Category Archives: storytelling

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.

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.

Jan8

the birds still remember

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“If ever there was a story without a shadow it would be this: that we as women exist in direct sunlight only. When women were birds, we knew our greatest freedom was in taking flight at night when we could steal the heavenly darkness for ourselves, navigating through the intelligence of stars and the constellations of our own making in the delight and terror of our uncertainty.” – Terry Tempest Williams

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” – Galileo

Oct11

True Confessions

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Thank you for indulging me this week as I shared my fascination with murder mystery television series. I make jokes that I feel homicidal at times; I hope you know that I can’t really wrap my head around that. I know that most murders are crimes of passion, and almost always committed by family members (after all, who can infuriate us more?) but it is hard for me to imagine losing control to the point of becoming violent. Mean, yes. God knows I have said some very ornery things to the people I’ve loved and respected most. If you’ve ever won an argument with me, it’s because I let you. That is not something to be proud of.

Like generations of girls before and after me, I was raised not to express anger. Sugar and spice and all that…seen and not heard. I learned to stifle anger with the best of them. The very best of them being exemplified by my Mother. I don’t believe I ever saw or heard her angry. And I do believe that is what killed her. She was never angry until one day she was sick and full of cancer. A particularly aggressive, fast growing cancer – liposarcoma. Cancer of the fat cells. She didn’t have any fat. She weighed about 90 pounds. She had been struggling with anorexia. It was not nervosa, it was a medical type of anorexia where she simply had no appetite.

One morning when she suddenly couldn’t walk we rushed her to the ER and within 24 hours she had emergency surgery. They removed an eleven pound tumor from her tiny, weak body. She would live another eight months. Her oncologist, who had also been my sons’ cancer specialist and would later become my sisters’, told me “it’s the cancer of unexpressed anger.” I believe him. And I know exactly what it was about. If anyone ever had reason to commit murder, she did. She thought about it. She talked to me about it one day, devoid of any emotion in her voice. And I understood completely. But she didn’t do it. She really wasn’t capable.

I don’t hold back anger anymore. I let ‘er rip. I’d get out of the way if I were you. I might scream and even throw stuff – but not at you. I abhor violence. I’ve been the victim and the witness to it more than I care to report; it grieves me deeply. We were given a clear divine directive: on earth as it is in heaven. There is no excuse for physical violence – NONE – ever. That includes hunting sentient life, and any mistreatment of animals. And it includes war. It has no justifiable place on this planet. PERIOD.

If you have violent outbursts, do whatever you must do to learn how to manage your anger before someone gets harmed, including yourself. Get help somehow. One of the ways I channel my angry fantasies is to read or watch murder mysteries. I love good storytelling. I like problem solving, and hatred and bigotry are problems. Big problems. I must confess, however, that I vet these mysteries ahead of time as carefully as possible. If I do see the violence take place I will have nightmares and be unable to sleep afterward. That’s why I like the genre called “cosy mystery.” You never see the attack. There is little blood. I want the violence pre-managed for me, thank you. Keep it cosy. And believe me, the irony is not lost.

Believe me, also, when I tell you that if I do ever decide to commit murder, it will be slow and painful; absolutely premeditated. They won’t see me coming. I will never get caught. But don’t worry, it won’t be you.