Recovery + Laughter + Spirituality + Relationships + Plant Medicine + Chronic Illness and Pain
Author: Jana Greene
I'm Jana and I write about the things that give me joy, help me cope, set me straight, and light my path. Recovery, relationships, spirituality, plant medicine, and assorted struggles and passions.
Sometimes when I pray, I’m not even sure what to pray for. But when God brings someone to my mind, that’s the impetus to pray for them. A common misconception about reconstructing your faith is that prayer ceases. Of course, I can only speak for myself.
I don’t mean giving God “instructions” on how to help someone, which I used to call “praying with specificity.” I replaced elaborate prayers with simple trust in God, because the most eloquent prayers are “help help help” and “thank you thank you thank you” (as my favorite author Anne Lamott opines.)
I ask and then I try to listen. Because there is no wrong way to pray, and prayer is designed to be communication from one sentient being to a supreme being, no holds barred.
Once I saw a movie that recommended having a “War Room” – a physical place to go to pray where the reception is clearest to God and where mighty battles are fought in the heavenlies, waiting for our next words to change the outcome in supernatural realms.
So of course I decorated my closet with scripture and crosses aplenty. But all I managed to do was feel guilty that I wasn’t praying more (or right?) every damn time I had to grab a pair of shoes out of the closet.
Was I praying enough? What if I don’t and when I get to Heaven, God informs me that he really wanted to do this magnificent thing, but I was two beggings short of getting the outcome I desired.
See, that puts the onus on me. And the onus is not on me – it is on Love.
I don’t make a big show for myself now, prostrate in my literal prayer “closet,” striving, striving, striving to be the person “God created me to be.” Building a tower of Babylon with my puny, pleading words (which are beautiful to him, by the way, but his love is not dependent upon them.)
No. I mean that if you come to my mind during the course of my day, I am simply asking God to love on you in a way that’s tangible. God loves us through one another. Through nature, laughter, and hugs from friends.
If you have a need or a heartbreak, I focus my intention on your hurt as best I can and believe in advance that he is walking alongside you, no matter what event is anguishing you. Being a very visual person, I picture you in a cloud of love, total acceptance, resolution, and peace. I can’t describe it any better than that, but trust me, it’s better than that.
And I ask him to increase your awareness of him in and around us. Because he is always at work in and around us, even when we aren’t begging for his favor. I pray he uses me in any capacity he sees fit to convey his great love.
Can we talk honestly about denial in the name of religion?
For most of my marriage, I have unintentionally masked. I told my husband everything, but not everything. Not intentionally by sin of omission, but because I couldn’t – I had stuffed it so far up my own ass for survival’s sake, I had built up a memory meltdown. Let’s just move forward. But you can’t move forward until you switch the gearshift from reverse. Otherwise, it’s just idling.
And it worked, for many years. If I was upset, I’d stuff it. Or banished it in the name of JESUS. Traumatic memory would surface, but I would rebut it with but you’re happy NOW. And to be honest, if some of it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it. It’s a got-damn wonder I am not locked away somewhere to protect me from myself, much less sober.
One of the reasons I am estranged from members of my family of origin is that they know. They know, they remember, and so long as there is distance, they don’t have to make amends. I have accepted that they can’t. I only write about the least violent incidents. I polish it up pretty nicely. I am not saying all that I could say, I promise you that. My intention is not to make anyone uncomfortable, but if it does, maybe it should. I am writing this transparently because I know so many, many souls are walking wounded here, being told that their trauma has been Houdini-ed in the name of Jesus, but still feeling bereft.
But I will admit I remain damaged, and that is okay. It all took a toll. How silly to expect growing up in an environment of daily screaming, physical violence – and indeed the worst thing that can be done to a little girl – is expected to be taped over by some of the laughs and good times, like an unfortunate VHS performance. That’s what a lot of people won’t tell you about growing up in an abusive home. There were good times too. I suppose they are supposed to override the bad? But the bad was bad, and it’s stuck in my gray matter, petrifying until solid, since childhood. I was steeped in it.
I dealt with it by Denial by Religion and Busyness. I engrossed myself in ALLTHETHINGS, all the distractions, the past 20 years. Raising three teenagers. Battling a chronic, as-of-then undiagnosed illness. Pretending to give a rat’s ass about my “career” – ANY “career.” Launching two city-wide recovery programs. Getting Recovery Coach Certification.
Need a greeter at the church? OKAY! Need a prayer person to pray with people crushed by their own abuse and pain? I’m ON IT. Fuck my own damage, let me weave sincere and elaborate prayers for the hurting. God is good. Amen?
I was getting up early every day to have coffee with Jesus and Joyce Meyer. Just feels like the devil is stompin’ me when I miss Joyce! I would say (and sincerely mean it.) Later, be the best wife, because you have the best husband. Your marriage is proof that miracles still happen. Don’t fuck it up with your trauma and neediness! Be the best friend, mother, warrior, Bible-reader. Smile, even though the physical pain is searing. Smile, even though you have unresolved trauma like some people have freckles. It’s all in your head anyway, you’re crazy. (It’s all in your head may be the gaslightiest self-gaslight of them all.)
I mentored the crap out of anybody with a heart-wound in those years. And for that, I am not sorry. Everyone broke my heart. Everybody got a little piece of me. Every ounce of trauma was healed in the NAME OF JESUS, AMEN?! God gave me permission to stuff it, what with all the Christian counseling I’d gotten that taught me to “pray it out!” It’s been CAST OUT, as far as the EAST from the WEST! God’s ways are not our ways, brethren.
In other words, GET OVER IT.
So, the trauma sat. Because whether by flaw of character or complete ignorance, I couldn’t seem to get over it. It took residence in my body, every tissue marked by it.
In all of us lives a whole preschool of children. Not in a multiple personality way, but layered like a cake of a hundred of layers. As many layers as went into our development, as many memories went into the batter at that time. We live in the frosting – the Present – but we sit upon years of joys and sorrows, expectations and traumas. Without it, there is no reason for the frosting. But frosting is no good all on its own.
My inner 4-year old’s pain hasn’t been cast out – ironically, because she had been cast out all her little life. Just try telling your 4-year-old that memories aren’t ghosts, and POOF! they are all gone because words were said over her, named and claimed. That’s not fair to her.
Joyce Mayer’s loud, booming voice frightens her. The Lord comforts her, but not in a magical instant as advertised. She used to hide in her toybox, when things got loud at home. The lid to the box slowly lifting with a great creak, and a hand of assistance is offered. It isn’t a “one and done” experience, though – that lifting. Every day, she hides in her toybox to some degree, and every day, the lid is lifted, the sun pours in, and a hand is offered. So, I, in my 4-year-old wisdom, take the hand again and again, and sometimes, that is what grace looks like – what miracles look like. We want out of the toybox altogether, but we do it by taking the hand every day, even when things are scary.
Getting the chance to nurture her with the help of The Greatest Therapist of All Time (PERIOT!) is an honor and privilege. I hope to hear out all the past versions of Me, with a little more compassion now. And I am writing raw for the first time, instead of just idling.
This isn’t the funniest season of my life, that’s for sure. So my writing hasn’t been the comedy-filled yukk-fest I’d hoped it would be. It’s been absolute clown shoes for a while now, but not in a mirth-making way.
When I decided to start this blog, instead of totally rehabbing my old blog, I did it for reasons that might seem obscure to some. The truth is that I wanted to write more humor; humor about everyday life that perhaps the 2014 version of myself might find in poor taste. I’m kind of into poor taste right now, to be honest.
I wanted to write about being a follower of Christ from here, not from there. I have been “there” most of my entire life, but in this new place, there is curiosity. Questioning. Observing. Laughing. And most of all the thing I’d tried to write about for twenty years but didn’t fully grasp: Grace.
Especially grace toward myself, can I get an AMEN?
“Wouldn’t it be easier to switch up thebeggarsbakery.com, where you have nearly 2,000 followers?” said my husband, who is right-brained and makes actual sense. It can be frustrating to explain total nonsense to a sensical person, because they have logic on their side, and all I have is a handful of glitter and some unrealistic expectations.
“I have new things to say,” said I.
“I know. You’ve just worked so hard to gain your following.”
“And I won’t ‘build my career?” I say. We laugh, because I am not career-driven. I have no competitive nature, absolutely no “drive” or “hustle.” No calling higher than sharing my mind and welcoming the sharings of others’. It’s a crappy career path, but a fulfilling endeavor.
When I was a kid, longing to be a proper writer, I believed I would make a living by writing, which is totes hilar, as my kids used to say. My 10th grade Journalism teacher, Ms. Flowers, wrote in my yearbook, “See you on the Johnny Carson Show one day!”
What an amazing compliment! I hugged the words of that prophesy close to my chest, choking the life into it. I carried it everywhere I went and still do.
Now I know that reference is lost on several generations, but if you are Gen X, that is prime adulation. That’s the pièce de résistance of success. Only the most amazing writers were interviewed by Johnny Carson. Stephen King! Danielle Steel! JUDY BLUME!
As compliment like that from a Journalism teacher? That’s like saying, ‘You’ll win the writing Olympics, Kid!’
Spoiler alert: I did not win the Writing Olympics, because that’s not a thing.
When in my 20’s, I wrote for a small, local paper, crafting community news pieces for 5 cents per word. Do you know how many 5-cent words you must write to put your kid through dance class as a single mom? Or even spring for a few Happy Meals? Many. SO many words.
I then wrote community news for the newspaper in my little city. I was paid the stately sum of $12.50 an hour. This – the pinnacle of my earning – ensured that I made exactly enough every month to contribute one-third of the mortgage payment each month.”
But hold up, y’all. Because THEN, a major magazine (it was 2016, magazines were still a thing; stay with me here) happened across a Beggar’s Bakery blog post I’d written about addiction, and asked if they could pick it up for their issue next month?”
HOLY SHITBALLS, BATMAN! Yes of COURSE you can! Send over the contract! Hurry up before you change your mind, In Recovery Magazine!
The contract was for zero dollars, ya’ll.
But think of the exposure! That’s what they told me. The EXPOSURE!
Now, exposure means you’ll be compensated for your talent, just not today. It means, we see you, Boo….but maybe the next publisher will see you and pay you!But probably not, to be honest, you’ll be a pauper if you try to survive on writing. The odds aren’t really in your favor. But thanks for the free work!
I self-published a couple of little books after that, which ended up costing me hundreds of dollars and making me none. I poured my soul into the first book, my little evangelical soul. I gave countless copies away.
I spoke on recovery in front of large groups of people, which I hated. I know they said the Lord wants me to “stretch” and “grow,” and that public speaking was another way to share the gospel, but I did it with bile rising in my throat and a hankering for a Xanax to get through speaking on recovery.
I now know that God “growing” me by torture is not his bag. But when giving my testimony, I could never wing it. I carefully wrote out every word and read it with all the passion of a kid reading a term paper about state capitals. Not because I wasn’t passionate about it, but because I’m better at bleeding my words than reading my words. Please look away, people. The vulnerability is making me so naked up here.
But see, I’m a prolific writer, if not a successful one. Doesn’t that sound impressive? PROLIFIC. But “prolific” really just means that I write A LOT. Obsessive-compulsively, some might say. Stephen King is a prolific writer. But so is the guy off his meds driven to write a hundred-page manifesto because he is on a mission. “Driven” can mean lots of things!
To me, it means that if I don’t find a home for my thoughts outside of my brain, they’ll stage a coup, and I will be prolifically in a fetal position forever and ever, amen. Since I could hold a crayon, the page has done nicely. It rolls out like a red carpet, welcomes my words, and rehomes the scary ones.
So anyway, thanks for reading my work. Because it affords me connection – with you guys and with myself – and with whatever sanity I have left. Life got heavier with the diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in June. I haven’t really yukk-yukked it up in my blog posts lately. But don’t worry, I majored in Writing for Free, but I minored in Gallows Humor. So, I’ll get there.
In a way, pain and cancer and struggle and anxiety are all surmountable, because a kind teacher told my 16-year-old self that she’d be on Johnny Carson one day. Ms. Flowers would want me to write honest and raw. Prolifically. Imagine that. Kind words have power.
In conclusion, life has been humbling. Would you agree? Humbling and not at all what the travel guide promised. But still full of surprises, blessings, and BS.
I hope your dreams land you at the pinnacle of your happiness, hustle be damned. There are more ways than one to “make a living.”
When I met my husband 18 years ago, I had to explain why my family of origin are not part of my life. “What do you mean, you don’t really have family?” he may have wanted to ask. Estrangement due to differences? You don’t get along with others? Witness Protection Program?” No. Just dysfunction that I had to let go of in order to protect my sobriety. My getting sober in 2001 was kind of the death knell on family relations: I simply became less easy to manipulate, and my tolerance for the bullshittery of dysfunction tanked. It was like blinders came off and I decided the cycle breaks here. For my daughters, if not for me. When a child grows up in a volatile, unpredictably violent home, she learns. She learns to make herself as small as possible, to expect an outburst or violence out of the clear blue, and to monitor the moods of an abuser in order to stay “safe.” These “skills” never completely leave her. The nervous system reacts before the brain or the rest of the body, which seems to forever be in fight, flight, or fawn. Add a layer of s*xual abuse to a child, and expect her to grow up unaffected by this trauma? Was that the expectation for her? The whole plan was just “don’t tell anybody,” and she was supposed to just go on her merry way? She remains attuned to eggshells under her feet to this day, but has also become hyper-attuned to any shift in anyone’s energies – forever and ever, amen. The slightest variations in tone of voice or movement, an affront to her lizard brain, that’s just trying to keep her safe. How to tame that ancient lizard? I’m not 100% sure. It’s a squeaky little bastard. How is she to un-become hyper-attuned to energies foreign (outside of herself) and domestic (in her own body?) I did not acquire the nerve to confront this facet of my healing until I got into therapy, about seven years ago. I learned that the body keeps score and the mind likes to cling on to the ways it knows. How are we ever to be able to function like normal people in society, kind and productive people? If not for therapy, spiritual practices, a loving and safe home life now, an incredible family, a network of friends, I would be a mental illness goner. What they don’t know is that it takes audacity to confront your upbringing. Had I not deviated from the family “norm,” I would no doubt still be a practicing alcoholic, or dead. Certainly, I would have lost my own children or followed in the long chain of my tragic ancestry. That would be the easier thing to do. Easier than dealing with the emotional reflux that rises on occasion from the pain I’ve tried to stuff down my gullet and keep there. But the extreme dysfunction I was born into has come undone, been lit on fire, the ashes blown away by my own breath. There is no joy in dismantling the trauma and losing people as a result. The sad truth is that it’s the family curse – each person who is supposed to provide care has had none themselves, no blueprint to do it differently. They didn’t know how to protect you, so they threw you to the wolves. The wolves, they knew by name; they never went hungry for long. I was told, “well, no family is perfect” – the most invalidating thing a person can say. It rings hollow where “I’m sorry” could have been a steppingstone to reconciliation. But it is not reconciliation I long for anymore. Most family has been out of my life for the entire 18 years, which is God’s providence. I suspect they worry about how much I’ll share (what would the neighbors think!? The same neighbors who heard the screaming through paper thin walls? I think they had a clue.) Or the knowing other family members who knew but did nothing; sometimes because their homes were even more toxic. They needn’t worry. I keep those details for my private journal, stained with tears and written in a quest for my own sense of justice. Some things I will never write about for public consumption. But the damage done? I’m not going to ghost my own soul because feelings might be hurt. Little Me deserves to be heard, and she deserves to heal, through the words that I write, and therapy. And she has, because she’s surrounded by love and light, which we all know vanquishes darkness. Eggshells are not meant to be stepped on. They are a pod to grow life, not an obstacle course to navigate, and my nervous system – the seemingly last vestige of my antique pain – will heal as well. Darkness I knew as a child. Light I know now. Yep. Light, I know now.
A couple of months ago, when I was young and full of hope, I mentioned that I was going to try to write a little something here every day. Yesterday, I did not, because I used most of my energy decorating for my daughter’s family birthday party. I really felt bad about myself for not writing. Not because it’s writing – but because it is a thing I fizzled out on.
I fizzle out on a lot of things, but it turns out that today – after blowing up a scadzillion balloons – all my “hot air” has not all been relegated to party festivities. So even though I didn’t write yesterday, here is today’s post.
I am very good at two endeavors: Starting things and losing interest in things. Now you’d think a substantial bit of time would have to be passed between those two, but not for me. I can lose interest almost instantly. Not people, mind you. People I love for life. But just about everything else? MEH.
I won’t half-ass the starting of things, of course. I go in whole hog, as we say here in the South. For example, when I took up yoga, I swore I would make it a consistent practice. Two weeks later, I subluxed a hip trying to do a downward dog and had to quit. And I can’t really blame the injury, I was already getting bored.
I have done this with crafts, business ideas, dieting, religion. Unrealistically saying to The Thing, “you better fix my whole damn life.” And out of ignorance or denial – I’m not sure which – I will low-key believe that ridiculous shit.
The problem is that I come at The Thing with both barrels blazing, shooting until I’m out of ammo, click click click that trigger anyway, until I collapse on the floor and tell myself, you can’t even shoot right. Lather, rinse, repeat with every hobby, jobby, or political lobby, until it holds absolutely no interest to me.
The Thing will be the antidote to life. The Thing is going to be so fulfilling, I will forget that I’m neurotic and flaky and stand triumphant for once on the monument to my completed task! The Thing is going to save/help/make me worth the air I breathe.
Holy shit. I am expecting The Thing to dole out my worthiness. That’s too big a job for yoga. That’s too big a job for me. It’s too big a job for anyone but God.
Perhaps, for example, The Thing is not writing; it’s the joy and pain expressed in the writing. It’s the purging, sharing, heartache and laughter.
The Kingdom of God lives within us. We cannot find it anywhere else. We cannot summon it. We cannot find it IN anything else. It can’t be imported, exported, structured, organized, or unfulfilled. It exists in energy so divine; the glorified hustle has to take a seat.
Perhaps “going inward” is the only consistent practice we require to find The Thing. And if the venue of my spirit is good enough to house God, I guess it’s good enough for me…wild and unfocused as it may be!
If you’d never even seen a Bible, where would you find evidence of God?
It isn’t heresy to wonder, friends. He put the wonder there, in our spirits.
Think on it a second. If you’d never been “formally” introduced to the concept of God, would you believe in a higher power?
While we were busy paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, we decided Eden was all that great and that we could do better.
I see God as the vastness of the ocean, not fully understandable to us, but too full of life and wonder to be random occurrence.
But he is also made obvious by the minutia.
Tiny, insignificant plankton feed the krill, which in turn feed the whales. Imagine explaining to our ancestors that the largest animal on Earth subsists on the smallest!
And here’s the hook – phytoplankton exist because they turn sunshine into energy. Sunshine. In the great trickle-up of nature, we are made of sunshine, too. Not just anxiety, and angst, and sciatica pain.
If you had never read the words of a tome highlighted in red, would you walk through a forest and find evidence of his majesty? Knowing every bit of flora and fauna was making breathable air to sustain us all? I know we have been apt to describe the Spirit of God as “wind,” but what of his breath?
In a brick-and-mortar church, I learned that God made the earth, and it was good. It’s right there in the Bible.
In 9th grade biology, I learned that photosynthesis is the process of plants turn light energy into breathable oxygen. And that’s also good.
But both of those things, while true, can be dry as kindling or old bones, if Spirit is taken for granted. If the wind doesn’t reach us.
Do we know God beyond book-learning?
Because that’s where the synthesis in us takes place. As in every seed, we carry a holy blueprint. As in the lungs of the trees, we are continually provided refreshment and life. The sometimes slow, indivisible forces sustaining us are forever turning us from sunshine to being. And it is in the trusting of this that we are able to grow.
I pray you find God outside of the Bible today. I hope you smell a flower, hug a tree, or swim in the incredible proof of God that we call “water.” I hope a switch clicks in the recesses of your soul, and you realize the same care taken to create the world, went into making you.
God is real. He is majestic in the minutia of even this shit show, lending us his light to make our energy sustainable. His breath our existence. Our existence his breath.
There is no consequence to not tweezing your brows even though you can see two errant hairs close up when you look in a magnified mirror.
Your family will not fall apart if you have leftovers three days in a row.
If you wash whites and colors together, nobody has to know. Nobody. Will. Know.
A three-hour trash TV marathon is good therapy.
A nice, well-timed depression nap can make all things new.
Your kids can eat an all-beige diet for all their preschool years and be fine (Flintstone Chewable’s cover a multitude of nutritional sins.)
Listening to really good, really loud music is CHURCH.
Staring off into space for extended periods of time is not a waste of it.
Holding hands is not just for children.
Don’t forget to lollygag and dilly-dally on the regular.
Store-bought is fine, if you can’t make your own serotonin and dopamine.
Paper plates are a mom’s best friend.
Animals are kind of superior to (a lot of) humans.
Remember that “no” is a complete sentence.
Cut ties with people who make you feel less-than important. Or LESS THAN, period.
Buy the concert tickets. You’ll almost never be sorry.
Not a single soul on this planet is better than you. Straighten your crown. You deserve to be wearing it.
Straighten your sister’s crown too, and remind her she’s a queen.
Hit the meeting. (If you know, you know.)
Be sloppily thankful for blessings, and ardently prayerful for troubles.
Shave your legs. Or don’t. No one cares.
Tomorrow is a fine day to start what you put off starting today.
Write the words, paint the picture, sing loud and badly, laugh until you pee yourself a little. And then laugh again.
And remember you are hurtling through space in a big, blue marble through an infinite, ever-expanding universe, and you yourself are made out of stardust and moxie for the express purpose of learning to love and be loved.
I kind of love this image that WordPress so generously offered me. Never mind I would break both ankles (plus probably fall off of the dang mountain) if I tried hiking this. It also occurred to me that every journey we take in life is perilous, and every hike takes us somewhere. Might be the Garden of Eden. Might be the Donner Party encampment. Wheeeee! *insert inappropriate laughter here *
I wrote this poem for my daughter when she was thirteen. I’ve been going through some old notebooks and all of the poetry, journaling, and stories I’ve written over many years. It was such a tender, painful age. It was really hard on her. I am happy to report she is turning 29 soon and has bloomed into a super cool woman. I am so grateful I get to be Mom to all of my girls.
It has easily been the longest summer in my entire life. Punctuated by triggers and glimmers and rolling thunder, it rains almost every afternoon. The day will be sunshiny (albeit, hot!) and from a great distance, you will hear the thunder.
At first, you wonder if the noise was a motorcycle or a garbage truck in the neighborhood over. But if you listen closely, there is the thunder cadence – a low vibration awakened, that you feel in your chest before your ears can confirm its source. And then the building growl roiling over the clouds: Yep, that’s thunder. Again. Here we go.
Nobody wants thunder at the beach. Thunder is a rude affront to the vacationers. It means get out of the pool, pack up your sand buckets. Might as well eat lunch out; the beach requires flexibility. But everyone has the same idea, so every restaurant is crowded and has an annoying wait. The kids are whiny, there’s sand in unmentionable places, you just want your ass in a beach chair, your kids in the pool and out of your hair, and BY DAMN you’re going to enjoy this experience in spite of the thunder and rain. All of this started with a little thunder.
When I received the diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia on June 13, when the summer was still fat with promise and completely benign. A lot of people freshly diagnosed with cancer describe the new diagnosis as a kind of hurried chaos. “For a while, it was a blur,” is a common sentiment.
But for me, it has not been a blur. It has been a sloth racing a snail and losing. It has been much pacing through my house, wandering aimlessly. It has been too much time on my hands, angry outbursts, crying seshes, and doomscrolling. I am wishing time away, and then chastising myself for wishing time away.
Because I could have 20 years with this cancer, although that’s the exception. I could also have five. Talking openly about the possibilities is therapeutic for me but makes everyone else uncomfortable. I’m not trying to make anyone else uncomfortable, but I’m trying to accept that we all have an expiration date, and if nothing else gets me first, this cancer will. That’s not fatalistic. That’s realistic. Cancer is not the only chronic health issue I deal with, but it’s a doozy.
Nobody wants thunder at the beach. But every day it comes – the realization- a rude affront to all the plans I’ve made for my life. The doctor’s visits mean crowded rooms where people wait, annoyed. I really just want my ass in a beach chair. Summertime means a season of heat and rain, that’s just the nature of the season.
And it occurs to me today that its exactly what depression feels like. I’ll be swimming with my floaties on under clear skies, when I will feel the rumble in my chest. At first, its mostly vibration, but by the time it’s all said and done, there are torrential tears and terrifying cracks of doom. They show up every day, like clockwork, suffocating me with humidity, impossible to ignore.
So, I write. And that helps. I talk to people I love and to the GTOAT (Greatest Therapist of All Time,) and that helps too. I listen to music loud enough to drown out the claps of thunder, and throw paint on a canvas, or fitfully meditate. The practice doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be practiced. But Jesus help me.
Please help me with the episodic depression that pops my floaties and sucks me under as soon as I hear thunder. Expect it to visit at least once a day. I can hide like a frightened animal in a storm or do a little rain dance; that’s entirely up to me – triggers, glimmers, and rolling thunder – all. Help me to accept that it’s just the nature of the season, and to keep my joy, all while realizing yep, that’s thunderagain.Here we go…
If we were close once, I still think about you. I want you to know I think about you with reverence, no matter what life threw at us to sever our tie. The things you told me – profound and trivial – still come to my mind as random thoughts are apt to do, and my face breaks out in a little state of happy. Please forgive me if I’ve hurt you in any way. I was only learning, as you were.
If we bore and raised our babies together, we were blessed. We did the “Mom Circuit’ together – lazy days of trips to Gymboree, the park, McDonald’s ball pits, endless breastfeeding sessions and diaper changes, co-rejoicing with one another over the milestones our babies reached, because they were our milestones too. That gave me an identity; it gave us an identity, together.
Perhaps we were friends as teenagers, furiously cutting out pictures in old magazines and making collages of our “futures.” We would turn page after page of handsome men we’d marry, fancy cars we’d drive, and families we would raise perfectly. We made vision boards before there were vision boards, and many a glue stick lost its life in our hands in the name of naiveite.
If we made friends as young adults, you were dear to me at a chaotic time. I pulled back from you because I was ashamed of my alcoholism. If you were with me when I came out the other side (24 years ago)? Your friendship is priceless. Not all of the people I love stuck around in my recovery.
If over the years, we laughed until we peed, I feel a poignant pang in my soul when I remember our laughter, even still. (Bonus points for shooting beverages out of our noses.) Yes, if we laughed together, you are tethered to my heart eternally.
Friend, just so you know – nothing that cemented our relationship ceased to exist just because time marched away from us. The prayers we held hands and petitioned to God over? Nothing went to waste.
God didn’t follow our instructions in the least, of course. Disregarded most of our magazine plans and perfect-mommy dreams. Nothing turned out like we thought it would (thank God, but also dammit) No matter. All the weaving became who we are: The smiles, the jokes, the heartache, the lessons we painfully teach each other and ourselves. The music we share, the memes we post.
All of it.
As as we reached middle age, friendships took on new importance. No longer were they relationships to be sandwiched in between the chaos of parenting and busy marriages, but tantamount to every aspect of our lives, our very selves. Friends become family at this stage. We finally know who we are, and that helps us bring our best selves into our fold. And when we’re our worst? You help me stay grounded. It’s so obvious now that we are – cliché notwithstanding – on a journey for real. As the kids say, for real for real. Nobody warns you that in mid-life, you get weepy and sentimental.
Maybe life got away from us, but I remember our bond. I wish you all the best, Old Friend.
In the interest of transparency, today sucks a little. I share when I have good days and get gussied up – admittedly those are fewer and further apart. And I share when I’m struggling because I don’t want to pretend I have my shit together for social media. That benefits no one. I don’t. And I won’t. Life is messy (and also great and awful, in turn. So who can give up yet?) But today the fatigue is crushing me, literally feels like a smothering blanket I can’t get out from under. And my pain level is crazytown. People get tired of hearing about my pain, I’m certain. But I’m tired of feeling it. So I spent some time meditating. And some time worshipping. And crying. And that’s the truth. That’s me, pulling myself up by my bootstraps. Leukemia sucks. Ehlers Danlos sucks. I’m tired of physical weakness making me feel less strong as a whole person. It’s just a hell of a day.
Thor’s Helmet in Canis Major. This image captures NGC 2359, a nebula shaped like Thor’s helmet in the constellation Canis Major (the Greater Dog.) Behold the absolute majesty of such creation!
By: JANA GREENE
I have always loved space. I think maybe I was born the year of the moon landing, that event which eclipsed my birth but began my own personal Age of Aquarius. I am also from Houston, where NASA was cause celebre – a field trip destination when I was a child, a portal to the great unknown.
I am 55 now, much more jaded about the conditions here on this planet, and a little obsessed with the beauty of the unknown. And now BEHOLD! The James Webb Telescope is capturing all of the glory I felt was surely “out there.” It’s like a great confirmation that our every day is not just every day in the vast universe. And that is super comforting to me.
Because here we mostly just see what’s here now, and experienceable through a finite number of human senses. It’s easy to forget we are divine beings living in a mousetrap of sorts.
Our daily lives are driving to work and driving past long, rectangular shopping strip malls, each less remarkable than the last. We shop in grocery stores that shelve our sustenance; items stocked neatly in a row, affordable by only some of us, while others go hungry. Traffic lights telling us when we can move, stop signs telling us when to stop. Hospitals housing our infirm, and despondent. Skyscrapers places to while away the time in order to make this thing we have made our god called “money.”
We worship vacations, because they set us free from the mundane for a fleeting time. We marvel at theme parks, because they make us feel like we aren’t ants marching on a big, blue marble. They are fantasy, and we have made fantasy the be-all end-all, another god altogether – who will whisk us away from working, and strip-mall shopping, and boredom.
The two places that seem most like home to me are space and ocean. Something about the mystery of the unexplored, the hope of otherness. Two of my hyper fixations that shape my daydreams and my dream life. Every new image from the telescope making me swoon.
Can you imagine I mean seriously; can you imagine? The colors, thick with stars, speckled with other worlds. Worlds where maybe gravity isn’t such a drag, sucking us to the good Earth. It makes me starry-eyed, morphing me into a child again, who wishes to soar through the cosmos and escape this realm. Escape all of the violence that exists here, and the poverty that breaks my heart, and the man-made monuments we make to celebrate ourselves.
I’d like to astronaut myself right out of this earth suit of mine, with of its maladies and humanity, and soar through endlessness.
But Houston, we have a problem. My feet won’t seem to leave this plain. They are heavy with purpose here, even as my mind likes to travel “out there.” Out there where my mind will quiet, maybe. Out there where God himself decides the order, which celestial bodies to spin where, what galaxies should resemble earthly things. I think some majesty of the universe is that we recognize some of it in ourselves.
A compulsory Google search will show us the Helix Nebula, which appears like a giant eye in outer space. It is often referred to as “The Eye of God.” The “Butterfly Nebula,” captured in 2009 by the Hubble Telescope. The “Horsehead Nebula,” looking for all the world like the profile of a steed. The list is endless.
The ancient stargazers knew that the Universe ties itself to us, even without modern telecopy. It reflects our world so that we know we are a part of it.
Carl Sagan has famously said: “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” A way for the Universe to know itself.
We are literally made of stardust – from the elements God used to create everything. Our good earth in its natural, perfect state. And the great mystery of miracles we call the “sky.” There is so much more glory.
Look up from your day job. Look up from your pain. See that there is so much more! And I will try to keep looking up, too. To quote Carl Sagan again, “Some part of our being knows this (space) is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us.”
Star stuff, mind you. Made for bigger things, better things. Don’t give up hope that God can fix this world through us, through a much bigger reality. I will hold that hope too, as I obsess over the Great Beyond that we call “outer space.” And be reminded we – all of us, and the whole Universe too – are connected.
Because sometimes our Current Selves and our Best Selves need a little pow-wow
By: JANA GREENE
BEST SELF: GOOD MORNING! It’s a beautiful day full of promise and potential miracles!”
CURRENT SELF: *HISSES IN UPPERCASE.*
BS: Gently rise from your slumber by birdsong! Thank the birds, as their melodies are the first track on the playlist that will be this day.
CS: I rise by cat, three hours before sunrise, by furry little entitled overlords, yelling “MRROOOOOOOWWWW,” and triggering me to greet the day with “Oh my GOD, not this sh*t again.”
BS: *Facepalm* That’s a little dramatic. Let’s continue.” Be sure to do that little stompy-windmill dance to ascertain which joints need bracing for the day, and then brace your knees and thumb so they don’t go completely sideways, speaking kindess to your body.
CS: We both know sh*t gonna go sideways anyway.
BS: *clears throat*: Okay, back to gratitude. Raise you hands Heavenward, lifts eyes to God, in awe of his majesty, and in preparation to receive the still, small voice of Spirit. *OHMMMM
CS: *Raises hands Heavenward* and promptly subluxes right shoulder joint, followed by the sound of 12 boxes of Rice Crispies being poured into the milk of God’s breakfast bowl as I do the stompy-windmill dance. My sacred and earnest prayer is actually” Snap! Crackle! Pop! Please make this sh*t stop!” (Hey, who’s to say I’m not making a joyful noise unto the Lord with my body, if only providing the percussion?)
BS: How about I steep us some healthy green tea? Full of antioxidants! *Opens cabinet and unopened boxes of green tea in every conceivable variety buries Best Self. * And in a muffled voice: Do it for your body, it is fighting cancer, Ehlers Danlos, POTs, and a bunch of other chronic and painful conditions. If anyone needs antioxidants, it’s us!
CS: Well, you see, for spiritual reasons, I’m brewing a cup of coffee like God intended – with sugar and half-and-half. It tastes like hopes and dreams, and not like God is withholding love from me, which – let’s face it – is what I can only assume with every sip of green tea.
BS: *Sigh* Time for Daily Affirmations! Go stand in front of the mirror and repeat after me: “I am strong!” “I am resilient!” “All will be well!” “I will handle my pain today like an enlightened Zen-Master, and not like a man with a common head cold or the flu.”
CS: Um, I’m kind of feeling ‘man with a common head cold or flu’ vibe today. Woke up feeling sick. How about some “Sh*tfire, this HURTS!” punctuated by “Oh well, make the best of it!” Followed by some primal screaming (what’s the matter CATS? I can scream TOO!) that leads into “I AM A STRONG WARRIOR! “
BS: Well, it’s a little dramatic but….
CS: I’m not done. Concluded by saying all seven of George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Words as my hip rolls out of place, before this prayer: “Thanks for the grace, God. I really need it.”
BS: Um, ending affirmations on a positive – that’s the ticket! Kinda. Wanna hang out tomorrow? We could do all of this together – you and me. Our Best Self and our Current Self don’t have to be at odds, imagine if we joined forces! I’ll allow you the occasional pity party, and you allow me to help you manifest hope, healing, and general badassery?
CS: Can I have an exoskeleton? I saw them on Amazon. They support every joint in the body, plus also makes you look like Optimus Prime. Makes you a bona fide superhero – the kind who leaps tall buildings in a single bound.
BS: Can we settle for some Tiger Balm, braces from CVS, and mobility aid? It’s from Amazon too, just like that exoskeleton.
CS: what.
BS: You could be the kind of superhero who can open jars without dislocating her thumb, put compression socks on by herself, step over a cat without tripping, do laundry without being too tired to complete it, and sometimes have enough energy to join friends for lunch?
CS: I suppose that’ll have to do. Hey, I think maybe we can be friends.
BEST SELF: We can, if you let us. I have such wonderful things to teach you, so that you can enjoy this beautiful, messy, challenging life.
CS: What the hell! I’m IN. Can I at least wear a cape?
I had horrible night sweats last night. Nothing like waking up pained and feeling like you wet the whole bed (I did not, just sweat.) So, I woke up to change my PJs and my sheets and couldn’t manage to go back to sleep. That was the 2-4 a.m. hustle, even before the sun was up.
It reminded me of getting up with my babies when they were little. I would change their diapers and onesies and change their sheets if they had leaked a little. I would calm them with kind, soft words, and cradle them to my breasts for a little feeding. Whatever discomfort they had was soothed. Whatever tiny human need they had was met. Thirst, hunger, general fussiness – all of it within my ability to “fix.”
Then I remember endless nights when they had colic, and I was sleep-deprived and unable to make them feel better instantly. And on those nights, walking the floor, jiggling a fussy baby, I sometimes cried too, right along with them. Little did I know I would cry right along with them all their lives, when colic was replaced by the struggles of growing up.
I didn’t consider that they would develop needs I was helpless to aid in the future, and I certainly didn’t think about my own needs; the ones I would also be unable to manage. I just lived right there in the moment. I’ve been trying to get back to that mindset ever since.
It makes me want to cry now that I cannot soothe myself on mornings like this. I can’t fix leukemia.
I can change my sheets and tell myself kind, soft words, and cradle myself in a hug, even as I am drenched with sweat. I cannot seem to get enough rest, even though I may still have ten or twenty years – CLL is “the leukemia you want to have, if you have to have leukemia.”
But here’s the thing…I do not want to have it at all, please and thank you. It’s kind of the shitty icing on a shitty cake, as I was already battling a myriad of chronic conditions. I cannot imagine what things will be like as this thing progresses over the years. Ten to twenty years of endless night sweats and crippling fatigue? Gee. Thanks, I guess? I’m such a grateful person, in general. So, this journey has got me in all of my feels. Can gratitude and frustration exist at the same time? Lord yes, friend.
In the meantime, I will try to keep my PJs dry and my attitude from tanking, because on days like this, I just want to fahgettaboutit. But I cannot just fahgettaboutit, because I have people who love me, dammit. They still depend on me for less sophomoric troubles. And I have such a wonderful circle of support; people who soothe me like a colicky baby when I want to give up. They know they can’t “fix” it, and I appreciate their trying anyway.
I know this piece would leave one to believe I’m a bitcher and a moaner. But see, I’m also a fighter, even as I cannot feel rested, and I’m flummoxed by the unknown. So, like a one-year-old learning to walk, I put one unsteady foot in front of the other, garnering self-praise when I teeter without falling, and crying when I do fall.
And in this 2-4 a.m. hustle, I will soothe myself and accept the soothing from others, and hopefully grow in the interim, just like a child, y’all. Because just like our children did under our watch, we are all still growing up. And we all live right in the moment, whether we like it or not.
Right this image at the Britt Floyd concert last year.
By: JANA GREENE
If we were tight once, but life and traumas and the life stages, and circumstances that mucked with our strong friendship….I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let us drift apart. Please drift back to me when you need someone to listen.
Or maybe we “outgrew” one another, or had distance put between us – geographically and emotionally, physically.
If I loved you once, I love you still. No matter how we drifted apart or parted ways, You need to know I am always rooting for you, and always will! Nothing would make me happier than to see every last friend succeed and live her best life.
No matter what happened between us. I’m cheering you on. And even when some relationships didn’t end on the best note, Please forgive me for my part in whatever hurt you. I am handing you a (cyber) olive branch.
Exceedingly grateful for so many incredible friends. You inspire me! Love you.
We are all just walking one another home, at the end of the day. ❤️
Words by Jana Greene 