Making it Up

Jason Mraz at the Bijou Theater.

Brent and I went to see Jason Mraz at the historic Bijou Theater in Knoxville last weekend. Just a singer and his guitar for two and a half hours. Beautiful simplicity. He was playing old songs that had been requested, as well as many new, unreleased songs. The lyrics of his new work really resonate with me in my present life. He sings of his life as a work in progress and about a world he hopes to live in rather than the reality we are experiencing. At one point during the concert, Mraz mentioned that he writes songs to heal himself, and along the way maybe it will help someone else too. The writing teacher in me was thrilled. Tell your story well and your audience will make their own connections.

I have found great comfort in writing for myself. I once heard Ben Marcus, a celebrated author, say that he can only write something he would want to read. It is that simple. He can’t write to make everyone else happy, but he knows what he would like to read. This way of thinking works for me. When I joined a writing group the thought of creating some masterpiece that anyone else would ever want to read was unimaginable. But I knew I wanted to write for me. I knew that taking time to write meant taking time to think and process.  Then I read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I knew I also wanted to be creative with my voice. Recently, I have come to see the possibility of marrying the two ideas. I can be creative and write for myself, and just maybe it will help someone else along the way.

A couple of weeks ago, a neighbor of mine “liked” a post I made on Instagram. I had not seen or talked to her in a couple of years; our children no longer attend the same school, so I clicked on her page to see how she was doing. I was struck by the absolute beauty of her pictures. How does she do it? Her pictures show me a world of shimmering sunlight and breathtaking views of ordinary life. She shows the common so uncommonly well. I don’t have the eye to capture the way the sun peeks through a tree above a peaceful house in rural North Carolina or how the city of Charlotte looks on a Friday afternoon through the side mirror of my car, but she captures it perfectly. So I sent her a message acknowledging her obvious talent because I believe when we see beauty in someone we should say it.

She soon responded and told me she had read my blog. My honesty had spoken to her, and she had passed the link along to friends. From that point we continued to communicate through Instagram. Then last week her dad passed away. In a few haunting, poetic lines she sent me the news. Again, I have not seen her in years, but honesty, words and hurt brought us together. Before I knew it, I was on Spotify listening to Jewel’s “My Father’s Daughter” with tears streaming down my face. It was one of the songs she chose for her father’s funeral. I ached that she was sitting on the other end of this social media chat with such a daunting task staring her in the face. “I chose blue flowers and a silver coffin.” It sounded like one of her pictures. No filter needed.

I don’t know what spoke to her from my writing other than the fact that I was open and honest about my life. I have shared about my sick mother, difficulties of motherhood, health and wellness, work/home life balance and marriage. I have no goal or purpose other than to sort through my thoughts and ideas in words. In healing myself and trying to figure it all out, there is a shared vulnerability that surfaces.

One of the new songs that Mraz played was about “making it up.” He sings that we learn lessons from other people, but in the end we are all just making it up as we go. This phrase can be interpreted as impulsive and lacking clarity or planning, but I internalize the message of “making” as an active way of living and evolving. We are making plans, making love, making mistakes, making a living, making a mess, but we are all making something. Living and not just existing. In that space of making sense of this big life, I find words to be my art form of choice. Intermingling my thoughts and reflections allows me to create while also healing and processing my world. I can enjoy making it up and hope that others, like my neighbor, can find some sense of solidarity or comfort in my journey.

Photos by Cyndie Adams. Follow her beauty here.

A Moment of Silence

I unfollowed a lot of people this week. Scrolling through Facebook after the Orlando shooting, I was disappointed that my reaction was anger at people I knew. I didn’t want to talk about gun control or politicians the day after this tragedy. I wanted to talk about human lives. Mothers who had to bury their children. I was so saddened and noticed the unhealthy anger I was developing towards other people was not a good use of my energy or time. It was neither helping the problem or easing anyone’s grief.

Thanks to Lisbeth Darsh, an online friend and writer I follow, I stumbled upon Krista Tippet’s book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. It turns out it came along just when I needed it. “We’ve all been trained to be advocates for what we care about. This has its place and its value in civil society, but it can get in the way of the axial move of deciding to care about each other” (Tippet 29). In this situation the angry shouts and taunts of the “advocates” were drowning out the wailing cries of human beings mourning their loss. Why didn’t everyone feel a sense of desperation for love and caring for each other in this moment? I felt like I was the only one who needed to see it and hear it. I didn’t have any words or reactions to post. There was too much to feel and process.

In America, many features of national public life are also better suited to adolescence than to adulthood. We don’t do things adults learn to do, like calm ourselves, and become less narcissistic. Much of politics and media sends us in the opposite, infantilizing direction. We reduce great questions of meaning and morality to “issues” and simplify them to two sides, allowing pundits and partisans to frame them in irreconcilable extremes. But most of us don’t see the world this way, and it’s not the way the world actually works. (Tippet 12-13)

Tippet’s explanation gave words to my struggle. I wanted to give her a standing ovation and exclaim, “Yes! That’s it!” This week I felt like I was in a world of screaming teenagers, full of impulses and reactions. Many of the responses on social media were so instantaneous and irrational. Darsh posted, “After you type it, check yourself.” She is acknowledging what so many of us are thinking. Please think before you share. These posts cannot be unheard. They are read by real humans experiencing real pain. This is not a reality show.

Can we move beyond discussing these “great questions of meaning and morality” through internet memes and insulting rhetoric? Can we step away from issues and see real people and real pain? Social media has created a space where many can play “couch coach” to the lives of others. They can watch tragedy unfold on the news and instantly chime in with solutions and judgments.  Perhaps it is a coping mechanism or the human drive to take action to fix a broken world. But this divisive and harmful rhetoric becomes noise, deafening noise that fills the space, which at times is starved for silence. We appear to understand the need for silence. We incorporate a moment of silence into ceremonies or rituals in recognition of death and tragedy. Silence is a form of respect and offers us a moment to pause and think, not react or shout, just to think and let it all settle in for a bit.

Where is this moment of silence in social media? I found that I had to take the day away from social media after the Orlando shootings. I had no idea how to formulate a response so quickly. How did people even know what they were thinking?  I needed silence. I saw a close friend from the LGBTQ community that day, and I just hugged her. I had no words or clear thoughts yet, but I think where people are hurting, a hug can speak volumes.

I am not pretending that my response was the right one. Many people were angry about silence and said silence from certain groups was deafening. But I am not referring to the deliberate silence of neglect or denial but rather the pause to check yourself that Darsh mentions. I am referring to taking the time to care about each other, not just the issues. Part of understanding each other is appreciating our vulnerability and the fact that most of us do not have the exact answer for all this world’s brokenness. But I can grieve and hug my friends in the LGBTQ community and offer support in any way possible.

I am hopeful that we can “grow up” as a nation in the way we handle tragedy. As a teenager my feelings were raw, and I was always so adamant and certain in my beliefs. With age and maturity came the realization that I don’t have most things figured out, but I need to listen and learn more. I can pause, check myself, and allow myself to feel and process before reacting. Collectively, we can monitor our reactions and move beyond impulse to care about each other.

I can disagree with your opinion, it turns out, but I can’t disagree with your experience. And once I have a sense of your experience, you and I are in relationship, acknowledging the complexity in each other’s position, listening less guardedly. The difference in our opinions will probably remain in tact, but it no longer defines what is possible between us. (Tippet 22)

The Final Frontier

The Final Frontier

There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay.  And perhaps the body is our final frontier. Most women and some men spend their lives trying to alter it, hide it, prettify it, make it what it isn’t, or conceal it for what it is.  But what if we didn’t do that? What’s on the other side of the tiny gigantic revolution in which you move from loathing to loving your own skin? What fruits would that particular liberation bear?

-Cheryl Strayed

Learning to be comfortable in our skin is a life goal for most of us. If we want to live a happy life, we must take care of this one body we were given to live in while we walk this earth. The human body is amazing and resilient. It’s amazing to think that my 5’4” frame has grown and birthed two children, supplied their earliest nutrition, and healed from numerous broken bones. I am also surprised and excited when my body lifts weights and sets new personal records in my lifting. It is no secret that the barbell is my favorite part of CrossFit. I get to celebrate with new numbers and the knowledge that I can literally move more weight than the day before. CrossFit provides an outlet where I can be proud of what my body can do, not how it looks.

I read somewhere that it is hard to be mad at your body when you are busy using it to do amazing things. It is difficult for me to hate my body when it is lifting heavy objects or pulling me up on a bar. When I am out hiking and climbing a mountain, I do not stop to berate my heavy squatting legs; I am too busy using them. Shifting my perspective to acknowledge my body’s work capacity over appearance has given me great space and opportunity to put this body to the test and LIVE in my skin rather than try to hide it.

During the 2015 CrossFit Open. Photo by Kristie Hamilton.

Human bodies are meant to be used. If we use them, it will probably show. Our muscles will tone up. Things will tighten. Some parts will shrink and some will grow. There will be scars. Living leaves a mark on us all. It is beautiful to see the human body in its full splendor - rippling muscles, dripping sweat and all. We were not born to be still and stagnant. However, as Rosie Molinary reminds us in Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self Acceptance, “Our bodies are not who we are...we are a compilation of our heart, soul, and our mind.” So when I am admiring a strong, healthy woman, I am actually admiring that glow radiating from within. There is an air about someone when they are working to improve themselves. When asked to define beauty, most people use internal qualities. Kindness, determination, confidence, joy, and intelligence all become part of the definition. Those qualities are what we can see shining through when a person owns his or her body.   

Almost every woman who walks into our CrossFit affiliate leads with the infamous line, “I don’t want to get bulky.” Insert eye roll here. Most of them want to lose weight and be skinny, but they do not want to look muscular. In time, I watch and smile as their perspectives start to change. Suddenly, they become interested in how much they can deadlift or how quickly they can get their first pullup. The aesthetic goals drift to the background and tend to happen as a natural consequence of hard work. They become amazed by what their bodies can do, and I have yet to see one of them complain that they became “bulky.”

CrossFit Jane women celebrating strength.

But this shift in perspective must also happen outside of the gym. This week I had a conversation with a fellow CrossFitter who runs ultra marathons. I was praising her for running the entire Creeper Trail as training for an upcoming race. She smiled and said, “Yes, except in all the pictures I look fat.” SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. She ran 34 miles and what she sees in the picture is a “fat girl.” She continued to say she had “those big CrossFit thighs.” I was floored.  I got really preachy in a hurry. “How can you not be proud of the incredible journey your body just took you on this weekend? Fat is what you see in that picture? Your daughter is watching you!”

This woman is intelligent, strong, beautiful, and the mother of two amazing children. She just earned her college degree while working a full-time job. She goes to CrossFit four times a week at 5 am. She occasionally runs 100 miles on the weekend for fun. How can she possibly be hateful towards her body? It broke my heart. I work with women every day who I hope can learn to love their bodies for what they can do. We need these bodies to carry the important parts of ourselves through this life. We need them to play with our kids, care for aging parents, and to share adventures with loved ones. My friend lives a big full life accomplishing all these incredible tasks, but she still battles with this uncharted final frontier.

My friend at the top of Mt. Democrat,
a fourteener in Colorado.

Molinary explains, “Our bodies carry our truth around, they are the lenses through which we experience the world, but they are not us. Our true selves are rooted within our bodies.” I need my body, but I am not my body. I don’t walk around labeled as a size of clothing or a number on a scale. I am a heart, soul and mind walking around in a healthy body that I care for and nourish to help me experience this big beautiful life in the best possible way.  I am grateful for my body and the incredible things it allows me to do. I can see a picture of myself and be thankful for the experience and opportunity, not critical of shape, size or imperfections. I can focus on the truth I hope to carry around within my body, not the packaging. I believe this is the “tiny, gigantic revolution” Strayed is describing.

In a follow up discussion with my ultra-running friend, she said she was heading to the lake for the weekend with her girlfriends. They all agreed to wear bikinis and ban all negative body talk. I would like to think my preaching worked, but maybe the fact that she is having this conversation with her friends and bringing these insecurities out into the open is helping to shift her perspective about her body. I hope we can all openly discuss our fears and learn to conquer this final frontier together. Bring on the revolution.

Making an Honest Living

“The truth reads like a tshirt: you can’t look back until you’re past it.”

-Amy Bagwell “The Lie and How We Told It”

This summer I joined a writing group. It is actually the exact same faculty members who are in my book club, but we decided we should read and write. One of our first prompts was to write about an unexpected call or email. I decided to write from the perspective of my 20 year old self.  That silly, young thing thinks she is so smart. She sees my present day self and calls to express her anger, disappointment and shock with who I have become. She is pretty adamant that watching my life might very well ruin hers.

With Brent at my college graduation.
21 years old.

As I began writing in her voice, it felt like an out of body experience. She could hardly recognize the skin I was in, and likewise, I shed her skin years ago. Remembering that time in my life, I can feel my chest tightening as her fear engulfs me. My early twenties were filled with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of exposure. Fear of disappointment. Fear of being fat. Fear of being alone. Fear of being weak. So much fear. I went to bed with fear. I woke up with fear.

Thankfully, here I sit as a 37 year old liberated from so many of those fears. To say I live fear-free would be ridiculous, but most of those irrational, nagging fears have been exposed and realized as my own misuse of imagination. My 20 year old self envies this newfound lightness and freedom. “How do I get from where I am to where you are? I am afraid the transformation is going to require more than time...I don’t want it to hurt.”

To which my present day self responds:

Suck it up, buttercup. Sometimes you will think you are buried but realize you are planted and just need to grow. Your life is full of rich, fertile soil. You are right where you need to be. But if secrets don’t make friends, please know that truth can make instant enemies. You will experience truth and honesty about yourself that will crack you wide open. Listen to it. Then get to work.

Honesty has been my recipe for change. Ironically, my earliest years were missing truth, even though I come from a very religious family. I was conditioned to see myself the way my parents saw me and that was on a pedestal. I even remember my dad describing me in so many words: pedestal. Then at 22 years of age all my smothering fear led me to grab a reckless, irresponsible boy and marry him.  Emboldened by this new union, we tested the waters of my fear and headed to the Big Apple for new jobs and graduate school.

Our newlywed
battleground in NYC.

It was in those first years of marriage that my pedestal failed me. It was totally irrelevant. I painfully learned to see myself for who I really was: a scared, broke and unhappy new teacher with a strong academic resume and a brand new failing marriage.  The plan for my life so meticulously detailed in my mind was crumbling in reality. I hated myself for letting everything spiral out of control. I hid in the shadows and labored to control my panic.

Then, in the midst of the muck and mire of my shame, slivers of sunlight began to break through. I cautiously started to seek the light. There were moments of great epiphany; realizations that who I thought I was, was not in fact who I really was to the rest of the world. The most painful arguments in our early marriage, now I understand, all involved truth, even if it was hurled at me through a rocket launcher. I am not recommending a tumultuous young marriage as a personal growth plan, but it just so happens that I grew out of those ashes. If people ask how we built such a strong marriage, we attribute it to the fact that we worked on ourselves a lot. We grew up together in a tiny 400 square foot NYC apartment.  There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Fear and truth collided.

In my present day life, I contend there are no greater tools for growth than honesty and seeking truth. I am not talking about seeking an outside truth but striving to see the truth about myself. When I am vulnerable and all my secrets are exposed, it makes most of those silly fears from my early 20s void and null. Transparency is actually quite liberating. And perhaps more importantly, surrounding myself with people who care enough to fire truth at me on a daily basis keeps me grounded and growing towards the light. Yet still, my 20 year old self is horrified. I blew up her plans. “You teach at a community college? Really? You just threw away our career to get married and have kids!” Yep, Pedestal Girl, it is raw and uncensored down here with my toes in the dirt. It’s honest living at its best.

Embarrassing my 20 year old self as a 37 year old faculty member.

Creating Space

I recently added yoga to my life. While it has tremendously helped my flexibility, I am more impressed with how it has helped my mind. At the end of each practice, our instructor asks us to take a minute to notice any new space we have created in our body or mind. It never ceases to amaze me; there is always more space! How did I do that? I created space in my tight hips while simultaneously creating a little sliver of uncluttered, momentary space in my mind. Wow. Space is a beautiful luxury that is earned, not given, or at least that is how I have marked its value in my world. It is a final frontier. Instead of exploring it, I am on a mission to create it. I want to be a space creator on and off the yoga mat.

In my professional life I have always recognized my duty to create a safe space where students can try, fail, and then learn how to improve. It is through trial and error that we grow and internalize the lessons we need to know. I build a community of writers in my classroom. My students all share their own writing, and perhaps more importantly, they read the work of others. “Read as writers and write as readers.” I know they need a comfortable space where they can create and think but also receive encouragement and feedback. That space is sacred. Writing is thinking, and we don’t have to do that alone. When students tell me at the end of the semester that I helped them “find their voice,” I tell them it was there all along. I just gave them space to use it.

Likewise, as a CrossFit coach I love celebrating the success of my athletes. Each time I receive feedback saying, “You guys have changed my life,” I smile and respond that THEY changed their life. We just created space and support, but they had to put in all the work to make the changes.

When I examine the success of my marriage, I wonder how much of it involves understanding the balance of created space and togetherness. If Brent gave me too much space, I would be hurt or feel neglected. Instead, he recognizes that in all areas of my life I need a safe space to grow. I want space to try and fail as an athlete. I do that quite often. As my coach, he pushes me and provides my space to grow. As a daughter, he knows I need space to mourn. Watching my mother fade away into the complete darkness of memory loss is painful and deserving of great sadness. As a wife, he knows I need space for romance and friendship, as well as an unfiltered mirror to show me what I am, not what I wish to see. As a teacher, he knows I need space to work, share victories and occasionally complain about grading. Clearly, I am just a woman who needs SO much space.

So where does a space for parenting come into play? Most days I go to bed questioning my performance as a mother. I am confident as a teacher and coach, but what about this monumental task that I am completely unqualified to do? Raising humans. I’m not patient or nurturing or even creative. As a general rule, I don’t even like kids. That is why I teach teenagers and adults. But every once in awhile I have a breakthrough. What if the ideas that I am using in other areas of my life are also applicable to motherhood? What if it doesn’t have to be a beast of its own, completely unrelated to my experience and training? Is creating space a style of parenting?

About a month ago, I had this epiphany. My kids came home from school at 4 in the afternoon. I had approximately one hour to see them before I left to coach. I needed to make it count, but I was also in a planning session with one of our coaches. We were busy planning a new program to empower teenage girls. She brought her kids to the house for the meeting. It was a deliberate meeting/playdate scenario.

My kids busted through the front door at 4 pm, as expected. They said hello, dropped their backpacks, and ran straight outside to play with the other kids. They played the entire hour; then it was time for me to go coach. The working mother guilt engulfed me in an instant. I had one solid hour to spend with my children, and I wasted it. I prioritized work. I could have grabbed them and rocked them in my lap talking about their day for 60 minutes. Instead, I barely even made eye contact with them.

But wait a minute. Did I fail them? Or were they too busy playing with friends out in the open air and sunshine to notice? I was in a work meeting, but I also planned that meeting to be at my house where our kids could play outside while we worked. Maybe what I lamented as neglect was actually space I created for my children to thrive and be happy!

To think that I must be present and involved with my children every second of the day is to sell short my role as a mom. I have never had children that were attached to my hip or shy around other adults. Maybe what I consider to be my own failure as a mother has actually created independent little humans who don’t require my presence to feel my presence. It is the very space they need to play and learn.

 Brent and I made the decision to send our kids to a nature-based charter school that is a 45 minute drive from our house. It is definitely not convenient and is non-traditional in every sense of the word. We saw this school as beautiful, fertile soil with lots of room for our kids to stretch and grow, literally and figuratively. We wanted them to expand beyond the walls of a traditional classroom setting. When we found their school we were thrilled to say, “Yes! There are other ways to do it!” Raising our kids to enjoy and love learning while appreciating their surroundings and nature is part of our goal by intentionally selecting a unique space for their education.

As CrossFit affiliate owners, we could say our kids are growing up in a box. We “take them to work” at least 3-4 days a week. There are times my ugly guilt voice bellows in my head about this one too. “You are not spending time with your kids! They will remember you as a workaholic! Why can’t you be present? You are helping all these other people and neglecting your own kids.” But what about the flip side? My kids GET to come to work with me. They GET to have this entire community of people surrounding and supporting them. They understand what it means to help other people and celebrate the success of everyone, not just their own. They are present with me in a space that fosters growth and self-improvement. Suddenly, life in a box doesn’t sound so bad.

Part of my role as a parent also involves maintaining a space for my marriage. This space is VITAL, and I will fight tooth and nail to save it. We have “I Love You Wednesdays.” It started because I did not teach on Wednesdays and had time for us to eat lunch together. A lunch date eventually evolved into a whole day that starts when we roll over and see each other for the first time on Wednesday morning. “Good morning! It’s I love you Wednesday!” Our kids know how important my time is with their dad. They moan and roll their eyes when Brent announces, “I can’t. I am going to spend time with your mom tonight.” They understand we will drive 30 minutes together to get just the right cup of coffee. They know we need space to talk, laugh, and sometimes cry. I don’t always know how they will remember me from their childhood, but I do know they will remember that I loved their dad and our “space” was sacred.

The opportunities for creating space are endless. Maybe I am also creating space when I take them to the library and fill their lives with books and stories. Maybe I am creating space when I drive them to gymnastics where they learn to strengthen and control their bodies and minds. Maybe I am creating space when I prioritize family outdoor time. Maybe I am creating space when we take family trips to the farmer’s market.

When I finish a yoga class, I am not fully cognizant of the space I have created. That awareness comes in taking time to intentionally pause and notice the space. Perhaps that is the step I am missing in parenting. Joan Didion said, “I don’t know what I think until I write about it.” Maybe I don’t know what I have created until I stop and think about it. I need to take pause and notice the spaces I create for my children on a daily basis. There is still so much work to be done and room for improvement, but I might be surprised to see so much beautiful, home grown space hiding in plain sight. And ultimately, I can hope the mere fact that I am deliberately creating space will encourage them to pursue healthy spaces in their own lives.