Homing

She tells me I’m special and I just don’t realize it.  No, she’s not my mother patiently cooing words of encouragement to my morose teenaged self.  She’s a co-worker playing an invaluable role in my career.  For years she’s been coaching me to change the way I think about myself, to rise on the inside to the stature I’ve achieved on the outside.  She’s the one who, when I refer to executives in the company, looks at me with that face and says “You are an executive.” I just don’t realize it.

I believe we are somehow programmed to ignore our own specialness.  Opposite of the narcissist incapable of self-awareness broadcasting his grandeur at every turn, we are blind to our majesty, shrugging off the idea that whatever it is we absolutely excel at is extraordinary. 

This is a big mistake.  If you think that thing that you are really passionate about creating, promoting, solving, or eradicating can’t change the world, you’re wrong.

As a token of appreciation for all she does for me, I bring her a box of my Christmas cookies. Over the years she alludes to the fact that this holiday leaves a sour taste in her mouth.  This year she tells me biting into my cookies has changed this. I’m incredulous and immensely touched.  Who knew a box of beautifully packaged and crafted homemade treats could profoundly impact an individual?  She insists it has.  My gift changes her world. I am beaming.

I used to believe this search for emotional gratification is pathetic, a bit embarrassed when I realize I crave job changes, not for more money, but to quench my thirst for appreciation.  What is wrong with me that I can’t be happy with the paycheck and find other avenues where people are more willing to express gratitude?  But it’s a manifestation of our humanity.  Once we’re fortunate enough to be able to afford the basic necessities of food and shelter, we are driven to fulfill our emotional needs.

 

We gingerly put our most personal work out there, willing to risk rejection or indifference because it’s work we are compelled to create, it’s unlike any other and in our heart of hearts we know it’s spectacular.  When we receive accolades we’re fueled to create more.  When we don’t we’re defeated. We want to pack up and take our onlyness elsewhere. Craving the environment that welcomes and celebrates our best selves is not something to shun or feel bad about.  It’s a signal to embrace and act upon.

 

We’re all parched beings craving the elixir of recognition and appreciation, aching to be noticed, to be called out as special. We gravitate towards those people who hydrate us with their generosity to validate our worthiness, to call out our specialness, to point us to our extraordinariness.  They fuel our sparkle and shine so we persist, so we can change the world.

He sees the way the cookies are presented in the box.  He is offered a taste because she’s willing to share.  He comes over to me to let me know how spectacular they are.  He suggests I may have missed my calling.  Have I?  Should I just quit this day job as an executive and open up a seasonal bakery?

After some contemplation I decide I am answering my calling, every day. I am a lot of things.  I am an executive.  I am a baker.  I am an artist. I am a writer. I am a mother.  I am a daughter, sister, aunt, friend.  I am partner to the most extraordinary man. I take on new roles all the time, I bring what only I can bring to them.  When what I offer is cherished and nurtured, I blossom into a greater role.  When it’s not, I know it’s time to make a change to get to that place where who I am is once again honored.  I am changing my world everywhere I go.  I just don’t realize it.

Masseter

He says I grind my teeth, but my prognosis is good.  He prescribes a mouth guard I plunge into boiling water and mold around my teeth. If forced, I’ll sheepishly admit I am not vigilant; I wear it sporadically.  While I can’t necessarily see in my mouth the evidence of this suspected grinding, it explains the root of a recurring dream waking me with a start when I believe for a moment I’ve broken my molars. He suggests this activity is not confined to sleeping, but sneaks in during my waking hours. Maybe I want to wear this mouth guard during the day? 

When my yoga instructors encourage us to relax our jaws,  I begin to notice I am a habitual jaw-clencher. It’s arguably the strongest muscle in the human body, right up there with the heart pumping blood and the uterus pushing out babies. And it’s interfering with my peace.

As I commit to myself to make room for more balance in my life, I know I am putting in less hours in front of my computer.  However, it’s clear my brain continues to work overtime.  I awaken in darkness attempting to solve complex puzzles.  While every other muscle in my body stiffens overnight from lack of use, my jaw feels like it’s been on the treadmill.  Clearly, the work is seeping outside my waking hours and I’m not sure why.

In my nearly 20 years of employment at my company I think I’ve held something like 14 different roles.  Some are formal declarations of a new job where I actually pick up my things and move to another location with a new client and team, others are casually communicated additions of responsibility lobbed my way as I walk past my manager’s desk; remarks like “I’ve been thinking you should oversee all the projects in Latin America.”  One thing that’s consistent as I’m fortunate to move up the ladder is the need to redefine the meaning of work. 

To my closest friends, I am brave enough to divulge I have a hard time describing what it is that I do in my current job. How, I wonder, do I sum up how I spend my time during any given day and the value it brings to my company?  I notice I am required to constantly pivot. I can have up to ten meetings in a day, all on entirely different topics.  This leaves little time to be thoroughly prepared for any conversation, nor to do anything traditionally described as “real work”. 

I continue to be amazed that meeting people is actually a job requirement.  I might not have a position for someone I meet, but if I’m doing my job well, I’m talking to people I might want to recruit at a future point in time.  It’s my job to remember every individual who impresses me and stay in touch so I can make a hire when the right position presents itself. 

Taking clients to lunch and carving out time to talk to them is part of my job.  If I’m really good at it, I’m asking pointed questions geared to draw out their biggest problems. It’s my job to listen, to observe, to understand what’s working and what’s not working, to diagnose and put a plan together to make changes.   

And it’s my job to delegate nearly every piece of what I’ve formerly described as “real work” that comes my way.  Because if my time is tied up with those tasks, I don’t have time to do my job.

It all sounds crazy to me, and no wonder up until now I haven’t been able to accept nor succinctly summarize what it is I do!  I can credit Seth Godin and his blog post "Mental load and the worry cache" with the ah-ha moment allowing me to turn the corner and embrace my new normal.    

At the onset of my current job I feel like the first-grader in late August who comes home at the end of those first few school days and needs a nap. It’s a kind of mental exhaustion wiping us out until we figure it out, until we settle into new expectations and a new routine. I need to accept that what I’m doing IS the real work. 

All of this delegation can clearly manifest itself in worry; however, when I look at myself from this new vantage point, I realize it’s not the fear that someone else won’t do the work as well as I would, it’s the accountability and the fear my decisions may result in failure, as Seth describes, that truly keeps me up and wears me down. It causes my mind to work 24/7.  And if I’m being really honest, I would bet the new role I’m playing with my kids since they’ve moved out is causing the same jaw-breaking consternation.

So the question becomes how to quell the fears, and repurpose this energy into something positive.  Leaving worry in the dust is easier said than done.  But maybe it starts with the understanding failure is part of the business of life and we are all more than capable of recovering from it. The most powerful muscle we can exert on any situation, by far, is belief in ourselves.

Riff

We’re attempting to meet for dinner, my sons and I.  We’ve tried two dates now, only to end up aborting both at the last minute because he is hung up unexpectedly at work. The text messages flying back and forth culminate in frustration:  “I hate this adulting thing, planning stuff is so hard now.” 

The Urban Dictionary defines adulting as follows:  “to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown-ups.”  I’ve been thinking lately that I hate this adulting thing, too.

Lying on my yoga mat the tears well up in my eyes. The instructors repeat this often:  Letting go of thoughts and feelings that don’t serve us can often manifest itself in strong emotions during class. Even though this is a practice, and every time I step into the hot room I’m repeating the exact same postures in the exact same order, today’s class is the most difficult I can recall in months.  I am struggling to get through, uncharacteristically taking a break to lie down in the middle of standing separate head to knee pose.  All I can think is I don’t want to work so hard anymore, not at yoga, maybe not at anything. 

I’ve spent my entire life trying to prove I am not a sloth.  It doesn’t matter that I can’t remember where I ever came up with the idea I deserve the label.  Maybe it’s a product of my contempt for the painful shyness I’ve slowly learned to accept and manage over the course of my adult life.  I have never been afraid of the work, just afraid to put myself out there.  And so I go the extra mile, ensure I’m extra prepared because when I do speak up, I need to be certain my facts are correct, my thoughts measured and logical.  I wonder if this compulsion to prove my fortitude has just worn me out over time.

There is no doubt adulting is a lot of work, in fact there are times when it feels like a chore. It requires, among other things, discipline, maturity, accountability and consistency to fulfill our obligations and keep our dependents safe and sound. It means doing the right thing when no one is looking, because our kids are looking.  They are always looking. It can seem like our lives are not our own.

But adulting also brings autonomy, the privilege of choice and a delicious freedom to express ourselves. We get to live life on our own terms, to create a sanctuary we call home that may look vastly different than where we came from. Adulting brings a tremendous amount of joy if we can allow ourselves to experience it.  I’m taking steps to not only recognize it when it shows up in ordinary time, but to seek it out and allow some space to invite it in.  Because we should be able to carry out our responsibilities and care for the ones we love without taking everything so seriously.  Adulting shouldn’t always be hard.     

Of course I will go back to yoga in a day or two.  I will continue to push myself. And I’ll also be a little kinder to myself.  It’s hard to compare yourself to others in the hot room; you’ll fall out of the posture the moment you take your eyes off yourself. I’ve been called out by an instructor as the strongest person in the room. Others must be allowing themselves the breaks I can’t seem to grant myself. I decide the world will not end if I choose to contribute not only to the energy in the room, but also the humanity.  

I wish I could I tell my son the challenges of adulting will pass, that it’s only a phase or a rite of passage.  But the reality is adulting is demanding at its onset, and continues to play a refrain throughout the course of any life. What I can encourage him to do is to be grateful for his independence, and to seek out and embrace the joy and solace there for the taking.  He’s on a journey every one of us on the planet, no matter who or where you are, finds rocky at intervals along the way.  Sometimes it’s just helpful to know we’re not alone.

Portaging

I’m standing in the basement early Saturday morning, watching a thin sheet of clear rain water creep across the basement floor.  While I packed as much as I could in plastic containers knowing my precious cargo would be waylaid, mooring in a basement for an indeterminate period of time before reaching its final destination, it is inevitable that some contents end up in cardboard boxes. I’ve been here before, paralyzed by impending destruction I feel powerless to avert.

This situation is top of mind in the past few weeks as countless people across the nation engulfed in hurricanes and fires are making these choices with a magnitude exponential to mine.  It’s the paralysis that consumes us, the need to wrest with split-second decisions about which possessions are most important. There is only time and space to carry the precious few. How is one to decide?

We become comfortable surrounded by our stuff, symbols of safety, security and stability.  Every item we choose to possess says something about who we are, what we do with our time, what is important to us, what inspires us.  Yet life is full of transformations asking us to shed our stuff.  Sometimes willfully and with great excitement, other times with resigned submission, bitter disappointment or hopeless incomprehension. 

Christina Baker Kline, the author of the current selection my book club is reading, “Orphan Train”, weaves into her story the history of the Wabanakis Indians who traveled across the land carrying their canoes and possessions from river to lake to sea.  As a people, they knew how to travel light. The transient characters in her present day story recount the choices they make:  “What did you choose to bring with you to the next place?  What did you leave behind?”   

As I prepared to move this summer I set the goal to thresh out only those pieces of clothing I wear, the dishes and cookware I actually use, the artwork I absolutely adore.  I found myself in a state of perpetual culling; multiple rounds of sorting up until the moment I locked the door behind me for the last time. What surprises me is this winnowing continues, even after the move.  Standing in the basement imagining the worst inches of rising water could wipe out, I go through the mental game of contemplating what I will choose to bring with me and what I will leave behind. Is this the universe telling me I have more to let go? 

Thankfully there are no casualties; he is outside in the torrential downpour assessing the condition of gutters and drains.  He quickly decides the tired sump pump is the culprit and in a heartbeat he and his plumber are replacing it with a turbo-charged model bringing newfound energy, upchucking with comforting regularity water laden with leaves and debris. I make myself useful by getting a pedicure and buying sandwiches.  I am grateful I have a partner who believes in playing to our strengths.

While this crisis never comes to fruition, I’m left pondering the questions:   “What do you choose to bring with you to the next place?  What do you leave behind?”   On the surface I’ve chosen to bring a wardrobe dominated by black shirts, kitchen cabinets full of white bakeware and Starbucks “You Are Here” mugs documenting our travel to cities across the globe, while leaving at the curb tattered furniture, broken appliances and electronics, paperwork documenting a past which no longer serves me.

But it’s about so much more than the stuff. I am changing homes, and entering into a new phase of life:  Freedom I haven’t seen in over twenty years.  I leave behind the overwhelming responsibility of single-parenthood, the pressures of being the sole breadwinner, the tether to the nest, the solace of my screened-in porch, the full expression of my onlyness. I bring with me my unwavering love for my boys, wisdom and patience to guide them from a new vantage point, worry for their safety and wellbeing, the means and travel companion to sate my wanderlust, the skills and desire to be a good partner. 

As we move from place to place it’s inevitable that we will leave behind some cherished gifts we wish we could take with us, and bring with us some worn baggage we wish we could leave behind. There is one constant; however:  We always bring with us our true selves.  And if we believe we possess the power and resilience to adapt to new situations and make everything new again we can be happy wherever we are.

Requiem

I am somewhat surprised by how saddened this American girl is by the passing of Tom Petty.  I can’t think of another artist who spends more time nor owns more selections on my playlist of favorites.  In fact he is on my playlist before the word playlist is even coined, for those who remember back to the days of mix tapes.

He writes exquisitely and succinctly. He speaks to me at the pivotal moments, those crossroads laden with emotion and uncertainty, able to be both a soothing balm and smoldering bomb. It’s as if behind his famous grin lies the confident assurance we’re only scratching the surface as we sway to his music; we will someday understand the sage messages his lyrics hide in plain sight.  We just need to live a little.

And for one desperate moment there

He crept back in her memory

God it's so painful when something that's so close

Is still so far out of reach

Slow to learn my lesson, I commit acts of serial pining, always incessantly, for the favor of unrequited loves who seem to slip through my fingers. I come to know exactly the chimera he’s describing, exactly how it feels to be utterly convinced you are on the brink of grasping something that in reality was never even remotely near enough to touch.

The waiting is the hardest part

Every day you see one more card

You take it on faith, you take it to the heart

The waiting is the hardest part

Blessed as a vessel for the creation of human beings, I find no better summation for the toils of pregnancy than The Waiting. Under all of its glorious discomfort lies an insatiable yearning to meet this precious individual I’m instantly and infinitely cleaved to with an unmatched ferocity. Time never moved so slowly.

She's gonna listen to her heart

It's gonna tell her what to do

She might need a lot of loving

But she don't need you

Who hasn’t woken up to the realization you’ve stayed too long in a relationship for fear the ache of loneliness is so unbearable you’ll tolerate snippets of affection from the wrong person?   We all need a lot of loving and, sometimes, the self-confidence to believe we deserve it and the courage to free ourselves from everything we know to find it.

Square one, my slate is clear

Rest your head on me, my dear

It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears

Took a long time... to get back here

She tells me I’ve always been a free spirit.  Until this moment I haven’t truly realized how much of myself I suppressed and sacrificed to be who I thought someone else wanted me to be.  There is no journey more powerful or worthwhile than the one that takes you back to yourself. 

I need only to hear a handful of notes before I know he’s playing A Woman in Love. The anticipation is hypnotic, intoxicating.  It’s like this for me with so many of his songs. I could (and do) listen over and over again. It seems he’ll never stop draggin’ my heart around.    

Incline

She steps up to the mic and affirms we're here to celebrate life.  I catch myself welling up as the word life catches in her throat.  She's up on the stage clutching those nearest and dearest to her, looking out at her community; the group of family and friends who are becoming known to each other for no other reason than for knowing her.  They've brought food and flowers, music and memories to this majestic clearing in the trees. They sing like the musicians in the band with their words of love and joy. They warm like the fire blazing heat through the crisp mountain air. They sparkle like the lights strung across the evergreens soaring high into the sky.

She wonders what she's done to deserve it all; this path of switchbacks life keeps asking her to navigate.  And at the same time she grips the wheel firmly with both hands, marveling at all she's learning with every turn she braves.

These challenges life forces us to stare down, they aren't the occasional rough patch on an otherwise smooth and predictable course.  They are everyday opportunities to develop our true selves we have no choice but to accept. And unfortunately they are sometimes doled out to us in the dirtiest of jobs.

When we accept that we are all broken in one way or another, some of us more visibly and publicly than others, and that hairpin turns aren't here to get into the way of life, but rather are the way of life, all sorts of magic happens.  We no longer need to worry about what if.  We don't need to wallow in the self pity of why me.  When we expect that the road will be harrowing at times we can focus on learning how to drive it.  An incredibly huge and wonderful ask not only because it takes courage, but help unlocking  it.

She says her feistiness only gets her so far.  For the rest she credits her community.  She learns to ask for what she needs, relieving countless pairs of idle hands earnest to be put to work.  She places a huge chunk of her hard fought business into the care of others, knowing she may never get it back. She comes to the slow realization that life is not temporarily altered for this blip on the radar screen, but forever altered as a new way of being.

The awkward, unwanted glow of cancer places her in this spotlight.  And she is able to use this place to acknowledge we all need each other, no matter the magnitude, credibility or celebrity of our brokenness, to fuel us through whatever life hands us.  She celebrates the power this community of giving helps her find in herself as she braces for another hairpin turn. This is glorious and treacherous life in the mountains.  This is life.  

Cull

Who knew there would be so many?  And how stealthy they are in the beginning; so innocent, simple and easy I don’t even realize I’m making them.  They perch on a sliding scale of difficulty I unwittingly set myself as I move through the process.  And the most time consuming and confounding of all is, in the end, the hardest to make are around the most trivial of things. I’m talking about decisions.

The decision to take action on my yearning to move out of my house and on to a new life has consumed the summer of 2017.  From the initial tour with my real estate agent in June sharing instructions on how to prepare my house to go to market, to the final throes of throwing the last vestiges into boxes now labeled “miscellaneous” and “kitchen junk”, I’ve been making decisions.

My bag collection is tormenting me at the moment.  I know; I can’t help myself.  I collect paper, select plastic, and the lightweight fabric.  Some of my most coveted are the ones from The Container Store, especially the little red zipper bags stowing Elfa hardware.  I almost like them more than the closets created with the parts they hold within them. Paper shopping bags with handles are a jumbled mixture of childhood delicacy and happy memories.  On bright, Sunday afternoons my grandparents would arrive at our house in the suburbs from the big city with Maurice Lenell cookies and other goodies in shopping bags I was convinced didn’t exist out in the sticks. My own bag collection coaxed into the daylight from the myriad of storage nooks now makes a troubling mountain in the dining room I can’t seem to attack. I will use the 50% rule to vet and downsize.

There are few milestones in a life that present such an undeniable and pristine opportunity to pause and take stock.  This process, whether I initially realize it or not, demands I make a decision about every single material item in my life from a safety pin to a sofa.  And as Hurricane Harvey rages on, I feel blessed and at the same time a modicum of embarrassment for all I have acquired, and grateful for the simple fact that I get to make choices for myself instead of a vicious storm making them for me.

 

Leaving my home of fifteen years is bittersweet. As I sit at my kitchen window and do the math, I realize that over the course of my lifetime there is no other place on earth where I have been anchored for more time.  No other sanctum where I have grown and changed as much. And there may never be again.

 

Ironically and somewhat not surprisingly, I have spent more time addressing my stuff than I have the wonderful people who have lived in and around this home with me.  While it’s understandable, something about it just feels wrong.  I’m looking forward to discovering new ways these relationships will change and hopefully deepen in the absence of close proximity.  Mostly I’m looking forward to the freedom letting go of some stuff will afford me.  If only I’m courageous enough to do it.  My gypsy soul continues to patiently wait. Probably with a few bags.