Start somewhere, even today

For Paul, because I'm still learning (with so much thanks).
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This morning as I bent my head down to kiss Ava's forehead to wake her, I whispered "Hello, my beautiful girl. How did Mama get such a beautiful girl to call her own?" Ava's eyes fluttered awake and as I came into focus, she smiled and said "It's because you're beautiful, Mama. Where did you think the genes came from?"

"Oh, sweet girl," I said, "Mama is..." and stopped, hearing in my mind what I was going to say next.

What was I going to say next?

I was going to say something to deflect the compliment. I was going to say anything that would deflect what she had just said. "Mama is...old? smarter than she is pretty? not beautiful?"

Instead, I smiled at her and said "Mama is so thankful for that compliment, bug. I love hearing that you think I am beautiful, it means so much to me that you tell me things that you appreciate about me." Because here is this fantastic, powerful, beautiful, creative, light-filled 10 year old who doesn't get that it's not ok to think that you are beautiful, that acknowledging physical beauty is fraught and full of connotations. And, at the very end of the day, she hears time and again that we look so much alike. Who is lying, then, if I deny her compliment, her or me?

I struggle with this question of beauty, the inclination for my girl to watch herself dancing in the mirror, the tossing of the mane of hair, the emphasis on her looks. She's confident across the board: smart brain, kind personality, giving heart, beautiful face. But there is this narrow line of humility that needs to run the border between confidence and arrogance that I feel as a parent I need to enforce, lest this get out of hand. Or is there? Perhaps it's just all my own conditioning now brought to roost in my shaping of this bright soul's opinion about herself. What am I supposed to do?

Years ago, a friend told me about an experience she had with two trusted and lovely friends. My friend is a smart, beautiful, clever, funny, hardworking and talented woman. At this stage in her life, she was already professionally successful in her mid-twenties, working hard and being recognized for the great things she brought to the table. If memory serves me, her friends were running a workshop about messages that women receive about themselves and wanted to work through an exercise where they each made a list of loving truths they believed about my friend. They then sat on either side of her and whispered these loving truths in each ear, one at a time. I think she told me that she made it through maybe 5 rounds before she could no longer stand the urge to reach up and shield her ears, finally asking them to stop, tears streaming down her face.

Maybe it was because we were in our mid-20s, but I sat nodding at her reaction, my skin prickling at the discomfort.

The truth is that I think women want nothing more to than to be truly seen by the people we love and who love us. We want to that inner light to rush to our eyes because we are able to be vulnerable. We want to feel that warm comfort of trust. We want to be beautiful, not only in the manifestation of someone digging our physical form (in whatever form that may be), but beautiful in the most all-encompassing way: heart, mind, soul and personality. Stop a woman on the street and pay her a compliment and watch the smile radiate from her face. These safe, single-serve intersections put a lift in anyone's stride that lasts hours. But go deep with a friend about how much you love and appreciate her, how you love how she walks in the world, how you think she's physically beautiful and watch her squirm or, typically, deny.

It seems the only way around this is exposure therapy: the relentless and targeted exposure of authentically admiring the beauty in the women we love. It's a text to your friend highlighting something that you admire. It's a phone call where you say, with your words, that you find something about her beautiful ("cute" has no space in this exercise...puppies and kittens are cute). It's the letter you write to tell her why you think her being on this earth matters to you, why her relationship with you matters or is important. And then there is the conversation over drinks, looking into her eyes (friend to friend, lover to lover, mother to daughter, etc), where you get to say these things and react to one another in a physical way.

Exposure to her own goodness, in varying degrees of intimacy, from someone she loves.

I had this sort of experience with a friend years ago, at a time in my life where I felt lost, alone, and less of myself than I had been in years. This friend made it his job to show me to myself, to bring me back to an understanding of what I could mean to people, to boost me back up on the path. This is his gift, a source of encouragement for many people I know. I also know he saved my life in many ways by this simple gift of sharing with me the bright light he saw in me.

So who is that 10 year old inside of you that all too quickly learned to stop trusting her belief in her own beauty? And how can you love and encourage that confident 10 year old in others? Because we all love the love, even if it's at different levels and with different layers of security keeping us safe. But it's good to start somewhere, even today.

Light, the white walls, small girl, worry.

Curled around my girl, light streaming through the window, I thought about that forever of not being whole. What would it feel like to have a partner missing a favorite body part? Forever? Forever is a long time. Even if I loved this person, would I be able to hurdle that? And what does love have to do with desire anyway? Does it make it easier to put it away, that need? Who can I call and talk to about this worry? I flip through my mental rolodex of friends, sorting through and through. My BC tribe are all too close to this, my nonBC tribe can't really understand in the same vein, my male friends I am worried will tell me the truth: that it's too much to think about, that I need to just roll with it and quit the worry, that this is today and tomorrow is something entirely new.

Facebook reminds me today that five years ago this week, I had my mastectomy and that four years ago I was rushed into surgery to correct the correction that came from two surgeries before. My brain sensed it even before I saw the digital proof.

That forever of not being whole, that forever of wholly being, that being of forever. What will that being be?

Made manifest

Today the men came to rip out the kitchen, next week the bathrooms, weeks after that the not-original built-ins and flooring. This shit is getting real, for real, now. Minutes after I took this picture, I saw one of my realtors on the street outside. "Come back and see what we are doing!" I called to him. "Oh my, go slow on that remodel, Fran!" he counseled back. "HA! This is go big or go home time, Ralph!" was my gleeful response.

And it was gleeful. All of the anxiety over the enormous amount of money I'm spending, whether I'll be in this home forever, what it all means to this time in my life had been burned away in that minute.

This is my vision, my brain reminded me.

My big, beautiful life, the home I wrote about back in June when I laid out my vision for my future. And that vision encompassed life and home and work and relationships. It is coming true in ways big and small that I haven't focused on, but have become manifest just for the sheer fact that I have articulated them. It's all in motion, big and huge and becoming. I can feel it.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to override the intellect and go with your heart. Sometimes the bravest answer is "yes", or "no" or "not this" or "hmm, let me consider that". Sometimes the decision trees are not enough, that the downward cascade of the worst case scenario is not going to save you from hurt or sadness or tragedy. Sometimes you have to run in front of the good thing to make sure you catch it. Sometimes what you think is a good thing only exists to teach you more about who you are and how gracefully you can let go of things that are not meant for you. And bless them, and say "thank you" for the lesson.

Late night last night, I got some great wisdom from a new friend about creating the life you want to live. He said that he believes that you attract good things by living the good things: to attract depth, you have to be vulnerable to going under; to attract partnership, you have to get past the need to manage the situation; to walk the path with others, you have to be comfortable with the ambiguity; to create a difference in someone's life, you have to know yourself in all of your sticky messy-ness first.

He also said that knowing the difference between suffering through an untenable situation and the life you are destined to have is having a sense of what this big beautiful life would feel like well lived.

What would that big beautiful life look like?
How would that make you feel?
Who and what exists with you in that space?
How will you continue to grow?
How will you help to make this life you've envisioned manifest?

And why are you waiting even a moment to begin?

Roadmap

For my girl Beth Peck, who I'm waiving at from the other side of the mountain.
And for my girl Krista Nye Nicholas, who I can't begin to thank enough for her love.
And for my girl Sharleen Ernster, who is making it hot for women to own it, all of it. Love you.
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Dr. Sullivan's PA eyed the opening on my chest, prodded it a bit, gave me a second glance and said "It looks like it's filling in, Fran. I think we shouldn't worry about it."

I'd come in to have a check up, down in New Orleans for a conference and worried about a wound from my surgery that hadn't healed properly. She looked at it again and told me that the wound would not close skin to skin, but would fill up, layer upon layer, until it had healed.

This was not news I was prepared to hear because it was a big wound, a startlingly large wound placed on my reconstructed breast in the most conspicuous place. But she went on to say that after the filling and the healing, that a revision would take place, that the scar tissue would be reworked to bring the appearance back to as normal of a condition as possible. "It will look good again, Fran. It will just take longer than we thought."

I've reflected on this experience a lot over the past few years, thinking about physical and emotional wounds and how they heal, how they are sometimes not just stitched up and become faint memories, but have to take the long road of layering time to bridge the gap and connect again. And then, if we are lucky, and if we are open, and if we desire (actually), someone may come along and help us revise that scar so that it's less noticeable to ourselves, be that through a change in attitude or insight.

One person's scar is another person's roadmap.

Yesterday I got fitted for the most beautiful swimsuits I've ever had, each with a plunging neckline, each summoning my inner warrior who owned the fact that the scars are there and visible and real and not a problem, that it is hot to own your history and all that comes with it. The metaphor of healing with time and love is not lost on me as I roll into this fifth year of living a second life. This is a hurdle, this is the clearing, this is the other side.

Developmental Tasks

The cats are curled up with one another on my grandmother's old chair. I'm wrapped in a blanket sitting on a foot rest against the wall, close to the radiator. The sun is streaming through the windows onto an orchid whose blooms are still intact despite the drafty window it sits in front of. There is laundry to be folded, tasks to be done. I'm ten days into my ritualistic taking away of everything delicious, my body clean and vibrant but limited by a small injury that keeps me from exercising for another week.

Renewal is coming early this year, after a clumsy end to a crappy 2015. I shuffle through the lists that I've made over the past few months when I was trying to jump start my life in this new place. These lists bring a smile, all contain the things that I have done in the past and do well when I am on track. But the smile is welcome instead of the beating up that I used to give myself, the thrumming of blame of what it is I need to do to be in my best space and kicking myself in the ass for careening off track. Instead, I recognize that I have had fabulous meals to eat and bourbon to drink late into the night with new friends, I have had people to discover and to crush on and then to put into a better place. I have had to straddle the space between my old place and my new place, my old work and my new work, my old friendships and new ones just budding. And then there was December and the beginning of January. And now I am here.

So I pull out these lists, I gingerly step around in the reflection of a year, I re-read the vision I wrote for myself in July, I reflect on the gift of developmental tasks at such a late stage. In all, I am patient with myself as I never have been before. I have the tools that I need to be ready to go, outward bound and sure.

[And here I will be, or was, as it may be, as I am posting this even later than expected. But to be sure, it's worth the time and the risk and the aftermath and the everything. Laying fallow and becoming again, anew, only to consider the pruning or growth (who knows) to follow. Trust ourselves, hold ourselves and others loosely so that they may grow too. So much goodness in awakening and knowing ourselves better, so much life to be seen, so much to share and reflect upon, so much to build. Let it be so, even though I missed church last Sunday. Amen.]

(started on a snowy day in February, written only in the last few lines on a balmy night in Sri Lanka, and so many beautiful spaces in between, my heart open wide, having just learned so so so much.)

Then and Now

What I remember most is how long it took to type out, hunched over my mother's electric typewriter out in the barn-made-office where our oil company was housed. The song had nearly 68 lines and I was not first in class in typing. And it really made no sense as to why I'd picked this song over other that were his favorites, other than I could see my father singing it and doing a hilarious dance to its jaunty klezmer Broadway tune, as I typed the lines. 

My dad, big as life, funny, irreverent, was gone. Something in the words, in the practice of transcribing them, brought something concrete to the chaos. I handed the note to my mother, folded up, and asked her to put it in the coffin with him. As odd of a request as it was, I know she understood.

The strange things we are called and compelled to do is how we make sense of things, I've learned this in the nearly 28 years since that piece of paper was slipped into his blue ultrasuede jacket, as easily as his casket was slipped into the marble floor that day. Today I have my own "burn box," held on the shelf of my home, filled with the most select group of emails, letters, poems, writings that I want to take with me as I return to ash. Everything in my burn box holds the deepest meaning for me, each piece given to me by loves of my life in moments that will forever be etched on my heart. I want to ensure, for myself, that I can carry this love into my future lifetimes, not an immolated gift for the gods, but love that is deeply entwined with my very essence, encased in my forever, wherever that may be. 

A year ago, I posted the following poem to my Facebook page, no doubt touched by the funny synergy of Leonard Cohen's act. Today we bury a friend, she, herself like my father, far too young and vibrant to be gone. I'd ferry her off with champagne if I could, and a picture of her sweet boy and the man who has been her lifelong backstop, and the best memories, painstakingly typed, all of those who will be here today for them and for her. What we take with us matters, what others give us for the journey, this side and the next, makes the most of life.

Ghosts on the Road
-David Rivard

A bookkeeping man,
tho one sure to knock on wood,
and mostly light

at loose ends—my friend
who is superstitiously funny, & always
sarcastic—save once,

after I’d told him
about Simone’s first time
walking—a toddler,

almost alone, she’d
gripped her sweater, right hand
clutched

chest-high, reassured
then, she held on to herself
so, so took a few

quick steps—
oh, he said, you know what? Leonard
Cohen, when he was 13,

after his father’s
out-of-the-blue heart attack, he slit
one of the old man’s

ties, & slipped a
message into it, then buried it
in his backyard—

73 now, he can’t
recall what he wrote—(threadbare
heartfelt prayer perhaps,

or complaint)—
his first writing anyway.
The need to comfort

ourselves is always
strongest at the start,
they say—

do you think
that’s true? my friend asked.
I don’t, he said,

I think the need
gets stronger, he said, it
just gets stronger.

Of Armor and Amulets

For Timothy, who has me thinking about all of these things
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Most days, my hands roam over my jewelry box, seeking the pieces I am drawn to for the interaction of energy and effect. My dad's belt and buckle, my grandmother's amethyst ring, my daughter's handmade bracelet: I used to think of dressing this way as my armor, a way to steel myself to meet something rough.

I remember so clearly the act of dressing for court, the last act of a painful and gut-wrenching divorce that dumped me out onto those hard wooden benches raw and bruised. That day, I dressed in my typical black, fortified by my grandmother's gold bracelet on my wrist, my father's chain a protective amulet underneath. My lawyer leaned over to whisper that my makeup was flawless. It was all intentional, every bit, a way to end things with as much care and attention to how I'd begun.

But today, sitting in church on All-Soul's day, I realize these pieces I wear are less armor than talismans, ways for me to feel connection and strength from those I love. A symbol of authenticity from a dear friend at my neck reminds me everyday to have courage to be true not only to myself, but to all of those I come into contact with, my grandmother's amethyst reminds me of her gentle nature, of her kindness, her empathy, her compassion.

I've been thinking about kindness and compassion a lot lately, about the fragility of openness and intimacy, and the difference between intimacy and vulnerability and that warm space in between. A couple of months ago, my lovely therapist Marilyn and I were talking about what it feels like to be open to giving of yourself, only to be hurt in the process. "You don't get to have it both ways, Fran," she admonished me. "You can either be free with the deep intimacy that you are able to offer people --which is one of the greatest gifts you have--but you can't be hurt when people take what they need and go. You either offer yourself freely, without expectation, or you build expectation in and limit who you share yourself with. You can't have it both ways." Her words have struck with me, playing over and back in my mind in the past few days as I'm pondering that blending of intimacy and vulnerability that sits atop my personal foundation of authenticity, courage and self-worth that are inked upon my spirit.

It's too easy to wall off, close the vault and shell up, climb back in a the first sign of ouch. But that serves nobody and it certainly doesn't serve my own purpose as the person I am in the world. Most of us are messy, most of us are feeling around in the dark for a light switch, most of us are feeling like we are failing at something important in our lives. So every day we armor up and go out into the world, not sharing our deepest gifts with others in ways that would help to serve and heal not only ourselves, but also those that are treading water just the same.

What if, instead, we turned to our talismans, to our guides, to hold precious things close to us to remind us of who we are, to lean against each other when we stumble in the present, to live it less afraid and more honestly and with truth and trust. There is a vast difference between being defensive and being fortified, between being armored and being available, between keeping ourselves from the real likelihood of disappointment and instead learning to navigate when situations present us with choices on how to meet things head on, to talk them through, to care, to forgive and to heal. And to be so thankful for the choice.