Living in a Beautiful Mess

Sherbert & Sepia ~ A Fabric & Paper Scrapbook

2011-12-16T11:07:00.000-08:00

Another paper and fabric altered art book for sale HERE in my etsy shoppe.

"My Doll" Heirloom Scrapbook

2011-12-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

You can find this sweet little book HERE.

Another excerpt from "Threads"

2011-11-29T21:38:00.000-08:00

(a bit from "Threads," a maybe-fiction-work I'm working on)

"'I want you to let me help you. I want you to let me in, just one step at a time. Don’t even try to trust me. Just let me share today with you. And then let me share tomorrow with you. And I think that after a while, when we have too many yesterdays behind us to count, you will wake up one day and find that that part of you that was broken, isn’t anymore. Or maybe it will always be broken. I don’t know. But we’ll build a new place inside of you, together. One day at a time, we will build something that is new and beautiful and strong. And if it still hurts that the old places are broken, that’s o.k. But I think maybe the more new things we build together, the less the old broken places will hurt. I don’t know for sure, but I want to believe that. Please, Rachel. Just let me in your today. That’s all for now. Don’t even worry about tomorrow. We’ll do tomorrow when it gets here.'”

Her face, so tender and so open, made me weak. And then her hands cupped my chin again and pulled my face toward hers."

Under....Reaching for

2011-11-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

Feeling the first list...trying to reach for the second list...

STUCK ....................................... Free
GRIEVING ................................. Celebrating
NUMB ......................................... Feeling
REMOVED ................................. Present
SHUT DOWN ............................. Opened up
DEPRESSED .............................. Joyful
FRUSTRATED ........................... Creative
SAD ............................................. Happy
BROKEN .................................... Whole
LONELY ..................................... Held
AVOIDING ................................. Looking for
HIDING ....................................... Exposing
WORRIED ................................... Hopeful
AFRAID ....................................... Trusting
HOPELESS .................................. Expectant
ISOLATING ................................ Reaching out

Bits of "Threads"

2011-11-18T14:51:00.000-08:00

"...'Today as I pulled thread through fabric, and then held the fabric out so that I could see the project I’m slowly stitching on in its entirety, imagining what someone else might think if they saw it, and if they would see the beauty I see, I realized there is something about creating a beautiful thing, something that no one has ever seen before, but that pulls on the viewer's heart or appeals to their soul in some new way, that has always had a curious power over me."

I looked up and met Ellie's eyes. They were intent in a way that surprised me. I was expecting her to be listening, of course, but I hadn't expected the silent 'answer' in her eyes, or the deep feeling of connection her eyes communicated, and not just me to her, but her to me. She was really listening in a way that made me wonder if anyone had ever been listening to me before now. She nodded, encouraging me to continue.

"There are only a couple things besides that that have such power over me," I went on, looking up at her to see if she was still tracking with me. Her brown eyes told me she was.

"One is ... knowing I affect someone else, that something about me draws them in. I am undone by the knowing that, in someone’s eyes, I am uniquely beautiful, and that under their gaze I glow or shine. I guess this is not that dissimilar from my desire for my art to be appreciated. One is a craving to be seen by someone and found beautiful; the other is a desire for something I’ve made to be beheld by someone and found beautiful."

I stopped, realizing I'd been staring into my coffee cup as I spoke. I looked up again and was surprised to see her eyes were watery. My words had moved her in some way.

"What does this mean, Ellie?" I asked her, not really expecting an answer. "Perhaps this makes me uniquely insecure and needy. Perhaps it means I’m an artist. I’m sure it means I’m human.'"

Love is a Bucket

2011-10-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

Love is
Lowering the bucket of my soul
Into the depths of the well of you,
Allowing my soul to be filled up
With that water that is
Deepest and
Lowest and
Truest in you,
And then fetching it back up,
Pouring in into a cup I made with my hands,
And raising it up to your mouth,
So that you may taste what I taste.

And Love is also this:
Doing so, not knowing
The outcome,
But filled with a desire to see your eyes light up
When you taste what I taste
That is greater than
My fear that you will not
Love me in return.

Last Day in the Bushes

2011-08-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've lived so much of my life
In these fucking bushes.

Until today.
That's it.
I'm done.

I had carved a little home here,
Between branches,
On the earth,
Where I could do the necessitites:
Breathe
Sleep
Eat.

It has been
Small,
Itchy,
Dirty,
And either
Too warm or too cold at night.
But it's a safe home,
I've told myself,
As I picked the dry leaves out of my hair.
Year after year after year after YEAR.

There was a look-out spot.
A hole in the bushes I made
Through which I peered out,
Looking for
What I've always most wanted to see.

I dreamt about it.
Wrote about it.
Talked about it.
Thought about it.
Cried about it.
Hoped about it.
Asked for it.
CRAVED IT.
My eyes ached
From looking so hard and long
For
It.

Yes: IT.
I have just been sure
That one day I would look through
That cut-out window
Of my home in the bushes
And see...
It.
Standing there in the clearing,
At the half-way point,
Waiting for me,
Looking for me,
Perhaps calling my name.

Cheryl...I'm here.
I'm here, Cheryl.
Cheryl...I'm here.
I'm sorry it took so long, darlin'.
Cheryl ("Dear One"),
I'm sorry it took so long.
But I'm here now.
Come on out, sweetheart girl.
Come on out, my little one.
Come on out, precious woman.

It
is of course
Love.

Then
(I told myself),
When I see Love/IT,
And when I hear my named called,
It will be safe to leave my home here
In the bushes
And rush
RUSH
RUSH
Into Love's arms.

I already know how it will smell,
I told myself.
How it will taste,
How my cheek will feel against its chest,
And just exactly exactly exactly
How it will pull me closer closer closer
Than I've ever been to anyone ever ever ever.
The peace oh the peace oh the peace that would fill me then.

Thirty four fucking years.
That's a long time.
That's fucking half a fucking life.
That's fucking a damn fucking long time to be fucking waiting.

So today I realized
I'm done.
Or really I've been realizing
I've been done
For awhile now.

But TODAY is the day
I weave letters and commas and periods
Together
Into
My Doneness.
This is the day I sew Doneness
To Doneness
To Doneness
Into
Intention.
I run the needle through and through and through
All the layers of Doneness
And pull the thread tight, tight, tighter.
Knot it off with a firm tug.
Cut the thread.
Sit back and let needle and scissors fall to the ground.
My Intention on my lap,
Complete.

Can I borrow your bush knife, Mantuya
(My lovely Papua New Guinean friend
Who used to pick beetle larvae
From our yard with bare fingers
To sell at market and
To feed her children)?
Can I borrow your bush knife that stands
Sharpened
In the trunk of the banana tree?
I need it to hack this bush up.
Gonna hack it the fuck up.

Then I am going to pull what's left
Of this bush home
This fucking safe bush home
Up by the roots.
I'm leaving nothing but hard ground here.
Nothing more.
No one will know there were bushes here
Watered by tears, or
That someone spent half her life here, or
That the bare ground was a home.

And then I'm going to stride,
Mantuya's bush knife in hand,
(Because I have nothing else left to hold)
To the clearing.
I'm going to find the spot I watched.
I'm going to find that
Halfway Point,
That place I hoped It/Love would appear,
And I am going to stand there.
I'm going to lay that bush knife down
And breathe one long breath in,
And then breathe it back out.

Pause. One more long breath now, in and out.

With that air in my lungs,
I will look at all the bushes around me,
And I will feel millions of eyes
Peering out at me from behind
So many bushes.
More bushes than I can count.
I might wave a little wave and then laugh
Because look at me!
I'm standing here!
Hoooooo-weeeee....never that I'd be here!
That's funny.
That tickles me.
That's fucking funny as hell.

And I will know that behind each one
Someone crouches.
Behind one you crouch.
Behind each one someone has made
A Safe Home.
Behind one you have made
A Safe Home.
But it's pretty itchy, isn't it?
The dirt is pretty uncomfy, isn't it?
Oh I know.
Oh do I know.
Safety is uncomfy
But feels like a feather bed
When risky risky risk
Looks even MORE uncomfy.
Right?
Yes, I know.
I KNOW.

And I will call your name.
I will call your name.
And I will call your name.
And I will call your name.
And your name.
And your name.
Your name.
YOUR name.
Not his name or her name.
YOUR name.
You'll see my tears as I holler out:

I'm HERE!
I'm sorry it took so long, my dear.
Oh I know you thought you'd always be alone.
Oh I know you thought I'd never come.
Ohhhhhhh SWEET sweet sweet...
I know you nearly gave up.
I know you did give up in moments.
Oh my lovely lovely lovely sweet sweet sweet.
I DO know.
I know the tears you cried.
The way your heart fell and fell and fell.
But I'm here now.
Yes I am!
I'm here.
You need not live in the bushes anymore.
Do I mean it?
Yes! Oh my my my my MY dear dear DEAR,
I mean it.
You can let go of that branch, love.
You can let go now.
You can just
Let GO.

You see, my dear?
Do you see?
Do you see how I've changed?
How I'm not who I was?
I mean....
I AM.
But I'm not.

You see?
Let me tell you, dearest of dear ones,
What has changed -

I thought I wanted to be called FOR.
I thought I wanted to be FOUND.
I thought I wanted to be CALLED TO.

And I do. I do.
Yes.
Oh how I do.
Oh the ache still aches
And still aches
And still aches.

~~And.~~
Or rather...
But -

I'm not crouching in bushes and waiting
Any
Fucking
More.

Come Out,
Come Out,
Wherever you are!
Yes, YOU.
Come Out!
I'm here now.

I am It.
I am Love.
And I am here.

****************************
*Photograph from HERE. I ordered a print of this photo and adore it.

One Decade

2011-08-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

I'm standing on a threshhold.

My big girl just turned ten. TEN. omg.

Tomorrow my baby boy starts kindergarten.

Today is not just Emily's birthday, but it's also marks a decade of parenting.

This decade has been both the best and the hardest decade of my entire life.

Emily asked me yesterday if I liked being a kid better, or being an adult. I said, "Being an adult, for SURE."

What a decade. I started being a Mama ten years ago, at 24. Today I can hardly believe I'm 34 and I have a TEN-YEAR-OLD. It's cliche for a reason: "It's HAS gone by so fast."

Today is also a marker of ten years of parenting "itty bitties." I've been mothering my less-than-school-age kids for a decade and tomorrow when I take my baby to kindergarten, I will go home to an empty house.

I'm not sad, though. I am excited. I WILL cry tomorrow when I close the car door and look back at the empty car seats. But I will be just as proud as I am weepy.

I'm proud of my kids. I'm proud of who they are. I love their spirits. I love the people that they are. I love that they are smart, kind, silly, strong, loving, stubborn as hell...and so much more. I'm proud to send these people out into the world. I'm so very proud to be their Mama. I love them so much.

And I'm proud of myself, too.

Some Good Questions

2011-08-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

I've heard and read it said, in innumerable places, that life isn't so much about finding "the answers" as it is about "asking the right questions."

Cue sigh.

Of course I know this is true, in a "head knowledge" sort of way. I know it in the same way I know that I should change the oil in my car every few months.

Tonight I asked James a question in a tone I didn't quite intend but that ended up being exactly the right one, judging by the look in his eyes and his answer. And it got me thinking....

What are the questions I most want to be asked?

Here are some I came up with:

- "Do you need a cup of tea?" (asked in the same tone you might ask someone who looks upset, "Can I help you?")

- "What do you need?" (then wait for an answer)

- "Do you know how attractive you are?" (then explain just exactly how)

- "Do you feel understood?" (if this prompts tears, know that the answer is "no," and determine to "get it," even if it takes all night, all month, all year or your whole life)

- "Would you like a back rub?" (then listen for the happy sighs and the little noises that mean you've found a sore spot that needs working on)

- "What did you most want when you were six?" (if this prompts tears, hold the Other as if they are six, and respond in kind)

- "What do you want more than anything?" (asked in the same tone you might ask, "What sort of jam would you like on your toast?" and then dig your knife into that jar)

- "Do you know why I love you?" (then tell the Other all the things you see when you look at their Real Selves, as if you are painting a picture in great detail, making sure they SEE it as clearly as you do)

My fingers pause now. In the silence, I hear the sound of traffic in the freeway bed next to our house.

I am thinking about how much I want to be asked those questions.

My next thought is that (of course!) the above list is a perfect guide to showing my loved ones how I love them, something infinitely more significant than simply saying, "I love you," although of course it's nice to hear that, too.

The thought after that comes from a new place inside of me...

What if the above list is composed of questions I can ask myself? After all, don't I know by now (please, for the love...if you have learned anything, Cheryl...) that waiting for others to love me "enough" that I can finally see and know my own value, is like waiting for everyone in the world to be served dinner before I take my first bite; wait long enough and half the world will be eating breakfast already.

So.

Though I have been asked almost every single one of those questions at some point in my life, at least once, and I can say without a morsel of equivocation that I will never be asked those questions "enough" in this life, I also know that I need not

SIT AND WAIT.

So I offer myself some tea. And the taste of the tea is no less sweet than if someone else offered it to me. And I breathe in the delicious pleasure that that is. It is ... a different kind of pleasure.

And I find...

I didn't stir the honey in well enough, so the last sips are soooooooooooooosweeeeeeet

And...

It satisfies a craving I didn't know I had

Until now.

--------------------------------
*photo here

Dealing with my shit

2011-07-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been feeling this....tenderness, for lack of a better word, I guess? I haven't been able to explain the feeling very well until now, and suddenly this afternoon, after listening to this song, the words to describe my feelings are right here on my lap, calmly sitting, looking up at me expectantly, as if they've been here all along, just waiting for me to pick them up. So here they are...the words that match my feelings. And the song that helped me voice them is below my writing.

Last fall I said to myself and a few other people
That I was ready to "deal with my shit,"
As I put it then.
I expected the outcome would be my inner wounds being healed.
A season of "hospital,"
In which I would tend to old hurts
With clean bandages and gentle hands.
A time of playing nurse in a crisp uniform,
Tucking the hurt under soft white sheets with care.

That's not what I'm experiencing.
Instead, it feels more like
I'm being introduced to multiple war victims inside of me.
One by one, they present themselves.
I drop my neatly-rolled-up bandages
As my hands fly up to cover my eyes.
I'm no nurse; I'm horrified.
Sometimes their faces are only recognizable as faces
Because there are two eyes in the middle of
Broken, bleeding flesh.

Sometimes their bodies are so twisted
I think they must be dead.
I prepare to give one of them a good burial.
I rearrange the limbs piled unnaturally on one another,
Mourning as I do,
But draw back in horror
When hoarse breaths suddenly begin.
Oh God...it's not dead.
I can only stand and weep helplessly before these forms,
Too broken to fix,
Yet still alive.

I choke back the bile sometimes as I look into their faces.
I lean in to hear the whispered words
Coming from what used to be a mouth,
Expecting to hear a last word,
Or a plea to help it end its misery.
And I feel willing;
It would be merciful to assist them in this way.
But instead they whisper,
That they don't want death.
And oh God
They don't want to just be "fixed."
They want and need
Their woundedness to be accepted and loved.

I'm looking into these scarred faces
And instead of flinching and calling for a nurse
To cover up the bloody mess already
And get that goddamned surgeon over here and
FIX THIS MESS,
I'm seeing that these seemingly destroyed,
Nearly-unidentifiable piles of broken flesh
Want to be embraced.
Loved.
Now.
I want to run.

And it's then I realize that I've been here before
And I've run before.
And I'll be here again if I run now.
So I bend to pick one of these broken, bloody forms up,
The smell of it making me almost ill,
And pull it close against my chest,
And hold it like one of my own children.
I hum a little bit of "Adelweiss," soft and low,
As I did to my babies, swaying a bit,
And patting its little back.

I murmur words into its ear....
Precious...
Perfect...
Beautiful...
Never again...
Love...
Always...
Safe...

And I suddenly realize
These are the words I've been longing to hear
For my whole life.
So I say them again.
And again.
Until the little form in my arms finally relaxes
And sleeps.

Life is...YOU ARE...

2011-07-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

Watching/listening to this incredible video from Akin Salawu over and over again.

As you watch it, pay attention to how your spirit responds to this.

It feels to me like a loving parent is looking into my eyes, fully seeing and knowing the REAL me, and loving me in such an extravagant way that I can hardly keep from laughing and crying all at once.

If you are like me you will feel courage, strength and intention to be 100% REAL YOU because you know that you MUST, and that if you don't, the world will be missing out on you as surely as the rainbow (or the earth for that matter) would be less than itself with the color blue missing...

Today

2011-06-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Feeling a lot of love for my sweet friends, several of whom are hurting today. Wish we could all just put our burdens, responsibilities and jobs aside for a day and hang out together somewhere peaceful, quiet and just-warm-enough. We'd eat pinic lunches, pick wildflowers, laugh our heads off, cry if we needed to and hug one another. We would lay on a blanket, watch the clouds and listen to the sounds around us. We'd find a little creek, take our shoes off and wade in. And then when the day faded and the stars came out, we'd have a delicious alfresco dinner under the stars with good wine and plenty of cheese and chocolate. And though we can't actually pull that off in real life, maybe we can feel some of the sweetness of that kind of day as we move through "real life." I hope you can imagine my hug, friends, know you are loved and breathe that love into your heart.

Find this pic here.

"...And I Know That My Heart Is My Home..."

2011-06-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

My new favorite song. I really like the music video, too, but there's some scantily-clad-ed-ness in it, just to warn you. :)

Here's the beautiful but not modest version:

And a version without all the skin, if you prefer!

"These Are a Few of My Favorite Things..."

2011-06-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

As a little girl, one of my favorite movies was The Sound of Music. I still love it. One of my favorite songs from the film is "Favorite Things."

So yesterday when I found this incredible cover of the song by a...wait for it...KOREAN JAZZ MUSICIAN named Youn Sun Nah, I was absolutely delighted. So I'm including a youtube video of her charming rendition of "Favorite Things."

This morning I've had this song, plus some other new ones I put on my ipod lately, playing on my itunes while I work. And I decided to make a photo collage about the song, which is below the video in this post.

Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Photo credits:

1. Make Me Smile, 2. Apfelstrudel, 3. Cabled natural white handknit woolen mittens, 4. Brown paper and String..., 5. February 20 - Day 51, 6. Blue Ballerina, 7. Cream Colored Pony, 8. Vintage European Copper Tea Kettle, 9. Whiskers

How do I stop wanting to dance?

2011-05-31T17:49:00.000-07:00

Understanding that foot binding was a deplorable practice
Doesn't mean the women whose feet were bound since childhood can dance.
A change of policy
Doesn't heal the tiny nubs for feet that women can only hobble on.
Not binding their own girls' feet is good,
But it doesn't mean they can run with their whole, big-footed daughters.
Understanding that they should have been allowed to dance on their big, lovely feet
Doesn't make the desire to dance disapear.
How do I stop wanting to dance?

Touching my heart today

2011-05-31T14:46:00.000-07:00

I've had this song on my ipod's "sleep" playlist, as well as my "editing" playlist, for awhile now. It's hauntingly beautiful.

Today I found this video version of the song on youtube. I have no idea what the images the video-creator used mean to him or her. All I know is that they were incredibly significant to me. This is the sort of thing that makes me think about Jung's concept of there being a "collective unconscious." I'm wondering if these images are significant to anyone else.

Or perhaps it's as simple as this. Maybe the person who collected these images and created the video is simply in touch with the path his or her own heart and spirit have traveled and unusually gifted at being able to create a picture of that, in all its joys and its sadness, and with in all its longing and pain. And maybe it's just that this path is a HUMAN path. Maybe, like any artist, the creator of the video is just uniquely adept at combining images in a way that paints a picture of what it means to be human with such accuracy that it makes me feel "understood." That make me feel "seen."

I have no idea. All I know is I love it and I wonder if you will love it, too.

Sister

2011-05-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

An "a-ha!" moment

2011-05-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

This blog post by Jen Lemen struck something deep, deep inside me this morning. I highly suggest you read the whole post, but #7 was particularly emotional for me; just reading it made me feel teary:

"7. Tell the truth about your beautiful, impossible dream. There’s no point in hiding anymore. Everyone already knows deep down. If you say it, there will be a price to pay, but there will also be a path forward and real excitement."

Even attempting to think about what that "beautiful, impossible dream" is for me made me weep. I chatted with my dear friend, Dena, earlier, and we talked about this. I asked her what her "dream" is and she immediately described it, in detail. It was indeed beautiful; hearing it made so much sense. I can absolutely see her doing, being, creating that dream; it fits her perfectly.

But when I tried to think about what my "beautiful, impossible dream" is, I hit a wall.

"I don't know what it is," I told Dena, "and just thinking about it makes me cry tears."

And then this afternoon, I read Dena's collection of meaningful quotes, ideas and thoughts for today that she posts one of daily on facebook. I came across a quote at the very end of her compilation that made me pause, and then tear up.

Here's the quote:

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside of us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our touch, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit." - e.e. cummings

When I read that quote, it hit me: that is a piece of my dream. To BE that person who "reveals" to others what is "valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our touch, sacred to our touch." To BE the person who speaks out the value that I see in those I come into contact with.

I'm not sure what "piece" this is in my "beautiful, impossible dream," but it most definitely IS one.

More on Embracing Loneliness

2011-05-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

This from my friend Dena's note yesterday totally relates to me and this place of "Embracing Loneliness" I find myself in...

"Any psychological pain avoided always seeds itself into a greater suffering to come, whereas any such pain made conscious - agreed to be accepted for the revelation that it serves - always flowers into a wisdom that soon becomes part of the beauty of one's life." - Guy Finley

Photo Collage credits:
1. embracing memories, 2. Embrace, 3. Embrace Struggle, 4. 9/52 live your emotions

Embracing the Loneliness

2011-05-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

It might not be logical:
Never a moment to myself,
Friends all around
Who know me,
Love me,
Accept me
And yet...
I feel lonely.
So I am accepting it.
Or trying to.
So I say,
Out loud,
"I feel lonely."

How to be Alone

2011-05-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

Each Tear You Cry

2011-05-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

2011-05-05T23:14:00.001-07:00

1. Flickan i trappan, 2. Melancholy, 3. Sad Dream, 4. Melancholy Bench, 5. sad girl, 6. A moment of melancholy, 7. Melancholy, 8. Bench (Black & White), 9. *

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

You Are Safe

2011-04-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

The last few days I have been staying at my parents' condo in Pacific Grove, near Monterey, CA. My husband, kids and I came up here on Monday in two cars, we had a great time together until Wednesday and then they went on home. And I stayed here. Alone. We'd planned it for awhile now. Three days. Two nights. In fact, I'm still sitting here for a couple more hours before I drive home.

If you know me personally you know that last year at this time, I was living in my own apartment, spending days and nights alone, every other week. I should be used to being alone.

And yet I was what you might call "totally freaking out" Wednesday as I got my husband and kids ready to go home without me. It was a combination of not feeling comfortable driving in this area (I am incredibly directionally-impaired and don't have a navigational system or internet on my phone) but I was also worried about...I don't know exactly. Intruders. Getting lost. Some of the fear was just irrational. Nameless. It was just THERE.

But I put them all in the car and waved good-bye. I slept alone, ate alone, watched movies alone, read some, wrote some, sewed some, and even drove down to the Monterey Bay alone. I had a good map but sometimes maps confuse me more, so I....well, I figured it out. I got myself from the condo down to the ocean alone. And back again. I even parked the car on a downhill, which is something I usually avoid if at all possible.

When I got to the Bay I walked to a little area with a bench, overlooking the water. I watched the waves crash. I watched seagulls scavenging for food. I listened to people walking on the bike path behind me. I took a couple photos. And I listened.

The last couple days I have been intentionally "open," wanting to receive/hear what my heart is saying. Sometimes regular life is too loud, too fast and too full to really hear. I have had a sense of anticipation since I planned these days alone; I have felt that I have been here for a reason.

So I sat there last evening on that bench overlooking the Pacific, a cold wind whipping through my sweater and hair, and I listened. Or tried to. First the anxiety came as I realized that no one knew where I was.

"No one I know knows exactly where I am."
"What if someone walks up behind me and grabs my purse? My wallet and keys are in there."
"What if the car doesn't start when I get back to it?"

Irrational anxiety clouded my head and made my stomach churn.

And then my next thought interrupted the anxiety almost as if a voice spoke it.

"You are safe."

And everything shifted in that moment. If somehow I lost my purse, or even the cell phone in my hand, or if I got lost, or if...whatever happened...I would be o.k. I. Am. Safe.

Friendly, happy voices walking by on the path behind me reminded me that the world is full of good people. They reminded me of the DOZENS of people who love me enough to drop everything and come to my rescue if I were in danger. But even the people riding by on bikes seemed friendly. They would loan me a cell phone to call for help if I needed it.

With new eyes I looked around. Even the waves seemed friendly...the same water that might have washed up on the shore of New Zealand where some of my dear friends live. Everything around me suddenly felt "familiar." I felt a part of the grass at my feet, the salty air I was breathing in, the waves crashing on the rocks below where I was sitting. I felt comforted.

Even if the unthinkable happens. Even if everyone I love was swept away. Even if the apocalypse happened.

I am safe.

Today I've been watching movies and relaxing before I head back home. But I've also been stitching something with a needle and thread, my favorite way to sew. It's a little square of pretty quilted Durham rose fabric and layered on top is a cream poplin and a row of rhinestone trim. On the cream poplin I stitched in pink, "You are safe." I cut the square the right size to put on a tiny canvas which I will hang on the wall at home. Maybe in my room. Or my studio. Not sure yet.

But when I look at it I will be reminded of these days I took for myself. How I did what I was afraid to do, no matter how silly that might sound to someone else. How I pushed through all sorts of fears to sit by the sea. Something so simple but that felt so scary and hard for me until I did it. And how my real self whispered to me what I can now carry back with me into my "real life."

You are safe.

Even broccoli is shouting out that you are loved! Yes! Broccoli!

2011-04-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

It's just human to question whether we are loved and loveable. But if we're looking and listening, we will see that we ARE indeed...

Even Nature is on "Project Make _____ (fill in your name) Know (S)He is Loved." Even broccoli is part of this scheme (see bottom left corner photo of the collage!).

WHAT IF what we experience each day just FEELS like abandonment and rejection...but is really a "messenger" (nod to Michael Brown there), invitation in hand, that invites us to open up, often through great pain, our aching hearts so that we can receive the love that is all around us?

WHAT IF "You are Loved" is the lesson we are all here to learn? After all, isn't that our most base desire? And, when you turn that over, look at the other side of it: it means we are perfectly-equipped TO love! We know how to do it because we know what we want!

Some of my readers are deeply spiritual but don't identify with a specific religion; some are "sorta Buddhist" ;), some are evangelical Christians and others...well there are probably as many different philosophies about how to look at this world, our purpose here, etc. as there are readers!

But somehow I can't see how this idea that feels like a song that has always been sung, low and steady, in the background of my whole life, but is now getting a bit louder, is inconsistent with anyone's beliefs, unless of course you are atheist. But even then, why not MAKE loving/being loved the purpose of your life? But if you are someone who connects with a specific religion or philosophy, isn't this a thread that weaves throughout all religions and all philosophies? Love is what we want most. Love, coming and going, is what makes life worth living. The desire for it is something we've had in us since infancy; we can't remember a time we didn't long for it.

What do you think about this desire we all have for love? What do you think about the fact that, if we could step back and look at the world from space, we would see every single solitary person on the earth with a longing inside to be loved AND the ability TO love? How silly would that look from space? Why aren't we loving the person next to us the way we so long to be loved? I have an evangelical Christian background, and even though I'm no longer a Christian, I can see Jesus saying in the Bible, oh-so-clearly, that this is the "kingdom of heaven" he was ushering in, modeling, and inviting everyone he came into contact with into!

So interested in what you all think....tell me, please! :)

*Photo credits:
1. the shape of my heart "winter love", 2. Hearts in Nature, 3. ... Heart'leaf ..., 4. Heart , 5. heart rock, 6. pink bleeding heart flowers, 7. Little Hearts, 8. Heart Strings, 9. Hearts and Flowers (dedicated to Bettie's Mum), 10. Hearts and Flowers, 11. heart, 12. heart leaf, 13. Heart of the (Broccoli) Forest, 14. Heart of Nature, 15. heart, 16. At the Heart of Nature - Nel Cuore della Natura

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

Vintage Strawberry Yumminess!

2011-04-09T11:14:00.000-07:00

1. Strawberry tart, 2. Strawberries!, 3. strawberry-free, 4. Delicious!, 5. Strawberries!, 6. vintage strawberry, 7. Strawberry Framed, 8. Vintage strawberry basket purse, 9. Fresh Strawberries, 10. Strawberries!, 11. Strawberries!, 12. Avon Strawberry Pitcher, 13. Strawberry Clogs, 14. Vintage Strawberries, 15. My first submission for the 'Willie find love?' pool, 16. strawberrie, 17. Fresas, 18. New York Cardigan, 19. * strawberries, 20. Strawberries!

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

A Vision

2011-04-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

A recent "waking vision" I had...still working on writing about it in words, but here are some images that capture it for me....

1. Looking for Treasures ..., 2. Loneliness, 3. With ravaged limbs and wet souls., 4. look, 5. Reflections by the Looking Glass River L1110558, 6. Day 103: I'm not good enough, 7. New Babies, 8. Peak District, 9. Seeing Forever From Olympic Mountain Tops

The Practice of Love

2011-04-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to announce that pre-orders of The Practice of Love are available starting today! I am privileged to be one of the contributors to this very first collective project by Civitas Press, edited by Jonathan Brink. As many of you know, I recently started working for Civitas Press in an editorial capacity, so I'm proud to see this book hit the shelves for many reasons! I am confident you will be as touched by the stories in this book as I was; it is truly life-changing.

If you are interested in pre-ordering copies of this book, you can find the PayPal button to the right in the margin. You can also go HERE to read more about it.

Jesus & The Starbucks Connection

2011-03-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

I don't claim to be a Christian anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't think about the faith I grew up in. In fact I think about it a lot. Write about it a lot, as you know if you stop by here with any frequency. Often I write in my sadness and anger, looking back at a former set of beliefs that hurt me in more ways than it added to me. I've left evangelical Christianity behind, but I think it would be easier for some people to believe that because I say I'm not a Christian, that that means I hate God, don't believe there is a God or have completely stopped thinking about God.

Fact is, I'm not a Christian and I think about God a lot.

I especially respect the person of Jesus as represented in the Bible. His interaction with people, especially those the religious establishment of his day judged, wrote off, condemned, rejected and abandoned is simply beautiful to me.

I'm not a Christian and I think about Jesus a lot.

Jesus, according to the Biblical account of his life, interacted with people in some really incredible ways. He connected with the people they WERE, rather than asking them to change, telling them they should change, or even asking them to emulate his own actions and behaviors. When Jesus interacted with people, he effectively made a "place" between the people he was talking to and himself. A place where they could sit down together with no shame and no hiding of their true selves. He understood the context of their pain. He saw THEM and didn't define them by their actions or behaviors.

That "place" he created for himself and whoever he was relating to was what he called "The Kingdom of Heaven." It wasn't like a lot of our experiences of "church" where you have to dress up, hide your pain, pretend you are "better" than you are and act like you have it together. Jesus, over and over, looked for and saw the REAL person underneath the behavior, actions and pain, related to and loved unconditionally THAT person. The connection between Jesus and the person he was relating to was for many the first time they had ever been utterly naked AND utterly loved and accepted. That's exactly how I want to be loved and how I want to love others.

But what was going on in those moments? I think I know. This wasn't all about God being able to magically see into people's hearts. That may or may not have also been going on. But I think to only define Jesus' treatment of others by that "divinity" would be a grave error. He seemed to think others were capable to doing the same. So what is it that he was doing that we are also able to do?

I think it was simply that Jesus approached connection with others with the expectation/goal of seeing through the shit to the real person and loving THAT person. I think it's that simple. He was living proof that the religious way of approaching people with a, "Are you 'good' or 'bad?' I get to decide," attitude was not loving and had no place in the kingdom of heaven. He simply saw. And he loved. Period.

So what was happening that created such a "real" connection between Jesus and those he interacted with? I've been thinking a lot lately about how, when we accidentally or on purpose connect with someone outside an established human construct, we often feel and experience a "connection" that we wouldn't normally. That connection is, at least in my mind, usually of a spiritual nature. Something happens when we are connecting with someone in a way that isn't governed by rules, norms or standards. It's almost as though we can sneak in a backdoor, by-passing the part of our brains that says, "Act like this; talk like this; this person is that; this interaction is limited to ..."

It happens in Starbucks sometimes. You might be sitting there in a sunny spot, watching stranger after stranger walk by, but then one stops and asks if they can share your table since the others are all filled. Every once in awhile that thing happens where two people move from strangers to people who "see" the other one in a matter of minutes, simply because they shared a table at Starbucks.

It happened in the streets of Christchurch, New Zealand a few weeks ago during the earthquake, and then again in the aftermath of the tsunamis in Japan. Strangers clung to on another in a sudden, illogical intimacy as they stood in the streets and watched helplessly while family, friends and colleagues were crushed or drowned. All of a sudden two people who would normally have no reason to even speak to one another spontaneously joined hands and cried into one another's shoulders. People who would never have helped one another because of gaps in age, gender, socio-economic level, etc. became one another's very real saviours, friends, brothers.

It happened in my family when one of my sisters gave her son up for adoption nearly 8 years ago. It is an open adoption, which means our entire family has a real relationship with my nephew and his adoptive family. Open adoption is new enough that there aren't "rules" for how to do it. We've made them up as we've gone along, following heart rather than head, without even meaning to or realizing we're doing it. While others would think we "lost" my nephew to another family, the reality has been that we "gained" a sister and brother "in-law," a second nephew and two extra nieces. My kids have an extra aunt and uncle, as well as extra cousins. There's no map, no rules and no "optimum result" besides my nephew being loved. That's it. So much beauty has grown out of what could have been a heart-wrenching loss.

Sometimes we experience this connection with someone else in the beginning stages of a romantic relationship. Often times it is at that "love is blind" stage of a relationship that we are able to see the "real," the good and the beauty in a person simply because we WANT to see it and are looking for it.

But my husband and I have experienced it in moments we'd never have expected it, as we sort through the anger, hurt, sadness and disappointment of our marriage. Our love isn't blind anymore, and in fact, the eyes with which we see all too clearly now often brim with tears. We're working through some serious shit in our relationship. It hurts like hell. But sometimes after hours of agonizing conversation, we find ourselves laughing through tears about some silly thing totally unconnected to the bitter pain that is still wet on our cheeks. In those moments of half-hysterical hilarity, we see in one another the old Cheryl and James that stood on the balcony of a pink house all those years ago, watching the stars 'til the sun came up. Sometimes the giggles lead to a tearful embrace and for a few minutes, the pain is gone and it's just ... "us," however impossibly, connecting.

Wherever or however it happens, we've all felt it to some degree. And I guess I'm just asking if maybe those "moments"—those connections—whether for a brief time or a lifetime, are what life is all about. I'm asking if maybe Jesus was living like that. I'm wondering what would happen if we intentionally lived like this, as much as possible.

How much in our lives and in our world would change if we lifted the human "constructs" off and just looked around at one another with eyes like Jesus'?

Untitled

2011-02-23T20:50:00.000-08:00

A couple years ago I learned that the "tulip tree" in my parents' yard is actually called a "saucer magnolia." I'm not sure who started calling it a tulip tree, but I know why: the blooms each February around this time look a lot like tulips...big giant pink blooms with petals that are strong and almost fleshy. Even gangly at times. These are the sort of blooms that a storm can knock off the tree, but once on the ground, it takes a lot to destroy the actual bloom itself. They definitely aren't delicate, that's for sure. They are gorgeous, strong and always seem a bit on the un-tamed, earthy, wild side.

I don't know if I love the tulip tree because it's just beautiful in a unique way that pleases me, or if it's because it always blooms near my birthday, February 26th, or both. Probably both. There's something comforting about it. Every year it blooms. It isn't phased by what's going on in my little life. It blooms, like clock-work, no matter what, every year.

It bloomed the first year we lived in that house, when I was turning 14 and trying to learn to love the United States again after two years of running free in the green hills, snap-shot-fast storms of the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea.
It bloomed the Spring I broke up with my first boyfriend while we sat looking at an impossibly-pink sun set over the little lake.
It bloomed the Spring leading up to my wedding in a small, stone church in the country town we would eventually build our own house in.
It bloomed the February my second daughter was born, only 6 days before my birthday, her eyes huge and calm, even then.
It bloomed the February that my heart broke in two, or felt like I did, the shards mixing with old and new hurt, making a poisonous cocktail I would only be able to drink for six more months before it finally ate away a hole that I had no needle or thread to mend, or even fingers to carry them in.
It bloomed last year, the February that I lived in an apartment as a single mom, oblivious to the hurricane coming mere weeks later that would turn me upside down, shake me like a rag doll and leave me, almost lifeless and barely breathing with only a faint pulse.
And though I haven't been to my parents' house recently, I know, without needing to ask, that it's blooming this February, right now, in the days leading up to my birthday, even as I sit and write in my former-but-now-mine-again house, my husband in the next room, trying not to long too much for redemption but knowing I won't stop wanting it any more than I will stop wanting food.

So much has changed in my life in a space of only two years. There has been tremendous joy. There has been devastating heartbreak. There has been brilliant, shining hope. There has been deep, thick-as-mud depression. There has been startling love I swore I'd never allow myself to feel again. There has been throbbing, aching pain I hoped I could keep at bay by staying in safe, calm waters. Call me a masochist (or a romantic realist) but I find I've wandered off into those dangerous waters in spite of my vows not to and, sure enough, been turned upside down by a wave that wants to steal the bloody, beating, apparently-still-too-delicate heart out of me.

And yet every February, irregardless of what is going on, still water or storm, the tulip tree blooms. The only thing that changes is that the tree gets a bit taller every year and the number of blooms it holds multiplies. Those same blooms fall to the ground, eventually. And every year the gardener comes along and rakes the dying blooms into bags to dispose of. When I lived there still I would beg my parents and the gardener to leave the blooms for as long as possible. After a couple of weeks, a portion of the yard is covered in a blanket of pink that is almost as beautiful as the tree heavy-laden with the blooms weeks before when they were new and still attached to branches.

A few years ago I thought about planting a tulip tree here, in my yard. Maybe more than one. It only makes sense. Then I can enjoy it every day, all February, every year. It never happened.

Then last year I thought I would never live here again and I remember once thinking I was sadly glad I hadn't planted one here, as that would be painful to see when I drove up in the driveway to pick up my kids for my every-other-week with them. One more reminder of a dream that died. One more pang of disappointment that my love story didn't turn out as I planned.

And now, here I am, back in the house. There is still no tulip tree. Not yet. I can't buy a tulip tree for the same reasons I can't look at my wedding photos still, despite the fact that my husband and I are back together and want to be. These are things that rub against the wounds still, I expect for both of us. Sure, we are slowly healing. I have come so far in such a short amount of time, when I think about it.

And yet, that doesn't mean the pain is gone. It's no one's "fault." If I try to look around to find someone to hold responsible for this pain, there is no one face I settle on. Certainly not my husband's.

I look for the tell-tale bloody hands that reached into my chest and ruthlessly yanked my heart out before putting it back on my sleeve; I want to return that still-hemoraging heart back into those guilty hands that deserve to carry it around and listen to its soft-as-silk mewings of weak but still painfully-alive sorrow. I don't see bloody hands except for my own as they helplessly swaddle this heart of mine, its wounds still spitting blood every so often. I anxiously hope that, wrapped up in soft, handmade blankets it will drift into a deep, healing sleep and wake in the morning with bright eyes and a hungry, rooting mouth that I can hastily put on my breast to relieve the aching engorgement in my life. It seems, once again, I'm left to tend to my own heart with the tenderness of a mother. So I have. So I do. So I will.

After all, if we've learned anything this last year, it's to finally, sincerely believe that the other person has done their best, at every point along the way. And in spite of doing our best and in spite of, at each juncture, trying to make choices that will hurt everyone involved the least, we still walked away, wounded. It's like a car wreck; even when it's no one's fault, when all parties are doing their best to drive responsibly, accidents occur. People walk away wounded, or worse. Needing hospital care. Afraid to drive again. Shaken and haunted.

"Sadness is but a wall between two gardens," wrote Kahlil Gibran. That's a bright stone I find myself turning over and over in my hand, rhythmically, until it almost sounds like a prayer. Perhaps where I am today is standing in front of a wall that looks impossible to make a hole in or scale, even with the tallest ladder I can find in the back shed.

When I walk around in this garden, there is a sting when I see hard earth where I fondly remember laying (trustingly...innocently) back in a fairy ring of flowers. There is a twist of whatever that is that twists in our guts when I see a once-green, fruit-bearing tree toppled over, its roots askew the way a dead body's limbs lay in unnatural positions that you have never seen a human in even during dance, love-making or gymnastics. Dry, crunchy leaves still try to climb the garden walls in some last, desperate attempt to escape over and out. There is only the vestiges of what was once vibrant, green, buzzing with bees and fairly humming with the low, almost-indecipherable sounds of insects walking in orderly lines, the slurping of roots underground as their always-thirsty mouths take what they need for growing, feathered bird wings flap and plump earthworms slowly turn earth over, seventeen pieces of dirt at a time.

Now the wind whips through empty air. Un-used oxygen catches the soonest plane out of town. Birds turn their downy heads away, skipping to some other richer earth in which to drop seeds and build nests and sing. They're not telling this garden's secrets; they're too well-bred for that. But that doesn't mean they are going to raise this year's batch of infants there, either.

There are not tulip trees here. And you know? I wouldn't want there to be. They have no place in this cemetary of dreams. They would find no rich earth with the worms having moved on. They wouldn't grow properly without a nest to weigh one branch down while another branch takes its turn growing. The tulip trees couldn't bloom without the muffled lullaby of fellow growing things escaping through ant tunnels and soothing them into a sweet slumber, dreams of growing teaching it which way to reach and when to stay in the bud and for how long.

Some days I press my ear against the wall of this garden and I swear I can hear life in the low murmurs of voices passing through stone. If I inhale while standing in the far corner of this nearly-lifeless garden, I swear I can almost smell Spring. I know there's life on the other side. A place where my tulip trees can be planted young and naive, properly nursed into adolescense, prompted into the quick adulthood and then endless twilight of tulip trees years.

Is this the year I find the gate that leads into that other garden? Is it finally almost time for me to pull back a dead, hanging vine to reveal the rusty doorhandle I've been looking for...well, nearly all my life, if I'm honest?

I'm reminded of the way things are in this day by the soft moans that come from that swaddled, still-bleeding heart that I so tenderly nurse. Will it ever heal and grow into the babbling, always-in-motion toddler that would run through the doorway and plop right down in the middle of a tulip tree blossom blanket?

There's no guarantee. Not with growing things. You can't get an insurance policy that covers hidden doorknobs or lazy earthworms. You can't numb yourself enough that finding the swaddled babe I'm sweetly suckling for now has died in the night won't level you for another day or month or decade. Growing things must be trusted to read their DNA with aptitude and eagerness. They must be allowed the space that a little blind faith makes for them to fatten in. Green leaves aren't greener because they were told to be. Doorhandles, as well, seem to be rather like growing things in that they present themselves when the time is right, just as surely as a peach becomes ripe and dripping with peach-sugar not a day early nor a day late.

Maybe I will sneak over to my parents' house some night and gather the blooms before the gardener can. Maybe I won't. Maybe I will tearfully ask my mother to pick some from the tree so that I can float them in a bowl of water and candles when no one is watching. Maybe I won't. Maybe I will drive out to a nursery early Saturday morning and buy a baby tulip tree for myself. Maybe I won't.

Each would require various amounts of faith...the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen...because they all say, in different voices, "She still wants a tulip tree."

I pull the still-breathing form at my breast a little closer and whisper into its left ventrical something no one else can hear. It seems to understand and begins beating a little quicker. After all this, it still wants to try again; it still keeps hoping to take its old place in my body...amazing, even after all its been through.

A door. Another garden. A hand-planted garden. A tulip tree. Maybe more. I inhale sharply. Hoping hurts. And yet...I can't help but hope. Maybe that's the piece my friend calls "God." Maybe it's not. I chuckle.

"God, the tulip tree." How silly. And yet that thought causes one tear to slide quickly down my cheek before I can brush it hastily away.

Festivities!

2011-02-20T20:45:00.000-08:00

Some photos from our little family birthday party for Rachel...

Happy Birthday, Rachel...

2011-02-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

Happy 7th Birthday, Miss Rachel!

How is it possible that you are turning 7?? It seems like just yesterday that we brought a little bundle of sweetness home from the hospital. And now you are a big girl!

You are a delight. I am so very, very thankful you were born and so lucky to be your Mama.

You are one of the sweetest, kindest, most gentle people I know. I love to watch you "big sister" your little brother. You are so loving and no one comes even close to being as cuddly as you!

Your sweet smile lights up our lives.

You are simply enjoyable, Rachel of mine...

You are a good friend, a great student, a sweet sister and a precious, precious daughter.

Your bright eyes and the way you talk just charm the socks off of anyone who meets you.

You are my sweet, sweet angel girl.

I just adore you...it's impossible not to!

You are so much fun.

You are as cute as cute can be and always have been.

So today you're seven. You're learning to ride your brand-new bike. You are growing up, my love, and I'm so, so thankful that I have gotten to watch you turn into the lovely girl that you are. I can't wait to see all the wonderful things you do this year. I hope this year is the happiest and most fun year yet.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Miss Rachel. Mama loves you.

This Afternoon

2011-02-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

I went running this afternoon. I was tired from not enough sleep, feeling down and even a little lonely, but I pushed myself to put on my running shoes, some running clothes and my hat, which, incidentally, reads, "Sweet Tooth," which is just my own funny little ironic joke. I grabbed my cell phone and pepper spray and headed out.

It was the sort of winter day that, in my book, couldn't be more perfect for running. Big, fluffy clouds floated in a crystalline blue sky with a crisp chill that wasn't too cold, but instead made my skin and my brain wake up. The grass (and weeds) were brilliant green and a few fruit trees were hesitantly beginning to bloom. We live in the country so my route takes me by fields with cows grazing in them, a horse here and there and even a flock of lovely dark grey goats that seem to have more babies among them this year than I remember. The animals all turned to look at me as I ran by and I had to slow down to a walk to savor it all, several times.

My route also takes me through a few neighborhoods, behind the high school, over the main street and past the acres and acres of bare grape vines. I live in the Central Valley of California, a place sometimes referred to as The Breadbasket of the World, so there are orchards, vines and fields everywhere around our little town. In the 110-degree heat of summer when everything that isn't irrigated artificially turns a gross brown color, living here seems dreary. But the end of winter, leading into an always-quick Spring is a lovely time to live here.

Today everything felt right, from the weather to a surprising new strength in my muscles. I've been running 2-3 times most weeks for a couple months now after a long hiatus of almost a full year. Today was the first day when I felt the very familiar "grab" of my abdominal muscles in a way I had totally forgotten about. As soon as I felt it, I remembered it from my running-an-hour-every-day stretch during a big chunk of 2009. It felt...wonderful. I don't feel the need to lose pounds and in fact am trying not to, but the feeling of muscles getting strong enough to engage in a way that haven't in a long time made me feel that much more alive as I ran along.

After my run today, I came back and sat down on the floor of the shower for awhile and just thought. I let the hot water pound on my aching neck and upper-back muscles. I let some tears fall that I'd been holding in. I decided not to shave my legs because I didn't want to. I thought about my life and some of the things I've been grappling with. And I felt really proud of myself.

Now don't get me wrong. I know I'm not perfect. Not even close. I'm screwing up, as usual, as I write this, I'm sure. I'm not going to get today right, or tomorrow, for that matter. I'm going to spread myself too thin. I'm going to stop short of insisting on what I really want. I'm going to swallow some truth that I'm still afraid of speaking, even to myself. I'm going to speak sharply to one of my children. I'm going to say something to a friend that I probably should have left unsaid. I'm going to make a food choice based on fear rather than nutrition or appetite. I'm going to take my loved ones for granted. I'm going to send a child out of my studio that I should instead invite in and fold into a big, lovely hug. I'm going to be selfish. I'm going to think of myself first. I'm going to stay up too late. I'm going to leave the lights on when I leave the room.

All that is true. It means I have a long way to go in the "perfect human being" department. And yet. I'm proud of myself. I'm proud that I went running through a town I was afraid to show my face in a year ago. I'm proud that I was honest with someone close to me last night in a moment when it would have been much easier to gloss over the truth of my feelings. I'm proud that I did the amount of laundry that I did. I'm proud that I'm keeping a couple promises I made myself the other day, even though it's challenging. I'm proud that I am moving forward, one step at a time, into the career of my dreams. I'm proud of the mothering I have done today (mostly). I'm proud of the fear I've overcome and the healthy boundaries I've erected. I'm proud that I've learned to see people (most of the time) as the real people they are underneath, rather than defining them based on their behaviors. I'm proud that I've forgiven people I would have though it impossible to forgive. I'm proud of myself for writing this.

The sun is disappearing and my little studio is getting dark. It's a bit chilly. Dinner-noises are coming from the kitchen and my children are pretending to be playing in a band which consists of the piano, a xylophone and an empty oatmeal container. I am wishing my heating pad would magically float from the other room into this one so that I don't have to drag my tired self out of my comfy blue chair to get it. I'll wrap this up, I guess.

I guess before I go, I just want to say that I really, really hope that, whoever you are, you can walk away with the permission to see the beauty in yourself, even for a moment. You're magnificent. You really are. I hope you can feel the strength that is yours. I really want you to think for a minute about how hard you are trying to do your best at so many, many things. I want you to consider the courage you've demonstrated in this life. Think about all the things you have overcome in your life, the things you rose above and the things you refused to be knocked down by; feel how much those weigh and how that weight would have changed you had you not acted with such courage. Think about the people who depend upon you and the people that you've made life a little better for. Think about how many hugs you've given. Think about how much you have loved every single person you have ever loved. Feel the weight of all that love. That weight is the amount that you have affected those people's lives in a positive way. Think about what you're good at and the way that the people you know would be altered if you didn't throw your muscle in the way you do. You are good. You are strong. You are brave. And I'm proud of you.

That's it.

Comfort

2011-02-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

This is an old family photo that is one of my favorites. This is me, at age 11, with my little sister, Whitney, at age 2. Whitney and I had a special bond. I am 10 years older than she is and mothered her in some very real ways. She would often want to cuddle like this on the couch and many times fall asleep like that. But the truth was, I sometimes asked her to come cuddle. When I was upset, feeling misunderstood, unhappy, disappointed, or sad, holding Whitney was like balm in a wound. Her sweet little baby self cuddled up against me soothed whatever I was feeling right away.

Today, at almost 34, I am feeling a need for comfort; it's just one of those days. My little Andrew will inevitably end up cuddling up with me at some point in the day, his big brown eyes full of the love that sometimes startles me in its intensity. "I love you so much I can't stand it, Mama," he'll say, and kiss me on the lips. And that will soothe the feelings inside me.

But today I'm also going to be consciously holding others I love in a kind of inner embrace. Even if I don't talk to them out loud or physically wrap my arms around them, I am going to hold them in my loving thoughts all through today. Whitney taught me how much the comfort of others comforts me, all those years ago on an ugly brown couch and I know that reaching out to those I love will make me feel held, as well.

So, dear ones, I'm wrapping my arms around you. I'm pulling you close. I'm whispering that I love you and pulling you even tighter still. I hope you can feel my love.

8:30

2011-02-18T08:30:00.000-08:00

"Sadness is but a wall between two gardens."

Burlap Inspiration

2011-02-17T14:15:00.000-08:00

Going to take an evening for myself. One of the things I'm going to do is use my JoAnn's coupon and buy the vanilla-colored burlap to make my bedroom curtains. I've been putting this off for awhile and really, it couldn't be a simpler project. The edges of the burlap don't need hemming up so there is only the bottom hem (unless I want to fray it, which I may) and making the curtain rod "pocket" on the top edge. I can literally whip up the whole room's worth of curtains in minutes! I'm still entertaining the idea of making white linen or cotton ruffles at the hem. My duvet cover is a light, light tan linen from the Shabby Chic collection at Target. I've got dark furniture, mostly vintage, pure white Rachel Ashwell lamps and huge white Rachel Ashwell "pretty pillows." I have also given up on selling the corset pillow I blogged about HERE awhile ago because it looks so perfect on my bed. I'm going for the really simple, restful taupe and white shades with natural fibers whenever possible.

Here's a photo collage I made using some favorite photos from flickr. It's called, "Burlap Inspiration."

Silence

2011-02-17T13:56:00.000-08:00

*Photo from ♥ artkat0116 ♥ away on flickr

Red Rose: A Photo Collage

2011-02-16T12:24:00.000-08:00

1. CECILE, 2. Unfinished Hobby, 3. Red Rose Vintage Tablecloth, 4. Middle name, 5. Untitled, 6. Vintage Rose Piece, 7. vintage 9 pazza, 8. Vintage Embroidery Motif Tattoo, 9. Red Floss...

A Vintage Love Story

2011-02-14T22:28:00.000-08:00

A collage of my favorite images...

1. __Lovin'_in_All_Stars__, 2. Love & Lace, 3. Phone Log, 4. "love is just a word...", 5. True love, 6. bags are packed, 7. Bench (Black & White), 8. In Love, 9. Untitled, 10. Untitled, 11. soft like milk, 12. sign of life, 13. Heart In Hands, 14. Love me, Love me not, 15. old door, 16. hither.

Wait it Out

2011-02-12T11:47:00.000-08:00

I "hear" this song by Imogen Heap on a personal level, but also on a spiritual one. Very poignant reflection of the whole "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" that's always eluded me. I realized I could live an entire lifetime in "the wretched hollow."

There are other "wretched hollows" in my life and over and over again, I see, once more, that putting curtains up in a prison cell doesn't make it "home." Maybe getting fed up with the "wretched hollow" is what finally motivates us to grow, change, move, stop waiting for someone else to engineer our satisfaction, and instead begin making our own happy lives.

You're Fuckin' Perfect

2011-02-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

I don't think I've ever seen a more powerful music video in my entire life. I watched this just now for the first time...after writing a hard/real email...felt meant to be. Watch until the last second.

Will the real God please stand up?

2011-02-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about these two passages in the Bible for days now and have begun writing about the contrast.

The Ezekial passage is an "allegory" that God was supposedly relating to Ezekial, comparing the nation of Israel to an adulterous wife. In this allegory God is the husband.

In the John passage Jesus is supposedly relating directly to an adulterous woman. It is told as a literal story, not an allegory.

The fact that the Ezekial passage is an allegory matters when comparing these two passages, but it is also interesting to intentionally juxtapose them with one another in a literal way.

Tell me, what do you make of this?

Ezekial 16: 32-42
"‘You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband! All prostitutes receive gifts, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favors. So in your prostitution you are the opposite of others; no one runs after you for your favors. You are the very opposite, for you give payment and none is given to you.

Therefore, you prostitute, hear the word of the LORD! ...I am going to gather all your lovers, with whom you found pleasure, those you loved as well as those you hated. I will gather them against you from all around and will strip you in front of them, and they will see you stark naked. I will sentence you to the punishment of women who commit adultery and who shed blood; I will bring on you the blood vengeance of my wrath and jealous anger.
Then I will deliver you into the hands of your lovers...and they will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you stark naked. They will bring a mob against you, who will stone you and hack you to pieces with their swords. They will burn down your houses and inflict punishment on you in the sight of many women. I will put a stop to your prostitution, and you will no longer pay your lovers. Then my wrath against you will subside and my jealous anger will turn away from you; I will be calm and no longer angry.'"

and then....

John 8:2-11:
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

(For a Friend)

2011-02-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

Once Upon a Time,

in a little village by the Great River, a little girl was born. She had the brightest eyes anyone had ever seen, from the moment she first opened them, and a spirit very like the Great River itself. She grew up with the Great River a part of her and she part of it. People talked about the hill above the Great River, where people lived in grand houses and had many more luxuries, and just like all the other girls and boys who grew up along the Great River, the girl was as curious as anyone else about such a life.

When the girl grew up she married a man who lived on the hill and together they built a beautiful house on the hill above the river. The girl, now a woman, soon realized that living so far from the Great River was like being separated from part of her own spirit and that no amount of fine things would make this not so. She tried to be at home in the house up on the hill by bringing water to her house. She put buckets of water all around her, embroidered pictures of the Great River on her dresses and painted the Great River on the walls of her house. She named her children after her favorite spots on her beloved river. She told her children stories of the Great River each night when she tucked them into bed. But it was not enough.

She began making trips down to the Great River, sometimes going alone and sometimes taking her children along. On these trips she visited old friends and made new ones; together they danced in the water and she was filled with a joy she realized she'd been missing all those years in the house on the hill. The more she went down the hill, the more she longed to go again, so the trips to the Great River became more and more frequent. She could not help but go as often as she could manage.

Each time she went down to the Great River, she fairly ran down the hill, and as soon as the glistening water was in sight, her whole body seemed to come to life and her spirit lifted. At the end of each visit, when it was time to back to her house on the hill, she felt a deep, heavy sadness. It felt as though her heart was being ripped from her chest, but she knew the house on the hill was her home and she must learn to live there and try her best to be happy there.

Then one day the woman realized that she could no longer go back up the hill to the little house; she couldn't bear it anymore. Every time she made that awful trip up the hill, a piece of her died. She suddenly understood that if too many pieces of her died, the person she really was wouldn't survive. She would become a shell of herself. She must save herself, if for no other reason than that her children needed that real, alive version of their mother. She felt her real self drowning and nothing but air would bring her back to life.

One summer evening as she watched the sun begin its slow descent, she made a hard choice that she'd been avoiding for years. Once she made it, she knew it was the right one. She felt sad; she knew her husband and the rest of the people she knew and loved on the hill would not go with her; they'd made it plain that they expected her to change. So she fetched her children and her belongings from the house up the hill and made the trip down the hill to the River for the last time. With each step it was as though a black-and-white version of her was slowly but surely popping into vivid color.

When she arrived at the Great River's edge, tired from her journey, she sat down and looked around her for a moment. She knew what to do next. She filled her lungs with a big gulp of air and then plunged into the water.

When she stepped out of the river, what she saw was HOME. She was finally home. She laid down and rested for the first time in as long as she could remember and when she awoke she set about making a lovely little home by the River's edge.

She sometimes thought about the house on the hill that she'd left...the people and things she'd left behind. But she knew, deep down inside, that the time she spent on the hill was over and that it had served its purpose: it helped her see who she really was and what she really wanted. Now she knew where Home really was and she would live there all her days.

Ephipany

2011-01-18T17:11:00.000-08:00

In the quiet kind of way that these things do, a simple but life-altering thought crept up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder this afternoon. I wasn't looking for it; I wasn't asking to find it. In the gentlest way possible it just opened itself up, right in front of me.

Here it is:

What if my Real Self is like a candle, just waiting to be ignited?

It couldn't be simpler. Wax, a wick and a flame.

Every part of my body and mind turned and curled around this idea and if eyes could see what happened next it would be like watching a dark, empty house suddenly light up, every single light inside turned on all at once.

Next, the ramifications of this new idea begin to hit, one after another, like a set of cards being tipped over, one right after the other:

What if Jesus was simply a human being with that candle inside, lit?

What if God made us with that candle inside and his deepest longing is for that candle to be lit, not some impossible "complete surrender" or a certain percentage of the mind given over in mental acquiescence?

What if the crucifixion wasn't about Jesus' blood being shed to cover disgusting human beings so that a perfect God could stand to look at us? What if it was simply the repercussions of a human who lives with his candle lit, even in the wind?

Suddenly an old memory verse comes to mind from Matthew 5: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

and

John 9:5: "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Not Jesus is the only light of the world. Not you will be the light of the world after you....fill in the blank. Not because I'm about to die you'll be the light of the world. Not go scare people into believing in salvation through Christ as the light of the world. No.

You ARE the light of the world.

Perhaps it's just how my mind works, but this idea is quite simply blowing my gaskets. To this every cell in my body answers, "Yes."

The nature of a flame is to spread. The nature of a flame is cast light into dark shadows. The nature of a flame is to warm. The nature of a flame is to burn away the refuse under which lies a treasure.

I see I've been walking around this simple truth for awhile now. I knew inside in the deepest part of me that our hearts are not "desperately wicked," that truth is not "out there" or "up there," but rather, INSIDE.

My friend, Jonathan Brink, just suggested it's more like a candle hidden under a blanket. It was always there. That gets at the truth of all this in an even different way. I love that image, as well.

Tell me, does this "candle" idea resonate with you? If so, would you share it with me?

My Favorite Song of the Week: Mercy

2011-01-15T20:01:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous song at the beginning of a movie I just finished called The Affair of the Necklace.

This song by Alanis Morissette & Salif Keita is sung in Hungarian & Mali. It is just one lovely piece that is part of a project called The Prayer Cycle, produced by Jonathan Elias. Here's the inspiring story behind it:

A Wise Friend Says...

2010-12-25T19:51:00.000-08:00

1. Big B at The Big E's (Easthampton, MA), 2. letter R, 3. letter E, 4. A, 5. letter T, 6. letter H, 7. letter E, 8. Alphabet ATC or ACEO Available - Needlefelted Letter I, 9. letter N, 10. Embroidered hearts, 11. L, 12. O, 13. letter V, 14. letter e

Walking Into a New Year

2010-12-25T13:32:00.000-08:00

1. 27/06/08 - The Secret Garden, 2. ., 3. Enchanted Forest, 4. Untitled, 5. Day 69, 6. ALICE'S ADVENTURES, 7. Untitled, 8. Questioned Proposal, 9. Untitled, 10. Taylor Swift- Love Story(explore!), 11. sunshine. a book. and a quiet park bench., 12. you'll think that people won't be able to live without you, but the truth is...they go on...life goes on..., 13. egg - held, 14. secret garden 2, 15. My White Dress, 16. old door

I'll Meet You in the Field

2010-12-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” ~Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Somehow I know that it's there in that field that I'll find the Tree of Life that Adam and Eve felt "driven away from." The "good" and the "bad" sorting system will collapse and it will just be...us. To imagine the sort of love and connections we could have without that sorting system governing us is stunning. THAT, to me, would be "heaven." To not need to have sorting words in our vocabulary but to instead show ourselves as we truly are and see the beautiful truth of everyone else. And then to simply love one another. That would be home.

On a Sunday in '81

2010-12-21T20:42:00.000-08:00

Red velvety pew seats that aren't as soft as they look
11 o'clock sun hesitantly shining through dirty stained glass windows
Heads all around me - curly, grey, short, long, brown, straight, blonde - bowed.
Pastor's soft but loud voice in the microphone murmurs
Then lifts and falls
Falls and then lifts

And then
Like a transistor radio my four-year-old ears suddenly tune in words and phrases
"...cast into burning hell"
"...a place prepared for the devil and his angels"
"...eternal separation from God"
"...those who are saved will be ushered into glory"
"...they will be with God"
Some words fall to the ground, incomprehensible
Others stick to the lobes of my brain
Where cement is quickly poured
Grey matter will eventually learn to skip agiley over those spots without even looking down

Many more words later
Many more pages later
Many more wordless cries later
Many more appeals through ragged sobs later
Many shouts into empty rooms later
Many more thoughts locked away before they can become words later...

A door opens
Fingers pick at lobes grown around cemented old words
They dig deep
Oh!
Pain in core of my being
Blood - so much blood
And then the cement is finally removed - all but a crusty film
And I am broken
So broken

Bandage up, or try to
And then the angry voices
A few sad voices
They are angry about my bandaged wound
Or more accurately, bloody pieces of cement cast aside
You can't do that, they say
But it's done, I say
There's no putting that back
That's done
That's over
That's through
They leave - for now
Silence
And then
Aching, crawling, relentless pain
I can hear my own groaning in my ears
It's your own fault, they say over their shoulders
They keep walking

Pain knocks me over
I fall in the discarded shards of broken, bloody cement
That cut my knees
That try to enter through my hands
But I roll away
Into the shadows
My own voice in my ears -
Someday wounds will heal (whispered)
Someday wounds will heal? (voice breaks into splinters as it falls like a glass into a sink)
Someday wounds will heal
And then?
Learning to think around and through
Scar tissue

Why I'm Never Making Another To-Do List Ever Again

2010-12-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

I hate "to-do"Lists.

I always have.

And yet I make them.

I always have.

I guess I just keep thinking that one day I will check every last thing off that list. And when I imagine how that will feel...well it goes something like this....

One day I will get up, ready to rock, my to-do list in hand, and will one by one, check every single task off the list. When I've checked off the last task and my work is done, I will feel a sense of accomplishment and the license to put my feet up, breathe in the sweet scent of cleaning supplies filling the house, have a slice of the delicious freshly-baked chocolate cake that of course popped out of the oven exactly on cue, the moment I finished my "to-do's." And which I can eat without guilt since I of course ran 6 miles that day. Duh...it was on my to-do list. I will push my perfectly-styled hair out of my face, since of course showering and primping was part of my to-do list, right after that run. I will take a sip of my coffee. And I will just. Breathe.

This is the kind of idiotic, idealistic and impossible thinking that prompts me make to-do lists that I never DO. And you don't have to tell me this all adds up my being a "type A"/obsessive compulsive nutcase. I'm well aware.

What always happens is I check a few off and then the sheer number of things still remaining overwhelms me and I end up rebelling against my own to-do list! Then I feel like I'm a loser at everything: Loser Mama, Loser Friend, Loser Writer, Loser Blogger, Loser Editor, Loser Ship-You-the-Stuff-You-Ordered-From-Me, etc. I feel frustrated with myself and can't even feel good about the stuff I DID get done.

It's really awful. Except that I really like writing with my favorite Sharpie Extra Fine pens. Like...a lot.

But anyway...
I think I get LESS done when I have an exhaustive to-do list with dozens of items than if I just get through the day doing what I can, when I can.

So today I tried something new.

Instead of writing tons of tasks I am quite aware need doing and would do, without the to-do list (dishes, countertops, moving laundry through, picking up the morning mess the kids left behind, etc.), I wrote down names.

Yes. Names. Four names to be exact.

Two were friends. One was a writer I'm working with. One was my 4-year-old.

All four people were people with needs I specifically wanted to address today. I could have made a list of individual tasks related to those names that would have overwhelmed and probably shut me down. But somehow four names on a paper, all four whom I like a great deal, felt do-able. I hoped.

And it worked!

It kind of surprised me! There were unexpected phone calls, interruptions I hadn't anticipated, additional tasks I'd not counted on that presented themselves, pink applesauce I hadn't planned on finding smashed into my rug, but I took them in stride because they didn't block me from dealing with the four people on my list.

I texted one friend. I emailed the other friend and then worked on some art stuff she and I are collaborating on. I talked to the writer on the phone, re-read some writing he did and then emailed him some follow-up thoughts. And I purposely spent time just sitting and scratching my son's back, listening to him talk about Thomas the Train and who has "passenger cars" versus who doesn't.

And I feel...strangely peaceful.

My hair is not done. I never put make-up on. But I didn't go anywhere and James thinks it's cute when my hair is all crazy! I didn't push "enough" laundry through. But there are four people who I loved, connected with, took care of, reached out to, helped, encouraged and gave my best.

And it feels so great. And I'm going to keep doing this, as long as it continues to work. No more To-Do lists for me! I'm going to make People Lists.

What My Grief & Benjamin Button Have in Common

2010-12-12T20:50:00.000-08:00

I was talking to a friend who is going through a very painful time…her whole life is seemingly turning upside down…and inside out. Tears flowed down my cheeks as I listened to her heart breaking.

I’ve been thinking about where my tears came from. I don’t always cry when others share their pain, even when I am close to them. I realized that as she described the dreams that are lying in shards around her feet, she was speaking words that have come out of my mouth, too. And some that haven’t.

After listening to her talk about the depth of her pain, I began thinking about how much I hope she can accept whatever the shape her pain takes and not to worry if she is "grieving right."

The image that came into my mind was of a newborn baby, all swaddled up. The shape of her pain. No matter how ugly, deformed, loud, demanding, fussy or weak a baby is, there is something in us that rushes forth, without our even having to tell ourselves to do so, and cradles a baby. Babies are innocent, helpless and simply NEED. They don’t have anything to give back. And yet, we would protect and comfort a baby, whether it was our baby or someone else's, whether it had years of life ahead or mere moments.

As I imagined my friend’s grief as a little life, in need of love and nurturance, I had to ask myself why I didn’t feel a similar compassion for the shape my own grief has taken. In my own life, even when I’m in the darkest of places, I tend to care far more about what I'm "supposed to" do, how it's "supposed to" be, instead of simply “tending to” myself with the compassion I feel toward my friend today. Why is that?

Months ago I saw “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and I remember when they showed the baby’s face I felt simultaneous disgust and compassion, right along with the woman in the film who would later become his “mother.” She couldn’t help herself.

When I approach my own grief and pull the blanket back from around its face, I see a monster that I’d rather drop off on a doorstep the way Benjamin’s father did in the movie. My grief shouldn’t be here, my mind tells me. My grief has no place here. It’s my fault that I feel the loss that I feel. If I hadn’t made the choices I made I wouldn’t have the burden of this ugly, misshapen grief to carry around my life.

After all, my grief is illegitimate. It shames me every time it fills my heart and mind. Every time the feelings of loss, sadness or pain come, there is the inevitable shame right behind them. If I show this grief to someone else, to try and receive some empathy or comfort, I am met with more judgment, more rejection and more shame. So I hide it.

This ugly child that is my grief was one born out of sin, I’m told. I fucked up and this is the illegitimate result of my mistakes. Basically I’m told, I deserve this pain. I deserve this grief. This grief is what I GET for sinning. It doesn’t matter why I sinned. It doesn’t matter how bad the pain was or what had been done to me. It doesn’t matter. The point is, I sinned. That’s what matters, everyone seems to think.

It seems that if my grief had been born out of something besides my sin, I’d have the right to the comfort, empathy and compassion of others I long for. I’d be held. I’d be patted. I’d be hugged. I’d be kissed. I’d be fawned over. I’d be loved. “I’m so sorry you are going through this pain,” they’d say, softly, concerned that even the tone of their voice would go even a little way to ease my pain.

But this…this ugly grief…this grief that is my own fault…it is my just punishment. I must endure it, and how dare I complain.

Not only that, this grief is the kind I should learn to keep to myself. No one wants to hear about it. In fact, I should pretend not to feel it. When it threatens to swallow me up, I should choke it down. I should eat it until I am sick, and only spit out the bones when no one is watching. How dare I offend the sensibilities of others by allowing them to see this hideous spawn of my sinful acts?

No, I do not love or accept the shape of my grief. How can I, when no one else does? There is no lap for me to sob on. There are no arms to hold me up when the grief knocks me to the floor. There are no ears to hear the ragged sobs.

So I pick up my ugly, squalling, illegitimate grief and cover it. I want to smother it, but then I know it would live on inside of me. So I wrap it up, put a finger in its mouth to soothe its screams, hold it close and sneak quickly and silently into the night.

What makes you feel loved? Besides gifts of cash and comments about your smokin' hot body?

2010-12-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

I was having a conversation with a friend and I found myself trying to explain the difference between "knowing" I am loved (like..."I know my therapist loves me because she doesn't cancel my sessions and only occasionally suggests that I might try coming only once per week and see how it goes") and "feeling" loved ("You know I can sometimes have a potty-mouth and use more toilet paper than anyone you have ever known or heard of, but you still love me").

It got me thinking. The differences aren't simply shades of intellectual understanding. I can actually pin-point behaviors and actions that, when someone points them in my direction, make me FEEL loved. This is mostly g-rated, so please don't treat this as an exhaustive list:

Some things that make me feel loved:

-Having some of my "responsibilities" lifted off my sore shoulders and taken care of for me. Stuff like, "No, no, no...STOP RIGHT THERE...drop that sponge and remove yourself from this kitchen IMMEDIATELY. And get the hell out of here and take this glass of Muscato wine with you! Acutally, take the bottle! And when I come in the studio to check on you, half that bottle better be gone, young lady!" That's just an example, of course.

-Back/neck rubs. I have a lot of discomfort and carry tension there. I'm a 33-year-old woman with one of those ugly blue heating pads lying around my house like old people have. This is serious. I'm contemplating the purchase of Epsom Salts.

-When someone says, "This reminded me of you," especially when it's something I didn't know anyone else knew I liked/would appreciate. A beautiful diamond necklace. Anything from the "Victorian Trading Co." catalog, especially that one thing on page 10. The entire season of The Office on DVD. A case of that nectar of the gods, Peppermint Mocha Coffee Mate creamer.That kind of thing.

-Compliments. Stuff like, "You're the hottest woman in the whole world" or "I'm aghast at the sheer genius of your deep, pentrating and fucking-awesome prose." You know...simple, sincere stuff, from the heart. (o.k. I guess it's not totally a g-rated list...sorry)

-Little reminders someone is thinking about me...a simple text, an email, link to a special song on youtube, notes, large cash gifts, etc.

-Surprises. Not like a surprise party! I don't like those. In fact, I might run out crying if you try to give me one. But a pre-planned evening that I don't know about, a surprise trip, a gift I don't know about or a dress picked out with me in mind (maybe at, say...Black and White Market...if anyone wants to know).

But seriously...you know what all that means to me?

-The other person wants to know me and when they find something new about me, they mirror it back to me verbally (feeling SEEN).

-The other person knows all of me, including my mistakes, and they look past them to the real me they know me to be (in practice: they don't define me by my mistakes)

-They "rush toward me," leaving the "half-way point" way behind, even when I am in so much pain that all I can do is curl up in a ball. They "come and get me."

-They delight in my personal growth. They don't freak out when I change. They want for me to be an authentic person MORE than they want me to make them feel a certain way or agree with them.

-When I am in pain or experiencing some other strong emotion, the other person is visibly "moved" and can't help but respond and/or take action. This means I don't feel like my feelings (pain, passion, sadness, joy, etc.) happen in a vacuum. I am SEEN, and because I am SEEN, the other is MOVED. And they make sure I know it.

So how about you? What makes you feel loved?

"I Want To Be Seen with a Fresh Pair of Eyes"

2010-12-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

Lyrics:

"'Cause I want to be seen
With a fresh pair of eyes
The single white tree
In a black hood of disguise

I want, I want to be seen
With a fresh pair of eyes
The single, the single white tree
In a black hood of disguise

I miss God, I miss God
I miss God, I miss God"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why does this touch something so deep? The Christians who love me might be hoping "I miss God" means I'm coming back into the fold (knowing smile/wink/the "I'm sorry!" look on my face) but alas, that's not it at all. Sorry guys. :)

So why does this strike something so deep inside of me. Well, I think, after some reflection it means:

I miss...

something I don't know if I've ever felt before, yet somehow I know what it is.

I want...

"to be seen with a fresh pair of eyes."

Which means...I think...

seeing myself in a way I never have.

Which can be summarized in one word:

Enough

I don't know (when I'm honest)....

If that's because I am not "enough" or because I can't see myself.

There. I said it. And not because I want a response. In fact, comments are closed on this one.

You see, if I've learned anything, it's that depending on the opinion of someone else...the approval of someone else...to give me value is.one.big.fat.mistake.

Perhaps that sounds like it comes from a jaded, callous heart.

That's because it does. But the real me...the one that KNOWS...knows that it's not just that.

My knowing says there's a deeper truth there, under the pain.

Somehow I got to age 33 (o.k. almost 34) with the mistaken belief that I need to be seen, understood and then loved by someone else in order to be "enough." I have walked around thinking that until someone really sees ME, really GETS ME, and looks at me, warts and all, and says, "Cheryl, you are enough...you are everything I have ever wanted...," that I'm...well....NOT enough. If you want to read about how MUCH I've wanted this, you can find it here, here and here.

That so doesn't work.

I could write a book (and probably will) about how I figured this out. But you probably already know the story, because really, when we look at it deep enough, beyond the unique details of one person's life, it's a very HUMAN story.

That story is simply this:

I am more than other people say that I am.

And...this one's the hardest to really "get:"

I am more than I say that I am.

That's where the "Fresh Pair of Eyes" comes in.

A friend sent me a link to this absolutely amazing video that simply must be watched, and watched to the very end.

Here's the big "a-ha" moment for me in this:

"When we work from a place that says, 'I am enough,' we stop screaming and we start listening." (Brene Brown)

For me that means that maybe, just maybe, if I can stop looking to others to define my value, I can "un-curl" out of the little ball of pain I've been in for so long, I can really SEE me. And maybe...just maybe...see myself as "enough."

And today I realize...<Tears>...today I realize....

That what I really long for is not someone else to tell me I am enough, but to really believe I am enough. I can't wait any longer to hear someone else say that. And what if they change their minds? There's the rub. So I realize it's going to have be my own voice saying, "You are enough." And somehow I'm going to have to learn to believe it.

I'm so not there.

Normally I wouldn't write about this if I didn't have this down. But hey...I'm trying some new stuff.

So I guess what I really want...

underneath all the pain...

Is not to "be seen by a fresh pair of eyes,"

But to see MYSELF with a fresh pair of eyes.

Put down the pooper scooper: I'm not shit and you aren't, either!

2010-12-01T15:06:00.000-08:00

I was interacting with Ron Hollenbach on Twitter and in my effort to explain why I take issue with this post by Fleming Rutledge about Advent, I ended up realizing something pretty big for me.

Fleming Rutledge wrote, "When a culture of impunity is present human beings become bestial toward one another~that’s not an opinion; that’s a fact." She goes on to say, "Imagine a world without judgment. That’s impunity," and to basically imply that without impunity we'd all be doing atrocious acts of violence.

I just don't buy it. As I was trying to put this into words, I ended up tweeting,

"The problem is not our hearts; Our hearts are the solution."

And then I had that sensation that you get when you have one of those rare but wonderful "a-ha!" moments. The heavens open up. The hallelujah chorus. Rays of sunshine. The whole nine yards.

O.k. so maybe your thought is, "Duh..."

Or maybe it just feels so freaking-super-duper-significant in my funny little mind because of its uniquely goofy wiring and idiosyncrasies. And genius, of course. haha.

But either way, it's really, really BIG for me!

See...I grew up thinking...hang on...here comes a caveat...

(not because anyone intended to teach me this...I need to preface these "I grew up" statements because I am fully aware my own kids will grow up and say, "I grew up..." and I will say, "What the HELL??? That's the opposite of what I was saying, you dodo-head!" or something along those lines)

I grew up thinking that without Jesus' death, which covered over my sins and allowed him to come into my life in the form of the Holy Spirit, I was pretty much...well...SHIT. To put it simply.

Yes. I was shit. And there I was all stinky and nasty and needing to be picked up with a pooper-scooper and flung straight into...well...HELL.

But Jesus strong-armed the pooper-scooper out of God's hands, calmed him down (he really despises poop, you know, and was always itching to pitch me and all the other shit in the place he specifically, intentionally designed for shit since the beginning of creation...you know...he made us...then made a place to torture us...totally logical) and threw himself on the cross. When he died there, then came back to life, now God looked at me and saw....flowers. Or at least less stinky poop. Depends on the particular brand of theology you subscribe to. But anyway, I wasn't just plain old poop anymore.

IF!

And oh, that's a big "if." IF...I agreed with God, "Yes, God, I am stinky shit and I deserved to be thrown into hell, but thank you for sending Jesus to wrestle the pooper-scooper out of your hands and die on the cross so that you could get those awesome rose-colored glasses you wear now when you look at me."

You see, depending on what church it was, what pastor it was, or how well my ears had been cleaned (you never know where these ideas come from), I vacillated between thinking that God super-glued those rose-colored glasses on his face OR that I had been reconstituted from stinky shit into something different...pretty flowers, let's say. It was usually a funny melding of the two.

Either way, I was stinky shit without God. Either way, I was on the way to hell with all the other stinky shit, until Jesus saved me. And either way, now, on this side of agreeing to all the right things, I'm going to heaven when I die and I'm now capable of maybe possibly doing some good because now God is in me in the form of the Holy Spirit.

But here's the problem I've always had with this idea. That means, if you aren't a Christian, YOU, my lovely bloggy friend, are stinky shit. It's easy to think Sadaam Hussein is stinky shit or the guys raping women in Zimbabwe in the Advent post I am reacting to are stinky shit. But what about....your friend? Your spouse? The lovely, caring man at the nursing home who doesn't have to visit your elderly mother every day, but does anyway...who it turns out is Buddhist? The sweetest angel of a kindergarten teacher who it turns out is an atheist? And what do you do when Stinky-Shit-Atheist-Lady is nicer than you? Or what do you do when you find out your pastor was molesting little boys?

So this has been a really big problem for me. I just don't buy that we are all "desperately wicked," "evil" bastards that, given the opportunity, if no one were watching, would rape, kill, steal, maim and destroy everyone else.

But then people get raped, killed, stolen from, maimed and destroyed by people who it is way easier to just agree are "Stinky Shit." It's much more convenient to believe that if they just accepted the free gift of salvation through Jesus, they would stop being Stinky Shit. It's a lot easier to think that their problem is being HUMAN.

But I'm human. And I don't rape or kill. Guess what? I just checked really thoroughly in my heart and...surprise! I don't even WANT to rape or kill! And here's the inconvenient truth...brace yourself...

I'm not a Christian.

So what to do now?

I'm being all snarky and sarcastic, but now I'm going to stop, sit down and let the tears flow.

Yes. Tears.

How many years did I waste not feeling good enough? How many years did I waste feeling guilty because I clearly wasn't fully surrendered to Jesus if I wanted to make out with my boyfriend? How many years did I spend begging God to take all of me and reconstitute every little cell of me, no matter how long it took, or how painful it was, into who he wanted me to be?

My chest aches thinking about it. Why?

Because I was already who he wanted me to be.

Oh my that hurts.

So today, when I was finally able to say,

"The problem is not our hearts; Our hearts are the solution,"

It felt AMAZING. There it was. All simple and shiny and right.

The truth. What I've been trying to say. What my knowing inside has whispered my whole life.

It's not a removing of my shittiness.
It's not a reconstituting of my humanity.
It's not a covering up of God's eyes so he doesn't see the reality of my shittiness.
It's not a big giant holy fix-up job.

It's a looking into our hearts and finding...oh my goodness...LOVE.

It's looking into our hearts and NOT finding nasty black shit all over. It doesn't mean that we're perfect. It just means the "answer" is that our hearts are good, and the solution to EVERYTHING is already there.

It's a falling back into. It's a laying back in. It's a turning my head toward what I always desired anyway.

It's a, "It was there all along!"
It's a, "I knew it."
It's a, "I've always known it."

And then I can turn to YOU, because I know you are not stinky shit at all, I can look deep into your eyes and I can say,

"You are good. You are very, very good."

I don't want God's forgiveness....I want YOURS

2010-11-30T13:50:00.000-08:00

The above song came on while I was sewing and kind of took me aback. If you know me very well, you know the whole idea of a personal relationship with God just hasn't worked for me and not for lack of trying. So these kinds of songs can potentially really drive me nuts. It's these songs that when I really, really wanted nothing more than to have a relationship with Jesus, got me all choked up and my chest all tight and full of longing. It was disappointing and painful to not find that relationship that I wanted so much. So hearing songs like this one can kind of sock me in the gut the way listening to an old song you associate with a past relationship gone bad can do.

But today I was too lazy to get up from the sewing machine and pass the song so I listened to it. I heard something different this time. Instead of hearing it as a song about how God overlooks my mistakes and sees past them (I could write a book about why this feels like bullshit, but that's not this post), I heard it in a much more meaningful way. The song wasn't about God at all today. It was about my husband. My friends. It was about the people who, despite the mistakes I've made and despite the pain I've caused, love me.

Instead I heard this (I've changed some words and set them in red):

Well the past is playing with my head

And failure knocks me down again
I’m reminded of the wrong
That I have said and done
And that devil just wont let me forget

In this life
I know what I’ve been
But here in your arms
I know what I am

[chorus]
I’m forgiven
I’m forgiven
And I don’t have to carry
The weight of who I’ve been
Cause I’m forgiven

My mistakes are running through my mind
And I’ll relive my days, in the middle of the night
When I struggle with my pain, wrestle with my pride
Sometimes I feel alone, and I cry

In this life
I know what I’ve been
But here in your arms
I know what I am

[back to chorus]

When I don't fit in and I don’t feel like I belong anywhere
When I don’t measure up to much in this life
Oh, I’m a treasure in the arms of [James, Belinda, Pat, Vicki, Brian, Laura, etc.]

[back to chorus]

Listen to the song again and insert the name of someone you know loves you 100% unconditionally. Imagine those arms being where you "know who you are." I don't know about you, but it means so much more to be the treasure in the arms of my husband, especially after the year we have just gone through, than to be a treasure in the arms of Christ.When I'm in pain, it's not God's arms around me...it's those who love and accept me. When I feel rejected, judged and most of all, misunderstood, being able to be really SEEN by even one person is huge.

The point is...this is what love feels like:
-To be more you in the arms of the other than out of them.
-To be seen, really seen...and loved because of that.
-To look into the eyes of the other and see that they TREASURE you.
-To be forgiven. And that means more than, "It's o.k." It means they look past your mistakes to the person they know you ARE and they don't define you by your mistakes.

Why is it that Christians talk so much about God feeling those things for us, and so little about us loving others that way? Being loved that way? I'm not saying I have a problem with others talking about God loving me that way, but I do have a problem if the person saying it to me isn't loving me that way themselves. As a Christian I did a lot of this. I would love people in this lazy "third party" way, essentially referring them, their pain and their longings TO God. Instead of bear-hugging them or taking them home for dinner, I'd tell them I'd be praying for them.

And that's pretty insane. If my daughter comes to me in tears and says, "Nobody loves me. I feel like I don't fit in. I hurt," I am not going to give her the therapist's phone number. I'm not going to tell her to go talk to her daddy. I'm not even going to tell her to go read the Bible and think about how much God loves her. I'm going to wrap that little girl up in my arms and not let go until I have done everything in my power to make sure she "gets" just how fantastic she is and how much I love her.

Maybe Christian musical artists would do better to stop singing about God's love all the time and start singing about loving others. Isn't that who Jesus was anyway? He didn't walk around asking to be loved and saying he loved people. He walked around and LOVED. He met needs. He spoke comfort. He touched people. He loved them with his heart, his mind, his hands, his face and his voice. It's the whole "becoming flesh and dwelling among us" business, right?

Let's talk more about THAT. Let's talk about how to love. Let's talk about what kind of love we long for. That's HOW we will know how to love others. If your someone who does experience God's love as real, that's awesome. Maybe you can try to keep in mind that there are people like me for whom words about God loving me just fall flat. I don't want words. I want hands that reach for me, arms that hold me and eyes that light up when they see me.

A Boy of Four

2010-11-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

Dear Andrew,

Today my "baby" is turning four. I can hardly believe it! It's a little bitter-sweet that you're not a baby anymore but you are turning into such a wonderful little boy and I'm so proud to be your mama.

Thinking about the last four years, there are so many wonderful memories with you in it. You're my sweetheart, the love of my life and my little man. I love your big, brown eyes. I love your mischievous smile. I love the way you tell me you love me constantly and sing "Hey, I'll be gone today, but I'll be back around the way...it seems like everywhere I go, the more I see, the less I know...but I know one thing...that I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you" and dance around like a crazy person. I love your crazy break-dancing we don't know how you learned. I love the way you look when you are asleep. I love to watch you drawing, digging in the dirt and torturing your sisters. I love the way you hold my hand when we walk someplace. I love your sweet kisses. I love your chubby hugs.

I adore you, Drewbie.

Here are just a few memories from the last few years of birthdays....

This one is just hours before you were in my arms for the first time. You were huge!

Brand-New you with my daddy, Pee-Paw, who delivered you...

You turning ONE and trying cake for the first time...

You turning TWO...

Also turning TWO...getting your fire engine. You were just a LITTLE bit excited!

My big THREE-year-old...

And now...you're FOUR.

Mama loves you so much, sweetie. I'm the luckiest Mama in the world. I'm looking forward to spending this next year with my little man.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Boy...

Love,

Mama

New Corset Cushion..."Eliza"

2010-11-27T12:19:00.000-08:00

Find the "Eliza Corset Cushion" HERE

Made from actual corsets, each of our Boudoir Cushions are decadent, one-of-a-kind creations. Filled with our signature combination of the best pillow-fill and the most beautifully aromatic dried French lavender we can find, this cushion will add beauty, as well as a subtle romantic scent, to your boudoir or parlor.

The Eliza Boudoir Cushion you are considering in this auction is fashioned from a mattelasse-style champagne corset that is dripping with Belgian lace. Gorgeous champagne ribbons lace this cushion up in the back and tiny hooks close up the front.

The Marie Antoinette sachet you see in the photos is available in our other listings. The others items you see are not for sale at this time.

"Shaddaim" (A God with Breasts)

2010-11-19T13:36:00.000-08:00

Brown. I am falling into a deep chocolate brown.
Brown, yes, but somehow different than any other brown I have ever seen. It is almost as if it is the first color my eyes have ever beheld. Perhaps it is.

It is a deep color, a three-, or possibly three-hundred- dimensional color, something more alive and more real than any of the browns in my life: the bark of the oak tree in the middle of our yard in Clovis, the coat of my grandmother’s dachshund, Shautzie, the brown of my daughter's hair, still damp from birth, or the leathery skin of our housemaid, Mantuya, in Papua New Guinea. Those were brown and this is....somehow different.

I am mesmerized. I would be happy to see only one color forever, if it could be this color.

I feel myself being pulled and tugged, as if a rope is tied to my heart and the brown is holding the other side. I give in, letting myself be drawn I know not where by the invisible rope. As my skin, my bones, my mind and even my soul, are moved by this unseen force, I am filled with a feeling that can only be described as pure, ultimate joy. It is the feeling of finally moving in the direction I have always tried to move in but could never quite find the door to. It is the feeling of an aching need that has been as part of me as my own flesh being finally fulfilled more exquisitely than I could ever have imagined. I am not fighting. I am joyfully going where I am being taken, with every fiber of my being. It is a feeling of falling, deliciously, into joy.

And then I land. I am in The Brown. The Brown is all around me, enfolding me and caressing me. I have never known this deep, brown joy. I never even dreamed it. I spread my arms, my legs, my mouth, my pores in a joyous acceptance of The Brown. I drink it, eat it, breathe it in, spread it all over my skin and then turn my body around and around in it. I am wanting to be full of this Brown. A warmth fills me as every cell of my body willingly absorbs The Brown.

Now I realize: this has been my only unfulfilled desire. I thought I desired so many things, but now that I am here in this moment, I realize those desires were really only one. And here I am, being utterly satisfied. Every moment in The Brown is more lovely than the last, and as my heart and mind embrace the multi-dimensions of this realization, it is as though my capacity to desire grows. I desire more; it is fulfilled. I desire even more; it is fulfilled. I am fuller and fuller, yet I know I can never be too full. I know now what in some part of myself I have always known: Joy is The Brown; The Brown is Joy.

And then from The Brown, comes a voice. Not like any noise I have ever heard, but like every noise I have ever heart, all at once. My body responds without my mind willing it to. It turns of its own volition, toward the voice and moves toward it. My eyes strain, for in that voice was a call to look, and of course I must do just that. My body is full of eyes, it seems, all of them, looking, looking. I will know when I see what I am looking for. My ears were made to hear this sound and I have been, without knowing, straining to hear this voice all my life. Now, suddenly, it is close. It’s so close I can almost touch it, taste it and hold it.

And then it is here….right here. It was there all along, I realize, but my ears were not ready until this moment. My eyes didn't know how to see until this moment. They dance: here is what they were made to see. A feeling of deep knowing overtakes me, temporarily banishing all other thoughts and I can not help but weep with the emotion of it. Through my tears, I see the source of that voice. I see The Brown. I know what it is, and I remember that this is not the first time my eyes have seen this sight, after all. It was this memory, almost forgotten, that drove me on for a lifetime. And it has all been leading up to this….

Oh! I realize all of life was a wall with little cracks through which, every once in awhile, I could see bits of this. I remember seeing those cracks in the beauty of a sunset on Nissan Island, reflected in the pink, purple and orange waves. I saw a corner of this in the face of my newborn sister as she took her first breath. I saw a speck of it in a friend’s artwork, the colors and shapes mixing and meeting in a way that touched something deep inside of me.

I see Her.

The voice was Her voice. The Brown was her eyes - deep, dark eyes. Each second, more of her comes into focus. Everything makes sense, fits perfectly, and seems so achingly, beautifully familiar, more familiar than my own body.

My eyes drink in this beauty, but they can't keep up. My eyes seem to see in slower motion than the beauty is growing. Every nerve in my body responds to Her, moves toward her Brown, breathes Her in and is breathed in by Her. I realize that I am becoming lost in her at the same time that I am becoming more real, more solid, more alive than I have ever been.

Then I look deeper into the eyes. This is The Brown I saw first. This is what pulled me as surely as a magnet. This is what has always been pulling me. I gaze deeply, unblinking, into a pool of something both strange and familiar. Where have I seen those eyes before? I can not remember, but I know that I have seen these eyes, as surely as I know this is the first time I have seen them. This is not a contradiction. Both are somehow equally true, equally real.

I realize that she is looking at me. I relax, burn and become in her gaze. This is what I have always longed for: to be looked full in the face and to feel that I am understood completely, not loved in spite of that understanding, but because of it.

The Brown is love. Just as this Brown is different but truer than any brown I have known, so this love I see, feel, and know, coming from her eyes is different and true. I feel it settling into me, but it feels like a new feeling. As if I've gained a seventh sense.
I know even as I feel this love that without it I would never be happy or content again, yet I find within myself no fear at all. I have never known a love without fear. Love and fear are two sides of the same coin in my world. To love is to risk losing, to risk being betrayed, hurt, rejected and left behind. But these things are impossible to feel as she gazes at me, love in her eyes. I look for the familiar tell-tale signs of anxiety and suspicion in my heart and mind but they are nowhere inside of me. I am full of love and it is overflowing. I am so full. There is no room for fear.

She opens her mouth to speak and my entire body listens. My whole being becomes an ear, taking in this sound. It is a voice I know, that I have always known, I realize with surprise. From deep within me bubbles up a response that I can’t hold back, can’t not say. It erupts form me involuntarily.

“Mother…” I sob.

Another word wells up inside of me and explodes from my moth, from every pore in my body.

“Shaddaim,” I hear myself say.

And then what I have been longing for all along, but didn’t know to ask for or even want….what I have been hungering and thirsting for since my first breath in this world... fills my mouth, my heart and every part of me, utterly and completely.

It is flesh: soft, warm flesh and from it comes a taste that transcends any and all tastes I have tasted before. It is how truth tastes, I realize. How joy tastes. How pleasure tastes. How completeness and fulfillment taste. When I was hungry, I was hungry for this. When I was thirsty, I was thirsty for this. When I felt there was something I desired…something more…but couldn’t pinpoint what, it was this.

This is the milk I was made to drink and I drink deeply.

My Favorite Song This Week

2010-11-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

Runaway Bunnies, Breasts & Hell (yup, you read that right!)

2010-11-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

Read this post over at In the Hush of the Moon. I understand the feeling of watching a little guy growing up...my youngest is going to be four in a couple weeks. Four is NOT a baby. I've asked him to stay three but he said no. sigh.

But this post isn't about that. This post is about The Runaway Bunny that Emily referenced in her post. I read the snippets from the book that she included and that thing happened that often does when I read a children's book: a little piece of truth went around to the back door of my brain, snuck in quietly and sat down when I wasn't looking. Funny how that happens.

I have tried several times, in several venues, to write about why I don't believe there can be a hell. It's because I am a mother and I know how I love my three little ones. And I'm not even the best, most well-balanced, unselfish mother, either...but I'm their mama. So as a mama, with a mama's heart (and I daresay it's similar in a daddy's heart), I can't help but love my children unconditionally. I don't know how to do otherwise. My heart says the words of The Runaway Bunny (below) right along with Mama Bunny. My heart already knows these words by heart because they mirror it perfectly.

The words of my heart, and any mama's heart, are not the voice of a God who made a hell with a door that opens "in"....but not "out." Not ever. Maybe as my friend, Jonathan, suggests in his book, the verse about hell's gates means you can leave hell when you want to, that it's not God's hand pushing you back into the hottest part of the fiery inferno to make sure you really "get" how stupid you were to not believe in Jesus and his death on the cross, the inerrancy of the Bible, or whatever.

So read the words of Runaway Bunny as the words of God, if there is one. Don't even bother trying not to cry:

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”
“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.”

“If you run after me,” said the little bunny,“I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you.”

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother,“I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

“If you become a fisherman,” said the little bunny,“I will become a rock on the mountain, high above you.”

“If you become a rock on the mountain high above me,” said his mother, “I will become a mountain climber, and I will climb to where you are.”

“If you become a mountain climber,” said the little bunny, “I will be a crocus in a hidden garden.”

“If you become a crocus in a hidden garden,” said his mother, “I will be a gardener. And I will find you.”

“If you are a gardener and find me,” said the little bunny, “I will be a bird and fly away from you.”

“If you become a bird and fly away from me,” said his mother, “I will be a tree that you come home to.”

“If you become a tree,” said the little bunny, “I will become a little sailboat, and I will sail away from you.”

“If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,” said his mother, “I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go.”

“If you become the wind and blow me,” said the little bunny, “I will join a circus and fly away on a flying trapeze.”

“If you go flying on a flying trapeze,” said his mother,“I will be a tightrope walker, and I will walk across the air to you.”

“If you become a tightrope walker and walk across the air,” said the bunny, “I will become a little boy and run into a house.”

“If you become a little boy and run into a house,” said the mother bunny, “I will become your mother and catch you in my arms and hug you.”

“Shucks,” said the bunny, “I might just as well stay where I am and be your little bunny.”

And so he did.

“Have a carrot,” said the mother bunny.

What do you think? It touches something deep inside, that something that whispers, "That's the love I've waited my whole life for."
So, as you know, if you read my blog, I really am not sure about there being a God "out there." However, I am sure that I love my kids with that love that runs after a runaway child and never gives up. I can't help it. I feel it. I don't have to believe it...I know it. And a God who doesn't love that way...I have no use for.

A God who doesn't just not chase down his child, forever, but actually goes so far as to create a place of eternal punishment for that child, just because he or she "didn't get it"...that is a God that does not love like a mother does. If God is real and I am made in his image, how is that possible?

I dearly love one translation of the word, "Shaddaim," one of the names of God in the Old Testament: "a God with breasts." I know how my kids' eyes looked up at me when they nursed as infants. That utter rest, peace and satisfaction. A mother with milk in her breasts doesn't give sustenance when her baby acts like he loves her enough. In fact, if she waits too long to give the rooting infant what he wants, the milk begins to leak out! A nursing mother becomes the most terrifying being in the universe if someone tries to tear her nursing baby from her breast.

So, as Emily eloquently describes, when that same infant becomes a toddler and toddles away, a mother is watching a piece of herself walk away. I have no idea how it feels to watch them move out when they reach adulthood; I don't even want to begin to think about it. All I know is no matter how far my children try to go from me, I will always find them.

I'll storm the very gates of hell if I have to.

More New Ribbons & Trims!

2010-11-17T18:10:00.000-08:00

Decadent French Daydream: HERE

Set of 3 velvet ribbon and flowers: HERE

French Primitive Trims: HERE

Vintage Sheet Music Rag Ribbon: HERE

Sweet Pink Linen Rag Ribbon & Vintage Milinery Flower: HERE

Wide French Blue Rag Ribbon & Brown Velvet Ribbon: HERE

Heaven & Hell: through a 3-year-old's eyes

2010-11-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

My almost-4-year-old has been drawing very detailed drawings all of a sudden. It's fun to watch. In fact, as I type, he is sitting on the couch in a little sunny spot, drawing in his red composition book with a purple pencil he grudgingly accepted even though "girls like purple and pink."

Lately those drawings are a whole STORY that no one else but him could ever decipher. They are monsters with dozens of eyes "to scare sister," or they are elaborate "computers" with squares for the keys covering the whole paper. That kind of thing.

So yesterday when he proudly showed me another of his drawings, I asked him what the picture was. He said, "This is blood and that man died and went to heaven but he got medicine in heaven and he came back down."

One of our cats died this past year, as well as his great-grandpa, and ever since, he asks every couple weeks, "When is Abel and Great-Grandpa coming back down?"

Not ARE they going to come back, but WHEN are they going to come back.

I remember being a child and the fear of heaven and/or hell was not about burning in the lake of fire so much as it was being potentially separated from my family. That gave me a sense of panic. So I think I understand my son's insistence that the separation of death can't possibly be forever. That thought doesn't even occur to him.

At my son's age, there's no philisophical "figuring it out" when it comes to things like God, heaven or hell. Their minds accept what they've been told and thank goodness no one has taken it upon themselves to tell him about hell. I wasn't the one who said Abel and Great-Grandpa went to heaven, but someone did, and that satisifed him temporarily. They had gone "someplace," which he understands happens sometimes. But in his little life (thankfully), most of the time people don't go and never come back. They go...and then they come back.

To my son, though, it doesn't matter what or where heaven OR hell is...the issue is being back in relationship with someone he loves who has left, of course temporarily, and he's rather impatient for that time to come.

When he asks, "When is Great-Grandpa coming back down?" some might say, "They're not coming back, sweetie, but someday you will see them in heaven."

When he asks me, I just say, "What do you think?"

And his response?

"Soon. Soon they will come back down."

Book Review- "Discovering the God Imagination: Reconstructing a Whole New Christianity," by Jonathan Brink

2010-11-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we are absolutely certain we understand something, and are in fact so sure of our comprehension, we base our entire lives on it. I was sure I understood Christianity and even more sure I had no use for it. And then I read Discovering the God Imagination, by Jonathan Brink and it changed everything.

I hope I’m not getting anyone’s hopes up. I should probably clarify: I’m not going to start attending church and I still don’t believe in hell. But I’m literally and figuratively re-opening the book on God. Yeah…that book. I have a love-hate relationship with the Bible, but thanks to Brink, I’m giving it another read.

If you were to take the classic fairy tale, Cinderella, cut each individual word out, throw all these words into a hat, shake them around, pour them out on the table and ask someone unfamiliar with the Cinderella storyline to use the individual words to create a story, it is unlikely that the end result would be the version of the story we grew up with. Sure, there would be a pretty dress, a pumpkin coach, a beautiful maiden and a romantic ball, but the way the happily-ever-after shakes out might be nothing like the story we have come to expect.

Jonathan Brink does something similar in his book. All the elements of the creation-to-crucifixion drama are there, but they are told in a way that changes the entire meaning of the story that has defined modern Christianity. Brink himself comes out of this very tradition, 2,000 years in the making, which has interpreted the God/Human story in a very definitive way; he clearly grasps this widely-accepted interpretation and then promptly turns it inside out.

Brink challenges the Christian framework in a manner that is, at once, supremely bold and stunningly simple. All the key elements of the story remain, but they are arranged in an entirely different way that makes the “happily ever after” something altogether new and different. It’s as though Disney’s Cinderella was re-told so that the evil stepmother is reformed, becomes the heroine and rides off, Prince Charming in tow, to begin a new life as a fairy godmother.

I spent the first 30 years of my life trying, not to make a religion work, but to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I was an evangelical Christian in the truest sense. But about 2 years ago, I opened the door, invited all the questions, doubts and instincts I’d kept locked up tight to come in, have a seat and speak freely. I finally got honest with myself and the consensus was that not only did I not want to go to church anymore, but I could no longer say I was a Christian. I wanted to believe the “right” things, but I just didn’t, and in retrospect, I realized I hadn’t for quite some time.

Leaving Christianity was painful; I’ve likened it in many ways to a divorce. Though it was a profound and palpable relief to finally allow myself to stop fighting to keep my true feelings and thoughts at bay, Christianity was like a thread woven through the entire fabric of my life and pulling it out was simultaneously the removal of a source of huge pain and a deep, gut-wrenching loss. The desire for a personal relationship with a God who loved me wasn’t easy to give up and walk away from.

It was difficult and painful to insist on what my inner knowing says when, from all accounts, I was walking away from God by doing so. I don’t want to “walk away from God.” Decades of my life were spent wanting a personal connection with God more than any one thing in my whole life, so following my knowing, what felt like away from God, has been painful, hard and many times, desperately lonely.

Then I read this book. Brink’s interpretation of the Biblical narrative is like looking at the whole of my life with a pair of glasses on and being shocked to realize what looked and felt like one thing was something else entirely. What if it wasn’t that I was “walking away from God” at all? What if, all along, he was “calling” me away? The exercise of thinking that’s possible, for even a minute, floods me with a mixture of joy, remorse, regret, pain and sadness.

Brink looks at the Biblical narrative and sees what he calls “the God imagination” at work. To look at not just the Bible, but my own life, through that lens means letting my assumptions go. Among other things, Brink says challenging our assumptions involves “leaving old stories behind.” He goes on to say that, “it means starting over again and building new ones…finally answering the deeper questions in our souls, the ones haunting us when we sleep.” (p. 72)

The prospect of doing so is, for me, terrifying. Re-opening the book on God means going back to “the scene of the crime,” as Brink refers to it. It means returning to the very ground on which I was hurt most, knowing I might be hurt again. I know from experience that anything that’s worth anything requires just that sort of “all in” risk, but that doesn’t change that it scares me to death.

Brink responds to this very fear when he says: “Reconciling our assumptions means we just might have to engage in our own restoration. It means we just might have to tear away the covering which blinds us to the God imagination. It means coming out of hiding to discover our worst fears aren’t true.” (p. 72)

Now I have to ask: what if the stuff that has always felt “off” for me about Christianity is also “off” in God’s mind? I experienced such pain, rejection and fear during my “questioning/doubting” years that the idea that I was on the right track all along makes me weep – both for the waste and the hope. Do I have the guts to go back and take another look?

Previous to reading this book, I had easily and without equivocation left Christianity behind. Discovering the God Imagination hasn’t “brought me back into the fold” by any stretch of the imagination, but it has created a space in which I am able to look at the concept of God with new eyes, for one reason and one reason only: it paints a picture of a God who sees me with eyes that, when I look into them, I realize I have seen before. They are familiar in the way the bar of a song sung in childhood might be. The expression of love and acceptance in those eyes is what I recognize I’ve been waiting for all my life. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with that, except to keep gazing into them and follow my heart.

To Love Me is to Know Me

2010-11-13T21:50:00.000-08:00

Question...

~Do you feel like you are understood by someone in your life? Like....reallllllllly understood?

Perhaps a couple better questions...

~Is there anyone you trust enough to show the real you?
~Have you ever shown anyone the real you?

And lastly...

~If you haven't shown anyone the real you, can you EVER really feel loved by anyone?
~If someone says they love you, but you know you've kept the real you hidden from them, is it possible to accept that person's love?

Decadent Trims & Treats

2010-11-13T21:35:00.000-08:00

Lots of new things are coming out of my studio. I am having so much fun hand-dyeing scrumptious velvet and vintage linen, stamping them, making ruffles out of them, creating romantic bags and...well, so much more! You can find them HERE. Working on lots more, as well.

Here's some photos....

My Great-Grandmother & Velvet Strawberries

2010-11-09T15:08:00.000-08:00

My great-grandmother lived in a tiny house in a beautiful, old neighborhood in Salisbury, Maryland that was filled with beautiful things she has made with her own hands. She worked for The Singer Sewing Machine Co. as a young woman and my mother has many stories of making Barbie doll dresses with her when she was a child. My mother was named Catherine, after her.

Now I have my own Emily Catherine, named after them both, and I can still imagine what the inside of my great-grandmother's little Cape Cod looked and smelled like. It was there I learned how to make a cathedral window quilt and how to make perfect French knots. She had a kitchen decorated in strawberries and I'm sure my fascination with vintage strawberry Wilender linens began at her kitchen table.

These little velvet strawberries are of my design, but they are modeled after the thousands and thousands of velvet strawberries made by women for centuries, at least. Velvet strawberries like this showed up in sewing boxes and used as pincushions, on summer hats and attached to pert little straw purses, many decades ago. You can still find vintage velvet strawberries on eBay or in corners of antique stores if you look hard enough.

I can't stop making them! I'm hand-dyeing the velvet, hand-stitching the strawberries, cutting out little felt leaves, filling them with stuffing and a bit of dried French lavender, stitching them together and then lastly, hand-beading them. It is a delight to make them, from start to finish, and though I'm sure I'll tire of it eventually, for now it's my new favorite thing to do in the evening while I watch t.v. and sip hot cocoa.

I imagine them in lingerie drawers, part of sweet little vintage vignettes or given as a gift. You can hot glue them to a purse, use them as pincushions, give them as gifts, or whatever else you come up with! The possibilities are endless!

I have this little group of 3 pink and 3 blue velvet strawberries listed on eBay right now, so if you want to snatch them up, go HERE.

Marie-Antoinette-Inspired Dress Coat

2010-11-09T14:36:00.000-08:00

Another of the new things I've made recently. You can find this one on eBay HERE.

I made it from scratch using a remarkable heavy brocade and a new pattern that looks vintage. I decided not to line it since it was already incredibly heavy and instead used an old-fashioned technique: hand-sewing lace trim over each and every raw edge on the inside. Phew! I had no idea the dozens of hours this would take!!! But it was so worth it when the coat was completed.

This is a size Small to Medium. The dress form the coat is displayed on is about a size 2/4. The sleeves are three-quarter-length and there is a pocket on each side. A silk-covered button and circle-yolk are all wonderful vintage-inspired details that make this coat your signature wardrobe piece this winter!

A Marie-Antoinette-Inspired Frock

2010-11-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

I've had soooo many computer issues this last month but finally getting the kinks worked out and starting some new things I'll tell you more about soon!

In the meantime...here's a vintage dress with some lovely Marie-Antoinette-inspired details I just finished. I am currently enamoured with velvet and linen and am so excited to incorporate some of these sumptuous details into this romantic frock.

I've started the bidding low. Go HERE if you'd like to take a peek at this one-of-a-kind creation...

Some photos:

Unconditional Love

2010-10-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

“The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that too, unconditional assistance. Co-operation which needs consideration is a commercial contract and not friendship. Conditional co-operation is like adulterated cement which does not bind.”

-Mohandas Gandhi

What do you think about the above quote? Imagine your friend, who you love very much, is going through a painful time in their life and needs your help. What would you do?

Now imagine your friend has made a series of choices that, in your mind, at least, are exactly why he/she is in the pain, trouble or hardship they are now experiencing. Does that change what you would do?

Let's get more specific. What kind of hardship would your friend have to be going through for you to decide NOT to assist them? Here are a few possibilities that might pop into your head:

-Drug addiction
-Other addiction
-Having an extramarital affair
-Abusing someone close to them
-Breaking the law
-Knowingly hurting someone else

Regardless of what those things are, there are things that those who are close to us can do that would cause us to respond in ways that express our disaproval. We might start by gently telling them we are worried about their behavior/actions/choices. Sometimes we might express our disgust. We might feel we need to exercise "tough love." We may decide that ultimately, we have to back out of the relationship.

But where does "Tough Love" leave off and Judgment, Rejection and Conditional Love begin?

Is it possible that we could actually love without condition...meaning our love doesn't change, no matter what, EVEN IF someone we love is destroying their lives (or even others' lives) right in front of us? Is that love "too unconditional?" Is there such a thing?

One thing is certain: loving under those conditions, and especially loving in a present, there-for-you kind of way would be...well, messy.

But is that when love BECOMES unconditional...right at the point where it gets messy?

What do you think?

Teaching Our Children to Trust Their Instinctual Nature

2010-10-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago Kristin commented on this post and mentioned her desire to be mindful of the attack on our instinctual selves while parenting her girls. Her comment got me thinking: it's all well and good to talk about the way we as women (or men) can "unbind" the feet of our instinctual self and run free, but what about our children, whose feet may have not yet been bound or have only been bound for awhile? Can we as mothers and fathers parent in such a way that our children are given tools and understanding so that living out of their natural, intuitive selves is second nature?

My experience so far in talking to my kids about their intuition has shocked me. I thought I'd have to teach them about their "knowing place," but as soon as I mentioned the term and described it, they nodded and said, "Oh, yeah, I have that," as if I was kind of silly to not have known that already! :) I asked them where it was and they pointed to their chests.

Still you kind of have to wonder if my kids have heard me talking about this stuff, but I've noticed other children have similar responses. I was substitute teaching for 3 weeks in a row for a friend's kindergarten class last Spring and on the last day, when we were ready for recess early and they were sitting quietly, I asked them if they had a "knowing" inside and they all nodded. No one looked confused or asked for clarification. They acted just like my girls had and all but two of the children pointed to their chests when I asked them "where" that knowing came from. Two girls pointed to their tummies. These are kids that, without exception, have grown up in very poor homes. English is a second language to all but a couple of them. Several began learning English that year, in kindergarten. It seems this "knowing" is something people from all different backgrounds, cultures, religions and traditions understand and can identify.

One interesting conversation happened when my eldest told me she had gotten a "step" (the first step in the discipline structure...it's basically a warning that's on paper you have to have your parents sign and return) for talking out of turn. She was upset; she felt it was unfair because someone had talked to her, and then she had responded to them, but only she was given a step. When I tried to ask her why she thought she got it, what she could have done differently and what she might do differently in the future, she couldn't stop arguing and defending herself. Then I said something without thinking. I said, "O.k. Emily, so you feel it's not fair that you got a step, but did you KNOW in your knowing place, when you were talking to your friend, that you shouldn't be?" She stopped in her tracks, the arguing stopped and she said, "Well, yeah..." I said, "O.k. that's all I'm saying." We talked about how she could listen to that knowing place in the future.

I think the most interesting part for me in Emily and my conversation was the distinction she made between "obeying the rules" and "listening to your knowing." Obeying the rules is good, we decided. Listening to our knowing is also good, and perhaps even better.

So I've been asking myself, "What else can I do to foster this listening to their knowing, encourage them to trust in themselves and their inner wisdom, and stop binding their instinctual feet in the way I inevitably would if I didn't intentionally choose to do something different?"

Here is one exercise I'm going to do with my kids next Sunday when we have our family time. We are going to read, "Horton Hears a Who," discuss it in the way this article describes and then do an activity of some kind that I haven't settled on yet. I want to hear what they think about the story and how they identify with having a "knowing" about something that others don't necessarily see, hear or understand.What should we do when we "know" or "feel" something others don't? Should we persist in trying to communicate it? Should we keep it inside? When is it important to insist that others listen to us? How can kids insist that adults listen to them?

Do you have any ideas for talking to kids about their instincts, knowing and feelings? I would love to hear any ideas.

Survey Says: Better Not Play Bible Trivia with Un-Believers or You Might Lose

2010-09-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

Contrary to common Christian belief, the average atheist is not in fact someone who needs to have the Gospel presented to them in a clear way. They don’t need to have “the bridge illustration” doodled on a napkin for them. The average agnostic is NOT “not sure about God” because he or she doesn’t want to think too hard or is chronically fickle. In fact, according to an article in today’s L.A Times, “a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.”

Say, what? Yup…you read that right. Why, you ask, would an atheist or agnostic know more about religion than a Christian?

The L.A. Times interviewed Alan Cooper, the associate director for research at the Pew Forum, the organization that released this survey earlier this week and he answers this very question. He thinks the reason atheists and agnostics know more about religion than those who ascribe to those religious beliefs is because they are more likely to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and went through a process of reading, reflection and decision before leaving that tradition. In other words, atheists and agnostics are not in fact people who don’t want to hear about, read about, or understand the “Gospel.” Rather, they are people who have grappled with it in a more serious way than the average believer; their atheism and agnosticism is something they came to thoughtfully.

“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” Cooperman said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.”

The study also found a correlation between atheism/agnosticism and being well-educated. However, this is not to say that the most educated people became atheists and agnostics, since Christians with similar education levels still knew less about their beliefs than non-believers.

The L.A. Times article also quotes Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister and author who, commenting on the survey’s findings said, “I think that what happens for many Christians is they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it’s already accepted to be true, they don’t examine other people’s faiths.”

I’m someone who, as an evangelical Christian, assumed that, if atheists/agnostics just examined Christianity, they would get on board with it. I also told myself that atheists and agnostics liked sinning and therefore found their unbelief more “convenient.”

Today, as a not-atheist-and-sort-of-agnostic-but-definitely-not-Christian, I can say, looking back at my former thought process, that I couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not interested in finding an excuse for sinning. I ate, drank, breathed and lived the Christian gospel for the first 30 years of my life and very thoroughly understand it. I have beyond-average knowledge of biblical facts and Christian theology. I wanted to believe it, more than anything I’ve ever wanted.

When I say I’m not a Christian, this is not something I say lightly. It’s something I say a little sadly, because I wanted so much to believe it. I can’t. That’s not because I want to live in a certain type of “sinful” lifestyle and need to believe things that make that lifestyle o.k. If only it were that simple. My belief/unbelief came at a high cost. It’s something I wrestled with for decades. My saying that I’m not a Christian is very simply, honest.

These days I’m reluctant to publicaly state that I’m not a Christian anymore, mostly because my hard-won belief/lack thereof is immediately written off by most Christians as “lack of understanding.” I can’t even explain the process I’ve been through without a Christian trying to “better explain” the Gospel in a condescending voice, no less. I’m not stupid, believe it or not, and neither are most other atheists, agnostics and otherwise “un-believing” folks. More knowledge about the Bible or Christian theology isn’t going to convince me to change my mind. That’s because, according to this survey, chances are I understand Christianity better than the average Christian does and, with brain intact, I’ve opted out.

**You can go here to take a quiz that represents a sampling of the actual Pew Survey of Basic Religious Knowledge.

"King of Anything"

2010-09-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

I laughed out loud the first time I heard this song on the radio and now that I've heard it a bunch of times, I can't help singing it loudly with an expression on my face that I'm sure our old realtor and one of the most condescending, misogynist men I've ever met would call, "feisty." I can still get fired up, thinking about that man. I expressed some concern/opinion about the sale of our first home and he actually told me, and I quote, "Don't worry your pretty little head about that, Cheryl! You just take care of those beautiful kids and I'll talk to James about it." Needless to say, he heard "what for." I got a $50 Starbucks card in a conciliatory attempt to mend things, which I'm rather ashamed to say almost did the job, except for the accompanying note that, once again, referred to me as "feisty." Sigh.

Anyway, here's the music video that is just as great as the song. I was kind of disappointed that they put her in "masculine" clothes at the beginning. It looked like another case of the age-old "defeminize a woman because she's expressing her strength," as if a woman can't be "feisty" (gag) and feminine at the same time! But I was pleasantly surprised to see her anything BUT masculine at the end, so all in all, I'm giving this song and the music video a big thumb's up.

Here's the (outstanding) album:

Sink or Float

2010-09-29T01:44:00.000-07:00

My kids play this game. We walk down to the irrigation ditch which is kind of like a small canal if you're aren't familiar with it, and we find objects to throw in the water. We play it in the mountains, too, when we find a body of water. You find an object and before you throw it in, everyone guesses if it's going to sink or float.

We could TELL our kids what was going to sink or float but would they really "get" it the same way? Throwing it in, hedging their bets and even having the nerve to say they think it's going to do something different than my husband and I are guessing it will is teaching them an important skill I hope they apply throughout their lives. Test things. Try them on for size. Observe as much as you need to.

Sure, I want them my kids to trust me, especially about "health and safety issues," and I want them to trust other people who are trustworthy, but the older they get the more I want them to begin to think for themselves, even if it means they disagree with me.

I want them to feel that the world is a place they can decide things about. I don't want them to have any trace of a feeling that they "must" believe something or other for their parents to love them and accept them. I'm hoping that for them, this will translate into only wanting to have close relationships with people who do the same. I want them to know that if someone tells them they must believe something, they can say no. They can decide for themselves.

They can determine for themselves if it "sinks or floats."

Religion: The DVD

2010-09-28T17:52:00.000-07:00

I would not say I’m an atheist and I resist labeling myself as an agnostic, mostly because I can’t stand labels anymore. But I definitely am not a Christian. I’m at a place where I no longer feel the need to believe or disbelieve anything. I know what I’m experiencing. I’m honest about it. I don’t need to label it. I don’t need to change or move. I’m where I’m at.

Because the shifts that have gradually occurred in me didn’t happen overnight, I think it’s important to write about the various stages I went through in the deconstruction of my Christianity. I know I am not alone in the feelings I have or had, but I often feel like there is a lot written from a Christian stand-point and a lot written from an atheist or agnostic paradigm, but not a lot written about the “process” people go through in between. What about the places in between belief and unbelief? Lots of people are there, but unless they read something about someone else’s similar experience or feelings, they inevitably feel alone.

Who do you talk to about the “in-between” places? Sometimes it feels like everyone – Christians and atheists, alike – would have you “hurry up and get on board, already!” There has to be a place for the process. In fact, I think I always WILL be in process and I don’t see myself ever pigeon-holing myself as “this” or “that.” I want to just be where I’m at and be honest about it, from here on out.

In the effort to talk about the in-between places, I’d like to share something I wrote about a year ago, when some questions began to surface that I think are important in the “deconstruction” process for a lot of people. Where I was at the time, it made sense to me to frame them like this:

Winter 2008 –

What if religion is the world’s effort to package up God in a manner we can offer to another at arms' length...we don't have to get too close, don't have to get the weepy, hurting friend's runny mascara on our clean shirts and we don't have to love in a palpable way that makes a difference in their circumstances?

After all, we aren't loved that way by others, so why should we get messy for someone else when no one is getting messy for us? Religion was handed to us at arm's length.

Many of us received religion as a neat and tidy package we didn’t dare unwrap. Religion was like a DVD still in the package we based our whole lives on even though we never opened or watched it ourselves.

Everybody we know gives and receives the same DVD in its' sealed form; we have forgotten there is something inside. Instead we talk about the DVD as if we've watched it. We repeat the little summary from the back cover, talking and acting as though we have seen it ourselves, when in fact we have not. We, along with our fellow-unopened-DVD owners, make special clubs we advertise as a place to talk about the DVD in depth. Instead, the clubs all go the same way: everyone repeating the description from the back cover in all the same ways. We forget the DVD is anything but the package it's inside of.

We all feel a vague discomfort- a feeling that there is something missing. Every once in awhile we might have a tiny flash of insight: what if we open up the DVD and actually watch it? What if, when we watch it, we find the story is different than our simple little clubs had interpreted it as being? What if, after actually watching it for ourselves, we can no longer stomach the "pat" conversation at our clubs? What then? This line of thinking is so uncomfortable, we more often than not push it from our minds.

We are too busy, too tired, too....afraid. We know deep inside that watching the DVD would change our lives, change our relationships, change how we do things. We, like the rich young ruler Jesus challenged to actually act on his beliefs, are willing to buy and distribute copies of the DVD to the world, stand in front of crowds and recite the blurb on the back cover and attend every single club meeting discussing the DVD. But open it up and watch it, knowing it could potentially change everything...hell, no. That is far too scary.

We give this same DVD to our children. We teach our impressionable children to memorize the blurb on the back of the DVD. We at least imply, and sometimes overtly teach, that if our children and/or other DVD-less acquaintances do not take the DVD we offer them and attend the discussion clubs, they will quite possibly go to hell. They are made to understand that if that happens, they are in danger of losing not only God's approval, but perhaps even our love.

When our children reach an age where they begin to think independently, they of course begin to doubt the "magical powers" of the DVD we touted: the rest of the world is watching all sorts of interesting DVDs, talking about them and don't live with the fear and numbed-out brains our children inherited from us. Why should they risk opening and watching the DVD for themselves; they already know the basic plot by rote, thank you very much, and they're frankly not impressed. Everywhere they look people are living their lives and watching fascinating DVDs.

And even if they had the gumption to open and watch the DVD we gave them, they'd likely meet with disapproval from us, as well as from our clubs, anyway. So why bother? It's much easier, more attractive and less of a bother to dump our DVD entirely and just subscribe to Netflix like everyone else in the world. Who cares what the movies the world watches are about; at least they WATCH them!!

What if we watched the DVD rather than leaving it unwrapped and having silly, shallow discussion groups about what someone else decided to say ABOUT the movie? What if we watch the movie, running the risk that it could change us? What if we were always meant to live in the truth the movie so beautifully pictures? What if there is no need for clubs? After all, why talk about watching it with other people, when we could be WATCHING it with other people?

Perhaps God created the movie TO change us as we watch it. If so, we shouldn't be standing arm's length from people, telling them ABOUT the movie and expecting them to be changed because they know what it's about. What if it's a movie only appreciated, only understood and only life-changing because the individual watches it themselves?

Perhaps watching the DVD yourself rather than basing your life on someone's tidy little summary would mean that the movie relates differently, personally and specifically to each individual. What if God made this movie specifically for each person, knowing exactly what that person needed to hear, see and feel? To give someone my interpretation or tell them about my experience is only helpful if they have already experienced it and been impacted by it in the way that is specific to them. If they already know the movie, they would enjoy hearing how it impacted me, what was personal to me and the individualized message I uncovered in it.

Perhaps the main difference between reading the description on the back cover and actually watching it myself is, quite simply, love. I can be told I am loved every day and twice on Sundays but until I am loved in a palpable, personal, wipe-your-snot-on-my-new-sweater-while-I-listen-to-you kind of way, others' statements of love are worth nothing to me; in fact their emptiness eventually hurts so much, I numb out to it. And yet, am I doing anything different when it comes to my interactions with others?

To be handed the DVD while the person offering it sits and watches the DVD-less person's child cry because she's hungry is insensitive and even hateful. And you better believe that when that person shouts, "goodbye!" over the deafening cries of that hungry child, the DVD-less person will be throwing their DVD, unopened, into the next rubbish bin. If she is given a DVD about African salamanders, while the cries of her child and her own tears rolling down her cheeks are ignored, the giver is worse than those that walked right by her, pretending they don't see her plight. In her world of pain, she has no use for DVDs...doesn't matter whether they are about salamanders or love. Same thing in her reality. The tidy giver doesn't see her; he or she doesn't care. They just want to go back to their happy little club and tell all their buddies how many DVDs they distributed this week.

"She wasn't very receptive," he or she will tell their friends, when asked about what the person they offered the DVD to did and said when given the DVD. These friends shake their carefully-coiffed heads sadly.

"We'll just pray that she looks at it. That's all God asks of us, after all," they say. "We've planted the seed..."

How despicable is it to distribute a DVD about love in an unloving way. We might as well replace the real cover with a new one that is entitled, "Fuck You." At least that cover is honest about what the giver really thinks and feels about the person who doesn't own the DVD. I know for a fact that such a person would rather they just ignored her. But instead we shout over the sounds of her cries what will happen to her if she continues to refuse what we are offering.

What if we just toss the DVD altogether? Or maybe we watch the DVD ourselves and then put it away. What if we meet one another, DVD-less, and simply offer the compassion, support, acceptance and love we all want? Who needs to watch a DVD about something when they can experience it themselves? I enjoy a good love story, but I'd much rather experience one than watch a movie about it.

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This article was published in today's "ExChristian.Net" and you can find it HERE.

Binding the Feet of Our Instinctual Selves

2010-09-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

In Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run With the Wolves, she talks about the "Wild Woman" who is not "wild" in the sense that we'd call a teenager who is running around doing reckless behavior and is a whirlwind of excess and has no sense of self-control. No, this is a "wild" nature that is closer to the word, "natural," "instinctual" or "original." The best way to understand the nature of this "wildness" is to think about another example that is a little further away from ourselves before we turn and look at our own natures.

In early Chinese culture there was an insidious practice called foot-binding. When a girl was born to middle or upper-class parents, they would break her toes, bend her feet backward, wrap her feet with cloth, wrapping it around and around, her toes tucked under. This process began in early girlhood. By the time she was a woman, her feet would be actually folded in half; the bones grew bent back and up. A woman with a "lotus foot" was one whose feet were 3" long. The tinier the foot, the more desirable she was. The more desirable she was, the more hope she had of being married to a rich man. Of course this is eerily like the practice in our culture of starving women until they are thin as possible, but this isn't that discussion.

Besides the obvious discomfort that women endured as their feet were taught to bend backward, wrapped tightly in a position they were not meant to be in, there was the awful reality that this practice essentially crippled women. They could totter around but not walk fast or run. They moved around with tiny steps on their little nubs, but this was o.k. because if they were married to rich men, they wouldn't need to work or do anything physical anyway, except of course sit there and lie there and be the objects they were born and raised to be. They were simply ornaments and ornaments can be changed, revised, cut in pieces, tied up or any number of methods for making it into something that a man will want to consume, have, own and control.

When you imagine these women with their little nubs that they had to totter around on, you can picture them sitting in richly-decorated rooms, sipping tea with other nub-footed rich women, their every whim being indulged and no work required of them. It becomes a different story altogether when you imagine these women as young girls who wanted to run and play like their male contemporaries but physically couldn't. It becomes heartbreaking when you imagine a nub-footed young woman who is being physically victimized but can not outrun her attacker. Perhaps the worst image is one of a woman with bound feet, who knows the pain that it means, tearfully binding her own daughter's feet, knowing it is the only way she will find a husband.

It is easier to imagine that this happened in the early centuries and that the practice was obliterated long before modern culture. The awful truth is that foot-binding was finally outlawed in 1912 but couldn't be enforced in all cases. Lots of things are outlawed, but when women are the property of their fathers or husbands, the law takes a back seat to things like cultural traditions or financial gain. This story explains why a woman today, in her 60's has the tiny "golden lotuses" even now.

This movie is nauseating, sobering but imperative that we watch it:

*The narrator has the date when it was outlawed wrong, or at least it sounded like she said it was outlawed in the 1600's. In fact it was outlawed in the early 1900's.

This video is a woman's direct memory and narrative of having endured this practice as a young girl. These are very painful to watch, but that is why we must.

Contemplating the concept of the "Wild Woman" after the thoughts and feelings we have while watching and reading about the Chinese foot-binding process, the reality of the "cobbled feet" of our own wild/natural selves springs into stark relief. Modern woman don't have our feet bound, but we are bound, nonetheless. We come into the world with instincts intact, possibilities and potential as wide open as the ocean. We aren't repressed the way women used to be. That does not mean we aren't cobbled. This cobbling happens first when our instincts are repressed, bound up and allowed to rot away inside beautiful shoes.

Estes writes: "Sometimes it is difficult for us to realize when we are losing our instincts, for it is often an insidious process that does not occur all in one day, but rather over a long period of time. Too, the loss or deadening of instinct is often entirely supported by the surrounding culture, and sometimes even by other women who endure the loss of instinct as a way of achieving belonging in a culture that keeps no habitat for the natural woman....Most women have been captured at least for a brief time, and some for interminably long period. Some were free only in utero. All lose varying amounts of instinct for the duration." (p. 269)

The good news is that the feet of our instinctual, wild nature are not impossible to un-bind.

Estes goes on to explain, "Whether the injuries be to your art, words, lifestyles, thoughts or ideas, and if you have knitted yourself up into a many-sleeved sweater, cut through the tangle now and get on with it. Beyond desire and wishing, beyond the carefully reasoned methods we love to talk and scheme over, there is a simple door waiting for us to walk through. On the other side are new feet. Go there. Crawl there if need be. Stop talking and obsessing. Just do it...." (p. 272)

A bit further on she tells the reader, "If our own wild natures have been wounded by something or someone, we refuse to lie down and die. We refuse to normalize this wound. We call up our instincts and do what we have to do." (p. 273)

Estes talks about how we can not wait for ourselves to heal completely before beginning this reclamation of our wildish nature. She says, "The real miracle of individuation and reclamation of Wild Woman is that we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answer, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking." (p. 274)

There is a song that we all hear that our feet long to dance to. We may hear it only faintly. But we all hear it. It is that song that gives us the motivation to unbind our feet, hoping that someday we will be able to hear that song clearly and that when that time comes, we will have feet that can dance. Perhaps we don't know how to dance yet. We may not know another soul that dances. But there is still a kind of "muscle memory" of dancing; we KNOW deep, deep down in the knowing part of us that we hear the song. Just because the old woman with bound feet in the second video could never dance doesn't mean she wasn't made to. Her feet "know" they are meant to dance, not hobble around. We can plug our ears and tuck our feet under our chairs but we can always hear a note now and then, reminding us that there is "something more than this."

For each woman (and man, for that matter), the binding of the instinctual, wildish nature is slightly different. Of course that means that the un-binding process is a unique one for each one of us. Our un-bound feet will propel us to dance different songs. We will each dance into a different reality. We may not know exactly what that is, this side of it. But we all know the edges of it. Why do I know that? Let's start with this...

*What would you do if you could do anything, no one would be hurt by it and no one would reject you?

*When you imagine a little, free-as-a-bird child "you" inside, playing as children do with utter lack of self-consciousness, stopping only when a hungry tummy growls, what is that little self doing?

*When you imagine finding that little "you," her chubby cheeks glowing from whatever busy-ness she was involved in, her bright eyes lit up with fun and pleasure and you imagine pulling her sweet little self up on your lap and telling her, "You are so good at _______" (whatever she was doing just then) do tears spring to your eyes? Do you feel a tightening in your chest? The song grows just a bit louder, doesn't it?

Our grown-up minds rush in with cautionary words about how we must be mature, we must be adults and how we don't have the luxury of doing what we want. If there is a stern, religious voice inside of us, it may say, "Your heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. You can not trust that little you or that 'knowing.' That is your sin nature and doing what you want is going to always end with you in wreckage. Your true nature is bad and must be redeemed."

But there is still that still, small voice. There is still the haunting notes of that song. Your feet tap a little, however hard you may try not to let them.

What would happen, if you unbound your feet? What would happen if you followed that song right into vibrant, soulful, rich-as-chocolate, thick-as-mud life? What if you danced right into the middle of that life, let your feet take over and your heart lead?

A Pound of Flesh

2010-09-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

"A strange equation, and an altogether too-common belief: One's worth is exponentially increased with one's incremental disappearance." -Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

"It was horrific seeing those beautiful women reduced to sticks. [...] It's like we're killing these women in public. We watch while you die." -Russel T. Davies

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My first "real job" was as a copy writer/copy editor in the in-house advertising department of a locally-based department store called Gottschalks that has since gone out of business. It was a good job. I proof-read ads, wrote copy and worked with graphic designers to make sure the copy we wrote matched the graphics/photos they created. The photo studio was also in-house and I soon got used to beautiful people walking in and out of the office for photo shoots.

I was shocked, however, while standing in one of the graphic designers' cubicles, to find that photos of the already-thin, beautiful fashion models were being altered dramatically. Generous "slices" were taken off of all parts of their bodies right before my eyes. Small waists, hips, legs, arms and even faces were trimmed generously. It was not just this graphic designer; it was standard practice. Today I can still look at photos in ads and see the tell-tale signs of the chopping block: any outside lines that are blurry and not crisp have been altered. Try noticing this the next time you look at a magazine or newspaper ad. You'll see that the blurred lines are in all the places that normal, and even thin, women have curves.

I got mad all over again. You see, I had had an eating disorder that I'd gotten under control a mere two years prior, and truth be told, still did in my head (always will). Those women in those fucking ads had haunted me as I was growing up, taunted me and told me how much of a failure I was. To find out it was a lie, that they had had pounds of flesh removed with the drag of a mouse and a "click" while I spent days, weeks, months and years starving myself, running 3 miles even when I only consumed 600 calories a day, pinching pieces of myself between my fingers while I stood in front of the mirror, hating that I couldn't cut those pieces off. I remembered the A+ grades that were twice as hard to achieve because my brain was dulled and my head pounded. All those times I hung my head over a toilet, vomiting until there was nothing left in my stomach so that I could have a moment of feeling thin came back to me.

I'm not that unusual.

The National Institute of Mental Health reports statistics that in real life mean:

-If you know 25 women, 5 of them have eating disorders
-4 of those are women between the ages of 12 and 25
-Of those 5, 1 will die of eating-disorder-related health complications
-Half of those 5 will never fully recover from their eating disordered behavior
-All 5 of those women are 12 times more likely to die than the other 15

And don't miss that these statistics are among women. That means if you are in a crowd of men and women, double the stats above.

It's no wonder. Every depiction of the female body in the media tells girls growing up that if they want to be beautiful, desirable, sexy, pretty, attractive and valuable they will be thin. These mind-boggling videos bring tears to my eyes when I think about my daughters and the other young women in my life.

An article which pictures Britney Spears in both "before" and "after" photos that she intentionally released makes the point that women have too much pressure put upon them to look not-natural. You'll see the arrows pointing to where the flesh was trimmed, cellulite removed and an already-beautiful shape morphed into what we would, without thinking, accept as an accurate-portrayal if we saw it in a magazine. Here is another pretty dramatic depiction of the "before" and "after" differences. Roll the mouse over each image to observe the differences.

Is there any hope? For years I didn't think so but in today's newspaper I found an article about some ground-breaking moves by the British government to curb the way the media's portrayal of women affects young women's view of themselves and their bodies in destructive ways. British government officials will be sitting down with members of the fashion industry next month and discussing ways to minimize the practice of airbrushing photos of women's bodies.

Fashion retailer Joseph of Montreal, Canada, will no longer be digitally altering body shapes in their advertisements. Read more of the story here.

These moves are not just important as they relate to the self-esteem of young girls who view magazines/advertisements/fashion shows. In November of 2006 a Brazilian fashion model died of infections caused by out-of-control anorexia and her family said she also struggled with bulimia. She was 5'8" and 88 pounds when she died.

People are paying attention, it seems. Super-thin models were banned from Montreal's fashion week and encouraged to seek medical treatment. That story is here. A British study by fashion industry officials estimates that about 40% of models in the industry have an eating disorder, as compared to 3% of the general public (American stats are higher, it seems) and urge those with eating disorders be banned from London's fashion week. They are also calling for children under 16 to be banned from the catwalk. That story is here.

What can we do?

One of the things that is happening in the UK effort is advertisers are being urged to include a "disclaimer" similar to those that advertisers have to place on products like alcohol or cigarettes. This may be legalized, which would be fantastic, and will perhaps set a precedent the U.S. could be urged to follow.

I called the FTC and the woman I spoke to clearly thought I was crazy to consider filing a claim against advertisers who airbrush photos. :) She said she did not know of any such claims having already been filed but sent me to the website to type "airbrushing" into the search field. Nothing.

So I kept digging and found that, in fact, the FTC doesn't resolve individual consumer complaints. The upshot is that if they get enough complaints, they take notice.

Here's the list of things the FTC suggests if the consumer thinks a company is running an ad that is deceptive:

Explore your legal options under federal and state statutes that protect businesses from unfair competition. For example, the Lanham Act gives companies the right to sue their competitors for making deceptive claims in ads.
File a complaint with the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, if your competitor's ad is running nationally or regionally. The NAD is a private, self-regulatory group affiliated with the BBB. It investigates allegations of deceptive advertising and gives advertisers a mechanism for resolving disputes voluntarily.
Call your local BBB or file an online complaint with the Better Business Bureau if the ad is local. Many BBBs have procedures for resolving disputes between businesses.
Contact the radio station, television station, or publication where the ad ran. Let them know that they're running an ad you think may be deceptive.
Contact your state Attorney General's Office or your city, county, or state Office of Consumer Affairs. To get their phone numbers, check your telephone directory.
Contact the FTC. By mail: Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Response Center, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580; by telephone: toll-free 1-877-FTC-HELP.

So far, I've filed a complaint with the FTC, which was easy and quick. Here's the consumer complaint form: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en

I don't think dealing with the FTC is going to be the most effective method of combating this, but it's a start. Ultimately, the changes that are being made in the UK are changes that require people thinking beyond "what sells" to "what's right." I believe human beings are very capable of making such choices, even when they are physically or fiscally difficult. This action in the UK is beautiful proof of this.

I'm going to continue to try to figure out the best way to go about this. I'm hoping to stumble upon an already-existent effort/group/cause to this effect. If you know of anything like that please email me at cherylensomdack@gmail.com.

Revisiting "Tattoos & Unconditional Love"

2010-09-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

I can't stop thinking about the post before last and the concept of a community that is based on something besides common theological belief. Is it possible? If so, what would it look like?

It struck me this morning that there are ways I already know what such a community would look like. I've written about it before. It's kind of an allegory, but still...it says exactly what I've been trying to say. So I'm re-printing this blog-post and hoping you will want to join me in or continue in the dialogue about the kind of community we all long for, even if we've never been able to put that longing into words.

I'd love to hear what you think after you read it...

Tattoos and Unconditional Love

“I recalled a morning years ago in a boxy church in Tujunga, the fluorescent lights, chipped folding chairs. Starr charmed as a snake while Reverend Thomas explained damnation. The damned could be saved, he said, anytime. But they refused to give up their sins. Though they suffered endlessly, they wouldn’t give them up, even for salvation, perfect divine love. I hadn’t understood at the time. If sinners were so unhappy, whey would they prefer their suffering? But now I knew why. Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life. It wasn’t like I didn’t know where all this remembering got you, all that hunger for beauty and astonishing cruelty and ever-present loss…I had already seen more of the world, its beauty and misery and sheer surprise, than they could hope or fear to perceive. But I knew one more thing. That people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. They were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air. So I let them go, got up and walked away, knowing I’d given up something I could never get back. Not Ann and Bill Greenway, but some illusion that I’d had, that I could be saved, start again.”

(Fitch, p. 306)

I've been thinking a lot about who I am. Like...really, who am I? The answer to that somehow lies in the life I've lived so far, the things I've seen, the things I've heard and read, the places I've been and the people I've loved and been loved by. All of that is in me.

Like Astrid in the passage above, I say, “Without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.” Somehow this is very connected to my altered vision of God, to the wall I have always seemed to run up against. I used to intellectually say that I am sorry for my sin. Yet somewhere inside of me, I didn't feel sorry. Isn't it those things, as well, that make me who I am?

Somewhere inside of me, I feel the longing to live in a tribe where women gather and paint on their bodies the stories of the pain, the anguish, the joys, the surprises and the beauty of their lives. I know the feeling I would have as I looked at my friends’ and sisters’ bodies, the pleasure and the pain they have known represented on their skin, blending together, making something so beautiful tears would fill my eyes.

I would wear my own stories proudly, my regret and my gladness mixing inside, just as the stories on my body ran into one another, making a new, more beautiful story than if one had happened and not the other. No one would know where one story and one emotion left off and where others began. I would be a beautiful tapestry and I would not be ashamed.

I would paint honestly and clearly the truth of my life and I would read the truth of the others’ lives that they painted. I would know myself. I would know them. They would know me. We would know one another. And we would love one another for telling the truth, for being alive. We would call what we saw, the result of the bad and the good in our lives, beautiful, for that’s what it would be.

At twilight all of us women would go and meet all of the men in one central place. The men would have painted their stories on themselves, as well, and there would be a palpable excitement about seeing one another.

We would sing. We would read one another’s stories. We would laugh and cry together. And then we would dance.

I would get up and walk toward him. His eyes would be soft and gentle, filled with a loving look and lit by the fire. Our hands would touch and I would lean against him. Our stories would blend together as we danced to the music in the firelight.

“Cheryl,” he would whisper, love in his voice, as I looked up at him.

“You are wholly beautiful, my love,” he would tell me tenderly and I would know what he meant.

It would mean that he had read all the stories, that he saw it all, that he knew me. That he looked at not just the story on my arm or my left thigh, above my right eyes or across my belly. I would know he had looked at the whole picture, that he saw all of me…the truth of me.

And seeing all that, he would think I was beautiful and love me. Not in spite of the “bad” parts, not because of how much better I became after the bad parts. Not because he avoided looking at some parts or tricked his mind into not feeling anything when he saw them.

Instead, he would love me because of the whole of who I was. Because of everything and because of the beautiful design that no one else wore. Because of every part of me, each bit a result of my life, good and bad. I would be loved unconditionally.

Art

2010-09-19T22:20:00.001-07:00