The Cross Killed Jesus and Tried to Kill Me

If I had to identify the hardest part about being a Christian, one of the contenders is the emphasis on denying my humanity.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

I interpreted Jesus’s words to mean that when my feelings and thoughts wanted to deviate from the group I associated with within my church, I needed to deny my feelings and thoughts.

Maybe it’s debatable what it means to take up one’s cross. It’s been a long time since I read a theologian’s interpretation. But for me at the time, “to take up one’s cross” meant that any place in my life where I suffered, I needed to press into it, not flee from it. For example, especially in my 20s, I spent most of my time with people I didn’t want to be in a relationship with.

When my first son was born, his dad and I were leaders of a small group that met every week. Except for one other couple, I didn’t like any of them. We rotated homes, and every several weeks, we met in a man’s apartment. He was a bachelor and lived with two cats. I don’t think he did a lot of cleaning because as soon as I walked into his apartment, my throat began to close from the cat dander. Yet I believed I needed to push that side of myself away to do what Jesus wanted me to do; I was called to be a leader to this man and show that I would do what was best for the collective, not for myself. So I swallowed my Benedryl and kept going. It’s possible my throat also closed up every time because I disliked the experience so much.

Maybe because he lived close by, my husband and I considered this man for our first babysitter. 🤦‍♀️ When my son was five weeks old, I thought I needed to get it together enough to go on a date (I really don’t like that expression) with my husband. I pushed aside my anxiety for several days about leaving my infant son with this man. I was supposed to put my marriage above my desire to be with my son 24/7. Thankfully, I pulled the plug at the last minute. Looking back, I shake my head and cry a little. My beliefs, reinforced by our group’s culture*, asked me to shove aside what was true about myself over and over again. Now I know it is when I ignore myself the most, I am the least healthy.

Children show their individuality from the time they take their first breath. My firstborn was no different. He waited, impervious of others’ demands until they earned his trust before he gave them attention. This began early. When he was two, we were teaching him to say hello to people when they greeted him. He rarely did. Many of our community had young children simultaneously, and it was hard for me to separate how I wanted to parent from their expectations and choices. Members of our group often disciplined punitively, spanking children to make them conform.

Our pastor’s wife was overbearing. She expected life to greet her with her ideals. She would burst through my front door with her loud ebullient voice in greeting and expect my two-year-old to respond in kind. I watched this woman discipline her own daughter, who was a year or two older than my son. My pastor’s wife corrected her with a hand slap on her daughter’s thigh if her daughter pushed away, which toddlers always do. “We do not push away from Mommy,” she would admonish. I believed this woman was an authority in my life put there by God, and I had to emulate her. My son had no such commitment and responded to her invasion of his boundaries with disdain. He definitely did not say hello in return. He was pushing away from her “authority”. I admit, I spanked him a couple of times for it as had been modeled to me.

Parenting came with high enough stakes that, over time, I could not conform to this expectation. My inner dissonance with actions such as these was too strong, and I had to come down on the side of my children. Their individuality and spirits were too important to me, and I could not squash them. Unfortunately, I didn’t fight for myself the same way.

I still struggle to bring my whole self to anyone I consider an authority. Too often, I find myself adjusting my behavior and language based on what I sense the other person wants from me. I don’t attend church anymore. But I find myself in conversations with those that do, and I can slip right back into the verbiage. It is hard, to be honest with others that I have left my religion behind. I don’t share face-to-face that I no longer believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God. I don’t shout what inside makes me scream. I am NOT a sinner saved by grace. I lost decades of my life believing God was an authority expressed through those I thought I had to respect. When I didn’t respect them, I thought it was my problem, not theirs. I had to deny myself (my intuition), take up my cross (suffer through the situation), and follow Jesus (not go after what I wanted instead). That I had to teach my children the same thing. I was wrong.

From my journal July 1997. My oldest is 19 months old.

““How did God make P? What is his bend?

As his mom, I see that he is observant, joyful, does not express his needs easily, but can wait until he is angry and frustrated and then lashes out. He enjoys being physically active. He is affectionate.

How do I see this affecting my parenting? I need to teach P from the beginning to tell me what he needs and how to communicate his emotions. I want to give him lots of opportunities to be with other kids and play outside. I want to give him transition and be aware of what makes him frustrated and prepare him for what’s coming next, especially if I say one thing and then have to do another. I want to be affectionate and playful with him.

I believe moral training is of utmost importance, but not as it negates my child’s emotional needs.””

One week before…

“When we get back from vacation, we have to face our responsibilities to P. We’ve seen some destructive behavior…”

He’s NINETEEN MONTHS, Jenny. There’s no such thing.

“…and attitudes surface in him while we’ve been gone. It has been so fun to have him with us - he has been so animated and playful! But it is not coupled with obedience, but disrespect.”

It is painful to see those words on the paper. I thought I had to keep him on as tight of a leash as I kept myself. I am positive now that “disrespectful behavior” was a toddler relishing ice cream and his grandparents’ attention. Of course, he didn’t want to take a nap.

Since I left the church seven years ago, I have asked myself what I asked about my son. “Jenny, how are you wired?” To answer this, I often look to the places where try as I might, I couldn’t conform. I tell myself I am my own authority now. It’s hard. But to live in this self-knowledge and make choices that allow me to be true to what I now know about myself is like diving into cool, clear water after hiking through dust and heat. This is something I wrote recently.

“One of my primal needs is to be independent and develop self-awareness.”

I see clues of this as far back as I remember. No one could discipline it out of me. Leaving the evangelical church freed me to pursue the self-awareness that is so essential to the health of my soul.

*P.S. Part of the reason the church culture, especially in my 20s was so extreme was that the Bible taught us children are born with sin. We followed teaching called, “Growing Kids God’s Way”, a destructive curriculum that still is espoused throughout American Evangelicalism.

How to Avoid Triggers. Or Not.

Photo by Daniel Herron on Unsplash

I don't want to read this book, and I definitely don't want to write about it. Because? Feelings.

It's not easy when someone else is doing what you want to do. I choked up twice just reading the foreword. It's hard when someone else gives themself permission that you can't seem to give yourself. I knew ahead of time that reading the book would make me regret, long, and feel anger. But I bought it anyway, thinking I wanted the bonuses and to be part of the online book club. I thought maybe I would journal the ten prompts here. But I'm not going to. I probably won't participate in the book club. Actually, I know I won't. I'm so tired of being the follower, I can feel like I'm going to throw up.

If I think about it, I feel like I'm going to throw up when I come to the page, too. So if I'm going to feel nauseous, I might as well create my own content instead of gleaning off of someone else's.

God, I'm jealous of her. But am I? Really? No, not really.

I think what I feel instead is the awareness that I haven't done the work to be where she is. It takes a lot of work, and I haven't done it. I also think I feel doubt. I stopped relistening to "Wild," too. It's one of my favorite memoirs, and I thought I would feel inspired to revisit it. But Cheryl Strayed is SUCH a good writer. She can describe her story in a way that makes me feel like I'm sitting on her shoulder and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with her. I told my therapist this week that I would never be the next Cheryl Strayed. "But you might," she said. Thanks a lot, I thought. #nopressure

This is a little embarrassing. I created a product awhile ago called "How to Release Your Story in 30 Days". I even sold a few. But I never used my own creation. I mean, I know enough about writing and memoir to help others. I have often been a part of relationships where the person I'm with speaks their truth out loud for the first time. But I haven't answered the prompts or written my own story spine to decide what thread MY book could take. Who knows what magic I might create for mySELF?

I've answered 12 of the 30 so far. Here's an example:

What do you want a trigger warning for? What kind of pop culture do you tend to avoid? 

I often choose to press into what triggers me instead of avoiding it. I'm not sure I believe I am supposed to avoid anything. I judge others for keeping their world small, and for me to not follow suit, I need to get over my trauma. Honestly, I can get annoyed at trigger warnings. On the one hand, we're told not to play the victim, and on the other, it can seem like trigger warnings are everywhere. 

But. The last time I remember being terribly triggered was when I tried to attend a workshop 'A' hosted. I wanted to go because it seemed like a low investment option to reconnect with 'D' and others. But I couldn't control my anxiety about seeing them again. I was deeply triggered because of how it reminded me of church. This was more than I could just push through. I didn't realize the event was supposed to be for corporate teams to learn about each other's personalities to work better together. The explanation and introductions were minimal, and I was expected to jump into group exercises without a lot of understanding. There was a man she was working with, and he acted like a leader by treating us as if we would automatically trust him. I tried to ask a question that would help illuminate that this could be a problem. I think he explained how working with him meant he would challenge us if he thought we hadn't typed ourselves accurately with the MBTI. I raised my hand and asked why we would trust him over ourselves. It seemed like he didn't understand the question. I can't count the number of times I felt like what I said versus what I meant got confused in this group. My adrenalin was running so high, I wasn't articulate. The atmosphere in the room changed. It felt tight as if we were all grimacing together. 'R' tried to tell me why she trusted him, and she did this in front of the whole group. All of a sudden, I was in the spotlight, and it got too personal. The atmosphere changed from professional, and I knew that wasn't respected or wanted. Suddenly, it felt like we were in a break-out session at a church conference, and I needed "ministry." I just held my breath and tried to get through it.

'D' and 'S' were gracious as always and welcomed me when I asked to join their small group. But at one point, we were interrupted as the male leader leaned over us and asked how it was going. It was so unneeded, and my shoulders went up to my ears. And then 'S' asked my opinion about individuating from 'C,' and I gave her too strong of an answer and overshared about my own empty nest. I also thought I had to take advantage of having a moment with 'D' and tell her about the drinking in simple terms and apologize. She teared up, but I'm not sure why because I didn't give the conversation time to breathe. Between my fear and doubt about how I appeared to everyone, I could barely stay in my skin because of my question and R's response.

I heaped trigger after trigger after trigger on top of each other. I am definitely triggered by religious men acting like they know more than I do. I overshared. I also realized that night that 'A' never saw me as a peer. When she is in leadership mode, she can't switch out of it. I don't blame her. After that night, I just knew that I can't continue to be in the role of the learner in situations with her anymore. I'm still unsure why fear and doubt can take me for such a fast and robust ride when I see my former community online or in person. I wish I could do those years over again sometimes because I would handle things differently. I want to prove to them and myself that I'm much more secure in who I am. But I couldn't do it that night. Maybe some triggers are too big to overcome.

I'm trying to press in with that community again, just in little ways. I want them to know how much I've grown and changed. Even though there are parts I really miss about that time of life, there's a lot I don't. But I just don't know that avoiding triggers is how I want to operate in this world. So I keep trying. 

Writing a memoir means revisiting a lot of triggers. I once had a therapist tell me I needed to lead a boring life. I think what she meant is that my high sensitivity can't afford to be triggered all the time. She was right, and I wish I realized that when I was homeschooling and remodeling all at once. There was no time for my emotions to recover. I think that's why I can be slow in my writing and content creation. It's triggering. I don't want to avoid it, but I can also only take so much. 

It's complicated, isn't it? We have so much freedom we can often manipulate our lives the way we want to and avoid the hard stuff. I will probably never go back to church. I haven't read the Bible in almost 10 years. I just had to stop one day and have never felt like I could pick it up again. If I see it quoted, I stop reading. I just can't hear what it says without the voices of all the men who I let interpret it for me over the years. I will probably always avoid church and memories of it as much as possible.

But I can't do that with the page. When you're taught that JOY= Jesus, Others, and Yourself, in that order, religion shoves aside self-awareness. Being a Christian was the largest part of my identity for twenty-five years. I will have to write about it.

Why Is It So Hard to Tell the Real Story?

I think Releasing Our Story is one of the hardest things to do. It is for me.

I think about my writing a lot—more than actually doing it, probably, though I do write more than the average person. As I’ve mentioned before, I started writing in journals when I was in 3rd grade (picture below!). And I’m old enough (working on my sixth DECADE. How is that POSSIBLE?) to see themes in my story. As a writer, I feel the need to write them down. It’s time to let others read a form of what is between the covers of all those notebooks. But even now, I find myself writing around what I really could be saying.

It’s so hard, to be honest with ourselves. It’s hard enough in our own heads. But when I homeschooled my kids, I would tell them, “You write, so you know how to think.” When we write things down, we see our thoughts in a different light. It helps us break what can be the continuous cycles in our heads that keep us trapped. 

For example, when I don’t write, I know I’m not taking care of my inner world. When I’m not taking care of my inner world, I start to see patterns in my life. Some of my tells are uneasy sleep and whacky eating. Like right now, I’m drinking chocolate chips out of the bag. I stop putting food back in the cupboard and just leave it tucked in the folds of my couch. Yeah, that’s my reality right now. How’s yours?

But I try to go easy on myself, too. Cycles in the past went on far too long. Thankfully, mostly because I’m not trying to be supermom, I have way more time and can choose to take care of myself more quickly. 

So why am I writing about this today? I’m writing about this today because I can’t decide what to write that others might read. I’m trying to know how to think about my writing.

It’s time. It’s time to write more than a blog for publication. I’ve known this for far too long. I have plenty of ideas. I have plenty of content that just needs to be compiled and made into something that can be published.

But writing is sedentary.

Writing can be lonely.

And if I write my stories down, the kind of writing that calls me…I have to face…ME.

Facing ourselves is hard. Because we all have a shadow side. And no one’s interested in my advice; readers are interested in my journey. But for me, to write down a story about my story means going back through the weeds.

The weeds would include the tangle and heavyweight of religiosity. I would probably need to write about the alcohol abuse that became my coping mechanism. It would have to include the fallout in relationships, including the beginning of the unraveling that happened with my youngest. How I set out to be supermom and then watched my family start to disintegrate. And, also, how I found my way through it.

And if I write about that, would I include the story around my sexuality? Sexuality and religiosity are not good bedfellows…hardy, har, har…and yet, they so are! Religion’s relationship with sexuality has been deeply fraught for centuries. It spills over into our personal lives in dramatic and subtle ways. But how do I write about that tangle? If there’s one theme that has dominated the last thirty-five plus years, it’s that. It’s so personal, though. 

Memoirists always wrestle with how much to expose themselves and others. How do we write about our families and loved ones when they’re still alive? Anne Lamott’s quote, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Yeah, maybe. But I should have behaved better, too. 

But all of these are excuses. They’re just thinking about it instead of actually doing it. To write, I have to put my butt in a chair and wrestle with these realities while working it out. So off I go.

Some of you tell me offline what you think I should write about. If you haven’t, please feel free in the comments below or message me. The best place right now is Instagram.

And I ask you, as well. Is there a story you are scared to release? What do your thoughts tell you as to why?

I Think God Wanted Me to Live Wildly in a Big, Wide World

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

I don’t want to publish this. I might post but not tell anyone. The commitment I made to revisit some of my journal entries and speak with kindness to a young Jenny feels so unsexy. Cuz young Jenny was SO severe. It makes me sad to remember her heaviness and religiosity. But I am also thankful for a chance to show her kindness.

I can’t blame where I ended up in my 20s and 30s, the height of my time in the anti-intellectual American evangelical church, entirely on my childhood. I was raised by “born again” Christians, and we were a part of mainstream churches. And yet, a short foray by my parents, especially my mother, into the Pentecostal church at a critical point in my development (5-7 years) meant I learned very young that I was a sinner and traumatic things had to happen because of it. At five years old, I believed my sins, the sins of a child, put to death the Jesus of my childhood songs. The fear of a male and all-powerful God lived in my cells. Fear of doing the wrong thing shook me as a young adult and parent; I looked toward the more extreme church communities to live out my faith. 

I believed God would desert me if I sinned. I lived with this ever-present fear and a deep sensitivity that read out in many emotional needs. When I began looking for my faith community while in college, I looked for a church that tended toward passionate expression and experience. I surrendered to some of the most bizarre corporate worship experiences simply because they promised emotional healing, freedom, and peace, which I actively sought. 

June 7, 1995. I am pregnant with my first child, 26 years old, and not pursuing a career outside of the church. 

“Tonight Todd & I went to a renewal service in Penryn. Very small & intimate. Nothing overt, but my hope is renewed. Jesus has not forgotten us, and he cares about what I care about. T was prayed for in front of everyone…

Hold up. Todd must have hated that. 

…and I cried as God showed His tender care toward T. That is the hope - that our hearts will know intimacy that is rich. That we will feel love from God and for God.”

And then:

June 20, 1995. 

Lord & Savior,

Please forgive me for my selfish desires.

Jenny, when you were little, and you wanted something, you let your desires be known, often loudly. The church taught your mother that it was your sinful nature, and she had to discipline it out of you. But what if you needed to be loud and vocal about what you felt was unjust? What if your desires had a message besides that you were selfish, aka sinful? I think you were supposed to be heard.

Lord, I want to submit to your ways and what you want. 

Jenny, pay attention to the pronouns you use in this prayer. An unseen God and “The Enemy” have all the power. 

Please give Todd & me want we really need. Only you know what that is. 

Jenny, you believed that everything in your life either met God’s approval or disapproval. But you needed things far beyond the box of the God your church culture was defining. I wish you could have known life full of freedom and possibility in your 20s. 

Please change my desires to conform to your will for our lives.

Jenny, I’m so sorry you didn’t know how to dream of infinite horizons. That you thought life was about being a perfect wife, mother, and Christian as was being defined by your small church. 

Forgive me for the pleasures I have sought at the expense of obeying you.

Oh, sweetie. You ached for pleasure. You needed beauty, but you gave 10% of your money to the church instead of getting to buy pretty things for your home. You longed for comfort. You loved sex, wine, great food, and snuggly fabrics. You wanted time for tea, books, and your blanket, but you spent SO MUCH time on ministry projects. Remember that time, Pastor Jim asked us to clean his cars? You thought you had to do it because he was farther along the path to God than you. Not only did you think you had to do it, you thought you had to recruit those in the Bible study you led to do it, too. 

Cleanse me of my pride every day.

What pride, Jenny? Your intuition was crying out for you to permit yourself to be you. No amount of religious posturing was able to quiet that voice. Every day you tried to fight your pride. But you were fighting your humanity and your unique expression in the world. I’m so glad the voice that wanted to show you how never deserted you.

Please help me to make the exchange of pride for humility all the time. Let me seek your approval alone. 

Jenny, twenty-five years later, you will still enjoy recognition. Some people do, and you’re one of them. It’s okay to want this. 

Spirit, thank you that you envy for me to follow you alone. 

Jenny, this doesn’t even make sense. I think you were thanking God for wanting you for himself. How I wish you’d believed in a God that wanted to give you a way to live wildly in a big, wide world. 

Do not stop until my heart is undivided in all areas. Continue to alert me to the devil’s schemes that I would resist him in your power.

Jenny, I’m so sorry that not only were you trying to subdue yourself, you thought you also had to fight an invisible enemy. You believed your sin made you vulnerable to this enemy, and you were scared all the time. You were on SUCH a tight leash. Live was so heavy for you back then. Your 20s was the time when you could have relished being pregnant and full of dreams for your little family. But even more so, you could have lived your days believing that who you were was good enough and that your expression in the world was just fine. I wish we could have gone to Target to buy pretty things for your little apartment. We could have hung out on your couch and laughed together and talked about our celebrity crushes. 

Jenny, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I’m so sorry you will be a young mother with all this burden. But someday, you will be free. I’ll show you how to get there.

In His Name & by His Blood.

Oh, Jenny. Can I rub your pregnant feet?

It Wasn't the Shitshow it Could Have Been: My Review of 2020

One of my friends, Faith McCloud, writes this Year in Review every December. I want to follow suit. I want to try and answer these without defaulting straight to COVID. We’ll see if I can pull it off. This feels a little like a self-indulgent Christmas letter, but I really enjoyed putting it together and hope you find something you enjoy in it as well.

1. What did you do in 2020 that you’d never done before?

Wore masks everywhere. Duh!

2. Did anyone close to you die or give birth?

Super thankfully, I don’t know anyone who died of COVID. BUT, one of my best friends from my 20s…such a pivotal age…dropped dead of a heart attack in October at 52 years of age. It was shocking. We live on opposite coasts, and I went to his memorial virtually. There is so much I could write about this. Here’s what I will say. I grieve Jay. He was the kindest any man has ever been to me apart from my husband and dad and he was my most famous friend, for reasons deeply admirable. But I also have to grieve who I was when we were close friends in our early 20s. I miss that Jenny, too. But that’s part of being in our 50s isn’t it? Doors close that can’t be reopened. Jay’s death reminded me of the days I loved Jesus with my whole heart and Jesus and I were going to change the world together. Back then my faith felt light…it was about U2, church camp, and making sure I didn’t kiss too many boys. Time with Jay involved sitting on the washer and dryer at camp while we did our laundry and talked philosophy. I miss Jay and Jenny from their 20s. But the door to me being a girl of simple faith is closed.

3. What countries did you visit?

I visited a lot of them online. Travel was Todd’s and my number one goal before COVID. I stood in line for my first passport ever on March 4. So I spent a lot of time imagining instead. For Todd and I, Great Britain has always been our number one. But I’ve struggled to decide between Ireland (my heritage) and Scotland (cuz, Outlander. Duh.). In other words, I could stand where my ancestors stood or where my favorite TV show was filmed. Guess where I chose? I finally landed on Scotland and put down a deposit as hope money for a trip in July 2021. We’ll see. But I am SO excited.

4. What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?

Am I honest here? Let’s just say that COVID didn’t cramp my social life too much because my social life was a little slim before COVID. When you stop going to church or having kids in the house, your social circles can really shrink. Thankfully, I have coworkers now….more on that later. I want to move to build social circles again in 2021.

5. What dates from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

On April 15th, our family lost our beagle, Meeko. He lived with us for 12 years and it was hard to say goodbye to him. He was so sick at the end. 😔. That was also the day my daughter moved back for two months. Only took a pandemic. 😊 Even though it was far from perfect, it was a good two months of building memories after several years of struggle.

On September 2, I started working at Grass Valley Charter School, a K-8 that also has a full homeschooling program. I am the “Discovery Studies Technician” who’s responsible for the homeschooling program’s budget and library, primarily. It’s in my wheelhouse and I am thankful to have coworkers again…four great women who serve as the credentialed teachers for our 88 students. It’s still more admin heavy than I enjoy, but I don’t want to go back to school for a credential or anything else. I also get to unpack new school supplies and books every day. Is that a job for me or what?

6. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I spent seven (!) months of 2020 without a day job and it went pretty great! I’m not ready to retire or anything, but I really enjoyed the break I started calling a sabbatical. I spent a lot of time on my home, on myself, and with Todd. It was healing. Very grateful.

7. What was your biggest failure?

I stopped blogging. There is one person in my life whose criticism can STILL slay me. She criticized me last December and I just stopped. For a whole year. Damn. The power of our words…

8. Did you suffer illness or injury?

No COVID as far as I know. But I had a terrible fibromyalgia pain flareup for all of May and June that made me wonder if I had it then. Brutal. I hurt ALL THE TIME. Everywhere. But I walked through it and found a great chiropractor. I also found a massage therapist who really worked hard to help me through it. Somehow I made it to the other side, but it was tough.

9. What was the best thing you bought?

Ha! Sigh. Keeping online shopping under control was my pandemic struggle. But I did buy a lot of plants, both inside and out because I was able to give them a lot of attention during the quarantine. They bring me joy every day. I planted a lot of bulbs this year and I look forward to them greeting me this spring.

10. Whose behavior merited celebration?

I continue to be so proud of my kids. P got engaged this year! He also continues to move full-forward as a Ph.D. student of Physics. B will graduate from college this spring and has done SUCH a good job starting his adult life the way he wants to live it in the years to come. N loves her life and is using her freedom to do all she wants to and more. She lives full time in her van and works so she and her dog Atlas can travel. She loves living primarily outside and did amazing things like building herself a sink and tricking her van out just how she wants it. P.S. She has a really great TikTok if you want to check it out. I truly love the time I get to spend with them, but my mom-heart fills with pride, too, as they head off into their versions of the sunset and leave me behind. It has not been easy to be at peace with it all…I will probably always want to be their mommy which is what they don’t need or want…but it has gotten easier.

11. Where did most of your money go?

Well, the world tried to end as we know it, so I really tried to be careful with it. Who knows what’s coming? And I’m still hacking away at the bookstore debt. But we did spend our stimulus checks and landscape the front yard. Todd hauled SO MUCH rock. And he loved it! Weirdo. I just got to pick out plants and tell him where I wanted them. Just call me Lady Mary of The Wellspring.

12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Painting the downstairs, another quarantine activity. Gah! I love the finished product of a freshly painted room.

13. What was your song for this year?

Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap. People. I love me some sexy time on-screen (when love is also involved) and Normal People DELIVERED! Whew, baby doll. Hide and Seek was from the soundtrack and yes, I follow Collin’s Chain on Instagram.

14. Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Happier. I feel bad about that sometimes. But all the work I did the three years before this year paid off. Deep internal work really does make a difference to help us for the next time the shit hits the fan.

But I was also painfully aware that I got to quarantine in my beautiful home and happy marriage while financially secure. One of the biggest surprises of COVID is I thought a pandemic would erase classism and level the playing field. That COVID wouldn’t discriminate. Boy, was I wrong about that and it grieves my heart more than probably anything else this year. I feel like I should do something, but I don’t know what.

15.  Compared to this time last year, are you thinner or fatter? 

Ha! I’m about the same, thankfully. But it continues to shock me how little I have to eat as a 51yo in order for the scale to stay about the same. It’s ridiculous.

16. Compared to this time last year, are you richer or poorer? 

Good grief. Who came up with these questions, Faith? I will say, having a job that pays me, unlike bookstore ownership, is pretty great.

17 and 18. What do you wish you’d done more and less of?

Hmm…I wish I’d done less shopping on ThredUp, if I’m honest. All dressed up and nowhere to go! Sidenote: this reminds me of my favorite TikTok videos. Hahahaha. I wish I had read more books this year. I read SO MUCH news instead. I read more news in 2020 than the previous four years combined. Didn’t it feel like every morning we woke up wondering, “What the hell happened while we slept? It could be anything!” And sure enough, it was.

19. How did you spend the Holidays? 

Oh, the mental gyrations of should we or shouldn’t we? I hated that. But we did decide to host our adult kids (all four of them, cuz FUTURE DAUGHTER-IN-LAW!!!) for meals and games. It was HARD to not include Grandma who only lives 5 minutes away. But no one in our family, immediate or extended has been sick and I am grateful.

20. What was your favorite TV program?

Normal People, hands down. But I watched a lot of good TV this year. Todd and I watched all the seasons of Handmaid’s Tale and really got into it. Guess it was a morbid way of realizing things could get much worse. 😂😬😂

21. What was the best book you read?

You know what? I did not read a single 5-star book this year, according to my Goodreads ratings. I read fewer paper and ink books this year than ever, I think. I think it was bookstore burnout coupled with an INSANE news year. I am now a subscriber of the New York Times and The Washington Post, though, which is a first.

22.  What Podcast captured your attention this year?

I listened to SO MANY PODCASTS! My favorites were Nice White Parents, Paintsuit Politics, and The Rewatchables. I also listened to a TON of podcasts that explained this year’s insanity astrologically and I LEARNED SO MUCH! Ask me anything. I mean it. Last but not least, you must must must listen to “You’re Wrong About”.

23. What did you want and get?

My downstairs repainted and landscaping in my front yard.

24. What did you want and not get?

To throw dinner parties. Again, just call me Lady Mary.

25. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 51 this year by having my adult kids over. This was on March 23 and I thought we were all going to die anyway. I mean that’s a little dramatic, but who knew? Back then I worried about touch way more than breath as to how the virus might spread. So no one even thought of wearing masks, but I acted like they were five again. “WASH YOUR HANDS!”

26. What’s one thing that made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Wow. Am I honest here? Studying astrology. Like every day. I was already down that road in 2019 and the astrologers were saying over and over that 2020 was going to be a shitshow. So I learned why they were saying that. And I watched and listened and followed the planet’s movements. I deeply studied my own chart and thought hard about who I am in light of what I discovered. I asked existential questions even though they remind me of Christian bumper stickers, like, “Do I have a purpose? Am I here for a reason?” Astrology was my spiritual practice in 2020, it’s true.

27. What kept you sane?

Todd. Felix the lab. Journaling. My therapist. And keeping a routine in the most mundane of days.

28. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Le sigh . Oh, my. I love me some celebrity fancy. And I embarrassingly love young men on the screen. Isn’t Regé-Jean Page delicious?? And Alexander Dreymon is GORgeous. His color is definitely wet. And he must have shampooed his hair a LOT, even in the ninth century. 😂 Lest you think it’s only men, I also fell in love with Anya Taylor-Joy this year. She is SO stinkin’ beautiful.

Unfortunately, Sam Heughan fell out of favor this year and a lot of fans ripped him to shreds. Poor guy. But a lot of the negativity got to me and I don’t see him in the same light as I used to. That was a major bummer.

P.S. Eddie Redmayne is still my teddy bear.

29. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020.

Laugh. Laugh, laugh, laugh. Embrace your Sagittarius rising and laugh hard.

30.  Was there anything that surprised you?

Well, the pandemic. Duh.

31. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

“A tea kettle whistle deep within a home
As a radio sings a song it’s sung countless times before
And I step outside with a searching heart
To save up wishes as we look above.

So the sky dismissed the stars
The night became unseen
The sun woke from its slumber
And the moon packed up its things
Saying “The only way to love is to know it might be lost.
So take hold lightly, let go lightly, whatever the cost.”

32.  What am I grateful for?

Have to be a little redundant here. A pretty home. A happy marriage. Health. Felix. A paycheck. Internet during a pandemic. A certain redhead. Two months with my daughter. My son’s engagement with a woman we adore. My other son’s hard, hard work turning into the man he wants to be. And that three years of sobriety and therapy meant this was one of my best years yet. I think the 50s are going to be WAY better than the 40s, pandemic, and all as long as we stay out of hospitals for any reason. Gonna continue to tread lightly.

How about you? Feel free to use these questions in your own way. Pick one and answer here if you want or link to where we can see yours. I’d love to hear your stories, too.

How I Deal with an Intense Inner World at the Holidays - Part II

Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

How do I deal with an intense inner world at the holidays? Therapy. I wish I had a simpler or less expensive answer, but there it is.

There were many times the last few days where I had to breathe through the feelings. The irony is that this was our simplest holiday year yet.

I can’t count the number of times, and years my inner circle has asked me in regards to the holidays, “Well, what do YOU want?” Even into my fifties, I have struggled to answer that question. I struggle to settle on what I want because I’m so aware of how others will be affected by my choices. I try to consider everyone in the bigger picture. But this year, a lot of that just wasn’t an issue.

I want to be with people, primarily my children, who WANT to be together, and I want us to feel connected. I want that to look like laughter, good food, games, and a few heart-to-hearts. Oh, and presents. I love to give presents. But the other side of that coin is having to live with the reality that they are also free to choose not to be with us.

This year I learned that when the pressure to please my extended family wasn’t there (thanks, COVID), I still faced fear, insecurity, and worry about pleasing my adult children and accepting that maybe I can’t.

One of the biggest surprises of being a parent of adult children is that I face the very things I wanted to avoid. I had to enter my fifth holiday season, accepting that one of our relationships with our adult children is complicated, and she would most likely not be a part of many of our plans.

How do I deal with that reality? I do a LOT of work leading up to the holidays. That’s the thing about therapy. We often get there because something has happened to us that we can’t make sense of. But by doing the work, we also learn how to approach the hard times that are yet to come, too.

This year, I learned the emotions that get stirred up are really more about me than they are about anyone I am with (or not with). The tools I’ve gained, though, helped me navigate them. One of the things I’ve learned is how much I try and fix everything right away. Now, I consider the timing and whether it’s something I need to address at all.

At Christmas Day dinner, one of my sons called what I said rude. It punched me in the throat. Just that amount of comment from him rattled me. I sat through dinner and all through dishes wrestling with it. What had I said? Was he right? Should I bring it up to him later?

After the evening wound down, I did find a way to approach him. I probably said something like, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.” He responded, “What do you mean?” In other words, he had already forgotten the incident.

What he said after that is what I ended up hanging on to.

“Mom, if it makes you feel any better, my friends on Instagram and Snapchat are posting about starting to drink at 10 am to get through their family gatherings.”

That did make me feel a whole lot better. My son was here for 48 hours over Christmas, and we had the time I had always aimed for when they were growing up. It WAS filled with games, food, presents, walks, and conversations. No, my adult children were not all here at the same time except for about 40 minutes. But two of them and one significant other were here most of the time. No one, including me, drank to get through it.

But that doesn’t mean the feelings I want to escape weren’t there. I just got to practice…again…how to live with them. And on December 27th, I take pride in the memories made WITH the fact that my emotions didn’t take me out.

Also? For me? Journaling is key.

How did your holidays go? What spiritual practice helped you through?

P.S. Handling intense emotions takes so much time. From my journal on December 25, 2013:

“I like to be sober. I can’t take care of myself if I drink.”

It would take three more years of fits and starts, some more destructive than others, to finally be able to quit. Emotional health takes a long time. I hope you give yourself time.

How I Deal with an Intense Inner World at the Holidays - Part I

In this stage of life, I often find myself saying, "HOW did I ever do this AND have kids in the house?"

It's Christmas Eve, and it's my second Christmas, where only one of three will spend the night. The first Christmas morning, I wake up with none of my children in the house, feels only a breath away. It is our first Christmas sharing one of ours with another family, and I relish any moment our home is full of the energy of youth.

This means I have days and weeks to prep for the magic I still want to provide. Todd and I work on it together, planning out the meals, hanging the lights, and gathering the gifts we love to give. And through it all, I feel the tremors of the emotions that used to feel like tidal waves, daring to take me out. How did I do this before?

Well, I know how I did it before. The journals tell the truth.

I often had meltdowns on December 27th, curling into the fetal position and sobbing while my children wondered what the heck was going on with Mom. One year, I drank too much and was so hungover that I got back in bed after Christmas presents. That was an ugly year. The kids were probably tween-early teens, and I'm sure, even if only subconsciously, they knew. But I didn't understand the power of alcohol back then and guzzled the brandy from the bottle in the bathroom. A little felt great, so more would feel better, right?

But I was "responsible" for choir performances, a Pinterest worthy home, and all the ideals that would transport my family into days of bliss. And I didn’t stop working toward all the ideals I placed on us from the rest of the year. I'm sure they would have instead had their mom centered, but that didn't even cross my mind.

Now I know. My sensitivity and intuition were also in overdrive throughout preparing all the festivities and holding the emotional weight.

Now I know I can affect my intense inner world's LEVEL, but I can't turn it off. Now I know it needs space to be invited to the Christmas season, not sidelined until December 26th. Writing here is part of the HEALTHY ways I can manage the intensity. I even walked the dog this morning, which in our hilly neighborhood is something I still have to make myself do at least every other day. But it helps me stay steady.

Right now, I don't even let myself have a glass of wine with dinner. I'm uneasy about ever drinking in front of my kids again. And yet, I am also scared of returning to the narrow tight box of perfect living. My intense inner life has to be released somehow in a way that makes me feel a little naughty. I even hung a Christmas ornament this year that says so.

How would I have done things differently if I could have? I'm not totally sure. I think I would tell myself to make a list and cross off two-thirds of it. We even remodeled TWO kitchens up to the holidays over ten years. Do you think my plan needed to be shorter? Damn straight.

I would have scheduled a LOT more downtime and let the chips fall where they may—time to stare at the fire and ask myself what I am genuinely feeling. I wish I had a therapist and housecleaner during those days. That's what I really needed.

I wish I'd been able to communicate with my extended family better. Mainly my mom. "Mom, I can't show up at a specific time in a clean car with well-dressed children and all the presents wrapped." I am still unsure what I should have done instead, but our particular brand of suburban Christmas did not include messes. I wish I asked to bring my mess, but I didn’t know how.

This year, with COVID, the only extended family event is happening in my parents' driveway. It only includes cookies and tea and a couple of gifts. I can do that. But then we'll come back to my home, and enjoy our version of ease. This year I don't have to worry about the days they might not come home because I've already had one who hasn't for several years. I've made it to the other side, and I know better how to enjoy this year for what it is.

No matter how I slice it, this time of year brings the feelings. Bittersweet nostalgia is wrapped with sensitivity to all the family dynamics. There are things, I cannot change, especially people. But I can take care of my inner world now. There's space for it. If only I'd known how to do this earlier.

In the meantime, I wonder how I can be a little naughty, too. Thoughts? Wanna come over and play Cards Against Humanity with me?

I Just Stopped, and A Year Went By

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

So I have this idea to unearth one of my dozens of journals, pick a quote, and share it here. Theoretically, I believe that healing comes from our acceptance of ourselves at whatever stage we find ourselves. I can show kindness to myself, both ten years ago and now, by sharing a quote and looking at it in a different light.

I’ve been thinking about this for several days. I reread some stuff. But I don’t know.

I miss blogging. I miss writing as if someone might read it. But I don’t know.

“Release the Story” is the flag I fly. It’s my standard-bearer. I got a lot of story to release. How can it be my rally cry unless I do it, too?

That’s what The Raw Jaw was supposed to be about.

But so much got in the way. No one blogs anymore. It’s all about building a business/image with filtered pictures or witty stories. Facebook, where I built some semblance of an audience, is a dumpster fire now. Nothing of substance is there, so why would I add my value? All this and more has kept me from writing here.

The more? Someone…the voice that viscerally grabs that space behind my breastbone and throttles me said, “Why? WHY would you do this? You have so much to offer that’s beautiful. WHY write about shameful things?” I just stopped, and a year went by.

A whole year of not releasing my story and staying safe. Even though person after person in my life comes through with the message, “You are a writer. Write!”

Dozens of journals on the shelf.

Decades of already writing The Raw Jaw to myself and a god I believed was listening.

But if I write here, I will have to write about “the shameful things” because that’s my story. My story is that I looked at and lived my life through a narrow moral compass, with the standard for holiness getting higher and higher every time I almost reached it. My story is that I carried anger and lived frenetically for decades until I just couldn’t, and the earth started to slide underneath me. I need to tell the story that letting it ALL go…and I mean all of it…is the only way I’m not lying alone in a pool of my own vomit.

But why? Why would you do this?

Because unless I can look at my story and bring it to you without that narrow moral framework squeezing it, I will not be free. And I’ve needed to be free for a really (really) long time.

Do I dare try this? Again?.

One Way to Mother (or NOT Mother) Our Adult Children

Season 4 Episode 4 of “The Queen” spoke to my mothering heart as they explored Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with her four children.

I text, "I know I'm just your mom, but I love this memory of you." I include the video snippet of him performing in his high school Madrigal Dinner five years ago. I think he looks darling in his Renaissance costume with his blonde hair peeking out from under his hat. It fills me with pride. But I also check my motives carefully when choosing to reach out to him. The line between reminding my adult children that I still delight in them and wanting them to take care of me emotionally is thin.

The hardest part about being a parent of adult children is to accept that they are not responsible for filling my emotional needs and then live like it's true.

Don't get me wrong. I have wrestled through many therapy sessions to come to this understanding. I default so easily to my mothering identity. But that can get weird. I mean, when is that supposed to end? One of my sons is turning 25 this month and has a fiance. Being wrapped up in his emotional life would be SO inappropriate. I can get hurt by them now, too. "Don't they know? Can't they see?" I might cry. But that, again, is me expecting them to take care of me emotionally. "It's not their job," my therapist responds. She has to remind me over and over again. Thankfully, I know she's right, and I pay attention to what (and why!) I communicate.

The irony is, I didn't know how to relax into the intimacy that can exist between a mother and infant. I was too wrapped up in doing everything right. I kept myself on such a tight leash in my 20s as I believed my god required it, and that spilled over into my full-time parenting in countless ways. Letting my child sleep with me was a no-no. I didn't trust myself to give my firstborn a bath, so I gave the responsibility over to his dad. My emotional bandwidth was narrow, and I withheld my natural nurture often without realizing it. My emotional exhaustion was so pronounced after my second was born, I left for nine days once before he was two. I felt so desperate for rest, I holed up in a hotel alone. It was better with the third because I'd learned a few things, but she had to struggle to keep up while I continued to push our family forward in my ideals, expressed in religious commitment and homeschooling. I missed so many of the moments I now long for just because I was trying so hard to do it all.

But there is no doubt becoming a mother cracked my heart open and let me feel deeply in ways I never had before. They needed and wanted me with pure abandon. I relished snuggles and greetings, making them laugh, and opening the world to them through books and hikes in the woods. All my longings and loneliness were met with their delight in the world I was creating for them. No romantic relationship or public success can replace the way my children made me feel.

I also bemoan to my therapist, "But only the whites believe in giving adult children lots of space! If I was the matriarch in another culture, like Italy or, or…have you SEEN "My Big Fat Greek Wedding??" But I am white. I did raise my children to become the best of themselves. I don't want to be a clinging mother in my heart of hearts, but an empowered woman excited about the second half of her life. I want them, of course, to come "home" for holidays and to celebrate them. I will relish being involved in my grandchildren's lives, if that becomes part of my story. Most of all, I want my adult children to want to be a Wells and thankful for our family. But in the meantime, I am learning to stand on my own emotional two feet and that needs to never end.

I have a theory. I believe that a lot of Gen X found emotional fulfillment in becoming parents. Our parent's generation didn't go to therapy, talk about triggers or mental health, or take child development classes. We wanted to do it better! Be much more emotionally nurturing. But our children ended up healing us. And as they come of age, it's hard to let that go.

But it's not their job to emotionally take care of us, is it?

It Is Better to Marry Than to Burn

Good thing I didn’t listen to Saint Paul after all.

Photo by Wesley Balten on Unsplash

When I look back at my college journals, both the handwriting and the young woman are tightly wound. I took my religion so seriously back then. I filled notebooks with prayer after prayer to a god I believed cared about my every thought and emotion. According to my journals, those thoughts and feelings were only holy when I quoted the Bible or cried out for forgiveness in prayer.

When I was nineteen, I fell in love with a man whose life was a mess. I fell in love with him because he played the guitar, wore his heart on his sleeve, and was taller than me. But I also fell in love with him because he had a life he wanted to “turn over to Jesus.” My God could do anything and redeem anyone. My God could even redeem a divorced man almost nine years older than me. God could change a man’s life so completely, and we could marry and be chosen by God for full-time ministry.

My journals tell the truth. I never found a resolution to marry this man.

See, I found this man very attractive. I liked his hair, laugh, and the way he said my name. And he was very attracted to me. But good Christians didn’t have sex if they weren’t married. I wasn’t even convinced divorced Christians could get married again. I would stand in the Christian bookstores, reading every book I could find on the subject to see if we qualified for a holy loophole. But it could never be justified for sure. So if we couldn’t have sex or get married, we were left with years of angst instead.

Oh, did I mention this man was already a father? Well, he was. Could God’s plan for me be to marry a man so we could have sex, and I could be the mother at nineteen to three little boys? I know, you just choked on your tea. But God had big plans for my life and theirs! And oh, how they needed a mother.

Every Friday night, I babysat the three boys until my boyfriend finished his swing shift. I fed them Kraft macaroni and cheese, read them Bible stories, and tucked them in with prayers and kisses. When their dad got home around midnight, we would make out on the couch and then peel ourselves off of each other, and I would leave. Back in the safety of my childhood bedroom, I would faceplant myself into the carpet and plead in prayer for God to help me stay celibate.

We did everything we could to do the right thing and stay out of bed with each other. And somehow we did. We spent our Saturday nights hosting worship sing-a-longs in his apartment with friends and Sunday mornings in church with only a passionate kiss in between. Is it possible that the strict purity rules my religion dictated saved me from a boatload of complicated heartache? In this instance, I think it did.

After years of debate and frustration, we sat across from each other over lunch, and I finally told him and myself the truth. “I don’t want to marry you. I want to have sex with you.” Breaking that moral code was still not an option, and I had decided I had to move on. “Can’t you see us married to other people and friends?” Oh, hell, no, was his response. In his mind, there was only one happy ending, and it included me as his wife. Thankfully, the day finally came where I ultimately walked away.

When I found this man again twenty years later, thanks to Facebook, the emotions pulled on me like beach waves. Facebook entered my life when I still worked very hard always to do the right thing. I was a fulltime homemaker and educator, teaching my children at home. Doing God’s will was a 24/7 job. But Facebook allowed me to begin to wade into murky waters, where right and wrong weren’t as clear. I wanted to know what happened to those boys and their dad. Who became their mother? Had he married someone he was still with? Did he now believe we had done the right thing, having gone our separate ways?

Maybe a holier and more self-controlled person would have ignored these questions and not pushed the “Add Friend” button. But the dam of perfect living had begun to crack under pressure, and I found myself desperate for some release. Finding and reaching out to ex-boyfriends on Facebook at forty years old was still not what my religion would have permitted me to do. Except, I wanted proof I had made the right choice. It was a risky question that demanded exploration.

More to come…

What was it like for you to find people from your past on Facebook? A complicated question, I know. But do tell, if you want! I’d love to hear your stories.

Read At Your Own Risk

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

I call this the Raw JAW because I need to continue to practice putting my words out into the world without fear. If censoring oneself is a superpower, I don’t know if I have it, but I would consider trying out for that reality show. But who would watch it? We often want what’s unfiltered.

That was my intention when I started blogging again, to practice writing with less censors. But there are many reasons why I find myself not doing that.

When I write or speak, I was taught to do it as if I’m writing for an audience of one. I’m sure this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but I took it to heart. The problem with that is I always have a person in mind. Usually, it is my critics, people who read me to pick apart and analyze my inner world. That’s part of it.

The other part is that I had a precarious season on social media several years back. I believed in letting it all hang out online as a way to push past my fear of criticism. Sometimes I threw in wine with my attempts at uninhibited writing. The problem was that drinking made me angsty, and sometimes I picked fights and shoved myself into other people’s business. I lost readers back then. They decided to look away from the train wreck. Now I don’t want to offend those who were able to stick around or chose to return. Many of my friends are true blues, faithful for years despite my shenanigans. They read, and I still write for them. But it’s holding me back.

A third reason I struggle to be “raw” is that I’m not sure I know myself well enough to lay the words down on a train track of certainty. I believed for decades that my inner world was suspect, and I needed to manage all my desires, motives, excitement, and fear. Emotions and thoughts needed to be denied or manipulated. As a result, sometimes, I still don’t know what I feel or believe, much less how to articulate it.

I once completed a Facebook meme about hopes and dreams for the future. One of the things I wrote was, as someone married 20 years, “a passionate love affair.”

Well, that didn’t get past some of my readers at all, and I got confronted about it.

But what was behind my comment? What if I wrote about that?

When my marriage was 20 years old, I was sad. I felt grief that the days of romance that left me unable to concentrate on anything else were behind me. My dreams of sleep were full of stories of being desired. I’ve said it before, but there’s a reason we like stories with the sexual tension of, “Will they or won’t they?”

“Why can’t you have that in your marriage, Jenny? You want a relationship with sexual tension? Don’t talk about that. That’s behind closed doors stuff!”

Well, yes. But isn’t that why we read memoir, to peek behind closed doors into a world we either want to understand better or to tap into the universal themes of our human journeys?

Many of these feelings came up for me when my children were coming of age. My daughter’s first boyfriend was the inciting incident for me to pick up the phone and call a therapist again. And I want to justify my FB meme with, “Well, I didn’t say it had to be with someone besides my husband!” After all, can a marriage change over time and be reinvented? I think it can! Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about books like “Kosher Adultery” and “The Ethical Slut.” Let’s talk about how, when the church introduced the vow, “‘Till death do us part,” people died much earlier in life! Let’s talk about how women losing their youth is painful and real. Now those are exciting things to write and read.

A good memoirist has to be able to explore themes such as these in a personal way. They have to go out ahead of the crowd, tell their story, and stand despite inevitable criticism. The memoirist is the one that says, “Life is not simple or black and white. I want to see my life in color, and maybe your life can be in color, too.” I believe these are the kinds of things I must write.

My girlfriend told me a few days ago, “It’s like I hear your voice when I read, and then it starts to slip away. I think, ‘There it is, there it is!’ and then it’s gone.” I hear her, and she’s right. I know it, too.

I cannot write and try to sidestep what I mentioned above. Not only do I hold a laundry list of what I still don’t talk about out loud, I don’t always know what I think and feel about those things. Maybe what’s more accurate is that I know what I believe about those things, but they are so radically different from the culture I left. To write them down anyway means facing the judgment that ruled my experience there.

But if I am ever going to get serious about writing the story I need to tell, I will have to face that judgment. I need to write more than a blog, Facebook statuses, or in my journal, but instead like a sculptor, painter, or woodworker. I know the story I need to tell. But can I find words to lead us through the depths and heights? I don’t know yet.

What I do know, however, is that this is where I need to practice. I write everyday words and worlds I do not publish. But I need a place where I push myself a little bit even though I know you will read. I need to stand on the edges and then go even farther.

So I leave you with a caveat. Read at your own risk. If you read for voyeurism looking for chinks in my armor so you can say, “Aha! I knew it!” or “How could she?” or ”That’s what she gets for leaving the church!” I need to stop writing to you. I’m going to try, anyway.

I'm curious. Do you read memoirs? What's a favorite?

Never Is a Very Long Time

"Who's Barbie do you like the best?" The three of us sat cross-legged on the carpet with our favorite Barbie balanced on her tiptoes on our thighs.

"My favorite is Kelly's," "Linda said.

"My favorite is Linda's," Kelly said.

"My favorite is mine," I said. And I meant it.

My Barbie was the most beautiful with her white flutter skirt and tiara. There was no doubt in my mind. I could not believe they hadn't chosen mine.

In library art contests and school and backyard plays where I directed and starred, I won the prize. I felt set apart from my peers in a way that put my virtual hands on my hips. I knew I was the best until I realized I wasn't.

In the crowded classroom, aspiring thespians sat two to a chair and some on desks. It was the first tryouts for the drama department in my freshman year of high school. Mrs. Miller had me read, and I stared at the word on the page. "Adieu!"

I did not know how to read this word out loud, which doesn't make sense because I took French in junior high. Why didn't I know how to say, "goodbye?" Did I get too nervous at that moment and feel on the spot? I opened my mouth and went barreling ahead, "Ah-dee-o!" I read with my best Spanish accent.

The crowded classroom laughed, and Mrs. Miller laughed. I blushed and slid under the desk.

At least that's what I remember. It was probably much more benign than that.

I never tried out for a high school play again, even though it was my crowd for the next four years. I pulled the curtain. I ate lunch in the theatre and held my breath while Mike and Kelly climbed scaffolding and hung the lights. But I never never never tried out again.

If only I had laughed at myself, dusted myself off, and been the first in line next time. But I didn't know how to stick the landing the first time, and I believed that meant I should never put myself into a similar situation again.

Recently, my mother told me, “You lost your confidence in junior high and never got it back.” Ouch. That word, “never” stung. But was she right?

Photo Credit: Kat Hurley of SASNAK CITY

Last month, I ran down to the front of the auditorium to ask the actors my question. Four of the supporting cast from “Outlander” sat casually on the edge of the stage, willing to engage with fans who wanted to know more. All of our questions were a version of "Pull back the curtain for us." For me, I wanted to know what their secret was. How do actors handle embarrassment? When I asked, all four of them gave me their equivalent of the blank stare.

I don't think it meant professional actors don't experience embarrassment. But from their answers, I understood that pushing past shyness and timidity must happen in an actor's training. I think they work so hard on it, it is not in the forefront of their minds. Maybe their blank stares meant, “Hmmm…let me think about that.”

It's not possible to succeed in their craft and let embarrassment hold them back. While this makes logical sense, what I felt resonating with me was that they embodied what I could not. To do what they need to do, they need to be at ease with both truths. "I am going to fuck up, and I am going to kick ass."

In particular, Maria Doyle Kennedy who plays Aunt Jocasta, said that if we don't go all in and believe in what we're offering, no one else will either.

Maria Doyle Kennedy and Sam Heughan as Aunt Jocasta and Jamie

I went to the movies last weekend, something I rarely do anymore. I waited for my husband, and people watched, relieved I purchased my tickets ahead of time, so we didn’t have to stand in line. And it reminded me how some of the actors got to go to a Kansas City Chiefs game after our fan convention. They posted in their Instagram stories about the police escort they got when leaving the game. I watched those stories, and the long line I got to bypass outside the movie theater and felt gripped like I’ve been gripped over and over again my whole life. It’s a version of, “Please put me out in front. Please help me not be ordinary. I want to be the lady of the manor. Please invite me to table with the movers and shakers.”*

Here’s the problem with that. One of my business coaches taught me, “Jenny, don’t wait to get invited to the table. Invite yo-SELF to the table.”

She was right. And I spend a lot of time wondering how to do that when, for others, it seems so effortless. What if I finally get my chance and I say, “Ah-dee-o” instead of “Ah-dew?”

I don’t know the answer for me yet. There are many tables I want to sit at where I haven’t. But in the meantime, this is what I know. When I feel embarrassed, I need to laugh at myself and dust myself off. Jump up and smile instead of slide under the table. I don't know that I haven't had confidence since junior high. But I do know that being polite, kind, and safe holds me back much more often than not. Avoiding embarrassment is a terrible life plan.

I'm curious. What table would you like to join?

*By the way, who am I asking to do this for me? I believed for over 40 years that the reason I hadn’t been “invited to the table” was because I wasn’t ready according to God. He had standards I had not or could not meet. So many of my prayers over the decades were a version of asking permission for opportunities. I now realize those prayers didn’t get me anywhere because I never had to wait for a gatekeeper to let me through. I have felt so guilty that I want this. I have felt sinful because I should wish for ordinary things. This kind of theology held me back so many times, but even now, I am afraid to write what I want in case Christians read it.

When Our Dreams Involve People Who Won't Conform to Them

Why do you think our memories with grandparents are so much more potent and visceral sometimes than our childhood homes?

This morning I remember my paternal grandmother. Of the four of them, she was the one I played with the most. Yes, we played. She introduced me to nail polish, card games, and Days of Our Lives. I can still smell her backyard roses that flourished in Southern California weather. My brother and I ate ice cream after dinner on tv trays while she tried to encourage us to top it off with some fruit for our digestion. Grandma used tooth powder instead of paste that we sprinkled onto the soap indentation of her pink sink.

Grandma and Grandpa lived half a block from a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop. We would walk the neighborhood after dinner and stop there first. Believe it or not, one of my favorite flavors was Black Licorice. I KNOW! The ice cream ringed my outer lips with black by the time we returned to their house.

I remember sneaking Andes Mints out of her candy dish in the formal living room where we never hung out except at Christmas, with their fluffy white tree.

At Grandma and Grandpa’s house, there was a little window you could open in their front door. My grandpa would start his days opening that small window for fresh air while he did his stretches. Their porch had outdoor carpet on its steps, but we always went out the side door. The side door led to concrete steps down to their long driveway, which stretched from the street to their double detached garage with doors that you had to manually open and close. When my grandfather left for work, my brother, grandmother, and I stood on those steps, waving goodbye as he backed down that long driveway. And then we would get ready to go to the mall. All my favorite clothes in elementary school, I’m sure, came from trips to the Santa Anita mall with my grandmother.

Why do so many of us have such strong memories of our times with our grandparents? I wonder if it’s because we spend less time with them than the day in and day outness of life at our homes coupled with much less pressure and confusion. Life with Grandma and Grandpa was simple, and we could easily blend into their routines. How is it that I remember the name and of their gardener that came every Friday? Or where the air conditioning and heating units were located in their house? I don’t know some of these things from my childhood homes (not that we had a gardener. Or did we?). But the memories from my grandparents fly off my fingers.

Grandma and Grandpa’s life together was also complicated. Grandma was Grandpa’s second wife because his first wife died giving birth to my dad. I think my Grandpa probably drank too much. Born in the Midwest, my grandfather came from a long line of pastors and missionaries, and I think my grandmother stirred things up a little with her love of bridge (playing cards are too close to Tarot cards) and wearing red (only for harlots). But that’s what was magical for me about my grandmother. She didn’t take life too seriously. I think we talked about my dad’s birth mother one time in two sentences. But when you’re a child transitioning from imagination to reality around age eight, days of soap operas while Grandma paints your fingernails lets the magic and delight of childhood stretch out. After all, Grandma never mentioned how many Andes Mints were gone from her candy dish whenever I was there.

During my in-between time of children at home and maybe them having children, I sometimes wonder what kind of grandmother I will be. There is split-second pain and horror that one of my children won’t let me see my grandchildren, but how can someone like me think about that without caving in for more than a few seconds? However, if my grandchildren spend the night at my house or help me decorate the Christmas tree someday, what memories will they remember when they’re fifty and thinking about what it might be like with their future grandchildren? What of me will they always have with them?

It took two years for me to touch these shelves, sorting and organizing board games and children’s books. But I finally could. There is a lot of hope for the future including children within these shelves.

I hope they remember the best of my children’s books that I’ve saved and playing in our backyard creek. Maybe they’ll enjoy the backyard trampoline my children loved if their parents let them. I worry daughter-in-laws, or by some miracle, son-in-law won’t think I’m safe enough with their children. It’s a fear that wants to grip me and take away my breath. I made mistakes with my children in dramatic ways, and what if they hold it against me with their children?

But, I like to think once I breathe through the fear that I will have grandchildren who spend lots of time in my husband’s and my home. I imagine them baking and building with my husband and reading and planting flower pots with me. I hope my children and their partners consider us a safe place to leave their children so they can get away together just like my husband and I could do because of both sets of our parents. We won’t be able to walk to Baskin Robbins from our home in the woods, but we can go to the Fourth of July parade or eat fair food on Treat Street someday.

Since experiencing what I call Violent Empty Nest Syndrome (VENS), I know better than to imagine the future a certain way. But this future is also what I started working toward before I even picked the partner I did — building a home and family for generations called to me early, early on. Sickness, even death, and estrangement (notice the order of that list) might mean what I can see in my mind’s eye never comes to pass. I also realize now that I must allow a wide berth for whatever choices my adult children make. They’re not responsible for my dreams, emotions, or memories in the making.

One of the silver linings of my youngest leaving home two years early is I think I have a long time between being a mom and being a grandma. There’s time and space to build a career apart from a homemaker. To fulfill non-family based goals like traveling to Europe to speak at a conference or visit the studio where they film Outlander and meeting Sam and Cait (What? It could happen!). But truth be told, these are dreams that come after long stares at my coaches and therapists who have asked me, “Jenny, what do YOU want?” Being a mother and creating a home began to live in my cells when I was very young, starting with a love for Marion Cunningham and all those teenagers who wanted to hang out at her house.

I’m pretty sure my grandmother had the gray version of this exact hairstyle.

It’s probably time to stop waxing philosophically about how to have dreams that include people we can’t and shouldn’t control. It continues to remain a question to me; however, how to build dreams with others who have different plans and paths.

Why do you think our memories with grandparents are so much more potent and visceral?

What if Those Who Don’t Observe Halloween for Religious Reasons Are the Scariest?

Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash

Ten years ago, I attended something called The Story Workshop. Hosted by The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, it was a four-day gathering of about 100 people. Before we got there, each of us wrote a story from our childhood and received feedback. I don’t remember the exact prompt, but it resulted in stories that were meant to illustrate a childhood trauma. They spanned from the death of a pet to the death of a parent. Based on the feedback, we rewrote our story and brought it with us. For example, when I wrote my story, the feedback I remember was, “You write this from the view of 30,000 feet.” Meaning, I kept the emotions in the story at arm’s length and chose not to enter into what my six-year-old self felt.

Throughout our time together, we sat in lectures and then met with a small group several times. In the small group, we each took turns reading our story out loud, and the other members gave us feedback about what they heard.

Here’s what the feedback WASN’T. It wasn’t feedback about our syntax. They didn’t review our writing skills. We were sharing personal stories, and there was no place for that. It also wasn’t supposed to be advice, like “Your mother’s alcoholism was a disease.” or anything that minimized what the child experienced. We were only to reflect to the reader what we heard based on their words alone.

After the feedback that I wrote my story from 30,000 feet, I went the other direction and wrote the story as dramatic as I could imagine. I ended up dragging my listeners through a story that was designed to shock. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it still kept my trauma at arm’s length for me.

And yet, they heard what I couldn’t in my story. My small group listened to the horror and shattering that my six-year-old soul experienced. And even though I wasn’t capable at the time to receive their shock, compassion, and reflections, I did tuck their feedback away. I never forgot about it.

I look back on my time there and see how difficult it was for me to hear and know my own story during that time. I wasn't able to tell myself the truth about how the combination of Jesus’s crucifixion and the discipline of a child was traumatic and horrifying. I wasn't able to admit it until Rachel Held Evans hosted her series in 2013 on spiritual abuse. Christians were beginning to talk about the fallout of authoritarian, patriarchal, and one-verse theology that drove parenting seminars throughout the church for decades, if not longer. Part of what this theology teaches is that young children must be disciplined harshly “with the rod,” and it’s what the Bible, therefore God, commands. It is believed, even today in many Christian circles, that to parent with that theology is what saves children’s souls from death. Somehow, when Rachel hosted the series in her blog, I finally experienced the watershed of emotions about how much the story I shared at The Story Workshop informed my life. I could finally admit that my childhood innocence and peace splintered because I was disciplined this way, based on the church’s teachings. I did the same thing to my firstborn, too, though thankfully, not connected to the crucifixion or explicitly teaching him about his “sinful nature.” But he was disciplined too harshly because I thought I had to.

I wish I could tell you the specific story I shared at The Story Workshop. But one of the other characters in the story asked me not to share it publicly. It’s hard to honor. Being able to write our stories down despite the other characters is so essential to our healing. Having our trauma witnessed is also key to it.

So many children I know have been wounded and traumatized by this theology. I’ve said it before, but I will spell it out again. Do not teach children about the execution method of the Roman Empire. Then we tell them it happened to the person they offer up their childhood prayers to. THEN we tell them that the crucifixion occurred because they did what children do like tell a lie, steal a cookie, or hit their brother. It horrifies them. Terrifies them. On top of all that, we add corporal punishment, telling them as we apply our hands to them violently, that “it hurts me more than it hurts you.” Now their “sin” has killed Jesus and hurt their parents. What childhood soul recovers from this?

Where we are wounded is where our most significant capacity for compassion and helping others comes. Our passions and missions in life grow from the place of our greatest hurts. That’s what The Story Workshop taught me. You might have heard people quote the poet Rumi, “The wound is where the light enters you.”

Little brings me more satisfaction than to help others, especially those who come from an oppressive religious setting, to feel released. What do I mean? I want to help others say, “This is the story that ruled my life, and I can’t live like this anymore.” We can be free when we tell our stories. To be able to stand up to powers that be and speak and write what scares us is terrifying and must happen. We need to be able to tell our stories without sugar-coating them or for shock value, but to tell our stories with honesty instead in a way that provides us personal transformation. Nothing means more to me. I have seen it change lives; my own, and those I love.

How do you need to Release Your Story to say and live what’s true, but scary? I can help. Let’s work together. Here’s a list of my current offerings that I’m updating all the time. I would love to listen to and help you release your story.

Take care. And be free.

You're a Heartbreaker...Dream Maker...and Proud of It? WWJD?

My girlfriends and I sat together at our lunch table and watched him smash his milk carton, splattering it everywhere. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but my fifth-grade understanding was murky at best. What had I done that caused him to be so upset he didn’t care that others saw him crying so intensely? While I hadn’t yet experienced my own broken heart, I was only ten, after all, I knew I had broken his. But what could I do? I had to tell him I didn’t want to be his girlfriend. I mean, who “goes steady” in the fifth grade?

I still remember his name and have looked for him on Facebook. It is an original name, and I am curious. His dad worked for Disney. Sepp (told you it was original) invited me over to watch “Dumbo” and have dinner. Well, this was before VCRs, and NO ONE ever watched a full-length movie at home. But since his dad worked at Disney, he was able to get access to a Disney film. He set up the reel-to-reel projector in the living room. His mom was Asian, and his dad Caucasian in a world where I had heard mixed-race couples were not “good for the children.” Their family was mysterious to me, and I felt like and probably was the honored guest. I knew it was a huge deal that I was one the one Sepp had invited. Why they didn’t include others from the class, I don’t know. It’s a little weird they helped him, an only child, have a date in the fifth grade.

Even now, I can feel the desire to write about this experience with the pride I felt being chosen. When I look back over my childhood and young adult themes, I tilt my head a little at all the ways I was a serious student and felt different from my peers. But the one place I did feel free and authentic was with the boys. The boys always liked me, and oh, how I liked the boys. Sepp was only the first heart I broke.

I’m not sure it’s healthy that I can still list all my crushes starting in first grade by their first names.

Somewhere in the eighth grade, I started writing the names and dates of whoever I kissed on the inside of my closet door. It’s a long list. Many in the record got a star for the verra special interactions. When my kids were young, my mom once showed them that list. I was horrified. It is not an innocent list, but thankfully, my children - I think - were too young to have much context. Side note: I wonder if it’s still there?

When I think about writing down my childhood stories, I always think about two areas I could write about with relative ease because there are so many memories. I could write about the role of religion in my growing up, or the part boys played in my life. I have so many stories about my experiences with boys, and of some of them, I’m somewhat proud!

One of the hardest parts of writing memoir is being able to tell stories that don’t just reveal the part of our lives we want to puff up and display — writing about what has indeed happened to us without depth and self-awareness leaves the reader feeling like a voyeur. It’s like they’ve been able to peek behind our curtains, and we’ve teased them by leaving those curtains see-through. Does that make sense?

The memoir I’m studying this week, having read it before, is “Small Fry” by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Lisa was the illegitimate (is that a word we still use?) and a long time unacknowledged daughter of Steve Jobs. Readers criticized her memoir for being self-indulgent. But in one of her interviews, I heard her share that when she shared a first draft with an agent, the feedback she got was, “I can’t quite locate you in this story.” In other words, Lisa had to write her story, both in life and on the page, under the shadow of one of the most famous people in the world. I can’t help but wonder if what others have thought smacked of self-indulgence was just her attempt and fight to be able to try and tell her story despite that shadow.

I have compassion for the wrestling those of us who write our stories go through. To learn to write our stories without trumpeting them is not easy. To write our stories and not hide them isn’t at all easy either. But something still calls many of us to try.

——————————————————-

Once upon a time, a very young Jenny learned that flirting felt very natural to her.

And every day, she practiced doing what the boys liked.

Then one day, she told Jesus she wouldn’t do any of those things anymore.

(These are the parts of the Story Spine that give your stories a beginning).

Because of that, Jenny wanted to get married as soon as possible because that was where Jesus said she could have sex.

Because of that, Jenny was very strict with herself and afraid she would sin against God.

Because of that, she…see, being honest in black-n-white is not at all easy. Because of that, she ignored the questions that came up for her about her choice of marriage partner.

(These are the parts of The Story Spine that give your stories a middle.)

Until finally, she couldn’t ignore the questions, especially after she found ex-boyfriends on Facebook.

And ever since then, Jenny worries about and wants to speak out against purity culture and its teachings in the American evangelical church.

(These are the parts of the Story Spine that give your stories an ending.)

Writing and telling our stories is not at all easy. It’s hard to tell a story that isn’t self-indulgent but healing. It takes so much work to be honest with ourselves about our motivation and reasons. AND, for some of us, we continue to feel compelled to tell them.

Last but not least, if any of you know a Sepp Diefenbach out there, I’d love to buy him a half-pint of milk.

Adolescent Drama and Adult Trauma - Only The Strong Survive

Photo by Charles Eugene on Unsplash

I hang on to relationships far longer than is healthy for the other person involved or me. Ending relationships can feel impossible.

My sixteen-year-old self knew it was over when I passed his car that night. I’m surprised he stopped because when we rolled down our windows to talk to one another, she sat in the front seat. My stomach dropped.

Only a few weeks later, that boyfriend and I fought on my parents’ front lawn. We should have sold tickets to the neighbors.

My Scot boyfriend was solid, the weight-lifting champion at our high school. He had already graduated by this point, and I hung on to him by a thread. We did not take our conflict toe to toe as equals as I was a young woman who pled and begged him to show me mercy and stay. The desperation rose in my throat, and my vision became myopic. Nothing mattered more than to fight with all I had to keep him.

My adrenalin pumped so hard; I ended up jumping into the passenger seat as he went to drive away. In a flash, I grabbed the keys out of the ignition and ran down the street. He chased after me, and I only made it about half a block before he cut in front and turned to face me.

What I remember most was his disdain. He wasn’t just rolling his eyes at me, but he seethed anger and disgust. In a last-ditch effort, I contemplated throwing the keys down into the sewer grate. But he knew how to talk me down. The lead in our school play when we started dating; he knew how to turn on the act when he needed to. He promised me we could talk if I gave him his keys. He coaxed me while I sobbed. Eventually, I handed them over, surrendering to his charismatic manipulation. It is no surprise he bolted. Now I chased him. Reaching my parents’ front yard again, he jumped into his car and screamed out of there. I collapsed on the lawn in loud, dramatic, and utterly heartbroken sobs.

Reading this, you might think that was that. That somehow I got up off that lawn, put my heart back together, and recovered as teenagers always think they won’t but usually do. Nope. While the timeline starts to get a little fuzzy, I remember several dramatic scenes that must have happened after this.

He dated that girl in the passenger seat. He and my best friend slept together. He started dating an older woman from his college theater department. But I clung on, demoralizing myself over and over to grasp at straws.

One time, I remember crouching in the dark in his bedroom. The college girlfriend had shown up, and I could hear them arguing in HIS parents’ front yard. The next thing I knew, the pocket door to his bedroom slammed open, and there she stood. Once again, I crouched in terror and meekness while someone filled with anger and disgust raged over me. The rest is a bit blurry, but somehow the three of us ended up outside, again on a front lawn. He wept and pleaded with her while I wept and pleaded with him. Guess what? My pleading didn’t work.

When people pull away from me, even today, my natural reaction is utter panic. If you’re familiar at all with the Enneagram, I am a two, and a two’s greatest fear is the loss of a relationship. Throughout my life, I can see where I hung on too long, where I put up with anger, disdain, and demoralizing behavior. Somehow this felt better than facing and living with the feeling that the bottom would drop out from under me if this or that person did not love me or had to walk away.

When my daughter, my youngest, left home two years early, my already devastated marriage strained under the stress. We were like deer in the headlights, unable to find each other or know what to do in the dark. I wasn’t sure we would make it. I didn’t even know if I wanted to. My few confidantes didn’t understand what had happened, couldn’t necessarily relate to the feeling that my life if without connection, was over. I woke up not in my usual bedroom during that time and thought, I am truly, truly alone. All my work for the last twenty-plus years of building a family hadn’t worked. My life purpose had shattered.

I found myself living with my deepest fear. It’s wasn’t the kind of fear like facing a rope course with coworkers at a teambuilding event. It wasn’t about clenching my eyes shut and just going for it anyway. It was a fear like walking along the street, avoiding all potholes only to step on a maintenance hole, and have it fall away. Down I went, my stomach rising into my throat with utter terror. How was I to recover, crawl out, and stand in the sun again?

Well, thankfully, maintenance holes have ladders. One rung was enough social skills to be able to reach out anyway, so I didn’t stay isolated. Another was my therapist. A third was reaching out to my husband in kindness so we could begin to move back towards one another. One of the strongest rungs was to run a small business and have a reason to get up every day.

But one rung that was never there and I don’t think ever will be is the rung that could tell me I would be ok. There was no rung where I could make sure everyone would love me as long as I did whatever it took.

I don’t think I’m alone when I write this. I feel so many women in my stage and culture wake up one day and find that the bottom has dropped out in one way or another. It’s scary. It shakes us. We have to learn to rely on ourselves over others in ways where only the strong survive. I think I can finally say, I’m one of the strong ones, despite how high school drama might say otherwise. At least today.

I won’t wrap this up in a bow of rainbows and unicorns, but I will say this. Find your rungs. I can help with one of them. Write your story, on paper and in life. Find your way back to the theme of your story, the story you’re meant to tell and live. Sign up for my email list to start. It will give you 30 prompts that can be answered in less than 10 minutes a day and provide you with the clues you need to find your way back to yourself.

Take care.

First Kiss

In junior high in 1982, the highlight of my year was one week in the Santa Cruz mountains of Northern California. It’s where I fell in love with the smells of clean dirt and pine needles. My outstretched arms tried to embrace the night sky without the noise and light pollution of the years spent in Los Angeles. I feasted on stars, campfires, and midnight giggles in the girls’ cabins with the appetite of a teenage boy. I couldn’t get enough.

And speaking of teenage boys, they were there, too.

Amber, my partner in crime that week was more bold than me. She separated her eyelashes after applying mascara with an unhooked safety pin. She wanted to marry Billy Idol, and we bonded over our admiration for bad boys. That summer, Geoff came to Mount Cross. Geoff was the bad boy because all the girls liked him, even the counselors. He wore his brunette hair down to his shoulders and Amber and I chased him for just one smile. We snuck around corners to snap his picture. In the 80s, we had to wait to see our developed film and only hope it didn’t come out blurry. I can still see that snapshot in my mind’s eye…Geoff sitting outside the snack, shack smiling and laughing with a girl I somehow knew was much prettier than me.

Amber and I lamented his inattention and headed to the last campfire of the week ready to say goodbye to our crush until next year.

The irony of Christian camp is their goal is to get kids close to God. But if you put young adolescents together under the stars and around a campfire, it doesn’t matter that you’re singing, “Sing Your Praise to the Lord.” Eyes connect across the flames. Girls (and some boys, I’m guessing) are falling in love with the hot guitar player who’s in college and vowing their future husband will have to be a musician. Sexual awakening is what is meant to happen at that age, and a camping experience hardly helps kids ignore that part of themselves.

Chasing Geoff all week meant I was oblivious to who might have been chasing me. Amber wasn’t. “David’s checking you out,” she whispered while elbowing me in the ribs. Sure enough, across the sparks of the fire, he winked at me, and I felt the shiver. Geoff, who? It was the last night of summer camp. Anything, and everything was possible. It was a night to make history and make history we did

“Sing your praise to the Lord!” The ecstasy of worship and guitars quickly translated to letting this boy I barely knew grab my hand and lead me toward a grove of pine trees.

Is there anything more magical than someone’s hand tenderly in our hair leaning in with confidence? I was lucky to have a good first kiss. I am well aware this isn’t the case for many. But for almost all of us, we remember in our cells our early sexual experiences. I still remember he wore braces, lived in Fresno, and the slight and sweet coldness of his open mouth.

Somehow it ended there. Amber’s and my giggles switched to whispers that night as we discussed and dissected what had happened. “What did it taste like?” Amber asked. “Amber!”. I responded with pretend shock.

I told her all the details, of course. But something new bloomed in my chest. I had experienced an enclosure of intimacy that was now uniquely my own, a place others couldn’t enter. Even David couldn’t because it was my story. My story to inflate, downplay, share, and treasure, whatever I chose it to be.

Summer camp wrapped my first kiss in a magical blanket. Poor David. I wrote to him once a week for about three months but never got a response. When I developed my roll of film, I still tacked Geoff’s picture up on my bulletin board. It took the sting out a little bit. Doesn’t a first kiss equal death do us part? I guess David thought otherwise.

Despite my first kiss’s idyllic setting, I think it’s safe to say that no matter what one’s sexual awakening went like, it’s a tumble and mishmash of sensations and memories. I understand that even when sexual abuse happens to a child, there’s remaining guilt because a part of it feels good. I am thankful my bittersweetness only included unanswered letters with a mostly anonymous boy. As a 50-year-old woman, it remains a sweet memory.

I don’t remember all my first kisses, but I remember the ones that mattered.

What details do you remember about your first kisses? Where were you? Mine involved a lot of tenderness. Maybe yours, not so much. Anything you want to share?

Who we are as sexual beings is so vital to our stories and humanity. Would you consider writing about it? If not, just let me know. Would your thirteen-year-old self consider Bily Idol sexy?

Will I Shed or Carry Weight? That is the Question.

I’m not sure why, but writing my thoughts and feelings down here has been a struggle. My goal is to bring something to this space once a week. I am writing behind the scenes, in the morning and before bed. The adjustment to do this was so simple, I wish I had thought of it sooner.

All I had to do was ask my husband to set the tea he makes me every morning beside my bed instead of leaving it downstairs where my laptop lives. So simple! Why didn’t I think of it sooner?

I had so many lucid dreams over the weekend. I wrote down what I remembered when I first woke up. My therapist has a lot of training in dream work. I look forward to sharing them with her, because my daughter was in every one.

Day after day, there’s still no communication. No news. No new insight. Nothing but the attempt to hang onto a dream that is like trying to grasp a cloud. If grief needs to be witnessed, I want to say again. It’s been three years. Three years. One-sixth of her life that I have had very, very little contact with her. And we had a few rocky years before that. I continue to stand at the fork in the road unable to choose. Do I live like she’s not coming back or like it could be any day? If there is a third road, I haven’t found it yet.

All that to say, I want to share a few snapshots of what else is happening. My whole life isn’t waiting, wandering, wondering. I will share here, however, that the body weight is coming back. I know for me, it’s connected to a feeling of futility that I carry. I’m working on it. But to long for something that might not come…there’s a heaviness there. And it’s translating back to heaviness in my body. So much else is going well…finally…that it doesn’t make a lot of sense. For forty years, bingeing was not an issue. I wish my will would out win my heart, but it just doesn’t. I know that change for me happens when my heart is touched with freedom and hope. It just hasn’t happened yet with my daughter. God, the 40s were rough. There are glimmers that the 50s will be better. We’ll see. I hope I don’t have to drag around 30 and counting extra pounds through it, though.

I want to take time here to write in black-n-white what might be turning the corner.

1. I am thankful for the opportunity to run a bookstore. I am good at it. It gives me street cred. I learned a lot. I got to be around books, talk about books, discover books and readers. But I am ready to let it go. And I can. The end of my lease is in sight. I am liquidating. I’ve only sold a quarter of the books I need to. The energy in the store has changed the feelings I carry so much. That’s another way I’ve had to carry weight…a business that wasn’t thriving. But one day soon I will close the door with satisfaction that I gave it my all.

2. Some weight I carry involves my home. There are some difficult memories there, for sure. But, I was able to do three things to change the energy up. I’ll tell you about one. I found a leather recliner in a color and style I liked at a consignment store. It’s a long story, but my husband and I spent a couple of years not sitting in the same room in the evenings. Now we are with this one small shift. Thankful.

3. My husband has the travel bug. He has announced we ARE going to Scotland and Ireland in 2020. I have not been out of the country and I want to go there more than anywhere in the world. I hear you, egalitarians. He had to announce it because, bottom line, money dynamics are a thing in my marriage when he makes all of it. Him making a definitive statement like this is a big deal. It might take us a year to get there. But he says we’re going and I get to live with this hope.

It takes a lot of work for a human to survive. The more money we have, the less we’re weighed down by our focus on survival. I live a comfortable middle class life. It’s just part of life to feed ourselves, move our bodies, and clean our homes. But, I wonder. If I had more money would taking care of what I need to survive feel easier? I know this is true, for example, for my foster son who lives on the streets. But for me, I wonder if I need to just be satisfied with what I have. Yet, if I could go to conferences I want to, or make bigger memories with my adult sons, would I be happier? I think I would. Dragging weight, physically and emotionally, through life is so much work. It just doesn’t leave a lot of energy to conquer bigger mountains. Being human carries great potential for wonderful rewards. Thankfully, I feel like I’ve moved a few inches toward thriving. But there’s so much more I want.

Where are you falling on the spectrum of thriving to surviving? I would love to know and share the celebration or weight of it with you. Feel free to comment here or through my contact page (link above). Also, are you following me on Instagram? I’m committed to sharing snapshots in Stories, if you want some daily tidbits.

Happy eating and moving, today, Friends. Wish me luck? Freedom? Hope?

Suffering for Jesus is My Comfort Zone

Photo by Christopher Windus on Unsplash

Yesterday I got spanked. Someone verbally chastised me. This person has the ability to touch my most painful places, expose them, and leave me to sit with one of my deepest wounds. It is brutal. I’ve told myself over and over again not to put myself in that situation, but I want this person’s acceptance of me as I am so much, I keep trying.

The most difficult part when this happens to me is to stand in the belief that I don’t deserve the lashing. 

I learned before I was 8 years old that Jesus suffered greatly even though he was perfect. I learned I did it to him because I was a sinner like everyone else. I also learned that even though I am not perfect and just a child, my life’s work was to be like Jesus. To be like Jesus is to reach for perfection in holiness and embrace suffering.

That is a very tall order to put on the shoulders of a child. Especially a smart, thoughtful, sensitive, and intense child like I was. And yet, entire Sunday schools are filled with a version of this story.

My first crush was the man that played Jesus during an Easter Passion Play at our large church. I sat in the front row, a first grader. In the play, they tortured Jesus by using a sledge hammer on his hand. I cried out in understandable horror. After the show was over, my mom had Lou…yes, I still remember his name…come down to the front and show me his hands were ok. Then Mom invited him over for dinner.

There’s a picture in our family photo album of him and I sitting together on our living room couch. I’m snuggled up to Lou’s side with a huge grin on my face. 

Jesus and I have quite a history. Like Disciple Thomas, I literally put my little girls hands into his. I’ve carried pleasing him and feeling his feelings since I was a little girl.

My other reality is that my whole life I’ve had to navigate the intensity of my inner life. It requires a lot of attention. So much energy over the years is about me trying to navigate deep sea waters on a life raft.

I tried so hard to apply good theology to my tumultuous insides. I spent so much energy trying to conquer the waves and build a better boat because the waves represented sin. If I was out of balance…not sleeping, majorly crushing on a boy, wanting to have sex, crying too much, overstepping in my words towards others, it was about sin. Even though I was taught Jesus calms the sea, I thought I was like Peter because I was sinking, so I scrambled to do my best to keep my head and heart above water, condemning myself if the waves were crashing over my head.  

The Bible verses are finally starting to fade. I had to stop opening my Bible almost ten years ago now. I can still see the outlines of them, verses I started in the second grade to get awards for memorizing. Most of them were written by Saint Paul, James, Peter…pick whichever male disciple you’d like. They are verses about how to get these waves of sin under control.

This has been a constant, constant quest in my life, because one of those key verses taught me the wages of sin is death. Death of the soul, a heart that began to feel heavy at such a young age; proof I was the sinner the preachers claimed. It was taught at Sunday school, Bible Study Fellowship, Good News Club, and by teachers in the Christian church on how to parent. The theology that children are born in sin is a key tenant of the Christian church and the parenting responsibility for that sin nature to be trained out of children is still prevalent and the worldview in many, many Christian circles. I was parented and I parented with this belief. 

So what does this have to do with what happened yesterday? Well, when I am told what I’ve done wrong by someone who comes from this worldview, it splits me wide open. The places where I hurt the most get exposed to the elements. 

Exposed raw nerves of our emotional pain is just a valid as what can happen to us when our bodies are traumatically injured. And, though I don’t understand why, emotional trauma takes so much longer to heal, if at all. My heart was splayed open again. 

I have to accept for my own mental health that the belief I was born in sin and Jesus had to pay the price and save me is traumatic and not comforting. But to stand in a place of safety that has to turn her back on that belief is very, very scary. It’s scary because in my cells I have believed since I was a little girl that in order to do so I have to turn my back on the God of the Universe and my eternal destiny. And, painfully and unfortunately, I have to turn away from others that expose that wound, too. 

But I have to do it. I cannot live in freedom, safety, and happiness in the second half of my life with this belief that I am called to suffer for Jesus and fight against sin. If a voice of accusation hurts me, I cannot afford to stand there and take it. Try and make up for it. Apologize and serve penance again and again and again. 

Accepting I was a sinner and following Jesus was my only choice in order to live with a God that was absolutely real to me, so real he came over for dinner. But my reality is that the “Good News of the Gospel” was  so traumatic and still lives in my cells that I need to walk away from anything that tells me I’m sinful person This is especially true when I’m told in my most vulnerable places that I will never change. My little girl’s heart just can’t take it.

I feel guilt even writing that sentence. I’m fifty, after all. The voices of accusation tell me I should be beyond this. But all of us have a wound we carry. To expose ourselves to it over and over makes no sense at best and is masochistic at worse. To separate myself from exposure to chastising and punishing language has to happen. God, it hurts. It hurts almost more than believing I am a failing sinner. Because suffering for and being saved by Jesus is my comfort zone. It’s where I have believed I belong for so long.

But it is the place of my childhood trauma. The child in me needs her adult to say instead, 

“You don’t have to do this anymore. Hold my hand and let us live like you don’t deserve to be spanked anymore. I’m opening the gate for you. I know you’re scared of the wild, the unfenced grasslands and cliffs of the fjords, but you don’t have to stay in what feels like a life sentence. It’s ok, we’ll go together. God may or may not follow, but we’ll be alright. I promise.”

I’m reminded of this song that I like so much:

What do you believe about yourself that weighs you down? Is it connected to the religious beliefs that you are familiar with? What makes you afraid to put the weight down? What might freedom look like for YOU? Feel free to leave a comment or message me.

Regret and Social Media

Today my high school boyfriend announced his engagement on Facebook. I’m guessing several of you reading this know who it is. And I have feelings.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I immediately typed out, “OH MY GOD!! I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!! Truly. WOW!!!!” I am thankful he knows I mean it and wrote it for him, not the Facebook audience, though I’m pretty positive his attention is somewhere else.

I meant it with (almost) all my heart. Because you know what? I know just enough of the story behind the story because I saw him several times in the last ten years to be able to genuinely celebrate.

Here’s the thing. My history with this man is long. It absolutely includes my 16 year old’s broken heart. But it also involves an adult me handling and navigating reconnection.

Ten years ago when Facebook exploded, forty year olds like me were in shock and awe. If this was true for you, too, please share your story and experience! But I think I can speak for some of us that finding people after knowing nothing for 20 years felt surreal and scary and…what else? Tell me what it was like for you. I would really enjoy that conversation.

Back then, Facebook would tell you when a friend of yours became a friend with someone else. So when…let me see if I can write this coherently…when one of my close high school friends saw this ex boyfriend and I were now “friends”, she messaged me three words.

“Well, that’s bold.”

It was bold at the time. But I’m so glad I did it.

Ten years ago, my church culture was scrambling to figure out what to do about this new reality of being able to easily find people from our past. Couples got joint accounts. It would say something like JOHNMARY SMITH (the man’s name came first, of course). And, not surprisingly, sermons began about marriages falling apart because spouses were finding exes online. Kirk Cameron was smashing his computer in, “Fireproof”. God (no pun intended), I hated that movie even then.

So instead I took the bold route. Not just with The Ex, but with several people where the outcome was unpredictable. Like the kind of life I want to live, not all went well. And actually, one reconnection did go terribly, terribly awry. But even that, while so heart wrenching…I think I cried over it for two years…brought my foster son back into my life which made it worth it.

I can’t remember the specific conversation Todd and I might have had about reconnecting with people on Facebook. I will say, when we married in our 20s, he wasn’t the jealous type and that hadn’t changed 15 years later. I worried, though. I worried that my heart would get carried away and caught up in something I couldn’t control and I would get myself in trouble. And the trouble I was worried about? I was worried that my heart would wake up. That I would have FEELINGS I wouldn’t know what to do with.

I have been afraid of my feelings for a really long time. They can feel so strong and powerful, like the South Yuba River in the spring, that I don’t dare let them out of this tight place I construct. Religion really did give me a lot of advice about how to help me keep them quiet. But even now, I still try to keep them underwraps. I’m doing it right now!. Here’s the deal, though. Trying to control feelings is exhausting for me and it doesn’t really work. They always come out somehow. Nor, I believe, does keeping them quiet serve who I’m supposed to be on this earth.

There is one tidbit I will share about this process of reconnection. I do it because it does illustrate the potential danger others would have warned me about.

Again, thanks to Facebook, during one lunch with even another high school friend, the ex boyfriend came up in our conversation. At one point she asked me,

“Was (this ex boyfriend) the love of your life?”

I won’t tell you what I said. But here’s the thing. Here’s the real thing. I thought a lot about that question.

Here’s my question for you, especially if you’re from the church culture I was a part of. Do you think it is healthy or unhealthy for me to spend emotional energy on that question?

I can hear some of you; I have heard all the warnings. I know my philosophy about navigating these kind of questions and explorations may be very different from yours. You might question the value in my asking these kinds of questions at all. But what I want to share today is that I have no regrets. I actually believe my regret would have been choosing to stay safe and doing nothing. Even though, if I’m honest, his engagement for me is bittersweet despite my utter celebratory and heartfelt Congratulations to him. Yes, I now have new memories I will carry close. In other words, I have FEELINGS.

I am human. I love…most days…that I’m a complicated human, certainly more than I did before. And when I don’t feel my feelings, they come out in anger at those who love me. I get sick. I live with pain at the base of my neck. I eat too much. You get the idea.

When I got married, I believed the best marriages were built by people who had no past. I was ashamed of my adolescent past for many years as a Christian. But now I can honestly say, after 25 years of marriage, I am so thankful I had that past.

I’m thankful because I don’t have to wonder. And I am absolutely the kind of person who wonders about these kinds of things. I don’t think I would be able to be in a long term marriage and have had no other experiences with other men. Never had my heart broken. Stayed safe. I honestly believe my regret would be that I had not done what was bold. In high school and at forty.

Oh, the voices, friends! So many voices! I think of that Bible verse from Proverbs I heard often as a child, “Can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned?” —Somewhere in Proverbs.

Religion keeps us safe. Many, many, many of you might think that absolutely should be our goal. And yes, I agree about a part of this. Safe is really nice. One of my often repeated sayings is, “Ignorance is bliss.” I do not have bliss a lot of the time because I do question things. I choose to wrestle with questions like this because in my experience they come up anyway. All of us have to live with these kinds of questions. We can squash them. Control our thoughts and feelings to the best of our ability. Or we can ask them even if we’re afraid of the answer and, in my opinion, experience life much more freely. Which is a good thing.

I can’t believe how much finding so many of you ten years ago changed the next ten years. So many of us reconnected through Facebook. I’ve met up with you in several states. Special shout out to Seattle as I connected with three different friends “from my past” there. We had crazy and honest conversations and I learned so much from you. I’m tempted to tell those stories, too, but I’m not sure I could be cryptic enough. 😊

What’s a question you think you should or shouldn’t ask?

FYI…my commitment right now is publishing here once a week. You can also find me Saturday mornings on FB Live and on Instagram in stories several times/week. Let’s have some deep conversations.

Are there people you’d want to share this with? Please do!