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Being Human

Seen: the tears I can’t not cry whenever I speak my brother Peter’s name.
Unseen: the clinch that tightens around my throat with my tears’ falling.
Is this a cause and effect? or is it simply Grief’s calling card?

Seen: their 59th anniversary prompt on today’s calendar.
Unseen: the lump I swallow around, thinking if I swallow hard enough I won’t cry.
Is this going to happen every March 14 until I, too, am not here to swallow?

Seen: me hugging my almost 25-year-old daughter so hard.
Unseen: the internal argument I’m having with myself because I no longer have her all to and by myself.
Will I ever learn to share what is definitely my most precious thing ever? Do I have to?

Seen: the most amazing man loving me, walking with me and holding my hand all night long, every single night.
Unseen: the terrorizing thought gripping my chest that he will leave.
Do trauma triggers and PTSD ever go away?

Seen: shelves upon shelves of books behind and around me.
Unseen: my fear that I’m not smart enough yet so I rage read to wrack up more volumes finished.
There’s a reason I set a limit of 52 books per year. Maybe this year I’ll not exceed it. Not likely.

Seen: me holding the microphone and singing loudly, “Maybe This Time,” and “I Feel Lucky” in front of the room.
Unseen: my pounding heart that’s not pounding so heavy it blocks my throat like before and before and the time before that.
I hear me as I open my mouth, like there’s an Oreo sitting on my tongue. Just like that.

Seen: my friend is sad and says it’s hard for him to be with himself.
Unseen: my immediate walk back in time to all the times I struggled to be with myself, too.
That journey is hard and lonely. I know. And I know it will transform you. You will Become, just like the Skin Horse. And just like me.

Seen: documentaries, podcasts (heard) and news stories about Mormons, Fundamentalists, origin stories and current events.
Unseen: the weight of my emotional separation from my family and their rights, their wrongs, their moralities.
Who can ever say when the crushing wound will happen to you? Or how it will splay you open, exposed and vulnerable to the man behind the curtain. . . .

Seen: me living my best life, finally.
Unseen: me living my best life, finally.
Can I bottle this up and stock my own shelves with it? Self-Preservation is the gift that keeps on giving me my Life.

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Misusing My Imagination

Yesterday my imagination was a semi going too fast down a mountain road with no runaway ramp to slow it down; it was completely out of control. And I was the byproduct of that messiness.

Monday, the first day back after a long (and much-needed break from all-the-things) Thanksgiving holiday. Monday, also the first of only 15 working days remaining on this calendar year before the week of Christmas arrives, bringing with it more (still-needed) respite from all-the-things.

Scheduled meetings, and many not, punctuated the morning hours, whittling them (the hours) down to mere minutes remaining on the clock and then, there were none. No minutes making up hours were left.

Picture me picturing myself at this noon juncture: one very not-put-together human managing and simultaneously spinning multiple activities, which activities included but were definitely not limited to: three loads of laundry, sheet changing (because Clean Sheet Day will be observed at our house, at any and all cost), client outreaches and responses via email, text, and email, surprise/unscheduled phone calls (thank goodness they were on the phone and not on video), loungewear being worn because a self-promised bike ride was still in my future (and on the other side of which ride would be a glorious hot shower, and on the other side of said shower would be clean, lovely and intentional clothes, you know like a put-together outfit), meal planning and preparing (mind you this was merely on the LIST; it was definitely not being done, dear reader, not at all), scheduled meetings and conversations that were always meant to be had, the putting away of various bags, boxes, containers, and necessaries congregating at the top of the stairs that decidedly belong down, returning a pair of borrowed shoes that came with a pleasant, albeit ill-timed, conversation because friends will be loved here only always, and the folding of sheets and socks and towels upon towels for those lucky enough moments when bike rides happen and brows are mopped.

And in the time it took me to create that inconclusive but lengthy list for Patrick, you might now picture me picturing myself at 6pm with nothing but hanging chads littering my imagination’s floor, nothing complete except for the soap dispensers at every sink basin being now refilled.

And what tale had my imagination been writing all day that I was now reading in my mind’s eye?

Only this: that I was a waste of space, never completing anything, terrible at tasks and their management, out-of-shape and probably fat and undesirable because of it, unkempt, definitely not put together, lacking a plan for supper because I am a failure at doing anything and while we’re looking through the kitchen file, how could you not have gotten your bread starter started so you would now have fresh-baked bread tonight? Oh, and remember the pizza dough you started ON THANKSGIVING?? It’s still hanging out in the refrigerator just waiting to be taken care of, you dolt. And your sweetheart will be home any minute and you have what to show him? He’s totally going to be unimpressed with you and this will be — YOU WILL BE — the reason he rejects you.

My friend Steve Chandler said, “Worry is a misuse of your imagination,” and dammit, he’s right, right?

Thank goodness my imagination’s creation was only entirely made up.

Curtis and I promptly (well I swapped my lounge pants for “proper” pants first) went out for dinner at our favorite Mexican place, his hand firmly holding mine, and my heart wrapped up and held by his loving reassurance that the product of my day’s imagination was ridiculous. Not me, my imagination’s creation.

And that’s it: worrying, storytelling, fear-mongering, self-shaming, guilt-tripping, negative talking, overwhelming. . . they’re all just a misuse of the imagination.

As it turns out, none of those things I made up about myself were true — far far from it, in fact. What did yesterday actually look like?

-First day back from holiday with a bang!
-Crushed all client calls, the planned and the unplanned ones.
-Managed SIX separate accounts, each with multiple people involved.
-Completed — sorted to folded to put away — three loads of laundry.
-Put away all extraneous/leftover items from holiday fun with family.
-Walked the dog.
-Fed the dog.
-Had meaningful and important conversations with two friends.
-Held a much-needed space with my mother in a difficult moment in her life.
-Scheduled our annual health insurance review.
-Showed up fully for my two full-time jobs.
-Confirmed my ukulele lesson for this Saturday.
-Changed the sheets and made the bed beautiful.
-Said yes to everything and to everyone that mattered.

Today I am managing my imagination and creating stories that serve and honor me and the truth of who I am: threads weaving together the tapestry of my created life.

P.S. I got that bike ride in first thing this morning, put on a put-together outfit, and realized the benefit of a well-timed burrito is way more powerful than all of yesterday’s runaway trucks combined.

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Acorns and Oak Trees

There’s a massive oak tree in my backyard. I didn’t know it was there, or more accurately, that it was an oak tree because of course I knew the tree was there. But there’s a difference in knowing something exists in physical form, taking up space, doing whatever it is that trees in my backyard do, and in knowing there is a Mighty Oak in my backyard whose canopy covers the entirety of my back deck and beyond into the side yard.

Let’s rewind the clock for a brief moment so I can tell you how I came to know of this Oak’s existence, or perhaps more accurately, how the Oak made its presence known to me.

I live on top of a hill, which hill is at the top of the town in which my mailing address resides. I am tagged and attached to that zip code and to that street number, both of which comprise my mailing address.

Side note, when I submitted a change of address with my last move, which of course resulted in my now residing in the house on the hill with the Mighty Oak out back, apparently the US Postal Service weren’t the only ones I notified. So interesting how networks work, right? The behind the screen scene of sending and receiving and communicating and connecting and coordinating the happening of things fascinates me, even when I’m not thinking about it at all!

Back to out back.

In late September when the weather is at its perfect and peak combination between day and nighttime temperatures we bask in the back deck outdoor eating opportunity. We plug in the string of lights we have strung across the deck and which lights interlace the beams of the grape arbor gracing the entire southwest corner of said deck. Underneath this grape arbor resides a rectangular table with glass top I bought from my friend’s found-in-her-basement-pile. There were six chairs to complete the set and I bought bright and big new cushions, gold + blue + porcelain white, which have now in six months’ time, collectively absorbed more rain than all the bathtubs I filled for personal soaking in as many months. I love baths.

Back to being on the deck.

I heard the first acorn drop in the middle of a September afternoon when I happened to be walking through the family room. The family room is deck-adjacent; they share that outside wall, and the sound was so loud to startle me from my focused-with-a-purpose walk into the kitchen. I probably needed to replenish my tea for the afternoon hours yet remaining at my desk. I like to brew a matcha tea latte or an apricot green tea blend to stimulate my brain in spite of the sinking sun.

After that first drop landed loud, they were everywhere and at all times falling, acorns from heaven, as it were. I know Moses said that’s where the manna comes from, right? Anyway, acorn drops became the background musical accompaniment to my entire day and even the lullaby that woke me in the middle of the night. Constant contact with the deck, with the roof, with the steps leading up to (or down from, depending on which direction you’re walking) the same deck. That deck was littered and laid with a brand new seasonal carpet on whose surface to walk would require an insurance policy against it.

Safety first, am I right?

That carpeting — and my cautious covering of its distance to take the trash out — is what caused me to look up as if for the first time. Where was this abundance coming from? And that’s when I really saw the Oak for the first time — as an actual Oak! My mind exploded considering that this one massive tree was born out of one tiny acorn such as were now littering my entire 1000 square feet of deck.

Everything this Oak Tree needed to become and to be exactly who it is — thriving and living and giving of its current abundance — was contained within just one of these tiny acorns.

This tree, which has been behind me all along, made its resourceful, resource-full and resource-filled Self known to me in an out loud and like a juggernaut kind of way. I see you, Mighty One. I finally see you and I won’t unsee you now.

As a quick post-script, most of the acorns are now gone, disappeared one at a time, and I imagine them taken, tucked away and stockpiled by each of the families of squirrels and chipmunks living in my backyard, just like this Mighty Oak. Look at all the living going on here! Look at each of them in their resourcefulness and not one of them doing anything other than exactly what they’re born, wired, and know instinctively to do, which instinct is all they know.

My pause and wonder is looking at myself now. What if I stopped questioning and overthinking and doubting myself and just allowed my inner wiring to operate itself? Believing that what I’m not seeing behind the screen of my own eyes is a well-tuned network of sending and receiving and communicating and connecting and coordinating the happening of things? All the things of my massive living loving life? It’s all here already, the seeds long ago planted and now grown into me giving away, dropping, and sharing the abundance of mySelf.

I hope you get to stand underneath the canopy of my resource-full love.

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To Thine Own Self Be True

“This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!”

— Polonius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act I, scene iii

But first, who is this: my Self to whom I am meant to be true? 

Surely the night that follows the day and then the night again is led by that Truth, which Truth I trust is my Self. And said Truth, when followed, is True North. 

I see: I am my own True North. 

How to locate her in the vast array of brilliance shining above and around me? Where do I cast my eyes to find her particular glimmer that upon seeing will be instantly-recognized and from which all lines will be drawn outward? 

Polonius reminds me I have a season of blessings in which to see, to pinpoint, to pattern my compass to Her. My karmic energy is vast and all-inclusive, my pendulum swings as big in my learning and grieving, as in my abundance and giving. 

The unicorn, like a stallion arrayed in a cloak, whose Pantone shade falls somewhere between Rubine and Rhodamine, watches over and envelopes me, its opalescent coat shimmering in the distance as I align my heart’s beat to her hooves’ deliberate steps and pauses. 

I gently and easily move my Self from the vast lapis lake, dropping off fear as I fill to overflowing the Courage I take with me to the top of the massive mountain range, where I find the mirror of Me reflected back in the rock’s golden Face, her eyes’ blue are remnants of the lapis left behind mere moments ago. Butterflies of recognition flutter from my midsection, no longer mistaken for or labeled as anxiety, my Sacral Chakra — overwhelmed with delight — takes flight, and I am atop the ancient wall (perhaps Jerusalem?) whose location is entirely inconsequential to what matters: my location on and to the wall, to the Grief itself. I see both sides now, my Courage (Strength) and my Matter (Abundance), sides of the Self that is Me. 

To mine own Self, to my Courage and my Conviction, to my Matter and my Meaning, to my Love and my Loving, I will be True. My north is my present moment. 

It is safe for me to spread my wings. 

My wingspan is wide and vast and here to hold.

My Self is Love contained within the span of my reach, my wings, my heart’s beat, my bigness, my seeing of You.

It is safe for You to be held within my Self’s Loving. 

My Self is found. 

My Love knows no reach. 

My Span contains for You. 

Between Rubine and Rhodamine:

My cloak waits to cover You. 

Lapis. Love. Lift. 

Letting go of that which no longer serves or sits in me. 

Letting go of the old, the other, the onus.

Opalescent unicorn of Self shining and lighting the way.

Feminine Primary Matrix cut and reconnected to the New Feminine: to my Self’s Own line of freshly-birthed ancient connection.

My blessing season stretches heart-and-year-round. 

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I Believe In Magic

I believe in magic.

And moonlight.

And the witchery that is womanhood — the BEING of a woman. I’ve seen it written that “we are the granddaughters of the witches they forgot to burn,” and I sometimes wonder why (women) — why (I) am so overlooked, so talked over, dismissed, talked about, told I intimidate, told to tone down, told I’m too much, had my words — which I weave out of and from the magic in me — the magic that IS me — taken, consumed, and used, to transform (his) very world, and then witness the credit for said total transformation claimed by a him and not the potion my Love brewed and which he guzzled down, while his eyes consumed me. 

I believe in magic.

And moments.

And with meaning, I stepped onto the North Carolina coast at midnight on May 27, 2021, and there she was in full view, the oceanic pull of her splendor casting its luminosity on me was instantaneous. Overcome with her beingness, of being in her presence, of my Self awareness in all of my own beingness, I burst into tears. And my tears mingled with my bigness, for which my Being is the sacred container holding all of Me.

Moonlight is magic. 

I believe in magic. 

And the magic of a seed, planted in a row, underneath a taut string, stretched from pole to pole, stretches beyond its original container and grows and grows, giving greenness and good-ness, and the garden glows with the abundance of what started in a simple and small buried shell. 

I believe in magic.

And in Me. 

And the bigness of my Love, of my container and my capacity to hold not just for and as Me, but for all those who have, and have yet, to pass through the magic of my Loving, of my Knowing, of my Holding. What does this magic of Me feel like? 

My magic is me no longer overlooking my Self, no more staying silent while words and worlds are being discussed over and around Me; I will not dismiss my own inner witch or her ways; if I am to be talked about, it is I who will do the talking, and “intimidation“ is yet another iteration of the age-old hunting and burning for that which you are incapable of experiencing. Tone up, not down. My muchness IS my magic.

To experience the moonlight, just step with intention onto her shore. She is here to flood and to cover you with every shimmer of her splendor, illuminating beautiful You. 

I weep at the potency of my own spells. 

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2020: A Personal Review

1. Like Rip Van Winkle I awoke in February-ish after a long (not) sleep — which sleep is 2019 in review, which was the year I released (not by choice) more than half the blood in my body. Doozy of a year that 2019, but I’m here to review 2020. And it was in 2020 (after aforementioned almost died in 2019 when I couldn’t walk from my bed to my sofa down the hall without the wall’s assistance and a four-hour nap on arrival) I laced up my runners again. I exhaustingly ran one mile, took a nap, and two days later ran it again. I must have run that beautiful mile with a nap fifteen times! Then I woke up and ran three miles on a Monday in June. My naps got shorter the farther I ran (but I’m not sure the correlating factor wasn’t the homegrown hugs and fresh garden produce I was consuming on the daily). And suddenly it was September and I was bent over weeping while full-out living at the base of a mountain on which I had just run FIVE miles. In October I decided to run 13.1 miles. I didn’t run them, but I decided to. It was a good year for empowering and powerful decisions. Socks were an unexpected major theme of 2020 and consumed not a little of my online content and crowd-sourcing solutions for my blistered toes. 

2. Another decision — profound and powerful in its creation moment — in March, which I’ve always known comes in like a lion, delivered details to me about my parents’ (then) current situation, which details (dad’s cancer diagnosis was our Christmas gift in that 2019 year I’m still not reviewing and his journey with it was already very much underway, mom full-time giving and giving and giving and getting I could see not enough in return) initiated a divine download and I decided (or was it already decided as things divine often are?) I was moving back home, back east, back in with my parents, back into the home and the hearts (my own at the fore) that have received, held, and helped to heal me more times than one Arminda in one lifetime might reasonably expect. And as my Self, for the first time in all those times, I came home, covering 2,458 miles to get here, wearing no socks at all.

3. Weeding, seeding, growing, (re)planting, watering, weeding (always with the weeding), cultivating, mulching, harvesting, cutting back, then the dying. This, the life cycle of our garden, the garden about which I cannot write right now without weeping, could be the simple summary of my 2020. For my dad, the master gardener, I donned gloves fitted for my small hands, and went to work. I cleared brush, I pulled weeds, I laid a brick pathway, I moved dirt, I dug holes, I watered the entire greenhouse, I hedged potato mounds, I created new beds for planting, I built a retention wall, I hauled yard waste, I organized by color, size, and shape, I took instruction, I wore out my first pair of gloves, I spread mulch, I measured rows, I planted sweet peas, beans, chard, tomatoes, peppers, squash green and yellow, cucumbers, flowers, flowers, flowers, flowers, and five more pepper plants we definitely did not need but he needed them planted. I placed the first green bean in his unresponsive fingers, on the underside of the surgical tape securing a needle whose purpose was to deliver nutrients that bean (could but) would never give to him but so desperately wanted. I took a picture of that bean in my dad’s hand. I still have that picture. 

4. Being alive and sad and happy and running farther than I have ever run, while wearing socks when I decided to wear socks. I got all the way up to ten miles in one consecutive run. I did those ten in December 2020. I’ve never felt so alive and fully wholly conscious of my aliveness, of what my body did in its own behalf — how it regrew itself from the inside out — just so it could support my decision to be alive and sad and happy and running as far as I want — all at the same time. Good times, 2020. Good times. 

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Planked Awareness

The aged wooden planks beneath my sandals reverberate just enough with each step to ignite my almost anticipatory sensory system, which is apparently the factory default setting in this body of mine. Sounds, smells, every leaf brand new to me as if for the first time, although I have been walking this same boardwalk plank through this ever-shifting bog garden for at least as long as many of these trees have been stretching toward their crowded skyline. 

I lean over the edge of the railing, putting as much as possible of the presence of the boardwalk behind my direct line of sight, minimize other visitors whose presence is audibly known, and initiate a manual fade on that feed line taking more concentration against my already-bogged sensory system. I’m looking for the knobby knees of the Bald Cypress trees that have gathered here, collected themselves into their own community amongst the ducks, the almost-always shallow side swamp to the larger but still-connected lake of some collective committee’s making, and down-stream and almost hidden from the other deciduous, but dirt-dwelling trees. 

I smile out loud and my laughter bounces off the nearby bamboo, dense in the aggregate knowing of its usefulness amidst any negative (and obviously completely false) rumors that sometimes get dropped by a passing robin too self-absorbed with his own shade of red to be bothered by what his beaked notes might mean to the wide-open ears of the bamboo below.

Next to me (and invited into my self-constructed cone of connectivity) on the elevated boardwalk, as I lean into my lean (those cypress nodes are consuming all of my attention), Curt points to a beautiful tree above my head and asks whether I know its name, his tone clearly indicating he is not asking, he is teaching. I do not recognize what appears to be a beautiful evergreen foliage, delicately interlacing her way through the intricate and interconnected branches of the treetop she calls her own. 

His grin immediately fills all seven acres of this luscious green garden space as he announces, “It’s the Bald Cypress!” 

My delight and my shock startle the birds in the branches above. I am immediately aware that this anticipatory sensory system I call my own has failed to focus on the two necessary parts of one self-sufficient ecosystem. The Bald Cypress’ knees so captivated me I did not overlook, but actually under-looked the very creation of this majestic multifaceted dweller on earth or underwater achiever. I am internally brought to my own knees, my sensory system recalibrating in real-time, coding my newly-propagated desire to always look in as many directions as the cypress stretches itself: up, down, around, under, and over me. I shift my lean back into full-standing alongside the Bald Cypress, my sandals exit the boardwalk planks; I leave only the remnants of my laughter to contribute to the aging of the planks.  

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Transcendent Love

The music begins to play softly in the background, like the perfectly-picked soundtrack to my beautiful life. I close my eyes and drop. . . down . . . into my heart, my holding space for all things and for nothing, where I see everything because I have closed my eyes to the nothingness. It all drops away, the thoughts I am so attached to keeping and believing. In their place I substitute nothing but my breath. I am with the I am. Nothing more. And it is the everything.

My attention is brought back into the now with the crinkling of paper, the forced skidding of my laptop being pushed aside, the weight of an object’s placement on the desk next to me. Opening my eyes I see my beautiful mother “quietly” placing a bag of Bojangles’ seasoned fries onto my desk along with a large cup of their sweet tea, Love’s offering on full display. I smile at her and choke back the immediate tears that surface with my thanks. She smiles back and gently closes my office door behind her as she leaves me to my meditation and my sweet tea. 

At this season of our lives, my mother and I are like Rumi and God: “like two giant fat people in a tiny boat. We keep bumping into each other and laughing.” Roomies as we two are, bumping, seeing, and loving each other couldn’t be easier or more joyful. 

I had an understanding, a knowing, with my Self fourteen months ago when I drove across the country from LA to North Carolina to move back in with my parents: that for the first time in my life I was coming home as my Self. Returning here to the very home that saw me through the (self-created) trauma of moving to a brand new state as a fourteen-year-old, and the blame I attached to my parents for my upheaval and upset, and also to the home and the arms of my parents that held me and my three-year-old daughter at our exodus’ end in leaving the abusive marriage my Self barely survived. Fourteen months ago I came home again with my arms and heart wide open wanting and needing nothing more than to hold and Love my parents through my dad’s cancer journey, none of us knowing where his journey would lead us, but knowing we would arrive together, our wide-open Self-recognizable hearts intact. 

I hold precious and close to me these fourteen months now of my mother’s Love: my Love for and with her, as well as her Love for and with me. We two: hearts full of the nothingness and the everything of nothing but Love. 

My mother doesn’t drink sweet tea. She doesn’t believe anyone should drink sweet tea. It is, for her, an insult to God to partake of this substance that is hurting or harming these our physical temples housing our hearts. 

What my Self no longer believes bumps into my mother’s Love bumping back into me with random gifts delivered silently to the soundtrack of my beautiful life: a paper bag filled with my favorite seasoned fries crinkling and the thumping down on my desk of a vat of sweet tea (my own reusable straw inserted in its lid) while my eyes are closed and I meditate in the corner, opening them to see the vision of my mother’s Love hovering. 

My heart captures and honors this vision of Love transcending the beliefs we have been so attached to keeping. I smile and giggle as I tuck it away into my heart’s cavernous nothingness, holding it for the always, the everything, the I am. We two, my mother and I, are here in this space, this Love, these our hearts, sweet tea and tenderness very much intact. I’ll definitely take fries with that. 

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Axis of Power

I never believed or thought anything about my hair except it was long and I liked it that way. Sitting next to my husband of under two years watching the holiday movie, The Family Man, starring Nicholas Cage and Téa Leoni, I was absolutely smitten with Leoni’s entire on-screen vibe, adorably short hair, included. I spoke my affection out loud, “Wow! I love her hair so much” and like whiplash from being hit from behind, my world’s axis was grabbed by its throat, my flailing hands scrambled to pry away the fingers of the perpetrator, too alarmed to admit the only one present and beside me all along, was my husband.

“You can never cut your hair,” was the coolly, leveled-at-me one-line throat punch I didn’t see coming. Assuming he was joking, or playing with me a little bit because of course he liked my hair, but it was my hair, up until that moment that it wasn’t. There had been a transference of power, of ownership, of axis, and I had not known my body was the battlefield and the bounty in one. “What do you mean, ‘I can’t ever cut my hair’?” I bandied back, skipping my words over to him, keeping my lightness and heart holding onto that which I believed to be mine, never not for a moment until this moment now ever considering the possibility I possessed something that could or would be taken from me. He did not skip with me, nor did he hold my hand while I was playing right there next to him; his words sliced with a razor’s edge, “Your hair belongs to me. It’s part of our prenuptial agreement. You can never cut it.”

(We have no such thing and never ever not for a moment of breath coming out of me was spent on my hair’s discussion or to whom it belonged or didn’t belong, over who held the rights to its length, style, design, or its color, all of which were hanging in this unbalanced breathless space between us and next to me here on the sofa, Téa Leoni paused on the screen in front of me, adorably short hair on semi-permanent display).

I didn’t know I could stand my ground, hold my position, resist his infiltration. These were not the lessons taught or the tools, like scissors, I had been shown how to use. I didn’t want to cut my hair, had never wanted to cut my hair, had cried for days in the second grade when my mother traded me a sucker for a haircut (my sister betrayed me, used her words to convince me this was a great idea, a beautiful outcome guaranteed, and when the deed was done and I stood looking at my shorn head in shock, she claimed the sucker as her own even though the hair stolen was mine and had nothing to do with her; she had not grown it, it did not live on her head, no loss was living in her heart) and suddenly not being “allowed” to do so was my body’s axis being forcibly removed, transferred, claimed, pillaged and my hair’s destiny was now someone else’s plunder. And the rapist and pillager was sitting right next to me.

Never to not be right next to me ever again for any and for all visits to the hairdresser who was no longer mine to claim because my hair was no longer mine to have and to hold. Rather, the self-appointed general assumed his power pose with a half smile (reserved for the lesser ranks) on his salon-facing face, orchestrating, visioning, and directing the handling of each lock I had loved. Bound in the black smock of complicity, my neck held, but not supported, in the sink’s cradle, my scalp burned, the flames stretching, reaching, licking the entire circumference of my skull, the shame I felt smoldering inside showing itself only briefly with one tear’s escape down the side of my face not facing his, while my tresses were transformed into his vision of a great idea, of beauty guaranteed, was to me an unrecognizable mass of Barbie. Bleached-blonde. My Self muted in this his strategic coup against my crown. Shame became my shroud, my sense of Self buried deep beneath the public-facing Barbie hair head held by him, proudly parading his trophy (wife) through one multiple of five years, the scalping, like an honor killing, repeated every 3 months, always standing in his power pose over me: bound, held, and burning for his pleasure, in spite of my ever-present pain.

And in the morning of the fifth year I saw my Self in the mirror and She said to me, “I miss you. I love you. You are still here. I see you.” My tears like a raging river washed clean the battlefield of the body (turned bounty) I occupied and I staged my own revolution: my reclamation of Self. And the lessons I had not been taught were instead forged in the fires of my quarterly burnings, branded on my heart, and I brandished my Love of Self like a pair of deftly-wielded scissors and cut my Self out of that five-year fealty, leaving only those Barbie locks — belonging never to me — in my wake, waking in the sovereignty of my own shorn head and the axis of my own power restored.

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Curiosity

I have noticed the absence of curiosity and creativity in me is a byproduct of being out of integrity with myself. So perhaps curiosity isn’t what killed the proverbial cat, but rather the perpetuation of my own damaging and self-minimizing behaviors that kills, or at the very least smothers, the curious in me. Great news: No cats were harmed in the creation or covering up of anyone’s curiosity! PETA will be so pleased.

Liz Gilbert talks about following her curiosity, and invites her readers to do the same, in her marvelous book, “Big Magic,” which I have read no fewer than five times. Its being remembered by me in this moment of putting words on the page about curiosity is perhaps my inner counselor nudging me — yet again — to explore this trail of breadcrumbs that feels suspiciously like a rhythmic pounding in my own chest, one beat for every metaphorical breadcrumb, leading me deeper into what I hope will find me falling down a rabbit hole where I will land in my own Wonderment. Because Alice shows me how to explore, how to say YES, how to be “‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ . . . (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).” And then Alice’s laughter invoked the admonishment of the Queen to “[believe] as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” 

Six impossible things (at least) I’ve believed since breakfast today:

1. I am seen.

2. My voice matters.

3. Credentials are a matter of perspective.

4. I am a writer.

5. I can make all my dreams come true.

6. I possess all the inner resources I need to accomplish all that I imagine.

As an undergraduate student I was required to take a 100-level English course: Freshmen English, essentially. I randomly selected one of many classes offered to fulfill the requirement, knowing nothing about the class or its professor, other than it was a box to check and the class I selected was not being taught by a grad student. I had no idea the impact that class and that professor would have on my life. 

Debra Monroe — in her purple tights, sometimes green, black (most often) witch’s broomstick skirts, and curly strands of hair that insisted on liberating themselves from any attempt she might have made at securing them in place — was the breath of life I inhaled the moment I walked through her classroom door. She represented, embodied, and modeled for me everything every cell in my body longed to believe it, too, could BE: smart, well-read, articulate, funny, a listener, a looker between the lines of life, a teacher, a friend, a woman in ownership of her creativity, engaging, a mentor, a writer, liberated. 

I relished every single lecture, devoured every piece of feedback (and my god! her feedback on my writing was voluminous!), took copious notes I still possess today (30 years later they remain a prized possession), signed up and showed up for every single office hour opportunity available to me, took additional classes she offered not because I had much (a little) interest in her subjects, but because I had a vested interest in her BEing-ness, her “muchness,” as Alice’s Mad Hatter shows me is even a possibility because perhaps before Debra, I didn’t know because no one had ever shown me, there lies a latent muchness inside of me. 

Today my curiosity in the form of my beating heart reminds me to remember that once upon a time thirty years ago, a marvelous and magical woman named Debra delighted at my seeing Heathcliff on the Commons (she even wrote about that in one of her published papers), encouraged me to keep putting words on the page because my words were good, introduced me to follow my curiosity in my reading of D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Chair,” inspired me to declare English as my undergraduate major, entrusted her dog to my care outside of school hours, responded to my finding her on Facebook, and today follows me on my social media platforms, telling me still I am seen. 

“You’re not the same as you were before,” he said. You were much more. . . muchier. . . you’ve lost your muchness.” is perhaps just a reminder from the Mad Hatter who masquerades as Curiosity, itself, a suggestion that perhaps it’s time to breathe in again the deep inhalations of what it is to be in integrity and alive in my own words.