Getting the F*ck off my Knees.

On Friday night at 10 minutes to midnight sitting in my parked car outside my apartment building, I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone.  I usually do this as a 'before getting out of my car at the end of the night' ritual.  I don’t know why.  Like I’m getting a few minutes' alone time before I go into the house… but I live alone... with a cat. … so…  In any case, I came across a post about that evening's blue moon, looked quickly at the clock and exclaimed, “Shit!”

I shut off my phone, dashed out of the car up to my apartment.  I took off my heels, slipped on flats, grabbed my loaner tambourine and climbed excitedly and nervously up the stairs to the rooftop of my building.

Pushing open the door, I saw before me a whitewashed roof with long pipes and what look like abandoned solar panels.  Dropping my keys by the door, I carried my tambourine to the center of the rooftop, shielding myself slightly from the view of neighboring buildings, and turned around to see the full, audacious moon before me.  Then, I began to jangle the tambourine, and finally I began to sing.

...uh, what?

As I’ve come to the part of my recovery/internal work where we are instructed to “Humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings,” my mentor asked me how I’d done this step in the past.  I told her I usually get on my knees and say some kind of prayer. 

“Get the fuck off your knees!” she replied emphatically.

You see, I have a habit of being small.  Of minimizing myself, diminishing myself, down-playing and ignoring my own needs out of fear and, mostly now, out of long-grooved practice.  This habit of deprivation and hiding causes many problems in my life, mostly because I am surely aware that I am not “meant” to be a mouse. 

Being a mouse, though, often looks like me withholding my truths, not admitting what I really want from others and from myself and from life.  Things like. … I want to get married.  *gasp!*  It was near torture to say this aloud to her when we were discussing truths I never tell anyone.  It feels embarrassing to say it.  To feel it.  To want it.  “I'm a modern woman, proud brave able!  What a simpering, waif-like desire to have!,” goes my internal monologue.  And I wither to admit it to anyone else.

My mentor and I spoke at length that day, and she finally suggest-/insist-ed that I get a tambourine, dress up in something exciting and shout this truth, and all my others, to the heavens.

*Gulp*

So on Friday morning, two weeks after this suggestion, I finally obtained a borrowed tambourine (you’d be surprised how few there are around!).  I texted my mentor that tonight was the night!  And then I read online that it was also going to be a full moon, a blue moon in fact.  This seemed most auspicious.  (For a woo-woo hippie shit chick like myself!)

The evening found me on the roof of my apartment building, fresh from a salsa lesson/live music dance in the city, in a hot dress and pulsing with feminine wiles, furtively tapping this noisemaker in my hand, trying not to feel embarrassed.  

And then I began to sing.  I started softly and whirled myself into a crescendo, abandoning decorum, delighting in the jangle and thrill of the truth.  Gyrating, gesticulating, twirling around the rooftop, I sang loudly all the secret desires of my soul and my heart, echoing a refrain of, “I let go of being small!” and hammering wildly on the tambourine, an elegant, alight grin streaked across my face as I hopped lightly over the pipes, spinning around the roof until all my heart’s desires, all my tiny wishes I’m too ashamed to speak, had poured out of my throat and into the moonlit darkness.

Laughing, giddy, adrenalized, I headed back to the entrance door, calling brazenly to the bulbous moon: “Peace out, Blue Moon.”

Float like a Waterbug, Sting like a Bee

It isn’t so much that I’m afraid of heights as it is I’m afraid of falling from heights.  Therefore, when, 2 months ago, I found myself in Moab, Colorado dangling on the side of sheer rock face struggling to find a toe-hold in the millimeter-wide crannies, I began to panic. 

Now, to pull back the scene a little bit, I was about 15 feet off the ground, strapped into a harness, and attached to a grounding line held by my belay partner only a few feet below.  But it didn’t feel safe.  It felt like I was stabbing the rock cliff with my feet, trying desperately to find purchase in thin air, my adrenaline kicking up so high I could taste it.

Muscle-fatigued and terrified, I called to my partner below that I wanted to come down – I was done.  The rock climbing guide on our trip overheard my plea and walked over from the lines and climbers parallel to me.  He suggested that I sit back in the harness, take a break, feel my weight being held, and catch my breath.  Then he called up, “You can come down, but if you want to keep going, I’ll help you.” 

Later that evening, back on flat earth in front of a crackling fire, he chuckled he could see my shoulders slump at that moment, a moment of resignation, a knowing that, indeed, because of his help, I was going to and was able to keep going.  This sanguine moment of, “Shit, alright, fine.  Let’s do this.”  And, together, we did.  He called out places where I could find my footing, and shortly thereafter I was at the top, my heart a fluttering canary, stress-tears straining back in my eyes, weak from fear and exertion – and once safely back the 60ft to the ground again, proud.

He told me of a concept called a “retro-climb.”  It is only after you have accomplished this ridiculous feat of effort that you feel pride, accomplished, and glad you did it at all.  In the moment, you only feel fear, anxiety, terror.  Honestly, I’ve not felt so frightened in recent memory, despite the intellectual knowledge that I was completely safe, held, and cared for.  (My naturopath had a field day turning down my maxed-out adrenaline once I’d returned to SF!)

In my own personal work lately, my mentor suggested I seek an internal guide to show me my blind spots.  As some of you know, I sometimes use a Shamanic Journey meditation practice that introduces you to internal guides of both human and animal form.

And so, the other morning in meditation, I “went in” to find a guide to show me what I’m missing, since there are whole areas of my life that still feel unresolved and cause me distress (see: "romance and finance"; aka serially single and perpetually under/un-employed).  In this meditation, as the title of this blog may suggest, I came across a waterbug.

… Now, the waterbug does not seem like the fancy-dancy spirit animal one would hope for!  It’s not a lion or eagle or even antelope.  And yet, here it was.  I won’t “bore” you with the details of the meditation, but the lesson was clear: 

The waterbug floats on the top of the water, not because it is defying the law of physics, but precisely because it knows, believes, and trusts in them so completely that it knows it will be held on the surface.  It is not defying gravity, it is embracing the truest knowledge that because of the laws of nature, it must and will always be held.

The rock climbing guide and I had a long conversation one evening about spirituality, and he revealed that his largest question for “God” or the Universe as he continued to expand his life and open his vulnerable self and admit all parts of him was, “Can you really love me that much?”

I replied to him that my question is, “Can you really hold me that much?”  Can you really let me know, help me feel, to my core, that I am held?  That I am safe? 

The waterbug teaches me that it floats because it doesn’t tense and struggle.  It floats because it relaxes and trusts, and simply embodies a knowing that if it steps onto the clear surface of a pond, it will be held.  And furthermore, having seen that it has been held and carried before, it doesn’t continue to question whether it will be held again in the future! 

So this is my lesson for the moment: to embody the true knowing that, like sitting back into a climbing harness, I am expertly and even lovingly held.  And, should I ever choose to question (as it can become a choice rather than a habit), there will always be help offered me.

And p.s., if I mess up and tense up and fall through the surface of the water… I can swim.

The Facts of Life

Not like “the birds and the bees”; like the theme song: “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have…”

In this great rumpus race for which we have signed up by the very nature of being born, we are subject to a variety of experience.  Some of these we deem good, some bad, and being pleasure-seeking beings, we are partial to those we deem good.

In my own personal relationship to the universe, life, fate and its many faces/facets, I have oriented my understanding to be one that says, Everything happens for our own good.  Even the bad things.

For my alcoholism, I have found recovery, a community, and way of life that brings me fellowship, understanding, pleasure, laughter, and a sense of being deeply understood.

For my childhood, I have come to tell myself that because of my experiences, I've become sensitive, compassionate, empathetic, resourceful, strong, and creative.

For my cancer, I have taken my struggle and survival as impetus to engage in my life more fully, playing in a band, flying a plane, acting and singing in theater.

For all these horrors and more, I can look back and deem them “good,” because they have led me to becoming more useful and engaged as a human.

And yet.

Fuck. All. That.

That we are thrown against the shores of life brutally onto the rocks of experience, shaping us, reshaping us, and winnowing us down to the raw beauty of ourselves—  Hey Universe, would you lay off a minute, huh?

Because perhaps, Shit. Just. Happens.

And that is the worst understanding of all for me.  It is the least controlled, the least controllable, the most chaotic, disordered, entropy-laden reasoning for it all.

What it means is that we are not “safe.”  And if there is anything I have struggled for in my lifetime, it is to feel safe.

But in this quest, this blazing, self-propelled quest for safety, I have built up around myself an armor, a buffer, a multi-layered sequence of dance steps that I believe if I dodge left, you, it, experience, failure, hurt, calamity will needly dodge right.

Yet, the Universe has its own dancesteps, and sometimes they are to bowl you over like a rhino in a football helmet.

Furthermore, by dodging experience as a whole --monstrous as I believe or fear it to be-- I also dodge whatever good that rhinoceros might be trying to hand me.  And therein lies the rub, eh?

As I mentioned a few days ago about the dam, restricting my own self, need, and experience out of fear of what might happen if I let things flow, I am scrubbing up against my own realization that I am restricting myself for fear that bad shit might happen.  I am hoping to control the all of my experience so I am not harmed anymore.

Because forget all the above bullshit (which I also happen to believe) about all those bad things becoming or being seen as good things – don’t fucking think that I want or wanted them too.  They were all still egregiously painful.  And, as I mentioned, human as I am, I don’t want pain.

In my attempt to restrict my experience of pain, however, I believe I restrict my experience of benevolence.  Grace.  Fulfillment.

And so, I am stymied, victim of my own prison, of my own design to be safe, I am restricted from the greater joys and rewards of life.

“You take the good, you take the bad… “

Am I willing to expose myself, to be vulnerable and open to the whole of life’s experience, knowing that in my disarmoring, I am (also) opening myself to unforeseen goodness?

Buying Desire a Hat.

I was at my therapist’s once several years ago now and we were talking about my closest friendships.  I was telling her how I was scared to admit my full self to someone because I feared that my full self, my full array of needs and personality, would be too much for them to handle.  I explained to her that I felt like my needs were like a tidal wave, that letting them out would be releasing one, and I couldn’t do that to any one person.  Or to any several people.  Better to keep it all locked up tight.

But what if I begin to think of my needs and desires not as a tidal wave, but as held by a man-made dam?  A dam has immense strength and power; the pressure behind it is exponential.  The power there, the pressure, comes from the restriction of motion, from the forcible and intentional holding back of something that had previously flown free.

You can see where I’m going with this, no?  I’m no expert in engineering, so I don’t know how one goes about dismantling a dam—and maybe for the purposes of my own internal metaphoric dismantling, that might be interesting to learn—but I do know that once the dam has been removed and the water again flows free, it’s not a potential tidal wave of need anymore.  Now it’s just the normal, everyday flow.  The normal, everyday rise and fall of desire.

Without the restriction and denial of qualities such as desire and need, they are free to be absorbed into the landscape, a part of the whole, neither something to be feared or ignored. 

Desire in our culture has a pretty bad rap of it.  Desire, the seat of sin.  And yet, what is it but simply an expression of self, like humor or wit?  My mentor and I have been discussing and prodding at my relationship to my own need and desire, to try to bring them out of the haunting shadows, to not treat them like the disturbed family members you try to forget you have, til they show up on your doorstep at Christmas with soggy string bean casserole.

What if, instead, they were invited guests?  Do I even know anything about what and who they are, after being so keen to shut them out for so long?  Or do I only now know the legend of them, instead of the qualities themselves?

There is a bit of terror and a bit of awe as I begin to reintroduce myself to these qualities of self.  As a person who is so adept at self-denial and deprivation, to allow that there might be a proper place for need in my life is... incomprehensible.  Like someone who’s been on a Paleo diet for years, touting the benefits, trying to recruit converts, suddenly being told that in order to live they must eat cake.  Because not only will it change their entire metabolism for the better, but, hey, it’s fucking delicious.  And you’re allowed to enjoy it.

Permission to be allowed to enjoy.  Permission to be allowed to want.  Permission to be allowed to need.  And actually, screw the whole permission thing – it’s not that at all.  It’s not a choice.  Or an earned prize.  It’s a basic human right. 

To deny yourself a basic human right, like having chosen to drink fetid water your whole life because you’ve somehow made yourself believe pure spring water wasn’t for you or that your imbibing it was a danger to the balance of existence… well, self-denial like that causes a whole host of problems, not least of which is unfulfillment.

So, the dismantling, the right-sizing of desire and need, the introduction to them as they are, not as I’ve feared them to be.  And why?  Because I have a suspicion that fulfillment, purpose, and wholeness are on the other side of that shift.

Snookered.

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

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

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

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

Maybe Baby 2

I have been looking at porn.

This porn comes in the form of a Facebook page for local moms who are selling or giving away baby stuff. 

I’m on this page because one of my best friends is pregnant, and I have hopped so far aboard her baby-train, I’m surprised I’m not morning-sick myself!

In the past few weeks, I’ve begun reading a book on pregnancy that she read and loved (The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy), crocheting baby bibs, buying scrap fabric for burp clothes, and practically stalking her to ask if she wants a breast pump I found online. 

As I spoke of in my 2014 blog post “Maybe Baby,” I am not sure whether I want children. 

As then, I am not in a serious relationship, and I still am not willing to go the motherhood route alone, so there’s no real reason to question if I do or do not. But, reasonable or not, that doesn’t stop me from thinking about it. 

With every article on our drought, the cost of living, the planet’s imminent demise, the expansion of the stupid class — I am convinced for a few moments never to bring children into this hateful world. 

And with every true breath of fresh air, every warm hug, every belly laugh — I am convinced for a few moments that I want another human to bear witness to this world’s incandescent beauty. 

I am the age my mom was when she carried me (33), and then my brother at 36. I have been emailing and asking her all kinds of questions about her pregnancies since I began reading the pregnancy book — what was your morning sickness like? what does pregnancy feel like? did you have food aversions? stretch marks? hemorrhoids? (god help us, she did not!)

I have had the liberty and the luxury of asking my mom these questions, and too, my friend who is pregnant, does not. And I am very aware of this fact, and I think it has spurred my devoted interest in her pregnancy — I want to be there as much as I can, because I want to make up for any absence she might be feeling (real or imagined, to me, since I haven’t spoken to her about it yet). 

I was on the phone with my mom this morning, telling her that I feel my heightened interest in my friend’s impending mommy-hood is also that she’s my first local BFF to be pregnant. One of my other best friends in Long Island had a baby last year, and I was able to be there for a few days when the baby was a month old, but that’s all. There wasn’t the same imminent babyhood. 

I told my mom that I’d been thinking about my very best friend from childhood, a woman I’ve known since we were 3 years old, and how I can’t imagine what it will be like if and when she gets pregnant across the country from me. And I began to cry. 

Of course, it’s about her, my New Jersey friend, and it’s also about me. About how I’ll feel, if and when I also choose to have a family — assuming I’m able — so far from her and my own family. 

This is big business. This mommy stuff. 

And I am wanting to prepare to make that decision in a realistic way — so I have doubled-down on my work around intimacy and relationships (or in my case, habitual lack thereof). This morning, I told the woman I’d been working on these issues with by phone for about 6 weeks (a stranger whose name was passed along to me from a woman I admire) that I have reached out to someone local to work the rest of this stuff with. 

And I have. I will continue this relationship work with this local woman who has known me for nearly 8 years, who has seen me at my best and worst, who can call me out, see patterns, and provide so much space for my feelings and vulnerability that I can practically swim in them and still feel safe. 

Yesterday morning, this same woman (as we were talking about what my issues were and what I wanted to work out) said that she'd always felt for me that my issue was around deprivation. 

… 

She’s very astute. 

And it’s also funny to me because it’s one of those things that doesn’t come into focus about yourself until someone else (who knows you well) reflects it back. 

I am very aware of this time in the generation of women around me. My friends who are certain they don’t want kids, ones who know they do, the ones who can't, and ones who, like me, are unsure.

It’s a particular, cordoned off time in our lives. And I’m holding the space for that, leaning into the grief of potentially not seeing friends change their whole lives, them not seeing me do the same. I’m aware this is “future-tripping,” but it’s fair to acknowledge my feelings around it, anyway. 

I’m allowed to not know what will happen (for me or for my friends), and I’m allowed to have feelings either way. 

Today, what that looks like is picking up a bitchin' breast pump for my best friend. Continuing to do the work toward an intimate relationship with a man. And letting myself be both sad and happy for and with my peers. 

The Look-Good.

I was with a group of close friends on Friday night, celebrating one of their “not getting drunk and sleeping with strangers” anniversaries. These are women I’ve known for nearly my whole 8 years of not doing the same, and who know me and have seen me through my best and worst. 

And I couldn’t tell them the truth. 

It wasn’t until the assembled group was about to close that I got up, walked to the podium at the front of the room and said, “This is the place you’re supposed to tell the hard things. And, things are really bad.”

I began to sob. I eeked out that 5 months ago, I burned my life down, and I’m exhausted and isolated. I told the group that I realized I had to say something when, tonight, I couldn’t hold eye contact with my friends over our dinner. That the closest women I have in my life, I couldn’t look at for too long, because if I did… they would see… and I would break down crying. 

And I didn’t want to do that. 

Because it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to do. So, why talk about it?

I told them about being an expert at looking good on the outside, and feeling like dog shit on the inside. Now, the thing about the “look good” is that, sure, who doesn’t want to look good? Especially when you are feeling crappy, sometimes it’s nice to say, Well, at least I can still pull myself together. At least I can assemble an outfit, put on a little makeup, and … look good. 

However, the other thing about the “look good” is that generally, if you look good, people assume you feel good. And that’s part of the guise of it, of course; that’s part of its purpose… is to fool people. Because if no one asks, you don’t have to tell. 

It’s a pretty little prison we wrap ourselves up in, in an effort to try to do it alone. Because, again, what else is there to do?

In my case, I’m going on interviews, auditions, tours of school, taking tests, ordering physics books. I’m going about the wildest flurry of activity, the other day, I called it a blizzard. 

All this manic pushing to get out of my current situation that I feel ashamed I got into again. Molly, quitting another job without a plan. Molly, struggling to find work, again. Molly looking into a hundred different career paths, and feeling like a strung-out shell of a person through it all. 

Because, as I said earlier: Things are really bad. 

There’s a lot of crying, a lot of hopelessness, a lot of just trying to make it through these extended, exhausting retail days. 

A co-worker I’ve been sharing some of my, “Someone get me out of here” activities with said yesterday that shouldn’t this (the retail job) feel laughable in comparison to what I’ve been through? (She knows about the cancer.) And I said, No. 

Instead, it feels like, “Haven’t I been through enough that I shouldn’t have to deal with this fucking bullshit?” That’s how it feels. 

It feels like I push and try and explore and push and try and explore, and nothing moves. 

I feel like the hamster on the wheel, working so fucking hard, and getting no where. 

I will say that this new idea to pursue teaching feels like the first thing that makes real and doable sense in all my career lily-pad hopping. So, that feels like a win, and progress, and hope. 

And in the center of that remains the fact that my feet and legs ache, right now, I’m earning half what I did when I was at my office job, I have a dwindling savings account that was really fucking hard-earned, and I have no back-up.

So. What? Why do you talk to anyone about that anyway? No one really has anything to tell you of use, except, “We love you and you’ll get through this.” … And take that to the bank. 

But, no. It’s fabulous that I have people around me, and I know there’s something to telling the truth, and so I did. When I realized I couldn’t look my best friends in the eye for fear they might see the truth of what’s happening beyond the “look good,” it was time to say something. (Though, perhaps earlier could have been better, too.)

Did they particularly have anything that shorn through the bleakness in which I find myself, again? Not really. No magic bullets. No words of enlightenment. Just simple suggestions like, Go to a meeting everyday with people who actually know you, and share about this. 

And so, I am. 

I hate it. I feel vulnerable, and I want everybody to not talk to me about it afterward — but there’s no controlling people. 

Because here’s the undercurrent of all this surface nonsense, all this struggle to stay and get afloat and to try to believe that things will change and get better if I keep doing "the next right thing," that life will even out, that I'll be okay...: 

The undercurrent is: I. Don't. Know. That. (None of us do, surely.)

But, specifically, I'm talking cancer. I have a lot of cancer grief to go through, and I don’t know how. 

Partly I don't talk about it because I feel it's so dramatic to talk about, because I'm scared people will roll their eyes, and think, "Sheesh, enough with the cancer already; you lived, didn't you? Move on!" 

I don’t know how to share with people about how angry, betrayed, and every day still terrified -- with every cough, or sleepless night, or strange headache -- about a recurrence I feel. 

I don’t know how to begin to put faith back into a universe and a universal law that arbitrarily may decide to kill you "just cuz." How to “come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to wholeness” when everything solid was ripped from under me in an instant. 

And that’s what I’m being asked to do. I’m at the point, again, where I’m supposed to contemplate my idea of a “higher power,” and I want everybody to take their, “It’s the cycle of life and death,” it’s love, it’s community, and shove it with red hot poker down their own throats. 

Because: Fuck. You. (non-cancer having people, she mumbles mentally.)

I am going at all this activity pretty much on my own, without the guidance and space of meditation, without a wisp of a belief in the goodness of the world, or in the belief that efforts bring results. 

And it’s really hurting me. 

There’s a lot of work I’m going to have to do on this, and I feel SO TIRED. I’m so tired. Have you fought cancer and then had to go about the daily business of living, getting parking tickets and paying bills you can’t afford? And are you now being asked to reconcile that traumatizing experience with a belief in goodness or constancy in the universe in order to stay sober and not kill yourself?

Few of us have. And I don’t know how to do it, because I don’t know who to turn to. 

And so, I’m doing this -- or have been trying to do this -- all alone, in many ways. Sure, I’m reaching out, and the shell of isolation is cracking, and I imagine “good” things will come of it. But for now, I’m just so tired. 

So that’s what’s beyond the “Look-Good,” friends. It’s not pretty, or happy, or palatable for many, including myself. It’s sad and raw and real and really fucking painful to be where I am right now. 

And… if one of you tells me “this too shall pass” or "everybody dies sometime," i’ll shove an iron through your cranium.

(Because it is small comfort, even though it’s true.)

Without Defense

In the summer, I’d texted friends nearly daily, asking them to help me not quit my desk job. I wrote to them that quitting my job without a plan would be just like an alcoholic taking a drink: Disastrous. Painful. An uncharted trip through hell. 

But. I wasn’t connected to the things I knew to do. Few meetings, no sponsor, stuck in the middle of step work I’d started months before. 

And so, I drank. Metaphorically. 

In the fall, I quit my job, without a plan. I felt elated, relieved, free. Exactly like taking a drink. 

And now, I am living the consequences of that decision. 

Yesterday, as I walked back to my apartment after more than 8 hours on my feet and little to show for it, I catalogued all the things I missed about my old job. 

The short commute, with no bridges or tunnels involved. The normal hours. The flexible hours, when I could take off to go to Trader Joes at lunch, or walk around the gorgeous suburban landscape, or nap at a nearby friend's before rehearsal. The co-workers I could have conversations with about things that were intelligent or fun or informative.

The kids. The chickens. The pianos.

The sitting. 

For all I wailed about wanting a job that didn’t require me to sit in front of a computer for 40 hours a week (and granted I still don’t) the ability to actually sit at all during the day sounds vastly luxurious. 

And as I walked home, the catalogue ever increasing, I said aloud, “I made a mistake.”

It was a mistake to quit my job the way I had, without a plan. I knew and had catalogued all the ephemeral perks of that job countless times, knowing what a cush place it was. But I was antsy, restless, hopeless and defiant. And I made a decision to leave. 

Now, in the school of life that I’ve come through, I hear much about “not regretting the past,” and true, through the interim period without work, I befriended another unemployed bright person who suggested a crowd funding campaign to pay off my back-rent cancer debt. The campaign was wildly successful, and a check is in the mail this week. In addition, because the goal was quickly reached, a very generous family gave me a donation insisting I spend it on “something fun,” which is how and why I have this fancy new laptop to replace the dinosaur I’d had. 

But… other than that? I mean, couldn’t those goals have been accomplished anyway? A campaign have been suggested another time? 

Look, I know this retail job I’m in now is temporary. I am trying my best to stave off the Stockholm Syndrome that seems to have engulfed everyone who works there, or anywhere in retail, into thinking that the paltry, hiccuping pay-scale, weak health insurance, and unpredictable schedule is acceptable. 

Today, I am trying to forgive the faulty thinking of mine that sent me on this fool’s errand in the first place, comparing it to how I did behave when I was drinking: It’s not cuz I was an awful person that I did what I did, it was because I didn’t know any better, and I didn’t have any tools to combat my insane thinking. 

I have to offer myself compassion for the misguided, instant-gratification seeking decision I made. I was not using the tools I knew to use. I was disconnected from the community that helps me not make insane decisions, financial and otherwise. 

I do feel, however, that admitting that I made a mistake in quitting that job without a plan is a good first step for me. I am not immune to my own thoughts. I am not solved from throwing myself into the abyss because I think my house is on fire. 

I have decades'-driven ruts and habits that I fell over into. And I did not have the diligence or connection to haul me out before I burned my life down instead. 

That’s okay. 

I mean, it has to be. Right? 

"I want to go to there." Good thing I am.

Where there is smoke, there is fire. And where there is fire, we take off our knitted gloves and hold our hands to it. 

It’s not that bad. This work. It’s tragic and awful, and would certainly raise eyebrows in most circles. I just got through chronicling the years from high school through, “Then I got sober.” 

The phrase “shit show” comes to mind. 

And yet, I remind myself, in small, calm handwriting at the end of each of these morning writing sessions that I am not that person anymore. That I have been shaped by her experiences, surely, but that the shape and essence of who I am can’t and couldn’t be eroded. 

Someone commented yesterday that I am courageous. And as I go through and into this work on healing my relationship to relationships and love, I know that I am. 

Not (only) because I’ve chosen (or been “forced” by fate) to do this work at all, but because of all that has come before that hasn’t broken me. 

Injured, scarred, frightened me. Sure. But I sit here today, in my sweats, a space heater licking my calves, half-philz half-trader joes coffee in my mug, and I’m not broken. 

I have been through things and experienced them in a way that makes me cautious to the point of isolation against romantic relationships, but that doesn’t make me broken. That makes me habituated to a way of being. 

It all comes, for me, down to safety. With others, in my body, in relationship, in intimacy and authenticity. To slowly peel back the traumas and defenses and reveal that there’s nothing to be scared of anymore. Nothing that can harm me the way my high school/college/post-college years did. 

I won’t say that my love life in sobriety has been a cake walk or the pinnacle of wise. It used to have a lot of the same patterns as my drinking days. But it doesn’t anymore. 

However, there’s a middle ground, I know, between wanton and nunnery. 

I want to go to there. 

I want to go to the place where I am safe, even in exposing myself. Not because other people are so trustworthy, but because I am. Because my spidey-sense is coming back, and I want to get to a place where I trust it. I don’t have to tap out of the dating game entirely. I just have to listen when the alarms go off, and act accordingly. Take action accordingly. 

In previous iterations of my love-life, I have pressed the override button so forcibly, for moments, I did break. 

But, I’m not that girl-woman anymore. As I said, I’ve been shaped and molded by her experiences. But I also have my own inherent grace, fortitude, and hope. 

And so, where there has been smoke (read: my love life), I have sought the fire (read: my fearful heart). And it will be there that I remove my (boxing) gloves. And learn to love and trust my own self. 

"There's gotta be something better than this..." ~ Sweet Charity

Why, didn’t every 7th grader want to become a botanist and live in a tree to be away from people? 

I am at the radically awful and hopeful place of beginning to work on relationships, and my relationship to relationships. 

Coincidentally or not, the last time I started this kind of work, I was into the deep and dredging and combing-over-my-sad-history-of-self-abandonment-and-isolation part when I was struck with a bout of Leukemia, and had to stop.

Now that I’m through a round of work on my relationship to money, scarcity, “under-being,” under-earning, me and my mentor agreed that we could work on the other side of the “romance and finance” coin.

Color me thrilled. 

In fact, I am looking forward to it, … sort of. Not the work itself, but the results of it. 

I am not meant to continue my early patterns of self-insulation through isolation or self-abandonment/-destruction. Or, rather, I’m not content to. What I’m meant to do is really only up to me, isn’t it? And a few strokes of fate, I imagine. (hello, cancer.)

But, whatever role I can have in loosening the noose of “Trust No One,” I am signing up for it. 

I do feel that I am in a better place to begin this time than I was about 2 years ago. I’m working with someone who knows me well, who’s walked this path with and before me, and whom I trust and love.

Even though our particular histories are dissimilar, their endings and the feelings they’ve evoked in us became the same. 

She’s told me that my feeling of imminence, urgency & impatience with myself and "the world" will fade: I am a 33 year old healthy smart beautiful woman. Why the fuck have I never been in a relationship that’s lasted over 6 months, and only two of them at that? Why have I been unintentionally celibate for years on end or find myself particularly attracted to taken men? My “hot” years are fading; I want to take advantage of them!

And yet. I seem to land in the same place each time I try to throw myself into the ring, or try to avoid it. And so, it’s time to try something else. Something I know will work, because it works for thousands of other people who walk a path of recovery. 

I’m not stoked. But I am. 

It’s sad stuff to riffle through. There is a Trail of Tears that’s led me here. But I feel ready for this. No, not eager to riffle; yes, eager to heal, move on, move forward. Let whoever I’m supposed to be, or whoever I’m hiding, to integrate. 

Does this look like a bright shiny pot of gold(en haired children) at the other end? Likely not. 

I finished the work on money, and I’m still in the thick of the results of patterns that brought me here. But I imagine they’ll shift over time. 

So, too, I imagine with the love and relationship stuff. I won’t buy a wedding dress at the end of it. But perhaps I’ll buy date one. 

(p.s. this missive is in no way a passive request for dating invitations. but thanks.)  ;) 

“Finding His Way”

Today will be my first day of training for women’s clothing sales at Neiman Marcus.

I never imagined I’d write that, but I’m not ashamed of it either. Nervous? Yes. Worried I will have to be aggressive to make sales? Yes. A little trepidatious at having to learn all new things about brands and quotas and sales targets? Yes.

Grateful? You bet.

An interesting thing happened the other day. I was asking a friend about a guy we both know, who I'd just met: What does he do for a living?

“He’s a server. He dropped out of law school. He’s finding his way.”

Aren’t we all, I replied.

And I noticed something. Although I still believe that pursuing our passions and earning a livable wage are ideals for me in my own life and in the life of a potential romantic partner, when I heard what this notably attractive man did for a living, I accepted it.

This, is new for me. Call me a snob, and perhaps I have been, but because of my own vicious drive to “do something” worthy in my lifetime, because of my own aching need to “move the needle of human progress forward” through my employment, I have been judgmental of my own jobs. And of others’.

But I noticed that I didn’t have that same snobbery come up when told about this guy’s job. Perhaps, I have gained – or been brought down to – a level of humility around what people are doing in and with their lives.

Which means, perhaps I am finding that same compassion and acceptance for myself. Perhaps. Maybe. Surprisingly.

Do I still want to do work that enlivens me and helps others on their own path? Yes. But I am accepting where I am today for the first time in a long time.

Partly, it’s because I’m taking action outside of my “regular work hours” to engage in activities like acting, and singing, and getting ready to make this video-ask to help get an art studio. Perhaps now, for reasons unknown to me, I am beginning to call those other hours worthy, enough, more than enough. And they begin to settle the aching gnaw of “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE???” that dogs my every step.

Perhaps, although this new work could be considered not “high” employment (working toward a greater good and utilizing my skills and talents), perhaps I’ve just become grateful to have any employment at all. Or at the very least, employment that doesn’t sit me behind a computer screen 40 hours a week.

I am delighted and surprised at this internal shift. This loosening of the noose around myself and others’ over how they pay their rent. Obviously, it’s none of my business what others do for work, but it’s a question we all seem to ask nonetheless. And in its answering, we begin to categorize and label people according to a caste system.

Maybe it’s realizing I’m part of the caste of people who are bright, creative, and longing. I am one of those “finding his way.”

I have found a compassion and acceptance of this place. (Though the shrewd part of me wonders if that means I’ll now move into the “found” category because of my new "achievement/enlightenment"… And I can offer a wry smile to that "never good enough" part of myself.)

To finding our way, be we server or CEO – Humans, all. 

Spiritual Echolocation

I am not the best judge of my progress or my abilities. But, even though I can’t rightly see myself, I’m beginning to notice that I am hearing it from others.

And this in itself feels like progress: At least I’m hearing it.

There was a time when I described compliments as one of those bug zapper lamps people hang on their porch. The bugs merely get within range of the lamp and they get zapped dead. Same with compliments for me: Anything positive that was said would get deflected before it even got close to touching me. None of that here, pew! pew!

I'd said that you can’t receive a compliment if there’s no complementary place within you to receive it. If there’s nowhere it fits within your own understanding of yourself, then there’s no way that it can be accepted. There’s no ring of truth, because you don’t believe it yourself.

Time passed, and I’ve become more able to receive positive feedback about certain things, because I have begun to hone and cultivate the place within me that is receptive, the place within me that believes you because I believe it myself.

That said, there’s room for growth.

This week, I’ve had several experiences where I’ve been told about my progress and abilities, and even though I can’t quite feel this, I’m beginning to recognize that I believe them, I believe others are seeing this, even if I'm not myself.

Hence, spiritual echolocation. I can’t see it myself, but I believe in the feedback I’m receiving – so there must be something to it.

I know that feeding off external validation is not the way to walk about the world, but what it’s doing for me is giving me hope that one day I can see it. There is an existence of a cave wall. Others are telling me so. If that is truth, there is hope that I will see it, too.

On Friday night, after the first act of our opening night of To Kill a Mockingbird, the director came backstage. He was beaming. He was so glad and proud of the work I was doing on-stage.

I was dubious. But I thought Wednesday’s preview night went much better; it felt better.

He told me he was the only rightly judge of my performance, and Friday night, I was better.

Whether I felt it or not.

On Saturday morning, I went for my semi-regular voice lesson. And at the end of a phrase I’d sung, my teacher applauded and cheered – he even gave me a high five.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, delighted.

No, I didn’t. I can’t hear myself.

The noise and buffer between what is and what I perceive is loud and thick.

“We’re going to have to record you more then,” he said. “You have to get used to hearing yourself.”

This morning, I was on the phone with my mentor, and I reported these incidents to her, as I begin to parse out these places where I’m being told one thing, but I’m hearing and sensing another.

She, too, had told me that I’m farther along than I can feel. And she gave me a metaphor (because we all know I love those!):

She told me I am a tree creating deep, deep roots. A solid foundation. And you can’t always see that growth above ground, but it’s happening.

We were talking (again) about my questioning of where and who I am this lifetime and where I’m going. And she said, some people have really gorgeous foliage, and weak roots.

We’re doing the work now -- early, some might say -- that others come to in mid and later life. Creating a root system, carving out the rot, cleaning the wounds.

Like a field of asparagus, you don’t see its heroic work until one morning you turn, and the whole field has sprouted green, fully formed, like Athena.

I am not used to hearing or seeing myself clearly. I’m not adequately armed with the ability to track my own progress. And thank god for other people, then!

But I do feel the promise and the hope of their reflection. I am beginning to hear what they’re saying instead of zapping it, because I'm beginning to uncover the place within me that believes it myself.

I’m starting to open to a truth that’s been, and is, hard for me to swallow:

I am worthy. 

Vision Quest

I was talking with an acquaintance the other day about what I know to be true. I know that, up or down, since I left my home at the age of 23 I have always had a safe place to live. Everything else in my life -- job, money, friendships, romance -- can be in upheaval, but no matter what continent, coast or city I find myself in, I manage to find a safe and comfortable place to live.

My acquaintance said, for him, he knows that all he needs is a rucksack and he’s fine.

We’re at different places and have different needs for sure.

But it causes me to think about my assumptions about my life. I have this assumption, this belief and history to back it up, that I will always be taken care of on the home front.

I also have assumptions and belief and history to back it up that even though I don’t know how, financially, I always do land of my feet. But that usually it takes a long while, and the outcome of that is not always what I want to be doing, but I am eventually safe there, too, even if a little battle-weary.

I also have other beliefs and history backing up my assumptions: I don’t know how to live a balanced life. I don’t know how to have a relationship. Or how to earn enough to support myself in a field I love.

I have beliefs about myself that keep me stuck. And what I then have is entitlement.

Someone should tell me what I should do, because I don’t know how.

I've been looking back at some of the writing work I’ve been doing lately, finally moving on past the section on amending relationships in my life, and in my prior writings and inventory work, I read that entitlement around jobs comes up virulently.

And only a few days ago was I able to see that for me, entitlement is an outcome of hopelessness. I can’t, I don’t know how, I’ll fuck it up – you do it for me. You make it work.

Another thing I noticed in my writing was how some of my despairing fears have dissipated since I began that inventory work over 6 months ago. Some of the same haranguing thoughts about my own ability to speak up for myself, to follow my dreams, to do things I don’t know how to do have been challenged since the time I’ve written them.

Since the beginning of 2014, when I decided I was going to make a go of this acting thing, I’ve been in 4 plays. That doubles the number I’ve been in since 2006. I made a decision and followed it up with action. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I took a few classes at Berkeley Rep that I didn’t find altogether transforming; I found a proper headshot photographer; I replied to audition calls.

I have been stalling on putting myself out there for my essay tutoring work, because I don’t know how to do it.

And this leads to a feeling of, If it’s supposed to happen, then it will. It’ll just happen.

A friend calls it “going rag-doll on G-d.” Okay, you want “surrender,” you want me to let go of my plans because my ideas are limited by my fears? Sure – here, you have it. You drag me along into the life I want to have.

The point is, there’s a difference between surrendering and giving up.

This blog is a little all over the place today, but so’s my brain.

Basically, I have some beliefs about my life, like my home, that make me feel secure. I have other beliefs about my life, like my earnings, that make me feel uncertain and hopeless.

There’s really no reason for the difference, except I continue to reinforce them both. I am blind to the changes that occur in and around me when it comes to perpetuating my negative beliefs.

But looking back at my work from 6 months ago, acknowledging the success of following a dream, I really have to acknowledge that I don’t have to do things the same way, right? I really do have to let myself see that I’m not as helpless as some part of me wants to believe, right? I do have to accept that I’m not as broken as I want to believe, right?

And, so this is the work, now. To pull back from the chatter which causes me to stagnate and become paralyzed against action. The work is to see that positive beliefs exist within me, and to let those fuel my action toward my next place.

I am not stuck. I am not helpless. I am not depressed, deficient, or despairing. I am only short-sighted. 

And for that, I can get better glasses.

Recalibrating the Bar.

Surely, normal is relative. I read some of my blogs about my past, and I think, Jesus, this is not what “normal” people have dealt with. I listen to some of my acquaintances share their histories, and I think, “Thank god things weren’t that bad with me.”

In some comparisons, my life has been saner and pretty charmed; in other comparisons, it’s been dysfunctional and tragic.

Yesterday, I came home from hearing tell of someone’s tragic past, “worse” than mine. Then I picked up where I left off in Autobiography of a Face, because surely the story of a little girl’s jaw sawn off through cancer is “worse” than my own story.

And I decided then, it is time for me to recalibrate my bar for normal and dysfunction.

I was feeling activated by the story I’d heard earlier in the evening. I was feeling protective of the children that story was being told to, and I was experiencing a hardening in my chest, made of anger and self-protection against the terror of that story.

And despite the fact that things in my life have been on the plus and minus side of well-being, I think it’s time for me to start marching toward those people and experiences that don’t trade in trauma.

There tends to be a uniting force among those in my crowd, knowing that we’ve, most of us, come from some kind of trauma. Wherever that may fall on the spectrum of horror. But, we feel an understanding with one another on the basis of a shared experience, and sometimes this unification posits us against more “normal” folk, folks who perhaps didn’t come from that seething primordial ooze.

The problem, and I’ve contemplated it before, is that when you trade in trauma, there’s no value in happiness. When you bond over tragedy, how do you boast your success?

Over the last few years, my threshold for violence and gore has lowered dramatically. Even “silly” crime t.v. shows that used to be my favorites, I’ve had to eliminate from my visual diet. I just can’t stomach them anymore.

As time has passed, I’ve become more aware and attuned to when those shows or images are getting to me – when I’m cringing, or closing my eyes – and I’ve taken note of those cues, and begun to drop them from my cue.

It feels the same to me with these stories that are around me.

I read Autobiography last night, despite knowing that I didn’t want to read it. The language is beautiful, the plot is compelling; by all counts, it’s a well-crafted book. But I don’t think I want to read any more – in fact, I know that, and I’m going to have to decide if I heed that information or not.

The same is true with some of the stories I hear around me. It’s going to be up to me to begin either seeking out or attracting into my life people, not who don’t have those stories of trauma in their past, but who don’t feel compelled to broadcast them. Who don’t feel compelled to do so inappropriately.

I am not saying that I will only surround myself with “normal” folks, or that the stories of our pasts are not important. I am, however, saying that my trauma meter is full, and I need to back away from media or people who will put it over the edge because of their own hemorrhaging boundaries.

I am, of course, an advocate for sharing of ourselves, as you've read over and over in my blog, but I stand behind the knowledge and hope that others click to read this on purpose, that this blog is chosen as a media source for them, that I'm not dumping it on anyone. I also think perhaps it is time for me to begin walking farther away from the retelling of these stories, as repetition keeps them powerful.

I don’t know what the line of balance is between honesty and appropriateness. But I do know there is one.  

The Dailey Grind

So, here I am, back to my Monday morning shift at The Dailey Method exercise studio! My 5:30am Monday morning shift...!

I arranged to have a sub for me during the weeks Addams Family was in performance (and then an extra one last Monday, since, hey, I was tired!). Now back to a 5am Monday morning wake-up call again. But I do think it's worth signing people into class and folding towels for three hours in trade for the free unlimited classes I get. Granted, I've been so tired and busy lately, I haven't been able to come at all. And my muscles feel it. But I'll be back soon.

In the meantime, I get to use this time (despite the thumping music in the studio room) to do job research, ... and do a little line memorization. Today will be the first run-through of Act 1. There's a lot more for me to learn, but I'm glad I decided to take it (more) easy this weekend.

I still didn't get done all of what I wanted, or study my lines as much as I'd have liked, but progress. I feel like I'm staving off the cold that I was about to succumb to. I got to clean some things up in the apartment, and I cancelled the non-necessity engagements.

Interestingly enough, I was approached yesterday after rehearsal with some potential work opportunities, but until there's more conversation, it's all ethereal. That said, it was gratifying to see that people notice what assets I can add and what skills I have. More will be revealed on that part.

It's also time to work on the final (for now) section of amending relationships that don't sit well with me. Third and final is, huzzah, work. Specifically my current employer.

Funny to me that I wrote this list back in the summer, and now as it's my last week of work there, I'm getting the chance to work on this now. There's nothing in specific that I need to necessarily "make amends" for; it's more about attitude. It's also about showing up on time(!), which this week will be harder, as I flit from dentist appointment to interview to... another dentist appointment.

Did you know that Covered California doesn't cover dental? I didn't! Until I was reclined underneath my dentist's light last Friday afternoon, and she said, Yes, you do need these fillings -- and then dropped the "not covered" bomb. Hence the several appointments this week.

So, that's more information as I continue on my "looking" path. In fact, my dentist had a great recommendation for an alternative private school, and I just applied to them a minute ago.

I have my second interview tomorrow with the alternative private school I met with last week -- whom I told I would only be available to work 30 hours per week. And that seemed to go over fine. With the wage I asked for (which I've been regretting I didn't increase), I'd be able to make the same amount as I do now working 40 hours a week. I have my fingers crossed -- but if it's a good fit, it'll happen, and if it's not, it won't.

The school is also located in the middle of an industrial park, office-building wasteland in Walnut Creek. Which is quite the far cry from the verdant landscape outside my current office in North Berkeley. But, sometimes you make compromises!

In the meantime, I'm going to focus on what I can do at the job I'm at now, watching my attention, (my facebook time!), and how I'm interacting with my coworkers. It's not any of their faults that I am not fulfilled at work and therefore it's not fair for me to seethe toward them, or show up late as a petulant rebellion.

I have no doubt that part of my amending my relationship with my current job is, a) to leave, and b) to understand what it is that got me into that relationship to begin with so I don't end up here again with another employer.

All of those on my list are relationships I have stayed in too long, out of fear, out of scarcity, out of an idea that I can't get what I truly need.

(I hope) I am taking action and self-inventory that will help me to move forward differently. That I'm gaining a semblance of understanding that I don't have to sell myself short; that with work and vision, I can get where I want to, and be the person I want to. I can have the life I want to live, and I don't have to demonize those who are not behaving how I want them to.

The only person's behavior I can change is my own -- and, well, I believe I am. (Come what may!)

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. 

A word, if you don’t mind?

Dear Molly,

First of all, congratulations on closing the Addams Family. I heard it was a fantastic run to packed houses nearly every night. And brava on finally getting that one song that was giving you trouble. Fist pumping is highly appropriate!

But, I’m moved to write to you today because I want to make sure you realize how many irons you have blazing right now, and ensure that you’re taking the proper time for yourself. (Although, I must say, I wouldn’t be writing if I thought you were!)

As soon as the show closed, you began a new one the next day, yes? Rehearsing almost daily with a dozen monologues to memorize by next Friday? You’ve been searching for a new job or jobs, as well as having interviews or coffee dates with folks several times a week. You’ve been sitting on weekend mornings for a portrait artist in order to make some cash, and you’ve begun teaching on two weekday afternoons after work and before rehearsal.

Forget about your dishes, we’re way beyond them now! Have you seen your car? Your apartment? Where is the calm space you so crave at home? How about that outstanding parking ticket you need to dispute at the Berkeley parking office? And the fellowship meetings you are barely attending and the crispy, crackling nature of your office interactions right now?

Is it fair to say that you’ve got a few things on your plate… AND that you’re not taking the normal care of yourself that’s necessary for your health? Is it true that you’ve been feeling tired and coming down with something?

Something’s got to give, my friend, and I don’t want it to be you.

Yes, I know this is an uncertain and shifting time, and your home is always a reflection of your mental state. I know it feels like there’s no time for meetings, but doesn’t there have to be? It’s terribly uncomfortable for you and those around you when you’re this wound up.

However, I do want to come back to say, I am writing all this because I am in support of you. I want you to achieve your best in all you do. I just want to remind you to set first things first. Weekends, which have been your farmers market and cooking-for-the-week days, as well as nesting and organizing days, have been robbed by all this new work.

Maybe -- and I’m just throwing this out there -- you tell the artist you can’t sit with him until after your show opens? I mean, the worst he can say is no, right? Maybe you ask a friend to help you with the enormous bookcase you inherited from your upstairs neighbor that’s been standing, disassembled, in the center of your apartment for a week? Maybe you really schedule that time to go to the parking office, and don’t blow it off this time because you’re running late for work?

Look, the bottom line is you’re in a huge amount of transition right now. You’re taking a leap of faith that you’ll land somewhere new and different than where you’ve been. You’re doing this to support your art, and to support the idea that you have more to give to the world than a well-crafted spreadsheet. I am in awe of you for taking the risk.

In truth, both ways are risky: to stay is a risk to sanity, to leave is a risk to livelihood. But, I do have faith that things will turn out well for you (Yesterday's interview was promising & the second interview is set.). You are doing all the right things… you’re just not leaving time for the rest of the “right things,” and that’s where I’m concerned.

So, take a minute to consider my suggestions. See if you can come up with your own solutions, and talk to your friends to help you through this quite chaotic but exciting time.

As a friend once said, The only difference between anxiety and excitement is breathing.

So, breathe, Molly. And I’ll see you when you land, safely.

Yours,