“You’re an interesting species, an interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone—only you’re not. See, in all our searching the only thing that we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”
~ From the movie Contact
When I watched this video last week I wept. Like it was the ugly cry, you guys. Because, after six months of watching the planet battle this pandemic, I’d forgotten.
I’d forgotten our greatness. I’d forgotten our humanness, our drive and indomitable spirit. I’d forgotten what hope feels like. I could only see the horrible nightmare, becoming completely oblivious to the beautiful dream.
This minute and a half helped me to remember. To revel in the time before which seems so distant now, and to know for certain that because of WHO WE ARE— this incredible collective of diverse and remarkable human beings, that there are better days ahead for ALL of us.
And I figured that maybe like me, you might need a little reminder of what’s ahead.
Moments of time strung together minute by minute that will be so incredible they seem impossible to imagine.
Just like the ones in this stunning video
We ARE an interesting species, Capable of SO much.
Because nothing can stop what we can do together!
See this stump? It may look like your run-of-the-mill vine that has been cut-down-to-the-bone. But oh, she is so much more than that!
Let me recap. This summer we suffered through a rat infestation so virulent that it made the biblical plagues look like the work of amateurs. Once we discovered that the rats were treating the gorgeous, perpetually blooming Bougainvillea that graced our back fence like a crack house, begrudgingly, we were forced to cut it all back.
That’s when we realized that the sixty-plus year old Bougainvillea had been holding up the equally aged fence. Our first clue came when it fell down. It collapsed like the house of cards we didn’t know it was and left us no choice but to build another.
Today I herby christen last summer as the Rat Bastard Summer of Limited Choices.
Anyway, this stump, and the Bougainvillea as a whole became what my husband likes to call “collateral damage”.
I hate that term.
In my experience, what that means is: We unintentionally broke, cut, demo’d, or otherwise destroyed something you love, and you seem mad—so we tell you it couldn’t be avoided.
Once the fence had been removed I asked the gardener (not my beloved Pedro, his assistant) to cut the Bougainvillea back even further so the guys could build a new fence without being impaled.
That night when I saw their handiwork I almost cried. I’m familiar with this type of eager overreach. Throughout my life I’ve suffered at the hands of your random hairdresser, trained by Edward Scissorhands, who left me with a hatchet job of a haircut so heinous that no hat could disguise the damage.
I was convinced my self-esteem would never recover.
And I was just as convinced that this Grand Dame of bougainvillea’s recovery would be sketchy at best. She is over sixty after all and they desecrated and disrespected her, whittling her into a popsicle stick.
“She’s dead. They killed her!” I moaned, with the same level of tortured angst usually reserved for roadkill, my favorite characters who’ve been killed off in a novel…or everyone on Game of Thrones.
I was furious.
But here it is, three months later, and just like my husband said as he reassured me that hot September night, she has risen from the dead. I have to bite my lip to keep from weeping as I write this.
Reliance is her middle name (she won’t tell me her first, she doesn’t trust me anymore).
From this day forward, when I feel beaten down and defeated, cut down and undermined. And when I feel ugly as a stump. I will look outside at this beautiful old woman, the crone of my backyard, who had the will to rise above the worst take a little off the top, collateral damage in the history of the world—and know that my problems aren’t worth shit.
“On every fourth step, you are meant to fall down. Not occasionally, not once, not twice, but on every fourth step.
The ground opens up, the wind blows, a branch hits you in the head, you trip on stones, your heart breaks, you’ve got to fold the laundry, and they’ve closed the two left lanes.
Here on the fourth step, all the forces gather together to stop you. And some people, when they fall down, they lie there for the rest of their lives.
And some people learn how to fall-down-get-up. That is one move. Fall-down-get-up.” ~ Naomi Newman
Hey loves,
You know how when a little kid falls down before they even get up they look for their mom?
As a parent you are certain of two things and possibly ONLY two things.
1. Kids fall down. A lot.
Avoid eye contact after a fall (unless there is blood or the “silent cry”), because the minute they see your face—they’ll burst into tears. We’ve all seen it. It’s uncanny.
They gage their response on yours. If you get hysterical, you’re gonna have a mess on your hands.
When we were kids parenting was different. Moms weren’t helicopters. They were Uber drivers who only came when called…after you told them your location…and waited five minutes.
I was born clumsy. Still am. I can fall over while seated.
I took my first steps at nine months and spent the rest of my childhood on roller skates. As a kid I was impossibly lanky with round feet, absolutely no sense of coordination, and a jinky center of gravity—and I fell. Not every fourth step. More like every other step. I was on the ground more than I was upright. That being said, one of my first memories is my mom’s response to what seemed to me to be a life threatening fall (kids are horrible judges of the severity of their mishaps.)
“Oops”, she said in a sing-song voice “You dropped yourself!”
Oh, right…I dropped myself. Well…she doesn’t seemed too concerned…and any sentence that starts with “oops” can’t be bad…huh…I dropped myself so I guess I’ll just…pick myself up.
Throughout my life, whenever I fall, (literally or figuratively), I can hear her calm, unwavering voice, “Oops, you dropped yourself” and it puts it all back into perspective.
Then I jump back up!
Oh, who am I kidding? I at least start thinking about getting my ass back up.
Resilience. And underreacting. Definitely two of the best lessons she ever taught me.
Carry on,
xox
How do you handle a fall? Share your secrets. I know you have ’em.
I will be away this week, vacationing in a land of sun, sand, and questionable Wifi. If it’s not two gerbils running on a habit trail unreliable, I will post something NEW.
Otherwise, every day there will be one of the six most popular posts from the past few years in no particular order.
I hope you’re all pigging out and having fun. I know I am!
Carry on,
xox
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Oh, Ralph. Or do you want me to call you Waldo?
How did you get so smart? So enlightened? After all, you lived during the nineteenth century, a time of immense intellectual and industrial expansion; yet it was also the time of corsets, slavery, the horse and buggy, The Civil War, and before the use of the electric light bulb.
You went around espousing and developing certain cutting-edge ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Holy cow R.W.!
With this quote you give those of us in the twenty-first century, an era whose technological advances you could scarcely have imagined in your wildest dreams—permission.
Permission to make mistakes;
Permission to get over ourselves;
Permission to be high-spirited, unencumbered;
Permission to start the fuck over!
Thank you Ralph, Waldo, Wally? We really needed it, because in that respect—humanity hasn’t changed a bit since you walked the earth.
Nearly two centuries later we have yet to master the art of forgiving ourselves and employing The Start Over.
“Blunders and absurdities” not only creep in, they set up camp and ruin our sleep as they set fire to our lives; and after we clean up the mess and re-group, we have a hard time letting go of the past, the old nonsense—and an almost impossible time forgiving ourselves.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”
I don’t know about you guys but you may as well be asking me to get into a shark cage in infested waters, or eat just one Lays Potato Chip—it’s simply not going to happen.
Then I remembered this, something I haven’t thought about in eons:
Years ago a friend posed this amazing question to me after too much wine and not enough cheese. (Remember the Sheryl Crowe song My favorite Mistake? It was playing in the back round),
“What would you say is your favorite mistake?”
I watched as her IQ rose several points just in the contemplation of such a thing.
Me: A Favorite Mistake? Really? I, I, uh, I don’t know. (tens of IQ points evaporating by the second.)
I suppose it was the word favorite that initially hung me up, but the more I thought about it, the more I LOVED the concept.
If we could deem a mistake our favorite, it would release the charge, the tug in our gut.
It would become the path on which we could meet up with “high-spirited and unencumbered”.
It could become old nonsense and jumpstart THE START OVER.
I was willing to give it a try.
“I suppose my favorite mistake was my marriage at twenty. We were way too young and not a good match, and after the divorce we both went on to live happy lives with other people—and we’re still friends” I admitted, feeling lighter by the minute.
Hers was an unplanned pregnancy, a son she had at nineteen. A favorite for obvious reasons.
Thinking about this again, all these years later, my heart started racing as I ran through twenty plus years of memories and they started to look less like a Tela Novela and more like a situation comedy.
Starting my business, my store, is quickly becoming my latest favorite mistake due to all of the internal growth it’s caused. I can finally be done with it. It has become old nonsense, and now I have this (the writing) and SO MUCH MORE. I can say that now.
As I lay in bed the other night it dawned on me that since the beginning of time, humans have tortured themselves over their mistakes to the point where perfectly lovely people lead lives of quiet disappointment trying to avoid another.
What is your favorite mistake? This needs to be a mandatory question on any employment or dating application.
The answer changes people.
It changed me.
Okay, you knew it was coming, Tell me, What’s your favorite mistake?
*I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done—This is for everybody who draws a breath, who has loved and been loved; who has tried and failed…and it makes me want to cry!
xox
MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED
There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers Than those of us who are willing to fall Because we have learned how to rise.
With skinned knees and bruised hearts; We choose owning our stories of struggle, Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending.
When we deny our stories, they define us.
When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye.
We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes.
We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings.
We craft love from heartbreak, Compassion from shame, Grace from disappointment, Courage from failure.
Showing up is our power.
Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted.
It’s short and it’s elegant and it’s so beautiful it made me cry you guys. Fucking Brene Brown did it again!
Have a great Weekend!
Rise Strong and Carry On,
xox
Fear had its grubby mitts on me and was dragging me systematically, with every anxious, shallow breath, deeper down the rabbit hole.
It replaced my relatively rational mind with that of a caveman being chased by a T-Rex.
I was in constant fight or flight mode, assessing every threat on a scale of one to ten. One being completely benign, a kitten sleeping on a chair, ten being a lumber truck filled with deer barreling toward us. Every moment on the motorcycle felt like a ten.
What the hell had happened to me?
If I had to name the soundtrack playing in my head all day long, it would have been the theme from Jaws and The Shining on an endless loop, ramping up my adrenalin, and whipping my nerves into a frenzy.
Studies have shown the detrimental effects of fear on the human psyche.
I was a textbook case.
Fear affects our thinking and actions.
It made me into a dumbass. My thinking was completely skewed which caused me to act like a huge fraidy cat.
I wanted to turn right, if you can imagine that, on our Left Turn Trip which prompted a stern admonition from my husband. “You’re acting like an idiot. Stop it.”
Fear hinders us from becoming the people we are meant to be.
Where was that carefree, fearless woman who was game for anything and loved seeing the world on the back of a bike? She had ceased to exist, replaced instead by a woman afraid of wildlife. Not lions and tigers and bears (oh my) but freakin’ Bambi.
Fear can drive people to destructive habits. To numb the pain of distress and foreboding, some turn to things like drugs and alcohol for artificial relief.
Yep, I was main lining the wine and chocolate. All concern for healthy living left me. Why bother. I could be killed at any moment so a big, fat, chocolate croissant or a sticky bun for breakfast were just the gateway drugs for a day of self-destructive culinary debauchery.
Fear steals peace and contentment. When we’re always afraid, our life becomes centered on pessimism and gloom.
Peace and contentment were distant memories for me now. I was a frazzled wreak. Being hyper vigilant is exhausting. I couldn’t even take in the beauty of the scenery, it was no longer about the journey, I just wanted to get to the next destination and get the hell off this God forsaken death march…I mean road trip.
Fear creates doubt.
Yes – yes it does, and I think my husband started to doubt my sanity right about then.
This next story is kind of my perfect storm of fear’s behavioral anarchy.
One afternoon around three, we found ourselves entering back into a forested area after being along the coast most of that morning. It was extremely overcast, dark and gloomy, so much so that all vehicles had to use their headlights in the middle of the day. In other words: summer along the Northwest coast.
Well, that sent me into a terrified tailspin. I could feel every muscle in my body tense up. I tugged at my husband’s arm frantically, which is the Universal sign for “I’ve lost my mind, pull over immediately.”
Now stopped on the side of the highway, I screamed over the traffic whizzing by into his helmet this question, which I’m SURE is on the MENSA qualification exam.
“Its gotten so dark out, do you think the deer think that its dusk? They can’t tell time, maybe they operate from the changes in light? Are they getting ready to start leaping out? Because if they are, I think we should stop riding RIGHT NOW!”
That was it. He’d had enough.
Forcefully grabbing both my shoulders, he looked me square in the eyes and yelled over traffic. “This has GOT TO STOP. I don’t care if you want to drive yourself nuts, but now you’re driving me INSANE.”
“I can’t believe I’m even going to say this: DUSK is DUSK. Get a grip woman.
We’re riding all the way to Cannon Beach today and we may not get there until after dark. DEAL WITH IT. I’m finished indulging your fears.
Yes, it’s true, you may die on the bike. It may be a buck, it may be a lumber truck, it may be because I had a brain aneurism caused by all this nonsense!”
“Nevertheless, I want my old wife back!”
“I want to hear you humming songs and talking sweetly to yourself behind me. I want to feel your light touch on my back, not this horrible death grip you’ve acquired. I want to see joy instead of fear in your eyes.
Most importantly, I want your IQ to return to it’s former level…NOW!”
He chucked my shoulders to punctuate the end of his lecture and to make sure I was still paying attention.
Without another word, we got back on the bike and rode away.
And THAT ladies and gentlemen is how I overcame my fear of bambi, and death.
Do you have that someone that will give it to you straight? Not let you be led by fear? Call them right now and thank them and then tell me about it!
RESILIENT
re·sil·ient
adjective
(of a substance or object) able to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed.
synonyms: flexible, pliable, supple
(of a person or animal) able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.
The world around us is moving at a breakneck pace. It’s becoming a colossal challenge to stay current; to keep up.
It seemed like, in the “good old days”, you could count on the solid footing that the status quo provided.
Those days are gone for good, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Many, many of the changes are for the better.
I just get nostalgic for some of the things that have gone the way of the rotary phone and Drive In movies.
I remember my dad grumbling under his breath, about the price of gas during the 1970’s gas crisis, when it had the audacity to hedge closer and closer to the one dollar a gallon marker. He was crestfallen when suddenly there was no attendant to check his oil and tire pressure and wash his windshield.
Shit, he even had to pump his OWN GAS!
It was hard for me to understand his consternation, hey, this was progress, after all.
But now I totally get it.
For the life of him, he could have never imagined something that had been 17 cents a gallon his whole life, would EVER cost him a dollar.
Un fathomable.
What about the days when we had one, MAYBE two telephones, connected by wires TO. THE. WALL. in our homes. You had to stand in one place while you held a conversation, and sometimes (gasp) it just rang and rang, with no answer machine to take a message.
Deep philosophical question alert: If a phone rings (in the forrest) and no one answers, and no message is left….. did the call actually occur?
However did we manage to live life?
My girlfriend and I were lamenting the fact that we aren’t ever alone anymore.
Like an ever present stalker, our cell phones lurk nearby, keeping us connected to the world, whether we want to be….or not.
Try unplugging for a day. It is harder to kick than crack cocaine.
I for one, do appreciate all the new technological advances in the last twenty years.
I love laser printers, smart phone cameras, texting, fax machines, email, my iPad, the ability to buy virtually ANYTHING from my bed, in my pajamas, at 2:30 in the morning.
I have worked hard at becoming resilient to change.
But here’s the thing. I need to mourn some of my favorite things that have been lost along the way.
I miss the Borders Bookstore on La Cienega. I loved being a single loser and losing myself with all the other single losers on Saturday nights.
We would purchase our pre-requisite coffees at the coffee counter,(which were pretty descent) and proceed to roam the self help aisle. I’d eventually make my way to the music section (that was the cool thing, they had a music section) where the cute hipster guys hung out.
Then, as I left, I’d grab a People, Vogue, and Allure magazine from their incredibly comprehensive magazine WALL.
If I felt sophisticated, or was trying to impress someone nearby, I’d add an Italian Vogue…….Ciao Borders.
I miss the neighborhood bookstores. I miss the smell. I miss Borders. I’m going to mourn it before I order from Amazon again. ( which will probably be in the next twelve minutes.)
Both my beloved high school and the place I worked for close to twenty years cease to exist. They were both destroyed by God. My high school by the 1994 earthquake and Antiquarius Antiques was burned down about six years ago.
*The former entrance to my beloved Alemany High School
Whenever I drive by either of those sites, where I lived out large chucks of my life; I feel slightly melancholy.
In my minds eye I can still picture how they USED to look.
Current reality is very different. One is a perpetual construction site and the other is just ruins inside a chain link fence.
They reconstructed the school across the street. It’s lovely…..meh.
I like to think I’m flexible, pliable, and supple (what?) to change, and I can be.
But what I think we all need to do (because I know I need to), as the world continues to whizz past us, is take a minute and mourn the loss of the things we loved that have gone bye-bye.
That will keep us stretchy and resilient.
okay, your turn. What are the places or things that have left in the name of progress? What do you need to mourn?
Tell me about them below.
Do you suppose if a wound is real deep, the healing of it can hurt almost as bad as what caused it?
~Spitfire Grill~
As the anniversary of Sandy Hook approaches I’m reminded of
how unbearable the healing process must be like for the family of the victims.
Yet, every time I see or read an interview I am completely knocked out by the courage and resilience these ordinary people are exhibiting.
Grief is such a solitary emotion, NO ONE can make you feel better.
People can help you,
they can feed you,
they can sit with you,
and even share their experiences, but ultimately you are alone on your path as you wade through that Valley of Darkness.
The darkness is tangible, no flashlight, not even a match to light your way.
Some days the emotions come in waves so strong they knock you completely off balance,
on your ass,
where you may remain for several hours…or days.
What I’m finding so incredibly uplifting is that these parents of the children and families of the educators that perished, seem to be able to let the light in.
They are getting up, and forming foundations and organizations in their loved ones honor.
They are having all sorts of dreams and spiritual visions of their kids,
And…they are letting the love flow in.
Ian Hockley, father of Dylan, who was one of the first graders killed last year, said this in a recent interview, regarding navigating his grief:
“So you’ve got to flip it around, Everything is about flipping emotions. Not hate, no hate. Flip it over. The other side is love, right? Take that and build, because once you push the hate out, the love just flows in.”
I just find that so remarkable and inspiring!
There is forgiveness in there,
There is compassion in there
There is so much courage it makes me weep.
He’s just a regular guy who lost his son,
He’s not the Dali Lama,
Or Ghandi,
Yet he’s made the choice, for his own well being to release the hate,
and let the love flow in.
And I’m convinced the world is better for it,
which means this tragedy was not in vain.
