Semantics.

Originally posted on April 3, 2013 

I’m a word girl.  Sometimes I like definitions, clear boundaries.  And sometimes (because who would I be if there wasn’t a sometimes) I find them incredibly limiting, even debilitating.

I’ve been thinking about how to define people like us.  Folks who get punched in the gut with emotion, curve balls straight to the stomach.  Who laugh loudly, cry loudly, and hear praise and criticism with ears turned up.

Spirited is a word for kids like this, for kids like Isla.  It’s my duty – not only as her mother, but also as a woman in the world – to demonstrate healthy ways to handle the bigness.

And I think that starts with language.

So instead of difficult, too much, and intense, I’m thinking about words like determined, enthusiastic, and passionate.

Instead of too emotional, I’m choosing emotional transparency.

:::

Isn’t this fun?

What word boundaries would you like to see re-mapped?  Leave them in the comments, won’t you?

xxx,
*E

A Drink vs. Self-Worth.

Originally posted on April 2, 2013 

I knew I’d get here, to this day.

To the day when I’d really, really want a drink.

See, last month, I decided that I simply like myself more when I don’t drink.  Of all of the reasons I’d come up with to stop, this seemed the most sane, the most logical, the most loving.  Aren’t we all supposed to do (or, in this case, not do) the things that make us like ourselves?

Last month I visited friends out-of-state, drank champagne in a way that felt responsible, defended points and laughed abundantly – and then endured the worst hangover I can remember.  During my day of nausea and headache, I did not begin my typical inner conversation of self-hatred.  Rather, I was patient and kind with myself, stumbling upon the idea that liking myself was a good enough reason to quit drinking for good.

The month that’s followed has been sprinkled with beautiful moments and inspired ones.  I’ve met new, massively important people.  I enrolled in B-School and have quickly fallen into the trap of expecting everything to fall directly into place immediately.

And today, in increasingly strong waves, the mama-reality of everyone-before-self kicked me in the face.  And I’ve felt angry.  And I’ve felt like I want to be regular, like a person who can dissolve some of her frustration in a glass of red wine, who can not have that glass of wine represent the new everything.

I knew I’d get here, to this day.

But this is my Truth, however eye-rolling it might seem.  And writing about it so openly makes it, somehow, easier.  This continues to surprise me, this equation of truth = freedom.

Alas, I don’t appear to be that regular person.  I’m envious of her, whoever she is.

Today, I’m surprised to see myself saying that I’m going to make the choice to keep liking myself, even when it feels really hard.

I think I might be worth it.

*E

Debbie Gibson, Mumford & Sons, and Some Other Things.

Originally posted on April 10, 2013

When I was a kid I had a recurring fantasy: me, boarding my school bus in slow motion.  My hair swept back by an invisible wind machine, singing Debbie Gibson’s Out Of The Blue, my peers awed and rapt as I made my way down the narrow aisle to my seat in the back.

Now, the fantasy looks something like this: I win some sort of contest.  I meet Mumford & Sons (natch) before a show and (not so) off-handedly mention that I can sing gorgeous harmony to any and all of their songs and, I mean, if they want maybe it would be awesome to have a female voice on something tonight.  They’re thrilled, call me up onto the large and theatrically-lit stage, and I’m immediately and confidently thrust into the life of music I’ve always known was mine. They’re not even weird about me having their lyrics tattooed on my arm because they get it; if they didn’t get to dive into the souls of these songs every night, they’d probably get tattoos like this, too.

:::

“I have felt – my whole life – like I’m just a little too much … I’ve spent a whole lot of my life trying to be different than I am at my core.  Fighting my nature.  Trying to be less sensitive.  More social.  Trying to climb back onto the charts.  Dulling my intense feelings with whatever was nearest – wine, food, cigarettes, sex, whatever.  I just wanted to be acceptable.  I wanted to fit in.  But I don’t know about that anymore.”

It was Glennon, of course, of Momastery.  I read this as I drank my coffee.  Eckhart Tolle was on the iPod when I began reading.  It was distracting.  I got up to turn it off as soon as I realized that this post was something different.  Not better, no, because Glennon is always just what I seem to need.  But these words she’d poured out at 5:30 in the morning?

They were for me.

After I shared the essay on my Facebook page a friend who’s been in the “too much” with me – deep in it – wrote, “She is you.  I mean you are her.  I mean holy moly you are so similar.”

:::

It’s exhausting to keep thinking, over and over again in a tedious and often mean-sounding loop, that you’re crazy.  That normal people don’t cry at the same song over and over again like this.  That there must be some way to feel less intensely about every. single. thing.  That the black and white and up and down and here and there and FUCK.

It often leads to the desire to numb the bigness.  Or it takes me to the I-just-want-to-be-regular place, the one where I sit quietly at a dinner gathering, smile perched precariously on my face, wanting to scream or run or drive as far as I can away from there.  Not because these people aren’t lovely – they’re my friends, so of course they’re lovely.

But because I don’t always know how to be a person in the world.

Which, I think you’ll agree, might make a gal feel crazy.  Might make a gal feel alone.  Might make a gal with a beautiful life feel like an amateur for not always getting it.

So to read what I read today, well, it mattered.

Lovin’ on ya,
*E

A Proposal (A Glimpse).

Originally posted on April 1, 2013 

I took my wedding rings off this morning, to slip into something almost old-fashioned.

The original engagement ring Tim proposed with, it’s this gorgeous thing, this big gorgeous thing that doesn’t fit with a wedding band, thus relegating it to the shelf most days.

Today I wanted to stare at something big and bold, to see origins shining back at me.

:::

The night he proposed, he took me for a walk.  The light was fading so quickly you could almost see it, like the air was on its own dimmer.

We walked, me and him and Redmond, up into the forest-y hills far behind the house we were living in then.  ”Babe, it’s really getting dark.”

“Just trust me, come on.”

My stomach tightened with the anticipation of maybe-this-is-it, but I forced myself back down; I’d been waiting to marry this man for nearly five years and didn’t want to ruin our night with disappointment.

We arrived at a cave-like mass of ancient stone.  I could barely see his face.  Red tramped around.  He grabbed my hand and I lost my breath.

He said words that I don’t want to type because they’re ours.  To which I responded, “Are you serious?”  And then this ring, this big gorgeous ring, he put it on my hand.  By then it was so dark that I couldn’t see anything at all, could only feel its weight.

When we got back to the car, I shined a light on my hand and saw green sea glass, Corsican sea glass, a Herkimer diamond – raw and elemental – set down in its center.  He’d designed it with a jeweler from Vermont, had driven to Herkimer, NY to himself mine for the stone.

The piece of glass that’s in my ring came originally from a larger piece.  The remaining section was there in the car, wrapped around the edges in silver – the jeweler, apparently liking this guy, had made it into a pendant as a surprise.  He turned it over for me to see, and there on the back, raised and small was a solitary “E”.

I marvel, still.

At all of it.

*E

Wells and Sighs.

Originally posted on March 29, 2013

I’m all deep sighs and welled eyes today.

The sunshine, the shadows, the music – it’s all getting in there.

Simultaneously lots of things.

Working hard (why is it such hard work?) to shoo away Doubt, who’s broken into my brain almost every day since every day I can remember.

She’s not welcome here anymore, and is reluctant to vacate.

Like, really – F that B.

A river walk and cool-air picnic are impending.

It’s good, all this.

*E