Tag: anxiety

I don’t like pumpkin spice lattes

September 17th, 2017

All I wanted to do today was sit in my favorite bar and write about how I don’t like pumpkin spice lattes. I wanted to write about not liking them and fall and the darkness that it brings.

I wanted to write about the changing of seasons.

But, all I can think about right now is the bridge I have in my written words.

I’ve learned a lot in my life from mentors and fatherly figures. I have nuggets and advice and wisdom that cycle through my brain.

I know beyond a shadow of doubt that I am incredibly fortunate to have people who choose to make space in their lives to speak into mine.

One of those I reference often is Andrew.

Before I met Andrew I was slightly terrified of him. For multiple reasons, but one main being I didn’t used to/still don’t sometimes, feel comfortable around men in authority.

The first time I met him, a story I’ve told many times in writing, was in a pub in Mijas, watching a World Cup game. I was alive with nerves to start my first day of class and the last thing I wanted to do was meet this man.

But my friend Tiffany made me.

And the first words Andrew ever uttered to me were “Welcome home”.

I say this because I had chosen to trust Andrew because Tiffany did. I borrowed some trust from her just to get to Spain.

Andrew has since then given me a lot of wisdom and even more so he’s given me love.

He taught me a lesson in trust that has stuck with me for a long while. Trust is a bridge. Some hold more weight. Some hold less. But they still hold something.
I had to build a lot of trust in Spain. I had to learn how to trust men in authority. I had to learn how to trust my voice and myself. I chose to trust people that I didn’t think I would and those humans have made my life more full than I could have imagined.

But, the thing about bridges is that they need maintenance.

I was having a conversation with my friend Krys in a loud, karaoke-filled, restaurant about my ability to trust people.

And I have come to realize that I’ve let my bridges get pretty threadbare.

Vulnerability and trust take more practice and maintenance than I have been giving them

I’m not saying I don’t trust people.

What I am saying is that I struggling lately to extend my ability to trust.

I am great at borrowing trust. I am capable of trusting humans because someone I trust, trusts them. Hell, the sole reason I am in Bellingham is because people I trust, trust the people here.

I think the problem is I’ve been living on borrowed trust.

I’ve been building bridges on top of other people’s already built bridges because that, my friends, is the easiest way to not get hurt. I am pretty discerning about who NOT to trust. I know when not to share.

But, that moment where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I need to share a little more, be a little more, give a little more, I know that I am not walking on the bridge that is built.

When you are in a season of building something, be it muscle, or skills for one thing or another, you can’t just keep doing the same thing. You can’t do the same exercise for weeks on end and expect a different result.

You have to find ways to stretch yourself.

You have to push your comfort zone and create new ones along the way.

And believe me, I know it’s hard.

I’ve been in more anxiety filled conversations than I’d like to admit these days, I’ve been in situations where I push past the curl up in a ball feeling to be present.

I WANT to trust.

I want to build bridges and practice vulnerability.

I don’t like pumpkin spice lattes. That’s surprising to some. It’s surprising that I, Meg, one of the most basic white girls some people know, doesn’t like the most basic beverage of all.

And it’s surprising to some that I walk in anxiety, and a lack of vulnerability.

But, I’m working on it. Again, still, probably always.

I am not working on liking pumpkin spice lattes though.

It’s not going to happen.
But what else is in the waiting?

September 10th, 2017

The last time I felt anger was the middle of June when I shouted the F word multiple times in my work wife’s car. The emotion of anger hides hurt and confusion and usually, disbelief.

This morning in church I felt anger. It wasn’t the anger of June. It was the anger that I felt in Spain. A very specific type.
It was the week Ferg was teaching. He was leading us through some visuals and I remember there came a moment where to me, everyone was wrong. He was talking about the flowers we saw in our brains meant hope and light and a lot of other fluffy words.

I went up to talk to him after, because he was wrong and I was angry. The flowers in my field brought anxiety, depression and a whole hell of a lot of others things.

Yes, in reality I was just angry at the words he was speaking. The words being spoken were knocking against what I found to be true.

Ferg gave me wisdom that week (well, he gave me a LOT of wisdom that week). He reminded me, over and over again, that my words had power, and if the color of the flowers were bringing me anxiety than I could just change them.

I try to use that wisdom in my life a lot “change the color of your flowers”. If you don’t like something, you have the power to change it.

But today.

Today, the anger at words came and I had no ability to change them.

I was in church and I was asking God for wisdom for a friend of mine. Really, I was asking for hope.

And then we sang a song called “Take Courage”. It’s a song that holds hope.

Exactly what I was asking for right?

The lyrics read:

“take Courage my heart.

Stay steadfast my soul.

He’s in the waiting,

he’s in the waiting.

Hold onto your hope

as your triumph unfolds

He’s never failing,

He’s never failing”
That’s great right? A reminder that He is there. The God I believe and have followed and loved, is in the waiting.

And as I sang the words I reached for my journal to write and I realized something:

I don’t think I believe that promise.

And then?

Then I got kind of angry inside.

It feels as if I have a group of humans who are on the edge of something. They might be doing beautifully living life, being present, moving their worlds forward; but regardless, they are waiting for the next thing.

And in the quiet, calm, empty places of their lives, they are reminded: waiting.

I believe waiting is active. I think most of our lives, even rest, are actually verbs. Even in rest we are moving forward. Because rest brings us fullness and fullness brings the ability to become more than we were the day before.

But, active waiting, going about all the things, with all that you are, knowing that it’s been days, months, years, waiting for the job, the person, the epiphany and choosing to believe that after days, months, years, believing that God has been there becomes hard.

Sometimes, I do admit, that disbelief is comparison. Comparing stories and lives and truth. Sometimes the disbelief, is just a plain desire to choose not to believe (which I stubbornly live in occasionally).

Today, though, my anger came from “this, again?”

I was angry for myself and for my friend and for the long list of humans I know that are waiting.

I’m not asking for instant gratification. Please don’t hear that.

I think, I might even know, that my anger is probably not even directed at the God that is supposed to be in the waiting.

My anger is directed at the shame.

Shame is powerful.

There is so much shame in the waiting.

It lives there, ready to pounce. Ready to remind you that you are waiting because you aren’t enough. It’s in the shadows of the waiting. Trying to drag you in. Trying to tell you that you are waiting because you are lacking.

That whatever God, deity, higher power you serve, has decided you aren’t worth it because of xyz that you have done.

It’s just not fucking true.

(I only use the F word when I’m mad and I find myself in a bar sipping a mimosa getting progressively angry at shame).

Shame hides in my waiting. It tells me that I am too much, I am too heavy, I am not personable, I don’t belong.

It creates a long laundry list.

And in the nights of sleeplessness or in the days (I.e. Last Thursday) where I feel not good at what I do, incapable of figuring out behavior of tiny humans, incapable of engaging them. In the nights where I feel like I don’t have a person, Shame waltzes in to leave a note in my room that reminds me that all of those are the reasons that I am “in the waiting”.

This morning, without knowing it, I got angry at a God who is apparently in the same waiting that the shame is.

That’s a lot to take in.

And really, I don’t feel that aggressive about my own waiting right now. I feel aggressive for the humans around me, who feel as if they are in a pause, a waiting.

And I can’t change the color of their flowers.

But what I can do, is try my best, to remember that shame has no place in my waiting. To speak out the shame occurring in others.

And to make space to find God.

Because I still don’t know if I believe he is there.

And as per my mantra.

That’s ok.

(And it’s ok for you too.)
anxiety does not = brokenness

July 30th, 2017

I did something I haven’t done in a long while today.
I walked.
Now, I know what you’re thinking “Meg, you walk everyday.”

It’s true, but not like I used too.

Back when I lived in Orange County my friends nicknamed me Moses, because sometimes, when I would get home meandering somewhere in my rainbows my feet would look like I had just walked through the desert.

Today I walked 2.6 miles.

The past month or so, Sundays have been harder than normal.

Going to church has catapulted my anxiety in more ways than I can describe and if I’m being honest I have had absolutely no clue why.

Two Sundays ago I actually almost ran out of the building before having a full on panic attack, but instead, I sat in the bathroom for about five minutes.

(I did bolt out though at the end of service.)

My last piece was about silence. The silence I’d been feeling, the lack of a path, the inability to give love and grace.

I had some things that happened in my realm of existence over the last two months that I am just now grasping the extent of how it caused me pain. I’m also realizing that for the last portion or so of this season of my life I haven’t given myself space to feel anxious.

You might think, oh that’s great.

But the thing about not giving space for things is that usually they end up coming out in some other way.

I’m not a mom, but I think I understand a piece of motherhood, that your children’s emotions and needs and wants come before yours. I spend my days helping the emotions of the 13-15 3-4 yr olds in my room, and trying to balance all the other emotions at play.

That’s a place I’ve been here before.

So today, I walked.

I walked and took deep breathes and listened to worship music and tried to untangle the anxiety that has built inside me.

I’ve done a lot of soul work in my life. I’ve more hours of therapy than I can calculate, I’ve cried in more foreign countries over coffee with mentors and teachers than I thought I would.

And I forget, in the midst of my speeches of “man up or shut up”, “be who you are”the most popular “just do the damn thing” that feeling anxious, depressed, or emotionally empty doesn’t mean I’m broken.

There were times where it did mean brokenness. It meant me, curled up on the floor of my Orange County apartment, crying.

It doesn’t mean that right now.

It means living.

And the process of untangling.

I’ve had up and down struggles with anxiety. I have seasons where I forget it exists and season like now where it seems like a prevalent fixture in my life.

I’m not 100% sure why I felt compelled to write this, but I think I wanted you, myself as well, to have more grace for people.

(I cannot tell a lie-that sentence was hard for me to write).

Wait, I guess scratch that. I sort of don’t want to tell you to have more grace for people. I don’t think I’m there yet.

I want you to allow yourself to have more grace for yourself.

I don’t want you to run. I don’t want you to equal grace for yourself for putting your emotions and feelings on others.

I want you to give yourself space to untangle.

I don’t want you to get so tangled that you become incapacitated.

I think anxiety is trying to rob me of some joy in my life. It’s exhausting me at times and attempting to meet me in doorways and keep from coming in.

I’m no where near the bottom of the barrel that I have been, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to do something about it.

It’s like laundry. I’m awful at keeping up with it (heaven forbid when I have to do more than just my laundry), but if I were to keep up with it and hang it up and put it away when I needed too, it wouldn’t be so bad.

I don’t want anxiety to rule my life (or yours), but let’s try to be humans how don’t let it pile up in corners like laundry so that it seeps onto our carpets and pours out of our hampers.

I think I’ve been letting my anxiety do just that, which is why it’s living in very specific places of my life right now.

So, on that note, I’m going to post this blog and figure out ways to do my anxiety laundry for the week.

And lastly, as always, deep breathes to the toes my friends.

We got this.
Not the last word pt1

December 28th, 2016

We’ve reached the point in the end of the world/natural disaster/plane crash on a deserted island movie where the survivors are about to see the sunlight for the first time. They are bracing themselves. They know that the outside is still there because they can hear the wind and see scattered light in the midst of the caves of wreckage they find themselves under, but like what if there are zombies waiting, or people with huge guns, or worse: zombies with huge guns.

What if what’s outside the wreckage is just as bad as being piled under it?

Or as per Jamie…what if we can’t breathe out there?

Now, pardon my French, but for the most part, 2016 has been a shitshow.

And even though I almost feel like I can use a royal WE in this blog (which Patty knows I only ever use with permission) I won’t use it. I will say that there are people in my life who have been in the trenches with me in this year. People around me who the same year as I did. People who were exhausted all the time. People who shook their fist unable to figure it out.

I think I’ve cried more this year than I have ever cried. I ugly cried this year. I hurt in ways I didn’t think possible. I was gut wrenchingly lonely amidst some of the best people I’ve ever known. I battled depression so much that I collapsed on my bed most Fridays. I was numb by the end of each week, from busyness, heartache, loneliness, anxiety and sheer exhaustion.

The need to run was maybe the highest I’ve ever felt. It lit my nerves on fire. Wanting to leave these place, these people, this home of mine. Because it was staying. And it was hard.

I questioned most of my actions. I questioned my okayness. I questioned being a broken record. I questioned my fineness. I questioned people wanting to be around me.

And also, again, it bears repeating, I cried.

I sobbed in the office at work multiple times in the first half of the year (less the second half-not none, just less). I sobbed in front of Patty. I sobbed on the garage floor with Joanna and Patrick. I sobbed in silence on my bed more times than I want to admit. I cried tears for my aunt Ann. I sobbed in airports and in Tiffany’s car. I cried in restaurants and bars. I cried at church. I cried to Glenalyn as I walked through back roads of Bellingham. I cried at NMC after camp, regretting not buying contacts just so I could wear sunglasses.

I cried more tears than I ever have in my life.

Something in me was reacting to everything around me. Some force outside of myself was telling me to fold. To wave the white flag.

And sometimes I did. If I’m being honest, sometimes I didn’t show up when I knew I needed too or I left early when I just couldn’t take it. Sometimes I didn’t push through.

{and here it is folks}

BUT

There is a reason why this is a two part blog.

For every time I cried, I probably laughed.

Even it was from the absurdity of life or the horrors or that span of life in T1 where teacher Meg got off the grace train and never got back on.

For every time life tried to kick me in the face, there was a reason to celebrate, even if it was just getting through another week of ypocalypse or ya know, all the weddings and babies.

This year has been hell. It’s been pain. It’s been heartache.

But that’s not going to be my last sentence.

Part two is filed with the loveliness I wasn’t always able to see. Or I was too exhausted to talk about. Or was in the midst of planning

Part two gets the last word.

So, watch this space.

And find your own last word on the end of this chapter of your life.
Sitting in the dark.

December 18th, 2016

I’ve been hemming and hawing over grouping these words into sentences for an hour or so mainly in my brain but also over text to my friend Amanda.
During the holidays there are articles and videos and news segments about dealing with this or that or the other thing. There are lists of coping with depression or grief or being away from home or being alone or being single or divorced and literally everything in between.

I don’t like to add to white noise.

But the nagging in the back of my brain reminds me that there’s probably something I need to say for myself anyway.

I live a full life.

An always-busy-never-see-my-roommate-have-no-clean-clothes-survive-on-espresso-and-la-croix full kind of life.

I honestly couldn’t count on one hand the amount of completely free weeks I had in 2016.

Sometimes I overdue it and I’m learning to say no.

The holidays are like my normal schedule on crack. Presents to buy, presents to wrap, cookies to bake, parties to throw, parties to attend and also sleep and sanity.

I came home Friday night after having beers with coworkers and just sat in my dark house watching tv. Because, along with all the things that the holidays brings it also brings anxiety.

I think all of the lists and articles are good.

But I also think it’s ok to take a moment to sit in the dark. It’s ok to take a breath. It’s ok to miss a party so that you don’t have to “make it through” the holidays but so you can enjoy them.

For me, sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I have anxiety. Something being a single person during the holidays is hard.

Sometimes I need to sit in the dark.

So I did.

And it helped.

Because I live a full life.

I have people that love me and I love them back.

I have a job and a life and traditions that I am creating regardless of my marital status.

So my mantra for the holidays is this: choose to sit in the dark with some Christmas lights on. Choose to slowly drink your coffee or catch up with a friend while baking. Choose to cry if you need to and wipe your tears off so they don’t freeze on your cheeks. Choose to do what you need to do to enjoy the holidays not just survive them.
Choose to have this be the year that redefines how you live during the holidays.
Savouring, laughing, and maybe, just maybe, sitting in the dark sometimes.
…and so I will stand

August 23rd, 2015

I’ve started three different blogs today all around the theme of being in Bellingham for 6 weeks, all about the loveliness that surrounds me and the lessons that I’m learning and walking in.

But before I write that blog there is apparently something I need to get off my chest, something that sneaks up on me here and there and lately it’s been trying to steal from me and cause me to question truth around me.

There is something I just need to say:

Anxiety is a bitch.

It creeps up on me in the weirdest of moments and decides that it is allowed to make home here.

But to that anxiety I would like to say this:

Hell no!

I think we all have things, certain feelings, certain skeletons that are long since dead and buried that try to come up above ground and live normally with us.

They sneak in the backdoor and hide in a crevice around the corner and just wait. They wait for that singular moment to sneak up on you and jump in.

And sometimes you don’t even notice.

Tonight I was struck with anxiety sitting at a restaurant with friends and it began to bubble up. It grew like a weed, really fast because I just didn’t notice it.

We were having some spirit-filled conversation and the anxiety inside me started to react to it, started to push against it and all I wanted to do was run. I wanted to get out of that restaurant as fast as I possibly could.

I wanted to get in the coziest of clothes and get as far away from people as I could.

But I knew that’s not what I needed.

I needed to stand my ground.

That’s what it was.

In the moment that I wanted to hide in my room I realized that I just needed to stand my freaking ground and reclaim my headspace and my heart space and remember that I have the ability to do that.

I can easily allow anxiety to have control over my emotion. I can allow it to cause me to spiral into the oblivion, to cry and to surrender to the chaos and confusion that I feel in my head.

Sometimes it is actually there. And when it is I do have to deal with it.

But tonight the moment I gave a “hell no” to the mess inside it began to subside and ease up.

When I stomped my feet and stood my ground physically the knot inside began to untwist.

My life isn’t easy-breezy right now.

I am working hard and jumping into community.

I have lessons I’m being taught and truths I’m being reminded of.

But I am also learning that I have the power to move mountains inside me and today as I told the anxiety inside me to go to hell I’m realizing that I can indeed to that.

So this is my encouragement, my challenge and my reminder: stomp your feet, stand your ground and remember that the person with the power to fight hardest is yourself. Your words to yourself are just needed as your words to others.

And the other part of that is this: surround yourself with good people. Because they will give you the courage to stomp your feet and stand your ground.

So I guess this blog does speak of the loveliness of this place because I am surrounded by truth, kingdom and love and I have the roaring voice inside me to yell back at what comes at me.

I have people around me on a daily basis that walk in who they are and because of that I am able to stand in who I am.

This community empowers me more then I can describe.

And man, is it lovely.
playing haman: be your own sparkle tape

July 2nd, 2015

{As you know from my last blog I was up in the mountains of southern California last week at Royal Family Kids Camp.}

The Saturday before we left for camp I got a phone call from the drama coordinator, who happens to be one of my cheerleaders in life, Michele. She asked me if I wouldn’t mind being in the drama that year.

Sure! I’d love to be a part of the wonderfully, wacky group of people who put on the drama.

Who would I be playing?

Haman.

If you don’t know the story of Esther all you need to know is that Haman was Hitler before Hitler existed. He wanted to kill all the Jews and then at the end of the story he was hung in the gallows. (if you prefer the veggie tales version he is sent to the island of perpetual tickling.)

Now the being in the drama was fine. I was in theater in high school and have no problem making a fool of myself in front of kids. So, what was I actually worried about?

It may sound dumb but I was worried I was going to be booed.

In the past I’ve watched the person playing the “evil” character get booed through the week.

So I started in early. All day Monday before the kids met Haman I told the them that I would be playing a man who made really bad choices and I made them agree they would still be my friend.

(Ok ok I may have resorted to bribery with scrapbook tape and stickers)

Guess what? I didn’t get booed.

The kids came up to me and had conversations about what was going to happen to Haman, the choices he made, how tantrums don’t solve anything. On the off chance a kid called me Haman, I would look at them shocked and ask if I was wearing a wig. Most of the time they’d giggle and say no then call me Miss Meg (and ask me for some sparkle tape).

My 5 day stint as Haman made me think of all the times in life where I was freaked out about what COULD happen. Like this week, last year, I was afraid to go to Spain for so many reasons.

One main one was “what if they don’t like me?”. Which, like being afraid of being booed was so very dumb. People I loved, and who loved me were already there waiting to hug me when I got off the plane.

But like my sparkle tape to the kids I took “precautions” when I got to Spain.

I did. I volunteered for things and was overly helpful.

For so long I thought the value I brought was ONLY by what I did.

But of course, when it came down to it none of THAT really mattered. I remember the week of reunion when I had been there a mere 6 weeks Kellen came up to me and told me I was appreciated (and what he may not know is I lost it promptly after). It hit me hard that I had barely been there- and that people were seeing ME, not the role I was attempting to play.

I forget that who I am is someone who is capable of being appreciated and loved. Who I was last week was still a person who the kids knew loved them. So even IF they would have booed me they would still know I loved them. (Though I stand by the fact the sparkle tape DEFINITELY helped.)

I believe it’s one of those deeply rooted human lies that we each have: that we aren’t enough without the things that we can bring to the table. And I believe that singular thing can cause us to NOT bring what we really have. I believe it causes us to bring THINGS not HEART.

It causes us to SET things on the table and not SIT at the table.

Playing Haman was hilarious. I got to spend my nights at camp with some hysterical people and I got to use gifts that have been long buried. I could have said no to playing Haman, because I was a wee bit worried, but that would have been silly.

I shook hands to an agreement to do the thing in Washington back in October, sitting in front of El Ultimo Mono. And that handshake agreement is officially in real life. In now time. There is a cute little yellow house waiting for me with a roommate whom I adore to the moon and back.

And all of those lies that I’m not enough, that I have nothing to bring, that I’m going to fail, they’ve all made rounds in my head.

We can’t be afraid to just sit at the table. We can’t be afraid to bring what we deem nothing to a table that seems bursting with everyone else’s gifts and talents.

It’s ourselves that matter. It’s what is innately in us. We don’t have to bring anything extra. Sure, you can if you want too but it’s not necessary.

And at the table you are surrounded by people who won’t let you be scared off by some silly little lie that you aren’t enough. Or that someone is going to boo you, or not see who you actually are outside of the job you work to pay the bills.

Show up and open your mouth in spite of what people may think and see what happens. Show up even if you think you might get booed because of a way you used to be in the past. Show up even if you think that someone ELSE may deem you unqualified.

Show up not to PROVE you are enough but to ACKNOWLEDGE that you know that you are.

Don’t bring sparkle tape to the table- be your own sparkle tape.
untitled honesty on friendship

March 28th, 2015

I was the kid in junior high that sat by herself and read a book at lunch and I was completely fine with that.

I had friends that I hung out with in high school, girls who were in the same AP classes as me and my after school time was taken up in the little theater rehearsing for whatever play was going on at the time. The people I still keep in touch with are those ones, the ones who I spent hours at a time with painting sets and rehearsing lines.

I moved away for college and made friends there. I chose to be a little more outgoing. I was in choir so I was plopped right into a group of 50 women who I wandered southern California with on weekends. I lived with 3 other women who I laughed, danced and with whom I made seemingly bad decisions.

What I am trying to say is I have always HAD friends.

The last two years have been community on high. I participated in an 11 month mission trip where day in and day out I was with the same people. Then I went to a 6 month leadership academy in Spain where I lived in a house with other interns and sat around a dinner table every night.

And it was those moments, those ones where I had to live in these communities where I realized something about most of the friendships I’ve had in my life:

I don’t always 100% believe that I am someone’s first choice. That I would be anyone’s first phone call. And because of that I hold friends at an arms length. I don’t expect anything from people.

There is a small group of people who I do believe, now, that I am the first choice.

But I don’t go into most friendships believing that. I don’t go into friendships believing that I me, in who I am, is enough. That I don’t need to do some tricks to get someone to like me.

And isn’t it that feeling that makes us post the pretty, filtered pictured on instagram, or edit statuses until they are just perfect explaining the best of our days?

I’m not saying to post depressing things or “my life is the worst” statuses like when were teenagers and had instant message and would make roses out of an @ sign.

What I am saying is we need to stop believing that we have to wrap ourselves in pretty pink paper. Something Shauna Niequist says in her book Bittersweet hits home for me.

“I’ve spent most of my life and most of my friendships holding my breath and hoping that when people get close enough they won’t leave, and fearing that it’s a matter of time before they figure me out and go.”

That’s how I’ve felt a lot of my life. That I wasn’t enough. That I didn’t merit the first phone call. That I’m not a first choice.

And that is a sucky way to live.

We need to choose not to live that way. This isn’t about comparison or something that someone else is doing. This is me, and my perception about other’s action.

And the knowledge that I am not going to be everyone’s first choice, but I am on a handful of people’s speed dials.

It comes down to the realization that I don’t need to be liked by everyone. It comes down to being myself and knowing that as long as I am that it is enough.

We need to stop believing that we need to be something other than who we are. It’s something I’m obviously still working out and walking through and figuring out what to do when the lies hit.

And thankful, I have those friends to remind me who I am when I forget.
lovely, once more

October 11th, 2014

I don’t like writing things out by hand. It feels as if the words that I place on paper have more power and emotion behind them then the words that I type out.

I don’t know why.

I just know that it is scarier for me.

It is scarier for me to place things handwritten in a journal.

It is scarier for me to place HURT in a journal.

There is so much pain involved in placing phrases and story in my own hand, phrases that hurt parts of my soul.

My journal is sacred. It’s filled with notes from class, quotes from books that impact and lovely musings.

It is where I separate the light from the dark. It is where I should be able to be vulnerable.

But here in this moment I want nothing to do with vulnerability.

I don’t want to fill my journal with words and phrases.

It is terrifying

It terrifies me so much that I bought watercolors to paint the pages in my journal and make them beautiful so I would WANT to write in them. To entice me to place words inside its covers.

I have another blog started on another blank page.

It’s about one of the reasons I am at G42.

A reason I never talk about.

I was going to explain it.

Because in all honesty I just want it to go away.

But while in conversation with one of my precious people in the haven and warmth of her home I realized I still hurt.

I still feel ugly in those things.

As the women who are influential in my life always say tears and anger are a map.

My tears showed me a lot today.

And it’s tough. I’m sitting here on the floor trying to even eek out a sentence in regards to all that’s in my head. All the beginnings of sentences I began in conversation with my dear friend.

I guess I want to encourage myself and in turn encourage you to write the ugly things. I’m writing mine on beautiful painted pages in my journal. I’m surrounding things I deem ugly with beauty.

I think it’s wonderful that I live in a world where ugly things are made lovely so often.

And that’s what I want to strive to do. Show people what they deem ugly in their story and show how they can create out of it beauty

That’s what I’ll be doing in my journal. Sentence by sentence, line by line, I’m going to paint pictures with my words and make the things that aren’t lovely, lovely once more.
an aggressive wind

October 7th, 2014

Last night as I walked back and forth around my little town the wind was blowing something fierce. I had to put on a sweatshirt to walk to a friends and I was in love with the cold,almost violent wind that was making a noise down the sweet cobblestone streets of Mijas.

The wind never stopped last night.

It got louder and more consuming. Slamming doors, throwing things off clotheslines, shifting our curtains with every inhale of air. And I couldn’t find peace amidst it.

Normally the wind brings me home, hope, calm. Even in it’s most rowdy, I revel in its presence.

Last night it scared me. It brought me unrest, I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted it to stop, I wanted there to be a moment that I could take a deep breath before it started again.

I wanted to yell at the wind. I wanted to open my mouth and shout. I didn’t like what it was riling up. I didn’t feel the peace it normally brings.

I know that wind stirs and settles and calms. It mixes things up to make them look new. It brushes away debris that doesn’t need to be there. It cleans and makes a mess all at the same time.

The wind wasn’t cleaning last night. It wasn’t allowing anything to exist inside of it. It was moving things to places where they didn’t necessarily belong and it was up to us to open doors and put things back together.

We needed to clean up what the wind left behind.

After last night I feel as if the wind left me in a mess. It was the exact picture of what I feel inside. There is this massive destructive wind going on within. Pressing against the places I’m pushing into and challenging me to stop.

To be silent and to stop.

But here’s the thing: the wind may be aggressive; but I can outlast it. The wind may put everything in disarray, but I know how to clean. The wind may scare me in the night but eventually it will be day.

And the wind will stop.

The wind will stop before I stop.

So this morning when the sun finally peeked its head out over the mountains, my curtains stopped rustling.

I opened doors and windows again and cleaned up what the wind brought.

Last night was a reminder that something stirring up isn’t the greatest, that something being pushed around and reaching the point of feeling unsettled isn’t fun.

But it also brought the picture that morning will always come. And that we can outlast the night no matter how dark it seems. Right now, the wind is doing something in me; even when it isn’t outside for me to see. It’s pushing things around and calling me to sit in the dirt and the muck and be ok.

The aggressive wind showed me that I can sit in the chaos and not become chaotic. That there can be destruction around me and I will not collapse.

And the wind will stop before I do.