Tag Archives: Memoir

For a long time, I worked very hard so that I could have a good life.

Now, I just use magic.

Consider yourself all caught up.

Promised I’d tell you what my real New Years’ resolution was when I finally got the guts. So here goes: My real New Years’ resolution is to be like Eckhart Tolle and live totally in the moment every single day, and to be in constant communication with God.

The results so far: I’ve failed every single day. But keep in mind that this is only the sixth day of the year. That’s only six failures.

I’m still holding out hope.

In 2013 I: became a stay-at-home-mom; watched my child smile, crawl, walk and talk for the first time; got on a regular (normal-person) sleep schedule; published one book and wrote the first drafts of several more; found a church and made a ton of new friends; learned how to meditate; got more spiritual; got an awesome job; overcame my ten-year eating disorder and totally kicked my diet soda addiction forever.

I don’t remember what my 2013 resolutions were, but I’m pretty sure I’m good.

Happy New Year, y’all. It’s 2014 now, and for me that brings up a major dilemma: How will I ever be able to be as awesome this year as I was last year?

And, with that in mind, a New Years’ resolution: I am going to meditate. I’m not sure how much but like, a lot more.

Wait, I changed my mind. It’s 3:20 and I haven’t even said good morning to God yet, much less stilled my mind.

Note to self: More thought must be given to resolutions.

Last weekend, I had Reiki done on me for the first time. And it was AWESOME.

Basically Reiki is a way of cleansing your chakras and stuff, and the experience is really low-key. In the moment it was like, “What is happening?” But later on that day, it was like, “What happened?”

I highly recommend it. I mean hell–you only live once. Why not get your chakras cleansed? (Here’s my go-to gal’s website.)

I have discovered the pleasure of driving aimlessly. And of sitting in McDonald’s, for two hours at a time, and dragging my feet a bit while I shop.

I am officially a stay-at-home mom.

It happened only a week ago, after I fired the babysitter. I told her I’d decided to stop working, which was true, though, secretly I had other reasons, too, namely, I wanted my baby to myself.

I wanted to be the one who held him when he cried, and saw his first smile. I wanted to be the one he admired the most, but mostly, I wanted him to feel as loved as he possibly could.

And the person for that job is me.

What’s surprised me most about this change so far: I love it like nothing else I’d ever done.

When I was working, I loved being a mom, too, of course. Not the sleepless nights or all the crying, but the waking up next to the baby’s sweet morning beauty, and the nursing, and the trust, and the love.

Motherhood rocks. I’ve loved every day of this job so far, and a good percentage of the minutes as well. Okay, okay–not the minutes in which my son is crying and I can’t calm him down, and not the ones where he’s not falling asleep. But the ones where I’m holding
him, singing to him, talking to him out loud like a crazy person in the grocery store. And nearly every time I stop the car and open his door to take him out of his seat, then once again see his beautiful baby face, I have to say it again: “You are perfect.”

And so. For the first time, life feels not only beautiful, as the saying goes, but it also feels like an adventure. Even if I’m just going to McDonald’s.

And yet. It took five months of motherhood for me to realize something that seems pretty obvious; being a stay-at-home mom is awesome.

I’m independent. I’m physical. I’m doing something with my hands and feet. I’m not trapped behind a computer, exercising only my tired brain and eyes. I’m getting out, seeing the world, living life.

I am getting in the car and going places. And if sometimes I don’t quite know where I’ll end up, that just makes it even more fun.

Here, a description of a typical day in the morning life so far: When Xavier and I wake up, he cries immediately, then every time I remove him from my nipple thereafter—except when in a moving vehicle or in a stimulating environment. For this reason, as soon as his diaper is changed in the morning, we are in the car on the way to McDonald’s.

It is not the first time we’ll go there today.

At McDonald’s I drink a large coffee and sit with him for over an hour at a booth by the window. With the help of the back of the bench he stands and stares at everyone else who’s there. People stop to say something to him, or to me about him. Everywhere I go I feel like a minor celebrity. Before long I change his diaper on the drop-down table in the bathroom and wonder if the last person to use it cleaned it off. In the car I check my phone for a moms’ group activity, and find one at a park 45 minutes away. I drive there slowly, considering whether or not I should get a bumper sticker that reads “Don’t rush me–baby’s happy.”

By the time we get to the park the baby’s almost ready for his first nap, but I decide to push it as this is the only social event I have scheduled for the day. I put X in the carrier and talk to the other moms while watching their children play, sincerely wondering if X will ever be
interested in these objects people attach so much importance to called “toys.”

When we start driving again, X almost immediately falls asleep. I’m driving in a suburban area but I’m lucky enough to spot a McDonald’s nearby. I park there and read, making absolutely no noise, for about an hour. By the end of the hour I have to pee really bad, but am determined not to leave the baby as he may wake up without me there.

After he wakes up we go in. This time I order a large soda, also caffeinated, and before we leave I refill it twice. (Did I mention that as we are cosleeping I wake up ten to twelve times a night, every night, to nurse?)

After this there’s an errand or two, then another aimless drive that ends in nap number two, again in a parking lot. Then there’s the car ride to pick up my husband from work. With him we eat dinner and immediately after we’re done we go to a meditation class. When we return home I put X in a stroller and we take a very long walk–about two hours. By the time we’re back home the baby is already asleep, but as soon as I move him he wakes up again and it is three hours before I’m able to leave the bed without him crying. I do so, and shower, brush my teeth and change into my pajamas. Then I go to bed.

And that is about how it’s been for the past seven days in a row, and will likely be for a pretty long time to come. I know that in some ways it sounds awful, but the truth is, I enjoy almost every second of the day.  This is how it’s been for the past seven days, and will likely continue to be for a very long time.

At least – I hope it will be. As I sat in the parking lot today waiting for Xavier to wake up from his nap, I had a terrible thought. ‘My life won’t always be like this,’ I realized. ‘Someday I’ll go back to a regular job. Maybe even have a second kid.’

The sadness that I felt in that moment was absurd and premature, I know. And yet, even now I can’t get the thought out of my mind.

I want to be Xavier’s first and best love, and to take care of him, like this, forever.

I also never want a real job again. (Egad!)

The importance of being ready to accomplish a goal before trying to do so is something I learned a long time ago, when I was in my early twenties. I was still an Evangelical Christian and still struggling each day to be perfect—or nearly perfect, whatever that meant to me at the time. I was also in a pretty bad depression spell, which made getting out of bed really hard sometimes. One morning as I lay there, tired and unmotivated, I remember thinking, I should skip my first class today. It wasn’t a thought that just came to me as a matter of course, a side effect of whatever enervation or despondency I was feeling in that moment. This time, it felt different. It felt like it was someone else that was saying it to me, as in, instead of I shouldn’t go to class today, the thought was actually, You shouldn’t go to class today. It was an “other person” kind of feeling—and the other person wasn’t someone bad or negative, but someone good, someone wise.

It was someone I should listen to.

In any case, I didn’t listen to that voice in my head that day. Instead, remembering my commitment to myself and to my concept of God, and maybe, even, to my reputation with others at the school (not sure about this one, though I did have some pretty strange ideas about what people should think of me back then), I got up, got dressed, and went to class. In a piece I wrote about it, I describe what happened next in this way:

“As it turned out, though, I didn’t feel virtuous; instead, I just felt dumb. That morning, the professor ended the lecture after fifteen minutes to pass out some books to the class.

I hadn’t even ordered a book.”

And that is when I learned a lesson that since then has been a huge part of my identity, a huge part of who I am and what I choose to do and not to do. I learned that not only do I really not have to try to be perfect—but that actually, I shouldn’t do so. I’ve found that when you truly, sincerely want to change, your whole being comes into alignment with that change, and someday—sometimes without even realizing it—the change is just there. It just happens.

It’s like magic.

What’s more, whether the change happens right away or several years into the future, when it does finally come, it is the perfect time. Because then, it isn’t something that you forced to happen inside you—it is something that just happened naturally, without a great deal of effort.

It is easy—and, more important, it is real.

There’s an affirmation that I like to say that goes like this: “I live in the easy world, where everything is easy.” Some people might find this idea a little strange, even somewhat heretical. For those people (and I used to be one of them), life is a struggle, and properly so. Saying that things should be easy and light and beautiful and that most of the time our difficulties are self-created and unnecessary is something they just can’t even imagine to be true.

And this is to be expected; it is what we are all indoctrinated to believe from the get-go in our society. From parents on down the line to books, movies and television, we are constantly reminded that life is hard, that whatever is worth having in life is worth struggling for, that arguments and conflict are natural and necessary, and so on and on.

Amazingly—inexplicably, almost—I just don’t buy this anymore. These days, I believe that life is not the great hardship that people say is—or doesn’t have to be, at least. I believe that if you want it to be, and if you choose for it to be (this, of course, is the key), life is actually light, and happy, and very, very beautiful, and properly so, and that the hardest thing about it is just remembering that it is actually easy.

And so, I say my “easy world” affirmation. And here is the image that I have in my mind as I say it: I am standing on an ocean beach, wearing a very comfortable oversized men’s flannel shirt and very loose white linen pants with the cuffs rolled up. Water is washing up over my ankles, and I am smiling.

As I stand there, I am able to see via some special sense an image of my other self, the “real-world” Mollie, as she goes about her day’s activities. I watch her as she eats, sleeps, writes, runs errands and carries out the various goals she’s made for her time on earth. I admire the way she continues to pursue them even though I know that she takes them much too seriously, and that she doesn’t really need to do anything at all.

And that is my image of my real self, the real, enlightened Mollie. Whatever it is that I’m choosing to do on a particular day, I am actually doing nothing—merely watching myself do things. Because really, I’m still on the beach.

Life is what you make of it. It isn’t anything until then. If I never reach enlightenment, here, now, so that I can see and experience what it is like, and use it to make this life better, that is actually okay. There is no need, no requirement from on high saying I must seek greater spiritual awareness in this life, and there is no punishment waiting for me if I don’t succeed in this goal. I choose to seek what I seek for my own reasons, and that is all.

And so, I choose today not to rush into this thing we call enlightenment. I choose not to worry about “where I’m at” spiritually, but instead just watch, and observe, and make myself aware of what I want to have and where I want to be.

I choose to give myself time.

After all, if I don’t do this, if I choose to work for what I want rather than just letting it come to me, there can only be one reason: I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten who I really am, and that this particular sack of water we call a body is not me.

I’ve forgotten that really, I am that girl in the white linen pants who is standing on the beach, doing nothing, with no need to prove herself, and nothing to accomplish at all.