroxide and then rinsed with water. (I have a large supply of hydrogen peroxide now, after learning that is what’s needed to rid your dog of skunk smell). 

My backyard is tiny. 

The whole lot is 1/3 of a regular sized lot in my neighborhood. 

And yet. 

It is full of surprises. 

This afternoon I was talking to my sister. 

I’ve been going through another existential crisis following family court and my birthday marking another year. I didn’t really expect it. Not my first family court rodeo. Not my first birthday rodeo. I have been to lots of rodeos—duh! 

My sisters are a good audience for my crazy moments. This past week, I made a recommendation that my sister moon her husband in response to a marital dispute.  I was meaning to be silly but the more we talked about it, it seemed like the idea had real merit. If you want any free marriage advice, DM me, okay? I’m a secret genius on this stuff. Still waiting to hear if the mooning worked….

So I was talking to my other sister and she gave me the idea to write a blog post about why Fall feels hopeful. She said that was the article she wanted to read. 

First I thought about the fall when I trained for the half marathon because my then-husband didn’t want to have a baby yet and I was bored with my career and making dinner and washing dishes. I am not a runner and it felt really cliche because so many people in medicine run out of ways to punish themselves after school ends, so they take up punishing habits like running. But the half marathon was a really good choice in that moment. 

I ran three or four times a week under the massive oak trees in our historic Omaha neighborhood. My mom was so delighted with my decision to do this, that I flippantly said, “If you think it’s such good idea, why don’t you do it too?” And she did.

This is what 15* looks like.

The race was on Thanksgiving day. In Omaha. It was FIFTEEN degrees when we started. It was EIGHTEEN degrees when we finished. The bagels and bananas they provided post-race were frozen solid. We had McDonald’s for Thanksgiving Dinner that year.

But the running put me in a really good place for the winter. Since I left my home on the range in Wyoming (aka—where the skies are not cloudy all day), I’ve struggled with mild depression in the winter—this is part of why I love living in San Diego. And the regular endorphin boost of that exercise made a big difference. 

So there’s one idea. If you need a Fall boost—run a half marathon. 

…I GUESS. 

But it also seems unfair to ask anyone to train for a half marathon when they are working from home and home schooling kids and worried about the upcoming election and the health of their loved ones. And there’s also racism and terrorism and thieves and rapists and Facebook.

That’s a lot. 

Already. 

So if the half marathon’s not your thing, this is the one other idea I have. 

Be open to being surprised. 

Liz Gilbert talked about this in such a lovely way on her instagram stories last week. She called it a spiritual practice, to which cynicism is the opposite.  

Cynicism is the voice inside that says, I know how this goes. I know who that person is. I know what’s coming. The writing is on the wall. I know. I know. OH—I know. 

And we cling to that because we want to feel in control. And knowing feels like control. 

But you know what? 

I DON’T know.

I don’t know how this going to go. 

I don’t know if Trump is going to get another four years. I don’t know if I’m spoiling my son or being too hard on him. I don’t know if the tumor in my neck has grown. I don’t know what that greasy stuff in my patient’s hair was today. I don’t know if I’ll catch any waves. I don’t know how to make sense of the COVID-19 news. I don’t know if I’ll sleep tonight. I don’t know if there will be a goat in my backyard tomorrow. (If there is it will certainly be a distinguished city goat with a neatly trimmed beard!) 

i. don't. know.

Of course I have opinions and fears and anxieties about all of these things. But I’m willing to be surprised.

I’m willing to be wrong. 

That’s the equivalent of faith to me. That’s accepting divine will. It’s not, I know how this goes. It’s not that I get what I pray for. It’s not that I have all the answers. 

It’s that I don’t! And there’s some energy, some force, some goodness in the universe that is working it out for my specific growth. So let me leave it to said universe.

That’s hope. 

That’s spirit. 

Notice the cat and the rat and the owl pellets with wonder. 

Anything is possible.

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  Watch dog.

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  "That's my navy face!"

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  Minimalist. Chocolate. Perfect.

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  Birthday air fryer. Goes well with wine and dancing in the kitchen,

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  These were delicious (thankfully I like crispy), but I read the directions (afterward) and you shake to avoid burned edges.

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  Charcuterie--makes working from home feel fancy.

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  Avid scientists in action.

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.  

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

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  Commence carb loading.

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  Attempt to get through a weekend without the gym.

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

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  Dress purse dog in masculine buffalo plaid flannel.

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

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  Nighttime chalk art produces strange results

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  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.

My most helpful thought

Last week I found myself rolling back and forth on the ground with a bunch of giggling asian women.  I was in my kundalini yoga class at the YMCA.  We were doing an exercise where we put our hands out in front of us, superman-style, while lying on our stomachs, then we turned to the right until we were on our backs, then back to center/stomach, then to the left.  As I rolled back and forth on the floor with these giddy women, I thought, I live such a rich life! 

One year ago I was entrapped in the agony of my thoughts.  I was just beginning to question whether my thoughts were really true.  But I still had so many to sort through.  It felt like every waking moment was thought-thought-thought-thought, one after another.  I was starting to question them but I still had so many.  There were the thoughts, and then there were the thoughts that were judgments of the thoughts, and then there were some judgment thoughts of those thoughts.  My brain and my ego were really running wild.  And it became untenable.  So I started some intense work on watching and then dismantling my thoughts. 

This brought me into the most disorienting season of my life to date.  I spent almost all of October separated from my son.  He was traveling with his dad for two weeks.  Then, the week I was supposed to have him was interrupted when I got a stomach flu that was so severe I couldn’t care for him.  I had to ask his dad to come pick him up.  I entertained him with TV for much of the day, while I laid in bed without any energy.  I remember at dinnertime he asked me for something to eat.  It took me about five minutes to raise myself from the bed and into the kitchen to pull something out of the fridge for him.  I have experienced this kind of decimation before, but never as a mother and never alone.  

After the stomach flu, I went to NIH for my ten days of testing.  The writing saved me.  I set a goal to blog every day and it pulled me through those days of isolation.  For the first time I allowed myself some introspection on the NIH experience.  I challenged myself to stay open and to find connection there.  And I shared it on my blog which helped me feel slightly less alone during the cold October days.  

The days between NIH and February run together in my memory.  I remember early mornings, where I would wake before the sun, unable to remain in bed.  I walked a lot.  On the days I didn’t have R, I would put on my headphones and room my neighborhood early in the morning listening to Brandi Carlile and Oprah Super Soul podcasts.  I lost weight.  I felt excoriated.  I heard Mark Nepo describe it that way and it felt precise to my condition.  My physique and my spirit were polished away to the essential elements.  And as Cheryl Strayed put it so eloquently, I floated like a rabid ghost through those days and weeks.  

I learned that R would be going on vacation with his dad in February.  With the ghost of the previous October breathing down my neck, I booked a trip to Hawaii to occupy most of R’s vacation days.  I had been studying Mary Oliver’s work prior to the trip and I spent that my time in Hawaii focusing on the present moment.  Nature has a way of pulling me into the present, and I let that heal me.  I returned feeling revitalized.  I vowed to reinvest in regular exercise.  I was also eating a banana with Nutella every day to help with my stress calorie deficit.  

After Hawaii, life kind of crashed back onto me.  I clung fiercely to my commitment to stay open to the good that was available to me.  I walked, I lifted weights, I played with R.  I was trying to stay open at work, which made work increasingly heavy.  I was losing patients to drug addiction and strange accidents.  I was attempting to shepherd heroin addicts toward feeling their feelings.  I was open to all of the pain and it almost swallowed me.  Then I wandered into a kundalini yoga class by accident. 

I had begun to seek out a more spiritual yoga practice.  So when I saw the instructor with her colorful mandala scarf laid out on the floor and the battery-powered candles, I was open.  In the first class I met the true version of myself.  My therapist asked me to name her but all I could come up with was Michelle because she seemed like the purest version of me.  I envisioned her as I went through the exercises, this open, playful, loving, interesting creature.  I kept coming back to kundalini because I wanted to see her again.  I wanted to know her better, this person who had been buried inside of me. 

In kundalini, I saw metaphors for joy and pain and trial and play and boundaries and kindness.  The practice opened me further but it also taught me to protect myself.  I heard my voice in the chanting and singing.  I felt myself in the movements.  I finally located the sacred place inside of me, the part that god put there long ago, the part that is uniquely wise and kind.

My practice helped me understand my role at work.  I wasn’t supposed be a repository for all of the pain my patients carry.  My job was to identify those who were open and to shine some light their way.  For the rest, medication management would be enough.

My yoga practice helped me find stillness.  My mind became quieter.  I began to watch my thoughts with curiosity.  I got better at identifying the useful ones and noticing the useless ones.  That’s how my original thought was born.  I live such a rich life!  

This thought has carried me through my faith transition, a divorce that is still incomplete, raising a little boy through the terrible two and threenager years, worries about tumors, and opening the part of me that is capable of loving deeply.  

And I think rich is the word for it, because there is so much depth in my life.  So many colors.  So much vibrancy.  Some of it has been penetrating darkness. But I am equally opening to joy. I am a rich woman, indeed.

I made this list of things that have changed in the past year and I’m sharing it with you, with the simple hope that you might reflect on your life in a similar way. Namaste and sat nam. 

• I’m better aquatinted with myself.
• I have more trust in myself.  
• I’ve started dating. 
• I am getting my first glimpses of how to forgive.
• I started a spiritual yoga practice.
• My brain is so much quieter.
• I opened myself up emotionally to my patients and then had to figure out how to shut that down somewhat. 
• Eight of my patients passed away. 
• I started to solo travel.
• I was more honest with myself and the people around me than ever before. 
• I kept a toddler alive and relatively happy through the terrible two and threenager years.
• I started painting and drawing again.
• I picked up knitting again.
• I started playing the piano and singing again.
• I began to understand humility.
• I began to see the part of god that lives in me.
• I published 114 blog posts (that’s 112,505 words) and some of you have read every one! 

Sit and smile

I was reading tonight in Eat Pray Love and I came across a passage where Elizabeth Gilbert is learning from a Ketut, a Balinese medicine man.  She writes:

He tells me that there are many ways to find God but most are too complicated for Westerners, so he will teach me an easy meditation.  Which goes, essentially, like this: sit in silence and smile.  I love it.  He’s laughing even as he’s teaching it to me.  Sit and smile.  Perfect….

You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy.  To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.  Even smile in your liver.

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

When I read this it made me smile because it made me think of my own yoga experience.  I used to be so annoyed when the instructor would tell us to smile in a particularly challenging pose.  My brain didn’t know what to do with this request, so I would paste on a smile or roll my eyes and ignore the instruction.  As Princess Buttercup said to the Dread Pirate Roberts, You mock my pain!

But there is power in this simple request: sit and smile.  Actually I think this is one of the most important disciplines to master for one who is seeking happiness.  Sit and smile.  Let’s break it down.  

Sit. This implies stillness.  A quieting of the monkey brain, which, for me, initially feels like a wrestling match. And when it becomes clear that the monkey is going to win, then a release or surrender.  It’s like the decision to relinquish control IS what ultimately grants it.  So one must first learn to sit in stillness. 

Smile. A smile is just a facial expression, but I love what Ketut instructs, Even smile in your liver.  To really smile it has to come from deep inside—at least, to really mean it. It’s the letting go that really allows for this.  It’s hard to have a genuine smile through your entire body when you are white-knuckling in anyway.  

Thank you, yoga, for teaching me this. I’ve noticed this when I’ve continued to hold the pose, but understood that perfection is not required.  And furthermore, constant shifting of the pose until theoretical perfection is obtained—also not required.  

I’m going to pause here because THIS is mind-blowing for me.  I’m not required to constantly shift and work and adjust and strain until perfection is obtained?  Really?  There is space in life for a moment’s pause to sit and smile?  

I’m not sure I was ever conscious enough to notice my constant shifting and adjusting, let alone to decide when/if it was necessary.  The truth is, I do want to be better at the yoga pose and at life.  I’m going to naturally shift and progress, but there is something to be said for holding the pose without adjustment.  

This brings me to my main thought of the past month.  I re-listened to Sue Monk Kidd on the Oprah Super Soul podcast while I was in Santa Cruz.  She, so pleasantly, told Oprah,

“I remember thinking, It’s time to start finding things…There’s a hunger in you and I think it’s appropriate to follow that, but we should also be finders at the same time.  It’s one of those paradoxes that I’m getting more comfortable living with.  That we can be a seeker and a finder at the same time.  

We have to acknowledge sometimes that this moment is enough, this place is enough, I am enough, it’s okay. And if I never seek another thing, it’s enough.”

Sue Monk Kidd on Oprah Super Soul Sunday

This is where I’m trying to live for the time being:  This moment is enough.  This place is enough.  I’m enough.  

I'm learning to sit and smile.

Engage in small c creation

“We do seem to be living in a universe that is in a constant and unending state of creation.  It’s never stopping.  It’s never stopping here either.  We are not witnessing that.  We are PART of that.  We come from that.  We work into that.  

So if the energy of the universe is in constant creation, when you are in creation, yourself, you’re in alignment with it.  And that’s why it feels so good, because you’re in the river of the thing that is happening from here to the outer extent of the universe, always.  And when you’re not in creativity and when you’re not in creation you’re against that flow and that’s why it feels like depression, and that’s why it feels like despair, and that’s why it feels so heavy.  

So for me, the best way that I can feel healthy, which means a sense of belonging, not just belonging to other people, but belonging to this whole weird story that’s happening that we’re in, is if I do creativity “small c" on a small scale.  So if I make something, then I’m also creating just the way that the universe is always making something and for some reason that feels deeply good at the soul level.  And when I’m not doing that I’m stagnating against a power that wants me to create with it.  

So for me it’s profoundly spiritual because there is no greater way to connect with capital C Creation than to engage in small c creation.  And that c can be as small as you want.  There’s something about making something with your hands that just makes you healthy and I think it’s what we are supposed to be doing so we don’t despair.”

Gwyneth x Elizabeth Gilbert: Can Creating Something Small Heal Something Big?

This is taken from an interview Gweneth Paltrow did with Elizabeth Gilbert on the Goop Podcast.  I heard it several weeks ago and I have become enamored with the idea of “small c” creativity.  There is so much power in it. 

A few months ago I felt inspired to put some of R’s artwork on my kitchen wall.  He was in a phase where he loved drawing and I felt inspired by his art.  Then I started to add my own art to the wall and the art of some of my friends (some of it made while they were watching R for me).  It’s become my visual memorial to small c creativity.  Each morning while I’m making breakfast and packing lunches I have several examples of small c energy reminding me that this is where the power lives.  

small c art wall

Starting with the small c has helped me to move onto some middle-sized c creative work.  I finished this oil pastel drawing while I was Santa Cruz.  I just got started with watercolor this weekend (something I have zero experience with).  I’ve been knitting too, which feels pretty chill but still adds and element of small c connection to my life.  

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The piano and my voice continue to be sources of small c.  I think of singing along with my car stereo in that context now.  Learning to play piano by chords has really freed up the piano to become a small c-type exercise.  I can play almost any song and process the emotion of it through the keys and my voice.  It’s powerful.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhVQdrbCUMQu0026feature=youtu.be

So what’s the benefit of small c?  What can you really get out of it besides mediocre art?

The main benefit I see is that I have developed a comfort level with myself.  I have come to know myself through small c.  I’ve started to hear my inner voice through the writing I do here and in my journal.  The inner voice has grown more recognizable as I assuaged the inner critic with a reminder that this doesn’t have to be good.  My inner critic told me the leaves of the watercolor plant should be green but my inner voice thought rainbow might be nice.  

When I do small c creativity, I start to hear the difference between the two—the inner voice and inner critic.  But small c dials back the intensity so a risk becomes less scary.  

I use small c in the way I live my life, as I’ve left behind the manual for living that I used to follow.  Small c invites curiosity, What if I told the truth? What if I said the hard thing? 

What kind of small c are you doing?

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. 

Put your arms down!

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.

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.

How to start feeling

I grew up in a house with four women which meant there was a lot of estrogen going around.  We were pretty adept at late-night sessions, hashing out the latest crises in our lives, letting our advice spill over into the wee hours when judgment for such things is waning and emotions are running high.  I was always the more detached, cerebral unit in this group.  I used humor as an escape and a facade to avoid these tell-all episodes when possible.  For years, these sessions were the glue that held the women in my family together.   They defined our get-togethers.  Sometimes they left us feeling closer and sometimes they just left us feeling more crazy and isolated.  The outcome was always a gamble.  

Thankfully, these sessions have changed.  My sisters came to San Diego for a getaway weekend this past week.  We’ve become better at this over the years.  It’s easier.  For one thing, the facade is starting to come down.  We’re not faking the always-clean house anymore.  We’ve dropped the idea that we should have it all together.

Another change that is coming about is emotional autonomy.  We aren’t perfect at it yet, but we’ve started to trust each other to take care of our own crap.  We are adopting the philosophy of I’m going to assume you’re okay with whatever is happening unless you tell me it’s not okay.  Maybe in some family dynamics this would be moving in the wrong direction, but in ours it’s magic.  We have a history of being endlessly caretaking to the point that no one will say where they want to have dinner for fear that someone will be disappointed but go along with it anyway.  It’s enough to make anyone bonkers.  

The third things is that we’ve started to cool it on the advice.  Advice, usually, just sucks.  It’s not helpful and it often makes the advised person feel like an idiot.  We probably suck at this one the most.  We still relentlessly advise each other because how do you not try to help your sister when she is telling you about something in her life that is causing her pain!?! That’s why I said we’ve STARTED to cool it.  No miraculous change here—just incremental.

So I was actually really honored when my sister opened up to me about avoiding her feelings.  She realized she was doing this a lot and had been for years.  Numbing out the negative emotion with food or TV or whatever.  She said, with the bravest honesty, that she wondered what it would take to give that up--and if she even wanted to.

Her simple utterance rang all my truth alarms.  I told her that that was a VERY valid question.  It’s a lot to feel.  It’s so much.  And at first you won’t know how to get it out—how to unbury that stuff that’s been locked away under layers of food and TV and shopping and piles of subconscious.  You’ll notice yourself binge eating or binge watching and, now because you’re slightly more conscious than before, you see it.  You think, I’m just numbing—what am I numbing?  And you won’t be able to figure it out at first.  

And you’ll judge yourself because that’s what you’ve always done.   Your brain will say things to you like, You’re weak. You always do this.   And then you’ll feel some shame about the numbing behavior which will really only feed it and you’ll wonder if you will ever get off this cycle.  But what you don’t realize is that your foot is already on the path to consciousness.  Because you noticed the numbing!  You identified it.  So a few weeks or months or years will go by and sometimes you’ll notice the numbing and identify it as it’s happening and sometimes you’ll see it after the fact and sometimes you won’t see it at all.

Then one day, as you reach for your first handful of Cadbury Mini Eggs—or maybe it will happen because you’re surprisingly out of chocolate—you’ll stop yourself and decide to really drill down.  What is the feeling I’m numbing?  You’ll search for a word, the chocolate smell heavy in the air.  Anger…fear…jealousy…tired…disappointment—DISAPPOINTMENT!  That’s it!  I’m disappointed.  

You’ll retrace your feeling steps back through the events of the last ten minutes or ten hours or ten days or ten years to realize that what you’re feeling in this moment is disappointment.  And then you will wonder what it feels like--without the chocolate.

You’ll picture a time when you felt disappointed.  You might even have to reach back to childhood if you’ve been numbing for a while.  You’ll lean into that memory as you lean into the current moment.  The lean means that you are getting into your body.  You will pull that feeling through your gut, to your fingertips and as you let go of the stoicism you will begin to cry.  You might be driving down the freeway sobbing over your steering wheel.  You might prostrate yourself on the kitchen floor as the disappointment takes over.  You let it.  

Part of you thinks this is completely ridiculous.  Another part of you worries that now that you’ve started crying you might never stop.  But you’ve already come this far so you continue to sob.  Tears are now coming from the darkest corners of your psyche.  DISAPPOINTMENT.  It’s such a simple emotion, so familiar, so easy to bury under layers of chocolate or busy-ness or novels or TV.  But now it’s racking you in full force.  Your face is covered in snot and tears.  You feel strange as the sobs start to slow—no wait, now they’re back again full-force—okay, now they are slowing.  

That’s the thing about emotions—they can’t last forever.  This is as equally true for the good ones as it is for the painful ones.  You look in the mirror and see your swollen eyes and snotty face, but it’s not pathetic.  There’s a little fire that’s started in your chest.  It’s the fire of self-respect because you did the hard thing—the brave thing.  You faced the disappointment dragon.  You shouted and beat your chest at the mouth of his cave and he devoured you.  Yet here you are on the other side of it, soggy but intact.  And that simple fact is proof that you can do it again.  Over and over and over again.  You can be devoured by the dragon because you were born to do this.  You were born to feel—not to numb, but TO FEEL.  

The weeks and months and years will pass.  Your emotional vocabulary will grow.  You will begin to see the dragons on the horizon and the fear of being devoured will become less.  Still, there will be times when you put on the sumo suit of chocolate or TV or exercise or podcast.  You will check out and the dragon will pass by, but it will secretly be waiting.

Sometimes you will notice these moments and you will judge yourself for it.  I should know better! I am enlightened! You really suck at this!  But another voice will tell you, you are human and the balance is what it’s all about. Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself.  Love yourself.  That is the way to freedom.  At first the shoulds will be loud in your ears.  You will wonder if you will EVER be good at this.  

The weeks and months and years will pass and you will realize that good is silly.  Good is a box and no one is shaped like a box.  We only come in human shapes.  By then you will suck less at this enlightenment business.  But that saying that goes something like, the more I learn the less I know will have come to pass.  

You will be very brave about being devoured by the dragon then.  For this reason, some people will think that you have too many feelings.  You won’t worry too much about those people because you will understand that we all have dragons lurking on the horizon.  

Sometimes you will succeed at standing firm while the dragon devours you and other times you will find yourself running to food or shopping or TV or drugs or incessant napping or alcohol or social media or sex or gambling.  But because you are conscious more often than not, you notice when you do these things.  And the reward of it becomes less because you see it for what it is—not an escape but a delay.  

And you start to be kind to yourself, to understand that sometimes you NEED a delay.  You aren’t yet ready to be devoured by the next dragon.  But because you know you are someone who faces down dragons, you trust that you will eventually summon the courage to be devoured and you will love yourself as you wait for that day.

Here’s to the journey, sister. I'm on it too.

There is beauty in the wobble.

Saul was one of the first patients in San Diego to scream at me.  I remember the first time seeing him.  I went into the field with my nurse to see patients in their homes.  We came to his independent living facility (ILF), which was house in a poorer neighborhood in San Diego.  I followed my nurse, Annie, into the house, into the kitchen, down the hallway.  She was calling out the patient’s name.  He appeared from one of the bedrooms.  There were other residents of the house watching us, not bothered by what is a very routine intrusion.  

My patient, I’ll call him Saul, was angry about not having Artane, one of his medications.  He spoke quickly, his eyes pried wide open; he was visibly dirty, his hair short but pushed up in strange directions.  He was wearing an oversized camo jacket, a t-shirt and cargo pants.  The conversation about medication changed course erratically.  I tried to introduce myself but he looked at me with disdain and rambled on.  Soon he was mumbling out threats about bombs, becoming more animated and difficult to understand.  I followed Annie’s lead as we walked out of the house and Saul followed us.  We got back into her car and Saul stood by Annie’s window gesturing wildly, now screaming about Artane and bombs.  She offered him a bottle of water through her cracked window but he refused.  She pulled forward carefully and we left Saul there standing in the street shouting.  This was one version of Saul.

There was another version that appeared months later.  I drove to a different ILF to see Saul.  By this time I had begun seeing patients on my own in their homes.  Saul emerged from a quiet house where I was not invited in.  We sat in some lawn chairs on the driveway.  He was silent, eerily so.  I asked him all of my usual questions about sleep and mood and appetite and medication.  His gesticulated quiet, one-word responses. He was losing weight. He complained of being hungry frequently.  Since he appeared to have stopped using meth, I wondered if he was on too much antipsychotic medication and being dulled by that.  I offered to reduce his medication and he agreed to this.  I suggested supplementing with food from food banks but he quietly and hopelessly said the others in the house would eat it.  

There was another version of Saul that was in my office only a few weeks ago.  His hair was dyed jet black.  He was wearing an ill-fitting sport jacket and a button down shirt.  He was happy and relatively at ease.  We went through the regular questions.  His thoughts were linear and easy to follow.  He wasn’t what anyone would describe as “normal” but he was good.  Saul looked good and he felt well.  A few days later he was dead from methamphetamine overdose.

I have other stories about my psychiatric patients that sound more like successes.  I like telling those stories better.  But what I’m really learning to appreciate is the wobble.  The wobble is the the fluctuation between the ups and the downs, the victories and defeats, the moments when I feel my capability and the ones when I feel my weakness.  I used to spend so much time focusing on those high points that I forgot about the beauty of the lower half of the curve.  And there is beauty there.  

Maybe we miss it because the cycle happens too quickly.  A couple of days ago I got an upsetting text from my ex-husband.  I responded reasonably, initially, but then I devolved.  I felt justified.  I probably was.  That night was a bit of a tailspin.  I chose to numb out the fear and pain rather than let it pass through me.  I went to sleep early.  

The next morning I woke to my alarm at 7am.  There were broken rain clouds visible through my bedroom window. I could see the wind was blowing so there was a thought that I should stay in bed—a compelling, logical thought.  I had another thought too: “You have R this weekend so this is the last morning for the next four days when you have the luxury of being able to walk to a coffee shop and sit and write.”  This was enough to get me out from beneath the covers and on my way.  

The morning air was crisp and the big clouds were more majestic than threatening.  The little neighborhood coffee shop was buzzing with caffeine and good mornings.  I sat down with my laptop to write and I pulled out what I had been reading the night before: 

“Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be—if we are to experience long survival—a continuous “recurrence of birth” (palengenesia) to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death.  For it is by means of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very virtue.  Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence is a snare.  When our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified—and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.”

A Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

I realized that I had been reborn in the morning.  I shook off the night before and rose again.  Maybe that is all we are asked to to. Rise again.  Rise again.  Rise again.  The happy ending we dream of, we wait for, we anticipate with bated breath, maybe it’s just the transcendence of the rise.  It’s the moment when I pop my head above the cloud cover and feel the warm sun on my face.  Even as I know I will sink down under the gray layer again.  It’s inevitable!

So the other night I was dismembered and the next morning I am reborn.  The acceptance of this cycle/process feels free.  It means that I don’t have to mire myself in shame, I can simply wake in the morning, wonder at my dismemberment for a moment, then shake it off and be born new.  As I walked home from the coffee shop, I thought about the ways nature teaches this: the daily sunrise and sunset, the seasons, the lifecycles of plants, insects, animals.  It’s like God was thinking, “I’ll just repeat this symbol absolutely everywhere I can so maybe they can get it.”  There is beauty in the wobble.  I see it, even in the life of my patient, Saul, who never freed himself from the numbing agents.  I see it because I witnessed some of the occasions when he poked his head above the clouds and felt the sunshine on his face.  And surly a God that teaches us to rise again in every iteration of nature, legend, scripture, folklore and fairytale, has made a way for us to rise again.   

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. 

Maybe love is letting go

A long, long time ago there was a really big meeting.  All of humanity was there.  God stood up at the front of the massive space that held all of us and said, “Hello, my beautiful and diverse creations. We are here today to discuss the matter of your becoming. Over the next several thousand years, I’m going to release you all into the world. The purpose of this journey will be for you to become love. What we have to figure out is the best way for that to happen. Because I value your opinions, I want you to break up into small groups, discuss this amongst yourselves and then we’ll come back together and present our solutions.” 

So a very diverse, and somewhat naive, humanity pushed their chairs together and divided up into small groups to discuss what it meant to become love and what means would get them there. At the end of this discussion, there were two basic ideas put forward. 

The first idea was that the important part of becoming was the finish line. An especially intelligent one stood up and said, “If we can just get everyone to the end without making these completely avoidable mistakes, then that will mean we became love.” They revealed a detailed formula, complete with flow charts, steps and rules. They spent time calculating statistical probabilities and laying out pros and cons lists. Everyone was really impressed by the thought that went into all of this. It seemed pretty obvious that this was the way to go.  It meant safety for the entire human race and no one would be left behind. 

At the end of their presentation, God said, “This is very interesting, and I can tell you put a lot of work into it.  Now lets hear the next idea.” 

Another stood at the front, a little intimidated by all of the data and preparation that went into the first presentation, but committed to sharing her perspective. “I guess I have a different opinion on what becoming love means. I represent those who believe that becoming happens in the process.  That our becoming will happen through a million different circumstances and thoughts and feelings.  And while we are going through these, we will feel painfully alone at times.  But that the more of these experiences we have, and the more we look outward—into the faces of our fellow creations and into the mountains and the sea and the grass and trees and insects and animals—the more we will find ourselves.  That we will realize we are all made of the same light and energy.  That our experiences, however diverse, are really one experience.”

She went on, “I am worried that if we go with the first groups plan, we will miss out on this—the living part of life.” 

After she spoke, a murmuring wave of low voices passed through the immense crowd.  God stood up and thanked both for their presentations.  “You have given us a lot to think about.  Because I believe in you, I am going to give each of you a vote for what kind of experience you want.  What will best support you in becoming love?  We will meet back here in an hour to vote.” 

The crowd came to life with voices attempting to persuade others to their way of thinking.  Some were quiet, tearful conversations, other’s gave impassioned, threatening speeches.  The time passed quickly.  God reentered the space.  Everyone quieted down, the room thick with anticipation for this all-important decision. 

God spoke softly, “I’m afraid this is going to disappoint some of you and relieve some of you.  I have been thinking this over and I offered you something that ultimately I cannot give. In the last hour, I realized that I love you all too much to force either side into something they don’t have confidence in.”

Everyone was really confused by this. God normally didn’t change his mind on things, so this was unusual. The woman who spoke earlier stepped forward. “I feel like I’ve already said enough, and you all know how I feel.”

God’s loving gaze turned to her, “Please, go on.”

“God, what you’ve said you want for us is to become love. As I’ve been watching you today, I have considered that maybe love is just the opposite of control. Maybe love is trusting you, the creator, and trusting us, as your creations.  Maybe love is letting go.”

“It’s going to be messy,” God replied, “and I will be there in every space imaginable—I will be right there.” In that moment we all knew what we had to do, that letting go was the first step in our becoming love. So together, we walked into the world knowing that it would be a mess—knowing that our first instinct would be to control and manipulate and coerce, even in the name of love. But we also trusted that we would find God in the letting go.

The golden cord

Last year a wise friend said to me, “Michelle, it’s okay to hope for good things.”  I’ve spent most of my adult life releasing hope as a means of protecting myself from disappointment.  It’s actually a very efficient way to make oneself disappointed.  I now call it pre-disappointed.  It happens when I decide I will be disappointed in advance for something that might (or might not) happen.  That way, I beat disappointment to the punch.  It’s very smart because then you get to be right about being disappointed and being right is the best, right?!?

This largely shut down my ability to dream and hope.   My therapist described this process as "turning to stone."  It happens when you are not allowed to be your true self, either by a threatening environment, or by you holding yourself back.  Slowly, you turn to stone.  The divine sparks inside of me became layered over with sediment that hardened until the light was almost completely vanquished.  I distinctly remember feeling that at two points in my life.  I described it then as feeling like a shell.  Hollow.  A cast of myself but with no substance within.  The truth is, I was living for everyone else’s expectations.  I wasn’t living for myself.  And I had been doing this for so long I couldn’t imagine what living for myself would even look like.  Most of the work I have been doing is to encourage my self—that fun, motivated, divine being that God created, lodged inside of me—that it’s safe to come out.

As I’ve done this, I’ve started to see this image of walls being removed from around me.  I used to press my hands and feet into them to know where I was in space.  The walls were things in my external environment that gave me a sense of who I was and how I was doing.  Gradually the walls, roof and ceiling have all dissolved.  I’ve pictured myself reaching out in all directions feeling for the limits of space and finding nothing.  At times it has been extremely disorienting.  Sometimes I haven’t been sure which way was up.  As I have considered this image, I wondered, what do I hold on to?  What do I know? 

I know love.  I envisioned love as a golden cord, extending from the heavens, coming down through the center of my head and my body.  As my limbs reach and struggle in an effort to examine and understand the space, my being is suspended from this thick golden cord, which is love.  Love is the anchor.  Love is the guiding light within me.  My sense is that if I can stay in love then I don’t need the walls.  Love will hold me.  Love will center me.  And love is the basis of hope and trust.  I trust the golden cord, that I am anchored in love, that it will support my weight and my flailing about.  And this allows me to hope for good things.  For aliveness.  For expression.  For the surge of spirit that gives me the sense that I am awake, I am here.

This is the golden cord. This is love. With it, I can be human and I can be free.