On crying too

I hardly even know where to begin. 

I arrived home last night around 10:30 PM, after spending a week in Haiti.  (You can see the blog and some of my writing about our trip here: www.haititravelers.blogspot.com). 

I am going to need to do a lot of writing, and thinking, and processing about this, but tonight, I'm going to need to start simply.  Tonight, I am going to need to go slowly.  Tonight, I just need to start unpacking what is here.

I am not much of a crier, and it's not even that I'm crying as much as I just seem to be leaking.  Ever since last night, my eyes just seem to be leaking.

Yesterday, I packed up my suitcase and got in a van that drove me 3 hours through the mountains of Haiti.  I passed hours worth of poverty I had previously been unable to imagine.  Poverty that now has faces tied to its name.  I passed hours worth of children and families with no access to water.  Water.  A fundamental human right, a necessity.  I sat in that van and was driven past people living in houses made of clay.  Houses made of sticks and mud, housing god-only-knows how many people.  Houses of hungry people, thirsty people, sick people, living in a country with no way out.  I rode through a country of people living in conditions I could have gone my whole life without ever imagining - people with hopes, and dreams, and smiles not so very unlike my own.

I got in that car, I rode through that gorgeous, devastated countryside, got on a plane and, without really having done a damn thing, I left.  I left.  I got on a plane, and I left the devastation exactly as I found it.

Then I came home, I turned on the tap, and clean water came out.  I flipped the switch and lights came on.  I took a long, luxurious hot shower.  I got into bed with lots of fuzzy blankets, on a comfortable soft mattress.  I made myself a cup of hot tea with clean water and tea bags I bought from a store in which I had more options than any person needs.  I came home to more space and stuff than any one person truly deserves, and I felt relief.  I enjoyed that shower.  I savored my cup of tea.  I didn't even think about the lights as I flicked them on and off as needed.  When I turned off the lights and I closed my eyes, the images of the people and places I had witnessed a mere 12 hours before flooded my mind, and I had the audacity to cry.

This morning, I got up, opened a closet full of clean clothes and chose something to wear.  I went to my kitchen, made myself breakfast with food from the fridge, helped myself to clean water fresh from the tap, sat on my couch with my dog and read for fun - because I had nothing else I needed to do, all my basic needs having been met.  I went to the bathroom and flushed the toilet without a second thought.  Then I went and got in my car, drove 30 minutes on a paved road, and ended at another heated building with electricity, clean water, and good people.  I sat in a comfortable chair for an hour and listened to my ministers speak about process theology, because I have the privilege of worrying about so little that I can focus on such heady and intellectual topics as process theology.  And at the end of that?  I had the audacity to cry again.

This is just the beginning.  The number of privileges I was afforded throughout today -- including driving to Walgreens to fill the remainder of my prescription for anti-malarial pills (which was almost entirely covered by my health insurance) - was astounding.  I did nothing to earn this.  I did nothing to deserve it.  But here it is -- all of it -- so available and at-the ready that I don't even need to think about it.

I feel guilty, yes, but guilt isn't the primary emotion.  Mostly, it's sadness.  Mostly, it's hopelessness.  Mostly, it's a sense of powerlessness, and feeling so very, very overwhelmed.  Mostly, I just keep crying, and I don't know that I'm even really sure why. 

I feel such an obligation to this world.  I always have.  I feel such a need, and a desire, to open my heart to the world, to witness its suffering and to tell its stories with compassion.  I feel an obligation to witness the places that hurt to the extent that I am able and to do what I can to move it towards wholeness.  I know the ways I can do this are small.  I know the things I can do are miniscule as compared to the need...and this is okay.  I do it anyway, if only because it is what I need to do.

When I was younger, I hated my sensitive heart.  I didn't know how to protect and manage it, and I felt raw, and hurt, and as though I was just so different from everyone else.  Over the years, I have been able to practice some gentleness towards my sensitive, open heart, and through this have learned to manage it better.

But knowing that there are people without water, and knowing people without water hits your heart in different ways.  Knowing that such extreme poverty exists, and holding a 6 week old infant who is living it -- there is no comparison.  Reading about the trauma and devastation of a country, and looking into the eyes of the men, women, and children for whom it is a daily reality -- this is different.  The world is not only not how I thought it to be, but my heart holds photographs of the people living an existence I never even had the ability to imagine.  And I had the privilege to - literally - fly away from it.

I don't have children, but the analogy that keeps coming to mind is that it feels like the difference between knowing that babies cry and hearing your baby cry. 

I knew the world was crying.  Now, it is my world that is crying.  This world -- the one that I live in -- with you, right here, right now, this world is crying.  Our world.  In 2015, there are children drinking dirty water, without shoes, unable to go to school, without food, without any visible sign of things changing.  They are living in one room houses of sticks and mud; they are dying of preventable, curable diseases.  They are smiling, and laughing, and turning plastic bags and dirty hats into toys, or walking for hours carrying water on their heads. 

I knew the world was crying.  Now, it is my world that is crying.  This world -- the one that I live in -- with you, here, right now...and the most I can do is cry, too.  

Like People Do: On Crossing the Street

When I moved to this area 3.5 years ago, I was at once thrilled to be out of graduate school and back on the East Coast, and also deeply unhappy that I was in this particular city.  You see, although I had lived for 4 years in the Midwest, and although much of the difficulty of those years was tied to that location, there was also something much more far reaching. 

Namely, the man responsible for my sexual assault was not from Ohio.  He lived in Baltimore.

So a year and a half later, when I applied to internships everywhere from New Hampshire to Tennessee, from Ohio to North Carolina, my ultimate placement at my top choice was bittersweet.  Rather than leaving it all behind, it felt as though I was walking into something new.  I knew the chances of seeing him were slim to the point of being unrealistic, but it didn't stop my fear.  My anxiety about walking alone, going places alone, and being in the city was intense.  Through daily exposure, after several months I could handle driving to work, taking the shuttle to where I needed to be, and walking up and down the few blocks between buildings with minimal anxiety.  However, walking around with friends, going out to dinner and walking back to my car, attending a street fair...this was where panic loomed.  It's hard to describe the intense fear I felt and worked through so frequently.  Just walking the couple blocks to the Whole Foods, or the CVS, or around the corner to my friend's apartment complex was enough to make me nauseous, make my whole body shake, and completely exhaust me.  It was, in a word, awful.

****

As I wrapped up my day at work this evening, I realized I had several things I needed to pick up from the drugstore.  I considered several options of how to make this happen, and quickly realized that walking the couple blocks to the CVS around the corner was going to be the most time-effective way to complete this errand. 

So you know what I did?  I put on my coat without a second thought and I walked to that CVS.

When I was about halfway there, I had this moment where I realized: I'm not scared. 

I wasn't surprised that I wasn't scared, per se, but it was an affirming moment. 

I'm not scared.  

Perhaps it's silly, but I felt brave.  And powerful, perhaps.  Maybe even a little badass.  Realizing growth and change, however small, is always badassery, I think.  As I stood on the street corner, waiting for the light to tell me to walk, I pictured myself standing on that same corner two years ago.  It was similarly bitter cold, but two years ago, I felt unsafe in my skin.  I was shaky, and nauseous, and hyperaware, and I didn't know what to do with my body.  I was counting my breaths, just to give myself something to focus on so I could get to my car. 

Tonight?  I was standing on the street corner, waiting for the walk light, like people do.  I was thinking about how damn cold it was, and about what I was going to make for dinner, and about that funny thing I had to text my sister about.  I was standing on the street corner, waiting for the walk light, just like people do. 

I've had a number of these moments lately -- they're tiny, and no one else would recognize them as moments...because they're things like buying a new pair of jeans.  Getting a drink with a friend.  Crossing the street at night.  Just like people do, you know?

*****

As I continued walking to the CVS, I noticed a woman, a little younger than myself, with a huge backpack reminiscent of Reese Witherspoon's pack in the new movie of Cheryl Strayed's "Wild."  She came towards me, and moved to wait to cross the road.  We stood for a few moments in silence.  She, looking up and around at the buildings (clearly a tourist), and me, unintentionally staring at her blue wool hat, wondering why the hell I forgot my hat and gloves in the car.  As the traffic continued and we waited, I became increasingly agitated with the cold and my lack of hat...and she smiled.  She turned and said in a beautiful Scottish accent, "it's such a gorgeous night, isn't it?"

"It's a little chilly," I said.  "I am finding myself admiring your hat."

"Oh," she laughed.  "It's beautiful here.  I am just loving Baltimore.  This is just so incredible."  She continued to look up at the buildings around us, and then looked at me and extended her hand.  "I'm Jennifer," she said. 

"Are you visiting?" I asked, stating the obvious, given the backpack and the admiration of the city I take for granted.

"Yes," she said.  "I'm from Scotland...came to the US to do a 6-month tour of the country.  I just came from New York by bus...headed south after this.  I'm staying with a man...I believe his name is Zachary...around the corner."  She flashed the map she had pulled up on her smartphone.  "I'm couch-surfing," she said. 

The light finally changed and we crossed together.  She was full of energy and passion and excitement for the new foods she was trying, and the excitement of New York, and the beauty of Baltimore, and how much money she was saving by using this "couch-surfers" website and finding people willing to host her in the cities she was visiting.  "I've met so many wonderful people," she said.  "It's just truly, truly incredible."

When our paths were about to separate, we shook hands again. 

"You are incredibly brave," I said. 

   

"Yes!" she nodded, simply, smiling exuberantly.  "It was so nice meeting you."

"Take care," I said.  "Be well.  Stay safe."

She continued walking down the road,  and I found myself looking up at the sky she admired, and whispering a prayer to whatever power might be out there that Jennifer be protected in her travels.

*****

For a moment, I laughed at myself.  After all, it's funny, isn't it, that I would get to feeling badass about walking a couple blocks to the drugstore and would meet a girl visiting a foreign country, alone, for 6 months, staying on strangers' couches?

There is nothing badass about crossing the street, I thought. 

And yet...

On Saturday, I leave for a week in Haiti. 

A group of folks from my church and another local church are traveling together to Haiti to learn, and to provide some assistance, and to broaden our worldviews, and to open our hearts to people and the world just that much more. 

There is nothing badass about crossing the street.

And yet, somehow, each of those actions has brought me here.  Even the ones where I was trembling.  Even the times I had to count my breath.  Each of those actions has still, somehow, brought me here, and something in that feels maybe, a little bit, badass. 

Maybe a little bit powerful. 

And maybe a little bit brave.

Goodbye Bravery, Hello...: My 2015 Word of the Year

Setting the intention to be brave at the beginning of 2014 was, unknowingly, one of the bravest things I did.  Of course, I couldn't have known what the year would bring when I settled on this word, but it is sufficient to say that this year gave me a plethora of opportunities to be brave.  And you know?  I took them.  Sometimes I had no choice but to be brave.  Other times I had a choice - and I chose the one I thought was "brave."  Still other times, I opted not to do the "brave" thing.  Sometimes, choosing not to do that "brave" thing ended up being the bravest choice.   

I know I said over and over again -- both here and elsewhere -- that my goal was not to become fearless.  I know I defined bravery about 20 different times.  I know I indicated that I was not trying

to be the fearless knight in shining armor, and that I didn't even WANT to be that fearless knight...but truth be told, I ended the year feeling disappointed.  Underneath of the calm, wise, thoughtful exterior I display here, I really wanted to end 2014 feeling as though I could do anything and not be shaken.  I wanted to be able to say that I did brave things without fear or anxiety.  I wanted to end the year feeling badass and whole and as though no one could ever rattle me.

The thing about bravery, though, is that when you spend a year focused on it, you start to see it everywhere.  As a therapist, I have the privilege of witnessing acts of bravery on a daily basis, and holy cow, y'all.  Do you realize how brave and beautiful people are, just getting through every day?  I see it in the kids in clinic who are being bullied at school, and the kid with multiple disabilities struggling with learning to read.  I see it in the nonverbal teenager who is learning to functionally request his wants and needs, and even in the kid who gave me a concussion a few weeks ago as he tries really hard to control his anger.  I see it in the single father raising a little guy with special needs, and the mother whose husband is deployed, and the people who come into my office and laugh, or cry, or don't listen to anything I say, or are mad about being there.  Every one of them is so full of this ridiculous, beautiful, strong bravery. 

Even the most difficult of people -- the parent who came 2 hours late for her session, for the third time in a row, and then yelled and threatened me when I told her I had other patients and could not see her.  What bravery it took to show up, to attempt to advocate for her needs and her son, and to keep trying.  Or what about the elderly woman in front of me at the grocery store, carefully counting out $2.56 worth of ramen noodles?  Or the man at the drug store attempting to carefully discuss which shade of red nail polish would best match a particular dress with his 14-year-old?  And even the lady in front of me at Best Buy yesterday, yelling and threatening her tantruming 3-year-old...even her.  We can't even imagine what steps she may have needed to take to bring her to this point, now -- and yet she's here.  We all are.  Isn't that an act of bravery?  Just getting here, to this moment, now?

I may not be brave...but I can
do hard things.

I am ending 2014, then, with mixed feelings.  I do not feel brave.  If I had to live this year over again, I'm pretty sure I would still shake and feel as scared and decidedly not-brave as I did the first time around.  But I am also trying to believe that I am brave because I choose to keep loving this world, and because every action I take comes from this willingness to love.  I am brave because I love the world enough to continue trying, to continue engaging, to continue fighting and believing and acting and moving forward in the ways that I know how.  I am brave enough to do brave things, even through the fear, and the self-doubt, and the shaking, because I believe that this life and this world is worth it.  What I learned, then, may be simply that there is bravery in the doing and in the loving.  I learned that I can do brave things.  I learned that sometimes, if you love the world enough to keep doing those brave things - even if the brave thing is just showing up, or putting one foot in front of the other, other brave souls will come out and help you.  I learned that accepting love is bravery.  Loving back is bravery.  I think I needed to learn these points.  I know I'll need to learn them again.

So even though I am not brave, this is good enough.  I think this has to be good enough. 

*****

December marks a year that I have been practicing yoga.  Talk about bravery!  When I started going, I was anxious before every class.  I was self-conscious about wearing yoga clothes, and I felt naked, judged, and exposed.  Being willing to show up and inhabit my body -- this body -- was, at first, awful.  I couldn't get out of my head or my judging mind, and I felt vulnerable.  The teachers talked about opening your heart, and being in your body, when all I had done for the past several years was attempt to hold my heart closed and live in my head.   

But in that very first class I attended, there was a moment when I was dripping with sweat from the 90 degree room, twisted into some approximation of a shape, thinking about how god-awful this was and how I never wanted to come back, when I heard the teacher ask, "how is your breath?"

Almost involuntarily, I took a deep inhale.  Just like that, I felt myself -- my mind and my heart -- fall into my body.  For a brief moment, I felt whole.  I felt alive in my body in a way that felt safe and controlled.  I felt alive in a way that filled my body.  I felt alive, and fully present in my skin.

So I went back, even though it was god-awful.  And I went back and it was less god-awful.  And I keep going back, because yoga brings me into my body.  Because it makes me feel alive.  Because I no longer panic about yoga clothes.  Because I can get into crow pose, and my eternally tight hamstrings are releasing their grasp, and because I can't quite do a headstand.  I keep going back because, on my mat, nothing else matters: there is me, and my heart, and my body, and my mind, as I am.  On my mat, I feel something like whole.

I went to yoga yesterday afternoon, and it was one of the most amazing classes I have ever taken.  I ended the class feeling grounded and so whole-heartedly in my body, it felt as though this amazing energy was pushing at the edges of my mortal form, desperate to escape into the world.  For some reason, I left the class feeling as though my being -- my heart, and my spirit, and my body and mind -- I felt that they mattered.  I felt as though I was starting this year with promise living inside of me.

Not me.  Photo from Elephant Journal.

About halfway through the practice, our teacher had us hold our Warrior II pose and close our eyes.  Warrior II is a pose that makes me feel strong and grounded, even though it can also burn like hell.  When I closed my eyes, I heard the words a dear friend repeated to me often over the past several months: "you are a warrior," she said.  I pictured myself in this pose, felt the warriorness running through my tingling, alive, burning muscles, and a word came into my head: powerful.

Powerful. 

My heart seemed to skip a beat, and my eyes filled with hot tears I quickly blinked away.

Powerful.

For the rest of the practice, this word was present in my mind, gently, as though it was resting at the bottom of the screen as a photo caption.

Powerful.

I think my word of the year has found me.

I think back to last year and my initial post on bravery.  I think about that client I had -- the one who told me I "have the biggest, best ninja heart."  I think I'm still trying to live into that...but this year is not the fighting year.  It is not the pushing striving struggle year.  This year is the year I own my power.  This year is the year I feel that power.  This year is the year that I believe that I am a warrior.  That I have that biggest, best ninja heart.  

Powerful.

A love letter from the bell to the air

I shared this poem this morning at church, along with the little mini-reflection before it.  I've been asked to post it here...so here it is (with names taken out for anonymity).  The service was about bells, and the prompt I received was "write something about bells."  This is what I got.

The challenge in writing about bells, I discovered, is that I have more to say about what comes after the sound than I do about the physical bell or about the sound itself.   The magic, for me, is in that wonderful moment that comes after the ring: the quiet that fills the space slowly as the ringing fades away.  The way the air seems to clear for whatever may come next. The stillness that fills the space in the clearing.  We hear it every week when our ministers ring the bell that prepares us to worship.  Have you ever really let yourself be carried into that quiet moment that follows the ringing?  Haven't you also felt the excitement, or anticipation, or stillness, or peace, or power of that moment as we settle into our time together?

Sarah Kay, a spoken word poet I admire, has a series of poems that are love letters between inanimate objects -- for example, a love letter between a toothbrush and a bicycle tire.  As I sat, wondering how to write about the moment of stillness following the sound of the bell, this concept - the concept of a love letter - kept coming to mind.  What better way to convey that relationship, I thought.  The relationship between the bell and the air and silence surrounding it -- that has to be a relationship of love.  How else could it make something so beautiful?

I realize this is a little strange.  I realize that there are probably few people who would consider the quality of the relationship between a bell and the air, much less decide to write a poem about it.  But I have learned to take inspiration in any form...so if you'll indulge me, I'll share with you a poem - a love letter, if you will-- between the bell and the air. 

A love letter from the bell to the air

They told me my job was to move through you.

To crash my sides with peals and ringing,

to throw my essence from my edges

cast my sounds upon the wind,

to announce my presence to the quiet spaces,

disrupt the silence by cutting through you and move

as far away as possible.

They said to chime with strength and dignity.

My job was to move, and move, and move,

to the recesses of every space.

To fill all the corners with my presence,

announcing peace, or justice,

or hope, or magic, or angels,

or God, or war as though

I was the only thing that mattered.

But they never mentioned the way you would carry me.

That you would move me as ocean moves sand -

together -

you pull me ever forward.

A vessel of hope and greater promise

you wrap yourself around my solid frame

warm against my vibration

hold my trembling

and carry me through the empty spaces:

a magic carpet bringing pieces of me into

a whole new world.

Who knew the things we would see there?

Who knew what adventures lay before us as we soared

in every direction;

sometimes stopping at an eardrum to be received

as a moment of grace

or meditation, or annoyance

or peace or liberation or warning...

how many purposes we serve.

What meaning we bring together --

me, with my rough and clanging metal, and you

the soft quiet that completes me.

I love that about us.

But my favorite - my favorite is when I ring

and you carry me out and out and out forever and nothing stops us until

I grow faint, and you grow weary,

and together we land, gently,

on the prairie grass

or high atop a mountain

or on rooftops of sleeping people

and we sit there, waiting and silent,

witnessing our aftermath

and the space we create in the empty wholeness that follows.

We look over the peaceful,

or hurting,

or joyous,

or war-torn world and know

this next moment will be different

if only because of what we created:

you carried me

and we held one another

to the very end.

Genetics

On a 1-10 scale of suck to awesome in terms of quality and style, I'd give this poem a 3.

On a 1-10 scale of suck to awesome in terms of making me feel good for having written it, I'd give it an 8.

That makes it somewhat of a win.

Holidays are hard, you know?  Family is hard sometimes, for many reasons.  Christmas means I see family that I see once a year for Christmas, and also see grandparents -- which is frequently challenging.  For some reason, even though I am 29 years old, the only topic of conversation I can reliably count on is everyone (a) commenting on my how much my sisters and I look alike, (b) analyzing which of our parents each of us look most like; (c) commenting on my clothing and my body.  Growing up with a sister with an eating disorder, I have always been hyper attuned to the body-talk.  Growing up with grandparents that commented on and made suggestions about my clothing, my weight, my acne, and my fingernails (I'm not even kidding), I was always extremely aware and, often, self-conscious.  Even close family friends - it was all they could talk about.  I remember one long conversation with my grandmother's friend who told me I have beautiful ears.  I constantly felt like every part of my body was being scrutinized.  Growing up with a grandfather who often made very inappropriate comments about my changing and growing body, I often felt a sense of shame - although it has taken many years to name these comments for what they were, and to name that feeling as shame.

Regardless, finally, at age 29, I get it.  So when I showed up to Christmas this year, and everyone commented on how much my sisters and I look alike, and which one of my parents I look most like, and commented on my clothing and my body and how good or not-good I look, I. Was. Pissed.  PISSED, I tell you, because I came away feeling like my body was torn apart and judged and picked to pieces.  I felt like the message was that, somehow, other people own my body.  Like this space that I take up is not my own.  As if we don't get that message from everywhere else enough already.

For me, the most powerful line here is this: "this body is not yours to love."  

When you have people commenting on every part of your body from your fingernails to your ears, and expressing judgment about every part of your body, as far back as you can remember...you come to evaluate your body, and your attractiveness and worth (because, you know, of course those things are one and the same...*groan*) based on what others tell you.  "Well Bubby likes my hair...and Aunt Betty likes my ears...and Grandmother says I have nice ankles..."  I think I came to associate my body's worth based on others' appreciation of it (and its lack of worth based on others' comments).  It's easier, though, to reject others' criticism of your body than to reject their compliments.  But both are worthless, I'm realizing, because this body is mine.  It is mine to love, in the way that I see fit, in the way that works for me, in the ways that I can.  This body?  It is not yours to love.

Genetics

After 29 years, the debate still rages:

do I look more like my mother? Or my father?

To whom can I attribute my coloring?  My nose? My facial structure?

The color of my hair, the size of my bones, my height, my weight, my smile

are all up for grabs.

Depending on the day and who is present

one side or the other will claim the pieces of me they decide

are most desirable.

Like vultures clamoring over the pieces and parts

they never stop to acknowledge my breathing -

just claim each piece as their own as though

it was the highest form of compliment.

I am nothing more than a pieced together statue of left-overs

waiting to be critiqued

by her makers.

They say it all comes down to genetics.

But Mendel didn't ask the peas to claim their offspring's shells.

Didn't tell the male he owned his child's shade of green,

never asked the female to claim the shape of her little shoots' pod.

He didn't make the children trace genograms in their tendrils

didn't force them to be nothing but a sum of their parts

collected into the outline

of a family tree.

My body is more than composition.

My face is not the outline.

My eyes are not subject

my nose, not object,

my hair is not adjective designed

to complement the shape of your pieces.

My breasts are not questions,

my hips do not rest in my body like punctuation,

my thighs are not adverbs inviting you softly,

slowly,

strongly,

this body is not meant to be diagrammed like a sentence.

My body is poetry-

it is living,
moving

flawed and fluid,

I want to tell them:

I learned the pieces of you before I could choose.

I am learning the pieces of me by choice:

my body learns from the pieces

I have inherited
but arrives upon its own
new answers.

This body is not yours because you birthed it.

Is not yours because it resembles you.

Is not yours because you recognize its edges, its softness, its stretch.

This body's pieces are not yours because they appeal to your sense of beauty.

Its weight is not yours to notice, to touch, to review,

this body is not yours to know.

Not yours to define.

Not yours to comment on

to claim

to reject,

you do not get to name, or outline her boundaries.
This body is not yours to love.

After 29 years, the answer is simple:

my cells come undeniably from your lineage.

My eyes shine with the light of generations.

And even so -

I make it all

mine.

On being a brave, promise-being of love

Here's the truth: I shouldn't be writing this right now.  I got a concussion in the middle of last week, and given the enduring headache and nausea, I think my brain is still pissed about it.

Here's the other truth: if I don't write this, I am going to lose my mind.  So I'm writing it.

The truth is that I am overwhelmed.  I am angry, and I am overwhelmed. 

I'm angry at my body for not protecting me better from the concussion.  I'm angry at my brain for not healing itself fast enough.  I'm angry that I get angry about this, and I am angry that my body taking care of herself always feels something like a betrayal.  I'm angry that I need to admit that my body is fallible.   

I'm angry because, right now, our world just feels like a fucking awful place to live.  I'm angry about too many injustices to name, and I'm angry most about people's passivity.  I would love for everyone to choose the side that I think is right, but mostly, I am angry about inaction, and about passivity.  Choose a side, dammit, and believe in it, fight for it, do SOMETHING, and do it with conviction. 

With that said, I'm also pissed about my own passivity, and my feeling as though I am unable to make actual change.  I am pissed off that I can't take ALL THE STARFISH and throw them back into the sea.  I know it matters to the one I threw in...but god damn.  There are so many dead and dying starfish, and that's not even getting into the little crabs and minnows and conch and sea anemone that are washed up between the starfish.  That's not even getting into the fact that no one has even written a parable about those creatures, and the fact that their lives matter, too. 

I think about that, and then about the fact that yesterday I went to a meeting and ran one errand...and came home and had to sleep for 3 hours...that just makes me more frustrated.  Damn me with my human brain, and my human body, living this very human existence amongst other fallible humans.  Damn it all to hell.

That said, I'm also aware that it is December 14th, and that I am nearing the end of my year of "bravery."  I'm thinking about all of the writing I have done about bravery, and about where I sit on this concept of bravery now.  I'm thinking about where I go from here, and what it will mean to let go of this nagging, chronic, pain-in-the-ass intention this year.  I'm thinking about what comes next.

As I was...ahem..."resting my brain"...earlier this week, I rested my brain on several podcasts.  One in particular had this piece that stood out to me -- it was from "On Being" with Krista Tippett, interviewing singer/song-writer Carrie Newcomer.  They were talking about some of her music and about song-writing, and Ms. Newcomer said:

Well, it's courageous to hope, because when you do choose to hope, eventually at some point your heart will be broken, and you will be disappointed. And then you get up and you do it again. But I think courage has nothing to do with being fearless. I think courage has everything to do with loving something or someone so much that you will brave it with solid feet or shaky knees because you love it that much....We hope, because we love it that much. It's worth the risk.

I long ago rejected the idea that bravery means the absence of fear.  But until hearing this, I had not yet articulated so clearly that bravery is about love. Why else would we dare it?  Why else would we go through the heartache and the fear and the tears and anger?  Because we believe it's worth the risk.  Because we love the outcome, and more importantly, because the outcome is love.

At the beginning of the year, I defined bravery like this:

Bravery is not about the absence of fear, or the absence of emotions.  Bravery is about feeling the fear, or the sorrow, or the heartache or loss, and making the choice to do the thing that is right.  It is the choice to do the thing that needs to be done.

And that's right.  Of course it is.  But there's more to that story that I have learned over this year.  As Ellen Bass says in her poem, "The Thing Is,"

...you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you.

I will love you again.

And this is also right.  Every act of bravery is an act of holding life like a face in the palms of your hands, and telling it, "I am going to love the hell out of you."  Or perhaps, "I am going to love the Hell out of you," because any act of bravery worth doing, not matter how small, is an act of loving the Hell out of this world, isn't it?

For the past several weeks, I've also had the last several lines of a poem entitled "Anxiety Group" by Catalina Ferro going through my head:

You can't be this afraid of losing everything

if you don't love everything first.

Because you have to have a soul-crushing hope that things will get better

to be this afraid

of missing it. 

I fully admit that, more often than not, I am anxious.  There are many, many times that I am afraid.  I have spent a year thinking about, challenging myself, and engaging in acts of bravery.  It doesn't get easier.  I will be the first to admit that I am not a brave person. 

But I have done brave things, and I will continue to do brave things, because I love.  Because I have this "soul-crushing hope that things will get better."  I love this fucked up world in a way that makes my eyes spill over.  I love this world in a visceral, full-to-the-brim, bursting-out-of-the-seams sort of way.  I love the people of this world in a way that makes my heart feel too big to contain everything inside my body -- I can literally feel something I can only name "love" pushing at my skin from the inside out as I write these words.  In this human form, with inadequate words and language that can never say enough, I do not know how to convey it other than to say that I love.  I love, I love, I love in this way that is whole-hearted, but not naive.  I love in a way that is not complicit, or accepting, or passive.  I love this fucked up place, with its fucked up people, with all of its brokenness and devastation in a way that does not feel like love as much as it feels like ferocity and promise that goes beyond what even those words hold. 

And isn't that love?  Isn't that bravery?  Ferocity, and promise, and bravery, and intensity...and fear and anger and passion and brokenness...and whole-heartedness that envelops the entirety of me and my fallible body....what word do we have that is big enough for that but love? 

Why else would I do anything?  Why else would I be angry?  Why else would I try so damn hard to be brave, when I know that one starfish is just one starfish.  When I know that any good that I do is miniscule, and temporary, and insignificant at best.  When I know that writing bravely, or acting bravely, or trusting bravely makes a difference to no one but me, or perhaps to the 2-3 people who witness this act.  Why do I do it?  Why bother?

I had lunch with a Badass Friend the other day.  We were talking about bravery, and about trust, and about being badass, and she asked me something along the lines of, "How do you smile so much when you believe the world is such shit?"

I don't remember the answer I gave her, but here it is: I smile because it is the only way I know to hold that ferocity, promise, devastation, and bravery.  I smile because that ferocity, and promise, and devastation, and bravery coalesces into a whole-hearted love that is so strong in its intensity and beauty and anger and brokenness that I don't have a choice. 

I smile, and I write, and I speak, and I act when I can because I love. 

Because they are the only ways I know how to hold a mirror to the fucked-up face of this world and keep walking. 

Because I believe in promise and ferocity. 

Because I believe in whole-heartedness. 

Because I believe in bravery.

Because I am a ferocious, broken, fallible, devastated, brave, promise-being of love.

I think we all are. 

So may it be.  

Trust Fall

Sometimes I write poems, and my process goes like this:  "Oh hey," I think, "I think I'll write a poem."  And then I sit down and I write a poem, and I say, "one day down the road, I think I might actually like this poem."

Other times, my process goes like this: "Oh hey," I think.  "That's a good line for a poem.  I think I'll write that."  And then I sit down and I start and stop and erase for a while, and I obsess over one word for a period of time, and then eventually I say, "one day down the road, I think I might actually like this poem."

Other times, the process is like the one I just went through.  It goes like this: "Crap.  I'm tired, and I'm angsty, and I don't know what to do with myself, and I can't figure out what's happening in my brain and my heart, and I'm going to write."  And then, for a good long while, writing goes like this: ".................." 

 And then, maybe I yell at the dog because he keeps putting his nose on the caps lock key and interrupting my stream of not writing.  Or maybe I go clean the bathroom, or maybe I decide I'm never writing anything ever again, or maybe I antagonize the cat.  But once I've started, my brain doesn't quit, and I have to finish it.  I HAVE to finish it.  Even if the only thing I have is "......." or "I fucking hate writing" or "I don't know what to write," or "if only I would be so lucky as to have a shitty first draft."  Eventually, hours later, typically in the wee hours of the morning, there is a poem on the paper.  A wholly unsatisfactory poem that I don't like, that I am not even sure if I will like one day down the road.  But there is a poem on the paper...and my heart feels better.

Trust Fall

My power lies in saying yes.

In grasping every opportunity before me

I have run so far on yes alone.

I have been this brave

and healing person,

I invite you in and make you comfortable.

Create myself from the pieces you hand me,

build a version of me I have not yet met,

I am piecing myself together

with only the pieces that are offered me:

I am a glued-together statue of shatters that were taken

and then handed back as gifts.

Forgive me

if I sometimes forget to say thank you.

What I mean to say is this:

there are times I swallow lies and wear them as truth.

Work my way to yes so I make them fit

hold my breath, refuse to breathe,

bite my nails,

remembering.

No is a trust fall.

As my mouth forms the words, I cross my arms

close my eyes, and

lean myself backwards as my muscles tremble

anticipating the ways they can be broken or pulled from my skin,

"no" has been the knock on the door,

bruises that were hidden,

thinly veiled threats.

"No" was pushed back in my throat

every time I let it escape,

my no is the red flag before the bull, it was

only ever asking for trouble.

You tell me you're not worried.

You tell me I am stronger than this.

That I know better than to believe the lies.

That I am not that type of person.

That I wasn't really hurt.

When I tell you I can't trust my world,

you laugh and say

"of course you do."

And then I hit the ground.

What I'm trying to say is that

every time I tell my story without crying

I am lying by omission.

Creating a space of "yes" around me

leading you to believe I don't feel the wound so deeply,

I practice smiling in the dark

shrink into the holes saved for lost pieces of me,

no, there are no longer bruises you can see.

I bury the ache behind the yes

leave breathing room for you to answer the question before it's asked

watch you sink into that space as you exhale.

What I'm trying to say

is that no one ever had to ask me if I was okay:

I am a gutted cathedral of my own creation

worshiping the power of yes.

You tell me that trust can only be built through trusting.

What I'm trying to say is that

you can't mend a broken bone through practice:

the cast around my heart is there for a reason

and it's not to keep you from coming in.

It's to heal what's broken inside,

to align those shattered ends,

you tell me healing will happen

that it's only a matter of time,

but have you ever asked the riverbank what time has done to her edges?

No

has been eroded from my vocabulary, so yes

I keep fighting

but survival has never been equivalent to trust.

My survival kit is full

of weapons of self-protection

but the hunter doesn't trust the lion

just because he packed his gun.

What I'm trying to say is this:

Don't let them convince you your no can tame the wild out.

That you're strong.

That it's just a lion.

You have your gun if you need it.

Just be brave.

They'll ask you

what makes you think he won't
leave you alone if you say 'stop?'

What I'm trying to say is that
there is privilege in the question.

What I'm trying to say is that
I can't understand how they're
honestly expecting
an answer.