First journal? Scrapbook? We were kids when we started, eh? With a diary in grade school. So, for me that was the 1950’s. Although I was drawing as soon as I could hold a pencil (per my mother), magazine tear sheets wouldn’t come into being until I was in high school in the 60’s. But once I discovered magazines a whole new world opened up, quite literally. The world became a much smaller place once it was delivered to the mailbox.
It began with Seventeen. Barbie grew up and dressed in Betsy Johnson. But it wasn’t long before art and shelter magazines like Metamorphosis and Architectural Digest and Rolling Stone broadened my horizons. And then The Sun.
Suddenly my life was too small. I couldn’t wait to leave the boring suburbs for real life in the city. Little did I know…I wouldn’t get too far too fast, probably a good thing. Family kept me close and I set aside the acceptance letters to RISD and Parsons and New York School of Design for Wayne State and Center for Creative Studies, known then as Arts and Crafts. It was across the street from the fabulous and inspiring DIA, to this day one of the best art museums in the country. It was my familiar stomping ground as I would often skip high school (I still got A’s & B’s) to spend the day roaming the galleries, dreaming and sketching. Other days you’d find me on the 13th floor of the J.L. Hudson Company, moving from vignette to vignette in the furniture and design department, imagining what I would do with that room.
It had never occurred to me that I would be anything but an artist or a writer. It wasn’t what I did; it was who I was. Fast forward five+ decades and I look back, longingly some days. At the life I sidestepped somehow, too young married and mothering and clambering for survival. The demons were lurking in the shadows, fighting amongst themselves for attention. They were not to be ignored. In retrospect, I wouldn’t trade any of it – but that realization happened just the other day. It’s a process, like me. I’ll have to keep you posted as to when I solidify.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (has that euphemism become old?!) some things have not changed much. I’m still obsessed with art and music and design. As I said, it is who I am. I was born this way. That’s why I keep insisting that you cannot miss your purpose. You don’t need to search for it; God hardwired it in. You can miss the option of different vocations – but your purpose is not a job. It’s who you are. It’s your calling. And spirit – your spirit – will nudge you toward happiness and fulfillment ceaselessly. Every day every day every day. You will realize yourself one way or another, sooner or later. And you will relax into being. You are whole. And holy. Right here, right now. Try to enjoy yourself already.
“People without a sense of humor will never forgive you for being funny.” – Joyce, The Thursday Murder Club
In my fantasy life I host a writer’s group once a month. Or maybe we pretend to be a book group or a writer’s group but we really solve murders. We gather around my gorgeous little antique dining table in the upholstered rattan chairs and talk and ponder all afternoon. We have tea, coffee, perhaps a sip of prosecco. We open little party gifts we’ve made or collected for each other, and we eat cucumber sandwiches and scones with lots of cream…someone falls asleep out on the veranda in the chaise lounge. It’s just a little nap. Some drooling might occur, but no one will hold it against you.
They love coming to my home, because, well, let’s face it – I know how to entertain. And put together a list of suspects. No one leaves hungry, and everyone leaves excited and hopeful and full of new ideas. It will be hard to sleep tonight.
In my actual life, a dear friend is moving into a new apartment in a retirement community, as did another friend not long ago. I’m experiencing pangs of jealousy. First of all, I love being old. Helen Mirren said “the best part of being over 70 is being over 70.” So hanging out with peers is ever so appealing. Young people just don’t get it. I want no-holds-barred brutally honest communication – and I also want to be home in my pajamas by 8.
All of my adult life I’ve wanted for nothing more than a big, raucous house full of family and friends. Kids and grandkids, constant coming and going. Music playing and spontaneous dancing and laughter and laughter and laughter. And a private office off my bedroom with a door that locks when “I vant to be left alone.“
That was my childhood home, and I spent the last 50 years of my life trying to recreate it. But it wasn’t real. It was a sham. My childhood home was also hiding terrible neglect and abuse and dysfunction. The big loud happy home was just for show. My parents wanted the happy home, too; they also didn’t know how to make it happen. They didn’t know how to face the addiction demons. Neither was I going to be able to create the life I wanted; I had not a clue how to go about it. And so shame tends to creep into my dreams and cloud my sleep. When I wake I feel entirely like a failure. Where did I go wrong?
That’s where the deep sense of failure stems from: I’m smart…but not smart enough to have figured this out when I was younger. To have stopped trying to please everyone else and keep everyone else safe; to have known that survival mode will never get you where you want to go. I was slow to understand that love is not transactional, nor negotiable. I wasn’t just quite smart enough to know that we really cannot earn our way to health and happiness…to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I AM already everything I could possibly dream. My loyalty and devotion were misplaced outside myself.
And now I have lived long enough to know the privilege of looking myself in the mirror and asking, “IS that what you really wanted? Or perhaps, is there something far more valuable to be gleaned here?” And now I can let myself fall apart at the seems. I grieve the life I spent trying to fulfill a fantasy that, in fact, I would not choose now. Now that I belong to myself.
“Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it, at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.” – Barbara Kingsolver
“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:
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.
This might be one of the most difficult posts I have written in the 13 – 14 years I’ve had this blog. I’ve lost my mojo. I am taking a class to get it back. Seriously, a class. Maybe group therapy would be more accurate…for aging women like myself who can’t seem to find their way. It’s called Wayfinding. I’ve missed the first of the six weekly sessions already. This past week it’s pneumonia trying to take me out; but isn’t it always something?! So, I’ll have to keep you posted. I have catch-up homework, and I don’t mean that metaphorically.
Suffice it to say my motivation took flight with my self worth somewhere back near the beginning of winter. Okay, maybe right after the election last November. And life hasn’t felt the same since. You never imagine you are going to live through the things you studied in high school history, like pandemics. And brutal fascist regimes. Life was so….so….mmmmm…not easy by any means…maybe the term I’m searching for is naively optimistic.
But here I am, in my seventh decade, feeling somewhat ignorant and defeated. Before you ask – thanks for your concern – yes, I’ve consulted my doctor. Switched antidepressants. Tried generic Adderall. Yuk. Therapy. Then no talking. Eating more meat. Eating no meat. Giving up sugar along with my will to live. “Mojo…where are you?” It’s gone like Car 54.
If you’ve read this far, I’mma sume you are experiencing some of this yourself. Congratulations. We made the shift to hyper-space. It feels like we left our soul back in the previous galaxy when we came through that wormhole. Like not all our particles beamed up in the transporter. I want to posit something for your consideration here: maybe – just maybe – we actually left behind every molecule of ourselves we NO LONGER NEED.
Now, nobody dislikes a Pollyanna more than me. I’m a supreme skeptic. But what if – and I know I’ve said this before, but really – what if we are right where we need to be doing exactly what we need to be doing? Because I didn’t come this far just to come this far.
Let me say that I am unequivocally uninterested in re-inventing myself. Been there, done that, got a closet full of those tee shirts. But this is different. You feel it, too. THIS. IS. DIFFERENT. All that psychobabble about 3D to 5D reality aside, you hippies…WTF does this mean?!
It means we drop the pretense. Pretense being anything and everything we pretended was real. Or significant. Drop who you think you are. Let yourself fall apart at the seems.
Let’s try an experiment: question everything you thought you knew. Everything you thought you knew about yourself, about who you are. Who you were, where you came from, why you’re here. Why that family? Why this country? Why that interest? Don’t assume anything. Dig deep. Where did that belief come from? Why do you think that? Draw the line at this boundary: Do I trust that I know right from wrong? Start there and come back to this exact moment in time. Question everything up to now.
And now answer this: what do you want? What do you want?
This little reprieve away I went south – literally. I flew from Michigan to Arizona to help a friend make the trek back. As we are in our 70’s now, and our priorities have changed, she was moving from Tucson back to Traverse City to live close to children, grandchildren, and friends. To lend support and be supported; that’s what it’s about now that we are aging.
We finished up the last little bit of packing, and once the movers had the house cleaned out, she and I left to drive back to Michigan in her car. We left Arizona in a blizzard, which seems perfectly appropriate. Why wouldn’t we drive through the steep mountain passes of Salt River Canyon in a blizzard? Because as we know, WWASOS (white women ain’t scared of shit.)
She was driving. We had a hotel reservation and a deadline. We got through the mountain blizzard and both said, “well, that wasn’t bad.” The next morning I overheard two older truck drivers in the hotel lobby talking about that drive being the scariest thing they’ve ever done. We were in Gallup, New Mexico, headed to Santa Fe, and were informed by the hotel that our highway east was closed temporarily due to a semi pileup. The roads were icy and it was snowing. So we lingered over breakfast before taking off, and that drive was a breeze.
We were reminded what a spectacular country this is. Wow, it is beautiful. Very inspiring. My dear friend treated us to lovely hotels and meals. We drew tarot cards and we cried a little and laughed a lot – and solved all the world’s problems you’ll be glad to know. Only a little witchcraft was involved…some reiki, some prayers (aka spells), and a good deal of coffee…
And I am home, my favorite place to be in the entire world. I am once again reminded of how addicted I am to my routine, my creature comforts close at hand (not at the bottom of a bag) and how I do so love the trees and the birds and the lush rolling hills of Michigan. The topography is soft and undulating here, like me. This is my land.
Okay. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty, shall we? We are less than a month into this new political administration. Regime, more accurately. I see it. I see the evil. Listen, I’ve lived with evil. Come face to face with it in my own home. You know that scene in Constantine where he puts his feet in a tub of water and travels into hell? Done it. (Don’t tell anybody I know how to do that.) That movie’s depiction of hell looked like a Disney ride compared to my experience. But I was successful in my mission. And I learned a few things. I’ll keep them to myself for now.
I was born into an upper middle class family in the suburbs of Detroit during the automobile boom. Both my grandfathers were in business together. They owned a company that built and maintained railroad tracks. That’s how the cars were moved. I was also a direct descendent of more than one founding father, cousin to several Presidents. I was destined to live a privileged life.
It will never cease to shock me how white Americans are so drastically unaware of their privilege. I’m still regularly shocked when I see it in myself, deeply ingrained as it is. But somehow I began to see this as a young girl. Somehow my parents and grandparents and teachers taught me some true values. I know right from wrong. And true from evil. You see, good is not the opposite of evil: truth is. Do not be fooled – we are not in any sort of political dilemma; the political era we see playing out is a symptom of a much deeper struggle over values. We are in a spiritual battle for the soul of humanity. Out there is a hologram we are projecting. We humans WILL come out the other side of this healed, whether it takes a decade, a century, a millennium – or ten minutes*. Our choice.
Perhaps this is the reason I don’t fear the future. Maybe it’s just my old age. Are we looking at some horrifically hard times here in the U.S? Probably. If we survive, will we lose loved ones? Very likely. I am looking as purposefully and accurately as I can, in order not to be naive or shy away from painful awareness. And, I am doing my homework.
News flash: the sky is not falling. It already fell. You are standing on it. Now, pull your head out of your past and get busy. Take the absolute best care of yourself possible. Love the people in your life. Love your pets, the animals around you in nature, all life. Love them all fiercely. Live with intention. Sage your house like a mutha, especially after you feel anger, fear, or sadness. Detox your body. Vote with your money. Practice your rituals. Keep calm and stay inside the salt circle. KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, your values – and never, ever – EVER – compromise them. Not for any person, not for any amount of money, not even if your life seems to depend on it. Don’t be the Judas. Stand true to yourself at all costs. And to the best of your ability, give nothing to fear. Contribute nothing to defensiveness.
Would I stand up to a bully? Absolutely. And I’ve had a lifetime of practice. Would I defend my loved ones – or anyone less fortunate, for that matter – against a bully? With my life. But make sure you aren’t one. Don’t go looking for the others. There are no others. And the best way I know how to do that is to extricate the unhealed trauma from my own body; to face my own demons. Believe me, we all have them. As long as you are still sitting there in your lovely home, sipping your tea or coffee, only think about Heaven. Imagine it. Open your heart and radiate warmth. Read uplifting stories. Learn who to trust. Turn off the news. Most importantly, expound endless mantras of gratitude.
* (what A Course in Miracles calls the Holy Instant)
He was a well educated professional. I was an unskilled hourly worker. I guess you could say he married below his station. In fact, he had a genius IQ and, like the movie character Little Man Tate, had his advanced degree by the age of nineteen. He went from college into an administrator position straight out of school. He was brilliant. But I was smart.
Within weeks of our getting married we were dealing with children in crisis. His dear daughter was being released from court-ordered drug rehab and he was excited to see her. He handed her the car keys and a wad of cash and told her to have fun with her friends. What a great Dad. I remember telling him, “I wouldn’t trade my smarts for yours for anything in the world. I hope your daughter survives to grow up. Meanwhile, what am I going to do with you for the the rest of my life?”
Like many unhappy couples, we primarily argued about money. Especially since we skipped silly little tasks like repairing the leaky roof in lieu of supporting the nearby casino. But if I brought this up he told me, “at least I have a real job.” I used to sing around the house, “why can’t you be like your big brother Bob – get a haircut and get a real job?!” Because I would make jokes about anything I couldn’t communicate any other way…a sort of last-ditch effort at making a point. From the abstract to the surreal I guess.
Just a few days ago a friend called to talk. She is in the grievous process of selling her home and filing for divorce after forty years of marriage. She stumbled upon his affair, apparently hidden for years at this point. Being in their 70’s now, I seriously doubt it’s his first. He’s always been rather distant. Emotionally unavailable. And, of course, we haven’t lived this long without having dealt with our share of hardship. I have watched for decades as she held that family together through thick and thin. Having lost her own parents early in life, she cared for his ornery, ungrateful mother through years of dementia with the patience of a saint. She nursed him back from the edge of death more than once, including donating an organ to save him. But he was preoccupied elsewhere. By divorcing, she’ll get half of everything, which is half of what she’d have if he’d died…and you wonder why women contemplate murder.
Let me make a monumentally long story short: I am dealing with the depression and angst of feeling like I have been stupid for the first 60 of my 70 years. Really – just downright, flat-out stupid. Trying to make relationships work with narcissists. The word familiar comes from family.
And part of this recent realization comes with the acknowledgement that I allowed my creativity to be sabotaged all of my adult life. In other words, I sabotaged it in deference to people pleasing. In a futile attempt at keeping my beautiful home and family together.
Like Camille Henrot, I did everything I could not to become an artist, and like Camille Henrot, I find art can help make sense of the world a little bit – or at least respect it’s nonsense. When I say respect, I mean like I respect the power of water, or nature. I mean respect like reverence for that which I find myself powerless to control.
“Oh love, bring every grief you’ve carried with you as a door you’ll walk right by / if you don’t stop to look with that loving heart and a troubled eye.”
Our troubles feel as if they are like stone, a compacted, impenetrable medium which will not allow us in. It’s time to “put my money where my mouth is…” so to speak. Time to show up, front and center, and face that stone inside, standing steadfast between me and my own liberation. I talk a good game, don’t I? All this wisdom about getting free. As if I had a clue.
When I am lost as I am this week, in the rock hard grief of my own making, I have few places I can turn. I can always turn to David Whyte. Ironically, I was introduced to him long ago by a friend I no longer have any contact with. She chose to stay in the comfortable captivity of her abusive marriage, and I had to stop pretending that I could be her supportive friend. If you read this journal once in a while, you’ll realize this theme has carried throughout the 13 years since I began here. I’ve gone no contact with more people than I have in my life anymore. Every single one has been a death I am mourning. In retrospect today, this seems an obvious theme. After all, I began this outlet as a means to help me process my divorce and separation from family, from everything I’d ever thought I wanted. To come up against that rock hard resistance and face the unknown.
C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying how shocked he was to realize that grief feels so like fear. There is good reason for that. Grief is the last doorway between us and our freedom, and we are terrified of our freedom. How, exactly, do we manage to be in the world, but not of it? Get back to me on that, won’t you, please?
It turns out that ignorance is never bliss; it’s really only ignorance. It also turns out that bliss was never the goal. It has always been awareness, whether we care to admit that or not. Bliss would be, well, blissfully easy by comparison. But awareness is how we get to freedom – which is our one and only job here. We like to pretend the god ate our homework. Yes, you read that right. So what is all this angst-ing about? Well, I have come up against the biggest boulder my heart has ever encountered, and I’m guessing you have one, too.
Since my teenage years, all of my relationships have been hard. I am hard. I have always been difficult to get along with. Something inside of me has always been as uncompromising as a boulder. I was the eldest of five children, and the scapegoat in a narcissistic family system. Yada, yada, yada…I married young. I got out as soon as I could, and I wasn’t going back. At the age of 24 I had my son, and he has been the light of my life. In many ways, my salvation. I don’t think I’d be alive today were it not for him, and I certainly wouldn’t be the person I am. He inspires me endlessly. But we are at odds right now, and it is breaking my heart. It has shaken me to my core.
Intellectually, I can explain everything. To tell the entire story, I have to begin with the health problems which impacted that pregnancy. I was always a nervous and thus scraggly kid. In high school I was diagnosed with bleeding ulcers. I struggled all of my young life to keep weight on. So I was considered medically malnourished when I became pregnant at 23, and I proceeded to lose 24 pounds. I gave birth to a healthy 9 pound, 6 ounce baby with teeth coming through his gums, but I left the hospital at just over 90 pounds. I’m 5′ 6″ tall. Perhaps because of this, he has always had some (miraculously mild) learning disabilities, despite an extraordinarily high I.Q.
During his first year in school he began to show behaviors that we would now recognize as autism. I took him to every doctor of every type that I could think of. We checked his eyesight, we checked his hearing, we checked his cognitive abilities. The doctors all told me exactly the same thing: this child is a genius. He is bored. With the wise counsel of some teacher friends we began a discipline of working through a daily checklist. I would write and draw it out on a blank sketchbook page at night, and he would work through it after school the next day. He had to complete it before he was allowed to play. It always included 2 or 3 light chores and 2-3 fun, creative activities. It always included Hug Your Mother (because I’m not above manipulation.) Then, an hour before bed we sat together and read a story or watched a favorite cartoon while I massaged his feet with a grounding oil, usually sandalwood. This routine was working beautifully. To this day, when he becomes stressed he will often create a checklist.
I am telling you this now because he has been struggling again. As mentioned recently, he is quite depressed. The aftermath of the recent natural disasters seems to have impacted him deeply. He is a highly sensitive person. But I, too, am struggling terribly as a direct result of interacting with him, in his mental and emotional distress. And because I am literally the only sober person he knows, I’m the sole voice of reason in his life right now. I must make mental health the priority of our lives.
And yesterday, I suddenly felt terribly helpless. I was consumed with fear, and I blew it. He came out of left field touting some wild conspiracy theory about the corrupt government having created the weather disaster and being out to get us all – and I lost my shit. It isn’t even that I necessarily disagree with everything he was saying, but I absolutely cannot – cannot – function from that perspective. It is mired in fear. It is entirely divisive. And it is utterly hopeless. Talk about a conspiracy!
I don’t know that I have ever screamed that loud before in my life. I screamed at the top of my lungs – at him. I told him he was dead wrong about so much of what he has recently adopted to believe. And in no uncertain terms I told him that he is subscribing to cult behavior, and that I am afraid for his sanity. I frightened him, and I frightened myself.
And so, shaken as I was yesterday, I must ask myself some very tough questions. Do I want to defend my own personal beliefs at the cost of anyone else’s freedom, including my sons’? What if he and I become estranged and never speak, as the current politics has divided so many families? Can I live with that? Are my convictions that important? Are yours?
Do I have other options here, besides finding “the truth” of the situation? Of course. Firstly, I recognize that if I am not experiencing peace, I have given away my sanity. Somewhere in the hours/days/weeks leading up to this blowup I have assigned meaning somewhere it doesn’t belong. If every upset is a setup (and it is,) I bought into somebody else’s agenda. Or in this case, depression. I picked it right up because it’s a familiar habit. And if I picked it up psychically, so did my empathic son. We can put it down just as fast. I’m not going to give assholes my vote this election. My pussy is not up for grabs. Neither is my mind. Out, demons, out! Here’s to our better angels.
Both my son and I lost our sense of humor – and perspective! After all, that’s what depression is. I fell into that bad habit, and so did he. Now I want my funny son back. I want my kind, intelligent son back. I’m thinking that screaming at him isn’t the best approach. But I’ve been holding on too tightly. Too much fear bottled up inside. It is no coincidence that I am having a flare-up of asthma symptoms. I have been holding my breath. I’m done with that. You want to see what created weather looks like? Watch out for that boulder rolling downhill. Tomorrow’s forecast is warm and sunny.
“You too have travelled from so far away to be here, once reluctant and now as solid and as here and as willing to be touched as everything you have found.” Thank you, David Whyte.
My friends and I are all getting old. Our children are middle-aged; our grandchildren and nieces and nephews are no longer young adults. And, sadly, I have to report that I do not personally know anyone who isn’t struggling. We are all finding it increasingly harder to make ends meet; we are having to make difficult decisions every month, or week…or day. For me, still living relatively comfortably, albeit paycheck to paycheck now, it means I drive an older used car. I’ve long since given up vacations. I eat out far less often. I cannot afford to adopt another dog after losing my darling companions, and if Medicare doesn’t cover the prescription I look for a natural alternative. Uncomfortable, yes; life-threatening, not thus far.
When we are honest with ourselves the future is rather scary. When we are honest with ourselves, we must confess that the middle class is gone and our leaders haven’t had our back in decades. Our food and water supplies are largely toxic to us now. You heard it here first – I’ve been saying this since I was a young woman. I began acknowledging that we are living in a military state here in the U.S. when Reagan was in office. No one was listening. That awareness came to me in a dream. Wurnt nobody listenin’ to that woowoo…
Among my closest friends, including those who don’t know one another, there is a profound concern for the welfare of our children and grandchildren. But I am having to talk most people I know (and sometimes, myself) down off a certain ledge – the concern that our children are not self-sufficient. And no one seems to be aware of the scope of this phenomenon. Yes, the most recent census told us that over 50% of baby boomers are helping to support their offspring. More than half of American households now house at least two generations.
I suspect those numbers are conservative, for we don’t understand much of what the increasing poverty is telling us. Poverty causes depression – and depression means that the people behind the doors of those little houses do not care about your survey. Even I have a No Soliciting sign on my front door. I am 70 years old. I do not need you to help me decide how to vote; I have been politically active since 1972. Go away. I especially do not need you to help save my soul. Go away. But I digress…
WHY are the younger generations not trying to improve their lot? What is wrong with them? Well, I will argue that there is, in fact, something RIGHT with them. Weren’t we idealistic back in the 1960’s?! We thought we would change the world. We thought we would end the Vietnam war and save the planet and the polar bears. We would change the government leadership. We would wake everyone up…and here we are, old and sick and tired. We had no clue what we were up against.
Now, before you think me too cynical, let me tell you why this is exactly as it should be. This is not, I repeat NOT, the end of the world. It is the end of the world as we know it. And baby, that sucker needs to burn. The systems and infrastructures and cultural expectations of the past must be transfigured. It won’t be pretty. It won’t be easy. It has to happen.
And the revolutionaries and shamans and visionaries that will bring a new way of life into being are your children, and my child, and our grandchildren. They already woke up – while you and I were scrambling to make ends meet, arguing over who is woke, and subconsciously functioning in “what the everloving fuck is happening?” mode. They are biding their time and not wasting precious resources (including themselves) trying to fit into in our dead culture.
Molly Tuttle was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease at the age of three. It causes her hair to fall out. While I am whining about my achey joints and not feeling creative, she’s years past worrying about what might get in her way. She isn’t letting anything hold her back.
“And who am I to wish I wasn’t just the way I am?!” she sings. And who are you? Insert here my stubborn argument for A) healing our codependent addictions before they kill us all, and B) while we are at it – HELP SUPPORT OUR CHILDREN to the best of our ability. Any way we can. If you haven’t got any children, help support someone else’s. Any way you can. Because who do you think you are that you know how to fix this mess? And don’t you DARE give up on anyone, let alone everyone. Don’t you dare lose heart. Don’t come to my door selling your beliefs and your outdated culture. You won’t like me when I answer.
Meanwhile, back here at the ranch, it’s gonna be a big week. So buckle up, buttercup. A hard rain’s a-gonna fall. And trust me – you need to trust your children. They are a crooked tree.
A Painterly Home 