Tending Candles

I was hoping for a respite from rough seas, but that is not what I have been given. The winds are stronger, the waves are higher, and my little ship is far out at sea. I am, however, becoming a better sailor, and I am still afloat.
Boats are mostly intended for a journey out and then back to port. You pull up to the dock and disembark on shaky legs. You know that you will be heading out to sea again but, for now, you are back to life on land with ample food, rest, and tools and time to make repairs.
This has not been that kind of a journey. I have thought that port was near over and over, but instead the sea just goes on and on. My little boat is getting worn and I am tired. So, I must learn to reprovision and repair at sea. Its not as easy as at port, but I am learning. Regular physical activity, mindfulness, good quality food are important at all times, but when life is battering you for long stretches of months and years they become as necessary as fresh water. I've been joking to myself that I have soul-scurvy.
It is for this reason that I sat this morning, after stretching and breathing a great deal more than I have any morning lately, with a lit candle and a small statue of Guanyin, goddess of compassion, protector of the unfortunate, guardian of those at sea. I am not the kind of person who can sit and just "let my mind go blank". I don't think that my mind has ever been blank in my life, and telling it to try is like asking you "please don't imagine Mr. Bean in a Spiderman suit". (There is your giggle for the day. You're welcome.) Instead, I try to give my mind direction. Today I asked for insight into how to navigate this sea. I know that I will come to port one day, and I want to be a stronger and more loving person when I get there, not just battered and sunburned. I sat silently and thought about my journey so far, and slowly felt a kind of peace. A tiny blossom of hope for better days to come began to flower. I breathed deeply and felt grateful that I made this time today. I opened my eyes, and I saw that my candle had gone out. The spell of the moment felt broken. I sighed and struck a new match to relight my candle.
That was when I understood that this was the insight I had asked for.
Candles have been used in worship for as long as we have had candles, it seems. Until the immediacy of electric lights, candles and lamps with flames were in our homes, on our streets, in our businesses, and our temples.
And all flames need tending.
Everywhere there was flame, there were those charged with tending the flame.
I am used to my electric lights that I can turn on and forget about. A candle is not like them. You can't just light a candle and walk away. Most things in life, however, are much more like candles than they are like electric lights. They need tending. My pets need tending, my children need tending, my plants need tending. I need tending. My relationships need tending. In a moment I finally had words for what I missed out on in my childhood - tending. Tending is different than just loving. Or maybe it is a way of loving? It is like the loving that Mr. Rogers talked about when he said that love is an active word, like struggle. It is not just a feeling, but a practice. It is something that you do. It is not enough to just love my dogs. I have to feed, water, walk, and train them. I have to think about what they may need and provide it as I am able. I need to do the same for my friendships, my family relationships, and for myself. I also get to want it from others.
I want to tend the people I care about and be tended in return. 
Now I know a little more about what the land will look like when I see it on the horizon.
I have a long way to go yet. I'm not always very good at tending. It is hard to know how to give what you aren't entirely sure how to receive. But I have a little more of a heading; a star to plot a course by. 
Tend yourself and those you love as gently as you can. Light your candle when it burns out.
Safe travels on the sea.

Rough seas

There is a place in the dark where you want there to be answers. The questions feel so big that it can't be safe to just let them roll around loose, right? They need anchors to hold them down.
I'm grasping today. I'm looking for anchors strong enough to hold down the uncertainties. I need to know that while we ride this storm the unknowns are tied and safe and when the wind dies down everything will be damp and more rounded than before but essentially ok.
Is love enough of an anchor? Is hope? Confidence is far too fragile and patience is nearly worn through.
I'll tie off on dreams of a better time and see how it goes. One wave at a time.

Unexpected Blueberries

Around the middle of September, my littlest kid and I needed to drive my husband's car for 60 miles. A sensor had been reset and we needed it to log 60 miles into the engine computer, so any 60 miles would do. Not a great day out for a not-quite-five-year-old, but I did my best to turn it into an adventure.
If you didn't know already, 90% of parenting is actually PR work. My understanding of this fact began to dawn when my oldest was about three. I pealed his banana and handed it to him, only to see his face crumple like a deflating ballon: there was a bruise on his banana. The initial grief lasted less than my intake of breath and moved directly into burning hot outrage: THERE WAS A BRUISE ON HIS BANANA!! Necessity is really only the cousin of invention, her true mother is desperation. "You lucky dude! You got a sweet spot on your banana!" His little eyebrows pulled together. A sweet spot? Just a bit more enthusiasm on my part and he dubiously ate his banana. To this day, all three of my kids prefer a banana with a spot or two on it. That is power, people.
So, I did my best to sell this 60 miles of aimless driving. We drove past his friends' houses. We drove past our old house. We drove out into the country to see if we could find a barbed wire fence (a fascination of his.)
"Oh!" I said, "Let's go see if the blueberry forest is still there!"
In the next town over from where we live, there was a you-pick blueberry place that the kids and I discovered by accident one day. It was on the property of a very kind, elderly lady who told us that her father had planted the bushes more than 80 years ago. The place was like a fairy tale. The bushes are taller than I am by a few feet, so on a hot august afternoon you could sit in the shade of the blueberry trees and pick for hours. The berries were small, sweet, and almost magical coming from such a place. We picked there two summers, and then when we came the third year the you-pick sign wasn't there and all the cars were different in the driveway. I learned from the community grapevine that the elderly lady had passed away, and her grandchildren were deciding what to do with the property. I actually cried. The idea of that rarified place being sold to become a housing development, as is very common in our area, stuck in my throat. I thought of those towering bushes crushed, and I felt crushed. On that day in September, I had already grieved the place. I had tucked it into my memory to keep for always. To tell like a fish story, the bushes getting taller with passing time. I felt like I needed to see what the place was now. I needed to say a final goodbye.
We wound our way up the narrow main road to the wind-blown hilltop to the farm where we cut our Christmas trees. Just a bit further was the corner where you turn off onto a side road that takes you passed the edge of the blueberry forest. On that corner was the last thing that I expected to see:
"You-pick blueberries! Never sprayed. $1.50/lb" It was still there! I bounced in my seat, and my driving companion cheered. I was secretly a little concerned that the sign hadn't been taken in at the end of the season. I wondered if that meant that there had been berries this year, but next year was less certain. But we turned down the road anyhow so I could show my kid just how big the bushes really were. Really, truly, I can't reach the tops on tip-toe.
When we saw them, not only were they tall, they were covered in blue. The blueberry forest had saved a precious bounty this late in the season and it felt like it was just for us.
My little family had been through so much in the previous months. We all gave up so many things. We all had to let expectations and dreams blow away in the wind not just once, but over and over. We aren't quite to the other side yet, but I hope it is close. My kids have been amazing though it all, but it has been very, very hard. Every summer my kids and I pick berries to make jam and tuck away in the freezer for the miracle of strawberry pancake syrup in January and blueberry pie at Christmas. That annual tradition was one more thing that wasn't going to happen this year.
When we drove up to find those bountiful bushes still laden with fruit the third week in September, it was the magic of the blueberry forest. A gift from the fairies.
We picked a small bagful to snack on while we finished our 60 mile quest. At the weekend, I gathered all the kids so that we could bask together awhile in what we had been given.
The berries became blueberry jam, and I took the last jar out of the freezer today.

Still alive and kicking demons in the shins

Man, writing this post is HARD. Harder than it has any right to be, really.
I didn't mean for it to be so long before I posted here again, but I had a nasty demon to do battle with and it wasn't any fun at all. This demon lives in my brain and dozes most of the time but occasionally it comes out to make things miserable. I tried to tiptoe past it's cave, but I got excited and shouted a little too much. Now it is awake. Now it must be dealt with.

Imposter syndrome is a jerk. If you haven't heard of it before, I'll give you my very unprofessional sum-up. It is the feeling of being a fraud, a faker, a lie even when working or speaking in your area of talent or expertise. On one level you know you are pretty dang good at something and have worked to become so, but on this other level you are constantly waiting for people to find out that you actually suck at it. It is not an "if they find out I'm a fraud", it is a "when they find out I am fraud". You know it's going to happen, no matter how hard you try to tell yourself otherwise. It's like low self confidence dropped acid. Awesome, right? Every time I talk about imposter syndrome at least one person (often very intelligent, talented, hard working women that have so much experience and insight to offer) makes that little round 'o' shaped mouth as their own struggle falls in to place in their mind. I am not alone in this fight.
I started writing again after hanging up my pencil sometime in middle school. It has been a strange and wonderful thing, like being reunited with a long lost sweetheart. I had forgotten the feeling of words coming out of my mind, how they can drop one at a time or flow in great waves almost washing me away. I got to rediscover the wonder of reading over something and being sure that it couldn't possibly have come out of me. I love it and, for a newbie, I'm not terrible. If I work at it, I think I have the potential to be pretty good. My main project is the novel draft I have percolating, but I wanted a place to put out short form stuff, random thoughts and flights of fancy, and maybe some story bits. That smelled like a blog, so I started one. It seemed like a really safe thing to do. I might show it to a few friends, but otherwise no one was going to read it. I could say whatever I wanted! If a post came out really cool, great! If it sucked, who cares!
But something wonderful/awful happened: a bunch of you came here to read it. Better/worse still, you liked it.
(Cue sound effect department: sound of monster yawning, yawn transitions to a deep resonant growl  and sound of heavy footfalls approaching...)
The demon in my brain woke up and has spent the last few weeks telling me all sorts of things along the lines of: one post about your dog does not a writer make, and that now you will all find out that I am not any good after all. This has not been helped by the fact that everything I have written, this included, has been pretty awful for a little while now. Self-fulling prophecies are only a cliche because they happen all the time.  
But here's the thing: I've met this punk before. I was kind of ready. I'm not quite strong enough yet to do any real battle, but if I psych myself up enough I think I can kick it firmly in the shins?
So, here I am, ticking off the demon. I am posting this even though it isn't polished, or funny, or much of anything that I want this blog to be. I am posting it so that anyone who makes it back to my crazy corner of the internet forest can watch while I suck at it and do it anyway. News flash: I'm not a professional writer. I am an aspiring writer who wants to reach out to others bumbling though this world just like I am. I hope that now and then I will post something well written, thoughtful, and a little funny, but I make no promises that I can do that every time or even most of the time. I will promise to always post what is real for me; to always write with care, compassion, and love; and offer the additional benefit that someone who stops by gets to see that perfection is not required, only a desire and willingness to try.
Whatever that thing is that you would love to do, don't listen to the little jerk voices, give it a whirl. You won't be great at it yet and that is not just ok, it is how it is supposed to be. Keep at it and you will get better.
Take my hand, let's go kick this demon's shins really hard!!

Perfection and Failure or I have a dog who eats dumb sh$#

I have a dog. (Actually we have three dogs, but that is another story for another day.) Her name is Ginny, because when you live on a planet with a series like Harry Potter there are things you simply must do. Ginny has a problem. She is going to kill herself someday by eating some dumb thing! This dog will eat anything. I mean it. ANYTHING.
A sample list of things Ginny has eaten in the eight months we have had her:
Apples off our apple trees
Blackberries, thorns and all, off the vines
Raspberries, thorns and all, off the canes
Half a cantaloupe
Half a bag of grapes (Yes, the are toxic to dogs, and yes she was very ill, and yes she has eaten grapes since.)
My daughters doll (poop should not have a face)
Three whole raw potatoes
Most of an onion
Two rubber Minions
Fruit snacks still in the bag
A peppermint tea bag still in the wrapper
Paper napkins
My entire lunch off the counter (I answered the door.)
The frosting off my son's friend's birthday cake (Seriously, no answering the door.)
A full ostomy bag, sealing ring and contents and all (THE WORST.)
The same ostomy bag again (I tried to stop her, I really did.)
A ziplock bag of dates
Seven or eight wooden magnetic letters (Not all in the same day, so don't worry about her gut. She pooped them out, believe me.)
A whole rainbow of crayons (She knows the secret to becoming a unicorn!)
Three ballpoint pens
I think you get the idea.
When she was new to our house, you couldn't leave anything on the counter and even turn your back or she would eat it. It drove me CRAZY. She is a little better these days, but not by much. The tea bag on that list was eaten yesterday.
I am a wee bit high strung, if I am being completely honest, and the constant eating of every blasted thing not nailed down has worn on me terribly. I really thought I might not be able to cope with keeping her. I am not exaggerating when I say that I was losing my mind. I felt that she was failing at fitting in to our household. I felt that I was failing at teaching her how to fit in; she is just a dogger after all. The idea of sending her back to the shelter broke my heart. My husband had fallen deeply in love with her, and I knew he might never forgive me if we had to send her away. So, I could feel like a failure at being a good wife too! The whole thing ate at me waking and sleeping. (I can have anxiety like some people run marathons: slow and hard, with risk of throwing up, and a side order of physical pain.) It felt unsolvable and my fault and my failure.
Somewhere in this soup of failure, to my surprise, I found something else. I found a space in myself where forgiveness, grace, and mercy can grow. I hear these concepts talked about as something ethereal that can be given by god if we ask nicely, but what if we learn to give them to ourselves and to each other?
The standard we hold the people in our lives to is very high, and of ourselves we expect near perfection. What if we didn't? How would the day be different if... A lady in an SUV cuts me off in traffic, and I think "Oh goodness! I hope she is able to pay better attention now. I'm worried about her safety rushing the way she is today. I hope everything is ok." The guy in line behind me at the store is short with the checker, and I think "Man, he must be having a poopy day to be so irritable. I hope it gets better from here."
What if when Ginny eats the apples straight out of the grocery bag while I run to the bathroom I think to myself, "Poor baby. We still have a lot of work to do to help her trust that there will always be enough food."

You see, Ginny came to us as just about half the dog she is now. She had been terribly neglected and starved. We rubbed her filthy fur, pretended not to be grossed out by the scabs and missing hair from demodexic mange, and told her she was the sweetest toast rack we had ever known. She was two, but had clearly not been socialized with either humans or other dogs. She got stuck under chairs because she simply didn't know that one should go around. She would try to sit close to you, but would twist her body in awkward pretzels because she didn't have any experience in snuggling. At night she growled and cried out in her sleep, started awake, and clung to us for comfort. It took two whole weeks for her to really believe that we were going to feed her every day. She thought this was the best idea anyone had ever had! She has so much to heal from.
I have a lot to heal from too.
Ginny and I both need the same thing: space to fail and still be loved. We need to try, blow it completely, be forgiven, and try again. And fail again. In that place of safety, she and I both need to forget the concept of perfection. It needs to evaporate. It needs to lift and thin like the morning fog and let the sunlight back in. Ginny and I are not going to find perfection, but maybe we can do a little better each day.
In the wise, wise words of my seven year old daughter: Practice makes progress. Perfection is not a reasonable goal.

PS: While I was editing this post, my son called with this message, "Hey mom? Ginny ate the wax from my Baby Bell. Is that ok?" Sigh.

Seeking Balance

January has just ended. Today is Groundhog Day, Imbolc, or Brigid’s Day. I am thinking about balance today.

January is a strange month. It is a month of hope, new beginnings, and dreams of great things! I think everyone I know began some version of a plan to eat “properly”, exercise more, start going to yoga, meditate every day, drink less beer, drink more water, and floss more often. We leap into the month of January with faith and resolve that this time we will make these visions reality. 

However, January is also a month of sadness for many. Here in the northern hemisphere it is still the dark ebb of the year; the tide of the light barely turned. It is a month of despair, of losing faith that it will ever be different. More people commit suicide in January than any other month. January is a month of absolutes, complete success and absolute failure. Whatever was good enough for us on December 31st is nowhere near enough on January 1st. 

It is strange to me, though. As many of us are plotting the great transformation of ourselves that will somehow spring fully formed on January 1st leaving behind the crumpled shell of who we 

were just the day before, I hear a great deal of talk about “balance”. “I’m finally going to have some balance.” “I’m going to prioritize taking care of myself and balancing my home life and work life.” There are endless variations on this theme. We see this grand plan of ours as the source of the fount of all things magical and sparkly: BALANCE! Finally, we will achieve it! 

Well, we have made it to February. How many times did you get to yoga? Personally, I haven’t even done a yoga video off of YouTube yet. So, here we are. Did you find “balance”? 

But...

What if balance isn’t a thing you find, or a thing you achieve, or a thing you strive for? What if balance is bigger? What if balance is the source of the struggle, the root of the tree instead of its fruit? In nature, balance is not a static state but a dynamic process.  Life buds, flourishes, over-reaches, dies back. The acids and bases in your body convert one into the other and back and forth, your pH rising and falling like a minuscule chemical tide. It swings, it cycles, it fades and fluoresces. Balance is not what happens when you stand still on one foot and don't fall over. Balance is what happens when you stand on one foot and sway tiny movements back and forth as your inner ear senses and your body corrects for the shifts and leanings so you only fall a little bit one way before falling a little bit the other and this all means that you never fall all the way. 

What if our goal is not to find balance, but to merely shift it a little? I may not give up cake forever, but maybe I can find a new recipe with more veggies that the kids will actually eat. That plan we all made to start our new year an improved version of ourselves was a wide swing out into space. By the end of the month most of us had swung back into the darkness again. We are entering February somewhere on the back swing. But, isn't that where the season is meant to be?

If you are one of the despairing, please know that you are not alone in your suffering. There are others here in the dark who have lost hope that the light will return. But that is the ancient meaning of this day: the light is returning. The balance is shifting. This northern place has leaned away from the sun, and now it is time to start the long lean back. Reach out a hand and find someone who can remind you how to turn back into the sun. That is the secret of winter: the light hasn’t really gone, it has always been just around the edge of the world waiting for us to come back.

Just in case you need it:

Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255) 

Because WE need YOU.

Did you know that there is a difference between living and thriving?

I don't think I gave it much thought until recently, but there is a HUGE difference between living and thriving. I don't mean in a new-diet-exercise-plan kind of way, just in a "it's ok to like your life" kind of way.

Most people who are reasonably intelligent have a fair number of options about how to live life. They have options about what jobs to pursue, what people to socialize with, and how to spend their free time. For some reason, though, we seem to start narrowing those options even before we get to kindergarten. I can't play with the girl across the street because she only likes dolls. I don't want to read that book because it is only about trucks. I don't want to have a Cookie Monster lunch box because that one kid said Cookie Monster was dumb. We keep narrowing, a little at a time, until we reach adulthood. Somehow we have even sold this a good thing, "I've found my niche!" 

But is it? 

I mean, it seems like a reasonable thing to have things we like and dislike, a stable job, blah, blah, blah. At what point do we give ourselves permission to look past all that and try something else? Low commitment items like trying something new on the restaurant menu are even met with surprise and some level of social pressure to return to your norm. "Wow! Taking a risk tonight, huh?" Because ordering fish and chips instead of a burger is a dangerous life decision? Scale it up, and we lose our minds. If our neighbor quit her job as a stockbroker to become a professor or a hair stylist we would freak out! 

It seems obvious when I say it, but the things that used to bring me happiness may not be my favorites any more. I used to think sweet potatoes were devil-food, now I quite like them. The job I did right out of college isn't one that I would want now. 

At what point do I give myself permission to walk away from the things that I have been doing and being and saying that I call living and reach out for the things that I think might let me thrive? How do I give myself permission to be wrong?

I bet you are hoping that I'm about to answer those questions in some witty way, and that would sure make a cool blog post, but I am the Introspective Bumbler for a reason. I really have no idea what those answers are.

But I'm going to keep trying to find out.