Abigail Carter's Blog, page 7

She’s Gone

Saturday morning, a swarm of red-shirted college students surrounded our rental car and disappeared with boxes and bags as fast as we could unload them. The room packed with stuff and now eight people, but the empty boxes soon piled up in the hallway, disorder massaged into a cute dorm room. Her roommate sat on her jacked-up bed looking like an eager ten-year-old as she navigated signing into the college network on her computer. The younger brothers a contrast in backgrounds – hers in his cammos and hunting belt with Leatherman attached and our buzz cut, khaki-shorted, Van sneakered version. They shared the same bored slope to their shoulders.

At the Commons, we navigated lines for the bookstore where Carter and Jim had already decked themselves out in college spirit t-shirts and fake tattoos. She declared that all her favorite foods were represented at the lunch stations – salad bar, pizza, pasta, mexican, deli.

Having never visited the campus before we requested a tour and a red-shirted senior was hastily roped into doing her well-practiced schtick which turned out to be the best part of the day. Olivia seemed to come alive as we wandered the campus and she could finally imagine herself in this setting. Our psych major senior was full of tips about everything from sororities to yoga teachers. She waved perky hellos to many as we walked around and it was easy to see our tour guide becoming a great resource in the days and weeks to come.

I was struck by the – what to call it exactly – humbleness? of the students we saw. People smiled. Clothing styles seemed casual. None of the fashion shows from some of our other college tours. No posturing, no sideways glances, just genuine excitement and a certain confidence each was in the right place. From her dorm room, we split up, leaving her to go to the computer lab while we made another trip to Walmart for some forgotten items. I fussed as she left, making sure she had what she needed, ever the mom. As she walked away, I heard someone call “Mama!” and went to the window to see if it was her. Jim started to laugh. “You are so cute! But it’s time to let her go now,” He pulled me into an embrace. I laughed too, but tears sprang to my eyes.

Driving home after taking her to a restaurant in an old fire-station and leaving her at her dorm, Sirrus radio played an array of songs on a channel that we couldn’t begin to imagine the genre of. A Little Feat song came on. “All That You Dream.”

All, all that you dream Comes through shinin silver lining Clouds, clouds change the scene Rain starts washing all these cautions Right into your life, makes you realize Just what is true, what else can you do You just follow the rule Keep your eyes on the road that’s ahead of you

I turned to Carter who sat in the back seat, “This was one of your dad’s favorite bands.” I was sensitive to Jim, still trying to navigate Arron’s presence in Jim’s life, but in that moment this fact seemed important. I was quiet thinking about Arron, trying to place him in this day. Would he be sad to let her go, or happy or proud? All the things I was feeling? The tears rolled down my cheeks as I drove. I swiped at them discreetly not wanting to alert Jim to my sudden sadness. It didn’t seem fair. He was here, not Arron. Another tear. The song played on, the past drowning me. The beautiful Pennsylvania landscape rolled by in tidy green fields, red barns and white silos. Keep your eyes on the road that’s ahead of you. 

Sunday morning, at the matriculation ceremony the president of the school admitted in a wavering voice that he had just dropped off his own daughter at college causing more tears to roll down my cheeks. A final lunch at McDonald’s and a final supply run and we drove up to her dorm for the final time. My weeks of anticipation of this moment had come, but she turned to me and laughed. “Don’t cry mama. I’ll be fine.” I laughed a little through my tears as I gave her a hug. “But it’s my job to cry,” I said.

The next day we flew home, a continent-distance away. Those tears are still there a week later as I write this, but I can tell her level of happiness in the sparseness of her texts. Yesterday I got a photo of a new fish named Nacho and another of a handsome boy. All that you dream, Comes through shinin silver lining.

She’s Gone

Move-in day – August 2013

Saturday morning, a swarm of red-shirted college students surrounded our rental car and disappeared with boxes and bags as fast as we could unload them. The room packed with stuff and now eight people, but the empty boxes soon piled up in the hallway, disorder massaged into a cute dorm room.

Her roommate sat on her jacked-up bed looking like an eager ten-year-old as she navigated signing into the college network on her computer. The younger brothers a contrast in backgrounds – hers in his cammos and hunting belt with Leatherman attached and our buzz cut, khaki-shorted, Van sneakered version. They shared the same bored slope to their shoulders.

At the Commons, we navigated lines for the bookstore where Carter and Jim had already decked themselves out in college spirit t-shirts and fake tattoos. She declared that all her favorite foods were represented at the lunch stations – salad bar, pizza, pasta, mexican, deli.

Having never visited the campus before we requested a tour and a red-shirted senior was hastily roped into doing her well-practiced schtick which turned out to be the best part of the day. Olivia seemed to come alive as we wandered the campus and she could finally imagine herself in this setting. Our psych major senior was full of tips about everything from sororities to yoga teachers. She waved perky hellos to many as we walked around and it was easy to see our tour guide becoming a great resource in the days and weeks to come.

I was struck by the – what to call it exactly – humbleness? of the students we saw. People smiled. Clothing styles seemed casual. None of the fashion shows from some of our other college tours. No posturing, no sideways glances, just genuine excitement and a certain confidence each was in the right place.

From her dorm room, we split up, leaving her to go to the computer lab while we made another trip to Walmart for some forgotten items. I fussed as she left, making sure she had what she needed, ever the mom. As she walked away, I heard someone call “Mama!” and went to the window to see if it was her. Jim started to laugh. “You are so cute! But it’s time to let her go now,” He pulled me into an embrace. I laughed too, but tears sprang to my eyes.

Driving home after taking her to a restaurant in an old fire-station and leaving her at her dorm, Sirrus radio played an array of songs on a channel that we couldn’t begin to imagine the genre of. A Little Feat song came on. “All That You Dream.”

All, all that you dream

Comes through shinin silver lining

Clouds, clouds change the scene

Rain starts washing all these cautions

Right into your life, makes you realize

Just what is true, what else can you do

You just follow the rule

Keep your eyes on the road that’s ahead of you

 

I turned to Carter who sat in the back seat, “This was one of your dad’s favorite bands.” I was sensitive to Jim, still trying to navigate Arron’s presence in Jim’s life, but in that moment this fact seemed important. I was quiet thinking about Arron, trying to place him in this day. Would he be sad to let her go, or happy or proud? All the things I was feeling? The tears rolled down my cheeks as I drove. I swiped at them discreetly not wanting to alert Jim to my sudden sadness. It didn’t seem fair. He was here, not Arron. Another tear. The song played on, the past drowning me. The beautiful Pennsylvania landscape rolled by in tidy green fields, red barns and white silos. Keep your eyes on the road that’s ahead of you. 

Sunday morning, at the matriculation ceremony the president of the school admitted in a wavering voice that he had just dropped off his own daughter at college causing more tears to roll down my cheeks.

A final lunch at McDonald’s and a final supply run and we drove up to her dorm for the final time.

My weeks of anticipation of this moment had come, but she turned to me and laughed. “Don’t cry mama. I’ll be fine.” I laughed a little through my tears as I gave her a hug. “But it’s my job to cry,” I said. The next day we flew home, a continent-distance away.

Those tears are still there a week later as I write this, but I can tell her level of happiness in the sparseness of her texts. Yesterday I got a photo of a new fish named Nacho and another of a handsome boy.

All that you dream, Comes through shinin silver lining.

Brain Candy, Meal Trains and Other Unmentionables

[image error]My best friend Deirdre has been diagnosed with… I feel like if I say it out loud it might hear me, so I’ll take her lead and call it “Brain Candy.” Or Sara. I called it a loogie in my poem. Anything but what it actually is.

My reaction hasn’t made much sense to me. “Taking it in stride” seems to best describe it, and yet doesn’t seem appropriate. Another bump in the fabric of the universe, another curve ball. I find myself assuming that she will get some treatment and come out the other side. Of course she will.

Of course she will.

Another journey has begun, one that I have every intention of tripping along down the path with her on, as best I can. There are a lot of people who have the same intention and so right off the bat, I have discovered the strange paradox of being a patient: you have to manage all those “helpers.” As if you don’t already have enough to worry about.

I am aware that the tables have turned and I am now on the other side of all those who tried to help me in the days and weeks after 9/11. Of course, the first thing I thought of was a meal train. My meal train all those years ago, consisted of a bright green sheet of paper taped to my kitchen cabinet where people came and signed up for meals. I would get phone calls every morning asking how many people they needed to cook for. I had to buy a freezer for the leftovers. I received more carrot soup, fruit salad, lasagna and bagels than I knew what to do with.

I asked a friend, (who strangely enough had just lost her best friend to brain candy. Is this an epidemic?) if she knew of a meal train app, but she had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

An aside: I actually hate the word “meal.” Oddly enough, Arron and I often exchanged our list of hated words, and it was one of his too. We’ve even passed our dislike of the word “meal” onto our children. Other hated words: loaf, panties, crotch.

Perhaps not ironic then, that this word likes to haunt me. It’s getting it’s revenge on me.

So now it’s my turn. Turns out there IS an app for that. It’s called… yup… you guessed it… Mealtrain.com. It’s kinda awesome. You can select a series of dates for which meals are needed, add notes about likes and dislikes and then add the emails of friends and family who can come and sign up to bring meals on specific dates. They get email reminders when the date they signed up for rolls around.

OK, so meals. check. Taking it in stride. Another bump in the path. We got this.

She is writing an awesome blog about her experience and like any good writer has already conceived the book that she hopes to write from it. Deirdre is about the only person I can think of that can make “brain candy” sound fun. For one, she calls it “brain candy.” She got a cute pixie cut. She is discovering everything from Reiki to Buddhism to hypnotherapy. Her and her husband are excited that the radiation unit waiting room looks like the lobby of a W Hotel. She wonders if they offer discounts at the cemetery across the street. She goes to Burlesque shows and comes up with new ideas for her latest movie script, based on the lessons she is learning.

I laugh right along with her, the black humor rife between us. I hope I’m saying the right things, doing the right things. All I can be to her is all I’ve ever been to her – a friend. Funny how brain candy somehow makes the simple things seem complicated. Makes you question all that you know.

I am grateful for my experiences–the roller coaster journey I have already undertaken–that’s prepared me to walk this road with Deirdre. Like so many people in crisis, she is already teaching us about life as she faces death. I marvel at her capacity to live and enjoy life despite the threat of brain candy and all that it entails.

I hope I can impart something back to her, maybe that lack of fear that I have unwittingly gained – the sense that there is life beyond life. I know for many this is a cockamamie notion, a folly, a brainwash, or whatever you want to call it, but for me it has power. Living without fear of what life may throw at you simply enriches your life.

I met a comedian today named Wali Collins who’s written a book called “The Y’nevano Book of Encouragement: Living a Regretless Life.” I know you’re all guessing at “Y’nevano.” No, it’s not some ancient lost language – Just read it as “You Never Know.”

There are no coincidences.

I think that is Deirdre’s strength. She has always lived a “Y’nevano” life. She wanted to paint her dining room pink, so she did. She wanted to make a movie about burlesque and she did it. She wanted to write a book, and she’s almost finished that too. She wanted to write a script about “boylesque” and now she’s improving it with her latest life lessons.

The last page in Wali’s book is about Legacy. He writes:

“Do something that shows the world that you were here and you lived a life. Your legacy will speak of you long after you are gone.”

Y’nevano.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Ode to Lady Hedgebrook’s Magic and a “No-Expectations” Life

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Cedar Cottage

If three perfect days of solitude in a one-person cottage, six amazing women discussing numerous topics mostly centered around writing over a home-prepared garden dinner, freshly baked cookies, and healthy to-go lunches in one of the most beautiful places on Earth weren’t enough, I may just have finished my manuscript.

I was serendipitously there – happenstance of another’s late arrival coupled with the almost-never event of a single mother – three days with no kids. Home alone or Cedar cottage alone? There was no question, the choice was obvious. Thus I arrived on three days notice, surprised, delighted, giddy, unencumbered.

At brunch on Sunday, someone talked about the idea of “no expectations.” Nancy, the founder of Hedgebrook explained that her vision when she built this women’s writing retreat was unencumbered by the notion of what the place might become. She just had hope that it would be a place that would feed women on every level. As Deb acknowledged, the lack of expectation is built into the very sweat used to pound each wooden peg that holds each cottage together and is transferred by osmosis to every inhabitant, no matter the duration of their stay. Each woman feels the freedom to face whatever comes, be open to possibility and put that authenticity down on a page, or not, as the case may be.

I have lived just such a “no expectations” life for almost twelve years now, ever since that moment when I knew my life would never be the same. Expectations had never served me well.

Thus Cedar cottage beaconed and I came with no expectations. I am a paragraph or two away from finishing and that book may or may not be published to great acclaim. In that tiny cottage, I remembered that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. What mattered at that moment, as I sat in Cedar’s window seat watching mosquitoes dance in the sunlight, was simply that I was there, having leapt at the chance at silence and solitude with very little notion of what it might bring.

The walls of Cedar cottage, like all the cottages are infused with tears and wonder and beauty and discovery. The magic Lady Hedgebrook wind brought me to this place and thus I inhaled.

I thank all responsible for the privilege.

Trying To Keep You For Myself

I watch you struggle, helpless

sugar-coating your reality with laughter

trying to keep you for myself

You tell me the news from the ICU as I watch a muted documentary on Highgrove

A royal garden visited in my darkest days. I am shocked by how selfish I am

trying to keep you for myself

You mention Buddha and I try to laser beam the loogie inside your head

with the white-hot light of my third eye, with my heart, my love

trying to keep you for myself

I want you to have the freedom to allow what comes to come

I want to tell you to fight, to embrace life, to not give up

trying to keep you for myself

You are my sister, my best friend and I don’t know how to make you better, comfort you, hold you in your fear

when all I want to do is keep you for myself.

Let’s Make Some Noise For Our Graduate!

[image error]In the frenzy leading up to the big day, I was told breathlessly, barely 12 hours before the event that I had to get a lei and maracas.

“A Lei? Maracas?” Had high school graduations changed that much or was this some American tradition I wasn’t aware of? Where the heck does one buy a lei or maracas?

“Everyone gets a Lei!” she said. “You can get them at Safeway. And you need maracas so that you can make lots of noise when I go up on stage.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly.  I was priding myself on the fact that almost twelve years widowed, this graduation thing was going to be a breeze. He’d be proud, I kept thinking. It won’t be a sad affair. I remembered the newly widowed me thinking about this day, feeling crushed by the far-in-the-future event, unable to fathom how I would ever get through it. I was almost giddy thinking how great it was all going to be. How happy and proud I was of my girl.

I found myself at the grocery store looking at a pile of picked-over white and purple orchid leis wrapped in plastic with “Manager’s Special” stickers on them. They were wilted and a little brown around the edges, but I was desperate. “Do you have maracas?” I asked the grocery store florist. She looked at me as if I had three heads. “Maracas? No. You could try Bartells…” After an equally bewildered looking clerk at the pharmacy told me they had no maracas, I gave up. She would have to be content with my four finger whistle.

There was a last minute dress-buying excursion and a dash to the airport to pick up Jim who had been away for a week buying a seaplane (that’s another blog post). I had spent the week in anticipation, missing him, excited to see him. He had changed his flight last minute to be able to attend the graduation with us and I couldn’t have been more grateful.  After a quick change, we were off to dinner at our favorite Greek comfort food restaurant. It’s where we’ve spent many of our occasions, the owner also a widower and a good friend. Olivia had spent a summer working there and thus had chosen it.

After dinner, we filed into the stadium, glad to arrive early and find a seat in the sun. The crowd around us gathered, rowdy, carrying balloons that blocked our view and clutching elaborate bouquets, wearing high heels and dragging young kids who kicked our backs through the bleacher seats. A group squeezed in beside us, almost usurping what little room we had on the wooden bench. They were loud and boisterous and the strains of Pomp and Circumstance that accompanied the procession of white and purple clad grads, could barely be heard over their hoots and whistles and screams at their grad.

My brevity began to slip. We saw her walking and tried to wave, but it took a series of text messages before she could. She turned and waved glad to have found us. The speeches began and I was relieved by the relative quiet. I moved closer to Jim, glad for his presence. This was going to be fine.

One of the speakers said to the grads, “I want you to turn around and thank your moms and dads, because they had a lot to do with you being here today.” She turned and smiled and waved, and my chest clenched, emotions surging. She was grown up. She looked so beautiful. She was going to be leaving soon. He wasn’t here to see it. I blinked away a tear, determined not to go there. The moment passed. Just a moment. I was safe.

When she got to the stage and they called her name, my four finger whistle, Jim’s dollar bill whistle and Carter’s hoot all died amidst the noise of our raucous neighbors. As she walked off the stage she whooped and her arm flew into the air in victory. She had done it. We had done it. Another gulp and swallow. I pushed the thought away. The rest of the event I managed to get through gulp-less.

The crowd filed out of the stadium to follow the grads to Seattle’s giant fountain where we were to meet up. In front of me walked a man with a grey tweed suit, its tails flapping in the wind. Another gulp caught me hard this time. I remembered Arron the night of Olivia’s kindergarten recital. Late, running in his grey suit, tails flying, shirt undone, shoes clacking on the marble floors of the school’s halls.

What would he have said? How would he have felt in this moment? Tears sprang. I swallowed them away. We had hugs and pictures and left her for the green bus that would take her to an all night odyssey of teen-aged fun. Driving home, my head throbbed with thwarted tears.

In the car, we talked about the kids that didn’t graduate, as had been mentioned in one of the speeches. Carter seemed incredulous at the idea of not graduating. Once home, he came to me, hugged me hard, upset. For a moment, I thought it might be for the same reason I was struggling, but then I remembered the conversation. I assured him he would graduate in four years. I could hear the mom in my voice, turning it into a learning moment. “As long as you do all your homework and stay organized and get involved…” No good mom would miss such an opportunity.

I poured a glass of wine while Jim disappeared into the other room. I was grateful for the momentary reprieve which he no doubt sensed I needed. I was unsure how to reconcile my moment of grief with my happy reunion with him. I unthwarted the tears, the silent kind. I let the emotions wash over me, knowing that they would eventually dissipate.

I let the dog out and Jim asked how I was. I didn’t know how to answer. Happy. Sad. Proud. I thought of a decoupage – a magazine image of sadness shellacked over with thick layers of pride in my kid, happiness that we had made it to this moment. Jim had texted upon Olivia’s final day of school “Congratulations. You deserve as much congratulations as anyone lady. You made it!” It had been the first time it occurred to me that a graduation was a combined effort. I thought of all the drama and angst we’d been through together getting to this point. Her and I together. I wished Arron could have been a part of that.

Later I lay snuggled in Jim’s arms, having spent a week without him, aware of how strange it all was, the sadness and happiness of the day mixed with the gratitude that I was right where I was supposed to be.

Dang it, where are the maracas when you need them?

 

 

Chasing Mavericks

[image error]I was flying home from New York and decided to watch a movie. I was tired. I wanted something that wouldn’t make me think too hard, so I went with the surfing movie. No, not the one with the shark (though that made me cry too, come to think of it), another one, Chasing Mavericks. I don’t know what it is about Gerard Butler always playing the widower, but I wasn’t expecting it this time (P.S., I Love You, which there was no way I was going to go and see and The Boys are Back, with, oh wait, that’s Clive Owen. Well, you get the idea).

It was kind of hokey, but by the end, tears were rolling down my cheeks. The movie producer guy sitting next to me glanced at me and I did an embarrassed little laugh and said by way of apology, “I’m a weeper. It was a sad movie.” “Oh,” he replied. “The Impossible?” (the movie about the family lost in the Tsunami, another one I would never watch). “Uh. No. It was a surfing movie.” He just sort of smirked and left me to wipe my tears on a very inadequate cocktail napkin.

(Spoiler alert)

So yes, there was a wife who died, and then we learn at the end of the movie that it was based on the life of a real guy who came from a crap childhood and befriended this neighbor (Gerard) who taught him how to surf the gigantic waves, called Mavericks. They have a sweet video of the real-life guy who married his childhood sweetheart and then they drop the bomb that he died in a diving accident at the age of 22. The movie ends with a big funeral held on the water, everyone on surfboards. Slam. The classic widow gotcha. Death and funerals and sad widow-type people who movies manage to portray so vividly.

But oddly, it wasn’t the dying wife and funeral that got me. It was the optimism of the main character. He trusted life and took huge risks to ride the giant waves. It’s been a lesson I’ve been trying to impart on my kids a lot lately in this era of graduations, and I was flying home on O’s 18th birthday. My baby suddenly isn’t such a baby anymore.

The irony is that with her knee surgery recovery she’s been more of my baby than ever. I was reluctant to go on this trip, leaving her still so vulnerable, but I was hoping my absence might spur a recovery of her independence. But it didn’t happen. I received daily texts telling me how sad she was, how much pain, etc. and I just wanted to get back and take care of her. But I also wanted her to snap out of it, and take her surgery in stride as a setback, but one that she would recover from.

A birthday dinner was rushed at the end due to her pain. The next day she came home from school and unleashed everything that she’d been holding back in my absence. I took her to a PT appointment and the despair continued. I was getting frustrated. I thought of that kid and his maverick wave and wanted my kid to feel strong enough to conquer her knee. On the drive home, I asked her if she was really in a lot of pain, or if perhaps all her tears were just her having a pity party meltdown and that she had waited for me to party with since I was safe to cry with. “Could that be it?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. I think it’s because you’re safe.”

When we got home she re-did the exercises from PT, helped me chop rhubarb for a pie, whipped off the two papers she had been moaning all afternoon about not being able to focus on enough to do, had me help her with a presentation and then went off to a friend’s house to finish another assignment.

Somehow the acknowledgement that she was safe to pity party (is that a verb?) with me was enough.

I will continue in my Gerard Butler role and cheer her on as she conquers her mavericks, watching from the cliff’s edge with a mixture of fear and pride.

Next up, graduation. A doozy of all widow experiences. Stay tuned…

 

 

Making Spaghetti-Os for Mother’s Day

[image error]I sat on a rolling stool in the tiny 8′ x 5′ pre-surgery room holding her hand as the doctor-in-training took a very long time practicing putting an IV into her arm. We giggled when she had to put the blue paper cap over her hair. I held her hand again as we watched the ultrasound of her femoral artery as they stuck the needle in, rendering the top part of her leg and knee numb and painless.

And then I had to let go as they wheeled her away.

In so many ways I am having to let go. In a month she turns eighteen and she will have to sign new forms so that doctors will share information with me. I will no longer need to sign forms on her behalf. In August, she will go far away to college.

I sit here waiting while she has her knee surgery, hoping she is safe, that things are going smoothly, that nothing goes wrong.

Life as a mother is filled with such moments.

I will nurse her tonight and make her Spaghetti-Os and help her manage her pain. This year, Mother’s Day will be spent mothering a daughter, something that I am going to cherish, since I realize how finite this time is, how few such precious moments I have before I must let go once again.

 

In the Wake of Boston

[image error]“I was thinking of you, so I thought I’d call.” It was my dog’s breeder, calling out of the blue.

“Oh, that’s sweet,” I said. I couldn’t imagine why she might be thinking of me, but she is sweet like that, so I went with it.

“You know, with this whole Boston thing.”

“Oh. Right.”

I was on a plane to Hawaii when the bombing happened, so other than a few headlines from the kid’s iPhones, we weren’t caught up in the media tornado. Honestly, what I thought was, thank goodness only 3 people died. But of course, it’s not just the people who died, so many lives are changed forever.

Another friend wondered why this tragedy took on such importance. “So many people are shot every day and we don’t hear anything about them.” I remember wondering the same thing after 9/11, thinking, my husband’s dead, just like so many other people who die every day. I couldn’t see what he came to represent in other people’s minds.

Fear.

What if it happened to me?

Fear drives the media. Fear sells. We feed on fear. In my class today, I talked about the root of anger being fear, instructing my students to stop for a moment if they find themselves shutting down in anger and really look deep to find the fear cowering underneath. Fear is why the Boston bombing and 9/11 take over our lives. Another moment where we have to face our fear of dying.

People may wonder what goes through my mind when these things happen, do I re-live the trauma? It’s a hard question to answer. What I go through is thinking about the ripple effect of lives changed forever. Like any parent, I am more deeply affected when children my own children’s ages are involved, because I do fear anything happening to my children. But for myself, I have become inured to death, which in turn has made me grateful for life. I don’t fear death the way I once did. Maybe it has to do with a misguided faith on my part that I might meet Arron again.

What I do focus on are the loved ones having to wake up alone in a too-big bed because I am reminded of that long, long journey that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Such trauma is a very long road to heal. As difficult as it is to remember those days, it reminds me how far I have come. Which in turn leads me to imagine the amazing things those people will wind up doing with their grief. Will they become activists? write a book? start a support group? Be one of those people who “just get it?”

Boston was far away as I was pounded with waves on a sunset cruise of the Na’Pali coast and for once, wasn’t one of the barfers (thank you Dramamine). Three whales swam within two feet of the boat. I watched my kids and my boyfriend laugh as they were sprayed with sea water, backdropped by an impossible vista of grass-flocked peaks, and I laughed too, enraptured with life.

But I appreciate the thoughts and phone calls, always.

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Sunset, Na’Pali coast cruise, April 2013

 

The Wisdom of Our Experiences

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Click to read Brené Brown’s parenting manifesto

It was good to get my rant at the Universe out of my system. The day after I wrote it, O and I met with the sports medicine doc who confirmed a torn ACL. The sobbing began the moment we got into the car. What about our trip, prom, the rest of her life?! I commiserated, but could say little that I hadn’t already said.

On Thursdays this spring I’ve again been teaching Brené Brown’s “Shame Resiliency” Connections curriculum to a group of people at the Recovery Café. These are people who have lived extraordinary lives, lives often marred by abuse, tragedy, addiction. Lives that have set them apart from their families, friends, communities. Lives that have led to destructive behaviours as a way of coping with pain and shame.

I left O in a puddle on the kitchen floor to go and teach this class. I didn’t want to leave her, scared of the negative spiral she had descended into. But I went.

Brené teaches us that shame is rooted in a fear of disconnection from those around us. A disconnection from society, family, community. Shame feeds upon this fear and breeds new shame. As the video of Brené explaining shame using her clear, concise, personal explanations played, I watched the class as tiny lights went on around me. Thoughts and feelings triggered, new ways of dealing with the daily onslaught of shame revealed and embraced.

After the class, one of my students came up to me and said, “This class is changing my life.” There are no words for the feeling you get when you hear something like that.

This is the third time I’ve taught this class and I feel so lucky. Lucky to be having this effect on other people’s lives, but also lucky that I too get to take the class again, re-learn how to cope with the shame that we all drag around with us like a giant bowling ball chained to our ankles. No one is immune.

In class, we are exposed, our vulnerabilities each laid out on the table, raw and wiggly. Each tiny insecurity – body image, parenting hang-up, past regret, notions of who, what and how we should be is drawn out. I am of course, not immune to this self-examination.

I wish that I could teach this course to everyone. Kids, teenagers, grieving people, the guy next door. Well, actually I do teach it, to some degree. I encourage people to tell their stories. Be vulnerable. That it’s in being vulnerable that you are able to release shame and turn it into empathy, the antidote to shame. You give the people you tell your story to permission to tell their story and the ripple effect takes over. With empathy comes connection, as we realize that we are not alone in our shame.

I was re-invigorated with Brené’s words, determined to go home and use those words to help O out of her malaise. As I was walking to the car I got a text from her:

“I’m not gonna to be sad because I’m a strong person.”

Perhaps through the power of osmosis some wisdom is being passed on to my children, whether by me, or some other force doesn’t matter. When I asked what changed her mind, she replied:

“The fact that I can’t stay sad and that I can’t change it either, so I just have to deal with it.”

Oh, the wisdom of our experiences. Take that, Universe!