What Now?
My Chiron return was in June and, apparently, I (metaphorically) fell “off the roof” (This is astrological and Human Design stuff. For current purposes, you just need to know that coming “off the roof” is a major life transition for people with a particular design, which I have). Just a few hours after the transit, I broke my ankle. While standing still no less. More than a month later, I still feel lost; like I have no idea what I'm doing.
Eight years ago, my body began telling me that the thing I loved most and was good at (law and being a lawyer) was no longer a viable employment option. I tried doing it differently, doing less of it, all kinds of things. But my brain wasn’t braining the way it used to, and I just wasn’t able to keep up and complete assignments. At the beginning of this year, I finally received something to respond to that made clear it was time to hang up my lawyer hat. I’ve been gutted ever since and, if I’m being honest, still harboring hopes that something will change or happen in the future that will let me go back. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to figure out what that means for now.
I know that where I'm headed has to do with spirituality and intuition. More specifically, I have felt called down a path to mediumship. But the more I try to learn, the more I feel like I'm forcing it. I'm heavily defined in the logic circuit (13 gates), and I just realized that I keep looking for answers, hoping someone has the message that will finally get through. Instead, I just keep receiving the same three messages on repeat:
Meditate;
Trust; and
You are the one you've been waiting for.
Image by petr sidorov, @m_malkovich on Unsplash
Now, I’ll be honest with you. I have been receiving the message to meditate since I was in my teens. And I keep not doing it. Or rather, I try, and it doesn’t seem to work and I just shrug and quit. Over and over and over. Somehow, I believed that if I just ran long enough and fast enough and ignored it long enough, the message would change. Then I discovered Human Design and saw my BodyGraph. With my conscious Earth in Embodiment and my unconscious Earth in Stillness, meditation is not a mere suggestion; it’s woven into my very existence. That message isn’t going anywhere. So, I pulled up my big-girl pants and surrendered. I found an app that resonated with me and have been doing 4 to 5 three-minute “pauses” each day. I’m not “trying” to meditate, which has always failed in the past. Instead, I’m simply focusing on the breath, saying “In. Out. In. Out,” over and over silently in my head. And when I realize my mind has wandered from that pattern, I drop the thought and focus back on the breath. I don’t know whether I’m doing it right, or doing enough, but I am doing. And that’s enough for now. Gold star for me.
In the continued spirit of honesty, I’m not really any better at Trust than I was/am at Meditate. I’ve been knocked down a lot by life. Sometimes it happens so quickly I don’t even get a full breath between punches, let alone a chance to pick myself back up. And even though I’ve been able to make sense of much of it, and have come to appreciate the lessons learned and growth I experienced from the events, it doesn’t make it any easier. Indeed, these days, when I get kicked back down, my first feeling is, “Really? I haven’t been though enough?” But that’s just it. There is no such thing as “going through” enough. The reward for success is new challenges. All I can do is trust that there’s a reason for what is happening, and that it’s happening for me, instead of to me. As you probably know from your own struggles, this is exceedingly difficult, especially in the moment. But I’m working on it. So, much like meditation, when I find my brain starting to spiral into “what-if” land, I try to turn the focus back to trust. Somehow, in some way, this is for me. I may not understand why or how—now or ever. And it likely won’t take the sting out of pain and grief. But that moment. That reminder. It pulls me out for just a second. Long enough to take a breath. And maybe next time I’ll get two breaths in before the spiral comes back. Each additional breath is another second of trust. And it’s one more than I had before.
I have started referring to the “You are the one you’ve been waiting for” message as Second Elsa (from the Book of Frozen). In Frozen 2, there is an amazing song called “Show Yourself.” In it, Elsa ends up singing a duet with her mother’s spirit, as Elsa finally figures out that the magical person she keeps feeling called by is herself. In the beginning of the song, Elsa is begging the person, “Are you the one I’ve been looking for all of my life? Show yourself! I’m ready to learn.” She knows that, “I’m here for a reason. Could it be the reason I was born? I have always been so different. Normal rules did not apply. Is this the day? Are you the way I finally find out why?” She continues to walk toward her destination, changing her question to a statement: “You are the answer I’ve waited for all of my life. Show Yourself! Let me see who you are.” When she finally reaches the end, she finds memories, and the voice of her mother sings, “Come my darling homeward bound.” To which Elsa replies, “I am found!” Then they sing together:
Image from Frozen 2, copyright Disney
Show yourself. Step into your power.
Grow yourself into something new.
Mom: You are the one you’ve been waiting for
Elsa: All of my life
Mom: All of your life
Show yourself.
This is the deepest, most Human Design song I have come across. It is God/Source/The Universe staring right into my soul, calling me out to become the person I came here to be. I cry every time I sing it. Every. Single. Time. Sometimes it turns into a big ugly cry where I can’t even get breath out to keep singing, so I just keep mouthing along to the words. But I still sing it. Because it makes me feel. And I spent so long being shut off from my feelings that I take anything that makes me feel and be in my body as a good sign.
And the message could not be clearer. Stop looking for the answer outside of myself! But I still do. I don’t fully trust myself. My intuition. That I’m on the right path. That I’m doing it right. That any confusion I have is part of the process. To quote Taylor Swift, “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.” Turns out, I am both the cause of and solution to my own problems. Ugh. In my moments of despair, this feels like the greatest clusterf$@k. If only I can solve this, I’m so screwed. But when I’m in the right space? This is empowerment. This is agency. I’m the one who can solve this. I have the power.
Image by Kaitlyn Baker, @kaitlynbaker on Unsplash
The answer isn’t in the transits. It’s not in my chart. It’s not in any free or paid course I can enroll in. It’s not something external that I can find or learn. It’s inside. That’s the only place I’m going to find it. And I can only find it by doing the things. Writing. Meditating. Trying different things. Trusting one more second today than I did yesterday. Recognizing the power and joy and freedom in being the only one who can do this. Find me. Grow me. Be me.
It's not the answer I want. If I wanted to meditate, I would have heeded that call long before now. If it were easy to trust, I would have done it already. I would already believe in myself. About 25 years ago, I was at a Carolyn Myss conference where she talked about how most people talk about asking God/The Universe for an answer of what to do, but always say they don’t get an answer. She then explained that it wasn’t true. We almost always already know the answer. The problem is that we don’t like the answer, so we keep looking for another answer. 99 times out of 100, if you feel stuck and don’t know what to do, just ask yourself, “What do I most not want to do?” That will be the thing that you need to do. She’s still right. Harumph.
So this is me. Committing to the work. To the doing of the things that I keep avoiding because I want the answer to be something else. After all, not doing it hasn’t gotten me to where I want to be. Might as well give it a try.
Returning to Writing
I’ve been quiet for quite some time now, and while there are lots of reasons for it (which may or may not come to light in future posts), the long and short of it is that I’ve realized that I need to be writing again. It’s how I process things. Events. Feelings. How I figure myself out. How I figure out what’s next. That was the whole point of having a blog. So I could talk things through with myself. And by posting these things, you could come along with me on the journey if you wanted. Because I learned that sometimes something I had to say would resonate or help you too. All of which is to say: Welcome back!
Example BodyGraph
Now, back in December, I posted about my move toward embracing more esoteric, spiritual, energy-based teaching and practices. Along the way, I have learned about something called Human Design. Without getting too deep into it, Human Design is all about helping you to be more of who you are and who you came here to be. It’s about learning to get back in touch with your internal authority and then act consistently with that authority.
To figure out what kind of internal authority you have and how you best make decisions, create, use, and replenish your energy, Human Design uses your birth information (date, time, location) to create a chart called a BodyGraph which maps out where the planets were at the time of your birth and approximately 88 days before. That chart provides multiple layers of information designed to help you know yourself and get back in touch with the places where the world told and conditioned you not to be yourself. It also provides information about your life purpose (hint, it’s not your job).
One of the things I love most about Human Design is that it describes the process of learning about yourself and your design as an experiment. There are no correct answers; only answers that are correct for you. You learn something, run it past your internal authority, try it out, and see if it resonates or works for you. Keep what works and throw the rest away.
Why am I telling you so much about Human Design? A few reasons. First, it has become a huge part of my process for figuring out who I am and what I’m here to do. So as I walk (and write) through this process, I’ll be talking about it a lot and using some of the jargon. My goal is to provide small explanations within the posts themselves that will allow you to understand my posts without having to do even a surface-level dive. However, in the event you find yourself wanting to learn more, I am going to create two additional spaces on my site. The first will be a reference page, where I link to all types of resources for learning more about Human Design or other related modalities for self-discovery. The second is that I am going to create my own Human Design explainer posts. During my own self-improvement process, I have become Level 3 Certified in Quantum Human Design™. I have not yet begun a practice of doing paid readings for others, although I am contemplating doing so. But in the meantime, I do want to share more about it. And creating my own posts is a win/win: you won’t have to go wandering all over the internet for information (but you can if you want to!), and I can include and highlight the things most important to me.
So, whether you’ve stuck with me from the beginning, just come back, or are joining me for the first time, I want to thank you for being here. I hope you find something fun, helpful, hopeful, and meaningful in something I’ve written.
TTFN.*
*Back in the 1990s, I was obsessed with Winnie The Pooh, especially Tigger (I still love it; just not quite to the same degree). I used Tigger’s sign-off, TTFN (Ta Ta For Now), as my sign-off on handwritten letters and emails for many, many years. I was trying to think of something to use as a sign-off here other than just my initials and remembered when this was my thing. It felt like just the right amount of fun, so I’m going with it for now for now.
What’s Your Paint Color?
Many years ago, I delivered a sermon likening humans to pixels on a screen. I explained that we all need to do our own thing independent of those around us or the picture doesn’t look right, and if we’re all the same color, it’s nothing worth looking at. It’s also very obvious when one of us stops shining their light—that single black pixel gets your attention all. the. time.
But my kiddo’s journey to find and express their gender and sexuality took me a step further into my color analogy. When my kiddo first began talking to us about it, they describes themself as a demi-girl and explained that while part of them felt female, part of them felt non-gendered. At that time, they indicated that she/her or they/them pronouns were acceptable. Over time, their understanding about themselves developed, and they advised that they/them were their correct pronouns.
In the process of being educated about all the different types of gender expression and learning to identify some of the various flags, I found myself getting really loud inside my head. Why are folks slicing these distinctions so thin? Why are there so many different terms? My first thought after having these questions was: dang. I’m a shitty ally. My next thought was: way to make it about you. After taking some deep breaths and granting myself some grace, I asked myself why this bothered me. What followed was a beautiful moment of clarity in which, instead of receiving an answer, I received a new way to look at things. And it’s been such a helpful tool both for me and others I’ve shared it with, I want to share it with you.
Have you ever painted a room? Or picked out a color for your wedding? Or for a dress? Have you and your friends ever fought over the correct description of a color? I love the huge boxes of crayons and could wax poetic on the variations between periwinkle and cornflower. I remember my bridesmaid dresses were Royple—a royal blue/purple mix. There are a quadrillion different colors, each with barely perceptible differences. This one a bit more white, that one more grey, this one a shade pinker, that one more green.
One of my high school friends and I were obsessed with the color mint green (making a comeback these days. Woot!) We would wander through the store and discuss whether any given shirt was too blue or too green to be “officially” mint green. We knew what the color we loved was, and we knew when what we saw wasn’t it.
And no one I know has ever begrudged a person who is looking at paint chips but just hasn’t found that exact shade of whatever that their room needs. It might be frustrating because we don’t see the difference they see, but I don’t know anyone who has ever said that the difference isn’t there, or that someone should just settle settle for “close enough.” Colors are powerful and painting our rooms and homes in specific ways matters. We can all identify with that.
Here’s the thing: gender identity is a spectrum, just like color. Folks are making fine slices and creating new names and categories because they are looking for their “color” descriptor. And if I’m not going to begrudge someone trying to find the right color for their home or clothes or car or painting, I’m sure as heck not going to stop them from finding the right “shade” to describe who they know themselves to be.
Once I realized this, it became so easy to support not just my kiddo but everyone as they figure out who they are and how they want to be identified. And not just in terms of gender expression or sexuality. The truth is, we choose how we define ourselves in so many different ways everyday. Maybe it’s your given name, a nickname, or your middle name. Maybe you request a name change altogether. How about your profession? Do you like lawyer or attorney? Is “professor” good enough or does it need to be “doctor”? Dishwasher or underwater ceramics specialist? How about all the different names for grandparents? Are you Grandma? Nana? Gigi? You’re in a relationship. Are you a spouse? Partner? Boy/girlfriend? Date? Hookup?
Words matter. How we see ourselves, how we define ourselves, how we label ourselves matters. And having others acknowledge and accept those chosen definitions matters.
So pick your color and live it. Now, maybe you’re just blue. Any blue is fine. That’s awesome. I will honor your blue-ness. I just ask that you honor that I am not merely green, but mint green. And maybe we don’t agree on what mint green is, exactly. That’s okay. I don’t need you to be able to recognize mint green, or even see the difference between mint green and light green; just acknowledge that I do. That’s all anyone wants. Not perfection, but to be seen, recognized, and loved for who they are and how they see themselves. In this great big glorious world, I can think of nothing more beautiful I want to see.
Embracing the Woo
I want to start this post differently than I usually do—with a definition, a disclaimer, and an invitation.
What is “woo”? Woo, short for “woo woo” means those things that are more spiritual, out there, unscientific, and sometimes unproveable. Crystals, essential oils, flower essences, astrology, magic, light language, Atlantean teachings, past lives, starseeds, different vibrational dimensions, Human Design, and EFT (tapping) are just some of the things that can fall into the category of woo. And we each have our own unique woo tolerance depending on our own experiences, upbringings, and so forth. What you accept and believe may be well outside of someone else’s woo tolerance. Where we sit on the woo continuum and where our woo “squeal” point lies may change over our lives.
I’m telling you upfront that the content of this post contains a lot of woo so that if woo makes you uncomfortable, you can stop here. I’m not trying to change your beliefs about any of this. Where you are on your spiritual journey is exactly where you need to be.
I am sharing this story because I like for those in my life to know what’s going on with me, writing about my experiences helps me process them, and many of you have shared that you have found healing and validation when I have spoken out about subjects our society isn’t keen on talking about openly. And if you’re curious enough to read on but nothing in this story resonates with you, then I invite you to simply say, “How interesting” and move on.
Now, for background context, I have spent a little more than a year working on more esoteric, energy, and spiritual practices. I have invested time and resources to change in my daily habits, thoughts, outlook, and mindset, and engaging with astrology and Human Design to figure out my life purpose, why I am here, and what some of the challenges are for my in the years ahead.
None of this has been easy for me. I have sought support in groups of like-minded individuals, but have shied away from sharing with friends, family, and readers, because I have a lot of logical skeptics in my life, and it felt too new and precious and vulnerable to share. I was not ready to hear the nay-sayers for fear they would cause me to second guess my decisions and stop listening to my intuition, with which I was only just reconnecting and learning to hear.
I was blessed with scholarships to amazing online classes taught by strong women who began life steeped in science and logic and the left brain but whose life experiences opened them up and provided real, tangible proof of the truth of these lessons. These women and the other individuals I met in the classes and their communities helped reassure me that I was on the right path. I began to wholeheartedly embrace the woo.
Earlier this fall, it became clear that I am supposed to work on my gift of mediumship. Patrick showed up and connected me with a gifted woman who I now consider a close friend. That friend introduced me to the work of Suzanne Giesemann, a former navy officer who was an assistant to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who developed an evidence-based mediumship practice after her step-daughter’s death convinced her there was more to life than our physical reality.
For the past month, I have been taking an online course on mediumship for which I received a scholarship. I am also going to start practicing with a small group of other folks who are also working on strengthening their gifts. Part of this process has involved starting and sustaining a meditation practice and connecting with my spirit guides. And some of the things I have been asking for are for signs of contact, confirmations of messages, and other evidence that I am on the right track.
This is all background to set the stage for this story. Earlier this week, I sat at the dining room table drinking tea when I heard an electronic chirp. You know the one. The dreaded smoke alarm low battery beep. It was coming from the kitchen. And I just knew, before I even went to look, that it was going to be the really high one by the ceiling. Why? Because it was the most inconvenient one and we didn’t own a ladder to reach it.
I gave it three more chirps before I went to investigate. Yup. It was coming from the high one.
If you’re paying close attention, you’ll see two smoke alarms in this picture. One about 2-3 feet above the doorframe on the wall, and one just to the right of the same doorframe. The two square items to the left of the doorframe are the thermostat and I don’t know what.
I hauled out one of our bar height dining room chairs to stand on to see if I could reach the smoke alarm. Standing on tip toe on the chair, my fingers could indeed reach the bottom of the smoke alarm. I began trying to turn the smoke alarm left and right, to remove it from the frame, but it wouldn’t budge.
After a few minutes, I got down from the chair and rotated the smoke alarm to my right to figure out what direction it should turn, so I could focus my efforts. While I had it off the wall, I confirmed that it had a battery, that the battery had a good charge, and that it was not the source of the chirping.
I eventually returned to the chair and redoubled my efforts to get this chirping thing off the dang wall. I pushed and pushed and pushed with my fingers as best I could until I finally felt it budge. Yay!
I hopped down off the chair, flipped that thing over, and popped open the battery compartment. This is what greeted me.
It had no battery. My mind exploded. I was shook. I had just spent 15 minutes listening to this alarm chirp the “low battery” chirp when it had no battery!
I knew, in that moment, that it was a message from spirit, and I had to make a choice. I could believe the evidence of the communication in front of me and move forward honing my gifts, knowing that I was going to experience more unexplainable things, or I could turn my back and shut down my gifts again. But I couldn’t stay who I was. That was no longer an option.
Honestly, I was so excited! I have believed in spirits and trusted mediums for a long time. To see some validation of the work I had just begun felt so reassuring. But it also meant that I had to leave my comfort zone. I would have to start telling people what I was up to. If this were to become a profession, I couldn’t exactly hide it.
So I’ve sat with this story for several days. I shared it with my kiddo and my spouse and my counselor and my close medium friend. And each telling left me feeling more excited. More empowered. More validated. And it left me with the feeling that now was the time to share the story, and the background behind it, more publicly.
So here we are. Now you too have a choice. You can believe my story as I experienced it and relayed it to you. You can find some version that includes details I left out or didn’t discover that makes it “make sense” according to the “regular” rules of our existence. You can write me off as someone not worthy of belief—perhaps a Christmas fruitcake.
Whatever you decide is fine. I don’t need you to believe me. My experience and my interpretation of that experience are sufficient for me. I have chosen to share because it was an amazing moment of growth and realization for me, and I have come to love sharing those moments with you. What you do with this story now is up to you.
I hope you’ll join me on my continuing journey as I discover and hone these gifts and help support me through the challenges ahead. But if not, if it’s too woo, or whatever other reason it may be, I understand. I bear you no ill will. You’re on your own path, and it’s perfect for you the same way mine is perfect for me. And I love that for both of us.
Namaste.
PS - all of the smoke detectors in the house have fresh batteries, and the ones that were more than 10 years old (the one that chirped and one other I found that also lacked a battery were both 21 years old (!!)) have been completely replaced. Because whatever else the message was for me, I recognized a sign to update smoke alarms when I saw it.
A Day of Re-Membering
[This post originally appeared on my personal Facebook page, but as I finished it, realized it was the beginning of a return to my Blog. So it, and the post I wrote earlier today, have been re-posted here.]
I have been given so much to say today. I am trusting that each thing reaches those who need to see/hear/read it.
I just watched the 2018 version of A Wrinkle In Time. I tried to watch it when it first came to Disney+, but for whatever reason I couldn’t. The truth, as I understand it now, is I was not ready. Because I didn’t remember the first few minutes at all. If I had, I surely would not have picked today, of all days, to watch it.
As I texted Phil this morning, remember how Up kicked the shit out of our hearts while we were dealing with infertility? Well, A Wrinkle In Time “upped” its game by 100 and tore my heart out and stomped it on the floor before handing it back to me all band-aided up again.
It was, without question, what I needed to see/hear/know today, of all days. About the power of the frequency of love. About knowing and integrating my faults, my shadows, my “bad” parts. About loving others exactly where they are. Because, to paraphrase the Happy Medium: it’s okay to be afraid of the answers; we just can’t avoid them.
When I first visited Phil in Michigan in 2003, we went to Celebration Cinema and watched Love, Actually. Watching it together is something of a holiday tradition for us now. And one of our favorite lines has always been when Sam says to Daniel, “Let’s go get the sh*t kicked out of us by love.”
Here we are, 20 years later, back in the Midwest, starting over again. And I realized that this quote encompasses our entire journey together.
Learning how to love each other through our faults. Deciding we were ready to start a family. Struggling with infertility. The highs of pregnancy and birth. The lows of miscarriages and medically-fragile children. Holding each other through the storms of hospitalizations. Realizing Mira’s medical struggles were merely preparation for the bigger waves that could capsize us with Patrick. Doing our best, for ourselves and our family, through the roller-coaster of Patrick’s life and death. The 9 years since we have spent figuring out what it means to be broken; how to heal; how to move forward.
Watching as each of us, in our own time, in our own ways, begins to shine our light again. Begins to emerge from the shroud that has engulfed us for what feels like forever. As we find ourselves again. As we find ourselves anew. As we figure out who we are. Who we have become. And love each other because of and in spite of all of it.
That’s what wedding vows are: promises to ride the roller coaster of life together. You can see amazing views from the highest of heights and lose your lunch on some crazy turns and be terrified or even rendered unconscious by some of the lows coming out of those spirals. But being human—living this life to the fullest—is all about experiencing the ups and the downs and everything in between. Your soul’s incarnation was your agreement to get the shit kicked out of you by love. In all of its most beautiful, tragic, amazing, incomprehensible, sorrowful moments.
And, believe it or not, it’s always worth the ride. Why else would we fight so hard to be here; to stay here; to live longer? Because despite the pain and the hurt, the beauty and the love nourish us and keep us going. Love is always there. Even when you can’t feel it. Because—You. Are. Love. And—You. Are. Loved.
I am reminded of Katy Perry’s song “Hot and Cold”. I never realized how right she was, because she recognized the person was not hot OR cold, but hot AND cold:
'Cause you're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up then you're down
You're wrong when it's right
It's black and it's white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
You don't really want to stay, no
But you don't really want to go
You're hot then you're cold
You're yes then you're no
You're in then you're out
You're up then you're down
This weird miss mash of life. It’s not “or.” It’s “and.”
Earlier today, I wrote the following as a comment on a friend’s post. And I realized it’s a variation on this same theme:
We forget that life is a circle.
Difficult time raise Hard People. Hard People work to create Easy Times. Easy Times raise Soft People. Soft People create Difficult Times.
There is no cycle of creation that has no destruction. The question is whether the destruction is thoughtful, necessary, limited. Like in Michigan when they stopped natural forest fires and then began losing special trees because the seeds only broke open in the heat of the fires. The destruction is necessary for new life. But we can be targeted and intentional about it so that the new life comes without unnecessary loss of property and life.
But we forget life is a cycle. We only want the up. And it just doesn’t work that way. So instead of spending time figuring out how to turn the cycle into an upward spiral by harnessing the destructive part of the cycle, we pretend it doesn’t exist and lose all our progress when it shows up.
Image by Nik @helloimnik from UnSplash
We’re human. We forget. It’s our very nature. But when we remember? When we hang on? Those are the brilliant moments we take massive leaps forward. Jumps the size of which we never knew or believed were possible let alone that we were the ones capable of making.
I set aside today as a day of remembering for me. But I got far more than I bargained for. I am re-membering myself. The quick flashes and glimpses I have seen these past few months of me coming back to myself. Skills and talents left dormant. Gardening. Singing. Baking. Dare I say, Writing.
It’s coming back. I’m tuned back in. I found the frequency again. I finally looking forward and excited to discover what’s next. I’ll do my best to post here and at my blog, so that if you want, you can come along, too.
Namaste.
Happy 10th Birthday, Patrick
[The following was originally posted as a post on my personal Facebook page.]
Struggling with words and feelings today. It’s Patrick’s 10th birthday. But do I say it is, it was, or it would have been? I mean, it is. We use present tense for the statement about dead people all the time. It’s so and so’s 100th or 200th birthday. But we generally understand with numbers that large that these are celebratory memorial birthdays. When you say it’s someone’s 10th birthday, the expectation is they are still alive for the celebration.
And then there’s the fact that it’s the big 1-0! This is a huge birthday milestone! Double digits! I remember always hearing those words prefaced or followed by “you made it!” But Patrick didn’t make it; not corporeally, anyway. And yet, at times I’ve felt ridiculously giddy and excited this past week knowing his 10th birthday was almost here.
Phil pointed out that we’ve survived 10 years, and I guess that’s part of it. But I’ve felt unsettled each time I recognized the feelings of joy, excitement, and anticipation for today. So I’m taking the day to sit with them. Feel them. Wish my sister a Happy Birthday because it was her day first, before life overshadowed that.
I think part of it is because I heard from Patrick this week. I was on a Zoom meeting and one of the other participants noticed some energy hanging around me. Afterward, she reached out through a mutual friend to ask if I was open to figuring it out. Long story short, it was Patrick and one of my grandfathers with messages for me.
I’ve had lots of mediums and spiritually sensitive people tell me Patrick’s never left me. One friend who did bodywork on me explained that he left a little footprint imprinted on my heart and that she’d never seen anything like it before. And I’ve said for a very long time that his outsized effect on the world meant he’s still here in many ways, even if I’m not raising him. So he’s not gone. Not really; only in the corporeal sense.
And I’ve found myself pondering the fact that his birthday is so close to Samhain and Halloween, when the veil between worlds is said to be thinner.
Anyway, one of the things the medium shared with me was that Patrick was sorry he had to go. I nearly laughed. I have considered myself blessed that we were able to give Patrick a good death and that we had no regrets about the choices we made. The only thing I have ever wondered about is whether he knew that and was okay with the choices. To have that question lifted. To know that he had to go, so the choice we made to spend two weeks together as a family really was the best choice for all of us. There are no words to describe what occurred—the breaking open of my heart and its simultaneous healing. Like it shattered into pieces but was instantaneously mended with gold energy, similar to the Japanese tradition of kintsugi.
So, it’s been a big week of feelings and knowings and learnings. And today, my forever baby boy would’ve turned 10. Turns 10. Is 10. I ponder the 10th anniversary of his birth. Whatever.
As a person who knows the values of words and spends so much time looking for the just right word, knowing that this moment isn’t about the words is weird. I write to process. To share. To educate. To inform. But some things just defy explanation. Language can’t really describe the comfort brought by the hug of a close friend, the softness of a baby’s hand on your cheek, or the scent of heaven wafting off the crown of their heads. A picture is worth a thousand words for a reason. Feelings can be, too.
So today is about feelings. Sitting with them and letting myself feel them and doing my best to keep my brain out of it; removing judgment or shoulds or need tos. Living in the tension.
Loving my son. Loving my sister. Loving the new friends Patrick has brought into my life who are having their own grief experiences. Loving my family. Grieving the life I expected. The one I thought I was going to have. Learning to love the life I do have and who I have become. Feeling Happiness and joy and loss and sadness.
Because they aren’t two ends of a line. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. Happy tears. Downpours in the sun. Gone but still here. It’s all part of life; part of our souls having a human experience. We have to feel these things. It’s why we’re here. Every feeling, every experience stems from love. The warm, fuzzy ones are offshoots of its appearance or presence and the dark, prickly ones are offshoots of its removal or absence. Go back to the source. Find the love. Remember that. That’s what I’m doing today.
Happy birthday, Patrick. I love you.
Broken
Dear friends, I am broken. I am tired and angry and frustrated, too. But the overwhelming thing I feel is broken. I have watched my country become something almost unrecognizable over the past four years, and it is becoming ever clearer that we may have another four years of this. And I cry. I cry for all the people who have been fighting this fight for longer than I have. I cry because I’m just not strong enough. Because I have reached my limit. And now I’m broken.
I have always wanted to know why people do what they do. I could not understand how people stood so firmly in their prejudices—against blacks, women, LGBTQ+, immigrants. How anyone could profess to love the values and foundations of this country while simultaneously denying others the freedoms and protections its governing documents guaranteed. And while some only passively permitted others to engage in such behaviors, others actively advocated for such things.
And I became fascinated with Germany and the Holocaust. In my naïveté, I believed that people must not have known what was happening. I believed that when we know better, we do better. I was wrong.
I recently listened to a talk given by the Holocaust survivor for whom my daughter was named. It was given a few years before I met her. I had a cassette tape of the speech that I was keeping for my daughter, so she could hear her namesake tell her story in her own words. I had already read the books she had written. I knew the things I was going to hear. The bittersweet sound of her voice, now that she has passed, put me on the verge of tears before she said more than “Thank you.” But hearing her relive her horror. Explain she couldn’t even give us a glimpse of 1/100th of the evil and horror she experienced in the 20 minutes she spoke. Impress upon us that the whole point of putting herself through the misery and emotional drain of retelling her story was to make sure people knew what happened so that in the future, those who remained after she was gone, could make sure it never happened again.
And yet, here we are. Kids in cages sleeping on cold cement without pillows or blankets; inadequate water and unsanitary conditions; denied education, medication, and air conditioning; being molested and sexually assaulted; some deported “home” without their families; dying from intentional neglect. Seeing people show complete disinterest in the suffering of these children or, worse, argue that they “asked for it.” My heart is shattered to see just how many mean people advocating for suffering and death there are—many of whom declare themselves to be “good Christians” and “Pro-life.” They either don’t see their hypocrisy or don’t care. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like someone. They do not deserve torture, neglect, abuse, or inhumane treatment. No one does. Full stop. No exceptions.
I get that others disagree with me. And that’s okay. I have never needed someone to agree with me in order to be their friend. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber. I will boisterously assert the rightness of my opinion, have it challenged, sit with my thoughts later, adopt the contrary position wholeheartedly, and admit I was wrong. That’s how we learn; how we discover if our positions remain valid or need reconsideration. What I adored about my diverse friends was our ability to love and support one another even though we didn’t agree.
Sadly, over the last four years, it feels as though every single aspect of our lives has become political. We can’t even agree to be kind and listen to one another. And although I have worked very hard to maintain my relationships with friends who think differently than I, they have not returned the favor. Only a few have unfriended me, but it has become abundantly clear that I have been hidden or muted or whatever. Direct private messages about things not even remotely political went unread and unanswered. I took time to check out their feeds and see how they were doing, commenting on pictures and memes as appropriate, but they never wrote a single thing on anything I posted.
So the time has come for me to stop. I cannot keep pouring energy into relationships that are not nourishing me. Life is hard. COVID has made it harder. I need to protect my limited resources. But I want to be clear. Disagreement doesn’t wear me out. Debate and policy discussions don’t suck me dry of energy. Ignorance, hate, and indifference, however, they leave me sick. Exhausted. Broken-hearted. Worse, I know these people personally. Have seen the love and humanity in their hearts. Shared some of my hardest and lowest moments with them. Been held up by them. And I will forever be connected to them. And I will always love them. But the time has come to say goodbye. They have shown me that they don’t need my energy; that they don’t want it. So I’m going to stop throwing it away and, instead, use it places that will feed my soul. And one of those places is going to be continuing the word of my daughter’s namesake—making sure people know and remember the Holocaust. It must never, never happen again, and we are far too close for comfort.
Black Lives Matter.
Immigrant Lives Matter.
Trans Lives Matter.
Jewish Lives Matter.
Peaceful Protester Lives Matter.
Learning the Hard Way
I’m a pretty smart person. And not just book smart.
I’m a pretty smart person. And not just book smart. I’ve learned a fair amount in my life. I have (un)common sense and know a lot about different social classes, how to blend in and get by. But I am also blessed with a stubbornness for the ages. I can dig in my heels and shall not be moved until I decide it’s time to move. It is this latter trait that means I have had to learn some lessons “the hard way.”
What I mean by “the hard way” is through personal experience rather than by seeing or learning about someone else’s experience and making better choices to avoid what happened to them.
As children, we almost all learn the hard way. Someone tells us not to touch a stove because it’s hot, and the majority of us have to touch the stove to understand what “hot” means. As we get older, when we see someone yank their hand back and stick their finger in their mouth, we know we shouldn’t touch whatever it was because it’s hot. This time, we have learned vicariously through their experience.
As adults, we seek out advice from experts because they have seen how things turn out time and again. We are hoping to learn from their experiences and avoid problematic outcomes. In the scientific community, they can provide research and data to prove they know that they’re talking about. So, when it comes to science and healthcare, I am generally a “follow the rules” and “play the odds” kind of person.
Granted, this doesn’t always work out in my favor. We fell into the 1% of people to have a kid with CHD, and then that even rarer group of people who had multiple kids with CHD. But we’ve beaten the odds in many positive ways, too. Many marriages fall apart after infertility, ART, medically-complicated children, or infant death, and mine has survived all of those things. But, on the whole, when my doctors tell me I need to do something, I do my best to follow their instructions.
And et. We all know that person who ignored their doctor, followed their gut, and was right. George Burns smoked cigars his whole life and lived to 100. My grandmother knew something was wrong and badgered her doctors until they did an angioplasty and discovered her arteries were too clogged to do one, so she had quadruple bypass surgery without ever suffering a heart attack, and she went on to live to 95. And we all know that skinny person that never exercises and eats nothing but candy bars, but has no fat, no diabetes, and flawless skin.
So when my doctor told me I was diabetic, I wasn’t surprised. Annoyed, to be sure, but not surprised. I diligently began taking my meds, releasing weight, and eating marginally better. We got my a1c in line, I began taking certain meds prophylactically, and life was good.
Now, from day 1, they told me I needed to start taking care of my feet. Putting lotion on them, wearing “real” shoes, checking them each night for cracks and whatnot, and recommended that I geta podiatrist. Not. I have been a barefoot child my whole life. My mantra is “naked feet are happy feet.” I have had tough calloused feet for as long as I can remember. I could walk or run on gravel. Hot summer cement didn’t bother me. I took pride when I lost two toenails after a half marathon. I mentally gave my doctors the middle finger and ignored everything they said about my feet. My endocrinologist would test the nerves on the bottom of my feet. There was no reason to add yet another doctor and another co-pay to my already hemorrhaging healthcare budget.
A few days ago, I noticed my right heel was tender when Ziggy licked it. But it was a mind annoyance. I thought maybe his teeth were scratching me a bit as he slathered my heel, and it was no biggie, so I ignored it. Yesterday, I noticed my toenails needed clipping, so I decided I would put lotion on my super dry and scraggly feet. That’s when I found it. A fissure. Fuck. Okay, no biggy. I cleaned it with alcohol (ouch!) and otherwise slathered my feet with lotion. When I checked my feet later, it was lke I had never put lotion on them.
Readers, I sed ultra-moisturizing lotion four times over 8 hours, put socks on overnight, and still barely made progress on the dryness of my heels. I am fighting to prevent additional fissures that I can literally see trying to occur. I am chastened. My doctors knew. They were right. It didn’t matter how my feet had always been. It didn’t matter that my A1c had been great for over a year. I should have been caring for my feet and, instead, I had been abusing them to spite the doctors. And the only person it hurt was me. Once again, my stubbornness got the better of me, and I learned the hard way that my doctors really did know what they were doing. If I am paying for their expertise, shouldn’t I follow it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know. And at least I caught it early before I did any real damage. But it was a wake-up call and a good reminder that I don’t always know what’s best for me, and I need to be doing a better job of caring for my body. I may have learned the hard way, but at least I learned. This time.