Becoming Real

The story I told myself is that the way for me to be successful, make the most money, is to work for an organization, get benefits and impress leadership. I am a good employee and so they keep me complacent. 

I am also different. I’m drawn to things that stand outside the norm. I like counterculture. I crave not being like everyone else. 

I have spent two years cocooning and trying to change the look of my life. I’ve dreamt about being a writer, making my money remotely, having a more fluid day, control over my schedule and true creativity. I thought the other day about how energizing it is for me to write. How I have felt an unseen presence coming through me. How I search for other writers out there. I am searching for myself. I’ve spent my whole life knowing this is my calling and then falling in line and doing the thing that needs to be done for stability.

My role as a mother intersects with all of this because I want to be available for my kids as much as possible. I also want to show them what staying true to your story is all about; what it looks like to respect your passion and hold space for it to come alive.

I’ve been so focused on work, the holidays and my mother, that I forgot how it feels to have this beautiful writing muse speaking through my pen strokes. This morning it came back; it has been months. I can’t control these words, they feel like they are coming through me rather than from me and I just let them roll. I struggle with all the words about my mother, and what to do with the content that I have written by now. It is so angry and not the energy I want to put out into this world. I keep asking myself how do I shape all of this into something worthy and beautiful for others to interact with? I keep wondering how will it become real?

Incessant Scrolling

It is in inevitable. I’m walking toward myself, and the weight of old ways has to go. Some of it has fallen off, like old skin I didn’t even notice disappearing. Other pieces have to be pushed away, scraped off like a scab, and I know I will be raw as I heal and grow into a new form. 

Incessantly, we are rebuilding our cells, our skin, our look. We have the same constant nature, but shift form and presence, depending on light, water, or environment. How far I have come; how much more I have to grow. Still the desire to do so pushes forth from within and I wonder whether I am drowning or flourishing in this space? 

I have existed in so many forms. My energy currently feels like an unharnessed force. My desire is to put forth something new and authentic. But I am not plugged in anymore; I feel lost and fumbling. 

I never tell stories. Even when I recount moments, I stumble and lack true memory to what happened. I go for humor instead to camouflage the parts that feel uncomfortable.

I must conspire my own magic to go after what I want. It doesn't feel like a grand pursuit, one that will surely evade me, but rather more a coaxing, like with a vulnerable animal that I ache to help.

I want to yell, "I AM HERE!" and make something happen, yet it feels like I am standing alone in a great valley surrounded by mountains, and the remains of my voice and my energy are bouncing off matter around me. Echoing. I am left my own devices. 

_________
This is for after your escape. After all the heavy breath and tears it required to tear you away from your chains. 

This is for when you have already felt the elated freedom of being on the outside of it all. 

This moment comes once you have settled and started to look around and consider what you should do next. 

When you consider whether you made the right decision and fear failure is right at your back. 

Don’t look back. 

Now you are truly alive and you only have your internal devices to survive. 

Anything is possible. 

It is up to you to decide.

Space and Place

I am at the end of a girl's weekend; it’s Monday morning and I can hear the traffic building. The fence along the street of this corner lot is lined with a hedge, so it creates a secret garden. I can see into the backyard of the house next-door, which faces another direction. The sprinkler under the huge elm in one corner is gently dusting the grass. Purple sage lines a curved brick path along the side of the house to the front gate. It is alluring and it makes me want to follow the hopeful feeling of this backyard. 

I haven’t even looked in all the beds around the edges of this lawn but it is clear someone is tending to this escape. It is lovely; I sense a wise person is caring for this place. The birds seem to love it too. I truly think it’s the best part of this rental. 

In the room my old U of A roommate and I shared, a small shelf called to me, not all the books but rather the curiosity of pulling from the books and finding quick wisdom with a flick of my hands: a note on the inside cover of one that said "Arizona rocks!" and a business card from a bookstore in Waltham from another. I smile at the synchronicities and felt kindred to some unseen presence. I was drawn to Earth Song, Sky Spirit – a book I surely have seen before but not read. It's an anthology of Native American writers. I randomly opened to Paula Guinn Allen’s Spirit Woman. 

I could barely fall asleep after I read the story. I was charged, felt energetic and anxious. It could have been that Dahlia was gone and I was the only one sleeping upstairs. It could have been that I had just spent the weekend with some old college friends I've known since we were silly kids. It could have been I found an escape I greatly needed. It could have been that I was searching for what to do next with my life. All these things. 

I was reaching out for that grandmother feminine energy. I felt encircled by it. It was as if I was waiting for it to deliver a message, assigned to me. It led me to think we are all grandmothers, even tiny Amelia. We all have the wisdom of the ages in our being and the companionship of each other. We are grandmothers from the get go, with our knowing solidified and perhaps just untapped and undiscovered. Age is not the only way we get to the river. Some of us are just naturally connected, some of us wander for years to get there, some of us assert our wisdom and some coax it, carry it like a fine light veil. Still we all have our space, our birthright to the knowledge, to the moment and to the flow of the great river of knowing.

I have come to fear the company of women. I have come to feel apprehensive of a coven of us coming together. Deep inside I wonder if it is because I am not aligned with myself, though I am more aligned than I have been in forever. Perhaps it’s that I sense so much worn out emotion from the women I know: the ones working and raising children, tending a home and taking care of family, frazzled and fearful for the spiraling path our society seems to be taking. I don't fear the world though, this living earth, this grandmother so entrenched in the circle of time, knowing this is but a mere story, a moment, all drips in a much longer lifetime.

I feel these things and yet I do not speak of them to my friends. I sit silent or let their stories take center stage or fall flat without battling back. I hide in humor and use alcohol to relax. Alone I feel free and alive and vibrant but I do not express myself the same way in the presence of others. I am scared of myself, I am scared of others; I don’t know how much to give and what boundaries to draw. I should release all fear of giving and do it with a gracious heart.

I'm thinking now that this house came to us for a girls weekend. The space, not perfect but kind, and just fine for us. Perhaps us too, bringing our energy to this house, as we had to a few others in Tucson, letting it shelter a few kind travelers since it has not had many guests.

Magnetic

How she came to her art felt like a dance, it was the same sensation. There was an awkward cadence to it, as if she was young and fresh and didn’t understand her own existence, let alone her partner’s. She felt nervous and new and she wasn’t sure of her actions. She held steadfast to the moment and followed the motions through her body begging to understand, to learn how to move. She wondered if on the other side the curiosity was mirrored?

From things unseen, there was a patient pause; a sense of grace about being recognized. There was no judgment or malice about how long it took. Time was uninformative. Rather there was a steady open listening, a gaze from across the room waiting to be returned. It was true and required nothing more than authentic recognition of what she wanted. 

Passion is not a such a strange thing. It is in fact a flowering plant that craves to bloom. She did not understand how to cultivate it and she expected that it would sprout wildly in her and grow uncontrollably taking over her being, leaving her old self cracked open, a husk to feed what was new. But no this was part of her, one she had to welcome and coax; assuring it she too was ready and would not abandon it. In this way it started out as an affair of sorts: she stealing away in fits and fear for being discovered. All the while feeling more live and aligned with each rendezvous. 

It is not hard to want, to crave something. It is much harder to be wanted, to be watched and release control of being carried away. It is never clear what story will wait on the other side. Truth be told, it is a web one gets entangled in long before they realize they are caught. There was not much else to do but throw fear aside, to relinquish it as a shield. She would stand naked across the room staring back into the eye of a being she did not yet fully comprehend. All the while knowing it was kin to her, all the while feeling magnetized to its presence.