In exactly 17 days, I will celebrate that it has been 25 years since my last drink.
Twenty-five years since I lay on my bathroom floor, begging God for help me quit drinking. Just as I had innumerous times before January 3rd, 2001. It was certainly not the first time. Or the fiftieth.
But because alcoholism is cunning and baffling, I couldn’t get sobriety to “stick.” If you knew me then, you probably had no idea. Nobody knew how much I was drinking. Active alcoholism requires mad distraction skills, a Masters in deflecting, a passel of excuses, and a side of lies, in order to keep the scam going.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I am Room Mother in my daughter’s 2nd grade classroom.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I don’t drink until the late afternoon.
I can’t be an alcoholic! I’m a regular church-goer.
But it was a scam; one I perpetuated on myself. I scammed myself into thinking I could drink “normally,” that I was okay so long as nobody knew my secret. I had at least a bottle of chardonnay a night, all by myself. But GOD, wouldn’t YOU? Kids are fighting, marriage is failing, I am constantly sick. The government is corrupt. The stars aligned in an unfavorable configuration. Tuesday. Any excuse to justify it.
See, that kept me from getting well for a long time. The rationalization that life was just too intense to raw-dog sober. The mental gymnastics of raising kids without my “reward” – Mommy’s “glass” of wine. The prospect of never (NEVER??!) having another drink. Not at my kids’ weddings? N E V E R?
I feel everything. I am a Deep Feeler. Feelings never stop coming. As Cynthia Plath famously remarked, “Even when I feel nothing, I feel it completely.” It has always been that way, even in childhood. Maybe especially in childhood.
So, you can imagine my delight at finding out that the antidote to my Deep Feeling came conveniently in a Bartles & Jaymes bottle. There was little trauma that Zima couldn’t smooth over. Boxed wine was the Holy of Holies. You can drink and drink, and nobody sees the level of wine disappearing. You could even take the foil bag out when the box got low, and drink out of it like a dang Capri Sun.
My new medicine came in LOADS of iterations – sweet, savory, celebratory! Every flavor profile. Drinking is sophisticated. You can’t have a toast without alcohol, or take real communion, or ring in the new year. How convenient that my drug of choice was associated with merriment and milestones. Society doesn’t care if you drink to excess. But it would have a fascination with people NOT drinking. Why aren’t you drinking?
I have written my entire story before, but I think only on my prior blog, and I might share it here again. It’s long and intense, but no less dark than my life before I got sober. By the time I was willing to work hard enough for it to “stick,” I was depleted. Turning yellow. I was not the mother my beautiful daughters really deserved. On the surface, maybe, but not in reality.
The heartache, desperation, loneliness, shame? I had it in spades back then. I had become careless, obsessed, and resentful of the drug that had been my salvation. I was poisoning myself. Alcohol got between me and my kids, me and my God.
That was 25 years ago, and that BLOWS. MY. MIND. I can remember sitting in the Rooms, listening to “Oldtimers” talk about their sober time, and thinking, that will never be me. I am not made of stuff that strong. But I stayed and no matter what – I did not pick up a drink. NO MATTER WHAT. I worked the steps, started taking self-care, and talking to God in earnest. I felt ALL THE FEELS and let them land where they wanted.
I imagined Jesus crouched down with me in that bathroom on the sickest night of my life, and that was my proof that I wasn’t in it alone. I can’t scientifically prove to you that he was sitting with me in my pain, but I can spiritually prove it. The proof is my recovery – my janky, imperfect, solid, triumphant, well-worn recovery.
A lot of things came to an end when I quit drinking. Dysfunctional and toxic relationships, chiefly. I could keenly feel the losses, I wish I could have had hope for the gains. Because when I lost my relationship with drinking, I gained a whole entire new life.
I had to love myself and believe I was worth loving at all. But slowly, I regained my self-respect. Any dumbass mistakes I made fell squarely on me, not my “drinking.” And when I am the origin of my own chaos, I can then fix it. The responsibility is mine.
Don’t get it twisted – alcohol is still poison to me. I will have 25 years of recovery, but I could lose it all tomorrow, easy as pie. I respect the addiction. It is still – always – cunning and baffling. I will never “arrive.” Alcoholism has no remission. But so long as I practice what has worked for me this long, I shall hold the monster at bay. One day at a time.
And what transpired is a beautiful, full, rich life. It’s not a perfect life, mind you. But it’s mine, wholly mine. My efforts – along with God’s grace – enable it. My efforts. The thing that I was sure would be the end of me, turned out to be the beginning of me. The thing that was going to ruin all the fun in my life actually made me more fun. The thing that signaled an old way of being coming to end, became my salvation. And I am so flipping grateful.
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.
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.
One of my favorite episodes of The Golden Girls is the one titled, “The Flu.” The premise is that all the ladies are attending a banquet, where one of them will win the “Best Friend of the Friends of Good Health” award. In sitcoms, chaos often ensues, but is resolved by peals of laughter within the 30-minute run-time, which would be damn handy in real life. Amirite?
Over the course of the past five years, I’ve thought of this episode a bunch. Those Golden Girls always seemed to be forever attending banquets and award ceremonies. I am the age they were, and nary one banquet have I attended. Also, I am certain I would win any friendship awards, period. Several times, I have felt like a candidate for “The Worst Friend of the Friends (“Chaos and Mayhem Chapter.”)
It started with the pandemic. Remember watching Tiger King? I swore was the most unhinged thing ever, (can you believe this guy? ) Little did we know there would be a shift, the likes of which we have never seen. Little did we know, Tiger King was actually the LEAST unhinged thing coming.
The next four years are a blur of pure madness, and for me personally, a diagnosis of leukemia. Because my body does not give a single *&%$ that I was already overwhelmed.
And The Madness we have been living through have affected us all. The political landscape leveled by the scorched earth policies of this administration have divided us in ways we never knew were possible. It’s a red-letter day when I get out of my pajamas, y’all. I’m owning my depression and anxiety.
I used to have boundless energy to nurture friendships and be the best friend I can be. Checking in on my friends, reminding them how cherished they are, and – on occasion – leaving the actual house to see them. The truth is that I care SO much that I’m sort of paralyzed.
We live in the Upside Down now, our little corner of purgatory. Not to be dramatic, but it’s been the worst.
Mentally, it’s like being at the circus for years, with no way out of the tent; scary clowns running amok, wild animals uncaged, terrifying trumpets and trombones, and where the hell is the exit? I am hanging on by a sequined thread of hope somehow.
Because it’s the worst, so am I, on occasion. Or that’s how it feels. Maybe that’s how you feel too. You very much want to be the person you were pre-pandemic. You very much want all of your friendships to thrive, but all you have the energy for is a box of Oreos and doom-scrolling. The struggle is real.
I so badly want to be a truly good friend. I’m so blessed by my chosen family. But the only award I’m up for is “The Best Friend of the Friends of Shitty Health,” or maybe “Friend Most Likely to Dissociate for Long Periods of Time.”
In a way – like the Golden Girls – we all have a “Flu” right now. And we have for years, at this point. We are all operating from a place of “caring fatigue.” It’s a real hard time to be an empath, absorbing everyone else’s energy.
We are all experiencing the achiness of division, the headache of existing in a world so harsh. We are all infirm right now. We were not created for the onslaught of global information, or the over-saturation of horribleness. Our connectedness is in peril. The clarity of those of us seeing through the veil can be a hinderance.
I long to be the friend I was before all of this (*gestures wildly.*) None of us have been this way before, and it’s a real intense pilgrimage to feel deeply.
IMBD sums up the Flu episode thus: “Blanche, Dorothy and Rose all come down with the flu and infuriate each other. When they each suspect that one of them has won a major award for their charity work, their competitiveness causes them all to attend despite their illness.”
At the conclusion, Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose – all who were expecting to win the Best Friends award – are not the winners. Dorothy’s mother, the Queen of Snark, Sophia, takes the prize. But in the end – as sitcom rules dictate – all of the girls come to the conclusion that the award is not the accolade, but their actual friendships that matter most.
I hope we all come out of this mess realizing the same.
Good day, dear readers. I woke up today with a version of this prayer on my lips. Even in times like these, it helps me to consider God as the kindest, gentlest keeper of our precious souls.
I am so tired of hardness and sharpness. It cannot all be bad news, so long as we all remember that we carry the divine that will save us.Amen?
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)
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.
One of my first memories as a child is trying to squeeze into my toy box. I couldn’t have been quite two years old. My parents were teenagers and were fighting in the living room. I know they did the best they could, as they were kids themselves, and I always sensed that I was kind of a mistake everyone in the family was just trying to make the best of.
I cut my teeth on fear and took my first steps on eggshells. None of the adults in my sphere was stable. None modeled emotional regulation. Nobody provided safety.
The world was a crueler place still by the time I was five. The father of the kid I played with next door molested me. It happened again by a female babysitter when I was six, and by three other men before I was 12. But when I was nine, a family member in an authority role molested me, and after that incident, I was a different kid. A different person. Although everyone in the family knew about the violation, it just wasn’t talked about. I was told when it happened, “he was just on drugs, he didn’t “mean” to.” He didn’t mean to? Even as a nine-year-old, I remember wondering, what are ‘drugs,’ and why does that make it ok?
In the violation, the chaos, and the violence, I shrunk from the abuse. I would tell people that I was the happiest little girl in the world, because it made my mother happy when I’d say it. I would have told everyone we were the got-damn Cleavers, if it made her happy. Eventually, there would be siblings, significantly younger than me, and they never suffered any form of abuse, I am happy to say. I was quite literally, the redheaded stepchild.
Throughout high school, I managed to make good grades. I carried a Bible to school with me each day. I was the quintessential ‘good girl,’ on the outside, but that darkness that permeated my environment. The only environment I’d ever known.
After high school, I was waiting tables and started tailgating late after each shift, and at 19 I took my first drink. I was just physically, emotionally, spiritually toast by that point. To hell with the ‘good girl,’ I thought.
I just wanted to stop feeling.
From the very first sip, I felt another compilation of emotions. I believe I had eight Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers that night. I remember thinking “If this is what it feels like to be drunk, why isn’t everyone drinking all the time?”
Alcohol was like ‘other than’ potion. Magic!
If things were bad at home, I could feel other than afraid. If I was feeling compulsive and self-destructive.
I could feel other than anxious.
I could feel like other than a mistake.
I could turn down the noise.
It helped blot out the bad memories, and after that, I drank every day, and to excess. I regularly drove impaired. I am not sure how I never hurt myself or anyone else. I was in destruction mode. And as an “old soul,” I knew I didn’t want to live that way anymore.
At 20, I first darkened the door of an AA meeting, and it was like I’d arrived on the planet I was meant to have been born on. Other people understood the powerlessness against alcohol! That group loved me when I could not love myself. I attended every day, got a sponsor, and stayed sober three glorious months.
Then I went on a date with a man and he ordered me wine with dinner. I bravely told him that I didn’t drink, and he assured me that there was no way I was an alcoholic and that he was SURE I could moderate. Ah, a challenge! I do love a challenge. And I really wanted to impress him.
So I allowed a man I’d known for a week take my inventory. Consequently, I drank so much that night that I threw up in his car, passed out, and woke up somewhere unfamiliar. That began another downward spiral.
I soon found myself pregnant and was devastated. I’d always wanted to be a mom, but not like this. This staunchly pro-life girl felt pressure to have an abortion, and I was scared. I had nowhere to go. But by the time I got to the doctor’s office, the baby had no heartbeat, and after the D & C, I felt like a shell.
I drank constantly after that. I hated myself with a fervor. I lost touch with God again.
Within a year, I got married. I was 21 and thought I knew what I was doing.
In two years’, time – in which I drank every day and usually to excess (and often alone) – I started to desperately want a baby.
So, the most amazing thing happened – I stopped smoking and drinking cold turkey and it was not that difficult because all of my energies went into creating and nurturing a new life, and not my own. I didn’t think my own life was worth nurturing, but that epiphany wouldn’t surface until much later.
When my daughter was born, I fell so in love with her that drinking was the last thing on my mind. The motherhood high had cured me! Three years later, I had another daughter – every bit as beautiful and amazing as the first, and the motherhood high doubled that day.
For around six years, I didn’t have a single drink, as I was pregnant or nursing. But around 1997, I decided that when my kids were tucked into bed at night, I would simply have a glass of wine. I had matured now, right?
Instantly, I fell right back into six or seven per evening, picking up right where I’d left off. Wine is the socially acceptable beverage of moms everywhere, I rationalized. (What IS it with moms and WINE? It’s a whole vibe, and one so prevalent it’s like a subculture.)
Soon after, we moved to the coast and became immersed in the drinking culture of beach living. By 1999, I was drinking heavily every afternoon and evening, and during the day on weekends. I tried moderating over and over, only to wake up angrier and angrier with myself for not managing it better. I sometimes polished of a box of wine every night or two.
The whites of my eyes were yellowing, I began getting sicker. Nobody – including my husband at the time – knew how much I was drinking. Nobody needed to know. But I was not the mother my girls deserved, and that clawed at my soul with every empty box of wine.
I begged God to help me moderate.
By 2000, I was becoming very sick. It was no longer any fun to drink. It no longer made me feel ‘other than’ the bad things and instead amplified them. I started putting alcohol above all else. I wanted to stop, yet ironically, I found I could not. I required it to stop the shaking.
My body knew when to expect it and demanded it on time, yet revolted it when I drank and I was vomiting every day.
The drinking life I’d romanticized turned on me.
A couple of years ago, I came across an old journal from the time. I’d titled the entry “I can touch bottom now.” I had written it about the night I was at the Christmas party for the teachers and staff at my kids’ school, as I worked in the library.
Please Jesus, please. That was my prayer last night. Crouched down against an unfamiliar toilet in the home of the hostess of the company Christmas party. How did I let this happen AGAIN?
I tried to pace myself, but by the sixth or seventh drink, I casually wove to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I told myself to vomit quietly, but I kept forgetting where I was and who was with me in the bathroom. I could FEEL someone in the room but it was hard to focus. I wished they’d leave, seeing me at my worst like this. After a while of retching, I noticed that I’d lost my shoes. Where were they?
GET UP, I told myself. GET UP AND FAKE SOBER….but when I looked in the mirror my eyes held the long, strange gaze. My dead eyes, rimmed in crimson and makeup sloughed off with sweat. Since I work at the school, my coworkers are the teachers and staff at my children’s elementary. They couldn’t know my secret!
After a while, I feel the first twinges of becoming more a tiny bit sober and it is immediately uncomfortable.
When I can stand up without weaving, my thought process is simple:
I am thinking, “I just need one drink, that’s all. That will steady me out.”
Before the night is over, the Art teacher will try to wrestle my keys from my hand, so that I cannot drive home, but I do it anyway.
That’s the crazy thing. I keep doing it anyway.
I’m so tired.
So, that is my ‘bottom story’. I know enough about recovery to know it doesn’t have to STAY my ‘bottom story.’ If I pick up again, I risk a more tragic ending. The good news is that getting into recovery is not the end of the story, but the beginning.
My date of sobriety is January 3, 2001.
On that day, two weeks after that party, God again met me on the bathroom floor. This time, my own. As I lay on the cold tile, I asked God to help me and surrendered my will entirely.
And in this full surrender mode, I asked Jesus to please save my life. And in one crystal clear moment, I knew he was with me, scrunched down on the floor, holding me. Not only with me, but in me.
In this broken vessel.
“Just as you are, remember?” I could feel him say.
I knew without a doubt that it had been he who was with me in the bathroom at the party, and as a child hiding in my toy box, and a million other times of peril.
To be honest, I didn’t expect sobriety to ‘stick.’ I didn’t think I deserved it to.
The first few weeks of sobriety were almost unbearable. God and I had” words on many occasions. I was sick, inside and out. My body screamed for alcohol. I informed Jesus that I COULD NOT DO THIS, and yet I relied on him solely and he carried me through. My detox included hallucinations. The devil constantly reminded me that ONE drink would make them all go away. “You’re a liar,” I told him. “I’ve never had just one drink.”
So, I made sure I never had another. It is poison to me, plain and simple. And it was both excruciatingly difficult and euphorically rewarding.
All of my energies now went into creating and nurturing a new life – mine.
I did meetings and got online support from other women alcoholics. That’s where the healing started. I asked God to restore my children and help me be the mother they deserved. Eventually, my eyes and skin lost the yellow tint.
I have had to erect boundaries with people I loved in order to maintain sobriety, and knock down other walls to make room for healthy trust to sprout. I’m still always learning. I had to leave my husband at the time, put space between myself and my dysfunctional family. I didn’t know how to take care of my own soul, but I tried very hard to take care of my daughters’.
To this day, I take it one single day at a time.
I would love to say that I’ve been completely delivered – and I know addicts who received instant healing – but my recovery is daily. My default setting is often to want to numb out. Food tends to be my drug of choice these days. That’s a slippery slope for me because I’ve resorted to bulimic behaviors in the past. My program helps me apply the 12 Steps to many areas.
I also struggle with major co-dependency issues. Recovery is truly like peeling an onion; one layer is exposed at a time. But you can deal with one layer at a time with God’s help. I get by with a LOT of help from my friends, too. Getting sober meant changing people, places, and things. I did a lot of that, and it hurt like Hell. But things shifted, slowly at first. IJ was very open with my two little girls about Mommy’s recovery. I wanted them to know – should they ever face similar – they too are strong and able to change their lives.
Although God can heal us by any mode, I’m grateful that my recovery requires me to willfully surrender to God each and every day. That’s a sheer gift, because it keeps me humble, having to stay in constant contact with Holy Spirit, in and around me.
In 2007, I married the love of my entire life after meeting him in church. He is my best friend and biggest supporter. I told him I was an alcoholic with five years sobriety, and expected him to turn on his heels. He did not. We have been together 19 years now, and are still deeply in love.
My precious daughters are 29 and 32now, and we are very close. God blessed me with a bonus daughter as well, who I love as much as my own. They are very proud of their mama’s recovery. They call me a good mom. They call me a strong woman. And you know what? I think I am, too.
That’s not getting what I deserve. That’s grace.
We are very open about our struggles. Stigma has no place in our family.
I attended meetings regularly for many years. If 12 Step groups are a “cult,” that cult saved my life. I surrounded myself with people who struggled similarly and found a true family. People who were looking for sane ways out of the chaos, not the stoking of it. People who loved me exactly the way I was.
Life, as they say, marches on. It is not always easy.
In the past several years, I have had to contend with an incurable and painful chronic disease. The journey through this illness has resurrected that urge to default by numbing. The 12 Steps apply to so many situations. The pain has somewhere to go. Very recently, I have been diagnosed with a form of Leukemia. I considered letting it level me. I considered drinking. Because who would blame me? This is TOO MUCH! I shook my fist again at the sky, asked God WTF!? But I didn’t drink.
I’ve accepted that I don’t ‘do’ moderation, in any way, shape, or form, but I’m learning. The upside to an addictive personality is that I don’t love with moderation. There is nothing moderate about my love of Jesus. I just have to tell you about it because it saved my life. I love my friends as hard as I can, without an ounce of restraint, and my family with fervor. I’m obsessed with my husband, and he seems to be with me. Go figure.
And I don’t want anything to do with anyone who wants nothing to do with me, which is a switch. I used to low-key beg people – family especially – to be in my life. It was exhausting and confusing and desperate. And there’s no need for desperation. I get to choose who has access to my peace, and I’m very protective of it these days.
God has fulfilled a lifelong goal, in that I have become a writer and penned two books on recovery. Sharing my story is part of what keeps me clean and emotionally healthy. I wrote a blog for years about recovery, and now I write my blog about a plethora of issues – mental health, chronic pain and illness, marriage, and of course, recovery. I write poetry too, because I have found that creativity truly enables a healthy recovery. It is taking care of self, which we so often forget to do.
For someone who never expected her sobriety to ‘stick,’ God has opened so many doors.
These days, I rarely crave the feeling of ‘other than,” because I’m more comfortable in my own skin. But when it does happen, I’m equipped with my tools to get through it and the support of friends who GET it, and a God who will meet me wherever I am at any given moment.
Whether you are bruised and beaten by your own compulsions or a victim of somebody else’s, the answer is the same: Love. Love yourself enough to get well.
God was working in my favor all along. He wanted to clean out all of the childhood trauma and life crud and hurt that has built up. It’s kind of his specialty. (And it’s an ongoing process.)
I just celebrated 24 years of alcohol-free living, and its equal parts beautiful and messy. What a long, strange trip it’s been – and a wonderful one. I would not be alive had I not surrendered my will to God on that bathroom floor all those years ago. I would not be alive without the support of others.
I still have to stay on my toes. Life is often so difficult, and our disease will not be taken for granted. It’s been a lot of hard work. I remember when 24 hours seemed impossible. It was done one single day at a time, and still is.
If you cannot relate to any other aspect of my story, that’s ok.
Just know this: YOU are designed for the good life, full of magic, radical silliness, and deep abiding love.
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.
I speak up for myself now. Well, sometimes. As long as it doesn’t rock the boat TOO much. As long as the person I have conflict with won’t stop loving me because I’m mad. Only when I’ve rolled the issue OVER and OVER I’m my brain ad nauseam and have decided I’m with a safe person. Only after I’ve played out the worst case scenario in my head, mini-grieved the possible outcomes. And after I speak my peace (because I’ve learned my peace has value, too,) I will fret and worry that I’ve upset someone. Doesn’t matter if it concerns life events or little frustrations, I speak. Even if it’s a whisper, I speak. Even though I know assertion-guilt will try to make me feel like a bad human. I’m starting – with fits and stops – to say when I’ve been hurt or bothered, even though I’ve been a people pleaser all my life. So… No, You cannot talk to me like that. Little Me had no say, but I’m re-parenting her, you see. I’m teaching her things I should have taught my daughters, and must have somehow over the years. They speak up for themselves, without fear of abandonment, because they know they’re safe. And Little Me is safe now too, finding her voice and using it.
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.
What a time to be mentally ill, eh? Depression, anxiety, we got it ALL this year. I have not been okay for a few weeks now. This morning, I awoke and write some poetry, as the angsty of nature are apt to do, and thought I would be okay today. But instead of comforting myself as usual, it felt a little disingenuous. And in the interest of transparency, I came back here to the blogosphere to air my grievances because today I’ve already binged watched My 600 Pound Life, and some show about real-life emergency room drama, and (surprise, surprise) that is not the antidote for feeling down. You know how toddlers behave when they are so maxed out on sensory input that they just melt down? They cannot tell you if it’s because they are hungry, or tired, or the seams in their socks are off kilter. They just whine in C Minor until you could pull your hair out in frustration from trying to console them. Yeah, that’s relatable. I may look fine, but deep inside, the seams of my socks are driving me crazy. The newness of the cancer diagnosis has worn off, and instead of feeling like a stab to my spirit, it’s more of being poked with a butter knife, repeatedly and with gusto. Duller, but still stabby. Just another chronic condition on my already-full roster. My overall pain level from my other conditions this week has been nonstop, as if not to be usurped by the cancer. And I don’t care who you are, everyone has a limit. So, I am fighting the urge to just give in to it, crawl in bed and sleep, and try again tomorrow, which I reserve the right to do, because again – everyone has a limit. I’m long past pleading with God to deliver me, which depending on which denomination you follow, could be construed as a lack of faith, or a surrendering. I am going with the latter. God will not stop the coaster, but he will pull the safety harness over the both of us, riding alongside me while I scream my head off. I imagine him holding my hand as I approach every incline, telling me breathe, we can do this together! And I’m yelling stop this crazy thing! Sometimes we rejoice WHEEEEE! together, other times I feel like my stomach is going to exit my body via my throat. That feeling you have at the top, knowing the ground is all the way down there, and you are way up here I and your heart hammers out of your chest? I have felt like hornking up my stomach since the election, I’m absolutely leveled by it. But days keep coming, they keep happening. So many of my friends – family I’ve chosen for myself – are in crisis mode right now, and my empath spidey senses are all a-tingle, 24 hours a day. Breathe, I tell myself. Focus on breathing. But my thoughts wander from breath to all sorts of doomy things, my depression saying see? I TOLD you everything is awful! So I come here to write. I changed my pajamas from yesterday into a fresh pair today (you expected me to say I got dressed, like a properly undepressed person? Pish.) I pray, the click-click-click of a roller coaster going up an incline the rythm to my mantra. I say, I see you to my Big Feels and realize so many of us are feeling like toddlers melting down right now, not having the proper language to express the groanings of the spirit. Maybe we need to tear off our wonky socks and run around barefoot. Maybe I need a nap and some graham crackers. Just don’t give in to the sadness. Just don’t pick up a drink. This January, I will celebrate 24 years without a drink, and Hons, you’d better believe it’s a hard-won victory this year. Some years are easier than others, but this year has been a helluva doozy. So, all of this ranting to say – If you’re feeling low too, just know that you’re not alone. Tomorrow is indeed another day. Blessed be, fellow humans. I’ll hang on if you will. WHEEEEEE.
I dream about babies a lot. At least a few times a week, there is a baby storyline in my slumber. I have two daughters by birth, who are now 29 and 32. I am not a spring chicken.
But in my dreams, I am a young mother. In keeping with the surreal element, the child is sort of an amalgam – a blend of both my daughters, but neither in particular.
My therapist and I suspect the baby – always a girl – is also representative of myself, and of my children. Whatever bizarre elements of dream-realm events that happen in my sleep, the theme is always the same: I MUST take care of this baby at all costs. I must save her from whatever crazy dream plot may come. Lots of silly storylines surface, but lots of dark ones too. Maybe I am keeping her safe from Keystone Cop capers. Maybe I am smuggling her out of a concentration camp.
Like I said, sometimes it’s heavy. Sometimes it’s scary. But that baby always makes it out okay.
So, I dreamt last night that this baby was a newborn, so fresh that her umbilicus was still attached. It was cold outside, and we were sitting on a park bench somewhere, and she was wet and crying. I lay her down and undress her to change her diaper, and she is doing that newborn thing where they fling their arms out wide in a startle.
She is afraid she is falling, and I am fastening her diaper with one hand, while trying to grasp her two tiny hands to her chest with my other, all the while cooing, “Shhhh, you’re not falling. I got you. You’re okay, little one! I love you!”
Pediatricians will tell you that this movement – called the Moro reflex – is just that…a reflex. As a matter of fact, it is used to determine that the baby is healthy and normal. If they do not startle, there might be a problem neurologically. Even baby primates do it.
But when my babies did it, it threw my instincts into overdrive. They were so sure (with their six days of lived experience,) that they were falling. We might as well have been a mother and baby chimp, so primal was the urge to make that baby feel safe. A baby in a startle reflex is a pitiful thing, as their little faces contort into something akin to panic.
But I could fix it, you see. Soothing words, a tight swaddle, offering the comfort of the breast – all things that I could do to make them feel safe. Honestly, it was the only time in my mothering life I felt like I knew what I was doing, and I haven’t felt that way since, and like I said – I’m no spring chicken.
This is the fourth dream I’ve had in a week’s time about the baby’s pitifully startling. And I’m sure that this particular incarnation of the baby is me. Because I have felt like I am falling for eight days now, since the election. I know many, many people who feel like they are living in a constant Moro reflex, feeling like we are falling. Except no one can assure us that no, we are actually safe. So we panic and flail.
And truthfully, it’s not just the political state of the country. I have felt flail-y for months, since The Diagnosis in June. I haven’t had time to recover from one startle before the next flail-worthy event. Family drama. Occasions for grieving. Never-ending health woes. Elections.
We need someone to grab our hands and hold them to our chests, so that we can know that – yes, it seems like the end of the world, but can you feel that beating? That’s your heart, and it’s still going, rhythmically and with regularity. We need someone to shush us gently so that we can hear our own breath, and know that we are still nourished by air, even as we feel as if we are falling.
So, this morning when I woke with the dream so fresh in my mind, I lay still for a good while. I could still feel the grasp of the tiny hands, so I asked myself what I could do to feel safe. I told myself soothing words. Words like…
You’re not falling, it only feels like it.
God’s got you.
I wrapped the blankets around me tight in cocoon of swaddled security. Feel the mattress beneath you, I told myself. I am on solid ground. I am warm and safe in this moment. I brought my own hands to my chest, where life keeps beating, in spite of the panic.
We must keep our littlest selves from falling. We must comfort her as if she is ours by birth, because she is, you see. We are birthing the best versions of ourselves, even as we startle. We know how to do this. We know how to nurture the whole wide world; it’s just our turn to be nurtured. We know what we’re doing, we’ve just been taught not to trust it.
May you feel grounded and comforted today, even if it’s by self-soothing. May your panic be calmed, and the things that bring your mind terror be tamed. Your fear of falling is an inborn instinct, but so is your ability to find comfort. No matter what storyline is thrown at you.
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.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but please don’t pick up a drink because of all this. Statistics show that the need for liver transplants has risen by 300% since the beginning of Covid – as the stress of the pandemic has pushed so many into alcoholism. This gestures wildly is every bit as terrifying; don’t allow it to push you. I know you are hurting, freaked out, panicked. For an alcoholic, that’s very scary territory. Our own minds tell us unwinding with a drink will chill us out. We fight the urges to drink, yes. But we are also fighting our own brains. Our own bodies. Our disease. I know it’s easy to say … who cares anyway, as mad as the world has gone!? ME. I CARE. So many people care, sweet friend. You are loved, and we need to be of soundest mind to figure out where we can serve next, how we can be the antidote to the hate. Hating is easy, and any old addiction will fall right in line. But loving is hard. Fighting is hard. And requires soberness of mind, and fire of belly. Listen, Beloveds: There is absolutely nothing that using won’t make worse, I promise. Nothing. And the good people of America need you – your love, your example, your strength for whatever crazy is ahead. Use your tools. Call your people. Plunk your ass in a seat at a meeting. Lean into your spirituality. Ask God for help. Practice self care. Just don’t pick up a drink. Please. You’ve worked so hard. I SEE YOU. Stay strong.
This morning, before the sun even rises, I am proper grieving for my daughters and granddaughter.
The election is over. The political ads will stop. Obnoxious snake oil salesmen will cease screaming at us through our television screens.. The mass mailings, like so much kindling for fire, will cease to stuff our mailboxes.
And we should be glad for that, at least. But we aren’t afforded that pleasure. There is no pleasure to be had at the feet of bullies and liars.
Old white men triumph, which should surprise none of us. We should be able to take a breath now, but instead we are gasping for air.
Tyranny has won. Hatred has its day.
I seem to remember reading in the very same ancient texts he used to pander to the people that evil will ultimately prosper on this plane of existence.
Words by Jana Greene 