wise words

Anne Lamott
Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be: Where to Start

"We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be. The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the things that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down. So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren't? How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?

Here's how I became myself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake's line that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.

Oh, yeah, and whenever I could, for as long as I could, I threw away the scales and the sugar.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.

I can't tell you what your next action will be, but mine involved a full stop. I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world. The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. So one day I did stop. I began consciously to break the rules I learned in childhood: I wasted more time, as a radical act. I stared off into space more, into the middle distance, like a cat. This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights. I wasted more paper, printing out instead of reading things on the computer screen.

Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do. You get to change your mind—your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you. I cross one thing off the list of projects I mean to get done that day. I don't know all that many things that are positively true, but I do know two things for sure: first of all, that no woman over the age of 40 should ever help anyone move, ever again, under any circumstances. You have helped enough. You can say no. No is a complete sentence. Or you might say, "I can't help you move because of certain promises I have made to myself, but I would be glad to bring sandwiches and soda to everyone on your crew at noon." Obviously, it is in many people's best interest for you not to find yourself, but it only matters that it is in yours—and your back's—and the whole world's, to proceed.

And, secondly, you are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined—it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger. It will not be a Hallmark card. It is not the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on both sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days—like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things—but then there will be that wonderful child right in the middle. And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and butt and thighs and goofy greatness.

Dealing with your rage and grief will give you life. That is both the good news and the bad news: The solution is at hand. Wherever the great dilemma exists is where the great growth is, too. It would be very nice for nervous types like me if things were black-and-white, and you could tell where one thing ended and the next thing began, but as Einstein taught us, everything in the future and the past is right here now. There's always something ending and something beginning. Yet in the very center is the truth of your spiritual identity: is you. Fabulous, hilarious, darling, screwed-up you. Beloved of God and of your truest deepest self, the self that is revealed when tears wash off the makeup and grime. The self that is revealed when dealing with your anger blows through all the calcification in your soul's pipes. The self that is reflected in the love of your very best friends' eyes. The self that is revealed in divine feminine energy, your own, Bette Midler's, Hillary Clinton's, Tina Fey's, Michelle Obama's, Mary Oliver's. I mean, you can see that they are divine, right? Well, you are, too. I absolutely promise. I hope you have gotten sufficiently tired of hitting the snooze button; I know that what you need or need to activate in yourself will appear; I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. 

 

And now is all we have, and love is who we are."

blogging about blogging....

"On January 1, 1660, a young government worker in London started a diary.  He wrote about going to church, where the preacher was saying something or another about circumcision, and about lunch afterward: he mentioned that his wife burned her hand while heating up turkey leftovers.
For the next nine years this guy wrote every single day. 
What I think is that this guy...wrote down all the details of his life for none years because the very act of writing them down made them important, or at least singular.
There's a dangerous, confessional thrill to opening up your emotional life and brain to the world at large and the Internet makes it all so much faster and more breathless and exciting."


I want moments in my life to be important and singular. 

This blog is a fun place for me....a dark place for me....a record of things....a scrapbook of memories....a way to show off photography.  But I hope when I look back on my entries, however boring, mundane, or even perhaps cheesy, I'm proud that I at least tried to write them down.  Not nearly as often as I should....but it's a start. 

a moment....hopefully not the last.

It was just a moment. 

One he will never remember, I'm sure. 

But this momma will remember it....and look back and remember that it may possibly be the last time my baby boy ever falls asleep in my arms.  (one can hope I will be proven wrong....)

It happened on a cold afternoon after school, KJ was snuggled up against my other arm playing on my cell phone, and Carter was at my other arm quietly watching Looney Tunes.  Auntie MoMo had come over for dinner and we were talking and I was idly playing with Carter's longer-than-usual hair.  In the middle of a sentence to my sister, I realized that the weight of my son felt different, as if he somehow melted into me.  It was a weight of complete abandonment into his momma's arms. 

(I whispered for Eric to get the camera, just in case Carter decides from now on he's just too big to crawl into his momma's lap and fall asleep, safe and sound, loved beyond words)

I'm thankful for this moment.  I'm thankful for the moments I'm choosing to live in and to savor and to feel, and just to know. 

I am such a lucky mom to have a son.  What a relationship.  What an honor.  May he grow in confidence in the love of his family.  Because, mr. bubba-head you are loved like you don't even know.  SO big. 

I'll always remember and cherish the memories of your sweet hot breath on my neck and the comfort my arms gave you.  Know that you can always run into them.

I'm one lucky mom :)

oh, sweet memories.

to whom it may concern,

Please be patient while I decide if I can trust you.
Let me tell you my story.
The whole story.
In my own way.
I am not a person.
I am this person.
Don't judge me as right or wrong,
good or bad.
I am what I am.
That's all I've got.
Don't assume your knowledge of me is more accurate than mine.
It's not.
You only know what I have told you.
That's only a part of me.
Don't ever think that you know what I should do.
You don't.
I am still the expert about me.
Don't place me in a position of living up to your expectations.
I have enough of my own.
Please hear my feelings.
Not just my words.
Accept all of them.
If you can't, how can I?
Don't try to save me.
It's already been done.

Sincerely,

fall break friday fort

(say that ten times fast....I dare you)

The kids had a big trip to Chicago with their dad planned over Fall Break, so Eric and I decided to keep it low key on Thursday night.  As soon as the kids got home from school, I let them play outside after dinner for as long as they wanted, and then we went to Redbox where they picked out The Lorax, and I built a fort in their living room to snuggle up and watch the movie.

This is getting so sappy, I want to puke.  Truthfully, yes I wanted my kids to have a fun night, but I also kinda wanted to watch tv myself, and keep them occupied with little effort.  Mom confession?  I suppose so.

However, my little boy and girl DID have a blast, and two bowls of popcorn, a bag of Skittles and M&M's they said it was the BEST fort ever.  Do you they make badges for that?

lucky kids.
and a WAY luckier momma.

my identity

I have a million things to say, but my own words are stuck, like in a bottle, just waiting for me to pull the cork.  And I'm not sure when I'm going to be strong enough to do that, but it's not yet. 

However, being COMPLETELY done with nursing school, passing the NCLEX and getting a job (all to be blogged about at a later date), I have actually had time to read real books.  These words struck me:

"I get this feeling sometimes that after the world ends, when God destroys all our building and our flags, we will wish we had seen everybody as equal, that we had eating dinner with prostitutes, held them in our arms, opened up spare rooms for them and loved them and learned from them.  I was just another stupid child in the flow, you know; I didn't know any of these things.  I didn't know it didn't matter what a person looked like, how much money they made or whether or not they were cool.  I didn't know that cool was just a myth and that one person was just as beautiful and meaningful as another.  Not all of us are that smart, you know.  Not all of us run around naked like Adam and Eve.  You can hardly fault me for this stuff, can you?  Like I said, it felt important to climb the social ladder, it felt important to defend my identity, as though it felt like I was saving my own life."
(Donald Miller)

I wish I could rewind fifteen years and say this to myself.  I wish that the strict guilt-inducing education of my past may not have had such an impact on me, and my ability to form an identity.  Maybe not.  There's no way to know now.  But I do know that I want to love the unlovable, to look past pain, sickness, death...

 I am who I am.  It's taken me (almost ) 32 years to get here...but this is me.  Take it or leave it.  I still have so much to work on, but I can no longer apologize for who I am.  I can't do it.....I won't do it.

This is me.

if you don't have anything nice to say...

Gossip is gossip is gossip is gossip. 
Cloak it in whatever words you wish, but it's aim is never to build up, but only to tear down, and so often results in misunderstandings, shredded feelings, and I dare say hearts and relationships that may never recover from its lasting impact.  




“It’s not technically gossip if you start your sentence with “I’m really concerned about

__________________ ,” (fill in the name of the person you’re not gossiping about).”

(Brian P. Cleary)

oh wait, yep...that's still gossip.