The other night when we returned from our Sunday family dinner, Max was undone. It a full weekend of lights and latkes, hockey and treehouses, Grinches and pancakes and too much sparkling apple cider. He was tired. But it was more than that too.
This time of year seems to stir it up–the sense of what we don’t have. Is it the Christmas list making? Or is it the darkness that descends way too early and lasts way too long? What is it that brings up the greatest longings? The biggest needs and wants?
He sobbed in the kitchen trying to explain. “I hate that you guys divorced. I hate that Papi doesn’t live here. I hate that I don’t get to see my dad except for a few hours a week.” (I know baby, I hate it all too). “I hate that I have no brothers and sisters. I hate that I feel so left out. I hate that I am the only one without a dad at these things.”
It all started when Max got his feelings hurt by someone he adores. When he was literally shoved into a corner. It happens, the shoving, life is full of unintended bumps and pushes. They in and of themselves may be no big deal but they can bring up the deepest of wounds, can stir up dragon and gremlins.
Long after he had fallen asleep, cried out and complete, I too grieved all that we have grieved over and over again and wondered how in the world to stent a broken heart? This unhealed wound, this sense of being not quite whole, makes him so vulnerable. And nothing undoes me like this, his pain exposed.
There is something about the holidays that make it worse. The endless Christmas specials with their perfect families. Just recently, we saw not one, but two stories with a magic happy ending when mom and dad got back together and families reunited just in time to open gifts.
I have spent much of the last few years knitting us a tribe, patching together our broken hearts with a community, filling the empty places with laughter and food. Inviting ourselves in to other people’s families and claiming them as our own. We have created something beautiful out of something that was broken and that is a miracle. But it can’t replace that that bright shiny big family Max always wanted, or dare I say it, that I always wanted too. I need to keep reminding myself not to attach labels or expectations to this that we built. For while this community is many things, it is also not many things. I can lose the joy of it while I point out everything that it isn’t.
Tonight I curled up under covers in Max’s red bed and together we talked about the pros and cons of being an only child in a house with a single mom. There is no one to play with when Mom does her chores, her work, the cleaning and laundry. There is no one to pinch hit when mama is busy which makes him feel lonely and a little bit unsure. The house can feel big and empty and life can seem like too much with just us chickens. There is noone to interrupt us while we read for hours on end together–books out loud, one more chapter, why not? There is no one to take away his mama when he is sick or sad or simply just needing the attention. This bed can feel just the right size for a boy and his mom and two favorite books. Truth is, nothing is all one thing and every family can feel broken and whole all at the same time.
Our family at the holidays is a meditation. About seeing. Not what is missing but what is really there, right at this moment–ugly, beautiful, broken but real, and shiny and full of goodness. Our life is a meditation about not comparing what we have against check-lists that promise unending happiness but always disappoint. As I lay in bed long after little eyes had closed, I wondered about how to move him from longing and grief to gratitude and appreciation. I know that it starts with me and my practice. Somehow it always does. He learned to speak by emulating me. Maybe he can learn to let go of wanting by watching me too. And yet, tonight, I light a little candle on my altar, say a prayer to the universe, to make it a tiny bit easier, a little bit smoother to let go and want nothing for Christmas but what I have so that he too can learn just how whole he already is.
Before I post again, I needed to stop to offer a huge thank you to the many people who have stopped by this blog, emailed, called, or facebooked in the last few days. Your kind, loving, beautiful words are a gift.
The overwhelming emotion for this week has been great gratitude for the gift of Jenni that we all shared, that indeed we all continue to share. Jenni lives on in all us, whenever we reach out to stranger, whenever we are courageous enough to be raw, and real, when we speak truth to power, when we find humor, grace and beauty in the most difficult of situations. Jenni lives on when we hug our children, when sing at the top of our lungs, when we make our art (whether it is with paper, dance, music, paint, fabric, clay or words). Jenni is with us when we cry at night, when we worry about our babies, when we contemplate the suffering in our homes, our communities, the world. Jenni is with us when we giggle with our girlfriends, when we pour “a cuppa” and sit for tea with our sisters, when we tell our stories over and over again in the hopes that we will find healing there. If we follow our stories, we will find as that in the end, there is only love–love so big and messy and wide and deep. That was the lesson of Jenni.
I have been holding a small moment of silence over here for Jen, until she be laid to rest. But now it is time to keep doing what Jenni and I enjoyed doing together–writing, connecting, watching, witnessing, living and growing.
I will. I will. I will. Everyday I will.
Will you?
My keyboard is missing a “g”.
A few weeks ago, when my friend Anne was visiting, Max and her daughter were running around the living room while I typed away. They were playing a game that involved a magic wand made from a stick they had found in the yard. Something slipped, and the wand flew out of Max’s hand, landed on my computer and suddenly there is a big hole in the middle of my keyboard. It was no one’s fault. There was no one to blame.
Sigh.
And so it goes. Isn’t it true, that life comes at us this way. We are going along and suddenly, without warning, a hole appears right in the middle of something that until that very minute felt…well whole. Suddenly, things that felt so easy and natural, like typinG thinGs become a little bit harder. And we don’t know quite what to do, what to make of it. We work around it. We try desperately to glue the “g” key back. We just give up and close up the computer.
Why the heck am I talking about my missing G? Only because it is missing and I feel its absence. And because its a metaphor. Because writing about the real stuff, is too raw right now.
The friend I used to talk to everyday who is transforming into pure love, moving from one world to the next. I miss her voice. The friend who shared my home, who has left to build her own. I miss her touch. But more than that, so many of the bricks, the ones who formed the foundation of my life as a single mom, they are shifting. I feel a dismantling but, its not destructive. More like creating space for something new to be born.
But I miss them. I miss them all. Even as I applaud whatever positive is moving them from our orbit, I miss them. Even as I mourn whatever difficulty pulls them away I let them go.
It is scary and hard. I wonder how they hell I am going to to keep typing without the “g”. With this big hole in the keyboard of my life. I wonder how I am going to keep writing my stories. But look! I am doing it. I am doing it. I am somehow, nevertheless, quite certainly doing it.
I am swimming in words. They trickle down and slide down my forehead, blur my vision, drip down my nose. Words are streaming down on me these days, like the heavy October rains. This is what happens when I don’t write.
Three weeks ago, I decided to take a break. Not really consciously. But I decided it would be OK if I didn’t write because I felt it was time to turn my attention to other things. Not big things. But important things. After a summer on the go, after years of prioritizing my social life over my home, after weeks of birthday celebration, my intuition told me that I needed the slowness, the easiness, the aloneness of simply just living. Not writing about living. Not thinking about living. Just washing dishes. Packing lunches. Taking walks. Reading to my boy. I told myself I would write if I had time, but no pressure. Just for a week or so. The blog would hold.
And then my internet broke. I guess the universe thought I needed a bit more of a break than a week.
Its been most wonderful, this respite. It was so nice letting go of that judging voice that says: “OK girly…get to your computer and write something.” I loved being able to silence the little supportive but annoying voice that said, “have you made time for your morning pages today? If you want your writing to grow you need to spend time writing”
I spent my extra minutes feeling on top of the bills, cleaning the dishes, not feeling guilty about a thousand other things that seem to pile up while I sit here at this computer. I even made some progress at learning to play the F-chord. Its been a productive time here at chez Meg.
But sometime late last week, I noticed that suddenly words were falling around me in the supermarket. They were chasing me in the car. They were piling up like the dirty laundry that was no longer littering my bathroom floor. Random phrases became stuck in my head like songs. I would repeat them over and over again. I missed writing. Really missed it. I kept telling myself, you don’t need the internet to write. But I had equated not having the internet with not writing and it felt good to be on vacation, even as I found myself falling slowly apart.
I am glad to say that today my internet is back and my self imposed hiatus is over. The technician was 4 hours late but here I am, better late than never. I am happy to be at the computer again.
I am awash in words that don’t yet make sense–there are so many stories, none fully formed that are begging for me to play with them.
Mostly, I just wanted to say HI. This is me waving. Shyly, perhaps. But it sure is nice to be back.
Sometimes life feels like a merry-go-round.
Same struggles
Same dreams and ideas
Same excuses for why not
Same exercises to unstick oneself
Same ambivalence, frustration
Same heartbreaks
Same fights
Same questions without answers
Its one big long walk around in a circle, over and over and over the same terrain
Same damn walk in the same familiar woods
Does this mean that I am lost?
Or does it mean I am found over and over again?
Or does it simply mean that this place, this walk, this life, this small patch of earth I tread upon is where I am right now?
Maybe it means nothing at all but this.
I am running out of stories…
I am running out of hope…
I am running out of excuses…
I am running out of breath.
I am indeed running and all I have
is this the pounding of my footsteps along the same old beaten path
Its the soundtrack of my life, these footsteps.
Once upon a time I went to walk a labyrinth. It was made of stones in a mowed meadow. I visited this June after weeks of summer rains. The grass had grown. The stones had sunk into the mud. It was not clear, anymore, which way the path really went. I literally walked around and around the same path over and over again,–stuck in a circle never moving further in or out. Breaking all my expectations about labyrinths. Just going round and round and round.
I would have circled for hours in the same funk I can touch right now. But I got down on my hands and knees and felt the way, felt for stones, hidden or buried, that might point the right way. I couldn’t see the path but I knew that with my nose down on the ground, with my knees dirty, with my perspective shifted I might just find it. I did. I crawled all the way into the center of that labyrinth that day.
On my knees in Silver Spring, in the mud and grass, feeling along for the slight turn of a stone to show me the way to go next. I may write about it more concretely one of these days, the fact that I have identified a dream but I am flummoxed about where to go next. I may write about the need for a practical solution. For for now I write about being dizzy and going round and round in the faith that one day I will naturally simply know where to go next.
“Its all bullshit”, I said as I slammed the pots into the sink. Tears dripping down my nose. Nothing had happened, so the tears seemed absurd, but maybe that was the point.
Big shifts are taking place in my heart but they are so small. They are the kind of changes that can only be captured by the words…”and then she grew up”. I am finding that unlike the divorce or learning to parent, or discovering my community in this round of the adventure there is no drama. There is no crescendo or aha moments. There is no story worth telling. I keep asking her, my teacher, WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO. She smiles at me and says this time there is no doing.
This time there is just me–learning to feel unconditionally loved–learning to love myself as fiercely as I love my tribe. Learning to be my own rock without letting that rock become a wall. Learning that I can drink my fill from a bottomless well–there is no needing to ask permission or earn my way there. Its is there for me–and it is there for you too.
Learning to receive love…Its not about doing anything at all. Its simply about being.
This can be excruciatingly difficult. And I can’t explain why. Giving up all the stories about why I can’t or don’t deserve or shouldn’t try…Giving up the conditions…”I will be lovable/worthy/accepted when…”, it can set a girl in a tizzy. Its a series of explosion that is knocking down a life time of rules that somehow made it all safe–that set up the game–and gave me a plan. Its pushing my buttons. I am resisting in every way I know how.
Getting rid of the doing as a condition of being loved. It can drive a girl to exclaim that its all bullshit and slam some pots into the sink and wash them.
And then, with tears and pots both dried, there is nothing to do but admit its probably not bullshit afterall.
Sitting in meditation a lot here this week. And simply settling into a practice of doing nothing big or bold or magical but rather simply what needs to be done–Folding the laundry. Sweeping the floor. Paying the bills and shredding the papers. Shopping for groceries and putting gas in the car. Returning the library books. Going to the pool and coming back home again. Going to work. Eating. And kissing Max goodnight.
And noticing, tiny, almost imperceptible shifts that feel like earthquakes…
How do you open up to the love of the universe? How do you stop the endless tap dance that insists we need to hit the performance marks to be loved? How do you give yourself permission to settle into the lap of the world and be held? One breath at a time. Just one breath at a time.
I have been in a bit of a funk lately. I have been banging around and grouchy and feeling stuck and unsure and not quite clear on what’s next. I have been feeling so powerless.
For so so long, after Juan left and I became a single parent, the goal has been simple: Survive. Just get through it.
And then, the goal was different, but simple still: Get through it with joy. And great love. And gratitude. And peace of mind.
Learning to do both of these things rearranged the furniture in my soul quite a bit. I learned a lot about relinquishing control, riding the waves of life as it came at me, going with the flow and acceptance. I learned to breathe through whatever came and to not focus too far into the future. I have learned to let go of control and to appreciate the unexpected gifts that come when it all goes wrong. These have all been good lessons. I am happier for having learned them.
But something else happened in that healing from the divorce. An unintentional consequence of my exuberance to let go. If you would have told me even 6 months ago that I would be saying this now, I would have told you you were crazy. But now in the light of day that comes when life is stable and normal and calm I can see it plain as day. I got used so used to giving in I somehow crossed a magic line. Somehow I equated acceptance with feeling powerless and I got so used to the feeling, I actually started to believe it was true.
As anyone who has been through a divorce can tell you, it is an exercise at realizing the limits of one’s power–or to be more accurate one’s power to control the outcome. Slowly but surely I woke up to the bitter truth that I was powerless to save my marriage and my vision of how it would all be. I could try and try, but no matter what I did, we had no happy ending. No matter what I did, or what I said, this horrible thing was rolling along anyway. I felt deflated by the process. Over the course of the next several years there would be financial problems I couldn’t solve, because they required my ex-husband to do something he didn’t want or couldn’t do. There were these moments when Juan promised to come spend time with Max but didn’t show and no matter how I flung my mama bear body, I couldn’t stop the waves of grief and hurt that crashed over the tiny boy’s heart. So much has come at us, Max and me, so much that we couldn’t control, I just stopped believing that I had any power to do anything other than react. We lived in the moment, breathed, did the best we could and we survived, laughed and loved.
I have spent the better part of the last 4-5 years reacting. Riding the waves and rolling with the punches. I have done it with grace if I must say so myself but I somehow lost touch with the confidence I once had–the confidence that I could actually make something I want to happen…well…happen.
The fact that I would ever allow myself to drift in this direction is shocking to me. I am honestly baffled. I am confused about how a woman such as me would arrive in this place of feeling so unable to do more than get through each day. I had no idea it was happening and yet, here I am, with eyes wide open, realizing that all this time that in an effort to save my sanity I lost my sense of power. Perhaps I even willingly let it go.
There is a fine balance, I am learning, between feeling I need to be in control and feeling powerful. There is a difference that is subtle but critical. Needing to be in control attaches to outcomes. Power however derives from the deep knowing that what you do matters, even if it doesn’t lead to the outcome you had hoped.
Power is the belief that its worth trying. Worth doing. No matter what happens.
It took having a dream, and deciding to make it true to bring it all to the surface.
And so now, there is some more rearranging of soul furniture to do. I need to touch that power again, and practice feeling powerful, even as I stay rooted in a non-attachment to outcomes. This feels like tricky spiritual gymnastics, a subtle dance I am not sure how to master. I suppose it’s an exercise of swinging between the extremes, practicing, until the balance is found.
I am not yet sure about how to reclaim my power. What do you do to claim yours?
Say yes to adventure, even when you are not quite sure how to start. Say yes to the journey because maybe, just maybe declaring the start of the trip will somehow make the path appear. Say yes, because until YES is bellowed loud, it seems like it all could get canceled anyway. Say YES because YES reveals how we tell ourselves no all the time.
No sooner than I came out with my healer’s dream, I found myself a little stuck.
Now what? I wondered.
And suddenly, in the treatment room, during my own acupuncture session, the what appeared. My healer’s journey starts with myself and with a wound so big and huge that it threatens to swallow me and my sweet little dream up in it.
Its the wound that I keep so neat and tidy, underneath a flesh colored bandaid. I have hidden it from so many, especially those closest to me. I have covered it over so neatly and prettily that I was able to ignore it, pretend its not there. I fool everyone around me too.
Saying yes and deciding it was time to start making things happen is what ripped it I wide open.
Its the hurt that comes from my belief that I won’t get my needs met. It is the ache that results from the belief that I will always need to settle for something almost nice enough, and be content with it. It is the soreness in my heart where I tell myself that I should take my portion of happiness however small and say, “Thank you very much”, That I should not ask for too much (that I won’t get it anyway) and that good girls aren’t greedy.
For so long, I have been afraid to ask for too much. Afraid because I thought that I wouldn’t get it anyway and the disappointment would be crushing. Afraid because I thought that I would be scorned, laughed at, ridiculed for daring to believe anyone would give me what I need. “Can you believe she thought she was so (deserving, smart, lovable, worthy?” I hear them chuckle. I am afraid that if I dared ask for my dreams to come true, the abundance in my life, the goodness and richness and beauty would all evaporate. So I sat in gratitude for what came my way and told myself not to dare think about asking for one stitch more.
Over the years, I have disguised this wound from so many, and even from myself. The wanting and the believing that the wanting will never be satisfied left me feeling like I had a giant hole in my gut.
I have mis-used the language of Buddhism to console my little wounded heart and to keep it in check. I would think about desire and suffering and attachment and translate their lessons as “Don’t bother to dream too big girl” I tell myself. “Those dreams are not for you. Give up your wants and desires. Simply say thank you for what you have.”
In an effort to swallow disappointment I stopped asking for what my heart wants and needs, and I called it “contentment”. In order to prevent myself from being attached I gave it all up and told myself I didn’t deserve it.
Teasing out the difference between this burying of my dreams and seeking true contentment seems to be my work right now. To be honest it seems like messy stuff and I feel as though I am stumbling along gracelessly.
Yet, I believe it is possible to live in the moment, awake and present to whatever that comes my way, to find joy and happiness in the messiness of now without promises of certainty. But I also believe that living this way does not mean that I need to turn a deaf ear to the whispers of my heart, the ones that beckon me on journeys, and call me toward my dreams. I can play in their possibilities without attaching to them. I can chase the butterflies, without attachment to catching them. I can ask for what I need to start this journey. I can ask and I can believe that it will show up without being attached to what that looks like.
I know I am brave enough. (she says with a gulp)
I think it starts with YES.
This is the time of year that finds me in the garden. Every morning, I am distracted from my march out the door by an inspection of flower beds. What has come up? What new thing is showing itself? What new beginning has announced itself? Max always has to yell from the car, “Mom…Mommmmm……Come….on…We are going to be late.” I am dreamy as I stumble to the car, unable to take my eyes off the soil. It is fascinating to me–this explosion of new life.
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Yet, when it is time to work in my garden, I find that the majority of the work is about clearing. Removing. Pulling up weeds, tilling the soil, turning over the ground. Clearing the space so that something new and beautiful can grow. I spend so little time actually planting. No, most of my work is about picking up dead leaves. Picking up the sticks brought down by the rain. Pruning the azaleas and the roses. Cutting back. Cleaning out. Sweeping up. Creating space so something new can be born. Isn’t this really the work of a gardener?
There is a spot in my garden where I usually plant annuals. Impatients or pansies–something that will immediately add color. This year, for a variety of reasons I don’t understand, I decided not to do this. I bought a couple packs of seeds, checking only that the light would be OK. Without paying much attention, Max and I dumped them onto the freshly tilled soil. We raked over a bit more soil and waited as it rained.
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This week our beloved housemate is leaving us. Its hard to believe it is so, but it is. It is an occasion of excitement for it marks a wonderful new beginning for her. Our home was a safe place of refuge when she needed it most. Our house was a transition. But now she has all that she needs to make it on her own–legal status, a job, resources, a community. The apartment half a mile down the street, up high on the top of the building, with the tiny kitchen and big windows, it is the right place for her to be now. It is the first home she will call her own. And this is a miracle. Something new is being born for her.
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And I know that something new will be born for us too. My dear friend Kaiya tells me that the Universe abhors a vacuum. When space is opened up, something new will grow. And I am holding onto this truth fiercely. It is a great comfort.
As we transition from housemates to friends, there is an ache in this empty place in our heart’s house where she used to be with her lilting African voice and the smells of her yummy cooking, in the place where she used to look at me with eyes that really saw. And yet, I know that out of this emptiness something new will grow. Letting go makes me sad and if I am completely honest, the mystery of what will grow up in this place makes me a little uncomfortable. But it is a discomfort I will sit with. But I have long ago given up guessing. Whatever is next will surprise me, that is for sure.
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For weeks now I have been churning on these thoughts, in the garden, with the moving boxes. I am feeling it in other places of my life too. Colleagues are moving on, our organization is transitioning, friendships that are dear to me are tranforming. I know that in my heart too something is giving way, releasing, letting go. I am letting so much go so something new and marvelous can be born. It is sad and scary and also full of wonder…
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I am drawing on the lessons of my garden. If I clear the space, something beautiful can be born. There is a cycle to this life we live, a cycle of letting go of what blossomed and filled us last, clearing the space and waiting with an empty patch of soil.
I feel I am stepping into an empty field, freshly tilled. I am saying yes to whatever will grow here in this open space in my heart, in my life. Yes without knowing where it will take me. Yes without a plan. Yes without knowing what the next step will be.
Thirteen miles in three and a half hours. By some ancient standards that might be making good time.
This is what I think as I sit in traffic, inching along on a very small stretch of a 300 mile quest to Connecticut. These thirteen miles are neither here nor there. They are somewhere in between, but they are exactly where I am and I am simply there.
There is a lot to see that maybe I would have missed at 60 plus miles an hour. Even on the Delaware Turnpike…at night…in the dark of the new moon. There is a lot to see even though its not remarkably different. But it needs to be seen I suppose. We all need to be seen.
There is some reason I am here, I tell myself. And I mean it. And I feel not impatient, even as I am a little achey. Somehow knowing that I am exactly where I need to be makes it peaceful if not perfect.
So, I play my ipod, a silly Russian roulette, spin the wheel and let the Universe decide what songs we will hear. I discover that the Universe prefers Ry Cooter and the Reverend Gary Davis and Pavement which I think is kinda funny given that I am stuck on a long black stretch of Pavement and this is apparently what I am meant to see.
I giggle to myself when I see a sign warning us to slow down for the construction. I wonder if we really could go any slower, me and my fellow travelers. Then I learn we can, and we do. Thats when it occurs to me that once upon a time someone might have thought that having gone 13 miles in 3 and a half hours was making good time. Its all relative.
There is no exit. The metaphor is not lost on me. We are all of us trapped here–on this stretch of a journey that some might say is painfully slow but maybe is the right speed afterall.
I am thankful there is no Pollyana ending. I have not found any greater meaning in the traffic. I didn’t find a long lost friend in the car next to mine. There was no missed accident, at least I don’t think there is. I don’t have any aha moments that explain the traffic, the slow car, the endless stretch of wet dark pavement. Whatever I needed to learn is subtler, simpler and I am not sure I can even articulate it.
I am here. Nowhere else.
I am somewhere in the dark. Stuck like so many. Creeping along and moving but always exactly where I am. I am moving, always moving. I feel my chest rise with every breath. I feel my leg tap out the rythym of the song. I feel my arms stretch up as I try and relieve my tired back.
Thirteen miles in 3 and a half hours. By ancient standards I was making good time.
