Therapy is hard.

 I first did therapy when I was diagnosed with cancer, 16 years ago, and I've done it on and off - mostly off - since then. 

But I'm determined to work through my garbage, because I'm tired of my old issues being the driving force in my life.

I got messages early in life that lasted well into my 40s that said if I wasn't perfect, I wasn't enough; those messengers said that if I didn't agree with them, I was wrong. Not just wrong - bad.

I was either good - compliant, agreeable, smiling, supportive, and absolutely without my own needs or desires if they were in the least bit of conflict with theirs. My time, interests, and ideas, needed to align. If I liked different food, I was mocked. If I liked different music, I was annoying and tasteless. If I liked different politics, I was an idiotic fool; if I had different dreams then I was a traitor to my family.

If I did what they wanted, I was good, and received approval, but I always knew that it wouldn't last, and that  in order for me to get that stamp of approval, I had to contort myself into a pretzel to get through my days, and it was exhausting, confusing, and ever so lonely.

I am estranged from those people now, and I doubt that I will ever be able to be in relationship with them again, because to do so hurts me and requires me to be someone I'm not. When the people who are supposed to love you best are those that hurt you and tell you that you are worthless, stupid, and shameful, well, there's nothing to be done but find a new way. I found that new way five years ago, and I'm proud of myself for having the courage to stand up, turn around, and face my future with truth and integrity. I'm not a pretzel anymore, and I no longer believe that my innate wishes and desires are bad, or that at my core, I'm bad.

But I've got work to do, anyway.

I am so far still from who I want to be, and the old messages still linger in my brain. Whenever I struggle, I hear them telling me that I'm bad, that I'm wrong, that I'll never amount to anything and "who do you think you are anyway" and "you think you're too good for us" and "persnickety".

So here I am, these old messages flaring up every time something goes in the least bit wrong, every time I have a smidgen of doubt about myself (all the time, for the record).

And I want to do better.

So back to therapy I go, dredging up old experiences and trying to understand how it is that I became the way I am, and how to let go of these ideas that do not serve me.

It's hard work. Remembering the things that have hurt me isn't a delightful experience... and I am doing it anyway. It's time to move past the old ways.

I know I can do better in my life, and I want to live with a heart at ease.

A heart that doesn't hurt too much to let a good man in.

So - therapy.

And it's hard.

Slogging and Joy

 I consider myself an incredibly optimistic person, but lately I am just slogging through my days.

Slogging at work.

Slogging at home.

Slogging through my dreams.

My energy levels are shockingly low, and I just feel worn out, no matter how much I try to rest. My body isn't helping: I can't remember the last time I slept through the night without awakening multiple times.

I have to keep reminding myself that it's temporary, that this too shall pass.

It helps to remember why I feel like this:

- Global pandemic (health risks, not traveling, not going to restaurants, theaters, etc.)

- Kid just left for college

- Single at 52, living alone (wait, this wasn't the plan!)

- thyroid issues (I get checked again next month)

- Back to school in a pandemic - the kids are needier than ever.

- Estrangement from parents and a recent particularly nasty interaction with my mother.

- Therapy. Oh, don't get me wrong: I'm a big believer in therapy, and I like my new therapist, but... it's hard. I'm facing The Big Stuff and it's exhausting.

So here I am, and it feels like every move is just slogging through the mud and slightly unbearable. Every step just feels a little heavier, and collectively, I just feel worn out.

But.

But I've been here before - the cancer years, the bad-marriage-then-divorce years. I made it to the other side then, and I will now, and the joy that comes after the storms is such a gift.

I'm trying to forgive myself for feeling so unenergetic, stuck, unmotivated, and sad. I'm trying to remind myself that this isn't because I'm a broken person, a terrible person, or an unworthy person. I'm feeling like this because things are legitimately hard right now.

I'm trying to remember that...

I'm good at my job and I'll find my way again.

I want Tessa to thrive in college, and for both of us to find a new way to co-exist.

When I'm ready, I'll go out there and find the right man to partner with, and appreciate the hell out of him (as he will me).

My estrangement from my family of origin is healthy. Agreeing to toxic behaviors isn't healthy, so even though I'm used to the dysfunctional way of being in the family, this is a much better choice for me, even if it hurts to not have family.

But today, I'm slogging, trying to remember the look of the sunrise, and the joys that are to come, trying to remember my energetic self and the life that awaits.

I guess I'll just slog my way through until the mud runs out, and then I'll walk on dry land again, change my clothes, and embrace the sunshine.

Soon, please.

Flying Solo

 A few weeks ago, my daughter and I got in the car - which I had packed with ten giant blue IKEA zipper bags full of bedding, clothes, shoes, and more, per the recommendations on Grown and Flown and Pinterest - and drove a couple of hours east... and I left her there.

This is the longest I've ever been apart from my girl, and I feel hollow and strange. We've done up to a week apart before, usually with lots of phone calls to check in, and I always knew at the end of the week she'd be back where she belonged, with me. But this time, she's where she belongs at college, and she'll never be home again in the way that she was before.

Now, she has two homes. My home will always be her place to land, and the room down the hall is still filled with her things, awaiting her return for holidays. But she and I both know that she has two homes now, and her growth and her future lies mostly in the other one at the moment.

This isn't a woe-is-me, I promise. I couldn't be happier for her, because she's out there trying to live her best life, trying to discover how to navigate when she's that much closer to adulthood. I am proud of her for finding her way, for being brave, for meeting new people and having a roommate for the first time (as an only child, I'm pretty sure this is a shock to her system!), for figuring out food cards and dorm rules and where her classes are on a campus, but she's ready. For whatever bumps she's experiencing, she's ready. She can do this.

And so can I - I hope.

Everyone talks about kids remaking themselves in college, and how much their parents miss them, but nothing prepared me entirely for the truly empty house I'm in. My canine companion might really be my best friend, because I feel really alone, despite the wonderful folks in my life.

No husband.

No family of origin.

None of Tessa's friends in and out all the time.

And a global pandemic that absolutely refuses to go away (and it feels like I'm the only one really worried about this winter - what if it's worse than last winter, despite the vaccinations?!). I'm being careful (it turns out that was a good idea - because I had Pfizer, and after 4 months it's at half effectiveness for preventing disease, and I'm with 150 kids a day at school in my crowded classroom).

So here I am, more solo than I've ever been. I'm of two minds about this: time to write! to be a superstar at work! to exercise more and more! to take classes! to visit art museums! to hike! to cook! to do house projects!

...and curl up in a ball, possibly in front of the television, and not get up.

Honestly, the jury's out.

What I did decide to do was start therapy again.

Mostly, I want to work out my family of origin stuff. When my mother was hospitalized recently I reached out to her, and as soon as we spoke, I regretted it. She brought up everything I've done to offend her in the past 20 or so years (we thought she could be on her deathbed, and she wanted to re-hash that I had not invited her to attend Tessa's birth... sigh). She said, "At least when I die, I guess I'll know you reached out once" (in a sad, dramatic, sighing voice) and when I pointed out that I've contacted her regularly - most recently to send a graduation announcement - she had no reply. She acted like it was confusing why we're estranged. I said "the door has always been open to see you again" and when she acted surprised I said, "All you and Dad need to do is agree to no name calling, belittling or yelling" and she said - in a surprisingly snotty voice, "OH! So you have BOUNDARIES now!" and did not agree to those boundaries and changed the subject.

I think of all of it, that last one was the toughest for me. I have the no-yelling-belittling-name-calling rule for EVERYONE I meet. Cashiers. Waiters. Passer by. Students. Friends. Strangers. Everyone. I feel like it's the absolute lowest bar in the world, but in my family it's simply too much, and for me to express a boundary is unacceptable, even when it's a lowest-of-the-low boundary.

So here I am. 52, solo, in therapy.

I am determined to get to the good stuff. The good stuff looks like an active life, close connections, meaning, and love. Romantic love, too. But I know I have to deal with my "stuff" before I'll be ready for that.

Sigh.

I think my first big leap now is to figure this out. Therapy. Journaling, Determination. Asking hard questions.

And then maybe the good stuff?

More

 The siren call of procrastination is strong. There are so many things I want to do; so many things that call out in distraction. I just got rid of social media in the hopes that my screen time in mindless scrolling would be replaced by screen time writing... but it's so much more than screen time that distracts me.

It's puttering around the house, doing laundry when I should be writing. It's calling a friend when I don't want to tackle my to-do list. It's curling up with a second cup of coffee when I could be going out for a run. It's signing up for a dating app instead of heading to the beach to read.

But...

I'm making progress.

My whole life I've told myself that I am doing it wrong, but the reality must be different because if everything was so wrong, and if my procrastination was truly so awful, I wouldn't have accomplished as much as I have. I have to remind myself of this all the time: I'm not so bad! But the flip side of it is that right now I'm filled with the longing for more. I want more.

Since my divorce, I've reinvented myself several times, and many of those inventions were for the sake of survival: if a lion is chasing you, you reinvent yourself as a runner. With every reinvention, I got closer to who I want to be. The divorce itself was a commitment to stop putting myself last in life, to demand more for myself. My first job, in business development for a jeweler, was a reminder that I was capable of supporting myself and Tessa, and that I had something to offer an employer. (I doubled that business, and remain proud of it.) My next job was to remind myself that I wanted to give back to the world, and a food bank was a great place for that. The next job was to prove that I was a leader. In both of those positions in non-profit, I proved myself, hit donation numbers they'd never seen, improved systems and processes, and I was proud. But it wasn't enough. I wanted more. In teaching I find myself in a whole new way, and the bliss of using my degrees for their intended purposes is a luxury and an astonishment. I feel sure that I've been doing what I'm supposed to do.

And there's Tessa.

I have truly and honestly done my best with mothering her. I have fallen short, absolutely, more times than I can count, but I also have faith that between us there is something good and true, and that she has received what she needed from me. We're still growing and learning together, and I am so proud of the two of us. She found her fire to head to a four year college, and I found a way to make it happen. When she goes out in the world, she will take me with her: she will never doubt, not for one second, that she is loved, worthy, supported. She will never question my desire to do right by her. She will forgive me, not because I am worthy of forgiveness or because she is saintly, but because she is generous and because I know how to admit it when I'm wrong and to change my behavior.

Tessa and I are well.

So, with work going well, and with Tessa and I in a good place as she launches the nest... I want more. I want to change our relationship into one between two women, not a woman and a girl, even as we both acknowledge that no matter her age, we are mother and daughter. I want to celebrate her as she grows, and I want to help her, and I want to let her soar on her own, and instead of reaching some new ending, I simply want more. More experiences with her, more depth, and more levels to our relationship. More. (Let it be said here, clearly and for the record: more does not mean more time. Letting her become the person she needs to be is important to me, and she needs space. I intend to give her that space.)

I'm thinking about what more means to me, beyond the two biggest things in my life (Tessa and work, in that order).

Writing.

Finances.

Love.

Fitness.

Playfulness.

In summer, it's so much easier for me to ponder the questions and to start putting them into action.

This blog is a warmup, but my real work is to write my book. Now that I've straightened out the narrator issue, I need to fight the fear and just write and write and write, and then edit and edit and edit. I just feel so sure of this book. It's my personal legend, and what I'm supposed to do. I want more. I have more to say, more to explore, and I am more than I have been and I know that writing is how I get bigger, and fully develop into myself.

I'm refinancing the house, I'm getting a raise, and I am ready to hit a new stride financially. The stay at home cancer years followed by the divorce years have been painful - but the best is yet to be. My pride at being able to help Tessa get through college is immense. It won't be easy, but it will happen. I want more out of my financial life, and I am willing to sacrifice, but I also want more: more savings, more vacation, more security. More.

I have some work to do on myself to be ready for love. I'm still processing my relationship to my family, and the messages that I internalized about myself through my family and my marriage, and I'm undoing them. I am trying to remind myself that I do not need to be rich, beautiful, have a flat stomach, or be perfect in order to be worthy of mind-boggling love and true partnership. I am committed to trying though, and I signed up on a dating app (Hinge - is it good? I don't know yet) to see. But I have more to offer in a relationship than I did a decade ago or a year ago, and I want a relationship that is so much more than I've ever experienced. I want security and adventure, companionship and challenge, laughter and tears. I want to explore, and to be at home. I want to be fearless in my love, and to be loved fiercely and fearlessly in return. It is so much more than I've allowed myself so far, but I'm ready for more.

In my life, it keeps coming back to my body: my control over it, my health, the way I feel in my skin. This summer I committed to daily exercise and I've done a great job of it, and it just feels so much better to be in my skin than it did a month ago. I'm nowhere near in shape, but I can feel my body changing (the run isn't nearly so hard as it was a month ago) as my skin's gold tones deepen in the sunshine. What is best, though, isn't that my muscles feel stronger - it's that my head feels clearer. The more often I get outside, and the more often I get my heartrate up, and the more often that I stretch my limbs to push myself, the more sure of myself I become in all ways, and I love it, and I want to experience it more. My promise to myself is to keep it going when school starts - that I will come home and switch clothes right away to take Chance out. Standing by the shore at Lincoln, Lowman, Alki, or Mee Kwa Mooks is good for my soul. I need more of what's good for my soul.

And all of this leads to a kind of playfulness. Whether that's swimming in alpine lakes, trying a new restaurant, game night, kitchen dancing, Paint & Sip, singing in the car, Shakespeare in the Park - I want to play. I want to laugh, and to feel the fulness of living. I am tired of being scrappy, or making do, or accepting my lot in life. I want more. I want to be generous, to live in an abundance of joy, hope, and laughter. I don't need to be rich, but I am done worrying about every penny, even when I need to watch my pennies. I am choosing playfulness as a new mantra. My big goofy dog leads the way - he's a good companion for me.

I want more.

I'm getting more.

I deserve more.

More is on the way.

 

And so we begin

 Today feels like the first real day of summer. 

This makes no sense, of course, except that it makes perfect sense to me. (The story of my life, in one crazy sentence!) I've been off school two weeks as of today. We've completed college orientation. The 4th - and all of the crazy illegal fireworks that terrify my dog - are done.

And now I'm ready to really dive in.

I just did a morning yoga practice (Yoga With Adriene is amazing; if you don't follow her, you should. All her videos are free on YouTube.) Of course I intended to do it at 6am when I got up. but there was the siren call of coffee, and then Susan and I had a nice long chat, and - much to my chagrin - there was some endless scrolling on social media. (I'm working on it.) But most importantly: I put my mat on the floor, lit some candles, and hit play. I did the whole thing minus a couple rounds of boat pose (I tried, really I did, but my abs said, "not yet!" and I collapsed on the floor in a fit of giggles).

The practice today was about "yoga kiss" and in some of the poses Adriene said, "turn your head as if someone is kissing you on the neck" and my body woke up and the face of my crush popped into my vision and it was delightful. My mind, soul, and body are waking up. I don't know if the crush and I will ever amount to anything, but for that little moment of yoga practice I could see his smile and imagine his lips and I thought, "ohhhh maybe I really am ready for this!" Only time will tell, but whether it's him or someone else, today I knew I was closer.

I'm writing. I've committed to come here, mostly as my warm up, and my commitment to myself to put myself out there, but also my book. Sometime this spring I got really stuck on the book: it stopped making sense, and I thought I'd absolutely lost my way, but then I realized that one of my main characters was male - the voice of the past - and it didn't work, that character needs to be female to have symmetry with the voice of the present. Eureka! I'm ready to keep going now, and suddenly it feels better.

The morning air is cool and wet with the marine layer - a fine mist is in the air, even at 10am. It's supposed to burn off later today so I have plans to go paddle boarding with a friend in the sunshine, but right now it's perfect to be inside, to think about my plans, and to put some of them into action. A morning of productivity and an afternoon of fun is the best during my summer break. Chance will be pleased to know that a long walk is in his future (and for me, a long podcast). Hopefully my favorite seal will make an appearance; perhaps I'll see old man heron moving slowly along the water's edge. I've put off making appointments, but I'm ready to dive in: the annual trip to the doctor, a meeting with a refinance person. My energy is returning.

So, summer is two weeks in, but I'm just getting started. I'm ready to tackle my to-do list, and to be the person I want to be. I feel rested enough to make this happen... so here I go! I'll see you tomorrow and let you know how I'm doing, but for now, it's time for me to get moving.

Intuition

 I just hit "publish" on another post, but I have to write this, too.

I guess it's about personal journeys, and I guess it's about reinvention, so it's related. But most of all, it's about intuition.

I have developed my sense of intuition in ways that continue to surprise me. My intuition is uncanny, accurate, and it still amazes me. I don't know exactly how it came into being, or how to control it, but I do know that it feels good, and true, and right, and that it's a gift that I do not intend to squander.

I've felt it a few times in my life, but lately it comes up with greater and greater frequency.

A couple of years back, when looking for dogs on Petfinder, I saw a picture of Chance. Hundreds of dogs were on the site, but I knew he was our dog. I was so sure, as a matter of fact, that when I got the notice after applying to adopt him that said "sorry, he's already been adopted" I was quite upset: partially because I really wanted to be the one to adopt him, but even more because I had been so sure, deep in my bones, that he was my dog, and I was perplexed as to why my intuition that he was destined for our family could be wrong. Tessa's intuition is strong, too, and she was as confused as I was. "Mom," she said, "I'm going to wonder about him for the rest of my life, because I was so sure he was our dog."

A week later, we got the email saying that his new adoptive owners were returning him to rehome him, because they had toddlers and he kept knocking them over and making them cry. He WAS our dog. My intuition didn't tell me how he'd come to us, or the timeline, but I was right all along. He's on his bed, next to my desk, as I write this.

There are many examples, including the day I knew (just KNEW) that I was going to return to the classroom, the day I knew I needed to get divorced, the day I knew that my baby would be a girl... many  more.

But the most recent one was about Tessa going to college.

On the day that she told me, tearfully, that going to community college didn't feel right at all, we were at the breakfast table in our kitchen. We talked, and I heard the truth of her words. We decided to look at some colleges with rolling admissions, and the first one was Central. My friend Jeanette went there, and had been telling me for a year that it was a good fit for Tessa, but we hadn't really paid much heed. Well, on this morning we decided to watch their little intro video; we'd seen a dozen of these videos for other schools, and found them mildly interesting and informative. So there we were, in our pajamas, drinking coffee and tea, and I Googled the Central online tour, and propped my phone up on the candle as we hit play.

Within a minute of the video starting, I started crying. My whole body reacted: my skin felt a not-unpleasant prickly sensation, and my whole being just knew. Tessa looked at me with slight alarm and said, "Why are you crying?" as her own eyes filled with tears. "This is where you're going to college," I said. She said, "But you don't know that! I haven't applied or anything!"

Wiping my tears away, I said, "You can do what you think is best. I am not telling you what to do, or giving you my opinion. I'm telling you that I just know, somehow, that you are going to go to CWU, that you're going to apply and that you're going to get in, and that you are meant to be there."

Tessa had real tears now, too, and she said, "I think you're right."

Within two weeks she had applied and been accepted, and now she's registered for classes, has an assigned dorm room and roommate and meal plan and the rest. At orientation, she made new friends, and they're talking about going mountain biking and other plans.

It wasn't a slam dunk, and I had no reason to "know" but I knew.

I have so many examples of being able to read other people, of just "knowing" what they were thinking or needing; at school, it's not unusual for me to spot students' needs several times a day, and when I say, "I know this might sound a little crazy, but my intuition is telling me that you are in pain/need to talk to someone/etc." the students often burst into tears and say, "How did you know that?!" and tell me something profound or serious. I have given up asking myself why I can do this, or what it means.

What I am asking now is how to use it.

My intuition tells me that I have a book - or several - brewing in me, and that I'm meant to be a writer, and that my stories will bring hope and love to a world in need of healing. My intuition tells me that people will respond to my stories, and that my books will sell, and that my name will be known.

My intuition is bigger than my fear (even when my fear is huge).

It just is.

The only thing I need to do is to follow my intuition.

The day that we watched the CWU video was a Sunday, mid-morning. By the middle of the day we were in a car headed to Central to self-tour. By the end of the tour, Tessa had decided to apply. Within a week, her application was submitted. We could have just sat on our feelings, or dismissed them, or dithered, but once we both knew, we both took action..

My writing has been a long time in developing, but it's time foe me to take action, to create a plan, and to make it happen. Just as my beloved daughter will have to now find her academic strength, her resilience against loneliness or imposter syndrome, in order to find the success that it is her destiny, I will need to fight my own imposter syndrome, insecurities, and the thousands of distractions that prevent my from doing what I know I'm meant to do.

Intuition is a gift, but it isn't a magical cure for all things: it is magical, but it's not a wand that I can wave to make an outcome happen. I think that the intuition is a sign of what is possible, and my belief in it is the thing that can give me strength to keep going.

Had I applied for other dogs instead of taking a pause because I was sure Chance was our dog... then Chance wouldn't be our dog.

Had we thought "CWU might be great but here are the reasons to stay at CC" then Tessa wouldn't be on this path.

And I can believe in my strength and destiny as a writer, but if I don't write, then my intuition will never be realized.

It's time. It's time for me to reinvent myself, and to follow through on my certainty, and to make it happen, even when I'm afraid. Especially when I'm afraid.

The mother of invention

 The world is passing by in a blur, and I finally have time to sit and just observe it.

Tessa graduated high school, and got to end the horrible COVID year with a lovely round of proms, graduation ceremony and parties, a healthy new relationship with a boy who seems to appreciate her as much as she appreciates him. Much to both of our surprise, in late May she decided that community college wasn't her path after all, and she applied to and was admitted to CWU.

My head is still spinning, but it's a good spin.

There is so much I want to say here, and perhaps I'll come back to it, but the sum of it is this: she is reinventing herself, and I am reinventing myself, and I see with such clarity that we are at some new tipping point where nothing will ever be the same (this is old news) but that we both get to shape ourselves with intentionality and joy; we both get to decide who we will be.

I'm giddy, fearful, contemplative, confused, and certain.

Mostly, certain.

When I completed the most heinous parts of cancer treatment, shortly after the big rounds of surgery, chemo, and radiation were finished, I was assigned a new doctor (Dr. Zucker at Swedish) whose job it was to oversee my return to wellness. He wasn't there to help me cure cancer; he was there to help my body and mind to overcome the treatment and find a new way to health. I was so on fire with being alive - was it possible that I had truly made it through? - that I was filled with energy, hope, and intentionality for my life. Dr. Zucker noticed this, and gave me some of the best advice I've ever received. He told me that my energy could inspire me to do great things, but that over time, that energy would fade as life resumed some new normal and the day to day took over again. He told me that the most important thing I could do was to, with great intention, create new habits that would last long after the surge of good intentions and energy had passed.

I know that I'm in another place like that again. Tessa has crossed the line from childhood into young adulthood, and I have crossed from centering my day to day life around her needs into...

What? Something new, somethin unknown, something exciting and terrifying in equal measure.

It's time to reinvent myself. I have no choice in this, really: whether I am intentional and make new choices about my life that please me and give me new purpose or not, there is no way my life can stay the same. I will no longer come home to a daughter needing a ride somewhere, or making messes in the kitchen, or sitting on the other end of the sofa to laugh at a movie with me. My house will not be filled with a handful of hungry teenagers excited for my snacks. Game nights will no longer be teens versus adults. Dinner will not be a negotiation. It is not my job to coach her to do her homework, or to stay awake until she gets home, or to insist that she put away her laundry so I can get the baskets back.

What is passed is in the past, and if I were to long for it to stay I would have no hope of forcing it... but I don't want to go backwards at all. I want to find the joy and excitement and energy of this moment, for her as well as for myself.

I have no role models for this. My parents did not show me this path: they fought my leaving tooth and nail, going so far as to say "so you think you're too good for us?" when I went to college, and again when I moved out. They demanded that I call them every day for extended conversations, and that I visit multiple times a week. They told me that if I moved far away I'd be unhappy and unsuccessful; they kept the tether short, and when I chewed on it, desperate to release myself, they found new ways to tether me. Until, of course, they couldn't tether me anymore at all, and I broke free with a vengeance, vowing to never be tethered to them again. No, that's not what I want in my parenting, not at all, and so I can't look to my past to determine how to behave in my future.

***

I re-read The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo yesterday. I'm on my personal journey, and I am so, so sure that I must do what I must do. I am equally sure that Tessa is on her personal journey, and that the fates are conspiring to help us.

I've been moving my body more (as a matter of fact, today it's sore from moving so much!), bonding with Chance and feeling at peace in my skin as I regain my strength and clarity.

I've been reading.

I've been outdoors, on beaches and lakes and paddle boards and trails.

I've been doing projects around the house.

I've been cooking (and eaten more vegetables in a couple of weeks than I did in the last six months).

And now, it's time to write.

My personal journey is to write, to tell the stories that have been welling up inside me and long to splash over the edges like a joyful waterfall. I was put on this planet to write, and I've been writing my whole life, and now is the time.

My personal journey is also to find the love I've been missing, and to heal the old wounds. I need to do the work... but even more than that, I need to believe that I am worthy, and that the Universe wants this for me.

It's that simple. It's time to live the life I've imagined, and to hold nothing back.

***

My daughter is learning to fly, and now that I am focused more on myself as she is out of my reach at college this fall, it's time for me to soar, too.

***

I think it's called the mother of invention because it is, indeed, a mother's necessity to reinvent herself, over and over. Our bodies reinvent first; then our lives are upended with our tiny babies; then we grow into our roles as they shift through different phases of our children's growth; and then, perhaps the biggest change of all, our children launch and we get to reinvent ourselves again. 

Not everyone does this well - some live in the past; some chase their children into the future. I love my daughter with my whole being, so I can understand these responses. But what I want for her is to be free to soar, knowing that no amount of time or space can separate us, and that I am always her soft place to land. What I want for myself is to live the life that is meant for me. And what I want for both of us is for me to model to her a true, authentic life so that she doesn't have to find her way on her own. I want to offer her a magical combination of support and freedom; I want to show her what I am made of so that she will know that she is made of that stuff, too.

What a time to be alive. Never, ever do I forget that I nearly lost it all, and that 16 years ago when I got that cancer diagnosis I had many reasons to believe that I'd never get the chance to experience a daughter going to college. Never, ever do I forget how hopeless and lost and uncertain of my future I felt when I got divorced, and how uncertain of my financial future and my ability to support myself I was.

But here I am. Alive. Independent. Filled with hope.

To reinvent myself again is a gift and a joy, despite my frequent anxiety, and somehow I know that this is a part of my personal journey, and that the best is right around the corner, if I will only do what my heart tells me to do.

My girl

 My beloved daughter is 18 years old and about to graduate high school.

It was only yesterday (such a cliché, but never more true) that she was placed into my arms. The first time I saw her, she was scowling, wailing, and clearly as traumatized from the beautiful, gory, painful, frightening birth that we'd both just experienced. As the doctors visibly relaxed after the crisis had passed, my beloved friend Susan wept tears of joy and astonishment at what she'd witnessed, and Libby scurried around making sure that Ryan was okay, and Ryan sat there slightly stunned (destined to be her father, for which I am forever grateful, although I do wonder how I was ever his wife)...

The quivering, soft, warm, noisy, mess that was Tessa was placed in my arms, and I saw her face, and I held her to my naked chest, and she quieted, and I felt the unconditional love that I'd been told about but never experienced, either as a giver or a receiver. I knew, without question, in an ancient and primal way, that she was mine, and I was hers. We looked at each other, her eyes hazy, mine never more clear, and I was sure that this girl deserved to be love like nobody before had ever been loved, and that my care for her was infinite and extraordinary.

It's all so trite to say it. It sounds like some kind of gushing Mother's Day card, or wishful thinking, or some hallucination (from the painkillers I didn't take).

But it is the truest thing that I have ever known.

When Tessa was two and half, her petite body tinier than her friends', her hair a wisp of golden curls and waves, her blue gray eyes as big as her face, the stork's kiss birthmark on her forehead a mark of recognition, perhaps really an angel's kiss; at this age, tender and tiny and just becoming herself, tantrums and sticky smiles and gentle hugs and a deep love of ponies and horses and unicorns, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I ended her innocence in my stumbling words to explain it to her. She learned about the hospital - hopspittle, she said, and I was simultaneously charmed by her mispronunciation and horrified that words like "hospital" and "chemotherapy" were the realities of her childhood. We read "Sammy's Mommy Has Cancer" every single night, at her request, and her tiny fingers traced the pictures, pointing at the IV lines and showing me how the medicine traveled from the bag down into the mother. The cancer happened to my body, but it happened to US. She whispered me reassurances ("your hair will grow back, Mama" and "you're still pretty, Mama" and "one day the cancer will go away, Mama") and I didn't know if she was reassuring me, or herself, but I clung to her words as proof that she would be okay, that she had some internal resilience and strength that was otherworldly for such a tiny body to possess, and that I must find it in myself to be okay for her.

Diagnosed in June, by August my hair was falling out, and the day came when shaving it seemed better than watching it fall out in clumps. The deed done, tears shed, I gathered my wits and asked my serious, sad little girl what she wanted to do that day. Her answer was instantaneous: she wanted to go to the outdoor pool to go swimming.

My hesitation was real - with one breast, the scar still red and angry, and a bald head, the last thing I wanted to do was to don a swimsuit and head into public. But my hesitation was brief, because my love for my daughter was bigger than my fear, and if she had to talk about hopspittles all the time and deal with waves of fatigue that kept us at home and massive doses of steroids that made me short tempered, well, the least I could do was take her swimming on a hot, sunny August day.

The children at the pool stared. One of them pointed and gasped. The adults looked at me with sad eyes, clearer than the children about what was wrong with my body and why. I heard the whispers, saw the parents chiding their children to shush and not be rude. I plastered a smile on my face, jumped in the pool, turned to face Tessa at the edge, held out my arms, and yelled "jump!" and watched her face light up with glee as she hurled herself, fearless, into the water and my arms. The sun shone down, my daughter beamed, and we were the only people on the planet, and I thought that my love for her might actually make me invincible. Her presence called out bravery that I didn't know I had.

I'm pretty sure that Tessa is the reason I survived my cancer, and the treatment horrors, and the never ending years of it. Without her face - sometimes somber, sometimes laughing, but always watching me, I think it would have been too much, and I would have sunk into it. Nobody would have blamed me. But with Tessa watching, I did every bit of treatment, demanded more, and pushed far past my fatigue and pain and fear and side effects too gruesome to list here, and said, "More." I got lucky, there is no question of that - but mixed with that was a stubborn insistence that I needed to be there for my girl.

I sometimes wonder if my bond with Tessa is like the ones that other mothers have with their children. Perhaps I am a narcissistic ass to believe that my love for her is more fierce, more wild, more deep, more true. Perhaps this is the gift given to every mother, but I'm not so sure.

Tessa saved my life, and my gratitude for this is all consuming. But even if it wasn't for that, she has defined my life for 18 years, and her presence has guided me to be a better person than I would have been without her. I never would have had the courage to leave my marriage unless I was sure that the model of a relationship we were giving her was worse than divorce; for myself I might have lived with the sorrow and anger, but for her, I chose something better for all three of us.

One day about a year after the divorce, I came home from my not-right-but-it-paid-the-bills,mostly job, weary, and coached Tessa's homework at the kitchen table while I cooked, still in my heels-and-dress combo. Out of nowhere, Tessa stopped, looked at me, and said, "Mama, you're amazing...." and proceeded to let me know in her own words, out of the blue, that she saw me, really saw me, and that she saw the work and the love and the fatigue of reinvention and the fear of the unknown and the bravery that made me try anyway and most of all the love for her - and I wept as I hugged her and thanked her. I don't think any person has ever seen me so thoroughly in my whole life, before or since, and made me feel so whole and hopeful.

We live alone, just the two of us and our funny, large, playful, boisterous oaf of a dog. We've quarantined a year together, me complaining about her refusal to get out of bed on time for school; her complaining about how loud I am when teaching or talking on the phone. We've watched movies, avoided one another, cooked, baked, made jewelry, paddle boarded, picnicked. We've traded funny memes from social media. But even more, I think we've soaked up each other. In a year where she should have been leaving - to go to work, to go to school, to go out with friends, to go on dates - she was at home with me instead, in a large house that started to feel too small when it was our only world. We're probably a little dysfunctional: we know each others' preferences like an old married couple, and we take care of each other, and we complain constantly about the quirks and inconveniences (I want her to fill up the water pitcher in the fridge more often; she wants me to do a better job rinsing dishes before they go in the dishwasher).

I see her watching me still. There were years when she told me that everything I did was wrong, that I said it wrong, that I looked wrong, that I showed up in the world... wrong. My heart broke - what had happened? - and older women told me to stay the course, that this was part of it, that she'd come back. She did. It hasn't always been smooth. Some days I'm so confused - who is she, is this who she is, wait why doesn't she like me...and I don't like what she's doing either, come to think of it! - and there were a couple rocky years ago that came on suddenly, made my stomach hurt, and then mysteriously went away as if they'd never happened, and suddenly we were back as we were, meant to be together.

The 18 year old Tessa is exactly, and nothing, as I'd imagined her to be.

She is so much braver than I was at her age, and so much more sure of who she is. She is a master at friendship: she brings the most lovely people into her life, and into mine, and I'm blown away by the depth of these friendships, and by the drama free way in which she has navigated her high school years socially. Her knack for seeing people as they really are, their gifts and their flaws, is uncanny, and what's even more extraordinary to me is that she isn't judgmental about their flaws, but at the same time, she knows who is a good fit for her life and who brings drama she'd prefer to avoid. Her friends are from every race, shape, gender, sexuality, and socio-economic background. She is socially aware, and though I pride myself (maybe too much - something I need to be aware of) and quick to march for social justice, to stand up against bullies, to protect, to listen, to be self aware and to stand firm on issues of race, gender, sexuality, immigration, and more. She is deeply compassionate, but her standing for these things comes from something bigger than compassion, it comes from understanding that these "others" are whole, that they are fully formed, beautiful, deserving, and that they don't need another white girl preaching at them how woke she is. She will, without one bit of doubt, make the world a better place. She draws people to her - she's not "popular" in the high school sense, she is just thoroughly herself, and she has friends who love her as she loves them, and she makes friendships with ease. These gifts will serve her for the rest of her life, and watching her in the world, I am so proud of her.

She is fastidious about some things, a slob about others. She loves to read and has stacks by her bed, but she too often falls into the phone-hole and forgets to read. She sleeps in until I start to wonder if this time she died - who can stay in bed until 3pm?!

She hates school. Though it has been true for years, her loathing of the academic system and the way she is told to learn is confusing to me, troubling, but I've come to terms with it as best I can. Maybe one day she'll change her mind, or maybe she won't. Until then, I'm waiting to see the path she chooses, and hope that a semester at community college with three classes instead of seven, on a schedule she chooses, will help her to fall in love with learning.

But she and I have found an easy banter. After 18 years of shared jokes, shared space, shared experiences, shared trauma (cancer then divorce was not in my life's plans, but there it is), we have found our way to each other.

Tessa is my favorite person on the earth, and I admire her. I stare at her beauty in wonderment: how can this lovely, ethereal yet sturdy, loud yet contemplative, young woman be my child? How is it that she is so ready to run out the door, not to the house down the street to play on the swingset, but instead to people, places, and homes where I have never been? To a home of her own, a future of her own making, where I am a side character and not in the middle?

The feelings that I had the day I first held her have only magnified. Through it all, I've grown to love her a little more each day, become yet more amazed that she is so whole, fully formed, and herself, and yet she came from me.

The next years will be painful and wonderful, and I guess that's all how it's supposed to be. She once lived inside me, where I shielded her from the world, nourished her, and whispered my love to her with every heartbeat. I have held her tiny body in my arms, protecting her smallness, reveling in her strength. I have watched her go into the world - from playdates, to school, to sleepovers, to jumping in cars with friends and driving away with a casual wave - and soon she will depart from me, leaving the sanctuary of the room down the hall from me where I can hear if she's coughing or ill, where I rap on the door "c'mon, you HAVE to get up or you'll be late!" and thousands of dinners at the little table for two in the kitchen (in equal amounts "oh this is good" and "do I have to eat this?"). There will be days (okay) or weeks (ouch) or months (unbearable) where we don't speak, instead of checking in with our plans via text all day, and shared meals at night, and weekend adventures and splitting the chores and collapsing on the twin sofas in the family room to watch a movie.

Right now, she's downstairs with a boy she likes, home from their date exploring the I.D., boba tea and Thai food in takeout containers, watching a movie together.; they brought me dinner too (a kindness). Every now and then I hear the wave of their voices in laughter or conversation, a murmuring like the ocean, no distinguishable words, just a soothing sound of contentment. I wonder if she will figure out how to fall in love and stay there before I will, and I'm half appalled and half excited by this idea. If I have to choose which one of us gets to fall in love, and it can't be both of us, I choose her. I think, despite all of my mistakes, she might get it right. But if she read this (and I will ask her to, and she will) she would smile and say, "You'll find him, Mom." She has faith in me when I lose faith in myself; in this way, we are the same, because she fears a future that feels filled with unknowns, and I am certain that she will find her way.

My daughter is an adult, wrapping up the final rituals of childhood: the prom dress is on order, the graduation gown is unfolded and hanging in the closet; graduation party invitations have been sent, and received. I'm equally thrilled and scared to witness her transform from child to woman. Her body is lithe and strong, her belly flat, her hair silky and thick, her face lovely. Her mind is sharp when she wants it to be. She is, in so many ways, beyond me.

And yet, she is mine, and I am hers, and I still have things to teach her, and things to learn from her.

When she was small, for many years I sent her to sleep each night with the words, "Of all the girls, in all the world, you belong to me, and I belong to you, and we belong together. I love you so much; thank you for being my daughter."

I don't know how I got so lucky. I'd live this strange, twisty, sometimes unhappy life of mine a thousand times over if it meant I got to be her mom every time. Letting go, and letting her find her way without me, makes me gasp - can I do it? But I will, because she deserves a mom who doesn't cling, and because she deserves to fly, and because I've been watching her grow her wings, and I won't be the one to clip them. I trust that she will keep coming back to me, looping over me like an eagle, riding the currents for the sheer joy of it, but coming down to alight and visit with me before she flies off to the next adventure. I believe that she feels our connection as deeply as I do.

Tessa is the thing that I am most sure of, even when I'm not sure at all. She is good, and true, and right, and she will soar to higher heights than I did, just as I have flown past where my mother could take me.

I'm so grateful that I get to be her mother, for now and for always, even when it's hard, even when she's turning into a woman whose job it is to leave me. She will be gone, but we will still be connected, and somehow, I know it's all going to be okay, and sometimes it will even be amazing.

Tessa Katherine, I love you. It's your turn to fly. Don't mind me as I tear up here on the ground; I've got some dust on my wings, and I might not be able to keep pace with you, but I've got some plans of my own for flying, and we're going to be okay. Better than okay: my love will hold you up when you feel too tired to go on, and the strength that you've given me will never leave me, either.

What a strange, marvelous time in the life of a mother and daughter. I can hardly bear it.

Thank you for being my daughter.

Best of intentions

 Well. Nothing according to plan - that's how much  or all of my life goes.

Daily writing?

Perhaps I should have said bimonthly writing?! Even so I'd have fallen behind...

And yet, here again. Again. Where I belong.

The plan

 My life very rarely goes to plan.

But I have a plan.

Today I sat down and wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and I'm not sure if what I have is beautiful or pure crap or somewhere bland in between place, but I have a breakdown of my book by chapter, and a list of characters and their traits and relationships. There are some missing pieces - okay, there are a LOT of missing pieces - but the bones are there, and I know that there is something.

Today I wrote over 2000 words in two hours. I'm not sure if it counts because it was outlining, but I think it counts. Figuring out the order is hard for me - telling the story is the fun part, but making sure that I have a story to tell is the hard part. It's taken me a couple of years in my head (playing with the ideas) to get to this point, but now I know I'm ready.

I can't wait to introduce the world to Mary. I think you're going to love her, I think she's going to make you cringe, and I think you're going to cheer for her anyway.

Back at it tomorrow. Tomorrow will be harder because I will teach all day, and still need to walk the dog and make dinner and do the laundry...

But I'll face that tomorrow. Today, I used up all my brainpower by writing, and it was a success. Hurrah!

Visions

 I have a vision that I'm really clear on.

I've had a few visions like these in my life: of being a mother, of becoming a teacher, of surviving cancer, of getting divorced. The vision is always a little fuzzy the way that dreams are always a little confusing, but the messages are clear. I must. I will. It feels like fate, like truth, like inevitability.

And I'm having a vision of being a writer.

My whole life, I thought I was doing everything wrong and that everyone except me had it figured out. I still feel like that most of the time. I keep returning back to the Mary Oliver line, ruminating after a day spent in the fields admiring nature, "Tell me, what else is should I have done?" Oliver is right. It was her destiny to stare at grasshoppers, not because to do so is delightful or restful or something, but because only she could capture it so perfectly that the first time I read her words tears sprang into my eyes, a mixture of gratitude for beauty and the clean pain of a wound that is healing.

I do not fit into the vision that the world creates for me every day.

I don't want to wear sexy high heels and bandage dresses and prove to anyone that I am sexy.

I don't want to be a teacher who grades until 2am because that is what she thinks dedication looks like.

I don't want to spend my Saturdays scrubbing out my house of every speck of dust.

I do not want to be with people who look like they belong in magazines, doing the right things and listening to the right music.

I want to stare out my front window, watching the birds in the bird feeder, playing with phrases in my mind. Might. Light. Nightlight. Mightlight. Might? Right? Rightmight? Might. Light.

I want to read books that I love, not books I'm supposed to love.

I want to play board games with my friends, and I want them to leave by 10pm because I'm tired and done at that hour, no matter how I might wish otherwise.

It is my destiny - as it is all of our destinies - to be myself. I'm still figuring that out, but I think - no, I know - that I'm supposed to be a writer.

I do best in fits and starts. I am not good at focusing for eight hours, twelve hours, grinding it out. I keep listening to Writer's Routine podcasts and I'm startled to hear real writers - successful writers, published writers, writers who make their living writing actual books! - say things like "I only have about two hours of productive writing in me each day." Now, of course there are a handful who write around the clock, but honestly, they sound relatively unhappy and obsessive (and like what I fear I have to be in order to be successful). No, so many of them say things like "I get up and walk the dog, and then I have a cup of tea, and then I dink around on the internet a bit, and then I am filled with self loathing for all I haven't done and then around 10am I finally kick into gear and write like mad until I'm hungry and have to stop for lunch" and the like.

In short, they are doing their thing and being good at it and accomplishing more than enough and making a living by BEHAVING THE WAY I ALWAYS FEARED WAS MY WEAKNESS.

When I work hard, I'm so "on" but I work in flashes. I burn bright and words tumble out of me and my mind is clear and sharp (even when it's messy) and then...it stops. When it stops I have always thought that meant that I was bereft of talent or enough desire or that I was broken in some way. And yet - here these real writers are, and the way they write is... the same way I write?

Some of them say things like "I'm done by noon, and then I walk the dog again and go to the shops and meet a friend and go to the gym..." and I think, "This is a version of life? Not because of sloth or lack, but because it is right and true?" Of course, many of these same folks also fight deadlines, and then they put in their long days and cancel engagements, and burn bright and long and tired...

Which is exactly how I have always done it.

I am not insane for the vision of the life that I have. Others are already living that life - ordinary people who found a way to be true to themselves, to tell their stories.

My vision is that I carve out this way of being for myself. That I stop running wild and anxious for what I haven't accomplished, and that I trust the process that I will do enough, that I will meet the deadline. That I can create a life with time to walk the dog, to be creative, to make my way with words, and to be enough.

My vision:

I write in the mornings. In the afternoons, I exercise, run errands, do podcasts, read, go to museums, connect with friends, volunteer at the food bank. I have time to make interesting healthy meals. I have time to date. I make more than "enough" and I have some ease (though not luxury). Sometimes I teach a semester or a quarter. Occasionally I substitute teach. Every few years I go on a book tour.

I believe in this. I know it's true. It's not a fantasy anymore, because I see it so clearly, in a way that I've seen only a handful of things in my life.

I'm not done teaching. Every day I teach, I learn. Every bit of it matters to me, and I'm proud of it. It will come to a natural end, and I hope that I neither leave it too soon nor too late.

The timeline isn't clear - this is a dreamlike state, but the vision, the feeling of the dream, is certain.

I'm ready to write, and the world is ready to read what I have to say.

I am.

 I have always wanted to be a writer. I know this, because I have always been a writer. I still remember a school assignment from around the second grade (grade two for my fellow Canadians) where we had to write a myth, and I wrote mine about how polar bears became white. I remember asking for extra pieces of paper, because I got lost in the process of writing and the story just flowed out of me, with twists and turns, and in the end I had to end it in a disappointing, sudden manner because I had to turn it in, but I felt like I could have gone on forever.

This taught me two things:

1. Brevity is not my strength; and

2. I am a writer.

I have spent the time since longing to be a writer, walking through bookstores in wonderment that behind every one of those spines was a person who was An Actual Writer who Had the Courage to Write.

But I've kept writing. Sometimes just in a little notebook, with snippets of ideas and words that call to me; sometimes in blogs (this is far from my first - I wrote my way through cancer, and then again through divorce); sometimes in email exchanges with friends (I'm talking to you, HCR); sometimes in stories that - usually at an inconvenient time when I am in the middle of something else or it's 10pm on a Tuesday - suddenly make themselves known to me and need to be written down right away, in that moment.

I have written terrible poetry, a range of essays, countless memoir pieces, and ramblings about the day to day of my life. I have written short stories, outlines for books, and one children's story. I have written in a dozen journals, filling their pages in illegible scrawl. I have written one note for publication in the NYT. I've put too much care into social media comments (before I abandoned all social media, recognizing that it was not the way I wanted to spend my life's energy).

Lately, I return over and over to the Anais Nin quote:

And finally, at long last, I think it's true.

I have spent 51 years dancing around the idea of being a real writer, the kind who actually shares her work with the world, the kind who gets paid, the kind who gets published. I have spent 51 years in longing, desperation, anonymity, ignoring every instinct that told me that this is what I was supposed to do.

Enough.

I might be nobody, it's true. But I don't think so. I think I'm somebody, and I think I have something to say, and I don't think I've wasted 51 years not doing the thing I long to do - I think I've spent 51 years getting ready for this moment.

I've read that Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks. It's so easy to reduce her brilliance into the stroke of genius that allows such a book to flow from her in less than two months, but I'd say that it took her entire life to write that book, and that what was inside of her all along bubbled out in seven weeks.

I have some ideas that have been inside me my whole life about what it means to be a woman, about how we choose right and wrong, about how to be cruel and how to be kind, about doing things our own way, despite it all. I've started writing them down in a book tentatively titled Might. (I love the double meanings of words - there is the might that is power, and there is the might that is possibility. We have all heard that might makes right, but I want to believe that it is our inherent possibility that makes right, not our wild fight to overtake another person with power.)

Not "I might write" but "I am filled with might."

I have frittered away so much time being afraid, and listening to the voices that cried "mend my life" (Oliver) instead of mending my own life.

In order for me to be whole, and heal, and live up to the potential and power of my own life, I must write, and I must be brave, and I must be willing to share how inept I am in addition to how vastly powerful and wise I am, one after the other, and both tangled together.

It's time.

I'm terrified - not that I will write garbage, but that I will not follow through. I have the insane, wonderful, exhilarating hubris that I actually have something to say, and an interesting take on new and old ideas, that - should I ever put them down, and organize them, and take the time - the world will want to read them.

I am putting myself on notice. It's time.

How will I do it? It is one thing to have will, another to have a plan. Do I have a plan?

***

1. Goodbye, television.

2. Remove the NYT from my phone. (So many articles, so little time. I love reading the news, it makes me feel smart and up to date. But the world will not suffer if I'm less well informed, and the hours I waste are quite extraordinary.)

3. Refuse to sleep before I write. I say this rather than "get up at 5am to write" or "write before bed" because I know myself too well. Some days I awaken with an idea, and other times it isn't until it's dark that I figure it out.

4. My goal is 5000 words a week. This is modest - I hope to do more.

***

I have squandered quarantine. I have fallen into sloth and television and staring out the window, dreaming without doing, and I could have written multiple books by now - after all, what else is there to do?! But to say so is also false. I did what I could do when I did it. It's not time to beat myself up, to chastise the me that came before and tell her all the things she did wrong. (I'm good at that - it's time to build a different skill.) Now it's time to be who I've always wanted to be, who I've always been capable of being, who I've always been. Now it's time to put on the outside what has always been on the inside.

Statistically, I will fail. Nobody makes any money as a writer, they say. It's an unstable profession, they say. It's a cute hobby, they say.

Well, screw that.

Bookstores are filled with books from authors who published them.

Everyone can name countless people who make a living writing books.

Lately I read a few books and thought "good grief I can do better than this!" and these are by successful authors.

The statistics area always a lie. They aren't about the individual.

I am ready to tell my truth, and to trust that the world is ready for it. I am ready to find success. My goal is to have something ready to send to publishers before school returns in August, about a half a year, maybe less. This is both an eternity from now and a blink, but I think it's enough. I am not trying to write a book in six months, I'm trying to finish the book that I've been writing on for over 51 years.

It's time.

***

I plan to use this blog to document my process, to tell the story of telling my story. This space will be my warmup, my accountability, and the account of my struggles and strategies and successes.

I'm ready. I'm stiff from being curled into a tight knot, protecting my soft middle. I'd rather fail than not try...but I know, deep within, that I'm not going to fail. This is faith, and it is bigger than my fear.

I am a writer.

How much do you love me?

Growing up, I learned that the way to survive was to praise my father.

But it wasn't enough.

I could say the right words, but he wanted me to believe them. He wanted me not only to walk the party line, to show respect, to do as I was told, but most of all he wanted me to BELIEVE.

He didn't just want me to believe in him - a common enough occurrence, I'm a parent and I certainly like it when my daughter agrees with me or approve of me - he wanted me to truly like the things he liked, approve of the things he approved of, hate the things he hated. Anything less sent him into a rage, or a cold shoulder, or otherwise made my life difficult. He wanted full agreement and adoration.

When I was young, if I wanted something - clothing, toys, activities - that he didn't like, he told me I was stupid. Simple enough. Because of his German upbringing, some of his insults were in German - dummkopf and schweinhund were the two most popular ones. (They translate to "dumb head" and "pig dog" for those not versed in German insults.) It wasn't enough to do more chores, I was supposed to be grateful to do them. If he wanted something, I needed to be happy about it.

There were other insults, too, mostly about intelligence. When I disagreed, protested, or simply said something that he didn't agree with, he told me I was stupid, a cretin, a moron. "Idiot" was common, and I don't remember him telling me that he loved me, but I do recall his shouted "What's the matter with you?" or "What the hell is wrong with you?" as the most common refrain. Disagreement was a sign of lack of intelligence - choosing the wrong item on a menu, or dressing wrong, or liking the wrong movies were all cause for insult.

When I grew up, I got away. Not far away, just across town, but enough. I fought for an education, a career, a life. I carved out a little space for myself in the world, and demonstrated responsibility. I paid my bills, volunteered, held good jobs. I found community. It made me braver. I started to see that other families weren't like mine, and that I wasn't bad for wanting my own opinions, I was normal. My mind was blown. When I watched a friend tease a parent, I cringed, thinking "oh no here we go" and bracing for shouting or worse; when the parent merely laughed I was stunned. I started to learn that it was their version, not mine, that was normal.

(On one occasion when I was eight or nine, my father really gave me a take-down and called me names, and I cried. Perhaps feeling some remorse, he told me that he was just teasing, and I should know the joke. Days thereafter, with this new understanding, he dropped something and I teased him. I can still feel the sensation of his large hand impacting with my face, furious with me. "Teasing" was one directional. Message received.)

Distance made me bolder, and safer. I was a grown women, not beholden to my family. I tried to be a good daughter, but to live my own life. I didn't push back against my family, I just tried not to engage.

Not engaging is not possible.

My father can bear no disagreement, no difference. Every time I chose something different than him - the kind of car I drive (foreign, not domestic), the kind of food I eat (organic, from a wide variety of cultures), the kind of books I read (I read!)...all of it was, to him, not a choice made by a grown woman, but an indictment of his choices.

Sometimes I argued. Of course, that didn't go well. I learned to mostly keep it to myself, to mute myself. But I stepped on landmines anyway.

One Christmas a few years ago, I checked in cheerfully - despite the stress of being in my parents' home - to see which dishes I should bring for the meal. I cook a lot, and enjoy holiday cooking (as do many people). My father said, "We're getting everything pre-made at Costco this year. Don't bring anything, it's all taken care of." I told him I was looking forward to the meal, but that I also enjoyed home cooked food, so I'd supplement with a couple ideas (a home made pie, etc.). He said "No! I told you, we will have it all!" I calmly explained that I liked preparing home made food at the holidays, that it was important to me, and that I prefer home made food, but he didn't need to eat it of course." That wasn't good enough. Not only did he forbid me from bringing anything for myself or to share, he was incredibly angry that I wanted to do so. There was shouting, and actual rage, and demeaning, and questioning my integrity...because I wanted to bake a pie to eat at Christmas. I sucked it up and gave up my hope for good food.

Disappointed, I came to the meal anyway. It was all processed food from boxes and plastic containers; the gravy came in a can. I found it unpalatable and disappointing, but I didn't say so. My father was not satisfied with my cheerful company, or with the fact that he'd won (the food on the table was of his choosing). He wanted me to say that I was wrong, that I loved the Costco food, that it was better than what I would have brought, that it was preferable, that he was right all along. He wanted me to apologize for offering to bring food. My attempts at diplomacy ("I'm just glad to be here with my family" and "it's so generous of you to provide everything") were not enough. He needed me to recant on my wishes, to deny them, to tell him that I should have known better, that his food was the best in the whole world. He brought it up over, and over, and over, souring the holiday. I had to choose between placating him and being honest. (I was distant, honest...until I declared a headache that made me need to leave.)

I have dozens of examples like this. It is crazy making. It isn't enough to say "We can agree to disagree" or to say "thank you" or to say "this tastes good" he needs to know that he was right, that I was wrong, and that even the idea of disagreement was a mistake.

It wasn't about the food. It was all about his insatiable desire to be The Best, to be Right, to be Adored. His version of adoration leaves no room for difference. 

I have all kinds of theories about why it is that way. I think that when I disagreed, it triggered all of his senses of not being enough, of not being loved, of not being appreciated or understood. It triggered his own power dynamics with his own parents. It made him feel insecure, and small, and scared.

And so, like narcissists everywhere, he responded with anger, attempts to control.

And worst of all? I couldn't use logic, truth, or reason. I couldn't change the conversation, flatter about something else, set a boundary, use counter-facts, or point out that arguing about mashed potatoes was silly and we could just let it go.

"Let it go" is not in his vocabulary.

Living like that for my entire life changed me. I became an expert at dodging, both in and out of conversation. I became an expert at finding the compliment and amplifying it. I became an expert at anticipating needs and meeting them. I became an expert at smoothing things over.

But it was never enough.

Imagine, if you can, what it's like to invoke someone's rage over a disagreement over home made vs. store bought mashed potatoes. Imagine what it's like when more important topics come up. I hope you can't imagine it. I hope this feels a little other-worldly to you. If you can understand, empathize, then I'm sorry. Sorry for both of us.

Right now, our nation is arguing with Donald Trump, not about mashed potatoes at the holiday table, but about democracy. He cannot hear anything other than what he wants to hear. Any pleading, any attempts at logic, will fall on deaf ears. Worse, like gremlins, the truth is like water, and when wet with truth, Trump will double down, over and over, exponentially, his rage increasing.

I'm sure it's because his father was an asshole and that he doesn't feel loved, and that he has a giant gaping hole inside that makes him feel like he's dying and that only pure loyalty, respect, love, and adoration can make him survive. I'm sure of these things, because I grew up with them. If you don't believe me, just look at his behavior, just listen to what he says, how he behaves. He cannot abide anything but reverence - anything less than being treated as a god causes him to lash out. I almost feel sorry for him.

But I know that we're in such a dangerous time that even my sympathy for his unmet needs is dangerous, and that if he could, he'd manipulate that sympathy, too, which he sees as a sign of weakness. Incapable of understanding another viewpoint, because it would mean possibly understanding that he did not know everything, that he was fallible. He can't be fallible, he has to be perfect, or his whole world view crumbles. He will fight with any means possible to make sure that doesn't happen. If a narcissist sees sympathy, compassion, or kindness, they see it as proof of another's weakness.

The most dangerous time in an abused woman's life is the time that she decides to leave her abuser.

I escaped my family in degrees - by going to college, by moving across town, by choosing my own path, and creating a series of boundaries every time. But in the end, my parents rejected me. I crossed the line by saying something they didn't like, and unlike in healthy families, they couldn't talk about it, negotiate, ask questions, or let it go. Instead, my father screamed at me, and told me he was ashamed of me, and that was that.

It is one of the hardest things I've ever gone through, and it still impacts me. But mostly, it was a gift. Holding my breath all the time, trying to please someone unpleasable while still remaining true to myself, was impossible, and it hurt. I don't do that anymore. I still hurt, but so much less. Who knew that the amputation could save my life? I miss the limb - how is it that I do not have a family, though they live? - but I value my life more than the limb.

But America will have to fight harder than I did. My father is not in the public eye: for him, having the last word and declaring me persona non grata is enough for him. But Trump will not stop there. He will go to any length - and based on the attempted coup in our Capitol, "anything" could be ANYTHING. Based on chants of "Hang Pence" and the President encouraging an angry mob... I shudder to think of what could come next. I couldn't imagine a coup in our halls of democracy, and yet here we are.

America is trying to leave her abuser. and she's in grave danger. With pursuit of facts, we might win. I fear we will lose a limb, too, and I'm scared about what that looks like.

But if an abuser says "How much do you love me?"  and demands 100% fealty, there is no room for anything other than godlike adoration, and we will fall short. Trump needs perfect love, and we will never be able to give it to him.

Some women are killed by their abusers as they try to leave. It seems to me that is happening to us now. It's really, really easy to back down, to try to soothe it, to hope for peace. But women DO leave without dying. Not all of them, but some of them. He might try to kill - but he won't always succeed.

But my experience, with 51 years of trying to figure out how to please someone who can't be pleased because he's hurting too much to see past his own nose, I have this advice.

Pack your bags. Have a plan. Gather your friends. Practice self care. Get a therapist. Be prepared for shouting, rage, and horrible, horrible, horrible words that will wound you in places that you did not know that you could be wounded. But - take the leap.

Being with an abusive person, whether that is a boss, a spouse, or a partner, infiltrates every minute of your life, when you're with that person or far away. But you need to get out. At first, it hurts all over, but once you realize that you're out, the relief is indescribable.

America is in an abusive relationship, and that relationship is ending. Hang in there, grit your teeth, cry, and scream at the unfairness of it all.

But when the abuser asks, "How much do you love me?" no answer will ever be good enough. You can't be good enough, you can't say the right thing, you can't make them feel good about themselves to help them to see reason and behave.

So you get out.

Surviving

 As a former breast cancer patient, I'm often referred to as a survivor. When I tell people that I've been through cancer, their first words are often "I'm sorry" (what - were you responsible?) or "Congratulations." I recognize that the former is a polite way of saying "I wish that didn't happen to you" but the latter is said as - as what? Acknowledgment that I am not dead? Proof of something about me, maybe that my cancer wasn't that bad after all, or that I fought valiantly, or something else? Other occasions where we say "congratulations" include graduations, promotions, bringing new life into the world, summiting the mountain, writing the book, winning the lottery. Perhaps people are right to say "congratulations" not for any of the former reasons except the last. I know plenty of extraordinary women (I'm thinking of Lisa and Casey right now, more than any other, but there are so many more) who fought valiantly, had an incredible attitude, did whatever it took, and died anyway. It is not because they were less deserving of life than me - to the contrary, I feel the weight of knowing that I lived, while they did not, and I wonder if I'm doing what it takes to live up to their lost legacies - it is because I had the strange and extraordinary luck to win the lottery of life over death (so far).

Surviving, I can tell you, is a mystery.

I fought harder than just about anyone to stay alive, it's true. I took all the drugs, refused to give up when the side effects crippled me (this is not an exaggeration - thanks Femara and Aromasin).When I got third degree burns in radiation that made my radiation oncologist literally gasp at the sight and say "we're done!" I begged to continue through the pain, the ooze, the skin falling off. (Sorry not sorry. You probably didn't expect to read such a ghastly vision when you started reading this, but the truth is that those pink ribbons hide an awful lots of hideous horror.)

I survived.

But I know women who shrugged off their treatments - one who said "I don't like how the pills make me not care about sex; life is too short, so I want to enjoy sex with my husband" and despite her dire prognosis (much worse than mine) she stopped treatment, and, to the best of my knowledge, is still alive and well today. I know women (including ones I only know as an online celelbrity, like Kris Carr) who decided that conventional medicine was Bad with a capital B and went all juices and clean mountain air, and remain alive. I know many more women who made those choices and died. And yet - so many of us live, and we are declared "victors" in the "fight" who have "won" the "battle" and we gain respect and admiration from friends and strangers who applaud us for this accomplishment.

But I don't know how I lived, only that I did. How does a lottery winner win? They play the losing game, but then they get lucky. There are no magic numbers, no systems for bucking the rules - there are just some lucky winners.

But make no mistake: my confusion over the way survivors are lauded in no way negates the way that I feel about having made it fifteen years past the diagnosis that I feared would kill me. I shake my head in wonder sometimes that I get to do magical things like get mad at my teenager for not completing an assignment; or mowing the lawn; or reading a book. When I stand at the edge of the ocean and smell the waves, eyes closed to take in the sounds, scents, sensations - I still think "I nearly missed all of this, and I'm here" and it is so overwhelmingly beautiful that I think about doing a little Sound of Music twirling. (Sometimes, if nobody is around, maybe I do.)

Surviving is confusing, but it's the most beautiful thing there is. I can't explain to you what it feels like, but maybe you know: most of us have had near misses in car accidents, or fevers, or cancer, or appendicitis, or any of a thousand things that nearly kill us. But if you are one of the Really Really Lucky Ones who never had it all go upside down and then had to fight to keep your breath, what I will say is this:

I'm convinced that the depth of my sorrow and loss is only matched by the new heights of my joy.

I feel things more now. Ordinary things aren't ordinary when you think that you might have never seen them again. I understand why people sometimes kiss the ground when they arrive at their destinations, why they burst into tears upon hearing the good news.

It took me years and years to understand it myself, but as awful, painful, and impacting the cancer diagnosis and treatment was on my life, and as much I never ever want to go back and relive it, or, even worse, experience it again in the future (oh please God no, please), I am strangely grateful that it shaped me the way it did, and I like myself more for having handled it to the best of my ability.

My life changed for the better because of the combination of getting cancer and surviving it. I feel more joy, I know what matters to me, and I'm less afraid. (I've done things that would make a lot of people weep. I found my way, often with weeping, but often without. I might be the strongest person you know. Knowing that strength makes me less afraid.)

Which leads us - so much rambling, congratulations if you've made it this far - to the present.

If you're reading this, you and I both survived 2021.

***

First, let's talk about the 350,000 or so Americans who have died from COVID19, and because we know that the world is made up of many places and not just America, let's talk about the over 1.4 million people worldwide (as of November 27) who have died, and the millions and millions of people who are still fighting to regain their lives as a result of the virus. I cannot fathom numbers like that, and when I try to do so it makes my chest squeeze in an alarming way. As they keep saying, "all those empty chairs at the table" and I'm thinking of mothers mourning children, and children mourning grandparents, and new brides made new widows, and it's all unbearable.

I've been careful, and I'm not in a high risk category if I do get it, but we all know that some of it comes down to luck, good or bad. I am healthy, and I do not take that for granted for one second. Perhaps you are lucky, too. So here we are, alive. I know very few people who have actually been diagnosed with COVID, and since I'm white, educated, middle class, and in a state (and on the side of the state) that values wearing masks and distancing and has closed restaurant dining and gyms and theaters so that even those who wish to cannot go indoors and breathe on someone else... so I'm lucky. (In case you've been living under a rock or avoiding the news, I'll explain my white comment. Black and Brown people are much more likely to die of COVID. They are much more likely to get deeply ill. They are much more likely to receive subpar care. This is fact, not opinion, and if you disagree with me please do your research. It is tied to income, but not a result of income: low income folks in general do worse with everything, but low income people of color do MUCH worse. This is horrible, and not the point of this post, but needs saying as often as possible so that people do something about it.)

So, I'm lucky again.

I'm also lucky that my job moved online and I was able to work from home. Teaching online is SO DAMN HARD: the tricks up my sleeve don't work half as well online, and while my students assure me that my class is doing better than some and as well as can be hoped, we all know that people just don't learn as well online, and it makes my job frustrating and confusing. My eyes ache from staring at a screen, I feel ineffective a great deal of the time, and I fear that I'm not giving my students what they need, and my motivation is lower than ever because of all of these difficulties. But I'm grateful every minute, because my difficulties are NOTHING compared to some. I have a warm, safe, comfortable home with a quiet space to work. I didn't lose income (well, except child support, because my daughter's father is unemployed in the pandemic). I have medical benefits in case I do get sick.

So. I know that businesses have closed left and right, that so many are unemployed, that so many are sick, that so many have died. I know these things, feel them until my body tightens with the pain of it all, the immensity, the powerlessness.

But I want to talk to you about survival.

If you are reading this, whether you are ill, or you are unemployed, or you are as lucky as I am, you are reading this. You have survived 2020, for better or worse.

With survival comes joy - who among us wasn't relieved to see the clock hit midnight, hoping that the worst was behind us?

But now comes the business of making it all mean something.

Most people who win the lottery squander it. By the time they're done, they've lost friends and family, spent great quantities of money, and seem no happier than when they started it.

So - surviving cancer is like winning the lottery. I got a rush of love and gratitude that was intoxicating every time I got an "all clear" scan, and on every birthday, every life event, every holiday, and watching my daughter turn from a tiny toddler (she was two when I was diagnosed) to a beautiful woman makes me well up with wonder and thankfulness. One of my many doctors - this one was supposed to put me together physically after cancer - saw how I was embracing life so thoroughly and with such joy and gratitude after I was done with the worst surgeries, chemo, and radiation, and he sat me down and said, "This phase you are in will pass. These wonderful feelings you have now will one day be replaced with more ordinary feelings; the initial rush of being alive will fade. My advice to you is to find new habits, new ways of living, while you have the energy and focus to do so."

It was the best advice that I received about surviving.

With surviving, comes some responsibility, to ourselves and to others. To ourselves, to make good of the life that we did not earn - we won the life lottery, and we're alive, when the disease that tried to kill us allowed us to escape, but some of our friends are dead from that same disease. We owe it to ourselves to live our best life, because if this isn't a wakeup call, then what is? We owe it to ourselves to care for our health: as I like to say, I didn't survive cancer to be taken down by a heart attack. It is a time to add vegetables and fruits, to go for daily walks, to meditate or do yoga. We owe it to ourselves to heed the call of our bodies to stay alive, and to do what it takes.

And, knowing how close we came to nearly losing it all, we owe it to ourselves to not merely stay alive but to really live. I'm not kidding when I talk about that Sound of Music moment that I have, with some regularity, at the edge of the small beach closest to my house. I walk the dog there, and I stand on a log, and I wonder how I ever got so lucky. I never, ever walk by without taking a moment to really take it in, to feel deep in my bones how fortunate I am. This translates to a lot of things: to time visiting with a dear friend, to camping trips, to a really good song on the radio on the commute, to shared jokes, to good food. It means stooping to look at a flower or to hunt for four leaf clovers, delighting in a favorite coffee mug. Little stuff adds up.

And there is the big stuff, too. If I had died, I would have missed so much that I long to do. I wouldn't have been there to tuck my daughter into bed at night, so for years afterwards I felt such tenderness in our nighttime ritual that I felt like I was floating. And I realized that my marriage, the shape and size of it, did not fit me at all, that I couldn't breathe within it, and so I found the courage to leave. I found meaningful work. Little things, and big things.

And with every breath I remember how lucky I am to be here at all, that some of my cancer friends weren't so lucky, and that I could have been them.

Dr. Zucker gave me a poem that I treasure to this day, Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.

Before you know what kindness really is,

you must lose things, 

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth...

So here we are, at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, and we survived. We have lost things. We've been stuck inside, and we've missed celebrations and hugs and the small joys of visiting in coffee shops and popping our heads into a colleague's office. We've lived with fear, and moist masks, and isolation, and economic worry. We've lost a lot of the joy of our jobs, missing handshakes and genuine laughter and bagels for everyone in the break room. We've missed game nights, dinner parties, concerts, and plays. We've been cooped up, alone or with those we love, crabby at our confinement.

And the end is in sight.

Soon, in a few months or a year, we will all be vaccinated, and we will slip back into something closer to normal life (albeit possibly with modifications). We will once again have to pretend to pay attention in the meeting instead of turning off our cameras and checking our phones or painting our nails through our boredom. We will be saddled with traffic jams, and slow waiters, and overpriced movies. We have all come through such hard times, and we have survived.

But as we look at our survival, we need to decide now how we're going to shape that survival. We are here, so we are lucky. (Maybe you are luckier than me, with a loving family and spouse and adequate savings. Maybe you are less lucky than me, without a beloved child or a comfortable home or work that is meaningful to you. This is not about ranking our luck: if we are alive, we are in luck.)

What will we do with our fortune? What lessons will we learn? Will we remember forever that to hug a friend is a joy, or will we let it slip away? Will we hold the dinner parties, or will we complain about how much work it is to clean the bathrooms and get the food prepared? Will we spring for the concert tickets? Will we remember the lessons about what we felt like we might lose forever, and live in gratitude moving forward?

I'll be honest. Five years after cancer, it was a lot easier to remember the gratitude, because regular doctor visits were reminders that I was not "normal" and that it could still all vanish in an instant. Fifteen years later, it is my habits - a gift from Dr. Zucker's reminders - that keep my gratitude alive. I have wired my brain to notice the sunsets, the sparkle of the rain, the smile of a friend. This summer, one of my favorite moments was drifting on the waves on a child's floatie (mine was a ring with a mermaid tail) next to my dear friend, who drifted on her own floatie (shaped, according to the package, like a "realistic lobster"). It was hilarious. The water was cold, the day was hot, the waves washed us - inept because were couldn't get our balance on the floaties - onto the sand and then soaked us. We are middle aged women, not playful children or flirty teens, and I laughed until it hurt. My friend - perhaps smarter than me - knew to say "yes" to my crazy idea of floating along the beach on children's toys, just for the fun of it. But for me, it was part of my commitment to simple pleasures available for the taking. The chores were done (enough). My daughter didn't need me (just then). The day was sunny. My friend was willing. I chose life.

So, we have survived. 2020 is gone, and the old calendar recycled, the new one freshly pinned to the wall. We all get to decide who we will be in 2021.

Who will I be? Will I remember, a year from now or twenty years from now, how I longed to go to book talks and art walks and happy hours? Will I take the appreciation of filling my table with my people with me into the future? Or will I fall back into old ways, taking for granted so much of my life?

With surviving comes responsibility. 1.4 million people have died so far, and won't get to make these choices. What, I wonder, do they wish they had done before they died? How many of them died content with their choices? What would they do differently if they had to do it all over again?

If I live my life the way I want to, then I honor those who did not survive.

I'm a survivor. Now I need to figure out what to do with that! I have some ideas - do you?