New Ideas

 I love the rituals of the seasons. I throw myself into pumpkins and cinnamon and knee high brown boots and orange scarves in the fall; the day after Thanksgiving I wrap my rooms in garlands and lights and ornaments and nutcrackers. In the summer I love to wear big floppy hats and gauzy swim cover ups and flip flops while I picnic on a beach.

And in the week after Christmas, I dream, I vision, I plot, I ponder.

This year, the heavy emphasis is on plot. I'm writing 1000 words a day. I've already started, because the stories that were inside me when I was born have been developing my whole life, and at long last, I'm not afraid to tell them. I'm not afraid of the critics, I'm not afraid that I'm stupid, I'm not afraid that what I say won't be read by anyone.

I'm not afraid.

This year, I'm writing my book. I'm on my way, sure of it, grateful. The words are spilling out of me. I love my characters, even my antagonist, who I once thought only filled with hate.

I am becoming (thanks, Michelle Obama) the person I was always supposed to be. At 51, it's better late than never, but I feel a young woman's excitement. I'm standing up a little taller, telling my friends, giggling and giddy. I'm a writer. Now I'm a writer for real, because I'm writing. I cannot control the future and I cannot force a publisher to like what I say, but I know this: I'm writing it anyway. I am convinced that I have something to say that the world needs to hear, and that the world will want to share. That is enough.

***

One thing that I am not doing this year is plotting my weight, my wardrobe, my clothing size. I have no plans to tone my arms, to reduce my belly fat, or to eat ten fruits and vegetables daily. I am not re-joining Weight Watchers (though I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered it). I am not stepping on the scale and measuring my worth by what that number tells me.

Is this because I've achieved perfection? Is this because my waist is trim, my buttocks and thighs smooth, my arms strong?

No.

This is because I have spent too much time in my life worrying about how I looked, and feeling like I wasn't good enough. I've hidden behind drab clothing when I was bigger, and I've strutted like a peacock (but not a peahen) when I was smaller, but I have felt judged, for better or for worse, by my weight, and I'm done with that.

I like who I am becoming, and my body has carried me this far. It has carried me over mountains, and into lakes and oceans; it has birthed a child, it has held lovers. It has stood up to a grizzly, and to an abuser who was threatening his wife and children with a gun and his rage. It has fought cancer, and cancer treatment, and anaphylaxis, and surgeries gone wrong. It is covered with scars that are ugly yet beautiful. Ugly because they replaced something smooth and clean with ragged and jagged; insanely beautiful because they are marks of my survival.

So this year, for new year's, I vow to love my body. I will continue trying to take care of it - I just got back from a wonderful four mile walk with Chance - because I really do feel better when I eat fruits and veggies, and because when I get outside my soul breathes easier, and because I want to live a long life. But I am not convinced that trying to twist my body into a shape that doesn't quite work, and requires constant vigilance, is right for me.

My energy is going to be spent on loving myself, not chastising myself. This is new.

I am not conventionally beautiful. I was not granted supermodel looks through the genetic lottery; I suppose in that way I am quite ordinary.

But I know how to be beautiful.

I am beautiful when I shriek as I jump into an alpine lake, eyes lit up with excitement and the thrill. I'm beautiful when I help a student to work through a problem, to see themself as whole and good. I'm beautiful when I tell the truth. And sometimes, I'm beautiful when I'm paddle boarding, or when I wear a particular dress and heels.

When I'm living my best life, my eyes light up and shine, and some see me as beautiful because they long for the light.

When I'm tugging at my sweater, holding my belly in, and marking down every bite, I'm not beautiful, and I'm not whole, and it takes so much damn energy that I forget how to focus on the things that matter.

***

This year, I am writing a book, and I am focusing all my energy on the ideas I'm trying to express, and on being the writer that I have always been. I accept my body, and I will treat it well, but this is not a year to focus on a marathon or a goal weight. I will walk, or run. I will do yoga, or paddle board, or hike, or snowshoe. I will eat salads, but also pasta.

This is my way of saying that I'm worth it.

This is my declaration to myself that I do not have to change in order to be worthy. I do not have to become something new, or turn everything upside down or inside out in order to be good.

I'm good.

My sheets are in the wash, the fridge is full of good vegetarian food (because we've been playing at vegetarian for a few months, having meat only rarely, and it actually feels great). I have a stack of books to read. I canceled the Hallmark Movies Now subscription, because it was a good way to rest at the beginning of break, but I'm done with it now.

2020 was hard, but it wasn't all bad for me. I slowed down enough to remember some things I really care about. I fell in love with my home all over again. I got unexpected time with Tessa. I missed my friends, but I also connected with them. I wrote.

I have been hoping to fall in love for years now, and it hasn't happened at all the way I'd hoped it would: I am quite, quite single. But now it seems right that it should be so. There is a thing I haven't done, because I told myself I wasn't good enough, and "not good enough" is not good partner material (how I would loathe a relationship with a man who walked through the world believing that about himself).

This year, I'm falling back in love with myself. Not with caveats, but with tenderness.

I'm a writer. I have something to say. I'm not afraid of putting my stories out there, because I know they have worth. I know I have worth. I'm not afraid to pursue my dreams, and when success comes, I won't be afraid of it. When someone says that I am a late bloomer, I will smile at them and shake my head "no" because I've blossomed many times before; this is just a new kind of bloom. Some will think that this is sudden, but not those who have really known me. I've been working on this my whole life, in one way or another, turning the words over in my head, on scraps of paper, on pixels. The only difference now is that I'm ready.

Welcome, 2021. I've been waiting for you, and I'm ready. Happy new year!

Fear

I've always loved the Anais Nin quote:

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“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Today, I'm looking at it differently. I think this quote is about how fear controls us.

Being the eternal optimist, I've always viewed this quote as the hopeful possibility of the future: the potential that lies within all of us. But today, I'm thinking about how the flip side of that possibility is how we let fear become our driving factor, and how we can choose fear because the fear is more comfortable - painful that it may be - than the risk of stepping outside of fear. It occurs to me with some shock that we can choose the comfort of our fear. The comfort of our fear? Isn't fear uncomfortable? Isn't fear the enemy?

Maybe. But we can grow comfortable with the monster we know, and more afraid of the monster that we don't. We can choose to stay where we are because the fear we know is manageable in some way, and we embrace how scared we are because we're used to it.

I'm experiencing this in three new ways right now:

1) I have been really scared to tell my family story in a meaningful way. While I am crystal clear on my position around my family's Nazi past, I had chosen to stay small with it. I knew that my story was worth telling, but I also feared the repercussions of telling it. I was choosing to stay small. Well, last week I chose to tell it as boldly as I knew how, and I burst through that fear.

2) I have wanted to be a writer ever since I was a little girl, and I have feared that I wasn't good enough or that only "fancy people" could be writers and I was too ordinary or weird and that I could never be a real writer. But this year, I vowed that despite my weirdness or my ordinariness, I'd put myself out there and share what I had to say in an intentional way, and that I could accept if people loved it or hated it, but I had to try anyway.

3) I have a beloved friendship that has spanned many years, but I haven't established healthy boundaries; when things have been uncomfortable, I've chosen to stay quiet. Recently, I set a firm boundary with this friend - and my fears came true. They (I'm not going to reveal their gender as part of anonymity) were angry, hurt, and completely withdrew from me. Two things instantly became clear to me: 1) my fears were founded, and that is why I had not established and maintained healthy boundaries; and 2) I am not who I was, and I am okay despite my friend's reaction.

In all three cases, I've been living smaller than I should have been.

I'm not surprised that in the space of a week all of these things happened. I think that I'm ready, and that I've been setting myself up for growth for a long time, and now the seeds that I've planted are growing.

I grew up in fear that if my parents knew who I really was, they wouldn't love me. It was made clear to me that when I stepped outside of family traditions (gender roles, established patterns, political and religious views, etc.) that I was deviant, unacceptable, mistaken, or just plain stupid. While I've been battling that my whole life (the confines never fit me properly, and I struggled against them), it wasn't until three years ago when my father laid it all out for me that I knew that the line had been crossed - that I did indeed have a boundary, and I'd just discovered it. It's funny that he rejected me, but that was the first time I felt free to say "No."

In the three years since, I've done plenty of reflecting (and therapy) and reading around boundaries, relationships, and why I have the thought patterns that I do, and where those thought patterns serve me and don't serve me. I think I've grown more in three years than I'd grown in the 47 years that came before.

So now that growth is building within me, and I'm not the person I was before. The growth has come with strength: I am much clearer about what I want, what I can tolerate, and what I cannot tolerate. I'm much more clear on what makes me happy, and who I am and who I wish to be (and the overlap between these two is much bigger than it was three years ago).

I made a decision to write; I chose to write about my family history. I am strong enough to weather the consequences - if people resonate with my story, or ignore it, it's okay. If my perspective is flawed, I'm willing to listen. If I have wisdom to offer, I'm willing to own it. My fear, which had been holding me back, suddenly seemed small compared to my desire to be my whole self, to share my truth, and to explore the big world to see what was available to me.

I wasn't consciously thinking about my friendship with X. or how that friendship needed to grow with me. The friendship has many beautiful qualities, and I treasure that friendship genuinely. I see the goodness in X. I also am a different size and shape than I was when the friendship started, but in many ways the friendship hasn't changed shape, and so suddenly I am awoken to the realization that I am uncomfortable, so I said, "I'm uncomfortable, and I need to enforce this boundary, which is about me, not you." X. was hurt and insulted. I looked at my heart, my boundary, my intention. I said, "I do not want to hurt or insult you. This is what I need. I still care about you." I don't know what will happen next, but I know that X. has the right to end the friendship, to refuse to honor my boundary, or to accept my boundary. I am not in charge of X.'s decisions, but I'm not afraid of them. I am at peace with me. I hope that X. and I can remain close, but if we can't, I can accept that too, because I can honor myself as much as I honor our friendship, and because I'm not in charge of other peoples' behavior.

I've never thought of myself as a particularly fearful person. At 22 I traveled Europe alone with a backpack and a Eurorail pass, and found that my spirit was adventuresome. I fought the confines of my family's expectations for me, and created a life of my own. I backpack in bear country. I had the courage to get divorced, I had the courage to change careers. I have faced chemo, radiation, and so many surgeries. I thought I wasn't fearful. People have told me for years how brave I am, and I thought I believed them.

But there are layers to people, and my brave exterior hid an interior that was shaking, frightened, and lately I decided that I was sick of it, that it was time to get real. Pretending to be brave, or being brave only some of the time, no longer serves me.

So here I am, with a clarity that I've never felt before.

Buds are beautiful - they are symbols of hope. But I long to burst into full bloom, to explode with color and gorgeous fragrance and the luxurious velvet of petals. I long for the honeybee to pause, to gorge itself with sticky sweet pollen, to rest on me.

I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid that I will not be beautiful enough, that nobody will enjoy my fragrance. I suddenly that bees love all blossoms, and that my destiny was always to blossom, whether I am the kind of flower that people notice with awe, or whether I am a dandelion in the lawn. I don't know yet what my bloom will look like, but I want to know, and I'm willing to try, because the bud is too small and I can't move and it feels tight and painful. If I'm a dandelion, I hope a child clutches me and presents me as a gift to someone loved. If I'm a rose, I hope that a painter captures my elegance for all time. If I'm a wildflower I hope that the breeze caresses me and that the mountain adores me. I don't know what happens next, who I will be.

But I'm not afraid.

Taking the Leap

How do we know when we are ready to jump? Why is it that we can stand on the precipice in fear, our hearts pounding against our ribs, our breath difficult, sweat pooling as we think "I can't. I can't!" and then suddenly - we just do.

I remember when Tessa was quite young, years ago, and we went to a pool with a high diving board. She climbed the ladder, stood at the top, and froze. She really couldn't do it. She tried several times, bowing her head, her cheeks red, as she backed down the ladder to let the next person climb up to take the leap.

But then one day -she trembled at the top, but then she leaped. She splashed. She swam, spluttering and smiling, to the wall, climbed out of the pool, and went straight back in line. She never hesitated again.

I'm interested in understanding that moment between knowing "I can never; it's not possible" and "I'm terrified, but I'm doing it anyway."

***

Some people seem to naturally go for it. Some people are born at ease in the world.

I am not one of those people. I'm awkward and confused and eager to please, quick to wonder if I'm the one at fault. I often think that everyone else has it figured out, and I'm left wondering when I will figure it out.

But then people reveal their truths, and I realize that those at-ease people aren't at-ease at all. Very few people are, actually. Everyone is scurrying around, trying to prove something to themselves, or their fathers, or someone, that they are okay. It's a rare person who radiates joy and peace.

Once I started looking for the "radiating joy and peace and at one with themselves so they weren't afraid to jump" people, I started to see how rare they were.

***

My grandfather - the one in the "Telling" post, the one who was a Nazi soldier - took risks. But he didn't do it with love and joy, and he felt no peace. He plowed through everyone in his path, knocking other people down with insults, money, or power, so that he could get what he wanted. He took financial risks, and he took relationship risks. The financial risks paid off: he died with a lot of money in the bank. The personal risks did not pay off: rather than garnering respect for his professional accomplishments and wealth, he died without a friend. I remember 12 people at his funeral; though he barely knew my ex-husband (they didn't even bother going to our wedding) my ex was a pall-bearer because they didn't have enough people to carry his coffin (and his granddaughters, flesh and blood he'd known all their lives, didn't count, because they were female).

So, he found the courage to move to a foreign country (twice), starting his life over. But I think he was running away as much as anything. I rarely saw joy in him, and I never saw peace.

***

There are a few people that seem to know things like when to jump. Oprah, Barack and Michelle Obama (together and separately), Maya Angelou (rest in peace), Brene Brown, and Cheryl Strayed come to mind. These people draw people from near and far - we're drawn to them; we can't get enough. I think it's because they know how to be their best selves, that they have tapped into something deep within themselves that we really want.

When Oprah says "this I know for sure..." I am sure that she really does know. When Barack said "yes we can" I believed him. When Maya said that she was phenomenal, I didn't have a doubt in my mind.

They are so sure of who they are that they take the leap. They become presidents and poets, writers and wives, philosophers and professors, because they are sure. They just - leap. And we watch them, and we are awed.

But I've read enough of their words, seen enough of their stories, to know that if any of them were reading this, they'd shake their heads and say, "no, no, no."

Just because they do it doesn't mean it is easy.

***

When Tessa stood at the high board, failing and climbing down on multiple occasions, she wasn't failing at all. She was proving that she was bigger than her fear. She measured the size of the fear - height, width, depth - and found it immense. But at one point, one that she knew was coming - for, after all, she didn't climb up just once and change her mind, she climbed up again and again. She must have know, somewhere deep inside, that she COULD do it.

The very first time she was climbing down the ladder, there was still a little voice inside her that said, "I'll try again. I can." She failed many times before she succeeded - but then, I think that's wrong. She never failed. She just wasn't ready. When she was ready, she leaped. The success was always lurking within her.

I know my daughter is brave because she was terrified, but she chose to overcome her fear. She made a conscious decision to do the thing that scared her.

Have I mentioned yet that she is my favorite person, and that while she certainly drives me crazy, she is also incredible, strong, and wise beyond her years?

***

I'm trying to take the leap in several places in my life. I have an old, valued friendship that is falling apart, and I'm taking the leap to bring my authentic self to it even if that means that the friendship is over. I'm trying to write, and to share something true as I write, not just words. And I'm trying to put myself out there to find a partner who makes me laugh and helps me grow and fits me like my favorite pair of jeans.

Not easy.

I'm still at the top of the high board, trembling. No, wait, I'm mid-air! Will I survive the fall? Will the pool embrace me with a laugh, or turn to stone as I land?

My story will unfold. I don't know how it ends. But I know this: pools don't turn to stone. I'm a good swimmer. And the falling, the letting go, comes with some freedom. Maybe it's easier to fall than it is to tremble at the top, questioning every move. Maybe I was made to fall. No, maybe I was made to fly, to splash, to feel the water's embrace.

Aren't we all?

Where are you standing, trembling? Where are you leaping? What is the shape of the water you're diving into?

I think it's time. It's always time. My heart is pounding, my skin is sticky with nervous sweat, and I'm not sure why what looks so easy for everyone else is so hard for me, but I'm doing it anyway.

Ready, set....