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.