Category: recovery

change · discovery · femininity · grief · growth · love · recovery · sexuality · spirituality · vulnerability

And So, She Wakes.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

As I was flipping open my Morning Pages notebook this
morning, it fell open to the back page. Written at the top was “Meditation:
Lodge Day 4.” I usually write my journeys and meditations in another
“spiritual” notebook, to keep them all together, but I couldn’t find it last
Thursday when I apparently wrote this. I’d forgotten, and it makes intensely
marvelous sense to me now, and I’m happy I stumbled upon it.
Again, bear with the “do we have to listen to another one of
these woo-woo Mollyisms”!
As you may recall, I went to my first sweat lodge last
Sunday, and we were told by the facilitator that the lodge “works” for four
days after the lodge, hence, Day 4 above. The meditation on that day, then,
went something like this:
The four characters of Beauty, Love, Sexuality, and
Femininity [I guess I didn’t write a blog about her, but a former meditation introduced my Inner Femininity to me as one anorexic and frightened looking young woman, who has been getting healthier for a few months] gathered at the lodge fire. Sexuality discarded her heavy cloak of
shame into the fire. All of the rest of “us” stood behind her – all my aspects
that sit at my internal dinner table, all my animal guides, and all my teachers
human and otherwise. Then the 4 entered the lodge, not with “me.” In the lodge,
they merged, joined, combined, and exited as one. She then purged all these
prayer bundles [little sacks of tobacco filled with prayers, tied together with
string, usually tiny, about the size of a nickel] and the last one was about
the size of a bowling ball, filled with shame. It burned brightly and a phoenix
rose up from the ashes and swam about the clearing. All the others whooped and
cheered – there was great merriment [so it says in my notebook]. She grabbed
onto the phoenix and made the whole trip back from the Santa Cruz mountains and
to my apartment where I sat meditating. And she asked me, Are you ready? And I
answered Yes. And she joined me, into me, empowers/powers me now [I write]. Am I
ready? Yes.
So, what? I realized this morning as I read over this page
that, in fact, something like this has happened. My dalliance with the married
man began the very next day. Brief and physically Rated G as the now-ended tete-a-tete was, I have not felt that kind of power, or charge, or electric in a long time.
That awake in a long time. 
I relate it to the awakening of a limb that’s long been
asleep. Suddenly it starts to tingle, which feels sorta nice, and then, more suddenly, it begins to
feel like it’s burning as it awakens. As the blood starts to rush almost anew
into this place so long cut off. You almost wish it would simply go back to sleep again – better that than this. As you know, I’ve cut off much of these parts
of me for quite some time, imagining, and having fed the story that my
sexuality, femininity, beauty, and love bring me pain, destruction,
self-hatred, and, again, shame.
So, beginning to feel the tingle of these parts of me again,
these massive alive energized parts of me, means that I’m beginning to walk with
my full self again. See, I don’t think it’s just about sex, or being a woman, I
think it’s about me being a full and entirely embodied human. About allowing
the blood, power, energy to flow into ALL of myself. And when that is allowed
to happen, well, I believe I’ll be able to take actions I haven’t been able to
take before.
I wrote a few informational interview query letters out to
networks of mine last night, and in it, I wrote a line that surprised me at its
truth. I wrote that I would, ideally, like to paint, act, sing in a band, and
facilitate workshops. So, there you have it. I now have an answer to “What do
you want to do.” Isn’t that lovely?
In fact, it is. I know that I’m still finding my way to
getting there. But having full working ability of all my limbs has been the
only way to get there. When, over the last several months I was told that I had
to work on this sex stuff before I could get “more information,” well, I think
I’m coming out of it/into it. I think I’m clearing it.
Apparently, sure, I have some work to do on how to do it
skillfully. My old habits with righteously attractive unavailable men are much
more familiar in my muscle memory – and as my muscles awaken, they seek the
familiar. (And seek to post the NIN “I wanna fuck you like an animal” on facebook!) So, it’s about owning, and holding these parts now – how to hold them
properly, and respectfully – without
fucking shame.
Finally, I realized yesterday, as I was clicking “attend” to a workshop for Shamanic Journey work, that if my professional development could
be anything, it would be this – sweat lodges, and collage parties, and shamanic
journey workshops. That my professional development ought to align with my
personal development. It makes a lot of sense to me.
Therefore, again, it’s about heading there. About allowing
myself to head there. Sure, I may need to find a job for the mean time, the in
between time, but with the full use of my faculties, with a widened and
compassionate understanding of the voraciously ambitious and pulsatingly
powerful support of my full feminine, human, creative self, with an eye for new
behavior, and with a welcome acceptance of all that I am, and want, and yearn for –
I believe that, Yes, I Am Ready.
adulthood · crazy · faith · love · recovery · responsibility · sex · sobriety · spirituality · time · vulnerability

How to Not Lose Your Car in Twelve Easy Steps:

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Six years ago today, I woke up, or came to is more like, in
a room in my shared apartment in the Sunset District on San Francisco. In my
room was everything I’d brought with me to San Francisco, so, two suitcases,
and a pillow. When I’d moved into the room, I didn’t even have a bed.
In the other rooms in the house, lived the “angriest pot
head I’ve ever met” (though I concede, I could be more than a bit techy
myself), and another lanky UCSF student who liked to talk about LOST.
That morning, I got myself together, and went out to drive
downtown to a job interview I’d gotten through a temp agency. I’d been in San
Francisco two weeks to the very day.
Outside, I realized I had no idea where I’d parked my car.
The day before, my only SF friend’s boyfriend’s band was playing at the Park
Chalet out by Ocean Beach, and I’d gone, for the first time in my memory, with
the intention that I was not going to drink that day. But, we all know a Bloody
Mary is a breakfast drink… and so, several pitchers and hours later, I come to
in the middle of a conversation with a dude I don’t know.
The band was gone. The sun was setting. And my friend was no
where to be seen. I excused myself from this stranger, and called my friend to
ask where they were, and she told me I’d said to leave me there. I asked where
they were, she said the Marina. So, I stumble to my car, … and realize I have
no idea where “The Marina” is. So I ask a passing couple if they do. And the
first thing they ask is, Are you sure you’re okay to drive? Sure… No problem.
Once in my car, I realize I need gas, so I decide to do that
first, and then, by Divine intervention realize I’m too drunk to go out, and
drive back to my apartment and pass out.
Therefore, the next morning, as I stand squinting in the rising
light, I have zero recollection of where my car is, and I begin to walk in
increasingly large circles of blocks looking for it. I call the police – Have
you towed it? I call the tow lot – Is it there? No. After nearly a half-hour of
increasedly frantic walking, I turn the corner on my way back to my apartment,
and there it is. Parked nice and neat just around the corner from my house.
I apparently was not sure if I was parked “nice and neat,”
however, as scrawled across my dashboard is a note that reads, “PLEASE DON’T
TOW MY CAR. THANK YOU.” And my phone number.
That was the last morning I woke up hungover.
For six years, I have not washed beer grime out of my
clothing. I have not managed my drinking with a steady pace of water or advil
or corona to polka dot the vodka. I have not puked in six years. I haven’t peed
while leaning against the side of a building. I haven’t woken up next to a
stranger. I haven’t slept with taken men.
I don’t have “UDI”s – a college-invented term: Unidentified
Drunken Injuries. You know, those bruises you really don’t know how you got. I
don’t have names saved in my phone as “Pinky Guy,” “Bar Nana,” or “Scary
Scott.” For six years, I’ve known where I am when I wake up.
And here’s where I am when I wake up today. Strikingly
similarly, I am heading into downtown San Francisco today to apply for a job.
I’m following up in person on an application to a gallery job I applied for
last week. I’ll be going through the rest of that building with my resume as
well, and be leafleting for my workshop next Saturday.
This morning, I wake up in my own apartment. My very own
studio. With furniture. A cat – my monument to a crumbling resistance to
commitment and love. Car stolen, I have a bus pass and many logged BART hours.
I have a bicycle, and a coffee maker, and magnetic poetry on my refrigerator.
My life is imminently different than it was six years ago. Yet, there are some details that I want to label as “the same” – single, unemployed,
financially insecure. But these are just similarities, not clones. The
difference between how I will show up to the job search today is that it began
with Morning Pages, meditation, and a blog to you, friends who I’ve met over
these last six years – people who actually, sometimes, maybe, sorta, like me! From here, I’ll go hang out with some of you
folks for an hour, and remind myself of the miracle it is that I get to walk through all this. All this human emotion and
life-strewn eventfulness.
My life is eventful – but not chaotic. My life path is vague
– but not hopeless. Most of all, my heart is warming – and my soul doesn’t house that painfully threadbare echo-chamber anymore.
I still get to practice. I’ve absolutely loved engaging in a thrilling, alluring, morally ambiguous “Drink with Two Legs” distraction this past few days – it’s been wonderful to feel
something other than uncomfortable. But in the end, my conscience (and my
exuberantly caring friend) reminded me yesterday that I’m living in a way so
that I don’t have to feel bad about myself or my behavior anymore. So that I
don’t have to clean anything up later, if I can help it (unless it’s dishes).
I’ve watched myself walk to the edge of decency, and reel myself absolutely
kicking and screaming back from the temptation to throw myself in.
See, my life is full of people who remind me that there is a better
way. That this is only a beginning, and that I can hang on to the love that
I’ve built within myself. That it’s safe to do so.
I thank you, Danger-Will-Robinson lure, for your welcome and
passionate resurrection of a part of me that has long been dormant. And I thank
YOU, reader, friend, lovers, G-d, for helping me to learn there’s
nothing wrong with my Vixen, as long as she doesn’t slice away at my self-esteem.
So, here’s to six years of learning the easy way, the hard way. To
six years of sitting in rooms with people who are learning the same. To six
years of showing up on every inch of the spectrum from megalithic tantrum to blissfully
serene. And to just one more day of this unusually verdant path. 
adulthood · change · commitment · community · faith · family · growth · home · life · recovery · relationships · romance · spirituality · tradition

The Kotzker Rebbi

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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

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

Somewhere New.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For several months now, I’ve been working on a particular
area of healing. For those of you who have read the “Savage Love,” then “Savage Beauty” blogs, you know that I’ve been working on healing my relationship with
my sexuality, and my past behavior and experience in this area.
This is likely going to be a little heavy – for which I’m
not thrilled, but I’m honest – so if that’s not what you want today, I’m sure Cyanide
& Happiness will provide some levity
today.
On my way back from the sweat lodge this Sunday, I was riding
with my friend who was running the lodge. I told her that earlier this year,
and late last year, each time I’d “go in” via meditation or shamanic journey
work to ask what I need to do next to move forward, I was presented with the information
that I needed to work on this stuff – sexual trauma and other murky stuff. I have been. Working
with my therapist on EMDR for a little bit (though I’m not seeing her
currently, due to finances), and in these other more alternative ways.
And most of all, through my thesis.
Basically what my thesis trails is a path through my sexual
history. That story parallels my mental breakdown, and my parents’ divorce, but really,
what is being excavated and brought into the light is all of that. The
“highlights” or representative incidents.
Over ages 16 through 24 (a little earlier than 16, but
that’s when it really took off with a very chicken-or-egg tag team with my drinking), is a napalm blanket of sorrow, shame, and
dissociation. When riding in the car with my friend on Sunday, I said to her
that I hadn’t “been in” to ask for a while if I’m “done” with this particular
set of work or not, and wondered if maybe I was, but/and as I found out a little this morning, there are still
some corners left to sweep.
I am grateful that I had the courage to put all of what I
needed to onto paper in my thesis. But, I’m also aware that it goes much deeper
and further than the stark, strobe-like glimpses that I give you, the reader.
And this morning, in meditation, I began to psychicly clear out some of the
cobwebs. (I just accidentally wrote “sobwebs,” which I suppose is pretty accurate
for this morning.)
In fact, I did something pretty literal to sweeping out – in my mind’s
eye, I walked through and into all those situations I remember, and
unfortunately or not, I remember quite a lot quite vividly apparently — more
than I thought I did. I walked through these times and places, into these
couplings and actions, and burned sage there. I carried this sage through all
the circumstances I could remember, and asked them to be cleared of any energy
which is no longer needed.
There are the few where there was kindness,
and the kindness will remain, but there are the many that were out of a sense of obligation, or resignation, or force; or just wanting to feel better; or just wanting to feel anything other than what
I felt. There are those that are truly tragic, and require some extra doses of
compassion and witness, instead of repression.
I don’t know what may or not come of this work this morning.
It was sort of “unbidden;” I didn’t have the intention as I closed my eyes for
meditation this morning to do any of that – but I guess the Powers That Be had
that intention for me, anyway.
One thing I asked for aloud in the prayer circle in Sunday’s
sweat lodge during the final prayer round – the one where we get to pray for
ourselves, out loud so others know what we need – I prayed for healing around
physical intimacy. And that’s where the majority of my tears came on Sunday. My
relationship with my body, my femininity, sexuality, sex, intimacy, being
present in my body when being intimate – all of this needs healing. I’d still
rather hide within my body – offer you it, but not what’s inside it; assume
it’s really all you want from me anyway, so I might as well just give you only
that out of spite – even if you in fact want more. But, hiding within myself doesn’t work
anymore. Beating myself out of my body – or having someone do it for me – doesn’t work anymore. Not being present
is painful now. And not voicing my physical needs to a partner is another way of hiding.
I don’t really know what to do about it yet. I know that I
don’t do what I used to. But I feel like I’ve swung to the opposite side of the
spectrum – from the vixen to Betty Crocker, as I’ve put it. But I know opening
these doors, clearing these wounds, being willing to treat my flesh with care,
and being willing to meet all of you with all of me are mile-markers of
progress.
I’d like to be done with this work. I’d like to declare
myself fit for duty. Maybe it’ll always be an ongoing process, maybe it’ll come
to a place of plateau. I don’t know. But apparently I’m ready to clear the
sobwebs, and arrive at somewhere new. 
change · compassion · forgiveness · fortitude · life · maturity · poetry · progress · recovery · San Francisco

Poetic Noise.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I was all set to write a blog about 7 years. How really when
someone is 6 years old, they’re beginning their 7th year of life.
How I’ve been here in the SF Bay Area 6 years to the day, and so I begin my 7th year in
the Bay. And how, further, and don’t quote me, that our cells are said to regenerate every 7 years – all of them – so that I am now beginning a set of 7. Any and all cells that I had in my body when I arrived in San Francisco
have absolutely been purged and regrown, replaced.
I think about this, and intended to write about all the
things that have changed in these 6 full years. About where I am not as I begin
my 7th – about how I feel it’s completely cosmically appropriate
that I stand ready to graduate from a Master’s program and contemplate a return
to the East Coast, and even maybe a career.
I wanted to list things like getting my teeth fixed, a
several-year process that I started here, after 10 years of having a few molars pulled
in high school but never replaced, which made me self conscious in photos,
though few others noticed (I certainly do now, as I smile entirely with every
ounce of my cheeks).
I was going to write about my return to art. About taking up the pencil after several years’ neglect and the first tentative and
judgmental sketches which I shoved away for another few years before warming up
and into myself – culminating in selling a painting last year – me?! of all people.
The last 6 years witnessed a return to the stage, auditions,
head shots, community plays. Two acting classes, and two performance poetry
classes, and some modeling to further my return to being present in my skin.
They also signaled a return to writing, the scribbled in
margins and the back of notebook hobby of mine. Who knew that beginning to post
my poems as Facebook notes for several years would morph into what it is now –
reading in public, (almost) owning my mantle of poet. 
I got a cat, for chrissake. Something I was loathe to do –
my first pet-able animal I’ve ever owned, and having her hasn’t make me a crazy cat
lady… so I’m told.
I put up curtains, set root in San Francisco, didn’t run
away, cut and run, shrink or hide. I’ve emerged slowly, shyly, tentatively,
reluctantly and painfully for sure.
I took guitar lessons and voice lessons. Which I dropped,
but the piano creeps in these days, sending crescendos of joy into my marrow.
For years, while I’ve been here, whenever someone told me
that they were in school full-time, I looked at them as though they were a
movie star, a little starry eyed and goofy and admiring, and said (I remember
so clearly), I envy people who do that – go to school fulltime. And now I’m one
of them. I forget that I really asked for this. I asked for it often and
deeply.
As each of the cells on this corporeal form have dived their
swan song into the ether, I have changed. People sometimes use the term inwardly
rearranged – how literal it is here.
Yes, I intended to write my blog about that – about the
nature and surprise of continuing to beat a heart consistently for 7 years.
But I read my email before I came to write this, and there’s
some poetic noise in the interwebs about some highly public class tension that
occurred last night in the direction of a classmate, and I’m just sort of sad
about it.
We are all human. We are all trying to be free from
suffering and doing the best we can. 
How we act and react — teacher, student, classmate … parent, co-worker, acquaintance, dude who cut me off on the highway — is simply and ultimately the best we can offer for that day. We may not like it or approve – we may reprove ourselves for how we acted or reacted or neglected to act – but we also get to reflect and change what isn’t working for us, whether that’s our perspective or action. 
So mixed with the awe and gratitude I feel for not being the sloppy,
grubbing, manic splash of a young woman I was when I arrived in San Francisco 6
years ago today, I also feel a melancholy compassion for last night’s wounded artist (who
for all I know, may not be), and for the reality that we are all somewhere in the process of this perpetual
self-renewal.
balance · crazy · recovery · school · self-care

Elephantitis.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, I gotta admit, I’m feeling a little discombobulated this
morning, and I’m not really sure what’s up. It’s like a wrong side of the bed,
but not cranky, just, off. Like the films aren’t aligned properly. Not sure.
Maybe as the day progresses, it’ll wear off. It’s threatening to be a gorgeous
day, so I’ll hopefully spend some of it outside, or at least in a café,
working.
Part of the discomfort is that I think I spent too many
hours hunched over my computer yesterday, working on both my thesis and the info
blast for May’s workshop. My neck muscles literally cracked when I turned to
shut off my alarm – ouch. Stiff and unhappy. Computers and health may not be
aligned either. Balance, I suppose.
I got the final copy of my thesis back from friends yesterday,
and began my final edits. The folks I gave it to were really helpful and
specific, which offset the entirely vagueness of my professors’ notes. I am marinating on a few changes that may happen – a word here, to delete
one or two poems there.
The nude suit is back in. By the way. I had my performance poetry class last
night, and spoke about my new idea, and that it may not warrant a nude suit,
but folks encouraged me, and said, basically, why the F not. Pretty much
anything that I’d get up there to say will be about getting down to the/my authentic, naked self. The professor said that it adds something visually, it
doesn’t matter what the content is. So,
now, the hunt for a nude-colored body suit. I have a hunch where I’ll find one,
and as I just got asked to babysit this Friday, I’ll have the funds to fund it.
Although he’s a little hesitant for me to be working on a
brand new piece for the performance, which is in less than two weeks, I’m
pretty confident that I can bust it out – as soon as I put pen to paper.
There’s SO much divided demands right now, is all. Each thing is important,
none can be “dropped,” and hardly any back-burnered, but this piece has been,
and I’ll do my best to crank it out in the next day or so. It won’t take long.
I have it mapped out in my head. I’ll post it when it’s done.
That’s really all that’s up right now – these school
demands, and the crunch time lead-up to both next Saturday’s workshop, and
May’s workshop. Each are going to require some more input from me. And I just
feel really thin at the moment. Only one person has actually registered for the
workshop next weekend, though a few have Facebook responded. But, I’m certainly
aware of the habit people have – myself included – of clicking “attend” to
something they have only a vague passing notion of attending. So, I’ll have to
blast that out again – if you get the email again, forgive me, but I sorta need
to know how many folks will be there. Like, if there’s really only one…!
Also, I have to print flyers for the May workshop, and I
need to do color copy cost research for that, and then I’m going to ask a
friend to help me drive around to various places in the Bay to post them up.
So, I’ve got to reach out for that.
Ack. You can see, perhaps, why I feel all off. I tried to
meditate some this morning, and got a few deep breaths, but not too much
grounding. Maybe today is a multiple attempt at meditation day.
There’s something I heard once: a guy said that on most days
he meditates a half hour, but on the days he’s really busy, he meditates an
hour.
That actually makes sense to me. Now, maybe I’m not the
hour-long meditator type, but I’ve sat in a few circles for 40 minutes. It’s
HARD … in the beginning. Then I sort of sink into it – once my brain has had
its say around what feels like 20 minutes or so of, OMIGOD are we done yet???
But, like working out, or something, once you get into it, you forget that you
hated it in the beginning few minutes. The adrenaline starts to pump, or in
meditation land, the serenity does. … Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes it’s 40
minutes, or in my case, 10 minutes of laundry list, punctuated by a few, oh
yeah, deep breath, follow the breath, touch down, just notice – I have to get
quarters for laundry – do I have any dollar bills – I love the sound the
machine makes when the quarters are changed, like in Vega– oh, right, breathe
in …
So, maybe today requires a little more grounding. I’ll go
meet up with some folks later today and have a bit of brain drain for an hour
or so, but, this is part of my self-care. The only way I can balance all that
I’ve got going on, is if I can let myself get balanced first.
I feel like that unicycle circus dude with the poles and the
plates balanced on top. I’d like to feel like the elephant, rooted and pressing
into the earth. 

beauty · grief · love · recovery · self-care

Savage Beauty

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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

(p.s. I have to say, I love the double meaning of “savage” as the colloquial for totally awesome)
So, guess what? I went back “down” today to find out who
that woman in the other penguin habitat was. Yesterday on my way out, I’d
assumed it was Depression, because of the scene around her.
On the lower left end of the enclosure, a woman stood, her
back to me. She stood on what looked like the dangerous rocky shore near a
nasty storm-driven sea. Above, the sky/wall dripped in large blackness. She
wore a tattered dress, and her hair, too, was wild and matted.
Yesterday, I simply backed away from this woman, partly
because it was time to leave (the drumming on the tape indicates when it’s time
to return), and partly because her anger or darkness scared the shit out of me,
and I wasn’t ready to investigate further.
But, it wasn’t sitting right with me since then that she was
Depression. It just didn’t make sense to me. I thought maybe perhaps she was
Loneliness, but I wasn’t sure; I just knew that whoever she was, she was mad as
hell, and wasn’t going to take kindly to me yet. So, I began to think that
whoever she is, perhaps she herself isn’t a “negative” emotion, maybe she’s
just surrounded by that.
Turns out, my curiosity, despite my fear to explore further,
took me back. I listened to the tape of the shamanic drumming again this morning, and
went to go check it out. And, as you might have guessed from the title, indeed,
she was not Depression – she is Beauty.
I have a lot of mixed … experience when it comes to
honoring, holding, acknowledging, or accepting my own beauty. I am not
surprised at how impersonable she is, or how raging, fuming dark and mad she
is. For me, since the (first set of) braces came off, the contacts replaced
glasses, and I got my first set of make-up near the age of 15, suddenly, I
became visible. The ugly glasses, the frizzy hair, the gawky tall figure, these
started to fade, and suddenly, people – boys – saw me.
I have used my anger at this “suddenness” for quite some
time — why didn’t you see me before? Is this all you want from me? I have had this interpretation reinforced by my own behavior, and by the behavior of
others. I have wielded my beauty as a double-edged sword, slicing those who
acknowledged it, and thus slicing myself.
I didn’t trust anyone to see me for who I was, and because
now all they saw (so I inferred) was my outside, I spent very little effort or
time discovering who I was on the inside. At the formative middle-teen years,
this was a tragic oversight.
It now meant that my beauty was a Siren song. I would lure
you in, and crash you upon the rocks. I didn’t care how you felt, or felt about
me. I wanted you to know that my visage was all you would get, and when we were
both done using it, I was done using you – on to the next.
I know this pattern of mine is not unique, but it has
dictated my behavior and thought for a long time.
When I was outside her exhibit today, I didn’t go in. Her
anger frightened me, and I still don’t know how to hold or approach her/it/my
beauty. Mostly, I hide it. Because of the pain inflicted from self and others
in reaction to how I look, I’ve decided it’s best to turn away from it – to
turn it down. It comes out occasionally, but it is rare.
And surely, there’s not much I can do to “turn it off”
altogether. I am who I am, and p.s. I am grateful for it. I know this is a gift
I’ve unrightly used. However, I can hide it, minimize it, hunch over it, and
protect it, I suppose. Which I have done, for a while now.
A few months back, I wrote about wearing this fabulous new
skirt to class, and later to a party. I wrote that I felt “embarrassed” or
something like it. I suppose, I can see now, I felt that duality of
defensive, and brazen – offensive. I don’t yet know how to just let it be. To
understand that my beauty is not to be wielded at all. It just is.
The lack of humility – of “rightsizedness” – I have around
it. It’s just another aspect of me, like my humor, or my intelligence. Which,
both, I will admit, I do much the same hiding of.
Rather you make your own inferences and be wrong about me,
than to show you who I truly am, and have you judge me.
The problem with the beauty thing is that I was/am
defensive/insecure even when you judge me positively. Because of the trauma that has come as a result of
being an attractive woman, and largely in my development, a drunken attractive
woman, the idea of showing you how I look or can look feels like a dangerous
risk.
After standing outside her “cage” for a little while, and
asking what I should be doing, I remembered a suggested question we can ask
when in meditations like these. How does she feel about you? How do you feel
about her?
I feel mistrusting of her; she feels betrayed by me. Great
relationship, eh?
So, in the end, I left. But I get it. I don’t trust my
beauty because it has brought me physical, mental, and emotional pain. She
feels betrayed by me because I haven’t used her rightly, and have then locked
her up.
She’s mad as hell – and she’s not going to take it anymore.
That said, I believe some kind of reconciliation will need
to happen – an understanding – before we can both move forward. It’s not like,
just let her out. She’s too pissed, and I’m too wary. So, what can I do? I can
slowly begin to shed my hiding. I can slowly, and safely, begin to reintegrate
those items in my wardrobe which make me uncomfortable, and attract attention.
Not like booty shorts, but like “nice” things. Pretty things. Things that make
me feel beautiful. This won’t be a
hurling of myself off a cliff into a different way of being; this will be a
slow dance toward intimacy and trust.
Which sounds like a great way to support myself as I look to
build that with others. 

commitment · community · progress · recovery · self-care

Scatterbot

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I dunno why. Sounds about right. Scattering parts of me
hither and thither. My apartment reflects that disarray most of the time. And as
I’ve written, the disparate parts of me are scattered. And my thesis, scattered.
I mention it today, as one of my action items is to print
the last 9 pages that I’ve written and consolidate them into the whole. This
isn’t like tacking them on to the end, that’s not the way my thesis is written
– not linearly. It is more like a collage, and I have to figure out what makes
these disparate pieces a whole.
As you can imagine, this is as – if not more – metaphorical as
it is literal. And I’ve been stalling. Not long, just a few days, but long
enough to notice. I went to the local library to print out the 9 pages, and a woman
was on the computer, so I waited about 5 minutes, and left. And, it’ll be time
for me to do that again today – but, uh, stay
this time, and print them out.
It’s like … gluing an old vase back together. You’ve hung on
to the pieces because you couldn’t bare to chuck them; and so you’ve lost some
of the little bits that used to create the whole. But I notice the missingness
of the vase.
I’ve asked a girlfriend of mine from school to take a look
at it once it’s in order, and to read it with an editing, writerly eye. She’s
agreed, and I feel safe and comfortable showing the work to her – she’s been in
workshops with me, and I trust her eye on my work – she gets it. Plus I respect
and love her writing, which is helpful in a partnership of this sort. So, I’m supposed
to get something – by my own deadline – to her by Friday. The end of Spring
Break – which, doesn’t look much different to me than any other week, except
I’m not on campus two days this week.
The other thing I have to unscatter for tomorrow are my
numbers – I meet with someone weekly to talk through financial clarity and do
some work, and it’s my self-imposed deadline to load all my numbers into my
spreadsheet before I meet with her – as when I was only doing it monthly, it
felt too vague, like I really didn’t know what I had to spend or had spent in the categories
I’ve designated.
I also have an “action partner” now. It was suggested to me
last week that I get an “art action partner,” but as I was talking with my
friend last night, we agreed, they’re pretty much the same thing in our lives.
So, I have someone who I’m emailing now daily the tasks I’ll do today – like
the printing and the numbers – and then, theoretically, I’ll email her tonight
to let her know what I’ve done.
We’ll see how it goes. We’re playing the structure of it loosely, but I know
I need a daily list at the moment. My fear is causing my lack of structure to
dissolve into procrastination and paralyzation. (The three “P”s, I’ve heard
are: Perfectionism, Procrastination, Paralyzation.) So I’m trying to head the
cycle off at the pass by creating a structure where babysteps are acknowledged
and doable… and accountable.
It is by baby steps that I won’t fuck it up, basically.
Inaction has the same result for me as too much or big action – taking an
outsized step, and falling, and then feeling like See, I can’t do it. When in
reality, it just was an outsized step for where I am in my development, and I’d
set myself up to fail.
I’m looking forward to some of this structure, because I
feel like by standing on the foundation of it, I feel supported, and like I’m
taking estimable acts.
Scatterbot, powering down. Gathering time, commence. 

family · love · maturity · recovery · self-care

Family Planning.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

(oh, who doesn’t love a little tongue in cheek!)
I spoke with my mom yesterday. It’s a new record. Twice in
6… well, more like 9 months. It went well. Better than with my dad at least,
but I know part is that she was simply excited to talk on the phone with me and so was on “good behavior.”
I’ve had to watch my balance between “maintaining boundaries” and silent
scorn/punishment. Because I can tend to tip the scales toward the latter, still
making my parents make up to me things they don’t know need to be made up, and
punishing them for things they do naturally, as if punishing someone for
breathing.
But, it’s becoming, and had become, time to step back into
our relationship, and hope that this is a dance floor not a boxing ring. I’ve
needed to time to cool off, to solidify my ability to say things like “That’s
not my business” or “I’d rather we didn’t talk about that.” And, as yesterday
at least was proof of, I am becoming better at it.
This isn’t to say there weren’t the few tinges of the same
old, but, they were few, and I wasn’t thrown by them, as I’ve been so easily
thrown into the drama of despair and self pity that my family is nuts, always
has been nuts, and ever thus shall be, amen. Including myself.
There’s been a lot of need for differentiation work. My life
being mine, and not a carbon copy of hers, or dictated by the mandates of my
father. Coming to believe that the life I’m living is actually my own …
well, it’s been harder than … it is for some people.
It’s something I’ve been repeatedly told over the last few
years. Don’t you understand that you are
the one doing the living? Don’t I understand that these are my decisions to make?
It’s been hard to take that ownership. To believe that I actually am the captain of the ship, or the one
doing the breathing of this body. When much of early life is focused on the
needs of others and falling in line with those desires, the questions as, “What
do I want?” take on magnum
proportions.
Although the aim of school was to accomplish a number of
goals, one of them was to really do what I
wanted. This decision, let me tell you, was NOT supported in some corners of my
nuclear family, and they were very
vocal about that. About telling me that I was making a wrong decision, that I
was making a mistake. That I couldn’t have what I wanted. And that I was stupid
to think something I did want was a viable option. … Only the first two were
actually stated – the others were interpreted by me, and my fear brain which
loves to tell me much the same thing.
I will here state, however, my mom has always been in my
corner around school. She hasn’t always understood what I’m doing creatively, she
hadn’t always supported it (or been aware of it, is more accurate), but she is now. And she has for a few years.
And part of my untangling my knot of self-sabotage is to
begin to see the support in my life around my creativity – and although it’s a
“nice to have,” not a “need to have” that she supports me, … well, it’s
*really* nice to have.
She’d contacted me earlier this week, perhaps the day after
I had my activating conversation with my dad, to ask about coordinating for the
graduation – my graduation. And, so, I told her I’d call her. And I did. And we
talked, and when it was getting a little maudlin, I kept it light and aimed
toward getting off the phone. And when she mentioned her retarded work schedule
(by which I mean 12 hours straight with no breaks, so that she sits with
clients while eating a Clif bar as lunch… <– no judgment there, eh?) I didn’t tell
her what I thought. I didn’t make suggestions. I didn’t, in fact, tell her she
was doing it wrong.
The thing which I so despise being told.
There were a few other minor things like that, where I
wanted to say, WOMAN you are marvelous and talented and beautiful and
intelligent and hilarious and creative and brilliant – OF COURSE you can find
something nice to wear for the graduation day. Of course you deserve to treat
yourself better than your work schedule. Of course … Well, Of course I love you.
Which I suppose is what it boils down to for all of us. All
of us, in this nuclear family, and all of us, us.
So, yes, it is nice to be having my mom coming out to visit.
To celebrate. She agreed she and my father (and his fiancé) will be cordial,
and that’s all they need to do.
I’m looking forward to putting that phone call in my
experience bank, diminishing the deficit of my negative thinking around both of
our “brokenness,” and letting myself live my own life, as I begin (continue) to let go of hers. 
action · balance · fortitude · love · recovery

Talking Alarm Clock Meditation

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I sit for meditation, if I’m timing it, I set my alarm
clock to the setting where it plays back a recording. I can record whatever I
want, 8 seconds long.
I bought this little clock before I set off to teach English
in South Korea in 2004, and had my mom record herself telling me to wake up,
so that I could hear her voice on the opposite side of the earth.
At some point the recording got recorded over, I
accidentally pushed the recording button, and it got erased, so I’ve gotten the
chance to have it say whatever I want it to.
For the past few years, I’ve recorded and rerecorded myself
saying “Thank you,” so at the end of my meditation time, instead of an alarming
beeping as it’s set to wake me up, I hear a soft voice repeat that phrase till
I hit the stop button.
Today, I accidentally erased that recording, and went to say
“Thank you” again into the little microphone in the back, but instead, I
recorded myself giggling. 😉 And I played it back, and it giggled, and I
giggled back at it, cuz it’s so silly but infectious, and at the end of my
meditation time this morning, it giggled at me. And as I reached to shut it
off, I giggled too. It’s very silly.
And yet, I’ve been hearing and reading more about the power
of laughter and smiling. A friend of mine’s been participating in a heart-smile
meditation with a friend at school. She said basically, they just sit around
for an hour … smiling. She said it feels weird, but sort of funny and cool, and
that the facilitator/friend of ours said that you have to actually smile with
your face, you can’t just smile inside.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this. In fact, I
think I probably read it first in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love during her sojourn to Indonesia and to the Balinese
medicine man, who told her to smile “even in her liver.”
And in another book I’m reading, they talk about the healing
power of laughter. About the frequency that gets emitted when we laugh, about
how it can heal us, about how we can change our current thoughts, simply by
laughing.
I haven’t done the meditation, although I’m curious, and
probably will sit in with those girls sometime soon. But, something this
morning – well, I just didn’t want to record the staid “Thank you” again. I
wanted something lighter. Laughier.
I think this whole “power of positive thinking” thing has
its merit. And I’m also getting to notice the needed balance between magical thinking
or “visioning” or collaging with the very earth-oriented action steps that I’m
having to take. I believe there’s a dovetailing of these two actions. Visioning
and taking action.
If I don’t use my imagination to concretize or even
vague-itize what it is I want in this life, I will be a 50 year old secretary.
If I only spend my time “manifesting,”
creating collages, or being in my magical accidental thinking, then nothing
will actually change.
However, I need the basis of those visions, those dreams,
desires, callings, whatever people are talking about when they say “follow your
bliss,” in order to figure out what the hell my bliss is.
Of course, the second part is the action. And luckily, I’m
at a moment in my life when I’m becoming more open to the baby steps that it
takes. These look small this week. But, they’re not.
I called my credit card companies to close my current
accounts. I called those store credit cards still listed on my credit report
which I haven’t used, or seen, in years (Mandees anyone?). I have one more
“hard” call to make. I have a collection agency on my report, with initials below it that are the same as one of the hospitals I was in when I was 21. I don’t know
if that’s what it’s referring to, or if I still owe money to them or not. But, clarity is better than fear or
vagueness.
Other action items of this week are to let you, and my other
communities, know that I’ll be participating in a reading at school at the end
of this month as a part of an open mic/party night. I told this to someone on
Sunday, and she insisted that an action I take this week is to LET PEOPLE KNOW.
To continue out of my hiding and isolation, and to let people know.
In that vein, I’m to work on a chapbook for the reading.
Basically, a small collection of my poems, so that I might be able to sell them
there. It’ll be about the same time my thesis final draft is due, and I should have a good
portion of work at that point.
Putting my work out there; putting myself out there; closing
up these holes of old accounts and fears. These are what enable me to move a
mountain one spoonful at a time. And if a giggling alarm clock helps me get
there, so be it.