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.