Lilacs and The Things We Lose.

After everyone left town following my mother’s funeral, one of the things left behind was a mix cd that held all of her favorite songs. It's maybe the truest part of her that I have left, since she never wrote anything or found a way to say, "this is who I was." It's a different kind of hurt, as I've grown older, to lose a person---not just the figure of my mother.  I wish I knew how she was funny or how she was sad; if there were things she lost that she never stopped missing. Mother’s day comes every year when the lilacs are blooming. They were her favorite spring flower. My childhood friends would bring her bunches of them on the days my mother drove us to school. Wrapped in wet paper towels, the lilac's woody stems would be nestled into the cup holder. She planted a lilac tree out in our back garden too, in the corner, at the meeting of the fence lines. In May, the Oregon rain would cling to the clusters of clover shaped flowers. The leaves folding, the branches bent under the wealth of it.

The second song on her cd is "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. "I'll light the fire," it begins, "you put the flowers in the vase, that you bought yesterday." Most of the verses are about simple blessings like that, about rest and light and illuminated windows. But, it's the last line that gets me every time: "life use to be so hard / now everything is easy because of you."

Those words help me understand the life that I remember with her and the home my parents made together. They both wanted to build a place better than the one they'd known. So, they painted the walls white and covered them with wainscoting. No unkind words were ever spoken. She turned on the table lamps to keep out the dark and set lilacs on the dining room table. And on the first warm day of Spring, she would open the French doors, put on her reeboks and windex the windows. From the living room, she'd play that song onto the patio. Even the neighbors could hear it coming from our house.

Information vs. Overload

If I retained one thing from my high school economics class, it was the concept of diminishing marginal utility. Apparently, the pizza analogy really captured my attention. It went something like this (please forgive this former English major if she is totally botching it): You stop into a pizza shop for lunch and buy yourself a slice. You are really hungry, and that slice is incredible. It is worth way more to you than the three dollars you spent on it. You decide to go for a second slice, which is also pretty satisfying and worth the price. By the time you’ve gone back for a third slice, you are feeling pretty neutral about it going down the hatch. After that point, additional slices equal pain, not pleasure, and they will no longer hold value for you (until lunchtime tomorrow).

Sometimes I wonder if this concept could be applied in some way to the problem of information overload. Imagine that the product is information and the cost is the time spent consuming it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve opened a browser in search of information or inspiration, only to find later that I’ve taken in more than I really needed or wanted, or spent too much valuable time, well, “browsing.” Depending on the question I’m trying to answer or how I’m feeling on a given day, there is a certain point at which the amount of information I’m taking in is no longer worth the time I’m spending consuming it. Unfortunately, it can be such a challenge to acknowledge when I’ve hit that point and release myself from the vortex of the screen.

There’s another challenge, which has to do with the intersection of the quality of the information we encounter, the order in which we encounter it, and our energy levels at various points throughout the day. For example, if I come across an incredibly beautiful and inspiring essay—exactly the sort of essay I had been looking for—at the very end of the day, I am probably too tired to really enjoy and process it. On the other hand, if I have spent the first precious hours of the morning flipping through a near-stranger’s endless collection of vacation photos, perhaps the quality of the information consumed was not equal to the nature and quantity of the time spent on it.

Many services and applications are coming up with welcome possibilities to help us manage the fire hose of information. Increasingly powerful search engines bring us closer to finding what we’re really looking for, and various forms of curation and personalization help bring content that may have more value to our attention first. Still, I often feel as though it really comes down to me, my browser, and my will power. Even a genius search engine and a fabulous curator can’t tell me when enough is enough, those extra slices are just giving me a stomach ache, and one more article is only going to tip the scale of my time in the wrong direction. There is enough incredible information in this world to fill lifetimes; it’s up to me to decide how much of it I can really handle in this one.

On Taking Responsibility for our Young Girls and Women

Like many of you, I was riveted this past week watching the story coming out of Cleveland unfold.  The rescue of three young women who had been held hostage for ten years by a brutal perpetrator is both utterly surreal and devastatingly sad.  It is virtually impossible to integrate the details of this story.  The facts of the case continue to emerge but we do know that these women were kidnapped, held for a decade against their will, starved, beaten and raped.  We know that they were bound with ropes and chains.  We know that they were not permitted to leave the decrepit house in which they were imprisoned. There is no way for any of us to comprehend the terror that they have suffered or the trauma that they have endured.  How were they able to maintain sanity or hope?  Perhaps they didn’t. I find it unbearable to even imagine their lives over the past ten years.  Denial is such a powerful buffer that I am desperate for them to tell us it wasn’t as bad as it sounds.  I want them to say that they were able to at least bond with each other and never felt totally alone.  I want to fast-forward to three years from now where one of them has written a memoir in which she describes her miraculous new life where all her wounds have been healed.  But achingly, these women---girls at the time of their capture---may never find peace.

The person responsible for this unspeakable horror is Ariel Castro, a marginal being with (at a minimum) mental illness and masochistic sexual deviance.  I suspect there will be months of speculation by FBI profilers and mental health professionals around what factors contributed to his executing this nightmare.  We will feverishly seek to understand “what to look for” when it comes to identifying potential future offenders.  Possibly some of the post facto analysis will make us feel like we are learning something valuable from this tragedy about the human condition.  But what kind of lessons can we glean from the behavior of an obvious sociopath?  Perhaps energy would be better spent on evaluating the routine, daily and casual attacks that are committed against women and girls.

Consider for example, that every two minutes, a woman in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. Forty-four percent of all victims are under the age of 18.  Fifty four percent of sexual assaults are never reported and by one estimate, 97 percent of rapists will never spend one day in jail.  Learn more about sexual assault statistics here.  What can we do with this information?

And what about the more subtle ways in which women are put at risk? Women continue to be regularly objectified in mass media. Such portrayals range from thoughtless characterizations of women as weak and dependent to victims of explicit and excessive violence in horror movies.  The message seems to be that women are not worthy of protection when we have ineffectual domestic violence laws on the books and inadequate community resources with which to respond to their urgent needs.  It appears that women cannot be responsible for their own bodies and must be subject to controls when we chip away at access to safe and legal abortion, Plan B, contraception and sex education (all the while, a 15-year old boy can buy condoms without restriction or consequence).  We demonstrate disregard for women’s humanity when we hold up unrealistic standards of beauty and encourage them to destroy their own bodies in the name of fashion.   We have normalized and mainstreamed pornography and disturbing video games in which women and female characters are often humiliated and treated viciously.

All of these realities are absorbed by our young boys and men.  All of these realities condition our young girls and women.  All of these realities imprint strongly on the broken mind of a potential perpetrator.

It is obviously critical that we acknowledge, investigate and unpack the horrific events experienced by these three women in Cleveland, Ohio.  Although it feels voyeuristic, I, too, feel a frantic need to understand what happened and how it might have been prevented.  What may be even more important to the larger cause of safeguarding girls and women is to address some of the more mundane ways in which we subvert and dehumanize them.  We might never be able to prevent the rare psychopath from kidnapping women, but we certainly have the power to improve social norms and strengthen legal protections.  We can teach our young girls and boys about equals rights and more generally how to treat one another.  We can empower young girls to learn about and appreciate their bodies and develop clear emotional and physical boundaries.  We can remind young women to maintain an acute awareness of danger and never accept assistance or a ride from a stranger.  The lessons coming out of Cleveland are not new---they are prompts to re-engage with bolstering the status of girls and women in this country.

Mother-in-law May I

Dear Sibyl,

My husband and I met our senior year of college and got married a few years later. We've now been together for almost a decade and I still feel lucky that we happened to meet and that circumstances allowed us to grow as people and build a life together. Our families, both immediate and extended, are an important part of our lives. We hang out with our siblings often and we're happy that our two-year-old daughter can experience the joys of a close family.

Here's the problem: From the earliest days of our relationship, my husband's mother wasn't warm or welcoming to me. Maybe it's her personality; maybe it's that my husband is the oldest of 5 and she didn't have experience with how to treat potential new members of the family; maybe it's that she and I just didn't click because we're incredibly different people with very different approaches to the world. At this point, I'm obviously part of the family, so I don't think she realizes that my perspective is colored by how she treated me for the first few years of our relationship, basically until we were married.

In many important ways my mother-in-law is a generous person who certainly has the best of intentions. I recognize that and I want to focus on it, especially since my daughter adores her. Unfortunately, when we're together for extended periods of time, like family trips, I find myself getting increasingly annoyed and frustrated. We're always going to do things differently. She's always going to correct me. She's always going to insist that she's right about everything. I can't change that, so I just need to accept her and not let all these little things bother me. Any tips?

Thank you,

Throw Grandma From the Train?

Dear Throw Grandma From the Train,

Recently, I went to a panel discussion of faith leaders who are seeking non-violent resolution of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank.  The theme that kept coming up was forgiveness.  I rose my hand, and asked my burning question, the one I keep returning to in my life, “How do you love people that are hard to love?”  The answer I got was to try to find the humanity in that person, to separate their actions from who they are, someone worthy of love and in need of care.

I think that is what you've been trying to do with your mother-in-law.  You've been trying to see the bigger picture, be the bigger person, just enlarge everything until it all doesn't bother you anymore.  But it's not the big things that get us, with those people that are hard to love.  It's the little, petty, constant shit that wears on us until we just can't take it anymore.

I actually don’t think the key here is accepting your mother-in-law.  It sounds like some of the things she does to you are simply unacceptable.  It is not okay for her to just decide not to like her daughter-in-law, and to correct everything you’re doing in your home.  It’s okay for you to be really frustrated when she does those things to you.

But you’re right that you need to let go of them, after you feel your feelings around them.  Another thing I heard at this discussion is that holding onto resentment is like eating poison, and expecting the other person to die.

So my advice to you is: stop trying to accept your mother-in-law.  Put all of those acceptance efforts towards yourself.

Accept the way you love your husband.  Accept it so much that it can never be questioned, never be swayed even the tiniest bit by your mother-in-law.  Let it live in the swing of your hips and in your thoughts when the two of you are apart.  Love the shit out of the way you love your husband.

Accept the way you run your household.  Accept your habits, even the ones you secretly think are gross.  Accept your home just as it is.  Accept your choices for food and work and daily routine.  Meditate on your imperfections, embracing all the very things about you that she criticizes.

Accept your parenting.  Celebrate your relationship with your daughter.  Let your acceptance for how you are raising your child ooze out of you to the point that your mother-in-law’s comments about it are deflected, as if your love for your daughter is suit of armor, gleaming and true.

I say all of this as a person who has gone toe-to-toe with her own mother-in-law several times over 13 years.  Early on, I realized this woman was never going to understand me.  But she didn’t have to, because her son did.  I realized this woman was never going to agree with me about most of the choices I made.  But she didn’t have to, because I wasn’t asking her permission or even her opinion.  I brazenly made mistakes, apologized when necessary, kept my distance when I needed to, or called her every week when I felt the desire.  I know for a fact that she doesn’t accept me as I am.  But I am certain that she respects me, and even loves me.  And the reason for that is that she knows I’m not waiting for her approval, and I love her even without it.

So, you have to be your own existential detective.  What are you insecure about?  Is your mother-in-law putting her finger in some open wounds?  Then do more work in those areas, until you can shine out your acceptance of yourself so boldly that she’s blinded by it.

And for the rest, for the hurts she’s inflicted on you in the past, and the ones that she’s sure to incur in the future, forgiveness is the only sane option.  Not just acceptance, but deep, life-altering forgiveness, that does indeed bring your mother-in-law’s humanity to the fore so her actions lose their sting.

The way to love people that are hard to love, like so many mother-in-laws, might just be to love yourself harder.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

To be born over and over again

By Joy Netanya Thompson Remember the song “It’s Raining Men”? Well, I’ve never experienced such a phenomenon, but for the past year it’s definitely been raining babies around here. It’s like the windows of heaven have been opened and new little souls are falling into my life everywhere I look. I no longer have a newsfeed on Facebook; it’s now a baby feed.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m 28, and most of my friends are my age and into their early thirties. It’s “time”—whatever that means. Since my husband Robert and I married a year ago, we’ve always laughed off the “so when are you having kids?” question with “oh, ten years or so” kind of answers. But the deluge of babies in my life are having an “everybody’s doing it” (literally—HA!) peer pressure about them, and I’m second-guessing the loose timeline we’ve created.

But the truth is, I am terrified of having a baby. I’m scared of losing the life Robert and I share, of losing freedom and fun and, yes, my halfway decent figure. I pop birth control pills with the determination and discipline of a soldier—no babies on my watch. All the while in the back of my mind I hear a little tap-tap-tap, the secret code the Holy Spirit uses to let me know fear is driving my actions. This isn’t the first time—it’s my MO to draw up the blueprints for my perfect life and present the plans to God, asking him to bless them.

My reluctance to experience one of the most life-changing events possible is not surprising—I’ve never liked change. In the past, though, God has had a way of preparing me for change long in advance so I’m not a total basket case when it arrives. Back in my post-college traveling days, marriage was a totally unappealing idea to me. I wondered if perhaps I would turn out to be a single missionary after all. But I knew that deep down, one day, I wanted to be married. The preparing of my heart came so slowly and gradually that the first time I actually admitted out loud I wanted to find someone and get married, it still surprised me.

I can’t say I’ve gotten the hang of marriage yet, but I do like the feeling of getting the hang of something, be it a job or a new city or a life stage. The very nature of life, however, never allows you to stay in that place for long—knowing what’s best and most effective, how to avoid mistakes and conflict. In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, one character says, “To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to die one hundred deaths.” And this, truly, is what I am resistant toward. I am resistant toward those hundred, those thousand deaths that make up a true, growing life, keeping us from stagnation and decay. The death of dependence as I walked into adulthood and learned to pay my own bills and manage my own affairs. The death of childhood friendships as we diverged into different life phases—marriage, children, singleness—and could not keep our ties tight enough. The death of dreams, of relationships, of innocence, of longtime habits and sins, of ideals and ignorance. We all die these deaths.

And yet if we have lived long enough to be marked by death, we know by now the great mystery that death brings life; all births require a kind of death. To live is to die a hundred deaths, but you might as well say to live is to be born over and over again. It is the approach to that birth that we fear and resist and see as death. But the pain of letting go of my girlish dependence made way for the birth of the woman Joy. One day, this fear and pain of giving up my independence will make way for myself to be born again as a mother—just as the literal pain I endure will bring forth my own baby. Frederick Buechner, speaking of Mary giving birth to Jesus as a metaphor for all of us, says we have every reason to be afraid of giving birth. “It is by all accounts a painful, bloody process at best…the wrenching and tearing of it; the risk that we will die in giving birth; more than the risk, the certainty, that if there is going to be a birth, there is first going to have to be a kind of death. One way or another, every new life born out of our old life . . . looks a little like raw beefsteak before it’s through. If we are not afraid of it, then we do not know what it involves.” 

And so for me, the labor pains have begun once again. It will be a long labor as I work through my fear and dread of becoming a mother, though I have no idea what that will look like. Perhaps a child from my own flesh, perhaps an adopted baby from somewhere and someone else. But the birthing process, and the first terrified and joyful weeks, will be raw, because that is an essential quality of new life. And I must labor again when I agonize over my children’s taking flight from our nest, and I must be reborn as another woman, another Joy, and learn to give birth to other ideas, relationships, and dreams. Oh God, let me never resist the deaths and the births that make up my life.

Launch our Print Platform: A Contest!

Hello, dear Equals readers! We wanted to share the news with you that we're moving to print. Those of you that follow us on Twitter or Facebook know that we're putting together an anthology that will be the first of a series of publications giving voice to talented female writers, photographers, and illustrators. The inaugural print edition of Equals includes 30 essays around the theme of "exploration," with four major sections devoted to cartography, uncharted territory, nostalgia, and souvenirs. Our contributors' words are enhanced by outstanding photography and custom illustrations.

Over the next year, you can look forward to the second print edition of Equals and essay compilations from many of our online contributors. Please consider pre-ordering your copy right here, and don't forget to share this with your social networks!

Thank you for being part of our community!

UPDATE!

We're happy to announce a little contest! Share this campaign with your friends, family, and social network and win a special Equals gift pack, complete with everything you see here:

- A Passport Case/Luggage Tag - A Set of Equals Pencils - A Set of Explore Notebooks - An Exploration Tote - A copy of Equals, signed by Miya & Elisabeth with a personal thank you, or a personal note to the recipient of your choice.

To enter, just share the campaign with as many of your friends/family members/neighbors/random strangers on the street, using the "Share this Campaign" code that you see when you're logged in to indiegogo (see below). Whoever refers the most people who donate (no matter the sum total of the donations) will win! We'll be able to see your referrals. At the end, we'll share our winner!

As always, thanks for your support. We're constantly in awe of our community of readers.

Talk to Her

For my mom’s 57th birthday, my husband, two-year-old son, and I flew to Florida to see her. Mom’s early onset dementia had progressed to the point where she couldn’t carry on phone conversations, so I made the arrangements with my teenage brother. When I tried talking to her, Mom’s light, trilling laugh would fill the receiver at odd intervals, often when I was mid-sentence. Even when she seemed to understand what I was saying, she’d become tone deaf to the easy rhythm with which we’d always talked on the phone. When it was her turn to respond, she’d go silent.

“Mom? You there?”

“Huh? Oh! Hahahaha . . . what?” And so on.

My little family and I met Mom and my brother at a sports bar. A pub probably seems like an odd place to visit your delusional parent, but any strange behavior from Mom was unlikely to stand out much in the busy, boozy atmosphere. The three of us sidled into the booth alongside them, my eyes already nervously ping-ponging to the large flat screen TVs. Since moving to Colorado in 2006, I only saw my mother a couple times a year. Each visit yielded a new milestone of degradation: first the loss of simple math skills, resulting in embarrassing customer service transactions. Next the inability to complete complex thoughts; she’d get stuck on certain words or phrases that opened like rabbit holes in her brain. Then walking was replaced by slow assisted shuffling. It became increasingly hard to meet her and really look at her, to take in the latest changes. So my eyes flitted around her like a hummingbird, knowing that the moment I rested them squarely on her, they’d fill with tears.

Mom smiled broadly and laughed easily. My brother ordered for her, cut up her food. I watched her pick up her iced tea several times, bring it to her mouth, and then, suddenly confused, put it back down. She mistook a small plate for a coaster and almost spilled the drink. She tried to participate in the table conversation, but couldn’t follow our exchanges. Instead, she interjected with unrelated half-statements and musings that were clearly better formed in her head.

“Yeah, that’s okay, Mom. Eat your potatoes,” my brother would say.

Mom held my son, Henry, several times and seemed very taken with him. At one point, she looked at me sweetly, softly touched my cheek and said, “Yes, yes, darling one. ”

Her attention turned away from me and back to some inner conversation.

These flashes of recognition and engagement were rare. Before we had a diagnosis, Mom had become savvy at hiding her inability to recall people. If you approached her smiling, she’d smile right back and chirp a cheerful and familiar “Hey!” She knew my face, but if I were to ask, “What’s my name, Mom?”, she’d get flustered and give up. She did better with simple yes/no questions, eroding our once fluid phone rapport, which slipped easily between self-analysis and questions of spirituality to piss-our-pants giggle fits. I tried brainstorming creative ways to flesh out our exchanges, but after a series of yeses and no’s and nervous laughs and responses that trailed off, I’d awkwardly wrap the conversation.

“Well, I guess I’ll let you go . . .”

Things weren’t supposed to go this way. Mom and I had one of those mother-daughter relationships that made for successful WB shows. Think Gilmore Girls, only with fewer witty classic Hollywood references and more Ab Fab quotes. We were close to a fault, the line separating “parent” and “friend” not merely tenuous but nonexistent. I imagine being pulled from the womb and handed to her and, after a moment of gazing at me adoringly, her saying, “Kid, have I got some shit to work through with you.”

I was raised like a sister. My earliest memories are of mom and me, snuggled up together in her queen-sized bed, eating bonbons and watching totally age-inappropriate prime time television. My parents divorced when I was four, and Mom remained candid with me about the life choices she made, often conferring with me as if I were an equal partner in the decision-making. It wasn’t in her to shield me from life’s uncomfortable gray areas, areas we found ourselves navigating often. As a parent, I now understand that this was irresponsible of her. But it wasn’t her aim to make me grow up too fast. She just couldn’t fake perfection, couldn’t pretend that she knew all the answers. She needed a sounding board. She respected my intelligence enough not to sugarcoat the facts and how they might affect me.

Growing up, Mom was my best friend. Of course, she could irritate and infuriate me in that special way that everyone’s mother can, could unravel my rational self and replace it with my feral toddler jerk. But I came to her with everything, and she always managed to impart some new truth about myself, about relationships, about life in a way that was both hand holding and honest. We could fight like guests on Maury, lobbing insults and foul language at each other one minute and the next, sloughing the anger entirely to discuss mundane concerns like tonight’s dinner and whether this skirt looked okay with that top. As I approached high school graduation, she joked that if I left the state, I’d find her hanging on the wing of the plane sobbing. When I imagined my future, mom was always part of it. She’d take care of my 2.5 kids while I worked and live in the mother-in-law suite attached to my sprawling ranch house with an open floor plan.

When I did leave home for college, long phone conversations became a salve for our sudden separation. I instigated many a tortured phone call wherein she gave me articulate, surprisingly wise advice about boyfriends, breakups, and English papers I had procrastinated on until the last minute. With barely a high school education and zero interest in reading anything besides Southern Living magazine, she’d listen calmly as I tried to refine the thesis for my paper on Gwendolyn Brooks.

These conversations ran the gamut of emotions: I cried, she laughed. We shouted obscenities at each other. I got frustrated when she wasn’t getting some paper topic I was wrestling with. Sometimes she hung up on me. Five minutes later, my phone would ring.

“Stop acting like a jerk and explain your goddamn thesis again.”

The dementia gradually made our exchanges staid and polite. Less stress inducing, perhaps, but vanilla. With the exception of random flashes of recognition, I am unfamiliar to her, and her grandchild is a sweet stranger. We are something I never thought we’d be: distant. I sometimes regret our past fights and my bad behavior, but I don’t regret the fireworks sparked by our tempers flaring, of being known for the neurotic, critical shit that I can be and being loved anyway.

Well, I guess I’ll let you go . . .

But she’s already gone. I can’t pinpoint when exactly I lost her. After years of telling me everything — too much, even — she didn’t prepare me for this. For not talking to her. For becoming a mother without my mother. For a me without her.

Recalibrating

I am completely fascinated by the relationships I’ve witnessed between drivers and their GPS systems. I used to assume that a GPS was simply a disembodied robo-voice that warns you when it’s time to make a turn. Apparently for some, however, a GPS is more like a bossy friend—someone you talk to, argue with, and refer to by name in casual conversation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve interrupted a discussion to ask, “Who’s Karen?” only to have everyone present refer me to the contraption on the dashboard. Go figure. In case you haven’t guessed, I am a relatively new driver and do not yet own one of these curious devices, so my methods for finding my way from Point A to Point B tend to be rather unconventional. For instance, it would not be out of the ordinary for me to call up my sister in Pennsylvania and ask her where I am as I repeatedly circle the same block somewhere in metro Atlanta. Although I’m sure you might consider this method to be entirely ineffective, it happens to be very calming. After a few minutes on the phone with a familiar voice, I have regained my hope and confidence and am much better equipped to face the task of figuring out where I am in relation to where I want to be. It works (almost) every time.

Earlier this week, I had to make a drive of about fifty miles to a place I’d never been. I was determined to complete this journey without A) phoning a friend, or B) taking ten hours to do it. I decided to bolster my chances of success by setting up two foolproof navigational systems.

By this, I mean that I taped a series of Post-It notes to the dashboard with instructions for both legs of the journey. I also set up the Google Maps app on my phone with its rather unpredictable voice guidance. I am proud to say that I made it to my destination without a hitch. The return trip, however, was another story altogether.

Only a few minutes in, I noticed my surroundings had nothing to do with anything on any of my Post-It notes. As soon as I realized I was lost, I silenced the Beyoncé album that had been keeping me company and pulled into a deserted church parking lot. I took a few deep breaths and considered my options. I could try to retrace my path and start over, in hopes of getting back on track with my notes. Or, I could start from where I was already and try to find a different route altogether.

Before I knew it, an ironic voice with an Australian accent popped into my head and sighed, “Recalibrating...”

I chose the latter option, and in the end, discovered a simpler route home than I’d originally planned.

When I finished graduate school and moved here nearly a year ago, I kept wishing I had a compass for my life. If only I knew which direction I was headed, I thought, it would be much easier to plan my course. Lately, though, I’ve been wishing more for a work/life GPS (and a real one too, for that matter). Rather than a fixed point on the horizon that I’m working toward, I wish for a guiding voice to argue with about my journey, a system that recalibrates for wrong turns, and even the option to change my destination altogether.

It seems, as I discovered on my recent journey, that my internal GPS is already built in, complete with a colorful Australian accent. All I have to do is turn down the radio, from time to time, and listen.

Do My Friends Even Like Me?

Dear Sibyl,

I seem to have a penchant for attracting friends who are very ambivalent about me.  Or friendship.  I am not sure, but they are so difficult to be friends with, because they pursue me mightily, but then reschedule our date several times, and say any number of passive aggressive things to me when we finally do get together.  

In between hangouts, I get a lot of "I miss you so much, I really want to invest in our friendship more, you are so amazing" from them.  It's really confusing, and if this were a love relationship, I would obviously just break up with them.  Since it is a friendship, I am so uncomfortable telling them the truth—which is that they are sending me wildly mixed messages and at this point the friendship is not worth all the work it requires.  How do I deal with this friendly mind-fuck?

With Thanks,

Baffled Buddy

Dear BB,

Ambivalence is one of the hardest emotions to hold for another person.  When folks are straight up angry, sad, or in love, even when it's difficult to relate, you can just let them express themselves and move on.  But ambivalence, especially when it is directed at you, leaves a confusing sheen on every interaction, which can linger throughout a relationship.  It is easier when the person knows they are ambivalent, but awareness is rare.  Instead, you get something akin to manipulation, as the person is trying to get you to help them sort through their ambivalence with your reaction.

My advice is to get out of there.  Since it sounds like many of your friends are acting this way, that may leave you a little lonely, but being alone is better than being beset by conflicting emotions that belong to other people.  And here's the thing about ambivalence—whoever is feeling it absolutely has to work it out on their own.  No one can take them by the hand and solve their problem.  So it's best to just leave them to it.

You also seem to be wondering, "Why does this keep happening to me?"  Well, consider the fact that you could be a polarizing person, someone who provokes strong reactions in people.  If that is the case, if you are a bold figure who people either love or love to hate, then folks with ambivalence issues are naturally drawn to you, because they intuit you will help them work through their conflicting feelings just by being yourself.  In fact, by confronting them, drawing their consciousness to their own ambivalence, you would be affixing a target right to your chest for all of their wavering arrows.

Don't fall for it.  Not only is it pretty much impossible for you to solve this problem for them, but your self-worth could get all tied up in confusing relationships.  So, put up kind but firm boundaries with these friends, and don't let flattery sway you.  If they are colleagues, simply see them at work, and enjoy the time you have with them there, but politely rebuff their invitations.  Tell them you are busy, and it is true—you are busy being fabulous, trying to attract new friendships, ones in which you can truly be yourself, rather than some kind of magnet they can attach to or repel themselves from.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

The Reconstructionists

We're thrilled today to share an interview with Lisa Congdon about her project The Reconstructionists. To say we're big fans would be an understatement. Her work is consistently gorgeous, and this project is no exception.  Every Monday, The Reconstructionists showcases a woman who made history or helped shape our world (Maria Popova does the writing, and Lisa does the illustrations). The illustrations, along with the short piece of writing, bring the featured woman's work, life, and passions to light, and leave us considering how we might impact our world. You can find more of Lisa's work here, and read about her life, inspiration, and side projects on her blog.

Hi Lisa! Can you tell us a bit about how and why this project came to be? 

I’ve had this idea for a couple of years that I wanted to do some kind of project or book that celebrated women who I admire or who have been influential in my life. Maria and I had met about a year ago, and I began reading her blog. I came to quickly learn that she and I were drawn to similar female artists, designers, scientists, writers and thinkers. Last year, as if by kismet, Maria asked me to hand letter some of Anais Nin’s quotes to feature on Brain Pickings. That initial project brought us together for the first time as collaborators. I love Maria’s writing style and her commitment to generating interesting, thought-provoking content. So this past summer I approached her about collaborating on this larger project together.

So far, you've profiled a wide range of women. How do you and Maria choose your subjects? 

Maria and I have been compiling a list since August. We add the names of women who have or given us hope or whose contributions have left us in awe. That makes it subjective. We don’t intend for this to be inclusive of all noteworthy women or even the “Top 52.” That would be virtually impossible to choose! The women we are featuring are women who are special to us, who have influenced our touched us. So in that way it’s a very personal project for Maria and me. We won’t even be able to include all the women we’d like to include, but we will get to celebrate many of them this year through the project. And maybe expose people to women they might not have known about otherwise.

People are notoriously hard to capture on paper. Is there a point in your illustrative process when you feel like you've "gotten" your subject? Is it in the eyes? The posture? Something else? 

Yes, and let me tell you, the more alive (or recently alive) and well known the person is (at least by their face), the harder it is to capture them perfectly! I really struggled with both Maya Angelou and Gloria Steinem for that reason. It is in the eyes and the mouth---and I always ask my partner: "who is this?" And if it's someone she should know and doesn't recognize, I worry! Sometimes I am not even sure I got it right, but at some point you just have to say "good enough" and be done.

Have there been any memorable responses to this project? 

The day we launched, Chelsea Clinton tweeted about it! So that was cool.

The Reconstructionists comes about at a time when feminism and womanhood are hot topics. How do you think your project fits in to the larger discussion of women's rights and place within society?

I don't know that we are necessarily attempting in any intentional way to be part of that larger discussion. Except that all of the people we are featuring are women, which I suppose is a statement in and of itself. As Maria wrote in her introduction to the project on Brain Pickings, we want to celebrate women we admire without pigeonholing the project into a stereotypical feminist corner and/or only engaging people who are already interested in women's history or women's issues or politics. It is true that we may be contributing to the conversation through highlighting the contributions of the women we feature. Most of the women we feature have contributed enormously to art or culture or science despite hardship of some kind. In some cases that hardship was sexism, and other cases it was poverty or homophobia or racism or disability, or a combination.

How do you think these passion projects affect your creativity in your other pursuits? 

I could not work as an illustrator (wherein I mostly illustrate other people's ideas, stories, etc) without personal projects. I do at least one personal project every year and have for several years. Don't get me wrong. I love what I do as an illustrator and pattern designer. I love my clients and the fact that I can draw and paint for other people for a living. But I get all my creative energy from personal work and pursuing personal passions through my art. That is what gets me out of bed in the morning. The Recontructionists is something I really look forward to working on every week.

What's next? 

There is a lot of interest in the world about making The Reconstructionist into a book. We want to make sure if we do that we are thoughtful about how we do it and with whom we partner. We know that if a print version is meant to be, just the right partnership will come our way. For  now we are just enjoying the online experience and response.

Healing: A Sense of Community

A new sense of community emerged this week in Boston. Last Monday we watched in fear as tragedy marred one of the most beautiful, treasured days of the year in our city. We held on through an anxiety-ridden week, hugging our friends a bit tighter and smiling warmly at strangers. Friday night closed with the end of a day-long manhunt and city-wide lock down. The city breathed a collective sigh as the suspect was caught. People ventured out into their neighborhoods, finally turning off the news.

This week, signs of strength are everywhere. Café signs show love for the city scribbled in chalk hearts, restaurants offered free meals to law enforcement personnel, and Syrians sent a message love through a painted sign---that was shared thousands and thousands of times on Facebook. The spirit of this city is still here, yet the questions of mourning and healing are only beginning to emerge:

As a community, how do we grieve? How do we heal?

Acts of violence, so close to our home affect us. The effect may be new or it may trigger old emotions. In the past week, I have watched those around me struggle with emotions spanning from indifference to shock to deep sadness. I urged my immediate community to be compassionate with the experience and allow yourself to be affected:

It is okay if you feel off this week. It is okay that you can’t concentrate or don’t want to sit in the library, even though you have so much to do. It is okay if you feel grief, or emotions you can’t identify, even though you don’t know anyone who was physically hurt or weren’t even at the event. It is also okay if you don’t feel anything. It is okay if this tragedy reminds you of other losses in your life. It is okay to miss people or moments that have nothing [on the surface] to do with what happened on Monday.

In consideration of healing, I return to stories. The world of grief and healing is full of stories. Stories that make our hearts ache and bring tears to our eyes. Stories that touch us deeply, resonating with our experiences, bring our losses closer to the surface, and in their own way, heal us. My own story of the Boston Marathon encapsulates one of my best memories: the spring, the sheer accomplishment of running 26.2 miles, and, which I did not know at the time, my last day with my father. In honor of that experience and the events of the week, this past Tuesday, I put on my running shoes and Red Sox shirt, and headed out the door into the spring air. What I needed to do was run, remember that joyful day, and spend time feeling through the grief that bubbled up out of the surface in the face of new tragedy.

Feeling, hurting, and all the other associated emotions are signs of life, signs of caring for one’s community. Be compassionate with yourself in this process. Do what feels right for you. Heal through allowing yourself to engage with the process. This is our first step as individuals that make up a truly wonderful community. As a community, we can soak in the love pouring from all corners of the world. And, within our responsibility to love these “corners” back, as individuals did by holding up a sign sending love back to Syria in Davis Square, we can reflect this sense of healing and hope.

The city I envision heals fear through love and community.

Fifty Shades of Yay

Dear Sibyl,

I have a wonderful husband of 10 years and we have a good sex life.  Often, I need a little help to get me in the mood, my choice is romance novels.  Is this normal?  Should my husband take offense?  He's never complained, but I just hope I'm not hurting his feelings.

Thank You,

Romance Reader

Dear Romance Reader,

You're in good company.  The Romance novel is the bestselling fiction genre, ever.  According to Romance Writers of America's 2011 Romance Book Consumer survey, slightly more than half of survey respondents live with a spouse or significant other.  Some studies say that women who read romance novels have sex twice as often as those who don't.  Others say that a high level of romance reading is correlated with happy monogamous relationships.  So, to answer your initial question, your penchant for a little erotica fantasy reading is not only normal, it may be even helping your marriage.

The fact that you are worried about your reading habits, despite the fact that you are one of the ladies having hot married sex after reading a chapter of your romance novel of choice, makes me think you have some shame around this predilection.  Well, head on over to smartbitchestrashybooks.com, where Sarah Wendell and Carly Tan, authors of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, facilitate a thriving online community of fellow romance readers.  They’ll help you realize you’re not alone, and give you some great suggestions for new reads.

As for your second question, I have no idea if your husband’s feelings are hurt by your romance reading.  For that, you’ll have to ask him!  And I highly suggest that you do.  A conversation about how he feels about the paperbacks stacked on your nightstand could lead to a juicy discussion of the fantasies that most intrigue you.  You may find yourself living out a few of them, with your very own leading man!

My hope is that he does not feel threatened by your fantasies, and the fact that they are spurred by stories in romance novels, as it belies your thriving intellect and playful libido.  He should feel glad to have a partner that is inventive in her interest in all things sexual.

However, if he is threatened by it, it’s best the two of you are honest about those feelings, in order to work through them.  Perhaps you could spend a night reading him some of your favorite passages?  Next thing you know, he may be swapping books with you!  A whole world could open up for the two of you.  I hope it is one with lots of lace and fur-lined handcuffs.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Kayla Allen was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, which she left behind in her teens to cultivate a life of travel and bohemianism. During those years she held many jobs including Jagermeister girl, blackjack dealer, paid game-show contestant, dental imaging software consultant and legal secretary. She also played bass in a Los Angeles band called Thunderfuck, while studying flamenco, learning to fly trapeze, and honing her skills on the fiddle, but not all at the same time.  Along the way she was awarded a PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellowship.  As an artist-in-residence at Chateau La Napoule, in France, she participated with her fellow residents one drunken evening in a spontaneous dance party.  A handsome D’Artagnan lookalike, visiting another resident, saw Ms. Allen writhing on the floor in a pathetic attempt to breakdance. A long-distance courtship followed, and she now lives in Nice with her husband and three children. 

I have nurtured a huge inclination to read ever since I stole my sister’s Barbara Cartland novels at age ten, giving rise to prepubescent fantasies of a dramatic rescue from a life-threatening situation, followed by romantic sex. Although since Cartland never wrote sex scenes, my idea of romantic sex was vague. I could only glean ideas by watching the family poodle hump the couch.

Through my teen years I immersed myself in Russian and British classics, and adopted a stoic and melancholy demeanor, proving to the world I was full of angst, just like the characters I read about. In my mind, I was a prisoner in a Siberian labor camp, eating gruel and building ice roads, even though to everyone else I was just the blonde girl on the dance team.

In my quest to be taken seriously, and to eliminate any residual traces of my Cartlandian era, I continued reading literary fiction for years.  Chic-lit was deemed unworthy. I poo poo-ed anything less than a Man Booker finalist or Pulitzer prize winning novel.

But then I had children, and the time or ability to concentrate on reading disappeared. Just like that. I went from voracious reader to brainless mommy faster than you can say “episiotomy.”

I turned to memoirs. I could pick up someone else’s life, escape through their perspective, then leave it behind at the drop of a stinky diaper. When my identity was being slowly erased by my childrens’ needs, I could latch on to someone else’s for brief increments and feel alive through their experiences. At times, reading a stranger’s truth was preferable to my reality. (Two a.m. change of vomit-splattered sheets, anyone?)

So here’s a look at what sustained me, made me laugh, cry, and reminded me I had an identity outside of stained breast pads.

Everything is Going to be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour by Rachel Shukert High raunch meets travelogue as Shukert recounts winding her way through Europe fresh out of drama school. Packed with sex, booze, humor and hangovers, she also manages to include tips for emergency room visits in foreign countries.  Amidst all the deliciously sordid stories, she proves to be a great writer, mostly for her brilliant imagery and for keeping us hooked with a powerful, emotional undercurrent.

When a potential love interest tells Shukert, “You are a beautiful child,” she writes: If ten thousand chimpanzees injected with the cloned genetic material of Casanova and Sigmund Freud were gathered in a vast laboratory and chained to typewriters, with the voice of God reading my psychiatric records over the cosmic loudspeaker, in seventy years or more they could never come up with a line that would get my clothes off faster.

Such deft expression with an irreverence that speaks straight to my heart.

Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles and So-called Hospitality by Jacob Tomsky Tomsky worked his way up from valet parker to front desk manager in luxury hotels, first in New Orleans, then New York. His writing is casual, like a conversation you’d have with your bright, funny friend, and full of profanity, which this grumpy mommy found hugely appealing.  Co-workers are exalted and non-tipping customers are trounced upon with great indignation. But he never comes off as mean-spirited. Rather, he’s a keen observer of character, having dealt with his share of crazy hotel guests and odd, random crises.

The book is full of helpful hints. My personal favorites are to always lie about the minibar. Empty it and pretend like you had nothing. No one will ever contradict you. And to tip up front, before your front desk agent checks you in, which always ensures an upgrade.

Tomsky’s memoir made me nostalgic for my years in the service industry, mostly waitressing at trendy bars and restaurants in Los Angeles, and the life-saving camaraderie with co-workers that actually made dealing with assholes fun.

DRIVING THE SAUDIS: A Chauffeur’s Tale of the World’s Richest Princesses (plus their servants, nannies, and one royal hairdresser) by Jayne Amelia Larson The premise of this book was right up my alley; an out-of-work actress becomes a chauffeur and drives the female branch of a Saudi royal family during their 6-8 week stay in Beverly Hills. The desperate-for-money, taking insane jobs-to-get-by and hating-every-minute was familiar.  Larson is demeaned by her job requirements and the loss of her autonomy during the weeks she drives for the family.

But the unfamiliar part was most intriguing, for the view into Arab, Saudi culture. Larson created empathy for the gaggle of princesses, when they could’ve been completely non-empathetic. She became enough of a compassionate witness to see beyond the decadent shopping sprees and plastic surgery. She captures the essence of these women, from royalty to the servants, and renders them with compassion, trapped by circumstances beyond their control.

Even though Larson’s writing style is lackluster, the narrative is compelling enough to stick with, culminating in a final moment when we discover how much of a tip she’s rewarded at the end of the job. (Part of the impetus for Larson taking the job was the rumored tip, well into the thousands, for which the Saudis were known).

Garrison Keillor makes a guest appearance in the beautiful epilogue, a highlight of the book in which Larson shines.

MUST YOU GO?: My Life With Harold Pinter by Antonia Fraser An epic love story beginning in 1975 when Antonia Fraser, biographer of Mary Queen of Scots, and Harold Pinter, Britain’s most famous playwright, met at a dinner party. Their affair was scandalous, they were married to others and had 7 children between them. The book manages to be both gossipy and highbrow, and distinctly captures the hip, literary circles of London from the ‘70s forward. Within that world, they were two creative forces that inspired each other. Lady Antonia put a very human, happy face on Pinter’s broody playwright image.

Lady Antonia is beautiful and admirable, even though at first glance I thought she’d wrecked her kids in her desire for true, passionate love. But she carefully disentangled herself from her first marriage and the kids seemed to thrive in their new arrangement.

Beyond all the fabulousness of their lives, it’s clear that Fraser and Pinter remained genuinely devoted to each other until his death, in 2008. Fortunately, their creative genius endures.

A Family Affair

Everybody has a different concept of family.  I was reminded of this after a recent trip to California where virtually our entire brood gathered to spend a long weekend.  As it turns out, the weekend was certainly longer for some of us than for others.  Even within the same core family unit, you will find members with vastly wide-ranging notions of connectedness as well as varying levels of tolerance for intimacy.  For my part, I find myself growing wistful for a time gone by, when we flew from all parts to be together for significant occasions with greater regularity.  In my admittedly rose-hued memories, we all managed to get to the beach for sunset and evenings ended congregated around the fire. What I find increasingly fascinating about being a part of a multi-generational family is how the gears are constantly shifting.  There are historical alliances that change in response to marriages and babies.  There also seem to be dynamics that are established so early and become so entrenched that no amount of maturity, softening of the years or costly therapy can deconstruct them.  There is great universality in the fact that we essentially become our adolescent selves in the presence of our parents and siblings.

The inner teenager is not always the most flattering version of yourself…mine engages in a confusing combination of acting out (often comically) and subverting feelings.  Still and all, my default position tends to be mediator and salve.   I just want everyone to get along and everything to be OK and everyone to love each other.  LIKE RIGHT NOW.  My official roles, then (according to the therapeutic community), fall into two categories: “Caretaker”, one who feels great responsibility for the emotional life of the family, and “Mascot”,one who uses comedy to distract from uncomfortable or dysfunctional situations.

There are times when these formative roles serve me well.  I have a highly attuned sense of empathy and I am occasionally entertaining at a party.  On the flip side, I can have poor boundaries and deny very real wounds.  Clinically speaking, the Caretaker is identified as being at higher risk for depression than other family members (it can be tough trying to make everyone happy) while the Mascot is often the person with the most healthy coping.  So, you see, it could really go either way for me.

Of course, now that I am a self-possessed adult, I could make different choices.  There are many people close to me who have no desire to endure the morass of feelings involved in dealing with their families.  It is often the subject of debate with dear friends---even with my husband---the ultimate costs and benefits of being an active member of an extended family.  I always land in the camp of “YES,” it is worth it.  What else is there?  What are the other options?  The other options seem to be cut-offs and estrangements.  At this age, with this amount of history, it is a take it all or leave it all kind of proposition.  While some maneuvering is possible within the relatively fixed role each of us occupies within a family, in due course the choice is to participate or not and to do so either kicking and screaming or enjoying the ride.

I have been accused of glossing over elements of the past when it comes to my family.  My ballast is a place where I consider my childhood happy---even the teenage years---and my family close.  I have unique touchstones with each member, and some relationships are based primarily in the past and while others continue to develop over time.  We have borne and inflicted our share of pain, but it generally pales in comparison to the real suffering of families where there is true neglect, abuse or impairment.  We have been largely spared of tragedy and our close calls have functioned to knit us together.  While I support the people I know who have separated from their clan, I feel crushingly and beautifully stuck with mine.  In fact, I am already dreaming up locales for next year’s reunion.  Just don’t tell my husband.

Just Say Yes

Usually I only work on one project at a time. But the freelancers I know who make a living at it work on multiple projects at once, and I want to learn to do that. When it comes to my social life, I’ve always been into saying ‘yes’ to lots of things and then figuring out how they all fit together, and I’m trying to extend that same confidence to art/illustration jobs. So, I’m working on a few different projects right now, and I think I like it.

I always like the beginnings of things (like fellow Gemini Don Draper), which can make follow-through a challenge. Self-help books have taught me that the best way to deal with a potentially self-destructive tendency is not to try and make it go away, but to find a way to make it work for you. So I think switching back and forth between projects is actually good for someone like me, because it means starting fresh again every couple of days. It also creates mini deadlines at the end of the day, which is helpful for the same reason--the only thing as exciting as starting something is finishing something!

Working on multiple projects concurrently seems to add up to just working more, period, which is good. I notice myself getting a little looser and stronger with my drawings. This helps me feel more motivated, too. I am starting to see potential, rather than feeling my I’ve plateaued. I’m still not drawing enough to be as strong as I could be, but I am seeing that I can improve, and that is really exciting me.

Below are some images of bits and pieces of different projects I’m working on now. I hope you will enjoy the medley [click to see full image].

[gallery link="file" order="DESC" orderby="title"]

For other freelancers: How many projects do you take on at one time? How have you learned to manage your time?

An Adopted Dad

By Cindy WaiteRead the first piece in Cindy's series here. 

I never planned out my wedding. I didn’t imagine the decorations, or the finger foods, or even my dress. I told my family, defiantly, that I’d wear jeans and a sweatshirt on my wedding day because, “Ew, dresses.” I made the sour milk face you’re envisioning. Then I did back flips on my mom’s bed, made mud cakes in the backyard, and fell asleep reading, a flashlight hidden under my covers. I was maybe a strange child.

I always said I wanted a chocolate cake on my wedding day.

“No, honey, that’s what the groom has. The bride’s cake is white,” My mom impatiently told me, again. I made my sour milk face so contorted I might have passed out from disgust.

I can see her now, my Mom, at our scratched wooden kitchen table, the plastic covering pulling over the edge, the kitchen garbage pail at her feet, a Russet potato in one hand and a peeler in the other. She would have looked up at me without missing a beat with the potato.

“Why can’t I have a chocolate cake, too? Who said only boys can have them? I’m going to have a chocolate cake.”

It made all the women around me laugh whenever I said things about my chocolate cake and jeans wedding, so untraditional was I, so my cake grew in brown, sugary divinity each time the conversation arose.

“It’ll be a BIG chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, covered in M&Ms, with chocolate sprinkles on top of that.”

Then I bested myself, “It’ll be a three layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, covered in M&Ms and sprinkles on top.”

I didn’t spend my young years daydreaming about my nuptials, but I did spend a lot of time wondering who would walk me down the aisle.

I call Rob, my mom’s best friend, “Adopted Dad.” He spoils me. He got me my first perfume, “Romance” by Ralph Lauren, for my birthday because I smelled it in a magazine and liked it. I liked the name as much as the scent.

I’m moderately more graceful than a baby giraffe, only slightly lighter on my feet than Shrek. I smelled Ralph Lauren’s newest scent when I peeled back the bulky page in Seventeen, and I saw myself transform from my not-quite-or-at-all-grown-into-myself body to a romantic heroine starring in my own meet-cute love story. I’d be sophisticated. I’d be urbane, a word so sophisticated, saying it put me in a new class.

Adopted Dad is divorced. He’ll be happily remarried in a few years, when I’m 17 or 18. He’ll stop being Adopted Dad then, but I’ll hold on to the title for keepsakes. Divorced Dad can be a Dad to me; he has room and time in his life to adopt me into it.

Adopted Dad lets me drive. He’s okay with me behind the wheel, guiding me from the passenger seat. He doesn’t grip the door handle and dashboard until his knuckles turn white---that’s Mom’s job, and she should get a pay raise she’s so excellent at it.

I’m driving out to Six Flags with Adopted Dad and his 10-year-old son, my babysitting charge. Adopted Dad took the day off, and he handed me the keys. I didn’t know my palms could produce sweat so fast, but those keys felt like they were dipped in oil they were so slippery. I drove through Newnan straight on to 85 North, headed for Atlanta.

I’m on the interstate, driving through Spaghetti Junction---six, eight, fifteen lanes twisted like noodles, my heart racing with nerves in the snaking, speeding traffic. This is my opportunity to prove my maturity.

I’m 16, but I swear it’s more like 20-something because that’s what everyone says. I’ve grown up in single parent years---that’s 1.5 for every 1 normal kid year. I sort of get how dogs feel, passing everyone by.

Rob tells me, “It’s okay to speed,” as matter-of-factly as though he’d said, “There are cars on the road right now.” I stare at him out of the corner of my eye, my peripheral vision stretched as I also try to keep both eyes straight ahead, my hands at 10:00 and 2:00 and my heart from fluttering straight out of my chest onto the console.

“If you have the money to pay for a ticket, then you can take your chances exceeding the speed limit,” he continues. “You can choose to break the rules if you know the consequences and accept them.”

I feel immensely loved in this moment.

This is real dad advice. This is a life lesson that seems absurd on the surface---one a Mom would yell about, eyes bulging out of her head, demanding to know what on earth he was thinking telling a 16-year-old something so irresponsible. But Dad would know that he has a smart daughter, one with a head on her shoulders that got it, that gets him, that will be a more responsible driver and person because now she’s empowered with choice and the weight of responsibility.

I’m choking up because he said this and I’m imagining that scene, and a car cuts in front of me, and my reflexes jerk the wheel enough for us all to notice, but Adopted Dad doesn’t critique. And I’m calming down now because I can do this.

Men bonded with Chris mostly, growing up. What’s a boy without a dad? They went fishing and hunting, and he learned to tie knots and change a car tire, all while I played beneath the towering oak tree in the front yard. Men lent me a lap to crawl on when I was little and reassuring, big hugs as I aged. Men taught Chris and comforted me.

But Rob took me on busy Atlanta interstates and taught me to trust my gut. He taught me the tools of the Dad trade---lecturing me on too much time spent online talking to boys and wondering if I’d like to learn how to change a tire, after all.

I still wear Ralph Lauren’s Romance. I still think of Adopted Dad when I spritz it, pushing my shoulders back and my head high and entering the mist as any urbane woman might do.

I put Adopted Dad in the “maybe” column to walk me down the aisle.

A Fatherless Girl

By Cyndi Waite

My mom runs her hand softly along my cheek, like moms do with their babies. Maybe I asked the question, "Who is my dad?" or "Where is my dad?" or maybe she preempts it. She strokes my cheek again and smiles at me.

“My beautiful girl," I imagine her saying it in the wonder-filled way she still says it today. "My beautiful girl, your daddy was a good man, but he is very sick."

This refrain is so palpable and entwined in my childhood, I know the words like a nursery rhyme whose repetition tattooed it on my memory. But there’s not a nursery rhyme for my story.

I was born in Hollywood, a fact that fills me with undue glee. I was a kid who had "a lot of personality," a euphemism for having been histrionic. I wanted to be an actress, a screenwriter, but always, I dreamed of being a Los Angeles Resident.

Because what I leave out is the "Florida" part. I'm from Hollywood, Florida, home of the Cuban and land of the retirees. It’s a far cry from the iconic “Hollywood” sign and yet, it’s true, I’m from Hollywood.

We lived in an apartment building. I can see the outline of it, and I wonder if that's my earliest memory shining through or if I've re-created a memory from pictures. It had a giant, humongous, can't-see-the-end-of-it-can't-touch-the-bottom-of-it pool. We lived there until I was three.

Mom has always been a fish, happiest near the water and stressed, searching for air away from it. Mom's angry? Let's run her a bath. Mom has to get away from work? Let's pack a bag of towels and ham sandwiches and find the nearest lake. Water is Mom's Valium.

Mom's love of the water seeped into Chris and me in the womb; pregnancy didn't keep her from floating weekends away. We came out with our arms failing in freestyle. Outside her belly, we split our time the way she had done while we were in it: between the pool and the beach. I learned to walk in the sand.

***

Mom and Chris hold my hand as we walk to the water, waves lapping my feet and calves and thighs and stomach. I’m pink and round---a perfect Gerber baby, squealing with delight at the touch of the cool south Atlantic waters (that are somehow, someway perfect, while northern Atlantic beaches are drab, the water the color of the gray sand. It’s a mystery I’ve never solved).

Chris, four years older than me, maybe six or seven, swims his way away from Mom and me. He probably travels three feet, but I swear it’s 10 feet---half a football field, even. Mom holds me over her head, and teases me, “I’m going to do it! I’m going to throw you!” and her threats aren’t threats at all but promises. And she tosses me through the air, and I’m soaring what feels like stories above the water shimmering below, and I land, laughing, in my brother’s open arms. They throw me like a football, calling plays, “Go left!” I was a precursor to my brother’s glory days on the football field, a human ball. I wonder if that’s where he learned a perfect spiral.

***

We move from Hollywood that same year, when I’m three. I still suck on a pacifier, a fact that embarrasses and endears me now---a childhood in tact, still so innocent it maybe seemed stalled, in slow motion, behind. Precocious and clever, my brother knows my sun rises and shines with him. Where he goes, I go. What he does, I try to do. Sometimes he uses his powers for good, and sometimes he uses them for evil. The line is always blurry.

We pack up the family Chevy S-10 and move to Georgia.

We say goodbye to our family and friends, and Mom says it’s time for an adventure. She drives stick shift in the small three-seater pickup truck. My legs swing around it; it's hard for her to switch gears sometimes, and I talk nonstop, except when I'm sucking on my pacifier.

She got lost, often, on that long drive. I asked a dozen times if we were lost, and she always said, “We’re not lost, we’re finding a new way," just like she says today. Sometimes I ask her when we're standing still to hear those guiding words.

Hours into the drive, Chris pipes up. “I dare you to throw your pacifier out the window.”

I eye him cautiously; at three, going on four, I’m already stubborn and incapable of turning down a challenge.

“I double-dog dare you. I bet you won’t do it.” The taunts keep coming.

I pull my pacifier out of my mouth, and he rolls down the window, and Mom intervenes.

“If you throw it out the window, I won’t get you another one,” she warns.

Chris smirks. “I triple-dog dare you.”

I can’t take it anymore, and I throw it out, watch the wind whip it, bounce it off the side of the truck and fall onto the hot asphalt. It’s gone. It’s really gone.

I start to cry.

“I love you, but I told you if you threw it out, I wouldn’t get you another one,” Mom reminds me.

Chris looks at me, pride in his eyes. “You’re a big kid now.”

I cry all night, furious and unable to sleep. Mom doesn’t buy me a new pacifier.

The next morning, I’m calm and grown up when we pull into Carl’s driveway.

Ready to Go

By Rebecca D. Martin "There was a great tree---a huge poplar with vast limbs---visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it. It had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs - though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled." ~J.R.R. Tolkien, Collected Letters

The big front yard maple finally came down today. All the branches had been taken off last November. In absence of any friends who could manage the substantial trunk with a mere chain saw, the official tree men returned today and took that away, too.

The baby and I watched through the gable window as the two fellows alternated at the base: chain sawing, axing, tossing wedges of wood aside. Saw, axe, toss. I expected this to go on all around the perimeter of the tree for the next hour, slow but sure. But just as the baby was losing interest in favor of the cord pull on the window blind, the unexpected happened. The entire, enormous ten foot trunk creaked and groaned. The men did some circling and pushing. Then a sharp crack, and 72 years-worth of sprouting, spreading, anchoring, and reaching fell into the road with a shuddering thump that set our dog a-barking.

Last fall, I'd mourned as the tree branches came down: no more green leaves dancing at the upstairs window; that lovely play of sunlight and shadow shifting across the downstairs living room---gone. Not to mention the temperature protection during our unairconditioned summers. The loss felt inordinately tragic, both physically and emotionally. But I thought all my sorrow had gone with the limbs. The stripped-down body left standing in the yard was merely a sad reminder, not to mention an eyesore---a ten foot high one. I was more than ready for it to go.

Imagine my surprise at the tears that sprang up this morning as the tree trunk fell, so suddenly, so heavily, down. It seemed so, so . . . irreverent. It seemed wrong. There lay the tree, bottom-up, all its striated glory exposed for the world to see. Suddenly, the blossoming circles amassed over three quarters of a century, the grey bark running its length in stripes and curves, were a surpassing beauty. The tree men seemed not to notice. They swung their axes and tossed the tree in bits and pieces into the back of their flatbed. They took a break and lit cigarettes. For them, this was any day, any tree, any job.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, "I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals." This morning, as the tree pitched over, I could hear the clanging and banging of Saruman's machinery, as it was so explicitly interpreted in the movies, and the ground-shaking thud at each felled tree. The neighbor who frowned and made a wide berth around our yard this morning on her daily dog walk seemed to channel Tolkien's disappointment at me. "Those trees were my friends!" Darn that movie.

Still, I knew it was just a tree. I know it is just a tree. And it was dying, after all. These Norway Maples were planted when our three neighborhood streets were first developed, back in the 1940’s, and none of the trees are going to last much longer. Each yard got two maple trees, in fact, and a good third of them have come down already. More than half of the ones left are dying. Windblown and ice-laden limbs fall into the streets where cars park and children on bikes race by. The resident tree expert says that, actually, there's only one healthy maple left, back in a corner lot. He speculates about environmental incompatibility. Others have suggested bugs or disease. Whatever the root cause, our particular tree was sick, and it was time for it to go.

But there's something to be said for putting in a lifetime’s work toward such a strong and quiet beauty. It doesn't seem like something so long-lived should go as easily as this fifteen minutes of sawing and chopping have done. It seems, for a moment, that the tree should get something better than a cigarette break in memorium.

But really, there is nothing that needs be done for the tree, or that could be done, except what we did. Instead, I know what I will do. As I watched this morning, I resolved to plant another. We'll do our research this time. We've been told something called the Black Oak does well in these parts. I also have a particular soft spot for Dogwoods. Yes, we'll start another tree in this one’s place, and make our own contribution to this tiny patch of land and its future, and to the neighborhood it belongs to.

And then we'll get on with our day. With all respect to the dog-walking neighbor, and to Tolkien, and to my own sappy emotions, it was only a tree, after all. And it was ready to go.

A Taxonomy of Fear

In my early years of ballet training, I developed a fear of falling. We would rehearse for months and months in anticipation of just a handful of performances, and as opening night approached, my fear grew stronger. There were many underlying reasons for my fear, and I could categorize them into neat little groups. There were the fears related to suffering—the worry that a fall would result in physical injuries, or at least, if it happened on stage, a great deal of shame. There were the fears related to failure and the sense that a fall was a sign of some shortcoming in my training, ability, or commitment. Above all, there was a gripping fear of the unknown. What would it feel like to fall, mid-flight, and what would happen afterwards?

Another dancer assured me that I had nothing to worry about and that my anxieties would disappear after my first fall. Of course, her confidence in the inevitability of falling terrified me even more, but in the end, she was right.

Eventually, my fear ballooned to the point where I would stand in the wings crushing rosin repeatedly with my shoes. I became certain that every floor was as slick as ice and that I would do best to ensure that my feet were practically glued to the floor. Of course, this was entirely counterproductive.

After one such rosin-crushing session, I rushed onto the stage with my fellow snowflakes for the frenzy that is the snow scene in the Nutcracker. We were running at top speed in cocentric circles, and before I knew it, I had landed flat on my face in a sea of tulle, dry ice, and fake snow.

Fortunately, my fears about falling onstage were proven wrong in an instant. It didn’t hurt (at least not until the adrenaline wore off), and no one seemed to notice. What happened next was simply that I popped back up immediately and kept running before I even had time to realize what had happened.

Sometimes we have the opportunity to face our fears, by will or by accident. We can climb mountains, hold snakes, speak to packed auditoriums, and pick ourselves up when we fall. These are opportunities for empowerment and for realizing our own potential. In other cases, however, we hope very much that our greatest fears will never play out in reality.

In the wake of public trauma and personal turning points, it seems appropriate to take inventory of our fears, to line them up in broad daylight and see them for what they really are.

Not all fears have the same weight or character. Some are rational, some irrational. Some are universal; others derive from individual experience. Sometimes we are most afraid of what we don’t know, and sometimes we are afraid of what we know too well.

Fear is a perfectly natural part of the human condition. I’ve had to remind myself of this whenever I’ve worried that my own fears were ridiculous or when I have allowed those fears to get in the way of joy. By bringing our fears to light and acknowledging them as a part of our shared experience, we may find opportunity for connection and give ourselves permission to live abundantly.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy

Dear Sybil,

What is twisting my gut is what is also twisting the gut of the nation. My issue is that I am so very, very sensitive to human-caused tragedies, so much so that even a headline can send me toward panic-attack-ville. I've dealt with this by avoiding the news in general (my husband keeps me up to date on disturbing events using gentler wording buffered on either end with a hug) but I still want to be in the know.

Also, avoiding Facebook is much more difficult than avoiding the news; and so I see articles that friends post that I shouldn't click but sometimes do. I am repulsed, deeply saddened and deeply scared by tragedy, but also curious about how terrible things happen (and how I can avoid raising a child that would act in those terrible ways.)

How can I honor my tender self but still stay informed and educated?  Maybe there are others in the same boat that would benefit from some words of wisdom!

Thank you,

Tender-oni

Dear Tender-oni,

When a tragedy of this magnitude rocks our nation, every sentient person feels it in some way.  It sounds like you have the beautiful yet difficult experience of being someone extra attuned to the fragility of life, which means you need to take even more care to be kind to yourself and others in the wake of the Boston bombings.

Hearing tragic news is really unsettling, and it takes us out of our bodies.  The most important thing to do is to get grounded, connect yourself to the earth, and back in your corporeal being.  Wherever you are right now, feel your feet on the floor beneath you.  Imagine there is a connection between the soles of your feet down to the core of the earth, and that a vibration of light is running up through you, lengthening your spine out through the crown of your head.  Put your hands on your thighs, and press.  Then place your hands on your belly and breathe deeply, in and out, until you can feel your breath steadying, and you feel connected to all your limbs from your center.

Now that you are grounded, go ahead and let yourself feel whatever you are feeling.  If you're sad and need to cry, let the tears roll down.  If you are angry and need to punch a pillow, or yell into a cup, do that.  If you are scared and need to call your loved ones, please do.  Let them know you love them and you need them right now.

It is okay to try to get the truth about what happened, to allow your brain to make as much sense as possible of such mind-boggling violence.  However, with all the ways of receiving news now available to us, choose wisely.  First of all, avoid visual and aural news.  Receive your facts in words, in the form of complete sentences.  It is impossible to un-see images of bodies mangled, and to un-hear screams and cries.  News that has already been filtered through the brains of professionals into sentences are designed to inform you in the least traumatizing way possible.  Therefore, if you must follow the news, read it in article form, and don’t sign up to be notified every time events unfold---be as in charge as possible of when/how you receive the latest updates.

Don’t be afraid to reach out for professional help if you are indeed having panic attack symptoms.  Call your therapist, or if you don’t have one, contact Disaster Distress, a program of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Support Administration: http://disasterdistress.samhsa.gov/  You can call 1-800-985-5990 toll-free to talk with a crisis counselor, who can help you deal with the normal reactions to such troubling events.  There is nothing wrong with you if you are having triggering responses to such horrifying acts---it just means you are human.

Being human sometimes means being scared, but it also means being able to love.  Do something today that makes you feel really alive, and connects you to the love in your life, and the kindness of humans.  You have to counterbalance the horror with reminders that we are all held together with heartstrings.  This may be as small as creating some art to immerse yourself in beauty, or as large as volunteering to help others even more in need than you are.

I don’t know how long it will take, or what will transpire before we get there, but love will win.  I have had too many wonderful experiences with humans to discount them in the face of tragedy and say “people are terrible.”  I don’t believe that.  Some people are sick and need help and love, so that they can see how alike we all really are, and that there is something of value in each of us.

There will come a day that we will all look in one another’s eyes and see our own spark staring back at us.  In order to make this vision a reality, to end violence everywhere, we have to let the love we hold in our hearts wash over all we come into contact with, until it is a tidal wave, consuming the fear and leaving us ashore at last.

Love,

Sibyl

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