My wish for you

I wish for you trust. The kind of trust that takes no effort and requires no convincing. The trust you knew before hurt was personal. Before you decided it was better to be guarded. Before you worried about being fooled. Before you thought the burdens of existing were yours to bear. The kind of trust that let’s your soul sigh in affirmation, “yes”.

I wish for you peace. The kind of peace that lives, not in the absence of pain, but as the water of its rivers. The peace that seeps into the weight of the world and changes its mass. Changes uncertainty into the steady ground beneath your feet. Changes into the safe holder of your heartbeat. The kind of peace that keeps you company when you can’t find trust.

I wish for you delight. The kind of delight that rises and pops into your heart like champagne bubbles. The delight you felt when you realized the power of sunsets. When you recognized everything real lived in a baby’s laugh. When you discovered the magic of what was right in front of you. The kind of delight that forms a smile when trust and peace have kissed your cheeks.

These are my wishes for you. Breathe deep and ask yourself, if I placed these at sacred alter of your feet, would you know how to pick them up? Or must I first wish for you a permeable heart that knows how to let these things in when the world says they aren’t allowed?

The amicable divorce from the woes of the heart

What do you have to let go of in order to emotionally thrive and prosper in the world, your world, exactly as it is? With its inability to form into the picture you wish it would.

What grudges, beliefs, fears, animosities, dreads must unhook from your heart so can it be freely graceful?

To be clear, emotional prosperity doesn’t mean being happy all the time, not being eternally optimistic.

This kind of thriving means that the soil of your emotional life is rich and fertile, where the seeds of all kinds of experience can grow.

What is stopping that?

You needn’t figure out how to unhook these things, just look at them honestly. State them. Name them. You don’t have to move them, correct them, condemn them. Just bring them to the light by forming them with words, and sit with them.

Perhaps… perhaps, if it comes easily enough, begin to wonder what life would look like if these hangers on left your life.

If you could amicably divorce them and say, “We are no longer a fit, indeed never were. I can plant nothing of value in your rancid soil except bitter fruits that do not nourish. Please leave me with my soft earth, and take with you your matted, choking roots.”

And in the space left behind wonder, what variety of experience now has room to flourish?

The only thing that ever happens

The Only Thing That Ever Happens

There is a rhythm,
a cadence that once identified
can be heard echoing through every happening.

The melody, for example,
of the rise and fall
of a nation,
is the same operatic opus,
as your first day of kindergarten,
the same refrain heard
in the song of a bird
at dawn.

Preposterous, I know.
But somehow still
the same tune, the same beats
arranged in a way that allows you to ride them
like a surfer impossibly captures the power of the ocean.
How? When each swell
only ever happens once?

Well, you can read Life’s music
the way a surfer reads waves.

Consider - what are the notes
of water crashing to the shore?
The chords of the surge?
The tempo of the foam that washes up and away?

Where in the moments of your life have you heard those sounds before…?

When my mother died, I heard the thrashing wave violin,
the same strings I heard,
when the towers fell,
when years later I crashed my car.

The “What Now?” tune sung by the question’s choir
was in the wreckage, the rubble
and at her funeral.

I hate that tune, but I know it.

I’m beginning to catch all the ways
in which Life plays
the same song
but that makes it all no less fickle,
leaves me no better at avoiding the dissonant chords.

Still, hearing the phrasing
brings comfort to pain
because it’s something you can name.
You’ll recall enough of the song,
to remember that the playlist never ended
just blended
into the next anthem,
the next ballad,
the next carol,
the next hymn.

The music that’s everywhere,
every time changes.
Sad songs into hip little ditties,
dancing beats into heart wrenching serenades
and then all stacked back into the same note. 

The more you hear it,
the more you’ll know that music
is the only thing that ever happens.

The Offer (Spoken Word)

The Offer

I want to offer you something to consider in times of struggle, frustration, or despair. I’m not extending words of solace or comfort, but those of vulnerability. I don’t wish to sooth you, rather deepen your comfort with discomfort.

It’s a soft offer that you are free to reject if you want.

If you accept, let’s start with the premise that this, whatever you struggle with, cannot actually be fixed. This relationship, this issue, this phase of existence, is fully here and cannot be changed by you.

Sit with that.

Let’s, even if just for a moment, redirect all that energy that’s been used to desperately find the right or best solution. Set aside all that anguish over constantly falling short, not making enough progress, and instead just look at it. Really, really look at what is there. Without doing a single thing about it.

Let’s be honest about our complete incompetence. How horrifically wrong we so often get it. Acknowledge our attempts to improve or enhance lead to chaos and collapse.

Let it be ugly. Let it be awful. Let it tell its story, the one where you are not the central character.

Life is desperate for the kind of intimacy that can only come from still connection and acceptance. “See me,” it says. “Don’t change me. See me.”

Let’s fully accept our total helplessness.

Not the feeling, but the fact. A truthful reconciliation that there is nothing that can be done to change what is already here. And from that giving up, let a new relationship have space to bloom.  

Let’s apprentice ourselves even to hopelessness. Setting aside our wishes and wants so that Life can regain the control it always had, and let us know new ways of being with it.

This is Life’s offer, which you are free to reject if you want.

The existential crisis of a no longer needed caregiver (audio)

I took care of her. Now she’s gone. Now what?

The audio version of this piece is below. For the written version, see this piece on Medium

If you have appreciated this piece, consider purchasing my new book, Love Doesn’t Care If You Forget: Lessons of Love from Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Make no mistake... you are holy

Waiting to see this precious one soon. All our days are always numbered, but I am so painfully aware of the dwindling count of hers. The light still shines, but she is at the flickering end of her candle.

Photo from December. We were sitting together but she was tired. She leaned over and fell asleep. I found myself wondering about our reversed roles. How many times had I fallen asleep in her lap when I was young? How often did she worry about my wellbeing as I went through life? How hard did she hurt for me in the times I struggled? How scared was she about how little she could control for me?

It's been said that having children is to forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body - but really that is the trade you make when you love anyone in this life. You see and experience and feel glorious things come into being, and in some way or another, you must see and experience and feel them go away. Being human has to be the most astonishing and devastating thing in existence. Make no mistake, if you are here, you are holy.

Threads

There will come a time when Life demands you give up.
And it will settle for nothing less than full compliance.
Nothing less than you falling to your knees,
Giving in and admitting that you do not know enough.

First not enough, and then nothing at all.
You don’t know anything.

“Tell me,” Life will say.
“I want to hear you say it.”

And through gasps for breath,
You will obey.

“I don’t know if I’ve made the best choice.
I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing.
I don’t know if this better or worse.
I don’t know if this is good or bad.
I don’t know how to fix this.
I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Let this moment come.

You can rage at this truth.
You can cry and wail to the heavens.
You can cower in fear.

But let this moment come.

Hug your knees to your chest
And rock on the floor
And say it over and over and over.

I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.

Let the waves thrash against you
Until it smooths your sharp edges.
Let the madness turn to mantra
Until it delivers you back to yourself.

Back to the space where you never needed to know
And Life did all the work
And you were Life itself
Cloaked in the suit made of you.