This Post Has No Title.

Originally posted July 24, 2015

I posted to Facebook today. I hadn't done that in weeks. I was bubbly and seemingly-confident. I posted because I'm trying to fill a retreat. I went for bubbly and seemingly-confident because people don't want to attend retreats with a facilitator who can't understand why their children love them so much, do they?

They want spunk. They want shiny. They want real, but not too real. Right?

I don't know how to play this game.

Finding the right mix of real and vulnerable and you've-got-this! and but-above-all-be-humble?

It's fucking exhausting. I don't know how to do it. I don't know what you want.

I'm struggling.

I have this friend who's an addict, too. She's been sober for a year longer than me and fuck if she doesn't read me - my face, my body language, how I eat motherfucking French fries - with an astonishingly clear sense of what it all means. She knows that silent French fry eating followed by stealthily handing the plate to the dish guys is a sure sign that something's up.

And she knows that if, like tonight, I sit at the bar drowning my still-present-silence into bite after bite of Lemon Trifle Dessert Thing, that she needs to hold eye contact with me for a second too long to make sure I'm good.

I am not good.

I mean, I'm good, you know, in the sense that I'm not in danger of drinking or smoking a cigarette or orphaning my children.

But I do not feel good. Not at all.

And yet here's the thing: I know I need to fucking feel this way. It's the trying-to-avoid-the-really-nasty-feeling-feelings that's made me circle back to this place over and over again.

I used to drink when these feelings of worthlessness and can't-I-just-become-a-hermit? popped up. I'd do some shots, go to sleep, wake up feeling like a piece of shit for not having any self control, and then avoid thinking about any of it until 4:00p, the magical hour when I'd start the cycle of you don't have a problem/avoid feeling feelings!/alcoholics only drink in the morning OH MY GOD STOP THE VOICE IN MY HEAD.

Then shots.

Then repeat.

Then I got sober.

But enough with the fucking backstory. Those of you who've been around here for more than a year have heard it an embarrassing number of times. I need to stop mining my past for answers to my current questions.

The present looks like this: I can't thrive in the society we live in. Facebook fucks me up. Instant access to everything via my phone fucks me up. Being able to text someone by talking into a tiny microphone fucks me up. Living in my sheltered world of whiteness fucks me up. Thinking and believing that I deserve to have everything show up in my life tied up pretty with a fucking hot pink bow?

All of this shit - I don't thrive in these conditions.

And yet rarely do I stop and remind myself that I can fucking choose to get off the hamster wheel.

I think because these things are there - technology, blind privilege, the expectation of an unearned state of pleasant perfection - that I must consume them. I think that if I don't, I won't exist.

Are people even living real lives that matter if they're not talking about it online? That's a serious fucking question. Do we matter to anyone if they can't connect with us through clicks?

How in God's name did we get here.

The fact that I know what I'm here on this tiny little speck of a planet to talk about is maddening to me when I feel like this.

I'm here to talk about feelings, about emotion, about how essential it is to the survival of our civilization that we start to actually feel our feelings - not just the easily consumed ones - and, more importantly, how we hold space for others to do the same while in our presence.

I've read enough to know that the things this voice in my head is telling me - that I have nothing to offer, that I'm a pathetic attention whore, that I don't deserve to have close female friends, that I am unequivocally ruining my children's souls - are bullshit. I know that's just my mind, getting all uppity. I know that's not Me. I know that Me is, instead, something Universal and untouchable and fucking holy and golden and light-filled.

I KNOW THAT.

I know that like I know that gravity exists and that the flowers will come back once the snow melts.

I know it.

But I can not yet sustain feeling it for more than seconds at a time. When those seconds open themselves to me I can hardly believe how beautiful they are. The light around me amplifies. My mind gets quiet. As I realize it's happening it's almost over; I grieve its loss before it's fully gone.

I want those moments. I crave them. Often, they come while I'm washing the dishes.

So.

You can find me here.

You can find me here and in my town and at my favorite coffee spots.

You can drive into my driveway and park your car and read your book on my porch.

We don't have to talk.

Only if we want to.

I’m gonna learn a new game.

Fucking exhale,
*E

A Super Soul Glitter Recap.

Originally posted April 1, 2015

Our weekend ended with us twisted into a spiral.

We were standing there, all of us connected, beating, a throbbing mass of female possibility.

I wept, tears falling onto hands that were not mine.

I hadn't been sure how to let them go.

We'd been standing there in a circle and I didn't know what to do.

One of us said, "I have an idea.  Emily, you spin into the middle."

All of our hands were still connected.

"And then we're all going to spiral in around her and then around each other."

When the movement stopped, I was surrounded.  They all squeezed in.

"Em, you can rest your head on my head if you want." 

I let my head settle onto someone else's head and if we'd had the time I could have napped there, standing and squeezed, for hours.

Sometimes it feels like if you talk about holy things, they'll disappear.  

And here's the real truth: I don't want to tell you about what happened in our room.

Because ten women came together and shed every layer of bullshit they could bear to part with.  We told each other things we'd never fully told ourselves.  We wrote things down in little notebooks and when we read the words aloud- the feelings that'd been sitting in the dank shadows for so long they'd nearly become immobile - we had to remember to breathe. 

I haven't been able to describe how it felt to walk myself down the aisle at my wedding.  

I haven't written my children's birth stories.

Some moments are alive. 

They change you and shape you and then drop you back into the world, rubbing your eyes.

New.

*E.

What I Learned From My Planner Addiction.

Originally posted August 26, 2015

Every addiction we have or had or think we maybe used to have can trace its deep and tangled roots down to a feeling.

My well-documented planner addiction has been burning, slow and hot, for quite some time.  Once the wayward cousin of my drinking addiction, my planner obsession became the golden child once recovery hit.  For years now, I've searched for The Perfect And Completely Life-Altering/Life-Affirming Planner that would make my life feel how I wanted it to feel.  

There's so much hope lying in those pretty little books.

I've used the Arc system.

I've used Emily Ley's Simplified Planner.

I've used Passion Planner.

I've used the Flourish planner.

And most recently, I (once again) made my own planner out of this super cute notebook from Staples:

It was a monthly layout, and every deadline, event, or appointment needed to fit into one of those small squares.  I liked it that way.  There were also sections to track meditation and thank you notes that needed to be written, as well as a big, general notes/lists/thoughts section.  But with school and work gearing up again, I started to get squirmy with my self-made planner.  See, the reason I decided to make my own in the first place was because almost all of the other systems I mentioned break each day down into some sort of detail; some hour-by-hour, some simply day-by-day.  Even the day-by-day breakdown has, historically, stressed me out as soon as it's been time to actually begin; the definitive nature of it all freaks me out.  How am I supposed to know EXACTLY WHAT TIME I'm going to fold these baskets of laundry!?   Please stop being so bossy, Planner Creators, what with all of your STRUCTURE.

I kept trying to make myself into a daily or weekly planner gal, but in the end I just wound up with a big ol' pile of what felt like (expensive) failure.

Last Thursday night, all of this came to a head.  I'd had a rough night, having fallen deeply down the rabbit hole of I'm A Giant Piece of Garbage Who Doesn't Deserve Anything I Have And Will Likely Never Succeed Because: Garbage.  I eventually found myself sitting outside.  I looked up and said aloud, "What is wrong with me?  Please - anything - help me."  Then I stood up. I straightened my shirt and my shoulders and I marched inside and fired up the laptop.  

I had no idea what I was looking for.  I had no plan.  But soon, I found myself on the website of a woman who'd done a giant planner review.  After I read that, I found myself reading a post she'd written about her morning ritual.  She gets up early, makes tea, reads, writes, exercises, and showers.  Now, that's the plan.  That doesn't mean it always happens exactly like that.  But the intention is there for her to have two hours of quiet to herself before her family wakes.  

Reading Kayse Pratt's words made me come back - to myself, to who I want to be.  And I realized in an instant that the reason a more detailed, structured planner has never worked for me is because I've never made it work for me.  In the past, I'd become intimidated when the schedule said to stop doing one thing and start doing another - but I'm not done!  I don't want to do that yet!  DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!  After reading that simple blog post, it all came into focus.

Here's what it boils down to: getting organized = getting more done.  Getting more done = feeling better and more successful.  Feeling better and more successful = jhdftykjshgsk.  See that?  That's my brain short-circuiting because it doesn't know what will happen if I feel better and am more successful.  Because right now?  I'm pretty much more successful than I've ever been in my life.  I have every single thing I really want. And yet I know there's even more out there for me, and my brain doesn't know how to process that because MORE = NEW and NEW = SCARY.

The new New-Age crowd calls this having "upper limit issues".

Let's recap: I realized I needed to get over myself, I took action by looking for tools, I found said tools, and then had a breakthrough realization about how I've been addicted to standing in my own way because I'm more comfortable being moderately successful and mostly happy than facing the unknown of my full potential and joy.

Whew.

All of this ultimately led me to Staples, as all the best realizations do.  The next morning, my children played on the tablets attached to retractable wires while I scoured the planner section with renewed focus and determination.

As I was standing in the Kate Spade for Staples section, I noticed a shopping cart full of color to my left.  I walked over to it and the woman standing near the cart smiled and said, "If you can give us five minutes, we'll have this all set up for you."  I peered into the cart and almost peed my pants.  It was full of Erin Condren planners.  

Now, all of you planner buffs likely understand why this was exciting.  But if you're new to this, lemme tell you what: Erin Condren's planners are a pretty big, fun deal.  They're colorful and sturdy and have just enough extra Notes pages without being too bulky.  Erin's an entrepreneur who's made it big and I admire her.  (It's worth mentioning that I was this close to buying one of her planners the night before online, but didn't because I just really wanted to see the inside of it.  I chose to be responsible and was rewarded.)

I tried hard to busy myself for five minutes while the nice lady stocked the shelves.  I semi-succeeded.  Once her cart was empty, I swooped in - "Thank you!" - and started studying.  There were many different covers and there were two different weekly layouts - a vertical weekly and a horizontal weekly.  I opened up both and laid them side-by-side.  I liked that there were no hour-by-hour sections, and in the end, also liked that the vertical layout was divided, by day, into three sections, presumably for Morning, Afternoon, and Evening.  I flipped to the back and discovered not only a thick, file folder-style page for loose papers, but a clear, resealable plastic envelope for things like stamps and business cards.  I might have gasped.

 Sold.  

I picked out a few accessories - a clip-in-able, laminated meal plan, some color-coding stickers.  I paid, waved my kids over from their tablet trance, and when they came almost immediately and without complaint, I knew the heavens had listened the night before.

:::

Like every other addiction I've ever had - shopping, alcohol, Facebook, seeking self-worth via this blog - The Planner Addiction was never really about planners.  It was about fear.  Fear of success, fear of becoming.  Getting stuff done, having a life that flows well and feels good, and succeeding in ways I haven't even dreamed of yet? I was surprised to realize how scared I've been of that.

But the gears are beginning to creak and turn.  I've successfully created a morning routine that involves 5:00am, me, meditation, my bike, and a good book.  I'm getting laundry turned over before the kids wake up.  Most importantly, I'm functional and ready when they do wake up, which makes for the kind of flow-filled mornings I've been craving.

I'm not a Bible reader, but I read something recently and chose to extrapolate what I needed to hear from it: "God doesn't promise to save us from the flames.  But He has promised to be with us as we walk through the fire." (Isaiah 43)

We're not doing it wrong because it's confusing or uncomfortable or harder than we thought it would be.  Life is sometimes hard because it's life.  There will always be flames.  And running to different addictions can feel like the natural thing to do when we don't want to face the heat.  

But if you take one thing away from this post (other than a burning desire to run to your nearest Staples) please let it be this: face the heat.  Turn right toward it.  Look your flames in the eye and feel them burn.  They will not kill you. They just want to see how close they can get, how bold they can be.  Once they see you're immovable, they're gone.  

All that from a night looking up, asking for help.  

Who knew transcendence came through planners?

xoxo,
*E

When My Daughter Told Me To Stop.

Originally posted September 9, 2015

It's hot here. The air, it's been like water; one feels thick and slow-moving, as if existing in slow motion.

My daughter is especially sensitive to such heat. Her face grows red from the most minimal exertion. Sleeping is challenging.

I've noticed lately that her go-to response when challenges arise is to complain. I'm not sure why it surprises me, coming from a mother like me, that she complains with her whole self; 'half-assed feelings are no feelings at all' could be our mantra. The complaining first begins with words, as complaining often does. It then moves on to full-body shaking, the kind where you scrunch your fists and do a tiny little jump up with board-straight legs. Do you know the kind I mean? Let's call it full-body-exasperation. After that the tears start, as does the angry tone of voice that gets tossed toward anyone who crosses her path. I often feel that if I don't intervene in some way, she'll spiral down into a child's version of hopelessness, getting lost inside a sadness she can't remember wandering into.

Such was the scene tonight, so hot and sticky, when bedtime avoidance was reaching a critical mass; I felt I needed to reign things in before she took a turn toward a This Bedtime Is Never Going To End And You'll Probably End Up Yelling So Just Cue The Guilt Now sort of tantrum.

"It's hot," she complained. "I think I'm allergic to this heat. And I think my feet might be wide, and so shoes hurt me when we're hiking, and..."

"Sweetheart," I interjected. "I know it's hot. Everyone is hot. Does it feel any better to complain about how hot you are?" She glared at me through the slats of her bunk bed. Naturally, I continued. "You know I'm never going to tell you not to feel your feelings; if you're grumpy because you're hot, be grumpy. But complaining all the time? It's no fun to be around. I get triggered by it because I know people who complain constantly, and it's so, so hard to listen to them. I don't want you to be one of those people."

Aha, I thought, smugly. Now I'm getting somewhere. She won't want to be one of those people.

And so of course, because my pause button sticks and my off switch is straight up broken, I continued.

"You can decide how you want to feel. You can be hot and just accept being hot."

And then she interrupted me because her voice came unstuck and she said the words that stopped me dead. "Mama, I'm not ready for all of this. I'm not like you. You keep trying to teach me everything you know, but you're 34 and I'm only seven. You learned this stuff as a grown-up and I'm just a kid, and..."

BOOM, my head broke free of the haze the heat had caused and I came, quite immediately, to my senses.

"Wow. Um, wow, Isla, you are so right," I said, pausing in an attempt to conjure words that would match hers in truth and wisdom.

"I've been trying to teach you everything I'm learning so I can save you some of the struggles I've experienced. But you're right - you're only seven. You need to just be seven."

"Yeah," she said, smiling at her victory. She then burst into tears. I sensed she was relieved to have said what she'd likely been holding in for quite some time. And let's not forget: telling hard truths to people we love is an emotional business.

"Oh my God!" I shouted after consoling her for a moment. "Am I just the bossiest bossy lady ever!?"

"Haha, YES," screamed both children, together, glee-filled. I was human, too.

See, I am human, too. Note to self, note to self.

"Honey, I just need to tell you one more thing." Many minutes had passed. Her brother had fallen asleep. "My only job is to love you. To love you just as you are. It's not my job to tell you who or how to be. All I'm supposed to do is love you."

I know that's simplistic. I know that's not the whole story of motherhood.

But in that hot, nighttime moment, it felt like the only pertinent detail worth putting out into the darkness, the one she might remember many years down the road, the detail she'll maybe mine from way, way back, mid-struggle, mid figuring shit out for her own self one day.

:::

This slight tension between me and my daughter has been present for a few weeks now. She's growing up, not a little girl anymore, but not quite big one yet either. She needs and wants me, and I need and want her, and yet something is new. Something is different.

The other day I was expressing my concerns to my husband. "I'm just worried. She's growing up. She's seven, and that's the age when my first real memories kick in. I can't be inside her brain with her, and I want to know what's going on in there. I want to support her - who she is, how she feels - and at the same time, I want to push her to be the very best of who and what she is."

And then my subconscious let a dam down and a flash flood of memory filled my brain. See, my daughter is, right now, the exact age I was when everything fell apart. When I woke up and found my dad sleeping on the couch. When he tried to explain it away, but I could feel that he was hiding something. When he moved out and bought the two rose-colored loveseats. When my parents said things they did and didn't mean, their everythings falling apart, too.

My daughter is the age I was when everything spiraled out of control, when my inner world needed to learn to fend for itself, when I discovered that feelings were dangerous.

So lately, I've been looking at her and her increasingly complex Self and my subconscious has been screaming, Just deal with it, girl. Get over yourself. Life is hard. I don't want to hear about it.

My subconscious - my surely-weary subconscious - is still trying to protect me, and she's been threatened by the purity of my own daughter.

Writing that truth just made me nauseated.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Tonight my up-too-late daughter padded quietly downstairs. "Thank you for what you said to me," I whispered, pulling her into a hug.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she whispered back, a huge, proud smile on her face.

A few minutes later, as she made her way back up the steps, from the kitchen I heard her stage-whisper, "I love you infinity billion times two, Mama."

"I love you that much times a billion," I said.

Because that's all I'm here to do.

*E

My Mother, My Self.

Originally posted September 16, 2014

Remember this summer when I went to the REVEAL retreat in upstate New York?

Every woman in the group - a small cluster of shining souls - was exquisite, ethereal, tapped-in. I felt for much of the time like the lone simpleton, the girl who had no right to be there because she knew so little and was so lost, so wandering. And then, as I'm wont to do, I verbally assaulted all of these celestial women with the fears and insecurities that were bubbling up like an emotional volcano, and they reminded me that, in fact, I was right where I was supposed to be.

With them.

Among them.

One of them.

That was just one month ago. And I'm starting to connect some dots.

I went to REVEAL with no expectations. I knew that something would happen for me there, but did not preemptively decide what that something would be. I was desperate for some clarity about my business, but knew that if I forced myself into the Figure Out How To Monetize Yourself box, I'd miss out on something spectacular.

As we got to know each other, and as we felt more and more comfortable asking questions that helped drag out answers we might not have expected, I was surprised and confused to hear myself talking about my sadness over my relationship with my mother. Tears came immediately, and I felt, in my body, incredibly out of control. "Where is this coming from? I wasn't expecting this. Why am I doing this now, here?"

I've never written about my relationship with my mother. It's such a huge part of my life that's been so completely absent from this typically-revealing space that I truly can't believe no one's asked me about it. I've been terrified, really. Scared to hurt her by admitting that things are hard. Afraid of the emails I might get from folks telling me what I terrible daughter I am - people that think they know all they need to know.

My mother and I don't talk often. We email occasionally about my children - questions and answers about books and visits - but nothing much beyond that. This isn't where I want us to be, and I don't think my mother's for it either. Yet the alternative - frictioned conversations that leave both of us feeling raw and tangled - wasn't working either. Not talking about this facet of my human experience has been making me crazy. I feel like I can't think straight because I'm uncovering all of this new information about who I am, and yet I'm not processing it fully because, for me, processing fully means writing here.

Old information - the things that have happened, the things we've felt, the things we've shouldered - doesn't leave our bodies until we dig it out. Instead, it sits in our cells, making us sad, sick, unhappy, angry, confused, lonely, self-doubting. It sits there hurting us over and over again until we're in a safe enough place to bring it up, feel it, and release it. The spiritual support I received at REVEAL was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I was witnessed so thoroughly, so completely. And I was granted the honor of witnessing. The expectation that whatever was coming out was just the thing that needed to come out was freeing, and allowed trust and faith to build.

I was unprepared for my relationship with my mother to become the focus of my time in the mountains, and yet I'm beginning to understand why it was. I needed a safe space to go deeper than I'd ever gone before. I needed an extended, focused time to really let myself feel the depths, without interruption. I needed to be held, witnessed, seen.

Because now that I'm home, amid the reality of my full, vibrant life, I'm realizing how challenging it is to partner deep, old feelings with daily living. It's hard. I'm stealing moments to read, moments to breathe, moments to look. But the power and safety of that circle of ladyloves was unprecedented - and powerfully necessary - for a wandering girl like me.

I am fully aware of the fact of my adult-ness, of the very real truth that I am responsible for myself, my life, and my circumstances. I am simply on a fact-finding mission, wanting to understand the bedrock of who and what I am. Not so I can blame the architect, but so I can know how to successfully rebuild.

That's all I want.

A strong, successful rebuild.

Love,
*E