I haven’t written much lately, but today I’m sharing my heart. I hope your heart receives it in full. I hope you cannot relate to my experiences at all – that you grew up safe and protected.
Many of us did not.
Back when I was speaking at recovery meetings, I would sometimes give my testimony to large groups of people. How did I come to be comfortable sharing my most devastating experiences? That’s a much longer blog post. One thing, more than any other, became anathema – the droves of women who would line up to speak with me in order to tell me one thing: ME TOO.
When I say droves, I mean a dozen or more at a time. Women abused and exploited as children and teens. Some had been trafficked. My heart broke for them all.
They came to thank me for being transparent, but also to tell me their own stories. And as I listened, you would think the abuse had happened the day before. I could sense the raw and gaping wounds that still felt fresh, a chasm full of tears of grief.
My own experiences are depressingly common. The family member in a position of power, who wielded his strength over me. The elderly man in our townhouse complex that offered to teach me piano at his house when I was in second grade. The father of a neighbor boy I would play with in kindergarten. The grooming as a young teen in church youth group. In church youth group.
Do you know what it does to a girl, to be objectified as a child? To be told to keep secrets? To see men as aggressors so early in life? To feel helpless, with no safe place to be? I have had over ten years of therapy to help me rise to speak the truth. But it still hurts, all these years later.
Friends, when I tell you this is endemic, it is everywhere.
We are the victims who survived assault at the hands of imposing men, who used their strength against little girls. But we are not going to do the one thing every deviant, abusive man asked of us: Don’t tell.
But we aren’t just walking wounded, no sir. We are TELLING. We are telling, because it’s a salve for our wounds. Because our tears do not go to waste. Because far too many children have been victims for time immemorial.
We have risen from the ashes in order to reclaim our lives, and we are no longer afraid of the flames. In spite of your hijacking our innocence, they didn’t get the last word.
We grew up to be kind, resilient, and bold. We grew up with shattered trust, our little bodies abused, our little minds corrupted. But we are made of the toughtest stuff, and we are saying ENOUGH.
The chickens have come home to roost now. They always do. And I wish I could go back in time and hold Little Me, when she was so terrified. Me, before she deduced that she was worthless.
Me too, friends.
We are witnessing a renaissance right now – what has been done in the dark is coming to light. Not just on the geo-political stage, but in homes and schools and churches all across the nation.
We have alchemized our trauma into strength. And we have no intention of being quiet.
My husband and I like to spend a week in the mountains of North Carolina each year around our anniversary. We have been coming to the same little cabin for our whole marriage, which turns 18 next week. Eighteen years of marriage now, which I guess makes our relationship “grown.” It certainly did come with growing pains.
The little town where we visit is just a typical hamlet in the South – with a general store that still sells pickled beets canned by the owner’s wife, and an adorable “downtown” trying very hard to become trendy and bougie, lest it fall into disrepair. Candle shops line the streets, a few breweries, even a haberdashery, where you can buy an expensive hat, should you have the occasion to wear one around here.
Anybody else would get bored. There’s kind of nothing to “do” here. No good restaurants, even. We keep coming back because throughout nearly 20 years of marriage that had survived blending a family of three teen girls, job changes, kid drama, becoming grandparents, and scary diagnosises, this is where we “right” ourselves. We grew up here, as a couple.
It’s the same.
It’s where we reset.
The allure here is nature – often to sit out on the back porch and listen to the creek, many steps down the side of the hill. To watch the daily festoonery of fall leaves as they turn. We talk. We listen to music. We wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. This town is the same every year, pandemics and elections notwithstanding.
It occurs to me as we drove to breakfast this morning, it is easy to “right yourself” in this small town. If I’m not paying attention, I could lose my way. But look – there is the tractor supply store. And ahead is the antique store, it’s offerings exactly the same as a decade ago. There’s a trailhead. There’s a coffee shop. There is the Walmart. Same as it ever was. “Same” steers us to safety.
But the world that has swirled over the course of 18 years is no longer the same place, and I am finding it difficult to right myself in it. There are not enough falling leaves and pickled beets to mitigate the loss of democracy.
Reminiscent of when we were children and we’d fall asleep on the sofa, we would sometimes wake up in a different room, someone having moved us in our sleep, and for a split second, we experience the “WHERE AM I?” panic. We open our eyes and look for things to right ourselves. Landmarks.
Oh, that’s my bedside table, we might think. I’m home. I’m safe. I’m okay.
But for the first time in history, We the People are not able to right ourselves. Our landmarks have been demolished – the checks and balances that were to keep absolute power from corrupting absolutely – gone. The benevolence of a government, scrapped. I feel like I fell asleep in my nice, safe house, and woke up in The Upside Down.
And jarred out of sleep, nothing looks familiar here, in the swirling world we find ourselves in.
“”WHERE AM I” I panic. Yet no stabilizing force comes to assure me. This is the “new normal” now. This is what happens when We the People prop up dictators, when they cut off their noses to spite the face of liberty, and so down we all go. I’m having a hard time accepting that half the country voted for what will become unprecedented suffering of what Jesus called “the least of these.” And they did it in the name of god. And Jesus wept.
Nobody is coming to our rescue – we were the ones who could have changed this trajectory. “Same” is supposed to steer us to safety, only the wheels are of entirely and Jesus ain’t at the wheel. There is a heaviness to this “reset,” I’m afraid. And I guess that’s why we are not to trust in the things we can see, because perhaps not even the things we can see are safe.
Perhaps hope is the safety. Perhaps we don’t lose our way, so long as we can keep that spark alive. We must lean into each other without leaning on our own understanding. Until we can orient ourselves in this changing world again. Let’s try hard to persevere, lest we all fall into disrepair of Spirit.
Perhaps in this land where nothing seems familiar, this is our reset. We are one another’s “familiar.”
Boy, it’s been a whole minute since I’ve written one word. But this Rapture thing today has got me reminiscing. About a time I sat in my pastor’s office at 15 years old with two pieces of paper in hand – one with a page full of questions to ask about predestination. The other? HOW DO I PREPARE FOR THE RAPTURE?
And before you ask if I’m making light of the Rapture with blasphemy, let me assure you, I made NO light of it for almost my whole life. I took that stuff seriously.
Have you ever seen the movie “Mermaids,” with Cher, Winona Ryder, and Christina Ricci? When it came out in 1990, I was 21 and the family joke was still that I was still the Charlotte Flax of the family.
Virginal, unnecessarily pious, scared out of my MOTHER EFFING mind of a God I believed was the Old Testament OG, willing to save an incestuous family with a drunk at the helm in an Ark, while thousands of “less holy” human beings are drowned like river rats in the rising tides of doom.
But I digress.
What teenager is wringing her hands about such lofty theological worries? One with terrible anxiety and a crushing need to please people. And to please God, of course.
“That’s a big subject for one so young,” I remember he said. And the next half hour he danced around it, when all I wanted him to say was that I was on Santa-God’s “Nice List,” and clear of the “Naughty” one. No such luck. If you are not predestined for Heaven, you wouldn’t even know it. You either aren’t or you are, and you can’t earn it. Good luck, Kid!
(That pastor would be fired a couple of years later for sexually harassed several women in the church and having a full-blown affair with another. Freaking creeper. Perverts do not deserve positions in power, but HAHAHAHAHAHA! That does NOT seem to matter anymore! I don’t think you are ALLOWED to be in a position in power nowadays WITHOUT being a pervert!)
Even that didn’t deter me from wanting to dedicate my life to Christ…
And dedicate it again. And again.
And in case God was out that day and my attendance went unacknowledged, dedicate it AGAIN.
Am I in, or not? WHAT IS THE SECRET HANDSHAKE!!???
I have made so many altar-calls in my day, I wore the aisle carpets out. Each time begging God to save my heathen friends so that they too could be caught up in the clouds and not suffer the fiery furnace of Hell. And I really, really hope I am predestined, please God, please please, AMEN.
THE RAPTURE? I took that stuff especially to HEART.
For fifty years, I woke up every day wondering if we would we even hear it over the cacophony of chaos we find ourselves in? (Another thing I believe is that we are CURRENTLY in Hell. We are God experiencing himself through the human element in our humanity, both light and shadows. This is where we learn. This is where we suffer.
My current theology is that one day – one glorious day – we will all share Christ-consciousness. It will be an indwelling of Oneness, not a mass yeet up in the clouds. Sharing God’s mind. (And before you think that’s out of the realm of possibility, look around you. Did you ever think this would be happening? Evil is having its rave, and I know we all feel like we are crowd-surfing madness.)
It’s insanity right now, Dear Ones. I know it is.
But keep looking for the light. Keep BEING the light, somehow. (Good thing I am less Charlotte Flax, and more of who I was created to be.)
I will land on love.
I will land on peace.
I will live out my days without fear of a Sky Daddy who is waiting to smite ‘n yeet us. But seek out the FATHER, who is only ever love.
A father that doesn’t leave our sides, even as we surf the madness.
I think about death a lot. Probably more than your average bear. Sometimes more than I think about life. And I don’t know what that exact ratio is, but it’s probably more than enough to inspire a dark sense of humor and a heaping helping of garden-variety neurosis. DO NOT BE ALARMED, friends,I have been morose my whole life and am in no danger of hurting myself – and certainly not anyone else.But in all my musings, I’ve come to believe that while Hell is a headspace, Heaven is also a state of mind. And that far, far better things to come than what lay behind, as C.S. Lewis reminds us.
By: JANA GREENE
Imagine if at the end of your life – somewhere between the dreaded death rattle and Glory -and after crossing over, you find yourself at a roundtable with every person you have ever loved, and who has ever loved you. And each person in the afterlife is manifested in the space and time they were most happy. The most healthy.
Before we all had to become survivalists out of necessity, even as children. With this life, there is so much weeping.
You imagine that that Mighty Cloud of Witnesses is here to usher you in death. But that’s the zinger, you are told. There is no death. Plot twist!
There never was a death. No sting at all! Just an emergence from a chrysalis, an unbecoming of ego and a becoming of true self.
Around you in the physical, there is weeping as your Earth Side family mourns. They who have held on to you tight in life are releasing their grasp on you, certain that goodbye is forever. They don’t know, you see.
Even as death looms, it’s really just a change of pants. Shedding the bulk of a winter coat. A great kicking-off-you-shoes. A freedom. They don’t know that in your most pitiful state, you are actually becoming resplendent. You are becoming One with every beautiful thing that ever happened or will happen.
Why cry for me, then? I’ll just be in the other room, you’ll think. A whisper away.
Don’t you know that energy created can never be destroyed? That once you are a form of energy, you can never become nothingness? There is no nothingness I will step into. Only the most beautiful muchness you can fathom. Completion beyond what you could have imagined. Togetherness with those we assumed were in a void.
I think we are still learning, in between the death rattle and the last breath. All that we have learned “in the dash” – the time between birth and death – will make sense then. And those cheering from you- invisible to everyone else – will celebrate as you become your Truest Self. Resplendent, whole, and One with all that bear love.
After a grueling religious deconstruction, who is a girl to trust?
By: JANA GREENE
I’m trying this crazy new thing, and it’s called trusting my intuition. It’s crazy. My whole life I have been coached to never trust the human heart – especially your own – for it wants its own way. It is deceitful and full of the flesh, they said. It will steer you wrong, they said. But I am finding it an oracle itself, not separated from a loving God by sin, but part and parcel of the Spirit.
God himself (or herself?) put it in me – intuition. Why would we be sent into the wilderness with sub-par equipment? Is he like the producers of “Naked and Afraid,” letting us choose our one, inadequate tool for the whole journey – and SUPRISE! It’s shitty intuition! Here you go, here’s a stick, when you could have used a pocketknife or a can of “Off” spray!
Godspeed, Kiddo. It’s a jungle out there. Whatever you do, lean NOT on your understanding!
I can no longer fathom that our consciousness is separate in any meaningful way from the Source. So, intuition – while not perfect – is trustworthy, in that it has much to teach us. In the realization that it’s not a sin to consult our intuition is a game-changer.
Most of my life, I have shushed my intuition in an un-valiant effort to prove to God that I had a faith bigger than my understanding.
But the gut is a quiet thing if you’re not used to listening to it. It politely tugs at your hem, whispering “excuse me, please, but I have a feeling about this.” Listen to her until her voice steadies. Listen to her until she is heard and BOLD. But for God’s literal sake, LISTEN TO HER. Say “yes” to the copious heaps of lavish grace and decide to stop eschewing it for distrust of self.
We are so afraid to honor ourselves; we forget God is not the kindly warden overseeing us while we do time in our flesh prisons, but the living breath in us – part and parcel. Holiness is our DNA, and all the self-flagellation in the world cannot whip it out of us.
My gut tells me that it’s true.
Can I get an AMEN?
(Part II to come: Trusting the intuition of others)
Good morning, dear readers. I was perusing my “memories” on Facebook, and came across this video I’d made in 2020. Ain’t it just like the Universe to remind me of my own words, in this season of pain and loss? So I thought I’d share it with you – it is a blog post I’d written from the heart. I am hoping it gives you a little comfort today too. Blessed be.
In my town, there is a little hippie-dippy church – open to all peoples, no matter their belief system – that hosts “healing nights” once a month. I like to go with my grown daughters when I can, and our eldest daughter accompanied me to the healing night last Wednesday.
Each “service” is different, but all of them would have been too spooky for my former evangelical self. There’s still a little fun-killing gremlin inside me that says, this is hokum! But the funny thing is that that little gremlin gets hushed like a kid in church when the yoga mat comes out, and I actually remember to breathe.
So we roll out our mats, and brought out the blankies we brought, in case it was cold in there. We pulled out our journals, as the teacher welcomed us all. What will it be tonight? We’ve done Spirit Animals, Reiki, even past life regressions.
These are all things that Evangelical Fundamentalist Me would have at the very least bristled at, and at worse, would have marched up to the altar in a fundie church until someone laid hands on me and “delivered me.” If you don’t know, deliverance ministry is… well, that’s a blog post for another time. I digress.
This session was Yoga Nidra, which – as the instructor described it – is the art of doing nothing. After some calming words, incense, and breathwork, we began. This guided meditation was about colors, he said. “I’m going to take you through the color wheel.”
We started with white. “Quiet your mind, and imagine the purest, cleanest white light you can.” So, after much intrusive, non-relaxing thoughts (where did I put my glasses? what about the state of our country? Are we out of laundry detergent?) I sank into the exercise.
The purest, brightest of white light was conjured by my desperate mind. I thought of Jesus emerging from the center of it, resplendent in white robes, arms outstretched. I thought of my wedding gown (which technically, is off-white,) and for some reason, meringue cookies. I was hungry, I guess.
Next was yellow. I visualized running barefoot through a field of daffodils. And then I focused on a big, ripe lemon. And the craziest thing was that I could almost taste the tartness. Then something unexpected. Something I have not thought about in at least forty years – a flower girl dress when I was little; festooned with little yellow sunflowers and gingham, a green ribbon tied in the back. Just like Holly Hobbie.
When we moved on to orange, I though of…an orange, because how original is that? I sunk back down in my mind and stopped trying to think.
Then I stopped trying to “conjure” visions. I guess I let my mind wander off-leash. You know how in a dog park, when a dog is released to run free within the confines of a fence? And when the leash comes off, they run batshit crazy all willy-nilly, not a care in the world? Yeah, like that. And a flood of imagines bombarded me.
Orange. Orange is the warmth of the sun at the beach, cheetohs, a threat level. I let it fill my mind – all the shades of orange. My breathing was steady. Hey, maybe there is something to this!
And red? The velvet pew cushions at the Baptist church my grandparents attended. Red is the blood in my body, tainted by leukemia. A rich red wave filled my mind, and I tried to think of something less traumatic. A nice cup of Red Zinger tea. I could smell the tang of it, feel the steam coming from it. It’s weird where your mind wanders, when you’re relaxed.
Purple? The sunrise over the ocean, if conditions are just right. Twice I have seen sunrises that are made of pinks, and yellows, and purples. If you are very valiant in war, you may receive a Purple Heart. I get purple bruises all the time. But I also imagined Tudor period dress in purple, laced in gold, as purple was for royalty, as indigo was at a premium. (Nerd thoughts of the history of indigo scribbled all over my nice little meditation.) Get back on track, Jana.
Blue. The sea, where I imagined floating in warm, salty water – turquoise waves moving me gently through ripples. The blue Froot Loops I used to pick out of the cereal to eat first, convinced they tasted best. And then I visualized sitting cross-legged in a field of bluebonnets in my beloved home state of Texas. “Yeah, but the last time you did that, you sat on an anthill in that field,” my brain whispered. Shush, I told it, going back to the field. No ants allowed in my vision, thank you very much.
I hung out there for quite a while. Felt like home.
My daughter and I melted into the floor, splayed out in relaxation. This isn’t hokum, I thought. This is as close to God as I have ever felt in a church. He is found in our imaginings and dreams. I think the hippies are onto something, ya’ll.
I’m sharing this because the experience blessed me, calmed me, comforted me. And God – always in our visions – can choose any number of ways to hang out with you, inhabit you. If I – with my wild anxiety and unfortunate neurosis – can let my mind wander off-leash, then maybe you can too? Maybe we are made for meditation, which I was warned about all my Christian life, but turns out to be a holy experience.
The church may be the “house of God,” but it’s not his only residence. He inhabits our thoughts, hears our prayers, and dare I say – invites us to explore our minds. Are our bodies not the temple of God? Our minds share in the divinity, but we go about or lives paying taxes, working, entertaining ourselves with empty pursuits just to pass the time here. But that’s not all we are here to do. If the body is a temple, the mind is the playroom.
With the introduction of each color that we were instructed to focus on, my senses participated in the practice as well. But those five senses we know in the flesh pale in comparison to the thing that’s truest about us.
The truest thing is that we holy already. We are holy. And we have been given these beautiful minds. Not to make an enemy of it (“lean not on your own understanding”) but to meet God in the Temple. The Holy Spirit lives in you, and not to condemn you, but to guide you through scary thoughts, and say, “You are already enough. Meet me at the playground, which is your mind! It’s colorful there.”
When my daughter and I got up to leave, incense hanging in the air, everyone seemed sleepy and contented, like a baby after the milk she has been screaming for. Most all of us were also smiling. Like having just had the best massage of our lives, our legs were noodley for a bit, hair just a little bit mussed, and a cacophony of yawns.
Because we allowed their minds to wander off-leash and go batshit crazy with the freedom that comes from exploring the beautiful mind God gave you. It’s okay to be all willy-nilly. It’s a colorful world, hons. Don’t let fundamentalism convince you that there is just black and white.
The birds are singing outside my window. The audacity of them, having joy, when the whole world seems to be on fire.
When I was a little girl, living with my grandparents, the windows were never open. I loved them very much, but it was a depressing place. The drapes were always drawn. My grandparents watched the 6 o’clock news when my grandfather would come home from work and then watch an entire lineup of shows until it was bedtime. My grandmother would watch her “stories” all day – the holy trinity of 70’s melodrama – The Young and the Restless, General Hospital, and Days of Our Lives.
In the evenings was The Rockford Files. Little House on the Prairie. Quincey. And to wrap it up, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. But it was always dark in the house, save for the glow of the television. There was a myriad of dysfunctional happenstance in that home, but one thing that stands out – the darkness. The isolation. What I now know to be severe depression and agoraphobia, but at the time seemed a willful boycott of fresh air and light.
The only time I knew my grandmother – whom I called “Gaga” – to voluntarily leave the house was for one of three things: Church, twice a week. The grocery store. And Foley’s department store salon, so she could get her bouffant hair-do done. She took me with her for those appointments, proud that I was her granddaughter. “Look at that auburn hair!” she would tell her hairdresser. And I would beam, because there was something unique about me that she was proud of.
The odd thing is that she collected bird figurines. She loved birds but could not tell you why. But later – much later – she and my grandfather changed. They didn’t just wake up one day and felt the sun on their faces by chance. They changed deliberately.
Seemingly blue, they became mall walkers. They got out every day to walk the Sharpstown Mall, wearing coordinating outfits (they went through a cowboy phase – it was Texas after all, which mortified me then, but seems adorable now,) holding hands the whole time. They started visiting interesting places, some of them outdoors. They took to eating healthy. And my grandmother’s favorite thing about being outdoors? Birdsong.
When I had my first daughter, they came to visit me. Gaga accompanied me on a diaper run. Just a casual jaunt to the store, so we could spend all the time together we could before her return to Texas. She gave me one of her ceramic birds on that visit. I’m so glad she did.
Out of the blue, she said, “You know, for most of my life, I didn’t hear the birds sing. I was too depressed to even hear it. Now I sing alongside them!”
And then she proceeded to sing a hymn, as if birds sang hymns. I guess to her, they did.
I miss my grandparents. And I also miss hearing the birds. Because recently – even when I hear them – the birdsong is muted with anxiety and worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah…it’s Spring. The birds are tweeting away. But did you know everything is messed up right now beyond repair? I have leukemia, and our country is being hijacked, and our environment is poison, and my pain level from EDS is BONKERS, and….
And, and, and.
We cling to our anxiety; at least I do. Without realizing it, I snuggle up to the Worst-Case Scenario, who – like a toxic ex – is unhelpful and mentally abusive. I know better, but I can’t help entertaining ideas of doom, doom, DOOOOOOM.
Funny, how we think sitting in the proverbial dark will hasten the light.
I’ve been doing a little isolating myself. And although the drapes are not drawn, they may as well be. The world seems so dark, so broken beyond repair. I leave the house to go to the grocery store, medical appointments, and the occasional dinner date with my husband.
But today, I sipped my coffee and deliberately listened to the birds sing, thinking of my dear grandmother and her curious collection in her China cabinet.
The bird she gave me is one of the only physical things I have to remember her by. It is chipped and the paint is faded, but it is perched on a stand that plays “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” when you wind it up. And that’s the song she used to sing to me when I was very little. It was released by B.J. Thomas the year I was born.
“Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head. But that doesn’t mean My eyes will soon be turnin’ red, Cryin’s not for me ’cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’, Because I’m free, nothin’s worryin’ me.”
May we not lose our humanity because the world is on fire. May we deliberately seek out sunshine and mall walks and the outdoors. Out of the house, yes. But also out of the gloomy inner”indoors” cling to.
May we hear the hymns of birdsong and not count it as noise, but as a harbinger for HOPE.
It is Spring, after all, which “springs eternal,” even when we are hiding in the dark.
That is what I believed about myself, as an unplanned child. I carried the message that I was an “oopsie” for as long as I can remember. Nobody in my family outright said it, but I carried the shame as if it were by my own doing.
Once upon a time, I was s a very religious teenager, I carried my Bible to high school each day, hoping it would let everyone else know who I was – a Christian. I would not realize until much later, that Bible was a talisman to keep me safe from my peers, because I was scared of the world.
Once I was a young mother, absolutely certain that this – THIS! – was my true identity. All other things I had identified as melted away. This is it. I was a mother. I threw myself into raising my daughters with my whole heart. So, this is who I am, I thought. But I was a mother with a secret.
In a land far, far away, I had somehow also become an alcoholic. I could go through a box of wine (classy, eh?) in two days. Chardonnay was my savior, I could not function without either the promise of, or imbibing in, alcohol. I was not the mother I wanted to be for my kids, so when they were 5 and 8, I decided to get sober.
Then I came to identify as an alcoholic, albeit one in recovery. In each of the hundreds of AA meetings I attended, I would introduce myself to the group with, “Hi, my name is Jana and I’m an alcoholic.” So that was my identity too, in the early years of my recovery.
The next twenty years were a blur of trying on identities, macro and micro. I strove to be a career woman, which was a terrible fit for a person who would rather daydream and create art than push for corporate success.
I buried myself in church activates, becoming a prayer leader, a recovery coach, and a door greeter.
I was playing Identity Whack-a-Mole. Just keep moving and hitting on various things, until I hear DING DING DING! We have a winner! I’m a __________ after all!
Now, once upon a time – in a place not at all far away – I have become angry. Not angry as in a passing mood. Angry as in a whole-ass personality. I am mad all the time, since November 4th.
Every day, I worry and fret about what all of this means for the futures of my three daughters and granddaughter. Every day, I have flashbacks of being obsessed with the Book of Revelation, which I furiously studied way back in high school. Doom. Doom. DOOOOM. Anger is my least favorite emotion and the one I am poorest at.
Hi. My name is Jana, and I’m an angry woman, trying desperately to not become bitter.
And I hate that journey for me. I truly don’t want to be mad. The anger comes from a place of fear for the country I love. But even so, it is transformative in the worst of ways.
I will not get stuck here. I will one day move past anger, and I’m giving myself grace until then.
I now understand that we are all an amalgam of every experience we live. Every “identity” that makes us feel temporarily “special”, just a lily pad jump away from the next thing that will also reveal who we are. Not for us to cling to, but to learn from.
It made me feel special to be a teenaged evangelist, a mom, and even an alcoholic. Looking for ways to prove to myself that I alone – on my own merit – have worth.
And I guess I’m writing this to remind you that if you feel like a mistake; if your hardest struggles cause you to slap a label on yourself, you don’t have to cleave to it.
We are wondrously complex visitors in a place that is equal parts amazing and terrifying. A place that – as you enter and leave – erroneously insists you be labeled for safe consumption.
A society obsessed with asking “how do you identify?” lest your mark on the world be for naught, and your search for identity be rudderless.
Dear Reader, I’m glad we are on the planet at the same time, so that we can remind each other that we are not a fleeting identity, but a PERSON. A messy, floundering one, perhaps. But all the same…
Hi. My name is Jana, and I am not a mistake. I am a life-long learner, a grateful mother. I am indeed an alcoholic. I am a writer who doesn’t get paid a lick for her craft but does it anyway so the feels have somewhere to go. I’m a wife, a partner to the dearest of all to me – my husband.
I will hold doors open for people, even though I’m not a greeter at church. I will be a shoulder for the addict and alcoholic. And I will – heaven help me – learn how to manage anger in healthier ways, so I do not identify as such.
We are always trying to pull contentment out of the ethers, somewhere – anywhere – but within. But when all the parts of Me Within feel confused, alone, and despaired, the last thing that seems natural to me is to go inward.
FOOL, THAT”S WHATG I’M TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM.
But I’m thinking I get lost sometimes on my way to my heart’s Eden. Took a wrong turn in Albuquerque, as Bugs Bunny would say. I have ended up in a wretched place, yelling “YOU CALL THIS EDEN?? Psssh.
INWARD is where I learned to be scared. That neighborhood is where I got lost in the first place.
INWARD is where I take to my bed, like an eighteenth-century woman who simply CANNOT with this world anymore.
INWARD has historically been a chasm rather than a resort.
It is a place I was warned against by the church proper. God is on high. He is above us, they say, after also reminding you that God also lives in our hearts.
But they say your heart is also full of deceit, so remember that. Remember that within you is The Creator. But also, indomitable darkness.
What, now?
Finding my way to the God inside me is quite the expedition. I still get turned around sometimes.
But through prayer and meditation, I am finding…
Surely, if God lives within our being, perhaps we all harbor an inner Garden of Eden. A garden where a holy Kudzu takes over, covering the darkness.
A place with so much air to breathe, you don’t feel choked by cruel realities.
A place where it’s safe to rest that was formerly a void.
A place where the grating anxiety has been buried in lush soil, and in its place, becomes a tall willow tree.
A place where the rocks themselves cry out in glorious praise, and music fills the atmosphere.
Where pain can be shushed, if not taken away entirely
Where I don’t have to hide or run.
Or conform to a certain expectation.
I’m learning – very slowly and deliberately – that INWARD is a safe place after all.
INWARD is where all the iterations of me gather in a circle to summon the Grace of God.
INWARD is where I am learning to be calm and quiet, and to search for the trinkets of Eden – calm, peace, balance, hope, and LOVE.
My inner Eden is lush with life, springing forth with new green shoots and popping with vibrant flowers.
It has a bounteous garden, a soft place to sit, and a babbling brook that assures me with each ripple you are safe here.
And in the Garden, which is myself, I find God.
Not so much as an entity of blinding light and booming voice, but as a wise little hobbit, living in a hollowed-out tree, who knows all the answers but whose presence makes me forget I had questions.
He sits with me in the ethers, fully content.
And he will dwell with me INWARD forever and ever, in this glorious place we co-created: my contribution being trust and surrender.
God, being big enough to create all that is glorious in existence; but small enough to come as a hobbit, who has time to sit under a Willow tree with me to consider the miracle of the Most High inhabiting my little human soul.
I hope Trump realizes that this gentle correction he receives in word and deed from followers of Christ who cannot in good conscious support him is not a one-time deal. We believers who see through him? We will continue to speak our minds. So get comfortable with righteous anger, Mr. President. You do not serve the God we believe in, nor do we believe in the god you serve (yourself.) The marginalized you crush under your power? They will rise up, with a legion of supporters, who love in the name of the God you pretend to know. While you get off to hearing your name chanted by “Christians,” there is a whole army of believers who do not, in fact, want to hear your name chanted. You may be the emporer whose nakedness escapes the evangelical masses, but you don’t fool us. You don’t represent followers of Christ, but your own graven image. And I promise you, Sir, LOVE wins. It always wins in the end.
In the summer of my 13th year, I fell in love. I fell HARD, much like the object of my desire who wrote so many lyrics about falling to Earth. As a young girl, I’d heard Space Oddity play on the radio and was completely transfixed. What did I just HEAR? I’d always loved music, but this…this? This was another thing altogether.
From then forward, I was obsessed. Everything Bowie wrote or sang, every cameo he made in a film, every poster featuring his amazing face from obscure and punk-ish Houston area shops, every book written about him. I couldn’t get enough. My bedroom walls were plastered with his beautiful visage. I was David Bowie two Halloweens in a row. First, Ziggy – and then as Bowie from his Serious Moonlight tour. Until I could tell him myself how much I loved him – silly girlhood fantasy – imitation was my sincerest flattery.
By the time Bowie enjoyed another wave of popularity even among my peers with “Let’s Dance” in 1984, I resented that other people were just now appreciating him. SO mainstream, ya’ll. Have you even HEARD of Ziggy Stardust?
Still, I played the new album into the ground in my Sony Walkman cassette tape player – always with ear phones in so that I could enjoy it as loud as I pleased and as privately as I desired. Rewind, and play again. And again.
When I went to see Bowie in concert on his Serious Moonlight Tour, I’d spent hours fantasizing about meeting him, and – possibly one day, you know, marrying him and enjoying a lifetime soaking of his supreme and inconceivable amazingness. Pretty standard teenage girl stuff, but it didn’t feel contrived. It felt possible, silly as it seems now.
Bowie made me believe anything was possible. I would try to get my friends to listen (especially to the old stuff) and they would be like, “Yeah, he’s okay.” And I was like, “ARE YOU NOT HEARING WHAT I AM HEARING!?” Everyone was about Madonna and Duran Duran and Rick Springfield and Pat Benetar, and I’m not dissing any of those artists.
But Bowie? He belonged to ME. When I was going through a very tumultuous family life, he was a constant and his music was my therapy. He taught me so much in those tender years, and I wouldn’t have grown up the same person without those lessons.
He made it okay to feel misunderstood. The world is not going to understand you. You are entirely too unique to be fully understood, and thank God for that. Bowie did music like nobody had ever done before. NOBODY. He didn’t really care about topping charts or being popular. It was all about the music, man.
Unconventional beauty is FAR superior to conventional beauty. Pale and pasty? The Thin White Duke fit the bill. His teeth weren’t great. His nose was crooked. But no matter how many ch-ch-ch-changes his persona underwent, I sincerely thought he was the most beautiful man on the planet. You go on ahead and wear makeup and spike your hair and shave off your eyebrows, and dress in an unforgiving leotard, you cool, confident cat, you. Hunky is B-O-R-I-N-G. Keep your Tiger Beat Magazine hearthrobs. YAWN. His eyes appeared to be two different colors. Did I mention that? BRB…SWOONING.)
Reinventing yourself is perfectly acceptable. Do it unapologetically, or not at all. I myself have been a thousand different versions of myself. You get to choose to change your personal, and that’s okay.
Treat everyone like a rock star. One of the things that stuck out to me is that he treated reporters interviewing him with the same respect as he might the biggest names in the music industry. He was by almost all accounts, just a really kind person. A gentleman’s gentleman. Equally at ease performing “Dancing in the Streets” with the venerable Mick Jagger as singing a duet of “Little Drummer Boy” with Bing Crosby.
Whether or not I realized it at the time, Bowie planted a seed of compassion in my spirit for the gay and lesbian community, transsexualism, the androgynous, and the gender benders. Bowie showed me that it’s essential to love people different than ourselves. His sexuality, which seemed to morph as often as his persona, just simply was NOT THE MAIN THING about Bowie. He was so much more. We are ALL so much more than our sexuality.
Don’t let anyone put you in a box. Bowie Culture is that it’s okay to reinvent yourself 1,000 times. You don’t owe anyone an explanation either. Switch it up and let that freak flag fly.
Be the best WHATEVER you authentically ARE. “And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their world, they’re immune to your consultations. They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.” (Changes) A better set of lyrics about the angst of youth I’ve never seen, and likely never will.
It’s okay to be a little weird: Did you ever feel like the weirdest kid on the block growing up? Me too. Bowie taught me that we’re all weird in our own ways. And that it’s pretty wonderful, actually.
Addiction is overcome-able. This lesson would come later in my life and in his. Like a good friend that you keep up through the grapevine, I’d heard that he’d conquered an addiction to cocaine in the ’80s. While not surprising that a great talent did battle with a drug (creative people often do) he inspired to to believe I may conqueror my own alcoholism one day. And I did, 24 years ago. I’ll always appreciate his candor in owning his disease and strength in overcoming it.
And lastly, being a spiritual Seeker is an admirable pursuit. Bowie experimented with all kinds of spirituality, landing on the determination that all paths to God are valid.
May we remember that we can be heroes, just for one day.
“Why can’t we give love Cause love’s such an old fashioned word and love dares you to care for The people on the edge of the night And love dares you to change our way of Caring about ourselves This is our last dance This is our last dance This is ourselves Under pressure Under pressure Pressure”
– “Under Pressure” (compilation with the great Freddy Mercury)
Every year, I am apt to say “well, that was a hard year to stay sober!” Some years I’d say it almost flippantly, because drinking didn’t seriously enter my mind.
Most times, I meant it though, because life is effing hard. Battling chronic pain and illness – all of it really difficult to raw-dog. But raw dog it I did and got to pick up a shiny token for my labors at the end of each year. Wheeee!
This year, staying sober has felt like having your bratty cousin hold your arm behind your back until you scream “UNCLE!” Now obviously, God is not a bratty cousin. But there have been days I’d have sworn he was just as bad.
How else to explain adding a cancer diagnosis to my already ridiculous list of health woes? How else to explain allowing the election results to carry consequences of harm to the most vulnerable among us? How else to explain THIS (*gestures wildly*.)
Even the” good” days felt like wearing wet socks with the seam all wonky, (emotionally.) Something was so off, all year.
On some of the bad days, I felt like drinking. And I thought about it way more than the usual amount, which is none.
“Humph,” said my internal narration.”Who in the heckin’ world would even blame me, if I were to pick up?”
“Nobody! Nobody would blame me! “I concluded, fist raised to the sky. “It’s TOO MUCH!”
I imagined people saying, “Bless her, it was the cancer that was the final straw.” Or “No wonder she fell off the wagon.” Or “At least it’s not hard drugs.” Or some such self-pitified bullshittery.
And then I laughed because silly alcoholic; mind games are for addicts! Of course, I recognized that voice from days of yore! It’s the one that kept me sick.
I’ve decided – for the sake of argument and a slightly fragmented faith – that God is not a fraud.
He is only love, and love has not failed me this year.
Love has shown up, hat-in-hand, smiling gently.
Love was with me during the bone biopsy, while they punctured my hip and sucked out the marrow, and hot, sad tears ran down my face, alone.
Love was with me when the biopsy confirmed that I have a form of leukemia, by lending me a calming essence not organic to my own understanding for comfort.
Love sat and listened to me primal scream in my car, when I’ve had unbearably painful days from Ehlers Danlos syndrome. When I couldn’t walk without agony or stay awake due to fatigue.
Love rocked out with me when I listened to purging metal music at full volume by myself, as if the genre could wick the anger out of me. (Thanks, AC/DC.)
Love was with me, rifling through my recovery toolbox, passing me whichever tool was the right one for the job. And I – much like the father in A Christmas Story trying to change a tire – cussing the whole way. “Again?!! Aw, blast it! Poop flirt rattletrap camel flirt! YOU BLONKER! Rattle feet sturcklefrat!” (Only not quite that wholesome. FUUUUDDDGGGGE.)
Love was with me when darkness enveloped me and hope was a little wisp in the ethers, so faint it barely had form.
Love manifested through my friends and family, who doggedly refuse to give up on me.
Love peeled off my wet, wonky socks, and then proceeded to wash my feet.
Love did all of those things, in the form of a God most compassionate.
My Higher Power provided everything alcohol would have withheld from me.
So this year, as I order a 24 Year sobriety chip, I say UNCLE, UNCLE, UNCLE!
I still say it’s TOO MUCH.
But I also say thank you, thank you, thank you. Because after the shitshow that was 2024, I will treasure that shiny 24 year chip. I earned it this year, homies. It was hard to stay sober.
But not impossible, you see. Because who in the heckin’ world would I be able to help, should I fall back into the drink? Surely not my family. Surely not myself. Surely not Love.
Bloodied and bruised, wild-minded and obstinate, and leaning into the Divine Love, I will pick up that shiny 24 Year chip and dance around with it on Friday.
Good morning, Reader. Well, the sun came up again. Damn if it doesn’t just keep happening. You know what that means, right? At your stations! Here we go!
It’s okay if you run to your station, but it’s also okay to inch, crawl, stagger, or be dragged, so long as you rise and report to The Universe you are present. Being present is everything.
Accept that – like Jesus – your holiness and humanity both get to seize this day. He, being 100% divine and 100% human (just like you) equipped to get through the muck. Jesus was the Prince of Peace. He was also a Tipper of Tables.
You get to respond to every new challenge in the way of your choosing. You’re not just rolling with the punches. You’re not a victim, but a participant in this miraculous, jacked-up, eternal production. I know it feels victimizing sometimes.
I am waving to you from my station this morning, hollering at you from over here, “HEY! IT’S ME, YOUR FRIEND WHO IS ALSO EXHAUSTED, BEFUDDLED, FEELING BEAT-UP, AND ANXIOUS! I’M HERE TOO.I KNOW THIS IS HARD. KEEP GOING, OKAY? YOU’RE DOING AMAZING!”
Love always starts the show and always takes the last bow. Remember that when the antagonists seem to be winning. Remember that when the plot is thicker than pea soup and it looks like the bad guys are winning.
This election has proven we are as far from compassion as the East is from the West. And as for the trite moral question, “What would Jesus do?”
I’m pretty sure Jesus would go straight to the Temple (the church, or ‘body of Christ’) and throw out everyone who had set up shop, buying and selling. Matter of fact, maybe he’d kick over the tables of loan sharks and the stalls of dover merchants and declare “My house was designated a house of prayer; You have made it a hangout for thieves!” (Matthew 21:12-13)
That’s actually in the oft-touted Bible that gets trotted out by politicians every election year. But the rest of the verse – from The Message translation – is followed by this zinger: ” Now there was room for the blind and crippled to get in. They came to Jesus, and he healed them.”
Table-tipping Jesus is kind of my spirit animal right now. I’ve never related to him more. All my Christian life, I did not understand that verse. Because my black-and-white thinking could not relegate sweet white American Jesus, hands folded in prayer, eyes heavenward, to this renegade loose-cannon Jesus.
But LOOSE CANNON JESUS? I SEE YOU NOW.
I’m not going to turn this piece into an opportunist sermon. I’m all sermoned out, plus, since distancing myself from the church proper, I have no intention of evangelizing. It’s too late for that (but it’s never too late for God! you say? Bold claim for people who voted God off the island in his own name.) It’s too late for the next four years anyway.
But don’t expect to be considered the temple when you host thieves in your heart and elect criminals to run the free world. The thing about having a temple full of snakes and liars, is that there is no room for the blind and crippled, not even standing room. We are not getting our healing because we have made a rummage sale out of our freedoms, and a discount house of our blessings. We have done it in the name of a God who has been denied entrance at all, hawking our shiny, empty wares, and calling them holy. The only thing in short supply is love, which is supposed to be the Greatest of These, but has instead been relegated to the scratch n’ dent bin.
“You don’t want THAT,” say the merchants. “You want THIS!” And shown the whole world (this could all be yours!) we have settled.
We are the Temple, my friends. Us. And I will never take the spiritual inventory of another human, except for maybe the guy with his own translation of the Bible (a bold move! I thought for sure everyone would awaken to the audacity when that happened. But, no.) Maybe except for the man half of us elected to run the free(ish) world. We should have all at least peeked at the inventory, and not signed off on it en masse.
Maybe instead of basing our votes on the “economy” (the moneychanger’s specialty!) we should have had a pow-wow with Jesus about what he prioritized – the sick, who will lose insurance benefits. The hungry, which will manifest in children going lunch-less. The poor, who will only get poorer. And the rich, richer. God ain’t worried about the economy, he never has been. That’s our schtick. He’s worried about our hearts.
Make room for the crippled, the sick, and the hurting, so that they might be healed with the resources our creator has made us stewards of.
Who else wakes up and for a few precious seconds, thinks you must have had the most terrible nightmare, only to realize no, it’s not a horrible dream. It’s happening. And you simply cannot believe with your own brain cells that it’s actually happening, but here we are? I am using every tool in my mental health coping skills. I’m digging through my rusty 12 step recovery toolbox, flinging tools hither and yon, saying no, THAT won’t fix this….dammit this won’t either! Tools flying everywhere, all of them sort of useless but also not. It feels like needing a certain screwdriver but not having it and needing a hammer and not having that either. So, you just use the handle of the wrong screwdriver to hammer that nail in the wall to hang a picture, which isn’t even what you set out to do, but oh well! It’s a tool that did a job! It’s like that. If you got anxiety problems, I feel bad for you, son. We got 99 problems and the president-elect is definitely one. I don’t know what to do with my mind, my face, my hands. I am either doom-scrolling whilst sobbing or disassociating with cat videos – tinny laughter hanging in the air like an insult to The Cause. Disassociating with dumb TikToks of people dancing. Comedian schtick. But it’s the only way, Obi Wan. I’m throwing everything at this – faith, videos of kittens, the seeking out of comraderie with my fellow sisters. Absolute outrage. Profound sadness. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then faith again, which I always seem to land on, which pisses me off, really. How dare I have hope at a time like this? The nerve of me! But I cannot fathom that this waking nightmare has no purpose. Maybe it’s the catalyst for the groundswell that needs to happen. It needs to happen. But did it have to happen this way? See, that’s what I don’t understand. But maybe it’s bigger than our lil’ supposedly puny girl-minds can fathom. Maybe it’s too big for us to understand just yet. And If you’re reading these brain droppings here on my blog, you are probably in an unfathomable place too. If you follow me for recovery content, or homespun stories of faith, or because I am a proponent for plant medicine, or write about mental health (or lack thereof.) We may never get back to our regularly scheduled programming. This has opened chasm, fundamentally changing all of us. And it needs to. It should. We wake, and shake, and think this simulation totally sucks! But it’s not one, of course. So welcome to the resistance, which sounds melodramatic but sadly is really not. It’s just regular reality now. The Sisterhood of the Hornet’s Nest, kicking at the hive of patriarchy, since it’s been laid at our feet. You done did it now. We are all in a kerfuffle! Women all across the world are rallying behind us – a testament to the sisterhood. Blessed be, friends. May the odds be ever in our favor.
Words by Jana Greene 