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.