Category: faith

adulthood · change · commitment · community · faith · family · growth · home · life · recovery · relationships · romance · spirituality · tradition

The Kotzker Rebbi

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

According to legend, and history, Menachem Mendel
Morgenstern of Kotzk, Poland was an eccentric and influential rabbi, teaching
and forming one of the early branches of Hasidism, creating a more austere sect
of Judaism.
According to legend, and history, The Kotzker Rebbi, as he
was known, locked himself in his room for the last 20 years of his life. He
never left it. He received his food through a hole in the wall, and apparently
opened the door of his home once a year, revealing himself and his new
teachings/learnings to his disciples.
According to genetics, I am his great great great
granddaughter. His grandson is my grandfather’s father… I think. I have a family
tree at home somewhere. Either he’s my grandfather’s grandfather, or my grandfather’s
great grandfather. I haven’t done the math. 
Point being, and why it occurs to me today, I have no idea –
but the point being that I have some whacked out crazy, and powerful, Jews in
my lineage, living in my blood and DNA.
I’ve always found this fascinating. Firstly, it sort of
points to the understandability that mental illness runs in my family(!), and
secondly, it just sort of makes sense that Judaism continues to be this thread
in my life. I can’t sever it, ignore it, dismiss it – it is me.
When I began teaching at the Sunday School last year in
Berkeley, I said that I felt it was both my duty and my privilege to do so.
There is a line from some text that if any of us knows even one word of Hebrew he is
bound to teach it to someone else.
Again, I don’t really know why this occurs to me today. I
suppose as I begin to think about the direction my life is taking, or may take,
or I want it to take, I begin to think about this thread. Part of my
consideration in where I will move next, if I move, and eventually I
will (whenever “eventually” is), is if there are Jews there. For example, I’ve
been enamored of Asheville, North Carolina, ever since I heard of it through a
friend of mine who lives there. Young, hip, mountainous, liberal, artsy,
cultured … with one Jewish temple, of Conservative affiliation – aka, more
religious than I am, or want to be.
I don’t want to be more religious, I simply want to have
more connection to the community. More connection to those who share a history,
random Yiddish words, and a very eye-rolly understanding of the complexities of
a Jewish family.
So, Asheville may not be it. I have this crude crayon
drawing I made after a group meditation about 6 or more months ago. It’s a
couple, a man and a woman, holding hands, walking up a street to a
t-intersection. At the head of this intersection is a house – with a
wrap-around porch, huge trees, and a stream in the back, nested by a forest
behind it. To the right of this couple on the main street is a building with a
symbol for recovery on its façade. To the left of them, is a building with a
Jewish star above the door.
This is my vision. This, I believe, is how I become the
woman I want to be. Buoyed by my communities of faith, I’m able to stand in
partnership with another human being, and take part in what the world has to
offer.
I am grateful to have the quirky lineage that I have. It
makes sense to me, and makes me smile. (On my other side, my dad’s side, I’m
descended from Bohemians, literally.) Somehow I feel that I’m preparing to take
up a mantle that belongs to me, which includes all of these histories and as
well as all of the modern and current advantages I’ve inherited as a 20th
century woman with good health and education. And I’ll be curious when I find
that crayon drawing in 20 or 30 years to see how close I’ve come. 

abundance · action · anger · change · faith · freedom · frustration · growth · progress · relationships · romance · self-care · spirituality · work

The Masculine Mystique

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Firstly, I would like to quote an acquaintance of mine as
they responded once to my tirade on SF’s chilly weather – “Then Move.” Touche,
quite right. And I will, just not today.
Secondly, my morning pages were like something out of a
schizo’s notebook this morning, and I’m rather heartened than alarmed by it.
As I began to, again, write that I could paint, a sentence which was followed immediately in my head by the thought, “Yeah, right,” … my morning pages turned
on me, and began a near-two page rejoinder along the lines of Stop Fucking
Saying Yeah Right, and GO DO IT! I channeled the very pissed off and frustrated
voice/part inside me that is exceedingly
tired of the self-defeating, Eeyore-like part of me that crosses all my
interests with a “Yeah, but,” or a “How will I make any money?”
I was happy to see that this activated part was so adamant,
and demanded that I Just Fucking Do It, rather than what I’ve been doing for a
very long time, question, debate, lolly-gag, despair. This voice is the fuck despair
voice. It is the voice, one might say, of my inner masculine.
I’m a little hesitant to draw the dividing line between
feminine and masculine in this way; feminine as pondering and questioning;
masculine as action and fortitude. But, it sort of feels like that to me, and
it’s only my interpretation. There are
plenty of other ways to categorize, or not, these disparate voices and parts of
ourselves. But, for the sake of the argument, I’ll call it my masculine side.
And the truth is, it’s right. Whatever it is, or I call it.
Because this is the point in the job search where I get frustrated and think,
well, nothing will come of it anyway, so phooey, here’s another admin job. My
internal beings of all sorts are having a coup. Nuh, Uh. Time’s up. Off the
pity pot, lady. Get on it.
And further more, Yes, You Can. Furthermore,
to segue,
you/I have very recent experience in NOT behaving as you
would have in the past. You very
recently responded to a situation MUCH differently than factual evidence
had it before. This means … you’re different. You’ve changed. You can do things
now that you couldn’t before, and your mental register aligns with a much
healthier set of behavior and thinking now.
The case in point, is that I was asked to go to the theater
by a boy…man. There is nothing wrong with this person, except that a) I
accepted the extra ticket thinking he has a girlfriend, so I thought it was a friend thing (I found out later he does not), and b) he is new to
the not-drinking world.
Over the last 3 days, I have felt icky – like the princess
and the pea. I know from my own experience that the first few months of not
drinking and trying a whole new way of life – no, not first few months, first
few years (or year, AT LEAST), are so incredibly
formative, that I would be damned to throw a wrench into the wheel works of
someone else’s critical development. I know people who have gotten involved, and it’s
worked out marvelously, but I, surprisingly, was feeling way too uncomfortable
about it.
Sobriety, mine or someone else’s, was way more important to
me than a fucking non-date date. No matter how long it’s been, how intriguing
it is, how fun it could be. Not doing it.
So, through a series of phone calls to friends, and a
confirmation that it’s the respectful thing for us both, yesterday, I texted
the dude and said I’d rather stick to seeing him “around,” than go for coffee.
That I felt “murky” around it.
You know what he said?
“Okay. No worries!”
???!!!
All my f’ing belly aching, and heming and hawing, and “Okay,
No Worries”?? Wow, this honesty thing really f’ing works.
Through a series of circumstances, the timing was different
than he thought, so I get to go see the play by myself and also get to have a
clean, peer-like relationship with this dude. I don’t have to feel weird, or
avoid, or future-trip about it. The play is the bonus prize – the actual prize
is the relief of doing the right and honest thing for myself, and sticking to a
new way of being.
I know from direct experience that I haven’t always
responded that way to someone who was new to not drinking, and I experienced
the fallout of that, however brief it was. I, apparently, have learned from my
experience. And my internal alarm system is calibrated to this new way of
being.
I say all this to say, that my masculine side has a point.
All that writing this morning about Just Do It has a point. The point is that I’m not the person I used to be. I don’t have the same
reactions I used to, and so I don’t have to follow the same actions I used to.
This whole “new way of living” has made itself quite apparent in my life, and I
can allow the boon of that to propel me forward.
I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Afraid there isn’t
enough, or I’m not good enough, or I’ll never make it anyway, or that a
creative life is a stupid one.
In fact, I don’t have these fears anymore, really. They’re
just echoes. There’s nothing real to scare me. There’s no one stopping me, or
chiding me, or making fun of me.
And if there ever is, I apparently have a massive bully to
yell affirmations at them. 
community · faith · gratitude · humilty · love

6 x 6 and 5 x 5

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Six years ago this very morning, the Monday after Easter of
2006, I packed everything I could carry – i.e. a few suitcases and a pillow –
into my car, and headed West.
I drove from New Jersey in the rising light of a near-Spring
morning, muddy headed, giddy, nervous, and a little puffy eyed. I got on the
highway, and drove.
This was a planned trip – albeit, not very well. Having
arrived home after my 2nd completed teaching contract in South
Korea, and a few pitstops along the archepelago, I found myself to be 24,
living at home, with no thought of what to really do next. It was March.
I thought, and had the idea, that I would “break onto
Broadway.” It hadn’t really occurred to me that people often spend years of
their lives in training and working their way through auditions and classes and
various local troupes, and still don’t make that leap. I simply thought I could “make it work.”
So, I envisioned that I would get a roommate or two in
Manhattan, get a job as a waitress (cuz that’s what actresses do, right?), and
start my way up.
I did get a job as a waitress. At a lower Manhattan Italian
restaurant, and was told that I needed to wear all black as the uniform, and
start the next week. Great – perfect – falling into place.
I’m in H&M clothing store. I’m in the stall changing
room, and trying on black clothing for my new job, and I have a sudden thought
– New York will eat me alive.
I suddenly realized that I had no business being in
Manhattan the way that I was drinking and drugging. That I would die if I
stayed. I somehow knew it. I was setting myself up to fail, as I had no coping
mechanisms and almost no community or friends, having lost most of those prior to
leaving for Korea.
I walked out of H&M without buying anything. I left the
black clothing, the representation of this pipe dream, and walked outside. I
called the restaurant, and told them I wouldn’t be coming in to work … That I
was moving to California.
What made me think that? I don’t know. But I had a
friend/acquaintance who lived in San Francisco, who’d invited me to come visit.
And somehow, San Francisco – California Dreamin’ – was for me. How ’bout I come to stay?
I don’t know what sense of intuition it was that let me know
that NYC was too much for the addled and fragile sense of self I was, but I am
grateful for it. In Korea, there weren’t many drugs around – a few here and
there, spilling off the army base – but mainly, it was drinking. And for that,
I am grateful. But, in New York? It was a buffet of ways to murder myself
slowly. And I had zero capacity to turn anything down. I knew it was a ticket
to the bottom, and I really didn’t have that much further to go.
So, San Francisco. I coordinated with my friend out here.
Let the Cousin know I would come to visit him in Ohio before I hopped on to
Route 66 – the cool way to go – and got gone. I bought the Lonely Planet guide books for California, and Coastal California,
and Route 66, and simply followed that map the whole way down. I arrived in
Santa Monica on April 25th, 2006, stuck my feet in the Pacific Ocean
(on this side of it) for the first time, and headed up north to San Francisco.
I arrived that night in time to induct my friend into my
nighttime tornado as she showed me around via a few bars. Two weeks later, I
got sober.
I had no intention of this, mind you. It didn’t at all occur
to me that I was heading West to leave a life I’d known for many years in
exchange for one I knew nothing about. I didn’t know that I would eventually
fix my teeth, live alone, go to graduate school, actually audition and be in a
few plays.
I just knew that SF was better than NYC for me.
6 by 6. Six years ago. I don’t know why I chose “by 6,” not
sure what it’s “by,” – perhaps “2006” – but 5 x 5, I get.
Five by five is the catch phrase of TV’s Buffy the
Vampire Slayer’s character, Faith. Which I
suppose is an apt name here at the moment. When things are good, in answer to
how are you, when life is not filled with monsters and demons and chaos, Faith
replies that she’s “Five by Five.”
My life is no longer filled with monsters and demons and
chaos. There are bumps in the night, and scary creatures that lurk still, but 6
years have taught me how to deal with, talk about, and work through those fears
and scary patches.
Over this past weekend, I have run into, at complete
coincidence, people from communities as variant as school, Jew, and recovery.
On the street, in a taxi, on the bus, on BART. I am “a part of.” I am a member
of. I am not a lost little pigeon anymore – I have community, and several at
that. I have been surprised and humbled as I’ve realized this weekend how many
friends I now have – people I now know. I arrived knowing one woman marginally.
And I’m learning how to “break on to Broadway,” or whatever
my current vision equivalent is, with the grace, fortitude, and support that I
never would have dreamed I’d have. For a dork, lost, wild, alone, sad, chaotic,
pipe-dreamy me, well, five by five doesn’t even feel adequate. 

faith · honesty · integrity · surrender · time

The end is nigh

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I just like that phrase. So gothic and epic … and Mayan.
Just kidding.
(p.s. Following yesterday’s blog and some other recent
ones, I start to wonder what is TMI or inappropriate for this forum. But,
although I may have walked up to the line, and even then, I may not have, I
don’t think I’ve crossed it. So – onward!)
My school inbox is being flooded with emails about
graduation regalia, thesis submission costs, thesis filing information,
invitations to the end of year event, etc. You’d think there were something a
brewin, eh?
May 12th I graduate. That’s about a month from
now, and I’m stoked and terrified. Not terrified, just unclear.
In an effort to get more clear, today I’m going to be taking up a
suggestion. A time map. You may call it a schedule. Part of my fear is based on
my inability to take action – or not an “inability” per se, but a fear, simply
of taking action. What if I try my best and fail? What if I turn down underpaying jobs and end up broke
anyway? Shel Silverstein was a wise man
when he wrote the poem “Whatif.”
So, to combat vagueness, and the three P’s (Perfectionism
-> Procrastination -> Paralyzation), I’m going to work today to create a
schedule for myself to include things like revenue generating time (i.e.
looking for work); creative time; and grocery shopping(!).
Because without any structure of a 9-5, I’m not doing much
of anything with my days. Sort of floating along, with class punctuating the
vagueness (and homework not). I don’t like it. I feel then stressed in the 11th
hour, and I don’t have to. So, I’ll work with someone today to create a plan
that includes play and self-care and work and effort and the scary things that
elicit the above questions.
In a stroke of unexpectedness, I got an email from a gallery
owner I know. I’d emailed her nearly 6 months ago to ask if she had any
part-time work available and had never heard back. She emailed me yesterday
with apologies. This, is something of a surprise, and I’m coming to notice
“surprises” as little “G-d shots” as it were. She said she’d love to chat in
person. Not sure that she has any work, but that’s not the point.
I mentioned to some folks last month that I would sweep the
floor in an art gallery. I would adjust spreadsheets. I would do whatever job
would get me into a world of art, artists, creativity. And, suddenly, here
appears my acquaintance. I will follow up with her. Little actions produce big
results. Is it a coincidence that I’m finally taking some action around work
and this email comes in? Maybe.
I’ve decided that I’m not going to the interview at the job
I have no interest in today. Mainly, it’s just f’ing dishonest. I’d be lying my
ass off to get a job I don’t want. I had the recent experience with the modeling guild
of lying and having it coming around to bite me – I think I’ve learned.
Furthermore, despite other people’s vocal fears to me which run along the lines
of “Just take it,” that is not my value. Not my personal value system, or the
monetary and energetic value that I have to exchange.
This surely produces fear (TAKE THE CRUMBS!!!), but fuck the
crumbs. I’ve been like Hansel and Gretel in the forest leading myself to the
fiery pit of someone else’s oven by following crumbs. I don’t need the crumbs. I need
the wiser idea of the stones on the path – the firmer, more appropriate, more
honest way of being.
I have help to lay these stones if I avail myself of them,
and so, I’m asking for help on the baby steps today. Feels a little silly to
ask someone to sit with me while I make a map of my time, but I haven’t been
able to do it on my own, and I need help. So, I’ll ask, I’ll receive, and I’ll
change. G-d willing. 

faith · fear · spirituality · surrender

G-d Letter.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Hi folks, I share this today with vulnerability, and the knowledge it may turn some people off. But, it’s the truth, so here goes.


There’s a spiritual tool I sometimes use called a “G-d letter.” In essence, I write a letter to G-d, all my fears and questions and … fears. Then I turn the page, take a breath, and write a letter back – from G-d. I was skeptical of this tool – *very* skeptical – and then I tried it. I’ve been using it at moments of extreme emotional distress since then. 


With the hope you may get something from it too, here’s today’s “letter back.”




Dear Child,

I’m glad you’re here with me. I see your despair and I have compassion. You are on your path. There is no other road to go or seek. I have dotted your path with synchronicity and it will make itself evident, if it hasn’t already — just look around. You are carried and cared for. You are loved and lovable. There is nowhere else to be. Can you trust me? Can you trust my angels here on earth?

Will you let them guide and chisel for you a path? What is the next footprint, Molly? The very next thing to do? Just do that.

I love you, and I cherish WHO YOU ARE, not just who you will become. Because you are already who you will become, you just need to see it. I am here. I am loving. I am listening and I am guiding.

Be still and know that I am G-d, and that joy is here, right here for your taking.

My everything, Your Creator,
G-d. ❤

commitment · dating · faith · Jewish · recovery · self-care

Standards

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday as I was walking to catch my bus to the movies
with friends, a young man walked out of a nearby store and was walking just a few
paces next to me in the same direction. It was obvious we were going to be
going the same way for a while, so I asked him what he’d bought at the store –
it’s a little Italian food and cheese shop.
We ended up chatting and laughing a good bit on the way, and
as my bus came into sight, and he was going to continue on his way, I
introduced myself and held out my hand. He did the same, and then he asked, Do
you want to get together some time?
I smiled, and said, Actually I’m not dating right now, but
thank you. And he looked a little quizzical, but accepted it, and as we crossed
the street, I said maybe I’ll see you around. And I got on my bus, with
a grin on my face.
This young man, about my age, attractive, and I
picked up a Jewish vibe (my Jew-dar is pretty good with men). But, he was about
5 inches shorter than me. (I’m close to 6feet tall, if you didn’t know.)
I told my friend about the interaction later, and she said, “he wasn’t up to my standards, no pun intended…” But, unfortunately or not, it’s
true. I’ve tried to make good enough good enough, and it just doesn’t work for
me. I’ve tried to make almost the right fit into the right fit, but it’s like
Cinderella’s sisters’ bleeding toes. Eventually, the truth will out.
I felt glad that I was approachable and attractive. I felt
bummed that it wasn’t the right fit. But, I suppose it’s progress that I’m
approachable.
I still think about the Catholic and our incredible first
date in January – like something out of Before Sunrise.
I’ve been noticing I really do have a type, a physical type, at least. Blond and blue eyed. So, a blond blue
eyed, tall Jew. Right… But, as someone once told me, the Universe will either
fulfill your desire, or take it away. Or, as I’ve also heard, G-d has three answers: Yes, Not Now, and I have something better in mind.
For my reluctance to write this in an open forum, before I
met my last boyfriend, I felt like and said that I felt ready for “the one
before ‘The One,’” that I wasn’t quite ready for white-picket fence land, or to
be fully emotionally available – but that I was ready to try for the almost.
And believe it or not, I believe that’s exactly what
happened. It was almost right. It was in many ways also very not right. But I
got to practice being in a relationship; noticing my patterns, my alternation
between a desire to control and be approved of, and a desire to reject. I got to see that I wasn’t
a half-bad girlfriend, which was good, considering my self-esteem’s attachment to my sordid promiscuous past.
And, ultimately, I got to see that the difference between “almost” and “yes,”
though small, is also a canyon. Not easily crossed or bridged by any amount of
force or desire.
I’ve had a few approaches by “almosts” in the last six
months or so. And I’ve gotten to play the tape – the recent tape of trying with
an almost. It included tears, pain, “breaks,” coercion, frustration, despair.
(Of course, it also included joy, humor, contentment, and creativity.) It was
not enough. And so, I’ve had to practice saying no.
I’m not sure that I like using the phrase “I’m not dating
right now,” which had been true for the last few months, not being emotionally
available to date. But I feel that that’s changing. So, we’ll see. Maybe I will
get the opportunity to say Yes sometime soon.
(And, by the way, part of the reason for today’s blog is all
a ‘note to self’ about the inappropriate
dude-I-feel-like-a-13-year-old-lost-in-my-gawky-body-when-I-talk-to-you crush I
have on an blue-eyed acquaintance, who is non-jewish, short, taken, but oh so …
yummy.) 😉

acceptance · anger · faith

Anima

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment
Yesterday,
during meditation, I began to notice that I’m alive. Now, before you
scoff, it was more I sort of sensed whatever it was, that spark of life within
me, that is not in a fire hydrant or end table. That mystical, magical thing
that happens only for us, that rides on our blood cells and sends messages to
synapses and invents thought, hormones, and waste.

Anima, is
what this is. The life property of us living things.

It wasn’t
as if I sensed my soul in that sense of the meaning, but more, that simply I
was aware that –hot dog!- this is being “alive.” I found this interesting, this unique “blessing,” perhaps. To just notice that there is something in me, as in you,
that is not in everything.

Later
that day, I found out that a friend of mine overdosed on drugs, and died this
weekend.

At the
moment, it felt simply like shock, indignation, and anger. I am believer in a
Higher Power, and an order to the Universe, or something like that – although
my understanding and relationship to that power changes and evolves, like most
relationships. However, this this felt abnormally cruel.

He was my
age, 30ish. Tall, blue eyes, light hair. Handsome. I had a crush on him.

Granted
it was a from-a-distance crush, because I knew the struggle he was having with
staying sober for the year plus that I’ve known him.

When I
got sober, I was told to buy something black – the men told to buy a suit – as
we were going to be attending a lot of funerals. (That’s not “recovery”’s
position on the matter; it’s just the half joke/half not of some people in it.)

When I
was a few months sober, someone I’d been peripherally running around with being
wild and crazy and ISN’T LIFE GREAT WHEN YOU’RE NOT PUKING AND BLACKING OUT
ANYMORE?!, well, I found out that he’d walked off a cliff one night on purpose.

A girl I
know died last year, and a lot of folks I know were affected by her death.

But, for
me, this one has come the closest to home. I sat in the same room with this kid
almost weekly for over a year. I heard his dry humor, and his despair, his
attempts, his hope, and his … anima. I heard his life. We all did. And now,
he’s dead.

My
emotions of shock were sent in a sentence up to G-d: What The Fuck.

Sure, I
do believe in the order of things, and that “things happen for a reason,” but
I’ll tell you, believe that though I do and may, this happened to be a great
way to shake that conviction. But moreso, I feel indignant and righteously
angry and my
firm belief in a kind Universe. I know it sounds antithetical, but really, I
have no other choice.

I, like
many people I know, have no other choice than but to believe in some cosmic
goodness – to me it is a goodness. And, sure, I can choose not to believe. I
can choose to say that this world is fucked, and aimless, and sometimes you win
and sometimes you lose, and there’s no reason or order or lesson or anything.
Cold, inanimate life.

But. I
don’t believe that. And, really, it’s not because I must, it’s because I
do. I simply do.

And, so
then, how to “reconcile” at all the tragedy of the loss of a … how can you
describe a person in a word?

I cannot
reconcile the loss and my worldview. And often my worldview is replete with
paradox, and for now, today, I will hold them both. I will be furious and
mystified at the shortened life of my friend. And, I will continue to scrape
the residue of that which covers my own anima – because I do also believe that
whenever the light is turned on in one person, the whole world is lightened
because of it.

And
though I still don’t feel that this is now some cosmic balance of we now all
get to improve ourselves and not take life for granted and all that bullshit, …
well, what else can we do?

Dear Aaron, I’m sorry I didn’t offer to lend you the two dollars you needed when you were on line behind me at the grocery store last week. I wish I had. 
faith · fortitude · love · self-care · sex

Holding the High Watch

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

The best laid plans, right? I had grand ones for this week,
then I got sick. I am on the mend, past the worst I think (insert ad for
Airborne here [despite others’ nay-saying about its efficacy, I swear by it,
and finally stocked up yesterday]).
It has given me the opportunity to nest a little bit; I
haven’t cleared my NJ boxes, but I have put up the revised “vision of love”
collage. It’s so much better than the
last – I wish I’d taken a before photo of the beige yawn it had been! And I
have another decorating project I might get to.
I think I know why I got sick – what tipped the scales from
‘minor winter ill-health’ to full-blown ‘duuuude, I don’t feel so good.’ I made
out with someone. — Not that this is karmic retribution or anything, but that he must have been sick too. 
A few days ago, I was in the car with a guy friend of mine.
We have a teeny bit of history having been involved for a full 4 hours 😉 a few
years ago but have remained pretty good friends, sort of sweeping it under the
rug. We often talk about our dating lives and such, and as he’s giving me a
ride home, we begin to talk about it again, what’s going on, etc, lighthearted,
etc.
Except…
I begin to say that I am of two minds lately. The one mind
that knows I’m “holding the high watch” as it were for something real,
potentially lasting, and ultimately revolutionizing. (Realistic… right? [I do
think so actually!]) I tell him about the work I’d been doing via Calling in The
One, and about how I am attempting to
create my best life, so when I meet someone, I’m fully present and accountable
for myself, I’m engaged in a life that makes me happy, and I’m not seeking for
someone else to make me happy or to take care of the needs within myself that
are actually my responsibility.
This is basically the aim of the book, and of a lot of the
spiritual work I do. To become my authentic and most available and active self.
That said,
I am also of another mind. Which says, I’m 30 years old, my
bones and ligaments only getting older and less nimble, and these are prime sex
years that I feel I’m wasting! It feels like a tragedy to let each day go by
without engaging in one of life’s greatest pleasures.
My guy friend says that it sounds like my body is saying one
thing and my head is saying another – but I really think it’s everything all at
once, to use that phrase again. My heart & head know what I’m doing,
holding the high watch, creating space, making room, expanding my life in
positive ways. They/I know that this “lull” is temporary, and perhaps in fact
necessary to sort of flush the system, or simply not clog it with anything less
than awesome.
In his car out front of my apartment, I ask, Has this whole
conversation been your way of saying you want to make out? and he laughs, I’m not
that transparent, am I?
But, being a hot-blooded human and woman, and knowing the
course of the conversation had been headed here, and having actively
participated in it, we make out.
And it’s fun and hot for a full ten minutes or so, and then
I know I have to leave. I don’t want to sleep with him, though, surely it would
be fun, but I am very familiar with fun
of this sort, this particular sort, which looks like neither of us actually
being romantically attracted to each other whatsoever, and I am also very familiar with the … blasé sort of let-down feeling
as you each pick up your discarded socks and clunk through some small talk and
try to figure out how quickly you can get out of there.
Sex is temporary. Love is not.
So, despite the “tragedy” of “wasted sex years,” I am clear
on what I am heading toward. I am clear on the woman and partner I want to be.
Clear-ish. I know it’s fluid. But I also know I am very much done (she says,
knowing things may always change) with vapid sex.
Besides, Good Vibrations appreciates my business. 
faith · growth · recovery · self-care

Vitamin D

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I sit here in the long, angled slants of winter sun, bundled
in my pjs, robe, and two blankets, with a bowl of cinnamon apple I just made. I
was told recently that Vitamin D is a really great healer, and as I’m sick and
had to cancel my plans for today, I’m sopping up this natural resource as much
as I can.
As I’m sick, this blog may not make much sense 🙂 and may
have contributed to the ‘downer’ mood of yesterday’s, but, c’est la vie.
I said a few months ago, around the time that I was preparing
to go home to pack up my house that I felt like my life was “Everything all at
once.” The money stuff was hitting a wall again, family was a beast, and I
generally felt overwhelmed.
A turn came when I also realized that “Everything all at
once” must include the good things too.
Right? If it’s everything, everything, all this drama and hardship and challenge and chaos, what must also
be happening and available is calm, serenity, growth, and gifts.
Perspective is everything.
So, if at the same time that I’m experiencing a profound
bolstering in my sense of inner strength, this doesn’t preclude that there is
also … life, with all its attendant twists.
To take a narrative turn, my only tattoo is on my left
wrist, and it is of the sun. In my senior year of college, the wall opposite my
bed had a filled-in doorway to the next room, but the molding for the door was
still there. When I’d painted the room, I’d left the molding white, so it was
like a frame. Knowing I was inching toward a tattoo of the sun, I decided it
would be a good idea to live with one for a while, to see if I got sick of it.
So, I began to draw on my wall in that frame, an enormous
sun, with each flame around it different and specific, and within the circle of
the sun was the infinity symbol drawn sort of like a ribbon or mobius strip, so
it was three-dimensional, folding in on itself, traveling infinitely.
These two images to me, infinity and the sun, were images of
“constants.” Things that would always be (though yes, the argument can be made
about the sun, but in my lifetime at least, it is a constant!). An anchor
amidst whatever else was going on, these things would always be.
When I brought my design to the artist, my wrist was too
small to take the detail of the drawing, and so we simplified it majorly.
Sometimes people assume that the lines within the circle on my wrist are of a
yin-yang, which sort of bothers me 😉 as I want to say, ew, no, I’m not that hippie, lol. But, I know what it represents.
Along those lines of constancy, for the last … maybe 4
years, I’ve been playing with another tattoo design, but have hesitated because
it would cover the entire right side of my body from top of my ribs to my
hipbone, and part of me feels “bad” or guilty rather to cover the work that is
already there – me 😉 The art G-d already made. It’s like graffiti – you never
tag over someone else’s work. Never.
So, twice, I’ve brought my design in to two different
artists. One was not quite my style, but still has my deposit, I believe! The
other, I found about a year ago, when searching online for someone who would be
good with the design I had in mind – and lo and behold, this guy had just
opened up a shop above Union Square, and I met with him, and we emailed photos
and sketches ad nauseum, and finally, we got it right.
Then, I got into grad school, and was soon to be unemployed,
and let him know, and he said cool, and to get in touch when I wanted to do it.
The design combines the images of the “hand of G-d” and the
“tree of life.” The trunk of the tree would be the wrist of a hand, with the
main branches as the outward curving of fingers. But it would look like a tree,
of course, and that’s what drew me to this guy. I’d seen some work he did where
the trees looked so intricate and phenomenal – it’s hard to do a tree! So, you wouldn’t be entirely sure, or
it wouldn’t be obvious, that it
was a hand, but it is.
The branches would be covered in each of the seasons, moving
from one to the next, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring (so that the sparse branches
of winter weren’t on an end, and also, to indicate that after the death of
winter, there is always spring).
The root system would travel down over my hipbones, equally
as massive and firm as the branches, because the degree to which we flower is
equal to the degree to which we are rooted, I believe.
I still think about this design, and it fits in well with my
first one with regard to constancy – the constancy of a Higher Power in my life
and the constancy of the potential to grow and flower continuously, infinitely.
We’ll see what happens, he still has my deposit too, and I
still have his final design. But I love the ideas I’ve chosen to live with, and
I don’t for a second regret the one on my wrist. And as the sun, here, now,
today, makes it’s slow way from behind another building onto me tucked into my
cozy couch, I am again grateful. For the reminder that it’s okay to be still
and mend today as tomorrow will come too; the reminder that growth is infinite
and continuous; and that there is always, always something to count on. 
faith · intuition · love · persistence · responsibility · self-care

The Power of Love (yes, I mean the song)

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Yesterday, I went to the 3rd of a series of 4
workshops my friend has been facilitating over the last few months. Yesterday
was Relationship with the Divine. I imagined I sorta had this one “down,” that
I could relatively expect what would come up – places where I trust, don’t
trust, know I’ll be taken care of, am scared I’ll be taken care of(!). But, a
bunch of things happened that I did not expect.
The first of which was in response to the question, What
would happen if we shift our current (and assumedly not completely accurate)
belief system? What would happen if I really allowed myself to step into full
faith in my path, my internal nudges toward art, into the fullest idea that
this is a world of abundance? What would happen then?
What occurred to me was that I would need to begin to take
responsibility for my dreams, for these nudges and instincts toward joy. And
that’s when it happened.
I’ve known that I have shirked responsibility for my needs
and my dreams for years, hiding them under “just stay within the lines.” I know
that it has become so painful to stay in the lines that I’ve quit jobs with no
safety net, moved across continents and countries, and previously fallen into
addiction and self-defeating behavior to cover up the distance between what I
was doing in my life and what I wanted to be doing. So, I’ve known that I’ve
not been responsible to myself.
What I didn’t know was that in sitting with what would it truly
look like to step into that responsibility would bring up the fiery reaction of
an inner child saying F.U., I’m exhausted from responsibility, responsibility
sucks.
Now, sure, many people feel this way, but many don’t. To me
what this question tapped into was that my previously held beliefs of
responsibility were of ones that were beyond my resources. Like I’ve said,
responsibilities that I had to take on when I was younger, like a lot of people
I know, were beyond what a child normally ought to take on. Responsibility came
with resentment and a feeling of exhaustion.
So, to sit now with the possibility of stepping in and
taking full reign of my dreams, nudges, creativity, “power” even, I come up
against this out-dated idea of what responsibility means, and of course I’ve
run away from stepping into ownership of them. If, to me, responsibility for
myself has equaled a burden, something beyond what I’m able to give, a
frightening amount of giving, then it is no f’ing wonder that I’ve avoided it.
The bright spot on all of this, is that now I see it, and
can dismantle these false ideas. It would be nice to assume responsibility for
myself in a way that felt nurturing, caring, and perhaps even refueling. My
needs are not exorbitant, they are doable, if I also am willing to tap into the HP (sorry to get G-dy for a minute)
and the abundant source of energy that is there.
I’m not a religious person, but I believe there are things
beyond me which are much more powerful than I am, and if I can tap into that
resource, I don’t get  depleted. If
I act as a channel, instead of charging off my own battery, then I don’t get
depleted.
So, I’ve known that it’s been hard for me to color outside
the lines, to stick to the course that is within me. But i haven’t really known
why I’ve continued to avoid the path, besides the normal fears(!). We’ll see
how I am able to incorporate this new idea, how I’ll be able to shift the
belief system, but awareness is the first action.
Secondly in this workshop, lol, if you’re still reading!,
there was a meditation on impermanence. This was So crazy intense, I’ve never
had a meditation be so evocative – and I’ve had some whacked out powerful ones
that I still remember. The meditation was to ourselves as a very old person, on
the doorstep of death. We were to enter the space of this person, and make
ourselves known to her (in my case), and to ask what she had to tell us. The
whole time, nearly from the beginning of the meditation, I’m streaming tears.
Not from grief or sadness, sadness was there, but it was just more this
overwhelming sense of emotion.
The woman, me, all frail and skeletal nearly, had my eyes,
and they were still bright and kind and alive. There was the smell of cinnamon,
something baking elsewhere in the house. And as I held her hand, she told me to
“Love, as much as you can.” And to be with my family (which I am not entirely
sure what she meant, my current one, the one I’ll have, my family of my
friends, or all of these). She was content with her life, ready to go.
Then we were to imagine her passing away, and not to get
gross, but imagining her decomposing, to bone, to dust, and perhaps blowing
away, and then to sit and “sense or feel or imagine” (as my teacher likes to
say) what remains. What remained for me, as I continue to drip saltwater all
down my neck, was both the Love this woman had, had around her, in her, in her
life, and gave to me, and the edict to
Love. Which I interpret as two different things. The sense of love, and the
command to love.
What also remained was the sound of children’s laughter
somewhere else in the house, downstairs or down the hall. In my meditation of
impermanence, laughter and love remained. In my meditation where I literally
(sort of) watched myself die, what was left in the world wasn’t diminished.
You can imagine this was pretty intense 😉
But how encouraging. And I’ve been given something to do. To
love, as much as I can, and to hold my responsibilities for myself with love,
not rejection.
Big tasks, but apparently, I have a very long time in which
to accomplish them.