There is no experience into which human beings freely enter for which they are so ill prepared. A "what the fuckola am I doing here?" moment...after moment...after moment.
I am, of course, talking about being born...I mean, Parenting. I'm talking about Parenting. Or being born.
How do you know when you're doing it right?
It never feels right. And as soon as you do accidently feel right...when you suddenly develop a warm feeling in your chest, outside Aunt Annie's Pretzels watching your brood eat warm buttery bread and icy sugary drink, when you look in their radiant faces and feel something that might just be affection, and then you hear your own voice in your head saying, in slow motion, like that drawn out voice Will Ferrel does on animal sedative,
"Yoooouuuuu aaaaarrrrre aaaa goooood paaaaaarrreeeeent."
---you gasp.
You gasp upon the realization. The realization that you have just hit The High.
And what follows immediately after The High is The Low.
Lows last longer than Highs.
It's quantam ecophysinomics.
We don't know what we're doing. Any of us, at any time. Sometimes I am quite certain I am being a bad mother AND a good mother, at the exact same time.
Interesting.
Interesting days.
I really could never have imagined how parenting would feel in my soul. How self-doubt could be a constant companion.
I mean if someone would just SHOW me how to do it, I would do it. No problem. I swear. I can friggin copy that. I just can't always create it.
I can't create bliss and harmony. I mean, I know I wasn't promised bliss and harmony but why do I seem hard-wired to crave it? To think that things could be better, to want ease and comfort.
Days should not feel this long. So hard-traveled.
Moms, all moms, are ridden hard and put away wet.
Has it been this hard for all moms/parents? Hi Dads!
Has it always been this bone-chilling, soul-sucking endeavor?
We have it so much "easier" than parents a century ago so why doesn't it feel that way? Perhaps our burden now is that we have lives of convenience. We are really pleased when things are easy and efficient. That's "good design."
Children are not convenient. At all. They are anti-convenient.
And that's hard to tolerate. And all the repetition. Jesus, I just fed you how could youbehungryagaingoddamnit?
Is it because our little families have become too small? We are separated from the herd and now we're separated from our spouses. It feels thinnish family-wise. It feels thinnish fight-wise too so there's that. But I really walk around feeling like a missing half. I adore my independence and alone time, but it is not worth not having the other half. And I'm talking about the other half of my dreams. Not those other other-halfs.
My friend Todd and I were sitting at the park today and I was feeling very much my Irish. Angry, tense, peeved, emotional, EDGY. It was about 11am and the park was hopping. It was still chilly and morning foggy. In the middle of all the green grass and well-maintained play structures and clean, suburban sand, a golf cart food truck thingy rolls up right behind our bench selling chips, soda and uber-artificially-flavored ice creams.
Seriously. Fucking rolled up directly behind us. Not in the parking lot or on a path. He was riding on the grass and stopped behind us.
Children's ears heard the call. A father passing us at just that moment took his son's hand and simply said, "Forget about it, Miles". Within minutes, our children were tearing across the sand and we said, "Forget about it, Miles." My friend's son took off listening obediently to his father but my son threw fit #495802 of the day. Crying. Whining. Other children started in too. The once jovial park turned quickly into a chest-beating, hyperventilating park. A bunch of us told the truck driver to take a hike. A nearby father with his own writhing son said, with what I thought was an air of expectant agreement, "Don't you think it's a little early?" The driver just glared.
Soon, he sold a giant ice cream sandwich to an old grandma who handed it to a newborn. Having caught his prey he moved on.
Have we lost our souls?
We permit trucks to drive trashy foods around playgrounds and then we waste our hard-earned tax dollars on First Five Eat Healthy billboards.
We don't want to go without. And consequently neither do our children.
Sacrifice feels intolerable. We want so much more. We want it all.
But we burn out, have to learn to say no. Get spread thin and are no good to anyone. Like Katy Perry said, A house of cards...
What is this ego that yearns to stay out in front? To be seen, appreciated, to be MORE? Why don't I just accept my work, my load, my position? I'm the snack-fetcher, fight-ender, car-driver, dream-procrastinator.
Maybe in the past, way past, I'm talking past/past, maybe we were just happy the kids got out alive. (I am still in gratitude that I manage to keep mine alive.) Things were just simpler. Expectations were lower. Like in this video.
Tomorrow is another day (off of school). And laughter is a prerequisite.
It Is What It Is
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Abortion Blog - a lifetime in the conceiving
"South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R) signed a law Tuesday requiring women to wait three days after meeting with a doctor to have an abortion, the longest waiting period in the nation," The Associated Press reports.
"I think everyone agrees with the goal of reducing abortion by encouraging consideration of other alternatives," the Republican governor said in the statement. "I hope that women who are considering an abortion will use this three-day period to make good choices."
I don't believe elected officials are put in office to tell me to "make good choices." How about I tell them what a good choice is for me and they, representing ME, go to bat for my choice. And my choice is for legal and open health care for all women, including the right to an abortion.
In regards to the waiting period: an unplanned pregnancy, an unwanted pregnancy is a CRISIS. You do not send a woman home to worry and stress and be unable to work and live her life because YOU hope a waiting period will make her change her mind. If her mind is made up (and women are quite capable of making rational decisions for themselves), she should be able to get one as soon as a doctor says she can. This is between a doctor and a woman. Every woman, like every man, has the right to make any and all decisions about their own bodies, and that bars any possible exception known to us now and in the future.
We, as women, have all the freedoms a man has and some of our own. Because just having the same freedoms a man has is not good enough.
There are freedoms that are inalienably a woman's. These freedoms include the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Our bodies are not your bodies. Our female bodies do different things. There are different consequences. A man is not the first sex. A man is not the main sex. A man is not the default sex. Women did not spring from men. There are two sexes: female and male. There's no species without both of them. And they work different. They come with different responsibilities. They come with different outcomes. They're very fucking different.
Women learn early about the responsibilities that sit on their shoulders. To bleed is to be able to become pregnant. (And to bleed is to not be pregnant -- all-girl sigh of relief.)
Birth control is our domain. If I don't want to get pregnant, I'd better get some. If you are lucky, you learn early it's too important to leave in someone else's hands. And if I do get pregnant, that's my domain too. The whole thing. I mean, that's what women are made for. The egg is in us. We carry children in our uterus, they eat our food, share our blood. Our breasts feed them. The ultimate responsibility is ours. All ours.
To those who would think to limit my rights, to doubt my ability to make rational decisions, to know my own mind, to not understand the awesomeness of the impact of my decisions...think again. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS LIKE A WOMAN DOES. When you get pregnant, when you have this incredible experience, you understand in a way that surpasses understanding, you IMBIBE that you as a woman hold life and death in your hands. Or in your uterus.
This being that you have never met is so bonded to you, you are so in love with it, its importance more severe than you can imagine that you compulsively count movements, you dream horrible nightmares where your unborn child is in mortal danger, your unconscious trying to face even the faintest part of your comprehension that this being you love more than life itself COULD be harmed and even die.
This is a knowledge that lives in every woman. Maybe in the egg, maybe it's planted like a seed, maybe it's passed down, from the first moment someone sits a baby on your lap, you understand. You know the pulsing heart of what it means to be a woman, to be a potential mother.
Once you become a mother, you have to face this life and death reality. You stare down the possibility that you could walk into that doctor or midwife office and not hear the heartbeat. What would you do? What does that kind of devastation feel like? How would I even LIVE through that, you ask yourself.
But women do live through it.
All the time.
Women have miscarriages. Lots. Women lose babies at birth. Their babies have birth defects. Sometimes their babies die shortly after birth. Women lose children at every age. Women lose children to adoption. Women lose children to abortion. Women lose children to war and catastrophe. Women understand. This is every woman's story. They know how to face it. To love is to lose.
We live and die with our children. Their cells, buried deep within the uterine wall, are set free and float inside us for eternity.
What I'm saying is women know the GRAVITY of the situation they are in from the moment they can pro-create. And if they don't, they should. It is the language we speak. It is the fabric of our duty and role as women.
A story about the impact of the politicalization of abortion on a woman's health:
My mom told me this story. She's been a GYN nurse for over 40 years. Suffice to say, when it comes to birth, she's seen it all. At the time of this story she was the high-risk birth manager for a large doctor's office. This story is slightly graphic so hang in there.
A woman, in her second trimester, was sent to my mom. It was found through an ultrasound that the woman's baby had massive birth defects. The worst my mom and the docs had ever seen. The umbilical cord had grown tightly wrapped around the baby's body and the baby's limbs were mis-formed and sort of shredded, and even the baby's torso was twisted. That the heart was beating was surprising but clearly the child would not survive for long. The docs wanted to perform a D&C immediately. The woman and her husband were told and were obviously destroyed but of course agreed. Here's the catch: the woman's insurance company would not allow the D&C because the patient's life was not (yet) at risk and so the "abortion" would not be covered. This mom had to go home and try to live her life knowing her child would soon be dead and that she would be carrying it. Also she had to wait for her own health to deteriorate before she could get a medical procedure that would prevent her from getting sick in the first place.
The thing is this woman could get very sick, very fast and DIE. And an insurance company's political take on abortion was putting her life at risk unnecessarily. And actually, interestingly, it was the teacher's union behind her insurance company who had requested this policy.
This woman had to do this. Go home and wait to get sick. Which is what she did and thank God, she survived.
The point is THIS is women's healthcare. This is women's healthcare while abortion is legal! Can you imagine what it would be like if abortion were illegal? Or are we already there?
Changing gears.
Most of us I think are born pro-life.
I should say right out that I'm adopted and therefore, personally, I'm really glad that my birth mother actually HAD me. That's convenient for me. And she could have not, but she did. And so for that, I say thank you Mom and I'm all for not killing unwanted kids. Go unwanted kids, go!
When I was younger, in my twenties, I was roaringly pro-life. I would argue anyone you sat in front of me. Women, especially, I would take on with my "it's murder" approach. I was callous and I apologize now for the things I said then.
I was also raised Catholic and still am. I was certainly fed a pro-life argument which I don't think is un-sound. Abortion ends life. But no one knows when conception starts. Come on. No one. But I'm also not going to argue with the fact that someone who had the possibility of being alive will now not have that possibilty.
I think honesty is the best abortion policy. You don't need to agree with me. The concepts, our opinions don't really matter. We can argue all night and let's do it, but the law bats last. We humans have rights. Period. That's the law. But back to the argument for a moment and me as a young attractive Catholic girl...
So I was pretty damn comfortable with how I felt about not supporting abortion. (I was then and always will be all for birth control btw.) Then at 26, a friend asked me to take her to an abortion clinic. She was pregnant and wanted to end it and would I take her. She was crying, shaking, begging, pleading. I was totally thrown. My first instinct, believe it or not, was to say no. Of course not. I couldn't. Ever. Go. To. An abortion clinic.
But this was my friend. She needed me. My friend who was right in front of me. My friend who was in real trouble. My friend who had been there for me in a hundred ways.
So I took her. I made her listen to my really convincing, finely tuned abortion argument first (what an asshole) but she said she still wanted to, so alright.
We went. It was in a small office building. You wouldn't have really noticed it. The lobby was nice, like a doctor's office waiting room. My friend filled out forms. I sat with her. She cried, her head hard and bony on my shoulder. I prayed. They called her name and I walked her to the door. They wouldn't let me go in with her. I can still see her face as she walked away from me. She was totally thoroughly terrified. And utterly alone.
I sat in the lobby unable to not think about what was happening in there. There were two other couples who held hands and whispered to each other. And a woman alone. Crying.
I went up to her. She did not speak much English. She mostly cried quietly, nodding, bobbing her head up and down. She was thin with dark hair and bags under her eyes. She said she had four children. Her husband didn't want anymore. He had dropped her off and was going to pick her up. They didn't have anyone to watch the kids. She wanted to keep the baby. When they called her name, I walked her to the door. She cried the entire way and did not turn around towards me as she walked down the hallway as I hoped she would.
I sat in the waiting room and weeped.
A while later, a nurse told me my friend was ready. My friend leaned on me as we walked to the car. She was in terrible pain. I got her to my house as quickly as possible. I walked her inside. Put her in my bed. I made her soup but she wouldn't eat. She was in agony. She bled a lot. She cried straight for 48 hours.
And my mind was changed forever.
This is life. This is blood and snot and horrible choices and reality and women know this.
We handle this.
There are a lot of great men out there but there are a lot of men who walk away. Lots of men leave checks on kitchen tables before they disappear forever. A lot of men don't see their kids. A lot of men hope the girl they knocked up will say that magic word to them: abortion.
I am not in any way interested in railing on your sex. I love your sex and I mean that. But women handle this shit every damn day under incredibly trying circumstances.
It means something to us. It is etched in the reality of our bodies and what they do. Women do not need rose-colored glasses. We've seen our moms go through it. We've seen our sisters go through it. We've seen our girlfriends go through it.
My friend was a woman standing there in front of me and needing me and needing to take care of a situation. My obligation was to her.
I would like to dispel some myths here so I'm going to tell you this.
This was my friend's third abortion.
My friend was not a slut. She was not someone who "used abortion as birth control." She was a woman who got pregnant very, very easily (and had a lot of bad luck). When I took her for the abortion, she already had a child and would later marry and have two more children. Women are different. Some women can have unprotected sex hundreds of times and not get pregnant. Some women seem to get pregnant every time. There is no correlation between the number of abortions a woman gets and her sexual promiscuity.
I will make my own confession now.
I have had unprotected sex. I have had lots of unprotected sex. I am very, very, very lucky. One, I'm clean. Two, I've never had an unplanned pregnancy. I'm two for two pregnancy/child-wise. So...I've never had an abortion. That is not because I was super careful. That is because I was lucky. That's not because I'm a good person. It's because I was lucky.
Had I gotten pregnant, I don't know what I would have done. And I think that's the only truly honest answer any of us can give.
My dear politicians: I will not ask you to give me my rights. I already have my rights. I know my rights. You do not tell me what they are. I tell YOU. You will NOT deny me or my sisters the right to a medical procedure. I will consult with my doctor and midwife about my medical choices, not with my political representation.
My right as a woman is to make my own choices about my pregnancies.
If you don't believe in abortion, don't get one. Make your own informed choice. You are the one who has to live with the consequences.
But I will be here to both make you soup and babysit.
I'm behind you.
We watch with joy and pride when other country's citizenship fight to win their basic human rights and all the while ours are being stripped away. Pay attention.
Talk about it ladies. It's the only way. I'm all kinds of behind ya.
As always, thanks for reading.
"I think everyone agrees with the goal of reducing abortion by encouraging consideration of other alternatives," the Republican governor said in the statement. "I hope that women who are considering an abortion will use this three-day period to make good choices."
I don't believe elected officials are put in office to tell me to "make good choices." How about I tell them what a good choice is for me and they, representing ME, go to bat for my choice. And my choice is for legal and open health care for all women, including the right to an abortion.
In regards to the waiting period: an unplanned pregnancy, an unwanted pregnancy is a CRISIS. You do not send a woman home to worry and stress and be unable to work and live her life because YOU hope a waiting period will make her change her mind. If her mind is made up (and women are quite capable of making rational decisions for themselves), she should be able to get one as soon as a doctor says she can. This is between a doctor and a woman. Every woman, like every man, has the right to make any and all decisions about their own bodies, and that bars any possible exception known to us now and in the future.
We, as women, have all the freedoms a man has and some of our own. Because just having the same freedoms a man has is not good enough.
There are freedoms that are inalienably a woman's. These freedoms include the right to terminate a pregnancy.
Our bodies are not your bodies. Our female bodies do different things. There are different consequences. A man is not the first sex. A man is not the main sex. A man is not the default sex. Women did not spring from men. There are two sexes: female and male. There's no species without both of them. And they work different. They come with different responsibilities. They come with different outcomes. They're very fucking different.
Women learn early about the responsibilities that sit on their shoulders. To bleed is to be able to become pregnant. (And to bleed is to not be pregnant -- all-girl sigh of relief.)
Birth control is our domain. If I don't want to get pregnant, I'd better get some. If you are lucky, you learn early it's too important to leave in someone else's hands. And if I do get pregnant, that's my domain too. The whole thing. I mean, that's what women are made for. The egg is in us. We carry children in our uterus, they eat our food, share our blood. Our breasts feed them. The ultimate responsibility is ours. All ours.
To those who would think to limit my rights, to doubt my ability to make rational decisions, to know my own mind, to not understand the awesomeness of the impact of my decisions...think again. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS LIKE A WOMAN DOES. When you get pregnant, when you have this incredible experience, you understand in a way that surpasses understanding, you IMBIBE that you as a woman hold life and death in your hands. Or in your uterus.
This being that you have never met is so bonded to you, you are so in love with it, its importance more severe than you can imagine that you compulsively count movements, you dream horrible nightmares where your unborn child is in mortal danger, your unconscious trying to face even the faintest part of your comprehension that this being you love more than life itself COULD be harmed and even die.
This is a knowledge that lives in every woman. Maybe in the egg, maybe it's planted like a seed, maybe it's passed down, from the first moment someone sits a baby on your lap, you understand. You know the pulsing heart of what it means to be a woman, to be a potential mother.
Once you become a mother, you have to face this life and death reality. You stare down the possibility that you could walk into that doctor or midwife office and not hear the heartbeat. What would you do? What does that kind of devastation feel like? How would I even LIVE through that, you ask yourself.
But women do live through it.
All the time.
Women have miscarriages. Lots. Women lose babies at birth. Their babies have birth defects. Sometimes their babies die shortly after birth. Women lose children at every age. Women lose children to adoption. Women lose children to abortion. Women lose children to war and catastrophe. Women understand. This is every woman's story. They know how to face it. To love is to lose.
We live and die with our children. Their cells, buried deep within the uterine wall, are set free and float inside us for eternity.
What I'm saying is women know the GRAVITY of the situation they are in from the moment they can pro-create. And if they don't, they should. It is the language we speak. It is the fabric of our duty and role as women.
A story about the impact of the politicalization of abortion on a woman's health:
My mom told me this story. She's been a GYN nurse for over 40 years. Suffice to say, when it comes to birth, she's seen it all. At the time of this story she was the high-risk birth manager for a large doctor's office. This story is slightly graphic so hang in there.
A woman, in her second trimester, was sent to my mom. It was found through an ultrasound that the woman's baby had massive birth defects. The worst my mom and the docs had ever seen. The umbilical cord had grown tightly wrapped around the baby's body and the baby's limbs were mis-formed and sort of shredded, and even the baby's torso was twisted. That the heart was beating was surprising but clearly the child would not survive for long. The docs wanted to perform a D&C immediately. The woman and her husband were told and were obviously destroyed but of course agreed. Here's the catch: the woman's insurance company would not allow the D&C because the patient's life was not (yet) at risk and so the "abortion" would not be covered. This mom had to go home and try to live her life knowing her child would soon be dead and that she would be carrying it. Also she had to wait for her own health to deteriorate before she could get a medical procedure that would prevent her from getting sick in the first place.
The thing is this woman could get very sick, very fast and DIE. And an insurance company's political take on abortion was putting her life at risk unnecessarily. And actually, interestingly, it was the teacher's union behind her insurance company who had requested this policy.
This woman had to do this. Go home and wait to get sick. Which is what she did and thank God, she survived.
The point is THIS is women's healthcare. This is women's healthcare while abortion is legal! Can you imagine what it would be like if abortion were illegal? Or are we already there?
Changing gears.
Most of us I think are born pro-life.
I should say right out that I'm adopted and therefore, personally, I'm really glad that my birth mother actually HAD me. That's convenient for me. And she could have not, but she did. And so for that, I say thank you Mom and I'm all for not killing unwanted kids. Go unwanted kids, go!
When I was younger, in my twenties, I was roaringly pro-life. I would argue anyone you sat in front of me. Women, especially, I would take on with my "it's murder" approach. I was callous and I apologize now for the things I said then.
I was also raised Catholic and still am. I was certainly fed a pro-life argument which I don't think is un-sound. Abortion ends life. But no one knows when conception starts. Come on. No one. But I'm also not going to argue with the fact that someone who had the possibility of being alive will now not have that possibilty.
I think honesty is the best abortion policy. You don't need to agree with me. The concepts, our opinions don't really matter. We can argue all night and let's do it, but the law bats last. We humans have rights. Period. That's the law. But back to the argument for a moment and me as a young attractive Catholic girl...
So I was pretty damn comfortable with how I felt about not supporting abortion. (I was then and always will be all for birth control btw.) Then at 26, a friend asked me to take her to an abortion clinic. She was pregnant and wanted to end it and would I take her. She was crying, shaking, begging, pleading. I was totally thrown. My first instinct, believe it or not, was to say no. Of course not. I couldn't. Ever. Go. To. An abortion clinic.
But this was my friend. She needed me. My friend who was right in front of me. My friend who was in real trouble. My friend who had been there for me in a hundred ways.
So I took her. I made her listen to my really convincing, finely tuned abortion argument first (what an asshole) but she said she still wanted to, so alright.
We went. It was in a small office building. You wouldn't have really noticed it. The lobby was nice, like a doctor's office waiting room. My friend filled out forms. I sat with her. She cried, her head hard and bony on my shoulder. I prayed. They called her name and I walked her to the door. They wouldn't let me go in with her. I can still see her face as she walked away from me. She was totally thoroughly terrified. And utterly alone.
I sat in the lobby unable to not think about what was happening in there. There were two other couples who held hands and whispered to each other. And a woman alone. Crying.
I went up to her. She did not speak much English. She mostly cried quietly, nodding, bobbing her head up and down. She was thin with dark hair and bags under her eyes. She said she had four children. Her husband didn't want anymore. He had dropped her off and was going to pick her up. They didn't have anyone to watch the kids. She wanted to keep the baby. When they called her name, I walked her to the door. She cried the entire way and did not turn around towards me as she walked down the hallway as I hoped she would.
I sat in the waiting room and weeped.
A while later, a nurse told me my friend was ready. My friend leaned on me as we walked to the car. She was in terrible pain. I got her to my house as quickly as possible. I walked her inside. Put her in my bed. I made her soup but she wouldn't eat. She was in agony. She bled a lot. She cried straight for 48 hours.
And my mind was changed forever.
This is life. This is blood and snot and horrible choices and reality and women know this.
We handle this.
There are a lot of great men out there but there are a lot of men who walk away. Lots of men leave checks on kitchen tables before they disappear forever. A lot of men don't see their kids. A lot of men hope the girl they knocked up will say that magic word to them: abortion.
I am not in any way interested in railing on your sex. I love your sex and I mean that. But women handle this shit every damn day under incredibly trying circumstances.
It means something to us. It is etched in the reality of our bodies and what they do. Women do not need rose-colored glasses. We've seen our moms go through it. We've seen our sisters go through it. We've seen our girlfriends go through it.
My friend was a woman standing there in front of me and needing me and needing to take care of a situation. My obligation was to her.
I would like to dispel some myths here so I'm going to tell you this.
This was my friend's third abortion.
My friend was not a slut. She was not someone who "used abortion as birth control." She was a woman who got pregnant very, very easily (and had a lot of bad luck). When I took her for the abortion, she already had a child and would later marry and have two more children. Women are different. Some women can have unprotected sex hundreds of times and not get pregnant. Some women seem to get pregnant every time. There is no correlation between the number of abortions a woman gets and her sexual promiscuity.
I will make my own confession now.
I have had unprotected sex. I have had lots of unprotected sex. I am very, very, very lucky. One, I'm clean. Two, I've never had an unplanned pregnancy. I'm two for two pregnancy/child-wise. So...I've never had an abortion. That is not because I was super careful. That is because I was lucky. That's not because I'm a good person. It's because I was lucky.
Had I gotten pregnant, I don't know what I would have done. And I think that's the only truly honest answer any of us can give.
My dear politicians: I will not ask you to give me my rights. I already have my rights. I know my rights. You do not tell me what they are. I tell YOU. You will NOT deny me or my sisters the right to a medical procedure. I will consult with my doctor and midwife about my medical choices, not with my political representation.
My right as a woman is to make my own choices about my pregnancies.
If you don't believe in abortion, don't get one. Make your own informed choice. You are the one who has to live with the consequences.
But I will be here to both make you soup and babysit.
I'm behind you.
We watch with joy and pride when other country's citizenship fight to win their basic human rights and all the while ours are being stripped away. Pay attention.
Talk about it ladies. It's the only way. I'm all kinds of behind ya.
As always, thanks for reading.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Do You Get Me Now?
I'm not done with my adoption. It is not done with me.
I feel like the Grinch baby.
I know that sounds severe but seeing that stupid Ron Howard "Grinch" movie - when that wailing, hideous baby is thrown off the bridge - it punctured my heart. All those stories and fables when the baby is discarded cause it's ugly and freakish is the starkest, realest feeling I can communicate to you through mass media about how my adoption/abandonment feels.
It's a fairly common story. A baby abandoned cause it's ugly and freakish. Think Benjamin Button. Girls in China.
This is raw. This is not good writing. but this is how i feel. Dressing it up feels disingenuous.
She gave up. That's the thing. I have nothing but sympathy for all moms and dads who make tough decisions. I know how life works. I know it's not simple.
But the first person to see me, the first person to know me, the one the good Lord entrusted me to, she decided to take a pass.
Take a pass on knowing me. Take a pass on my being worth the effort. Take a pass on spending her life with me. Even though she bore me, life would be better without me.
Let's just say it was a lot of judgment right from the get go.
Look at me mother and you'll think:
that's too much work
that's too hard
that's too tough a challenge.
Look at my baby face and you'll think:
she's ugly
she's damaged
she's deformed
she's unnatural
she's NOT WHAT WAS INTENDED.
Insert my entire life post-adoption which I'm labeling simply STRUGGLE TO BE HERE.
No one should enter this world without a guide.
Imagining being born to the mother who rejected me feels like entering the world through something rough and cold rather than warm and viscous. Birthing my own babies, and feeling the immensely gratifying experience of visceral love as well as the honor and privilege of being responsible for their very lives, has been healing.
But I now know how it should feel, and how it could NOT have felt to her for her to give me up. And again I know parents who give their children up for adoption can and most often do love them. Of course. I just get a distinct feeling that that was not the case for me.
This is my pain. Quite unique. Cloutish freak.
Your pain is not so far from mine.
We all face some kind of rejection. We all must build our own altars to love. There is no birth without strain. There is no growth without pain.
Mine has left me with this complete fear of being all alone and the gravelly knowledge that that is exactly what I am.
The demons circle like a campfire ghosts. I swing my stick into the darkness and hope to make contact. Knock a big one down. Drag it into the light.
I know my pain is different but it's the same.
You wanna be gotten.
You wanna be loved.
You wanna have a place to truly call home.
you wanna feel safe.
YOU
WANNA
SAY
FUCK
THE
FEAR.
I wasn't an ugly baby. I wasn't a disabled baby. Still something in me resonated: I was a bad fit.
How do you re-write a story for someone who cannot read? How do you talk to someone who is pre-verbal? How do you repair such a tiny heart?
But they do get repaired don't they? My lovely friends MS and DS are having their baby's heart operated on next month. They grow strong oxen children and their darling son will be fine...better even.
Hearts, even tiny ones, heal.
My injuries are so tiny but so early that they pierce everything. They're the root tap that leads to the fine veins that pumps blood into every ventricle, every artery. Even those that lead to something good.
I know it's dramatic. But if feels dramatic. It feels like an abandoned basket on a lonely, windswept farmhouse step. It feels like an abandoned basket on a dark and wet cement townhouse stair. It feels like being tossed into a cold, rushing river.
But...
It feels like a reedy Nile River marsh too. Like baby Moses...maybe my mother took care of me for those six months under extreme conditions, she hid me from harm and then gently set that basket where she knew the Pharaoh princess would find it.
maybe I was saved for better things...
I feel like the Grinch baby.
I know that sounds severe but seeing that stupid Ron Howard "Grinch" movie - when that wailing, hideous baby is thrown off the bridge - it punctured my heart. All those stories and fables when the baby is discarded cause it's ugly and freakish is the starkest, realest feeling I can communicate to you through mass media about how my adoption/abandonment feels.
It's a fairly common story. A baby abandoned cause it's ugly and freakish. Think Benjamin Button. Girls in China.
This is raw. This is not good writing. but this is how i feel. Dressing it up feels disingenuous.
She gave up. That's the thing. I have nothing but sympathy for all moms and dads who make tough decisions. I know how life works. I know it's not simple.
But the first person to see me, the first person to know me, the one the good Lord entrusted me to, she decided to take a pass.
Take a pass on knowing me. Take a pass on my being worth the effort. Take a pass on spending her life with me. Even though she bore me, life would be better without me.
Let's just say it was a lot of judgment right from the get go.
Look at me mother and you'll think:
that's too much work
that's too hard
that's too tough a challenge.
Look at my baby face and you'll think:
she's ugly
she's damaged
she's deformed
she's unnatural
she's NOT WHAT WAS INTENDED.
Insert my entire life post-adoption which I'm labeling simply STRUGGLE TO BE HERE.
No one should enter this world without a guide.
Imagining being born to the mother who rejected me feels like entering the world through something rough and cold rather than warm and viscous. Birthing my own babies, and feeling the immensely gratifying experience of visceral love as well as the honor and privilege of being responsible for their very lives, has been healing.
But I now know how it should feel, and how it could NOT have felt to her for her to give me up. And again I know parents who give their children up for adoption can and most often do love them. Of course. I just get a distinct feeling that that was not the case for me.
This is my pain. Quite unique. Cloutish freak.
Your pain is not so far from mine.
We all face some kind of rejection. We all must build our own altars to love. There is no birth without strain. There is no growth without pain.
Mine has left me with this complete fear of being all alone and the gravelly knowledge that that is exactly what I am.
The demons circle like a campfire ghosts. I swing my stick into the darkness and hope to make contact. Knock a big one down. Drag it into the light.
I know my pain is different but it's the same.
You wanna be gotten.
You wanna be loved.
You wanna have a place to truly call home.
you wanna feel safe.
YOU
WANNA
SAY
FUCK
THE
FEAR.
I wasn't an ugly baby. I wasn't a disabled baby. Still something in me resonated: I was a bad fit.
How do you re-write a story for someone who cannot read? How do you talk to someone who is pre-verbal? How do you repair such a tiny heart?
But they do get repaired don't they? My lovely friends MS and DS are having their baby's heart operated on next month. They grow strong oxen children and their darling son will be fine...better even.
Hearts, even tiny ones, heal.
My injuries are so tiny but so early that they pierce everything. They're the root tap that leads to the fine veins that pumps blood into every ventricle, every artery. Even those that lead to something good.
I know it's dramatic. But if feels dramatic. It feels like an abandoned basket on a lonely, windswept farmhouse step. It feels like an abandoned basket on a dark and wet cement townhouse stair. It feels like being tossed into a cold, rushing river.
But...
It feels like a reedy Nile River marsh too. Like baby Moses...maybe my mother took care of me for those six months under extreme conditions, she hid me from harm and then gently set that basket where she knew the Pharaoh princess would find it.
maybe I was saved for better things...
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Work in Progress
When I was six years old and living in Georgia, a 17 year old neighbor boy forced me to give him a blow job. For years he had played with my brother and I, slowly grooming me, teaching me dirty words, how to play spin the bottle. He was attractive and older and his attention made me feel seen, even loved.
His family had sold their house and at this point it sat empty across from ours. Clearly out of time, Jeff intercepted me during a game of freeze tag. While my four year old brother sat outside on the porch steps, Jeff carried me in his arms, showing me around the freshly-painted, cavernous house. I believe he was pretending with me that we had just been married and he was carrying me over the threshold. I remember distinctly feeling like a princess.
Last, he carried me into the empty master bedroom and it happened there, on the floor, my knees scraped raw on the wall-to-wall.
I exited the house alone. I grabbed my brother off the porch, walked across the lawn, into the street and executed a masterful job of placing that gruesome memory somewhere far away.
I can see my six year old back ramrod straight under my t-shirt and I can feel my long ponytail hot on my neck as I walked my brother and I home. I can see my hand on his shoulder in a rare moment of affection and probably protection. I steadied myself then as I do now on that really normal image of brother and sister...
My mind must have been flying in untold directions, busted wide open. In memory, my brain feels like a shuffling deck of cards and I hear the sound of static like a swarm of summer mosquitoes.
The hot noon sun looked like it had never looked before. It felt like it had never felt before. The street we crossed was made of dirt and gravel...had I ever seen it before? I mean really looked at it? Had I ever seen the muddy creek our driveway straddled? What about that tree in the front yard, the cool garage, our dog? They were all new. Everything was new.
And while I recalibrated, I completed the filing.
By the time I had crossed that street, the memory was put away and I never told a soul until my college roommate confided her rape to me and I felt safe to reveal my story to her.
For over a decade, the incident had all but been erased from my memory, yet it had managed to vein through almost all my relationships and would continue to do so. I let friends and lovers choose me rather than choosing them. I had trouble seeing my way out of bad relationships. I was there to pleasure, not to be pleasured. I convinced myself that I could not prevent or stop painful events from happening, my job was simply to deal with them well.
And I was good at it.
That practice of dealing, filing, muscling through, of being pleasurable and pliant dogged me my entire life. Consequently, under-reacting became my game.
I remember the high school senior who trapped a freshman me in a stair well and asked, if I knew how to give a blow job. My thought bubble: since I was six years old you scum bag. My reaction: to let him kiss me.
At 16, I woke up one summer night from a drunken stupor (after downing what I hoped would be a suicidal bottle of Everclear) to find a person I'd just met earlier that night having sex with me. That sex-waking happened about four or five times that night and into the morning and with more than one person on top of me. When I found my way out of that nightmare and the 125 miles back to my parents' house, I didn't tell anyone. I made dinner for my parents and brother that night and put myself to bed. I handled the rape and the alcohol poisoning by writing Cure-inspired poetry into my childhood rainbow-adorned journal. For years and years this was a hilarious story I would confide to my friends, complete with a soundtrack: "Why Don't We Do It In the Road" (one of the places I sex-waked) earning myself the super-funny nickname: Gravelback.
I learned to handle these situations and many others like them with silence, strength, courage and humor and I wore that ability like a badge of honor.
But it was no honor.
Reacting with a numbed out perspective that this is what life is like no longer suits me. Under-reacting will not be my game. What served my wounded six-year old self does not serve me now.
I don't need to put myself in challenging situations just to prove how resilient I am or how much I can love. I do not need to prove my strength and courage to anyone.
And realizing that slowly, step-by-step, re-writing each jokey-story with honesty - letting each brutal truth have its day in the sun has been the journey.
There may be situations in this world I can't handle. I may fail. I may fall down. I may come with baggage. I may be irreparably damaged. I've done things I don't have answers for. But at least it's the truth. And for it I can be accountable.
But I retire from the pleasing, the bending, the filing, the sacrifice, the compromise that comes from my need to be in the company of what looks like love and that in turn forsakes my love for me.
I will try anyway.
I do love you crazy people, and this crazy planet, and I'm grateful for the God that keeps me tethered to it all. (Glad the Everclear didn't do it that night too.)
His family had sold their house and at this point it sat empty across from ours. Clearly out of time, Jeff intercepted me during a game of freeze tag. While my four year old brother sat outside on the porch steps, Jeff carried me in his arms, showing me around the freshly-painted, cavernous house. I believe he was pretending with me that we had just been married and he was carrying me over the threshold. I remember distinctly feeling like a princess.
Last, he carried me into the empty master bedroom and it happened there, on the floor, my knees scraped raw on the wall-to-wall.
I exited the house alone. I grabbed my brother off the porch, walked across the lawn, into the street and executed a masterful job of placing that gruesome memory somewhere far away.
I can see my six year old back ramrod straight under my t-shirt and I can feel my long ponytail hot on my neck as I walked my brother and I home. I can see my hand on his shoulder in a rare moment of affection and probably protection. I steadied myself then as I do now on that really normal image of brother and sister...
My mind must have been flying in untold directions, busted wide open. In memory, my brain feels like a shuffling deck of cards and I hear the sound of static like a swarm of summer mosquitoes.
The hot noon sun looked like it had never looked before. It felt like it had never felt before. The street we crossed was made of dirt and gravel...had I ever seen it before? I mean really looked at it? Had I ever seen the muddy creek our driveway straddled? What about that tree in the front yard, the cool garage, our dog? They were all new. Everything was new.
And while I recalibrated, I completed the filing.
By the time I had crossed that street, the memory was put away and I never told a soul until my college roommate confided her rape to me and I felt safe to reveal my story to her.
For over a decade, the incident had all but been erased from my memory, yet it had managed to vein through almost all my relationships and would continue to do so. I let friends and lovers choose me rather than choosing them. I had trouble seeing my way out of bad relationships. I was there to pleasure, not to be pleasured. I convinced myself that I could not prevent or stop painful events from happening, my job was simply to deal with them well.
And I was good at it.
That practice of dealing, filing, muscling through, of being pleasurable and pliant dogged me my entire life. Consequently, under-reacting became my game.
I remember the high school senior who trapped a freshman me in a stair well and asked, if I knew how to give a blow job. My thought bubble: since I was six years old you scum bag. My reaction: to let him kiss me.
At 16, I woke up one summer night from a drunken stupor (after downing what I hoped would be a suicidal bottle of Everclear) to find a person I'd just met earlier that night having sex with me. That sex-waking happened about four or five times that night and into the morning and with more than one person on top of me. When I found my way out of that nightmare and the 125 miles back to my parents' house, I didn't tell anyone. I made dinner for my parents and brother that night and put myself to bed. I handled the rape and the alcohol poisoning by writing Cure-inspired poetry into my childhood rainbow-adorned journal. For years and years this was a hilarious story I would confide to my friends, complete with a soundtrack: "Why Don't We Do It In the Road" (one of the places I sex-waked) earning myself the super-funny nickname: Gravelback.
I learned to handle these situations and many others like them with silence, strength, courage and humor and I wore that ability like a badge of honor.
But it was no honor.
Reacting with a numbed out perspective that this is what life is like no longer suits me. Under-reacting will not be my game. What served my wounded six-year old self does not serve me now.
I don't need to put myself in challenging situations just to prove how resilient I am or how much I can love. I do not need to prove my strength and courage to anyone.
And realizing that slowly, step-by-step, re-writing each jokey-story with honesty - letting each brutal truth have its day in the sun has been the journey.
There may be situations in this world I can't handle. I may fail. I may fall down. I may come with baggage. I may be irreparably damaged. I've done things I don't have answers for. But at least it's the truth. And for it I can be accountable.
But I retire from the pleasing, the bending, the filing, the sacrifice, the compromise that comes from my need to be in the company of what looks like love and that in turn forsakes my love for me.
I will try anyway.
I do love you crazy people, and this crazy planet, and I'm grateful for the God that keeps me tethered to it all. (Glad the Everclear didn't do it that night too.)
Monday, December 13, 2010
Pathetic
Life gets better and better. Over the long haul. I mean the looooooooong haul. But in between it sucks. It sucks between the neurons. It sucks like gunk between your toes. It's uphill. You're blind AND deaf. At best you see those 3 feet in front of you like you are walking through life with a flashlight.
Hey it's better than total darkness, right? But it's still just a flashlight. You will not be able to fight off a jaguar in the rainforest with a flashlight.
Not that you have the first idea of how to fight off a jaguar.
Not like you're even in the rainforest. But it sure as hell feels like it.
How do you start a relationship this way?
Openness and trust takes on a life-or-death kind of feeling. Or perhaps I'm simply neurotic as fuck.
Perhaps it's the new birth control.
My daughter said, in response to me dating someone new and thereby reinforcing my no longer being with her father, "You had your chance at love."
She simply picked up on me and this guy's togetherness on a field trip (so did her teacher) and confronted me. She's mad. She's sad.
It makes me wonder.
I can at least console her by saying, "I will not be getting married ever." And then I hear myself say to her, "and I already told him that."
What kind of fucking conversation is this to be having with your ten year old?
And did I tell him that?
And who is him?
Him that is running ramshod through my life. Who is he? What's he mean to me? Why does he so suddenly mean so much?
I had to tell the ex-dh of course. Cause the ten year old can't tell him. And she will. And that's cool. Telling him is infuriating of course. And then there's a call from the principal's office. Molly's melting down.
This thing that's happening; it is page one of a thousand page book but okay, let's spill the beans. Let's face the music. In the words of Good Morning America's Advice Guru, "Let's make room for love."
Tonight and last night and even today, I felt sick of not knowing.
I felt sick of people hurting.
I realized how really bad I am at playing games.
Especially the dirty ones my mind is fooling with.
I want to know. I want to be sure. I want Certainty to be my middle name.
Is it so far from Audacity?
I want to smoke in bed.
I want to trade myself in for a new me.
I wonder why I'm in my pajamas drinking wine out of a plastic cup.
I want to reach you. I want to invest. I want you to rush in. I want you to convince me. I want you to commit while I squirm away.
I want you to see my worth. I want you to ravage me.
It's all about me pretty much.
I want to give up when it gets hard. I want to pull off the scab and make you eat it. I feel like quitting already. What was I thinking??????????????
Sylvia Plath never used fourteen exclamation points in a row.
I feel like I'm risking so much. Are there returns? For real? Are there? I'm not seeing it. But I smell self-sabotage. It smells like burnt hair in here. Why can't I enjoy myself? Cause really, what about this ISN'T ENJOYABLE?
Fear. Complications. Revelations. Insecurity. Embarrassing reveals. Sudden intimacy. Stumbles, Escalation, Love, Rush, Wait, Wonder.
It sucks being alone but it's easier. You know you get used to lethargy. That's the definition of it. You think, life will just be like this now.
But I DID NOT want that life. Page one is a good place to start. In fact, we may have gotten to page two tonight.
"Oh dear, out here.
Everybody stumbles on fear.
Who cares if we're scared?
Everyone is on there own."
Brandi Carlile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDpZrLciCE&feature=autofb
Hey it's better than total darkness, right? But it's still just a flashlight. You will not be able to fight off a jaguar in the rainforest with a flashlight.
Not that you have the first idea of how to fight off a jaguar.
Not like you're even in the rainforest. But it sure as hell feels like it.
How do you start a relationship this way?
Openness and trust takes on a life-or-death kind of feeling. Or perhaps I'm simply neurotic as fuck.
Perhaps it's the new birth control.
My daughter said, in response to me dating someone new and thereby reinforcing my no longer being with her father, "You had your chance at love."
She simply picked up on me and this guy's togetherness on a field trip (so did her teacher) and confronted me. She's mad. She's sad.
It makes me wonder.
I can at least console her by saying, "I will not be getting married ever." And then I hear myself say to her, "and I already told him that."
What kind of fucking conversation is this to be having with your ten year old?
And did I tell him that?
And who is him?
Him that is running ramshod through my life. Who is he? What's he mean to me? Why does he so suddenly mean so much?
I had to tell the ex-dh of course. Cause the ten year old can't tell him. And she will. And that's cool. Telling him is infuriating of course. And then there's a call from the principal's office. Molly's melting down.
This thing that's happening; it is page one of a thousand page book but okay, let's spill the beans. Let's face the music. In the words of Good Morning America's Advice Guru, "Let's make room for love."
Tonight and last night and even today, I felt sick of not knowing.
I felt sick of people hurting.
I realized how really bad I am at playing games.
Especially the dirty ones my mind is fooling with.
I want to know. I want to be sure. I want Certainty to be my middle name.
Is it so far from Audacity?
I want to smoke in bed.
I want to trade myself in for a new me.
I wonder why I'm in my pajamas drinking wine out of a plastic cup.
I want to reach you. I want to invest. I want you to rush in. I want you to convince me. I want you to commit while I squirm away.
I want you to see my worth. I want you to ravage me.
It's all about me pretty much.
I want to give up when it gets hard. I want to pull off the scab and make you eat it. I feel like quitting already. What was I thinking??????????????
Sylvia Plath never used fourteen exclamation points in a row.
I feel like I'm risking so much. Are there returns? For real? Are there? I'm not seeing it. But I smell self-sabotage. It smells like burnt hair in here. Why can't I enjoy myself? Cause really, what about this ISN'T ENJOYABLE?
Fear. Complications. Revelations. Insecurity. Embarrassing reveals. Sudden intimacy. Stumbles, Escalation, Love, Rush, Wait, Wonder.
It sucks being alone but it's easier. You know you get used to lethargy. That's the definition of it. You think, life will just be like this now.
But I DID NOT want that life. Page one is a good place to start. In fact, we may have gotten to page two tonight.
"Oh dear, out here.
Everybody stumbles on fear.
Who cares if we're scared?
Everyone is on there own."
Brandi Carlile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDpZrLciCE&feature=autofb
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Family of Man
We are a family of man. A tumble-torn, bruised and damaged lot. Our original sin is held in the heart, in its fragility, its ability to break, its inability to heal. We are handicapped by this organ that just wants to love.
We walk grey streets of remorse and denial, our motley pasts zipped into our packs. We walk alone although we are surrounded by people, our family. A family of brittle hearts. We struggle to communicate our love and longing and loneliness but share easily our pain and anger and frustration. Frustration at our inability to shape our lives into what we want them to be. Frustration that things don't work out the way we want them to. Frustration that people aren't what we need them to be. Frustration that the road is steep and long.
There's so much we have to work for. To fight for. To struggle for.
To gamble for.
We must extend ourselves, risk our joy, play our shitty hand, toss in our glass hearts, our flimsy souls.
I keep looking for a guarantee of happiness like it's a star in the damn sky somewhere.
I keep thinking that pain will recede yet it returns like a tide.
I keep hoping that I will overcome my faults and insecurities. I will stop stepping in the same potholes, the ones I swore I patched up.
But there are so many cracks in the infrastructure.
Consequently, I lean heavy on the power of prayer.
I pray for eyes open and raw and seeing. I pray that the blinders of my upbringing, my race, my sex, my expectations fall away even if it makes it a Visine kind of day. Because I so much want to see YOU. To see your experience, your heart, your raw and open eyes looking in mine.
I pray for ease. I pray that I don't make things harder than they have to be. I pray that the incline abates. That I get out of God's way. That my pain-popping ego stays in its place and stops dancing all over my primal wounds. That I don't become hard-edged and pessimistic. That I don't court rain when I need a clear blue sky. That I have faith in the universe's merciful leaning toward equilibrium.
I pray for quick lessons. As much as I want this journey to be grief-free, it seems impossible. There are dues to be paid. You must ante in to play. But when the darkness does come, I pray I learn what I need to learn quickly. And I wish the same for you.
You know what they recommend when you're going through hell.
Keep going. It's the only way out.
Be brave. Have courage. Face your fears. Bet your heart. And keep going.
We walk grey streets of remorse and denial, our motley pasts zipped into our packs. We walk alone although we are surrounded by people, our family. A family of brittle hearts. We struggle to communicate our love and longing and loneliness but share easily our pain and anger and frustration. Frustration at our inability to shape our lives into what we want them to be. Frustration that things don't work out the way we want them to. Frustration that people aren't what we need them to be. Frustration that the road is steep and long.
There's so much we have to work for. To fight for. To struggle for.
To gamble for.
We must extend ourselves, risk our joy, play our shitty hand, toss in our glass hearts, our flimsy souls.
I keep looking for a guarantee of happiness like it's a star in the damn sky somewhere.
I keep thinking that pain will recede yet it returns like a tide.
I keep hoping that I will overcome my faults and insecurities. I will stop stepping in the same potholes, the ones I swore I patched up.
But there are so many cracks in the infrastructure.
Consequently, I lean heavy on the power of prayer.
I pray for eyes open and raw and seeing. I pray that the blinders of my upbringing, my race, my sex, my expectations fall away even if it makes it a Visine kind of day. Because I so much want to see YOU. To see your experience, your heart, your raw and open eyes looking in mine.
I pray for ease. I pray that I don't make things harder than they have to be. I pray that the incline abates. That I get out of God's way. That my pain-popping ego stays in its place and stops dancing all over my primal wounds. That I don't become hard-edged and pessimistic. That I don't court rain when I need a clear blue sky. That I have faith in the universe's merciful leaning toward equilibrium.
I pray for quick lessons. As much as I want this journey to be grief-free, it seems impossible. There are dues to be paid. You must ante in to play. But when the darkness does come, I pray I learn what I need to learn quickly. And I wish the same for you.
You know what they recommend when you're going through hell.
Keep going. It's the only way out.
Be brave. Have courage. Face your fears. Bet your heart. And keep going.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Best Revenge - Live Well
My parents moved a few times when I was in elementary school. Starting a new school was never easy and at one time they even moved me in the middle of the school year but the worst move by far was at the beginning of seventh grade. When I arrived at St. Anne's Catholic School I did not have a uniform and for some reason all the stores were sold out for the year so I had to wear "church clothes" which my parents saw fit to have my GRANDMOTHER make for me. Peter Pan collars. Split princess sleeves. Boxy heathered pastel vests with matching skirts hemmed mid-calf. I have no hesitation in telling you these clothes were hideous.
I was un-liked. And by seventh grade standards for very good reason.
But still, they didn't just not like me, they hated me. It was their job. Spitballs in my hair. Tripped in the hallway. Boys would gag when I walked by. The girls were the most brutal if only because they ignored me but because I wanted to be their friend so bad. I missed my friends at my old home.
Now at the school I had left, I was class president so this was a very long way to fall in the social strata. I just didn't get it.
The girls and boys hated me equally. They would cram into a single table at lunch so as to not have to sit at the same table as me. They would pass invitations to a party by my desk saying, "could you pass that over. there's not one for you." There was no shame in their dislike. I simply wasn't included. But like anything weak, it's an easy target. And after a while the games began. Boys would pretend to like me but when I started to trust them and made any move to reciprocate they would laugh in my face and shout, "As if!" (The game was called "As if.")
I had one friend, a lone wolf who had been bullied for years by these kids and she was kind enough to take me under her wing. But notes would circulate with she and I doing things to each other with the words "Lesbos" above it. We were even physically shoved around, especially on the stairs where we could potentially fall and hurt ourselves. Even teachers got in on the act. Hey, they want to be popular too. By eighth grade, I was pretty low and depressed. It's hard to admit but I had given up on myself. I remember wearing my hair in a ponytail and for days on end not bothering to take it out when I bathed and wearing that same ponytail every day without brushing it out. I just didn't care. Nothing mattered. I was hated and there was nothing I could do about it. I was even kind of designing myself in their image, rather than my own. And THAT'S WHEN IT HAPPENED. When a ray of self-awareness shined in and I deemed to wonder: why? Why did these people hate me when they didn't even know me? I was worthless I would sigh to myself, no doubt looking at my greasy ponytail. Plain and simple. And the ray of light faded.
One day, a teacher asked me to take something to the nurse's office but when I got to where I thought her office was it wasn't there and I couldn't find her new office and I hesitated going back to the classroom cause I knew I would be humiliated so I kept looking and next thing you know all this time had gone by and I'd made it so much worse on myself. I had no choice but to go back and explain what had taken so long and why I had not even completed the task which the teacher made me do in front of the class. She chastised me for being stupid and irresponsible and on and on and everyone laughed. She said she would send someone else with "half a brain in their head" but I begged her to just tell me where the new office was and I would complete my task correctly. I was desperate to get out of that room. Hot tears were about to fall and I had yet to let them see me cry.
She let me go and I hightailed it to the stairwell and collapsed in tears on those dusty linoleum stairs. And there for no good reason I had one of the biggest epiphanies of my entire life. And thankfully, it's never let me down.
I sat on those steps, crying, complaining inside: why don't they like me? They don't even know me? I've never even done anything to them. They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
That was it. They are going to hate me no matter what. So why am I trying so hard to please them...to get in their good graces? Why am I bending myself into a smiling, pleasing, pleading, greasy freak when they will NEVER like me. They don't even know me. No matter who I am, they will hate me, so therefore, I AM FREE. I am free to be me. To be whatever me I want. THEY are trapped. I would watch the lowest among them, clinging to the underbelly of their popularity, desperate to maintain it. But I had no such need. I was free to be AS ME as I wanted to be.
And high school was 6 months away and there EVERYONE would be starting a new school. Many kids would come from far and near and they would all get to meet a new Erin. The real Erin. The true Erin. Like me, hate me...I don't care. I am free. And I am me.
I started immediately with my friend to remake ourselves and by freshman year our old classmates didn't know who we were. And by the following year, I was a free and happy new waver with wacked out hair and a wacked out wardrobe. I was not that girl who wore split sleeves and pastel dresses. I was a girl with a shit load of friends and a shit load of self-respect. I just had to cross over.
As they say, the best revenge is to live well.
Bullies act out of their own sadness and frustration and weakness. Most of my old classmates weren't even aware they were "bullying" me (we're friends on facebook ;-)
I think it might be easier and more effective to educate kids on how to react to bullying rather than trying to end bullying.
And maybe sharing stories of overcoming bullying will help kids learn how not to let someone else's opinion change how you view yourself. Respond instead by becoming more yourself. Don't hide. Don't be ashamed. You might even end up inspiring the bullies to break out of their fear, their cliques, their misunderstanding of how life really works and allow them to see their own path, worry about their own lives and become who they really are...FREE from influence. Accepted by yourself. Led by your own star. Deeply loved.
I was un-liked. And by seventh grade standards for very good reason.
But still, they didn't just not like me, they hated me. It was their job. Spitballs in my hair. Tripped in the hallway. Boys would gag when I walked by. The girls were the most brutal if only because they ignored me but because I wanted to be their friend so bad. I missed my friends at my old home.
Now at the school I had left, I was class president so this was a very long way to fall in the social strata. I just didn't get it.
The girls and boys hated me equally. They would cram into a single table at lunch so as to not have to sit at the same table as me. They would pass invitations to a party by my desk saying, "could you pass that over. there's not one for you." There was no shame in their dislike. I simply wasn't included. But like anything weak, it's an easy target. And after a while the games began. Boys would pretend to like me but when I started to trust them and made any move to reciprocate they would laugh in my face and shout, "As if!" (The game was called "As if.")
I had one friend, a lone wolf who had been bullied for years by these kids and she was kind enough to take me under her wing. But notes would circulate with she and I doing things to each other with the words "Lesbos" above it. We were even physically shoved around, especially on the stairs where we could potentially fall and hurt ourselves. Even teachers got in on the act. Hey, they want to be popular too. By eighth grade, I was pretty low and depressed. It's hard to admit but I had given up on myself. I remember wearing my hair in a ponytail and for days on end not bothering to take it out when I bathed and wearing that same ponytail every day without brushing it out. I just didn't care. Nothing mattered. I was hated and there was nothing I could do about it. I was even kind of designing myself in their image, rather than my own. And THAT'S WHEN IT HAPPENED. When a ray of self-awareness shined in and I deemed to wonder: why? Why did these people hate me when they didn't even know me? I was worthless I would sigh to myself, no doubt looking at my greasy ponytail. Plain and simple. And the ray of light faded.
One day, a teacher asked me to take something to the nurse's office but when I got to where I thought her office was it wasn't there and I couldn't find her new office and I hesitated going back to the classroom cause I knew I would be humiliated so I kept looking and next thing you know all this time had gone by and I'd made it so much worse on myself. I had no choice but to go back and explain what had taken so long and why I had not even completed the task which the teacher made me do in front of the class. She chastised me for being stupid and irresponsible and on and on and everyone laughed. She said she would send someone else with "half a brain in their head" but I begged her to just tell me where the new office was and I would complete my task correctly. I was desperate to get out of that room. Hot tears were about to fall and I had yet to let them see me cry.
She let me go and I hightailed it to the stairwell and collapsed in tears on those dusty linoleum stairs. And there for no good reason I had one of the biggest epiphanies of my entire life. And thankfully, it's never let me down.
I sat on those steps, crying, complaining inside: why don't they like me? They don't even know me? I've never even done anything to them. They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
They don't even know me and they hate me.
That was it. They are going to hate me no matter what. So why am I trying so hard to please them...to get in their good graces? Why am I bending myself into a smiling, pleasing, pleading, greasy freak when they will NEVER like me. They don't even know me. No matter who I am, they will hate me, so therefore, I AM FREE. I am free to be me. To be whatever me I want. THEY are trapped. I would watch the lowest among them, clinging to the underbelly of their popularity, desperate to maintain it. But I had no such need. I was free to be AS ME as I wanted to be.
And high school was 6 months away and there EVERYONE would be starting a new school. Many kids would come from far and near and they would all get to meet a new Erin. The real Erin. The true Erin. Like me, hate me...I don't care. I am free. And I am me.
I started immediately with my friend to remake ourselves and by freshman year our old classmates didn't know who we were. And by the following year, I was a free and happy new waver with wacked out hair and a wacked out wardrobe. I was not that girl who wore split sleeves and pastel dresses. I was a girl with a shit load of friends and a shit load of self-respect. I just had to cross over.
As they say, the best revenge is to live well.
Bullies act out of their own sadness and frustration and weakness. Most of my old classmates weren't even aware they were "bullying" me (we're friends on facebook ;-)
I think it might be easier and more effective to educate kids on how to react to bullying rather than trying to end bullying.
And maybe sharing stories of overcoming bullying will help kids learn how not to let someone else's opinion change how you view yourself. Respond instead by becoming more yourself. Don't hide. Don't be ashamed. You might even end up inspiring the bullies to break out of their fear, their cliques, their misunderstanding of how life really works and allow them to see their own path, worry about their own lives and become who they really are...FREE from influence. Accepted by yourself. Led by your own star. Deeply loved.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Any Way You Slice It
First off: you and I both wish this were shorter. But it is what it is. ;-) Thanks for bearing witness.
I want to tell you a story. A funny story. A story I hope you’ll find funny. A story I hope to continue to find funny.
My friend Soph and I wonder if we enjoy our foibles too much and that’s why we have so many, so consistently! As believers in the law of attraction we hold that that which we give energy to persists. And if positive energy is the most attractive energy, it would stand to reason that if we find enjoyment in our problems perhaps more will come to us.
Of course I don’t know that we really believe this but the important thing is we all have our things we attract. Our issues. Our baggage. Perhaps ME more than others (as you might be convinced of at the end of this story) but, rest assured, and I do, we all got SOMETHING. Here’s mine du jour. May your life feel a little better in comparison.
Almost a month ago, my transmission went out on my 2002 RAV4. It took the mechanic over a week to fix and it cost a buttload of money. Too much I thought, but I had my car…which I need. As you all know, I’m a single mom and I drive all over this great city for my landscaping job and I need a car. Unfortunately, after a day of having my car back I realized it was not fixed. It drove the exact same, dangerous, herky-jerky way so I took it back and in a not-great mood. The guy fixing my car loaned me his car so I would not have to rent a car again. This car.
My gangster box. Of course, I appreciate not having to rent a car but this car is not great for transporting landscaping equipment as my SUV was. But that’s not so much of an issue cause I’m pretty much not working in August. My kids are out of camp and their father is on vacation and working for the entire month so I’m on my own with the kids this month.
Now I’ve been prepping for this month of August. I knew it would be challenging. No work means no money. And being with the kids 100% means no breaks and that’s just what August is. August to me is like December without Christmas. However, my long-awaited vacation will be coming in September and the kids will be back at school. All will be well. Nothing to do but muscle through, right?
Well…then the ex drops the bomb that I would not be able to take my September vacation as things were changing at his work and he wouldn’t be able to take the time off. (This being the day before he left for his two-week vacation.) AND he would not be able to take the kids overnight as he was going to have to be at work earlier. When he dropped this bomb I had to just turn and walk away cause I was not going to let him see me cry. The god-damned pressure of being a single mom/provider/human being is so, so intense. I need that fucking vacation. I need to live my life. I need to CREATE my life. I’m beyond frustrated.
The next morning my neck goes right out. Like…OUT. The pain runs down the back of my head, through both sides of my neck and down my left shoulder. I can barely drive my kids to their physicals at the doctor that morning (the gangster box does not have power steering). Since, I simply did not have the time or money to hit the chiro I call Soph and she reads to me from Louise Hays’ book Heal Your Life and the basic affirmation is about the need to be FLEXIBLE. (no, really? ;-) The affirmation goes: “I am at peace with my life,” and I say it over and over and over and I’m reminded that morning that I am blessed with super healthy kids and a wonderful pediatric practice and in the end I heal myself. My body tells me I should probably do some yoga that night but I think I just end up drinking beer and watching The Bachelorette.
Next day, I get a letter saying my dishwasher has been recalled (It could burst into flames!) and Maytag will only refund me my money if I buy one of their high-end dishwashers. Whatever, right? Be flexible. I’m at peace with my life. So I get someone to watch the kids and I head out the next morning in my gangster box to Sears to buy a god-damn dishwasher.
Let me stop here for some juicy backstory. Since separating from my ex, I have had five car accidents and gotten four moving violations - in two and half years. Prior to that I had gotten a total of two tickets my entire life and never been at fault for an accident. Things change. So after my fourth moving violation I got this letter from the DMV.
I would like to say in my defense, that (at the writing of this letter) I had never ever CAUSED a crash. So that first sentence is just not true. I feel that’s about as far as I can defend myself however. I had a little fender bender after that and before that I totaled my car by hydroplaning and crashing into a tractor trailer on the freeway but the truck didn’t even stop so that’s hardly causing a crash.
Let me also tell you that when I went to see a psychic last year, she said that I had some trouble with cars and accidents and I said yes. And she said I had a special guardian angel that had been protecting me through many lifetimes (What up. Gerome?) and she said that I kept him very busy. I told her to tell him that I was sorry about that and so she kind of mentally went away and came back and said, “Gerome says it’s okay. You were the same way on a horse.” Funniest line uttered by a psychic ever. Anyhoo…
A few months ago I got pulled over for speeding. A whole ten miles over the speed limit. I’m a menace I tell you. Luckily it had been long enough between tickets and I could take the traffic school option. Of course you have to “pay off” the DMV to keep a point off your license so that added $150 to my $350 ticket. Yeah. Awesome.
So back to our story: I’m at Sears and I get this big run around (they want to charge me to pull a permit for installing a dishwasher?) and I leave very frustrated and without a dishwasher. As I pull out of the mall parking lot I hear sirens behind me. I pull over to let the cop pass and he yells at me to pull through the next light and pull over. No. Fucking. Way. You know, maybe I have a tail light out. I mean this isn’t even my car. Wait. I don’t even have the registration. I don’t even know my mechanic’s last name. Uh. Oh.
So the cop claims I ran a stop sign IN THE MALL PARKING LOT which is not even true and he and I argue back and forth but then I have to start explaining about the car not being mine and now it’s “let’s step out of the car.” I TOTALLY LOSE IT. Yep. I’m one of those folks standing outside her mechanic’s car, crying on the side of the road while the cops writes me a ticket and threatens to impound the car. I sign for my ticket (not an admission of guilt, I’m assured), pull my shit together and go on my way with the knowledge that I am going to have to go stand before a judge in Chatsworth and plead my case just to keep my license. Holy Shitstorm Batman.
That’s Sunday.
Monday. I decide to get Molly a cell phone. Her father doesn’t tend to carry his and sometimes I’m not sure where she is when she’s with him so I like the idea of being able to contact her when I want to. And then I can cancel my home phone service which is still under the ex’s name and is inundated 10 -15 times a day by creditors. Molly’s thrilled and I’m up for a free Blackberry upgrade so we are ALL happy campers. We go back home, I spend 45 minutes on the phone using a “man’s” voice, pretending to be my ex canceling my phone service. I get the service cancelled, plug in my new phone to my computer and proceed to wipe out EVERY CONTACT I have on it. Somehow the software or whatever replaced everything on my phone with the contents of my computer address book which I only use to keep about 700 email addresses for Molly’s school and La Leche League. I jump on the internet to figure out what the hell I’d done and realize that I’ve knocked out my internet. My DSL was attached to my fucking home phone line! I have erased all my contacts and snuffed out my access to the internet in less than an hour’s time.
I really wish I could say to you that I did not have a giant, big-ass pity party for myself that began with the thought: if I had a HUSBAND to help me with this shit, none of this would be happening. Cause that’s an unfriendly road, my friends. And I don’t want to take you down it.
So Jana comes over and takes my kids so I can put out the fine china for the pity party. I go down to Verizon and they are gigantic losers and can’t help me and I just have to bear it. It’s a hassle. They are all just hassles. It’s a shit storm no doubt. But it’s not WHO I AM. It’s just crappy circumstances. That’s all.
I do finally listen that night and do yoga and meditate and read my inspirational books and get centered and make an appointment with my therapist. I hire a sitter to watch the kids all day the next day so I can go write and peace out and make things better in my life.
Monday.
Sitter comes. All’s lovely. I pack up my computer and put on makeup and look forward and upward. I get in the gangster box, start the car, pull away from the curb, my phone rings, I pick it up and hear:
WRRR WRRR WRRR WRRR.
I get pulled over on my own street.
My emotional state at this point kinda plummets. I really feel like there is a good chance I am living some other kind of parallel life. Like everyone else, I saw Inception and loved it. Loved the idea of the totem a lot and in fact, walking out of the theater after seeing the movie, I found a pendant in the pocket of my jeans. It’s a pendant my friend Anne got me. I have no idea what it was doing in my pocket but I decided to make it my totem and I enjoyed rubbing it and touching it all day…communing with my totem. Keeping myself in the real world. Well I forget once again that my totem was in my jeans and I wash the totem in the jeans. I then discover the totem in the dryer…broken in two.
HOLY SHIT! That means, you realize, that for me and by the extremely realistic rules of Inception, this is all a dream?
Moral of the story: keep track of your stinkin totems.
So as soon as I realize I’m being pulled over, I turn off my phone and throw it on the floorboard. It’s total instinct. I actually have no memory of this exact moment. I’m piecing it together backwards like a police detective.
So the cop pulls me into a parking lot and walks up and says he’s citing me for talking on a “handheld device.” I mumble something. No idea what. Maybe, “okay.” What other response is there at this point. “Okay.”
I’ve really taken the path of least resistance now and have just gone numb. It’s safest. Then I realize I gotta explain about the car again and we go through all that somehow. He then asks me to sign for the ticket (…not an admission of guilt…) and I do and he stops and looks at the ticket and looks at my license and says to me, “It doesn’t look like you’ve signed the ticket the same way you signed your license.”
Now there’s a fucking handwriting quiz?
I kinda laugh and say, “I’m sorry. I’m a little upset.” (To say the least, right?) And he says, “Care to try again?” and hands me the ticket. I do try again but it’s no better and he lets me leave.
MY BAD SIGNATURE
This is the beginning of my great day?
WHAT?
I get my bearings. Put my license away. And where is the damn phone? And I can’t find it. Anywhere. Okay. I start the car, drive away from the scene of the crime, relax myself somewhat and stop and look again. The phone is not there. I’m on my hands and knees looking everywhere and nothing. The phone is gone. The phone without the contacts. The phone that just got me pulled over (well, I didn’t do it…) THAT FUCKING PHONE. Nevertheless, I still need the fucking phone. But it’s just not there. Totem. Breaking.
So I drive to my friend’s house who lives nearby and to whom I know I can present myself in pretty much any state and she will have me. (This is true of all my friends actually. This is pretty much how I IDENTIFY my friends.)
I knock on her door and she’s happy to see me. She claps her hands and says, “I have a PRESENT for you!” She skips off and comes back with a beautiful bud in a baggy. “Humboldt!” she exclaims. I laugh and as good as it looks, I think, I’m probably the LAST person you want to give that to…
“Follow me,” I say. “I have a story to tell you.” I take her to my car and make her help me look for the cell phone and start filling her in. Thing is, neither of us can find it. We move the seats back and forth. We empty every bag in the car. We scratch our heads and look again. My friend slides her hand down between the bottom and back of the driver’s seat and all of the sudden, she pulls out a KNIFE. A knife that has been wedged in the seat and pointed at my back the entire time I have been driving this dude’s car!
THE KNIFE.
We spend the better part of five minutes laughing our asses off. We send her kids for a flashlight and find the phone immediately. Right under the seat.
This knife has been literally stabbing me in the back. So there’s that. There’s your totem. Your law of attraction. Your poison arrow. Your affirmation.
And I’m glad that knife’s no longer there. Life has been calm (i.e. regular shit storm) but I keep hearing in my head the words that came to me when I was meditating that night as an explanation of current events: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”
I can translate this for myself in two ways: either I’m Spiderman (I do spend a lot of time around spiders), or my life needs to be much, much more than IPAs and The Bachelorette.
These days I feel bi-polar, caught between thoughts of suicide and the experience of transcendence. I feel close to God but mad at him. I want to be at peace with my life but I also want a peaceful life.
My friend Soph quoted our friend John Paul who said to her, “When the shit hits the fan you know you are in a sacred place.”
Guess for now, I’ll just go with that.
Nameste, bitches.
Bad things come in threes.
I want to tell you a story. A funny story. A story I hope you’ll find funny. A story I hope to continue to find funny.
My friend Soph and I wonder if we enjoy our foibles too much and that’s why we have so many, so consistently! As believers in the law of attraction we hold that that which we give energy to persists. And if positive energy is the most attractive energy, it would stand to reason that if we find enjoyment in our problems perhaps more will come to us.
Of course I don’t know that we really believe this but the important thing is we all have our things we attract. Our issues. Our baggage. Perhaps ME more than others (as you might be convinced of at the end of this story) but, rest assured, and I do, we all got SOMETHING. Here’s mine du jour. May your life feel a little better in comparison.
Almost a month ago, my transmission went out on my 2002 RAV4. It took the mechanic over a week to fix and it cost a buttload of money. Too much I thought, but I had my car…which I need. As you all know, I’m a single mom and I drive all over this great city for my landscaping job and I need a car. Unfortunately, after a day of having my car back I realized it was not fixed. It drove the exact same, dangerous, herky-jerky way so I took it back and in a not-great mood. The guy fixing my car loaned me his car so I would not have to rent a car again. This car.
My gangster box. Of course, I appreciate not having to rent a car but this car is not great for transporting landscaping equipment as my SUV was. But that’s not so much of an issue cause I’m pretty much not working in August. My kids are out of camp and their father is on vacation and working for the entire month so I’m on my own with the kids this month.
Now I’ve been prepping for this month of August. I knew it would be challenging. No work means no money. And being with the kids 100% means no breaks and that’s just what August is. August to me is like December without Christmas. However, my long-awaited vacation will be coming in September and the kids will be back at school. All will be well. Nothing to do but muscle through, right?
Well…then the ex drops the bomb that I would not be able to take my September vacation as things were changing at his work and he wouldn’t be able to take the time off. (This being the day before he left for his two-week vacation.) AND he would not be able to take the kids overnight as he was going to have to be at work earlier. When he dropped this bomb I had to just turn and walk away cause I was not going to let him see me cry. The god-damned pressure of being a single mom/provider/human being is so, so intense. I need that fucking vacation. I need to live my life. I need to CREATE my life. I’m beyond frustrated.
The next morning my neck goes right out. Like…OUT. The pain runs down the back of my head, through both sides of my neck and down my left shoulder. I can barely drive my kids to their physicals at the doctor that morning (the gangster box does not have power steering). Since, I simply did not have the time or money to hit the chiro I call Soph and she reads to me from Louise Hays’ book Heal Your Life and the basic affirmation is about the need to be FLEXIBLE. (no, really? ;-) The affirmation goes: “I am at peace with my life,” and I say it over and over and over and I’m reminded that morning that I am blessed with super healthy kids and a wonderful pediatric practice and in the end I heal myself. My body tells me I should probably do some yoga that night but I think I just end up drinking beer and watching The Bachelorette.
Next day, I get a letter saying my dishwasher has been recalled (It could burst into flames!) and Maytag will only refund me my money if I buy one of their high-end dishwashers. Whatever, right? Be flexible. I’m at peace with my life. So I get someone to watch the kids and I head out the next morning in my gangster box to Sears to buy a god-damn dishwasher.
Let me stop here for some juicy backstory. Since separating from my ex, I have had five car accidents and gotten four moving violations - in two and half years. Prior to that I had gotten a total of two tickets my entire life and never been at fault for an accident. Things change. So after my fourth moving violation I got this letter from the DMV.
I would like to say in my defense, that (at the writing of this letter) I had never ever CAUSED a crash. So that first sentence is just not true. I feel that’s about as far as I can defend myself however. I had a little fender bender after that and before that I totaled my car by hydroplaning and crashing into a tractor trailer on the freeway but the truck didn’t even stop so that’s hardly causing a crash.
Let me also tell you that when I went to see a psychic last year, she said that I had some trouble with cars and accidents and I said yes. And she said I had a special guardian angel that had been protecting me through many lifetimes (What up. Gerome?) and she said that I kept him very busy. I told her to tell him that I was sorry about that and so she kind of mentally went away and came back and said, “Gerome says it’s okay. You were the same way on a horse.” Funniest line uttered by a psychic ever. Anyhoo…
A few months ago I got pulled over for speeding. A whole ten miles over the speed limit. I’m a menace I tell you. Luckily it had been long enough between tickets and I could take the traffic school option. Of course you have to “pay off” the DMV to keep a point off your license so that added $150 to my $350 ticket. Yeah. Awesome.
So back to our story: I’m at Sears and I get this big run around (they want to charge me to pull a permit for installing a dishwasher?) and I leave very frustrated and without a dishwasher. As I pull out of the mall parking lot I hear sirens behind me. I pull over to let the cop pass and he yells at me to pull through the next light and pull over. No. Fucking. Way. You know, maybe I have a tail light out. I mean this isn’t even my car. Wait. I don’t even have the registration. I don’t even know my mechanic’s last name. Uh. Oh.
So the cop claims I ran a stop sign IN THE MALL PARKING LOT which is not even true and he and I argue back and forth but then I have to start explaining about the car not being mine and now it’s “let’s step out of the car.” I TOTALLY LOSE IT. Yep. I’m one of those folks standing outside her mechanic’s car, crying on the side of the road while the cops writes me a ticket and threatens to impound the car. I sign for my ticket (not an admission of guilt, I’m assured), pull my shit together and go on my way with the knowledge that I am going to have to go stand before a judge in Chatsworth and plead my case just to keep my license. Holy Shitstorm Batman.
That’s Sunday.
Monday. I decide to get Molly a cell phone. Her father doesn’t tend to carry his and sometimes I’m not sure where she is when she’s with him so I like the idea of being able to contact her when I want to. And then I can cancel my home phone service which is still under the ex’s name and is inundated 10 -15 times a day by creditors. Molly’s thrilled and I’m up for a free Blackberry upgrade so we are ALL happy campers. We go back home, I spend 45 minutes on the phone using a “man’s” voice, pretending to be my ex canceling my phone service. I get the service cancelled, plug in my new phone to my computer and proceed to wipe out EVERY CONTACT I have on it. Somehow the software or whatever replaced everything on my phone with the contents of my computer address book which I only use to keep about 700 email addresses for Molly’s school and La Leche League. I jump on the internet to figure out what the hell I’d done and realize that I’ve knocked out my internet. My DSL was attached to my fucking home phone line! I have erased all my contacts and snuffed out my access to the internet in less than an hour’s time.
I really wish I could say to you that I did not have a giant, big-ass pity party for myself that began with the thought: if I had a HUSBAND to help me with this shit, none of this would be happening. Cause that’s an unfriendly road, my friends. And I don’t want to take you down it.
So Jana comes over and takes my kids so I can put out the fine china for the pity party. I go down to Verizon and they are gigantic losers and can’t help me and I just have to bear it. It’s a hassle. They are all just hassles. It’s a shit storm no doubt. But it’s not WHO I AM. It’s just crappy circumstances. That’s all.
I do finally listen that night and do yoga and meditate and read my inspirational books and get centered and make an appointment with my therapist. I hire a sitter to watch the kids all day the next day so I can go write and peace out and make things better in my life.
Monday.
Sitter comes. All’s lovely. I pack up my computer and put on makeup and look forward and upward. I get in the gangster box, start the car, pull away from the curb, my phone rings, I pick it up and hear:
WRRR WRRR WRRR WRRR.
I get pulled over on my own street.
My emotional state at this point kinda plummets. I really feel like there is a good chance I am living some other kind of parallel life. Like everyone else, I saw Inception and loved it. Loved the idea of the totem a lot and in fact, walking out of the theater after seeing the movie, I found a pendant in the pocket of my jeans. It’s a pendant my friend Anne got me. I have no idea what it was doing in my pocket but I decided to make it my totem and I enjoyed rubbing it and touching it all day…communing with my totem. Keeping myself in the real world. Well I forget once again that my totem was in my jeans and I wash the totem in the jeans. I then discover the totem in the dryer…broken in two.
HOLY SHIT! That means, you realize, that for me and by the extremely realistic rules of Inception, this is all a dream?
Moral of the story: keep track of your stinkin totems.
So as soon as I realize I’m being pulled over, I turn off my phone and throw it on the floorboard. It’s total instinct. I actually have no memory of this exact moment. I’m piecing it together backwards like a police detective.
So the cop pulls me into a parking lot and walks up and says he’s citing me for talking on a “handheld device.” I mumble something. No idea what. Maybe, “okay.” What other response is there at this point. “Okay.”
I’ve really taken the path of least resistance now and have just gone numb. It’s safest. Then I realize I gotta explain about the car again and we go through all that somehow. He then asks me to sign for the ticket (…not an admission of guilt…) and I do and he stops and looks at the ticket and looks at my license and says to me, “It doesn’t look like you’ve signed the ticket the same way you signed your license.”
Now there’s a fucking handwriting quiz?
I kinda laugh and say, “I’m sorry. I’m a little upset.” (To say the least, right?) And he says, “Care to try again?” and hands me the ticket. I do try again but it’s no better and he lets me leave.
MY BAD SIGNATURE
This is the beginning of my great day?
WHAT?
I get my bearings. Put my license away. And where is the damn phone? And I can’t find it. Anywhere. Okay. I start the car, drive away from the scene of the crime, relax myself somewhat and stop and look again. The phone is not there. I’m on my hands and knees looking everywhere and nothing. The phone is gone. The phone without the contacts. The phone that just got me pulled over (well, I didn’t do it…) THAT FUCKING PHONE. Nevertheless, I still need the fucking phone. But it’s just not there. Totem. Breaking.
So I drive to my friend’s house who lives nearby and to whom I know I can present myself in pretty much any state and she will have me. (This is true of all my friends actually. This is pretty much how I IDENTIFY my friends.)
I knock on her door and she’s happy to see me. She claps her hands and says, “I have a PRESENT for you!” She skips off and comes back with a beautiful bud in a baggy. “Humboldt!” she exclaims. I laugh and as good as it looks, I think, I’m probably the LAST person you want to give that to…
“Follow me,” I say. “I have a story to tell you.” I take her to my car and make her help me look for the cell phone and start filling her in. Thing is, neither of us can find it. We move the seats back and forth. We empty every bag in the car. We scratch our heads and look again. My friend slides her hand down between the bottom and back of the driver’s seat and all of the sudden, she pulls out a KNIFE. A knife that has been wedged in the seat and pointed at my back the entire time I have been driving this dude’s car!
THE KNIFE.
We spend the better part of five minutes laughing our asses off. We send her kids for a flashlight and find the phone immediately. Right under the seat.
This knife has been literally stabbing me in the back. So there’s that. There’s your totem. Your law of attraction. Your poison arrow. Your affirmation.
And I’m glad that knife’s no longer there. Life has been calm (i.e. regular shit storm) but I keep hearing in my head the words that came to me when I was meditating that night as an explanation of current events: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”
I can translate this for myself in two ways: either I’m Spiderman (I do spend a lot of time around spiders), or my life needs to be much, much more than IPAs and The Bachelorette.
These days I feel bi-polar, caught between thoughts of suicide and the experience of transcendence. I feel close to God but mad at him. I want to be at peace with my life but I also want a peaceful life.
My friend Soph quoted our friend John Paul who said to her, “When the shit hits the fan you know you are in a sacred place.”
Guess for now, I’ll just go with that.
Nameste, bitches.
Bad things come in threes.
Monday, January 11, 2010
It Needs To Be Different
My life is a big question mark and right next to the question mark is a big exclamation point. It’s all what if’s and man, I’m so fortunate and this is exciting but what am I doing's.
Cause I don’t know how to do it. This.
How do I move into this new phase? What’s the end game? What’s the exit strategy for stay-at-home moms? And, of course, my specialty: newly single stay-at-home moms? Now my situation is not SO different. It just shines the light on this problem a little brighter. All stay-at-home moms ask at some point: what am I equipped to do? Who is going to help me do this? What do I want to do? Can I even risk asking if it’s possible? Is there any other way?
And the kicker in my case is that the financial need for a job has crash-landed with my absolute need to pursue my dream job right now.
And this on top of the fact that I’m still 100% a mother. That doesn’t change. I’m needed in all the same ways. My chores and all the expectations are all still there. Now though there is so much more to do and worry about and achieve. It’s hard not to be a little resentful. I sit on my back stoop and I wonder.
Am I less a mother, am I less maternal, because I am ready to move on? Was I misrepresenting myself all these years?
Can a woman be more or less maternal? Or is maternal just maternal?
Something we’re born with. No more negotiable than our femininity. We’re female; we’re feminine. We’re mothers; we’re maternal.
Mothers, and women in general, get pigeon-holed this way all the time. Like the old Victorian chestnuts of needing to be lady-like and of being careful not to act like a man. How can I NOT be lady-like? And unless I’m wearing a fake moustache, how can I be ACTING like a man?
Quite honestly, I’m more than over it.
The double standard was present in my marriage and it’s present outside of it. It’s presently holding me back.
There are precious few paths to follow out of the forest.
What have women done in the past? How have they managed? What was the path of my foremothers? My guess is that that knowledge, that wisdom, has just not been considered valuable enough information to be passed on. What mothers do is invisible, un-rewarded and not just that, but suffering from a bad stomachache from all the trips up and down the ivory tower. Hard to climb in these high heels and lady-like dresses and acting like it’s all no big deal.
Golly gee, we could do it with our eyes closed.
It’s not that easy. It’s not easy at all. For anyone.
It’s shit work. Pretending it’s anything less diminishes it. And saying out loud that it’s a shit job doesn’t tarnish it. A surgeon with his hands up all’n up someone’s colon has a shit job too. It’s still a lovely vocation.
To not really look at moms through the lens of reality is to not see mothers as individuals. We’re not all going to do this the same way. No one’s life looks like anyone else’s. Moms are all connected by sleepless nights and wiped butts and a true understanding of the word “sacrifice”, but we are all different. Even within our distinct mommy war bunkers. The breastfeeding mom still loses her temper and gives her kids Doritos. The mom who brings home KFC every night makes her kids washes behind her kids’s ears religiously and never swears in front of them. That PTA President who thought she’d be a natural mother cries in the night wondering if she’s failing her kids.
For our own selves and the sake of future moms, we need to ease up. No one’s perfect at this. And God, it’s hard.
I know men struggle with the nature of masculinity, but it’s different. To become a mother is to change forever and never return to that other person, and not just inside, but in society’s eyes. You must re-make yourself in the public eye.
I don’t always feel ready for my life to change. I like the old routine. It’s familiar. And most of the time, I do not want to be apart from my kids. But my life is changing, forcibly, in so many ways. The push-pull right now is my biggest complaint. My neck flared up as I wrote that. Can’t seem to get anything DONE and I know that everyone feel that way, but I feel in caps that there is SO MUCH AT STAKE.
The pressure is INTENSE. And all I wanna do is write and make my show. That’s all that drives me. I am pretty much unhappy if I’m doing anything else.
I know, right now and forever, that I will fail at every venture that resides outside the scope of my greatest dream.
If this does not work out for me, if I don’t achieve my dream which I should stop calling “my dream” cause it makes it sound unreal and it is, in fact, very much here…if my reality doesn’t soon, very soon, begin to resemble the picture in my head than there is nothing in this world I understand. Nothing would make sense. Right now, serializing my life is the only thing that makes sense. I want to sit down in front of my computer, walk on a film set, hunker down in an editing bay…and never leave.
Cause I don’t know how to do it. This.
How do I move into this new phase? What’s the end game? What’s the exit strategy for stay-at-home moms? And, of course, my specialty: newly single stay-at-home moms? Now my situation is not SO different. It just shines the light on this problem a little brighter. All stay-at-home moms ask at some point: what am I equipped to do? Who is going to help me do this? What do I want to do? Can I even risk asking if it’s possible? Is there any other way?
And the kicker in my case is that the financial need for a job has crash-landed with my absolute need to pursue my dream job right now.
And this on top of the fact that I’m still 100% a mother. That doesn’t change. I’m needed in all the same ways. My chores and all the expectations are all still there. Now though there is so much more to do and worry about and achieve. It’s hard not to be a little resentful. I sit on my back stoop and I wonder.
Am I less a mother, am I less maternal, because I am ready to move on? Was I misrepresenting myself all these years?
Can a woman be more or less maternal? Or is maternal just maternal?
Something we’re born with. No more negotiable than our femininity. We’re female; we’re feminine. We’re mothers; we’re maternal.
Mothers, and women in general, get pigeon-holed this way all the time. Like the old Victorian chestnuts of needing to be lady-like and of being careful not to act like a man. How can I NOT be lady-like? And unless I’m wearing a fake moustache, how can I be ACTING like a man?
Quite honestly, I’m more than over it.
The double standard was present in my marriage and it’s present outside of it. It’s presently holding me back.
There are precious few paths to follow out of the forest.
What have women done in the past? How have they managed? What was the path of my foremothers? My guess is that that knowledge, that wisdom, has just not been considered valuable enough information to be passed on. What mothers do is invisible, un-rewarded and not just that, but suffering from a bad stomachache from all the trips up and down the ivory tower. Hard to climb in these high heels and lady-like dresses and acting like it’s all no big deal.
Golly gee, we could do it with our eyes closed.
It’s not that easy. It’s not easy at all. For anyone.
It’s shit work. Pretending it’s anything less diminishes it. And saying out loud that it’s a shit job doesn’t tarnish it. A surgeon with his hands up all’n up someone’s colon has a shit job too. It’s still a lovely vocation.
To not really look at moms through the lens of reality is to not see mothers as individuals. We’re not all going to do this the same way. No one’s life looks like anyone else’s. Moms are all connected by sleepless nights and wiped butts and a true understanding of the word “sacrifice”, but we are all different. Even within our distinct mommy war bunkers. The breastfeeding mom still loses her temper and gives her kids Doritos. The mom who brings home KFC every night makes her kids washes behind her kids’s ears religiously and never swears in front of them. That PTA President who thought she’d be a natural mother cries in the night wondering if she’s failing her kids.
For our own selves and the sake of future moms, we need to ease up. No one’s perfect at this. And God, it’s hard.
I know men struggle with the nature of masculinity, but it’s different. To become a mother is to change forever and never return to that other person, and not just inside, but in society’s eyes. You must re-make yourself in the public eye.
I don’t always feel ready for my life to change. I like the old routine. It’s familiar. And most of the time, I do not want to be apart from my kids. But my life is changing, forcibly, in so many ways. The push-pull right now is my biggest complaint. My neck flared up as I wrote that. Can’t seem to get anything DONE and I know that everyone feel that way, but I feel in caps that there is SO MUCH AT STAKE.
The pressure is INTENSE. And all I wanna do is write and make my show. That’s all that drives me. I am pretty much unhappy if I’m doing anything else.
I know, right now and forever, that I will fail at every venture that resides outside the scope of my greatest dream.
If this does not work out for me, if I don’t achieve my dream which I should stop calling “my dream” cause it makes it sound unreal and it is, in fact, very much here…if my reality doesn’t soon, very soon, begin to resemble the picture in my head than there is nothing in this world I understand. Nothing would make sense. Right now, serializing my life is the only thing that makes sense. I want to sit down in front of my computer, walk on a film set, hunker down in an editing bay…and never leave.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Desire, Ask, Believe, Receive
Today I sat and watched the sun move shadows against my garage wall. I was alone and trying to experience the aloneness of being alone. The light was fine and I was enjoying the fading day. I felt really content. Then I was quite suddenly struck with this feeling of living for myself. Of living without being tethered to someone else's ideas and plans. Not that other's ideas and plans aren't awesome. But this was a message just for me. This was about taking control. This was a warning not to give myself away. And then these little words came out of/to me:
Don't be afraid.
You're only dreaming.
Don't fear change darling.
It's the natural passage.
It is nature's way.
It is best and
it is what is.
Embrace it. Why not?
You don't have to be afraid.
You're only dreaming.
You get a FRESH START.
You see it.
You're so close to it.
You are it.
You are love.
You know.
I am.
You know.
Take the power. All of it is yours. All of this is for you.
You get to choose Everything.
Who you love. What you do.
How far you go.
How skinny you are.
How audacious.
Don't let others decide. Take their counsel and their comfort but don't ever, ever give one single part of yourself away.
Follow your heart. Know your heart.
Know it inside out.
Build a temple to it.
Build an altar to yourself and your God.
To your heart.
And then I watched a massive black widow kill a june bug.
Now tonight I remember "give thanks for every wrong move." Remember to say thank you for your pain. I want to be thankful for mine. I want to laugh and say, yeah. Thank God for that.
I see candles flicker behind my closed eyes. My old cat insists on being on the yoga mat with me. I watch her spread out and lick herself and I stop and observe her and give thanks for the present moment. Thanks for time and it's awkward warping. It's tightly woven regrets, it's little jokes. It's irrelevance. It's experience.
Thank you to the everything for these seconds of pure happiness. For watching my cat, for the turns of my mind, for my invisible eyes.
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost." Martha Graham
Don't be afraid.
You're only dreaming.
Don't fear change darling.
It's the natural passage.
It is nature's way.
It is best and
it is what is.
Embrace it. Why not?
You don't have to be afraid.
You're only dreaming.
You get a FRESH START.
You see it.
You're so close to it.
You are it.
You are love.
You know.
I am.
You know.
Take the power. All of it is yours. All of this is for you.
You get to choose Everything.
Who you love. What you do.
How far you go.
How skinny you are.
How audacious.
Don't let others decide. Take their counsel and their comfort but don't ever, ever give one single part of yourself away.
Follow your heart. Know your heart.
Know it inside out.
Build a temple to it.
Build an altar to yourself and your God.
To your heart.
And then I watched a massive black widow kill a june bug.
Now tonight I remember "give thanks for every wrong move." Remember to say thank you for your pain. I want to be thankful for mine. I want to laugh and say, yeah. Thank God for that.
I see candles flicker behind my closed eyes. My old cat insists on being on the yoga mat with me. I watch her spread out and lick herself and I stop and observe her and give thanks for the present moment. Thanks for time and it's awkward warping. It's tightly woven regrets, it's little jokes. It's irrelevance. It's experience.
Thank you to the everything for these seconds of pure happiness. For watching my cat, for the turns of my mind, for my invisible eyes.
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost." Martha Graham
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
A Year in a Life
I can't believe it has been a year (a YEAR) since this house was in upheaval. Chaos rained and reigned. Love was kicked around. Dreams were tinkered with until they no longer resembled themselves. Expectations fell down to basement level and were still not met. Every day was an adventure but not the good kind. These adventures were dark and dangerous. Violent. Empty and hollow. Jesus...I can't believe that was my life for so long.
“Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.” St. Augustine
The fact is I don’t want to spend time with him this Christmas. I faked it last year. I don’t want to do it this year. And the nice thing is I don’t HAVE to. I am exercising my right to not have to.
“Yet it is not enough to seek the truth or even to know the truth. We must give ourselves permission now to live the truth as we understand it, with all its myriad implications for our lives.” Marianne Williamson
I believe everyone’s trying to find their equilibrium. Nature automatically looks for balance. We adapt ourselves to situations so we can survive. Like Darwinian fish, we try to find out feet. But much of the diversity of our world comes from genetic mutation. Not careful baby steps but totally random fucking shit (TRFS).
“Even cowards can endure hardship, only the brave can endure suspense.” Mignon McLaughlin
There’s something about being on the tightrope I really like.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Thoreau
My favorite word is freedom.
My favorite number is 4 because it is twice my actual favorite number which is 2.
Someone called me super mom today. Someone else said I was their hero. Someone else said I was full of love and the kindest person ever. Best. Year. Ever.
“After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.” Wallace Stevens
An aside: not for the squeamish…
One piece of advice: never ever ask your husband to look at your vagina after you’ve had a baby to “see if it looks alright.” It does not look alright and he does not want to see it.
I believe maybe that was the beginning of the end with the dh and I. Maybe. Free advice.
“We’re all on a sinking boat.” Me to Soph Jan. 2008
“Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.” St. Augustine
The fact is I don’t want to spend time with him this Christmas. I faked it last year. I don’t want to do it this year. And the nice thing is I don’t HAVE to. I am exercising my right to not have to.
“Yet it is not enough to seek the truth or even to know the truth. We must give ourselves permission now to live the truth as we understand it, with all its myriad implications for our lives.” Marianne Williamson
I believe everyone’s trying to find their equilibrium. Nature automatically looks for balance. We adapt ourselves to situations so we can survive. Like Darwinian fish, we try to find out feet. But much of the diversity of our world comes from genetic mutation. Not careful baby steps but totally random fucking shit (TRFS).
“Even cowards can endure hardship, only the brave can endure suspense.” Mignon McLaughlin
There’s something about being on the tightrope I really like.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Thoreau
My favorite word is freedom.
My favorite number is 4 because it is twice my actual favorite number which is 2.
Someone called me super mom today. Someone else said I was their hero. Someone else said I was full of love and the kindest person ever. Best. Year. Ever.
“After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.” Wallace Stevens
An aside: not for the squeamish…
One piece of advice: never ever ask your husband to look at your vagina after you’ve had a baby to “see if it looks alright.” It does not look alright and he does not want to see it.
I believe maybe that was the beginning of the end with the dh and I. Maybe. Free advice.
“We’re all on a sinking boat.” Me to Soph Jan. 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Health of the Mother
I like having other people write for me:
http://flotsamblog.com/2008/10/16/more-wounded-that-eloquent-im-afraid/
http://flotsamblog.com/2008/10/16/more-wounded-that-eloquent-im-afraid/
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Hope Is Never False
Four years ago, post-presidential election, was a very disturbing time for me. It seemed that it was impossible for Bush to remain President for another four years and I remember when Kerry lost feeling very distraught, grossly disappointed, confused and pessimistic about the future. What choice was there but to just kind of check out and move on? I felt terrible for the people who gave their time to get Kerry elected. If I felt bad, how must they feel? How depressing I thought, and I wished I had done more but, oh well. They'll always win, I secretly believed.
Then along came Barack Obama.
I love Barack. Love his power and grace. His calm and his fury. His ability to relate to everyone. His heart. His smarts. His willingness to dream. So I wanted to get involved. Wanted to. But how?
Last week, the kids and I drove to Culver City and I attended an Mama Camp Obama. I met leaders in the Democratic party, field officers who got Obama through the primary, people just like me who have dedicated their time and energy to change OUR world.
I remember one of the speakers mentioned that there were 45 more days till the election and whoosh! A fire was lit under me and I knew now, now, now was the time. It is not too late. Now is the time to act. To get involved.
Now is when you can get in people's head and make your little voice stay there till election day.
This last month could easily decide the election.
No one wants more of the same. We as a country cannot take it and therefore we cannot allow it.
We must act.
Now.
A bumper sticker is not enough.
Forwarding an email is not enough (although I hope you forward this one).
Every vote counts. Every person you talk to.
The next forty two days determine our future.
Commit.
An hour a week at a phone bank.
Better yet: have one at your house with five of your friends.
Be positive. We want to unite this country.
Be a good example to others.
Talk about Obama with enthusiasm and pride.
Don't get suckered into petty arguments about McCain and Palin.
Do this instead:
Visit: www.my.barack.obama.com and join a group or search for events in your area.
Contact your local Obama office right now and volunteer. Check out:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/actioncenter
Don't live in fear of the worst case scenario.
Do something.
Take control.
Let's push Barack up over the top.
I decided to have a Mama Camp Obama right here in the Valley next week so more moms could come and get trained in this grass roots effort.
Here's the link to my event.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gs7htc
(Men are welcome too.)
Please attend and pass on the information about it. In fact pass on all this information. Seeing these people at the training camp made me realize that, as usual, they are just like us. They have kids. They're busy and tired and overwhelmed. But this is our country and our future at stake and nothing less. Every vote counts. They are people just like you who could have thought to themselves, I can't make a difference.
But they are and so can you!
Watch these Women for Obama videos here (very inspiring!):
Women from all walks of life, coming together for Barack Obama:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid900837095/bclid900609698/bctid1757661310
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid900837095/bclid900609698/bctid1317865535
Here's the blog about the event I attended: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/sarahgallagher/gGgY9M
It is NOT too late to get involved. In fact right now is the PERFECT time. Only 42 more days and you won't have to do it anymore. Imagine how you will feel when there is a ground swell of support for Obama and you know YOU made that happen. Now imagine how you'll feel when Obama wins!
Here's the address for the SFV Valley Obama office:
San Fernando Valley Office
14529 Archwood Street
Van Nuys, CA 91405
Phone: 818-995-DEMS
Hours: 10AM - 6PM
Here is a website to make sure you are registered or if you need to request an absentee ballot: www.voteforchange.com
Here is a website to use when making calls or just talking to people. Acquainte yourself with the issues! Stay positive and know your facts!
http://www.fightthesmears.com/
or/and
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
or print out the great one sheet below and attached to this email.
And just for fun, here's a site I love for printing out Obama stuff or posting art to your blog or getting cool wallpaper.
http://www.barackobama.com/downloads/#
Here's the blog about the event I attended: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/sarahgallagher/gGgY9M
Thank you for reading! We can and will do this! Please feel free to email me with questions!
LOVE & PEACE & COURAGE PEOPLE!
Then along came Barack Obama.
I love Barack. Love his power and grace. His calm and his fury. His ability to relate to everyone. His heart. His smarts. His willingness to dream. So I wanted to get involved. Wanted to. But how?
Last week, the kids and I drove to Culver City and I attended an Mama Camp Obama. I met leaders in the Democratic party, field officers who got Obama through the primary, people just like me who have dedicated their time and energy to change OUR world.
I remember one of the speakers mentioned that there were 45 more days till the election and whoosh! A fire was lit under me and I knew now, now, now was the time. It is not too late. Now is the time to act. To get involved.
Now is when you can get in people's head and make your little voice stay there till election day.
This last month could easily decide the election.
No one wants more of the same. We as a country cannot take it and therefore we cannot allow it.
We must act.
Now.
A bumper sticker is not enough.
Forwarding an email is not enough (although I hope you forward this one).
Every vote counts. Every person you talk to.
The next forty two days determine our future.
Commit.
An hour a week at a phone bank.
Better yet: have one at your house with five of your friends.
Be positive. We want to unite this country.
Be a good example to others.
Talk about Obama with enthusiasm and pride.
Don't get suckered into petty arguments about McCain and Palin.
Do this instead:
Visit: www.my.barack.obama.com and join a group or search for events in your area.
Contact your local Obama office right now and volunteer. Check out:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/actioncenter
Don't live in fear of the worst case scenario.
Do something.
Take control.
Let's push Barack up over the top.
I decided to have a Mama Camp Obama right here in the Valley next week so more moms could come and get trained in this grass roots effort.
Here's the link to my event.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gs7htc
(Men are welcome too.)
Please attend and pass on the information about it. In fact pass on all this information. Seeing these people at the training camp made me realize that, as usual, they are just like us. They have kids. They're busy and tired and overwhelmed. But this is our country and our future at stake and nothing less. Every vote counts. They are people just like you who could have thought to themselves, I can't make a difference.
But they are and so can you!
Watch these Women for Obama videos here (very inspiring!):
Women from all walks of life, coming together for Barack Obama:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid900837095/bclid900609698/bctid1757661310
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid900837095/bclid900609698/bctid1317865535
Here's the blog about the event I attended: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/sarahgallagher/gGgY9M
It is NOT too late to get involved. In fact right now is the PERFECT time. Only 42 more days and you won't have to do it anymore. Imagine how you will feel when there is a ground swell of support for Obama and you know YOU made that happen. Now imagine how you'll feel when Obama wins!
Here's the address for the SFV Valley Obama office:
San Fernando Valley Office
14529 Archwood Street
Van Nuys, CA 91405
Phone: 818-995-DEMS
Hours: 10AM - 6PM
Here is a website to make sure you are registered or if you need to request an absentee ballot: www.voteforchange.com
Here is a website to use when making calls or just talking to people. Acquainte yourself with the issues! Stay positive and know your facts!
http://www.fightthesmears.com/
or/and
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
or print out the great one sheet below and attached to this email.
And just for fun, here's a site I love for printing out Obama stuff or posting art to your blog or getting cool wallpaper.
http://www.barackobama.com/downloads/#
Here's the blog about the event I attended: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/sarahgallagher/gGgY9M
Thank you for reading! We can and will do this! Please feel free to email me with questions!
LOVE & PEACE & COURAGE PEOPLE!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Sarah Palin vs. Malcolm X
This is my response to an article on Salon about the republican party lecturing us about sexism, the future of feminism, and of course, Sally Palin. Here's the link to the article and below, my letter.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/11/zombie_feminism/
What's really sad is that it's a woman we feel we can't root for. I always envisioned our first female president to be maternal, wise, witty, deeply instinctual and intelligent, peaceful, strong...not snarky, snot-nosed, insecure, inexperienced...
I want a woman I can root for.
That being said, and if you are still reading, I feel we must as women support all women. Before you think I'm putting flowers in my hair, read on.
It's like this: to be truly free is to be whoever you want to be. Blacks, women, gays...any person who feels un-heard, un-seen, mocked and ignored within the system. That person must be free to reinvent themselves, to be totally and uniquely themselves WITHIN the group. Even if they become someone that brings the group down. That shoves its face in the dirt.
Even if it is someone who brings shame. Even if it is someone who pretends to be something they are not. Even if it is someone who REJECTS THE GROUP.
To be shackled to the need to do what your group would want you to do is not freedom. It's not fairness. It's not liberty.
The right to be different, to be an individual, to write your own story, to make a mistake: they are all human rights. To not fit in. To not fit the bill. To fail.
Every woman has that right.
Every man.
Being a woman on the presidential ticket does not mean you have to be a feminist. Does not mean you have to support women's issues. You don't even have to have a clue.
Irony is that's the promise of the feminist revolution for every person: Self-empowerment. Self-expression. Self-realization. Self-reliance.
Now it's biting us in the ass.
No, we don't want to take her out for cocktails.
No, the suffragists wouldn't have invited her to lunch.
Yes, she makes me cringe. But that's beside the point.
When there is so much on the line, when the game gets this big, it's always this way.
Look at MLK. He had his Malcolm X.
Naomi Wolf has Camille Paglia.
George Bush had his John McCain. And look what they made McCain do.
Castrated him. Let's not do that to Palin.
Let her have her day. Take all the rope she needs.
Listen, someone is always there to tell ya you're doin' it wrong. But SP just be doing it her way.
(Cue Frank.) Her way.
Her fucked up, stinking way.
But that's her right.
And I applaud it.
Now let's get back to solving the real issues like real women do, shall we?
VOTE OBAMA!
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/11/zombie_feminism/
What's really sad is that it's a woman we feel we can't root for. I always envisioned our first female president to be maternal, wise, witty, deeply instinctual and intelligent, peaceful, strong...not snarky, snot-nosed, insecure, inexperienced...
I want a woman I can root for.
That being said, and if you are still reading, I feel we must as women support all women. Before you think I'm putting flowers in my hair, read on.
It's like this: to be truly free is to be whoever you want to be. Blacks, women, gays...any person who feels un-heard, un-seen, mocked and ignored within the system. That person must be free to reinvent themselves, to be totally and uniquely themselves WITHIN the group. Even if they become someone that brings the group down. That shoves its face in the dirt.
Even if it is someone who brings shame. Even if it is someone who pretends to be something they are not. Even if it is someone who REJECTS THE GROUP.
To be shackled to the need to do what your group would want you to do is not freedom. It's not fairness. It's not liberty.
The right to be different, to be an individual, to write your own story, to make a mistake: they are all human rights. To not fit in. To not fit the bill. To fail.
Every woman has that right.
Every man.
Being a woman on the presidential ticket does not mean you have to be a feminist. Does not mean you have to support women's issues. You don't even have to have a clue.
Irony is that's the promise of the feminist revolution for every person: Self-empowerment. Self-expression. Self-realization. Self-reliance.
Now it's biting us in the ass.
No, we don't want to take her out for cocktails.
No, the suffragists wouldn't have invited her to lunch.
Yes, she makes me cringe. But that's beside the point.
When there is so much on the line, when the game gets this big, it's always this way.
Look at MLK. He had his Malcolm X.
Naomi Wolf has Camille Paglia.
George Bush had his John McCain. And look what they made McCain do.
Castrated him. Let's not do that to Palin.
Let her have her day. Take all the rope she needs.
Listen, someone is always there to tell ya you're doin' it wrong. But SP just be doing it her way.
(Cue Frank.) Her way.
Her fucked up, stinking way.
But that's her right.
And I applaud it.
Now let's get back to solving the real issues like real women do, shall we?
VOTE OBAMA!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
You Mean the Wordle to Me
I Quit
I would like to formally announce my retirement.
It was all just getting started but I feel my best is behind me.
And in case you don't know, writing is hard.
That's why writers drink. I have, tonight, seriously considered leaving the house and getting myself some Bushmills. (My favorite liquor.) I don't understand why I don't keep my (favorite) liquor in the house. Everytime I want some whiskey I don't have it. And there is just something a little desperate about buying liquor when you are really, really craving it. Like everyone can see.
Like when I buy ice cream, I think at the convenience store they are thinking, "Here comes that fat girl. Coming to buy ice cream AGAIN. What's she so sad about?"
See it's different if I'm at the grocery store and my cart is full of peaches and beans and ice cream and cucumbers and cereal and whiskey and peanuts and juice boxes. That makes sense.
But to just go buy a bottle of hooch or a pint of ice cream...it's like telegraphing my sorrow to the world.
Ok.
I just realized that is what I'm doing here. Right now. However! To write this, I did not have to put on a bra or go find my shoes or check if I have any cash. (Cause using a debit card to buy a 3.00 carton of ice cream is just a whole other thing.)
So there.
Back to why my cupboards are bare of the essential whiskey.
Today has been a rough day. I set aside the entire day to write about this something-something that is quite emotional for me (this isn't it). Just jotting down some notes on the subject really stirred my pot of insecurity and unloveableness and failure and suddenly I just couldn't deal with anything.
It's okay. It's process. I get that.
Anyway I'm feeling a little better now. And that will get written whenever that gets written.
Still I'd like to sip a little whiskey at my retirement. (Oh, yeah. I guess it won't get written.)
But I have no whiskey.
So instead I ate my weight in chocolate. Peanut butter cups to be exact. So maybe, I'm theorizing, that is why I don't keep whiskey in the house. Cause I'd drink my weight in it just as I have the chocolate.
And I ate my weight in chocolate holed up in bed while reading David Sedaris' new book. And that my friends is why I am quitting this writing business.
Writing makes you sad.
Which makes you want whiskey.
Which you never have.
Which drives you to chocolate.
Which you eat while in bed with the new David Sedaris book.
Which you realize is the funniest thing ever written.
Which means all hope is lost for you in the funny writing department.
So why bother.
I quit.
It was all just getting started but I feel my best is behind me.
And in case you don't know, writing is hard.
That's why writers drink. I have, tonight, seriously considered leaving the house and getting myself some Bushmills. (My favorite liquor.) I don't understand why I don't keep my (favorite) liquor in the house. Everytime I want some whiskey I don't have it. And there is just something a little desperate about buying liquor when you are really, really craving it. Like everyone can see.
Like when I buy ice cream, I think at the convenience store they are thinking, "Here comes that fat girl. Coming to buy ice cream AGAIN. What's she so sad about?"
See it's different if I'm at the grocery store and my cart is full of peaches and beans and ice cream and cucumbers and cereal and whiskey and peanuts and juice boxes. That makes sense.
But to just go buy a bottle of hooch or a pint of ice cream...it's like telegraphing my sorrow to the world.
Ok.
I just realized that is what I'm doing here. Right now. However! To write this, I did not have to put on a bra or go find my shoes or check if I have any cash. (Cause using a debit card to buy a 3.00 carton of ice cream is just a whole other thing.)
So there.
Back to why my cupboards are bare of the essential whiskey.
Today has been a rough day. I set aside the entire day to write about this something-something that is quite emotional for me (this isn't it). Just jotting down some notes on the subject really stirred my pot of insecurity and unloveableness and failure and suddenly I just couldn't deal with anything.
It's okay. It's process. I get that.
Anyway I'm feeling a little better now. And that will get written whenever that gets written.
Still I'd like to sip a little whiskey at my retirement. (Oh, yeah. I guess it won't get written.)
But I have no whiskey.
So instead I ate my weight in chocolate. Peanut butter cups to be exact. So maybe, I'm theorizing, that is why I don't keep whiskey in the house. Cause I'd drink my weight in it just as I have the chocolate.
And I ate my weight in chocolate holed up in bed while reading David Sedaris' new book. And that my friends is why I am quitting this writing business.
Writing makes you sad.
Which makes you want whiskey.
Which you never have.
Which drives you to chocolate.
Which you eat while in bed with the new David Sedaris book.
Which you realize is the funniest thing ever written.
Which means all hope is lost for you in the funny writing department.
So why bother.
I quit.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Part Two - Raining Maitri
This is the second half of my original post but I wanted it to be separate. More people than ever may be reading this blog (ha, ha, I hope...getting ahead of myself?) and I like that but it's scary and it threatens to edit me, change what I want to write. At a time when I am trying to expand my damndest I am exposing myself all the more!!!! Aack!
Oh. Duh.
Right. That's how that works.
So I'm asking you to be patient with me. You might not like it. I have some strong opinions. Could be different than yours. But hey, that's fine. Just know I am trying to break out. And be me.
And be free.
Picking up from last time and jumping off the subject of fear, let's move on:
You (I) try to get to the point where you (I) no longer resist. Ekhart taught us this in "Power of Now." To be present. To not give in to thinking and the urges of the ego.
Dissolve that damn pain body.
Burn off the synapses that go to it.
I got it. I should no longer push against the circumstances of my life. And so I have learned to accept them for what they are. I've given in.
Given up.
Surrendered.
And to some degree and for some time, I kind of tolerated that practice. I practiced. I TRIED. But I can't say I embraced it. I can't say I lived it.
Then over an inexplicable time/divorce, I found myself looking from one mountaintop to the next. I saw that the next goal was to go beyond non-resistance and to be able to welcome pain into my life.
To expect it.
To be curious about it.
To be compassionate.
To lean into the sharp points.
TO NOT BE SCARED.
I had learned this once before. Well, twice before.
I am very fortunate to have two children as well as having had the experience of having my kids at home au naturale.
This was the experience of labor for me.
In my opinion, birthing children is the most under-valued and/yet most-ecstatic experience in modern human history. Birth is to labor, to bleed, to lactate, to provide, to pass, to create, to replicate, to sacrifice your very body and being for the continuation of the species, for your kin, for your kind, for your spawn, for your baby...your BABY.
To love your baby is to know real love.
So you do it all for your baby. You love so much that you can welcome more pain. You can know the experience of going to your end. And then to go past it.
That's to die, isn't it? To pass from one realm to another.
In birth, the woman brings the source of life into this realm. She transports a life from the un-seen, un-knowable place before birth into this bright, fast-moving reality in contrast. Into a modern world through an ancient path. The transportation takes place with grunting, shape-shifting, ripping, expectation blowing, running and hiding, boldness and courage, screaming and crying, laughing and climaxing. A warrior. A goddess. A vessel. Through this: a mystical. material, physical, animal/Godly person arises. A new person. Two new people.
That said. My friends:
I have to ask you.
Why would a woman want to be drugged for that? To not totally be able to feel the most empowering moment possible in life? I think it is a shame that our medical system doubts a woman's ability to manage her pain. That they feel the need to control her. To silence her. To numb her. And sometimes dumb her.
Women can take it. They're smart and strong. She is nature. She is the creator.
She can stare down fear.
Sure, it makes your blood run cold, empties your brain cache and creates you new. But it is a woman's birthright. It is her path.
Birth is an experience that is common throughout the world and over the centuries. Yes. But the opportunity to experience birth for myself was rare.
That's why I made my choice. And it taught me that I can do anything.
I can ask for more pain. I can ride the waves of that pain. Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo. I can bow to the divinity inside of me. I can rely on it. I can let the animal in me take over.
I can present myself: naked and vulnerable, stripped down and eternal. I can beg/scream for deliverance and mercy and strength and all by myself, I can carry my baby and me through death and into life.
Oh. Duh.
Right. That's how that works.
So I'm asking you to be patient with me. You might not like it. I have some strong opinions. Could be different than yours. But hey, that's fine. Just know I am trying to break out. And be me.
And be free.
Picking up from last time and jumping off the subject of fear, let's move on:
You (I) try to get to the point where you (I) no longer resist. Ekhart taught us this in "Power of Now." To be present. To not give in to thinking and the urges of the ego.
Dissolve that damn pain body.
Burn off the synapses that go to it.
I got it. I should no longer push against the circumstances of my life. And so I have learned to accept them for what they are. I've given in.
Given up.
Surrendered.
And to some degree and for some time, I kind of tolerated that practice. I practiced. I TRIED. But I can't say I embraced it. I can't say I lived it.
Then over an inexplicable time/divorce, I found myself looking from one mountaintop to the next. I saw that the next goal was to go beyond non-resistance and to be able to welcome pain into my life.
To expect it.
To be curious about it.
To be compassionate.
To lean into the sharp points.
TO NOT BE SCARED.
I had learned this once before. Well, twice before.
I am very fortunate to have two children as well as having had the experience of having my kids at home au naturale.
This was the experience of labor for me.
In my opinion, birthing children is the most under-valued and/yet most-ecstatic experience in modern human history. Birth is to labor, to bleed, to lactate, to provide, to pass, to create, to replicate, to sacrifice your very body and being for the continuation of the species, for your kin, for your kind, for your spawn, for your baby...your BABY.
To love your baby is to know real love.
So you do it all for your baby. You love so much that you can welcome more pain. You can know the experience of going to your end. And then to go past it.
That's to die, isn't it? To pass from one realm to another.
In birth, the woman brings the source of life into this realm. She transports a life from the un-seen, un-knowable place before birth into this bright, fast-moving reality in contrast. Into a modern world through an ancient path. The transportation takes place with grunting, shape-shifting, ripping, expectation blowing, running and hiding, boldness and courage, screaming and crying, laughing and climaxing. A warrior. A goddess. A vessel. Through this: a mystical. material, physical, animal/Godly person arises. A new person. Two new people.
That said. My friends:
I have to ask you.
Why would a woman want to be drugged for that? To not totally be able to feel the most empowering moment possible in life? I think it is a shame that our medical system doubts a woman's ability to manage her pain. That they feel the need to control her. To silence her. To numb her. And sometimes dumb her.
Women can take it. They're smart and strong. She is nature. She is the creator.
She can stare down fear.
Sure, it makes your blood run cold, empties your brain cache and creates you new. But it is a woman's birthright. It is her path.
Birth is an experience that is common throughout the world and over the centuries. Yes. But the opportunity to experience birth for myself was rare.
That's why I made my choice. And it taught me that I can do anything.
I can ask for more pain. I can ride the waves of that pain. Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo. I can bow to the divinity inside of me. I can rely on it. I can let the animal in me take over.
I can present myself: naked and vulnerable, stripped down and eternal. I can beg/scream for deliverance and mercy and strength and all by myself, I can carry my baby and me through death and into life.
Raining Maitri Part 1
My friend TD and I "i-chatted" (or something) on FACEBOOK today.
What the hell is this? Or should I say what fresh hell is this?
In some ways, it's like that nightmare I used to have in college where every boy I had ever kissed suddenly converged at a party all at once and they met and shared stories and realized they'd all slept with me and as I turn around in slo-mo, I see them all staring at me.
That's FACEBOOK!
(I must say, and I don't want to break the mood, that OVERALL I'm friggin loving it. Ya'll got to do it. Seriously? Phillip S??? Crazy!)
Back to the cautious mood...
Tonight we're dealing with insecurity, fear, happiness, self-acceptance. All of it. For good. We're figuring it all out.
Cause you see...some of you know too well cause you actually have to deal with me, I'm a woman who hasn't written in like months and I lost my one day a week nanny/love Rosa (Saint Rosa) (Am I giving you any idea what this woman meant to me???) and it has been summer. Summer. Summer. Summer. HSM2!
Moms? High five. Summer sucks. Slap. Slap. Slap.
Oh yeah, back to TD, a mom friend on Facebook.
So TD and I were i-chatting and she was talking about how she feels/fears she'll have to get a "real job" (she's of course had the very real job of mothering her son) but she feels she'll have to get another job and then she won't be able to pursue her dreams of having a production company.
I totally get where she's coming from. It feels like there's so little time left you just want to get there.
I live it too. I teach yoga classes, looks like I might be selling Arbonne, doing whatever it takes to try to pull something together financially but damnit that's just not the whole of it. Not the whole of who I am. There's a much bigger picture. I want to write and direct films. Nothing in my life except the words that I type here resemble that possibility in any way. (Chew on that.)
I will be a director. I am a writer. Baby steps. Whatever. Being on a time table? What-ever.
We think we're chasing this dream and it's part of a different life and once that dream comes true we'll have this "other" life: the dream life.
it's really hard to see that there's just one life. All ya get. You better get busy living, or get busy dying. All the little things, the seemingly abstract things are all on "the path." It's all to pursue the dream. When your dream is living. Live it all up. It's messy. It's funky.
It even smells funky. (I'm in the throes of potty training.)
But it's human and divine.
Let me ask you this?
Do you see how we always seem to default to the position, to the observation, to the analysis (sweet analysis) that beats us up the most?
I'm unlovable.
Well that's mine.
Go get your own.
And how is beating ourselves up getting us any closer to our dream?
Earlier this year, I decided to try to get some more yoga classes going. I rented a small space for a couple hours a week (I pre-paid for three weeks) in a cool dance studio in North Hollywood. I was very excited. I emailed everyone (everyone!) I knew and invited the clients I already had and put up posters and made some calls.
Very excited.
First time: no one shows.
Ouch.
That's ok. It was good to have a practice run.
Second time I email, call, but no one shows.
My clients don't show.
My best friends don't show.
I'm fucking bombing at YOGA.
Oh yeah. This was gonna be grist for the mill, this was going to be good meat to chew. The ego does luh-huv to chew.
And mill sometimes. Mill the grist. Grist grain. Wheat. Whatever.
So I'm in the car, driving (milling) to the third class and I know, I KNOW, no one is coming to this class.
I am raining shit on myself.
I am worthless. Stupid. I'm humiliated and I have to go cancel this time with the studio and everyone there KNOWS no one came to my class.
What is wrong with me?
And I was rushing to get there in the car, in the damn traffic on the 101, in the shit rain, when...WHEN...
i was struck by the idea that "This is my life." It was like a whisper and a slap in the face. It was new information yet something I always knew. "This is my life."
Why in MY life would I do this to MYSELF?
My beautiful self.
I must take a commercial break and say that prior to this incident I accepted for certain, partly from watching "The Secret" (say what you will, it changed me, I highly recommend the DVD)--
I accepted that my life is entirely my creation. I already believed this. And that is a joyful thing. A burden at times and a challenge every other time? Yes. But joyful. It's Good News my friend. Good news.
"Ain't that news? Ain't that good news? Man, I know that's good news." (That man can sing. We are soul brothers.)
Okay, wrap this up. Mama's glass needs a re-fill.
Okay.
My friends, my sentient and holy beings:
Don't do this to your self!
Love yourself!
I love you!
Every single one of ya!
Make this YOUR life.
Speak YOUR life.
Live YOUR life.
Claim YOUR life.
Your life is this world all around you.
Very vast too. It's nice that way.
And you created it.
You continually re-create it.
Make it exactly as you want it to be.
Did I want to live in a world of humiliation, shame and judgement?
No.
Ok. Great...snap...now I don't.
Just like that.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
This is your life.
Joy. Joy. Joy.
End of story.
I walked into the dance studio with my head held high. So, the yoga classes didn't work out. Okay. That's the end of the story. Don't need to add to it.
And guess what?
What?
The people at the dance studio were lovely. And warm. They treated me as I would like to be treated (hhmmmm...).
There was no judgement on their side. It didn't work out, they said. They actually SAID that.
So.
End of story. They wished me luck and I went on my merry way and that was that. I was a changed woman for it.
And it hasn't left me. I can still, when I remember to, just click into that. Into that feeling I had in the car.
Peace.
When I feel some daily (ok, minutely) insecurity or embarrasment or God forbid, judgement, I can step back and say: "Your Life, Woman."
I project traffic on the fucking freeway and I'm stressed and running late: "Choose Your Life Riley." (I know.)
I eat like shit all day and I'm fat and I'm a lousy mother and aack! the house is a mess?
"Fucking Sue Me, This Is My Life."
So...I'm leaving it there people. Part Two of this strange saga manana!
Goodnight.
Check out a little thing I found tonight. She's eloquent and one of my heroes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s-rRMUl04I
Love you.
What the hell is this? Or should I say what fresh hell is this?
In some ways, it's like that nightmare I used to have in college where every boy I had ever kissed suddenly converged at a party all at once and they met and shared stories and realized they'd all slept with me and as I turn around in slo-mo, I see them all staring at me.
That's FACEBOOK!
(I must say, and I don't want to break the mood, that OVERALL I'm friggin loving it. Ya'll got to do it. Seriously? Phillip S??? Crazy!)
Back to the cautious mood...
Tonight we're dealing with insecurity, fear, happiness, self-acceptance. All of it. For good. We're figuring it all out.
Cause you see...some of you know too well cause you actually have to deal with me, I'm a woman who hasn't written in like months and I lost my one day a week nanny/love Rosa (Saint Rosa) (Am I giving you any idea what this woman meant to me???) and it has been summer. Summer. Summer. Summer. HSM2!
Moms? High five. Summer sucks. Slap. Slap. Slap.
Oh yeah, back to TD, a mom friend on Facebook.
So TD and I were i-chatting and she was talking about how she feels/fears she'll have to get a "real job" (she's of course had the very real job of mothering her son) but she feels she'll have to get another job and then she won't be able to pursue her dreams of having a production company.
I totally get where she's coming from. It feels like there's so little time left you just want to get there.
I live it too. I teach yoga classes, looks like I might be selling Arbonne, doing whatever it takes to try to pull something together financially but damnit that's just not the whole of it. Not the whole of who I am. There's a much bigger picture. I want to write and direct films. Nothing in my life except the words that I type here resemble that possibility in any way. (Chew on that.)
I will be a director. I am a writer. Baby steps. Whatever. Being on a time table? What-ever.
We think we're chasing this dream and it's part of a different life and once that dream comes true we'll have this "other" life: the dream life.
it's really hard to see that there's just one life. All ya get. You better get busy living, or get busy dying. All the little things, the seemingly abstract things are all on "the path." It's all to pursue the dream. When your dream is living. Live it all up. It's messy. It's funky.
It even smells funky. (I'm in the throes of potty training.)
But it's human and divine.
Let me ask you this?
Do you see how we always seem to default to the position, to the observation, to the analysis (sweet analysis) that beats us up the most?
I'm unlovable.
Well that's mine.
Go get your own.
And how is beating ourselves up getting us any closer to our dream?
Earlier this year, I decided to try to get some more yoga classes going. I rented a small space for a couple hours a week (I pre-paid for three weeks) in a cool dance studio in North Hollywood. I was very excited. I emailed everyone (everyone!) I knew and invited the clients I already had and put up posters and made some calls.
Very excited.
First time: no one shows.
Ouch.
That's ok. It was good to have a practice run.
Second time I email, call, but no one shows.
My clients don't show.
My best friends don't show.
I'm fucking bombing at YOGA.
Oh yeah. This was gonna be grist for the mill, this was going to be good meat to chew. The ego does luh-huv to chew.
And mill sometimes. Mill the grist. Grist grain. Wheat. Whatever.
So I'm in the car, driving (milling) to the third class and I know, I KNOW, no one is coming to this class.
I am raining shit on myself.
I am worthless. Stupid. I'm humiliated and I have to go cancel this time with the studio and everyone there KNOWS no one came to my class.
What is wrong with me?
And I was rushing to get there in the car, in the damn traffic on the 101, in the shit rain, when...WHEN...
i was struck by the idea that "This is my life." It was like a whisper and a slap in the face. It was new information yet something I always knew. "This is my life."
Why in MY life would I do this to MYSELF?
My beautiful self.
I must take a commercial break and say that prior to this incident I accepted for certain, partly from watching "The Secret" (say what you will, it changed me, I highly recommend the DVD)--
I accepted that my life is entirely my creation. I already believed this. And that is a joyful thing. A burden at times and a challenge every other time? Yes. But joyful. It's Good News my friend. Good news.
"Ain't that news? Ain't that good news? Man, I know that's good news." (That man can sing. We are soul brothers.)
Okay, wrap this up. Mama's glass needs a re-fill.
Okay.
My friends, my sentient and holy beings:
Don't do this to your self!
Love yourself!
I love you!
Every single one of ya!
Make this YOUR life.
Speak YOUR life.
Live YOUR life.
Claim YOUR life.
Your life is this world all around you.
Very vast too. It's nice that way.
And you created it.
You continually re-create it.
Make it exactly as you want it to be.
Did I want to live in a world of humiliation, shame and judgement?
No.
Ok. Great...snap...now I don't.
Just like that.
Snap! Snap! Snap!
This is your life.
Joy. Joy. Joy.
End of story.
I walked into the dance studio with my head held high. So, the yoga classes didn't work out. Okay. That's the end of the story. Don't need to add to it.
And guess what?
What?
The people at the dance studio were lovely. And warm. They treated me as I would like to be treated (hhmmmm...).
There was no judgement on their side. It didn't work out, they said. They actually SAID that.
So.
End of story. They wished me luck and I went on my merry way and that was that. I was a changed woman for it.
And it hasn't left me. I can still, when I remember to, just click into that. Into that feeling I had in the car.
Peace.
When I feel some daily (ok, minutely) insecurity or embarrasment or God forbid, judgement, I can step back and say: "Your Life, Woman."
I project traffic on the fucking freeway and I'm stressed and running late: "Choose Your Life Riley." (I know.)
I eat like shit all day and I'm fat and I'm a lousy mother and aack! the house is a mess?
"Fucking Sue Me, This Is My Life."
So...I'm leaving it there people. Part Two of this strange saga manana!
Goodnight.
Check out a little thing I found tonight. She's eloquent and one of my heroes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s-rRMUl04I
Love you.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Well, Hello Dolly!
I have to get this blog written in May or there will be NO May posts. Holy canoli. Where did the time go?
I really have no good reason for not blogging. Let's blame Dancing with the Stars and American Idol and leave it at that (damn you David Cook!).
Where to start?
A non-sequitor.
I had the most amazing experience on iTunes the other night. I looked up the 1978 compilation and every song, I mean EVERY song moved me to the core, hit me like a ton of bricks and transported me to a different time and place. It was like time traveling. I give you Jefferson Starship's "Count on Me" and Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch" and Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line" as some deeper cuts. This is but a tip of the iceberg my friends. 1978 was an unusually rich year for all kinds of music.
I've always known that at a young age I had a watershed of musical interest. Suddenly, I was aware of all the songs on the radio. I began to understand the emotional pull of music (thanks in large part to the "Saturday Night Fever" album I bought my mom for Mother's Day - for MOTHER'S DAY - hilarious!). I must have been 9 years old because the music of 1978 just SENDS ME. I suggest you check it out.
It's been fun.
I've also been cleaning a lot. A LOT. Along with that comes the admission that my house has been DIRTY. You see, first off, I can longer afford my twice a month housekeeper. So a few months of my doing the cleaning on my own has caught up with me. Then we got a dog. Then my kids had the stomach bug that kept them going at both ends. There was a week (those who are queasy of stomach might want to skip ahead) when I had my hands in the puke and poop of both my kids, my cat AND my dog. Enough already.
I feel almost obsessed with cleaning my house. Like the acceptance of a little dirt I had been working on suddenly plummeted and my baseboards, my baseboards, my baseboards! Who painted them black? Is that DOG HAIR? Is that DOG HAIR in my CEILING VENTS? Oh, and then I got cockroaches. You know how I had all that stuff in storage and then sitting in my garage for a year? Well, I finally got it put away and I was so happy and relieved for like a week, cause then it turns out all my stuff came back from the storage unit with cockroach eggs. Yes it did.
So I had to pack all that stuff back up and PUT IT BACK IN MY GARAGE so the nice man in the mask could come spray my house with poison.
While I was packing up my kitchen at 2am in a fog of bitterness and resistance all I could do was pray. I mean, Jesus! I don't want to do this, but I have to do this, but I don't want to do this. GRRRR. And then I had to slap myself. What am I COMPLAINING about? Moving all the wonderful stuff I own from my wonderful house to my wonderful garage and back again, okay...and back again?
Sometimes I just don't know about me. But, nevertheless, there I was. All ego. All disconnected. I was pissed. So I prayed. I prayed and packed. I gave it up. Gave it up to those without stuff and houses and garages.
And finally, I had the break-thru. I am cleaning up a lot of messes.
Sometimes if I take that one refrain that goes on and on in my head and just listen to it, really listen to it, without emotion (whining) and resistance, just listen to it objectively, the message can get through.
Yes.
I am cleaning up a lot of messes.
Yes.
I have a lot of messes to clean up.
Yes.
Things are a mess.
Yes. They are. They still are. And that's okay. This is a large mess to clean up.
Luckily I have a lot of experience cleaning messes and I can clean up this one. It just takes time.
Oh, that's my kicker. It takes time. It's a process. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'm listening now. It takes time. It's a process. I have a big mess to clean up. My life right now? It's about cleaning up messes. Got it.
But, I did finally get smart and put on a pair of rubber gloves so my hands can still look pretty. You don't need to have red, chapped, old-looking hands just cause your life is a mess now do you?
No you don't.
I really have no good reason for not blogging. Let's blame Dancing with the Stars and American Idol and leave it at that (damn you David Cook!).
Where to start?
A non-sequitor.
I had the most amazing experience on iTunes the other night. I looked up the 1978 compilation and every song, I mean EVERY song moved me to the core, hit me like a ton of bricks and transported me to a different time and place. It was like time traveling. I give you Jefferson Starship's "Count on Me" and Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch" and Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line" as some deeper cuts. This is but a tip of the iceberg my friends. 1978 was an unusually rich year for all kinds of music.
I've always known that at a young age I had a watershed of musical interest. Suddenly, I was aware of all the songs on the radio. I began to understand the emotional pull of music (thanks in large part to the "Saturday Night Fever" album I bought my mom for Mother's Day - for MOTHER'S DAY - hilarious!). I must have been 9 years old because the music of 1978 just SENDS ME. I suggest you check it out.
It's been fun.
I've also been cleaning a lot. A LOT. Along with that comes the admission that my house has been DIRTY. You see, first off, I can longer afford my twice a month housekeeper. So a few months of my doing the cleaning on my own has caught up with me. Then we got a dog. Then my kids had the stomach bug that kept them going at both ends. There was a week (those who are queasy of stomach might want to skip ahead) when I had my hands in the puke and poop of both my kids, my cat AND my dog. Enough already.
I feel almost obsessed with cleaning my house. Like the acceptance of a little dirt I had been working on suddenly plummeted and my baseboards, my baseboards, my baseboards! Who painted them black? Is that DOG HAIR? Is that DOG HAIR in my CEILING VENTS? Oh, and then I got cockroaches. You know how I had all that stuff in storage and then sitting in my garage for a year? Well, I finally got it put away and I was so happy and relieved for like a week, cause then it turns out all my stuff came back from the storage unit with cockroach eggs. Yes it did.
So I had to pack all that stuff back up and PUT IT BACK IN MY GARAGE so the nice man in the mask could come spray my house with poison.
While I was packing up my kitchen at 2am in a fog of bitterness and resistance all I could do was pray. I mean, Jesus! I don't want to do this, but I have to do this, but I don't want to do this. GRRRR. And then I had to slap myself. What am I COMPLAINING about? Moving all the wonderful stuff I own from my wonderful house to my wonderful garage and back again, okay...and back again?
Sometimes I just don't know about me. But, nevertheless, there I was. All ego. All disconnected. I was pissed. So I prayed. I prayed and packed. I gave it up. Gave it up to those without stuff and houses and garages.
And finally, I had the break-thru. I am cleaning up a lot of messes.
Sometimes if I take that one refrain that goes on and on in my head and just listen to it, really listen to it, without emotion (whining) and resistance, just listen to it objectively, the message can get through.
Yes.
I am cleaning up a lot of messes.
Yes.
I have a lot of messes to clean up.
Yes.
Things are a mess.
Yes. They are. They still are. And that's okay. This is a large mess to clean up.
Luckily I have a lot of experience cleaning messes and I can clean up this one. It just takes time.
Oh, that's my kicker. It takes time. It's a process. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'm listening now. It takes time. It's a process. I have a big mess to clean up. My life right now? It's about cleaning up messes. Got it.
But, I did finally get smart and put on a pair of rubber gloves so my hands can still look pretty. You don't need to have red, chapped, old-looking hands just cause your life is a mess now do you?
No you don't.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)