Life

This is one of the most requested holiday posts. Happy Weekend ‘y’all!

If you can believe it, and I know you can – I had a dream last night about being a snowflake.
I was with all the other snowflakes, waiting in line to fall to earth.

It was very noisy, because us snowflakes are a chatty bunch.
We have to get it all out before we jump.
All the gossip the complaining and the bad snowflake jokes,(and trust me, they are the worst), because after we leave the cloud – we are required to remain silent.

Everyone was laughing, chewing gum and eating Red Vines, as snowflakes do. Man, there was a lot of excitement in the air!

What I can remember the most, is looking around and admiring, well, really, I was envying everyone else’s designs.
There was such a display of creativity and individuality that it blew my little snowflake mind!

Every flake seemed to be showing their best crystals.
One was really pointed, with great right angles, and deep cuts.
Another had more rounded edges, with huge cut out sections. (Someone had obviously been running with scissors.)

But what I noticed above all else, was that the designs matched their personalities perfectly.

The outside totally matched what was inside.

What strikes me now as I’m thinking about it, was that I was unable to see MY design. I could not get a glimpse of myself.
There are apparently no full length mirrors at that point in line.

As I looked for a shiny surface to catch my reflection, I began to notice how I was being looked at with the same degree of admiration by the other flakes – but of course, even though I had no idea what they saw, I liked THEIR designs better than my own.

I wanted to go back to the “snowflake drawing board” and make just a couple of revisions. I felt inspired. No one told me we could make a nip here or a tuck there.

I had no idea we could be as bold as what I was observing around me.

As I got closer to the front of the line, I suddenly had this realization:

I WAS special and I was good at this,
I had done this many times,
I had fallen as rain,
I had pelted the earth as hail and sleet,
But now, HA! I got to be creative – I got to be a snowflake!

One of a kind – sparkling, crystalline, and magnificent!

All of the sudden there was a hush as we all became more present and very serious. Everybody ditched their gum under a table, gave each other big hugs, making sure not to smear our sparkles, and with a minimum of fanfare, but filled with great pride,

…We jumped. Look for us!

Merry Christmas Loves,
Xox

“I work 8 hours, I sleep 8 hours, that leaves 8 hours for…what?”

I was listening to a podcast today and this “old saying” stopped me in my tracks.

Well, the big, juicy melted piece of gum I stepped in while I was listening and traversing the parking lot at Target actually DID stop me in my tracks. A stop so dead—I walked right out of my shoe.

I kid you not.

Seeing that we are deep into December, I had to park so far away that the actual Target store was just a speck on the horizon. I’m sure someone left their gum, like a bread crumb, to mark the trail back to their car so…I can’t really be mad, can I?
But enough about my glamourous life.

Back to the saying. You know, the myth that implies that there are more than enough hours in a day.

You work eight hours.
Stop laughing.
I know we’re smack dab in the middle of the holidays and what with shopping and wrapping and all—the Elves up at the North Pole have a shorter work day. And better benefits. And terrific catering. Nevermind.

So… you work.

Anyhow, you sleep eight hours. But seriously, who does? I’m lucky to get seven. This morning I woke up at 3 am because I thought I saw an orange glow down the hall and knew for sure the tree was on fire.
It wasn’t.

Too late, adreneline rushes don’t keep regular office hours.

Then I couldn’t remember all of the reindeer names or get that damn song out of my head.
I lay there wondering where on earth my pine nut cookie recipe went and the next thing I knew it was 4am and all I could think about was how good coffee would taste with a pine nut cookie—so I got up and made some. Coffee. Not the cookies. I’m still at a loss.

So…You sleep.

But you guys, that still leaves at least several, maybe four, hours left to do whatever you want.

My friend says those hours are reserved for worrying.
Yikes.
My hubby says traffic on the 101 freeway chews up his spare time.
Jeepers, people.

What about eating?
Sex anybody?
Holiday merriment?

I decided to paint with a broad brush.
“I work 8 hours, I sleep 8 hours, that leaves 8 hours left for… FUN!”

That sounds downright illegal, doesn’t it? Fun? Really? And for eight hours? Oh, sweet Jesus, help me!

But fun can be anything, right?

A glass of pink champagne for no reason?

Maybe it’s staying up after everybody else goes to bed to binge watch Netflix.

What about going out to lunch and catching up with an old friend?

Today, my friend Kim and I played hookie and went to see a movie—in the middle of the day!

How would you complete that sentence? Gimme some hints, I’d love to know.

Carry on,
xox

“Oh, the heartbreakingly beautiful tender weight of being human.” ~ Unknown

I’m tender-hearted.

Truly.

I know I may seem pretty cold-hearted sometimes, but I can be brought to tears by a beer commercial with big horses and dogs. And carols. Oh Holy Night or that incredible duet by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli —that one slays me.

So, yeah. I cry easy. Especially at Christmas.

A “friend” sent me a story with the video of a Santa who was granting a terminally ill little boy’s wish to talk to him only to have the boy whisper at the end of their visit, “Santa, can you help me?” and then die right there in the bearded mans arms.  The man is undone as he weeps through the telling of the story.

Well! That was the cruelest of Yuletide acts so of course I was forced to rip up her Christmas card and eat the fudge I made her.

I will not post it here because it really is THAT sad, but if you need to see it with your own eyes it is currently doing the rounds on Facebook where I have had to do the equivalent of running past it for the past week lest I cry my eyelashes off.

But you’re not getting off that easy. I saw this video and just had to share it with you guys. It is the epitome of the Christmas spirit and that’s all I’m going to say. Except…

I was shocked.

I was touched.

I cried and then I wondered what Oprah,  I would have done in the same situation at the same age.

https://www.facebook.com/unbelievable.wow/videos/289671704767444/

What do YOU think?

Carry on my people,
xox

The energy was a bit frantic this weekend and it carried into Monday.

After all, It’s mid December.

I hiked, had some Facetimes with two of my tribe members whom I love, and then before I started gnawing on own arm I decided to make myself something to eat. These days I’ve been preparing a lovely riced cauliflower dish which I convince myself through the power of my mind and copious amounts of butter, salt and pepper, is perfectly steamed jasmine rice.

Some days it tastes like a big carb cheat. Most days it does not. It tastes like sock drawer lint covered in butter, salt and pepper.

I’m doing this during December because I just so happen to have the ingredients for Toll House chocolate chip cookies in the house and so I consider myself armed and dangerous. Dozens of cookies could be baked at a moments notice so I feel better eating them knowing I had something bland, tasteless, and carb free for lunch.

So you can imagine my horror when I opened the butter dish only to find a sliver of butter left behind and none in the fridge. This sliver should have never been left there. It was barely enough to butter one piece of toast. The culprit, and I’m not naming names, but his initials are RB, should have just used it up and left out the empty butter dish so I would have bought butter when I was out shopping, oh, I don’t know, every day this past weekend.

Anyway, I has just enough time to run to the market to fetch some butter for my lint before my friend Kim was due to arrive, AND I had on the appropriate clothing. I have been known to run to the market for a stray ingredient (not big grocery shopping mind you), in whatever I have on in the moment. Pajama bottoms, a stained sweatshirt and flip-flops, shorts, no bra and Uggs to name a few examples. It’s like I’m running out to the garage, not a public place. So…if you ever see me—I apologize in advance.

Today I had on real pants…a bra…and some proper shoes. This is worth mentioning.

So, I raced to our nearby Ralphs, grabbed a butter (salted, of course), and finally, finally, several poinsettia plants that did’t look as if they’d fallen off the back of the truck. I checked myself out at the Self Checkout (because I am so fast it’s not even fair), ran back to my car in a very crowded and chaotic December parking lot and unloaded my one bag while an SUV waited patiently for my primo spot.

In my rush to expedite the entire process and because I was pressured by that freaking SUV, I took my purse out of the cart and put it down in the back so I could maneuver the dog cushions and a rogue rug I’ve been driving around with for the past day or so.

Hey! The poinsettias were delicate and they needed breathing room!

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was shutting the back when I was finished.
As I flashed a quick smile and an I’m going as fast as I can hand wave (sans the middle finger in case you were wondering), to the waiting SUV, my smile was instantly replaced by the taste of vomit when I realized the back tail gate had just clicked shut and LOCKED itself—with my purse inside.

The last time I locked my keys in the car was…NEVER. I have never locked my keys in the car.

I have one of those new fangled cars that works without keys. It has a push button ignition and the doors will lock and unlock and it will start as long as the key is close enough to smell. I’ve tried to lock it many, many, many times with my purse still in the back seat and the doors refuse to lock. It is smarter than me. It knows things. Yet, somehow the same rules don’t apply to the back of the station wagon.

You know how I know that? BECAUSE I COULDN’T OPEN THE F*CKING CAR!

At least I had my phone in my pocket, so I called my husband who, when he was done laughing, said this:

Me: I locked my purse in the way back of the car.
Husband: How?…Never mind. Looks like you have a walk home ahead of you.
Me: Of course! I can walk home and get the other key! It’s a fifteen minute walk. That’s genius!
Husband: I know. Between the two of us we have one brain that’s firing on all cylinders.
Me: Right?
Husband: Gotta go. I hope I haven’t used my one great idea for the day.

As you can imagine, the SUV lady was NOT happy when I mimed I locked my keys in the car accompanied by the universal forehead slap and the Doh shrug.

So, off I went a walkin’.

This was the perfect opportunity to slow down. Something I decided to embrace. I also decided to pay attention. This was my quaint little neighbor hood that I usually race thru at fifty miles an hour. Walking at a decent clip the first thing I noticed were all of the changing leaves. My God! It’s SoCal, not New England, I get that, but still! Look at this!

One thing I could not avoid noticing was all of the smeared poop on the sidewalk. It was like avoiding land mines and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was the result of one incontinent canine or that the dog walking people in my neighborhood are seriously THAT rude.

My neighboorhood has real holiday spirit. What I hadn’t noticed before were all of the holiday wreaths. Every single door has a wreath of some kind. Even some gates and garages have wreaths. I even spotted one on the front of a truck. Some of the old-fashioned lamp posts in the neighborhood are wrapped with ribbon and many a mailbox is tied with a bow. Is that a thing? Putting a big red bow on your mailbox? I saw so many, I think it’s a thing.

Something else that was really surprising were all of the phallices drawn in chalk on the sidewalk. I’m serious. I counted five. Is there a band of depraved, sexually precocious six-year olds wandering our neighborhood drawing dicks in colored chalk? Or is this Pompeii? I’m still scratching my head on that one.

By the time I got the spare key and started to walk back it was starting to drizzle. Not enough to get wet. Just enough to frizz my hair into a giant gray afro. Terrifying. But I was glad I had on pants and real shoes because, you know, weather.

After my half an hour walking tour of the neighborhood I have to tell you I was never so happy to pull into my driveway—in my car. The sheer gratitude I felt for reliable transportation and for my swell little neighborhood was barely overshadowed by the fact that sitting happily in the driveway, admiring the white lights of the tree glittering through the window, I suddenly realized I’d left my Christmas tree on the entire time I was gone.

I need to slow down. How about you?
Carry on,
xox

“What if you saw your life from beginning to end, would you change anything?”~ The movie Arrival

Besides placing my little baby self with the perfect set of parents, on the beach, in Malibu, while being fed organic, gluten-free, free-range apple sauce by a giant silver spoon…

…I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But if I’m being truthful here, which I always try to be, I’m sure I’d take out my pair of big, sharp scissors and edit out all the painful parts.

The places where I didn’t get the part. Or the job. Or the boy I wanted more than a dish of really melty chocolate ice cream.

Where I was embarrassed. Sad. Ruefully disappointed. Or ashamed of myself. Yeah, I’d cut out those parts too, because, hey, nobody would miss them—least of all me.

And lets not forget the times where my heart got broken.

Where my chest hurt so much it felt like I’d recently had open heart surgery. Only to figure out later that the pain came from the exact opposite—the force of the slam. You can all relate to the force of the slam, right? Where you’re sailing along, all open-hearted (la, la, la, la, la), and somebody you love, respect and admire betrays you?

Or somebody dies.

First you hear the creaking of the hinges, because, hey, your heart is flung WIDE OPEN. This closing up tight thing will take a minute.

Then comes the slam. SLAM!! It batons down all of your hatches, locks every single rusty lock (and there are a shit-ton of locks, more locks than your average Manhattan walk up)…and installs a moat.

NOBODY is getting in there anytime soon. Am I right?

So, yeah, I’d say it would probably be in my best interest and the interest of love in general if I just cut out all of that messy shit —and pretend like it never happened.

But we all know we aren’t able to alter those things. I’m thinking of starting a “Go Fund Me” page to get that changed. Who’s with me?

Think about it though. Would you wipe out all of the people you’ve loved and lost? Just delete them from your script?
That would change so much. I don’t know if I’d be willing to do that. Because in hindsight each situation had an effect on another, kinda like the butterfly effect. In other words, it would fuck everything up.

Things we can”t even imagine. Things out of our purview.Things that are above our pay grade to even comprehend.

Didn’t not getting some of those things make you better? Stronger? Savvier? Funnier? And smarter?

Yeah… me neither.

In all seriousness. All of those things that felt like big, fat, obvious mistakes were like rocks in a stream, each one causing the path of the water to shift, which may have held us under, choking and spitting and gasping for air…until something (the fickle finger of fate?) grabbed us by our wet bathing suits, gave us a wedgie and led us to where we stand right. this. minute.

If I saw that in a life overview I’d probably laugh my ass off. Wouldn’t you?
And I probably wouldn’t change one goddamn thing. Would you?

Carry on,
xox

Just your average, giggly, pink champagne lunch. With fries, duh.

Once there was a very wise and funny woman who absolutely LOVED pink champagne. I already adored her but upon hearing that fact, well, it made me love her even more.

Why, you ask?

Because in my opinion pink champagne is the friendlier, less pretentious, girlier (don’t get all feminist on me, I mean this in the best way) sister of regular champagne. It’s fun. It’s the poodle skirt of champagnes.
It giggles. It twirls. It charms and delights.

Anyhow, The other day, after listening to one of her books on audible, read by her, I became nostalgic. “Show me a sign that you’re still around” I asked her politely. Less than an hour later I was offered, out of the blue, a glass of pink champagne.

I relayed this bit of magic to a darling and dear friend of mine who is currently going through a rough patch. “Isn’t that magical?” I said. We both agreed that my wise pink champagne loving mentor should help her through this…rough patch.
We did that by nodding dreamily in unison over FaceTime.

This same friend told me she was looking for a house. Not just any house. A start over house.

She has intended with a heart full of love to reinvent her life. And it’s a good time to do so since the life she’s leaving behind is kinda in a…well…rough patch. If you were to take a snapshot of her life—in this moment—it would not look good on paper. But, seriously, we’ve all been there at one time or another, right?

One. Tiny. Detail remained. You know what new houses require? That you look amazing on paper.

Meh. No problem.

She decided, since she was doing that reinventing thingy, to really commit. So she scanned the internet for a house to rent using NO FILTERS.

Have you ever done ANY search with no filters? Terrifying. Exactly.

It’s amazing how many filters we run our lives through. Financial. Emotional. Rational. But that’s an essay for another day.

After a while, lo and behold, the perfect house popped up. Perfect in every way. Size, decor, location. all except for the price. Did that deter our intrepid heroine?

Hell to the NO!

She made an appointment to meet with the realtor who was surprisingly underwhelmed by my friend’s less than stellar financials. “Just as long as you don’t have a dog” she laughed.

“Oh, I have a dog. But just a small one”, my friend replied.
“Huh. I’ll have to talk to the owners” was the real estate woman’s response.

Gee, that doesn’t sound like a no, my brave friend thought on her way home.

When the wife of the couple who own the house met her dog later that week the dog behaved like the docile, well-behaved pup she is NOT—and the wife fell in love. “Of course you can have your dog”, she gushed in that baby talk that dogs find disgusting.

This is the part of the story where I tell her about the pink champagne magic. Cue the tandem sigh…

Not ten minutes later she texted me this picture of a random fridge in her random writing hub.

We both screamed a little. Well, honestly, we screamed a LOT!  WTF! Pink champagne!

“You are SO getting this house!” I declared. We were giddy for another ten, fifteen minutes, half hour and when we hung up I went and bought a bottle of pink champagne because when magic knocks on the door—you answer!

On my way home my wise dead friend from the beginning of the story took this whole champagne tale a step further.
“There is more to this. It goes deeper” she said. “What does champagne signify, Janet?”

After turning down the christmas carols in the car and thinking for a minute I got it. “Celebration!” I yelled like a gameshow contestant.

“Exactly”, she affirmed. “Why do you think I chose pink champagne as my sign to you guys that I’m around?”

“Because you love…” I barely got the thought out.

“Besides that. I could have chosen a myriad of things that would have let you know. So why pink champagne for your friend?”

It suddenly became so obvious to me, and you guys are so much smarter than I am you’ve probably already figured it out.

“Because she’s going to celebrate getting the house!”

“Exactly”, she said with a smile in her voice. “And you’re going to have something to celebrate soon too. Let’s not forget who got the pink champagne first.”

Holy F*ck.

“This is what happens when your future informs your present”, she dropped like a bomb at my feet.

—but that’s an essay for another day…

I invite you to look everywhere for pink champagne.

Cheers,
xox

The best part of this video is watching Jason giggle like an eight year old boy and then break into some Latin (like you do), while discussing The Kiss.

So, tell me, why do people kiss each other? Haven’t you asked yourself that question?
I have.

I remember a long time ago reading somewhere, I think relating to Kabbalah (an ancient and mystical form of Judaism), the high regard with which they held a kiss. They consider it a sacred act. It is an act so intimate that you are virtually “sharing” the breath of another person.

Knowing that marked me.

Today, the most widely accepted theory of kissing is that we humans do it because it helps us sniff out a quality mate. When our faces are close together, our pheromones “talk” – exchanging biological information about whether or not two people will make strong offspring.

Well, that’s just not sexy.

Here are some other fun facts I found:

Do any other animals kiss?
Save for the bonobos that suck on each other’s tongues for up to ten minutes at a time, there aren’t any animals that kiss. And are we really going to count a tongue-suck as a kiss anyway? Somehow, humans are actually the only species to kiss on the mouth, and the meanings of a kiss are plentiful.

Why do they call it a French kiss?
The term ‘French kiss’ – once also called a ‘Florentine kiss’ – is popularly considered to have been brought back to the English-speaking world by soldiers returning from Europe after World War I. At the time, the French had a reputation for more adventurous sexual practices, and so it happened that these soldiers returned to their sweethearts with some newly acquired “skills”.

That being said, with decades of dating under my belt, I became a bit of a connoisseur regarding kissing. There is a Goldilocks zone where kissing is concerned. I’m sure you’ll all agree with me on the fact that a bad kisser can kill even the best chemistry.

No tight, dry “butt pucker” lips.

No overly moist delivery that makes you want to wipe your face with the sleeve of your jacket.

No wide open “shark mouth” where your teeth bang together.

And my least favorite, the wild tongue thrusting where it feels like they’re looking for their car keys somewhere around your tonsils.

Ah, the kiss. Done well it makes me giggle and speak Latin too—how about you?

Carry on,
xox

I should be ashamed I love these things. But I’m not.

Not really. I suppose I should be because they’re not the usual suspects like spring in Paris, babies and puppies but hey, how boring would that be? We all love those things.

No, these are specific to my twisted brain. What I feel the least bit of a tinge of shame over is the ferocity with which I love these things. It’s the way I love them. The love is mad and runs deep. So, even though I know you weren’t wondering, without further ado, here they are:

1. Grilled cheese sandwiches. And not just any grilled cheese sandwich. It has to be just so. The trick is to use nice, thick bread and then butter and grill both sides. If that much butter bothers you order a salad instead and by-the-way, I don’t think we can be friends.
2. Words. Well, certain words like, pomplemousse, inert, tiddlywinks and hippopotamuses. I like the way they make my mouth feel when I say them.
3. Homemade croutons. Made from stale sourdough or better yet, brioche bread.
4. False eyelashes. (No secret there.)
5. The very rare natural redhead with brown eyes. My niece is one and people literally fall all over themselves staring at her hair. I had blue eyes (still do) when my hair was dyed red—so yeah, I was batting zero for two.
6. Pink champagne. Does this need an explanation? It shouldn’t. It’s magic.
7. Straws in my drinks. No umbrellas and please, no plastic monkeys (okay, just one).
8. Hikes with trees. Like a forest hike, not those dirt trails where there’s no shade and the terrain resembles Death Valley.
9. Science Fiction ANYTHING. Movie, book, TV show, it doesn’t matter.  I repeatedly tell my husband that in my next life I’m coming back as an astronaut/archeologist/deep space explorer. I’m pretty sure that won’t be for a while since I don’t want anything to do with our current space program. I want to be on a ship with gravity. Where I can run around, not need money and replicate whatever my little space exploring heart desires. So, see ya in 3033.
10. The chinese chicken salad at Joan’s on Third. There is only one that is better. My mom’s. Hi mom.
11. Jeans. Don’t you love jeans? I just love that I live in a day and age where pantyhose are no longer required and if they’re not faded and you wear them with a black jacket and nice shoes, you can get away with jeans almost anywhere. Except maybe a funeral. Wear a black dress or real pants to a funeral. Show some respect.
12. The chocolate pie my friend Ginger made for my birthday. ( Are you sensing my love affair with food?) She made two and we had a least one piece a day for my entire stay. I didn’t ask for the recipe because I’d like to fit in one airline seat the next time I fly.
13. Flashmobs. I will scream and cry if I ever see one in person. They make me crazy! You can surprise me with one anytime.
14. Nora Ephron movies. My favorite is You’ve Got Mail, but I also adore Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Michael, Silkwood, Julie And Julia and…

So…what do you love with a fiery intensity that you might never admit except here, as an anonymous reader in front of tens of  my other readers?

Carry on,
xox

Hey you guys,
Digging around in my “dead drafts” file I came across this stream of consciousness, shitty first draft of an actual event that happened to me last year at this time. Since it’s a year old I suppose it’s a Throwback for a Thursday. Right? And since I know most of you, no, make that all of you, have loved and lost, I thought I’d share this unabridged account of just how much I suck at it. Loss that is. So here goes. 

Carry on,
xox

I wish more than anything that I had a profound and pithy quote befitting this story, instead, all you get is:

“Omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,omg,breathe.”~ Me

I heard his voice again last night. For the first time in thirty years.

This is a voice I would have given my left tit to hear back then, back in the days and months after our break-up in 1986.

Truthfully? I would have sold my soul, my car and my beloved cat to hear him say my name in that seductive way he had.

Just one… More…Time.

Shameless doesn’t adequately describe me.

Neither, do I have enough fingers or toes to count the number of times I sold-myself-out emotionally.

I would call, he would answer and I would hang up. Or, I would get his out-going message on his answer machine and since I knew he wasn’t home (he was never home), I would call back and listen to it ten to fifteen times in a row with the intensity of a FBI voice analysis expert, searching for any small hint in the tone, or the words that he used as a clue to his state of mind.

Was he happier without me? Or did he sound like wads of Kleenex were shoved up his nostrils, his heart-broken into tiny pieces that were scattered across the globe by the wind—like me?

Mostly I did it because second only to his smell, I desperately ached for the sound of his voice. That along with a longing for reentry back into his inner circle from which I’d been banished.

He was the drug and I was the addict.
He was the tall, cool drink of water. I was dying of thirst.
He was the Sun, and whatever small ray of attention he chose to shine on me, like a sunflower I reached up and reveled in it.
He threw his scraps of attention to my bruised and broken heart as I rolled around in the dirt like a feral animal, begging for more.

You get the picture. Shameless.

It had to be enough—but it never was.
Because that’s the thing about that kind of love. The always evident, finite nature of it, creates mental insatiability.

From the beginning, the deep tone of his voice could magically make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Like a musical instrument, my body was specifically tuned to him–it had a visceral reaction—every cell vibrating with desire.
It was crazy. At nearly thirty years old I’d never felt anything like it.

My love for him felt crazy. So, I began to mistake feeling crazy—for love.

It culminated in a real eye-opener when I jumped out of a second-story window and chased his car down the street. In that moment it turned dangerous crazy. Stupid. Untethered to reality.

At no time was I aware how unsustainable that kind of love, lust, obsession was.
Nothing that burns that hot can survive as it consumes everything it touches. It must flame out. It must. Even volcanoes go dormant.

I thought I would never get over him. The mere mention of his name could send me to bed sobbing for hours.
The pain was simply unbearable.

In order to function in the world, I put myself into an emotional rehab of sorts. I removed all signs of him from my immediate surroundings. First I got rid of all the gifts he gave me. An 80’s abstract patterned sweatshirt, a small, carved jewelry box. Then I took the pictures of him out of their frames. Well, to be honest, for years I left them in the frames and covered them with more current shots of friends and family in the hopes that this was all just a bad dream and we would eventually reconcile and I could put our pictures front and center once again.

Slowly, I erased all of his saved voice messages. They were like the tiny airline bottles of booze alcoholics save in case of an emotional ”emergency”. A quick fix. A masochistic game. A rush followed by the pitiful groan of my heart as it dropped like a piano from a fifty story building. Over, and over, and over again.

First to go were the simple ones, “Hey babe, just checking in.” Hearing those only hurt a little bit, like a blister or a cold sore.
I could hit erase on those and not immediately burst into flames.

The next ones, the ones that were funny or touching, well, those hurt like I imagine a cracked skull or broken bones do. I would suffer physical pain for days after deleting those.

The last ones to get erased took me the longest to let go of because of their intimate nature.
They held my heart in chains and like a prisoner with Stockholm’s Syndrome I feared I’d die if I we parted.
I threw up for four straight hours the night I had the courage to hit ERASE on those.

Detox. It was Emotional Detox.

I’m not proud of the fact that it took me five years to become neutral. Yes, you heard me. Five fucking years to get that man out of my system. But I did.

Eventually, I healed and as part of that healing, I held a ceremony where I burned everything. It was my graduation ritual. Emotional rehabilitation complete.
As I watched all of the cards, love letters and yes, finally, the photos of us disintegrate into ash and swirl their way back into the aether, I felt free. He no longer held my heart prisoner. I was literally and symbolically free of him. Finally! And I have to say it felt fan-fucking-tastic!

So, you can imagine my reaction when a few weeks before Christmas, out of the blue, after thirty years —he reached out on Facebook for connection. And it triggered in me the most curious mixture of love and hate, attraction, and revulsion, curiosity, and fear.

Anyway, we agreed to talk. On the phone. Like for real.

He is fifty-two to my fifty-seven years and still in dire need of a “sensitivity chip”—just as I remembered.
He laughed hysterically when I said I was fifty-seven. “Yeah, sure you are” he guffawed, “You just keep telling that story.”
“I will, because it’s true,” I replied with a half-ass laugh, trying to keep things civil. Truth be told I wanted to reach though the phone and stab him in the neck with a fork. Come to think of it, it was not an unfamiliar impulse where he was concerned, but the rage he was still able to trigger shocked me.

Remember, we burned HOT.

After listening to him for a while, it was clear as he reminisced about our on-and-off two years together back in the eighties that:

1. He remembers that time fondly. Like, scary, made up memories of weird things that never happened, fondly. I do not. I was not my best self back then. Not even a little bit. Think, hot mess. That time turned into a catalyst for my own self-reflection and introspection. I’d jumped out of a fucking window overcome by lust so I’d say I was a girl desperately in need of some self-respect. It was not my proudest moment and as a result, I did decades of work on myself after that.

2. Our five-ish year age difference which I will admit felt much larger as a twenty-five-year-old woman with a twenty-year-old man (boy) had grown to a much broader span of his memory (hence the snide remarks). In HIS telling of our tale, the age difference has grown to decades. He is now Ben Affleck and I am Dame Helen Mirren, (who by-the-way admittedly looks better than I do in a bikini), but that is neither here nor there—the woman is seventy. 70!

3. His life has fallen to shit. He is re-connecting with me because he has become the Mayor of Martyr-ville. As he explained it, when his beloved father passed away, he gave up a thriving career and a life filled with fancy houses, cars, tons of money and super-models, (insert HUGE eye-roll), turned his back on love and ever having a family of his own, to live in his childhood bedroom taking care of his ailing mother and special needs sister. Oh come on! He’s NO saint. I can hear you, don’t turn on me now!

Why do guys do that? Why do they call you after they’ve fallen down the rabbit hole? I KNOW with every fiber of my being that if his life were going well he may have looked me up out of curiosity on Facebook (like we all do), but he would have NEVER in a million years have contacted me. I know that because I’m over fifty and life doesn’t work that way.

He sounded to me like someone who was in dire need of the three “C’s”. Camaraderie. Consolation. Contrition.
I don’t think I’m the right person for the job. I tried for about thirty minutes. Then I couldn’t wait to get off the phone and back to real life. You know, MY real life of fancy houses, cars, and super models.

For several days afterward I felt emotionally unstable. Like I’d been massaged by a plunger or punked.
I couldn’t tell if he felt bad about how things had ended and he most certainly didn’t call for my forgiveness.

You know why? Because he has no idea the suffering I put myself through. Did you catch that? I tortured myself. Everyday. All by myself.

So… why did he call me? Why was I the one he chose to soothe him? Honestly? I have no idea.

One of my friends who is familiar with our saga asked me if I somehow felt vindicated by his shitty life. You know, the best revenge is living well and all that. So…did I?… Maybe…and Yuck!
Had I learned nothing? Great. There go tens of thousands of dollars spent on three decades of self-help.

After feeling ashamed of myself, I have also started to figure out why I feel so out-of-sorts.

Perhaps because it was clear he still inhabited that wild, careless and dangerous place I had turned my back on years ago, and maybe I was afraid that hearing his voice would somehow lure me back there after being off of that sick, adrenalin high for thirty plus years. Perhaps.

More likely it’s because I have absolutely no desire to re-live the past. Even those lusty, tempestuous years with him. Like I said, those were not the good old days for me and no amount of reminiscing will make it so.

I have a distinct memory of something my mother said to me as I writhed on her bed in my broken-hearted agony—so here’s your quote. “He’ll come back. One way or another, they always come back.”

I lived breathlessly off the fumes of that hope for many years like a lost Mariners wife waits for the sea to return her beloved. Until eventually, facilitated by the passage of time, the entire situation was no longer a trigger for tears but an ancient, distant memory.

Then… he came back.

You guys,
I have a confession to make.
I hear voices.  Pretty much all the time.

I have all of my life.

When I was in my twenties I was urged to leave my first marriage.
Like Liz, I too was guided away from motherhood.
A voice told me to start a blog four years ago when I’d never even read one before that moment.

Eighteen months ago one particularly pushy voice insisted I write a screenplay (something I had neither the skill nor desire to do.) But… with her help I did it.

When  I think about it they help me with every decision I make IF I take the time to listen. And trust.

Except for confiding in a few of my friends and family, I’ve tip-toed around this subject for years because I didn’t know how to write about it without sounding, well, batshit crazy. But yesterday, Liz did an amazing job explaining a particularly woo-woo occurence—so I’ll just let her tell you about something that I once viewed as a curse but have come to realize is a gift.

Carry on,
xox

Dear Ones-

START KNOWING.
This is something I wrote in my journal a few months ago.
These words came to me through a powerful internal voice.

Allow me to explain.

I hear voices sometimes.

It’s cool. Don’t be alarmed. It’s all good. I’m willing to bet you hear voices sometimes, too.
AT LEAST I HOPE YOU DO.

Every powerful woman I know is guided by voices.

Here’s a story:
I have a brilliant friend who used to work in academia. She told me once that she’d been conducting a series of interviews of accomplished women, for a research project about women’s success in the workplace. On the outside, all these women appeared to have nothing in common. They came from all different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and all worked in different fields — corporate and non-profit, secular and religious. But each woman carried herself with confidence and ease, and all of them had become quite powerful in their own corners of the world. When my friend asked these women how they had gotten so far, they all began by dutifully reporting the same sorts of standard statements about the importance of hard work, and cultivating discipline, and fostering good professional contacts, and staying positive, and uplifting other women, and seeking out mentors, and blah, blah, blah..

Sounds perfectly logical, right?

But then there would come a moment in each interview where EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE WOMEN would seem to get bored with the questions, or maybe she was just feeling mischievous. Then each woman (EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!) would ask my friend to turn off the recording device. Then the woman would lean in really close to my friend, and say in a conspiratorial whisper, “But do you want to hear what REALLY happened?” And then EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE WOMEN would report how — at some point in her life — she had heard a voice.
A mystical voice.
An otherworldly voice.
A powerful and certain voice.
A commanding voice.
A voice that could not be explained away rationally.

And each of these women reported that this voice had told her exactly what she needed to do next. And she had done it.

“I know it sounds crazy…” they would say. But it was true.
They had heard a voice, and they had followed the voice.
It hadn’t been easy for any of them, they reported. The voices often told them to do really, really hard things — things that often felt like total disruptions of their lives.
Maybe the voice had said, “It’s time for you to move to Los Angeles now” — even though the woman had just signed a lease on an apartment in Houston.
Or maybe the voice had said, “It’s time for you to go to medical school” — even though she’d just had a baby.
Or maybe the voice had said, “It’s time for you to leave that boyfriend” — even though her parents really liked him.
Or maybe the voice had said, “This religious path is no longer authentic or meaningful for you” — even though she had been raised by fundamentalists.
Or maybe the voice had said, “It’s time for you to learn Mandarin” — even though she’d never been to China.

But the voice had come. And whatever the voice said, the woman in question had taken the enormous risk of deciding to follow it. Even when it was inconvenient. Even when it was challenging. Even when it seemed prohibitively expensive. Even when it meant cutting her losses and walking away from any sense of security whatsoever. Even when it cost her the approval of friends and family.

Even when everyone thought she was insane.

And THAT’S how she had gotten there, to her place of power in the world. It really had nothing to do with professional contacts, or mentors…it was just that she heard a voice, and she chose to listen.
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
So.
I hear voices, too.

I heard voices when I was a teenager, saying, “You are meant to be a writer,” and when people said, “But how will you make a living at THAT?”, those voices were still like, “Yeah, whatever…you are meant to be a writer.” And when I got rejection letters for years and years, and nobody was interested in my work, those voices were STILL like, “Yup…you are definitely meant to be a writer.” And those voices STILL tell me I’m meant to be a writer. I’ll stop writing when the voices stop telling me to write.

I heard voices telling me to move to New York City when I was young. I heard voices telling me that it was imperative that I see the world, and that I learn how to travel alone as a woman — no matter what the cost or risk. I heard voices telling me not to settle for the security of getting a “real job” — but instead to just work odd jobs, and to keep traveling, and to keep writing, and to keep gambling everything for creativity and an exploratory life of the mind. (You guys, I can’t tell you how many times the voices tell me never to choose security over creativity. It’s exhausting and sometimes scary. But they seem to REALLY MEAN IT.)

When I was in my 20’s, I heard voices warning me not to get married, but I went ahead and got married anyway (side note: it’s REALLY HARD for young women to push back against the forces of culture and tradition sometimes) and then I SERIOUSLY started hearing voices when I was 30 years old, and firmly married, and living in a shiny new house in the suburbs, and my mind and body were absolutely falling to pieces, and I was supposed to be trying to have a baby that year, and the voices started screaming, “OH, NO YOU DON’T, MISSY!” And then I had to leave everything behind, in order to re-calibrate my path to my own truth. (This was awfully inconvenient and horrible and expensive and terrifying. And it’s REALLY HARD to decide not to have a child in a culture that still tells women that having children, ultimately, is the only thing that shall fulfill them. But the voices were like “NOPE”, so I had to leave it all behind. We call that “a course adjustment”. It’s never easy. But you don’t get to chart your own life without making some pretty hardcore course corrections along the way.)

I still hear voices.

I heard voices this spring telling me to leave everything behind yet again, and to gamble everything for love. (Very hard. Very scary. Very ACCURATE.)

Where do the voices come from? Beats me. You can call it “intuition”. You can call it “the still small voice within”. You can call it your “inner compass”. You can call it “God”. You can call it “Angels”. You can call it your “spirit guides”. You can call it your “gut instinct”. You can call it your “dead ancestors speaking though you.” You can call it “the flow”…but whatever it is, those voices exist. And you must train yourself to trust them, and to risk everything in order to follow them.

Notice that I didn’t say, “You must train yourself to hear them.”

I don’t think you have to practice hearing them. I think they are always talking to you. I just think you have to train yourself to TRUST THEM. That’s the hard part.
Learning to trust those voices is a practice that you can cultivate. Just like any other craft or skill, it is worth the effort to learn how to master it.
So…Today, I want to tell you what my voices have started telling me lately.
It’s just these two words:
START KNOWING.

Here’s the thing about my voices. They can be merciless. They are not always sweet and gentle. Sure, there are times when my voices say, “Poor baby! Poor little small one…we are so sorry that you are suffering, please take care of yourself, and lie down in a soft and safe place with a warm towel over your head”….but there are also times when my voices are like, “Oh for God’s sake, FIND YOUR STRENGTH. Grow a fucking spine, woman, and take the action you need to take right now, and stop wasting time…we didn’t send you here to let you pretend to be damn weak.” (Interesting side note: The difference between THAT voice and my dark internal voice of self-hatred is that the dark internal voice of self-hatred says, “You’re such a baby, you aren’t worthy, you are a scum person, just curl up on the floor in a pile of dirty towels and die,” but the mystical all-knowing voice says, “We love you too much to let you keep pretending that you are so powerless…COME ON! Let’s DO THIS! GROW A FUCKING SPINE! WE HAVE THINGS TO DO! WE HAVE A DESTINY TO CREATE! STAND UP OFF THE FLOOR!!!! LET’S GOOOOOOO!!!!!” See the difference? Good.)

There have been times in my life (this year, among them) where my voices have needed to get really firm with me. They have challenged me, and they have pushed back against my arguments. They will hold my face in the truth and make me look at it, even when the truth hurts. They will not baby me. They refuse to enable me. This is good. They will not say, “It’s OK, honey! Don’t worry! It’s all good! It doesn’t matter — you’re doing your best, and everyone’s human!”, but instead they say, “Actually, honey, it’s NOT ALL GOOD. This situation is NOT OK, and the way you are behaving is NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, and it’s time for you to grow a spine, and challenge yourself more, get creative, and change everything. Let’s GO!”

But mostly, this year, my voices have been saying to me just these two words: “START KNOWING.”

Anytime I am faced with a dilemma, and I start to feel very small and confused, and I hear myself saying, “I don’t know what to do!”, some voice from deep within me rises in full power and says, “START KNOWING.”
(I even wrote it down in my journal one day, for my entire entry that day. So that is what this picture is all about START KNOWING.)

What my voices are challenging me is to realize is that when I am feeling sad and scared and small, and I keep saying, “I don’t know what to do!” — the truth is that usually I DO know.

In fact, my voices are pretty certain that I always know. Somewhere, deep within me, I have always known what I need to do. I just don’t want to do it sometimes, because it’s too hard, or too scary, or seems to wild or too risky. Or I don’t want to hurt anyone. Or I don’t want to be judged. Or I don’t want to lose what I have already attained. But still — I do know. Secretly, I do know. And my voices get impatient with me, because they’re like, “Look, lady, we don’t have forever, OK? You have all the information you need. Nothing will change now unless you change it. Make a move right here. Stop pretending you don’t know what you need to do. START KNOWING.”

I’m sensing this in so many women whom I encounter these days, too. They seem stuck and frustrated and confused and insecure and afraid. They have grown too comfortable/uncomfortable in the realm of “not knowing” what to do. They come up to me at my speaking events, and they introduce themselves by telling me about their injuries and their wounds. Before they have even told me what they want to create in this world, or who they long to become, they tell me the worst thing that has ever happened to them. Then I hear them start spinning and spinning and spinning the same story they’ve been telling for years about what happened to them, and how it damaged them, and what they want, but what they aren’t getting, and why they can’t change it, and why this situation is impossible, and what they wish would happen, and why can’t it all be different, and why it’s too late…and then they say, “I just don’t know what to do!”

And I swear to God, this fearsome strong voice starts to rise out from the center of my spine, and all I want to do is take that woman by her shoulders, shake her, and shout at the top of my lungs: “START KNOWING!”
(But in a loving way. I love you all! Seriously, I love you guys! Smiley face! You go, girl!)

But seriously…this voice that rises within me is not a voice of judgment or contempt. It’s not a disgusted voice. This is just the voice of the Archangel of Womanhood — a divine force who cannot abide seeing any woman who has ANY power in her life pretending that she has no power in her life. Not you, not me, not your sisters, not your daughters, not your mothers. She just can’t take it anymore. So voice of the Archangel of Womanhood says (out of a sense of fierce but merciless compassion, and a desire to liberate us all), “START KNOWING!”

Yes, it’s hard. Of course it’s hard. What did you think — it would be easy?

Did you think they would just hand your destiny to you, cost-free? Yes, you might have to risk everything. Yes, you might have to cut your losses. Yes, some people will hate it. Yes, some people may never understand and never forgive you. Yes, you may walk away from the situation with a permanent scar, or a bad limp, or a battered heart. Yes, yes, yes, blah, blah, blah…
But come ON!

START KNOWING.

Stop saying, “I don’t know what to do!” Because I believe that — somewhere deep in your center — there is some powerful truth about your life which YOU ALREADY DO KNOW.

If you’re afraid of making a hasty decision, just remember that the alternative is to stay stuck in the same bullshit garbage death swamp you’ve been stuck in for years. (I say that lovingly! I love you! Smiley face!)

So start knowing. Start knowing what you already know. Start knowing what is so damn obvious about your life that a perfect stranger could see the problem, if you told her about your situation in a five-minute conversation. Start knowing that you will no longer degrade yourself with the illusion that are powerless, that you’re in a trap. (Here’s the evidence of that: Tell me your story of how powerless you are, and I will find you a story of a woman who was in EXACTLY the same situation, and she changed it. I know…that sounds harsh. But it’s true. Start knowing that it’s true.)

Start knowing that you have far more agency than you think. Start knowing that the story you’ve been telling yourself about your limitations, or your helplessness in this situation, is NO LONGER GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU. Start being honest with yourself about something that your body has been trying to tell you for years. (Listen to your body’s pain — IT KNOWS. The body always knows. The body knows exactly the thing that is causing you suffering, and holding you back. I had a boyfriend once who I was madly in love with, but every time I got in his bed, my body would explode into pain, because my body already knew, “This man is no good for you.” I didn’t want to know it, because I was blinded by love — but my body knew. Start knowing what your body already knows.)

Start knowing the kind of woman you need to become — so that your daughters can have a better chance of becoming that kind of woman, too. Start knowing that the universe didn’t send you here to this fearsome planet of change and danger so that you could practice being more afraid…but rather, the universe sent you here to this fearsome planet of change and danger so that you could practice being more BRAVE. (Stop waiting for the world to feel safe, before you live your life. The world never will never feel safe. This planet has a nickname in the universe, you know. It’s called: THE ADVANCED SCHOOL FOR UTMOST HUMAN BRAVERY. They do not call our planet: THE COMFY RESTING PLACE FOR PRACTICING EASE AND SECURITY.)

Start knowing how brave you are. Start knowing how resilient you are. Start knowing how resourceful you are. Start knowing that you are the descendent of thousands of years of survivors, and that have you inherited all their wiles. Start knowing that the Archangel of Womanhood loves you too much to let you keep acting meek and degraded. Start knowing how willing you are to walk away from all of it, if you must. Start knowing that there are no victims in this room. (I can’t tell you how many times my voices say to me, “THERE ARE NO VICTIMS IN THIS ROOM.” I hate it sometimes when they say that to me. But the Archangel of Womanhood is quite firm on the matter. There are no victims in this room, she says. Period.)

START KNOWING, you guys.

Try saying those two words to yourself in a very calm, very wise, very ancient, very adamant voice — the next time you panic. Just say it (START KNOWING) and then breathe. Then get quiet and see what comes up.

I promise you that your very next thought will be the truth.
It might not be easy, but it will be true.
And you are ready for it.
Seriously, you are.

Start right there. That’s what every powerful woman I know has done.
Because the voices within you already know everything. But they can’t work with you until you are willing to START KNOWING, too.
OK?
I love you. Smiley face. Let’s do this.

ONWARD,
LG