Aug3

the better end of the deal

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“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” – Gloria Steinem

In my sweet little blessed life here I was recently swimming in the warm, clear water of Crystal Lake. Out from the beach at my friend’s summer cottage, not another person in sight. She was thanking me for something – oh, driving her around, as she had flown in from her home in another state. She had bought me dinner the previous night. Our conversation turned into a back and forth of silly compliments and thank yous. Standing on a soft sand blanket, shoulder deep in blue water as far as my eye could see, I said, “well…I got the better end of the deal.”

That was the day after I got home from attending The Detroit Book Festival with another friend. She needed to attend for business and had asked me to drive her downstate. Not only because I know my way around, but because I have often bragged that “if you can drive in Detroit, you can drive anywhere.” It was a chance to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. However she paid for gas, hotel and fabulous meals in return. She also provided one on one counseling – not sure she knew she’d signed up for that, but that’s what transpired along the way. When I dropped her home she thanked me. “Well, I got the better end of that deal,” I replied. I didn’t say it lightly.

Days before my father died he said to me, “I sure hope your friends are going to take care of you in your old age.” He was implying that my family would not, because I had not taken care of him properly in his old age. And I had abandoned my siblings. The five of them (my mother being long dead) had unanimously agreed that they were done with me. They had put up with me long enough. They wouldn’t speak to me for years after my father died, or ever again in the case of my brother.

My father was in the hospital for a life saving surgery. His heart would give out a few days later. I think he knew he was dying, and it was his final chance to let me know how disappointed he was with me. My sister yelled at me to shut-up that afternoon and I would leave in tears. My father was almost deaf and apparently I was speaking loudly – as I had gotten used to doing in the recent years he had lived with me. Perhaps I, too, have become somewhat hard of hearing. For whatever reason, I was embarrassing them. They made it clear they did not want me there. This wasn’t anything shocking or new. I was their burden to bear. To say that I never fit in was a gross understatement; I was an albatross in a flock of swans.

Decades had passed since I’d left home – decades of therapy, ACOA meetings, and self examination. Failed marriages. Failed businesses. The loss of my mother. The loss of friends. I’d raised a child with his narcissistic father – who, by the way, my family loved and got along with. My mother lent him the seed money to start his own business right after our divorce. She didn’t tell me that, he did. He leveled it as evidence of how stupid and crazy I was to leave him. He won. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’d gotten the better end of the deal.

My family has always told me that I am lucky, wielded this announcement disdainfully like an accusation. In fact, I am lucky. And I do not take for granted that I have fared better than they have in life. I had a better education, for one thing. But years before that I was lucky in birth order – eldest, and specifically because my maternal grandmother was close. She was a huge influence in my upbringing. And as I’ve said before, my parents addictions were not yet in full swing. My Mother was 19 when she was pregnant with me. My father was in the army and so Mom and I lived the first 8 months of my life with my grandparents in a big Tudor house in Detroit. I remember playing as a toddler in that magical house with it’s many secret nooks and crannies. My siblings have no recall of it at all. I’ve imagined my grandparents arguing about the decision to drive us to Texas, where my father was stationed, and drop us off with him. I’ve dreamt about it. I’m guessing my grandmother could hardly bear the idea, but that my grandfather felt it was the only possibility of my father taking responsibility for his young family.

Three years later we would return to Michigan. My father went to work for my grandfather. Mimi was often my babysitter. In grade school I would ride my bike to her house, often with friends in tow. We knew we could count on lots of food and goodies, and a quarter to spend around the corner at the 5 & Dime. So lucky.

I fared much better than my younger siblings in so many ways. They have lived with ongoing health problems, plagued with cancer and heart issues. Now in my 70’s I’ve still had neither – how’s that for lucky?! They have all four battled the demons of addiction – to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and gambling. I’ve not had that to deal with. They have all faced homelessness more than once. It is true they were not so lucky.

And now in my old age I live quite an isolated life. I have lost more loved ones than remain. Thankfully I have a handful of close friends. I can count on them. They can count on me. A chosen family. It sure feels like I’m getting the better end of the deal.

If you were to ask me today my greatest achievement in life, I would say it’s having learned to value kindness in the face of cruelty. Not entirely. God knows I’ve slipped up more times than I care to admit. I’ve certainly been cruel at times. But I hope I am becoming kinder with age. It is a choice, a choice that requires practice. Kindness and curiosity are the way forward, of that I’m sure.

Feeling like I got the better end of the deal isn’t about comparison to anyone else. It isn’t a competition. It’s about being grateful. I want you to feel like you’re getting the better end of the deal when we are together, and I want to feel like I am. That’s why I say it; it reminds of how grateful I am to be with you, here, now. It’s a “just pinch me” moment. How lucky are we?!

Aug2

it’s never out of your sight

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Admittedly, I’ve never been good at separating out timelines in my life. It’s all going down at once in here. This morning at three a.m. I woke from some wild cosmic ride thinking about my RAYHOPE experience. And having an ah-ha I would like to share. It had me buzzing.

You may not remember reading the post about this (May 8, 2024). Here’s the synopsis: my father was dying. As I was driving to be his caretaker one day I had to pull over to calm down, overcome with grief and blinded by tears. It suddenly occurred to me that I was habitually praying for him but not for myself. And so I said a prayer for myself, a solicitation for help. And I ended it with, “show me just a little ray of hope…” Those are not words I have ever used. My Mother, perhaps, but I don’t remember ever saying them, let alone thinking them. I was desperate for some relief, physically and spiritually.

My father was living with my brother, way out in the middle of nowhere in some tiny cabin my brother had rented when I kicked him out of my house. Homeless, my brother had asked to stay for a few weeks, and over three years later I kicked him out. I was tired of his abusive behavior. But I wouldn’t see him that day, or ever again. So I took them groceries, cleaned the house, filled the refrigerator with prepared meals. My father was still able to get around on his own, and one of my sisters would be there the next day. Around the middle of the afternoon Dad said he wanted to lay down and take a nap. My brother would be home from work by dinner time, and so I said goodbye to Dad. It would be my turn on the caretaker schedule again in a few days.

Slowly I dodged the potholes of the dirt road for a few miles to get back to the highway. There was traffic to wait out before I could turn left. Once I did I was following a big black SUV, and as I got up to speed I couldn’t help noticing that it had a specialty license plate. A government vehicle? It wasn’t legible until we came to a stoplight miles later, and as I inched up behind it the license plate read R-A-Y-H-O-P-E.

Literally, a little ray of hope.

I had to pull over again, this time in a parking lot, to compose myself. I was shaking. Did I hallucinate that? How can that happen? There was no predetermined time frame for my visit. Imagine the complicated sequence of events that had to culminate in that exact place and time. The State of Michigan sells customized license plates. They run a check to make sure no one is already using that exact plate; there are no duplicates. What was it doing on a big SUV on a northern Michigan rural highway nowhere near anything? At some random time in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon? I did not hallucinate it. It was carefully orchestrated, perhaps over months or even years, for me. It had to be.

My father did not live but a few more weeks. My brother would never speak to me again. He was a gambling addict, and once my father was gone he would not be able to pay rent and would soon become homeless again. But he would not reach out to me. The day that had given me so much hope did not mean what I thought it meant. I have never understood it.

Until very early this morning – twelve years later – when I woke knowing something even more fantastical. Help me wrap my head around this awareness: that event was a glimpse into how the world works. It was not a miracle, not unique, or even unusual. It was momentary insight into how life works. All the time. It is all unfolding perfectly. In any given second. On any road, anywhere.

The past several months have broken me open. My days are consumed with unreconcilable grief. Maybe it’s been percolating under the surface all my life and only now has the time and safe place to express itself from my body. And this grief has simply sharpened my awareness to the point in time where I can almost grasp the enormity of this. There has always been a little ray of hope. There will always be a little ray of hope. Nothing here is happening by accident. Nothing ever has.

Aug1

public service announcement

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Part 3 of 3:

7/30, 3:33 am; I’m awake thinking about my brother again, about how he didn’t have a voice. About how I feel a responsibility to speak up for him, to tell the story of how abuse in the family of a narcissist steals the childhood of a spectacular child, an innocent child, who would never find himself again, never know joy. Who would never know his soul, his voice. Who would die alone in the rented room of a coworker’s trailer at the age of 62.

What if, at the age of 72, I drop the guilt I have carried my entire life? What if I was never responsible? Oh sure, part of me always knew my four younger siblings weren’t my responsibility. I left home at 16, telling my parents that I would no longer raise their children for them. Never mind take care of their drunk asses at three am when they stumbled in from the bar. But I didn’t really let go of the guilt, ever. The sense that I had abandoned them all. I remember being in my late thirties, sitting in a therapy session with my sister who looked right at me and told me she still could not forgive the fact that I left them all to fend for themselves when I was sixteen. I abandoned them. I abandoned my siblings. She told me they were angry at me – not at my parents. And I get it now; in many ways I was the parent. When I left at 16 they had already depended on me for years.

And I didn’t just disappear. Perhaps it would have been better if I had. No, I went away to boarding school. To what I still call the real Hogwarts. I went from a living hell to magical days full of beauty and art and inspiration. I went to Kingswood Cranbrook. I was in my heaven. I left my young siblings to fend for themselves against a monster no one could name. It was 1970. There was no such thing as Child Protective Services. No one to call, should anyone in the community realize something was wrong. I only realized it at a subconscious level myself. My body knew it, but my psyche wouldn’t define the fear for decades to come.

And I have carried guilt ever since. It is heavy. My body can’t seem to lose this visceral fat. My ankles are swollen, my knees ache. I can’t eat anything spicy, or digest gluten anymore. I’m a walking inflammation factory. Rather than accept this all comes naturally with age, I protest. There is nothing natural about this. This comes from aging in a dysfunctional, misogynistic family and culture. The one that flourished in the post-war industrial boom of the mid 1900’s.

The internet is full of articles about the inflammation that occurs with age. WHAT IF it actually only occurs in an aging society of narcissistic abuse victims? And don’t tell me you aren’t one. Not if you live in the United States, or under any oppressive government. HOW the everloving fuck do you think we got here??!!! Wake up. We are a misogynistic culture of narcissistic victims. AN ENTIRE CULTURE, people. And regardless of your age or gender or socio-economic status, ain’t nobody done here until everybody is done. You don’t have to like it. But you do have to live it. Some day I’ll tell you what we all lost when we lost my brother.

And you wonder why I’m angry all the time.

Jul31

empty and free

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Part 2 of 3:

Just in the past week I’ve had three different friends ask me why I seem angry all the time. I’m not angry. I’m enraged. But I did not respond. Each time I was taken aback. Had I responded, there could only be one thing to say: “why aren’t you?” My recently triggered rage is both personal and collective. Isn’t it always? Isn’t it always…

There are sometimes weeks on end when I think I’m doing just fine. No rage in sight. Although it’s been months and months and endless months now of this confounded sadness. And then my dear friend, listening intently to me rage on and on, asked me what was beneath all this? And bless her, she listened to the answer. Not what she was expecting, I’m sure. To her credit, she didn’t say what most say. She’s so way smarter than most people I know.

Go ahead now, tell me life isn’t fair. Life was never meant to be fair. And then, you rage-less enlightened soul, you – you tell me why that’s okay with you. Go ahead. Just stand over there when you say it.

In the mid 1970’s I bought a paperback copy of the Gnostic Gospels at the Mayflower Bookstore in Berkley, Michigan. Might have actually paid my (now) friend as, come to find out, she was working there about that time. I remember reading the passage where Christ teaches the Lord’s Prayer, telling his disciples that it is the only prayer they need to know. Something in my body knew that was the truth, and I have said it every day since. I am not a religious person, but every line of that simple prayer gives us direct instruction as to how to live life, not least of which is “on earth as it is in heaven.” Now tell me again how life is not fair. And again, for all we plebs in the back, why is that okay with you?

Do not ever say that again. Not to me, not to anyone. It smacks of shallowness and a complete and utter negation of responsibility. You have a responsibility here. ON EARTH. As it is in heaven. Behave accordingly.

Easy for me to say. I talk a good game. I’m still struggling to give up bacon. But here’s the thing I’m just waking up to: creating heaven on earth isn’t complicated or even difficult. Can I change the world? Can I make an impact in my lifetime? Can you?

The answer is yes, but it doesn’t mean what you believe it means. It has nothing to do with protest marches or changing the government or saving polar bears. That is not your department. You are part of the problem itself, not the solution – unless you show up free, as in: “in the world but not of it.”

Heaven is not waiting for you to get your shit together. It is not waiting for you to make enough money or find the right partner. You’ll be glad to know heaven is not waiting for you to realize you are enough. It isn’t waiting for me to get my roof replaced, although it feels that way when it rains. Heaven doesn’t care if you are Mother Teresa or Adolf Hitler. And it sure as fuck is not waiting for you to fix it. It IS waiting right here on the lee shore, waiting for you to surrender. Anytime I am feeling attached to any outcome, I am holding heaven at arm’s length. Or as I say, “I’ll be with you in a moment…” Take a number, God.

The way to experience healing, yours and ours, is to be entirely present. My friend did that with me on the road trip to Detroit. She breathed in my rage and she breathed out compassion. In…and out…and it had nothing to do with the injustices I was reporting. I was telling her about the things foremost in my mind, about the horrible abusive unfairnesses of my life. It isn’t that they aren’t real or didn’t happen or don’t matter. They matter to me a great deal, and she knows that. She has her own injustices swirling around inside her. They’re in our blood and our DNA, and they are personal – as they should be. Let’s not pretend we aren’t in this mess together, and let’s stop pretending this isn’t personal.

On earth as it is in heaven means all sentient life has equal rights. PERIOD. No stipulations. We all have clean water, plenty of food, the best healthcare known to man. Can I make this happen? Of course not. But I can choose to live free of fear. I can choose to live in a state of possibility. And so can you. And I swear to you, it is our only hope. It is the only way we will ever realize heaven. I have some questions for you: what if life WERE fair? What if it were meant to be fair? What does that look like? What is life like on that earth?

I am older than you know, and I will be waiting for you on the lee shore.

Jul30

black road double yellow line

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Part 1 of 3:

It’s been 10 days since I last posted. I promised you a report of my fast road trip downstate to the Detroit Book Festival. Obviously that didn’t happen. Oh – the road trip did, the report did not. The past week was a whirling dervish dance of out of town company, obligations and activities. It included finishing an application to try to secure some financial help getting my leaking roof replaced and getting bids from contractors. That has been an ongoing process the past few months with almost no response. Or short responses after weeks of paperwork and inquiries: “we have no funding.” As Pooh says to Rabbit, “I s-u-s-p-e-c-t something.”

I’ve completed more paperwork in the past few months than it took to get a mortgage. Turns out being poor is a full time job. Also turns out determination is my middle name. I’m not one to give up easily. I believe it was Mark Victor Hanson who said, “Ask and you shall receive, so ask, ask, ask, ask, ask….” That is not a habit I am comfortable or familiar with. But ya know, life is for learning.

When my siblings were indoctrinated into the cult of fundamentalism they all wore bracelets with W.W.J.D. on them. In case they inadvertently forgot who they were following I guess. Smart aleck that I have always been, I got myself one of those bracelets. But mine stood for: What Would Joni Do?

Joni Mitchell narrated my adolescence and young adulthood. She kept my heart afloat in a toxic sea. Thank God for Joni. And Joan Didion. And Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem. Thank God for Shirley Chisholm. Those were my influencers.

Now I say that in retrospect – as if I weren’t unconsciously under the influence of the cultural norms I grew up with in the 1950’s and 60’s. Within a year of graduating high school I would marry a mean, raging alcoholic like my father was. I was a walking talking statistical average. And although I would never stop trying to break free of those patterns, I would follow them again and again and again – believing each time would be different. It would not be until the age of 60 that I would even begin to get free.

Oh, I believed I was free. Because I was a rebel, don’t-cha-know, a free thinker. Nope; not even close to free from the influences of my family and culture. Not even close.

You see, the problem with beliefs is that they are false prophets. You are fooled into thinking you are free if your beliefs are strong. I’m here to tell you the bad news: your beliefs are keeping you stuck. You’ll want to get underneath that shiny layer of confidence and rustle up those loose cuticles in your armor. Into the murky, messy, uncomfortable waters of your unconscious. Because you didn’t invent your beliefs – you accepted them. Before you were old enough to have any awareness that you were doing that. And they all serve one outcome: keep you mired in the past.

Every time you get upset (so, about 15 times a day for me) – BINGO! – you just found a belief. It has been hiding for decades and you just found it. Treasure! Every upset is a set-up. That’s what we are here for! That’s the privilege of a human incarnation in earth school! The tuition here is outrageous. Guaranteed you will not live long enough to pay off the use of your body (lab fees) – so you’d might as well make the most of it. Now mine that treasure for all it is worth. “I’m upset because…I believed….” And, as another influencer in my life, Jack Boland, would say, “as day follows night…” it will appear. Show up like the answer in the magic 8 ball.

And you will be shocked. You will be shocked and enraged at what you have accepted as truth when it was nothing of the sort.

Over the next few days I will tell you all about my road trip to Detroit. I’m still mining the gold it uncovered, from anticipation to recovery. While driving fast on an open highway feels a lot like freedom, I held one of my dearest friends hostage in the passenger seat and splattered her with the chaos of my confessions. She was a captive audience to the grief I am outgassing these last several months. Thank God for her. She was forced into the role of therapist and she rose to the occasion as if she were my own personal superhero. There is no amount of money in the world that could compensate her for the healing of her loving presence; that was priceless. I pray each of you find a friend like her, although I implore you don’t kidnap her in a speeding car.

Jul19

everything else is paperwork

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“We get to keep all the limitations we defend.” – unk

Well, I think I’ll post this video on a Sunday…because church. This is my church. Actually, every day is my church now. I do so love Carolyn Myss when she yells at us. Preach. Here she teaches us about animals communicating…like DUH.

And yes, I AM humiliated by humans who don’t understand animals. I’m embarrassed by and for my species. And for all of us who don’t see or grapple with our addiction to being superior. You know, like we were taught in school – top of the food chain. And it stood to reason we would next be taught that some humans are superior to others. Definable. A noun. As Tiokasin Ghosthorse (well, and The Indigo Girls) teach us, we are healthier when we define ourselves as verbs.

“The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.” – The Indigo Girls

I listen intensely when the birds are singing outside my window. I desperately wish to understand what they are saying – because I know they are saying something important. And I don’t speak the language. Every once in awhile I catch a word, an idea, a meaning, on a soul level….and I know. Ahhhhh. Yes, that. Ooohh. Uh-huh, yes. And I have only one response: “thank you.” Thank you for telling me. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for allowing me, despite my deeply flawed humanness, to eavesdrop. Thank you for staying near.

The birdhouse outside my front door is part of a display I made in a planter box. Under the wide roof overhang of this mid-century ranch, it defies the modern aesthetic and alludes to country cottage, the style I much prefer. The French iron planter is stuffed with coir and small branches from the Hawthorne tree it faces. A few flowers drape over the side closest to the door in the shade. I rarely use this door. A chickadee has taken up residence and hatched her eggs in the little house. Those babies are gloriously loud! She hangs out in the Hawthorne tree, watching intensely, and sings the sun up. She is so happy and proud of her brood. That’s what I imagine she is saying, “look, listen…see us. Aren’t we beautiful?” I assure her that I, too, am made happy and proud that she has graced us with her family. I leave a small makeshift bath on the porch for her, worried how they will cope with the wildfire smoke.

And I sit inside and listen to Carolyn Myss for hope, for us all. The time stamp on this video is very deceiving – it was recorded over a decade ago. This is actually about healing, yours and mine and the worlds. And then how to…fill in the blank. Live. Be in the world and not of it. That’s always my goal, because that is where freedom is found. Thank you. Thank you for telling me. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you, despite my deeply flawed humanness…for allowing me to accompany you on this journey.

When you are reading this I am on another journey. I’ve been asked to accompany a friend on her business trip to the Detroit Book Festival. Let’s go see what the paperwork has to say. I’ll share my experiences with you next week. Thanks for being here.

Jul16

smoke and tears

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“Life is good if you don’t weaken,” my Mother used to say. I think about her every day…and wonder. How did she do it? She had five children to raise. At what age does a parent consciously think about the fact that, given life follows it’s natural order, they will no longer be needed? And then one day no longer exist…that their child will outlive them and become an orphan.

I don’t remember thinking about that when I was a young mother myself. In fact, I never thought about it until after I had lost my parents. I became an orphan at 60. I was one of the lucky ones, although I wish I’d had my parents longer. And appreciated them more. Some time during the last decade or so it slowly began to dawn on me…oh. My son will lose his parents and be alone in the world. He has never married, although he has had some long term partners. He’s single now. He hasn’t had children. He himself is an only child. He’s a loner, especially the past couple of years that he has been sober. That only works if you withdraw from the drinking friends, stop hanging at the bar, attending the yearly summer camping trips that all revolve around the beer.

He’s middle aged now. His body is slowing down, arthritis is affecting his mobility. I worry about how he will manage on his own. There is no obvious support system for him in his later years. I worry about my younger nieces and nephews. My siblings are all in their 60’s now. My son gets along with his younger cousins, loves them, but they are scattered by decades and distance.

Tonight as I am writing this the wildfire smoke is oppressive here in Michigan. I am sad. Beautiful wild Ontario is on fire, where I spent so much of my childhood and teenage years exploring. My son has never been. We had dramatically different childhoods. Mine seemed to stretch out forever; it sustains me still. His had smaller borders and was so much lonelier. I swam in the crystal clear water of Georgian Bay, with long black snakes and schools of curious fish and the occasional black bear. We flew to California to watch TinkerBell fly from the Disneyland castle at sunset. He flew to Florida and Disney World. Both fun, certainly…I’m just not sure his childhood was as magical.

Every generation grows to realize their world was smaller and simpler. Mine had majestic old theaters gutted of their seats, where we sat on the floor and watched the best musicians of our generation for our five dollar cover charge…Joe Cocker sang about a Girl from the North Country.

Jul14

confusion has it’s cost

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7/11, 11:01am

And so, home now with the day ahead free of obligation, I can sit here and review my week. Something I have yet to define has me feeling like something big just happened. Something life changing, just in the past 72 hours. And I know what started it: the book I am reading – Permission by Elissa Altman. Specifically, the chapter titled The Magic in the Mundane. It – she – has given me permission to be mundane.

“In the most mundane stories lie humanity. It is where the magic is, where the stories lurk, where the most stunning and affecting art is waiting to be made. It is where joy and sorrow and the absurd and the human are plaited together in a tight braid…forget perfectionism: the mundane reeks of imperfection, and that imperfection is what makes for beauty of a human sort.”

If you read the last few days posts you’ll know that I walked out on my job last Thursday. There wasn’t anything wrong or bad happening there. There wasn’t much happening there at all. I didn’t need to be there. It was a distraction from what I need to be doing. I need to be here. It has taken me 73 years, 5 months and 4 days to get here.

You may begin to see a theme running through all the posts of this week. Perhaps it will continue, but I am not about to predict the future – I still have the rest of my life ahead of me, after all.

In January of 2012 I participated in a 13 week group study of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It would prompt me to start this blog. A woman I had never met before sat across from me in the circle and commented on something I had said – or maybe written – in response to one of the exercises. She exclaimed, “Oh my gosh – you’re a writer.” For some reason I thought of that today, and what it meant to me at the time. I was shocked and somewhat confused. I didn’t believe her. Until this past Thursday. Fourteen years later. Is it too late? Apparently not. I’m still here. Or perhaps I should say, I’m here now.

Elissa Altman pulled me aside last Thursday in the bookstore, in that little back tarot-card-reading-room closet. Families of tourists scurried outside the mysterious curtain that provided no privacy for my tears. She let me know quietly that, yes, my family also taught me that perfectionism was the only way to avoid shame. And she let me know that it wasn’t working. It wasn’t keeping the shame at bay. Not the grief. Not the sorrow. “Go home,” I heard her whisper.

And so I am home now. I slept all day Friday. And all night, until the nightmares woke me. This morning, Saturday, my son asked if I had been having nightmares last night. “Why, yes. Why do you ask?” “Because you were standing outside my bedroom door early this morning calling out to me for help.” I wasn’t there physically. But my spirit was.

I used to write poetry. In high school my English teacher submitted one of my poems to a student contest with The Atlantic and it was published…I guess I could say I’m a published author. But I won’t. That same year I also won my second honorable mention in The Detroit News Scholastic Art Awards. And then I left school. A couple of college teachers acknowledged my writing, encouraged me. One invited me to skip a year. But then I left school again.

Schoolwork was too difficult to maintain with a full time job and a baby and a household to run. And an abusive husband who was closer to my abusive family than I had ever been. If I were to believe them, I was crazy still and again. That pattern had begun in the very early years of my life. And it would continue until last Thursday.

I’ve lost most of my family now. Divorced more than once. I’m estranged from most of my remaining family and many well-meaning friends. I am not easy to get along with. Most perfectionists aren’t, especially the ones wallowing in the shame of unexpressed creativity.

My father was not a good man. He was funny. Creative, charming. He was brilliant but uneducated, gay in a time and culture where it was never to be revealed, or even remotely tolerated. Permission was not granted him. And he was enormously gifted as a musician. He was also married at nineteen and had 5 children by the age of 29. He would enter the family business whether he liked it or not. All of his rage would come out sideways. It always does. Of his 5 children I have fared the best, with the least damage. I am the eldest by more than 3 years, first grandchild on both sides. Not only was I adored as a young tot, but my parents addictions were not yet in full swing. The dream was still intact.

The opposite of perfect is not flawed. The opposite of perfect is free. This is not a story about what could have been. It is a report about what is becoming. A PSA of sorts, a heads up. It is a story of endless curiosity and hope and never ending love. It’s my story. Maybe some part of it is also yours. I say we tell it, no matter how long it has taken us to get here.

Jul13

unemployable

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7/11, 9:05 am

My dear fiend has been ill. I texted her yesterday and she responded to tell me she was in the ER. It’s that horrible parasitic yuk going around western Michigan right now. Kinda scary. She called me back later once she was home and feeling better, after a few hours on a gurney with IV fluids. And sick as she was, she still managed to be her usual gracious self. I admire her so for that. I am not that, especially when I am sick. Or stressed, which has been much too often lately.

She always seems to have a gift for me. Yesterday it was a great big juicy gift. Infinitely useful. I told her I was losing my wits, and she assured me I will be okay. Told me I have “hippie wits.” “What?” Did she just make that up? Yes, yes she did. How wonderful. I will always have my wits about me now; I can keep those. I’m not crazy. I’m just a hippie. Which is to say that I have solid values. Trustworthy values.

And then, just coincidently (if you believe in those) Terry Tempest Williams shows up in my feed. Talkin’ about how we – women of a certain age – have been culturally programmed to think we are crazy. Witless. For most of my life it was the most powerful word used against me as a gaslighting technique. No…no no no no…anything but crazy. Crazy people are unacceptable. Weird. Never okay. Unloveable. Broken.

But it turns out that not only are we not crazy, we are fabulous. Smart. Creative. Genius. And spectacularly alive. We are good, we are beautiful, and we are true. We are very certainly sane and we are transforming an insane world. It turns out we are the holy ordinary. Albeit, unemployable.