Hearth and Home

December 24, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Winter cleaning has begun. The clean laundry that was
occupying the “other person’s” part of the bed is now put away. And the
cleaning will continue. I’ve decided and recognized that this “free” time off
work will be an excellent time to dig out those boxes from NJ and begin to
empty them.

First, sure, there’s all the surface cleaning I need to do,
and I have a girl coming over at 1 for coffee and chat, so the surface will
need to look decent before then. But after that? Today feels like a good day to
begin, gently, with the NJ boxes.

When I began CITO, it
asked us to make space, literally, for a partner to come into our lives, and so
I emptied a drawer in my closet and a shelf in my bathroom, and I bought
silvery grey sheets, which felt gender neutral, but also pretty sexy.

My place began to feel lighter, like I was creating space,
and allowing for “Nature abhors a vacuum” to occur. Then, I sent back 6 or so
boxes from NJ. They have pictures, and old school notebooks, and old poetry,
and old journals. A girl friend of mine called me up earlier this month to say
that she was taking a page from my book when she goes home for Christmas and
wanted to know what I did with my old journals.

I said, nothing. That’s not entirely accurate. I packed them
up in NJ and shipped them here to SF, uh, Oakland, I mean. I knew that there
was enough emotional upheaval to not want to or be able to process what to do
with them when I was in NJ, and so I just packed them up and shipped them here,
and they’ve been in my closet since October.

Which is fine. And I don’t yet know what I’ll do with them.
There’s the part that wants to honor what they hold, there’s the part that
knows that the childish records of who was in a fight with who and who was
wearing what in 9^th grade are not things I feel tempted to keep, but
they are funny too, now, and so, what to do with them?

There is a lot of sadness in them too. When I was home, I
was doing some sifting and sorting and discarding, and there’s poetry from
grade 2 and 3 that is already about loneliness and isolation. So, I think there’ll be
some spiritual work or process or ritual I want to do around them. Maybe my
friend and I can do something around them together.

When I got into grad school last year, another friend of mine encouraged me
to do a ritual of thanks for the gift of this opportunity. We wrote down old ideas that no longer
served us, and burned them. Then we wrote down one idea that would carry us
forward. I still have it, in my closet. It says, “We can.” Sure, a little
reminiscent of the whole Obama campaign, but it still speaks to
the same sentiment I’m continuing to address: I don’t have to do
things on my own. I don’t have to deplete my own limited resources; there is a
world of abundance around me of people, resources, help, and love, if I avail
myself of them.

So, I’m not sure what I’ll yet do with the old journals. I
know there’s a reading series in Oakland where people submit from their jr high
era journals, and then if chosen, get to read them – pretty hilarious stuff, I
hear. One that comes to mind reported to me – I haven’t been yet – is a girl
who wrote, “Maybe if I got a pig they’d like me.” 😉 She apparently grew up in
an agricultural setting…!

It also feels like an appropriate “end of year” activity, to
clean the closets, to put my apartment back into “other person” readiness.
Nature isn’t the only thing that fills in a vacuum, and I’ve begun to encroach
on the newly emptied space I cleared, filling it back up with my crap.

There’s plenty of other stuff in the boxes to go through and
set aside, organize, or discard, and it takes me a long time to decide whether
some things are worth keeping, as you sift through old high school photos,
which do you need? What is “for posterity” in my drawings, poems, items? What
is now simply junk?

But, I will recall the belief I want to carry with me – I don’t
have to do this alone – and I can call on some guidance, clarity, and a heavy
dose of lightness(!) while I sift through the remnants of my childhood.

compassion · gratitude · growth · healing · love · recovery · relationships · self-care · spirituality

Today’s Lesson: Love. (Don’t Vomit.)

December 20, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Today is affirmation day.

Per the last exercise of Calling in The One workbook/coursebook/spiritual revolution catalyst,
today, I’m supposed to affirm my availability and openness to Love and to meet
love, not just in a romantic partner, though that is an aspect, but to meet
love within myself, my life, and in all other people.

When I got sober, I used to hear people say
“We’ll love you until you can love yourself.” At the time, that sentence felt
like I just got slimed on Double Dare.
No way, dude. Get it off me. Keep that gross thing, “Love” you’re calling it?, to your own
damned self.

At the time, “love” to me was a series of fabulously tragic
relationships and an invitation to be hood-winked. I imagined love was like The
Simpsons’ Nelson, asking me to sit in this
lavish chair, and just as I was bending into it, he’d pull it out from under me
with his catch-phrase “HA HA!” I can hear it. Love was not to be trusted; love
was a lie; love was an invitation to be hurt.

So you can imagine, that when people also said that “G-d is
love”, I threw up in my mouth a little bit, every single time. I still think
it’s an extremely gooey phrase, but I
don’t get (as much) acid reflux from it anymore.

For quite some time, I used to say that I received
compliments like one of those lamp-light bug zappers. Compliments, and we can
extrapolate “love,” would only get so far toward me before ZAP! Dead. You ain’t
getting in here, no way no how.

One of the meditations in the workshop I went to this weekend asked us
to envision the light from various teachers and positive sources coming into us, and to then to allow that light to pour out into others. I did this
meditation a few years ago, about 3 or 4 I suppose. At the time, I vividly
remember that I wasn’t going to let these people’s “light” come anywhere near
me. I’ll send light out to those behind me, sure, but keep your light to
yourself. I would send from my own bucket, tap from the (limited) source within
myself. I didn’t need your light – I can do it on my own.

This past weekend, however, sure, I recognized I still was very uncomfortable accepting the light from these loving
sources, but I let it in. It was like slipping into a fur coat that’s been in
mothballs for years – comforting but icky. 😉 That said, to know that I was a)
willing to accept light, and we can substitute the word “love” here, from
others was a huge shift, however uncomfortable I am to receive it, I was
willing to do so; and b) I didn’t have to send my love/light to others by
depleting my own reserves. Instead, I could be a funnel, a filter, a channel,
as is often said.

So, here I am. 30, single, hesitant to believe in a thing
called love (to quote the song with a cringe) ;P but opening more to it.
There’s been a level of conceit which says I’m able to give love and you’re not
allowed to give it to me; a level of conceit which says I know the right way to
love and you’re giving it to me wrong. These have kept me quite alone over the
years.

The reality is that I haven’t fallen in love with an addict,
alcoholic, unavailable, or taken man in a long long time. Doing these things
helped to cause my belief that love was a cruel trick. I haven’t had proof of
this for a long time. Instead, what I’ve been given evidence of as “love” has
been self-less, light, thoughtful, and consistent, and this love has come from many people, not only lovers or boyfriends. I’ve begun to give myself the same
respect and consistency, and finishing this course (and because I mainly just
read through it with lots of underlining(!), and didn’t complete all the exercises, I will now go back
through – there are a bunch which I know want my attention to help sever these
old ties of beliefs) – finishing the course, going on my date with myself, not dating jerks, all of these are helping to firm up
the new system of belief which is that your love (and my own) is not going to injure me, but
rather it is going to bolster me in my climb out into the sunlight.

For all that, I thank you, friends, readers, little secret
gnomes, who are sliming me with the support and generosity of love.

generosity · healing · letting go · painting · recovery · relationships

The language of letting go.

December 17, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

Two things occur to me about
this at the moment, situations that have come up. The first is that I’m
creating holiday cards to send out to friends and family. The second is that my
best friend from the east coast texted me last night to say that her childhood
home had been bulldozed.

To the first, I’ve stalled a little on the cards, partly
because of the insanity of my self-imposed schedule (even with the simplified
design of the card I’ve chosen to do for everyone, it’ll take 30 minutes, times
like 20 cards… = ten hours; and my list has more like 40 people on it!). And
partly stalled out because of the process around sending them, these handmade
items, out into the world. Some people may have no problem with this, and
consider it all a labor of love, but it’s nudged into a larger thing for me.

The cards will be okay, mainly because they’re all the same,
because they’re being made with the intention of being sent out. But earlier
this year, I hosted an art show with a group of my friends, and I sold a
painting. I didn’t actually think anything would sell and was delighted when
someone inquired, but also felt a sharp pang of “oh fuck”. The painting that
sold was sort of a companion piece, one was called “The Rebound”, the other, created
months later, was called “Safety or Before the Fall”. The first showed an empty
mussed up bed by candlelight, with a naked girl tucked into a corner on a chair
facing the bed, all you see are her legs wrapped up around her.

The second painting was of a woman’s hand resting on a man’s bare chest in sort of sepia-like colors, intended to connote a memory. The view most women will know instantly,
it’s the view of cuddling, the view of sleeping next to someone, to me, it was the
view of safety. That time in your day, whatever time of day it is you are
horizontal with your lover, and for those moments, nothing is wrong. You watch
your hand rise and fall with his breathing, you play with whatever strands of
chest hair, or trace lightly on the skin. It’s a moment of zen for me. Of “all
is right with the world.”

Now, of course, the second part of the title “Before the
Fall” speaks to the impermanence of that moment. Which led to “The Rebound.”
Obviously, these paintings are intensely personal and moments of my own life
which I created with my greatest ability to offer the honesty and vulnerability
of each of these moments. They were a part of me; a part of my past; and a part
of what will always hold a place in my memory and my heart.

So a woman wanted to buy “Safety.” And because it was my first
art show, and I was so excited to have an offer at all, and I didn’t know what
an appropriate amount was for it, I sold it. (The Rebound I marked as “not for
sale,” as that one, at least I knew was much too close a moment to let go of.)

Months later, I’m at an art show of a friend of mine who
makes very spiritual paintings, each radiating a kind of passion, divinity, and
connection. They are little portraits of love, and sometimes pain. And perhaps,
often both. I asked her how she feels able to let go of her paintings when
they’re obviously crafted with so much love and care. She said, firstly she
prices them in a way in which she doesn’t feel “sold short”, in a way which she
feels she wouldn’t “miss” them. (Not greedy, but not lamenting, like I am/was.)
Secondly, she said with a specific set of her work, she did a process around
letting go of each of them, in order to send them out into the Universe.

I didn’t do either of these with “Safety,” and I regret it.
Were it a higher price, I still don’t know if I would have liked to have sold
it yet. As such a fledgling artist, there’s still also a place in me in which
every piece I make is SO precious because I don’t know if I’ll have it in me to
do it again, and also, I am still sometimes astounded and proud of the work and
don’t want to let it go.

Earlier this year, I made a portrait of a friend of mine
that was very specifically for him, of him, of a San Francisco moment, and I
had no trouble giving that away to him. It was a gift for a major milestone for
him, and I wanted to honor that. And again, with the cards, knowing their
intention is to go out into the Universe to people whom I love, that is easier.
It’s these more amorphous recipients who I have trouble with.

Granted, I’m not in any art shows right now, “The Rebound”
sits in my closet, but I’ll be taking an advanced oil painting class in the
spring and imagine some more work will come out of that/be inspired by that
class.

I don’t know what all of this means in my scheme of things,
the ability to let go of my creations, but paintings have been different than
poems, or even performances. A poem, I own, I wrote, I know that moment, and I
have a document. Go ahead, read it, hear it, buy my chapbook 😉 Performances?
They only work because of you. A
performance, to me, is absolutely the love child of performer and audience, be
that performing theater or music. That’s part of the thrill of it to me, that
each night, each performance is different. It’s a thrilling moment of
co-creation.

I would like to learn how to set my paintings in a way where
they can go off to others with a sense of completion and satisfaction, even
joy, not with a sense of loss.

Lastly, I think having better documentation of my work than
my cell phone photos could help me as well 😉

To the second item of letting go, my friend’s house – I’m
out of time and room in this blog, but for now, a moment of honoring for that
house, the haven it was for me, the home it was for her, and the memories we
still get to share, 30 years later. Amen.

Safety or Before the Fall (June 2011)

The Rebound (March 2011)

abundance · balance · decision · healing · holidays · recovery · school · self-care · work

While the going’s good

December 10, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Hey folks – how you been? I’m currently sitting at the desk shift at the dailey method – yes at 7:15am. I traded my shift from last Friday with this Saturday, as I knew I needed the morning free last week, as I was getting ready for my teaching demo etc.

What I did do this Friday, yesterday, was my classical song for voice class – in Italian. Surprisingly, that song went much better than “Have yourself a merry little christmas,” which was the holiday song I chose to sing. My teacher emailed me earlier this week to say another student was going to sing that for our “Holiday Performance” class, and I could do it, but I might want to choose a different song.

So, I paused, and thought about it. And the next morning, Wednesday, my mom texted me to say that Meet Me in St. Louis would be on TV that night. … For those of you who don’t know, Judy Garland sings the above song in that movie – and it’s really sad and beautiful. It’s at this moment after a little girl has just slain the snowmen she made of her family in the backyard because they’re moving from that house, and Judy come fetches her and comforts her (all while in this gorgeous fur coat and bright red dress), rocking her and singing that, “We’ll all be together, if the Fates allow, Until then, We’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

The song always gets me, I cry like a little girl.

So, when my mom texted me that the movie would be on, I decided to sing Have yourself a merry little christmas anyway. And when I sang it yesterday, all drama and all aside, I dedicated the song to my mom. And I totally teared up then too. Now, granted, it was not the performance of my life. I was really nervous, and all full of jiggling emotions, and I was all dressed up in heels and a really hot pencil skirt I’ve worn once because it was a class party, and we’re supposed to dress up for classes when we perform – which is all to say I was also a little …embarrassed? about looking so nice.

But, I sang it, and as is almost always the (genuine) feedback, the class and the instructor said that I have such emotion and presentation and stage-presence. So, maybe my voice is not Judy today, but I showed up with my whole heart & body anyway. And sometimes that’s enough. I’ve heard the “stage-presence” thing often enough to maybe stop dismissing it. My teacher actually said That’s something you cannot learn. So, that felt good. And next it’ll be time for me to leap again and show up for another audition, or rather, email back to some casting calls.

I had an interesting moment this week. I was offered a temp gig over my winter break from school at the awful, Office Space-esque company I worked for before. I’d hemmed and hawed on it, trying to see if I could stay with the interior design firm instead, but they couldn’t guarantee that they would need me in January, or for how long. So, I accepted the job.

Then, on Wednesday, I’m being driven home from class by a school-mate and she’s telling me how she’ll be using the break to really begin thinking about jobs after graduation (in MAY!), and I tell her, well, I’m going to be working full-time in the city, and I’m not going to have one day of holiday the entire break, and I’m actually looking forward to when classes will begin again (in over a month!), because then I can finally breathe again.

Anybody else sense a *warning* in the above? Any tinge of resentment against the job I haven’t even started yet? A large bout of self-pity for not having any time off at all? An intense feeling of overwhelm? Well, yeah, I finally got that too. And on Thursday, the next morning, I met with a girlfriend at lunch to talk about NOT working AT ALL over my winter break from school.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that I would be able to afford not working over winter break. But, it did in my morning pages on Thursday morning, What if I don’t work over break? Can I?

So, that morning, I crunch the numbers. If I don’t work over break (3 weeks – as I’m with the interior design firm til Christmas), I will be entirely covered – entirely covered – through the whole month of January. And what happens mid-January? My student loan replenishes, and I will have enough. I do have enough. I *don’t* have to work over break.

But… being the mind-f*king woman that I am to myself, I work the numbers as to how much I’d earn if I did work (despite ALL self-care information to the contrary). How much would I earn? Enough.for.a.car. A used car, but enough for a car.

What could I use that car for? AUDITIONS!!! Holla!! …. What else? The live modeling gig – they require you have your own transportation as many of the gigs are all over the Bay, at various schools, universities, studios. So… I need a car, right? I need a car to help follow my dreams right? I need a car to be more available for auditions & for gigs, right? … I need a car under these circumstances when I would be working myself so hard that I nearly cried talking about it with my girl friend at lunch on Thursday, right? …

Luckily, my friend is wise, compassionate, and has a mountain of faith in all of our dreams. She said that she doubts that the Universe would make it this hard – that she doesn’t believe in the kind of Higher Power, if you will, who would make us grind ourselves to the bone for our dreams. If it’s meant to be, it usually is simple. That does not mean easy – we have to do work on our end – but look at so many of the things that have just “fallen into place” in my life (See “Wordless but Effective Chant” blog). In each situation when I’ve given up forcing myself into a situation which did not fit, I was led to something which was immensely better.

That continues to happen. So, … my friend and I made an action plan for me. First was to call my temp agency and to decline the job in cubicle purgatory. Also along those lines was to affirm that I would be more conscious next time I was offered a job before I accepted it. I actually hadn’t really asked myself whether I wanted it (I knew/know I didn’t; I was just focusing on having continuous work, as I thought that’s what I needed). So, that’s my action of reparation for the future – to do things differently. Hopefully.

I did call the temp agency, and she said, So you can’t work even a little? And, I said, No. (with all the attendant thank yous and I apologize, etc). And she said, Okay, Thanks for letting me know. And that was that. Cuz, despite the fact that the woman at the new job asked for me specifically (I’d worked there last year and she and I got along really well), and that she rejected other applicants, and that “she only seems to want you,” … (some ego may be mixed in here too, huh). Despite all that – I AM NOT the only woman able to adjust the margins of a 300 page Word document. I am not the only woman able to recalibrate your Table of Contents. Yes, it’s hard, because the whole document is fucked and it’s mind numbing to highlight and tag and adjust and readjust – it’s time consuming and takes patience and diligence – but guess what, I’m NOT the only woman, or person, able to do this job. I appreciate your faith in me, and your appreciation of work I have done in the past but,

Anty needs a recharge. ;P

The other action items were to look into getting away over break. Getting somewhere out of the city, somewhere warm. So, I’m looking into that. Reaching out to my network of elves, I mean friends. If it doesn’t work out, my girl friend will be out of town between Xmas and New Year’s and offered me her place in the city. So, that would sort of be vacationy, and also would mean I wouldn’t have to commute in if I’m doing city related friend things. It’s just an offer, a generous and sweet one.

But, just to know that I will have OPEN TIME. FREE TIME. Time that isn’t filled with dubious stains on BART seats; institutional recycled air; or resentful exhaustion – that’s my Christmas gift (or Chanuka rather!) to myself.

My part of this whole bargain is also to *do* some of my thesis. To email the theater companies. To check out an open mic (that’s one of my self-assignments lately).

But, also, Super Molly, part of my assignment is to take a long walk in some semblance of outdoors, even a park in the midst of a city. To paint my toenails. To see friends. To see new friends. This is a vacation after all.

If the Universe wants me to have a car, it’ll be easier. If the Universe wants me to get an audition, I’ll go “buy a ticket” and apply. If the Universe wants me to feel calm, useful, and available, I’ll let it.

abundance · family · healing · relationships · synchronicity

Sacred Bonds and Hybrid Cars

November 20, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Today I went to the 2^nd in a series of workshops
led by a friend of mine on relationships. The series is Relationship with Self,
Others, the Divine, and Spiritual Contracts and Inner Archetypes.

So, today was “Others”. I trust this woman implicitly, and
have been through several workshops and retreats with her over the past … could
it be 4 years? Maybe. In any case, I was interested to see what would come up,
especially as I’m doing all this Calling in The One work, etc.

The most poignant, and new, information was around my ideas
of what a “girlfriend”, as archetype, as character, as a “should”, should be.
After writing for other archetypes of Mother, Husband, Friend, qualities like
consistent, loving, supportive, independent but available, etc., it was a shock
to see me write under Girlfriend: sexy, happy, giving, available, demur. …

It
is not a surprise then that I’ve been a serial single person! If my belief is
that in order to be a girlfriend, I must demur, be happy and sexy and giving
and available to the other person at all times … yeah, it’s no wonder I’m
single.

The other thing that came up was around my mom, with whom I
haven’t spoken on the phone with for about 6 months, following a, well, an
inappropriate conversation – one which she really has no idea was
inappropriate. And I wasn’t able to say as much then, so I did like I do and I
shut down, and haven’t spoken to her in 6 months. We text now and then, just so
we know each other is not dead, but going to a dry well for water is one thing
(I’ve sort of stopped) – having that well knock on your door and say what’s up
how come you haven’t asked me for water lately is maddening.

In the workshop, I later wrote down how my experience of “mother” actually is, versus my “should”s: narcissistic, over-worker,
self-involved, NEEDY, isolated, sad, doomed …

I then wrote how “daughter” actually is: burned, exhausted,
done, tired, untrusting.

And again, it’s no surprise then that I haven’t spoken to
her in 6 months! And yet I judge myself on it all the time. I should
be nicer, call her, love her, talk to her, listen to her … I get depleted just
thinking about it. But even so, Super Molly thinks it’s the role of a daughter
to talk to her mom – no matter what. Human Molly tries one more time to not be
disappointed, to set boundaries, to stay on her own side of the street, and
gets walloped, time and again.

Last week, I told Patsy, my spiritual teacher/friend lady, that I
had to write a “Renegotiating Old Agreements” letter to my mom – that I wanted
to – that I’m warming up to the idea of getting in touch with her again, but
that first I want to be clearer on a few things within myself. She said, how
about you do it for next week – I cringed. She said it was just a suggestion –
and here it is Saturday night, and I meet with her tomorrow, so maybe I’ll do
it on the train – but I will write it. Because it does feel crappy to not talk
to my mom – the mom I have is not the mom I want, but I would love to
renegotiate an agreement where I can communicate with the one I have in a way
where I don’t get depleted …

Come to think of it, in a similar way to how I believe a
girlfriend gets depleted. Hmm…

Thank you for reading my therapy session. (Kate, I swear
there’s traction!)

In other news, so, the Universe is obviously actively
listening to me. About a month ago, in rearranging my room per CITO, I had need of a 2^nd bedside table, one
that would match my first (sort of country-style wood painted white). I’d been
semi-on the hunt for one, and in a very synchronistic manner, I ended up at a
garage sale with the *perfect* matching table – white, with a drawer, and
country details. Evidence one.

Evidence Two: the blind date – I’ve asked for a tall,
handsome, employed Jewish man – and I got it – but whoa, buddy, I guess ‘not a
douchebag’ wasn’t on my list, and I didn’t specify taller than me, so…

Evidence 3: the perfect purple wool pea coat. Done – and for cheap!

Evidence 4 … For the last week, I’ve been bemusedly thinking of getting a car, coveting them on the street, looking at some
online, and I found a new lovely hybrid car online for the mere price of almost
$30,000. So in realizing that I’ve gotten evidences One Two and Three,
guess what I’ve been doing the past 3 days? Asking the Universe for a hybrid car or $30,000! (Although it was pointed out to me that having a car again may not solve my time-debting problem, as was clear to me when I rented a zip car yesterday…TO GET TO CLASS! f*ck.)

But, in the mail today when I come home is a pre-approved auto
loan junk mail for … $30,000. No lie. I guess I have to be really specific
these days (“$30,000 with no strings attached, and no one dies”).

Thank you Universe for listening, I’ll be more conscious
hybridcarhybridcarworkingingoodshapehybridcar of my intentions from now on. 😉