Recently, I was with three friends. Two of us were talking about journaling. One pulled a roll of decorative tape from her purse and we joked about her having it.

The other said "I don't have time or money for that."

 

Not sure that that meant. Its tape. Journaling is pen and ink.

One of the cheaper obsessions I have had.

 

What I did is take that into my head as a critical voice.

I was off kilter for a few days, sort of diffusely angry.

 

As I went about my life I kept hearing that. I kept with

it wondering why I was reacting that way.

Then it hit me that I feel guilty for this time in my life

that allows me the luxury to create, specifically to journal.

Most of what I have created I have turned into product to sale. Now I mostly work for the sheer pleasure of using my hands. And I feel guilty for it!

I mean, I do it anyway but I steal the pleasure from myself

with the guilt I am choosing to feel...

Later I had a perfect day. Rode my bike, had a massage, a hot shower with good smelly products. I thought if today was my birthday then it was perfectly spent.

Oh wait, should I not celebrate every single day of living?

 

What if I did?

Just what if I did????

On Suffering

The first thing I said her was that I am tired of thinking about my story. I am tired of analyzing. I think it is important but understanding doesn't change my reaction. Understanding makes me do better because I know better but it doesn't make my feel better in an old conflict. I told her "I want to access joy." I thought she would say I was in denial and needed to continue a contemplative look at the past and all it implies. Instead she said, "I agree, you should enjoy your life and have joy. You need tools."

And tools she gave me. Still it takes many seasons of crop rotation to improve the soil. It takes lots of weeding and watering. Lots of practice. Jo always said "practice, practice, practice, it's all practice."

And there I was nearly 17 years later sitting on her couch, that same couch where so many tears and revelations, tools and wisdom came, there I was once again in Jo's office, coming home to mama to help me through the struggle with my mother's chronic illness and my reluctant, guilt-filled, anger-fueled care-giving. It occurred to me that I have always wanted joy and have gotten so much better at having it, really having it. But the vine of guilt grows faster and chokes out beautiful blooms, some buds to appear then never open.

I had been thinking about my disabled brother Kerry. I had not even realized the impact living with him had because it was too deep and too dark to see. I was realizing the guilt I had that he wasn't "okay." I started reading about siblings of autistic, mentally ill, and addicted children (having had all three) and came to recognize the words to describe them in myself, responsible, sensitive and guilty. Not all bad to be sure. I remembered mother would shame me from bad behavior pointing out that my pitiful brother was in the shape he was and how could I "act like that?" She did it the wrong way from the right place of reminding me to be empathetic but because she was so hurt and sorrowful it came out as a guilty dart, stabbing my value, deflating it.

It occurred to me I believe fully that I cannot have joy while there is suffering. How could I enjoy my life while my poor mother was suffering so? And I told Jo. It hit me in a childlike revelation that someone will always be suffering. Mother would die and I would feel bad about living without her, laughing and enjoying my life while her little body lies in a dark box, hot, cold, indifferent to storms. Then there would be Kerry. So simple. I would recognize the behavior in anyone else but couldn't  see my own truth shrouding and informing my choices and feelings. You know what? I am not responsible for mother's illness. I am not responsible for Kerry's severe dysfunction. I am only responsible to celebrate my blessed life because what good does more suffering do? Why do I have to be punished?

Mother died 4 days later. I am grateful for this life-giving realization prior to her death for now I can grieve, I can integrate the enormous loss but I can also live fully.


And then more teachers came to me...

All the Ladies

I am really loving us. You and I. You have been so giving. I really have been thinking about you. About us.

I was feeling guilty, of course, about my last post and all the whining, negative posts before it in the last year...the year of reckoning, the year my daughter starting driving and looking at colleges, the year my body is deconstructing its reproductive ability. I was feeling bad for you. For reading about my darkness and sadness and how it elicits such love and support from you, you whom has no time for me.

I don't still feel guilty today. I turned my thinking into something like this...we all will face all these same things I am facing. Either you have already buried your parents, or you will. Maybe you never had parents and had to grieve that already. It is a certain and natural thing that we will all bury our parents.

We all will say goodbye to our children. Maybe you never had any and you had to let that choice happen, maybe you have raised your kids and already saw them leave the nest, maybe you have babies and it seems like a million miles away, maybe you are just hopeful to have or get a baby. But we all have to deal with the decison or the experience in someway. Maybe you have a disabled child that will never get to make the choices my dear lucky daughter can. Maybe you buried your child, the worst imaginable of all scenarios. But it is a certain and natural thing that we all face the issue of children and reproduction itself.

We all deal with the hormonal tides. Maybe you had a hysterectomy, or cancer and had surgical removal and early menopuase. Maybe it came and went without fanfare, but still its gone. Maybe you are facing menopause yet to come, periods yet to start, horrific pain and PMS and can't wait for it to go. But it is cetain and natural that the function of our reproductive system will take up huge amounts of our lives.

We all will face my same life issues, its all just timing, when, and how many at once. So of course I need not feel guilty for you reading my thoughts nor should I feel bad about you loving me. You know you will be here or you have been here, my timing is now, all these things. I will lose my mother and my daughter and my periods about the same time. Interesting that these are all such female issues.  Female rights of passage.

And yet, you, you who gives and gives can come here and give some more. You who should take instead of give because you are tired, depleted, often forcing yourself to the grocery store yet another time, folding that towel for the 176th time, emptying the dishwasher again, deciding on a menu again, figuring out what to wear again, smiling again, buying another gift, mailing another card, reminding, listing, driving, circling, you come here and give some more.

I love us. I love us women who give until there is nothing else. Of course we plummet through depressions. Of course we share anxieties. Of course we come here for a community who understands each other.

I feel very moved by us. I am so proud of us. I think I will remember that in 10 minutes when I am guilty for not giving someone I love enough attention. We do so much.

I would never speak to someone the way I speak to myself. Critical. Judgemental. I would never let someone talk to you the way I talk to myself. And that insidious hating voice once identified and kept pretty quiet waited, opportunist that she is, until I became more exhausted and weakened and she started whispering, so quiet, so in rhythm with my own better thoughts that I didn't hear her at all. I just became more guilty and depleted. She worked on me like a seductive abuser until she was yelling at me that I am worthless and cannot manage anything. Yelling and screaming and I was cowering in the corner hating and loving and believing her.

And then I remembered us. You and me. Strong, loving, take a bullet for our people women who have this horrible, hating, self loathing voice.

You want me to keep mine quiet. I want you to keep yours quiet.

And we bolster each other. And we keep talking to each other. You lift me up out of that corner, so I can hear the ridiculousness of my own thoughts. I hope I can remind you who you really are as well.

Strong, loving, soft, hard, beautiful. Woman.

Oh One Oh One One Oh

Did you wake up reflective this morning? It is a new year and a new decade. I have been looking back and forward which is really my constant state anyway. The present moment is always my most elusive one. However on this bright morning, introspection seems appropriate.

New Year's Eve ten years ago at the edge of the millennium, we chose to spend it with my dear friend, my chosen sister and her family. My new husband and my newly turned 6 year old drove 4 hours to a small town to my girl's house. She and her husband had set up their simple quiet lives in a beautiful small town, tucked in the pine, near the freshest bluest lake in the state. They had two boys and a life I admired, but knew wasn't quite for me. It was always such a respite to visit them and live their Christ, neighbors and family sort of life.

While we were there I smelled marijuana. Her husband was sneaking outside and smoking pot. Listen, in the old days they allowed smoking in concert venues and they weren't just smoking Virgina Slims Menthol Lights, right? I have seen Kiss, Queen and Boston. Tom Petty, Flock of Seagulls and the Grateful Dead for God's sake. I knew the smell of some Maui Wowie, okay? I was so shocked that with our little kids right there he would be doing this. I never told my friend. How could she not know?

Anyway we left the next day as I have zero desire to spend anytime in the presence of drugs, I mean, I have a medical license I would like to maintain and a small child I would like to keep. Later my girl would reveal to me more shocking details in the same vein as my discovery. I will only say that this guy was not a good guy. He was a decidedly bad husband and father and a slovenly man. I have never known of a worse husband. I will not tell you the things he did, the list of the things he hasn't done is shorter and includes murder, armed robbery and child molestation. So there's that right?

But what ensued over the rest of last decade was me hearing these terrible discoveries she was making, and me saying she has to leave him. Leave him, divorce the bastard. Leave. Get out. But she so loved him and had a deep commitment to her marriage. She believed she had to forgive him and stay with him to keep him alive. She made a vow to God when she married him to stay with him forever.

Uhhhh, expletives here. That was so hard to swallow. So hard for me to understand. So about 4 years into their cycle of discovering something bad, confront, fight, and forgive, I started to realize how codependent I was on her marriage and problems. I was so angry. First I was mad at him. Then I was mad at her. I anguished over it. I started to realize one morning while working in the garden that this friendship with her was supposed to teach me some very important things about loving someone. And, oh lord, the big frontier...about forgiveness.

Yuck. I do not heart forgiveness.

I realized I would have to forgive this lousy husband of hers. I realized she would never leave him. If I wanted a relationship for a lifetime with her, pause...wanting a lifetime relationship was not even on my radar screen. She is my family, I would never forsake her. Never. So I must let go and forgive him. I realized how little I had forgiven myself. Oh shit, oh dear. It was on, dog. I had to forgive myself.

That divine moment started a many year journey for me into the murky world of forgiveness. I had done so much therapy and unearthed all the ugly things before. But I had not ever reached the depth that I needed to really let go of the dark parts of myself. The prayer "forgive me" is not enough for me. My learning curve has a very low rise with a long arch. Nearly flat.

So for about 4 years in the last decade I walked and thought. Asked and prayed. Wrote and drew. Meditated and read. No forgiveness was coming. I was able to let go of a lot of anger about my friend's husband. That was my playground for forgiveness. But my own forgiveness was really about shame. Oh ugly, dark, deathly shame.

It was not until I had the darkest most necessary depression of my life almost 2 years ago that I started to let shame go. The great majority of it burned up pretty quickly once the right crucible occurred. A necessary depression. A winter. A seed. An egg. The shell cracked, then broke and someone emerged that is carrying so much less guilt and shame. Oh, I highly recommend a depression like that for you. I just let myself be there. Waller a bit in the sadness and not feel ashamed for the depression.

I will say it. I no longer feel ashamed for feeling depressed. That was the key to a very strong lock.

So it also healed the anger I felt for my friend. It took about a year and a half for me to break the codependence, mostly break, I still need to have a little I guess. But we as friends, broke a bit. I don't know if she knew how messed up I was over our friendship but we went through some bad days together. Interestingly she was leaving her husband. He had actually spiraled so far down she realized there wasn't even a spiritual grappling hook big enough to salvage that shit.

Jewelry piece by Ingrid Dijkers which reads 'the shell must break before the bird can fly'.

So yesterday on the last day of 2009, on the last day of the first decade of the millennium, on a blue moon, my girl's divorce was finalized.

Ahhhhhh.

I actually felt sad a little about it. After wanting it so bad for her, it was not ultimately the outcome I wanted. I had hoped that man would get better, be better and give her the life with him she never had. Give the boys a fine example of who to be instead of an excellent example of who not to be. But it wasn't going to happen.

What a great lesson that decade provided to me in the form of a relationship with this beloved woman.

I love you shiny girl. Oh one, oh love.

Now find a great life for yourself this decade. Heal. Please know that your marriage and your struggles helped hurt, scar, teach and feed me.