On Cleanliness and De-Cluttering

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."  ~ William Morris 

This is a great quote.  I've been cleaning today.  If you would like a reminder of why it's better to cook bacon in the oven, rather than on the stovetop, you should spend an hour cleaning the stove-side steel shelf that you have not cleaned thoroughly in a month (COUGH-it's.really.been.more.like.a.year).   Full disclosure: this activity might, in fact, put you off bacon entirely for a while.  

Deep cleaning almost always coincides with efforts to get other things in my life "cleaned up."  These days I'm working on balance, on nurturing my health and my joy.  I'm reaching for the tools that have always helped me: love, time in my garden, time on my bike, food that is "close to the source" instead of packaged neatly and chemically preserved.  I'm working to find my healthy center again, and my efforts are working.  I'm trying to define what "healthy" looks like to me, for me.  

Questions of body image seem almost impossibly tangled with judgement.  I have friends who feel too skinny, friends who feel "fit but fat" and friends who either feel they are too fat or feel other people feel they are too fat, those other people ranging from mothers to spouses to friends to utter strangers who feel qualified to judge because we have BMI ranges and weight charts with nifty labels that let everyone who cares to indulge that sort of impulse feel like an expert.  It's a colossal waste of energy, and if it were not so charged with emotional pain it would be boring.  I'm bored by my own exploration of how best to manage my weight.  Sick of it.  Bored to death by my own voice when people ask how my latest efforts are faring, what the "secret" is.

The secret, it seems, is probably nothing new.  It is likely to be comprised of eating real food and moving our bodies as much as we can.  The secret is probably avoiding foods that contain chemicals we can't identify or pronounce.  It's likely best to eat food that didn't come from a process (Ore-Ida friends, remember the "formulated factory" label?  there's a sign!).  The secret is probably balancing our lives so that pleasure and work, joy and striving, stress and reward, are all in balance. The secret is probably enjoying food without guilt, but not turning it into a reward and punishment system that makes us lose sight of the basic function of food as fuel, or the simple pleasures of food as part of a life well lived.  The secret may involve lounging in gardens with books, dancing to music, hugging people we love, drinking wine or coffee or whatever makes your heart sing--just not in a mega-mug.  

I have struggled and wrestled with "healthy weight"--but not with any other symptoms of health--my entire life.  In my 20's I discovered that if I quit worrying about the number on the scale and whether other people thought I was too fat to walk, hike, play tennis, bike or swim, I could have a damned fine time doing all of those things and become a fitter (slightly smaller) version of myself. I have especially always loved biking, which has been a favorite activity from the time I had my first gold Huffy with the sparkly banana seat.  In my 30's, I routinely logged 150 miles a week on my bikes, most of it on the Boise Greenbelt pathway.  

That said, there is a weight range that I feel comfortable in.  I feel strong, energetic and (if I'm getting enough time on my bike saddle or in my walking shoes) fit.  That weight range is well above what weight charts think I should weigh.  I'm not big-boned, I'm big-curved.  And if I diet and struggle enough to get to the "target" weight, I'm tired all of the time but can't sleep 12 hours a night because I have to fight like a demon to maintain it.  

But you know what's strange about our culture?  If I write about wanting to get back to MY self-defined healthy range, which is still in the too-high BMI range, the too-heavy for healthcare discounts range, I will risk being labeled as a hater.  A fat-shamer.  I'm not, for the record.  I have very little interest in telling healthy women or men how much I think they should weigh.  I have very little interest in anyone else's weight at all, except as a function of how good they feel.  If I love someone, I'm likely to also have an opinion about how much junk (food that isn't food!) is in their daily diet.  Live, I say.  Splurge a little, I say.  Enjoy, I say.  Eat produce prepared delectably. Eat what makes you feel good, and makes you feel like living well.  Hell, eat some junk!  Just don't confuse food with happiness, don't confuse the bliss of a chunk of chocolate cake with fulfillment of a lasting kind.  Don't feel entitled to a gigantic serving of anything Starbucks or Taco Bell or your favorite Thai place makes because you had a difficult day.  The food and the challenges of everyday life are not related, you see.  Conflating them will cause no end of blechiness, including the fact that you won't enjoy the food.  

But the fact that I need to cushion my words with these assurances--I'm one of you!  I am not judging!--hurts, more than a little.  It makes me aware of how achingly judged people who weigh "too much" or "too little" feel.  It makes me aware of how lucky I am to have been loved and have found success in many corners of my life while simultaneously being a heavy person.  I know that the labels hurt--but I have also learned that the labels are only words.  I know that they are not limits on what I can do unless I believe them.  I know that it is 100% okay to love the me I am today while striving to be a fitter, and slightly smaller as a result, version of me.  I know that those who love me will love me no matter what.  

For me, life at my heaviest was not painful because I thought I would be judged for my size.  In fact, I was often shocked on those occasions when I realized that I had been judged for my size.  No, it was painful because I did not feel true to myself.  It was painful because I hated how clearly my size was reflecting the crazily out of balance nature of my life.  It was painful because Jeff, my then-husband, felt responsible for all of that and it was so visible, so clearly present, that I could not deny any of it.  It was painful because it was actually more difficult to do the things I believe healthy bodies are meant to do, to dance and walk and bike.

As ever, I am aware that not everyone has been as fortunate as I have been.  Not everyone feels loved no matter their weight.  Not everyone has been successful despite having a body size outside the narrowly accepted limits.  And so, while I love Morris' quote, it helps to de-clutter a home, and a life, I think some variants are useful:

• Eat nothing that you do not fully enjoy, and do not allow guilt to color your enjoyment.
• Remove from your life anyone or anything that does not make you feel joyous, happy, worthy or beautiful.  
• Corollary: Feeling guilty that someone who is important in your life does not make you feel joyous, happy, worthy or beautiful is not a reason to ignore this life rule.

My best to all who happen this way.

~plk

Carrying Weight

The older I get, the more difficult it is to accept backsliding. In 2012 and 2013, I made a lot of progress on three important-to-me fronts - losing weight, eliminating debt and finding a balance between work and life. I had a plan for each of these items, and I was working these plans like a mofo. And then life intruded. I lost focus on all three of these. I had unexpected expenses and made a major purchase (new car!). I lost my focus on weight management, and then I wound up sick and taking a medication that turned me into an eating machine.  Many things happened at work that conspired to dial up the intensity of my work life.  

And, too, I had many happy things happen. I've met and married a wonderful man, I've reconnected with some friends and family, and I've made new friends. If this were a balance sheet exercise, I'd be in the black. But life isn't really like that. Personal fulfillment doesn't work as an average across categories.

So, in early February, I took stock of where I was and had a little melt-down.  Several of them, actually. I kicked and swore and cried. And, at the end of that, I'm still where I am and there is nothing to be done except dust myself off and rewrite the plans and get to work again.  

That's the thing, though. Once I've kicked something, once I've made progress and corrected course a few times, I know how to find that course again--but I also know exactly how difficult it was, exactly how much effort it required. The effort to dig deep and find the energy to get back on course is simply more difficult the third, fifth or hundredth time. For the first time in a long time, I realized that I'd begun to question whether it is even worth the effort.  

Of course it is worth it. It is merely fatigue and the weight of being disheartened that makes it seem unworthy. Actually, it is the physical weight of my heavier body and the psychic weight of being disheartened about backsliding. And it is simply the bone-deep knowledge that it will never be easier than it is now (the corollary of which is that it will only get more difficult if I wait) that is difficult to accept.  

So I'm shaking it off.  I'm reminding myself why these goals are important. Here are four reasons:

1. Debt puts a stranglehold on your ability to make choices.  

2. Carrying this extra weight is very tiring, and I have a lot of pretty clothes that will not, at present, button.  :)

3. My work life is difficult, and it also is a handy excuse not to spend time doing what is difficult and very important to my heart--writing.  

4. I want to live a fulfilled life, and this stuff stands between me and my ability to do that.  

It's Sunday, the day each week that I, and many of us, prepare for the challenges that will come at us in the days ahead.  I'm being gentle with myself today, but I'm resolute. It is not helpful to kick myself for losing focus, it is not helpful to berate myself for falling into familiar, bad habits. So, I'm not going to to that. Instead, I'm going to pick one or two of those three big goal areas and make a plan to get moving forward again, just a tiny bit wiser than I was before. A tiny bit warier, too. 

Sending love out to all of my fellow travelers.  

~plk

Bring on the Forsythia

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself today, and also pretty resolute.  I was just out in the back yard looking at the forsythia, trying to will it to bloom immediately and end this whole winter thing for real.  

It's been an interesting and demanding couple of months. I've been thinking a lot about the way, for a writer, your life fuels your craft. I've been thinking about the fact that when we write essays and blogs, we are writing about real people in our real lives.  It is a tricky thing to write about people you know, people you love. It's easy with colleagues, or those we know socially, but it gets tricky (and worth reading) quickly when we are writing about family, spouses, besties. How to ensure that your "material" isn't an invasion of their privacy?  How to avoid being paralyzed in the telling of a story?  Often I managed that balance by writing fiction. :) 

But I have stories to tell now that will be cheapened and weakened by that strategy. And I have been thinking lots about that balance. When my late husband, Jeff, was alive, I wrote almost nothing about his illnesses, his challenges, our challenges.  He was a very private person, and both a stoic Czech and a Nebraskan.  He hated pity, despised selfishness and pettiness, had a core of something like steel or iron or titanium infused with grace, better able to face the truth than almost anyone I've ever known. So part of my decisions not to write about him were to honor his sense of privacy--but it had another function, too. Before he had cancer, he had some chronic illnesses that were difficult to live with.  They were illnesses that impacted everything in our lives, from finances to lifestyle choices to our relationship with one another. And those realities shaped the life choices I was able to make. As a person, I carved out online spaces and pieces of writing where I could be just me, just Patti, and in those spaces I did not write about Jeff. What I gradually realized during that time is that it felt, as I assume it does in almost every close and committed relationship at one point or another, that his needs were automatically more important than my needs. Imagine my surprise, when I finally shoved those words out of my mouth in a counseling session one afternoon, when my counselor's response was a very calm, "Well, yes. They actually are more important, or at least more urgent, and probably always will be. But that is a factor having to do more with the person you've chosen to be than with Jeff's needs."  

Because I could have left, you see. I could have given up entirely and left. I could have driven big changes in our home life. I could have said no, I could have said "not my problem" and I could have stopped fighting on his behalf. Some of the choices I made are permanent--I'll never have a baby, for example.  And sometimes people ask me if I regret that choice. I wish it were otherwise, will probably always have a soft spot in my heart where I wonder what might have been. The only actual regrets I have, though, are in not being more kind, not being more courageous with Jeff. All he wanted was for me to be happy, and there were times I was afraid to ask him to help. My motives were pure--to be protective of him when he needed some buffering from the world--but I do think I erred on the side of cowardice.

That moment in the counselor's office was one that changed my whole understanding of the universe and my place in it and how resentment can color everything you see. I still, six years later, have moments when realization explodes like a flare and I know that what is happening to me will only change if I change it. A fact that is both empowering and exhausting. When I'm feeling resentful, most of the time, it's mine to undo.   

When I'm feeling trapped, I need to remember that something made me make, and re-make, and re-re-make the choice that has me now caught in a situation I don't care for.  The demands of my job, for example, were pretty well known to me when I said, waaaaay back last summer, that I wasn't sure I wanted to step into this circle of crazy. But step into that circle I did, and I need to own that choice and work hard to focus on the good stuff, on changing what I can around me for the better.  

Yesterday my bellydance troupe performed in front of a very enthusiastic crowd in Salt Lake City. We were all there, all 6 of us, and each one of us had made choices to perform in spite of obstacles. We had injuries, several of us are looking with dismay at the number on the scale, there was some expense involved, there were competing demands for our attendance at other events--but we were all there and while we were imperfect, we danced with joy.  

I hope the forsythia bloom early, because I could use some sprays of bright yellow blossoms in my life. We all could.  

Here is to courage, to making thoughtful choices and to dancing with joy. 

~plk

Universal Beauty

This week it occurred to me that some of the people I've always thought of as being filled with low-drama stoicism, Midwestern stiff-upper-lip types who march through hell and fire with little comment, might simply be, or have been, introverts who didn't see a need to discuss what was simply fact. It has occurred to me that because many people (even those who know me best) think of me as hyper-communicative and very extroverted, the fact that I don't talk about what I feel could be misconstrued. Often is. Hmmm. Interesting. While I always knew I needed to listen carefully to the stoic people in my life, to make sure they were okay under that stiff upper lip, I know that I do not inspire that concern in others, because I seem like the type who will holler if I need help or am unhappy. Do you have people like me in your life? People who are neither quiet nor open about what they need? Do they drive you crazy? Because I'm pretty sure this particular combination has driven several people in my life crazy.  :-)

I've been thinking about this because I am writing essays that are difficult to write and I can't make enough time for them.  I'm struggling to make room in my crowded life and my busy mind to settle at my writing table and put paragraphs on the pages, and I'm frustrated by the things that are tugging at my minutes, demanding my attention.  I want to complain, but I don't because complaining never changed a thing.  Not one.  Or has it?  As usual, what I do is double-down on tasks so I can get ahead of them.  This is a strategy that seldom works, by the way.  What works is to do the difficult and important thing, not get busy with minutiae.

Dani Shapiro, a writer who has written memoirs and fiction, recently responded to an angry Facebook fan who felt her memoir was not close enough to her chronological life.  Shapiro is a thoughtful writer, a careful writer, and the letter is worth reading.  This, however, was the section that spoke to me:
"The memoirist looks through a single window in a house full of windows. After all, we can’t look out of all the windows at once, can we? We choose a view. We pick a story to tell. We shift through the ever-changing sands of memory, and in so doing create something hopefully beautiful, by which I mean universal."

It was as though Shapiro wrote those words for me. There is no perfect version of the story that I'm trying to tell. There is no version that will include all the angles from which this experience could be seen, or felt. There is no version that will not be filtered through my flawed, imperfect lenses. The version I write will be filtered through the lenses of imperfect memory, of immense love, of pain, of loss, of anger and acceptance and the thousand other filters that each of us bring to our lives and to our memories. But if I can find my way to the truest version, when I can choose the window that will show the clearest view, when I can discipline myself to find language that is clear, that will help me share these moments with my readers--it's possible I will find my way to beauty, and truth. It is possible, and even likely, that the universality I am so certain is a part of my experience will be something I manage to share with my readers.

I've been struggling so hard with these essays. They are so important that I can't stop tripping over my desire to make them perfect. And I need to let that go and make them honest. Perfection can wait. So can laundry.

Best to all who happen this way.

~plk

So Much Damned Beauty

I was talking with a friend today while at work, and found myself in tears while sitting in the relatively public area outside my company's mail room.  I was overtaken by a wave of memory, shaken by a combination of anger and grief and, oddly, gratitude.  My friend's mom is in a coma in a local hospital, having suffered a stroke.  She is terminally ill, and my friend is trying to prepare for what will come.  

My advice was heartfelt and simple.  I said to be gentle with herself and to assume that her mom could still feel her touch, hear her voice if not her words.  I suggested foot massages, head massages, pedicures--whatever was possible in the confines of the hospital bed.  This is something I can help with, the moment when you must prepare for the imminent loss of someone you love.  The logistics are less onerous than you anticipate, and the long periods of not-knowing, of waiting for the next development, are painful and precious in waves of swelling, alternating emotions that are a surprise--or that were a surprise to me.  

And my friend thanked me, and she said she knew I would be helpful.  I've had a lot of early loss, and I share what I've learned freely.  And then she said something to me that made me cry.  She said that I was a beautiful person, and it broke something loose in me to have her compliment me in the midst of her own pain and loss and confusion.  Not because of the compliment, which itself was a lovely thing to hear.  No, it was the experience of witnessing such generosity of spirit.  The fact that we as humans can find the capacity to be gentle and kind with others when we are being crushed by circumstance is something that I am continually amazed by, continually gratified to discover.  There is so much damned beauty in this world, in the midst of pain and loss as well as in the midst of joy and plenty.  

And her words reminded me of so many things, including the generosity of three hospice caregivers who I had the pleasure to know.  I remember my gratitude for each of these women, and I think that part of what they must have been moved by in our time together was the same thing that I was moved by in my friend.  In the midst of my pain, I remember telling each of these women why they were so important, so amazing.  And I'm so grateful that my heart was open enough to see that, because seeing it made those days and hours easier to bear.  And seeing it was a testament to the kind of person I hope to be, try to be.  

It was a difficult day, and my friend's journey is not over.  But it was a good day, too.  Any day that we lessen the burden of someone else is a day worth living.  

Best to all who pass this way.  

~plk 

Labors of Love

I spent the last four days making order from disorder.  In my house and in my head.  I reordered some messy cabinets, put away the Christmas stuff.  I worked on some blog posts, a budget, some idea maps for three of the essays that will comprise a big part of the memoir I am working on.  I got some gentle exercise.

The Bat Buggy

This weekend we also said goodbye to a friend who is following her dreams and starting a new adventure in Bend, Oregon. Another friend is at the hospital, her mother had a serious stroke and, while being evaluated, was also diagnosed with lung cancer.  And I've been smiling over photographs of my great-nephew's birthday and crazy-awesome gift, a custom-built Batman-themed go cart created by his Dad.  Eric spent much of his weekend working on the labor-of-love network project that he tackled at the Idaho Botanical Garden.  What I am struck by is how much love is in my life.  How many people I am proud to know and love.  How many lives being spent doing good things intersect with mine--things that might not stack up on some best-of list, or be notable on the national news, but things that require courage and strength, optimism and love.  

In an ideal future, a good part of my time and energy will be spent on things that can best be described as labors of love. I'm in charge of making that happen. Tonight, I'm feeling centered, and happy.  And I hope that I'll be able to hold onto this feeling for a while.  I like it quite a lot. 

Here we go - first week of work in 2014 coming straight at us!

~plk

Firing up the Zen mojo

This morning I was sitting on the sofa juggling banking minutiae and looking out at the blessedly clear skies and the happy people walking dogs in the thin-but-real sunshine.  A man with a Goldendoodle walked past, and when his dog took care of business on the sidewalk, this horse's-patootie of a man just walked away. I was incensed. My coat was on and I was halfway out the door in slippers carrying empty Albertsons bags to "suggest" that maybe he'd forgotten something. But something stopped me at my door. Something more than the blast of chilly air. A quiet voice said to chill out. So I did.

And 15 minutes later, the nice man, who was clearly NOT a horse's patootie, was back, bag in hand, looking for the spot he needed to clean up. And I was glad I'd hushed myself. I was relieved not to have to smile sheepishly at him the next 874 times I see him out walking his dog. I was happy for that little voice, the one that so often helps me take a moment to reframe my assumptions about the motivations of others and determine if what I am chalking up to malice or asshattery could more easily be explained by ignorance, thoughtlessness, bad manners.

When I'm feeling pinned by circumstances, it is pretty easy to assign intention to the actions of others.  Or corporations, banks, traffic lights, weather patterns. It is a pretty quick trip from "this sucks" to "why is he/she/they/it doing this to me?" And, of course, the other person, corporation, bank, traffic signal, driver, weather Gods are blissfully just doing what they do.  Sometimes thoughtlessly or carelessly, but seldom with any intention at all as it relates to me and my (small) concerns.

This is one of the toughest realities I've wrestled with in my life. Acceptance of what is, that's the only way to get to the next step, the one where we deal with that reality. Assigning intention to whomever or whatever has "wronged" us is just a delay in the process. It has served me well, most of the time, to skip over that process and get rapidly back to what I'm doing to do about it.

The trick, then, is determining when it is good energy for me to try to exert some control or pressure over an outcome.  Sometimes that's easy. If I don't like the way banks charge me punitive interest, I should double-down on my efforts to be debt-free. Not, as is so tempting to do, think that my dissatisfaction will in any way change their for-profit motives or actions. If I dislike the mission of my employer, I should look for another position. And driving is really simple--get my Zen mojo fired up, accept that I'm not in charge of the road or the people on it, and plan some extra travel time.

But it gets tricky when my sense of "I deserve better than this" or "I've earned better than this" butts up against my concern that I'm edging toward a sense of entitlement, which I think is a poisonous force in our country.  When should I press for a bigger paycheck or a better title at work, for example, rather than being satisfied with the healthy paycheck and title I've attained?  The answer has to be more complicated than a matrix of rules. It has to consider factors such as the economic climate I'm working in, the other factors that are driving my sense of inequality. During the years that my late husband was sick, I spent almost zero energy on these questions, and that was appropriate. But now it is not. I'm sure I was easier to manage, in many ways, when I had the major demands and distractions that I had 4, 5, 6 years ago. Because even in the midst of lots of other demands, I have always delivered professionally. Always.

But now, I'm wrestling with the question of how to use my work life for the next 15 or 16 years, and how to make space for the other things I plan to accomplish, the other parts of my life that deserve time.  I've begun by accepting that work is an exchange, that Monday through Friday (and occasionally on weekends) I give a big chunk of my one and only today to my employer in return for pay and benefits.  My job is not a definition of me, it is a job. Yay, me, I have a first step. Next has been trying to identify and put a value to the many intangible benefits mixed into this exchange; am I doing work that matters to me, am I developing others, am I able to solve problems, am I empowered to be successful, am I able to live where I want to live, am I able to leave work when I'm no longer at work, do I like the people I work with and the people I lead. And then the really uncomfortable questions, like gender equality within my industry, or my company.

And you know what?  It can be paralyzing. It can make me less happy to spend all this energy on matters I've always trusted would sort themselves out if I keep doing great work and keep a positive attitude.  And that, my friends, is a sign that I'm not feeling valued. Which could be valid, or could be a hint of that entitlement stuff I mentioned up there ^^. It will, I trust, sort itself out. With a little nudge here and there from yours truly.

In the meantime, I'm in the middle of the only today I'm going to get.  I spent some time writing and some time in necessary life maintenance stuff, and now I'm going to queue up some background music and begin writing wedding thank-you notes.

Life is sweet!  My best to all who happen this way.

~plk

Photo credit to the Facebook page "Peaceful Daily"

Better Together

Today I'm taking down the Christmas tree. We didn't leave our childhood with many objects to remind us of our family's life together. Illness, financial problems, a sheriff's sale--circumstances. But we have lots of memories. I'm old enough now to have accumulated a great many objects, including 30 years worth of Christmas ornaments. As I look at them, boxing them for another year of attic storage, I see that they tell a story. One collection took years to assemble, the gold plated ornaments with intricate details that sparkle madly on the tree. There is the collection of Lenox snowflakes, glowing porcelain lace. There are ornaments that perfectly capture the spirit of a year. They tell stories of my years of plenty and joy, and the years when no new ornaments came into my home. And I look forward as I box this year's additions, a beautiful silver bell ornament that was a wedding gift, and a heavy, pretty mistletoe ornament that I found for Eric. And so a new chapter, a new season of plenty, begins.

One of the things my counselor often asked me is "what is the worst thing that can happen?" I have relatively few fears about being in the world, or about my ability to "take care of business" but, as it turns out, I have quite a lot of fears about people letting me down. It's a strange business, this messy process of learning to count on other people. And I have lots of reasons to suck at it - many of the people I've tried to count on in my life have had illnesses (and early deaths) that prevented them from being able to be my safety net. My logical brain knows that it has been circumstance that prevented them, not their choice. But fear is not based on logic, as it turns out.  

I accept that I am not practiced at counting on other people. That makes sense, right?  Being out of the habit makes sense. But it makes absolutely no sense to me that I'm so afraid that when I do ask, the person I ask will let me down. This fear keeps me from asking, even when I dimly realize I could, or even should. Why all the anxiety? Really, what is the worst thing that can happen? If I ask and am let down, can't I can just take care of me, instead? Well, yes, but it might be harder because I might have less time, or have budgeted my time or money expecting not to need to handle X. Still, though, I know there is more to it. It has something to do with feeling valued, or loved. Because while we can logically understand why people we love who are sick or absent can't take care of us, while we can absolutely put on our big girl panties and make sure they never ever know that we are hurt or feel bereft--we are still actually feeling hurt, or bereft or both. Abandoned or let down or some combination of the two. And unfortunately, this habit of non-communication can develop into a bit of a problem. Let's be real, here: the last thing a sick person needs is confirmation that the reality they fear most is true, that their needs are very difficult to meet, that the family's resources are focused first on them, that their spouse (or children, or parents) are hurt in ways they cannot fix. Finding a way to live around a loved one's illness, to stay loving, joyful and authentic with one another when an illness is chipping away at not only your health but your finances, your daily lives, your routines, your self esteem--this is one of the greatest of life's challenges. So when counselors say to be open with one another about needs, even in the midst of illness or depression or crippling anxiety attacks, I have steadfastly disagreed. The patient comes first. Corollary: ask only for what can be given or can be soothed away. If I'm ever in that situation again, it will very likely continue to be my plan. 

But I'm not in that situation now. My life has changed. I've moved into a new life with people who are not sick. And yet those habits are deeply ingrained. They extend outside my personal life to my professional life. So maybe I struggle to ask for help. Or maybe I struggle to hold the people in my life accountable because I am so out of practice. Or maybe I become paralyzed in my communication (this is not the same as silent, although sometimes I'm silent). I've done all of these things. But none of these behaviors is "how I am." They are, instead, simply a set of behaviors and habits that I can change. If, as you read this, you find it resonates with you, then this next bit is for you and me: we have to hope that we'll figure it out. We have to try to figure it out, and stumble. And ask for help, or say when we are hurt, which feels as monumentally difficult as a kidney transplant.

So, to answer the question, the worst thing that could happen is that I say what I need and find that no one cares. The worst thing that can happen is that I will need help and no one will be there to help. In the range of human possibility, that's not so big a risk. I can take that one. And I can live in hope and certainty that most of the time, someone will be there for me. My husband, my siblings, my friends, even my colleagues. When it is truly important, someone will be in that scary black void with me.

So - one of my most closely-held commitments this year is to identify, accept and embrace what I need to be fulfilled in my life. I need to practice acknowledging it, first. I need to practice giving my needs and wants language, because that is how they will become real to me, how they will move from pie-in-the-sky dreams to goals. And then I need to practice reaching out to those who could help me find or attain those things. I need to ask people I love, people who love me, people I've helped along the way who would love to return the favor.

The Christmas tree has been disassembled and wrestled into a new storage bag.  I'm here with a cup of coffee, looking at the empty space where the tree has been twinkling cheerfully for the last month or so. It doesn't look bereft, it looks like a blank slate.  And so it is with the year ahead, as I go inward and try to find the route that will put my life, especially my professional life, on the path to something I find truly fulfilling.

We are better together than we are alone.  Happy New Year!

~plk

Commitments, baby!

Five commitments I'm making this year: 

• Move more, browse the internet less.
• Write something every day that is not a work product for a major retail company. 
• Spend less money, accumulate less stuff and spend less time worrying.
• Eat less sugar and (even) more vegetables, but enjoy everything I consume without the crushing stupidity of guilt.
• Remember every single day how much the love in my life has sustained me and continues to sustain me.  As a corollary to this one, I will also express my love for others without concern for looking silly, and without expectation.

Tomorrow, I will have more to say.  For tonight, I'm focused on taking some time to read something worthwhile.  Hooray for long weekends!

Note: I've committed to making writing a priority in my life again this year.  And while some writers feel that blogging is a way to avoid "real" writing, I think that the accountability of writing daily in a semi-public forum is just exactly what I need to cement the writing habit in my daily life again.  So if you read these posts, thank you.  Leave a comment here or on Facebook - it will help me make this a priority.  

Pavlov's Freaking Dogs

I'm a person who often (maybe even "generally") makes choices about my own life that I hope/guess/calculate/infer will best serve the people I love, or (less commonly these days) those I feel responsible to.  And I am ridiculously, crazily, exhaustingly empathetic, with a strong and accurate sense of how others feel, what they "want."  However, if you ask me what I want, I am often unable to reply.  It is, I think, a habit of mind, a way that I make sense of the world and the people and situations I interact with each day. Seek to understand, as "they" say, then to be understood.  It is also a little teeny way to be in control and not be disappointed - if you never want anything, you can never be disappointed not to achieve it.  Tada!

How people make choices is a topic that interests me deeply, both as a person and as a writer.  It has only a little to do with your intelligence.  Smart people make stupid choices all of the time.  And over the last several months, I've been ruminating on the choices that keep us stuck--in jobs, homes, activities, behaviors, relationships, friendships--that don't suit us, that simply do not fulfill any part of who we want to be, the person we are at our core when all the stuff that doesn't matter is stripped away.  Habits of thought and behavior, habitual choices - they are not easy to change.  But I don't believe in "that's just how I am, baby."   The truth is that it's simply a matter of priority.  Things that we make a priority to change, we change.

So, there.  All set.  Just stop making wrong-headed choices.  Done and done!  Of course it isn't so simple, the comfort of the familiar is simply too strong.  It can feel so "right" to make a choice to do something that we know intellectually and in our hearts is self-destructive, or counterproductive.  Physiologically, we're often rewarded for making these wrongheaded choices--humans often feel less anxious when we make a familiar choice, no matter whether it is a good one.  But anxiety is born of so many factors--and sometimes it is born of trying to move toward dwelling in a happier, healthier, safer, cleaner, more aligned with our values but unfamiliar way of living or being.  So we make the choice that rids our bellies of that anxious fluttery feeling.  But sometimes, maybe even often, the choice made to quiet our butterflies is not a healthy one. It is merely familiar.

Right.  Got it.  Can I say that I'm so freaking sick of learning this lesson?  It is so frustrating to watch myself and the people in my life keep tripping over the same mistakes we've always made.  I'm not all that interested in the kind of psychotherapy that "undoes" trauma and the crazy bad decision making that we learned as coping mechanisms when we were children or young adults.  Conversely, I'm pretty invested in the kind that helps me grow, pretty interested in NOT continuing to use the skills I learned at 9 or 19 when the lessons I learned at 23, 29, 39 and uhm, well, 47 are so damned hard-won and valuable.

Which is why I'm annoyed with myself.  I've fallen out of some very good habits that I fought to bring into my life and back into some stupid ones.  I'm eating too much sugar and white flour.  I'm not working out.  I'm not writing enough.  I'm not reading enough, even though I can literally feel my brain calm itself when I'm reading great prose regularly.  I'm working too much and thinking about work when I'm not working.  I'm not holding people accountable to treat me as I should be treated - hell, I've slipped out of the habit of even thinking about and acknowledging to myself what I need/want.  Yep, big deal, I know.  I'm human.  First world problem.  We all fall off the wagon.  I'm busy.  My life has stress in it.  I'm super-cute and deserve my bad habits.  (Ignore the lack of logic in that last one - it's literally the kind of logic we use to self-justify our stupid choices 12-18% of the time.  Your actual percentage and mileage may vary.)

Blah, blah, blahhhhh.  For me, at my age, with my life experiences--it's all crap.  Excuses.  Reasons to keep being where I have said emphatically I.Do.Not.Want.To.Be.  Pavlov's dogs were utilizing the same level of thinking and judgement that I have in some of these choices.  Seriously.

And this week I attended another funeral for another great man who left this planet too early.  It can happen to any of us.  And once more, our mortality is on my mind.  And once again, I'm faced with the fact that this is the only life we'll be given, today and this moment are all is we have for certain.  I'm still the same freaking realistic optimist I've been since age 9.  I will try to be gentle with myself.  I will continue to live in gratitude.  But making excuses for myself and others has to stop--and stay stopped--if I'm to live the live I want to lead.

So, let's do this again.  Let's keep doing it until it sticks.  Let's get back up when we fall down on our great intentions and start once more.  Do not live in fear, but live fully in the knowledge that today, this moment, is the only guarantee that any of us have.  Make good choices, my friends.  Love people wholly.  Know what you need from those around you, and ask for it.  If they fumble or are defensive, try to forgive it and repeat yourself.  When the calm person in your life freaks out over seeming minutiae, ask why it matters so much instead of asking why they are freaking.  Pay it forward every chance you get.  Treat children, the less fortunate and every animal you see with kindness.  Treat the people you love with the courtesy and care and tenderness that you think about showing them "when you are less busy" or that you think must be obvious.  Move more, read more, dance more, smile more, laugh more, eat food that is made of ingredients you can pronounce.  Give 75%, not 50%, in your relationships and don't judge the people you love, don't assign motivation to their behavior.  Be less busy, and more determined to mindfully live each day with care.

Best to all who happen this way.

~plk

Toasting Courage

"Why do people lie to people they love?"

The question popped out of my mouth unbidden while watching TV.  I've been watching "Shameless" the last few weeks.  The show is filled with titillating sex scenes and bathroom humor, but it is also dead-on in some depictions of humans in self-destructive undertows, and in very rare moments of grace.  The characterizations are strong enough that we can't seem to look away, and so we keep watching episodes as these characters make bad decisions, lie to one another, hurt one another -- and then, suddenly, we are rewarded with a moment of grace that feels true and honest.  

One night, curled into the corner of the sofa watching an episode where two characters lie to one another about important events, the question just fell from my lips, and fell into my lap.  And then we were on to the next scene, which was undoubtedly some tangled mess of bare limbs in a badly lit room.  It is, I think in retrospect, a silly question.  Naive.  People lie to lovers, or to their spouses, children, parents or best friends for a relatively short list of reasons, though we may be motivated by a variety of emotions. but I would posit that the most common thread among them, the most common motivation, is fear.  And, in my experiences, those fears can be relatively simply categorized.  The two big categories are fear of being judged once the truth is out, or fear of being called out for behavior we know is foolish, selfish, self-destructive or hurtful.    

And then, one afternoon speaking with a young female friend, I listened while she detailed a fear that her lover was lying to her about his drinking.  She was working out a plan to catch him, to prove to herself, or to him, that he was lying (or underestimating?) his drinking.  For a moment, she reminded me of a character in "Shameless."  And, after a moment, I thought how lovely it is to be my age.

Trust your gut - this is what we learn as we grow older.  One of the most interesting realities of growing older-and-wiser-and-more-pummelled-by-gravity is the increasing sense of accuracy we have about sensing lies.  When we are young, there is so much energy and focus on proving our intuitions right (or wrong).  But there comes a moment, or a year, or a decade, when validating our intuition is no longer the question.  We simply know, without question or "proof" when someone we love is lying, withholding, telling half-truths.  We do not know, of course, the truth of whatever the matter is, but we no longer question whether our instinct is incorrect.  Luckily, or happily, or blessedly, one of the other amazing gifts of wisdom that we earn with our wrinkles is the ability to choose how to react to that knowledge.  Will you confront the person and demand an accounting?  Will you chase down proof of what you sense?  Will you wait it out to see whether this is a pattern?  Will you walk away from this person you know is lying?  Or, will you try to unravel why they feel it necessary to lie, whether something in your behavior toward them makes lying to you seem safer than telling the truth?  Perhaps you'll just let the entire thing go, presume that the intentions are not, or were not, malicious and focus on something larger.  Or play ostrich, if you're feeling tired and beat-up.  

I've been told big, uncomfortable truths by my father, by friends, by coworkers, lovers and by my late husband.  They are often difficult to hear, and always difficult to accept.  Because of who I am, the people in my family and the people I surround myself with, those I invite into my life, the truths have often dealt with substance or alcohol use or abuse.  I'm grateful for having heard all of them, because they freed me to understand my own choices and life in the light of reality, and not the pink glow of false hope, or the yellow-brown murk of half-known reality.  

But, even writing that, I know how difficult those truths were to tell.  Telling the truth can be risky, as can demanding the truth.  It can end or damage a relationship, show our weaknesses and faults to someone that we love, make the person we are demanding tell us the whole truth feel cornered or pursued.  And it is in recognizing these risks, knowing them, that we find our way.  It is the gift of age and wisdom to understand that in many parts of our life "truth" has shades, that our right to know is balanced against each person's right to privacy.  And, the big truth, that claiming too vigorously the right to privacy may well equate to limited intimacy.  Sometimes those limits are healthy, but I tend to think that the healthy limits will not trip that ol' gut-meter, unless we mix a pile of self-doubt into the stew.  And we wrestle because all of these, all of them, are the normal tensions in a friendship, a family, a couple.  

Reading this, it seems I've made a pretty good case for keeping secrets, doesn't it?  That's because secrets can truly be a way to maintain privacy--and that is not "wrong."  Anyone from a big, nosy family or a small, nosy town knows this.  But secrets, while they may protect your "privacy," will never free you.  What I know about telling the truth when being silent might be easier or safer is that it is an expression of trust.  What I know about trust is that it is the path to intimacy.  And real intimacy, I'm here to tell you, beats any other possible way of being with the people that I love.  I'm talking about real truths, about sharing the important scary places in who we are with just those few that we need to trust.  Our weaknesses, our screw-ups, the times and ways that we are not our best selves.  Intimacy is made or broken based on trusting those we allow to know these big, scary secrets.   Which, in a frustrating twist of human connection, means that these will be the things that we most fear sharing.  The things that we most fear are those that will reveal some dark morass in us that makes us unloveable, unworthy of connection.  Airing them and not being judged is the essence of intimacy.  And, as many of you reading this may now, sharing them brings the glorious gift of robbing them of their power to shame us.

Did you get that part?  A secret that you keep from the people you love out of fear of being judged, out of fear that telling the truth will make others stop loving you, maintains power over you.  That power has a name, and it's shame.  Whether you think of that word or not, that's the one that fits, unless you have sociopathic tendencies.  We long to trust, we long to connect and be honest, and a secret you're afraid to share carries shame.  So that's why examining your little pile of "privacy" items to make sure they are not facts, behaviors or memories that you're simply too ashamed to share, is important work.  Blechy, but important.   

I wish my young friend well in her quest to prove the unproveable question of whether her lover's drinking is excessive, and whether he intentionally misleads himself and my friend when he speaks of it.  I'm done with that sort of investigation.  

And so it was that I was wandering alone in Kathryn Albertson park in Boise yesterday, in thin early-spring sunshine, being grateful for wisdom.  While I walked I was remembering some of the big brave truths I've been told, thinking of some of the times that I've been brave enough to share my scariest truths, and how those moments nearly always built upon one another.   It's a dance, isn't it?  A more grown-up, complex and rewarding version of "you show me yours, I'll show you mine."  

So thankful for the path I've walked, for the people I love and have loved.  When I raise a dram of scotch (or a glass of decidedly NOT green beer) later today, I'll be toasting all of those people I've trusted and who gave me their trust.  I'll be toasting many of you.  I wish us all strength and courage on our journey.

Best to all who happen this way.

~ plk

Snowfall on Roses

Snow has been falling on Boise since Monday morning.  I've had enough of wintry weather, of ice and snow, of required down coats.  Eric spent several hours over the weekend scraping and shoveling the driveway, ridding it of the built-up ice I'd allowed to accumulate.  It annoyed me to watch his handiwork disappear under more snow.  

I ran some errands after work, so by the time I was able to get outside to shovel the snow, it was dark.  Crisply cold, though not bone chilling.  I wore layers, I wore boots, I had sensible gloves and I was ready to do battle with the snow.  And then, something magic happened.  The snow had stopped falling, and the sky and air were clear as I stepped outside my back door to clear the deck.  Moonlight lit the new snow, piled in small glowing drifts that highlighted leaves and branches of shrubs, the curved tops of the fenceboards, the arching beautiful limbs of my Russian Olive trees.  And in that moment, all of my annoyance fell away and I saw, really saw, all of that beauty.  I set aside the snow shovel, and spent 40 minutes wandering the streets around my house.  I admired the flat sweep of the golf course greens, the way the moonlight made the pretty bridge over the empty canal seem to be made of icing sugar.  And as I wandered, I was reminded of how that flat expanse of golf course looked before this new snow, with week-old snow and icy clumps of tree sap and the ugly evidence of flocks of Canadian geese.  I remembered the icy canes of my climbing rose, which on Sunday looked almost surely to be dead--and marveled that tonight they glittered and shone with as much beauty as the rose has when in full bloom in June, the snowy splendor in moonlight a rival for June's emerald greenery and lush blooms.

When we are young, and sometimes when we are older and caught up in periods of hapless nostalgia tinged with depression, we are often a little preoccupied with firsts.  First kiss, first lover, first job, first...uhm, marriage?  Whoops, outside voice.  I avoid the mildly pejorative tone of "obsessed"--but the word is often accurate.  Firsts are special, they hold sway in our memories, they are lit with the soft light of naivete, a freshness and a glorious (it often seems when we are older looking back on those moments) absence of expectation.  And it's clear that all of those early experiences can imprint and shape us, in ways both good and bad. In ways that may or may not require extensive therapy.  So, yes--I understand and appreciate why there is a reason that "the firsts" are the topic of so much literature, why they preoccupy us as they do, why we sometimes long to have a moment back so that we can relive it or share it with someone new.

But as my time on the planet continues, I find myself longing to perceive and appreciate moments of beauty in the now, in the flawed glory of a moment, with people and objects that have withstood the tests life has thrown their way.  At our best, we get up from tough experiences and allow ourselves the grace of softness, as I've written about both here and in the essays I'm working on these days.  I seek, and am learning to recognize, the people who have also uncovered this truth.  Wisdom and experience can sharpen and enrich our experience of beauty, of this I am convinced.  But not if we are forever looking backward, comparing this moment, the moment we are in now, to a softly lit moment caught in a bubble of amber in our memory.

When spring comes, this harsh winter will have taken a toll on the flowers in my gardens.  I'm prepared for that, for the replanting of those spaces with new lovely things that I will find with Eric in one of our favorite Boise nurseries. We are already animatedly discussing where to plant vegetables, how to make the most of the sunny corners of the yard on Roosevelt Street.  And that is how this garden will become our garden.  It is one of the simplest pleasures, creating a well-tended garden around a home that you live in through the cycles of seasons.  Gardens, and the tending of them, the ways that they change and evolve and surprise, are one of the pleasures of staying, at least for people who love dirt.  It is a well-worked and familiar literary tool, the garden as a metaphor for a life, but it is endlessly resonant for me.

I'm reminded tonight not to fast-forward to spring, not to mourn the perfection of some earlier season, not to presuppose the amount of destruction that a long and hard winter will have caused. There will be time enough to assess and plan when spring comes.  There will be time enough to clear the ground and find the perfect plants for this new version of our garden.  For now, I'm going to spend a few more minutes admiring the beauty that is all around me this very moment.

Be well and happy in your corner of the globe.

~plk

Journeys and Dreams

A few nights ago, unable to sleep and reflecting on the many people I know who are at crossroads, I found myself thinking about a poem by Marty McConnell, a performance piece, really, titled "instructions for a body."  I love this poem, which is unusual for me because (shhh - this should not be something I admit so freely) I am generally undone by poetry.  I can see where the beauty and power is, but it is more as an analyst than as a experience.

I could quote the entire poem, but this section, the ending, is what is ringing in my ears just now: 

...tell me you don't matter to a universe that conspiredto give you such a tongue, such rhythm or rhythmless hips, such opposable thumbs – give thanks or go home a waste of spark 

speak or let the maker take back your throatmarch or let the creator rescind your feetdream or let your god destroy your good and fertile mind

this is your warning / this your birthright / do not let this universe regret you.

From the poem "instructions for a body" - © Marty McConnell, 2005

The use of the word "regret" instead of "forget" seems especially telling, and brilliant.  Don't we all, when we are considering our lives, worry that we will be forgotten?  We plan, and assess, counting our accomplishments and considering our legacy.  But, in truth, I am ever more convinced that it is better to live the smaller life that doesn't trample others in our wake, to make the hundred (or the one or two) small gestures each day that are kinder, more generous, more giving than we are required to be.  Leave the world, or the person you just encountered, no worse for your having been here, and strive to leave it all just a bit better.

What had me sleepless, surprisingly enough, was hitting a milestone in a journey I'm on.  I am three-quarters of the way through a year of reclaiming my body, and I've now lost 75 pounds.  The number shocks me.  I'm very proud - my weight has been the thing that kicked my butt for years.  I've far exceeded my original goal.  But this progress is something that feels more like coming home than like a rebirth or makeover.  The truth is that the entire time that I was carrying all those extra pounds, I felt as though I was inhabiting someone else's skin.  I keep repeating this story, and I'll share it here, too.  My good friend Kat and I were once talking about being overweight, and she said out loud what I'd often felt.  When you are heavy and your body feels foreign to you, it seems perfectly logical to think, "ugh, people think I look like this."  Which is, of course, utterly illogical.  You do in fact, I did in fact, look exactly like that.

But as the weight melts away, the woman I've always known was in there is the one that the world sees, too.  It's good.  Now that part of me is in alignment - I look more like the person I really am.  Which, very effectively, erases my body as a reason or excuse that I can hide behind.  And that, I think, reminded me quite forcefully that my life's guiding principles, which for so long were tangled up in the responsibilities of caring for and providing stability to someone I loved, are now all mine to choose.  What a realization to accept, both the acknowledgement that for years they were not, and the scaryexcitingfabulous fact that I am choosing, right now.

This next connection is tenuous, but I believe it's real - just as I was the woman carrying all of those extra pounds, I am also the woman who must own all of my choices and actions.  The ones I highlight on my resume, and the ones I wish I could wipe away.   "People think I am like this," is as illogical a thought as "people think I look like this," but I am relatively certain it guides some of my (and maybe some of your), decisions.  We are "like" the actions and choices we make.  My life, my legacy, will be the sum of all of those actions and choices and blunders and moments of small triumph.  My life will not be the life I intended to live - it will be the one I actually lived.

Which is why I was sitting in my pretty little house late at night, unable to sleep, hearing the words "dream or let your god destroy your good and fertile mind" on a slow, rolling repeat.  Here it is, people - life is short.  Dream.  Dream often, in small ways and in wild and improbable ways.  Find the path your feet are meant to be on, and walk it.  You can take breaks if you need to.

Best to all who happen this way.

~plk

Musings on Pathfinding

While searching for a computer manual this weekend, I came across an envelope filled with images and memories I had not thought of in a long time.  Photos of me as a child, and as a young woman, photos of my father and my mother, my sister, brother, cousins, aunt - simply a small stack of images that translated instantly into memories.

I also watched the film "Being Flynn."  It is adapted from a memoir, and it's a worthy film if only for the performances of Paul Dano, who plays Nick Flynn, and Robert De Niro, who plays Jonathan Flynn, Nick's alcoholic father.  Jonathan is a big-talking and big-dreaming unpublished "writer" who has been long absent from his son's life but who, in the course of the film's events, suddenly bursts into Nick's world and becomes a presence he cannot ignore.   It's not an easy film, more difficult if you're the child of an alcoholic who, like De Niro's character, never quite achieved the arc that his brilliance might have afforded him.  As I watched Jonathan Flynn rage and rant on the screen, as I watched him live through humiliation and loss of his tenuous place in the world, it reminded me too much of my own father in his darkest hours. De Niro was brilliant, and difficult for me to watch, his brown eyes watery with liquor, his hair and beard scruffy and wild.  He hits the perfect notes of hubris mixed with bravado and, ultimately, crushing defeat.   The movie doesn't end in darkness, and for that I'm very thankful.

In the envelope of photos, there was also a letter that my father wrote to his father in December of 1984.  My grandfather never left Scotland, and the letter is written on one of those tri-fold airmail packets (do they still exist in this time of text, tweet, email and Skype?).  My father had been estranged from his father for decades, and I remember being very surprised when I first read this letter, years after my father's death.  In it, he sketches our lives at that time, with an attempt to emphasize the positive - think "Christmas letter."  My brother was in college, his first year.  I was not.  I was 20, and I was married (it seems impossible now) to a very nice young man, and working in a drug store, and in this letter my father's regret about those turns in my life, about what he had not done for me, especially, is evident.  He was such a proud man.  In the very restrained language of this letter I can feel pain and regret between the words, and I want to tell him that it's okay, that everything worked itself out, that those early missteps in my life just set me on a slightly different path.  I want to tell him that the combination of Scottish and Irish stubbornness and resilience has served me well. I did tell him all those things, after my mother died.  But I wish that I could tell him again now, that I could be assured he can hear me when I'm sending my thoughts out into the ether.

And as I read his letter, crosslegged on a cushy chair in my office and library, I remembered that time so vividly.  I remembered the early days, in 1982 when my mother came home from the hospital, when she needed so much care and her recovery was only a murky possibility.  I remembered helping her with physical therapy, or with a hundred small tasks.  And I remembered running up and down the carpeted staircase in our farmhouse when I had felt restless and scared and trapped, running until I was breathless and my hair was standing on end, alive with static electricity.   

My parents have been gone from my life for so long that I've simply lost some details.  I don't know, and would like to know, for example, if my affection for simple gentlemanly gestures (having my car door opened or my dining chair pulled out) is because my father did those things, because he did not do those things or has absolutely nothing to do with him at all.  And occasionally, my inability to confirm a memory is maddening.  After spending too much time trying to remember, I'll realize that the answer simply doesn't matter.  We arrive in our 40's or our 50's with the accumulation of our history and our choices behind us, around us, and the specific reasons for such preferences matters not much at all.  It's what we will do going forward that matters.  So I try to sort them out, the efforts to remember that seem in some way to question why I'd made a choice separated from the efforts to remember that seem rooted in my desire to remain connected to people who are no longer alive.  Thus I realize that while it no longer matters why I felt so responsible for things at age 16, 18, 20, 40--it does matter to me that my confidence, my moments of courage, are in some great measure a legacy from parents who simply believed that I could do anything, could be successful at any venture I put my mind and muscle to, and who instilled that belief so deeply in their children that we, too, were compelled to believe.      

That belief is what I'm considering as I allow the words on the thin paper of this letter to provide a frame for considering the path I've taken from 1984 to 2012.  There is a corollary: in our house, we all knew what it is to be loved, and to love.  My father's words on this page, his quiet regret being expressed to the father he was long estranged from, reflect his love for me, for all of us, quite surely.  I'm making a new life for myself these days, and it is with all the wisdom I can muster that I'm choosing my path.  So today as I am drinking coffee, looking at the drifts of golden ash tree leaves that need raking and the house that could use a good cleaning, I am also simply awash in quiet gratitude and pride for my imperfect and riotously, gloriously dysfunctional family.  They are the smart, fearless, sometimes foolish, sometimes drunken and always big-hearted people who first taught me that life is to be lived, that home matters, that joy is everywhere you look, that pride does eventually need to give way to humility, that what we will face will not always be easy but it will be real, and that our kind of love is never (ever) conditional.   

Best to all who happen this way.

~plk

Notes on Grace

I'm writing essays these days, and a theme has emerged: I was born to, and have surrounded myself with, people who, though they may kick and buck and complain about this fact, do not give up on other people, on life, on relationships.  I've been writing about what it means to not give up, and how a choice that might look from the outside like defeat is really sometimes a more beautiful and complicated thing called acceptance.  And as I write, I'm reading both new-to-me writers and my old favorites, pulling both crisp-paged books and yellowed and much-bookmarked volumes from my bookcases.

One of the writers I am reading is Andre Dubus.  In his essays, he writes as a man badly injured in an auto accident, a man who feels as though he has lost so much of himself that he is struggling to even define himself as a man.  It is relevant to me for several reasons, as it was when I first read Dubus a decade ago, but also in a way that is new, because I am no longer the woman I was when I first read these essays.  Dubus' voice on the page, sometimes so raw it scrapes, reminds me that in every human relationship there are at least two participants.  Each has a voice, each has a perspective, and sometimes more than one perspective over time.  I love the way words on a page can do that, reach out and touch you across years and miles and distances, and then touch you in a different way when you bring a new self to the same work at another time.

The essays seem especially important as I think about the people in my own work, the people I know and love, or those I knew only fleetingly, bit players on the stage of my essay's drama, in the drama of the lives I've observed.  I'm thinking hard about being fair as a writer, about being fair as a person, about the enormous weight of accuracy when we tell these big stories.  It's something I've always wrestled with when I write nonfiction, and it is one of the gleeful freedoms of writing fiction.  And this balance, this accuracy, this fairness--it is something I sometimes cringe over when I read other writer's work and see lives laid bare on the page.  Yet -  this honesty and detail is generally what lifts creative essays or memoirs from wimpy to powerful.  When writers take risks and tell the truth wholly, the stories they tell benefit.  They ring with both truth-of-telling and the bigger truths of what it means to be alive and human in this world of ours.

I'm always interested to know how other writers handle this struggle.  Some are defiant, or simply do not acknowledge that there is a struggle  "I'm just writing it the way I saw it, that's why my name is on the manuscript."  Others are careful, and acknowledge the challenge, the risks.  Some writers are simply paralyzed by this struggle, and choose to write about safer material.  Mary Karr prefaced her book with acknowledgment and gratitude for her mother's involvement as she wrote the stories of her apocalyptic childhood in her memoir, "The Liar's Club."  For me, and many other writers I know, the struggle to decide which parts of any story are the writer's to tell, and which feel like a betrayal of trust or intimacy can consume many hours at the editing table.  And often some liquor.  The occasional coin toss.

The other aspect of Dubus' essays that is consuming my thoughts when I'm thinking about this work is his use of the word "sacrament."  I was raised as a Roman Catholic, and Dubus was an actively practicing Roman Catholic for most of his life.  The word sacrament has a very specific meaning in our faith.  Dubus uses it differently, to describe the daily rituals between lovers, and sometimes parents--the small and generous actions that express our belief in one another and the connections between us, even when we might be angry, frustrated, exhausted, desperate to run away to some imagined better place.  I cannot think of a word that expresses this idea more accurately, but I'm trying.  Because, like Dubus, I believe in those small rituals.  They might be as simple as making a meal for your lover, picking up after your has-been-told-a-thousand-times kid.  Or they might be as large as committing to care for your husband or your father who has become disabled.

Sometimes, language can be a barrier to meaning, especially when the emotional stakes are high and you're speaking over hurt, anger or a history of both.  It is why sometimes your mere presence, some small act of giving--a  phone call, a shared hike, a gentle touch, a house filled with the scent of baking cookies or simmering Coq au Vin, a repaired kitchen faucet--speaks more clearly than hundreds of words. Faith in the power of those moments is what defines them as the human form of a sacrament, connecting you to those you love more firmly than some jaded sense of responsibility, your legal commitment, your morality.

Sound heavy?  It isn't.  These are the moments filled with healing, with joy.  They are the small risks we take every day--I am going to love you enough to do this in spite of your flaws, in spite of my hurt, in spite of what may or may not be in the future.  They are the moments that, even and maybe especially in apocalyptic life circumstances, sustain normalcy and connection.

I'm going to be thinking about the people I love today, as I take a hike in Boise's foothills.  Best to all who happen this way!

~plk

The Cost of Softness

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

When I was a girl, my mother once told me that the worst thing that could happen to a woman was to become "hard." I have often wondered what, exactly, she meant by that word, that phrase. I will never know for certain, because I was too young when I lost her to realize that this would be one of the moments I'd remember so clearly, and question so often. Maybe she said it more than once, maybe she said it often and my crystalline memory of that day is not real at all, simply the distillation of a stack of memories.

I am not a girl any longer, and I know that the struggle to stay soft in this world, filled as it is with struggle, with injustice and with senseless pain and loss, is a difficult one. It does not escape my notice that my inability to ask my mother this--because she died when I was not yet 25--is itself an example of the temptation Vonnegut's words are warning against, the temptation to harden myself against loss, and pain. Yet, somehow I was lucky enough or wise enough to avoid that temptation. I knew better, I know better, than to allow myself the tempting plunge down that slope of anger, and then bitterness and, yes, hatred.

How to stay soft, then, remains the big question. In the course of my life, I've tried a lot of methods. I took a good long run at the use of denial. This is not a tremendously effective method to ensure you are living fully, on the off chance you are considering it. While denial can be a very effective coping mechanism to get through something painful, or awful, it is not a life strategy. Denial consumes a lot of energy, and it turns out that living in denial results in a life lived in perpetual numbness more often than a life truly lived. I have said that I'm "lucky" not to have grown bitter. But that isn't accurate.

I've come to the realization that the only way I've truly found happiness in the wake, and sometimes even in the midst, of pain and loss is to risk feeling the pain fully. To be vulnerable to exactly, precisely the kind of pain we never want to feel. To love fully in spite of the risk of loss, and even in the midst of it. To give freely to those who will never know you helped, and to expect nothing in return. Seek the joy, and the beauty, trust that it is there even when it is so dark you cannot imagine it still exists.

I have listened to Brene' Brown's lectures, and read her books. They are based on her findings while researching vulnerability, the surprising relationship between vulnerability and joy, hope and love. I think "of course" or, more accurately, "well, duh." How have we missed this for so long? The only way to truly succeed is to be vulnerable to failure, loss, rejection and complete idiocy. To find great joy, you need to take risks. Sometimes big risks.

So, take the job that isn't as secure but makes your eyes light up. Have the baby, even if it is not the right time. Go back to school, even if the degree you want to pursue does not translate into a fatter paycheck. Pursue the love affair, even if you or your lover have failed at love. Begin to dance, or bike, or run. Write poetry or play the guitar--even though you are no longer young and you'll likely never "make" anything of your passion. Do it, risk falling on your face, and watch the joy flow into your life.

Know that the outcome could be a trainwreck. Don't be an idiot - don't leap without thought. Keep your eyes wide open, know the risks. If there is another human involved, do your level best to know that person is worth the risk. Be mindful, and choose deliberately. But do not let yourself be frozen in indecision. Take a deep breath. If your belly tells you to leap and your head keeps reminding you how much you could lose, leap.

That is what I take from Vonnegut's words. I'm writing essays these days about the things I've seen and experienced, the people I've known who risk vulnerability and, in doing so, create connections that simply cannot be formed in any other way. These essays will someday be a book that gives readers a glimpse of how the world changes each time one of us bravely steps into a vulnerable place. Writing these essays is difficult. I feel vulnerable as a person and as a writer--almost frozen in place by the weight of all that I am trying to put onto the page. I'm doing it anyway, because it matters enough to risk imperfection and failure.

Being strong is not the same as growing hard. Care is not the same as fearful avoidance. Staying soft means remaining open to the joy, love, happiness and beauty that lies just on the other side of a scary and brave choice. If you are over 30 and reading this and thinking that there is no point in wisdom if you can't use it to protect yourself, then you're exactly the person I hoped to find with this message. Yes, risking a painful trainwreck in your life becomes more difficult as we grow older. We now have actual memories of pain, and thus the risks have more weight, as of course they must. We understand the risk because of our personal experiences, and not via some other person's told-to-us-over-libations war story. And yet--what is the point of having amassed all of that knowledge and experience, all of those bruises and scars, if it doesn't help make clear that we must open ourselves to hurt and loss and pain, because those bruises and scars are the mark of a life fully lived.

The truth is that risking hurt and loss and pain is simply what it costs to put yourself next to a person you adore, in the circle of a life that fills you with quiet joy, in a world that is wondrous and beautiful more often than it is ugly, on the stage of a life that is unfolding in full, vivid color.

My best to all who happen this way.

~plk

Beautiful Imperfection, Reprise

I'm working on a book review.  The book is compelling and beautiful and flawed and messy.  One of the things I loved about this book is that the writer just will not be hurried in telling his story.  He breathes real life into his characters, infuses the sentences with the drama of their interactions, moves the story forward in the slow sweet time that it takes to unfurl.  And his confidence and skill keep the reader engaged, and reading, and eager to find the next gem of language or image or exciting plot turn.  I'm contrasting that against writers I know who can't believe that a reader might actually stay with the story, so feel compelled to sell, sell, sell their work.  Offer it up and then sit back, I want to say to these writers.  Breathe a moment, and let the reader find your work and discover the wonders in the pages.  


Once again I'm reminded that reading and writing teaches me how to live.  

To live well is to live fully in the moment, stay in *this* moment, and stop trying to anticipate what the next turn or twist will be.  If this moment is a beautiful one - bask in it.  If it is a difficult one, then gather your strength and march on through.  But don't waste your life wishing for the next great thing, or hurrying through today's imperfection to get to an imagined better tomorrow.  It doesn't work, and we soon grow numb not only to the difficulties of today, but to the beauty that is all around us, all the beautiful imperfections of our lives.

Many of you will know that I have been working on my own beautiful imperfection this year.  I'm interested in the bombardment of messages about body image in our lives, especially for women of a certain age, of a certain size, in America.  It's a tough one for me - I have been heavy (I am still heavy!), and I know the biting discomfort of feeling judged for your waist size.  For me, size is not a determinant of worth as a person, of value as a human.  But I have to be honest and say that I feel better when my body is a strong and healthy version of itself.  It is simply easier to achieve strength and health when weight is within a rock toss of what the weight charts say is healthy.  So this year I'm remembering that I feel most beautiful in motion, in activity, in the simple joyous experience of moving my body through water, dancing across an open space, biking along a river or up a hill.  As I recall, before I fell off the wagon as a runner to become a caregiver, I even felt beautiful right after running.  There are limits, for hell's sake - it's gonna take some sort of moratorium on gravitational pull before I feel beautiful running.

Thus I am working on my body, and on my weight.  In doing so, I'm once again confronting my habit of delaying life while waiting for perfection to happen.  Or, to be more accurate, while trying to engineer perfection.  This means that while I'm waiting for (or trying to engineer) the perfect time, the perfect moment, the perfect me, the perfect weather - life happens.  Some of you will want to write me and say "No, no, you're being too hard on yourself..."  Shhh - I'm not.  I'm not scolding myself, I'm acknowledging that this is a habit of thinking that gets in the way of my living.  It gets in the way of me having all the joy and love that my life might otherwise hold.  I'm trying hard to jettison that habit.  And if you're reading this and you feel a twinge of familiarity, join me.  


So despite the fact that I'm still gloriously, beautifully imperfect, I drove my trusty Explorer across Oregon, loaded with women and dance gear, and competed with my belly dance troupe.  Wearing, I kid you not, sequins, glitter nail polish and hair extensions.  It was the girliest thing I have ever done, and it was scary and pretty damned fun.   


Here's to road trips and weekend adventures, to dancing on stages and kitchens and backyards, to impromptu bbq's, bike rides and lazy hours on patios and decks drinking the libation of one's choice. Here is to all the life we can fit into each day, and all the laughter, love and joy we can find on our journey.


Best to all who happen this way!


~plk

Honoring Ordinary

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, of love, of belonging, of creativity, of faith. . ." ~ Brene' Brown

This idea fills me with something I have been missing, a sense of reason or an organizing principle.  It it something I have been struggling to understand, something I could not give words.  And, as a result, I now have a tiny crush on Brene' Brown.  They are pretty words, to be sure.  But what makes them resonate so deeply for me is that as I'm working on writing essays about the experiences that I shared with Jeff in his battle to keep the life he wanted so badly, I've been unable to give words to the absolute peace and grace of his acceptance, and how it was not, is not, anything like giving up.  Acceptance can coexist quite beautifully with a fighting spirit, and it did in Jeff, and in me.  Brown's research frames it perfectly for me, and things simply clicked together, the last turn of a Rubik's cube solved.  Watch for an essay on this, it's too big for a blog post.

There are at least six examples from Brown's work that moved me.  But I want to focus on something more immediate, and more relevant to anyone reading this.  From the transcript of Brene's TED talk in Houston:

In this world, somehow an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.  We miss what is important on the quest for the extraordinary, when in fact it is the ordinary moments that hold the most joy.  Embrace vulnerability by:

• Practice gratitude.  Be thankful for what we have.

• Honor what is ordinary about our lives.  

• Experience joy and love. 

This is simply true.  We chase all the wrong things, are encouraged to identify all the ways that we are extraordinary and "work 'em for effect."  But it is the threads of similarity that tie us to others that matter most, not these flashes of extreme talent or brilliance or beauty.  It is how we connect with others, eye to eye as humans, that matters.  It is empathy, not sympathy.  Love, and not merely admiration.  Joy, and not merely existence.  Humility and not hubris.  Focus on these and the rest will fall into place.  Your life work will assume the rightful place in the world.  More importantly, you will have real joy, and you will have love.  It may not look exactly the way you had planned - but planning for joy and love is not really on the agenda.  This is a process that must simply be lived.

All of this means self evaluation.  I've practiced gratitude most of my adult life.  It has been a part of me since I was in my early 20's and thanking God and the universe for the people who fell into my life and gave me a helping hand.  But these days, how am I doing on my own path?  How many ordinary moments did I embrace this week?  When I imagine my future, as I consider the options for my future, how many of my choices are colored by a desire to find a more extraordinary life, and how many are more simply grounded in creating a life that might make me more vulnerable, but more happy?

Which leads me to discussions of my own vulnerability, the need for risk-taking.  One of the worst habits I have is the habit of perfectionism.  I also have the ability to strive for excellence, which is quite different.  In some areas of my life (my work in technology) I am able to balance the habit of perfectionism, chiefly because deadlines are deadlines and you just have to deliver at some point.  But also, my work in technology does not move my heart.  It is work, and I do it well.  I do it very well.  But it doesn't matter to me in the same way that, in contrast, writing does. And in those areas that matter most, self-imposed deadlines don't work.  In my writing, I delay stamping a story or essay as capital-F Finished, because it does not yet seem perfect.  By which I mean it does not yet represent the perfect version that existed in my head.  Get.The.Hell.Over.It is my advice to myself these days.

The other way that perfectionism interferes with my joy is in my relationship with my body.  I somehow drifted into a habit of delaying action/trips/dream-making, until my body was the way I wanted it to be - the right weight, fitness level, whatever.  This is not an easy thing to admit. Not everyone who knows me will recognize the truth of this, because I am relatively good at hiding this habit.  I have had a life that let me hide this habit - crowded as it has been the last five years with caring for Jeff and a truly inappropriate work schedule.  I have to own that I constructed this habit, this wall, and now I'm deconstructing it.  It's more difficult than I expected.

I have a deadline for that essay I mentioned, and I know which of my writer colleagues I will ask to give me feedback on it.  My body is gradually becoming my own again, and I am submitting a passport application so that this year I can experience at least one of the places that I've always dreamed of.

I am stronger than I ever knew.  I am more gentle than I ever knew.  I am as joyous as I have always known myself to be.  As always, I am grateful beyond measure for all of these gifts.

Be well wherever this may find you.

~plk

Notes on Brene' Brown:
Brown is a woman researcher who essentially fell into her life's work as a shame and vulnerability researcher.  She is a lively and animated speaker on the TED Talks series, and has written several books that deal with what she has termed Wholehearted living. 
One (fabulous) TED talk:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UoMXF73j0c

Context

I spent a few moments with one of my neighbors yesterday.  Eveyln has a progressive and terminal lung disease, given 2 years to live -- 5 years ago.  She is gritty.  She asked about me and then said she missed Jeff being out in the yard working on things.  "I knew how sick he was before the cancer, and his stubbornness made me stubborn, too.  I'm still mad at God about the whole mess."

It takes a lot of effort for a woman with progressive lung disease to say that many words.  Later I reflected that there was a time I would not have been still long enough for her to say them.  I'm glad I'm no longer that hurried.

I'm working on the outline and beginning pages of a memoir.  As I write sentences and paragraphs, and try to commit remembered scenes to the page, my heart sometimes hurts. As is often the case when I'm writing essays, I resist this discomfort.  I want to stop writing and go dig in the garden dirt.  And yet, there is an unsettled sense of urgency that drives me back to the page.  And there are the voices of people I love reminding me that I have a story that needs to be told.  So, I find myself digging pretty deep to find the precise, exact, story.  I've had this feeling before, this persistent and unnamed urgency, where the story or the wisp of memory is elusive and yet I know it is important.  It's a moment, as a person, where the uber-logical technical analyst person in my head is told to stand down and be patient.

I started out thinking that I was writing about the year that my husband fought cancer, and accepted death, and about the surprising lessons I learned while bearing witness to his wrestling with grace.  I thought that I had "context" that I would need to work into the book.  It would be important to relate that there had been 9 years before the cancer diagnosis that he lived with and fought myasthenia gravis, and to share how the effects of a back surgery and pain medications changed him.  I would need to delicately work in the details of anxiety disorders and chronic depression.  And I want to make sure that the joyous, funny, generous man with the crazy energy, the man I knew before all of these things happened to him, is alive to the readers of my story.  It would be important to say which parts of that lovely spirit remained until the very end.  Yes.  All true.  Nicely analytic and neat.

While I know that these considerations, as we say in discussions of writing, inform the writing, it seems to me that in the best essays and memoirs, they are more than context.  These details are more akin to the interwoven threads upon which the rest of the story is told - the warp and the weft of a life.  That's how I need to think of them, and it will be harder to write, but better.

This is my story, and it is also Jeff's.  It is also the story of us.  And the participants are gloriously and imperfectly human, and also gloriously and imperfectly infused with grace.  Perhaps, as I think these days, grace is given most generously to those who freely admit to flaws and foibles. Evelyn, and Jeff, and my family and the dozen other families I know that have been touched by loss in the last year.  Our story is not one of sudden and unexpected loss, it's the story of a longer war.  But it is also not all about loss.  It is, in great measure, the story of how unexpectedly beautiful and rich are the gifts of simply staying and doing what needs to be done.  How difficult, how tenuous and how lovely

Be well and joyous, wherever this may find you.

~plk