Get Your Belly Over... to the Elephant Journal

If you missed my post on lovin' your belly over at New Approaches, come over to the elephant journal.  I'm talking about some unique ways to increase the peace with your body image.

A Good Death

 

Picture from the Juneau Empire files

 

 

For my grandfather, Bill Ray

 

 

These are the sounds after a quick death following a long life: The telephone rings are steady, but not constant. Arrangements are made swiftly, with no big decisions, discussions or surprises. Voices are calm. You hear a lot of sighs. Only a thin layer of shock drifts by, like a cirrus cloud.

 

My grandfather lived to be 91. We loved each other and said so in later years, but we didn’t speak often. He was strong-willed and difficult with those he loved the most. He was a storyteller and a lawmaker. A liquor hawker. A secret-keeper and a gold collector. He was a name caller. A fisherman and a painter and a writer.

He was a child of the universe who was here, and now isn’t.

A constellation of ancestors, long twists and turns of accident or fate. A mother’s eyes, a grandfather’s nose. The birth name, Will, that he grew into, but later changed.

My best memories of him are when he told stories. He sits at a table, one hand on his coffee mug. He is already laughing, his eyes shining with anticipation. “This is a good one,” he says. “Wait until you hear this one.”

It’s the one where his father’s dog, Whitey, fell out of the fishing boat, perilously close to the falls. “‘What’d you do, Dad?’ I asked him.”
‘I said, So long, Whitey!”

He shakes his head and chuckles, his laugh still sturdy among the laughs of his listeners.

I wish I had listened better, had a better memory. I wish I’d written the stories down instead of letting them sing by, all wisps and trails. I wonder where do all those stories go when we die? Do they live on, swirling and hanging in the air where he was? In the cells of his great grandchildren who he never met? In the pages he wrote?

 

“Reaaad boooook, Mama,” my daughter says, pattering over to me.

She hands me Goodnight Moon. Her eyes are big and blue, her cheeks full and smooth. I start reading, my eyes taking in the flat greens and tomato reds of the book. By the time I get to And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush, I am in tears.

All those goodnights. The words of the book, a childhood favorite, reach back through my mind, unlocking the little girl inside of me. The one whose grandpa was larger than life, full of laughs and stories. He was big and handsome. He slipped her sips of beer in the kitchen. Sent her postcards when he travelled. He appeared on the radio and TV, making jokes and laws.
 

These are the sounds after a good death: Quiet sobs. Voices on the phone, shaky, but not shattered. Patter of small feet, new tales unfolding. Goodnight stars, goodnight air. The rush of memories, of stories, rising and falling, lifting into the sky.

 

Guest Posting at the Elephant

I'm over at the Elephant Journal today. Come on over to find out why this non-athletic, gentle moving gal has taken up running.

This

So, this really amazing thing happened this week.

I sent one of my recent blog posts to the Huffington Post and they published it. And all these friends and family members on Facebook have been complimenting me and sending love and it feels like a really great birthday, like going from celebration to celebration and getting piles of cards with little notes from all my favorite people. It feels like lying at the beach and letting the sun sink into my skin. It feels like being at my own funeral and soaking in all the really sweet things people have to say. Except I get to be alive.

There's been some hard stuff this week, too. Someone close to my husband died. The kids were a bit spasmic. I worried about some people close to me.

Life is hard and good. Parenting is hard and good. Love is hard and good.

But right now, I'm going to do something I don't do so often. I'm going to soak it all in and enjoy it a bit.

And then I'm going to write.

Migraines, Mojo and Moments

Last Saturday, I got a migraine for the first time in about fourteen years. It started as a lingering headache, which stayed at bay while my husband and I went out on a rare dinner date. The moment we got back home, a small squiggly, clear worm floated into my field of vision, and I knew the headache was about to get worse. I went to bed at 7:30 PM and slept and slept and slept. The next day, the headache felt like it was resting in the nape of my neck, ready to uncoil and spring back into action at any minute. I felt spacey all day, like I probably shouldn’t be driving and what the hell am I doing at the gym? and there is no way I can go to the potluck for my kid’s classroom. I handed the kids off to my husband and slept for most of the day.

When I woke up on Monday, the headache had retreated a bit more, but I still felt spacey. In fact, I felt spacey all week. I started googling things like migraine brain tumor and sleepy aneurysm head. I finally went to my doctor on Thursday, who theorized that my body was just all freaked out from the migraine, and I probably wasn’t dying. This was good, relaxing news, and I felt ready to re-enter my life and start writing and exercising again.

That night, my daughter came down with a fever and was home from daycare with me the next day, so my plans for writing and running were replaced with incessant reading (“Elmo book! Elmo book!”) and naps and lying on the couch while my daughter watched Thomas movies on Netflix.

I don’t like it much when things don’t go the way I plan them to. I complain and I pray and I try to go with the flow and then I complain some more. Despite the fact that so much of life consists of things not going how we plan them to, I still fight it.

Yesterday, I heard a man say, “Around every corner is another spiritual experience.” And I thought, Oh.

Things had felt good lately. Writing has helped me circle back around to myself. When I’m really in the flow, it feels like a spiritual experience. Like I’m doing no more than just sitting here, letting the words stream through my fingertips.  And running, or yoga or dancing brings much needed endorphins my way. So when I miss these things, for even a handful of days, I feel bereft. I feel like I’ve lost my mojo. Instead of not being able to wait to sit down and write, I want to avoid it. Same with exercise.  

Maybe the spiritual experience of this unplanned week is that life is about moments. That despite the crappiness of that headache, damned if it didn’t feel good to sleep. That in between being grumpy that my daughter was home sick, we nuzzled up to each other, and I felt like a mama cat with my little kitten, close and warm and right. And maybe getting my mojo back is as simple as sitting down and writing even when I don’t feel like it, even when the words are trickling instead of flowing, and running that eleven minute mile even when it feels like slogging through mud.

Onward and Upwards

Fear crouches in my chest. The voices start up: who do you think you are? Why don’t you get a real job? You are going to embarrass yourself. You should be spending more time with your kids instead of writing.

Really? You guys again? I think.

With my recent recommitment to writing, I feel more like me. More alive. I’m finally, finally doing that one thing that I’ve always wanted to do but been too stuck or afraid or busy to really dive into consistently.

I’m not sure why writing feels easy and fun right now. Maybe it’s because I’m on the fast track to 40’sville and I’m realizing this is it, this is my life. Maybe all those years of therapy are finding kicking in. But wherever this tailwind is from, I’m grateful.

 
But I’m also scared.

I used to get frustrated when I’d work and work and work on an issue, seemingly moving forward, and then without warning, I’d backtrack. Fear and external challenges would pop up and sometimes I’d sabotage myself. The sabotage usually showed up as overeating, too much television, or isolation.

Then I heard of the concept of the ‘upward spiral.’ The theory is that as we move through life, working on our issues, we move forwards and up, around and around. On the Slinky of life, if you will. We don’t backtrack. But as we circle around, propelling upwards, we revisit old places. Hard places.

As a slowly recovering perfectionist, the idea of backsliding is blasphemy to me. But the idea of spiraling up makes sense. I’m writing and I’m running. Most importantly, I’m cozying up to myself. I’m showing up and showing myself: the awkward parts, the scary parts, the funny parts. All the parts.

I’m cycling up and around.

Last week, someone I care about criticized my writing, and worse, me. Because I believe in kindness, I’m not going to say more about that. But because I also believe in truth telling, I’m going to say that it sucked and my heart hurt. And for about 24 hours, that external, critical voice melded with my internal, critical voice and those voices were freakin’ loud. I doubted myself and the choices I was making in writing and sharing this all with you.

And then I talked to some friends and to my husband. I realized, oh, I bet this is that upward spiral thing again. And I breathed and I slept and when I woke up the next day, I felt a lot better.  

So see, you silly voices? I’m on to you. You saw me circling around and came out to meet me. You even brought friends. If you’re right? If this writing thing doesn’t work out? I can get a job. I can regroup and try something else. But before that, I’m going to give this thing a chance. This one thing that brings me alive, that brings me up and up and up.

Fear of Success

 

 

I have always known that success freaked me out a little bit. Fear of failure is pretty clear cut—no one wants to fail. But fear of success is murkier.

The last blog post I wrote got 1500 page views. Compared to some very successful blogs, that is a drop in the bucket. For me, only a month into this incarnation of my blog, it was amazing. I have had a few pieces of writing published before, but I’m pretty sure none of those pieces ever got 1500 sets of eyes on them.

 
I posted the piece on Monday morning. I plugged it on Facebook and thus began the compulsive checking of my stats. Each time I put Thomas and his Friends on for the kids, which is more times than I would like to admit, I checked. When I got up and when I went to bed and a bunch of times in between, I checked. I had liked the piece while I was writing it, and I had that feeling I sometimes get while writing like it wasn’t actually me writing it, like I’m just making space in the universe for something that already existed. I revised it and tweaked it and asked my husband if it was okay that I publicly suggested he was glued to his chair in his man cave for the first months of our son’s life. And then I sent it out into the world. Or at least Facebook.

All week, I’ve been checking, checking, checking.

 
All week, I’ve been not writing.

For the past few months, I’ve been enjoying the most creative era I’ve ever had. Stories have been shooting into my mind like stars, glittering and plentiful. Until this week, when instead of writing, I was checking.

It hit me. I am afraid of success because then I will have to keep doing it. Keep being successful. Keep writing stuff that will make people want to hit the “share” button on Facebook.  I will have to not disappoint and because I’m an anxious, neurotic overthinker, I will be constantly stressed out and striving, a one hit wonder.

So I’m letting myself off the hook. I want to write because when I do, my whole body lights up and it feels like magic, like alchemy. Because it helps me makes something else out of the fact that the people we love die and that yesterday I was up to my elbows in my son’s hot watermelon vomit. It helps me slow down all those moments I might otherwise lose, and sculpt them into something a little more permanent than the constellation of brain cells where they would otherwise reside and morph and fade.

Have you ever felt afraid of success?

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”—Marianne Williamson



photo credit by Andreas Krappweis
  

Fear

 

I’ve been grumpy for weeks.

Before I had kids, I set up my life to be spacious. I worked part-time so I had ample opportunity to take good care of myself; I could practice yoga, dance, write and walk. I could watch TV and relax. I spent time with friends. I am high maintenance in that way—it takes a good deal of effort for me to simply feel okay. Some of that is because of the anxiety and depression that I am prone to. Some of it is just because I’m freakin’ sensitive—research suggests that some of us are just born with nervous systems that overload easily. I feel things deeply. I shut down when there are too many people around or too much noise. I get overwhelmed. It’s just who I am, and something I’m trying to accept, despite living in a world that places great value and emphasis on doing.

And then we had two kids.

 
They are gorgeous. They bring great meaning and love and snuggles to our lives.

And they squeeze out all the extra time.

So I stopped watching TV. I stopped spending much time with friends. We started sending our son to daycare a few days a week. So I could breathe. So I could attempt to tame the sprawl of toys and crumbs and laundry.

And then we had another baby. And I took a part-time job.

It’s a low-paying editing job that I can do from home. It worked for awhile. It felt good to be contributing a little teensy trickle of money to our family. It felt good to use my brain and do something I was good at. Something besides raising two little munchkins, which is amazing, but does not ever leave me feeling wow, I am really good at this. 

My husband provides well for us, but there is something in me that can’t let go of my little job. Though it gets in the way of writing. And yoga. And breathing. Though it stresses me out and takes time away from my husband and I.

I am so scared to let it go.

We are so fortunate that I don’t have to work for a paycheck right now. I could be writing more. I could be taking better care of my kids' mom. So why do I create this problem for myself? This fully first world problem?

Guilt. And fear. 

Guilt that I’m a bad mother because I need so much time to myself. That if my babies go to daycare a few days a week, I should be using that time to work. To be productive. To contribute to society.

Fear that people will judge me. That because I decided to be a mom, it’s selfish to want so much time to myself.  

Fear that if I let go of my little job, I’ll have to really commit to writing.  And then I’ll find out that I’m really not good enough.  

If you were my best friend and you were sitting where I’m sitting, I’d say, “Sweet Lord, woman. Go for it. You have nothing to lose.”

My husband says, “The kids go to daycare because it’s good for them and they like it. Your job is not serving you.”

So why is it so hard to say that to myself? To believe it?

What do you do when you get stuck in fear?

Thank You

 

I just want to take a moment and thank those of you who are reading. I’ve gotten some really positive feedback on my writing, and that means the world to me.

I’ve never wanted to be anything but a writer.

Except when I wanted to be a theater actress, a rock star, a grief counselor, or a hockey player.

But I love to string words together like beads, fumbling for the right combination, when the words fit together just right and spark a current. When they glow.

I struggle all across my life with the old not good enough tapes, so deep and ancient they are nestled in my bones. I am digging to remove the tapes, but it is surgery, deep and painful and bloody. So it means the world to hear that my words are working, they are shining something to you, connecting us like beads, like glowing words.


photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ravages/2576309184/">Ravages</a>