EDGY, WHOLESOME
My piece about embracing my gender is up on Shondaland:
She grew up wearing girly clothes to fit in with her family. Years later, she cut off her hair and dressed in masculine clothes, embracing her true gender identity.
“And I think I’ve been content to let it go, not think about it too hard, and not let myself want too much or care too deeply that the feelings of disgust and vileness about my body persist. I turn the attention away from me and on to them. I make my partners feel beautiful and desirable because I experience them that way and don’t ask for that in return.
I can feel pleasure. I have lots of good sex. I’m good at achieving an orgasm now. Isn’t that enough?”
Read the full piece here: Being The Feast
“Believing in a gender binary, where only “men” and “women” exist, has created a stifling system where personality traits are attributed to one gender or the other. This ignores the vast intersections where male, female, and non-binary characteristics exist, co-mingle, and crossover. What’s wrong with a man crying and being sensitive? What’s wrong with a man in a dress? What’s scary about a woman who is strong and capable and assertive? Nothing but what we’ve made it be, and it’s all arbitrary.”
A collection edited by Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
The first bit I wrote
after the drought
where my words were stuck
past my teeth
down my sore throat
weak from loneliness
deep into crevices under my ribs
and ribboning around my heart
in ways that hung the truth
was a piece about how love
stomped down the barbed wire fence
in just enough places
to let myself walk over
curious
in my boots among the sheep
to kick down rocks and boulders
like a bear
who knows better than to keep sleeping
so he wakes up
and uses his ferocious voice
to unplug the dam
which lets the waters flow
then builds a boat
and heaps it with words
chiseled out of black tar
before burning the whole place clean
for new growth
then sails to find you
and writes this bit first
I’ve had my fair share of grief over the years and when you have a real conversation with just about anyone, you realize they, too, have had theirs. We live on the surface so much of the time, nodding our heads hello and nice to see you, which is to be expected when we’re all surviving with our heads just above the surface.
I’ve learned that to release grief and move beyond it, you truly have to feel it. That can be scary. It can feel like you’re probably going to die. There are usually a lot of tears involved and sometimes kicking pillows or throwing rocks into the sea followed by deep, cavernous silences that go on forever and never reach the bottom of your soul, occasionally ticking the sides making an other-worldly clanging sound.
For me, now, it involves some kind of conversation with God. A lot of me telling Him why I’m feeling so sad and a lot of Him listening. What I love about my conversations with God is that he doesn’t try to just go and fix things. He listens. A lot. I feel Him there, empathizing with me. And that’s what I need. And after I’m all done going on and on, I listen to what He has to say. About 99% of the time, He just tells me He loves me and that I’m doing great.
I wrote an essay for Blogher this past week. It’s the first time I’ve really spoken about how devastating the end of my first marriage was. When your kids are young, you don’t want to add anything to the pain they themselves are experiencing. I tried never to speak ill of their father to them or around where they could hear. It was hard. There were some really rough years where things were very unfair and it would have felt great to unload on them. But even now I’m so glad I didn’t do that.
If I could add something here to the essay, it would be to caution those going through similar circumstances to consider how your children are feeling when you speak ill of their other parent. Remember, your kids are made of half of them.
Sometimes I feel like I learn new things right before I really need them. You know what I mean? Like, had this challenging thing that’s currently happening, happened even six months ago, I wouldn’t have been ready.
But God, or whatever you consider your Divine to be, creates this space for us to gather our knowledge and our wits about us right before the Big Test comes. If we’re paying attention. If we’re *at all* trying. And I’d wager that most of us *are* trying because we’ve been around the block a time or two and know that not paying attention doesn’t get us the desired result we’re after. Trying to be awake. Trying to be aware. Trying to pay attention. Trying to be a little bit better every day. Trying to serve and be present for those we love. Trying to make the world a slightly better place.
I’m watching my son grapple with being twenty and doing all the thought processes you go through at that age, wondering what to do with your life. Wondering what kind of person you are and who you want to be. Wondering how to participate in life in a way that’s meaningful. Trying to be Present. ALL the big questions.
And as we’ve talked and worked together this past month one theme keeps coming through: You do get to create the life you want to live. There are a vast number of ways to be a Person in Life.
Of course you look first to those closest to you to see who and how they are, like your siblings and parents. Of course you do, because they are your examples and who you have had the closest contact with in your life so far. And then maybe you look at the next familial circle, including aunts and uncles. And then hopefully you keep looking further out and find people in your friend circles and even further, historical figures, to find other examples of How To Be. You don’t *have* to be the same as anyone you know. It’s a choice to follow in someone’s footsteps.
Short of being a person that harms others, there isn’t a “wrong” way to be a Person.
We get so caught up in what it means to be successful and what constitutes a real job or a life worth living. Want to know what a Real Job is? I’ll tell you. A Real Job is anything that supports the life you want to live.
If it brings you immense happiness to live in an expensive loft and have three cars and arrange your days to be super busy without any breaks and travel a lot and be a VP or a CEO then do that. That’s one way to be a Person. And if it brings you immense happiness to live a quiet life with minimal needs and much more down time and many less people counting on you for paperwork or code or whatever, then be that. Just Be That Person.
There are no Real jobs and Not-Real jobs. There’s only what you want to create your life to be, and what you then do to support the lifestyle you’ve chosen. And also? It’s ok to change your mind and choose another path at any point. It doesn’t make everything you’ve done up until that moment a mistake. We gather knowledge and experience no matter what path we go down. You don’t have to know everything before you start. A good chunk of life is Winging It.
Take the lesson, leave the baggage, and move forward. Grow to the next thing. That, my friends, if Life.
There’s no one “Right” way to be a Person. The world is vast and the people are numerous and it takes all kinds to keep the world turning. Let go of the limiting beliefs you have about yourself and who you are *supposed* to be. Look inside, see who you are, and then be the best one of those you can possibly be.
————
Looking for a mentor for your own life process? I can help. Find out more here.
It would be easy to say as things get older they automatically go towards entropy like moths to a flame in the witching hour.
But the truth is, the easy answer isn’t always the true answer and where entropy is falling a little closer towards chaos and disorder every moment, we actually keep following along the perfect arc towards the inevitable, sure, but it isn’t chaos. It’s exactly what’s supposed to happen next.
If I had to narrow down and categorize all the things I’ve done in the past three years that have made a huge difference in my life and just pick one to share with you, one thing that literally shifted my life into healing, it would be this: Positive Energy.
Part of that is accepting life as it comes, in all its myriad layers and textures and believing that on some level, this too is for my good, whatever it is. Embracing the next thing that comes, choosing to see it as an exciting challenge instead of an attack on the fabric of my soul.
It can be scary at first and it’s still hard from time to time, but I take that opportunity to look at myself in the mirror, smile, and say, “I love you! You are doing so great!” even if it’s a smile through tears, because that weeping smile is no less real and valid than a smile done in pure joy. I really and truly am doing great, the very best I can do at any given moment. And so are you.
I’m getting older, no question. New wrinkles. Thighs of cellulite. Gray hairs to beat the band. And along with that a whole new way of perceiving my life. Maybe a little bit of wisdom? Do I dare call it that? I tread lightly here because the past has shown me that on the occasion I think I know something, I might not really know that something and soon may fall flat on my face in a sea of faulty expectations.
But on this particular day, yes, I am so bold. Living in a more positive light, choosing to see life as trying to provide me with the very best it has to offer me, looking for the good, allowing others in my life to make mistakes and knowing they are doing their very best as well – this has made my life sweeter and more satisfying than any other change.
Next time you’re in front of a mirror, pause and smile. Tell you that you love you. 15 seconds of fake smiling triggers the same endorphins of a real smile, and a real smile hits your pleasure center the same as thousands in cash or bars and bars of chocolate. Pretty valuable smiles.
You guys. I’m just going to go ahead and apologize ahead of time because I’m going to be using phrases like, “I remember when,” and “Back in the old days,” and I’m very aware of how tedious and eye-rolly that can be. BUT.
Back in the old days (See? I wasn’t kidding.) when I first started online journaling in the late 90s, it was a brand new world where I could share a story on my computer with my family who lived miles and miles away. I’d post pictures and write what was essentially a monthly update about the kids and it was fun and it meant something personal.
And then in 2002 when Joe moved me to WordPress, my mind was blown with how easy it was to add posts and update more often and easily put in images and add headers and and and…
But it was the day he introduced me to Dooce.com and said, “Look. Here’s someone else writing about their life and sharing it with the others,” that I realized there was the possibility of a real community out there in the innernets.
Soon after that I started my sidebar blogroll and kept people listed there that I felt a connection to and I started my interview series to highlight interesting writers and photographers and “internet people.”
We had a smaller group then. It was 2004 by that time and more and more people were beginning to write their stories but it still felt like we could keep track of each other. It still felt small even as it was growing. I kept seeking out new bloggers so other people could find them and I loved it! And then at some point the world of blogging wasn’t about storytelling anymore. It was all about “Brands” and “Cultivating an Audience” and sidebar ads, which I tried out in various forms myself and have nothing against in the abstract.
But things changed over the next few years, didn’t they? We started having fewer and fewer storytellers and leaving comments on blogs became a way for people to make money. Traffic was king and everyone was being judged on their numbers. We could look up each others stats and decide if that person was worth knowing on or offline at a conference. If they were worth our time. If what they were saying mattered because other people said it mattered. Oh, popularity. Just like High School.
That was when I didn’t want to do interviews anymore and I shut my series with bloggers down. It wasn’t fun to get emails from people saying they should be interviewed by me because “they were getting 10,000 uniques a month and wasn’t that enough? Why wouldn’t I interview them? What was wrong with them?”
I stuck to Google Reader. I went in and read the websites I loved every single day and left comments when it struck me to do so based on their stories and not on their brands. I still felt a part of a community of friends.
When Google Reader went away, I really felt like I was being abandoned. (I’m still kinda upset about it.) The other options of feed readers were all lacking (for my needs) so I just dropped out. And I’ve missed out and I’ve missed you!
I miss the real stories. They are still out there. I see some of my old friends are still blogging and talking like real humans without all the freshly pressed look of a fine magazine going on. Not that I’m dissing fine magazines. I like them. But I’m much less likely to leave a comment on a post that isn’t a personal story. That’s where the heart is.
I recently noticed that Angela has an old-fashioned sidebar blogroll (You don’t mind if I call it old-fashioned, do you Angela? Not you, it!) and it got me thinking. I should stop complaining about missing Google Reader and woe-is-me-ing and do something about it.
So here it is, finally, the request I have for you. If you know of a writer/blogger who is telling personal stories and not “crafting their brand for an audience,” would you let me know? I’d like to add them to my Storytellers page. I’d like to read them and connect with them. I’d like to cultivate a community again. I’ve missed it. I’ve missed you! I know there have to be thousands out there that I’ve missed out on while my head’s been in the sand.
Personal story telling and this community is what’s helped me through some really tough times. Really feeling other people’s stories is what it’s all about for me. Help me find you.
When my kids were young, when we first came back from Germany, when my marriage to the other guy was being held together with tape and googly eyes, when I couldn’t breathe, when I couldn’t think, when I wasn’t on meds and needed them badly, when I was dissociating, I took the kids to the beach.
My feet, which had walked way too far and way too long to get there, were suddenly surrounded by rushing water and the Space of Nothing I needed. The water was cold and fast and then pulled at my soul before it receded, taking my fears, confusion, disappointments and grief with it on its way back out to sea.
This was “Our Beach” and the kids knew how far they could walk and still yell into the surf and find me. There were huge boulders and small crabs and hot sand for miles. There was my daughter wearing her suit with the rainbow, ruffled rumba-butt, worried what might be lurking in the water that she couldn’t see. And my oldest refusing to have fun because he was just-that-much-too-cool and pulling a towel over his body, taking a nap nestled in the grains of sand while the sun kissed a slice over his leg when the make-due-blanket slid down.
And there were my other two boys, unashamed to have hard, wild and loud fun, running into the waves, grabbing boogie boards and refusing to let me swipe sunscreen on them because they just can’t stop running right now, Mommy. Can’t stop right now, but soon.
I sat. I watched. I stood at the edge of the world where the packed, wet sand meets eternity, with my feet sinking lower and lower with every pull of water and wondered who I was, where I went, and how I could find me.
In the summer more people came. More and more each year. Parking got harder. Walking was further. The jugs of water, towels, sunbathers and canopies that dotted the sand got closer and closer together. The water began to burst with more and more surfers and swimmers but we didn’t stop going to Our Beach because, well, it was ours. No matter what else it was, it was ours.
The world ended one spring, just as we had started going back to Our Beach that year, and I had a vacation in a mental hospital with strangers that knew me better than anyone else. Within minutes the kids had moved with their dad to what might as well have been another country and I had no passport. The gates closed on Our Beach and we never went back.
I spent the next ten years or forever driving past Our Beach every other weekend and sometimes in the middle of the week on a Thursday to see them play sports or be in a play, using any excuse to get to watch their faces talk about everything, anything, please talk about something, to me.
I looked out the window at that water and wondered what it did with all my secrets. But I never went back to Our Beach because it wasn’t ours anymore. It was just a regular beach now, like a hundred other beaches, one that belonged to everyone else in the world more than me or us.
I’m finding new beaches now with my guy, the guy that stands by me when the tide is high or low. I don’t claim these wild beaches or try to make them my own. I understand better that the magic when the water races to the shore and dances around your feet, pulling out the grief and sadness, belongs to everyone. You can’t own a wild thing, anyway. It’s just pretending to think you can and I don’t need to pretend anymore.
I sit. I breathe. I stand in the surf on the edge of the world and watch my guy swim out into the magic and feel so much joy it hurts in a delicious and comforting way, now that I’m healing, now that I’m happy in my soul where it’s quiet, now that I can breathe, now that I can think, now that I’ve found myself.
…
Heal Something Good is available for Pre-Order here.
I see you.
You’re at that place where you’re realizing that the people around you, those people who maybe love you more than anyone else in the world, those people, they are telling you those things about yourself and it isn’t really you.
Maybe it once was. Maybe it was a shadow of you. More likely it was their perception of who you were, their version of you after they took the pieces and assembled them so they fit inside them easily, in their own system. But maybe, to be fair, it’s a completely accurate image of you then. Then.
What they see when they look but don’t really look at you now? That’s not you. What they say when their mouths are moving up and down and back and forth like cows chewing cud, sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes not, that’s not really about you, either. It’s all about them and their needs. I can see how you got that confused. It’s so easy to do.
So, look at them. Really look and see how they’ve constructed their version of you just right on top of the real you. See how they feel safe in their faulty perceptions and old news and rod-straight unwillingness or unable-ness to change. See how they keep pulling up old days, old behaviors, old habits, old words, old worlds and trying to make them fit on you now, to stretch them across your bones even when they are too tight, too small, the wrong shade of green.
Look at their hooded eyes and incapability and really feel their frustration with them. You don’t seem quite the same. Are you? Of course you are. Because they need you to be. They need you to be exactly who they think you are so their lives can keep rotating around the sun without interruption and at least one thing in their lives can ring true. Otherwise, maybe their lives don’t make sense anymore. Otherwise, maybe they would have to change.
Once you see them, really see them, with their faulty perceptions and narrow glasses looking at you wrongly, and you’re feeling your full sense of righteous indignation that is duly yours, send them love and disconnect. Then drop the indignation, righteous or no, because it heals nothing.
“I love you. Disconnect.” Remove that cord that creeps like a vine, or maybe a root, from them to your gut and continues to suck your energy and very life-force from the marrow of your bones. Pull it out and throw it down or even hand it back with a simple, “No thank you,” if you want to be polite. But take it out of you where it doesn’t belong anymore, if it ever did, and heal that spot with love to yourself, from yourself, because this is just the beginning.
They will be sad. They will be angry. They will try with all their might to make sure you understand just how much you are still the same, the same, the same as you ever were. They will do this when they don’t even know why they are doing it. They will do it when they try not to. They will do it, these people who love you the most in all the world, because you’ve gone and done something extraordinarily difficult and upset the universe and all they know and all they understand and now they are afraid. And that’s alright. That is theirs to deal with and work on and it is not you. Still, that is not you.
Look at them, really see them, and send them compassion for their pain and love for their hurt and then refuse to cross over healthy boundaries to make them feel better during their confusing pain because it will hurt you and they will see you as broken and the same as you ever were. It will make them feel better when you break down and soothe them by acting like the old you and falling into old habits. It will make them feel better because all will be right in their universe again, see? You are just the same. And then they can comfort you. Yes, there, there. It’s ok. (I knew you would never change.)
And you’ll be holding that drink or smoking that cigarette or exhausted from an angry fight or crying in the corner or sporting a new bruise or out with someone unsafe or eating an entire bag of chips or cutting your arm or thinking about using or dropping out of school or shoplifting something you never needed even when you needed things because doing that thing, that very act, puts you back in the place of broken where it fits what they think they see.
And in that moment when they see you and it feels right to them and wrong to you, but right to you, too, because that gnawing ache of Different is soothed, you’ll remember I told you this might happen and that it’s ok. It’s a process. And next time when the vortex comes to suck you up, you’ll maybe make a different choice. Maybe not that time, but maybe the next time after that, because you will start to see you, too, like I see you.
And when that happens, if that happens, know I love you. This is hard, this thing you’re doing. You’re Becoming even when those around you, who you count on for support, who you gave your heart to with nothing held back, wish you would stop.
Remember they are afraid, but you be fearless. Let them move forward on their own journey at their own pace and Embrace your Self with all your might. Let your heart sing your new song, which is really your old song that got covered with layer after layer of hurt years ago. But it sounds new because it is so happy and you are so happy in there. I’ll tell you now, that’s called joy, so you know its name in case you forgot. Sing louder when you are lonely. I am smart. I am beautiful. I am free. I am joy. I am enough.
Keep track of that broken record that plays in the back of your mind, the one that replays all the old hits like, “People never really change,” and “Who do you think you are, anyway?” and everyone’s favorite, “You tried your best, just leave well enough alone,” and when you hear those old familiar phrases, take a step back and say, Oh, hello. I see you. You are not me.
It’s no longer about patience or explaining for hours with your jaw until it’s aching and your teeth want to fall out. It’s no longer about long-suffering. It’s no longer about keeping the peace. Now it’s about owning your power and seeing, then projecting who you really are. The more you sing your heart song, the more you pull your strength from the floor and gather it around you like a cloak, the more completely you reveal your true nature underneath all their misconceptions, the more you refuse to see yourself as broken, then you are whole and they will eventually have no choice but to see you that way as well, if they truly love you. You will reflect your song so loud and strong and true that they cannot help but hear it and see it.
And if they don’t truly love you, if their perceptions of you simply cannot budge, if they can’t hear your song, I’m sorry for them, but only for a short time. Because we don’t have time for that or for them. You and I? We’re too busy Becoming.
