Vacation Calm: Finding it Close to Home

 

I just got back from vacation. On our trip we snorkeled, kayaked, and hiked in the beautiful Galapagos Islands. The natural beauty we witnessed was beyond anything I’ve experienced in my life. There were swimming pool clear beaches and lava rock hikes, lush greenery in the highlands where the land tortoises live. There were Blue-Footed Boobies, Frigate birds, iguanas and sea lions. And so much more. At dinner the night before we were to get off the boat we’d spent the week exploring on, I cried. 

I cried because we were leaving a place of protected, majestic beauty. I cried because I might never play in the water with sea lions again. I cried because we we returning to cell service. I cried because the chatter and logistics of my job were closer once we reached land. I cried because I felt so calm and I knew that I’d lose this when I got home. 

The day after I got home from vacation I went back to work. “I need a new job,” I thought to myself as I scrolled through two weeks of emails, jotting down to-dos on my spiral notebook. Nothing seemed important; nothing felt meaningful or moving. 

I struggled to focus on my work. I fought off images of swimming with sea lions and sea turtles. I tried to block out the memory of the school of dolphins we’d come across or the baby albatrosses we’d seen nesting. As I stared at my computer I longed for the quiet that came when I was snorkeling, my body gently buoyed by my wetsuit, my breath, loud and rhythmic through my snorkel, schools of fish darting towards and away from me. 

On our trip my niece asked me if it was normal to hear her breath so loudly with the snorkel. It freaked her out and she thought she might be doing something wrong. “No,” I explained, “that’s what you want to hear. That’s normal.” I love the sound of my breath when snorkeling. Amplified like Darth Vader in the darkness under the water when snorkeling, I exist in a suspended chamber of silence. 

This is what I miss as I force myself back to work; back to reality. Is that kind of quiet only possible 3000 miles away on a remote cluster of islands? Is it possible to have vacation calm in real life? 

This morning, still a little jet lagged, I woke up at 5 am and went for a walk in the pitch black cold morning. I brought a headlamp to guide me on the path along the lake. In the dark I could hear the ducks in the lake, an occasional float of coots swooping up and landing a few feet from the shore. It was so quiet I could hear my breath as I walked. 

In the quiet darkness I felt calm. I walked for a long time. My eyes adjusted to the dark and I turned off my headlamp. The air was cold against my cheeks and my eyes watered from the wind. 

I thought about snorkeling, how without the protection of my wetsuit my hands and my ears got cold in the frigid ocean water. I was reminded of the calm I felt floating in the darkness below the surface. As I walked I could almost bring myself back there. The feeling was the same — quiet darkness. It is possible. Vacation calm, just a few miles from my house.

I'm an Excellent Packer

I’m getting ready for a big trip. We leave in less than two days and I’ve been thinking about packing for months. I have made piles and lists. I have a notes app on my phone that I’ve opened and edited at least fifty times. I’ve run through every possible devastating scenario in my mind. I’ve printed out airport maps and checked that my Lyft app is fully loaded onto my phone. I’ve gathered and packed medications for every possible ailment. I’ve contemplated snacks and washed my favorite scarf to keep me warm on the plane. In the process of it all I’ve lost my glasses, adding one more thing to worry about in the thirty-six hours before I leave. 

We’re going on a lifetime adventure to the Galapagos Islands and, while I’m excited for the trip, I recognize that I’ve spent so much psychic energy preparing that I’m kind of exhausted even before zipping my suitcase. The joke in my family is that I love packing. For my birthday this year I got packing cubes, little soft suitcases that I can put in my big suitcase to keep me even more organized. The truth is, I’m not really organized at all. I’m just incredibly anxious. Every act of packing makes me feel a tiny bit more in control of an experience I have very little control of.

As I sit here writing this I am wondering if I should make coffee at 3 am before I call the Lyft or if I should wait until we get to the airport so I can wash the pot before we leave. Does my daughter’s TSA pre-check work or should we go to the airport extra early in case? If I pack cough syrup in little spice bottles will that be under the requisite 3 ounces to get through security? Holy crap! It doesn’t stop. I feel sorry for my traveling companions. I feel sorry for myself.

A therapist once told me that my brain thinks this way, in part as a coping strategy to a very chaotic childhood. I remember being in the car with my plastic grocery bag on my way to my dad’s house. He’d call to my sisters and me in the back seat, “Everyone got enough underpants?!” If we didn’t he’d stop at K-mart on the way and we’d grab some.

I am always prepared. For anything. For everything. I have two satellite bags in my everyday purse — one that has two kinds of lotion (hand and face), Advil, lip balm, bandaids, tweezers, dental floss, gum and hand sanitizer and another that has a pen, a pencil, a highlighter, a phone charger, old earphones, new earphones, ear plugs and post-it notes. I’m always ready. 

What would happen if I was unprepared? If I didn’t have a granola bar handy when I got hungry? If I had to use a thread from my shirt instead of floss to get the broccoli out of from between the molars on the upper left side of my mouth? What would happen if I was late to the airport? I really don’t know because it RARELY happens.

Once, when my daughter was four and we were visiting my mom in Chicago, she took us to O’Hare Airport and we got in terrible traffic. We ended up missing our flight and being stranded for hours. I remember leaving my daughter in the airport corridor with our luggage as I raced to the bathroom to pee, afraid the whole time that she’d be abducted or molested in the seven minutes I was gone. 

I also remember having ice cream with her at 10 am and again at noon. I remember sitting on top of our suitcases watching Dora the Explorer on her tiny DVD player. I remember her sense of adventure and acceptance. She wasn’t worried at all. As far as she was concerned, we were chillin’ in a giant room full of lots of people (and ice cream) and everything was fine.

I can’t prepare for everything. Can I really prepare for anything? No matter how many times I check my flight status, there’s no way to know if somehow ice will form on the wings in an unexpected cold snap. There’s no predicting if the pilot gets COVID or the Lyft driver gets a flat. I tell myself these things, but I still prepare. I’ll leave just a tiny bit earlier in case. I’ll pack a few extra pair of socks in case someone forgets their’s. There will always be a headlamp in my toiletries case if I need to read. 

Already things aren’t going as planned. I lost my glasses! But I have my old pair and I can use those. To get to our destination we’ll need to take three flights, multiple taxi rides, and a boat. There are so many possible ways things can go wrong, and they might. 

A few years ago I went to India. At the last minute, I gate checked my bag. After a grueling few days of travel, missing a connection in Dubai, finally arriving in Chennai, I learned that my suitcase was lost. On the way to my final destination I had the driver pull over to a shop I’d been to on my last trip. I bought a set of clothes and planned how I’d wash my bra and underpants while I slept that night. A friend gave me some disposable underwear, I brushed my teeth with my finger, and two days later my bag was found. The worst had happened and I had been okay.

As I prepare for this once in a lifetime trip I desperately want to change my narrative. I long to see the possibilities beyond the logistics, to chill out like my daughter did all those years ago. I know I can do it because I’ve done it before. I have a day and a half to figure this out, to embody the calmer me. Can I do it? I hope so. I’m really going to try.

Holiday Party

I don’t think about COVID every day like I used to. Slowly, like a sponge drying on the side of the sink, my brain has become less saturated with thoughts of the virus and more full of daily life as I knew it before COVID.

I know that COVID is still a concern. I am fully vaccinated and boosted. I wear my mask at work along with my co-workers. I’ve had COVID so I’m less fearful of getting it, but I’m not a denier by any stretch of the imagination. I do notice, though, that life feels more normal than it has in the last three years. I welcome this return to the ways things used to be.

This year we decided to resurrect our holiday party. It’s been several years since we had our annual party. It was my daughter’s question one morning, “Why don’t we have the cookie party anymore?”, that sparked the idea. It’s her last year at home before heading to college and that seemed like good enough reason to me.

I talked to my partner. She agreed we should have the party. And we started preparing. We would make mini-muffalettas, champagne punch, and lots of cookies. We spent many hours preparing for the party. We invited most of our friends and neighbors. We decorated the stairs around our house with luminaria. We were ready. During all of the party planning and preparations we never once talked about COVID.

Almost everyone who rsvped (and many who didn’t) came to the party. We had close to seventy people in our house — eating and drinking, talking, hugging, sharing bites of food, picking off of the same cheese board, taking cookies off the same tray.

I remember having friends over in the early days of COVID. We sat outside six feet apart and made separate serving trays of food so no one would touch the same utensils. We kept our visits short and quickly washed our friends dishes at the end of our outdoor gathering. We were afraid of each other. Hugging and touching was vorboten. 

Our holiday party started at 5PM. People came right on time. Over and over I’d answer the door, throw my arms around guest after guest, so happy to welcome them into our home. I must have hugged at least fifty people. I flitted around the party most of the night, filling people’s drinks, restocking the food, having short chats with various guests. No one wore a mask.

I watched the guests from the kitchen. They were like dozens of little stars twinkling around the room, moving from one star to another, star dust trailing behind them as they traveled to a new star to say hello and how have you been. Together, they made one beautiful constellation that lit up our home. I felt so grateful so many times.

The last guests left at 11:30PM. We put away all the food but left the rest. The next morning when we woke up, the remnants of the party were everywhere — plates of half-eaten food, punch still in the bowl, cups, napkins, crumbs everywhere.

While we cleaned the house we got text after text thanking us for the party. “Thank you for bringing us all together.” “So many great people!!” “Thank you for the wonderful party.” And we all had fun too. It really was a great party. 

The party was very much like has been in the past. We had the same food, many of the same people, the same champagne punch. But we were all so much hungrier for each other, so much more grateful to be together. 

From the very start of the party there was an electricity, a kind of vibration. I watched people move around the rooms, talking to different people. I watched faces light up and arms open wide for hugs. I saw heads tilting back in laughter and hands reaching out to touch an arm or share a toast. Though we had music playing it was barely audible. There was the non-stop hum of dozens of conversations happening at once. 

This energy is what we’ve been missing over the last three years. The connection that comes from one person making contact with another and then another and another. It’s the confluence of all of these energies combined that creates the magical hum and spark that we all noticed at the party. It’s love, connection, happiness.

It’s the exact opposite of what we’ve been doing since March 2020. With COVID we’ve had to turn away from contact to stay safe. And as a result we’ve lost the connection, the feeling of love and happiness that comes from being in a big group of people, some of whom you know very well, and some just a little bit. 

Since our party, I’ve been waiting for the COVID shoe to drop, for someone to call and tell me that they’re sick. So far no one at the party has called to tell me that they have COVID. I’d feel responsible and terrible. 

I know there are people who will tell me that this party was irresponsible, that COVID is not over yet. But I stand by my decision to gather my family, friends and neighbors together. We’ve been in the darkness for almost three years. Our twinkle has been dimmed for a long time. I know the party was a risk, but I’m glad we did it. I got to see the night sky of my community light up again, to feel that magical feeling of all the stars shining at once. It was as beautiful as I remember it and I can’t wait to do it again.

Hormones, Magical Hormones

Last week my partner Nancy and I took a much needed vacation to Mexico. We’ve both travelled to Mexico multiple times but this time we found a magical beach, more beautiful than any either of had ever seen. It was quiet, secluded, clean, and full of whales! We stayed in a beach tent on the Pacific Coast of the Baja Peninsula. We read books, drank margaritas, took walks, and watched whales migrate south. 

Breakfast was included in our stay so we wandered inland to the main facilities in the mornings to eat huevos rancheros and sopes. One morning we sat next to two young couples. At one table was a man and woman in their mid-thirties. The woman was heavily pregnant and very chatty. Just beyond their table sat another man and woman, about the same age. 

As they talked, the non-pregnant couple shared that they had a one-year-old back at home. The women talked and talked about their pregnancies, the one who was one year into motherhood talked about how she managed work and mothering. The still pregnant one talked about her worries and her plans for balancing her new mommy responsibilities. The “dads” sat quietly, proudly, admiring their fertile, capable vessels, piping in periodically but mostly encouraging their wives to talk.

I’ve been pregnant and I am a mother. Pregnancy and motherhood are my favorite life experiences, bar none. But I just turned fifty-four and, like clockwork, I’ve been hit hard with raging night sweats and daily hot flashes. My belly is round (not from a baby in there) and I’m irritable. Sitting there listening to those youngins basking in the glow of their fertility was really bugging me!

My partner Nancy has already been through the hormonal whiplash that I’m going through now and she’s been a patient, loving and helpful advisor with me and my newish symptoms. As we sat at breakfast I found myself distracted, half paying attention to my conversation with her while also trying to eavesdrop on the conversation of the new parents.

Later that night as Nancy I sat outside on our beach chairs looking at the stars that blanketed the sky on the most beautiful beach we’ve ever been, I said, “Can you imagine talking about menopause with men the way those women were talking about pregnancy?”

“Never,” she said, shaking her head without taking her eyes off the stars.

Menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause are the three profound and significant biological life events women experience, but pregnancy is the only one that seems to warrant any co-ed conversation. Why is that?

When girls get their periods they somehow know to keep it a secret, never letting their male peers know about the equipment and supplies they need to use or the symptoms they experience. From the time menstruation starts, girls and women are mocked for their mood and body changes. As if that isn’t hassle enough, girls must also manage being sexualized in response to their hormonally changing bodies.

If there is any kind of male-female mealtime chat about menstruation, it is not in a reverential way to proclaim how amazing it is that these female bodies are now capable of reproduction but rather to discuss how inconvenient and unpleasant the period process is. Girls learn early, in middle school and sometimes earlier, that period talk in the presence of boys will only lead to humiliation.

Conversations about menopause are equally unwelcome around co-ed dinner tables. Menopause happens to women, so why subject the fellas to this nuisance talk. Even the most open-minded/open-hearted men steer clear of menopause chat. Men (and sadly women too) are socialized to believe that women in menopause are hysterical. Jokes are made that women will lose control and attack for no reason when they enter the dreaded menopause. While young women are hyper-sexualized when the start to menstruate, older women are desexualized once they reach menopause.

Pregnancy is the one phase of a woman’s life where the male species shows interest and respect. It’s no mystery why. Pregnancy involves men. Those two nice young new fathers at the breakfast table in Mexico nodded lovingly, enthusiastically, appreciatively as their fertile females waxed on about the changes in their bodies and their lives pre- and postpartum. There was no mocking, no teasing, no dismissing their pregnancy experience because they were part of the equation.

It’s wonderful that men want to be involved in the pregnancy stage of a woman’s life, but to really understand women, men must understand the other significant hormonal stages that women go through as well. 

Menstruation and menopause affect women and so they affect men. To dismiss or disregard these stages that bookend the pregnancy period is a disservice to women and men alike. For women, this shadow culture of menstruation and menopause breeds internalized shame. Women hide their symptoms for fear of being mocked or humiliated. 

For men, they are denied the opportunity to really understand the profound workings and power of the female anatomy. In turning a blind eye to the very hormones that make pregnancy possible, they are missing opportunities to truly know and understand the women in their lives. 

As the mother of a girl, for obvious reasons, I’ve always talked to my daughter told about menstruation and pregnancy. Boys need to learn about these things as well. I’ve encouraged my friends with boys to talk to their sons about what it means to get a period and of course how to control for unwanted pregnancy. I’ve talked to my daughter a little bit about menopause, but I could do better. And I’m guessing that in most families, menopause does not come up in parental conversations with sons. 

Sitting in my pot-bellied hot-flashing body that day watching the pregnancy and new mother glow of the young women holding court next to me, I wanted to protect them from their future selves, “Hold onto that power,” I would tell them, “remember how fierce you feel now, being able to grow a human inside your body! In twenty years when your hormones take you on entirely different road trip into menopause, remember that power is still inside of you.” 

I’d tell them that society will tell them otherwise, but not to believe it. I’d hug them and bless them and wish them well. I didn’t say one word to those women that morning, but I really of wish I had. 

The Good Place

 

I turned 54 yesterday. As I sat with my eighteen-year-old daughter on the couch I thought to myself, “wow, she has a really long time to live.” I get tired just thinking about the days ahead for her — college, graduate school, work, figuring out her life day after day after day.

But I didn’t get tired when it was happening. It didn’t feel like a slog when I was in it in my twenties and thirties. The work I was doing felt life-giving and necessary. I felt like figuring it all out was my JOB. 

I just started watching The Good Place. Eleanor Shellstrop, the main character, gets sent to the show’s version of heaven (The Good Place) accidentally. In reality, based on her terrible behavior on Earth, she should have been sent to the Bad Place (hell). I’m just on season one, but from what I can gather, Eleanor learns some important lessons in the Good Place that change her. The powers that be want to send Eleanor to the Bad Place. But in her time in the Good Place she changes and those powers recognize that maybe Eleanor actually belongs there. 

In the Good Place, you are matched with your soul mate. You live in your dream house. There are 18,000 flavors of frozen yogurt you can eat any time, as many times a day as you want. You get to fly. There’s no traffic or pollution. Everything you need and want is there. 

In the Bad Place, you have to do tasks you’d despise on earth — like hosting a baby shower or cleaning up rat poop all day long. Eleanor has good reason to stay in the Good Place and she and her friends are working their asses off to make it happen. 

Last weekend I co-led a retreat with ten women in menopause. We were all seeking clarity about ourselves, our lives, and the world around us. At our age, we don’t have the kind of energy that 18 or 20 or 32 year olds have. We are tired. But there’s a pressure to keep acting the same way we’ve always acted. 

Unfortunately, in our dysfunctional, capitalistic, American society, women are told that either they keep up with the younger Jones or accept their fate as washed up old dogs with no reason to live. The United States has the highest number of plastic surgeries — 4,361,867 in 2018, almost 2 million more than Brazil, the country next in line.

The message is that if we keep looking younger, we’ll keep acting younger. We’ll retain our passion to work hard and stay young. Getting older is a negative thing. Women (and men) in this country work as hard as Eleanor Shellstrop to stay out of the Bad Place of aging.

At the retreat we released that pressure valve of staying young. We acknowledged our desire to just be where we are now, to give up the grind and reflect on where we’ve been. Instead of striving to keep up with things that don’t matter to us anymore, we honored the need for rest and community. 

What I realized at our weekend retreat, and again on the couch with my young, full of life daughter yesterday is that I really don’t want to be young. I don’t want to work as hard as I used to. I don’t want to worry about being liked or approved of. I want to settle back and reflect on how hard I have worked already. Going back to the younger stages in my life would be like going to the Bad Place. 

I’ve spent years in different careers, in different relationships. I’ve explored countless therapy modalities and self-help concepts. I’ve read thousands of books and traveled far and wide. At fifty-four, I want to sit on the couch and listen to my daughter tell me her plans. I want to bask in the comfort of knowing that I don’t have to work that hard anymore. 

Spending the weekend with a group of women in a similar physical and emotional place was affirming and energizing. I was reminded again and again that I like where I am. I don’t want to go back and do the hustle I watch my daughter doing. I don’t want to figure out what my major is or pine over romantic interests. I’ve done all of that and I’m happy where I am.

There are lots of aspects of getting older that are hard. I don’t love the new jowls that are forming on my face. My joints are pretty stiff. And I can’t drink wine without getting a massive headache. But even with the little trouble spots, I choose this place. I want to be where I am now. I like getting older. It’s where I belong. This is the Good Place.

The Absence of His Presence: Goodbye Freckles

Our dog died yesterday. We think Freckles was nine or ten years old. Some of his history is unknown to us so we deduced his age based on what we do know and the vet’s best guess. We also don’t know Freckles’ breed, but we think he was part Shih Tzu for sure. Based on the length of his torso and the shortness of his legs, he also might have had some Dachshund in his DNA.

Whatever he was, he was amazing. He didn’t bark (except at the mailman). He didn’t shed. He only whined around food. He napped constantly — wherever, whenever around the house, snoring loudly as if sending our household the constant, subtle message to just slow down, calm down, and chill out.

Sometimes Freckles’ would send a more direct message — coming directly to where one of his humans was sitting, settling in to nap along side them. He often sat right next to me on my meditation pillow or snuggled his bottom right beside my head when I lay on my yoga mat.

Every night he excitedly climbed the stairs for bed as if he were going on an doggy adventure. He’d march down the hall clicking his nails on the wood floor until he reached our room where he’d burrow into the blankets in his crate and start snoring again.

Freckles was also obese. When we got him three years ago we started on an immediate campaign to help him lose weight. We exercised him, revised his diet, tailoring his portions down to the exact quarter ounce. His only treats were raw foods — his favorites were carrots, cucumbers and red peppers.

Because of his history of obesity, the vet told us, Freckles’ had a bad heart. We knew that in one of his previous households he’d spent years eating fatty human foods and getting little exercise. He was well loved but his health suffered as a result. We hoped that by investing in his health we could postpone or even reverse the possibility of heart failure.

But we couldn’t. Freckles lived in our home for a little over three years, creating a slow steady presence so grounding and anchoring that I didn’t even realize it until he was gone. Two nights ago Freckles began to struggle to breathe. My partner Nancy and I raced him to the ER vet where he was given oxygen and medication. The interventions didn’t work — nine hours later he went into respiratory failure and then heart failure and died.

When we got to the vet they put us in a corner room with a flyer about getting support after your pet dies. There were tiny cremation urns on the shelves and a box of tissues on a shelf next to the tiny naugahyde couch where we sat.

A vet tech came in and handed us a clipboard with a list of choices for what to do with Freckles. At the top of the list was the several hundred dollar option for individual cremation with a ceramic paw print souvenir. Listed below were other cremation options and the option to take your dog home.

“I want to take him home and bury him in the yard,” I told Nancy.

“I don’t know if I can bear to handle his dead body and bury him,” she said. She was imagining a rigid, dead Freckles.

“Can we see him first and then make a decision?” I asked the tech. “Sure,” she said and left our tiny bereavement room to collect Freckles.

Another tech brought Freckles back. He was strapped to a tiny stretcher underneath a plaid fleece blanket. After she wheeled him in, the tech unstrapped Freckles and left him for us, still covered in the blanket.

Nancy gingerly pulled up the blanket to uncover him. He was still warm, still Freckles. We laid our hands on him and cried. We missed him so much already.

Just minutes after reuniting with his body Nancy looked at me and said, “Let’s take him home,” nodding as tears ran down her face.

We pushed the call button for the tech to tell her our decision.

It felt good to drive home with Freckles. The tech had put Freckles in a tiny cardboard casket and it was comforting to have him in the backseat with us. We decided, on the twenty-minute drive home that we’d bury him between the two vegetable beds he liked to snack out of every summer. His favorite were the snap peas. Every season Freckles ravaged my pea plants, his fat little butt hanging off the edge of the raised bed as he chomped the plants he could reach.

As soon as we got home I went to my sewing room and got a white cotton sheet I’d been saving for a potential future project. While I ironed the sheet Nancy gathered shovels, gloves, and a pick ax from the garage. I brought the sheet up and we laid it out on the dining room floor so that we could prepare Freckles.

He looked the same in the box as he had on the stretcher. He was still Freckles, still soft and furry, lying on his side, the same position as he often was, napping around the house. Together, we took him out of the box and laid him on the sheet. Nancy got his favorite stuffy, a raggedy old black cat, and we placed that between his paws. We added a carrot and his tooth cleaning bone, two of his favorite snacks.

Then we wrapped him in the blanket, tucking him in for his next journey. Friends had brought flowers to a dinner party we’d hosted the night before and we laid several buds on top of his wrapped body. We said thank you and goodbye and then we went out to dig a hole.

I’d read that we would need to dig a hold three-feet deep. We didn’t really forge a plan for how we’d do it. We just started digging. To accommodate Freckles’ body the hole would need to be short, narrow, and very deep. We dug from soil to clay to rocks. It took about two hours and lots of inventive techniques to dig the hole. We barely spoke as we dug, both grateful for the activity to distract us from our grief.

By the end we were covered in dirt and filled with pride at our accomplishment. We went in to gather Freckles. After another round of goodbyes and the last minute addition of his pink monkey, we carried Freckles out to the garden and kneeled down to lay him into the hole. We thanked him and told him we loved him. And then we covered him up with the soil we’d just dug.

As I meditated this morning I waited for the tapping of Freckles’ nails to come join me on my mat. I keep hearing phantom snoring in the dining room as I sit here writing. I feel the pull to wrap this up so I can take Freckles on his walk before I start my work day.

I feel the absence of Freckles’ presence everywhere. It’s not even been a full day that he’s been gone but I miss him. I miss all his little sounds, gestures, movements, and needs. I missed his excited running in circles at breakfast time this morning and I miss all the walks we’ll take along the lake.

To my left, outside in the garden is the tiny grave we dug for Freckles. He’s there. Last night at his dinner time we went outside to toast him. We lit a candle and made some wishes. We told him thank you and I love you again.

It wasn’t the same last night, going to bed without the sound of Freckles’ snoring. Freckles was everywhere, all the time. There is a huge void in our home. There’s no way around this feeling. It’s the absence of his presence.

A few times since we buried Freckles, in moments where I’m aware of his absence, when I look to his bed and know I’ll never see him snoring there again, I go to the window and look at the raised beds. I look at the spot where we laid him to rest and feel comforted. He’s here. He’s gone but he’ll always be with us.

Last Minute Parenting

 

These days I am intermittently filled with pride and overwhelmed with sadness. I always knew, but never quite believed that this moment would come; that my daughter would grow up. Periodically, I saw it happening. My iPhone reminded me every year of how much smaller she looked the year before, but this feels too sudden. How did it happen?

I am counting the months until my daughter moves out of the house — not in a good way. Soon I’l be counting the weeks, and then the days. “How can I make the most of this time?” I ask myself, “how do I soak her in before I send her off?”

And my biggest questions, “have I done it right?” and “have I done enough?” Rationally I know that I won’t lose contact with my daughter when she goes to college, but the combination of her surging independence and desperate need to impart everything I know in the next ten months leaves me furiously scrambling to make sure she is ‘ready.’

When my daughter has a conflict with a friend I move through all of my own friendship struggles like a slideshow in my brain and tell her, “It doesn’t matter what they do. You need to make sure that whatever you do has integrity.” As I share this lesson I am reminded of the countless times I acted dishonorably. 

When the topic of Fentanyl-laced pot comes up I look anxiously at my daughter, hoping that she’d never take a toke off of a joint from an unknown source. As we talk about the risks she tells me, “Well, I don’t smoke weed, but if I did, I’d get my own from a dispensary.” Phew. I am reminded of the innumerable stupid choices I made in high school and college, eschewing the clear voice at the back of my head telling me not to risk it.

Every day I think of things I want to make sure my daughter understands before she leaves — how to really scrub the toilet; how to make good coffee; how to save and invest her earnings; to be on time; to communicate respectfully; how to write a resume; to join clubs at college; to trust herself; to try new things. 

And every time a lesson comes into my mind I have to soothe myself. “Laura, you’ve had eighteen years,” I tell my panicky mother-self, “she knows what she knows.” I have to trust that my daughter will keep learning along the way. Just like I did. She’ll learn from the world, from her own mistakes, from the wisdom of all the other people she’ll come across in her life. She has her her own internal wisdom and all the micro-lessons I’ve done my best to share along the way.

My friend Linda is seventy-five. Every morning she sends me a text message. Usually it’s a GIF with a prayer for a good day or a funny image of rain clouds or a traffic jam. Every day her sweet image includes the letters, “GM” which stands for Good Morning. Linda has been doing this tiny ritual for months. I love it. It’s a daily reminder that I am loved and that someone is thinking about me.

Even though my daughter still lives at home, our time together is limited; I always want more. A few weeks ago I started my own version of Linda’s daily affirmation for her. I think of the real things I want my daughter to know — that she is loved, that she is good enough, that I am proud of her — and so many more. Whatever piece of wisdom or sentiment that comes into my heart at the moment, I write. In a very short text, I write a GM message. The act comforts me. Maybe she’ll read these texts or maybe she won’t, but I hope that even if she doesn’t read the text every day, she’ll know what it is — a sign that she is loved. 

The first time I wrote the GM text, my daughter texted me from her basement bedroom to ask me what the text was. “It’s just something I’m doing,” I wrote back, “you’ll get one every day.” I waited and watched the three dots on my screen.

“Thanks Mommy,” she texted back. Message received.

The 'Self': Welcoming her Back Home

Last week I talked to my therapist about a feeling I’ve been having lately. I’m on the precipice of something. It’s familiar and foreign at the same time. It’s a feeling I have at work and at home. It’s a moment when I feel like I actually know what to do without stressing or struggling, without thinking too hard. 

It’s happened recently at meetings with my staff when I leave the meeting feeling like, “well, that was easy.” And also with my daughter when I find myself in the unusual position of offering her advice that seems to help at just the right time. What I notice is both situations is the very clear absence of drama.

I shared this feeling with my therapist who is a very wise, very old (81) woman and she said, in the sage-like maternal way that I love so much, “Laura, that’s your ‘self’.” She explained that for most people, at some point in their lives, the ‘self’, or what I’ve called ‘essential nature’, leaves and a series of parts take over. These parts might be judgers or worriers or caretakers. The parts can be anything and they are different for all of us. We all take on different parts to get us through our complicated lives.

But at a certain point the ‘self’ feels safe to come back and reorganize. “This,” my therapist told me, “is what is happening for you now.”

When I look up ‘self’ online I get this definition, “a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.”

I have believed, even proselytized the belief that when women get to the age of menopause they come back to their essential nature, or true selves. It comes from a combination of hormonal reorganization and lived experience. By age 45 or 50 we have learned and endured a lot, and we are done with the bullshit and the drama that come with managing all of the parts. 

This fed-up-ed-ness enables our true selves to come back, take charge and settle in for the long haul. This is the time when the ‘self’ can push aside the parts that have been holding down the fort and reclaim what is rightfully hers.

When my therapist pointed out the presence of my ‘self’ in our session, it felt like a great affirmation and recognition of this belief I’ve been carrying. I have infinite faith and respect in this woman and she has an additional three decades of wisdom on me. To hear her point this out opened up a new portal of acceptance of this concept for me. 

Since that conversation with my therapist I feel different. I have a knowing now that I can’t un-know. I can’t push the ‘self’ back out. She doesn’t want to go. I am aware of a peace but also an absence. I’m so used to the drama, the confetti of other voices in my head that I feel a sense of aloneness without all those parts shouting their opinions.

I know this is going to be an adjustment — it’s just me now, myself. I can feel the changes on the inside — a new openness inviting possibilities. I worry that I might seek out new drama to fill up this space. I wonder if my ‘self’ is secure enough now to resist this temptation. I hope so. I really hope so. 

The Healer

Today I went to see my acupuncturist. I’ve been seeing him for over a decade. Early on in our relationship I determined that he was a true healer. I don’t exactly understand what he does, but it’s magical.

I’ve referred countless friends, colleagues, and former students to him and everyone agrees. He’s truly magnificent. I call him the healer.

I can go a year or two without seeing the healer and then, when I realize no one else can help me, I go see him. Every time I see him I fall a little bit more in love with how wise and insightful he is. I’m grateful that mostly I am very healthy but a few weeks ago I went for a back injury I sustained carrying heavy bags of soil and removing a tree. 

After the healer did his assessment he informed me that I had somehow twisted my lumbar spine. He gave me a treatment and sent me home with some exercises to do. For a week I practiced the squats, pelvic rolls and hip openers. I felt good. I felt great. 

Then in the middle of the second week I felt the pain creeping back. I scheduled another appointment for today. When I went in, as he always does, the healer asked how I was feeling and if anything in my life had changed. 

“I’m exhausted,” I sighed heavily, “I feel so tired today.” He asked if my diet or my sleep or my exercise patterns had changed. When I replied that nothing had changed, as if inviting me to dig deep for the root of my exhaustion, he sat back quietly and waited. 

“I think it’s emotional,” I said, near tears, “there’s a lot of change — the weather, work, and my daughter is eighteen, and she’s almost gone and that is so much harder than I thought it would be.” 

He nodded with sympathy and invited me onto the table where he had me lie down so he could do further assessment. I closed my eyes, grateful for the time to rest. The healer moved around my body manipulating my hips, lower back, and legs. After about thirty minutes he settled on where the needles would go.

By this time I was half-asleep, grateful for the familiarity of his presence and the utter faith I have in his abilities. I could rest here for as long as it took. It felt good to be in capable hands. I trusted the healer implicitly.

After the healer placed the needles into various spots on my body, he left the room and I drifted off. I fell into a hypnagogic sleep, imagining my hands moving even though I knew they were totally still with needles in my wrists. After some time (I don’t know how much), the healer came back in. He palpated my stomach and my hips and said, “Can you lie her a bit longer? You’re not fully cooked.”

I nodded, happy to stay on that table all afternoon. On this second round of rest I had a memory of the healer in my early days of knowing him. Many years ago, when my daughter was 5 or 6, I had a similar pain in my lower back. During our initial conversation I shared that I was in a mental tug-of-war about moving my daughter to a new school that her teacher recommended. The teacher said this new school would be more academically challenging and better for her.

I was conflicted. I loved her elementary school and I wasn’t sure if moving her was the right decision. That day the healer did a treatment focusing on my gallbladder channel. After the session those many years ago, he explained to me that the gallbladder channel was often associated with decision-making. He said, “it could be that the pain you’re having is related to the decision you’re trying to finalize OR maybe the decision you’re trying to make is contributing to the pain.”

In the end it didn’t matter which was the chicken and which was the egg. Both existed — the pain and my need to make a decision.

This afternoon, after the healer removed the needles from my arms, legs and hips, he said, “Laura, from what I can tell, your back is fine. What I think is going on is that you’re stuck.”

“I am,” I said as I pushed myself up to my elbows to get off the table. As I put my watch on and laced up my boots I shared the memory I’d had of the day he’s worked on my gallbladder channel twelve years ago. He smiled and nodded. “I remember,” he said.

I put on my jacket to go and walked towards the door. As I opened it to leave I said, “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome,” he smiled, “You know, I worked on your gallbladder channel today too.” 

Back when I was the mom of a young child struggling with the decision about where to send her to school my struggle manifested itself as pain in my back. This year, as I round the corner of my life into an empty nest, I am again faced with some big life changes and decisions and the pain, again, shows up in my back. 

Bessel Van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, writes, “…the two most important phrases in therapy, as in yoga, are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.”

He’s right. It’s funny. I taught yoga for twenty years and I still forget to slow down and notice, to remember that the body and the mind are deeply entangled. My first instinct with pain or discomfort is often to try to assign some action that got me to the pain instead of to explore other areas of my life that might be contributing. 

The body keeps the score — my back told me something wasn’t right. But knowing the score doesn’t explain the game. The game is as big as life — there are rules, players, goals, and thousands of other contributing factors. The healer, in his great wisdom, reminded me (again) to slow down and expand my perspective. 

Every time I see the healer I reconnect with the idea that the messages from my body are sharing a bigger story about my life. Maybe I should try to remember this the next time my back hurts. But if I do that, I won’t need see the magnificent healer. And I don’t want that…..

We Are All Connected

Several years ago I did a year-long energy mentorship with an integrative medicine doctor. To this day, I consider her to be one of my greatest teachers. Over the course of that year (and beyond), my teacher helped me to understand energy, intuition, and the power of the universe.

The first thing I, and the other handful of curious women in my class, needed to understand, is that we are all connected, every tiny molecule in the universe is connected. 

Believing in the oneness of the universe is a huge pill to swallow, a great leap of faith, but my teacher helped me to understand this concept by sharing how it is explained and understood in different traditions. She also broke it down for our class, giving us little exercises to see our own inter-connectedness.

The very first exercise we did was to look in our closets every morning and not think about what we would wear, but simply go for the first thing that we reached for. Then, later in the day we could notice if this made sense — did the weather change and we were grateful to have a sweater instead of a blouse? Did we have an unusually long walk and we were relieved to be wearing comfortable shoes?

One class we went to a nature preserve and walked in solitude until we found a plant that called to us. We were encouraged to spend time with that piece of nature and notice what we could learn from it. I found a tiny weed by a creek and sat with it for thirty minutes noticing every tiny detail of the plant that I would have otherwise passed by.

One year I went to India with my teacher and shared with one of my traveling companions about a lunchtime laughing class that they were offering at the trauma hospital in Seattle. I shared how I hoped to take that class upon my return. Later that afternoon, on the bulletin board of the ashram where we were staying, there was a flyer advertising a laughing class in the town we were in — 8000 miles away and 13.5 hours time difference. We laughed together, wide-eyed, at this unusual and magical connection.

There was a time in Mexico when I knew, on a visceral level, that even though the people transporting us seemed legitimate — they were wearing uniforms and made a “phone call” to our hotel to prove their identity — there was something off. I tried to convince my partner that we were being swindled but her counter arguments were strong and I, prone to anxiety, chalked my sixth sense up to being anxious instead of intuition. In the end, my inexplicable knowing that something was wrong was right. We got taken for a fake ride, losing over $300 in the process.

Over the last several years since that first energy mentorship class, I’ve learned countless ways to listen to my intuition. I believe wholeheartedly that we are all connected. This is my faith, the thing that I can tune into when I struggle to make a decision or choose a reaction in my life. I trust that I am not alone, that there is a greater force helping me.

My family likes to tease me about my belief system. Sometimes I’ll say, “I just know” or “I’ve got a feeling about this” and eyes will roll. But sometimes I’m right. When I sold my business just four months before COVID hit, it had been a long-time coming. I went back and forth on the decision. After almost twenty years it was hard to let it go. But in the end I lowered the price for the right buyer and said goodbye. That was the right decision.

I trust my gut on most things, especially big decisions, because I need the support of the universe. I don’t want to be alone in this world.

My greatest struggle of late has been the slow painful letting go of my eighteen-year-old daughter. In the past I had control over her. She still lives at home. She still checks in about her whereabouts. She’s still my daughter. But I am recognizing each day that the actual “control” I have is slipping away. And it should. My daughter’s job is to graduate into full independence. My job is to let her go.

Sometimes, oftentimes, I panic. I worry about my daughter. Is she safe? How can I protect her when she’s at a party and there’s alcohol, and she drinks, and a football player takes advantage of her? What if someone brings a gun to school? How can I protect her then? I can’t. 

Last night my daughter went out with two friends. I rarely see her these days. She’s out more than she’s in, filling her social coffers with the constant flow of friendship. I went to sleep around 10:00pm and woke around 11:00pm to the sound of her voice. “Mommmmmmmmy,” the voice cried from downstairs. The voice sounded unfamiliar, like a much younger child. 

I woke up and called back to the voice. “Lucia,” I yelled loudly down the stairs. There was no answer and the hall light was still on which meant she wasn’t home yet. “It must have been a dream,” I thought to myself. My heart beat fast as I walked down the stairs towards the basement to see if she was in her room. On the way, I looked out the front window and saw her car. There she was, sitting in the driver’s seat, having just pulled up. She was looking at her phone as she often does when she first parks.

When Lucia walked in I shouted down to her, “the craziest thing just happened….” and I shared how I’d awoken from a dream to her calling me and that she’d pulled up in her car at just that moment. I said, “See, we really are all connected.”

“Mom,” she said, “I’ve been sitting out there for like twenty minutes.” I let it go. I didn’t need to annoy her further. I went back to bed filled with a mixture of relief and gratitude. I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep. We really are all connected. 

Melancholy Part ll

I used to be a prolific reader. I still read regularly, but not nearly as much as I used to. It’s too easy to turn on a show on my laptop or scroll through dumb shit on my phone; I waste time that could be spent reading. I keep a library of books that I’ve read over the years. I hold onto almost everything but especially the books that really move me.

During COVID I found comfort in rereading some of those books. I’m a fast reader so sometimes I remember snippets of books I’ve read but can’t grasp the full story in my memory so rereading often yields surprises. Though I don’t remember the exact story of the books I’ve loved, there’s a feeling I remember and I want to go back and experience that feeling again. 

There was one book, a novel I read close to ten years ago, that I have thought about thousands of times that I could not go back to during the peak of COVID. I knew it would be too upsetting so, though I thought about the story often, I left the book on the shelf.

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, is about eleven-year-old Julia and her family. They live in California in current times when a rare phenomenon strikes the planet. The Earth’s rotation inexplicably starts to slow. The book follows the course of the Earth’s slowing alongside the adolescent development of the narrator Julia.

Last week I finally felt like I could stomach The Age of Miracles again. COVID feels mildly under control. We have a functioning human as president and my daughter is in actual school. The Age of Miracles was everything I remembered. The story filled my brain for days. I thought about it all the time and I could see parallels in the world we live in now — rising temperatures, fires, and the extinction of certain flora and fauna. For me, the book was then, and is now, viscerally relatable.

The Age of Miracles compels me in the same way the 2008 Disney movie Wall-E did. I recently rewatched that film and loved it as much as I had the first time.

I wonder why certain topics stick in our brains and others move through like water through a sieve. Both Wall-E and The Age of Miracles are about the utter collapse of our environment, the total devastation of our planet. I wonder if these stories are so stuck in my mind because they hold a deep-rooted truth about the world or because the topic is the one that scares me the most. 

When I read about Julia persevering in a planet ruled by days of cold darkness followed by days of sun that’s become dangerous and radioactive, I take a pause to grieve for my daughter’s future; I pray that she dies before we get to that point. I am terrified of her living in a world like that.

But in The Age of Miracles, Julia and millions of other people on the planet adapt. They find ways to survive while understanding very clearly that their time on Earth is limited, that they will probably witness the demise of their planet and of themselves. Despite this imminent destruction, they have an enduring hope that keeps them going day after day. 

In Wall-E, the humans abandon the Earth and wait out planetary destruction somewhere in Outerspace on a giant spaceship. After signs of life on the formerly dead planet become evident, the Earthlings come back and try to rebuild what was destroyed. Starting from nothing they trust that they can recreate a habitable world.

In both the book and the movie there is a sense of utter despair and surprising hope that totally pulls me in. It is not unlike the feeling of melancholy. The feeling of welcoming both the tragedy and the possibility, of existing in that opposite land is strangely comforting. 

I know we’re not the first generation to fear the future. Humans from the beginning of time have faced peril— vicious predators, famine, world war, nuclear arms. And they have carried on. Their perseverance has gotten us to this point and now we will keep going, enduring, and hoping.

I will read The Age of Miracles again and I will watch Wall-E again. As hard as it is to recognize how close we are to the planetary destruction of those stories, I take great comfort from the undeniable presence of hope that runs through them.

Melancholy: My Perfect Emotion

I’ve always liked sad music, heartbreaking books, and movies about love and loss. Last week when I was writing, listening to a classical playlist, a tragically sad song came on, one that made my pen slow down;  a wash of warmth moved through me. I felt simultaneously somber and content. I could feel my heart rate slow down and my breath become more shallow. I felt a deep sense of calm and okayness.

As I wrote I recognized that I loved this feeling I was having. If the music coming from my phone had been the soundtrack from a scene in a movie I would have been sitting on a beautiful horse on a vast prairie remembering a great love lost. 

The deep sorrow of loss does indeed create an opening for memories, images, and feelings related to that mourning. I often feel it when I read a poem or look at photos of my late father — melancholy — great sadness merged with nostalgia. 

Melancholy is the quintessential welcoming of opposites to create a sense of peaceful presence. For me, melancholy invites me to slow down. To welcome all that comes with melancholy, my overly active physical body and always busy brain have to downshift to experience the complexity of the emotion.

It’s why I love to read heartbreaking memoirs. It’s why I gravitate towards slow, storytelling music like country and folk. It’s why I’ll always choose the tragic family dramas on Netflix. When I enter those spaces I invite in melancholy.

We learn early in life to steer clear of sadness. We learn that it will bring us down, keep us from living our best lives. And it’s true. Wallowing is not the same thing as melancholy. When my grandmother died and then her son, my father, a few months later, I experienced deep sadness, grief, and mourning.

But twenty years later when I think of my father, when I write a poem and his humor comes through me, or when I share with my brother how alike they look, I feel melancholy. I miss him and wish her were still here. And at the same time, memories of him run through me like a warm stream. I am happy-sad all at once. It is a feeling of fullness and complete presence.

Freud writes of the difference between melancholia and mourning. Mourning, he posits, is finite and external, related to immediate loss. Mourning, he says, eventually ends in acceptance. Melancholia, on the other hand, is more complex. The pain of loss is relegated to the unconscious so is not obvious, even to the griever. 

From my cursory review of Freud’s analysis, what I can gather is that melancholia exists when a grieving person has not had the opportunity to fully move through loss to acceptance. And I wonder if any of us ever fully moves through deep loss or if there is always some residue of melancholia.

This makes sense to me. Sometimes I reminisce about days when my daughter let me hug her and snuggle her. I remember the times when she needed me to guide her. And I miss that. I miss that version of her that is gone now that she is a young adult. Sometimes my iPhone will send me a video of images of her, of my family with sad music playing in the background. It comes at random times, a delightful surprise where I can take a break from whatever I am doing to pause and welcome that perfect sense of melancholy.

Maturing into Humility

My therapist is 81 years old. A few months ago when I was weeping over the news that a ten-year-old had shot and killed her mother’s friend accidentally, she cried with me. After a few minutes of sitting together in our sorrow, she said, “and there is so much good.”

In another time, a different era of my life, I would have found this type of comment glib and annoying. But that day I took comfort. I believed her. I trusted her wisdom and her experience. 

That six-word statement, heard at the right moment, from a trusted guide and elder opened up a tiny portal for me. Like a rainbow milky-way encircling me, I felt it, all the good things that walk with me every day of my life — my family, my community, my health, the trees, the lake, the birds. And, along with the despair I felt for that ten-year-old girl, I felt grateful. 

Today is September 11th, the 21st anniversary of one our country’s greatest disasters. I remember the day. I was set to fly to Los Angeles on September 14th for a three-month yoga training but at the last minute, afraid to fly, I decided to drive. I spent months after 9–11 frightened, unmoored, waiting for another bomb to drop.

I was thirty-two years old then and I thought I had more control than I did. I thought that worrying, fretting, and listening to more news, would keep me in charge of the situation. I believed that keeping my mind on the matter would prepare me for whatever else was to come.

Today there is a thick layer of smoke blanketing the sky, alerting us to the devastation that is happening to forest land to the north of us. We cannot see the bridge to the north or the mountain to the south. We’ve closed all of our windows and altered our outside plans. I can’t help but think about the birds. What are they doing? Where are they hiding out?

As I look at the sky I wonder how far in every direction this smoke goes. At what point does the sky turn blue again? I remember when I first learned about brackish water. How do the freshwater fish and the saltwater fish figure out where to live? Have they adapted special abilities over time so that they can live in fresh, salt, or brackish waters?

The birds are adapting to the smokey sky. I don’t know how, but they are. Some of them will learn to manage the smoke, others will retreat to the sky that is clear and some will manage to live in the brackish sky.

Last night I went to an outdoor cafe with a friend. The sky was brown. It felt like we were in some kind of a smoke-induced solar eclipse, but we decided to sit outside anyway, accepting the possibility of being in unhealthy air quality in exchange for a few hours of much needed time to catch up with each others’ lives.

My daughter’s school district is on strike, a galling and appalling situation after two years of half-cooked school. Trump is up to his familiar manipulation tactics, reminding us of the utter and pervasive corruption in our country. There is smoke in my sky and skies all over our region. Women are being denied rights to their own bodies. Russia and Ukraine are at war. Guns are more valued than books. Loved ones of those killed in 9–11 are remembering and grieving those they tragically lost twenty-one years ago. People are suffering all over the world. 

And, there is so much good. I go back to that moment with my therapist all the time, “and there is so much good.” In my mind’s eye, I can see her face — kind, loving, and earnest. When she spoke those words to me she really believed them. And I can feel, as I get older and more mature, that I am starting to believe them more too. I am entering a phase of acceptance. And with acceptance comes the ability to feel grateful for the things I missed when I was younger, hunkered down in my suffering.

I think about the birds right now, about how they are managing in this smokey sky. They aren’t like humans. They aren’t processing how fucked up this is. They aren’t getting angry at the trees for igniting or at the humans for creating this tortured planet. They are just figuring out how to live in the brackish sky, accepting and adapting.

There is so much to be outraged about in this world. And there are things we can change with our anger, with our votes, and with our financial support. As I get older I see that suffering does not have to accompany anger and outrage. We do our work, we fight our battles, and we accept that this is what it looks like now. We accept so that we can experience the things that bring us joy and happiness.

The birds, even the crows, are nowhere to be seen this morning. Maybe they found a haven somewhere to wait out this smoke. I hope so. As I sit here on my couch, all the windows sealed tight to prevent the smoke from coming in, I feel humbled by the earth. I am no more or less important than the birds who are out there finding their way through the smokey skies. 

Every year, we experience more challenges, tragedies, and disasters, and with each one, we adapt and get through. It’s what the birds do. It’s what my therapist, in her age and wisdom, has learned to do. I can see the future and it doesn’t look so bright. Environmental, social, and political issues are somersaulting their way across the news media every day. I live in this world where there is so much to fear and despair. It is scary and unmooring and infuriating. And, there is so much good. 

Task Conflict vs. Relationship Conflict

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Last week I was in a meeting with two men and two women. The focus of the meeting was to address some work conflicts that one of the men and I were having. The other two parties were there to facilitate this potentially difficult discussion. This issue I have with this particular colleague is a long-standing issue. I’ve been frustrated, irritated, angry, and complacent at different times during our time working on this project together.

This meeting had been called to bring things to the surface, to put it all on the table. And so, as the meeting unfolded I didn’t hold back. I leaned into this opportunity and said everything (almost) I thought. When my colleague started spewing revisionist history I barked back with the real version, citing emails, and calendar clarifications. When he told me that we hadn’t had the required meetings I snapped that I wasn’t his secretary and he could make the meetings as well as I could. I was pissed, and I did not shrink in that room.

A few days later, the other man at the meeting and I were debriefing and he said to me, “I’m so glad you two (me and the other woman present) were direct with X.” I knew he meant that as a compliment but I what I heard was his sense of surprise. He wasn’t used to women standing up like this and that made my heart sink.

Expressing anger, outrage, and injustice are all natural reactions in the face of conflict, but from the time we are girls, we are subtly (and not so subtly) coached to tone it down, to steer clear of conflict. We’re taught to see things relationally, to take care of people, to not create unrest. 

And at what cost? Minimizing or avoiding conflict does not solve anything long-term. It simply covers things up until they fester, get bigger, and show up again. I see it in my marriage, in my friends’ marriages, at work, and with my daughter. Last week on the Hidden Brain with Shakar Vedantam I heard an interview with psychologist Adam Grant. Grant shared the following:

I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they assume that less conflict is better. That if you want to build a successful collaboration or a great team then you’ll want to minimize the amount of tension you have. But as some researchers have argued based on a lot of evidence, the absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy. If you’re in a group where people never disagree, the only way that could really happen is if people don’t care enough to speak their minds.

Grant differentiates between “task conflict” and “relationship conflict”. Task conflict involves debating about different perspectives and ideas and can potentially be constructive because parties on both sides can learn something. They are focusing on the content of the conflict and can move through it. 

Relationship conflict, on the other hand, is personal, so when there is an issue up for discussion or debate, it becomes emotional. Feelings are hurt. Productivity is thwarted, and the possibility for future communication is further ruptured.

When I left that work meeting last week I felt better. More clear. We’d looked the conflict dead in the eyes and each said our piece. I don’t know what will happen with our working relationship moving forward. Fortunately, we work for different organizations and my tenure on this project is limited. The worst-case scenario is I grit my teeth and endure. In the best-case scenario, we focus on the task conflicts moving forward and strengthen our working relationship.

Recently my daughter and a few of her friends found themselves in the middle of a conflict. An issue between two of the group of friends emerged. Sides were taken and factions were quickly formed. My daughter stood staunchly on one side, firm in her beliefs about the story. She was ready for conflict. Invested. Engaged. Energized. 

And I could see that the kids who stood on the other side were equally invested and energized in their story. As I watched this teenage drama unfold, I was aware that I was witnessing a full-blown relationship conflict. The actual story, or difference in the story was buried beneath the raging emotions.

And what I also understood was that I have had similar experiences in my adult life. In lieu of learning a different perspective, I have fueled my conflict coffers with emotion, basically blocking any possibility for movement in the disagreement or misunderstanding.

The title of Grant’s recent book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing what You Don’t Know says a lot. There is power in stepping outside of the emotion to hear the other side. 

Last night one of the parents of one of the kids on the “other side” of the conflict my daughter is embroiled in called me and left a message that she wanted to talk. Feeling roped into this teenage soap opera I felt panicked about what I would say to this mom. I didn’t have the facts. I just knew the emotion, and mostly from my daughter’s perspective. How would I communicate with this representative from the other camp?

My partner and my daughter and I talked about what I might say to this mother. My partner is a mediator and had great advice. “Even if there is one truth,” she said, “even if the event did happen, everyone has a perspective, an experience.”

“The conversation with this mom,” my partner said, “is not about who is right and who is wrong. It is about the lesson for the kids in making room for all perspectives. It is about each party taking accountability for their part, whatever that is.”

It’s true. My daughter and her faction digging their heels in and saying, “This is the only truth” only makes the kids on the other side plant their feet more firmly and shout, “No. this is the only truth.” No movement is made. It’s a tug-of-war without relief.

We talked more about how my daughter can navigate this conflict, how she can make room for all of the different perspectives. It’s not easy to take the emotion out of hard conversations. It takes maturity, perspective, and basically removing any ego involvement. This is hard for adults and nearly impossible for teenagers. 

I can’t help but go back to my own relationship history (both friendship and romantic), to my own past conflicts. And there are many. I can see that I have limited myself by leading with my emotions and taking different perspectives personally. In blinding myself from other ideas I never learned what I didn’t know. 

I plan to talk to that mom today. I’m gearing myself up to hear a different perspective, to make room for it, and find the power that comes from that process. I know I alone cannot solve this conflict for my daughter and her friends but maybe I can learn something by trying.

My Junky Old Sewing Machine

When my parents got divorced my mom sewed little velvet bags to hold crystals and denim shirts with quilt patterns on the back. She sold them on consignment to The Contemporary Craftsman, a tiny boutique of handmaid items in our neighborhood to make ends meet as a newly single mom.

I always watched her sew but I never officially learned. Anyone who’s ever used a sewing machine knows that, though machine-sewing makes the process more efficient and effective, sewing machines are complicated. Threading a sewing machine incorrectly can, at best completely sideline a project and at worst, break the machine. 

When I was a senior in high school I started using my mom’s sewing machine regularly. I hemmed pants, altered shirts, and reconfigured skirts and dresses. I used my mom’s machine (without asking) all the time. Several times I jammed the needle, abandoned the project, and left the sewing machine for my mom to deal with when she went to use it. Each time she’d ask me what happened. I’d confess to using the machine and she’d ask me to please ask for help so that it didn’t happen again. After a few times of Mom lugging her sewing machine down to Sears for repair, she asked me to stop using it.

There were so many reasons why I didn’t just ask my mom for help. I was stubborn and independent. On top of that, I had a complicated relationship with my mom. I thought I was too old for a sewing lesson. I thought I knew what I was doing. Even though my mom sewed some of our clothes when we were little and had made part of her livelihood sewing, I didn’t think she could teach me anything I didn’t already know. 

One weekend when my mom and stepdad were out of town I used her machine. I jammed it again and tried repeatedly to fix it. After multiple failed attempts and still not being able to fix the machine, I asked my sister to drive me to Sears. I found the appliance department and dropped off my mom’s machine. I didn’t know I’d have to leave it indefinitely. 

When my mom returned, she asked where her machine was. I had to confess that it was at Sears waiting for repair. When Mom finally picked up the machine and brought it home she made a proposal, “Laura,” she said, “if you spend some time with me learning how to follow a pattern and sew the pattern with me on my sewing machine, I will buy you your own sewing machine to take to college.”

I agreed right away. In my high school mind, a sewing machine was a major piece of equipment and I was psyched! My sister had a silver silk gypsy skirt that I loved and often borrowed. I told Mom that I wanted to try to replicate that. 

One weekend we went to the fabric store and found a pattern and some silver material (polyester because silk was way too pricey for a first-time project). When we got home Mom brought her sewing machine from the basement up to our dining room table and we started working. First, she showed me how to lay out and cut the pattern. Then how to pin the pattern to the fabric and cut the pieces. And finally, she taught me how to thread the machine, adjust the tension, and manage the pressure foot.

I can’t remember how long it took us to sew the skirt — maybe a few days, maybe weeks — but we finished it. In the end, I didn’t like the skirt. It didn’t hang and flow like my sister’s, but I’d completed a pattern and my mom bought me the sewing machine. And we’d done something together. I’d let her teach me something she knew and it was fun. And it’s a memory that comes back to me every time I sew.

That was thirty-five years ago. I packed my sewing machine in the trunk of my grandmother’s Oldsmobile when I graduated from college and my sister and I drove cross country to start our adult lives. I’ve sewn consistently since then — clothes for my daughter, quilts, hats, aprons, and a million other random projects. I know my machine like an old, trusted friend.

I live three thousand miles away from the Sears that used to fix my mom’s machine when I broke it. But my machine has needed fixing many times over the decades. I’ve taken my machine to get repaired and serviced countless times in my own city. When I go to the shop to pick up my old beater I always look at all of the shiny new machines and wonder if I should upgrade to one of those self-threading numbers. But I never do.

My sewing machine is a part of my history, a vessel that holds memories of my mom being my mom and me being her daughter. I learned to sew on that machine and I never stopped. I’ve taught my own daughter to sew on that machine and maybe one day she’ll teach her daughter to sew.

My mom gifted me with a skill that I’ve used hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Recently, I went to visit her at her snowbird house in Arizona where she has a new sewing machine. She rarely uses it. “It’s too complicated,” she told me, “not like her old one.” 

Slipping Through My Fingers

Yesterday I went to my last school orientation. I have gone to thirteen school orientations — every one since kindergarten. My daughter is a senior in high school now and this hour-long session in her high school auditorium was my last parent orientation. As I left the building I felt nostalgic for the years that I took for granted, all those years when I was a needed player in all of the decisions, collaboration, registration, and management of my daughter’s life. 

One of my favorite songs is Slipping Through My Fingers by ABBA. Sometimes my daughter will play the song on the piano and sing along, smiling as she sneaks glances at me getting choked up by the words. My daughter and I both love the movie Mamma Mia. My favorite scene is when Meryl Streep sings that song to her daughter who’s preparing to get married. “Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning. Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile.” My daughter told me that the ABBA singer who wrote that was moved as he watched his daughter walk off to the school bus. I completely relate to this heart-wrenching moment. As a parent, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of these micro-moments of saying goodbye to childhood.

The days of me managing the minutiae of my daughter’s life are over. She doesn’t need that kind of help anymore. Sometimes I worry that my daughter’s independence means that she is cutting me out of her life. I take it as a personal rejection. But the truth is, she is a lot like me. My daughter is fiercely independent. She always has been. 

Every year my daughter takes on a little bit more responsibility and handles it. For several years now I’ve been less and less involved in the day-to-day operations of her life, not because I want to be, but because she doesn’t need or want me to be.

In a year my daughter will go to a college orientation or maybe embark on a gap year of some sort. She’ll learn how to navigate all of the pieces of whatever that new world entails. She might call and ask me for help, but I doubt it. 

Right now my daughter is applying to college. She’s also juggling three summer jobs and a packed social life. I rarely see her, and when I do I am desperate to know something about her life. What is her top college choice these days? Is she getting enough sleep? How was it saying goodbye to her friend who’s headed off to college? And then there are the things I need her to do — clean her room, call the doctor, email the teacher. The list goes on and on. The questions pile up until I am ready to burst.

I remember myself at that age. I too was fiercely independent. I never shared my thoughts about college, my boyfriend, or my friendship struggles with my mother. I wanted to do it all on my own. When I think back on those days I wonder why I rejected help and support.

 I have a complicated relationship with my mother and I have struggled with trusting her for most of my life. I’m sure that weighed into my need for my deeply clandestine adolescence. But it was also my personality. Even before my teens I was independent and committed to doing things on my own.

It felt good to figure things out, to accomplish things on my own. As I watch my daughter manage her multi-faceted life I can see her feeling a similar satisfaction. Occasionally she’ll send me a screenshot of something she’s proud of — an email correspondence with her high school counselor or a photo of a gap year program she’s thinking about doing. 

Sometimes my daughter and her friends hang out in our kitchen and talk about what’s going on in their world in front of me, every once in a while gracing me with the invitation to give an opinion or reflection. She gives me little glimmers of what she’s up to, tiny snippets like little breadcrumbs leading me towards her through a dark forest with no clear path.

I find myself wanting to smother my daughter with questions whenever I’m around her. Often I dive in before I’ve reflected on how that approach will play out and I end up alienating her, sending her in the complete opposite direction. 

When I have the foresight though, I bring myself back to my seventeen-year-old self. “Think about how you would have wanted your mother to engage with you,” I tell myself.

I close my eyes and imagine what environment would have made me feel like opening up to my mother. Calm. Spacious, yet loving. Unconditional. Accepting. As I sit here in the early morning anticipating the fifteen minutes I’ll have with my daughter in an hour when she wakes up, scarfs some breakfast, and races out the door to her job, I try to embody those characteristics. “Hang back,” I coach myself, “just be curious, but not too interested. Let her just be herself.” 

I sink deeper into our kitchen couch preparing myself to refrain from jumping up and giving my daughter a huge hug when she walks into the room. “Breathe deep and feel her energy before you pounce,” I counsel the panicky mommy bouncing around inside my chest.

Last night I went to a housewarming at a friend’s house. Her daughter is leaving for her second year of college tomorrow. As we stood admiring her more-adult-than-child daughter, my friend said, “This is probably the last summer she’ll come home.” I felt my heart muscle squeeze imagining that reality coming down the pike in my own household.

Sometimes I wish my daughter needed me more. It’s hard to take myself out of the equation. I worry that by giving my daughter distance I’m not doing my job as a mother. But I know that’s more about me than about her. My daughter needs what I needed — a wide open, calm, loving, unconditional, accepting place to land when she needs it. The jury’s out on if I can pull that off this morning. I’m going to try. All I can do is try and keep on trying.