Brave, Anyway

Tag: resilience

  • Refurbish, Brave Girl

    I hate messes.

    I don’t like sand in my car, I don’t like PlayDough that gets stuck in toys supposedly designed for PlayDough, I don’t buy glitter or powder or terrariums if I can help it, and I don’t like substances like Desitin or vegetable oil that are really hard to clean off of things.

    I hate messes, and yet my whole house is a mess.

    And when I say it’s a mess, I mean it’s in crazy complete disarray. Like, stacks of books on top of my dining room table and china resting on shelves in the sitting room and gymnastics mats in hallways and toothbrushes in the dishwasher.

    In the last three weeks, a wonderful team of people has painted our walls, baseboards, casings, doors and railings. Literally everything. As they moved from room to room, we moved our things from room to room. Every night we spent preparing for the next day, shifting what we could to accommodate the next round of work.

    The last few days of painting happened while I was in Dallas last week, and the biggest change in color – a room going from cranberry to a linen color – had not happened when I left town. I absolutely could not wait to get home and to see it and then to start putting things back together. It’s been so hard for OCD-me to embrace the mess. Every day I’ve longed to just put things back together and back where they belong. On Thursday night I came home very late to a completely quiet and still house – my father-in-law had long before gone to bed with the kitties – and I walked though each room marveling at what a brighter, lighter place it is. It’s completely transformed.

    The house that I’ve lived in for a decade has a completely different feel now. Same doors, same walls, same wooden railing…and yet with fresh paint in lighter shades, it’s different. It’s different and yet the same. It feels like my old house I’ve always loved and it feels like a new house that I’m so excited to live in.

    It’s like old me and new me. It’s all me, but I’m different than I was two years ago. I have the same core foundation of components like faith and family, but I look different and I feel different and my countenance is lighter. Just like my house, I’ve been under construction for a while. Or maybe refurbishing is the better word.

    The me that has emerged from refurbishing is stronger, focused and determined. I recognize I’ve aged as a result of anger with and disappointment in people, but at the same time I’m once again filled with youthful laughter and hope because my life is filled with genuine and kind and happy people.

    The me that has emerged from refurbishing that is accountable to and for only me and my girls is a freer and lighter me, even with the weight of added responsibility. This me sets better boundaries and fiercely guards what things get my time and thoughts, to ensure that freer and lighter me stays that way.

    The me that has emerged from refurbishing has realized that there’s a huge difference in Beige and Crisp Linen. Something can seem like it’s neutral or light, but once you’ve experienced actual light the darkness is revealed for the shade that it is.

    Now that all the painting is done my next task is to put everything back in its place. But as I’m doing that I’m realizing that I do not want some things back in the same places they’ve always been. And not only that, but I do not even want some of those old things in my house at all. So room by room I’m making more changes – some additions and some deletions and some refurbishings.

    I guess that’s what we should all strive to be as we age – a mixture of all of our learnings. We should be made up of additions or the things we’ve tried and liked along the way, and of deletions or the things we’ve learned aren’t right for us and we’ve removed, and of refurbishings or the pieces that change with us and with the times. And actually maybe we are refurbishings, if we’re doing life right – going through cycles of renewal or reconstruction.

    Beneath the Crisp Linen that covered a deep cranberry tone in my sitting room are the same four strong walls that have always been there. The walls look different now but they are the same walls that hold up a second floor and a roof, that sit on a foundation that has not changed. It’s already kind-of hard to remember what that room looked and felt like, which makes me so glad I have this snapshot of the transition time – the time when some of one coat of primer covered the cranberry walls so you could still see the old room and yet start to envision the new room. In a corner where two of the walls met, it looked like there was an arrow.

    An arrow is hidden deep within my home, in my favorite room, reminding me that refurbishing is an opportunity for me to be brave.

    An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means that it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming. ~Unknown

  • Melancholy Mom Notes to My Girls

    Melancholy Mom Notes to My Girls

    When you are sad or hurting it breaks my heart. I would rather feel the pain of someone smashing a limb of my own than watch you struggle. Watching you struggle and knowing the reason why fills me with sadness and regret. And it motivates me to do absolutely everything possible to make the remainder of your childhood as great and as carefree as possible. To get you any help and to tap any source to see you genuinely smile and feel peace.

    I will do anything to help you grow into responsible and caring and successful adults, and that includes setting boundaries for you and having rules for you and even enforcing consequences for you when those rules are broken. It’s my job, my most important job, to help you see how to be good people and to help you want to be good people.

    I want more than anything for you to trust people. To believe firmly that the vast majority of people are good. And instead of focusing on the havoc that selfishness in people can wreak, I want you to focus on the best of people that you have seen – the people who have rallied around you and loved you and supported you and prayed for you.

    I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt what love is and what love isn’t. I want you to know that you know, deep down in your gut. Things may get confusing as you explore relationships of your own, and when you’re confused I hope you will seek the counsel of the right friends and adults. Just as you would choose a cardiologist for a physical heart problem, choose people who have loved with honor and integrity and selflessness for an emotional heart problem.

    I hope you two rely on each other always, even when you’re mad at each other or in different places in your life. You are each the only other person in the whole world who has experienced love and heartbreak and disappointment and resilience together during this time. You can keep each other grounded, you can keep each other honest, and you can support each other as no one else can. Commit yourselves to letting each other say anything, and to forgiving each other no matter what.

    I understand that in great part you will learn from your parents how to be a parent. I really, really, really hope I am a good enough example, but I know with absolute certainty that I fall short. A lot short. I commit to always doing my best to be honest with myself about the good and bad, to allowing you to be honest with me about the good and bad, and to trying to do better.

    No matter what, I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will always prioritize you and choose you over anything and anyone and everything and everyone.

    I will always choose you.

    I will always choose you.

    I will always choose you.

    I will always, always, always choose you.

    No one, including and especially me, will ever be more important than you.

    Love you my girlys.

  • Alice in Wonderland

    My first glimpse of truth was at a costume party. He took me to her house for the event, and the two of them enjoyed shots with neighbors and work pals while her husband and I watched them like they were our errant children, laughing about how they couldn’t hold their liquor and wouldn’t make it through the whole party. I’d planned to go as Poppy, the happy-go-lucky girl from the movie Trolls, but at the last minute decided instead to wear a costume I’d purchased for an office event. I was Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, in a big blue dress, properly pressed apron, and a little purse that looked like a clock.

    There are dozens of theories about what all the fantasy in Alice in Wonderland really means, but I think almost everyone would agree that at least in some way it’s a story about the loss of innocence. And at the center of that story is innocent Alice – polite, sometimes snarky, trusting, with a little bit of a temper. One of the many supporting roles in Alice’s story is The White Rabbit, the character that leads her deep into a rabbit hole to a fantasy land. The White Rabbit is the character that leads Alice to awareness. The White Rabbit is the character that leads Alice to truth.

    Some would say that The White Rabbit is a counter for Alice. The initial persona of a happy, carefree character fades and The White Rabbit’s overwrought and desperate self becomes visible. The neurotic character is a counter to Alice’s calm. Lack of composure counters her purpose. Alice is curious about The White Rabbit, and as Alice says, “curiosity often leads to trouble.”

    Watch: The Rabbit Hole

    The party was filled with happy people, all dressed up for fun. Neighbors and friends dressed as doctors and clowns and such. He was Batman – the costume of a character that lives two lives, who lost the most important people to him in his childhood and who fights to help others not suffer the same loss of family.

    One of the funniest details in this wonderland/party story is that two people who hadn’t spoken to each other about costumes before that event were both dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland. Me as Alice, with my proper white tights and Mary Janes. Her as an adult steampunky version of The White Rabbit, with bunny ears, leather short-shorts, and black fishnet stockings. It was so funny that people took our picture together – two characters from the same story, a contrast of light and dark. There might actually be more irony in our choice of costumes for that night than in all of Lewis Carroll’s writing.

    Did The White Rabbit invite Alice into the rabbit hole and to the party in hopes Alice would see some truth? Perhaps to force the hand of all the players in wonderland? There’s no question what the outcome would be once everyone was exposed to truth. Or did The White Rabbit invite Alice into the rabbit hole and to the party because games were just part of the fun and thrill? In the big scheme of things, The White Rabbit’s motives are not important. The more important question was why Batman would take Alice to The White Rabbit’s house for a party.

    I used was because it doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t care why people behaved the way they did, and even more than that I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in divine intervention. Sometimes the seemingly awful things that happen to us end up being our salvation from things that will really harm us. And there are messages and lessons for us not just in what happened, but also in our surroundings at and in the details of those events.

    Here’s the thing about Alice and The White Rabbit. In the end, after all the chaos and confusion, The White Rabbit is just a noisy trumpeter that’s a slave to others in a world of fantasy. But Alice…Alice separates herself and she runs away from all the dysfunction. Alice looks at that screaming mob that’s yelling at her and railing at her, and Alice focuses on the calm guidance of a doorway to peace – and then she wakes herself up.

    Watch: Alice Wakes Herself Up

    I threw away my Alice costume long ago. I didn’t want the reminder of such a horrible night hanging in my house. I regret that. I likely would never have worn it again, but that Alice costume is a symbol of so much more. It’s a reminder that Alice knows what is real and what is not. It’s a reminder that Alice chose peace over chaos. It’s a reminder that Alice saved herself.

    Alice saved herself.

  • Brave Girl Wannabe is Angry

    The bravest people I know are children surviving the behavior of selfish adults.

    The bravest people I know are children who try to offer forgiveness in scenarios where “adults” like me simply cannot.

    The bravest people I know are children who admit they are afraid and ask for help.

    The bravest people I know are children who run out of cards before they run out of things for which they’re thankful, even when their life is not what they expected or what they deserve.

    Brave Girl Wannabe Thursday Truth: I got really, really, really angry today and I was a complete bitch. And I don’t even regret it.

  • Go Into The Light, Brave One

    I think I have seen every episode of Friends at least a couple times. Some of them I’ve probably seen a dozen times – I especially love the Thanksgiving episodes and the ones from the season where the main characters have switched apartments.

    One of my favorite Phoebe moments is in an early episode and it’s the one where Mr. Heckles dies. She senses that his spirit is still in the building, and she yells “Go into the light, Mr. Heckles!”

    There are people who believe that when we die unexpectedly or with unresolved issues, our unsettled spirits wander until that business is settled – until maybe their loved ones are safe or they can pass along a message to those of us still here – and only then do those people pass over into the next life. I’m not sure what to think about that, other than to say that I think it’s possible there are ghosts.

    But what I do believe with certainty is that those of us in the land of the living often choose to wander around in darkness. Darkness can be a toxic relationship, a job we don’t like, grief, addiction, anger. (Even the Old Testament Israelites wandered around in the desert for 40 years before entering their promised land.)

    When bad or disappointing or unexpected things happen in our lives, we experience a time of emotional upheaval. And after we survive that initial upheaval, we make a choice – consciously or unconsciously – to wander around in the darkness or to get up and seek the light.

    Googling “light” shows you a couple of basic definitions:

    1. the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible,
    2. an understanding of a problem or mystery, or my favorite…
    3. something that makes vision possible.

    Light requires action. We turn on a light or turn on our headlights. We light a fire. Or even, we arm ourselves and fight with a light saber.

    The commonality is that light requires our action.

    Light makes things possible. Light not only can give us hope, I realized recently that it actually kind of requires our hope first.

    We will wander around in darkness until we decide to seek the light. And if we make no decision to seek it and take no action to seek it, the truth is we are stagnant in darkness.

    We have to want and fight for the vision that is possible.

    We have to be brave.

    It takes bravery to hope in light, especially when we are surrounded by darkness. It takes bravery to seek light. It takes bravery to turn on light. And even, it takes bravery to fight with a light saber.

    So today and every day I say to myself, to my girls, to anyone who’s wandering in a darkness or a wilderness in our land of the living: Go into the light, brave one.

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