In the Crook of My Right Arm

My son is 22 months and he loves his Mama somethin’ fierce. He is much more attached to me than my daughter was at this age. If he loses track of me in the house I can hear him from the other room saying, “Where’s Mama? Mama!” I always answer back. “I’m right here Buddy!”

When he finds me he climbs on my lap and says, “What doing Mommy?”

His favorite place to fall asleep is in the crook of my right arm. When he wakes up alone in his crib he cries, “Mama! Come get me. Your bed.” He’s my youngest (and probably my last) and of course he gets most of what he wants.

There have been some significant changes in our house in the last couple of weeks and because of it, my anxiety has been on Level Red High Alert. Coinciding with these changes was a rash of attempted child-abductions in Seattle where I live. On three different occasions, three different people tried to snatch a young child in broad daylight. It appears the incidences are unrelated.

But what is related, is that the only time I left my house for a week was for school and gymnastics class. I was so paranoid. For a whole week I wouldn’t even take my eyes off my children in our fenced-in backyard. Then one night, while lying in bed with my son tucked into my right side, I suppressed a panic attack. I looked up the sexual predators in my neighborhood (again). I left the outside lights on all night. I double-checked the window locks and I had to take medication to fall asleep. For a straight week I could not stop thinking about the possibility of my children being abducted.

Eventually, the anxiety abated. I became calm(er) once again. I thought back to the night with my son when I was clearly unhinged and I couldn’t understand how I let my thoughts whip me into such a frenzied state? Normally, I am a rationale person. I know the child abduction statistics. I mean, I don’t even live in Seattle proper.

But this is how anxiety works. Panic attacks are the activation of the body’s most primal fight or flight response. But the reaction is not from actual danger, but a perceived, imagined danger. Danger you fabricate with your thoughts.

I thought about that night a lot – laying next to my son trying mightily to slow my breathing and trembling heart as he slept in the crook of my right arm. Eventually, I uncovered the parallels; the hidden meanings of my fabricated thoughts and my real life, and I came to a conclusion. You see, for a week or so this recent big, family change had me feeling out-of-control, and the more uncertain I am of the future, the easier my anxiety latches onto any reason to illicit a response, in this case, it latched onto the recent attempted child-abductions.

The new, big change in my life is that two weeks ago I reentered the workforce for the first time in almost three years. In fact, as I write this, I am on a plane—my first business trip in as many years.

I’d been thinking about going back to work lately, but I hadn’t planned on doing it this soon. An opportunity presented itself to me out of nowhere and I could NOT say no. It is the “perfect” job for me right now. I get to work from home with flexible hours. I will be able to be there for my kids when they need me. I’ll be doing things I enjoy doing. I get to write and read other people’s writing. I get to use social media and interact with mothers on a daily basis. I get to create and use my business acumen. I get to help people. You.

One of the best parts is that this job found me through this blog. They know that I write openly here and that is not a negative, but a positive.

After weighing all the positives and negatives there was only one answer. I had to take it. More than that, I wanted to take it. But… and there’s always a but.

I know myself well enough to know (or at least figure out) what’s been happening in my mind and body for the last two weeks. I know that when life starts spinning in all directions I get nervous. I start wishing for eyes in the back of my head, more hours to the days, and a crystal ball to tell me what’s going to happen tomorrow. All are impossible things to have, and it makes me start to worry that I’m doing something wrong. Missing some crucial piece of information. That if only I can stay one step ahead, I may never fall.

I want to succeed at work, but I’m not scared of failing either. I’m also not scared of making mistakes or not having this position work out in the long run. I know I will give it my all and that will be good enough, and at this stage, work can’t scare me anymore anyway. Not after what I’ve been through. I’ve got a firm grasp on what’s important every night in the crook of my right arm.

What’s got panic rising in my chest is thinking of that little boy walking around the house crying, “Where’s Mama?” and his Mama is not there to answer him.

My true, repressed fear is that my children will flounder–get metaphorically lost–at least in the short-term. For this reason I have fixated on the near impossibility that they will get really lost. Forever.

I put my career on pause and stayed home for the last three years for a reason. I wanted to be with them when they were babies. I wanted to have that experience with them, for them, because I love them so very much and I never wanted to regret not being there for the most dependent years. It’s not the right decision for everyone but it was the right one for me. It was also an opportunity I was fortunate enough to have, and also one that was handed to me by The Universe due to circumstances beyond my control.

But now my daughter is four and my son is almost two, while they still need me a great deal, The Universe has handed me another sign that it’s time to go. It might just be to my office to do some work for a couple of hours, or away for one night on a business trip, but still, it’s time to go.

But Buddy, don’t you worry because I’ll always be right here. Right here. I promise.

There are Pythons in the Everglades: And Other Things I’ve Learned about Marriage

Recently, my husband and I spent a week on vacation in the furthest, southern, sunny geography in the continental United States; south Florida. We also recently spent several rainy, winter months in counseling in Seattle, Washington. We didn’t choose to go to Florida, and if we didn’t have to, we wouldn’t have chosen to go to counseling. But my husband, the intrepid bread-winner, won this trip to the Sunshine State through his work. It was a rare accomplishment for his large company, and since we were not taking the kids, it was also a rare opportunity for us to spend some extended time alone.

I was mostly excited; only a touch nervous.

Ritz HorseWe started off being utterly spoiled at the Ritz Carlton on Key Biscayne. This was the company portion of the trip. In those four days we took a boat tour around Miami, went to a Heat basketball game (my husband is a huge NBA fan), and took an air boat tour of the Everglades. We ate, drank and slept our fill over four days in luxurious style. Like a relaxing, self-endulgent massage on tense muscles, it was a perfect way to soften us up for the rest of our trip—our personal vacation away from the company people, deeper south in Key West. We left the Ritz, somewhat remorsefully, and made our way, slowly, southward along Hwy 1 where we would spend three days alone.

But before we could get there, we had to drive through the Everglades.

The Everglades is actually not a swamp, but a river. It’s a remarkably lazy one because it moves (slides really) off the edge of Southern Florida at a whiplashing rate of a half mile a day. When it reaches the ocean, the fresh (although muddy) water mixes with the shallow, light blue seas of the Caribbean. If you draw a latitudinal line through the Everglades all the way around the Earth you will not find another geography like it. It is a truly unique ecosystem.

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The Everglades is also a petri dish for wildlife. If, by chance, a new species makes it way to this lazy river, that species proliferates beyond its typical boundaries. It grows larger, more resilient than usual, disturbing all other things and creating chinks in the chain of homeostasis. Apparently geriatrics are not the only population who thrive in Florida.

Like most ecosystems, the Everglades are sensitive to change. The slightest hiccup; the subtraction or addition of a plant or animal can bring sweeping and permanent change to all the parts. Michael+Jackson+snakeThe most publicized, and perhaps most exotic of these invasive species is the Burmese Python. Sometime in the 80s, no doubt a misguided pet owner channeling his inner Michael Jackson, let lose some Burmese Pythons that had grown too big to wrap around their mullets. That mistake resulted in a population of Pythons that are now estimated in the 100s of thousands. These monster-sized snakes are now eating the natural predators at the top of the Everglade food chain, the alligators. In some areas, the Pythons have devoured 90% of the animal life; everything from wrens to deer.

Realizing the potential for destruction of one of the world’s most unique habitats, the government now spends $500 million dollars a year trying to save it. And it’s not just from Pythons; there are trees, snails, mice and yes, men who want to take over this prime real estate.

As we traveled south I thought of those Pythons. People in Florida hate them. They hold contests to see who can kill the most snakes. Once, a tour guide operator even jumped in after a one attempting to wrestle it with his bare hands. He was almost strangled to death in front a group of tourists. Pythons are Everglade Public Enemy #1 but they didn’t really do anything wrong. They are just Pythons being Pythons. But that doesn’t change the fact that they don’t belong there, even if they like the warm weather and plentiful golf courses. It does not change the fact that if left unfettered, they will destroy a good thing.

As I looked out the car window onto the mangroves and saw grass, it hit me. I’ve let loose Pythons in my marriage.

Marriage Pythons are unforgiven deeds. Resentments. Marriage Pythons are deadly and if allowed to grow unfettered, they will proliferate and destroy 90% of all the other pieces that make a marriage unique and beautiful. If you can’t stop the Marriage Pythons, the ecosystem will collapse. Right then I decided to become a Python hunter, but since I’m more a catch and release kind of gal, I’m not killing them. I’m caging them. Studying them.

Now, I see Pythons all the time. I’ve learned how they move, where they hide, what they eat and where they breed. I’m catching them one by one. I’m giving them names, shining a light on them inside their cages and letting your little fingers to tap on the glass. Hopefully, I’m educating a few on the dangers of owning exotic animals, 80s hair and marriage pitfalls.

By the time we reached sunny Key West, I had recommitted myself—not to my husband, but to honing my most valuable Python catching tool: forgiveness. So far, it’s been the hardest thing yet.

But Key West wasn’t the furthest we had to go on this journey south. We went even further. We took a float plane 70 miles south to the most southern and key of all; The Dry Tortugas. This is where a pre Civil War military fort, Fort Jefferson, has been turned into a pristine and magical animal sanctuary and protected state park.

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Fort Jefferson’s history is gruesome; a tropical island of horrors. Slaves built the fort in the early 1800s.  They are called The Dry Tortugas because the island lacks access to fresh water. The fort was designed to sit on top of a massive cistern that would hold fresh rain water. But the engineering was faulty and the massive brick structure collapsed under its weight, cracking the cistern and 087filling the surrounding moat with sewage water. Imagine a moat of standing sewage in tropical heat? During the Civil War prisoners and soldiers in their heavy wool uniforms were forced to stay here. Disease ran rampant. Many tried to escape, and many others died.

Today, the moat is clear blue ocean water. The canons and shackles are rusted relics and the attached land is a rookery for all kinds of beautiful tropical birds. As we walked this empty, ethereal and solemn place, I realized that this was me. I am a fort, on an island, in a shallow sea and if I do not seek peace, I may collapse under my own weight, surrounding myself with sewage water while chained to the wall. I am also beautiful, magical, a sanctuary. I can be deadly. My history; flawed. If I cannot learn to forgive even myself, to turn the page, if I cannot hunt the Pythons inside my head and bring the waters to homeostasis, I might flood my moat and destroy my own habitat.

I came home from Florida changed. But do you know the best part of all? The most heart-clenching truth I found in this most southern, foreign of places? That sometimes is it out of war, that beauty arises. Sanctuaries are found. That love lives on behind high walls and dirty waters.

Muster Up A Little Faith

Image credit- aswirly.com

Image credit- aswirly.com

We sit on our couches in the dripping wet moss of the Pacific Northwest, or high desert, land-locked mountains, or sunny beach communities, and we watch a swirling dark cloud whip up people’s lives in a place we don’t know. We feel horrible, we feel slightly comforted that we are not them, we feel sad and helpless.

We are all flabbergasted by the seemingly random, potentially disastrous and sometimes instantaneous way life can knock us sideways. In times like this, we tread along similar thought patterns of self-soothing–prayer, anguish, altruism–because even if we were not near that town, buried under that rubble, we  know, even fixate on the idea that bad things can happen at any moment. To us too. Sudden, devastating tornadoes are symbols of the impermanence and unpredictability of everyone’s life. It is this constant, most basic and low-frequency fear that drives us to seek out vices and means of control.

My mode of control is thought. I will think a thing to death. I will flip it over and over between my fingers–one by one and back and forth like a drummer with his drumstick–until there is a glimmer of sense to be made. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it forces me to be honest, to stay curious, seek information, use my brain. A curse because there is never a definitive answer and I am often wrong.

My primary focus has been people. If I can figure out why people feel, and do, and behave, then I can feel safer, more able to predict the future, more in control of my world. I have learned a lot about people this way, but it is not with other people that I am most concerned. The person I’m preoccupied with figuring out is, of course, myself. If I have learned anything over the years, it is that this is an impossible task.

People are as different and intricate in their thoughts and reasoning as the composition of the universe. There is simply no outer edge to human potential which is, in itself, a scary/comforting thought. There is no quantifiable algorithm that will make people suddenly make sense to me. It is impossible to discover the secret to suffering and pain and love and hate and love, because those things hold no definitive quality or concrete definition. They are forever moving, always out of reach like the funny shapes that move under your eyelids. As am I in any given day.

People are as crazy, hopeless, fantastic, capable, blinded and varied as the stars, and yet, at he same time, we are the same. It’s a circular thought. Our name might be Jane, or Randy, or Natalia or Xerxes; we may speak different languages, want different things, but we all still want… and feel, and try, and love in various combinations of each.

Science thinks it knows these things better than all else. I know, because I love science. Why do I love science? Because science is the pinnacle modality of control. Inarguably its goal is to quantify the world, deduce it down to elemental parts. It uses formulas and statistics and empirical data! to prove we are all knowable and known. Don’t you love the word empirical? But science has an outer edge.

And when you reach the outer edge of anything you can do two things: turn back, retrace your steps and tread a deeper path along the only thing you’ve ever known; or… you can close your eyes, muster up a little faith, and jump.

My Tribe

My TribeYou are my tribe. The people who visit me here. You are the people who hear me, understand my intention, collectively nod along with words that resonate inside you. First, I wanted to say thank you, and then, I want to know more about you.

When I started this blog, I had no grand vision or theme. My only intention was to be brave enough to write what I was truly thinking and feeling. To write it cohesively for an audience. Of course I wanted to write it well–with honesty, sincerity and as much insight as I could manage. Over the year and a half some themes have emerged. Themes where my heart and mind tend to wonder. This is my 100th post, and in the 99 previous posts, the more prominent themes have been spirituality, fear, love, anxiety, letting go, relationships, yoga, and, of course, modern motherhood.

I never would have known these things occupy my thoughts had I not written them here. And what a gift that has been. In the process of writing those things I have freed myself from some of the most burdensome thoughts. Because I believe thoughts have power and possess energy and when they are harmful, they can harm the host. I’ve laid down some of my most harmful thoughts here, with you, and I am much lighter for it. So thank you.

I believe that the power of thought works in positive ways too. I hope I have shared some of my more uplifting ideas as well; thoughts that have proliferated with you, helped you, made you think or feel and want more for your life. If I have one true goal in life, it is that: to inject positive thoughts into the world. To let people know they’re not alone and have nothing to fear.

In my time here I have also come to realize who I might represent:

Anyone who fights everyday to overcome where they came from. Those who think a little too much, feel a little too deep, love a little too hard and hope a lot too high. (Although I don’t believe those are real or possible things.) Those who have dreams and refuse to let them die no matter what their past says, their future bears, or how the people they love, feel. Everyone who believes there’s a better way and is committed to finding it. Those of us who refuse to numb our lives, and when we do (because we all do), have the awareness to acknowledge it and the courage to share it.

I represent all the compulsive, impulsive, thought-filled, laid-back-hippies who believe the only thing you need is love.

I represent the affirmation believers, the hang a scripture on my mirror people, the Om your heart out, fear-conquering, light-following tribe of never-stop-believers.

The deep thinkers. The heavy feelers. The lover of words and believers in the goodness and oneness of all people.

Because that’s who I am, and I suspect, who you are too.

My content will always be thought-inspiring, fearless and sitting right up next to my heart. I write in that tender space and I like it there. It’s warm and wonderfully terrifying. My intention with this post is to know a little more about you. Some of you comment with regularity and I have visited your spaces, too. Others just listen and I understand that as well. But if there is something here that I’ve missed; some aspect of my writing or my content or its resonance, please let me know.

Ultimately, I want to know: why are YOU here?

Why It’s So Hard to Talk About Religion: An Apology

If there is one phrase I never learned to say with great ease it is, I’m sorry.

Both of my parents were educators. Now retired, they spent the vast majority of their 25-year teaching careers at the same high school where their three children graduated with honors. My father was a dedicated, passionate and charismatic chemistry teacher. He was well-loved by many. He was awarded many times over for his achievements in education; he even met the President and was a finalist in the 1984 Teacher in Space Program. My father was, without question, a brilliant science teacher–but once I caught him misspelling the word “cat” on a grocery list.

My father’s story is not mine to tell but I can tell you this: He didn’t always know he was smart. Back when right-handedness was considered virtuous, he was publicly punished for being the opposite. When he couldn’t grasp basic spelling, they labeled him learning disabled. His family grew up in rural Missouri and his father had only an eighth grade education. Either because of, or in spite of this, education was valued in their home. Most of my father’s four siblings went to college and he was the last, and youngest to do so. My dad’s older brother was a usual tormentor and when considering my father’s learning issues, my father began running from the label of “stupid” at an early age. Literally. He went to college on an athletic scholarship for distance running. He graduated with a degree in Chemistry and went on to obtain a Masters in Education. My mother would spell-check his papers as she earned her own degrees.

In light of my father’s many academic and professional achievements, the idea clung to him of being labeled something so anti his core values. It has affected (perhaps unknowingly) how he negotiates his world. True, the experience kept him humble, compassionate, wise in his understanding of conventional intelligence. He even kept a quote by Albert Einstein on his dresser that read, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.“ It is a noble idea, and I do not doubt he believes it, but it wasn’t always the same idea that carried forth into our family’s values because it’s hard to stop running from your past.

In our house, the heroes were the smart people; the credentialed, the professionals, the graduate degree’d. Those were the trusted voices–the opinions given weight around the dinner table. Whenever analyzing someone’s general worth, their level of formal education was high on the list of positives. It’s natural to want your parent’s approval, and in our house, to be “smart”, meant something. I don’t remember having many conversations about faith, or speculation, or opinions that could not be backed up with double-blind, peer-reviewed, complicated facts listed in books written by names with many suffixes. If you had an opinion, you better be able to back it up with solid information.

Now I must tell you that I am the youngest in my family. While growing up, if there were ever a person who would always be less smart than everyone else, it was me. I was, by default, the least informed. If someone else’s intelligence came into question, a figurative finger could always point to me saying, “well at least I know more than her.” I learned early on that if someone is to be right, by default, someone else has to be wrong. That someone was usually me.

I didn’t try to prove them wrong. I slipped into the black sheep role like one would a shadow. It was a cloak shielding me from high expectations and potential failure. If they thought I was stupid, then I’d be so stupid. And I was. I maintained decent grades, but I was the most irresponsible, rebellious and least mature. Even though no one expected much from me, secretly, I believed in my own potential. I had an underdog spirit and a rebel soul. I also believed that someday I’d grow up and show them exactly what I knew. Just. You. Wait. And. See.

Then I did grow up, and realized the world operates in much the same way.

My 10 year professional career was spent in the corporate and medical fields. If you’re wrong in the corporate world, you’re fired. If you’re wrong in the medical world, someone may get hurt. No, you must not be wrong while sitting around the conference table or, heaven forbid, the operating table. Being wrong is the most egregious thing you could possibly be! Being wrong = being stupid or weak or incapable–a failure.

This is why I have a hard time saying I’m sorry; because I lived far too long in worlds where “sorry” was synonymous with “failure.”

Saying I’m sorry is saying–I was wrong. If done genuinely, it’s saying (unequivocally) that I was not right; that there is no justification for my wrongness. Saying I’m sorry requires humility, vulnerability, a willingness to set your ego and pride aside and admit that you are… well, wrong.

There’s an old country song by Sammy Kershaw called, Politics, Religion and Her.  He sings, “Politics can start a fight; religion’s hard to know who’s right.” And I suspect that sits at the heart of why no one wants to talk about it. Religion is the moral compass of humanity. One’s faith is one’s personal gauge of wrong and right.

There are six major religions which cover 95% of the world’s population. Christianity, the largest faith, is a mere 1/3 of the entire population. With so many diverse ideas of right and wrong, it’s hard to know who has the best, most correct faith, especially when we live in a world that values being right above all else.

But Faith is different. Faith is the antithesis to certainty.

Faith requires you to let go of reason, suspend logic, forget concrete data and simply believe for no other reason than it feels right. Hardly an empirical data driven concept. Letting go and suspending logic are all things easier for people who like country music, believe in angels and miracles and signs of every kind–zodiac notwithstanding. Educated professionals have a harder time eschewing fact-based reality.

Well of course most left-brained people are less religious. That makes sense right? But this mentality flows over into the artistic, right-brained realm as well. Recently I heard two, well-respected, contemporary authors (whom I like) say they don’t believe in God. It was said as almost a badge of honor because it was apropos to seemingly nothing.

In my experience with the artist’s life there is one thing you must never be; ordinary. You can stretch in a lot of areas of artistic interpretation, but the one sin you must not commit is the sin of the “cliché.” And what is more cliché than believing in God, or worse, the world’s most popular religion, Christianity? No, in art you must be unique. God and Jesus are for lay people, not the exceptionally high-minded artist and purveyor of taste! If you talk about religion in art, it’s almost a requirement that it be ironic.

For these reasons religion and faith are rarely part of the discussion between professionals and artists, and why I have rarely discussed my own faith in these areas of my life.

Recently I heard a moral equation quoted by the amazing Brene Brown, Ph.D. a leader in shame research. [Aside: A woman who has a Ph.D. in shame and isn't afraid to talk faithfully about God ticks ALL of my intellectual boxes!] But I digress… Brown says:

Faith – (Vulnerability + Mystery) = Extremism.

If you take away the mystery, and personal vulnerability, then you don’t have Faith, you have extremism. Essentially, don’t call your religion a “Faith” if there’s no vulnerability or uncertainty because the very idea of Faith requires a belief in something you cannot prove to be certain. Faith requires vulnerability because you have to be willing to open yourself up to people who will believe with a passion that you are wrong. This is exceedingly difficult in our world where being wrong, or ordinary are the worst things you could possibly be. Extremism is believing concretely in the fundamentals of any religion. A belief that you unequivocally have the only right answers. That you are the ONLY righteous ones. Well I learned a long time ago that for someone to be right, by default, someone else has to be wrong.

Something else I have learned is that there is a big difference between being intelligent and being wise. Wisdom requires experience in pain. Wisdom requires experience with being wrong. Wisdom is saying I’m sorry. Wisdom is understanding that vulnerability is the cornerstone of connection and connection is only means to love and that love is all that matters. Wisdom is having faith in things you cannot see, or prove, or know for certain. Wisdom is shining a light on your past; ripping off the cloak and stepping out of the shadow that fear casts while opening up to the scrutiny of failure.

No amount of intelligence can lead you to real wisdom just as no amount of religion can lead you to real faith. 

I have always referred to myself as “spiritual” instead of religious, but that is not entirely true. I am a Christian. I have had a hard time saying this because I do not think that only I am right–mainly because I do not think others are wrong. Because I know how lonely it feels to always be on the wrong side of right.

What I am is faithful. And faith means that I believe in what I cannot prove and sometimes that means magic and angels and resurrections. Sometimes I also listen to country music and use clichés–hell, sometimes I am a cliché–but I’m not sorry for any of that.

What I’m sorry for, is that it’s taken me so long to say all those things without fear.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. ~1 John 4:18

For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. ~Matthew 18:20

Albert Einstein Quote

In the midst of a world that values knowledge and certainty, I’m grateful for the bits of wisdom, the magic, the inspired imagination that shined light into the darkest corners of my universe; the small things that collected dust on dressers, were tossed aside, but never forgotten. Thank you.

It’s the Petri Dish of Evil

 I have been to Boston several times, but the only people I know who live there are (at best) acquaintances. I don’t run for fun or sport and was ignorant to the magnitude and significance of the Boston Marathon.

For these, and other reasons, I have felt removed from the events of the past week. Before today, I was not feeling the same visceral pain and anxiety as with Newtown or similar tragedies where I was more identified. I certainly felt horrible for the people involved, but I was not glued to the news and I did not turn to social media or this blog to share my fears and anxieties; mostly because I felt they were unjustified and insignificant compared to others who were more intimate with this story. 

But today, with the unraveling of the manhunt and the illumination of the lives of the suspects, I feel pulled into this tragedy anew. With every update, I am wrapped with a familiar kind of fear.

Brothers: one a man, the other just barely. Conflicting reports: A coach says of the younger one, “… dedicated kid, and all the kids loved him.” The uncle says they were both “losers.” Former friends and teachers of the younger brother use the word, “nice” and “normal.” A cousin says the older one had turned radical in his Islamic beliefs and was corrupting the younger brother. The family is said to be “incredible” in a good way. The father calls his sons “angels” and insists they were “set up.”

Right now the information is conflicted and confusing; the truth likely buried somewhere among the rumor and rubble. This is why my fear antennas rise.

Do you ever really know someone? I mean, really know them? With each report of “normal” turned “violent” I can’t help but think that our bodies and faces are just a facade for what lies within us. Evil can walk next to you on the sidewalk, sit behind you in class, or bump your shoulder on the subway and you wouldn’t even know it. How could you?

I ask myself, are we all highly skilled actors projecting to the world what it expects to see? Or is the world so scared of the truth that our eyes will only see the what we want to see? Did the brothers project to the world a “normal” facade? Or did the world define the brothers with labels it could accept? Labels less scary than the truth.

I’m not afraid of being subject to a terrorist attack. I understand those odds are infinitesimal. I’m not afraid that my children are growing up in an unsafe world. Yes, I understand that evil exists, but I believe love exists in a larger capacity.

My fears are more esoteric. What scares me are the imperceptible human masks. The thin veils we place over our eyes and ourselves to hide the things we cannot and do not want to see. The invisible dividers that separate us; that tell us we’re alone, or different, or not good enough. The shields we hold in the name of protection, in spite of the pain. This shadow and its murky opacity is the Petri dish of evil. It’s the perfect environment to allow evil to fester until it invades the mind and convinces someone it’s a good idea to drop a backpack bomb in the middle of a crowd just because you believe they are not like you.

Humanity, in its never-ending variation, dichotomy, and adaptability are the reasons I love this life. It is also the thing that scares me most.

This feeling of  being different, removed and untouched by the events of the past week is my own veil. The veil I put up to shield me from the hurt of others so that I would not have to submerge myself in their world, their pain, their fears.

But I’m all in now, Boston. I’m emotionally there with the runners, mothers, fathers, classmates, coaches, friends and acquaintances. I feel your hurt and your terror and your anxiety for the next hour, day, week, year. I offer you my prayers, my thoughts, my hopes for comfort and justice and peace. My emotions are visceral now and that’s okay because I’m not hiding from the collective fear, and thus, my own. No mask, no veil, no shield, no shadows.

And maybe what brings me comfort in times like this, can bring some comfort to you as well. It’s an ageless wisdom:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

~Both quotes from Martin Luther King Jr

Love & Light, Boston

Boston

Practice Does Not Make Perfect

The kids’ toys have invaded every room of my house and it’s making me little crazy. Right now, there are three rooms in desperate need of painting, a brigade of dandelions invading my garden, and stacks of papers that have built up over a dreary, rainy season. I sigh heavily each time I look at them. For the last week I have been slightly obsessed with getting my home organized. Call it Spring cleaning, or whatever, but it has suddenly become of paramount importance that each these issues be rectified and a semblance of order restored to my living space before I can think of doing anything else.

In the last week I have been on a singular mission to create a playroom in a spare bedroom and reclaim my living room as “adult space.” I have made trips to IKEA, Target and Goodwill for donations. I have searched for more than an hour online for the just-so-perfect-paper-organizing-charging-station (which I have yet to find). If I’m being honest, I can think of hardly anything else until this project is complete. I know when I get so focused on one task that there is something larger, deeper at play, and this new zeal for cleaning and purging is no exception.

For four months I have been walking a razor’s edge. I’ve been balancing knives on a high wire and holding my breath 1000 feet under water. I’ve felt the heaviness of the unknown resting on my chest while dragging the past behind me strapped to my neck like a noose. It has been a long, hard winter for all the relationships in my life.

But today, like the tulips and daffodils that are pushing their yellow petals toward the sun from under previously frozen ground (a miracle each time) there has been a transition toward the light in my own life. Some friends have emerged as life preservers. Some family relations have been clarified, deconstructed, ready to build anew, perhaps in a healthier way. Most importantly, my marriage has shifted onto more solid ground and it too is rebuilding with a stronger foundation than ever before. At this moment everything feels like a miracle, from the flowers to my faith.

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt this assured about the future and my sole motivation to organize my home is my way of trying to hold onto that feeling; gain control of it, slap a fresh coat of paint on it and force it to stick around for a while. I believe this much is true.

I have learned a great deal about myself and relationships in the past four months by means of therapy, reading and introspection. In the midst of it, I have swung from one side of the sanity pendulum to the other sometimes in the very same day. I know more about who I am, a knowledge that came at a high price. I have confronted my anger, my anxiety, my ideas about marriage and family, motherhood and faith. My convictions have never been stronger or more flexible and neither has my body as a direct result of deepening my yoga practice. All of these are good things that have helped me grow, and yet, my compulsions remain.

life is a practiceThis is the lesson standing out to me on this clear, crisp Spring day–that like my yoga practice, life is never mastered. Life is a continuing practice because there is no such thing as perfection. Perfection is an illusion we portray to keep the deeper, larger things at arm’s length; to avoid eye-contact with the ugliness and unexpectedness that lays on the periphery of every thing we hold close.

As deep as my tendencies for obsessions and compulsions run, somewhere else deep lies the knowledge that there is no promise of ever getting it right, of having it all, of writing the perfect blog post, bending into the epitomous expression of downward dog or even another clear, crisp Spring day.

Even though I want to finish this post so that I can paint trim, I will remind myself in the midst of it that there is no such thing as the just-so-perfect-paper-organizing-charging-station (believed me, I’ve looked) or seemless, knick-free walls that do not hold with them the immediate threat of a toddler’s permanent marker adornments… or relationships without the promise of future disappointments.

My recent quest to organize my house is about me, once again, fighting this reality. In the light of this more hopeful, brighter place in my life, I am already starting to fear of the unknown, the chaotic, the foreboding season I just left, one that I know will come again because… such is life. My need to categorize my papers is me trying to hold onto something instead of slipping into the flow of life, of letting everything be perfect the way it is and trusting that everything is already as it should be… a miracle.

But the good news is that life is a practice, and part of that practice is reminding myself again and again that there is no such thing as the perfectly organized playroom and clutterless countertops. They do not exist.

If I have learned anything over the last four months, it is that life is unpredictable and precarious and the only thing we have is the present moment, whatever that beautiful mess might be, and miraculously that it is always enough. I know now that there is no such things as the perfect marriage, the perfect mother, the perfect life… that we are all just practicing at doing our best each day. Something we should learn to be more forgiving with, for, to, of.

I have changed the way I think about these things, and that new thought takes practice too. Instead of saying I am a writer, I say, I practice writing; same goes for yoga. I also practice being wife, a mother and a daughter. I practice patience and gratitude and staying present. Always practicing, never perfecting because I have also learned you can never master anything in life. (Much to my love-of-lists-and-checked-boxes dismay.)

But perhaps with diligence of effort, commitment to the cause, and a willingness to be vulnerable and take risks, I’ll get better at all of them? Maybe?

I don’t believe happiness, serenity and forgiveness comes naturally for anyone. Life is difficult and testing for even the most enlightened and faithful among us. But I believe the more we commit to practicing gratitude, being present, forgiving and loving thy neighbor, the less harsh the winters may seem.

My tendencies are for control and perfection and certainty, but today, on this rainy, shiny, Spring-filled day, with its Chartreuse leaves twisting in the wind and bright tulips unfurling to the sunshine, I know that practice does not make perfect, but I am CERTAIN it will make good enough.

Because there is no such thing as a garden without weeds, relationships without falter, children without messes… and would we ever want it any other way?

Motherhood + Work + Life = Sacrifice

“I used to have a career, but I filed a lawsuit against my company for sexual discrimination a few years ago and I was ultimately fired. After a long legal battle I needed to reevaluate my priorities. Then I another baby, and, you know…”

It’s a conversation I’ve been repeating with ever more frequency. I know it well. I’m feeling insecure and this is a justification for that feeling. All rehearsed conversations are scripts laced with justifications and insecurities.

motherhood + workThe sharpest lesson I learned from my painful, year-long, litigious experience was that my career does not define me. I also learned that more money isn’t a good enough reason for doing something, and there are more important things than having an interesting answer to that popular dinner party question, So what do you do?

My insecurity does not come from a lack of identity as a professional or even my lack of a paycheck. It comes from guilt. Plainly put, I don’t feel like I’m living up to my end of the feminist bargain especially in light of all I went through and stood for during that lawsuit: gender respect and equality. I feel an obligation to the trailblazing women who came before me to step aside from my singular role as mother, and make room for the role as a leader in the workforce. I feel this same sense of obligation toward the women who will come after me, most significantly, my daughter.

I know I am capable of being a thoughtful leader. I was a leader in my professional career and I am in my personal life. I did, after all, have the nerve to sue a very large company for sexual discrimination and then promptly reinvent myself as a writer. I can do hard things and make difficult choices.

I also happen to like this role.

I am comfortable with speaking out, taking responsibility and making decisions.  I like working with others toward a common goal. Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, said recently in a 60 Minutes interview,

I want every little girl who [is told] they’re bossy to instead be told, “You have leadership skills.”

With only 16% of c-level position, and only 18% of Congress being women, this world desperately needs more of us “bossy” types. A world I feel obligated to make a better place for both my children.

Recent statistics show that 31% of working mothers drop out of the workforce for 2.2 years. This break is most often precipitated by the birth of a second child. This results in a decrease of 18% earning power over their lifetime. As of today, I have been out of the workforce for 2.4 years and I am feeling the pull toward my dusty patent leather pumps grow stronger by the day.

My entire life has followed the typical, statistical equation for a white, middle-class, American woman who came of age in the 90′s and early 2000′s. Graduate from college + develop a career + marry at the age of 27.5 + have 2.5 children in your 30′s + carry a mortgage + invest in college funds + take family vacations. It is an equation that would have continued had it not been for the addition of an unforeseen lawsuit… scratch that… the MULTIPLICATION DIVIDED BY THE SQUARE ROOT of the life-altering shift in perception called motherhood.

Perhaps there is no way to prepare for motherhood, but if there were a test one could take on motherhood preparedness, I would have failed valiantly.

Despite my best efforts to seek advice from colleagues, no one told me the sacrifices I would have to make as a working mother. No one explained that my choices would be between difficult and impossible, and often times, I would have to transform the impossible into good enough. No one told me that taking a step back to raise my 2.5 children would result in an significant reduction in earning power over my lifetime and render me 79% less likely to be hired, half as likely to be promoted, and offered an average of $11,000 less. Perhaps it’s because these statistics didn’t exist until recently. Or, more accurately, I didn’t pay attention until I found myself a new mother in the middle of a lawsuit for sexual discrimination.

I took a step back because I wanted to be with my children in their earliest years. It’s a decision I will never regret no matter how much I might bemoan some of its drudgery. Right now my youngest is not yet two, and my oldest is almost four. I can see the growing light of autonomy at the end of this beautiful tunnel of early childhood and it’s making me wonder: What will I do when they don’t need me as much? How will I find a way to fit back into the workforce? Since we are not independently wealthy people, this prospect feels inevitable.

I’m feeling the pull to get back into to the corporate world sooner rather than later for many reasons, but at this time, none more powerful than my obligation to my gender. It is still true that I want to redirect my career into one that includes writing, and there is no question that I will always write for work and pleasuer, but this path takes a lot of time and offers very little financial security. I can’t pay for someone to care for my children while I pursue a career that doesn’t pay enough to afford said childcare. This is a sad and true fact. Also, there is only so much more time I can opt out of my former career path before I must start all over working my way back up. Lastly, there are intellectual muscles I want to stretch and a need for some autonomy of my own that I’m aching to scratch out.

And the reason I’m finding so much urgency to be a leader for women in the workforce is because my current options for combining motherhood + work + life, appear unworkable and require more sacrifice than one individual (no matter their gender) should have to navigate.

Here are my options:

A. Reenter the workforce, flex my mental capacities, live up to my potential as a leader and earn a paycheck. But there is no such thing as part-time in my career field. I would have to work full-time and then some. It would take up nearly all of my time and offer limited flexibility. This will require a full-time nanny which will not only limit my children’s experiences, but take me out of their lives for a significant portion of the week which doesn’t work for me until they no longer live under my roof. Or…

B. I can stay out of the workforce, continue to dwindle my lifetime earning potential, perhaps become unqualified for the positions of which I am still qualified, not pay a nanny, expand my children’s experiences, have ultimate flexibility and be in their lives to the fullest capacity, but also find a way to squelch my ever-growing discontent over not living up to my potential and lack of autonomy, and hope that I never have to rely on myself for sole support of my life.

Hm. Which one of these horrible scenarios should I choose? Who will win? Who will lose? In the end, will I wish I did it differently?

I’m not to the point of making an eminent decision but I’m trying to develop a third option. It is the hardest of them all. It requires more faith, will power, consciousness and fortitude.

C. Work hard. Trust in God’s plan. Learn to breathe deeper. Learn to let go of fear and regrets and expectations. Stay grounded. Live on less. Be okay with the unknown. Follow my passions.

If you know another path, perhaps a D option, please, I’m all computer speakers?

Whatever my choice may be I’m sure C will be a part of it, if not ALL of it. Nonetheless, this excruciating, mathematical equation of motherhood + work + life = sacrifice shouldn’t have to be an impossible conundrum. Perhaps necessary, even difficult, but never impossible and never one set squarely on mothers alone.

I feel an obligation to help make this situation better for my children… and yours. Not just by becoming a leader, but by doing what all great leaders do… lead by example.

I’m confident this entails learning to breathe deeper, let go and trust more and the good news is… that can happen in every moment, no matter what shoes I’m wearing, how many numbers are on my paycheck, or even who’s listening.

A Lingering Vegas Hangover

I went to Vegas with some girlfriends last weekend. The three of us are stay-at-home-moms and each week we meet behind the plexiglass of our 3-year-old daughters’ gymnastics class. A couple of months ago, we decided a Moms Only trip to Vegas was in order. It’s been three years since I spent more than 24 hours away from my children, so I was more than game.

We danced, we drank, we stayed out late and laid by the pool. We ate when, and what we wanted. We got foot massages and I laughed so hard my abdominals still hurt three days later. We put on pretty clothes and spent at least an hour getting ready. I wore heels and Spanx and glittery eye-liner. We went to loud clubs where the music pounded in my chest and it felt good.

Moms in Vegas

We had so much fun that we had TOO much fun. When Monday rolled around and it was time to go home, reality came spinning at me faster than the sevens on those money-sucking slot machines. Ding!

Over those three days I remembered what it was like to take care of only one person… myself. I remembered how electric the nightlife can feel pulsing through my body. I remembered what it was like to sleep until I woke up on my own. I remembered what not having to be anywhere felt like. I remembered the freedom of having choices.

Compared to the rote and often mindless cleaning, cooking, scolding, bickering and cartoon Disney movies of my present-day life, it was like being transported to the Technicolor world of Oz complete with shiny heels, short dresses and good music. I truly hadn’t realized how drastically my life had morphed in ten years until I was suddenly standing in the middle of my 20′s again.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking to be single. I’m not even looking for the ability to binge drink and stay up until 3am. Been there, loved it, over it. What I realized is that freedom and choices are in drastic short supply in my life and I had no idea how much I missed them until I had them back for three, short days in Vegas.

When I became a mother almost four years ago, my obligations burst from the asphalt like a flashy hotel on expensive Las Vegas Strip real estate. Subtract a career, add another child and my choices shrank to the size of a perpetually full laundry basket. It took awhile for the shock of my tethered life to sink in, but what other choice is there when you have children? You just do it. All of it. Over the course of four years, this life became quite natural and I hardly remembered anything else. At some point I found it pointless to think about all the things I CANNOT do because that’s just masochistic. But what I hadn’t realized is that because of this lack of freedom and choices, somewhere inside me there was building a low-grade hum of discontent like the buzz of neon lights.

I came home in a funk. My husband was expecting a different result. He thought I’d be rejuvenated–happy! with my three-day vacation. But I wasn’t. I almost wished I hadn’t gone. I wished I hadn’t tasted the freedom because now I’m in withdrawal, and if I learned anything from my 20′s it’s that no matter how good the high… the crash is always worse.

It’s taken me three days to get my head out of the fog and it is only with distance, perspective and a practiced (if not forced) gratitude, that I can remember the point of going to Oz… to find the way back home.

Brooke & Brady Glam

And I brought some glam and shiny shoes back with me.

Crazy and Sane

When I was a kid, I could only stare at my birthday candles while people sang happy birthday. On my wedding day, as I walked down the aisle and then stood on in front of a floating dock full of guests, I could not make myself look at them. I love to sing, and I actually sing pretty well, but when faced with a microphone and a room full of faces, I fold down upon myself like a crape paper.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, I am considered an extrovert. Plenty of times I’ve stood in front of an auditorium of medical professionals and given presentations without a single crack in my voice. A long time ago I realized that when I had something to say, and it wasn’t about me, I wasn’t afraid to say it. Contradictory to that fact, is that I’m not shy about telling you what I think and how I feel here in words, yet somehow, at the very same time, I would wilt in the literal face of emotional attention and/or praise.

Today is my 35th birthday. Every year I pretend like it’s no big deal and I really believe I am too old for the fan fare. But when faced with the reality that there is no fan fare, it always makes me profoundly sad. As much as I don’t want anyone to look at me with feelings of any kind, I desperately want someone to celebrate the fact that today is the day I took my first breath.

I have always found the turmoil I feel on my birthday, fascinating. How could I be both? How could I be an extrovert that shrinks when faced with attention? How could I crave the celebration, but shrivel in the midst of it?

What I am coming to understand is that this equal and opposite thing lives inside everyone.

In recent weeks I have been utterly shocked by people I thought I knew so well. People, who yesterday I would have said, “they would never, ever do… ” have turned and done that very thing I swore they would never do. This flip of human nature always leaves me breathless. I am realizing that the more I think I know, the less I truly understand.

Proof of Heaven

I’m reading a book right now called Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, MD. Alexander is a neurosurgeon who was befell with a rare and spontaneous case of E. Coli bacterial meningitis. Since I had meningitis once, and I’m a fan of the right-brained medical perspective on spirituality, this book interested me greatly. Alexander had a 10% chance of survival at the onset of his illness–a survival rate that plummeted to 0% after several days in an unresponsive coma, but not only did Alexander live, but he made a miraculous, full recovery. And not only did he make a miraculous recovery, but he came back and wrote a bestselling book about his very real near death experience in heaven. This is his vivid description of God.

“…found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me.” p. 47

“…an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light.” p. 48

How confounding that he describes God with such a profound dichotomy of characteristics? It is hard to imagine this with our limited experience, language and abilities, but something about it (to me, at least) makes perfect sense. I feel that what Alexander says is true because the polar opposite nature of humanity is also real, and so very unreal. The fact that people can be both hateful and loving, selfish and generous, strong and weak all at the same time, often in equal measures, is truly a testament to God.

And I believe only God knows how we can simultaneously want no one to look at us, and yet crave the world to watch us sing.

Today, a day that has always perplexed me with my own feelings of emotional flip-flopping, I am going to honor these opposite sides of me. In doing that, I must also honor them in you, and those people who have so surprised me with their humanity.

Because the truth is, as black as one can appear on one side; on the other is a dazzling brightness. I believe it behooves us to honor these opposites–to see one another as not halves, but wholes. I think to do otherwise, is to deny ourselves, and ultimately, God.

So… Happy Birthday to my mixed-up/ perfectly sensical, black/white, angry/happy, inky/sparkly all-over, self. And thank you, to all the crazy/sane, sober/drunk/, happy/sad, spiteful/generous people in my life… and in the world. As much as it pains me to look into your eyes, I thank you for acknowledging that today is the day I took my first breath.

It means more than I am able to express… although I will never stop trying.

I am large. I contain multitudes. ~Walt Whitman