September 2020

When I was little, my legs were short. We spent many of our weekends camping as a family, and one of our favorite ways to pass the time was to go for hikes. Inevitably, as the youngest, smallest member of our tribe, I would be the first to slow down and ask if we could go back to the travel trailer. You know, where the fruit roll-ups and cheez balls were. But my mom, always the cheerleader and optimist, wouldn’t let me go out like that. “You know what you need?” she would coax. And then in a lower tone, as if sharing a secret so tender and special only the ears of true believers could hear it, “A magic walking stick.”

We would scour the woods’ floor for the perfect fallen branch. It had to meet our specifications – not too tall, not too wide and smooth to the touch. “We’ll know when we see it,” she’d say. And we always did. And somehow, once I had that magic walking stick, my little legs, going one tiny step at a time, carried me that extra mile.

Of course now, as a mother who herself has whispered in the ears of her chicks about the mystical power of fallen branches, I understand that it was the woman walking next to me as much as it was anything else. Her belief in me. Her willingness to hang back as if our walk could go on forever if it had to, as long as we were together. Her voice. Her words. Her presence.

This past week, some chronic health issues my mom has been battling came to a head, and we found ourselves in a hospital room, just the two of us. She has persistent pain in her lower back and her right leg, with some weakness, which makes walking and standing uncomfortable, challenging and, quite frankly, dangerous. As we moved her from bed to walker, bed to bed, bed to wheelchair, I felt the weight of her burden pressing against me. I nestled my hand under her arm and coaxed, “It’s OK, Mom. We’ve got you. Nice and slow,” and I heard her voice in my own.

Sitting in a predictable, uncomfortable, mass-produced chair an arm’s length from her, disturbing daytime television in the background, I scrolled through my Instagram feed. Facebook was telling the world it was National Daughter’s Day. How appropriate. I am, in so many ways, my mother’s daughter. I have her hands, her humor and her desire to help others. Her stubbornness and grace (which is really a lack thereof) are stitched across my patchwork. I see pieces of her that became slivers of me that are now beautiful fragments of my daughters.

She kept telling me to go home, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. Time could go as slow as it needed to. We were taking tiny, tiny steps toward the answers. Toward getting home.

As it happens in hospitals, hours turned into the necessary tests and the results turned into recommendations and eventually discharge. Mom was home in just over 24 hours and we all got together for our traditional every-other weekend brunch, known to us as Big Breakfast. The grandkids showered her in hugs, my sister and I brought the tough questions about care and short-term plans. When I left, I ached for the days of sticky fruit roll-ups wrapped around pointer fingers and whispers in the woods.

The rest of our Sunday was intentionally slow. I think Hank could sense my need for play rather than purpose. We didn’t clean the house, like we normally do. We putzed around a nearby nature preserve and called in dinner. Before bed, after months of prodding, Sloppy Joan finally agreed to try riding her bike without training wheels. We all stood at the top of the driveway and watched as a new confidence took over our littlest bird. Her posture was different. She commanded the two wheels and, though a little shaky, flew up and down the pavement and around the tree in the center of our cul-de-sac. Fearless. Elated.

“Slow down, honey,” Hank said, a hesitant smile crossing his face. “The best riders are the ones who have control over the bike. You don’t need to go so fast.” She nodded, not really committing to the instruction, and descended the driveway once more, involuntary expressions of joy popping out of her mouth like firecrackers.

The pace of life, the rate at which everything changes, is such a thief of serenity. I can see myself in that rusty autumn landscape like it was yesterday, leaning against my mom on one side and a tree’s enchanted limb on the other. I can smell the distant campfires, hear the dried foliage and feel the sun soaking into the fabric of my sweatshirt. It’s so close to me, and also a story I recall with the nostalgia that can only come after many years and many seasons have passed. Now, as a witness to the toll time and tension takes on a body, a body that has worked tirelessly to serve and celebrate others, it’s hard to deny just how much can transpire between walks in the woods.    

People always talk about the phases of life. How your parents care for you, support you as you care for your own children, and eventually, become the ones in need of care themselves. But as much as you try to prepare yourself for that transition from one phase to the next, you eventually realize it’s a fool’s errand. The reality doesn’t come in the subtle decline or quiet adjustments. The understanding and, ultimately acceptance, comes abruptly in a hospital room, in the nuances of a heartbreaking conversation about independence or a look in her eyes that says, I’m scared.

Before anyone asks, as many of you know my mom, she is doing fine. There’s no need to worry or send texts with question marks and exclamation points comingling. We’re figuring things out and finding a new path out of the woods. She is still one of the biggest badasses I know. Life is just changing. We find ourselves in one of those blurry clouds between how things were and how they’ll be. It’s not the first time and certainly won’t be the last, but this one has me reflecting so deeply on the times I’ve leaned on her – so many times – and also the pride she has about needing to lean on us now. It’s an interesting dance, where the partners are the same but the one who usually leads is forced to follow. At least for a little while.

Life is moving so quickly. The shape of our family is shifting. My children are growing so fast. Sometimes I feel like time is flying down the driveway and the brakes don’t work. The limbs just budding when I was a girl are my daughters’ magic walking sticks, and I’m quietly trying to find the calm hiding in the mad dash and frenzy of it all. Perhaps the only opportunity for pacification rests in the pace. One step at a time, little hiker. Just one step at a time.   

A few weeks back, at a friend’s recommendation, I started watching The World’s Toughest Race on Amazon Prime. (If you read no further, you still got something out of this post, I promise. Do yourself a favor; grab an armful of snacks and plow through it.) Riding that reality show wrap-up high, I started entertaining the notion, going so far as talking to a few people, about what it would really take to enter an eco challenge or extreme adventure race.

Really my friend Kim, who lives on the other side of the country, started it by sending a barrage of texts in all caps, exclamation points and emojis. Let’s find a race! Let’s form a team! Let’s identify our strengths in athleticism and navigation! I was right there with her, I’m not going to lie. In my mind I was casting my line for sponsors and talking myself off the ledge all women stand at when they wear spandex above the knees.

I brought it up to my husband in a casual way, sure to downplay how truly interested I was, like any smitten stalker. “I mean, it would be really expensive,” I said. “Right,” he agreed. “We’d need good bikes and gear and travel,” I went on. “Right,” he agreed. “And not to mention the training! I mean, when would I do the training?” “Uh huh,” he agreed.

He then, in his typical Hank way, found an article with the world’s top adventure races, many of which fell a realistic arm’s reach out from my most recent athletic endeavors. He was, as he does, ushering me back to safety. Being careful not to clip my wings, but gently placing light weights in the soles of my shoes to bring me back down to earth. This is where you really want to go. These are the things that won’t kill you and leave your three children motherless and in need of intensive therapy.

And I realized I was cloaked in a cape I’d worn many times before. Historically, I’d thought of it as imposter syndrome – pretending to be or envisioning myself as someone I’m really, truly not. But, my Google research tells me this, much like my illusions of being capable of participating in a 10-day race across Fiji, is not quite accurate.

Turns out, the ingredients of true imposter syndrome include heavy feelings of self-doubt and, to put it in my own terms, the paranoia that you’re being a poser. I don’t really have a lot of that going on upstairs. My disease is an innocent one. What I’m really dealing with here is more of what social psychologists call “illusory superiority.” I tend to overestimate my abilities or qualifications. Not in a braggy way necessarily, but more of a starry-eyed, floating on a cloud made out of unicorn farts kind of way. I put a little too much weight in the where-there’s-a-will-there’s-a-way bucket.

Let me give you another example. One that might be a bit more relatable for you. In my mind, I am eternally 26 years old. I know what things are cool and I’m generally in touch with the trends. But this is also, sadly, illusory superiority, a fact that becomes abundantly clear whenever I’m around, well, 26 year olds. In reality, I get pissed off when I miss CBS Sunday Morning, I’m a solid 6 o’clock dinner eater and my lower stomach area looks like an elephant’s face, the leftovers from incubating three healthy-sized chicks.

Now, let me be very clear here. This is not me doubting myself or my body. In an ulterior reality, one in which I don’t have a full time job, a house full of dependents and a running pace that sloths snicker at, could I complete a 10-day multi-discipline race? I mean, absolutely most likely. Could I do it even with all of those things? Let’s say sure. But the truth is, there are so many steps between where I’ve been and a feat that requires an energy drink sponsorship, that the sandbox is plenty big to play in without catapulting myself onto the side of a cascading waterfall in a country that I can’t even pinpoint in relation to my own. (Geography has always been a struggle.)

Similarly, I don’t mind being 37. It’s great! Let’s hear it for all my thirty-something sisters out there! I’m finding my stride [sometimes] as a mom and I give far less Fs about what others think about my decisions. I’m comfortable in my skin and my skills and my marriage. It’s cool to wrap up in that midlife duvet comforter and just chill for a while. I mean, I don’t want to be bored, by any means, or phone it in, but there’s something sweet about this chapter. Being settled and satisfied to the point where you can dabble at the weekend warrior stuff. But love it as I may, I still can’t seem to wrap my mind around the fact that I’ve had so many birthdays! I mean I watched all of the Friends characters turn 30 on the show and they seemed older then than I feel now. Right? And then add nearly a decade on top of that. There’s just no way I’m really that old. You guys, I take a fiber supplement.

Really, the rub of it all is reconciling your illusory superior (imaginary teen Olympic athlete) self with your 37-year-old, realistically aspirational, sloth-running self. I think you have to become friends with the pieces of your soul that see the stars and extend your fingertips to snatch them up, because in the end, those fantastical, far-fetched endeavors often lead to a scaled-down destination that is within your grasp. One that still pushes your limits and waters the wanderlust and appetite for an adventure, but fits within the parameters of what’s possible for you.

I’m a sucker for a story about a real life person who just gives it all up, sells their possessions (because it’s really just stuff anyway) and walks across the country so they can finally hear the sweet whispers inside their soul. We all are, aren’t we? It’s romantic and rebellious and so against the beliefs we’re all spoon-fed as we graduate from one stage of life to the next. And when I close those books, I always have a moment where I’m pricing out my JCrew Factory slack collection on Facebook Marketplace. But my kids can’t walk that far without wanting to stop and have, like, three snacks. And I have some stuff that I really like. And, if I’m being honest, whenever I’m walking alone I just hear lyrics from Frozen or Hamilton over and over and over again. I guess my inner whisper is really just the voices of my daughters.

But I’ll never stop loving those stories. And maybe one day I’ll live out a narrative that resembles one I’ve lost myself in somewhere before. I’ll take a bigger risk than I normally would. I’ll discover things about myself in an unexpected corner of the world. My illusory superiority self is always open to what may come, and my 37-year-old (or whatever age I am at that time) self can bend the edges to fit it into the circle of things that matter to me most.

I love that there’s still a fire goddess in me who believes I can do insanely hard things. I’m not letting her go anywhere. But even more than that, I love that I have supportive people in my corner so that I can do moderately hard things – typically close to home and usually just enough to bend but not break my aging body, which is oddly thrilling to me. It’s not a compromise unless you give up the dream completely.

Whatever your aspirations are, I hope that you can find a way to fit them in. I hope you get a little stardust on your fingertips and some great stories to tell. The important thing is to keep reaching. Keep dreaming. Keep seeking out the joy. (All things, admittedly, I didn’t quite grasp at 26.)

Hello, friends. I wanted to check in and see how you’re feeling these days.

Earlier this week, Glennon Doyle posted this on her social media channels:

Hello. Just Wondering if Anyone else feels like they have lost the point.

I no longer know “how i am.” I do not know what to do what to say who to call what to eat how to plan how I feel. I don’t know if I’m doing enough too much not enough. I forgot how to parent, how to friend how to lead how to achieve or serve or rest or heal or work hard play hard yadda yadda.

I am kind of Mean, suddenly. The meanness that comes from numbness.

I have forgotten the structure, the way of things. I want Something To Change. The closest feeling I have Access to is: claustrophobia?

I do love you. I know that much.

G

The candid remarks resonated with me, as much as all of her brilliant writing does, but a few of the lines in particular scared up some sentiments (and admittedly some fear) that have been stirring in my own tired mind. “I am kind of Mean, suddenly. The meanness that comes from numbness. I want Something To Change.”

To talk about change, we first have to address the status of things, which can be … uncomfortable. There’s a simultaneous spread of both divisiveness and apathy in our world right now – two dangerous states of being swelling side-by-side and poisoning the population. It’s an emotional pandemic, perhaps fueled by the virus, but rooted in pain and positions that were sprouting long before anyone heard the term “COVID.” Every conversation I have these days is really just a trail of breadcrumbs leading to some tender, emotional bruise. People are frustrated, angry, skeptical, wary, stir crazy, distressed. They are exhausted; succumb to the antagonistic environment infiltrating our spirit from all directions.

I’m heartsick over the animosity in our country, in our neighborhoods, in our families and friendship circles. My soul doesn’t feel safe anywhere. So many people are screaming at the same time, that no one’s really being heard. The truth – whatever that means anymore – is muffled by a rising roar of hatred. Somewhere along the line, there was this unanimous adoption of the belief that people are either right or wrong, good or bad, based on how their opinions align or misalign with our own. Platforms and social gatherings once used to connect and celebrate our shared human experiences are now battlegrounds for hurling inaccurate headlines and dangerous assumptions. We are fractured into millions of sharp, perilous pieces – quick to cut, without remorse or responsibility. We’re broken. Without a doubt.

So many, like Glennon, want something – anything – to change just so that we can sip from that sweet cup of “normalcy” again. But that desire feels hopeless. The world feels wild and explosive.

My kids are on a real Hamilton kick right now. It’s all they want to listen to, all hours of the day, every car ride, garage concerts, the whole deal. The other night we got to talking about our favorite songs from the musical. I’m partial to “Wait for it,” mostly because of the line, “I am the one thing in life I can control.” It’s something I’ve said to the chicks over and over, time and time again. People will be mean. People will do things that are unkind or unjust. You can only control your own actions and responses in the face of others’ ugliness. Lately, the line has been resonating with me in new ways. It’s become somewhat of a personal mantra.

I can’t change the global state of things. Even the thought of trying to have an impact on that scale right now is aspirational, sure, but enough to swallow anyone whole. But I can put a finger under my chin and tilt my own head toward the sun and the stars.

Every morning when I wake up, every time I pick up my phone, with every breath, in every second of my day, I have two hands on the steering wheel and a foot to hit the gas or the brake. I don’t have to watch the news, which often, I don’t. When I feel a conversation taking a turn, I can use my words to ask questions and seek to understand, or I can walk away if that’s what feels like the best path to self-preservation, which often, it does. It’s not about “being a snowflake” or avoiding confrontation or any of the other aggressive labels people believe we need to apply to foreheads these days. Boundaries are a beautiful thing.

There are so many strong wills and cemented opinions out there right now. The resolve is both a source of angst and admiration for me. These immovable demarcations make it difficult to reach a common ground, and, being wired the way I am, often feel more personal than political, but there is always a choice. So often, we subject ourselves to the same painful exchanges, over and over again, until the wounds are so deep there isn’t a salve strong enough to heal them. These days, I find myself weighing the risk of an incurable outcome in all of my conversations and endeavors, with the reminder that “no” is always an option. I have been blessed with two feet on which I can always choose to walk away.

If you want to know how I am right now, the truth is I am fighting like hell. Every day I am raging against the numbness. I am clinging to the variables I can control. I relate to the words Glennon wrote because these days that resignation is always just one insult, one newsfeed story, one broken relationship away. I am operating out of a dire wish to maintain some shred of optimism, self-respect and a heart full of love for the lives around me. I don’t want to “lose the point,” because then what? What do we have left? A pandemic is hard. Social unrest is hard. Polarizing political views are hard. But I don’t have to let these tensions break me, as much as I might bend. I can stand for something without contributing to the poisonous public commentary that, let’s face it, isn’t helping anyone.

What felt like a side-stitching sprint, is now unarguably a marathon, with no end in sight. Amongst the chatter, I hear shaky statements like, “Once the election is over …” or “As soon as they approve a vaccine …” as if the ache is coming from just one tender tooth.

I am trying to be really honest with myself about what I want to hold onto and who I want to be on the other side of this dark time. I’ve seen relationships dissolve over tense dinner conversations and inner lights dim over long stints at home without visitors. Things are so different. So many people are in pain. I am the one thing in life I can control.

So, what am I’m holding onto? There are many things, and I certainly believe that one person’s lifeline is another person’s luxury, and that’s OK. For me, first and foremost, there are a handful of relationships that I will do almost anything to preserve. While my beliefs align with the majority of the loved ones in this group, it’s not true with all. It’s important to me to try to understand, rather than discard and disown. It’s not easy, but some people are worth fighting for. We all experience life differently, and those experiences shape our perspectives. We can’t assume everyone thinks like us, or that they’re “wrong” or “bad” for seeing through a different lens. We don’t know what we don’t know. Ask questions. Have a discussion. And if it starts to tear at the fabric of your friendship, you can always change the subject. Some folks just wait too darn long to call it for the sake of salvaging the mutual respect every relationship requires.

I’m also letting my heart marinate in the beautiful, effortless connections I have, like a marshmallow in hot cocoa, soaking in that sweetness and appreciating the simplicity. In a time when so many don’t have anyone, I’m exceptionally grateful for the nearness of my tribe.

Prioritizing my mental and physical health has been a roller coaster during these past several months, but I know with great certainty that when I’m challenging my body, carving out time for trail runs with some special women in my life (church, as we call it) and getting enough good sleep, I am more of who I want to be. My mind is clearer. My patience is longer. And my optimism muscle is stronger.

Finally, and I know this one sounds a little judgmental, but I’m constantly taking stock of who I don’t want to be. If the past few months have given me anything, it’s a thousand tiny snapshots of just how ugly humans can be. Dirty glances. Flippant, blanket statements about segments of people. Poking and pot stirring. Firing for effect. Disregard for lives lost. Personal preference trumping the greater good. Over and over and over again I’ve seen displays of gross, gut-turning behavior and commentary. So often, I think we see the disturbing tendencies of others, roll our eyes and move on, without holding that mirror up to ourselves and asking if we’re guilty of similar crimes. In my moments of self-reflection, when I wrestle with who I want to be, sometimes I find clarity in the less desirable attributes I’ve seen in others.

I hope, sweet friends, that you are well. My wish for you is that you’re riding these waves, following the sun and finding your way through. But if you aren’t, I think that’s OK, too. If you’re “losing the point,” you aren’t the only one. Hold onto the things that matter to you and check in with your heart often. I truly believe that we’re all going to meet up on the other side, stronger, more empathetic and grounded in gratitude.