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  • What Does Courage Look Like?

    Sometimes you fall flat on your face and discover that something is not at all what you thought it would be. Something you planned turned out to be greatly disappointing. And that’s OK.

    I am nine days into my travels here in Thailand, and I haven’t been this miserable in quite some time. Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with Thailand. I am very aware that the problem is in me. But, all the same, I feel unhappy here and desire greatly to go home.

    I’ve written before about how the murkiest of emotions that we have to wade through are fear and shame. Underneath frustration and anger and boredom lie these two great beasts, and they try to muck everything up with their refusal to soften. But eventually, they do soften, with enough awareness and tender compassion applied. That is my practice right now, because at every turn my mind is bullying me.

    Naturally, I have felt pretty stupid that I have not liked it here. I quit my teaching job and started planning a longer term trip through the Southeast Asian region, quite obviously not knowing what I was getting myself into. I prided myself on being someone who loves to do things alone: I have traveled alone in Europe, I love going to the movies by myself, I was single for over five years and rarely felt lonely. Traveling in a third world country, however, as a thirty year old woman, is not what I imagined it would be. Especially with a new boyfriend at home who I miss deeply. Especially as a sober woman who tends to be rather introverted and shy.

    My first instinct was to toughen up and wait it out. I didn’t love Bangkok… perhaps a change of scenery will lift my spirits. Not the case. I don’t enjoy Chiang Mai by myself either. I don’t like walking around in the terrible humidity getting eaten by mosquitoes. I don’t like sleeping on rock hard hostel beds and feeling sick to my stomach and always having a headache. I don’t like sitting down to most meals alone or eating from the 7/11 because for some reason the street food isn’t agreeing with me. (I do love Thai food back home.) I don’t think these feelings mean I am weak. My head tries to tell me that I am, because minds are often mean. I have already proven to myself over the past ten plus years of my life that I am tough. That I don’t run away from my problems. My late teens and twenties are filled with countless tales of beating the odds and overcoming adversity and picking myself up in the midst of great despair and anguish.

    Perhaps this would be joyful if I had a companion to share the experience with. A few beers in my belly to take the edge off. But no, here I am, stripped bare, face to face with loneliness and feeling out of my element. I don’t write this to complain. My heart swells with gratitude in spite of my current predicament, and I am well aware that this is what they call a “quality problem,” and that at every moment I have the freedom to make a change. That doesn’t, however, negate the mixed thoughts and emotions that are in me, the vacillation between feeling like it’s brave to admit defeat and head home and to stay because I should stop being a baby and shouldn’t quit so soon.

    I find that the latter voice is an old one, and that life is too short to stay miserable in order to prove to myself or anyone else that I am strong and not a quitter. But is that true courage? Staying stuck in something that clearly isn’t working, isn’t fun, isn’t what I thought it was going to be, simply to prove something that I already know is true? Is it courage to stay in something simply because I am afraid people will judge me for wanting out? Because it wasn’t what I had imagined? Even my father, who loves to pick himself up by his bootstraps, told me I proved long ago, at nineteen, that I was one of strongest people he ever knew. Thanks, dad. Noted.

    So, courage might actually be doing what we know is not the popular choice, what doesn’t appear brave. What the travel bloggers would strongly advise against. What your mom says you might regret later.

    Not to get totally cheesy on you, but I’m a huge fan of the musical Rent, and one of the great lines, “forget regret, or life is yours to miss,” rings true here. No day but today. Or, to get current, YOLO. I love myself today, (took years and years), my recovery, my friends, my heart and soul, my deeply blessed and happy life. And I don’t want to waste another second of it in a place I don’t enjoy. And I see how these little quotes could help with the argument of why I should stay, because, you know, I might regret it later, I might never have a chance to do this again, but you know what? I don’t subscribe to scarcity thinking anymore. I am not having fun, I don’t like it here, I would rather be home with the people I love, in a city I love, and go from there. It’s impossible to see the entire world in a lifetime anyway, so I rather see the parts that bring me joy and connection. If do regret leaving in the first few weeks later on in life, well, I will ask for help in dealing with those feelings. God is far bigger than the black and white world.

    So what does courage look like? I think it looks like telling the truth. Being willing to look like a total failure and walking through that. Caring what people might think (because I do) and listening to my heart anyway. A wise man once wrote, the truth will set you free. And the truth is that I want to go home. There’s no place like it.

  • Travel and Fear

    I leave in less than 48 hours for Bangkok, and I have been crying a lot. I’ve experienced physical pain, turmoil, and anxiety. Yes, part of it is because I have recently fallen in love and will be saying goodbye to him for at least a month and probably longer. But I believe the even bigger piece is because of the deep fear that lives within my mind (still, despite years of recovery) to face the great unknown.

    What a joy, what a mess, to face the unknown.

    If I had my bratty five year old way, I would not get on that plane. I would stay put right here in Los Angeles and spend as much time as possible with my boyfriend and maybe begin looking for a new job. That would be a lot easier. But of course, I would regret it, and of course, it is not what I really want, nor what I need. No, what I really want and need is to get on the plane and go on this trip and move through all of the ups and downs that will inevitably come, and why? Because I am here to grow. I am here to be challenged. I am here to do the things I think I cannot do. I am here to experience the whole spectrum of feeling. We are all here for that. To try, to seek, to dare greatly. To meet fear square in the face and see it for what it really is: a trick the mind plays that has no basis in reality, no basis in the present moment.

    I have learned that lesson time and time again throughout my life, that fear is unreal and always based on some presumed projection. I have aha! moments and grand epiphanies and startling jolts of clarity, but like all humans, these understandings are fleeting, and my mind defaults back to creating the same loop of fear and obsession, attempting to find control and safety. There’s a whole lot of science to support why our brains are wired this way; there was a time when it was necessary and life saving to be afraid and hyper-vigilant, and that stays stored at the primitive level of our minds. There is no escaping it indefinitely, especially if one chooses to live sober and awake. This is why we meditate or practice mindfulness: not to escape, but to wake up to this cycle of dysfunctional thinking and see it clearly for what it is: thinking. A whole lot of noise. It’s just what the mind does, and as Jack Kornfield often says, the mind has no pride and will think anything.

    What are my greatest fears going into this journey? Most of them come down to this strange, self-centered idea that the world is watching me and waiting for me to screw up. It’s a a bizarre perspective and one that is challenging to describe. It is the sense that I am not allowed to be myself, that I must not make mistakes, that there is far too much vulnerability (mind reads, danger) out there in every unknown person, place, and exchange. It is the fear of being seen, of feeling feelings, of losing control. Despite how we grumble at times about our monotonous work lives and the mundane routine of “mainstream” living, there is comfort and security in a (seemingly) predictable and controllable schedule. Travel, at least the fun kind, has a whole lot less of that. It’s about spontaneity and personal daily choices and doing exactly what I want to do. And that sort of freedom can be downright terrifying. A privilege, yes, a blessing, of course, but terrifying just the same.

    If you read travel blogs today, and there are around four hundred thousand on the internet so please do take look, you often hear of people having these same fears: doing it wrong and being a failure. Interesting how the perfectionist mindset can dog humans even in the most carefree and laid back of circumstances. What will people think? Will I be judged? Will I stand out? Will no one notice me? What if I go to the wrong place? Will I hate it? What if I want to come home? What if I never want to come home? What will people think? The reality is that the mind thinks this way because it has nothing else to latch onto. Venturing out into the unknown allows the mind to roam free in the madness of wonder, and some of us more than others tend to default on negative wonder. So my mind clings to all the things that could go wrong, rather than allowing the experience to unfold and be what it is. But I practice presence, I read my books, I connect back to a Source that allows me to live a bit more comfortably. And like most things, just writing this stuff down or saying it out loud takes some sting out of it. The traveling will be what it is, and there doesn’t have to be any attached story.

    You often hear meditation teachers speak about how our mind likes to take everything personally, usually because it takes a defensive, disconnected stance, whereas the heart is a bit more attuned to the truth that, for lack of a better term, we are all in this together. The mind makes up stories and attaches dualities and far fetched meaning to circumstances that may or may not hold any water. The heart, instead, feels its tenderness and connection to the world and rests there in loving spacious awareness. I am not the center of the universe, and I have no control over exactly what the future holds in these lands that are foreign to me. But whatever does happen, none of it is personal, and there is great comfort in that. When nothing is attacking you (and nothing really is) there really is nothing to fear.

    I knew I would be scared in the days leading up to this trip. I chose to go because I knew it would challenge me. I knew it would pull me out of my comfort zone and nudge me to confront my most stubborn parts. To get me out in the world (and how intimidating it can be to get out there!) I’m not going to “find myself” or reach Enlightenment. This isn’t an eat pray love tour. But I am going to practice being present and fearless in the face of everything my mind tells me is scary: to see and be seen. To simply leave the house. (Thanks Kindle and HBOgo. And sex.) Oh, I guess I will be eating and praying and loving, too, and certainly seeing. And if I get seen back, great. Maybe I’m a sight to see. Took me years of recovery to think I was worth anything. Might as well take that worth and see what it can do. I’ll let you know what it’s like. It’s probably a little scary. But underneath that, simply wonderful.

    Au revoir!

  • The Deepest Sobriety

    There are these moments that come every so often where I fall on my knees in a sort of tender, tearful reverence to the fact that I am sober and free from the hell of alcoholism. Sometimes it comes from reading a novel that recaptures haunting tales of destructive boozing and the interminable suffering that accompanies such compulsion. Or watching a film that might depict someone in the throes of addiction, and I shudder in relief, knowing I live clean now without the shredded memory of blackouts, the sleeping with strangers, the driving drunk, the opiate withdrawal. And sometimes it just comes, boom, out of nowhere, because my heart knows: goddamn, am I lucky.

    It changes everything to look at the world through this lens. It makes every moment good enough, because nothing is ever as bad as being in active alcoholism, once you discover what a demon it is. Alcoholism eventually ceases, completely, to be sexy, glamorous, exciting, and fun. It is nasty, punctuated by such a debilitating fear that the idea of ever returning is one that I prefer not to entertain. And so – reverence for recovery. Because no matter how bad things might seem, how stressful, confusing, painful, irritating, unfair – to have true and deep emotional, spiritual, and physical recovery from alcoholism is to live life with an undeniable undercurrent of joy and gratitude. There is a sort of comforting, sweet innocence to recovery, at least the sort that I subscribe to, where even piercing moments of fear and anxiety are smoothed out by the magic of a spiritual awakening. I cannot imagine living any other way.

    But I used to live another way, even when I was physically sober. I have lived sober and fallen on my knees in rage and hatred and bitter resentment. I have been sober and hated every minute of it.

    I was lucky enough to first enter the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous at the tender age of seventeen. I was lucky to have some time sober here and there in my late teens and early twenties, while subsequently suffering with codependency, every form of an eating disorder, cutting, love addiction, image obsession, consumerism, smoking, sleeping too much… and every other possible form of substitution for drinking and drug use, that by the time I reached the ripe old age of twenty five, I was well versed in the twelve steps and had taken a cake to celebrate two years of sobriety but secretly fantasized about hanging myself with a jump rope. It sat coiled in a ball in the den of my father’s house, and I knew exactly where I could string it and where I could hang. Or, if not that, I could swallow every single pill in the house and wash them down with Bombay gin, drift into nothingness. I could drive my car off a cliff. I could split my wrists open with a sharp knife. I had lots of ideas. Instead, I chose to party again and let active alcoholism take its course.

    Why was I still so miserable, despite being sober and involved in a twelve step program? Because I hadn’t changed, internally. You sometimes hear around the rooms that if you take the booze away from an alcoholic and they don’t fundamentally change their insides, they are even worse. We’ve all heard that drinking can be a form of self-medicating, and that is exactly what it is, if you are a real alcoholic. You are (trying to) keep asleep a beastly cloying terror and obsession. When you stop “treating” alcoholism, there you are, stripped bare, with all your rotten thoughts and feelings. And it takes profound courage and willingness to move through that muck and mire and make it to the other side. That is why so many of us alcoholics know what it feels like to get some time physically sober, struggle and feel cheated, and then relapse. We long for nothing more than the promised relief that we are told recovery brings, but we feel angry that it didn’t come to us. Why didn’t it come to us! Well, because it requires courage and willingness to not simply not drink, but to (at least attempt to) set down all the destructive things we do and allow the twelve steps to work. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it is very hard to stay sober or have any sort of quality long term sobriety if one is continuing to act out destructively in other areas.

    Many of us struggling with addiction want to kill ourselves, or if not that, at least blot out our rotten existence with substances until we die accidentally, because real life, awake and sober and present life, hurts too much. But it doesn’t have to. Why do so many people struggle with staying sober and having some semblance of emotional sobriety? Because, at least for a while, it can be brutal. Picture every bone in your body being broken, and they all have to be broken again in order to heal properly. It’s kind of like that. I also like the metaphor of laying a foundation to a building. In the beginning, it’s all dirt and splintered wood and hammer and nails and it’s hot or far too cold and you’re exhausted and it’s ugly, and you can’t quite get a grasp of what is being built, and you wonder, how the hell am I going to do this. But then, over time, there stands a beautiful building. With a strong and solid foundation. And it needs upkeep, to be sure, but it’s pretty sturdy because the time spent on building it from the ground up was authentic and with effort. So it’s kind of like that. It requires real work, internal work, “soul surgery,” as a friend of mine once called it, and a lot of us don’t want to do that. Alcoholics like instant gratification – we don’t want to wait. But if you avoid it or move around it, eventually, your building will crumble.

    Why is that? Why do we need such an overhaul? Why isn’t physical sobriety enough? Whether you believe alcoholism to be an illness or not, there is no denying that addicts tend to have a peculiar mind that often defaults on obsession, anxiety, fear, and guilt. There is often selfishness and shades of narcissism, or else there might be extreme codependency, self-doubt, and people-pleasing. There is more often than not low self-esteem, self-hatred, and fierce resentment. Sometimes we are diagnosed with depression or an anxiety disorder, and while that most certainly is valid, many find in the rooms of recovery that, after a while, the serious depression we were diagnosed with softens and lifts, turning out to be just another face of our alcoholism. What the western world calls depression and anxiety, the east may refer to as a form of spiritual sickness or the “monkey mind,” the untrained brain disconnected from the soul, that cannot stop thinking and seems only to stir up trouble. The founders of AA understood this, recognizing that alcoholism was not only a physical and mental problem, but a spiritual one as well. We are physically addicted, we are mentally obsessed, and we are spiritually void. That doesn’t mean you have to “find God” to get better (although many of us do) but it does mean that there is something deep inside of us, deeper than our brain and body that needs to be addressed and healed.

    We live in an interesting time in society. Religions clash violently and people scream that atheism is the answer. Meanwhile in the west, millions flock to meditation and yoga and all forms of “New Age” spirituality. Some call it God, others Higher Power, still others, “just a feeling.” People look to the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., Eckhart Tolle, or Mother Theresa, and some swear by the heartfelt teachings of Brene Brown and Jack Kornfield. Whether you consider yourself religious or not is beside the point, and whether you are alcoholic or not doesn’t really matter – people are spiritually thirsty. People are seeking. People see the benefit of living with spiritual principles like surrender, forgiveness, gratitude, acceptance, presence, and service to others. And these are the very principles that save the lives of millions of alcoholics all over the world. The twelve steps are a path that lead to a spiritual awakening, or if you prefer, a psychic change, where something shifts inside of you and you are no longer so deeply governed by fear, self-hatred, and resentment. We don’t change overnight, but I am living proof, and I have witnessed it in countless others, that if we do the work, we will change and we will come to know what it means to live peacefully in our skin without a need to drink or take drugs (or self-destruct in any form.) I like to think of it in spiritual terms, but I have friends who prefer to think of the work as having nothing to do with a God or Higher Power but retraining the mind and rewiring those neural pathways. Fair enough – they’re still changing through the work.

    Some of us still take prescribed medications for depression and anxiety, but many of us eventually find that we don’t need them after all. Some of us still do psychotherapy, but there is often an end game in sight because we are actually getting better. Some of us simply stick to AA while others of us need support for sex and love addiction, codependency, financial problems, chain smoking, or continuous issues with food. I have found that there is a delicate balance between removing those behaviors and allowing the twelve steps to work, because it is not so cut and dry don’t take a drink no matter what. We have to eat, we want to have sex and relationships, money is a thing, sometimes we slip and smoke a cigarette, emotions can get intense…

    What I learned through getting some recovery around these areas was that the solution always always always comes through awareness, love, and faith. I no longer subscribe to the old idea that we are sick forever and will always have monkeys on our backs (or in our minds.) I believe our natural state is joyful, even for alcoholics. Will I always be an addict? Yes. Can I safely take a drink or a drug? No. Would it be a good idea to make myself throw up when I am a little too full? Of course not. But I try to not be so hard on myself about it all and make every little thing in my life into a syndrome that needs to be fixed by some external source. I have learned what real solutions are, and they are never to be tough and hard and rigid. It might be somewhat of a radical idea in our fast-paced, hard-working, perfectionist society, but today I subscribe to loving myself unconditionally. It might be the most spiritual principle of all – radical acceptance and compassion. Sometimes the Buddhists call it lovingkindness. Beating ourselves up is never the solution, even when we make big mistakes. Like how I finally came to understand that hating my body was an insane solution to trying to feel sexy and beautiful. Starving myself or eating until sickness was not an act of self-love and care, nor was drinking twenty drinks and taking enough Vicodin to kill a horse. Tearing myself apart for making mistakes at work or saying the wrong thing to a friend did not make anything better – it only instilled fear and shame. Instead, I have learned the value in giving myself and others a much needed break, while also maintaining responsibility for my life and my behavior and being accountable for my actions.

    Time and time again I have witnessed that whenever I try to solve a problem through thinking, struggling, forcing, and fighting, it all gets worse. I grow disconnected and start blaming everyone and everything for my problems. I drift into self-pity and fear and resentment. I get aches and pains. I want to act out. When I let go and surrender and let things unfold naturally, without clinging, they eventually resolve, and I feel lighter and happier. I trust. I get into the present. What else can we do? Think we actually have total control over how the world functions and how our lives will unfold? Oh please. Spiritual principles, twelve steps, mindfulness – whatever you want to call it, this stuff bloody works, whether you’re trying to stay sober from booze or just hoping to have a little more peace in your life.

    And so I fall on my knees in reverence, because today I am sober, today I’m not starving myself or bingeing and throwing up, or cutting into my wrists with a rusty razor, or sleeping with dozens of men or smoking two packs a day. (But I have, and if you are right now, don’t beat yourself up, sweet loves.) I don’t have millions of dollars or a “perfect” body or flawless skin or the best wardrobe or whatever it is we are taught to care about in this land. But I feel connected and full of joy and gratitude, and it runs deep. And it is all I ever really wanted.

  • In Google We Trust

    Just Google it. We all do it. And boy does it deliver. But I can get out of hand with it. You know, search for the meaning of life and the holy grail and the proof that I am worthy with a few clicks of the keyboard. It’s possible that due to growing up in the trenches of insecurity and wearing wounds of codependency shrapnel, I am still looking to be told who I am. I am looking for something to make my decisions for me, because something must know better and I know nothing. Maybe I am turning to Google to answer all of my questions because I still have battle scars from growing up in a family affected by alcoholism and need a sense of ground beneath my feet vis-a-vis a blog post from 2010. Or perhaps we all do this, because we are all looking for answers, and in this modern world of Instant Gratification (IG) we can actually get some answers fast rather than pausing and getting quiet and listening to our insides or (gasp!) settling into the vast and formidable unknown. Rather than wait for a relationship to unfold and simply, imperfectly be, I want to know if it’s right. Rather than trust the signals of my body, I want the internet to tell me that gluten is poisoning my stomach and mind. Yes, I can search and search to be told some sort of truth about romance, health, love, sex, family, recovery, society, etc. – I’ve just grown wary that I actually want them, and that they are ever complete truth. The internet is full of opinions (including this one), and they may all bear glimmers of truth and fact and reality here and there, but I keep coming back to letting go and letting life unfold and living in the not-knowing far better. Not easier. But better.

    Here are just some of the questions I have Googled over the past few years, even dating back to pre-Google (in high school when I used to search for diet plans and the correct amount of calories to eat and still lose weight.)

    1. Why do I prefer to be alone?
    2. How likely is it that I am pregnant from using the pullout/rhythm method?
    3. How long will it take to get over my ex who I dated for 14 months?
    4. What foods to avoid if I have acne
    5. Teaching is sucking the life out of me what should I do
    6. Will my life change when I turn 30?
    7. Cambodia or Vietnam on my travels?
    8. Am I a bad person for sometimes hating my parents?
    9. Should I keep dating this guy even though there is no spark?
    10. Should I keep dating this guy even though there are red flags?
    11. I feel guilty for being white
    12. I work with a bunch of narcissists
    13. I work with a bunch of codependents
    14. I feel jealous of my beautiful coworker
    15. I hate work and want to die and will never be happy
    16. Being a vegan is stupid?
    17. I feel like privileged people have made dieting their Higher Power
    18. How come he never asks me any questions about my life?
    19. Am I a bad person for looking at porn?
    20. Am I a bad person for not being offended by offensive comedians?

    You get the idea. Granted, none of these questions are wrong or insane or even all that unique – we all have these questions and feelings in one form or another and at various points in our lives… but what did people do before there was Google? You couldn’t look such specifics up in the Encyclopedia. Perhaps they relied on faith or a parent or a doctor or some sort of mentor, or perhaps they didn’t think so much because they knew there was no bullet proof response that would offer solace or relief. Perhaps the days before IG allowed people the forced luxury to be more comfortable in the murky gray. They just had to be. (This is why mindfulness meditation classes have become so popular – we need to literally be taught how to accept what is and what is right now, in a sense, to not know what is coming.) Today, I have to train myself to not immediately race to Google or at the very least a friend who might be giving me all kinds of shitty advice. Not that any of this is inherently bad, and it certainly isn’t bad to seek out a confidant to possibly shed some light on our burning questions, but often these confidants are just as lost and muddled (and probably got their advice from Google.) I know that I can sometimes be too quick to believe that others know better than I or hold the answers I so desperately seek.

    Or maybe that is it. Some of us are seekers and desire to have answers, to have clarity, the conviction that we are okay, doing the right thing, on the healthiest path. And others are finders and have an easier time letting answers come naturally, if at all. They think less about what it all means and go about their business. (How?!) I like being a seeker, and I have always been after the deeper meaning, the subtext, the guy behind the guy, but often the lesson for me is wait. Pause. Stand still. Listen. And the answers come slowly. Through time and experience. If they are even answers at all. A huge part of my experience of getting more comfortable at life was letting go of seeing the world as a great game of dualities and I had to stay on the right side. As Shakespeare wrote, “nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Googling is fine, and it has really helped me plan lessons as a teacher and find the closest moderately priced restaurant, and in all seriousness, it has directed me toward many books, articles, and blogs that have offered insight and healing, but it cannot stand as the be all, end all answerer of my questions. And I know I am not the only one Googling away with a bunch of questions that I want answers to now … how? I just Googled it, and it told me.

  • Lovers

    I come to see, in the gasp between
    our love making, when there’s nothing
    there, when the emptiness
    is so full I forget to like my pain –
    that mean fathers produce
    truth tellers, lovers who gaze lost, seeking, us
    deep in the earth, with eyes hopeful
    like a child’s eyes, wet and glistening, arriving –
    we look at our lives to find the meanness
    but stumble upon what is actually there,
    what is there? A slippery ease, a claiming,
    some raw and ragged glory of the overcome,
    of coming, going,
    of getting and going home.

  • Layers

    the anger is thick, deep,
    it is like a crust, molded
    and beginning to stink,
    for so long it has festered,
    I’ve tended to it like a garden,
    conjuring thorns, weeds,
    a swarm of insects, I have seemed
    to like it–
    but it’s the emergence
    of grief that breaks through,
    the tenderness that cuts
    it, softens it to crumbs,
    wipes it clean, says, you don’t want this.
    I’m not angry at my father anymore –
    What he did is not mine.
    I miss him, actually, and
    I think I just might love him,
    actually, too much,
    so terribly, that
    it hurts so terribly,
    that I think I might weep for so long,
    that nothing will be left but the beginning.

  • If These Comments Could Talk

    Each trimester when grades are due, teachers across the country (or at least across the westside of Los Angeles) wither under the writing of ten to twelve sentence paragraphs that must capture the academic achievement, behavior, effort, growth, and ‘areas for future improvement’ of their students. Some of us write only fifty, some a grueling hundred, and others, depending on their subject and grade levels, ponder suicide in the wake of two to three hundred.

    But the worst thing about writing comments is not the mind-numbing mundanity of it or how much of our time it consumes that might be spent watching Game of Thrones or taking a much needed walk around the block. No. The worst part about writing comments is that we are inhibited from being honest and must wade in the tepid pool of euphemisms and indetermination.

    Oh, imagine the world if we could say how we really feel and share the truth! Imagine if we didn’t feel so censored! If what we wrote wasn’t dissected and scrutinized and labeled as inappropriate or disrespectful! If we couldn’t so easily offend and people didn’t take everything so damn seriously! Alright, I get it. We’re not talking articles from The Onion here, we’re talking about education. We’re dealing with kids and their ever-sensitive over the top helicopter parents’ feelings. Job requirement. Very well.

    But oh. If in some alternate universe, parents were more concerned with the First Amendment and freedom of expression than fearing the truth about their children, our ten to twelve sentence paragraphs may look something like this:

    Joe John
    Joe John sneezes too much. Like at least fifteen times in a single class. It’s highly distracting, and I think it makes him dizzy. Just the other day, during the highly anticipated climax of our novel, he lets loose a series of three deafening sneezes. You ought to think about maybe some Claritin? Checking for unknown allergies? He definitely cannot think abstractly yet. I told him once to spread his wings and fly and he looked at me real funny and said, “but I’m not a bird.” I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a developmental thing. Hopefully he’ll get there. On a lighter note, his bodily functions are not entirely unwelcome. Why, just the other day he farted during an intense discussion, and that really lightened the mood. We are all feeling the stress of this time of year, and Joe John helped us gain some perspective.

    Tina TeeHee
    Your daughter is gorgeous. Clearly you two have bred a goddess into the world. And I think we can all agree her best attribute is her hair. But, see, she plays with it all through class. Braids, buns, twirls. It distracts her from learning. Then again, I’d play with my hair all the live long day, too, if it was that shiny and fluffy and wild. She also dresses a little bit slutty, and it distracts all the boys in class. How can they focus when she’s sitting there looking like a future model? Maybe invest in some long-sleeved shirts and baggy jeans? Just some ideas. I also recommend teaching her how to read, because at this level, they are already supposed to know, and I can’t differentiate that widely.

    Dylan Douchepants
    Your child is a bad person. He will likely roofie girls in college and make millions poisoning an innocent town’s water supply.

    Peter Pothead
    Peter is very funny and knows a lot of great movie quotes. He comes in at recess and we rap about old SNL episodes and Monty Python. Great job raising him. He will definitely do drugs in high school, but only pot and alcohol. I think he just wants to have a good time, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that. And the ladies love him. He won’t have any trouble there! He’s a pretty decent writer, too, although he clearly doesn’t understand structure, or else he would bother to put it in at least one of his essays. But it’s no big deal; unless he wants to be an English major in college, essays are pretty pointless. And he probably won’t go to college.

    Carrie CrayCray
    Your daughter needs to chill the fuck out. She is a major stress case, and it is making the rest of us very anxious. I understand that she is brilliant and will attend Harvard and cure cancer one day, but in the meantime, we are trying to get through a sixth grade English class, and she is really sucking the fun out of the room with her constant questions and reminding me to assign homework.

    Franny Cool-Hip
    I freaking love and adore your child. She is ridiculously precious, funny, and interesting. Seriously, I would like to adopt her. She’s sort of my best friend. Don’t be jealous! Obviously, I can’t compete with you. But we really connect. It does make it a little hard to be her teacher, because how do you tell a best friend to be quiet and get back to work without giggling just a little bit? But I’m trying. And she’s doing fine. B+ kind of kid, and that’s a good kid to be. Are you aware, by the way, that she knows all the lines to Princess Bride and Stand By Me? I’m telling you, you’re raising a real winner. We should do dinner sometime. Abbot Kinney? I am also free for babysitting if you two are looking to rekindle the old flame.

    Tamara Two-Face
    Sometimes Tamara is really sweet and cool, and then all of a sudden she is aloof and distant. Is she a Gemini, Aquarius, or Libra? Air signs are notorious for having this hot and cold demeanor. Regardless, even if the stars are not aligned in her favor, she can still make efforts to not be so moody, because it really hurts my feelings. I am a sensitive Cancer, and we can not handle such mutability.

    Adam ADD
    I am coming quite close to acquiring methamphetamine from the drug dealer who lives next door and administering it to your child if you don’t do something about his very robust, highly distracting ADD. You are aware that his eyes are practically rolling in the back of his head and that his hair stands on end when he speaks, are you not? That his arms break off from his body when he raises his hand in discussion, yes? This is NOT normal. We’re not talking a little disorganization here and there or forgetting to bring his books and pencil pouch to class. We’re talking major serious brain-must-be-on-fire ADD. Run for the hills ADD. The stuff of tragic memoirs a la Augusten Burroughs ADD. Please for the love of god and for this entire school’s peace of mind, get him tested, get him help, and stop trying to pretend that he is simply “gifted and quirky.” He is CRAY.

    Jakey Baby
    Alright, folks, it’s time to do three things for little Jakey. Number one, he needs his big boy haircut. It will change everything. Number two, please get him some age appropriate clothes. He is going to be thirteen soon, and wearing only shirts with Spiderman on them and shoes that fasten with Vel-cro is just not ok. Do you want him to be a 40 year old virgin? And number three, stop emailing me for him. Just stop. Completely. Surrender and let go. See what happens. Go explore nature. Maybe take up knitting, like you always wanted to. But stop sending me emails about his performance in my class. He’s doing fine – you are the problem.

     

  • Eating Food Like a Person

    I can’t tell you how exhilarating it is to eat food, all food, however much or little I need, and get the fuck on with my life. Sounds simple, but it has been one of the most difficult processes I have ever gone through. It has taken years to undo the insane thinking that comes with restriction and dieting and starvation and bingeing and body obsession. Food is not my higher power anymore, and it is not my enemy. It is not my best friend or lover or challenger trying to ruin my life. It’s just food. Delicious, perfunctory, lovely, healthy, junky, boring food.

    But this took a while.

    It has been a giant jagged line, up and down across the spreadsheet of learning how to be nice to myself, unconditionally, trusting my body, and facing immense fears about what and when and how and why to eat.

    How many messages are we sent about food and body each day? Whether it’s the actress being interviewed about her “regime” or the coworker commenting on needing to lose ten pounds, or the friend talking about her latest cleanse, or the blog touting the miracles of going gluten and dairy free, we are bombarded, literally attacked, with these frustrating and sneaky messages on a far too regular basis. And the messages often boil down to this tired old ditty: you are not good enough as you are, so fix your body! I try not to listen anymore. I’ll think about Game of Thrones or visiting Laos instead. I hear it as gibberish, like the parents from Charlie Brown. Waa-waa-waa. Just noise in the background. I hear it, but I don’t let it pierce me and hijack my life. As Red said from a special little film, “get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’. That’s goddamn right.” Obsession with food and body is no way to live. And it’s boring.

    But finding recovery can take a while.

    After years of vain attempts to try and love myself by being perfect and thin, I decided I wanted to find God/Authentic Self/HigherPower the real way: accepting my flawed being right now, completely, and stopping the game of fixing. I know now, deep in my guts that self-love and connection and spirituality have nothing to do with dieting and hitting the gym and how fit and toned I can get my body. I bought into this for nearly fifteen years, since the day my teenaged self realized she could make herself smaller if she counted every calorie and ran on the treadmill. Which led to bingeing, over-exercising, bulimia, compulsive overeating, anorexia, orthorexia, raw food/vegan diets, cleanses – MISERY. Thank goodness this stopped working for me. Setting aside this game of trying to feel good enough through the outside opened up the doors of authentic recovery.

    The first to clean up was the extremes of anorexia and bulimia. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. In my experience, the insidiousness of dieting and restriction and calorie counting is far harder to break than bingeing and purging or not eating at all. You are immersed in the gray area, no longer clutching the shores of black and white. You have to re-learn everything. You have to learn how to eat food like a sane person.

    About a year ago I started to (tried to as often as I could) eat whatever I wanted. I had years of dieting rules imbedded in my head: bad foods vs. good foods and low-carb and no red meat from my teenage years, not to mention the newer “trendier” diet rules of avoiding gluten and sugar and dairy and filling 80% of my plate with lettuce. All of this noise made the act of eating a terrifying and joyless experience. But I got so burnt out/done/fedupwith all this dieting and restriction, that I was like, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE AT ALL EVEN IF I GET FAT BECAUSE NOTHING IS MORE MISERABLE THAN THIS, and I let myself gain weight through a diet of waffles and Nutella and sugary soda and cheeseburgers and whatever the fuck else I wanted to eat that I had not allowed myself to have for years. And man, did it feel good. Also terrifying, because my clothes got tight. My skin broke out. But I felt so fed. I felt happy. I slept like a baby. My period became more regular. I knew my metabolism was repairing. I trusted those who came before me who had gone through the same “Diet Recovery.” I bought new clothes, as needed. I cried and wrote in my journal. I freaked out. I felt grateful. No one loved me less. No one called me names. My world opened up and became so much more beautiful, and, it sounds a little cheesy and cliche, but I rediscovered all the things I loved and cared about that I had set aside in the name of Holy Food and Body.

    The initial weight gain only lasted a few months, and then my body seemed to settle at a place it always goes to when I don’t diet or compulsively overeat. A healthy place. I assume it is the place it is supposed to be, even if it doesn’t conform to society’s standards of thin and beautiful. (When I conformed to those standards at a svelte size 2/4, I had no period, no libido, and lived in a paralyzing fear of eating anything besides vegetables. Sexy.)

    About seven months in, I had a little “slip” and started eating way too many salads. Restricting sugar and carbs. Wanting to lose weight. Comparing myself to other women and paying far too close attention to my body. That lasted about a month, until my body did itself a favor and screamed at me, “this doesn’t feel good! Feed me all the foods!” So I listened. And I did. And I felt much, much better. My weight also seemed to stay more or less the same. (I don’t weigh myself ever, but I can tell by the fit of clothes.)

    I attribute much of this behavior now to stress and trying to find control when I feel overwhelmed. It’s an old broken tool that I can forget is broken. If often alerts me to needing to address something far deeper. At its core, much of this dieting madness has very little to do with food and body. How fun can food really be? How evil? How joyful can a thin body really make you? A large factor is a sense of control and “self-improvement.” If you are a chronic dieter/body obsessor/eating disorder-er, you likely learned at some point that self-love and worth will come through what you look like. And so when we don’t feel great on the inside or we doubt ourselves or feel less than, for whatever the reason, often the first thing our head tells us is that we are fat and ugly and need to do something about it, damn it! When we feel out of control, taking the reins of our food seems like an easy solution. It’s a damn good distraction, too. But it leads to nothing. Call me a Buddhist, but everything is only available right now, in this moment. Self-love and body celebration must happen now in order to have it at all. And then it grows. But we’re not taught that. Pick up any women’s magazine (but don’t!) and on the cover it will say something like,

    “six weeks to your perfect bod!”

    “Toned abs in just 21 days!”

    “Detoxify and cleanse in two months!”

    From this outlook, everything waits for you in the future. It never arrives. Let’s say you work real hard and detoxify and cleanse for two months and get real thin and clear and small. Well, what then? Have you suddenly arrived at something grand and transcendent two months later? Have you made it? Are you perfect now? Found abounding self-love? Likely not. Likely you have all the same thoughts and fears and issues you’ve been avoiding by making obsessive grocery lists and chopping vegetables for juicing. Now you’re just in a smaller (and colder) body that is screaming for bread and cheese and a piece of chocolate. Control, in general, is so common for all human beings, because it attempts to dismantle the sacred and undeniable truth: that we aren’t in charge of very much at all, and that we’re going to die one day. No way around that. And for whatever reason, food (and maybe money/consuming) has become the control du jour for our culture. Focusing on the outside leaves little time to tend to the inner world and realm of the spirit, which is for many, a more challenging and frightening (yet sublimely enriching) place.

    I read an article recently about how the uprising of so many fad diets in the name of “health” is damaging not only the bodies but the psyche of Americans and is so clearly a substitute for the spiritual connection we crave. Some may have Celiac Disease and benefit from a gluten-free diet or feel better when they don’t drink milk, but most of us are putting far too much stock and thought and energy into our lunches in a way that is completely unnecessary and resembles a sort of insanity. (I’m not dissing – I’ve done it, too, in a very hardcore manner.) No offense to the pioneers of health and clean eating who have shed light on the shady practices of the FDA and the dangers of processed food, but to over-obsess and worry and control so desperately every morsel we put into our mouths doesn’t help. Sure, I love to eat healthy organic vegetables and fruits. I know it is good for me. I also love to eat cookies and gluten-rich pizza with non organic cheese. I know that is good for me, too. There is nothing that I won’t eat today. And no food I think of as evil. As of now, I’m not stocking the house full of Cheetos and frozen corn dogs, because that doesn’t sound very appetizing, but if it ever does, I’ll eat it!

    What I’m saying is, I listen to my body today. It goes through waves of cravings and needs, and if I pay close attention, I can give it what it wants and my weight stays stable. I eat when I’m hungry. I eat more when I walk more. When I’m close to my period. When I have to wake up earlier. I eat less during the summer, when I have less work to do. Sometimes I crave spinach and sometimes gooey cheese or tamales. I don’t always eat intuitively, either, because it’s not such a big deal. Sometimes I overeat. Okay, not the greatest feeling, but I can move on. I can love myself through it. Sometimes I still get scared to eat because I have this residue of thinking that says, “but if you don’t eat, you’ll lose some weight,” but I try to ignore it and feed my body what it needs. And love myself through it.

    Do I love my body today? Yes! And sometimes no. I love that I am strong and healthy with pretty hazel eyes and nice boobs. A nice head of hair. Sometimes I dislike my arms and broad shoulders and freckly skin. Or that I’m not super tall. (Because that would make everything better!) I’m not perfect. I have those parts of me I’m not wild about. Everyone does. But I don’t beat myself to a bloody pulp the way I used to, and I recognize that I am far more than just my appearance, anyway. I accept all of myself, including my darker thoughts. I also admit I don’t always see my body clearly. The perception of my own appearance can shift all the time, sometimes within an hour. So more than loving my body, I love my Self, unconditionally, the light and the dark. I love who I am, in my spirit. And I LOVE that I eat very much like a regular person. It is deeply liberating to do something like eat pizza or chocolate chip cookies and enjoy them and not feel that sinking terror that leads to a binge or a diet. To love and enjoy food for the delicious and nourishing magic that it is. To eat and then move on and get back to living. It sounds so simple, but if you’ve ever had experience not eating like a sane person, you know how big this is. It’s huge. Immense. Celebratory! And very sexy.

  • Open Mind/Heart

    People would probably describe being “open-minded” as having the ability to accept many walks of life, judging less and loving more, being willing to have new experiences, listening. All of that is true. But there is an even deeper meaning to a truly open mind that in turn lends itself to being able to accept and love and try new things. And that is the discovery that the mind is actually quite limited. That it wants to cling to beliefs and ideas as a way to feel safe. That it thinks in loops, that it has tunnel vision and myopia, that it is fear-based. The mind is powerful, but it is also destructive. It is actually the heart that is more powerful. And the quieter and clearer I can make my mind, the more its perception is rooted in truth and presence, the more open my heart becomes.

    I have witnessed what the heart can do when being led by the untrained and frightened mind. It gets tough and closed. It wards people off and judges. At its darkest, it hates and wants to hurt. It can grow self-destructive and harmful toward others. From this place stems all sorts of illnesses and addictions and forms of suffering. A path of recovery has led me to mindfulness and meditation, prayer, visualizations, and all sorts of other woo-woo stuff that just really gets me going and connects me to a Source that makes life rich and meaningful, and it has helped me continuously soften and open my heart.

    If I really pay attention today, I can feel my heart soften or harden with each circumstance, with each friend or student or colleague or stranger, and I see that I have a choice in how I respond to the world. It doesn’t mean I have to like everyone or everything (and I don’t) but it does mean that I can breathe into that heart space and look at what makes me not like whatever it is or not want to open up. It’s usually fear or a lack of compassion or self-preservation. All of which are fine in their right. Certain people and situations can be unhealthy at times, and sometimes we need very clear boundaries and detachment, but a present mind will also be willing to face new experiences in each moment. For years I was afraid to feel my own feelings and let people in. I was defensive and judgmental and very afraid. My mind ran the show, and so my heart was blocked and encased in what felt like ice or tar or hardened crust. In early recovery, it was hard at first to even cry. All I felt was rage. But as the process did its thing, I started to feel the ice melt, the tar dissolve, the crust clean away. And then I felt my open heart.

    I am learning the difference between shutting down and detaching with love. A good friend of mine has started to do something that, let’s just say I am not wild about and of which I have plenty of opinions. In some ways I may even be right. But so what. She’s not me, I’m not her, and it does no good to harden myself to her completely. It was fascinating to watch the anger in me come up and the desire to lash out and judge and tell her all sorts of things I was feeling and thinking in a not so nice way; but the truth is, what she is going through is really none of my business, and my hardened heart comes from my own circumstances and feelings that need to get sorted out in me. Becoming nasty to her solves nothing and only cuts off connection. It is interesting, too, to see how when I deal with my own feelings, I no longer feel such a strong tug to judge her and crucify her for having an experience that I disagree with. I can let it go and meet her where it feels safe.

    I was with friends and colleagues last night, and one of the girls was being particularly drunk and negative. Everything out of her mouth was rude and disrespectful and rather obnoxious. But I have learned, instead of judging her as this or that, I can look deeper and notice that she is probably suffering in some way. It doesn’t mean I have to put up with it and stick around, but by acknowledging her humanness, her suffering, the “knife in her heart,” as Thich Nat Han calls it, I can get some space from feeling offended and instead turn to compassion. In practice. Always in imperfect practice.

    Having this sort of open mind and heart helps me not take everything so personally. One of my biggest character defects is internalizing other people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and thinking that it is a reflection of something the matter with me. It can become a maddening and highly destructive pattern. Practicing mindfulness and compassion for others, getting that perception of mine aligned with the truth helps to have detachment and space and understand that everyone is dealing with their own humanness.

    I think the more we seek to understand others, those who walk similar paths and those who live quite differently, the more open we become inside and the more we can love ourselves in the midst of all our imperfectness. And the great news is that no matter how long we have been shut down or closed, we can always open again. Always.

  • Introversion: A Love Story

    I know what you’re thinking. Introverts are people who are incredibly shy and taciturn. They wear black lipstick. They never ever have fun at parties. They rarely assert themselves, and they have like, one friend.

    This is all stereotypical nonsense, of course. Some of it may be true for some introverts – I have certainly been shy and have left parties in a relieved huff (and have worn black lipstick for Halloween) but there is actually a whole spectrum of extraversion and introversion, and while we are usually much more of one than the other, we have a little bit of both. It’s not so black and white, and yet it is absolutely real.

    I discovered in the past few years of my life that I am remarkably introverted (INFJ), and in discovering that, I learned what it actually means and how to stop fighting or feeling guilty over my natural desires and behaviors. This discovery has dramatically changed my daily life, my level of self-care, and my overall well-being. It has also validated what I thought for so long was weird or anti-social (having fewer friends, never for one second considering joining a sorority and baffled at how girls do that, loving music but struggling at festivals, strongly disliking cocktail parties.)

    As a child, I was sometimes shy. There are photos of me clinging to my mom like a baby, long after I was a baby. I can remember feeling very nervous around new people and highly uncomfortable being the center of attention. But at school I was often gregarious and bossy and had a host of friends. I was always told on report cards that I was too talkative but a natural leader. I was relatively popular and social, and my family was certainly popular and social. My mom is about as extraverted as a human can be, so we were always at the community park or playing with our neighbors or doing some kind of social event. And yet, when I wasn’t having playdates and sleepovers and doing the many activities kids seem to always be doing, I loved playing alone in my room. I had detailed scenarios that I acted out with my dolls and Barbies, I made mixed tapes and pretended I was choreographing elaborate dance numbers like my teachers did, I organized my closets and wrote in a journal and read a lot of books. I pretended I was other people and talked to myself.

    As much as I loved my friends, I know I really enjoyed that time alone. And it never crossed my mind that I felt lonely. I wasn’t. There was no desire to be with other people – I felt highly content. And even in high school, when I felt that urgency to attend parties and be social and avoid FOMO, I still often preferred to be alone and felt very comforted by music, journaling, and reading. Mostly, I went to parties because I was an alcoholic and I wanted to get high, not because I felt this need to socialize with a bunch of acquaintances.

    I was also (and still am) a Highly-Sensitive Person (HSP, a real thing!) and was very drained by a lot of external stimulus. I disliked really loud noises, bright lights, and strong smells. I hated fireworks when I was a child and when my dad would blast the radio. I didn’t know this at the time, and I often had to hear from my family that I was “too sensitive” and “overly sensitive,” but I can see now that my nervous system was just incredibly uncomfortable with constant input. We tend to not know ourselves as children, but I am sure if I had or if I had parents who were more like me, I probably wouldn’t have felt so high-maintenance. Caroline Knapp, an introvert, said in her memoir about her alcoholism, that drinking was like “pulling down the drapes,” and I think a lot of my substance abuse was about finally getting to do that: shutting up the world and getting quiet in my head. Going within.

    I don’t think I heard the words intro and extraversion until my twenties, and again, even then, I thought it plainly meant shy vs. outgoing. I have learned that it actually means, in a nutshell, how a person gets energized and recharged, and that introverts are rather drained by social interaction and external stimulus and need a lot of alone time in order to feel healthy and sane. Understanding that changed everything for me. I no longer felt so “weird” for not wanting to attend social events at work, for not wanting to exercise with friends or go to those loud gym classes, for keeping the fluorescent lights off in my classroom, for feeling absolutely depleted at the end of the teaching day, for having to leave meetings if someone was wearing terrible perfume. It finally made sense why the more people were around me or the closer they were to me, the tighter my chest seemed to get and the more invaded I felt.

    When I moved and got my own apartment three years ago, it became my little haven of recharge. After a long week of teaching, my weekends are spent mostly by myself, reading, taking long walks, writing, and listening to music. On the occasion that I do attend a social event, I usually have fun, but I still crave that alone time, especially knowing I am headed back into a week of forced extraversion with my students and colleagues. Coming to terms with this has changed my behavior at work. If I didn’t take walks and wear headphones and avoid small talk in the lunch room, there is no way I would stay sane. Even still, teaching is incredibly draining for this introverted empath. I have to take such good care of myself, because I am constantly absorbing other people’s feelings (especially intense twelve year old feelings.)

    Don’t get me wrong, though – I can be quite social and outgoing, just like I was in grade school, and I deeply love my close friends. INFJ’s can actually appear extraverted from the outside, because we like talking and enjoy engaging with like-minded people. We can be rather confident, quick-witted, and nurturing. We are perceptive and articulate and make great listeners. There are times when I socialize with people I really dig and can get super energized from it. It’s not unusual for me to stay up till 3am talking about life with one of my nearest and dearest. Even bigger social events can be exciting and energizing from time to time. (Especially if dancing is involved.) This is worth noting. Since my default “desire” is to be alone, it is important that I take risks and put myself out there, and it is important that I stay connected to my close and intimate friends and occasionally say yes to the social event. Otherwise I would never leave my apartment! And you know, no man is an island. I don’t want to be the rock in the Simon and Garfunkel song. I like connecting with others. We are meant to connect. But I also know myself today, and I can tell when I absolutely need nothing more than peace and quiet and solitude.

    I fell in love with my introversion and really celebrate it today, but it took a lot of time and recovery. It took healing from years of self-hatred and addiction to like my own company and to learn how to properly take care of myself. The root of most addiction stems from very sick thinking and spiritual emptiness, so even when we stop abusing the substances, we are left with a mind that screams all sorts of insanity about perfectionism and self-hatred and judgement and “not good enoughness.” Until I learned to quiet that thinking and fill up my soul, being alone was not very fun. It was rather torturous, and books and music weren’t enough to distract. I needed to smoke and binge and starve and shop online and watch television until my eyes were blurry. I also beat myself up for not being more extraverted, because I thought it meant that I was unpopular, lame, and boring. Just like introversion can appear rather counterculture, the path of recovery is certainly the road less traveled, and we can bump up against plenty of self-doubt and feeling “weird” along the way. It’s a foreign land with a foreign language, and many people don’t understand. People may think I am less friendly at work when I don’t want to chitchat during lunch, and when you’re a codependent you are inclined to take care of other people’s feelings before your own, so being that “unfriendly” girl is actually immense recovery. (Besides, they’re probably not thinking anything about it, and it’s none of my business anyway.)

    So much of coming home to ourselves and knowing how to take care of ourselves comes from understanding ourselves. Though we all possess essentially the same human spirit and potential for crazy thinking as well as profound connection and love, everyone has different avenues of coming home and various ways of feeling comfortable in the world. I had to comes to terms with, accept, and finally embrace the truth that I am highly-sensitive (and there ain’t nothing wrong with that), introverted, creative, a lover of the Big Picture and not small details, a true blue alcoholic and addict, a codependent, a survivor of trauma and childhood abuse/neglect, a hypochondriac at times and someone whose emotional pain shows up physically, a “gifted adult,” and a (recovering) perfectionist. None of these are bad; all have led me to learn how to take care of myself and meet my needs. I am still learning to trust my intuition and true nature and not beat myself up for being what I think at times I am supposed to be “more” or “less” of; perfectionism is a nasty illness all on its own. But I have certainly come to embrace my introversion, and I’m damn glad that I have.

    So. My plans for today: read and write and listen to music. Maybe take a walk. Maybe go to a meeting or see a movie by myself.

    How’s that for perfection.