Pain

In case you didn’t see the latest from Liz Gilbert. It’s SOOOO good!
xoxJ

Dear Ones –

I’ve been going through a lot of big life transformations lately — moving through divorce, and loss, and the terrifying illnesses of loved ones, and outrageous upheavals of emotion — and none of it is easy.

Sometimes our transformations bring out the best in us, and sometimes they do not. When the ground breaks open because of an earthquake, you can be certain that everything — absolutely EVERYTHING — will be upturned, unearthed, or cracked open.

When you get cracked open, you will not always love what you discover about yourself. You wish you were a better person (whatever that means.) You wish you had handled this or that crisis with more grace. You wish you were stronger. You wish you were more certain about things. You wish you could go back and have that conversation all over again, and do it more wisely. You wish you were more forgiving. You wish you were more honest. You wish you were less judgmental. You wish you were less emotional. You wish you had figured things out sooner, or better, or smarter. Sometimes, you must face the truth that you have caused pain to yourself. Sometimes you have caused pain to others.

In short: You wish you were different. And wishing that you were different always, always, always hurts.

This is all very natural.

But we can choose in these difficult moments of self-doubt and regret and confusion whether or not we are going to hate ourselves for any of it…or whether we are going to practice self-love.
This is important.

The parts of yourself that you do not love are terribly vital, because they demand that you dig deep — deeper than you ever thought you would have to dig — in order to summon compassion and forgiveness for the struggling human being whom you are.

And until you learn to treat the struggling human being whom you are with a modicum of empathy, tenderness, and love, you will never be able to love anyone or anything with the fullness of your heart…and that would be a great shame. Because this is what we all want, isn’t it? This is what we came here for, right? To learn how to love each other with the fullness of our hearts?

Please know this: Whenever you withhold love from yourself, you are withholding love from the world…period.
We really need you to stop doing that.

The world has enough problems, without you withholding any more love.

Please understand that these difficult parts of yourself (the shameful parts, the regretful parts, and those episodes of your biography that are so spiky and troublesome and contradictory and embarrassing that you simply don’t know what to do with them)…please understand that these difficult parts of yourself are your ultimate teachers in compassion. Those parts of yourself are where you must begin learning how to love.

You guys? This is not a simple or straightforward moment in my life right now. There is a lot to sort through. There are a lot of parts of myself that I must examine now with unflinching honesty, if I am to grow.

I am willing to practice self-honesty. I believe in it, fully.
BUT SELF-HONESTY WITHOUT SELF-LOVE IS NOTHING BUT SELF-ABUSE.

And here is what I am finding, as I age: I simply do not have the stamina for self-abuse anymore. Just can’t do it anymore. I dip into it sometimes for a moment or two, but I can’t stay there — my heart just isn’t in it anymore. I used to be so good at self-hatred and shame! I could attack myself for YEARS — drowning in an endless wave of self-criticism. But I’m out of shape these days when it comes to self-hatred. I’ve lost that special kind of emotional endurance which is required for nonstop self-degradation and attack. I can’t do that to anyone else, and I can’t do it to myself, either. Too much practice in empathy and too many years of tenderness have ruined my chances to collapse ever again into the job of full-time shame.

I have loved all the hatred for myself out of myself.
(Well. Mostly, anyhow.)
🙂

And so now, when I suffer and struggle, I ask myself, “What part of you is hurting, Liz, and how we can love it — even as you are hurting?”

We must begin there — with the parts that we do not love.

This doesn’t mean being complacent. This doesn’t mean living in denial. This doesn’t mean that I have stopped trying to grow and transform. This doesn’t mean that I am excused from being self-accountable. This doesn’t mean burying my head in the sand, or telling myself lies. It just means: There is no part of myself anymore that I do not believe is deserving of love.
And that’s good news.

Because the only way I’m ever going to learn how to love any of you beautiful freaks — by which I mean all 7 billion of you gorgeous, unpredictable, troubled, weird, contradictory, struggling, devastatingly inspiring, broken, and perfect humans with whom I share this difficult planet — is if I can learn how to love my own freaky-ass self, too.

If I can accept me, Dear Ones, I can accept anyone.
So this is where we shall begin.
OK?

LG

This is from 2014 but hey, I think we could all use the reminder. LOVE anyway!
Carry on,
xox

Dear Hearts,
Have you ever loved someone so deeply you thought you might die?

That you would become immersed, completely consumed and drown in the depths of that feeling of connection?

Have you loved so intensely that it made your toes curl, your hair go straight, your skin glow, your fingernails grow, your personality improve, and your temper take a hiatus?

Did you get thinner and more beautiful just because that love permeated every cell of your being? (Also because you were so lovesick you couldn’t eat.)

Did you love so completely that you had the superpowers of infinite selflessness, the need for virtually no sleep, and constant adorable-ness?

Did that love make you a better person?

Could you tell a better story? Suddenly remember the end of jokes? Cook the perfect omelet? Remember birthdays? Balance your checkbook? Say please and thank you? Sleep without drooling? Laugh when things were funny, cry when they were sad?

Were you able to be unfiltered, unguarded and uncensored because of that love?

Did the constant sex render your face more open, your eyes more loving and your skin softer?
It does that you know.

When you loved so intensely — wasn’t the world a better place?

You didn’t care about lines and traffic, they just gave you more time to get lost in thoughts of your beloved.

When that love intoxicated you, wasn’t everyone beautiful?

Didn’t that homeless guy and the lady on the bus stop want to make you weep, because suddenly you had new eyes that were able to see their soul?

Love does that too.

When that love ended—did you regret you had ever felt it?

Why?

Love, love, love, 
Xox

Why does “A Case of You” By Joni Mitchell still make me tear up?

Because “Music makes room for our pain.”

Yes, yes it does, Jason Silva.

…Hold me.

Carry on,
xox

This is a post from early last year when we lost our beloved ten-year-old dog, Querida.
She died on her own terms, instantly in the back of my husband’s truck after a rousing game of Frisbee. She had been sick with a brain tumor, but it was still a shock to find her lifeless after a twenty-minute drive home.

But it’s always that way, isn’t it? We all know how this story ends, yet death, as inevitable as we try to forget it is, surprises the shit out of us when it takes someone we love.

A pet.
A parent.
A sibling.
A close friend.

Pain is pain—because love is love, is love, is love, is love, is love, is love. (To quote Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant sonnet.)

But I believe that the risk of a broken heart is far outweighed by the innumerable rewards and blessings that love bestows.

Maybe you needed to hear this today. I did.

Carry on,

xox

“Grief; it covers you with the weight of a wet blanket and smothers all other emotions, most especially joy”

~J. Bertolus

Here I sit, internally pummeled by the ebb and flow of grief.

It was just a dog, I tell myself, as the terribly underutilized rational part of my brain gets its chance to craft a reason and attempt to soothe me.

Doesn’t matter, moans my heart.

I loved her with all I had. I loved her without boundaries, deeper and wider and bigger than I could have ever thought possible.
She was my baby –– That thought just makes me cry longer and louder.

The rational brain, not used to seeing me like this, ups it’s game, taking a different tack—
You knew how this story would end, it reasons. Everybody dies, that’s the exit strategy we all agreed upon.

You’re right, I answer begrudgingly.

She was old and sick and you could sense the end was near… That’s funny, my rational brain doesn’t usually acknowledge intuition. It was clearly pulling out all the stops.

So why the sadness and the tears? It continued. The question actually had an air of sincerity –– my brain searching, seeking a viable answer.

Love…it’s about love. When you love someone or something with ALL your heart and soul…well, the pain of its loss is equal in measure.

I could feel it contemplating, reasoning –– love sounded dangerous.

Then why love at all? When you know it will end this way, with so much pain –– why risk it?

How do I explain?  Deep breath.

Because without that love, without opening your heart that much, each time more, then more, then more again –– life is colorless, black and white, and in my opinion not worth living. The reward is worth the risk.

So…I’ll cry and I’ll feel bad for a while and time will carry me through this; and when I’m on the other side of grief I won’t forget her, I could never do that. It will just start to hurt a little less each day until her memory makes me…smile.

Then I will have forgotten the pain enough to love without borders, ignoring all reason.

All the while knowing how this ends…

xox

How many of you are blamers? Or married to a blame? Or were raised by a major blamer?
Show of hands, please. Uh-huh, I thought so.

I had a boss for almost twenty years who was a blamer and it drove. me. nuts. He was a shamer too. I’m convinced blame and shame are siamese twins, but that’s just me. Let’s see what the expert, Brene Brown has to say about blame in this short, funny and insightful video.

As for me? I’m not a blamer, I’m an “I told you so-er”.
I have to bite my tongue not to say in some way, shape or form, “I told you so” to my husband like, forty-five thousand times a day.
Seriously.
Like today. He saved all of his outdoor tasks for this morning. The morning we were ALL warned that El Nino was going to hit us like well, like a big, fat, super soggy storm full of really wet rain.

And like the shining example of good wifery that I am, I reminded said husband of his shitty decision making,choices, —timing, before I left for the gym and it was only drizzling.

But alas, he waited until the REAL rain hit to empty the dog poop can into the main garbage bin, get the dead Christmas tree out to the curb for pick-up, and fiddle (fix in man-speak), with the sump-pump (all of which we talked about just yesterday), and then sent me a text and left evidence (wet pants in the shower), of how soaked he got. (Who is surprised here? What woman is the least bit surprised by this?)

See how I did that? Never once did you hear me say I told you so. I wanted to. So very, very, badly.
My tongue has permanent grooves.

Listen, I don’t want to tell Brene how to run her social media, but I think that needs to be her next video.

The seemingly repressed but clearly expressed I told you so.

What do you guys think? (That’s for you, Jim)

Love, soggy in Studio City
Carry on,
xox

How are you with loss? OMG you guys I sucked at it!

Coping with any kind of loss has been a learning curve for me.

First I was a cold-blooded jackass looking for payback, then an armoured up she-devil, then, slowly, eventually. I started to figure things out.
Take a look, see if what you did was radically different (do tell) or if you are a part of my tribe.

Please share with anyone you know who might need this right now. I’d also love it if you’d leave a comment on the HuffPo.

Thank you, love you, and carry on,
xox

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/learning-to-navigate-loss_b_8671602.html

Change.  Who likes it?  Nobody.
Who does it?  Everybody.
How does it work?
Badly for those who fight it—better for those who go with the flow.

This is for me I’m Always learning!

Carry on,
xox

I was reminded by Facebook that three years ago this week my dear friend and I attended a Peter Gabriel concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I have a love/hate relationship with that feature on Facebook, but that is fodder for another story.

When I saw the photo of the group of us I was stunned. Had it really been three years?

I looked closely at her face in the picture. She is beautiful in a patrician Grace Kelly kind of way, blonde, cool and collected. But I could see the numbness behind her eyes, and I remembered the fear in those days. It was palpable.

She had been diagnosed with cancer just a week or so before if my memory serves me, and this concert was an early birthday—cheer-up—everything’s going to be okay, present.

I started to get transported back; to the days of chemo, radiation, watching her lose her beautiful long, blonde hair. Back to the day she shaved half of her head and sent us the photo just prior to going full-blown bald. Man, we all cried…until, fuck, wouldn’t you just know it, she had the most gorgeous scalp and perfectly shaped head imaginable! She wore the wigs until the stubble grew in at which point we begged her to dye it platinum and own it. Why the hell not?

She looked like a fucking runway model. I kid you not.
People who hadn’t seen her in a while and were in the dark about her diagnosis fell over themselves marveling at her beauty. I literally saw a guy fall over his own feet staring at her.

Once she found out she wasn’t going to die, the fear subsided. She started to glow from the inside out and not from the radiation.  She glowed because she wasn’t marinating in fear anymore.

Fear is a serial killer. Remember that.

Fast forward three years: Don’t you EVER grow your hair out! we all begged—and she hasn’t.
She rocks that short white hair like a 90’s Annie Lennox, something she would have NEVER done prior to the cancer.

She has been transformed in so many ways they are too numerous to count. It’s no exaggeration to say that pretty much everything is different about her than the woman in the picture—not only different—it’s better.

 I think she walks taller in the world. She waged a battle and beat a pretty nasty foe and she’s got the scars and the swagger to prove it.

She’s a hell of a lot more authentic. She’s becoming more and more who she really is—even occasionally flying her freak-flag—Above is a picture of her this year at Burning Man, a warrior Goddess, who fulfilled a lifelong dream and in the process realized she had found her tribe.

Courage is her middle name now, not Ann or Penelope or whatever it was. I think she should legally change it.

When you go through something like that you can’t help but grow up. She’s a grown-up now.

And a magician.
When she was diagnosed she had been unemployed for a while, broke, with no prospects on the horizon.
I’ve watched her these past three years manifest perfect health, money, a great job—and then a dream job. I just met her for lunch and she’s probably the happiest I’ve ever seen her. Her eyes are bright and wise—her face—serene.

That’s the thing about life you guys. If we only had a crystal ball during the shitstorms that could show us the future—our future.

That not only does everything work out, it works out better than we could have ever imagined!

I’ve always told myself,(because we all know I don’t reside in the real world too much), that after a particularly difficult time—the Universe rewards me. It showers me with magic. I’ve seen it happen over and over again and now I’m seeing it with my sweet, courageous friend.

So let this be your crystal ball. Hang on. Have faith. Be brave. Magic is on the way. I promise.

Carry on,
xox

Awwww, man, Jason seems like he’s speaking from experience. Right?

The gut-punch level pain is unmistakable.

Here’s the thing you guys, we are all letting go of people right now. Loves, great and small.

Here’s to loving so big it hurts like hell when it’s gone.
“Tis better to have love and lost”…aw hell, you guys know the rest.

Carry on,
xox

I just spent the day writing an article about getting divorced at twenty-six for a series on divorce at all ages.

I called it I Was A Twenty-Six Year Old Divorced Unicorn because that was how…um,…unusual I felt at the time.

You see, my ex wasn’t a troll. He wasn’t a bad guy in any way. We just weren’t a good match. But you need more than that as grounds for divorce. How did I know we weren’t a match that could pass the test of time at the tender age of twenty-six?

Because I was desperately unhappy. Like can’t eat, can’t sleep unhappy.

That was my first clue. My second clue was the fact that the stress I was under (pretending I was in love) kept my appetite nonexistent and my weight at barely one hundred pounds. I know. You’re thinking Oh, boo fucking hoo, you can’t gain weight. But at five foot five, it was a real problem.

True story: At the time of my divorce my weight dropped to 97-98 lbs. I wore a size zero and looked like a skeleton. Apparently my eyesight went too because I thought I looked amazing. My mom, never one to mince words, looked at me wearing my teeny-tiny Barbie clothes and lost her cool. “You think you look good, don’t you?” she hissed. “Well, you don’t! You look like shit! Eat something! NOW!”

Sadly, in recent years my metabolism has begun to listen to my mother— and it has turned on me. Now when I’m under intense stress I crave raw cookie dough, and frosting out of the can; and if I eat an olive, I gain five pounds. Hand to God.

Today I searched for the one word to describe how I felt at the time. At the time I was not able to articulate exactly what I wanted and what I felt was missing—all I knew was that in my heart of hearts—I wanted more. That’s when it suddenly came to me—greedy. I felt greedy. Not a positive word because my emotion at the time was so misunderstood.

“More than what?” my dad had asked me upon hearing that I wanted a divorce. “What more could you possibly want? It doesn’t seem like anyone can make you happy!”

Wow! He was right about that. That was my job, only I didn’t know it at the time.

I only knew that something profoundly wonderful was missing, and I wasn’t able or willing to settle.

So that made me feel greedy. And greedy felt wrong.

Other people settle. Why can’t I?
Believe me when I say, It would be so much easier to just stay married!

“I’m a freakin’ unicorn! An anomaly; and NO ONE understands or knows what to make of me!”

Once I was single, I found out guys didn’t want to date a twenty-six year old divorcee.

Typical First Date Conversation:

“So, you ever been married?”

“Yeah.”

“Really? He die?”

“Uh, no, we’re divorced.”

“He cheat on you?”

“Nope.”

“He left you?”

“Nope. I left him.”

(Beat) “Waiter, check please!”

Obviously I needed to set my bar higher.

What I eventually discovered, after a whole lot of sleepless nights, and years of pain, was that there were benefits to divorce; to asking more from life; to refusing to settle; to being greedy.

I also forgot that a Unicorn is a mystical, rare and beautiful creature.

So I’m curious…

This being what it is, more of a stream of consciousness, I want to turn the tables and ask you guys:

Q- What does it mean to you to settle? When have you done it and when could you not?

Q- Do you agree with the word greedy? What word would you choose when things look good but you want more?

Q- Are you a Unicorn? Why?

I love you all madly, carry on,
xox