It seems strange that an online writing space could seem so significant.  After all, it’s just a portal for my words - meaningless really.  What I write (and what you read) is not impacted by the URL you type to get here…or is it?

I’ve been writing online for just under nine years (my first entry on my ancient geocities webpage is dated December 2000, officially branding me an online journaling dinosaur. Blogs didn’t even exist, back in the day).

For almost a decade I have been spilling my soul onto a computer screen, offering what I have and being given so much more in return.   Through this process the very act of blogging – of taking my words and releasing them into cyberspace – has become an integral part of the art and therapy of writing for me.  A piece never really feels done until I hit publish and let it go.

Crunchy has been my online home since the fall of 2004 and in the space between then and now everything has changed.  Time has a way of doing that, of shaking us up, molding us anew, twisting us around until we’re facing an entirely different direction than we’d ever imagined.  For quite some time now, this space has not felt quite right.  It represents another space, another time, a different focus.  Even though I told myself over and over that the words were all that mattered, I was reluctant to write here.

Beyond the seismic shifts in my personal life over the past two years, I have also been growing as an artist.  Owning and naming my creative self. Exploring what my words and photographs mean and how they can work together to fulfill my desire to create change, inspire people, build community.  I wanted a space that would represent my desire to explore all of those things, a fresh start.

And so, from now on I’ll be writing at {peace. love. free}.  Inspired by the Amy Steinberg song that I once wrote about here, I hope my new online home will be a place of inspiration, of community and a place where I can dig deeper into my writing and my personal photographic projects.  I’m still going to be me   (and I’ll still probably be a slacker blogger) but I hope my new blog gives me the space to stretch out, relax and see what happens.

Hope to see you over there, please add me to your reader and take a moment to say hello while you’re there.

PS: I’ve still likely got some bugs to work out, some fonts I want to change, etc - but I figured I could keep fiddling with it forever, or I could just start already…let me know if things are not working right!

 

~ Benjamin Button

~~~

He always told me that the freckles scattered across my legs and arms were worm holes, and I believed him.  After all, they did look suspiciously like the dark spots on the crab apples littering the ground beneath the trees in the lower field.  I worried about this; about when the worms got in, and how on earth they would ever get out. He teased me mercilessly on my summer visits, nabbing me as I ran through the room and trapping me between his legs - in what he called a bear trap - tickling me until I gasped for breath. 

He was a woodsman, like his father before him.  I remember the softness of his worn flannel work shirts, the way the scent of the forest clung to his skin, and how his fingers seemed permanently stained with dirt and tractor grease.

He was somehow different from the rest of our noisy crew. He mostly held himself outside the fray, observing the chaos with quiet amusement, chewing on a bit of wheat or a tall piece of field grass plucked outside.  I had a sense, even as a young child, that he was far more comfortable in a quiet stand of trees than he would ever be in the midst of his highly social family.

Today word came, traveling as it does amongst family, from aunt to aunt to mother and finally to me. 

You know how your uncle feels about gays and lesbians? He doesn’t think it is right at all.  Your aunt says it would be best if you didn’t come up to visit.

I’m still for a moment, blinking back surprise and sudden tears.  My throat is tight and I summon a bit of bravado that I don’t really feel.

Fine.  His loss.

Yes. My mother agrees quietly.

~~~

On my last visit home this was all just beginning to make its slow, painful ascent to the surface.  After six weeks of idyllic vacation I returned to the desert and within days the foundation gave way beneath my feet, beginning a free fall that lasted for almost two years.  I was nervous about coming home, about finding the courage to present myself to those who have known me since birth, and to stand without apology before them.

I’ve been here for two weeks, and it’s been so uneventful as to be anticlimactic.  I had an idea that my differences – that sense of otherness that has been my companion often on this journey - would be more profound here.  Instead it’s been elusive, and I have to remind myself that anything has changed at all. 

At home now, amongst the green and the water and an earth that seems infinitely more solid beneath my feet, I’m reduced to my essence.  All the rest swirls out of my grasp and what’s left is just me.

It’s a lesson in layers, in all that I carry with me by choice, all that I hold on to, to protect and comfort and make fierce.  All of it belongs in the desert, it seems.  It has no footing here by the sea.

Without all the labels and identities and protective spells wound tight around me, I am open and simplified.  My breaths are drawn deeper and I can allow the moments to steal over me and make me still. The drive to go-go-go eases up, and all that is necessary is to just be.

From the nomadic childhood existence of a preacher’s daughter, I drew comfort in the eternal sameness of my summer home in the country, nestled along a rutted country road in a protected curve of the Bay of Fundy. No matter what happened elsewhere during the year, this place remained untouched.  It is only now, having changed more than I ever thought possible, that I realize the root of that comfort lies in the knowledge that I never really changed at all.

The crashing waves and the green grass and the ancient trees  greet me and accept me as they always have.  The air, electric with the buzzing of thousands of insects, touches my face and finds me no different than I was before.  And when I raise my eyes upward at night in the darkness only found deep in the country, the thick blanket of stars do not wonder who I am. They’ve known me forever already.

Nothing changes, really.  Like the rocks on the beach, we are broken down, carried places, placed in new formations, but always, at the heart of it, exactly the same as we began.  Even if we don’t at first recognize ourselves, we still belong, still exist, are still a part of the same infinite whole. 

~~~

His loss?

Not really.  Our loss.  All of us.  His and mine and theirs and yours.   

Don’t you see? I want to scream. Don’t you understand? I’m the same girl I was then.

Worm holes and all.

They pulled up next to my car as I was leaving the grocery store, in a rusty white suburban that had seen much better days.

“I’m not asking for money”, she said, “We are running from a domestic violence situation, and have driven from Sedona. I just wondered if you had any food for my daughter”

I look further into the truck and notice her in the passenger seat. She is laying back, her swollen belly stretched under a ribbed brown tank top. Her belly peeks out the bottom where the edge of the shirt does not quite reach her vibrant peasant skirt. She looks up wearily with haunted eyes and a weak smile, and the older woman continues.

“She is due in a few weeks, and I’m worried about her. Perhaps just some food or juice so she can take her prenatal vitamins? Anything you have.” She pulls out a scratched hot pink razr phone, gestures towards the gold colored bangles on her wrist, “I can give you these things”.

I look over at the bags piled in my passenger seat, trying to think of what among the few things I had just purchased would be of use, my head skipping from thought to thought.

Is this for real? I don’t want to be taken advantage of. I hate when this happens. I’m in a hurry, I have things to do. Of course I can give them my food, I have plenty. I have plenty. I have plenty.

And so I tell them that I just have some fruits and vegetables, but of course they can have whatever they want.

***

I’m no Mother Theresa and I’m plenty selfish, plenty of the time. Despite my best intentions and ideals, the bulk of my charitable giving is done at exit ramps and in parking lots. I’m not applying for sainthood and I am so very aware that there is so much more I could do – every single day - with what I have. But if I’m asked and I have something to give, I give.

Yes, there are some who take advantage of the generosity (and guilt) of strangers. But I believe that the vast majority of those with outstretched hands are truly in need in deeper and more complex ways than I can even fathom, and I, as tight and stressful as my finances might be these days, truly am not.

An older man with the weathered skin from exposure to too many Arizona summers carries a small sign torn from a cardboard box with the words ‘Vietnam Vet - Homeless and Hungry’. I see him often, standing on the side of the off ramp at the 51 Freeway and Indian School Road, enduring the blistering sun. He, whether from genuine emotion or years of practice, looks both eternally hopeful and incredibly humble.

I don’t know his back story, but I do know that he needs the two or five or ten dollars I have in my wallet far more than I do. He looks me directly in the eye, as so few people do these days, nods his head in thanks and says “God Bless You” with a sincerity that is almost shocking in its unfamiliarity. I drive away knowing that I was given something by the encounter, just as much as he was.

Sometimes, giving the benefit of the doubt is as much about keeping alive my faith in humanity as it is in providing one person with something so small.

***

I get out of my car and walk up to the Suburban. “What do you need?” I ask, “When are you due? Where are you heading?”

The daughter gets out of her car and comes around to stand near me. I offer to take her inside the store to pick out some things that she needs. I am still wary, something about the entire situation making my instincts wake up, my self-doubt now battling directly with my desire to help a mama in need.

As we get closer to the store, the story changes slightly. She begins talking about the family they have in Casa Grande, how if they could just get there, things would be better. About how she was turned away from the domestic violence shelter because the incident occurred elsewhere. About the only available option was a shelter that would only allow access at night, leaving them outside in the heat all day long.

She pulls out her cell phone, flicks her fingers across her dangling gold gypsy earrings and the bracelets adorning her wrist. She says I can have them, if only I could get them enough gas to help them reach their destination. The request goes from five to ten to twenty dollars very quickly. She tried to pawn her jewelry, she said, but her driver’s license was expired and they would not take it. She no longer seems interested in juice or food or anything the grocery store has to offer.

I wave away her offerings of jewelry and phone. I don’t want them, but I don’t much want to be here either. I have so much to do. I don’t want to be involved in this. I wish I had driven away faster. I wish they had asked someone else. I am ashamed of myself for thinking this way, for not simply believing.

There is no ATM at this store, but there is a gas station on a nearby corner. At this point I am almost certain that this is a scam. I cannot explain why – just an inner knowing whispering in my ear. Still, I struggle to keep my heart open. What other choice is there, I think to myself, to walk away from this woman and just hope I was right to be so cynical? To take the chance on turning my back on a late term pregnant woman who might truly need what I can give? I can’t do it. I want so badly to trust, am angry at the world for making it so I cannot easily do so.

I tell them I will meet them at the gas station, and drive to the Arco on the corner that I stop at so frequently (always when I’m running late and notice at the last minute that my low fuel light is on). They don’t leave the parking lot right away, and for a few moments I think they are not coming. I sit at the gas station wondering if they gave up once they realized I had no cash to give them, feeling relief that maybe I was off the hook. Eventually they do pull up at the pump, and I walk up to them.

For the first time in a long time, I’m not feeling good about helping someone. Nothing about this feels good, but I’m not willing to gamble on my instincts and walk away. I tell them I can pay for $20 worth of gas, and slide my card through the pump, feeling rather ill about the entire situation. I’m not sure which is worse, my increasing certainly that this is not legit, or my discomfort with facing my own cynicism and reluctance to unconditionally offer what I have.

“I know several midwives”, I tell her, “perhaps I can connect you with people who could direct you to some assistance. “ I pull out my phone to try and reach one of my contacts in the birth community, but notice that the battery has died. I ask for her phone number so that I can pass it on to the appropriate people, still wanting so badly to believe that she needs what I can give.

Neither of us has a pen or paper, so she suggests we go inside to get one. Inside the store she requests a bottle of water, and maybe some extra cash, since the $20 I was putting in the gas tank might not quite get them to Casa Grande, but $25 or $27 surely would. Oh, and could I buy her an apple juice too? My inner guide is screaming at me now, but I feel committed and purchase what she has requested, with additional $10 cash. These are small things, in the grand scheme of things. Giving this much will not hurt me or my family. We will not be hungry or homeless if I am wrong.

She writes her mother’s number on the receipt from the purchase, explaining that it is a California number, because they are eventually heading there anyway, so her mother just got that number in anticipation of the move.

It’s not until I walk back toward the car, where I had left the mother pumping gas, that I realized my mistake. Even before she spoke, I knew what she would say.

“I knew you said $20, but I forgot to stop the pump, and it filled the entire tank”

I immediately begin silently berating myself, “STUPID! STUPID! STUPID! You should have known better than to walk away! What were you thinking? Of course she filled the tank!”

My eyes glance up to the pump display, and when I see $73 I have an incredible sinking feeling. My brain scrambles to calculate the total for my earlier grocery purchase, the amount I had just spent in the convenience store and the gas bill. I realize that I’m not even sure I have enough funds in my account to cover everything. I’m feeling panicked to realize that this seemingly random encounter will put me in a position to once more have to ask for money in order to make it through the next week or so. The irony of this is not lost on me.

They thank me and hug me, but even this does not seem sincere. Even in the moment I know this could be a projection of my own feelings about the entire situation, but I don’t think so. I think I was taken advantage of, and that leaves me with a range of complex and uncomfortable emotions that I would rather not feel, let alone examine.

I head home and began to attack my to-do list, but my entire morning is colored by my feelings about what had just happened. I tell the story a few times throughout the day, to several people who agreed with what my instincts had told me from the beginning. Even though I want someone to tell me otherwise, nobody does.

Giving freely from the heart is such an amazing thing – a beautiful symbiosis between giver and recipient so that both are fed and grow from the interaction. Giving and receiving this way can create abundance and flow that extend far beyond the initial exchange. But giving with reluctance and cynicism and against all instinct nourishes no one. Both parties are somehow damaged, everything is a little bit less than it was before. Acknowledging and honoring our inner voice is vital, and we are so often taught to silence or, at the very least, ignore it.

I did ignore my voice, and I gave what I had. Actually, I gave more than I should have because doing so impacted my ability to care for my own family, I had to borrow to avoid sending my own account into overdraft. My bank account is no longer in the red, and really, the financial bit is the least important bit of this story. Still, I’ll feel the impact of the encounter for a long time. The next time someone asks me for something, there is a part of my heart that will not be quite so willing to give. I will have to work to open myself again and heal the damage and mistrust. But still – if I had to go back and do this over, I cannot say I would do anything differently.

If I had walked away from her that day, if I had turned myself away from a young mother about to give birth, if I had closed myself off and allowed my cynicism to take over – I believe I would have damaged my own humanity in a way that would have much deeper implications than an empty bank account. And in the end, maybe that instinct is the one I most needed to follow.

1. From the wise folks at zenhabits : Creative Inspiration: The Pulse That Beats Within Us All

"It doesn’t matter whether you are an architect, gardener, or bus driver, everyone has the ability to find the distinct beauty embedded deep inside their daily grind. The problem isn’t capturing our creativity, as individual inspiration is a steady pulse that beats within us all. The problem is keeping those embers hot once we have them in our grasp."

2. Worth reading sideways for: crush

3. Yes, that’s it exactly. Plus, extra points for being green.

4. From the delicious Jen Gray, inspiration, kick in the pants style: the not good enough lie

"this is your life.
enough already.
you have beautiful things to share with the rest of the world.
now giddy up and get a move on."

5. From Magpie Girl: Lessons from an Artist: On speaking with authority about what you do.

"The authority to name yourself lies within yourself"

6. And lastest but not leastest: from the no nonsense side of one of my most lovliest of love-love-loves in the comments section of my last entry:

"less talk. more do."

Damned if she’s not right…..

I have two projects that have been percolating in my brain for quite some time. I think (with tentative hope but filled with self-doubt) that they could be wonderful - allowing me to stretch and grow as an artist and as an individual.

Both projects are inspired by this two year journey of awakening and authenticity. Both are extremely personal and rooted in my soul. Both would combine photographs and written word; bringing them together into a combination of art and activism that makes my spirit soar.

These projects tease at my brain, pull me into daydreams and visions of what I could create. A website and blog? A gallery show? A book? I can see these things already, in a fuzzy, hypothetical way. I imagine their texture and depth and impact. But then I push these dreams down and away, even avoid them entirely for weeks at a time. Why? Because the very audacity of this vision frightens me. A book? Really? Who am I to even dream it?

But even as I run away, these dreams grow more complex and more finely developed. As if the project itself is driving the process of its own becoming, and I am merely the medium for a deeper force. This is clearly rooted in a source so deep within that it is also far beyond, and I cannot take ownership because it is so clearly composed of everything and everyone.

But now suddenly, there are possibilities, connections, wisps of potential appearing out of nowhere. A grant application that must be submitted in the next two weeks. A fabulous local company interested in partnering with me to bring this project to fruition. And so the visions become more whole. They take on a shape and weight and solidity they didn’t have before.

Now I can really see it - the placement of impactful photographs and well crafted words on a stark white page. The tones and texture of perfectly converted black and white images. I can feel the weight of pages turning in my hands. I can visualize the fonts even. I know what the paper looks like. And in the brief moments that I am bold enough to allow myself permission, I can see myself standing in the middle of an urban gallery space (in a fabulous dress and killer heels, naturally) with my community swirling around me, taking in the end result of months and months of dreaming and work.

But I cannot quite convince myself that I can do this. That I am worthy of this.

It took me several years of hard, hard work to call myself a photographer. Although I’ve been writing for years, I’ve only just begun to call myself a writer. I spent a lifetime denying the existence of creative force inside me, and it has been infinitely difficult to accept and nurture it and allow it to sing and dance and move through me. There is something so exquisitely vulnerable about claiming this for myself; of accepting the drive to create and then to release it all and just sit and wait.

It is far easier to minimize this idea, to avoid that nagging sense that this time I’m actually meant to follow through. As long as it only exists inside me it is safe, I don’t have to risk judgment or failure, and I can tell myself that someday maybe the time will be right. I can convince myself that the idea is not good enough or important enough, that I don’t have the proper skills or experience or near enough talent, and besides, - clearly I’m not organized enough to pull it off! And so I talk myself out of something that I desperately want to do. The stories I have told myself for far too long have taken root in my heart. I have given them a power I know they do not deserve, but I don’t quite know how to conquer their hold on me.

For over a year I wore a custom designed necklace made by the amazing Janet at Jewelry for the Soul. I didn’t take it off once. It’s a simple but beautiful silver rectangle stamped with the words “BE BOLD”. For a long time I needed that necklace, it was my talisman – giving me strength during days and weeks and months that I barely knew how to survive. And I would hold the pendent on that simple necklace and repeat those words like a mantra ; giving myself the courage to believe that I could be bold enough to not only survive, but thrive.

At some point, as life has settled into a pattern and routine lulled me back into complacency, I took off the necklace. After I post this I’m going to go find it and put it back on – because right now, I need the reminder to be bold in a totally different way. If I’m going to closer my eyes, open my heart and take the leap to do this, I need to be bold in a way I’ve never been before.

And I do need to do this.

So I post this in celebration of boldness, of vanquishing the demons that convince me to live small. I post this in the honor of laying claim to my authentic self and to the giant leaps and grand vision that demands. To embrace the potential and the risk of unwrapping my heart and offering it to the world in the purest way I know. In the name of trusting that what I offer is perfect and wonderful and that the people who need it will embrace it, and me, in ways I could never imagine before beginning.

So now I start talking myself into it….

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
~Melodie Beattie

We have a choice, I believe, to live every day from the standpoint of scarcity or abundance. Do we focus on what is, or what isn’t? What we have or what we want? What we’ve been given, or what we have lost?

The simple power of gratitude lies in its main requirement; mindfulness. To be mindful of blessings in the midst of ordinary life is to be present and open. And to be present and open is to be primed for recognition and acceptance of even more beauty and goodness. It’s a lovely little system designed for exponential growth, and all it requires is that we shift our attention and create a habit of giving thanks for what we have, knowing that it is more than enough.

Simple, right? If only…

Exercise is good for us too, but it doesn’t mean dragging yourself out of bed at 6am to run on a treadmill becomes easier just because we know we’ll ultimately have thinner legs and a tighter ass. Sticking with the status quo, (however dissatisfying it might be) is takes far less motivation and energy than pushing ourselves through the process of change. Seriously folks, building momentum is a bitch!

Even if our habits do not serve us, we have to badly want the change before we will commit to doing the work. We think that when our life, our luck, our jobs, our financial stability improves we’ll have more to be happy about, and thus automatically be grateful. Here’s the real truth: happiness does not create gratitude, my friends, but gratitude can get us a hell of a lot closer to happy.

To further complicate matters, our culture does not set us up for gratitude. We’re primed to see life through a lens of scarcity, programmed to focus on what we lack. It’s pervasive, this attitude of have-not, want-more, need-that, if-only. Pulling ourselves away from a paradigm of discontent and shifting our focus to simple goodness, little pleasures and small moments of beauty – this requires both conscious effort and strong desire.

Calling this past year challenging would be like calling the Grand Canyon a small hole.* There have been many periods where I’ve been far too focused on simply keeping my head above water to even begin to think about personal growth and spiritual fulfillment. I’ve often fallen into the trap of thinking that my life was defined by my external circumstances and my internal pain. Of focusing only on what wasn’t, instead of rejoicing in what was. Quite frankly, it got rather old, and I’m more than a little bit over myself.

Elizabeth Gilbert says “You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings”. She’s right, of course, if I want it, I’ve got to work for it. Nothing, not even gratitude, is going to fall into my lap simply because I know that I need it. It is no accident that when I selected my words for 2009 I chose present, abundance, manifest and expansive. These, to me, are empowering words that speak to my desire to be present and aware and my understanding own limitless capacity. Low and behold – they also relate directly to my concept of gratitude.

And so I begin this relentless participation by starting a creative challenge called “30 Days of Gratitude” designed to bring focus back to what is. To make me search for and acknowledge what is good, what is wonderful, what is appreciated, what is beautiful, what is blessed, what is here and what is now. I’ll be posting here on my blog, on facebook and on flickr. One picture for each of the next 30 days, with words accompanying them as inspiration strikes.

And as I’ve been working on being kinder and gentler to myself, I’ll give myself permission to admit that realistically – my 30 days of gratitude might stretch over a slightly longer period of time. Stressing to make sure I hit a self-imposed deadline when life isn’t cooperating seems to run counter to the purpose of the project. And I don’t expect myself to immediately morph into a shiny-happy gratitude girl.

In meditation when your awareness drifts you are directed to bring your focus back to your breath, to follow that breath in and out. If your mind wanders, you simple bring your attention back to your breath. If it wanders 100 times, you bring it back 100 times, without judgment. And so it is with gratitude – when my mind wanders I need to simple direct it back. Yes, I’ll still sink into woe-is-me moods, and I’ll still lose perspective, and I’ll likely grumble and complain about things that aren’t really that bad. I’m human, after all; beautifully, gloriously, hopefully human.

I hope you’ll join me on this project, and create your own 30 days of gratitude. You can take photos, write poems, paint pictures, twitter your blessings – however you are inspired to share. If you do, please leave a comment with a link to your gratitude project, wherever you decide to keep it– I’ll keep a running list of people participating and post them here so others can be inspired as well.

30 Days of Gratitude on Flickr

*I’ve never been one to shy away from overused metaphors, even when they verge on melodramatic hyberbole.