Sometimes, 547.5 days seem so far away I worry my heart could not possibly mend without going numb or falling asleep or forgetting what I learned or unfeeling what it felt so I remind myself that everything will someday be alright and even when the hurt hurts more than hurt should hurt, I know I’ll keep going because all the things that were hard in my past are now over and have colored who I am today, I think for the better, and so one must keep getting to the next day or even just to the next word, because some sentences are too long but eventually they end and you’re on to writing the next one.
I’ve become a mother eight times over. Three of my children were never born. Five of my children thrive. I’ve had a mother for all the days of my life and sometimes more than one at a time. I’ve watched my Grandmothers and have been in awe of their age, hearty laughs, and sober stares.
And when I pool our collective mothering together and reflect in that pond, I see two rules that seem to get the job done right:
I went to a play called “Little Wars,” written by Steven Carl McCasland. I am not a theater reviewer, nor is this an attempted play review. I am an audience member who is filled with gratitude that people can be honest enough to write, produce, direct, act, and convey the following with such sincerity that it left tears on my cheek and lungs without air.
These lines were beautifully and expertly delivered by actor, Candace Barrett Birk:
I have often wondered what it would be like to be “normal”. I have questioned my sanity and searched for my “normalness” and I have stood in the yard with my hands clenched in fists yelling into the sky because even though I’m not sure there is a man in the sky, even though I’m not sure there is a God or a Higher Power or a Holy Spirit and even though I have questions, so many questions, who doesn’t have questions, I have stood in the yard with my hands clenched in fists yelling into the sky and asking why I was not “normal”!
But I have also often wondered, oh, I have wondered… if “normal” even exists…
and there I was in all my ugliness in all my rage in all my not normalness and I was looking at the sky when I should’ve been looking at myself.
This is a time that passes but it takes time like a stone in your kidney like a rock in your chest. In your heart. But when it passes when the time passes and you finally realize, it is oh so very normal oh so very quiet oh so very Yes. Yes. Yes.
(excerpts taken from the script)
I do believe there is a God. But God, I don’t believe there is a normal. And if there is, God, I thank you for not asking me to be it.
or someone that you never really got to know but know you would have loved them if you did,
or someone that’s been in your whole life but never wholly there,
or someone right beside you, someone you can see and cannot find,
or someone you haven’t even met yet.
And your body gets still, and your mind rolls out the words you exchanged or wish you could, and your heart laughs along side theirs, and your hand holds ghosts;
that’s when I find the moon, and say this little ditty:
“I can see the moon
and the moon sees me.
If you can find the moon,
there, the three of us will be.”
I remind myself that it’s okay to miss. It’s okay to long for. We all need to let go and be let of go of, now and again. Even moonlight is bright enough to find the way back home.
I occasionally jam with a banjo man. He’s a gentle giant, has raised his children, is kind to my own, and enjoys playing music in his retirement.
When I started this journey, he sent me a kind note of encouragement and an idea from the late, Jiddu Krishnamurti:
“seeking drives aways the sought”
It made me ask myself, “WHAT DO I SEEK?”
I couldn’t say.
But I can feel it, seeking me.
Like a child lost at the zoo, surrounded by terrible beauties and beautiful terrors, I’ll hold my ground firm, until it, like a good parent, arrives to collect me. This requires restraint, patience, and very, VERY, open eyes.
So whilst we’re waiting in this zoo together, (…And JUST IN CASE you think the banjo is not the most thought provoking, philosophical instrument around), I leave you with a couple of songs from another friend of mine…
An exercise in restraint. With the exception of the introduction and ending, this tune is composed from a palette of 9 harmonics.
I came across the YouTube video, “The Art of Being Yourself,” by Caroline McHugh. She absolutely floored me. She is now my newly adopted mother and I shall begin speaking in Scottish brogue from this point hence.
If being ourselves is an art form,
how many colors are left in our trays?
How many slabs of us go without shape?
If you actually watched it (sláinte!), let’s talk. If you didn’t, you can still check the highlight reel…
Discussion Point 1:
Revelation vs. Reassurance.
Which one are you looking for when you look in the mirror?
Discussion Point 2:
Eccentric vs. Authentic.
One has a negative connotation and the other, a positive accolade. I would argue they’re exactly the same and that “eccentric” is put upon the person whose authenticity is not widely accepted.
“You’re already different. Your job is to figure out how, and then be more of that.”
When we look at all the people who are “larger than life,” the leaders and wonder-kids and movers and shakers at work, “they glow; it’s like they swallowed the moon.”
See, I WANT that. I FEEL the moon in me. Don’t you feel it in you, too???
“When are you good at being yourself?”
I would add, in whose company are you unashamedly yourself?
In Day 2, I talked about these times of change as being “precious.” McHugh also says, they “lend themselves to change…and rock you back into the inner self,” and elegantly names them:
INTERVALS OF POSSIBILITY
They’re crazy scary! If I’m honest, my biggest fear is not losing the THINGS around me, but rather, losing myself in their midst.
Intervals in time, like in music, like in stories, (and definitely like in cardio workouts), are HARD. They burn because they’re short bursts of effort that only yield results if the effort is true and exerted. They take the next year, movement, chapter, (and your abs), to the next level.
But when you’re already tired, how do you go one more mile? And where are you headed, anyway? Would we put all that effort into circling back to where we left off? Or should we instead question, “If I were the person of my dreams, who would I be?” …and point our pedals in that direction.
So, before I go seeking Scottish citizenship, I leave you with this:
“Even on the stormiest of days, the sky is beautiful blue underneath. The sky just is. Because the sky sees the impermanence of the clouds and the impermanence of the rainbows; and YOU have to develop an inner state of mind that’s as impervious to all the good shit and bad shit that happens to you, as the sky is to the weather.”
More can be learned about Caroline McHugh’s work here.
There are precious few times in our lives when things break open and split apart…
your work,
your marriage,
your health,
your faith,
your sense of self,
your heart
…and I won’t think these are “bad” times.
They are hard times, yes, but in them lie the maps and guideposts to new places. Without them, we’d circle ’round and ’round ourselves like unchained elephants, completely unaware of the reach in our height and the might in our steps.
In these times, we jolt into an awakened state where we can suddenly take new notice of things:
Things we’ve loved, but no longer like.
Things we’ve hated, but have begun to understand.
Things that don’t fit us, and maybe never did.
Things we’re surprised to want and
things that have no gift in keeping.
What shocks me most of all is the sedation that smallness brings to our lives. When we curl up inside ourselves, we fall asleep, and the slumber is deep.
Wake up. You’ll be amazed by the faces you see in the crowd.
Not everything is art,
but there is an art to everything.
When you’re building a house of cards,
it’s best to get out of the wind.
Everything I thought I couldn’t do, I disproved by doing anyway.
“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” ~ Donald Winnicott
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people that have come alive.” ~Howard Thurman
The advice I gave to my children on their first day back to school: Be present to all those you meet. They were set in your path for a reason. Look them in the eye and love them as they’ve been made. You will change the world by knowing who you share it with.
“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” ~ Mary Oliver
“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.” ~Emerson
“If we do not tend to our own process, our own journey, we risk denying the life forces which led to our incarnation and losing our sense of meaning. As long as we are on the high seas of the soul anyway, why not be as conscious and as courageous as possible?” ~ James Hollis
“Sometimes, emptiness is not vacancy, but rather a long gestation. Gestation by ego’s measure is most often too long. But, by soul’s measure, the length of the waiting and making within, before what is being created shows on the outside, is ever just right.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
