Category: growth

community · expansion · growth · love · theater · trying

B’reishit: In the Beginning…

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This week in the Jewish calendar, having unscrolled and read
the whole Torah throughout the year, we come again to rewrap it all the way back to
the beginning to read the very first word: B’reishit, “In the
beginning.”
We’ve come to the end of something, and we wind it back to the beginning to start again.
I can’t think of a more appropriate coincidence and parallel
for my own life.
Yesterday afternoon, Addams Family The Musical closed to a
full house, once again. We said our final jokes, we emphasized things a little
more. We cried at that one “Happy/Sad” song that reminds us that most things in
life are a little of both. And when the final bows were over and the final
patrons thanked, we came back to the dressing room for the last time, finally
and pleasingly and thank god-ingly taking off our sweat-soaked costumes. The
last time getting someone to help me un-pin the dress, the last time taking off
the long and elaborate and hot wig, the
last time returning my mic pack to the sound designer.
And when this was all done, and most of the makeup had been
removed from our faces…
We began tearing down the set. The set that only a handful
of weeks ago we’d built, and painted, and staged, and seen evolve right before
our eyes. The same stage that only a few weeks before that, we’d all stood on
for auditions in the remnants of the set from the previous show.
And now, here we were, making this, our set “the remnants of a previous show.”
Because To Kill a Mockingbird opens in 4 weeks.
I asked some of the old-timers if they got a little wistful
breaking down something that was like another character in the show, if it was
sad to have put it all up, just to take it all down? And each of them said, No.
It’s part of the gig. They’re used to it. To the turn-over, to the letting go.
I’m not, yet! It was happy/sad for sure. It will be strange
tonight to come to the theater for Mockingbird rehearsal and see the bones of our Addams set on the stage, picked clean of the character we’d
built. And yet, if this isn’t a great lesson in the constant ebb and flow,
creation and destruction, then I don’t know what is.
In the beginning, we were tentative and perhaps shy,
getting used to one another’s personalities, contributions, moods.
In the beginning, we created something out of nothing, out
of a few words and notes on a page, sitting in a small room with a piano,
laughing a little, tense a little.
In the beginning, we didn’t know about the tech problems or
the extra rehearsals. We didn’t know the petty arguments we’d have, or the
number of times we’d have to control rolling our eyes.
In the beginning, we didn’t know the kind of joy and
laughter we’d create on-stage or back-stage. We didn’t know the relationships
we’d form, and the singular role each member of the cast and crew would take.
We didn’t know that we’d come to love each other.
And now that we’ve unscrolled to the end, and we’re about to
bring it all back to the beginning again, I am sure that we have learned
something, something critical to the nature of life and love and joy and
experience, that we didn’t know we would and that will carry us forward as we
start once more with new words and notes and castmates.
In the beginning, we were strangers. We’ll never be that way
again. 

anger · authenticity · faith · forgiveness · grief · growth · Jewish · possibility · spirituality

T’shuvah

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(In my vague and limited Jewish knowledge) T’shuvah refers to the time in the Jewish calendar between Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—and Yom Kippur—when our names are sealed in the “Book of Life” by G-d for the next year.

T’shuvah literally means to return, but most interpretations take it to mean a time of repentance. A time of atoning for our “sins,” and to acknowledge where we’ve “missed the mark” of our own moral target.

I’m not one for “sins,” or for “atoning,” or for asking forgiveness from a spiritual entity. In my own spiritual practice, there is a habit of taking note of where we’ve been wrong and amending that behavior, whether through direct conversation with someone we’ve harmed or through choosing to act differently in the future.

But, the idea of asking a “higher power” to forgive me for anything at all has never sat well with me. I simply don’t think that anything that has the power to create life and death and change and love would need my asking. I believe that whatever “G-d” is, “it” is much too loving or non-personified to ever require me to ask it to forgive my behavior.

As I said, I still think the process of taking stock of my behavior and righting my own wrongs is very important to my emotional wellbeing and my personal relationships. But on the spiritual plane, G-d would never need me to ask for forgiveness. There’s nothing to forgive – there’s only love, acceptance, and a desire for me to be my best self.

That said, I have been reflecting that this week of t’shuvah has certainly been one of returning. I feel that my actions are those of a woman returning to herself and her values; returning to my true nature, and returning to ideas and hopes that were feared or abandoned.

I am in a musical. I’ve returned to that dream of acting and singing, despite the fears and self-judgments it still brings up in me.

I have officially announced this week that I am moving on from my office job. Again, a return to my true desires, my internal compass. I have stopped hitting the Snooze button on my instincts and drives.

No matter what comes of it, disaster or “success,” I am trying something brand new for me. And that is certainly a return to curiosity, innocence, hope, and creation.

I told my coworker that I boycott Yom Kippur these days. The fasting and the communal atoning of sins. I shun this day and its activities because the idea is that by atoning for our sins, we will be “inscribed in the Book of Life” for another year.

According to the Jewish calendar, in 2012 the evening closing Yom Kippur was the moment of my Leukemia diagnosis. I spent the day of Yom Kippur in an ER. And closed the chapter of that day with cancer. I was 30 years old.

I have done a lot of work around turning that diagnosis into the seeds of a new life. But I will never deny that I have a few wheelbarrows full of anger and grief that still need … sorting or composting or alleviation. Or simply time to feel them, and then to let them go, perhaps, if that’s what happens.

But for me, the idea that on one of the most holy days of the Jewish year, on the day when a person is either granted another year of life or is not, I cannot hold the tragedy of being told half my blood was cancer on that same day.

And, I imagine, my feelings toward all of this will transform, lessen, or evolve. But, for now, I boycott Yom Kippur.

I have used this week of T’shuvah to take stock of where I am desirous to return to and acknowledge and rejoice in the truth of my soul, and to note where I already am. I have used this week to affirm that life can be new and different and fulfilling.

I will never need the forgiveness of an entity that is either made of benevolence or simply is the indifferent force of Life itself.

My week of T’shuvah is and has returned me to a place of excitement and possibility. I don’t need a communal atonement to reward me for how exceptional that is.

That said. Shanah Tovah u’Metukah — May you have a good (tovah) and sweet (metukah) year, friends. And may we write our own Books of Life.

adulthood · change · dreams · fear · fun · growth · reality · stagnating · theater

Baking a Life Worth Living.

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“It was the fantasy made so real that I teared up a few
times, wanted to pinch myself, and thought over and over and over, how is it
that I am here?
How did this happen?
And I can trace the arc of it and still be amazed to be
this woman[…]”
This is a quote from my friend Carmen’s blog today, or last
night actually, the woman who began inspiring me to write a blog at all, and
then a blog-a-day (or, almost a day. Self-care [aka sleep!] comes first during this month, sorry
avid readers!).
Our paths have been divergent but so parallel over these few
years, I once proposed we co-share a book based on our blogs: Her adventures in
Paris, having moved there for her 40th birthday, and her triumphs and struggles
there; My adventures in Cancer-land happening at the same time, as I turned 31, and the
strangely similar triumphs and struggles.
Today, was no different: She was visiting New York City for
the first time. I am in a musical for the first time as an adult.
Her words make me reflect and become present once again with
the amaze-ball nature of where my life and energies currently are.
But, I also was very keen when I first found out I was cast
about the words I used. I made sure to not say, “I can’t believe it.”
Sure, I couldn’t believe it! But, I wasn’t going to say
that. I believe in the Law of Attraction-style woo-woo stuff, and in my
readings on it, when you say things like, “I can’t believe this is happening to
me” or “This is impossible!” or “This can’t be happening” – even though they’re
amazing things – it’s my belief that the “Universe” hears that, that you hear that, and if that’s really your belief, then
they can fade or change to support your belief that these amazing things aren’t
actually happening.
Who knows? I don’t. But I’d rather be on the safer side of
things!
So, when I told my mom, I said simply, “I’m so excited. I’m so grateful.”
I do have to stop saying, “I’m so nervous.” SURE, I am nervous. I
had another voice lesson yesterday, and it’s helping me feel more comfortable
in the lower register of my voice, but I won’t yet say I’m confident. It still
feels like straining and yelling. But I’m getting more used to that
discomfort…which I guess is another way of saying, “Getting comfortable”!
I am astonished by and pleased with the woman I am and have become. And I also know the places where I strive to grow
and build and commit, and lay foundations for an even more “me” life.
I know progress is slow. My voice teacher said that it’s
about first finding a place to build the house, before you even begin to think
about what it looks like or furnishing it. You have to find the firm ground to
stand on before you can build anything on it.
And, I’m doing that, slowly.
It’s strange sometimes to be the age I’m at. About to be 33
next month, and feeling so much older than some, and so much younger than
others. Explaining to the 11-year old Pugsley what a revelation the cordless
phone was when I was a teen. Even my new co-worker, age 22, fresh out of
college, and so bristling with energy.
And then, there’s most of my friends, who are older than me,
who hear me talk about the brevity of life and how there’s so much more I want
to do, and give me the “You’re so young, you have so much time” face.
I get the feeling that this is the center (or the beginning
of the center) of adulthood. When you know you’re not a child, really learning
the world and who/how you want to be in it; and neither are you a middle-aged
person, knowing that you are pretty well set in your personhood for the rest of
your days.
It’s a period of final gelling that I feel. (Though I know
learning and growing and changing is a lifelong process.)
But I sort of feel like all the ingredients have been
gathered, have been mixed, and we’re waiting to see if what I’ve assembled is a
sourdough or cupcake batter.
I do hope it’s cupcakes.
I am the woman who knows she eats 90 eggs a month (yes, really). Who knows she
buys only Ultra Soft toilet paper, but the super eco-friendly paper towels. Who
knows how to pay her bills on time, and knows she still won’t do her dishes
until pressed by her own revulsion!
The woman I am looks for the hope, even in the desperate
times. She relies on friendships built during the “ingredient assemblage” time,
and knows they are in fact ingredients of this current and future life.
The woman I am struggles with self-doubt, and celebrates her
moments of self-encouragement. Falls short of ideals, and laughs about it when
she can, and shares about it when she can’t.
“How did this happen? How am I here?”
I don’t have to pinch myself. I don’t think this is a dream.
I do have to remind myself it’s a nuanced, challenging, changing, and ultimately
precious reality. 
And the woman I am looks eagerly forward to licking the icing. 

change · connection · fear · growth · love · self-abandonment · self-support

Doctor of Philosophy

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If you have read my blog for any period of time, you may be
aware by now that I seem to have a knack for interpreting the human species and
their actions. I observe, report, make conclusions, and sometimes adjust my own
behavior to meet the findings of what “healthy” or “happy” people seem to be
doing.
Philosophically speaking, in all my deep-cover research on
human behavior, I may well have earned myself a doctorate in human behavior.
However for every inner tube of polymer, there is a flat of
pavement, and it is where the rubber meets the road that I become hesitant.
It is all well and good to observe, predict, and theorize,
to take note of actions of others and even of myself as a predictor and indicator
of action’s next steps. However, there is also the parable about the monk who
spent 20 years in a cave becoming enlightened, and upon emerging decked the
first guy he had a disagreement with.
It is only in practice that we actually learn. (Though, I do
submit that research and reflection help.)
When my mom came to visit a few weeks ago, we began to discuss my romantic life. (Unworried, as she said she was, that I would have any trouble when I was finally ready. She’s not the “where are my grandchildren” type, she said.) I told her a
little about my extra layer of protection around my castle wall metaphor. I
told her that my work currently is about coming to trust myself and my boundaries
enough to let people close enough to know me.
I told her my doubts about feeling capable of a) letting
those guards down, and b) evaluating approachers in a level-headed way. I told
her that I am scared to learn to trust myself, because I’m scared that I can’t.
She responded with a story of her own. She’d taken issue,
herself, with the word “trust.” The airy and elusive nature of that word. And
she’s replaced it with the word, “rely.”
Several years ago, she signed up to be a part of a tour
group that would travel to Scotland to see the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Her
friend asked her if she was nervous to go by herself, with no-one she knew? My
mom replied, No. She knew that she could rely on her own effusive and collegial
personality, and that she’d make friends.
She didn’t say that she could trust herself to do this; she
said that she knew she could rely on
herself. That she had her own back, basically.
And she invited me to think about it this way instead: Can I
rely on myself? Do I have my own back?
… Well, judging by a very long history of self-abandoning
actions, it’s hard to answer that with a complete affirmative. But, when
pressed, I know that it is true—that it is true now: I am here for myself, even when things are hard…
and even when things are great.
My own pattern of looking the other way, of procrastinating,
of dismissing myself has begun to lessen. If I look at it honestly.
And so, can I rely on myself? Well, I think I can.
And, here’s the rubber/road test: If I do think I can rely on myself, support myself, be
compassionate and encouraging and honest with myself… Then… it means I’m going
to have to allow the sentries around my castle to stand down, and let
my natural boundaries do their job.
I’m going to have to trust myself (word disparity aside) and
take actions that are indicative of a woman who trusts herself, inviting in
those who are supportive but also challenge me to be my best self, and inviting to leave those who
are not.
I’m going to have to have my back.
And I’m going to have to let go of the reigns. My reigns
have become most like bonds, and not the fun kind.
I am scared to try this new way of being out “in the field.”
But I am also scared to continue limiting my connections with people. (And
again, if you’ve read me for any length of time, you know that, mostly, I’m
addressing the case of chronic single-hood I’ve managed to carry for as long as
I’ve been of dating age. Chronic single-hood is most like being Typhoid Mary.
You feel fine, but no one wants to be near you.)
I know that I can’t (and don’t want to) go on the way I have. I’m too young to
be a spinster, and too old to be a bachelorette.
In the observational reality of modern relationships, I may
be deft at cataloguing and quantifying. But my absence of field research also
means that all of my assumptions about my own viability, accessibility, and
health are purely theoretical. 

awareness · connection · fear · growth · love · parenting · risk · self-derision · self-love · vulnerability

parental advice

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Brene Brown talks a lot in her book Daring Greatly about parenting, about how to “dare greatly” in
parenting, which often means allowing yourself to feel, with all uncertainty and unpredictability, the full extent of your love. She talks about
the split-second after noticing her full love for her children the flood of constricting
and panicking thoughts about loss and impermanence and a terrible desire to control. To allow herself to
notice and accept her love so deeply, she’s also acutely aware of how tenuous
life is, and how she cannot protect her offspring from the world.
In the moment of greatest love is the moment of greatest
vulnerability.
She talks about trying to withstand and stand in that moment
of love as long as possible without giving in to the fear of the things we
cannot control.
The kinds of thoughts that enter immediately after hearing,
“You got the role.” God, I hope I don’t fuck it up. Or after “I love you.” Don’t betray me. Or “You’re a great friend.” Am
I doing enough?
Moments of connection are severed by fear when we insulate back inside ourselves around the thought: How can I control this?
We can’t.
In every effort we put forth to expand ourselves, we risk.
In every effort we make to control, we risk those
relationships that have brought us joy, including the one with ourselves. See:
I’ve gained some muscle working out, I better make sure I get to the gym even
more. I hiked for an hour this week, I really should do that three times a
week. I loved that novel I read, I should really be reading something
“worthwhile.”
Brown has written that we siphon off the top layer of risk and
innovation and spontaneity when we attach our interpretation of our efforts to
how they’ll be received – I believe this includes the efforts and risks we make
that are private, like those above: How are they received by ourselves?
Are the efforts we put toward joy, spontaneity, pushing our
own envelope supported internally, or hampered by voices of not good enough?
Sometimes both. Sometimes it depends on the minute of the
day.
I can experience the duplicity of knowing my acting is up to
par for this show, but my singing is not.
What I cannot hold is the self-derision that follows that
awareness.
As always, action is the antidote to anxiety and worry.
Voice lessons, music drills. Learning, learning learning.
This is a challenge. A challenge to show up authentically,
even if I don’t like or approve of what that sounds like at the moment. There is
vulnerability in showing up, but if, as happens frequently, I step on my own
efforts and try to hide the greatest risks, I won’t learn, I won’t grow, nor will I have any fun.
There’s a self-reparenting that is happening for me right now.
A re-training. In fact, several days this week, as I’ve sat up out of
bed, voices already chiding me for being sick and not being able to sing, for
not being as good as the others actors – I’ve literally had to stop myself and
insert a new voice, saying aloud – Yes, Moll, I know, and you’re working on it.
You’re doing the best you know how right now, and you are enough.
There is risk in allowing myself the “lenience” of
self-approval. There is the risk of abandoning control and constriction and self-flagellation. There is the risk that things won’t turn out “how I want,” how I want things to be, how
I want myself to be – Can’t you be better at something you’ve never done
before, the voice chides incessantly.
But I want a different reality. A different parenting. I
want to be able to look at myself and my efforts fully, with the full ache of
unknowing and the full pride of risk-taking.
I want to begin modeling this completely uncertain,
vulnerable, pulsating, spark-of-life parental love for myself, because I have
hope that one day I’ll need to employ it with children of my own.
And you can’t give to others what you can’t give yourself. 

change · fear · growth · health · voice

Slings and Arrows

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Hamlet questions whether it is better to “suffer the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune,” or to “take arms against a sea of troubles”
and end them (with suicide).
Outrageous fortune. Could be good, could be “bad,” but we have to show up to find out.
In Louise Hay’s book on the relationship between emotions
and body symptoms, the throat is listed as the “avenue of expression.” Troubles
with the throat are interpreted as a fear of expressing oneself and stifled
creativity.
I’ve felt it coming on this week, and today, my throat is
officially red and sore. Color me not surprised.
As I’ve been mentioning this week, the idea of being loud,
louder, more full, more powerful has been a hard one for me to grapple with.
And so, this morning, tender in my throat, I went into meditation to “ask”
what’s going on here, and how I can help.
Forgive me if this gets too “woo-woo” for you, but…
It was like Fantastic Voyage – I “went” inside my throat, to my tonsils, to my
vocal cords, and inside there on both sides, at each tonsil, someone, a
girl, a child choking them, shushing them. Telling them to Be Quiet!
I went and asked her what she was really trying to
accomplish here, what is the objective, why be quiet?
Because then you’ll be safe, she railed. I’m trying to keep you safe.
I told her that I already am, that I am safe without this
strangling. I put my arms around her, and told her she was safe, and in real
life I began to tear up a little. With relief, with grief, with acknowledgment of
pain long suffered and finally being addressed and hopefully cleared – in
time.
With a mother with chronic migraines and a father apt to
turn rageful, I learned very early that to be quiet, unseen, simple, need-less,
and self-sufficient was to be safe. I aroused negative emotions in others when I
expressed the needs a child might have, and so I learned to deny them.
This hasn’t worked out too well as I’ve grown up, and at
another deeper level, I’m again being called to address the fallacy of these
childhood interpretations. Someone not able to care for my needs is not the same as “my needs are too much.”
The important change here is to allow myself to understand,
feel, acknowledge, and melt into the present, into the changes that I have made
around and within myself to establish a life that is safe, loving, encouraging
and open.
It is hard to remember these things in my throat.
I remember them in my head, but it is going to take time for
the little girl who strangles and shushes me to understand, like most children,
that something has changed.
It is safe to be heard. It is safe to speak up for myself.
It is safe to be creative.
I have a host of supporters, internal and external, who tell
me that indeed, Yes, it is better to suffer the slings and arrows than to shut
down. That it is better to show up and be seen and find out what outrageous
fortune has to offer than to escape.
I am safe, I am heard.
These are not mutually exclusive. 

dreams · fear · fun · growth · humility · power · smallness

TURN IT UP!

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In my race toward the middle, I have forgotten something: To Have Fun.
I was at my first vocal rehearsal on Sunday, and I did what
I had done at my audition: When I got scared of a note (even one I can sing), I pulled back.
I’m reminded of Brene Brown saying that, If we base our
performance, our work, our art, our selves, on the reception of others, we will
invariably slice off and withhold the most potent layer of our performance, work,
art, self. We cannot give our full selves, our full gift, if we are concerned with how we look about it.
To quote another source: You can’t save your face and your
ass at the same time.
Did you run out of breath, the music director asked me? No,
I just got embarrassed and dropped the note. 
My new voice teacher has told me that she thinks Morticia is
from the Bronx – not for the accent, mind you, but for the attitude. Imagine a
large Bronxian woman yelling down the street at some paisan – Morticia is like that.
The vocal coach told me to speak like I think everyone else is deaf.
Despite dropping out of the “Queen of the Amazons” play,
where I was being called to “Be a Royal,” to act how a queen might act, and I
was curious and a little scared to see what that would be like, I am again being
asked to do the same.
To own my voice.
Be loud. Be big. Be powerful.
The music director said, There is nothing sweet about
Morticia.
This isn’t about sounding sweet or beautiful; it’s about
sounding powerful.
Honestly, two plays in a row where I’m cast as a powerful
woman? I think the Universe is giving me a huge opportunity and challenge here.
And as I said to a friend yesterday, I’m going to have to rise to it.
In the middle of all this, however, in the middle of trying to
stay on note and memorize the phrasing and the breathing and the rests – I can
begin to forget why I came here in the first place.
This is not about perfection; it’s about fun. This is
supposed to be FUN! Come on, man? “Addams Family The Musical”? If that’s not
supposed to be fun, I don’t know what is.
Now, I get that I have a responsibility to myself, to the
cast, to the audience to rehearse, to get as proficient as I can. But I also
have a responsibility to be light and fun about it – it will come through if
I’m terrified, or scared to belt a note, or worried what you’re thinking of me. Worried that I’m being too much, too big, too loud.
Fears I have shackled around myself for a lifetime, I’m being
specifically ordered to discard. Now.
Be more, Molly. Be bigger, be louder.
And, too, within that challenge and order, I am being called
to remember to hold this lightly. That this is meant to be so the most fun that
I’ve ever had.
The bigger I get, the more fun I should remember to have.
It’s the antidote to self-sabotage. And a supporter of humility.
This isn’t really
about me. Sure, it’s about me and my challenge to grow and let go, but it’s
also about what can come through me. And when I close my voice, drop the note,
don’t support myself by not breathing, there is no chance for me to be a
channel of joy and fun.
I said it only two days ago: I need to root my safety within
myself, and stop worrying about what others might think – especially that
they’ll tell me to turn it down. They are literally, actually, verbally telling
me to turn it up!
Rise, Miss Molly, to the challenge. This is one of those moments when you have a choice, when you can see the options clearly marked and have the chance to change: Small or Big, Mol? –
You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think you could do it. 

adversity · friends · friendship · growth · laughter · love · opening

Open Sesame!

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I’m still a little giddy from last night’s show with my
band. Our debut and farewell show! (Though, there are rumors we may have a
“reunion show” on Halloween.)
But a friend said something to me after the show that’s been
sticking with me. She said that I am so much more open and confident now, that
I’ve changed so much in the last year.
This same friend sat with me in ERs, cared for my cat while
I was in chemo, and allowed me to bawl on her couch when things seemed so hard.
We’ve known each other only for maybe 4 years, but a lot has
certainly happened since then, and she said she feels like she’s seen me
blossom. And that, especially with everything that I’ve been through, how
heartening it is to see that I’ve become and am becoming more open, and more
engaged.
She referenced a quote she’d read in a book about women’s
aging, that women come to a crossroads in their lives where they choose: become
more open, or become more rigid, and therefore bitter. I told her, I don’t
think that’s just women!!
But, what struck me about her initial comment was that it
echoed something I’d thought to myself only a few days earlier.
I was in my car, and made some kind of comment aloud to
myself, and laughed about it. And I had a flashback to when I was in junior or
senior year of high school, and this one frenemy commented that I’d become much
more relaxed and funny in the last little while.
Which may have had something to do with the fact that I started
drinking and smoking pot… but… She was right. I wasn’t as exacting or
perfectionist as I had been.
I sort of took that “easy-going” train off the rails a
few years later… But I remember feeling then that she was right, that I felt less … not “square,” but serious, I suppose. (I was
a very serious teen!, like most emo children.)
And as I sat in my car laughing to and at myself the other day, I
had a similar self-awareness: I’ve become and am becoming more easy-going. (In
some ways! In others, you have to untangle my brain with a tweezer and a
magnifying glass!)
To have that same sentiment reflected back to me only days
later by my friend was heartening, affirming, and… sentimental.
She said that as she watched me play, she found herself
getting teary, thinking about everything I’ve gone through, and what I’ve made of
it. And then she had to check herself, because you don’t cry at a rock show! 
The same understanding about rigidity or openness I heard on
an audio CD about “Exceptional Patients” from Dr. Bernie Siegel. He said that
after cancer, people tend to go one of two ways: become scared of everything,
because death is just around the corner, or (finally) throw caution to the
wind, because you’ve literally faced one of the worst things that can ever
happen to you. You’ve stared death in the face: Will you now shrink at all risks,
or will you say, Tah, this is cake?
Well, we all know, I don’t think it’s “cake” to say “Tah” to
fear, but we all know that I’ve been doing it anyway. Because, really, there
isn’t anything greater to lose. There isn’t any harder challenge. (Now, yes, there are other challenges that people face that I
cannot imagine, child loss being one that’s top of mind lately.)
I find no glory in shutting down. I’ve lived most of my life
in a state of “flight” and paralysis. I will never call it a gift, but I do
recognize with appreciation and awe that, following visceral horror, I have
become a woman more willing to be open, free, funny, and present than I’ve ever
been. 

authenticity · dating · fear · growth · isolation · relationships

Pushing the RelationShip off the Edge of the Earth

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As I recently found out in “Well, Shoot…” there are things
that I claim that I want but if they did actually happen, I’m not sure I could show up for them.
It’s embarrassing to be here again.
It just makes me feel really old and really weary.
And I’ll start with the perfect example that I’m sure I’ve
told here before:
When I was in college, I was having a fling with a guy. It
was purely physical, no “date nights,” no philosophical conversations; whenever
both of us were into it, we’d contact the other. Easy peasy.
Then, one night, lying in bed after our activities, he told
me he wanted to take me out to dinner. I was aghast, “Why?!” Because I want to get to know you, he replied, as
if it were the most obvious and natural thing in the world.
And after that night, I never called him again.
Perhaps to most people it is the most obvious and natural
thing in the world to want to get to know the person you’re being physically
intimate with. But my years of practicing it otherwise have hardened me to the
kind of softness real connection requires.
(I feel really vulnerable writing about this today, I have
to say.)
See, there would be no problem if I only wanted to “hit it
& quit it.” But I don’t. I would like
a connection, I would like a relationship. I would like to be vulnerable and
intimate with another person and have them be that way with me.
But when the glimpse of that possibility arises, I bolt. Too
much, too scary, I can’t, I don’t know how, is
followed by the justifications, You only want sex anyway, why don’t you just hit it & quit it? Stop trying to pretend you want to get to know me.
It’s very easy for me to throw up the barriers, and to put
between us one of those cardboard cut-outs of myself: Here is my reasonable
facsimile. Have fun.
No, really, just have
FUN! Enough with the getting to know me bullshit. Light’s out, Nobody home.
And the trouble today is that I’m really tired of this M.O. And, yet, I’m really terrified to
be any way else – the way else being “real.”
So, again, I come to a place where what I say I want (a
relationship) in the light of that possibility I say fuck no.
I can lick the wounds of old hurts for many more years to
come. I can point to those people to whom I’ve been real and vulnerable and
been eviscerated. I can pile up the evidence to say, See, this and this and
here is why I can’t show up fully
anymore, I’ve been hurt.
But who hasn’t?
To tangent, once again:
There are several situations lately, where I’ve gotten to
show up fully, stand in my truth, and not let fear drive me or hide me.
I was offered a job that would pay me minimum wage, but
would be in a profession and a capacity that would be a dream. After much thought,
writing, and reaching out for help, I turned the job down. I’m able to show up
for myself, I don’t have to abandon my truth.
I declined the invitation to my father’s wedding, despite
the already rolling-in fall-out. After much thought, writing, and reaching out
for help, I was able to show up for myself and not abandon my truth.
I was offered the lead in a play that I didn’t want to be
in. And, once again, after much thought, writing, and reaching out for help, I
was able to turn it down, show up for myself and not abandon my truth.
What each of these are evidence of is that I am creating
boundaries for myself, and a value for myself. I am able to weigh and measure
how I feel in a situation, and parse out if it feels right for me. I don’t have
to make snap judgments of yes or no, of people pleasing, or underselling, or
hiding.

I’ve been scared to be vulnerable because I’m scared I can’t show up for myself, or protect myself when I need to. I’ve been scared to be vulnerable because I think it lays me open to being attacked. 

But, what I have done in just the last fucking month is to back
myself up. I have let myself be open to what was true for me, and be honest
(enough) with those I had to create boundaries with.
Isn’t it possible
then, that the same practice, the same muscles could be exercised in
relationships? Isn’t it possible that I can show up with my truth, with all of me, even though,
YES IT’S THE HARDER THING, but it’s the most rewarding of all?
I’m having a tough time at the moment accepting that I’m
going to have to change my M.O. Not serving me well, surely, but familiar as
all get out.
As a friend once sardonically said, “Everybody look at me,
but please avert your eyes.”
Oh, you want to look at me. Oh, I find that I want to look
back.
Well, Shoot. 

adversity · anger · challenges · gratitude · growth · life · perseverance · perspective

Aesop was a Scientist.

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Chances are, like me, you’ve heard a hundred versions Aesop’s fable, “The Oak and the Reed,” wherein we’re taught to bend like a reed in a storm, instead of remaining stalwart
as an oak which will be blown over.
The moral is to remain flexible in the face of
challenge or adversity, instead of becoming rigid and unmoving. To move with
the times, to let things shift around you without trying to control them or how
they’re affecting you. To be at ease with how things are, because when the
storm does pass, if you’ve remained reed-like, you’ll stand up into the
sunlight again.
Yes, we’ve all heard this, and again if you’re like
me, you vacillate between these flora’s coping mechanisms, flexible to rigid and
back again. Sometimes within the same hour.
However, one story I didn’t know was one I heard on
the little audio book I’m listening to now: The
Biodome Moral.
(Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the Pauly Shore
movie, but it’s valuable nonetheless.)
Scientists in the 80s, the book reports, created a perfect
replica of Earth and Earth’s atmosphere within a dome. They then sent 8
scientists into the dome to live there for 2 years. Among their findings was
what happened to the trees.
Inside the dome, there was no wind and no storms. The
scientists assumed that without the challenges of storms to damage the trees,
they would grow taller and stronger and faster than those outside the dome.
Indeed, the trees grew faster and taller. But not stronger.
The trees were weak, and easily uprooted. The scientists
discovered that the trees needed the challenge of the storms, of withstanding the storms, in order to become strong and healthy.
By eliminating all adversity from their lives, they became big and tall, sure,
but they also became hollow and weak.
Remind us of any other species?
I am not an advocate for adversity. I bristle vehemently when told that adversity is “a blessing,” as I’m
occasionally told about my cancer.
Which, by the way – never tell someone that. If they want to say that to you, great; listen, nod, be compassionate.
But never be the one to tell them that it makes them stronger, never tell them
that there will be a gift from it, or that it is itself a gift. All these
things may be true, but fuck you, healthy person, for telling me to look on
the bright side of leaking out my ass for a
month. Even though you mean it authentically, lovingly, and truthfully.
I happen to know
these things are true. I write here that they are; that having had that
adversity has impelled and propelled me to engage in my life and in activities
that I’d procrastinated on; necessitated my creating new relationships and boundaries that
I’d been too scared to create before. Having had and survived cancer has
irrevocably changed the rest of my life and given miles of perspective to every
other storm I may encounter.
But if you haven’t noticed, sometimes we get tired of
encountering storms, and I’d really prefer for you to not steal my lemons to
make your own lemonade. — And I still wouldn’t call it a blessing. An opportunity, I’d concede. But I’m sure no one ever said: Bless me, father, with life-threatening illness. 
… I guess I still have some letters of complaint to write to the Universe’s customer service department.
So,
The absence of storms makes us weaker. But, the
preponderance of storms makes us exhausted.
To continue in fable-speak then, I suppose it’s appropriate
to quote Goldilocks on the merits of balance and the middle way. To endeavor to
create, withstand, be free from and grow from challenges that are not too big, not too small, but “Just
Right.”