For the last 4 years, since becoming a single parent, I have always felt as though I was within something like 20 paces of falling off the edge of the cliff, the cliff that marks my the boundaries of sanity.
At first it felt scary, to be so close to falling apart. But then I realized that 20 paces is really quite a ways a way. After awhile it felt quite comfortable. Even as I knew that it could all unravel quite quickly, I knew that it most likely wouldn’t.
There are times when I move closer, within 10 paces or even 5 of the edge. Those times initially felt scary too. The wind is stronger here and I can smell the dangersous dropoff but I have survived moving so close so many times that it feels old hat. I know 5 paces is still 5 paces and one step backwards is all that is needed to get me back to 6.
But lately, the last week or so, I have been perched with my toes curled up against the edge, gripping with every last bit of strength—channeling it all down to the tiny muscles in my pinky toes. Its not a trauma that pushed me to the edge. Instead I am just the daily business of keeping it together, through winter, through Max’s latest bouts of separation anxiety and the flu, through the battle with a house which is slowly falling apart, dissolving into a pile of broken toys and popcorn crumbs and dirty laundry and dust, Four years of trying so hard to do the work of two parents, to build a community that fills the holes in our hearts, of striving and working and being solution focused. Its got me worn out and in my exhausted stupor I stumbled like a drunk to the edge where I stand now, holding my arms out for balance and crying out “Whoa…”.
The other night as I was dropping off Max’s playdate, and running to the store to pick up the M&M’s Max needed for a graphing project, I thought if I don’t ask for help I am going to fall apart, literally, figuratively. Asking for help is hard and while I feel I have pushed past all my fears and the taboos that I carried, I still wince when I need to ask.
And truth, unlike the help I needed in the past the help I need now makes me feel so much more vulnerable. I didn’t need a babysitter. I don’t need someone to cook me a meal or give my kid a ride. What I need is a hug from someone who loves me, who sees me, who isn’t trying to change one bit of me or hope that I am someone other than I am. I need someone to appreciate me, celebrate me, tell me why they cherish me. Oh…and I need someone to sit on my couch and drink a glass of wine while I clean, cause I need to restore order to this house and I have been having a hard time settling. I need someone to help me settle.
I wonder if I can whisper wishes so precious and vulnerable out to the world? Can I ask my community to fill in this way? Even just a few people–my closest and dearest friend or two? Is it too much? I know these are needs that so many of us have unmet. If I ask, do I give permission for others to ask too…Do I open up a door where we all start unsurfacing our most vulnerable needs exposing them to the air where they can be met? Or… do I risk creating resentment and hurt during a time when everyone is so stressed, by the economy, by illness, by their own demons that feels so much bigger than my exhaustion.
Post script: I wrote this piece last week but never posted–The frantic pace of being stuck kept me from making it to my blog. And then I asked. Not wide and far but within a very tiny circle. And like a magic carpet that request swept me away to safety. I will continue to ask, because I know how easy it is to know that perch and when I am ready I will write what I learned along the way.
Something came over me last night. It was blown in by the howling winds, the ones that roared and growled and shook the trees. I didn’t see it coming, still don’t know where it came from. This must have been me at 13, sulky and petulant with a little bit of sass, pushing back and out for no good reason. Completely uncomfortable in her own skin. Ambivalent and wavering and not sure of what she wants. Not sure of where she is going. Not even sure why she is here.
I normally have a pretty good sense of the why and how of my moods shift, and what is going on in my heart. I normally know why I lose patience or feel frustrated or want to be alone. I normally can explain and hold it all in tenderness, but this time I can only shrug my shoulders. Somethings just are beyond explanation.
I sat on the couch in silence in this space when I was interrupted by Max, sleepwalking. He was panicked and calling my name. “Mama,” he cried looking right at me, “Where are you?” “Right here mijito…right here” I replied.
Three times I had to call him, to wake him up. Three times it took to wake me back up again too. The me that feels like me. He climbed into my lap and I held him close up against my chest, happy to have found us both. Happy to be home.
It never fails to surprise me. It creeps up on me and shocks the hell out of me. Just when I think that I have become fearless, just when I think I have overcome my deepest darkest fears, just when I think that I have done my soul work and gotten an A+ on the lesson, then I realize how terribly scared I still am.
Does it ever end as we peel away, layer by layer the protective walls we put around our hearts? It seems that no matter, how much work I do, its still there, more and more subtle but there. This fearfulness.
Shortly after my marriage failed, I found feng shui. After suffering such a devestating loss, after feeling so adrift, after realizing there was no security in this thing called marriage, I found a sense of control and order. If I could just eliminate the clutter, if I could place the bamboo just so, if I could figure out the flow of energy in this house I could be safe. I spent long hours, arranging, planning, sorting…and desperately holding on to a vision that my life would be OK.
At other times, it would be my job, my money, my community, my life as a mother, my writing and creativity, my spiritual journey, even this blog… a long line of things that made me feel anchored and safe. One by one I transform each into a security blanket the thing that would keep that fear at bay. The fear of being here. All. Alone.
And over and over again I would learn, the more that I grasp at these things, the more they slip through my fingers like water, proving to me again and again that while each one of these things delights, my security comes from none of them.
They are false idols, lined up in the temple of my heart–I deify them and doom them to failure. They will not save me. Over and over again I learn that really, its just me. And my faith.
Yup… in the ends its just me. As rich as my life is, there is nothing to grasp onto but what is here in my heart and my faith. No matter how hard I try, I cannot be anchored for life is a river and it is sweeping me along and carrying me, pulling me moving me. And that scares the hell out of me.
But make no mistake. This is not a sad or desperate post.
Because I am breathing sweet free air of liberation. I can stop looking for the thing that is going to save me. I can stop waiting for it to delivered and come along. I can stop fearing that it will all disappear if I say or do the wrong thing. I have it, have always had it, will always have it, right here in my heart.
I am the thing that saves me.
I am so unpracticed at this way of being.
So I will stumble along and when I trip, I will reach for something to steady myself but when it disappears into thin air I will not feel the bruising crash of my body slamming down, but the steadiness of my hand against the ground. Catching myself.
When my little family was breaking up, I realized I could feel adrift and alone or I could adopt the whole world as my family. I could recognize how tangled our roots are, even as we look like separate trees, even separate gardens above the surface.
Every now and again, when the whole world is contracting in, closing tight around around the nuclear and I start to drift again I need to remind myself what lies below the surface. I need to remind myself of the connections between us–the ways that you and I all share the same earth, draw from the same water. If you dig beneath our roots are entwined.
Choosing to live this way can be hard, especially when I feel like I just might be the only one who believes in life beneath the surface, the place where all this connection is at hand. Sometimes I feel like the neighborhood wacko who is caught up in a dream that is not quite real. Efforts to draw distinctions cut deep. This is mine. That is yours. We are separate.
Whenever I feel this me/you/us/them/in/out/ dynamic at work it rocks my world. So much so that I wake up at night with a headache. It breaks open my heart. It makes me gasp for breath. And its not because of some big cosmic world view of community and peace in the world.
But it’s simply because it was the knowledge that we are all connected, that my family is big and wide that saved me when the illusion of my little family dissolved.
Lately, I have been finding shining little bits of myself, from Boston to North Carolina, alive and well in the love of friendships long dormant. Just at a time when I was wondering if I was a crazy old lady dreaming of life in the earth, if the connectedness I had been counting on was yet another illusion, I am finding that the connections go longer and farther and deeper than I dreamed.
I choose to believe in these connections, even when others try and tell me otherwise. When someone wants to contain us as a unit I will simply smile. I know what lies beneath the surface. I believe in it. I do.
Buck up, bear down, dig in and wait it out.
Find the silver lining.
Shift perspective-see the lesson–trust the reason.
Hold it all lightly. Claim its all interesting.
Say it is living
Know that it is dying.
Slam the door. Shout at the moon.
Kick and scream and don’t go easy.
Cry. Flail. Blame. Plead.
Dance. Sing. Weep. Laugh.
Build walls. Tear them down.
Sweep up dirt. Air out laundry.
Notice. See. Listen. Question.
None of this changes anything. Nothing changes anything but the passing of time.
And even time makes no promises.
I used to think that if I got it right, if I learned my lessons, if I bore my lot with dignity that I would be rewarded. Rewarded with rest.
I used to think that if I slayed the gremlins, if I journeyed bravely, if I kept up in the storms that I would find the Holy Grail and would be rewarded. Rewarded with some peace.
I used to think that if I somehow figured it out, that if I unlocked the mystery, that if I mastered the game there would be a magic transformation and all would be easier, simpler, picture perfect
Yet, it seems that the reward is really practice.
Practice in order to buck up, bear down, dig in and wait it out….
again and again and again.
It is raining now. A steady cold autumn rain. The kind that spoils camping trips and calls for hot tea and warm blankets and stacks of movies. Max is sick and has a sinus infection on top of an ear infection on top of something dreary and medieval sounding called Hand Food and Mouth disease. We are burrowing in.
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A few weeks ago I had a dream. I don’t remember much about it. It was fuzzy, almost impressionistic–blurry and not clear. The only thing I remember from this dream is staring out a window watching the rain, remarking “The women who have loved me are dying…” At the time I had the dream, I viewed it as a Jungian metaphor. I thought that at this time of great transition, I was letting go of all the various parts of me who had served me before, who had done their best to protect my tender heart but who now had seen their time end: The me who was afraid to love too deeply, the me who felt she had to do everything perfectly and be perfectly nice so that she would be adored, the me who felt she needed to plan out and control her life. Yes…I thought. These versions of me, they are dying and from their ashes a strong, secure, adventurous woman who is not afraid to love fearlessly is starting to rise.
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Our dear housemate Odette has been in the hospital for almost 3 weeks now. She is not dying but she is struggling to heal from a life changing surgery. She has been in and out of the hospital and holed up in her bed since labor day. I realize how much of our day-to-day life, functioning and running smoothly, has been made possible because of Odette’s quiet presence. In my efforts to keep our life together with her gone I am running at double speed, flailing around and unable to go and visit. I miss her and feel her slipping away. I feel a hole in my heart where her lilting African singing used to be.
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My dear friend Jenni is so ill and in so much pain. She had pinned her hopes on a surgery that was not successful. I am angry and sad because I don’t know how to get halfway across the world to hold her hand. I want to sit on a beach with her and wrap my arms around her and I feel that if I could something just might shift for both of us. I am not sure what I can do anymore that will make a difference.
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This week I learned that my dear Jill, a friend who held me through the early days of my divorce with Juan, has cancer. We don’t know any details yet. There are tests, there are possibilities, there is lots of unknowing. I am sitting on the edge of her wide circle and wondering what if anything I can do to help. Thursday I learned that Antonieta, Max’s babysitter and third grandmother, my second mother, the woman who has been my steady day to day presence for four years through the worst of our separation, the one who wiped so many tears, the one who put cold cloths on my migraine ravaged head, the one who took my child when I needed to cry, I learned that she has an aggressive form of cancer. She has no health insurance. We don’t know what is next.
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“The women who have loved me are dying.” Suddenly this dream I had takes on a new scary meaning and as I stare out the window and watch the world turn impressionistic and blurry through the rain I wonder what it means.
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I am bowing to life exactly as it is. Its a minute by minute– no, more like breath to breath– exercise, this not wishing it was otherwise. Not wishing that it wasn’t raining…not wishing that we were camping…not wishing that Max felt well…not wishing we could be with other people…not wishing that Odette, Jenni, Jill, and Antonieta were well and sitting around my kitchen table sharing a bottle of wine and laughing with me right now…not wishing that I didn’t just eat an entire box of chocolates to dull the sting around my heart…not wishing that I was already an acupuncturist so that I could do something to help…why can’t I do anything to help?
It is raining, we aren’t camping, Max feels crummy and we can’t be around people lest we pass along the horrible virus that has left him with sores on his hands, feet and mouth. Most importantly many of the women who have loved me so well are sick and I don’t know what to do about it except eat a box of chocolate–so much so that now I can’t sleep. I don’t have needles to help them and I am years off from being able to and I feel so damn helpless in the face of this all. Wishing wouldn’t change any of this.
I frantically text my community and beg them to bring movies so I can distract myself this night. As though they are all in cahoots with the universe, they have set their phones aside so late, forcing me to sit here on the front steps, watching the rain and breathing through my grief.
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This is life, as it is.
This is the rain, cold and wet.
These are my tears warm and salty.
This is life.
I took a two day class at Tai Sophia this past weekend. It meant leaving the house by 8 am each day and not returning home until after well after 5:30. The class was thought provoking and heart softenting. It was a restful, restorative way for me to spend my 48 hours away from work. And it had real consequences for Max, the only child of a single mother.
Max, precious Max, spent his weekend being traded like a card, being passed off, being neither here nor there in the middle of everyone’s very busy schedule.
Sunday morning found Max at his friend Jake’s house. He was picked up by his dad who shepherded him to his swimming class and then took him for lunch. Juan dropped him off with my friend Michelle who took him with her kids to the park for a couple of hours. Michelle then dropped him off with his favorite teenage babysitter Katherine. By the time I reached him it was almost dinner time and he had been in the care of no fewer than four different families.
One of my friends was worried about Max’s day. She thought Max would feel fractured and discombobulated. Insecure and unrooted. At loose ends and a little unloved. She had me a little concerned too.
Yet, something interesting happened. When I picked Max up he was glowing. It was clear that Sunday had been one of his favoritest days ever. As he recounted his day it was clear that he had experienced it not as an orphan being shuffled around but rather as beloved child being passed gently from one set of waiting arms to another. He had experienced it as one big epic adventure. His conclusion was that our community was wide and deep–that he was well loved–that there were many experiences to be lived–that he could trust many.
It amazes me how the very same set of facts could elicit such different interpretations. It reminds me that our lives are really just stories, and while we have little control over many of the events in our lives we do have the power to write our own stories about what happened as those events unfolded. Max could have written a story about being left by his mother and schleped about no one having more than a few hours to give him. Instead he chose to write a story about adventure, deep love and a community who cherishes him and shares him. I would like to think he wrote a bigger story, a story that was wide and deep enough to protect him versus one that was shallow and left him feeling vulnerable.
Children are such brilliant storytellers. They find a way to breathe magic and good into any set of events–that is until we teach them otherwise when we pass on our own tiny stories. When we teach them that their stories are fantastical and dare I say wrong.
Too often I find myself living in my smallish little stories. I go about believing them for no other reason than its because I always have. They are convenient, automatic and don’t take much brainpower. But oh…when I look under the hood of my tender sweet soul and I see how these stories drain my heart of its power.
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One of our favorite games here at work, when Stephen, and I are bored and distracted, is to imagine what Winne the Pooh characters we might be that day. So often he is Tigger with boundless energy. I used to frequently be Piglet, often fretting but buzzy too, sometime I am Kanga nurturing and sweet. At times I have been Rabbit, with his schemes and his plans and his bossy nature but lately I have felt that I am Christopher Robin. Does he even really count as a character? He has cool boots but is pretty much on the sidelines of the story, unimportant and relatively uninvolved. That’s me, I tell myself over and over again. The one that doesn’t matter, who is doing so little to keep this ship afloat, the one who is sitting on the sidelines. It wasn’t until one of my favorite colleagues said to me yesterday that she was Christopher Robin that I could see how to breathe into a different story. Suddenly I saw my own “Christopher Robin-hood” in a new light. For Christopher is the one who carries all the animals of the Hundred Acre Woods as beloveds. He holds the space. Without his love there would be no story. He is quiet and still but his love breathes life into those woods. Just, dare I say it, like me.
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I have to admit, I have stopped and started this post, wondering where on earth this is going, how on earth I can conclude. With a call to action? With yet another reminder to myself to be more like my son, with yet another set of words that sneakily tell me that I am something less than perfect exactly as I am.
It gives me pause, this dilemma, this koan, this questioning, this holding of stories that expand not contract. Is there any way to end at story about stories? Is there any other way than this….
And she lived happily ever after.
the lesson of the falling leaves
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god.
i agree with the leaves.
-Lucille Clifton
It is autumn. The leaves are painted, and even though they are more muted and muddy here so close to the city they are nevertheless dazzling me with their red and gold. And even now they are starting to drift down gently and rest upon the lawn. A man just knocked on my door and asked if I needed someone to rake my leaves. From now until December they will come, the leaf rakers, and I will break down and hire them, one after another, to clear my lawn, the one that had been so well shaded by the huge oaks that surround my property. But today I say, “No thank you”. Perhaps the trees are ready to let go of their leaves, but me I am still not ready.
In Chinese medicine, autumn is considered the season of grief and letting go. It is the season of pruning away all that is not needed, so as to better prepare the way for the deep dark winter of unknowing. It is the season that we, I, must admit that as the bounty of the late summer goes into storage the full, ripe time is done.
I have been reflecting on all the ways I hold on, to the joyful summer, to my attachments, to my expectations. I realize now that the trees are calling to me to join them. Life is now calling me into a place of letting go.
I am also realizing that I am not well practiced at the art of letting go. When I am faced with a goodbye or a retreat, I fight it. And, of course I lose that fight every time. The autumn comes. The leaves go. People move on. Life changes, always changes. The trees grow dormant and rest, preparing to be brilliant again in the spring. It happens whether I like it or not. It happens.
Letting go brings such grief for me. And this grief is my bell.
This month I am embracing the lesson taught to me by the trees–the trees who let their leaves go. Here are just a few things I am doing to practice this letting go:
1. I will end my guitar lessons early, not begging Jeff to stay and play just one more song for me. I will let my favorite evenings pass without holding onto the sweetness of them. I will do it consciously.
2. I am continuing on my quest to declutter the house. Every day I am making sure to find one thing I no longer use or need and will donate it.
3. I will breathe and concentrate of letting go of the breath that just brought me life. I will focus on the out breath.
4. I will bow to life as it is. When I find myself forming expectations about how I want it to go or how I think it should go I will stop and thank life for appearing just as it is.
5. I will wear a bell and every time it rings I will use it as a wake up call to detach from whatever it is that I am attached to at that moment.
What about you? What ways do you practice letting go?
Thanks to sweet Jen Lemen. Ain’t it the truth…
Originally posted Sept 27, 2007
Tonight it rained. I sat in wonder and listened to the sound of the rain against my windows. I stood out on the front steps and let me feet get damp. It has been such a dry summer. The rain smelled miraculous and hopeful, the harbinger of good things. Life giving and cleansing. Just what we needed.
Nighttime in Rio, just after the storm passed
I have thought alot about my trip to Rio –the one I took two Octobers ago. We took this photo our first night there. Eddie’s friend, an ex-pat who had settled in this magical city, had taken us for a walking tour and showed us his favorite spot, a park across a lake from the hustle and bustle of this city. A rainstorm rolled in suddenly, unexpectedly, catching us on the wrong side of the park. It fell in sheets soaking us all as we ran for cover under some trees, laughing. I laughed harder than I had in months. At that moment, laughter bubbled up unexpectedly, as unstoppable as the rain. It was so absurd and silly and joyful. We were dressed to the nines for a night out on the town, with water running down our noses, with my chic outfit dripping and misshapen, my “oh-so-Rio” sandals squishing and making ridiculous noises. It was the funniest thing ever to be in Rio in the warm rain. I jumped in a puddle and lost my shoe. Pretty soon we were all laughing because I couldn’t stop laughing
I had felt so heavy and stressed when I got to Brazil. I was at the height of my financial panic and I had just started to wrap my heart around the idea that Juan was not coming back. I arrived at the airport after flying all night with only $20 American and a three day training to run in Spanish. I went to the cash machine at the airport to take out money for taxi fare and found my account was overdrawn. My cell phone was out of batteries. I had forgotten my credit card at home. I had no idea what I would do next. I went up to the money exchange counter and cashed in my $20. I hoped it would be enough to get me to the hotel where I could regroup and figure out my next move. I thought I had hit rock bottom. I felt so alone, like such a failure. To keep myself from breaking down in this strange city, I repeated a mantra “It is going to work out all right” and then I added a fervent “please” and threw in a prayer for good measure.
The taxi fare was exactly what I had in my wallet.
I got to the hotel and they told me my room was already paid for. I slept a heavy deep dreamless sleep. I woke up to find lunch. A a friend of a friend living in Sao Paolo who had come to meet me. A fully charged cell phone and a Dad on the other end able to wire some cash to get me through the week. And best of all when Eddie arrived that evening he had two airplane tickets to Rio.
Four days later I was standing in the rain in Rio, laughing as the water poured over my toes and ran down my fingers. I remember thinking that the rain washed some of my grief away that night, just let it slip right away and run into this lake, leaving me feeling a tiny bit lighter and ready to start healing.
