I just changed my site tagline from “what happens when truth hits you before age thirty” to “what happens when truth hits you before age forty.” Because I am now 31. Wait, am I 32? No. 31. Shit.
Nonetheless, I made it past age 30 and the quarter-life crisis stills seems relevant BUT the age bracket has extended. So. There.
I’ll be honest and confess that the new tagline has me freaking out a bit. Forty? Since when did that become something looming in my future? Forty?!
Maybe I should change it to thirty-five. No. That feels even more lame for some reason. Plus, 35 will be here before you know and then I’ll get thrown into a tailspin when I still don’t know how to apply my truth to my life at age thirty five. I’ll stick to forty and keep allowing it to make me feel young.
Now back to some simple math. Am I 31 or 32? 31. Whew. Almost lost a year in a second there.
I spent this past Saturday night at Sam’s Boat in Pearland, TX watching Greg play in his cover band to a bunch of, ahem, Pearland sort of folks. And, it just so happened that a man named Kent and I began an interesting (don’t get too excited) discussion about his 29-year old marriage and his relentless wishes for it to end, “finally.” Of course, I became immediately attuned to the signs of a mid-life crisis – the lack of presence of said wife, buff arms, freshly shaven bald head, coifed mustache, a fruity drink, and plenty of winks – and I knew that my friend Kent was on the prowl that night to prove that new love could be found … yes, at Sam’s Boat. And one thing led to another and Kent somehow slipped in the following statement: “Well, you know, it’s easier for men in their 60s to date then for women in their 60s to do so, because women (and then whispered like he was very frightened) just don’t age very well.” Well, I’ll spare you my response, which I am confident would have made my freshman women’s studies professor very proud.
Anyway, the next morning, while performing the daily frantic survey of Ella’s dollhouse (“WHERE ARE ALL MY GUYS,” she screams), I found a very frightening bit of evidence. There, in the dollhouse, was the residing miniature wooden family. And, I was pleased to see that Little sister, Little brother, even Dad, all looked so cheery and fresh faced. Then, to my horror, I took a glance at Mom (pictured below in the yellow shirt). She looked like hell. I mean, hair missing, arms missing, face totally banged up. So, I decided that this called for a little family photo. And, mind you, if Mom looks a couple of centimeters too short, that is only because her left foot was hanging on by a thread and I had to prop her up on her non-arms over the banister.
It turns out that Sassy, our curious dog, had decided a while ago that Mom was super tasty. However, naturally, I decided that, in the world of tiny dollhouse people, what really happened was Mom had saved the rest of the family by bravely battling the horrible beast (Sassy) and took one for the team. Of course, I go to therapy enough to know that I am totally projecting here, but, come on … we all know 7 times out of 10 who it is in the family that often faces the scary beasts of life (barf in the middle of the night, explosive poo, sibling battles, close encounters with the bathtub drain, etc).
So, this is just to say to all you moms and wives and caretakers of anything or anyone, take good care of yourselves and prove to all the Kents out there that the only reason we supposedly age badly (an assertion still up for debate, of course) is because, generally speaking, we tend to, and even perhaps instinctively, face those scary beasts and take one for the team. So, start your week before the official Hallmark Mother’s Day not waiting for the gift certificates or flowers, but doing something that you want to do and that makes you feel like you.
As far as my own life in terms of all of this, I haven’t quite ruled out the possibility that my dogs, Milah and Sassy, are secretly planning my demise through the use of some sort of voodoo doll ceremony. I mean, ever since Ella began finding bliss in toddler rebellion, I certainly have cut back on their walks and I have even, on occasion, forgotten to feed them breakfast. Pray for me.
Happy Mother’s Day. Here’s to what real beauty is truly about ..
Why is it so hard to hang on to the belief that magic can happen? That dreams do come true? I’m not talking picket fences and a big house kind of dream, I’m talking about the dreams that are etched in gold before our feet ever touch the ground for the first time.
I’m surrounded day and night by people who don’t believe … or who have come to believe that dreams are for kids in fluffy tutus and pirate hats. These are the same people that hate it when other people strive on towards seemingly useless pursuits, like artistically infused ways of life, and claim that “they just need to face reality and get a real job.”
Which is why I find it so perplexing, then, that we encourage kids to dream at all. When we ask them what they want to be when they grow up, we fully accept their declarations of brave and seemingly ludicrous future identities. We never look a 4-year old in the eye and say, “You silly you. Firefighters don’t make very much money.” Nope. We pat them on the back and we tell them how brave they will be and how much they will help people in need. In fact, we tell them we are proud of them all the way until they sling their golden tassels over to the other side of their graduation hats.
This, to me, is a great contradiction. I think that most of us in this society view children as the future, as hope, and as all things pure. So, why then are we lying to them? Why are we saying we’re proud of them, when really in the back of our minds we’re thinking, “Good luck on that dream of yours kid. It sure won’t pay the bills.” Why would we set them up for the greatest heart break of them all? Why would we infuse them with all of the soul searching, all of the “just be you” advice, all of the hugs after dance performances, and all of the money spent on lessons and instruments when at the end of the day we don’t believe any of it means anything at all? Why would we do this to a child if we view that child as a solitary being that encompasses all things possible?
Are we really lying to them?
No. Because we don’t really, at the core of who we are, believe that these “fancy” dreams are unevolved. We invest in the dreams of children and we give them space to fly because we want so badly for them to have what we have not: A life lived authentically.
This is why I strongly believe that instead of blindly teaching children to embrace their dreams and reach for the stars, we need to empower them to pursue such authenticity by teaching them to A) never give up; B) stay above debt, financial or otherwise; C) never listen with envy to the beat of another drummer; D) never feel entitled to anything; E) eat their veggies; and F) pray to a source beyond their reach.
Not providing children, and thus ourselves, with these lessons sets them up for failure, which at the end of the day validates our own misery and gives us more reason to believe that growing up means dumbing down.
I’ve been inspired on this topic because of Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open, which I must say is one of the best books I’ve read in a while. It has genius in it, for sure. Agassi’s big struggle in his career was dealing with his own need to hide from himself by being a rebel who never grew up, while simultaneously needing desperatelyto be perfect at his craft. What he learns in the end, however, is that in order to be good at his craft, he has to reveal himself and to never again play with the intention of being perfect. It is within this growth that Agassi learned to “grow up,” as if the sudden rise to a life lived with integrity, stability, and purpose stemmed from unveiling himself in full glory. Growing up did not mean retiring from tennis when he became more and more imperfect at it. No, growing up meant embracing who he was and then becoming an active participant in his own divine calling. It meant seeing “it” through.
Agassi often quotes from his favorite movie about the life of C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands, that “God wants you to grow up.” And Agassi ends his book making sure that his readers understand that growing up is not dumbing down. Growing up has nothing to do with dis-art and everything to do with a well-rehearsed symphony of possibilities and wildest dreams.
Okay, okay, one more story about my crazy kid. I really try to avoid overly exposing her life in my personal online rambling, but … I can’t resist this one …
Last weekend we were at yet another birthday party, to which I dragged a grumbling Greg along. By the way, I’m not quite sure why husbands so frequently get out of these shindigs. Are they too good for fake smiling and overblown compliments about well-behaved children who are far from well-behaved? I don’t think so. So, yeah, Greg came along this time. And boy oh boy did he manage to pick the party to come to. This one was literally crawling with children of all ages. Crawling. I surprised there weren’t kids climbing out of windows just for a gasp of fresh air.
As soon as we opened the front door, the incredibly loud combined sound of 30 toddler mouths and 3,000 toddler toes almost knocked us out of the house. As I looked desperately around the room to find a few parents I knew, I caught a glimpse of moms with their eyebrows permanently cinched together and their bra straps hanging conspicuously off their shoulders, probably the result of heave-hoing too many a distressed child up on their hip and away from the open flames. The few husbands that were there had managed to flock outside, braving the 100 degree September weather and sweating beer cans just to avoid the drama inside. Needless to say, these men seemed to care less that the job of standing outside also required watching children play on the trampoline, a scene that had quickly disintegrated into a full blown wrestling match, minus the referees and rules.
Anyway, this birthday happened to be a “magic” one … which means that the mom went the extra mile and actually hired a professional magician to come and perform for the children. And I’m quite sure that when the hired magic man arrived he must have glanced longingly outside at the sweating beer cans and distracted dads, but instead was faced with the onslaught of crazed girls in tutus running around him the minute he began to set up his pseudo-stage. I remember at one point watching as this supposedly kid-friendly, happy-ass magician completely lost it on the birthday girl and told her sternly that he needed 20 minutes to set-up or else she’d ruin magic for all children …. everywhere. Which then set off the chain of events that included the birthday girl’s mother getting teary-eyed and the other moms around her to continuing to fake smile with one stink-eye looking at the magician, all the while reassuring the hostess that the party was a hit.
Finally, after talking to a billion overwhelmed and disheveled moms about my lack of direction in life and my indecision about whether or not to have another child (they all stare at my belly and ask about “#2″ every time I see them), the magician was ready to start the show, his polyester suit sticking to his overly curvaceous belly and sweat dripping down his rather pasty face. And, surprisingly, the show was pretty good, except for the time when the magician called on an adorable little girl to come up and help him with a “fun” trick and then rather un-kindly asked her to sit down when she got shy about swirling her hips around like a belly dancer. He then asked the group of impressionable, sensitive minds if there was someone who would “actually like to participate.” Then there was the ill-placed music that kept coming on before the “punchline” of his trick occurred. I suppose he was running just a tad behind on previously recorded, cassette-playing program. Nonetheless, the kids were all mesmerized. Except mine who, after the first trick, looked at me and asked when we would be having cake.
The biggest hit was certainly the magician’s final trick. It started with a chalk drawing of a bunny rabbit and then some sort of discussion about what happens when he put the chalk drawing through the middle of a wood box. He opened the box and nothing was there but a chalk drawing staring back at the children. Next, with a knowing smirk, he asked for all of the kids to say the magic words and then, BLAM, a real bunny appeared inside the box. Magic. Yup.
It was at that point that all of the kids stood up on their tippy toes, reached their fingers way up to the sky, and begged, no screamed, for their chance to pet the bunny. Except Ella. I watched as she stood quietly with her hands tucked into her pockets, slinking away into the back of the crowd. One by one the kids stood in line and pet the bunny, which was then followed by the magician handing each child a little magic gift with a magic fish and a magic stick and magic everything. Ella, however, refused to stand in the line to even get the gift. I told her that I would stand with her and hold her hand, thinking she might be appropriately weary of the scary, sweating magician man. Nope. She ran behind me, crying a bit and said that she didn’t want to go near the bunny. Thinking she was being a full-fledged wimp and that I needed to encourage her to overcome this newfound bunny-phobia, I scooped her up in my arms and told her that I would help her pet the bunny, that it was nothing to be afraid of. I then reminded her of all the times she had willingly and eagerly pet a bunny before and this was the same kind of friendly bunny. She started to kick and flail in my arms, causing the nervous moms and drunk dads around us to all cast a judgmental glance of “your kid is weird, everyone likes bunnies.” Needless to say, I walked away from the scene with Ella and went outside to enjoy the serenity that the dads had stashed away for themselves, minus the beer and the wrestling match.
Birthday parties. Groan.
Later that night, Greg and I asked Ella about the bunny, genuinely curious and partially concerned that perhaps some evil bunny had threatened her at school or something. She looked right at us and said, “I like bunnies that come out of cages, not boxes.”
Ha! The kid isn’t a wimp, she’s just skeptical. Bravo. We continued asking her about this conundrum and she explained that it was weird to have a bunny come out of nowhere. I don’t blame her, actually. And, frankly, I approve of her sensitivity to things not clearly logical. My kind of kid. She probably thought it was a robot bunny. Or a ghost bunny. Actually, she probably thought it was Michael Jackson reincarnated, since the topic before bedtime lately has been surrounding her debates about where Michael Jackson went after he died (yeah, I know, I’m in trouble).
The other day Ella and I were walking at one of my favorite places in Houston, The Arboretum. It’s this strange, green, forested, and beautifully serene space in the middle of a buzzing orchestration of freeways and buildings and, well, smog. It exists for me like a page out of a Dr. Seuss book, creeping around in solitary declaration of nature’s very best attempt at surviving despite it all. Which is why, above even its inherent beauty, it has become my very favorite places in Houston. Anyway, I was pushing Ella in the stroller, taking the extra long and looped path, pondering intensely on a few impending life decisions that require my approval, as well as my release into the unknown. Job stuff, life stuff, money stuff … you get the drift.
During this pondering of mine, Ella was sitting quietly, playing with her hoard of “guys” that she had carefully packed away in her socks, shoes, and whatever other portable carrying contraption she created that morning. She was quiet. Content. Every once in a while, she would scream at the top of her lungs, “MOOOOOM! Look! That’s an American Beautyberry!” And after screaming she would climb out of her stroller, carefully retuck her “guys” into their proper holding spaces, walk up to a striking purple berry she had spotted and give me a lecture of not eating them until we ask if they are “poise-ness.” Pardon the aside, but I’m not quite sure where she learned that (Sid the Science Kid, was it you?), but after first thinking that Princess Disney barf-o-rama had once again taken hostage of her brain, I googled the damn thing when we got home and sure enough, that’s its actual name. Needless to say, the walk that day was purely decadent in its silence and overall lack of drama, which also means that I was able to get some productive thinking done (if you could ever call “thinking” productive) and had found my way back into a sort of sunny, creatively-fueled, surrendered, and satisfied state of mind.
And just as we came out of the long and looped path , we came across a massive swamp with a boardwalk-like path floating heavily over it. The trees were suddenly very dense, causing the sun to have to work extra hard in shining through them. Ella immediately jumped out of her stroller and began chasing the little twinkles of light that remained. I followed her closely, watching her shadow jump and disappear. When she got to the end of the path, she turned around and said,
“Mom, when we’re in the shade, our shadows are gone. If we’re in the sun, our shadows come out.”
Think about that one for a minute, folks.
I feel like I’ve got a Zen Buddhist Monk for a child who walks around uttering simple statements that make you just get life. Of course, for her to be an official Zen child, we’d have to sort out those occasional (ha) freak-outs and the daily attachment to suffering. But, no less, her statement was freakin’ profound. And it was perfect timing. Perfect. I had just been thinking about how easy it is to hide away from your life’s truth, finding refuge in the safety of just not taking a chance on it. I was thinking how much easier it is to be blinded from who I really was and to just operate in my life as a robot. Many times I have said how great it would be to get a lobotomy so that the portion of my brain that gives a shit about creative ventures and ambitious dreams would just be rendered useless. Yet, there I was at the Arboretum, being schooled by my daughter once again. Being in the shade is easy. Our shadows don’t show up there. Being in the sun is hard. The dark parts of ourselves .. our resistance to truth and authenticity … have a chance to be seen to there. So, yeah. All we have to do is learn to walk consciously with our shadows, allowing them to play and taunt, but certainly never letting them give us a reason to hide.
I want a typewriter so badly I can hardly stand it. But, I don’t want one of those new-age LCD screen models that are trying to be like a computer. Nope. I want the old fashioned one. I want ink and paper only. I want clickity clack. That’s it.
Don’t get me wrong, typing away on the computer has had its benefits and I am certainly not against the whole practice. Its just that, with the internet looming its heavy presence in the guts of my computer, I feel myself wanting to be alone with my words. I want to be unable to google the definition of a word or to be unable to pull up the online thesaurus in an instant just to find a fancier word than the one my brain provides. I want to be separated from the oodles and oodles of thoughts and ideas and opinions and … the gazillions of more skilled writers than I. I want to write in a space that can be tossed into the garbage forever, but also tucked away in a journal until the pages get yellowed and worn.
This last month I spent in writer’s block. Or at least my only experience of what that sort of block might be. It wasn’t that I was without material … in fact, it was quite the contrary. It was a block rooted in a high volume of what I’d like to officially call “idea traffic.” It was in this little traffic jam that I experienced such an overload of sensations, observations, stories, words, and prose that I could almost literally see each and every one of them fly by me in my brain, waving and screaming “neener neener” like a maniacal toddler. And although I attempted to grab a couple of them by their necks and proclaim them mine, I found myself retracting out of fear or anticipation. It was like a pressure build of up inner demons, a la Ghostbusters in the scene where their “Containment Unit” bursts open and all the ghosts spill forth into the world. I did not want to suffer the damages of that.
The bothersome thing is that now I’m left with this irritating stillness, one marked indelibly with each flashing idea, but completely empty in its tangible state. It’s that feeling that you get when you just can’t remember that actor’s name from that movie and it sits on the back of your tongue taunting you until you give up and relinquish your tired brain to Google. But, unfortunately, I do not yet own a personal Google app for my mobile me, my brain. Which means I am stuck with the irritating silence.
That is until I stumbled upon the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (a la The Legend of Bagger Vance and many others).
He writes, “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”
Need I say more?
What I have garnered from Pressfield thus far, in the few pages I have read, is that every single human being faces a dark force that he has coined as Resistance (with a capital “R”). And that Resistance beckons from us a call to the unspirited, the unlively, the practical, the unfulfilled, the tormented, and the unhealthy way of living. And he assures his readers that the creative life can not be lived unless Resistance is understood and mitigated.
I haven’t gotten to the part in his book about how exactly to overcome Resistance, but I am quite certain that it will be as juicy as these first few pages. However, despite not yet knowing the answer according to Pressfield, I can already feel a shift within myself that totally gets it. It’s like a inborn piece of me, and probably of everyone, that smiles and nods when it hears that freedom can be had. It’s a piece of me that has been sitting around like the Mad Hatter, evading death and destruction whilst waiting for the “right Alice” to appear.
And I think she’s here.
Today, prior to her weekly gymnastics class, Ella declared that she didn’t want to go. That she was “tired” of gymnastics. Seeing as we were literally pulling into the parking lot of the gym at that very moment, I told her that we needed to go to class. I explained that we had made a commitment to go and it was important to go even when she felt like not going. She cried and whimpered. And whimpered some more. I grew conflicted. A part of me was saying, If she doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t need to go. Maybe she’s coming down with a cold.
Maybe she had a bad day. Maybe she needs to rest. I sat in the driver’s seat debating on whether or not I should continue to encourage her to go. And then I thought of Resistance. And, so, into the gym we went. As I put her leotard on she continued to whine and whimper, saying, “Mom, I really don’t want to go. I’m tired of gymnastics.”
“Do you feel sick?” I prodded.
“No,” she replied.
Still conflicted, I asked, “Is it because you want to go home and play?”
“NO,” she said, with her arms crossing over her chest and her bottom lip protruding.
“Well, Ella, then what is it then?”
“It’s because it’s going to take a very long time,” she answered quietly.
The human condition flashed before my eyes and displayed itself in all its glory right there in my little 4-year old’s whining. And that’s when I got it. Because it’s going to take a very long time. That’s Resistance. That’s also demonstrative of our propensity to want our heartfelt desires to manifest themselves like a fairy godmother brings life to a pumpkin. And Resistance apparently sneaks its way into that expectation and demands that we be impatient. That we be lazy. That we be unsatisfied unless we are living our dreams tomorrow. Resistance tells us that anything that takes a long time is not worth our time.
I got it.
Which is why I went home and immediately took out the scraps of what should be a finished writing sample for my graduate school applications. One of which, by the way, was due yesterday. The reason for the procrastination still seems valid, to be honest. I was tired. Work had killed my ambition. Ella went to bed late. I had to clean the house. The dogs had to be walked. Project Runway was on.
But there was also a far more sinister side of the procrastination … I had begun to demonize my own wants and had also begun to doubt my ability. My thought looked like this: How am I going to make a living at writing? A Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing? What are you thinking? You’ll be switching careers in no time, as soon as you discover what everyone else discovers: Dreams are magical thinking.
And, so, the beginning scraps of my writing sample sat idly by, untouched and uninspired. Until tonight.
Oh, and Ella did make it through class. Of course, she also took a couple of unnecessary potty breaks, during which I had to continue to encourage her to finish what she started. And, every time I made eye contact with her while she was on the beam or the bars, she would pull out her sixteen year old face and mouth the words, “It’s taking a very long time.” But, then, as fluidly at the Resistance had taken shape, I watched as she slid into the groove, laughing and flipping and making it through.
Making it through.
And, finally, Pressfield also reminded me of this brilliance:
We are born
without a care
as we grow old
but unaware
as we grow tall
begin to falter
we want to know ourselves
spread love to all
but we fall down cause we are human
yes sweet anger will feed the hunger
yes we push through
just me and you
we made it through the darkness to the light
uh huh we fought
but still we won the fight
oh yes, we stand to gain love
a fantasy for you and me
a beauty light and reality
no need to feel
the proof that something
for all of it is love and harmony
but we falter and yes we are flawed
as we play victim to such conviction
and breathe heavily
both you and me
for the day by day
worried we would fail
how we flailed and we wailed and we screamed in pain
took it step by step
we could not forget the wounds we felt
and how we screamed for help
from the dark, dark nights when you held me tight
and we prayed for light to rescue us
yeah, we were distressed
now we’re nothing less
we are strong
we are blessed
we are united
I’ve been seen. Right through to my guts, then up to my heart, and into my head. And then back again.
As a celebration of my 30th birthday, I went to see a psychic or, as she calls herself, a “spiritual advisor and intuit.” I have to confess that I wanted to go into the meeting skeptically, as to appear to myself and others as a rational, level-headed, and critically thinking adult (not the word “appear”). I even reminded myself just moments before the session of my ever-present gullibility, which has been in tact since I was kid. In fact, just a few years ago, my older brother led me to believe that there existed glow-in-the-dark deer that had been genetically modified by a biotech industry as a way to provide hunters with easier targets (no worries, I was dubious, but still considered it a possibility). And, just the other month, I believed in a story I heard from my hairdresser about a handicapped boy and a Mexican troll so fully that I told everyone I knew, only to then discover it was an urban myth. Needless to say, if there is a way to be gotten, I will be gotten.
However, despite going into the session with skepticism, this woman “had me at hello.” I can’t explain why, to be honest, but I’m guessing it was because she was super chill and wasn’t wearing long and flowing layers of scarves, nor was she bedazzled with spiritual bling. Nope, she could have been my daughter’s teacher, my dentist, my therapist … which is all to say she appeared to be normal. Along with that, once in her presence, I was completely calm, a rare trait that I almost never carry into any type of meeting situation. I think the calming sensation was due in part to this normal, non-tarot card reading appearance and in part due to the fact that she started the session by making me laugh, then proceeded to talk to me about the process, and then she reached out to hold my hands. It was almost clinical, but also totally familiar and friendly.
While this introduction was enough to make me at least feel better about the session, it was her first observation of me that began to chip away at my loosely formed skepticism. After holding my hands, she gently shook her head, chuckled, and commented, “You’ve got me confused. It’s like you are sitting on a fence and your butt is glued. One door is open and another is closed. There’s no question where you need to go, but for some reason you are just sitting on that fence, not going anywhere. And it’s confusing to me. Are you confused?” Then she laughed some more and continued, “You are so creative … in fact, that’s all your energy is … it’s hugely creative. It’s just glowing. And … your imagination is expansive. It’s like …” She paused, thinking about the description she was to use. In my head, I started to imagine the gigantic rabbit hole around which my sprawling mental limbs have been clamoring, desperate not to enter. Then, she broke her silence and said, “Yeah. What I am getting from you right now is that your mind is like Alice in Wonderland. You are Alice. But, you’re not going down the hole. For some reason.” She laughed again, while I sat there trying to remember if I had said something out loud. She continued, “You probably think you’re crazy all the time, with that imagination. But, I’m here to tell you that you are okay. You’re not crazy and your imagination is what is going to make you successful. You might cry more than most. You might get angry over nothing. But, whatever, that’s who you are and your husband loves your for that.”
Oh dear god.
I must continue with stating that if you are a non-believer in these types of experiences, than please feel free to call me gullible. Please feel free to laugh at my ability to give anyone and everyone credit. Please feel free to deem me whatever kind of hoo-hah follower and extremist. Trust me, I’ve already called myself the same things. All I can say is that I was there and I don’t need any more proof than that. The entire session was magical and powerful and exactly what I needed. So, if you believe in God, consider this a moment of divine grace and an answer to prayer. If you believe in science, than consider that maybe this woman googled my name and called my friends and came into my bedroom the night before to steal vital information. Whatever rationalization you need, I’m okay with it. Because all I know is that the hour I spent with this woman was exactly what I needed. And whether it was divinity or a perfectly designed con, it was exactly what I needed.
Anyway.
The rest of the session went along as mysteriously and curiously as its beginning. She knew I was a twin, she knew I had worked as an Expressive Therapist with autistic children, she knew I had thyroid problems, she knew I was considering another child, and she knew my husband was dedicated to me, but confused by me … she knew a lot (and, yes, you scientists out there – I do realize that all of that info may be googable). And she somehow managed to follow my train of thought with such ease that I thought I had been talking … but I hadn’t. Along with all of that, she told me quite a few other amazing things, things I would only know to be true. However, they were so special and so potentially laughable to other people that I am opting to keep those close to my heart only. “Mine,” as Ella would have said when she was 2.
Now, if I haven’t lost you yet and you aren’t sitting there contemplating my insanity, here comes the good part:
While I found her psychic abilities to be impressive and startling, the most powerful thing she had to offer me was a license to imagine. By the end of the session, it felt like someone had peeled away a layer of guck and grime from around my heart, allowing me to re-enter the world as if the power had just turned back on after a bad storm. It just didn’t feel hard to be me anymore. I felt suddenly that it was okay to be Alice. That it was okay to be sensitive. It was okay to be filled daily with stories and images that needed to get out on paper, lest they drive me crazy. It was okay to be unfulfilled by my job. It was okay to not want to be a lawyer (sorry Dad). It was okay to want to stay up late. It was okay to be an over-thinker. It was okay to want to live in a cabin on the cliff of a mountain. It was all okay.
What was deemed as being “not okay” was information that has become oddly liberating. She made it clear to me that I was not to be confused about what I was here to do on this planet, as I already knew (I do?!!). It was also not okay for me to believe that I was physically falling apart anymore, a characteristic that she told me I would soon “outgrow” (I didn’t tell her about my penchant for hypochondria, by the way). Outgrow? What an amazing word, I thought. And I instantly knew that that was exactly what would happen to me. I will outgrow all of this fear. I will outgrow all of this confusion. I will get off the fence.
I’m going to end this odd post by relaying a quizzical event that happened just two days after the visit with this woman: A good friend of ours stopped by over the weekend to give me a birthday present, which was wrapped rather whimsically with blue and purple paper and and a bow much too large for the box. Inside was another smaller box, in which I found a beautiful necklace in the shape of the key. All around the edge of the key were rubies and in the center there was a white gem stone as creamy as a pearl. It hung on a very long and dainty chain, which made it feel feminine and vintage all at once. I put in on immediately and my friend said, “Yeah, I knew that that was the one for you.” The next night, still wearing the necklace, I watched the movie Alice in Wonderland for the first time, curious as to why the psychic had seen me as Alice. And, as I watched the movie, I became engulfed by this strange sense of belonging and clarity. At the end of the movie, without thinking, I reached for the necklace. Looking at it made me chuckle. My key looked exactly like the many keys that kept appearing to Alice during her journey. Additionally, it carried all the colors of the Wonderland … ruby red and creamy white.
So, yeah. There you go. And, for all you scientists, my rational mind would like to know even Carl Jung believed in synchronicity. Just sayin’.
