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. 

Don't Freak Out: A How-To.

When I was sick, I became extremely diligent about my spiritual practice.

Despite, or perhaps including, the conversations I had with a few select friends about the nature, existence, purpose, and questionable benevolence of a Higher Power, I knew that my safest and surest course through all that uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity around me was to touch base with my center.

It really was only after the first month, though, that I was able to write. I found my first journal entry in a notebook friends had brought me in the hospital just days after I was diagnosed. It begins Saturday, September 29, 2012. There’s one on the 30th, and then it stops. Until after my month of chemo and recovery in the hospital.

But, thereafter, I made it a huge part of my practice to journal, meditate, and eventually write my near-daily blog. I even made the nurse put a sign on my hospital room door that read, “Meditation in progress; Come back in 20 minutes.” (I personally loved that this meant people would continually be turned away without a firm time listed, and I could have some solitude in that busy and anxious place!)

But, I think about this practice now (journal, meditate, blog), one that was common for me before I was sick, one that was essential to me during my treatments, and one that still needs to be a part of my daily life.

Meetings, Movement, and Meditation are my recipe for sanity. And most recently, with all the hubbub, I’m lucky to get even one in there.

But I know very specifically and with assurance that it not only works, it also helps to light my way through.

I am in another place of uncertainty, fear, and buzzing activity. And my only way through is to have the anchors of my practice.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard, “Most days I meditate for thirty minutes, but on really busy days, I meditate for an hour.” Not that I’m doing that! But the intention is there; the intention to give myself even more time and space to coalesce, to touch down, to get grounded, and to listen.

I have less trouble listening as I do heeding. It’s all well and good to listen, and I can do that, and sometimes get answers or guidance; but if I’m not following through or up on the information I receive, what’s the point? Then I simply know what I’m not doing and get to beat myself up for it!

And, I guess that’s not the point either.

I get to remember this morning that I have been in more dire straits than the one I’m currently in: Job ending Friday; uncertain income sources; uncertain path toward fulfillment. I get to remember that I’ve been here before with previous job changes, and I’ve emotionally been here before because of cancer. Nothing puts things in perspective like cancer!

And if I could have gotten through what I did, using the recipe I know works every single time, then I am bidden to use it again. Journal, meditate, blog. Meetings, movement, meditation. Heed the information I’m given.

Rest.

This career shift is all about buying myself time to see myself more clearly, to see my future more clearly, and to create the space and time in which to build toward those goals. This isn’t about busy work, or a brain fogged with anxiety. This isn’t about despair or hopelessness.

This isn’t even about simply “getting through” this time. This time is important; being in this transition space is important. It’s not simply, Batten down the hatches til the storm passes. This isn’t about ostriching my head into the sand. It will be important for me to be aware through all of this time, to listen through it, and to be aware.

To not hide from my own change, because then I won’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing. I have to stay present with this change. I have to acknowledge that I’m uncomfortable, and that I’m taking positive steps. I have to acknowledge where I’m neglecting myself and acting out my anxiety in less than healthy ways. And in order to know any of these things, I have to be present.

And that’s ultimately what each of these “recipes” does for me – they help me get and stay present.

So, yesterday I did cancel that modeling gig. I went to meet up with folks I hadn’t seen in a while. I got my vacuum cleaner fixed, went to the farmer's market, put that bookshelf into my closet. I bought dish soap.

The more I engage in my recipes, the better I feel. The better I feel, the more able I am to take care of myself and to take actions that support me. The more I take action, the better I feel.

It’s a continuous positive feedback loop that has carried me through the most atrocious and trying of circumstances. With grace.  

And if I can remember that -- I am voraciously confident, it can carry me through this. 

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. 

Day 21

Today ends the 21-Day Meditation “Challenge” by Deepak Chopra and Oprah I’ve been following this last month. Today’s “thought” is about Fulfillment.

And despite coming home on Tuesday night (finally tucking into bed after a chaotic day of work and a busy night of rehearsal) and bursting into quiet tears of overwhelm, today as I get ready for the day, the soft tears are of a different sort.

Fulfillment.

Two years ago on Yom Kippur I was diagnosed with Leukemia. Last year around this time, I hosted an “I Didn’t Die” party and played in a band on the bass I’d carried for over a decade but never learned to play. This year on and around the anniversary of my diagnosis, you’ll find me onstage in musical theater, another dream set down for over a decade.

Fulfillment.

In workland, I continue to feel like the hockey player who gets checked into the boards, my own path crowded out by the demands of others and by the very nature of the perpetually-behind game in which I find myself. I continue to know that things need to change, want to change them, do research on changing them, … and haven’t (yet) changed them.

I continue to desire giving myself the “right” kind of time to flesh out ideas for a different mode of working, one that means more fulfillment, less time, more stability. I continue to lament that the nature of the game I’m in doesn’t allow for pausing. Except when you’ve been sent to the bench. Which I call Netflix-binging. But that kind of pause isn’t productive, and I know this.

I am looking for the space in which to create a different kind of life, to have the space to dream and plan and implement. And, it’s not this exact moment. Which can be really hard for me. Believing as I do, that my stasis in this position (over-working and underearning) creates a dissatisfaction in me that bleeds into other areas of my life, and keeps me feeling less-than and stuck and not ready or viable or worthy.

And yet.

As I’ve spoken of it, one foot may be in the bear trap, but the other is passionately trying to walk anyway – or, as in the Addams show, to tango. I continue to have one foot in the direction … no – in the reality of a vision and a dream of mine. It’s not the direction, it’s the reality.

And truly, how different I know this is than it was. To be in it, instead of dreaming of or lamenting it.

Can you be half-way fulfilled? I dunno. But, I do know that the hours spent in band, in rehearsal, in laughter, and in friendship are times of pure engagement, presence, and self-forgetting (sometimes!). That absence of commentary, of doubt, feels like the presence of fulfillment.

If I have created, and worked hard toward creating, a third of my waking hours to be ones of fulfillment, I have to acknowledge that the scale is tipping. It isn’t there yet. I still lament and cry and question if I will pursue, but those hours spent in joy …

*insert silent wonder*

Thou Shalt...

I’m always hesitant to share my meditations. Like listening to someone report their dream, which to the dreamer is a fascinating pursuit, and to the listener is … not. But. This morning’s meditation was too illustrative and too relevant to current musings not to report. So, bear with.

“What is blocking me from making this decision around the play?” Around quitting or staying in it. I can’t even get to a firm decision either way, get a spiritual “hit” either way – even after conversation, taking an inventory of my fears around it both ways, and even after regular old "getting quiet" meditation.

So, this morning, I plugged the headphones into my iPod, scrolled to the drumming meant for this type of meditation and went in on a Shamanic Journey to find out what the heck is going on since the “normal” pathways to clarity are so gummed up.

Standing, in my mind’s eye, at the edge of the cliff that overlooks all the land that makes up my self (occasionally I'm reminded of Mufasa showing Simba all the land in Africa that is his domain), I asked the above question: What is blocking me from making my decision?

Without warning, the sky turned black, the light sucked out of the land, and a voice stormed, “You have to do this play.” This was no gentle cosmic answer. This was violent insistence. This was, I don’t care whether you want to do it or not; you have to.

This, is not my voice. But, apparently, it’s there inside me, blocking my decisions. I certainly can’t even know whether I want to do the play or not, if there’s a damning demand to do it regardless of my desire. This wasn’t a request, this was an order. This wasn’t a suggestion, this was a decree.

And if you’ve read me for any period of time, you know that voice is probably internalized from a parental source of the masculine variety.

The fear, no, terror, I felt when everything turned black was so evocative of how I felt as a child, I’d forgotten what it feels like to feel so small, so unimportant. On my couch, in my living room, in 2014, I pulled my blanket tight around me and cowered into the cushions.

There are cases and circumstances when, certainly, we don’t want to do things. As you also know, I hate doing my dishes. But, I do them. I know I “have to.” I know that as a child, we’re required to do things that we don’t want to do, because it’s for the good of the family, the good of your education, the good of your health (who wants to get a teeth cleaning?). But, this isn’t that.

As I recorded in my journal what occurred during meditation, I wrote what came to mind after it – the counter, the compassionate response to this demonic, demanding voice: “Molly, You don’t have to do the play if you don’t want to. There is no wrong decision here: If you do it, you’ll have more opportunities to do things you love; if you don’t do it, you’ll have more opportunities to do things you love. This is an abundant world. Just keep honing your vision and asking for help.”

Because there is no right or wrong here. But I haven’t been able to get anywhere on this choice because there's been this internal override preventing me from making it. I can’t know what I want if I don’t think I’m allowed to figure that out.

This still doesn’t make my decision one way or the other ... yet. But, I suspect that identifying, addressing, and removing the block to making one will help. 

You Spin Me Right Roun’...

I’ve been looking up meditation retreats. There’s this one I’ve heard about for years that’s a 10-day silent meditation retreat – I remember a guy I knew once shared that his therapist advised him against going on a silent retreat! (He went anyway, and reported great tidings.)

But, one thing I always seem to forget until after I’ve gone on such a retreat or weekend away is that I can effect the same kind of stillness without going so far, and without paying so much.

I remember last year, I went north to Marin to participate in a half-day meditation retreat. The meditation itself was lovely; the grounds are nestled into the hillside near the ocean, and there’s an organic farm and garden you can walk through during the walking meditation part. But… the zen talk… eek.

This day's particular teacher stuck in my craw the whole time, so before the second “dharma talk,” I left. I felt good about having gone, being among the greenery and the eucalyptus. I even saw a chipmunk on my way back to the parking lot. But, I didn’t need to stay and “practice listening” to someone whose personality shone way larger than his teachings. It was way more about him, than his teachings.

As I left, I noted that I could have found the same or a similar degree of stillness, just by driving up into the nearby national park in Berkeley. I didn’t have to sit in a “zen-do” or listen to teachings – really, I just wanted to listen to the silence, and although I can do that in my own home, I prefer to go somewhere nature-y when I really want to recharge. 

I’m reminded of this as I look up retreats this morning: a day-long one at the same retreat center, the 10-day silent retreat place, even a hot-spring zen-center-meets-spa related to a nearby center.

But really, what do I want to achieve or gain or experience? Stillness.

I feel very harried at the moment, with a lot of irons in the fire around creative endeavors, work endeavors, and even friend endeavors.

I’ve been wanting to strengthen my relationships with friends, form new or stronger connections, and this weekend has been the perfect exercise in that – it’s been chock full of friend-related activities that have been truly wonderful. But, I’m tired.

Yesterday morning, spur-of-the-moment birthday plans were texted to me: “Join me in Marin for dinner and a hike under the full moon.”

Um, Yes, please!

None of the 6 dinner attendees knew anyone except the birthday boy, and we had a great time. The hike was fantastic. Epic, really. The view over the Bay, the fog rolling in, the lights below, the reflection of the “super moon” in the water. – That, my friends, was meditative.

But, it also wasn’t. Different personalities require different levels of reverence, and for some people, silence isn’t really an option. – I’d love to go back and experience it in the quiet. It was awe-inspiring.

And, I wasn’t home til after midnight … which if you didn’t know, is way past my bedtime. But, so worth it!

However, I begin to feel a draw inward. I’m an “X” in the “introvert/extrovert” Meyers-Briggs scale. Meaning, I am neither an “I: Introvert” nor an “E: Extrovert” – I fall so perfectly between the two, needing both in such equal amounts, that I am an “X: Right in the middle.”

So, with all of this external push (creative stuff, job stuff, friend stuff), Anty needs a recharge. (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids reference, fyi.)

But, it is important for me to remember that I don’t need to retreat from the whole world, put huge parameters around my life in order to do this. It’s as simple as committing 2 hours, getting in my car, driving 20 minutes, and crunching through the soft-fallen eucalyptus leaves until I get to a spot where I can sit – no incense required. 

Witchy Woman

I’ve been back to reading through that Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life book before bed. Just reading through some of the affirmations, saying some of them out loud.

I’ve also begun more consistently reading my Tarot cards, pulling one daily.

And, it should come as no surprise to you that I have variously: burned sage, taken a bath in a blend of “protection” salts, participated in a sweat lodge, buried letters to G-d, dissolved some in the ocean, carried rose quartz in my jacket pocket, and burned a blend of incense powder mixed for me by a man in a dress.

When I was in college, I took a class on Witchcraft in Literature. I don’t remember much from it, except what the classroom looked like, and probably that most of the classmates were women. I know it’s not gender specific, but I feel like in the teenage years, many women (or those that I’ve come into contact with) delve in the occult for a little while. I mean, with the proliferation of movies at the time we grew up that embellished witchcraft as both hot and powerful, like The Craft, Teen Witch, Practical Magic, and Hocus Pocus (for a humorous bent!). Plus, the 80’s show, Out of This World, where the main teenage girl could freeze time (though, she was half-alien, not a witch), or Sabrina the Teenage Witch (a far worse show).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both the movie and the t.v. show) can also be seen as a teenage girl “coming into her power,” the development and surge that happens in the teens. And I think there’s something about the occult that offers girls a channel for that energy; something that offers safe guidelines and something a little special and weird and creepy and, perhaps, powerful.

I’m not saying I believe in witchcraft; I’m saying I believe that we all want to believe that we have the power to change ourselves and our circumstances, whether that’s through spells or prayers or good karma or electro-shock therapy.

And I want to believe that I can divine some information about the world and myself through things like shamanic journeys, meditation circles, and, yes, Tarot cards.

Recently, I’ve been pulling this one card consistently. The 8 of swords depicts a woman bound with ropes, blindfolded, and surrounded by a barricade of swords. In the distance, there is a castle on a hill. At least in my book of interpretations, the meaning of this card is restriction, hopelessness, accepting inaction. The last paragraph of the description says, however, the ropes are not that tight around the woman; she could ostensibly wriggle free out of them, knock over the swords, and head home. She, the figure, waits for someone to save her, instead of acting to save herself.

The words “accepting inaction” have been echoing for me these few days and weeks.

I met, post-cancer, with a therapist who works with PTSD. I described to her the vision/metaphor I currently have of myself:

There is a birdcage. I (forgive me) am the bird. The door to the cage is open. Has been open for some time. I walk out of the cage into the freedom, but the freedom is too big, too unknown, too scary, and so I walk back into the cage.

I know I am not alone in describing self-made prisons. I know I am not alone in cleaving myself to the devil I know rather than the devil I don’t. I know I’m not alone in fearing that there’s a devil at all out there in the wide scary world. (Not like THE Devil. Pretty sure I don’t believe in that!)

But I have become restless in this self-made prison. In the looking at things that interest me, and backing away. In the participating in things I love for a little while, and quitting. In exploring what kind of work I want to do, and procrastinating indefinitely.

And, I do know that countering fears with affirmations is one of the only tools I have in my belt right now to help me wriggle out of those self-made, and self-maintained, bonds; to bend a crowbar behind myself and shove/encourage me back out of the cage, where, underneath all the doubt, I know it is not only safe, but inviting, enlivening, and waiting for me to play/lead/inhabit.

So, if I have to meditate to a drum that "mimics an alpha state" for 20 minutes, tack the Sh’ma AND a cross to my wall, or pull a card from a deck to help me feel like I have support and protection as I try, so very falteringly, to enter this wide scary world, so be it. 

The Tell-Tale Heart

Written 2011:

i meet with a grad student who tells me not to take split-level poetry because all the under-grads write about is date rape – so i don’t tell him about the drunken carride from two strangers, later finding an earring twisted into my shirt, or being turned away from four Korean hospitals because rape is not an emergency.

i read an article on how to snag a man which suggests that women think about something naughty when out because women won’t pick up on it, but the men will – so, i imagine licking pre-cum from a cock, which provides a lascivious revolt against public decorum and not undamp panties.

but, in the unwalled house of my memory, these situations sometimes mix – and the salt sours, the armor rebuilds, and the currency of reality cripples.

In Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine, and Miracles, he reports that his research has shown that most cancer patients have suffered a significant breach in trust at an early age.

“I will slice your face with a razor blade/

and watch your smile fade.”

- The couplet I often recite in my head when I’m feeling cornered, scared, and angry.

I informed you a little while ago that it seems like repairing my relationship with intimacy, trust, and sex is probably back on the agenda. Yesterday, after my work at my shamanic journey group, this was made pretty apparent.

And luckily, one of my great friends in attendance told me afterward that our mutual friend is having a hugely positive experience with a therapist/healer around similar issues. I plan to contact her today.

In fact, I’d referred the same friend to my own “intuitive” (read: psychic), and it’s just humorous to me that me and this group of women have this rolodex of woo-woo witchy healer folks. And damned, if I’m not grateful for it.

For those unfamiliar, shamanic journeying (according to my novice understanding) is pretty much an intense meditation, but there’s a drum, the sound of which is purported to help induce a dream-like state—it’s like a guided meditation, where instead of listening to someone’s voice tell you to follow down a path in the forest, you sort of follow the drum, and make your own path through the forest. I’ve been journeying for years now, and find it to be one of the best and quickest ways to access internal information—however uncomfortable that information may be.

Yesterday’s overall message was that I have to repair my relationship to trust. Yuck.

It’s like trust for me is a broken port, and until it’s repaired, there will be glitches and sparks and melted fuses.

The thing about sexual trauma is this: you want to show people (the right people) the wound, you want to share about it, you want to exorcise it, you want to talk about it in order to heal from it, to release it and move on from it. You want to expose it to fresh air so that it heals instead of festers. You want to bring it into the sun and let the forces at work do their magic to create something beautiful out of something horrifying.

And yet.

Because of the nature of sexual trauma as a secret, and the prevalence of people dismissing it as exaggeration… You also don’t want to share about it. You are ashamed to bring it out, to tell anyone, to share about it. You feel that to mention it is to invite revulsion, rejection, dismissal. And perhaps, you have experience to back up that fear, and so you remain locked up tight with it, and it will continue to burn a hole in your heart.

The longer you hold onto it, the more painful it becomes, until it becomes something so immense in your heart and head that you can’t imagine that you can actually share it with other people, because it will overwhelm everyone, including yourself.

This, is why god made therapists. Healers. And friends with rolodexes.

The arrows toward healing this next came from “going in” to my meditation with questions about my recent fatigue. Over the last month or so, I’ve been so fucking tired, and my western and eastern doctors can’t figure it out, except that my eastern doc said, “You’re energy center is depleted.” Well, yeah. But why?

The information I got last night was that I have been fighting this, this knowledge, these experiences, this anger, this sorrow, … well, for years. I’ve been avoiding it for just as long. I’ve been fighting dealing with it, but it’s there. Believe you me, apparently, it’s there. And somehow my awareness has cracked open about it. Somehow, I am aware that I am exhausted from this fight, from this constant battle to suppress, dominate, and deny.

Some veil has lifted, some curtain shifted, and I am finally able to experience the exhaustion.

And if I want to get healthy, then I have to heal it. And if I want to heal it…--well, as I mentioned earlier, I’m more than a little ambivalent about doing so.

First things first. Call my friend who’s working with someone. Get that info.

Second thing? Ensure that I approach and treat myself with the most radiant compassion and care that I can muster, cuz,

We’re gonna need a bigger boat. 

Step on a crack...

In meditation this morning, I went to address the fault line located yesterday. The one within me, upon which my foundational ideas of love and trust were precariously built.

There, I witnessed this deep crevice in the earth, not Grand Canyon-esque, but not fillable with some caulk either. So, per my shamanic practice, I asked my guides how I could fill in this fissure to be able to build love and trust on a firm foundation? No reply. Okay, how can you, guides, fill or heal this fissure? No answer.

I look back at the crevice, and notice that it’s like one of those holographic game cards, where if you turn the card one way, you get one image, and turn it the other, you see something different. As I looked, I saw that the fault line was both there, and not there. If I chose to see the crack, it was there; if I looked a little longer, it disappeared into the plain of the ground.

It doesn’t have to be there. This mistrust, this broken place, this doubt and fear.

I also heard that this doesn’t erase the events, it doesn’t invalidate or refute what my experience was growing up, but it doesn’t have to exist like this fault line any more.

What if I want to visit it? What if I want to pay homage to my pain, maybe dally in it a little? What if I want to soak in the sorrow of what happened? ~ Sure, that’s an option.

But, I got to see that, over time, even though I may now know precisely where the fault line had been--mapped its edges, named its outcroppings--since it is now just a part of the whole of the landscape, over time, I will forget exactly where it was. It was somewhere right around here, I know it was. And soon, I’ll walk right over the land where the pain had been and not even realize I’m stepping easily over once-hallowed and -harrowed ground.

I don’t have to heal the place where love was built. I just have to notice that it’s already healed. 

S/he had so much potential.

I want you to imagine yourself doing something you’ve always wanted to do, but you haven’t.

This could be play Frisbee golf, visit a foreign country, learn piano, plant a sapling. Anything.

I want you to picture yourself engaged in this activity, noticing your movements, your self, how you’re feeling, what energy you’re carrying.

Now, I want you to remove yourself, and in your stead, imagine your inner most power--the very greatest power you have thumping in your heart--doing that activity. See if you can sense or see or imagine the unmasked self, the soul part, your unharmed self engaged in your dream activity. Again, notice their movements, their feelings, what energy they carry.

Is it different?

Is there a difference between how you imagine yourself to engage in the world, and how, well, the world wants you to engage in it? Are you freer, larger, glowy? Are you lighter, uninhibited, unafraid?

Maybe, or not. Maybe you won’t do the above. But, this morning, I did. Just sort of made up the meditation, “thought exercise,” as I sat in my morning meditation, and I did see myself differently. I was envisioning today’s audition, envisioning myself onstage in the dress I’ve chosen, giving my monologue. And I felt the urge to see what would happen if it weren’t me, but the me that lives under all my cages. I will tell you, it was very different. The second one confident, unafraid to fill the space, to be big. Not hiding.

I’m going to try to remember that part of me, because it is always with me, when I go out into the world, and onto the stage today. That there is only a trap door of fear that prevents me from being her. And what if, for a few moments, I can pry it open, and let myself be and let you see what I’ve always wanted you to see: I am more than who I've been.

And greater than my obfuscation.

Positions.

Over the last few years, I have gone from smoking maybe half a pack or so a day, down to nothing -- this, by no virtue of my own. There have been times when I was smoking a pack a day, and sometimes hardly at all, having started back in college, when I said Fuck It, I Need a Cigarette, following a dramatic break-up with my first “real boyfriend” my freshman year.

But, over the last two years or so, I’ve had to stop. Despite having developed strep throat several times a year in the past, and continuing to smoke until really, ultimately, I couldn’t breathe fully or swallow, whereupon I’d “quit” until I could get that nicotine relief back into my lungs, a different ailment began to happen when I’d smoke recently – after several a day, at night, I began to wake up from my sleep, not able to take a full breath properly. So… slowly, I cut back, and realized that even after one a day, I’d still get this tight chest pain, and shallow breathing, which was always not so fun. And slower still, testing the waters still… I’d go down to a drag from someone else’s or splitting half a cigarette with a friend. No. Dice.

Without fail, I’d go to sleep, only to wake up a few hours later unable to breathe. So, I “quit.” Or rather, I stopped. I had to – it wasn’t my choice, I’d rather not have, despite the health and smell and cost and yadda yadda – If I could, I would, but I can’t.

Yesterday, as I was sitting at my temp job in SF, I had a similar experience. Something being crossed off my list by no virtue or choice of my own. Within a few hours of sitting, doing data entry basically (I’m organizing the massive library for the interior design firm that I’ve temped with before – hired to work with them until it’s finished – so about two weeks) – my back began to hurt. And this isn’t like "oh, silly back pipe down," this is like "stop sticking a fucking fire brand into my lower spine."

I’ve known recently that sitting for extended periods of time has been aggravating my health, but it’s been easier to moderate as I haven’t been working full-time. So, yesterday by about 3pm, with near tears in my eyes, my three or four lower vertebrae about ready to jump out the back of my skin, I told my boss that I was going to leave for the day.

This was fine – she knows the work is grueling, and I’ll be back this morning, and I’ll attempt to moderate my sitting time more consciously. But, when I came home yesterday afternoon then, and came to my computer to apply for jobs, what am I looking at? Admin jobs.

For the love of Christ.

This, is being taken away from me as an option through no virtue of my own. Sure, I’ve been applying to admin jobs at cooler places, like the SFMOMA and galleries and art schools – places that seem more aligned with where my values lie – but, it seems, and is evidenced, that this too is not an option – or not in this way.

I simply cannot sit down for 8 hours. The job that I applied to yesterday listed under physical requirements that I be able to sit for 80% of the day and type for 50% of that. It’s a cool-ish job too. And yes, I applied, before I began to put two and two together.

So, this option is being wiped off the slate, and I’m left with another question mark. I’m honestly glad that it is being taken away from me – it’s a default position, it’s a fall-back, it’s what I’ve always done, sit behind a desk like a good worker bee. I’m good at it, but like I recently told a friend when she asked me if I liked those kinds of jobs, I said it’s like (forgive me) farting – it’s something I can do, but really I’d prefer not to.

Sorry. ;)

So, it’s been suggested for me to make a list of all the jobs that don’t require sitting for 8 hours a day, or more schooling at this point – though, maybe that’s just what will happen – though, sincerely, I hope not. And doesn’t require standing for 8 hours, like waitressing. Although, I do have a few offers for some catering work over the next few months, … which I haven’t replied to yet.

I was with a group of folks last night, and we were listening to a tape of a suggested meditation. This was about money, our relationship to it. We were to stare at a monetary bill of some denomination, and really look at it, and imagine it nearly animate – we, Americans, Humans, give money a lot of power and anima all the time, may as well find out what it has to say! The first question we were to ask it was, How do I (Molly) feel about you (money)? Its answer: Distant. … Duh, no wonder I am where I am.

There were a few other questions along these lines which need some more marinating and change, but as I change my relationship to money, how I can earn, how I can earn respectfully and with integrity and health, how I can be of service to others which is reflected back to me as a monetary value, how I can be responsible to myself, to money, to my jobs or career … I will apparently also be changing my position, physically and otherwise. 

Somewhere New.

For several months now, I’ve been working on a particular area of healing. For those of you who have read the “Savage Love,” then “Savage Beauty” blogs, you know that I’ve been working on healing my relationship with my sexuality, and my past behavior and experience in this area.

This is likely going to be a little heavy – for which I’m not thrilled, but I’m honest – so if that’s not what you want today, I’m sure Cyanide & Happiness will provide some levity today.

On my way back from the sweat lodge this Sunday, I was riding with my friend who was running the lodge. I told her that earlier this year, and late last year, each time I’d “go in” via meditation or shamanic journey work to ask what I need to do next to move forward, I was presented with the information that I needed to work on this stuff – sexual trauma and other murky stuff. I have been. Working with my therapist on EMDR for a little bit (though I’m not seeing her currently, due to finances), and in these other more alternative ways.

And most of all, through my thesis.

Basically what my thesis trails is a path through my sexual history. That story parallels my mental breakdown, and my parents’ divorce, but really, what is being excavated and brought into the light is all of that. The “highlights” or representative incidents.

Over ages 16 through 24 (a little earlier than 16, but that’s when it really took off with a very chicken-or-egg tag team with my drinking), is a napalm blanket of sorrow, shame, and dissociation. When riding in the car with my friend on Sunday, I said to her that I hadn’t “been in” to ask for a while if I’m “done” with this particular set of work or not, and wondered if maybe I was, but/and as I found out a little this morning, there are still some corners left to sweep.

I am grateful that I had the courage to put all of what I needed to onto paper in my thesis. But, I’m also aware that it goes much deeper and further than the stark, strobe-like glimpses that I give you, the reader. And this morning, in meditation, I began to psychicly clear out some of the cobwebs. (I just accidentally wrote “sobwebs,” which I suppose is pretty accurate for this morning.)

In fact, I did something pretty literal to sweeping out – in my mind’s eye, I walked through and into all those situations I remember, and unfortunately or not, I remember quite a lot quite vividly apparently -- more than I thought I did. I walked through these times and places, into these couplings and actions, and burned sage there. I carried this sage through all the circumstances I could remember, and asked them to be cleared of any energy which is no longer needed.

There are the few where there was kindness, and the kindness will remain, but there are the many that were out of a sense of obligation, or resignation, or force; or just wanting to feel better; or just wanting to feel anything other than what I felt. There are those that are truly tragic, and require some extra doses of compassion and witness, instead of repression.

I don’t know what may or not come of this work this morning. It was sort of “unbidden;” I didn’t have the intention as I closed my eyes for meditation this morning to do any of that – but I guess the Powers That Be had that intention for me, anyway.

One thing I asked for aloud in the prayer circle in Sunday’s sweat lodge during the final prayer round – the one where we get to pray for ourselves, out loud so others know what we need – I prayed for healing around physical intimacy. And that’s where the majority of my tears came on Sunday. My relationship with my body, my femininity, sexuality, sex, intimacy, being present in my body when being intimate – all of this needs healing. I’d still rather hide within my body – offer you it, but not what’s inside it; assume it’s really all you want from me anyway, so I might as well just give you only that out of spite – even if you in fact want more. But, hiding within myself doesn’t work anymore. Beating myself out of my body - or having someone do it for me - doesn’t work anymore. Not being present is painful now. And not voicing my physical needs to a partner is another way of hiding.

I don’t really know what to do about it yet. I know that I don’t do what I used to. But I feel like I’ve swung to the opposite side of the spectrum – from the vixen to Betty Crocker, as I’ve put it. But I know opening these doors, clearing these wounds, being willing to treat my flesh with care, and being willing to meet all of you with all of me are mile-markers of progress.

I’d like to be done with this work. I’d like to declare myself fit for duty. Maybe it’ll always be an ongoing process, maybe it’ll come to a place of plateau. I don’t know. But apparently I’m ready to clear the sobwebs, and arrive at somewhere new. 

Elephantitis.

So, I gotta admit, I’m feeling a little discombobulated this morning, and I’m not really sure what’s up. It’s like a wrong side of the bed, but not cranky, just, off. Like the films aren’t aligned properly. Not sure. Maybe as the day progresses, it’ll wear off. It’s threatening to be a gorgeous day, so I’ll hopefully spend some of it outside, or at least in a café, working.

Part of the discomfort is that I think I spent too many hours hunched over my computer yesterday, working on both my thesis and the info blast for May’s workshop. My neck muscles literally cracked when I turned to shut off my alarm – ouch. Stiff and unhappy. Computers and health may not be aligned either. Balance, I suppose.

I got the final copy of my thesis back from friends yesterday, and began my final edits. The folks I gave it to were really helpful and specific, which offset the entirely vagueness of my professors’ notes. I am marinating on a few changes that may happen – a word here, to delete one or two poems there.

The nude suit is back in. By the way. I had my performance poetry class last night, and spoke about my new idea, and that it may not warrant a nude suit, but folks encouraged me, and said, basically, why the F not. Pretty much anything that I’d get up there to say will be about getting down to the/my authentic, naked self. The professor said that it adds something visually, it doesn’t matter what the content is. So, now, the hunt for a nude-colored body suit. I have a hunch where I’ll find one, and as I just got asked to babysit this Friday, I’ll have the funds to fund it.

Although he’s a little hesitant for me to be working on a brand new piece for the performance, which is in less than two weeks, I’m pretty confident that I can bust it out – as soon as I put pen to paper. There’s SO much divided demands right now, is all. Each thing is important, none can be “dropped,” and hardly any back-burnered, but this piece has been, and I’ll do my best to crank it out in the next day or so. It won’t take long. I have it mapped out in my head. I’ll post it when it’s done.

That’s really all that’s up right now – these school demands, and the crunch time lead-up to both next Saturday’s workshop, and May’s workshop. Each are going to require some more input from me. And I just feel really thin at the moment. Only one person has actually registered for the workshop next weekend, though a few have Facebook responded. But, I’m certainly aware of the habit people have – myself included – of clicking “attend” to something they have only a vague passing notion of attending. So, I’ll have to blast that out again – if you get the email again, forgive me, but I sorta need to know how many folks will be there. Like, if there's really only one…!

Also, I have to print flyers for the May workshop, and I need to do color copy cost research for that, and then I’m going to ask a friend to help me drive around to various places in the Bay to post them up. So, I’ve got to reach out for that.

Ack. You can see, perhaps, why I feel all off. I tried to meditate some this morning, and got a few deep breaths, but not too much grounding. Maybe today is a multiple attempt at meditation day.

There’s something I heard once: a guy said that on most days he meditates a half hour, but on the days he’s really busy, he meditates an hour.

That actually makes sense to me. Now, maybe I’m not the hour-long meditator type, but I’ve sat in a few circles for 40 minutes. It’s HARD … in the beginning. Then I sort of sink into it – once my brain has had its say around what feels like 20 minutes or so of, OMIGOD are we done yet??? But, like working out, or something, once you get into it, you forget that you hated it in the beginning few minutes. The adrenaline starts to pump, or in meditation land, the serenity does. … Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes it’s 40 minutes, or in my case, 10 minutes of laundry list, punctuated by a few, oh yeah, deep breath, follow the breath, touch down, just notice – I have to get quarters for laundry – do I have any dollar bills – I love the sound the machine makes when the quarters are changed, like in Vega-- oh, right, breathe in …

So, maybe today requires a little more grounding. I’ll go meet up with some folks later today and have a bit of brain drain for an hour or so, but, this is part of my self-care. The only way I can balance all that I’ve got going on, is if I can let myself get balanced first.

I feel like that unicycle circus dude with the poles and the plates balanced on top. I’d like to feel like the elephant, rooted and pressing into the earth. 

Tourist Center

Some of the things we’ve gotten to do: drive to Sonoma and eat cheese samples at the Cheese Factory, and a coffee from Hot Shots, the drive-through coffee joint. Walk part way across the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin county northern side. Stop by Crissy Field and take touristy pictures of ourselves, and a few for the fellow tourists, looking out toward Angel Island and Alcatraz, and of course the copper-crimson of the bridge itself.

We ate at Green Chili, the wonderful, all grass fed, all hippie, sustainable Mexican restaurant. We ate at Fenton’s, the local ice creamery here in Oakland, in a wonderful bout of yum. And last night, at Mission Pie – my thanks to that guy I briefly dated for introducing me to it!

We’ve also been to an art opening at a gallery in Berkeley, and last night, a weird white box studio in a factory in a not so hot part of Oakland. We left before the performance began. It was a tiny room with a modge-podge assortment of chairs, and an even more motley crew of people. It was obvious that we didn’t really fit in with what was going on, and as we both agreed prior to going that we’d leave if it were “weird,” and my friend also felt a bit of Bay Area culture shock, we left. I wasn’t disappointed – but I was glad we went, if only for the experience of being a sociologist in a strange sub-culture of the Bay.

Truth is, I haven’t had much thought to much of anything, as we’ve been driving hither and thither, and also then resting some, and gossiping and catching up and laughing and eye rolling, and it’s been fun, and I’ve been doing my best to take care of myself with bringing food with me so I don’t have to buy any, and with getting up in time to do my morning pages and this blog. But, I haven’t been meditating at all, and I do feel a bit off center. I notice that my focus is pulled by the other person, and suddenly, or slowly, my center is somewhere between us, instead of within myself.

This is codependent, but also our long history. We’ve been this way for 3 decades, it won’t shift for me over night. But I’m aware of it. I’m aware that I’ve been cursing more, and interrupting more, and adding in bits of my own stories when hers aren’t complete, as if I validate myself or her experience by adding in my own two cents. When, really, I can just listen. I’m noticing that more this morning, and being attentive to letting the other person finish. What I have to say isn’t important enough to interrupt another person. And granted, it doesn’t “sound” interrupty – it sounds like a dovetail, like I’m adding to the conversation – but it’s not a conversation when one person is telling a story, and it sparks 8 thousand other thoughts you want to get out immediately.

But I recognize too, that I’m also excited and happy to be able to share all this stuff, that there is this manic sort of energy to catch up, and share stories, and give opinions, and laugh about people we knew or know, and just share about our families new events. We grew up basically living in the other person’s house. We’re more like sisters than anyone I’ve been in a relationship with – and family sometimes brings out the best, and sometimes the worst in you.

I’m not going to beat myself up for not having taken a breath in a few days, or not letting her finish her thoughts. I’m simply going to rectify the situation, as they say, as soon as I am able.

This morning, I’ll go meet with some folks and have a few minute meditation, and get recentered, and come back, I hope, with a renewed sense of camaraderie and ownership of my center. I don’t need to be anything more or less than I actually am. I don’t need to interrupt to make sure I’m heard, or valid, or liked. I don’t need to curse to show that I’m hip or cool, or get sweet dessert things to be hip or cool. I can be me, a woman who needs to meditate, not eat sugar, and pack her lunch. Who has valid things to say when the moment is appropriate, and can listen with an open ear, instead of my own running dialogue – which is exhausting.

Tell the Truth, Tell the Truth, Tell the Truth.

This was the inscription in someone’s book I read once, quoting someone else. I’ll have to look up who. But it occurs to me this morning.

So, it is true that by vomiting out my thesis and the actions therein that I have opened up lines to things that I didn’t have access to before. This morning, I got to see one of them.

A while back, I’d written here about an "individuation meditation" I’d done regarding my mom. It was an exercise out of that Calling in The One book, and it was helpful and powerful and sad, but freeing, then.

This morning as I went in to meditation, I thought to go one place, and instead was drawn to go elsewhere. So, I did. I ended up at Ocean Beach, basically the end of the continent hemmed in and eroded and maleated by the wide Pacific Ocean. There stood a large figure. It was my dad.

I’ve written some here about his ability to throw me off course, with his demands that I live according to his ideas of what is right, or with his pure denial of facts about his life and our mutual familial past. Maybe I’ve even glanced at some of the violence that occurred when my brother and I were young. But I don’t really talk about it. Hence, the title.

The truth is, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what I hear in others' lives, and I discount and play down the ability that man had to scare the … nearly scare the life out of me. He is a large man, at 6’3”, with a larger voice, fiercer eyes, and my brother and I would tense at the sound of his car pulling into the driveway, as if getting ready for battle defenses.

There is a story that I've been told, that when I was about 7 or so, in the middle of an altercation, I turned to my dad and said we were too old to be hit anymore. – No seven year old should ever have to say or feel that. And my brother at 4, then, shouldn’t either.

These are, granted, my own interpretations. But, my father, abandoning physical violence, started in simply using his voice to holler. And his hollering shook the foundation of the house. -- Although there are some poignant moments in my past when he took up that old tool of intimidation again. … He was not a pleasant man – though you may not know that in public. You probably sense you don’t want to cross him, but he’s like that Scorpion in that legend – it’s in his nature to bite.

And then, too, it’s not in his nature to bite. He’s scared. He never had proper fathering, never knew how, had his own shame about being a bastard child, and then hated his step-father. He grew up in the army. Learned how to make beds and keep time and everything in a row and in order.

Children are not on time or in a row or ever in order. This frightened him. I know that now.

But, in my meditation, the phrase that I repeated several times, as I sobbed a bit in real life, was, You don’t have the power to kill me any more.

…

See, because, last night, I wrote a mini G-d letter, and asked for some guidance on earning income, what I should do. And the letter back asked, What do you want to do? I cannot produce vagueness.

What a novel question: what do I want to do?

And so when I went in this morning in meditation to find some answers within myself to this question, I found myself face to face with my dad. My dad who has wanted me to live life to his rules for a very long time, even though it’s years since I’m out of his house. I still feel the stamping thumb of a demand for “normalcy” or whatever his idea of the “right” kind of life is for me.

So, that’s what this morning was about. Of course I haven’t really been able to consider what it is I want to do in my life, if I’m continuing to struggle against what his ideas are for my life. My therapist has tried to instill this in me over several years – Molly, this is your life. It hasn’t made sense to me. I haven’t known what that’s meant. When I’m trying to struggle against the idea that I might be swatted or, as the fear puts it, killed, of course I don’t have the time or wherewithall to consider what I want to do with my life. First things first, right? Survival.

To move from the stance of survival to the stance of growth means to move out from under the fear of elimination. It’s a “fancied” fear at this point – but it makes my heart flutter and tells me to stay hidden and to stay safe. Which is what I’ve done for a while, and doesn’t fucking work for me.

I invited him to leave. I told him, as the exercise in the book suggested, that I was sorry I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be, and that I forgive him for not being what I want him to be. That without his anger, he’s just a scared old man, and a scared little boy. I have compassion for the little boy. And I need to learn some right-sizedness around the man. To begin to step into my own britches is to believe that they belong to me. In the face of anyone else – good or bad decision, right or wrong, lost or found -- this is my life.

I don’t know how to do that yet, but inviting him to stop throttling me is a good start. 

Savage Love

This morning, I couldn’t get quiet in meditation, tried a variety of different techniques and styles, and then decided, fuck it, I’ll just do a journey. A “journey” is a shamanic journey, and how I do them at home is via a tape of drumming on my ipod that I listen to. I’ve mentioned some about this here before, and believe what you will or won’t, but it’s one of the surest ways I find to get in touch with whatever’s going on, and to find clarity and, potentially, resolution. 

NOTE: I feel that describing a journey is much like the way some people tell others about their dreams - they're fascinating to the dreamer, not so much to the listener, so feel free to read on or not. 

I usually shy away from doing journeys at home (as opposed to when I do them in a group), because they are so powerful for me, and usually provide a level of information that is hard to sit with when I’m by myself.

It was none too different this morning.

Back in January, when I was on the women’s retreat up in Napa, we were talking a bit about how people get to the various places of these shamanic “worlds,” and I mentioned that every time I go to the “lower world,” as I go down, I pass through this room that’s like the indoor penguin enclosure at the zoo. I usually just walk right through to the exit door, and on down to the lower world, but I was curious as to what that room was about, if it was just a “silly” fluke of my brain or what.

I’d never really looked around the space, having been told early that I was supposed to be getting to a place in nature and if we hit a man-made environment to just keep going. This space has always been there during my journeys; it's a dark room/hallway, with that eerie blue lighting that happens in those enclosures as it lights up the exhibits and penguin habitats and water.

It was suggested in January that I take a look at the nature of the space, that maybe it is trying to tell me something. And, if you’re with me so far, your suspension of disbelief will be needed further. …

So, today, in the journey, I head down, and when I get to this room, I stop and pause. I walk through and go out another door, but I just walk into a whole mess of large leafy plants, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the “right” way. So I walk back inside.

Then I walk up to one of the two exhibits, lit behind its glass, to see what’s inside. It’s not penguins. Perched on the craggy, bird-shit stained fake rocks that you normally see, is a woman, naked, and hunched over herself. Her head over her bent knees.

At this point, I call up one, then two of my teachers/guides, cuz I’m starting to get a little anxious, and I ask them who she is. This dirty, matted hair naked woman is Love. She is the part of me that is love.

I ask what I should do, and it’s indicated that I go and approach her, so the glass in the exhibit between me and her disappears, and I walk through, and up onto the stained rocks, and crouch down to approach her. She looks up at me. Her eyes are wild, fearful, non-linguistic, but meaningful nonetheless. She ticks and jerks, like we imagine cave-people did, like savages did. Moving without grace, and in non-self aware spurts.

I ask her what she needs. She “says” she’s cold. I put this enormous fur coat around her I’d gotten previously (like a prize in a video game I can now cash in). It’s warm, and filled with love and calm. I give her some pajamas.

-- She throws herself on me, supplicant with gratitude, but this strong, muscular woman is crushing me with herself. With her love. Her thanks are out of proportion with the gesture. And she wants to hold on to me with such force.

She, is Savage Love.

I ply her off of me, and don’t know what to do, where to go, if I should leave. Instead, I take her to this safe place I have, this desert – the cave of the penguin exhibit fades and we both find ourselves in the wide, open, dry, sunlit desert.

I don’t really know what to do with her – this force that is too big, doesn’t know her own strength, and once is shown affection wants to consume the giver, to keep it.

I bring in my little 5 year old self who likes to hang out in this desert, drawing at a picnic table. I sit my primitive, wild self down with her to draw, and she makes a whooping and hollering mess of stabbing the crayons onto the page. The 5 year old self tries to tell her no, that she’s doing it wrong, and messing with her space, and quickly, she has had enough, and gets up to go to the sandbox, an elsewhere safe place.

Savage Love is furious, rampant in her rage at this rejection, at being chastised and rejected. She is dangerous.

I call on someone else, a woman who represents adulthood to me, who isn’t me, but surely, as these all are, is of course me.

She comes in, and holds the untamed woman. Like a mother calming a child. The differences between a toddler and a savage aren’t much. And that’s when I realize that’s ultimately what this woman is. She’s an adult in form, but in her manner, reaction, and action, she’s very like a small child – you give me something nice, I want it all and more, and I don’t care or know if it’s crushing you or more than you can give. If you reject me or chastise me, I’m enraged and destructive.

This part of me does not know or have boundaries. She doesn’t have language, or common sense. She has been in a sealed glass cage for nearly a lifetime – of course she doesn’t have “people skills.”

And, to get “real” for a moment, I resonate with these reactions and actions she portrays as I consider my own actions in situations of love. If you show me affection, I will drape myself over you, and become dependent upon you. If you put up a boundary or behave in a way I perceive as rejection, I will shove you away and cause as massive chaos as I can doing it.

As you can imagine, today's journey has caused a great deal of self-reflection, but is bringing about a great deal of self-compassion. This part of myself has not grown up and has remained in reactionary patterns of behavior that in the end cause isolation and solitude.

When I had to leave, which, by the way, I was considering the entire time during my interaction with her – how can I get away from her – which is interesting… well, I left her with the adult woman comforting her, calming her. She was calm. And she will learn.

But, on the way out, reluctantly, I took a look in the second penguin-like exhibit, to see who or what was in that one.

It was Depression.

And I backed away, knowing that would need a whole ‘nother day of work.  

Talking Alarm Clock Meditation

When I sit for meditation, if I’m timing it, I set my alarm clock to the setting where it plays back a recording. I can record whatever I want, 8 seconds long.

I bought this little clock before I set off to teach English in South Korea in 2004, and had my mom record herself telling me to wake up, so that I could hear her voice on the opposite side of the earth.

At some point the recording got recorded over, I accidentally pushed the recording button, and it got erased, so I’ve gotten the chance to have it say whatever I want it to.

For the past few years, I’ve recorded and rerecorded myself saying “Thank you,” so at the end of my meditation time, instead of an alarming beeping as it’s set to wake me up, I hear a soft voice repeat that phrase till I hit the stop button.

Today, I accidentally erased that recording, and went to say “Thank you” again into the little microphone in the back, but instead, I recorded myself giggling. ;) And I played it back, and it giggled, and I giggled back at it, cuz it’s so silly but infectious, and at the end of my meditation time this morning, it giggled at me. And as I reached to shut it off, I giggled too. It’s very silly.

And yet, I’ve been hearing and reading more about the power of laughter and smiling. A friend of mine’s been participating in a heart-smile meditation with a friend at school. She said basically, they just sit around for an hour … smiling. She said it feels weird, but sort of funny and cool, and that the facilitator/friend of ours said that you have to actually smile with your face, you can’t just smile inside.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this. In fact, I think I probably read it first in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love during her sojourn to Indonesia and to the Balinese medicine man, who told her to smile “even in her liver.”

And in another book I’m reading, they talk about the healing power of laughter. About the frequency that gets emitted when we laugh, about how it can heal us, about how we can change our current thoughts, simply by laughing.

I haven’t done the meditation, although I’m curious, and probably will sit in with those girls sometime soon. But, something this morning – well, I just didn’t want to record the staid “Thank you” again. I wanted something lighter. Laughier.

I think this whole “power of positive thinking” thing has its merit. And I’m also getting to notice the needed balance between magical thinking or “visioning” or collaging with the very earth-oriented action steps that I’m having to take. I believe there’s a dovetailing of these two actions. Visioning and taking action.

If I don’t use my imagination to concretize or even vague-itize what it is I want in this life, I will be a 50 year old secretary. If I only spend my time “manifesting,” creating collages, or being in my magical accidental thinking, then nothing will actually change.

However, I need the basis of those visions, those dreams, desires, callings, whatever people are talking about when they say “follow your bliss,” in order to figure out what the hell my bliss is.

Of course, the second part is the action. And luckily, I’m at a moment in my life when I’m becoming more open to the baby steps that it takes. These look small this week. But, they’re not.

I called my credit card companies to close my current accounts. I called those store credit cards still listed on my credit report which I haven’t used, or seen, in years (Mandees anyone?). I have one more “hard” call to make. I have a collection agency on my report, with initials below it that are the same as one of the hospitals I was in when I was 21. I don’t know if that's what it's referring to, or if I still owe money to them or not. But, clarity is better than fear or vagueness.

Other action items of this week are to let you, and my other communities, know that I’ll be participating in a reading at school at the end of this month as a part of an open mic/party night. I told this to someone on Sunday, and she insisted that an action I take this week is to LET PEOPLE KNOW. To continue out of my hiding and isolation, and to let people know.

In that vein, I’m to work on a chapbook for the reading. Basically, a small collection of my poems, so that I might be able to sell them there. It’ll be about the same time my thesis final draft is due, and I should have a good portion of work at that point.

Putting my work out there; putting myself out there; closing up these holes of old accounts and fears. These are what enable me to move a mountain one spoonful at a time. And if a giggling alarm clock helps me get there, so be it. 

I’ll tell you when you’re older.

You know how frustrating that answer was to us as children. I feel like that’s the answer I’m getting now. In mild-to-moderate panic about the end of school in May, what I’ll be doing then, what I want to do, and where I want to do it, I’ve been knocking on the Universe’s door, being like, HEY! Throw me a bone here, eh??

Trouble is, the damned Universe has been throwing me a bone. I just don’t like the taste.

I’ve written here before that it’s been indicated to me via multiple meditations that I need to do this work on untangling past sexual trauma before I can move forward, before I can get any further information.

This, makes me mad. Frustrated. Besides the fact that when that information was once again given to me in a meditation about 2 weeks ago, I kicked that information in the shins. I had a right ole’ tantrum about it. WHY?? (She asks again…) Why do I have to do this shit – this uncomfortable, vulnerable, honest, and sad shit. I. don't. want. to. feel. this. I don't want to feel sad. I don't want to acknowledge that I am. I don't want to do this. 

I phoned a friend of mine who knows me well and who had done EMDR for a whole year before, and I expressed my frustration. I also told her that this trauma/funky relationship with my sexuality and femininity is kicking me back... She said that I could take all the acting classes I wanted, all the music lessons, and painting classes, but that THIS was the real work. That this, doing this work within myself and with the help of Team Molly, is how I will move forward, and enable any of the rest of that stuff to enter my life, and inhabit it in the way that I really need, and in fact, want, to.

I pout. I say that being sad is for pussies, and I should be over this shit, or rather that so many other people are walking around psychicly limping, how come I have to actually do the work? No fair. >:(

And, yet. I know she's right. Later in that conversation I told her, I do have a choice. This is a choice that I’m making to work through this. Not to “get over it.” To discount it, or to continue to walk as a wounded antelope. My sexuality began wearing a heavy cloak of shame, guilt, fear, and pain almost 20 years ago. I don’t really even know what it looks like anymore. And so, that’s what I’m doing.

I have a vision I sometimes use of a table at which all my disparate parts of self sit. There’s me at the head, and the smart girl, the baker, the Vixen (who is not the same as my sexuality), there’s the goofball, the artist, and sadness who is a recent invite to the table – now that I don’t believe she’ll infect everyone with her sadness. There’s gentility. All of these parts of me and more sit at the table, and I’ve been gathering them from the far corners for a few years, and there are too those who were never banished from the table or had to hide or escape.

Then, there’s sexuality. Mired in her leaden cloak, like the kind you wear in the dental office when taking x-rays. I didn’t actually know until recently that all those emotions she’s wearing are not a legitimate part of her. That shame and sexuality are in fact mutually exclusive, and that … they can part ways.

She’s somewhere outside of the house where the table is at the moment. Somewhere in the woods perhaps, in this sodden cloak, which she is now, I am now recognizing is removable.

I look forward to meeting her. I imagine that she has a lot to teach me and show me. I told another person recently that I believe that eventually she’ll sit on my right side up at the head of the table – she’s that important and that potent. That does not mean that there’ll be rampant sex – that’s much of what saddled her in guilt and shame to begin with – but that the power that comes from owning my body as well as my voice. The power that comes from owning my boundaries and my needs - and really really speaking up for them. The power that will come with the kindness and mutuality and trust. The power that comes from sexuality’s creative bent.

The chakra that is associated with creation is located in the area of the reproductive organs. This area produces life in the literal sense, and life in the metaphoric sense. This is a way in which I have been cut off from my own ability to create, to own voice, to know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with my life, now, after May, hereafter. Of course I can’t know yet. All the information is still tucked away in this miasma of trauma and grief.

So, as I was once again informed this morning in my meditation upon asking, “BUT WAIT!! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO??? WHAT DO I NEED TO DO NEXT TO MOVE FORWARD??”, I need to do exactly what I’m doing: feel sad, have tantrums, cry in my bathrobe, watch Pixar's entire catalogue, listen to friends, admit what's really going on, and to let myself become fully and usefully whole.