Theme and Wishes for Age 43

            I thought about going with “flawless,” but I just like flaws so much. For the past week or so, my intention in every meditation session has been “I’m celebrating my life,” and I have been. I’m so glad to be here. I woke up, in a healthy body and an often-happy heart. I’m here. Most of the time, I’m pretty sure that I exist, and that’s a big change for me. I want to keep being here wholeheartedly, keep celebrating. How lucky we are to be alive right now was another good option. I’m so thankful every day that I woke up like this.

            My political wishes for the coming year are many, of course, though right now DACAis heaviest on my heart. My personal wishes are simple: more money and more snuggles.  The money part seems less mystifying—as soon as I finish grad school in December, I’ll be free to build up my tutoring clientele. But the snuggle part, as always, is a mystery. I’ve written out my ideal mate a thousand times, but what I wish for is fairly simple: someone warm and funny to take walks with. If by some miracle he voted Hillary in the 2016 primary, all the better. I have some guilt about hoping to be with someone masculine-identified (this misguided ex-wife loyalty runs deep) but I do.

Birthday Heart Inventory: Thanks 42!

Surprisingly, 42 was one of my happiest years yet. Last year around this time, I wrote about depression as a weed killer and this year, my garden is thriving, both literally and figuratively. There’s a lot of pain in my heart and so much battle still ahead, but my goal of cultivating a life has been met and exceeded.

Mental Health: Like for a lot of women, particularly trauma survivors, the 2016 election season was wildly triggering. In my case, those triggers got me to an amazing place: Women Organized Against Rape. Not only did my (FREE!) therapist there stem the tide of sobbing and panicking to a manageable level, she has also steered me towards a calmer, warmer, more productive, and loving self—she is truly a brain artist. It’s hard work to focus on the trauma part of life every Monday, and it usually results in at least a day of catharsis hangover, but it’s 100% worth it. This year is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling truly worthy of love, especially my own.

Love: Every day I feel the gorgeous, generous, and powerful love of friends, family, and cats, but I could copy and paste the longing for romantic love that I’ve written nearly every year. Though I’ve finally attained the goal of self-containment to a level that seems magical, I dream about boyfriends nearly every night. I try to take loneliness as a sign of health, my heart telling me that it’s ready to open up again.

            This is a good place to confess that there are a couple of guys I haven’t gotten over. I still wish I could hear from them, even though I know they aren’t the right ones. I keep their nice notes and artwork in the Box of Things to Be Worked Out by Unseen Forces. They don’t read this, I don’t think, but I’ll tell them anyway:

Dear _______ and ________,

Thank you for being in my life, for loving me the best you could, for the snuggles, the music, the kindness. Thank you for your face, your kindness, your humor, your support. I’m sorry for the ways that I hurt you. You’ll always be a sparkly gem in my heart because you changed me for the better. I’ll always a little bit belong to you, and I hope that you remember the best parts.

Love, Jane

(With that, I hope I made a little room for some snuggle-able treasures to come aboard.)

Work: I love my tutoring work so, so much. Getting to work with kids one-on-one, getting to know their families, using my teaching skills organically and flexibly, I CAN’T BELIEVE I made it here from where I was three years ago. Even on my lost-est days, a tutoring session brings me back to myself, frees me to live in love and in the present.

            I have one more semester of grad school (I HATE being back in grad school!) and then my teacher certification will be permanent. I hope to build up to a full-time tutoring business—I LOVE being my own boss, and the joy of going to the bank to deposit cash has not diminished since my waitress years.

            Creative coaching is going beyond-well: Coachees tend to transform into friends who guide my creativity just as much as I cheerlead theirs.

Art: At an organizing meeting last November, I introduced myself as a “street artist” for the first time, and that title really does ring true. I love being able to share my work with the neighborhood, watching how well the paintings I staple to phone poles get curated—some of the pieces have been up for more than a year! It’s a way to give and get love every time I take a walk, and fulfills what I think are the deepest purposes of art: to give, to love, to connect. Sometimes a neighbor even thanks me, and it’s the warmest, most fulfilling, most enriching feeling.

Activism: Remember when we thought it was sometimes not an election year? Transitioning from activism being a once-once-in-a-while pursuit to being a Daily Action feels healthy and sane. I’m so inspired by those who stay engaged and also by the way that we’ve committed to self-care as part of the resistance.

Plus, it’s always a good time to remind myself that this happened:

Grief: Although the Rapist-in-Chief causes the most horror in my heart and worldwide, it’s the misogyny of the 2016 Democratic primary that has caused me the most personal day-to-day grief, including making me wonder if I can ever date a man again. I’m working on a separate post about the ongoing soul-rash that is The Bern, so I won’t spend any more of my birthday typing about him.

Family:  My family of origin seems to have forgiven me for my Thanksgiving-ruining, welcoming me back like a prodigal daughter. My poetry family is mostly not connected to me anymore, largely a casualty of the misogyny-storm of the primaries. My immediate family is my ex-wife/bff and my two cats, and that’s a really, really nice life.

Spirituality: I’m addicted to Insight Timer, going to yoga weekly, and I’m even getting monthly massages. Sometimes I think I might just float up off the earth.

It’s been, in many ways, a year of luxury, of radical self-care, and I hope I can continue that spirit through age 43 and beyond. Thank you for helping make my life so rich, complex, and loving—wishing you all of the healing and happiness.

August Checkmarks, Birthday Month Goals

Was it a Year of More?

Following the advice of happiness expert Gretchen Rubin, I chose a theme for myself last year on my birthday. I was dating someone at the time so I might have been thinking more snuggles, more connection, more being taken out for steak. In that respect, I’d call the year an absolute flop-o-rama, but in so many unexpected ways, it was a year of more.

Last September when I stood on the Port-A-Potty lined Parkway feeling oppressed by the preparations for the Pope’s visit, I vowed to de-colonize my body as much as possible, and that was a lightning-strike change that felt, paradoxically, like a religious experience. I wanted to liberate all of the hoo-has and saw the world in a more radical way. At first it was alarming and terrifying but eventually I figured out that I have the power to change things for the better.

It was a loss. I lost my Unitarian church, my circle of friends, and my underlying idea that if I was well-behaved, I’d be loved and welcomed in the world. I’ve lost (I think) the ability to be what any man expects of me. And though I experienced a drastic reduction of fucks that I had to give, it was still a painful process. But as I lost the just-take-a-deep-breath-and-be-accepting-of-your oppressor Unitarians from my life, I gained something too—the realization that we all can be more than religion and society reduces us to. I realized that while women and LGBTQ+ people are always asked to make ourselves smaller for others’ comfort, I didn’t have to anymore, and more importantly, I could put myself to work trying to reduce those limitations for others.

Luckily, it was an election year, and I had the chance to hit the streets for women and fight for hoo-ha freedom in very concrete ways. Primaries gave me the chance to clear hundreds of sexists from my friend feed and stand up for the bullied-feeling handful of pals that were feeling the weight of oh-no-we-have-to-keep-a-man-in-charge scary groupthink.

Being loyal to Hillary helped me to be loyal to myself. One night, fired up after the debate and scrolling through facebook, I ended up accidentally standing up to one of the biggest bullies in my life, someone I’d somehow thought was a little bit in charge of me. Watching Hillary take decades of smear campaigns and bushels of hate-Tweets and still do so much good in the world made me realize that being hated wouldn’t necessarily make me less awesome. Recently I stood up to another of my life’s me-appointed Svengalis and was surprised to see that my world did not come crashing down. It’s given me the courage to realize that what seems an immovable force can actually be dislodged, either easily or incrementally—I’m not helpless and don’t need to be in anyone’s thrall.

Paradoxically, shifting to a positive lens on the world and trying to work for change has been somewhat alienating. I’m still dragging behind me the heavy wagon of disapproval that I can’t quite seem to let go of—they say you can, so maybe someday soon I’ll be able to let all of the baggage slide Grinch-sled-style down the mountain. Either way, I can see the world as a place where we can and should make a real impact. I’ve shaken off a little fraction of the learned helplessness that comes from having a depressed brain and from just living in the world.

Professionally, it’s definitely been a year of more—I branched out into tutoring, which is one of the greatest joys of my life.

It was a lonely year, but I really got a chance to hear myself think and retrace my steps to the connections that mean the most to me. I made a TON of art and got the habit of stapling it onto phone poles around the neighborhood. I FINISHED A BOOK! I did my best to find an agent and publisher but that didn’t pan out, so I’m left with an incomplete feeling that means I need to figure out what’s next.

After the election is over, I’ll need ways to refresh and renew myself. That’s why my theme for age 42 is “Plant the Seeds.” I need time to cultivate, to rest, read, take walks, watch things I haven’t seen before. I want to fill myself up with inspiration so that good work will be able to germinate and grow. I want more time in the woods, at the beach, with the people I love, with kind friends. I want to make this a year of creative and personal indulgence, of sunlight and breeze and rain, of treats for the muses. I’m satisfied with serious 41, and now I’m ready to bloom and play.