Category: self-love

authenticity · fun · laughter · life · self-love · self-support · trying

Chief Happiness Officer

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Not kidding. This is actually a job. In Brooklyn. “Community
Manager and Chief Happiness Officer.” God, I love this generation. For all its
foibles and failings and impending earth-dying doom, I don’t know if there was
ever a time in history (maybe the 60s) where this could be listed in
semi-earnest.
Yesterday as I was driving home from my chiro in SF, I had
my windows down. It was hot, but not too hot, and it was curious to see who had
their car hermetically sealed with A/C and who enjoyed the breeze. At first, of
course, my elbow is resting on the window ledge, half committed to experiencing
the flow of air. Then, as we begin to move faster onto the Bay bridge, I place
my palm into the air, and let the wind carry it, make it dance, still tethered to the anchor of my resting elbow.
Finally, I decide or am pulled to go for it: My arm floats
up off the ledge, we’re whizzing over the bridge now, and my arm, elbow, hand
are carried up into the wind.
My arm pumps into the air, high up, almost straight up. People can see me, I see
them driving past looking back at me, smiling, and I’m smiling. In fact by the
time I get over the bridge, I’m laughing gleefully and giddily. This is so FUN! I see people in cars ahead and behind me tentatively
reach their hand out the window too, still elbow-anchored, but it’s a start.
I am my own Chief Happiness Officer, and I’m spreading it
one car at a time. It was brilliant. To be unself-conscious, to let myself be
silly, be seen, to laugh at myself, to experience the world. The air.
My belly full of laughter at myself and the sensation and
playfulness, thoughts pop in as I exit the highway past a Kaiser
building. It wasn’t long ago that I was hermetically sealed myself in one of
those buildings. Absent of fresh air, unable to touch this freedom.
It’s why it’s sometimes easier for me to take risks like
this, to take the risk of having fun, for its own sake, with no stakes except
silencing my internal critic. I did it because I can, because I saw a little girl earlier in the day
hanging her whole head out the back window on the slow Berkeley streets, and
she looked happy.
I looked happy then, too, in the grins and gawks of passing cars, my hand only beginning to chill as I pull to the stoplight toward home. I forget what silliness feels like, what glee
is, how freeing it all is — and how simple. I forget what it’s like to laugh infectiously and
appreciatively at my own antics. Until I see you hanging your arm out a window, and I remember.

anxiety · beauty · faith · fear · healing · scarcity · self-esteem · self-love · tension · truth

Don’t Hold Your Breath.

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No, really, Moll. Relax.
A woman recently told me that the body is the last hold-out.
It’s the last place we carry anxiety, tension, fear, even as we’ve worked
through it on all other levels.
I hold my guts in tension 99% of the time, even when I’m by myself. I rarely breathe
to full capacity, unless I’m reminded to. There is always a slight constriction
of fight-or-flight going on in my body.
The few places I can recall this not to be the case are when
I’m hiking, walking in the woods. Hm, well that’s the only place I can recall
at the moment! Although, it also happened when I would go up to Sonoma to visit
friends, an old boyfriend. I would say I could “breathe bigger” there. There
was something about the openness, the closeness to nature, the un-cityness of
it all that allowed me to open, too.
I’ve done a lot of pondering on how to bring that feeling, that
sense of ease, of safety, home.
I realized something significant this week. My fear takes
two tacks that leave me hamstrung in a Catch-22: On the one hand, I’m atrociously scared
of being boring, being neglected, being overlooked. Yet, on the other, I’m
afraid that if I am seen, I will be
annihilated, attacked, shamed.
What’s a girl to do?
Well, I can’t control the first part – I cannot control how
I am seen or embraced by others.
But, what does the first part really mean, anyway? It means
that I’m scared my needs will not be met. Though what I can control is that I am
healing in a way that means I’m better able to take care of my own needs, and
to invite others into my life who are able to meet them too, without dumping my
own onto them.
So, if I can come to believe that my needs will be met,
because I and the world around me are
meeting them, then I don’t have to fear being overlooked and languishing in the abyss.
To address the other hand, the fear is that I am not
safe in the world. That if I peek my head out, if I take ownership of my needs,
become brave enough to step out of the shadows, I will be suffer.
How can I dismantle that part? How can I force myself to
believe I’m safe in the world, and not the object of opprobrium if I raise my
hand and say, Hey, this is who I am and how I want to express myself in the
world – isn’t it cool?
Well, I can’t force myself. I can convince myself, my jury, through
overwhelming evidence to the contrary that I am safe when I am myself.
I just have to be willing to look at the evidence. And
that’s hard. 
Who wants to look inside themselves and declare it good? Who wants
to walk with a spine of confidence in their music tastes, clothing choices,
reading material? Who wants to feel proud of their contributions in the world? Their aspirations and hobbies and dropped hobbies and efforts and set-backs
and dorkiness and naiveté and thirst and laughter?
Who wants to say, “Yes, this is me, and I am good. In fact, I
am great”?
Perhaps we all say we do, but the issue to me is that every
time I think a thought like that, I have a gremlin born of those ancient fears
that croaks, “You think so, do you? Well, here are all the ways you’re not.”
Every time you begin to catalogue your achievements, you are
slammed with doubt. And so, you stop cataloguing; the doubt wins, and the
evidence slackens and dulls.
There is so much effort
(it seems to me, right now, and may change) to loving ourselves.
There is so much effort in deciding to face that gremlin,
allow its ire, yet continue with our own mantras of belief.
Belief. It’s all we really have, especially when we’re not
willing to accept the evidence yet.
On both sides of my fear aisle, I am called to believe: a)
That my needs can be taken care of because I believe they’re important; and b)
That I am safe in expressing myself because I believe I am important.
That’s a lot of work for a given moment! And that’s why my
guts tangle nearly every waking moment.
I don’t think I have an anxiety disorder. I know moments of
peace and relaxation and ease. I know that it is possible for me to strive to
have them more frequently by doing this dismantling and believing and accepting
of facts.
But, until then, I will just have to remind myself to
breathe. 

camping · community · confidence · courage · doubt · grace · insecurity · laughter · love · self-esteem · self-love · serenity

Confidence: How To.

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Think of something you know you know how to do. Something
you enjoy knowing how to do. Maybe it’s making the lightest quiche, or playing
the drums, or changing a bicycle inner tube. Maybe you know that you know how
to plant seeds that germinate, or fix this computer bug, or mix the perfect vermillion. Maybe it’s as simple
as knowing you know how to hug a child, or tell a good joke. Find something that makes
you feel competent and confident.
Experience that feeling. The surge of blood through you, a
sense of guidance, purpose, direction. A sense of being the right person for
the job, in the right place at the right time. A feeling of ease and tension
release, of certainty and even exuberance. I know how to do this – I love
doing this.
For me, about 2 years ago, I realized it was (car) camping.
I know how to do that. I knew when we
needed wood, when we should start the fire, how to put it out. I knew how to
set up my tent, how to walk in the woods, how to avoid poison oak. I knew how
to brush my teeth at the tap, and use my headlamp to find my missing sock. I
knew how to have fun, how to do what needed to be done, how to help others
because I knew how to do these things.
What if… we allowed for the possibility that we could have
that feeling in more places in our lives. If we could recognize the mastery we have in some areas, and allow that
sense of confidence and competence support our less certain attempts. Maybe, it’s just knowing that I know how to
put on liquid eyeliner with deft precision. Can I allow that to fill up my tank
a little? – Come to think of it, can I recognize that I know how to fill my gas
tank! (If you grew up in NJ, you might not!) 😉
But the point, today, is that although there are many areas
in which I am not an expert, and that will always be so, and there will always
be something to learn in the places I want to become more adept… there are also
a host of places that I haven’t recognized I’m doing pretty well.
I think this is what they call, “building self-esteem.” What
a concept.
But, it’s true. People in general, and people like me, tend
to dismiss what we think is easy for us. For me, I have tended to dismiss my
writing when its complimented, since it can be so easy for me. What’s the value
of something that is wickedly simple for me?
Somehow the idea that valuable things are hard things came
into our zeitgeist. This is not to say that you or I needn’t work for what we
want, but it’s about recognizing what we have, and sometimes what we’ve been
given, that we take for granted.
I take for granted that I know how to put on crisp eyeliner.
I learned it, I do it, it’s a part of me. So, I forget it’s not something everyone else knows. I take for
granted that I can write this every day, for better or worse! I take for
granted that I can talk to the children at work and make us both smile. – Well,
that one I don’t. I don’t take the smiling for granted, just the knowing that I
know how to do it.
If I were to go through a given day or week, and take note
of the things that I seem to “instinctively” and “intuitively” know how to do,
how many things would pile onto that list?
Sure, there are blank spots, there are gaps, there are wide
berths of where I want to know and learn and be more. But they’re gaps. They’re
not the whole.
If I tried to recognize that I could feel the same
self-esteem while cooking eggs in the morning as I do when making a teepee out
of wood in a fire-pit; if I could remember to feel adept and facile when I
parallel park my car; if I could allow a sense of ease and confidence for the
simple act of knowing to pause in today’s heavy sunshine,
I imagine that delightful, intrepid poise can offer a
foundation for my less assured endeavors.  

abundance · adulthood · determination · fear · intimacy · perseverance · recovery · relationships · self-love · self-support

Manic Panic.

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It’s what the junior high and high school kids
were using to dye bright streaks of their hair in the 90s. There was one store in the
mall that sold it (Nature Works? – The Nature Company! that’s it.),
and if you said you were going there, you meant that you were going to dye your
hair a brilliant shade of rebellious.
I never bought Manic Panic. I was as straight an arrow as
they come until the end of high school. There was too much order to maintain,
and too many rules to follow, for me to diverge any bit off the path I was
expected to walk.
And so, as I am very apt to do, once I hit college, the
pendulum swung so desperately and frenetically in the direction of “off the path,” that it
swung right around and hit me in the now-pierced face, like a rogue tetherball.
Obviously, this wasn’t the “way” either. This wasn’t
my authentic way, at least.
I had a therapist tell me a long time ago that if my mother
had killed herself when I was young, as her behavior threatened she’d do, that
I would have probably gone down with that ship. I’d spent so much time and
energy attending to the needs and expectations of someone else, there wasn’t
room to explore or attend to my own.
Years later, I had another therapist tell me that this life
was my own, that I didn’t have to make
choices anymore based on whether I thought my dad would approve, or disapprove
and retaliate anymore. That this life was my own was such a novel concept, I’d
rejected it for years. That I could choose now to dye my hair, pierce my face,
be alone, reject the world, participate in it, smoke, not smoke, date, not date – is still a
concept I’m adjusting to, but the marination of this understanding and
awakening has been long underway.
The idea that I am a master of my own fate … well, it seems
just as rogue! That I can choose the kind of toilet paper I want; toothpaste I
like; friends I call. That I can choose how I want to dress in the world; what hobbies to pursue; … job to have … partner to love.
Fulfillment, is the end game, or the suspicion of the end
game. Am I happy in my path? Note, Molly: this is your path. There is no mother to care for, no father to
obey. What is it you want in
life? And do you feel free and brave enough to pursue those desires?
Do you feel free and brave enough to apply for a new job? Do
you feel free and brave enough to wear clothing without stains? Do you feel
free and brave enough to accept that you want a partner whose clothes are also
without stains?
Do you feel free and brave enough to accept that you want a
good life? A job you respect? A partner
you admire?
Do I feel … stable enough, secure enough, self-supporting
and self-worthy enough to not only admit these “taboo” desires, but also to
express them to the world, through action?
Do I feel ready to tell you, world, that I want in? That I
want in on the goods, on the joy, on the self-respect, on the intellectual
stimulation, on the bed-rocking sex, on the critical, yet specious-seeming ease?
Well, I guess I’m telling you. I guess it’s been long enough
that the tetherball has hung limp and impotent, and it’s time to begin playing
again. I no longer am… tethered to ideas of being and living that aren’t my
own. The cord is cut, the apron strings untied. The life, really, is my own. 
And though today that may not mean dying my hair
green or copper, as I wish I’d been able to do a dozen years ago, it means I now know that I could. And that I would be awesome besides. 

acceptance · adulthood · beauty · faith · intimacy · letting go · loss · love · relationships · self-love

Because I’m your Mother, That’s Why.

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The last song on Anticipate This, the mix CD I’d made for him, is Dave Matthews’ Say
Goodbye. It includes the refrain, “For tonight let’s be lovers, and tomorrow go
back to being friends.”
The line from Alanis’ Thank You has been repeating in my head: “Thank you, Disillusionment.”
And, finally, if I was “craving cupcakes,” well, a cupcake
isn’t a sustainable meal, is it? It’s never actually intended to be, and so you’ve got to enjoy it while it is there, savor, relish, cherish it, and then you let it
go. Then you move on.
We had a “debrief” conversation last night, during which most of the
above sentiments where shared by us both. Acknowledging the loveliness, the heights, the
calm, the titillation. And yet, that it was what it was. That it was a moment
in time that we’d both signed up for, participated in, and get to let go, get
to allow its sanctity, without marring it with all those Whatifs that spun in (both) our heads.
To allow the sanctity of beauty, to allow it its singularity
is a challenge and a lesson of adulthood. To be disillusioned, to know that
moving isn’t right for either of us, that fantasy can overtake reality and
crumble it. To have had the hard-won experience of knowing that selfishness and
possessiveness can suffocate a beautiful thing, is perhaps not “romance” as we
think of it. But it is, in itself, a mercy.
Relinquishing the ties to future, to “meaning,” to purpose,
we can allow it the simplicity and integrity of its joy.
I wrote a poem once about trapping a moment away in a mason
jar, locking it deep inside for fear that the moment would get marred by time
and eventuality. But the problem was that I forgot what that moment smelled like anyway; in my possessiveness and fear of losing it, I forgot what
made that moment so precious to begin with.
The same is true here. And, smartly, maturely, rightly, and a little wistfully, we both, or at least I, have to allow the experience its
autonomy and “string”lessness.
I called my mom yesterday. I’d spoken to several friends
about my conflictedness, and my sadness in letting the moment go. In knowing,
surely and deeply, that I would have to. This knowledge all the more
painful since it was such a thing of beauty, since it was, for me, a lesson in
intimacy, vulnerability, and ease that I haven’t felt with anyone in my past.
As we spoke, I told my mom it was like tasting ice cream in a shop
for the first time, and having to realize that ice cream is available
elsewhere, all over the place, in fact. That I don’t have to go to this one
place to experience it. That I’d be missing out if I thought this was the only
wellspring of deliciousness.
Part of the beauty of it at all, is that I get to see that
ice cream is in fact available to me.
(Ice cream! Cupcakes! Sheesh, can you tell I don’t really eat this stuff
anymore!?)
But, I did. I got to experience, savor, relish, and cherish,
and I get to decide to believe—DECIDE TO BELIEVE—that I can have similar dishes elsewhere. Somewhere a little less
complicated.
My mom told me that of course it was available to me. That we all deserve to have the kind of love
we want in the world. That we all are worthy of finding it, searching for, letting
the non-fits go, and working toward creating in ourselves a person deserving of the highest order this life offers.
Why? I asked her.
Why? Why is that so? Where is the cosmic contract we’ve all
signed that says that we’ll get that kind of love? Where is the agreement that we
sign as humans that says, Work and open and heal and (for)give, and you shall receive?
Really, honestly, who the fuck says that any of us get any of that?
It was important for me to play my own Devil’s Advocate. I’m the one with all the woo-woo affirmations posted
around my apartment about abundance and light and love and serenity and
security and radiance. I’m the one who’d easily and believingly tell a friend that
things work out. I’m the asshole who believes all this muck.
And for once, I needed someone else to tell me it. I needed
to be the petulant asshole who says, “Yeah, Says You.” I needed to allow my
disillusionment of that kind, too. I needed to allow that it sucks and hurts,
and is disappointing, and hard fucking work, and that we (I) do this with
absolutely no promises whatsoever of any kind of “reward,” or change.
There is no rule that says, Thou Shalt Not Toil Until Death.
There isn’t.
So, I need, sometimes, someone else to tell me. Because,
truly, somewhere (a little out of reach at the moment), I believe that we all
do deserve the precious and gorgeous things in life. I believe that none of us are meant to toil and suffer and be beaten by
life. I truly, somewhere, have a faith that is unalterable. A
place inside me that has never known fear or scarcity or sorrow.
But, despite my friends’ ears and wisdom and empathy, I
simply needed my mom, former Miss Cynic of the Universe, to tell me, Molly, It’s
going to be alright. There is ice cream
elsewhere. There is love, abundant and resplendent. Not that it isn’t without
its own challenges and lessons and compromises, but there is love, and I am
worthy of it. That I “deserve” it.
Despite the “adultness” of letting go and loving detachment
and equanimity and allowing what is… in these moments, in this one, I simply needed
the maternal “all knowing” assurance of that which I actually believe.
Dear Egregiously Gorgeous Moment in Time: Thank you.  

action · addiction · clarity · commitment · community · fear · fortitude · procrastination · progress · recovery · self-esteem · self-love · self-pity · self-support

Forte. Più Forte. (Loud. More Loud.)

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It’s come into my awareness again this week the fallacy of
perfection, and its venomous tendrils. The three “p”s: Perfection,
Procrastination, Paralyzation.
I’ve also read that procrastination is simply another way
for us to prolong feeling crappy about ourselves, and to delay feeing proud of
ourselves.
This week, after a conversation with some people of
authority at work last week about my position, my ambition, my vision of “Where
I’d like to be;” after I was given the feedback that, great, sure, put it in
writing and we can talk more… I stalled and dragged my feet.
It wasn’t acres of time, this time; it was only from Friday until
Tuesday evening, when I finally wrote what I needed to
write. But I could see those tendrils curling up around me, waiting to choke my
ambition and self-esteem from me. The tendrils of hopelessness (What the use
anyway), uncertainty (What about acting, my art, moving), and simple
perfectionism (If it’s not perfect, they’ll reject it, and then I’ll be stuck
answering phones the rest of my life, anyway, so f* it, I’ll just watch some
more Once Upon a Time).
It was so helpful to hear other people talk about how this
weed of perfectionism crops up in their lives, marring their attempts at a full
life—it reminds me that I’m not alone, and mostly, as I heard people talk about
their struggle with perfectionism, I sat
there in that chair and decided (for the hundredth time) to go home afterward
and do the write-up I needed to hand in to my superiors.
I heard them battling the beast, I heard them being flayed
by it, and I decided I wasn’t going to let that be me, if only for an evening.
I cannot tell you how many times I make this declaration to
myself. And then, simply do come home
and watch Netflix, or surf Facebook. I wonder if the advent of television and
internet has created in us a generation of procrastinators, but I certainly
know that I am none too helped by it! (in binges, especially)
But for whatever reason (and I won’t call it exasperation,
because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been exasperated, and still done
nothing), I came home on Tuesday night, wrote what I needed to write, emailed
it to a few friends for feedback, and handed it in yesterday.
And here’s the/a reward for overcoming perfectionism: It may not go the way you wanted anyway. I may hear, “Thanks, Molly, but we’re not
in a position to… We’ll think about it for some undetermined date… This just
isn’t in our vision or budget… We just need someone (you) to stay doing what
you are doing indefinitely, or at least through the next year or more.” I may
hear things I don’t want to hear in response to my action on behalf of myself
and my ambition, BUT, the reward is that I get to hear something at all,
instead of sitting, spinning, resenting, foaming, fuming, and … watching
Netflix.
The reward for overcoming perfectionism (and it’s
paralyzation) in just this one moment is that, no matter the results, no matter
the response, I am actually moving
forward, internally, for sure. What this does is tell me that, See Molly, once you did something. One time you took action on your
own behalf, and instead of delaying your good, instead of languishing in a sea
of self-pity, you get to feel proud, pro-active, like a leader. You get to feel
like yourself, instead of like the skin of mutating fear that creeps up yours
and mimics you out in the world.
I don’t know the result of the action I took, externally, at
least. However, having put things in writing and gotten clarity around my
vision and desire, if I don’t get the result I “want” here, in this environs,
then I get to take that information and that knowledge and shop it around
elsewhere. Because I took the action that I did, suddenly, I have a beginning
instead of what my brain and that malevolent skin tells me is an end, a sorry, pathetic end.
Finally, I’ll repeat something I heard a long time ago,
which I’ve agreed with and disagreed with over the years: We ask “god” for what
we want; “he” gives us what we need; and in the end, it’s what we wanted
anyway.
I know that what I wanted anyway was clarity and
self-esteem, so, Team: Mission Accomplished. 

adulthood · compassion · connection · courage · friendship · healing · leadership · perseverance · recovery · self-love · trauma · writing

Seeing Someone

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Yesterday, I saw my new somatic therapist for the 2nd time,
and we’ve decided to continue to work together, for the next little
while. I don’t know, exactly, what changes will be wrought from it, but it’s
nice to have someone to talk to again who’s third party and kind and uninvested
in propping me up or giving me advice.
Which isn’t to say she isn’t keen on helping me recover and
heal, but she doesn’t really have any agenda except that. Which is nice.
At the end of the session, I said how it galls me that I was supposed to, all these years, work on trauma recovery and grieving, and now I
have to go through recovery from the trauma and grieving of cancer to even
get to that layer of healing and muck.
She said something heartening, which I’m not sure I agree
with yet, but maybe will eventually: That it’s all connected. That if we work
on one part, it’s pulling on all the others. Like a spider web, if I work and
tug and pull and excise over here, it’ll ripple across and affect the other
parts.
We’ll see. As always, the act of showing up is one of hope
that things (that I, my life and how I engage in or hide from it) will
change. I have hope, every time I call a friend or reach out for help or write
this blog – this blog is an act of writing myself out of the darkness.
In my “stats,” I see someone read that first blog called
“Cancer,” so this morning I went back to read it too. So much of what I wrote
about the recovery process was true and so many of the questions are still the
same, if not a little more in focus. My cousin is a doctor in palliative care,
and reads my blog (Hi, L.!), and she emailed me the other day after she’d read
my blog to say she’d never thought of life-threatening illness as trauma
before, but of course it is. And to thank me for the bravery of putting my
process of coagulation up for the help of so many.
It’s interesting to read back to that first blog, and to
read the virulent ambivalence of being “an inspiration.” And it’s something
that came up yesterday in my session: the desire to be someone who holds the
torch, and the desire to stop being the
f’ing person who holds the torch all the time.
The duality of being a leader, if you can call this that
(which, frankly, I’m coming to see it is), is that sometimes you want to just
march along with everyone else. You get tired of standing at the top of the
mountain alone to look out and see where you should go next, what horizons need
staking. You get tired of being the one who charges into the fray – of being
the person, as I wrote in that blog, who just “goes with it,” faces it, accepts
it.
AND YET, of course, for me, I want to be that person, too – I want to be the person who is a light for others; I want to be a teacher and a leader and an inspiration. I
want to exact positive change in the world.
Yesterday, in session, we spoke about vascillating between
both these feelings, and allowing it to be. It’s part of owning the all of
myself: the fearless leader, and the exhausted soldier. The tireless explorer,
and the guy who just wants to carry the horse oats and play cards in the tent.
I think part of my ambivalence is a conscious understanding
of what leadership might mean, too. To recognize, without slipping into
workaholism or unseeing “progress,” that I am, and have always been Both/And.
At some point, I also told her that I’d been scrolling
through my profile photos on Facebook just the other day, since I’d put a new
one up. And I came, on Tuesday, sitting in my car waiting to meet up with some folks,
to the photo of myself at graduation from Mills College in May of 2012. That I
stand with a cap and gown, long hair, and a “radiant smile,” I told her.
I told her how I began to cry, looking at that photo, out of
grief that that girl had to go, and would go, through all this. That she had no idea what was about to happen. That the innocence of that
moment and that glee was … time-limited. To see that girl, to know what she was
about to go through, to feel so sorry that she does and will, and still is, is
grief. To know that my right eyelid will never look quite the same, an eye
infection during chemo causing it to droop slightly, so that I can see it now,
though others can’t. To know what that graduation day meant to me – to accomplish
something, to put my energies in and to excel, learn, progress, and shine.
I suppose, truthfully, I can say the same for my current
profile photo. Almost 2 years later, headshots for theater gigs. The result of
something I’ve also put my energies and monies and progress toward in order to
shine the way I know that photo does, too.
It’ll take some time, as I wrote in that first cancer blog,
to heal from all this. But I am a leader with a torch–though, please,
sometimes, can you be one too?

abundance · acting · self-esteem · self-love · self-support · vision

…And all the men and women merely players

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Audition Over. I feel exhausted. I am hoping that some day
soon, I can stop reporting my exhaustion to you, because I won’t be.
However, if I get into this play, which I realize is an SF
State Production, I think, then there are rehearsals there every evening and weekend
for 4 weeks. But, cart, horse, one bite at a time. (And, although that sounds
exhausting, I know it’s part of “building a resume” and a body of work; so, worth it.) I
won’t talk too much about this play, until I know I’ve gotten into it. To
paraphrase my new go-to book, It’s Just a F***ing Audition. So, now, I go back onto Theater Bay Area website,
follow-up on another message board the 25 y.o. told me about, and get another
audition lined up. And another monologue into my brain.
You know, this memorizing thing is work. It’s amazing to be able to keep so much information
in our heads. I remember words from plays I did years ago, when I click into
that gear.
And that’s the other thing I realized as I walked out of the
audition last night into the Sunset streets: I’ve done this before. I know how to do this, if still gelding-like. But this isn’t as foreign to me as I like to let my brain tell me
it is. I’ve stood in small rooms in front of strangers and performed words to them before. I’ve conversed awkwardly with auditors, having rehearsed so many lines for them, I forget how to just have a normal conversation. I’ve filled out audition sheets, and printed headshots, and doctored a resume. I’ve stood in hallways waiting my turn before. 
I left last night – just as I’d left the CCSF audition last month –
thrilled that I showed up. THAT’S the result that is most important to me. I
was just so glad that I let myself try. And I did “not bad,” in my own
estimation, which is like high, throwing-flowers-at-myself praise in my own
scale. “Not bad.” Ha. In fact, really, I think I did well. They’re students, it
seems, the auditors, and they gave some feedback that skewed positively.
I remember when my friend Melissa came to see me in The Vagina
Monologues at Mills about 2 or 3 years ago,
now. She said afterward, and her sister is a director, so she’s seen her share
of plays and players—she said, I feel like I’ve finally seen you do what you
were born to do.
It was the best compliment I’ve ever received. Because I
knew she wasn’t a bullshitter, and because it resonated with me. And because it made
my insides do a happy dance. Like, SEE, MOLL! We told you you could do this!!
On Tuesday night, the 25 y.o. came over to help me practice
my monologue. He’s a director and an artistic director, so he’s seen his share
of actors. So, very nervously, I did my piece for him. And I begged him
afterward to be honest with me: if I was wasting my time, and someone just
really needed to be honest with me, tell me to move on to something else. I don’t want to be like that person on the American Idol audition tapes who no one ever told was horrible because they didn’t want to hurt their feelings, and so now all of America laughs at their idiocy. 
He told me, no, he wouldn’t say that at all. But, he also
told me that, like the bell-curve, I fall somewhere in the middle of the curve,
“if a little to the right of center,” he said.
I could be crushed by that. I could say, well, forget it, if
I’m not excellent, f*ck it. But, HELLO, even though I’ve done this somewhat,
I’m a TOTAL NEWBIE. And if as an untrained, total newbie, I’m average, then that’s AWESOME!
I mean, come on, man.
My bass teacher said the same thing to me when I was working
with him. That noting my incredible lack of training and beginner status, I was
much farther along than he’d seen.
I’m good at picking
things up. And I haven’t ever put concerted effort behind this acting vision before. So… seems to me…
leads me to believe… it follows that… logic says…
I better keep doing it. Because I’ll only get better.
*INSERT CHEESY THIS-IS-AWESOME GRIN*
P.S. The 25 y.o. also told me there’s plenty of work in this
town for a start-of-career non-equity actor. And I told him, Tell your friends
– I’m happy to be in their crappy plays. 😉

assertiveness · authenticity · fear · health · self-care · self-love

Heeding the Cautionary Tale

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I was sick, I contacted the Leukemia & Lymphoma
Society. They were great, and recommended this Peer-to-Peer program, where they
connected current patients by phone with survivors of similar age, background,
and treatment.
I asked to speak with someone who’d chosen only chemo, as I
was doing, instead of chemo + bone marrow transplant, which was standard (and
recommended) protocol.
I spoke on the phone once to a woman who was a few years
older than me, who’d also had the cancer come out of nowhere, and who’d also
chosen “only chemo.” She went into remission, and when she was done with
treatment, she began training for marathons.
I can’t remember if she’d been a runner before she got sick,
but she told me she went at it with abandon. Not “fun runs,” not 5ks, but the
long New York City Marathon-style kind of marathons.
Her doctors advised her to “take it easy,” to go slow, but
she, like me, felt that she had time to make up for, and also like me, wanted
to prove that her body was her own, and not a foreign infectious parasite. She
wanted to prove that she could be above, beyond, and more than her cancer. She wanted to tell it, Fuck you.
Within a year of remission, healthier than she’d ever been,
this woman’s cancer returned. Leukemia. Again.
So she finally went into the recommended bone marrow
transplant treatment, the year of absolute hell (with two small children at
home), and was now 5 years out from that relapse.
Tell me if you don’t get where I’m going with this story.
This is part of the
reason I need to slow down. To focus my energies.
I got a bill from Stanford Hospital yesterday, only for a $10
co-pay, the actual cost of my meeting with the bone marrow expert much higher.
I’d gone twice to see them when making my decision. Once with a friend, and
once, gratefully, with my mom. Because we really all just need our mom
sometimes, and I’m lucky mine is around.
The Stanford folks explained the harrowing treatment process, and took some blood to
type-test against my brother to see if he’d be a bone marrow match—and he is,
should I ever need the assist.
There’s a family at work, a congregant’s family, where the
sister of the couple I know just is going through the phase of integrating her
brother’s marrow with her own, and apparently the grafting is going well.
I’m typing up a “life story” for an older woman not inclined
to typing. In it, she recounts the tale of her friend, diagnosed with one
cancer, gone into remission, and then relapsed with Leukemia, and dies.
Cautionary Tales, I think is the word for these stories.
To be cognizant with my body, my efforts, my love of self
and others. To be compassionate to my own twitching reaction to the above
stories, too.
In the first few months of returning to work last Spring, a
congregant I’d known only in passing told me he was 15 years out from Lymphoma,
and if I ever wanted to talk, he was available. I took him up on that offer a
few times. He’s the one who told me the Damacles’ Sword story.
I asked him when the vicious paranoia stops? When every
cold, fatigue, sore throat doesn’t send your mind reeling to the far end of doomed?
He said, Five Years.
He said, he knows it’s just a magic marking in time that the
doctors put on us, but they do. Five years in remission is the marker they use
to say, “Okay, you’ve made it this far, so you’re pretty much as healthy as any
Tom, Dick, or Harry. Good on ya.”
He said that even though it’s a nearly arbitrary
mile-marker, that’s when he felt able to breathe for the first time in years.
He also said it sounded like I have done and am doing a lot
more concerted work around my disease, my process, and my healing that he was
not able to do until some years later.
My cousin told me the other week that I talk(ed) so much
about the nuance and subtlety of being sick. The multi-faceted nature of health
and wellness and life.
I get to have my experience of being scared, I get to
have my experience of processing the fear, and I get to have the experience of
saying, Hey you, Fear: Go bother someone else.
So I am slowing down, I am pulling the e-brake on my spinning
world. Because I listened when that marathoner told me about her relapse into
Leukemia. And I am more scared of going through that than I am of telling
people, I’m sorry, I can’t participate in that thing right now. 

change · fortitude · growth · love · self-love

Strike That; Reverse It

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

(*Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka [Sorry, Johnny, you ruined a classic])
In order to get ready to enter words that create and convey
feelings onto a screen that I upload to you, I have to do a little centering
first. Otherwise, you’d get — well, I don’t know – it just never felt right
to dive out of bed and onto the screen. Instead, I dive out of bed toward the
coffee pot, and then to the journal, the Morning Pages routine picked up many
years ago by working The Artist’s Way
with a group of varied and wonderful folks in Muddy Waters at 24th
street (you can have 16th street).
In fact, in order to prepare for you, for this, for reclaiming my daily blog, I began
writing them again because I knew I needed to skim the top layer off
my thoughts and onto a written page before addressing you. I haven’t been
consistent with the Morning Pages, but, pretty much so. I probably have a dozen notebooks since we began in, what, 2008? 2009?
After those (and I don’t always get 3 full long-hand pages,
especially when my Thursday night acting class keeps me in Berkeley til 10pm), I try to
meditate for even a few seconds, if I’m honest. I have varied the time of these
“sits,” even up to 20 minutes, but for now, it’s about 5 minutes, if I get that. If not that,
I do one fully present breath. Like really present, not what I’m going to
do after this breath present. Because it’s
usually somewhere between and in concert of these two practices that I get the
kernel of what I want to say to you here.
I’ve written from monkey mind, I’ve quieted it (hopefully),
and from there, I can address you.
What I’ve found in a few of my most recent journalings is
that when I write the words, “I should…,” I’m stopping myself, crossing out
“should” and instead writing something like, “I encourage and support myself in
doing…”
I need to send those photos to that agency. STRIKE
I support and encourage myself in sending those photos.
I should go back to the gym today. STRIKE
I support and encourage myself in going to the gym.
What a difference of manner and direction that provides.
I’ve heard people use the phrase “Shoulding all over your
self;” and it’s true, you, we, I can shame and should myself all I want – but
remember the “more flies with honey than vinegar” thing? I think it works with ourselves, too. 
And while we’re on phrases; Shame, I’ve heard
it said, can be an acronym for Should Have Already Mastered Everything. ~ Back
to shoulding.
I’m liking that I’m catching myself and changing the
language to something more positive, even though I’m the only one who sees it,
and because I’m the only one who sees
it. I’m only retraining myself. Does it help? Did it make me—strike that—encourage me to send the photos? Not yet. But I did go to the
gym.