Who Makes The Decisions Around Here

This month, this week, this very moment, many of us are wondering what we can do, what impact we can have on the fiery mix of situations our country is still facing. How we can support change and tear down injustice, as just one person. What do we do when our cities are burning and there's so much to say. When there's murder. Incitement and provocation and the fallout.

Maybe you wear a cool shirt, or support your causes with bumper stickers. Maybe you rally and march and protest. Maybe you just have an aching heart and quietly wonder what to do.

Once upon a time in a PoliSci Club, on a campus nearby, my friends and I held a voter registration drive for the budding college voters - and this was our slogan:

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Because you can do all the things mentioned above, and you can have the fiercest heart that beats for change - but the most important thing you can do is to show up at the polls. The value of your name punched into that machine or on that absentee ballot? Your golden ticket. Stop thinking it doesn't matter. Stop thinking your vote in your local elections and precincts isn't a thing. Those votes lead to our city officials, our police chiefs and on from there to the cities that run our daily lives. We have got to do better at connecting the dots from the decisions we make at the polls, to the appointed officials, to the actions that shock and anger us in our communities.

There are so many things in our lives that get in the way of this simple action - from inconvenient poll locations to knowing the dates for local elections, to babies that won't nap or are having a bad day. I feel that pain, I have been the mom waiting in a voting line with twins in a double stroller and a baby sling carrying an ornery Phoenix. And on the other side of that exercise in patience was the small voice of my 7 year old when it was all said and done: "Mom, Martin would be very happy." (because aren't all kids on a first-name basis with MLK Jr?!) We can do better.

Don't let the frustration of what is about to fall on us dissuade you. The ugly words and propaganda. Don't let cynicism win. Show up. Maybe stop being so nice and hoping that the good guys will win. I know I will.

Many Faces

Faces of the mother 

Are many, oh sweet child 

You know for sure

they see us in all our glory

And they hear us in heartbreak

Small eyes watch how we

Move through this world

Aware

Taking it in to spit it right back out 

In our general direction 

Our eyes watch them, oh sweet child

There goes my heart walking around out in the world 

How we ever stand it

I’ll never know

How we ever learn to sew up the small tears 

Left in our hearts

I’ll never know

But will we ever get tired of the soaring 

Connection of that golden ribbon that binds us 

Not in this life

Or the next 

BL

5.10.20

A Lockdown List

A Lockdown List

Say yes to your hungry soul
Walk into the stormy night
Speak what you've been holding back
Sip whiskey at midnight
Think of the color of your best friend's eyes
(her beautiful eyes)
Make a list of the hugs you will give when this is over.

BL 4.26.20


 

Quarantine Got Me Like 2005

This is it friends, the moment that the wheel of time takes us full circle and as we pass by things forgotten, they become new to us again. I find myself distilled, paring down to what really matters. Dusting off my blog, as 2020 reminds me of 2005 days spent almost entirely at home with new twins and a toddler.

The quarantine and all it has brought to us - from the work realm and being absolutely slammed staffing healthcare providers in covid hot spots, to the home realm and homeschooling a hostile learner.

Another election cycle, where I last left you on the borderland with a heavy heart in 2016. Not much has changed. I am 100 years older and 100 times more cynical and yet hope is curled like a nesting rabbit in my chest.

Creativity is a funny thing. Artists and writers muse on it all the time, debating how to inspire it, how to maintain it, how to find it, why it goes missing from time to time. This spring it has found me again. Will report back.

 

Dreams

Friends, Past Me thought The Day After would be the day of unity and of angels inside.  Past Me thought we were evolving as humans, that we were constantly and continually moving into a higher realm of thought and deed. Past Me was a naive fool. The reality is... not only the day after, but this whole week has been one of movement through a shifting fog of grief and anger. Betrayal. My land is not what I thought it was. It has willfully elected a man who can only be described as crass, vulgar, arrogant. And those are the nice words. What stands before us is a man who has spoken and acted in ways that I have spent 15 years teaching my children not to act like. A man who has marginalized swathes of citizens. Yeah. This is gonna take more than a day to reconcile with inside. I'm sure the next stage will come to me soon enough, whether it be more anger or a plan of action. But today, still today, there is empty sadness.

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams 
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes

The Day After and The Angel Inside

I was talking with a friend today, and we rabbit-trailed around our lives, catching up and telling secrets. We joked about an impending sense of doom. It's the election, she said. It's the death of dreams, I thought. We giggled at our morbidity.

This thought of The Day After has been bubbling in me for a week. November 9th. I am eager for it, as I see the constant feed and play of vitriolic ads and shares. We are all feeling it. We are shutting down. It has been too much, for too long, and too many ugly underbellies have been shown.
Come to me, November 9th, the day we will all go back to being Americans. The powers that be will move us out of their targets, and we will cleave again to our friends and neighbors, and carry on with our lives.

This deadly divide will stop shouting at us, from every outlet and rooftop, and we will be The People again. Twenty years in this community, twenty years of shared lives and experience, striving to give our families the foundation that freedom allows. I do not choose to focus on what divides us; down that road lies constant strife. An endless soundtrack of bitter division.

My eyes are on my friends, my family, my people here in the community. My eyes are on the job at hand. The kindness that matters every day, spoken in small ways, shown in daily life. The actions that build our community and welcome each of us to share news with each other, to share our lives.

When Cole was a small boy, I had a constant mantra for him, when he was out of sorts, or when he was down. I've stopped saying it over the years, and it came to me again this week. It was my way of encouraging him to follow his birthright, find the divine inside.

Find the angel inside, buddy. The angel inside knows the way. The angel inside guides your heart and actions. You just have to let it out.

It's time for November 9th. It's time to let out the angel again.

Fresh Baby

On the Birthday of my youngest, as he turns 8. My last fresh baby.

Fresh Baby

Drink it in, it spins your head

this dizzy love

delicious smell.

You are not tainted with life

and its dirt

You are only new: newly arrived, newly alive,

Newly become

You.

Softly caress, marvel anew

Fine skin bears the lines that will come later.

Drawn-up knees, froggy curl, arms a-stiff and flailing

Curve you round mother's warm body, inside out,

you are not alone.

Fresh baby, fresh baby there is no other like you!

Every mother's heart thumps in universal delight

to recall

The first sight of a new person whose little world became the wide world

Oh those fresh baby shivers

Fresh baby smells

Your tufted crown holds the elixir of love.

Happy Birthday Phoenix.

The Bones of the Earth

On Sunday I had the misfortune of throwing out my back, while flinging 45 bales of pine straw in the beds around the yard. The rest of the day, all night, and into Monday, I moved slowly and hobbled around, unable to bend or twist. At the risk of sounding 40 a day before the big day... what in the world, world? I was in pain and in even greater annoyance that I might be feeling less than my best on the day I planned to treat myself to some pampering.

The thought of 40 has circled inside me for the past year - was it a big deal? Would I care? Would I be depressed? Run away? So as I came home from work, thinking about my last day at 39, I called my Mom. I was cheerful, planning to ask her about a night 40 years ago... and was she at the hospital yet, or did labor start in the night. The usual birthday eve thoughts we recount year after year. Only, that thought struck me in tandem with this one: Mom is the only one left who was there that night. My Dad, my grandparents - all gone. I sunk like a stone. I went to a dark corner like a small creature. As I eased my aching self down to sit on my closet floor, I pulled a box close by - my Dad's gemstones. It had been unloaded into the closet over a year ago when we moved, and there it still sat.

In his last years, Dad's affinity for geodes, gemstones and crystals grew. He bought them from mines across the country, wherever he happened to travel. In the divesting of his belongings, I claimed a small cardboard box filled with ziploc bags, labeled and containing one stone each. I went through the box twice - once when it first came to me, and once when I chose a stone to give to a special friend. So as I opened the box, fully sentimental and tearfully missing my Dad, I grabbed the folder on top, recognizing the font as his favorite and eager for his words.

"Everything is energy" he wrote,  "a combination of atomic and sub-atomic particles. These particles are in constant motion, vibrating, and creating an electromagnetic force field that extends beyond the physical boundaries of the 'matter' itself... when you hold a crystal or gemstone in your hands, your sub-atomic particles are intermingling with the rock's sub-atomic particles. In that way we are energetically connected with all of existence."

I smiled through the tears, reading his words, feeling his sincerity, lifting the stones out of the box one by one. I couldn't remember even seeing them before that moment. I continued reading, and unwrapping stones.

"Stones were the Earth's bones... and it was believed that stones held certain energy to either assist humankind or to record information throughout the ages. There is nothing on Earth as old as stone. They have seen the full range of human trials and tribulations, disasters and times of milk and honey."

I dug through the box, dissolved in longing for my Dad, and hunting for a message from him.

"There is no greater resource to you than your own instincts. If you happen to be drawn to a particular stone, or happen to come into one 'by coincidence' it may be just the thing that your 'inner guidance' is trying to motivate you to obtain."

I smiled at the "Dadness" of this article, at the way he put his whole heart into what he believed. The promise that he would always be there for me, though I may need to look for him in the trees, after he passed from our realm to the next. I had spent my time with one leg in that realm after he passed. I know it is there, just along side of us, but I also know I am part of the living. I had to step away from the mystical heart of me, or miss out on what was right before me, visible.

But we have a pact, Dad and I. I will always acknowledge the power of the unseen. I will always speak to him, speak to my Mamaw, speak to my Gig - and I know they hear my heart. I laid my almost-40-year-old heart on that floor and missed the three that celebrated the morning I was born. Imagined their presence there with my Mom, welcoming me.

After a time, I stood up from the closet floor, shook off the memories, and made my way downstairs. My eyes widened and a grin like no other split my face.

The back pain was gone.



I am 40 and as long as there are still mysteries, life is good.

Women's Lives Club

I've been wanting to write about this cool new club I've jumped into, and now, now we are officially in The Media! So. You can read about our new Women's Lives Club all prettied up and professional! Here We Are: "Be A Part of The Smartest New Book Club" and this title is everything - these women are S  M  A  R  T  and interesting and it is so much fun to be inside the same books, having revelations, and jumping online to talk about it.

You're gonna want to join this.
You CAN join this - we are welcoming all and hoping to take the world by storm! We sold out Amazon and B&N in one day when the first book choice was announced. BOOM.

Rachel Syme, one of my favorite writers today, threw out a spontaneous idea on Twitter one day - and a month later here we are, finishing up our first book, having fantastic mass-follow-backs on twitter and generally feeling like the kick-ass Book Club that we are.

Take a coffee break and read my favorite piece from Rachel last year, and then let the selfies flow... SELFIE was a work in progress when I first followed Rachel, and she tweeted bits and pieces of her research, and her thoughts along the way. She had twitter selfie roll-calls where we dropped what we were doing and sent in ourselves at that moment, saying we are here, hi, this is my life. And it became captivating to see these moments in time, from all over the world. In SELFIE, reading about women with stories that were erased, simply because they were women born in a time that did not allow their personhood, moved me. Galvanized, I should say, as I told friends about it, shared it online and generally spoke only of SELFIE for weeks. (Thanksgiving in Cleveland was Selfie City, right?! Or Ussie, I should say!)

Fast forward to a January day on Twitter when Rachel said, hey, if I start a book club where we read about and celebrate women's lives, would you be interested? Um, hi. You had me at "book."
My heart thunders to learn about the women that have shaped and are shaping our world - and I feel so woefully uneducated on this topic, it is bordering on shameful.

It makes me very thoughtful about having grown up in a small conservative Southern town, with quite clear limits placed on what was taught and allowed into my life. I may have had full reign of the Brown Library, but what was even the extent of the biography collection at that time? I remember the orange-backed biography section - Ethan Allen and The Green Mountain Boys, Jim Thorpe, various Presidents and famous figures... If I read any women's biographies, they must not have been very memorable. I've tried to play catch-up over the years, always feeling behind and out of the loop when the names of remarkable women pop up. Like, how could I live this many years and not know about X?

It is the just-right time to connect and learn and I am ON IT. If you are feeling the spark too, then come on! Join the #WLClub. You won't regret it. Rachel is the  most thoughtful, kind leader one could wish for in such a club. And she takes a selfie like a voodoo master. Connect HERE to our Google Group, or on Facebook.

'A Solitude of Being'

I have eternal admiration for Sue Monk Kidd and her lovely novels. They seem to come my way at just the right time, and resonate with me in just the right way. This week I re-read The Mermaid Chair, and it had been long enough ago when I first read it, that I didn't remember the story clearly. So it was new to me and I rolled in it like a fresh puppy.

"What comes to mind are ridiculous things like 'my own space,' 'my independence,' but they sound so shallow. They don't capture it."

"I never could make them understand that what I needed was to be alone with myself."

"Around here they call it 'a solitude of being.'"

- The Mermaid Chair p216

I've been turning that phrase, and those lines in my head for days. Feeling them on my tongue. A solitude of being. It has become an intense craving, battling with 'adventure' for top spot in my heart. I re-read these lines. I put them in my own words. I try to convey the striking, galvanized pull of solitude. I try not to feel smothered by togetherness and need.
I think it is a struggle many mothers face.
I think we put on our smile, and though it is a true love for our children that we carry, we still must choose the smile over the struggle. I used to call them 'stolen moments' if I could get away alone. But I'm facing an emergence of being. A recognition and an embracing.
A solitude of being is what I need to Be Me. To refill the well. Recharge the batteries. Refill my spirit.

"...the separateness, my independence, this abiding new loyalty I have to myself now..."

It has to be fed, this loyalty to one's self. Fed and stoked and petted and coaxed. We too easily become agents of care taking and caregiving, feeling that as we have chosen to walk along this path, we must slough off our skins and wear the coat of Motherhood, which is always heavy and often fraught with misconceptions.
The coat of Selfhood fits like the skin it is.
I am smoothing it on; burnishing the creases; becoming a Self again that is not stolen away or borrowed but a full-fledged right.
It is not without a price. The status quo gets shaken as I find my way. I'm desperate and slightly angry, spinning to and fro with my elbows out. This is not a graceful moment or a time of loveliness.
Birth never is.
It is portended by pressure and pain. Brought to being by blood and effort.
There is so much drama in birth of every kind!
It is a worthy momentous occasion though, because I know I will find true health and wellness for all the corners of myself.
Here's to this new year, and to all who seek a solitude of being... again and again.

XO
Bethany