Snookered.

See, the thing about being saved is that it’s not an absolution.  You aren’t swept back from the cliff’s edge and wrapped in a cosmic swaddling, rocked into unseeing bliss.  What you are is placed back firmly onto a path.  A long one.  Back from the edge, back from the place of giving up on the work of this lifetime, you are nudged—not so gently, but not without compassion—onto a path that will require of you work for the rest of your lifetime.

The cliff’s edge, the leap from it, the ultimate sacrifice as it might be called is the choice to give up all the work that will ever be asked of you.  It is to say, Forget it, too hard, too much, there’s no help, no hope.  To be placed back onto the path you had made some kind of decision—by omission or commission—to leave means that you are now responsible to take up the work you’d abandoned.  It is to look up from your crumpled knees and see winding before you the path of your lifetime, the work that will surely be needed to accomplish it, and the knowledge that to be alive is to do that work.

To be alive is to agree.  To be alive is to sign an agreement daily that you will, however falteringly, place one foot before the other.  To be alive is to agree that you yourself and your life are more worthwhile than eliminating all the possibilities it holds, all the better and all the worse. 

And so, pulled back from the edge, “saved” as it were, you walk with a grim humor, knowing that somewhere you have chosen this.

storytime

In soft, rainy weather like this, you warm up a mug of cider, coffee, cocoa, cradling your palms around it for heat. You sink into the couch and watch vaguely out the window as everything gets welcomely drenched.

Your mind begins to drift, out of plan-making, errand-plotting, and back into the story that’s always being told.

It’s the one you were told before you were born. About wood nymphs, and magic, and the luminescence of play. It tells of quests and triumphs, failures and wounds burdened. It reminds you of the goat you rescue and the crow you chase out of the darkness. The lovers you are meant to kiss and those who trick you into it.

In the story that is always behind thought, you meld with ancient heroes, you are the foes they vanquish, and the cities they lay waste to. You are the sword of justice and of vengeance. Both the hag and lady of the lake. You are the unquantified stem cell of protagonist.

In grey weather like this, you aren’t yourself any longer, because you’ve gone back to what you've always been: everything. nothing. and teeming with every ending ever conceived. 

Shel.

Author, Poet, Artist Shel Silverstein played a significant role in the formative literary lives of myself and many people my age. 

Who didn’t have a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends or A Light in the Attic, with his line drawings of a man who forgot his pants, or three children flying in a shoe? Who doesn’t remember a few lines here and there of that one about being sick but then, “What’s that you say, You say today is Saturday, Alright I’m going out to play” or “Pamela Purse Yelled Ladies First” and then ends up in a cannibal’s stew?

Shel’s poems are inventive, clever, imagination firing. And yet. It’s his two “full-length” books that I’m considering today. Books whose premise I simply don’t agree with, despite having heard others’ interpretations and admiration: The Missing Piece and The Giving Tree.

In The Missing Piece, we follow a Pac-Man-looking pie as he looks to find his own missing piece, the piece to complete him. Like Goldilocks, some are too big, some are too small, but in the end, he finds the one that’s just right.

In The Giving Tree, we watch as a small boy enjoys the bounty of an apple tree, the tree offering him fruit, a branch to swing from, its trunk, and then finally, simply a stump on which to sit.

Both of these books, to me, reek of codependence. ! And, yes, you might roll your eyes at me, analyzing a simple children’s book or reading too much into a story. Many people have told me how lovely and generous it is that the tree continues to give and give of itself until there’s barely anything of itself left, and then finally the boy, now an old man, comes to appreciate it.

Isn’t it a beautiful story of self-sacrifice and loyalty and steadfastness?

Erm…

How about the Missing Piece? All Shel’s trying to say is that we all walk around the world feeling slightly unwhole, slightly missing. We are all trying to fill in a place within us that feels empty. Sometimes we use things that we think will fit that place – sometimes we use people who we think will fit that place. But we continue to go through our lives looking for our missing piece, and when we find it, we are complete and we are happy.

Isn’t it a lovely metaphor for life, for our human striving for fulfillment and satisfaction?

Well…

As I said, I have a hard time appreciating these messages as they’re written, if they’re written with those intentions at all. I have a hard time integrating the message that we ought to divest ourselves of our needs in order to satisfy others, as the tree did. Or the message that we none of us are whole, and need someone to fulfill us, as the piece sought.

I recognize I may be being a little heavy-handed with my interpretation of these stories, but as someone who’s loved so much of Shel’s work, I bristle at the messages I glean from them.

In fantasy land, yes, it would be nice to have someone around who would give me everything I needed without asking anything in return except my eventual appreciation. Yes, it would be lovely to find a human who would complete me. But that’s not the way it works in reality land. And that’s not the way I think it should work.

I think it’s a strange message to pass along to kids, and an unrealistic vision of relationships that’s being set before us.

I was trying to explain “interdependence” to a friend of mine recently, and I sort of failed. But in the world of these stories, I guess the best I could say is if I am a piece rolling about the world, whether I feel whole or not, what I’d really want is another piece rolling alongside me, looking to make themselves whole, just as I am. And, in the end, mostly it’s about seeing that we already are, and discarding the skewed and broken glasses we use to view the world and ourselves.

If I were the tree, I’d hope to get to say the to boy, you know, I love you and all, but I could use some mutuality in this relationship, if that’s something you’re available for. And if the boy really needs to row a boat made out of my trunk, I’d hope for the strength to tell him … he’s barking up the wrong tree.

That all said, I will continue to pull out my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends and read a random poem. I will hope to read it to a new generation of readers, and I will hope to be an iota as creative and ingenious as he has been. But, I also hope to learn the lessons I would have liked these books teach. 

Blood Brothers

Yesterday morning I had coffee with a cancer friend, for lack of a better term.

He’s someone who reached out to me when I returned to work last Spring, who was 15 years out from his own similar cancer diagnosis, and said if I ever wanted to talk, he was available.

Since then, we’ve had coffee about once every 6 months or so, and we get to talk about walking back into a life that sort of looks the same on the outside, but has completely changed. We exchange the requisite, “Everything’s okay with your health?” question early in the conversation so we can continue on.

We speak mostly about work and fulfillment.

At the time we first met up, he was in a transition of his own, and now, about 18 months later, is again. And so we spoke about meaningfulness, about intention, about the often tipped balance between the checkbook and joy.

I love talking with him. Because he is my cancer friend. Because, it’s different than the first coffee date I had even earlier yesterday morning (a Jewish holiday and therefore a day off work), when I met with the home stager about potentially working and apprenticing with her.

With her, I only said things like, I’m just looking for a change and to instill more creativity into my every day life, to engage more of my heart in my work. With him, the whole conversation is built on the understanding of why that’s so. It’s not just because I’m a flighty 30something; It’s because I’m a fighting 30something (if you will).

I left the first coffee date with the home stager feeling mildly despairing and depressed. And I left the conversation with my cancer friend feeling uplifted, supported, and understood.

I know what he’s talking about when he says how it wrecks him that he has been so wrapped up in work again that he hasn’t had time for his outdoor hobbies. He knows what I’m talking about when I say that we have the privilege and curse of not being able to run on the hamster wheel of life without questioning what we’re doing.

I never wanted a cancer friend. I never wanted to be part of a cancer support group, and tried a few times without going back. Therapy isn’t the same thing either, though that helped. But talking with someone who also had their next breath marched up to the guillotine… it’s different.

It’s not "all cancer all the time." Our conversation wasn’t even about grief or anger. It was barely about cancer at all, except that of course it was. It is the reason we met, became friends, and can share with one another on a different level what our life paths are looking like and what we want them to look like and the struggle between just going along as planned and taking the time to question it all.

I imagine in some ways, it’s like war veterans’ ability to have an instant understanding of one another: You’ve both seen life and death; you’ve both fought bravely and been terrified; you’ve both come back to civilian life and are attempting to make sense of it all, while still paying your cable bill and buying groceries alongside every other citizen.

But you also know that, conscious or not, you both make every decision in reaction to and on top of your experience at war. You can’t not. It’s part of your DNA, now. You’re blood brothers.

I never knew I needed a cancer friend. And I sit here writing with tears of gratitude that I have one. 

Oh My Dear, Who’s Ever Ready?

I tore this quote from the back of a playbill a few years ago, and taped it to my fridge.

The play I’m in, there’s a song about waiting: waiting for marriage, for children, for your husband to come home, and eventually for death. The character pleads with us, with her husband, with herself: How long do I have to wait?

The ideas I have for my future are not unheard of or unrealistic; I’ve just been telling them to wait for so long that they feel out of reach. If you’re not moving toward them, your dreams will always feel that way.

I’ve been thinking this morning about worthiness: Who would want to hire me? What do I have to offer? Why would someone pay me instead of someone with more experience?

And, as romance and finance are never far from one another, I’ve been thinking about replacing some of those words with the same sentiment: Who would want to date me? What do I have to offer? Why would someone date me instead of someone who has their shit together?

The theme of worthiness is the undercurrent for both places of lack in my life. Or, more accurately, both places of unrealized dreams.

I do know intellectually, and often in my soul, that what I have to offer is not only magnificent, but unique. It’s about showing that to the world (and myself) in a way that I can support – in a way that I haven’t been ready to support or stand behind.

But, my dears, Who’s ever ready, indeed?

There has been a lot of waiting in my life, too. Waiting for me to get better, to get healthy, to get stable, to get grounded, to get organized, to get … “approvable.”

And mostly, that approval is internal. Waiting for my critic to shut the hell up long enough to see the beauty and the awe (that we all have, by the way).

Why haven’t I ever submitted an essay to a publication? I’m scared I’m not good enough (aka unworthy). Why have I never applied for an English professorship? I’m scared I don’t know enough (aka unworthy). Why do I … well, why do I remain single despite my awesomeness? I’m scared: my “picker” is broken, I can’t handle heartbreak again, I’m too gun-shy to really try. Aka, unworthy of letting myself try.

These are not easy admissions, but they’re also not the all of me, yet they’re part of the truth of me.

You can’t wait for someone else to knight you “worthy.” To pour magic bravery potion on you that enables you to write something you feel proud of and submit it. Or for someone else to see a potential in you that you’re terrified yourself of seeing.

You have to see it for yourself, and you have to make decisions from that place.

I’ve read enough Brene Brown over these few years to know, a) we all go through this in one form or another, and b) that there is a way out: It’s through.

It’s the small steps we (I) decide to take. Why didn’t I ever apply to teach English? Doesn’t matter – can you do it now? Why haven’t I ever coalesced my ideas for children’s workshops? Doesn’t matter – do you believe in yourself enough now to try?

I will not wait until I’m ready, because that’s an illusion. We (well, many of us?) are going to question our worth now and then, but it doesn’t have to hold us back from taking action anyway. Readiness is an illusion, just like perfection. Because, surely, that’s what I’m meaning, isn’t it? When I’m finally good enough to try, to be original, to be seen, to be loved, then I can masterfully get on with my business of being awesome?

That’s really not the way it works.

You take the steps, and hope the rest of you catches up. You overreach yourself, and yes there’s a moment of will you make it or not, but if you’re not reaching, you’re waiting. And the next step will never ever get closer, no matter how long you do. 

Having My Cake and Eating It Too.

(Yes, I’m gonna go there. Bear with me!)

In 12-step recovery it is custom to acknowledge lengths of sobriety or abstinence. Within the first year, we often acknowledge monthly mile-markers, and after a year, we acknowledge annual “birthdays” or “anniversaries.”

Why do this? Why stand up in front of others and say that you’ve accomplished something? Isn't that selfish and self-seeking? Why does it matter?

Well, the conventional wisdom is that it shows others that it’s possible. You’re not actually doing it for yourself, although that’s quite nice; you’re helping others to see that “one day at a time” adds up to months, and even years. You’re offering hope to others.

In our “belly-button birthday” world, why acknowledge our birthdays either? I have friends who eschew celebrating their birthdays. Why celebrate? It’s not like you *did* anything. You just lived another day.

And, just as with recovery, to me, that’s the point these days.

It’s to celebrate and share the fact that you made it. That you are alive. You did do something: You lived.

A former mentor of mine used to call this our “precious human life.” A Buddhist, her meaning is how rare it is to inhabit a human form this lifetime. We could have been a tree or a toad or a fruit fly, alive for 24 hours, unconscious. But we’re not.

We’re animated, active, Fate-affecting. And Fate-affected.

We’re constantly learning and changing and fighting and hoping and loving and hating and struggling and triumphing. We’re constantly forming ideas of who we are and who the world is; where we are and where we want to be.

We’re creating our lives with every breath we have the privilege to draw.

So when a co-worker the other day shushed everyone as we wished her a happy birthday, saying she doesn’t do birthdays, I did whisper to her, But imagine the alternative.

We do fight to be here, conscious or not; every day, we are making a decision to try. No matter what that looks like, even if it looks like stagnation or the mundane. Even if we are the tired, poor huddled masses. We try.

The celebration of a birthday is an acknowledgement of a year of living. A year of something precious and rare and teeming with uncertainty and, hopefully, love.

Today, I turn 33 years old. I have survived alcoholism, dysfunction, gang rape, and cancer.

I have formed and smashed relationships. I have melted and embraced. I have survived my own machinations. And become a metallurgist.

I, my friends, am an alchemist. And I honor us all today by showing you:

We live.

And how!

With love,m.

Third Star to the Right...

Call me a navel-gazer, but as the Jewish High Holidays approach, I get reflective.

At work, I'm neck deep in preparation for them, and acutely aware of their significance on the calendar than I ever was: Two years ago, at the end of September, I was diagnosed with Leukemia on the evening of Yom Kippur, our "day of atonement," the day on which we are either "sealed into the book of life" for another year ... or not. It's a pretty significant day on the Jewish calendar, and I have come to hate it.

I hate what it "means," about being sealed or not into the book of life. I hate how much changed in an instant, with one sentence told to me by a doctor. I hate remembering the sore throat that began the whole prelude to my ER visit, which kept me working from home, and feeling so badly about it since it was a brand new job.

But, what remembering this day also does for me is cause me to reflect on what has changed, and what has happened in the two years hence. I have endeavored to create "a life worth living" for myself against all the internal railing and nay-saying, against all my own self-sabotage, against all the foot-dragging and self-immolation I had previously submitted to.

In the last two years, I have dragged myself kicking and screaming into a life I consider worth living.

This isn’t to say that I’d done nothing beforehand, but here’s a list of experiences I've had & actions I've taken in the last two years, post-cancer:

Hosted my Creativity and Spirituality Workshop

Began blogging daily again

Went to Hawaii for the first time

Got a bedframe for the first time since childhood

Sang at a café with friends

Joined their band on bass

Played shows out, nearly once a month

Started ushering at Music shows for free & have seen, among others:

     - Paul McCartney (about to see him again next week)
     - Red Hot Chili Peppers
     - Doors guitarist Robby Krieger play "People Are Strange" with Warren Haynes...!
     - About to see Dave Matthews

Bought a car

Celebrated July 4th near my old hometown with my mom and brother

Busked on the streets of Oakland and SF singing Christmas caroles

Got real headshots

Auditioned for plays and musicals

Got cast in 4 shows

Modeled for friends

Submitted photos to modeling agencies

Visited Seattle for the first time

Visited Boston to try out a new relationship experience

Dated with craziness

Dated with less craziness

Got laid well

Got laid poorly

Visited a best friend and her newborn baby for a week

Hiked Tilden & Marin

Took accredited acting classes

Took voice lessons
Flew a plane(!) -- and landed it ;)

Any of these things could have happened beforehand (and some were indeed happening, with less gusto, determination & regularity), but most of the activities on this list are new to me.

I was talking with a friend a few months ago, another cancer survivor, and she said that she feels complete with the world – that if she died today, she’d be okay with that. I noticed how not okay I'd have been with that; virulently not okay.

Granted, she’s about 10 years older than me, has a daughter, teaches in a way she loves, is married.

And I think those are key differences. Having created your own family, having a career you feel impassioned about. Those are items that are not yet on my above list, and I want them to be before I expire, thank you.

I do however, write this list to reflect to myself that there are things that I’ve done that are miraculous, fun, and inspiring for anyone to have done, let alone l'il ole me. I forget this, frequently.

It’s hard to admit this here, and it’s not precisely the entire truth, but if I were to expire sooner than later... Well, I won't say, "If I died today, I'd be okay with that," but that I am exponentially grateful for this role I’ve recently landed. To play in a musical, comedic role at a community theater is the cat’s pajamas. (If I have to go soon, I hope it's after we open!) 

When I returned from teaching English in South Korea almost 10 years ago, I said I was coming home to “break onto Broadway.” Then instead, I got sober!

And now, 8 years since then, I’m taking steps that are developmentally appropriate to that dream. It’s in the right direction, even if I never get there. It's my impassioned avocation, even if it’s not a vocation.

I do not wish to expire soon. I have more experiences I want to add to that list, and more sanity and evenness I wish to accrue. But I feel more comfortable now than I had been even a few months ago in noticing that I am accumulating the experiences that, to me, express a full and well-lived life.

I wouldn’t have as many regrets if it were to happen soon. I have a few regrets of things I’ve done & ways I've re/acted in the last two years, sure. It’s not as if I’m a saint, and sometimes I still choose experiences I know are more damaging than useful.

But instead of waiting to be "inscribed in the book of life" by some entity or religion or benchmarks of success otherwise prescribed to me by my childhood, my faith, my inner critic...

Instead I am coming to believe that I am following my own North Star: I may never get there, but I'm headed in the "right direction."

And for the first time ever, I deeply feel that. 

We Can Do This the Easy Way . . .

Why does nobody ever put a period after that phrase?: 

We can do this the easy way. Period.

I heard it again on a radio interview the other day: Well, anything worth doing is hard. It’s the hard work that makes it worth while. Nothing good ever came from taking the easy road.

Really?

Here is a brief list of activities that I find most worthy and fueling in the world:

Holding a baby

Making conversation with a child

Laughing with friends

Singing showtunes with my mom and brother

Singing camp songs while my brother plays guitar

Dancing

Not one of these things is “hard.” Not one requires advanced degrees, mountains scaled, or scars incurred.

Each of these things are, for me, Easy. Joyful. Miraculous.

This value our culture has attached to struggle and adversity and toil is sickening and disheartening.

Why would we try to do anything if we know we’re gonna get our butts kicked in the process?

Now, I know what they’re getting at. I know that I wrote just yesterday that showing up is hard and scary, so I don’t know that I have a soap-box to stand on here. But, I am tired of being harangued by the idea that I have to struggle in this life to do anything worthwhile.

That anything that comes easily, naturally, feels good, joyful or pleasurable must have a toll paid in flesh.

Sure, caring for children all of the time is taxing; and I’m not a parent, just an eager attendant and friend to others' kids, which demands its own responsibility. Making the time to show up with and for friends, and to maintain friendships does take effort. Dancing means making myself vulnerable to being seen, which requires taking a deep breath before diving in.

But it doesn’t follow that these things are struggles, adversities, or stories of redemption.

God, how we love a redemption story. We hate people who “have it easy.” We want to hear how muddy the water was you had to slog through toward your goal. We want you to express fear and isolation and doubt and a “dark night of the soul” before you are worthy of a story of triumph, joy and ease.

What kind of fucking schadenfreude society are we?

I “get” that we all want to feel a kind of connection with those who have struggled, because often we too find ourselves in struggle and we don’t want to feel alone. It feels disconnected to hear a story of ease, success, and Life’s mercy. Because we don’t have or believe we can have that ourselves. And so we want you in the mud with us.

Sometimes we do slog through mud. I get that, too. But not everything in life that’s worth doing requires that. Sometimes we cross the bridge, our toes are not calloused, there is no troll to pay off, and we simply arrive at our destination.

I know that doesn’t make great drama. But I’m not looking for drama. I’m looking for joy. 

My Brain Reads Like a Cafe Gratitude Menu...

I am pure, undiluted joy.

Honestly, you could culture my blood for Potions class.

There was an impromptu dance party.

I left an incoherent bubbling message on my mom’s voicemail, and called my brother, too. Who told me I’m awesome. And who I told back that he is, too.

For those who don’t follow my Facebook feed, I found out this morning that I got the role of Morticia in “Addams Family: The Musical.”

The one I don’t even know how I found the audition call for. The one I auditioned for this weekend to my own mediocre reviews. The one I was called back for, to my own mediocre reviews.

I’m sensing a trend here: What I think, and what reality tells me, may be two very different things.

And, here, for the better.

The astounding thing to me is this is the second lead role I’ve been offered in as many months. From, “you know your height gets in your way” to “please join us” … Wow.

There’s a quote that called me to sit for a moment in silence on my bed, breathing heavy from the fist pumping, Elaine-thumbs-out dance party:

Don’t forget to pause a minute and thank G-d for everything.

Thank you. Thank you, Universe, for conspiring for me. Thank you, Molly, for showing up even though you’re scared and doubtful. Thank you, FRIENDS, for receiving those phone calls and texts that ask you to send me love and support. Thank you, friends, for sending love and “likes” and hope.

I need you way more than you know.

And you always show up, which is marvelous – like, something to marvel at. Really.

The play will run mid-September to mid-October. This means that I will spend my October 7th birthday in performance.

I spent my 30th birthday with fondue and friends. I spent my 31st in a hospital bed, saying, "Next year: Brunch, huh?"

I celebrated 32, indeed, at brunch with a dear friend and her two kids whose laughter is part of my salvation.

And, god willing, I will spend 33 in pursuit of a dream I have let languish in a faded costume closet. The clothing of another woman in another life.

Life moves and shakes, it do.

And part of my work is to accept that these costumes, these roles, these friends, this love, this life … are for me, too.

Let’s throw open the doors, pull out these moth-eaten dreams, and hold them up to reality. They may be more solid than I’ve wanted to know.

Thank. You. 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Why aren’t you writing for a living?

Because it’s just a hobby, an escape.

Why aren’t you writing for a living?

Because it’s too hard and I’m not good enough.

Why aren’t you writing for a living?

Because I don’t know how to show up consistently.

Any of these types of questions ever cross your mind? Any of these questions and immediate quashings?

This morning, that question came to me. I always dismiss my writing becoming a means or an ends. I don’t make the time; I haven’t touched the essay my aunt said I should submit to the New York Times’ Modern Love section. I haven’t crafted anything for the The Sun, a magazine at least 3 people have suggested I submit my work to.

It’s just me being me. How is that worthy or interesting or enough?

Because I saw someone else had clicked on it, I just re-read a blog I wrote in January, Remember What the Redwoods Told You, about being “told” by the trees that I was going to live through my cancer. And as I read through the end of it, about being given the chance to be in my life, to make this time worthy, I think about all the procrastination and fear I still let grab hold of my ankles.

This is not a self-flagellation blog; as you can read in italics above, I already have plenty of those thoughts. But, they are just thoughts, not facts. And thoughts can be changed. Through action.

“Act your way into right thinking,” the phrase goes.

I’ve “thought” for a while about waking up earlier (yes, even earlier) to do some “real” writing. It hasn’t happened yet, and that’s okay, but I know that I work better in the morning, when my brain cells still have some anima.

And as I was finding this question arise in my meditation this morning, goading me to find a legitimate reason for postponing my good, I thought of a perfect resource friend I can reach out to about this, and actually get something into action. And maybe deadline.

Because, as my acting friend told me earlier this week when I asked her how she “makes” herself learn monologues, she answered, Deadlines. She sets up deadlines by signing up for auditions, and makes sure she has a back pocket filled with current monologues.

To paraphrase, Our growth can come as much from our actively seeking it, as it can from being forced.

But, it helps to be pushed a little.

That’s what registering for these auditions is for me, a push to get back into it, to not let another month and another month slide off the calendar. To make this year “worthwhile,” to me means to actually do those things that I think are for other people, people with talent or time or resources. Bull.

The only difference between them and me is action. Nothing more.

A rallying, warrior cry sounds every day for me. It is my choice to heed its call or to roll over and hit Snooze.

And yet, it is also my choice to condemn myself or not on the days I do hit Snooze. As I wrote yesterday, there’s no use in beating myself up for not being where I want to be – that doesn’t actually get me there quicker.

What helps with all of this is accountability, which a deadline is, but also what friends can be. I’ve been toying with the idea (thinking, again!) recently of getting an “Action Buddy,” or “Accountability Partner” whatever you want to call it.

I know this is a system that works for many people, and I believe it could work for me. So, with all irony, I’m going to add “Get an Accountability Buddy” to my list of personal actions… and see if I can hold myself accountable to that!

Because there is no reason I’m not writing that is valid. I know there’s grist here; I know there’s “enough” talent. I would love to take actions that reflect that knowledge. Because, if you haven’t noticed, I seem to think that Time is our most precious natural resource of all.

Card Reading

I had very specific plans for when I came home last night: watch Apollo 13, “take care” of myself, and go to bed by 10.

Only one of these happened.

For most of the day, I was out & about in lots of conversation with lots of people, expending lots of up, outgoing energy, and I wanted to counter it with some quietude. Before coming home for the evening, I was in a coffee shop, finishing up some extra work, and addressing cards for some friends.

I didn’t have the address for one, so I texted her for it, and told her that I must have 10 of her envelopes at home with her address on it; in fact, I had one of hers on my mantle.

She asked me which one, but I couldn’t recall exactly, and told her I’d send her a photo of it when I got home.

This, was the first domino toward the hijacking of my evening.

I did come home, take a photo and send it to her, a lovely decorated envelope with stickers and curly-cues and kind words, like all of hers. Next to it on my mantle (well, the top of a bookshelf, really) were a card from the director and one from the assistant director of the play I was in in April, with deliciously glowing, appreciative, complimentary, and supportive words. Such kindness and such a reflection of my being “seen” by them, in one of my aspiring avocations. The last one up there was a thank you card from my best friend on Long Island’s wedding, thanking me for being there and what a treat it was to have me there, literally in her bed, the night before the wedding, and helping/watching her get ready the next day; that it wouldn’t have been the same without me.

You can see why I keep these things.

But, it was also time to probably pack them away, do some cleaning. And I wanted to send more photos of my friend’s envelopes to her, since I knew she was in a space to need her own (literal) sparkle reflected back to her. 

And, down the rabbit hole we go, into the desk drawer where I keep cards, envelopes so I can remember return addresses (yes, I know there’s a better way), and art inspiration bits, like postcards from galleries or pages torn from magazines.

I’ve known this drawer needs attending to. If, god forbid, I were to croak, it would be hell for the person cleaning it out, and I know they’d just trash the lot, since, who keeps someone else’s old greeting cards.

But, also, it’s unusably full at the moment. Because in it, too, are all the cards I received when I was initially diagnosed with Leukemia in late September 2012, and also a host of them came in around the Hanukkah/Christmas season that year.

I’ve been avoiding having to carve through them. Because how can you discard those messages?

When I was sick, I lined all the cards up on the walls of my hospital room. I taped every single one up around me, to remind me of the network of support and love that I had. Each card, a message of love, faith, healing, fortitude, just for me. You couldn’t come into my hospital room without immediately knowing that I was loved. And how f’ing important was that.

This was not the room of a dying woman. This was not the room of a woman told she had a 40% chance of living through the next 5 years, even with treatment. This was not the room, either, of a woman who looked like a patient, despite the baldness, weightloss, and IV stuck into my arm and chest. I wore jeans and a sweater, like everyone else. I was a human, not a patient. I was a woman loved, not a pity case.

How rallyingly important was that to know, feel, and remember every single day.

But, when the trips to the hospital were finally over, and it was time to reacclimate to living in my apartment full-time, what to do with those cards?

I’m a keeper of things. Sentiments, magazine pages, interesting rocks I find on a mountain or beach. I wouldn’t say I’m a hoarder, but I do have a bag of gently used tissue paper in my closet … but it’s folded neatly and in color blocks, so it’s okay, right?!

I also have a bag in my closet of the covers to theater booklets of plays I’ve been to; movie stubs; plane tickets; the brochure for a place I went camping or an attraction I toured.

The trouble is, I’m not a scrap-booker, so I just kinda carry this bag of non-chronologically ordered “crap” with me from home to home. But, that’s okay. One day, like the cards, I’ll go through them.

But, last night was for the card drawer.

It was slow-going. I had to take a deep breath before taking the rubber band from around the batch of 2012 holiday cards. I knew this was going to take a while and probably bring things up.

But I began. And with each card, I was reminded of why I’d kept them until now.

Here’s the one from my college classmate, now in LA, saying she’d enclosed a gift card to Trader Joes.

Here’s one from a former colleague saying she loves getting the bloggish updates I was posting then to my lotsahelpinghands website.

Here’s one handwritten from an Etsy company saying “a friend” was thinking of me and wanted me to stay warm. This, I remember, accompanied a package of 6 “chemo caps” ranging from thin to thick, the one I wore most, a fuzzy leopard print that kept me feeling fun and warm. I still don’t know who sent those, as there was no name. Thank you, whoever you are.

Last night, with each, if I knew the sender and their cell number, I took a photo of the card, and sent it as a text with a note of thanks to them. Each text, a reminder to us both of what friendship means, even for people who aren’t close.

It was nearly 11 when I finally decided to stop. I’ve barely made a dent into the drawer. But was able to cull a few things out, deciding that with some, having a photo of them now is enough.

At the closing of this activity, I found myself in soft tears of gratitude. So many people surrounded me with love. With funny cards and sentiments, with crazy wacked-out envelopes, with heartfelt messages of hope and healing. And only a handful of these folks were people I keep in regular touch with. So many people came out of the woodwork to support me.

I was told once during the time I was sick, that I had no idea how many people were rooting for me. I agreed. I knew I had no idea, and I knew that was astounding and one of the greatest showings of human generosity that I’ve witnessed.

I had priests, rabbis, Muslims, and Buddhists praying for me. My mom’s hairdresser and my Aunt’s student. I had a class of kindergarteners praying for me.

I remember, too, when I was sick, trying to figure out how I could send thank you cards to everyone who’d contacted me, but I could only handle a few.

In this retread through the cards, in sending them back out to their sender with my note of thanks, I hope I am closing that loop of love, and letting you all know:

Your prayers worked, and I love you back.  

Aesop was a Scientist.

Chances are, like me, you’ve heard a hundred versions Aesop's fable, "The Oak and the Reed," wherein we're taught to bend like a reed in a storm, instead of remaining stalwart as an oak which will be blown over.

The moral is to remain flexible in the face of challenge or adversity, instead of becoming rigid and unmoving. To move with the times, to let things shift around you without trying to control them or how they’re affecting you. To be at ease with how things are, because when the storm does pass, if you’ve remained reed-like, you’ll stand up into the sunlight again.

Yes, we’ve all heard this, and again if you’re like me, you vacillate between these flora’s coping mechanisms, flexible to rigid and back again. Sometimes within the same hour.

However, one story I didn’t know was one I heard on the little audio book I’m listening to now: The Biodome Moral.

(Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the Pauly Shore movie, but it’s valuable nonetheless.)

Scientists in the 80s, the book reports, created a perfect replica of Earth and Earth’s atmosphere within a dome. They then sent 8 scientists into the dome to live there for 2 years. Among their findings was what happened to the trees.

Inside the dome, there was no wind and no storms. The scientists assumed that without the challenges of storms to damage the trees, they would grow taller and stronger and faster than those outside the dome.

Indeed, the trees grew faster and taller. But not stronger.

The trees were weak, and easily uprooted. The scientists discovered that the trees needed the challenge of the storms, of withstanding the storms, in order to become strong and healthy. By eliminating all adversity from their lives, they became big and tall, sure, but they also became hollow and weak.

Remind us of any other species?

I am not an advocate for adversity. I bristle vehemently when told that adversity is "a blessing," as I’m occasionally told about my cancer.

Which, by the way – never tell someone that. If they want to say that to you, great; listen, nod, be compassionate. But never be the one to tell them that it makes them stronger, never tell them that there will be a gift from it, or that it is itself a gift. All these things may be true, but fuck you, healthy person, for telling me to look on the bright side of leaking out my ass for a month. Even though you mean it authentically, lovingly, and truthfully.

I happen to know these things are true. I write here that they are; that having had that adversity has impelled and propelled me to engage in my life and in activities that I’d procrastinated on; necessitated my creating new relationships and boundaries that I’d been too scared to create before. Having had and survived cancer has irrevocably changed the rest of my life and given miles of perspective to every other storm I may encounter.

But if you haven’t noticed, sometimes we get tired of encountering storms, and I’d really prefer for you to not steal my lemons to make your own lemonade. -- And I still wouldn't call it a blessing. An opportunity, I'd concede. But I'm sure no one ever said: Bless me, father, with life-threatening illness. 

... I guess I still have some letters of complaint to write to the Universe's customer service department.

So,

The absence of storms makes us weaker. But, the preponderance of storms makes us exhausted.

To continue in fable-speak then, I suppose it’s appropriate to quote Goldilocks on the merits of balance and the middle way. To endeavor to create, withstand, be free from and grow from challenges that are not too big, not too small, but “Just Right.”

"Only Her Hairdresser Knows For Sure!"

I am likely not the only woman to tear up at the sighting of a gray hair on her head. But I may be one of the few who wells up with tears of gratitude.

Yesterday, during my morning primping, I noticed a gray hair. I usually don’t pull them out; this isn’t the first I’ve noticed. But this one, I decided to.

About 5 inches of silver, shiny, light-catching hair. 5 inches that have grown back since it all fell out from chemo in late 2012.

Call me crazy, but I’ve never been scared of going gray. I had none at all before cancer, and several now. But, even before then, I always thought of it as a rite of passage. As a crowning achievement, really. You’ve made it. You are alive to go gray at all. You are passing into the stage of life that is for richness, boldness, satisfaction, self-esteem and a greater degree of self-assurance.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading about aging generations, it’s that so much of our self-questioning begins to fall away once we reach “a certain age.” We begin to think less about how others see us, and more to question what we want to leave as a legacy. And this brings with it so much reflection and truth-finding.

Who wouldn’t want to age into that category?

Surely, you don’t have to turn 50 to begin to assess your values and your desires for the remainder of your years. Like me, and surely others, you can do that at most any age. But it helps to have some experience behind you to make those choices from a place of peace, not fear.

The first memoir I ever looked at, I didn’t read.

I saw it on a shelf in Borders (when it still existed) about 7 or 8 years ago. I noted the title, looked at the flap, and went on with my day. But I never forgot about it, and last year finally picked it up to read.

The title? Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters. A woman’s exploration of what that means to “go gray” in our culture and society. A lifelong hair dyer, she made the decision to give up the illusion, and embrace whatever lay under the chemicals, for better or worse.

Author Anne Kreamer looks at the history of dying our hair; goes “undercover” as a woman trying to reinvent herself to re-enter the workforce to see if image consultants will tell her to dye her now growing-out grays (none do); and comes to discover that with her new look comes a new clothing color scheme, and a new confidence.

She also doesn’t purport the superiority of letting her hair grow out. She talks with successful women who do and don’t dye, and let’s them have their experience. All she can speak to is her own.

Surely, it helps that she goes gray in a “nice” way, with silvery and dark chrome strands. Which is much the way I anticipate I will.

With my dark coloring, I imagine that I will go silver, instead of stale gray, or as my mom describes her (dyed) fading blond: dirty dishwater.

So, that "beauty in the beast" helps my acceptance, I’m sure.

But what brought me to tears yesterday as I stood there, admiring this newly-found strand, now plucked and held like a precious object in my hand, was the reality and giddy reminder I feel every time I find one: I made it. I am alive to have gray hair.

I’m alive to see what will happen with it: if they’ll turn out all spidery texture and I’ll lament I ever praised finding them. If I’ll consider dying it after all. Or if I’ll love every single thread of life these gray hairs represent.

I tear up when thinking about this, because it’s true. Because, like someone admiring a sunset, or their sleeping child, or the taste of a food never eaten, it means I’m alive. Which itself means I have a chance and a choice to make my life whatever I want it to be.

My gray hair represents possibility, transformation, and authenticity.

Who wouldn’t rejoice? 

10 minute blog:

(I know they say, Only speak if you can improve on the silence, but I felt I wanted to give you something this morning. Time is short due to doing my due diligence. And making up tongue twisters, apparently.)

Yesterday evening, I went to pluck one of the remaining lemons from the tree in the backyard of our building. In it, I found a robin’s nest with three sightless, flat and feathered chicks in it. Maws up and open.

I’ve been watching robins on the roof next door to me with worms in their mouths for a few days now, as I sit here at this kitchen table, writing, typing, breathing. But I never imagined there was life happening right there! The ingenuity of the nest-making was astounding, leaves harvested long ago, now time-reduced to a lattice outline.

It’s the noticing. The small moments when the chocolate vegan mousse cake you doubted, actually tastes like gilded decadence. When you decide to send a “hugs” text to your immediate family, just because it felt like a good idea this morning. When you go back through old pocket calendars, and read all the quotes and notes you’ve collected, including this rancorous gem from a rancorous man: “I’ve gotten to the point where patience is a waste of time.” – or this one, “I have a hard time taking my sanity temperature.”

For reasons hilarious and unknown to me, I seem to find myself in my second band with folks who are at least 10 years older than me. I love this. There’s little of the peacock chest puffing, and more of the genuine delight in participating in something fun, something that maybe we all wish we did when we were in high school, but didn’t. At least, I feel that way. And grateful that I get to do it now, when I’m less likely to vomit vodka tonics on myself.

Instead, I get to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon holding a bass in a basement with friends, and come home and feel inspired to take out my own guitar, and find out what I have to say anyway. 

"Push the Button, Max!"

In the 1965 hilarious film, The Great Race, Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) chases our hero, The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) around the globe. Whenever Professor Fate attempts to unleash a hidden gem of an engine booster or booby trap, he yells to his sidekick, PUSH THE BUTTON, MAX! – which Max does, to uproarious and hijinxed disastrous results.

It would have been a Leslie Nielsen film if it were done in 80s.

What sparked this memory this morning is how often there’s a voice inside me egging me on to push the panic button. Come on, Max, this is a great idea! Let’s pull all ripcords, let the chips fall where they may! Damn the consequences, HOO-RAH!

Yesterday, I got an email from Kaiser to follow-up on some routine bloodwork I get done every few months now, just to keep tabs on my post-Leukemia cells. Apparently, my liver enzymes were elevated. Like, Wonkavator-through-the-factory's-glass-ceiling elevated.

My doctor wrote me that I had to come in for follow-up labs right away, that if I drank alcohol I should stop immediately, and that she was informing my oncologist, Dr. Li (which humorously autocorrected to “Dr. Lithium”).

Professor Fate wanted Max to push the button so bad. It’s bad news, it’s tragic, it’s cancer, it’s death, it’s imminent! PUSH THE BUTTON!

But… here’s the thing I’ve learned about pushing that button, from the movie, and from my own life experience: It rarely does anything productive.

So, I texted my coworker and my boss that I would be in late, that I was going to Kaiser, and then I called my naturopath/chiropractor/nutritionist in SF and made an appointment with him for that morning, too.

Because, this is how The Great Leslie would approach it: Pause, Assess, Reframe, Choose Love.

Well, maybe he wouldn't use those terms, but he would pause, at least, and assess before leaping out of the hot air balloon.

I arrive at Kaiser, and walk down the hallway. I’m toodling to myself, softly singing/humming tunelessly, just making notes up to distract my thought-life. I realize I’m practicing something called self-soothing, a practice I read about for babies learning to fall asleep on their own.

Instead of fully freaking out, I’m using a positive biofeedback technique to calm my pulse, my panic. And, it works, a little.

After they take 7 vials of my blood, I drive into the city to see my chiro. The man I credit for saving my ovaries from nuclear annihilation during chemo, with his supplements, nutritional advice, and amazingly accurate diagnoses of what’s going on in my body.

I tell him that my Kaiser doctor said it had nothing to do with having poured chemo into my body for 6 months, since that was finished last March. It couldn’t possibly be related.

Assholes.

No: Idiots.

Of course my liver and kidneys are still bouncing back, shmucks. I “love” the way Western medicine brains work: There is no immediate cause of this that we can see, so it must be something new and traumatic and deadly.

How about a patient history, assh— Sorry, Idiots.

It’s like telling someone who broke their ankle a year and a half ago that that has no bearing on why they’re now experiencing pain in their hips. … You guys did learn the whole, “The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone” song in medical school, right?

Anyway, my annoyance with Western medicine aside, I went to the doctor I trust, after having done what the Western folks wanted me to do.

We did some muscle testing, which is like the coolest thing ever. He handed me a small vial filled with clear liquid marked GMO corn. Told me to hold my other arm out and try to resist his pushing it down. My arm fell like an anvil. It weakens my system.

He held out one labeled organic corn? My arm stayed straight as a compass.

We did this several times: Pasteurized milk? Down. Raw milk? Up. Non-organic eggs? Down. Organic eggs? Up.

What I should offer at this point is that I have been eating a ton of crap these past few weeks. Whatever cookies, candy, cupcakes have been lain out at work, I’ve eaten – because I’m stressed. And sooner or later, my ban against refined sugar and dairy yields, and I go to town.

I’ve also been busy so I haven’t been cooking at home, and have therefore been eating take-out foods, which, although aren’t the worst foods I could choose, are surely not all made with my liver in mind.

So, I’ve been tired, stressed out (as you’ve read), and eating crap to boost me back up.

Yeah, apparently my overworked and Hirojima’d organs need some TenderLovingCare.

(Heh. ... Organs... lovin'... heh...)

Pushing the panic button does nothing for me except exacerbate an already very sensitive system. I don’t like hearing that I really have to stop eating the cupcakes at work, and not use half&half at Peet’s. Or, since it's not organic, I can't drink Peet's at all. I don’t like knowing that because of something I didn’t ask for I now have to work extra hard to fix its effects.

But, What I like less is driving to Kaiser on a Friday morning, thinking about the children I won’t be able to have. The life I won’t be able to “figure out.” The X-Men movie I won’t be able to see.

Look, Death and I have a pretty intimate relationship. We’ve fought an epic battle, and He’s waiting and watching in the corner, seeing if my hubris will bring me down. If, like in Million Dollar Baby, I will let my guard down and He’ll have the chance to (spoiler alert).

What I got to see from yesterday’s panic/not panic "opportunity" was that I still am pretty keen on this Life thing. That I can’t quit my job without health insurance. That I stress out about things I don't need to. And that I’ve accomplished a whole lot in the year and a half since I was diagnosed, things I want to continue to do: play music, make art, be with friends, travel.

I don’t need to push the panic button to “wake me up” – Life has a way of pushing it for me. Of pushing the button on the side of my cosmic cell phone to illuminate the time and remind me to stop freaking out in my head and get into my life.

So, today, I’m going to hum tunelessly as I get dressed, cook organic eggs, do (some) dishes, and head to an 11-year old’s birthday party to shoot mini-marshmallows at my friends. Because that’s the text Life is sending me today. 

But don't worry, I won't eat any. ;)

"Scott, if your life had a face, I would punch it. I would punch your life in the face." Scott Pilgrim Vol 4

As those of you who follow (or haven’t yet hidden) my Facebook know by now, I’m actively looking for work. I have been, but some dam broke this week, and I’ve pulled out more of the stops – those stops tend to look like “fear of looking bad, desperate, needy.” However, SURPRISE! I feel those things, so I guess if I look that way, then I’m just looking honest, huh?

I’ve been reading back into some of Brene Brown’s work lately. I have her book The Gifts of Imperfection, and have been reading through the Amazon previews of her other two books, most especially, Daring Greatly, because it’s got her own biographical story at the beginning that includes the following exchange: 

      Therapist: What does it [vulnerability] feel like?

      Brene Brown: Like I'm coming out of my skin. Like I need to fix whatever's happening and make it better.

      Th: And if you can't?

      BB: Then I feel like punching someone in the face.

Nonetheless, what she goes on to discuss is the virulent necessity to be vulnerable in order to achieve anything of worth, mainly love, connection, and compassion.

People have commented to me often that what I write here is “so honest.” Which I guess is another way of saying I allow myself to be vulnerable here. Partly I do this because this is a protected forum. There are many layers to getting here: You have to be my Facebook friend (or somehow have the link), and then you have to click on it.

Well, two layers then!

So, this is a bit of a more private club than public. And I suppose that I feel brave enough to share this all with those of you who have leaped those two “massive” hurdles toward connection with me. If you’re this interested, or amused, then why shouldn’t you get to see some of me? Which this blog always is: some of me. – It’s honest, but it’s not my diary, nor my therapist. (Aren't you grateful!)

I suppose that mostly what I feel about sharing here, and why I feel it's "safe" vulnerability, is that you’ve probably felt this way, too. I have heard that feedback many times from people from wildly different arenas of my life and backgrounds and circumstances.

We all feel the same way at times. Have felt that way, or simply “get” what it feels like to do so.

In short, we are an empathetic and compassionate community just by my writing and your reading. We create connection, however zero’d and one’d it is, in this exchange of ideas.

I suppose I write all this today to say-- No, to remind myself that I have great capacity for courage, authenticity and vulnerability. I don’t mind telling you about the depths because you’ve been there, and can relate. I don’t mind sharing my journey into and out of the chaos of my brain, because, surprise, you all have brains, too!

In this time when things for me feel uncertain and uncharted, this blog is a constant and a place for me where I know that I can do and be well. Even when I’m vomiting on this page, and raging into and at it, I know you’re here, smiling, waiting for me to pull through. Or nodding and saying, Me too.

And. (Point):

If I have the balls to be as vulnerable and honest as I am here behind these hurdles, then there is a significantly greater chance that I can own my authenticity out in the "real" world.

Which I’m pretty sure is what all this mind-fucking job/meaning of life search is about, anyway. 

Not Knot.

Last night, I listened to a woman share her intense pain and entanglement with her past. In listening to her, I realized something crucial for myself: I don’t actually feel that way anymore.

Despite the trailing tendrils and my habitual gnawing back at it, my past and I are actually not so enmeshed anymore – at least, as I listened to her, not nearly as much as we were. No. That’s not accurate. We’re just not. It’s there. I poke at it, like a plate of live octopus bits, still wriggling on the plate, long after everyone’d finished jamming them into hot sauce and tried to chew and swallow before they attached to the inside of your gullet. (Uh… See: My years living in South Korea for reference!)

But, I poke at it, and if I do, it’ll squirm. But for the most part, my past isn’t a thing crawling toward and suffocating me anymore.

Listening to this woman, hearing her say that she can’t seem to get under her past, I realized very clearly that I have. Again, it’s there, but it’s not a shackle around my ankle anymore; it’s just some dust I can kick off my shoe.

(Apparently, this'll be a metaphor-heavy blog!)

I have liked to think that my past is something I’m still slogging through, carrying around behind me like a behemoth, its hot putrid breath at my neck asking me how it feels, whether I am able to ignore it now, How ‘bout now, Now?

I’ve liked to think that my past is still a quicksand pit I’m wading through, slow as molasses, fetid and shoes lost.

But, something about having this woman’s story as comparison (not better or worse, simply different), I got to see into a mirror that I haven’t been able to hold up for myself.

I am not there anymore. I am under my past. I’ve excavated, charted, spelunked and had more than one canary die down there with me.

But, in the end, in the now, we’re kind of done there. There’s a cave we’ve dug down into, we’ve opened the land around it, we’ve cared and cleansed and ameliorated the land. We’ve begun to forget that it was a horrid, dark, and dismal place, now in the open space that we’ve created from it, and we’ve used that dank soil to plant new things. Exposed to the sun, it’s something new, now.

(I do like me my extended metaphors!)

(Though, actually, I’ve done this exact work in visualization meditation over many years, opening the cave of my pain and my past, exploring, mourning, and later watching flowers begin to sprout where there was only hurt. I’ve done this work of opening my past and my pain up. It’s finished, or as finished as it can be.)

So, I got to see something yesterday that I haven’t been able to see yet: The truth.

As I listened with compassion to this woman tell us, tearful and anguished, that she is so knotted with her past she can’t see her way out, I wrote in my notebook:

            My past is really not that knotted anymore.

                        Actually.