While writing my grandma's eulogy last month, I marveled at how this woman, who had for years been a fixed entity of grandma-ness in my mind, was now coming alive and taking on sights and sounds and colors and resonances I'd never associated with her. She was, right before my very eyes, becoming somebody's mother, somebody's long-lost lover, somebody's life-long friend...someone who would find a way to give her family the gift of her life even after her death.
My grandfathers, all three of them, passed away several years ago. When I leaned over to kiss my last grandfather goodbye, my unborn child kicked and squirmed within me, reminding me that life has a shape - and it is round. I've lost an uncle, friends, neighbors, a childhood crush. I've said goodbye to some and why to others. And sometimes, when the clouds part and join above me, I look up into the windy sky and say hello.
Losing my grandma was different. Sharing pictures of my daughter's birthday party with her, passing chocolate truffles around her hospital bed, and finally, blowing kisses into her darkened room from the hallway, my family and I weren't shepherding her toward the end of her life but letting her know that her life would go on. And in writing our memories and public goodbye, selecting just the right psalm to print on her memory card, and sifting through her neatly hung clothes to find the outfit she would rest in at last, I found a woman I wished I'd known all along.
After her funeral, as we sorted through her things, removing them carefully from places they'd belonged for years but would never be again, I found a book of poems and quotes sitting on a shelf in the corner. I opened it and read, "A mistake is evidence that someone has tried to do something." I closed my eyes, hugged the book to my chest, and told my family I'd be taking it home because I realized, in that moment, grandma wasn't done speaking to me.
Just tonight, ready to write a bit about her life and our loss, I picked up the book again. The inside front cover reads, "Wishing you every special joy, today and every day," and just below these words, "From:" followed by a blank space. She didn't have to sign her name to let me know that this collection of life's lessons on love and loss and faith and goodness is from her. She knows I have a lot to learn.
And so, grateful for the quiet moments this little volume of wisdom and pencil scribbles will bring me as my life goes on without her, I thank my grandma for showing me that grace is a choice, faith is a gift you give to yourself, and chocolate is as necessary as breathing.
~ Katie
Quotes from "Apples of Gold," compiled by Jo Petty, 1962
Monday, January 10, 2011
Saturday, November 13, 2010
The moment I let go of it, was the moment I got more than I could handle; the moment I jumped off of it, was the moment I touched down ~ A. Morissette
Here is something no one tells you about divorce: you will be on your hands and knees, forehead to the floor, nearly two years after you and your husband decide to separate, overcome by the enormous riptide of loss it took you both of those years to comprehend.
Here is something else no one tells you: you will feel so vulnerable and so afraid that you will change who you are just to be close to someone...and you will spend the next year filled with confusion and regret and rage at how much you sacrificed for that one sliver of peace.
Once you are alone, you will, at times, question your sanity. You will move through moments of estrangement from your own life, and you will lay face-down in your endlessly streaming tears, well past midnight, desperate for help with your child who won't sleep or listen or give you 5 seconds to think, and still manage to get up when the alarm goes off the next morning to do it all again.
Two years into your "new" life, you will crumple in front of a friend when you tell her it might be time to move on. You will sob on your couch at night, and while your child is in the bath, and when your dreams take you to places you'd rather never revisit.
And you will, without question, arrive at that tender place where you finally realize you are tired of crying, tired of placing cold packs on your eyes so that they're not so swollen in the morning, and tired of putting your hand up whenever someone tries to love you, even though this feels like your only protection at times.
You will talk to your divorced friends and find out that the grief never really goes away, it just changes into something you can live with most of the time. You will hear that there is always a little bit of guilt, always a sensation of failure, especially around the holidays, when it comes to your children. You will adapt, and you will move on, but you will always feel like a little bit less of a good enough mother when you recall the things you couldn't repair.
Waking up on Christmas morning without your child will never get easier. You will spend a lot of time coordinating holiday schedules and trying to read between the lines while focusing on the positive. You will communicate with your ex-spouse better than you did when you were married in order to siphon out the challenges and filter in the love you both share for your child. You will have to forgive and you will have to forget in order to cope. And you will have to extend more faith than you did when you brushed your teeth together every night.
In the early months, you will feel more like strangers than you did before your very first date, and upon seeing your in-laws for the first time after you separate, you will understand that the circle of people with whom you celebrate the miracle of your child's life has just gotten smaller.
You will exhaust yourself holding open doors that simply want to close, and sometimes you'll be the only thing bracing the walls when they want to come tumbling down. You will teach yourself how to fix your shower drain, repair a crack in your windshield, and troubleshoot your computer problems. You will sleep with the windows open during summer's hottest nights because you can't find the time to properly install your swamp coolers.
Good friends will become your saviors, and you will look to them for guidance during your darkest hours. Without a partner, you will have the space and time to let people in who will protect you from the scorching flames of your guilt and regret; and you will learn, eventually, how to ask for help. Forgiving indiscretions will be difficult since you are now your own gatekeeper, but your life will be cleaner and safer in the end.
There will come a point, maybe sooner, maybe later, when life will threaten to topple the delicate balance you have worked so hard to achieve in the aftermath. Knocking on your door will be opportunities you've always dreamed of, but require a loosening of your vice grip on the type of parenting that allows for little else. And it will break your heart to love again because the doors left open by the sheer force of your unrelenting hope will close.
Surprisingly, you will find that the final heartbreak that divides two people is not the last, but the first of many to come. You won't know how much you treasured laughing about your child's antics together until you're suddenly laughing alone. And you won't fully understand the enormity of raising a child by yourself until you're the only adult in the house at night and no one else is coming home.
And yet, what emerges from the unspooling of a family is more than devastation...and just as inexplicable. Grief eventually becomes a setting sun that will always rise again, bringing with it a newness terrifying in its unfamiliarity but necessary in its illumination of everything beautiful and whole and unchanged by your tragedy. You will lose yourself in moments of despair, and tire of chasing your sanity around the labyrinth of your life, but you will learn - because you have to - how to love even the most despicable pieces of yourself so that you can present to your child the person you've always wanted to be.
On difficult days, you will raise the clear, glass sharpness of yourself to the light and find a way to smooth the edges, and you will know that the person you see in the mirror each night has the strength to get through tomorrow because she just survived today. And as simple as it sounds, you will power yourself through impossible moments by powering yourself through all the preceding impossible moments. No matter what, you will put one foot in front of the other because that's the only way forward even when you're lost.
I wish I knew two years ago what this separation would do to my family and what it would ultimately do to me. When the decision was made, I saw divorce through a pinhole, and as the days have gone by and that tiny hole has split, widened, gaped, and finally opened completely to expose the whole of single-parenthood, I finally understand its impact.
For me, divorce meant jumping into a new existence and finding, once submerged, that nothing was any easier...only different and, in some ways, harder that it had been when it seemed impossible. But, eventually, I learned how to swim and, in most cases, protect myself from the sharks that circle every once in a while. And, in finding ways to keep my head above water, I have created an island for my child: safe, dry, and sometimes magical.
My life is no longer contracting but expanding to include new people, ideas, and a kind of serenity I never imagined. Sure the peace sometimes feels like isolation, and the silence in my house sometimes leaves too much room for sadness, and calling my daughter at night rather than tucking her in feels like the worst kind of pain, but this is all part of the life I am blessed to lead. I don't always understand it, I don't always like it, and sometimes I cry for days, but there is always something at the end of the day to hold on to. Always. Even if it's just a glimmer of hope that tomorrow will be a little bit better or a little bit easier than today.
Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something that needs our love." I can say with absolute certainty that the last two years have brought with them the darkest, most frightful moments I have known in my life thus far. But, they have also brought with them the opportunity to survive. And with that survival comes an appreciation for the forces in me that refuse to be overcome, and sometimes, in brief moments of clarity, a genuine appreciation for the struggles themselves.
~ Katie
Here is something else no one tells you: you will feel so vulnerable and so afraid that you will change who you are just to be close to someone...and you will spend the next year filled with confusion and regret and rage at how much you sacrificed for that one sliver of peace.
Once you are alone, you will, at times, question your sanity. You will move through moments of estrangement from your own life, and you will lay face-down in your endlessly streaming tears, well past midnight, desperate for help with your child who won't sleep or listen or give you 5 seconds to think, and still manage to get up when the alarm goes off the next morning to do it all again.
Two years into your "new" life, you will crumple in front of a friend when you tell her it might be time to move on. You will sob on your couch at night, and while your child is in the bath, and when your dreams take you to places you'd rather never revisit.
And you will, without question, arrive at that tender place where you finally realize you are tired of crying, tired of placing cold packs on your eyes so that they're not so swollen in the morning, and tired of putting your hand up whenever someone tries to love you, even though this feels like your only protection at times.
You will talk to your divorced friends and find out that the grief never really goes away, it just changes into something you can live with most of the time. You will hear that there is always a little bit of guilt, always a sensation of failure, especially around the holidays, when it comes to your children. You will adapt, and you will move on, but you will always feel like a little bit less of a good enough mother when you recall the things you couldn't repair.
Waking up on Christmas morning without your child will never get easier. You will spend a lot of time coordinating holiday schedules and trying to read between the lines while focusing on the positive. You will communicate with your ex-spouse better than you did when you were married in order to siphon out the challenges and filter in the love you both share for your child. You will have to forgive and you will have to forget in order to cope. And you will have to extend more faith than you did when you brushed your teeth together every night.
In the early months, you will feel more like strangers than you did before your very first date, and upon seeing your in-laws for the first time after you separate, you will understand that the circle of people with whom you celebrate the miracle of your child's life has just gotten smaller.
You will exhaust yourself holding open doors that simply want to close, and sometimes you'll be the only thing bracing the walls when they want to come tumbling down. You will teach yourself how to fix your shower drain, repair a crack in your windshield, and troubleshoot your computer problems. You will sleep with the windows open during summer's hottest nights because you can't find the time to properly install your swamp coolers.
Good friends will become your saviors, and you will look to them for guidance during your darkest hours. Without a partner, you will have the space and time to let people in who will protect you from the scorching flames of your guilt and regret; and you will learn, eventually, how to ask for help. Forgiving indiscretions will be difficult since you are now your own gatekeeper, but your life will be cleaner and safer in the end.
There will come a point, maybe sooner, maybe later, when life will threaten to topple the delicate balance you have worked so hard to achieve in the aftermath. Knocking on your door will be opportunities you've always dreamed of, but require a loosening of your vice grip on the type of parenting that allows for little else. And it will break your heart to love again because the doors left open by the sheer force of your unrelenting hope will close.
Surprisingly, you will find that the final heartbreak that divides two people is not the last, but the first of many to come. You won't know how much you treasured laughing about your child's antics together until you're suddenly laughing alone. And you won't fully understand the enormity of raising a child by yourself until you're the only adult in the house at night and no one else is coming home.
And yet, what emerges from the unspooling of a family is more than devastation...and just as inexplicable. Grief eventually becomes a setting sun that will always rise again, bringing with it a newness terrifying in its unfamiliarity but necessary in its illumination of everything beautiful and whole and unchanged by your tragedy. You will lose yourself in moments of despair, and tire of chasing your sanity around the labyrinth of your life, but you will learn - because you have to - how to love even the most despicable pieces of yourself so that you can present to your child the person you've always wanted to be.
On difficult days, you will raise the clear, glass sharpness of yourself to the light and find a way to smooth the edges, and you will know that the person you see in the mirror each night has the strength to get through tomorrow because she just survived today. And as simple as it sounds, you will power yourself through impossible moments by powering yourself through all the preceding impossible moments. No matter what, you will put one foot in front of the other because that's the only way forward even when you're lost.
I wish I knew two years ago what this separation would do to my family and what it would ultimately do to me. When the decision was made, I saw divorce through a pinhole, and as the days have gone by and that tiny hole has split, widened, gaped, and finally opened completely to expose the whole of single-parenthood, I finally understand its impact.
For me, divorce meant jumping into a new existence and finding, once submerged, that nothing was any easier...only different and, in some ways, harder that it had been when it seemed impossible. But, eventually, I learned how to swim and, in most cases, protect myself from the sharks that circle every once in a while. And, in finding ways to keep my head above water, I have created an island for my child: safe, dry, and sometimes magical.
My life is no longer contracting but expanding to include new people, ideas, and a kind of serenity I never imagined. Sure the peace sometimes feels like isolation, and the silence in my house sometimes leaves too much room for sadness, and calling my daughter at night rather than tucking her in feels like the worst kind of pain, but this is all part of the life I am blessed to lead. I don't always understand it, I don't always like it, and sometimes I cry for days, but there is always something at the end of the day to hold on to. Always. Even if it's just a glimmer of hope that tomorrow will be a little bit better or a little bit easier than today.
Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something that needs our love." I can say with absolute certainty that the last two years have brought with them the darkest, most frightful moments I have known in my life thus far. But, they have also brought with them the opportunity to survive. And with that survival comes an appreciation for the forces in me that refuse to be overcome, and sometimes, in brief moments of clarity, a genuine appreciation for the struggles themselves.
~ Katie
Sunday, September 5, 2010
This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true. ~ Wally Lamb
This morning, feeling aimless and heavy with thoughts, I pulled my rose-patterned box out from under my bed and started to read, hoping to find an inroad to my writing voice. What I found instead surprised me: a deep and clear understanding that I'm done processing those years, done communing with the girl I once was, done with that chapter of my life. It is time to close the door.
The thing is, I'm not ending the journey out of frustration or exasperation, but out of the calm serenity of closure I've nurtured here. I have honored those years and the people in them and, in doing so, discovered myself standing tall atop the darkness of my twenties. I wasn't sure what I'd find looking back into my troubled and recovering mind, but I'm leaving the process behind knowing that I not only survived anorexia, I learned and changed and grew into someone with a full and challenging and beautiful inner life. I am, quite simply, not a sick young girl anymore.
I contacted a friend while in the midst of making this discovery. I can't write, I said, and explained that I'd gone back to re-read my journals and couldn't connect to or channel the young writer anymore. And then I understood: I feel like I've grown up, I said, it's time to move on.
I realize now I've been combing through those years, really feeling them again, so that I'd eventually reach the day when I could finally lay them to rest. Attracting and embracing change over the last couple of years while shedding the tight, cracking skin of my twenties, and experiencing the vast and frightening overhaul of a new life lived in a new place, has been nothing short of metamorphic. My skin is still raw and fresh.
It is true, though, that in looking back to see the heavy door of my past click shut, I am unsure where to turn. I know that I am well into a new chapter of my life, but it doesn't have roots deep enough to stabilize me during times of extreme doubt. I still awaken to quick moments of haziness and plan my day as if I lived elsewhere. I still fumble through feelings of displacement which seem exciting during bursts of exploration but terrifying and exhausting during stretches of loneliness and despair.
And yet...I've fallen in love with this place and that in and of itself is a soft place to land.
I've learned, in imparting these years of my story, that we all share the same soulful unrest that plagues me at times -- we've all got bundles of life tied to our backs that feel either heavy or weightless depending upon the slope of the ground beneath our feet. We all get tangled up in the minutia of daily life, creating a narrative that makes sense and feels safe in its re-telling, while days tick by and etch their presence onto our hands and memories, reminding us, when we dare look ourselves full in the face, that time is marching on.
Walking Adela to kindergarten the other day and feeling her quick kiss on my cheek and tiny hand slip out of mine as we reached the playground, I realized that there is nothing I can do or change or think or say to fix these moments in time. No amount of intelligent, responsible life-construction or determination will make time stand still. My daughter's childhood is like a beautiful limitless sky, and though I've come to understand that clouds and wind and rain blow through every once in a while marring the blue, I was never so aware of the sun traveling in its own finite arc until now. This one perfect, glorious day won't last forever.
And so, as if braiding my life, I pick up another strand of change and weave it in.
A few weeks ago, on the eve of this wrenching set of discoveries, I found myself blisteringly angry. Sitting alone in my room late one night I told the universe exactly what I thought of it through heaving sobs and shallow breath, hoping to make sense of my confusion. I didn't realize at the time that grief was erupting noisily around me and I was trying to muffle it with fury. Everything was changing right before my very eyes and what I knew to be solid and true was mere shadow in the light: my daughter's youth, my sense of self...
Change is extremely painful, especially change that ruptures within, and I tend to follow a very distinct pattern when a particular journey such as a relationship or job is ending: shock, blame, anger, withdrawal, grief, and, finally, acceptance. Completely unaware of my position within the continuum of change, I have spent some time balancing on each of these stepping stones over the last couple of months, sometimes going backward then forward again. As the days blur hastily by, blame simply feels like blame rather than the bookend of shock or the precursor to anger. Grief just feel like grief, not the resting place of withdrawl nor the tunnel through to acceptance. Real change doesn't happen overnight, but rather through this series of transitions, the next step presenting itself only when it is truly time to move on. Acceptance doesn't come until anger has crashed, foamed and bubbled in silence, and receded with grief.
Emerging from my own confusion and finding a bit of reflection, I am happy I spent this past year sifting and sorting through the contents of my rose-patterned box. I am proud that I surrendered to those wretched and shameful memories for a time, understanding their nuances and how they affect my life. Honestly, I am astonished to discover that the wayward soul I once was still has the strength to power me through challenging times. And, I am relieved to discover that I don't have to cast out the lost little girl who starved herself in order to shed her shame...I'm privileged to love and live with both.
This year, as I navigated through one kind of grief, I said goodbye to a friend whose life was cut far too short. In one of our last conversations, she shared with me some of the challenges she saw before her and how she planned to deal with them. After her death, I reeled for weeks trying to understand how a woman and mother whose work seemed so unfinished could be gone. It seemed an ugly injustice to lose someone with plans and hope...until I accepted that our lives are present and vital while we're here and that death doesn't diminish the importance of the love and lessons we leave behind. My friend will not live through the challenges and blessings she foresaw, but that doesn't mean I should stop looking ahead.
I know in leaving this subject behind for now that I have mountains and oceans of work left to do. If I'm lucky, I'll still be climbing and sailing throughout all the days of my life. I have lists and lists of unfinished business and unanswered questions tucked away in my mind, ready for the next phase of exploration. The brilliance of being alive is getting an infinite number of chances to crack open life's little riddles while the sun still travels through the sky.
Georgia O'Keefe once wrote to a friend, "I see my little world as something that I am in - something that I play in. It is inevitable to me. But I never get over being surprised that it means something to anyone else."
Thank you for making it safe to share this tender piece of my story with you.
~ Katie
Quote from Georgia O'Keefe by Roxana Robinson, 1989, p. 454
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Now I know a refuge never grows from a chin in a hand and a thoughtful pose, gotta tend the earth if you want a rose. ~ E. Saliers
Some of the most difficult journal entries for me to re-read are those I wrote to Rich from the hospital. Over the past year, I seem to have made peace with my starvation diaries, my desperate, aching poems, and my doctor's clinical notes, but looking back into that place in my heart, where light was cracking through for the first time in years...those words are the most difficult to take in.
And to see where we've gone from there makes it nearly impossible to pull those pages out, sit patiently with them, and listen to my innocent voice. Somehow, keeping those feelings hidden, well out of the spotlight, makes it easier to stay objective when telling my story. I can't skim the surface of my emotions when the weight of my disappointment and heartbreak still has the power to drag me under. Even now, with all of the relinquishing I've done of my shame and inner torment, vestiges of pain and regret cut through.
During my last hospitalization, I wrote a 30-page letter to Rich detailing my every meal and indignity. I sat at my tray, in corners, on the visiting couch, in my room, next to other patients, alone, in full view of the nurse's station, in the middle of the night, after meal time, first thing in the morning, and wrote line after line on clean white paper in blue pen, black pen, scribbling frantically, pausing, angry, tired.
I told him everything; even, at times, nothing at all. "What would I say if I could say the words that I feel?" Sometimes, he talked right back to me in my own words. "I know, I hear you telling me not to be so hard on myself." Sometimes, I was caught in the loop of my fears. "For the millionth time, I'm worried about my heart. My breath. The rest of my body."
I described my surroundings: "It is so windy outside. There are no clouds in the sky except for the fog peeking up over the most distant hills. It seems, from the inside here, that the world is so silent it might actually sound like the air-duct in my room rather than like traffic and talking and rattling leaves. I'm in a world unto itself. Here, there are noises and drama and conflict and joy and relief. Here, people feel things and think thoughts that elude them in their daily lives. They may see hope where they haven't been able to before. Or, they may see more pain than they previously imagined existed. We run the gamut here."
I shared my feelings for him. "You heal me. You soothe me. Your very presence makes my heart lighter...I used to tell you not to worry, I'm fine, you're just being silly but now...I feel like we're in this process together..." And this is where I stop.
In retrospect, these pages are as much a love letter to my anorexia as they were to Rich. On them, I processed the gradual ending of a relationship that held me so snug and so safe for so long while I slowly and reluctantly welcomed something -- someone -- else into my life. Suddenly, bathed in this new light, the quiet stillness of starvation felt stifling and musty, curling around my throat in angry demand, a relic of the suffering I didn't want to feel anymore. I was tired. My constant and reliable companion, sweet as it seemed in my solitude, left no room for hope or change or faith. And so the transition began from one life to another, a complete overhaul that ultimately led to motherhood.
I have a picture of myself from those months between my last hospitalization and the start of my pregnancy. I'm sitting outside Rich's apartment, in a garden, with a spade in one hand and a packet of seeds in the other. Six seed pots and a bag of potting soil sit in front of me and I'm smiling up into Rich's camera. Two photos later, I'm tapping the seeds into place with careful concentration. It was a moment of pause in my life, when the rough swell of my treatment leveled off, leaving a smoother surface and a gentler pace. I had to go back to work, I had to re-assimilate -- there was nothing normal about medically-supervised eating -- but the hollow sound of anorexia was fading from my ears.
I folded into Rich, pulling his life over mine like a temporary blanket. I found so much security in his concern, allowing for a re-awakening of dreams I'd forcibly denied for years. I let the future stretch before me again, an unknowable blankness, and constructed in words and actions the kind of life I wanted to lead. I told Rich I never wanted to get married again -- I'd made that mistake too young, twice already, astonishingly. I wanted to explore all of my options, embrace the freedom of my youth, and try different lives on for size. As time went on, I began earning my own trust and gaining a sense that maybe...just maybe...forgiveness for my disastrous chain of mistakes lay within.
And from this very, very tender, very nascent, embryonic state, came our child.
As soon as I discovered I was to be a mom, I was ready to be a mom, and I believe Rich experienced the same thing as a father. But, I don't believe we were ready to be parents together. The paths of communication we'd just begun to blaze needed to be paved over and solidified prematurely. There was no time to turn around and wonder if we'd gone the right way. Together, we shared few tools, building a precious little nest just the right size for our daughter which we circled in separate orbits, never once landing and making it home.
Now that we live apart and have for some time, I see more clearly the trajectory of our differences. We don't parallel one another even in the tiniest moments of parenting. We now tread respectfully around each other, casting individual nets beneath our daughter so that whichever way she falls she'll be caught. It isn't our unity that gives her safety, it's the attention we pay to the gaps our distant lives create. She isn't a fixed star in our universe anymore, she's the living, breathing ocean between our shores. And though it breaks my heart that we couldn't hold this life together for her sake, I'm sure we could not have done it for ours either.
It is not without stepping over deep wells of grief pooling in my mind that I move on now. My joy has a galvanized edge to it, sharp and shiny. My life is not the vast plain of newness I gave to Rich, instead it is a complicated, dense biosphere of traditions and rituals that continuously evolve to suit two young women living alone in a cute, blue house on a hill. With the disparate elements of our lives so tightly wound and interwoven, leaving no room for distinction between our needs and wants, what is there to introduce but the sun and the moon and the stars? What can be hidden when life is played out on the skin, when mistakes are as obvious as spilled milk, and love is as achingly real as it gets?
Every morning, even this far removed, I must grab my shovel and dig myself out of my dreams, arresting the uneasiness and unfamiliarity that continue to plague me in those early moments. And week after week, as I flip wildly between my two lives -- she's home, she's away, she's home, she's away -- I still search for the common threads between them, desperate to knit something whole. Yet month after month, despite these little battles, I forcefully send my roots down even deeper, letting this life branch further and further from its closed, quiet core. And I remember, when the storm clouds roll in and the hillside darkens, that the only way out is through.
This summer, when Adela moved to Rich's house and my balancing act collapsed under its own weight, I was reminded how clear the windows into my life are, and how expectation and reality never really intersect, causing disappointment to web between the two. And as I watched the arc of my story boomerang around me, never once touching the ground, always just out of my reach, I realized that there is very little I wish to defend anymore. My life is mine and I'm doing the best that I can. Embarrassment and shame still live in my bones, but they're softening and, when I most need them to, graciously step out of the way. I am starting to see the benefit of grabbing my past in a great big bear hug, and squeezing.
Adela said to me recently, "Mom, you don't have to do it perfectly for it to be perfect," and I think she might've been right. I've stumbled over myself a few times thus far, and will again in all the days to come, making mistakes that are more apparent than others and finding those the most difficult to overcome. But if Adela is correct, and true and blissful perfection is built upon one imperfection after another, then I have succeeded...perhaps well enough for her to be proud of me someday.
And now, in allowing myself to glance into the uncomfortable past and read the real emotions I put down on real paper a lifetime ago, I find myself more willing to listen to what my heart is saying now. I am still devastated that the earnest and innocent journey Rich and I began has left us here, apart, raising our daughter, but I am encouraged to discover that hope and possibility flourish in my life again.
And if I've learned one thing, it's that having faith in love, even when it isn't right, is never wrong.
~ Katie
Title quote from Hammer and a Nail by Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls)
And to see where we've gone from there makes it nearly impossible to pull those pages out, sit patiently with them, and listen to my innocent voice. Somehow, keeping those feelings hidden, well out of the spotlight, makes it easier to stay objective when telling my story. I can't skim the surface of my emotions when the weight of my disappointment and heartbreak still has the power to drag me under. Even now, with all of the relinquishing I've done of my shame and inner torment, vestiges of pain and regret cut through.
During my last hospitalization, I wrote a 30-page letter to Rich detailing my every meal and indignity. I sat at my tray, in corners, on the visiting couch, in my room, next to other patients, alone, in full view of the nurse's station, in the middle of the night, after meal time, first thing in the morning, and wrote line after line on clean white paper in blue pen, black pen, scribbling frantically, pausing, angry, tired.
I told him everything; even, at times, nothing at all. "What would I say if I could say the words that I feel?" Sometimes, he talked right back to me in my own words. "I know, I hear you telling me not to be so hard on myself." Sometimes, I was caught in the loop of my fears. "For the millionth time, I'm worried about my heart. My breath. The rest of my body."
I described my surroundings: "It is so windy outside. There are no clouds in the sky except for the fog peeking up over the most distant hills. It seems, from the inside here, that the world is so silent it might actually sound like the air-duct in my room rather than like traffic and talking and rattling leaves. I'm in a world unto itself. Here, there are noises and drama and conflict and joy and relief. Here, people feel things and think thoughts that elude them in their daily lives. They may see hope where they haven't been able to before. Or, they may see more pain than they previously imagined existed. We run the gamut here."
I shared my feelings for him. "You heal me. You soothe me. Your very presence makes my heart lighter...I used to tell you not to worry, I'm fine, you're just being silly but now...I feel like we're in this process together..." And this is where I stop.
In retrospect, these pages are as much a love letter to my anorexia as they were to Rich. On them, I processed the gradual ending of a relationship that held me so snug and so safe for so long while I slowly and reluctantly welcomed something -- someone -- else into my life. Suddenly, bathed in this new light, the quiet stillness of starvation felt stifling and musty, curling around my throat in angry demand, a relic of the suffering I didn't want to feel anymore. I was tired. My constant and reliable companion, sweet as it seemed in my solitude, left no room for hope or change or faith. And so the transition began from one life to another, a complete overhaul that ultimately led to motherhood.
I have a picture of myself from those months between my last hospitalization and the start of my pregnancy. I'm sitting outside Rich's apartment, in a garden, with a spade in one hand and a packet of seeds in the other. Six seed pots and a bag of potting soil sit in front of me and I'm smiling up into Rich's camera. Two photos later, I'm tapping the seeds into place with careful concentration. It was a moment of pause in my life, when the rough swell of my treatment leveled off, leaving a smoother surface and a gentler pace. I had to go back to work, I had to re-assimilate -- there was nothing normal about medically-supervised eating -- but the hollow sound of anorexia was fading from my ears.
I folded into Rich, pulling his life over mine like a temporary blanket. I found so much security in his concern, allowing for a re-awakening of dreams I'd forcibly denied for years. I let the future stretch before me again, an unknowable blankness, and constructed in words and actions the kind of life I wanted to lead. I told Rich I never wanted to get married again -- I'd made that mistake too young, twice already, astonishingly. I wanted to explore all of my options, embrace the freedom of my youth, and try different lives on for size. As time went on, I began earning my own trust and gaining a sense that maybe...just maybe...forgiveness for my disastrous chain of mistakes lay within.
And from this very, very tender, very nascent, embryonic state, came our child.
As soon as I discovered I was to be a mom, I was ready to be a mom, and I believe Rich experienced the same thing as a father. But, I don't believe we were ready to be parents together. The paths of communication we'd just begun to blaze needed to be paved over and solidified prematurely. There was no time to turn around and wonder if we'd gone the right way. Together, we shared few tools, building a precious little nest just the right size for our daughter which we circled in separate orbits, never once landing and making it home.
Now that we live apart and have for some time, I see more clearly the trajectory of our differences. We don't parallel one another even in the tiniest moments of parenting. We now tread respectfully around each other, casting individual nets beneath our daughter so that whichever way she falls she'll be caught. It isn't our unity that gives her safety, it's the attention we pay to the gaps our distant lives create. She isn't a fixed star in our universe anymore, she's the living, breathing ocean between our shores. And though it breaks my heart that we couldn't hold this life together for her sake, I'm sure we could not have done it for ours either.
It is not without stepping over deep wells of grief pooling in my mind that I move on now. My joy has a galvanized edge to it, sharp and shiny. My life is not the vast plain of newness I gave to Rich, instead it is a complicated, dense biosphere of traditions and rituals that continuously evolve to suit two young women living alone in a cute, blue house on a hill. With the disparate elements of our lives so tightly wound and interwoven, leaving no room for distinction between our needs and wants, what is there to introduce but the sun and the moon and the stars? What can be hidden when life is played out on the skin, when mistakes are as obvious as spilled milk, and love is as achingly real as it gets?
Every morning, even this far removed, I must grab my shovel and dig myself out of my dreams, arresting the uneasiness and unfamiliarity that continue to plague me in those early moments. And week after week, as I flip wildly between my two lives -- she's home, she's away, she's home, she's away -- I still search for the common threads between them, desperate to knit something whole. Yet month after month, despite these little battles, I forcefully send my roots down even deeper, letting this life branch further and further from its closed, quiet core. And I remember, when the storm clouds roll in and the hillside darkens, that the only way out is through.
This summer, when Adela moved to Rich's house and my balancing act collapsed under its own weight, I was reminded how clear the windows into my life are, and how expectation and reality never really intersect, causing disappointment to web between the two. And as I watched the arc of my story boomerang around me, never once touching the ground, always just out of my reach, I realized that there is very little I wish to defend anymore. My life is mine and I'm doing the best that I can. Embarrassment and shame still live in my bones, but they're softening and, when I most need them to, graciously step out of the way. I am starting to see the benefit of grabbing my past in a great big bear hug, and squeezing.
Adela said to me recently, "Mom, you don't have to do it perfectly for it to be perfect," and I think she might've been right. I've stumbled over myself a few times thus far, and will again in all the days to come, making mistakes that are more apparent than others and finding those the most difficult to overcome. But if Adela is correct, and true and blissful perfection is built upon one imperfection after another, then I have succeeded...perhaps well enough for her to be proud of me someday.
And now, in allowing myself to glance into the uncomfortable past and read the real emotions I put down on real paper a lifetime ago, I find myself more willing to listen to what my heart is saying now. I am still devastated that the earnest and innocent journey Rich and I began has left us here, apart, raising our daughter, but I am encouraged to discover that hope and possibility flourish in my life again.
And if I've learned one thing, it's that having faith in love, even when it isn't right, is never wrong.
~ Katie
Title quote from Hammer and a Nail by Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls)
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
If there ever comes a day when we can't be together keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever. ~ Winnie the Pooh
I became pregnant with my daughter six months after my last hospitalization for anorexia; six months after the nurse kneeled down and told me she could see my fighting spirit just below the surface; six months after I took what was left of my life, cradled it close, and moved on.
Six months was not enough time to transition my mind and my heart and my body from living with death to producing life. I lived in fear of losing the baby, and the fear was acute and constant. In the beginning, her body was tiny inside of my tiny body but still I felt the enormity of the physical responsibility at hand. I had a miracle to perform, and I wasn't sure my blood, bones, liver, and heart were up to the task.
I was petrified.
And so I began to grieve almost instantly, even as I felt myself crack wide open with heartbreaking love for this speck of a soul that had somehow entangled itself with my own. Loss was imminent, so I felt, even moreso after the positive triple screen results and the subsequent genetic and termination counseling. To get through my days, I held my pregnancy loosely even as I clung to it for dear life.
My friends and family celebrated cautiously, seeing, no doubt, my reluctance to embrace this incoming, transformative force. I let her new little life come in and pass through and out as I moved from love to fear to loss to grief and then back to love.
To cope with the possibility of loss, I wrote letters to my unborn child, certain that what emerged from my heart would be known and felt and understood by her. I strung my fears from page to page like lighted bulbs on a string, illuminating every so often the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul where only the fear of losing a child can live. I handed my love and loss to this baby even as we grew and grew and grew together.
As I lay in bed during those full and heavy months toward the end, watching her roll and twist and stretch beneath my skin, I loved her with fierce endurance, bittersweet in those frequent reminders that while she lived within me, she was ultimately not mine to keep.
I wrote to her:
"I'm afraid I'm not strong enough to do this for you. I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you. I'm afraid my body isn't good enough, strong enough to take care of you. And losing you would be my punishment, THE punishment, for my anorexia.
I love you more than I've ever loved anyone before. Already, you are in my soul. And I would do, will do if this is to be the case, anything for you.
I want you to come into our lives. I want you to share your childhood with us, your life with us. I want to see you and know you. But...that feels selfish...I want what is best for you.
I love you.
I know you are not mine. I know you are a child of the universe, of God. I know that your life is your own, your path - the path you are meant to take - is your own.
I know that I am just meant to carry you, and to care for you with love if you are destined to be here with us.
Much love,
Mom"
The month before I gave birth, when attachment had overgrown resistance, I devised a contract with myself so that I'd have something to hold on to in the end if not my baby:
"November 12, 2004
I am 8 1/2 months pregnant. If anything should happen to this baby I will change my life in order to help those in need. This baby has given me back my life so I will give my life to those in need, not simply use it to better myself."
I signed my name.
In the final weeks of pregnancy, at a grocery store in Oakland near our apartment, I saw a stuffed baby toy. Up to that point, I hadn't made any preparatory purchases for the baby, fearing I wouldn't be bringing her home from the hospital. But, I reached over, grabbed the toy, paid for it, and brought it home. Though most of the baby toys have come and gone, I still see my fleeting faith in that one little bear.
Looking back with 5 years of motherhood now under my belt, I see the terror I lived in. I read the letters and know that I had one foot planted firmly in hope and the other in total surrender. Though I was carrying a baby, I could not erase from my mind the years of messages that my body was dying, that I was dying, that my heart might give out at any moment, perhaps unexpectedly while I slept. Before my baby was on her way, those messages helped me gain the perspective and strength I needed to claw my way out of a desperate situation. But once the pregnancy test came back positive, those messages, and that knowledge, filled me with a dread so opaque and so dense it immobilized me at times.
Today, my love for my daughter tethers me to the earth. When the tidal wave of life's constant disruption crashes down upon me and drags me out to sea, I fight my way back to shore because I know she's waiting there for me. I never knew myself -- or the power of my own love and strength -- before I became her mother. And if anything causes me to rise to a level higher than even I can imagine, it is her love for me.
During these summer months when weeks pass by without her, my world tips over. I dream endlessly at night and wake in total panic, wondering where she is. When I remind myself that she isn't here, fresh sadness seeps in. She is a happy girl wherever she is, and her life with her dad is full and rich with love and affection, but the resounding emptiness of my house when she's gone is sometimes more than I can bear. And as I drive back and forth through the orchards and rice fields, ferrying her from one life to another, I beat back my raw devastation at how often we have to say goodbye to each other.
I would have imagined that by this point, with our separate lives well-established, Rich and I would spin smoothly as satellites around this planet we've created. But, there is no settling into this strange and difficult life; there is only a painful and reluctant acceptance that even time isn't going to deliver an easy solution. Decisions are rock solid...and then they melt...while the clock ticks and the days pass and the months grow into years.
The thing about love and loss and separation and grief is that they don't soften into well-worn, familiar possessions over time, they are as fresh and new as the sun peering golden eyes over the horizon each morning. They stretch and snap and pull and tug and recoil when touched, and they sprout and blossom and reseed with each passing season. Every day they are young, impressionable sensations that expand and contract in relation to everything else. One love fades into loss into love into loss into love.
I miss my daughter with an instinctive desperation during these months. Her absence leaves a void in my life that requires constant management and attention. I find things to do, places to go, people to see -- peace, fun, adventure -- and life seems to regulate. Then she comes home and I see so vividly the distinction between motherhood and life on my own. Clicking between these different roles has gotten easier, less abrupt, less jarring, but nothing has brought the two closer together. The only sustainable ablution to this constant polarity is a fine and practiced filtering of every emotion through one intact, receptive heart.
After delivering my daughter to her dad recently, I drove home awash in the bitter grief that drowns me still, and wondered what kind of mother permits this bumpy journey for her child. It's not what I wanted for any of us, certainly not for her, yet these are the lives we lead, these are the lives we preserve. They're not pretty, they're not fancy, and sometimes they hurt us like hell, but for the time being -- which is all we have -- they're ours.
And so, with a heart still funneling that enigmatic mix of love and loss from one chamber to the next, keeping my spirit alive, I carry on. We all carry on. And that, I'm coming to understand, is the painful bliss of simply being alive.
~ Katie
Six months was not enough time to transition my mind and my heart and my body from living with death to producing life. I lived in fear of losing the baby, and the fear was acute and constant. In the beginning, her body was tiny inside of my tiny body but still I felt the enormity of the physical responsibility at hand. I had a miracle to perform, and I wasn't sure my blood, bones, liver, and heart were up to the task.
I was petrified.
And so I began to grieve almost instantly, even as I felt myself crack wide open with heartbreaking love for this speck of a soul that had somehow entangled itself with my own. Loss was imminent, so I felt, even moreso after the positive triple screen results and the subsequent genetic and termination counseling. To get through my days, I held my pregnancy loosely even as I clung to it for dear life.
My friends and family celebrated cautiously, seeing, no doubt, my reluctance to embrace this incoming, transformative force. I let her new little life come in and pass through and out as I moved from love to fear to loss to grief and then back to love.
To cope with the possibility of loss, I wrote letters to my unborn child, certain that what emerged from my heart would be known and felt and understood by her. I strung my fears from page to page like lighted bulbs on a string, illuminating every so often the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul where only the fear of losing a child can live. I handed my love and loss to this baby even as we grew and grew and grew together.
As I lay in bed during those full and heavy months toward the end, watching her roll and twist and stretch beneath my skin, I loved her with fierce endurance, bittersweet in those frequent reminders that while she lived within me, she was ultimately not mine to keep.
I wrote to her:
"I'm afraid I'm not strong enough to do this for you. I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you. I'm afraid my body isn't good enough, strong enough to take care of you. And losing you would be my punishment, THE punishment, for my anorexia.
I love you more than I've ever loved anyone before. Already, you are in my soul. And I would do, will do if this is to be the case, anything for you.
I want you to come into our lives. I want you to share your childhood with us, your life with us. I want to see you and know you. But...that feels selfish...I want what is best for you.
I love you.
I know you are not mine. I know you are a child of the universe, of God. I know that your life is your own, your path - the path you are meant to take - is your own.
I know that I am just meant to carry you, and to care for you with love if you are destined to be here with us.
Much love,
Mom"
The month before I gave birth, when attachment had overgrown resistance, I devised a contract with myself so that I'd have something to hold on to in the end if not my baby:
"November 12, 2004
I am 8 1/2 months pregnant. If anything should happen to this baby I will change my life in order to help those in need. This baby has given me back my life so I will give my life to those in need, not simply use it to better myself."
I signed my name.
In the final weeks of pregnancy, at a grocery store in Oakland near our apartment, I saw a stuffed baby toy. Up to that point, I hadn't made any preparatory purchases for the baby, fearing I wouldn't be bringing her home from the hospital. But, I reached over, grabbed the toy, paid for it, and brought it home. Though most of the baby toys have come and gone, I still see my fleeting faith in that one little bear.
Looking back with 5 years of motherhood now under my belt, I see the terror I lived in. I read the letters and know that I had one foot planted firmly in hope and the other in total surrender. Though I was carrying a baby, I could not erase from my mind the years of messages that my body was dying, that I was dying, that my heart might give out at any moment, perhaps unexpectedly while I slept. Before my baby was on her way, those messages helped me gain the perspective and strength I needed to claw my way out of a desperate situation. But once the pregnancy test came back positive, those messages, and that knowledge, filled me with a dread so opaque and so dense it immobilized me at times.
Today, my love for my daughter tethers me to the earth. When the tidal wave of life's constant disruption crashes down upon me and drags me out to sea, I fight my way back to shore because I know she's waiting there for me. I never knew myself -- or the power of my own love and strength -- before I became her mother. And if anything causes me to rise to a level higher than even I can imagine, it is her love for me.
During these summer months when weeks pass by without her, my world tips over. I dream endlessly at night and wake in total panic, wondering where she is. When I remind myself that she isn't here, fresh sadness seeps in. She is a happy girl wherever she is, and her life with her dad is full and rich with love and affection, but the resounding emptiness of my house when she's gone is sometimes more than I can bear. And as I drive back and forth through the orchards and rice fields, ferrying her from one life to another, I beat back my raw devastation at how often we have to say goodbye to each other.
I would have imagined that by this point, with our separate lives well-established, Rich and I would spin smoothly as satellites around this planet we've created. But, there is no settling into this strange and difficult life; there is only a painful and reluctant acceptance that even time isn't going to deliver an easy solution. Decisions are rock solid...and then they melt...while the clock ticks and the days pass and the months grow into years.
The thing about love and loss and separation and grief is that they don't soften into well-worn, familiar possessions over time, they are as fresh and new as the sun peering golden eyes over the horizon each morning. They stretch and snap and pull and tug and recoil when touched, and they sprout and blossom and reseed with each passing season. Every day they are young, impressionable sensations that expand and contract in relation to everything else. One love fades into loss into love into loss into love.
I miss my daughter with an instinctive desperation during these months. Her absence leaves a void in my life that requires constant management and attention. I find things to do, places to go, people to see -- peace, fun, adventure -- and life seems to regulate. Then she comes home and I see so vividly the distinction between motherhood and life on my own. Clicking between these different roles has gotten easier, less abrupt, less jarring, but nothing has brought the two closer together. The only sustainable ablution to this constant polarity is a fine and practiced filtering of every emotion through one intact, receptive heart.
After delivering my daughter to her dad recently, I drove home awash in the bitter grief that drowns me still, and wondered what kind of mother permits this bumpy journey for her child. It's not what I wanted for any of us, certainly not for her, yet these are the lives we lead, these are the lives we preserve. They're not pretty, they're not fancy, and sometimes they hurt us like hell, but for the time being -- which is all we have -- they're ours.
And so, with a heart still funneling that enigmatic mix of love and loss from one chamber to the next, keeping my spirit alive, I carry on. We all carry on. And that, I'm coming to understand, is the painful bliss of simply being alive.
~ Katie
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life- to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories ~G. Eliot
My brother was 17 when he ran away from home. I was 23 at the time, well into my eating disorder, and already estranged from my parents. Yet, I spiraled into panic with the rest of my family and photocopied missing person posters, reviewed tidal charts with the police to determine where his body might wash up, and slept in my childhood bedroom with my 15 year-old sister. My parents and sisters did other unimaginable tasks like decipher a cryptic postcard my brother sent from the road which led to the discovery of his abandoned car in Santa Cruz.
We banded together the five of us, found ways to cope, managed the influx of visitors day and night and the emotion of candlelight vigils held in our living room, and reminded each other to breathe. And when my brother came walking home a week later, all the worse for wear having traveled overnight by bus from Los Angeles, we grabbed each other in a great big hug, relieved to be six again. Over the days that followed, a subtle softening occurred between parents and children while the curtains of our inner workings parted ever so slightly, exposing everyday challenges that had always hummed along, barely a vibration, before shattering the windows around us.
Families aren't the slightest bit transparent; they are impossible to see into until something of this magnitude happens and friends bear witness to mothers and fathers and children falling to their knees in anguish or in grace. For my family, my brother's disappearance and surprise return brought about a gentle buffer of amnesty, if only for that brief season of terror and relief, and rather than peer at one another through the familiar thicket of history and pride and disappointment, we saw each other as breakable, mortal human beings made of bones, blood, fear, and love. And when that chapter ended and we returned in earnest to our routines and preconceptions and estrangements, we carried equally within us a token of that hard-won innocence as the curtains slowly fell back into place, shielding us once more from the eyes of the world.
In Wild Geese, Mary Oliver writes:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
In my hospital writings, I chronicled my family's visits and documented my pain at being so nakedly exposed. Without the security of my job, my relationships, and my house, I was a terribly frightened, fragile young woman living at the mercy of well-meaning but nonetheless unfamiliar medical staff. Not a family, indeed. Years of wall-building and self-protection were no match for the shame of wearing hospital clothing and weeping in the corner during meal time. The girl my family had always known was nowhere to be seen, yet I remained to accept her visitors.
At the time, it seemed to me that everything I had built and worked for was gone. When I was discharged from the hospital for the last time I didn't even have a home to return to. But, I was determined to make it on my own, and so I did.
Re-building genuine ties with my family took much longer than re-establishing a home for myself as my treatment eventually ended and real life began again. Even during my pregnancy I maintained my distance, calling to share the news that I was having a girl, but keeping my private fears and questions to myself. It wasn't until I was in labor, and experiencing the sheer uproarious pain of childbirth, that I finally called out for my mom.
It astonishes me how gradually the seams of a relationship pull apart, stitch by broken stitch, yet how quickly they can be mended. The arrival of my daughter brought about more than just a resurgence of my own vitality, it opened doors that had been sealed shut for years. Just as my brother's casual stroll back into our lives fused the shattered pieces of our hearts, so did the appearance of one small baby girl, reminding us with her newness that anything is possible.
I think about what Mary Oliver writes: "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting." To me, this instruction falls in direct opposition to what I've always believed to be my duty to my family and the world. There is a right way forward, often aligned with the path of least resistance, and it is to be followed without question. Black is on one side, white is on the other, and together they meet in sharp contrast, forming a long straight line down the middle. Room for error is nothing more than a vacuum of time and space.
I haven't lived in a straight line, nor has anyone I've ever met, yet I spend much of my time crawling through the desert, repenting.
Letting the "soft animal" of my body "love what it loves" is another inconceivable concept. It is always with great shame that I explore my thoughts and feelings, nervously reaching into the shadows of my mind and heart, afraid I'll find darkness where light is supposed to be. Though no one can see it from the outside, I writhe in discomfort and despair when I unearth genuine feelings of love and concern for others. Attachment feels like a nightmare until the soft lullaby of trust comes drifting through and I reawaken.
Every once in a while the jaws of my earliest confusion clamp shut and I'm suddenly locked in mid-step. Perhaps my heart has opened itself too fully to another, or my mind has traveled too far into unknown territory. No matter the consequences, the journey often ends in regret, and so I have adapted to hiding away, lonely as this is. Just today I found myself burrowing into my dark, quiet place -- that tiny little corner where, even if someone peers in through the windows, I cannot be seen.
And yet...
Sometimes when I'm hiking out in the clear, blue open, I'll stop for a moment to feel the wind. I'll stand atop a rock or plant myself in the grass, throw my head back, close my eyes, and let my hair and clothes whip around me. In these moments I'm listening. Listening to a voice that can't be heard otherwise. It doesn't speak to me like family, and it doesn't sound like a friend; it doesn't even sound like the narrator who guides me through my day, sometimes pleasantly and sometimes impatiently. Instead it is calm, peaceful, and assured, and comes from the very center of my being.
Even though I can't yet access this deep wisdom as I wander aimlessly through my life, alternately hidden and exposed, I know that it exists. I only have to be still for a moment to hear the quiet voice speaking. And the older I get the more I realize that it is always there, gently nudging and nurturing me along my way, whether I can hear it or not. It gets lost in the rush and color and pace of daily life, often supplanted completely by outside noise, but it is as constant as the thrum of my own heart beat, and just as necessary.
Admittedly, I still try my hardest to live in the absence of my own divine intercedence, resisting the urge to surrender with a kind of poisonous power that astounds me at times. But, what is life if not the opportunity to untangle the thread of who we are from where we've been so that we can sew something entirely new?
I feel blessed to know the love of family and friends, and to have the presence of mind to appreciate myself every once in a while, flaws and all. And I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a child while peripherally exploring the mysterious recesses of my own heart and soul -- learning worlds about life and love and family in the process.
More than anything, though, the most amazing lesson emerging from my tentative dance is the fact that what make this life special are the very things in me that make it possible. This knowledge brings with it a delicate coating of bliss and the lightest dusting of forgiveness, reminding me, when I falter and lose my way, why I'm here.
~ Katie
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, 1992.
Title quote: George Eliot
We banded together the five of us, found ways to cope, managed the influx of visitors day and night and the emotion of candlelight vigils held in our living room, and reminded each other to breathe. And when my brother came walking home a week later, all the worse for wear having traveled overnight by bus from Los Angeles, we grabbed each other in a great big hug, relieved to be six again. Over the days that followed, a subtle softening occurred between parents and children while the curtains of our inner workings parted ever so slightly, exposing everyday challenges that had always hummed along, barely a vibration, before shattering the windows around us.
Families aren't the slightest bit transparent; they are impossible to see into until something of this magnitude happens and friends bear witness to mothers and fathers and children falling to their knees in anguish or in grace. For my family, my brother's disappearance and surprise return brought about a gentle buffer of amnesty, if only for that brief season of terror and relief, and rather than peer at one another through the familiar thicket of history and pride and disappointment, we saw each other as breakable, mortal human beings made of bones, blood, fear, and love. And when that chapter ended and we returned in earnest to our routines and preconceptions and estrangements, we carried equally within us a token of that hard-won innocence as the curtains slowly fell back into place, shielding us once more from the eyes of the world.
In Wild Geese, Mary Oliver writes:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
In my hospital writings, I chronicled my family's visits and documented my pain at being so nakedly exposed. Without the security of my job, my relationships, and my house, I was a terribly frightened, fragile young woman living at the mercy of well-meaning but nonetheless unfamiliar medical staff. Not a family, indeed. Years of wall-building and self-protection were no match for the shame of wearing hospital clothing and weeping in the corner during meal time. The girl my family had always known was nowhere to be seen, yet I remained to accept her visitors.
At the time, it seemed to me that everything I had built and worked for was gone. When I was discharged from the hospital for the last time I didn't even have a home to return to. But, I was determined to make it on my own, and so I did.
Re-building genuine ties with my family took much longer than re-establishing a home for myself as my treatment eventually ended and real life began again. Even during my pregnancy I maintained my distance, calling to share the news that I was having a girl, but keeping my private fears and questions to myself. It wasn't until I was in labor, and experiencing the sheer uproarious pain of childbirth, that I finally called out for my mom.
It astonishes me how gradually the seams of a relationship pull apart, stitch by broken stitch, yet how quickly they can be mended. The arrival of my daughter brought about more than just a resurgence of my own vitality, it opened doors that had been sealed shut for years. Just as my brother's casual stroll back into our lives fused the shattered pieces of our hearts, so did the appearance of one small baby girl, reminding us with her newness that anything is possible.
I think about what Mary Oliver writes: "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting." To me, this instruction falls in direct opposition to what I've always believed to be my duty to my family and the world. There is a right way forward, often aligned with the path of least resistance, and it is to be followed without question. Black is on one side, white is on the other, and together they meet in sharp contrast, forming a long straight line down the middle. Room for error is nothing more than a vacuum of time and space.
I haven't lived in a straight line, nor has anyone I've ever met, yet I spend much of my time crawling through the desert, repenting.
Letting the "soft animal" of my body "love what it loves" is another inconceivable concept. It is always with great shame that I explore my thoughts and feelings, nervously reaching into the shadows of my mind and heart, afraid I'll find darkness where light is supposed to be. Though no one can see it from the outside, I writhe in discomfort and despair when I unearth genuine feelings of love and concern for others. Attachment feels like a nightmare until the soft lullaby of trust comes drifting through and I reawaken.
Every once in a while the jaws of my earliest confusion clamp shut and I'm suddenly locked in mid-step. Perhaps my heart has opened itself too fully to another, or my mind has traveled too far into unknown territory. No matter the consequences, the journey often ends in regret, and so I have adapted to hiding away, lonely as this is. Just today I found myself burrowing into my dark, quiet place -- that tiny little corner where, even if someone peers in through the windows, I cannot be seen.
And yet...
Sometimes when I'm hiking out in the clear, blue open, I'll stop for a moment to feel the wind. I'll stand atop a rock or plant myself in the grass, throw my head back, close my eyes, and let my hair and clothes whip around me. In these moments I'm listening. Listening to a voice that can't be heard otherwise. It doesn't speak to me like family, and it doesn't sound like a friend; it doesn't even sound like the narrator who guides me through my day, sometimes pleasantly and sometimes impatiently. Instead it is calm, peaceful, and assured, and comes from the very center of my being.
Even though I can't yet access this deep wisdom as I wander aimlessly through my life, alternately hidden and exposed, I know that it exists. I only have to be still for a moment to hear the quiet voice speaking. And the older I get the more I realize that it is always there, gently nudging and nurturing me along my way, whether I can hear it or not. It gets lost in the rush and color and pace of daily life, often supplanted completely by outside noise, but it is as constant as the thrum of my own heart beat, and just as necessary.
Admittedly, I still try my hardest to live in the absence of my own divine intercedence, resisting the urge to surrender with a kind of poisonous power that astounds me at times. But, what is life if not the opportunity to untangle the thread of who we are from where we've been so that we can sew something entirely new?
I feel blessed to know the love of family and friends, and to have the presence of mind to appreciate myself every once in a while, flaws and all. And I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a child while peripherally exploring the mysterious recesses of my own heart and soul -- learning worlds about life and love and family in the process.
More than anything, though, the most amazing lesson emerging from my tentative dance is the fact that what make this life special are the very things in me that make it possible. This knowledge brings with it a delicate coating of bliss and the lightest dusting of forgiveness, reminding me, when I falter and lose my way, why I'm here.
~ Katie
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, 1992.
Title quote: George Eliot
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same. ~Flavia Weedn
It's easy for me to talk about my illness now. The word "anorexia" rolls off of my tongue with an ease I never would have imagined. Yes I was anorexic, yes I starved myself, yes I endured years of treatment before I began to heal my mind, body, and spirit, and yes I'm still experiencing the joys and challenges of surviving my dark decade.
An illness such as mine seems quantifiable. It appears to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It starts slowly with a loss of control, builds into a beast of its own making, and has to be dismantled piece by piece before the threat is gone. In my case, my symptoms were treated, my thoughts and feelings were rearranged, and my body was eventually restored. And that, it seems, is the end of the story.
So why, I've been asking myself, do I still feel compelled to write about it? What questions have I not answered? What is there left to tell? What I am coming to understand, as memories continue to rise and flatten out before me, is that my illness is merely a lens through which I can view my life as a whole thus far, and gradually begin to understand why I came so close to losing it all.
When I was a child, my grandparents lived on a farm in rural Petaluma. I remember leaving for home one night when I was 8 years old and looking back at their farmhouse glowing against the night sky. As we drove alongside the slotted fence leading down the gravel road, I struggled to see into their windows because I was sure, in the way children are sure of such things, that the people I knew as grandparents were now taking off their masks and turning into strangers. I wanted to catch them in the act because I was convinced that the entire evening had been a charade for the sake of the grandchildren, complete with costumes and facemasks and theater. What truth, I wondered, was being obscured? Soon after, my grandparents separated, and eventually divorced.
I remember laying in bed at night, too, and looking around my room and wondering if everything lost its color in the darkness. To me, my toys and clothes and curtains looked black, white, and gray in the moonlight. As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined that color lived only in the daytime, or perhaps only within light, but never within the objects themselves. In the morning I was always relieved and slightly surprised to find that my room was once again filled with shades of red and blue and pink and green.
It's almost as if I can hold up a looking glass and see the world now exactly as I saw it back then. I was not a naturally trusting child and kept myself in constant reserve, closely examining everything that came into view. When I encountered things I didn't understand, I stepped back and watched until things made sense again. I didn't entirely trust my environment and dealt with change by imagining that what I saw wasn't actually real. I felt that life, real life, was taking place just below the surface of what I could see, only I didn't have the tools to access it. I was on the outside, standing on the very top of my tippy toes with my young fingers curled into the splintered window pane, trying to see through the impossibly fogged glass.
Now, I find myself the mother of a child who bears the same kind of wonderment deep within her own mind. A soulful taking in of the world, bringing unsettled and unanswerable questions that skip out and about when night falls, testing me and teasing me, and leading me back to that very same seat of confusion.
This week, she and I are processing grief and trying to understand how the loss of a mother impacts a young family. Who will care for her children when she is gone? How will their lives change without her? When will we die? How can we be sure that an accident like this won't happen to us?
Cuddling with her at the end of the day, and doing my best to answer her questions honestly, we are merely two little girls trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense. Last night, after crying in the dark for a few minutes and snuggling up against me, she asked, "Mom, a long time ago, were things everywhere only gray? Because when I look at pictures, the only color I see is gray." I assured her there has always been color in the world, and that the gray only lives in the pictures, but I knew that her question was much larger than that, and that she was looking for an answer I haven't yet found.
In searching for peace and forgiveness within myself over these past years, I've often wished I could grab hold of the world, dig my fingers deep into its shoulders, look it straight in the eye, and make it understand that the symptoms of an eating disorder, or other such illness, are simply the waves of a vast ocean of confusion and unrest crashing onto the shores of our bodies. Starvation is nothing more than an expression of something otherwise inexpressible in its enormity.
Looking back on my own childhood, and now glimpsing life through the eyes of my daughter, I see how I've always grappled with an unending need to know where the road ahead curves, dips, and climbs. It is no wonder that I tried with all of my might to erase this unsettling hunger from my life during my twenties. As a parent now, trying desperately to protect my daughter from her own set of frights and worries, I see so clearly that this is a need that can never be met. For the same reasons I couldn't comprehend the world as a child, she can't either. The best I can do for her is hug her when she cries, tell her how much I love her, and try to help her understand the practicalities of an unimaginable loss.
I am devastated by the death of my friend, but am learning from her passing that one moment doesn't guarantee the next. Through this haze of grief, I am beginning to understand that I will take my questions with me to my grave, just as we all do when we pass. I don't need to chase them away or stomp them out, I simply need to tuck them into my mind and move on with my life. It is not my burden to seek a definitive understanding of the world; rather, it is my duty to give myself fully to the people around me so that we all have hands to hold when grief comes crashing down, and someone to smile with when a moment of bliss breezes through.
Given my lifelong struggle, I am not sure I will ever be without fear of the unknown or that I won't scramble around at times trying to find something solid to hold on to. I cannot promise myself that the lessons I am learning today will settle into permanence and become part of each step I take forward. But, what I owe to myself and to the precious people who leave us far too soon is a constant, often painful, surrender to what life delivers no matter how ready or secure I feel. There is nothing inside of today that guarantees tomorrow for any of us.
These sweet little moments that make up our days, whether they build upon or chisel away at the mystery of life, have to be enough...because they are all that we have.
~ Katie
An illness such as mine seems quantifiable. It appears to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It starts slowly with a loss of control, builds into a beast of its own making, and has to be dismantled piece by piece before the threat is gone. In my case, my symptoms were treated, my thoughts and feelings were rearranged, and my body was eventually restored. And that, it seems, is the end of the story.
So why, I've been asking myself, do I still feel compelled to write about it? What questions have I not answered? What is there left to tell? What I am coming to understand, as memories continue to rise and flatten out before me, is that my illness is merely a lens through which I can view my life as a whole thus far, and gradually begin to understand why I came so close to losing it all.
When I was a child, my grandparents lived on a farm in rural Petaluma. I remember leaving for home one night when I was 8 years old and looking back at their farmhouse glowing against the night sky. As we drove alongside the slotted fence leading down the gravel road, I struggled to see into their windows because I was sure, in the way children are sure of such things, that the people I knew as grandparents were now taking off their masks and turning into strangers. I wanted to catch them in the act because I was convinced that the entire evening had been a charade for the sake of the grandchildren, complete with costumes and facemasks and theater. What truth, I wondered, was being obscured? Soon after, my grandparents separated, and eventually divorced.
I remember laying in bed at night, too, and looking around my room and wondering if everything lost its color in the darkness. To me, my toys and clothes and curtains looked black, white, and gray in the moonlight. As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined that color lived only in the daytime, or perhaps only within light, but never within the objects themselves. In the morning I was always relieved and slightly surprised to find that my room was once again filled with shades of red and blue and pink and green.
It's almost as if I can hold up a looking glass and see the world now exactly as I saw it back then. I was not a naturally trusting child and kept myself in constant reserve, closely examining everything that came into view. When I encountered things I didn't understand, I stepped back and watched until things made sense again. I didn't entirely trust my environment and dealt with change by imagining that what I saw wasn't actually real. I felt that life, real life, was taking place just below the surface of what I could see, only I didn't have the tools to access it. I was on the outside, standing on the very top of my tippy toes with my young fingers curled into the splintered window pane, trying to see through the impossibly fogged glass.
Now, I find myself the mother of a child who bears the same kind of wonderment deep within her own mind. A soulful taking in of the world, bringing unsettled and unanswerable questions that skip out and about when night falls, testing me and teasing me, and leading me back to that very same seat of confusion.
This week, she and I are processing grief and trying to understand how the loss of a mother impacts a young family. Who will care for her children when she is gone? How will their lives change without her? When will we die? How can we be sure that an accident like this won't happen to us?
Cuddling with her at the end of the day, and doing my best to answer her questions honestly, we are merely two little girls trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense. Last night, after crying in the dark for a few minutes and snuggling up against me, she asked, "Mom, a long time ago, were things everywhere only gray? Because when I look at pictures, the only color I see is gray." I assured her there has always been color in the world, and that the gray only lives in the pictures, but I knew that her question was much larger than that, and that she was looking for an answer I haven't yet found.
In searching for peace and forgiveness within myself over these past years, I've often wished I could grab hold of the world, dig my fingers deep into its shoulders, look it straight in the eye, and make it understand that the symptoms of an eating disorder, or other such illness, are simply the waves of a vast ocean of confusion and unrest crashing onto the shores of our bodies. Starvation is nothing more than an expression of something otherwise inexpressible in its enormity.
Looking back on my own childhood, and now glimpsing life through the eyes of my daughter, I see how I've always grappled with an unending need to know where the road ahead curves, dips, and climbs. It is no wonder that I tried with all of my might to erase this unsettling hunger from my life during my twenties. As a parent now, trying desperately to protect my daughter from her own set of frights and worries, I see so clearly that this is a need that can never be met. For the same reasons I couldn't comprehend the world as a child, she can't either. The best I can do for her is hug her when she cries, tell her how much I love her, and try to help her understand the practicalities of an unimaginable loss.
I am devastated by the death of my friend, but am learning from her passing that one moment doesn't guarantee the next. Through this haze of grief, I am beginning to understand that I will take my questions with me to my grave, just as we all do when we pass. I don't need to chase them away or stomp them out, I simply need to tuck them into my mind and move on with my life. It is not my burden to seek a definitive understanding of the world; rather, it is my duty to give myself fully to the people around me so that we all have hands to hold when grief comes crashing down, and someone to smile with when a moment of bliss breezes through.
Given my lifelong struggle, I am not sure I will ever be without fear of the unknown or that I won't scramble around at times trying to find something solid to hold on to. I cannot promise myself that the lessons I am learning today will settle into permanence and become part of each step I take forward. But, what I owe to myself and to the precious people who leave us far too soon is a constant, often painful, surrender to what life delivers no matter how ready or secure I feel. There is nothing inside of today that guarantees tomorrow for any of us.
These sweet little moments that make up our days, whether they build upon or chisel away at the mystery of life, have to be enough...because they are all that we have.
~ Katie
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