The Giving (Blog #1090)

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Last night after I posted the blog and as I crawled into bed, I was dead tired. My neck, back, and shoulders ached. I am so over this shit, I thought. Ready to pass out. But then I started thinking about myofascial release and about how almost four years ago I saw a rolfing therapist (rolfing is a form of bodywork that also works with fascia) who did a release on my sinuses by sticking his finger up my nose. (No kidding. I tell the entire story in a live video here.) Well, you guessed it. Lying in bed, I stuck my pinky on the inside of my nostril (first one, then the other) and applied gentle pressure until I felt any tension relax. And whereas I know this sounds odd, oh my god, y’all, I could feel the release into my neck and shoulders, into this knot that’s been there, I don’t know, over two years now. Seriously, just like that, it unraveled, like, thirty percent.

The idea behind working with your fascia is that everything in your body is connected. The way a spider web or sweater is. All knitted together. This is why especially by working with your internal fascia (by entering through an orifice, if you must know), you can affect changes throughout your entire body. In terms of my sinuses, I imagine they affected my neck because 1) things got “cinched down” through years of stopping tears, 2) things got “crunched up” due to any number of car accidents, or 3) things constricted when I had my sinus surgery. This last possible explanation is apparently a common occurrence, since surgeries actually cut the fascia, thus causing scarring and bunching. Think of the way your clothes are never the same after they’re mended or sewn back together. There’s always a pull somewhere.

What I’m learning, however, is that, with a little help, the body can repair itself, stretch itself back out or whatever needs to be done. If you’ve never had myofascial release or felt something let go and reverberate throughout your body, think of what happens when kids scrunch up the paper wrapper that goes around a straw. That’s the constriction. Then think of what happens when they drop some water on the scrunched-up paper. Like magic, it unfurls. That’s the release.

Tonight’s blog is #1090 in a row and begins my final week of this three-year-long project. Said another way, one week from tonight I’ll be done. Scratching my head. Probably writing to myself, What do I do now? But not posting it. Regardless, this is my last Tuesday post.

Wow.

Daddy needs a break.

Recently a dear friend asked, “What are you stopping the blog?” Hum. That’s a good question. My answer being, “In short, I’m tired.” Meaning this entire thing really has taken a lot out of me. Granted, it’s given so much more, but there’s still been The Taking. Of my time. Of my creative resources. Of my emotions. God, I’m surprised my keyboard hasn’t shorted out from all the tears. Suffice it to say it’s been exhausting, and Daddy needs a break. More than this, however, it’s simply time. That is, a little over three years ago I “just knew” I needed to start this thing, at some point I “just knew” it needed to last three years, and now I “just know” it’s time to stop. Everyone knows when a good meal, however delightful, is over, and, well, this one is. It’s time for me to go home now.

The thing being, of course, that this blog has brought me home. To myself. That’s the way I see it. That for years, decades, I was wandering about the world not really knowing who I was, what I was about, or what I was capable of. Then my ex acted like a total shit (seriously, he was fabulous at being an ass), and I started therapy (six years ago today, in fact). Not that one ever knows when their journey begins (I think we’re on it from our first breath, if not before), but that’s when mine began. Then this blog came along and really kicked it into high gear. If therapy was like getting a bachelor’s degree in understanding myself and my emotions, this blog has been like getting a master’s. Or even a doctorate.

Well, sooner or later, everyone graduates.

I just said that my journey began when I started therapy, but it would be more accurate to say that my dark night of the soul began when I started therapy. The dark night of the soul (or dark night of the ego, as Robert Ohotto calls it) simply being a technical undoing of the major patterns in one’s life that no longer serve them. Caroline Myss says that when we ask ourselves, “Why was I born, why was I given life?” that’s really not a question. “It’s a prayer,” she says. “To God. Who else do you think is qualified to answer such a thing?” Well, apparently this is a dangerous prayer to pray, since, according to Myss, when you ask it you’re in effect saying, “Show me why my soul chose to come here,” the answer to which, by necessity, involves a stripping away of all the strategies, beliefs, and systems you’ve come up with during the course of your life that are NOT in alignment with your soul’s calling.

Enter the dark night.

The dark night mostly sucks.

As I’ve experienced it over the last many years, the dark night mostly sucks. Which is why for the longest time I’ve said that I don’t recommend this path (even though I do). Because it’s painful. You lose your shit (or at least you lose your attachment to it), you lose your friends (or at least the ones that aren’t a good fit anymore), and you damn near lose your mind (the divine has this effect on a person). Part of the reason being, according to Ohotto, that the dark night is a holding pattern, meaning that you feel and are powerless. This is why I’ve said over and over again that I’ve tried, tried, tried everything under the sun to heal, grow, and be successful but have again and again come up with peanuts. As it turns out, this has been by design, on purpose. Meaning that I needed to spin my wheels in order to let my old ways, my old life, peter out. “The divine can’t let you experience what you want during the dark night,” Ohotto says, “because you’d just go back to doing things the way you did them before.”

And that way clearly wasn’t working.

According to both Myss and Ohotto, our entire world has, thanks to COVID-19, recently and collectively entered the dark night process. Meaning that, from a technical standpoint, a number of things haven’t been working for a while now and need to be deactivated. Of course, this sounds good if you say it fast, but expect (even more) weeping and gnashing of teeth. Expect your old life to be gone in the blink of an eye (sorry, bye bye now), and expect to feel and be powerless. Expect the whole thing to suck.

All dark nights come to an end.

The good news, however, is that all dark nights come to an end. Sometimes after months, sometimes after years, but they do eventually move on. What’s left on the other side? Something better, something more in alignment with your soul, the soul of humanity, and with God. Feeling like I’m on the tail end of my personal dark night, I’m experiencing not only more joy and inner peace, but also more power. Or agency. That is, whereas for years I’ve felt like I was getting nowhere, lately I’ve been feeling like I’m getting somewhere, everywhere. Largely thanks to a number of different therapies and medical techniques I’ve been trying, I’m actually starting to believe, “Wait a damn minute, I can heal. I can be successful. I can really do something with this life I’ve been given.”

With the holding pattern/powerless idea in mind, I’m honestly not sure that the specific therapies and techniques I’ve been using matter. I’ve talked about and love them, of course–upper cervical care, EMDR, myofascial release–but apparently this whole thing has been a divine setup from the beginning. Meaning that when you’re in the dark night, nothing you do will work. Because you’ve got to learn to surrender. And not take credit for everything. Because life can get more done with you when you’re humble. Then, after you’ve gone through hell and have risen from the ashes, things will start working again. So sure, I’m getting a lot of mileage from putting my finger up my nose, but perhaps if I’d stumbled across yoga now instead of five years ago, I’d be in child’s pose instead of child’s nose. So take this to heart if you’re spinning your wheels. Maybe it’s not about you and what you’re doing. Maybe it’s about timing.

Getting back to why I’m ending this blog, I honestly think it’s because long, long ago (in a galaxy far, far away), I signed up to spend three years going through and talking daily about the dark night (but not necessarily what comes after it). In order to help myself heal, sure, but also to help others heal. So that we could all believe a little more, or maybe a lot more, not only that things get better, but also that we get better–together. Because no one is alone here. This is my encouragement to anyone, whether you’re going through a transition/transformation individually, collectively, or both. Hang in there. This process will, by definition, take something from you. (And that will suck.) Everything comes with a price. But you’ll be better, more beautiful, more content, more confident, and more you on the other side. (And this will be more lovely than you can imagine.) This is The Giving.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Love  is all around us.

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On Pouring Yourself Out (Blog #799)

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Last night I said I was going to finish cleaning my friend’s house before I went to bed if it hair-lipped the king. Well, I lied. Despite my best intentions, it didn’t happen. (I’m not sure if this means the king was hair-lipped or not.) Instead, I ended up spending time with my friend Justin. He came over to help me lift something heavy, and then we chatted until three-thirty in the morning. After he left, I posted the blog (which I’d written earlier in the evening), then promptly passed out.

Today I’ve been in a tither, since I’ve got a lot to do–errands to run, a dance lesson to teach, etc. This morning after eating breakfast, I finished cleaning the kitchen then vacuumed and mopped the floors. Phew. The good news is that I thought it would take three hours to get all this done, but it only took two. This gives me time to blog now (if I keep it quick). The bad news is that as I’m sitting here typing, I’m remembering some of the spots I forgot to clean. The air vent return, for example. Still, since cleaning could go on forever and ever (Amen), at some point you’ve got to be done.

I’m so done.

A phrase on my mind lately has been “nature abhors a vacuum.” (After cleaning for the last three days, so do I.) The idea behind this statement is that where there’s an empty space, Something wants to fill it. In terms of my personal, physical experience, this Something is often me. I’ll move into a new home with a bare room and immediately go shopping. My married friends tell me that when they have an empty space in their schedule, their spouse is usually the one to fill it for them. The car needs washing. The lawn needs mowing.

Yes, something there is that doesn’t love a void.

The other side of this idea–nature abhors a vacuum–is that you can’t put something where something else already is. That is, in order for nature to fill in or fill up a vacuum, there must first BE a vacuum–an empty space. Said another way, you can’t fill a cup that’s already full.

While cleaning, I listened to a lecture that quoted the mystic Meister Eckhart–“To be full of things is to be empty of God; to be empty of things is to be full of God.” The idea here is that before God or The Divine can enter our lives, we must divest ourselves of–well–ourselves. Indeed, we must empty ourselves of even the desire for God. Why? Because, according to Eckhart, even our purest desire keeps our cup full. In other words, our desire for God takes up that very space we’re asking God to fill.

And so we must pour ourselves out.

This letting go of desire, I imagine, is one of the hardest tasks any of us could ever undertake. How do you stop desiring? And if you desire to stop desiring, isn’t that desiring too? I don’t pretend to have the answer. And yet more and more this sounds like wisdom to me. Having imposed my will on my life and body in a number of areas (health, fitness, work), I know that you can only do things Your Way for so long before everything in you cries uncle. Having struggled with a number of health challenges the last few years and having tried everything I could think of to heal (some of which strategies were successful, some of which weren’t), I know that at some point you have to Give It Up. Give up wanting to feel better. Give up wanting that job or recognition. Give up trying to be in control.

Caroline Myss says that surrender is the name of the game. This is the lesson of your fifth chakra, your throat chakra, your center of choice, and is imaged by Christ on the cross. It’s the surrendering of personal will to divine will. To the recognition that whatever’s going on down here on planet earth isn’t about your little life but is rather about Something Bigger, about Life Itself. I imagine one could spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to do this–to surrender, to let go, to give it up, to sacrifice what it is that you want for what it is that you’re being called to. To trust that if you’ll only pour yourself out, Something will fill you back up again with Itself and that your cup will indeed run over.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"You can't change your age, but you can change what your age means to you."

I’m Not in Charge Here (Blog #651)

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This afternoon I had my second physical therapy appointment to rehab my recently repaired knee (I tore my ACL, had surgery). Today they added new exercises–heel raises, balancing on one foot, one-leg presses, and this thing where I sit in a rolly chair, dig my heels into the carpet, and pull myself around the room. Talk about feeling conspicuous. That being said, pretty much everyone in the room today was gimped up in one way or another. One lady was doing leg exercises like I was, another was doing shoulder work, and another was working on her elbow. Hell, even one of the staff members had his leg in a boot and was walking with a cane. I thought, THESE are my people.

For forty minutes I stretched, lifted, and flexed my left leg. The hardest thing was practicing going DOWN stairs, since apparently you bend your knee twice as much going down stairs as you do when you go up them. Anyway, I broke a sweat. But then they wrapped my leg in an ice blanket, and I quickly cooled off. Especially since the machine sprung a leak and squirted water all over my leg and all down my sock. That felt good.

After physical therapy, I came home and took a nap. Seriously, I don’t have a lot of energy and can’t seem to get enough rest. Probably because my leg keeps waking me up at night. I keep telling myself this is normal, that the doctor took a drill bit long enough to tunnel through a stack of two-by-fours and ran it through my leg, so it should be achy, tired, and pissed off. Still, I have a hard time slowing down and giving my body what it’s asking for (rest). For one thing, I’m used to being active. For another, I’m supposed to be doing rehab exercises two or three times a day at home or the gym, and I can’t exactly do those while I’m sleeping.

To be clear, the rehab exercises aren’t so much difficult as they are time-consuming. Originally there were nine exercises, and now I think I’m up to twelve or fifteen, depending on whether I’m at home or at the gym. Again, that’s three times a day. As my mom says, getting better has become a full-time job. Still, it’s paying off. Today my physical therapist seemed impressed with my ability to balance on one leg and said I was actually “ahead of the curve.” So that’s something.

Lately–over the last year–I’ve been trying to lower my standards. What I mean is that I’m used to a certain level of energy and activity, and my body simply hasn’t been consistently capable of that for a while now. So I’m trying to listen to it. My therapist says something big happens whenever you can really give into the universe and say, “Fine, damn it. I’m not in charge here. I’m on your time schedule.” What that big thing is, I don’t know. Probably inner peace or some shit like that. But again, I’m trying, to be okay with how things are right here, right now, to let sleeping as much as possible and doing my rehab exercises be my life for a while.

Okay, I’m off to the gym.

And then to bed.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Rest gives us time to dream. One day, for certain, you’ll wake up. And you’ll be grateful for the time you rested, and you’ll be just as grateful that you’re different, far from the person who fell asleep.

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No Tornado, No Adventure (#553)

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It’s day seven working backstage for the national tour of The Wizard of Oz, and all the long days are starting to catch up to me. Physically, I’m trucking right along. Emotionally, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. I’m due for a good night’s rest, which, according to the science I’ve read, truly does reset your feelings to baseline. Alas, that’s not going to happen tonight, as we’ll be running the show until late this evening and have to be back early tomorrow for our first performance (for the local high school). But I think–I think–we get tomorrow night off, as well as the next morning. So maybe I can sleep in.

And since I know I’m not the only one who’s worn down and stressed out, maybe we can all sleep in.

I spent this morning painting and sprucing up more sets. However, one of them, The Oz Chamber, got called onto stage in the middle of my paint job, so it’s still not done. And whereas The Completionist in me can’t stand it, this is life–I don’t know when or even if the project will get done. Anyway, when The Oz Chamber got called in, I moved on to other matters. Specifically, I added more details to the flower pots I worked on yesterday and decorated a backup wand for Glinda (The Witch of the North), which is pictured above.

Here are yesterday’s pots.

Here are the same pots today.

Last night I dreamed I was driving home on the interstate and a fast-moving tornado was coming in my direction. I wonder if I’ll be okay, I thought, and then woke up. Of course, I assume the tornado image came from The Wizard of Oz, but I think it’s interesting symbolically, since tornadoes represent chaos and destruction. In Dorothy’s story, the tornado is this big, scary thing that rips her away from her family and the only world she’s every known. It’s terrifying.

I think of the worst things that have happened to me, and without exception they’ve all felt like tornadoes, these huge, strong, uncontrollable forces that have come into my life and ripped me away from whatever I held dear at the time. God, I felt so helpless when our house burned down, so powerless when my dad went to prison, so heartbroken when that relationship ended. But that’s what it’s like when a tornado comes into your life. One minute your feet are on solid ground, and the next minute you’re up in the atmosphere, floundering. And who knows where you’ll land–or if you’ll even land at all?

All you can do is surrender.

Personally, I think tornadoes get a bad rap. After all, had Dorothy not been picked up by her tornado, she never would have landed in Oz or faced her fears and overcome them. Clearly, she wasn’t doing that on her own, so she needed a nudge (a shove) in the right direction, and the tornado was obviously the only thing strong and powerful enough to separate her from her old way of thinking and being. Say what you will about the tornado, but it ultimately got Dorothy over the rainbow (to her true self). Personally, I wouldn’t trade any of my tornadoes, any of the terrible things that have happened in my life. Not a single one. Because they gave me my chops. They made me who I am. And I like who I am.

No tornado, no adventure.

I’m not saying you should write a thank-you note to the tornadoes in your life (because sometimes tornadoes are people–you know it and I know it). But I am saying that a story without a tornado (a little drama to shake things up) is no story at all. That is–no tornado, no adventure. And not that you should go inviting storms into your life (don’t worry–they’ll invite themselves), but consider that a storm may be the only force capable of prompting you to dig deep and unlock the power, beauty, and magic that you’ve been hiding within yourself–let’s face it–for way too long. This is, after all, how nature works. Only under pressure does a piece of coal turn into a diamond.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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A break is no small thing to give yourself.

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An Act of Surrender (Blog #72)

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I’m really disgusted by the way science works. Apparently, on a planet such as this one, a person (I’m not going to say who) can gain fifteen pounds over the course of three months (if he eats enough carbohydrates to feed the army of a small nation), but can’t lose those same fifteen pounds in five days. Come on. Who makes these rules? I’d like to have word. Maybe I could request a different planet to live on, one where eating carrot cake and wheat beer makes your ass smaller instead of larger. Who’s with me?

Everyone wants to call dramatically altering your eating habits a “lifestyle change,” but let’s admit it. It’s a fucking diet. I think it’s interesting that just like there’s no “I” in teamwork, there’s no “life” in diet either. However, there is “die” in diet, which sounds about right. Done correctly, a good diet is a death. Here lies refined sugar. In the name of our lord, we remember thee fondly.

Five days into this diet, I continue to be cranky. I should probably lock myself in my room until it’s over or until my body gets the message that having a chocolate shake on a daily basis is not a requirement for happy living. Until then, it’s throwing a temper tantrum. But in light of the fact that I’m already down a few pounds and can now find my hip bones, I’m willing to keep things up and trust that this piss-poor attitude will eventually pass.

This afternoon I finished reading a book by Karen Armstrong called A Short History of Myth, in which the author discusses what myths are and why we need them. She says that for most of human history, myths helped mankind feel important, connected to the world and divinity around him. But since Newton and the scientific method, a lot of that has been lost. Rather than being a mystery, life has become a collection of facts, something that can be measured.

Lately I’ve been hyper-focused on my posture. No one gives a shit about this except me, but for whatever reason, my head turns slightly to the left, almost all of the time. I’ve noticed recently that my hips do the same thing, and if I consciously square my hips, it helps square my head as well. But without the correction, my body seems to be permanently twisted, like a sapling that’s managed to survive a hard storm.

This posture problem–I imagine–has been going on a long time, but since I’m now aware of it, it drives me crazy. I’m constantly trying to correct it, constantly hoping heaven will hand me down a miracle, even though I’ve never heard of an archangel who gives chiropractic adjustments. It seems I have literally made myself a problem, and part of every day is devoted to worrying about it, searching high and low for an answer. Honestly, it’s like a hobby that’s not any fun.

I had an older friend tell me once that there’s a great dissolution that happens in your thirties, that at some point you realize life isn’t the dream you thought it was going to be. Rather, he said, it sucks. (I’m paraphrasing.) Honestly, it wasn’t an uplifting conversation, and it reminded me of my dad’s line–One day you’ll be old and fat. I think my friend’s point was that when you’re younger you think your body can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but when you’re older you realize that gravity applies to you too.

Personally, I fight this thinking tooth and nail. It’s not that I think I can fly. I don’t jump off bridges for fun. But I don’t believe that everyone has to get old and fat, or at least that those two things have to go together. And whereas I’m all for reality and the collection of facts, I’m also for the mythological, the mysterious, and the idea that anything can happen for anyone, at any age. I like to think that a tree doesn’t have to stay twisted forever.

I went for a run tonight, but my body really wasn’t having it, so I ended up walking, deciding that running was for people who eat carbohydrates. I’d hoped that even the light exercise would alter my diet-induced sour mood, but apparently burning calories wasn’t the answer I was looking for. (Please try again.) But I did love the full-ish moon, and that made me think even more about the mythological and mysterious. Mostly, I was focused on a line from the book I read this afternoon that said, “You cannot be a hero unless you are prepared to give up everything; there is no ascent to the heights without a prior decent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.”

All great heroes, at some point, surrender to the unknown.

In light of that quote, it makes sense that there’s no “life” in diet. The diet itself is the death. The new life comes later. But what grabbed me most about the quote was the part about being prepared to give up everything. Lately it feels like I HAVE given up everything, but I know that’s not true. There’s plenty more I’m holding on to. And as I walked and obsessed about the fact that I kept looking to my left instead of straight ahead, I realized that one thing I have yet to give up is my idea about how my body should be. What’s more, I haven’t given up my idea about how my life should be.

But I think the myths would encourage me to do that. All great heroes, at some point, surrender to the unknown. Indiana Jones stepped out onto a bridge he couldn’t see. Jonah gave himself up to the belly of the whale. Jesus said, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Call it a dissolution if you want, but I think dissolution is a lot like resignation, and there’s usually not a lot of hope in that. Surrender, on the other hand, is full of hope. What’s more, it’s full of faith. It’s trusting that the bridge is there even when you can’t see it, or knowing that after three days in the belly of the whale or even the grave, you’ll rise again.

So not only am I working on accepting the facts of life–like the fact that it takes more than five days to lose fifteen pounds–but I’m also working on giving up control and surrendering to the unknown, letting go of my old life and letting the great mystery of life have me. All the while I continue to hope, dreaming of the very best life has to offer, trusting that even a twisted tree grows strong and tall, worthy of its place on a planet such as this one.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"Kindness is never a small thing."