acceptance · adulthood · commitment · growth · letting go · life · self-support · willingness

Grown-upness

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I was on the phone yesterday with a friend/mentor of mine.
I’d asked her for an informational interview, with the knowledge that I had no
idea what I was going to ask her – I’d let her know that in the email, too. She
accepted anyway, and on the phone we were, as I sat beneath the dome of the
downtown SF shopping center during my lunch break from the temp gig.
She knows much of my story and development over the last few
years, and works in a field to help people, and, most importantly to me, seems
to have some semblance of balance between work, creativity, and life. I thought
she’d be a good place to “start.”
I told her the 2nd thing that came up at the
“money meditation” on Monday. The 2nd question was “Do I (Molly)
fear you (money)?” The answer was, Yes, because I mean responsibility.
Oh Responsibility! How I’ve run from you!
Over the course of my conversation with my friend, she
reflected back to me that it sounds like I want to be powerful, without
building or holding or being the vessel for that power. I do want to do great
things (not like, ooh famous – just like, ooh cool), and, I have not wanted to
really take the ownership of what it might take to get there. See,
particularly, Magical Accidental Orgasm.
There is no one coming to live my life for me. There is no one coming to take
the risks and chances and changes that I need to make in my life and attitude
for me. It’s up to me.
Or it’s not. I can choose or not to take the reigns of my
life. I can choose or not to take the steps to holding responsibility for
myself.
This responsibility thing, my aversion to it, came up
earlier this year, in a workshop run by the very same friend. See, I have these
old associations with responsibility. That it means more than I am able to
handle. That’s what it meant when I was young – having to do things a child
should not have to do, things that an adult ought to have been doing, but the
adults in my life were not quite able to do that. So, I did. And I resented it,
and I was burdened by it, and I’ve carried my resentment and fear of
responsibility here through and to my adulthood.
Adulthood. That word came up yesterday in our conversation
too. “Adult.” “Grown-up.” If I want grown-up things, which I very much do, then
I have to learn to be a grown-up. Sure, I’m 30, but that’s no indication of
adulthood.
Things that grown-ups have — a job, a car, a house, a
relationship, stability, vacation — well, they earn these things by showing
up for themselves in a responsible way. My same friend had worked as a house
cleaner for ten years before coming to her pursuit of her current profession.
She also said, basically, nothing can grow in the dark. I am
ripe with resentment, self-pity, longing, entitlement, and self-centeredness
because of this ongoing rejection of the mantle of grown-up. I grasp
at things I think I want, but I’m not willing to firm the foundation to get
there – to mix the mortar, lay the bricks. Chop wood, carry sticks. That’s
where I need to be at. Very simply, I need to lay hold of qualities and actions
that I have tried to avoid.
The truth is that I have no idea what it would be
like to take responsibility for myself. I’ve churned along at this hamstrung
pace and mind-set for so long, I honestly don’t know. I’ve been talking here
some about how “grace” and gifts from the Universe have been incredibly lovely,
but that they don’t help me to build self-esteem around jobs and work and …
being a responsible adult, basically.
To warm up to the idea of being a grown-up. Yes, very much I
want to be one – I want what they seem to have. But what I see, I suppose is
the externals. What I haven’t seen, necessarily, is all the work they have put in to get there. To do what is necessary. I
haven’t done what is necessary. I’ve done everything else, I’ve danced around
the entry to that path for a decade, and belly-ached, Why can’t I get there?
Why is the door closed to me? It’s not closed. Never has been. I’ve been
terrified of what it means to begin to walk down it. But the truth is, and
forgive me, I got a cat a year and a half ago. She is a monument to my warming to commitment – has
this responsibility, has responsibility for this life, hers, created any burden
or pain in my life? Not in the slightest, and in fact, has brought untold and
unforeseen joy.
This is what I too imagine that taking on responsibility for
my own life may bring. Sure, I imagine it’ll be a little different, seeing as
it’s mine, and my brain is such a lovely chatter factory. But, maybe not.
Maybe, the doors will swing open as I take one step onto the path of
grown-upness. Maybe, simply, I’ll feel better knowing that I’m on the path at
all. 

change · finances · health · integrity · recovery · work

Positions.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Over the last few years, I have gone from smoking maybe half a pack or so a day, down to
nothing — this, by no virtue of my own. There have been times when I was
smoking a pack a day, and sometimes hardly at all, having started back in college, when I said Fuck It, I Need a
Cigarette, following a dramatic break-up with my first “real boyfriend” my
freshman year.
But, over the last two years or so, I’ve had to stop.
Despite having developed strep throat several times a year in the past, and continuing
to smoke until really, ultimately, I couldn’t breathe fully or swallow,
whereupon I’d “quit” until I could get that nicotine relief back into my lungs,
a different ailment began to happen when I’d smoke recently – after several a
day, at night, I began to wake up from my sleep, not able to take a full breath
properly. So… slowly, I cut back, and realized that even after one a day, I’d still get this tight chest pain, and
shallow breathing, which was always not so fun. And slower still, testing the
waters still… I’d go down to a drag from someone else’s or splitting half a
cigarette with a friend. No. Dice.
Without fail, I’d go to sleep, only to wake up a few hours
later unable to breathe. So, I “quit.” Or rather, I stopped. I had to – it
wasn’t my choice, I’d rather not have, despite the health and smell and cost
and yadda yadda – If I could, I would, but I can’t.
Yesterday, as I was sitting at my temp job in SF, I had
a similar experience. Something being crossed off my list by no virtue or
choice of my own. Within a few hours of sitting, doing data entry basically
(I’m organizing the massive library for the interior design firm that I’ve
temped with before – hired to work with them until it’s finished – so about two
weeks) – my back began to hurt. And this isn’t like “oh, silly back pipe down,” this is
like “stop sticking a fucking fire brand into my lower spine.”
I’ve known recently that sitting for extended periods of
time has been aggravating my health, but it’s been easier to moderate as I
haven’t been working full-time. So, yesterday by about 3pm, with near tears in
my eyes, my three or four lower vertebrae about ready to jump out the back of
my skin, I told my boss that I was going to leave for the day.
This was fine – she knows the work is grueling, and I’ll be
back this morning, and I’ll attempt to moderate my sitting time more
consciously. But, when I came home yesterday afternoon then, and came to my
computer to apply for jobs, what am I looking at? Admin jobs.
For the love of Christ.
This, is being taken away from me as an option through no
virtue of my own. Sure, I’ve been applying to admin jobs at cooler places, like
the SFMOMA and galleries and art schools – places that seem more aligned with
where my values lie – but, it seems, and is evidenced, that this too is not an
option – or not in this way.
I simply cannot sit down for 8 hours. The job that I applied
to yesterday listed under physical requirements that I be able to sit for 80%
of the day and type for 50% of that. It’s a cool-ish job too. And yes, I
applied, before I began to put two and two together.
So, this option is being wiped off the slate, and I’m left
with another question mark. I’m honestly glad that it is being taken away from
me – it’s a default position, it’s a fall-back, it’s what I’ve always done, sit
behind a desk like a good worker bee. I’m good at it, but like I recently told
a friend when she asked me if I liked those kinds of jobs, I said it’s like
(forgive me) farting – it’s something I can do, but really I’d prefer not to.
Sorry. 😉
So, it’s been suggested for me to make a list of all the
jobs that don’t require sitting for 8 hours a day, or more schooling at this
point – though, maybe that’s just what will happen – though, sincerely, I hope
not. And doesn’t require standing for 8
hours, like waitressing. Although, I do have a few offers for some catering
work over the next few months, … which I haven’t replied to yet.
I was with a group of folks last night, and we were
listening to a tape of a suggested meditation. This was about money, our
relationship to it. We were to stare at a monetary bill of some denomination,
and really look at it, and imagine it nearly animate – we, Americans, Humans,
give money a lot of power and anima all the time, may as well find out what it
has to say! The first question we were to ask it was, How do I (Molly) feel
about you (money)? Its answer: Distant. … Duh, no wonder I am where I am.
There were a few other questions along these lines which
need some more marinating and change, but as I change my relationship to money,
how I can earn, how I can earn respectfully and with integrity and health, how
I can be of service to others which is reflected back to me as a monetary value, how I
can be responsible to myself, to money,
to my jobs or career … I will apparently also be changing my position, physically
and otherwise. 

adulthood · change · family · honesty · intimacy · life · love · relationships · willingness

A Fair and Balanced View

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

There are a few things that are hard to reconcile. For
example, prefacing your poem to your family by saying it’s mediocre as you did
not have time to edit the first draft – and after reading it in public at the ceremony at school, having people come up to you afterward praising the poem
and asking how they can get a copy. I gave a woman my card.
It’s hard to reconcile my view of where and how I am in my
life with the clouds of pride and support that beamed from my family and
classmates on Saturday, graduation day.
It’s also hard to maintain a stoic, stark, medieval view of
myself when I have women around me who “want what I have,” and a woman to call
who reminds me of the length and breadth of this process of school, and indeed the last 6
years.
A fair and balanced view. How to achieve that around
ourselves, whom we hold to such impossible standards that we’re always falling
short. Or at least I do.
Because I’m not
falling short. My measuring stick is broken and outdated and subjective.
Not much has “changed” outwardly over the last few weeks as
graduation occurred, and it’s hard to know if much has changed inwardly, but, I
think it is, slowly. I think my awareness of my rigid and flagellating stance
with myself will begin to bring change with it.
I also decided to change my workshop to sliding scale,
instead of a set fee. I had the thoughts to either cancel the whole thing (as I
had/have only one registered/paid participant), or to host at my house the few
who said they wanted to come, or do it in the city anyway.
I chose the latter, partly because I want the experience of doing it in a more “formal”
or official setting. I still want to share these tools, and help others
to learn whatever they need to learn from this. And also… I’m worried if I just
cancelled it, people might show up at the event the day-of, and be disappointed 😉
So, we’ll see what happens with that. It still may just be
me and my one registered participant. And if that’s the case, and I eat the
rental fee, so be it. Not ideal, but my ideas about how the workshop should be
are obviously not working, so instead of edging toward “fuck it” and not do it,
or toward “you MUST” and do it for the set fee, I’m finding a middle way. – That feels
like progress.
Also, I got to talk with my mom yesterday at the ass-crack
of dawn when we’d dropped my brother at his flight at SFO, and had a few hours
to kill before her flight. So, we grabbed some coffee and sat in Terminal 2 in
those Ikea-looking tangerine-colored winged chairs, and we talked.
I decided somewhere mid-conversation to tell her why I’d
stopped talking to her on the phone for almost a year. I didn’t “owe” her the
explanation, but I did want to share why. I reminded her of that last
conversation we had, and how she “hi-jacked” the conversation (a term she used
about her behavior when I’d finished). How suddenly a light and fun and mutual
conversation jumped the tracks, the shark, the point, and careened head-long
into “My Mom’s Issues.” I told her that I don’t feel able to hold the space for
that stuff for her anymore, that it feels inappropriate, but that I didn’t have
the words or wherewithal to tell her that in the moment. And so, instead of putting up a boundary, I put up a wall.
And it’s held. She said she had to just accept that we’d communicate
via email and text, and that that had to be enough. And for this year it was.
Seeing her, however, I really was reminded of how much I miss her. And she said
to me after I’d shared what went on with me, that if I felt able, and it sounds
like I feel more able now, to tell her that she’s hijacked the conversation to
let her know. And we’ll see if I can.
We both know we’re still in new territory. Our relationship
has swung the gamut from oversharing, overly enmeshed, over identification all
the way over to not talking for months and months, several times. We’re still
finding our center in our relationship, as I suppose we’re each finding our
center within ourselves. Back to the fair and balanced view. The Middle Way.
How can I hold the contradictions? How can I allow for
myself to be vulnerable without a hard shield of protection? How can I see
myself as a simple, or simply complex, human, with assets and liabilities? And, how can I allow others that same
generosity?
Dunno.  😉  But I think I’m trying. 

community · family · forgiveness · love · maturity · recovery · San Francisco · willingness

Three’s Company

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Best Laid Plans are luckily not always the best plans.
Overambitious as visits with family usually are, my brother Ben and I did not
get to see all of San Francisco in an hour and a half. He did say the sweetest
thing, as we swept back into the car off of Pier 39 on our way to Lombard
Street – that he came here to see me, not San Francisco.
My brother is 3 years younger than me, lives in New Jersey,
and is a highlight of my life. It was not always rainbows and puppy dogs between
us, but the last few years have seen a dramatic, but incremental shift toward
mutuality, trust, and love. It’s been one of the greatest gifts that I’ve
gotten, this renewal of our relationship on a basis of support and respect and
admiration – to get to know each other as adults, or as adult as we are, rather
than as two kids fighting each other for the crumbs of whatever there was
available.
So, he and I got to briefly traipse around those tourist
spots, and then had to get to SFO to pick up our mom. Another relationship which
has formed and reformed many, many times. It’s in an iteration that neither of
us know, and so we’re sometimes formal, hoping not to cross boundaries or
offend, and we’re sometimes deep, treading carefully for the same reasons as
above. Mostly, we’re funny. Mostly, the three of us together is like an old
left-off conversation, dotted with movie references, and cackles of laughter –
though my brother chortles rather than cackles.
An old boyfriend of mine got to meet her once when she came
to visit me in San Francisco about 4 years ago. He said that we laugh the same.
I’m sure we’re many things the same – sometimes I catch the strangest sights of
myself, and am struck at how much that’s a “mom” move – reaching for a kitchen
cabinet, I see the hollow of my thin, graceful wrist, and it’s hers that I see
and remember. Sometimes it’s the way I click my fingers together when I’m
nervous or anxious. And sometimes, it’s strange things that I’ve picked up from
her, like when I was in college, cutting up chicken breasts in the kitchen, and
I started clucking at the chicken – and didn’t even notice it until my roommate
came it and laughed – this, is a mom move.
Irreverent, sensitive as all get out, brilliant, worried,
with a kind creamy center like the inside of a cadburry egg that you cradle so
you don’t crush it. That’s my mom, and also my brother and me. We each have
varying degrees of it, but we are apples not fallen far from the tree. And
however embarrassing it was growing up without cable or Nintendo, so that we
watched Fred & Ginger movies, and all the movie musicals, and The Marx
Brothers, so that no one our ages would get our references, we’re older now,
and people still may not get our references, but I can appreciate that we have
them at all.
A friend of mine told me maybe a year or more ago, how
distancing she felt that her father could really only communicate in quotes
from movies – that it wasn’t personal enough or intimate enough. I shared with
her my and my brother’s experience, and said, for me, now, it’s actually one of
the ways we do share intimacy – sharing
something, a witticism, with each other that we know the other will get, and so
we bond and revel in our commonalities.
My cell phone broke recently. In it were saved text messages
over the course of several years. I’m a hoarder of texts. One of the last that
I know I have saved in there is from my brother a few weeks ago: “Of course
your president is an actor – he has to look good on television.”
For those uninitiated, this is a Back to the Future quote, just one in the long continuous conversation
that my brother, and mom, and I get to share with each other across time and
space.
We cannot be present in person with each other often. And
when we are, we’re all still learning how to relate in a way that is open
without overreaching, and fun without being superficial, among many more
balancing acts that all relationships aim to master, but likely never fully
achieve. We figured out that the last time the three of us were together was
about 3 or 4 years ago.
Last night, at dinner, which didn’t go “as planned,” as my
dad and his fiancé were stuck in the city and didn’t make it to the ceremony at
school, it went perfectly. It wasn’t as I’d planned, it was better. And the
three of us delighted in the bright, animated, multi-faceted, infinitely
tangential company of one another.
For all that has come before, for all that it took to get us
to that dinner table, for all that will continue to need to happen to help us
show up to tables like that with one another, I have a family whom I love, and
who love me dearly.
TODAY’S GRADUATION DAY! So, as Abe Lincoln said,
Be excellent to each other, and… PARTY ON DUDES!!!


community · courage · discovery · faith · fate · poetry · receiving · school

Rituals, Rites of Passage, and the Spindly Lines of Fate.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Here.We.Go.!
I’d written last week to some of my fellow cohorts to ask if they
wanted to mark our graduation with some kind of a “ritual” or ceremony. That
very afternoon, I was invited to read a poem at the “Spiritual Send-off”
graduation ceremony at school. Apparently, I really do and am meant to have a
ritual around this. To mark and honor and acknowledge what a privilege this is, and to mark and honor and acknowledge what we’ve done and how we have shown up and completed something sort of major.
When I got into school two years ago, a friend of mine suggested we have
some sort of ceremony of our own to celebrate and honor and give thanks for
having gotten there, to wherever there was – an answer to a stated and unstated
prayer or longing or wish. For years, when I’d ask folks what they did for a
living – trying to vicariously divine what I ought to be doing for a living – when folks responded that they went to school full-time, invariably, I said that
I envied people who could do that. Who did that. Underneath envy, is longing.
I knew for some time, and said it occasionally or often,
that I wanted to “go back to school.” That I wanted to go for some advanced
degree, but I had no idea what. I toyed with many ideas. Rabbinic School.
Cantorial School (the singers in synagogues). Masters in Education. Masters in
Jewish Education. Clown School (just kidding). Master’s in Literature… that
always seemed to make the most sense, what with my undergrad in English Literature, but I had no inspiration for what I’d study in that or why.
Through a series of “coincidences,” I’d heard of Mills
College. Although well-known here in our little Bay Area enclave, I hadn’t
heard of it prior. What happened was, in about 2008, my friend in Brooklyn,
whom I’d met here in SF, started a magazine. An arts and culture journal. She
called me and asked if I’d interview a writer for the magazine who lived out here in the Bay,
and despite my lack of experience, I said sure.
Yiyun Li was working as a visiting professor at Mills
College, I found out in my research about her before our phone call. This was the first I’d heard of it. I toodled around the
website, and something somewhere in me sighed, Yessss….
Every six months or so, I’d revisit the website. I’d never
been to the college campus (The first time I even saw the campus was orientation day!). I’d hardly ever been to Oakland. But, I’d read the
description of the English Department’s Masters’ program, and I felt …well,
like I knew. Like I knew, but dismissed, closing the browser for another six
months. That’s for other people. People who can afford to go back to school, or
who really know what they want to do.
I found a notebook recently that has scribbled notes from a
phone call with my Aunt. She’s an English professor at a university in
Virginia, and has been doing all this for a very long time. My notes are probably
from 2008 or 2009. They’re asking me to check out programs, and seek out
writers I like and see where they’re teaching. They’re asking me to take action
to help “figure out” what I want to study.
See, my above list of my options for Masters’ degrees remained.
What did I want to study? Desire and
action are two different things. Vague desire and clarity are as well.
But, at some point, all of those peekings at the Mills
website came to a head. And in the Spring of 2010, I called the English
department admissions coordinator to talk it out.
Huddled in a side office at my job, I sat on the phone with
her, and she told me about the requirements for the Masters in Literature
Program. The problem became, that I didn’t really do so hot in the last days of
my undergrad (read: Pulling a Britney), and I didn’t have any connections with
my professors from then, and I certainly didn’t have any academic papers on
hand.
I called my brother, and asked him to go through my room in
New Jersey, to see if he could find a paper of mine. He said he didn’t see
anything like that as he sifted through a few years’ of my papers and creative
writings, but that “It is obvious that you are, and have always been a writer.”
This phrase helped more than he knew. I called Stephanie at
the English Department, and as the deadline for application drew voraciously
nearer, I asked her what I should do. I asked her, then,… what were the
requirements for the MFA in Poetry Program….? (insert full body chills)
Those requirements, I had. 15-20 pages of recent poems. I
had 16. No lie. Letters of recommendation – my gorgeous and supportive women
Karen and Kristin who’d seen my evolution over a number of years and were aware
of my poetry (go Facebook). And an essay. My essay. An essay which wove
together the disparate streams of chance and circumstance and fate which
brought me to the cave of longing for a Mills’ degree – about Yiyun Li, and the
thread of creative writing through my life (thanks to Heather for that phrase),
and about a mission statement I’d heard from a friend of mine – “To use my gifts
and talents to be of maximum service to [G-d and] my fellows.” That although I
didn’t have my own mission statement yet, mine would be something like that.
It continues to be something like that.
The threads of fate conspired, faint as gossamer, lost as a
cobweb in the dark at moments. At other times, bright and obvious as the red criss-crossed string of a movie manhunt over a map. Termed as I’ve put it, “an answer to a
prayer I’d never have let myself utter,” instead of the MA in Literature, I
applied to the MFA program in Poetry, and I got in.
In my friend’s living room a few weeks after I was accepted
and in process of heading down a path I’d no idea to where, cross-legged on the floor, we wrote down all the things that we
wanted to let go of – things that had brought us to the point where we were
now, but which we believed weren’t serving us any more. To honor those
characteristics and beliefs which had been necessary ‘til then, and then to
burn them as a symbol of surrender and release of them.
So many of my “let go of” qualities were about doing it “on my own,” feeling like I needed to or had to do it alone, or that I had to figure it out.
I wrote down, “I can’t” and I burned it.
When the ceremony was at its end (“ceremony” being us
burning several strips of paper over a bowl!), we wrote down what we wanted to
take with us, as we headed out from there. On one square of blue lined paper, I wrote what I wanted to
take with me from there, to Mills, to my future, to the world as I engage it
more fully:
We Can.
adulthood · aging · family · home · love · selfish

SOLD

Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

What the hell – might as well admit it…
So, each time I’ve read my Tarot cards lately, (which I heard
once you’re not supposed to do, but the book I have says it’s the best
way to learn. Who knows – so I just don’t do it too often). Nevertheless, I have been doing it mildly
frequently over this past month in an effort to “figure it out,” and darnit, if I don’t keep getting The Devil
card. This card represents a lot about materialism, the bondage of self, and
self-obsession.
And nothing leads me more to self-obsession than being
broke, so I’ve been pretty much all I think about lately. Not a very lovely way
to live. This morning, … in meditation (I can’t believe anyone still reads this
stuff!), I realized that I’ve cut myself off from a lot of my connectedness
through my contracted and constricted thinking around money, jobs, my life, my purpose,
etc.
I have been reaching out more for help, but feeling actually
calm, centered, connected, all is well? Well, that’s felt a little out of reach
for me. Fair enough, it happens. But, it’s nice to notice that although I’ve
been availing myself of more resources and networks and connections this time
(only when I’ve thoroughly exhausted my self-propelled resources!), it’s still
so Molly-centered, and gimme gimme. It feels icky.
An assignment that I’ve had since Monday is to pray for
others’ happiness once a day for two weeks. Some specific others, but sure, it
could apply to everyone. In doing this, I realized how much I’ve been focused on
myself. And also, how depleted I am internally from working in that closed
circuit. I haven’t “filled the well” in a long time. My well is dry. And others
need me to get some moisture up in here.
Connecting back to sources I know that are nurturing, and
getting back onto a schedule for myself will help (I was up till 1am applying
to a job – not the best time…but I won’t have much time as the family all pours
in from the corners of the eastern seaboard) are some ways to refill the well.
Perhaps this then sounds like another path of self-obsession, thinking about
how I can feel better, and maybe it can
skew that way, but I’d like for it to skew in the way to help others – to
refill so I have something to give. So I can actually have energy to put behind
my prayers for others’ healing.
Specifically, last night, I had dinner with my Dad and his
fiancé. They’ve come in for vacation/my graduation, and came to see me at
school, and we went to dinner. They are planning on moving to, and have a house
all ready to go for them in Florida. It occurred to me last night how much
older they both have gotten.
I see them, and my mom and brother, maybe once a year, but
usually every other year, and it’s been that way since I left for Korea in
2004. So, I don’t get to witness the slow aging process; I see them, and I’m
beginning to notice the slower pace they walk, the much grayer hair of my dad, and
the general aging look of them both. It’s startling a little to see so much
change from visit to visit.
They are moving to Florida to retire, like good Jews, into a
house in a “senior community” (I half envision Jerry Seinfeld’s parents in
Boca… And I don’t think that’s half off!) She is older than my dad, and my Dad
is 65, not “old,” but there’s a lot of aches and pains and aging issues. I can
tell that he’s sad that he’s not as vibrant as he was. They “courted” by going
to lots of dances and on motorcycle rides and kayaking and whatnot. They were
very active, at some type of dance or other nearly every week.
Last night they said they don’t really go anymore.
In order to move to Florida, however, they need for my
childhood home to sell. I’ve done a lot of work on letting go of this house, I
burned sage when I was there emptying it last Fall to help let go of all it housed and witnessed, and in meditation, I’ve
tried to do the same. To differentiate my identification with the house too –
having seen it for a very long time as a neglected beautiful thing that could
be so much if it only had enough love. I’m come a long way with that, and feel
ready for it to go, feel ready for it to be owned and loved by a new family.
But, the house does need a lot of work, and it’s not
selling. We all know what’s happening in the economy, so I decided every little
bit of help counts, and this morning in meditation, I went to the house. I
asked it what it needed to go to another family, and it said it needed Love. (Yes,
really.) So, I tried to sit in a room in the house and radiate love out to it,
so that it could radiate love and attract a new family.
Problem is, I’m running on fumes, and that’s how I
recognized this this morning. I sent someone else in, a teacher/source I know,
to illuminate it, but no dice. I need to work on receiving some light, to get
back to being a channel, rather than a closed circuit running on
self-propulsion for me to have anything to give.
Will it help the house sell? Dunno. Will it help me to feel
more connected to those around me? Likely. Will it do me some good to think
about others’ happiness and how they are? Definitely.
And, if you would be so kind, could you maybe send a little
love to the house too? Envision a “Sold” sign on the lawn? Help my Dad and his
wife move to a better place?
Thanks!
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. 
courage · creativity · faith · fortitude · inspiration · responsibility · vulnerability · willingness

Movie Magic

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

In an effort to vary what’s become to me a rather one-note
blog lately, I’ve decided to lie.
I recently earned a decent wage from my spirituality &
creativity workshops, and am supplementing my income with sales of my art work.
Further, I am feeling so rejuvenated and supported by these avenues of income
and service, that I have enough energy and creativity left over to practice
with my new band – We play our first show this weekend.
There … did that work?
Well, in some circles, one might call that a “vision,” or
dream. A goal, per se. And in those circles, Visions are highly regarded as
lighthouses for us in the dark nights of the soul. So, I’ll take what I can
get. It may feel like pretend, like fantasy, as I cannot see how to get from A
to Z, but I don’t have to. Those are places that resonate with me to my core.
If we add in that I’m a member of a local theater company, and we just ended
our sold-out run, I think I’d hit nirvana.
I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this here, though I’ve used
this metaphor before.
It’s like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Yep. That’s right. I’m going there.
When Indy, as we affectionately call him, is on his way through the cave to get to the Holy Grail, he comes to a ravine. There is no way
to cross this. As it appears, Indy stands on one side, clinging to a statue of
a Lion, and about 15 or 20 feet away, is the other side of the ravine, and the
path to the Grail.
There is no way. He cannot “jump” it, it’s egregiously deep
and sharp and craggy. And so, he recites the clue, as if the words somehow will
give him wings.
“A leap of faith from the lion’s mouth.” A leap of faith. This
is nuts. A leap of faith. But
there’s nothing down there. A leap of
faith. Fuck It.
He takes one step forward from the safety of the rock… and is held,
solid and firm. The camera pans out from his angle, and we see that hidden,
blended into the ravine walls, is a firm, stone bridge. Had he not stepped out
from where he was, he wouldn’t have the vision to see that he was firmly taken
care of the whole time. That there wasn’t a moment at which he was unsafe. He
just needed to take that first step out from perceived safety to perceived risk.
Metaphors like this keep me going.
I’m a visual person, and a child of the 80s, so throw in a “Goonies never say die,” and I’m ready to pack my rucksack, hitch up my courage, and step forward.
Despite my crawing about it here, it’s been suggested that I
let other people know about the state of my affairs, if only to take my
isolation out of it. Funnily, a woman whom I’m not fond of yesterday instructed
me to “Figure It Out.” I could have slapped her. (Funnier still, it’s already been strongly suggested that I choose another woman for these monthly meetings I have with my financial folks – which I haven’t done yet… point taken?)
But, it all reminds me of another phrase, “You can’t save
your face and your ass at the same time.”
I suppose belly-aching is different than sharing. Different
from being open. I’d like to submit that I’ve done a little of both, and what I
recognize is that I do have some blinders on. I do stand like Indy with a
limited view of things.
And if sharing with other folks my honest truth, without
being maudlin or Debbie Downer, can help me to take the next leap into the
unknown, then alright.
Camera Pans Right.
Lights up on microphone. 

adulthood · balance · faith · growth · receiving · responsibility · self-support · the middle way · willingness

The 11th Hour

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, to get to the important info first, of course. The
internet-met coffee date was a bust. Not an ounce of chemistry on my end, so,
after about a half hour of waiting on the slowest coffee drinker in the world,
I declined the invitation to go to eat or to the park, and went on my way.
I’m glad I felt comfortable enough to do that, despite the
CREST FALLEN face when I replied,
Actually I think I’m going to go. That man is not a poker player.
But, on my way I went. I caught a bus up to see a girl
friend of mine, and we had a sojourn to Ocean Beach. It was more than lovely.
Regarding the title of this blog however, I feel like I’m
here again. I’ve said in the past that usually what happens around money and
jobs is that “something comes through” in the 11th hour. This has
always been true, and despite my dire, apocalyptic belly-aching about the
sodium-laden brick, I haven’t eaten any Top Ramen in the last several years.
Part of what I’ve recognized though is that I come to a
point at some time during my “what am I going to do next”ness where I “go
rag-doll on G-d,” as my friend puts it. You know when you’re in a grocery store,
and a parent is holding hands with a child, and the child is cranky or tired
and doesn’t want to go or walk anymore, and the kid just goes limp. And has to
be dragged by the parent a few steps.
Yeah, that’s going ragdoll on G-d. It’s like, I’m not sure
what the fuck to do, so I’ll just let you pull me. That feeds back into the
whole “lack of self-esteem around jobs” though when I throw
up my hands, and just wait for the 11th hour – when I know
inevitably something will have to
happen. I really haven’t been dropped, ever.
But, I’m not comfortable doing that anymore. It makes me
feel young, and childish, and like a recipient, rather than an active
participant in my own life.
So, I guess I’m at the point of finding some sort of balance
between trying to “figure it out” and throwing up my hands in frustration and
impertinent surrender. “Alright, Universe, Fate, G-d, whatever you are, you obviously have some better idea about my life than I do, so HERE. Go
ahead. It’s all yours. Fuck it.”
The former makes me crazy, and the latter lacks integrity
& a fair balanced view.
So, what’s the middle way?
…*crickets*…
Perhaps it starts with the recognition that I don’t want to
do either. I am still taking action. Applying to jobs, looking at websites
around the country, trying not to be too limited, but not too focused, because
I really still have no f’ing idea where or when or why. It IS the 11th hour. June approaches, and my
bank account approaches zero.
So, how, in what sense-memory tells me is the “same place,” do I stand on my
two feet, and let myself be guided rather than dragged? How do I stand with
integrity and surrender?
Well, yesterday I did make a phone date with a girl friend bassist for this afternoon. I also did ask my theater instructor for an informational interview coffee date. And, I did show up to that date yesterday, not knowing what would happen, but being willing to try something new – and hideously uncomfortable (somehow, “we met on the internet” doesn’t make a great retelling…)
And, to be honest, I still have the hope that in the 11th
hour, there will be a miracle – because
there always is – but I don’t want to stand around waiting for it. I want to
meet it. That feels more “adult,” or humble, or something. More of value.
But, what do I know, I just work here.
Here’s to the middle way – letting go, but walking forward –
it may be into the dark, but my eyes will adjust.