Oh, the places you'll go

If you’d asked me ten years ago, or even two years ago, where I’d be living at age twenty-five, I might have guessed New York or Boston. Perhaps I’d even shoot a glance toward the West Coast, but I certainly never would have guessed I’d find myself in Atlanta. Atlanta’s a lovely place, but it was never on my radar. Before I showed up, I hadn’t internalized any stereotypes about the food or the people or the culture here. In fact, I had no idea what the place even looked like. (So many trees! So many strip malls!) It’s been a really wonderful aspect of settling in here, I think—arriving without assumptions and just taking it all in.

The thing about just showing up is that you get to notice exactly how a place folds in around you. When I moved to Boston for college, I had so many ideas about who I’d be there and how I’d belong. But you can spend a long time wrestling with the difference between who you think you’re supposed to be in a place and who you really are.

I moved here in June without much of a plan for what I’d do or who I’d be in this new-to-me town, and I like it much better that way. Somehow, it feels simpler this time, getting to know myself and my new context without having to make comparisons to what I’d expected. It’s a little scary approaching life in a new place without a detailed map and itinerary, but it’s pretty exciting too.

As a writer, I love trying to think ahead, imagining how the arc of a story will pan out. I love answering questions like, “How do you imagine your life five years from now?” It’s comforting trying to predict the future.

But I’ve learned that life doesn’t really work that way, plotting out a set of points and connecting them with straight lines. Instead, my imaginary future is most helpful for understanding the present.

When I was in sixth grade, I was set on becoming an astronaut one day. I loved learning about the universe, and I really wanted to leave my small town behind for fabulous adventures. Years later, that same impulse landed me not on Mars but in Divinity school. There I didn’t study how the universe looks or how it works, but rather a bit about how each of us imagines the universe from where we’re standing.

From where I’m standing today, the universe looks very beautiful and strange, and the future looks wide open. I wonder a little about where I’ll be five years from now, but I’m learning to wonder more about how I’ll shape today.

When I focus more on where I am than on where I will be, life starts to feel less like a timeline and more like a spiral. Even as we move forward, we can look back and notice how we’ve circled back around to familiar places and ways of being.

Recently in the Jewish calendar, we’ve entered the month of Elul, a time for reflection and contemplation in preparation for the High Holidays. I’ve often spent this time reflecting on past mistakes and shortcomings and planning how to do better in the year to come. This time, I’ve set myself a new challenge: to delight in what the past is teaching me about today and to allow the future, real or imagined, to illuminate possibilities for the present.

Telling a new story

"Roxanne Krystalli is a gender-related development specialist in conflict and post-conflict areas."

What do you do when the first line in your biography no longer fits?

I am between stories at the moment, a process that involves consistently living off the top two layers of my still-packed suitcases, debating the merits of paint swatches, and confronting the reverse culture shock inherent in returning to what used to be a home with the task of sorting out the disorienting dance between the unfamiliar and the too familiar.

And the first line no longer fits. Having worked in conflict and post-conflict areas, I know not to confound conflict and war. Conflict, human pain and strife exist in Boston and Colombia and Guatemala and Jerusalem and I have called all these places home at some point along the journey. Yet, you would hardly call Boston a "conflict or post-conflict area."

You would hardly call me a specialist. I have grown wary of specialists and experts. The longer I have worked with women affected by conflict worldwide, the more I have uncovered the boundaries of my knowledge. The universe of concepts I do not understand and of life I cannot make sense of keeps expanding. It would be out of step for the titles and labels to keep narrowing. "Specialist" and "expert" do not fit. Do not even get me started on "guru."

As I fill out the paperwork for orientation at the graduate program that is anchoring my return to Boston, I notice everyone is grabbing for story. The prompts might as well read "Tell us who you are . . . in 250 words or less. In a paragraph. In 140 characters. In a text message without emoticons. With bells and whistles, without embellishment, with enough intrigue for us to want to be your friends, roommates, or mentors."

Life stories evolve, and so do their 140-character biographies. I am slowly realizing that a bio is not the story of "is", not exclusively the story of here and now. It is a journey between points, a question about the axis on which you are traveling. The story of "has lived and has worked", not of "lives and works." And, perhaps most thankfully, it is the story of beyond "lives and works." On Twitter, in her own blog, in the Admitted Students Handbook, Roxanne Krystalli is - still - a gender-related development specialist who works in conflict and post-conflict areas.

In life, Roxanne Krystalli is in transition, perpetual transition. Her heart is in gender advocacy and conflict management, in the Middle East and Latin America. This is the work that feeds her faith in humanity, a phrase she overuses, right up there with "the universe is winking." Her mind likes to wrap itself around the concepts of remembrance and forgetting, nostalgia and grief, of storytelling as a vehicle of empathy and, shyly, maybe even as a vehicle of peacebuilding. She sees the world, really sees, through the viewfinder of a camera. She loves panda bears, everything that smells like vanilla, and the art of loving in itself---as an art.

This is not the stuff of LinkedIn, of student handbooks, or maybe even not of Twitter. But it is the story of now, the biography of a journey from elsewhere and a past "then" to a future that has yet to be painted.

My Story: Purpose

For most people, mid-life crises strike in middle age, when paunches are appearing and more hairs are grey than not. For me, the period of searching I began to jokingly refer to as my “quarter-life crisis” came calling a few years ago in early spring, a few months before I turned 21. Eight months after I got married, it was becoming clear that a bachelor’s degree was not going to be in my immediate future. My class schedule had been pared down until hardly anything remained; I spent my days going to class and doing homework for a degree that was realistically impossible at that particular moment in my life.

I felt adrift, confused, unsure of what my purpose in life was or what my next step should be. If not a college graduate, then what? My health wasn’t stable enough for even a part-time job. I desperately wanted children, but my husband and I had agreed to wait until my health was a little more manageable. Coupled with the fact that I knew that my cystic fibrosis was nearly a guarantee of a future infertility struggle, it seemed clear that motherhood was not something that would come to me easily or soon.

As the trees began to unfurl their first delicate green buds, I wrestled over and over with the feeling of being lost, purposeless, meaningless. Could there be value in a life so small, I wondered? Could there be a value in a life that was, more often than not, lived from the couch? Could there be value in a life that lacked all of the markers our society uses to define success—a degree, a job, children?

A few weeks after my soul-searching began, I reflected in a rather macabre moment that really, my “quarter-life crisis” might be considered a true “mid-life crisis,” if you consider a mid-life crisis to be the anxiety that strikes when you’ve lived half the years you can be expected to live. Currently, the average life expectancy for a cystic fibrosis patient is in the late thirties. Years later, I learned that plenty of CF patients in their early twenties experience a similar mid-life crisis.

Weeks passed. The snow in my mountain-locked home melted, leaving the earth saturated with mud and the constant sound of dripping in my ears. And still I felt empty, longing for a purpose. I had always been driven; I’d gone after the things I’d wanted with energy and zeal, and I usually got them. I had always had a purpose. I had been a daughter, a writer, a big sister and surrogate mother, a violinist, a student. I had had all number of big dreams, from publishing a book to living in Hawaii to teaching at a dance studio.

I felt, now, as though everything was being peeled away from me. I was left with only the barest of essentials, the simplest of responsibilities. The scope of my life was narrowing. I thought about these things constantly, talking them over with my husband, writing about them in my journal and on my blog, praying desperately for a purpose for my life.

And slowly, over a period of weeks, I began to find what I was looking for.

As days passed and I continued my relentless questioning, a word came into my mind again and again. Homemaker. It was not a term I had spent much time thinking about before; in the brief moments that I had, I had considered it a rather outdated phrase, one that pigeonholed a woman into a narrow frame of reference and failed to recognize her vibrant, dynamic nature.

But the word stayed. Homemaker. And as I pondered it, I had a revelation.

All my life, I had thought of "homemaker" as synonymous with "mother." After all, "homemaker" is the official term for a stay-at-home mother. When applying to college, I’d spent a lot of time checking boxes to indicate that my mom was a "homemaker." "Homemaker" was, in my opinion, the label that the corporate world had come up with to make a life of diaper changes and laundry baskets something you can put on an official document.

But as I thought about it, I realized something sensational: "homemaker" was not, in fact, the same thing as "mother." Although many mothers are homemakers, a homemaker does not have to be a mother.

I thought about the phrase: a simple compound word, really. Home-maker. One who creates a home. A woman who devotes herself to making her home a haven, a place of safety, comfort, and peace—for herself, her husband, and anyone who enters.

In that seemingly innocuous word, I found the sense of purpose I had been so desperately seeking. There were many things that I couldn’t—and still can’t—do. A year after that mid-life crisis, I officially withdrew from college. Three years since that spring of searching, I still don’t have a degree, or a job, or a child.

But I have been a homemaker. In every place that we have lived, I have worked hard to create a place of joy and love for my husband and myself. I have welcomed friends into our home for comfort, and companionship, and lots of late nights of games and laughter. I’ve discovered a passion for creating good, healthy food for my family.

I have made a home.

That moment of realization—the light-bulb instant where I realized just how much purpose could be found in such a neglected phrase—did not solve all my problems. I still had moments of guilt, and despair, and long nights where I felt worthless and obsolete. I still do.

But what that chilly spring so many years ago did do was answer one question that had haunted me for a long time before. Can there be value in a life so small?

Because what I have learned is that the answer is yes. There is always value. Even in the days where I feel most helpless—even in the days where I can hardly get off the couch—there is value. I am the maker of our home, an integral part in this family of two that my husband and I have created.

I have purpose.

In this space, Cindy Baldwin will share her evolution---the ways she has come to accept the circumstances of her life with cystic fibrosis and find great contentment within them. You can read the beginning of her story here and here. 

Inheritance

By Sheila Squillante Something happened tonight that I was totally unprepared for.

Before I describe it, I’ll back up and say that lately, my daughter, Josephine, has been asking a lot of questions about death. In particular, she wants to know, “Did my grandpa die?” My answer is always the truth: Yes, sweetie. He died. Each time the question comes, her inquiry deepens so that we have gone through, “He was your dad? Your dad died?” “How did he die?” “Why did he die?” “Where is my grandpa now?”  and, “Can he come back?”

These questions obliterate me, but I have been able to take a deep breath each time and tell her the age-appropriate truth with maybe a little quaver to my voice, maybe a quick tear, but mostly with composure. I did the same thing for my son when he began to ask these questions.

And I’ve been telling the kids about their grandfather since they were first interested in listening to stories. Josephine has been asking for “Grandpa Stories” before bed for at least a year. She has them memorized and asks for them by name: “The Snapping Turtle,” “The Red Rooster in Brewster,” The Glue Cookies.” Tonight, though, as we were finishing up a book we got from the library, turning off the light and climbing into her bed for our nightly snuggle, she burst into racking, whole-little-body-shaking sobs out of nowhere. I thought, at first, that she had physically hurt herself. I was completely thrown and I asked her what was wrong. She could barely form her mouth around the words,

“I miss my grandpa. I want him to come back.”

Oh, sweetie.

I gathered her up into my arms and held her while she cried, stroking her hair and telling her it was okay to feel sad, that I feel sad sometimes, too. That it’s okay to miss him. But that when I’m sad, I think about The Glue Cookies or The Red Rooster and it helps me feel better, closer to him. I promised her I would tell her Grandpa stories whenever she wanted me to to help her feel better, too. I told her all this while she cried and cried and I buried my face in her hair and cried too. Quietly. Mostly swallowing my grief for fear of indulging it and letting it overwhelm us both.

It’s not that I didn’t expect her to ask hard questions about death or that she would maybe someday feel a void where my father should have been in her life.

But I did not expect it to happen *now*. She is three years old.

I have become so used to my son’s rather cerebral, analytical relationship to my father’s death (the only emotion I’ve seen him express has been around the extrapolation of death-in-general to Death of Parent. Me.), that I forgot about the child whose uncanny empathy has been a primary part of her personality since she was a year old. This should not have surprised me. This is who she is.

As I helped her settle, I realized that this was the first time in more than eighteen years that I’ve had to push my own grief aside to minister to someone else’s. That it was my own daughter’s felt terrifying–I don’t want her to hurt like this–but also, in a sense, wonderfully healing.

I have always said that part of the reason I write about my father is to continue him, to enliven him for my children. Maybe I’ve been able to do that a little, and it feels good; it makes me happy.

But somehow it never occurred to me that, along with my memories, my stories, my kids would also inherit my living, persistent, still vibrant grief.

Header Image: New York Public Library. Photo by Centennial Photographic Co. of sculpture "Grief".

Mind Games

The carnival ride that was my day started at 4:30 AM.  This seems an unnatural hour for a human to be awake.  And yet I am frequently up at this time attending to domestic or professional responsibilities, or some combination of both.  I am not alone in this, I know.  As I haunted our still apartment, pumping fresh milk for the baby and packing my tools for the flower market, I began preparing mentally for the day ahead.  In the muggy blackness of the morning, I set out for the Manhattan Bridge---the city on the other side, still/already bustling with activity.  Driving over, I fantasized about the delicious coffee beverage I would enjoy before hitting the floral vendors, did a quick survey of all the tasks I had to complete before my 2 PM installation (including pumping two more times) and mustered up an extra helping of confidence and sense of competence.  I thought, “I have a lot going on and I am really doing it!  RIGHT ON, SISTER!”  My primary objective is always to keep that thought (or something just like it) as my ballast.  I aim to stay the course psychologically with something helpful and supportive as my guide, until I am back at home base, checked in for the night.  It is not easy, has never been easy, will never be easy.  Forthwith, a record of my efforts on this particular, not necessarily unusual, day. I came close to totaling the car when the cab in front of me decided to slam on the brakes (appropros of nothing) while crossing an intersection through a green light.  I navigated the interminable construction on Houston (fight or flight response still kicked into high gear) and eventually slid into a parking spot near the coffee place.  I took a minute to regroup---my heart still beating a little too noticeably---and thought to myself, ‘UGH, THIS CITY!’  I knew I would live a full day before most people even crack an eye.  Then, I did a reframe that went something like this, ‘So, that makes me lucky, I’ll get twice the day out of it.’  I let out a sigh (an audible dusting myself off), shoved open the car door and spilled onto the street with my bloated purse (Why always so HEAVY, Sarah?) and clipboard, ready for action.

The process of taking negative thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts is a very simple component of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  The basic tenet of CBT is that you can change the way you feel and behave by changing the way you think.  In the above example, my automatic thought was that this city was making me crazy.  If I continued down the path of that negative thinking, I might feel awful about my situation and then engage in self-defeating behavior.  When you interrupt the process of barreling straight from the thought bubble to the emotion to the behavior, it is like pushing the reset button over and over.  You get a fresh start on each experience and eventually, you may find that the maladaptive thinking begins to lessen.  The positive feedback loop is that the sunnier your thoughts, the happier you feel and the more effectively you move through life.  It all sounds so heel-click-y and effortless, right?  Depending upon myriad factors, including temperament, physiology, environment et al, the phrase “easier said than done” may have strong resonance here.

Among my all-time “Aha!” moments in terms of challenging negative thought patterns came years ago from a superb clinical supervisor at an outpatient psychiatric clinic.  During our supervision (a weekly meeting that’s sort of like professional therapy for therapists), we covered many esoteric concepts.  We discussed the theoretical underpinnings of the work I was doing.  We reviewed patient after patient and delved into my private response to each of them, how my past experiences and intimate feelings might impact our sessions.  We discussed psychotropic medications and which of the patients seemed to be benefitting.

One week, I came in fit to be tied about some issue at graduate school over which I was completely powerless.  It was distracting me from my work that day.  My supervisor sat and listened patiently as I described the nature of my snit.  Finally, he said, “Have I ever told you about my commute?”  Incredulous, I thought, ‘This jackass isn’t even LISTENING to me.’  I managed a, ‘No.’ And then he proceeded to tell me that he drives an hour to and from work, every day on the busiest freeway in the city.  He said that both ways, he sits in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour, sometimes more.  For various reasons, he did not have an option to change this commute, so he was resigned to this fate.  I flashed on the sense of helplessness and frustration that I was sure must well up inside him while sitting idle on the freeway.  I asked, ‘How INSANE must that make you?’  He replied with this: “It doesn’t make me crazy at all.  I just decide to relax and use the time to think and dream and listen to great music.”  Genius.  I couldn’t believe it---he was explaining to me that there are actually options from which to choose when interpreting your life circumstances.  For whatever reason, no amount of study or my own therapy put as fine a point on it as that miniature sketch.  My mind was officially blown.

Which brings us back to now.  During the course of the day in question, I was confronted with many, many opportunities to lose my shit.  These opportunities ranged from, “Good GRAVY, NO!” moments to “Well, that’s annoying.” interludes.  I experienced a little witching hour---right around 3PM things got dicey and I drifted into approximately 13 solid minutes of self-pity.  I gave myself permission to indulge until I was back at the apartment.  Interestingly, I found I didn’t need all the time I had allotted.

Image: Traffic on the George Washington Bridge, Dan McCoy, 1973

Looking Forward: Credit Due.

Just before my sixteenth birthday, my family packed up our little white clapboard house in Honolulu (where we’d lived for eight years) and moved back to Los Angeles (where I was born and had attended elementary school). My first year back on “the mainland” required me to adjust to life in a big city after spending many years in the slow, simmering heat of a tiny tropical island. I also had to cope with the stress of starting over at a new school in the eleventh grade, on top of the normal, everyday highs and lows of teenage life. It wasn't easy. By the end of my senior year, however, it became clear that the move was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Attending a small, art-centric high school helped bring me out of my shell (I was painfully shy at school prior to the move), and, as a result, I developed friendships that were deep and meaningful. I left high school feeling strong, confident, and incredibly happy. I recognize now that I’d come a very long way in just two short years.

But, again, it wasn’t an easy journey getting there. It was a stressful process, and I was often very hard on myself when I made mistakes, or faltered, or did things that I thought were awkward or embarrassing (but, in hindsight, were totally normal). I was my own worst critic and toughest judge — I expected myself to handle everything perfectly.

One day, though, just before graduation, I remember sitting on my back patio and suddenly thinking something that I’d never thought before. The thought contained just five simple words, but they resonated so clearly: I think you’re doing great. It felt so good to think those words, to believe them — because when all was said and done, I was doing pretty great. My life wasn’t perfect, but there were so many things to be proud of and to love about it. I’d been critical of all the things I thought I’d done wrong along the way, but had never given myself credit for all the things I’d done well.

I thought of this last week at a moment when I felt tempted to say - half-jokingly — that I felt like a complete mess. I was sleep-deprived, working non-stop, and feeling sluggish and scatterbrained in general. I’m failing, I thought.

Then, I thought again. The truth of the matter was, I wasn’t failing. There was a lot going on at the time and much of it was stressful, but there were other things to be happy about, too. The difference was, I was choosing to focus only on what I was doing wrong, when really, there was a lot I was doing right, as well. Why wasn't I acknowledging that?

My takeaway from all of this: when things aren’t going my way, when I'm under a lot of stress, when I'm tempted to put myself down, I should remember to give a nod to the things that are going well instead, and give myself a little credit, at the very least, for trying. Life can be painfully, overwhelmingly hard. We’re all doing the best we can, and no one’s perfect. It's a challenge to think this way, but it's so worth it: cut yourself some slack. Chances are, you're doing great.

Destiny's Child

I have been thinking a lot about destiny lately.  Whenever people hear the story of how my husband and I came to be together, they say something to the effect of, “It’s like you were fated to be married!”  When I describe my 180-degree career shift from social worker to florist, I get, “It was always what you were supposed to do!”  And there is the inevitable, “This was absolutely meant to be!” concerning the subject of my finally becoming a mother.  Having said all that, and acknowledging that my life feels nothing short of wondrous at times, I am not actually sure I believe in destiny.  I think what I mostly believe in is making choices. As a person with some fairly significant control issues, I battle with the notion that things are in any way preordained.  When confronting a particularly challenging set of circumstances, the concept of life unfurling “just as it should,” and according to some magical plan beyond my comprehension, sounds amazing.  I assert there is some truth to this - I have an indistinct sense that everything always “works out in the end.”  But I feel strongly that I have a hand in crafting the result and that, depending on the situation, my influence is anywhere from 85-99% of it.  The remaining 1-15% (author’s note: these numbers are not rooted in any scientific process) I suppose is some amalgamation of karma (at least my white, Jewish, suburban notion of karma) and dumb luck.  I never said it was sexy.

My husband and I have a really good thing going.  For his part, he is lovely, bright, thoughtful, totally friggin’ hilarious and a very involved father.  We share the same life goals, appreciate almost all the same cultural phenomena and have similar values around politics, social justice and generally how we want to function in the world.  How I landed him seems like magic, but the bottom line is I chose him.

We first met at summer camp, as teenagers.  Flash forward 17 years and we ended up married with a ridiculously adorable infant daughter.  This story is so ripe for the “meant to be” trope, it’s virtually impossible to resist.  And as much as I would like to wrap it up in a tidy bow, it feels critically important to appreciate how pro-active we both had to be to get here:

1)   How I knew Michael in the first place: As a child, I chose to participate in a Labor Zionist youth movement that offered a sleep-away summer camp.  Believe me, this is a highly specific choice.

2)   How I was in a position to date him: At age 34, I chose to leave my first marriage, recognizing that I had made a mistake.

3)   How we reconnected: I chose to reach out to him on Facebook, hoping we still might have some things in common.

4)   How the relationship developed: I chose to pursue our connection, despite being separated by 3000 miles.  I then chose to move across the country to give it a real chance.

5)   How we were married: I chose to make a life with someone that I not only loved but who treated me with respect and with whom I was a great match.

Don’t get me wrong: there was and is all manner of getting the vapors and birds chirping and stars trailing across the night sky.  However, the bones of what we have done and what we are doing together are the minute and monumental choices.  The future of our relationship depends entirely on these choices.  Are we going to be kind to one another?  Are we going to listen?  Are we going to stick around when things get tough?  Are we going to share domestic responsibilities . . . some of this is HUGE and some of it seems so piddly, I realize.  I would argue that every little choice piles onto the heap that tips the scales in favor of a partnership.

I was fortunate that someone like Michael was available for my choosing when I was ready.  It was also providence that our timing worked out just right.  But almost everything since has been instrumental and emotional elbow grease.

Chance has also played a role in my career.  I have been “lucky” to have a supportive husband, willing to bear the risk of my starting a business (and doing so smack in the middle of a global financial crisis!).  But I chose to leave a stable, essentially recession-proof career to go out on my own.  And every day I choose not to go back to a more secure position that carries fancy health benefits, so that I might create something more meaningful for myself.

The miniature cherub that lives in our home?  When it comes to her, things get a bit more complicated.  The relevant choice is that I decided to pursue and endure fertility treatments when it became clear that we would not have a child without assistance.  The staggering fortune is that it worked, and we had a healthy child.  Speaking of staggering fortune, we were also lucky to have the resources at our disposal for the procedures.  I will also say that had it not worked, I would have chosen among many other (equally taxing) options to have a child, all of which involve a healthy dose of rolling the dice.  Soon enough, we will be confronted with this crazy fusion of intention and chance if we decide to expand our family again.

The things of which I am most proud in my life — marriage, work, baby — have required a combination giving it up to the fates and making the arduous decisions of a warrior.  It gives me great solace to imagine that I am the author of my own future and that I don’t have to wait for “blessings” to be happy.  The good news is that means we can all change our lives for the better . . . it simply starts with choosing to believe that it’s feasible.

From Cannes, France...

Dearest Clara, August is for going to the beach, isn't it? I didn't necessarily used to think so always, but the older I get, the more I miss the salt water air and carefreeness that comes with hot summer days and cool ocean water.  We were lucky this year - the beach in Cannes called our name.  Maybe if we're lucky next year, it will call again.  Here are a couple of things I've learned from this beautiful coast:

• Rosé goes with everything: Everything.  Remember how I said prosecco goes with everything in Italy? Well here you can’t go wrong with rosé.  Lunch, dinner, aperitif, fish, chicken, anything adn everything . . . when in doubt, go pink.  And you can even throw in an ice cube or two.
• There will prettier girls sometimes: At least, that’s what you’ll think, even though it is not true.  And sometimes there will be thinner girls and ones with more money, a deeper tan, cooler sunglasses . . . This is a place where often people have more, and it’s easy to get caught up in comparisons.  But believe your mother on this one, you are just as beautiful as any person out there and it will be your confidence that makes you so.  Whether your bathing suit costs $20 or $200, the ocean water will be just as refreshing.  And when you come home, you’ll wonder why you did all that silly worrying.
• You can have cheese for dinner:  Really.  Our hosts are such wonderful entertainers and chefs, and evenings around the dinner table featured so many good things that were on endless parade.  Yet, one of my favorite meals is the night we were all tired, and we had “cheese for dinner”.  Of course, there were several different platters of all kinds, and accompanying breads, and baskets of fresh figs and honey.  The milk and the creams that go into French cheeses are so good, and the process still true to what it always has been.  Sometimes, something simple can steal the show – give it space to do so every once in a while.  And don’t forget the rosé.
• Enjoy a quiet night in the garden: Cannes has a way of feeling hectic sometimes, but it’s amazing how many pockets of solitude you can find, and absolutely everything that is beautiful and fragrant seems to grow here.  I guess that’s why so many perfumes are from here.  Enjoy these plants and smells…the lavender…the olive trees…the herbs…it all comes together in such a unique combination.  You’ll come back in the future just for that experience all over again.
• Go to the beach: That’s what you’re there for.  Whether it’s a little cove off the road, or in a full on beach club, go to the beach and get in the water.  Nothing sparkles quite like the ocean in the south of France – this is your chance to be part of it.

And of course, don’t forget your sunscreen.

All my love,

Mom

My Story: One of "Those" People

Things were better by the time I graduated from high school. I still had to balance my schedule carefully, and I was still confined to a wheelchair when I went shopping—but I had made great strides from the year before. I could walk up the stairs in my parents’ house without pain. College would be difficult for me, I knew, but I was confident that I could handle it. With care and caution, I knew I could put together a schedule that wasn’t too much for me. At least, I thought, I wouldn’t have to be one of “those people” whose health problems were serious enough to prevent them from higher education.

I packed my bags and drove across the country with my family. I was moving from big-town North Carolina to small-town Idaho; as the trees fell away to plains outside my car window, I could feel the homesickness growing.

My first year of college went smoothly. I took as light a schedule as I could while still being a full-time student. I missed so much class that I had to have a special letter from the office of disabilities giving me extra sick time, but I still managed to make it through my first two semesters with a near-perfect GPA and a journal filled with memories.

Not long after I began my third semester, my health started to decline again. I battled lung infection after lung infection, and my fatigue seemed worse every day. The previous summer, ballroom dancing had become my passion, and I’d spent hours each week dancing. Within a few weeks of the start of the new semester, I had to drop both of my dance classes. I was too out of breath to dance like I had just months before, and the exercise left me exhausted.

Still, I tried hard to live a normal life. I kept up with my classwork, stayed on top of my healthcare regimen so that I could take advantage of the energy I did have, and got a boyfriend. As fall passed into winter—always an early occurrence in southeast Idaho—things between the two of us began to get more serious. By the time I left for Christmas, Mahon had told me that he would like to marry me. By the end of January, we were engaged.

That spring, an outbreak of a particularly nasty strain of the flu went around my hometown. For nearly a month, I stayed in isolation and didn’t see any of my friends, for fear that I’d catch it. Ironically enough, weeks after everyone else had gotten better, I started showing symptoms. I ran a high fever for several weeks, losing fifteen pounds and developing a serious lung infection. I’d already been in the hospital once that year—a fairly routine annual event—but as the first flowers began to bloom in North Carolina, I found myself a hospital patient once more.

It quickly became clear that I wouldn’t be able to travel back to Idaho in the coming weeks, as I’d planned. My recovery was slow; I lay in bed for several weeks, unable to do much more than read light books and try to gain back all the weight I’d lost. Instead of catching a plane to Idaho to spend time with my fiancé—who was still in school—and plan a wedding, I was faced with the necessity of taking a medical deferment from the summer semester that I was supposed to be attending.

Suddenly, I had become one of “those people.” Frightening possibilities crowded through my mind, marching one after another like ants at a picnic. Would I be able to go back to school in the fall? Would I be able to finish school at all? Would I have to withdraw from school to take care of my health? I had always been driven, ambitious; I had spent my life looking forward to my undergraduate education, and I had loved the year and a half of school I had already completed. Each time I thought of the possibility that I might have to eventually withdraw, I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. I spent long afternoons that summer crying, mourning the dreams that I felt were slipping through my fingers.

By the time I got married late in August, I had had three hospital stays in the last six months. I found myself wondering if I would ever manage to crawl back from where I was now; was this the beginning of a decline I’d never be able to pull out of?

I did go back to school that autumn. Within the first two weeks, it was clear that the full-time schedule I had signed up for would be too much for me. I dropped one class, and then another, until I had pared my course load down to only two or three classes. Even then, I found myself missing class often, easily drained by the effort of keeping up with homework while adjusting to married life and a household of my own.

But always, the fear haunted me. I felt hounded by guilt—at taking such a light courseload, at all the times I felt I’d failed as a wife when I had to ask my husband to take care of me yet again, at the nagging feeling that maybe I should be pushing myself harder, be one of the people in inspirational commercials who accomplishes great things despite their setbacks. I was daunted by the prospect: Most days, I considered getting through my classes and getting dinner on the table to be a Herculean effort.

The fear, and the guilt, stayed with me, an insidious voice always present in the back of my mind.

It would be years before I learned how to silence that voice.

In this space, Cindy Baldwin will share her evolution---the ways she has come to accept the circumstances of her life with cystic fibrosis and find great contentment within them. You can read the beginning of her story here and here. 

YWRB: It Takes Nerve

By Amanda Page It took nerve to go to the microphone and ask a feminist legend for some advice.

It takes real nerve to be a rebel.

It took a year of writing about rebellion for me to build up the nerve to finally claim my life as my own. I was 22 and ready to travel and it seemed like the whole world was telling me, “No.” I simply wanted to get on a plane.

“You can’t go,” I was told. “You can’t leave.”

My biggest rebellions have always been about going after what I want for myself instead of living in service of what others want for me. It’s hard to hold our own desires and protect and honor them. The wants and expectations of others can so easily become the “shit” that we’re not supposed to take. If we don’t respect our own wishes, then we’re taking shit from ourselves.

It takes nerve to take no shit . . . from others or from yourself.

Nerve is like a muscle. Rebellion is the exercise that builds the nerve muscle.

And you can do rebellion by writing it.

It took nerve to whip out our pens and legal pads in bars at midnight. It took nerve to declare that we were writing a book. It took nerve to share the idea with the wild woman from my poetry class.

Each action was a tiny act of rebellion, working my nerve muscle, making me more capable, more daring, more able to surprise myself.

I was told, “No,” but I said, “Yes.” Yes, I will.

I can now say, “Yes, I did.”

The stories we hold dearest are the ones that come from the times that we dare ourselves to do something.

Do something that scares you. Today. Anything. Ten years from now, it might be the moment that changed everything. It might be your best story.

Your best story takes nerve.

Defining Simplicity: An Introduction

I fell in love with women’s magazines by about age twelve. My mom had a friend who was a librarian, and she would bring us back issues that would then pile up around the house, their glossy covers beckoning. Each issue offered its own promises of quick weight loss, clutter-free closets, and five-minute meals. I guess you could say I grew up in a sort of magazine heaven. Our house was a place where serials came to live on, far past their prime, dog-eared and well-loved. They made the journey from couch to recycle bin only on rare occasions and more often remained nestled under beds, in over-full baskets, or between cushions. Ironically, these volumes of promise eventually became a part of the clutter and weight of our material lives.

Of all the magazines I lived among, one title stood out above all others: Real Simple. I devoured the how-tos on packing healthy lunches for your kids, simplifying your beauty routine, and entertaining effortlessly. I remember a summer weather tip that suggested cooling off by running cold water over your wrists. How simple. I couldn’t get enough of it.

If I visualized my grown-up life, it was a collage of images and checklists swiped from between the covers of countless issues of Real Simple. From an adolescent perspective, age 35 looked something like a hazy mishmash of perfect white button-downs, a couple of charming children, a golden retriever, and something called a “work/life balance.” Above all, I was filling notebooks and mental file cabinets with instructions for keeping it all “simple.”

These days, my dreams have evolved (although, the ever-elusive perfect white button-down is still on my radar), but “simple” has stuck. It’s become a recurring question and a promise I encounter on a daily basis. Simple time management strategies. Simple DIY. Simple meals. Simple cell phone plans. Simple apps. Simple weddings. Simple investing. Simple skincare. Simple living.

I can’t help but wonder, what does “simple” really mean? And what is “simplicity”? A state of mind? A practice? A place? An illusion? Even a dictionary defines “simple” mostly by what it is not. It is not complicated, ornate, artificial, elaborate, or affected. More subtly, I would argue that “simplicity” is not necessarily cheap or convenient or easy, though the terms are often used interchangeably.

What is “simple,” then? And why does “simplicity” continually elude us and tempt us as consumers and as human beings? These are just a few of the questions I hope to explore in this column, through stories and memories and wonderings.

For now, though, I’d love to know what simplicity means to you. Where and when and how have you encountered it or achieved it in your own life? Or, alternately, how has simplicity eluded you?

My Story: Poetry and Prose

My parents are my heroes. I was their first child, born when they were 21 and 23, respectively. They were young, hopeful, and excited to become parents.

For the first four months, everything was normal. After that, things went downhill quickly. A bad reaction to an antibiotic sent my infant self into a quick spiral of electrolyte loss and malabsorption, until my tiny body was so taxed by constant vomiting and dangerously low potassium levels that my parents were told I was near death.

When I turned twenty-one—the age my mother was as she experienced all of this—I marveled. I could not imagine the pain that the two of them went through, welcoming their beloved first child into the world only to be told months later that the end was likely.

Finally, at six months, the doctor thought to test me for cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes a buildup of sticky mucus throughout the body—and also, incidentally, leads to very quick electrolyte loss. The diagnostic test came back positive.

My early memories of cystic fibrosis are a jumble of doctor’s appointments, strange machines, and leaning upside-down on a pile of pillows as one of my parents percussed my chest to help keep my lungs clear. There are other things that swim through my remembering as well, like the time my babysitter told me that if a necklace clasp worked its way around to the charm in front, it meant you could make a wish.

Crystal-clear in my memory is one sunny Sunday afternoon as I left church with my favorite necklace around my neck. The clasp nestled against the heart-shaped pendant. With childish fingers, I reached to pull it back, remembering as I did so the babysitter’s words.

That’s easy, I thought. I wish my CF would go away.

Still, my childhood was by and large a happy and very normal one, defined far more by the monsters that lived in my basement and my favorite park two blocks away than by my disease. I breathed easily, and could not remember those early days of endless hospitalizations. It wasn’t until high school hit—and with it, sleep loss—that the hospital became a part of my life again. Each winter, I would be admitted for a few days to begin a course of intravenous antibiotics. I would finish out the weeks-long course at home, needing a month or more after I’d finished the round to recuperate from the harsh effects of the strong medications.

And then, early in my junior year, everything changed.

High school had been a hit to my immune system, and I’d grown used to spending the winters fighting off one cold after another. At first, the virus I picked up around Thanksgiving of my junior year seemed like all the others: I was tired, my throat was sore, I had a cough, I was spending most of my time in bed.

But unlike all the other things that had come my way, this didn’t go away. Months stretched on. I was exhausted all the time, living in a half-awake world where even reading a novel was sometimes too much for my brain to process. Weeks would pass in which I never really left the house. I rotated from bed to couch to my parents’ back porch, where I would stretch out across two chairs and watch the squirrels jump from tree to tree in the backyard. I canceled plans with friends again and again. Even a twenty-minute phone call was enough exertion to leave me so drained that all I could do was crawl into bed, desperate for sleep.

Every few weeks, my mom drove me to the pediatrician for more tests. Nothing came back positive, and still my symptoms did not change. I began to have pain in my legs and feet; over time, the pain got so bad that I could hardly walk. I spent my days confined to places where I could have my feet propped up, my legs stretched out, to give my aching muscles a little relief. I left church early each week, roaming the building to find an unused room where I could lay down on the floor. The simple effort of sitting up had become exhausting.

Eventually, a diagnosis came. Ten months after that first sore throat, my doctor tested me for Epstein-Barr, the virus that causes mono. It came back positive. Another doctor explained that because of my weakened immune system, I hadn’t been able to shake off mono like most teenagers do; not only would it take longer for my body to fight off the virus, but I would be susceptible to relapses in times of stress for the rest of my life. He also said that I had developed Fibromyalgia, a muslce pain syndrome, as a complication of the mono.

I hardly recognized my own life anymore. Gone was the vibrant, energetic teenager; in her place was a girl I didn’t know, a quiet girl who found long conversations tiring and needed as much sleep as a newborn. I raged against this change, raged against the loss of the life that I had loved.

But slowly, so slowly, I learned to find the beauty.

Nearly a year after my diagnosis, I sat at my desk with my computer slung across my lap and felt bathed in light and loveliness in a way I had never quite experienced before. That afternoon, filled with a peace I had not felt in so long, I wrote these words:

There is a state, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, prose and poetry, that is entirely unique.

Colors seem brighter; sounds are sharper and clearer but, at the same time, gentler on the ears. Every movement you make—lifting a hand to brush at loose hair, blinking, turning to look beside you—feels lyrical, like ballet. You don't speak: there is no need for words. You simply are.

This, then, is one of the gifts that sickness has given me. This, the talent that some people are intrinsically born with, but I never was: the ability to slow down, to take things as they are, without preconceptions or misperceptions to cloud my vision. The ability to stop for a moment, and see loveliness in ordinary things: a mess on a table, a bag comfortably stuffed with contents, a plastic craft bead. The ability to recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary, and understand the beauty of peace.

I have always been a writer. I would venture to guess that I probably spun stories and wove words in the womb; I certainly have for all the years afterwards. But, I think, as I silently uncurl my legs and shift my position on the chair, that it is sickness that has made me a poet.

Prologue

I have always loved butterflies. Something about the way they seem to hang on drafts of air, featherlight, the iridescent greens and yellows and blues of their wings catching the rays of the sun, catches at my heart. A butterfly flitting across my path or alighting on something nearby is a reminder to me to stop, to breathe deep, to live. To embrace joy, and be the deepest version of myself. One summer when I was straddling the line between childhood and adulthood, my Carolina hometown was overrun with tiny green and white butterflies. They fluttered everywhere, gems against the rich blue of the August sky. They were so abundant that it was hard, driving down the freeway, to avoid catching one on your windshield now and then.

“I hate to see them dashed against the glass,” I told my mother one afternoon as I swerved to miss a small white shape. “It makes me feel sick.”

“Don’t feel too bad,” she answered. “They only live for two weeks, anyway.”

That conversation has stayed with me. I think about it, sometimes, as I watch a butterfly pass me, or delicately fan its wings as it sips from a flower. In a human lifespan, two weeks is infinitesimal, hardly a blink on the landscape of a decades-long existence. It is so short as to almost be meaningless, lost in the longer lives of larger creatures.

And yet in its small life, the butterfly brings such beauty.

This is a principle I try to remember.

At six months old, I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a life-shortening genetic illness that affects many organs in the body, causing frequent and serious lung infections, sinus infections, malabsorption, and a host of other issues. Halfway through high school, I battled a year-long case of mono that left me with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. My life is one that is lived in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals; I have both my nurse and my pharmacist on speed dial. I spend hours each day doing treatments and therapies to help keep my lungs clear of infection. Each morning, I swallow more pills than my 82-year-old grandmother with Leukemia. Each day is a delicate balancing act, a struggle to accomplish what I need to without overusing the limited reserves of energy that I possess.

I am breathless on a daily basis. But, as a friend once reminded me, “breathless” is also the word that we so often use to describe moments where we are awed by beauty, or bathed in heart-stopping joy.

And this life of mine is both of these things. The days of frustration, of feeling overwhelmed and betrayed by my own body, are balanced with moments of deep, pure delight. I have learned to find the beauty in a small life, as well as a grand one. I have learned to break new ground, to blaze new trails when the old ones become impassable. I have learned to savor the moments that come my way.

I have learned that sometimes, the only requirement for happiness is a single choice.

This is my story. In this space, I hope to share my own evolution, the ways I have come to accept the circumstances of my life and find great contentment within them.

Because what I continually come back to is this: In my reckoning, two weeks is nowhere near enough time for anything to be accomplished or gain meaning.

And yet, each time I see a butterfly, I am reminded of just how precious each life—no matter how small—can be.

Moving the Goalposts

By Michelle Bunt Rugby is New Zealand’s national sport: it consists of two teams of fifteen players, and a 100-metre playing field. Points are scored by kicking the ball through the goalposts, or dotting the ball down over the goal line. For most of my life, I have approached health and fitness as though as it were a rugby game. I tried to get the ball (myself) through these very narrow goalposts, and when I failed to do so, I assumed the blame. What I have come to realise though is kicking between the goal posts is great in sport, but not so good as a guiding principle for life. Rugby is concrete, and ordered by the rules of the game, whereas life and people operate by a far more nebulous playbook.

Several years ago, after being on different medications that had the unfortunate side effect of weight gain, I decided I needed to get into shape, and exercise. My motivation was simple: I wanted to lose weight. My goalposts were the people around me. I desired to look how they looked, in order to be more acceptable. Fortunately for me, fitness derailed that rather shallow path early on, and opened me up to a much broader, more expansive way of being. After exercising for several months, and finding it a chore---yet another task to be ticked off my to-do list---I suddenly woke up one day to the discovery that I actually liked it: the sweating, the puffing, the burning muscles, the challenge. It was no longer just a means to an end, but actually something life-giving and affirming in and of itself. This was when I started to realise that my goalposts needed shifting; that squeezing myself to fit between the expectations of others could only lead to despair.

So my focus changed.  I spent some time figuring out what was important to me, and there in my heart was the answer, in all of its beautiful simplicity. I wanted to be happy and healthy. Luckily for me, exercise is a significant part of the equation for both of these. I am still not a super-fit, super-slim athlete, and it is possible that I may never be, but no longer do I allow that to determine my view of myself.

Recently, I have just discovered a new exercise obsession. It’s called CrossFit, and is a military-inspired type of group fitness training. On Sunday mornings, I turn up to CrossFit, look at the board for the workout of the day, and try and contain my panic. The workouts are daunting, and they bring my every fear about not being good enough right back up to the surface.

The Dalai Lama gives a brilliant talk about how one finger is only longer than another if you look at two fingers together.  However, if you look at one finger by itself, it just is, and is perfect in its own uniqueness. This is what CrossFit is teaching me. Michelle, in relation to all to the other people in the CrossFit class may be slower and not as strong, but this doesn’t matter. In the moment all that matters is me: Michelle---perfect in her Michelle-ness. Now that I am able to grasp this knowledge, the goalposts no longer matter.

All I see is wide open space, and the freedom to play my own game.

YWRB: What We Rebel For

By Amanda Page Essays were written. We collected them and took them to the head of the English department. We handed him our short stack and waited. We waited for his reaction, for his feedback. We stood in his office, terrified, exhilarated, proud of ourselves for taking this on, scared of ourselves for the same reason.

Maybe we wanted his approval. Instead, we received, with apprehension, a question: what does rebellion mean to you? He didn’t want to disappoint us, that much was clear. But he wanted us to understand that something was missing.

“Right now,” he said, “all I’m reading is several stories about drinking in bars and meeting boys.”

It was early in the project and we were in our early twenties. Drinking in bars and meeting boys was a significant slice of our collective experience.  He went on to say that we needed to have a point, a reason to rebel. We knew he was right, but we challenged him anyway. My memory wants to share a moment where one of us (Amy) dared him to see past the surface to what we were really saying. I don’t remember exactly, and it both kills me and relieves me. I want to say that he responded by daring us to do the same.

We were orbiting the point, just discovering the lesson.

I don’t remember where we found it or who gave it to us, but we happened upon the Marlon Brando quote from The Wild Ones. A girl asks him, “What are you rebelling against?”

He answers, “What have you got?”

Well, we had plenty.

It’s too easy to look back and assign ourselves things to rebel against. I also think that we weren’t rebelling against things. Our rebellion didn’t look like rebellion, which could be seen as a type of rebellion. But we weren’t protesting, we weren’t overtly political, we didn’t have one particular issue that pushed us or for us to push back.

I like to think that we were rebelling in the service of something. We were rebelling for something, not so much against. The idea was to share some instruction on how to rebel, how to live, how to be a young woman writer. We were writing it in real time.

It’s clear to me now, that our rebellion was an attempt to figure out how to live our lives authentically---how to live an authentic life. Every act of authenticity is an act of rebellion. If we rebelled against anything, it was the script. When you’re about to graduate from college, your options can feel limited. You can be overwhelmed with choices, and paralyzed by the pressure to choose. We fought against that pressure, those expectations, often from well-meaning family and friends and professors and advisors.

The most we could hope for was to make interesting lives for ourselves. And at that point, the interesting stuff was boys and bars.

Of course, there was more. By claiming any kind of power over our own lives, we were rebelling against many things: parental expectations, societal expectations, what we’d been taught and what we’d been told to expect for ourselves.

That’s where essays served us most. We claimed our power by claiming our stories. By owning our experiences, through how we wrote them, we created respect for them. I learned to respect my own stories. I learned the power in having a story, and in telling it. The YWRB project made my stories matter at a time when no one wants you to trust yourself. But I trusted my stories. I trusted Amy’s stories. I believed our stories mattered. Our stories mattered. That’s all anyone can ever hope for. That’s what we were trying to say to other young women: Your story matters.

That’s what I rebelled for.

On (New) Marriage and the Ever-Elusive "Home"

Here on the Equals Project, and elsewhere—on my own blog, and in the musings of my favorite writers like Miranda Ward of A Literal Girl and Roxanne Krystalli of Stories of Conflict and Love—we talk of an elusive home. We explore what this thing, this state, this feeling means to us, is to us. If we have found it.

If it is not located on a map.

If, as Judy writes in Home Sweet Home, it is not a literal space to fix and construct.

If it shapeshifts as we change.

Or if it is the loved one that holds us, that anchor that keeps us afloat, wherever we may be in the world.

* * * * *

In Homelands, Miranda asks: What if home is just a memory that we carry with us?

In Home, Karey does not have a clear picture of home: "It still looks like my mom and smells like Oscar de la Renta and vanilla ice cream and chlorine and lilacs and cow manure. . . . It’s in the eyes of someone who has lost her world, someone who’s found it, and someone who’s trying her damnedest to get it all back."

In Wherever You Go, There You Are, Sarah describes her bicoastal identity—the pull of New York, but also her roots in California: "I live in New York, but I am not entirely at home here. When the question of where I am from comes up, my answer tends toward the knee-jerk and almost always mildly defensive: "CALIFORNIA, I am from California." This is said as if to distinguish myself somehow, as if to say 'I really belong somewhere else.'"

In No Place Like Home (Wherever That Is), Shoko places home in quotation marks, which reminds me of Roxanne's piece, Home, in quotation marks, which led me earlier this spring to explore my own definitions of home and love, and how they intertwine—or if they are one and the same.

What if home is not the birthplace, the stacked bricks laden with memories, but the new place, filled with learning, with promise, and with love?

 * * * * *

In Roxanne's recent post on her blog, she refers to her explorations of home and away as a "serial infidelity to place," which also reminds me of Miranda's musings from last fall on a visit to London, and whether or not she could live there, and how it's interesting that even though she has a home in Oxford, she's still window-shopping for places to live.

So it appears that while we are all different, born and raised in different countries, living now in different places, or between places, or constantly on the go, we share a special something, a quality I sense in each of us and hear in our voices. We redefine ourselves with each stop, each state of stagnancy, but also with our movements and lapses of change. We ask these same questions over and over again, which both comfort and confuse. We are driven by such elusiveness—driven to inspiration but also to uncertainty, and maybe to loneliness, but certainly driven, period.

* * * * *

I do love the haze produced by these questions of home; it's the best kind of fog—a cloudiness I don't mind.

Indeed, lately my head has floated about in this fog. So, so many things: engaged at the end of June, and then married to my beloved the day before the Fourth of July. Perhaps my mind hasn't been clouded, but is rather in the clouds. And I've been thinking a lot about my evolving definition of home, and how it continues to change now that my long-distance relationship has morphed into a marriage, here in San Francisco.

Can I finally remove the quotation marks, or place it in regular font and not in italics, because the person who has encapsulated this word is now physically next to me, each day?

Has my exploration of home come to an end?

As I read the words of the other women on the Equals Project and elsewhere, and their very different but very similar worlds, I know this is not possible; if anything, I continue on a trajectory in which the target continues to move, a bullseye that shifts as I, and my husband, grow together.

At the moment, that's all I know: that home continues to surprise and elude, that it can be many things and something unreachable at once, and that the one thing that matters right now is realizing this journey is no longer just mine, but ours.

Alone

“Run the marathon with me,” says my best friend (who also happens to be my business partner), “I don’t want to train for it alone.” At the time, her husband is contemplating taking a job 3,000 miles away, in our hometown. We are both hoping to move back in a few years—this city is the bullseye of our 30’s. Our lives are so intertwined that when she mentions him interviewing for it, the job isn’t even contained within the realm of possible. I take it as seriously as if she had told me he was buying a unicorn. I sign up for the marathon on a whim; running a marathon is on my bucket list, and who wants to do anything alone? We are going to train together, to run together. This marathon is to be another check on our list of things that we’ve done, together. We’ve built our business on the principles of wellness and prioritize making time for our friendship amongst our busy days. Our love of running (and ability to run together--no small feat for two lone-wolf runners) binds us; of course this would be something we would tackle together.

I get the message while I am finishing up some work for the evening: “He got the job.” And then within a matter of days, it’s final: my best friend is moving away. Far, far away. I feel happiness for her (she’ll be so close to her family) and deep, deep grief for the moments that I realize may not come the way we had expected them to (We always bring our girls to see Santa together, I worry about her kids not remembering me). At the core, below it all, I am desperately afraid of being left alone.

We were fast friends, bonded by our California roots and our preppy east coast husbands. Running together early on was a test of the potential in our friendship. Our first run together took us over a sun-dappled gravel path that smelled of decaying wood and fresh undergrowth in New Hampshire. It was the summer I got married, before spending our time together in the summer was happily consumed by organizing activities for our sunscreen-slathered children with impossible blonde highlights. She was training for a marathon. Before we started running, I had visions of being left far behind, huffing and puffing in an embarrassing attempt to catch up. That melted away once we started out. Our steps fell into synch, our paces compatible. This, I thought, could be a great friend. Towards the end, as our conversation waned and our breathing and footsteps were all that broke the silence, we realized that we had both stopped sweating, not for lack of exertion. This found us begging for water at a local bar. It was cool and perfect, and we clinked the plastic cups they had given us in a toast to our inevitable closeness.

She has been my steadfast company in a tumultuous time. Through my husband’s surgical training, where he works countless hours, through the birth of my daughter and the growth of our business, she has been my constant. I am as entwined into her family as I am into my own. I love her kids with the unrelenting ferocity of a blood relative; her little sister makes me feel like less of an only child. In fact, her family is the primary reason that though my husband spends far more hours at work than he does at home, I (and my daughter) have felt neither lonely nor alone. Now, during my runs, I have a desperate and sinking feeling. My brain repeats over and over, “I don’t want to do this alone.” What, exactly, I am afraid of doing alone eludes me. Perhaps this is an indication of the hole that she will leave when she moves.

For the first time, I am running and crying at the same time. With our training for the marathon, I am spending more time on the road. Mostly alone, since our routine has been so upended by this move. Running for me has always been a release, and the metaphor until this point has been of the yogic variety: finding comfort in discomfort, pushing through, knowing when to yield. I ran through teaching special education in the Bronx, through the abject terror of my father’s cancer, through the life-swallowing grief following my grandfather’s death. In these times of hardship, I turned to running to be my constant companion, found solace in its repetitive simplicity. Left, right, repeat. All without tears. To stop the tears, even. With this move comes a new metaphor in my running: I don’t want to do this alone. I’ve always run alone, save for runs with very close friends (I have exactly two people with whom I like to run, not including my dad's running club, many of whom I have known and run with since I started coming home from college). What is it about this time in my life that brings the tears every time I lace up? Running had, for so many years, been my companion; now its companionship reminds me of the one I am losing. This marathon, this move, solidifies for me the simple fact that good company is at the heart of what we all want in life. Yes, misery loves it, but so does joy.

It’s all anyone really wants, isn’t it? A friend to synch steps with; company for life’s path. We look for, and find, companionship in the oddest places. Online, in bars, in friends’ social networks. We find drinking buddies, lovers, friends, husbands, confidants. We curate relationships that we hope will prevent us from being alone---truly alone---on our journey. But, I’m learning (as an unwilling student), interludes of aloneness are inevitable, even with the most loving cultivation of relationships. More than not wanting to face her leaving me, I don’t want to face it alone. A cruel irony. The fact is that it’s only her and me inhabiting our friendship; when she shifts a bit, there is nothing to fill that space, except dull sadness and the fear that she has something to fill the space that I will leave.

A few weeks ago, my left quadriceps started to ache. It was unstretchable, unrestable, unmassageable. Gnawing. I chalked it up to getting older. Then, last week, my right leg began to ache behind my knee, a twinge with each step. As if one leg was incapable of working without the other. Left, right, repeat.

An Introduction

I've always considered myself to be a curious sort of person.  I’m not afraid to ask questions, to examine different options, and to experiment until I find the right answer.  Perhaps that’s to be expected when your parents are a Librarian and a Physicist.

When I was younger, I was fascinated with how things work.  I used to take apart old radios and telephones just to see what the inside looked like and how all the parts moved together.  I could almost never put anything back together, but that wasn’t the point. That mechanical curiosity faded by the time I was a teenager and was eventually replaced by a more personal curiosity.

I’ve never really been able to answer the question ‘What do you want to be’. Or at least not in a way that people expect.  While many of my peers would respond with details about their career aspirations, my answer is more abstract.  I want to be happy.  I want to be the best version of myself.  That’s all I’m looking for in the world.  I don’t aspire to a corner office or an expense account and I’m not looking to raise a family, at least not yet.

On the surface, to be myself and be happy seems trite and simplistic, but if you really think about it, it’s an involved, never-ending project.  People are not stagnate and happiness is a day by day process, not one final destination.  To be the best version of myself is an ever evolving undertaking involving issues of spirituality, self-confidence, learning and growth.

In this column I want to consider those topics and the questions they invoke.  I want to look to religions from all over the world and learn from them. I want to talk to women I admire about their own journeys. I want to reflect on what practices and actions work for me, which do not, and why. And I want to learn from you, what has made a difference in your own life and helped you become who you are today. What are our strengths and how can we strengthen our weaknesses.

We all have a journey and a destination, and everyone’s path is different.  This column is about how I’m making my way in the world. My interests, experiences, beliefs and thoughts are just that, my own.  Life is not one size fits all and there isn’t one right answer, but that’s what makes it interesting and exciting.  I’m not the expert on living your life, but I’m trying to become an expert in living mine!

I hope you’ll read along and comment, maybe even be a little bit inspired, I’m sure I will be.

This is Me, Making My Way.

Inside the White Picket Fence

By Marni Zarr I met him in sophomore geometry. My head in the clouds over his best friend, the subject of which made easy fodder for conversation. Our instructor happened to be his basketball coach which miraculously made me privy to over the shoulder glances at his correct answers during tests thus saving me from failing. Happy that I had this advantage I was big on smiles and loved conversing with this insider who knew everything I wanted to know about my not so secret crush on his goofy yet charming friend.  In between the hand holding and break ups between his friend and I, the two of us grew into good pals. Hours spent with him on the phone, nothing said in coded whispers as was required with other friends.  I wasn’t afraid of my parent’s overhearing me as I spoke to him through the avocado kitchen rotary, only that our phone time would be cut off before I was ready to say good-bye. The curly cord a slinky in my hand, I’d wind it’s twisting loops through my toes while talking and daydream about compliments from the older girls in the P.E. locker room. One insisted I should be a foot model. The perfect shape and always polished, the only blemish a growing bunion on the right side, enough to squash that idea. My self doting thoughts were suddenly interrupted by his innocent question, “So what about going to the movies with me this weekend?”

My parents prejudices were a good cover-up for my own fear. I wasn’t totally comfortable with the thought of going on a date, although I considered him a friend, a black guy. Would people think he was my boyfriend? Would they stare and tag me with another accessory like my religion that I wasn’t comfortable carrying around? Did I want to say no but blame my parents prejudices as a shield for my own? How could I decline without hurting his feelings? All of these thoughts swirled in my head like an alphabet soup of questions whirring audibly in a blender, a jumble of words and feelings that in the end was so thick and unrecognizable my thoughts a messy mush. and then, the honest answer rose to the top, “ I can’t, I have to be sixteen to date.” Although valid, we both communicated the understood underlying truth with an awkward moment of silence.

Who knows what would have happened if I had been allowed to experience my first date with him. I could sense his feelings for me were different than mine for him, but his character spoke only of respect. I could have breached my parent’s rules and told them I was going to a movie with a girlfriend and met him there but didn’t. Instead I packed the incident neatly away, we stayed friends, I denied my feelings, and life went on with the blame pinned to my parents, folding my confusion neatly away to be dealt with later.

We remained friends while the dating excuse covered the dark truth until late winter. Still three months shy of my 16th birthday I successfully convinced my parents to lift the dating rule, “just this once.”  The most popular boy in high school, a year ahead of me had asked me out on a Valentine’s date.  Possessing perfect all American good boy looks with mischievous sparkly blue eyes and a California like carelessness to his confident athletic walk, he was the stud of the school. How I was chosen to be his valentine crush was never clear . . . to anyone. He was the boy on a pedestal. The one that everyone remembers.

All nerves electric at the sound of the doorbell, awkward introductions were made and off we went down the front walkway to his pristine truck where he opened the door politely and I raised myself up and sat on the soft burnished brown velour seat. First stop, a weathered liquor store in a strip mall just outside the cozy confines of his country club community. I waited while he confidently strutted in and came out minutes later with a six-pack, gum and a pink plastic comb which became my souvenir of the evening.  I loved how he played with my hair and teased me with it as we listened to “The Cars”  cassette on his fancy stereo and drank the lukewarm bottled beer in the theatre parking lot. Three for him, two for me, time for the movie. We each popped a fresh stick of doublemint gum in our mouths and before getting out to walk around and open my door, hand resting softly on my thigh, he asked me to reach into his glove compartment so he could reapply more of his “Polo” cologne. My senses heightened to the first hints of sexual tension the scent was forever branded on my memory so that years later I could smell our song whenever it played and feel his hand as it went up my shirt.

After the movie, fully clothed but rolling in the cool winter grass of the church on the corner, we kissed and I assumed it was true love forever, hearts floating in my head I went home to dream about our wedding and how envious everyone would be as I walked down the aisle with the dream god of the high school universe.  Two weeks later, as the deities of high school often do, he moved on to new and easier waters. My elevated ego smarted from the fall, but I had the song “Just What I Needed” by The Cars and my light pink comb for comfort. Even if never allowed to pray at the feet of his graven image again I knew I had earned his blessing and to me that was timeless.

A few years ago I ran into a former high school friend at a neighborhood restaurant as I walked out the door. Turning at my name there was instant recognition in the hint of a smile, the way you see through someone’s voice and facial expressions and it transports you back in time. We started talking about our current lives, family, kids, jobs etc., the creamy pre-prepared information filling the space between high school graduation and now. The conversation turned to people we occasionally ran into from school and we shared short clips of what we knew or had heard.  His son was on the high school football team at a small school in California and being coached by another former classmate’s younger brother, small world. The topic of football sparked my curiosity about my long ago crush and the question rolled off my tongue with a wistful lilt. His face fell as he told me what he had heard a while back. This boy who many of us had assumed would go on to have it all, just as he did in school, grew up and had taken his own life. I couldn’t help but wonder if every one of us who had assisted him in rising to that highest spot of teen-age stardom hadn’t somehow contributed to his fall.

YWRB: First Impressions

By Amanda Page My first memory of Amy Turn Sharp is crisp and static, like a simple snapshot. She was a girl in a poetry workshop, sitting in one of the chairs beneath the classroom window, scarf around her neck---although it was Spring---and headphones casually slipped from her ears, dangling from her neck where they got lost in the fabric.  It might have been the first day or late in the quarter. But that's when I took notice. She seemed shy as she responded to a question---maybe about her poem. What stands out to me most about that moment is the reserve and timidity she displayed, because I was reserved and timid. I was shy and I didn't like it, but I didn't know how else to be.

Maybe that's why the image sticks. Or maybe I recognized a kindred spirit, but not consciously. Anyway, that was not the woman I started to know on smoke breaks. The Amy Turn I came to know in fifteen-minute bursts was loud, exuberant, and wildly enthusiastic about writing and life.

We weren't fast friends. The quarter ended and I saw her once over the summer, when I saw her on the street and stopped to say hello. Fall came and classes started and there we were in another workshop together. Most of our friends had graduated that summer. We were those rare, at the time, students who kept at it, floating a little, not quite ready to move beyond the classroom, still trying to figure out what we were doing in college, let alone with our lives.

Maybe I'm projecting a little. That's what I was doing: floating. Flailing. When I met Amy Turn, as she was called then, I made a friend to flail with. Amy Turn. I rarely ever heard her called anything but the two names together. She was never just "Amy." I admired that. I was from a place where two names were common, and I'd tried to get one to catch on for myself. It never happened. I wasn't a Bobbi Jo or Barbara Dee. I was just Amanda. Just the one name. And I couldn't quite get the two-first-name version of myself to exist.

We started writing together. We'd sit at the bar or the coffee shop or sometimes at the kitchen table in her apartment and we'd handwrite essays in yellow legal pads, right there on the spot. We thrived on the spontaneous nature of sitting down and writing something complete. We were rebelling against the image of the isolated writer, working in a dim room all alone. The work had more energy, more life, because it was composed quickly, full of vim and whimsy, in the presence of another writer.

Rebelling against the idea of the diligent, lonely writer was exciting. We reminded ourselves that Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road on one long continuous scroll. He couldn't have written it all in isolation. He needed his friends. He needed to be around the "mad ones." And I found myself a mad one in Amy Turn. I liked that my first impression of her was wrong. It gave me hope that I could rebel against first impressions of me. I was more than just a shy girl with a single first name. I was a writer, and that's what I wanted to be known. Amy Turn made it known.

Amy Turn was known. Everyone in town seemed to know her: restaurant owners and convenient store workers and every single bartender in town. It’s hard to not know the girl dancing on your table at the end of the night. Before I knew it, we were known as the writer girls. People expected us to show up with our legal pads and scratch out whole pieces. People knew about our project. That terrified me. But it also made it real.

If you're going to look for a friend with whom to rebel, you can't go wrong with one who pulls you out of your comfort zone, who introduces you to people as the person you want to be, which is not always the person you see yourself as. I started, then, to see myself as a writer. That vision, that version, of myself has wavered through the years. It's good to have a mad one to contact to remind you that you are not the lonely writer.

And it's good to know that the mad ones don't always reveal themselves in your life with that first impression.

We want to know: Do you have a friend who pulls you out of your comfort zone and makes you rebel against the small version of yourself that you sometimes believe yourself to be? How do they pull you out of your comfort zone? How do they prompt you to rebel against that small version of yourself? Email us at amanda@bold-types.com or leave a comment.