Coffee Cup

 I bought myself a fancy, over-priced, expensive Miir mug on Tuesday at Peets. I had gotten up early and gone to get blood drawn for my supposed-to-be-monthly-don't-always-make-it-happen labs. Years ago I started treating myself to coffee and a pastry after morning labs, as a reward for waking up early, fasting and getting poked with a needle. I felt scattered, mind floating, jittery. I had just had a conversation with two white yoga pracitioners who are part of my sangha--people I met in a powerful, challenging yoga teacher training taught by the badass, wonderful, beloved Susana Barkataki. Susanna Barkataki

Some of us meet weekly via Zoom to check in and get support in our learning process. On Tuesday we spoke about one person's commitment to not travelling by plane. When I asked them if that was due to the ecological impact of air travel, they confirmed that yes, that was the reason. I felt uncomfortable because I am nowhere near ready to give up air travel. Climate change is not one of the areas I focus my attention. I recycle. I named my discomfort as part of our discussion about social justice work, liberation work, and how to show up consistently and imperfectly. We talked about how we can push each other and step into more discomfort. We talked about honoring our nervous systems and not choosing suffering 100% of the time. We talked about adrienne maree brown's book Pleasure Activism and finding time to read it together adrienne maree brown

From there, I walked into Peets even though I knew my budget could not truthfully support this treat. In line, I looked on the shelves and saw a short metal cup with a handle and a hard plastic top. I have looked at the resuable cups at Peets many times over the years and never bought one because they always cost so much money. Instead, I have bought disposable cups over and over again, as if the true cost of that was somehow cheaper. This one was $25, an absurd amount to spend on one cup, especially when one already knows one cannot truthfully afford it. 

I bought it anyway. I pushed down the discomfort I felt in my body for not honoring my own self-care, my own limits. I bantered with the coffee seller. I left with my new mug filled with an almond milk latte, a scone in my other hand, no bag. Because, the earth.

I vowed that I would keep this cup in my van. My van that is currently, and most of the time, filled with stuff. Clothes, masks, dog treats, pens, papers, books, trash, food. It embarrasses me each time I get in and yet I have not found or made time to clean it. Because here we acnowledge that human capacity is not limitless as Krystal Collins, one of the Administrators in the Done for DiDi- -White Labor Collective said so generously and wisely last month during book club. I got ready to drive home and then turned the car off, remembering that I had no dog food and that the dog had not eaten since the day before. Walked into Petfood Express, spent $90 on a big bag of food and two heavy-duty bones. Cringed inwardly at the expense and at the awareness of all of the other things that money could do.  Drove home.

This morning I dropped the kids off, staying in the car in the drop off line as they trundled out of the messy van. I saw what I thought was a sign on the mini Jumbotron thing that lives in front of school saying that at 8:15 this morning they would be hosting Cafe with the Principal and the Superintendent. It was 7:55. I was wearing dirty sweats and my slippers, an actual shit with a bra underneath. I was half-accptable to myself for a public outing. I sighed inwardly and then drove home. Changed my clothes. Grabbed my mug. Loaded the dog in the car so I could take him out after coffee. Drove back to school. Got out. Re-read the sign. Realized I had the wrong date. It's on the 14th, today is the 11th.

I got back into the messy van and almost drove home when I remembered the coffee I had at home was decaf. I am going on a one-night overnight camping trip with Lily and her Brownie troop tomorrow night. I am bringing coffee, even though it was not on the list. Because self care is a cup of hot coffee after a cold night of sleeping on the ground outside. Headed back to Peets. Bought a bag of beans, ordered an almond milk latte and sat down to read an article about Lowell High School in San Francisco. What Happens When an Elite Public School Becomes Open to All? 

I was engrossed, the coffee shop was full and I waited, not hearing my name. I got up once to see if my cup was up there. It was not. I got up again and asked the baristas whether mine was coming soon.

"Oh. A woman took that cup and left. She said it was hers."

I held the divorced hard plastic cup in my hand. I felt. . .sad and confused and mad and dumb. My voice was a little quavery when I asked "What should I do?" hoping someone would fix it for me. 

The baristas apologized. They made me a new latte, served in a single-use cup with a single-use soft plastic top. I held up the reusable plastic top and asked "Should I leave this here in case she comes back?" I wasn't just disappointed and sad about the loss of the cup for myself, I was also agitated at the thought that it now made no sense. What was I going to do, throw out the plastic top? Try to get a cup that needed and fit the top? Wouldn't she rather have the top too?

"Leave it for the thief?" a white woman next to me asked in indignation. I didn't respond. In fact, this is where the tears come up for me now.

I have taken things that weren't mine, because I wanted them or needed them or felt in that moment that I needed them. No one has called me a thief, at least not to my face. My young daughter took something that wasn't hers two weeks ago. I didn't call her a thief. Are the three of us thieves, me, my daughter and this stranger who has the cup I bought? I guess so. But what is the point of that word, that story? To separate the good people from the bad? The hurt people from the ones who cause harm? Do we have the sense that every single person falls entirely into any one of these categories?

My daughter, her father and I had a painful conversation about her actions, about how hard it is to regain trust after your actions have fractured it. I don't remember having conversations like that when I was younger. I remember feeling that sometimes I was Good. Sometimes I was Bad. Not my actions but Me, my actual self. I felt a lot of shame, trying to be Good, internally beating myself up when I was Bad. Trying to excorcise the Bad so I could only be Good. Because Good meant Worthy. I keep learning that systems of oppression aim to separate us with this black and white thinking. Shame keeps us quiet. Fear of losing people's love, our community, if we show our needs or our wants or our shadows. I don't want to live like that.

I do not know why that person took a cup that wasn't hers. Maybe she was distracted. Maybe she was in a rush. Maybe she wanted the cup. Maybe she too had a top that needed a cup to fit it. I do not know. It upset me though. I was upset because I couldn't afford that cup and I won't let myself buy a new one now. I was upset because I wasn't paying attention and it was hard not to blame myself. I was upset because it didn't feel fair and I was on the losing end in that instance. And I was upset because I am learning to take up space. That part of liberation work is that I also matter, that I also get to be free. That skipping over my feelings does not serve me or the movement. Skipping over my own anger or hurt or disappointment means that it keeps living in me, pouring out in moments when my tears or hurt might take away from important moments or spaces when I can no longer hold it in and someone says or does something that punctures that valve.

What I know for sure is that this person must be many things, not just a Thief. It somehow hurt just as much to hear that other woman call her that name, in anger that couldn't have been just about my cup. The cup, since it's no longer mine. I wish somehow she could have asked so that I could have given her the whole thing. And truthfully, I might not have given it up. But I might have. And now I just have this top.

I got back into the car and started driving to the park with the dog. Tears came and I wept for a minute. Those tears were not just about the cup. And even though I had a voice in my ear saying "It's just a cup. You shouldn't have spent so much on a cup anyway" I let myself be sad and mad and disappointed. And I let myself weep because it's been a long week of carrying a lot of emotional loads that I have had a hard time putting down.

What we do matters. When I was younger I thought it mostly mattered if I got caught. I was more concerned about what people thought about me than I was about how I acted. I did not know what my values were or what it meant or felt like to be accountable. I did not know what it meant or what it felt like to not beat myself up over mistakes, to not try to hide the parts that seemed Bad but to actually step up and repair harm that I caused. I am learning those things. I am grateful for generous teachers.  

Giorgio

 I have a friend named Giorgio. He didn't start out as my friend--he was my third childhood soccer coach and the father of my new best friend when I was eight. Our team was called the Dolphin and I do not remember how I linked up with that team. He is Italian and loud and smart and passionate in his opinions and values. He drove a brown Cadillac, fast. He used to yell, with vigor, "Acchuge Fumigante!" as our girl team ran the ball down the field. It sounded like he was yelling "Charge!" He said it meant "roasted mushrooms" although now when I tried looking it up for the proper spelling the internet told it could find no such thing. He once said being nervous gave one 70% more power and I still carry that wisdom around with me, leaning into it when I need to.

He showed up big time for me twenty years ago when I was sick with liver failure. I don't know how he decided to come or what message he received that pushed him to get into his car and drive to see me. When I was in the ICU, refusing the placement of the feeding tube the medical team insisted I needed, I had to drink thick, chalky milkshakes full of protein. He was visiting me as I attempted to eat the anemic shrimp salad the hospital had provided me. He scornfully assessed the tiny, tasteless shrimp. My friend Giorgio is a foodie and an excellent cook. Some of the best and weirdest food I ever ate as a child was prepared by him as I spent many a night and day with his daughter at their house. The first time I ever ate sushi or went to a taqueria was with their family.

In the hospital, I don't know if it was the day of the shrimp salad or another day, he went to Mollie Stone's down the street from the hospital and came back with fat, juicy jumbo shrimp for me. And a bunch of round, perfect grapes. It turned out the grapes had seeds in them so as he sat by my bed, he took each grape and cut it in half so he could take the seed out before handing me the grape. I don't remember him asking but my mom tells me that while visiting me in the hospital he leaned in and asked me "Are you going to fight?"  Yes. I am going to fight. I got transplanted a couple days after that.

A week after my transplant I found out I needed another surgery. My surgeon told me an errant ligament was constricting the blood flow to my liver and he needed to open me back up again and cut the arcuate ligament. I went numb for about twelve hours and then completely lost it, terrified to have surgery again. At some point during that twenty four hours between being informed of and then having the surgery I talked to Giorgio. "I'm pissed!" I said. "I want to go smash some widows, break some glass."

He came to visit, holding a small brown paper lunch bag. He smiled as he shook it, as we both heard the tinkling of broken glass he had smashed on my behalf. I'm still not sure where that came from or what he did to get it.

In my 20's and 30's he and I would meet for lunch and he would mentor me, professionally. He gave wise counsel and pushed me to think about things I hadn't considered before. We always ate delicious food.

When I was preparing to get married, I asked him if he would officiate our wedding. He said yes. He asked my ex and me to come meet him for dinner once a month or so. During those dinners, he asked us many questions about our future marriage and what mattered to us. I can't remember a single question he asked but I know those dinners were wonderful and invigorating for me, very challenging for my ex and me as a couple. I felt grateful to both of those men, my ex for being willing to let one of my people play such a big role in our wedding, Giorgio for being so thoughtful and loving to us during that time, despite what I imagine now were possibly some significant questions or concerns about the match. He stepped into those unexplored spaces with us and led us into some important conversations.

He gave us a list of restaurants to seek out on our honeymoon in Italy. We walked many miles in attempts to try at least one of them and I don't think we ever had success.

When the honeymoon was over and I was knee deep in having babies and everything that came along with that period of my life, I was not good at keeping in touch. He kept trying and I kept. . .hiding. He could see me so clearly and he asked for accountability from me. I was afraid of both of those things at that time.

The last meal we shared was at Nola Po'Boy and Gumbo Kitchen in Concord where I live. The food was good. I was divorced or almost divorced. I was working on my recovery, learning how to take care of myself in new ways. I told him during that meal that I was recently discovering that I had some control issues, which surprised me as I had always thought I was very go-with-the flow. He burst out laughing. He told me a story about working at a soccer camp when me when I was a young teenager and how apparent it was to him that I had a serious need for things to be done a certain way. I looked at him in wonder, surprised to have been seen so long before I could see myself.

In the years when I was blogging regularly he often told me that he couldn't read my blog because it scared him. It was too raw and he didn't know how to read those details about my life, how to be connected with information but not close contact. I felt shame when he said that, afraid that my words were too much, too painful. Afraid to be scary. Those exchanges were also part of my questioning how I wanted to show up in my writing, in my life. How to stand in my own truth, even when it brought up feelings in others that made me or them feel bad.

Last Friday as I was walking through my living room, I got a Giorgio hit. This is how I describe the feeling that comes up when someone important to me pops into my consciousness seemingly out of the blue. Oh hello, Giorgio, I thought. I see you there. You're right, it's been a long time. I will reach out.

You are in my heart today, my friend. 

Morning hour

 It's quiet in the house. All the kids are asleep. I peel myself out of bed, careful not to disturb the long limbs of my two seven-year-olds who have made their way in to sleeping with me. My son stretches horizontally across the foot of the bed, leaving my own legs with no clear lane. I'm awake. 

My heart feels so full and happy. I love when my kids are with me. 

A couple weeks ago a new friend of mine asked to interview me for her podcast. It's called First, The Worst and it's about the worst time in your life. Sure, I said. I'd love to. Then I spent a little time wondering what I would choose as the worst time of my life. Do you know what you would choose?

The feeling that rose up in me was the way it felt the year I was getting divorced--the way I felt about losing my kids. For more than a full year I could not think about it or talk about it without feeling short of breath and full of pure heartache. Agony. Fear. Dread. My mind would not actually let me imagine it. Something like a black hole of nothingness would descend and I would want to curl up in a ball. Not have my kids with me for 50% of their lives? What? I can't. I can't do it. I sobbed my way through many a therapy session, trying to get ready for it. When it came, the time to go fully 50/50, I hated it. I was hardly ever home because I could not bear to be in the quiet house. When I finally did start spending time at home, I spent a lot of hours paralyzed on the couch, numbing myself with TV and food.

Do I live for my kids? No. I wouldn't describe it like that.

Do I feel more whole when I'm with my kids? Not exactly.

Do I prefer to be with my kids over being alone? Not always.

What is this feeling?

I have felt it at different times since becoming a mom. Often when they're asleep. My nervous system breathes a sigh of relief and I can sit in the golden silence that only exists in these moments. My babies are with me. My babies are safe. My babies can rest because they know I am here. I am at peace. I am so grateful to be their mama.

Aguantar

 Aguantar. I first learned this word in Madrid, my Junior year in college, when I was twenty years old. Despite my plans to somehow live in an apartment during my year abroad, I had agreed to live with a home-stay family. Nela, my Spanish mama, had jet black hair and bedroom eyes with a raspy voice. She smoked a lot. It was 1997 and grunge was still in. My dyed, platinum-blond hair hung like a curtain down my back, I was tall, thin and twenty. I got a lot of attention in the streets. Some days I would put on my size XL overalls to head out into the city. "Odio esos pantalones" she would say to me. "I hate those pants." She had a flare for hyperbole. 

"No lo aguanto," she would say, about many things. "I can't stand it."

To bear it. To endure. Agauntar.

I don't remember when I started to understand that I lived my life like that. Enduring things. Putting my head down and gutting things out. When I started claiming that word as the way to describe my approach to life, I had already been enduring things for a long, long time.

At 11, you have colitis. You can't eat any of these foods or drink milk anymore. You have to deal with all sorts of medical stuff. I will bear it.

At 13, your parents are getting divorced. That feels so sad and hard. Do you want to talk about it? I will bear it.

At 15, you will never have kids. I am shattered. I will bear it.

At 23, your liver has failed. You need a transplant. I will bear it.

For as long as I can remember people have praised me. For being strong. Amazing. Superwoman. I both fed off it and scoffed at it, shrugged it off. What choice do I have, I wondered to myself. 

Somewhere along the line I claimed the identity that I could make almost anything happen, with sheer force of will. I did not feel like I was making many decisions, I felt like I was shrugging and putting my head down, enduring.

When my ex and I got pregnant by surprise the second time around, we were shocked. We sat up one night talking about our options. I am pro-choice to my core and never could have imagined myself having the kind of conversation we had because, after a lifetime of infertility and hoping for babies, I could not imagine a circumstance under which I would not be grateful to be pregnant. We decided to go forward with the pregnancy, both of us truly paralyzed when it came to imagining the actual details of our future. I do not think I told him at the time, the certainty I felt in my heart when we made that decision. The deep knowing that told me "This will break you," I knew it was the right decision and I knew somehow we could not actually do it. And that we would somehow do it. Because aguantar. My muscles and brain grooves were long-established. Head down, teeth clenched, gutting it out. I can't do it and I will do it because what else is there to be done?

I kept doing it. I felt strongly about sending my kids to a co-op nursery school. It felt essential to me, something I was not willing to give up. My ex did not want to do it. So I put my head down and gutted it out, volunteering in two classrooms and working until my health failed and I stopped working for a while. I kept ending up in the hospital, for one reason or another. People around me were worried. I blew the worry off, still hooked into my way of living and achieving. Did I think I was thriving? I can't answer that now because I hardly have any memory of those years of my life. When I think about it now, and when I notice how I feel these days when people say I'm amazing or shake their heads in disbelief when I describe aspects of my life, I think I probably equated being praised and admired for thriving. 

In the weeks leading up to this week I have been in what I would  describe as a dream-like state. Such extreme overwhelm, looking ahead to a schedule and a way of life that I could logically see were not doable, that I started to shut down. Except in me, shutting down is mostly an internal process that on the outside looks like calm. Even blase. I could feel myself falling into old patterns, steeling myself, preparing for battle. I felt the panic and the anxiety sitting near me, waving flags, as I made plans and had conversations about how to somehow work and go to grad school and start my field placement and handle distance-learning with my four kids and somehow also feed them and myself and occasional clean the house and water the trees and mow the lawn and. . . Aguantar. Bear it. That is how we do.

Except after motherhood broke me, I started learning and claiming a new way. The tears come as I get to this part because my Self is so grateful that I am learning. I am a Self. I am not infinite. Enduring is not the way I choose to life my life anymore. I am not willing to discount my body, my health, my serenity, my life. I choose myself. I choose my life. I choose rest. 

But how?

Last weekend I dreamed of tidal waves. I have had scary tidal wave dreams since I was a kid, but rarely. Last week a chip of my molar crumbed off as I chewed on some cold pizza, hustling to get some work down. A couple days later another piece of the same tooth broke off. Hmmm. I am not thriving here. My body is showing me that my well-being is not in tact. 

On Monday we had our first day of distance learning. I went into it with very, very low expectations and still, by 5pm I sat on the porch with my dad and burst into tears. I wept for several minutes, feeling the weight of the world crushing me. I don't see a way out! I can't do this! What do I do? Quit grad school? Find some kind of daycare place to take the kids and somehow figure out how to afford it? Take a leave from work? I can see that all of this is impossible for one person to handle and I can see myself walking forward on this terrible, painful path again. Tears, tears, tears. I need help.

The day before, I woke up early to the crash of thunder and a bright orange sky. As though in a dream, I wandered barefoot out into the rain, gazing wonderingly at the sky. Lightening? I sat down in awe, feeling and enjoying the power of this bizarre weather. I watched a fire start on the hills and hoped it would get put out quickly and easily. Four days later, much of the state of California is on fire. It is devastating and scary and overwhelming. I keep getting the image of swimming in the ocean, getting pushed down by the waves. Just when we get our heads up to catch a breath of fresh air, to somehow grab on to something to hold on to, another wave crashes down on our heads, pummeling us. We are in aguantar mode. Bearing it. Gritting our teeth. Doing all the things each of us do to somehow keep going, when it feels impossible.

My tears helped me. Reaching out to people in my life and being honest about how I'm struggling and what I'm worried about helped me. And most of all, remembering that I must keep choosing to ease up on myself as the key to everything else is helping me. I thrash and fight and tighten and hunch my shoulders, going into battle-mode. Bearing it. Refusing to be broken by it and falling precipitously close to those old grooves where fighting through suffering feels like the only way forward.

No.

I will give myself a break. I will remember I am not infinite. I will ask for help. I will rest. I will look for ways to fill myself up, even when and especially when it feels most impossible. And I will come here to write some words as a reminder to anyone who wants or needs to hear it. When we find ourselves in aguantar-mode, can we see it as an invitation to look for ways to let go somewhere and somehow? I believe we can. I believe that we must. 

A Vivid Dream

It's Tuesday March 24, 2020 and we are sheltering in place due to COVID-19 aka the Corona Virus. My kids are with their dad until tomorrow morning when I get them back for five days.

I have been working from home since Friday March 13. My work consists of calling people to check in on them and offer grief support a month after someone they love has died. I also call people at various intervals after the death--around six months and a year after. I am also translating a children's book about donation in Spanish and processing correspondence sent to us as the intermediary between the donor families and the transplant recipients.

I am in my first semester of graduate school, working towards earning my Masters in Social Work from Tulane University online. I am taking three classes which add up to seven credits. My classes are:

Diversity and Social Justice

Social Welfare History and Policy

Theories of Human Behavior, Part 1

We got last week off as the university worked to bring all the rest of the students online during this quarantine.

The kids' school closed after Friday March 13 so they have been doing a variety of learning activities here and with their dad since then. I feel grateful that there are four of them and that they are around the same age. Grateful for them to have the company and interaction; grateful for me because it is easier for me not to feel the need to engage or entertain one child.

I am writing my book. So far this looks like going through my old blog posts, journal entries, emails and voice memos to capture the details that I already have. For the first couple weeks of this year I woke up at 5 am every morning to write for an hour. I stopped doing that when I started school, got a bad cold and started staying up too late. Waking up early in the cold and dark seemed too hard. Since then I have written here and there but nothing consistent.

I am participating in my friend Isabelle's powerful, empowering online women's personal growth experience--Mom-Me Circle. She invited me to be a part of it on November 9, 2019 and I immediately felt a huge resistance come up in me. I am too busy! I do not have a big dream I am working towards! I am starting school! I can not take in any more input. I did not respond.

On December 2, 2019 I wrote her back:

Hello my sweet friend, It occurred to me yesterday that you asked me about this virtual circle and for whatever reason I balked at it the day your offer arrived. Fear of something but I couldn't really explore it at the time. Still haven't! I think the fear of "What specific dream would I even pick and do I have the bandwidth to work on? ack" So i'm circling back. I feel scared of this offer. Overwhelmed. Also, I was thinking of you yesterday with so much love and gratitude and wanted to check in. xoxo

We met for coffee on College Avenue in Berkeley a few days later and shone our friendship lights on one another. We caught up and brainstormed and heart-stormed and soaked up the gratitude of being seen and known and valued. I signed up for her course. We just finished our Week 9 Zoom group call last night. I want everyone I know to take part in it.

It occurs to me that part of me would want to journal daily for hours, just to capture a portion of the thoughts, observations, feelings, reactions, triggers, exchanges and moments that make-up a day. In this moment I want to stop here and do a juicy write-up of everything I am learning in her circle. I also want to write up some of the thoughts that flitted into my brain as I cooked lunch--about my privilege and the gratitude and shame it brings up in me, about how busy and overwhelmed I feel sometimes when I look at all there is to be done around here and how even taking away the kids, their school, my school, my commute, any in-person errands and any in-person communication I still have moments of feeling like there is not enough time and not a clear place to start. This awareness startles me and soothes the part of me that wants to rest almost all of the time.

In Mom-Me Circle we worked towards finding and declaring a Vivid Dream. At the beginning of the year I thought mine was to write this book. Last week, in Week 8 of our circle and Week 1 of our quarantine I felt tears come to my eyes as my Vivid Dream settled over me.

I write this book and while I do it I will fall in love with writing. I will embrace that this love pushes me and stretches me to grow. I will acknowledge that the kind of love I want means showing up consistently and resting regularly. I will fall in love knowing that I am scared of lots of parts of love and when I get scared I throw up all sorts of defense mechanisms to keep me from feeling vulnerable, to keep me safe. In this new kind of love I know to ask for help when I feel that fear come up instead of running away. In this new kind of love I know that running away will still happen sometimes and I will forgive myself for that. In this new kind of love I will look for the small, daily celebrations and acknowledgements that we need and want to hear.

Please tell me more about your Loves and what they look like and feel like.

First Day

We went to Yosemite the weekend before last. It was magical to be with the kids as they explored. They kept turning around to asking, "Can I go here? Can I go over there?" Wild with possibility. I asked my dad to take a picture of my crew up in the tree, me standing below them rocking my new sweatshirt. Can you read it?

Tulane.

I start graduate school today.

Wild with possibility.

Last week I got flooded with overwhelm. I don't remember at what point in the cycle we were in. Had the kids just left me? I think so. Was the house a mess? Almost certainly. I felt broke and tired and alone, head racing racing racing like it does when my sweet, hard-working mind gets the message that things are out of control. How will I do this? I am adding a huge thing and I am not taking anything away. What was I thinking?

I could feel myself gathering the troops of my perseverance, my determination, my push-through-it-ness to make something happen when I've decided I want or need it to happen, consequences be damned. Like sending my four kids to a co-op when they were younger, requiring two mornings a week of volunteering even knowing I would be doing it all alone. Even though I was sick and exhausted. I had decided long ago that a co-op was the best foundation they would have and I resolved to make it happen, even though the circumstances of my life at the time clearly flashed "This is too much!" as neon-brightly into my face as they could. Outta my way, I told those warnings, pushing them aside. This is happening.

I've learned some since then. A new awareness has seeped through me that reminds me I need rest. The old way--the dealing with it, making it work, finding a way to work harder, the digging deeper, doesn't work anymore. My body says no. I am one being with finite resources and I can only do so much. I could feel that as I looked out at the looming horizon, knowing something had to give, that I would need to put something down or let something go in order to be a student again. But what?

Some tears and deep rest curled under blankets in the womb-space corner of my couch, binging Netflix and doing what I could to make my mind take a goddamn break I felt better enough to get up and face the world. Nothing was fixed and I still felt overwhelmed but I wasn't drowning in it anymore.

My mom and I chatted on the phone a day or two later. I called to check in, heart full of tenderness, knowing she hadn't been feeling well for a while. She asked how I was. I launched into story. At some point she made a comment that I interpreted as unsolicited advice and my ten-foot brick walls came up at warp speed, palm out to push it away from me "I know! If I want advice I'll ask for it!", shutting it all down. I was flooded, shoulders up at my shoulders, jaw clenched. We hung up, both upset.

I huffed and puffed through some breaths. Did some rage journaling. Texted with my homegirl in one of the many back and forth notes we send to one another throughout the week. Argh! I'm triggered! Invasion! If I want help I'll ask! Grr.

After all of that and some time passing I felt it move through me. Oh yeah. That's ok. Nothing personal. We're both doing our best. For some reason, long ago, that became a tender spot for me. For some reason, long ago, I taught myself or learned from observation that I immediately feel like someone is questioning my competence, taking away my autonomy, if they try to help me problem-solve a problem I haven't asked for help in solving. If I want help, I'll ask for it!

Somewhere quiet inside I heard a little voice say "But will you?" I turned my back on that little voice. Mostly.

I got back into the swing of things with work and kids and school drop offs and scrounging up dinner to feed us. I felt a little better. Well, I felt a little less obsessed with how freaked out and overwhelmed I was. But I knew nothing had been fixed yet. I did not have a new plan.

As the first week full week of kids back to school and me back to regular, non-holiday time work came to a close I reached out to my friend Tara to check in. She'd been popping up in my heart for a couple days. I knew she was hosting a retreat, her first, and I felt so full of admiration and love for her. We did The Practice leadership training together in 2017-2018, when my life was straight up falling apart and she was building herself back up. I knew how far she had traveled to get to this place. I had known about her upcoming retreat for weeks but was too deep in my darkness, surviving the holiday and wallowing in grief, to be able to imagine doing it.

I sent her a text "I wish I could come be a part of your retreat this weekend. I am so amazed and grateful for you! xoxo" I did not say Help me! I'm struggling! I don't know what to do!

"You too friend! You too!" she replied.

and

"You are welcome to come. Are you busy?"

I felt a mix of light dread come over me, imagining going into a vulnerable place of sharing and being quiet. I also felt a little hand at my hand, gently pushing me, whispering "This will help you. You know it will. What a perfect thing to do just before starting school. Do it."

I was really tempted to let the dread win and stay home.

"Come" she said.

"Wow. I am stunned. Thank you. I'll be there" I replied.

She gifted it to me. Because she loves me and she values having me in a circle and she knows me. I decided not to stay overnight so I could save money on lodging. That felt like a good decision. I felt lighter as the weekend approached, especially as Friday dawned and I could move through the day knowing I wouldn't be coming home to a quiet, kid-free house after work. Sometimes the spectre of that is so heavy. But I had somewhere to be.

I drove through the streets of Danville and then up and up the rising slope of a long, steep hill. It was dark. As I rounded a turn I looked to the left and the bright, glowing beauty of the full Wolf Moon shone so clearly I felt tears spring to my eyes. The moon pulled them out, unbidden. I feel so grateful for tears when they come because it means my heart is soft enough to be open to joy. I knew I was in the right place.

I met the others as they sat down for dinner. We chatted and sat quietly and got to know one another a bit. They finished and we walked across the darkened courtyard, past the fountain, on our way to our special retreat room. We came to a small flight of stairs, five or six steps, and the woman in front of me slowly eased down, cup of hot tea in her hand, favoring the leg she hurt that is slowly healing.

"Here, let me hold that tea for you," I offered.

"I got it," she said.

"No," I said. "I'm taking it."

And then I reached out and took the tea cup right out of her hand. I knew she could manage and I also knew I could manage more easily and let her focus on getting down the stairs safely. Part of me cringed on the inside, feeling appalled. Who was I to take something right out of her hand? But I saw her, working so hard, and I didn't want her to work so hard when I was right there to help her find some ease.

The retreat was wonderful. I will write once more about it soon. To sit in a space set with intention, wreathed in beauty, with other women who chose to show up and make something together that none of us could do on our own. The community. The music. The movement. The art. I felt myself getting filled up.

On the last day, Sunday, we gathered for one more time. Tara gave us each a piece of white paper and a charcoal pencil, asked us to draw a picture of ourselves. When we were done, she asked us to pass our portrait to the woman on the left and invited us to write one word that described the woman whose image we were holding. After we finished, we passed to the left again, so that by the time my picture made it back to me it had five words written on it.

Tara passed out water colors and invited us to look at our pictures, take in the words, and paint the pictures if we wanted to. We all wanted to.

Three of my words were:

Strong
Courageous
Warrior

I felt what those words brought up in me. I painted my picture.

When we finished, Tara invited us to share with the group anything that had come up for us. One woman talked about how much she liked and appreciated her words. We listened. She finished talking.

I sat in the silence, wondering if I would say what I was feeling. Not really wanting to, because my feelings felt. . .bad. I knew the words had been written with admiration. I wanted to be able to receive them in the way they were given. I almost didn't share but because I have sat in many women's circle and deepened my practice with them and trust myself more within a circle of women than I do in most other places, I opened my mouth knowing that the words that were sticking in my throat were meant to be said. Knowing that we don't discover the mystery hidden behind the words that are sometimes hardest to say unless we speak the truth out loud for others to hear.

"I am sick of these words! I feel no connection to them. Everyone tells me these things. I'm strong. Who cares? What good does that do me?"

That sat and listened as I talked.

"These words are so isolating. Someone I love very much told me recently that he looks at my life and he can't comprehend how I do it, how I manage. The cognitive dissonance that requires! I am not different than you. I am not stronger. I am drowning. I am so lonely. I'm sick of everyone admiring me from afar and telling me how brave I am. I need help."

They received me so graciously and with so much tenderness. They reflected me back to myself with kindness and open-hearts. They did not run away. They did not get mad. They did not get offended. "I can see how that would be isolating. Thank you for sharing. That would never have occurred to me."

I turned to the woman with the sore knee and said "I don't know if I owe you an apology."

"For what?" she asked.

"For taking that tea cup right out of your hand! Even after you said no. If someone had done that to me I probably would have gotten pissed."

"I loved that you did that" she said.

"Oh good," I said. "Thanks. I knew you could do it and I saw you working so hard. I wanted to help you not work so hard."

Something settled into place inside me.

Oh.

I felt the shift. I don't want these to be the words people use to describe me anymore. These are old words. They are not serving me anymore. It has felt good to be admired. My ego likes that. I must be doing a good job, I must be doing it right if people think I am inspiring. But my Self is saying loud and clear that it would feel better to have ease. To be supported. To be held. To not have to push so very hard so much of the time. That not asking for help, not letting people help me, in no way serves the soft, real me who sits alone on the couch bearing up under the pressure in the moments where my strength is nowhere to be found.

I start graduate school today. I am working towards a Masters in Social work so that I can be a therapist who helps others build resilience, learn how to take care of themselves, recover from trauma. Ever since deciding to do this I have felt excitement bubbling up inside me. I am thrilled!

And I set a new intention this weekend--I will ask for help twice a week. I will try to pay attention and notice when people offer to help me with something, even the small things like carrying something for me when I feel like I've got it all under control. I will try to say yes.

I ask for your help with this. If you offer to do something for me and I say "No thanks, I'm good!' please remind me gently of my intention.

I need help.

New Shoes

Written last Monday:

Tomorrow is my day off, Tuesday. The one day I don't go into the office these days. It's been a change, getting used to commuting back and forth, seeing my kids less. Last Tuesday after picking them up from their fourth day of school I made the mistake of taking them to the mall to get shoes. I'd been picturing taking them to the Vans store--even though I couldn't afford it with any kind of money other than the pretend kind on my credit card. I imagined they'd love the cool shoes and it would be a fun adventure, yet another way to mark the transition into a new year.

I usually love the start of the school year, have ever since I was a kid. Finding out who my teachers were going to be, feeling myself get geared up to a new level of functioning, getting both excited and nervous about diving back into the bizarre soup of social confusion and thrill, wondering if I would feel like enough. Hmmm. Did I love it? Those words all together paint a different picture. It could be hard and scary at school. A lot of times I felt like I didn't know what other kids were talking about and I learned pretty quickly that to feel safe, to not feel dumb or not enough, I better pretend that I knew what everything meant. Pretending to be cooler than I felt on the inside started young.

The past few weeks I have been stressed. Obsessing actually. That's new awareness for me--that when I feel out of control my mind makes plans, revises them, imagines scripts, revises them, has conversations with itself, tries to look at something from all angles. Spinning, spinning, spinning, trying to soothe myself by naming what is happening, making sure there are no surprises, and finding a way to make it turn out the way I want or need it to.

My ex and I had made an agreement to try a particular after school program for the kids and I did not want to. I knew I did not want to and I agreed to try it anyway, because my values got confused like they sometimes do, and I put getting along and being liked and being a team player above what was best for the kids. I tried to make space for my co-parent because I know that I am not always right and I know that I see things through the lens of what I know or believe to be true. And because it's hard for me to make space for my own self. To allow myself to need something for my kids for my sake too.

As the beginning of the school year got closer, I knew I did not want them to go. I felt it in my bones and throughout my body that I did not want them to go. I tried to talk myself into all the reasons it would be ok. I reached out to trusted friends and heard from them the reasons it would be ok, even if it wasn't ideal. I felt panicky. I knew that feeling panicky did not necessarily mean that the program itself was bad. I was feeling scared and sad and out of control. So knowing it in my bones, that I wanted them home with less structure, more free play, the ability to go find a comfy place to reset or jump on the trampoline or play on the rug with Duplos with no timeline, felt like the one truth. But I know there is never one truth.

My babies going into kindergarten. My kids away from me way more than they're with me. The loss and fear of that. The ache of longing to have more time with them. The belief that what I was asking for was best for them. And also the willingness to fight for myself in the process. To say I need this and I am allowed to need something. I am allowed to keep them close.

Spinning, not sleeping, obsessing. I asked to change the plan. It was difficult and triggering to try to work things out with my co-parent. It affected everything I did. I used every tool I have access to, trying to take care of myself.

Getting divorced was so much more painful and humbling than I expected. So many people get divorced. This happens. They keep going to work and seeing friends and functioning. I didn't expect it to gut me daily. I didn't anticipate how hard it would be to get myself together and keep all the rage and grief and loneliness from spilling over onto my kids. I didn't anticipate how hard and confusing it would be to try to show up as myself, my real self, with these growing young people when my real self was scary and hurt and mad. I didn't anticipate how much strength of will and willingness to reach out and near constant self-regulation it would take in order to be a grown-up when I needed to be the grown-up.

Last Tuesday I picked the kids up and took them to the mall, with all of this back up in my face, swirling around inside me, attempting to shove the feelings down into whatever secret hidden hole unacceptable, uncomfortable, difficult feelings go into when they're not wanted.  The kids were jumping out of their skins. I forget that transitions are still in full effect on day four. I forged ahead. We got to the mall with excitement. Ice cream and the park were promised for after. Together the five of us skipped and ran inside.

It was not fun. No shoes were purchased. They were goofy. There are four of them. It's not a playground. One kid out of four had found satisfactory shoes that fit. I wanted to leave. The kids were wrestling and using loud voices. One of them noticed that the lady at the front of the line in a wheelchair only had one leg and came to tell me about it, loud voiced and full of curiosity and wonder. The young man next to me kept looking at me. If I were a cartoon there would have been steam coming out of my ears.

I hit my breaking point. I can't say what pushed me over the edge but I snapped. Slammed the shoes down. "I'm done. We're going. No ice cream. Let's go"

The shock spread. Tears and disbelief and hurt feelings and disappointment. They trotted after me on their long short legs as I strode with purpose and desperation out of the store, turning around to herd them safely into the van. I felt wretched. They were miserable, promising to be good, so hurt and scared, still asking to make sure they were clearly understanding that there would be no ice cream, the one child who had actually fallen for shoes and was now not getting them broken-hearted. I feel so sad even recounting this story.

We sat at a red light and I started crying. "Are you crying?" one of them asked. "Yeah." And that made them cry even more.

We all cried together in the messy minivan on the way home. I seethed, all walls up trying to hold it together, finding no gentleness for anyone anywhere in me. Help me, help me, help me. This is not what I wanted for today. I feel trapped by myself. By my hardness. By my powerlessness. By everything. I'm only with them for another hour. This is my one spacious day in the whole week to be with them and it's wrecked. What a dumb decision to do this. Help me. My shoulders were hunched up to my ears and I could feel the muscles that have been clenched and spasmed for weeks settling into their twisted up places because there was no where else for them to go.

Lots and lots and lots of deep breaths. Apologizing to them. Taking the blame onto myself, saying I asked too much of them and of myself and that I was sorry.

Transitions are hard for me. Really hard. This has been true for most of my life, as narrated to me by my mother and felt by me with growing layers of awareness as I grow in wisdom and self-knowledge. I know how to take care of myself better, how to make space for the mystery that is packaged within the change. How to notice when I'm gutting it out, pushing through to get to the other side, clenching my fists and the muscles in my face to just be done. And it still surprises me that a transition takes so long. It's not just the day itself--back to school day. It's not just the couple days before and the couple days after. It's a process, a settling in, a shaking off, a whole body, whole spirit experience. And being in relationship with other humans adds seventeen other layers of ACK and WTF and BE QUIET and TOO MUCH and HOLD ME. So many chances to be let down or to let someone else down as we're doing our best to ride the waves.

Be gentle with yourselves. Humaning takes a lot of energy.

Oh and this past Sunday with an unexpected four hours off I went to Nordstrom Rack to buy myself a new suit as I prepared for an interview. While there I picked out and purchased four perfect, comfortable, well-made on sale pairs of sneakers for my kiddos. With joy and gratitude to be alone while being with them in my heart.

Enough

Oh hello. I've missed you. I've spent much of the last year living and feeling, exploring and hiding from, talking about and thinking about what has been going on rather than writing about it. I've been journaling more, finally turning to a typed journal rather than another handwritten one because in typing my fingers cover more ground. There is so much to take in. So much to take in and so much to share.

I stood in a new-to-me bookstore yesterday, touching the pretty books, taking pictures of some I want to buy but didn't let myself because my shelves are already heavy and because much of my self-care has looked like spending money lately. I felt some anger and fear come up as I read the sleeves of memoirs. Oh no. I better hurry up. Who is going to want to read my book when there are all these other good life stories being published already?

Hello, scarcity. I welcome you so I can send you on your way. There is time. It will happen. I will make it happen.

I read so many words written by women and they are so bad-ass and wonderful it's like drinking from a life-source that will never run out. More and more and thank you and where have you been and yes. In this article about Stacy Abrams I read in a months-old issue of New York What's Next for Stacy Abrams? she talks about creating a spreadsheet in which she wrote down her goals and what it was like to admit to wanting. To be a woman and to want and to claim that wanting and how that in itself is revolutionary. To read an article about a smart, powerful, curious, multi-dimensional woman written by another brilliant, observant, powerful woman. . . yes yes yes and yes. There is no scarcity here. There is more and more pouring out and I want to drink it all in.

More soon. I want to write about my 20th college reunion and what it was like to sit with my girls and talk and love and celebrate. I want to write about taking the kids camping. I want to write about buying this house and what that's been like. I want to write about leading my first yoga circle with The Practice and getting close to finishing my certification so I can lead more. I want to write about health and body awareness. I want to write about leaving room for the mystery. About feeling love. About unlearning.There is enough. There is so much.

42

I am going to write a book. It will be the story of the last five years and for it I will take this blog and fill in the holes, draw in the landscape. I don't know how long it will take but I am going to do it. Today on my 42nd birthday I set this intention here.

Two months ago if you had asked me when I started writing this blog I would not have been able to tell you. I knew it started in my motherhood but I couldn't remember specifically when. That is how I feel about most things lately. Did that happen a year ago? A month?  Four years? I have to sit down and sift through memories, finding lamp posts of certainty--these kids were born in this year so that means this other thing happened after that year so that means. . .it's a funny reconstruction. Cleo laughed with me yesterday morning as I turned back and forth from kitchen sink to kitchen table saying out loud "You're so funny Mommy. You don't remember anything."

That's right I said, in between pouring a glass of orange juice and then a glass of ice water and then making a waffle and then pouring a different glass of orange juice.

"What am I doing?" I ask myself aloud many times a day.

I started this blog in April five years ago. I was hugely pregnant with Cleo and Daphne. Lily and Cyrus were ten months old. I'd just met and hired Stephanie, the woman who was immediately to begin saving my life. Because of her I had a little space in my day, in my mind. I had time. I was desperately afraid and nuts because of all the babies and the exhaustion and the back-to-back pregnancies and the identity changing and the self-doubt and my life-long Observer self, trying to take in all of the life that was crashing down around me and through me. At the time I didn't know how else to keep myself in the world, alive, so I poured words out onto a page in a torrent, an exorcism, a plea, to have people see me and tell me I would be okay and to get the teeth-humming madness out of my body. Writing was survival. Raw and scary and desperate and necessary.

Last year I hardly wrote here at all. I was changing and healing and noticing and for the first time in my life had the tools and the community and the wisdom and the loving arms to hold me and keep me safe as I started letting myself feel all the feelings. Feel the pain. Feel the fear. Feel the love. Be in it as it happened. Not write about it but feel it and take care of myself through the feelings. Feel it in my body, not just observe it with my mind. I got to do that for so many reasons, not the least of which is having a doctor who also is a mother of many, who had been treating me for over a decade and finally sat me down and said "You can not survive like this." She gave me the space and the freedom and the support to treat myself more gently. I got to do it because I had found a yoga community of women who were interested in and committed to showing up, listening to our sacred intuitive voices and letting our bodies guide us. And a teacher who showed us how. I got to do it because I had found a recovery community, roomfuls of people who have years of coping mechanisms that no longer serve us. Years of coping because we needed habits and skills to feel safe when we knew we weren't. Tools and books and understanding and hope and serenity because we found our way to one another and saw with gratitude and fear and trembling what healing could mean. I got to do it because when I finally started being brave enough to really show up as my whole, real self I found that I was somehow surrounded by the sweetest love I had ever felt--from all sorts of people. Somehow they knew me and loved me anyway. And I got to do it because of these four children who came into the world and broke up into pieces and who keep holding up a mirror for me even as they forge their own paths.

All of this was happening and is still happening and it has changed my relationship with writing. It has changed and is changing my relationship with my mind. With Knowing. With Figuring Things Out. It is changing my relationship with myself and even as the unwritten words call me to because I know and they know that there are other people who want to hear these stories, when I check in with myself to hear what I need and what I want my Self says "Not yet". I want to share them because I know that is what I'm here to do--take this funny, wild, difficult, unusual life and this mind that watches myself and the world like a movie and these words that make a connection between what I see and what other people are wondering about and spins them into thread that other people can sometimes grab onto. But not yet. Because the healing and the unlearning and the feeling have had to be first.

When I was in high school, maybe even as young as middle school, I remember adults or magazines giving me the absolutely useless and infuriating advice to "Just be yourself" And I felt rage and hopelessness as I inwardly screamed "What the fuck does that mean??? I need more help than that!"

When I was a young adult I remember hearing other older adults telling me "Your 40's are great! You finally really know who you are!" and thinking "Ugh! I will be so old in my 40's. I hope I figure things out way before then when I'm still young enough to enjoy it."

Imagine my surprise to be learning that my Self has been here all along. That She is here and has been here and will be here no matter how many birthdays I have. Happy Birth Day to me.

A snippet

It's been challenging for me to write lately, for lots of reasons. Here is an unfinished piece, a snippet, written almost two months ago.


This morning I woke up alone except for the dog and the cats. It was really cold in the house. I lay in bed quietly, trying to remember what day it was and what was happening.

January 2, 2019. First day back to work in an office after a fifteen month break. Wednesday. Kids coming back from their dad's. Almost the end of winter break so still no school.

I went into the kitchen, opening the cabinets to find the coffee grinder. It wasn't there. Did he take it when he moved out? I hadn't noticed. It's been a while since I've bought whole bean and he moved out in October. I debated driving to Peets to get a pound of coffee, or at least a cup, but I knew the kids would be getting dropped off soon and I didn't want to rush. Tea, then. Hot, milky, sugary tea like my English friend Jemima made for me in Madrid twenty years ago. I held the mug in my hands and sat at the kitchen table. I opened up my laptop and tried logging into Outlook--password remembered, 5400+ emails.

My dad arrived, arms full of gallons of milk in what has become his Wednesday morning ritual, steady even as routines change around him. I let him in and we sat quietly together. I made him tea just like mine.

The kids arrived, full of smiles, Cleo dressed for summer because she never gets cold. My ex-husband and I greeted each other in the kitchen, rolled eyes together at the confusion of going back to work on a Wednesday--him after being off for a week, me after being off more than a year. I told him how many emails were in my inbox and I thought of the other times I've gone back to this workplace in the time he and I have known each other. Once after my two week trip to El Salvador. Another time after our month long wedding and honeymoon break. I was in management then so there were a lot more emails. Once after my first six month long maternity leave. Once after being laid off and then a year of working elsewhere. Once after a three month long medical leave of absence. This time after the longest leave, the longest break from paid work I've ever had since being a working person.

He left, the kids settled in with their part-time toys in their part-time house. I got in the shower. The water was hot. I thought ahead to my haircut next week as I rubbed too much shampoo into my too long but still very short hair. Six months ago I shaved my head. Six weeks after that I shaved it again, marveling at how brave and how vulnerable I felt out in the world--forty one, almost divorced, no hair. Who was I? Could I still be pretty? Would anyone ever want me again? What if for the first time in my life this is the start of not defining myself by whether anyone else wants me or not. People asked me if I was scared when I had it buzzed off and I said no, shaving my head was the least scary thing going on at the time. We were going through mediation, talking money and custody and endings. I was trying to even imagine living half my life without these kids near by. Shaving my head brought my insides more in line with my outsides. It felt raw, wild, wounded, bare. Powerful, defiant, bold, free.

This morning running fingers through sudsy, inch-long, shaggy hair growth helped bring me into the moment. A physical marker of time passed. Of easy, awkward, change.

Happy 40th Birthday Martha

I don't remember not knowing my sister Martha because she was born a week before I turned two. If you look back at photos of our early years you see two very similar-looking girls with bowl haircuts wearing some funky outfits in 70's colors that would have matched better had we swapped pants or shirts. Knowing what we now know about my sister's fashion sense I'm amazed she let either of us out of the house back then without doing some re-arranging. I have questions about this.

My sister is brilliant. Her mind works so fast that she often skips multiple words in the middle of her sentences as she strings her thoughts together, gesticulating her elegant hands in the air and looking at you with bright eyes and raised eyebrows, waiting for confirmation that you were flying alongside of her.

In nursery school we played a game where the girls would take turns lying on a mattress pretending to be sleeping princesses and the boys would take turns trying to wake us up. Writing this now this game seems very strange and weirdly gendered in a gross way but I think at the time it was fun. One day I was winning the game by not showing signs of being awakened so a boy got frustrated and bit my calf. That woke me up. My sister responded by punching him in the nose. She was three.

My sister was an artist from the beginning, not just with her clothes but with any medium she could get her hands on. My dad still has a framed piece of art she drew in nursery school hanging on his wall. She took an art class with high school students at a museum when she was in elementary school. I was jealous but also filled with admiration for what she could do.

My sister has always been surrounded by friends and they have always seemed to be doing fun things and holding each other up and loving each other. This was true in elementary school, again in middle school with some slight variations, again in high school with a totally new group and then again in college even though she thought she could never and would never possibly meet friends as close as those she already had. I've watched these girls and women laugh and love and celebrate my sister and each other over and over again as I've watched her grow up. My sister is a bright light and the kind of friend that people find and hold on to with both hands and full hearts because if you are lucky enough to be loved by this woman you know you would be a fool to let her go.

My sister walks tall, fierce, bold with long hair streaming down her back or tied up in a bun. Her strides are long, her eyes are sharp, her mind is matchless. I can guarantee that many people who have crossed her path have been intimidated for one reason or another, unable to imagine the soft, tender heart and the artist's soul housed within.

My sister graduated with honors from an Ivy-league university and wrote a thesis on beauty pageants for her degree in cultural anthropology, rocking baggy sweats and headphones as she researched and wrote page after page and then went to party like a college student to bring all the pieces of herself back together.

My sister threw herself in the air and onto the ground thousands of times over the her decades' long soccer career as a goalie.

My sister worked in a flower shop after she graduated when there weren't many jobs to be had (it was 2001). Then she worked in PR which stands for public relations which is the business of getting products in the news which is an art I knew nothing about until she started doing it and teaching me. She is known and sought after and beloved in her field. She has elevated companies into international awareness because of how she thinks and what she says and how she understands people.

My sister ran the adult kickball league in San Francisco as a young adult without a car and somehow managed to get equipment and people to where they needed to be, including herself to Las Vegas for kickball championships which I bet you didn't know were even a thing.

My sister and I have lived together as roommates and upstairs/downstairs from each other as neighbors as adults in two different apartments in San Francisco. We loved it and were always perplexed and sorry for the many people who responded with shock saying "I could NEVER live with my sister."

My sister and I got engaged within months of one another and carried our babies at the same time, both times. Together we birthed six children in 2013 and 2014.

My sister is the fiercest protector I have ever had and could ever hope to have. When I was in the hospital waiting for my liver transplant she, among other things, crawled under a sterile paper blanket to hold it up off of my face while doctors inserted a central line into my neck because I was scared and claustrophobic and the doctors wouldn't listen to me so she took matters into her own hands. She also walked in the room after flying home across the country during finals her senior year, took one look at me and said "Can't you at least wash her hair?" leading to the most glorious hot water/hair washing experience of my life, still unmatched as of this writing.

My sister has given me 80% of the clothes and shoes I wear and anytime I get complimented on anything I'm wearing I almost always respond with "Thanks, my sister gave it to me." People then invariably say "You're so lucky! I wish she were my sister." to which I respond "You have no idea."

My sister is the most loving aunt I have ever met. My son told me once how much he loves her and how well they get along and said it was because "we're like two eggs in a pan." She shines love and delight upon my children unabashedly and unreservedly and they bask in it. Wait until she sees the bag of funny, random goodies my daughters put together for her birthday.

My sister is a loving, fun, natural mama and anytime I hear a random video of her interacting with her young sons I marvel at the sweetness of her voice.

My sister, in addition to starting her own PR company, raising two young children and two older children alongside her husband, co-oping at her boys' nursery school, creating and running one of the most successful and joyous fundraisers in the school's history, showing her friends and her family how much she loves us and thinks of us, sponsoring scholarships and speakers at women's financial conferences, and doing other daily, regular life stuff also helps run the San Francisco Women's March as a volunteer. She is badass and big-hearted and I don't know how she does it.

She is generous. She is kind. She is funny. She is quirky. She gifts me with her love over and over again even when I have nothing to give in return. She is the reason I am so grateful to have given my own children so many sisters.

Happy birthday Fanny. I don't have the words to do you justice.

A weekend

It's Monday morning and I'm alone in the house, cleaning. I'm on a bit of a roll, making some progress that might outlast the arrival of the kids in a few hours. It usually feels futile.

Last Thursday I got sick. Not "go to the hospital" sick although it can be hard to know that. It felt like croup, my chest full, cough deep. Do grown-ups get croup? When I felt the sickness creep into the corners I felt the alarm bells in my head. Get a sitter, they said. Don't try to take care of these kiddos when you feel like crap, they said. I dug deep and pushed forward because I am a slow learner.

By bedtime I was long past done. We'd had a mellow, TV-filled afternoon and everyone was pretty mellow. TV coma mellow. I thought bedtime would be easy and it wasn't and I lost it. I screamed at those sweet loves and scared them and felt like a shithead. I burst into tears, which scares some of them more than the yelling does. "Please stay in bed. I'm so tired. I don't feel good. Give me a break."

They kept creeping out to me, cowed but wanting to say one more thing, wanting to get one more doll. I never want anyone's posture to change because of my behavior. I don't want to scare, to intimidate, to try to control. But I felt the wave of exhaustion and rage building and pouring out of me before I could stop it. By that point it's too late anyway. I recognized the point I needed help long before that and I ignored it and then the yelling.

I went back to their room and sat with my back against the wall, mug of hot tea in my hand, rivers of hot tears pouring down my cheeks silently. They quietly fell asleep and I mourned the pain that I as the flawed, needy, sick person that I was and am can cause.

Friday morning I called my friend and asked if she could take the Bigs to school. Yes, she said. I called the babysitter and asked if she could take the kids after school. Yes, she said. I dozed on the couch with the Littles watching TV, waiting for their dad to pick them up and taken them to the pumpkin patch for the field trip they'd been eagerly awaiting for weeks. He came and they flew out of the room, jazzed. The front door closed, leaving me alone in the house, and I wept. All I'd wanted was to be alone to rest and when the solitude arrived so did the despair.

"I'm going to be alone forever. I'm going to be taking care of four kids by myself forever. I can't do this. This isn't what I wanted."

I knew I was in the dark place. I knew it was the sickness doing what it does, bringing me to my knees. I knew it wasn't the only truth but it felt like the one and only truest truth.

As Anne Lamott says I eventually picked up the heavy phone and started reaching out for help. Help me, I'm scared. Help me, I'm lonely. Help me, the shame is overtaking me. I yelled at my kids. I scared them. They'll be gone all weekend and I didn't send them off with love. Help me. I need help.

Help arrived, in reassuring words. An offer of physical help from my mom who would come the next morning. Understanding. Solidarity. Sympathy. Support. Help came and I could eventually fall asleep and start the process of getting better.

Friday night was the second night ever that I slept alone in the house. The silence of being alone is so different than the silence of being alone with my four beloved sleeping children a few rooms away. I left the microwave light on, even though it was just me, to shine as a bridge between this new life and my real life. My life as a mom when I'm so busy and so distracted that I don't have to face myself. I read and slept and fed myself and it was a mix of peaceful and lonely.

Saturday morning my mom came and held me. She walked the dog and cleaned the kitchen and offered to buy me the special, expensive food I need to help me get back on the eating plan I've fallen off of these last few weeks when I needed the most to be taking care of myself but when I put taking care of myself on the most distant burner available because it felt too hard. Her offer made me burst into tears, out of gratitude. And out of the shame that comes from needing so much help for so long. It was sweet to work side by side and get the house on the road to not being a total disaster. We didn't talk much and that was nice too.

She left and I spent the rest of the day alternating between sitting quietly and reading, resting and then working on a task. Everywhere I turn inside and outside this house there is a pile that begs to be dealt with. It exhausts me to see them and it exhausts me to deal with them. The mix of rest and work soothed me and by the evening I felt agitated, knowing I still needed rest and knowing I needed a change of scenery. I put on a cute outfit and a little make-up, drove the San Francisco with the intent of checking out LitCrawl. Instead I got a parking spot directly in front of my friend's house and stayed in all night, ordering my favorite Chinese food for delivery and watching a movie on the couch.

Sunday morning I woke up early and slipped out of the house with my dog. We walked the quiet, cool streets of the city to Blue Bottle on Linden Street. My city soothed me, as she always does. I love the feeling of being alone surrounded by people. I love all the human interactions I have, each and every time I'm in San Francisco. They are brief but there is something about them that makes me so happy. "Good morning. Cute dog." Smiles. Acknowledgement. Community. Camaraderie. Contentment. I took deep breaths, breathing in the feeling of being me, a me I recognize and love. I talked to a beloved college friend and that filled me up. I looked and listened, appreciating the colors and the familiarity of these streets. The memories they hold.

I took a different route back to my friend's house and ended up walking past murals painted on plywood barriers across the street from Alamo Square park, down the block from the Painted Ladies. I admired the art and felt grateful for the impulse and need to create art. A block later I slowed down, across the street from the huge, rambling Victorian I lived in back in 2003--the year I turned twenty-five. The year I started working in organ donation. Four adults sat on the front steps, drinking and hanging out in their pajamas. It was clear they were still going from the night before, not starting a new day. I hesitated, staring at them and they started staring back. Feeling shy but feeling like me I crossed the street. They stopped talking, curious.

"I used to live here," I said.

The smiles came. "No way. What room?" Testing me, maybe.

"The big one by the kitchen," I said. Now the smiles got bigger.

We talked about the great parties in that house, one of which was still going. "Come in!" they said.

So many smiles, so many memories, so many little stories of their lives there and mine. I moved out a only a couple years before one of them moved in--we wondered how many degrees of separation it would take us to link our tenancies. Real conversation with strangers. One of my favorite things.

I turned to leave, walking down the hardwood hallway pointing to the doors. This was my office, where I allocated organs for transplant alone at my computer in the middle of the night. I touched the bathroom door and smiled. And in here I had one of the best kisses of my life.

Life. Change. Memories. Possibility. The dark places. The hopeful places. The sweet, sweet beauty and grace that comes so often hand in hand with seemingly unbearable exhaustion and pain. What a strange, amazing design it is to be human.

Depression

In honor of Mental Health Day, which was yesterday, I add some words. This was written a few months ago and does describe my current mental state.

Coming out of a depression is like taking deep sips of the clearest air. Like drinking the purest, coldest water--the icy water out of Arthur's red Igloo cooler at soccer practice. Ideas and insights pour into my mind unchecked. I can't get to the page fast enough. Some of it is relief at no longer being in the pit. In the darkness. And some of it is the other face of the beastly angel that is my mind, the joyful extreme. I earn it because I pay the heavy pile of stolen coins, the anguish of being deep inside a painful brain that lies to me and won't let me out until its time.

My depression came on two weeks ago, most likely because I got sick. Those two things almost always go together. I got sick and that made me scared--scared about being sick when I'm alone with the kids. Scared because when I get sick my body shuts me down and I can barely get out of the chair. Scared because I turn a lot of resources inward, trying to recognize whether I'm sick enough to need to go get checked out or whether the muscle memory of being sick fires the panic buttons inside me and I'm really just regular sick.

Depression for me is wearing poop-colored glasses. I hate where I live. I can't think of anyone I actually want to be with, even as I remind myself of all the people who love me and accept me who would happily take my call. I can only see the things I don't like about myself, even as I'm trying to soothe myself saying "These are the mean voices. This is not the truth. This is the darkness and it won't last forever."

I got a little bit better physically and my mood lifted a bit too, which made it harder to be plunged back down the next day. Oh. Still here? Fuck.

I balance my physiological health with my mental health. The isolation is bad. The loneliness is crushing. But I don't want to go out. I don't want to talk. I don't want to spend the energy it will take to be around people.

I have never been suicidal and I don't think I ever will be, mostly because this life was given to me by a young woman when she died 18 years ago. It's my gift. It's my responsibility. It's my honor to be here. And there are times when I sit in my own head and beg "Do I have to keep being this person? Does it have to be this hard? Isn't there something I can do to make it better?" It's why I avoid meditation, afraid that in the quiet I will tip into the abyss and not come out again.

People tell me I'm too hard on myself and I now understand that to be true, even when I'm not depressed. I am healing that part of myself, slowly and steadily. And because of my yoga practice, my spiritual practice, my sacred movement and sacred sisterhood at The Practice I remember to find my breath. To tell myself, I have this breath. And this next one. Can I stay here, in the pain and the darkness, knowing it will not be forever? Yes.

Me too

As a freshman in college I played on the Varsity soccer team. Played is overstating the case but I was on the team. One night I went to an off campus party with a bunch of my teammates. I got wasted even though we had practice very early the next morning. Several hours later I woke up in a bed with a guy having sex with me. I'm pretty sure we had been making out at some point in the evening. I know it was his house because I took a pair of his shoes so I could run the mile to campus in time for 6 am practice. As I ran around the turf I could smell the alcohol coming out of my skin. After, we all went to breakfast and then went to work concessions for the football team. I ladled bowl after bowl of clam chowder for grown up alumni, holding back my vomit. The smell, the texture, the whole experience. It was years before I could eat it again.

I don't know that guy's name. I don't remember what he looks like although I think he had brown hair. I don't know who came with me to that party. I do know the PM Dawn song "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" was playing because to this day I can't listen to it. If it comes on the radio I have to change it because because my body vibrates with NO.

I was drunk. I'm sure I was letting him know I was interested at some point. I imagine I must have laid down in his bed. I don't think I blamed him or even really thought he'd done anything wrong. No one ever told me that it wasn't ok for someone to put himself inside of me when I was unconscious and it didn't seem obvious. I got myself into that situation.

My body knew it wasn't OK though because it kept saying NO to that song. It still does. I feel panicky when I hear the intro.

Many many many years passed before I thought maybe that was date rape? Or something? The conversations around me started changing. People started talking about consent. Oh. My intellectual understanding of what happened started catching up with the physiological trauma that my body had been carrying. Oh.

I don't know if that guy thought it was OK. Did he hesitate? Did he ask himself if it was OK? Was I somewhat responsive? I don't know.

It's embarrassing to admit to getting so drunk that I would let that happen.

Sex is pretty confusing. At least it is to me. Some of that has to do with the fact that I started having sex when I was in high school and none of us knew what we were doing. Although I thought the guys did know what they were doing and that they would somehow teach me. A lot of the confusion has to do with the fact that not many adults then, or now, know how to talk about sex and love making and feeling good and navigating the emotions and the awkwardness and the power of it. Certainly not with kids although now that I'm grown I see that we don't really know how to talk about it with each other either. I was in my 30's when a therapist said "You know men have a lot of anxiety and self-consciousness when it comes to sex too" and my mind was blown. Oh.

When a grown woman is willing to sit in front of a country of people and tell us about needing a second front door to feel safe because of something that happened to her when she was fourteen, that is real. And when many or most or all of us know that in the end the people who decide probably won't give a shit, that is real too.

I can easily imagine scenarios in which a high school boy pushes a girl down and gets on top of her, holds her down, laughing, and then walks away thinking nothing happened. No one got naked. No one had sex. What's the big deal? Add some alcohol to the experience and the whole thing could easily be forgotten by him. Because it wasn't out of the norm. And because we can still have a national conversation around the fact that a woman is saying "You did this to me. You hurt me and you scared me and I can't forget it because my body will hold onto it forever" and the responses are "No I didn't" or "He was only 17" or "All his colleagues like him."

We all make mistakes, at seventeen and forever after. Things that seem obvious now, like "Having sex with an unconscious person is not OK" didn't seem obvious to me then.

The devaluing of women is so pervasive, so insidious, so normal and deep, that I'm still waking up to it myself. Most of my embarrassment about writing this is that I'm still not outraged and hurt enough on my own behalf. That I still give that dude the benefit of the doubt. That I still think he probably wasn't and isn't a bad guy. That he didn't know better. That's still my default.

Imagine a world where there is room for curiosity. Where Brett Cavanaugh, the professional, successful, advocate of women that he tells us he is, could say "I'm so sorry. I don't remember doing that but I believe you when you say that I did. I never meant to hurt you and I will keep working and learning to try to atone for the fact that my actions have affected and will continue to affect you forever. Please forgive me." That is someone I'd be willing to have as a judge--a human who is fallible but willing to be better.

Instead he is a man who complains that he won't be able to coach kids again, even though he loves it so much. He is a man who complains about how long the past ten days have been. We're talking about a lifetime appointment and the ability to make laws that affect all of us forever, sir. Can we have someone better than you?

Here we are and there they go

Yesterday was our last day of summer vacation. The kids and I have spent almost every day together these past couple months in a mix of lounging and hustling, adventuring and hanging out at home. The house as been a complete disaster for most of that time. We've eaten home-cooked meals and grabbed random handfuls of whatever snacks happened to be in reach. We've been bored and restless and found our way out of it. We've been blissed out and awake. We drove into San Francisco many times, Barted once or twice, jumped into pools many times and exclaimed over discoveries big and small. We've created lots of art, built many towers and a tree house, done tons of laundry and mowed the lawn never quite often enough. We've watched lots of TV, tried camps for the first time, celebrated birthdays and grown inches. We've had lots of grandparent times, play dates at friends' houses, bee stings, playground visits, ice cream truck celebrations and not many naps. We've paired up in every way possible, snuggled in, laughed, tantrumed, fought and loved. We've been together, talking and wondering and playing and expanding. It has been good.

My big kids started kindergarten today. Yesterday we were in San Francisco visiting my dad, their Poppy, in his new apartment. He lives a couple blocks away from the hospital in which they were born and we drove by it yesterday, pointing things out and telling our stories together.

That's the corner that I ran around, holding my big belly and scaring the people on the sidewalk who got out of my way as fast as they could.

That's the apartment where Lily and I lived by ourselves for three weeks while we waited for Cyrus to be ready to get out of the hospital.

I didn't feel like drinking a bottle so I stayed there a while.

That's right.

I wasn't deep in nostalgia, I wasn't deep in emotion, I was in another place. An in-between place of deep awareness. The human inability to truly comprehend the passage of time because it is a mix of fast and slow, holy and excruciating.

They take my breath away with their long, strong limbs and their bright eyes. Their funny observations and their great vocabularies. Their pride in accomplishing new tasks. Their kindness and their resilience.

"I'm not a baby," Cleo told me at dinner last night.

"That's right, you're not," I replied.

"But you call me Baby," she said.

"I do. Do you want me to stop?" I asked.

"No. I want you to keep calling me that," she said.

"Good. Because I want to call you all that forever, even when you're grown-ups." I told her.

My babies. I think about holding Lily and Cyrus on my chest together for the first time, weeks after their birth. I was filled with so much gratitude that they were both alive and that I got to be their mama. When we first got them home eight weeks later we swaddled them up and put them in the same crib, an ocean of mattress between them because they were so little.

We took a quick picture this morning, the dog tied to a pole a few feet away, their little sister sitting in a huff against the wall. We wandered around trying to figure out where we were supposed to be. We found our place and got in line for Room 11, surrounded by kindergartners and parents, wide-eyed taking it all in. The line started moving, we got to the front door and were greeted by the principal and then they were gone.

Waking thoughts

When I was nineteen or twenty years old I quit soccer. I cried in front of the coach when I did it which I hated doing--I didn't like that coach at all and I wanted to quit with my head held high, powerful. In those days tears flowed easily, especially when I said anything that scared me out loud.

Walking back to my dorm, Anne was with me. She was a year older and we were friendly with one another, although not really friends. I didn't really have real friends on that team which was quite a change from my past team where the friendships were equal to the soccer. I don't remember any parts of our conversation other than her saying to me "I don't know who I'd be without soccer. I've always been a soccer player. But you have so many other parts to who you are, you'll be ok."

That was a relief to me at the time and I've thought about it over the years to remind myself--this thing that you're doing, whatever it is, is not you. You are more than this one thing.

I pulled those words into my heart this morning as I woke up to motherhood changing, yet again, as it always does and always will. My son wasn't in bed with me--he was next door with his dad where he'd been since one in the morning. One of my daughters, she who used to be the only one who stayed in her own bed all night, was over there too. I was in my son's bottom bunk bed because another daughter had asked for me also around 1 a.m, which is how I'd noticed the other two were gone.

In the arrangement we currently have which will be ending in the next couple months, I often wake up to an open back door. In the dark the kids, especially my son, make their way from the big house to the in-law unit, walking the thirty yards surrounded by shadows. Sometimes I wake up alone. That never used to happen.

Motherhood is not the only thing that I am. It is a big part of who I am, though. Motherhood and wifehood have been two of the things that have changed me the most and now one is ending and the other is changing. But it will always change. So why am I gripping so tightly?

I remind myself that it is not my kids' job to love me enough to fill up the holes in my heart. It is their job--their joy and their opportunity and their hardship--to be kids. It is my job and my soon to be ex-husband's job to build the structure and the support in which their developing brains can grow and thrive. I tell them "You never have to choose between your dad and me."

And it is my job to make that always true.

Fight or flight

In my head and in my heart I am the kind of mom who supports my kids as they feel intense feelings. In real life I am the kind of mom who starts yelling "STOP CRYING!" internally gasping in horror as I imagine the therapy my children will need to learn how to feel their feelings after their mother repeatedly told them to stop. Recently I read an essay written by a mom about how she responds to her daughter's tantrums and how the responses teach her daughter emotional intelligence. I felt a tiny flash of shame and desire, sad that I didn't do what she did and full of a wish to learn to do that. Those feelings were followed by  emphatically shutting off my phone and patting myself on the back for doing my best and trying really hard to keep doing better. Parenthood brings up the consistent wish that I had no flaws with which to damage my children as well as the constant reminder that I have the opportunity to show them how to be a flawed person who keeps trying.

The other night I lay on the floor of my kids' bedroom waiting for them to fall asleep. I started to weep, curled into my left side on the stained carpet. The tears came quietly: my kids didn't notice. I was grieving a relationship that is changing and feeling the hurt and fear fill me up. The tears came after several days of my own emotional upheaval, during which time my mind was racing circles within its inflexible container. Outrun, find a way to fix it, make a change, do something! The tears came, a relief. And I saw so clearly how much I hate feeling sad. Or mad. Or scared. I don't just hate it, I want to get as far away from it all as I can, by almost any means necessary.

I have spent most of my life trying not to feel my feelings. And not just because they are painful but because my whole body goes into a major fight or flight response, all of my parts straining to get the hell away from the thing that is causing the pain. But the thing causing the pain is. . . in me. My heart.

The fight or flight comes up with my kids too which is tough because three and four year olds are kinda nuts. I mean, they're supposed to be. Everything is new. The can speak more words than they truly understand. They are growing and forming and changing so much. They fly into rages or tears or tantrums and often they are totally irrational--at least to me. There is always some kind of explanation if any of us were calm and rested enough to sit there and find it. My well-educated mind can tell me that most of what they do is developmentally appropriate. That these small humans don't have the words to express all of the feelings that are coming over them. In fact, they are most likely in a state similar to mine--being flooded and not knowing what to do. My heart wants these beloved, amazing people to feel safe and cherished no matter what. I would love to sit on the floor and calmly put a hand on a screaming child, telling her "I'm here," and letting the feelings wash over her until she is ready to move on. I don't want them to be like me, afraid of my own fear. Afraid of my own rage. Afraid of my own grief. But my mind and my heart take a back seat to my body, awash in messages telling me to do anything I can to shut that shit down. What a relief to finally be paying attention to my body so I can notice these things are happening. And to have teachers and coaches who confirm that yes, my body is often in fight or flight and it doesn't need to stay that way. That is a coping mechanism that I don't need anymore. We can fix it with a lot of different kinds of hard work.

I don't recall ever experiencing the fight or flight during any of my many babysitting experiences. In fact, one of the reasons I was such a baby whisperer before I was a mama was because babies could feel the calm radiating from my body into theirs once I picked them up. I was unphased by crying and it never lasted long because of that--babies and kids settled right into my chill and stopped. But mamahood? Totally different. Maybe partly because I have so many. Yeah, that's a lot of it. With one at a time I might have been able to gut it out. With four it comes as a torrent. The whining and the crying often come from multiple directions and the need to escape it or shut it down washes over me like Niagra Falls. I just. . .can't. Within two minutes one night one kid was asking me, politely, to staple a hand-crafted book, one kid was screaming to get out of the bath, one kid stood up at the table and knocked a full glass of water onto the floor and the final kid was standing at the stove next to a hot pot of cooking chicken, demanding to make popcorn. And that wasn't even a time that I lost my shit. Oh wait, that's a lie. I didn't lose it in that moment but a few minutes later as I carried the crying child from the bathtub (after being told three times that said child needed the dinosaur towel! The dinosaur towel!) I stated fiercely "The effing crying is making me want to tear my head off." Except I didn't say effing.

This tornado of kids is teaching me so much. One of the reasons I don't write much about them individually or specifically here is because I want to protect their privacy. The other huge reason is that the experience of becoming their mother affects me so intensely that I'm processing and learning and healing myself and that's what I want to write about.