"Pause. Breathe. Repeat."  An entry about remembering to take my own advice. And some household tools for remembering your calm and focus in the midst of a very challenging transition.  

My Christian faith started evolving 25 years ago, but the kernel or promise of change was embedded in my heart since childhood. The catalyst for my transformation was the fire of grief, which cracked me open and left me exposed.  Community, in the form of women’s friendship and wisdom, tended me, planted me deeply in cool soil, and gave me room to grow. ​

My father died when I was 18.  I was in college at an Evangelical Christian school.  In the following year, I attempted suicide. My family of origin slid into a state of alienation from each other.  I was angry and bereft, rude and out of control. I struggled against everything and everyone. ​

Something essential in me prevailed and was witnessed.  Other women saw it. I received compassion and insight from female professors at the college.  They brought me to church, a woman-lead Episcopalian congregation. They taught me about feminism, new-to-me theologies, women’s perspectives and experiences conveyed by women authors in narratives and poetry.  I learned about the entanglement of Christian religion with colonialism. I reached out and met other female students wrestling with the same ideas and stretching into their own awakenings. I prayed and played with God alongside the guidance of an eclectic and faithful spiritual director.   ​

A few weeks before my thirtieth birthday I moved across the country to Seattle for graduate school.  It was my fresh start, far from my family, my personal history, the church I grew up in, the politics I did not subscribe to.  The Madwoman resurfaced in my graduate studies and occupied a central role in my thinking and writing. As I drafted my thesis I heard Her call.  She did not reveal Herself to me in the upper room of the house, which I had hoped and expected. Rather, She bid me retrace my steps and meet Her in each person I met as I traveled back down through the house. ​

There’s still no “there” there, for me.  I don’t have a local community that I can simply join for resonance and support, teaching and service.  I miss that. I understand, now, the best parts of a house of worship. Even so, I proceed. I am making it up as I go, one step at a time, down from Her attic and into the company of Her people, who are everywhere. ​

"Where is balance in your life?" the question is our homework assignment from the circus lessons coach.  I've considered my answer and I'm happy with it.

I am seen, known, and loved for who I am.  I dwell in my close relationships with my husband, son, and besties.  I enjoy my home.  My daily routine generates only a minimum of stress for me.  My life is safe, secure, and stable. 

Rooted in this place of comfort and warmth, I'm reaching out, stretching, and challenging myself. The vital tension between comfort and growth is how I'm balanced.

At 45 years old, my heaviest weight, and lowest level of physical fitness, I'm enrolled in circus lessons and enjoying them.  I just received my A1C (blood sugar) test results - my highest/worst numbers to date.  So, J and I have embarked on a focused and intentional diet to bring my blood sugar back within healthy boundaries and maybe shed some pounds in the process.  I'm walking in the evenings, inconsistently but persistently.  I'm tending to my body, my physical self care and presence, in new and supported ways.

I've planned a solo adventure.  In October, I'm attending the Evolving Faith conference in Denver. The ideas, experiences, and emotions of how one's spirituality and/or religion may change over time is one of my passionate interests. Ultimately, I'll be traveling alone to meet and engage with strangers, pushing through the membranes of my introversion.  

It's been almost a year since I created and hosted my first retreat.  It went smoothly yet it left me exhausted and sensitive to all the areas for improving the event.  It also reminded me of how much I value and enjoy small gatherings of women talking together about substantive, real-life, heartfelt topics. This year I'll host more of these group conversations in my home, starting with one this month.  And, I'm revising the retreat for a new participants.  

There are more ideas for stretching still percolating through my mind, but this is where I'm balancing, today.  It's a vibrant, creative, growing space between the comforts of home and the unknown out there.  

In a joyful ceremony, with friends and family, J and I were married.  

​We gave special attention to including young N in the ceremony.  J made a commitment to N to love and support him as step-father and friend, with care not to replace L.  We made promises as a family, in addition to our vows as a couple. 

N also received a simple silver band as a symbol of the family the three of us make together.

Then the party!  A picnic reception with plenty of food and cake for all. 

I've enjoyed coloring since I was a child.  As an adult, it's taken on a different feel and purpose.  When I scroll through my old blog, there are intermittent posts of completed coloring pages, filled in at night at the kitchen table, waiting for Baby N to wake up for a feeding or some comfort, until I could finally go to bed.  Now, N is a tween who needs different things from me, and I find myself again at the kitchen table coloring.   ​

 I color to soothe my nerves and clear my head after a day at the office and the commuter traffic.  I color because I enjoy the final product.  But there's something else easing its way into my little hobby.  I color to restore some of my own vibrancy.  I'm re-membering my creativity.

Granted, filling in a pre-printed page with markers isn't a unique expression of self or anything. But it does offer some foundational elements for developing creativity.  I mean both concrete things like choosing colors, establishing patterns, practicing technique with a tool, and intangibles like getting into the “zone,” perceiving something familiar from a different perspective, and engaging imagination and ideation parts of the brain.  I’ve missed these parts of myself during these seasons of personal drought.

​Coloring again feels to me like planting and tending my creativity.  Coaxing it out of dormancy.  Bringing it up into my life.  

​June Moon Visionary Art free online coloring book

​Dover Publications offers a diverse array of coloring books

On Saturday, my guys, J and Little N, went hiking, together, without me.
And it was good.

Here is Little N with Slim and Brother Justin enjoying a leisurely Sunday morning.

It was such a leisurely Sunday morning that I got to sleep in until 8-ish.  We stayed at J's Saturday night after a 4-hour playdate with G and her family.  Pizza and a movie later and Little N was sound asleep.  Only to rise early, with the cats, and then J, while I slept on.  happy sigh.

Happy too, to note that N's behavior toward me improved a little after a call with his dad.  N heard that he was going a little too far in his treatment of me and some of his classmates.  He is still impatient and quick to anger, but he's eased up on his verbal abuse of me. 

So we enjoyed a playdate with G's two boys.  We enjoyed hanging out for the evening at J's.  Little N put down the iPad and enjoyed imaginary games in J's house, which he wishes was ours.  He enjoyed pizza, a raucous movie, sleeping in a big bed by himself, with maybe a cat or two.  And I enjoyed my son.  

It's a beginning.  It's a sign, I hope, that we're in a change.  I anticipate bumps.  I'm seeking additional support in the form of a counselor for N.  And I'm holding onto my hope of N learning how to manage big emotions, like anger, like reactions to change and loss.  Holding onto my hope of knowing my son throughout this transition and continuing our relationship, on good terms, on the other side of this.

I've been sick for about 2 weeks now.  I'm not as sick today as I was a week ago.  I'm back at the office.  I'm holding things together.  But weighing me down more than illness is Little N.

He's angry. Every evening after school.  Every morning when he wakes.  At me.

When I pick him up from school he swears at me and flips me off, calls me names, teases me about my weight, tells me that I'm dumb, erupts at anything I say, any move I make.  When he rises in the morning he bellows for me to get up and starts issuing demands.  It's near constant.  It's exhausting.  It's wrong.  

His anger is justified but misdirected and abusive.  He wants to be with his dad.  His dad has moved out of state.  He blames me.  For everything.  All day.  

I don't know how to correct him.  To let him feel his anger, get it out, and treat me with respect, all at the same time.  The questions stew and stir in my mind and my heart.  

There's a line in an Ani song, "We never see things changing, we only see them ending."  I hope that this is the pain of things changing.  And not the grief of an ending.  

this has not been my most healthful, most productive week ever. it was largely a week of recovering from the visit with my mom. well... our relationship makes me tired and sad. so much of what is most significant to me seems to be insignificant, or even negative, to her. and, at 43, i still don't have the words to tell her these things.

so i keep the peace.  i let the unspoken words collect in my throat.  and when the visit is over, and mima has returned to her home, all those thoughts and feelings splutter up and out, sour tasting and slimy.

i document it all in my journal. what i heard from her, how it felt in the moment, what i think about the same topic (which is largely antithetical to her point of view), why i didn't say anything. i notice the shape and weight of what i didn't say. i sketch it out to try and understand the differences between us and the history that keeps me holding my tongue.  

my siblings, though more alike to our mother politically and culturally, have had similar challenges expressing their own points of view to her. they get labeled rude or ungrateful or worse when they talk back. even at our adult ages.  but then, they tend to lash out in anger.  none of us have found a polite respectful way to say what we think and be heard.  each of us have experienced the backlash in some form or another.

i believe that my mother loves me.  i'm not sure that she likes me very much.  her comments tell me that i'm too fat, too grey, my home isn't ordered properly, my boyfriend isn't her type, my city isn't her culture, my beliefs about spirit are wrong, my faith in friendship is misplaced, my dreams are best left in the past.  

so what would i tell her?  now that she's gone and the words are still with me.  

first, these things are my own - my health and appearance, my home and 4 sets of measuring cups, my sweet thoughtful boyfriend, my cosmopolitan liberal city, my spiritual-but-not-religious soul, my steadfast precious friends, my dreams for creativity and vocation.

second, i am enough and whole as i am. i don't need or want the persistent comments and critique as if i don't measure up to some ideal that i don't even subscribe to.  i don't need to be saved. i don't need correction, lectures, exhortations.  i'm not interested and the constant comparison is distracting and draining as hell.  i am enough.

third, accept me as i am today.  see me. value me. let me be.  encourage me in the things that are important to me.  

fourth, give me space to speak my words.  please, pause the monologue. grant me the room, the airtime, to speak up with a clear head and open heart.    

it's pretty common to have a challenging relationship with one's family of origin. it's a familiar phenomenon to all get together and start acting out the roles we had in the family back when we all lived together.  when we were children.  i think maybe my mother is stuck at a particular point in time, which i have grown past.  like, maybe she doesn't recognize me now because i'm not the same girl i was back then.  mom has often said that she has to be mother and father now that my dad's passed.  but i don't really need that kind of parenting.  i'm looking to be seen and heard as the adult me, who i am, enough and whole, today.