Lenticular

I have been Thinking a lot about the school shooting situation, scrolling through the debates on my news feed.

Is it mental health? Antiquated gun laws? Modern weaponry? Video games? Absent parents? Overburdened school administrations? Astrological phenomena?

Yes.

As a perpetual overthinker, I have to remind myself that sometimes it is possible to solve a problem without knowing the answer, without naming the culprit, leaving the why unanswered.

I graduated from high school the year of the Columbine Massacre. My mother and I were having lunch only a few miles away as all emergency vehicles in the state drove past us. We said a prayer for whatever terrible accident may have happened, and went home.

When we got there, I turned on the TV to chill out for an hour before going to a play rehearsal at school.

But the same thing was on every channel.

It was a defining moment, as the bleeding boy fell from the second story window (he was my Spanish teacher's nephew, in fact).

What in the everloving FUCK is going on?

A Moment.

My brother stopped wearing black that day.

(I stopped sleeping).

I can remember the trauma, the terror, the tectonic shift in the infrastructure of my psyche as I thing I hadn't been prepared for secretly took my mental health down six notches.

I'm glad we're thinking about it. I'm glad you're thinking about it. I don't have the answers, because God did not issue me a rule book with my Yoga Teacher Training certificate, and I wasn't able to divine answers through months at the ashram.

Thinking about it is good. Praying about it is good. Talking about it is good.

Fighting about it is not.

We are all in agreement about this: Children Should Not be Shot at School Ever.

So let us start there. And pray, if that's what you've got. Say something, if you have something to share. Act if you're able to act. Manage the carnage by voting, marching, surrendering and destroying your weapons. These are not my ideas, Martin Luther King Junior and Jesus said these things.

Using your magic for good, rather than for evil.

Or distraction.

Let's find a solution, and let our children and theirs figure out why it worked.

Valentine

Holidays. Trigger. The. Fuck. Out. Of. Me.

Oh, you too?

Welcome, friends.

Romantic love has not gone well for me, historically. I'm good at friend love (and boundaries), sibling love. Puppy love.

But romance?

I've built a healthy 90 foot wall around it. With a moat. Barbed wire. Maybe a few feral pigs with oozies.

Spikes.

I've worked as hard as I could, while always feeling like a disappointment. Paid with money, time, and service for neglectful love. Lost my self in abusive love.

I've considered cats, but I'm allergic. Which might not be worse, but I do still think so. Plus they smell.

(and are cats)

((gross)).

My therapist and my 12 step group tell me that I Have Needs That Only Other People Can Fulfill. Like romantic love. Connection. Affection.

I agree, even though I don't want to.

So I'm Making An Effort.

After eight months of walling myself off in the joy room, six months of truly unfortunate and confused "dating," I'm considering Not Dressing Like A Pirate (preparing for the worst, like being boarded in the night by bigger, badder pirates). Assembling my skills from the reading and observing of healthy relationships, and therapy, and watching every single Global Glue Project interview and Recovery 2.0 interview, and adding them to my Faith, a thing that was born 14 months ago, that I lean on when it feels like the world and the internet are collapsing.

Today hit me with all of the Triggers, like the unwanted advances, the changes of plans, and the internet collapsing. And The Ben, telling me he's learned from What Went Wrong with us, and that he's Not Making The Same Mistakes This Time.

That This One is Worth Fighting For.

God.

(How I'd love to believe I'm Worth Fighting For).

And that's the side of the street that I get to own. Who wants to fight for a pirate, who has isolated herself behind a moat and clenched teeth?

My work is in smiling - letting the light in.

More worth, less adversary, less conquest.

Faith.

Tigers

I've snuggled up with my laptop all day, diving into a mountain of work while my anxiety lurks on the other end of the couch.

For a long time I thought we were the same person - that her constant nagging to Just Keep Moving was part of what made me who I am - someone who has a hard time sitting still, who gets things done, and doesn't let an email go unanswered.

Except I wasn't always this way.

I remember times not so long ago when I would sit and read books for hours on Sundays, watching the snow fall. I would snooze on the couch at my parents' house, or snore while my husband played video games all day.

She was quieter then.

Some circumstances unfolded in my life that gave her a better hold, moved her closer to the inner circles of my mind, and eventually handed her the keys and the steering wheel.

She drives fast, in a state of near panic, trying to outrun the things that scare me. Like aging, infertility, death.

Love.

Her keen sense of smell is better than mine - she does a fantastic job of scaring off would-be suitors by any means necessary, because the last one got too close and singed and amputated more nerves than I would have thought survivable.

She's been trying to protect me.

She did her best, but she's unskilled.

And I don't need her help anymore.

I've spent fourteen months uncurling her fingers from the steering wheel, placing her at arm's length, at the other end of the couch. Sometimes she's like a puppy, trying to crawl back into my lap for attention and affection, and I have to lovingly pick her up and relocate her, encouraging her to Stay for a few more minutes.

Sometimes she gets ahold of my phone and sends frantic texts, which is embarrassing, but it's happening less often.

She's getting better.

Quieter.

Because I'm getting better. I have to dedicate myself to it every single day. Remind myself that the tiger in my mind has only as much control as I give it. That it is a ghost of a tiger that used to be - a tiger I used to be.

And that her services are no longer required.

Off

I turned off my phone last night.

At first I couldn't even remember how to do it... not that it should be difficult, the darn thing has two buttons... but still. I can't remember the last time I turned it all the way off.

Me too, I thought.

I can't remember the last time when I turned myself all the way off. The last time I was unreachable.

The Universe listened, as she tends to do, with most of the texts that came in over the night cancellations of obligations today. Meetings where I would have had to Listen Deeply or Bare Parts of My Soul that might still be catching their breath from the marathons of the past five or so years, since I've been outrunning the grief and healing that were seeking me.

And I slept – with interruption, mind you – for twelve hours. I woke up and cried a few times, too. Echos of the unanswered cries from 37 years ago, feeling unreasonably far from everyone I love, but with quite a few more tools than I used to have.

(And none of them The Phone).

Monday I went to a meeting of The People In My Shoes, whose stories are different shades of my own. How can it be so simultaneously healing and terrifying to hear that the fears and behaviors I've adopted have shared roots?

That the other women in the room are lost in the same confusion – how did I love someone so much that I'd let them do this to me?

It is tempting to look at What Was Wrong With Him, but it's a fools errand. Because I give zero fucks about what happens to him, and that's the truth. That's his job, or the job of society, to hold him accountable for the terror he has unleashed.

My job is to find the weak spot in me, the deepest root of this weed, the unanswered cries in the night that he responded to. And respond to them.

I am an example of the damage caused by generations of cry-it-out.

By Big Girl Pants.

Take a good, long look.

(I wrote a book about it)

My mother did the best she could, as did her mother. And now I get to Do The Work of understanding the roots, unearthing them, and healing them. Putting myself back to sleep, rather than distracting myself with The Needs of Others.

No one can or will complete you.

(except you).

37

Facebook just reminded me that today is my birthday... you know... in case I forgot?

I have loved seeing the wishes come in from the other side of the world, watched the sun rise in Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, South America, North America.

The power of technology, used for good. 

---

There is a man I love. A man mowed down for the power of his peaceful words. They mean more to me each year.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that."

Wow.

---

You are a vehicle for this light, right now. In this moment. In each moment. It's easy to forget - I forget it every six seconds.

I was in line at Costco yesterday, buying coffee and a suitcase, swarmed by carts overloaded with children eating samples. And the darkness rose up. The sadness. The desperation of self-pity.

Costco is the cruelest of places.

I wanted to go home and cry - sink back into bed and let the darkness wash over me.

But instead I phoned a friend. I ate lunch. I stretched my mothering muscles in another way. Had dinner with a kindred spirit, sent another to the beach on my behalf. Told my parents I loved them, reached out in all directions.

---

I am not in charge in this life, a fact I dislike immensely until it comes time to send out warnings of inbound ballistic missiles, and then I'm entirely grateful.

The darkness is here. It is all around. The universe is made of darkness.

And you?

You are made of light 

Things You Cannot Teach

“Some things you cannot teach, only learn.” - my friend Zreba

I'm on the eve of 37, and just realized I never wrote a birthday post last year. Last year, I woke up one month into working full time for Tommy Rosen, and DJ brought me a gift as I started the kettle for tea.

I had intended to go to New Mexico, as I had intended to go this weekend, and instead found myself facing a day off in Venice, by myself, for my birthday. Instead of bounding off to go and play with his local friends, DJ asked me what I wanted to do, and took me to the beach. He took quite a few pictures of me (which I'll forgive) but otherwise gave me space to contemplate the completion of another year - one no one promised me.

It's funny, to think back, isn't it?

Knowing what ultimately unfolded?

These men have been my guardian angels, watching me re-emerge from the wreckage of my own burned out, self-destructive, worthless ways.

(maybe you have, too?)

36 was a Year of Sadhana. Chanting. Phoning a friend. Al-anon. Home Improvement. Therapy. Letters I wrote and sent to Hannah instead of the intended recipient(s). Eating on most days. Crying on most days. Making My Bed.

(Not in that order).

I graduated from cambio, a place I feel does good in the world, who no longer needed my energy and effort. I graduated from Enso, a place I helped build, whose community became so nurturing and so painful – everything I ever wanted – a place for mothers and babies who instead reflected back to me my own emptiness.

I wrote a book about love, and all of the different ways I tried (and failed) to be The Right Woman. A primer on the ways I've defined my self worth and sought to heal one relationship with others.

(It's also hilarious).

Last week, I started on book two, because I cannot help myself. I'd rather be in the desert right now, alternately soaking in healing mineral springs and wandering west towards the mica mines, a place where it looks like God dropped a mirror and sprinkled the hillside with glitter. But I needed to be still. To work from my own bed, my perch above the burned out hills and the coyotes in the canyon.

Last year I was an infant in recovery, just a few weeks new and still near sighted. I needed loving care and regular monitoring.

Sometimes I get lost in the minutia – the steps and missteps I've taken along the way. I forget the miracle of all miracles, which is that I was born.

Me.

The woman who cannot successfully get onto an airplane with a roll-a-board suitcase and a latte without The Kindness of Strangers.

The woman who can look you square in the eyes and champion you birthing or dying but cannot accept a compliment without turning 100 shades of red and choking back tears and vomit.

The woman who looks in the mirror and thinks (simultaneously) I have some redeeming qualities. I meet some of these beauty standards. And. It's a good thing you're smart, Kwinn, because you're rotting on the vine.

(Hannah reminds I have nothing to be redeemed for – and some things are better with age.)

I have believed that my love is a weapon, a cause of suffering for anyone in the wake, and so I've tried to keep it within the exoskeleton of the cage I've built around me. I have been sorry for existing, for the inconvenience I've caused. And I have so wanted to be seen, for who I am – a bumbling idiot with sexy defense mechanisms, a malnourished heart, and a few morsels of things to offer. Compassion and eye contact.

I'm such a toddler. Needing a rest and fighting against it. Except for me, the rest in question is human connection. Come at me, and I'll bury my head. Run away, and I'll follow.

The things I will do for a hug.

This year I'm publishing The Book. Finishing a few more. Buying an airstream and going to the beach. Sitting by the fire by myself and letting love come to me.

Last year was the dress rehearsal.

This year, the reveal.

It may have taken 37 years to get here, and that's ok.

Some things you cannot teach, you can only learn.

Overslept

I overslept again, which I know because I woke the first time before the sun and stayed in bed. Drifted back into wonderland where three men in my life collided in a frantic attempt to get back from India and settled into a place that was full of secret passageways and did not feel like home.

This is the language my body uses to tell me – with greater certainty – that it is time to get up. That laying in among the sheets is a recipe for getting lost in the gnarled and dark passageways of my mental illness. That I'll wake tangled in sheets and grief, both hot and cold, wondering where the easy nights of sleep and youth have gone.

The Universe it seems is cashing in on the nights I powered through, the tempestuous spending of the trust fund of my energy. Many of these expenditures were indulgences in love and full moon walks on the beach, others binge-watching Dexter and horror stories.

Rather than bounding out of bed, I kept score, weighing myself with the communications that came in during the night – and those that did not. I feel like the coastline of California – first ravaged by fire and then drowned by the storms that we prayed for, that always seem to come a week late.

The rain is so fast and so soon after the fire that it changes the very shape of the earth, tearing away what was once a piece of the massive part of gravity that keeps us from floating off into space.

How is this possible?

I cried a lot last year – many sleepless nights spent burried in the misery of my past, unpacking one memory at a time. Tears that came years too late, after the burned out soil had hardnened over and was no longer able to accept the healing of the waters. But somehow, something softened me, just a little, just at the edges, near the roots.

Rain in the desert runs off and away, and only soaks in when it finds a safe place to land and rest.

I would like to be a safe place to rest.

In Search of Water.