My House

     It's a snow day in my city... something that hasn't happened in 25 years. This means many things, but one thing is that all of the schools are shut down today and tomorrow because of the "worst spring blizzard in decades". After living through the worst winter also in decades, trudging through the snow in subarctic temperatures daily to my car to drive to work on icy roads, I feel like I've been given a surreal gift -- two days of living outside of normal. My educator self can abandon her routine for the next few days and do whatever she wants. Although I like my job, I welcome this mandate thrust upon us all by the city: Stay Home.

    At the moment, the snow is falling only lightly, teasing us, making us wonder what it's going to do next. It was raging earlier in the day though, rapidly covering everything that had only recently melted. I watch the thin wispy flakes playing around outside my window and have a little chuckle, followed by a zen moment of sorts. I am reminded of the power of weather, of snow, wind, and rain, and of all of the other things that nature has in store for us, things that we can't stop from happening. My zen reflection involves an aspect of surrender for sure, and I am well aware that I sit from a position of privilege to ponder this all from my cozy house. But ponder I will. Because I am good at that sort of thing. 

    Just like I've been at the mercy of the weather, so too have I been at the mercy of my house this past winter, and I don't think this is going to end anytime soon. My house is 113 years old and although is still going strong and is blessed with an amazing bone structure and overall good health, her age is no longer a well-kept secret. There have been too many signs in the last while, too many giveaways that can't be ignored. They pile inside and upon her centenarian frame, screaming,  "Notice me, you idiot. Tend to what needs fixing, and tend to it now... or else!" 

    The signs are numerous and varied. Cracks of all sizes, shapes and depths run along ceilings and walls. Most are small, thin, almost imperceptible and require my reading glasses to fully see them. But some are not small. Some are strangely large and filled with a meaning I struggle to know. They require no reading glasses. They are the ones yelling at me as I pass, gliding innocently along in a room. I say innocent because that is how I feel. Because I am not the one who did this. It is being done to me. This aging house is doing it, despite all of the caregiving I've done. She invites the mice in through the basement, and the squirrels in through the roof. She creates water stains on a patch in the kitchen. She makes paint buckle in odd places, nothing extreme, but just enough to notice. She lifts shingles off the roof and lets the water in. She causes faucets to drip. She creaks and makes bizarre noises when I'm trying to enjoy the quiet. She basically does her own thing lately and doesn't seem to give a damn about me. 

    So, recently, I was ready to abandon her. I emailed my realtor (the one who found this ancient beauty for me) in the midst of yet another domestic crisis and told her I might be ready to sell. That day, my house had decided she couldn't take the extreme wind chill anymore and the pipes in the upstairs bathroom froze. Although this was nothing new since I had experienced it off and on over the past decade and knew from experience that it would likely be brief, I felt something inside of me snapping. It didn't help that the pipes in the downstairs bathroom had also been frozen at this point for well over 2 months (worst winter in decades remember), or that a part in my new dishwasher had also frozen and burst, and I was waiting for it to be repaired as well. It didn't help that things just kept happening, breaking, cracking, and freezing. It didn't help that she was 113 fucking years old I guess.

    So in a moment of weakness and frustration, mostly for having to take care of all things house related alone, being a single woman, I reached out to my realtor. I was ready to take the plunge, to get rid of all homeowner responsibilities for good. I was ready for modern, clean, and slick rooms, and walls with no cracks. I wanted contemporary, and wanted to join the times. I was looking forward to a future of no longer worrying about what my 113 year old house would be up to next, and what I would have to do to handle it. I was ready for apartment or condo living. So I arranged a time for the realtor to come and assess my house, and I told my son. I said that the house had served us well for the past 11 years but that it was time to move on now as we were entering a new phase of our lives. I felt emotional but spoke rationally, plainly, surprising myself with my logical arguments. Maybe this wouldn't be so hard after all. 

    Then something happened to change the tangent I was on. I think I started to fall in love with my house all over again. Looking through the condo listings that my realtor sent, I felt uneasy inside. The same thing happened when I scrolled through current apartments for rent on the internet. It just didn't feel right. Try as I might, I couldn't see myself or my son in those spaces, even in their sparkling perfectness. And when I did see us, it was all of the things I knew would annoy me-- like balconies overlooking parking lots, or hearing the neighbours' footsteps overhead as I tried to sleep, or smelling someone else's cooking as it wafted under my door-- basically all of the things I'd experienced a long time ago when I did my share of apartment living. Things that were part of another era and that I didn't want to revisit. So I decided to stay in this house and to keep looking after her as I'd looked after her for almost 12 years. For awhile longer anyway.

    Since I made my decision, I've felt a lightness that I haven't felt in awhile. I know there are things that need doing around here and that my 113 year old host won't be happy until I do them. The difference is that I no longer feel like I need to go into battle with my house every time something needs tending to. So I made a few preliminary phone calls to get the ball rolling. I'm not deluded, I know there will be more phone calls, decisions and projects to tackle as long as I choose to remain in this house. But the lightness means I'm okay to do those things for the time being. More than okay really. I look forward to sinking my body into my old comfy couch in my front porch this summer with a good book, as I do every summer. The porch might be my favourite room in the house with its old windows and doors draped in character and cradling me in a warm embrace. I'm just not ready to give that up. 

    

    

My Son Turned 18 The Other Day

     My son turned 18 two days ago, and I've been walking around in a bit of a surreal state ever since, which is kind've baffling to me. I mean, I knew this day was coming. Things crept deliberately and consistently towards it, like they always do. Life happened, as it always does, and here we are... he is now 18, and I am now 53. It all makes sense because it happened the way it's supposed to happen. But I'm baffled nonetheless. The boy grew up. It wasn't an instantaneous process. So why does it feel like it was? Why does it feel like it was just last week that I was cuddling his 4 year old self, cozy in his bed, reading a story to cap off the day? I blame my memory. It's playing tricks on me.

    Lately, my memory won't quit. Thoughts, images and feelings have been weaving themselves through me, at random hours of the day and night. A few nights ago, I got up at 3am for a routine trip to the bathroom, crawled back into bed and thought I'd just drift off to sleep again as I usually do, but no go. My memory decided to do it's magic, rendering me wide-eyed in the dark. Suddenly, we were both about 10 years younger, my son and I, and I had a full-on memory of a ritual we had back then, one that I now see as a beautiful thing because of its simplicity.     

    In this particular snapshot, we are both in the living room in our house, on a pull-out sofa. The snow is fiercely blowing outside and we can see its frantic dance through the windows as we look out from our cozy refuge within. The sofa bed is the focal point of the room, and my son and I (and our dog Licorice) are tucked under blankets, propped up on pillows, and having one of our favourite kinds of days: A Stay-At-Home-Day. His 7 or 8 year old hands are holding a DS device, or an xbox controller. I sit beside him, teacup in hand, reading. We are each doing our own thing in this snapshot, but we are doing our own thing together. The feelings this image generates in me are lovely ones- calmness, coziness, contentment- and the act of being together in this space is precious to me. 

    I created this ritual shortly after we moved into the house, so my son would have been 7 years old then. It was something that happened every few Sundays in the winter months. I'd either decide it would be a stay-at-home day, or he would request one. We would pull out the sofa together, set it up with blankets and pillows and proceed to hang out there together for the afternoon and into the early evening. We ate snacks and dinner there, watched movies there, read, played board games, or sat side by side doing our own thing separately. The activities varied, but they all happened nestled under blankets on the sofa bed. Our homebody selves loved it.

    When I asked my son what he wanted to do on his actual birthday (apart from the family celebrations we already had, and the birthday friend outing), his request was simple. He wanted me to order sushi and watch 4 episodes of Game of Thrones with him. I've been watching the series with him for the past few weeks even though my sensitive self doesn't deal well with violence, gore and brutality, partly because he asked me repeatedly to do it and I caved to stop the harassment. But deep down, I know the main reason I'm doing it is to spend time with him, to have him nearby, to be with him in the cozy space of our living room, like we used to do when he was younger. The real reason is because time is doing that train racing thing again lately and I sometimes feel instant surges of panic as I realize my son is one day going to jump on that train and leave my house, likely for good. Although I want him to be able to leave and thrive out there in the world, and will encourage it, part of me also wants to cling and hold him tightly, inhaling the scent of him and not letting go.

    So, sitting there together eating sushi and watching the show the other night, my memory jumped back again to our stay-at-home days together when he was a child, and I was filled with intense love and sadness all at once. My eyes lingered for a moment on his almost-fully grown adult self, while my memory played its tricks, morphing him into that precious 7 year old boy. I asked him if he remembered our stay-at-home days and he answered, "Of course". My hope is that one day, his memories of our ritual will fill him with the same sense of peace, contentment and love that fill my heart whenever I look back to that time in our lives. I hope that the coziness, predictability and togetherness of our stay-at-home days will always remain in his adult self, and that he can turn to it in his memory whenever he needs to. I hope too that he never loses his child self as he ventures out into the world independently, as the beautiful young adult that he has become. 

    

The Truth About Hallmark Movies

     Well it's that time of year again... Hallmark Movie time. For me anyway. I've decided to explore my relationship with this curious thing- the hallmark movie- one that I think falls into the love/hate camp and that I can't seem to give up just yet. 

    To date, I have seen dozens, and then more dozens, of hallmark movies. This has happened over the past five years or so. I was never into these shows in the past, didn't even really know they existed, but for some reason, discovered them later in life. It probably started innocently enough one day with a lazy perusal through the Women's Network channel. I likely clicked on a hallmark movie one holiday season, and I'm not sure I've been the same since. 

    I don't mean this in a cosmically huge way though. It's not like these movies have transformed me, or enriched my life for the better really. I haven't changed fundamentally as a person as a result of watching single people turn into cozy couples over the span of two hours, over and over again. I haven't been the same because my initial hallmark movie experience then turned into a ritual that I haven't been able to ditch, even though I sometimes think it is in my best interest to do so. Which brings me to this idea that I have come to believe I am in some sort of dysfunctional relationship with the Hallmark Movie, one that teeters on that line between love and hate, every time I watch one, or even think of one. 

    Let's start first with the hatred part, shall we, so that I can then end this exploration on a positive note? I hate the sappiness, the cheesy lines, the fake acting, the predictability, the stunning good luck that always seems to land in the main characters' laps, the Christmas cheer, the Mr Rogers neighborhood feel. I hate the syrupy sweetness of it all, in essence the unreality of it all. I hate immersing myself in that sweet bubble of happiness because I know that real life doesn't usually work out the way it does in hallmark movies. I hate it because part of me resents it maybe, resents that it's not real, feels cheated because I want what they have... or I think I do... have been told I'm supposed to want that anyway by the world I inhabit. I'm supposed to want someone to suddenly appear before me and fill me up in all the right places with a wholesome kind of love, one that never ever includes sex (or even kisses for that matter) on a first, second or third date, one that is just simply quite nice. I think that sarcastic, biting, critical me might hate the niceness of it most of all.

    But then... the love... Enter the me who loves these movies, can't get enough of them, apparently. She sits down, on the sofa under her warm fuzzy blankets, in her pjs, with her fake fireplace glowing in the room while she watches. There she is- that me- tuning in for the zillionth time, waiting for the magic to fill her. Is it the magic of the predictable? Is there magic in the predictable? I begin to think there just might be. It dawns on me that this is why I love hallmark movies... I love the predictable endings. I love their fluffy, pretty wrappings and bows, how in the end, everything- and I mean everything- is perfectly wrapped up. I love the final kiss-- which is usually the first kiss incidentally (what is up with that?), and the fake snow falling around the soon to be lovers (because as I said earlier, they haven't been lovers up to this point and may well end up being sexually incompatible, but I digress...)... I love that things always work out in the end, and that everyone is nice and happy and filled with good cheer. Nice, sentimental, passionate and sweet me loves all of that. She exists as much as the previously mentioned critical me does. 

    So there is is, the truth about Hallmark Movies: They are both awful and beautiful all at once. They are gratingly annoying and a balm to my world-weary soul, at the same time. They are the relationship I can't get out of because as much as it irks me, it also fills me to the brim with sweetness. I guess the sweetness overrides the sharp cynicism within, most of the time. This is probably what it's all about for me in the end-- I watch the movies because I need to keep in touch with my syrupy sweet side, for fear that she'll disappear forever if I'm not careful. And I guess that's why I'll no doubt be sitting on my couch tonight, or some other night this week, tv remote in hand and wondering who is going to fall in love with whom this time. And I'll click on the movie, sit back and relax in the delicious sugar of it all.

    

    

Letting Things Be As They Are

     I'm reading "Awakening the Buddha Within" right now and I came across a part in the book the other day that resonated with me, "In Buddhism, there is a rather unique word that translates as 'suchness'. It means vital, living truth itself, here and now, right before our very eyes-- the 'isness' of things exactly as they are" (69). The author goes on to talk about finding the place within ourselves that is "the ultimate refuge, the ultimate practice of letting go-- the art of allowing things to be as they are" (70). Such a simple idea, to allow things to be as they are, and yet so hard to do, really. Such a short and nifty new word-- isness-- and yet heavy with meaning.

    I began to think of my own "isness", and how I deal with it... weekly, daily, by the minute. Do I notice things as they are? Or do I try to cover them up? Or run from them? Pretend they aren't happening? Do I push back against those things? Or do I just let them be? Is there joy in the noticing, when I do notice? I began then to think about all of the people in my life, family members, friends, coworkers... and how they deal with their own "isness". The next thing I knew, I found myself on a tangent of wondering about other people on the planet, entire countries and continents and whether or not they've mastered "the art of allowing things to be as they are". As I thought more about this idea, I realized that often, for many people, we are ok with things as they are as long as those things make us feel good and comfortable. It is only when the things that are cause us pain, suffering and discomfort that we begin to have problems with them.

    One of the reasons I started this blog was to explore the state of life without wine, having come to the conclusion that one of my main default ways of dealing with things as they are was to meet friends in a lounge and order a crisp white, or two, or three. Some days more. The wine blurred the edges of things as they are, and this was especially welcome when those things resulted in uncomfortable feelings. When I didn't like things as they were, I had a ready solution. I could blot out my own isness. I definitely wasn't allowing things to be as they are- not without reacting to them anyway. Because it is one thing to notice things exactly as they are, and to not dress them up or down to suit your whims, but it is quite another to accept those things and to choose not to react to them. 

    A lot of this seems to be about acceptance and nonreaction, and I think this is the hardest part. This is all within reason of course. I'm not advocating that we accept and refuse to react to mistreatment, abuse or other unhealthy situations. What I'm talking about here is the grey, that place between the black and white, between the highs and lows, that place where most of life and living takes place... maybe this is  the "isness". There is a quiet power and groundedness in both accepting things as they are as well as choosing to not react to them in that moment, in just letting things be, and in noticing. I guess if you can do this, then you may well be on the road to inner peace. Enlightened beings have known this for thousands of years, and it's not like they have kept this a secret from the rest of us. But at the end of the day, allowing things to be as they are, without reacting to them is just plain hard. Often. For many people.

    I'm a ways away from achieving this on a regular basis, but I am trying, and I believe I'm making progress. It gets easier as I get older, for many reasons. One of my main tools is meditation, and I definitely wouldn't be where I am in terms of my own personal growth if I didn't have that. So I will continue to sit still, in the dark, breathing in and out, sitting with my "isness" and trying my best to accept it and not to react, because I know deep down that there is wisdom in all of that. I just know.

Bruises

        I had a disturbing thing happen to me recently. My heart was pulled from my chest, toyed with, lightly bruised and then put back in its place to go on with life as usual. I was a willing participant in this, I will admit, in the sense that I opened the door to my heart after keeping it shut for a few years, allowing entry to the eventual bruiser. I let him in, so I guess that was a risk I took. That's the thing about risks-- they're risky. You really have no guarantees when you take a risk how things will turn out in the end. One possibility is the end result won't be pretty. Knowing this, we sometimes choose to quit while we're ahead, protecting ourselves, and our fragile hearts. But sometimes, we decide to jump in anyway, to push aside the cautionary warnings because we feel that maybe the risk will be worth it in the end. That's what I did.

    I made a decision in the last few months to actively start looking for a romantic partner so I signed up for a dating site. This is not a new thing for me. Over the past 10 years, since my split with my ex, I've been on several dating sites at various times. I've even had a few relationships that came from these sites, but none lasted longer than a year. For most of the last decade, I've actually been off dating sites, doing my own thing. The past 3 years, I wasn't involved with anyone, by choice. I had decided I needed to work on myself, tackle some of my demons and work through my yucky baggage. I had a deep-seated inkling that if I really wanted to ever find a healthy relationship with a man, that I needed to heal some of my own crap first. So I did that. Fast forward 3 years, mission accomplished and I now felt ready to look for the love of my life again, so there I was, once again on a dating site. 

    I wasn't surprised when the usual clientele began presenting themselves to me. Typical of my experiences on there (and especially since turning 50), most of the attention directed my way was either from men quite a few years older than I, or from men in my age group who I didn't find physically attractive. The few men I found intriguing enough to message never messaged me back. Until one day, that changed. I received a message from a man not quite 5 years older (so better than the usual 8-15+ year range), and the bonus was that he was articulate, attractive, and seemed to have much of his stuff together. He was also incredibly charming so that didn't hurt. We agreed to meet so we could assess the situation in person and were both pleasantly surprised and thrilled when we discovered mutual attraction on multiple levels. This led to of course more texting, now of the regular kind, and plans to meet again of course, which we did, a few times. 

    We lived 2 hours away from each other and were both aware at the outset that the long distance factor was a bit of a barrier, but we both felt we had quite the connection on several levels- physical, mental, emotional- that we were willing to go with it, knowing that such connections are rare. Because of the distance factor, and because it was summer, our next meetings were lengthier than they might have been had we lived in the same city... dates that went on for 24 hours instead of the usual evening out for example. And those epic dates were pretty amazing. But it wasn't just the physical time together that was fabulous, it was all the texting in between that was off the charts incredible, as this man spread on the charm so thick I couldn't see straight. Truth be told, I didn't want to see straight. I wanted to be enveloped in that plush blanket of  lovey goodness. And tightly. There was, however, a very tiny voice inside my gut somewhere deep that said, "Hmmm this guy seems just a little too perfect. Be careful, because you know perfection isn't a real thing, not in the realm of humans anyway, so...". But that little voice wasn't strong enough for me to hear it fully, and that was when I decided "Fuck it, I'm just going to let him grab my heart if he wants to".

    In retrospect, it was easy for me to make that decision because of the things he was saying to me, both via text and in person. He appeared as into me as I was into him, in fact more so.  Analyzing his words and actions (as we analyzers are wont to do), I came to the conclusion that there was no doubt that this man was moving full steam ahead, and pulling my heart along with him. At times, it was hard for me to keep up with it all, mostly because I couldn't believe this was happening to me. I walked around in a daze, unable to believe my good luck. There was though, through it all, a bit of a sense that things were moving a little too quickly, that this guy had seemed to catapult into my life, and that I had taken on too-perfect dimensions in his eyes. I would sometimes say to myself, "If he can fall this quickly into you, he can probably fall quickly out of interest as well", using the laws of physics as my guide. I kept those thoughts to myself though, and allowed myself to be wrapped in a delicious cocoon of budding love.

    And then there was no cocoon. Just like that, it vanished, only to be replaced by some casual, distant text interchanges in a matter of hours. The temperature emanating from my newfound love interest went from hot to lukewarm to cool without warning. I was suddenly freefalling and not sure where I was going to land but I knew it wasn't going to feel good, wherever that was. When I questioned this new behavior, he denied it was occurring. At first. When I pressed the issue, he then began to give various reasons for the change, but none that made sense to me. The one that he grabbed onto and elaborated on was that we had the fact of a long-distance relationship on our hands, and that this was likely to be a barrier, not to mention that I wasn't yet retired and would not be moving to his neck of the woods anytime soon. Both of these things were true, but they had been true all along. They didn't suddenly become true. The fact of the matter is he was okay with those things before and then- poof- he wasn't. He became, as he said, "Mr Reality" overnight, ripping off the veil of loveliness that we had both covered over ourselves with one logical argument after another. When he tired of the discussion (which occurred by text and which is another issue itself but will leave that one for another time), he simply told me that I needed to think about the distance thing, that we needed to "sleep on it", and that he was exhausted and signing off.

    The next few days were blurry as I carried my now heavy body, complete with bruised heart, wherever it needed to go. My dominant mode was confusion as I had no understanding of what had just happened to me. Every morning, around the time he would usually text me, I waited. But nothing happened. No good morning text, no effusive messages, no kissy or heart or other fluffy emojis. Nothing. The nothingness that happens at the end of things. I was stunned, not only because he was now giving me nothing, but because he had given me so much before. The overthinker in me came up with hundreds of reasons why he had changed, and was saddened to discover that many of my hypotheses centered around some flaw of my own. Maybe it was this, that or the other thing about me, my essence, my being, that pushed him away, turned him off, made him flip the switch from a definite something to a solid nothing. It was me, because it couldn't possibly be him, right? 

    And then, in a split second, in a moment when meditating, I realized that it wasn't me at all. It was him. He was the one who changed, within hours actually, into a seemingly different person. He was the one who was able to act one way and then another towards me with barely any time lapsing in between. He was the one who couldn't communicate honestly about what was going on. He was highly changeable, not constant, not predictable. He was hot then cold. He was disturbing. And he was not for me. Not for this woman who I had worked so hard to become, the one who had finally become her own advocate and friend in midlife. I realized that I wouldn't be waiting for texts from him anymore, and that if a text did come, that it wouldn't change what I had decided: He would no longer have a place in my life nor access to my heart. As blissful as I had felt around this person previously, my bruised heart had other plans. Has other plans. Plans that don't involve rough handling, manipulation, half-truths or getting ones needs met at the expense of others. 

    It hasn't been long since this incident happened and so my heart is still sore. It's hanging out in my chest cavity where it always was but it isn't the same. I've noticed a few changes. It has visible bruises from this recent activity, but it's intact. And there is something else... I hesitate to declare it, but I think it's a wiser heart. It sits there beating regularly and hopefully, refusing to give up, refusing to let this define it or predict future disasters. It knows it is capable of great love, and so it sits steadily and patiently in my body, waiting...

    

    

    

    

Aging Gracefully in Tight Jeans

    I turned fifty-three two days ago and have been "adjusting" to this, like I've adjusted to my new age every year for the past few years. It's like putting on a pair of jeans that don't quite fit right, struggling to pull them over my hips and noticing a resistance. Noticing the tugging that is required to make it happen. Noticing the tightness as I pull up the zipper. Noticing the discomfort. I stand there in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom looking at the me in too-tight jeans and wondering, "How did this happen?" and, "What can I do to make it go away?" 

    I know how it happened: I got older. There's no mystery in that. I got older like everyone else gets older. Why I thought I would somehow be immune to this process is strangely comical. Why I thought everyone around me might start to wrinkle, sag and bulge in odd places while I would not is baffling and bizarre. Or is it? Isn't clinging to that desire just another way of resisting the inevitable? Maybe the belief that I would retain my youth past middle age is a normal reaction. I don't know. What I do know now, now that I'm smack in the middle of it and suited up in my new jeans, is that I was wrong. I was wrong about this just as I've been wrong about many other things in life. This new me isn't going anywhere anytime soon. She is here to stay, and stay she will, even though I've been trying to kick her out for awhile now. Even though I tell her she isn't beautiful enough to be a member of the club. 

    Yes I've been trying to make her go away, that woman in the jeans clinging a little too snugly to her bottom. I've done this in various ways. Most have been attempts to preserve my youthful physical appearance or alter any visible signs of aging as quickly as I can. This is evident on the shelf in my bedroom that contains multiple vials, bottles and pots of various creams, lotions and potions designed to slow down the passage of time. There has sometimes been a franticness to it that I'm not proud of (looking at my aging neck pushes the panic button every time for example). Because everyone knows we're not supposed to feel frantic about aging, or we're not supposed to show that we're frantic anyway. We're never supposed to show our fear, panic or distress about the whole thing. We're either supposed to do something about it OR we're supposed to age gracefully. Those seem to be the only two choices. We can pay someone to try and change us back to who were were, or to somehow stop time from running all over our faces and bodies, just freeze it somehow... for a bit anyway. Or we can invite that new person in to stay, for good, and with open arms. 

    Although the second option is much less invasive and cheaper, it isn't easy, the main reason being that we live in a world that values youth, equates youth with beauty and places a premium on it. Looking young is the ideal. A face free of lines and jowls, and a body free of lumps and saggy parts is a good thing indeed. In our world, we are basically made to feel inadequate with the inevitable. This sucks. Because how can you fight that? How can you beat it? How can you emerge unscathed? How can you traipse through middle age and old age unaffected by the standards and scripts that the world has written for you when you're bombarded by it at every turn? I told someone the other day that it seems like a cruel joke indeed as we go through life, especially as women, that we spend our youth often not feeling attractive enough, and just when we start to feel ok in the skin we're in, age comes storming in and boom-- we're not good-looking enough again! When does it end?

    It probably ends when we say "Fuck it" or "Enough" or "No more" to societal standards and expectations and begin to live our own scripts, not the ones that have been laid out in front of us forever. It probably ends when we can redefine beauty, and look at beauty from multiple perspectives, perspectives that can look at a highly wrinkled face with twinkling eyes and find pure beauty in that. It probably ends when we can go within and make peace with ourselves, explore the depths of our hearts and minds, and see the never-ending treasures inside of us. It probably ends when we realize with certainty that the inside is more important than the outside, that the outside is just a shell that houses the gifts within, and that that shell is beautiful and valuable no matter what age it is.

    I know that is where I need to get to. I know that I need to redefine things and make my priorities reflect where I am at in my life, rather than where the script that is "out there" tells me I should be. I know that I need to take a deep breath and be less frantic about the whole aging thing. I know also though that underneath it all is an intense fear of aging and that I need to confront that probably in order to embrace the new me fully. But for starters, I think I'll just welcome that new woman in the tight jeans into my space instead of pushing her away all the time. I'll let all fifty-three years of her in the door, and we can sit and have some tea together. 

    

    

Being Single on Valentine's Day

     Over the past decade, Valentine's Day has always been a bit of a tricky thing for me. I never really know how to celebrate it, being a single woman, so I usually don't celebrate it. I know I could use this day to focus on all the other kinds of "love" that I have in my life, and celebrate those loving relationships, but I don't do that because to me, Valentine's Day isn't about other kinds of love; it's about romantic love. It's about being grateful for the intimate partner you have, and taking the time to make sure they know somehow, in your own special, meaningful way. Whether that be a carefully crafted private moment with that person or a public post detailing the the reasons that person makes your heart skip a few beats, this day is about a special kind of love. So where do all the single people fit into this?

    Although it often feels like a "couples world", especially seen through the lens of singlehood, the reality is there are many, many single people on the planet. Whether by choice or not, our numbers are growing. Considering that Valentine's Day is supposed to be a day to celebrate coupledom, it would seem logical that us single folks should just ignore it. And many of us do. Or at least we try to. But sometimes this is hard, and sometimes we can't help but think about our own hearts on this day, and on the paths that have led us here, to our single places. This is what I often find myself doing on this day: reflecting on my own love life and how I ended up wherever it is I am at in that moment.

    Today is no different in the reflecting part, but it is radically different in other ways. In past years, a certain chunk of time was devoted to feeling sorry for myself because I didn't feel the piercing of cupid's bow at present, and was convinced it would never happen in the future either, even though I desperately wanted it. This prediction of future loveless states would send me into a downward spiral that wasn't pretty. Another chunk of time was devoted to trying to convince myself that I really didn't want a romantic relationship, or that it was an overrated, commercialized thing best left to hardcore romantic types, of which I thought I wasn't. In retrospect I can see that both of these ways of responding to Valentine's Day were lousy ones, but that was where I was then, and the response seemed fitting.

    This year is different though. Although a small part of me is thinking about the lack of intimacy in my life in the present moment, it is only a tiny part. And even when I think of it, the way I am thinking about it isn't the same as before. I don't think of it in a self-pitying way, rather in a self-acceptance way, a way that sees with truly open eyes how things are in the present moment and is okay with it. I can look at where I am at in my life also with understanding. I can see the choices I have made, choices for the most part that have kept me single, and I am okay with those choices too. I know that it is I alone who has created my reality, and that for many reasons I am meant to be exactly where I am now.

    There is no longer the self-blame or over-analysis of how I came to be where I am, no longer a bemoaning of my single status or a fervent wishing that it were different. Gone is also the desire to be rescued by someone, or to lose myself in another person in order to possibly forget my overthinking self for a moment. I also am not replaying countless tapes of how and where I have screwed up in the love department, tapes that rewrote all of my relationship troubles and made them my own fault, even though I knew that a relationship involves two people. In short, I don't feel yucky about being single today.

    Does this mean I'm doing a dance of joy because I'm not part of a couple thing? No. Do I still want that? Yes. Do I need it? No. And that is the biggest difference of all. I have finally arrived at a place in my life where want trumps need. It took me 52 years to get here but it finally happened. I no longer need a romantic relationship to feel whole, centered, satisfied and at peace. Because, more and more, I feel those things on a daily basis, just being in a relationship with myself. Although it seems to be common wisdom that one of the best ways to a fulfilling, healthy intimate relationship with another person is to start by cultivating a healthy, fulfilling relationship with yourself, for some reason, I found that so hard to do for much of my life. But then slowly, things began to click for me, and slowly that changed. 

    So today, on Valentine's Day, I celebrate personal growth and true self-love, a love that is not born out of ego, but grounded in compassion and acceptance. I celebrate the opening of my heart as I see more and more the ways that it was closed before. I celebrate this moment as it is, and me as I am in my singleness. I know that, in the end, Valentine's Day is about the heart that is full, and I know I have a full heart. Maybe one day again I will share my heart with another, but today, I am okay to sit still with my full heart all by myself.

    

    

Why I love "It's A Wonderful Life"

     I have a few routines and traditions during the holiday season, and one of them is to watch "It's a Wonderful Life". I'm not really sure when this started. It wasn't a tradition in our house growing up. It was something I grabbed onto I think in my late 20s, and it stuck around. Truth be told, it more than stuck around. It's not just a thing I do because I'm supposed to, or because I started it, therefore need to continue it. No, it's something I do because it has meaning for me, because it reminds me of things that matter, and because it fills me up with warm, fuzzy, loving feelings... and that is never a bad thing.

    I've tried to pull my 17 year old son into my now decades long yearly ritual of watching this movie, in various ways, telling him the themes are timeless, that it's a classic, a treasure, something he also needs to incorporate into his holiday season. He has now watched it three times with me. I don't remember 3 times, more like 1.5, but he insisted adamantly the other day that it has been three... three hate-filled times. He has declared more than once, "I hate that movie". Although part of me feels the sting of his words and wants to ditch my indoctrination attempts with him, another part won't give up. In fact, that other part clings fiercely to the mission: To make my son see how fabulous this movie really is.

    So my mission got me thinking and asking myself a few questions. Why DO I like this movie so much? Why does the holiday season somehow not feel complete unless I've watched it? Why can I watch this movie over and over again, and not get tired of it (especially being a person who tires of things quickly)? Why does it affect my emotions the way it does?

    This year, I actually found myself tearing up a few times as I watched it, an odd experience because crying is not something I usually associate with this film. In context, the tears might have more to do with current circumstances rather than the movie itself. Due to the social distancing that is now required of every human on this planet, I spent Christmas Eve alone-- something I have only done once before in my life, and that was because I had a nasty flu, so it doesn't really count because I was too sick then to care. But this year, I did care. And this year, my ritual of watching It's a Wonderful Life took on even more importance. This year, it was a life raft of sorts. I clung to that thing like it was the only thing to cling to in a weird sea of alienation. And it saved me.

    As I sat on my couch and watched it, under blankets and cozy in my pjs, with food I'd ordered in so I didn't have to cook, I slowly felt myself filling up with all the right emotions. Where sadness and disappointment were a few hours before, in its place now were hope, love, and joy. Where I had been focusing on my aloneness, feeling cut off from the human contact I so desperately wanted, the focus now shifted. I was reminded of our interconnectedness, of the ways we affect one another, of how we come together when we need to. But most of all, I was reminded of the love we feel for our partner, family and friends, and how it is that love that matters most of all. I was reminded, in essence, of all the things I am normally reminded of each time I watch the movie. 

    When George Bailey leans over the same railing of the bridge he had only hours earlier thought to jump from and end his life, but this time in his leaning, he is praying, "Please God, let me live again. I want to live again" (or something like that), my heart fills and occupies more space in my body than it did before. It happens every time. His plea is a reminder of how precious and beautiful this life is. When he realizes he has been granted his prayer and runs screaming with joy through the streets of Bedford Falls, savouring everything and everyone along the way, I'm reminded of all those things and people that I savour in my life, and how I need to spend more time savouring and less time complaining. When Clarence the angel tells George, "See George, you really did have a wonderful life", it makes me think of the infinite ways that life is indeed wonderful. And that is never a bad thing. So I will continue my tradition of watching "It's a Wonderful Life" every holiday season, under my blankets, with the lights of the Christmas tree twinkling in the background, because I love it that much.

    

    

My Father

     Today is November 11th, Remembrance Day, and a fitting day to write about my father, who served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 31 years. Every year, I watch the Remembrance Day ceremony on tv on CBC, and though I think of current events and past veterans, it is my father who takes center stage for me in my mind on that day. He is the main character, the principal hero in his crisply pressed military uniform, with his stripes and medals, standing proudly, representing his country and all those values that he held and continues to hold dearly.

    My father was born on October 13th, 1945 in Sudbury, Ontario to a French-Canadian mother and father. I don't know a lot about my father's childhood, but I do know things weren't always easy, that money was sometimes tight, that his father had a problem with drinking, and that his mother worked long hours to pay the bills. My dad doesn't talk much about his childhood. I know that at a young age, he was hustling in a local pool hall, finding a way to earn his own much-needed money. I know also that he wasn't successful at school, despite his obvious smarts, dropping out in grade 9. The act of joining the military at 17 years of age I think was, in many ways, a ticket out of the limitations he was facing at the time. Joining up revealed a few other things about his personality as well: the ability to make radical changes and take on big challenges, the desire to defend core values by serving his country, and a deep-seated urge to grow into his potential and spread his wings. 

    As I think of my father today, through the lens of the army brat I once was, I have many vivid memories of him as a military man. There he is, spit-shining his boots at 9pm, getting them ready for work the next morning, cigarette dangling from his lips, face tense in concentration. There he is again, standing in front of an ironing board as the early evening spread itself across the living room, turning his shirts into perfectly perfect fabrics, getting ready for the next day. Always getting ready for the next day. And always happy to get ready for the next day, never miserable about it. As a child, I understood that my father loved his job, and found meaning in it. As proof of this, in the mornings, my father would whistle and hum as he went about his rituals before work.

    In another memory, there he is, walking around in the Officer's Mess one night, the place he was in charge of running. We lived in Lahr, Germany at the time and my dad, who had begun his career in the infantry as a cook, had risen in the ranks and was now a Master Warrant Officer whose job it was to take care of all manner of events and goings on in the Officer's Mess-- a position of significant responsibility. He had gotten me a job that night as a "cigarette girl" (I was 16 so I guess old enough to carry out such duties), someone who walked around with small elegant trays of cigarettes, offering them to the officers and officers' wives. I remember for the first time, looking at my father through different eyes as I watched him work, and witnessing the respect and genuine liking his subordinates showed him as the night went on. I saw that not only did he like his job, the people he worked with seemed to like him. A lot. I had a newfound respect for my father and his work after that night.

    I have a few other memories of my father, sitting on the edge of my bed the morning after an argument that happened the night before during my late turbulent teen years (this occurred more than once), lightly waking me up with his hand and saying, "Sorry about last night. We're okay, right?"  In this memory, he sits there, in his ever perfect uniform, ready for work, his kind eyes looking into my own sleepy ones as I struggled to wake up. Looking back, I understand that it bothered him to leave things messy and unfixed and so made the effort before going to work to fix things with me. I cherish this memory of my father because it says so much about him as a man, and as a parent.

    When I left Winnipeg at 20 to move to Vancouver, it was my father who drove me to the airport, again in his military uniform because it was in the morning, before work. We had a coffee together in the airport lounge. We sat across from each other, he in his usual outfit and I in mine. I don't remember what I was wearing at the time but it was probably something black, being the deep-thinking artsy wanna-be that I was. We didn't say much to each other beyond talk of weather and travel details, yet the space between us was heavy with feeling. I remember there was so much I wanted to say to my father in those moments before I left, and I'm sure there were things he wanted to say to me too, but it was hard to say them, and so we didn't. To this day, I remember the jumble of feelings I felt as I waved goodbye to him, holding back tears. I remember his eyes were dry as well, but I could see in his expression that his tears were closer than they had ever been with me before. In this memory, he stands there waving back, crisp and efficient in his uniform, and I love him fiercely. 

    My father served 31 years in the Military. He began as a private and ended as a Chief Warrant Officer, the highest level one can attain as a non-commissioned officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. When I think of my father and how successful he was in his career, I am filled with awe, respect and admiration for him. His career achievements made him a success story, triumphing over humble and shaky beginnings, and leading him to a life of meaning and satisfaction. He loved his work, and was good at it. He showed unwavering commitment to the values of order, peace and freedom. The military was a huge part of his life. So today, on Remembrance Day especially, my father holds a special place in my heart, and in my mind's eye standing there at attention, in his perfect military uniform, ready for work. 

    

Going for Year Two

    I've decided to go for year two of my Onewinelesswoman experiment, and have been surprised at how difficult it has been so far. I think I thought it would be easier than this, mostly because I already had a year under my belt, so wouldn't the second year just be more of the same? Wasn't I now a pro of sorts, an expert at navigating sparkly water drinking in a world where the cups runneth over with all things alcohol? Wouldn't I just get better and better at this way of doing things? Wouldn't I forget about the wine? Wouldn't the moderation fantasy disappear, replaced by a healthy, vibrant, centered me who didn't need fantasies?

    I didn't plan to go for year two. The goal was originally one year, and then I would reassess things. Beneath the one year goal was another goal though: To begin drinking moderately again after going one year alcohol-free. So as I went about the business of living without my pinot grigio and merlot buddies, I had that other goal, tucked somewhere deeply in my back pocket. It went wherever I did, comforting me on the tough days. Perhaps it was this other goal that allowed me to accomplish the first one. I don't know. What I do know is that I needed it, and maybe I still do. I needed to know that in future, if I wanted to accompany my delicious dinner with a glass of equally delicious wine, that I'd be able to, no questions asked. 

    Not that there would be any questions asked anyway. I live in a world and in a time when wine is a cherished thing indeed. And beer. And vodka. And other spirits. People love this stuff. They love how it makes them feel (while it's going down anyway!), how it takes the edge off a rough week. They love how it connects people, how uncorking a bottle and pouring it into glasses around a table is a lovely shared thing. They love how it makes things seem somehow more manageable. And fun. They love the fun that alcohol brings. So if I were to uncork my own bottle again, I doubt anyone I know would say anything, or wonder why I decided to do that. It would be a normal thing, just as their doing it is a normal thing.

    I think that's one of the reasons why year 2 has been a challenge-- I'm tired of going against the grain of normal. I'm tired of being the perrier-with-ice woman, while everyone else fills their glasses with the other stuff, the fun stuff. I'm tired of being the abnormal one in the room, the lone wolf on the sidelines. Even though I chose it, I'm tired of it. Sometimes. And I guess that's the key word... sometimes. Because I don't feel like this every day. Most days, actually, I'm ok with following my own path, as odd and not-normal as it may be. Most days, I'm aware of how much I've grown in the past 15 months, and how the fact that I've been wineless has played a big part in that. Most days I agree with my son who told me one night when I asked him why he likes me better as a nondrinker, "I don't know, you're just a better person". So, with that in mind, I guess I'll crack open another bottle of sparkly water and raise a glass to Year 2!

On Gratitude

     Thanksgiving is the one day of the year where the idea of Gratitude takes center stage. We mark it on our calendars, we have a day off work, we gather with our friends and family to stuff our faces and be thankful for what we have. It is a fabulous holiday. We need more of those. 

    In recent years, there has been much interest in the topic of gratitude. Google the word and you will be flooded by information on its benefits-- everything from increased immune systems and improved sleep to positive emotional and mental wellbeing. Merriam Webster defines gratitude as "the state of being grateful: thankfulness". This simple definition is easy to understand, but for some reason sometimes difficult to do. It is one of those things in life that most of us know we should be doing more of, but sometimes default to its opposite: the state of being thankless. I don't think we set out to be thankless; I think it is more that we just forget to be thankful. It is all too easy some days to focus on what is not working in our lives, or on what is missing, rather than remembering what is there and beautiful right in front of us.

    I have the unfortunate predisposition to be one of those people who, for much of her life has looked toward the other side of the fence and its pastures, always thinking they are greener than the greenest green, and often wondering how I can jump over the fence and quickly get there to do some frolicking. Although it is nice to be able to envision better things for oneself occasionally, the problem with this activity (especially if it becomes a regular habit) is you miss out on so many things. You miss out on the joy of being in the present moment, in feeling yourself grounded in the now. You miss out on recognizing and valuing what you already do have. You miss out on the experience of savouring what is. Again, this concept is not new at all. It has been written about over and over again by philosophers, psychologists, writers and musicians. It continues to be written about. People are talking. 

    We all have our things that we are thankful for, big and small, and they are unique to each of us. What is important is that we remember them. Regularly. Daily ideally. Doing that is medicine for the soul. So in no particular order, here is a list of things that I am grateful for today: When my sixteen year old reaches over to give me a hug- not a short fleeting hug but a long meaningful one, and then says, "I love you, mom" in his almost-man voice. When the sky is a vibrant canvas for the stunning fall colours of the leaves on the trees on my walk. When I slip my tired body between clean sheets at the end of the day. When I look down at my stomach and remember there was a colostomy bag there at one point in my life for 9 months, and that has now been replaced by a few scars, which I greatly prefer. When I share an intimate moment with a friend or family member. When I am filled with laughter to the point of bursting, and have a fully satisfying belly laugh (even better when I do this with someone else who is doing the same thing-- shared laughter can't be beat). When I sit on my couch in my living room by the window with a good book that makes my brain either relax or think, with tea in hand, looking at the shadows and shapes that the sun makes on the walls, and realize, "I am content right now". 

    I could add many more things to my list, and to do so would only enhance my life I am sure. Just writing the short list above did something cool to my heart. It warmed it up in all the right places, reminding me that Gratitude should indeed be a daily thing, and what a better day to reflect on this than on Thanksgiving. 

Scars

     I have these two scars. I've had them for over 3 years now. One runs from slightly above my navel to just above my pubic bone. The other hangs out mid-abdomen, below my belly button, on the left side, about 3 inches long, perpendicular to the first one. The first one was the result of an emergency surgery brought on by a perforated bowel from a diverticulitis attack. The second one was the closure of the temporary stoma they had to create because of the perforated bowel. They are permanent reminders of what happened to me physically; there is no forgetting. But they are also symbols of healing and compassion.

    Today, September 20th, is the anniversary of my first surgery. It all started the night before, September 19th, 2016, when I was hit with excruciating pains in my lower abdomen around 9:00 pm. The pain was unlike anything I had experienced before, and I knew it was serious, and beyond troubling. It wouldn't abate. All night, I lay in bed moaning. My son was 12 at the time and could hear me from across the hall. He kept telling me to stop making the sounds. Thinking back on it, I'm filled with a rush of sympathy for the boy he was. Nobody wants to hear a parent in pain like that. Nobody. But I was stuck because I didn't want to go to the hospital and leave him alone during the night, so I was determined to stick it out. My plan was that I would drive him to school in the morning, then drive myself to the hospital. Ever the independent woman. Needless to say, my plan never happened.

    Around 4 am, unable to stand the pain any longer, I texted a former boyfriend who I knew would be awake as he worked at a golf course. I texted him because I knew in my gut I would be hospitalized and I needed someone to look after my dog, Licorice. He had always liked Licorice, didn't have a dog of his own, was single, and likely able to help. He answered right away that he could take her. More texting resulted in him coming to pick not only the dog up, but me as well to take me to the hospital. So at 5:00 am, he arrived at my place. I will forever be grateful to this man for his help when I needed it most. I woke up my son to tell him I had to go to the hospital, texted his father to tell him what was happening and to make arrangements for him to come and get him in a few hours. Then we left.

    The rest of this story is a surreal nightmare of sorts. Although I was given attention at the hospital fairly quickly, the next parts of the trip weren't so quick at all. I was placed on a bed in the back somewhere and lay there moaning (although a bit less with the morphine drip) for over 12 hours. Fast forward to 5:30 pm when I got up from my bed, dragged my ass and the IV pole to the nursing station and made an announcement to about 5 nurses laughing and chatting that I had had enough. They had been telling me all day that I was going to get a CT scan, even made me drink a bunch of water 2 hours prior in preparation for it. Yet it wasn't happening. In a voice that shocked me with its calmness, considering the state I was in, I told them that I didn't understand why this was taking so long, that over 10 hours had passed, that I had a known intestinal condition, that I had already been hospitalized for 4 days for this same condition 3 months prior, that I was probably sitting here with a perforated bowel. I advocated for myself with all the strength I could muster. It worked. The silence at the desk was deafening as I spoke. They all listened to me, and within 5 minutes someone came to take me for the CT scan.

    After the scan, the 5 minute thing happened again. Although they told me I would likely get my results from the scan in about an hour, within 5 minutes a doctor was at my bedside informing me that they were indeed going to have to admit me because I had a perforated bowel. Fear met reality at that point for me. They wheeled me somewhere else where I waited another 5 hours to see an emergency surgeon. She told me that I had 2 options: 1. have surgery to remove my problematic sigmoid colon and have a temporary colostomy bag or, 2. wait out the night and see if the IV antibiotics would kill the infection, with the hopes that I could then have elective surgery at a later date and therefore spare me the joy of living with a colostomy bag. I chose the latter. It sounded nicer.

    Over the next 24 hours, I waited to get better. My friend and her husband came to the hospital to be with me that evening, and I am forever grateful to them as well for doing that. A few friends came to see me the next afternoon, and I am forever thankful to these wonderful women too. I was starting to learn, unfortunately, that laying in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, being sick and scared and vulnerable is a really shitty thing. Seeing a few familiar, caring faces was a soothing balm to my fragile state. 

    Around 3:30 the next afternoon, a nurse came to check my temperature, and she told me it had spiked to 38.5 degrees. The 5 minute thing happened again. A group of doctors appeared at my bedside, and the surgeon that I had decided I didn't like during my previous hospitalization, looked down at me with the kindest eyes, and in the gentlest voice said, "I think you need to have surgery". I still think about and am grateful for his compassionate delivery of the news. I asked when this would happen, and he said "In about an hour". I'll never forget the panic and temporary madness that filled me as this news sunk in. Everything seemed concentrated into one point in that moment: my son. I had to text him, had to tell him I loved him, had to tell him without showing how terrified I was that I had to have surgery. I was filled with horrifying thoughts that hijacked my brain. There were many hijackers, but the most frightening of course were the ones concerning my actual life on this planet: What if I didn't make it? What if I actually died on the operating table? What would happen to my son? How would he cope? I let the thoughts do their thing for a bit, but then I decided to shut them down and go with Faith, something I don't have a lot of normally, but in that moment, I grabbed onto it like it was the biggest of life rafts in a turbulent sea. It got me through.

    By 10:30 that evening, September 20th, I was back in my hospital room. This time was of course radically different, for a few reasons. For starters, I had a transparent colostomy bag attached to my abdomen and could see my actual colon ("stomie" as I would later come to know and call it intimately) resting there, swollen and pert, looking up at me. Then there were the tubes coming out of almost every orifice of my body: a catheter drained urine into a bag attached to the bed below me, an epidural and other drugs ran into the pick line they had done earlier that day, the NG tube ran from my nose to stomach (this would eventually almost drive me mental), and finally, a tube running from my abdomen into a small pouch attached to my hospital gown that collected what appeared to be blood and pus from my stomach. I was a mess. I definitely had had better days. But, on the bright side, I knew that the offending agent- my sigmoid colon that housed the diverticula that had caused me such grief off and on for years- had been removed. I would later learn that I now had 13 cm less of my colon. But I also had 13 cm less of problematic body parts, so I decided to focus on that.

    There is much more that I could write about all of this (because of course the story doesn't end with my first surgery) and maybe someday I will. It was in many ways a harrowing journey, and harrowing journeys, despite their awfulness, often make for great stories. Today though, I decided to start with my "scars", and so I will end there. 

    As I sit here and reflect on the 4th year anniversary of my first surgery, I am filled with many feelings about my scars. When I stand in front of a mirror and look at my body, my scars look back at me and tell me things. Every time. Things about strength, courage, determination, humility, grace, suffering, pain, and yes, even love. My scars are a reminder of what I have been through, but more importantly of what I have survived. Although I think of physical pain sometimes when I look at my scars, what I mostly think about is healing and compassion. I think of the ways my body has physically healed (the human body is indeed a miracle), but I also think about the emotional healing I have gone through since then, my own personal journey to match the physical one. Another thing that happens though when I see my scars is I am suddenly filled with compassion. I can't look at my scars anymore without feeling compassion... for myself, for others, for all of the suffering that humans sometimes endure while being alive. My surgery changed me in many ways, but the opening of my heart, ironically, was one of the biggest ones. 

    

    

Be Your Own Best Friend

       It is dawning on me more and more as I get older that one of the most important things in life is to be your own best friend. This is not a new concept to me, and I am not the first person to write about this by any means, but it isn't any less significant. What is interesting is that, for many people, this idea is easier to think about than to do. I've been one of those people.

    Although I have known for a long time about the magic in this kernel of wisdom, I can honestly say I wasn't my own best friend. I was other people's best friend, or good friend, while I lagged behind somewhere. I don't even know, come to think of it, if I was even a good friend to myself on most days, never mind a best one. 

    For some reason, as I grew up and then became an adult, and then did all the adulting required of me, I found it much easier to critique and pick myself apart than to build myself up, as best friends do. I've written before of the anxiety that has traveled alongside of me my whole life, but there has been another companion too, although a much more sinister one. I will call her the "Critic", for want of a better word. 

    The Critic isn't nice, far from it. Nor is she a friend in any way. She might disguise herself as a friend in the way she offers me "advice" on how I can improve various aspects of my life, personality, character, physical self... on and on it goes. The Critic is relentless. With her, things are never good enough as they are. There is always something that can be improved. I can always be a better version of myself, and the Critic tells me I should strive to be that. Underneath all of that is the understanding that I am somehow not good enough. The Critic never says this directly... she just implies it, but she always delivers her message. 

    For most of my life, I listened to the Critic. I trusted her. I believed her. I thought she was right, that she had the right view of me, of my life, my choices, of anything really. I would do what she told me to do, thinking that this latest morsel of advice was finally the crumb I needed in order to be that better version of myself, that thing that I coveted so much. The problem was, the Critic never went away, not permanently anyway. Just when I thought we were done, she would show up again.

    Over time though, I started to see the Critic differently. She was a meanie disguised as a nice girl. She was never happy. There was no pleasing her. Her intentions were never good ones deep down. The objective with her was to tear things apart in order to build something new. She believed that things needed to be torn apart, that they weren't good enough as they were. There was no celebration of my uniqueness, of the miracle of my life, of me, just by the very nature of being lucky enough to have been born.

    I'd like to be able to say here that I one day just kicked the Critic to the curb, said, "I've had enough, you silly b----! Be gone!", and that was that. But, it of course hasn't been that easy; the tough lessons in life never are. I haven't yet been able to make her disappear completely. No, she still shows up beside me, but there are some things that are different these days, because I've grown, evolved, come into myself a bit more. For starters, she doesn't come around as much. I can breathe more fully. One result of this is too... dare I say it?... I am starting to think I might be good enough exactly as I am. This is indeed a very cool and comforting thing. 

    The other thing that is different though, and the one that has been the most powerful agent of change has been the relationship I have been cultivating with myself over the past year since I quit drinking. I have become my own best friend finally, and this has made all the difference. Although the Critic can still deliver her acidic barbs (and this still happens), because I am my own best friend, I am much better able to withstand the onslaught. I have myself in my corner, for the most part, and this is a precious and beautiful thing. It has led me to conclude that being your own best friend is not overrated at all. It is crucial. In fact, it starts there. 

    

Do What You Love

    It is becoming more and more important as I wander through this land of middle age that I do things that bring me joy, or as Joseph Campbell said, "follow your bliss". There is a sense of urgency about it though sometimes, which I have to keep in check so I don't dive into panic mode as I contemplate all of the things I have yet to do, discover, experience, but not the required time anymore to do them. Perhaps this means I am smack in the middle of a midlife crisis? In any case, the idea of the midlife crisis is no longer a distant, comical thing for me... it is no longer an idea... it is a reality. 

    Crisis might be too strong a word for what I am describing. This is not a dangerous thing. It isn't a calamity. It doesn't involve catastrophic events that have me taxed beyond my abilities to cope. It isn't a loud thing. And it isn't a totally obvious thing either. It is more of a quiet thing. Quiet but persistent. More of a whisper in my ear when I wake in the morning, or as I go about my day, or at 3:00 am when I can't sleep and the stories of my life are swirling in my mind with a vengeance. It is quiet but it is there, and I can't help but hear it.

    It tells me things I always knew but never acted on. It jolts me, pulling me out of the humdrum and the routines and the bills and the automatic ways I do things in this life. It tells me a bunch of things that aren't new at all: life is short, time is precious, it all goes so fast. It asks me questions like, "What are you waiting for?" and "Who are you, apart from all of the things you have to do to live in the world every day?" The most pressing questions these days are also the most frequent: What is it that you love to do? What is that thing, or those things that transport you out of the ordinary, and into a realm that can only be defined as special? What is it that makes you lose your sense of time and space, that pulls you totally out of the moment but yet keeps you in it all at once? What is that thing that makes you feel connected to the deepest, happiest, most authentic part of yourself? 

    These questions have surfaced in my life often, from a young age, so I am pretty familiar with them. I've always been a person who asks big questions. What I am not familiar with though is the immediacy, the sense that I must act NOW... or else! What I am not familiar with is these questions no longer having an airy, theoretical slant to them, an intellectual pondering, something I could think about but keep safely at a distance. No, these questions have pulled me firmly to the ground and are keeping me there. They are loaded with feelings, hopes and dreams. These questions can't be just thought about or ignored anymore. My 52 year old self won't allow it.

    Although my 50-plus status has contributed to the state in which I now find myself, it involves more than just aging for me. I know deep down that one of the main reasons I am now thinking more regularly about how I want to spend the rest of my life is that I removed the wine from it. My lounge visits and tipsy lunches with friends had become like one of my hobbies really. It was something to do to fill the time between work, chores and parenting, and to take the stress off of work, chores and parenting. It was a hobby I liked, but it did take up a lot of time, and sometimes too much time was spent recovering from said hobby. It was also a hobby that took over other hobbies and interests... the other things I used to do just faded into the background.

    But lately, these other things have been reappearing into my life, one by one. I am rediscovering my love of writing, and am actually not just thinking about writing but am actually doing it. I took the plunge yesterday and treated myself to a beautiful guitar, one with a smaller body than the guitar I've had for the past 25 years, and playing it last night for 3 hours was heavenly. I am thinking about possibly singing/performing again. Basically, I am starting to remember what it is I love to do, what makes me tick, what makes me connected to who I am, deep down. 

    I've decided that it is okay to feel this sense of urgency and that it is okay to have the pressing questions come and visit me regularly. It is only in listening and accepting the questions that I will know what it is I need to do next, the next place to put my feet, or what direction to place them. I know now at a feeling level (not just a thinking level) that life is indeed way too short to waste it doing things that do not bring me joy, and that do not reflect my truest self. It really is. Everything that has been said about the passage of time being much too fast is completely true. There is nothing partially true about it. In the end, we owe it to ourselves to do what we love.

    

What One Year With No Wine Has Taught Me

     Recently, I celebrated achieving my goal of reaching one year without alcohol. I decided to give up the wine (my beverage of choice) on July 30th, 2019, mostly out of curiosity, but partly out of a sense of becoming aware that, for me, the benefits of wine consumption were becoming more and more overshadowed by the lousy parts of it. I wanted to find out what it would feel like- physically, emotionally and mentally- to not have any alcohol in my system for a year. So last summer, I began the journey...    

    There are so many things I could write about, as I reflect on what it has been like for me, but something that stands out for me is how giving up the booze has presented the opportunity for me to come face to face with myself, demons and all, and to handle things differently. I'm reading a fabulous book right now by Pema Chodron, "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times" that is resonating so much with me because she talks about how we often react to "discomfort" in our lives (and I am taking this to mean mostly "emotional discomfort") when we encounter uncomfortable situations:

"Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape-- all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain...There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge..." (14).

    When I think of what much of the past year has been for me, it has been a meeting of my edge, as Pema calls it. I love that description. I'm not saying the past year has been awful, or miserable, because I gave up the wine. But it has definitely been "edgier". Without a doubt. And by choosing to not blunt that edge with a luscious red or crispy white, this meant I've often rubbed up against the hard spots, and as a result, felt uncomfortable. So the biggest task of this past year has been learning how to handle discomfort, instead of running from or trying to manipulate it in some way. 

    I was partly prepared for this kind of thing because I've been meditating fairly regularly for over 20 years now. Meditating has provided me often with the opportunity to come face to face with my discomfort while I am sitting, and thoughts and feelings arise, as they will. Meditation is in many ways the opposite of running, or numbing, or distracting, or manipulating. In those moments, when you experience discomfort while meditating, you simply acknowledge what is happening, breathe, and notice things. I say simply, but this is probably the wrong word to use because there is nothing simple about just sitting there while you are being bombarded with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings (which is why many people hate meditating, and why of course, they probably should do it regularly, but this is another blog entry entirely)... But I digress... My point is that meditation helped me greatly this past year.

    I've been thinking a lot of this discomfort idea, and have come to the conclusion that it is at the heart of many problems people face. Although some people on the planet grew up learning how to deal with discomfort in healthy ways, I think many of us did not. Many of us grew up thinking it wasn't desirable to feel intensely negative emotions at all and the best thing to do when experiencing them was to run, distract, ignore, etc. In fact, many of us came to think that extreme emotional discomfort was to be avoided at all costs, and that it might actually destroy us somehow should we allow ourselves to experience it fully. So we grew up believing all of that, when actually, there is a whole other story that can be told about discomfort. The truth is that discomfort is normal, okay, that we won't be destroyed by it, that it doesn't last, that we can handle it, and so on. But we only discover that truth when we sit still and stop running long enough.

    So if I had to say what my biggest lesson has been this past year going alcohol-free, it would be that I can sit with emotional discomfort now more than before without freaking out about it and without telling myself stories that only make the discomfort worse. I can meet my edge without obsessing over the wounds that the edge might cause. I can do this, and when I do this, I become stronger, more resilient emotionally. Although I could do this before I quit drinking, I couldn't and didn't do it consistently. It was only after giving up the vino that this happened on a more regular basis. So in following through with my goal, a whole new way of living has been opened up to me, and it's pretty cool.

    I still haven't poured myself a glass of wine, even though my year-long experiment is now over, and I'm not sure when and if I ever will again. When I set out to do this, it wasn't for forever, as I know that I am not a forever type of woman, but I do know that some of the gifts that have been born out of this past year have indeed been priceless to me, and so for now, that is motivation enough to continue on this path.

    

    

    

    

Comfy Slippers

    I've been thinking a lot lately of an often referenced quote as I approach my goal of giving up alcohol for a year, "Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore" (Andre Gide). When I think of this quote as it applies to my life today, I find myself asking, "What is my shore?" and "What are the new oceans for me?" 

    I can't think of the quote without thinking of comfy slippers. They go hand in hand. For me anyway. I gave up wearing my comfy slippers last year when I made the decision, on July 30th, to give up wine for a year. At the time, I wasn't aware that I'd actually have to yank off my slippers and go barefoot for the duration of my "experiment". I think I thought I'd just make one change in my life, but be able to basically keep the rest of my life as it was, and keep wearing my slippers. I was mistaken.

    As the year has progressed, I've come to see how my slippers are basically the shore I had to leave in order to do what I needed to do. They are my coziness and my predictability, my routine comforts. They are the known, the tried-and-true. They are the ways I have dealt with discomfort, sadness, irritation, anger, and all the other yucky stuff that life sometimes brings. They are a light and breezy glass of white wine, or a smooth and soothing red. They followed me into many a lounge booth and hugged my feet at family gatherings and other outings, always comfortable, and always familiar. They were on my feet a long time. 

    And the new oceans, what of those? They are me, floating on a raft in the middle of the unfamiliar, alone and wondering, "What in the hell have I done?!" They are me leaving behind those things that I was able to hang onto. They are the place with no handles. In fact, in order to survive here, I've had to release quite a few attachments, both literally and figuratively. But as chaotic as things have sometimes been in the middle of this new ocean, there has also been at times a rich calmness and depth of experience that was often lacking when I was a slipper wearer. As scary as it feels to have not much to hang onto, it also feels liberating. There is an authenticity in being in these waters that I didn't feel enough while at shore. 

    It's not that complicated to understand though really. Anytime you leave the shore and venture into the ocean is to go into the unknown (unless you're a sailor or a captain of a well-traveled ship of course!). You do this when you decide to make major changes in your life. And any time you do this is to catapult yourself into the chaos of the unknown, so this act requires courage, on many levels. But the first act of courage, as Gide said, is to "lose sight of the shore", and I think he was right about that.

ANXIETY

"Anxiety- got me on the run/Anxiety- yeah, I just need someone/ Anxiety- can't get nothin' done/ Anxiety- spoils all the fun" - Pat Benatar, Anxiety (Get Nervous).

    Ever since I can remember (a long time surprisingly), I've walked alongside of anxiety. I haven't called it anxiety forever, because way back when, it wasn't commonly called that. There were other names or other ways of talking about people who were frequently anxious. For example, I grew up being told I was a "worrier" and that I "worry too much". And nobody was wrong about either of those things. I was a worrier, worrying about multiple topics at a dizzying speed, from a very early age.     

    I still sometimes have flashbacks to 6, or 8 or 11 year old me, laying in bed, trying to fall asleep but not being able to before navigating a series of troubling thoughts. The thoughts ranged from banal topics like, "Oh no, my library book is overdue, am I going to get in big trouble for that?" to not-so-banal topics like "What happens when we die? Do we just stop existing forever? And how long is forever?" Looking back now, I am amazed that the child me was even able to sleep at all after playing some of the more  harrowing scripts in my little mind. 

    The anxiety didn't leave me once I hit adolescence either of course. No, it stayed with me, tagging along as I navigated teen friendships and intimate relationships, and school pressures, and my changing body. It hung around, whispering in my ear all of the things that could go wrong, or that were already wrong with me, or with my life. Its favorite thing to whisper was "What if...". Those 2 words would then be followed by other words, words that were capable of instantly breaking my spirit. "What if he doesn't like me back?" "What if they don't include me?" "What if I fail the math test?" "What if they think I'm ugly, or fat, or boring, or not cool?" Anxiety was constantly by my side, but hardly my friend.

    By early adulthood, anxiety was so much a part of me that I often struggled to know who I was apart from it. Around that time, a new companion, depression, crept into my life and set up camp. The two of them showed no mercy, bombarding me with awful thoughts and feelings on a regular basis. I started devouring self-help books in a frantic attempt to fend them off. I figured I was doing it all wrong, that I should be doing something to help myself, that the problems were all mine, that I had created them and so I could fix them. And sometimes this worked. Sometimes, my anxious and depressed companions would fade into the background. But this was always temporary- a few days, weeks or rarely, months- and they would always return, grabbing both of my hands with a vengeance. It didn't matter where I lived, they followed me. For years, my adulthood was spent moving or traveling to different places, or changing apartments in an attempt to "start over", in the hope that the old me, the worrier and depressed me would disappear. 

    In my late 30s, and with the help of a therapist, I began to see that the depression that had brought me to the therapist in the first place was really just exhaustion from being anxious all the time. My mind and heart had finally surrendered and a strange hopelessness and fatigue with life set in. I understood that the anxiety had become stronger than I was, knocking me over more days than not. But I also understood that I was letting this happen. I was letting it define and defeat me. We began to talk in therapy about recognizing the anxiety but knowing that it didn't have to incapacitate me. I started reading about "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy", and I started to look at my anxious sidekick differently. I also started to understand that the anxiety was never going to leave my side as long as I lived, and so I was going to have to learn how to deal with it.This was a big revelation for me, and a turning point. In retrospect, however, although I began to understand all of this, it would take over another 10 years for me to live this truth fully. 

    One of the ways I had dealt with the anxiety, since the age of 18 really, was with alcohol. I never used alcohol regularly, as in, never daily, but I did use it most times when socializing. In my 40s, newly split from my partner and raising my son alone half the time, I socialized more, therefore drank more. I started to have a new routine of sometimes stopping by the liquor store on the way home from a lounge visit with friends to buy a bottle of wine just to keep the buzz going. I would then suck back a few more glasses while phoning people; this meant I wasn't drinking alone. The alcohol was the one thing that could quiet the anxiety beast at my side. The anxious thoughts would diminish and a calm would overtake me; it didn't matter that it was an artificial calm. It worked and that's all that mattered. The problem is it worked to induce a calm state but there were just too many negative consequences for me to choose that as my main coping mechanism. So I decided to quit.

    These days, my main way to cope is to meditate, bombard myself with uplifting self-talk when I need it, and to exercise. As corny as it may sound, I hold hands with my anxiety more often than not now. I meet her where she needs to be met, let her have her say, but then I do my own thing. I understand her fears, her vulnerabilities, her raw, sore spots. I'm okay that she walks alongside me. But she isn't me. She never was, even though sometimes I struggled to see that. I now know that there is a me apart from the anxiety, a bigger me, a healthier me, a wiser one. And I can sometimes even look at the anxiety now as my companion, rather than my enemy. In the spirit of observation and compassion that meditation has taught me, I can say, "Oh there you are again. What is it you would like to say to me today?" I can listen, but not be defeated by it. We just walk together, side by side, my anxiety and I.