When your weekend includes an evening with Anne Lamott.
Not just us, per se, but one of hundreds who hung on her words of insight, vulnerability, universal suffering and redemption, humanity, and writing craft. She kept her words of vitriol toward the Administration to well, nothing, actually and addressed that; how do you maintain hope when what you love and have fought for is under attack? Do you attack back? Do you pray more? Do the double-down? No, on attacking, not even really in print or in speech. You are lowering yourself and wallowing in the grime and disgust of it all. But you do better and you keep doing the good work that will bring it all around.
*****
We cooked together today. We had a fairly deep, impromptu status update of the Marriage. How are we? We are still both deeply wounded but still committed and believing in the future. Can we cook a meal together for our friend who is recovering from open heart surgery? Let's try. And we did. We did it. We shopped and cooked together, delivered our food, ate together and left, all largely without fighting or tension.
So I could call this Milestone Saturday or something sappy along those lines, but it was just a good, normal day and I'll leave it at that.
*****
This was a solid week of hard work, many projects with tasks checked off, fewer doctor's visits, good daily exercise. A solid week of laying down more days to the new routines and schedules.
*****
Some due to my own healing, some due to Jay's new openness, I have a growing awareness of some of my worst habits and flaws. It's humbling. I feel there was divine timing in hearing Anne Lamott speak last night. I had forgotten her humility, her complete openness to how flawed her life has been, spectacularly so. I needed and need to remember that. What beauty is and has come out of her life of discovery and a seeking journey toward something better. At times, I feel overwhelmed by what is still buried within and what comes out in negative ways, hurting me and others. I could easily slip back to my old patterns of self-doubt and self-loathing. I secretly wonder if friends, my kids, my husband, will go the distance with me. I've had to accept that I have and am doing all I can ever do, and for some, maybe that's too much. I have to accept that everyone has their own work, and I can part ways with people if my issues are too distracting, confusing or hurtful. I can move on and not take it personally as I know I've lived with integrity to the best of my ability and pursued growth with all of my energies. I can try to make amends or not. It is what it is and I am what I am, flawed and loved fully by Infinite Love.
Oyster mushrooms
CHANGES/REFLECTIONS:
- I don't fully know what I'm doing with my life right now other than getting physically and mentally healthy, writing daily, keeping our house functional and returning things to a more normal, stable state, working on the Marriage and my myriad of issues, the wedding, thoughts about the future. I'm occasionally smoking small cigars, watching movies on Fridays, relaxing and also working, not in conflict with each other. I don't have a Big Plan. I have small plans, small assignments as Anne Lamott would say. They are wholly unsexy but I think she made it pretty clear this evening that while she likes, I think a bit, speaking to groups, she kindof dreads it too. She said she likes being home, and she means it. She likes being in sweats and lounging and being with a few people and reading and writing and burrowing. So it's okay to mostly like to write and then if you get to publish and speak, so be it, but you may not be crazy about all that.
- How affected am I by the weather? Apparently about a billion percent. I honestly thought at one point, why am I bothering reading about spirituality and the spiritual life? I just literally need sun and green around me, almost all the time. Water is a bonus.
- Continuing to marvel at how reduced trauma focus makes relationships better. All around. Still get defensive and triggered on some things but dealing with it.
- Healing physically makes everything better. I have lived so long with chronic, physical pain and it's a symptom of having several ACE's, sadly. I don't understand the connection, but if your body is mild to moderately stressed all the time, your immune system is compromised so there you go. When I think of all I'm doing, all we're doing, I feel the need to rub lotion on my legs, take a nap and give myself the breaks I need when I need them. This time of repair and healing won't last forever. I can be patient for other projects that come; for now, do the work that will create a new foundation for the rest of my life.