The Chrysalis Year

I started out 2017 with a New Year's Resolution to write a blog entry once a week. I kept it fairly consistent until about August than dropped the habit in favor of spending more time on song writing and life stuff.

This year was incredibly transformative and I'm super grateful for it. I'm in awe of all the things I achieved. 

-I wrote 28 original songs

-I wrote music for 14 songs for Feather's A Super Hero Musical

-I wrote music for 8 songs for LIVE's musical episode

-I dropped my office day job and went full time as a freelance musician and teacher

-I turned 30

-I got engaged

-I survived my first full year without my mom and wrote a lot of cool stuff

This has been such an awesome year and I look forward to what 2018 has in store. I may start blogging more consistently again. We'll see. Anyway I started the year with a poem and I'm ending it with a poem-

The Chrysalis year

This year was a Chrysalis year

Wriggling out of a room full of fears

Breaking thru anxiety

And shedding layers that no longer served me

This was a year to rise from the ashes

As I tend to do from time to time

And learn to fly holding my newfound resilience

Humans aren’t butterflies

There’s always another chance to change

We’re more like snakes

Shedding skin

There’s always another layer to let go

And it takes awhile to know

And trust the next step

I’m ready to keep flying forward

Letting the light shine brighter

Than ever before

Exploring all things unseen

Grateful for all the lessons I’ve learned

Looking forward to what’s around the corner

On God and Storms and that Kirk Cameron rant

(This is post is a combination of ideas I have floating in my head from reading a ton of different authors. It is a rant so rather than citing my sources I gave you a reading list at the end. Thing about being UU is you read all the good books)

So I’ve got a lot running around in my mind with the hurricane and all the 9/11 posts. What triggered this blog is an article I saw on Facebook that Kirk Cameron was quoted as saying “god sent the hurricane in order for us to learn to be humble.”This elicits a knee jerk response from me for many reasons.  I read “A Paradise Built in Hell” By Rebecca Solnit earlier in the year and so I sort of see the thought processes. That book has many a case study of how communities come together thru natural disasters and how people can be transformed by them.  However, saying that "storms were sent by a god who seeks to punish people and make us humble" can be toxic thinking. It gives God too much of a human quality. I don’t believe in a "capital G male pronoun bearded dude God.”  I believe that God is the essence of creativity and peace. Because God is the essence of creativity we can only describe God in poetry. God's true pronoun is love and we are most connected with God when we are connected to each other.

Rather than saying “everything happens for a reason.” Or everything is “planned by God.” I think that everything that happens was meant to happen because it happened. You can look at the literal physical cause and effect for the why. (i.e. climate change and meteorology and all that jazz). After the event occurs, we make meaning from how these events impact our lives. So everything happens...and we make up the reason. We choose how to respond to it and when we respond with positive action, gratitude, and presence in the moment, we are operating from that higher self that is attributed to God.  So OK Kirk I agree with you that for some disasters can be a kick in the pants to remind us of our own humanity but the storm wasn’t a punishment for sins. Petty punishment is an entirely too human quality to ascribe to a superior being and in fact I’m pretty sure that sort of behavior is the essence of original sin. Also take a look at science please ktnx.

I’ve been juggling a lot of Richard Rohr (Catholic mystic) and Tara Brach (Buddhist author/ lecturer) and a common theme that comes thru is the idea that original sin is our “fight or flight.” “To Sin” means to miss the mark. When we “miss the mark” we lose our connections with our fellow humans. We get caught in a survival mode and look out for ourselves rather than others. In moments of grace and humility or in moments when we are helping each other survive, we approach a state of “attend and befriend.” People begin to work together as a team. It brings out the helpers.

I don’t believe that God causes the storm, but I do think that moments of great destruction often result in a mass connection with that higher self. These are moments when people work together to pull themselves out of the rubble.  When we realize that we are all humans and life is fragile, when we work together to help others, when we act from a place of love rather than fear, we can reach a connection with that love that connects us all. So yes inner paradise, humility, and grace can come from going thru a personal hell but it's extremely bad form to wish that hell upon others or say they deserved it.

Reading list of things that inspired this:

“A Paradise Built in Hell” by Rebecca Solnit

So many Tara Brach lectures

So many Richard Rohr meditations

Forgiveness, Writers Block, and Just Doing The Thing

As a birthday gift for myself I signed up for the DailyOm Course “A Year to Clear What’s Holding You Back.” It give you a quick daily reading to help you clear your mind of negative patterns and get in touch with your higher self. All that good stuff. One of the lessons earlier in the week is really sitting with me. It was called the "4 action steps of clearing." It can be used with any task where you may experience internal resistance. Those action steps are:

Intention

Action

Non-Identification

Compassion

Intention- This is the thing I want to do and why it’s important that it gets done

Action- I am doing the thing

Non-Identification- I observe any negative whiny nonsense that happens in my mind but I don’t attach to it or even label it as whiny nonsense just observe it and keep doing the action

Compassion- I hold love for myself as I power thru something that might be hard. I complete the action and find a sense of peace

So I read this lesson and went about my day. Immediately applied it to chores and doing dishes and continued to apply it while going about my busy day. What I love about these four steps is that it allows me to observe the chatter that’s going on but also acknowledge that chatter as a separate thing rather than getting overwhelmed.

The same day that I encountered these four steps I also read a quote by Richard Rohr about forgiveness that stuck with me-  “to accept reality is to forgive reality for being what it is.” I connected this passage to the non-identification/ compassion steps: when I observe but don’t attach to the chatter and hold compassion for myself I am forgiving myself for the negative thoughts or mistakes I make and work to find that peaceful sense of flow and focus. I also find again and again that when I complete the task the more difficult I had perceived it to be, the more excitement there is at the end.

Now I get super meta about this- as I go thru the task of writing my (mostly) weekly blog I am following these 4 steps:

Intention- I am writing this blog. I have some nifty stuff to say.

Action- Writing the blog

Non-identification- in the back of my mind I notice the voices that create writer’s block building tension. “This is dumb. I don’t want to do this right now. Yada yada yada” I hear y’all but look at me I’m still typing, suckas!

Compassion- I create a peaceful space inside. I am super proud of myself as I write and I also know that I have so much more to grow and that is awesome.

What I’m learning is that the key is to show up. To commit to the intention and the action and let the rest flow. It’s a lesson that I continue to learn. I feel like I lost momentum in my various creative projects and having these four steps helps me to power thru. Funny how building a spiritual practice is...a practice.

Adventure!

For the past week I have been embracing the word “adventure” as my mantra. Specifically “Adventure!” said in an exuberant way whilst flailing my arms. I switched into this mindset while I was on my New York trip. That week I was going thru a lot of travel anxiety that was heightened by grief feels-it was the anniversary week of losing my mom.  I’d like to think this burst of inspiration happened while I was flying to NYC and being weirdly anxious about logistics.  I remember listening to “How Far I’ll Go” and thinking “Girl, if Moana can sail out into the void you can handle getting a cab at LaGuardia. Chill.”

There was something about taking a trip where there were no specific plans that really helped my mind relax. It was so great to go to a city that I don’t know super well but feel comfortable in and explore with friends (I was in town for a friend’s bachelorette party). It was my third time visiting NYC and my first time feeling truly confident in my visit. In the past I felt overwhelmed by it.  On this trip I just went with the flow. It was the first time where I felt that it would not be outside the realm of possibilities for me to live there. I grew up going on vacations to Chicago, now Chicago is home. NYC is the new city to experience as a wide-eyed tourist...well a tourist with city sensibilities. I’m wide-eyed inside but you know I can power walk with the real New Yorkers.

Anyway I had all of that Sunday to go on Manhattan adventures. I went to church, caught up with friends, saw School of Rock on Broadway, got to go backstage to see friends who are in the show. It was amazing.

Since I’ve been back I’ve embraced this sense of adventure in my regular life. Because my schedule is so sporadic the best thing to do is to take it one day at a time. I can look at what I have scheduled make a plan for the day and call it an adventure.

I want to use the mantra of “adventure!” against any problem.

Can’t find parking? Adventure!

Having a technical issue? Adventure!

Difficult people at the grocery store? Adventure!

Might have to reschedule my vacation? Adventure!

Performing at a Lutheran church and learning how they do things different than Catholics? Adventure!

The world is a hot mess and I’m going to do my best to increase love and positivity? Adventure!

I guess what I’m discovering with this adventure mantra is it helps me to open up to what is from a place of faith. It does that in one word.

Here is a thing I am doing. Adventure!

It will be challenging. Adventure!

I’m excited to do it. Adventure!

I’m confident that I will get thru it. Adventure!

Will I always be this excited about life's adventures? Nope! Sometimes things are really sucky and I don't feel called to adventure but you know that's part of the journey too. Feelings of doubt are totally acceptable parts of the adventure and usually result in the best songs in Act 2.

Life is a journey full of little adventures and I love it.

There's a Carly Simon Song For That Too...

My mom would say that “there is a Carly Simon song for pretty much any life situation.”  Usually, we’d muse about Carly Simon while I was going thru some breakup or some other boy troubles. This is also why Little Black Book is one of my favorite movies because the mother/ daughter love of Carly Simon is a major plot point. Also the movie ends-spoilers- in her getting her dream job, screaming on the phone to her mom, meeting Carly Simon, and fainting.

I’ve been listening to Like a River a lot lately. I tried to listen to it shortly after Mom died. I still felt too numb to feel the feelings. Like I’d sing along with the lyrics and wonder why I wasn’t crying.  Now I am in a place where it’s the thing I need to listen to. It’s the exact Carly Simon song that I need for the moment.

It’s funny but I feel like my grief angst is becoming more tangible. It’s less of an underlying stress that haunts me and more of a funk.  A“low-lying-write-in-your-journal-and-blast-sad-folk-songs” funk. A very similar flavored funk to the “some boy did college Gail wrong...again” funk. I know how to do this funk. That’s the funk where I’m a songwriter and eat ice cream! Also I get to go thru an angst funk with a supportive partner at my side who will feed me snacks! Huzzah.

Recently I got the advice that you have to treat grief in an intentional way, otherwise it pals around with your survival mechanism. That is totally a thing. I get caught in loops where something will set off a feeling and I’ll go about my day, turn into a bit of a gremlin, and eventually something sets me off and I cry. I retrace my steps and I come back and realize it’s some facet of grief.

I suppose when I was going thru breakups or going thru major life transitions and feeling the funk it was easier to name the funk. Grief is a longer funk to unpack. It’s such a deep pain that the default is to self medicated and pretend that everything is fine and you put on your confidence and then the spiritual Jenga tower gets knocked down by your mom’s  flour sifter that you find in a box in her garage...for example.

In breakups and life transitions it was more logical to unpack the transition. There are rituals in place for breakups that involve shenanigans with friends and journalling and ice cream and Thelma and Louise. When you lose a job or move to a new place there is also a level of grief but there are definite traditions in place and its easier to ask for what you need. In grief there are shenanigans with friends at the beginning when you are still a bit crazy pants and then the rest of the ritual is sort of DIY.

Working thru my loss has been like working thru a breakup with my childhood while simultaneously connecting with my inner child and make sure she gets to go on all the adventures. It’s been a complete reawakening and I’m grateful for it but it. Is. hard.  This month is a slew of anniversaries of various points of mom’s struggle, culminating in her death on August 4th.  Piecing together the events in my head feels like a fucked up cancer version of the stations of the cross. I am putting together all the pieces of her suffering and all the dates in my mind as I hit the anniversary points.

A year ago today I was hanging out in her hospital room. I had rushed to Iowa after I got a call that she was in the ICU after going into respiratory distress. We sat in her hospital room whist she was a little loopy on painkillers. We were talking some estate logistics but she would continuously assure us that she “had no intention on dying anytime soon.”  She died about 10 days after that.

Years before she went back on chemo we were in her car listening to Carly Simon. “Like a River” came on. I got the “song intro tingles”. She immediately changed the track. My memory puts a particular harshness to this skipping.  We didn’t unpack that moment but I remember it bothering me. I wasn’t aware enough to think that it poked her emotionally. I just remember being mad because I really liked the song.

I know it was hard for her. I forgive her for not being open about it.

She was a different person than I am. She liked to keep things private. If I were in her situation I most likely would have been incredibly open about how I was dying and scared and I probably would have written an album about it or something.

I am a person who dives head first into the sad song that will make me cry and surrenders to riding the wave. Pump of the Carly Simon and Ani Difranco. It’s gonna be a bumpy July to August.

The Butterfly Phase

So this week I've been settling into new patterns. I'm teaching a morning summer camp and working on various projects and generally getting into the swing of my freelance schedule. I've also been taking more time to process grief stuff and unpacking at how far I've come in the past few months (almost a year. ahh!) I think that I'm out of the chrysalis of the more squishy bits of grief and am learning how to be my best butterfly self. So that's what this poem comes from:

The Butterfly Phase

The best way to honor my mom

Is to be my own person

To stand strong

To feel like I belong

To trust my instincts when something is wrong

To listen to my heart’s song

The best way to honor my mom

Is to live my life to fullest

To be grateful for opportunities

To seek out more and more

Places I want to explore

I’m soaring

Transforming

Like a big beautiful

Unapologetic butterfly

Who wears a fair amount of tie-dye

Taking time

To land

Sigh and take in all the things I see

I am grounded in myself

My reality

The idea that life is constantly

Changing and I’m open and engaged

With whatever it has to throw at me

My confidence is in the driver’s seat

Worry is an occasional passenger

But it doesn’t get to drive the car

It becomes more and more easy

To clear space in my mind

And sigh as I settle into the breathing room

My mom would be so proud

To see the person I’m becoming

The weird thing is. I’m not entirely sure

I’d be becoming this person if I wasn’t working thru this loss

It’s some “hero’s- journey- Lifetime- movie” nonsense

But I’ll see blessings in the loss

And continue to walk explore the world

With this clearer vision

Redistribution

It’s funny how one person can fill so many roles. When they pass, the roles they play are passed onto other people.

Cheerleader, support person, anchor, best friend, voice of wisdom, person I sought to impress. Mom. As I’ve been powering thru this year I’ve been reflecting on how those roles have been redistributed.

She was my cheerleader, the person to affirm that I was doing great. Now I work with a life coach. It’s funny how sometimes growing up means finding another adult who you can pay to listen to you and help.

She was my anchor. I have handed this role over to my boyfriend. We are learning how this works.

She was my best friend. I have had many good friends/ best friends throughout my life who I have considered to be family. No one will replace her.

She was a voice of wisdom in my life, now her voice comes out when I speak sometimes. I say a lot of really wise sassy things and they sound so much like her it’s scary. It’s part channeling, part how I’m programmed.

She was the person I ultimately sought to impress. Now I have this freedom where I am allowed to just do things because I want to do them. Because I am called to do them. I am my greatest ally, my guide. She is one with spirit/ mystery/ woo woo/ whatever/ memory. I find solid ground in this developing sense of the spirit.

She was my mom. I have a lot of maternal figures in my life. I still have my Grandma. I have a handful of awesome older female mentors. I have my dad.  But she was my mom.

My mom was these things and more to me. When she passed the pieces of who she was were laid out in front of me, strewn about my mind. Now I trace how I can track the way her roles have been redistributed. I find new patterns, new ways to relate, new ways to live my life.

It’s hard. It will continue to be hard. But it helps to have a map. It helps to know that I have a vast network of people who can somehow fill in her shoes. Lord knows she often took jobs that would normally take 10 people to do. I probably got that from her too.  

Should's and Could's

Could's and Should's

I’ve been turning my should's to could's

Slowly but surely

My need to succeed is rooted in

An inner drive

An urge to thrive

My should's are becoming could's

“I should write a song today” becomes

“I could write a song today!”

Then a song casually appears before me

My should's are becoming could's

Because lets face it

I spent the last few years should-ing all over the place

Trying to show that I can make it

Trying to prove to my mom that I was capable

Of making a living in the arts

I shoulda-ed myself into burnout

Saying yes too many times

Filling up my life

Choked by the weight of obligations

I still get the should's

They come from inside

The need to survive to make a mark

To keep the spark fan it into a flame

Not let it burn out again

I’m less overwhelmed

I don’t drown in expectations

I pick them apart

Start to make a map

That becomes easier to follow

Confident that the things I know I can do will bring me to my goal

I get the should's when I’m filled with regret

I should have could have done something

I bet if I had made a different choice

I hear that negative voice

And I will it away with a

Wouldacouldashoulda

you’re fine

You’re fine

...you’re fine

I am excited for all the could's

I encounter every day

The challenge of doing the things that scare me

And driving thru them with confidence

(literally driving thru the thing that scares me

When that thing is lower Wacker to 290)

So as I go thru each day

I make the list of things that I can do

I trust my inner motivation

And I know

That what matters

Is finding my place of joy

And letting the could's flow

Quantity and Quality

Somewhere in one of the books in Julia Cameron's The Artist Way series she says that one of the keys to creativity is to sit down to work and say to your designated higher power/ muse " ok I'll take care of the quantity, you take care of the quality." That thought has been sticking with me a lot lately and is a pretty solid prayer to have in the back pocket before writing or work on a show. So I wrote a poem exploring that.

Quantity and Quality

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

Let the clay tell you what it wants to be.

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

Let the words flow freely.

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

On the cloudiest days I know the sun is there. 

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

Let the song inside sing out. 

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

I listen carefully to my heart.

I take care of the quantity you take care of the quality,

The only way to get there is to start.

Reflections

Reflections

Standing in front of the mirror

Words of encouragement from the past swirl around me

Receiving my reflection from another’s eyes:

Firecracker

Mover and a shaker

Free spirit

Badass

Words of encouragement from throughout the years

I am the actor looking at the script

Seeing what the other characters say about my character

I piece together a path

I see myself doing the math

Putting the puzzle together

I want to take on the mantle

Of these titles from the years

Stand above the fears

The stories I tell myself

The character I sometimes create in my head

I am that free spirit,

Firecracker,

Badass,

I always have been

This character inside me

Full of energy

Fire in her belly

Ready to reach out to the world

I gaze at my reflection

Waves of introspection

Calm in my mind

I am home

The magic of that one table you always sit at...

I don't know about you, but I tend to have that one table I always sit at when I'm hanging out at coffee shops.  The last conversation I had with my mom was while sitting at one of those tables.  I was killing time at the Starbucks at Piper's Alley. I had some time before a show at Second City Training Center.  I was hanging out, writing in a journal I had just bought, and I called my mom to check in.
She was still in the hospital.  They were chasing a myriad of complications she had after her stem cell transplant. I had visited her the previous week after she had gone into respiratory distress in the hospital. She was out of the ICU and on various painkillers and such while they were chasing a myriad of complications. I said my I love you and played my show.

The last time I talked to my mom was in the middle of me living the dream. I actually really love this. I love this because her support of my dream took it's own journey. In high school I would say I wanted to major in theatre and mom would make various comments that would range from "well you're good at math and science, take a look at engineering" to " theatre is a nice hobby but you'll need a day job" to "well at least go to a real school (one that has a math program) so you have options." Then my senior year she want thru her first round of treatment for multiple myeloma. I remember her saying as I was going off to college to major in theatre "life's too short not to follow your dreams. Besides, you can't outsource live theatre to India."

As I went thru college and started building my connections in Chicago, my mom would say how she was proud of me and how she had faith in my ability to make it in my career because i was good at networking. She was so supportive and proud of me and was my cheerleader. She would still make comments about how she didn't know how both her kids ended up in the arts. I think that's pretty hilarious as she's the one who was constantly creating quilts and using her creative problem solving skills wherever she went but life's funny like that.

I've found myself killing time at that Starbucks a lot recently getting my pre-show caffeine and killing time. At first I was afraid to sit at the side of the Starbucks. Like that table had some sort of power. I sat on the opposite side of the Starbucks like "ha that'll show you demon table." But a few weeks ago I sat there and I thought. Hey this is actually kind of cool.

When I sit there I think about how proud my mom was of my success. I think about all the trips we took to Chicago when I was in high school when we'd go see shows and I'd think "i'm going to move here someday." At one point we sat there together and killed time before a show (not that specific table I think but maybe. It was awhile ago for story's sake let's say THAT TABLE).

I've been so into the groove of living the dream that I sometimes forget that I'm LIVING THE DREAM.  I've come so far and have so much that I want to do. In all of my reflecting I am learning that yes life is short not to follow my dreams.

A Confession

So today marks the 10 month Aniversary of Mom’s passing.

In my 10 months or so of having a car and working thru grief, I have started listening to KLOVE (christian radio). It’s now my favorite thing to listen to driving between work and home. I suppose part of that is you might as well fill the car with positive and encouraging vibes whilst driving in Chicago. It does wonders for parallel parking alone =). Anyway, this feels weird because I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding my Christian side . I was raised Catholic and UU. I chose team UU in high school partially because I had issues working my mind around Jesus’s divinity and the concept of the trinity. I was also really not into it because there was a priest who would get on tangents about how gays were going to hell. High school Gail was having none of that. After that I landed in sort of a searching agnostic humanist place. As I progressed that grew into a larger sense of God.

As people I knew passed I started to build my belief in a heaven. A simple “I want to believe in a heaven, you believed in a heaven so I believe you are in heaven.”It was a very transitive train of thought. As mom was more of the humanist agnostic flavored UU, I had to take a different route entirely.

A few years ago my mom and I had a conversation where she straight up said she didn’t believe in an afterlife. So in the shock of her death, a whole ton of spiritual growth took place on my end (hello this blog). I believe in universal salvation and for a long time that belief has just been a sassy thing to pull up in conversations:

Friend: aw man I’m going to hell!

Me: I believe in universal salvation. I got your back haha

So it was another thing to pray with various UU ministers in the hospital to all the names of God for her peaceful transition. That’s when my faith went from theories to being real.

So after mom passed I started working everything out in my head. I got all the standard comforting messages of “she lives in your heart” and kept repeating to myself “what would mom do?” I started to work my mind around the idea that she is in heaven and make jokes with friends about how Prince was her orientation buddy to the class of 2016.

A few days after she passed I was back in Chicago, walking along the beach. I was on the phone with a friend. The previous night I had a vision/ performance piece idea about a quilt she had made me and all the love she put into that quilt. Anyway, as I was walking down the beach there was this ratty piece of quilt. I touched it to make sure it was real. I then said to my friend “uhhhh she didn’t believe in this shit and now she’s sending me quilts.” It was one of the more mystical experiences of my life.

So as I tried to rationalize the mystical I came down to this- If I can believe that my mom made it to heaven and that faith that faith is grounding for me, then I can believe in a God, I can also start to work thru my belief in Jesus. (Mind you we still have an open relationship. I’m cool with him I also hang out with Buddha. Rumi likes to party too).

So when I listen to KLOVE although I may disagree with some of the wording, I key into the emotions and the music behind the words. It opens me up to the spiritual experiences of others. It inspires me to write similar songs that have my particular bent on spirituality. It also helps me work thru some baggage.

It annoys me so much that the Christians that are getting media press for doing unchristian things seem to be the loudest in the media.  As a liberal religious person it annoys me to the core. It also makes me afraid to open up about my beliefs. So in listening to Christian music it reminds me of the emotions behind belief.

Honestly I think the emotions and universal human experience of faith can get lost in the dogma. The music gets lost in the lyrics. We all sing songs with different lyrics but the emotion behind it remains the same. So I see it as an exercise in empathy. The more I listen to some else’s experience, the more I understand them and myself.

Maps and Travel Snacks

Maps and Travel Snacks

The fire inside me burns brighter now

Dreams reignited

I feel ready to fight to take flight

The drive to survive and thrive

The fire feels so much more grounded

Confidence in the uncertainty

Excited for all the possibilities that I see

The small steps I have taken

Over the past few months

Have put me miles ahead of where I was before

I want to explore and forge ahead

Preparing all the travel snacks for the journey

I sometimes feel exhausted

Looking at the path ahead

I take it one day at a time

One moment at a time

I am confident but vulnerable

Muddling about in what it means to be human

Here are some things i know:

I can’t pour from an empty cup

I can’t kindle flames if my fire isn’t burning

There’s a time to ponder the nature of existence

To map out dreams and pit stops along the path

And there’s time to just enjoy the trail

And drink a lot of water