trust

Dame Helen Mirren who turned 70 this week.

This is from back in 2015 when I was a Huffington Post contributor and my very existence seemed to rest on whether or not they ran something I wrote. Maybe you can relate?

I look back on this and marvel at how much I’ve changed in five years. No longer at HuffPo, and writing mostly books and screenplays, I’ve developed what I guess you could call a ‘submission callus’. I write, submit and go on with my life because what I’ve had proven to me over and over and over again that God, or the Divine, or whoever runs this show—she has a plan—and the details and timing involved are none of my business.

Carry on,

xoxJB

Hi, My Lovelies!
Here is my latest Huffington Post essay on rocking the years after your fifth decade, AND, there’s a cool, humiliating, humanizing, little life lesson attached.

I know there are a few over-fifties in this group and you guys will appreciate this post. So you get your glasses while I find mine…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/turning-50_b_8282198.html

Anyway, the lesson was this: I gave this to the HuffPo over three weeks ago. Three. That’s like an eternity in dog years.

Anyway, cue the crickets…

I was well aware that the divorce pieces had gotten some legs, but come on! There’s more to my story than a divorce that happened thirty years ago—WAY more! Yet, the divorce pieces continued to run and my thought process went something like this:

Why didn’t they run the Over Fifty piece, it’s been a week? Clearly, they hated it and are rethinking their decision to make me a contributor. Shit. I’ll just lay low, fly under the radar.

Then…

It’s been two weeks, I can’t continue to just lay low, maybe they never received it. Should I risk seeming desperate and re-send it? I sent something else instead, an essay on unsolicited advice, you know, just to check the system for bugs (no bugs detected, the piece ran the next day).

Instead of making me feel better I was now convinced they HATED the Over Fifty piece. A plain and simple case of literary loathing. 
In my imagination, they all laughed over lunch about how stupid it was, “Can you believe that Janet Bertolus! She doesn’t know shit about being over fifty! Or writing for that matter!” Bahahahaha! (insert diabolical editor laughter here).

Fuck.

By week three I decided that for the sake of my mental health and to maintain any shred of self-confidence I had left (it was hiding somewhere in the vicinity of my big toe) —I had to just forget about it and go on with my life.

That was last week. Yesterday, they sent me the email that they were running the Over Fifty piece.

Oh, really…that piece? Remind me again which one? Oh, yes, hahahahaha (insert insipid, forced, and awkward laugh here) the one about being over fifty, Oh, well, I’d forgotten all about that one. (Insert somersault inducing eye roll here).

When I pulled up the link I literally gasped (and not for the reasons you think, like grammatical errors or blatant overuse of commas). There, at the end of the essay, was one beautiful photograph after another of spectacular women over fifty! What a great surprise!

Sometimes I can be incredibly batshit insecure.

They’ve obviously been busy the past three weeks compiling pictures to run in this section—and here I thought it was all about me.

Lesson #1789–Trust the process. At a certain point, it has nothing AT ALL to do with you.

I’m beginning to think this applies to every situation in life!

Carry on,
xox

He was SO mad at me. Furious. How could I tell? Because he told me right to my face.

I’m glad you’re home safe,” he said. He looked stoned but I knew better. That was his sleepy face. His way-past-my-bedtime face.

“Really? ‘Cause you seem pissed,” I quipped. It was pretty obvious as he stomped around in his bare feet and blue, flannel jammie pants, slamming drawers and doors and anything within reach that he could slam on his way back to bed.

No hug.

No kiss.

No eye contact.

No kidding.

Even the little brown dog had picked sides, staying put, warm and cozy back in our bedroom, her brain having been filled with anti-mommy propaganda for the past couple of hours. 

“Wow! You’re mad?”

“Yes I’m mad!” He snapped. I think I saw smoke billow from of his nostrils.

“I can’t believe…”

“Well, believe it because I am! (Insert dramatic pause) You know I texted you…and you didn’t answer.”

“You did?” I started looking for my phone.

“Yes, I did. When I was going to bed, around eleven.”

He turned around without looking me in the eye which I took as the ‘silent eye treatment’ and stomped away. It was impressive.

But I could hardly keep from laughing. I know that sounds insensitive but this is a man who NEVER worries about me when I’m out. I suppose I should take it as a compliment but it’s always been a little disconcerting, this faith he has in my ability to make the good decisions, you know, the ones that have led me, so far, to remain…not dead. Since we didn’t even meet until we were both well into our forties, he believes me to be capable of defending myself and figuring shit out as proven to him by the fact that I rarely call him to bail me out of any jam that I may or MAY NOT get myself into. (Psssst…I have Auto Club and our friend Ernie on speed dial.)

Unfortunately, that door does not swing both ways. I make him (and by ‘make him’ I mean it’s written in Chapter One of The Husband Manual that he read and signed before we sealed the deal) I make him text me when he’s off the motorcycle.

Because that’s a fucking dangerous hobby and I have this habit of liking to know he’s still alive.

Since the scariest thing I do is karaoke in Korea town, occasionally, I think to text him when I leave because fair is fair, you know, goose and gander stuff, but he’s always led me to believe that it’s kind of adorable—but completely unnecessary. 

“On my way home,” I’ll text, letting him know that I didn’t choke on the microphone or accidentally drown on my own spit. 

CRICKETS…

Or, a simple ‘thumbs up’ emoji—meaning that I had momentarily interrupted his pizza, beer, and violent movie night by stating the obvious.

I have to admit, the evening had run later than I’d told him it would by about an hour and a half. I was at the Forum in Inglewood with my sister, having the spiritual experience of #becoming with Michelle Obama and eight thousand of her most rapturous admirers. The night was a lot of things. It was transformative. It was inspirational. But it was NOT punctual. So when I told him I’d be home by eleven and the event didn’t let out until then—and in my post Michelle-taking-me-into-her-confidence-coma, I neglected to think to correct that with a text… 

THAT was a mistake.  

As a matter of fact, unbeknownst to me, my phone, which was zipped securely inside the pocket of my purse, (because she was THAT good), had long since gone into ‘sleep mode’. 

This meant his text vibrated silently, unseen in the dark. 

TEXT: 11:09 pm — Is everything ok? It’s late. I’m going to bed
(kiss face emoji)

Holy mother of all things hyperbolic and hysterical!

You have no idea how over-the-top dramatic this is! It may seem completely innocent to you but this, you guys, this is a five alarm fire. This is a scream into the void. This is my husband absolutely freaking out! 

And I missed it. 

I was too busy fan-girling, re-living over and over every tasty morsel of juicy girl-talk Michelle had spoon fed us all night. We quoted back to each other every word. The story about falling in lust with Barack. About therapy and in-vitro. We laughed again at every joke and implied jab at the current administration as we wove our way in and out of post-Michelle traffic. It took us a good thirty minutes to find the freeway and when we did—it was choked with traffic. Don’t look at me like that, it’s LA! There’s always traffic in LA at 11pm (or so I’ve heard).

Anyway, there it sat, the unanswered text, stewing in its own juices for another forty minutes or so. And there he sat back at home—marinating in worrying. Wondering whether I’d fallen victim to a mugger in a dark parking lot, or gotten into a car accident and was lying unattended in the hallway of County Hospital. Or maybe a carjacking had occurred, or a drive-by shooting, or my sister had finally reached her limit with me, stuffed me into the trunk of her car, put it in neutral, and pushed it off a cliff.

As it turns out he’d texted a preview of what was to come. Look at that. He was all set to worry. Who knew?

Who had created this monster? In retrospect, I blame myself. Maybe it’s the fact that lately, with the whole #MeToo thing, I’d been talking to him a lot about the fact that just living in the world as a woman is akin to walking naked through a sketchy neighborhood. A lot of stuff that he never gives a thought to—is out to harm or even kill us. The fact that my guard is never down. I have to park my car in a well-lit area, lock my doors the minute I get into the car, and walk with my keys woven in and out of my fingers like a weapon. The fact that his only concern is protecting the money in his wallet and that my purse is the least of my worries when I’m out at night. That’s because my most valuable asset will always be MY ENTIRE BODY. 

Men don’t think about that kind of stuff until we educate them. And then they worry, like, all the time. They slam things and get mad when we don’t answer texts late at night—which they have every right to do because we’ve scared the bejesus out of ‘em. 

Later, when I got into bed, I snuggled up close to him, but I could feel him tense up. He wasn’t done being mad.
I know that feeling of loving someone or something (a pet) so much that the mere thought of anything happening to them shatters the veneer of complacency we all wear—and then the vulnerability leaks out all over the place like a big, wet, mess, and the only thing that can keep you from embarrassing yourself and losing your shit altogether—is anger. 

But I’m sorry, I still wanted to laugh.

Isn’t love absurd sometimes? 

Carry on, 
xox

I don’t know about you guys but I have a pretty good relationship with my “inner boss” (some call it their Guardian Angel, mine is way to bossy to have wings).

I know this because she has kept me out of trouble for most of my life. Guiding me toward what makes sense, and away from my most idiotic tendencies. That is when I listen to her.

What I often forget to factor into my daily discourse with all of the idiots (I say that with love) around me, is that THEY also have an inner boss who is guiding them away from idiocy. 

But can we trust that? 

Can I trust that the guy driving sixty-miles-an-hour next to me on the 101 and TEXTING is going to put down his phone long enough to hear his “boss” try to convince him that the fight—texting with Debra is a really bad idea?

I heard a woman talking the other day about her twelve-year-old son wanting desperately to walk on their frozen pond. It was early March and she wasn’t convinced the ice was still thick enough to support him. 

In other words, FUCK NO!

Just to back up her concerns she told him all the “falling through thin ice” stories she could think of. Especially the ones that didn’t end well. She even showed him the videos on YouTube. By the end of her lecture, he was yawning and SHE was the one who was hyperventilating and needed a cocktail.

She was so worried that he’d disobey her warning that she forbid him to go outside at all.

Seeing that it was the first nice day they’d had in months, he pitched a hissy fit and she felt like Cruella D’Ville. Even the dog showed his disapproval by pooping in their downstairs bathtub. 

Maybe we should all just wrap ourselves in bubble wrap, live in a hermetically sealed room, and call it a life, right? I mean at some point we have to trust that those we love (and even those we don’t) have their own inner boss who will keep them out of danger. Ewwwww, that’s a haaaard one!

I’m practicing this in real-time with my own husband—who is a twelve-year-old boy in a man suit. 

He wants to go on his annual motorcycle ride up in Northern Cal barely two weeks after getting out of ICU due to a nasty interaction between his motorcycle AND THE GROUND. All the doctors advise against it. They warn him that the margin of error is, well, zero. If he falls again, it will be bad. 

Like, fall through thin ice bad. 

But I’m not his mom. I can’t forbid him to go.  I have to trust that his inner boss will take the wheel. That he will realize the idiocy of taking a chance like that—and make the “right” decision.

He asked for my opinion and I gave it: Go on the trip, just drive a car.

“That’s what my better angels were telling me to do!” he admitted. 

Whew! I guess that “trusting” shit really does work sometimes! With sixty-five-year-old men.
Mother’s—I still wouldn’t let my kid walk on the frozen pond.

What do you think?

Carry on,
xox

Besides you know, politicians, choosing people to populate your life is a heady endeavor.

It is my belief that this should apply to bosses, landlords, car repair men, lovers, and Uber drivers.

And if they appear to be a lying, cowardly, foolish thief—I give you permission to cut and run.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
~Maya Angelou

PS. And don’t forget to vote.

Carry on,
xox

Hey you guys, 

Have you ever pushed a button for an elevator or started the bar-b-que and then stepped away thinking that something was in progress? Yeah, me neither. I’m a watcher. I watch for signs of progress. 

If you have profound trust issues like I do, then you push the button to call the elevator like a junkie with a self-administered morphine drip. I know that the more I push it—the faster it will come.

Can I get an AMEN?!

But have you ever been distracted enough by let’s say Snapchat, or a CNN news alert about the latest asinine Trump tweet, that you missed the fact that you pushed—and nothing happened?

That’s the feeling I’ve been having lately. Like I pushed the Easy button and looked down at my phone for a minute and everything got hard. Harder. Hardest.

So what does this self-confessed lover of all things easy do in a situation such as this?

Well, I push harder. Duh! Don’t you?

My neurosis looks like this: I make a phone call to clear up some bureaucratic snafu and it goes straight to voicemail (which you have to admit is SO un-gratifying!) so what should I do? I think the answer is clear: I wait an appropriate amount of time for a reply (one hour) and then I call back obsessively and leave another seventy-hundred messages that start off nice and polite—and slowly devolve into a monologue that sounds like it’s taken from the pages of an old Andrew Dice Clay stand-up act circa 1980.

I push harder.

I sent important emails last week and haven’t received any responses. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Do dah.
Well, that’s just bad manners Fancy East Coast Magazine. At least send a confirmation that you received my submission and let me live in peace. Instead, I’m two whiskey sours away from risking looking like the insecure, over-zealous, micro-managing, control-freak that I am by re-sending it when you’ve specifically asked writers not to. You obviously know my type and want to save yourselves from four million re-submissions of the same essay.

They say on the submissions page, “We’ll get back to you in 90 days.”
Sadists.

That just makes me want to push harder. I could be dead in 90 days, killed by a horde of marauding middle-aged midgets who’ve been sent by my husband to put me out of my misery.

I suppose this will be a good lesson in “trusting the fucking process” (I added the fucking for emphasis. Pushing it?). But ninety days is an eternity when you’re waiting!

I have five articles out in the world right now with various publications, waiting for the green light.

I continue to push the Easy Button. Hard. And often.

I’m fifty-nine. When does this striving thing go away? Sixty? Seventy? Never?

Oh…wait…I forgot to say please.
And abracadabra.

I forgot to use magic! Shit. (Forehead slap) I do that all the time!

Sorry, gotta go.

Carry on,
xox

“Trust is like an eraser, it gets smaller and smaller after every mistake.”

Don’t task me with bringing the fruit salad to brunch. I cannot be trusted to pick ripe fruit so I screw it up every time.

Once, emboldened by the misguided faith that I’d picked well, I waited until the last possible minute to cut up the fruit and ensemble the salad. The peaches were as hard as baseballs, the strawberries were moldy and lo and behold I had chosen not one, not two, but three worm infested melons. A cantaloupe, a honeydew, and a casaba to be exact.

Cue the screaming.

You ‘d think at this stage of my life I’d have knocked on enough melons to know the difference, but alas, that is NOT the case. (For decades the same could be said for my ability to pick men.)

Now I know my shortcomings and after that horrendous episode I will volunteer for dessert duty (excluding fruit torts), or the cheese plate. Always the cheese plate. If you can have your pick of what to bring to a soiree, pick cheese. It’s next to impossible to screw up a cheese plate. (Unless you bring Velveeta. Although…at a wedding back in the day they served sliced Velveeta with a sharp cheddar and some brie and many of us scoffed. How incredibly low brow!  Then, some of us covertly loaded up our napkins and scarfed it up secretly in a dark corner.)

I cannot be trusted to pick out glasses that compliment my features. I repeatedly go for style over substance, trendy and oversized. I am neither a millennial nor a hipster so I cannot carry off trendy trends but don’t tell that to my oversized purple cat eye frames.

I should stick to timeless. Classic style frames and cheese plates.

I cannot be trusted to know off the top of my head how to get anywhere.

And by anywhere I mean ANYWHERE.

I could not find my way out of a paper bag without GPS.
Don’t follow me because I can be counted on to walk in the opposite direction of where we’re headed.

Not just sometimes. EVERYTIME!

It’s a joke. But not a funny one. Unless you’re my husband who finds it endearing and thinks it’s hilarious.

You must always marry a man who laughs at your shortcomings.

I am a continuous source of entertainment for the man. 

So in closing, pick the cheese plate, stay away from the fruit, don’t attempt purple cat eye frames (you’ve been warned), and pick a man who thinks wormy melons and watching you walk with determination in the wrong direction is a riot.

Carry on,
xox

I LOVE when the Universe sends me a love note saying just the right thing—at just the right time, don’t you?

This one was so good I had to share it.

Waiting can be haaaaaarrrd. So, be impeccable with your thoughts and words, your dreams and desires, and stay focused because it’s ALL cueing up behind the scenes.

“Janet, do you know what happens in time and space just before something really incredible happens? Something mind-blowing? Just before a really HUGE dream comes true?

Do you?

Absolutely nothing.

At least not in the physical world.

So if, perchance, it appears that absolutely nothing is happening in your life right now… consider it a sign.

All the best,
“The Universe”

Sign up to get your own Notes From The Universe:
tut.com

Carry on,
xox

To all of you out there, and there are many, many of you, who are willing to be toast on your way to transformation—we are all in this together—and I applaud you with my crispy, toasted little hands!

Love,
The piece of burnt toast you’re smelling right now.
xox

Happy Sunday you guys!

I advise you, this wonderful Sunday morning, to take the time to read this.

I’ve written about this subject numerous times, I’m a fucking pro at NOT THIS. But as usual, Liz Gilbert manages to hit a home run with this essay.

I know about fifty gazillion people who are in the midst of their NOT THIS moment right NOW—myself included.

(Any two cents in parenthesis is mine, just so you know.)

I think you’ll feel a little bit better after reading this. At the very least, better understood.
I did.

Carry on,
xox

Dear Ones –
Most of us, at some point in our lives (unless we have done everything perfectly…which is: nobody) will have to face a terrible moment in which we realize that we have somehow ended up in the wrong place — or at least, in a very bad place.

Maybe we will have to admit that we are in the wrong job. Or the wrong relationship. (I’ve left both. You?)
With the wrong people around us. Living in the wrong neighborhood. Acting out on the wrong behaviors. Using the wrong substances. Pretending to believe things that we no longer believe. Pretending to be something we were never meant to be. (yes, yep, uh huh and yep.)

This moment of realization is seldom fun. In fact, it’s usually terrifying.
I call this moment of realization: NOT THIS.

Because sometimes that’s all you know, at such a moment.
All you know is: NOT THIS.

Sometimes that’s all you CAN know.

All you know is that some deep life force within you is saying, NOT THIS, and it won’t be silenced.

Your body is saying: “NOT THIS.”

Your heart is saying: “NOT THIS.”

Your soul is saying: “NOT THIS.”

But your brain can’t bring itself to say “NOT THIS”, because that would cause a serious problem. The problem is: You don’t have a Plan B in place. This is the only life you have. This is the only job you have. This is the only spouse you have. This is the only house you have. Your brain says, “It may not be great, but we have to put up with it, because there are no other options.” You’re not sure how you got here — to this place of THIS — but you sure as hell don’t know how to get out…
So your brain says: “WE NEED TO KEEP PUTTING UP WITH THIS, BECAUSE THIS IS ALL WE HAVE.”
But still, beating like a quiet drum, your body and your heart and your soul keep saying: NOT THIS…NOT THIS…NOT THIS.

I think some of the bravest people I have ever met were people who had the courage to say the words, “NOT THIS” out loud — even before they had an alternative plan. (On the GPS map of life, the blinking red dot shows that I’m “currently here”).
People who walked out of bad situations without knowing if there was a better situation on the horizon.
People who looked at the life they were in, and they said, “I don’t know what my life is supposed to be…but it’s NOT THIS.” And then they just…left.(Did you see the word BRAVE? You know who?)

I think my friend who walked out of a marriage after less than a year, and had to move back in with her mother (back into her childhood bedroom), and face the condemnation of the entire community while she slowly created a new life for herself. Everyone said, “If he’s not good enough for you, who will be?” She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about what her life would look like now. But it started with her saying: NOT THIS. (Are you getting this cryptic message Liz and I are sending you? You know who you are.)

I think of my friend who took her three young children away from a toxic marriage, despite that fact that her husband supported her and the kids financially…and the four of them (this woman and her three children) all slept in one bed together in a tiny studio apartment for a few years, while she struggled to build a new life. She was poor, she was scared, she was alone. But she had to listen to the voices within her that said, NOT THIS.

I think of friends who walked out of jobs — with no job waiting for them. Because they said NOT THIS.
I think of friends who quit school, rather than keep pretending that they cared about this field of study anymore. And yes, they lost the scholarship. And yes, they ended up working at a fast food restaurant, while everyone else was getting degrees. And yes, it took them a while to figure out where to go next. But there was a relief at last in just surrendering to the holy, non-negotiable truth of NOT THIS.

I think of friends who bravely walked into AA meetings and just fell apart in front of a room full of total strangers, and said, NOT THIS.

I think of a friend who pulled her children out of Sunday School in the middle of church one Sunday because she’d had it with the judgment and self-righteousness of this particular church. Yes, it was her community. Yes, it was her tribe. But she physically couldn’t be in that building anymore without feeling that she would explode. She didn’t know where she was going, spiritually or within her community, but she said, NOT THIS. And walked out.

Rationally, it’s crazy to abandon a perfectly good life (or at least a familiar life) in order to jump into a mystery. No sane person would advise you to make such a leap, with no Plan B in place. We are supposed to be careful. We are supposed to be prudent. (Uh, Steph?)
And yet….
And yet.

If you keep ignoring the voices within you that say NOT THIS, just because you don’t know what to do, instead…you may end up stuck in NOT THIS forever.(We know these people. They live in a state of quiet disappointment.)

You don’t need to know where you are going to admit that where you are standing right now is wrong.
The bravest thing to say can be these two words.
What comes next? (My mantra is: What Now?)

I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows. It might be worse. It might be better. But whatever it is…? It’s NOT THIS.
ONWARD,
LG

* This is a flashback from a couple of years ago when my inner poet ran the show. It seems apropos to end this week of tested faith with a poem.
A rhyme about faith and luck and his friend chance; perseverance and truth.
Enjoy your Friday you guys
xox

Some days my faith is huge and bold,
So large an ocean cannot hold.

Then other days, it’s all dried up,
just a drop in the bottom of a paper cup.

I vacillate between the two.
Fate waits to drop the other shoe.

Then luck comes by with his friend chance,
this is my lifetime’s little dance.

Some days an ocean, some days a cup,
I stay the course, I won’t give up.

I play the game, my heart is true,
with faith as my partner, how about you?

Carry on
Xox