let it flow.

In the release, we become.

-- Teresa Robinson, via Erica Simpson
 

___________________________________________________________

When you begin to feel the ibuprofen wearing off and you feel like you need to get it back into your system immediately but don’t have any water in the car with you

let it flow.

When you know that your mascara is running down your cheeks with the tears

let it flow.

When you feel like you need to jump out of bed and already start hurryhurryhurrying the second your eyes open

let it flow.

When you haven’t answered text messages in hours and the guilt starts creeping in

let it flow.

When the only energy you can muster is to take a deep breath and stare out the window

let it flow.

When you spot the withering petals and browning leaves and remember the plants needed to be watered three days ago

let it flow.

When you need to put yourself on a schedule and lie down at least once an hour to keep the post-surgery pains at bay

let it flow.

When you go to two different stores looking for a product that you never end up finding

let it flow.

When you type up a blog post and then mistakenly delete the end of it (yes, right now)

let it flow.



Let it flow.
Release, release, release. For it is in the releasing, after all,

that we become.

where the healing happens.

The other day a dear friend told me, “You are really vulnerable right now. Huge transitions. That is when this stuff comes up.”

Just hearing the words “You are really vulnerable right now” was enough to allow some softening inside. Oh yeah. I am.

There are so many meanings behind vulnerable. It can be as simple as going out without makeup on, it can be telling a truth that feels uncomfortable, it can be as intense as finding yourself totally incapacitated and needing to rely on others for basic care. There are so many layers of vulnerability.

This week I’ve found myself on the more intense side of things. Sitting in the passenger seat as my mother drives me to the hospital, lying unconscious on an operating room table, trusting a surgeon to safely remove a cyst from my ovary, recovering at home and relying on family members to take care of me. Total vulnerability, at its finest.

I was worried about this, pre-surgery. Really worried. As my mother and I walked into the waiting room where I’d declare myself arrived and ready for surgery, where I’d be led to a small changing room to strip down, donning scrub pants and a flimsy gown and a striped robe and non-skid socks, where we’d see OR team member after another, where we’d wait for hours nervously before carrying on with the actual thing…..as we walked into that waiting room, I turned to my mother and said, “Let’s just turn around. It’s not too late. We don’t have to do this. We can just run off somewhere and I’ll be a surgery no-show. Please?” Nerves, nerves, nerves.

But, I did go through with the procedure and before long I found myself tucked into bed at home that night, albeit in pain and lots of discomfort.

And suddenly the vulnerability felt a little easier. I was helped in and out of bed. I was brought food. I had full access to straws and trays and as many pillows as I wanted. It felt good. Suddenly I was given the space to unravel to just a little bit, to get down to the core of me, to access so many other ages of myself that were coming up for healing, too.

I felt layers peel away. Suddenly I was 12, 15, 18. Huge ages of vulnerability for me, that weren’t necessarily met with as much care and support as I was receiving in my current 25-year-old self. It was uncomfortable, so uncomfortable, and still sort of is, as I navigate the present world while still having all these gaping wide versions of myself peeking out.

Layers.

Raw, real, open, wanting.

Vulnerability, where the healing happens.

Here’s to healing.

 

 

time to write my own story.

As a little girl, I was always writing stories.

There was the family of ladybugs. There was the X-Files fan fiction. There was the Revolutionary War drama. There was the Italian countryside during World War I. There was the 1930s kid on her typewriter during the Depression.

There was always a story in my head that I was hiding away in, and eventually they’d make their ways out onto the lined pages of lime green composition notebooks or documents in dated Microsoft Word programs. It was always my go-to activity, after reading. I would shakily put pencil to paper in the backseat of the station wagon on long family road trips, hiding out on my top bunk before school in the mornings, hogging my time on the family computer as I typed up plot outline after plot outline, family tree after family tree.

I distinctly remember the feeling inside of all that story-telling – it seemed miraculous to me that I could create any reality I wanted. I could dream up the most preposterous scenario and it wasn’t preposterous because it was a story. It wasn’t real. I could make the main character as thin and beautiful as I liked, I could make a romance as whirlwind and ridiculous as I liked, I could make the setting as gorgeous and Hollywood-worthy as I liked, I could make the family members and friends as nice and kind as I liked.

They were stories. And in them, I could be whoever I wanted. There was nothing holding me back, no reality to take into consideration, no limits. I could literally dream up the life I envisioned as “perfect,” and make it somewhat real.

This was where I lived. I had found power. And no one could shut it down.

But over the next fifteen years the stories became less and less frequent. I went from bookwormy homeschooled kid to public high school transplant and although I liked being in the creative writing club, it wasn’t cool. I tucked away all my historical romance plans and tried my hand at a few nonsense angsty poems (which were really the only things acceptable within our tortured teenage writing realm) and hated it.

Writing became less and less important to me. My creative writing teacher in high school was actually a 20-something, uninterested psych major who took points off when I started a sentence with “And.” My creative writing teacher in college had us doing things like writing descriptions of the weather and going around the circle sharing what our favorite words were. It was painful, and I was slowly letting go of any leftover passion from the backseat family road trips. Families of ladybugs frolicking in cornfields were things of the past.

And then a funny thing happened. Last year I began making vision boards for each month at the new moon, and in August a board took shape with the words “time to write my own story,” smack in the middle. Of course, the idea of writing a story was just an analogy for creating one’s own life, and…..it held the same exact feelings I’d found in writing all those years before – a power in ownership, awe at the thought of creating whatever I wanted, no need to hold back.

All those stories I was making up? I could actually do that. I could actually dream up what I wanted my real life to look like and make that happen. Write my own damn story. I didn’t need to take on anyone else’s story as my own. I didn’t need to let things happen to me. I didn’t need to passively float through the pages of someone else’s story.

I could write one myself. From scratch. I could gather the paper and bind it together and decorate the cover and begin to fill it with words, words that resonated and meant something to me. Words that I wanted there. Words that were beautiful and hopeful and inspiring. When I got down to it, I knew exactly what I wanted and didn’t want in those pages.

And so I started writing my own damn story. Slowly, slowly, it’s been taking shape and starting to look like how I dreamed it would. Because I stood in my power. Because I took pen to paper and created it.

And the funny thing is – once I started getting back to that little girl that found joy in creating extensive 1920s Italian family trees, I realized…..I actually am a writer. I’ve actually always been a writer. I have piles and piles of journals and diaries filled with words. I have a diploma proving that I studied words for four years. I have a blog that’s now almost five years old, filled with words. But really, none of that even matters…..because if I want to be a writer, I can be. If I feel like a writer, it’s because I made myself one.

That’s what I’m writing. That’s what I’m keeping. That’s what I’m creating.

Let’s write our own damn stories.

twenty-five.

There seems to be something about this age.

Twenty-five. This quarter-life time.

People keep telling me.  
When I was that age, I picked up and left. 
I lived wildly.  
At twenty-five, everything changed.  
Your mid-twenties are such a great time for inventing yourself.  
When I was at that point in life, I felt like I could go anywhere, do anything.

There's this constant state of flux surrounding twenty-five. There's not a lot of solidity, there aren't many sure-things, there's not a lot of pure, absolute truth. Everything is changing. You think that adolescence is the time for figuring yourself out, discovering who you are, trying on your morals and values for size, playing around until some semblance of a grown human being begins to form and take shape.

Adolescence has nothing on your twenties.

 Here I am at twenty-five, still figuring myself out, discovering who I am, trying on my morals and values for size, playing around while some semblance of a grown human being forms and takes shape. I've floundered in my years-since-college, retreating back to some safety as I pieced my Self back together and gathered some tools for the road. I've quit my safety job, leaving it behind in a quiet, anti-climactic, stepping-away. I've taken a new job and a leap of faith, finding myself vacillating between Connecticut and Rhode Island, between my childhood bedroom and a spacious loft, between Small Town and Gorgeous City. I don't have anything with me besides a bag of clothes and this computer. Back and forth I go, navigating twenty-five, toeing the lines between young and old, unsure and sure, early twenties and mid twenties (and not quite at late twenties, I don't think).

Perhaps this isn't a twenty-five thing. Perhaps this is just a thing, a thing that happens when you awake from sleep, when you can't go back to the way you were, when your heart opens and all this light pours in and closing it again feels downright painful. Perhaps this can be a thirties thing. Or a forties thing, or a fifties thing, or a sixties thing. Perhaps it's not really a thing at all, but rather an era of time that begins with the awakening, and continues on for years. Perhaps this is just the initial moment of flux, like stepping off a merry-go-round and taking some time to regain your balance and get reacquainted with the solid ground beneath you.

But this is my twenty-five. And there seems to be something about this age. This quarter life time.

It's scary, but it's so damn good.