Elora Nicole Ramirez's Blog, page 4

new skin

I feel like I’m boiling over.

Like this morning, when I woke from a dream where we hid from people who turned into spiders — their bodies slowly morphing into pinchers and knobby eyes. At one point, we knew our location was under attack. We needed to hide, and fast. I hid under the covers of a nearby bed. I felt like this was sufficient, that the covers were bulky enough to hide me, but my phone was beside me and playing music out of its speaker. I wanted to turn it off and protect myself, but I was just too tired. I even mouthed the words in my dream.

I’m just too tired.

So I woke up this morning feeling out of sorts and remembering the obscure haze of sleep and how in this mental state, I tend to analyze my dreams as they happen.

This is what we have to deal with now, I remember thinking. Nightmares.

I’ve been having nightmares a lot lately. Aside from the spiders, I’ve been seeing my abuser in my dreams. It’s a recurring one where she shows up unannounced and uninvited and demands my attention. Normally, I hide — like with the spiders. But lately, I’ve fought back. I’ve cried and yelled and screamed and pounded on the walls and slammed the doors and pushed her out of my space every time she makes an appearance. I’ve been claiming my mental acreage. I’ve been protective over my soul.

You do not get to be here, I say. And I mean it.

Perhaps this is why I feel as if I might boil over. Perhaps this is why last week, in a state otherwise known as rage, I made a decision to finally stand up for myself. I told a friend today on the phone that it’s like I have this other Elora inside me who is done with being ignored.

“It’s like she’s telling me that whether I’m ready or not, she’s gonna speak. It’s her time,” I said.

“Girl, yes!” My friend responded. “Let her. Let her speak. You need her.”

And I know I do. I know it like I know the feeling of coming home when she takes that breath before the words fly up and out of my mouth. I know it like I know the feeling of freedom.

I know it like I know the memories that come rushing back every time I hear another excuse.

Why didn’t she report if it really happened?
Why wait so long?
She’s obviously in this for attention.
She can’t go against this person, she doesn’t have the biblically required witnesses.

I feel like I’m boiling over.

I feel like I’m breaking into new skin.

The impossibility of writing

I want to take a nap.

Jubal is down for a few hours, and I have some time to myself in a house that gloriously quiet and I want to nap.

And some days, I let myself. I set an alarm and I curl under my blankets and I close my eyes and remind myself what rest feels like.

But today is not one of those days. Today is one for remembering something different.

Remember when you took any quiet moment as a chance to write?
Remember when you didn’t have a list of things you needed to clean?
Remember when that didn’t even matter?

It was Steven King who once told us to not come lightly to the blank page — do you remember that quote? It was everywhere for a few years, when those of us inching our way into the online space found our voices and croaked out words for the first time.

I’ve never forgotten it, but I’m also one for melodrama. I don’t know if I come lightly to anything.

I’ve been trying to get past that. I’ve been trying to figure out what it means to just write and not worry about the sharing. I’ve been separating marketing and ROI from my words. No expectations. Just….writing.

Just me.

A few months ago, someone I respect told me to keep writing. I just love your writing style, she told me. I did the opposite. Mostly because of fear and grief.

Sometimes I still worry that I am all out of words. Like, even though I have all of these things I want to say, whatever I am dealing with is so overwhelming and I have this expectation hanging over me to “not come lightly to the blank page” and it feels like I can’t articulate these emotions swirling inside.

Like sometimes, you’ll really love your job and then suddenly you’ll hate it and then just as suddenly, you’ll love it again.
Or sometimes, you’ll begin to understand the inherent lack of respect we put up with as women.
Or sometimes, you’ll be so very done with people asking you to calm down.

Even though I coach that losing your words is impossible and sometimes you just need to take a breath, give yourself some space, let the words flow. Even though I know, intrinsically, that my words will show up when they’re ready.

When you have a thing that came so easy for you in the past, it makes sense that you begin to question that same thing when it’s not so easy anymore.

Some people are surprised when I say this — when I admit that writing can be hard and feel futile.

I don’t know. These are my confessions? I saw a friend at a book signing a few weeks ago and nearly packed everything up and quit because at one point, I coached her. And now she’s a bestselling author and I’m attached to a headset all day long and I don’t even know how many books I’ve even sold this year and the last time I published a book I wasn’t a mother so you can do the math.

Right now, writing feels impossible. And that’s okay. Because ultimately, it is impossible. We just get to experience the alchemy of pulling together impossible sentences and paragraphs and stories.

Maybe you wait for the words or maybe you pry them out of your bones whether they’re ready or not. However you do it, excavation never feels pretty.

For Coop.

A friend died a week ago.

I got the call while I was at work, and when my body started shaking and I couldn’t look anyone in the eyes and I broke down when my boss called to check on me, I went home. As we do, my people banded together. A text thread was created for immediate needs. Russ and I went to buy groceries. Others dropped off necessities. Plans were made for the house to be clean and hosting parents and beginning the devastating process of what stays and what goes. And through it all, through every new text and offer to volunteer, I kept waiting for the grief to hit. I kept waiting for the wall of pain.

If I’m honest, I don’t know how I’m doing. When people ask me, I just shrug and say, “okay?” My voice lifting at the end because how can you quantify something like this? How can you explain dealing with someone just not…being anymore?

Most moments, I go about my day as I normally do and in some ways that’s maddening because it reminds me of a Robert Frost poem. The last thing I want to be thinking about right now is poetry and its talk of death. But it’s where my brain is going and those connections keep happening. Oh, I guess they were right, I’ll think. And then squeeze my nails into my palms and try to think of something else. Which, having a two year old makes this unnervingly easy.

Eventually though, I knew I needed to face it. I needed to let myself go there: to whisper to my heart that I was ready to face the fact that he wasn’t coming back.

And you know what? I forgot something about grief: that wall of pain is more like a wave. It never comes at once, that’s too much for me to handle. It comes in pieces, at random moments throughout my day. It hits me when I’m driving to work and I start sobbing. Or when I think I hear a coworker say, “hey, darlin’” and I look up, expecting to see my friend’s face. It hits me when I’m standing in the kitchen and I see a box addressed to him waiting on the table, unopened. It hits me when I carry the bag with his things from his desk off the floor at work, down the elevator, and to my car.

The weight of the bag pulling me down and keeping me cognizant of its meaning.

Do not forget. This is him. This was him.

It hits me when I hand the bag of his things to his partner.

“Did you look through it?” she asks.

“No,” I respond. Knowing it wouldn’t have mattered — she wouldn’t have cared. But also knowing those things felt sacred and I wanted her to be the first to pick them up and remember.

Talismans can appear anywhere.

Like these words. My friend would often ask me if I was writing anything — how my stories were doing. I often would roll my eyes and grimace and he would laugh, a booming sound that vibrated everything around him and forced his head back.

“Sore subject?” He’d wink.

“More like no subject,” I’d whine. But then I’d process through it with him: the timing, the waiting, the believing it’s there just not ready-ness of writing. He would nod the entire time, looking me in the eyes.

“Well I know you’ll start eventually,” he’d say, another smirk on his face. “You can’t ever stay away from writing for long, can ya?”

And I’ll remember now how well my friend knew the people in his life. How he knew what to ask and how to support and sprinkle in belief in just the right measure that it always left me feeling inspired. And I’ll open my computer and pull up this screen and hem and haw for a few minutes before I write the first sentence that comes to mind that seems to stick.

A friend died a week ago.

And I’ll know.

Coop, look. You were right. I’m writing again, see?

Something about September

There’s something about September. 

I used to have a friend with September in her blog name — something about finding her in the month that brought hope and renewal. I feel the same. Even though my restart doesn’t really happen until October, when the leaves are thick with color and the air crisp, September reminds me that it’s coming. 

September reminds me that I made it through another season of ash. 

Maybe it’s because the summer is just so hot here. Maybe it’s because so many things have happened in the summer, when the sun’s oppressive rays refused to relent and I was forced to push through and believe. 

Summer is when I realized a partnership was toxic. 
Summer is when I experienced the death of a dream.
Summer is when I packed up newborn onesies and bottles and toys.
Summer is when everything fell apart with violent necessity.

Ultimately, the season of ash proves useful. I know this. I prepare for it. I let go. I shed. I release. Different seasons require different things, and this year was no different. My life looks nothing like I thought it would back in May. And yet here I am, nine days into September, taking stock of what is around me and what I’ve left behind. I think in a way I thought I was past the season of ash — that it dealt specifically with dreams and hope and things I once believed would never happen. But those things change, right? What we once hoped for, we now have, and that desire has been replaced with something else. 

We breathe in, we breathe out.
Everything is a cycle.

September is the month of book releases. It’s the month I breathed life into the word mother. It’s the month of slower days and new beginnings and easy dreaming. The breeze turns cool in the mornings, and I’m struck with just how sudden change takes over. 

I breathe in, accepting the newness.
I breathe out, releasing the ash.

The Nameless Thing

Here is a truth: there has been a nameless thing resting in the space between my heart and throat since the beginning of the year. 

I don't know what to make of it. It swells at the most inopportune times, like now, when the world is asleep and tomorrow morning's wake up from a little lion two rooms over will come oh-so-soon.

I think it might be story. 

There have been a few wisps appear — tendrils in the imagination — too nebulous to grab hold of and name.

And so I do what I know to do: I come to this space, and write, knowing I won't be actively sharing because I need to know I'm writing for me. I need to know this nameless thing is not for you.

Here is a lie, tainted by the truth: sometimes I wonder how I got here. How I went from writing incessantly to grasping moments out of thin air like miracles. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just close up shop and pretend this was once something I did, but not anymore. This is a lie because there is no way I could ever not write. It's not possible. Even when I wasn't writing because I was holding Jubal or crashing into bed or chugging coffee at work, I still wrote with invisible ink. My fingers reaching for the keys and various pens while I dreamed, the muscle memory kicking in and poems appearing out of nowhere, floating above my head into the ether.

Here is a truth: every day I begin again.

And so tonight, I'll close this window before I can think twice about syntax and edits and curl my body next to my love and feel his breath against my chest and the story will begin again and again and again....

....the nameless thing pulsing with new life and promise, waiting to be seen. 

Mornings.

My legs start moving first. I feel the friction of my skin rub up against the pillow that's been pushed lower and lower throughout the night. I turn and reach for Russ, my fingers crawling against his torso, anchoring me. I try not to stir. 

For a moment, I succeed. I feel myself falling back into oblivion, the deep dark of morning not yet tinted blue. But then I hear him. He's grunting. Half crying. Moving around in his crib, trying to find the perfect spot. 

I know it will be an early morning.

His cries turn more frequent, the comfort of sleep lost. Now, he's only concerned with his very wet — no, soaked — diaper and the fact that he cannot see either one of us. I know I will find him on his stomach, his arms tucked underneath him, his rear end perched in the air. 

But I cannot open my eyes. As much as I try, sleep is puling me under again and again and maybe I can rest here for five more minutes. I curl into my pillow, Russ has already gotten up and started his morning routine. I think I hear him whispering to Jubal, but I'm not sure. It's not until I hear his wails echoing off our walls that I know Russ is changing him. I smile. He hates being changed in the morning. 

I don't blame you, little lion, I think to myself as I lift my arms above me and stretch. 

Within minutes, papa is walking in with Jubal and Neruda, our chihuahua. Jubal is already giggling, his mouth precariously balanced close to Neruda's ear. I'm sitting up now, rubbing my eyes and taking deep breaths, willing my body to wake up wake up wake up. I reach out for Jubal and Russ passes him off to me. I squeeze him against my chest, kissing his forehead. 

"Good morning, Jubal." I whisper.

He answers by kicking his feet and reaching for Trulee, our older dog resting at the foot of our bed. When she doesn't give in to his wish of kisses, he sighs and pushes himself toward the edge of the bed. Russ walks over and grabs him. 

"Come on, Jubal. We need to give mama her Valentines." 

Valentines. 

Immediately my mind migrates to where we were last year. I was here, alone in the house. This bed, with all of the pillows I could possibly fit, stacked on top of each other. Neruda, snuggled somewhere underneath.

At that point, we'd been separated for almost a month. Russ was in North Carolina with our son, waiting for courts to say it was okay for us to take him across state lines. When I went to work on Valentines Day last year, a coworker gave me an obsidian stone. 

"To dispel negative energy," he said. 

I cried at the gesture, and then cried myself to sleep that night — missing my men with an ache so fierce it felt like my heart would crack in two. 

But here — now — they are within arm's reach. Russ grabs something out of his drawer and gives it to Jubal to give to me. It’s a hat. Jubal immediately puts it on his head and I laugh softly at how it tilts on his head and hold my hand out, inspecting the word written across the front.

QUEEN 

I look up at Russ and he gives me the smile he reserves only for me. I lean forward, kissing him once, twice, three times.

"They had one that had KING across the front, but that's not really my style," he shrugs. 

I laugh again, my body waking up, and make a face at Jubal. He shrieks, amused by the hat now resting on my head. He falls forward, planting a wet kiss on my lips.  

I let myself breathe deep from my chest.

I am awake. 

Open

Ten minutes to write. 

Ten minutes to breathe, and show up, bare foot in my purpose.

What does that look like these days? Before it looked like workshops and books and long days spent behind the computer connecting with other like-minded individuals. 

Now it feels harder. More cumbersome. My purpose is always present, painting the area around me with this murky shine, like when the sun tries desperately to break through the clouds on a day where they're so thick the sky is white with heaviness. 

I remember what it feels like to find a story. I remember the feeling of it settling in my bones and resting there, knowing I would take care of it, knowing I would share it when the time was right.

And I always did. I always took that purpose seriously. I know the words are coming. I feel them in the way I pause at what I've written before, a familiarity looming right behind the veil. 

I know you, I think. Do you know me?

I have this white board in my office at home. On it I write my goals for the month that align with how I'm wanting to feel. 

Alchemic, it says. It's written in purple, on accident but really on purpose, because that's the color of creativity and intuition. Listen for book #5 is scrawled next to the feeling, a mantra I have whispered since I hit publish on INDIE CONFIDENCE over two years ago. 

I know what you're thinking: I've written that fifth book, haven't I? My memoir? And I did, you're right. But I see that manuscript as a bridge between then and now. It helped me in so many ways catalogue my life in a way that felt validating, but it's not for the general public. Not yet. In its form, it is still very much incomplete. 

And so, I listen. 

I stay open. 

I wait for the words that are on their way to me. The words that are settling in my bones as I type. The story I am meant to tell but don't even know it yet.

I am ready. 

Being honest.

I didn't get the position I interviewed for a few weeks ago. 

I found out yesterday, combing through my emails at work. 

Thank you for your interest, it said. We take great pride in finding talent....and then the standard bomb: they decided to go with someone else. 

It doesn't matter my qualifications. 
It doesn't matter how I've exceeded expectations. 
It doesn't matter my experience. 

Somehow, some way, I was less than what they wanted. Or maybe too much? I don't know. That's been a thing before and I haven't gotten feedback yet. Whatever the reason, I am sitting here on the other side of knowing and it sucks. 

But if I'm honest with myself, if I get down to that core level of my intuition and soul, I knew. 

Back in May, another email landed in my inbox. It was for an opportunity I hadn't expected and completely different than where I was headed. But every cell in my body lit on fire as soon as I read the words and I knew — I knew — I was supposed to apply. 

And before I even hit send, I knew the position was mine.

It did not make sense. It did not fit my "career path" or what others expected. But I was right. Within a week I had the new role and I started focusing on leadership within our department.

When the job opportunity posted a month ago, I felt a quickening in my gut. I have to apply for this, I thought. This is what I worked for — this is what I've been wanting to do. 

But even as I applied, I knew the position wasn't mine. 

It didn't feel right. It wasn't the right time. I still applied — and I still hoped for an interview since I never experienced one with such high expectations — but if I got quiet enough to listen to my intuition, everything was pointing to me being prepared for rejection.

Around the same time, I started getting random requests for story-coaching and developmental editing. I didn't post about it, didn't share that I was taking clients, didn't do an email blitz that dropped content to my subscribers and led them down a purchase funnel (ew). I just lived my life and dug deep into my art while waiting for the stake holders to make their decision. And in that waiting, three people came to me within a week. 

I need your help, they said. 
I'm listening, I wrote in my journal. 

But even after all of this, and even after journaling just yesterday morning that my current role felt like home and how weird is it that suddenly people are wanting me to help them with their manuscripts again, it still felt like a wave of shock hit me when I read the words that I wasn't chosen. 

I'm still learning to trust my intuition. I know. It shouldn't be a thing still. I talk about it all the time and in reality, all it takes is a few deep breaths for me to connect to that inner wisdom. So I should know by now the difference between the carbonated excitement that runs through my veins like voltage vs the hesitant quickening that signals something is about to be good, but hard. As an empath, I take in so much from my surroundings that very easily I can begin to feel the emotions of those around me and mistake them for my own if I'm not continually checking in with myself. 

What is the truth here? 
How do I honestly feel about it? 
Where does my body feel the most at peace?
What energy am I relying on right now: feminine or masculine?

When I ask myself these questions, I always get an answer. 

So what is my answer right now?

It's continuing to do what I'm doing. Write the idea when it comes. Don't worry about sharing. Read as much as possible. Speak up when I know there's something to say. 

And don't worry about how I will get from here to there — all I need is the next right step. Which for me, right now, is preparing myself for conversations with those who said no, and the grace to find the words when I need them.

More than ever, I am open for the words to find me. 

La Loba

It's raining outside. 

The clouds are swollen and dripping heaviness and the only thing I can think about is how long it's been since I've been able to stare out the window, completely free, and watch the rain fall. I've shut the door. This is another thing I haven't been able to do lately. I hear little lion on the other side, playing and laughing with Russ, and I know what his smile will look like when I open the door like the back of my hand. But for now, I am finding words. I am plucking them up from within and placing them where they belong in front of me. 

I feel whole. 

I have a person who folds inside herself when it rains. She's getting better, facing her melancholy when the weather turns grey and frigid, but she knows how this weather makes me unfold, and will text me every so often when the winds begin to shift. 

"This is a day for you," she says. "The Universe just gave you a gift." 

I'll do the same for her when the skies are crystal blue and the sun shines so bright you need protection. While I hide indoors and resist the heat, she'll shuck her clothing and embrace the way it presses into her skin.

"Look how the sun shines for you," I text her. "How are you celebrating today?" 

We need these people in our lives. People who despite time or distance or inability to "hang" they know the pathetic fallacy of weather on our lives. These people sing over us our own song, reminding us of our power when we tend to forget it. 

Hey. This day is for you. Use it. Own it. I'll be waiting on the other side. 

.::.

I am in a gathering season. 

Back in the summer, a friend and I looked at each other and spoke of the shift we felt internally. 

"Change is coming, isn't it?" I said. She nodded, her eyes pensive. We didn't know why or what or how, but when you feel it, it's like your molecular structure begins to vibrate. A preparation. 

I wasn't ready. Whenever this happens, whenever I feel the shift but don't know what to make of it, I go inward. Words grow heavy in my throat, ready for release. But this time, I couldn't find a way to get them on to the page. 

I started asking myself, "who am I?" over and over, a broken record without a beat. Was I done writing? Was my identity changing? (I know. Typical 4, right?) But I wasn't used to this lack of knowing. I wasn't used to the inability to find some time to quiet my soul and listen. I felt like I was constantly going. Constantly growing. Constantly looking back and wondering what happened to the Elora I was just a few days before...

Somewhere, somehow, this question shifted into a knowing. I stopped asking who I was and started recognizing all of the pieces of me beckoning for attention.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am. — Sylvia Plath

I started trusting myself more. My intuition sparked into awareness and I started knowing things I wouldn't be able to explain. I started speaking out and up and without fear because I recognized the Truth in my words. I realized those moments where I was growing and changing I was also mourning. I couldn't get the words out because they were not meant to be shared. They were meant to grow heavy with longing. They were meant to explode. 

This is what I'm gathering now. This is what I'm finding words for in this moment. 

.::.

I listened to a book recently. It was one I've read before, one that held an importance I couldn't quite articulate when I first picked it up a few years ago. As I listened to the story of La Loba, singing over the bones and living into this characterization of el rio abajo rio, I saw myself. I should have known this was coming. I'd been seeing wolves everywhere, lately. Pictures, posts, movies, shows, dreams — it was apparent I needed to pay attention to these messages. The vibrations I'd been feeling for months created a rhythm that centered in my gut and made my heart race. 

I am La Loba. 
I sing over bones. 
I awaken them. 
I help them remember. 

I wiped a tear from my cheek and picked up my journal, knowing now what needed to happen first. 

Before I could wake the bones, before I could join others in song, I needed to sing over myself — over the bones that had been neglected for too long. 

Moon Dust and Starlight.

"I call all my power back to me now." 

I stood in the stall and whispered this like an incantation. My hands pressed up against each other as if I were praying. I was. But I was also trying to stop shaking. I had approximately three minutes until I needed to be somewhere, and I needed to not be shaking. Preferably. 

“When we give energy away willingly, intentionally, with positivity, we get stronger. We become truer, purer, bigger. Power-full.

When we give our energy away unconsciously, under duress, as we are victimized, or taken advantage of, when we over-give out of a sense of deficiency or obligation, we … don’t get stronger. We constrict, we get depleted, we start to stiffen from fear.”

— Danielle LaPorte

About fifteen minutes later, I stood in the room and spoke with someone who was charged with the role of moderator. His sentences were crisp and focused, determined to stay on the point and within schedule. 

"Do you understand?" 

I nodded. 

"Do you have any questions?" 

I shook my head. 

He clapped his hands and took a step toward the door before turning his head back to me, "oh and Elora?"

We looked at each other. 

"This is your room now." 

.::.

I've been thinking about this exchange for weeks. 

Me, calling back my power. Him, passing me ownership. 

Power. Ownership. 

What would it look like for us to buy into the Truth — yes, Truth — that we are capable of choosing when and where we reveal our Power? And not only are we capable, but this is necessary in living out our purpose. 

I know. It's a big word. 

Think about it. In order to really understand what we're meant to do, we have to be willing to own it. We have to be willing to step into the Power required for it. 

I've been doing some soul-work this year. Three weeks in and I am consistently asked to show up and show out — to reclaim my power. My time. My purpose. What keeps surfacing, again and again, is the necessary work of owning up to my own magic and potential. 

And here is where I've landed: I refuse to work and love and create and relate from a place of inferiority. I am moon dust and starlight. I am poet. I am rio abajo rio. I am lion and la loba. I feel this awakening and I will not stop it. I will not tamper my light so you can stay comfortable with who I've been.

I will not silence my ascent.

I call all my power back to me now. Especially the piece you took when I looked the other way.