Category: health

aging · health · menopause

AARPing

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

9.23.18.jpgYesterday, I got the chance to continue reading the AARP magazine I’d liberated from my building’s mail slush pile.  One of the major articles was about menopause, and… it gave me pause.

I texted my mom to ask when she’d gone through “the change” (although I’d asked for details before, I can never remember), as it’s generally accepted that whatever your mom experienced, you can anticipate you’ll experience something similar.

She replied that she was 51.  I’m about to turn 37.  That’s 14 more years of ovarian churning; 24 years of their production line have passed.  That’s a lot of years!

And yet, it feels like such a short period (no pun intended!) between now and the anticipated change.

The article went on to report that a vast majority of doctors, even ob-gyns, have little experience or familiarity with how to help a woman going through this utterly predictable and common experience (51% of ALL earthlings!).  They report that most ob-gyns focus on in/fertility and delivery — where the big money is at.  There’s not yet much bank in “the change.”  The article further states that, while the overall cause is the same, women’s experience and symptoms vary wildly so there’s no “one size fits all.”  There’s more of a need to listen, interpret, and adjust one’s approach, which is also not something many doctors like to wade through.

It’s fascinating to me.  There is a gargantuan industry for media and products aimed at anti-aging: the serums I buy for my face, the water I drink for my organs, the sleep I attempt to get for my brain function, and the workouts I try to maintain for my bones.  And yet, I haven’t once read an article aimed toward someone like me looking for ways to improve my experience of menopause, even from this long a landing approach.

What was news to me was the fact that around 30 years old, muscle-loss comes into play, and at about 35 or so, we begin to lose .5 a pound of muscle mass per year, and that can increase to a pound a year as we progress through this life-span thing.

My metabolism, I’ve noticed, began to slow down earlier this year, almost as if it had hit some kind blaring neon mile-marker (our bodies are brilliant time-pieces!).  My night-vision on the road has been on a decline for a few years, the brightness of headlights bothering me much more than it used to (no doubt partly in response to the new LEDs).

Plus, my body has never been one to maintain muscle mass without regular, near-daily (probably daily!) attention to weight-bearing exercise.

This aging thing is such a journey!

But I know, curious cat that I am, that the more I learn, the more prepared I’ll be and the more I can assist this vessel in its continuity, not its “decline.”

(Awed shout-out to my bad-ass, cancer-survivor sisters who’ve had to go through the change way earlier than ever expected.) ❤

 

addiction · avoidance · health

Bridge and Tunnel

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.27.18

Game of Thrones has eaten my imagination.  You’re probably as tired of hearing about it as I am of reading it.  It’s 5,000 pages of binge.  Even a weekend spent devouring Stranger Things is a shorter time suck!

I bring it up because I notice that my blog post from yesterday was half-assed and scant, but it was also all I had.  I didn’t have much to reflect, relate, or realize because all of my brain cells have been consumed by dragons.

I listen to the audio-book on the way to work; I listen to it on the way home; I listen while I’m organizing my classroom and read the book between classes.  I read it at the breakfast table on weekends.  I read it for 3 hours on the couch every afternoon.

This means that there’s no room or time or breadth for any other thoughts.  Nothing of my own imagination or realization, no time to reflect on anything, no room to plan or make progress on anything… The series has eaten my life.

Before I began these obliviating books, I had a structure for my commute:  Listen to The Success Principles on Hoopla on my drive in and Anna Karenina on my way home.  (I’d tired of NPR, even delightful Kai Ryssdal, and music can be too noisy after a day of children.)

But Karenina grew burdensome and I was enjoying GoT, so I paid for the audiobook and began listening on the way home… then on the way in.  Then during my breaks, moments of pause, moments of zen… now unzenlike.

I reflect on this today because the new meditation challenge from Oprah and Deepak is about “Shedding the Weight,” about using food to drown our feelings or thoughts.  While I don’t generally suffer from overeating, I can assure you that having spent the previous month on the couch after work for 3 hours every day has done nothing for my level of physical energy or esteem around my body.  I am drowning in words.

Sometimes, it’s important for me to “dig to the bottom” of my self-harming behaviors, to really get to the root and suss out what’s going on.  I don’t think this is one of them.  Whether I’m using words to drown out feelings from my self-inquiry work, shame around delayed work-work (e.g. grading papers), mourning my relationship, discomfort from my living situation as my ex- still lives here, or simple avoidance of any number of projects I have in the pipeline…

It does not matter!  It is likely all of those, and a host of other sh*t.  But the point for me, the action, the antidote remains the same: Get back to my positive habits!  GET SOME NEW INPUT.

Listen to The Success Principles.  Use my commute home to start recording songs, as I’d promised my Goals Group.  Use my gym membership.  WALK in the afternoons now that it’s light out.  Listen to The Year of Yes.

Find more nourishing input.

GoT is fine; it is.  (It’s pretty brilliant world-building…and clearly engaging!)  But it’s also junk food for me.  I’ve been binging and drowning and crowding out all other awareness.  And it’s time to chain it up between the hours of 8pm and 830pm as I tuck into bed, like a normal, literate person.  (Please dear god amen.)

(Yes, I go to bed at 830; I wake up at 445 to do all this!);)

 

determination · fortitude · health · life · recovery · spirituality · surrender

Snookered.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment
See, the thing about being saved is that it’s not an
absolution.  You aren’t swept back from
the cliff’s edge and wrapped in a cosmic swaddling, rocked into unseeing bliss.  What you are is placed back firmly onto a
path.  A long one.  Back from the edge, back from the place of
giving up on the work of this lifetime, you are nudged—not so gently, but not
without compassion—onto a path that will require of you work for the rest of
your lifetime.
The cliff’s edge, the leap from it, the ultimate sacrifice
as it might be called is the choice to give up all the work that will ever be
asked of you.  It is to say, Forget it,
too hard, too much, there’s no help, no hope. 
To be placed back onto the path you had made some kind of decision—by
omission or commission—to leave means that you are now responsible to take up
the work you’d abandoned.  It is to look
up from your crumpled knees and see winding before you the path of your
lifetime, the work that will surely be needed to accomplish it, and the
knowledge that to be alive is to do that work.
To be alive is to agree. 
To be alive is to sign an agreement daily that you will, however
falteringly, place one foot before the other. 
To be alive is to agree that you yourself and your life are more
worthwhile than eliminating all the possibilities it holds, all the better and
all the worse. 

And so, pulled back from the edge, “saved” as it were, you
walk with a grim humor, knowing that somewhere you have chosen this.

career · clarity · exhaustion · fear · health · work

Numbers, Indignation, Holding Patterns: i.e. the Usual.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment
I have the delightful learned ability to read a health insurance coverage summary with a hawk’s eye. 
Post-cancer, I have become acutely aware of watch-words like “after deductible,” “co-insurance,” and particularly, “lab fees.”
Last week, I met with two of the 3 HR ladies I have worked with at the retail company I now work for. The first, Heidi, I met on the day I waltzed into the HR department with no plan and asked if they were hiring. I then had a wonderful impromptu interview and was subsequently hired. She’s great, personable, real. And someone with whom I can be honest. 
To finish up the health insurance thought, I met with another of the HR ladies last week to sign the “permanent hire” paperwork, and to get the particular HR documents I’ll need, and information on eventual benefits. 
I’d assumed, working for a large conglomerate corporation, that my health benefit coverage would be fantastic. More people = less $ from me, right? Wrong. 
This morning, I logged in to see what my options are, as I have to stay with the Kaiser health insurance, since that’s where all my cancer records and doctors are, plus it’s in walking distance of my house. 
I looked at the plan they offered. I saw many watch-words, including all those above. And then I brought out the plan that I’m currently under via COBRA through my old synagogue employer. 
My lord. What a better plan. 
As someone who needs to get lab tests done fairly regularly, I know that I now pay $10 for them to look and see if my blood is still blood, or if some of it has reverted to cancer. 
With the new plan I saw this morning, I’d have to meet a $4,000 deductible… and then I’ll still pay a 20% copay. Besides the hundred or so they’ll take out of my paycheck each month, just to have the plan. 
Now, this may all be boring to you. But, number-cruncher that I now am, COBRA costs me $400 a month = $4800 a year. 
So they’re kinda similar, now, ain’t they? 
How much is a lab test before deductible? I don’t know. A hundred, maybe? How ‘bout the other things I get checked through-out the year that the new plan says, “After deductible” next to. 
Knowing that the plan I currently have is a phenomenal one (having done the health exchange comparison, too), I asked the HR woman last week if they could do something about my pay if I keep my own health insurance. 
She’d never heard of such a thing. ??! 
It is common that if someone is covered by outside insurance, if the company is not paying for it, the employee can get a boost in salary, since the company would be paying insurance, but now can pay the employee instead. 
Again, she’d never heard of such a thing. And said, no, that would not be the case here. 
Enter the second HR conversation I had last week. It was post-holidays, post-working on New Year’s Day, and I was exhausted, upset, not happy. 
This retail, commission, fighting for customers with the other girls on the sales floor thing is not for me. 
I walked upstairs to see Heidi. I told her as much, in quite cushioned, complimentary, grateful words. 
And she said: I figured that wouldn’t be for you. 
But, we love you, you’re one of 2 of 70 employees kept on past the seasonal period. “Give me a week,” she said. 
Give me a week to think of another role for you here. We want to keep you, and let me think about where we can utilize you. I have some ideas already, but I have to check them out.
She knows me, sort of. She got one of those hand-made collage holiday cards. I’d gone in to talk to her previously about expectations for the sales positions, and how much hustle one has to do in that role in order to make a living. A living which would equal the paycheck I left at my non-profit desk job. 
She said last week that she could see I was someone who thought about the good of the whole, that one’s success is all’s success, and that cut-throat retail floors don’t allow for that. 
I later said to a friend, it’s like she called me a communist! But, funnily and astute observed, she’s right. For the good of all! And other Marxist ideologies!
It’s coming to the end of the week she’d asked me for. She was nearly plaintive in her asking me to give her the time to think of something.  — They really like me. 
In addition, I wrote her an email early this week saying that she needed to have all the information: I do theater. And that means nights and weekends. And if we can keep that in mind as we seek out a new role for me there, that’d be great. 
We’ll see what she comes up with. If anything. 
If I land back in front of a desk so I can get to theater rehearsals, so be it. As long as I’m earning more than I was at the non-profit. 
I mean, come on people. You’re an international corporation. I’m not 23 anymore. I have skills. 
Again, we’ll see. Before I go charging off to look for alternative companies, I’ve invested a lot in them already, as they’ve invested in me. 
But, should it look like I’ll be a salaried lady again — I’m asking for the health insurance off-set increase. 
Because screw that noise. 
balance · fun · health · joy · love · responsibility · self-care · theater

In Training

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Dear Blogosphere,
Apologies for the sporadic posts these few weeks. First
there was sickness, then my mom in town, and then, of course, the Monday 5 a.m.
shift at my gym.
And in thinking about the structure of the next few weeks, I
don’t know that I can promise you anything more than a few pixels.
This Sunday began the first full week of rehearsals. 4 hours
Sunday, 3 each night this week. And assumedly, each weeknight until opening
night on September 19. It really is like a part-time job!
And so, I’ve come to think of my approach to this time as
though I’m training for a marathon. To the best of my ability, I am going to
aim to be completely conscious of the food I eat, the breaks I force myself to
take from my desk at work, the sleep I manage to slip in between rehearsals and a
day job.
I have this phrase I wrote down a hundred years ago that is
taped to my closet wall and has taken me as long to come to understand and
believe: Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong.
And I believe this is the perfect time to begin to implement
“acting as if” that’s true (because, I somewhere believe it is). The body is a cautious and delicate scale. In these few weeks and months, I’ve gotten to see that my own scale is
particularly sensitive (liver trouble, K.O.’d by a virus, my acupuncturist saying my body was ripe with signs of stress).
So, balance, intentionality. Vigilance. Yes, it’s the
absolute busiest season of my work year – like a retailer between Black Friday
and Christmas. But, as we’ve seen, I can’t show up to work if I’m not healthy,
and I’m not healthy if I’m not intentional. So, I have to be my own trainer,
stopping the clock to take a walk outside. Deciding, No, I won’t have 4 cups of
coffee to power through my day. Yes, guy at the store who watched me put the apple
back and reach for the organic one that’s a dollar more expensive, yes, I do
need to eat this instead.
I’ve set up a “crash-pad” at my friend’s house who lives
between work and the rehearsal theater so that I can go and chill out a few
hours after work without having to either rush home and back or sit at a café
and spend money or be interactive with anyone.
I’m going to begin going back to my gym a few mornings a week,
instead of the once I’ve been doing. I’ve been meditating almost every morning
for 10 – 20 minutes. And, we’ll see where the blog falls on the self-care
scale, considering the few moments of sleep it ticks away.
Finally, I’d like to make sure that I get time in with my
“brain drain” crew, spending an hour with people who normalize my experience
and help my thinking to turn down in decibels.
“Meetings, Movement, and Meditation” has arisen as my
prescription for health, and I am hoping to treat myself as the worthy
patient and doctor of such self-care, which will enable me to show up fully,
mind, body, spirit.
Because… I gotta tell ya, This shit is So.Much.Fun. !

change · fear · growth · health · voice

Slings and Arrows

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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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. 

career · clarity · health · progress · self-care · theater

Round and Round She Goes!

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Waking at 5 am to do work-trade at my workout studio doesn’t make for a lyrical blog, so I figure I’ll just give you a “state of the union” update on a few things I’ve been writing about here recently.

Yesterday, I had my first vocal rehearsal for The Addams Family. It’s sooo low, this range, so I’ll do the best I can! Which, I think will be alright! I also took my first voice lesson last week in over a year, and I really like the woman I met with. She’s in SF, but I think, for now, at least through the play (Opening Sept 19), I’m not in a position to shop around at the moment.

I also wonder if I should begin auditioning again, too. As I once heard, “You’re only as good as your next play”! Which is a great discouraging mantra!! But, perhaps instead, I’ll look at audition lessons or acting lessons, too. It’s not that I have the finances for that at the moment, since

I’ve begun acupuncture again, following all the medical upswing of the last few months with my liver, et al. But things have calmed down. Medically and emotionally. I had an ultrasound of my liver about a week or more ago. They found that, indeed, there were fatty or scarred areas on my liver which were likely causing the elevated liver enzymes that incited the doctors to panic in the first place. They can’t tell from the ultrasound if it’s fat or scarring, but in either case, the dr. said that we don’t have to do anything except watch it. That there were just small spots on the image. Nothing seriously damaged at all. Or even moderately damaged. Thank god. The irony of a sober person developing cirrhosis was just too galling.

In the meantime, I’ve begun again with the acupuncturist I used to see (who’s also in SF, so I try to stack my time there), and I think she’s been influential in helping my system calm down and regulate. Granted, I see and have been seeing my chiropractor/naturopath, (who, using muscle testing, was able to diagnose liver scarring!) but I wanted some additional support, since things were “showing up” in my ovaries, and I know that the chemo may have knocked those ladies out of alignment. The acupuncturist, I began seeing for fertility/womanly issues about 7 or 8 years ago. She’s known me for a good long while, though I haven’t seen her in a few years. It’s nice to have that long-term relationship, and she remembers things about my life and my progression that I’m surprised she does!

Next in Team Molly accrual, I met with a woman yesterday about a “fulcrum”related topic. I want to find a way to work less and earn more, so that I can actually not live paycheck-to-paycheck and dawn-to-dusk for the rest of my life. I believe it’s possible, and have been reaching out to people to ask for their suggestions on this.

She, this friend of a friend, suggested something that I’ve had suggested twice before: Teach writing to kids.

…

Bu- But, B, B…. but I don’t know how. But it’ll be hard.

Mainly, I don’t know how, and that means that I throw up all kinds of barriers to mask that vulnerability, like “it’s hard,” it’s competitive, I don’t have experience, etc etc etc.

These are not very true. That I don’t know how to go about it is. But that’s why I reach out for HELP! The same woman I met with yesterday said that she just paid… wait for it… $200 for a 4-hour class for her child.

I’m sorry, what?

In a class of 6.

She said that, in this area, you can charge at least $30 per kid per hour, and have a small class. She said that the teachers also offered help with personal organization for the kids, helping them clean out their backpack, organize their homework schedule, organize their life, because, if you haven’t figured this out — not all parents know how to model this for their kids.

Point is. This is the 3rd time in as many years that the suggestion has been made to me about doing supplemental education for kids. And I would love to do that. I have the passion, and the good intention (despite my practicality about the numbers), and the acumen with kids. I just do. And I don’t want to be a “classroom teacher;” I just have watched and am continuing to watch too many of my friends work really hard for a diminished ROI.

Fulcrum, man.

Good for me for reaching out and being open to ideas. Now, the work will be to create a curriculum, a program. Eek.

And that’s where the help will need to come in. But I know plenty of people who can, and the things that I don’t know, I have the wherewithal to find help for that. She sent me the links to several programs in this area that offer similar services/classes that I could model my work after. It’s exciting, nerve-inducing… and I hope I do it!!

Lastly, for fun, I’ll tell you that my “Great Caffeine Reduction Experiment” is going well! I’ve moved from 4-5 cups of coffee a day to 1-2! Granted, I went to bed at 8, then 9 pm for about 2 weeks, and am still tired by 10pm! But I think a) that’s more normal, and b) might pass. In any case, I think it also helps my body, and my energy, which I’ll need. Not to mention my voice, since coffee is dehydrating.

So, things continue to move. … And the Tarot card I pulled recently is the one about intense rest and reserving of energies. So, I cancelled one of my coffee dates this weekend (with a girlfriend, don’t get excited!) to fulfill that need. But I think there’s more rest to come.

As someone once said, “On most days, I meditate 30 minutes. On days that I’m very busy, I meditate an hour.” (and I say this soooo metaphorically at the moment!!)

amends · avoidance · change · father · fear · healing · health · isolation · relationships · self-support · truth

Excising a Lily-Liver

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As part of my personal work, I am called to amend
relationships in my life that are in need of clarity and repair.
As part of that work, I broke down my list of these people
into three categories: People I fall out of touch with; Men I intrigue with;
and My dad.
I’ve begun the work on those I’ve fallen out of touch with –
it’s usually out of a habitual belief that I’m not good enough to show up for
relationships and I self-prophesize that by allowing relationships that I value
fall away. These are relatively easy to repair, and by doing so, I get to
challenge these false and long-held beliefs by being consistent, responsible, and focused on the truth.
Amending my relationships with the second set of humans is
more … well, I was going to say more difficult, but it’s not more “difficult,”
it’s just harder because I have more invested in those. If you don’t know what
intriguing is, it’s those little flirtations, vaguely flirtatious texts or
conversations, or over-active “likings” of someone else’s Facebook page in a “winking” kinda way. It’s, for
me, engaging in flirtatious behavior with people I don’t want to go any further
with, and sometimes with people I have no interest in, but who I know I can reach out
to when my self-esteem meter is low for a little infusion of “See, I have value:
he wants me,” and a little hit of adrenaline from the oblique exchange.
This is a very old habit. And it’s excruciatingly unfair to
both the men and to myself, especially any of those who think there’s still a
shot. It’s unfair to me, because I continue to feed the delusion that my
self-esteem comes from others, and to crowd the field of actual potential
partners with distractions – albeit often very handsome, talented and
hilarious distractions.
Since the time that I wrote down the half dozen or so names
of those with whom I was actively engaging in this behavior, about half have
simply fallen away through circumstance and lack of my engaging. They’re
intrigues, not relationships usually, so they don’t require some big
conversation like, “Hey, I’m trying to be more clear in my relationships, and I
just want to say that I really appreciate you as a friend, and that I see us just being friends in the future.”
The funny thing about saying this is that, when I’ve given that speech in the past, usually the response is, “Yeah, totally! I don’t even know what
you’re talking about.” Which is fine. I
love you and your egos, and I will help preserve them too; I’m not here to bust
your balls. I’m just here to offer us both some clarity and let us both off the
carousel of “Will we/Won’t we” so that we can get on with our lives.
But. For some of the people on my current list, that
conversation is necessary, and in a truncated, “light” version, I
had that talk with one of these men recently. And the backlash from it was … well,
people don’t like when you change the rules in the middle of the game. And I’m
having to show up for the fall-out of that, even though I just want to avoid
it. I participated in the game, I should participate in the dénouement.—Oh, but
how much easier to Cut & Run!! Oh, old M.O., how I love you! … and miss you.
Because I don’t really do or want to do that anymore. See:
first subset of humans: retracting from relationships because I don’t believe I
can show up.
It’s the same underlying belief in this second category. 
More will be revealed, and I have some writing to do and a conversation to have
with some for whom I’ve changed the rules. It’s not comfortable, but neither
is predicating a relationship on false hope.
The final category, I see now, has its foundation in the
self-same belief that I can’t show up for relationships. In this case, with my
dad, I’m being asked to be honest with him in a way that frightens the shit out
of me.
I would LOVE to lie,
avoid, detach, retreat, and retract. But each and every day since the
invitation to his wedding came in over the phone, I’ve been called to take a
different course. Because, I have been using the above mechanisms for how to
manage this relationship. I’ve been
detached and retracted, and avoidant. And, much like with the men, I’ve created a
game that I don’t want to play. One in which my dad thinks I want or can have a
relationship with him.
To tangent:
This morning, I will get an ultrasound of my liver to confirm or disconfirm cirrhosis. About
two months ago, my liver enzymes came up elevated, and although I simply think
it’s my body’s reparation from 6 months of chemo a bit more than a year ago, I
am also very aware that in Chinese medicine, the liver is the seat of anger.
And two months ago, I was very angry. For a long time. And this dad stuff only
serves to aggravate it.
I was at my therapist’s last Wednesday, and I told her that
I would really love to be able to forgive him, but I am not able to do that.
I’m terrified that my lack of forgiveness for him is perpetuating the problems
in my life, and creating holes in the foundation of my life and relationships
and happiness — and my health.
I told her, it’s astonishing to me that I can have
forgiveness for my rapists, but not have any for him. Compassion, I have in
crateloads. I know how this person came to be, and it’s a sad state of affairs.
But, no matter what modes of self repair I try, I can’t find my way to
forgiving him, and I feel that I need to
in order to move on with my life.
She said something critically important: You can’t
manufacture forgiveness.
If I’m not there, then I’m not there.
“But what about that he’s getting older, and what if he dies
and this is unresolved?”
You can’t manufacture forgiveness.
I can’t bully or force myself into a feeling that I don’t
have. She said that I have some word she couldn’t place that indicates deep disappointment. And betrayal. And this is true.
And I would love to “get over it.” But I’m not there yet,
and beating myself up for not being at a place where I’m not doesn’t help me
get there quicker.
I honestly don’t know if I’ll get to this place this
lifetime. The very last time I was vulnerable to him and depended on him, he
used it as a later opportunity to shame me for not being the daughter he wants. This
is a Catch-22 relationship.
But. It’s not.
The catch is that I have to be willing to show up with my
truth, which, like my friends and like those men, is that I don’t like who I’m
being in this relationship, and it’s harming me. I don’t like to show up in a
falsetto range “happy” conversation with him, when that’s not at all true for
me, and so I avoid the conversations. But, he’s pressing now, and there’s a
deadline.
The truth will out, as Shakespeare wrote. The work on my part
will be to get ready to deliver it. To get ready by remembering I’m acting in
an esteemable way by showing up for my part of the relationship. I’m also
working on steadying myself for the fallout, of which I anticipate there will
be much.
Again, people don’t like when you change the rules in the
middle of the game.
But this was a game I started playing when I was a child.
The rules have changed. It’s time for me
to let the other players know. 

To let them know I’ve stopped playing. 

change · connection · disconnection · envy · friends · friendship · health · relationships · scarcity · self-care

The Facebooks.

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Yesterday, I saw another of those articles posted by a
friend on Facebook about the rose-colored facade that Facebook allows us to put out to the
world. About how we only see photos of grand trips and lattes with foam hearts drawn in
them and that uber cute one of you and your partner looking so darn happy.
This article and those I’ve seen like it tell one side of
the truth, but not all of it.
I didn’t comment on my friend’s article, as his friends were aggro-commenting about Falsebook and how pissed it makes them that we don’t see the “whole” picture of others’ lives. I didn’t want the agida
of the notifications if I put my thoughts there, so, I’ll “post” my comment here:
Facebook saves my life.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer in an ER and led
right upstairs to start intensive chemo treatment, there was no packing of
stuff, no notifying loved ones or having some hippie prayer circle. I called my
mom, and then I called one of my best friends and asked her to do the major
task of letting Facebook know, because that is – whatever feelings we all may
have about modernity, technology, and disconnection – where my friends “are.”
Because she did that for me, my friends knew where to find
me, and what to bring me, and how to get in touch with me.
A few weekends ago, an acquaintance – someone I’ve met only a
few times, someone I could say “hi” to “in real life” but
wouldn’t call “in real life,” aka a Facebook friend – put up a call to go to a local lake for a
lazy Sunday afternoon. I had no plans that day, I’d never been to that lake,
and I took a chance at spending time with someone I barely knew by letting her
know, via the Facebooks, that I would love to go with her.
We did, and I made other new (Facebook) friends. I had a
wonderful and, for me, an adventurous afternoon.
When I got frustrated with my job search recently, I threw my resume
up on my “wall,” and two people have given me actual live leads for work, and
two have contacted me to offer me help on my resume. I’ve looked at this thing
so many times, I see only dot matrix anymore.
When I couldn’t stand that I don’t know if I’ll get to go
camping this summer once rehearsals start, I let the Facebooks know I wanted to
go, and now will be going into the wilderness with “real” friends, having a respite from this
social network thing that brought this trip to fruition in the first place.
I get to see that my college roommates aren’t dead, what
state they live in, how many kids they have. I get to see friends from my high
school musical days launching and thriving in their artistic careers. I get to
read the witticisms, intrigues, and slush that my friends post, and I get to
feel that I know they’re safe.
I have learned about friends’ weddings, deaths, job changes,
moves, births, divorces, successes, struggles, and banalities. And they get to
learn about mine.
I won’t say Facebook is a benevolent entity, wanting us to
all feel connected in a disconnect era. I won’t say that this is the “best” way
of keeping in touch with people you’ve lost contact with, or moved a few zip
codes from. But it does work.
I can also see it from the side of the aggro-commenters, lambasting the system for creating a culture of constant “less than.”
I can admit that just the other day, I Facestalked a
crush’s ex, and felt the creeping compare/despair that I see so many of those
Facebook “expose” articles lament. But, what I did as I felt that gnaw of “not
as pretty, funky, cool, yoga-y, artistic, traveled, fun, witty” creep
up was not to skewer Facebook for allowing her to present an awesome and curated
face to the world. What I did was LEAVE HER PAGE.
For the love, peoples. It’s certainly not that I don’t also fall prey
to that depraved inclination and curiosity. I’ve Facestalked ex’s new
girlfriends (or wives), and I’ve Facestalked crushes exes. I’ve kept tabs on who’s “talking” to who and leaving little digital roses on one another’s doorstep. But, what I’ve
learned to do by now is to remember that a Facebook wall is NOT the whole story, but EVEN IF IT IS, it’s NOMB (none of my business).
Other people are allowed to have happy lives, curated,
sappy, enviable. And the choice I get to make is whether I want to engage with
envy, not with Facebook. 

change · childhood · compassion · growth · healing · health · joy · pain · past · recovery · truth

Not Knot.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Last night, I listened to a woman share her intense pain and
entanglement with her past. In listening to her, I realized something crucial for myself: I don’t actually feel that way anymore.
Despite the trailing tendrils and my habitual gnawing back
at it, my past and I are actually not so enmeshed anymore – at least, as I
listened to her, not nearly as much as we were. No. That’s not accurate. We’re
just not. It’s there. I poke at it, like a plate of live octopus bits, still
wriggling on the plate, long after everyone’d finished jamming them into hot
sauce and tried to chew and swallow before they attached to the inside of your
gullet. (Uh… See: My years living in South Korea for reference!)
But, I poke at it, and if I do, it’ll squirm. But for the
most part, my past isn’t a thing crawling toward and suffocating me anymore.
Listening to this woman, hearing her say that she can’t seem
to get under her past, I realized very
clearly that I have. Again, it’s there, but it’s not a shackle around my ankle anymore; it’s
just some dust I can kick off my shoe.
(Apparently, this’ll be a metaphor-heavy blog!)
I have liked to think
that my past is something I’m still slogging through, carrying around behind me
like a behemoth, its hot putrid breath at my neck asking me how it feels,
whether I am able to ignore it now, How ‘bout now, Now?
I’ve liked to think that my past is still a quicksand pit
I’m wading through, slow as molasses, fetid and shoes lost.
But, something about having this woman’s story as comparison
(not better or worse, simply different), I got to see into a mirror that I haven’t been able to
hold up for myself.
I am not
there anymore. I am under my past. I’ve excavated, charted, spelunked
and had more than one canary die down there with me.
But, in the end, in the now, we’re kind of done there.
There’s a cave we’ve dug down into, we’ve opened the land around it, we’ve
cared and cleansed and ameliorated the land. We’ve begun to forget that it was
a horrid, dark, and dismal place, now in the open space that we’ve created from
it, and we’ve used that dank soil to plant new things. Exposed to the sun, it’s
something new, now.
(I do like me my extended metaphors!)
(Though, actually, I’ve done this exact work in
visualization meditation over many years, opening the cave of my pain and my past, exploring, mourning, and later watching flowers begin to sprout where there was only hurt. I’ve done this work of opening my past and my pain up. It’s
finished, or as finished as it can be.)
So, I got to see something yesterday that I haven’t been
able to see yet: The truth.
As I listened with compassion to this woman tell us, tearful
and anguished, that she is so knotted with her past she can’t see her way out,
I wrote in my notebook:
           
My past is really not that knotted anymore.
                       
Actually.