Mothers Empowered

Yesterday was my goddaughter’s birthday. She turned that age of magic-13! An official teenager. When I asked her what she wanted, what special thing I could get her to commemorate the occasion, she, in that typical way of teenagers, kind of pooh-poohed the whole thing by saying that the day felt like any other day and that she couldn’t think of anything special. But she didn’t ruin it for me. I have been thinking for a few months about THE gift, THE present of all presents because I want to mark this moment. Not for a godmother of the year award but because I want her to celebrate this time, this moment, that hasn’t come before, and won’t come again.

That is part of what makes the present so special; now is happening now. It hasn’t happened then and it won’t happen later. It’s happening now. To get locked into yesterday or last week, to fret about tomorrow or brood over next month means missing now. It means that if the past has all of your energy, or if the future has all of your attention, you have no present. You’re stuck in the woulda/coulda/shoulda, or spinning in the loop of mayhaps/maybes/mights. Consider Lisa and Eric, a couple I know. They have been together for eight years, have two beautiful children; each is successful in their professional pursuits. They’ve shared some concerns about the quality of their relationship. Lisa admits to a great deal of uncertainty about their collective future. Eric is bent on re-capturing the special moments they had before. Neither one of them is lending focus to now. And now has them at a crossroads, common to most relationships. Choosing between Here and There means focusing on now. Who are we now? Where are we now? What are we going to do now? And if they decide that trying to answer all of those questions is too much for them to do right now, they can decide what they can do. And do that now.

The present may not always feel good or be comfortable. The past can be. That’s why we do our best to remember those good times. Or change the story each time we tell it. You know how you cringe when you think about when you did you-know-what with you-know-who you-know-where? Right. THAT story becomes the one you love to tell at cocktail parties and it begins with meeting Eddie Murphy in the club (back when you were both “cool” enough to be hanging out in clubs) and ends with a free bottle of champagne. What the future holds, the future knows. The thinkers among us plan, prepare and plant seeds. The fools live on wishes of a dollar and a dream, and fall apart when they reap what they’ve sown. The wise knows the seed hasn’t any idea of what plant it will be, but trusts that the seed will follow its natural process and enjoys the wonder of it all. (And plants extra seeds for the locusts and the floods.)

That’s the joy of being present in the present. Being able to appreciate the twists and turns life brings, knowing that who you are now is enough for where you are now to be able to enjoy the wonder of it all. Now.

The “You Are Here” sign found in most buildings and on mall directories can either be a comforting reassurance, as in I am on the blue level, clearly indicated by the bright, bold HERE and the Off Saks outlet, where I would like to be, is on the red level THERE. Comforting and reassuring. Some days, the “You Are Here” can only be construed as mildly annoying. As in, I am standing at the elevator pushing its buttons with about 40 pounds of thrust, late and later by the second, hence the mildly annoyed feeling I experience as I read that I am HERE instead of THERE where I should have been x minutes ago.
Many of us walk with our own personal “You Are Here” maps which tell people exactly where we are, who we are, and how we’re feeling about the who and the where if they but stop, look, listen. I hold fast to the notion that the greater majority of us strive to be in a better place most days. To get there we sip our herbal teas, light our soy candles, eat our locally grown sustainable food, exercise, enjoy the company of positive people, floss, and sleep 8-10 hours a night. Or some variation of all of the above (I hold fast). We try to give the best that we can as much as we can. So on any given day our HERE is in a place of peace, acceptance, compassion, kindness, wisdom, wonder and joy. When we are HERE we love it and it shows. We encourage others to be HERE with us whenever possible by making room, saving seats, holding spots, and by advertising HERE as the place to be-like a Hamptons hot spot: Everybody who’s anybody wants to be HERE.
Then there are those “You Are Not Here But There” maps. THERE is not HERE. THERE is where we were before we got HERE and THERE is where we try not to be and where we don’t want you to go either, as in ‘Don’t make me go THERE!’ or ‘Why are you going THERE?’THERE is not the place to be. THERE is turmoil, judgment, indifference, meanness, ignorance, contempt and misery. And you know when somebody is THERE. It’s all over their face, it’s in their speech, and you can smell it on their breath. THERE feels small and tight and all kinds of wrong. It strangles, it chokes, it makes you mad, makes your skin crawl, makes you want to hurl, makes you want to holler. It makes you criticize everyone and everything; the way a person is dressed, their choice of lover or the dessert they brought to a social gathering (cookies ARE dessert, especially if they cost $5 a pound and you eat them after dinner). Being THERE makes you call yourself all kinds of names, hold yourself to unrealistic standards and create dysfunctional relationships with malfunction-all folk. You don’t see the spectacularly flawed you, the imperfectly perfect you. You can’t because THERE distorts loving truth and authentic power into gossiped rumors and supercharged id. No one in their right-full mind wants to be THERE.
Honest reflection can help us determine who we are, where we are, where we need to be and who we need to be when we arrive. Honest evaluation can help shorten the distance from HERE to THERE, or widen the span between THERE and HERE. Our goal should be to spend as much of our time as possible HERE. And when we find ourselves going THERE as we sometimes will because we are spectacularly flawed and imperfectly perfect, we need to make that a day trip, as in ‘My bad, I was tripping’ or ‘Dude, you really tripped out’. THERE can be a programming glitch but not a system-wide error.
Getting HERE is all of the battle. Being HERE makes the journey worth the while because the amenities are-literally-out of this world. And the view from HERE is pretty darned good, too.

In the “Family Circle” comic strip (I think it’s still around) found in newspapers (are those still around?), there was a recurring character named “Not Me”. Not’s primary function was to serve as the go-to scapegoat for the children in the family circle. How convenient. Vase knocked over, waters and flowers on the floor? Who done it? Not Me. Seven cookies missing from the freshly baked, just out of the oven dozen? The culprit? Not Me. Imagine the ease of having an at-the-ready culprit for life’s mishaps. Missed the deadline for submitting a book proposal to an editor your best friend’s mother’s friend hooked you up with? Who missed it? Not Me. Took money from your 401k to loan to your cousin to help her repay your other cousin for the loan he took out for her and thought you were going to get it back? Who took and who thought? Not Me. Met a man twelve years ago who cheated on you while you were dating, while you were engaged and you married him anyway? Ah, yes. Not you.

You have, however, taken the credit for catching that accounting error which saved your team from having to go to tribal council. You “reluctantly” received kudos-in the front of the church, no less-for being the one to suggest the old storage room be turned into a “nursing station” complete with live video feed for breastfeeding mothers. And you singlehandedly saved the harvest festival at your kids’ school by calling your cousin, the habitually broke, up and coming makeup artist to replace the face painter who pulled a no-show the day of. The wonderful thing about growing is you have to own all your stuff. The awful thing about growing is you have to own all your stuff. The good, the bad, the smart, the probably-shouldn’t-have-done-that. The stuff that makes you smile and blush. The stuff that makes you wince and cringe. And grimace.

Last Sunday, my girlfriend called to ask if I could watch her children because the babysitter was sick and her estranged husband was acting more estranged than usual and refused to watch them. The prior Thursday she called to tell me that it had been three weeks since she had received any support payment from him. And because they share a joint account, she could see where he had incurred an overdraft charge for a Domino’s pizza order. This is the same man who refuses to talk divorce because he wants his family; he is also the same man who refused to go see a marriage counselor before he became the man who refused to talk divorce. Both times she was strangled with anger and barely coherent. Both times, she devised six million ways for him to die; all he had to do was choose one. Both times, I told her to breathe, document and sing praises that she was able to see clearly enough to have an estranged husband. Many, many times she laments having married him, not leaving sooner, not running faster in the other direction. Most of the time, she remembers to be grateful for their union on four specific occasions. On Tuesday, I received a call from her which began with a shriek only dogs could hear and ended with “I love Governor Patterson!!”: On that day, New York became a no fault divorce state.

Owning your stuff, all of it, is a signal that you are in control of you. Not Not Me, but you. You take the credit, you get the blame. Your triumphs, your mistakes, your successes, your problems. They belong to you. Because at some point, there has to come a day when what happened to you is not who you are. Your father’s drug addiction, your being molested, your miscarriage, your partner’s violent behavior, a friend’s betrayal does not contain the whole of you. We are all bits and pieces of what we take away from what has happened to us. The greater part of who we are comes from how we chose to respond to what happens to us. We can be dis-abled and respond with defeat, with despair, with murky thought and cluttered meaningless phrases. Or, we can respond with ability, with empowerment, with grace, with clarity and purpose. Our responses may not always be correct, but they can be from a place of informed positive intention and authenticity.

A place where there is no place for Not Me.

Companies which market diet products make a bazillion dollars. They promise you can shake it, drink one, take two, skip three and look like Kate or Beyonce. Give us five, they say, we’ll take off twenty. And we do. We shake, drink, take, skip, give and then get taken. Funny how we’re always surprised when we get taken. Or indignant.
The same can be said for beauty products which promise a three fish and five loaves miracle with just a jar of cream and a tube of serum. We look to have wrinkles and crinkles erased, pores the size of potholes shrunk to pinholes, jello jiggly thighs rock hard and Kardashi-asses (I have no earthly clue who is who and hope to never find out). So we slather, lather, laser, taser, pump, and, when all else fails, buy all manners of things which bump something in some desired direction. This industry rakes in ten gazillion.
We devote a great deal of effort and energy to our exterior. And we should. We need to lavish love and attention on the temple. We need to care for it, see that’s it well maintained, presentable and admirable. That’s not vanity, that’s veracity. The temple should be pleasing, it should reflect the beauty of the inside. This takes good food, exercise, rest, knowing which cuts enhance and which colors flatter. How to make it work and what not to wear. This takes time. Calls for consistency, truth-telling and hearing, restraint and discipline. Yes, sometimes, it calls for slathering on serums and taking two but not as the cure-all panacea. But. And yet.
How many times when faced with challenge, choice or change, do we opt for the road often travelled? The path of least resistance? Whatever it takes to get it done quickly, painlessly, effortlessly? This could be at work, with a vampire friend, or in a toxic relationship. We go to a hate-my-job and siphon off 40 (sometimes more) torturous hours from our finite lives doing something which does not touch any pleasant part of our id with people who were put on earth to maim and cripple our egos. We respond to calls, texts, emails and confirm Facebook requests from beings. We. Wished. Would. Cease. Existing.
My friend deleted her soon-to-be wasband (shamelessly borrowed from Mocha Manual maven Kimberly Allers) from her Friends List. Not five minutes later, he called incredulous and crushed that she had done so. This would be the same dude who ignored every DEF CON 10 call, text, and email, and bat signal from her telling him their child was sick and asking if he would be so kind as to meet her at the emergency room. He showed up, at their home, in time to awaken the baby who had just fallen asleep after a four hour stint in pediatrics for a nasty stomach flu. And when she re-friended him she said she did it for the sake of the child. I pointed out that not only could her child not read, said child probably did not have a Facebook account and would not, therefore, be familiar with the facts of the heinous de-friending. After batting her very pretty lashes-half/vanity, half-veracity-she surmised that I was probably right.
We remain rooted in relationships which have ceased growing into anything which resembles healthy, affirming, positive, sustainable love. We feel choked, dwarfed and bereft of light. We convince ourselves that the crying, the cringing, the mistrust, the dislike, the hoping they’re gone before we come in is going to go the way of the cellulite, the wrinkles and the belly fat. Slather, lather. Poof!
We are not designed to work that way. Effort in requires equal effort out. Effort on requires equal effort off. Stick-to-it-ness. Measurement. Inches lost, gained and lost again. Re-thinking. Re-framing. Re-imagining. Shifting. Giving up self-less for self-full. Giving up that which speaks more to vanity than veracity. Giving up does not mean giving in or giving out. It does mean letting go. It does mean powering on. Facing it, feeling it, owning it, releasing it and giving it up. It means freedom. It means more. Giving up requires more of you and acquires more for you. You will have to do more. Think more. Know more. Be more.
Dare to dream about what your life looks like after giving up.

Stop. Go. ATM. Coffee. Signs play significant roles in our lives. We depend upon them for instruction and direction. We expect them to be accurate, true and infallible. Signs communicate. They save us from being caught with our pants down by our fellow humans who stand rather than squat precariously. They ensure that we are all going the right way down a now one way Broadway, or Peachtree, or MLK Blvd. Signs are a crucial part of the civilized world and have been since there were things people needed to know.

So why,then, when so many of us are facing signs, do we misinterpret or completely dismiss them? The story of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt is one of my favorites.  So many themes and lessons. It speaks to persistence, resistance, triumph, and power-real and imagined. Enslaved Africans in the south saw the parallel, which is how Harriet Tubman came to be known as the Moses of her people. When shepherd Moses went to Pharoah and said, “Let my people go.” Pharoah was like,            “Dude, who are you?” Moses said “My bad. God told me to tell you that.” Pharoah came back with a proper united Red and White Crown, “Whatever” and Moses responded with an ‘it’s cool’ nod and the admonition that if he, Pharoah, didn’t do what God had told him to do, he would be sorry. The rest, is well, the ten plagues visited upon Pharoah and the Egyptians giving the Israelites everything they had to get the hell (literally) out of Egypt.

One would think water turned to blood, frogs everywhere and lice in everything would have been strong indications that Moses was telling the truth. Or that the subsequent millions of flies, diseased livestock and boils would have provided ample proof that God was not in a playing mood. But Pharoah pressed on, oblivious to the warnings he was being bombarded with. He ignored advisors, wives, friends, associates, Egyptians high and low-born, and what he was seeing with his own eyes. He had to have had some inkling that all was not well. Not even remotely.

But Pharoah is not alone. We have all been Pharoah a time or twenty. ”Vicky” is a gorgeous, up and coming artist who had a beautiful child with a very succesful and equally gorgeous man. During their three years together, she has been verbally abused, the victim of physical violence, emotionally extorted to relinquish financial independence, threatened with eviction and loss of custody. It could be argued that those were Pharoah-like signs that she should have considered ending a less than healthy relationship a few plagues ago. Know what finally spurred her to action? Bedbugs. The apartment she  refused to give up has become infested with bedbugs and, therefore, no longer safe for her or her daughter to inhabit. Bedbugs. Locusts. A plague is a plague and a sign is a sign. Especially if it bites and causes you to itch and bleed. Or annihilates your fields.

It took the death of all first-borns , his first-born specifically, for Pharoah to get it. What insight did that bring? How did that shift his perspective? When he reflected, where did he think it was that he misread the first sign? One friend shared that she knew she shouldn’t have married her husband when she found nude pictures of several women and condoms in the apartment they were sharing a few weeks before the wedding. She continued to find similar items during the two years they were married. She is now speaking to a divorce attorney. Another admitted that when her limo pulled up to the church she bit the inside of the lip to keep from telling the driver to not stop. And when she couldn’t stop crying inside of the church, she blamed it on the pain from the gash in her mouth. Her estranged husband, who left his family of five twice, just told her he wouldn’t be signing any papers.

My own struggle with reading and heeding signs comes from placing the well-being of others far above my own. It comes from not feeling worthy enough to trust what I was seeing or hearing. I mean I have been knee-deep in a pool of bloody water, in utter darkness, assaulted by a gazillion pieces of hail, cradling the lifeless body of my dream of my best life and insisted that all was well, that I was fine. My exodus came after a day trip with my family. We had taken a cruise around New York Harbor and received a souvenir photo. I almost didn’t recognize the fat, frumpy, woman with the really sad mouth and eyes that not even the huge sunglasses could cover. And there was my daughter, smiling and glowing, alert, conscious, open, unafraid and free. I wanted to throw that picture into the water. I wanted to throw myself onto the ground and kick, scream, yell and cry. Instead, I put it into my handbag. When I got home, I made myself look at the picture again and again until I read the unmistakable sign of “EXIT THIS”.  For me. For my daughter. For the man who loved me. For friends, family, community. “EXIT THIS”. I keep the picture as a talisman against plagues.

My exodus brought me back to a healed and healing me who is alert, conscious, open, unafraid and free. And all the signs point to it.

Summer is days spent at the beach. Nothing soothes like the sound of the waves coming to rest at the sand’s edge, bringing a bite of salty spray. Scenes of children dancing in the foam, making dolls with seaweed and seashells, and the delightful sound of discovery, whether teeny crab or new friend, are all best recorded in memory and captured on film. Remember the camera in all of its family magic appearances? The boxy old-fashioned Kodaks, the unwieldy Polaroid, the sleek, rectangular shaped new-fashioned Kodaks, the impressive-looking 35 millimeters with their neck straps and many lenses? And before the memory cards and sticks, and cameras on your phone, there was a process to sharing those moments in time; film had to be developed. Taken to Fotomat (remember the yellow roof?) or Duane Reade and placed in those envelopes. Given space and know-how, though, you could have developed it yourself. You needed a really dark room, some minimal light and three trays of solutions-developer, fixer and stop bath. Mr. Dimpson taught us how back in sixth grade. He also taught us how to take a picture using an oatmeal canister but I’m sure that will come up another time.

What I remember most, other than sneaking to kiss Carl Reid (again, for another time), was the process. Everything had a specified time attached to it. Too little time caused your picture to be dark and unfocused. Too much time and your print would be washed out and really white (this was black and white film). The trick became how to manipulate the photo paper in the solution to get just what you wanted. I remember shaking the developer tray, watching, thrilled, every time an image began to appear. For me it was both the power to recreate exactly an event or a person AND the feeling that I was fashioning anew a somebody or a something. Because, back then, for me, not until the actual photo was hung and drying did it exist. There was always the possibility that there would be too much developer in a tray or not enough fixer. There was always the chance that someone could ignore the red light and open the door. There was always, usually, the occurence that I was not pleased with what I had done and would throw the mistake into the trash and start over.

And isn’t this how many of us live our lives? We have too much of what’s not good and not enough of what is good. We attempt, time and time and time again, to attain perfection, to present the unflawed and the faultless. We don’t spend enough time developing-we rush the process, then we blame the process when we have not processed fully or completely. When we are not pleased with the outcome, or when, more often, we don’t get the outcome we would like to have, we want a great big old cosmic trash can so we can discard, dismiss and discount our errors.

Thankfully both Mr. Dimpson and Nikki Giovanni knew something, that in developing the fullness of who I am, I have come to embrace: “I am so hip even my errors are correct”. Mr. Dimpson may not have articulated as poetically as SisterMother Nikki but, basically, his philosophy was ” How do you know what you got until you know what you got?” Precisely. If we focus our energy on waiting until we have it just right, or for other people to give us their “expert” opinion, or until he gets it or she comes around, then we miss what we have. When faced with a negative situation or person, we are given an opportunity to use what we are being presented with to learn something about ourselves and those with whom we come into contact. When someone says she is disappointed in you, is that an attempt to induce you to guilt or to exert control? Is she transferring her inability to overcome a perceived obstacle to you? Or, is she genuinely distressed over your lack of genuine and authentic connection to her and/or an issue important to her? If he considers your feelings as an afterthought, is unable or unwilling to deepen his understanding of who you are, do you update that resume and reach for the real estate section first? Or do you begin polling your friends to find a counselor/therapist?

If we agonize too much over the outcome, we miss the beauty of the process-as messy and imperfect as it may be. If we fret too much over the process, we miss what we can take away from the outcome, as messy and imperfect as it may be. Balance, essential to our state of being full and filled, then. The power, the truth, the core of who you were created to be, is captured in your ability to develop a negative and produce a positive picture.

Billie Holliday. Lady Day. American Icon. National Treasure. She sang, phrased and interpreted like nobody’s business and it was nobody’s business if she did. She sang songs of love gone wrong, love twisted, heaps of unhealthy love and love where the woman always came out on the short side of the long stick (oops, pun intended?) The kind of love we tell ourselves we will have no part of and yet, most of us, have had some of it at least once or twice in our adult lives. Most of us, thankfully, get it-we get it together and we get it right. For some of us, things may take a little while longer. Because THINGS get in the way: Denial. Refusal. Inability. Unwillingness. Resistance. Reluctance. Uncertainty. Hesitation. Doubt. Procrastination. Fear. And we stay in a love that has us singing the blues. And that love could be outside of ourselves or it could be the love within for ourselves.

A good friend of mine is having a “Lady Day” moment. And by that I mean we have passed the six month mark on a life altering situation. She had to have a surgical procedure which caused some of her-as I’m reading this back I’m struggling for the words to say because I’m reluctant to use the words out of fear for the pain they may cause. But this is about healing and going through. And as I have just GASP-ed, I am shifting into love’s truth. My friend had a hysterectomy about nine months after she turned 40. The symbolism is powerful here. She had to have a hysterotomy (and I will ask my naturalistas to reserve judgment and insert love and light in its place) to address some other health concerns she had been having. And the reason I didn’t use the H word initially is the same reason we sidestep C-Sections and anything else which gets in the way of “motherhood”. Yes, we are all still foolish enough to think that motherhood is defined by how many hours you spent in L&D-if you went to L&D and not the birthing center or home-whether or not we took drugs, or how long we carried. And some of us are silly enough to think that MOTHERHOOD and WOMANHOOD are synonymous and interchangeable. And so we believe that if we fumble on the one hand, we are sure to fumble on the other.

This, graciously, is not the case with my aforementioned friend. The one in Lady Day mode. She is clear that the two are separate and distinct. She knows that one does not compromise the other.  My concern for my very ego healthy, optimistic perspective having good girlfriend is that she is teetering on the edge of a breakdown-not a diva deluxe meltdown or a drama queen tantrum. I’m talking hushed voices and the muted sound of those clogs that seem to be the nurse rage these days.  For months, I have been talking to her about the need for her to go to talk to someone. We speak in these euphemisms because they just don’t make things easier to hear, they also make them easier to say. And so on Monday evening when my sister friend explained to me for the millionth time how always tired she had been feeling, how she avoided being around people as much as humanly possible, how if she gave in and started crying she wouldn’t be able to stop, how overwhelmed by the all of everything she was, I, for the first time, did not suggest she go talk to someone. I, armed with love’s truth, told my dear and sweet homie that she was depressed and that she needed to make an appointment with a professional as soon as possible. She was quiet and then she said, ” I just couldn’t even begin to take that on because it’s one more thing and I can’t.” I asked her if she would allow me to take it on. She agreed.

This is not about the greedy medical establishment and its push to line its pockets; this is not about the myth of the strong black woman, motherhood as martyrdom or womanhood as the feminista battle cry. This is about hard skin found under old skin. This is about wrapping yourself up and it’s about little movement/interference, or as little movement/interference as possible. It is most certainly about growth and differentiation. It’s about metamorphosis. “When the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, usually it will sit on the empty shell in order to expand and harden its wings.” It’s about shift. Emergence and expansion. It’s about affirmation. Sanction. Ability. Willingness. Submission. Enthusiasm. Certainty. Perseverance. Belief. Advance. Courage. It’s about the requirement to stand on love’s truth when dealing with others and the committment to always stand on love’s truth for your/self.  Ultimately, this is about how if nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.

And while Billie Holiday, in her song ” Solitude”, sings of the haunting despair of being alone, we stand strong in love’s truth knowing that what the world calls the end of the caterpillar, the master calls a butterfly (R. Bach).

I’m noticing a lot of buzz around the coming of this week’s full moon. Plenty of Tweets and FB posts about it. The full moon has long been associated with all things normal-turned-way-too-crazy as in Jack Nicholson’s “Daddy Scariest” in “The Shining”. Like one minute you’re sitting around the table with the family happily exclaiming “Jenga!”, the next you’re hacking through a locked door with a  nine-inch Wustthof. The full moon makes us think of werewolves, crime sprees and things done best under the cover of darkness.

In the positive realm, the full moon speaks to full strength magic, to healing, to new beginnings; one of my nephews made his appearance on a full moon Sunday. In May, the full moon is referred to as the Hare Moon, the Milk Moon, or the Planting Moon. The month of May  itself symbolizes the rebirth of life upon Earth, making the full moon’s existence at this time of year extremely prolific. We are treated to a period of abundance, of productivity, of fruitfulness, of great frequency. All signs point to the now, to the right now, to the at this minute, to the in the moment. We are here to receive, to appreciate, to acknowledge, to bear witness to the Hare Moon in our lives. It’s happening whether we are ready or not.

Consider: A good friend of mine celebrated her birthday last weekend. She is at the beginning of the end of a marriage and in the middle of a new friendship. New friend took her away for her birthday and he planned everything. New friend splurged and spared no expense, including the lobster and steak room service dinner inside of the lavish room at the plush hotel. And at midnight, when her birthday officially arrived, new friend produced a bottle of champagne and fresh, decadent chocolate  covered strawberries. Overwhelmed ( her word), my friend ran into the bathroom to cry. It wasn’t just the lavish, the splurge, the plush, the champagne, or the strawberries, though that probably would  have been enough for me, it was the thought that new friend was doing something for her that her soon-to-be wasband had not done and that she herself had never had a thought of being done. It simply never occurred to her that she should be treated exactly the way she wanted and deserved to be treated. It never occurred to her to even think about what, in her heart of hearts, that would look like, feel like. But in that moment, in a baptism of her own tears, she made the shift from being bereft and a victim of settle-for-this-itis to being grateful for feelings of value, for knowing her worth, for another’s appreciation of her and  for more of who she wanted to be.

Consider: Another friend of mine cancelled a date we had to be present for a conversation with her husband regarding their family’s financial situation. Though this particular issue had been with them for a while, she had originally voluntarily opted out of being included at its first appearance because, she reasoned, since she hadn’t caused it, she wasn’t going to contribute to its solution. And though she didn’t contribute, she insisted upon being updated. Those updates, though, set the stage for some epic “discussions” which, she said, unceasingly followed the same script time and again. It would begin with her “request” for an update, followed by his resistance, followed by her insistence, straight to “ACTION!”. She said as much when I called to see if we were still on. She was deep in the midst of preparation for Act I and didn’t have too much time to spare on providing me with a synopsis. When I called her the next day for a review of the action, I was informed that the previous evening’s performance had been cancelled. What happened was as she was gearing up for her opening monologue, she discovered that she didn’t have the energy for the director’s cut version.  So instead of approaching her husband with her war paint on, she informed him that they were going to have a talk about their current fiscal outlook and that they were going to do so calmly, rationally and without having to rearrange the furniture. And they did. She made the shift from “innocent” bystander to trusted confidante. She was able to validate her husband as provider and family leader while establishing her role as compassionate partner. She is now looking forward to co-creating solutions which work best for their family, to feeling like more of a participant, to wanting to do some furniture moving for other reasons.

I don’t say these shifts took place in honor of the full moon a-coming. I do say that there comes a time, a season, when what used to work, or what we wanted to believe used to work, can’t/don’t/won’t work anymore.Then we aren’t graced with an abundance of peace, of calm. Then we don’t get an increased sense of purpose, of worth and value which are all the trappings of a life well lived and of a person loved and loving, healed and healing.  If we must be full of something, let us be full of being givers of light, of receivers of blessings.  Full of the truth that we are extraordinarily and magnificently capable of being both at the same time. That everyday, every moment brings us opportunities to renew, to grow, to shift, to move forward, to move closer to the full promise of the best of who we are.  

Yes, let us be full of it.

“The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step”, said Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu. Many of us get lost in contemplation of the enormity of the thousand miles (especially my fellow Librans): How long will it take? How long or short should the stride be? Do we wait for some ceremony to announce the commencement of the single step? And we never begin. Some of us get stuck at what happens after the single step is taken. Did we move too fast? Too slow? Where should the next step be-left, right, due east, northwest? So we stop.

I used to think the above quote referred solely to the necessity of just starting, of having a beginning; of having the beginning be just as important-if not more so-than the ending. Now, having GASP-ed and still GASP-ing, I see that it is as much about the process as it is anything else. Something we have lost touch with and don’t really seem to value anymore. Process is about the how, the what of a thing: It’s about how something is done and what necessary steps are involved it getting it done. The blessing of technology is that, in many instances, it has clarified the process and made it more readily available and accessible. One can go online at anytime and find out how to do anything. Need a homemade remedy for that sore tooth? Got it.  Need a recipe for Beef Stroganoff? Google will hit you with about 624,000 results in less than.028 seconds (go ahead and check). Technology is also a curse in that it provides the process and the shortcuts for the process as well. The traditional recipe for Beef Stroganoff calls for 30 minutes of prep time and at least an hour of cooking. The shortcut recipe has it from stove to table in about 20 minutes with just 10 minutes of preparation. And while I’m sure the easy recipe has made life easy for a lot of moms, there is something to be said about the process. Of selecting the roast, trimming the meat (asking my vegans to indulge the writing process), slicing the mushrooms, chopping, whisking, stirring. There is a beauty in the ordered steps, a reassurance.

And yet, in hesitating to take the first step or experiencing a reluctance in moving beyond that first step, we remove the possibility of being reassured, of knowing that the process of movement is what matters. We have lost patience with process; media has us convinced that although it takes nine months to carry a human being inside of us, it only takes 2 weeks to rid ourselves of any evidence that there was even a cohabitation situation aka pregnancy to begin with. We don’t value process. We don’t understand process. Simply put, process moves us from here to there, again and again. That is where the reassurance is to be found. That just by moving from here to there, we will be reassured of the possibility, of the potential. Of our capability and our capacity. Initiating the process, engaging the process, pursuing the process reassures us that we will know we are no longer HERE even when we are unsure or unclear about THERE. Because sometimes, most of the time, it isn’t about getting THERE, it’s about not being HERE anymore.

Get to stepping.

In our quest to be our best selves, we must first acknowledge what is the least desirable about ourselves. For a long time, for me, that meant that which was unlovable and unworthy. Yes, it’s probably because my parents separated when I was 11 and my father wasn’t around much then. Perhaps it’s because my mother became, in the space of a breath, all things to the two people who mattered to her the most and whom depended on her for everything all while trying to navigate areas of her own life yet explored or considered. It may even be because I was a little black girl growing up in a community, in a city, in a country, in a world which didn’t quite know what to make of little black girls born in the years following the assassinations of the Kennedys, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, the Watts Uprisings and the founding of NOW. Especially little black girls who played with Barbies  and  built houses from Legos, and who read (and re-read) ”Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret?” and  “Manchild in the Promised Land” with the same level of greedy excitement. Whatever it was, I just know that I did not find too much about me that was so much.

Which is why when asked to be a presenter at an upcoming conference for an organization I am no longer a part of, I immediately and without hesitation said,”Oh, hell no!” Funny how validation and vindication kind of go hand in hand; like when your ex who dumped you sees you looking your red carpet best at Trader Joe’s and gets that “I Want You Back, yeahyeahyeahyeah” look. And you’re like ”You’re Never Gonna Get it” with all the Dawn from En Vogue you can muster.  But instead of the oh-now-you-want-me-hand-on-hip-hair-toss I expected, there was present a joy, a pride, a warm sort of humility that I had even been considered. I felt honored and happy and aware that I was feeling honored and happy. (YouTube Sally Fields’ Oscar acceptance speech for an accurate visual.) I was also aware that there was not this major ’AHA’ moment but a still, calm acceptance of just who the little black girl had become mingled with the possibilities of who she could be, of what she had yet to explore, to consider. And I gasped. Note the use of GASP as an idiom, as in “the point of death”. 

For the one-dimensional thinker, death is the end, finite. For the believer, the rainbow seeker, death brings the infinite closer. It heralds beginnings, it beckons a reconfiguring and ushers in a reimagining. It gives way to birth. It must. It always has. In our quest to be our best selves, we have to let those aspects of ourselves which keep us captive and bound experience a death so that the better of us lives and flourishes. We let those parts die so we can develop, alter the way we receive and perceive and engage forward motion. In other words, we GASP. We Grow, experience an Attitude Shift,  and Progress.

Are you gasping yet?