“Then that happened…”

This is what I said to my friend after I broke down on Friday night with the truth of how lost I’d been feeling. 

She said to me, You can’t do that. You can’t say something like what you shared, and then cover it up with a joke like it wasn’t important or true. 

And that’s what I want to do with today’s blog. I want to try to stem some of whatever reactions I believe you might have had to yesterday’s blog of anger and fear and isolation. Because no matter how I feel in a moment, I do need you greatly, and I want you to still like me and not to think that I’m a whiny, privileged person who’s lost perspective on the world. 

So, I’m going to try not to do that, to reverse any effects of what I said yesterday. And simply let it lie. 

I do know that my job is not scooping animal carcasses off the highway, or cleaning toilets, or any other job that many people have. I have friends who've lost children, husbands, gone bankrupt. I mean, I work at a high-end retailer in Union Square, not on a chain gang. And I'm going through cancer survivorship stuff, like I imagine and hope those of us who have to, do. 

I know, too, that in times like these, we all seem to lose some perspective, and I allow myself to have that for now, because I do know it will change. 

But, I guess I did need (or want) to put how I've been feeling out there, even in this impersonal forum, because it is the truth, and that’s what I tell here — with or without back-peddling. 

So, whatever reactions you might have had (because I can see from the stats page that many people did read that blog), I hope … well, I hope it’s okay I put the truth there. And I'm trying to let myself be okay with it, too.

"You can't save your face and your ass at the same time."

A Kick Start.

Well, folks. Tomorrow I will publish my indiegogo campaign to help me pay the back-rent accrued when I was in chemo.

It’s been a short, strange, and amazing process. About 2 weeks ago, I was sitting with a friend in a café, both of us “applicationing,” online searching, looking for work, looking for authenticity.

I said to him, “You know my favorite thing I ever did? I hosted this group art show in SF.”

I showed him the LocalArtists Productions page, practically defunct and way out-dated. I told him how successful it was, people came, people who didn’t know they could sell their art sold their art. I even sold some!

People laughed, ate, met, mingled. It was divine.

I then told my friend that I haven’t painted much since then. That I can’t really in my small apartment with a cat who likes to walk over wet paint. I told him about this art studio I found while exploring the 4th floor of my apartment building, and how I’d inquired to my landlord about it, and how he’d said, yes, I can rent it for $25 a month(!!!), if I pay off my back rent.

Almost $4000 now. Out of work for 6 months, only working part time after that. I racked up quite the debt. And have been slowly paying it back. But…

Here’s where lightning struck. My friend said to me, “You should do a Kickstarter. This is exactly the kind of thing people use crowdfunding for."

I looked at him, stunned, quizzical, a little vague. I tilted my head, trying to process what was just said, offered, opened up before me.

I replied, incredulous, “I guess people would donate to a cancer survivor who wanted to make art again, wouldn’t they?”

And so it was, 2 weeks ago we started something new.

Planning meetings, a few video shoots, a lot of “omigod, I’m not even wearing any make-up, I wish I’d smile, I look awful” moments. And it’s done. It’s being polished, and tomorrow morning, I will push this campaign out into the world in the hopes that others will actually feel something from it.

In the hopes that I can stop writing “back-rent” in my monthly budget. In the hopes that I can sever that weight of debt from that time in my life.

As I sat with my friend going over the language in the campaign, we have been talking a lot about “closing the cancer chapter.” And I turned to him and said, “This isn’t closing it, you know? This doesn't make it 'over.'”

There is no “closed” when it comes to cancer. I’m in remission. I’m 2 years into the 5 year “almost as healthy as normal people” period. But it’s never closed. It can be moved on from in many ways, but the simple existence of the campaign itself is proof that I’m willing to move into the world in a way I wasn’t before cancer.

Everything I do is in reaction to it.

I told my friend, tearfully, that this campaign is important. It’s helpful. But it isn’t the end. The “closing the chapter” is a great sound-byte, and I’m using it. But it was important for me to say to him, “Not quite.”

For better or worse.

I am proud of the strides I’ve made since being sick. I’m proud of the advancements and actions I’ve taken – being in a band, singing, being in plays, a musical, going to Hawaii, Boston, Seattle, trying dating again, flying a goddamned plane! – and I’m overwhelmed by the support I have gotten.

But, it’s so hard to sit with the reality that I am who I am because of what I went through.

I still get nervous when I get a sore throat, cuz that’s how I was diagnosed. I still have to keep extra tabs on my health insurance. I still have a butterfly-shaped scar on my chest where the chemo tube went.

And last week I put on a sweater I hadn’t worn in a while, and pulled a strand of hair caught in it. The hair, my hair, was long, past shoulder length. It was from before I was sick. Before my hair fell out.

It was like seeing a unicorn. Evidence of a mythical time. A time called, “Before.”

It existed. I existed.

The cancer chapter isn’t closed. I don’t know if it ever does.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t take action and strides and make use of the persistent lesson to live.

I am proud of the woman I have become and continue to evolve into. I know she exists now. And maybe she always did. 

Someone will be with you shortly.

In the absence of more information, we fall back on the marching orders we know: Chop Wood, Carry Water. The Golden Rule. Look up, around, and away from yourself.

This morning, in an attempt to cull more information from the universe about where I should be focusing my energies with regard to career and income, I went into a meditation via a shamanic journey.

I didn’t get much. I asked other questions that I got some answers or insight to, but as to What on earth should I be doing next, who should I talk to, where should I focus, I got a whole lot of nothing.

And, in my own experience of meditation, the absence of information is itself information.

Stop trying to force yourself into a path, into action. It will be available when it’s supposed to be. The whole, "God is slow but never late," adage comes to mind. – One that galls me most of the time.

Because, often in my experience, slow but never late translates as “the last minute,” which really means, when you’ve given up all your plans and designs and have thrown your arms down, and said, okay, god/universe/soul/fate, whatever. Just whatever. I’m here, I’m done. I’m here.

It’s usually in these moments of surrender that I find information, that opportunities open up, that more is revealed.

Funny, as I think of it now, the play I’m in right now is a result of that “Whatever, here goes nothing” tack. The second audition of a day, after I’d pretty badly bombed the first, I decided, Whatever, I’m going to pull out (most of) the stops, and just throw it all out there, be as funny and into it as I can be because I have nothing to lose. I tried my controlled, “I want it to be this way” way, I tried working from the place of true terror and fear about what others would think of me, and that didn’t work out so great.

So, whatever, god, whatever you want. And lookie-loo what happened. It’s not to say don’t take action, it’s just to say, let go of my hold of the way I think things – me, mostly – should be.

And, with regard to other information I got in my meditation this morning, one of my questions was how I can stop stifling myself onstage? Because I do. I’m nervous and judging myself, and I want the audience to like me and my peers to esteem me, and I want to do a "really good job." And in that attempt, I’m so in my head that I’m not in my body, in my heart, in the moment, in the fun. And it doesn’t turn out how I want it.

It seems to me that the answer to most of this is, Be where you are, be who you are, and let it happen how it is.

That is so hard for me. And for most people, I imagine.

I want to know what to do next. I want a simple path from A to B. Or even a map to a complex path – I don’t care, just give me some coordinates! This, “be where you are and love yourself in and through it” thing is amorphous and feels ungrounded.

And yet, basing my actions on what I think I should be is as ungrounded as anything, because it’s not grounded in reality or the truth.

It is obvious to me when I reflect that taking actions out of fear, out of imagined people-pleasing, out of a panicked desire to “do the right thing” cause me more harm than good. And take up more time than it’s worth.

So, I will wait until more is revealed, as people often says it is. I will remember that there are no mistakes, only misinterpretations. I will try to embody the … no, I will try to let loose the confidence I know is stifled beneath the surface of my posturing and planning, and I will see what comes of it.

This whole transition for me is about embracing and sharing who I really am. It doesn’t work if I keep on trussing this person up in the shackles of my own expectations and a habit of low self-image.

Hello, Seattle, I’m listening. 

Why Nice Guys Finish Last.

(Note: The following is one human’s opinion and not intended for relationship diagnostic purposes. See a doctor if symptoms worsen.)

You can add your variation of this sentiment to a long list of complaints we’ve heard over the years:

“I don’t get it; I’m a nice guy. Why do women only go for assholes?”

In my meditation on kindness today, I was brought to thinking about “nice-ness.”

In dating, what does “being nice” look like? Most times, we translate "being nice" as allowing the other person to make the decision:

“Wherever you want to go.” “Whatever food you want to eat.” “Whichever movie looks good to you.”

In the beginning, this seems like a great tack. Allowing the other person to choose, we figure, means that we’re being “nice” by saying that we respect and trust their opinion. We’re also saying (perhaps) that we don’t want to impose our will or assert our own interests or preferences, because we’re afraid that if we do, we’re going to proffer the “wrong” choice. 

I’ve had Mexican all week, and want to have Thai, but what if she hates Thai? I have absolutely no interest in seeing a chick flick, but if it means I get to spend time with her, then fine, I’ll sit through it.

We believe that we’re letting the other person make the choice in this situation, but actually, we’ve already made one: I am choosing not to disclose my desires for fear that my idea -- and therefore I -- will be rejected. Period. So, by contrast, if I let you choose, then I know whatever it is is something you'll like, and therefore you'll have a good time and you'll like me.

So, the "nice" guy says, "Whatever you want." Look how nice I am. 

This is a choice. But it's also a manipulation of the truth. And, in my experience, if you add enough of those up, what you wind up with is not knowing at all what the other person likes, what their preferences are -- who they are.

We wind up dating someone who is just trying to stay in our good graces, and in doing so, the "nice guy" begins to lose us, because there isn’t enough of “them” to keep us engaged.

I want to date you. Or at least, I want to find out if I want to date you.

I will add here, that of course, in the start of any dating situation, we’re all angling somehow – of course we want this to work! Who doesn’t want to find someone they enjoy and can be themselves with?

But there’s the rub. If we begin to date on a basis of people-pleasing, we’re not being ourselves at all. We’re being who you want us to be – Or more accurately, who we think you want us to be.

There is always room for negotiation, for compromise, obviously. (And sometimes, yes, you really don't care.)

But I think the (mis)understanding of “nice guys vs assholes” is that we set up a dichotomy that states: "Being nice" doesn't work, therefore women want an asshole. And, asshole becomes defined by the opposite: Someone who asserts themselves regardless of the other person's needs or wants. Someone who treats the other like crap.

And that is NOT what I’m saying is the successful tactic.

Certainly, someone who takes only their interest and desire into account is an asshole. And is not someone who I (or most people I know) want to date.

But there is a middle-ground for each of us between being a doormat, and being the one who makes the other a doormat.

Equality, self-esteem, honesty, fluidity. Uncertainty.

Yes, perhaps you see the chick flick on your second date. But maybe you have Thai beforehand.

Because, I want to get to know you, whoever that is, and whatever the outcome.

parental advice

Brene Brown talks a lot in her book Daring Greatly about parenting, about how to “dare greatly” in parenting, which often means allowing yourself to feel, with all uncertainty and unpredictability, the full extent of your love. She talks about the split-second after noticing her full love for her children the flood of constricting and panicking thoughts about loss and impermanence and a terrible desire to control. To allow herself to notice and accept her love so deeply, she’s also acutely aware of how tenuous life is, and how she cannot protect her offspring from the world.

In the moment of greatest love is the moment of greatest vulnerability.

She talks about trying to withstand and stand in that moment of love as long as possible without giving in to the fear of the things we cannot control.

The kinds of thoughts that enter immediately after hearing, “You got the role.” God, I hope I don’t fuck it up. Or after “I love you.” Don't betray me. Or “You’re a great friend.” Am I doing enough?

Moments of connection are severed by fear when we insulate back inside ourselves around the thought: How can I control this?

We can’t.

In every effort we put forth to expand ourselves, we risk.

In every effort we make to control, we risk those relationships that have brought us joy, including the one with ourselves. See: I’ve gained some muscle working out, I better make sure I get to the gym even more. I hiked for an hour this week, I really should do that three times a week. I loved that novel I read, I should really be reading something “worthwhile.”

Brown has written that we siphon off the top layer of risk and innovation and spontaneity when we attach our interpretation of our efforts to how they’ll be received – I believe this includes the efforts and risks we make that are private, like those above: How are they received by ourselves?

Are the efforts we put toward joy, spontaneity, pushing our own envelope supported internally, or hampered by voices of not good enough?

Sometimes both. Sometimes it depends on the minute of the day.

I can experience the duplicity of knowing my acting is up to par for this show, but my singing is not.

What I cannot hold is the self-derision that follows that awareness.

As always, action is the antidote to anxiety and worry. Voice lessons, music drills. Learning, learning learning.

This is a challenge. A challenge to show up authentically, even if I don’t like or approve of what that sounds like at the moment. There is vulnerability in showing up, but if, as happens frequently, I step on my own efforts and try to hide the greatest risks, I won’t learn, I won’t grow, nor will I have any fun.

There’s a self-reparenting that is happening for me right now. A re-training. In fact, several days this week, as I’ve sat up out of bed, voices already chiding me for being sick and not being able to sing, for not being as good as the others actors – I’ve literally had to stop myself and insert a new voice, saying aloud – Yes, Moll, I know, and you’re working on it. You’re doing the best you know how right now, and you are enough.

There is risk in allowing myself the "lenience" of self-approval. There is the risk of abandoning control and constriction and self-flagellation. There is the risk that things won’t turn out “how I want,” how I want things to be, how I want myself to be – Can’t you be better at something you’ve never done before, the voice chides incessantly.

But I want a different reality. A different parenting. I want to be able to look at myself and my efforts fully, with the full ache of unknowing and the full pride of risk-taking.

I want to begin modeling this completely uncertain, vulnerable, pulsating, spark-of-life parental love for myself, because I have hope that one day I'll need to employ it with children of my own.

And you can’t give to others what you can’t give yourself. 

pome.

Tour de Coeur

Here.

  Place your fingers — Here.
   Lower your head, breathe and

  press them in.

Do you feel it, soft and

  warm and — I'll arch my back —

  pliable. How the muscles shift around you,

learning you, too.

  Here,

Lay your head here, and I'll

  breathe, not freeze

  as you explore the hidden

edges and ridges.

I will try 

  to keep my eyes open

while you read my collarbone like Braille.

8 6 14

Disarming.

I am having a languid, delightful time getting to know someone. A man.

The same someone who inspired me to look at how much I don’t want to let a romantic interest get to know me. And, for whatever this is or will be, it’s really, really nice.

I described to a friend what it felt like to be held – not spooning, or even the enjoyable resting of your head on the guy’s chest – but simply standing, holding one another, like the kind of extended hug that someone forces around you until you relax. Until they can feel your shoulders drop, and your lungs start to inhale again. Until you feel safe enough to breathe.

It’s like that, only without the imperative insistence of the extended hug. This feels, to me, mutual, natural, like we both are relieved just to stand there, heads tucked, arms wrapped, bodies together, and breathe for a minute, guileless. It’s similar to the feeling I sometimes have when I realize that I’ve been holding my breath or breathing shallowly for too long, and I finally take a nice deep breath into my belly. Filling out my whole body with awareness, instead of constriction.

It’s a feeling that you didn’t know how stressed or armored or anxious you were, until it falls away so fucking naturally and quickly, that it almost makes you dizzy. And suddenly, you’re just two people, two hearts, unaware you were looking for relief and comfort and ease, until now you’re experiencing it.

It’s benevolent, and it's grace.

For me, it’s also an awareness, I think, of how lonely and body-starved I’ve been. Not for sex, though sure, but for that kind of holding. To be held. It’s actually, now that I think of it, what I came to at the conclusion of my meditation retreat in January. I concluded that this year, I wanted to learn to let myself be held.

I almost always hold my breath, as I’ve written about before. Even in the safety and constance of my own home. I am always on guard, protecting myself from something. And it’s just so tiring, but I don’t realize it – didn’t realize it, until in this togetherness, I find it fall from around me, and experience feeling unburdened and relieved of that something. 

I am not Fate’s author, I am only the scribe. So, I can only report to you what I know, and share with you how I feel in the moment, today. As everything changes so quickly.

But recognizing for myself that there’s another way of being, that there’s an open way to be, that in fact that way of being feels like its own ecstasy, I think I’m learning that my armor is not as useful as it once was. And that being held, without that shield, is more healing, joyful, and filling than I could have predicted. 

Prerequisites

I’m still wading through Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. I can only take mind-blowing awareness in small chunks! The latest chunk being:

The important thing to know about worthiness is that it doesn’t have prerequisites. Most of us, on the other hand, have a long list of worthiness prerequisites [most of which] fall in the categories of accomplishments, acquisitions, and external acceptance. It’s the if/when problem (“I’ll be worthy when…” or “I’ll be worthy if…”)

Sound familiar?

To me it does. And yet. I have other quotes to help combat this if/when thought habit.

One of which is on my fridge, and comes from a book on auditioning, actually: “There are no mistakes, only misinterpretations.”

Brene talks a lot about the difference between shame and guilt. Shame = I am bad. Guilt = I did something bad. With guilt, your inherent worth and worthiness is not called into question, and she encourages us to use “guilt self-talk” instead of “shame self-talk,” if we have to use anything at all.

Which, we usually do, because… we all make misinterpretations!

It’s interesting. Yesterday, I got the chance to spend some time with a coworker’s 10-year old daughter who was home for the summer, but didn’t have anywhere to be this week. After way too many days watching t.v. on her phone, I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk yesterday. And so we did.

We walked to the nearby park, and when we got to the water and I encouraged her to touch the cool, lapping stream, she was surprised and delighted, and asked if we could walk in it.

Well, I wasn’t expecting to do that, but SURE! Off come the socks and shoes and into the shallows we go.

On our walk back to civilization (a whole block away), she was reporting a story to me about something that had happened with her father the day before. A story that would likely be categorized as one of Road Rage. As she told the story, I experienced many reactions and opinions. Aghast, sad, worried, judgmental, superior.

But what I said was, "There are many different ways to handle situations, and that was one way to handle it."

I’m NOT the person to tell her her father was wrong, inappropriate, endangering, or negligent. I am the person, in that little short hour, to tell her, Yes, we can play in the water, and you are safe with me. I am not going to pile my opinions onto you, because I know you’re making your own.

You go ahead and love your dad. You observe him, and make your own choices. You be influenced by who and how he is, and you’ll have the chance to work through any of that if you need to.

But for right now... I didn’t even say, "That sounds scary," because she wasn’t telling it that way. She was reporting, to see how I’d react, I think. Was what he was doing appropriate? Wasn’t that funny or awful? No. It was neither. It was human.

(As I write this, I realize that I can use this lesson and aim it in a parental direction in my own life.)

It’s slow-going through Brene’s book, because there’s so much meat to her observations and suggestions.

But her lamplight to guide us and offer hope on this journey of misinterpretations is as follows:

Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we’re headed in the right direction.

By not attaching my own value or values to this little girl’s experience, I get to let her have her own North Star and continue to follow mine. No ifs, whens or buts. 

Pushing the RelationShip off the Edge of the Earth

As I recently found out in “Well, Shoot…” there are things that I claim that I want but if they did actually happen, I’m not sure I could show up for them.

It’s embarrassing to be here again.

It just makes me feel really old and really weary.

And I’ll start with the perfect example that I’m sure I’ve told here before:

When I was in college, I was having a fling with a guy. It was purely physical, no “date nights,” no philosophical conversations; whenever both of us were into it, we’d contact the other. Easy peasy.

Then, one night, lying in bed after our activities, he told me he wanted to take me out to dinner. I was aghast, “Why?!” Because I want to get to know you, he replied, as if it were the most obvious and natural thing in the world.

And after that night, I never called him again.

Perhaps to most people it is the most obvious and natural thing in the world to want to get to know the person you’re being physically intimate with. But my years of practicing it otherwise have hardened me to the kind of softness real connection requires.

(I feel really vulnerable writing about this today, I have to say.)

See, there would be no problem if I only wanted to “hit it & quit it.” But I don’t. I would like a connection, I would like a relationship. I would like to be vulnerable and intimate with another person and have them be that way with me.

But when the glimpse of that possibility arises, I bolt. Too much, too scary, I can’t, I don’t know how, is followed by the justifications, You only want sex anyway, why don’t you just hit it & quit it? Stop trying to pretend you want to get to know me.

It’s very easy for me to throw up the barriers, and to put between us one of those cardboard cut-outs of myself: Here is my reasonable facsimile. Have fun.

No, really, just have FUN! Enough with the getting to know me bullshit. Light’s out, Nobody home.

And the trouble today is that I’m really tired of this M.O. And, yet, I’m really terrified to be any way else – the way else being “real.”

So, again, I come to a place where what I say I want (a relationship) in the light of that possibility I say fuck no.

I can lick the wounds of old hurts for many more years to come. I can point to those people to whom I’ve been real and vulnerable and been eviscerated. I can pile up the evidence to say, See, this and this and here is why I can’t show up fully anymore, I’ve been hurt.

But who hasn’t?

To tangent, once again:

There are several situations lately, where I’ve gotten to show up fully, stand in my truth, and not let fear drive me or hide me.

I was offered a job that would pay me minimum wage, but would be in a profession and a capacity that would be a dream. After much thought, writing, and reaching out for help, I turned the job down. I’m able to show up for myself, I don’t have to abandon my truth.

I declined the invitation to my father’s wedding, despite the already rolling-in fall-out. After much thought, writing, and reaching out for help, I was able to show up for myself and not abandon my truth.

I was offered the lead in a play that I didn’t want to be in. And, once again, after much thought, writing, and reaching out for help, I was able to turn it down, show up for myself and not abandon my truth.

What each of these are evidence of is that I am creating boundaries for myself, and a value for myself. I am able to weigh and measure how I feel in a situation, and parse out if it feels right for me. I don’t have to make snap judgments of yes or no, of people pleasing, or underselling, or hiding.

I've been scared to be vulnerable because I'm scared I can't show up for myself, or protect myself when I need to. I've been scared to be vulnerable because I think it lays me open to being attacked. 

But, what I have done in just the last fucking month is to back myself up. I have let myself be open to what was true for me, and be honest (enough) with those I had to create boundaries with.

Isn’t it possible then, that the same practice, the same muscles could be exercised in relationships? Isn’t it possible that I can show up with my truth, with all of me, even though, YES IT’S THE HARDER THING, but it’s the most rewarding of all?

I’m having a tough time at the moment accepting that I’m going to have to change my M.O. Not serving me well, surely, but familiar as all get out.

As a friend once sardonically said, “Everybody look at me, but please avert your eyes.”

Oh, you want to look at me. Oh, I find that I want to look back.

Well, Shoot. 

"Person-To-Person"

Of course it is a pity that so much of all creative work is so closely related to the personality of the one who does it.

It is sad and embarrassing and unattractive that those emotions that stir him deeply enough to demand expression, and to charge their expression with some measure of light and power, are nearly all rooted, however changed in their surface, in the particular and sometimes peculiar concerns of the artist himself, that special world, the passions and images of it that each of us weaves about him from birth to death, a web of monstrous complexity, spun forth at a speed that is incalculable to a length beyond measure, from the spider mouth of his own singular perceptions.

It is a lonely idea, a lonely condition, so terrifying to think of that we usually don't. And so we talk to each other, write and wire each other, call each other short and long distance across land and sea, clasp hands with each other at meeting and at parting, fight each other and even destroy each other because of this always somewhat thwarted effort to break through walls to each other. As a character in a play once said, "We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins."

Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.

[...]

Of course I know that I have sometimes presumed too much upon corresponding sympathies and interest in those to whom I talk boldly, and this has led to rejections that were painful and costly enough to inspire more prudence. But when I weigh one thing against another, an easy liking against a hard respect, the balance always tips the same way, and whatever risk of being turned a cold shoulder, I still don't want to talk to people only about the surface aspects of their lives, the sort of things that acquaintances laugh and chatter about on ordinary social occasions.

I feel that they get plenty of that, and heaven knows so do I, before and after the little interval of time in which I have their attention and say what I have to say to them. The discretion of social conversation, even among friends, is exceeded only by the discretion of "the deep six," that grave wherein nothing is mentioned at all. Emily Dickinson, that lyrical spinster of Amherst, Massachusetts, who wore a strict and savage heart on a taffeta sleeve, commented wryly on that kind of posthumous discourse among friends in these lines:

       I died for beauty, but was scarce
       Adjusted in the tomb,
       When one who died for truth was lain
       In an adjoining room. 

       He questioned softly why I failed?
       "For beauty," I replied. 
       "And I for truth,—the two are one;
       We brethren are," he said. 

       And so, as kinsmen met at night,
       We talked between the rooms,
       Until the moss had reached our lips,
       And covered up our names.

Meanwhile!—I want to go on talking to you as freely and intimately about what we live and die for as if I knew you better than anyone else whom you know.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, preface to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1955.

"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? 

My Own Private Fan Club.

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety,” he wrote.

Granted we later slept together. But I digress.

I had the good fortune to spend time last night with several women I admire. I shared with them what’s going on with my father and my having to make the decision to attend his wedding in lieu of performing in the play in which I’m cast.

One of them reflected: “I’m sorry your dad is not able to see you.”

And when I listen to this more deeply and clearly, it is a bell of truth.

The fantasy and illusion I’ve abided by for years has been that if I am a good daughter, a good girl, a devoted and doting woman, then I will be seen. The delusion is that my people-pleasing will make him see me. But. This is false.

I have tried many times, this path of behaving. And I’ve tried its opposite, being a wanton, crazed, rebellious teen and young adult, in order to be seen.

But what struck me this morning was this image: You know when someone has a lazy eye, and you’re not really sure where to look, so sometimes you just look at their forehead? Or if you’re trying to avoid someone’s eye for another reason, you focus somewhere else that sort of looks like you’re looking at them, but you’re not?

That’s how I feel with my dad. That he never actually looks directly at me, which is why I’ve tried to make the trappings around me so much larger or different or “approvable” or “disapprovable.” If you can’t see me, maybe you’ll see the life I’ve built that meets with your military/engineer’s strict sense of correct.

If I have the job you can brag about, … but that’s not me. I am not my job.

If I have the relationship with you you can brag about, … but that’s not me. We don’t know each other.

If I have the life you can brag about, … but I’ve tried that. You threw my own failings in my face.

I have tried to make the external parts of me approvable enough for you. But even those periphery trappings (and they are “trappings”) have not been enough to hone your focus onto the all of me. Me in my entirety.

I didn’t know that was what I’ve been seeking until my friend told me he saw me. I didn’t know that was what I’ve been missing, and making a pretzel out of my life and myself in order to make happen.

If I want to please my father so he sees me, what do I think will happen if he sees me, “in my entirety?” ... I don’t think I can answer that. Except to say he’d love me, in a way that I could feel.

Because here’s the thing: If he’s looking around me, and not at me, he’ll never love me in a way that I feel. He may “love” or approve of the things around me, the life I meticulously and back-bendingly try to arrange around myself. But that’s still not me.

This is a system, a relationship in which I am not seen. The one thing I want to glean from it is the one thing I cannot have.

In reading Brene Brown so voraciously right now, I can know this: He’s not able to be vulnerable enough to do that.

To see me, is to expose himself, is to open himself to being vulnerable, and for him, that is not an option. His whole life has been built on a foundation, a faulty one (well, in my own estimation), that precludes true connection, because he is unable to look at and love himself. I know how this formed, and I can only presume the pain that’s caused, because he’s never shown it. (Except in these indirect ways.)

Brene writes that men deal with vulnerability in one of two ways: Rage or shut-down. (She also writes about those who find ways out of that dichotomy, but those are the go-to’s without the tools to do anything differently. And surely, those aren’t the only means to deal, but it’s her research, not mine!)

I know that when I told my dad that I might not be able to come to his wedding because I’ll be in a play that weekend, when he put on his “I insist” voice, that was his way of hiding his vulnerability, his disappointment and hurt. I know that this was rage to mask actual feelings. I know that this rage was to protect and prevent of moment of true connection, in which something different might have been said like, “I’d really love for you to be here. It would mean a lot to me.”

That directness is too vulnerable.

To look me in the eye and say that is too vulnerable.

To see us both as humans doing a dance of having a relationship, instead of as a master and a servant, a “father” and a “daughter,” is too vulnerable.

If I can’t squash it or approve of it, I can’t deal with it.

I “get” this. I get and have compassion for and understand this dilemma for him. Also, this is a dilemma that I’ve prescribed for him; true or not, it’s only my interpretation.

But, like I said before, it’s my choice how I want to engage in this “relationship.” Because for as long as I can remember, I’ve been waving my arms in an effort to start one. An effort in vain. And my arms are tired.

Brene writes that shame is countered by self-love, and that shame resilience is a practice, not a diploma.

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety.”

I’m going to have to say this phrase to myself, repeatedly. To truth-test the thoughts of “not good enough” – especially "not good enough daughter" – as this future unfolds.

I’m going to have to truth-test my fantasies around this relationship versus the reality, and I’m going to have to accept, even for a minute at a time, that this relationship is the way it is, and that my father is the way he is.

I’ve heard many times that “acceptance is not the same as approval.” No, this isn’t ideal. But turning my life into a pretzel to garner a connection I will never (or not today) have, is the worse fate.

Perfection is the enemy of the done.

Well, if I haven’t told you yet, I’ll tell you now: I’m reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. She’s a researcher on the topics of shame and vulnerability, and how the first can keep you from embracing the second, and thereby keep you from “daring greatly.”

Particularly, I’m (*air quotes*) “enjoying” the part when she’s quoting from some of her interviewees. This mantra, cribbed from Voltaire, is my favorite so far: "Perfectionism is the enemy of the done."

There is always one more thing to do. There is always one more spot to scrub, one more hair to fix, one more jiggly arm skin to poke, one more class to take, one more edit to make.

In the pursuit of perfection, nothing is ever finished, and satisfaction and contentment are perpetually elusive.

My aunt sent me an email a few weeks ago in response to one of my blogs. She reflected that she always admires my writing, but this one in particular should be submitted. To the New York Times.

She’s a life-long professor of English, a stellar mind and woman. And she would be someone to know what she’s talking about.

So, I’ve sat with this idea since she sent me the prod. I looked up the submission guidelines, and promptly forgot them.

Until I read that quote about perfection and the done. So, this morning, I printed out the blog, and edited it. Then went back online to see the guidelines: 1500 words. Mine is currently 700. I need to double my article!

BUT. It’s out. It’s printed on actual paper. I can carry it around with me to read and make notes of what parts I’ll focus in on to expand the essay.

When I decided to finally join a band last year, it was precisely this perfection that cracked. I was no better or worse than I’d been for years. I had no more or less experience than I’d had before. What cracked was my commitment to perfection. "When I practice, then I can play. When I’m better then I can reach out to them. When I get lessons. When I …"

A few years ago, I put together an art project whose purpose was entirely to eschew perfection. I used paint on paper…without sketching it out first. There were no “mistakes,” even though the lines aren’t perfect. There was no starting over, even though I wished I could. My entire purpose was to put something down on paper, and to be done with it. I’d had the idea of this art piece for quite some time, and I was finally willing to do it imperfectly. And it hangs up on my wall, with lines I still fantasize about perfecting, my idol to "done."

The same will have to be true for my essay/article. It’s taken these few weeks to look back at it, because I have those gremlin thoughts that say, “The NEW YORK TIMES?! Are you out of your MIND?! Who do you think you are??” That say, What’s the use, it’ll never be used. That say, If you don’t do it perfectly, you’ll always be a secretary.

Yesterday morning, after my phone encounter with my dad the day before, I reached for a coffee mug. I dug behind the enormous ones I usually use, to find a modest sized one with something printed on it.

I HEART ME. (Could be “I heart Maine,” but that works, too!)

In the sprawl of brain chompings and perfectionism. In the shadow of habits that draw me back into being small or angry or disconnected. In the face of a choice to let myself be seen, as imperfect but good enough as I am, I reaffirm something preciously true: I Heart Me. 

Yeah, But…*

Here’s something nobody knows about me: When I access something very truth-y in my morning journaling, my handwriting becomes miniscule.

Written like those boardwalk booths that used to write your name on a grain of rice, I find myself getting really tiny with my words – and that’s when I know I’ve struck something important. Shh, don't say it too loud or it might whisk off the page.

Let’s back up a little though.

Yesterday, I got to see my therapist (the Rosen Method therapist I’m still seeing. Despite my doubts before every time I go, I always leave laughing that I doubted). We hadn’t seen one another for about a month due to schedules, so I had a lot to catch her up on.

Last time we spoke, I told her I felt like I didn’t have any options available to me in dating land. Like Goldilocks, I’d experienced the too hot, the too cold, but have yet to find the “just right.” I mentioned this yesterday because I was talking about my job search. I told her that as I was driving over last night, I realized that it’s not that I don’t have any options available to me in job land – it’s that I refuse to commit to one path.

She challenged me on this a little, and asked if it was “refused” or something else. And, surely, it is fear and paralyzation.

Because here is the secret, sacred truth: I do know what I want to do.

I told her that I see my job options like a scene from Sliding Doors. If you haven’t seen the movie, the premise is based on Gwenyth Paltrow in one version of her life catching a subway train before the doors shut; in another version, she misses that train. At that point in the movie, we follow both these lives and their divergent challenges and successes (and haircuts). 

I told her I see three options of my job life for myself:

One: Be a Jewish professional, or a community professional, a leader, an organizer, a bringer-together-er.

Two: Do something counsel-y and social work-y, working directly one-on-one with the populations I want to serve, particularly youth.

And three.

And this is where I began to cry.

Be an artist.

I laughed through the tears, and said, “Well if tears are any indication of truth, then the third one’s the charm.”

The third one is also the hardest. Requires the most work, the most vulnerability, the most action, the most fortitude, and… the most uncertainty.

I told her I’m not willing to be a starving artist. But perhaps there’s another way.

As a note, by “artist,” I mean in all disciplines, starting with performance, starting with that Yoshi’s singer I mentioned yesterday. Starting with that dream.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve been told I don’t let myself dream. It came up a few times yesterday when I had to correct my “Yeah, But”s to “Yes, AND”s.

Every time I even begin to think about following this path, I get buried under a mountain of “Yeah, But”s. I don’t think I need to list them for you, since I’m sure you have your own bevy that attack your own dreams.

So, we/I were careful to reframe them. I told her at the end of the session that I feel like my whole life has been an exercise in “Yeah, But.” And she told me that that is changing; that I am changing it.

And it was in my morning pages today that I recorded something I thought of after I came home yesterday that actually knocked the wind out of me. What I wrote in the miniscule, micro-truth script:

When we are in alignment with our highest good, the Universe will rearrange itself to help us.

I don’t have to know how to do this. Because I don’t. What struck me so suddenly and viscerally were the words I’ve heard repeated for years: When we take one step toward (G-d / Fate / the Universe / our Highest Good), it takes a thousand toward us.

I will be carried. I will be helped. I won’t have to do this alone, because, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

I was floored by this revelation. I was floored that I actually heard and felt and believed it. It was a moment of belief.

I take care of the What and G-d takes care of the How. I’ve heard this for years.

What I have needed to do is admit and commit to the What.

I have “Yeah, But”s coming up as I write this. About money, and too late, and this is for other people and other lives, and what are you thinking of me right now as you read this and are you doubting me and rolling your eyes, and how, and how and how.

Yes, I have doubts and fears. AND. I only have to hold onto the “What.” I only have to hold on to my dream. That’s my only job right now – to not go back to sleep, to not abandon my dream, again. To not continue to break promises to myself. To not drown myself in those fears and doubts. Because I am trying to live my truth. And all this wisdom says that’s all I need to do.

(You know, along with reaching out, asking for help, seeking people in these professions, gathering intel, honing my vision, practicing and learning the fuck out of it AND remembering that the pain of avoiding all this is SO MUCH GREATER than the pain of trying to do it.)

Molly, you want to be a singer in a band? You want to perform onstage in dive bars? And at Yoshi’s? And be a lounge singer? You want to feel proud and full and felt and heard?

All you have to do is say, “Yes.”

*(Thanks, Joel Landmine, for the title grab. See: Yeah, Well...)

On Leave.

The thing about being a good little soldier is that eventually you suffer battle fatigue.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had doctors appointments up the wazoo because of a liver enzyme test that came back extremely elevated. Granted, it’s the first time they’d ever run this test since I finished chemo last Spring, but don’t try and tell them that.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten panicky emails from my doctor to stop drinking alcohol immediately (check), to get another test immediately (check), and asking if I’ve had my hepatitis vaccines when I was a kid (check).

Being the good little soldier I am, and using the wisdom of not pushing the panic button, I’ve done pretty well these past two weeks, doing what I’m told, following up diligently, and trying to follow the new all-organic diet suggested to me by my naturopath.

This is all well and good not to panic when panic isn’t prudent. But yesterday I came to see, while reduced to a ball of tears in front of a friend, that there is a third option between panicking and “soldiering on.” There’s acknowledgment of my fear.

I told my coworker the other day that I just feel weary – that trying not to freak out is exhausting; that trying to maintain an emotional equilibrium is hard work.

And underneath that even façade, which also has a thick vein of veracity, is fear. They can co-exist, but I have to acknowledge that they both do.

It is activating to have to go through all these tests. It is not my favorite thing to google "autoimmune hepatitis" (which, we learned, I don't have). It is even less my favorite thing to contemplate that the reason for this trouble in the first place is a result of something doctors did to me – despite the rational fact that they had to. I had Leukemia. The cure is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy causes havoc.

I am not freaking out, but I am concerned. And I am “activated.” It’s hard not to be – I’ve had legitimate reasons to freak out in the past – but even then, if you were a reader when I was going through that, you saw that the times I freaked out were few and far between – and then, they weren’t panics or freak outs, they were the falling-armor acknowledgments of a real threat to my security and joy.

I was a good soldier then too, but it was also very important to break down sometimes with someone trustworthy. To acknowledge both sides: Bravery and Vulnerability.

Which are coexistant. The first does not preclude the second. And I'm pretty sure the second enhances the first.

It was not as if I had some grand easy epiphany about allowing all of my emotions to be valid. I sat yesterday with a group of folks, and by the end of our time together, I was leaking silent tears. I didn’t anticipate to do that, but we create a sacred space together, a place where it was safe to allow something I didn’t know was happening arise. And because of that, a friend was able to see my pain, and sit with me while I let the soldier take a rest, and let the scared and weary and angry woman take a spin for a while.

I felt better after I acknowledged all that was going on. And coming to realize in conversation with her that I’d been forcing my experience into two categories: Panic and Perseverance. Acknowledging fear does not equate panicking, is what I learned. And it was important, so important, for me to let some of the rest of my emotions out, besides good humor, diligence, and perseverance.

Because I believe that without letting some of that pressure out, without allowing that vulnerability to arise, our capacity for soldiering is greatly hindered.

What happens is burn-out, instead.

When I only allow validity to one side of my experience, I am hampering my ability to move forward.

I don’t have to be a crying mess about having to seek out only organic meat and my fear of the cost and the inconvenience, and wondering if I’ll have to now be like those people in food addiction programs who have to carry around heavy-ass glass containers of their own food to restaurants because they can’t eat anything else and become a burden to myself and my social life…

but sometimes, at least once(!), I do have to admit that these are thoughts and emotions that are happening, too.

I’ve never really been a fan of the Buddhist term, “The Middle Way,” but fan or not, I seem to be learning all about it.

"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. 

LiveStrong.

Yesterday, I was given the cosmic and delightful (sarcasm) opportunity to put that day’s blog message into action: I was asked if I was coming out to spend time with folks. … But I really had to go home and watch Netflix, you know. Not that I have anything I’m particularly watching at the moment, not that you can put that on my tombstone (“Excellent t.v. watcher, Achiever of many episodes”). But the alternative was to spend an hour with people. Blech.

But, health won out. (Damned health.) I went, I smiled, I listened, I shared, I had conversations with people. Netflix won’t really converse with me. It’s selfish that way.

I got the chance to hear what was going on with a friend and offer some suggestions, and she got to hear me share what’s going on with me and offered me some help, too.

Again, Netflix is really loathe to help me out. The bastard.

I also got to notice that I’ve gained a few readers in the past week who’ve gotten to read things about me that some of my closest friends don’t know about, and that … well, that’s okay. It’s what this, the blog, is here for. Not to “connect” with people in a complete way, but to offer something. To offer a catharsis, a container, a mirror into their own experience. To hear someone say – or read someone write – about what have been issues or concerns or triumphs in your own life is to get to feel you’re/we’re not alone. Our experience as humans is not isolated; we’re not as different as we think we are when trapped alone in our heads.

I’m grateful for that, for this opportunity. And I know it can be intense. For anyone who’s joined us this week, it’s not always so dark. But, it is likely always as honest. Don’t worry, I don’t tell you everything. You don’t in fact get the all of me by reading me, and we both know that. But it’s a good thread between us. And I get to feel cathartized, too. Not that this is therapy or anything, but that I’m putting my voice out there in a way that feels relatively safe, but also authentic.

On voice, I emailed an old voice teacher yesterday to ask if she still gives private lessons. I was in her voice class when I was at Mills, and earlier in the week, I got the message from Theater Bay Area that applications for the General Auditions for the South Bay are open. And, you have to note on the application if you think you might sing. You don’t have to sing if you check that box, but you have to indicate if you might so they can group you with the other singers in that day.

I applied to the Generals last year, and didn’t get in. But I have real headshots this time, and two more credits, and possibly a third that I can add before I send off my resume. I certainly have enough gumption and the substance to try this time, especially if I had even less to my name last year!

I was talking yesterday with a friend about singing. About how I know the voice is there, but I hide it all the time. Even when I was in the band, I hid it. I didn’t sing to the best and fullest of my ability, and I also don’t even know what the limits of my ability are. I want to sing. I’ve always said it. Or thought it, so most of you didn’t know anyway.

It’s secret. Private. It’s tender, is what it is. It's the most tender dream I have, honestly. And I think that’s what makes it the most protected and least acknowledged one. For me, singing has no place to hide, and it’s an outpouring of your soul – or it can be. As I know well, it can not be that very easily, and no one would know the difference but me. They’ll just think that’s what I’ve got.

It’s like when I work at 80% most of the time at my job. They don’t know. They just think that’s what I have to offer, but the reality is that I hold back, in that case because I’m resentful, entitled and begrudging. But I digress!

Or I don’t. It’s the same side of the coin of not participating in life fully, of not offering myself fully. They’re different angles toward that, but they’re both about self-protection and -preservation.

Tender shoots of hope always need a little more room and space and care. For me, they’ve needed to be hidden so as not to be trampled by the onslaught of life. But by keeping this thing small, myself small, by harboring it and mentally reinforcing it as a tender and sensitive and fragile thing, it will always remain that way.

A redwood starts out the same way, you know. As tender as a sprig. But if you take the cage off of the plant, allow it air and sunshine and nourishment. Soon it won’t be a small and tender, fragile thing anymore. Soon it will be able to weather the strokes of life. By letting what I’ve carried as a secret and a calling out of its confinement … I can allow it to become what it’s always needed to be: Strong.