Category Archives: courage

Jun1

…senses and sensibilities

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Do you watch house hunting shows like Escape to the Country and Location, Location, Location and House Hunters? Do you have a dream house? Do you design and decorate homes in your daydreams? Do you watch Nancy Meyers movies just to see the houses?!

I remember years ago when my former husband and I were house hunting. The realtor was a family friend, and I not only managed to offend him inadvertently (ouch,) but I think he was probably convinced I was nuts by the time we purchased a home. I know my husband thought so.

The criteria I was looking for in a home made no sense whatsoever to these two men, including the experienced professional. What they didn’t know was that I was only sharing out loud the few things I thought would be reasonably acceptable to them. I dared not state all the features I was looking for. Among the things I thought were reasonable (hahahaaaa…) but they were flummoxed about, was a window in the bathroom. That really threw them for a loop. “Why do you need a window in the bathroom?” I’d prefer the fireplace be wood-burning, but there should at least be one. No subdivisions, no tri-levels. I said I wasn’t interested in tri-levels, or anything contemporary for that matter. He kept taking us to tri-levels. One day I just didn’t get out of the car. I wasn’t going to buy it, so why waste everyone’s time? “I don’t understand! It’s a nice house! Why won’t you look at it?!” In my smart ass way, I probably said, “well, I’ll just sit in the car and describe it to you from here. How’s that?”

I was secretly also looking for a front door to face east. I was adding the address numbers in my head and doing the numerology. Having telepathic conversations with the deceased former residents. You know, nuts stuff like that. I was looking for quirky, cosy features and they were all about the open concept. Let’s just say we were not on the same page.

It took years to realize that I belong in a small English cottage in a village, what Britains call “chocolate box.” That isn’t happening, although I’m closer – since I’m the only one making the decisions now. I traded some freedoms for some others, and some stresses for different stresses. I have no qualms about having made the right choice, and that isn’t anything I regret.

But I must tell you, after a decade on my own, I am just beginning to realize how much I compromised my own preferences and even dreams – and the true cost of that. Our sensibilities, our preferences, our dreams – they mean something. Without them, we lose our connection to our true selves, and then we consequently lose everything. The compromises were costing me my health and well-being, both physically and mentally.

If it matters to you never settle for less. Stop explaining yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you. Stop trying to justify your place in the world. Your ancestors lived through much harder times than this – so you could be here, now – so you could be you.

Seven years ago now, when I was looking for a home, I didn’t have many to choose from. The houses in my price range and area were selling fast and over asking price. My realtor (a woman, who was listening, just fyi) had told me that she didn’t have anything to show me until new listings became available. My son found this house on Craig’s list, of all places! It was in the middle of being flipped. But it had new mechanicals and windows and roof. I could finish the inside myself. It isn’t my style. In fact, it’s my least favorite style, Mid-century modern. But in actuality most of those features are long gone from previous owner’s remodels. This is a summer resort area, and it was originally built as a summer cottage. There are things about it I don’t like, but more that I love.

My front door faces east. The fireplace burns wood. There are two windows in the bathroom! It’s an old house with a good address in a little village. I have the world’s most colorful sofa, and believe me, it isn’t leather. It’s chenille. I want natural fabrics – cottons, velvets and linens. The art supplies live out in the open in my home. Every room has a little red. And a lot of green.

“…it’s cooker or pictures – and so you go, pictures – and worry about the cooker later.” – Cath Kidston

May31

murder and mint chip

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As pearls of wisdom go, I have two words of invaluable advice for anything at all that troubles you: Maira Kalman. I ask myself daily: WWMD = what would Maira do? Now, I’m not saying she’s an enlightened being…but she’s got more wisdom in her pinky than any guru I’ve ever encountered. Spiritual, schmeer-it-ual, I’m sticking with her.

For me, Maira is a great example of how an artist overcomes personal hardship and adversity while offering the world a piggyback ride on her healing journey – without ever losing grace or humor. Oh, she’s had her share of bad days. Her beloved husband Tibor lost his long battle with cancer at the age of 49 and left her with two young children. She exemplifies someone who incorporates grief, both personal and collective, with tremendous empathy and turns it into beauty. Curiosity moves her slowly through the world and she reports back to we lucky observers.

Lately, coming to terms with t h i n g s – like finding out I have a genetic disease that should have killed me decades ago, and like old age being ever so different than I expected…among other issues (!) I have become acutely aware of how much I appreciate quirky individuals who persevere. I have regrets, people, (can we talk?) about settling and about making too many compromises and about not taking my art seriously enough. I actually do wish I’d worked harder – at the things that I love. Mostly my regrets boil down to one common denominator: I didn’t TRUST myself, my intuition. I didn’t follow my dreams. It certainly is not too late for me, or for any of us. And I am enjoying life more now than I ever have. I appreciate the ordinary and everyday idiosyncrasies. I gladly traded wrinkles for the need to know. I’m learning to live in the questions. I like it.

Like Maira, I love British murder mysteries. I, too, revel in my inconsistencies. I, too, value an acute sense of the absurd. I value observation skills over job performance. I value ordinary life over extraordinary accomplishment. I value rest over productivity; I value silence and solitude. I value imagination over knowledge. I value Maira Kalman, and I value YOU. I’m not a fan of mint, however. Make mine a double – one scoop coffee and one scoop chocolate.

Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman: https://amzn.to/3X9BssN

May29

Tchotchke City here we come…

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The year was 1966. My Mom took me to Macy’s in New York for school clothes and we bought Betsey Johnson paper mini-dresses…I was obsessed. I asked her if she could paint matching flowers on my face for the first day of junior high. About halfway through the day the Vice-Principal grabbed me by the arm with a stern look and nodded me toward his office. I was told in no uncertain terms to walk home for lunch and return without that stuff on my face.

My Mother was quite surprised when I walked in the door just after noon. She wasn’t expecting me. When I told her why I was home she was livid. She marched me right back into the Principal’s office – but I wasn’t in trouble – HE WAS! I wore painted flowers on my cheek every day after that. It wouldn’t be long before I asked my Dad to contribute: he gave up a pair of black socks so I could cut them into strips and hem the edges and my friends and I would wear them around our right upper arms. Black armbands signified our protest of the Vietnam war. My life as troublemaker had begun…and my wild parents sanctioned it.

Gil-Scott Heron told us the revolution would not be televised. Bess Myserson told Mrs. Smith that she didn’t have to buy war. And Betsey Johnson gave us fuchsia pink and lime green mini skirts. I was born this way, baby!

Suffice it to say Betsey Johnson has been a personal icon for over five decades now. I was in my 20’s when a roller skating friend came over to help bake cookies and declared my home “Tchotchke City.” Apparently there was a lot of stuff. Once again, light years ahead of my time (okay, a couple decades) I was a self proclaimed maximalist. I loved it when McDonalds started making Happy Meals. I collected the toys and proudly lined them up on the kitchen windowsill. Like my parents before me, I was a child with a child…in case I needed an excuse.

Betsey did not need an excuse. She never lost her playful spirit through codependency, as far as I can guess, because she didn’t have to. It was another influence, Virginia Woolf, who so wisely said, “Money justifies what would otherwise be frivolous.” I was young and my parents were still quite affluent and I had no idea of hardship. Not consciously, anyway. Life was still a lot of fun.

When did life become not-so-fun? I do know the answer to that question. I would never go back. That’s a saga that would span more than fifty years (so far,) and I am only now beginning to unravel the complexities of my life. I will say, if I have anything worthwhile to share as we venture forth, it’s that we must learn to live in the contradictions.

Last week I asked you to join me on a little adventure, to explore the connection between fashion, storytelling and sleep…and then I had a bout with illness. Seems I have to factor that in to my enthusiastic (and often unrealistic) time goals. Okay. But I am fascinated by the idea of what motivates us, how we treasure our creative spark as long as we live, and why. Do we lose our mojo because we get old, or do we get old because we lose our mojo? You don’t need me to answer that, do you?!

Let’s change sleep to rest and re-visit the concept of rest as conscious resistance, as withdrawal from the culture and our learned dissatisfaction. Let’s re-frame some of this curious exploration and learn to live in the questions – but let’s keep going. We owe this to ourselves, to get to the healing. Let’s honor that inner child and take her out to play…

Betsey Johnson Earrings: https://amzn.to/3KriCFG

May26

I am many other worthy things…

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Lately I’ve been struggling with extreme fatigue. Feeling lousy, my joints are stiff and surprisingly painful, so movement is difficult. I try to limit taking any medications, including Tylenol. My poor liver is as overwhelmed as the rest of me. The dishes are done. The sheets will get changed another day. The lawn mowed another day. The rain will water the garden. Let’s just visit The Unexpected Gypsy today…

May24

Peace and thank you

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My Mother never ever complained. About anything. She would famously say, “there’s nothing wrong with me” when we kids would corner her. We could see the pain on her face. Then she’d say, “there’s a hitch in my giddalong…” or, “the only thing wrong with me is that my children are trying to find something wrong with me.” Every so often she’d finally admit to a headache. I don’t know how she did it. She had five very spoiled children, 6 if you count my Dad, and most certainly many mornings had a hangover. As she aged her hands began to cramp up and become crippled with arthritis like her fathers had.

I am not my Mother. Try as I might to emulate her talent and tenacity, I whine. Regularly. I’m not proud. But today I have a hitch in my giddalong, both physically and mentally. Nothing is really wrong, but somethin’ ain’t right. Let’s just say it’s been a week. I began this week of writing most enthusiastically, setting out to explore the common denominator between fashion, storytelling, and sleep.

I think I do know the connection – it’s creativity, of course. But when I don’t get enough sleep I am anything but creative. Surly comes to mind. Coffee and Morning Pages certainly help. As I’ve talked about since I began this blog over 12 years ago now, Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages practice has saved my life, and certainly my sanity. When I don’t feel like writing – or think I have anything interesting going on, I may write stupid trivia, but I write. Some days I can barely think, and I might start by “reporting” to myself, the weather, the night’s holdings, any plans for the day, all of my frustrations, what I’m most surly about, and eventually listing things I am grateful for – even if I don’t feel grateful. Sometimes I can write myself free; sometimes I can’t. By free, I mean through a change of mental state, from anxiety or perfectionism to optimism and more creativity. It’s an invisible door that I have to find by feel.

But the real goal is always peace. Creativity is the how. It’s how I get to peace. It’s how I shift out of fear and toward expansion, possibility, and hope. It’s how I re-member myself. And that, quite simply is what fashion, storytelling and sleep have in common. Fashion, design, architecture, color – the ideas of others that excite and inspire me. Storytelling, mine or others, that incite curiosity and invoke my sense of human-ness, of belonging. And sleep, even if it wasn’t enough…dreams or nightmares, rife with the potential for more. These simple elements get me up, curious about what the day might hold, moving forward.

Ever forward, toward peace and thank you.

May22

before the world got in the way

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If I’m honest, I am needy much more often than I let on…it’s ugly. Like most of us, I grew up in a household that equated personal need as weakness. The culture, the times, reinforced this belief. But make no mistake – it’s a belief system. Learned. Un-learnable.

Now in my 71st year I am finally getting around to looking at what I want from life. What do I really – really – want? How much time and energy have I spent pursuing things that I thought I wanted, but that didn’t work? Why? Along the way too many compromises were made because of co-dependency, in an effort to make relationships and houses and jobs and situations work that were not an organic fit for me. Know thyself takes on a whole new meaning when life isn’t working. It turns out self awareness is key to being happy and healthy…duh.

Living in the Detroit suburbs in my 20’s, divorced far too young after marrying far too young, I sought counseling. The counselor, Jo, lived around the corner from me. She taught the first nationally accredited hypnotherapy program for Wayne State University, and she taught private courses in NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming.) She was a huge influence. Shortly after we met through a mutual friend, she told me that the quality of my life experience would be directly reflective of my communication skills. I told her she’d lived in California too long. My usual objection to her platitudes was “I want tangible evidence.” It was my own feeble 1980’s rendition of “show me the money.”

She encouraged me to enroll in a weekend workshop on psychic development using NLP techniques that was being given at nearby Marygrove College. The facilitators were sisters who lived and practiced in a cloistered community a few hours away. I don’t remember if it was Canada or upstate New York. I do remember the experience vividly. I do remember that I was stressed. The cost of the workshop was a stretch, and it required I negotiate with my former husband to make certain I had my son’s care covered, and plan for backup with my family. And I couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing for fear of ridicule and reprisal.

Besides, I didn’t believe in psychics. Jo had tried to convince me that I had some psychic gift. I had no idea what the heck she was on about. The weekend would prove to me that I was psychic, although that didn’t really mean anything at the time. Isn’t everyone? Obviously anyone can learn these techniques; I just did. I can follow instructions – they told me what to do, I did it, it produced said results. So what? I actually still feel exactly this way, although I do see more value in the practice than before. The 2 people leading the workshop would pull me aside for private sessions and we would end up laughing and crying together. I wish I had paid more attention then, but I did not know how to get free of survival mode and be present, for myself or anyone. I’m learning to pay attention now. Better late than never.

Let me begin by giving an example of the tangible evidence I have stumbled clumsily upon: you cannot begin to understand self awareness if you don’t feel safe. Survival mode is just that – it focuses all your attention on being elsewhere and otherwise. If you are in survival mode you are stuck. Frozen in time. Unavailable. A walking zombie. Remotely controllable. I’ve lived much of life this way, and I do not recommend it.

So, yes, everyone is psychic. The important thing to know is that it is not some unique and weird complex trait. Let’s stop glorifying it as if it is magical and mysterious. It’s just a sense. It’s normal. It’s boring.

Where it’s value lies is in bringing us closer to knowing our selves. Now that we know self awareness is valuable – and not just selfish as we were taught to believe – why not utilize our natural capacities? Let’s salvage some tangible evidence about who we really are, authentically. And what it is we really need and want. It isn’t a shortcut to happiness, but it does short circuit our neurosis, our insecurities. Any time you feel needy or insecure, I invite you to ask yourself where you might have inadvertently picked up someone else’s expectation of you and are trying to fulfill it. I would ask you to pause and conduct a personal inquiry: what is it that I want here? Let’s be archeologists of our own personal culture and unearth those dreams…

May19

we all know this…and yet

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The military has used visualization techniques since WW2. Olympic athletes practice them daily. Grief counselors know this works as well in reverse; they will tell you that having faced a life-threatening situation you must grieve as if everyone involved did, in fact, die. Your subconscious cannot tell the difference between the threat and the reality.

Einstein knew it. I posit that it was the truly valuable discovery he made – far more valuable than splitting atoms. He said, “imagination is the language of the divine.” In more recent scientific studies, since the ability to map the brain while neurons are firing, we now know that intuition and imagination are the same brain function. So, psychic ability can be taught, and it turns out daydreaming is one of the ways to learn it. (Hence the value of the tarot, of storytelling.) Being busy and “productive” all the time is the way to lose it. This brings us full circle around to “Rest As Resistance” – the only way to have freedom from oppression is to mentally remove yourself from the culture; to learn how to think freely again.

I’ve had it all my life. I suspect that being the eldest of five children in a chaotic, abusive household required my “Spidey senses” be hyper-vigilant. And so the natural sixth sense was not un-developed, but allowed to function. Maybe I’m not dysfunctional so much as I’m super-functional.

I remember watching the movie Brainstorm in the theater in 1983 and getting it. This was no longer science fiction. It made for a good screenplay; I knew better intuitively. It was what my son calls “soft disclosure,” meaning it is preemptive propaganda being presented to the masses as fiction so we will readily accept the reality in the near future. And we did. We’re living in someone else’s reality (or dystopia) now. Let’s take back our own.

So, why are each of us not experiencing absolute joy and prosperity? And the answer, as far as I can surmise, is that we don’t practice. We are scared out of our wits of our own power. The only truly meaningful question becomes: WHAT IF? What if time is NOT of the essence and money IS no object?!

What do YOU want? Have I got some stories for you…

May18

Preservation Resource Center…

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WHO isn’t up for some preservation resources?!

I have often felt like my Dad was born in the wrong place and time – for which I’m grateful, of course (because…well…me.) He was gay, for one thing. He confided that to us after my parents 27 year marriage ended in their forties. But that was not something he was safe to disclose as a younger man, born in 1933, working in the factories of Detroit. He and my Mother both were talented beyond measure, both visually and musically. They never had much opportunity to be artists; they nurtured and encouraged it in us children. The expression that could not be contained, or even managed, was their rebellious spirits. You’ve heard me say that my parents were beatniks in the 50’s and became hippies in the 60’s…he did like to sport a colorful bandana around his forehead.

He played the piano, daily. We had a baby grand tucked in the corner of the living room where you would often find him tinkering. He played all the classics, but honky-tonk was his passion, and I suspect his sanity. I’m not exaggerating that his voice sounded like Frank Sinatra, and he was extraordinarily handsome throughout his lifetime. Circumstances being different, he’d certainly have given Sinatra some competition.

My father was not a particularly kind man. In fact, I’ve identified him in my older years of therapy as a narcissist, a sociopath. A man of extremely high intelligence and very low empathy. But I can’t help wondering who he might have been if born in a more tolerant time and culture, were he given even a bit more freedom of expression. Repression forces our personality out sideways in unhealthy choices, into addictions and immature abuses. I’m but one child of that fact. Please, God, may we finally learn that now, if we are to have any chance at all of a healthier future. Preferably before another world war. Preferably before the complete collapse of this empire. We have all suffered the consequences of oppression. Our society, our country, is bereft because of it. Our collective spirit is bound by grief, but we shall each know it personally. It’s our wake-up call.

Yesterday I discovered a fabulous new (to me) YouTube channel. Sorry (not sorry) to report – but I am a YT junkie. And home tours are my guilty pleasure, but I’m ever so picky. I want a lot of visual grist. This channel features restored historical homes of New Orleans, post Katrina. Let’s explore a few of these treats this coming week, beginning with this story, which brought me to tears for obvious reasons. THIS was so much like my childhood. Freeze this video on any frame at all and I will point out at least three things that spark memories. I am an endless fount of story, and I’m done apologizing for that. What awareness does this treasure spark for you?

May10

Let’s Get Medieval

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I’m kind. Until I’m not. And lately, I’m not a lot. Something happened to me. I’m not sure when. I know it began about a decade ago, living in Manville. Only those closest to me know what that means, but here’s the short version: I was in an unhappy marriage – again. And feeling like an enormous failure for being there. Would I just never catch on? We had moved my elderly father in with us as he could no longer live alone. He came with Hospice care, which is only available with a terminal diagnosis. He would be taken off Hospice before the six months expired. Fortunately, he did not. In fact, he would live another several years.

Then my brother came to “stay” while getting his feet back on the ground. He stayed for three and a half years. He, my father, and my husband (17 years my senior) all hung out together quite happily while I went off to work. Their idea of fun was going to the casino and playing the slots, which they did regularly.

They did not clean the house. I did that. They did not grocery shop. I did that. They did do most of the cooking. Because all 3 of them were “meat and potatoes” men. They ridiculed me while I chopped greens for my salads, laughing accusatorily that I was part rabbit…that never got old. They would ignore any pleas for help, or even kindness. At one point in time I’d gotten myself a camp counselors whistle, which I would blow at the kitchen table and announce, “Ass-hole retraining bootcamp begins now!” They rolled their eyes and each went back to their televisions…I’d have been invisible were I not so irritating.

You know where this is going, don’t you? Suffice it to say I was in my own special hell. Then I became ill. Deathly ill. I didn’t realize how sick I was until I finally got myself to the doctor once I was recovered enough to drive (they were busy) and was told that I was lucky to be alive. Apparently I had a blocked duct from passing a gall stone. Helllllloooooo….

In one of many fever-induced nightmares I had been driving cross country alone and my beat up old car broke down (someone call Dr. Freud.) The creepy desert town I was stranded in had become intolerable. I’d realized that they had no intention of fixing my vehicle. In fact, they were fattening me for the slaughter. I waited until after dark and snuck out my hotel window unnoticed. But I did look back once over my shoulder and saw the arched sign above the road into that town: MANVILLE. And I woke up.

I’ve never been the same since. It took a couple of years to fully extricate myself from Manville. Thanks for asking, but no, I have never recovered. And as my sister would say, now I’m “meaner n’ a snake-bit coyote…” Now I’m a lot like Mother Nature: you won’t like me when I’m mad.

I thought that if I survived that nervous breakdown, I’d soon get back to my kinder, gentler self. It didn’t happen; I’m not the same person anymore. But I did have another health crisis less than two years ago. Another wake-up call. And something remarkable also happened then. Hooked up to IV’s in a hospital bed, the nurses were so very kind. And it touched me to my core. It was as if a cellophane capsule growing inside me suddenly burst and all the bad drained out. I had never known kindness like this. Let me say that again: I HAD NEVER KNOWN KINDNESS LIKE THIS. I’m sure it’s been offered many times throughout my life. But I hadn’t really understood it until then. Perhaps we can only assimilate kindness proportionately to the hostility we’ve been faced with. And until that day I wasn’t ready to let that in, to relinquish the bubble that held hostage all my human-ness.

May7

Snowbird from Hades

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It was after midnight in the ICU when the alarms went off. My father’s nurse rang the alert for the crash cart, jumped up to straddle my Dad and began CPR. They managed to revive him a fifth time since his surgery a few days prior. It would only be a couple of hours, however, before a different nurse knew he was in trouble. The chest compressions had broken a rib and punctured his spleen; he was bleeding internally. Again, alarms and a 3am call to the surgeon as they prepped him for an emergency splenectomy. As the eldest of his five children I received the phone call to verbally authorize surgery. I wouldn’t make the hospital in time to see him before he went in.

We were in the second? third? week of this crisis. My siblings and I were exhausted. But I knew what had to be done. I wasn’t ready to lose my Dad. We had been estranged most of my adult life, and only recently reconnected. My father was a sociopath, the kind you hear about on those investigative shows where the neighbors swear that he was such a remarkable man. He was that, too, but that is a story for a different time. Meanwhile, I wasn’t about to let the S.O.B. go without a fight. I wasn’t done with him yet.

I knew where to find him in the spiritual realm, and I knew the angels couldn’t help with that. So I prepared myself to descend into hell and negotiate for his salvation. Don’t ask how I know this practice; I cannot answer. Some would explain it as past life work I guess. But I do know it, and I don’t have any need to understand how. I don’t care how. I put myself into a deep altered state and made the transition. It began with the heat. I suddenly had the thought that perhaps this is what the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion is! I concentrated on pulling my breath in and shallow so as not to jar my body out of the experience, hence failing at the goal.

I was walking down a slope, out of a creepy dark wood, and I began to sense and then see beings approaching my path on either side. I knew not to make eye contact. I had “called ahead” and was expected. This was the welcoming party. These creatures made the movie Alien look like a Disney princess…and they were huge, much larger than I would have expected. They were being restrained by an army of lesser demons I can only describe as resembling Orcs. I knew I had been granted passage and that as long as I kept moving along I would make it through. A grotto seemed to emerge from the smoldering desert floor and I entered, to be greeted again by two dark masses of energy. The stench turned my stomach and I had to concentrate not to wrench. If I had a strong physical reaction I risked waking my body from meditation and losing the opportunity.

These two dark beings escorted me through a tight opening to a waiting area barely large enough to stand. Something was breathing behind a wall? a curtain of heat? A deep gutturall breath. It seemed to be laughing at me. Was I a fool to try this?

I was not allowed to view this authority, nor did I want to. I communicated telepathically: “You know what I’m here for. What are your terms?” A scene appeared ahead of a weird cafe-like setting where many people waited to be served. They were waiting for something to quench their thirst, and I was to be their server today apparently. I had the disgusting sense that they had all come as I had, to petition for their own request, and that somehow who and what I was serving was like a lottery to determine who would be given audience. Not all of them would return home today. I had absolutely no fear. I understood the task and went about my business. And woke in my sweet little guest room, feet soaking in a pan of ice cold water. I will not share here all the details of my experience, but I knew it had worked.

There would be no more resuscitations necessary. My father would go from the hospital to assisted living while receiving outpatient rehab. He would live another seven years, and a great deal of healing would occur, for him, and for us adult children, There would be more astonishing spiritual experiences that would shake my understanding of how the world exists. I will share some of those (much more heartening!) events in the near future – but suffice it to say that I know – as in, KNOW – that the life experience you and I are having is a tiny tip of the iceberg of what is going on here. And we are truly blessed and highly favored.