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Words left unsaid
If you could simply reach out and touch
all the words left unsaid
I’d implore you to gather them up as secret treasures.Take them home and sort them out.
If you do, I imagine you’d find the meaning of life splayed out neatly and concretely on your floor.
Among the words we never say, each of them carrying more weight than the fragments fumbling from our mouths, there’s profound beauty.
There’s also caution, fury, love, fear, tenderness—it’s all there.
The next time your body gives you its telltale signal of knowing far beyond what your mind can comprehend, that’s where you’ll find them
hanging like grapes on a vine.
Pay attention
gather them up
all the words left unsaid.
Pour over them.
Rearrange until all the pieces fit.
Then, and only then, will you come close to the secret of what it means to truly see another person. -
One-way conversation
Joy: I’ve been side stepping and evading your touch
knowing full well I’m not worthy of your true power.
You’ve sought me out, on occasion, revealing a sense of lightness.
But, what joy could I possibly allow within me following a sister snatched too soon?
She’s not here, nor there. She can’t hear me anymore
because she left me hanging on the other end of the phone on a dark day in late March.
I’m still standing there, 18, wondering, waiting, asking why
in a lifelong one-way conversation.
I talk to her inside my car or in the bathtub
revealing secrets I think she’d want to hear.
She’s not up or down, or in the middle.
Maybe joy is finding a place for her within me.
If I can just stop searching and hold her close
she’ll walk with me forever, taking me by the hand
and whispering it’s finally time to let myself feel. -
The gift of gratitude
I don’t often feel grateful for the situation I’m in. Normally I’m in a dizzying storm of exhaustion twisted up with feeling multiple emotions at the same time while trying to put on a normal, appropriate face around others when it’s all brewing inside me. Sometimes I’ll dare to admit, “I’m just not feeling right”, but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of how it feels to be me during this moment in time. It’s usually just all I can muster.
Yet, as I sit with my coffee staring at the fire this morning, I notice something new: gratitude.
A few months ago I was taking a long walk and happened upon one of those adorable little free library boxes where you can take and leave books at your leisure. I cannot pass one of these without being immediately drawn to it. You know, the whole moth to a flame thing. On that particular day there was a book hiding inside called “How to do nothing: Resisting the attention economy” and I snatched it up. I made a promise in my head that I’d return once my book is published. Truthfully I haven’t gotten very far, but the idea of doing nothing continues to resonate with me. What can I discover about myself and the world around me by intentionally doing nothing?
A lot.
This morning I decided I wouldn’t put on the tv or blast music to avoid hearing my own thoughts. I let myself sit with them and that’s when I noticed it. I was surprised because, in the middle of this shit storm, what do I have to be grateful for? Well, there’s actually quite a lot if I tune into myself.
I’m grateful for friends, old and new, offering to take my kids to basketball games and gymnastics class. I’m grateful for bosses, old a new, reaching out to share kind words. I’m grateful for gifts of food deliveries and recently published books and notepads, chocolates and candles and socks, pampas grass and handwritten cards and rose night cream, matching pajamas with a far-away friend, handmade dish cloths, a magnet of my favorite people, a piano I promise to return unscathed, and all of the gifts of people’s time to ask me how I am really doing and to listen without judgement when I tell them I’m not OK.
I don’t know when I’ll be myself again. Honestly, it’s not clear in this moment if I’ll completely return to her ever again. I imagine I’ll carry forward the parts I’ve cultivated for years that I’m most proud of and leave the other bits on the floor that don’t serve me anymore to leave room for new sides of me to emerge.
I’m excited to see what’s in store for me next and grateful for what’s already here.
Tomorrow, or an hour from now, I may feel completely different, so let the record show, I did allow myself a few moments of gratitude.
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Walden Pond
Henry, you should have been there.
Well, you were, but I mean today, specifically.
I thought of you as I passed slowly by the replica of the tiny cabin where you escaped a society that didn’t suit you. Can I admit to you that I’m not sure it suits me either?
I wish I could ask you what it felt like every day in the woods, surrounded by beauty, to wake up and write.
Today I didn’t come to write. You already did enough for the two of us.Today I came to jump into Walden Pond, your pond.
It’s the middle of the winter, Henry, so maybe you’d think I’m ridiculous, but knowing you, I think you’d vibe with the idea.
There were people walking around, which you probably would have hated. I did too. But, I walked until I found a little slice of peace with no footsteps or echoes of conversations between friends.
I took the opportunity to sprint right into the water.
Henry, it was fucking cold. I’m sure you remember.
But, guess what? It lifted my fog. I felt happy. I bet you went out there too, to remember what it feels like to be joyful. You paved the way, friend, if I am allowed to call you that, because you put this place on the map and in my mind when I woke up this morning.You’ll never know that just by being you, you helped me get a little bit of me back today. For that, I wanted to say thank you.
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X-ray vision
Last week at dinner as my ten year old son sat across the table from me, I noticed him studying my face—the way he does when he’s trying to figure me out. He was born wise and is a person who truly sees me. He’s like a super hero whose super power is x-ray vision of my soul. He’s supremely adept at seeing through the act I often put on for the world. When he’s with me, I don’t often feel like I’m conversing with a ten year old—he’s like being with an ageless and wise wizard. Don’t get me wrong, he still also very much acts his age, but the words that come out of his mouth never fail to astound me.
So it came as no surprise to me when, all at once, he opened his mouth, looked straight into my eyes and asked me if I am depressed. You know, the type of normal questions one might get from a fourth grader. I didn’t hesitate to tell him that I am depressed. The Joanna from a few years ago would have never dared to be so honest, but the mom that sits across from him now finally sees the value in sharing the truth.
He didn’t appear scared or worried when I said “yes”, just curious. He asked me questions about depression and how I’m feeling. It was a raw and open conversation and it’s been on my mind ever since.
I think it’s still with me because it occurs to me that perhaps I’m modeling for him what it looks like to be depressed and not only survive a period of depression, but how to begin crawling out of it.
He knows I’m doing yoga every day this month and the other night when I would have forgotten, he reminded me that I hadn’t done my class yet. He has seen me struggling to sleep for months and each morning he tells me what my “battery life” is. He pretends I’m a cell phone and when he sees my face, he’ll say “7 percent”. Today he said “50 percent” and it made my day because he’s watching my progress.
Rafe listens to me practicing the piano and is now very interested in doing the same exercises to learn alongside me. We didn’t need another thing to bond over, but I’m glad we’re adding another thing to our list.
I don’t know if he’ll see this period of time the same way I do. Time will tell. I do sometimes second guess myself and hope he’s not scared to see me this way. I’m hopeful that if we can keep being honest with each other, maybe one day when he’s an adult he’ll tell me he’s proud of how far I’ve come and how I showed him that it is okay to not always be okay.
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How to stay in the sun
“Strength in numbers,” they say.
Numbers are sometimes what I require.
An outstretched hand, a kind look, company.
Today I needed me…to be brave.
I peeked out from the shade of the cloud I’m sitting under—the one that follows me incessantly.
I let the sun graze my hands
just to see how it felt, but just for a few moments.
I was scared, shaking, yet I didn’t let it stop me.
I dared to try something new, guided by mystical magic
suddenly and inexplicably in my little world.
Here to stay
if I can just learn
how to stay put in the sun. -
New year, new you
Today I was joking around with one of the dads at the school bus stop.
I saw him coming down the road and as soon as he was within earshot I said, “How you doing? New year, new you?”.
He’s chatted with me enough times at this point to immediately know I’m completely full of shit, so he took the opportunity to tell me just how horrendous his night of sleep was with his toddler who woke up at 1:30 a.m. only to bring every toy she owns into their bed and fall asleep peacefully right at 5:30 a.m. The new year doesn’t automatically bring on change, nor should it.
I don’t believe in using January as a jumping off point for self-improvement. I’m of the mind that it should be a marathon, not a sprint that ends in dry heaving or throwing up mixed up with a good dose of disappointment in the beginning of February, if you can even make it that long.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in goals. I have many of my own and they’re all centered on one idea: how to lift the fog of depression.
I’ve shared with those close to me that it’s not the sadness or tiredness of depression that’s most challenging, it’s actually the depression fog. To me, it feels like I wake up and go to bed surrounded by a cloud. It’s not a light and fluffy one, it is a dark storm cloud. In fact, it feels as if I’m sitting right in the middle and it won’t allow me to fully feel like me. I know my authentic self is somewhere inside me, but I can’t truly access her when I’m depressed. I often believe my fog must be so obvious to others that I become embarrassed to hang out with people. I wonder if they look at me and can immediately see that I’m not OK.
But, I’m coming into an awareness that the fog is only visible to me, not others. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse. What I do know is that even in this state, the woman I’m meant to be is calling to me from the future and giving me well-placed clues and hints for how to find to her. Because I’m slowing down for the first time ever, I’m finally in a unique and privileged position to notice the breadcrumbs. If I let my mind get quiet enough, they’re everywhere. I’m able to access the clues from all of my senses.
I see them in the twinkles of Rafe and Alba’s eyes in moments of belly laughter, I feel it after an icy January plunge into the Atlantic, I hear it on walks when I notice the sound of my favorite bird, the Black capped chickadee, I taste it when I’m enjoying a meal with friends and family, and it’s the smell in the air of the changing seasons because it reminds me I’m changing too.
There’s a lot to be said about doing nothing, slowing down, and pausing. I think it has the power to transform lives when people can consistently tune in to themselves with the goal to get to know themselves deeply. Once you’re listening, you may find you had the answers all along, but were simply too busy and suckered into the thrill of “New year, new you” to realize.
