And So, She Wakes.

May 9, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

As I was flipping open my Morning Pages notebook this
morning, it fell open to the back page. Written at the top was “Meditation:
Lodge Day 4.” I usually write my journeys and meditations in another
“spiritual” notebook, to keep them all together, but I couldn’t find it last
Thursday when I apparently wrote this. I’d forgotten, and it makes intensely
marvelous sense to me now, and I’m happy I stumbled upon it.

Again, bear with the “do we have to listen to another one of
these woo-woo Mollyisms”!

As you may recall, I went to my first sweat lodge last
Sunday, and we were told by the facilitator that the lodge “works” for four
days after the lodge, hence, Day 4 above. The meditation on that day, then,
went something like this:

The four characters of Beauty, Love, Sexuality, and
Femininity [I guess I didn’t write a blog about her, but a former meditation introduced my Inner Femininity to me as one anorexic and frightened looking young woman, who has been getting healthier for a few months] gathered at the lodge fire. Sexuality discarded her heavy cloak of
shame into the fire. All of the rest of “us” stood behind her – all my aspects
that sit at my internal dinner table, all my animal guides, and all my teachers
human and otherwise. Then the 4 entered the lodge, not with “me.” In the lodge,
they merged, joined, combined, and exited as one. She then purged all these
prayer bundles [little sacks of tobacco filled with prayers, tied together with
string, usually tiny, about the size of a nickel] and the last one was about
the size of a bowling ball, filled with shame. It burned brightly and a phoenix
rose up from the ashes and swam about the clearing. All the others whooped and
cheered – there was great merriment [so it says in my notebook]. She grabbed
onto the phoenix and made the whole trip back from the Santa Cruz mountains and
to my apartment where I sat meditating. And she asked me, Are you ready? And I
answered Yes. And she joined me, into me, empowers/powers me now [I write]. Am I
ready? Yes.

So, what? I realized this morning as I read over this page
that, in fact, something like this has happened. My dalliance with the married
man began the very next day. Brief and physically Rated G as the now-ended tete-a-tete was, I have not felt that kind of power, or charge, or electric in a long time.
That awake in a long time.

I relate it to the awakening of a limb that’s long been
asleep. Suddenly it starts to tingle, which feels sorta nice, and then, more suddenly, it begins to
feel like it’s burning as it awakens. As the blood starts to rush almost anew
into this place so long cut off. You almost wish it would simply go back to sleep again – better that than this. As you know, I’ve cut off much of these parts
of me for quite some time, imagining, and having fed the story that my
sexuality, femininity, beauty, and love bring me pain, destruction,
self-hatred, and, again, shame.

So, beginning to feel the tingle of these parts of me again,
these massive alive energized parts of me, means that I’m beginning to walk with
my full self again. See, I don’t think it’s just about sex, or being a woman, I
think it’s about me being a full and entirely embodied human. About allowing
the blood, power, energy to flow into ALL of myself. And when that is allowed
to happen, well, I believe I’ll be able to take actions I haven’t been able to
take before.

I wrote a few informational interview query letters out to
networks of mine last night, and in it, I wrote a line that surprised me at its
truth. I wrote that I would, ideally, like to paint, act, sing in a band, and
facilitate workshops. So, there you have it. I now have an answer to “What do
you want to do.” Isn’t that lovely?

In fact, it is. I know that I’m still finding my way to
getting there. But having full working ability of all my limbs has been the
only way to get there. When, over the last several months I was told that I had
to work on this sex stuff before I could get “more information,” well, I think
I’m coming out of it/into it. I think I’m clearing it.

Apparently, sure, I have some work to do on how to do it
skillfully. My old habits with righteously attractive unavailable men are much
more familiar in my muscle memory – and as my muscles awaken, they seek the
familiar. (And seek to post the NIN “I wanna fuck you like an animal” on facebook!) So, it’s about owning, and holding these parts now – how to hold them
properly, and respectfully – without
fucking shame.

Finally, I realized yesterday, as I was clicking “attend” to a workshop for Shamanic Journey work, that if my professional development could
be anything, it would be this – sweat lodges, and collage parties, and shamanic
journey workshops. That my professional development ought to align with my
personal development. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Therefore, again, it’s about heading there. About allowing
myself to head there. Sure, I may need to find a job for the mean time, the in
between time, but with the full use of my faculties, with a widened and
compassionate understanding of the voraciously ambitious and pulsatingly
powerful support of my full feminine, human, creative self, with an eye for new
behavior, and with a welcome acceptance of all that I am, and want, and yearn for –
I believe that, Yes, I Am Ready.

acceptance · adulthood · change · courage · discovery · forgiveness · gratitude · grief · honesty · intimacy · kindness · love · meditation · progress · recovery · sex · sexuality · sobwebs · spirituality

Somewhere New.

May 1, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For several months now, I’ve been working on a particular
area of healing. For those of you who have read the “Savage Love,” then “Savage Beauty” blogs, you know that I’ve been working on healing my relationship with
my sexuality, and my past behavior and experience in this area.

This is likely going to be a little heavy – for which I’m
not thrilled, but I’m honest – so if that’s not what you want today, I’m sure Cyanide
& Happiness will provide some levity
today.

On my way back from the sweat lodge this Sunday, I was riding
with my friend who was running the lodge. I told her that earlier this year,
and late last year, each time I’d “go in” via meditation or shamanic journey
work to ask what I need to do next to move forward, I was presented with the information
that I needed to work on this stuff – sexual trauma and other murky stuff. I have been. Working
with my therapist on EMDR for a little bit (though I’m not seeing her
currently, due to finances), and in these other more alternative ways.

And most of all, through my thesis.

Basically what my thesis trails is a path through my sexual
history. That story parallels my mental breakdown, and my parents’ divorce, but really,
what is being excavated and brought into the light is all of that. The
“highlights” or representative incidents.

Over ages 16 through 24 (a little earlier than 16, but
that’s when it really took off with a very chicken-or-egg tag team with my drinking), is a napalm blanket of sorrow, shame, and
dissociation. When riding in the car with my friend on Sunday, I said to her
that I hadn’t “been in” to ask for a while if I’m “done” with this particular
set of work or not, and wondered if maybe I was, but/and as I found out a little this morning, there are still
some corners left to sweep.

I am grateful that I had the courage to put all of what I
needed to onto paper in my thesis. But, I’m also aware that it goes much deeper
and further than the stark, strobe-like glimpses that I give you, the reader.
And this morning, in meditation, I began to psychicly clear out some of the
cobwebs. (I just accidentally wrote “sobwebs,” which I suppose is pretty accurate
for this morning.)

In fact, I did something pretty literal to sweeping out – in my mind’s
eye, I walked through and into all those situations I remember, and
unfortunately or not, I remember quite a lot quite vividly apparently — more
than I thought I did. I walked through these times and places, into these
couplings and actions, and burned sage there. I carried this sage through all
the circumstances I could remember, and asked them to be cleared of any energy
which is no longer needed.

There are the few where there was kindness,
and the kindness will remain, but there are the many that were out of a sense of obligation, or resignation, or force; or just wanting to feel better; or just wanting to feel anything other than what
I felt. There are those that are truly tragic, and require some extra doses of
compassion and witness, instead of repression.

I don’t know what may or not come of this work this morning.
It was sort of “unbidden;” I didn’t have the intention as I closed my eyes for
meditation this morning to do any of that – but I guess the Powers That Be had
that intention for me, anyway.

One thing I asked for aloud in the prayer circle in Sunday’s
sweat lodge during the final prayer round – the one where we get to pray for
ourselves, out loud so others know what we need – I prayed for healing around
physical intimacy. And that’s where the majority of my tears came on Sunday. My
relationship with my body, my femininity, sexuality, sex, intimacy, being
present in my body when being intimate – all of this needs healing. I’d still
rather hide within my body – offer you it, but not what’s inside it; assume
it’s really all you want from me anyway, so I might as well just give you only
that out of spite – even if you in fact want more. But, hiding within myself doesn’t work
anymore. Beating myself out of my body – or having someone do it for me – doesn’t work anymore. Not being present
is painful now. And not voicing my physical needs to a partner is another way of hiding.

I don’t really know what to do about it yet. I know that I
don’t do what I used to. But I feel like I’ve swung to the opposite side of the
spectrum – from the vixen to Betty Crocker, as I’ve put it. But I know opening
these doors, clearing these wounds, being willing to treat my flesh with care,
and being willing to meet all of you with all of me are mile-markers of
progress.

I’d like to be done with this work. I’d like to declare
myself fit for duty. Maybe it’ll always be an ongoing process, maybe it’ll come
to a place of plateau. I don’t know. But apparently I’m ready to clear the
sobwebs, and arrive at somewhere new.

beauty · grief · love · recovery · self-care

Savage Beauty

March 22, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

(if you haven’t read it, you may want to glance at
yesterday’s blog for continuity)

(p.s. I have to say, I love the double meaning of “savage” as the colloquial for totally awesome)

So, guess what? I went back “down” today to find out who
that woman in the other penguin habitat was. Yesterday on my way out, I’d
assumed it was Depression, because of the scene around her.

On the lower left end of the enclosure, a woman stood, her
back to me. She stood on what looked like the dangerous rocky shore near a
nasty storm-driven sea. Above, the sky/wall dripped in large blackness. She
wore a tattered dress, and her hair, too, was wild and matted.

Yesterday, I simply backed away from this woman, partly
because it was time to leave (the drumming on the tape indicates when it’s time
to return), and partly because her anger or darkness scared the shit out of me,
and I wasn’t ready to investigate further.

But, it wasn’t sitting right with me since then that she was
Depression. It just didn’t make sense to me. I thought maybe perhaps she was
Loneliness, but I wasn’t sure; I just knew that whoever she was, she was mad as
hell, and wasn’t going to take kindly to me yet. So, I began to think that
whoever she is, perhaps she herself isn’t a “negative” emotion, maybe she’s
just surrounded by that.

Turns out, my curiosity, despite my fear to explore further,
took me back. I listened to the tape of the shamanic drumming again this morning, and
went to go check it out. And, as you might have guessed from the title, indeed,
she was not Depression – she is Beauty.

I have a lot of mixed … experience when it comes to
honoring, holding, acknowledging, or accepting my own beauty. I am not
surprised at how impersonable she is, or how raging, fuming dark and mad she
is. For me, since the (first set of) braces came off, the contacts replaced
glasses, and I got my first set of make-up near the age of 15, suddenly, I
became visible. The ugly glasses, the frizzy hair, the gawky tall figure, these
started to fade, and suddenly, people – boys – saw me.

I have used my anger at this “suddenness” for quite some
time — why didn’t you see me before? Is this all you want from me? I have had this interpretation reinforced by my own behavior, and by the behavior of
others. I have wielded my beauty as a double-edged sword, slicing those who
acknowledged it, and thus slicing myself.

I didn’t trust anyone to see me for who I was, and because
now all they saw (so I inferred) was my outside, I spent very little effort or
time discovering who I was on the inside. At the formative middle-teen years,
this was a tragic oversight.

It now meant that my beauty was a Siren song. I would lure
you in, and crash you upon the rocks. I didn’t care how you felt, or felt about
me. I wanted you to know that my visage was all you would get, and when we were
both done using it, I was done using you – on to the next.

I know this pattern of mine is not unique, but it has
dictated my behavior and thought for a long time.

When I was outside her exhibit today, I didn’t go in. Her
anger frightened me, and I still don’t know how to hold or approach her/it/my
beauty. Mostly, I hide it. Because of the pain inflicted from self and others
in reaction to how I look, I’ve decided it’s best to turn away from it – to
turn it down. It comes out occasionally, but it is rare.

And surely, there’s not much I can do to “turn it off”
altogether. I am who I am, and p.s. I am grateful for it. I know this is a gift
I’ve unrightly used. However, I can hide it, minimize it, hunch over it, and
protect it, I suppose. Which I have done, for a while now.

A few months back, I wrote about wearing this fabulous new
skirt to class, and later to a party. I wrote that I felt “embarrassed” or
something like it. I suppose, I can see now, I felt that duality of
defensive, and brazen – offensive. I don’t yet know how to just let it be. To
understand that my beauty is not to be wielded at all. It just is.

The lack of humility – of “rightsizedness” – I have around
it. It’s just another aspect of me, like my humor, or my intelligence. Which,
both, I will admit, I do much the same hiding of.

Rather you make your own inferences and be wrong about me,
than to show you who I truly am, and have you judge me.

The problem with the beauty thing is that I was/am
defensive/insecure even when you judge me positively. Because of the trauma that has come as a result of
being an attractive woman, and largely in my development, a drunken attractive
woman, the idea of showing you how I look or can look feels like a dangerous
risk.

After standing outside her “cage” for a little while, and
asking what I should be doing, I remembered a suggested question we can ask
when in meditations like these. How does she feel about you? How do you feel
about her?

I feel mistrusting of her; she feels betrayed by me. Great
relationship, eh?

So, in the end, I left. But I get it. I don’t trust my
beauty because it has brought me physical, mental, and emotional pain. She
feels betrayed by me because I haven’t used her rightly, and have then locked
her up.

She’s mad as hell – and she’s not going to take it anymore.

That said, I believe some kind of reconciliation will need
to happen – an understanding – before we can both move forward. It’s not like,
just let her out. She’s too pissed, and I’m too wary. So, what can I do? I can
slowly begin to shed my hiding. I can slowly, and safely, begin to reintegrate
those items in my wardrobe which make me uncomfortable, and attract attention.
Not like booty shorts, but like “nice” things. Pretty things. Things that make
me feel beautiful. This won’t be a
hurling of myself off a cliff into a different way of being; this will be a
slow dance toward intimacy and trust.

Which sounds like a great way to support myself as I look to
build that with others.

community · fortitude · gratitude · grief · love

Be Lightning.

March 4, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

It will be impossible to write today without acknowledging
yesterday. Puffy eyed and dehydrated, as if I drank all the salt water
that I poured out yesterday.

A bottle of root beer was spilled ceremony-like into a glass
of vanilla ice cream. Like when someone spills a person’s favorite drink onto
their grave in memoriam.

Someone chuckled at the number of women he’d slept with who
came to the funeral. That that said something, that they all showed up.

A woman he worked with told about the practical jokes he’d
done at work, like rearranging her cubicle when she was gone for lunch, so that
when she came in, it was all walled in and backwards, and she couldn’t get into
it.

What I thought of him was that he
was like the initial spark of a lightning bolt. That all of the ions became
electrified just by being in his
vicinity, just by being adjacent to him. That suddenly the whole place, the
whole sky was lit up. He had that effect.

I am not among the women he slept
with. I was not friends with him in a familiar, close way. But I was in his
vicinity, often, and I too had been lit up by him. Heartened by his just being
there, even if he was sulky and sarcastic, as he was more and more. It just
felt good to know him. Just to know he was here.

There were more than 200 people
there yesterday, with standing room only, and all the doors to the small chapel
opened wide for people to crowd in together. I shook with repressed sobs. His
mother was in a mildly hysterical, altered state that you associate with
someone with dementia – oh, isn’t this nice, what’s your name. …

In Judaism, parents who have lost
a child get a free pass to heaven, no questions asked. In Judaism, we also
don’t do open caskets. So this was the first time I’d been near a … one.

Awkward in his My Girl made-up face. The slight raised angle of his
eyebrows toward the middle that always made him look like he was eager, or
worried.

I’d written a blog a while back
about death, and how it occurred to me that what was left was love, and
children’s laughter. There was a child there yesterday, his nephew, playing
outside the opened doors where people were crowding in. And love is not even
the right word for what was felt in that chapel yesterday. It’s not even close
to big enough.

With no other course, I am
inspired to honor this life, his life, by attempting to be a fraction of the electric ion that he was. To quit my solitude and hiding. To love as
much as I can, as I know I’m here to do. And lastly, with no other course, to accept that this had to be done. That this was necessary. That he needed to go home. That he needed to go back.

For all of the lives you brightened. For the one thing that held you back from “getting it.” For addiction’s baffling ability to cut us down. And for your legacy that poured from every eye in that chapel. May you be at peace.