In the event of death…

By j on May 14, 2012

Me & The Boy, goofing off

The Boy and I had a fight on the way to school last week. I don’t remember what it was about exactly (which is a telling fact now that I think about it), but I know it had to do with that place he’s in – that precarious, awkward precipice between child- and adulthood where everything seems suddenly much too important to both of us. I want to make sure he’s ready for the world, and he wants me to loosen my grip, let him actually go out into that world. By the time we reached his school, I was beyond frustrated and so was he, so when we pulled into the  parking lot, he got out of the car, slammed the door, and walked away without saying goodbye. I watched him trudge across the grass, tall and lanky, his backpack the widest part of him, and I felt two things intensely: anger that he left so abruptly (though he was a minute away from the first period bell, so time was of the essence), and the beginnings of a familiar, underlying panic.

It happens whenever I’m in that situation, whenever someone I love is mad at me and walking away. No matter how angry I feel, how righteous and absolutely unwilling to give up ground, I  have this terrible thought: What if this is the last time I ever see this person? What if the words we just hurled at each other are the last ones we get to say?

It’s a stark and frightening possibility, unnerving when it takes hold of me, and as I watched The Boy walk away, the distance between us taking on mythic proportions in my head, you’d think that such a terrifying thought would be enough to make me jump out of the car, close that distance, repair the damage anyway I could, but it wasn’t. What I did instead was drive away, white knuckling the steering wheel, certain of my rightness, certain my anger was justified, and certain way down deep (where the things I just know reside) that my being right wasn’t what would matter in the end.

~~~~~~

Despite the volatility of his age (and my general nature), I don’t fight with The Boy very often. Maybe that’s why this time, the incident has stayed with me. Or maybe it’s because I’m writing The Love Essays and as a result I find myself in this constant state of evaluation, sifting through old journals, blog posts and emails, all the platitudes and the pretty words about love, to get to the unpolished, boots on the ground, messy reality of what it means to choose love when it matters, in the trenches of everyday life.

I have a friend who’s mother died and the last conversation he remembers having with her was one in which he told her that he didn’t respect her. He was angry of course, and hurt, and damaged; it takes a lot of history to get to a scene like that. But it haunts him now. He longs for a different ending.

Of course that’s the problem. In the real world, without benefit of credits and music, we don’t always recognize our endings when we’re in them. It’s only later that we see them for what they were, and all too often, they break our hearts then.

~~~~~

It would be stupid for me to write here that we should live each scene with our loved ones as if it could be our last, although the thought of that makes me laugh, the constant state of drama. “Wait, in case we never see each other again…”

On the other hand, I kind of want to try it, say something like, “I know you’re pissed off, but in case one of us dies, I want you to know I love you.” Honestly, I can’t imagine what sort of effect that would have on an argument, and if I was the one that was really pissed off, I’m not sure I’d even be able to bring myself to say it. I have a temper. It takes a concentrated, herculean effort to settle myself down when I’m angry, measure my words and consider their impact. Moving from that place of righteous conviction to a more conciliatory place, one that allows for compromise and actual, openhearted listening takes time for me, and in the absence of time, I’m not at all sure I can get to the “in between place” I’m picturing, the one where I’m pissed off and thoughtful. And honestly, I can’t quite decide if my desire to get there is neurotic or evolved.

What do you think?

 

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Their delicious diaspora

By j on May 7, 2012

Trying to stay focused on The Love Essays, so today instead of writing a post, I’m sharing some beautiful and badass writing about love from elsewhere on the interwebs.

~~~~~

Wander. Roam. Opt for adventure.
Follow your curiosity with deliberate abandon.
Disappear into the wilderness with nothing but possibility to guide the way.
Lose yourself and trust you’ll find your way back home.
Indulge a fantasy of never returning to what once was.

~ From Andrea Lewicki’s gorgeous poem, “Celebrate the way back home.”

~~~~~

Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.

~ From Kim Addonizio’s poem “For Desire”

~~~~~

Leave everything — apartments, national parks, people’s hearts —
in better condition than you found them.

~ #27 on Alex Franzen’s “List of 27 ways to be an (even) better person & practically levitate with awesomery”

~~~~~

ON our first full day of hiking together, rain poured in sheets, smacking the soil. The world shone in gray light. Justin and I shouted over the downpour, sharing stories and hopes. We were drenched but giddy. Rain dissolved the trail — it was a muddy stream and we splashed through it — and the evergreens smelled sweet, of sap and clean wood.

~ From Aspen Matis’s NYT Modern Love essay “A Hikers Guide to Healing“

~~~~~

Doodle by the DoodleMaster, Pam Carlson

Pam Carlson (the artist behind my beautiful banner here and at Zebra Sounds, has a new blog! It’s called Daily Doodles and it will make you smile.

xo

 

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The tongues

By j on April 30, 2012

Photo by edikenkoyon on Flickr.

The first boy I ever loved was named Bobby. I tried to keep it a secret, but I guess my adoration was obvious. His last name was Crudo and on the playground, I plugged my ears to taunts of “Judo Crudo,” but I was only pretending to be bothered. In first grade, I was a gangly, freckled, bookwormy redhead; I’d been called much worse. My name up until then had been rhymed most often with cootie and booty, so being rhymed with the object of my desire was a big improvement. I don’t know what he thought. We didn’t talk about it. I can’t actually remember talking to him at all. About anything. I loved him from afar, across a crowded classroom. Bobby taught me how to pine more than how to love, and I pined for him masterfully, heroically, all the way to sixth grade, when I fell for Scott.

Scott was like the anti-Bobby. I didn’t like him at first. He was loud and had a lot of opinions for a sixth grader. He was almost always the center of attention and almost always in trouble. Then one day behind the library after school, he dared his best friend, David, to kiss me, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. On the one hand, I was intensely curious about the kissing thing; on the other, I’d never been curious at all about David, who was sweet and pudgy and utterly unassuming. And although his friends had told my friends that he liked liked me, just then, behind the library, he looked more mortified than impassioned. If he could’ve melted into the ground and disappeared forever, I think he would have.

I felt so sorry for him I stepped in between the two of them and let Scott have it. I told him David didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to. I told him I didn’t know why David was even his friend the way Scott treated him. I told him I thought he was mean and immature and that’s when Scott kissed me. On the mouth. With tongue.

It was like being plugged into an electrical socket, every nerve inside me raw and open and clamoring for more.

“That’s called French kissing,” he said afterward, studying me as if I were the subject of an experiment he’d just conducted. “The tongues,” he said. “That’s what makes it French.”

I nodded.

“Wanna do it again?” he asked me.

I nodded. We did it again. We did it again for quite a while in fact, until my limbs felt rubbery and my breath felt unreliable, and my insides were all jumbled and racing and alive, and I knew nothing would ever be the same again.

When, trembling, I said I had to go home and do my homework, Scott said, “okay,” and we separated, both in a daze, both of us trying to get our bearings, both of us suddenly remembering David, who was nowhere to be found.

~~~~~

Got a first kiss story? I’d love to hear it. (And yeah, I know. David. I feel bad about that. I do.)

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

jjj
Want more? A couple of times a month, I write emails. People write back.
I think this is how revolutions start.
I’d love you to join us.

Join the mail list

jjj

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Don’t delay

By j on April 23, 2012

 

Way back in January, Alex Franzen wrote a post titled “Add to the Love in the world, ” and I go back and read it sometimes when I’m feeling bruised and bitchy and like retreat is a viable option. It reminds me why I’m here, why this idea of fearless love matters, why I launched a year-long love project and then a website dedicated to my belief that being a warrior for love is the most noble, wild, beautiful thing we can do.

In her post (which you should read), Alex’s final suggestion is this.

Don’t delay.

Adding Love to the world isn’t a diet you start next Monday. Not that you should ever start a diet, next Monday. And adding Love to the world doesn’t start once you’ve cared for yourself ‘enough’.
It starts at the same time — and it is the same thing.

I love that. It is the same thing. People often tell me they have no time to be loving to themselves because they are too busy loving, helping, caring for others. Or they tell me they are too hurt and must spend time healing before they can feel okay connecting to other people. And while I understand both impulses, I’ve never fully bought into either one. I don’t think that loving outward and loving inward are mutually exclusive actions, and I absolutely believe that doing one facilitates the other.

Being generous, kind and grateful (honestly, not out of obligation or with the expectation of getting something specific in return) opens you up. It connects you to your world and to your soul, and from that place – tapped into your best self – it’s really hard to be self-flagellating.

And the reverse is true too. Taking time each day to consciously be kind to yourself – to do something you love, to look around and notice the magic (because it’s there, I promise), to make (write, paint, doodle, color) something, to just pause and breathe and believe in the miracle that is you – fortifies you, replenishes your soul and expands you. Being generous with yourself makes you more generous with the world. During my year of fearless love, I learned that lesson (wonderfully) over and over  again.

Love begets love, and adding love to the world and loving yourself are the same thing. If you doubt that, for just this week, pretend that you don’t. Be guileless; perform acts of unabashed kindness, be generous to yourself and to others and see what happens.

And then come back and tell me about it.

xo

~~~~~~~~~~

A moment of mush. I sent an email to AHT subscribers over the weekend. In it, I shared a personal story, and I invited people to write back to me with their own stories because I knew my experience wasn’t uncommon and I believe in the value of sharing. I was particularly interested in hearing how people have used personal rituals and ceremonies to heal themselves. The response was immediate and amazing. Some people wrote about their rituals, some told me their stories, and some sent me (perfectly badass) words of encouragement and love. I’m SO grateful to everyone who responded. The honesty and generosity of those emails undid me completely (and then, as love so often does, put me back together again). If you haven’t replied but would like to, please do. I can’t tell you how much your responses mean to me.

And so, yeah, a couple of times a month, I write emails to delve deeper into the conversations that begin here. I’d love you to join in.

Join the mail list

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Love + creativity = breakthrough

By j on April 16, 2012

Over the weekend I read “34 Things I’ve Learned About Life And Adventure,” by Chris Guillebeau, in which he said:

“When in doubt about the next step, help someone and make something.”

The whole post is full of inspiring, useable advice, but that particular thing…  that one lit me up inside. Deciding to “help someone,” consciously, generously and without expectation, plants you squarely in a place of love. “Making something” exercises your creative muscles, engages your heart and your imagination, makes you  feel whole and purposeful and plugged into your best, most energized self.

Chris goes on to say: “Do these two actions every day, 365 days a year. When you get stuck at any point in any process, come back to the basics: helping and creating.  (These things also help when you’re depressed.)”

What I love most about the advice is that it’s, at least for me, counter-intuitive. When I’m stuck – personally and professionally – I have a tendency to keep banging my head against the same wall. I stare at the blank screen or write page after ranting page in my notebook, and I hope for a breakthrough. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn’t. I’m amazed how often the breakthrough occurs not when I’m banging my head, but when I walk away from the stuck place entirely. Do something different, rest my poor little overactive worry-filled brain.

And what can I say? I love the idea of resting my worry-filled brain by helping and creating.

In my planner, on every single day this week, the first two things on my to-do list are “Help someone” and “Make something.” I anticipate a kickass week of love and creativity ahead. I’ll let you know how it goes.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

I’m writing a really special letter to my email subscribers this week. It explains this picture…

Join the mail list.

jjjjjjj

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No need to solve for X

By j on April 2, 2012

When my friend, Annika Martins invited me to join her blog crawl in celebration of her coming-soon new website, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. For one thing, I’m crazy about Annika. For another, I’m truly excited about her new direction, her plans for the future and her hellbent northiness. I’d have said yes anyway, but then she told me what the blog crawl question was, and the deal was sealed.

She asked, “What do you need to celebrate?”

And as I read her question, my answer came as easily and unconsciously as an exhale, as clear and bright and unequivocal  as the day outside my window. “I need to celebrate me,” I thought, and not the me I usually write about – the one who’s trying to figure out what it means to live, love and write fearlessly and from the heart – but the skin and bones, blood and guts, absolutely non-metaphorical me.

Recently I wrote a post on Zebra Sounds called Body Math. It was a hard post to write; I held my breath when I pressed publish. In Body Math, I talk about a time when thoughts of my body consumed me, when my distorted view of it informed every single decision I made, and yet I could not have been more separated from it. My body was not a temple. It wasn’t sacred or strong or beautiful.

It was a predicament, a situation to be controlled and contained.

All these years later, it’s painful for me to look back on that time, though in the weeks since I posted, I’ve revisited the subject often in the pages of my notebook, remembering scenes I’d forgotten, examining them like rocks under a microscope, then putting them away until I’m ready to pull them back out again days later. There are jewels here, knowledge buried deep, secrets being unearthed. It’s a process. An ongoing, slightly treacherous, very necessary personal excavation.

So when Annika asked me what I need to celebrate, I thought immediately of my physical self, my poor, beleaguered body that has been the subject of so much loathing and longing and fear and brutal examination. It’s one thing to accept it. I’ve done that. It’s quite another thing to declare it a cause for celebration…

So instead of lamenting its age, its size, its shape, I’m going to celebrate how my body does damn near everything I ask it to, how it bends and balances and breathes on the mat; how it runs and makes love and hikes and dances; how sometimes it knows things first (before my mind does), and that’s when it sends me coded messages – the braille of goosebumps, the Morse code of a pounding heart.

I’m going to celebrate the intricacy of me: my miracle of a central nervous system; my amazingly dependable eyelids; my shoulders, my hands, my feet, my skin, my wrists, my ankles, my hips. It’s a wonder more doesn’t go wrong, actually, considering all these moving, (swaying, twisting) parts. It’s more poetry isn’t it, than math, more rhyme than reason.

There’s no need to solve for X.

Today, I’m celebrating my body for the pale, freckled, bruised, aging, beautiful, resilient, able, astonishing thing that it is. Because it deserves it. And because I’m grateful. And because it makes me sad that it took this long for me to finally just say, “thank you.”

~~~~~

I’m one of 10 writers Annika asked to blog about celebration. See what the others had to say and get info on how you can join in at The Celebration Series.

~~~~~

I’ll be taking a week off to… well, write mostly, and plan and plant and recenter myself. So no post next Monday, but I’ll be back on the 16th.

xo

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Forward motion

By j on March 26, 2012

On Saturday, I drove about 160 miles (round trip) to spend the day with someone who I’ve been friends with for decades. We went for a 2-hour walk along the shore of a quiet, gray lake, and we talked about love and art and sadness and how personal evolution works – two steps forward, one step back. We bitched a little too, but my friend is really funny; bitch sessions often turn into comedy routines and after a while I inevitably lose the urge to complain.

On our way back to the car, I wandered into a story I haven’t shared with many people. I had this weird feeling as I approached it, a realization that I could change the subject safely and she wouldn’t push, or I could move forward into the thick of it and see what happened. It was literally a few seconds, the pause of a breath, but enough time for my mind to present me with not only those two options, but a series of questions. How far into the story would I be willing to go? What would she think of me? What purpose would the telling serve?

It was that last question that propelled me forward. Not because I had an answer, but because I didn’t. In that instant, I understood that we were literally and figuratively walking an unfamiliar path, but we were doing it together. In a way I couldn’t have articulated at the time, that moment was all about love. It was about having felt impossibly alone not very long ago, and feeling the exact opposite here, now, in the presence of my friend.

I told her my story and when the telling of it made me cry, she reached over and rubbed my back, but we didn’t stop walking. The flow of words and the rhythm of our forward motion were tied together, a fact we somehow both understood. So we kept right on walking, side by side, my friend silent and solid, and me…  uncoiling a truth tightly wound inside me, watching my footfalls on the gravel path and the path itself disappearing beneath them, step by step, mile by mile… until finally, more of it was behind me than ahead.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Want more? A couple of times a month, I write emails to like-hearted souls. I’d love you to join us. Join the mail list

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What I know

By j on March 19, 2012

I watched Brene Brown’s first TEDx Houston talk in April, 2011. I was in San Diego for my nephew’s wedding. I was four months into my love project and feeling lost, divided. There was the me that was fearlessly loving, believing with all my might in what love could do (no less than change the world!) and there was the me that was struggling in the most important relationship of my life. My husband and I had come through a years-long storm, and we were finding that surviving the worst of it isn’t the same as happily ever after.

I watched my nephew get married that weekend, he and his bride giddy with love and possibility, and I hoped they’d do it differently than we had… and hoping that broke my heart.

On the morning after the wedding, sitting in my brother-in-law’s empty house, I watched the TEDx video and it rocked my confused little world. I was like a sinner hearing the gospel; it was so big and important and true to me, I didn’t even know how to process it. Brene said that people who have a strong sense of love and belonging are people who fully embrace vulnerability. They are people who believe that what makes them vulnerable, makes them beautiful.

It changed everything for me. Not that day, or that week, or that month, but over the course of the almost-year since I watched it. It was the beginning of deep down, gut-wrenching honesty, first with myself and then with my husband. It was the beginning of true fearlessness, of love like a religion, of faith. (I’m writing about all of this in The Love Essays, which are all about last year – the love project, yes, but behind the love project too, the part I didn’t blog about, the part where, for me, the real shit went down.)

This past weekend, I watched Brene Brown’s latest TED talk, twice. I cried when she said, “If we’re going to find our way back to each other, vulnerability is going to be that path,” because I know it’s true. It’s true in the great big, worldwide humanity sense, and in the smaller, bewildered, brokenhearted sense.

And this time my belief doesn’t stem from a leap of faith. This time I know because I was there. Am there. Living, breathing, trembling proof.

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Because I can

By j on March 12, 2012

I’ve been trying to construct this post all day. Not write it so much as arrange it, grab all my disparate thoughts and lay them out here in a way that is coherent, if not quite artful. The problem is I’m tired. I’ve been diving deep, writing as brave as I can, testing my boundaries and as a result, the last four days have been crazy with connection. Beautiful and revealing and fierce and raw.

I keep coming here to capture it in some meaningful way, but I always only stare at the blinking cursor…

And think about Matt Frerking.

~~~~~

Matt’s a neuroscientist and a professor in Portland, Oregon (or at least that’s where he was when This American Life told his story, which I heard last week). He suffers from narcolepsy with cataplexy, which causes him to, out of nowhere, collapse, literally. He goes limp, and though his brain remains fully functioning, he can only lie in a heap, paralyzed, unable to move at all.

Only what I just said isn’t entirely true. It doesn’t happen out of nowhere, and that’s why I can’t stop thinking about him. Matt’s attacks are brought on by strong positive emotions, like happiness, enthusiasm, passion… love.

Matt is married. He has a wife, stepchildren, grandchildren that he loves, but because he loves them, spending time with them is difficult. It often incapacitates him. In the This American Life episode, “Held Hostage,” Matt tells the story of going to his brother’s wedding. It was a happy event; Matt was happy for his brother and therefore having an attack the entire time. He was propped against the wall, totally conscious, hoping everyone would simply carry on and ignore him. But when the time came to take family pictures, everyone gathered around Matt. They wanted to include him. It was embarrassing, awkward.

Sweet.

When he tells the story to the interviewer from This American Life, Matt hasn’t actually seen the picture that was taken. But talking about it gets to him, thinking about his family’s desire to make sure he was included. You can hear his voice slow, his words slur. Eventually he has to stop because even the thought of it is more than his body can stand.

When he is able to return, thirty minutes later, he tells his interviewer that he tries to avoid happiness, tries not to be too present, too emotionally invested in the moments of his life. Holding hands with his wife, snuggling, talking to his kids on the phone – these things we take for granted – are too hard for him. Matt says he tries to think of himself as a robot.

And yet…

He still has attacks. “Although Matt tries to avoid happiness, it’s still a part of his life. He’s proof,” says the interviewer, “that you can’t avoid happiness. It’ll find you, no matter what.”

~~~~~

The story breaks my heart, of course. I can’t get Matt Frerking (or the million others around the world who suffer from the condition) out of my head. Every time I sit down to write this post, what I want to write is Matt’s story, and I wonder why. Why, after having just experienced four days of intense and dizzying connection, do I find my mind wandering to a man who couldn’t possibly have endured it?

And then I realize, suddenly, that’s exactly why. Because as hard as the last few days have been, as many times as I’ve cried, and struggled for the right words, and stared straight into my darkness… the truth is I’m better for it. I’m stronger. In reaching back to those who have reached out to me, I can feel myself beginning to heal.

Matt makes me want to go places I haven’t been brave enough to go before, even knowing that it won’t always work out the way it has this time. Sometimes I’ll risk my heart and it’ll get busted up. Someone will hurt me (or I’ll hurt myself), and I’ll cry and not be able to stop, and I’ll wonder if I’m good-strong-smart-fearless enough to get back up and do it again.

And then, because I am, because I can, I’ll do exactly that.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Want more? Every two-ish weeks, I’m writing emails to like-hearted souls. I’d love you to join us. Join the mail list

Photo Credit: Pam Calrson

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41 days of connection

By j on March 5, 2012

At the same time that I launched A Human Thing, I launched a project with my friend, Julia Fehrenbacher, called “41 6-Word Days.” We invited people to join us, and they did, sharing their lives in beautiful, revealing, clumsy, poetic 6-word snippets. Most people wandered in and out of the space, but ten hardy souls went the distance with us, posting all 41 days. As promised, I arranged the 6-word days of all us diehards into 41-day glimpses; I was touched by the life-pictures that emerged.

I’m so glad we did this.

For 41 days…
we were openhearted, brave, wise, kind, hilarious, happy and sad.

We filled our days with gratitude, affirmations, struggle, release…
yoga like prayer.

We went to work and stayed home and made decisions.
We took charge, and we relinquished control.
We walked dogs, and played with cats, and mourned a bunny.
We auditioned and hiked and got (sometimes more than) half lit.
We read books and constellations, loved our kitchens and our moms.
We visited doctors, labs, emergency rooms…
We waited for results.
We fell in love with Days 4 and 8 and 14 and 39.

We had SO MUCH TROUBLE sleeping.

… so we all got into bed with Nancy.

We questioned our sanity, our choices, our abilities.
We lost jobs and focus. We lost track of north.

We held each others’ hands.

We celebrated, yearned, gave up on everything one day and started over, determined, the next.

We believed in different things (in God, our dreams, our friends, ourselves) but no matter what we believed in, when life got scary, we each leaned into our faith.

We had epiphanies and relearned old truths about the joy of singing, the power of just starting, the value of quiet, the healing properties of the ground, the sky, the trees, the beginnings and endings of days.

For 41 days we were together,
alive and aware and fucked up and remarkable.

And we were, absolutely, concise.

~~~~~~~~~~

I’m in the middle of writing an email to everyone who signed up to get it. Like the 41-day project, the emails are an experiment – a collaborative (slightly scary), more intimate space to go beyond what we cover here in the blog. I loved writing the last one, loved hearing from you guys, loved expanding the conversation. I think it’s just going to get better and better. If you haven’t signed up, now’s the time. The email I’m currently writing will go out this week.

Join the mailing list.

xo

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