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Mornings after 7am rattle and crash. Our next-door neighbor has built a new house from the ground up since December 2020. It’s a true test of my spiritual practice to focus on my breath, not the incessant commotion,machinery, and mayhem.

 

We’ve come out of the three days of Halloweentide: Halloween, All Saint’s Day, All Soul’s Day. Tomorrow is a New Moon and the main day of the Hindu festival of Diwali, the Festival of Lights.

 

I’m for it.

 

Yesterday I scrambled, assembling a last-minute ofrenda. I snatched time while completing homework assignments, folding laundry, and checking in with my family about my Dad’s medical appointments.

 

About two months ago, my Dad fissured L3 simply moving a light chair in the yard from one shady spot to a sunny spot. A chair he has likely moved hundreds of times before, with no issue.

 

But like so many things in life, you don’t know when it will be your first or last time. 

 

What we thought was a strained muscle we learned was a fissured L3. With the subsequent pain, he has totally changed into a different man. Where once he was still working 10 hour days as the plant manager of our family’s farm, now he struggles to move from one room to the other.

 

I’m not sure everyone in my family is yet used to this version of my father. He is fragile and brittle as glass. I’m afraid to touch him too hard, fearing he will shatter.

 

His injury has blasted apart my heart. What do I value now? New Rules, as the Bill Mahr sketch goes. The borders of my comfort zones wriggle like amoebas. 

 

He has always mattered but the way we demonstrate it now has changed.

 

What I have with him now is time – something that didn’t exist before. He worked a lot my whole life – his whole life. I think that was his primary identity – as a worker or employee. I imagine he enjoyed being a father and husband but he showed his loyalty to his family by supporting us economically and working.

 

As part of the spiritual exercise I look at the positive aspect of this situation. It is that I have complete and total time with him when I’m with him. There is no competition or distraction. It’s just him and me, he and I, and I don’t ever recall that it’s been like that.

 

That is a spiritual gift.

 

A few weeks ago I thought he was going to die. Not from his injury or the side effects but because I wasn’t sure if he wanted to deal with everything involved with healing. It seemed that, for him, the act and art of healing was too painful.

 

Can you relate?

 

One of my daughters expresses similar sentiments. When I get excited about upcoming birthdays or events, like starting grade 9, she doesn’t show enthusiasm. In fact, the opposite; she says being an adult is hard and she doesn’t see the benefits.

 

(This may be in part to the abundance of t-shirts, bumper stickers, and mugs that say such things as “adulting is hard, i’m going back to bed”. But that’s a conversation for another day.)

 

Would he decide, like my daughter believes, that it is too hard? That healing isn’t worth the work it takes, or that he wasn’t hardy enough for the task?

 

Sound familiar?

 

How many times have you not believed it is worth it to go on? Or not believed that you can? Or wondered what there is to live for?

 

Yet here you are.

 

These are big and good questions.

 

When I underwent chemotherapy I knew I wanted to live for my girls – even for my partner and my parents, in particular for my mother whose mother ascended, after contending with cancer, at age 49 when my mother was 14. Those numbers were identical to my situation and too close to cuddle. Our family didn’t need a repeat of that episode.

 

Praying my treatments would be successful, that my cells would respond favorably, I showed up to the best of my ability, keeping my darker thought for my therapist or other cancer thrivers (IYKYK, as they say).

 

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And so to thoughts of my Dad, darker days, colder nights, what matterst most these days and the ofrenda and Dia de los Muertos and Seasons of Joy.

 

The paingriefdoubt exist without much help or prompting from us. 

 

That’s why Seasons of Joy are so important. Cultivating celebrations and expressions of elation, particularly the small and not-Pinterest-worthy, matters. If we hold ourselves back from feting our lives until they are perfect or Pinterest-worthy, we won’t do it. 

 

But we must. Because this is what we have, what’s in front of us and within us, a holy spirit that yearns to rejoice.

 

You can order the tamales or pan de muertos from the hot deli at your local mercado or bodega, you can watch Muppets Haunted Mansion a few days after Halloween while you sort socks. It still counts. It definitely matters.

 

Social media has created social pressure unlike we’ve ever experienced. We are heading into a season associated with the biggest pressure cooking of all – Thanksgiving and the Holidays.

 

Can we give it a rest? Yes, let’s do our best, spending our time together making cookies or pies, but let’s remove the perfection expectation. 

 

And after the year we’ve all had, didn’t we learn something about what really matters? It’s time to let go of the filters, likes, followers, and “friends” and Be Real. 

 

Be with your people and pets, more tuned into what brings you pleasure. 

 

You’ll discover your true pleasure by slowing down and listening to your people and to yourself. Ask yourself, what brings you warmth and lightness. Do more of that more often.

 

The road to peace is cobbled with rocks and roots. It twists and turns away from the crowds affording you a tremendous, spacious view. 

 

It seems it’s become super popular – Day of the Dead. Perhaps people who love Halloween or Fall, are like me, they want to keep the Season of Joy going.

 

We can say that Day of the Dead is an amalgam, a mashup, or a remix. 

 

Ancient practices of the indigenous people from the area of Oaxaca + Spanish Conquistadors + Roman Catholicism (and all its rituals, candles, and incense) + the Mexican Diaspora +Pumpkin Spice Latte = Dia de los Muertos.

 

Or at least that is what it seems when I see the glut of people with their faces painted like skulls.

 

And just like any good remix, the best elements of the originals are combined with current cultural tastes.

 

Lots of people get mad at this – the term thrown around is appropriation. 

 

I don’t mind. I think it’s the way a culture, society, and people evolve. I understand that the cultures of origin have suffered when they celebrated or expressed their sacred traditions. 

 

But perhaps we can consider, is it better for the world if more of us learn about, thus respect, the customs of our global neighbors?

 

Certainly, some will and some won’t. There will be many mistakes along the way as we come to understanding. The hope is that we can come to understanding, one small step at a time.

 

So I’ve been thinking about Dia de los Muertos and what it means as a white, Mexican woman. 

 

The parts of Mexico from which I hail (Sonora and Nuevo Leon), do not originally celebrate this custom. I’ve spent the majority of my life in the United States makes me want to celebrate even more.

 

My mother just told me a story of when we first moved here. We were in a store and she spoke to me in Spanish. A fellow shopper scolded my mother for doing so. 

 

I forgot my Spanish for many years, and have had to relearn it. When my daughters were born I was determined to teach them Spanish. For many years I did, until they started spending more time away from the home and with English speakers. They have forgotten it, though the seeds are there, perhaps waiting to regerminate. 

 

And so, with people angry about appropriation, am I allowed to celebrate this event that honors the power of family? 

 

The point is to bring comfort in dark days. And as the light diminishes and the darkness increases, isn’t this the most important thing?

 

We’ve all been through some dark days, lately. Some of us more than others. Who has the heart to deny joy where there has been so much grief?

 

So light the candles, set the flowers, cut the papel picado. Find the photos of your precious ones who have ascended. Maybe serve a little shot of mezcal o tequila. O una cerveza o atole. Lo que te agrada. And tell a story or two.

 

Bow your head in honor and humility, for your people and the impact they made on you, for the cycles of life, for cold, dark days, and for knowing that there is always light.

They say write what you know.

Or don’t wait for it to be perfect just get started.

Or great is the enemy of the good.

 

I’ve been waiting for manymanymonthsnow to get started because I didn’t have the photos uploaded, or the social media organized, or the email newsletter locked in or didn’t know what to say.

But I know I want to write again. I know that writing helps me clarify my thoughts and discover what there is to say.

I watched a video about the ceramic sculptor, Tip Toland. She creates these sculpture of humans, mostly naked, realistic. What we might call “imperfect”…so human they are disturbing.

Why?

Because we aren’t used to seeing such vulnerability and humanity on display.

In today’s filtered, online, curated presence, it seems that raw nakedness is unorthodox and inspiring.

In addition to their lifelikeness, Toland’s sculptures put the viewer on edge.

We’ve become professional mask-wearing, personas, highlighting what we deem the best, hiding the rest.

Are any of us real anymore? We display a self on social media, to our family and friends, to our co-workers, peers, and acquaintances. If we can sufficiently quiet the distractions and demands of the exterior life, can we hear the call of the real self? Can we bear the sound of our souls? Can we bare them?

Toland’s sculptures strive to show an honest look at what it is to be human. The statues are edgy in that viewing them puts us on edge, makes us feel tense, or nervous. They are bold and provocative, challenging us – no, begging us – to look, and by looking to become vulnerable to the experience of being. Here are wrinkles, fat folds, imperfect teeth, genitalia, postures deemed “improper”. Here are tantrums and jesters. Here is pain, concern, confusion, and glee. Here are signs of bright souls radiating from the figures.

Here is humanity. Here are children of the earth.

Toland summons us to lean into the difficult, grabbing us and holding us, letting us in, inviting us to see more. Through the experience of her models, she urges us to be vulnerable. To feel as her figures feel. To imagine us in them.

Some days we awake to life, to its beauty and joy. Other days, we are overwhelmed with it all. On that we can depend.

Can we bare the truth of the human experience? Can we be vulnerable as Toland’s forms?

 

Her sculptures inspired me to start again.

During this month of November, usually National Novel Writing Month, I’m going to write on the blog (and post on my social media) every day. Something small, something large, but something, to get back in the habit.

But not to chase perfection, but to bare the truth of my human experience. It can be so lonely and so fake.

I want to, as Tip Toland says in her video, “Be the paintbrush in Your hand”.

Seasons of Joy has simmered in my mind for a few years now. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but maybe I do.

It’s the act of reflecting, during each season of our life and of the year, to discover and express joy. I’m going to find it here.

May we all remember that we have something to say or create. That creation can heal or help. We must first be aware and then express, in raw nakedness, without fear of perfection.

I’m looking for non-Pinterest-worthy moments. The Be Real moments, and to express the joy within them.

May we discover Seasons of Joy together.

It’s the one-year Cancer-versary of my surgery. Coming up to this date, I wasn’t too worried, or overwhelmed. I wasn’t *marking it* the way I marked my chemo anniversary dates.

I knew it was coming but with life rolling out “back-to-normal” I had a full day running Thing Two to camp, going to the gym myself, taking the dog to the vet and then to the beach, making dinner, handling the laundry.

Who has time to think when you’re banging around life like a pinball?

But this morning, after meditating, when I sat down to write my Morning Pages, a very long-form poem poured out of me.

I cried as I wrote most of it.

As the very famous song from “Free to Be You and Me” goes, crying gets the sad out of you. 

So much sad, I didn’t even realize I was hanging onto this much sad.

Sad and scared.

I’ve been following more women on Instagram…women who are experiencing Triple-Negative Breast Cancer…the same kind I had. Many women are on the other side and are thriving. Some are in the middle of their treatment, and though they are keeping their chins up, they are struggling. For some of them, the cancer has metastasized. These women are showing us how to live.

Honestly, it is scary for me to follow these women. Logically I know I can’t get cancer from being around people who have cancer, but something deep down in my lizard brain rears up. I get scared.

I’ve been there. I don’t want to go there again.

And I’m still close enough to it, that…well, it’s like that terrible roommate or romantic partner or co-worker that you had. Maybe they aren’t physically in your space anymore, but the memories are still fresh and you are still wary and weary.

When I woke up from my surgery, the first words I remember saying were, “I’m alive!”

I sat up, took a deep breath, like I had been underwater, and said, “I’m alive.”

I heard other people as they woke up. They didn’t say that. One man said, “Where are you going with that snowball?!” Another woman said, “Bring me a carafe of honey violets.” Another voice, further down in the recovery salon, whispered, “Shhh…they are coming.”

But I said I’m alive.

I am so ready to be alive. And I didn’t know how much I had the fog of death surrounding my experience…living way down there in the triune brain, the lizard brain where fear, flight, and fight live.

Here is the long-form, free form, first, rough draft, poem…

 

3am

Alone at 3am

Alone in a house full of people

in a house full of love

 

One daughter rumbles in her bed,

a bear, wrapped in a hive of blankets

and stuffies

Only her hobbit feet visible from one end

her cocoa-colored curls spill from the other.

 

The other also

snuggles deep into a navy-blue cave

dark as deep space

not a glimmer of light enters the room

lest her sparse sleep be disturbed.

 

They are warm and safe and

unaware

I hope.

Shielded as they have been by us

and their youth and stories

where everything ends well

nothing overly perilous

and even if the mother dies at the beginning

the daughters persevere in the end

tied with a pretty bow or fancy dress.

So far their life has been a stocking hung on the mantle in anticipation

knowing with certainty, it will be filled

the way they know the sun will rise in the morning

the way they know there is food when they want it, a hug if they need it.

disappointment, fear, and

uncertainty has sprinkled grains in their life

so few times

they can’t recognize the taste

subtle as saffron.

 

He snores, his dense form reassuring in its

heft and weight. These 3am moments when he can lay in lightness, allowing the night to lift his spirit away from here.

He too is warm and alive,

filled with worries

that his wife might die

and the what-ifs that come with

what-then?

 

That I might die.

 

It’s nothing that any of us talk about

nothing we mention or discuss.

 

We take it as only one can

One-Day-At-A-Timing it

Letting-Go

Letting-God/ing it

While we pray incessantly, as instructed by St. Paul

subconsciously

the most powerful one-word prayer ever uttered by the

distraught and desperate.

Please.

 

Please

 

Please

 

In whispers, while smiling tersely and tensely, pretending everything is all right

while picking up the dog shit

and sorting the socks

watching the May Grey fold the skyscraper’s outline into the distance

grey buildings indistinguishable in the horizon.

 

Please

as we wait for dinner to arrive, delivered by a well-intentioned neighbor

as the flowers fade

as the blood results return

as the stack of gifts rises above the table in May

a reminder that things are atypical

like the lump near my heart.

 

Please

 

Please, do not let history repeat itself, leaving my daughters the way my mother was left

Please, let me see them grow

let me be assaulted by the teenage years

let them rail against me, resist me, let them rebel against my rules, run from me

let me be there when they return, mouth shut, arms open to

embrace their fragile bodies – now i know just how fraglie –

let me rub their backs while they sleep

let me

Please

 

I’m not ready.

 

I certainly wasted some of my precious time.

Is that true?

Maybe that is living too—

the drunken nights, road trips, hot wings and chocolate cake, movies and

museums

the gardens, started and abandoned and

replanted again with new intentions and

new hope

puzzles assembled, recipes made

closets cleaned, clothes and relationships and jobs and books discarded

because I’m not that person anymore.

Please

Allow me to be the person I was born to be.

Give me a chance!

I barter, alone at 3am

Please.

I want to live.

If I follow the treatment

If I obey

If I’m a good girl

Mother May I?

I

will

gladly endure this pain and fear and doubt

for the chance, for another pass at

Life.

June 1 and though I know June follows May, I am often bewildered when it does arrive.

June, is the mid-way point of the year. We are in the last weeks of Spring. Summer isn’t official until June 20th this year. And just as I do in December, I look back over the last few weeks of Autumn and ponder what I’ve done and who I’ve become, I’m here on the cusp of Summer and thinking the same thing.

Mid-Year Course Correction

Finals are over. I worked hard all semester and am taking a much needed pause before Summer Starts.  I’ve come to the solitude, the heat, the silence, of the desert.

I’m here for the healing. I’ve got new art supplies, face masks and serums, bath salts, two new-to-me books from the Little Lending Library, and lots of leafy greens. I’m ready.

Or so I think. 

I’ve bopped around the space, aimless. What am I doing here?

What am I doing?

I take out my Passion Planner from my bag, look over the last few months – mostly empty save for a few dentist appointments and major project due dates. 

The rest of the year rolls out as sparse as these dunes. A few dates are filled in: Thing One and Thing Two’s 8th Grade Promotion, Father’s Day, a trip to Disney, River Rafting. 

That’s all external. Those are things. Doing. Busy.

But something else lives under the surface of that doing, just as in the heat of the desert life stirs. That thing stirs and wonders. It wants to stretch and explore. It asks the questions: What else? What if?

I made some adjustments this semester: I didn’t take as many classes because I needed exercise more. I’ll still end up in the same spot, starting the Master program in January 2022. 

I didn’t need to overextend myself this semester. I almost said kill myself, but I don’t say things like that anymore having come close to death. I took the classes I needed, classes I wanted, and still had time to walk our Norwegian Elkhound, Maeve, at Fiesta Island a few times a week. I met friends for walks, enjoyed BBQs at my parents’ house. I got fresh air and sunshine. I grew in strength.

But without the focus of classes, assignment, and projects I feel unmoored.

So I try some plans on for size. 

I’d like to visit both sides of my family in Mexico. We are all vaccinated now. I’d like to take The Things to meet my Dad’s side of the family. I’d like to go with my Dad so he can walk us through his village, tell us stories about the people he knew, the places he went, and the things he did. My Father will be 80 next year. The time to do it is now. 

But is it safe for me to travel? Even with the vaccine, it’s possible I’m still at risk, my immunity compromised by the cancer treatments of last year. But after everything that happened last year, the desire to travel feels urgent and necessary. 

Is it?

I want to start training for the runDisney Dopey Challenge. It’s been a dream of mine for years. I’d like to run it in conjunction with the advent of my 50th Year in December. But runDisney hasn’t released any information. I’ll be starting from scratch. I haven’t run since B.C. – Before Cancer, Before Chemo, Before COVID. I’d like the Things to run the 5K and the 10K with me. I’d like to have that as a goal. I’ll only be 50 once. I want to do this. 

Is it possible?

I need to earn some money. God willing, I’ll start my Masters program in January of 2022 and it’s not going to pay for itself. I’ve thought of working part-time at Target or Old Navy. I’m sure I could get promoted quickly. But then I think I could restart my Arbonne business. After so  many years of being a business owner, I would rather work for myself.

Should I?

And my writing? My book? I started the book B.C. and left it. I restarted in April, right around mid-terms when the projects got more intense. I write every day, just not toward the story. The story feels like it’s pulling away from me like the wisps of a dream when morning . I could spend this month contemplating The Universe and return to the story in July.

Can I?

I have an appointment with my oncologist this month. Just a check in. Just in case. 

It feels like baiting the devil to make plans. Something could happen. 

But something can always happen, I reason with my Lizard brain. And nothing is happening right now. I am safe. I can make choices. I choose to breath. 

The concerns stir, too. Concerns mingle with hope like desert creatures: rabbits and vipers, owls and mice. 

I’ve got to remember to let the light stream over both to concerns and the hopes, illuminating the path, not letting my lizard mind mistake sticks for sidewinders. 

Everything waits for me. Everything I was and want is there for the choosing. Still as the desert that stirs with life. 

I flip the pages of my planner, vast with possibility. I use pencil on some dates, just in case. 

Just in case I can.