I found an eyelash on my keyboard...

 I found an eye lash on my key board during lunch today. I was working and one of my roles at work is to support meals for folks with eating disorders. Rereading my old blog posts sometimes blows my mind, the job that I have right now was only just a hint of a dream for the version of me that wrote this post. Anyway, everyday I get to go to work and ponder what it is about our brains that can stop some of us from fulfilling one of our most basic humans needs. And one of the things that I do as part of that job, is eat lunch with my clients. We try to keep it light, playing silly games to keep our minds occupied. Sometimes when someone is struggling and another speaks up to encourage them through the meal I want to cry. Those moments are why I do this job.

So I was eating lunch today and all of the above happened. One client was struggling, so another spoke up and asked if the group would play a game to help keep the mood light. During the middle of the game, I found an eyelash on my keyboard. It was an obvious impulse for me to make a wish and blow it away. I didn't even realize anyone saw what I did when the client who was struggling said, "what did you wish for Lisa?" A smirk crawled across my lips. I would never tell, primarily because the basic rule of wish making is that you don't tell. But I also wouldn't tell because I wanted her to have some hope that maybe I'd wished for her.

She wasn't actually able to finish her meal, which was too bad but it got me thinking.. what if magic was real. At least a tiny bit. We make haphazard wishes constantly; on eyelashes, on times on the clock, on dandelions, and how many of those do we keep track of? Right, so how do we know that some of them aren't coming true? Guarantee me that one of yours hasn't. I know some of mine have because I'm here. Some people may call magic by another name, coincidence. Or maybe it's just a glitch in the matrix. But, isn't it more fun to call it magic and to let the wonder sink in. Why is it that whenever I'm talking about a client who is late to program and I say their name out loud, that is the moment that they show up? Magic. Why is it that even though I thought I would never live in a city surrounded by concrete and 8 million people, it has started to feel like home? Magic! 

One of the first few nights that I spent here I was having a tough night. I know that I'm 1000% on my healing, because I'm able to say that what a "tough night" for me, looks wayy better than it used to. Anyway, I was anxious because I had just moved and I was feeling one of my self sabotaging behaviors coming up. I heard somewhere that our easiest sabotaging behavior to fall into is usually the opposite of our love language, soo as someone who gives and receives love through quality time; my sabotaging behavior is... isolating. So here I am trying to isolate and figure out just how I can live in my room without having to talk to anyone ever again, for the rest of my life. But, I shake myself out of it. "Ok, you have to go outside, explore your neighborhood and buy food from somewhere fun looking," I told myself. So I did that. I wandered around and after a while, walked back and ended up at a mediterranean grill next door. I walk up to the window and completely butcher the name of my order. The guy behind the counter looks at me and must've smelled the newness all over me. 

"Is this your first time here?" he asked.

"Yeah, I just moved in to the building next door"

"Hold on a second, right here- I'm not going to charge you. I'll go get your order"

I stood there, a little astonished.

"Here you go," he says "make sure you meet your neighbors, there are some really good people in your building. Like I said, no charge- I want you to always feel welcome here."

Are you sobbing? I'm sobbing- it was pure, sparkly, capitol M- Magic. The people around us are magic. How boring and easy to think that each night that I spend here is more evidence for my anxious body that this is home and that I'm safe. I know that may be true, but what I'm saying is, to quote Terry Pratchett, "it's still magic even if you know how it's done". Wish fulfillment is magic, and if you ever wished for the job that you have, or for the family you've built, or for your life to be free of the tangles of diet culture.. and you've put the work in to accomplish that, you've created magic. You're a magician! Which all ironically comes full circle because the tarot card of the magician represents taking action in a conscious and creative way. We do it- we bring real magic into our own lives. If you still don't believe me just look closer.. you'll find it. Here's to hoping my wish from today comes true, what do you think it was?

Is it cliche yet, to write a blog post on your birthday?

Is it cliche yet, to write a blog post on your birthday?  Asking for a friend.. no?  Ok, good. Because 28 has been quite the year and I want to take a break from writing about variables which are highly correlated with negative body image to write about it.  28 started off with a surprise party with some of my closest people in attendance. Almost immediately after that though, I had to say good bye to one of those people.  Then another one.  And then another one.  And then all of them.  Between the months of March and August last year, I was in 26 different states.  I quit my job, packed everything I own into my Subaru, and moved across the country to go back to school to work on something that I'm passionate about.  I've seen landscapes that I had only dreamt about prior, I've cried over deadlines and term papers, and I've met quite a few amazing humans along the way.

Some of my favorite artists and writers use the metaphors that they come across in nature to guide their art.  So when I was biking the other day and I looked up at the orchestra of trees swaying to the conductor of the wind, bending but not breaking, I knew what my 28th year was all about. I knew what it was that allowed me to experience my 28th year with life “dripping down my chin” as Nayyirah Waheed puts it. At 28, I learned how to put myself out there.

Brené Brown uses a quote from Teddy Roosevelt in her latest book where he describes the man in the arena "who's face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms; the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly..."
Now, I'm no President Roosevelt, but the metaphor works because when I was 28, I didn't only learn how to put myself out there, I learned and I tried to do it without armor.  We walk around with the things that keep us up at night, the 'truths' that we tell ourselves, and the belief systems that we have, coated around us like metal plates designed to stop even the tiniest splinters of doubt and criticism.  But, if I had walked into my advisor's office with my helmet and chest plate on, with 'not enough' scrawled across them.. if I had walked in like that when I was taking a risk and asking to be apart of her research lab, rather than waiting to be assigned by my program, who knows what would have happened. With that armor on she never would have been able to see my conductor, the wind that blows me, thing that bends me but doesn't break me, the thing that gets exposed every time I put myself out there without armor.  My sensitive heart.

When I first arrived in Eugene I had to put myself out there.  A lot.  And each time that I did it, there was no one to tell me what to do, not what music to like, not how to act, and certainly not how to feel about any situation to help me fit in.  It was raw and uncomfortable to expose my sensitive little heart to these strangers time after time.  It was raw and uncomfortable, but it also worked.
In my 28th year, I used my sensitive heart to put myself out there because it's a whole lot easier than trying to figure out how you "should" be doing anything.  It's better than feeling like you are only where you are because of other people, and it beats staying closed when you should have opened and going home afterwards with regret.  This isn't to say that it's been easy each time.  Or, that I've gotten good results every time either.  Brené and Teddy both said it, you will fail.  Not, you might fail.  You will.  I've put my sensitive heart out there and had it smeared back in my face, throw to the wind, bruised, bloodied, and broken. And that's only been in this year. But why do I do it?  Why do I make myself nauseous from exposure?  Why do I check in with myself about how I'm feeling about this?  Why do I muster every ounce of courage that I can find swirling around my body from the very tips of my toes and use it to put my sensitive heart out there?  Because.  My sensitive heart is what makes me human.

I'm taking a class right now with a professor who is cynical and loves to spend most of class on his soap box.  Obviously, I love the class.  Because most of the time he is on his soap box he is going off about how someone with XYZ diagnosis is still a human and still deserves to be treated so.  He questions the socially constructed view of the world, meaning he doesn't believe things should be the way they are just because that's how they always have been.  He also works from something called a strengths-based prospective, meaning he starts with the good in someone and goes from there.  He was talking about how some folks have a more mature, and quite possibly stronger connection between their prefrontal cortex (the rational decision maker of the brain) and their amygdala (the emotional and subconscious part).  When the connection is like this, this person's emotions have a tendency to influence their behavior more, and they may come across as more emotional and sensitive. The amygdala/subconscious is actually collecting more information than your conscious brain is and it collects that information faster, so in all likelihood your subconscious has more insight about the situation than the rational-decision maker (prefrontal cortex) does. It's important to note that how much each of our amygdala's inform our behavior varies by person and development, so am I one of those people, with the stronger, more mature amygdala-prefrontal cortex connection? Probably not. That finding is actually from those who come from pretty adverse backgrounds.  BUT, my professor referred to these folks as more deeply human, based on these grounds, because the way he sees it, thoughts come from anywhere and everywhere and change over time, emotions are more primitive and individualist.

My sensitive heart may not always like the 'way that you are talking to me', or may get offended faster than others, it may disappoint me at times when I wasn't planning on being disappointed, and it may have ignored your needs when the suffocating pressure of big emotion told me to run for the hills, but it also allows me to be who I am.  It allows me to empathize with my clients and it allows me to create the feeling of home for those who seek it. My sensitive heart allows me to see humanity the way that I do and it allows me to love and connect with all of my people on a deeper level. Connection. I wear two hands around my neck clinging to each other, never letting go, to represent the deep and humanistic connection that keeps us alive in a world that is marring our faces with dust, blood, and sweat.
I picked up David Brooks' new book, The Second Mountain earlier this month and in the first part of it he discusses the transition that our culture has taken from the collectivist, "we're all in this together" attitude of the Great Depression and the WWII years, to the individualist, "I'm free to be myself" attitude of the counter culture.  He claims that, with this shift and possible over shoot of individualist culture we are now plagued by loneliness, fear and tribalism.  His hope and advice comes in the form of human connection.  Last year I was writing a lot about choice and paying attention to the revolving doors of our internal monologue.  This year, I'll probably continue with that, but I also plan to listen to my sensitive heart more and allow it to conduct my life the way it has this past year, in the most human way it can. Join me if you'd like.

I've been scratching for...

I've been scratching for solid ground recently.  I think maybe, the toll of moving has resurfaced now that I'm home and immersed back into the world that I used to call home.  I haven't even written a blog post in so long, it feels like I can't even remember how to do that.  My last post was about fitting in and belonging as soon as I got to Oregon.  Happy to report, it wasn't that difficult.  Thanks to school and a healthy dose of putting myself out there, I easily found an amazing support system and a place to look forward to going back to.  It feels strange to me that it happened so quickly since I've always thought of myself as someone who doesn't put themselves out there quickly and easily.  How fast our thoughts about ourselves can be proven wrong under the right circumstances.  That's what this blog post is about.

When I was moving I had a lot of time to think.  Far too much in my opinion, but it allowed me to really spend some time with the thoughts that I have about myself.  It helped me to realize how quickly a prophecy can come true when you are the one with power over it.  Given the opportunity to go meet up with new people for the first time the sneaky gremlin of I'm not the type of person who makes friends easily would appear.  How easy it would be to follow that gremlin back to it's cave and sit at home all night.  The cycle appears!  And I become a person who doesn't make friends easily because, a) I already think that and b) I don't show up to the opportunity for change.  On top of that, my gremlin is happy; soooooo happy.  You see, gremlin's don't like being proven wrong.  It's so uncomfortable for them.  Our brains seek efficiency and old gremlins are very efficient.  A friend of mine and I recently renamed gremlins, blind spots.  And they are everywhere in our minds.  By choosing to follow my gremlins, I'm grabbing their hand and closing my eyes.  Seems like a loss of power and individualism, huh?  Blind spots can come in all shapes and sizes from I'm not the type of person who makes friends easily, to I need the perfect bikini body to find love.  Blind spots can appear from anywhere.  A lot of them show up without us even realizing.  From the brief exposure to developmental psychology that I got last quarter in school, I've come to realize something about people.  Everyone is a product of their environment; think about your life as a pinball machine.  Everyone has taken a different path, we've all hit different sides of the machine and in a different order.  We're really, not even all playing on the same machine.  And because of the pattern of our pinballs, we develop blind spots.  I grew up with a doctor for a father, I had blind spots to alternative means of taking care of the body until those blind spots were illuminated.  It's no one's fault, that was just where my pinball hit a wall.  We even have societal blind spots; creating the man, woman, 2 children and a dog home is the only way to be happy, when someone breaks the law the only way to keep the rest of society safe from them is to put them out of sight.  Think about it this way, anything that you can say or think with only one possible explanation and little evidence behind it, this is the only way I'll find joy, I'm inferior if I make less than my partner, etc.... probably blind spots.  Scary, huh?

Blind spots are scary.  Don't let me tell you otherwise, I'm not trying to.  They freak me out too.  Think of your thoughts and mind as an expansive field, it's sunny and bright, the grass sways in the warm breeze.  But then, there are some places in the field where a vortex black hole lives, it pulls thoughts in swirls them down to their simplest form and a creates binary boxes for them to fit in.  Good/bad, black/white, all/nothing.  And finding your blind spots forces you to challenge your own thinking.  Who wants to do that?  Because if you challenge your own thinking then who do you trust?  Since being home, I've discovered a couple blind spots that I didn't even see coming.  I made a huge mistake moving.  Now, let's work through that one together because I'm not going to just sit here and blab at you about finding your blind spots, I'm interested in shining the light.  This comes with a major warning label though, the feeling of being unsettled, "scratching for solid ground" that I just mentioned, it comes from having blind spots revealed.  Revealing blind spots is exhausting.  Like I said before, gremlins and blind spots are comfortable places in our mind.  When we fulfill our gremlins they sit quietly.  When we challenge them, they throw a fucking tantrum.  When we see someone swerving late at night and call the cops to report a drunk driver, we feel good.  We've fulfilled our duty to society to keep drunk drivers off the road.  Maybe that person was drunk and driving, that's pretty dangerous.  But, maybe it's a young man and his wife in labor trying to get to the hospital.  Maybe he did have a couple drinks that night, and maybe they should've called an ambulance, but maybe they are living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford that.  In this situation, our gremlin was proud, but this man now has a DUI on his record, and how is that going to effect the rest of his life?  With a new baby?  Soooo, the way we battle our blind spots is to allow in possible alternative explanations.  Rise above the vortex and look around.  Some helpful questions to ask to our blind spots can be, how did you get here? Why does that seems like the only answer?  What is my evidence for that?  So back to my blind spot of moving.  What is my evidence?  None.  In some of those fleeting moments of boredom or loneliness that all humans come across, the vortex is tempting.  It's an explanation after all.  And our logical brains love explanations.  But where would that get me? Going around thinking that just because my life on the east coast doesn't feel the same as it used to, and that somehow that feeling is a product of my own flaws... it's destructive.  A possible alternative explanation could be that I'm experiencing those fleeting moments of boredom and loneliness that all human feel, and that soon enough that will pass.  See what I mean?

I've noticed that we do this with other people a lot too.  They are the only person who will make me feel _____.  Wow, blind spot!  And, it happens in both directions.  I was sitting at a meditation class earlier this week and they were talking about how we don't dislike anyone, we dislike the feelings that they bring up in us.  What if it's not even the person or the feeling, but it's the blind spot that they are illuminating that's uncomfortable for us? And what about the other direction?  Do we like other people because of the feelings they bring up in us, or "the person who I am around them"?  Have you ever said, I like them because I trust them to show me my blind spots?  What if you did?

I'm sitting on the floor again...

I'm sitting on the floor again.  I have chairs in my new place.  I found them on the side of the road with a piece of cardboard that had 'free' scribbled across it.  But, I still wanted to sit on the floor.  I wanted to connect with the Lisa that wrote this post.  And I still don't have a bed, so I slept here last night.  I also say it to stress that the adventure that I've put myself through is not always glamorous.

I've gotten to take amazing pictures.  I've seen breath taking landscapes.  Just about everywhere that I drove past Chicago I had to actively remind myself- 'hey, you've never been here or seen this before, how cool is that'.  I've gotten so used to being in a new setting that it has become almost normal.  Almost.  During my stint in San Francisco I was reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and she describes so elegantly 'The Physics of The Quest':

“I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call "The Physics of The Quest" — a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: "If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself... then truth will not be withheld from you." Or so I've come to believe.”

Liz and I speak the same language.  'Everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue', 'everyone you meet along the way as a teacher'.  Now, I don't have time to go into details about each one of the lessons that I've learned along the way.  My car breaking down in the middle of the Utah dessert with the tornado sirens going off is a lesson that I'm putting on the shelf under the 'done' category.  The cleaner at the hotel talking to me about the inherent goodness of people has been dog eared for the times that I'm questioning that.  And sleeping outside under the Washington stars served to remind me that we're all just spinning on a big rock.  Just to describe a few.

The first time that I returned to Burlington after moving out of my apartment was to go to a show with my friend Sarah.  I was driving through downtown, knew exactly where I was going, had been there not even 2 days prior, yet still felt like I didn't belong anymore.  As soon as I showed up to her place I was hysterical.  
"Sarah!  I already feel like I don't belong hereee.." I whined.
"Calm down," she replied.  "Of course you belong here, here- drink this and let's go see some funk music." 
[paraphrased] <3
And that was all it took.  Little did I know this was the first clue I was getting in the lesson that has since, ushered me across the entire country.

We have an animal instinct to fit in.  We can't help it.  It served us to be pack animals during critical evolutionary moments.  If we fit in with the tribe, we got fed, a cave to sleep in, and a partner assigned to us.  Life was good.  Our animal instincts still serve us.  Life is challenging, it helps if we have someone on our side and being atypical draws attention.  My therapist once told me that our brains can only do three things: analyze, compute, and compare.  I suspect we max out the compare mechanisms when we reach for an attempt at fitting it.  Wherever I ended up, whatever town I pulled into for the night, I would catch myself scanning the people around me and seeking to morph.  I would even dream up back stories for the person in the campsite next to mine in order to create some common ground and a sense of safety.  *If it's ok for them to be here, then it's safe and ok for me to be here too*, I would convince myself.  But then I noticed something else.  I would play out possible conversations with these people and I could feel the tiniest little part of me wanting to lie.  Not astronomical ones, just little white lies to make it seem like I was a local, or at least like I knew what I was doing.  I couldn't help it... and I'm blaming evolution.  Then, somewhere between Mammoth Lakes and San Francisco, I remembered my trip to Panama in January.  Flipping through my journal I scanned the section on what I'm working on releasing from 2017.  The idea that my story isn't worth telling, I had written.  And from there something changed.

Brene Brown helped me through this section with her quotes on the difference between 'fitting in' and 'belonging':

"The greatest barrier to belonging is fitting in"

"Fitting in is assessing a situation and becoming who are need to be, to be accepted.  Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are."

And, where I realized this longing to belong came from was the idea that I wasn't ____ enough.  And for who?  The townspeople of Whatever Town, USA?
Only until we realize where that story comes from, can we start to rewrite that narrative.  And I had gotten pretty over the idea that this narrative; that I wasn't ____ enough for those townsfolk was true.

So how do I start to feel a sense of belonging in a kabin (with a k) in the middle of the dessert, in the middle of a state that I know no one living in?  I turn to my friends of course!  I've made it to the part of this blog where I get to gush about how amazing my friends and family have been.  One thing that I have noticed about the people around me is that we all do an astounding job at letting each other be who we are.  I need to thank everyone for that, because without feeling like I belong whenever I talk to anyone I know, I never would have made it.  Places make you feel like you fit in, people make you feel like you belong.

When I pulled into Eugene there were no fireworks, no group of people on the side of the road with big welcome signs.  But! I did make it back to my apartment without GPS on the first try, on the way home from Whole Foods.  Soooo, I'd say that's a start.  Oregon feels like a place where I will find belonging, and even if it isn't, I've got enough of it.  Because of this trip I was able to visit and reconnect with some people I otherwise wouldn't have seen this summer and each one of them picked up right where we left off in conversation.  Some figuratively, some quite literally will answer the phone with an expansion of the conversation that we were having 4 days ago.  What a way to make a girl feel like she belongs.  And for those who may not drool all over their support systems the same way I do, Mary Oliver has some words for you:

the one world
we all belong to

where everything
sooner or later
is part of everything else

For those who need a translation, Hannah (luv u), it means that when I'm looking for belonging and I know I've exhausted my team, I remember that I get to belong to the collective of all beings as long as I leave my heart open to it.

THANKS FOR HELPING ME MAKE IT OUT TO OREGON, I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Eating the sauerkraut that my aunt gave me...

Eating the sauerkraut that my aunt gave me in a hotel room in Minneapolis, wondering if they'll recycle my plastic cherry tomato container, and trying to coax Kwasi off the hard wood floors and onto the bed.  That's what I've been up.  That, or trying to play tetris with all of the stuff in my car in an attempt to find enough stuff for a bike ride.  Traveling across the country hasn't been glamorous the entire way, but it has at least afforded me the space to think.  A lot.

I don't think you get away with a cross country road trip without a lot to think about.  So naturally, I've been thinking a lot about the experience in front of me.  The empty pages of a new chapter.  Blank and inviting, begging to be filled however I choose.  Wait a second, do I get to choose?  Have I been choosing?  A lot of the people who I talk to about my upcoming adventure have a tendency to assign emotions to what I'm doing.  "You must be so *insert emotion here* about your trip!"  Scared.  Excited.  Those seem to be the top two.  And yes, both of those are present.  Also worried about making it out there without a problem, annoyed about finding an apartment remotely, interested in what I'm going to be learning, grief over leaving behind my family and best friends, the list goes on.  Now, I'm not expecting any one person to sit with me and sort through all of the things that I'm feeling, and I'm not upset with anyone over the fact that they told me that I was supposed to be scared or excited, in fact I do it to.  It's so easy to get swept away by our days, go onto autopilot, and respond from our bank of appropriate conversation responses, but I'm looking for a shift in the way that we ask each other questions and relate to each other.
Brene Brown was telling me today, while I was driving through midwestern traffic and weather, that when we do this; assign each other with the emotions that we felt during a similar experience, it's an attempt at empathy.  Which is great!  I'm ecstatic that I'm surrounded with people who are empathetic.  But, we're going about it in the wrong direction.  We're empathizing with each other's feelings before we even understand them.  If, instead of saying "Oh, you must be so _____ about your trip", we ask "Hey, how are you feeling about your upcoming adventure?" it opens the floor for a more authentic interaction.  I, too, get why we make statements instead of questions.  It protects us.  If we don't ask, we don't run the risk of hearing about the deep sorrow the person in front of us is feeling while they rip themselves away from their support system.  We then don't have to tear open our own wounds from the times that our loved ones have left us, or when we've done it ourselves.  We aren't forced to recall the time that we made a similarly risky move with only a beacon of hope that it'll work out.  Which is what we would be obligated to do if we want to avoid disengagement, and what my girl, Brene calls 'false empathy', which are both ways of diminishing trust, and humans subconsciously understand and avoid that (no trust = no community = no good).  When we state or assign instead of ask, we bypass the risk of getting the 'good' answer, with a shrug of the shoulders.  Which, honestly seems worth it sometimes.  During our day to day interactions, it seems like we'd much rather hear someone talk what excites them about learning new things and traveling new places even with some imposition, than to get the dreaded, conversation stopping 'good'.  But what do we risk when we do that?  An opportunity for authentic interaction.  A chance for your story to hold meaning for someone else.  How many times have we missed out on our story having significance for someone else because of the way we used our language?  When you put it that way, a small change in the way that we interact with each other doesn't seem like so much after all.

I've had a strange relationship with mirrors through this process.  It seems like each time I look in the mirror, in addition to making sure I look presentable.. I check to make sure I'm the same person.  It's so easy to forget who you are when you are surrounded by an environment that you don't know.  I've been waking up every morning and writing down where I am since May when I quit my job and half moved away from Burlington, so that, when I look back and wonder why I've been feeling so uprooted I can point to that and say 'of course'.  On the surface, and intellectually, I understand that I'm the same person.  I have the same genetic make up that I always have.  The same eye color, hair color, voice, scar under my chin, etc. that I always have (putting away the idea of theseus' ship for one second).  I own the same things and I have the same birthday.  What I'm talking about is the visceral understanding of who we are and what we know about ourselves.  The ways that we interact with those around us, the values that we hold close, the things we do and don't enjoy.  These are the things that, when we go through a new experience, may change.  Ray Dalio explains that intelligence, money, and happiness are not correlated.  And that many intelligent and wealthy people are very unhappy.  Breaking news, I know.  But what he goes on to say is that the highest correlation with someone's happiness is community.  Feeling a part of something, and connected to other people.  So you can imagine how difficult it has been to feel happy and confident about my decisions after drawing away from the web of my community...
What I have also discovered about myself is that I have pulled close to me, a community that just won't let me go.  The overwhelming love and support that I have received from my community has been more than enough to make any girl driving through states where she knows no one, feel like she's at home where ever she goes.  It feels like the web of my connections, the people I've woven into my life, and netting with which they hold me up has been stretched over my map and driven into place like railroad spikes.  That's the honest truth.  So when I say that I look at myself in the mirror every morning to tell myself that I'm the same person, I see the eyes of the congregation with which I sit, looking back, reflecting who they've turned me into.  They’ve reminded me everyday since I’ve left that physical location has nothing to do with what you mean, how you talk to, and how much you love each other.

I was trying to describe that feeling...

I was trying to describe that feeling the other day.  The one that you get after a laughing fit and you can still feel the laughter in your body.  A hangover.  A laughter hangover.  It's fleeting, but you can still feel it so strongly.  Whoever or whatever it was that thrust you into this fit has since past, but your stomach is still a little tense, there is still a smile on your face, and maybe a tear still in the corner of your eye.  Everything is ok and you're happy.

This feeling doesn't even last a second but it still feels so important.  It's funny that we strive so boldly, and put so much effort into leaving darkness behind, but we allow joy to have it's own agenda.  I want to reverse that.  I'm sure we can all remember a time that we fought and fought for some sort cobweb to just, leave.  It's impossible to focus on anything and all we can do is scramble around the room trying every light switch in an attempt to turn the lights back on.  But how many times have we done that with the light.  Rarely have I found myself laying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, wondering whyyyy is it, that this joy just won't. go. away...
Are we just assuming that it's supposed to be this way?  That we are supposed to figure out exactly why it is that we are feeling one way before we can feel another.  That by remaining loyal to our feelings we are remaining loyal to ourselves.  Just me then?

I was reading about something the other day called 'negativity bias', which refers to the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (e.g. unpleasant thoughts, emotions, or social interactions; harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on one’s psychological state and process than neutral or positive things.  I’ve heard that it takes up to five positive interactions to overcome one negative one. What a fight, huh?  Is this only because we allow it though?  We allow the negativity to run its course on our bodies, but we’re so quick to accept that positivity and joy are brief and fleeting. We sit with darkness, just to ‘feel something’ but allow the light to pass as if it were obligatory. Just imagine a world where the opposite we’re true.  A world where positivity and negativity switched roles. Instead of mistrust, we feel overwhelmed by permission. Or instead of lost, we feel capable.

It sounds a little hippie dippie, but I'm pretty sure our bodies are just vessels.  We ask a lot of them.  And sometimes put a pretty harsh stimulus on them.  We force them to do things that they 'should' enjoy.  And use our minds to pull them away from things that they are calling out for.  Some of my favorite lines from a Mary Oliver poem:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Let the soft animal of your body..  I think some of us get caught up in negativity because we think it's the only way we can feel.  Laying on the ground wondering why is only one way to feel, true.  But, I think it's time to open our minds and bodies to alternative ways of feeling.  In my opinion, feeling is not an active process.  Listen to Mary Oliver.  Allow her permission to wash over you the way that emotions do.  That. is feeling.

How do permission for feeling and negativity bias relate, you ask?  Slow down and allow yourself to feel, but be conscious of negativity bias and instead choose to attach yourself to the overwhelming positivity that radiates and pulses the same way negativity does. Bank your laughter hangovers and bring them out again on a rainy day. 

The person who I am, has changed...

The person who I am, has changed.  A lot.  My last post was about some of that change, this one will probably will be the same.  What can I say, I'm not a big fan of it, so it's on my mind a lot these days.  I'm sitting on the floor of my room.  I won't have a bed for the next 2 months.  I won't be spending more than a week in one place for the same amount of time.  That's a lot of change.  I changed my mind, this isn't going to be about that.

One thing that has changed about me, is how much I've gotten to know myself.  It is naive of me to say that I know myself well, but I think that I have a solid grasp at the moment.  To ask me how is an impossible question.  Ask me how long it will last and I will have the same answer.  I have no idea.

If you're interested: one of the ways that I try to get to know myself is through learning about new things.  Each new thing that I try is a guess and check effort to see if what I'm doing feels right.  If it does, that's great, I'll keep doing that.  If not, maybe I'll give it a few more go's, but I'm not going feel guilty about putting it aside.

One cool thing about always learning about yourself, is that if you come across something about yourself that could use some improvement, you get to then put some gentle attention into it.  And with that gentle attention, you then get an attempt at making that something, just a little bit better.  I did a webinar a couple months ago about getting 'unstuck' in your life.  Not that I assumed that I was stuck anywhere, I was just curious about what could be said on the topic- after all, just because I'm not stuck now, that doesn't mean I won't ever be.  And, I found out, that when it comes to any situation, someone might find themselves stuck in one of two ways of being.  You can be stuck in the stimulus of something, circulating around how this particular situation makes you feel, and why it makes you feel that way, and what it should feel like instead.  Or you can be stuck in the response, always concerning yourself with what to do next.  And the only way out is to find the middle ground of the two.

I've been stuck in the stimulus of leaving for school.  How am I supposed to be feeling about this?  Have I been feeling that way for too long?  Is it time to start feeling a different way about it?  So, in an effort to place some gentle attention on the response, I'm going to draft a letter to the people who I may come across on this next chapter.

Dear friend,
I'm a taurus (if you're into that kind of thing), and I know myself well.  How well, you ask?  Well enough that I can tell you upfront that everything that I, and everyone else, says has deeper meaning to it.  An added layer, propping up our statement, developed from the pivotal moments that stack up behind it.  Where the meanings of my words come from is a story for another day, but here are some examples of what I really mean when I utter these phrases:
How are you? - Different from 'how was your day?', when I ask how you are, I'm more interested in how things are going for you right now.  And how you feel about it.  Tell me, I'm listening.
I've got a lot going on. - Friendship is an equality thing for me, and I don't open up easily.  If I'm reaching out, it's because I need help with something, and I think that you are just the person for that job.
I miss you. - Thank you, new friend, by the way, for sticking with me long enough for me to notice your absence.  So, when I tell you that 'I miss you' though, what I really mean is- I miss your presence.  And i miss the the way that I feel in that presence.
I miss my friends from home. - Jealously is a difficult emotion.  And I'm not trying to evoke that in you, I just truly miss home.  It was amazing there and I loved it with all of my heart.  And as you have already seen, new friend, I have a deeper meaning for 'missing' something.  So it's been difficult.  But, maybe one day, if you haven't already been lucky enough to visit, I'll be able to show you around the place I called home for so long.
I love you. - When you make it here, you are a part of me.  I wouldn't be my same self without you.
So thank you, new friend, for reading along; and if you still don't think I'm too weird to hang out with, then let's keep doing it until you do.  Hobbies, likes, and dislikes listed separately.  For real though, I'm glad our paths crossed and I'm looking forward to you helping me to call this new place home so if you want to grab a drink or a kombucha sometime, or help me walk my dog, just let me know. xoxo.