Last week, Two Bi Guys aired their latest podcast called Three Bi Guys, (with wives)! in which Austin was interviewed. I am so grateful for the work Two Bi Guys are doing, calling attention to the largest but most unseen portion of the queer community. Not only are bisexuals often unseen, but they are also likely the most misunderstood.
Since Austin came out, I have been astounded by the assumptions, gossip, and slander towards him, and the bi community as a whole. Often coming from people within the faith community. This is wrong and needs to stop.
What I appreciate about this podcast, is the honest glimpse into the lives of three different bi guys. Bisexuality is a mystery and there is no box to easily put bi people into. No label says it all. While hearing from three different bi guys will not give you a complete picture of what it means to be bi, it will certainly give you a much better understanding of the complexity and fluidity of what it can mean to be bisexual.
levels of coming out
The night before the episode was due to drop, I was a mess. I don’t sleep well at the best of times, so I certainly did not sleep well that night. I was worried that I might discover something new, some new level of coming out.
In the episode, Austin mentions how he came out to me before we were married. Suffice it to say that whatever he said was so subtle that I did not pick up on it. At all.
If you have read my blog from the beginning, you will know there have been various levels of coming out. To the point that sometimes I worry that there may be more. Sometimes I’m afraid that if I make peace with the way things are, something new will come up.
learning to verbalize
Part of being a survivor of childhood trauma means having learned to survive by always expecting something terrible to happen. It’s what gave some of us the skills to scan the room and read body language. The only way we could survive was by always being ready, always having an exit strategy or a hiding mechanism.
But you and I, we are not children anymore. For me, a very important step in healing and moving on, has been to verbalize instead of exiting or hiding.
So I verbalized. It seems simple but it took excruciating effort on my part. To tell him I had trouble sleeping because I was scared. Because I felt vulnerable. We talked about it. He saw me and his words comforted me.
It’s so easy to sabotage some of the simple steps to healing and wholeness. It may be a completely different set of circumstances for you. Whatever it is, keep showing up for yourself. You matter and you are worth it.
no label says it all
It was a couple of days later that I listened to the podcast. I loved it. I also loved him more for being so honest and real and funny. And I was grateful that I had faced my fears and been vulnerable with him about them. It freed something up inside so I could really sit back and soak up the podcast.
I hope you will take the time to listen to this episode. The fine folks in this interview will show you how beautiful, unique, and mysterious a thing it is to be bisexual. No label says it all so please, stop making assumptions, keep your heart open and take this opportunity to educate yourself.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
Last week I began to hear friends reference what they were doing a year ago, as the Pandemic began to spread throughout the US. The impact didn’t fully hit me until a new episode dropped in a TV show I had been anticipating. I watched as characters I’ve come to love received the news of an upcoming two-week lock-down in their city and I felt heaviness and grief rise up in my body.
This tangible fear and a sensation of anxiety resurfaced simply by watching these fictional characters and I thought to myself, ” they have no idea what is coming.” Just like that, I found myself face to face with the alarm and the frightening unknown that pursued me a year ago. When I had no idea what was in store.
Listening to the language of my body, I began to process what it means to near the end of a time of trauma. As I sat with the heaviness that had taken over my body, I felt gratitude for the physical sensations that would not let me just rush to the finish line in celebration. Without fully processing and bearing witness to the losses I had faced.
Grieving the losses.
We each have our own list of losses. Mine looks something like this.
The loss of solitude as an introvert in a house full of extroverts. All stuck at home together. One of them is diagnosed with ADHD but all four of them display multiple symptoms. So things can get kind of wild.
The loss of meaningful work and income. Bringing so much anxiety. While I am back at work and our business is thriving, there was a very scary time when I didn’t know if we would make it. It seemed as if the grants and loans were going to the big guys who didn’t really need it while small businesses like our own were barely hanging on. Not getting the promised relief. When we were denied benefits, though I could show proof we had not made a profit for 3 months.
The loss of relationships. People I thought were friends but showed me that my life was not as important as their comfort. But my life matters. I finally believe that now and it affects who I will spend my time with when this is all over. But the pain of losing relationships will last a long time.
The loss of places of belonging. Toxic places of belonging are still places of belonging and the human spirit yearns to belong. Pulling away from places that do not honor my life or the lives of those who matter to me has not been easy. It hurts.
Parenting 24/7. Juggling home schooling on top of everything else. My senior threw his graduation cap in the air in front of an empty auditorium last May and I wanted to ball my eyes out. My youngest, a junior this year, thrives with people and lots of activities. Doing school work at home on his iPad has nearly been the end to all of us.
The loss of travel. Gatherings of friends. Work conferences with like-minded people. The loss of rhythms and routines that bring sanity. Quiet. Order. Stability.
religious trauma
There’s more. I struggle to know how to write these words. Before the pandemic, I had stepped away from the church. Not from faith, but from the organization struggling to represent it. Please know that I am not speaking about a particular church. But the representation as a whole.
The pandemic, George Floyd’s death, and the resulting conversations on race and privilege, followed by Christian’s response to the election, have brought painful clarity. I lost the church. Or the church lost me. Either way, I don’t think I will completely recover from this. Nor do I want to. I will keep following my faith and the prophet who thought nothing of breaking religious laws so he could be kind to all. Blurring the lines between those who were “in” and those on the “outside.” For me, any remote desire to be back on the inside, died during the pandemic. Too many “Christians” gave out the message that my life (and the lives of certain others) does not matter.
listening to the language of my body
These losses are heavy. And the only way out is through. Listening to the language of my body, the heaviness, the aches and pains. To hear what they are saying to me.
“We cannot figure our way out of grief… we must turn toward our experience and touch it with the softest hands possible. Only then, in the inner terrain of silence and solitude, will our grief yield to us and offer up its most tender shoots… So much is carried in our bodies. The wisdom that is held within our tissues is something that we have almost completely forgotten. And yet there is no awareness more situated in the present moment than what is found in our bodies.”
Listening to the language of my body has become crucial to my well-being. That particular ache in one of my shoulders that flares up. I have long known it is brought on by stress and anxiety, my body’s way of getting my attention. Telling me I have taken on too much. Reminding me that I’m longing for comforting touch and a place of belonging. Or for rest, deep deep rest. I close my eyes and find the little girl who first felt the weight of the world on her tiny shoulders and I ask her how she is doing. If I listen long enough, this little girl tells me what I need. It could be a listening ear, paper and pen to pour out my soul, or a boundary she needs me to set. She is wise beyond her years and is always within my reach.
closure
Two more things come to mind as I think about moving into the light at the end of the tunnel.
I need a grief ritual. A sacred space shared with a few close friends, to grieve the losses and metaphorically put this pandemic into the ground so we can rise and move on. Francis Weller says,
“Unlike most traditional cultures, where grief is a regular guest in the community, we have somehow been able to cloister grief and sanitize it, denying its expression as the gut-wrenching and heart-breaking event that it truly is… ritual is the means whereby we can work the ground of grief, allowing it to move, shift, and, ultimately, take a new shape in the soul.”
The terror of this past year has brought me face to face with previous traumas. I’ve jumped bravely into the deep end and discovered new ways of being in the world. One thing I’ve come to understand is that victims who are rescued from trauma, have a much harder time healing from that trauma than victims who were able to use their own resources to escape. Naturally, sometimes being rescued by another is the only possible way out but the invaluable truth from my therapy this past year is that I am my own way out.
choosing life
In reflecting on the Pandemic, I am convinced that I did what I could to stay safe and keep others safe. There were things beyond my control, but now, as we near the end, there is something I can do, for myself. I can get the vaccine as soon as I am able. I can be my own way out. It is one way of taking this trauma and putting it into the ground.
I know that this is a controversial topic for some. And yet for me, it is about choosing life. For myself and those around me. It has hurt a lot to feel as if my life hasn’t mattered to some people this past year. And I can’t change that. I can make certain however, that those around me know beyond a doubt that their health, well-being, and yes, even their lives, matter to me.
The journey from grief to glory starts by sitting with death and loss. Listening to the language of the body. Letting grief be an honest conversation of soul with the outer world . Letting flow what must flow. In the end, we must find a way to choose life.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
In my last post, I wrote about leaving toxic places, touching on the grief that surfaces when we realize certain places or people are no longer safe for us.
I need to dive in a little deeper, to the pain of grieving something we never had.
Grief is necessary when we lose something precious. When processed well, grief can be good and beautiful, true praise of what we have lost. Proof that something beautiful was in our lives.
“Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson
grieving something we never had
Yet sometimes grief grabs us in the deepest places and holds on because instead of grieving what we lost, we may be grieving something we never had in the first place.
The child in the closet who pretended she was straight to maintain her place of belonging in the family, will someday have to grieve never actually belonging to that family. The boy who raised himself while caring for a parent does not weep because his father died. His tears are shed instead for the father he never had. And never will. The woman who has always struggled to feel beautiful because as a child, a boy publicly humiliated her and labeled her as disgusting. She does not weep for the loss of popularity, she weeps because she has never felt seen as beautiful. The parent who is triggered into deep anxiety when facing food insecurity because of a global pandemic is not grieving today’s hardships. He is grieving a childhood that never knew that security.
Sometimes we grieve because we have lost something. But there is an equally bottomless pain of grieving something we never had in the first place.
For all who grieve and feel the pain of loss over things that never existed – yet should have existed – you are not alone. Some losses feel forever and stretch beyond human reasoning and comprehension.
This loneliness, this deep and utter feeling of betrayal, loss and isolation is exhausting.
coming home
And yet, when the song and dance is over, when the dust clears and all that is left is the raw authenticity of our lives.
Those moments where we were the truest to ourselves.
The best versions of who we could be.
With startling clarity, we can look around and realize that there is something inside of us that has outlived the betrayal, grief and losses of life.
We want to engineer a world where everyone admires us, holds us in high esteem. Where safety and security are the norm. We try so hard to control the outcome of the broader story yet all we can really do is control our own narrative. When all else has been lost or is out of our control, we can and must speak our own narrative. Make our own way. Belong to our self.
Perhaps the only way to find our true place of belonging starts with coming home to our self. Belonging to our self.
This is not a journey I can guide you on because this journey will not look the same for any one of us. Our journey of coming home to our self is as unique as each of us.
It’s taken me decades to truly come home to, and belong to, my self. More often than not I wished I could trade in my self for another one braver, more beautiful, stronger, more articulate, and better than this one. Yet I finally love her. More than being shaped by her experiences, she now experiences life by the shaping of her narrative.
By belonging to her self, she holds the pen in her story. No matter what she gains or loses, she knows she will always have her self.
And she is more than okay.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
I find myself feeling a lot of things these days. Sadness. Happiness. Grief. Hope. Anger. Relief. Waking up in a polarized world that keeps getting a little more chaotic every day has given me the gift of clarity. So many places once familiar are now strange to me. Places of belonging that have turned toxic bring me no small amount of sadness. Keeping the raw edge of grief sharp. I look around me at people I once categorized as “my people” and it is as if I am looking at a crowd of strangers.
It’s unsettling. Waking up in a strange place. The grief is nuanced and layered. But at the heart of it, there is a loss of belonging. And when that loss is realized, brought to the surface and given space to metabolize and flow, I realize there is not much point in staying connected to a place or a relationship where I no longer belong. Especially when that place has become toxic.
The word belonging means happiness felt in a secure relationship. It is rooted in the idea of being suitable or fitting to something or someone. Toxic comes from a Greek phrase that literally meant poison used on arrows.
Toxic places
Arrows harm. Poisoned arrows destroy.
It’s more than a little startling to wake up in a place that is toxic. Where there is intent to harm and destroy. What is even more disconcerting is to see people you had imagined were safe and good, dipping their arrows into poison. Metaphorically speaking of course.
Some of us still have a painfully difficult time attempting to leave these places behind. Belonging is so deeply wired into our DNA. We need “place”. Safety. Belonging.
But when a particular place is no longer safe, you no longer belong there. Your relationship is neither happy nor secure. You might as well leave.
leaving
Give yourself time and space to grieve the loss. But whatever you do, don’t remain in that toxic place. If your church, marriage, family, friendships, workplace, social group, whatever, has become a place of poison instead of a place of safety, get out. It’s okay to leave. Okay to risk disappointing others. To make waves. To let down the people who have long ago let you down.
You matter.
Your safety matters.
Happiness and well being. These things matter.
Let your gut be your compass. The beautiful thing is that there is a place you belong to. If you are leaving toxicity behind, you may not yet know that new place. But it is there. And the only way you will find it is by leaving behind all that would poison you.
You may have to create it. Build it. Find your own people and start anew. But you can do this.
some extra help
I recently began EMDR with my therapist. Simply put, EMDR is a psychotherapy that enables one to heal from emotional distress that stems from past experiences. The thing about trauma is that when it is physically over, a part of our brain stays stuck in the event. This causes our bodies to react to current day events as if we were still experiencing that past trauma.
For me, it’s seeing my husband lay back and close his eyes. Particularly in the middle of the day. Or the middle of a conversation. It may be a normal reaction on his part. Of simply being tired. Or having a headache. But my body goes into a flight mode and I have an irresistible urge to leave the room. It takes everything I have to remain physically present.
Such a simple thing but it has a very powerful effect on my body. It subconsciously transports me back into an old trauma, as if that were the event happening today instead of my husband just being tired and needing to withdraw for a minute.
My therapist described EMDR as a way to connect the right side of our brain to the left side. So that the part that thinks it is still in the traumatic event can finally and truly understand that it is over.
my own way out
We began the EMDR process by creating a safe space in my mind that I could go to if it became too much to bear at any point in the therapy. Then, we chose an event from the past, to begin with, using tapping instead of eye movement. Part of the process involves fully entering the memory and all the feelings that go with it. We identified the negative cognition or thoughts that went with the event. For me, it was “I’m not good enough.” But when it came time to replace the negative cognition with a positive one, all the while staying in that past event, I really struggled.
But then I had a light bulb moment. I knew that my positive cognition had to be this – I am my own way out. I knew that what I was feeling was not so much that I wasn’t good enough, but that I was trapped. Using tapping, I was able to re-tell the story of my past. I gave myself a voice and freedom. Became my own way out.
I cannot, simply cannot, in the language of mankind, tell you how powerful this is for me.
changing the past
When my Grandpa passed away, I was processing another memory on my own. That phrase came to me again and I went back into the memory and found the little girl that was so hurt and confused. I talked to her and showed her who she would become. I told her how she was her own way out.
While we cannot change the past, we can change our perspective of it by changing our relationship to it. It is possible to bring an end to past trauma.
To the little girl I meet in my memories and to all of you who find yourself stuck either in toxic places or toxic memories, you are your own way out. You belong, not to those poisonous places, but to a new place that hears you, sees you and values you.
The world is big and wide and beautiful. There is enough. You are enough. If you are not in a place that tells you this every day, then go and find that place.
You are your own way out.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
New Year’s Eve often finds me perched in my room. Away from the noise and parties. Just me and my thoughts. I sit and ponder the year gone by and listen to hope, as she whispers new lines for the year ahead. Eventually, a word or phrase finds me and I know it is to be my mantra for the coming year.
My word(s) for this year were slower to come, but no less real when they did show up.
Let go.
No way!
You’re kidding, right? I do not like that particular combination of words. Never have. Never will.
They have become synonymous with a certain kind of self-disregard that was subtly held up as God’s ultimate plan and pleasure.
Looking back now it seems clearly twisted. Equating Divine Love with the call to self-sacrifice and personal pain. As if the reason for my existence was to serve others and give up whatever dreams and hopes I may have had for myself.
It has been a long journey to come to a very different realization – that my hopes and dreams and wants are good things. My pleasure mirrors that of the Divine, rather than being in dissonance with it.
And while there is much that could be written about that journey, it would take us off topic. So back to that phrase.
Let Go
Almost as soon as the “what the heck?” thought entered my mind, I was given a picture of what a healthy letting go could look like. Like a stream that branches into two smaller creeks, each being connected to and a vital part of the whole, two things began to separate and lengthen in my mind.
First, honesty. Being honest with myself about what I really want. What I need. Desire. Passion. Longing. It’s a brave and utterly honest look at all I am feeling and needing. Admitting it. Owning it.
Secondly, it’s telling myself that I will be okay, even if I don’t get that thing that I really want and need.
It was a light bulb moment for me. Maybe I was never really able to let go of things in the past because I had not had the courage or permission to wildly feel and be honest about what it is that I wanted. You can’t let go of something you are in denial about. It will own you. Haunt you. Control you.
But raw honesty about all that flows and rumbles through this human body is a beautiful and freeing thing.
Within hours of coming to this realization, I began to have physical symptoms that would later be diagnosed as COVID. As the first aches began to take over my body, I admitted how much I wanted to feel good. How hard I had worked for a very long time to be healthy. To protect my own body and the lives of my friends and neighbors.
Then I told myself that I would be okay even if I did not have those things.
I let go.
And with it I found the courage to look at many more places in my life where fear was holding my fingers tight.
Yes, I want it very much. But yes, I will be okay even if I don’t have it.
Christmas Day found us snuggled in close. The kids all home. Snow falling and falling and falling. Piles of good food and heaps of presents. Laughter and love slipping from our hearts and filling us back up at the same time.
Heart full, I checked my phone at the end of the day. One message stared back at me from the screen. My Grandpa has passed on.
In the most poetic of ways, the great Poet of my childhood, the one who always made me feel seen, safe, and loved, had passed on. On Christmas. A man of faith who always had one eye on earth and one on eternity. A man who fully lived his life here while longing to go “home”. He was finally home. After 100 years on this earth.
grief is praise
Gone. Leaving a hole that words fail to fill. Grief washes over me like the waves of the ocean, the salt from my tears rolling with the endless expanse. My grief is praise to the greatness of my Grandpa.
“Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, unchoreographed and honest, for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses. ”
My grandpa was called to be a preacher long before I was born. The son of an Amish farmer and author, my grandpa was ordained by lot as a pastor in the Mennonite church when he was 34 years old.
One of my earliest memories of him is both a confusing and painful one. I remember sitting in the pew one Sunday morning. Swinging my legs in the air because they did not yet reach the floor. I looked down at my new blue dress, lovingly fingering the three Holly Hobby Buttons that were stitched on the front. Admired the soft ruffle that edged the skirt. After what felt like an eternity, Grandpa got up and began his sermon.
While his exact words elude me, the admonishment passed on to me that day was that women should not wear frilly things. I looked from my cute little buttons and my ruffled skirt up to the woman I was sitting with. I can’t remember if it was my mother or one of my aunts. But I know it was a woman because the women still sat on one side of the church and the men on the other. I remember looking up in confusion, wondering what we should do about my new dress. I went from feeling pretty and happy, to confused and dismayed.
In many ways, I have spent many years since then trying to figure out what to do about that dress. The teachings of family and church in my early years left me with an unconscious belief that I, as a woman, should never look beautiful. That little girl in her cute little new dress was shut behind a door inside of me until I finally realized I could not fully live until I gave her a voice and a place.
Grandpa my friend
But here is the exquisite piece – my Grandpa loved me no matter what. He saw me, the shy little girl who grew to love crafting words as much as he did. Who shared his love for cherry delight and brown sugar frosting piled on thick. The country girl who grew to love wandering the hills and praying out loud with only the trees and stones of the brook, the birds, and the squirrels as fellow worshipers.
One of my happiest childhood days was spent at his side. My parents had moved us from Ohio to Arizona. One winter, my Grandparents drove out to stay with my brothers and I while my parents went on a trip. Now grandpa walked every day of his life that he was able. If it was icy out, he would walk loops in the house. Nothing deterred him from moving his feet to the rhythm that thrummed inside his giant heart.
So on one particular day in Phoenix, my grandpa decided to take his walk up a nearby mountain. And he wanted my brother and I to join him. He called the school to get permission and we were allowed to take the entire day off. I loved school but when I put my feet on the mountain path and breathed in the fresh clear air that only exists in places like that, the air of the classroom felt like a stuffy memory. Walking up the mountain with Grandpa woke something up inside of me and I have been in love with walking and with mountains ever since.
grandpa the famous
At church, the next Sunday, the visiting pastor, who was quite famous in our circles, nearly shrieked from the pulpit when he recognized my Grandpa sitting in the pews. I felt so proud to be linked to this famous person that my Grandpa was.
Years later I found myself sitting in another pew. This time behind my parents as they waited for my grandpa and another visiting pastor to come out of the side room with the hymnals that were used for ordination by lot in our denomination. I saw the slip of paper in my dad’s hymnal a fraction of a second before he did and I felt the weight that my grandpa felt at his own ordination. As a woman, I would never have a place of leadership in our Mennonite circle, yet I felt a weight that literally shook my shoulders as if I would be the one to bear this new responsibility.
Always welcoming
Time moved on and so did our family, eventually settling in the Carolinas. We didn’t get to see Grandpas very often. But when we made the trip back to Ohio and would walk through that door, Grandpa would always come to welcome us with arms wide open.
“Ooohhh my! If it isn’t Marita! Mamma, come see who is here!” And he would envelop me in his arms and hold me close to his heart for a minute. Letting me know that no matter where my journey took me, I would still always belong.
Black Sheep
What I wouldn’t give for one more of those hugs. Because of COVID, I didn’t get to say goodbye to him and that brings a sharp edge to my grief.
If I’m being honest though, I suppose I have kept myself away more than necessary over the past few years because I have felt like the black sheep of the family. The same ancient texts and the teachings of loving the Divine with all I’ve got. Loving my neighbor as myself. These same teachings have brought me to a very different practice of faith. It first took my feet across the ocean. Then it brought me home. Now it’s taken my feet to rallies and protests. Opened my mouth to support queer people. Refugees. Immigrants. Black Lives. Lately, it’s caused me to mask up and stay away. It’s opened my eyes to recognize the Divine in the most unexpected places and in people I would have been taught cannot house the Divine. Yet there It is.
I think part of me has kept a distance because I felt like the odd one out. The lone Democrat in a family of Republicans. The one who has left the faith – when in reality, my faith has never felt more real. More true. And my soul more whole. I didn’t want to disappoint. Neither did I like the feeling of being so different. Of perhaps not belonging anymore. In this way, my grief is praise to the tight feeling of belonging I once had.
Grandpa’s girlfriends
Yet Grandpa would always envelop me and welcome me home. No matter what. Even when his eyes could no longer recognize me, his heart did. And he would laugh and be so glad that one of his girlfriends had come to see him.
You see, there were 5 of us granddaughters and 12 grandsons. He took to calling us his 5 girlfriends. He would periodically take us out for breakfast and, after a morning of stories and laughter, he would ask the waitress for the check. Always letting her know that these were his girlfriends.
While Holmes County and the Mennonite world may know him as a preacher, he was so much more than that.
Moving across the ocean several times, compressing my belongings to several suitcases, has caused me to loosen my hands and let go of many things. Yet somehow, I kept a letter that Grandpa wrote to me when I lived in Brooklyn. I had traveled to Ohio for the holidays and left my coat at his house when I left. He took it to his store where he sent it UPS. When I pulled it from the box, in my tiny apartment in New York, I found a sweet letter that he had written to me. I pulled out that letter Christmas night and read it once again. I read again how he had given my coat a couple of extra hugs and prayed over it before he sent it. Held the letter to my heart in one hand. Squeezed the Holly Hobby buttons I had saved in the other…and wept.
Tears of grief. Tears of Praise.
I lost a great love. But I had a great love.
Loss is complex. Loss is simple. Grief is praise. And in this way, grief is good.
It leaves a hole because something was there. Something that spent a lifetime of growing and giving and blooming.
I think about all he was. The enormous role he filled for so many. The impact of his life. And I look around. At my father and his siblings. My brothers and my cousins. My children and the other great-grandchildren. The great greats who have come and those who will come. And I see him. There is a bit of him in each of us because, well, I suppose it takes that many of us to hold all the pieces of who he was. And now still is.
He was our legend. And we are always his.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
4 years ago, I woke up to the news that Trump had been elected. And I wept. Not for myself – as a straight, white citizen, I didn’t expect my personal life to be greatly affected. No, I carried a crushing agony inside for those I care deeply about, who I knew were going to be utterly broken during the coming years.
My tears became a lament. I grabbed pen and paper and let these words flow from the brokenness and despair I so keenly felt. They truly came from the basement of my soul.
So here, in the middle of uncertainty and anxiety, I share with you my prayer of lament. Hoping it can jar free that hope that is in you. That no matter what happens, we are the doulas and there is a birth in process.
From the basement of my soul
As darkness rises, gathers tight Folds in upon itself Growing thick and spreading far, Be the light. The light in my soul for Only light can chase back the clutches of darkness that threaten to take over the land I love The community I once knew. My neighborhood far and near.
I cannot shake the darkness Nor did I ask for this. Did not enslave or trample my way to the top But yet I bear the sin of those who did Who today are rising even stronger. Because of the color of my skin I also bear this sin. While they gloat I grieve a grief That shakes my soul to the core. And in that shaking I am undone and lie A tiny crumpled ball In the basement of my soul.
And there I weep. For we have sinned. Have put on a pedestal those who lie and cheat and steal. Who happily step on the soul of God’s creation and laugh the wound away. We worship those who break the law to rise to the top but Point our fingers at those who break lesser laws just to survive. So we send them to prison or return them to hell while We gorge ourselves with the darkness and think it is the light.
In the basement of my soul, I am spent. Day after day I confess the sins of those who share my race and my skin But not my soul. Forgive, I plead, and let the madness stop.
I open my eyes in the basement of my soul, While screaming winds rip apart the roof of my nation And see I am not alone. The Light has always been with me and Others who bear that Light are coming closer Growing stronger and I remember that Darkness makes the Light grow stronger. This cursed wretched darkness is giving courage and bravery To voices who have never felt needed before. Out of darkness, hope is born. Justice is birthed anew while we The doulas believe and nurture, Swaddle and grow it.
O Light of all light, push back this darkness. Expose the hate for what it is. Peel back the layers to show the fear and Cleanse this land of self preservation.
From the basement of my soul I dance with joy because now I see A nation of Doulas that will never be stopped. Driving taxis, teaching schools, serving meals, pounding nails Black, White and all the glorious shades between. Rich, poor, in rallies or on knees, In courtrooms, buses, hospitals, airports, prisons. One doula gives courage to another And then another and another. It spreads like a wildfire of light. Yes! We are the doulas and we stand guard over this birth As if it were our own while Light is born anew and Given wings to deliver The death sentence to this darkness.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
I thought it would get easier. And in many ways it has. But that underlying, nagging feeling that I don’t have what it takes. That I will never be enough. Rejection is surely just around the corner. Those feelings and fears I’ve had from the beginning are still are there.
It wearies me. After so many years. So much internal work. So many therapy sessions. Endless conversations. Countless tissue boxes and tears.
Yes, I see growth. Beauty. A depth that wasn’t there before. Wisdom emerging from the ashes. So much that is good.
But do our oldest and deepest wounds ever go away? Are they the ghosts of past, present, and future? Perhaps not visible, yet hauntingly and deeply felt.
I want to feel as if I’m the love of his life. The missing puzzle piece. But I feel like I’m only half of that missing piece. A love but maybe not the love.
That’s not what I want. Not what I signed up for.
It’s like fate has dealt us the best and worst of hands all in one. To walk away from the pain would also be to walk away from the deepest happiness I’ve ever had. How does one even begin to process that, much less live through it?
To quote Daniel Levy’s character, David Rose, in the show Schitt’s Creek,
“I’ve been burned so many times, I’m basically the human equivalent of the inside of a roasted marshmallow.”
David Rose
Deep inside I carry a weight that, whether I’m consciously aware of it or not, tells me I’m not enough. That I don’t have what it takes. One too many rejections leaves one feeling like the next one is just around the corner.
I mindfully breathe in the golden color of this fall day. The birds singing welcome to sunshine dripping on green and gold leaves. It strikes me that the earth is letting go of one season while fully waking up to a new day. Embracing and releasing at the same time.
I always thought it was either-or. Death or life. Acceptance or rejection. Sorrow or joy. But what if we are able to be enough and not be enough at the same time? What if I’m not his everything but still be the love of his life?
Maybe life is best lived when we figure out how to hold our grief and our happiness in the same hand. Not either-or, but both. Not enough, yet still enough, at the same time.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
Regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education, race, species. Life is life. A woman’s womb weeps tears of blood every month new life is not cradled within. The sight of a wee babe makes our hearts go soft inside. Breathing slows down and anxiety lowers when I step outside and wander the backyard, caressed by the breeze, hands plucking ripe tomatoes, toes kissing blades of green grass. I soak in life and I am reborn.
Life is sacred and life is life. And I am very much for life. I guess, to be politically correct, you could say I am pro-life. But because I am pro-life, I pause at election time and do not vote based on the abortion issue. Being pro-life has widened the scope of my lens instead of narrowing it down to one thing.
Does that shock you? Give you pause and make you want to throw out my words like dirty dishwater? Hear me out first.
The possibility of duality
Being pro-life and pro-choice are not mutually exclusive. The Patriarchy has groomed us to see things in black and white. Right or wrong. Only one way. But femininity has taught me the possibility of duality. It has given me the right to question, to use my own brain and come up with endless possibilities instead of only one way.
I am pro-life. But I do not believe it is right for me to make that choice for another human. That is why I am also pro-choice. It is not my right to make moral decisions for another woman. It’s like expending my efforts to protect the little twigs in the forest from being burned when the entire forest is burning to the ground.
The dominant voices in the American evangelical church have told us that the most important issue to consider when voting is the abortion issue. In reality, this is a guise to distract us from the bigger picture. Are the little twigs necessary in the forest? Do they contain life? Yes and of course! But it does little good to protect them when the entire forest is burning to the ground!
Saving the twigs by saving the forest
It’s time to wake up to reality. We must throw our effort into protecting the whole of the forest. The time is here to come together and look at the bigger picture. Because it will take all of us to save the forest and, in doing so, we can create a place where all the little twigs can thrive.
I am pro-life and that is why I look at the bigger picture of what each candidate and their party stands for. I watch the way they treat the audience during debates. The way they treat minorities. Women. The differently-abled. I look at how the policies they propose will affect children. Single moms. Immigrants. I listen to friends of other races and orientations. When they tell me their lives are in danger because of policies with this administration, I take that seriously. Their lives matter to me. Life is sacred and life is life.
I try to imagine how the policies they make will affect women and children around the globe. I count the cost of future wars and hold the Iraqi and Afghani mothers in my hearts and hold their children with mine – because life is life. My children’s future is not more important than theirs. I think of soldiers blown to bits on foreign soil while their comrades return to us with PTSD, I see them and weep. Their life also has value to me.
Pro-life or pro-comfort?
Pro-life does not build walls and close humans in cages. Look not for the words you want to hear. Rather, look at the life your candidate leads. This is how you determine whether or not they actually stand for life or not. Words on paper, a signature captured to change a law, that is no victory for life. It is only a ploy to get your vote and to enable a life of comfort for a select few.
Look for the walls broken down. The cages open. Wars ended. Peaceful solutions found. Look for compassion, justice, and equality. See if there is regard for the earth itself. Will it be cared for or exploited?
The forest is burning. There are those who are pouring gas on the flames and telling us to only see and save the twigs. But I gather with my bucket of water. Pour out what I have and run for more.
If you burn the forest down, you will have to burn me with it. I stand with life. Black, brown, white. Gay, Straight, Bi, Trans. She, He, They. Immigrant, indigenous, and all who tremble with fear for their lives. They are human first. I see their faces and I stand with them. And we plant our feet on Mother Earth and she shares her water with us and we fill our buckets. There is room for you here too.
Because life is sacred. And life is life.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
At least that’s what I was taught. But what if, in making that choice, we suppress the feelings that could lead us to true healing?
Growing up as a Mennonite kid, I was surrounded by stories and wrapped in a history of ancestors who forgave their enemies. Who turned back to rescue their pursuers who had fallen through the ice on the river. Or fed breakfast to the men who had just torn the roof off of their house. Who forgave their killers as they were being tied to the stake for burning.
These stories gave my life texture. Meaning. Noble virtue. And there is something inspiring about a faith strong enough to die for. A faith that can still offer forgiveness in the midst of betrayal and pain.
The stories of my ancestors and others like them during times of persecution are astounding. The Martyr’s Mirror is full of them. Love your enemies, was the message. Forgive and do good to those who treat you badly.
What my little heart picked up, for a combination of reasons, is that I must never get angry and must always be quick to forgive. No matter who was doing it, no matter what they did. But quick forgiveness shut down some things that I needed to feel and give voice to. In fact, it robbed me of my voice.
I look at communities like the one I grew up in and I see I’m not the only one. Story after story after story has been whispered to me. Stories of unspeakable abuse, incest, and torture. Suppressed. Swept under the rug. Victims silenced while perpetrators are given a second chance all in the name of forgiveness.
This is not okay. And this is not forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a journey
What if forgiveness is not simply a choice? What if forgiveness is a journey? A journey that is pointless if we suppress our rage and deny our anger. If we sweep truth under the rug and protect the abusers in the name of honoring our parents, preachers, or teachers, we keep the abuse alive for the next generation. We are also doing great damage to our physical bodies.
Severe illnesses, early death, and suicide are the logical consequence of subjection to the laws that we call morality, although in fact they suffocate our true lives. This will continue to be the case, all over the world, as long as we show greater reverence to these laws than to life itself. The body rebels against such treatment, but the only language at its command is the language of illness, a language that is rarely understood as long as the denial of true feelings in childhood remains unrecognized.
Alice Miller
The Body Never Lies
Like the title of her book says, the body never lies. Over the past decade, I have been on a journey to listen closely to what my body is telling me. I have been able to link some of my particular physical aches and pains to repressed anger.
I began to notice a pattern a few years back. Every time I was in the presence of a person who had harmed me as a child, by the end of the evening my shoulders would be tight and sore. It felt as if I was carrying a hundred pounds of stone. The pain would keep me from being able to sleep on my side at night, interfering with my sleep. I couldn’t even put my hair in a ponytail or messy bun because it put too much pressure on my aching shoulders. This would often last for an entire month until the pain would eventually subside.
Quick forgiveness shut down some things that I needed to feel and give voice to. In fact, it stole my voice.
It took me a while to catch on to the pattern. Even when I saw it, I found it hard to believe because I had long ago made a decision to forgive this person. So while my brain may have decided to forgive, my body still had not and could not.
The pain and abandonment of our childhood keep our body trapped until we make a choice, not to forgive, but to fully acknowledge all that we endured. We must find safe spaces to speak our stories fully, to rage, to grieve. To feel it all.
a new kind of forgiveness
Perhaps we need a new kind of forgiveness. A re-framing of sorts. Because true forgiveness does not leave one person the victim and the other a bully. It should never allow the perpetrator to keep a shred of power. Nor should it silence the victim. It is movement. Messy and loud. It frees the victim, not the perpetrator.
It is the beating of wings and the flight of the wingless.
The journey of forgiveness may take a lifetime because it is not a destination. Nor is it defined by arrival. It is movement from victim to truth-teller. It is the shout of the voiceless. The shedding of tonnes of stone and a rising up. It is the roar of the soul as it rumbles forth, awakening the fire of justice. It is the opposite of silence and stillness. The wild dance of freedom, the ripping up of a confining costume, the first taste of air outside of the cocoon. It is a beating of wings and the flight of the wingless.
Forgiveness is the journey to freedom. From self-loathing to self-love. At times it is fueled by rage and anger, grief, and sadness. No feeling is banned. Each one is a tool and every tool is needed.
I am on this journey, not to bring relief to the ones who have wronged me. But to bring relief to the little girl inside. To open the doors and let her out. To embrace the entirety of her story. I take her in my arms and we weep together, our tears greasing the wheels, propelling us forward.
Click on the button above to send me an email and I will let you know when new posts are up! If you or someone you love is in the closet, or if you are struggling with your own guttural grief and need someone to talk to, email me. I may not have time to answer you but I will read it and hold you in my heart.
