Hello, Friday: we are here.
{a breath for being here when we get here}
Thank you, week!
This is the 376th week in a row we are chickening here together….
What worked this week?
Getting close to the ground.
Even if I didn’t want to close my eyes. Just getting on the floor and breathing, looking at my space (external and internal) from a quieter perspective.
Next time I might…
Remember the mechanics of grief and exhaustion
I know how these work, maybe even too well. But sometimes I forget.
Right now, for example, the number of times I have left my bedroom for the living room to retrieve my laptop to write this but returned empty-handed (because I forgot what the mission was) is up to five.
I would like to remember that this is how it works, and this is normal, so I can be wonderfully patient and compassionate with myself, instead of momentarily wondering if I’ve lost my mind.
My mind is right here. It’s just processing bigger things. And that’s legitimate. You’re doing great, mind. This is just a thing that is perfectly understandable, even in the moments I can’t remember why.
Upcoming biopic if it were based on this week…
Trust Equally In The Wisdom Of Everything Ends And Everything Is New Again
8 breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- My sweet beautiful lover and I heard-and-received the understanding that we need to part ways even though we don’t want to be apart. We know this is right, and also we are both heartbroken and aching and distraught over this. A breath for every moment we have been given to love each other: treasure.
- The pain of this is absolutely agonizing. A breath for breathing into this.
- Nothing has ever hurt even remotely like this, and life has already given me a hell of a training in endings and loss and all forms of Everything Ends, and nothing has hurt like this. I suddenly found myself sitting on the kitchen floor, not sure how I got there, one hand pushing against the wall, hyperventilating from something that is beyond tears. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t even remember how to be scared about can’t-breathe. For a moment, my mind flashed a picture of me in an ambulance. And then I realized this was Wise-Me was trying to get through to me by sparking a memory of a short story by Etgar Keret. It’s a very short story, just a paragraph, I probably haven’t read it in ten years, but it’s about how when you are in the throes of an asthma attack, each word has meaning: “I love you” or “ambulance”; choose wisely. Yes, I just looked it up. Here is the whole story, well-translated by Miriam Shlesinger:
When you have an asthma attack, you can’t breathe. When you can’t breathe, you can hardly talk. To make a sentence all you get is the air in your lungs. Which isn’t much. Three to six words, if that. You learn the value of words. You rummage through the jumble in your head. Choose the crucial ones–those cost you, too. Let healthy people toss out whatever comes to mind, the way you throw out the garbage. When an asthmatic says “I love you,” and when an asthmatic says “I love you madly,” there’s a difference. The difference of a word. A word’s a lot. It could be “stop,” or “inhaler.” It could be “ambulance.”
A breath of breath — for me who hurt so much she forgot how to breathe, and then remembered through the power of words.
- Usually I fall asleep moments after my head comes to rest on my lover’s chest, his fingers tangled in my hair: I feel him kiss my forehead and then it’s morning. But the night we knew, I found myself awake in his arms all night, listening to him breathe, not remembering how to sleep. A breath for me.
- There is nothing more I want to say about the hard of this week, so here is a pebble. A breath for pebbles and I am here.
- Another pebble, another breath.
- Again. A breath.
- Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. Trust-more love-more release-more receive-more. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week.
8 breaths for the good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- I have known this was coming, there was no surprise in it. Exactly one week before it happened, I wrote in the secret s-word society that I knew he would be exiting my life soon, because everything that is no longer congruent has been easing its way out of my life — it is, after all, the Year of Easing & Releasing, and I knew this was next. I wrote that one day very soon he would come to me and say, “Sweet girl, I love you so much and I don’t want to leave you, and I need to go”, and I would say, “I know, it’s time”, and we would cry, and that is what happened. And I’m glad it was that and not other ways of exiting, for example, he could have exited in a heart attack from working sixteen hour days seven days a week in high-stress conditions, or in a car wreck brought on by stress and fatigue. A breath for the treasure in not being surprised, because I don’t like that kind of surprise. And a breath of gratitude that I didn’t need to say what I was ready to say — hey my love my love my love I can’t have this in my life anymore — because knowing it was hard enough.
- The beautiful boy and I fit more pure unfiltered love, sweetness, passion, joy, intensity, adoration, play, wild adventure and genuine happiness into these last fourteen months than other people get in decades or lifetimes. Even as it hurts (so much!), I have endless appreciation and gratitude for all the gifts of this connection and this love, and I am not someone who believes in the myth of the value of longevity that our culture pushes on us. Everything has the potential to have a just-right healthy vibrant lifespan, and I plan to always choose quality over quantity in all things. A breath for the wisdom of this, and my full heart.
- I have experienced breakups before that fall into the category of “mutual”, but invariably one person is more ready for the ending. While I don’t wish this pain on anyone, there is a certain comfort in knowing that we are both equally torn up about this, in the same turbulent experience at the same time. We have to trust truth, this is what is indicated, and also it hurts like hell. A breath for the odd little funny grace of not being alone in grief.
- I’m going to be okay. If life has taught me anything, it’s that stones come and go, but the water is always there. I can scream and cry and beg DON’T LEAVE ME STONE I LOVE YOU STONE COME BACK TO ME STONE, but the purpose of a stone is not to stay forever, it’s to jostle me from my stuck places and lovingly nudge me back into the stream of aliveness. Flow is the answer. Stagnation is not. Thank you, stone. Thank you, river. A breath for trusting life.
- I had a beautiful time at Waltz Brunch, dancing for hours with people I enjoy and cherish, leading and following, feeling at home in my community. This felt especially important this week, with so many shootings in Portland and the city feeling dangerous and unwelcoming to me, it was good to have a place that felt like ahhhhh this is where I belong. I especially enjoy when there are new women in the lesson and they see a woman leading and realize this is a thing, and it’s possible, and they get so excited and happy. A breath of yes and thank you.
- Even this unbearable sadness has joy and beauty in it, because the reason I am sad is that of course I don’t want to say goodbye to the intense passion and our magical pull and the deep wells of sweetness, our perfect-fit embrace. The way he sings to me in the car, or how he writes I love you on the small of my back with his finger when he thinks I’m asleep, as if my back can’t read. A love-breath.
- My lover was supposed to leave today but I asked him to stay the weekend, partly so we could have time for goodbye, but partly because he doesn’t know what weekends are, and I would like him to experience just once what a human weekend in Portland feels like, with sleeping in and walking in the park and brunch and restfulness. So we are doing that. A breath of thank you.
- Thankfulness. Everything is okay and so much is good. Nothing is wrong, even when I want to believe it is. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. Thank you for this grand adventure. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
Sparklepoints, superpowers, salve, fake band of the week!
Operations completed and forward movement!
Despite being overwhelmed by heartache, I was able to channel the qualities, superpower and theme for the 2016 calendar and handed it over to Richard for design magic! Hard to believe this is already the fifth year we make a calendar!
Also making progress — like a Fairground Stripper! — on initial preparations for the Sweet Honey ops and Operation Shed Shed Shed, and decided to put another mission on hold until spring, and that feels good. Thank you, fractal flowers.
I now bestow upon myself a quintillion sparklepoints, and you are welcome to do the same for you.
Superpowers I had this week…
The superpower of really feeling the difference between 5% yes and 120% yes, and the power of graceful exits, both of which I used on The Facebin and a project that wasn’t feeling joyful.
Powers I want.
I want the superpower of Deep Beautiful Trust In All Is Well.
The Salve of Deep Beautiful Trust In All Is Well
This is a softening salve. I start with my feet, and as I breathe and rub little circles in the soles of my feet, I feel into forgotten truth.
I feel the pulsing hum of life and the the vibrating jewel of the center of the sole of the foot. I feel the way my foot changes as I imagine I can breathe through it.
I feel the earthiness of earth and the support of the floor.
I feel so much, because I have let things soften, and I have let things soften because I have remembered, maybe not always consciously but somewhere deep inside of me, that I am okay and the ground is okay, and stumbling is okay, and hiding is okay and waiting is okay and striding forth is okay, and whatever I choose, I am good.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is :
Received Like This
Their latest album is How Very Peculiar, and, of course, it’s just one guy.
Quick announcements!
While clearing out the house, I discovered a hidden stash of the gorgeous Stone Skipping cards! $22 for an extremely magical deck of cards plus shipping, or for $30 (plus shipping) we’ll add a cheery red Playground mug, since I found some more of those too! Tell the First Mate if you’re interested.
How was your week?
Come play in the comments. Share something from your week, take a breath, or just say hi! No rules, my format doesn’t have to be yours, we’ve been doing this every week for years now and there still isn’t a right way.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We lovingly refrain from giving advice.
And of course it’s always okay to comment under a made-up name, whether for play and delight, or in the interest of Safety First.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — jump in whenever you like. Blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers too!
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I’m so sorry Havi Bell. It must be so painful.
o
<3
Sending lots of love and sweetness your way, friend. <3
—
Hmm… what's here for me?
The Hard
1. A breath for saying all the 'wrong' things. I have this strange experience where I'm with this one particular friend and I feel like I want them to know everything about me, but when I open my mouth, the words don't come out at all like how I want them to. It is not entirely unique to this situation, but I was acutely aware of it this past weekend, and frustrated by it.
2. A breath for a Very Hard Situation and Secondary Traumatic Stress and other things that don't need to be rehashed.
3. A breath for imposter syndrome and the challenges of new identities/reinvention.
4. A breath for feelings I don't understand and ways in which I do/don't fit in the boxes.
5. A breath for loneliness, and the fear that loneliness is looming out there just beyond the edges, with its friend depression. Even on a week that is good, things are colored by the last [2 years?] for me right now.
6. A breath for writer me, who had to step out of the front of the V, grudgingly, and who wants more support and more energy-allotment than she's getting right now.
The Good
1. A breath for last weekend… Trusting in right-timing and going with the flow and having an adventure and sweet time with a sweet friend.
2. A breath for being reminded of the things that stay true.
3. Queer writers group! Queer writers group! Queer writers group!
4. The show went well and nothing bad happened and people reminded me how good I am at doing the thing, which even though it's a thing I used to do professionally, still feels nice to hear.
5. Roommate cleaned the apartment! We have new posters hung and things organized and dishes done, and it felt so nice to come home to last night. This makes me excited to finish the congruencing project on my room. (Also, remembering just now that I want to ask for help with this!)
6. The general feeling that the people I need to have in my life are on their way in and that I'm spiraling up. So insanely grateful for this one right now. A breath for connection and community and love
A pebble, a breath, a flower for you, Havi.
I’ve never gotten to have mutual grief over a beloved relationship ending.
Realized a poem I wrote about being ‘scruffy’ (not ‘soignee’) is actually about much deeper things than just that I tend to dress for comfort not elegance. It’s about realizing that I’ve grown up feeling like my essential self is Deeply Wrong… but it *isn’t*. How do I love the person I’ve been all along? How do I truly, deeply, madly *appreciate* them? Still learning how I might.
hi havi,
thanks for writing this. i’m also in the throes of a relationship ending, although it’s a different kind of relationship (and i’m actually wanting to make sure the relationship doesn’t end even though the business partnership is). it’s helpful to read your wisdom about how the pain comes when i’m clinging to a stone, and that’s not the function of a stone. i’m also remembering your post about the playground, and how you made decisions from love and it’s still safe to love, and that’s helpful too.
and i also know that all this is happening as i start a new menstrual cycle, and when my literal bleeding and shedding coincides with a releasing of energetic and emotional stuff, everything is more intense and it’s normal for me to cry uncontrollably for a few days.
i don’t know how to end this except to say thank you for writing and i love you and it is still safe to love. xo
Dear Havi
<3 for the Hard
<3 for the Good
Thank you for the story
* <3 *
I'm going to tuck that beautiful salve into my pocket and save it for a challenge coming up next week. Oh, what the heck, I'll use a little now, too. There's plenty.
Hard: feeling a desire to travel, and sensing that now is not the right time. Maybe I can do a deep dive into armchair travel and wild fantasy for now.
Good: I am very aware of my superpowers, and my crown is beginning to glow more brightly. This opens up all kinds of amazing possibilities, and makes me very happy.
Lighting my candle, and breathing, and sending love…
A heart and a pebble for you, Havi Bell. You sent me a yellow heart-shaped stone from the Playground. It says “Peace” and it is beautiful. I send you qualities of that stone – beauty, strength, memories, and peace in the heart.
We got some forewarning of potentially bad news that will be confirmed — or not — next week. I handled it by wallowing in it! Once I face the fears and name them, accept that, yes, these things could happen, then I can pull together my tattered courage and my resources and handle it. I am so tired of being brave and strong and handling things.
The only way I see an end to the need to continue being brave and strong and handling things is either bad news or a miracle happening.
Hey, everyone, wish a miracle for us!
My mood has been rotten, and over-reactive and so has my husband’s. Blame it on the dire warning, and, in my case, PMS. I’d forgotten what PMS was like, and I don’t like having it again.
Our niece had a baby, very premature, weighing 1 lb 11 oz. So far he’s okay, as okay as such a little guy can be, but it’s scary to know how much of a struggle he — and his parents — face over the coming months.
I keep hoping to go somewhere for a few days and it keeps not happening.
Wishing for the miracle Vica. Cxx
wishing you a miracle, may it come in the very best form <3
Oh Havi, such a paradox of exquisite beauty and excruciating pain. My heart just aches for you. I cannot imagine the searingness of the loss nor the courage it takes for the two of you to let this precious sweet thing go.
You impress me with your capacity to keep righting yourself, to keep breathing, even as you sprawl all over the place.
Many gentle breaths and softly safe spaces for you within all of this.
I’m not ready to—nor could I even fully identify, much less articulate—my experience but may we tenderly pick our way through our respective anguish, and may we find the jewels within (you seem so much better at this!) and shine them into the world.
In peace, sadness, and safety,
Magic (because I’m also not ready to publicly disclose my name, eek! *blushes shyly*)
Breaths and pebbles for the endings and beginnings and continuings.
My superpower this week: recognizing Shoulds disguised as Buses.
Power I want: I’d like the Wearing My Crown With Style While On Rollercoasters magick, please.
What worked? Wearing the Joy bracelet. Not going to the preview or the dance.
Next time? A pedicure, I think. And more time for additional self-care.
Hard, exasperating, disheartening, or just plain gross:
1. Hostility from [x] not getting what they wanted
2. Falling asleep with makeup on
3. Why did the tire go flat so quickly?
4. Someone tossing loosely bagged trash into our recycling bin
5. Itches and aches and bumps, oh my
6. Waiting for answers/confirmation
7. The right words not coming readily
8. Allergies and rundownedness
Good, delightful, reassuring:
1. New crown not perfect but working out so far
2. A poem won a prize
3. Surprise music from a dear friend
4. Being asked to read at a wedding
5. Catching up with another beloved after Simchat Torah
6. Ten tiny pieces accepted
7. Being offered a new assignment, even though I couldn’t fit it into my schedule.
8. My printer continues to do what I ask of it.
Warm wishes to all y’all. Shabbat shalom.
o
This week… Was huge. Not overwhelming, just big. Big waves moving and me in them instead of on top of them, so the intensity is not so painful.
On Monday bizarre scheduling conflicts and misunderstandings introduced me to the exact right person and then spun a lovely ritual to MY HOUSE. I was so happy to host and my house was so happy to host and there are good things coming from this. Everything is humming.
Nightly healings have gone on planned hiatus and I am so pleased with where we’ve landed on the other side of this. I’m afraid to say this above a whisper, but I appear to have learned to go to sleep, to drop maybe half of my list of interrupters – things that come between me and sleep even when I’m exhausted. It’s amazing.
But if that superpower has landed or if it is still landing, it certainly had not landed at the beginning of the week and as a result, much was very difficult.
Also I had things in the evening every. Single. Day. And this meant so much tired. Also there was a lot of hungry.
I get gossipy when I’m tired and while after a lot of work I’m generally less gossipy than, say, your average person (my idea of the average person, surely skewed in unknown ways), I still felt terrible afterwards. More sleep! Less gossip! And knowing that it’s okay in the meantime. That failing to live up to my own very high standards is an expected part of life.
I’m so grateful for the community of people I work with, and how lovely they all are.
Today I had acupuncture and then two kinds of root work. And some naps, because obviously. So much moved. So much came together. Old sexual trauma, family stuff, stuff about receiving, stuff about doing. Apparently I thought, like, 25-gajillion people needed to be held in my pelvis and today I got to let them go and it felt so nice.
And then sweet A said “you have so much strength here, even more than most people,” and “I see us getting all of this out of the way of your purpose and I see you working as a healer.” And I couldn’t believe someone could look deep in me and see strength or healing or anything good but somehow I did believe her and I felt it too and I cried.
All my superpowers are big right now. Things working out in perfect timing. Getting to listen in on the plan and knowing it’s okay even if I don’t know how. Everything (except food) being where I need it when I need it – even buses and trains and parking spots and elevators. This is very good.
Speaking of stones, I still miss mine. Too much driving in SE again, and thinking I’m catching glimpse of him (though last I heard he was in Germany) and losing all my breath to sobs. So much else I can release, but a year isn’t enough yet for him. So I’m lighting many candles, for me and for him and for the pain between us. But it is hard still, often, almost always.
So let’s end with another stone for endings.
o
Sending hearts and pebbles to.you, Havi.
-0-
sending you so much love.
A heart for your heart, dear Havi.
-o- -o- -o-
Pebbles, sparklepoints and hand on heart sighs for Havi.
The Hard:
Friend’s husband might be sick. They are waiting right now to find out. She said she just sits on the couch and screams. This broke my heart because I can’t duct tape her all up to keep her from falling apart. So I will just love and hug them. And pray because they pray.
Realizing that something that was probably just supposed to be short term (but you thought maybe it could last a little longer) is just going to be short term. And the person that you thought you might have to keep you company for a while will not.
The Good:
Having the bravery to call (not text!) and say “what do we think this is?” and not wanting it to be the same thing he did and being able to say “no thank you goodbye and see you around” and then getting up and out of yoga pants to see my friends and letting the little fish go. Sparklepoints for this new Me who realizes she gets a say.
Had scary things come up at work last week and was able to calm myself so I could deal with them much more quickly than I have in the past. Most importantly – I was able to reach out and say “I need help.” And it turned out that I got to be helpful to that person.
I was in the wrong writing group. And so I put the word out about a new writing group. And people come to it! And it’s story hour for grownups. And they love it. And I love it and it is so good. A breath for finally finding your right people.
Sea girl! A new writing group that is storyte for adults ! Sounds amazing.
<3 and presence
<3
The hard: since my partner worked himself into the ground, he can no longer deal with Dynamite Kid. It's getting lonely in this We Who Treat Dynamite Kid With Some Friggin Decency, Respect, And Compassion club. I'm angry about this, and weary.
The good: I'm such an awesome communicator!!! I'm giving myself all the medals! Two importants Truths were delivered clearly and kindly this week.
very strong resonance with the frustration of partners who work themselves into the ground and don’t have capacity for the actual important things! and the weariness about that!
adoration and sparklepoints and awe for the medals and truth-delivery!
<3
Putting here a single yellow rose, surrounded by a perfect ring of pebbles. So much love for you, Havi.
These lyrics reminded me of you yesterday. (Elevator shaft if not resonant). They’re from a Darlingside song.
Yes we will leave here, without a trace
Take a new name, and an old shape
I’ll be no outlaw, no renegade
Just your faithful god of loss
xxxxx Do Mi
Much love to you, Havi.
The hard:
– the people
– wanting to be in the ground, but not to have got there by working myself into it
The good:
– the people
– and those who ask the right question at the right time
– the sea around my ankles
– the sea outside my window
– the sea smoothing out my mind
-o-
<3
sending love to you, sweet Havi. <3
I’m very sorry to hear you’re going through such a painful thing.
Lots of love and support for you, at this time and all times.
Sending you so much love, Havi, and the comfiest, safest, most colourful sparkling hammock you can imagine.
<3<3<3
Oooooh chicken time chicken time!
AWESOME
Breathing for the tangles, the mysteries, the uphills.
+Breathing for the Mystery of Agent Teabud. Breathing for how great I thought that might be and how dizzyingly not great it turned out to be. Breathing for the mysteries it solved that I actually didn’t want solved, not like that anyway. Breathing for the superpowers of me who had to be in there with that, and how well I handled the whole thing. Breathing for the next chapter.
+Breathing for the ever-elusive Pegasus Blue. Breathing for the tangles that make it hard to search.
+Breathing for all unnecessary requests/demands for gender identification. Especially for the ones that only give two options, but, also for all of them really. Breathing for Dragon-Me who kind of just wants to breath fire at them all and incinerate them off the face of the earth. (Oh, what a beautiful wish.)
+Breathing for the Twenty Percent. Still there. Still here. And yet, so much space (spaaaaaaace!!!) between Where I Am and Where I Was.
+Breathing for the Mystery of the Lemon Juice. Is this a clue? What can I learn or discover? Where is the creativity? OH it’s right here, hi!
+Breathing for the There’s Never Enough Time!! Monster. Oh, sweet fuzzy fuzzball buttmonster! It sounds like there never seems to be enough time! Let’s breathe. And then we can talk about it maybe.
+Breathing for that goddamn pterodactyl still creeping around my goddamn backyard. I see you. I hear you. You’ve got a lot on your mind. We can work through this. Breathing for the epiphany ze breathed down my neck last week. Yes. That was good. Even if it was hard to get to it. Yes.
+Breathing for the thing I want to say yes to but I’m not sure that I can. Breathing for the me who knows how to figure out how to decide whether to say yes to this and is scared to look at it.
And breathing for the delicious donuts, the sparkling fairy dust, the rainbow water slides!
+Breathing for the Forthcoming Adventure! OHMYGOSH! TWO DAYS AND I’LL BE THERE! Breathing for all the books I can read on the train! Breathing for all the friends I will see! Breathing for the leaves changing JUST IN TIME! Breathing for everything I love about this place! Breathing for all the Right Timings and What I Need Shows Ups and Ride the Waves! YAAAAAAY all of this!!!
+Breathing for the ongoing [WHEEEEE] project. This is fun. I am enjoying this. YEAH.
+Breathing for (what has now become) Operation O[hohohoo] and all the parallels and clues and wowwwww.
+Breathing for Time Machine! Whoaaaaaaa.
+Breathing for Operation Tea Party and how awesome and terrifying and amazing and EEAAAGKKK this is. Completely different kind of whoaaaaaa.
+Breathing for the Applejack Voyage of Tetris Tree, how far away and how right up close it seem, how excited I am for it to happen and for all these Tetris Tree Voyages I am Q’ing.
+Breathing for my [YEEHAW!] list that I’m embedding in my brain forever and ever because YES.
+Breathing for the Discovery of [Fruitskydoodles]! Holy mackerel! 😀
Breathing into a universe big enough to hold all this and so much more.
And let’s hear it for the fake band of the week: Cephalopop! (It’s actually… just one octopus.)
Oh I relate so hard to things that turn out dizzyingly not great! <3
Oh love and hearts and pebbles!
<3 <3 <3