I recently read about childhood memories and how we might not remember the good as well, not because they don’t exist but because the bad ones are easier to access.

Think of learning a new route home: the more you do it, the less you need directions. It becomes muscle memory. You start heading in familiar directions even if it’s not where you meant to go. You know exactly how long it should take without checking. And this is how neurons of the brain work.

Recalling moments of distress in an instant. Your ability to remember the times you felt hurt isn’t because you always were, but because your mind established quicker paths to those flashbacks as a means of protection. To keep you from the risk of experiencing that same pain again. In theory, it’s trying to keep you safe because if you can remember it quick, then you can avoid it. It’s by design.

It’s a sobering feeling to realize that I struggle to think of the good times from childhood. The same heartbreaking stories have played in my mind for so long that it’s hard to see beyond the fog. I couldn’t have always been an undercover sad girl. Where are the moments that I was happy to be alive and carefree like every kid should be able to be? Was there ever a time that family actually felt like family? Did we do more than argue and fight?

I’m certain there are moments I wished lasted forever. Like the summers we spent living like fish in the pool. Or when a quick walk to the cornerstone solved everything. Oh and there were field trips with my mom as the chaperone. I can see them all faintly in my mind but what is gnawing at me is the feeling. I can’t connect to those memories as well.  I don’t remember laughing until my stomach hurt with friends who felt like they’d be life long. I don’t feel a sense of home when I picture my childhood bedroom. Maybe because we moved so often it never felt permanent, like something that was mine. Maybe I always longed for something more, even as a kid — there was something missing.

I think at the root, I don’t know if I ever felt like I belonged. I was the youngest and my parents worked a lot and my brother had more friends to hang out with. I can recall trying to cling to anyone even for a moment. With a mother who worked nights, a father who was an alcoholic, and a brother who was busy also trying to be a kid, I didn’t know where I fit in. It seemed like everyone had something else going on and would come together just briefly right before the street lights came on to eat. But I don’t remember dinner table conversations outside of being told to stop putting my elbows on the table. Did we ask each other how we were doing? How our days were? I wonder if we all share the same clouded memories of that time…?

As I’m trying to recall the good. I can picture one Christmas morning. I’m pretty sure it was one of the last that Santa got credit for giving us gifts (spoiler alert, it wasn’t him). My brother and I really wanted bikes. Our neighborhood always had phases where the kids would rally around the same toys or games. This time it was skateboards, scooters and bikes. We woke up early and begged to open presents. Of course, our parents took their time and when they finally came downstairs we ripped through everything in sight. You can imagine that bicycles were not magically wrapped (that probably would have sold me on Santa forever). Nonetheless, we were grateful for what we got and went outside to exchange oohs and ahhs with our friends. If I remember correctly we were called inside and told that Santa “forgot” to bring two of our gifts inside. And yes, it was what we hoped for, one for each of us rolling through the back patio door. Apparently, Santa left them outside for us. How lazy! (Kidding). We were ecstatic. It definitely went down as a great Christmas, and those were a dime a dozen.

That had to have been 25 years ago, give or take.  I wish I could go back and savor it a littler longer. Take note of the kind of bike it was and how long it took to take the training wheels off. What color was it? You can never learn how to ride a bike for the first time again. How wild is it that many firsts get lost in the speed of life without knowing that sensation, the rush and overwhelming joy, will only live there in your memories…and if you’re lucky enough you’ll get to browse them like a museum.

Time really flies and blends together and before you know it you’re grasping for the things that connect you to the little you.

I know there is so much more that is lost in the creases of my mind. I’m determined to shorten the time it takes to reach for them because even though life may have been full of survival, it has also been one of great celebrations.

I know it. There’s more to me than my pain.

I invite you to do the same. What is one of your most cherished childhood memories? Will you share it with me? Comment below!

Comment

Thank you for taking the time to read. Consider sharing with a friend ❤️ subscribe for free below.

Subscribe

I asked Google how many articles are currently circulating about the war Trump started and it’s thousands. Every time I open an app, there’s a headline about something; intercepts, sleeper cells, bomb threats, TSA lines. You know… I didn’t even realize we were also in the middle of a partial government shutdown. Those headlines feel so far removed. January 31st came and went and somehow our presidential administration thought it was a good idea to launch into another middle east conflict that nobody asked for. Well – there is one entity that benefits from U.S. involvement, but this isn’t another article about all of that. That’s just where my head is.

I am trying to wrap my head around the current state of the world. Then I decide I’m not going to care telling myself that I’ll just sit in my bubble. Then I loop back around and repeat. When does it end? Is everyone experiencing the same thing and just moving on with their days?

Today, I woke up exhausted. It has been multiple days in a row of abruptly opening my eyes around 5AM. A time I’ve exclusively reserved for sleeping. I have attempted to be an early riser but then I’m up late ruminating on writing and creating and chores and lists, I must add everything to the list, and getting sidetracked and thinking about work and and and…. I could go and on and on. You’ve seen those endless spirals. Sometimes I feel like my brain is one long thread fraying at the end waiting to be pulled; triggered by a creeping thought. All it needs is an ounce of angst and my thoughts are off to the races.

Am I prepared for a catastrophic event? Absolutely not. In fact, I was just complaining about having excess of food that probably won’t get eaten. I try to only shop for the things I will need in the moment. But lately, I keep going back and forth about stockpiling. Is there enough to last? And for how long? Do I need batteries? Do I need weapons? I definitely need to get some Vitamin C supplements because.. scurvy! It’s ALOT.

How are we supposed to act like none of this is happening? Time and time again these moments in history arise and we hope to God that the dust will settle with minimum threat to existence. But this time… I’m not too sure. This time I’m praying for a miracle to happen, something to show itself full of hope and promise because where we are now is seemingly hopeless.

In the meantime, I’m reminded that I can only control myself and so I’m writing a list of 5 things I can do to regulate and come up from air, to not let the impeding burn out win.

1. Take a walk, get some fresh air. Let the sun touch my skin.

2. Take a break from my phone and the internet in general. Currently, I can hear the wind chimes my neighbor hung and it makes the wind sound magical.

3. That leads me to three - spend more time noticing the tangible. Flowers and butterflies or clouds forming shapes in the sky, all of these things are worth pausing for.

4. Stretch. If not for bodily maintenance then do it to send love to the places stress is stored. Maybe my hips could use a little help letting go.

5. Breathe. When’s the last time you’ve taken a full bellied breath? Inhale and exhale without holding anything back. I’m often surprised in the moments I can tell I’ve been holding my breath and lately, it’s happened significantly more. It always feels good to let it out, sometimes even with an audible ahhh.

I’m sure there is a whole lot that could be done but this is where I’m starting. If you can relate, I see you. Maybe, you too, could use somethings to help calm your nerves. I hope you find what works. We’re kind of all in this together after all!

It all started as an innocent inquiry not thinking it was actually going to turn into something tangible. I had a realtor, a decent savings, and a deadline to find something before having to rent yet again. After spending the summer searching high and low, I ended up with a cute new-build townhome, and it still blows my mind that I have a mortgage and can just decide to paint my walls without considering consequences.

I was recently notified that I have officially owned my home for 6 months and it stopped my rambling mind in its tracks. How has time gone by so quickly? I still have things in boxes because I need more cutesy bookshelves for my knickknacks. I still haven’t’ picked a color to paint the walls. I am still daydreaming about what I can do to the yard. Somehow having the freedom to do so has also created an unexplainable pressure. If I choose the wrong color, do I fail? At what? Who knows! But in all seriousness, I have been trying to quiet my nervous system. Like this is our home. No one can take it from us, and I won’t have to figure out where to live in a year.

Usually after 6 months I must evaluate staying in one place or not. There are always varying factors to consider. How are my neighbors? Are there constantly random people hanging around? Am I tired of the gentleman who randomly decides to perform impromptu karaoke on the light rail station platform across the street at 2AM? I never stopped to ask myself do I want to stay? Moving on always seemed par to the course. There was a time in life I thought I had to move at the end of the lease. Growing up, my family always moved from place to place with little explanation; that’s just the way it was. So, when the time came to renew, I just found somewhere else to go.

Most recently, I moved every year due to break ups, family members in need, and the aforementioned rodents. What an adventure. I’m so very grateful and somehow I’m still wondering if the proverbial shoe is going to drop. I still tell myself to slow down. I can curate the space in as much time as I choose. A friend of mines jokes saying it took them a year to get rugs in their home after buying. And it’s true, it took me months to pick curtains and how fitting is it that the rod didn’t actually work, falling apart after being held up by command strips. Yep, I still hesitate putting holes in the walls.

So, how do I embody homeownership as a perpetual rent?

1. Breathe. There will always be something I could be doing; but who else sets the timeline but me? The power of a breath to regulate and calibrate is something that’s become such a practice, as soon as I feel the impulsive urge to DIY, I pause and breath.

2. Make a list! There will always be ideas and there will never be enough time. A list helps me prioritize and decide what will actually make my life easier and more organized.

3. Purchase items that feel good. I want to have random things around that make me smile. My paper towel holder is a bear leaning against the rod. It’s a pain in the ass to screw the rod in but literally grabbing a piece brings me joy, I love it so much.

4. And this is the most important. I interrupt comparison as much as I can. Watching reruns of HGTV is all fun and games until I start to feel bad that my powder room doesn’t share the same custom flare. Chip and Joann designing my space would be amazing but also not a reality I am living and that’s okay!

I know that eventually I will come home and it will feel like walking into a hug–at least that’s what I’m going for. When that day is, is to be determined. What I can say is that no matter how long it takes, I won’t ever get over the fact that I did it. I’m the person at the parking garage who had to do a promise to pay because my card declined trying to get out and there were no other options. I’m the girl who kept half her belongings in the trunk of her car because she didn’t have a room and was sleeping on her friend’s couch. To embody homeownership is to honor my story. How amazingly blessed am I to make it here?

I don’t know if it will ever feel real, but what I do feel is the sense of belonging that I don’t think I’ve had in a home before, and that has made everything worth it.

Cut to a core memory from high school… where I’m standing in a courtyard at school wearing black velour pants with a red and black striped shirt when a nameless boy approaches me unprovoked. Imagine me, already a self conscious fifteen year old girl who questions her appearance, in front of a crowd of peers watching the interaction. He gut-checks me and asks when I was due. It didn’t register immediately and then he and the crowd chuckled at the cheeky comment and it hit me that he’s referring to a pregnancy belly. Instead of showing any sort of hurt emotion, I shrugged it off and probably called him a name in defense. The exact details escape me but the feeling–the uncomfortably awkward, please get me out of here, feeling is all too familiar. I didn’t hate my body entirely but I also didn’t think anyone noticed it to this extent…It’s ironic how I’ve begun my own reenactment of this event to myself every time I look into a mirror lately searching for imperfections; contorting my abdomen posing the same questions to myself… Do I look pregnant? Is my stomach flat enough? Can people tell that I’ve stopped lifting weights? The amount of questions posed in the mirror could spiral around me a dozen times. Each question getting farther and farther away from any sort of acceptance. And it’s gotten painfully clear that the relationship I have with my body at thirty-something feels a lot like the one I had as a teenager.

It sucks. Thinking of all the work I’ve done to dismantle the negative dialogue in my mind and seeing it unravel is heartbreaking. I thought I was more confident than that, I thought I was past the struggle with my appearance. Years and years spent feeling like the ugly friend, the fat friend, the bigger friend…the girl with the gap…never feeling pretty enough…never having clothes fit right… all rushing back to me in these moments in front of the mirror. Why now? Is it just aging? When did being in my 30’s start to feel like I’m not where I should be emotionally and physically? Here we are spiraling again.. Have we learned nothing?!

Okay – So, if I pause and take a breath to process my emotions like a “grown up,” I also must ask… what am I even expecting my physique to look like? Where did the ideas around my body come from? As I reflect, the dots connect to a very complicated childhood and complex relationship with a mother who worked tirelessly as a waitress. Are you surprised? Probably not.

As an adult, the relationship my mother and I have is one that I believe many can relate to; one where there’s intent for connection but somewhere along life’s many tribulations, distance has taken its place. It hasn’t always been like that though. I used to always want to be with her. I remember begging to come along while she ran errands and calling her incessantly when she wasn’t home. At one point I’d even considered her to be a best friend. When or why that changed is a story for another day but I find it important to note here so you can envision the kind of relationship where we’d share clothes, float between the lines of friendship and mother-daughter relationship and have open dialogue about pretty much anything. She’d casually mention her dieting or tactics to lose weight and I’d secretly follow suit. There was this saying she had - if you wanted to lose five pounds you just have to refrain from eating for a day. I would hardly look at a scale but whenever I felt that I looked too big, I’d skip a meal or two like the mantra says. It’s ironic thinking back about how we could talk about anything yet never really talked positively about body image or self esteem. Phrases like “fat cow” and “grody” were regularly thrown around the house without aim. It was like there was some imaginary standard set but only applied to adults and yet I had no frame of reference for what I was supposed to be.

It didn’t help that I was well developed by third grade. I was the tallest girl and probably was one of the first to have “chi chi’s” come in. I just remember feeling like I stood out among my peers. Always in the back of the class photos; always taller than all the boys; I categorized myself as a tomboy to make it make sense. My mother and I also never really talked about bras or puberty. One day we were coming home from the store and I randomly found the urge to ask her when I should start shaving my armpits, showing her the hair that had begun to grow. Innocently, she laughed suggesting I start now. For some reason it felt like I should have known but had no idea where I would have learned if not from her. From then on I took it upon myself to start shaving any place that grew hair. I can thank the learning curve for the many scars acquired during that phase.

Like most, my teenage years weren’t exempt from inner scrutiny. I tried my hardest to hide in a t-shirt, jeans and sunglasses daily. My confidence was always teetering. I couldn’t get it out of my head that I was “bigger” than everyone else. Even playing sports I was reminded of my size based on the position I played. “You’re not fat, you just have big boobs.” The intentions were always good but seemed to dig a deeper hole in my self esteem.

Looking back now, I wish I could hug her. Tell her that our body deserved our love no matter its size or stretch marks or what we wore. In hindsight, we weren’t even overweight. BMI charts aren’t realistic anyways. It’s also amazing that I almost weigh what I weighed at 16 but have so much more muscle. I workout more and try to eat more things that fulfill my health holistically.

On my way to the gym the other day my mother and I stumbled into a conversation. She often spews compliments like rapid fire and then follows it with a self-deprecating comment like “yeah I’m a fat cow, I need to stop eating.” I stopped her in the conversation and asked if she knew that her mindset was something that I held onto as a kid. She shared that she didn’t think I would have taken her seriously but that’s what she would really do. I can’t remember a time where she ate regularly or found anything remotely nice to say about herself or created a dialogue that welcomed a variety of acceptable body images. I can’t blame her for the conditioning of the 80’s and 90’s, being thin was “in.”

I’m not sure how I would have known not to take comments like that literally as a child but where the conversation went next provided so much insight into how I might’ve gotten here. “You should have heard what my mom used to say. She would say such horrible things about herself and I thought she was so beautiful. It made me think, wow I must be hideous if SHE thinks she needs to change.”

And just like that, it clicked for me. These harsh beliefs I’ve carried with me were passed down to me subconsciously. In this moment, a simple five minute conversation, I saw generations in front of me; standing in front of mirrors, dissecting their bodies piece by piece, wishing they looked like the version of themselves they deemed perfect. My heart broke for us on my drive to the gym that day. I couldn’t help but to think where we would be had our mothers talked nicer to themselves; accepted their bodies as is and loved them through their changes with compassion.

Maybe it wouldn’t have changed much but maybe I can start now – standing in front of the mirror daily and telling every inch “I love you.”

This essay was published in an anthology “Amidst the Drought”, available for purchase here.

Leave a comment

When love meets its end and the dust settles, the proverbial other side randomly appears to you. You realize one day that you can breathe again without a second thought of the other person. One day their image doesn’t headline in your mind with every fleeting memory. You stop stalking their texts and social media. There isn’t a timeline on this occurrence; that moment slowly slips its way into your norm and you’re free.

I remember wishing for a fast forward button through grief; for the pit in my stomach to soften with a sense of relief; for there to be an ejection button on the experience of heartbreak. Unfortunately, and fortunately, it does not work like that. The journey through grief is one that inevitably leads you back to yourself, if you let it. It asks you to stare deep into the wounds you’ve carried well beyond their welcome and reckon with yourself.

What did loving and being loved by them mean for you? What did it teach you? Aside from the ache of heartbreak, what feelings about yourself should you examine? Obviously it’s nuanced and complex and weird but as a perpetual lover girl, I can tell you it helps heal you a little more each time. Every time I’ve cracked my heart open to experience something new, it was first a closed broken heart. And each time I’ve realized how lucky that experience is alone; to transform through pain and not run from it. How lucky am I to have loved so deeply that I am called to love myself more and more?

Today I have a something new to offer.

when love visits you in the forgotten place
let it lean against your window
like dew dribbling down the pane
let it learn how you held your walls together
and gently peek into your soul
welcome the flicker of sun into old rooms
let it shine against dusty remains
like a beacon of guiding light
let it reveal joy left lingering in stale air
let it be bold and fill new space
with whispers of fresh beginnings
like spuds at the first sign of Spring
let it bloom with sweet nothings
when love visits you
let it settle in
unpack
and let it stay…

I know I am late and the world has likely moved on, however, the show is a whirlwind of historical fiction and poetry and love and comedy and I love it so much. Picture a young Emily Dickinson desperately craving for one thing – to write. She refuses to live a life that ends with her being some mediocre man’s wife who’s values rests upon her raising their children. She’s seen as a radical thinker. A dangerous woman that threatens patriarchy just because she wants a name for herself. Her world revolves around writing and thinking and grappling with ideas of being published, or rather, being known. The idea of being forgotten haunts her.

Subscribe now

I found myself wondering how similar I may be to her. I’m a 33-year-old unmarried woman with no children, no man and a career. Nearly 150 years later, society still finds ways to scream at me “WHEN?” When will I settle down? When will I take having children more seriously? When will I stop trying to be independent and step into the “soft” girl era so someone will want to marry me? We’re a century apart and somehow existing as a single woman today carries the same undertones.

My mother usually works that kind of conversation in monthly. Reminding me how she had two children by the age of 22. I know she means well but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t spark the biological ticking clock in the back of my mind. Why can’t I just want to write and have a career while the role of motherhood simmers on the back burner?

Like Dickinson, ideas being forced upon me make me cringe compulsively. I want that journey to be on my own terms. I want my story to revolve around something just as romantically as Dickinson and her poetry. Surely she floats between love interests as we all do. But her purpose in life is to write and write and write until she has nothing left to say or quite frankly – dies.

I think about of writing less as a means of practice and more of something to lean on when I’m seeking expression. Do I wish I could be like Dickinson locking myself in my bedroom and write thousands of poetry or essays over the course of my lifetime? Absolutely. I think if we all could lock ourselves somewhere to escape the modern world, we would. But as of lately I have been wondering how having a practice/routine would make my expression even better, even deeper. So this “blog” is that – my practice.

I hope you will find it cheeky, light and entertaining but yet heart wrenching, moving and provoking. I hope it helps you marvel at life with openness and grace.

I leave you with the most recent renderings of a poem I am writing…

And finally..

the wind stopped whispering your name

between my favorite things

stillness rests where anxiety once fluttered

when the last leaf falls for the winter

it crinkles without second thoughts

of a future.