Life

So I’ve been thinking…
Have I ever been brave enough to sidestep​ an emotional tsunami filled with mean-spirited accusations and diminishing love that was headed straight for my marriage?

The answer, after searching the archives of my menopausal mind, turning over every rock and remembering the times when the shit hit the fan was …once.

It was one night, inside one fight, but sometimes that’s all it takes to turn a situation on its head and start over. 

I remember it clear as day because my husband and I don’t really argue that much. We bicker and disagree, but rarely does it escalate into a full-blown fight.

This day was different, and the reason behind it was palpable – FEAR.

My store, the business that held all of our proverbial eggs in its basket, had flooded and closed. Insurance was in full jackassery mode, and the situation appeared bleak. Bleak is an understatement; it was a clusterfuck on steroids.

He had been letting me handle most of the fallout while keeping a watchful distance. I was grateful and full of resentment all at the same time.
This was th hardest time of my life. Weren’t we a team?

Our we project in good times had become a me situation now that it was damaged beyond repair.

But to be fair, I hadn’t included him in much of the business set-up. He didn’t know the in’s and out’s of my insurance​ policy, and besides, I had managed to establish an uneasy alliance with all the players so they only wanted to deal with ME. He felt it best to keep his distance and watch it play out.

One evening, after peppering me with questions, those inquiries quickly turned to accusations. I, of course, became defensive. “Oh nice of you to finally join the circus, welcome to MY world!”  I sneered sarcastically. As he realized the gravity of the situation, things escalated. Name-calling ensued; lots of fuck you’s were thrown around — it turned ugly.

“How could you let this happen?” he yelled at me ​as if I could have somehow prevented an act of God. “You said you could make this business work, you sold me a bill of goods, what the fuck happens now?”

How did I know? I was just as overwhelmed as he was except this had been my dream, a dream that was now covered with a stench I couldn’t escape — failure.

Here was my partner, my best friend; how had he become so insensitive? Couldn’t he see I was suffering, treading water just to keep from drowning in despair?

“I won’t cry, I won’t let myself cry” was my mantra, knowing that when I get that angry I can’t contain the tears.

I reverted back to a default setting from my childhood; Stoic Sadness – I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of breaking down. I would not let him know how much this hurt.

The fight was gaining momentum, words were on the tips of our tongues that could never be taken back, hurts leveled that would cut too deep to heal — it needed to be stopped.

I took a good look at him with eyes so clouded with rage it made me nauseous. And that’s when it hit me – I was hit by a thunderbolt of…Compassion.
It forced me to look again, and this time I could really see him. He was scared, just as scared as I was, maybe even more so. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost, lawsuits were pending, and his wife was a hot mess.

Something made me get up and walk over to him sitting in his chair. I had no idea what the next moment would bring. I didn’t have a plan. I was “winging it”.

My posture was such that it made him recoil. I remember thinking: that’s funny, he thinks I’m gonna punch him in the face, and let me tell you, his fears were not unfounded. There was a fist and a knock-out punch with his name on it—if I were the face punching type.

Instead, I put out my hand. It was a gesture that only confused matters.

He looked down at it and then up into my eyes.
Did I see…contempt?
I stood fast, my hand extended—this was a matter of life and death — our marriage was on the ropes.

“What?” he looked at my hand and shrugged like a punk.

“Come on, let’s go”, I wasn’t taking no for an answer.
I probably stood there for a good two and a half minutes, hand extended, while he considered the offer.

“What are you doing? Where are we going?” he asked.

“Just come with me.” I exhaled impatiently. Maybe this had been a mistake.

Slowly he rose out of his chair, shoulders sagging, eyes to the floor. His six-foot-three​ frame folded in on itself.

I took his hand, guiding him through the living room and down the hall. “What are you doing?” he sounded like a confused little boy. He wasn’t mad anymore, just worn down, vulnerable.

We kept moving forward.

I didn’t say anything, I wasn’t even sure what I was doing. All I knew is that I was headed for our bed.

I laid down crossways on top of the bedspread, never letting go of his hand. His face read: If you think I’m going to have sex with you, you’re nuts, but that wasn’t my intention, we needed something more than sex could provide.

The bed became a life raft on which to ride out the tsunami.

Begrudgingly, he lay down beside me as I positioned our bodies face to face. When I moved in closer, he moved away. So much for being best friends, we had turned into adversaries​, total strangers whose faces were now inches apart.

Looking at him in that moment, he was not the grown man who had been raging at me just minutes before – I saw a very scared nine-year-old​ boy – and that started to soften my heart.

“We need to remember what we love about each other”, I whispered softly, as I stared into his eyes, digging deep to think of something to say.

I feared he would get up at any moment and bolt for the door, but he just lay there, emotionally exhausted.

Tentatively, haltingly, I began.

“I love your eyes.” he closed them briefly, a long blink.
“I love the way you smell.” I started with the easy stuff.
“I love what a good doggie daddy you are.”

Did he crack a smile? If he had it was gone in a flash.

He wasn’t making it easy, but I continued undaunted for another few minutes until momentum began to build.

“I love your funny French accent.” I was on a roll. “I love how you mix your metaphors ​and invent names for things…like Ricky Ricardo does…”

He interrupted, “I love how that makes you laugh — every time.”

Now we were both laughing. Then he pulled me close, burying my face in his chest — and our laughter turned to sobs.

“I love what a big crybaby you are”, I mumbled into my best friend’s chest after a couple of minutes.

That made us both giggle uncontrollably, like teenagers, and suddenly I felt safe again. I exhaled a huge sigh of relief knowing that in that moment, we were a team again, we had found our momentarily misplaced love, and by the Grace of God – compassion had saved my marriage.

Carry On,
xox

*Holy Crap you guys,
This was a hard one to write and re-live. SUCH a painful time for us. My hope is that maybe you’ll think of this during the next big fight, and take a second look at the person and the situation. Compassion is an equal-opportunity-saver of anything for those who are willing to be happy—instead of right.

I know you guys have turned some horrible situations around by the Grace of God –– Care to share?

Hello my peeps,
I gotta tell ya, I love this recent blog post from Daniele LaPort.
I’m sure you all know how much this resonates with me, being that after five years we’re still paying off the Atik debt,(my business that failed/flooded) and I just can’t hear this enough, and I know I’m not alone.

Take it away Daniele!

“When my first company tanked, I was on the hook for about $150,000. Before I got slammed with that fact, my CEO, who I hired to run the company, thought it best to fire my Founder’s ass. Shortly after they canned me, the whole business fell apart — because you can’t have a personality-driven business without um, the founding personality there. And because, bad karma.

Anywaaaay, I got to sit back and watch them tank without me. Which was only slightly satisfying. Mostly it was sad and crushing. When the castle crumbled, the bank called me for its money. And because I’d co-signed the loan as a “person” and not as a co-founder of the business — I had to pay up, even though I’d been fired months before.

3) I knew that if I actively resented and bitched about those monthly payments, that it would distract me from my own creations. Also, the anger about the whole situation was heavy-duty. And I was done carrying it. So I re-framed paying the debt into a reason to be grateful. Every time that money came out of my bank account I said, “I’m grateful that I have the money to pay this.” And I was. And I let THAT be the lead story.
And then… magically (but not instantly,) on the VERY same day that I FINALLY made my very LAST monthly payment on that bad debt, my company tipped its first million dollar mark — and I did the happy karma moonwalk. Oh ya, oh ya…”

This is a re-tooling of a post I wrote several years ago.

OMG! You guys! I have to tell you that when I made this tiny tweak in my belief about what was possible for me to have in life, well, what a fucking relief!

Here it is in a nutshell: No dream is impossible. There is ALWAYS a way. Some ways are risky, fast and impractical, others take time and careful planning.

The choice is our own.

Everyone will weigh in. Ignore them! Do what feels comfortable, scratch that, I recommend reaching just a little bit out of your comfort zone for your dreams. It makes life so much more interesting!

Take a few risks.
Pick the road less traveled.
Occasionally drink wine before noon.

As my friend, Steph Jagger would tell you “Lift your restraining device and accept the call to adventure.”

And Carry on,
xox

We’ve all been bitten by the ugly green ENVY monster, especially when other people’s fabulous lives are vomited all over social media.
“Where’s my great kitchen?  “Why aren’t I wintering in the Maldives? ” They bought another car?” “Shit, I know that jacket, that jacket costs eight grand!”

Waaaah, Waaaah, Woe is me…where’s MY stuff?

I turned this around for myself years ago and then shared my devious little plan (insert diabolical laugh here) with my husband – who has made it into an art form.

Seriously. He should hold seminars.

When I saw someone with something I really wanted, like a ten thousand dollar handbag, or a Tuscan Villa, instead of thinking that’s impossible for me and turning into a sad sack — I’d sit down and make a plan.

I Could Have That If I Really Wanted It —I’d tell myself — and it’s true.

If I wanted a wildly extravagant vacation, I could sell some jewelry, cash in my 401K, borrow money, even take out a loan. I could do all those things.

IF I really, really wanted it, I could make it happen.

The same is true for almost anything you desire. You CAN have it — but it’ll cost ya.
If it’s a price you’re willing to pay, great! If not, put a picture of it on your Pinterest dream board and keep living your life.

It may still show up!

My friend Alex wanted a husband. A rich husband. So she made sure she was impeccably manicured, coiffed, waxed and outfitted, ready at a moment’s notice to attend on the BEST party invitations with only the BEST  men in attendance. Een though I admired her commitment, I scoffed often at her strategy. It seemed shallow and wildly expensive. She would just smile at me, undeterred. Three years later Alex married a billionaire businessman she met at a diplomatic dinner party in NY.

The bottom line is this — it is a choice. YOU make the choice. It’s not impossible, it just may be impractical, there’s a difference.

Impossible = says NEVER. That deflates me. Like a pair of saggy boobs, it leaves me feeling limp and disempowered.

Impractical Practicality = says MAYBE. It feels hopeful. Like I’m making the better of two decisions.

Sell everything and travel around the world skiing like Steph did sounds crazy, right? Only here’s what she did to make that happen. She did careful research in order to pick the destinations, got a loan on her house (gulp), saved her ass off and drained her savings. When others, like her dad, questioned her sanity, she just smiled the same undeterred smile as Alex. She wanted it THAT bad

Now THAT feels empowering.

I wanted a house which is impossible when you‘ve only managed at the age of thirty-nine to save $1.57.
But I was ready, and it was time. How am I going to make this happen?  I wondered.
I had refused to believe it was impossible, so I made a plan. It actually played out as a mix of practical and impractical. I’d have to bank every cent of my income, adhering to an austerity program that would make the rationing in communist Russia look extravagant.

I’d have to practice wildly impractical practicality for one year — to gain the impossible — and I did.

At forty years old I put all my things in storage, moved into a room at my sister’s with my two cats and saved every nickel I made. I sold watches and jewelry, silver, and anything else valuable that I had collected over the years as an antique jeweler. I also put a large chunk of what I’d saved in the stock market, for the short-term. Very risky, I know, but I made out like a bandit. Impractical you say? Yep. But I was trying to make the impossible happen.

I brainstormed and researched areas I’d like to live in, forgoing my daily Starbucks, nixing the mani-pedi’s, and living on salads made at home. I tried to borrow money at different points during the year, to expedite things and was met with a tight fist every time. That should have discouraged me but I was in so deep at that point it only strengthened my resolve.

Eventually, the perfect house, in the perfect price range, in the perfect neighborhood showed up — exactly one year later, and not a moment too soon according to my cats.

I’ve often found that if you believe the impossible is possible — the Universe provides.

Years ago, my husband was going on and on about a certain car. The car of his dreams.
“Buy it!” I said. “It’s too expensive.” he shot back, without hesitation.

“You could afford it if you sold some things, you have thousands of dollars of motorcycle crap…” he flinched as if he’d taken a punch, “It’s all just lying around, gathering dust. Sell it!”

“First of all, that stuff is NOT crap, and second of all, it wouldn’t make a dent in the price of that car.” He sounded…deflated.

“Yeah, but it’ll get the ball rolling. Put the word out that you want that car, it’s not impossible if you really want it — you’ll find the money.”

He looked at me sideways, but the next day I noticed that his screen saver was a gorgeous vanity shot of that car.
Within a year, he drove it into our driveway.
I nicknamed it The Vomit Comet. Too much car for me. I couldn’t ride in it without getting carsick. Eventually, the bloom fell off the rose and he sold it — and put that money toward the next vehicle of his dreams. He got that car and then realized — it goes too fast, you can never use all that power off a racetrack.

NEXT!  He’s got this down to a science.

NOTHING is impossible. It’s all a choice.

Carry on,

xox

I always need to be reminded of this — some weekends more than others.
As a matter of fact, I should just stick this Post It to my forehead where I could be sure to see it all day long…except I avoid mirrors, especially on the weekend…and it would be backwards, so I’d have to struggle to read it, even with my glasses. Bad idea, bad idea…

Carry On,
xox

Great thought to start the week.

Carry on,
xox

On the private Facebook page of that kick-ass online business school I took last year, a post caught my eye.

I try not to read them.  I barely understand them.  I’m neither “cool” enough nor smart enough to be a part of this group.  I slid in through the side door, the “blogger” who created her own website and then limped off to throw up. I just barely recovered, my brain hurting from the overexertion.

Anyhow..
It was written by a young man, an aspiring entrepreneur, whose boyfriend had booked a fancy, shmancy weekend away.
They were headed to a beautiful warm weather resort, with messages, fine dining – the whole shebang.

The intention behind the trip, his boyfriend told him, was to celebrate his best year EVER.

In his endearing, aw shucks way, he admitted to us, his tribe of up and coming internet movers and shakers, that this had been less than a stellar year for him.

“I didn’t hob knob with the rich and famous this year” he said. “No high level meetings, no mastermind groups, no Ted talk or speaking engagements at all. Instead of multiple six figures, I lived off savings.”

He went on to explain that 2014 had been a year of reinvention for him.

He took what appeared to be a thriving business and changed it up, downsizing some things, while reinvesting in others. He went on to explain that he’d spent the whole year at his desk with his hands in the clay. “If anyone wanted to find me I wasn’t on the road as usual, running from event to event, I was at my desk, from dawn to dusk, and I have never grown and changed, and worked harder in all my fucking life.”

Would he have labeled it his best year EVER? Probably not. Because the yardstick we all use for that doesn’t take into account anything besides the money and fame.
The outside trappings of success.

But his boyfriend could see it. He understood. And he knew it needed to be celebrated. Don’t you just love that?

I could SOOOO relate! I too have had the best/worst year of my life. By the standards set by society at large – it sucked.
But in laying the foundation, the hard work, the networking, perseverance, personal growth and general all around richness – it was my best year EVER!

My husband has witnessed the changes and repeatedly suggested that we celebrate them.

How lucky am I?

Wouldn’t it be great to pay homage to those years that don’t look so great from the outside but change us forever on the inside?
Because isn’t that what makes a person a true success?

Thoughts please?

Carry on,
xox

Morning Loves,
This is a photograph of beach sand at high magnification.

Carry on with your Sunday,
Xox

Morning!
Never one to ignore my own advise,(insert laughter here) I was diligently following my “path” as it appeared beneath my feet while walking the boxer-shark puppy yesterday.

One foot in front of the other, that’s it.
Look at the beautiful day, smell the fog in the air, be present,open your eyes, pay attention…oh what’s that?

We had vaulted past a Post It with bright orange writing that was laying in the wet grass.
Let’s be honest here, we zoomed past it because the puppy was walking me – ugh, work in progress, Work. In. Progress.(Said with a tightly clenched jaw.)

Something in my head said Go back, it has something to say to you.

Yeah, sure it does. Eggs, milk, cheese, coffee.

But I’m nothing if not obedient to these little “hits” I get, so I swung the puppy around like ball of legs and teeth on a string, and went to retrieve the soaking wet note, eager to garner its wisdom.

That’s the picture I took before picking it up.

Kites are overrated, if you fly them too high a bird might think it is a (colored) seagull, and try to kiss it.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but a cryptic teenage haiku was pretty far down on the list.

I shoved the note into my pocket and laughed all the way home.
I love when something surprises me and makes me laugh. Especially in the morning. It’s hard to find anything funny before 9 a.m.

So…
Musings of a tweenage girl…
I’m not sure I agree because as you can see below, I enjoy a good kite flight.

But the idea of a seagull kiss, well, what overrated kite doesn’t want one of those!
Keep your eyes and minds open my peeps, our paths can be very entertaining.

Happy day y’all!
Carry on,
Xox

That’s me flying a kite last spring. Just because.

*Below is a recent essay by Anne Lamont. I love her writing. A lot.  And I think this piece is one of her best, or at least it pierced the hard candy shell that sometimes surrounds my heart and got into the chewy, caramel center.

I love that she reminds us that words can be dangerous, they can gut someone faster and more efficiently than the sharpest Ginsu knife. Let’s all be careful with that.

And Horrible Bonnie.  God I love that!

Can I be your Horrible Janet you guys?  Reminding us ALL that everybody gets to be free?

Anyway…I though this would be a great piece to start your week.  ‘Cause I love ya!

Carry On,

xoxJ

“Nearly twenty years ago, I arrived at a fancy writer’s conference, in what were some of America’s most majestic mountains, where I was looking forward to meeting a great (and sexy) American director, who’d given a lecture the day before. But he had already left.

There was, however, a letter from him, to me: to not-all-that-well-known me. It began well enough, with praise for Bird by Bird, and gratitude for how many times it had inspired him when he got stuck while writing screenplays. He singled out my insistence on trying to seek and tell the truth, whether in memoir or fiction, and my belief that experiencing grief and fear were the way home. The way to an awakening. That God is the Really Real, as the ancient Greeks believed. And God is Love. That tears were not to be suppressed, but would, if expressed, heal us, cleanse up, baptize us, help us water the seeds of new life that were in the ground at our feet.
Coming from a world-famous director, it felt like the New York Glitterati was stamping its FDA seal of approval on me, and my work.

Unfortunately, the letter continued.

He wrote that while he had looked forward to meeting me, he’d gathered from reading my work that many of my closest friends and family members seemed to have met with traumatic life situations, and sometimes early deaths. So basically, he was getting out of Dodge before I got my tragedy juju all over him, too.

I felt mortified, exposed. He made it seem like I was a sorrow-mongerer, that instead of being present for family and friends who had cancer or sick kids or great losses, I was chasing them down.
And I flushed in that full body Niacin-flush way of toxic shame, at being put down by a man of power, that had been both the earliest, and now most recent, experiences of soul-death throughout my life.
My clingy child was drawing beside me, What did I do? You can’t use your child as a fix, like a junkie. That’s abuse; plus it won’t work.

Well, duh–I fell apart, on the inside, like a two dollar watch.

I had stopped drinking nearly 15 years before, stopped the bulimia 14 years earlier, and so did not have many reliable ways to stuff feelings back down. Also, horribly, my young child, two thousand miles from home, upon noticing my pain, clung even more tightly. I wanted to shout at him, “Don’t you have any other friends?”

What I did was the only thing that has ever worked. After finding a safe and stable person to draw with my son, I called someone and told her all my terrible fears and feelings and projections and secrets.
It was my mentor, Horrible Bonnie.

She listens.

She believes that we are here to become profoundly real, and therefore, free. But horribly–hence her name–she insists that if we want to be free, we have to let every body be free. I hate and resent this so much. It means we have to let the people in our families and galaxies be free to be asshats, if that is how they choose to live.

This however, does not mean we have to have lunch with them. Or go on vacation with them again. But we do have to let them be free.
She also knows, and said that day, that Real can be a nightmare in this world that is so false. The pain and exhaustion of becoming real can land you in the an abyss. And abysses are definitely abysmal; dark nights of the soul; the bottom an addict hits.
And this, she said, was just a new bottom, around people-pleasing, and the craving for powerful fancy people to approve of me. It was a bottom around my psycho doing-ness, my achieving-ness.
She said that because I felt traumatized, and that there had been so much trauma in my childhood, and so many losses in the ensuing years, that the future looked like trauma to me.

But it wasn’t the truth!

There was a long silence. (Again: she listens.)
Finally, I said in this tiny child’s voice, “It isn’t?”
Oh, no, she said. The future, as with every bottom I have landed at, and been walked through, would bring great spiritual increase.
She said I had as much joy and laughter and presence as anyone she knew and some of this had to do with the bottoms I’d experienced, the dark nights of the soul that god and my pit crew had accompanied me through. The alcoholism, scary men, etc.
She said that what I thought the director had revealed was that I am kind of pathetic, but actually what I was getting to see, with her, and later, when I picked up my luscious clingy child, in the most gorgeous mountains on earth, was that I was a real person of huge heart, laughter, feelings and truth. And his was the greatest gift of all.

The blessing was that again and again, over the years, we got to completely change the script. Thank God. We got to re-invent ourselves, again.

But where do we even start with such terrible days and revelations? She said I’d started when I picked up the 300-pound phone, told someone the truth, felt my terrible feelings. Now, time for radical self-care. A shower, some food, the blouse I felt prettiest in. Then I could go get my boy and we could explore the mountain streams.

Wow. We think when we finally get our ducks in a row, we’ve arrived. Now we’ll be happy! That’s what they taught us, and what we’ve sought. But the ducks are bad ducks, and do not agree to stay in a row, and they waddle off quacking, and one keels over, two males get in a fight, and babies are born. Where does that leave your nice row?

I got about five books out of the insights I gleaned from our talk. I still have a sort-of heart-shaped rock my son fished out of a stream later. Sadly, this director’s movies have not done well in the last twenty years. Not a one. And all of his hair has since fallen out. Now, as a Christian, my first response to this is, “Hah hah hah.”

But Horrible Bonnie would say, Now you get to tell it, because then it will become medicine. Tell it, girl– that we evolve; that life is stunning, wild, gorgeous, weird, brutal, hilarious and full of grace. That our parents were a bit insane, and that healing from this is taking a little bit longer than we had hoped. Tell it. Well…okay. Yes.”
-Anne Lamott