anxiety

I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to post it again because I’ve told this story more in the past week than I have since it happened. 

We have a choice. The future, your future, the future of the entire world—it isn’t written yet. So…regarding this virus, how bad do you want it to be FOR. YOU. Your future is fluid right now and it’s asking for direction.

If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And please, don’t give away the ending.

In the spring of 2010, I went to Hawaii with my dear friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after the death of my store, Atik. Sudden loss can strip a person of their trust in life—and themselves, and I was not lucky enough to escape that unspoken step of the grieving process. Besides, misery loves company.

Oh, who am I kidding? We went to drink Mai Tais, eat like escaped death row convicts, sit on the white sands of Waikiki Beach all day gossiping and people watching—and get massages.

All we did was laugh. Well, he laughed, I cried—then he laughed at my crying. Then I cry-laughed. It was wet and sloppy. Lots of running mascara and snot-bubbles.
You get the picture.

About mid-way through our seven-day trip, I got the sense there was going to be a tsunami.
You know—like you do…
That evening when Wes met me at the bar for happy hour I voiced my concern. “I want to move to a higher room in our hotel,”  I said, stirring my drink. “I think there’s going to be a tsunami and I’m not going to be safe on the second floor.”

“Did you start without me? How many drinks have you had?” he was laughing, flagging down a waiter in order to join this crazy party he figured I’d already started.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving.”

All I could see in my mind’s eye were those horrible images from the tsunami in Sumatra the day after Christmas, 2004.

His eyes said: Have you lost your mind? But in order to calm my fears, he immediately whipped out his phone and started to look up ‘Hawaiian tsunami’.

“The earliest on record was reported in 1813 or 1814 — and the worst occurred in Hilo in 1946, killing 173 people.” he recited, reading a Wikipedia page.
“So it happens kind-of-never, and I’m okay with those odds.” He raised his drink to toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami!” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.

Still laughing, he mumbled under his breath, “But if it does happen, which it could, ‘cause you’re pretty spooky that way— it will be one hell of a story.”

The first week of March the following year, 2011, our great friends, the ones who ride the world with us on motorcycles, asked if we wanted to join them at their condo in Maui. You don’t have to ask me twice to drop everything and go to Hawaii. I was printing our boarding passes before I hung up the phone.

On the beautiful drive from the airport to Lahaina, the air was warm and thick with just a hint of the fragrance of tropical rain as we wove our way in and out of the clouds that play peek-a-boo with the sun all day on the Hawaiian Islands. With a view of the lush green mountains formed from the ever-present volcanoes to the right, and the deep blue Pacific churning wildly to our left, that place really felt like Paradise Lost.

That’s when it hit me. I turned down the radio of the rental car that was blaring some five-year-old, Top Forty song.
“We’re going to have a tsunami,”  I announced.
It didn’t feel like if — it felt like when. A certainty.
“I think we’re more likely to have a volcanic eruption than a tsunami,” my hubby replied nonchalantly, turning the radio volume back up just in time to sing along with the chorus.

Damn, I love my husband. There he is, happily cohabitating with all the voices in my head without batting an eye. Most men would run for the hills. He just stays rational. A volcanic eruption in the Hawaiian Islands is the rational supposition.
God love him.

I had never mentioned my premonition from the trip the previous year—too odd; but I let loose for the remainder of the drive, wondering aloud about what floor their condo was on and worrying if it would it be high enough. Having never been there before, neither of us had any idea and I’ve gotta tell ya,  I breathed a sigh of relief when the answer came via text. The sixth floor. Their condo was on the sixth floor, overlooking the pool, facing the ocean.

We spent the next week eating and drinking amazing food and wine, snorkeling, swimming, driving around, and whale watching. As a matter of fact, the ocean outside of our resort was a veritable whale soup.

There is a passage between Maui, Lanai, and Molokai (both which we could see in the distance), that the whales like to use instead of the open ocean, and we could see them breaching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active. “It was extraordinary!” The guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like that one!

Two days before our departure, on the eleventh, it all seemed to come to a screeching halt.

The ocean was as passive as a lake. I hiked down the beach to a little cove that was supposed to be like “swimming in a tropical fish tank”—nothing. Literally no fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed. Suddenly, there were no whales.

That night after my shower I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip to catch the results of American Idol.
We made dinner at home that night and I was just the right amount of sunburned, buzzed, full and sleepy.
As I got dressed and dried my hair I casually flipped around the channels. American Idol, Baywatch re-runs, CNN. Then I saw it.

The bright red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen screamed: JAPAN HIT BY 9.0 EARTHQUAKE—TSUNAMI IMMINENT!

I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys, Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I grabbed the remote, but it looked like something that powers the International Space Station, so I threw it toward my husband.

“Oh, I don’t want to watch TV…” I heard someone say, but Raphael could tell something was wrong. He said later that it felt a lot like 9/11 when everyone was calling and the only thing they could manage to say was, turn on the TV!

“CNN. Find CNN!” I was so freaked out I could barely speak.

When the images came up on that big screen HD TV they were even more terrifying.
It was a helicopter shot, high above the coastline of a small city. There was a wave with a white cap as far as the eye could see. it looked like it spanned almost the entire coastline and it was headed straight for cars, boats, houses…and people.

Now we were all transfixed. Silently glued to the screen with the frantic sounding Japanese commentary running in the background. This was all happening LIVE.

The CNN anchor sounded reassuring, telling us that Japan had one of the most advanced tsunami warning systems on the planet. Sirens had started sounding a few minutes after the large off-shore earthquake, warning the population to make their way to their pre-determined evacuation points up on higher ground.

We watched in horror as churning brown water began rushing onshore with a ferocity that was nauseatingly familiar.
It just kept coming and coming. Undeterred by the breakwater…and the thirty-foot wall they had built to withstand a tsunami.

“God, I hope they had enough time,” I whispered.

Suddenly the CNN picture was minimized as the face of a local anchor at the Maui station took up the entire rest of the screen.
“Good evening,” he read off the cue card, “The entire Hawaiian Islands have been placed on tsunami watch due to the large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan. We will keep you posted as scientists get the readings off of the tsunami buoys that dot the span of the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Japan to the west coast of North America. If it looks like a tsunami is coming our way, the watch will turn into a warning.” He swallowed awkwardly, I saw his Adam’s apple quiver.
“Stay with us for further instructions.”

The screen was filled again with the escalating destruction in Japan.

I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.

Then I saw him flinch out of the corner of my eye. It got my attention and when I looked his way his face looked as if he’d seen a ghost. With the remote still in his hand, my husband turned toward me slowly, deliberately.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.

Then with no sound; his eyes locked on mine as he mouthed my prophecy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.

As an aside, I cannot explain to the wives reading this, the satisfaction I felt when the look on his face telegraphed to me that my tsunami prediction had been real and not the result of some questionable tuna salad at the airport.  

Then I snapped back to reality. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Really, the hair on my entire body. Even my chin hairs stood at attention.

The shrill wailing of the Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—the tsunami was imminent.

To Be Continued…

LESSONS FROM A TSUNAMI ~ THE CONCLUSION
(It’s a throwback, I’m not gonna make you wait!)

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen—for a year!

Why in the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, and it was headed directly towards the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Fucking three a.m! Of course, it was coming in the middle of the night!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified!

Ginger was feeling sick and went to bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable. Just like they did on the deck of the Titanic.

I went back to our room, shivering under the blankets with anxiety, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background. Right around midnight, they announced the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way. Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared its throat.

A barely pubescent boy’s man’s voice, extremely nervous, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructed everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night.” His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.

Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm. Maybe Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones?
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination, he was the pimply-faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists what to do during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had!

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out. Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterward, I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds of lounge chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surfboard or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I finally turned off the TV plunging the room into darkness. Once it was quiet I instantly felt a drop in my anxiety level. Say what you will, cable TV can suck you into an endless loop of death and destruction—it’s like a drug. Unhooking the CNN IV, I grabbed my phone, inserted my earbuds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes, I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

Slowly, my mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually slipped into a half-sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me—to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Sumatra, You can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it! To the palm trees only—NOT into the pool—and NOT into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water. We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening, crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees… you can go up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously, the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It may not look like much but it is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool of our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

“First of all, fuck the future, stay in the NOW!” ~ Me

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author, speaker, and all-around wise-warrior-goddess, posted something on Instagram the other day that reminded me of an exercise I was taught back in the eighties when I was blindsided by debilitating anxiety attacks. Between gasping for air and literally feeling as if the sky was falling, I was advised to practice the 5-4-3-2-1 Coping Technique For Anxiety, and it always made me feel better even if I had to do it five times an hour.

Since basically everyone and their mother on planet earth is feeling a bit anxious these days, I thought I’d share it too.

It goes like this:

Stop whatever you’re doing and look around. Notice five things you can see.

Then take a breath and notice four things you can hear.

Breathe…and notice three things you can feel.

Breathe again and notice two things you can smell.
And then finally take a deep breath and notice one thing you can taste.

If you do this a few times a day you will literally bring yourself back to your senses!

What this does, is bring you back into your body, back into the present moment which, even though it feels uncertain and scary, is unquestionably better than living in that zombie apocalypse movie running on the endless loop inside your head.

And trust me, when you’re in your body you make better decisions.
You look out for yourself and those around you.
You’re somebody other people trust.
You call and check on friends.
And you finally, finally clean out that disgusting hall closet!

I know this sounds trite but I’m gonna say it anyway, because what are you going to do to me that sucks more than a pandemic?

Time is constantly moving forward. Nothing lasts forever. And this too shall pass.

I love you, stay healthy, stay calm and carry on,
xox

If I could wish anything for you guys, I would wish you a couple of siblings like mine. 

My younger sister is enough like me to hold my interest (what?) but shows me all the potential available to me if I suddenly get a bug up my ass and decide I want to be a better person. 

It seems our DNA, after seeing what it created the first time, with me, rearranged itself…to try again…to do better…in both my brother and sister. 

She is a much kinder and more generous being than I could ever pretend, even on my best day of pretending—to be.
So much so, that she had the two kids, a boy and a girl, that I could never be bothered to have—and then raised them better than I ever could have, all the while teaching them to love their “auntie”.  For over two decades she has freely shared them with me and my love for them is limitless. So much so that now, on my best pretending days—I pretend they’re mine.

My brother has a heart the size of an Amazon warehouse and we share the same twisted sense of humor. He’s actually made me snort-laugh coffee out both nostrils. If I had the presence of mind to record everything he says, which I don’t—because

1. My last name isn’t Parnas.
2. I’m usually choking with laughter (and swallowing my gum). But if I did I could fill stadiums full of hysterically laughing fans, hire an assistant to steal all of his material, AND chew my gum for me.

He’s also a teller of truths and “asker of the hard questions”.  

The other day, in between yucking it up, when I was complaining about my husband doing some shit that seemed to me to be detrimental to his health and well being, my brother, a card-carrying member of #teamhusband, drilled down on me with one simple sentence, “Well, don’t you have a vice?”

Gulp.

I stuttered and stammered for an uncomfortable amount of time, “Sure, I mean, no, I mean, I don’t know.”

Vice—A vice is a moral failing or a bad habit.  (Because I looked it up) 

What I think he was really saying was: Jesus, Janet, cut the guy some slack.

But I took the question to heart. A moral failing? I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he meant more like a guilty pleasure, only on steroids. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m as deeply flawed and hot messy as any of you, it’s just that at the ripe old age fifty-eleven, I’ve had enough therapy, woo woo voodoo, and spiritual interventions to leave most of that vicey behavior in the rear-view mirror— along with my delightful disposition and perky tits.

Let me also state right here, that I’m in no way trivializing addictions or vices for that matter. I’ve seen both up close and personal and I cannot express how INCREDIBLY grateful I’ve felt my entire life for being blessed with a non-addictive personality.

I don’t know who to thank for that, I only know that if the opposite were true—I’d weigh five thousand tons and be in jail. 

Anyway, he’d made his point, loud and clear, so after we hung up I crawled off my poor husband’s back and decided to go deep diving into my seemingly vice-free life and what I found there was a (wait for it) a vice. (Are you surprised?)

To make the term vice more relatable I kinda re-framed it as “a behavior that we do even though it makes us feel bad or is bad for us.”

Cut to: Last Friday night after Trump’s Impeachment acquittal.  I poured myself the rare glass of whiskey and proceeded to get shit faced. Then, I drunk texted my Bff, barfed up a really nice dinner, and ruined most of my Saturday with a wicked hangover. 

WTF?

Remember me? I’m not a big drinker, ask anyone. I am not who you call to tie one on. I’m the one who drives everybody home and cleans the bathroom.

So, back into my deep “Vice” dive, I dove, looking at exhibit A — Friday Night Drunkenness. What had prompted me to go past my limit? 

Sadness? Yes. 

Hopelessness? Yes. 

Anxiety? Yes. Yes. Yes.

And why was I feeling that way? 

Cable TV and FUCKING TWITTER!

Oh, sweet Jesus Christ on a cracker.

Cable TV—The 24/7, home-delivered, IV drip of fear and outrage. And outraged fear. 

Twitter—240 characters of pure, unadulterated, who gives a fuck what you think? 

Those two things had become my heroin and I mainlined them every day—all day. And like most addicts, I hid it well. I was high functioning. I wrote, and grocery shopped and ordered stuff I didn’t need online. But I also had news and twitter alerts going to my watch and my phone literally (Because, Trump) minute by minute. And like any good dealer they didn’t think twice about interrupting my writing, my peace of mind, or my life.

Especially, that rat fuck Twitter! I don’t say this lightly, but I think Twitter needs to shut down. I mean what is it good for besides sowing division, fear, and outrage and giving certain bullies a way to exercise their “power”? Tell me, I’d love to know how we’re better off with Twitter in our social discourse.

I can’t believe it happened to me! (I know, beyond cliche) I’m sooooo late to the Twitter party! I don’t post and I don’t really read anything but politics (NEVER the comments, the comments are the third rail of social media) that being said—that shit is TOXIC.

Twitter says we’re in a Constitutional crisis. Twitter says it’s 1933 Germany all over again. Twitter says it’s just like the fall of the Roman Empire.

It’s poison. All of it. And I’m addicted. I’m addicted to poison. (Sounds like a vice to me.)

It all started a year and a half ago (a simpler time) with the political screenplay I was writing. I needed to keep myself well abreast of current events and Trump creates those like sixty times a… Blah, blah, blah! There I am, making excuses about why my vice isn’t really a vice.

So I deleted it. I deleted Twitter on Sunday. That’s when the twitching and reaching for my phone every six seconds began. At least that’s when I noticed it.

Don’t be fooled the detox is real. But don’t worry about me. I’m taking it slow. I only look at half of my news alerts.

But then…Shit went down at the DOJ yesterday and I wasn’t sure what level of outrage to feel. Because we’re always at DefCon 5. What did Twitter have to say?

I unconsciously reached for my phone. Put it down. Did it again. And again. And again. Like those rats who push the button for a fix. After a minute, it passed. The twitching, the wondering, all of it. And I have to say, so far, day three, I feel better. Calmer. Like the world won’t end if I don’t “like” a tweet.

Hi, My name is Janet, and I’m a news junkie and a recovering Twitter addict. And I’m better when I’m not marinating in fear and outrage. I’m smarter, more strategic and able to make clearer decisions about what happens next. 

Carry on,
xox

cheers!

“Are you waking up feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and insecure for no apparent reason?
A nagging knot in your gut, a panicked feeling rushing upside you, an unpleasant heat flushing your cheeks?
Yeah, well, you’re not alone.

The period from October 31-December 31 is the darkest time of the year, when the veil between Earth and the Spirit World is at its thinnest…

Forcing you to confront what your soul truly needs to thrive as we close out the year.

It’s a beautiful and natural process in our evolutionary spiral upwards. 

We’ve been sitting in this shadowy energy for a week and while it may feel a bit intense and uncomfortable now…

Just. You. Wait.”*

OR, or…

Is your Apple iwatch, with all of it’s good intentions disguised as motivational “nudges” feeling more like a relentless bully— or your mother? Here’s what I mean.

Breathe. (Uh, I am. I least I thought I was. I am watching Black Mirror so maybe I forgot.)

Time to stand Up. (I’m pooping, so no. And I’ve noticed your timing is a bit sinister. Do you have a hidden camera that I don’t know about?)

But my all-time favorite is: Close Your Rings. (I don’t know who set my rings, but if I find that sadistic triathelete—I will hide their spin-bike shoes and force-feed them carbs.

You’re usually further along by now. (I know! But today I’m sitting on a plane. I have a leg cramp, the guy next to me is Ebola patient zero, and I have to pee but my husband, who is seated next to me on the aisle, just fell asleep. But hey, thanks for the reminder—asshat.)

Keep it going. You did better yesterday. (Really? I did a lot of things better yesterday. Yesterday I made a pot roast, booked a mammogram, and shaved my legs. Yesterday will go down in the record books as a banner day. Not all days are as stellar as yesterday and life is full of disappointments so, back off—or I will cut you.)

Janet, you’re so close. A brisk 16 minute walk should do it. (Okay. I hiked 3.5 miles this morning. Up hill. With the dog. You can just kiss my ass you judgy fuck—no brisk walking will be happening for the rest of the day. Get over it. And don’t call me Janet like we’re friends or something.)

I know I seem testy but these motivational reminders are relentless. And irritating as hell, reminding me several times an hour what a dismal failure I am at standing, moving, even breathing!

I don’t know how you guys feel but I cannot express my feelings strongly enough.

You’re a damn watch! Mind. Your. Own. Business.
Nobody wants your special brand of “motivation”. And if you can’t say anything nice, how about if you don’t say anything at all!

Oh, and maybe for the next two months, you know, during these darkest of dark times, with the air already thick with anxiety, we should all ditch our iwatches—at least until we feel emotionally strong enough to fight back. 

Carry on,
xox

*From https://numerologist.com

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been talking to friends about perfectionism and what a soul suck it is. 

Recently, when I saw a friend spinning out of control, I sent her a “You’ve got this” text—which she promptly corrected for grammar and punctuation. So… I recognize it takes many decades and a ton of face falling before it REALLY sinks in.

Back in 2013 when I first started blogging I was too stupid to realize that anyone would ever read it, so I’d write my face off and press “Post”—spelling and grammar be damned. My compulsion to just get the words out overrode my shame.

So, I guess that was another time when I discovered that MY inner perfectionist had FINALLY left the building.

What about you? Do you freeze when faced with creating something that may not be “perfect?”

I say “Fuck it! Just do it!” (Sorry Nike.) Anyway…

Here’s an old post that explains my thought process on this very subject.
Carry on,
xox

Ah, perfectionism—you rat-bastard.

You are the behind the scenes ruin-er of every event.
You are the “I told you so” inside every mistake.
You are the “It could have been better, you should be thinner, I’m a freak, a fake and a fraud” whispered in my ear at the end of every day.

In short, you are the cause of so much grief.

I’m on to you, Perfection. Like a 22-inch waist, a man who asks for directions, and delicious vegan cheese—you are literally impossible—a myth and an illusion.

Perfectionism, you started for me in childhood.
The dolls lined up perfectly on the shelf, school papers stacked in neat piles, worn thin by rigorous erasing.

Perfectionism, you sabotaged my joy.
You’re a punk. You steal Joy’s lunch money and gives it a wedgie. I see you, Perfectionism, hanging out with those two thugs, anxiety and shame.

Perfectionism, you stifled my creativity.
I know you two cannot possibly co-exist because creativity is messy, I don’t care what anyone says. When you’re in the flow, you can just throw perfect punctuation and grammar to the wind.

Have you ever seen a painter’s studio when they are creating? It is a catastrophe! There is shit everywhere – Empty coffee cups, brushes and tubes of paint in heaps, tarps, stacks of ideas, even some paint on the ceiling (?).

I know you Perfectionism. You would never be caught dead in the swirling vortex of creativity—it might mess up your perfect hair!

When I take perfectionism to a meeting well, yeah, things don’t go well.
It is the bully in the room, taunting me with thoughts of inferiority, constantly assuring me that I’m not good enough (as if I needed the reminder.)
Work harder, be better, PROVE YOUR WORTH, it sneers.

It is my belief that perfectionism is complicit in every nervous breakdown. Most especially, the ones suffered during the holidays.

Listen, I can speak to this with authority.

I am a semi-retired perfectionist.
It started to wane when I got married again. Perfectionism doesn’t compromise, and compromise is to relationships what singing is to musicals. Imperative.

My perfectionism’s exact time of death occurred when we decided to live in our house during a remodel.
Any last vestiges that remained died, (along with the tiny bit of modesty I possessed.)
Residing in so much chaos, dirt, and destruction; I can remember wiping 4-5 inches of plaster and drywall dust off random surfaces in order to sit and drink the coffee we made in the bathroom. For long stretches, the refrigerator was in the dining room and we were sleeping in the garage.

It got so bad I actually started to throw random trash (gum wrappers, receipts) on the floor, fuck it, what’s the use, it’s a disaster, I’d tell myself. The upside was that I’d never in my life felt so FREE! So I ran with it, and I haven’t looked back!

Living in a construction zone is like aversion therapy for perfectionists.

Take off that twenty-ton shield and fly! Or at least trot toward your goals.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not completely void of my perfectionist tendencies. They torture me now when I walk down the street. No longer can I just stroll along haplessly enjoying my surroundings like I did before I turned fifty.

Nope. I worry about my gut. Is it sucked in all the way? Are my thighs going to start a small friction fire inside my jeans? What the hell are my boobs doing and are my shoulders up around my ears causing me to look like I’m doing a Quasimodo impression?

Oh well, old habits die hard.

Maybe you want to talk about how you kicked perfectionism’s ass, or how you’re still struggling? Either way, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. Don’t be shy. It doesn’t have to be perfect. 😉

Xox

This was written waaaaay back in the fifteen minutes when I was eating healthy. But the questions are more useful than ever!
Carry on,
xox

The house is still. It’s the middle of the night, so that’s appropriate.

The only sound I can hear is the whrrrrr of the refrigerator motor, which spends its nights keeping my kale and green drink ingredients fresh.
Damn you stainless steel box of cold air (yelled dramatically while waving a fist).

Rant Alert:
Why can’t my protein, vegetable laden juices taste like a chocolate malt?
Is that too much to ask?
I’m submitting a formal complaint right here and now. This healthy shit has GOT to start tasting better…or else…

Anyway…
My refrigerator has undergone a recent renaissance.
It seems to follow my life’s trajectory. It’s all cleanses, and bitter greens and shit.
I’m home most days writing, so I give myself very few choices so I won’t cheat on fat infused deliciousness. As a matter of fact, there is nothing delicious within a three-mile radius. I’d have to get in my car and drive to get it, and my laziness overrules any craving for carbs, so I think technically, I’m not an addict, which gives me some solace.

What I am is a clear channel…with a bad attitude…in dire need of a cheeseburger.

Back in the day, for about two decades, the freezer in my apartment contained two things: vodka and cigarettes (if you’re just the casual smoker, keeping cigs in the freezer keeps them fresh) not even an ice cube dared show its face. Later ground coffee replaced the cigarettes.

Quick story about how THAT happened.

Back in ’93 when I had my first “energy work” done, a friend came by the apartment to get the skinny. Remember, I had been violently ill for three days.
She was a regular, so she knew about the cigscicles and since she could tell my story was going be juicy, and warrant a smoke, she walked over to the kitchen, which was just to the left of where I was sitting, on the couch, and opened the freezer. Suddenly, she stepped back like she saw a ghost – and slammed the thing shut.
I watched it all happen, puzzled.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her with my head tilted sideways like a dog hearing a high pitched whistle.

My friend still standing in front of the closed freezer door says, “A voice just told me: DONT SMOKE AROUND HER!”
“What?”
“I’d better go.”

Man, the disembodied voices in my apartment in those days were bossy! (PS. Nothing’s changed.)

“Sit your ass down, I’ve got a story to tell.” I barked from the other room.
And THAT was the end of my casual smoking. I tried one occasionally in the years that followed but they made me feel awful, and when something stops being fun, I quit doing it.

Think Jane Fonda Workouts and hot yoga.

So, back to the middle of the night as I tossed and turned and awfulized; mulling over this decision or that.
I finally made the first decision and that was to switch my brain from FU mode to productive mode, remembering all the recent things I’ve heard and read on making life altering choices and decisions.

So, to save you the obsessing, the time, and trouble, here is a list of the things you should ask yourself:

1) Will I regret not making this change? (Regrets are like walking around with a wet coat on. They are killjoys.)

2) Why exactly am I hesitant/ indecisive? Make a list. (The list that you make in light of day will always be shorter than the phone book sized one you make at three AM…just sayin’).

3) What doors will close if I make this change? Do I care? (That one makes my butt cheeks clench)

4) Which choice will make the better story? (Kinda like the movie viewing analogy from Saturday’s post.)

5) How does the choice or change FEEL? (That really should be number one. Check your kishke.)

6) What’s the worst thing that can happen? (Rewind your three AM worries, they’re ALL there).

7) What’s the BEST thing that can happen? (Tiny little list, usually written on a Post-It with a question mark at the end. )

8) What would I tell my best friend to do? (Sans all jealousy, competitiveness, and ego).

9) What’s the “next right thing” to do to stay free of ego? (In other words, check your motivation. Is it pure? Not really? THERE’S your answer.)

10) What choice or change would make me the proudest in five years? (That’s often the clincher for me. Can’t say I’m too proud of myself when I play it safe.)

There you have it. I hope this helps. Clarity is key to making the best choices. That and chocolate.

Love you all,
Xox

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Hi Loves,
Feeling anxious? Fearful of the dystopian future being predicted by the talking heads on cable TV? Take a deep breath…and feel safe. You are safe. All is well. Well-being abounds. And fear is an invented lie.
I should know. Well, me and Dita my dog.
Carry on,
xox

Late one night last week, our dog, a nine-year-old boxer, startled us all awake…

The puppy heard it before anyone. She brought it to our attention by running around the bed, her nails tapping out a sort of morse code S.O.S. on the wooden floor. She may be young, but she’s resourceful.

It was 3 am. My husband got up and went to look into the old girl’s cubby in the wall, her virtual cave of a bed, to see what was what.

Querida (Dita for short) was thrashing around, on her back, legs in the air, doing the cartoon run for her life. You know, the one that gets you nowhere.

I could hear her wild breathing – the snorts and hoarse panting. It sounded like she was in the fight of her life with an invisible foe. Come to find out she was battling her own demons.

It appeared (as reported by a somewhat reliable source, my husband) that Dita had somehow become wedged between the wall and her down filled, hotel bed quality, better than any dog deserves – cushion. A crevice had opened during the night, and while she lay unaware, peacefully dreaming her sweet doggie dreams, it had swallowed her whole.

He reported that she looked like a bug on it’s back, struggling to right itself, only problem was – she was uncomfortably wedged until he was able to free her.

When he pulled her out of what I’m sure seemed to her to be a deep, dark, Grand Canyon sized chasm, my girl tried to shake it off.
She paced; wandering around our dark house, going in and out of every room, as if searching for her lost car keys. Several minutes later I heard her take herself, in her adrenaline infused stupor, outside to pee, after first tussling with the doggie door. I think she just needed the cool, fresh air.

Her breathing was rapid, she was panting, her little heart running a marathon.

As I watched my dog use the ancient instinct she was born with to navigate the terror inside that dark and twisted place that was her mind – I had a realization.

Through some fluke of nature, some law of weird science, Dita really IS my daughter, because here it is 3 am and she is having a panic attack!

Panic attacks used to be my wheelhouse, I know them well. Boy, could I relate.

Curiously, our attacks were identical, the reactions the same – an instinctive, primal, repetitive dance of self-preservation.

I too have woken up flailing like a bug on my back, my brain convincing me of my imminent demise after falling into an invisible abyss. I too have walked the halls, alone, searching for comfort, my hand feeling its way in the dark, touching old wood in the hopes of grounding; soaking up its familiarity. I have not gone outside to pee, (there but for the grace of God), but I have spent the hours just before dawn shaking in the bathroom; waiting for my heart to stop racing.

And it is ALWAYS, without FAIL, 3 am(ish). WTF?!

Have you ever had an anxiety or panic attack? If you have you know what I’m talking about. I would not wish them on my worst enemy. On those unfortunate souls, I wish a bad perm and severely chapped lips. Anxiety attacks, in my opinion, are somewhere along the lines of emotional waterboarding.

They are torture. Self-imposed torture—but torture just the same.

Mine felt like a cross between a heart attack, losing my mind, and being chased through the streets by a Velociraptor. My heart would beat out of my chest, while an elephant or two pulled up a seat right there and got comfy.
I would obsess on my breathing and start sweating, gasping for air – fight or flight in all it’s glory.
The sky appeared to be hung too low, making me feel like Chicken Little.
My sanity seemed elusive, my thoughts raced like a wild animal escaped from its cage.

I have actually looked at myself in the mirror and not recognized the person behind my own eyes.

Sometimes it would be preceded by a stressful situation, but often times not. Hence waking up in a full panic for no apparent reason; which just added confusion to the already fear infused emotional cocktail that was messing with my head.

These three questions ran on a loop inside my rattled brain: Why me? Why now? When will it end?

So, I watched my poor pork chop of a boxer (she’s not fat, just thick in the middle from age – again like her mother) try to navigate her fear, struggling to maintain her sanity. She had believed the story her mind was telling her, and THAT’S when the terror took hold.

She believed she was trapped ( huge anxiety trigger) and it caused her to hyperventilate (classic step two of panic attacks) which then convinced her she was going to die.

Dita did what you do in that situation. You flee, you run, you take a walk, you look for someplace that holds comfort for you—you do whatever it takes to gather your wits.

Once we figured out what was happening, which took us awhile because we were all so groggy (except for the puppy, who thought being up in the middle of the night warranted popcorn, bad TV and a pillow fight) we brought her up onto the bed with us; disoriented and frantic.

Because isn’t that the final solution you come to after you’ve worn out all the other options? That you must eventually find your way back to bed?

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about just that in Eat, Pray, Love.
After spending hours crying on the bathroom floor, begging for mercy from her emotional pain; a voice in her head answered her prayer for guidance, “Go back to bed Liz” was its simple directive.

Since Dita was too scared to go back to her own bed, ( do you blame her? It had tried to eat her alive!) I knew the next step – she had to come up with us. (I would have crawled in bed with my parents during my attacks—if I’d lived at home and wasn’t 25, 35, 40.)

With one hand on her head, I lay there deep in thought, realizing that her fear had been as baseless as mine all those years ago.
She was fine. It was self-invented.
Easy for me to say from where I sit NOW, but it’s true.

Her mind presented false evidence that appeared real. FEAR.
With hindsight, I could see that mine had been just as ridiculous.

After another fifteen minutes, she took a deep, calming breath, settled down, and fell asleep. My husband and I then took a turn, each taking our own relief-filled deep breath.

I continued to stroke her graying, velvet ears, listening to her softly snore.

I’m happy we could help her.
Because of my (our) familiarity with this kind of behavior, we had kept the lights off and stayed calm, talking to her softly, petting and kissing her face. We hadn’t shadowed her, following her from room to room, asking her what was wrong. That would have made her feel more anxious.

Animals can sense energy, they can feel your fear.

No, we did all the things I’ve learned in order to calm myself when I’m in the midst of an anxiety attack. Slow, deep breaths, remaining calm and finding a place to feel safe. Apparently, that works for people and dogs.

If I can tell you one thing, it’s that she is fortunate to be a dog. With a minimum of baggage and tons of good canine instinct, she was able to calm herself in a little less than an hour. That makes her my hero—I only wish I’d been that adept.

Yep, she’s my fearful, furry daughter and clearly, I’m her mom.

Morning you guys,
I say this ALL THE TIME. That the world is better off and safer than its ever been—and most people look at me like I’m wearing an armadillo hat—on my two heads.

But it’s TRUE! I know it is! Yet…
Why are we so invested in being scared to death? Is this a dangerous world? A bad place?

I believe not.  Are you willing to change your mind?
Take a look at this essay by Pam Grout, take a deep breath and know that there are many of us out here who are trying to drown out the 24/7 cacophony of terror.

Carry on,
xox

“Why it’s time for an intervention from the relentless 24/7 media
by ps grout

“Violence is interesting which makes it a great obstacle to world peace and more thoughtful television programming.” –P.J. O’Rourke

Crisis, conflict, and violence are the prevailing themes of our 24/7 media. If some stranger talked to us the way newscasters do, we’d tell them to go jump in a lake. Likewise, if our boyfriends made us feel the way headlines often do, our friends would line up for an intervention. ‘Toss the jerk out on his head,’ they’d say.”

Living in fear sells products, creates economies, elects politicians and keeps the flying monkeys on the job. But it’s not the truth about the world.

The reality is that the world is safer today than at any time in history. The murder rate has plummeted in the last ten years. School shootings are no more prevalent than they were in “Leave it to Beaver” days. In fact, collaboration, goodness and, yes, love are the norm.

It’s just that the dominant paradigm, the one we’ve blindly bought into is “life sucks.” Any thought to the contrary is sidelined immediately by the 27-inch box in the corner of most of our living rooms (and kitchen and bedrooms). In fact, if you pay attention to the box–and most of us use it to form our view of reality–you have little choice but to conclude that murder, rape, war, and genocide is the human condition.

But if you look at it scientifically, the math just doesn’t work out. For every Koran-burning Terry Jones, there are 335,000 ministers who aren’t burning the Koran, who are espousing peace and love and tolerance. For every Scott Peterson, there’s 58.9 million husbands who didn’t murder their wives.

Every day, we’re spoon-fed “news” about missing children, identity theft, the mild-mannered neighbor who walks into work with an AK-47 and a bomb pack and blows up his boss and 27 co-workers.

Why do we think this is news?

On the same day (February 18, 2008), two-year-old Karissa Jones was abducted from her home in Louisville, Kentucky (by her father, as it turns out), there were 53,298 two-year-olds in Kentucky who didn’t get abducted, who were safe and sound at home, happily sipping apple juice from their Winnie-the-Pooh high chairs. Nearly a million children of all ages in Kentucky also didn’t get abducted that same day.

Why is Karissa the “news?”

News, by definition, is new information that teaches people about the world. Picking out what happened to two-one thousandth of one percent of the state’s two-year-olds is not an accurate picture of the world. If you ask me, what happened to the other 53,298 two-year-olds is a bigger story. Or at least it’s more realistic news.

What you see on the newscasts at night, what you read in the morning newspaper is not a realistic perception of our world. It’s an anomaly, an out-of-character thing that happened at one moment in time. News junkies pride themselves on believing they’re well-informed. Because they know what Ann Curry said about the latest layoffs at Boeing and what Morley Safer reported on the earthquake in New Zealand, they smugly believe they’re up on current events.

But do they know about the African-American postman in Germantown, Tennessee who jumped into a lake to save a couple whose brakes went out of their car when they were coming home from a hospital dialysis treatment? Do they know about the Marysville, Kansas attorney who flew, on his own dime, to Israel to donate a kidney to a 10-year-old he’d never met?

Thinking you’re informed because you watch the news is like thinking you understand a zoo when you’ve only seen the “Z” on the entryway sign. It’s not a complete picture, guys. It’s not even a good picture. I’m not going to argue that you can’t find the letter “Z” at any zoo. But if you try to convince me you’re a zoo expert or even that you have a faint understanding of what a zoo is all about because you’ve seen a “Z,” well, I’m sorry, I have no choice but to argue.

Attention-grabbing headlines and newscasts are nothing more than a sales tool, no more “factual” than “The Simpsons.” Isolated incidences get turned into frightening trends and our own thoughts have become conditioned to leap to the worst.

The mission of this blog is to free readers from the straitjacket of the relentless news media. Instead of asking “What’s wrong?,” a question we hear over and over again, I’d like to pose a simple question with the power to change the world: “What’s right?”

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy

“Charles finally attained inner peace by ascribing all the world’s ills to the 24/7 news cycle.”

I lost something very important to me last week. I squirmed. I obsessed. I bargained with God. The very minute I stopped caring…it came back to me.

Pass it along…
xox

I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to post it again.
Partly because there are so many new readers, but mostly because I’ve told this story more in the past few weeks than I have since it happened. AND it is a fuckin’ great story.

If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And don’t give away the ending.

In the spring of 2009, I went to Hawaii with my dear friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after the death of my store, Atik. Loss can strip a person of their trust in life—and themselves, and I was not lucky enough to escape that unspoken step of the grieving process. Besides, misery loves company.

Oh, who am I kidding? We went to drink Mai Tais, eat like escaped death row convicts, sit on the white sands of Waikiki Beach all day gossiping and people watching—and get massages.

All we did was laugh. Well, he laughed, I cried—then he laughed at my crying. Then I cry-laughed. It was wet and sloppy. Lots of running mascara and snot-bubbles.
You get the picture.

About mid-way through our seven-day trip, I got the sense there was going to be a tsunami.
You know—like you do…
That evening when Wes met me at the bar for happy hour I voiced my concern. “I want to move to a higher room in our hotel,”  I said, stirring my drink. “I think there’s going to be a tsunami and I’m not going to be safe on the second floor.”

“Did you start without me? How many drinks have you had?” he was laughing, flagging down a waiter in order to join this crazy party he figured I’d already started.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving.”

All I could see in my mind’s eye were those horrible images from the tsunami in Sumatra the day after Christmas, 2004.

His eyes said: Have you lost your mind? But in order to calm my fears, he immediately whipped out his phone and started to look up ‘Hawaiian tsunami’.

“The earliest on record was reported in 1813 or 1814 — and the worst occurred in Hilo in 1946, killing 173 people.” he recited, reading a Wikipedia page.
“So it happens kind-of-never, and I’m okay with those odds.” He raised his drink to toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami!” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.

Still laughing he mumbled under his breath, “But if it does happen, which it could, ‘cause you’re pretty spooky that way— it will be one hell of a story.”

The first week of March the following year, 2010, our great friends, the ones who ride the world with us on motorcycles, asked if we wanted to join them at their condo in Maui. You don’t have to ask me twice to drop everything and go to Hawaii. I was printing our boarding passes before I hung up the phone.

On the beautiful drive from the airport to Lahaina, the air was warm and thick with just a hint of the fragrance of tropical rain as we wove our way in and out of the clouds that play peek-a-boo with the sun all day on the Hawaiian Islands. With a view of the lush green mountains formed from the ever-present volcanoes to the right, and the deep blue Pacific churning wildly to our left, that place really felt like Paradise Lost.

That’s when it hit me. I turned down the radio of the rental car that was blaring some five-year-old, Top Forty song.
“We’re going to have a tsunami,”  I announced.
It didn’t feel like if — it felt like when. A certainty.
“I think we’re more likely to have a volcanic eruption than a tsunami,” my hubby replied nonchalantly, turning the radio volume back up just in time to sing along with the chorus.

Damn, I love my husband. He cohabitants with all the voices in my head without batting an eye. Most men would run for the hills. He just stays rational. A volcanic eruption in the Hawaiian Islands is the rational supposition.
God love him.

I had never mentioned my premonition from the trip the previous year—too odd; but I let loose for the remainder of the drive, wondering aloud about what floor their condo was on and worrying if it would it be high enough. Having never been there before, neither of us had any idea and I’ve gotta tell ya,  I breathed a sigh of relief when the answer came via text. The sixth floor. Their condo was on the sixth floor, overlooking the pool, facing the ocean.

We spent the next week eating and drinking amazing food and wine, snorkeling, swimming, driving around, and whale watching. As a matter of fact, the ocean outside of our resort was a veritable whale soup.

There is a passage between Maui, Lanai, and Molokai (both which we could see in the distance), that the whales like to use instead of the open ocean, and we could see them breaching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active. “It was extraordinary!” The guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like that one!

Two days before our departure, on the eleventh, it all seemed to come to a screeching halt.

The ocean was as passive as a lake. I hiked down the beach to a little cove that was supposed to be like “swimming in a tropical fish tank”—nothing. Literally no fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed. Suddenly, there were no whales.

That night after my shower I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip to catch the results of American Idol.
We made dinner at home that night and I was just the right amount of sunburned, buzzed, full and sleepy.
As I got dressed and dried my hair I casually flipped around the channels. American Idol, Baywatch re-runs, CNN. Then I saw it.

The bright red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen: Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.

I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys, Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I grabbed the remote, but it looked like something that powers the International Space Station, so I threw it toward my husband.

“Oh, I don’t want to watch TV…” I heard someone say, but Raphael could tell something was wrong. He said later that it felt a lot like 911 when everyone was calling and the only thing they could manage to say was, turn on the TV!

“CNN. Find CNN!” I was so freaked out I could barely speak.

When the images came up on that big screen HD TV they were even more terrifying.
It was a helicopter shot, high above the coastline of a small city. There was a wave with a white cap as far as the eye could see. it looked like it spanned almost the entire coastline and it was headed straight for cars, boats, houses…and people.

Now we were all transfixed. Silently glued to the screen with the frantic sounding Japanese commentary running in the background. This was all happening LIVE.

The CNN anchor sounded reassuring, telling us that Japan had one of the most advanced tsunami warning systems on the planet. Sirens had started sounding a few minutes after the large off-shore earthquake, warning the population to make their way to their pre-determined evacuation points up on higher ground.

We watched in horror as churning brown water began rushing onshore with a ferocity that was nauseatingly familiar.
It just kept coming and coming. Undeterred by the breakwater…and the thirty-foot wall they had built to withstand a tsunami.

“God, I hope they had enough time,” I whispered.

Suddenly the CNN picture was minimized as the face of a local anchor at the Maui station took up the entire rest of the screen.
“Good evening,” he read off the cue card, “The entire Hawaiian Islands have been placed on tsunami watch due to the large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan. We will keep you posted as scientists get the readings off of the tsunami buoys that dot the span of the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Japan to the west coast of North America. If it looks like a tsunami is coming our way, the watch will turn into a warning.” He swallowed awkwardly, I saw his Adam’s apple quivering.
“Stay with us for further instructions.”

The screen was filled again with the escalating destruction in Japan.

I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.

Then I saw him flinch out of the corner of my eye. It got my attention and when I looked his way his face looked as if he’d seen a ghost. With the remote still in his hand, my husband turned toward me slowly, deliberately.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.

Then with no sound; his eyes locked on mine as he mouthed my prophecy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.

As an aside, I cannot explain to the wives reading this, the satisfaction I felt when the look on his face telegraphed to me that my tsunami prediction had been real and not the result of some questionable tuna salad at the airport.  

Then I snapped back to reality. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Really, the hair on my entire body. Even my chin hairs stood at attention.

The shrill wailing of the Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—the tsunami was imminent.

To Be Continued…

LESSONS FROM A TSUNAMI ~ THE CONCLUSION
(It’s a flashback, I’m not gonna make you wait!)

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen—for a year!

Why in the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God for small favors.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, and it was headed directly towards the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Fucking three a.m! Of course, it was coming in the middle of the night!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified!

Ginger was feeling sick and went to bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable. Just like they did on the deck of the Titanic.

I went back to our room, shivering under the blankets with anxiety, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background. Right around midnight, they announced the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way. Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared its throat.

A young man’s voice, extremely nervous, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructing everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night.” His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.
Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm. I was thinking Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination, he was the pimply-faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists what to do during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had!

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out. Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterward, I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds of lounge chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surfboard or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I finally turned off the TV plunging the room into darkness. Once it was quiet I instantly felt a drop in my anxiety level. Say what you will, cable TV can suck you into an endless loop of death and destruction—it’s like a drug. Unhooking the CNN IV, I grabbed my phone, inserted my earbuds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes, I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

Slowly, my mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually slipped into a half-sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me—to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Sumatra, You can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it! To the palm trees only—NOT into the pool—and NOT into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water. We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening, crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees…up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously, the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool, and our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox