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  • The Loss of Anger

    “I never get angry. I grow a tumor instead.” -Woody Allen

    As a child in the nineties, I idolized women who were angry and restless and lived to write and sing their fury. Fiona Apple, Gwen Stefani, Erykah Badu, Alanis Morrissette, Lauryn Hill, Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Shirley Manson – even Madonna (before she became an enlightened pedantic guru) were all my heroes, not only because I dug their music, but also because each was unique, each was inhabiting of their individual beauty and sexuality, and each was authentic in their feeling and expressing of emotions. Especially anger.

    They were mad and they spoke out: rotten childhoods, forays into drug addiction, men who had done them wrong, an ax they felt they had to grind with society. They didn’t sugar coat their ambivalence and hurt and seething imperfection. Their anger did not make them ugly, unspiritual, violent, or less feminine – in fact, it made them wholly human and relatable. It was also nice that, compared to today’s female singers, they wore pants.

    The nineties seemed a brief respite when anger wasn’t so condemned and criticized. Individuality was far more revered. Not every goddamn thing was politicized. Alas, I feel we have gone backwards, and I sometimes have a hunch that that is why rage has exploded so profoundly in our current cultural and political climate. (There’s also that pesky internet. And ten thousand other reasons.) But in the nineties, it was a bit more encouraged to be messy and broken and pissed off. Sloppy. Unpolished. Fully human. Now everyone drinks green juice and downward dogs their way to love and light. Positive thinking, law of attraction, and “happy-ism” have replaced genuine, well-rounded, and fully embodied feeling. People are spiritually bypassing the very real world of humanness, which will always include fury and ferocity. And it should. Our lives depend on it.

    Anger brings to mind violence and contention, but anger in and of itself is not the same as uncontrollable rage. It is an emotion, therefore it is an experience of energy and sensation in the body. It may lead to lashing out or shutting down when dealt with in a faulty fashion. Like any strong negative emotion, it can be difficult to experience. Anger, in particular though, is the most socially unacceptable. Having it means you don’t handle yourself very well, that you are somehow flawed. Right?

    Wrong.

    Anger is not just a poor defense mechanism. Anger is not just something that uncontrollable, selfish, and dark-minded souls experience. It is inherent to all human beings; it is an innate survival mechanism that alerts us when something isn’t right. It is an emotion that demands I matter! And it is when we don’t feel it – when we repress, ignore, and shame it, that it wreaks havoc on our systems and can unnecessarily harm others.

    I thought for so long that I was in touch with my anger, when really, ashamed as I was, I was judging it and shoving it aside. It began to erupt in all sorts of volatile and damaging ways. Chronic pain, depression, addiction, difficulty breathing, lashing out at well-meaning people, and feeling generally sick are my repression side effects. Bottled up anger is toxic. Pretending to not be angry is dangerous. Dumping heaps of compassion and light (I get mine at Whole Foods) over unprocessed anger is a fool’s game. Dr. Candace Pert explains that a surefire way to jumpstart one’s immune system is to release (in a way that doesn’t do harm to another) a surge of suppressed anger.

    I began to suffer from chronic pain when I was eighteen, mostly low back and leg pain, only on my left side. I still experience this pain today, which I have come to understand is a mind-body phenomenon and not due to any specific medical issue or structural cause. More on that later. At the time, I was so numb and shutdown that I had no idea what was happening in my body, and I was a bit distracted anyway with alcoholism and trauma. I thought the chronic pain was from a hamstring injury that “hadn’t healed right.” I made zero connection to the very real trauma and repressed anger that was living in my body and the overall pain I was (wasn’t) feeling. It wasn’t until seven years later that I would discover the work of Dr. Sarno and the wealth of knowledge and insight that has sprung forth from his discovery: that very real chronic pain symptoms of every color can (and mostly do) stem from the mind and deeply repressed emotions, namely anger and rage.

    For many of us in the western world, some of the beliefs we internalize are: happy people don’t get angry. Anger is unfeminine and ugly. (Girls and women, in particular, are praised for not being “angry types.”) Look good and be successful – that is what is important. Grin and bear it. Be grateful. Be kind. Strong emotions mean you are doing something wrong. There is an exorbitant amount of pressure to be cheerful and successful and to look good while doing so, and this in and of itself creates intense unconscious rage in the psyche. The id does not like it. (See Freud.) There is nothing wrong with being successful and socially decent – but often it is these distorted and narrow beliefs that mask an entire subterranean world (Carl Jung’s shadow world) that demands release, and if emotional release doesn’t happen, you better believe it will come forth elsewhere, often in the form of pain or sickness, in mental illness and addiction, or in nervous system shutdown. All boiling pots eventually spill forth their scalding contents.

    Not only does our culture set some pretty high standards, but many of us grow up in dysfunctional homes. Children do not thrive in unbridled chaos, nor do they thrive in hyper-vigilant and rigid form, and balance is a challenge to come by in the modern world. When we grow up forced to be a certain “type” of kid, punished for crying or getting angry, shamed for having feelings, ignored and neglected, emotionally or verbally abused, with narcissism, alcoholism, and divorce, or simply with parents who are emotionally immature and therefore unequipped to attune and connect, our systems and our ability to regulate ourselves are obviously affected. If we are already a bit more sensitive to begin with (holler), we are likely more affected.

    This is the trauma that packs a walloping punch on children, discrete and covert as it might be, and one of the most common characteristics of these sorts of system-shocking experiences is a deep repression and subsequent suppression of anger. It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part to repress a sea of anger (that would have been entirely appropriate to express, given the sometimes hostile and unsafe-feeling environment) but repress I did. Pretend I did. Smile I did. I did not grow up with extreme poverty or a bombardment of physical and sexual violence but there was plenty about which I was super hurt and angry. It stayed buried, like an infection, (and I did indeed feel sick and fever-like for so much of my childhood and adolescence) underneath layers of coping mechanisms.

    This is an epidemic. This is, what many psychologists and doctors are finally catching onto and beginning to prove (see Dr. Sarno and Dr. Gabor Mate and enjoy inevitable rabbit hole) a huge factor in the wellspring of chronic illnesses, autoimmune diseases, and neurological disorders that are so common in modern society. This is not a blame game but a calling forth of a cultural frailty that demands notice; that the classical family system so common in our culture is riddled with misunderstanding of what best supports human development. This doesn’t mean we need to start walking around scowling and picking fights and talking shit – but we do deserve as individuals to tap into our veritable feelings and not judge them or swat them away. We perhaps deserve to find a confidante or two with whom we can really let it all hang out. Not as easy as it sounds, especially for those of us who have deeply internalized the anger is bad messaging.

    I’ve been on, for lack of a better phrase, the wellness path, for many years now. I have looked into what creates suffering and peace and many different avenues that shed light on such a universal, age-old wonder. The psychological, spiritual, and philosophical realms have been especially fascinating to me. As I have grown and changed, so have some of my beliefs and understandings. Investigating my own experience with addiction, eating disorders, career and relationship, spirituality, and mental and physical illness, I’ve made discoveries that ring true, some that ring false, and a whole heap of confusing contradictions.

    Should I practice gratitude at all times? Should I express myself? Restrain myself? Forget my Self? Serve others more? Punch pillows? Sit in meditation? Write it all out? Spend more time alone, introverted as I am? Spend more time with others, since we are social creatures? Exercise more? Forgive more? Therapy more? Have fun more? (yes.) There is no one answer to the however many questions humans have been asking since the beginning. But I do always circle back to one truth, and that is truth. (What is the truth? I dare you to ask Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson!) Well, for me, it’s authenticity. Awareness. Acceptance. And allowance. Of where I am. And what I am feeling. And allowing that. Anger and all.

    I do not mean that to sound woo-woo or draped in gauze and healing crystals. I simply mean, here is where the fuck I am. Fine. So if I am feeling angry or depressed or annoyed or afraid, instead of judging it, labeling it, analyzing and understanding it, and then trying to fix and change it, even through “positive” methods, I’m just there with it, and not necessarily cross-legged on a stupid cushion. Instead of letting our cultural happy-ism drive me to thinking I must be doing something wrong to not feel great, I just let myself not feel great. So much comes from allowing ourselves to just not feel great.

    Some of what I learned in recovery and in our current holistic and wellness-obsessed culture has had to be challenged and unlearned, which makes a lot of people uncomfortable, (including me.) It has taken me so long to just accept, accept, accept and stop trying to fix, fix, fix (I’m an addict, I need a fix!) through spirituality, therapy, food, or anything else. Here are a bunch of things I have done to stop being angry and “get happy,” none of which are at all wrong or bad, by the way; I just used them to a degree of trying to dehumanize or else superhuman myself.

    I tried eating the perfect nutritious healthy diet in order to cure what was still ailing me, both emotionally and physically. Didn’t do a damn thing, except make me skinny, cold, and drained of all libido. My boyfriend at the time was thrilled. I kid, but nutrition, while somewhat important, is not at all the answer, at least not for those with a history of trauma. (See Lissa Rankin’s work – the health nuts of LA will drop their bowls of organic local greens!)

    I tried the gratitude lists, positive affirmations, post-its with I love you’s on them, and law of attraction woo woo. Again, all fine to a degree, sort of helpful, but not enough for me. Putting a positive affirmation on an autonomic nervous system fried by unfelt feels is like putting a Mickey Mouse bandaid on a broken back. Nice try. (And for the record, I think the way Esther Hicks talks to her clients is controlling and mildly abusive.)

    I tried the Christian, Buddhist, A Course in Miracles, Power of Now, God is Everything route. All great stuff, which I still practice and still revere. I consider myself a believer. I pray and meditate. I have a relationship with a Higher Power. The present moment is cool. But for me, if I use this stuff to not feel bad feelings, espesh anger, I am in trouble. Attempts to go the spiritual bypass route, where we are so darn connected and enlightened and conscious (oh, brother) that we don’t feel and think and have the experience of being in a complex body on the complex earth is foolish (and obnoxious.) Mind-body illness, deep trauma, addiction, and propensity toward depression are partly a spiritual problem, if you think of spiritual sickness as that universal inevitable suffering and dissatisfaction with life, but they are not just spiritual problems (though spirituality can make the path a lot more meaningful.)

    I did therapy, and for a few years it was extremely helpful. It gave me a baseline understanding of what was happening within me and how family systems (dys)function. I learned about narcissism and “parts work.” One therapist was very unconditionally loving when I was first getting sober, and another was super Jungian and helped me integrate a fractured psyche. No joke. I have gone back for tune-ups here and there, and usually I think after, that was a waste of money. No offense to the therapist – it’s not you, it’s me! But the talking doesn’t do much for me anymore. I need to feel. (See Somatic Experiencing.) I notice that when I feel “bad,” (9 times out of 10 because I am suppressing feelings) I get those urgent thoughts: should I start therapy again and commit for at least six months? Then I’ll be cured? Because maybe I haven’t excavated enough? Because maybe I’m deeply screwed up? And should be on medication? Oh, dear! Hey, maybe that will be a path again at some point. But I am finding that if I actually feel instead of thinking and analyzing, the suffering passes.

    I also did (and still do) a whole lot of twelve-stepping. I will be the first to defend twelve step programs. I have seen them save and rebuild thousands of lives in my ten plus years in the rooms. They absolutely can work in helping someone stop drinking or drugging or gambling or compulsively eating or whatever-ing and find their way back to society. But I will also be the first to offer a critique, and here it is!

    Twelve step programs teach forgiveness, making amends, saying prayers when angry, all of which can be positive and helpful tools, depending on the circumstance. But they write off anger as if it is the “dubious luxury of normal men” (meaning non-alcoholic, FYI)  and that we must leapfrog over it and into forgiveness and compassion, stat. Um, no. Just because I have alcoholism does not mean I am forbidden to have anger because it might spiral into resentment and might lead me to drink. The decision to not feel anger and instead force ourselves to understanding by praying or writing or talking our way out of feelings is exactly what leads to anger turning toxic in the first place. It is one area where I think AA gets it wrong – don’t tell me how to forcibly control my emotions – my parents and teachers already did that!

    Look, I get what the founders were trying to explain – they were attempting to say, you can’t change this person/place/situation and lashing out is certainly not a good choice, so you might as well forgive. But what they fail to mention is the very real experience of feeling the anger and processing it in a healthy manner without shame. Resentment and other soul-sickness sets in when we have been forced or have forced ourselves to not feel. Resentment comes when we don’t allow the anger because it is “bad” or because “we’re better than that, we’re more spiritual than that, we’re not angry people;” then it really settles in and grow roots.

    So many of us addicts come from backgrounds where we were deeply shamed for having strong emotions, and god knows we drank and drugged every damn feeling into the ground anyway, so to come into recovery and be further taught that anger is still inherently bad is not helpful. I am all for behaving like a decent person who doesn’t run around like an emotional terrorist. This comes from learning how to accept, allow, and process all emotions in a functional way. Most emotional tyrants haven’t really felt their anger in a damn long time.

    I find this sort of messaging especially damaging to recovering alcoholics who suffer from chronic pain and other mind-body illnesses. Next to alcoholism, living with pain is a most hellish, insufferable, and emotionally draining experience. If getting more in touch with my anger is going to provide me solution but possibly rock a little of the social boat in terms of what I may or may not share in a meeting, I choose the former.

    In terms of what I value philosophically and spiritually, I don’t deny that I flip flop. Some days I am madly in love with the ideas of lovingkindness, compassion, and non-aggression; others, I relish in the soul-jolting fervor of intensity and reaction, of incisive discernment. Perhaps that is my philosophy – plenty of room for both. There is too much that I enjoy that is also a bit “toxic” to fully commit to the non-aggressive path (namely Twitter and poking fun at the incessant, utterly moronic nature of social justice warriors.)

    So what do we do? How do we cope with our lives having suffered the loss of anger, when we should have been allowed to feel it without attaching stories of shame and badness to it? There is no one way. I don’t have all the answers. All I know is that being in complete acceptance of whatever I am feeling and NOT forcing it to change into something flowery and pretty and socially acceptable feels really good and far more healing than gratitude-listing my way to peace.

    Of course I don’t want to hurt people, but I don’t want to be Pollyanna either. I don’t want to live in a utopian world of rainbows and unicorns and everyone just being polite to each other all the damn time. There is a place for passion and intensity and argument, for reaction to mistreatment, for honoring our very human (animal) natures – the messy, sloppy, reality-based world where we can feel and tell what is true. Jung’s sprawling, shimmering River of Doom ain’t going anywhere – as Tool sang (another kick ass angry nineties rock band) you better “learn to swim.”

     

     

     

  • Disarm

    Dian Fossey, famous zoologist and anthropologist, who spent an extensive amount of time studying gorillas in their natural habitat, came to understand that the best way to approach the magnificent creatures was without weapons of any kind. It was a daring undertaking – gorillas are potentially dangerous; no doubt their strength and size could cause harm. But every scientist who came before her noticed the gorillas were not themselves when the scientists were armed with guns and other weapons; they were on high alert and hyper-vigilant – unfriendly, dangerous, ready to attack. Instead, Fossey attempted the path of surrender, of least resistance, and of benevolent curiosity, which allowed the wild animals to relax into being themselves and her and her team to make the most authentic observations.

    Emotions and feelings and difficult experiences are sort of like wild animals. Perhaps it is best that we approach them with tenderness, not attack. Ah, metaphors. Don’t they make life grand? Security and defense are necessary to an extent, but vulnerability and gentleness offer more healing and truth.

    This goes against my natural instinct – I can be quite defensive. I put up my dukes. I get afraid and want to fix or fight, get on the riot gear on and destroy what is making me so damn uncomfortable. But true love breaks the spell, not armor. I have had to learn this through a whole lot of brawling, and the final contender is always me – over in the corner, beating myself up. I have to give up my own battle and fall at my own feet. Weeping feels better than rage. Forgiveness will always dissolve resentment. Underneath fear is an ocean of sadness, and at the heart of the ocean is joy. But oh, to practice.

    I come from tough stock – football players and raging men and alcoholics and very few women. I say this without blame, but I believe I was born a soft little feminine creature who had that emotionally and mentally beaten out of her. The message was to toughen up and stop being so sensitive. The message was to fight and overcome. Surrender was weak. Even my mother, who I love deeply, was not the sensitive, emotional type – she was playing football with the boys, and proud of it. I was a bit of a flower born into a family of lawnmowers. Defenses kept me safe, but then the message was, don’t be so defensive, what is the matter with you! (You can imagine why I drank the way I did.) I sometimes think my whole life’s purpose is to keep taking off every piece of armor I was handed as a child.

    —

    Last summer, I traveled to Europe with a crew from high school to witness one of our friends get married. He had fallen in love with a girl from Belgium, and they were residing in her hometown, Ghent, with their beautiful new baby. It was a trip that combined joy and excitement with tension and enmity. Throw any group of high school friends together in a foreign country, and try not to have a semblance of drama. We actually did pretty well, overall. No broken dishes in our Airbnb.

    At one point in the trip, my best friend, Jane, grew angry with me and treated me in a way that hurt my feelings. When I tried to talk to her about it (with my own snippiness and drama) she shut down. I felt sad and afraid. Then I grew angry. I was twelve years old again, unsafe and excluded and dwelling in that the world is against me perception.

    Even though we forgot about it and moved past it, when I returned home I went through waves of feeling angry and hurt. But beneath that I understood exactly where she was coming from. My friend was suffering, and as the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. She had her own personal issues going on, we were thrown into the cauldron of teenaged high school wounds, and I wasn’t exactly travel companion of the year; for whatever reason the best she could do was place me in the crossfire of her pain.

    Of course, understanding this did not necessarily make me leap to bone-deep forgiveness right away, but it did help me begin to tease apart the reality that her behavior was not personal and did not mean she didn’t love me. She later apologized, and I graciously accepted her apology. She and I have had our ups and downs before, but we have what I consider a profound and solid friendship that has been able to withstand both of our personal demons.

    Despite my understanding and forgiveness for her (minor) transgression, it wasn’t until recently that, due to, as they say, the flipping of the script, it hit me how I have done just what Jane did more times than I can count – hurt someone because of my own hurt – and that compassion and forgiveness and vulnerability, not defensiveness and shutting down, are the remedies (but that it sure can take time to get there.) Justified anger or clinging to feeling wronged is a goon, however seductive and comfortable it might seem. Approach the wild beasts of anger, fear, and hurt with sweetness; leave the whips and chains at home (or in your S&M dungeon, if that’s your thing.)

    Only days ago, I committed a similar hurtful act against my dear friend, Lily, and it has brought up a world of lessons and truths that I desperately needed to witness. This experience certainly helps me love my Jane even more and have such gratitude for her, such deep compassion and empathy for her, because I am just like her, as well as recognize the transformative and healing power of forgiveness and understanding. How foolish it would be of me to stay angry at Jane over something that I have done and still sometimes do. Karma, as they say, is a… well, it’s enlightening is what it is. With Lily, I take full responsibility for my shitty behavior – there is no excuse – but in a way, there is an explanation, and there is certainly a spiritual lesson and an opportunity for transcendence.

    —

    A bit of backstory: for weeks I have been experiencing pretty rapid mood swings and some extremely unpleasant thoughts. I started a new teaching job in January, which has brought upon many new stressors and triggers. It’s too tedious of a tale to go into here, suffice it to say that I am a highly sensitive introvert who simply cannot thrive in today’s school environment, no matter how much I meditate and pray and run and write out my feelings and eat vegetables and etc. Constant noise and movement, bright lights, strong smells, having to be “on” all day, hundreds of personalities to mirror – it is soul-crushing exhaustion for me. Though I love education and connecting with students, the job has always sucked the life out of me, like a vampire to a fresh and pulsing neck, and it has become very clear that it is an unsustainable career path, at least in the conventional sense. (Stay tuned.) I am also in the midst of working the twelve steps again, and sometimes this excavation process, this mining of the black bile can bring up a lot of icky feelings. My grandfather passed a month ago, which was not only emotionally jarring but logistically stressful. My distorted belief that I need a boyfriend/husband/baby to be OK certainly doesn’t help, considering that I’m still swiping left and right on good ol’ Tinder. Chronic pain often visits me (a symptom, actually, of my emotional turmoil.) Despite immense growth in recovery over the past six years, I wrestle with my demons and deepest character defects, namely that of self-hatred and anger, which really covers grief and fear. I still get very overwhelmed when I am not trusting in the flow of life. So, you know, reasons.

    In the days leading up to hurting my friend, I was very much in my small sense of self, feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, irritated, and lonely, all of which make me believe I am ugly and unloved – the classic emotions that come up when I start believing the mean and terrified voices in my head. I had family in town the week before and spent every moment with my precious little sister, and though I love her very much and value our time together, I didn’t get my usual rejuvenating quiet weekend after a stretch of teaching. I showed up to the dinner for my dear friend overtired, hungry, in self-pity and self-centered fear. I made it all about me. Why is she not paying more attention to me? Why is no one talking to me? Why are they all best friends but not me? Why do I look so awful in that picture? Why is it hard for only me? (ha!) Why me why me why me?

    I was in it. I did not pause to take deep breaths or fill my belly with needed food or say a little prayer. I didn’t go home. I stewed in the self-pity and anger, and by the time the evening was over, I was mired in my funk and thus engaging in passive-aggressive, cold, and disrespectful behavior. Total selfishness! It’s yucky sludge. Lily confronted me and began to cry, and I shut down. There were other people around bearing witness to our conflict, and that added to my mindlessness and discomfort. I knew I had been here before, hurting someone because I felt hurt, letting the darkness get the best of me and spewing it at others. As a friend once said to me, my insides are so soft (I still cry in Disney movies) that when I get scared, I become a porcupine and prick others. I sat in my car afterwards bawling my eyes out and feeling like the worst person in the world. It was so clear to me: sometimes my behavior can be awful. This is not who I want to be. Later, more became clear: when you do not take care of yourself, this is what happens. I love you. Also, quit teaching. 

    It was a horrible feeling, knowing I had hurt my friend, and I take full responsibility for my behavior. Despite my reasons for being in a sour mood, I am not a victim to life, and only my personal attention and spiritual path can help changes take root. But I have compassion for the struggles and deep wounds, because I did not choose (or maybe, in woo woo terms I did choose in order to learn lessons…did my little primordial soul choose Scotch-Irish tough as nails Texans for my family tree? Dadgummit!) as a small child to encounter trauma and abuse and to be born into a deeply sensitive little system that has caused me to be build immense defenses and feel chronically overwhelmed.

    We peel that stinky onion, don’t we, and recovery is a jagged line. I am, indeed, no picnic. My mood swings and stress and darkened thoughts have been trying to tell me something, and finally I’ve been shaken into paying attention. Transcending the whole don’t be such a bitch number ringing in my head is, how about not treating yourself poorly? Because beneath the introversion and the work exhaustion and the singlehoodedness is the reality that I’m just kind of mean to myself and hard on myself and tough tough tough all the time. I am like the gorillas when the scientists are carrying rifles. Obvi I would then be tough on someone else (rifle carrier.) Our stuff is bound to leak out. I am afraid of feeling bad, so I preemptively strike – you’ll never get me! This is a terrible strategy, because not only does it exhaust me trying to defend myself, but the perception that the world is a hostile and unfriendly place creates that reality.

    My actions that night had absolutely nothing to do with how much I love and respect Lily (and I madly and deeply love and respect her, without equivocation.) But of course she took my rotten behavior personally, because who wouldn’t? Just as my friend’s behavior in Belgium hurt my feelings, so did my behavior hurt another, even though the attack was based on a delusional harm. My friend did nothing, but I created a suffering in my head and went on the nasty defense, because it is something I do and have done my entire life when feeling threatened and empty. Again, there is no excuse, but there is an explanation. Call it an emotional relapse – I am an alcoholic, I am prone to dark depression and the suppression of feelings – if I don’t continue to practice a willingness to grow spiritually and look at the part I play in my relationships, I will continue to harm others. I do not want to harm others, just as I do not want to be harmed.

    This is growth for me. I am of the slowbriety variety, meaning that it has taken me years to untangle the dark web in my brain and become willing enough to look at my behavior and thinking patterns with complete honesty. It has also taken me quite a while to honor who I am and not feel this fierce impulse to be different or better. (If only I were a yoga Instagram model who lived on fresh air and grass, all would be well. Alas.) Addiction is very much about denial and pretend, ignorance and repression, and it has taken time to feel safe enough to truly acknowledge and admit that I am an imperfect human with twisted and distorted perceptions and behavior that is sometimes, as Shakespeare said, pretty whack.

    For so long I was so clogged with shame that the best I could do was feel good about cracking the iceberg – getting sober, quitting smoking, holding a job, healing from bulimia and compulsive food and body issues. And that was good enough. (I mean, that really isn’t too shabby.) The only way out is through. We must first learn to stand and walk. We cannot rush the process. As one of my mentors often reminds me, it is all happening as it should, and each painful experience is a gift, if we allow it to be. Because I earnestly want to grow and become more free, more kind and gentle with myself and to others in return, I can trust in her words. And perhaps for all of us, this is a process done over time. We all have our different wounds and demons that show up.

    Some of my understanding is that I think I have matured enough and have enough recovery under my belt to reflect with rigorous (but neutral) honestly – without beating myself up – on my patterns over the years, both in and out of sobriety. As I mentioned before, I carried such deep toxic shame for so long and hated myself so much that the best I could do for a while was defend and guard. I had to build a semblance of self love and self acceptance before I could examine my sketchy perceptions that have affected every single relationship I have ever had. For whatever reason, the childhood trauma, genetics, astrological alignment (hehe), I have a mind that often believes people are out to get me, that judges harshly (both self and others) and that is highly defensive and reactive to the actions of others. I jump to conclusions, I mind read, I label, I fear weakness and vulnerability, I filter through a negative lens. I tend to repress emotions until they become mindless and volatile, and then I create problems where there are no problems. I am human (and an alcoholic), therefore this monkey mind small sense of self stuff is inevitable (and is more likely to come when I am burning the candle at both ends) but mine comes out like my father’s came out – mean, snappy, scary, harsh, tough like Gary Cooper (Texas Scotch Irish) – and this is not how I want to be. The feminists may burn me at the stake for this, but I ‘d rather be the fragile damsel Cooper rescues and romances. Just, you know, softer. Maybe that soldier in Hacksaw Ridge who refused to use his weapon. Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Sansa Stark. Cordelia (you know, before they hanged her and stuff.) You get the idea, I hope.

    Despite my growth in terms of my self-love and compassion, there is still gentle work to do, and yet it’s not a game of self-improvement. I spent my entire childhood and adolescence, namely ages nine to well, yesterday, just steeped in self-hatred and judgment and trying to be different. I was completely numb and shutdown. I had slammed all of my grief and rage deep inside of me and covered it up with addiction. I literally felt clogged with toxic glue. So it isn’t that shocking that it would take some years to awaken that numbness. This recent experience showed me that on many levels, I am still keeping that self-hatred story alive and well. I still beat myself up too much when I make mistakes. I still judge myself extremely harshly. I still look at pictures of myself and feel disgust. I still make myself rush and worry and fear, rather than let go and relax and trust. I still feel like there is something wrong with me when I have big feelings. I still focus on the bad things. This is not nice behavior, and this does not help me treat others well. In a nutshell, this behavior is lacking compassion and wisdom. It is far too tough, far too cutthroat, and incredibly suffocating. No wonder others would feel they must walk on eggshells with me! If I cannot extend myself lovingkindness, especially when I am having a difficult experience, it is hard to offer it to others. Compassion is so deeply essential, especially when we are suffering.

    Fortunately, suffering is the touchstone of spiritual growth and a great catalyst for awareness and shaking it up. I do not mean that my behavior to my friend was justified by any stretch – it wasn’t. And though I do hope that she gives me a chance to make amends and finds a way to forgive me, this is not guaranteed. But the answers do not lie in me beating myself up for days on end or letting this experience spiral me into shame and guilt and believing that I am a terrible person, nor do they lie in me scrambling like a madwoman to try and fix it and get her to forgive me. I would not want those who have caused me harm to wallow in such hell. I used to think I wanted this, immature little victim mentality that enveloped me – now I know I do not. I have to learn, I have to forgive myself, and then I have to let go.

    I know I am not a terrible person. I know I am a decent person with a big heart and a capacity to love and nurture immensely. I know I am also very imperfect, and still quite young and foolish, and that I have much to experience and learn and heal from. As Sharon Olds wrote, I can be “full of cruelty and full of kindness.” Good and evil cuts through the heart of all humans. My job is to work out the kinks and to take emotional and spiritually inventory, so I don’t have to unleash my cruelty to the world. All coarse straw can be spun to gold with breath, with pause, with loving attention. Sometimes we need to befriend our demons in order to get them to smile. We give it a shot like Fossey – to approach the wild animals without armor and artillery. I think I’ll try that and lay down both my weapons: the one aimed at you, and the one aimed at me.

     

  • Another, 1

    “In each of us there is another whom we do not know.” Carl Jung

    You must write every day to save your life. if you do not, your mind will get the best of you. You will think these dark thoughts. You will fall into such despair. You will give up. You are not an artist, get over yourself. You are an artist. You were born into a family that did not understand artists. You will never be understood. The fantasy lately is to be saved by a fifty two year old novelist with a great head of hair who wants nothing more than to give you a child and love you, and he understands perfectly that you will leave him in twenty years for someone younger. He is OK with this. He would be lucky to have you. You will always be in pain. Emotional pain is sexier and more literary than physical pain, but you will always have the physical, and no one wants to hear about it. Perhaps you are far more fucked up than you are willing to acknowledge and that you ever let on. You should be on medication, and you should be in therapy. You mind is not integrated. You are unwell. You are an alcoholic. You hate February, but then when April rolls around you quote T.S. Eliot, so you hate April, too. You hate life and you love life. You should be lecturing to high school students or else writing for a magazine or else writing novels. People would like them. But you don’t, because you are afraid and no one believes in you, especially you. You want to skip the horrid soul sucking rough drafts and get right to the final, the hardcover on the shelf. This is impossible. You have so many stories – why aren’t you telling them? Because they aren’t diverse. Because they aren’t politically correct. Because writing sometimes sucks, is very hard, is very annoying. Because you are afraid. You don’t like food that much anymore, except for sugar. All you want to eat is sugar. It was so important to you for a time to be beautiful, but you are wondering if you even care anymore. What does that accomplish? You’re not a model, and no one cares what you look like on Instagram. Why do you care? Why do you still chase high school boys? Why do you still live in Los Angeles? Why don’t you make a change? What are you so scared of? How do you think you’ll feel, when your father finally dies, and when do you think that will be? Do you think you’ll feel relief? You were meant to have your writing heard, but no one hears it. Mean girls broke your heart more than boys. You did nothing. Why didn’t you defend yourself and scream? You want to much to be good. You have to do this everyday, or you will never get better. Stop trying to be good. Allow yourself to be messy. Let it be messy. Be a bitch. Be angry. You often pick guys who do nothing nice for you. Find a man who will. They are out there, they will be floored by you. You are magic. You know this. You are full of talent, if only you could find someone to write with. You were meant to write. You were meant to be loved. It hasn’t happened yet, and you think you are old now, but you are so very young. How broken is your heart? Very. It is very broken. Give it time to heal. There is something about you that is luminous. Radiant. Whenever you share jokes with your students now, you’re afraid they’re going to come back with some far left wing ideological retort that will shame you for saying something traditional about men and women. These parents are ruining their children’s minds. It is tragic. Art will be lost, a slave to politics. You fantasize about two men at once. You fantasize about ruining a marriage, being the other woman. But that is not what you really want. You want the glamour and magic of kids, you do not want the day to day. You want the partner, you do not want the irritation and struggle of another. But there is someone out there who will get you, who you won’t be too much for. You are afraid to share this writing, because the deep dark down in the depths disgusting swamp of truth is too much for people to bear, and they will call you dramatic, self-indulgent, treacle, embarrassing. They will not get it. You thought teaching would be artistic and romantic, but it’s stale, sterile, full of type A’s. Where are all the artists. The real ones? What could you do differently? Where could you lighten up and not care? You get tired of being sober, and not because being sober is all that bad, but because getting high would feel so good. It would feel good to get a little high. You feel shame for these alcoholic thoughts, so you repress them. They are actually human normal thoughts. Everyone wants to feel good. You never really let yourself really go. You are afraid it will turn you ugly, turn you to stone, turn you mean, turn you judged. You are afraid of the thoughts of others, which is a sort of insanity, for you will never know the thoughts of others. Thoughts are weightless, unreal. When you finally heard truth spoken from the professor, it was everything, and yet, you do not know him. You feel that no one really knows you. As you write this, you want to publish it on your blog, but with that in mind it controls what you write, and you don’t want that. Everything has become about what this might look like to others on a screen. What insanity. You don’t want a screen. You dream about novels and stretches of beach with a lover. Stillness and quiet. Death, too. Death is romantic. You’re told to see a doctor. No one really understands you. No one really tells the truth. What happened to art? To writing? To stories? Everything is politicized, a postmodern nightmare. The books world is corrupt, like every other world, but that shouldn’t stop you. Why aren’t you writing? You do not finish stories. Every story you start is about two sisters, and you dream about having two daughters, this is the life you did not have? You love so much that it hurts, doesn’t it honey. But you cannot say this love out loud. The vulnerability kills you. It will scare the other person away. Your mother’s hugs were never tight. Your father loved you but couldn’t show it. So you don’t show it. But you feel it, and it’s so deep, it is in the depths. How could someone be an atheist? How could someone choose to believe there is no meaning, when there is so much? How can people be so cruel, so aloof, so manipulative and dishonest? So faraway and unloving? It disgusts you. People disgust you. People are horrible. You would love everyone if only they would be the way you think they should be. This makes you laugh. Have a snack. You should eat a well-rounded meal, but instead you’ll have sugar. Do what you want. We are all going to die. You are so tired of your friends posting about politics. Women in Los Angeles, white women no less, thinking they are oppressed. You are embarrassed for them. You know this isn’t true. People have no depth of understanding of western civilization and the mere fact that they can shout, we aren’t free! is a gift of a free society. And as if men don’t struggle too with pressure and conformity and feeling that they have to be a certain way. As if it wasn’t always hard to be a man, too. As if we aren’t all consumed with guilt and fear and shame. We are alive. The oppressor struggles, too. No one understands anything, because no one bothers to learn and study and read. The world lies everyday, and people only look at the surface. You are angry. And you know what, be angry. You have chronic pain because you pretend to not be. So, be. Instagram is ruining your life. This makes you laugh. Don’t be so dramatic. The truth is that you love and hate deeply at the same time, and this is the truest truth – we are all capable of extremes of good and evil, if pushed to the brink. July 1’s, overwhelming ambivalence. You aren’t proud. You wish it could all be love. But it isn’t. You know why AA works? Because it’s about God, and God is good, God is bigger than the material earthbound surface world. God is transcendent – the head lifted to the heavens, to the stars, to the unknown and unprovable. Not everything is about what you can see and touch, about damn Newtonian laws. Most of it probably isn’t. We’re far older and primordial than that. People in this city are stupid. They lack wisdom. You know you’re right, like Kurt Cobain. Or maybe you’re so wrong. You are every archetype, but mostly you are the anti-hero warrior sister who must fight the bad guy while not becoming bad herself, Arya Stark, Scout Finch, Mina Cates, Eponine. Why not just be depressed and let it all go? Do you have to fix it, right away? Because you have to show up to society every day. You cannot act this way at work and on social media. But why? What would happen if you let it all hang out? With your friends? With your writing? With a lover? With your folks? If you wore lipstick and dressed however you wanted and let go? What would happen if you told the truth all the time and didn’t feel like you needed to censor it or hide it or apologize for it? You feel often that it is too much, your feelings. They are big. You are afraid to scare off your friends. You are afraid to be yourself. You are afraid to love with your whole heart and ask for what you need and accept yourself the way you are and let that be beautiful and lovely. You give far too much power to boys who do not matter. You have very old ideas, rooted and stuck in fifteen year old you, and these must come unglued and dislodge completely from your system. See what happens when you just allow things to be exactly as they are. Just be and allow. See what happens. But, why don’t you figure out who you are? Are you afraid to stop being good? What would happen? Why don’t you just figure that out and be that. Or why don’t you just let it be. Let it all be. But, who are you and why don’t you and what if? But, who are you and why don’t you and what if? But, who are you

  • Savor It All

    “Savoring” is trending right now as part of mindfulness work, meaning that if we can spend just a few more seconds each day really taking in and delighting in that which is pleasant – the sun on our face, laughing with a friend, a delicious meal – we are increasing our ability to feel joy and building up resilience to pain. I like this idea a lot, and part of my intention for 2017 is focusing even more on enjoying myself, enjoying life, and relishing the small pleasures. What else is there?

    I used to rely quite heavily on extreme highs (or else guttural lows) to feel something. As an addict, I wanted to be obliterated, so close to death but still awake enough to feel a glittering euphoric numbness, and anything less than that was miserable. So I required copious amounts of liquor, pills, cocaine, weed, cigarettes, food, and sex in order to chase that high. Watching a sunset? Oh, please. Give me a break and pass the pipe.

    Even in the earlier years of sobriety, I always needed something. Food issues galore, or else I’d start smoking again, or compulsively chew Nicorette, or constantly have a non-alcoholic beverage in hand, or eat little candies, or binge-watch shows, or online shop. And none of it was from a savoring place. It was compulsive, grabby and needy, all about trying to get a hit and not feel my present circumstances. It wasn’t very enjoyable, or else I just didn’t appreciate the goodness.

    But since I am now cured and an enlightened guru (just kidding), I no longer grab compulsively for most things. I am far more comfortable letting things be, and I usually don’t need an external hit of anything. I am comfortable in my skin most of the time, and I eat, drink, spend, and live fairly moderately. I often joke that I don’t even care about food (and that is sort of true, unless I am really hungry.)

    I mean, don’t get me wrong – I can still get obsessive, especially in my mind, but my behavior is very different. I attribute most of this to recovery and a spiritual path, and a lot of it, too, to allowing, making nothing (most things) forbidden. It’s not uncommon for people to restrict excessively and then later binge excessively on whatever it was they were restricting. This was the story of my life for many years, especially with food, but also in my early stages of alcoholism when I was really trying to control (to little avail) how much and how often I drank. Or else just being super ascetic in general. I think a lot of us, when we first stumble upon a spiritual path, think it has to be super serious and boring and martyr-ish. Then, thank the heavens, we find there’s a middle way.

    I can’t safely drink alcohol anymore or use mind-altering drugs, but I obviously have to eat, and I still watch Netflix and shop and eat candy and even once in a while indulge in a cigarette (minimal inhalation, and we’re talking three times a year or whenever I travel to Paris.) But because I don’t have an obsession with any of these things I don’t restrict, and I do not then over do it. Sugar is probably the best example – I allow myself to have it whenever I want it, even every day, because I really enjoy it and it feels good in my body. I’m not eating five Snickers bars or a carton of ice cream – that would likely make me feel sick – but I’ll have a piece of chocolate or a few bites of dessert after dinner, a sweet with a coffee or tea. If I feel a need to cut it out for a week, fine. If I eat too much of it, I notice. But what I really try to do is savor it. Taste it and experience it. Then let it go.

    I just had a coffee and a biscotti for breakfast, and there is something about it which makes me feel incredibly happy and satisfied. I don’t know if it’s because I love the small rush of caffeine and sugar, or because sweets are tasty, or because it represents the huge victory over years of restricted eating and health-obsession madness. But I liked it, and I did my best to experience the satisfaction, and I am probably going to do it again tomorrow (or maybe later today.)

    I just had two friends in the past two days reach out to me to tell me how much they love my writing. I sat with that for a few minutes to feel how wonderful it felt, not only to be complimented, not only to know that people can relate to my words, but because they took the time to reach out and say so. What a thing to savor.

    I ran around with my precious little nephews over the holidays playing pretend war and hide ‘n seek and helping them open their Christmas presents. My mom said, these are the moments you will always remember. She is right, and because I savored it, I think it sank even deeper into my system. I keep remembering it with such warmth.

    I try to savor the blissful moments in yoga where it feels like graceful dancing. A really really really great kiss. A moment of feeling beautiful. Playing Apples to Apples with those I consider my second family. A friendly exchange with a stranger. Even, basic bitch that I am, a glorious sunset. (When you live in Los Angeles, it’s easy to be like, yeah yeah, another Michelangelo-level painting of the horizon, so what? But yes, of course I try to savor this. And if you’re on Instagram, you can see everyone else is trying to, too.) A delicious nap. (Anything bed and sleep-related, really.) A runner’s high. A great movie. A great shower. A clean room. Clean socks. Clean teeth! Anything can be savored, if we choose to pay attention. And it just makes it all better, all the time.

    In the midst of suffering, it isn’t easy to stop and pause and focus on gratitude and enjoyment. I can default back to anger, impatience, fear, and frustration many times throughout my day. It’s the human condition to an extent, and it is also part of my wiring, and it is also perhaps because we live, I believe, in a culture that tries to move too fast. (Please stop tailgating me!) It is a practice, but we can get better at anything we practice enough. I think of gratitude and savoring as the antidote to negativity, and why not try each day, to make it all more positive? Default on positive and occasionally stumble on the negative. I’m going to savor that idea for a while.

  • New

    When I was seventeen, I got black out drunk on New Years Eve and found myself in a precarious sexual encounter with a man who I thought was my friend. I went numb after. It was 2003. Endless tequila shots by the wet bar before the party, to steady the nerves. I was toast. 

    My life proceeded to fall apart in ways that are still painful to examine too closely, and they remained broken for quite some time. I consider that night in my metaphorically-inclined brain to be the exact end of innocence. It had been departing for years by then, such innocence, and that severed the final clinging strand. I sat in the corridors of school writing in notebooks all the things I could not say out loud to a single person. Not my mother. Not my best friend. I was sometimes paranoid. I was a burgeoning alcoholic. I started taking a prescription of Zoloft. I pretended everything was fine. I didn’t always want to drink but I couldn’t not drink. I knew I loved writing, that I loved learning, that I had something to say and most certainly everything to offer, and though I understood this on some level, I could never feel it. My system was clouded with fear and loss, a complete repression and restriction to experience grief and to be exactly where I was. I came from parents who did not explain suffering to me, only overcoming. I love the overcome – but I cannot prevail over that which I do not first process. 

    For years and years, I processed. I toiled. I learned to live and mend wounds and celebrate life. It brought me here. Fourteen years later.

    New Years Eve this year was marked by simplicity and serenity at its best. At its more somber, the experience of quiet reflection and tender sadness for something out of reach, for what has passed, for what lies ahead – the complete unknown.

    But it was mostly joyful, sitting with dear friends in their lovely home, playing games and talking and eating, belly laughs, holding their precious little child. I opted out of a beckoning party that I knew would represent all that I rather move away from in my life: inauthentic relationships, toxic patterns with men, a re-ignition of the old stubborn lack of conviction of who I am, what I believe, what I want. I can hold that conviction close most of the time these days, until I come face to face with a past that will never settle, and that party, to me, represented the dreary past; the only way to move forward is to not keep looking back at it, expecting it to convince me of something different. It has told its story, and the plot doesn’t change.

    I am sometimes so tempted to return to worlds where I never quite fit, to see if I finally fit. The world of years ago that landed me black out drunk and naked, having sex I did not want to have – a lost world of so long ago, that told me lies about my worth, my beauty, my lovability. I do not hate that world, but I do not wish to live there, and I don’t even like visiting anymore. Why take trips to places we don’t like, when the horizon stretches in all directions, open, clear, and full of possibility?

    My friend said, you will always remember that you chose not to go. Carry that with you, as a reminder of where you are going instead. 

    It was not a sexy, enthralling night, though I did dress up and did take pictures and did attempt to feel some semblance of glamour and allure. Smoke and mirrors, social media. But really, it was simple and quiet, and very sweet, and very precious. There was no New Years kiss, except the one I planted on the forehead of the baby. Driving home at two in the morning, nearly six years sober and very much in healthy love with myself, with a new year stretched before me, I could feel this was, so far, the best night of my life. 

  • The Highest Value

    I’ve been thinking quite a bit about values lately and what matters most to me deep in my guts. What am I on this earth for? What is actually important? How meaningful are the things that sometimes seem worthwhile but that tend to cause suffering? Some people put values into the context of, what do we worship? Where do we place our faith? What do we make our Higher Powers? Basically, it is as a simple as, what do we really want out of life and with our own little lives?

    Some value fame, fortune, beauty, popularity. Others simplicity, solitude, quiet. For many, success and winning are up there, achieving dreams, creating, building, growing. Is there a right or wrong? Not necessarily (although valuing hate and fear might not be such a great idea.) I know that I have at various times valued knowledge and education, the arts, family. I have also been in darker places and put far too much stock in money, image, appearance, thinking success and perfection in these areas would make me happy, grant me inner peace. (Didn’t happen.) I still value education and knowledge, and to a degree I care about a healthy self-image and comfort in life, but these are no longer the tip top, and I find that they tend to work out naturally when I place my energy on a larger, more intangible value.

    I think our truest value shines through when we don’t go looking. It just bursts, often through tears, joy, laughter, some force of energy. For me, it tends to emerge through music, literature, writing, prayer, and physical movement. The deepest, most primordial sensation is there beneath all of my layers of thinking and analyzing, down in the bones, and it covers everything else.

    I remember clearly sitting in a hotel room with my parents during Boulder parent weekend back in 2003, sobbing uncontrollably. I was very aware that I was depressed and troubled and probably an alcoholic. Eighteen years old and incredibly lost. I felt wracked with shame, fear, guilt, and despair. And despite being in a room with parents who loved me, I felt alone.

    My step-dad asked me a simple, gentle question: “What matters to you? What do you want?” I will never forget my answer. “I love Jackson (my younger brother, who was only four at the time) and I just want to be there for him. I just want to love. I just want to love.”

    It might sound a tad melodramatic or reductive, but I really believe I was speaking my heart’s truest truth and that the love I felt toward my young child/brother was symbolic of the desire for something innocent and pure, something brimming with goodness. This is still what comes forth when I am very quiet, when I sift through all the other bullshit that I think holds more weight. I just want to love. I just want to love. Love, perhaps, and I mean real love, is what I value most. From it, comes everything else.

    What is love, exactly? (Cue the Night at the Roxbury song and dance.) How do we define it? What does it really feel and look like? There are many answers. There are endless expressions. For me, love is an experience of spirit and authenticity that eradicates anger and fear. It is without conditions. It is our essence. It is larger than beauty (though it is beautiful), larger than wealth, than health, than ideologies and systems, than physical freedom. It is unbreakable, inherent, and deeply within a living thing. It is not necessarily taught, although it is certainly nurtured. It is a movement toward gentleness, kindness, service, and joy. It defies all identity and separateness. It is the truest experience and emotion and decision and action. It is everything.

    But it is not easy.

    There are one hundred thousand reasons we can come up with to not stand in love, to not give love, to not receive it, to push it away. We can always attempt to justify anger, judgement, and hatred to some degree, on both small and large scales. Some of us carry incredible burdens. Some of us are deeply wounded. Some of us are even right. Perfecting our love, then, becomes a practice, because it is in living creatures to defend and shut down, to fight, flee, or freeze.

    And sometimes we must. We are not here to be doormats or stand willingly in the face of danger to get torn apart and gobbled up. We are allowed to protect ourselves. But when the threat is over (and for many of us today the threats are minuscule or nonexistent or show up primarily in our minds) what are we to do? It can be tempting to withhold love from where it is not given.

    My understanding now is to give it even more, and not from a codependent place of trying to get something, but as a blessing. A gift. Lighting someone’s candle does not distinguish our own. Sometimes we must walk away and stay away and try to love from afar. This is compassion. This is service. Nelson Mandela had every excuse in the book to hate and seek revenge. As did Martin Luther King, Jr. As did Jesus. They chose love and forgiveness.

    I spent a good portion of my younger life in a defensive stance. I was so sure that the world was out to get me and that I had to protect myself from imminent danger. I felt consumed with fear and anger. I often did not trust and saw darkness at every turn. I think many of us come face to face with this experience, especially as we grow out of childhood and lose our innocence; we see that the world holds many horrors. Thus, we prioritize. Holden Caulfield, in my opinion, wasn’t completely crazy; he just felt too deeply the sadness of seeing that pain is real, life is unfair and unpredictable, children grow up and turn cynical, angry, hurtful.

    But it isn’t only this way. The world is an imperfect place full of imperfect people, but we can still value Love. Despite the fact that, yes, there were circumstances in childhood and adolescence that caused my heart to close, plenty of what I feared never happened. Despite the fact that the world tells us daily of its despair and tragedy, we can still look in front of us for the good. There is always good in front of us.

    Good defense predicts danger, but sometimes the danger doesn’t come. I was often reacting from fear rather than responding with curiosity and an open mind. I have had to practice retraining my approach to life and shifting my perception. I have learned that whatever is lacking in any situation is my job to bring. If I feel a lack of Love, I must bring it. If there is fear, I must bring courage. When feeling judged, I must accept that I am likely judging myself. My deepest value is Love, and my deepest practice is continually, daily, over and over and over again, perfecting that love. Opening my heart. Understanding and forgiving. Bringing forth light and goodness. Amending. Being kind. Never making my mind up about anything or anyone. Allowing others to change. Always attempting to forgive and not seek revenge or the perpetuation of the sad story.

    We live in a climate today where it feels as if we were to stand in such a value, people might call us quitters. Or ignorant. Burying our heads in the sand. Not fighting the good fight. I respectfully disagree. I have erred on the side of standing in such ideas, believing a place of love to be naive or lacking knowledge, education, or a pursuit of justice.

    If anything, my acquiring of knowledge (which I still acquire and for which I still hold reverence) always leads me back to understanding that simply knowing does not create peace. Nor does saying something is a certain way. Life is bad in this way? Ok, maybe it is. Then what? Do we fight what is bad with more badness? With anger and hatred and blame and sides? Do we attempt to ameliorate those who promote evil with more hatred and call that “having a voice?” The greatest irony of those fighting for tolerance is how intolerant they can be. No thank you. I choose love. I choose peace. I choose understanding. I choose to take care of myself, do what feels good, and seek to help others, especially those in front of me. I choose mercy, not justice.

    It is an experiment, to live this way, and not often the instinct. But since I have gone down this path with my head and heart, attempting to solely value love (and forgiveness) above all else, my life has been undoubtedly better. I have laid down the sword of anger and trying to be on the “right” side of anything. You might disagree with me, and that is fine. I know that place. I am still often there, all the time. But it is never too late to wake up and love, every morning, every moment, or once and and for all.

  • A Journey of Beliefs Pt. 1

    Universal Stories

    Belief and meaning, (and it is by believing that we derive meaning and discovering meaning that further deepens our beliefs) play a significant role in the continuous development of the human at the psychological and spiritual level. We, ideally, focus our beliefs on honorable virtues and values without becoming too puritanical or too pessimistic. We, hopefully, align our beliefs with truth and goodness, remain balanced and open and avoid outright zealotry. It is wise, too, to avoid trashing belief patterns that work, simply because other belief patterns are problematic.

    Regardless of your views surrounding religion, whether you are a staunch atheist or a dreamy-eyed believer, an honest individual can agree that wonderful stories (not to mention art) have come from religion, and that these stories contain themes and messages that speak not solely to religious followers or stalwart ideologues but to all people. You might say they contain universal truths or basic ideas of morality. Look into Greek and Egyptian myths, the Torah, the New Testament, and you will see humanity grappling with what it always has, in every tale. We continue seeing this in high definition with the unsurpassable Shakespeare and subsequent succession of great western writers and artists. The oldest stories explored family, good and evil, identity, love, jealousy, anger, war, revenge, oppression, freedom, death, rebirth. Such stories are often taken metaphorically, but not necessarily lightly. What is all this saying about people? What does this mean?

    One can be an outright atheist and still derive meaning from tales of the ancient gods, from Moses and Jesus. We learn through narrative, “the world is made of stories,” and archetypes are deep within the psyche of all humans. Harold Bloom claims Shakespeare invented the human, and he might be right, but storytelling as a way to understand our world, each other, and ourselves, goes back to the very beginning of time, which suggests that such universal truths reflected in these stories are inherent, even biological. Such narratives have helped us mold our consciousness and our existence.

    Most tales throughout history and up until today present varying degrees of good vs. evil and the external and internal conflict with which human beings grapple. Stories contain protagonists and antagonists, heroes and villains, gods and monsters, a bevy of triumph and tragedy. We get happy joyful stretches and primordial lairs of darkness. We get the hero’s journeys over and over, and it teaches us about ourselves. These narratives speak, if you pay attention, to the soul. They speak to what it means to be good and strong and whole, and why we strive to be such. These stories were not accidental or in vain. They were not beholden to just one group or one society. Across the ages, good and evil were concepts that people understood, that stuck.

    People gravitate toward stories, because stories are a capturing of people. We love literature, cinema, gathering with friends to hear dramatic snippets of their lives. If we pay attention, we see morality, we see reflection and lessons learned, we see human connection and love and heartbreak. We see death and life. Can we really call it all meaningless? Can we really see no thread through all of this that defies society, culture, identity? That is not to say that people from various backgrounds don’t have differences or unique experiences, but there is there not a common link, as old as time?

    Moral Relativism, Postmodernism, and the Hypocrisy of the “Tolerant”

    The idea of morality, the seeking of decency and integration as a worthwhile path, seems to be unpopular these days, in the sense that it be sought in an authentic, wholehearted, intuitive way. Much of what people now believe to be moral is nothing more than tolerance-posturing that masks judgment, self-righteousness, and sometimes profound cruelty. This is not surprising, especially amongst young people and those emerging from today’s elite universities, where their minds have been indoctrinated to follow no code except that of cynicism, grievance and victimology. Postmodernism thought, most specifically the ultra-chic version that penetrated the universities beginning in the 1970’s, tore down morality and made it (and everything else) into some human created “structure” that can never be defined as any one thing and ultimately seeks to to exclude and oppress. All reverence for religion and mythology, history and classic literature, and even evolutionary biology has been thrown out the window in place of a limited, quasi-Marxist, identity-politic theory, chalk full of language control, thought control, and suppression of new ideas. The goal, if there even is one, is a blind pursuit of iconoclasm disguised as “justice and equality;” no one actually triumphs, and justice is never served.

    Moral relativism predated postmodernism, but the two are highly interwoven and pretty much the same idea; that there are no universal truths or morals, that everything is subjective and depends solely on social and cultural circumstances. Postmodernism encourages us to not label anything as anything or derive any meaning from anything, because it all just is, and such labels are manmade structures anyhow. Agh! What mental masturbation. I have come to find postmodernism, though initially seductive, empty and banal and totally inapplicable to actual life. It is a theory that has yet to be as heartily proven as that of its opposite: that life, and all that goes along with it, does have meaning and connecting threads. Moral relativism may apply in the following manner: one can believe strongly in atonement and forgiveness (a universal truth, mind you) so that even those who commit unbelievably immoral, evil acts due to certain desperate social circumstances (murder, torture, rape, purposefully cruel abuse) can possibly find a way to redemption (i.e. Crime and Punishment.) But that does not make the immoral act some ambiguous deed that is only immoral because we have chosen to call it such with our silly western civilization language, or that it is acceptable to commit such acts because one comes from a limited social or cultural background.

    I bought into the postmodern spiel for a while, just as I bought into “progressivism” for a while; such philosophies were edgy and cool and seemed to make sense in theory. In the midst of this though, surrounded by other ultra cool believers, I felt like a phony. I knew in my heart I simply did not identify with the tenets (which are inherently ambiguous) of either philosophy. I had absolutely zero interest in making sexy The Communist Manifesto. I knew I was not atheist. Did I sing out? No. Squeaks here and there. It’s hard leaving the cool club behind, and it’s doubly hard when you fear you might be called some terrible things for having a difference of opinion. Fascinating how, even though I knew it was the best decision I ever made, to create a life built on faith and personal liberation, and undeniably the way of strength, I was so influenced by my culture that I felt ashamed to have what might be considered traditional beliefs. No one derides God, tradition, and liberty (and science and history) like the postmodernists. No one derides period, like those who cling staunchly to such divisive, inhibiting doctrine. Even the great existentialists and scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had enough heart and wisdom to seek where faith and morality made sense, where something like The Bible held universal lessons, where truth did indeed dwell.

    Now, instead of morality and decency we have this idea of unconditional tolerance, which sounds really nice and fluffy but is actually quite barren and cold, is boxed in and lends itself to utter intolerance through the perverse exploration of identity politics and grievance culture. Nothing is anchored in any kind of reality – everything just depends on people’s feelings and opinions (which are often, respectively, highly overblown or misinformed) and an absolute infantile approach to life. Feelings are important to a degree, and we need to feel them, but it is unhelpful when they drive our every belief and action, and they can become destructive when we have not integrated ourselves psychologically and learned how to live in reality. Reality can be unfair; get used to it! Find something inside to nourish you. The world cannot be contained.

    This moral relativism has spawned over the top political correctness and the plight of the hateful, often violent “social justice warrior,” who claims that anyone who disagrees with their strident (delusional) ideology is somehow a racist, homophobic bigot. To live by a core belief system that defies identity politics is considered juvenile, “privileged” or naive, and of course, very “offensive.” A micro-aggression, if you will. (I won’t. A common claim would be that I have no right to hold this or any other view because I am a white woman, therefore coming from a place of privilege, therefore unable to understand suffering. You can’t win. Onward with truth!) To have any faith whatsoever, any moral compass, or any diversity of thought, is now considered gross and racist, (holler Ben Affleck) homophobic, bigoted, simple-minded, uneducated, a refutation of science – on it goes and goes. The great irony is that what you are often accused of being by the standard “SJW” are the very traits they embody. Another irony is that, inside this “tolerant” world one can now be considered highly immoral for peacefully practicing a religious faith and highly moral for attacking those who believe. Attack, violence, hatred, cruelty, condescension, and meanness are all considered moral and righteous in the SJW’s mind, because it is the name of the fighting the good fight. The cognitive dissonance is astounding. It is postmodernism parading as a reverential political and cultural transformation, and it is toxic. 

    It is not fighting the good fight. It is the thought police world, it is mind control, and it is hateful. Faith in anything decent and good has been replaced by ridiculous reverence and faith in the state (see twentieth century Russia and China for results), in identity politics, in radical gender ideologies, radical anti-West ideologies, and worst of all, faith in nothing at all, a complete collapse.

    I believe strongly in individual rights and freedoms, and so by all means, please go study postmodernism until your eyes and ears start to bleed. But pay attention. Is such cynicism and nihilism the answer? Is a world without meaning actually possible? Can we really strip everything down to the idea that only language makes something something, that categories of anything were solely invented to keep people out? It’s a ludicrous, damaging, false set of theories, and yet the good news is that such investigation might turn you toward wanting to realize a bit more of a path of truth, that history, nature, science, and faith are onto something.

    Faith and Knowledge

    I find that having faith, especially explored and pondered faith (agnostic faith?), despite the cries that it is a naive and uneducated path, something that the most open-minded and intelligent possess. It is unbearably reductive to say that to believe in God, however one may define that belief, means the total abandoning of facts and logic. Faith is not the antithesis to knowledge, and in fact, the two often blend together quite nicely and satisfyingly, if one sees the cultivation of knowledge not as a sterile washing away of the unknown and the transcendent, but as a joyful pursuit of truth and understanding. One certainly can believe in God in a thoughtless and even evil way, and that of course is not holy benevolence but a rigid and controlled system (see authoritarianism) that seeks to denigrate and condemn. That is not the faith I subscribe to, nor one I see commonly practiced amongst peers. 

    People like to blame the world’s horrors on religion, and indeed many horrors have occurred when religion as an entity had far too much power over the people. Christianity certainly had to go through many a reformation to divorce itself from narrow-mindedness and condemnation of others, not to mention its inappropriate blending with government. This was religion corrupted and preying on people’s faith. Today’s radical Islam (still blended with the state in certain countries) is in desperate need of a reformation. What has actually caused more deaths throughout the past few centuries, besides disease, has been totalitarian statehood in countries like Russia, China, Germany, and Cambodia, not belief in God. The claim is often that such a totalitarian regime is eerily similar to that of a controlling religion, and that is true to a degree – when any set of beliefs turns into enforced ideology that then removes freedom from individuals, violence occurs. A major difference though, in say most religious principles and a Communist dictatorship is that the former is focuses on an individual’s path of growth and self-realization through a relationship with the transcendent, while the latter is about what an individual can give up to the state. (And if anything actually is meaningless and void of heart, it is the state.)

    All sets of beliefs can be corrupted and turned authoritarian by man, but this does not mean the set of beliefs in and of themselves are corrupt. Some sets of beliefs, when applied well, are never corrupted. Some sets of beliefs, no matter how seemingly decent or perfectly applied, simply cannot remain free from depravity, and this usually means they clash too drastically with reality and human nature. The idea of Communism sounds so good. Unfortunately, it does not align with the natural world and instincts of man, with the complexities and dualities of life here on earth. It kills freedom, creativity, growth. Eventually, it kills millions of people. An institution cannot give you liberty and individuality. A spiritual path, however, does align with nature and with freedom, and it is the oldest story in the world. Wishing on stars is among the first acts of human, the belief in something larger, the turning our heads and hearts to the sky for guidance.

    Faith should never be enforced, which is why it is a blessed thing that we have the separation of church and state in our country and freedom of religion. It is absolute power and the removal of individual freedom that corrupts, and faith is a highly individual and personal path anyway, so the separation is a boon.

    Authoritarianism as the Problem

    Any belief system (even atheism) becomes damaging when it grows rigid and dogmatic and is inflicted onto others. This can happen intrapersonally, interpersonally, or at any level of society and policy. The personal and the political, in this regard, often feed off of each other, as we have seen with the uprise of a culture that is highly intolerant to diversity of thought in the United States. Do as I say, not as I do, is a tried and true dictate. Moral relativism can sometimes be just a hop, skip, and a jump away from authoritarianism. Since nothing is rooted in any sort of fundamental truth or based in reality, well…then, I’m just going to oppose my morality du jour onto you, and don’t you dare get it wrong! Do as I say! Do as we say! This is the only way.

    My natural evolution of belief systems could certainly be likened to transitioning from a rigid system to an open one, from a dark and empty one to a warm and joyful one. You might say, my perception and spirit changed from postmodern to Enlightened and Romantic, and hallelujah for that. Thank the heavens. This had nothing to do with religion, although I identify with certain symbols and archetypes of various religious figures that went through personal transformations in their perceptions of the world. I highly respect and revere religion. I continue to keep an open mind about it and find solace in its lasting impact on humanity.

    A belief system works for me, and yet within the realm of this system I find a lot of space and air and light. I don’t think of my set of beliefs as rigid or highly controlled or authoritarian by any stretch. It is not a closed system. There is room for change. In fact, my beliefs have transformed quite a bit over the years, and I leave room to allow them to continue to change. Certain truths, however, have stayed the same, and I am proud of them. At the core, there is faith, faith in a benevolent force. There is the awareness that true light and soul lies within, that there is something fundamentally good in my chest and stomach that I can feel and that is real. There is a belief in revering truth over what “should” be, in respecting reality over fantasy but not renouncing mystery and magic. There is a belief in keeping an open mind but not abandoning myself simply for the sake of openness. There is an utter conviction that to trash god, faith, knowledge, reason, nature, literature, history, is deplorable, but there is also a belief in forgiveness. There is a distaste in my belief system for the postmodern love affair with the desolate, with emptiness, meaningless, nihilism. I am repelled by these concepts. I find at their root is really just resentment and rejection of humanity, in all of its complex, accidental, forgivable forms.

    I certainly believe that one can be atheist and live a wholehearted and happy life. I have many friends who consider themselves atheists and are wonderful examples of kindness, service, and warmth. What I notice about them, however, is that they are very open and receptive and they are certainly not spending their hours trashing people who do consider themselves religious, spiritual, or people of faith. They are by no means authoritarian or fundamentalist in their atheism. In fact, I doubt they even give it much thought. And they have reverence for all that may stem from religion and mythology in terms of narrative, culture, and connection.

    Heaven and Hell as Metaphor

    One of the oldest and most universal symbolic references is that of heaven and hell. This is not something I ever really believed in any sort of a literal sense. Is there an afterlife? Maybe. I don’t know. I certainly cannot claim to know, but I also cannot claim to not. What I can relate to is the metaphor and that we can live in heaven or hell right now, here on earth, and that such a destination often resides in the daily choices we make and what constitutes our moral code, our belief system, our capacity for amendment and atonement, and our willingness to learn and grow.

    For me, hell is lacking all belief, all meaning, living life as an iconoclast without any attempt to rebuild something good and decent. It is easy to be cynical – why not try something braver? Hell is living day in and day out with anxiety and self-hatred and the hatred of others. Hell is trying to force others to be like you, or worrying that not everyone understands you and making everyone an enemy. Hell is condemning others and ruining people’s lives for not catering one hundred percent to a rigid system. Hell is sometimes in the logistics; losing a job, a lover, a family member, or freezing or starving or being so very poor and believing there is no way out. Hell is being unfree, whether physically or within your own psyche and soul. Many who are physically free are slaves within their own minds and spirits. Hell is too much focus on others, hell is too much focus on yourself. Hell is the absence of feeling. The inability to feel joy. The wanting to die.

    Human rights are indeed among the most moral of issues. I believe all, no matter their identity, deserves basic dignity and freedom. But this cannot be politically mandated, even though it seems like the wise choice. Let the benevolent government fix it, right? Sadly, the inherent dualities of nature at times makes this seemingly impossible. The struggle is, as they say, real. It is one thing for a government to take rights away (not good) but it is far worse for a government to force people to behave and think a certain way and to constantly intervene in the day to day lives of individuals. Of course we want the end of racism, of sexism, of bigotry, but this cannot be eradicated by force, by violence, by control. There is extreme backlash when the government behaves with such intrusion. Let people have their basic rights. Let them be. Let them work or not, let them pray or not, let them alone. Let them be free. Do not expect them all to be perfect or decent or cater to your expectations. But if they cause you no direct harm, deal with it. This is earth – not heaven. 

  • The Circus

    “This is the circus. Everybody’s trying to not go home.”  

    To be human is to be a social creature, and it is an endless adventure and collection of lessons to interact with other beings and establish relationship. I have learned over time that relationships can work like a drug – we get so high on feeling like we belong to a group and are in the in-crowd, or we get wasted on love (usually not real love) and keep coming back for more, only to feel restless and dissatisfied. Only to feel unloved.

    We find those who irritate us or get us, some we can’t stop thinking about and others easily forgotten. We click or feel indifferent. Relating can be a circus, a fervent distraction of smoke and mirrors, a blowing of fire and ice. It can also be exquisitely real, and wonderful, and a lot like coming home. At its best, it is (almost) home.

    It’s dawned on me lately how much I (sometimes) don’t want to grow up and how youth really is wasted on the young. How coming home to ourselves, day after day and year after year can at times feel overwhelmingly lonely. How authentic human connection is what it’s all about, and yet even when we are lucky enough to find it, it is not completely lasting. It comes, it goes.

    I sometimes don’t want to grow up because, I think when you get free, you want to spend every waking second with others reveling in such joy. You want to share it and talk about it and give it away and make something warm and visceral, something constant. Those teenaged stretches, those early twenties, so lost and insecure and in terrible suffering! If only we could live backwards.

    But you always have to go home. You have to go home to yourself at some point. And I think such freedom of finally loving yourself enough to want to venture out without motive only comes with time, with cultivating experience and wisdom, with slaying the dragons that dog your younger years. The glory days come later. You want to return to yourself at sixteen, at twenty four and say, be cheerful, sir, your fears don’t matter! You cannot. Youth wasted. Onward.

    It takes time to really connect to ourselves, let alone others. To be human is to see from a skewed frame, and we must learn to see better. We look out our little individual windows, and because each of us observes the big wide world from that solitary perspective, we think it is personal to us. We see something, and we think we, the seers, are what it has in common, that we are the constant, the common denominator. This is a misperception but it feels extremely real, and it can create an exorbitant amount of fear.

    It is the feeling of being watched by everyone when you walk into a room, as if they are all in cahoots and collectively judging you based on what they see. (They’re not.) It is the feeling of being alone in your painful (or joyful) experience or that strange idea that others have life figured out while you are stumbling along blindly. We can feel very separate in our minds, and so to befriend ourselves and then join with others and share the common experience is a worthy goal. It is something inherent to all living beings – to really hear and feel, I do that, too. Individualism and collectivism, coming together.

    What is a connection and how do we make one? And who with? And for how long? When we’re little, we practice with our family, and if we are blessed enough we have a decent bonds with caregivers who love us and mirror to us a friendly world. We make friends at school as children, sometimes based on who sits next to us in class or shares the same lunchbox, sometimes built on deeper understanding or natural likeness.

    A few of my closest friends in high school were kindred spirits with whom I shared a connection based on love of music and movies, or unity over common family dynamics and mild traumas, or a similar sense of humor. Sometimes it was just about who wanted to smoke pot with me or who seemed cool or was convenient. There were those people you spent all your time with but secretly felt ambivalent toward. And there were those people you wanted to be friends with but just couldn’t get close to, for whatever reason. The disconnects are the hardest.

    My personal opinion is that we can make authentic connections at any point in our lives, but as we grow older and become more ourselves, our capacity for true kinship grows stronger. Though I had some very special friends in childhood and adolescence, I did not meet the people who I can really spill my guts to and completely be myself with until I was in my mid to late twenties. Much of this had to do with my willingness to be vulnerable and open and let people know me. To say, this hurts, can you help me? I used to never ever ever ask for help, and I did not let myself be loved. The most I asked for, if I asked at all, were scraps. I chased the unavailable, the hurtful, the aloof. I got nervous when you really tried to love me.

    Fast forward some time and work and whatever the fuck later, and now, I allow it, or at least I try to, because I want it and need it, and I know what it feels like to not be loved. It’s a knife in the gut and an eight year old abandoned cry. Though some strange lost part of me still finds comfort in the old familiarity of inconsistency and rejection, being truly loved and treated well is obviously the path. It is the circus act that does not lie.

    To be seen, listened to, and supported is a gift. I have friends who do this today. They have shown up for me through difficult experiences and deeply painful emotions. They are little angels, and I love them with my whole heart. I hope they feel that.

    I know without a doubt that my capacity to connect with others today in a profound and worthwhile manner, came from my ability to love myself and feel at home with just me, in solitude and quiet. Which I really do. To not need nothing ever but to need nothing right now. To not be frantically searching for some external magic trick distraction. The only thing as good as that, as a connection of kindness and acceptance with ourselves, is a connection of kindness and acceptance with someone else. Everything grows from there.

    And so we attempt this with so many, and so many disappoint us, but a few get in there. We go to the circus and we get swept up. Sometimes it’s fake and you don’t get what you see, but sometimes that feeling of connection has meaning and is meaningful. Sometimes the people you meet out there actually give a shit and actually want to love you, unabashedly. And yet, still, we come back to ourselves. We learn how long to stay and when to accept that we’ve got to hit the road. It always comes, when there is nothing left to do but sleep.

    We don’t want it to end. We do not want to go home. We have to.

    I find that the best of relationships are built on this understanding; that though we try so hard to be loved by each other, and we can and do love each other, we must continually return to the first home. Ourselves. We cannot be saved, we cannot be fixed. We tend to ourselves and share what we learn. A friend, a partner, a true lover is a gift, but not a white knight. The best ones do not try to save. The best ones do not judge, no matter what you might do. The best say, it’s normal to feel that way, we are all part of the same circus, how can I help?

     

  • Cool Shoes

    Sometimes all it takes is a pair of shoes to shift everything.

    In fifth grade, my supremely cool step-mom took me to see Clueless and then proceeded to whirlwind me around Westside Pavilion on a shopping spree to mimic the far out fashion of the film. We’re talking plaid skirts and knee high socks, patent leather Mary Janes and corduroy jumpers, clear glitter sandals and collared baby-tees with words like “What-Ever!” and “As If!” scrawled on the front. I showed up to fifth grade at Palisades Elementary ready to sweep the Student Council and rule the playground at lunch. (I lost to a boy and had a terrible falling out with my friends halfway through the year. The election was RIGGED and girls are merciless.)

    But I had this one pair of electric blue high-heeled jellies that I wore to the point of my parents speaking up and buying me some Adidas. (“Those are bad for your high arches!”) I loved those shoes, because even at ten years old I was very aware that wherever I went they were a show stopper, a conversation starter, and they gave me some identity beyond “sensitive bossy fifth grader who subconsciously knows she is headed for a fall.” They made me feel cool and seen. Let’s be real – nothing feels quite as important as being cool when you’re young. And feeling seen, I think, at least by a few, even when we already see ourselves, is always important.

    My older brother was for sure cool, and he hung out with all the other cool people. Especially the girls. If I thought I had fresh outfits, these chicks were next level. They were seventh and eighth graders, so that meant they did things like pretend they smoked cigarettes and made out with boys. One in particular always commented on my blue-jelled shoes and made me feel like a million bucks. We’d get to talking about music (Alanis Morissette, No Doubt) and TV (90210) and the other pop culture references that unite us all, and she treated me like a person. Not like a little sister or a nuisance or a younger, dumber whatever kid – like a person with shit to say. I will never forget this, and I have my shoes to thank. It was the first time I was aware that something you wore could work like art – evoke a connection, bring people together, make you feel less small.

    When I first started teaching, it was unbelievably difficult, and not because I wasn’t good at it – I was. I still am. (Teaching is difficult for anyone anywhere, and until you have done it, you’re not allowed to say, “how hard can it be, hanging out with kids?” and “But summers off!” Ha! Why I oughta…) Connecting with my students always came naturally, and I’m a nerd for English so mastery of the content was no big. But knowing this on a higher level did not soothe the fact that I felt like a failure on a lower level. I was not suave about making mistakes – I was hard on myself and rigid, took it all personally. (This, I worked on, and I’m better!)  If the kids seemed bored or tired, I thought it was because I was boring and tiring. Never mind the fact that school just sometimes sucks, no matter how much you love your teachers.

    One student in particular plagued me. She was aloof, highly intelligent, sensitive, creative. Very moody. Often quiet. Best writer in the class, by far. One of the popular girls, but she didn’t want to be. She came from money and was extremely fashion-forward, always getting sent to the office for showing a little too much skin or wearing more makeup than was appropriate. She full stop would not make a connection with me, and I lost sleep over it. Every other girl in the class wouldn’t leave me alone, pestered me at recess and lunch and wrote me little love notes that I pinned to my bulletin board. Not this one. She didn’t even laugh at my awesome jokes. She had already read The Giver, and so while the rest of the class gasped and cringed when we discovered what Release meant and read what Jonas’ father did to the twin baby, she sat there picking her nails.

    I almost started to get angry, but really I knew, there’s something going on there. Something was hurting her inside. Her parents didn’t respond to my emails. Admin was vague about her issues. She didn’t have any learning disabilities or diagnosed behavioral problems. She got straight A’s and was quiet, therefore left alone. I knew her parents were divorced. I had the sense she was a bit of a latchkey kid, raised by nannies and taught very young to fix herself snacks after school. She was growing up fast. She’d get into a rough crowd in high school and get eaten alive, or else devour others. Sensitive girls with pains in their hearts? And beautiful? Wrapped in bows for mean boys.

    Much like Annette Bening in American Beauty chanting, “I will sell this house today!”, striking a connection with this student became my mantra. And I knew my way in. Shoes.

    There was a dress code for teachers, but I broke it. No platforms, no sandals, lest you trip and break your ankle and then we have to spend money on hiring a sub. I took the risk. You can take it out of my paycheck, suckers! Nineties fashion had made a comeback, and this student never ceased to piece together unbelievably adorable and creative outfits. Crushed velvet tops and dark lipsticks and hair dye. Sneakers with skirts. Fake diamond collars. Sometimes a straight cowgirl theme or goth princess from the future. Other girls tried to mimic her with scant success. My outfits were always relatively appealing, but I was also teaching middle school, so I couldn’t really bring it with my clothes. Had to cover up, don’t you know, had to look professional. (And as I mentioned, she was sent to the office on the reg for breaking dress code, but what could we really do? Straight A’s and calm. Let her be.)

    I had these ridiculous patent leather super high platforms that were completely nonsensical for teaching (or anything) and a total violation of the rules. They stayed in the back of my closet. My boss was a stickler for teachers never looking sexy (understandable) or wearing the wrong shoes. Well, this was a a matter of humanity. They were fresh. Dope. Hip. #TrendyAF. #CoolTeachers. Bring it. It sounds unbelievably shallow and stupid, but I knew my little aloof writer would notice. It was only November, and sometimes it takes students until about February to really warm up, but damn it, this was happening now. I would law of attract it, so help me. And I did.

    She walked into my class and gave me a once-over, as girls often do. “Whoa, those are cool shoes,” she said, avoiding eye contact. She was used to seeing my brown boots, worn down on the heel. Here I was, merry little prankster, changing the game. People feel comforted by mirroring, so in my most cavalier, nonchalant, middle school cool girl way I said, “oh, thanks. Have a seat, get out your homework.”

    “Where’d you get them?”

    “Shopbop. Nineties back, in a big way. Like Clueless.”

    “I love that movie. You know Shopbop?”

    “Duh.”

    Something flicked in her eyes, swear. Something ignited. My guess is she finally saw, Ms. Ingraham is a person separate from teacher. She likes fashion. She probably doesn’t live at the school. She probably knows some shit beyond junior high literature. (This is huge, by the way, for students to grasp.) All from a pair of silly little shoes. There was also some deeper nuanced learning going on for both of us and for women everywhere: you can be into fashion, into beauty, into looks, and also be into books, into profound connection, into something deep and lasting. Smart girls take selfies, too, damn it, and teachers have hot sex.

    I had her come in to work on her writing with me, and she started to talk. First, about fashion. (“My mom buys me whatever I want, but you know, I have enough shoes at this point. I think I’d rather have…”) Then, a little pop culture. (She loved Pretty Little Liars, Rhianna and some YouTube star I had never heard of.) Then, friends. (“I feel like they know don’t know me.”Ah, join the club, girl.) She had a depth to her, and a sadness, and she reminded me of me in that sense, and dear god I wish I had had someone to talk to when I was twelve. Her mother was hard on her about her looks and weight. Already on a diet of no sugar and lower carbs. She loved books and had read The Outsiders, The Golden Compass, Catcher in the Rye (“Holden is judging others to avoid getting close”) and every single John Green book and popular YA series. (“The Hunger Games is overrated. I think they should teach Harry Potter in schools. [I agree.]) She loved animals and children. (“My little brother is six, and he is my life.”) She felt lonely and alone, and there was more to her story, something dark and tragic that I won’t go into, and I knew high school would be rough for her and she’d get into drugs and sex, but I also knew she’d come out on the other side with a large and ferocious story to tell. She was an over-comer, undeniably, to her bones.

    She became my favorite student and perhaps had more of an impact on me than I had on her. I learned once more how quickly I might judge someone or take it personally that they behave in a detached manner. What is wrong with me, that we aren’t connecting? Why don’t they love me?! That we can judge so harshly on appearances. (How sad can a pretty girl really be? Well, very.) But there is always something brewing below, and if we can show, I see you, and I accept you, that brew might bubble up, and spill.

    It was worth getting called into my boss’ office and lectured on my fashion choices. It was good for me to prove to myself once more that it is in making mistakes and being imperfect where the real shifts occur. And that it is simple, and unexpected. Shoes. And listening. Sometimes that is all it takes. No pronouncements. No grand gestures or declarations. Just a little rule-bending, a nodding head and knowing eyes, a hundred bucks dropped on impractical footwear.

     

  • Rebel With a Cause

    My first rebellion was at fourteen, and it was all about sneaking out and getting transformationally high. I wasn’t trying so much to be a bad girl (no weird piercings and black lipstick for me, and barely even a fuck you to my folks) as I was trying to connect and feel at one with the world. No joke. Drugs and alcohol were a sort of spiritual experience in the sense that everything seemed to click for me when in that space of perfect chemical bliss – there was nothing to fear, nothing to seek, nothing to judge, just complete and total acceptance of myself and the moment. It was that Perks of Being a Wallflower “we were infinite” kind of sensation, and yet David Bowie and a ride in the car weren’t enough; I could only get there under copious amounts of booze and drugs. Such spirit was lost on me otherwise. Emptiness, meaninglessness, anger, and fear were the feelings du jour when sober. Later, when I began practicing yoga in my mid-teens, I got little moments of that connected state; in the sweaty asana room, my head pinned to the floor, I would feel that everything is OK, everything is Love feeling, but it was far more fleeting and not nearly as flooring as substances. So on and on I went, seeking “connection.” By sixteen it was like trying to grab a feather in the wind. By eighteen, it was gone.

    Eventually I had to cut that shit out, the drinking and drugging. It turned on me and went from evoking a (false) sense of connection to establishing complete disconnection, misery, and despair, not to mention began jeopardizing the logistics of my life in terms of work, school, obeying the law, and relationships. That rebellion was over. I had to find a new one.

    I began the search. The process. The path. A way to find that peace I felt at fourteen, blowing smoke. It was a jagged freaking line. Eighteen to twenty-five, a hot up and down sometimes happy mostly wretched mess. Periods of sobriety, periods of relapse. Periods of seeking the proverbial external fix. Straight A’s, boyfriend, size 2 jeans. Sex, cigarettes, clothes, car. The emptiness followed me, tried to kill me. Suicidal fantasies, thick at twenty-four. Spirit crushing obliteration with any and all substances that would alter my dark mind. My goal was to be so close to death that I couldn’t feel one thing. Close-to-death-high chasing is terrifying, especially when you wake. Then: an actual awakening.

    Along this rocky road of learning to live and searching for truth and connection, my values have gone back and forth and up down, and what I believe to be important has sometimes varied. What I hold dearest to the very center (faith, spirituality, God, whatever you want to call it) has in essence stayed the same but has expanded in its own right (as I believe is the point.) My faith has at times been ineffable, ill-defined, very clear, sometimes blind. It sometimes felt extremely far away. It was always more or less without dogma, without boxcar-tight religiosity, without approval or disapproval. It has grown to feel very warm and safe and, mostly, near. It is still at this very moment, moving, changing. It is even larger than it used to be.

    I wouldn’t say that I “found God” at twenty-five in a white light magic sort of way. Really, all I did was surrender to some concept of a Higher Power that I created myself. It then grew into a comforting presence to which I sporadically felt connected. It was enough. I kept my idea of God simple: an unconditionally loving benevolent force in my life, both inside of and all around me that was carrying me through the shit storm of early sobriety and my about-face to reality. I did not try to over-explain it or figure it out. I just believed in it. I had to confront so much stuffed down suffering, it was overwhelming. I could not do it without faith. Suffering gave me faith. It has never left. Despite this faith, I was still convinced that the real answer lied in fixing me on some psychological and emotional level.

    I spent a good chunk of my mid to late twenties rebuilding my internal world at the psychological level. It was lost on me, a healthy sense of Self, and it was essential to erect it. I had to cultivate true self-worth and unconditional self-love and acceptance to counter the vicious voices that told me incessantly that I was worthless, etc. This was work, and it was worthwhile, however nebulous and far-reaching it sometimes seemed. And it stuck. For a few years I pulled away from the world and tended to my inner wounds, learned to have boundaries and take care of myself. That was my priority, “selfish” as it might have seemed. It was highly necessary and life-changing, and it came in layers and levels. At first, I had to learn how to feel painful feelings (anger, grief, fear) without losing my mind or self-destructing; eventually, sitting through such discomfort became easier (still not easy.) To show up to a career every day, when the buzz of that alarm clock felt like chimes of oppression. To stay in when exhausted and completely drained. To take walks and eat well and call and ask for help. To fail and fall and get back up. To allow crying without meanness. To sleep deeply. To say no. Basic self-care, a boon, but not something we all know how to do. Learning this was essential and helped me broaden the path.

    It wasn’t, however, “enough,” this self-care/psychological shifting work, or the actual solution, in the sense that it did not always nourish and sustain me on the larger levels, on the deeper un-earthbound levels that I could not understand with my mind. In and of itself it did not provide abounding connection to others and the world at large. Such psychologically searching also kept me stuck in stories – especially past traumas and the whole family system shebang.

    I also spent a good amount of time studying and reading books on everything from literature to art to history to philosophy to science. (I am by no means even close to being a scholar in any field.) The little that I learned was often eye-opening and worthwhile and sometimes very nourishing and connected to my spiritual quest, but in and of itself the knowledge did not create happiness. Nor did a plunge into all things political and cultural on the entirety of the spectrum. I would never reject knowledge, and I still seek it daily, but it can sometimes spiral me back to a place where I think some specific thing is right and therefore the other thing must be wrong. Knowledge was helpful, but it only got me so far.

    The faith stuff was bigger, despite me grumbling about this truth. God is larger than dualities and human ideas, in my humble opinion. I imagine the very cosmos itself would laugh at us all right now, bickering on Facebook about American politics. (Indeed, it probably is.) Faith, however one defines it, is often seen as the way of weakness, and I wanted to be strong, self-sufficient. My mind still wants to have it all locked down and figured out, under control. It wants to know, know, know. It does not like pausing, trusting, allowing. It wants to stay angry or separate or right about certain things.

    Luckily, I grumble no longer, not about the power and largeness of my faith and its magnanimity. I have also learned to not feel ashamed or embarrassed about my faith. It has transformed my entire life in a way that words do not do justice. It is an experience of Spirit. Something so precious need not be justified, but it also need not be hidden and secretive. I have hidden my beliefs at times, depending on who I am with, knowing I have certain friends who reject all things God and believe faith to be stupid. I respect their atheism and quite honestly understand it – however, it is very much not my path. There was a time when I thought it was uncool to believe in God, and it still is quite uncool to certain people; but I have learned by now that coolness (and worrying what other people think) is silly and boring, and I would much rather be happy and filled up with joy, goodness, and love. I rather be a light than a cynical vampire.

    Over the past year and more specifically the past few months, my faith has deepened and my capacity for forgiveness has expanded, and while some of it simply came to me, I also pay attention and practice. I make daily choices. My heart wants joy and connection, not judgment and separateness, and I keep hearing the same message as the vessel to take me there: love others deeply, forgive others everything, and go help. Forget. the. rest. 

    In widening rings, we expand.

    Along this spiritual journey, forgiveness is an area I have struggled with the most (and what maybe we all struggle with the most), of both others and myself. It can be extremely difficult to let go of anger and resentment that feels justified (and that probably was at some point.) Anger, though sometimes a healthy and necessary human experience, can be seductive enough to stay longer than is necessary. It likes to really get in there and tell the same story over and over and over. It likes to crawl back, even after you’ve made an attempt to forgive. And what happens when we hold onto such anger? It hardens our hearts. Closes us off. Turns into toxic resentment that leeches real happiness. It creeps into other relationships. It makes us feel high, then guilty. It can be very easy to justify anger when dwelling in the psychological and emotional realms. Knowledge and the whole I’m right, you’re wrong field is its close friend. You might say that anger is rather close-minded. Childhood trauma, while unbelievable painful and deserving of healing, can easily morph into a lifetime of resentment at your caregivers and family members and an unwillingness to accept imperfection and move on. Again, possibly justified, but who would really want to live there? I rather be free. What is the antidote? It is what every great spiritual master (Jesus and Buddha in particular) taught, under various terminology: lovingkindness, radical acceptance, forgiveness, atonement, amending, surrender, unconditional Love.

    I do not know if such an experience of forgiveness can be rushed. It would likely be inauthentic or shallow. I do believe that if we do not do some level of feeling and processing our darker, painful emotions, they get stuffed down and wreak havoc on the spirit. Jung wrote of the shadows in all of us that deserve a voice, and that it is by looking at the darkness that we increase our light. I don’t think I could have gotten to a place of honestly desiring to forgive until I felt how deeply full of rage (and grief) I was and said it out loud, wrote it out loud, cried it out loud. It is helpful to seek support in a therapist, counselor, or trusted friend to release honest feelings without shame or harm. But then… onward.

    If you pay close attention, you will see the difference between healthy release and morbid, stubborn wallowing. I don’t feel so inclined to plunge into my past and excavate traumatic experiences as a way of healing. I know what happened, and I know what to do now. I know where real solution lies. And I feel less need for armor and defenses, for I think I actually believe now that nothing real can be threatened. (Beyonce said that, but not first.) I can keep taking care of myself, obviously, but the path has shifted, and the shift has gone to love, forgiveness, and service, no matter what.

    I do sometimes wonder though – no matter what? How much can I love others? And all of them? What about those justified resentments? What about toxic people, the emotional vampires and narcissists? The ones that drive me crazy, for whatever reason? What about our global planet, all the horrors inflicted upon it? I honestly don’t yet know the answer. Rebellions often appear to be daring acts that create something new, not rely on what’s been done.

    I do know that the heart is inclined to close out of self-protection, but that little grows from that place. An open heart is a risk, but one worth taking, and if I do actually believe in loving fully, what else is there? Love without conditions, is often the sentiment. But this is work that takes practice – it is not often my instinct. Some of my favorite literary writers commented on how empathy can work backwards: we shut down and hate those that remind us of our pain, our humanity. I notice how I can harden, close, act unkindly, judge and hate. The smaller part of me loves the idea of brick walls to keep out bad guys and villains. But some higher part of me knows that is not the way, that vulnerability and profound, weighty, large love is bigger. Damn it, I think it is. Self-protection is of course a healthy choice to a degree, however that may be defined. But we need not armor ourselves so greatly, nor can we, and we can love our enemies deeply (maybe the more dangerous ones from a distance.) Most great teachers of love and spirit call upon this sort of work: we will not hate our enemies and let such hate destroy us. We will not be governed and closed by fear. We will forgive and try to understand.

    It is not an easy walk, nor is it a very popular one, and I fail at it a hundred times a day. But I believe in it so fiercely that I will simply keep trying. To love what I am inclined to hate, to forgive who I think deserves anger, to understand what I proceed to judge, to help when I want to retreat and shut down, (to attempt) to be a channel of peace – I think this is about as punk rock as it gets these days. Love above all else is tough, is gutsy, is a radical cause. Sign up.