I’ve sat here for an hour and half and deleted words, closed documents, switched over to reading books and now I’m back again.
The image that keeps coming into my brain tonight are all the people who moved through the night to see the baby Jesus. Now, I know historically, it wasn’t during December, who knows if it was cold; but all I can see is their breath on the air as the moved through the night to get to the manger.
Their breath moving in front of them, as they walked to meet the baby that would change everything.
And all I can think of our the words I wrote when my mom passed. That even though we were devastated she was gone, she was finally able to breathe again.
I think for the last three years I haven’t been breathing.
I mean I have obviously, been breathing. I’ve been living, moving forward, making choices, trudging through sickness, maneuvering through grief.
But, I’ve realized, that this holiday season I just want to breathe.
It sounds so simple, so cliche’.
People say they want to have breathing room, have space to breathe. That they just need to take a breath.
To me breath is more than space and room.
It’s being alive in a different way than I used to be.
One of the collection of words I deleted simply stated that I feel like I’ve failed this year.
But, really, I think I’ve just been holding my breath in hopes that it would make a difference. That when I came up for air there would be clarity.
And now, this span of time of holidays, I just want to breathe. I want to take deep breathes to my toes.
I know these words don’t feel very holiday. They feel stilted and tired.
These words need to breathe.
So that’s where I am this Sunday before Christmas.
Usually that isn’t the case. I might not like the word, but I see the good things that come from it and I can understand.
Not this year.
On Sunday, I was sitting in church and I was like “ok god, let’s be done. Let’s wrap this one up like a bow.”
And he said “nah, I’m good.”
Because, again, I have to keep going.
And no matter what that’s going to be the case. I’m always going to keep meeting places I’ve been before.
Again and again.
I thought this year would have more answers than it has. I thought maybe it would hold something.
And really, it has held a lot.
It’s still held more than I can even comprehend I know.
Usually, at this point in the year I feel like we’re starting to coast to the finish line.
Like I have a grasp and I start to understand what the baton in the relay race is going to look like.
But, right now, I can’t even see the baton. I don’t know what it looks like, I don’t know if I’m even still moving towards the finish line.
It kind of feels like I’m playing Mario kart with the Steiners and I’m just choosing to go off course because it’s easier.
This year has honestly made me feel like I don’t know who I am at all.
And has made me feel like I know exactly who I am at the same time.
Because I knew this year, each thing I met, I had met before. I knew that each moment where I felt like I was walking through fire, I had walked through it before.
I had done it before so I can do it again.
And because of all of that; I stopped seeing that as a threat.
When I think about the labyrinth and how Sarah, the main character, is utilizing the book she has that is the story of the labyrinth to get through she must feel as if she’s been there before. She knew the book so well that it must have felt a bit like she had been there before.
And there were places in the maze she went to again and again.
She was caught in the place of either moving forward and or allowing herself to “rest” in a place that at one point in the journey been safe.
But the journey moved her forward.
The journey has kept moving me forward.
The things I’ve had to unearth even in just the last stretch of time that have been a reminder to me that my worth is not based on what I do.
That I’m not the glue, even when it feels like if I allow myself to let go control it will all crumble.
It causes me to sit on a street corner in Brasov, Romania across from Betsy Garmon as she leans in to tell me, remind me, implore me that I don’t have to be the glue.
It’s almost as if, I’m still making my way toward the Goblin King.
I haven’t had the chance to tell him he has no power over me.
I am not ready for whatever comes at the end of these words.
As I’ve said; again and again, I write to untangle.
I start at the beginning with words, or a phrase or a reference to the labyrinth or something Hannah Brencher wrote or something my pastor said in church (or honestly just during the work week) that pissed me off because I had to agree with it with gritted teeth.
And then I write.
Currently I feel that if I begin to untangle I might lose it all.
I feel, as if I am hanging onto my sanity with an absolute death grip.
That means, for today, it’s Hannah Brencher.
She does a series of notes for every month and there is always one or two that I latch onto.
For lovely words and truth; @ Hannah Brencher
I know that I know that I know I’m supposed to be letting go.
I can physically feel how tightly wound I am, how I’m still terrified at giving hope a chance.
Because if I can’t control it; who will.
(I know I’m freaking digging a deep hole with these words for my week but here we are).
Truthfully, I haven’t been eating really. I haven’t been sleeping.
I’ve been in survival mode for longer than I care to admit.
The bags under my eyes have their own bags and no amount of concealer can help.
(I also know none of this will be surprising to my best friend).
October was rough with ghosts and dates and memories of what once was. Then during nap time at work the day before Halloween, a text that friend had suddenly passed surprised and shocked me, shook me up.
Solidifying to me that nothing good ever happens in octobers.
I realized this morning standing in the cafe at my church that I am legitimately still terrified to hope that good things will happen.
(To me.)
And that controlling the hurt I encounter will make it hurt less.
I haven’t been feeling very brave lately. Or strong.
Or capable.
These words aren’t meant to strike pity or empathy.
They are literally just truth for me to begin to untangle whatever all this is from my clenched fists.
I think (I know) I’ve fallen back onto a pattern in which doing will get me out of being.
When I had to get taken care for a month last year, it was damn hard for me. Even amidst all that I was going through, I was still writing the menus for work, typing out notes for each and every day I was gone even though it physically made me ill to look at my phone.
When it feels like I’ve come so far from this place of doing as a personality trait I’ve realized it’s deeper and deeper.
That month of dizziness and being unable to move was the hardest month I’ve maybe ever had because if I can’t do then what am I.
So, today, I stare at my clenched fist.
I don’t know what to do about it.
I don’t know what I need to un-grip from.
I just know it’s there.
All the things amidst the grief, the pain, the things that don’t feel like hope but actually are.
And I know; none of this feels good.
The words would make my mom call me. Would cause people to feel like I’m worse off than I am.
But you know what; I’m still here.
And I’m choosing these words because right now in this world, this place we need to know that there are other people moving forward with us in the midst.
I never want to be a person who brings others into her distress, grief or pain.
I want you to know that amidst all of that you can live, you can have laughter and joy.
You can support people and make ordering McDonald’s on DoorDash something you do for the plot.
You can still have joy.
Amidst all this I may not have hope but you damn well better believe I have joy.
We have less than 60 days left in this year.
My word for the year was _______ again.
There are so many things I’ve had to do this year; again and again.
And damn it, I think I’m supposed to learn through these last two months of this year to hope again.
To believe that beautiful, bold, unattainably feeling things can happen for me.
Love, grace, bright spots of color.
I don’t know what else I need to un-grip from, but I do know that I’m supposed to un-grip my aggressive hold on hope and let it do its magic.
Lately, I’ve felt more aware than I’d care to admit about two things:
Point 1: I’m single.
Point 2: I’m childless. (I’m not though a childless cat lady; though maybe I vote like one)
Obviously, this caused me to do my scroll of the last time I talked about single in a collection of words because heaven forbid someone who is single talks about being single.
Earlier this year I got to do something I absolutely love to do: bake and care for people I love. I made desserts for a marriage retreat our church had. I (with help of my amazing assitant) baked a dessert for each couple. I helped set-up, I helped bartend mocktails, I tried to do everything I could so that the couples, the people I love and support, were able to set some time aside for themselves. I did everything I could to support the couple who came to run the retreat who happen to be humans I adore more than life. Being able to support the relationships of humans I love is always a top priority and I was absolutely glad to do it.
When I got home that Saturday night after more or less being kicked out of clean up, I sat on the floor and I cried. Just a little.
I didn’t neccesarily cry because I was sad I wasn’t married. I didn’t cry becuase I was tired. In all fairness those events and doing all of that fill my soul in ways I can’t even articulate.
I cried because walking into a space empty of a person for you can start to get heavier. All the moments wherein you feel just outside of a space. I’m more grateful than I can ever say about the humans I have in my life. I have the best ones known to man. I have ones near and ones far and everywhere in between. I have the absolute best people.
And because of them I go through a shame spiral every time I feel like I need to bring up how singleness is hard. I feel like I delve into a part of christian guilt about saying singleness is hard. All I can hear in my head is all the times I’ve been told that God should be enough BLAH BLAH BLAH. I’m sorry high school youth group, I am absolutely whole without a man and God and I are doing just fine. And don’t even talk about my reaction to my singleness being brave.
Lately I’ve just felt in almost all spaces of my life that I’m right outside the circle. Like I’m just enough to be included but it’s only on account of others. Like I’m allowed to dip my toes but not able to be fully submerged. It’s hard to start these conversations or to even speak them out because of every little thing in my head that tells me that they aren’t valid. That I’m whining. That I should be stronger. That I should just be grateful I have people.
But isn’t it wild that we are so conditioned into feeling guilt or shame for a thing we are designed to want? I don’t know what you’ve been feeling guilt or shame for wanting these days. I don’t know what lies people have told you or spoke over you to make it seem like your desire is less than. I don’t know what season of life you’re looking at through the store windows.
I just know that it is ok to have moments that it’s hard to be looking through a window. I know it’s ok to want that thing for yourself. Be it a spouse, a baby, a place of your own, a cat. And I know that you shouldn’t be feeling guilty for wanting any of it.
I might talk about this more now, I might not. I might just tuck it into a box and deal with it later.
But I guess I’ll just leave you with this: These words aren’t for pity. They aren’t for anyone to tell me all the stories of their cousin Brenda’s best friend who is hair dresser who met a man at 40. They aren’t for anyone to tell me let go and Let God. They aren’t for you to tell me I’m brave.
They are a just a reminder that even the most independent, badass woman (and men) have deep breath to the toes moments, have sit on the kitchen floor in silence moments, have ponder the what-if moments and the take another breath, stand up and keep fucking going. I don’t know what moment of silence you have to keep fucking going from; but I’m here with you. You got this. With love, Meg
I’ve lived a lot of life with the persistent fear that I’m letting people down.
And to be completely and utterly honest I’ve lived the last three years mostly with the gut wrenching fear that I’m letting my mom down with every step I take.
That I haven’t been strong enough, smart enough. That I’m not able to take care of myself.
That I’m not making her proud and that she’s be so disappointed in all the ways I’ve failed.
And I know that all sounds so heavy but if we don’t ever let the heavy things out than all we will do is let them continually weigh us down.
I feel as if I have a lot of evidence in my life of all the ways I’ve been chosen last, been written off a list, not been enough for the people I wanted to be enough for.
That I’m literally just right outside the map with no way if knowing how to be apart of the journey again.
When I was in Ecuador on one of the first days of the world race myself and my team of 6 other women were handed a map of how to get to where we needed to go.
The issue was the place we were and the place we were going weren’t actually on the map- the map was the middle.
We just had to choose to go off and get to the middle without actually having the tools.
And right now, in the moment, I feel like that again. Like I’m looking at a map and I have to get to the end without all the information.
And I feel like I’ve already failed.
I know it’s not true.
I know that I’m not always letting people down.
I know I’m not a last choice.
I know that no one actually has a complete map.
Lately, the heavy has been more heavy than I know what to do with.
And hope feels like fireworks in the distance that is gone in a flash.
But, if there is anything I know that is true it’s that we have to choose to face the lies and the words that go against who we are. We have to not be afraid of them.
We have to stare them in the face.
So that’s what I’m doing right now.
Staring the words in the face that become ticker tape on my brain sometimes.
Staring them in the face because the more I do the more I realize they are untrue.
Want to join me?
Want to stare the things in the face that feel so true until you realize they are mirage that flickers off in the distance?
And let’s replace it all with what is true and full of gritty steadfast hope.
I’m making myself try. I’m sitting here, out in the world, deciding that I can be capabale of putting words on a page. I can be capable of finding something to talk about, something in me can untangle and I can keep trying to figure out the wisps of phrases in my brain. A few weeks ago at church I kept having the image of kids in a pool spinning the water in circles. Making a whirpool and going as fast as they could to get the water to whip them around so fast. I remember doing that as a kid and it was always so fun. But, as I thought about it that day I was struck with the fact that the water was moving. The water moves even in stillness. The kids in the image in my head amped up the movement. The spinning of the water moved things around, brought things to the surface and shook things up. But, even without the spinning the water moved. I have felt, without a doubt, like still water lately. I know that I’m still moving. I know that there is movement in the places that feel stuck. I know there is movement in the places where I feel right out of the water. It’s just damn hard. I’m a little petrified right now of the water getting spun around quickly. Because, I’ve felt like all that’s come up is the grit and the leaves and the lost pool toys long forgotten. I’m a little bit scared because it always seems nothing good comes from the stirring.
I saw a therapist for about 3.5 years. I ebbed with how much I saw him but it was always at least twice a month and for some seasons every week. I was always so anxious heading into a session. It felt like I never knew what was going to come to the surface and I wasn’t ever fully prepared for it. Things always stirred to the surface and it felt as if they were never pretty. Because the things that settle on the bottom usually aren’t the good things. I’m sitting here trying to scan my brain for any example, anything that gives me an example of something bringing good things to the surface when they are stirred.
I know that you stir things to keep them from burning, you stir them to mix flavors or to combine ingredients. Staring at my computer though; I’m unwillingly to step into something that might stir the depths on my inside.
Have you ever known in your depths that you needed to leap, you needed to step outside of what was and you needed to let go of a little control? Like, you just had to trust that there was something to catch you? I don’t feel on the precipice of a big life change at least outwardly. But I do feel like I have a death grip on the thing that’s trying to create a whirlpool inside of me and I’m just refusing to unclench my fist.
I believe we are in an interesting span of time. I think we’re just beginning to fully grasp the depths of ourselves and we’re beginning to grasp our abilities to see beyond who the world may sees us as. We just have to choose to believe that we’re up to the challenge of figuring out all that we are. We have to choose to unclench our fist and let the whirpool bring the good we don’t yet believe it can.
I’m afraid right now. I’m afraid of the straw that may break the camel’s back, I’m afraid of the other shoe dropping. I’m afraid of the wizard being found behind the curtain.
But, I’m also afraid if I don’t unclench my fist now I might never find my way back home to myself again.
So, I’m going to do some things that might cause stirring. I’m going to let people in to places I’ve forced to be still and I’m going to speak words that create movement.
It’s been a really hard place for me to be in. A place where I feel incapable of communicating or saying what I mean, or feel. I’m a writer who has spent most of her life using words that come out of my brain as a place to land. I’ve discovered more than I can even explain via my own writing. I’ve untangled, I’ve stared at words on the screen that I had no clue where they came from but just knew that they were true and real.
I’ve found the end of the rope through my words on more occasions than I can even count.
I’ve found hope in between the lines of my own writing because at the end of the day, when I write it, I know that it’s there. When I write something I know that there is something more in me, something I can grab on too.
Something that is more real than the things that feel dark.
But right now, there is none of that.
It feels like I’m standing in a hole and I have all the pieces to something that will help me out of the hole, but it’s a piece of Ikea furniture and I have no instruction and I don’t have that damn little tool to help me build it.
The only way out of the hole is to build it.
But, instead of building it, I’ve just sat there, not trying because right now it’s easier to stay in the hole than get hurt by the fall again.
Three years ago today I wrote that I was starting to not be afraid of the other shoe dropping.
And then a month later my mom died.
Now, I’m sitting here in this bar, writing these words feeling like I’m just throwing a pity party.
Because I know I’m strong enough to get out of the damn hole.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how my high school youth pastor used to talk about how it was better to be a Christian whose fire was completely out than a lukewarm Christian. I remember, like most things from high school youth group, feeling so incredibly ashamed of that. I remember thinking that I just had to stay “on fire”. I had to do all the things I needed to do. I had to show up, be everything. I needed to sing on the worship team, and go to every bible study.
I couldn’t let the fire die because than I would be less than.
But here I am over 20 years outside of high school youth group and I would like to call bullshit on my youth pastor.
I would much rather have some dying embers of faith than feel as if a wet towel had smothered all the flames.
At the beginning of this I said that I haven’t been able to write; that isn’t completely true. I have been writing.
The words have just all felt completely and utterly devoid of hope.
Which, I know isn’t true.
Because choosing to write is choosing to believe in the hope that there is something at the end of the words.
Choosing to write is choosing to believe I might be able to be a little stronger than I was before I started writing.
Choosing to write is choosing to believe even though I feel incapable of it; I’m still someone who has the ability to stir hope and light.
So, that’s it. That’s me right now.
I guess, that at the end of it all, I’m here with my hands open, being a little more honest than I want.
I feel absolutely unsettled by all of these words and normally that unsettledness would push me to not post them, to shut my computer, maybe to even delete them, but instead I’m choosing for a moment to lean in to the things that don’t feel settled in hopes that the action might help them settle.
In the last couple months I’ve started more blogs and more pieces of words than I care to admit.
I’ve absolutely written the things that I deem safe sans one collection of words back in June.
Ever since those words I’ve been afraid that anything I write about the dark things I feel would negate the words I wrote then, the things I know to be true. The light I know I am.
That me speaking of the things that have been hard would negate the things I know to be true.
I have had a lot of beautiful, sparkly moments this summer. Moments with friends where I belly laugh and sitting in the sun and enjoying every moment.
But, then there have been more moments than I can count that feel like depths I haven’t been to in awhile.
And that is really damn scary to say.
I’ve written in spaces that say I’ve moved past them but in reality the mornings I’ve been awake til 2 or 3 am and the days at work I’ve survived on 3-4 hours of sleep are more then I would care to admit.
When I was at camp and had spent an evening on the absolute verge of a panic attack and I admitted to it Susan one of our directors-she asked if I had a mantra, something to say that grounded me in the moments where I felt like I could keep my breath or my head out of the darkness.
I didn’t. But I came up with one.
I am here.
It’s a play off of the words of Hannah Brencher “be where your feet are”
My feet are here.
I am here.
Then there is this:
My word of the year this year is again.
And I’ve had to work really damn hard to not tack the word on the sentence: it’s 2009, again.
Because that’s honestly all that’s been in my brain. The recesses of my brain that hold dates and memories and pain just keep telling me that I must not be strong enough since I’m here, again.
I want you to know human being reading this that I know, in my absolute knower, that it’s not true.
I know I’m stronger, bolder, and so many things in between.
I know.
But, good god, I never want anyone to feel less than if they feel as if they’ve met the pages they’ve been in the book before.
Something a Nigerian med student told me in a small village on the border of Russia in Ukraine (it’s just a fun sentence I had to say) was that he was never going back to Nigeria. He wasn’t the same so he couldn’t go back, he was going forward to Nigeria.
I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like I’m going back.
I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that the strength I have will be diminished if I admit I’ve met some mountains that have to be climbed that just so happen to look foothills I’ve climbed before.
I’ve been silencing myself because I’m so afraid that people will think I’m a fraud that can’t just get over it.
I’ve been silencing myself because it feels like 2009 and I don’t want to live through that again.
But, when I silence myself I can’t get to the end of the sentence.
When I silence myself, you don’t have the space to get to the end of the sentence in your book,
The end of the sentence is this: it feels like 2009 again, but it’s not.
And if we don’t get to the “but” we can’t negate everything that came before it.
It feels like 2009 again, but I’m stronger.
It feels like 2009 again, but I’ve rebuilt and I will again.
It feels like 2009 again, but I am Meg in 2024.
I don’t know how you are silencing yourself.
I don’t know if you won’t let yourself get to the “but” that negates the thing that scares you that comes before it.
To get to the overcoming we have to get to the “but” in the sentence.
We have to change our language and our outlook.
I don’t know if you feel up for sharing the end of your sentence and if you do please drop it in the comments or shoot me a message.
Here’s mine (sorry for the language):
It feels like 2009 again but, for fucks sake I’m still here.
I have a few defining moments in my relationship with God that I seem to circle back to as an anchor for a season, or an emotion or a theme that seems to continually wind its way around me. And the one that’s come back into my life in recent months that I finally feel out of to talk about is simply the constant image of the nightlight in my life.
I went through the probably the absolute darkest time of my life in 2008-2009. I was on meds, both of my parents had health issues, I had just gotten out of a classroom environment that was not good for me and I was feeling so much more than I was capable of dealing with.
I was thankfully in therapy and trying to do as much as I could.
But, the darkness and the things around me felt like too much.
It was a Sunday morning. It’s one of the images that stay in my brain despite my desire to not remember it so clearly. I was looking at myself in my bathroom mirror and I stared hard at myself and just thought the words “maybe it would just be better if I wasn’t here anymore”.
And then I closed my eyes.
When I closed my eyes I saw myself standing in an incredibly dark room and in the corner of the room I saw it. It was a dim, dim nightlight. It was down at the corner of the wall, where the light socket was. One of those rectangular ones that you get at the dollar store with a yellow light and a flimsy cover.
I will never forget that picture in my brain and how for all of my life since then when I’ve found myself in places of darkness I’ve come back to it. I’ve come back to the reminder that the darkness could not completely snuff out the light.
To be completely and utterly honest in ways I don’t love to be; I needed this image a few months ago. I was trudging. And one night I was in the shower and I sat down and I sobbed and sobbed and let the water engulf me and had the thought crossed my mind about just staying in the water. (Don’t worry mom, I’m ok).
And I sat in my shower sobbing I saw that light again and I got up and I shook it off and I kept (pardon my French) fucking going.
Because, at the end of the day, that’s what I was going to do. I was going to get up no matter what and keep going.
That brings me to today.
I didn’t go to church yesterday because cramps and no sleep but, I listened to church at work this morning to help get me out of a Monday mood.
When we got to the activation at the end, the thing I heard God say while I scooped pasta was “you’re still light”.
In all honesty, I just thought of that nightlight picture and really just believed his light was still there. That the darkness couldn’t drown it out.
That MY darkness couldn’t drown it out.
I knew though, that there was something there, something I needed to untangle.
Something that needed to become undone.
I didn’t realize that the thing the needed to be undone was a narrative I’ve kept close for 15 years.
The narrative being that the nightlight was just God.
The thing that was stronger than the darkness around it. The thing that has still been lit in the rooms that feel devoid of light wasn’t just God.
It was me.
Because no matter how dark my world has felt, no matter how much I wanted to just stop moving;
I’m still light.
Last year when I went through my identity work with my pastor and my people and kind of met myself where I didn’t know I needed too, the picture I saw was one of a home with a candle in the window.
A small, soft light that was always on, welcoming those that need it in.
No matter what I’ve believed about myself the light will always shine through.
That feels more important than I even know how to articulate.
I’ve always been afraid of the things that feel dark in my life. That the darkness is something that can engulf me, that it can dampen the light that I believed was outside of me- not a light that I brought myself. That the darkness was me.
We all bring something to the table. We all have something inside of us that the humans around us need.
And I hope that for all my days the light I am shines on what you bring.
And that I never forget that my ability to keep the darkness at bay.
A narrative in my life changed today over wontons and bubbly and people watching.
Here’s a reminder that no matter how long you’ve held onto something you always have the ability to realize that it’s not what you think it is.
I deleted about 300 words that I wrote yesterday because I knew in my knower that I wasn’t actually typing what was true.
Well, it was true but it wasn’t it. It wasn’t the thing that I needed to be saying for myself at the beginning of this new year.
I didn’t need to start with all the ways in which I’ve always felt less than.
I didn’t need to start “used to be”.
Years ago a mentor was asking me questions about journaling and I stated that I don’t journal when I don’t want to face the thing that I already know.
I absolutely know what’s at the end of this; but I absolutely don’t want to see it in writing.
I’ve always been…scratch that.
I’m currently working on letting go of the constant fear that I’m too much.
And it’s really hard.
I’ve spent a very long time checking over my shoulder, backspacing over words, regretting input I’ve given, questioning my abilities and wondering if I’m allowed space in the places I inhabit.
Now, there’s a lot of reasons and a lot of situations and a lot of times where those things have been proved correct in my head.
But, (it should be noted how long I’m waiting to type the next words) today, at one of my favorite little bars, I’m choosing to say that those narratives and those people and those situations no longer have the ability to take my voice, my abilities or inhabit the spaces I should be in.
And if you ever want to know those things, or people or stories, I can share, but it won’t be from anything but a place of storytelling not situations that hold me back.
Because I’m not going to tiptoe around the things that make me who I am, that I’m good at.
I think it’s time I don’t shrink back anymore.
It’s time to unravel and undo the things that have caused me to keep a distance.
Today, I decide, to no longer be hesitant in being the first person to believe in myself.
