a while ago, i started a gratitude practice.

i sit on my bed and look around the room and really look at everything i have. i don’t know how or why, but it often turns into an experience of wonder.

i have a bed! i have a pillow! i have a comfortable bed and pillow! i love my bed and pillow! i have $2! i love my $2! i have a purple and green striped wool blanket! the blanket is soft! i love my blanket! i have socks on my feet! i have more socks to wear when these are dirty! i love my socks!

when you’re a child, it seems easier to connect with your sense of wonder.

i suppose it’s because everything really is fresh and new.

i flip a switch and there is light! i flip a switch and the light disappears! the telephone makes a noise! the waves splash me and i am wet! the dog is soft and hard all at once! i touch your cheek and it squishes!

every once in a while, i can look at something and see it clearly.

all of my past experiences fall away.

i see the thing as it is, as it truly is, and i am filled with wonder.

when i can’t, when my sense of wonder fades, i have stories.

anything is possible in stories.

everything is possible in stories.

i like stories that expand my sense of what is possible.

the more i learn about the universe, the more i think that anything is possible.

the more i learn about the universe, the more i think that the most extraordinary things in stories pale in comparison to the wonder that exists here and now.

one morning, in meditation, the beginning of a tiny story came to me.

this particular story is about a mermaid named mariana who lives in the deepest part of the ocean.

her hair is the color of squid ink: the color of the sky at night, the color of the murky water that is her home.

her hair is also home to millions of tiny bioluminescent organisms. when she swims through the ocean, her hair fans out around her in a halo made of light.

i write and tell the stories i love to read.

they spill out when i am connected to my sense of childlike wonder.

i don’t know if there are mermaids or unicorns or dragons under our feet or puppies that sit down to tea with a family of rabbits or trees that fall in love.

but they delight me, they enchant me, they remind me that nothing is as it seems.

and then i lift up my wonder-filled eyes from the story and shine them on the world around me.

can you think of anything better than that?

(need the link to the story club? here ’tis. it’s currently half-off, because i am sticking my tongue out at the winter blues.)

for most of my life, i was allergic to cats.

one christmas morning, a cat came into my parents’ cat-free house as a christmas present for my youngest sister. i didn’t see the cat arrive, but i knew as soon as it was there; within seconds of its arrival, i couldn’t breathe.

cats and not-breathing were familiar.

when i started practicing reiki, my cat allergy began to heal.

eventually, with only one exception, one house, it had vanished.

when i moved back to michigan, atlas and i moved in with my parents.

my sister is here. so is her cat.

the last time i visited my parents, i brought steroids, just in case, but i never needed to use them. as a result, i was excited about the prospect of living with a cat for atlas’s sake and i wasn’t worried about my breathing at all.

the day after i arrived, my breath left me.

i was devastated. i thought i had healed my cat allergy, and it felt like i was right back where i started.

i was also worried. i was going to live here for a while, and now i couldn’t breathe in the house.

atlas and i slept in a tent in the backyard for more than a month.

i spent most of every night coughing until i thought my lungs would burst.

when the cold rains came, we moved inside, into a cat-free room. i spent most of those nights coughing too.

i remember going to the beach one day to take pictures. the pictures made it seem idyllic. it was. but the thing that the pictures didn’t say was that my lung capacity was so limited that i was at the beach because it was all i could do. i couldn’t even walk up the tiny hill that led from the beach to the parking lot without wheezing.

slowly, slowly, my breath came back.

now, most days, i don’t cough too often and i don’t breathe too shallowly.

i was wondering how to circle you in tenderness when this story came to me.

i think this is why:

most of the time, i really was ok with an iron band across my chest, with wheezing, with not being able to catch my breath.

healing had taught me – and meditation reminded me – presence, and acceptance, and how to relax instead of panic.

but i realized that the rest of the time, when i wasn’t ok, the problem wasn’t so much that i wanted my breathing to come back as it was that i wanted to know why.

why.

i think that if i know why, i can change something.

i think that if i know why, it will make something easier to bear.

(why can’t i breathe? why did they leave? why isn’t this working? why did i fail?)

but we often don’t know why (at least for certain), or can’t know why, or maybe there isn’t even a why at all.

i remember the moment other than in deep stillness when i felt the most relief.

i had left the dinner table because i couldn’t breathe and i thought that my sister could tell i couldn’t breathe and i was worried that she would feel bad because it was her cat and i didn’t want her to feel bad so i went upstairs and i sat on the bed and i cried.

my mom came upstairs to check on me and i told her that i was just so frustrated that i couldn’t breathe and i cried.

i sat on that bed and i felt all of the frustration and the fear and the sadness and i cried.

when i was done, i went downstairs and ate the rest of my dinner.

maybe that’s what we need most of all.

to let it out, to let it flow, to be witness/ed.

to be with the frustration and the sadness and the pain and the longing and the loneliness and the grief with all of the love and tenderness and compassion we can muster.

and when we can’t, to be with that too, with as much love and tenderness and compassion as we can muster.

i am the oldest of eight, and most of my family lives in the midwest, so life here in michigan has been full of time with family.

games of yahtzee with my mom. games of rook with my mom and my grandparents. games of boggle with my mom and my sister. hikes with my dad. photo outings with my sister. sunday dinner at my parents’ house followed by games – usually with my parents, sister, grandparents, and brother & sister-in-law & nephew. playtime with my nephew. afternoons at my grandparents’ house – cleaning or putting up holiday garland or chatting while atlas snores on the couch. time with my brothers. two weeks of hugs and bubbles and books and “auntie nibby!” with savannah at christmas. a holiday full of family, food, games, and laughter. a kitty for atlas.

my mom is going to teach me how to bake bread and sew and quilt. my dad is teaching me about trees and showing me all the trails i missed when i was young.

there is lots and lots of time for conversation.

two years ago, i realized that one of the things that is most important to me is relationships.

at the time, i was thinking specifically about friendship, so i spent more time with the friends i already had and invested time and energy into making new ones.

but my family is incredibly important to me, and i am finding that this move i never expected to make is full of unexpected relationship blessings.

(my family plays games. i think i’ve played more games in the three months since i’ve been here than i’ve played in the entire 13 years i was away. in related news, my goal in life is to beat my sister at boggle. the last time we played, i think the score was 51 to 7.)

{i feel moved to share part of today’s journal entry with you. the questions are courtesy of martha beck and the joy diet, which i am currently re-reading. may it offer a spoonful of permission and a sprinkling of compassion on this, the first day of the new year. }

what am i feeling?

nothing. it feels like the kind of nothing that is blocking something.

i feel sleepy. again, not the sleepy of (i need rest), but the sleepy that is keeping me away from the truth.

i feel anger. it is behind my shoulders, behind me, a tightening.

now i want to know why i’m angry. it is not the gentle loving curious why, but the why that says what i’m thinking/feeling/doing is wrong and i must find the why in order to change it.

ahhhhh. now there are tears. my shoulders ease. i finally feel permission to feel.

i feel …

i don’t know the word. confusion? longing?

yes, longing. i sense a deep longing for something that i am not ready to articulate to myself just yet.

for now, that is enough.

what hurts?

my throat. it feels raw and inflamed.

it speaks of too much apple cider vinegar and not enough honey, of taking in someone else’s wisdom and thinking it must become mine because they are clearly wiser than me (by virtue of not being me), of forgetting about pleasure and joy and honoring myself in favor of pain and suffering and the opposite of loving kindness.

it speaks of stuffing things down and being small and thinking that my ways (and subsequently me) are not the right ways because they are not what someone else might have done.

it speaks of shame, of feeling embarrassed about how much i love my puppy, even though my love for him is one of the real-est and truest things about me.

ahhhhh. again there are tears. there is a cool release spreading throughout my throat.

for now, that is enough.

i was almost asleep after a midnight potty run for atlas – half in dreamland, half out, disoriented and groggy and heavy – when he got off the bed and began to pace back and forth between the bed and the door.

(the door to this room is always closed – it’s a cat-free zone – so he needs me to open the door.)

atlas paces when he needs a potty run, but he had just gone, so i was sure he didn’t have to go again.

he also paces when his stomach is bothering him and he needs to vomit, but this is always accompanied by a very vocal stomach and his was silent, so i was pretty sure it wasn’t that either.

back and forth, back and forth, he paced.

atlas came over to me – when he wants me to do something, he stands in front of me and tries to communicate with his eyes – and i felt a spark of anger burst into flame and i whisper-yelled at him to “go and lie down”.

he jumped on the bed, then jumped off.

back and forth, back and forth. atlas stares, elizabeth whisper-yells. jump on, jump off.

repeat, repeat, repeat.

finally, i grumpily and noisily got up and brought atlas outside into the cold, snowy night.

he walked over to the snow-covered grass, then came back to me.

oh, was i furious.

i whisper-yelled “we are not going inside until you go to the bathroom” and pushed him toward the grass. atlas walked to the grass, came back to me, and looked up at me sadly.

i did not relent. i whisper-yelled again and pushed him toward the grass. he walked to the grass, came back to me, and looked at the ground.

repeat, repeat.

finally, still upset, i opened the garage door and let him inside.

while i was wiping the snow off his feet, i woke up.

i wasn’t really mad at atlas.

i was frustrated. atlas’s needs and movements often interrupt my sleep, even more so since we arrived here, and sometimes i just really really need/want a few solid hours of sleep.

i was worried about atlas. he has been sick quite a bit since we got here. what if he was too old and the move was too hard on him. he was doing so well, and now he’s not. what if it’s all my fault.

as soon as we entered the house, i realized that something was wrong.

atlas’s back was arched, his belly was large and tender, and he walked through the kitchen with his head close to the floor like he was going to vomit.

i spent the rest of the night taking care of him.

i spent the next day taking care of him.

all the while, i berated myself. because i was mean to atlas at all. because i was mean to him when he was sick and needed me.

but then, later that evening, something occurred to me: i was mean to atlas for maybe fifteen minutes.

fifteen minutes.

i saw his whole life, with the moments i was unkind to him – the moments that feature in my thoughts often, when i am berating myself for things i’ve done wrong – next to the moments i was loving and kind.

when i saw the lifetime of moments, i was filled with so much tenderness and forgiveness for myself.

i am human. i am imperfect. i am going to make mistakes. i am going to have moments when i wish i had behaved differently.

i know those moments seem so awful to me, so far from how i want to behave, that surely they must outweigh the whole.

maybe sometimes they do.

i want to be able to forgive myself for them anyway.

i also saw that sometimes i do the same thing to others: i let moments of unkindness overshadow a relationship full of love.

and of course i would. i do it to myself.

i just hope that as time goes on, it takes less and less time to find my perspective.

i was driving home from a friend’s house, a week after arriving in michigan, when the tears began to fall. as they dripped down my cheeks, i realized they were not the occasional tears of grief, but tears of exhaustion.

this was not the exhaustion that comes from a spontaneous decision to pack up my life and move 2000 miles away. in three weeks.

no.

this exhaustion ran much deeper.

in that moment, i realized that i felt completely and totally responsible for myself.

not in the way you might think – because i am responsible for myself – but in a way where i felt absolutely alone in the world, a world in which there was no one i could turn to for anything.

and i realized that i was completely and utterly exhausted.

another day. another story.

it was a chilly michigan afternoon and my car wouldn’t start. i tried and tried to start it, but nothing happened. i know absolutely nothing about cars; when something is wrong with my car, i feel a sense of panic, completely and utterly helpless.

i was at my parents’ house, and my dad was home, so i went inside and told him that my car wouldn’t start. my dad came outside with me, got the car started, told me what happened and how to start it myself if it happened again, and went back inside.

i got in the car, put my hands on the wheel, and realized that i was crying.

right now, i am working on my relationship with abundance, with money, and i keep coming back to these stories.

i don’t even want to write about this. i am so full of confusion that i don’t know what to write. and yet i still feel compelled to do so.

maybe i am waiting for the perfect words, for the right words. to be the person who is on the other side of this, not the person who is lost and confused and in it.

i don’t know how to give up this sense that i have to do everything on my own, that i have no one to rely on but me.

intellectually, i know this isn’t true.

i can ask people for help and support.

i can ask the universe for help and support.

sometimes, rarely, i ask the universe for help. but the truth is, unless i am at my wit’s end, and just can’t see where to go from there, i don’t really mean it. (and i am hardly ever there.)

rarely, almost never, i ask a person for help. but oh, it is so hard for me: to ask for help, to receive help. even when i really need it.

how on earth is asking for help related to my relationship with money?

quite honestly, i have absolutely no idea.

when i look at my relationship with money, i find things like: “i am smart, not creative, so i can bring in money using my smartness but not my creativity.” or this: “i don’t know what i really want, and so i can’t create it.” or this: “i don’t deserve it, so i can’t receive it unless i pay for it in pain and suffering, and i’ve done so much work on my stuff that i can’t force myself to suffer anymore.”

and yet, i keep coming back to these stories.

well, there was a tiny clue related to receiving.

apparently i cannot receive.

unless i give and give and give.

but really, even if i give and give and give, i can’t receive, because the giving is just payment for whatever is on the other side of the scale to be on the scale at all.

if i somehow manage to let something in, to receive, i have to pay for it, because i didn’t deserve to receive it in the first place.

intellectually, i can see that none of this is true. i also sense that the clue about receiving is a small clue, not a large clue, and in fact it is something that has already shifted.

and yet, i am still in this place of confusion, and it is immensely frustrating to me.

i am not in resistance. i know how to look at my stuff. i am willing to look at my stuff. i like looking at my stuff. i am not afraid of what might come up in the process.

i feel like i am in a fog and i am waiting for it to lift and there will be a glorious sunrise on the other side. only i don’t know what to do to get there.

except. oh. i just now realized that i am in resistance.

i am resisting this place, this place where i am, this place of confusion.

i am here, and maybe this is a right place to be.

even if i can’t see it.

even if i don’t like it.

and just like that, just because you’re you, the world offers you its heart.

sometimes, life is a spiral.

i have been quiet here.

the truth is that it is not so much an inspired quietude as it is a combination of two things.

first, the words for all of the things that i want to write about are slow in arriving. you would not believe the number of posts that are in draft form.

second, i have been under a strange and new cloud of confusion related to the connection between my art and my life. the result of this is that i am second-guessing almost everything i want to write about. when i do this, i block my own flow, and no words come out at all.

yesterday, i was given a moment of clarity.

what i really want, what would bring me joy, is to be here with you.

i am spending so much time playing with my camera. so much time. i want to be sharing more of these photos with you.

what i really want is to return to the days when i posted pictures almost every day.

and so i am.

if i want to write, i will. if i don’t want to write, i won’t. and i will write about whatever it is that i am inspired to write about.

i feel so free.

today, i do want to share an article with you, in case you like questions to consider.

it’s from the poet david whyte, and it’s about the questions that we should be asking ourselves.

i keep thinking about something he said in the article.

“most people, i believe, are living four or five years behind the curve of their own transformation.”

there is something very compelling about the idea that this might be so.

i wonder: what am i ready to step into, that i don’t recognize because i think it is far out in front of me, when it is really the very next step.

i don’t know. but i am curious to find out.

if you want to ponder one or more of the questions with me, please do. i love thinking about things and then talking about them.

This past weekend, I had my very first ride on a motorcycle. While on it, I realized that I felt a little cool.

Not completely cool. But kind of cool.

Cool is a word I have never ever ever associated with myself. In high school, I wore glasses and played the flute and got straight As and was neither popular nor athletic. Also, I was in lots of spelling bees in middle school. I was most definitely not considered cool.

Somehow that made me think of someone I know, who probably doesn’t think they’re cool, but I think they’re very cool.

That made me wonder if there might even be people who think I am cool. (What a thought!)

All of this is making me think about labels. About how we apply them to ourselves. About how we apply them to other people. About how we allow those labels to shape us. About how we carry those labels for years, never bothering to take them out and question them.

I am even thinking about labels I might like, because the truth is that they often cause me to extend judgment toward myself and others. If I want to be a kind person, it is hard for me to accept and forgive myself for behavior that is unkind, because it doesn’t align with my perception of a kind person.

I don’t know if it’s possible, but I want to lovingly thank all of my labels for their service and release them with love. I think it would be freeing.

(Ok. I know I just disavowed labels, but I am definitely a thinker, since I seem unable to completely enjoy anything without reflecting on it, even when I don’t mean to. I love that about me.)

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon eating pumpkin cake and playing Pictionary with my parents, grandparents, brother & sister-in-law, and sister, as we celebrated my sister’s birthday.

My nephew napped. Kia did whatever kitties do. Atlas napped behind my chair, no doubt dreaming of his own slice of cake.

It was a lovely day.

When I woke up this morning at 8, I felt exhausted, so I went back to sleep. I noticed that my first thought upon rising was, “Why am I still so exhausted?! It’s been a month. I should be getting up earlier by now. This is not acceptable. Besides, yesterday was a relaxing day; I should definitely not be tired.”

The window was open all night and there was a definite chill to the air so my next thought was, “I’m cold.” That thought was immediately followed by something like this, “But I’d have to get out a sweater. That’s fine if I’m cold. I can be cold for a while. I should toughen up anyway. It’s going to be winter soon.”

Why are we so hard on ourselves?

I’ve been practicing loving-kindness for at least five years now, and I find it so interesting that my first thoughts about myself are still so often ones of judgment and censure. This seems especially true when my behavior doesn’t meet a standard that I have set for myself (often one I am unaware of until I don’t meet it) or doesn’t meet a standard that I think other people meet.

I also find it interesting how often I still disregard my body’s needs and wants, thinking they are neither valid nor important.

Atlas and I slept in a tent for most of the past month – this was partly to give my body time to adjust to the kitty, partly so I could get some sleep (if inside, Atlas was too intent on the kitty to sleep which meant that I didn’t sleep), and partly because I was so enjoying it – and I woke up multiple times each night so that if Atlas woke up and rearranged himself, I would be able to immediately rearrange the blankets around him so that he would stay warm. Clearly warmth is important to me.

Sometimes all I need to do is notice.

I let myself be annoyed at my exhaustion. Half an hour later, I realized that I am actually back on my pre-move schedule.

I had forgotten that my body’s schedule had shifted.

It happened late last year or early this year. I was always an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person. Almost overnight, it seemed, I became a late-to-bed, mid-morning-to-rise person. I was often inspired with an idea around 10pm, I would work until 1 or 2am, and then I would wake up around 10am.

I had forgotten about this, possibly because instead of going with the flow, I spent a good deal of time feeling guilty about “sleeping in” and trying to force myself back to my previous schedule.

Sometimes I listen to what my body needs, even when I want to disregard it.

Because I do want my body to know that it is important to me, I took the time to put on a sweater and was amazed at how such a simple thing made me feel so loved and cared for.

I notice that I want to write so much more than this.

About life and art and confusion and passion and purpose. And so much more.

But I will stop for now.

May we all find a way to treat ourselves with compassion.

oh, my dear.
you are carrying such a heavy burden.

you don’t have to go it alone.
you weren’t meant to go it alone.

none of us were meant for that.

we need each other
in so many ways.

it is safe to let people in,
to ask for help,
to receive support and comfort and nourishment.

it makes you more, not less.

there is great generosity in receiving as well as giving,
and vulnerability is a sign of strength, not of weakness.