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.

Hello, Anxiety. Who are you exactly?

I read an article recently that suggested that when anxiety appears, you have a conversation with it.  Being the eager guinea pig that I am, I decided to give it a try and it was really helpful.  At the risk of revealing my inner crazy, I’m sharing it here.

Me:  I think there are two voices here.  The first is the Judgmental Older Sister.  You obviously need to go first. 

Judgmental Older Sister:  You know when all of this ends badly? I’m going to say I told you so.  I’m going to look at you with disgust and remind you that you knew better.  I’m going to be sorry for you that you are hurting, but I’ll remind you that you could have avoided the pain if you only did the smart thing. 

Disclosure: I have two older sisters and, for the record, neither of them talk in the voice of the judgmental older sister.  It’s just the way I picture this particular voice. Love you, sistas!

Me:  I think what I am unsure about is how will I know when it’s time to REALLY let go?  And will I be able to do it?  That’s the deep essence of my hesitation.  I am not sure about that.  I guess I can say this.  I knew when it was time to let go of my marriage.  And I was able to do it.  Why the hell would that not give me all kinds of confidence about this?  I just made it through the divorce finalization which was hell.  I did it.  I made the decisions that got me through it.  I did it with my eyes wide open.  It wasn’t perfect but it was pretty damn good.  So how can I be unqualified for this?  I  AM smart.  It doesn’t mean I always do the smart thing, because who even knows what that is?  Certainly not me.  I spent a long time doing the “smart” things and it was totally stupid.  It was my best, but if I had to do it over again, I would totally do it differently.  So I’m not looking for the smart thing anymore.  I’m looking for the precise thing.  That’s all I can do. Because smart is too subjective.  It’s too hard to call.  So, Judgmental Older Sister—you are ego personified.  Ego is the real fear—that I’m going to look or feel stupid.  That’s the worst case scenario.  I can handle that.  I do stupid things all the time.  Let it roll.  I can get through that.  Okay, let’s hear from the second voice.

Fear-of-Pain: I just don’t want us to hurt anymore.  Haven’t we been through enough?

Me:  You mean well.  You really do.  I get where you’re coming from.  Pain sucks.  It hurts.  Sometimes it comes and stays a while.  It makes me cry in front of people which can feel awkward.  It makes doing little things seem hard.   But it’s also where all the growth is.  And avoiding the right thing or the true thing to avoid pain never works because pain is there either way.  Pain shows up in the avoiding and it shows up in the embrace.  Pain is on either side of the equation.  It doesn’t matter how you solve it, pain will be there in some measure.  So, my dear Fear-of-Pain voice, you can be present, because, you’re right—pain hurts.  But you can’t drive the car.  You can’t run the show because pain is coming along too, at least for part of the trip, and we have to make room. 

Then I wondered… could I have a dance party with Judgmental Older Sister and Fear-of-Pain?  Is that possible? Does Judgmental Older Sister dance?  She can sit on the side and watch with mild loathing.  Fear-of-Pain will probably only safely sway in the background.  It’s okay—I will dance for all of us.

Walking is a prayer

I was in a strange state the morning after my divorce finalized.  I felt deeply tired.  I felt angry about how it went with just a hint of giddiness that it was over.  I thought that many people would expect me to be happy.  I wasn’t.  I think at that moment I understood more than ever why so many women stay, not that that was ever an option for me.  No one understands the blood that is lost in that arena unless they’ve lived it. 

Last weekend I got to see Cheryl Strayed and Elizabeth Gilbert have a discussion at UCLA.  I admire these women for their work and for their voice.  The discussion was inspiring.  At the end they had a Q&A session. I am not someone who gets up to ask questions but I COULD NOT resist the opportunity to talk to Dear Sugar and Big Magic. 

I said something like this: “I admire both of you for your willingness and ability to find your truth and then continue to live by it.  This is something I have been working on for a while and really fighting for for myself.  Do you have an practices you do to help you stay connected with that truth?  To keep it uncovered?”

Cheryl looked into my eyes as I spoke.  She is such a mother!  I felt her nurturing spirit and her depth.  At first she noted that the practices would probably be different for each person.  She said her advice would be to identify five things that make you happy and do them.  The answer was so simple.  Then she went on to list some of her things.  “Walking.  Walking is a prayer.”

I thought about her language, identifying these meditative activities as prayer.  What feels like a prayer to me?  For most of the last year, R has preferred to go on a walk in the stroller before bed.  We would go out at 8 or 8:30pm and walk the neighborhood for 30-45min.  I usually would listen to a podcast as I pushed R to sleep.  In the last few months, this has changed and he likes to go to sleep in bed so I’ve been missing my walks.  These nightly meditations mixed with light exercise felt like prayer.  They grounded me.  They connected me.  I had so many moments of knowing as I listened to the women I quote so often, talk me through these principles.  It was a prayer.  I resolved to find more moments to walk. 

So on Friday, I dragged myself out of bed.  The sun was shining which felt notable because of the torrential rain the day before.  It was a beautiful day.  With Cheryl’s words in my head, I decided to walk.  I put in my earbuds and put on an Oprah Super Soul podcast and I walked.  I pulled myself into the present by noticing the feeling of the breeze on my skin, the sun on my face.  My earbud's battery died but I didn’t mind.  I pulled them out and walked more.  I listened to the sound of traffic.  I walked past the park where I met R’s dad to tell him I wasn’t willing to try anymore.  Where I gave him back the ring.  I walked across the bridge and up the hill back to my apartment. 

As I reached the top of the hill, an old man was sitting on a bench waiting for the bus.  He looked at me through his sunglasses as I approached.  I smiled.  He smiled back and clapped four robust, distinct claps as I passed by.  I said, “Hello,” in response but that seems inappropriate now.  I thought about prayer and God and walking.  I knew that God was in that man that day.  He was cheering me on.  He was saying, “Run! Dance! Live!”  And I knew that THAT is what I must do.  I must keep walking as a prayer.

"We are asked to learn to ask for what we need, only to practice accepting what we’re given.  And that’s a paradox, but what’s so important about this, for me, is that asking for what we need doesn’t always lead to getting what we need.  Sometimes it does and that’s great. But the reward for asking for what we need is we become intimate with our own nature, we learn who we are by standing in who we are.  The reward for practicing accepting what we’re given: we become intimate with everything that’s not us.  We become intimate with the nature of life.  And it’s the rhythm between our own nature and the nature of life that allows us to find the thread we are in the unseeable connections that hold everything together.” Mark Nepo, Oprah Super Soul Sunday

Benediction

Remember that part at the end of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Clark Griswold goes on a rant about his boss?  That's how I felt walking out of my divorce settlement conference tonight.  It's over.  The papers are signed. The orders are written.  It's over.  Hallelujah!  Holy shit!  Where's the Tylenol?I wrote this last night and it's a good thing because I am completely spent tonight.

On this, what I suspect will be, my last evening as a married woman, I want to write a little about what my marriage meant to me.  I entered into it as a smart, naive, 20-year-old woman.  I intended it to last forever.  I was willing to work, and I worked.  Oh, how I worked.  I poured every bit of work I could muster into this.  I reduced myself to putty to fill in the holes and surround the sharp edges.

I worked.  I learned several occupations.  I learned finances, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, housework.  I learned how to navigate medical insurance and billing.  I learned how to live with less.  I learned how to change a car tire and patch a bicycle tire.  I learned how to shovel snow.  I learned to trust an old car.

I traveled.  I learned how to live with the contents of a backpack.  How to show up in a foreign city without a place to stay and trust that I would find one.  I learned how to navigate the country with an atlas.  I learned to sleep in places I never imagined I would.  I learned to walk.  I learned to carry a heavy load.  I learned how to endure heat and cold.  I learned how to start a fire and fire a gun.  I learned not to be scared as I walked in the woods alone.  I learned how to paddle a canoe and bait a hook.  I learned to notice the birds in the sky and the fish in the river.

I studied.  I worked more. 

But mostly I waited.  And the sun set as I was waiting and then it became dark and I knew it was time to be done.  So I walked away, into the night, into the most painful and fearful moments of my life.  And in this dark, I have learned to trust myself.  Even that naive young woman who decided to jump on a ship that would ultimately descend beneath the waves.  I have been changed for good.   

An open letter to my evolving self at Christmas time

Dear Michelle,

This is a hectic time in your brain.  Your divorce settlement meeting is looming next week.  Your patients are struggling as is typical around this time of year, with the holidays and the reduced daylight.  Because of the extra things going on, you are out of your routine with exercise and eating.  That routine has become really important because so many element in your life are new and unfamiliar.  Pick up that routine when you can, but be patient when it’s not the thing for that day.  Life will return to normal soon, with the monotony and security of the ordinary.  Holidays help to mark the passage of time and they are supposed to feel different. 

This is the first Christmas where R really understands all of the fun things that will be happening. He is already talking about Santa Claus and snow.  This will be a perfect opportunity to reconnect with your own child-like wonder.  So teach him about Christmas, but let him teach you about fun and curiosity.  Allow yourself some excitement and some hope.  Remember to dance and laugh and open your eyes wide to the present. 

To do this, you are going to have to let some things be.  You have been seeking intently for months for answers to some of life’s most difficult questions.  This is a time to rest from that.  Remember your mother’s words, “When I was in my 30s I thought I had to have it all figured out. Now that I’m in my 60s, I don’t believe that.”  There is time.  Lots and lots and lots of time.  Seeking is important but so is rest.  So let the difficult things be.  Trust that you will know when it’s time to pick them up again. 

Remember the things that you DO know.  Like God is there.  God is inside me and if I can get quite and still then I can find the knowing.  I can connect with that part of myself.  On the busy days, the thing that will allow you to continue to feel grounded and joyful is keeping that voice uncovered.  The only activities that REALLY qualify as “self-care” are the ones that clear some of the crap that builds up over the part of yourself that knows.  Focus on those things. 

As you make decisions about how to spend your time, remember what a yes feels like.  That it’s a yes with your whole self, every part of you wants to do it.   If the response feels like less than that, then really consider whether, what you are asking of yourself, aligns with your intention.  You’ve decided that your intention for December will be to let it all be, observe and be present and to feel love.  Let that intention guide you through the fun things and the hard things. 

You’ve got this!

Xoxo,

Michelle

Practice makes practice

When I was first learning to surf, my experienced-surfer friend, Clare, encouraged me to practice my pop-ups.  She recommended lying on my stomach on the living room floor and practicing the process of paddling, then pushing up and popping up.  The pop up is important in surfing and something most beginner surfers struggle with.  It’s the movement that allows you to go from lying prone on the board to being up on your feet in two quick movements.  First, you push your chest up off of the board (think upward facing dog, not push up), then you bring your feet forward in one movement placing them on the board and becoming upright.  Many people will hesitate meaning they only get to one knee, which can work for a while but will eventually, if not immediately, hold back some success. 

I practiced this on the floor at home.  I practiced it with her in the sand on the beach before we would paddle out.  I immediately understood the importance of the practice—to build muscle memory. Muscle memory is procedural memory. It’s building the coordination between movement in a way that allows you to complete the movement without conscious effort.  Practicing the pop up is helpful for a beginner (and really any) surfer because it allows the movement to be made without conscious effort. 

Imagine yourself sitting on a board, watching the waves come in.  You finally decide there is one that is coming at you in the right way that you can be in position to paddle for it.  You are paddling forward checking the wave’s position against yours as you paddle.  The paddling requires a big effort so you are paddling hard, the wave hits, you start to feel it pushing your forward.  This is the moment for the push up/pop up sequence.   If you are like me, a lot of mental energy already went in to getting to that point.  I am still a little hesitant that I might nose in causing the board and me to pushed under the water.  In that moment, the muscle memory of the pop up allows me to commit without much mental energy and get to my feet.  I’m getting better at this but it has taken A LOT of practice.   

I see this pattern repeated over and over again in my life.  Practicing the piano, when I was young, was building muscle memory.  Learning to type.  Learning to play the saxophone.  Cheerleading stunts and dances.  Volleyball skills.  The repetition builds muscle memory which eventually makes the activity unconscious. 

Muscle memory is another term for motor learning--the repetition of a movement until it become automatic.  It’s easy to think of physical examples of this, but what I want to write about today are the other practices I do that are kind of like muscle memory.

I want to create so I write.  You get to see some of it here but I write way more for myself than I publish.  When I first decided to start writing, I wrote at least five times a week for 6 months before I published anything.  And even when I started publishing, it wasn’t because I felt ready.  I just recognized that I would never feel ready.  It would always feel vulnerable to share my writing, and I wanted to do it anyway.  So most days I write something for myself, even it if’s just a short paragraph.  And I try to post here three times a week.  I’ve said this before, but this has been the single greatest sanity builder.  There is something healing in the creativity of this practice.  I process things through writing that I can’t process any other way.  After I wrote the post on Sunday, I emerged from my bedroom and my mom, who was visiting, said, “You look lighter!”  On days when I feel blocked, I remind myself to simply keep writing, to keep showing up for myself.

I want to have courage so I ask myself what feels brave and I do it.  At least I really try to.  I live with a lot of fear.  It wakes me up in the early morning some days.  It makes it hard to fall asleep some nights.  I have found that the best antidote for fear is to remind myself that I am brave.  A while back, I wrote a courage list in my journal.  I made a list of everything I had done in my life that required courage.  What a helpful exercise!  Now, I have made it a conscious practice to be brave in my life.  When I do my morning thought download and empty out what’s in my mind, I sort through it to identify which thoughts are the fear voice.  This consciousness allows me to know when fear is driving the car so I can kindly ask fear to get in the backseat.  There is not much that feels better than the feeling that comes after courage. 

I want to be sane to I expose myself to the outdoors and exercise.  If it's been more than a day or two without it I start to get antsy.  That's the muscle memory.  That's the intrinsic reminder that I need to recharge in this important way.

These are a few examples of mental/emotional muscles I’m trying to strengthen.  Here’s why I care.  When life is going good, I don’t really need these things.  It’s when it gets hard that they become so important.  It’s when the wave is about to roll me that I need the muscle memory of the pop up so I can get to my feet and ride the wave.  Because—there are days when I absolutely need to write and I don’t feel like it.  I don’t want to face the reality of what’s in my mind.  There are days when I hesitate to do the brave thing—so many days when I want to let fear drive the car.  There are days when it’s hard to do the mom thing and go to work and run the household and care for the friends and family around me. 

Those are the days I need the muscle memory.  I need my body and spirit to know what to do because I’ve been practicing it.  It's the physical manifestation of my intention. 

Something I'm just starting to work on is play.  Brené Brown calls it "laughter, song and dance" in her research.  I used to be really good at this but it's been buried in the seriousness of life.  My life, even the things I enjoy, has become a checklist of activities that have a function for my mental or physical health, household function or work.  I think I need a serious intervention to bring play back into my life, so if you have any suggestions, please help me out!    

Malcom Gladwell wrote, “Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”  I’m less concerned about getting good at any of this and more concerned about being freed by it.  But, I like his acknowledgment that the power is in the process, not in its perfection.  So let’s be intentional about what we practice and let’s be kind to ourselves as we do it.  Namaste. 

Accelerated carousel of mommy guilt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just in case you ever feel ungrateful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rebellion in the sparkling line of costume gems

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what I learned from my mom: 

To keep moving alongside the fear and the dark. 

To find beauty in it.

And to create in its presence. 

That is how you find the light again. 

Evictions and invitations

After I wrote my last post I have been using, “I’m just going to dance,” as a mantra.  It’s been quite useful, but because life is what it is, it’s been a struggle to keep dancing. Just wanted to reality check that.  I’m still repeating, still working to do it.  I do feel like I’ve risen to a new level in this process I’m working in but, as I keep learning, progress does not equal comfort. 

I’ve been through a meaningful clean-out this week.  I passed on most of River’s baby items to people who could use them.  As someone who waited a long time to have a child (“long time” qualified as such by nothing but my own expectations) and is now facing the possibility that I might not have any more children, this was emotional.  I also sold my longtime companion car (read here if you missed the tribute).  It was time for the car to go and I felt ready, but the experience of selling a car on Craigslist was a little harrowing.  Nothing bad happened but I felt extremely vulnerable, standing under a streetlight in the otherwise dark, holding River, while three grown men examined my car and then haggled with me over the price.  It’s an experience I never anticipated having and I hope to not repeat.

All of this moving-on business has prompted me to think about evictions. 

When I was about 11 years old, a big shift happened in my family.  Around this time my grandpa was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  His prognosis was poor.  I was young so I don’t understand everything that played into this, but I know it broke something open in mom. She began spending long periods of time in her room, in bed, with the door closed.  When I came home from school, I was met with a serious expression and relative silence.  Before this time there had always been pleasant chatter and busy flow of housework, homework, errands and dinner prep. 

Glennon Doyle described this kind of experience as an eviction from your life.  It’s a point in time in which something changes in a way that makes it impossible to return to your previous existence.  Effectively you cannot go home.  You cannot return to your previous way of living because something fundamental inside or outside of you has changed.

I think my mom would identify this time period as one of her life evictions.  It was my first.  It was the first time I remember understanding that life was bigger than my childhood problems.  That the adults in my life were facing things that were bigger and more complex than I could understand.  I searched for a way to make sense of it and my role within it.  This is when I started to worry about getting good grades.  I started thinking about college.  I started to TRY to get along with my sisters.  I started to believe that if I could be and do enough good, I could control my life and, to some degree, the lives of those around me.

Eviction #2 happened about ten years later.  I was 20 years old when I got married.  Five months after the wedding, I had a septoplasty and turbinate reduction surgery. This was to help me breathe better but was mostly in response to recurrent, severe headaches that had been going on for years.  It was an outpatient procedure but I spent the entire day in the recovery room.  My blood pressure became very elevated during surgery and it took hours to bring it down.  The surgeon advised me get this checked out by my primary care doctor.  I was a BYU student at the time so I went to student health and told the doctor what had happened.  Thankfully she took it seriously.  She began ordering tests to evaluate my cardiovascular and endocrine function.  After a bunch of tests and a misread CT scan that was thankfully given a second look, a tumor was found in the back of my abdominal cavity behind my pancreas. 

I had an incredibly invasive surgery to remove the tumor, followed by another incredibly invasive surgery four months later.  This was my second eviction.  I dealt with this in a similar way to my first.  I put my head down and went to work.  I looked for things I could control to take care of the things I couldn’t.  I went on like this for 11 years. 

I was 31 when I became pregnant with R.  I waited a long time to have a child and I was so excited to be pregnant and bring this little human into existence.  I don’t think it matters what you circumstances are, having a child is an eviction from your life!  It’s something you can’t adequately prepare for, no matter what.  Having R was the best kind of eviction.  Holding my sweet boy, feeling the incredible love I felt for him and believing that God’s love for him was even more perfect than mine—that was the impetus for me.  That’s when I started to believe that God loved me and he wanted something more for me than my self-mandated, contrived existence. 

This is when I realized I couldn’t continue—I couldn’t fulfill the measure of my creation, within my marriage.  This marked the most meaningful eviction to that point.  That’s the thing about evictions.  They are uncomfortable.  They are supposed to be.  During the past two years, there have been several times when I have longed to go home.  To return to some feeling of normalcy in life.  But whenever I think about this, I try to picture what that would look like and where it would be.  And I realize, it doesn’t exist anymore.  I cannot go home.  Like those whose homes were destroyed in the terrible fires in California this past week, I could return to the lot and I would find a field of charred and scattered debris.  What was there before, only exists in my memory.

This is where the invitation comes in.  An eviction always comes with an invitation.  An invitation to rebuild, to grow, to expand, to understand, to let go, to reach.  These are invitations that I would ignore without the preceding abrupt eviction.  Life in the status quo, however comfortable or uncomfortable, is familiar and it is so hard to let go of the familiar.  I don’t think God provides these evictions.  The world and life and biology are chaotic and complicated enough to ensure that we will find our necessary breaking points.  But God is always the inviter.  God is the one that invites us to turn shit into gold.  It is up to us to accept the invitation—to “trust the inviter,” as Glennon suggests.

When have you felt this eviction/invitation?   

Today my invitation is, not to wait for the downhill stretch, but to get comfortable in the climb.  To stay open.  To love.  Namaste.

It's all delusional anyway

I am a psychiatric PA.  A lot of people get confused by that title.  I am a physician assistant specialized in psychiatry.  I do the same job as a psychiatrist for much less money, and I’d like to think with a little more style!  I diagnose and treat mental illness, primarily with medication.  I have been doing this for 6 years and for half of that time I have worked with the severely, persistently, mentally-ill population.   Most of my patients have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, substance abuse or some combination of all three.  When I tell people this, I usually get some kind of response like, “I don’t know how you do that. That seems like a really hard group to work with.”  And it is in some ways.  My patients are often dirty and smelly.  They are often high on something or coming down from something or waking up from something.  They struggle with basic tasks.  They get angry easily.  They don’t answer my questions in straight-forward ways.  Sometimes they are violent or threatening.  Sometimes they lie.  And sometimes they are honest. 

One such patient suffers from schizophrenia.  He is usually stoic with limited eye contact when he sits down in my office, but after only a moment he will start to intensely muse about Father Time and the universe and people and places that, I’m pretty sure only exist in his mind.  I’m trying to find out how he is sleeping and whether he is thinking about suicide.  I’m thinking, “Yeah, ok, Father Time… but let’s talk about the important things.” 

And he is probably thinking, “Yeah, ok, sleep…but let’s talk about the important things!" My interviews often feel like a struggle to obtain the information I want without completely dismissing, what to me is complete gibberish, but what to my patient is his pressing reality.  I’ve learned that patients get used to this dance too.  And like me, sometimes it’s frustrating but usually we just roll with it and do our best to play our parts. 

This particular meeting was different.  He started off with a bizarre statement (not so unusual), “Did you know I have AIDS but it doesn’t register?  I have it in my spirit.” 

I think, “Okay, this is how it’s going to go.”  So I look at the report that he completed in the lobby.  It’s called a Common Ground report and it gives the patient a Likert scale to rate various symptoms.  Sometimes psychiatric patients (and really all patients) have a hard time relating their symptoms to their healthcare provider so this is meant to ease the process.  He marked that he was not doing so well at fulfilling responsibilities so I ask him about it. 

“I have trouble remembering to go on walks, wash my plate and the table cloth, and flush the toilet because I spend a lot of time nervous and confused.” The honesty of this statement strikes me.  He continues, “It’s confusing that I know how to understand what I’m going through and still be able to take the pain that I’m going through.”

Heart wrenching. 

This man stabbed himself in the arm a while back in response to some delusional belief.  It became infected but no one noticed and his arm eventually had to be amputated due to the infection.  "Is the pain physical or emotional?" I asked. 

“Emotional,” he replied.

I saw his pain in that moment.  He is living in two worlds, maybe more.  For a moment, he visited me in my reality, but there is pain there so he quickly wandered back into the land of “Mother Nature”, “Father Time” and “alternate universes.” 

This is a dramatic example—and, speaking from the front lines, mental illness is real—but we all get to choose our reality.  Life happens in the mind.  Ultimately, our experiences hold the meaning that we assign to them.  So be intentional with your narrative, friends.  You get to decide if it is a tragedy or the hero’s journey.  You choose the delusion and make it your reality…choose wisely.