Category: faith

acceptance · adulthood · beauty · faith · intimacy · letting go · loss · love · relationships · self-love

Because I’m your Mother, That’s Why.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
787
4491
37
8
5515
11.1287

0

0
0

The last song on Anticipate This, the mix CD I’d made for him, is Dave Matthews’ Say
Goodbye. It includes the refrain, “For tonight let’s be lovers, and tomorrow go
back to being friends.”
The line from Alanis’ Thank You has been repeating in my head: “Thank you, Disillusionment.”
And, finally, if I was “craving cupcakes,” well, a cupcake
isn’t a sustainable meal, is it? It’s never actually intended to be, and so you’ve got to enjoy it while it is there, savor, relish, cherish it, and then you let it
go. Then you move on.
We had a “debrief” conversation last night, during which most of the
above sentiments where shared by us both. Acknowledging the loveliness, the heights, the
calm, the titillation. And yet, that it was what it was. That it was a moment
in time that we’d both signed up for, participated in, and get to let go, get
to allow its sanctity, without marring it with all those Whatifs that spun in (both) our heads.
To allow the sanctity of beauty, to allow it its singularity
is a challenge and a lesson of adulthood. To be disillusioned, to know that
moving isn’t right for either of us, that fantasy can overtake reality and
crumble it. To have had the hard-won experience of knowing that selfishness and
possessiveness can suffocate a beautiful thing, is perhaps not “romance” as we
think of it. But it is, in itself, a mercy.
Relinquishing the ties to future, to “meaning,” to purpose,
we can allow it the simplicity and integrity of its joy.
I wrote a poem once about trapping a moment away in a mason
jar, locking it deep inside for fear that the moment would get marred by time
and eventuality. But the problem was that I forgot what that moment smelled like anyway; in my possessiveness and fear of losing it, I forgot what
made that moment so precious to begin with.
The same is true here. And, smartly, maturely, rightly, and a little wistfully, we both, or at least I, have to allow the experience its
autonomy and “string”lessness.
I called my mom yesterday. I’d spoken to several friends
about my conflictedness, and my sadness in letting the moment go. In knowing,
surely and deeply, that I would have to. This knowledge all the more
painful since it was such a thing of beauty, since it was, for me, a lesson in
intimacy, vulnerability, and ease that I haven’t felt with anyone in my past.
As we spoke, I told my mom it was like tasting ice cream in a shop
for the first time, and having to realize that ice cream is available
elsewhere, all over the place, in fact. That I don’t have to go to this one
place to experience it. That I’d be missing out if I thought this was the only
wellspring of deliciousness.
Part of the beauty of it at all, is that I get to see that
ice cream is in fact available to me.
(Ice cream! Cupcakes! Sheesh, can you tell I don’t really eat this stuff
anymore!?)
But, I did. I got to experience, savor, relish, and cherish,
and I get to decide to believe—DECIDE TO BELIEVE—that I can have similar dishes elsewhere. Somewhere a little less
complicated.
My mom told me that of course it was available to me. That we all deserve to have the kind of love
we want in the world. That we all are worthy of finding it, searching for, letting
the non-fits go, and working toward creating in ourselves a person deserving of the highest order this life offers.
Why? I asked her.
Why? Why is that so? Where is the cosmic contract we’ve all
signed that says that we’ll get that kind of love? Where is the agreement that we
sign as humans that says, Work and open and heal and (for)give, and you shall receive?
Really, honestly, who the fuck says that any of us get any of that?
It was important for me to play my own Devil’s Advocate. I’m the one with all the woo-woo affirmations posted
around my apartment about abundance and light and love and serenity and
security and radiance. I’m the one who’d easily and believingly tell a friend that
things work out. I’m the asshole who believes all this muck.
And for once, I needed someone else to tell me it. I needed
to be the petulant asshole who says, “Yeah, Says You.” I needed to allow my
disillusionment of that kind, too. I needed to allow that it sucks and hurts,
and is disappointing, and hard fucking work, and that we (I) do this with
absolutely no promises whatsoever of any kind of “reward,” or change.
There is no rule that says, Thou Shalt Not Toil Until Death.
There isn’t.
So, I need, sometimes, someone else to tell me. Because,
truly, somewhere (a little out of reach at the moment), I believe that we all
do deserve the precious and gorgeous things in life. I believe that none of us are meant to toil and suffer and be beaten by
life. I truly, somewhere, have a faith that is unalterable. A
place inside me that has never known fear or scarcity or sorrow.
But, despite my friends’ ears and wisdom and empathy, I
simply needed my mom, former Miss Cynic of the Universe, to tell me, Molly, It’s
going to be alright. There is ice cream
elsewhere. There is love, abundant and resplendent. Not that it isn’t without
its own challenges and lessons and compromises, but there is love, and I am
worthy of it. That I “deserve” it.
Despite the “adultness” of letting go and loving detachment
and equanimity and allowing what is… in these moments, in this one, I simply needed
the maternal “all knowing” assurance of that which I actually believe.
Dear Egregiously Gorgeous Moment in Time: Thank you.  

anger · detachment · faith · fallibility · family · forgiveness · humaness · serenity · spirituality

The Father-Daughter Dance

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

My friend found out yesterday that her father is dying in
Switzerland, and she and another friend happened to be at my house yesterday
morning when she got the call. It felt like divine timing that she “happened”
to be at my house, instead of alone in her apartment, when she received this
call, and then had to argue with her phone company to get international calling
added to her account so that she could call the ER where her dad was admitted.
We were able to sit there with her, just to sit in my kitchen
while she paced my living room, on the phone. Able to make her tea and just
set it there, whether she wanted to drink it or could or not. Able to bear
witness to her tears, and her fear and her love and her fraughtness about
timing and money and taxes and passports and citizenship.
We were able to help her talk through her very next steps,
just the ones she needed to do that day in order to prepare to get on a flight
tonight.
It was a gift to be able to be present with that.
These past two days, I’ve pulled the “Emperor” card.
Shuffled them thoroughly, cut the deck, and again, this morning, I pulled the
Emperor card.
I squick at this card. I don’t like it. In my book, it lists
the traits of this card: Fathering, Structure, Authority, Regulation.
Um, you all know my dad was in the military, yes?
My friend yesterday, between phone calls, told us how much
she loved and admired her father; what a kind man he was, how great a man he
was. It was obvious that she had great esteem for him.
I, do not have the same feelings toward my own. And
strangely, I got an email from him just a few days ago.
We haven’t spoken in months. Not since his brother died
unexpectedly over Christmas.
But, I had been thinking about him, and that it was probably
time for me to send an, “I’m not dead” email, just a check-in, just to touch
base. And then, there was his email.
So, I replied. Reported the generic updates I would tell a
casual acquaintance about my life. And it’ll probably be another several months
until we speak again.
I’m still livid, folks. I’m still angered and betrayed and
astonished at how he behaved when I had cancer, when I was going through chemo.
How he demanded phone calls on his time table, instead of mine, when I was the
one in a hospital bed with chemo dripping into a port in my chest. How he simply told me, when I
asked for this to change, that, “This is how it works.” How, even though he was
newly retired and was working in
the yard of his fiancé, he somehow didn’t
have any other time in the day to call his daughter in the hospital.
And mostly, it’s just sad. It just still saddens me that
this man has no idea how to show up for people. That if it isn’t something that
is structured, regulated, and orderly,
he doesn’t know how to address it, and therefore, he simply tries to quash it.
And, unfortunately, people, I’ve grown up too much to be quashed by him
anymore.
I’ve done a ton of work around him, asking for compassion
and forgiveness. In fact, just these few weeks, I’ve been using a new
affirmation: I forgive my dad fully and easily.
Strange to realize now, after the new email, the
Emperor card, my friend’s ailing father, that this might be part of that process. This doesn’t seem like coincidental
timing to me.
I know that I have more work to do. I know that I feel very
unwilling to forgive him, even at the same time that I have compassion and
understanding for someone who never, ever had kindness modeled for him. Someone
who didn’t have his own father, and only a step-father who demanded perfection and doled out derision.
I know “how” to have compassion for him. And sometimes, many times, I have it.
But, forgiveness is another thing.
And I know that my unwillingness to forgive, to continue to
drink the poison I intend for him, is only holding me back, and is only
creating blackness in the light I want to move toward. I know that my
unwillingness to forgive yokes me to him as surely as shackles, or, perhaps, as
surely as love. 
I also know that it is only in the past few weeks that I’ve
begun seeing this new therapist, and last week, just the mention of my
father, almost in passing, came up. She remarked later that it was clear there
was some work to be done there. Which, obviously, I know, and hope for us to do together.
The last thing, and the only thing that’s keeping me from
burning that Emperor card is the end of the description in my book. It says
this card can also stand in for the archetypal father “in his role as guide,
protector, and provider.”
Surely, mine was not able to be this in a way that was
supportive. But these are the exact qualities that I’ve been seeking and hoping
the “Universe” embodies. That I’ve been praying for, and trying to trust the
Universe to have. That it supports me with guidance, protection, and
provisions.
Individual, versus Archetype. Reality versus Fantasy.
Compassion versus forgiveness.
I really hate that card. 

community · connection · faith · grace · healing · isolation · laughter · spirituality

Too Hot to Handle

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

There’s a maxim around here that goes: G-d will never give
you more than you can handle.
To echo Wednesday, bullshit.
I think this phrase is missing a key point at the end of it: G-d will never
give you more than you can handle with the help of others.
I think G-d or the Universe or life will always give us more than we can handle *alone.* I think, in
fact, that’s the point. In order to be able to handle that which is handed us,
we must reach out for help from
others, or help from “god,” which often comes in the form of help from others
anyway.
I think it’s important that we are given more than we can
handle alone, otherwise, surely, we all would. If we could live like Sandra Bullock in “The Net,” ordering
pizza via the internet, watching a yule log screen saver, and never knowing our
neighbors, we would. But I still think about that movie every time I nod or say
a passing hello to my neighbors: I am not anonymous; I am not alone.
In that movie (sorry, y’all!), Sandra’s character gets
accused of something or other, but no one can identify her, and her identity
gets stolen. No one except one character (her shrink) actually knows who she
is, actually recognizes her. The neighbor says, no she doesn’t think that’s her, even though they’ve
lived in proximity for a dozen years.
What kind of challenge of growth is there in that? If we
were intended to live in isolation, there wouldn’t be all this talk about
connection and community, mehta and helping one another, and my understanding of tikkun
olam (repairing the world) has a lot to do with
eliminating disconnect.
I opined to my coworker, who was listening to Pandora the
other day when one of these new modern radio songs came on (I don’t remember
which one). But it was one that eventually has a chorus of voices yell, Yeah!,
or Hey!. And I theorized that the proliferation of “modern” songs that feature a chorus of voices at some point is a call for
connection, to refill and replace the actual being with others—if we hear a
chorus of voices yell, Hey!, on the radio, we want to yell along with it, too. For a
moment, we are also connected to those voices, even though they be
computer over-layed with one another.
This “new” sound I hear has a lot of that, and my opinion is
that they’re also trying to create community in the best way they know how, to
create a moment of connection and a feeling of being a part of a crowd…even
when you’re just driving alone in your car, and the person next to you is as
well.
I do think “G-d” gives us more than we can handle. In the utter inability to handle things on our own, I think
we’re intended to reach out to one another or to a “power greater than
ourselves” for help, for guidance, for support, and mostly, for laughter.
The amount of laughter you can have alone is much less than
what you can have in interaction with each other – like I’ve been saying about
random connections with store clerks or bus passengers: You never know what
will be said by the other, and it creates something totally unique.
This morning, with all of this on my mind, in my notebook is
a printed quote by Anais Nin:
Each friend represents a world in
us,
a world possibly not born until
they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that
a new world is born.
I make it a point to say hi, or at least nod to or acknowledge
my neighbors, to let them see my face, and I theirs, as I rush in and out of the building at
the ends of a long day. I want to be able to recognize, and possibly say hi,
when I see them on the street, and, mostly, I want them to be able to pick me
out of a line-up. 

change · community · faith · fear · growth · prayer · trauma · vulnerability

Witchy Woman

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I’ve been back to reading through that Louise Hay You Can
Heal Your Life book before bed. Just
reading through some of the affirmations, saying some of them out loud.
I’ve also begun more consistently reading my Tarot cards,
pulling one daily.
And, it should come as no surprise to you that I have variously: burned sage,
taken a bath in a blend of “protection” salts, participated in a sweat lodge,
buried letters to G-d, dissolved some in the ocean, carried rose quartz in my
jacket pocket, and burned a blend of incense powder mixed for me by a man in a
dress.
When I was in college, I took a class on Witchcraft in Literature. I don’t remember much from it, except what the classroom looked
like, and probably that most of the classmates were women. I know it’s not
gender specific, but I feel like in the teenage years, many women (or those
that I’ve come into contact with) delve in the occult for a little while. I
mean, with the proliferation of movies at the time we grew up that embellished
witchcraft as both hot and powerful, like The Craft, Teen Witch, Practical Magic, and Hocus Pocus (for a humorous bent!). Plus, the 80’s show, Out of This World, where the main teenage girl could freeze time
(though, she was half-alien, not a witch), or Sabrina the Teenage Witch (a far worse show).
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(both the movie and the t.v. show) can also be seen as a teenage girl “coming
into her power,” the development and surge that happens in the teens. And I
think there’s something about the occult that offers girls a channel for that
energy; something that offers safe guidelines and something a little special
and weird and creepy and, perhaps, powerful.
I’m not saying I believe in witchcraft; I’m saying I believe
that we all want to believe that we have the power to change ourselves and our
circumstances, whether that’s through spells or prayers or good karma or electro-shock
therapy.
And I want to believe that I can divine some information
about the world and myself through things like shamanic journeys, meditation
circles, and, yes, Tarot cards.
Recently, I’ve been pulling this one card consistently. The
8 of swords depicts a woman bound with ropes, blindfolded, and surrounded by a
barricade of swords. In the distance, there is a castle on a hill. At least in
my book of interpretations, the meaning of this card is restriction, hopelessness,
accepting inaction. The last paragraph of the description says, however, the ropes are not that tight around the woman; she
could ostensibly wriggle free out of them, knock over the swords, and head
home. She, the figure, waits for someone to save her, instead of acting to save
herself.
The words “accepting inaction” have been echoing for me
these few days and weeks.
I met, post-cancer, with a therapist who works with PTSD. I
described to her the vision/metaphor I currently have of myself:
There is a birdcage. I (forgive me) am the bird. The door to
the cage is open. Has been open for some time. I walk out of the cage into the
freedom, but the freedom is too big, too unknown, too scary, and so I walk back
into the cage.
I know I am not alone in describing self-made prisons. I
know I am not alone in cleaving myself to the devil I know rather than the
devil I don’t. I know I’m not alone in fearing that there’s a devil at all out
there in the wide scary world. (Not like THE Devil. Pretty sure I don’t believe
in that!)
But I have become restless in this self-made prison. In the
looking at things that interest me, and backing away. In the participating in
things I love for a little while, and quitting. In exploring what kind of work
I want to do, and procrastinating indefinitely.
And, I do know that countering fears with affirmations is one of the only tools I have in my belt
right now to help me wriggle out of those self-made, and self-maintained,
bonds; to bend a crowbar behind myself and shove/encourage me back out of the cage, where, underneath all the doubt, I know it is not only safe, but inviting, enlivening, and waiting for me to play/lead/inhabit.
So, if I have to meditate to a drum that “mimics an alpha state” for 20 minutes, tack the Sh’ma AND a cross
to my wall, or pull a card from a deck to help me feel like I have support and
protection as I try, so very falteringly, to enter this wide scary world, so be
it. 

abundance · dishonesty · faith · fear · honesty · recovery · trust · truth

Horse Thief

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

There’s a phrase I heard when I got to certain rooms in San
Francisco: If you sober up a drunken horse thief, you still have a horse thief.
Lately, I’ve been getting the chance to acknowledge where I
still act from Horse Thief tendencies and impulses.
I was a thief in High School, probably in Junior High, and
actually come to think of it, in college, too. It was sort of “a thing” me and
my friends did, to see what we could get away with, and also, because we were
only stealing from big conglomerate stores, we felt (or at least I did)
justified, since they were always screwing the little man anyway – What did they care if Maybelline mascara went into my pocket? That’s a fraction of a cent they’ve lost in profit, and I’m standing in solidarity with the
Chinese children they hired to mark the packaging. (Riii….ght.)
I was, however, pretty clear about not stealing from people, only from these big stores, because there was a line I felt I still had to
maintain, a standard of behavior I adhered to. It wasn’t right to take from
little mom & pop shops, or to steal from actual people I knew. That was wrong.
Stealing from the mall was just expected, written into their budgets in some
corporate headquarters somewhere, and therefore right — or at least okay.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve stolen anything. Probably
since before I moved to SF. But that doesn’t exactly mean that the Horse Thief
has been repentant or ousted.
I have all the stores I’ve “reappropriated” from on a list
that I am slowly chipping away at, to make amends to, either by sending in
money for items, or “paying it forward” by donating to a charity. Each will
have a conversation with a trusted friend around it when the time comes.
But, I’ve lately recognized that there is still a pattern of dishonest behavior and thinking that infiltrates my current life.
When I was working through a temp agency while in grad school,
I got to open the invoices to see what the company I worked for was actually paying the temp agency, and it was certainly higher than the rate at which I was being paid by said agency (which, duh, is how they profit). So I approached the company I was working for, and asked if they
would just hire me under the table. That way, my Horse Thief logic went, it was
cheaper for them, and I would get a few more dollars, since it wasn’t going to
be taxed.
Um… Yeah. That didn’t work out so well. Even though I was
“working a program,” even though I could talk about the necessity of honesty
and integrity in life, and seriously really mean it, this dishonesty was
creating holes in my abundance, and in my sobriety/serenity.
Plus, I got caught. The temp agency found me out, and called
the company where I was a receptionist, and when I answered the phone, she
“surprisedly” said, Oh, Hi Molly…
Oops.
So, there were emails and phone calls and conversations
between the HR at the company where I was and the temp agency I’d spurned.
After talking with some trusted friends, I wrote an email to the agency, owning
up to my part of this deception.
And, in the end, when tax time rolled around, I got a 1099
from the company, anyway, since I’d earned a significant amount in the 5 or so
months I temped under the table for them, and I had to pay taxes on that money
anyway. Which meant that I ended up earning less from my time there than I
would have if I’d just continued working through the proper (read: legal)
channels.
I have a moral line about not stealing pens from work, or
using stamps I didn’t pay for. But there are other ways in which this fear of
not being taken care of, this fear that my needs will not be met creeps out.
This poisonous fear seeps into my life, and I make choices
based on that fear. And eventually, I am screwed by it.
It’s been interesting to notice that this is a pattern that
has continued into my adulthood. It’s certainly rooted in a long-held belief
that my needs will not be met. That if I behave along “proper” channels, I
won’t get or have enough. That if I behave by rules and laws that are set down, I will not be taken care of.
So, I better get my fearful, sticky claws into something, I better come up with some better, sneaky ideas, or
else I’ll be eating ramen again.
I get it. I see it.
And I hope to change it.
A trusted friend does a lot of work with affirmations to
counter fear. So, this morning, I used that tool:
I fear my needs will not be met.
I trust that the Universe cares for all my needs.
I fear that no one is looking out for my good.
The Universe cares deeply for me.
Sure, maybe it’s bunk. But, right now, I don’t know another
way, except to “act as if” these things are true. To try to behave in a way
that really does align with my morals, instead of with my fears. 
I have also heard that, with every bought of true honesty or clarity or bill paid on time or phone call from creditor answered, that we are closing up the holes in the sieve that holds abundance. Each time my covers are pulled, I get the chance to be more honest, and thereby the chance to mend the bucket into which the fullness of life is surely always being and going to be poured.
I cannot turn a drunken horse thief (or a sober one for that
matter) into an upstanding citizen. But I can try to trust that I don’t have to
be one anymore. 

authenticity · community · courage · direction · faith · help · inspiration · perseverance

From all quarters (and nickels and dimes).

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
146
837
6
1
1027
11.1287

0

0
0

Of time necessity, today’s will be short. Strangely(?), I had a
very particular intention yesterday to show up to my job and do my best–my
actual best, not my “sorta kinda all you need to do” best.
By 1pm, I had a migraine so awful, I thought I’d puke, and
went home.
In addition, yesterday morning I received an email that proposed an
answer to a few of the questions I’ve been posing about purpose, direction,
intention, and desire for next steps. I forwarded it to a friend, and asked her
professional opinion and input. We got to talk (or email) about what interests
me, and what doesn’t, what I do want to engage in, what I don’t. And through
the course of our conversation, I came to a pretty good conclusion that may
result in more action. Because of the nature of my readership, I am necessarily
vague, but know that I sit here today with more information than I had
yesterday in answer to some of my recent questions.
As the saying goes: Call it odd, or call it G-d. 

community · direction · doubt · faith · inspiration · leadership · life · purpose · spirituality

“What’s the use in clapping if Tinkerbell’s just gonna die anyway?”

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
580
3309
27
6
4063
11.1287

0

0
0

Yesterday at rehearsal, I was changing into my costume in
the women’s stall and overheard two of the other actors reciting lines from
their monologue class last semester. This was the line.
It sounded so maudlin, purple, dramatic – and hilarious.
It’s nice when these kinds of pessimistic, nihilistic
phrases sound like humor to me instead of like truth. Depending on the day, it
could go either way.
But for right now, it sounds funny to me.
Because it’s a question I pique to. It’s a question I (and
we) have to answer for ourselves every single day. What is the use in trying,
living, loving, exploring, creating, learning, sharing, expressing, including,
communicating, if it’s all gonna turn to rat turds anyway?
I think it’s a question we are also privileged to be able to
ask ourselves. In many economic circumstances, in many not so small corners and
countries of the world, there isn’t the option to see the breadth of life and
question why we engage in it—there’s only “do what’s in front of you to keep on
living;” there’s only survive.
Therefore, it is a gift (and a curse) to have the opportunity to ask ourselves why we
should keep on keepin’ on. And we can choose to take the opportunity, or not.
If we forget the finality of mortality, we are (I am) apt to
waste time. To plod along, to not question, and not look up to see what
direction we’re going. Which is what yesterday’s blog was about.
I won’t repeat what I wrote around Cancer Time, about the
crazy-making imperative clock that then
can begin to sound when you start noting the temporality of things, which makes
you question if you’re allowed to sit on the couch and watch Netflix – or if because of the finite nature of things, you’re only allowed to participate in activities that move the
needle of your life and humanity forward.
That kind of extremity can lead to paralyzation. We all need
a mind break.
But, what when that mind break goes on too long? When again
you begin to feel what Martha Graham called, “a queer divine dissatisfaction, a
blessed unrest”?
I have that divine dissatisfaction; it’s part of what keeps
most artists (and mathematicians and inventors)  tinkering at their “finished” work – there’s always something to
do, to improve, to make divine itself. But there is a quagmire when that divine
dissatisfaction is coupled with absence of direction or intention or
consistency.
Then it is only failure. And you’re back to paralyzation
again.
My dear aunt wrote me in response to my blog about courage
the other day. She was galled. She asked, in essence, if I, Molly, am not
courageous, if I am not a warrior goddess, than what on earth am I?
I agree with her (sometimes), that I am a warrior goddess.
Not that I’m unique or special in that; many of us are. But, I wrote a blog while sick that was
called, “What’s
the use of being a Shaman Warrior if you don’t get paid for it?”
I asked myself in the car yesterday, driving to rehearsal,
what a warrior goddess does for a living? I thought about Gandhi and Mother
Theresa (if I may be so bold as to compare). And I answered, She teaches others
how to be warrior goddesses, too.
What that will look like, I wish I had more ideas. But, I
will continue to clap for Tinkerbell – because the “use anyway” is that I (and we
all) have been given the chance to touch and enhance the world around us and
within us. The use is that every time that we exchange a
moment of compassion and joy and true connection we illuminate the world. The use
is that every one of us is a beacon for everyone else, if we’re bold enough to
shine.
As you can see, I have the blessed unrest – if I could only
have the blessed roadmap, we’d be in business. 

action · change · creativity · direction · faith · healing · inspiration · spirituality · trust · work

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
470
2684
22
5
3296
11.1287

0

0
0

Call it Spring. Call it some planetary phase. Call it the
fact that I’ve been back at my job for one year in April. But the past few
days, I’ve begun to feel like things are about to shift. Change is afoot.
Could be wrong. Could be indigestion. Could report the same
old, same old here for the next sixty years. But, I don’t think so. I don’t
feel so.
It’s kind of a stupid thing to report, that you feel change is afoot, in a blog that is supposed to be
about updates and reflections and actions. To simply take a moment to let you
know that I feel like things are about to be different seems antithetical and
anticlimactic. But, nonetheless, I tell it as it happens.
There’s some sort of coagulation that has happened, that I’ve begun to recognize. Maybe it was sitting with that woman on Sunday and
reflecting on the change that’s occurred within me and my spending habits.
Maybe it’s noticing that it’s been a year at this job, which has provided a
foundation of stability and structure, and enabled me to heal. It’s also realizing that things are going to change soon at my work, the nature of things are going to be reorganized, and perhaps it’s just a time
to reassess what’s happening and going on.
It feels like a time to pull my head out of the sand a
little more. To reassert what it is that I want out of life, and address those
things that hinder me from heading there, or even dreaming them up. It’s what I
wrote yesterday in my morning pages: It’s time to dream again.
When you’re in a storm, all you have attention for and time to
do is to batten down hatches and lower the mainsail and hope to Jesus and Allah
and George that you get through the rough patch safely.
When the clouds do clear, you spend the time assessing
damage, swabbing the decks of all the debris you took on board during the
crisis, and getting a new roll-call of who’s still with you, who’s got a
broken arm.
Eventually, the water has evened out, the crew is back to
its old galley routines, and it’s time to point the ship toward the horizon
again.
I’ve been very clear this time, as I ask for direction and
guidance, to be open to what’s
said/heard/intimated. How do you want me to earn? How do you want me to live?
How do you want me to share the gifts I have?
I feel I’ve made an awful mess of hampering myself, like an
anchored ship attempting to get anywhere new. And I know that some of the
internal and external work I’m doing is to untether that stagnation,
resistance, and fear.
A friend once told me, years ago, that things wouldn’t work
out for me with theater until I addressed my trauma shit. Another friend told
me while I was battling chemo that I wouldn’t get out of this pattern of
self-immolation until I moved through my father shit.
Despite all the rowing, all the sails pointed in the right
direction, no movement can be made if you’re still anchored to pain. No
sustainable movement, at least.
So, I suppose this feeling, this sense that things are about
to change, is an indication that I’m hoisting anchor.
Where I go from here? I’ve got to take a deep breath of promise and divine creative unrest — and trust my compass.
(Thank you for indulging my ship metaphor! I hope you
enjoyed it as much as I did) 😉

addiction · detachment · faith · family · fear · love

On Witnessing the Inevitability of Life

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

My mom and I spoke yesterday for the first time in a while. As in, really talked, not a quick check-in, how are you, okay, gotta go. She and I can speak for hours, on subjects ranging from all manner of depth to superficiality. 
Yesterday, she wanted to ask me my advice about a situation she and her long-time boyfriend (for lack of a better term for a live-in adult partner) were facing. His son, my age, was having consequences (severed tendons) that seemed to refer to alcohol (after an altercation with a guy at a bar).
This apparently wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, and despite the stories he told about it (he slipped and fell on the sidewalk after the altercation), my mom and her boyfriend were concerned that this pattern of incidents pointed toward alcoholism.
So, she called me to find out what they should do.
I gave the best advice I know for the families and loved ones of someone in an addiction: Get the help for yourself that you wish the person had. I suggested Al-Anon, or CoDA (Co-Dependents Anonymous), which are geared toward the families of folks facing addiction.
Because, I told her simply: There is nothing you can do.
Apparently, the son had texted to cancel a brunch with his dad yesterday morning, claiming he’d not been able to sleep well, and would be a zombie. His dad texted back, Okay, but we need to talk.
I suggested to my mom that her boyfriend change his tactics. If the son is really in the grips of a disease and an addiction, then he needs to know he has allies. And, really, what would another conversation do about it, as they’d brought up A.A. already and talked about their concern? Play the tape: What do you hope to accomplish from a talk with him that hadn’t already been said? So, the son will say (again), you’re right, I’m sorry, I’ll do better, different. The dad will sit back in his chair with relief and triumph. – And then the son will do whatever he was going to do anyway.
I told my mom some things that sound harsh and even crass when speaking about a loved one in a hard place: That ultimately, the intention of a conversation like that is to get the result that the son’s dad wants, that my mom wants: relief and reassurance that the son be happy, be healthy. And if he is happy and healthy, then they two can be as well. Ultimately, these desires are selfish: I want to feel better; I want to feel relief. (And I know that’s a hard thing to hear when speaking about a parent’s love for a son.)
Furthermore, though, their desires for his changed behavior proclaim that they know the best course for the son. And they don’t. We spoke about “not robbing someone of their bottom;” that getting sober isn’t the way for everyone; and that the person very very much needs to come to the conclusion themselves that they need or want help.
You cannot tell someone to get sober. They have to want it themselves, or it won’t stick; and if you demand it from them, they’ll feel pit against you and your expectations, instead of aligned with you against the terrifying proposition of giving up the one thing in the world they know how to do.
To let go of the results of someone else’s addiction is a grave assignment; that’s why there are support programs for the people who are in that circumstance. It isn’t easy for the people on either side of the bottle.
I told her too, that the thing she does have control over is how she chooses to engage the situation. I talked about Loving Detachment, which I haven’t mastered at all, but have less antipathy toward. I told her she could “pray” for him, in whatever way that meant for her (the agnostic Jew), even if that meant sending thoughts of hippie rainbows toward him. I suggested using the phrase, “I pray that he gets the same peace love and happiness that I want for myself.”
Because it may not be this kid’s path to get sober, to stop drinking, to stop getting in bar fights. It may not be his path to live past 35, is the ultimate truth of it. And that’s where the enormous task of Loving Detachment becomes so painful. And, that’s where help for the loved one’s comes in handy. There are people who have been where they are, and some of them are not there anymore.
The thing about 12 step support, I told her, is that you hear others’ “experience, strength, and hope;” you hear them telling the same stories, not from 3rd person hearsay, or generalization: you hear your own story coming from someone else’s mouth, your own feelings being mirrored back at you, and you realize you are not alone in your struggle. That these folks were where you are, and they aren’t (hopefully) there any more. How did they do it? Stick around and listen. There is hope here.
The last thing I suggested was that the boyfriend amend his text to his son about “needing to talk,” and simply say, “You know what, I’m here when you need me, if you ever want to talk. Otherwise, I’ll just see you on Thursday for the game.” (or whatever.)
It’s not that people in their addiction need to be coddled or allowed to behave inappropriately toward their loved ones. They simply need to be given enough rope to hang themselves. To come to their own desperate conclusions in their own time.
And if you have the strength, or the exhaustion, to let someone you love do that – you all have a better chance to be helped.

* Disclaimer: Opinion and interpretation is only that of the person who gave it, and by no means representative of any other group or entity. 

aspiration · dreams · faith · perseverance · theater · trying

Voice of Dreams Past

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Normal
0
0
1
564
3215
26
6
3948
11.1287

0

0
0

When I left South Korea in February 2004, my neighbor and
Canadian co-worker gave me a journal as a parting gift. I didn’t realize til
later on the plane back to America that he’d written inside, “Good Luck on
Broadway.”
I just searched my blog to see if I’d written about this
segment of my life earlier, and I have, but it’s worth revisiting today.
When I left my ESL teaching post in Korea, my first “real”
job post-undergrad, I had the idea I would come back to the States and “break
onto Broadway,” that I would work my way through the underworld of New York,
the clichéd waitress by day, actor by night.
As I was applying for jobs, I went to get my nails
done—because surely that’s a priority to someone looking for food service
work…? I was in the salon, and began to chat with the woman next to me. I
told her about where I’d been, where I thought I’d be going, and she said
something that infiltrated. To paraphrase: You know you have to start in
community theater, right? It takes years to do anything worthy of note. You don’t just
start at the top.
Her words, combined with a moment of clarity about my
ability to cope with life on life’s terms, led me to abandon my dream, drive
west, and set up a new life in California. You can read about that story here.
But.
Last night, I went to my first rehearsal for the new play
I’m in. It’s a staged mock-trial about the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese
during World War II. It’s not a Sam Shepard, or Shakespeare, or Kushner. It’s
not something I’ll actually advertise to my friends to come see, because I
believe there will be more plays, with better scripts and an actual plot that I
will want to encourage you to see me in. But, it’s a start. And, as I wrote
earlier, I’m happy to be in your bad plays. And really, I am.
But, this thing happened while I was waiting for my table-reading rehearsal to begin: I heard voices.
Specifically, I heard a woman, probably a young woman, as
the rehearsals are at SF State, singing operatically, and there was a chorus
behind her. When I heard it, I stopped short, and followed the sound.
I stood on one side of a wall, the theater on the other. It must have been the scenery shop,
with spray-painted borders on the walls and floors, immense pieces of mirror
and wood. The sort of haphazard array of items you think of in any work-shop. I
stood there, and I listened to them sing. To the accompanying pianist, the voice
of the director, telling them something I couldn’t quite hear. She lit up the
whole place, this disembodied voice.
And I remembered that part of this whole thing for me. That
part of the motivation, that part of the dream.
Because, as you may have (or maybe I should have) gathered by now, this theater thing
and this singing thing are related.
I do know enough to know that what that woman in the nail
shop said was correct. That it does take years. But what my 24-year old self
wasn’t able or willing or balanced enough to say was, So what? Yeah, And?
That’s what I’m doing here, lady—I’m beginning.
I could look around the room at the director and my fellow
actors and report that they’re all 10 years younger than me.
I could stand in that hallway listening to the voice of my
own aspiration and wail I should have studied theater in undergrad.
I could comb through my neglected childhood,
and poke a finger into the wound of not being encouraged to pursue my talent
and my dreams.
But, Julia Cameron wrote something very significant to her
naysayers (internal and external) in The Artist’s Way when she began learning to play the piano in her
50s.
“Do you know how old you’ll be by the time you actually get
proficient at this thing?”
Yes, the same age I’d be if I didn’t.
I saw my friend Matt onstage last week. He’s been working in
the theater industry since his 20s, went to school for it. He’s 50 now. He’s not famous. It’s his first SF play. But he’s
working. Always working. And he loves it.
And isn’t that the damned point.