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Saturday, November 26, 2016

Sort it, shake it.

I'm trying to sort out something I think.

What is the interplay between feeling and brain?  I don't mean mild feelings, the ones that pass like lightning: annoyance, irritation, frustration... they aren't necessarily mild but they dissipate fairly quickly and the feelings i'm talking about are the sweeping ones... the ones in which your body is consumed.
Its not all fairy dust.
Anger, Love, Thrill, Fear, Hilarity, Joy, Grief

Big Ticket Items. When you feel them, they leave an impression in the air as you move through the world, right? You can see them in other people usually, even if you can't figure out which of the feelings you are seeing.

With those big ones, what is the brain doing? Can I think my way out of it? Is there some sort of control exerted? IS there a hierarchy within my body in which the brain and the feelings battle ? Is there a glass ceiling? Are there autocrats at the top? Practicality, Self-Preservation. Office workers. Suits.

You want to paint something. You are driven. Your hands are shaking with the desire. Before you make it to the paint, you realize there are people living with you.  You sit down and make your kids do their homework. You throw chicken nuggets at them and get in the car for basketball practice. Brain wins. Where does that shake go?

I feel like someone should be the boss, in there.  And i fear the 'consensus-needing-non-profit-committee-forming' nature of things, and worry that without a clear boss the chaos i feel will just keep rolling on.

What do you think?
I'm going to take my coffee outside and sit for a while on the porch.  Maybe I'll come up with something.  What will I use to figure it out? My brain? My feelings?

Strange post, yes.
Sort it. Shake it.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Deserving

Deserving:
I am.

I deserve to love my own self, the peace i bring to the world, the challenge i offer with my intelligence and wit.

I deserve to have my back touched at its small, the warmth of that intimacy.

I deserve to have thoughts on me, eyes on me with sparkle and light.

I deserve someone worthy of trust, big trust.

I deserve rocking sex.

I do.
All that. And then some.

This is my fight song.

I'll wait for it, all of it. Long as I have to.

Friday, November 18, 2016

First time

Two weekend past i went to Quaker Meeting for Worship.  Its my church, has been for five years. The kids have been raised here.  We sit in almost utter silence for an hour and worship what we see fit, listen (or not) to our minds and hearts spill over.  And Its the first time I"ve sat in this meeting for almost ten months.
When j and i first sp;lit the agreement was to pass the kids back at Meeting, and I was unable to have my emotional reunion be in 'public' or in a place of supposed quiet, so i was always meeting them in the hospitality hall, coffee house spot, etc.  I didn't want to 'sit' in the same space with J and I couldn't bear my heart to hear the kids call to me across the quiet meetinghouse.  So be it. But now it has been ten months, eleven if you count when we actually knew the separation was imminent.

THIS weekend, J was away on vacation.
So he was out of the equation entirely, and I finally got to have them on a weekend, with no bedtimes,  no homework, none of the daily daily daily routine that J knows literally nothing about- And i can feel entrapped by these necessities of parenting through school, at times, as can the kids.  But this, this was a weekend!
So the kids and I sat quietly in worship, on a brilliant fall day when the light shining into that small whitewashed space was both illuminating and blinding, all at once.  My brain is shifting, I am feeling myself falling into a very different space these days.  I don't know exactly what it is, and I know that i still have ups and downs and fully expect them to catch me off guard, if one can expect to be surprised.
The kids were amazing, how fully they remembered the quiet, the roll of space and mind. Roll, role.
Then they took off for 'first day school' /sunday school and i stayed.  I stayed and stayed and stayed.


And was worshipful, and thankful, and sky-gazing was my bag.  The kids and I climbed ladders and washed windows, picked up sticks and called on the cloud shapes in order to help the community get ready for winter. The clouds kept kids from 'helping' too much, and the work cruised right along.  
It was good, and it was good. 


Thursday, November 17, 2016

TIdal swells and where does it send you?

Just some bits to let you know I'm still alive:

SO, its a long strange trip, this whole reconfiguring of life because of divorce and releasing a history that is as much a part of me as tree bark is to the tree. And the ups and downs continue and learning to share birthdays and custody of the children  in a way which satisfies my heart and is also the best for the kids is ROUGH, to say the least. Dude. I had no idea. I thought heartbreak was the tough part, but no. No.

SO there seems to be a constant roil of waves here, and I can be thrilled beyond belief with my life, and it happens and I'm bounding in joys for all to see, and then I spend a day wondering how on earth i am going to manage to feed the kids because i am so thoroughly trashed by the emotional high-tide. I've missed J lately, and that has been actually more painful than many of the feelings of betrayal and anger, and I've somehow come out the other side, and really can't tell you how, except that I am supremely glad to be done with it for now.

And we've made a bear cave, and the sloppy mommy is the way it is, and you should know, because thinking anything else is just crazy-making.  And many days I am ALL UP IN THAT CAVE.  
But there is always something else around the corner.

And I went to see Chakra Carol this week and got some peace, and it came with discussions of Leonard Cohen and the power and magic in his poetry and melody.  And I've introduced My now-4 year old to 'SO LONG MARYANN...' and boy, is that a great one for shouting in the car, or what?
Part of the peace I've gotten lately is a resurface of the massage-the-day-away table.
     When the boys were smaller I took a reiki class with Chakra Carol. And as part of my practice as a mom, I would give them a massage-the-day-away at the end of the day.  And as they aged, it went away, and I haven't opened the massage table for years.  And so yesterday, it was reinstated and there is a massage table back in my life, and used, not just leaning against a wall.  And I need practice, and I REALLY like the idea of helping kids and grown ups find their safe spaces within their own bodies, so I am taking a deep breath and just holding that idea in my own safe space to keep it with me for awhile in thought and dream, to see if that's a direction to go...

Its very cool to consider that part of what I have to offer the world is something I've already got.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Just Me.

Its been a very tough couple of weeks here, full of emotional regression on my part. But now it has been almost a year that i've known we were disassembling our marriage and so even in the depths, i know it is just a pit and that i'll rise again, and i have the tools to get myself up.
There was the family birthday that i missed for the first time in 15 years, a weekend in which i really wanted to hug J and congratulate and celebrate with the man i've watched grow and change for so long. And an instance of old history in which I realized that I know him best when he's slightly disappointing me and the great sadness that held for my own part in a long history of treating something precious like something that could be held passively.
And the need for a new water heater and the financial pressure rearing its head. And the coming changes that, really, have already arrived.
And a birthday of a child, when the birthday girl was somewhere else, and the magic of the birthday would be delayed until she was in my presence. Being alone and reliving the birth reminded me of how many things have changed and made me angry and almost had me sending drunken angry texts for the first time in my life, but didn't.  Instead, I sought out family and had laughs and fears about Donald Trump.



And a family birthday party here, and love of all the grandparents deep. And birthday magic that happens because of ME, because it is a large part of who I am, and what I have done with the past decade of my life, becoming a mother three times over and making homes and light and incredible goodness in the lives of my kids.
And the night after, when I thought I'd be distraught that birthday girl and kids all drove away and I was home alone? I thought I'd be drunk and inconsolable, but no.  I was reading and sitting by the fire and realizing how little time I have to myself and thinking of baths and enjoying the hell out of my solitude and making plans for the Supermoon rising in the sky...
It has been a long year, and so much has disappeared that was really good to go, and many that are so sad to lose.  And so much is still to come, and it is daunting but I'm so content to be where I am, in all this grayness wherein I begin to learn self-respect...and continue to daily struggle with what it is that I want. Just me.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Lines and Squiggles

All the posts i've got half-typed, half-thought-out... all in line to be dispersed when i'm more settled in my thoughts and space, when i can make ritual a reality.
All in line now.

Donald Trump is going to be the next president of my country.  It all seems momentarily irrelevant now.

I am a perpetual optimist, in a strange way, as it seems, sometimes, to be an attempt on my part to convince myself of the words coming out of my mouth. and I turn quickly to a belief in checks and balances and what a beautiful system that can be when functioning healthily .
I think immediately to how I can DO more to move through the world with force, as a visible presence and sign of goodness. People need to see goodness in action, goodness as fairness, in clarity... a relief against the skies of the fear and anger that allowed DT to move forward, and now represent us to the world.

I won't tell you that I held my optimism high while walking through the world on Wednesday. I felt like i'd been hit by a truck, had a headache, felt like i'd been sick the day before and was slammed in the recovery. . . Lots and lots of disbelief.  How could a single woman vote for him? How could a single human?  But, the thing is, I do know how.  Fear and anger and believing in fear and anger are the cores of all of it.
But here we are. More than half the country voted against Trump, although electoral college rules the day.  BUT it matters.  More than half the country voted against Trump.

( i include this picture because it is me putting finishing touches on the present that the kids made (with lots of motherly influence) for their dad's 50th birthday. And that's the kind of model I'm talking bout... be that. I may not want to look at him and I may think lots of thinks about the kind of man he has shown himself to be but the kids? Understanding that giving is important, to me, but also to take a minute to think about what will be loved by someone else, regardless of small feelings... humanity is bigger than divorce, right? ((Full disclosure: he was touched to receive it and i utterly rejected that i had anything to do with it...)) but larger is still there...))

Be that. Be the model of what you want to see in world.  We can all do that.  
And we will be called to in the next four years. . . Loudly.