Not a Word
They were lovely. The letters, that is. Actually, more so the words themselves. Or perhaps what lived inside of those words which was truth.
Those words and their precious cargo arrived at first with trepidation in short staccato sentences. Clumsy. Nervous. If they had palms they would have been sweaty.
But, over time they blossomed. Rotund in fact. Plump and full of candor; with a heartbeat and a pulse. Completely naked and sweaty everywhere as we would soon be ourselves.
Our words danced.
Read More
Understanding Contentment
This ‘balance thing’ is difficult.
• Live with intention – but let things flow.
• Focus – and breathe.
• Change – and accept.
• Feel whatever you feel – and then feel gratitude for it (including those things that hurt).
• Understand your wholeness – outside of your story.
For me, these things are more challenging than learning to write with my non-dominant hand. Or mastering a yoga balance pose on shifting sand. Or apologizing (particularly when I know I am the one who is wrong). Or listening patiently when I have something to say. Or being open to examining myself ~ truly examining myself ~ and then being willing to change.
Read More
Balance
“I can’t make those two realities – what I’ve lost and what I’ve found – fit together in some tidy pattern of divine causality. I just have to hold them on the one hand and on the other, just like that”
Read More
The Last Train Out
I spent the weekend revisiting the City that I tried to make my 2nd Home. This time I visited it alone.
Yes, my flip flops were in the corner of his apartment on Dorchester in Brooklyn, and my satin robe with the pink trim was on the back of his door. There were tampons in the bathroom, nail polish on the dresser and art that I created adorned every room along with pictures of us together. And his key was on my keychain so that I was always welcome.
I visited often. But it never became the nest we both intended it would for me.
Moving about in this giant City was difficult for an empath. Too many people’s everything screamed like screeching brakes. It went right through me as if I were opaque and leaving metal shards. For five and one half years I tried hard to love it as much as he did; because he did.
Read More
Guerrilla Healing
Two weeks ago something terrible happened in my life. Two things in fact. On the same day. That’s all you really need to know.
What I want to write about is why those things happened and what I have since done about it.
For my entire life I have stashed my emotions into containers unfit to hold them for long periods of time and placed them in chambers on makeshift shelves with the lids askew. I did this, in part, because I thought they were bigger than me and would consume me if I gave them space. And, in part, because my unyielding life did not afford me the time and emotional energy to deal with them as they arrived. But in doing so I allowed them to ferment untended taking on shapes and meaning and power that they never should have had. Blue tinctures; wild, fiery tonics resembling Jack Daniels but with a bigger bite; black sludge in gallon containers set upon narrow oak planks too meager for their girth; clear liquid in vessels with hand etched notes reading “Flammable. Do Not Drink.” Some that smoldered. Poison.
Read More
Taping the Box
I have done a lot of difficult things in my day. And I have survived plenty of unspeakable circumstances. So one would think that a simple task like taping a box would be easy.
Not so.
I packed the contents with absolute care. Folding some. Rolling others. Fitting them together so that no damage would be done ~ as if that were possible any longer. And I lined up the box tops so that there would be no gap, no empty, no space, no longing.
But before I could seal it I was compelled to open it again and take each item out ‘just to be sure’. I did this on and off throughout the morning hours between laundry and rocking and work meetings and crying and errands and calls to my healers and friends to help me find my center again.
Read More
Too Ugly to Heal
After posting a series of stories about Domestic Violence survivors last year, I was approached by several people to compile them into a book. I was hesitant because my personal experience is that we, as survivors, don’t really matter. That we aren’t important enough to others to read it.
But, some of these people were friends who had never admitted to anyone that they, themselves, had been abused and my writing touched them. Others were doctors who felt it would be a tool to reach women who had no voice.
So, I began.
Read More
Sweet Nothings
What am I supposed to do when Ed comes to dinner?
I showed him the door already, TWICE. But he’s back again.
The first time we met I was barely 18. He must have noticed that I needed a companion. He approached me during a late night walk back to my dorm and, while I now know I should have been terrified, at the time he felt like family. And in the years that followed for countless hours he would sit with me quietly at the Off Campus Deli (OCD) while I tore the edges off my turkey sub and contemplated life. He would walk with me in silence until 3am on Spring Street, and College Street, and through the Quad near Sigma Chi. All over campus; just so I wouldn’t be alone. I found that so very thoughtful at the time.
Read More
The Gutter Guy
Hope walked through my door yesterday in white painter’s shorts splotched with color and anchored with earth. He was covered in ruddy leaves and muck and wearing work boots worn through the soles. His gray hair told me history and his smile lines knowing. He asked me if I was New Age which also told me his age.
I simply answered “I’m odd” to which he responded “I know.” And then we had a conversation.
It’s funny how the Universe delivers people and lessons. Just the night before I was lying in bed sobbing, my dear friend doing all she could to bind me to something hopeful when I was having trouble finding anything at all. And one of the last things she said before I shut out the lights (and my life) for the evening was “you have the power, no matter how diminished you may feel it is, to not only survive this but to triumph over it.” Who uses the word triumph anymore? Well, the Gutter Guy, in that same unmistakable sentence word-for-word in my doorway. So I settled back to listen because the Universe wields a mighty hammer ~ THUNK. Between the eyes.
Read More
Dear Morgan...
Dear Morgan,
Today my daughter retweeted your tweet which simply said “wonder what it’s like to not have divorced parents.”
Sometimes it’s lovely. Sparkly in fact; like Christmas. But, only if the parents get along, truly love one another, put their children first, raise them in true partnership and are independently creative, intelligent, hardworking, decent people. And in those rare cases everyone is at the breakfast table together. Mom and Dad may even hold hands at the softball game or laugh at a private joke. Spring Break means a trip to the beach because money isn’t as hard as it is for a divorced family. You are never in the middle unless it is Friday movie night and they are fighting over who gets to cuddle with you. They are both at the concerts, and graduations, and major events like the first time you fall off your bike. You can hear one downstairs while the other is tucking in you. It is lovely.
Read More
Truth
When life gets too difficult to bear, I rely on Truth.
I know. I can’t crumple it like grungy money in my pocket that would keep groceries in my refrigerator. And it doesn’t smell like the lavender on my pillow during the few more hours of sleep a different job that didn’t require 12 a day would afford me. It certainly isn’t as immediately available as the oxygen that would come from living free from the person who promised to spend his life in pursuit of my ruin. It isn’t warm and pliable like sand around my toes at the Outer Banks; a feeling I have to forget during this chapter of my life while I put my kids through college. And it doesn’t replace the sensation and strength on my left side that used to allow me to climb a simple set of stairs without help which, for the first time in public today, I was unable to do.
Nonetheless, Truth is my ‘go-to’ and is unalterable by anybody or anything ~ lies, desire, effort, manipulation, time. The Truth is simply the Truth. Whether or not one person knows it or everyone does, it’s still the Truth.
Read More
I Should Have
There is a letter sitting on a shelf just above my desk. This is the very same desk where I sit safely every day to work, or write, or help my kids with their homework. It is the desk where I now enjoy the freedom to create which wasn’t possible before; and listen to my children’s laughter again. This letter sits there with his name clearly visible on the front of the envelope. And yet I never sent it.
I should have.
Read More
