Tag: #patchworkquiltfamily

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Meeting my Spirit Animal: Liz Gilbert

Good Morning from the International Women’s Summit in Phoenix Arizona! Just hanging around with Laverne Cox (no big deal), Elizabeth Gilbert, Cheryl Strayed, and Glennon Doyle. NO BIG DEAL! You know what I realized this time around however, is that I am not as star struck as I used to be. I realize that due to their bad ass ness I have these power house women available to me all the time anywhere I want. Elizabeth Gilbert for instance has been downloaded into me (this is actually something she spoke about here, about her beloved Rayya). Her words are literally a part of me now, and so too I am realizing is her spirit. So when I was able to have the courage to show her some words I wrote about my experience in 2015 and receive an amazing nurturing hug from her, I absorbed it into me and it just gave me more encouragement for my own journey as a bad ass.

I’m just sitting here trying to wrap my mind around this experience. I was going to write that even words fail to capture it, but that simply isn’t true. Words haven’t failed me before and I am willing to bet they won’t now either. I just don’t know which ones will come forth at this time. Isn’t that exciting?!

Isn’t that the very definition of magic, that we don’t know what is going to happen next?

It can be magical. And for people with anxiety it can be terrifying. I am both. It depends on how grounded I can find myself in any given moment and what I am facing down in the mirror that day. These events have a way of doing that to you. Bringing you face to face squared off with any existing feelings of unworthiness. Four years ago at one of these I could barely make eye contact with anyone. I was so afraid they would see straight through to all the hurting parts of me and decide I wasn’t meant to be there. At the same time I was desperately wanting to be seen. We can be both, ALL, all at once.

Elizabeth Gilbert ended up telling us a very intimate story (that she stated she hadn’t planned on) about her beloved Rayya, that she lost two January’s ago. By the way if you haven’t read Rayya’s Memoir, “Harley Loco”, I highly recommend it. Harley Loco !!! She describes the process she needed to go through to come to terms with losing the person she always went to for everything. How could she exist in a world without her, and she ended up saying at the end of the story that this process made the download complete. She talked of radical mercy, the kind that defines who we are as people, not the person we are being merciful with. She keeps Rayya inside of her now, and can access her voice at any time, because she knows her so intimately, that she knows exactly what she would say in any given situation.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. This idea that we can keep people well beyond their expiration in a variety of ways, not just through the written word.

Also at the panel lunch (that only gold tickets have access to, something I can hardly believe I am able to do, never would have been able to before), they talked about this idea of leaving a legacy and how much pressure we women feel to do that AND all of the other things on our plate. One of the bad ass women said something along the lines of rather than thinking of some large scale way to do this, the end result our biggest dream come to life. We leave our legacy anytime we touch another human life with connection, mercy, kindness, integrity, anytime that we see someone that needs to be seen. This idea was so comforting to me. It gave me the sense I am exactly where I should be RIGHT NOW. Not that I am somehow desperately missing some imaginary mark that was set for me. A way I have always felt restless and disturbed about.

I am experiencing more peace, even amongst all of these very big emotions, and so many different energies, here this time. In my personal journey peace is probably the thing most would describe could seem the most unattainable for me. I do not have a peaceful mind, often I have a vicious one, but I am learning to love it/her right into submission. She is melting into a puddle of positive thoughts, and solidifying into a beautiful deeply rooted willow tree. Strong and grounded, and capable to allow her branches to be lifted and moved by life’s experiences, without fearing total annihilation at every turn.

I barely even recognize myself on this trip.

So for this morning I will share one defining moment from it, there have been many. At the top of this post I shared a passage I wrote in September of 2015. At that event I wandered around, not knowing whether I was doing peace or being spiritual correct or not, feeling very insecure about my place in the world.

This time I took my shot and I asked Elizabeth Gilbert to read these words in the front of my very worn copy of Big Magic. She READ MY WORDS! And she gave me the best hug, she didn’t let go first she just held me. My hero held me for a few moments and read my words. I can do anything now! She saw me. And that was enough. It didn’t need to be more. And so perhaps maybe I too can entertain the idea that I am enough, and nothing needs to be more, and then hopefully I can model that for all of the women who look to me. My daughters, my wife, my friends, my clients, my found family, and anyone I come into contact with: WE ARE ENOUGH! We are exactly where we are supposed to be, and life can be full of magic if we are willing to face off with our fears enough and to keep going when it burns enough to see the horizon over the next difficult spot.

Keep going my friends. Dreams do come true. Here is what it looked like when one of mine did…

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I have a new “bar” for self-love.

*my bar is that I may see myself as magical as my wife does, the great salve that continues to heal the many hurts*

In my office I am always talking to my Clients about my “bar”, their bar, our bar for ourselves. A simple expression meaning “what are my hopes and expectations for my one go round in this life.” Am I allowed them? Or does my functional dreaming stop at whatever happens to cross my path.

Passive living. Aggressive living. Is there something in between? If there was an in between perhaps it would be the belief that magic exists.

These thoughts of magic brought to you from having watched the new movie A Wrinkle In Time last night. when the stars and my hormones aligned to bring me one of these clear states of consciousness where everything just feels magical, and I somehow manage to not discount that or minimize its worth.

To be clear and fair about this process today I am bloated and bleeding so don’t forget in the beginning and perhaps always we are afforded glimpses, and clues, not handed our dreams on a platter. Today it’s back to the business of just making it through to the next magic moment.

Whether it was the fact that a pair of very adored clients have a new baby and I was blessed with the opportunity to hold him a couple of times now, and it broke my heart wide open. It broke open the pain of the negative pregnancy tests, and the joy of our new possibilities with IVF beginning this month.

Or whether there really is such a thing as destiny and if I squint just right I can actually see the threads of the tapestry being woven before my very eyes..

Regardless lately I feel magic in everything.

So I was thinking about this and realizing/ wondering if my will has led me to somehow be allowed to RE-experience the childhood I should have had, now. My willingNESS to still remain open to people and experiences despite the many anxieties and hurts that clawed inside of me for so long.

And could this realization further solidly my belief that I will create beautiful things in some way that will touch the lives of others?

People are just too beautiful to pass up.

People are “the bread and butter” of my life. They are my patchwork quilt that keeps me warm when I am cold and scared, they always have been. And I’ve always been able to find what I wasn’t given naturally in the way we all imagine it’s supposed to work.

Maybe imagining things as supposed to work a certain way is very limiting after all, and sometimes we just need to buckle up and take the ride.

This suddenly made me think of Space Mountain at Disneyland. I rode it with my Aunt Linda as a young girl, one of the few typical childhood experiences I was blessed to be able to have. You are riding a roller coaster in the dark, there are a few laser lights and things, but ultimately you are surrendered to your fate once strapped in and set loose on the rails.

I screamed with delight. I felt the lightness of being in childhood for those moments. I don’t know if she and my Uncle will ever know what it meant that they took me there at that time. Looking back now it honestly could have been a game changer. I wonder without that experience if I might have gotten lost to a world of rebellion of a variety I couldn’t come back from. A kind that would swallow me whole. I certainly had all the vulnerability for it.

But there was always people. I always turned to people. And when that need felt a bit more desperate and anxiety driven as life got more turbulent I ended up again shamed for this behavior by some of the people that mattered most to me.

Replacement family after replacement family. A foster care system of my own creation.

The thing is that now I got it so damn right, that I can’t even become tempted anymore to discount the path of getting here.

My wife came home last night, just after I had fallen asleep. She came in and she just curled up with me and told me how in love with me she is. She did it in such a way that clearly she had experienced the same magic that I had over the evening, even though we were towns apart. We tend to be connected like that, in some cosmic manner.

She just said it over and over throughout the night as she read to get sleepy while I slept. I felt a rush of pure adoration and love. She remarks to me when she sees me playing and light that she notices a childlike me. This noticing has opened me up to accepting that could be ok now. It doesn’t have to take the linear traditional route.

It’s ok to find someone who loves you this much, and to find out how to receive that love when it wasn’t a part of your model. I’ve journeyed through hell and back. Out of the dark wood, up the mountain, down into hell, and back out the other side.

So when I see a scene in someone’s creation from their imagination I know exactly that the magic is real and I can connect to it. I don’t need to be skeptical or critical or pick the movie apart for design flaws. I can just experience pure and utter love.

Movies and music give our truest selves permission to come out and play, and to wonder, and to dream….

I don’t know if there’s anything better than that.

My bar for myself and my life have become pretty high. There have been lots of critics, but my love story speaks the truth about holding out for what you are really looking for, and what you want and deserve, whether you are able to believe in it fully yet or not.

That part can always unfold….

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Chicken Soup and the Written Word…. for the Soul

*When I was a kid I devoured as many Chicken Soup for the Soul books that I could get my hands on. I remember they stirred something in my empathic soul. I can still remember some of the stories to this day. I kind of wonder how much of my value system was formed in those, always telling tales of people who would go above and beyond and then the effect that had. 

Let’s see what kind of Sunday thoughts I can organize (or not organize) with a house full of eight girls. Am I having a birthday party you might ask? I am not. My daughters are very social and love to host their friends. With such a great group of friends how can a mother argue. It’s such a wonderful thing to hear their laughter and to watch them all experimenting with who they are and coming into their own. This is one of those moments where I am at the top of the parenting mountain and able to catch my breath for a few moments and take in the breath taking view. These moments will quickly blur into the rearview and the next challenge will be on the horizon, but it’s incredibly important to soak them up and log them into the long term memories folder. The issues I was speaking about in previous posts with twin A have subsided for now. We finally came to an understanding, a partway meeting of sorts. Her attitude has been better ever since.

Today’s blog title began with me buying ingredients after I dropped my son and my adopted son (emotionally not literally) off for a day of work at Trader Joes. They are sixteen and part of the my first work program, and I couldn’t be more proud. It’s a great company to begin learning from, and a job that was able to carry me financially and personally in ways I only am able to see now through a painful divorce and many transitions in my life. My Trader Joes family will always be an important piece of my personal history. It is so good for my son to be out in the world learning about new things and people, rather than just holed up in his room playing video games. I am proud of the balance I have encouraged in his life. Granted it is not always easy to know how much to intervene and how much to let him have his own lessons and conclusions. I am putting a lot of work into that recently as a parent. A Client session recently and the movie I love Simon, brought to my awareness that I can be a little overly intrusive into my kids lives. You know trying to pry them open like using a knife to open a can of tuna, for their every feeling. I mean I know the value and necessity of having a space for that, but with my own children I just may not be that space. It’s heart breaking to acknowledge that. But seriously where is the magic formula for when to make sure you are involved, and for when to give them space? If I ever find one I’ll let you know.

So my trip to Trader Joes was for ingredients to make chicken soup. They are chilling on the counter right now, waiting for the teenage girls to depart the kitchen. The reason I am making a pot of chicken soup (not that I need one, it’s delicious and becoming a staple in our home) is because I am really struggling with my Crohn’s Disease right now. It’s flaring it’s ugly head. My typical MO is to try and deny or ignore, or reduce it. In the past I have told my self that I was sick, and therefore felt even more sick, believed I was sick. I believe in the power of the mind. This is a good thing except when that belief reduces the validity of my very real experience with this disease. It’s coming up on five years now since my diagnosis. The testing and my own knowledge suggests I had it for long before it was known though. I guess the theme of today is balance as my trouble here is trying to strike a balance between acknowledging and validating my disease, and yet not letting it take over my life. How do I know then when I am really sick … (ok the teenagers have asked me to play computer video games with them, and I’m actually really thrilled at this age I would even be asked, so I’ll have to come back to this).

This turned out to be a lot later. I just finished separating the bones from the chicken and the soup is nearly done. Turns out it is the perfect thing, because twin B has a sore throat and hardly slept. I got sidetracked and ended up trying to delete some of the 18,000 pictures/videos on my laptop. That task, much like cleaning out my e-mail feels insurmountable, and probably is. I wanted to sit and read for a good solid hour. It’s gorgeous outside so perhaps I will try for out there. It is still chilly though. I started reading Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, a book about the life of David Foster Wallace (author of The Infinite Jest). Something about it was calling to me. I have yet to figure out whether this reading ADHD is pure genius and exactly as it is meant to be or whether I could definitely be doing better.

Here are the books I am currently reading: Lisey’s Story by Stephen King (thought its been months since I picked this one up). Bird by Bird Anne Lamott (I don’t want it to be over). Carry on Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton (Wambach). 3 or 4 books on brain and behavior wiring etc that are all WILDLY interesting. The whole series of Julia Cameron’s the Artist’s Way. The 3rd installment in the Ripley series (Ripley’s Game I think)  (the book series that the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley was derived from, by Patricia Highsmith.) I am also trying to read magazine articles, because lately I am wondering if a way to begin with a smaller goal of getting my writing out there, would be to try to do articles first. I just started listening to 11-22-64 I think it is? by Stephen King on audiobook. It hasn’t captured me the way The Dead Zone did, but I also have been doing different things with my time.

On the home-front my first born son, (and only son I will ever give birth to) just passed his driver’s license exam, and pending some insurance sorting will be making his maiden voyage of a first solo car ride shortly. I am proud, astounded, nervous, awed, reflective, contemplative… and so many things about this. I told him this morning that if he isn’t careful and something happens to him I would stop breathing on the spot. Too much pressure? Seriously though I would. I feel simultaneously like still my 20 year old self, and also this foreign entity that has a 16 year old boy with a driver’s license. I am both selves, rich with everything in between.

The thing that is happening the most lately is the writing piece. If I look back over the past couple of years my reading and writing has grown exponentially. If I can avoid the gremlins who say things like: yes BUT you aren’t published, and who really reads what you’re writing anyway, and couldn’t you be doing something more productive to make money during that time, and it’s frivolous, and it’s already been said, and on and on and on. If I avoid those guys and just take an objective look at the facts. This is my 41st blog post, and even as I am writing it I feel it is just disjointed, and who would get something out of reading it, and my ADHD and Crohn’s is trying to sabotage my existence.

Speaking of Crohn’s to bring this post full circle. I am really struggling right now. The migraine’s have spiked up again, which likely means inflammation is wreaking havoc in my body. Last week I thought I was going to pass out while a new client sat across from me, I felt heavy and far away from my own body, and for a second I almost warned them. It passed, but the memory of the feeling and the fear it would soon return did not. I have been having ringing in my ears followed by rushing and pressure in my head often throughout the day, my hands and legs and fingers etc have been going completely numb or unpleasantly tingly during the night. I’ll wake up with a swollen hand, severe nausea, terrible stomach pain until I use the bathroom. My temperature regulator feels broken, I can be freezing and not able to get warm or too hot and puffy and swollen. My abdomen without warning will swell to a 5 month pregnant status. I can hear my stomach running and it feels like my food tries to call back out of my esophagus. At night I have been “flushing”, red hot feverish episodes that come on without any warning and leave people asking if I am ok. The only remedy is to lay down and rest. I don’t want to lay down and rest. My body is sabotaging my natural enthusiasm and joy for life, and it’s so hard not to be angry about this, to deal with it with grace and to not fear the worst. The possibility of surgeries etc. But even that is a distraction from the very real fact that each day having some unpleasant physical symptom that I am attempting to ignore, banish, push through etc, adds a gigantic extra layer of exhaustion to my life. More overwhelm, and lately this is the thing that feels the biggest threat to the breakthrough of me writing. 🙁

One of the worst aspects is the having 0 idea of when it will strike. Another terrible aspect is trying to look for ways that I have caused it by being unhealthy etc. From my understanding while certainly you can make it worse by being excessive in certain behaviors etc, for the most part you can’t really do anything when you have a disease to control whether you have symptoms or not. I mean you can try to be as healthy as possible, but it may or may not stop the symptoms, and unless you want to live in a bubble and not enjoy anything. I mean there needs to be what’s this b word again? BALANCE as with everything. But even then. It is hit or miss. I can eat something one time and be fine, and eat the same thing another time and be miserable for hours.

There have been times when I have had a few “bad tummy days” that I was afraid that I was coming out of remission, but I recognized that to be just fear. However I think this is different this time. Whether it is or isn’t the process is completely draining and sends me pummeling the air with my fists until I break into a fit of tears. I don’t want to give one ounce of my life up to Crohn’s. I refuse. My will is not enough here, and I have never come up against something where this was true. Somtimes when you write yourself all the way to the spot you needed to reach the emotions just end up flowing. This always happens for me, the dead center of the fear or the helplessness when touched with the tip of the needle bursts. I am at the mercy of this disease. Not since I was a child have a felt so helpless, and that was not a place that was very pleasant for me, so being brought back in this way evokes strong emotions from my core.

Back to David Foster Wallace for now. Oh a quick thought about that. I am still always more interested in reading about the creator, than what they created themselves. People will always be the most interesting thing… the why, the how, the when, the where of their lives. Endless fascination….