guidance

Generally speaking, I’d be described as an optimist. A Pollyanna even. I think that’s been determined.

So naturally, people come to me to have their spirits lifted. To lighten their emotional load, so to speak.

What ends up happening if I’m not careful about my energy is: I cheer them up—and they cheer me down.

Not too long ago I consoled a friend whose business had fallen on hard times. I can do this, I thought through her torrent of tears.

No big deal. My business tanked almost seven years ago. I’m over it! I said to myself. And I meant it.

But her stories of debt collectors, empty bank accounts, no customers, and an evil, puss-pocket, scum-bag, hell beast, shit gibbon of a partner (he must have been related to my landlord), sent me down the rabbit hole.

Obviously.

Before I took my journey to hell, I did manage to mumble a few things I thought might help. She felt so much better when she left. “I feel so much better”, she said. That’s all I remember. My transformation into Zohar, the gatekeeper of hell had already begun, so my understanding of the English language was getting sketchy.

Driving home I got a splitting headache and a couple of hours later I was in full-on migraine mode. (Muttering incoherently in a dark room about f*cknobs, the horrors of retail and shit, with breath that could peel your face off—and an attitude to match.)

WTF?

It doesn’t happen to me a lot, but more often than I’m comfortable with and I see you my coach/motivational expert/fellow optimist friends. I see your exhaustion, your edge, and your drastic need for a break. This shit can wear you down!

We have no problem listening to our friends vent about their shit. But maybe we’re not doing anybody a favor by re-telling the story. I know, I know! We do it because we love them (and they’ve sat through our endless shit sessions.)  But I’ve gotta say, it is hard work keeping their shit from sticking to my shoes. Especially if I’ve been through anything even remotely similair—which is pretty much everything they’ve been through.

The optimist in me has started to scream Awwwwww! My arm! My arm!

Besides that, I’ve started to remember the advice of someone very wise who was trying to help me crawl out of a deep eddy of despair over twenty years ago. Talking about something over and over again is NOT helpful, and he refused to do it, much to my dismay.

He would hear my sad story ONCE. Only one time would he listen before holding his hand up and shushing me. That’s right, he shushed me! (Truth be told, that was the only way to shut me up once I was on a roll.)

“You think you’re going to find answers to your problems by talking about them”, he said, “but the answers aren’t found in the problem and it’s just making it worse. It’s keeping you from progressing and I won’t stay there with you.”

I think that’s when I lunged over the table with a fork and threatened to tenderize his face. I wanted him to hurt as much as I was hurting, and that’s the truth.

He would have none of it.

Because he knew how sticky that shit is when you give it life with words. “When you give it language, you give it power”, he said. And he wasn’t willing to be cheered down. Not under any circumstances. Not even love.

Plus, if he’d gone to the depths with me—I wouldn’t be here today. Swear to God. I needed him to stay with his head above water so he could throw me a line when I was drowning. You know what they say about rescuing someone who’s drowning: Be careful or they’ll pull you down with them.

So, I guess my advice to all of you optimistic uplifters out there would be (if you’re asking), speak briefly to each other about the shit. Don’t dwell on it and if you’re not up to it energetically—don’t sacrifice how you feel–even to temporarily lift a client/friend.

And check your shoes. ‘Cause that shit can stick.

How do you feel about this? Do you hate it? Does it feel shallow and selfish and other names that start with an “s”? Or are you strangely relieved? Like, thank God I have permission! Tell me about it!

Carry on,
xox

In a month we’re off to Chicago. And the thought of that makes my butt clench. Tight.

It’s not the flying so much because think about it. Getting from California to Chicago just over one hundred years ago took weeks if not months of treacherous stage-coach travel through scorching deserts and over snowy mountain passes, never mind bouts of cholera and the possibility of Indian attacks.

Luckily, there is a different kind of coach travel these days and I concede that on some flights, especially if a baby is crying, it can feel almost as long and harrowing.

I appreciate the miracle of flight. I really do. I actually love sitting perched in a seat, in an aluminum tube that’s hurtling through the air, watching movies while I snack on things I never eat below 35,000 feet, like bag after bag of potato chips and soda, and then arriving at some far-away destination in the same clothes I put on that very morning.

Here’s the thing that sends me into a tizzy. The before part of flying.  The check-in part. The part that makes you regret your trip before you’ve even left the ground. You know what I’m talking about. All of the degrading malarkey (God, I love that word), that every airport in the world has put us through since 911. You can almost hear the sound of your personal freedoms being sucked right out of you over the garbled gate announcements during the two hours of lining up, waiting, wheeling, shuffling, packing and unpacking, waiting, X-raying, virtually stripping; taking off your shoes, belt, jacket, watch, sunglasses, and in one particularly mortifying case—my underwire bra, only to wait in line some more.

It would be comical if it weren’t so sad.

My husband and I fly frequently enough that sometimes the gods deem us worthy and bestow upon us the words  TSA precheck at the top of our tickets which I’m happy to report allows us to sidestep some of the madness—but I see you there, hopping up and down on one naked foot, trying to get the other damn boot off  while your purse shoots through to the other side unattended, the line backs up, and your other boot falls off the conveyor belt and into another man’s bag.

I feel your pain. I am you. I will be you in a month.

Listen, we have all agreed, as a collective, to hand over our rights to privacy. Into the dumpster that went along with any expectation of expedient air travel as a trade-off to make us feel safe.

I have no choice other than to give up my personal freedoms when I fly, but I will never stop talking about how it used to be.

Here’s the thing, flying used to be glamorous. And fun. You got dressed up. The flight crew engaged in polite small talk, as kids they even used to show us the cockpit. Now it’s locked up tighter than the room where Donald Trump keeps his wigs.

Airports had a buzz of excitement back in the day, not like now, where the low hum of stress meets you at the curb—that is literally where my butt clenching starts. There are airports in foreign countries, (I just saw it recently in Mexico), that have full-on military walking around with assault rifles at the ready. That does not bode well for me. It forces me to drink before I board my flight which not only exacerbates the anxiety it makes me stupid and clumsy.

I have given up my freedoms, I have. But I suppose some part of me thought this would be temporary. You know, maybe for a year or two. Now there is an entire generation that only knows air travel to be this way. This ridiculous, freedom-sucking, unorganized, cluster-fuck of a way.

But I for one will never forget that it was not always like this. That we used to check our bags and walk on planes like civilized human beings. Because if we forget that, IF we accept the way things are now as normal, then, in my opinion, fear and terror have won.

Carry on,
xox

A reader reminded me of this post the other day. “A guy actually opened my car door for me!”, she gushed, “I just about jumped him right then and there.”

Imagine that.

Alert the media.

Man gets lucky after a random act of politeness.

I couldn’t stop myself. I tweaked it, I changed a couple of things, I added the word anomaly and took out some stuff about stairs. You may remember it. It’s the same only longer in a short kind of way.

Then I sent it to the Huffington Post.

So without further ado, an essay about my short-lived parking lot relationship with the polite man at Target, and my continuing struggle with feminism.

Please, feel free to make it go viral.

Carry on,
xox

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/the-polite-man-at-target-_b_11722578.html

Yesterday, I couldn’t help myself, I plastered this all over social media.

”I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:
I’m not screwing around. It’s time. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go.

Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy of love and belonging, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever.

Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through you. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.”

~ Brené Brown

Photo: Helen Mirren, age 70  (70 is the “new” middle age.) 😉

First of all, because I find myself smack-dab in the middle of this mid-life thing —I absolutely love what this says. Secondly, are you farking kidding me Helen Mirren? You are my spirit animal!

And last but not least, I love it because my hubby was just telling me the other day how grateful he was feeling due to the fact that for our age (late fifties, early sixties) we seem to be beating the clock pretty darn well, MEANING… except for a few minor things here and there—we’re not sick (as a matter of fact he puts me to shame doing CrossFit like a beast three mornings a week), and we work at maintaining the gift which decent genetics has bestowed upon us, MEANING…without going under the knife we don’t necessarily look our age (but lets get real, we don’t look like Helen Mirren either.)

Now, since it’s all about  Dame Helen, here is the flashback part from a couple of years ago:

Today I met a couple of girlfriends for a leisurely, late breakfast. I hesitate to use the word brunch because that implies Mimosa’s and Bloody Mary’s, pots of hot coffee and the fact that it’s the weekend.

This was simply an egg, toast and tofu rice bowl breakfast, sans the alcohol.
In other words, a Monday.

We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of weeks, so there were lots of hugs, laughter, stories, and sharing of pictures on our phones.

One of my friends showed us a picture of the cute rainbow-colored, teeny-tiny bikini she’d just had the courage to purchase over the weekend. She is a stunning forty-year-old, who, in my humble opinion should be wearing her bikini to the Post Office and Trader Joes, but this was a big step for her.

No more modest little one piece for HER this summer.
She’s gonna rock a bikini, loud and proud. I applaud her for that.

Here’s what Nora Ephron had to say about bikinis:

Anyhow, my friend had been noticing scores of, for lack of a better word, average women, with their voluminous bellies and boobies, and their jiggly thighs, walking up and down the beach with heads held high, like they’re freakin’ Heidi Klum, and she thought: Hey, why the hell not?

Why not indeed!

I love what she said next. I think I’m going to embroider it on a pillow.

“If people don’t like me in my bikini, they don’t have to buy my calendar.”

Bahahahaha!
After we all got done laughing our asses off, my other friend told us the story of her holiday a few years back, in Italy with her friend Luigi. They were in some steamy southern Italian city and decided to go to the local beach.

Because it was Italy and you can’t be held accountable for anything you say, eat or do there, she was also wearing a bikini. (Italy is where Vegas got their slogan, I think Marcus Aurelius said it first)

Somehow, she and Luigi found themselves together on a raft, (this part of the story gets murky. There must be one hell of a reason behind this because my friend is not a “share a raft” kinda gal). Anyhow, there they were, paddling around in the warm, deep blue, Mediterranean Sea.

Luigi then suggests that they paddle (I’m still wondering about this), over to a small island nearby (what?), to visit a couple of his friends on the beach. As they approach, one of the women, as my friend tells it, slowly unfolds herself from seated to standing on her towel.

“Luigi, Mio Caro!” she exclaims, waving her long, tan arm in the air as she slinks toward the shore to greet Luigi in a warm embrace. (Okay, now I get it.)

So… picture this: Luigi is 5’3″.

She is 6 feet tall and shaped like a ripe pear. Large heaving breasts and curvaceously round hips all the color of mahogany bounce toward the shoreline…oh, and she’s topless.

My friend then recounted how Luigi’s face was buried in this woman’s smoldering Italian bosom for the duration of the endless embrace and no one even flinched. As a matter of fact, there was a lot more of this skin on skin hugging and all of the women were older, voluptuous, tan and topless.
Mama Mia!

Not a body issue to be found. OMG! That’s SO Italian! Actually, that’s SO European. What’s OUR Yankee doodle problem?

My friend admitted that in that moment, she was thrilled she wasn’t all covered up in her chastity inducing, IcantbreathbecausethisisSpanx, one piece swimsuit.

Why is it that if we’re over a certain age, or don’t have the bodies of supermodels, we don’t have the courage to flaunt what God gave us and rock that bikini?

Didn’t the paparazzi capture this picture of Dame Helen Mirren looking fucking awesome in a red bikini a few years back? Isn’t she over sixty? Fuck! I worship this woman.

We don’t have to walk around, with boobs a flyin’ like those gutsy and gorgeous Italians, but some body confidence couldn’t hurt.
I say let’s all get over ourselves, and buy bikini’s, or a least something flattering that plays up our good assets.

Come on, Guys too.
It doesn’t have to be a speedo, but it can be trunks that hit above the calf.
Most guys I’ve met, even if they have a belly, have GREAT legs.
Flaunt um!

When we look back at pictures from twenty years ago, we were HOT and we thought otherwise at the time.

We’re never satisfied, so let’s just love and embrace what we have.

I’m not certain I’ll be able to comply. I can’t be expected to hold in my stomach for more than half-hour increments, and if I eat more than a single grape, it’s impossible altogether.

But….it I do,  I have my new motto:
“If people don’t like me in my bikini, they don’t have to buy my calendar.”

Too much?
Xox

Oh, Holy Christ on a cracker is that ever true!
We just had a Capricorn new moon and that my friends, facilitates jettisoning all that is not working in our lives.

We get a cosmic do-over. A universal re-write (the best kind of re-write there is).

Wait. This all feels eerily familiar. That’s because, if you’re like me, we’ve done a full, life-retrospective every damn year around this time.

And some years look better than others. They just do. But for those jinky ones, the ones that make you cringe with regret, oh, how I’ve relitigated the past. I’ve played the roles of judge, jury, and executioner.

Then I move straight to the special effects department and I whitewash the mutherf*cker with some heavy duty gauzy filter.

In my heavily CGI’d version, I’m so much smarter, prettier, and wittier, I have the most epic ideas, rebuttals and combacks, and my hair looks impossibly, hatefully perfect—even after a nap.

In one version, nothing is my fault. In another everything is. It depends on which chapter you come in on.

In my dreamy, rom-com version,  I get chased by a horrible dragon, captured by a giant cyclops, and saved by a naked, brave and handsome knight (we know he’s a knight by the chainmail codpiece he’s wearing). That scenario is the only way I can introduce all of the magic that permeates my life—otherwise, nothing would make sense and nobody would believe me.

But I can’t justify how I got to where I am any more than you can. Sometimes shit just happens.

Often, when I look back I feel bad for her, for me. She simultaneously appears to be the heroine and the villain of her own story and that is a hard pill to swallow. Sometimes I want to warn her, “Hey, idiot! Watch out for that guy, he’s a …oh, there goes the bra…nevermind.” At other times I try to congratulate her. “You, yeah, you. Ya did…okay. Next time try to suck less.”

Most of the time I want to duck tape her mouth shut and put her in the corner with baby.

All of these years later I realize nothing good comes from looking backward. It’s all water under a rickety bridge guarded by angry trolls. It’s all ancient history, filled with faded Polaroids and lots of bad clothing choices and the worst part of it (besides a stint with eggplant purple hair) is that focusing on my past, however riveting, keeps me distracted from where I’m headed.

Someone once said, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Well, I think quite the opposite is true. Selective amnesia is our friend AND those who look in the rear view mirror MUST be driving in reverse. I know I was. Also, and of this, I’m quite sure—my best times are not back there, behind me. They are ahead of me!

A few things that may be included while I create my future are (In no particular order): chocolate, naked knights, dog kisses, and predominately minding my own business and looking dead ahead because the future I envision for myself doesn’t resemble my past IN. THE. LEAST. (except for maybe the good hair).

What about you?

Carry on,
xox

I heard the story recently of a woman and a cat. Not the usual story of feline obsession. There were no special little kitty-cat outfits or freshly massaged beef flown in daily from Japan. Nope. The cat became this woman’s catalyst for change. Long, long, overdue change. Here’s the story:

A woman lived in an apartment for a long time. Too long. As the landlord aged, his saint of a wife passed, he fell into ill health and his temperament changed. He turned from a basically okay guy into a pot-bellied, yellow-toothed rat bastard.

Meanwhile, the once lovely building began to fall apart. Not all at once, but systematically. First, it was the single elevator which became a hit or miss box-of-terror. The out of order sign was permanent and if you didn’t feel like walking the seventy-eight steps up to the third floor with your groceries, you took your chances. But not without a valium. And a crowbar.

Everywhere you looked the paint was peeling faster than a bad sunburn. The front buzzer hadn’t worked for years, (friends just shouted up for the keys to the front door from the street below her window), and her oven either made lukewarm everything or charcoal briquets.

Everyone who visited the apartment urged her to move. But after eighteen years of rent control, she just couldn’t bring herself to leave. And they allowed cats. That is until the fateful morning he came banging on the door to personally deliver a UPS package addressed to her that he claimed was loitering in the front lobby. When she answered the door, the friendly feline came over and wove itself in and around her feet, rubbing its face on her three-day leg stubble, purring loudly.

Too loudly.

“What’s that?!’ her landlord hissed between teeth the color of aged ivory piano keys.

“Oh, uh…that’s my cat”, she stammered.

“I don’t allow cats in this building!”, he bellowed, his fat belly quivering for emphasis.

“But I’ve always had it”, she replied nervously, trying to shoo the cat away with her slippered foot.

The cat thought it was a fun new game and began tightly hugging her muck-luckity clad foot with its front paws while furiously rabbit kicking it with its rear legs She grabbed the box from his twisted, cigarette stained fingers and closed the door to just a crack in order to hide the madness happening below her bathrobe.

He was undeterred. “The cat goes or YOU go!”, he yelled. “You have one week or I’m evicting you.”
With that, he managed to propel his girth away from her door and with enormous momentum practically plummeted down the stairs. She slammed the door leaning against it for support, trembling. The cat strolled away contentedly, convinced it had beaten its foe. Exhausted, it jumped up onto the chair by the window, rolled into a ball and promptly fell asleep in the warm morning sun.

What am I going to do?, she wondered. She had to admit that the place had transformed over the years into a shit-hole and the landlord into a troll, but the thought of moving sent her into a full blown anxiety attack. She had savings, it wasn’t that. She wasn’t good with change. She hated the thought of leaving, of looking for a new place. She was used to it there. Even though she knew her quality of life could be so much better—she was willing to settle. For everything that was wrong with the place, the voice in her head came up with a million reasons why it was easier to stay.

Her tolerance for mediocrity, misery, and sub-standard living conditions had reached an all-time high.

Terrified, she hid every sign of the cat.
Late at night, she’d load its dirty cat litter and empty food cans into bags and lug them three flights down, out to the scary-ass alley where she’d walk several buildings over to dump them. The cat box took up residency in her shower when she wasn’t using it and she played the radio to hide the sounds of any meowing. One Sunday it took her nearly the entire morning to move the gigantic carpeted cat tree from its sunny place next to the dining room window into a dark corner of her bedroom. She made sure to keep the blinds closed on all of the windows—just in case.

One night, laying in bed, she literally made herself sick with worry. She realized that not only was she miserable, she had now seriously diminished her dear cat’s quality of life as well.

And THAT was the last straw!

The next day she begrudgingly mentioned to someone at work that she needed a new place— a place that took cats.
Not even three weeks later, she found the most adorable little house-behind-a-house owned by a terrific man, his equally fantastic husband, and their two siamese cats. A fresh start! Fresh in every way. New paint, shiny refinished hardwood floors, even the unfathomable! A stackable washer and dryer! Not only that, it was at ground level, the oven worked like a charm, and the front porch was screened with a perfect spot for the cat tree. Nobody was happier than the cat.

Now…you may be wondering, did the cat make this happen? Did it show itself at just the wrong time to get this ball rolling? Perhaps.

But I think the real moral of this story is the habit many of us have of dragging our feet on the way to our own happiness.
I’ve done it and I’m sure my friends—you have too. It’s about self-worth and why our cat’s, friend’s, spouse’s (fill in the blank), everybody else’s happiness is more important than our own.

It’s also a story about how there are great possibilities out there, possibilities we could never have imagined— if we can only just step out of the complacency and fear.

Take it from this cat story, the very thing you dread could be the best change you’ve ever made.

Carry on,
xox

I should feel bad about posting this video because politics, especially this year, is serious business. But I don’t. I think we should all lighten the farck up.

So…Wanna pee your pants?

I don’t care what party you are…this is funny. And we need some funny in politics these days. I’m a firm believer in injecting funny into pretty much everything I can and politics is NOT exempt.

Come on! Remember the conventions of the past? All of those funny hats and stupid costumes? All of that faux earnestness for the TV cameras? All of the crazy signs and ridiculous slogans?

OMFG! We’ve all fallen down some sanctimonious, humor-free rabbit hole.  My opinion:Politics needs the funny back! 

Families are divided. Long time friends aren’t speaking. Casual dinner conversation can turn into a street brawl (okay, maybe that’s just MY house).

Take a minute to just laugh at the absurdity of it all. Just a minute.

PS: I’m a Dem but I think some of this makes more sense than what they’re actually saying. Seriously!

If you live outside of the US this is going to be another level of hysterical!

Please enjoy your Sunday and have a laugh on me you guys.
xox

“Change is always an inside job” Another great one from that fence-sitter, Humpty of the Dumpty.

Carry on,
xox

In an act of full disclosure prompted by yesterday’s post, here is photographic proof that I am someone who has felt the WRONG EMOTION once or twice in my life. Case in point: the end of your childbearing years can be a time of great sorrow. I’ve witnessed the melancholy that particular rite of passage has caused several of my close friends. I’ve comforted them and dried their tears at the fact that no more babies are in their future (at least not in the traditional way).

Not me! I was thrilled my childbearing years had come to a close! Ecstatic! Dare I say, giddy?

You see, I like to have…ceremonies. I like to mark rites of passage, beginnings, and endings and celebrate milestones with candles or fireworks.

Or giant bonfires. I like to burn stuff. Things that caused me grief. I must have been a Viking in a past life.

Like old love letters and photographs from past relationships. I know that I hold all of the good memories in my heart.

Those can go.

Remember when I lit all of the legal papers on fire from the numerous lawsuits pertaining to the closing of my store?

Maybe you saw the smoke? They could see it from space.

I felt relief and a certain sense of pride in the fact that I’d survived such a shitshow emotionally intact, fat and happy!

So this…this is the picture of just such an occasion. A particularly meaningful event that I had been waiting years, no, make that decades to celebrate.

A few years back, once I was sure my birth-control days were behind me I impaled my trusty diaphragm with a sparkler—and lit it on fire!

We all cheered. There was alcohol. And snacks. My sister immortalized it on film. It was awesome!

You can see from the smile on my face how happy this made me. Maybe you can relate.

All those years.
All that worry.
All that mess.

Gone!

Some things just need to be lit on fire. So, what’s next?

Carry on,
xox

Oh, for the love of all things holy! This is music to my ears! I too have suffered the curse of having the inappropriate emotions for a certain situation. Not ALL situations, just…most one or two.

Haven’t you?

If so, give this a read. If you’ve already read it—read it again. You’ll feel so much better for it!

Carry on,
xox

Dear Ones:

Once I went to visit a therapist because I was afraid I might be a sociopath.

The reason I felt like a sociopath, is because I thought I was feeling THE WRONG EMOTION. Specifically, my story was this: I was a 30-year-old married woman, and I was supposed to want to have a baby — because that’s what married women are supposed to want when they are 30 years old. But I didn’t want to have a baby. The thought of having a baby filled me not with a sense of joy, but with a sense of dread.

So I figured I must be a sociopath — obviously! — and I went to a therapist to confirm this diagnosis.
This woman helpfully explained to me the difference between a sociopath and myself. She said, “A sociopath does not feel any human emotion. You, on the other hand, are feeling plenty of human emotion, but the problem is, you believe you are feeling
THE WRONG EMOTION. “

That’s why my life was falling apart — not because I couldn’t feel, but because I couldn’t accept my true feelings as legitimate. I was suffering and falling into depression because I still believed that there is a way that we are supposed to feel about every single life event (some sort of industry standard) and if my feelings deviated from that industry standard, then there was something deeply broken and wrong about me.

I do not believe that anymore.

We are not Dell Operating Systems, people.
We are people, people.

And we are complex and unique and perfect and true, and there is no one way to feel.
There is a way that culture teaches you that you are supposed to feel….and then there is what you are actually feeling. And if can’t allow your true feelings to exist, because you’re trying to live within the socially acceptable feeling, then you will suffer, and you will try to cram yourself into the industry standard, or you will try to numb your true feelings with addiction or self-abuse, or you will just stop feeling anything at all (to the point that you almost DO resemble a sociopath.)

Oh, my loves, my loves, my loves…
Have you ever suffered because you believed you were feeling THE WRONG EMOTION?

For years, I have collected so many stories from friends about their experiences with THE WRONG EMOTION.

I have a friend who described her sense of grieving — acute, anguished grieving — on her wedding day. That’s THE WRONG EMOTION! You can’t feel grief about getting married when 300 guests are waiting to gaze at you in your very expensive Vera Wang wedding gown! WRONG! And the shame she felt about that feeling of grief was so awful that her internal hard drive basically crashed for several years…effectively turning her into a socially-acceptable zombie, because feeling absolutely nothing was preferable to feeling THE WRONG EMOTION.

My friend the writer Ann Patchett recently wrote a brave and gorgeous essay about the tremendous joy she felt when her father finally died. He had suffered from an awful illness for years, and when he passed away, Ann felt not just relief…but joy! Ecstatic joy! And man, did she take some shit from the Internet for saying out loud that she was happy her father was dead because that is THE WRONG EMOTION. And yet that’s what Ann felt — despite, or perhaps because, of the fact that she had adored her father, and been his caregiver. She felt joy for herself, and joy for him because they had both reached the end of his suffering. And rather than keeping that WRONG EMOTION under wraps, she brought it out into the daylight and examined it, and talked about it openly, and shared it. Good for her.

I have a friend who finally said, “I hate Christmas, and I’ve always hated Christmas. I’m not doing it anymore.” WHAT?! WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who doesn’t feel any regret or sadness or ambivalence about that abortion she had thirty years ago. WHAT?! WRONG EMOTION.

I have a friend who stopped reading the news or being involved in activism and politics because he finally said, “Honestly? I don’t care anymore. I just don’t!” WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who stopped being a deacon in her church because she finally had to admit that she couldn’t swallow her church’s teachings anymore: WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who told me, “You know that expression about how nobody on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at work’? Because family and friends are supposed to be more important than work? Well, I probably will be the one on my deathbed saying that I wish I’d spent more time at work because I love working. I’m crazy about my job, and I love it more than anything! I wish I could work even more hours. My work fulfills me completely. I love my job more than I love my friends — and I find my job so much easier to deal with than my crazy family. Work is where I go for joy.”

WHAT?! WRONG EMOTION!

I have a friend who thought she was insane because — after her husband left her — all she could feel was relief….after twenty years of a “good marriage”. She had given everything to that marriage, and she had loved him so faithfully, and then he bailed out on her. She should have been weeping! She should have felt bitter! She should have felt shamed and betrayed and enraged! There’s a script for how you are supposed to feel when your husband leaves you after you’ve been such a good wife, but she was deviating from the script because all she felt was pure elation that he was gone and she was free. Her family was concerned about her for her reaction because that’s THE WRONG EMOTION. They thought she might need to be medicated.
My mother once confessed to me that the happiest era of her life began when my sister and I finally grew up and went to college and she had an empty nest. THE WRONG EMOTION! Women are supposed to hate the empty nest! Mothers are supposed to mourn and collapse when their children leave home. But no. My mom wanted to dance a freakin’ jig when she dropped her daughters off at college and realized that she was — at last —done with us. All the other moms were weeping, but all my mother could feel was: “Yahoooo!” But she kept that feeling under wraps, because maternal ambivalence is the single most unacceptable emotion in our culture, and a “good mother” (whatever that even means, God help us) does NOT get to celebrate being free of her children, because: WRONG EMOTION. What would the neighbors say?

And here is the ultimate: A beloved friend of mine, years ago, was diagnosed with a terminal illness. This man, who loved life more than anyone I have ever met, admitted to me that his first thought — when the diagnosis came — was, “Oh, thank God.” And that feeling didn’t go away over time, either, even as his disease worsened. He felt such deep happiness. He felt like, “Phew, I’m done!” He was dying! He “should” have felt sorrow and rage and pain and loss. But all he could think was that there was so much he didn’t have to worry about anymore! He didn’t have to worry about saving for retirement anymore. He didn’t have to figure out how to deal with his most difficult relationships anymore. He didn’t have to worry about terrorism and global warming anymore. He didn’t have to worry about getting the roof on the garage fixed anymore. He didn’t even have to worry about dying anymore because now he knew how his story would end. He was happy. And he stayed happy, throughout the whole journey toward his death. He told me, “Look, life is hard. Even a good life is hard, and I’ve had a very good life…but it’s hard. I’m excited that I get to leave this dinner party now. It’s been a fun party, but I’m tired. I’m ready to go.” WRONG EMOTION! The doctors told him he was in shock and kept handing him brochures about grieving. But my friend wasn’t in shock. Shock is when you feel nothing; my friend was feeling something —happiness! The doctors just didn’t like it, because it was THE WRONG EMOTION. Not up to the industry standard. But my friend was standing in his truth – his very own truth — and if sixty years of conscious and open-hearted living do not entitle a good man to stand in his own truth and feel his own feelings at the end of his life, then what is life even for?

My friends, listen: I want you to learn how to feel what you are feeling — not what you think you are SUPPOSED to feel, but what you ACTUALLY feel.

And I want you to guide your own life based on that, and only that.

I want you to remove the WRONG EMOTION! button from your internal keyboard forever.

I want you to throw away the idea that there is an emotional industry standard, and that you must not deviate from it. My friend Rob Bell told me that he used to ask his therapist all the time, “Is it normal that I feel this way?”, and the therapist would always reply, “Oh, Rob…we passed normal a long time ago.”

I passed normal a long time ago, too. I will not inflict upon myself anymore the shame and suffering of questioning my own reactions to life or burying my own true feelings because I am not feeling what I’m allegedly supposed to feel.

If I feel joy than that joy is right and real…for me.
If I feel grief, then that grief is right and real….for me.
If I love someone, then that love is right and real…for me.

If I feel mistrust or aversion to people I am supposed to trust and admire, then that feeling of mistrust is right and real…for me. And if I feel admiration for people I’m not supposed to admire, then that feeling of admiration is right and real…for me.

Nobody benefits when I try to make myself feel ways that I do not feel, and nobody benefits when I try to make myself NOT feel ways that I do feel…and nobody benefits when you do that, either.

Feel what you feel, allow your emotions to be legitimate, fearlessly examine your own reactions to your own life, and live your absolute truth — there is no other pathway to integrity than that.
Anything short of that is truly WRONG. (For you.)
☺
ONWARD,
LG