Monthly Archives: July 2026

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.

Jul12

the ethics of soul saving

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“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.” – Rilke

7/11, 7:38 am.

Just once. Maybe that’s all it takes. I was at my recent workplace taking a break. Sitting in a back room, I opened the book I had been reading to the next chapter, The Magic in the Mundane. I would finish those twelve pages and pack up my things, say my goodbye as graciously as possible and leave. Sure, I’d been thinking about it, but I hadn’t realized that today would be my last day until I read about it just then. Elissa Altman was speaking to me, and I happened to be listening.

This week I will be making a series of posts here that include some longer videos. Because healing. Maybe healing requires longer videos. I can promise you one thing this week – there is a consistent theme. I am a consistent theme these days: no matter your age, there is no time to waste. Forgive me my sudden sense of urgency. It might be my age, or maybe my rebellious nature. What a good friend calls my hippie wits. I don’t care. I fucking love my hippie wits. I’m no longer explaining myself or dissecting my psyche. My reality no longer requires justification nor explanation – and neither does yours. I am giving us permission. We are a lot of things, crazy is not among them. That’s tomorrow’s conversation, however. Today we visit with Anne Lamott and Elissa Altman. Because healing.

And healing means that I am no longer treating my grief as a pathology. Grief, fear, shame..whatever. Let’s build an altar for all the angels and demons. Let’s honor it all. And then let’s burn that candle and go live.

Jul11

Only you.

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7/11, 6:36 am. Life gets very real after 70. You can fool yourself and others throughout your sixties that you are still “middle-aged,” especially if you are blessed with looking a bit younger. I see people doing this all the time these days on social media. But you can’t get away with thinking you are middle-aged in your seventies. And tbh, there isn’t a descriptive word for old that I like. The word elderly makes me cringe. I don’t think I’ll ever be – or identify – as elderly…we’ll see. Maybe in my 80’s. Maybe I’ll revisit that word then. But I don’t feel old. We need a new word for people who are over 70 and fabulous.

I don’t know about you, but I am living my best life. I’m just getting around to it. It’s been a long haul, but from here on out I intend to rock this as long as it lasts. Starting now. As I said, it’s been a long haul – which is to say, those tired old demons of self-doubt have not yet given up the ghost. They’re still chasing. One of the most beautiful advantages of age is perspective and insight: those doubts become more transparent than ever. Seeing FEAR for what it is: False Evidence Appearing Real, becomes habit. FU fear. Or as my Mother would have said, move along smartly. Ain’t nobody got time for you here.

I just quit my job. I guess you could say I re-retired. It wasn’t an actual job; it was some work I had taken on out of fear. Fear of being poor to be exact. But it wasn’t working on several levels. So I gave myself permission to leave without feeling guilty, like I had let someone down or somehow failed. Maybe I’d feel differently if I were making some big cash, but that was not the case. So it was keeping me from doing my real work – which is right here on the page, with you. Because this is where the healing happens, and I want healing more than ever.

The real work is being. As in myself. All this psychobabble about authenticity is getting on my nerves. Who has time for nerves after 70? Not me. I must say however, we have such expanded language for this phase of life. Expansion I only wish my mother and my grandmothers could have known. And so I will honor them by not squandering this time and this awareness.

My dreams have been screaming at me. Wake up! Stop lollygagging. Write. Draw. Paint. Tell stories. Give yourself permission. Give yourself permission. I’m going to be saying that repeatedly for awhile. And reminding myself and you: there are no coincidences. There is no lapse in time. There is only now. There is only me and only you.

Jul4

let’s fall apart

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“Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she will not enter a house where her children are not welcome.” – Joe Hudson

July 4th, 6:34 AM

No one actually paints themselves into a corner – we think ourselves there. Most of us, if we are fortunate enough to be healthy and have a roof over our heads, don’t have many problems we haven’t created with our misguided intellect. Most of my anxiety, my unrelenting grief, all of my pain and autoimmune issues, all stem from suppressed emotion. Emotions that I cannot name. I am not familiar with them. I have successfully avoided feeling them for over seven decades.

Up until this point – oh hell…who am I kidding…I still think I can think my way out of this mess. Surely I can figure out solutions to my challenges. I’m a pretty smart person.

I use that terminology (pretty smart) purposefully today. I woke an hour ago wondering how my life might be easier had I been told I was smart growing up – rather than being told I was pretty. Pretty was bantered about by the adults as if it were the golden ticket and I had won that lottery. Surely anyone can be successful if they are born good looking. Who needs smart? After all, as a female if you were pretty back then you were far more likely to find a husband. Now, that was the real goal: marriage. What more could a girl want? I suspect that my parents believed that was the best I could hope for: a husband who would support me. What’s love got to do with it? And who needs love – let alone it’s scruffy cousin, respect – when you can afford alcohol? All is tolerable with alcohol. Throw a little cocaine in the party mix and you are happy. You’ve found the magic formula.

Jesusmaryjoseph. Yes, that is all one word for today’s conversation. So now that I have spent the last fifty-odd years in therapy and self examination, I have a deep understanding of how I got here. I’m still here – right here and no further. Suffering. You can understand your situation and your strengths and your shortcomings from now until the cows come home…but I am here to tell you quite adamantly, that will not change anything. Ya still gotta feel it to heal it. Damn it.

In the past six months of grief I have said that I don’t know how to do this. Meaning, I have never learned how to grieve. There are sorry few examples or mentors to follow. I’m grateful to Anderson Cooper for making the process so public, and for the teachers before. How often I’ve gone back and re-read Stephen Levine’s Who Dies?

But I am just now at this late stage in life realizing that the underlying problem is actually that I don’t know how to feel. I am well practiced at diverting, cajoling, distracting myself out of feeling. Because feeling? Terrifying. So instead I just live in a state of low-grade seething terror every day. Nothing I try seems to work…how many times has spirit, never abandoning me, whispered into my consciousness, “let yourself fall apart at the seems…”

Let yourself fall apart at the seems.

It only seems terrifying when you think about it. My problems, most? all? of which stem from poverty – financial or spiritual – exist because I am doing everything in my power to solve them. I can’t let my life fall apart. I can’t have more faith than what seems real. That would seem to be pretty stupid, and I am not that.

So spirit, slightly smarter than my intellect, must fool me. Thank you God. It must fool me in an endless creative way, which yesterday looked like a new face in my YouTube feed: Joe Hudson. He’s helping me fall apart. I’m so grateful.