No, it’s not a must-read. But Growing Up Amish: A Memoir and other religious memoirs like it offer fascinating and educational insight into other people’s lives and minds. Ira Wagler doesn’t needlessly berate his former belief system or the people who maintain it. He gives a well-written, objective account, as do many others. I, for one, can’t get enough of this type of book.
Key Takeaways
This memoir chronicles Wagler’s experiences growing up in a strict Amish community and the internal struggles he faced as he questioned the beliefs and lifestyle he was raised in. Itprovides insights into the Amish way of life, their traditions, and the challenges of leaving the community behind.
“We were also repelled by what we saw and heard around us every day. Most of the adults—those securely anchored in the faith—didn’t seem any too happy in their daily lives. In fact, they were mostly downright grumpy. There was little in our own world that attracted us, made us stop and think, That’s what I want. To live like that. We were stuck in a stifling, hostile culture consisting of myriad complex rules and restrictions. More things were forbidden than were allowed. And that’s not to mention the drama, the dictatorial decrees, the strife among so-called brothers, and the seemingly endless emotional turmoil that resulted. We had seen and lived it all.”
“In fact, the Amish church does everything in its power to maintain its grip on the youth, including applying some of the most guilt-based pressure tactics in existence anywhere in the world. After all, there’s no sense encouraging young people to taste the outside world …”
“With some prodding, there might be a reluctant admission that yes, others not of our particular faith might make it to heaven, but only because they were not born Amish and didn’t know any better. Those who were born in the faith had better stay, or they would surely face a terrible Judgment Day. That’s what we heard. What we were told by our parents and what we heard in the sermons at church. But they never explained why.”
“That kind of pressure is a brutal thing, really, a severe mental strain. And it’s the reason that in most communities, when Amish kids run wild, they usually run hard and mean. Because once that line is crossed, there are no others.”
“From a distance, or from outside, my decision [to return to the faith] makes no sense. But it made all the sense in the world to me in that moment, to keep slogging on, to walk the road that equated eternal life with earthly misery.”
About the Author
Ira Wagler is an American author known for his memoir “Growing Up Amish: A Memoir.” Born in Aylmer, Ontario, Canada, in 1961, Wagler grew up in a traditional Old Order Amish community. However, as a young man, he made the difficult decision to leave his Amish upbringing and pursue a different path.
Someone lived in space for a year. His name is Scott Kelly, and Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery is his story. I think that pretty much sums up the value of this book. Side note: the quotes I selected below don’t do the book justice; the beauty of it is in Kelly’s descriptions of the mundane, daily activities of life in space.
Key Takeaways
On the International Space Station: “The ISS is a remarkable achievement of technology and international cooperation. It has been inhabited nonstop since November 2, 2000; put another way, it has been more than fourteen years since all humans were on the Earth at once. It is by far the longest-inhabited structure in space and has been visited by more than two hundred people from sixteen nations. It’s the largest peacetime international project in history.”
On landing the space shuttle: “The very complexity of the space shuttle was why I wanted to fly it. But learning these systems and practicing in the simulators—learning how to respond to the myriad of interrelated malfunctions in the right way—showed me how much more complicated this spacecraft was than anything I could have imagined. There were more than two thousand switches and circuit breakers in the cockpit, more than a million parts, and almost as many ways for me to screw up. The amount I learned in order to go from a new ASCAN to a pilot on my first mission was, from what I could observe, an education comparable to getting a PhD. Our days were packed with classes, simulations, and other training.”
On the moments before takeoff: “The space shuttle, fully fueled with cryogenic liquid, creaked and groaned. Soon this sixteen-story structure was going to lift off the Earth in a controlled explosion. For a moment I thought to myself, Boy, this is a really dumb thing to be doing.”
“There is a NASA tradition, which some crews follow more closely than others, of pulling pranks on rookies. When the Astrovan pulled up to the launchpad, I said offhandedly to Tracy, Barb, and Alvin, “Hey, you guys remembered to bring your boarding passes, right?” They looked at one another quizzically as the four of us veterans pulled preprinted boarding passes out of our pockets. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t bring your boarding passes! They won’t let you on the space shuttle without one!’ I insisted. After an initial look of panic crossed their faces, the three rookies quickly caught on.”
“On his fourth flight, in 2008, Yuri’s Soyuz landed so far from his intended touchdown point, the local Kazakh farmers who came upon his steaming spacecraft had no idea what it was. When he and his two female crewmates, Peggy Whitson and Yi So-yeon, emerged from the capsule, the Kazakhs mistook him for an alien god who had come from space with his own supply of women. Had the rescue forces not arrived, I suspect the farmers would have appointed him their leader.”
About the Author
Scott Kelly is an American astronaut, engineer, and retired U.S. Navy captain. He was born on February 21, 1964, in Orange, New Jersey, United States. Kelly is renowned for his contributions to space exploration and his record-breaking mission on the International Space Station (ISS).
Kelly joined NASA in 1996 and became an astronaut in 1999. Throughout his career, he participated in several space missions, including space shuttle flights and long-duration stays on the ISS. However, his most notable achievement came during his year-long mission on the ISS from March 2015 to March 2016. This mission, known as the “One-Year Mission,” aimed to study the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body, specifically comparing Kelly’s physiological and psychological changes with his identical twin brother Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth.
During his year in space, Scott Kelly conducted various scientific experiments, participated in spacewalks, and documented his experiences through photographs and social media. His mission provided valuable insights into the physical and psychological challenges of long-duration space travel and helped pave the way for future manned missions to Mars and beyond.
Scott Kelly’s achievements in space and his contributions to scientific research have earned him numerous accolades, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Russian Medal for Merit in Space Exploration. He is recognized as a prominent figure in the field of space exploration and continues to inspire others with his remarkable journey and dedication to pushing the boundaries of human exploration in space.
In case you didn’t already know, Donald Maass is a legend of the book publishing world. In his mature, wise, yet conversational way, he’s written a slew of books on writing and publishing, including How To Be Your Own Literary Agent. I love the emphasis in The Fire In Fiction: Passion, Purpose, and Technique To Make Your Novel Great on making your fiction (and nonfiction) snap, crackle and pop. This is one of the most practical and specific books on writing I’ve ever read.
Key Takeaways
There is a big difference between storytellers–people who hone their craft relentlessly–and status seekers, who publish for money and recognition. Be the former, and avoid the latter trap.
Great novels happen because the author is committed to making every scene, every line, not just technically good, but infused with the author’s own passion.
Protagonists shouldn’t be just Jane and John Does. They should be people we admire and want to spend time with, like the few friends we have that we would cancel plans and drop everything for. Even antiheroes should be admirable in some way.
Similarly, every hero or protagonist needs flaws. Balance the bad and good in every character in the book–even the minor ones. Make no one flat.
Secondary characters are often one-dimensional, cliché. This is a major missed opportunity. Each should be 3D and memorable.
When editing scenes, look for their turning points and focus the whole scene around them. This will clarify the purpose of each scene. In each, something or several somethings should change. A story is always in motion. Remember: change.
Your book should include the “tornado effect.” This is the big event in the book that affects all of the characters. Show how it affects them, too; don’t just assume the reader gets it. Make it clear how the tornado changed everything.
Good description attaches emotions to detail. Both are found together. Don’t have flat detail; have evocative detail.
Characters should have opinions. This makes us want to get to know them. Don’t worry about being too controversial; remember, they’re just characters, not you.
“The world of story is hyperreality. In a passionately told tale, characters are larger than life, what’s happening matters profoundly … and even the words on the page have a Day Go fluorescence.”
“Great books are fast reads because there is tension in every line. Characters are always at odds, even if just mildly, as with conflict between friends. This is the secret to page-turning fiction.”
“Micro-tension is the moment-by-moment tension that keeps the reader in a constant state of suspense over what will happen, not in the story but in the next few seconds.” Knowing whether or not guy gets girls doesn’t us for three hundred pages. Knowing who will win this little battle of minds in this scene keeps us there for that scene.
About the Author
Donald Maass is an American literary agent, author, and teacher known for his expertise in the field of writing and storytelling. He is also the founder and president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, which represents a wide range of fiction and non-fiction authors. He has worked in the publishing industry for over forty years, helping authors navigate the publishing world and negotiate book deals.
In addition to his work as a literary agent, Maass is also a prolific author. He has written several books on writing and craft, including Writing the Breakout Novel, The Fire in Fiction, and The Emotional Craft of Fiction. These books offer insights, techniques, and exercises to help writers create compelling and emotionally resonant stories.
Maass is known for his deep understanding of storytelling and his ability to identify what makes a book stand out and connect with readers. He encourages authors to dig deeper, take risks, and infuse their writing with emotional depth and resonance.
This is part three of a story I wrote after the death of my daughter in 2011 called What I Learned from Jane. Read parts one, two and three here.
Chapter Four
On Tuesday, David and I got to the hospital around noon again. This time there was no meeting.
It was Jane’s last day.
As I had the day before, as soon as I saw her lying in her bed, I started to cry, and, as soon as I could, I sat down to hold her. After a short time the nurse asked if I wanted to be skin-to-skin again.
“There are visitors,” I said, but she told me she could pin some blankets over my shoulders, so I said yes. She called in another nurse to help and they put Jane’s body on mine and I placed each of her arms on my breasts and wrapped her legs around my waist, then leaned back in the chair.
After a while, there was a call on the room’s intercom.
“David’s boss is here with his family,” the receptionist told us. “Can they come in?”
I smiled. “Yes,” I said. “Let them in.”
He and his wife and daughter came in the room and saw my bare arms and saw my tears and they were very nice and they understood.
A few hours went by and more visitors came. Eventually, I had to use the bathroom so I got dressed and gave the baby to David. He took off his shirt and held Jane skin-to-skin, too, and, as he did so, his face was very happy and very sweet. Then David’s sister held her for a while, and, after that, Andrea.
When Andrea held her, David and his family were already out of the room, so I decided to leave, too, and give them some time alone. I went to the waiting room for a while, then went back inside.
Andrea was still holding Jane and she looked very happy and very sad at the same time.
We sat quietly for a while. Then we started talking about the meaning of Jane’s life.
“Do you think she knows we’re here?” I asked.
“Yes,” Andrea said. “I think that the important part of her is still here, even though her mind is gone; who she really is is here.”
We were quiet again. Then, after a while, I said, “I used to be religious.” I didn’t just say it for no reason; I wanted to find out what she believed about such things. “Anyone this good and this kind,” I thought, “Must know something I don’t.”
“You were?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was nice.”
She nodded.
“What do you think about religion?” I asked.
She paused and looked away. Then, slowly and carefully, she gave me her answer.
“I am a very spiritual person,” she said. “I read about it and I meditate and it is important to me, but I am not religious in the typical sense of the word.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I like that.”
And, right then—right at that moment—I think I came back to God.
***
I have always believed in God. Ever since I was old enough to believe anything, I’ve believed in something beyond this great green place. When I was maybe six years old, in fact, I spoke in tongues for the first time. If you don’t already know about speaking in tongues, I’ll just mention that it is believed to be a way to communicate with God in words that you yourself may not be able to interpret.
When I spoke in tongues for the first time, I was not thinking. I was not speaking on my own. The words just came out without me even knowing what had happened.
I guess that’s what is so great about being a child.
My sister was sitting next to me and after I was done, she asked my mother if she could do it, too. So, my mom prayed for her and the same thing happened to her that happened to me and I saw it happen, and it was amazing.
And nothing like it has ever happened to me since.
But I kept believing. And I’ve never stopped. Not because I spoke in tongues, though.
Because I think that belief makes sense.
Now, I won’t start preaching to you—after all, it won’t change your mind about anything and anyway I like you just the way you are, I really do. But I do want to tell you a little more about this because after all, this is a story about what happened to my baby and what happened to me after that.
As I said, I’ve always believed in God and I’ve always been a spiritual person. But when I was in high school and for my first few years of college, I was really spiritual. I wasn’t just inclined to believe a certain way; I was actually trying really hard to change myself and to be a better person.
And, as I said to Andrea, it was nice.
No matter what I was doing, there was always a purpose to it—a real purpose, not just a love-others-and-be-kind kind of purpose. Everything I did meant something—or seemed to, anyway.
Then things happened. I won’t go into the details here as they are unimportant, but I will just say that as a result of these things, I could no longer believe the same things I used to believe and, as is so common among college students, I lost my faith. Not all of it—but all of the part that, at the time, made it meaningful.
And then, I graduated. And then, I did the usual things and learned how to be happy without the help of religion.
I became like everybody else.
I got married, which made me happy for a while. I got divorced, which also made me happy. I went onto the internet and found a very good man, David, who is either an atheist or an agnostic depending on how you phrase the question, and soon after that I knew that no matter what, I would never let him get away from me, even if it meant losing my religion entirely.
And then, at some point—maybe a while into the relationship or maybe at the very beginning, when I first fell in love with him, long before I knew for sure we’d be together for good, but just knew I wanted to be—David became my religion.
Not literally, of course. He was still just David.
But I lived for him. He did not ever hurt me, and our love was as real as I’ve ever known love could be, and I am an old-fashioned girl anyway who likes looking up to someone I think is better than me and so, I let my love for him take over a great part of the meaning of my life.
In other words, I lived to be happy.
By that time I had learned a lot about the subject of happiness. I had made a lot of mistakes and assumed a lot of things that weren’t true. For instance, I used to believe that if you were very good, and very spiritual, happiness would just come to you as a matter of course. As it turned out, though, life isn’t like that; if I wanted to be happy, I realized, I’d have to make myself that way.
And I did. I looked for a good partner, which, fortunately, I found. I looked for a good city and I moved there. I started doing the kind of work I loved—all in the same year.
And, finally, I was happy.
And happiness—living the good life, as I called it—became everything to me.
Then came Jane.
And somehow, in the time that I knew her, I realized something: I wanted to be spiritual again.
I wanted to believe in something higher than myself.
I wanted to believe in miracles.
And that is why spirituality, to me, is relevant again. It’s not just something I think about or an interesting topic of conversation; right now, it feels like a lifeline, like a rope thrown out to a drowning person.
I don’t know where the rope came from. I don’t know where it will lead me.
But now isn’t the time to question all that.
Now is the time to just grab onto the rope.
I’ll figure the rest out later.
***
Andrea and I talked for a while longer. Then, she went back to the waiting room and I undressed and took Jane again.
It was the last time we would be able to sit like that together. We were there for about an hour and a half, but it seemed much, much shorter.
I cried a lot. I sang to Jane in a cracked and terrible voice. I told her I loved her and tried to do all of the last things.
I asked her why she didn’t want to stay.
When David came back, he told me that it was almost time. Since we didn’t have any baby girl clothes, some of our visitors had given us some nice things for her to wear for her last moments. Before we put them on, though, the nurse asked us if we wanted to give her a sponge bath. We said we did.
We washed her whole body, one part at a time. David changed her diaper and we both washed and combed her hair. Her hair was so long and so soft and so beautiful.
She would have been so beautiful.
After that, David left the room and I put on her clothes while he waited with the others in the lobby. When I was done she looked very fat and very healthy and she looked like the perfect baby girl. David came in.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
It was about nine thirty.
The visitors came in and we took turns standing by the bedside with the baby, looking at her and touching her for the last time. All of the women cried and maybe both of the men, too. Someone brought her a stuffed dog and I said, “She must like dogs because that’s the second one she’s gotten.” We all talked about how pretty and healthy she looked and how the nurses had told us that her feet were big for a newborn.
“Maybe she would’ve been tall,” David said.
“She probably would’ve been,” I said. Then we were quiet.
After about half an hour everyone left the room except me.
It was now the end.
The nurses moved some chairs to the balcony where I told them I wanted to be and, saying it was cold outside, wrapped Jane and I in blankets. They undid most of her tubes so just the respirator was left. Then they brought in a mobile oxygen tank and attached her to it. One of the nurses showed me how to open the little iodine tubes and rub it on the tape before removing the respirator.
After that they put Jane in my arms and we all walked out of the room, down the hallway and onto the balcony. We walked very slowly. To my surprise, I was not crying yet.
I sat in the chair that faced the city. One of the nurses asked me if I was ready for them to take the oxygen tank away, and I said yes. She did so, then both of the nurses left, saying they would be right inside the door if I needed anything.
And then, for the last time, we were alone.
Next to me there was a railing and on top of it there were the iodine tubes and a wet nap to wipe her face with. I picked up one of the tubes but I couldn’t make it work so I put it back down and began to pull the tape off Jane’s mouth without it. It came off easily and, in a way, I was relieved.
Then I took the respirator out of her mouth.
The nurses told me later it would’ve happened a few seconds after that but at the time I couldn’t tell; there was no change.
I looked at Jane’s face without the respirator.
It was beautiful.
It was perfect.
It had depth.
It said something to me that I don’t think that any other face could say so well.
It said, “I know you. I understand you. I love you. “You’re my mother.”
***
After a while, I opened the wet wipe and began to wash Jane’s face. Her lips were still pinched in a little from the respirator and I wanted to smooth them out so I rubbed the cloth over them again and again.
It didn’t work; they would not go back to the way they were when she was born. Still, I kept wiping them and the rest of her face, over and over and over. At the time I didn’t know why I was doing it—it just felt right. Later, though, as I was telling someone about that moment I said, “It felt like it was the last thing I could do for her as her mother.”
After a half hour or so the nurse came out with a wet wash cloth and exchanged it for the wet nap and went back inside.
I wiped her face some more.
***
After a while, I pulled Jane close to my chest for the last time. Then I kissed her.
My last words to her were, “Please don’t leave me.”
I said it many, many times.
It was all I said.
***
Another half hour or so went by. Finally, I decided I was ready, and shortly after that it started to rain, so I gathered Jane’s blanket around her head and mine around my shoulders and we went inside.
I took Jane back to her room and put her on the bed. By this time her face was very yellow. The nurse that was there said that I could undress her, so I did. Then a doctor came in and looked for a heartbeat. There was none, she said.
It was over.
We looked at the clock. It was ten forty-five.
I started gathering Jane’s things and mine. The nurse offered me her comb and the clothes they had given her to wear during her first days in the hospital and some other things, too. I took them all and put them in my purse. Then I put her blanket around my shoulders.
After that, Jane was naked again on the bed with just a hospital blanket over her lower half.
I kissed her goodbye and walked to the door. At the door I turned around and looked at her for the last time.
Then, I left.
In the lobby, the visitors were still waiting with David. I hugged everyone and they had some food for me so I ate some food and drank some water and soon after that we went home.
Chapter Five
The next few days were busy. I was still in some pain from the episiotomy but I didn’t want to rest. On Wednesday we went to the funeral home to make arrangements and I cried in front of the lady we talked to there. Then David and I got a massage and I cried while lying on the table. The next day I cried at the dentist, and the day after that in the bank lobby while waiting for someone to help us.
And every single day for that first week, I wondered: If I stop crying, will I lose her?
I don’t want to stop crying for my little girl, I thought. Not even when it seems like the right time.
I want to bleed forever.
Besides the pictures, and her clothing, and two locks of hair, the tears are all I have left.
***
The day after Jane died, a Wednesday, I talked to my sister on the phone. I told her about Jane’s last day and I sobbed and after a while I said, “I know it sounds crazy because she never spoke and I don’t know if she ever heard me speak except in the womb but looking at her, especially those last two days, it felt like her soul was there and it spoke to me instead.
“It felt like she was my soul mate, someone who understood me better than I even understand myself,” I said. “It was like she came for a reason and she knew exactly what I needed—something I maybe used to have but somehow didn’t anymore—and she knew exactly how much time I needed with her to get it back. So she decided to come for just that reason and nothing else, to give me a gift I couldn’t have received in any other way, and now she’s gone.”
I could not accept that her death was a result of random chance—and her life, too. It had to mean something.
There had to be a reason.
And I still believe that.
It’s unspecific, I know. It’s not a perfect philosophy or explanation. But, so far, it’s as close to a theology as I have come in a long time.
And I think it makes sense.
I think it really makes sense.
***
That night was hard, but Friday night, two nights later, was even harder. I could not sleep and as I lay in bed I thought about all of the things I didn’t do that I should have done.
I should have held her more, I thought. I should have stayed with her at the hospital every night.
“It was too short,” I kept saying to David as I cried. “It was too short.”
***
The following Sunday, I went to church for the first time in a long time. It was a non-traditional church where people believe things like karma and reincarnation—and Jesus, too.
I liked it a lot.
During the service, I cried a little. Then, after the service, I prayed with someone and cried a lot more. The minister saw me and came over to talk. I told her what happened and said through my tears, “I want to know where she is.”
“Why do you ask that?” she said. “Why is it so important for you to know?”
“I don’t want to believe she’s in heaven,” I said. “I don’t think she is. I think she is still with me.”
The minister said that she believed I could be right; Jane could still be here.
“I don’t believe in heaven,” she said. “I believe that those that pass on are still with us, but they’re on a different level, one that we can’t see right now.”
“Can I talk to her?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You can talk to her, even out loud, and I think she will hear you.”
That helped.
***
The next day was a Monday. That night, as David and I were sitting next to each other on the living room floor, warming up by the heater, it suddenly occurred to me that he probably didn’t know how much I loved him.
I looked at him. My face softened into that right-before-crying look and I said, “I love you, David. Do you know how much I love you? I love you so much. I love you so, so much.”
I cried for a long time as he held me.
***
And that, my friend, is the story of what I learned from Jane.
Now, I still don’t have a religion. I probably never will again. But I have something else, and it is, as I said before, something big.
Something much bigger than any one thing can be on its own.
I feel more now. I love people more. But more important than all that: I have, once again, learned to expect miracles.
I don’t know what the miracles will be, of course. Right now, I don’t even have a guess. But I am going somewhere that I wasn’t going before, and my life is larger than it used to be: larger than my own happiness and larger, even, than the happiness I can bring to others.
It is as large as my soul.
***
Of course, I am not always full of faith, even now.
The truth is, I only have this kind of faith part of the time. The rest of the time, there is nothing—only emptiness, and when I see Jane’s picture, I just see what could have been, not what is, still, somewhere, wanting me and waiting for me to be with her again.
The truth is, most of the time I have very little faith or none at all.
But I want more.
Maybe someday I will have it.
Maybe that will be my miracle.
Oh, I hope so.
Oh, God, I hope so.
Please, Jane, please let it be. I want to talk to you and believe that you can hear me. I want to have something more to live for again.
Something big.
Please, Jane, if you are reading this, please give me that faith.
***
And with that, this story is almost done. Before I end, though, I should add one more thing. It isn’t something Jane taught me, but it is something she gave to me, something very simple and yet very beautiful and, I think, important:
She made me a mother.
And for that, I am grateful.
Even if it had to be for only four days, I am grateful.
And I have no other explanation for how it feels to have given birth to a person and then spent a few days with them before letting them go other than that:
It feels like being a mother probably feels every day.
It felt like being a mother.
***
And so. This is the end of the story. But only technically. Only in the literary sense of the word “end,” as in, “And they all lived happily ever after. The end.”
But actually, I don’t think this is the end, not really. Maybe it is for you—if you want it to be, that is.
But not for me.
Because there is something that I have now that I didn’t have before—not enough, anyway.
I have purpose. I have emotions. I have love.
And I know what it feels like to be a mother.
I am changed.
And that is all I have to say. For now. Except: Thank you for reading, dear reader. And thank you for being my friend. You have been kind to me, and I want you to know that I’ve noticed, and that I’m grateful.
This is part two of a story I wrote after the death of my daughter in 2011 called What I Learned from Jane. Read parts one, two and three here.
Chapter Two
At this point in the story, there is something that maybe you should know: I have always been a shy person. Now, for the past ten years or so, I have pretended pretty well that I’m not. People even say that I’m confident. And actually, I am. I love myself way, way too much, possibly as a result of good parenting. But even though I’m confident, I am shy, too, and insecure, and deep down inside, as they say, I’m really unconvinced that people like me, or maybe even really convinced that they don’t. And so, sometimes—often, maybe—I have just decided—even before really knowing someone I have decided—I will not like them back.
That way I’d be, of course, invulnerable.
When I was going to the birth center for my baby appointments, the midwives there told me that I’d have to write a birth plan. I had read about birth plans but I didn’t know what to put in one, so I asked the midwife about it.
“Write about how comfortable you are with affectionate gestures from the midwives,” she said, “And about how you think you’ll react to pain.” She said that the midwives would all read it once when I gave it to them, then once again before coming to the birth.
So, that is what I did.
“…Touch and massage welcomed from David but no touching by midwife of an affectionate nature,” I wrote. “Excessive smiling also not preferred.”
After that, when we were in the hospital together going through all of this, all of the midwives would ask me for permission whenever they wanted to hold my hand or give me a hug.
And that is what I was before Jane.
Now, things are different. I’m not quite myself anymore, I’ve realized. I cry pretty often, and, a lot of the time, the tears are sudden—they come without any warning at all. Often, I am with other people when it happens and I should say now that if you’ve seen me do this already, you have been very kind to me and at least pretended very well to understand, and I have noticed, and I am grateful.
But please don’t take this as an apology. I haven’t been myself lately, but, somehow, I don’t think that that is such a bad thing.
And I should say, too, that sadness isn’t the only thing I feel more of lately. I’m more emotional about everything now. I get mad sometimes. And I get really bothered by mean things or unfair things. And I feel like I’m bleeding all the time, and needy, and I get embarrassed more easily, and I am embarrassed to even admit this right now.
And I love people more. And I see them not as just people I know: I see them as people I could really like a lot if they let me.
Overall, I think having more feelings is worth it.
And that is the first thing I learned from Jane.
***
The next morning, a Saturday morning, David and I got out of bed around ten o’clock. I was very stiff all over, I remember, and I was bloody, too. I stood up just long enough to take a shower and the rest of the time I was in the wheelchair. Doors felt very heavy to me and I had to move very slow.
The shower, however, was nice. It felt good to get rid of all of the blood and sweat from the day before. David’s parents had brought us some clothes and putting them on I felt even better. I looked at my deflated belly in the mirror and felt very small and very light even though I still had some pain.
For breakfast, David and I ate some bananas and apples that someone had given us the night before. As we ate, I said, “Do you think we should give her a name?” Now that we knew she’d be with us for at least a few days it seemed like the right thing to do, and he agreed.
“I was kind of thinking Lily,” I said.
“That’s nice,” he said. “I actually liked the name they gave her at the hospital, though—the first one we went to. They called her Jane.”
“Jane,” I said. “An old-fashioned name. Let’s call her that.”
And so, from then on, she was Jane. Sometimes, too, she was Baby Jane.
We liked the sound of that.
***
A little while later David’s visitors arrived. He went downstairs to see them while I stayed in bed and rested. I had a breast pump with me and I wondered whether I should start using it but I was too tired right then and so I decided to wait.
After a while, David came back to our room with the visitors and we all went downstairs to the NICU to see the baby together. She was still on the cooling blanket so we couldn’t hold her all the way yet but we touched her feet and hands and forehead and soft, soft skin and talked about how beautiful she was.
After a while, Andrea came into the room. I was a little surprised she was there; I knew she had a family and even though she said she’d be back I thought she wouldn’t have time.
I was also surprised by how she looked, and David must have been too because when he saw her he said, “Did you get any sleep?”
“I slept,” she replied, but we both knew what she meant. “How are you guys doing?” Her voice was very kind and caring and I thought, “Maybe she really is as nice as she pretends.”
At four o’clock there was another meeting with the doctors. This time Christine and Andrea came as well.
First, they told us that they had done the MRI. Only one doctor had looked at it so far and another one would review it the next day, they said. “So far, though, it confirms what we already suspected. There is almost no activity in the brain—just at the very base, the part that controls the heart.”
“That explains her strong heart rate during labor,” we said. “But do you know what could have caused this kind of damage?”
They did not, they said. They couldn’t even make a guess. “We have never seen anything like this before.”
Then we asked them if they at least knew when it occurred, but again the answer was no.
“We do know that it didn’t happen at the time of delivery,” they added, explaining that there was some blood on the outside of the brain that seemed to have been there for a while before birth.
Andrea and Christine went over the details of the delivery, and again the doctor assured them that they had done nothing wrong, and neither had the paramedics.
And neither, they said, had I.
“How do you know?” I said. “If you don’t know how it happened, how do you know what caused it?”
“Nothing that we know of could have caused it,” one of the doctors said. “Nothing that is within our current understanding of medicine explains it.”
Did that include genetic problems? we asked.
“There is no developmental problem that we can find,” they said. “We don’t think it was caused by genetics.”
Before the meeting ended, they told us they’d have another specialist look at the MRI the next day and that he might be able to give us more information.
When we left the meeting, we were all relieved.
It was nobody’s fault.
***
That evening, David and I ate dinner with some of our visitors in the hospital cafeteria. We talked about the meeting, trying to explain what the doctors had said without really understanding it ourselves.
We didn’t only talk about Jane, though. We talked about other things, too, and even joked and laughed a bit, and we took a little break and it was nice.
After dinner, around eight thirty, the nurses told us that Jane could come off the cooling blanket for a little while.
“Do you want to hold her?” they asked.
“Yes,” I said.
So they arranged a chair for me by the bed and moved all the cords and machines and after that I held my baby for the first time.
Her head was heavy and limp. The only thing that visibly moved was her chest as air was pumped into her lungs one breath at a time. I looked at her face, studied it, admired her big fish lips and enjoyed the way her body felt in my lap. I wondered about what had happened to her, and what could have caused it, but I still didn’t know what to think about it all.
And I still didn’t know what to feel.
After a while, I asked to be alone. I remember that for some reason, I thought this would be my only chance to hold her, ever, so I tried to think of everything I wanted to say.
First, I prayed that God would bring her back. Then, I asked her to come back.
I asked her many times.
I wanted her to hear me.
And yet, I did not cry.
***
Later that evening, David told me that he had talked to some of the nurses about breastfeeding.
“They don’t think you should start pumping,” he said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“They said that if you do it will be very hard for you to stop. The milk will just keep coming.”
“I will ask them about it later,” I said, and the next time we went downstairs, I did.
“I don’t think you should try,” one of the nurses said. “It hurts and you could get an infection.”
Before we went to bed that night, I told David I would decide the next day.
***
The next day was Sunday. Once again, David and I woke up around ten o’clock and took a long time to shower and get dressed. I found that I could walk on my own again, though, and that made it easier.
Around noon, more visitors arrived. Again, I wanted to rest so I let David stay with them while I stayed in bed.
After a while, Andrea came into the room with David. At first, when I saw her, I thought, “I don’t want to see anyone right now.” I didn’t tell her that, though, so she sat on the bed and we started talking.
And as we did, suddenly, I had a thought. It was more like a feeling than a thought, though—more like a realization, and even before I was sure what the right words were to describe it I said to Andrea, “Andrea, I have to apologize to you.”
“Why do you have to apologize?” she asked.
“I have been cold,” I said.
She said she didn’t think I was cold, but I went on. “I don’t usually expect people to be so kind and really mean it. I didn’t expect you to come today.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I am glad you’re here,” I said.
And, after that, we were friends.
***
And there was something else that happened in the few minutes that she and I spent in that room, too, something very important and meaningful, something that I’ll never forget, ever, and if I do, please, please remind me of this that I’m writing to you right now:
I started to feel again.
Chapter Three
A little while later, Andrea and I went downstairs to see Jane. As I sat next to her bed, holding her foot in my hand, I wondered again what to do about breastfeeding.
“What would you do?” I asked Andrea. I was a little nervous to ask; I knew how stupid it sounded.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Why do you want to breastfeed?” She said it in a sympathetic way, a way that showed she understood but wanted me to tell her anyway.
I looked down at the floor, hiding my face with my hair.
“When David and I were making plans for the baby, the one thing I always said I would never, never do is give up on breastfeeding. No matter how hard it got, I swore that I’d keep at it. It’s the thing I looked forward to more than anything else.”
After I said that, something wonderful happened.
I started to cry. Not just a little, either.
I cried a lot.
“Now that all this has happened,” I said, “It feels like it’s the only thing I have left.
“It’s the only thing I can do that would make me feel like a mother.”
It was then that, for the first time, I knew I loved my baby.
I might have loved her before that, of course.
But I don’t think I knew it until then.
Not really.
That is the advantage of having people to talk to sometimes. Without them, I don’t think I would have learned how to feel what I felt.
Without them, I may not have learned how to grieve.
***
And that was the beginning of my feelings—the real beginning.
And after that, I couldn’t keep them away if I tried.
But, I soon realized, I didn’t want to keep them away. No matter what I was feeling, I decided, it was better than feeling nothing at all.
Much better, actually.
It was wonderful.
***
At three o’clock that afternoon, we had another meeting with the doctors. They told us what we all expected to hear.
“There is no reason to continue with the cooling treatment,” they said. “She will not live.”
They still had no explanation for what happened to her, and neither did the other specialist who had looked over the MRI that morning.
“Do you want us to keep her alive if something happens during the night?” one of the doctors asked. “Would you want her resuscitated?”
We said no.
Several of us asked the doctors more questions, trying to pin down the cause of the injury, but all of our theories were ruled out; they would do an autopsy, but it was unlikely we’d ever understand what had happened.
After the meeting ended we went back to the lounge area where some of our friends were waiting for us. We told them what had happened and all I could think was, “It is settled now. She is really going to die.”
Soon after that I went back to Jane’s room and as soon as I saw her I started crying again. And I can’t quite explain it but that time, as I looked at her, something was different. Her eyes were still closed and she still did not move or breathe on her own and the respirator was still there, and she looked in every way exactly the same way she had before, but somehow, in that moment, she was a total person to me just like everyone else.
For the first time, I felt like I knew my daughter.
I knew her.
And she was mine.
***
That night David and I decided not to stay in the hospital anymore, but to go home to sleep instead. We went out to dinner, then came back to the hospital to pack our things. I don’t remember if we saw Jane again before we left but I know I didn’t hold her again and I regret that now.
I should have held her again.
I should have held her all night.
As we drove home we I noticed the Christmas lights that had been put up in our absence.
We went home and slept very badly and very long.
***
The next day, a Monday, we arrived at the hospital around noon. As soon as we got there we were ushered into another meeting. This time there were just two doctors, David’s parents, David and I. They told us that now that Jane was off the cooling blanket we could hold her as long as we wanted.
We asked them some more questions. We told them about the ultrasound I’d had the day before I went into labor and how everything was normal. They said that that may help narrow down the time period in which the damage could have been done, but nothing else about their diagnosis had changed.
When the meeting ended, we went to Jane’s room right away.
As soon as I saw her, the tears came again.
“I want to hold her,” I said, so the nurses arranged all the cords and I sat in the chair by her bed with my feet up and held her for several hours while people came in and out of the room to visit.
I stroked her back over and over. I held my lips and cheek to the top of her head. I admired her arms and legs, noticing how long they were. “You’re my little monkey,” I said. I looked at her face for a long time.
I thought, “She looks just like me.”
***
That afternoon there were a lot of decisions to be made. David and I had to plan Jane’s baptism, her photo session and, finally, her last moments.
“When do you want to let her go?” David asked me.
“We can do it tomorrow,” I said.
“Do you want to be there?”
“Yes,” I said, and he was surprised. “Do you want to be there?” I asked.
“No,” he said, and I was surprised, too.
Sometime after that, the nurse asked me if I wanted to change Jane’s diaper.
“Yes, I do,” I said. It was the first time I’d ever done this and she had to show me how.
A little after three o’clock, we held Jane’s baptism. Several friends and family members were there.
During the baptism, I held Jane in my lap. When the chaplain read the verse “. . . And Jesus said unto them, let the little children come unto me,” I started to cry. “I don’t want her to go to him,” I thought. Then, when he put the water on her forehead and said, “I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” I cried harder and Jane’s body shook with each sob.
Most of the other people there cried, too.
***
When the baptism was over Christine and Andrea stayed in the room with me while everyone else did other things. We talked a little, but we also stopped talking some of the time and I knew that they understood.
“We were going to hold her all the time,” I said after a silence. “I was going to hold her all day, and when David came home from work I was going to give her to him to hold, too. We weren’t even going to wear shirts when we held her so that we could be as close to her as possible and she could feel our skin on her skin all the time.” I smiled at the thought.
Then Andrea said, “Do you want to hold her like that now?” and it may have been the best thing that anyone has ever said to me.
At first, though, when she said it, I didn’t think it was a good idea. “I can’t do that here, like this,” I thought. I looked down at Jane and didn’t say anything.
But after a moment, Andrea asked me again.
“Do you want to hold her like that?” she said, quietly.
This time, I nodded.
Then I started to cry.
Andrea and Christine called the nurses in and told them what I wanted to do. They didn’t think it was strange at all and while they took the baby I took off my sweater and shirt and bra and sat back down in the chair. Then they put the baby on my chest with her head between my breasts and her arms and legs wrapped around my stomach.
After that, they left, and we were alone.
***
Before I met Jane, when she was just a body inside me, someone I was with all the time but never actually saw, and even before that, long before I was even expecting a baby, or expecting to ever have a baby—even back when I didn’t want a baby at all—I dreamt about babies. Not often—just often enough that I woke up during a significant number of them, thus remembering the details.
They were never good dreams. The first part was wonderful, but they never ended well.
Though the specifics varied, the general outline was always the same. First, I loved my baby more than anything else in the world. I felt the kind of feeling that I used to think you can only feel in dreams, namely, complete love. Complete surrender of every other emotion to this one of total bliss as I held the baby in my arms.
After that, though, something would happen that would take her away from me. In one dream, she grew up right before my eyes and she was too big to hold. In another, I left her in the supermarket, only to remember her hours later in a sudden panic.
In all of these dreams, I never got the baby back.
Now, I don’t think these dreams were a way for the universe to warn me about what would happen to Jane—I think they were just dreams. But what I do know is that in each of them, for just a short time, I knew what it was like to be a mother. And I knew, a little, what it was like to lose a baby. And now when I remember having them, I think to myself, those feelings I had when holding the baby in my dreams don’t even compare to the feelings I had when I held my baby skin-to-skin for the first time.
And losing the baby in my dreams was not as bad.
***
After a while, David came into the room where I was holding Jane.
“We’re all going out to dinner,” he said. “Do you want to come?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
He left and I stayed with Jane for about two more hours after that and they were the best two hours of my life.
***
Around eight thirty, the photographer came. I put my clothes back on and we had our pictures taken. After that, someone asked if I wanted to make a Christmas ornament with Jane’s hand prints on it, so I did. One of the nurses had also made one for her the day before so I put mine in the box next to hers and we gathered up our things and went home.
When we got home it was about midnight. I still wasn’t walking very well and on my way to the door I dropped one of the Christmas ornaments and it broke. David wondered what was taking so long so he came back to find me.
“Are you coming in?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything; I was just looking at the ground and crying.
He said, “Oh, the ornament broke.”
Then he took me in his arms and held me for a long time.
Later that night after we had gone to bed I told David that I wasn’t sad about losing the ornament.
“It just seemed so symbolic,” I said. “She’s broken.”
***
And that was the end of the fourth day I knew Jane. And that is the story of how, in a very short time and without saying one word, she taught me things I didn’t even know I needed to learn.
But that is not all that I learned from Jane.
Jane’s short life of only four days not only taught me greater love and greater feeling; it taught me to expect miracles.
In the distant future, two young adults make their way through a dystopian landscape in which resources are scarce and the minutes on the clock can be the difference between life and death. Read it here.
Unicorn
Sam and Alex are happily married. But that doesn’t mean they don’t want more out of life: more love, more family and more adventure. So one day, they decide to look for a third partner, sometimes called a unicorn. Read part one, part two and part three of their story here. (This story is coming soon.)
This is part one of a story I wrote after the death of my daughter in 2011 called What I Learned from Jane. Read parts one, two and three here.
Prologue: Dear Reader
Dear reader,
I want to write what happened to me and to my husband, David, and to our beautiful daughter, Jane (who is still with us now, I believe) as not just a story, but a letter—a long letter (much too long, probably)—but nevertheless a letter, which is sometimes essentially the same thing as a story, except that there are not only a lot of “I’s” in it, but some “you’s” as well.
And the “you’s” are important. Because I don’t want what happened to us to be only for me and for David; I want it to be for someone else, too.
And maybe that someone is you.
Anyway, even if it isn’t, for now, just because I need to, I will pretend that it is. And so today I am writing this story as a letter to you: to my “dear reader.”
And when I say “dear reader,” please know that I mean exactly that. I may not know you, personally, or I may, but either way, I do know one thing: You are dear.
You are completely and absolutely dear.
That is something that Jane taught me and I hope that I never forget it.
And I want to say it again just in case you didn’t fully hear it the first time: you are dear. You are completely and absolutely dear. If you came to the hospital and stayed with David and I during those four precious days we spent there, or if you came to the memorial service we held and greeted us as we mourned, at some point I looked at your eyes and I remember what I saw—even weeks later I remember—and it was special and precious and irreplaceable and perfect. And if you weren’t one of those people, you are dear anyway because God is in you and even if you somehow don’t see that right now, please understand that there is someone who does, and that is me. And there are probably a lot of others who see it, too, and I bet if you asked them, they would tell you themselves.
Okay. I know I promised you a story—a real story, not just a very long, very wordy, very sappy letter, so I guess I’ll begin. But first, because I just can’t help it, and because I’m still pretty sure you didn’t understand what I meant the first time, please let me say it again:
You are dear.
Chapter One
Jane came to us on the twenty-fifth of November, the day after Thanksgiving. She lived for four and one-third days. They were wonderful. They were indescribable, really.
They were the best days of my life.
But they were too short. They were too brief.
They were too, too short.
And so, I find that now, one month later, I want to relive those days again. And not only do I want to relive them myself, I want to have someone else who has lived them, too, with me, even if just in a way, and so I’m writing this letter to you, who is my friend, and maybe now about to become a better friend, because I want someone else to understand what happened in those days that I knew her and, maybe, a little, understand. I want to tell you about those days, which were the best and worst, as they say, that I’ve ever had, and I want explain to you why knowing Jane has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. And I want you to know that I am thankful for her coming, even if it had to be for only four and one-third days.
She made me different. And, for that, I am grateful.
There is another reason I’m writing this letter, though: I am writing it for you. Maybe you have grieved, too, and even if you haven’t, most likely, you will—someday. And maybe, someday, you, my friend, will find it comforting to read about these things that happened to me and, maybe, also, they will make you feel less alone.
It’s worth a try, anyway, I think.
But, I admit, those aren’t my number one reasons for writing this letter. My number one reason for writing about what I learned from Jane is to think more about what happened, and, in doing so, maybe—just maybe—understand it.
***
Ever since I met Jane, I have known there was a purpose to her life. Not a small purpose, either, like helping me “be a better person” or “learn how to let go.” Not a small thing like that.
Something big.
And so, for a while now, I’ve been asking myself this question: What was this purpose? What is the meaning of her life?
It has been almost one month since she came, and in that time, I have learned a lot about grieving—definitely more than I ever used to know. And one of the things I’ve learned is that it is much easier to grieve when you think there is a reason for what happened—a good reason; that, somehow, what happened to you will make you better.
So, I search for meaning. I look for it everywhere I go. I pray. I even tried meditation. I think, and think, and think. Sometimes, I feel like I’m getting closer to an answer. But most of the time, I don’t. Most days are just days, with nothing special in them at all.
But still, I search. I pray. I read. I try to figure it out.
I ask myself why.
I even talk to Jane, and ask her why.
She may be giving me an answer, I think, but I just can’t hear it. So I listen harder, pray more.
And I write.
And, even though it’s hard to do, I’m writing this letter about her life and about what I learned from it, because even though I don’t have the whole answer yet, I think I have, at least, found part of it.
And the rest, I believe, will come.
***
As I said before, Jane came to us on the twenty-fifth of November, the day after Thanksgiving. The day before I went into labor—a Wednesday—I had an ultrasound and some other tests, too, and we saw the pictures and the needles on the paper and we saw that everything was perfectly fine.
We saw something else, too: I was having contractions. They were coming about every fifteen minutes, the doctor said, but until she said that and told me what to look for I did not know it was happening and even after that I still couldn’t feel them.
David could, though. While we were there at the doctor’s he touched my belly and learned how to tell when the contraction was coming and after a while I learned to feel them, too. So, that night, we sat on the couch together and watched TV and he kept his hand on my stomach and we noticed them together when they came—he by feeling outside and me by the slight tightness that happened inside.
When I woke up the next morning, I was still feeling them. I called my family and told them that finally, twelve days after my due date, I was having contractions. They thought it meant that I would be going into labor right away and they were so excited they screamed.
“But I don’t know if they’re real,” I said.
“Do they feel kind of like gas pains?” my mom asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “They are real.”
David was sitting next to me at his computer and after I got off the phone I said, “Did you hear them screaming?”
“I thought I heard something like that,” he said.
“They think I’m going into labor,” I said. “The contractions aren’t regular yet but it could be almost time.”
“It would happen on my day off,” he said.
He is dear.
***
A few hours later David and I decided to take a drive. The contractions had become more noticeable by then and by about three in the afternoon while we were still in the car I was really hurting.
Around that time, my sister called again to ask about how I was feeling. While talking to her I had to take a couple of breaks to breathe better, and after that I knew it was time to go home.
We drove back home and as soon as we got there I went to bed. After that I felt pretty good; there was pain but it was a normal kind of pain. David and I timed my contractions for a while but even though they were getting stronger they still weren’t regular so we thought we had plenty of time.
Sometime that evening, we called the midwife, Christine. She told me to relax my breathing more and to call again when the pain was less manageable.
During the night the pain got much worse. David came to bed but I didn’t want to keep him up so I took a bath then walked around the living room for a while. When I went back to bed he woke up and we decided to call Christine again.
When we called her, though, she gave us some unexpected news.
“I am at another birth,” she said. “I’m not going to be done in time. Is it okay if Andrea goes instead?”
“Of course,” we said. I knew all of the midwives at the birth center so I thought it wouldn’t really matter either way.
As it turned out, though, it did matter.
It mattered a lot.
David and I got ready to go. While I put on my shoes, he packed up my things and a few things for the baby. Then he helped me to the car.
When we arrived at the birth center it was about six forty-five in the morning. Andrea and her assistant, Jamie, were already there. They helped me onto the bed and even though my head was at the wrong end when I lay down it was so hard to move that I didn’t turn around. Right after that, Andrea and Jamie both did an exam and said I was nine centimeters already and I was ready to get into the tub. David and I had planned a water birth so we took this as a good sign.
I undressed and got into the water. People brought me ice and wet towels and I had a few more contractions but they seemed to be coming less often. So, after an hour or more of this, Andrea tried to speed things up. She told me to move to other places and positions, and that is when the pushing started and it got really hard. I won’t describe all of the positions to you but the midwives were taking pictures so there is evidence anyway.
During the labor, David was so strong. I gripped his hands and arms constantly. I pushed the bottoms of my feet against his hands and body. He held up my head and neck from behind. Each time I had to get up and move to another place in the room, he had to lift me almost entirely on his own.
For each of the positions, Andrea told me everything to do: how to breathe, how to push, even what to imagine as I did so. At one point, she said she wanted me to push the baby up to the ceiling, kind of like a yoga instructor would say to try to improve your form and even though I hate yoga—and visualization, too—it worked. She was calm and precise, but used urgency in her voice to show me how I needed to push.
“I need you to push harder, even harder,” she said many times. “Push through the pain.” Then, on a good push, she would say, “There you go. I want you to do that again, just like that.”
Also, whenever the baby made some progress, she made sure to tell me about it. She would say the baby was “plus one” or “plus four,” but I didn’t want to ask what the last number was. Eventually David asked, though, and she told us that plus five is out. By that time I was already at plus four, though, so it was good news.
Sometime after getting to plus four, my legs started shaking. I tried to relax them, especially between contractions, but they would not stop—they shook and shook and breathing got harder, too. David asked Andrea if I was cold but she said I was just tired.
Between the contractions, especially for the last few hours, there was barely a minute of rest and it wasn’t really rest. I could breathe a little better but I couldn’t relax my body. Andrea said, “Use the break, use the break,” and I tried but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to stop pushing; I just wanted it to end.
By then it was afternoon and I was close. Before every contraction Andrea would tell me that the next one could be the last one and I made myself believe her, but it didn’t help. I couldn’t push hard enough to make the baby come. When my breath ran out on a push and I had to take in more air, the baby stopped moving down and sometimes even moved back up a little. Andrea said later that it was like the baby just wasn’t helping. “She could have just lifted her head up at any moment and she would have been out,” she said. Now we know why that didn’t happen.
At the time, though, Andrea still thought it would be soon. The head was showing and she told David and I that we could touch it, so we did. Jamie brought a mirror so I could see it but I didn’t have my glasses on so I couldn’t see it very well and anyway I didn’t want to look—I just wanted to push. After that, Andrea asked David if he wanted to catch the baby and he asked some questions and said that he might. Then she told me that after the head was out she would have me ease up on the pushing for a little while so the baby didn’t come too fast. By this time they were measuring the heart rate after every push. It was always normal.
Around two o’clock, the other midwife, Christine, came into the room. She hadn’t planned on coming, she told me later. She just happened to stop by the birth center to drop something off and wanted to see how I was doing.
“I don’t ever do that,” she told me.
“You came at exactly the right time,” I said, and it was true, because soon after that we got the first sign of trouble: the baby’s heart rate dropped to ninety. At that point, we all knew we needed to get the baby out fast.
Both of the midwives and Jamie went immediately to work. First, they put an oxygen mask on me. Then, they moved me from the bed into a squatting position on a stool with arm rests that I could push down on. Someone put a bowl and some pads underneath me for the blood. David sat behind me on the bed and held me while Christine and Andrea sat on the floor in front of me. Then someone brought some scissors and other supplies.
“I’m going to give you one more push to get the baby out,” Andrea said. “If it doesn’t come, we are going to have to cut you.”
“She will have to cut me, then,” I thought. “There is nothing more I can do.”
I told her okay, though, and when the next contraction came I pushed as hard as I could.
Nothing happened.
Immediately after that, Christine took the scissors and made a cut. I thought it would hurt, but it didn’t. There was a slight burning, but it didn’t feel like I expected it to.
Another contraction came—the last one. I pushed again, as hard as I could, and this time, there was a relief at the end and the feeling of a knotty cord winding out of me. It felt like the baby had shot out very quickly and gone a long way but I don’t think my eyes were open at the time so I didn’t really see her being caught.
It was two thirty in the afternoon exactly.
I opened my eyes and looked for the baby. She was there, I knew, but I could barely tell where; I couldn’t focus my eyes. Then, someone started to hand her to me and I saw that she was near my right side.
Behind me, David said, “Hold the baby, honey.”
“I can’t,” I said, surprised that they thought I could hold anything right then.
Right then, Christine must have realized something was wrong because she pulled the baby back. I thought she was just taking her away because I couldn’t hold her but then I saw that the baby was on the floor and they were doing CPR and I, too, realized that something was wrong.
At first, David and I did not look at each other or say anything; we just watched what they were doing and wondered what was going to happen. Then Christine told us to talk to the baby so we did. We said, “You’re okay, baby. You’re okay.” There was nothing else we could think of to say.
The longer it went on the more we realized how serious it was. After a few minutes Andrea said to Jamie, “Call 9-1-1.” I don’t remember my exact thoughts but I knew that the baby had never taken a breath and I was very afraid.
At some point, I asked David for my glasses. He didn’t want to give them to me, though; he said I didn’t want to see. But I did want to see. The glasses were next to me on the bedside table so I found them easily and put them on.
And then I saw my baby for the first time.
The first thing I noticed was how gray she was. Her whole body was gray, not just her face or some part of her. Also, she was completely still. Her eyes were closed and no part of her moved on its own.
Strangely, I don’t remember being surprised at her not breathing. I think if my labor had been shorter or easier I would have been, but as it was, it must have seemed to make sense.
Something that did surprise me, though, was how big she was. She was much bigger than I’d imagined—much bigger than any doll. Then, after a while, when one of the midwives moved out of the way and I saw that she was a girl, that surprised me, too. I had guessed she would be a boy and seeing her I thought, “I don’t know this person.” I studied her face. I tried to see something I would recognize in it, but I didn’t.
She looked like a stranger.
***
After what seemed like a long time, the ambulance came. Four or five men rushed into the room. I was still naked and the bowl that was under me was full of blood but I don’t think anyone was looking at me anyway. Christine told Andrea and David to go with the baby and Jamie to stay and help with me. David gathered his things and went outside but Andrea was still breathing for the baby with the oxygen mask until they got into the ambulance so she had to leave without her shoes, cell phone or keys.
After they were gone I lay down on the bed and Christine told me I would need to deliver the placenta. She told me to push it out but I couldn’t—my muscles wouldn’t do what I wanted anymore.
After a while, she started looking worried. She asked Jamie how long it had been since the birth and Jamie said forty-five minutes. She felt inside me and pushed around a bit, trying to make it come out but it still didn’t, so they gave me a Pitocin drip and after that my muscles contracted and I was able to give a little push and, finally, the placenta came out. It hurt but afterwards I was relieved that all of the pain was over.
Christine said, “Do you want me to stitch you up now or do you need a break?”
I said, “I don’t need a break.”
She and Jamie prepared their things. Then she gave me some numbing shots. She said they would hurt but they didn’t, much, and I didn’t feel the stitches at all.
At some point, Christine got a phone call and I knew it was from someone at the hospital. She didn’t tell me right away what they said so I thought it must have been bad news and I didn’t ask. After she stitched me up she said that it was time to go to the hospital to see David and the baby and I was surprised.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
“She is alive and she is stable,” Christine said.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe right; I started panting really hard and couldn’t stop.
“There is still a chance,” I thought. “There is still a chance.”
There were tears in my eyes but I did not cry.
After I calmed down, Christine asked me if I wanted to take a shower.
“I won’t be able to stand,” I told her. So she wiped some of the blood off my legs and helped me get dressed. While we were doing that Jamie asked if I wanted to see the placenta and I said I did and I suggested they take a picture of it but she said they would keep it for me and David instead. They packaged it and put it in a bowl.
Then, it was time to go. Both of the women helped me to the car. I walked very slowly and when I got to the car I couldn’t sit down directly so I put my knees down on the seat first, then sat with my hip on one leg. Someone put my seatbelt on for me and Jamie and I went to the hospital while Christine stayed behind.
At the hospital, Jamie left me in the car and went inside to see what was going on. After a while she came back with some doctors and I rolled down the window and they talked to me there in the parking lot. They explained that the baby was stable on life support and she would now be transferred to Seattle Children’s Hospital. I said okay and thanked them, and they left and Jamie went with them.
A little while later, David got into the car. The first thing he said was, “She is so beautiful, Mollie. Her skin is very pink now and it’s just perfect.” I asked him if he thought she would make it and he said that she wasn’t responding to any of their tests so far.
“And if she lives, she will have brain damage,” I said. I hadn’t thought of it before, but somehow right then I knew it was true.
“Yes,” he said. “There will be some, but they don’t know yet whether it will be permanent.”
Then he told me what happened at the hospital.
“They took a long time to resuscitate her,” he said. “I watched for a while but eventually I couldn’t anymore so I went into a little waiting room. After a while of being in there I started crying uncontrollably and hyperventilating and shivering all over. Someone had to turn the lights down for me to help me calm down.
“I have never cried that hard before,” he said.
When Jamie got back to the car she told me that I could ride in the ambulance with the baby if I wanted to. “One person is allowed to go,” she said. “You can ride with her or you can go with David.”
“I don’t want to go with her,” I said. “I’ll ride with David.”
When we arrived at Children’s Hospital, David brought me a wheelchair from outside the front door and helped me get out of the car and sit down again. Then he and Jamie and I went inside to the front desk. There, they gave us all ID badges and told us where the NICU was. Jamie’s badge said “Visitor” and David’s and mine said “Parent.”
At the NICU we asked where the baby was and they said she hadn’t arrived yet. I had to use the bathroom anyway so David and Jamie took me and helped me onto the toilet. I was bleeding a lot and I needed new clothes already so it was a long time before we were done. When we finally got out, we were told that the baby was at the hospital. By then, David’s parents had arrived, too. It was nearly evening.
A short time later, a nurse came to get us and take us to the baby’s room. David, David’s parents, Jamie and I walked through the double doors, down the hall and into one of the rooms. Just inside the door there was a high bed surrounded by machines, and in it was the baby, breathing and still.
And she looked perfect.
Her skin was pink and soft. Her cheeks were fat. Her hair was long. The nurses told us she weighed over eight pounds and was twenty-one inches—a big baby, they said. Her little fingernails had grown well past the ends of her fingers and there was fat on every part of her.
She looked healthy.
Of course, she had tubes in her, too, and some patches on her head and chest that were linked to monitors. Also, there was a respirator in her mouth; she still wasn’t breathing on her own. The respirator was pretty large and with the tape on her cheeks that held it in it hid a good part of her face. It also held her lips in a puckered position, like very big fish lips, but even with that, you could see what they looked like and they were beautiful.
Almost as soon they saw her, David’s parents and the nurses, too, said that she looked like me. They said she had my forehead, nose and mouth. When they said that, I studied her face and tried to see what they were seeing. I agreed that she had my features, but I didn’t think she looked like me. I couldn’t believe that this was the person I had known for nine months already.
I still didn’t recognize her at all.
***
After an hour or so, the doctors came into the room. They talked to us for a while about the baby’s condition and said that we would have a meeting later that night after all of their tests were done. At that time, we all thought that the damage had happened during the labor or in the minutes just following it before she was resuscitated. It seemed to be the only explanation.
By then, Andrea had arrived at the hospital. When David and I went to the lobby to wait for the meeting she sat next to me and took my hands and said, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you.”
I nodded.
“I’m so sorry this is happening to you,” she said again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know you feel bad. It’s okay.”
“You don’t have to be so strong,” she said. “You can be angry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry,” I thought. “I don’t get angry.”
***
While we waited, one of the nurses asked us if the baby had a name.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to give her a name.”
David agreed. “It’s probably better that way,” he said. We didn’t know then whether she would make it through the night.
After that, the doctors took David, David’s parents and I to a conference room for the meeting. The conference room was small and they had to move one of the chairs out to make room for my wheelchair.
We all sat down and introduced ourselves. Then the doctors told us what they knew so far: the baby still wasn’t responding to any of their tests, which suggested serious brain damage.
“Her condition is very concerning,” one of them said.
“What could have caused this?” we asked.
They didn’t know. “We will do an MRI in the morning.”
Meanwhile, they told us, they had put her on a cooling blanket to help slow her deterioration. It was an experimental treatment, but it was all they could do. After two days of this, they would warm her up again, then observe her for another day or so after that.
“If her brain activity returns, it will likely return then,” they said.
“What is going to happen to her?” we asked. “What are her chances?”
“There is no way for us to predict that,” the doctors said. “Every baby is different.”
Then they said that though the baby had to stay cool for now, David and I would have a chance to hold her the next day.
When they said that, for some reason, I was surprised.
After the meeting David and I went back to the baby’s room. As we stared at her and held her hands, I said to David, “Do you think there’s even a ten percent chance she’ll live?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Later that night, the nurses told us they had a room for us to stay in so eventually we went upstairs. The room was very small with a twin bed but it was nice to be there.
As we were settling in, people kept asking us if we needed anything. We said we could probably eat a little so they brought us a lot of food and left it in our room. After they left we ate, then got undressed and went to bed. As we took off our ID badges I read mine to David.
“Parent/Caregiver,” I said. “I don’t feel like either one of those things.”
“Neither do I,” he said.
I don’t remember all of my thoughts that night but I was very tired and very sore and it didn’t take me long to fall asleep.
The next morning I woke up very early and I remembered they said I would be able to hold the baby later that day and, for the first time, I cried.
Photo by 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬 𝐇𝐃 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞- 𝐮𝐩 & 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐦𝐞 on Pexels.com
Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore by Elizabeth Lyon isn’t just about revision; it’s about writing. It’s a book on writing, with the revision angle. And it’s solid.
Read it because you want to learn the writing craft … or you just want to tell a better story.
Key Takeaways
Know the difference between style and voice. Voice is unique to each author. Style can be captured in phrases or descriptions that apply to many different authors.
When you do a read-aloud of your script, don’t perform it. Read it straight.
Practice riff-writing. Riff writing is when you quickly flesh out a portion of an early draft that needs more depth or room. The author writes: “Most early drafts are ‘tight’—they are shells of what they need to be, outlines or condensed revisions of the full story … In twenty years as an independent editor, I ‘have rarely seen a manuscript overwritten …” Most are underwritten.
Add conflict to every single page. Even in quiet scenes, show inner conflict. Conflict shouldn’t be too up and down, either—it should rise slowly, evenly.
Avoid sagging middles. When conflict flattens out, or starts to go up and down, up and down endlessly without building, “… the reader will at some point get tired rather than more deeply worried about the outcome.”
The first chapter should raise lots of questions in the mind of the reader. Hook them good, right away with the main question of the book that’s not answered till the end.
The protagonist needs a backstory wound (one that is emotional in nature), as well as a universal need or personal yearning.
To learn more about great storytelling, read Newberry Award-winning books. Young adults are a hard audience to capture, and the way these books do it is highly instructive.
About the Author
A writing teacher and book editor since 1988, Elizabeth Lyon is the author of half a dozen books on how to write, revise, and market novels and nonfiction. In Manuscript Makeover, Lyon offers aspiring novelists the guidance and instruction they need to write and edit well-crafted and compelling stories that will stand out from the competition and attract the attention of agents and publishers.
Home Grown: Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling, and Reconnecting with the Natural World is a book by one of my favorite people I’ve never met. Ben Hewitt is a homesteader, a homeschooling parent and a damn good writer. Everything of his is inspiring. Here he describes the unique way he raised his kids: on a large farm, with lots of books and a little tutoring.
Key Quotes
“I think of the way I’m so often caught off guard by some small, commonplace moment: the sight of our pet Muscovy duck, Web, waddling across the pasture; or seeing Fin and Rye moving over the land together on their way to or from the woods. From the way their heads are tipped just the slightest bit toward one another, I know they are talking. Sometimes, I cannot even identify a trigger, like when I am walking down the farm road and I am suddenly swept by a sense of knowing my place. Not just in the here and now, but in the grand, infinite scheme of things and forces far beyond my capacity to even imagine.”
“What I gain from these moments—the quick bloom of warmth they bring, the quiet sense of knowing that there is nothing else I need—cannot be readily measured, and because it cannot be measured, it cannot be traded. It is my own wealth. It is unique to me and therefore it is secure.”
“When I explain my children’s unconventional educational path, I am often confronted with skepticism. ‘What if they want to be doctors?’ people say. ‘How do they learn?’ I am asked. ‘What if they want to go to college? Don’t you worry about socialization?’ I have heard these questions so often that it is almost as if I can see the thought as it migrates from brain to tongue. I can hear the question before the question has been asked. The answers to these questions are at once simple (respectively: ‘If they want to be doctors, they will.’ ‘They learn because learning cannot be helped.’ ‘If they want to go to college, no one will be able to stop them.’ And ‘No, we are not worried about their socialization. Don’t you worry about what schoolchildren are socialized to?’) and complex.”
“Still, I can’t help but think of how my own sense of discernment over my time has shaped my life, and generally for the better. I did not like school, so I walked away from it. I did not like working for others, so I chose not to. I do not like to spend a lot of time indoors, so I don’t. The truth is, I want to live the way I want to live, conventions be damned, and I can only hope for my sons to know they can be so free.”
“I have no doubt that if Fin had been sent to a public school, he would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and summarily prescribed behavior-modifying drugs.”
“And what we observed was that the son we worried would never be able to quiet his body and mind enough to concentrate on a particular task was actually capable of tremendous focus. Liberated from paint, paper, and all assumptions about how he should learn, Fin immersed himself in projects that seemed to blossom from some primal place deep inside him. At first, these projects had no discernible end: He spent hours hammering nails into a single piece of wood, or whittling a stick until it was so thin it splintered in his hand. But gradually, his pursuits became tangible. He built bows, spending hours carving and sanding. He became an expert at making cordage from gossamer threads of cedar bark.”
“Sometimes the greatest blessings come disguised as inconveniences.”
“There’s another part to it, and I think it’s that chores are an assumption of responsibility in a world that can sometimes feel devoid of such a thing. In a sense, chores are homage to the animals and crops under our care, the fulfillment of a silent promise not only to them but also to ourselves. It’s a promise not to take anything for granted, and that we won’t forget—for this one day, at least—that we are merely a part of something bigger than we can even imagine.”
“You might ask, ‘What is the point of knowing these things?’ To which I can only answer, ‘What is the point of knowing anything?’ By extension, we might both ask, ‘What is the point of an education?’ Is it to be socialized to a particular set of expectations? Is it to continue sawing at the few frayed strands still connecting us to the natural world? Is it to learn that learning happens best under the gaze of a specialist? If so, then perhaps you are correct. There is no point to my sons knowing what fox pee smells like, or which of the wild mushrooms in our forest are edible, or how to make fire from sticks. There is no point to the ease and comfort with which they move through the wilderness. There is no point to their desire to help our neighbor get his hay under cover before the rain comes. There is no point to their boundless curiosity regarding the habits of the woodland animals. There is no point to all the little shelters and tools they’ve built.”
About the Author
Ben Hewitt is an American author, journalist, and homesteader known for his works exploring alternative lifestyles, sustainable living, and the connection between humans and the natural world. He resides in Vermont, where he and his family have embraced a self-sufficient and off-grid lifestyle.
Hewitt has written several books that offer insights into his personal experiences and reflections on living close to nature and pursuing a simpler way of life. His works often blend memoir, philosophy, and environmentalism to explore themes such as sustainable agriculture, homeschooling, and the importance of community.
There are a lot of inspirational books on creativity out there, but my favorite is this one: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by the wonderful Elizabeth Gilbert. The reason I like it is that it doesn’t talk about how hard it is to be creative. It talks about inner resistance a bit, with the author concluding that writer’s block and other names given to the resistance is a bit … overrated.
Work hard, Gilbert advises. Be consistent. Show up. Do that, and you’re most of the way there. Woody Allen said that, but Gilbert expands on the idea in that authentic, heartfelt voice we love her for.
Key Takeaways
Perfectionism is ego. Don’t fall into this trap. Make peace with the paradox that what you’re doing is infinitely important, and at the same time, completely irrelevant to anyone but you.
You don’t need permission to create. You also don’t need feedback, or fans.
Originality is not possible; all ideas have been done. Instead, reach for authenticity.
Don’t create in order to help people or make money. Create because you like it. Then you’ll accidentally make stuff that help people, or at least entertain them genuinely.
The suffering artist is a myth. Depression is demotivating. People who created alongside depression and despair probably did it in spite of their emotional state, not because of it.
You are qualified enough. Men tend to think they’re qualified enough if they’re 41 percent of the way there. Women tend to wait till they’re 99 percent of the way there to consider feeling qualified enough.
Creativity comes in many forms. So does art. Don’t limit yourself.
The best artists often don’t seem to be the best or smartest or most educated. Talent picks randomly and surprises us.
Fear might always be with you as you create. Welcome it. Acknowledge its presence. It’s along for the ride and part of the family. But it doesn’t get to choose the station, fiddle with the A/C … and it certainly doesn’t get to drive. That’d be like giving the wheel to a three-year-old.
About the Author
Elizabeth Gilbert is an American author, best known for her memoir “Eat, Pray, Love,” which became a worldwide bestseller and was later adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts. The memoir chronicled Gilbert’s personal journey of self-discovery, as she traveled to Italy, India, and Indonesia after a difficult divorce. The book resonated with readers around the world, becoming a phenomenal success and remaining on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than 200 weeks.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing often explores themes of love, spirituality, self-discovery, and personal growth. Her works have been praised for their honesty, wit, and ability to resonate with readers on a deep emotional level. Gilbert continues to write and speak publicly about creativity, personal development, and the pursuit of a fulfilling life.
Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Dave Balter and John Butman makes an excellent point: the best marketing in the world—the most effective, the most reliable—is word-of-mouth marketing. The problem: advertisers can’t drum it up, no matter how hard they try. Lasting, powerful word-of-mouth happens only when products and services are the real deal.
Read this book because you’re interested in marketing and business … or maybe because you just want people to start commenting on your YouTube videos already.
Key Takeaways
Genuine word-of-mouth is not “buzz.” It’s not the latest thing that everyone is talking about right now. It goes far deeper than that, and lasts longer.
People love talking about the stuff they buy. We do it all of the time. But why? The reasons are discussed in Grapevine. They include: the desire to educate or help, the desire to prove our knowledge, the desire to find common ground, the desire to validate our own opinions, and the pride of ownership.
Notable quote: “There’s a tiny part of the brain, the hypothalamus, that among other things helps regulate sexual urges, thirst and hunger, maternal behavior, aggression, pleasure, and to some degree your prosperity to refer. The hypothalamus likes validation – it registers pleasure in doing good and being recognized for it, and it’s home to the need to belong to something greater than ourselves. This is the social drive for making referrals.”
About the Authors
Dave Balter is a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of multiple successful companies. He has a deep understanding of consumer behavior and marketing strategies, with a particular focus on word-of-mouth marketing and customer engagement. Balter is known for his innovative approaches to building brands and creating impactful marketing campaigns. He has authored the book “Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing,” where he shares insights and strategies for harnessing the power of word-of-mouth to drive business growth.
John Butman is a renowned author and storytelling expert. He specializes in helping individuals and organizations communicate their ideas effectively through compelling narratives. Butman’s expertise lies in the intersection of business, leadership, and storytelling, and he has collaborated with numerous executives and entrepreneurs to develop their communication skills and craft powerful narratives. He has co-authored several books, including “Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas,” which offers practical advice on storytelling and thought leadership.
His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage by Willard F. Harley, Jr. is a popular marriage book–and for good reason. It’s basic point: partnership isn’t all about love and self-sacrifice; in order to have a good relationship, we have to get our needs met. It’s a good choice for the newly engaged, but any partners can benefit.
Key Takeaways
Like it or not, relationships function in a give-and-take way. This phenomenon can nearly be quantified.
My favorite quote of the book: “Figuratively speaking, I believe each of us has a Love Bank. It contains many different accounts, one for each person we know. Each person makes either deposits or withdrawals whenever we interact with him or her. Pleasurable interactions cause deposits, and painful interactions cause withdrawals … In short, your needs keep score.”
Since this is the case, it’s vital to keep your account and your spouse’s account balanced, so that neither feels like they’re getting cheated or going broke.
There are several key needs that partners have in their relationships, and people prioritize these needs differently. It’s important for couples in long-term relationships to identify their most important needs and show their partners how to help provide them.
These key needs include, but are not limited to, the following: quality time, physical intimacy, financial security, good conversation, shared fun and more)
Harley recommends that couples rate each of their needs and discuss them at length with their partners.
About the Author
Willard F. Harley, Jr. is a renowned author, psychologist, and marriage counselor known for his expertise in marital relationships and relationship counseling. With over five decades of experience in the field, Harley has dedicated his career to helping couples build and maintain strong, fulfilling marriages.
Throughout his career, Harley has authored numerous other influential books on relationships, including “Love Busters” and “Five Steps to Romantic Love.” His writings offer practical advice and guidance on addressing common challenges and conflicts that couples face, such as communication issues, conflicts over money, and infidelity.
Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It is pretty darn controversial. Still, most of what the great Gary Taubes says is true. Though I’m unsure where I stand on the whole vegetarian versus low-carb/Paleo debate, it seems clear that blood sugar spikes are a bad thing. Read the book closely and draw your own conclusions.
Key Takeaways
Excess calories aren’t what make us gain weight.
Low-fat diets definitely don’t help us lose wight.
The calorie theory of weight loss is garbage science.
According to an early ‘90s collection of National Institutes of Health studies, even while dieting, people often gain weight and lose muscle.
Exercise doesn’t work either; it simply makes us want to eat more.
Our bodies, not our calorie intake, regulate our weight. If that weren’t so, the couple of extra calories per day that lead to a yearly weight gain would almost guarantee we were all overweight.
The energy we spend and consume are dependent variables; one affects the other.
Of course, the type of food also matters. Carbs release much more insulin than protein or fat, and insulin is the fat-storing hormone.
Meat was the preferred calorie source in prehistoric times.
On a comprehensive analysis of 229 hunter-gatherer populations from 2000: “When averaged all together, these hunter-gatherer populations consumed about two-thirds of their total calories from animal foods and one-third from plants.”
About the Author
Gary Taubes is an acclaimed American author, journalist, and investigative science writer known for his influential work on nutrition, health, and obesity. With a keen interest in challenging conventional beliefs, Taubes has delved deep into the complex world of dietary science, challenging the prevailing notions about the causes and treatment of obesity. He has written extensively on the subject, analyzing the role of carbohydrates, sugar, and insulin in weight gain and exploring the potential benefits of low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets. Taubes is widely recognized for his meticulous research, engaging writing style, and ability to present complex scientific concepts in a compelling manner, making him a prominent figure in the field of nutrition and health journalism. His thought-provoking books, including Good Calories, Bad Calories and The Case Against Sugar, have sparked widespread discussion and influenced public understanding of nutrition and the obesity epidemic. Through his work, Taubes continues to challenge prevailing beliefs and encourage critical thinking about the role of diet and nutrition in our overall health and well-being.
I couldn’t admire an author more than I admire the great Ben Hewitt. I love his intelligent, writerly style, but it’s the content that really gets me. If you’re interested in homeschooling or simple living, all of his books are well worth a read. The Nourishing Homestead: One Back-to-the-Land Family’s Plan for Cultivating Soil, Skills, and Spirit is particularly info-heavy, which I like, which is why I chose it as the book to feature in my highlights here.
Key Quotes
On connection to the land: “To us, making a life means living in a way that feels connected. Connected to the land, to animals both wild and domestic, to community, to seasons and celebrations, and to the food we eat. It means living in a way that affords us the time to follow our passions and to feel as if the work we do nurtures our bodies, minds, and spirits, rather than depleting them. It means waking up every morning looking forward to what the day will bring and going to bed every night satisfied with what was delivered. It means living in a way that enables us to act from a place of kindness and generosity, in part because we have seen that when we act from a place of kindness and generosity, these things are returned to us tenfold and in part because kindness and generosity feel a heck of a lot better than meanness and stinginess. To us, a meaningful life is one that includes vigorous physical labor in the pursuit of food, shelter, and heat, because we understand that this labor is not an inconvenience but a gift. It is a life in which all of the aforementioned aspects come together in a way that does not merely inform the way we live, but also actually becomes the way we live.”
On freedom: “When the subject of travel comes up, I often explain our choices in terms of exchange. Which is to say, we’ve exchanged the freedom of easy and frequent travel for a different sort of freedom. The different sort of freedom I’m talking about is not quite so easy to explain, particularly in a society that celebrates the transitory freedom of easy travel. The freedom I’m talking about comes from connection to a particular place. It comes of spending one’s days immersed in that place, in its nooks and crannies, hollows and swells, woods and fields. It comes of waking every morning—or most mornings, at least—with a sense of anticipation for what the day holds, for all the small tasks and moments that await. It comes of walking down to the cows in the hesitant light of almost dawn. It comes of knowing where the chanterelle mushrooms are emerging from the forest floor, of following a fresh set of moose tracks with your eight-year-old son until you feel like not following them, of returning from morning chores with your hatful of mushrooms and a quartet of fresh eggs and setting them on the ground, stripping down to your birthday suit, and cannonballing into the pond. This freedom comes of ritual and routine, not in service to the contrived arrangements of the modern economy, but in accordance with nature’s cycles and forces . . . And when there’s no one to tell you your time should be spent otherwise, there’s not much of a need for vacation. There’s not the same desire to get away.”
On food industrialization: “It is infuriating to me that we have arrived at a place where the fundamental right to feed ourselves as we wish has been largely eroded. At this very moment, I could leave my house, drive a handful of miles, and purchase a semiautomatic handgun, a carton of unfiltered cigarettes, and a fifth of whiskey. Yet I can’t legally sell the butter I make at any price. I can’t legally sell a home-butchered hog or even a single link of the excellent (if I do say so myself) sausage we make.”
On safety and child-rearing: “This is a huge subject, but in short, Penny and I believe the invisible psychic and emotional risk of not exposing our children to these tools and tasks is far greater and ultimately more damaging than the risk of bodily injury. Furthermore, because the latter risk is the one that seems most visceral—after all, wounds to the psyche don’t bleed—we grant it more power than it deserves. It is difficult to see a child’s eroding sense of confidence and to articulate all the risks of that erosion; it is not difficult to see the wound left by the knife’s blade or from falling out of a tree.”
About the Author
Ben Hewitt is an American author known for his non-fiction, memoir, and nature writing that explores self-reliance, sustainable living, and the connection between humans and the natural world. Hewitt gained recognition with his book The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, about small-scale agriculture in Vermont. Another notable book of his is Saved: How I Quit Worrying About Money and Became the Richest Guy in the World, a memoir that discusses the author’s simple, anti-consumerist, anti-materialist, self-reliant lifestyle.
One of my favorite marriage books is also one of the more controversial of the genre: Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice: Hormonal Balance–The Key to Life, Love and Energy by John Gray. If you are uncomfortable with frank discussions of innate gender differences, this might not be the book for you; otherwise, have at it. It’s practical advice with a good bit of hard science to back it up. As always, take generalizations with a grain of salt. This author sometimes gets too excited about his points and doesn’t present any opposing details.
Main Takeaways
Some of the differences between men and women are due to differences in hormones—both in their levels and in the ways they behave in their bodies.
When feeling stressed, men often seek testosterone-raising and testosterone-releasing activities. When feeling stressed, women often seek oxytocin-raising and oxytocin-releasing activities.
For men, testosterone is released during work-like, problem-solving activities and raised during rest/zone-out/no-talking time.
Women are different. “Testosterone feels good to her because it gives her a sense of power and capability and makes her feel sexy, but it doesn’t lower her stress level.” It may even raise it.
Instead, women seek oxytocin raising activities—primarily talking and bonding—and oxytocin-releasing activities—care giving.
Men are different. “Oxytocin feels good to him, increasing his tendencies toward trust, empathy, and generosity, but … [it] doesn’t lower his stress level.” it may even raise it by lowering his testosterone.
Cortisol, the stress hormone, is only good for them in a true emergency. As a daily response to modern life, it prevents people—both men and women—from maintaining healthy levels of their other needed hormones because the body prioritizes the making of it. Thus, when we’re stressed out, they feel the need to engage in even more oxytocin-raising and -releasing activities (for women), and even more testosterone-raising and -releasing activities (for men). Soon, their schedules are fuller than ever, and they become even more stressed out.
Tomorrow morning, you are going to have to wake up. You’re going to have to take the baby to the park and to the playdate you have scheduled, and pretend that everything is fine. How are you going to get through it? How in the world are you going to get out of bed, knowing the foundation of your life—your marriage—is crumbling?
Though the hormonal needs of individuals vary widely (some women need more testosterone than other women and some men need more oxytocin than other men), these needs explain the presence of traditional gender roles. Women enjoy nurturing others, then being nurtured through conversation and relationship, while men enjoy working and problem-solving, then spending time alone to rest.
Women aren’t cranky—their serotonin is depleted due to stress and fluctuating blood sugar levels.
Men aren’t lazy—they are chemically built to need more time off.
Women don’t prioritize chores over self-care—they choose to release oxytocin by taking care of the home environment.
Men aren’t insensitive—they don’t crave the bonding women do.
Women don’t want to avoid sex—they need oxytocin-building, caring words and actions in order to get in the mood.
Women don’t overreact—they experience a larger response in the brain when under stress than men do.
Women don’t complain endlessly—they talk about their feelings at length in order to rebuild their relaxing oxytocin.
Men don’t procrastinate—they choose to rebuild their testosterone levels through rest. They put off doing chores until an emergency, at which point their testosterone kicks in and tells them to act.
Women don’t worry an unreasonable amount—they simply enjoy nurturing others and thinking about their needs.
About the Author
John Gray is the author of several self-help books that offer practical advice on how men and women can communicate more effectively, appreciate each other’s differences, and develop stronger connections. One of his first books, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, was published in 1992 and became an instant bestseller. In the book, Gray presents the idea that men and women have fundamentally different emotional needs, communication styles, and approaches to relationships. He suggests that understanding these differences and learning to bridge the gap can lead to healthier and more fulfilling relationships.
I love a good goal–especially a New Year’s resolution. And especially a self-improvement one. In You’re Getting Closer, I write about my year-long attempt to meditate daily and develop closer relationships. It was one of my first books that I didn’t completely hate after a few years, and yet, I still don’t think it is quite good enough to submit to my current publisher. (I also unpublished it on Amazon, since I no longer self-publish except on this blog.)
Only Malcom Gladwell could make ketchup seem fascinating. In What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, he starts off by discussing the “ketchup conundrum”–and from there, keeps the surprises coming.
Read this collection of New Yorker pieces because your Psychology 101 class focused mostly on Freud and behaviorism, and you want to learn more about how psychology works in the modern world.
Key Takeaways
Why is ketchup one of the few sauces without much competition? It’s called the “ketchup conundrum.” Most people view the Heinz recipe as the only real ketchup. When other companies try to create ketchup varieties, they’re no longer seen as ketchup, but instead as a different kind of sauce entirely.
When making decisions, there are perils in too much information, too little information, and information gathered from images (like mammograms). Getting the right amount and kind of information is a tricky challenge in both business and in personal life.
Homelessness isn’t an unsolvable problem. With less governmental redundancy, it could be easily and affordably solved–and at least one city has done so.
Plagarism is a tricky concept that is partly defined by tradition–and a gut check. Sometimes, what logically seems like plagarism isn’t.
There are two ways to flub a stressful moment: choking (thinking too much) and panicking (ceasing to think). They happen for very different reasons.
Some disasters, like the Challenger failure, can’t ever be fully and reliably prevented. Eventually, little problems, such as those in management and communication, add up.
Don’t base hiring choices on interviews. Often, the best candidates are those who don’t do well in face-to-face interviews. Look at skill instead. Better yet, offer candidates trial employment and let them learn on the job.
Geniuses are usually late bloomers–not precocious children, despite what our cultural stories tell us about our intellectual heroes. (This includes Mozart.)
Other essays discuss how various businesses and products succeed, including a short seller, a pitch man for kitchen appliances, hair dye advertising slogans, the birth control pill and the methods used by the Dog Whisperer.
Gladwell also discusses the limits and disadvantages of criminal profiling; why it’s so hard to “connect the dots” to find criminals; and what pitbulls teach us about crime.
About the Author
Malcolm Gladwell, a renowned author, journalist, and public intellectual, is celebrated for his captivating storytelling and thought-provoking insights. His works, such as “The Tipping Point,” “Outliers,” and “Blink,” have gained global acclaim for their innovative perspectives on social sciences, psychology, and human behavior. Gladwell’s writing seamlessly blends engaging narratives with rigorous research, reshaping our understanding of the world and inspiring critical thinking. As a captivating public speaker and host of the popular podcast “Revisionist History,” Gladwell continues to shed light on intricate social phenomena, challenge conventional wisdom, and encourage listeners to question established narratives. With his unique blend of storytelling, meticulous research, and profound understanding of human nature, Malcolm Gladwell has emerged as a leading figure in contemporary intellectual discourse, leaving a lasting impact on popular culture.
Sometimes, our greatest weaknesses are our greatest strengths. That’s the lesson from author Malcom Gladwell in David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. But Gladwell doesn’t rest on cliche. He’s known for his originality, surprising his readers with paradox after paradox.
Break the rules, Gladwell tells us, and he follows his own advice. His journalism has always done so supremely successfully.
Read this article collection because you want to experience perspective-shifting intellectual whiplash.
Key Takeaways
A common personality trait of successful underdogs is disagreeableness.
In the story of David and Goliath, David succeeded because he broke the rules–not because God intervened. He beat him because rock slinging was the most deadly form of fighting and Goliath wasn’t prepared. David wasn’t strong in the traditional way, so he found a way around the traditional way; he found strength in his weakness.
Basketball coach Vivek Ranadive succeeded because he broke the rules. He led a novice girls’ basketball team to the national championship for their division by playing full-press–something no other team did.
Teacher Teresa DeBrito succeeds because she breaks the rules. She actually prefers larger to smaller class sizes, and this perspective is backed by research. The lesson: often, things we see as good (like small class sizes) are bad after a certain point; there is a U-curve. For example, money makes parenting easier, until you have too much and it makes it harder again.
Caroline Sacks didn’t succeed in her major because she followed the rules. She made the decision to go to Brown instead of her second choice, a lesser-known school. This led her to quitting her preferred major, science, because of the difficulty she experienced at Brown. Had she gone to the second-tier school instead, she believes she would have stayed with it.
David Bois succeeded because of his weakness. His dyslexia made him an excellent listener and memorizer, and he ended up becoming a highly successful trial lawyer who could detect the slightest weakness in his opponent’s voice, though his mom thought he’d never even graduate high school.
Emil “Jay” Freireich succeeded because he wasn’t a people pleaser. His father died at a young age and his mom was also absent. He became a doctor who didn’t care what anyone thought, even ignoring orders at times, and pioneered a cure for leukemia.
Wyatt Walker succeed because he broke the rules. He worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. to incite cops to violence so the media would carry the story and the civil rights movement would gain momentum.
Rosemary Lawlor succeeded by questioning authority. She participated in a successful riot against unnecessary search, seizure and extended house arrest policies in Northern Ireland against the British army who had come to help keep peace during a civil war. The British army’s mistake: they didn’t establish legitimacy first.
In Brownsville, a NYC neighborhood, a police officer named Joanne Jaffe succeeded because she established legitimacy. She is leading an effort to help criminal kids turn around by first gaining their trust, bringing turkeys on Thanksgiving and gifts on Christmas and talking with the families.
Sometimes, reactions aren’t what we expect them to be. During the Blitz in London during WWII, everyone expected mass panic, but instead the remote misses created a sense of aliveness, exhilaration and invincibility.
About the Author
Malcolm Gladwell is a renowned author, journalist, and public intellectual widely recognized for his captivating storytelling and thought-provoking insights. With a unique ability to dissect complex ideas and phenomena, Gladwell has become a leading voice in contemporary nonfiction. His works, such as “The Tipping Point,” “Outliers,” and “Blink,” have garnered global acclaim, captivating audiences with their innovative perspectives on social sciences, psychology, and human behavior. Gladwell’s writing style seamlessly blends engaging narratives with rigorous research, making his books both accessible and intellectually stimulating. Through his distinctive approach, Gladwell has reshaped the way we perceive and understand the world around us, leaving a lasting impact on popular discourse and inspiring critical thinking.
Beyond his literary contributions, Gladwell’s influence extends to public speaking engagements and podcasting. He has delivered captivating talks at prestigious conferences and universities, captivating audiences with his ability to shed light on intricate social phenomena and challenge conventional wisdom. As the host of the popular podcast “Revisionist History,” Gladwell continues to explore hidden stories and reevaluate historical events, offering fresh perspectives and encouraging listeners to question established narratives. Through his multifaceted body of work, Malcolm Gladwell has emerged as a leading figure in contemporary intellectual discourse, captivating audiences with his unique blend of storytelling, rigorous research, and a deep understanding of human nature.
Well, it’s December now. The year is almost over, and lately I’ve been wondering what’s going to happen when my experiment is over. Sometimes I feel like I’ve gotten into a habit that, now that I know how great it can be, I will never totally give up on, even if I do take breaks—even very long breaks. It’s something I’ll always come back to, always aspire to. Other times, though, I feel something else.
I feel like giving up.
And actually, most of the time I feel both: Praying without ceasing is something I will never give up on completely—but it’s something I often may not want to do right now.
And that’s where I’m at today. For the past several weeks I haven’t meditated much. I haven’t always felt very good, very inspired. And I definitely haven’t prayed without ceasing.
More than that: I haven’t even tried.
A few nights ago I was thinking about my next step, thinking about whether I was ready to start again, and I came back to where I began with this whole thing. When I started this journal in January there were two main hesitations I had about the experiment—two things that caused me to delay the actual start date by several months. One was that I was afraid it wouldn’t work, that I wouldn’t hear from God about what to do and where to go and what to say, et cetera. The other was that I just didn’t want to give up control. The first I can say that I’ve pretty much let go of; I have only to remember a few key experiences this year to prevent that fear from materializing. It’s that second one—the one about control—that still feels true to me even though it doesn’t do me any good.
I hate. Giving up. Control.
I really, really hate it.
When the baby won’t fall asleep at naptime. When my husband isn’t available when I’d like him to be. When I can’t make my own decisions without someone else’s input, and that person is nowhere to be found.
I live a very self-directed life. I have no set work hours, no particular workplace to go to; I work where and when I see fit. I see friends and take the baby out and run errands, all at the times of my choosing. On any given day my shower could happen at 9 a.m., 2 p.m., 9 p.m. or not at all. I do not live by a schedule—but I always plan my day. I plan how many and approximately which hours the baby will be asleep, and what I will do during that time. I plan which items on my to-do list can be completed and which will have to wait. I plan what to cook, what fun thing to do that evening, and on and on and on.
I am always, it seems, planning something.
The freedom and flexibility that I have in my life is awesome. The stress that I take on by being so high strung is most assuredly not. My worst days (I remembered yesterday) are not the days when I get into an argument with someone or even the ones when I feel fat. The worst days I have are the ones in which the baby doesn’t stick to my schedule and I end up missing something I wanted to do. The anger that I feel, the annoyance, the stress . . . It’s just not fun. Not at all.
And really, it isn’t me. I’m not high-strung, actually. I enjoy life. I’m pretty cheerful most of the time (not naturally so, but I’ve taught myself this skill over the past few years with good success).
I’m just very Type A, that’s all. And not only am I Type A—I like it that way, too. It’s how I achieve so many goals in such a short period of time. It’s how I find purpose in my days.
It’s just the way I like to be.
And so, that’s the truth of the matter. The truth is that I’m afraid that if I give up this control, it will all fall apart.
I won’t write books anymore. I won’t “use my time wisely.” I won’t be able to work and make money while still spending as much time as I do with the baby. I won’t read as many books. My to-do list will grow longer and longer by the minute.
I won’t get anything done.
Or, maybe I’ll get a lot done—but not as much as I could have. If I get too spiritual, I think, I’ll just hang out watching flowers grow and children smile and forget to look at the clock.
I will get things done. But not as many as I could have.
And that, that single thought, is the thing that keeps me from my goal.
Thankfully, I know the solution: Giving up control. Making plans, but staying flexible at the same time. Asking for guidance and direction in every decision I make throughout the day and then following it, even if I don’t want to or if it seems to make no sense.
If I could do that consistently, what could possibly stand between me and my goals?
And so, as always before when pondering these things, I make the decision once again to start to pray without ceasing. Right now, right after I put my pen down, I will ask for the Divine’s guidance about what to do next . . . and then I’ll do it. I will put the Spirit to the test, and see if I still get everything I want to do done, or if it all comes crashing down as I fear it will.
Here we go. Starting . . . now.
***
December 9: Limbo
Failed again. Yesterday. After writing that last entry, I listened for guidance on what I was supposed to do. Though I didn’t get a very clear message, I made the best guess I had at the moment: I did a crossword puzzle. The baby was down for the night, Jack wasn’t home and I didn’t know how to hook up the TV (long story). So, I took up an old hobby—and it was nice. Not ecstasy or anything, but nice. After a while Jack came home and we hung out for a while—and I very promptly forgot all about my resolution to pray. Then we went to bed.
This morning when I woke up I remembered. I prayed a little, then got distracted by the baby and the morning. Later I remembered again, and got distracted again. And now I am sitting in the car as the baby sleeps, and I’m remembering again.
And I feel like giving up.
I can’t do this. I have no deep thought to attach to that statement right now. I have no insightful psychoanalysis behind the whole thing like I did yesterday. All I have right now is the conviction that no matter how good it feels (and is) to pray without ceasing (or to come as close as I can to doing so), right now, it just is not happening.
And yet, I am not actually giving up. Being this willing, being this spiritually conscious, this close to God, is one of my most precious goals in life. I want to write a hundred books and have a passel of children, and do some other crazy things that I need not tell you about here, but this spirituality thing—this is the most important goal of all. This is the thing that won’t disappoint me, won’t fail me, ever. This is the thing that makes me feel good in a lasting, sustainable, circumstance-independent way.
This is what makes me really happy.
So, right now I am choosing to take a break from praying without ceasing. But remember October 6? Remember how I told myself that was my start date and that’s what would make me stay on this path? Well, I am going to hold to that. October 6is still my start date—I just need a quick little break.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to take a break. I don’t want to choose to be less in touch with God, less fulfilled, more dependent on circumstances for my happiness, more unstable. I don’t want any of those things—not at all. But if I could have made myself become a better person overnight, it would have happened already.
And so, this is not the end; this is just a delay. And really, it’s not even that. I know that as I let go of this goal, the journey I’m on right now to find more oneness with God will not come to a screeching halt; it may even go faster. The only way to grow into something else is to first allow yourself to be who you are now—to accept yourself, faults and all, and to fully experience whatever it is your soul is trying to teach you by choosing to be the way you are.
And so, that is what I’m doing: I’m accepting myself.
I’m allowing myself to be flawed.
Because no matter how much I think I want to change, the truth is that deep down inside, I don’t.
When I really want to change, it will happen.
And so, here goes nothing. Today, I’m doing exactly the opposite of what I’ve done at the end of my past few journal entries. Instead of deciding to refocus, reprioritize, try harder, today, I’m choosing not to try at all.
I am setting myself free.
I’m going to be as pigheaded as I want to be. I’m going to be as controlling as I want to be. I’m going to schedule stuff, and work as hard as I want, and check things off my to-do list at a rapid-fire pace.
I am going to let myself go.
Then, when I’m done, I’m going to sit back and rest, and ask myself what it all meant.
It’s funny; in a way this experience feels like it did several years ago when I was in limbo about whether or not I wanted to still be a Christian. Long after I had given up going to church, long after I stopped believing some of the teachings, and long after I had decided to (gasp!) date non-Christians, I still hadn’t gotten rid of the label; I still called myself a Christian.
Of course, that’s not what I’m doing here; I know that this change is only temporary. But as when I wasn’t really a Christian but wasn’t ready to admit it yet, right now I am not the person I want to believe that I am, either.
I am not experiencing divine connection on a daily basis.
It’s humbling, really. I have in my recent experience known what it’s like to live the kind of life that would make me the most fulfilled, and yet—I am turning it down, choosing my control issues instead.
I’m going to take a break from my goal, and I’m not going to feel guilty about it at all.
(Okay, maybe I will feel a bit guilty. But I’ll get over it, I’m sure.)
***
(a few minutes later)
I changed my mind. I can’t give up. I can’t take a break—or at least I can’t admit to myself that I’m taking a break. I can fail a million times, but I cannot give up.
God, what do you want me to do next?
***
December 17: What Is Prayer, Anyway?
Today, I discovered a form of prayer that until now I didn’t even know existed. How did this happen? It happened by sitting on a couch.
Before I tell you about that, though, let me remind you of the spiritual practices that in my life I’ve (knowingly) experienced. Most of them I’ve mentioned in this book already. They are:
Saying affirmations;
Meditating by feeling my inner body;
Meditating by repeating a mantra;
Asking my spirit for guidance in my actions both small and large;
Saying prayers of thanks repeatedly;
Writing affirmations;
Keeping a journal of answered prayers;
Listening to spiritual music;
Singing spiritual and uplifting music;
Reading spiritual books;
Smiling, even when I don’t feel like it;
Doing good deeds for others; and
Reaching out to friends.
And, as I told you before, it’s my belief that if I’m doing any of these things, I’m in prayer.
Today, though, another glorious practice joins the list. It is deep, and it is beautiful, and it is this: just . . . remembering.
Do you know what I mean by just remembering? Well, just in case you don’t, here’s a little story about how I discovered it. After I tell you this, I’ll talk about what I think it is.
***
Last night I had about forty unscheduled, baby-free minutes to enjoy before going to bed. I was too tired to read, and it wasn’t quite enough time for a TV show or movie, so I decided to sit on the couch and do nothing—to merely have a peaceful little think.
And so, that is what I did. As I sat I reviewed the mundane and beautiful events of the day. I thought about the walk I took with the baby during which he saw his first worm. I thought about eating dinner with my husband at Chipotle, enjoying the food and feeling grateful that I didn’t have to cook. And then I started thinking about my house.
About my house there is only one thing you need to know, and it is this: I love my house—love, love, love it. It is brown. It is orange. It is peaceful and muted and warm. It is clean and it is empty and it is fully baby-proofed and it is exactly like I want it to be.
I appreciate it.
And so, because I had nothing else to do, last night I just sat on my couch, appreciating it. And it was during this reverie that it hit me: my house is not just a house—it’s a person. It is a being—a growing, changing, giving, receiving, loving, living being. It is part of our family, and it speaks to us every day.
It was like what Eckhart Tolle says about feeling the aliveness in your body and using that as a portal to the Divine. I was feeling the aliveness, not of my body this time, but in my surroundings instead.
That teddy bear has something that isn’t made of atoms, I realized. That laundry basket has it, too. If someone—some great or even just very good photographer took a picture of those objects in just the right light at just the right angle, he would prove my point. He’d be able to convince anyone in a single glance of a truth that is so often overlooked, namely: even the salt and pepper shakers are profound.
So—she’s alive. My house, to me, feels alive. The solid parts—the bricks, the carpet, the curtains—are all different aspects of her personality, and the air isn’t just the space between those things; the air is filled with love.
At least I believe that it is—and I don’t think that I’m the only one. Interior designers see love in chairs and tables. Musicians hear love in music. Doctors see love in the human body. Everyone sees love in, not just someone, but something.
And here’s where I get tied up in logic knots, but bear with me: Seeing and feeling love and beauty is called worship. And when we worship something, it’s because it’s a form of God. And when we worship something while at the same time realizing we’re doing so because that thing is a form of God—that, I believe, is prayer.
And it is by this logic (which is really more faith than logic, I admit)—it is by this logic that I have a new definition of prayer. That definition is “to remember that something is God.”
***
And so, that is what I’ve decided to do. When I don’t feel led to pray about anything in particular, even a prayer of gratitude, I can remind myself to do something else that is every bit as good—go through this other portal, so to speak. I can look at my surroundings, wherever I might be, and remember that everything I see is Spirit, and is love, and is meaningful, and is alive. I can remind myself that there is a kind of magic all around me—the kind that can’t be seen but must be accessed in other ways instead. Then, I do that right then: I just sense it; I sense the unique expressions of God in it all.
I simply remember—nothing more complicated than that.
Why did I ever think it should be?
***
December 28: Change Is an Actor, Right Behind the Stage
December 28 today: three days till the end of the year and the end of my experiment. You know what that means. It means the time has finally come to do what I’ve been looking forward to doing all year long, namely the final friend list review.
Here is that review:
Friend Number One (responsive)
Friend Number Two (unresponsive)
Friend Number Three (unresponsive)
Friend Number Four (still responsive)
Friend Number Five (unresponsive)
Friend Number Six (unresponsive)
Friend Number Seven (unavailable)
Friend Number Eight (uninteresting)
Friend Number Nine (unresponsive)
Friend Number Ten (unresponsive)
Friend Number Eleven (unresponsive)
Friend Number Twelve (unavailable)
Friend Number Thirteen (unresponsive)
Friend Number Fourteen (unresponsive)
Friend Number Fifteen (unresponsive)
Friend Number Sixteen (unavailable)
Friend Number Seventeen (only mildly responsive)
Friend Number Eighteen (only mildly responsive)
Friend Number Nineteen (only mildly responsive)
Friend Number Twenty (only mildly responsive)
Friend Number Twenty-One (unresponsive)
Friend Number Twenty-Two (unresponsive)
Friend Number Twenty-Three (unresponsive)
Friend Number Twenty-Four (occasionally responsive)
Friend Number Twenty-Five (responsive)
Friend Number Twenty-Six (unavailable; she moved away last month)
Friend Number Twenty-Seven (occasionally responsive)
Friend Number Twenty-Eight (occasionally responsive)
Friend Number Twenty-Nine (responsive)
Friend Number Thirty (untested)
There are several recent changes to this list, and most of them are pretty disappointing ones. Friends Eleven, Thirteen and Fourteen, as well as Seventeen through Twenty, are all from my church—and all of them are now crossed off the list. The reason isn’t that I don’t like them, and (more surprisingly) it isn’t that they don’t like me. We see each other every Sunday, and have a lot of nice talks—and it seems that for them, that’s enough.
For a time, I thought that might be enough for me, too. Recently, though, I’ve realized that it’s not. Though I can appreciate having them as part of my larger circle of acquaintances, to me they are not true friends.
A bit harsh? I dunno. It’s just the way I feel, not a prescriptive thing. None of those four (or anyone else from church, actually) have initiated contact with me outside of church hours, and I’ve decided that just won’t do—not for me.
The other subtraction from the list is Friend Thirteen, the kind writer. Thirteen is super busy with her current projects and as I’m not sure I’m going to continue with the writing group past this year (lately it’s felt a bit boring), I doubt our friendship will pick up.
And so, that’s it. That’s what I’ve achieved friendship-wise this year: three potentially close friends out of thirty, plus one friend of limited closeness—a success rate of over 10 percent.
And when I think about it, these results really don’t seem all that bad. I don’t have a best friend, or someone I consider right now to be a very close friend, but I do have a couple of good candidates. And there are several others that may be a part of my life for a long time to come—the moms in the moms’ group that don’t call me back, for instance, and the church members that prefer to keep their distance. Too, both of these groups will be for me an ongoing source of new like-minded friend possibilities.
And so, in conclusion, I liken my friendship experiment to those people who send spam emails. The response rate is always dismally low—something like .1 percent is what I’ve heard. But it isn’t the rate that matters, you know—it’s the end result.
And the end result makes some of those companies very, very rich.
***
Thus, my friendship review is complete, with qualified success being the final result. Now let’s get down to what you’re really interested in, namely: the praying without ceasing. Clearly, my connection with God isn’t what I hoped it would be at the end of this year. But looking back, I do see progress. I learned how to meditate, and I’m doing it now and then. I’m praying for guidance much more often, and getting it. I know how to tap into the energy of my body, and when all else fails, I’m at least remembering.
And there is something that I’m not doing, too, that’s just as important as what I am doing: I’m not letting thoughts of failure get to me. I’m optimistic. God is everywhere. God loves me. God is good. Eventually, I’ll get where I want to be. I wanted a miracle this year, but what I got instead was a foretaste of what I want to be and where I’m going. The miracle will come. But my miracle might take longer than I thought it would.
It might show up one day at a time.
***
The way I see it, change is like the actor, waiting in the wings just backstage. He is practiced. He is prepared. He knows his lines. And yet—he is not actually playing the role yet.
He is still waiting for his cue.
I, too, am waiting for my cue, but don’t worry—that doesn’t mean I’ll stop preparing myself for opening night.
***
Epilogue: I Can Float Now, and I Have Friends
Last night, I had a wonderful dream. I dreamt I was at a park playing on the playground, practicing a new ability I’d discovered: the ability to fly a little in the air each time I jumped. I flew in and through and around the various obstacles, sort of floating, like they do in certain martial arts movies. It was wonderful and awesome, but one thing about it was rather strange: the other people in the park that day took no notice of this highly unusual sight; the whole time I was there, no one even looked in my direction. I wanted to show them what I was doing, to explain to them how to do the same, even though at the same time I knew it wouldn’t be right for me to do so—not yet.
I was still learning it myself.
And so, I suppose that if I were to sum up this entire year in a single sentence, this would be that sentence: I did not learn how to fly this year, to truly pray without ceasing as I so wanted to do—but I just may have learned how to float.
***
That isn’t my only post-journal update for you though. As it turns out, there’s something else I gained from my year of effort and experimentation, namely: I now have friends. And when I say this, I am delighted to add that these aren’t potentially close friends, or friend possibilities—these are the real, genuine, reliable, calling-me-back-after-I-call-them, spending-time-together-several-times-a-month-and-having-meaningful-conversations kind of friends. Yup, you heard that right: there isn’t just one of them—there are four. Can you believe it?
I have a group of good friends.
There are two sort of interesting, sort of instructional things about this development. One is that though I still go to my moms’ group and I still go to church, neither of these places is where I found my friends. (Well, one of them did go to church once, but that was it.)
The other funny thing is who these women actually are. Three of them are over ten years older than me. One is a Christian and one is Jewish. Another one is Hispanic and English is her second language.
Unlike the people at my church and in my moms’ group, these women are actually pretty different from me.
And so, what I’ve learned about friendship is this: friendship is not scientific. You can’t make a list and fill it with people you think you’ll have things in common with and expect it to work out. In fact, you can’t make a list at all. Like falling in love, the only things you can do are to look and to wait.
In any case. As a way to celebrate my success I will tell you a bit more about these wonderful women.
Friend Number Twenty-Five is someone I already told you about; she’s the one I met while walking the baby. She is an avid reader, an artist, a homeschooling mom (as I plan to soon be) and a pianist. We take walks regularly and, since she’s my neighbor, spend some time at each other’s houses, too, just visiting. Twenty-Five is one of the most positive people I know—and one of the most talkative, too.
Friend Number Twenty-Nine, the one I first met at church, is a Tarot card reader, a lesbian and a businesswoman. Her spiritual beliefs are very similar to mine and we often (mostly?) talk about the way those beliefs affect our lives. She is a wise, perceptive person, great at giving advice without making you feel stupid. (I know: major bonus.)
Then there’s Friend Number One, whom I’m actually a bit surprised to see included in this list considering our awkwardness at times. Though I’m not as close to One as I am to the others, we see each other often and her husband is friends with mine, which is nice. She is a doctor, a mother and an outdoorsy type, and very kind and thoughtful. I look forward to getting to know her a great deal more.
Finally, there’s Number Thirty-One. Thirty-One, not previously on the list, is a mom, a businesswoman, a wife, a hard worker and a natural optimist—and she has one of the kindest, most—well, most enlightened faces I’ve ever seen in anyone under the age of sixty. I met her a month or so into the new year and now we see each other almost every week. What I love the most about her is captured in a single word: she is genuine. Number Thirty-One says what she feels, and what she feels is almost always positive. When she’s happy, she says she’s happy. When she’s grateful, she says that, too. When she’s tired, she admits it but gently. Shortly after we met she told her mother about me and how grateful she was to meet me—not just once but many times. And she said this to me as well.
It’s such a rare and lovely thing to feel appreciated.
***
It has only been a few months since I finished my experiment, and a few months is not long enough to be able to predict the length of my new friendships with any certainty. But what I can say is that unlike before, I now know what I want in a friend—what I require in a friend, even. Positivity is important to me—much more important than it used to be. So is maturity and so is respect—but it is genuineness and sincerity—an ability to be oneself and to be vulnerable—that is the most important quality of all.
And so, after twelve months of hard work, the reward for my efforts has arrived. I have four good friends, and though I have not yet found the level of divine connection I’d hoped to find, the voice that I’ve been listening for all year is becoming more and more clear.
“You’re getting closer,” it’s telling me. “Closer to people and closer, too, to having an ongoing experience of the Divine. The most important goals of your life are even right now being realized, Katie: You can float now, and you have friends.”
And for now—at least for now—I’m going to be content with just getting closer.
The first service of our brand new Center for Spiritual Living was today, and I just couldn’t wait to tell you: It was everything I hoped it would be. No—it was (as they say so often but rarely as sincerely as I do now)—it was that and so much more. It was super awesome—super deluxe awesome with ice cream.
It was a treat.
Here’s the thing: Before I arrived, I was worried it wouldn’t be—er, not for me, anyway. See, the baby and I did not sleep well last night, yet I had volunteered to be a greeter. Actually, I volunteered to be anything that was needed, but what I really wanted to do was be a greeter. Then during set-up someone came up to me and asked if I knew of anyone else who could be an usher and greeter.
“Could I do it?” I asked.
A surprised look. “Sure,” they said. “Great!”
And so, at least one cup of coffee later, it was. But my sleep-deprived self wasn’t just a greeter; I was the best damn greeter you ever saw.
I was caring. I was talkative. I was spirit-led. I was in the moment. I was, even, effervescent. I think I met my (impromptu) goal of speaking with everyone that walked through the doors of the church at least once during the morning.
I was the sparkling version of me.
It sounds so proud, I know, but I don’t care. I am proud. I am, right now, chock damn full of pride. Not because I’m such an awesome human being; I already knew that about myself (after all, I’ve been one for a very long time). No—I’m proud of myself for, at least for today, letting it actually show.
Not long ago, I made the decision to become a friendship- and community-building kind of person. I decided to start going to church, and to start reaching out to new friends—in short, to explore a whole different part of my life.
And so, when I came to this church I did not volunteer to be a writer, or a marketer—no one even knows that I do these things as well. I volunteered to do only what I can do while with the baby, and as a result I am privileged to be expanding my vision of who I am and can be in this life.
Yup—this loner by nature, nerd by default and painfully shy child by experience is now a total extrovert.
I’m proud of that, and I’m excited, too—so, so excited for what this means. This is, after all, just the beginning—not only of a new church, but of a new chapter of my life.
It is all just the start.
One more thing of note about the service today: as awesome as the social time was, everything else about it was even better—everything meaning—well, it. Having a church. Being in a church. Being with the church. Just doing it. As I sat in the service and prayed, sometimes along with the others, sometimes just on my own, I felt the strength that comes to us in gatherings like this, gatherings that may not even be religious in name but that emphasize in some way the importance of community and love. All of the rest of the day today, prayer has been easier, feeling spiritual has been easier, letting go of imperfections in myself has been easier.
I feel like I’m walking in love.
And isn’t that just another form of prayer?
So today, I am praying all day. I am, without ceasing, in a state of prayer.
If one church service can help me do that, it surely won’t be long after going to church every week before “today” becomes “many days” and “may days” becomes “always.”
Amen and so be it to that.
***
My friends news is also good. I’ve gotten to know two new people recently: Friend Number Twelve and Friend Number Thirteen, I’ll dub them. Both are writers. Twelve is the lady I met at Center for Spiritual Living that I told you about before. She’s smart and a great conversationalist, but (and this is a problem) she doesn’t actually live in Seattle. She’s also more than a bit abrasive—something I can overlook to a degree, but not entirely.
Friend Thirteen is someone I have a little more hope for. Like Twelve, Thirteen is intelligent (her critiques are super good), but unlike her she’s also just really easy to like. I met her in my writing group, where I noticed that no matter who reads their work and what level of skill it shows, she always makes them feel special. There’s definitely something spiritual in the way she approaches others, though we’ve haven’t talked about it (yet).
As for the other moms’ group: I’ve attended several more activities and met more people, but no one I’ve felt compelled to email yet, and I haven’t heard anything from the ones I have, either. Thank God I now have the churchgoers to fill the gap.
***
September 24: I’m Feeling It
So—wow. Been about a month since I wrote last, and let me just say: I’m feeling it.
In terms of friends, not a lot to report. I did meet a couple of new people, so that’s good. They are two of the women at my church, a couple, and I’ll call them Friend Fourteen and Friend Fifteen. They are about my age, super friendly, deep thinkers, and most important: they actually want to have friends. At our church planning meeting a few days ago, to which only I and they showed up, we had a very nice conversation. They told me about how hard it was to find a church they liked, that they felt at home in. We all agreed that our experience at our new church has been exceptional, and that we’re confident this is where we belong. For the first time in a long time, I feel not only hopeful about these new friends—but I actually feel pretty good about my chances with them as well.
Regarding my other friendships: Friend One is still a good option. One day this month I was having a rough time and I ended up talking to her and her husband about it for about an hour. The funny thing: it actually helped. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m exaggerating my perceived need for friendship, but then something like that happens and I realize: I’m not. I’m really not.
As it turns out, friendship is not all that overrated.
The other friendships that are still going strong: Friend Four and the two older women I told you about, though for one reason or another I haven’t had occasion to see any of them in over a month.
Okay, then. That’s the friendship news. Now I suppose you want to hear about something much more important, namely: how I’m doing spiritually.
Oh, goodness. Oh, my gosh. I wish I had better news for you on this front—I really, really do. I want to encourage you, to inspire you—and I want to just be feeling better about it all myself. But if I told you I was fine, that would just not be the truth—and in the end, all that I have is the truth. And so, here is that truth: I am a bit of a failure. Not a total failure—just a bit of one, at least for now.
Here’s what’s been going on to make me feel this way: A few weeks ago, our family went on a trip. It was a wonderful vacation, and I enjoyed it very much. It gave Dave and me lots of quality time together. We even laughed—a lot (he really is a very funny guy).
We made memories.
The trip was a success, but what hasn’t been such a success since then is my spiritual life. While away, I decided to put my spiritual practices largely on hold. This included my meditation as well as my contemplative evening walks. (Well, actually, I’d already put those on hold a week or two prior to the trip, citing hot weather as an excuse, but in any case.)
During the trip, I didn’t really notice much of a difference in my level of peace and joy. There were some rough trip-related and sleep deprivation-related moments, but nothing I couldn’t bounce back from fairly easily.
Then, about a week ago, we came home.
The first few days were okay; I got wrapped up in a few would-be stressful activities and I noted with great self-satisfaction how well I handled them. I felt mature. I felt strong. I felt very in control of my emotions.
I felt, pretty much, good.
And maybe as a result of that, or maybe as a result of just being busy, I didn’t resume my meditation practice until—well, until today, really, and that only from sheer desperation. Because after things calmed down at home, and all the unpacking was done, and all the busyness was over, it happened: I hit a freaking wall. I became suddenly very depressed, a depression which culminated in a very quiet drive home last night that ended in lots of tears and a heartfelt hug from my husband. The weird thing? I don’t even really know why it happened.
Over the past few days, life—the life that before the vacation I’d been thoroughly enjoying—has been basically back to normal. I get up (usually after plenty of sleep these days as I’ve finally gotten the baby to sleep longer at a time), do some household stuff and some computer stuff, then take the baby to do errands. At some point he falls asleep and I pull the car over and take advantage of some lovely quiet time. Then we go home and Dave watches him while I do some more house-related stuff. In the evening there’s always some activity to go to (usually a group meditation), and after that we take a walk and go to bed.
What in the world could possibly be better than that?
And yet—I’m not happy. Yup, the old adage is absolutely true: happiness really does come from within.
And so, here’s the question I’m facing today: how do I get it back? And the answer is I don’t know.
The one thing I do know, though, is that I will get my spiritual high again. I’ve come back from much worse—much, much worse—than the way I feel right now, and have even surpassed my previous level of hope, love and joy. And as I’m now back to regular meditation, it may even be much sooner than I expect.
Who knows? It may even start right now.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself today, over and over again.
***
September 26: I Am Two
For a very long time—most of my life, I suppose—I have been two people. One of me is hesitant, doubtful, depressed, while the other is just sparkling. On any given day, I must choose which one I’m going to be.
The decision is harder than it sounds.
Lately, I’ve had so much to be thankful for: my family, my spirituality, my financial success, increased time with friends. I’ve even had better sleep. It’s like one my new affirmations says: “I am energy, and the energy I am is love.” Nothing is real except that, so there is nothing bad in my life.
On the days when it’s just me and the baby and I don’t want to stay at home or take a walk, I put him in the car and drive to a coffee shop. If by the time I get there he has fallen asleep I get some coffee at the drive-thru, then park the car until his nap ends and read a book. If he’s still awake I drink my coffee inside and entertain him the best I can, which isn’t so hard when there are other people around for him to stare at.
Later when we’re at a store and a happy song starts to play, I dance with him in the aisle. I narrate our outings for him aloud—even the most mundane details—and stare at his beautiful face and tell him over and over how perfect he is and how much I love him. I say it out loud, oblivious to any stranger’s stare.
These are the times that I sparkle.
And there are other times, too. I sparkle on my walks. I sparkle, almost always, during and shortly after meditation sessions. I sparkle in many social situations. Even so—I don’t sparkle enough.
See, in spite of these many and beautiful and inspired moments of my life, I still feel alone. I am still lonely, and sometimes I’m even depressed.
Like I said: two people.
And so, as is my habit, instead of sitting around pondering my lack, I do something much more helpful: I make a plan. And here is that plan:
Stay busy. Keep going on those mom and baby outings, and keep filling my calendar with as many social things as I can;
Increase my times of meditation to three per day (can I really do this?); and
Continue to seek inspiration. My involvement with my new church is so exciting to me not just because it’s something cool to do, but because it feels so right. Keep busy, but be guided by my spirit at the same time, if at all possible.
I don’t want to be depressed Katie anymore. I want to be sparkling Katie, every day, all day long. If I can do that, I will have found what I’ve been seeking in this journal—or at least I’ll be well on my way.
I’ll try my new plan this week and let you know how it goes.
***
September 30: I Just Stopped
Just a quick check-in today. Last time I wrote I was feeling pretty terrible, so I wanted you to know what has happened since, namely: I stopped.
I just stopped feeling terrible.
I guess I should attempt to explain how this happened, but actually, there isn’t all that much to tell. Saturday, I woke up feeling better after a successful meditation day Friday. I kept busy. I took a walk. Then, on Sunday, I went to church. It was only my second actual service and lemme tell ya: it was still truly awesome. The people there are beautiful. We had lunch together afterwards like we did the first time, which was nice, and everything just went well.
The best part, though? I felt it. During part of the service, someone volunteered to hold the baby for me and I just sat with my eyes closed and my hands palms-up (in my preferred meditation position) and I didn’t pray, really, and I didn’t say affirmations, really. I just . . . felt.
And it felt pretty darn good.
In fact, it felt better than pretty darn good; it may have felt better than I’ve ever felt in a spiritual way before.
Last week I wrote that I knew this would happen, and what do you know: I was right.
I am very thankful for this church.
But before I talk more about that, let me give you the friends report. Let me see now . . . Where to begin? I suppose I’ll start with last night.
Last night, after an enjoyable meeting of my writers’ group, I had some even more enjoyable one-on-one chats with the attendees, and two—yes, two—invited me to hang out with them in the coming few weeks.
I think that’s a world’s record for me.
One of them, Friend Thirteen, I told you about before. She’s the one who is so easy to like. The other is also a very interesting, sweet person but with whom I feel a bit less chemistry. I’ll call her Friend Sixteen. Still, I enjoyed our talk and will respond to her email (yes, she emailed me already) today.
What else. Becoming ever closer to Friends Fourteen and Fifteen, the gay couple from church. They will babysit for me tonight so I’ll get to hang out with them a little beforehand. Also, at church this week there was a new lady who is like me a new mom, and as part of my church duties I gave her a welcome call. I will call her again today and invite her to coffee or something. Since I already know we have a few things in common, I’m going to go ahead and put her on the list.
She’ll be Friend Seventeen.
While I’m at it, why don’t I add a few others from church to the list as well? Friends Eighteen, Nineteen and Twenty are all church volunteers like me. We meet every Sunday morning to set things up, then chat for a while before the service begins. It’s a great time, and Eighteen, Nineteen and Twenty are part of the reason why. They’re spiritually-minded, of course, but more than that: they’re just really cool.
I think I can learn a lot from them.
Oh, one last thing I almost forgot: The other day I went to the house of one of the moms in my moms’ group to buy her baby carrier. We had a good time chatting and watching the kids, and at one point she made the following statement: “You know, I think it’s been, like, weeks since I’ve had a meaningful adult conversation—or any adult conversation—besides with my husband.”
As I left her house, this friend (Number Twenty-One) invited me to come over again sometime soon, just to visit. It’s my hope that she will become my first real friend—not just a let’s-hang-out-with-the-other-moms-who-show-up-at-the-playground kind of friend—from my working moms’ group.
And so, I am having some success. In the nine months during which I’ve been keeping this journal I have made two friends from my writing group, one from my other moms’ group and lots more from church. Do I have a best friend yet? No, I don’t. But the couple from church feels like they’re getting close to that. In just the few weeks we’ve known each other, I’ve already shared a great deal with them about myself and learned a lot about them, too. All of us believe that the relationships we’re forming with each other are just the beginning.
We are building something, we realize. We may only have forty or so church members and ten or so volunteers, of which only three or four are close to my age. But soon, there will be more—lots more. Who knows? The church may someday become big. In any case, we’ll have something that’s so much cooler and more amazing and, in my life, rarer than any single friend could ever be: we’ll have a group.
Finally, what I’ve been trying to bring together by joining my moms’ groups and hosting parties at my house and doing everything I’ve been doing all year and beyond, will occur.
I will be part of a group.
And so, at this point, I have to ask: have I already arrived? Has the goal I made for myself at the beginning of the year, namely to find a few close friends, already—five months before the deadline—been met? And my answer, I’ll have you know, is a bold one.
It is yes.
Yes. My goal has been met or, put more accurately, is being met. I know you might caution me at this point not to get too excited about something that is so new and just starting out. But today, as I sit here right now, that is just not how I feel. I don’t feel like being cautious. I don’t feel like being political and circumspect.
I feel like having faith.
***
In related news: Remember my goal to meditate three times per day? Well, you’ll never believe it, but here it is: I am doing it. I’m actually doing it.
I am meditating at church. I am meditating in the car. I am meditating at a Hindu spiritual center I found.
Meditation is my new hobby.
How in the world is this happening? I don’t know. All I know is that it is happening, and I appreciate it.
I really do like being one person.
And so—I’m back. And now I ask myself again the question of the year: Am I ready to start praying without ceasing? And again, I’m not really sure that I am.
As we used to say in church, I may not yet be willing, but I am definitely willing to be willing. And for now, that will just have to do. Maybe after I’ve fully and completely established my three times of meditation per day I’ll be ready for the next step—whatever that may be. Well, not maybe—probably. Definitely.
Definitely, I will soon be ready.
***
October 6: Oh, Crap
October has begun, and here’s what I think about that: Oh, crap. Only three more months to find the divine connection I’ve been looking for.
I am well and truly screwed.
As far as meditation goes, well … it goes. In spite of this and my other spirituality-related efforts, though, every day is definitely not bliss. Today, for instance, I am not feeling particularly inspired, even though there’s no clear reason why not.
And so, we turn again to the question of the year: When will I ever learn to pray without ceasing?
Well, today I actually have an answer for you: I’ve decided to start right now.
Let me tell you why.
***
In my last entry, I reported that despite the occasional feelings of inspiration, when it comes to praying without ceasing I’ve still been dragging my feet. And in the week or so since then it’s been even worse: I’ve slowed down on meditation as well. I mean, I still say my affirmations and meditate regularly—but not for nearly as long as before.
My excuse? I don’t want to use the baby’s naptime for something so seemingly unproductive. After all, the two hours or so that he is asleep are the only reliably free two hours of my day.
You understand, I’m sure: these are my moments, my special, wonderful moments to myself. I can do anything, anything at all, and maybe most important, I can think. No one is distracting me, asking for my attention. I can write. I can read. I can fly through a to-do list in record time . . . Or I can just eat a meal without anyone there grabbing at my food.
I can do anything I want; I have super powers.
So you can see why sitting still and doing absolutely nothing during this time would be so difficult.
Okay, then. What about my other meditation times, the ones I attend with the baby? Well, lately those have lessened both in quality and in number. One of them was preempted by the small group I joined for church, and as another is held on the weekend my attendance there was always spotty. As for the third? Last week the baby proved himself too much to handle there when he threw up four times on the host church’s carpet.
I still love meditation, and I still attend one session per week plus church. I also do occasionally enjoy longer sessions at home or in the car. But that handful of times isn’t enough; I don’t want to be a meditation hobbyist, as I previously implied.
I want to be fully committed.
In any case. This is where I’m at today, and I’m just going to have to accept it. Lately my primary spiritual practice is more like what I hoped it would be at the beginning of the year before starting the whole meditation thing: continually asking for divine guidance and continually bringing myself back to the awareness of God. Because this of course is something I can do anywhere, and at any time at all.
And really, it’s what I want to do. It’s meditation, but it’s also a whole lot more than that. It’s a way of bringing joy and connectedness into my every action, my every decision—my whole self. It’s not just a practice—it’s a way of life.
And so, that is what I’ve decided: As much as I love meditation, praying without ceasing is what I am really meant to do—and what I’m going to do.
Today is October 6th. On this date, it begins.
***
(later)
Praying without ceasing, asking for guidance for the smallest of actions, remaining aware of my body (as Tolle says to do) and of the Divine. And guess what? It’s working.
I can feel it working.
What do you know—my inspiration was here all along. I just had to make the decision to see it.
I. Love. This.
***
October 8: The Turning Point
Last Sunday, something happened that I’ve been looking forward to writing about all week: the turning point. That’s right, I didn’t say “a” turning point, I said “the” turning point.
What do I mean by this phrase? Well, that’s a bit . . . involved. Let me explain by shortening a long story, then lengthening it once again.
The shortened story is this: I haven’t been praying without ceasing every day. (I know: big surprise, right?) In spite of this, though, things have been going pretty well. Here’s why:
1. There are some days that I do—and those are really awesome days indeed;
2. Every day I at least make the attempt. I at least remind myself this is what I want to do—no more “wait for tomorrow” kind of stuff;
3. It is getting easier; and
4. It is getting more frequent as well.
Now like I said, until last Sunday, I really didn’t realize these statements were true. Until then, I saw my mix of good days and bad days since my last prematurely triumphant journal entry as, well, a mix.
Truth be told, I really didn’t think I was getting anywhere.
My prayers have often felt uninspired. My times of meditation have been short and constantly interrupted. My walks have been infrequent. And as for following my intuition? Well, it’s hard to do what the universe is telling you to do when you aren’t convinced you’re even hearing it right.
And so, I struggled. Here’s the thing, though: I did not give up.
And that makes me pretty proud.
There are several reasons I didn’t give up, but today let me highlight just one.
The reason has to do with my first day of college: October 6, 1997. On that day, my life changed forever. No longer—never again, actually—would I live with my parents at home. No longer would I have to follow someone else’s rules.
Finally, I was an adult.
This must have meant more to me than I even realized at the time, I suppose, because in order to relate this story to you I did not have to look up the date in an old journal or school paperwork.
I have remembered it ever since.
Okay, you may be saying, what does this have to do with praying without ceasing? Well, just and simply this: The date of my last entry, the one in which I spontaneously decided to begin again my attempt to pray without ceasing, was October 6th.
Now, maybe this doesn’t matter. Maybe it is just a coincidence that this (hopefully) new phase of my life began on the anniversary of the beginning of another. As you may or may not know, according to my spiritual beliefs, life circumstances and coincidences and whatever other events occur don’t really have meaning in and of themselves, except the meaning we give them. Of course, the great advantage of this belief is that it holds within it something very special: the open-ended invitation to interpret events in ways that benefit me and encourage growth.
And so, that is what I did. The possibility of not only celebrating one achievement by beginning another, but (admittedly) of actually being able to remember, possibly for the rest of my life, the precise date when this new phase began, was too attractive a possibility to pass up. And so, ever since this October 6th, I have never once said to myself, “I’ll wait for another day to begin—a day when it feels more right.”
Instead, I’ve decided to view that date as a sign.
It was October 6th when I took on this challenge again, I told myself in my weaker moments of late. It was usually just a very fleeting thought, one I was barely aware of—but as we know, those are often the most powerful kind.
Right now, I don’t feel like I can do it, but maybe the universe is saying it disagrees.
Besides, it’s September. I really do need to get this thing done.
***
So, there it is. There is the reason that in spite of my repeated failures to pray without ceasing, I have not given up. Sometimes, the strength you need to carry out your goal is sort of just magically there, placed fully within your immediate grasp. Other times, you’ve gotta kinda believe that it is—then look really hard for the evidence you’re right.
In any case, last Sunday as I was sitting in church, all of these things were going through my mind. I was remembering my goal while at the same time soaking in the spiritual strength that often comes to me while in the presence of people who share similar spiritual beliefs. Then, all during the service and for the rest of the day as well, I stayed in that mindset of peace.
At no point during the day did I say my mantras. At no point did I sit quietly with crossed legs and raised palms and meditate. I didn’t even take a long walk. Instead, this is what I did: I talked to people. I made lunch. I played with the baby. I hung out with my husband—even watched TV with him.
And, through it all, I felt the presence of God.
That feeling—the one all spiritual people have felt at some point and ever after seek out again and again—I will now try to describe. Not because you don’t know what it’s like, but just because I think it may be interesting to try.
Here it is: It is a nearly physical sensation that radiates from my chest out to each of my limbs and beyond. It is a pulsing and a warming, and along with it are thoughts of—well, for me, mostly of gratitude. I don’t have to say or think anything in particular when I feel it (many mystics, of course, would argue that it’s better if you don’t), but if I do it’s often along the lines of this: Thank you, God. Thank you for trees. Thank you for clouds. Thank you for driving. Thank you for my baby. Thank you for my husband. Thank you for my life. Thank you for flowers.
Whatever—whatever at all—comes into my mind, I just give thanks for that.
After a while of this, I’m able to let go of what’s bothering me. Then when the feeling I want to have breaks through I sit with it, notice it, and appreciate it.
It is as simple as that.
Sunday was a beautiful, blessed day—one of the best I’ve had in a long while. But Sunday was not the turning point—Tuesday was.
Allow me to explain.
All day Sunday I wondered if I’d ever feel bad again. How could I? I thought. I am a part of God, and the end of it all is Good. However, after that something happened that gave me the answer. That thing was Monday.
Monday, everything went wrong.
Well—maybe “everything” is a bit of an exaggeration. Not everything went wrong, really—mostly just one thing that then made everything else feel, and thus be, bad. By early afternoon, I no longer felt even a hint of the inspiration I’d so enjoyed only the day before.
I just felt depressed.
And yet—even then, I realized something. Remembering my previous bliss, I reminded myself that the depression was just a temporary thing, something I allow myself to experience at various moments for various reasons. But if a day like yesterday was possible, I told myself, another one like it—and many more after that—will be, too.
Now, don’t misunderstand me here—this one thought did not instantly change my mood. But by the time I woke up the next morning, I felt a lot better, and by the time I went to bed that night, I was again right where I wanted to be.
I was back in the zone.
Maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal, or at least not as big a deal as I’m making it out to be. But here’s the thing: I was able to get back to my meditative, praying without ceasing state quickly—to intercept and subdue my funk after only a single day. You do know what this means, don’t you?
It means my persistence is paying off.
And that is what I mean by “the” turning point. The turning point was the realization that yes, I will actually get where I’m going eventually, but not because I just know myself, know that I’ll keep trying until I do.
No—I know I will get where I’m going eventually because I am already on my way.
I am making progress, and it’s tangible progress, progress I can attest to with evidence from my life.
Right now, as I sit here, I am feeling the Divine.
And I’m not meditating. I’m not walking. I’m not even praying as such.
I am writing. I am getting dressed. I am brushing my teeth. I am thinking about other things entirely.
And I am, at the same time, feeling a great deal of peace.
Do you remember an entry from a few months ago where I said I hoped that soon my long list of spiritual practices would sort of merge into one unified thing—one blended, continuous property and habit of my daily life? I do. I remember writing it and realizing how important that step would be, since then this thing I call praying without ceasing would no longer feel like a struggle or like a list of items on a to-do list (meditate three times per day, say affirmations every morning, etc.). Instead, it would all just sort of happen—easily and naturally, and all at the very same time.
Like I said before: It would just be one Thing.
Well, today I can tell you that maybe—just maybe—that day has already come. As of yesterday, I’ve decided that no longer will I make it my goal to meditate a certain number of times per day, or set aside special prayer time in the morning, or take a walk three times a week, or whatever and ever and ever. Not that there’s anything wrong with those goals—they just aren’t the right goals for me right now, and even if I wanted them to be, actually accomplishing them would be quite difficult—difficult enough that I’d fail or give up (as in fact I have done). Maybe at some point in the future I will make these things goals in themselves again, but lately I’ve been realizing that my one goal for the year—the one I started this book with, that of learning how to pray without ceasing—really is, in fact, enough. Because when I’m praying without ceasing, I’m not just asking for intuitive guidance and direction in my actions, as I once thought and wrote here. When I’m praying without ceasing, I am meditating—when circumstances provide an opportunity to do so. I am saying mantras and affirmations—when I get a thought I don’t like and am trying to focus on something else. I am following my inner guide—when in a sensitive conversation with someone and trying to find the right thing to say.
I am walking when my body says to walk. I am focusing my awareness on my body when I need to feel more calm. I am encouraging others with my words, making divine declarations, when the situation calls for it.
And all of this, of course, is prayer.
So, part of my turning point has to do with the fact that I am actually seeing progress—that I am in fact more in tune with God’s presence than I ever have been before. But part of it has to do with the way I define that presence, and that beautiful word “prayer.” Looking back, I’m not sure why I equated praying without ceasing with following clear divine guidance in each and every action I take. It must have had something to do with the book I read about Brother Lawrence and his admirable ability to do so. In the past few days, though, I’ve experienced something that convinces me that, at least for now, this total clarity and unity isn’t necessary in order to be successful in my goal. Three times in the past three days, I experienced coincidences of timing that, for me, confirmed that the actions I was taking were the right and best ones in that moment—even though at the time I didn’t think I was following my intuition in doing them, but just my mind as usual. The details aren’t important; they involve finances and phone calls and finding the right people for the job. But each morning, I had prayed that I would take the right actions that day—and then I just did what seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t stop to pray about it first, even for a second. Of course, if something didn’t feel right, I’d be in tune enough to recognize that and move on to something else. Other than that, though? No clear thought was needed. Following my so-called “intuition” was on autopilot.
People always say (as I myself have said) that you need not—even should not—try to force yourself to maintain your spiritual practices. No good comes from doing anything like this because you “should,” they say, and like I said: I’ve agreed. And yet, at the same time that I knew this to be true, I was forcing myself to do certain things. Not force-forcing them, I would have said—just “setting goals.” See, even though we feel that it’s true that spiritual practices should never be forced but only enjoyed, that concept is essentially difficult for us as humans to truly believe. How can we grow spiritually, we wonder, if we don’t consistently do the things that help us grow? And how do we do these things if we don’t, well, make ourselves do them? After all, life is busy. Other things grab our attention and distract us. Some of those things help us survive, and others are just more fun. In any case, spirituality isn’t always our first priority.
Well, finally, I have an answer to this dilemma—my answer, anyway. I’ve decided that I won’t make myself do anything I don’t truly desire to do, but—and here’s the important part—every day, I will remind myself that those things are freely available. I will remind myself that some days I will pray more and some days I will pray less, but whatever amount I choose that day is enough. It is my hope that after realizing this, the pressure to be perfect will be off, and my spirit will be free to enjoy its communion with God.
So, to return again to the short story of the past month or more: No, I’m not yet successfully praying without ceasing every day—not even close. But I am praying a lot more than I ever used to, and even on my really bad days, I’m doing pretty darn well.
So, much like in my last entry about my friendships, I guess I’m asking the question: Where do I go from here? Despite my very best intentions, at this point I don’t actually anticipate achieving my goal for divine connection in the next four months. I guess I should have the perspective, then, that that’s the fun of this thing: taking one step at a time, then watching to see what happens next. Funny thing, though: for the first time in a long time, maybe even ever, I’m actually pretty happy with where I am on my spiritual path.
I’m doing good. I’m feeling good. I’m feeling God. Most important: I know, finally know, that with every day that passes, I am making progress. One day, I’ll be exactly where I want to be: living in a place of bliss and moment-to-moment unity with God—at least some of the time. Until then, I’m merely aware this is possible.
And that’s actually pretty cool, too.
***
October 30: I Wonder
Sometimes I wonder if when our language was evolving and people were feeling what I’m feeling now, if one person didn’t just use the word “love” and then attach it primarily to relationships, while another person thought of the word “joy” and, another, peace, and attached those words to different areas of life—or different aspects of the feeling. Who knows?
What brings this question up? you may be wondering. Well, just this: Today, I am in the zone. I’m in the flow. I’m feeling it. (“It” being of course communion with God.)
And it feels good.
It feels like joy. It feels like love. It feels like peace—all at the very same time. Why are these three words so often used together? Because they are the best. They’re the three best—and actually, I think that they’re all the same.
In any case. Today I am in love/joy/peace with the Divine, and it feels good. Last week, however, I was not. And it did not feel good. It felt pretty darn bad, actually, and it even included the end of a friendship.
A short background: Since my last entry in this journal, most of my days have been a little sub-par. Despite a fairly decent effort to maintain the spiritual high that I was on for a while, after some ongoing annoyance with a friend and another disconcerting episode my mood abruptly, then persistently, shifted—and it did not get good again. My depression (what I refer to as my “depression leftovers,” what’s left of my lows that I can’t seem to get rid of completely) was hanging on pretty tight.
So when a good friend—the best friend that I told you about at the beginning of this journal (I think I’ll call her Friend Zero)—came to visit last weekend and I said something that was a little insensitive and then she screamed and drove back home without allowing time to resolve the problem, it shook me up—hard.
This is my only really close friend besides my husband, I thought. What the hell is going to happen to us?
Because this was no ordinary fight. This was a much bigger one than we’ve ever had before—a bigger one, even, than I think I’ve ever had with anyone. Not because of the content of the fight—just because of the reaction.
And it threw me for a friggin’ loop.
First came the defensiveness—all of the arguments in my favor circling endlessly through my mind. Then came the anger, especially after the disproportionately passionate email from her the next day that culminated in a very pointed “fuck you.” You see, people don’t normally say that word to me. So maybe I overreacted, but this single word put me into a tailspin that lasted the rest of the week.
I did have some bright spots. One afternoon, after emailing someone from church (a trained counselor) about the issue, I became inspired to change my outlook on my relationships and to come up with a new affirmation, namely: “My friendship does not come for free. I demand respect.”
Now, in case you hadn’t noticed after reading this far in this journal, so far in my life I haven’t been very picky about friends. At times I guess I have been, but for the most part I’ve been too desperate and lonely to do a great deal of filtering. Now, picking my husband—that was a different matter, and a different story (but I won’t go into all of that here). But here’s the thing you may not fully understand about this situation (as I sure didn’t until now): Not only am I not very picky about who my friends are—I haven’t been very picky about how they’ve treated me, either.
That’s right: Until this happened, I had been doing what I think most people do in unpleasant moments with friends: just being nice and hoping it all works out. And what I realized this week was that this approach just isn’t working for me anymore.
Recently in church we’ve been talking about agreements and commitments. One of the points Friend Eleven (the minister) made was that sometimes, our agreements are most effective when written down. And so, as I remembered this, a lightning bolt: I am going to write out a friendship agreement—one that both parties can freely sign. There’ll be various non-negotiables listed, things that I expect of each and every friendship that I have (whether or not they want to actually sign the paper; this exercise is more for my sake than for theirs, you know).
And the first one on the list will be respect.
I was emotional, of course, when I came up with the idea, and when I told Friend Zero about it on the phone a week or so later.
“Zero,” I said, “This is what I want, but if there’s any part of it that you can’t agree to, don’t do so anyway just to make me feel good.
“This is not just a silly exercise to me; this is serious.”
And she believed me.
That weekend, we met up at my house for the first time since the incident occurred. I showed her the paper, and she decided to neither sign it nor verbally agree to its requirements.
She wanted none of it at all.
Well—not none of it. Points two through five were just fine with her. It was that first point (and the way that I interpreted it to mean “no screaming or cursing”) that she just couldn’t live with.
“I respect you, Katie,” she said. “But I believe I have a right to yell when it’s deserved.”
“I just can’t be yelled at,” I told her. “I don’t yell at people in my life, and people don’t yell at me. It’s just not my style. Maybe someday when my kids are older they’ll yell, but they can go to their rooms or do it somewhere else; I’m not going to take it from them, either.”
I guess this is what they mean by the phrase “feeling empowered.”
Here’s the thing: if the verbal attack of the other day, together with the emails to follow, were an isolated incident, it’d be one thing. However, that is not the case. Each time I plan to see Friend Zero I understand that the chances of her snapping at me at least once are pretty high—and up to this point, I guess I’ve been okay with that.
This is just the way she is, I told myself. It’s her weakness.
And when often it happened as I’d predicted it would, I didn’t argue, and the next day when she apologized I told her it was fine—every single time.
In other words: I accepted it.
And that was a mistake. But when you see someone infrequently, you tend to let certain things slide a little more than you normally would. And clearly, that is what had happened with her.
Here’s how our final conversation ended.
“Well, I guess then we can’t be friends anymore,” I said.
“I guess not,” she replied. “I am really glad we talked about it, though.”
“Me, too.”
“This makes me sad, Katie,” she added, and once again I agreed.
It was the most self-restrained angry parting I’ve ever had.
That was two days ago, and we haven’t talked or emailed each other since.
Are we really not going to be friends anymore? I wondered.
I wonder.
Here’s the thing, though: In spite of the sadness, in spite of the suckiness, I am feeling at peace. At not just at peace; I am feeling that peace/love/joy thing that I described before.
I know that I did the right thing.
And so, today I am feeling that it’s time. It’s time to do something that I’ve put off for some months: I am going to cross some friends off my list.
Not Friend Zero, of course—she wasn’t on there in the first place, as (ironically) ours was my only friendship that I believed wouldn’t change. The people I’m crossing off the list today are people I’m going to stop pursuing entirely from now on, based partly on the friendship agreement I wrote recently and partly on their lack of receptivity.
Before I do that, though, allow me to reproduce here that agreement, in order to show you what I’m talking about.
Friendship Agreement
On this __ day of ______, ____, we the undersigned agree to the following conditions of friendship:
To treat each other with respect at all times and in all circumstances, including those of hardship or distress;
To not gossip about each other, except in matters of health or safety;
To discuss any hurts, wrongs, misdeeds or misunderstandings that may arise between us with and only with each other;
To apologize when in the wrong; and
To forgive when wronged.
If at any time we do not meet these conditions, we agree that the consequences may include the suspension or termination of our friendship.
Signed in love,
(friend) (date)
(friend) (date)
So. How do you like it? Is it complete in your eyes? Maybe it isn’t, but I didn’t write it for completeness, anyway, and I didn’t write it for anyone else. These are my expectations, whether or not they’re anyone else’s—and that is good enough for me.
All right, then. Here are the friends that are left on the list:
Friend Number One (still responsive)
Friend Number Two (unresponsive)
Friend Number Three (unresponsive)
Friend Number Four (still responsive)
Friend Number Five (unresponsive)
Friend Number Six (unresponsive)
Friend Number Seven (unavailable)
Friend Number Eight (uninteresting)
Friend Number Nine (unresponsive)
Friend Number Ten (unresponsive)
Friend Number Eleven
Friend Number Twelve (unavailable)
Friend Number Thirteen
Friend Number Fourteen
Friend Number Fifteen
Friend Number Sixteen (unavailable)
Friend Number Seventeen
Friend Number Eighteen
Friend Number Nineteen
Friend Number Twenty
Friend Number Twenty-One
Friend Number Twenty-Two
Friend Number Twenty-Three
Friend Number Twenty-Four
As you can see, my old Friend Four is still on the list. Though as I told you before I do think there’s an upper limit with her, I enjoy much of the time we spend together—and she is, as the agreement requires, always respectful and mature.
A few others didn’t make the cut. Due to our lack of genuine chemistry—something I realized lately I need to weigh more heavily—Friend Eight is off the list. Ten has (to my surprise, actually) been “too busy” to get together. Twelve moved back to Costa Rica, and Sixteen really is too busy—we’ve tried several times to get together, only to have her cancel last-minute.
We move on …
***
November 30: That Is Definitely the Goal
Good news today: I have made a discovery. Do you want to know what it is right away? Or do you want me to tell you how I made it, then find out? Hmmm . . . Let’s try the former. My discovery is this: the best way to maintain my state of unceasing prayer—and the oneness-with-God feeling that goes along with it—is the very practice I started this journal with in January: asking for guidance in my actions both large and small.
Nothing—nothing—that I do during my day to increase my spiritual awareness is as effective as this.
Now, I know what I said before—that all of my spiritual practices are actually one thing, different portals that lead me to the very same place. But as you may recall I also said that some may work better than others—though until now, I didn’t actually know which of them was best for me. Now, I do—and that’s a significant improvement indeed.
And so, I have come full circle. Trying new things, making lists to help me remember them all, reading all kinds of books and following their advice. But in the end (if you consider October the end, which I don’t, really—we’ll see what happens after this) . . . In the quasi-end, I see that there’s a reason I felt so inspired to use the divine guidance method as my first and main technique for learning how to pray without ceasing: it just works really well.
What has been going on lately to make me think so? Well, simply that I’m doing it. I’m asking for guidance in my actions ten or more times each day—and I then I’m actually getting it.
Here are the times when I find asking for guidance most useful:
When deciding on my plans for the day—when and where to go. I often get an answer to this kind of prayer and when I follow it I’m always glad that I did.
While having a serious conversation, or having a regular conversation with someone I don’t know very well.
When making a big decision, of course; and
While writing.
And so, due to this wonderful success, today I’m going to do something I’ve hesitated to do thus far: I’m going to give you an example of how I perform this (admittedly odd) spiritual practice. Until this time, my self-consciousness about the unusual nature of this experiment has prevented me from doing so but today I say self-consciousness and embarrassment, be damned.
I am going to be foolish for God.
And so, here it is: a description of my morning—a typical praying-without-ceasing experience.
I wake up to the sounds of the baby. After a few minutes of letting him play in the near pitch-black darkness of our heavily shaded room, I remember to commune with the Divine. I feel my hands, my feet, my arms, my legs, and the energy that is inside them. A feeling of peace begins to emanate from my body.
It is working.
As I lie there, I let myself wonder in a prayerful way what I should do next.
Not surprisingly, the first thing I hear to do is to turn on the light.
I do so. Then I consider whether to first brush my teeth or go to the kitchen to make coffee. The answer comes: let the baby play in the bedroom while I brush my teeth. After a while Jack comes in and plays with the baby (he had been in the office) and I’m able to gratefully finish getting ready alone—and brew my coffee as well.
It is already a good day.
By the time Jack decides to hit the shower, I’m ready for some playtime myself, which, with the help of the crib, I manage to pull off while folding the rest of the laundry from the day before. There is a play date scheduled for the morning and I check in with my spirit again to see whether or not this is the best plan for the day. While there’s no absolute “yes” in my mind on this one, my desire to get out of the house combines with a lack of “no” response (sometimes the “no” feels sort of like a grey cloud hanging over the place I’m imagining) to come up with my decision.
I take the baby and go.
On the way to the play date host’s house, I decide on the route that feels right even though it follows the street with the most stoplights. As I drive I’m surprised to sail through all of the lights except one, at which I’m stopped just long enough to text the host that I’m on my way. At one point I consider changing lanes, get a “no” response, then look over my shoulder to see a car in my blind spot. I stay in the same lane until my turn comes closer, then change lanes (even though there was no particular guidance to do so).
I enjoy the drive. My mind is not racing to figure out the quickest route, or to plan the rest of my day, or even to ruminate on that argument with Zero last week. When it tries the latter, I stop and shift my attention back to my feelings both physical and spiritual. Then, when there is any little decision to be made (should I pass this car up ahead?) I consult my spirit for the answer.
In other words: My mind is occupied, but not busy.
The best part of my conversation with the Divine today happens when I arrive at the host’s house. As the women chat and watch the children play, I wait for some guidance about what to contribute—and, very often, I get it. In this way I am able to keep a close connection with my spirit while also increasing my chances that my comments will be well received.
By the way, just in case you’re wondering—getting this so-called inspiration to speak is much easier than you might think. After a thought comes I just stop and consider it for a few seconds. Sometimes the duds are obvious—they are preachy, self-serving, irrelevant or just plain clunky, and anyone trying to improve their interpersonal skills would know to avoid them, with or without divine guidance. Other ill-timed comments, however, leap to mind several times only to be shot down by the Spirit each time. You really want to say them and you have no idea why they’re inappropriate until you (inevitably) find out the reason later on. Other times you find yourself being led to say something you’d rather not say right then, and you’re a little surprised when the response is so good. These last two circumstances are where the real magic of this technique comes in, and I love it when either occurs.
It didn’t happen often today. But I did show maturity, I think, in the way I conversed. Maybe even love. And heck—at no point over the course of the morning did I embarrass myself.
So these are all good things.
Here’s a sample of our play date conversation as I recall it:
Me (changing the subject): “So, people tell me it actually gets harder after they learn how to walk. Why do you think this is?”
Mom Number One: “Well, for me, it’s not so much that she walks now as it is that she is getting into everything in the cabinets.” (She explains a bit.)
Mom Number Two: “You know, those cabinet latches work really, really well.”
Me: “Definitely.”
This line of talk continues, and by the end of the morning Mom Number One is planning to baby proof her cabinets later that same day. A miraculous intervention? Maybe not. But she does have two young children at home; it could feel like a miracle to her.
In any case, back to my morning.
At one point, I get the feeling that it’s time to leave. I don’t want to go, but I look at my clock and it’s the baby’s naptime, so I do. The baby falls asleep during the ten-minute car ride home, and when I get to the driveway I feel an (unasked-for) urge to back the car into the driveway rather than pull in forward in my usual way. Since the baby is sleeping and therefore sensitive to noise, I turn off the engine, pull the hand break and take out my keys in a deliberate, waiting-for-guidance kind of way. The baby does not wake up. I then decide to go inside for a while before coming back out to the car to do some writing while waiting for the baby to wake up (a little tradition of mine that’s perfectly safe in our mild climate, in case you were wondering). However, I get a clear sense that I should stay in the car and start writing now, instead. I fight this idea for a moment, then give in. Later I’m glad I did; the baby’s nap was much shorter than usual and I still got quite a bit done.
Half an hour into his nap the baby wakes up and I realize I have to get the car in motion again right away so he’ll fall back asleep. At this point I’m glad that the car is turned the right way so I can pull out of the driveway quickly. After he’s asleep I park the car again and resume my writing.
And now here I sit, and this has thus far been my day.
Often, the difference that my prayers make is a bit more significant, but rarely is it life-altering. On Sunday I felt not to suggest my preferred driving route to a friend who was already late to a meeting we were both attending, and she made it there well ahead of me. Other times the guidance helps me know when to bring up a sensitive subject with my husband (and when not to). It helps me plan my day (I’m glad I waited to buy groceries a few days back until I had the car, not the stroller; I wouldn’t’ve been able to carry a quarter of what I wanted to buy otherwise). And the somewhat trivial nature of these prayers is the reason I’ve been too embarrassed to tell you about them until now.
“You wait for God to tell you when to do the dishes, the laundry, take out the trash?” I imagine you asking after reading this. And my answer is: not always—not by a long shot yet.
But that is definitely the goal.
Yesterday I planned to watch a movie during the baby’s afternoon nap. I wasn’t feeling all that well, and I thought it would be nice. However, when I got a clear “no” and sat down at the computer instead, I was glad to have changed my mind. I got a few things done, reversing my malaise of the morning. Before bed the baby and I got to watch our movie together with minimal complaints on his part—something that rarely happens (both the movie and the minimal complaints).
It worked out really well.
Earlier this year I told you about the guidance that ultimately led to a life-changing discovery (that of my new church). That was a wonderful thing indeed, but this little daily stuff is—yes, I’m going to say it—this little daily stuff is even better. I no longer worry so much about my schedule—things just seem to work out. I don’t worry so much in general, actually, as my mind is occupied with the present moment instead.
I am being constantly reminded of the existence of my spirit, and that is a beautiful thing.
I told you before the reason it took me so long to actually do the thing I meant to start doing in January, but just in case you forgot, I’ll say it again now: I didn’t want to give up control. And sometimes, I still don’t; I think I can figure out things better by myself.
Here’s the thing, though: this is myself that’s leading me in this way. According to my belief system, I am part and parcel of God; I am the one Spirit that I’m consulting. I’m not inconveniencing some other busy being—I’m basically just talking to the larger, more complete version of myself.
And after all: that’s what she’s there for, right?
I think so. And I think she likes not being ignored so much anymore. I think she likes being consulted, even about the smallest of decisions. After all, one of the parts of me—my spirit or my mind—has to make my decisions; it might as well be the smarter of the two.
Make sense?
And so. The above is a little sample of what it’s been like in my head for the past few days, and on occasion before that.
Crazy, isn’t it? And yet, if this is a form of schizophrenia as some people may believe, all I can say is: I hope it gets much worse.
***
As for my friends goal? Well, we are trucking along. The other week, at one of the meditation groups I go to, I met and had a long conversation with Friend Twenty-Two. She leads one of the weekly sessions and I am hoping to get to know her better (though I’m not getting a distinct read on whether or not the feeling is mutual). Friend Twenty-Three is also a possibility. We met at the writing moms’ group and though she’s not my usual type of friend—way too cool, I think—she actually texted me to hang out last weekend, then came to my church (in response to my invite) on Sunday.
Friend Twenty-Four is interesting. She is a member of a recovery group I occasionally attend for chronic problem eaters. We’ve met up twice already and I love our in-depth chats about all things food and eating (yes, you can actually talk deeply about food). We seem to have a lot in common and it helps that she lives nearby.
And so, that’s three more for the list, folks. Like I said: progress is being made.
***
November 12: The Verdict Is In
Well, the verdict is in: I am a work in progress. For the past week or so, I have not been praying without ceasing. Still, I’ve been feeling really, really good—and really spiritually-minded, too. Importantly, I still have one of my keys to happiness working for me, namely gratitude. Yesterday at church the minister was speaking on this subject and she said that the kind of gratitude that is causative—that has the ability to change our circumstances for the better—is the kind that you carry with you throughout your days. It’s the kind that doesn’t go away when so-called “bad” stuff happens or that comes back when “good” stuff happens.
It’s the kind that is always just sort of there.
Well, for the past week or so, and longer too I guess, this has been my experience. All day long I look for—and find—a hundred or so things to be grateful for, and I speak about my gratitude out loud, telling whoever will listen—my husband, my baby, or even just (just!) God, while on a walk. If I’m not in a good mood when I start after a while it feels like all the bad stuff has been cleared out of the corners of my mind. I am clean. I am refreshed.
I am walking in joy.
Of course, it isn’t always an easy process; most days, some negativity still manages to find its way in. But here’s the funny thing: I’ve gotten so good at counteracting these thoughts based solely on their own merits (or lack thereof) that for the past several days one of the only ones that finds its way to the conscious level on these (literally and figuratively) cool, foggy mornings is this: “I have just had three (two, five, whatever) really amazingly good days in a row. I am due for a less-than-great one.
“Maybe this will be it.”
And then my mind starts in on some guesses as to what the problem to come is likely to be.
Wow, right? Does this blow your mind as much as it does mine? I actually have an unconscious belief—and a deeply held one—that there is a limit as to how many good days I can have in a row.
Wild.
Here’s the point I’m trying to make, though: There are, I now believe, two different portals to the Source that work equally well for me. One of them is, as I’ve said before, asking for divine guidance throughout my day.
The other is just continuous gratitude.
So have I been praying without ceasing these past few weeks? No. But—dare I say it?—I sort of have been, too. Now, don’t get me wrong: I want to get back to doing what I was doing before, for all of the reasons I told you before. But gratitude, man. It really is my current secret to happiness, especially when asking for guidance just seems way too hard.
That, and a whole lot of sleep.
Anyway, because of this recent change, I realized today that I want to reinstitute The List. Not the friends list—that one’s never been in danger. I mean the list of spiritual practices that I made a few months back. See, a lot of the time, when I’m not in the place of joy and communication and prayer that I’d like to be, I don’t really know how to get back. I try whatever comes to mind, but it’s not always effective. What I need is a more systematic approach with specific ideas that can help. Besides, I always seem to be learning new tips—and now that I’m going to church regularly, that is especially true. Listing them means that I won’t forget what I’ve already learned (assuming I occasionally read over the list, of course),
Okay, then. Here are the spiritual practices I wrote before, with my recent additions:
Saying affirmations;
Meditating by feeling my inner body;
Meditating by repeating a mantra;
Asking my spirit for guidance in my actions both small and large;
Saying prayers of thanks repeatedly;
Writing affirmations;
Keeping a journal of answered prayers;
Listening to spiritual music;
Singing spiritual and uplifting music;
Reading spiritual books;
Smiling, even when I don’t feel like it;
Doing good deeds for others; and
Reaching out to friends.
I suppose this will do for now.
***
November 24: There’s a Party in My Head
Okay. I am not proud of this, but here it is: I have backslidden. One day just recently it hit me that for some reason, I wasn’t doing it anymore—even though “it” had previously been making me so happy. I went from doing “it” and being happy to just being grateful all the time but still being happy to what has been happening the past two weeks, which is not doing “it” and not being as happy as I’d like to be, either.
The question I ask myself about this turn of events is, of course, why. Why do I stop doing something that is in every way, for all of the reasons I mentioned before, so cool?
Well, here’s one answer: it’s just hard.
So many mornings I tell myself that this is the day that I will start up again, and every time (until today, which I’ll tell you about in a minute), I just don’t get an immediate answer to my prayer for guidance.
I don’t know what to do next.
I might try to be super self-aware and discover what it is, exactly, that’s keeping me from getting the information that I want. Do I have enough faith? I’ve wondered. Am I giving the Universe enough time to respond?
Am I doing it right?
Self-analysis can be such a tricky thing, can’t it? Sometimes you think you need it when really what you need is to just shut up all of the voices in your head and all of the conflicting advice they’re giving you and to just do whatever you feel you need to do. And if whatever that is fails, you don’t give up; you either try something different, or you just try the same thing again later.
In this case, I went with the latter route; this morning I just started fresh and tried again.
And guess what? It worked. Right now as I write this I’m not as sensitive to that guiding voice as I’d like to be, but for several hours this morning, I was—and it made a difference.
Like I said before, though, it wasn’t easy. I got kicked out of the “flow” (so to speak) when I was asked to do something that I wasn’t sure was a good idea which, come to think of it, was a really bad reason to stop listening for guidance. Anyway, ever since then I’ve been pretty off and on with knowing where best to go and what best to do. I wonder if taking some quiet time for meditation in the mornings (yes, that’s been pretty lacking lately, too) would help.
So, that’s my plan. Add in a little meditation, keep plugging away. And remember that whatever the reasons are for my many failures in this area, they will be resolved in time—as long as I just keep the vision, stay on the path. After all, I’ve already come a pretty long way, haven’t I? Perfection is not an overnight thing—and neither is spiritual connection. I mean, it can be.
But I’m not gonna be waiting around counting on it.
Okay, then. That’s the spirituality news. In friends news: I met someone awesome—I mean really awesome. (Yay! Party in my head!)
It happened after one of my (relatively) few moments of clarity last week when I asked God to show me which way to go on my walk. I wanted to do my usual circle but felt to go the other way instead. Not long after that I came across a woman who lives in my neighborhood. She struck up a conversation with me and we started walking together. At one point I said, “Which way do you need to go?”
“I was heading home, that way,” she said, indicating her street. “But I don’t mind just continuing on with you; I’m really enjoying our conversation.”
And that, I feel confident, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
We walked and talked for an hour more, and like I said, I have a lot of hope for this one. Friend Twenty-Five is genuine, spiritually minded, artsy, mature and—most notably—happy and positive in the extreme. After talking to her I remembered what it was like to really hit it off with someone in a way that is easy, unforced. We talked about all kinds of personal things—husbands and parenting, to name two. At one point we actually found ourselves celebrating our newfound friendship, mentioning how truly happy we were to meet. It was such a nice talk that it makes me wonder if I’ve been expecting too little of my friends not only in how they treat me, but in how much I actually enjoy them as well.
Not to mention in how much they’re responding to my overtures. Whereas Twenty-Five has already called me and we already have another walk planned, I seem to be getting nowhere with almost everyone else on my list.
I’ll review again soon, but suffice it to say for now: today was a very good day.
And that wasn’t all that happened. Inspired by my good luck with Twenty-Five, on Halloween night while everyone was trick-or-treating Jack and I dressed up the baby and knocked on a few of our neighbors’ doors to introduce ourselves. In this way I made three new friends: Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven and Twenty-Eight. Because of this sudden influx, I’ve decided to plan a party for the neighbors. Oh, and lest I forget—I met two more possibilities, Numbers Twenty-Nine and Thirty, at church this month, and have coffee dates tentatively planned with both.
Things are moving along …
***
November 30: I’m a Mess
I cried last night. And the night before, and the day before that, and last Saturday in a parking lot, too. The tears were mostly unexpected but they all happened for the same reason, namely: I am lonely. I am lonely, and I am realizing it more and more.
One of the main reasons: my lack of success with the people at church. My hopes for them were so high, but lately, it’s all come to nothing. Well—not nothing, exactly; I still see them every Sunday. We laugh and we talk and we set up chairs. But my calls, texts and emails have often gone unanswered and I haven’t spent time with anyone outside of the services yet. It’s kind of like the problem with the moms’ group I’m in: it’s not that we don’t like each other, because we do.
It’s just that we aren’t all that close.
And that’s not all the bad friends news I have for you today. Last night I hosted a party at my home for my new neighborhood acquaintances that I told you about. My hopes for the gathering were high, just as they usually are in this situation.
It will be so much fun, I think as I plan the food, buy the flowers. We will all laugh and talk and bond, and maybe by the time we’re done we will have formed a group.
Inevitably, though, when the day of the party comes, my feelings about the situation are very different: I just want to bail.
Yesterday was one of those days, and, possibly not coincidentally, it was also one of Those Days. The kind you wish you could just erase from your mind by shaking an Etch-A-Sketch.
Why was it so hard? Well that’s the thing: It wasn’t. It was just a day. I just woke up with the baby (after not quite enough sleep, I admit), drank coffee and played and hung out, all as usual. We had a nice time seeing a friend from church, taking a walk together. But as the afternoon wore on, I became more and more easily annoyed and by the time the party began, I was on the verge of tears.
So, I gave the baby to Jack for a while and went to the grocery store for some alone time. Before I went in I sat in the car for a while, thinking and praying, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
A couple of possibilities came to mind. Baby overload? Stomach bloating, feeling fat? But nothing I came up with really seemed to explain the emotions. Then, another thought: Would I be feeling this bad, I wondered, if I didn’t have this party to host tonight?
And the answer, I decided, was no. Now, it probably wouldn’t’ve been a five-star day; it just wasn’t in the cards. But would I be feeling this sense of despair? I doubted it.
I just really didn’t want to have the party.
And so, I did what I usually do under these circumstances: I prayed. In this case, I prayed that all of the guests would call to tell me they weren’t coming, and that Jack and I could celebrate by putting our pajamas on and watching TV.
However, that is not what happened. What happened was that we had the party and it was fine . . . but I had the distinct impression that everyone there felt exactly the same way I did.
I was sure they would’ve rather been at home.
The party was scheduled for four o’clock to seven o’clock and everyone came around four forty-five and left around six thirty. It was the shortest dinner I’ve ever eaten with eight adults and five children.
So there was that to be grateful for, at least.
Anyway, after it was over I was in a worse mood than ever—and I had no idea what to do about it. I tried to take a walk, but it was too cold. I tried to talk to my husband, but I just ended up yelling at him. I tried eating, but that just made me feel worse. Finally, I said, “Screw it. This day isn’t going to get better; it just needs to get done.” Then I went to bed.
While there, I had a realization. I realized that there was something I could learn from that day—something very important. What I learned was this: I’m a mess.
See, normally I think pretty highly of myself—much too highly, maybe. I mean, it’s good to like yourself and all, but when in your heart you think you’re better than other people, that’s when I think you’ve crossed the line.
And that is what I have done; I have crossed that line too many times to count.
And so last night, when it hit me that I’m a mess, just like those other people to whom I compare myself so favorably and so often, it was a realization to be thankful for. Because it’s true—I really was a mess.
I was cranky, and moody. I was unforgiving and angry. I was impatient and self-centered and negative and depressed—and for no good reason at all.
And, truth be told, I still am. Right now, as I sit here, I am on the verge of tears. My heart is sad and lonely and I am trying to think of a way to feel better but I can’t. Earlier today my cell phone rang and my first thought was, I hope that’s a friend. And just a minute ago as I sat here in the car with the baby napping in the backseat, a van I didn’t recognize pulled partly up our driveway and again I found myself hoping that it was someone stopping by for a visit. As they backed up and turned around, all I could think was, I am tired of being alone.
Like I said: I’m a mess.
I am lonely. I am flawed. I depend too much on things and people for my happiness.
I am vulnerable.
And if I were a more spiritual person, this would not be the case. I’d be strong all the time. I’d be able to face much bigger problems than I have with barely a blink of the eye.
I would be at least a little invincible.
Someday, after this life is over, I will be invincible. But that is not me now—not really, not at my deepest core. I am weak, just like everybody else. And now, I know it.
And that, at least, is a gift.
Thank you, God, for that gift. Now, then: How to get back to feeling good?
