Woke with a song worm this morning. Played several different versions of it while feeding catlips and making coffee; ending with the Queen herself, of course…so often my inspiration. Life changed forever that summer back in 1970. My family and I were traveling on our Chris Craft, as we did much of the summer, and moored in a tiny fishing village in Georgian Bay. The general store had the album displayed, and I bought it for the drawing on the cover, never having heard of the Canadian singer. We’d plug in my portable turntable out on the deck and dance and sing along, until we wore that vinyl scratchy.
My childhood home was always filled with music, often around the clock, until I would burrow my head under the pillow and wish it would stop. Midnight margaritas were real in our house. Your questions were often answered in song lyrics. At the drop of a hat all seven of us (Mom, Dad, me and my 4 siblings) would burst into song in public restaurants and shops with any inspiring prompt. The world was our oyster, and constant muse. There really were no ordinary days. They were all extraordinary. Magical and full of spontaneous adventure, fun, friends, my adoring grandparents, our horses and dogs and cats and bunny rabbits and all kinds of birds and fish…our every whim pretty much addressed instantly.
For the most part I had absolutely no clue what the world – or real life – was like. That’s why the horrific events of the rest of the world were so devastating to me. The war in Vietnam. The riots in the streets of Detroit. The assassination of fine men. I was shocked by human cruelty. And utterly unprepared to face the reality of my family’s personal dysfunction – let alone the country’s. I never will understand it fully in my lifetime. When you have so very much in life, why would anything but wonder and generosity occur?
“When I’m an old lady I want to be one of those women that has a house full of plants, weird rocks and crystals. That just looks after her animals, paints and minds her own business with her crazy hair.” – unk
Well I don’t know who said that, but I am that woman now! It’s the second week of July already. I’m getting around to spring cleaning. Better late than never I suppose. For starters, it’s been a little-shop-of-horrors-like around here for a couple of years now. I seem to have a green thumb (I am an old witch, after all.) I take home little forlorn plants from the grocery store clearance for $3. and two years later there is nowhere to sit in the same room. One small monstera I brought home (it had tipped over and lost half it’s dirt) is now eight feet wide and ten feet high. Seven years ago I bought a foot-high Norfolk Island Pine (indoor only in my climate) to use as a tiny Christmas tree and it’s almost hitting the ceiling now. My son helped me move the plants out to the back deck the other day. They aren’t coming back in. I need to find homes for them. Removing them has opened up every room and it feels so spacious in here I could dance. No really – I could actually dance in here.
This is a small house. Originally built as a summer cottage by a University of Michigan professor, the idiot I bought it from tore out most of it’s original features and knocked out walls to create an open floor plan. If you don’t know how I feel about that you might read some of my older posts. Suffice it to say that open floor plans are an abomination of the human spirit. They suck the dignity out of relationships by unnaturally forcing everyone in the household to share the same noises and smells. It feels like living inside a shoe box. Open floors plans are for worms…just sayin’…
But I live in an open floor plan, because, well, it was the right house in the right place. The plants apparently like this arrangement. They have taken over, spreading from the studio to the kitchen and the living area to the dining area. And down the stairs and across the ceiling. This ends now. I’m taking back my home! I love nature, and I will always have a few plants. But this has become ridiculous. I’m ducking and penguin-ing myself around them.
For my next trick, I’m deep cleaning all those creepy corners I haven’t been able to reach or crawl into. Getting all the spider webs and tumbleweeds of cat hair out. Eeeeewwwwww…and I have taken down the curtains and washed them. Everything has sticky dust. And I wonder why I’m so sick all the time?! Twelve loads of laundry later and the place is looking like new.
So here’s the thing. I’ve read a bazillion books on decluttering and feng shui-ing your space back into order. Psychology journals about how decluttering helps your mental health. And I’ve always done it throughout the years…in little increments. It has never felt like this. Maybe because I’ve been ill? It’s true that I’ve never let my home get this dirty and cluttered before. But something about this is coinciding with a huge shift in awareness.
A few months ago I participated in a Beta test group for a program designed to help older women traversing life changes. I’ve mentioned it here briefly, and I will provide a link for you at the bottom of this post. It’s called the Wayfinding Road. I don’t know what any of us were expecting, but this process with this group of remarkable women has been beyond helpful. The small group I was working with included a recent widow, a woman retiring and moving across the country, a woman whose husband was ill, one who had left the country and relocated to Europe, one who is a political refugee in exile. All manner of circumstances – one uncompromising commitment: a life of continued growth. We quickly realized we had much in common despite a wide variety of life experiences. Soon after the 6 week program began I started having dreams with these women in them. And my dreams were fantastic, adventurous and profoundly healing. I was wealthy beyond measure. Something supernatural was happening. We discovered we were all having experiences we could not explain. We started calling it “magic” for lack of a better explanation.
I have never met any one of these women in person. I have interacted with them only online and via email. If one of them called tomorrow and said “I need your help,” I’d be on a plane. They taught me how to love myself. I’m done with depression and shame and guilt. They taught me how to stop performing my life and begin to live it, deeply. They are well educated, articulate. Some of them speak more than one or two languages. They are all extraordinary. The 2nd time we met I confessed to feeling unworthy of their friendship – but I knew I had 2 choices: drop out or show up. I showed up and they lifted me higher.
I hear them talking to me in meditation, telling me precisely what action to take to heal myself. This morning’s meditation told me that my chronic pain and illness serves only to remind me that I took on the responsibility for my family, and that it is long past time to let them go. Not only can I not be responsible for them, but this addiction to saving them is not helping anyone. I gave it up today and got out of bed pain free.
My life has begun to change now in the last few months. Not in any way I had planned. It’s still going on; it’s a process. I don’t know what this means or where it will lead me. Watch this space. But wow…change is afoot.
Lynnelle Wilson is the creator of Wayfinding Road. Contact her through YouTube or Substack:
As it happened, my phone that is way smarter than me created a “video memory” all by itself, and sent it to me this morning. It was titled “Arizona and Illinois.” It was a short video account of the road trip I took this spring, a few short months ago. A good friend was moving back from Arizona to Michigan, and I had offered to “help.” In retrospect, I don’t think I was much help, but we did make the move. I flew out 2 days before the movers were scheduled. We finished the little bit of last minute packing. And when the movers pulled away we got into her car and left Tucson for Traverse City.
Two seventy-something single women driving across the country in a white SUV…what could possibly go wrong?! Haaaaa…actually, everything went quite well. We had to drive through the northern Arizona mountains in a blizzard…but other than that…She was driving when we hit the blizzard, so she drove us right through it. I’ve always said that if you can drive in Michigan winters you can drive in anything. Well, that, and learning to drive in Detroit in the 1960’s. Believe me – I can drive anything anywhere. But I digress…
A few things struck me about this phone-created photo montage. The first thing I noticed was my face looked weird. My face has been looking weird for awhile. Pinched is how I would describe it; almost a grimace. Puffy. Swollen and pinched – as if I were in pain. Because guess what?
You know, your body adjusts to pain. It does it’s very best to compensate and keep you upright. And you think you’re dealing with it when you aren’t. I don’t look like myself in those photos. I was in pain. I was also sick. I had motion sickness on the airplane on the way out to Tucson. That came on suddenly and completely shocked me. I’ve traveled all my life on boats and planes and I’ve never had motion sickness. I love flying.
Once on the ground I seemed fine, but I wasn’t really. I was just distracted; there was a job to be done. I am sure I was moving slow and I know I took a lot of breaks, hence my thought that I could not have really been much help. But we managed.
We had to push through the blizzard in the mountains and so decided to spend a couple of nights in Santa Fe and decompress, maybe get some rest. I love Santa Fe, but I seemed to have been adversely affected by the altitude on this visit. It was my birthday that weekend and I was being treated to dinner at Coyote Cafe. But I had to return to the hotel room immediately afterward and crash. Not only was I not much help, but now I was also not much fun. There is a possibility that I was actually a royal pain the butt. It’s been known to happen.
Fast forward almost 3 months and it hits me: I was going to use that trip as a jump start to my new-found health and creative life. Oops. I seem to have forgotten that. The slide show also reminded me of a piece of art I saw in Santa Fe that I intended to come home and use as inspiration for a painting of my own. What is Santa Fe for if not inspiration?! I forgot it altogether.
It would seem that I quickly forgot all the changes I wanted to make upon my return home. I slipped right back into my clunky old life, my poor health habits, and my outdated ways of thinking. But I know better. The old ways haven’t worked for a long, long time. And hence yesterday’s post about basic self care. Self care isn’t indulgent. Without it I have nothing to share; I can’t even show up as the friend I want to be.
For some odd reason, this July 4th holiday has been a wakeup call for me. It isn’t that I didn’t know that it’s the middle of the summer…and sorta the middle of the year…but this year it hit me hard: it’s half over! I’ve never made resolutions at the beginning of a year, but I did have some ideas of how I wanted to make changes in my life. I do have goals for myself, not the least of which is improved health.
My health has not improved. It had been a struggle. I wake most days in quite a bit of pain. Headache, nausea, stiffness and pain in my back and hips primarily. But it moves around. It seems to “settle” in the joints I slept on. I’ve been referred now to a rheumatologist. But there are things I can – and will – do to help myself naturally. Some of them are as simple as getting into a warm shower immediately upon waking. Well, after feeding the cat, of course. It actually helps a lot. But I had gotten out of this habit, drinking coffee and checking emails and watching YouTube videos instead. And putting off a shower until after I had done housework or yard work. And taken some Tylenol. Tylenol is not a good habit.
It isn’t working. Let me rephrase that: I am not working. My body is not cooperating with my plans and my commitment to said plans gets delayed…and delayed. My life is on hold until I feel better. Insert rolling eye emoji here…
Pain is a formidable opponent. So is depression. And they often hang out in the same circles. It’s time for some new companions. Like determination and curiosity…and hope. Where to start when you really just want to go back to bed? Start small. But start. Change a habit, maybe two. Return to the basics of self care. As much as I hate to admit it, I have to go right back to basic basics. I have no long term practice of self care. In fact, I’ve had to figure out what that buzzword even means. I was never taught.
So, I will get right up and into a warm shower every morning. Then I will make my bed. I will drink a glass of water before coffee. In fact, one big change is leaving out the cream and drinking my coffee black. It sucks all the joy out of life, but I can do it for a time. If I don’t put milk in my coffee, it is easy to give up dairy. That comes with some dietary changes, again small, but significant. I’ve pretty much given up sugar already and cut way back on carbs. I don’t buy bread anymore; I do eat some gluten-free pasta.
I’ve been writing intermittently. Waiting for inspiration to strike; it isn’t coming. I will go back to writing daily. Daily. Morning pages for starters. I know this works. WHY don’t I do what I know works??!!!! And then, we WALK. Julia Cameron stresses it constantly. Christ, she’s written books about it. Just fu*#ing WALK already! I had an ah-ha this morning as I headed out the back door – I feel guilty about going for a walk, as though it’s self-indulgent if I’m leaving behind housework and a messy yard. That’s where my energy should go. And there I go, shoulding on myself. There is NOTHING self-indulgent about going for a walk. It’s basic self care.
“I am not knowing,” my southern grandmother Mimi used to respond when she didn’t know the answer to our constant inquiries. You or I would say, “I don’t know.” Or more likely, “dunno.” Mimi was effortlessly – even accidentally, elegant. So she was not knowing.
Needing to know is a scam. Needing to know what’s next, what to be when we grow up, what to do with our life…our “purpose”……ONE BIG SCAM. It’s the invisible CULT mentality of BELONGING scam. It is the insidious, evil programming of the hustle culture; meant to keep us enslaved. It’s grooming us to identify ourselves with a job, a career, a political party, or even a marriage. To whittle ourselves down to fit. To value ourselves for what we do. If, in your infinite failure to be enough, you become an alcoholic or an addict, well…bonus for the cult.
Drop your beliefs. They’re chains. Find your true value within yourself. Value yourself as a verb, and trust your becoming. YOUR true value is in being you, right here, right now. You LITERALLY ARE a work in progress. That is your purpose, P E R I O D. Breathe. God does not make mistakes. You were born. You have every right to be you. End of story. Figure yourself out, don’t figure yourself out…all within your right. I’ve been saying this all my adult life – but not living the truth of it. Still trying to fit in. Still trying to figure out what to do with myself. Still trying.
And until I feel like I want to whisper “YES!” to something, I will practice saying NO to what I don’t want. “No” is a complete sentence. I am so over explaining myself. Find your own why; I am not knowing. I am, however, infinitely curious. Aren’t you? I’ve gone from the immaturity of wondering why I am here to asking better questions, like, what do I really want? I’m trusting God knows why I’m here and therefore I don’t need to know. I don’t owe anyone a version of myself that makes them comfortable. The only person I owe anything is myself. All my debts are paid, seen and unseen.
My darling, sweet Mother used to say to me, “Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong.” She meant help with the housework, of course! That was her conditioning speaking. In truth, she would never feel like she was enough. She would busy herself to death. What I wouldn’t give for one more conversation, but how would I ever manage to convince her that she was so much more than enough?
Also when I was a bratty teenager, same said darling Mother used to say, “Learn how to spell GURU and you’ll never need one.” G-U-R-U.
A Painterly Home 