Waking Up for Life

I woke up the other morning and couldn’t move my right arm without wrenching pain. What is this?? I wasn’t aware of hitting it or injuring it, but something happened in the night, and now I couldn’t use my dominant arm. The day ahead included flying, then driving, to a mountain village in Colorado for a family celebration for several days. The celebration was beautiful, as were the mountains, but my arm got steadily worse. When we returned from the mountain town to a bigger city, a visit to urgent care suggested I had damage in the nerve plexus that controlled my arm. They gave me a sling and some medication and sent me on my way.

What was interesting to me about all this was the experience of life without the use of my right arm; it had to be completely immobile or I’d have searing pain…

I must note that this essay is not particularly weighty or profound, and when the world is burning, anything less than profound seems downright irrelevant. But, every once in a while, it’s good to come up for air and swim in the waters of the more mundane with a little amusement toward oneself.

Indecision. Does this plague you as much as it does me? What is behind this compulsion to weigh each option over and over? Fear of making a mistake? Fear of missing out (FOMO) on the thing not chosen? Fear of imperfection? …

Have you ever wondered exactly what a weed is? Even if it flowers, we still don’t call a weed a flower or buy a bouquet of them. I looked it up - a weed is merely a plant that is unwanted. It’s entirely subjective. I love this quote from cyberspace: “A weed may simply be an unloved flower.”

I have some lovely flowering bushes in my yard, which are very pleasing to the eye. However, some of these beautiful plants seem to have sprouted other plants in their midst that look different, like they really don’t belong there. They are not at all pleasing to my eye. But why not?

Is it just because of my belief that they don’t belong there? … Is it that they disrupt the homogeneity of their host plant’s space? Or is what I believe ‘the right way’ the yard should look somehow spoiled by their presence? …

One afternoon, during my recent self-retreat in Sanibel, FL, I sat outside on the deck to read, and I noticed a colorful bug about three inches long, which Google later told me is an Eastern Lubber Grasshopper. I decided to just watch and see what he (or she?) did. He did nothing. Well, every couple of minutes, he would wave one or two of his front legs in the air, but not move from his spot there, affixed vertically to the wooden railing.

I began to wonder about him. What was he doing – digesting a meal, sleeping, wanting to find a mate, sensing into where he could hop next, or was he just … being? What would that be like? …

I was recently invited to write an article for my alma mater’s literary magazine. Eleventh Hour Literary is a new publication by Binghamton University, featuring creative writing, poetry, and other forms of art. I was given the theme of the rejections that creatives often face, particularly in the publishing process, and what my experience has been with meeting rejection.

My piece evolved into a narrative of the various, perhaps more subtle ways I experienced rejection .…

What to do when a dark inner weather system moves in and inhabits what is otherwise a relatively peaceful, sunny interior life? When sullenness moves through the veins like molasses and veils the eyes with shadows? When the heart becomes stubborn with grumpiness, and the shoulders slump like a sloth has taken up residence? When all the fun things feel like too great an effort, and the pull to curl up in a blanket is too much to resist? When I question everything that I love doing: really? Whatever made me think I even want to do these things in the first place?

Even though I know this state is temporary and that all things change eventually, I tap my fingers with impatience and annoyance as it lingers longer than I like. As if I had eaten something sour, and now its bitterness is stuck in my system until it works its way out.

Where did this come from?…

It seems I am in the life phase where aging is an almost daily topic in conversations, in what my social media feeds produce for me, and what my own body says to me. Although we begin the aging process from the moment we are born, it seems far off until we start to reach our “use by” years. Close on the heels of aging concerns is an increased awareness of our mortality. We can be sure of these things: we will age, we will get sick and injured, and we will all die one day. These are the fundamental and ubiquitous characteristics of being alive.

This sounds so dreary. But it doesn’t need to.…

Nearly all the people I talk with, the groups I am part of, and much of what I read, are talking and writing and thinking about what to do about our world. About our country. The chaos taking place no longer feels like a partisan subject; it is and will impact everyone in one way or another. I know there are people who think what our current leadership is doing is good and right and just. I am not one of them. I am very worried about how many people will be hurt in deep and irreversible ways.  It looks like it may be millions of people, and not only in the United States, but around the world.

I think there is a fundamental confusion about what the elements of a ‘good life’ are…

January 27, 2025: Today, I turn 70. It brings so many thoughts, reflections, feelings, and gratitude Here, in Sanibel, on a gloriously sunny day, watching the sun sparkle on the waves as they roll to shore, I am on my knees in awe, contentment, and devotion.

Just this moment of grace and glory is enough. It is beyond ‘enough’; it is abundant with beauty. This moment is nature at its most bounteous, life at its most generous.

This fragile island is much like life itself—beautiful and bountiful yet subject to the impersonal laws of nature, and it can come to an unwelcome end at any time. Two and a half years ago, Hurricane Ian came to this area and wreaked havoc, destruction, and devastation that many people and businesses, trees, animals, and vegetation have not recovered from. It all changed in a flash, not unlike the recent fires in LA…

I didn’t expect to have a baby so late in life. But in some ways, writing and publishing my memoir Light in Bandaged Places (published September 5, 2024)is the culmination of gestating a lifetime of struggle, learning, and growth. I mention both the writing and the publishing because these turn out to be two significantly different experiences.

Many people ask me if writing the book was cathartic. I always pause at this question because I think the expectation is that it was. But for me, it was more of a creative unfolding. Delightful, in that the creative process is joyful. If anything was cathartic, perhaps it was the post-publication speaking experience because giving a literal voice to my history is part of what heals. Attending to it, holding it with care and love is what heals—offering it so that anyone who might resonate with its themes and be seen and helped is what heals.