In my new age, while I cannot claim many years, I am cyclically aware of the duality and transitory nature of all things.

When I can forget it, I wallow in that ignorance, because to look too long at it is to wonder when the pendulum will swing back, and whether I’ll be able to handle the change.

(I must. I can. I will.)

In a search for health I have discovered control, and with success comes joy cradled in terror: that I will make a complete fucking mess of this if anything falls out of balance. I create a new space, another and another, a more sober space, a healthier space, a calmer space, a more prepared space, I can, I will, I am in control, I’m good at this, this is easy, I am worthy…

I am fallible.

There is no infinite climb, no ultimate understanding. It’s a stopping and starting, a clumsy-beautiful lurch forward with scraped knees and bruised ego and hope cobbled together by loving words and chance.  But the steps I can land consecutively feel so good. I think, “I’ve got this now.”

She’s got herself together. Her ducks in a row. What a well-adjusted young lady

          Who spirals into manic benders spent gripping tight to blankets and partner and the fervent hope that this one can be rode out without the safety net of substances.

          Who goes months at a time unable to put forth any more. All I have, and it’s not very much.

          Who avoids truths to spare feelings.

Who is blessed with knowledge and support and still unable to use every gift, meet every eye.

          Who knows the exact texture of the ceiling, the tempo of the blinking of the clock, the cadence of the barking of the neighbor’s dog; watch the numbers tick by, get up, lie back down, read awhile, get back up, change seats, read a book, drink some tea, back in bed, and still, still

Was it enough? Was I too kind, too cruel? Should I have said this instead? Does she deserve better? Do they? Does it matter? Who’s responsibility is… How far should I… When will it… I’m not sure. I’m happy. I’m scared. It’s enough. There’s more.

To remain in the light.

To look at, and then truly see, as much as I can; good and bad are not all that far removed, after all, and binaries are just hues and shades dancing along Mobius strip. To acknowledge my fear without tainting my joy. To acknowledge my weakness in a way that celebrates my strength. To embrace discomfort. To forgive, myself mostly, for being human, for not knowing, for having to relearn and recalibrate and rebalance over and over and over and-

To rejoice and not cower in the knowledge that I am reborn, reintroduced, seeing and loving anew and different every second of every day for the depth and breadth of my life. That change is inevitable, but life is enduring, relentless, it survives all by becoming more than it was before.

So too shall I.

The struggle of maintaining sobriety has been on my mind frequently of late, and I thought I'd share this tidbit I wrote a few months ago.

I'm practicing leaning into discomfort.

It's uncomfortable.

Music is better sober. That's something I didn't expect. I loved the hazy waves of sound emotion, but sober I still get those glorious flavors of nostalgia and joy and pain, but my brain is more nimble. Instead of one foggy dream, it's a hundred vivid lifetimes.

I thought I would lose the nostalgia. Ha. That's the existential void. How humbling.

Joy is rawer and I can focus on bringing it to the forefront. I fail sometimes, but I have a choice almost always now, not consumed, writhing, caught in some unknowable force. It's me. It's mine. It's a little broken, a little prideful. But I'm am powerful too, in my strength and perseverance as much as in my vulnerability and empathy.

I cannot control the ebb and flow of time or space. But I can control myself. My reactions, my choices. Not the impact I have. I have to let it go, good or bad, with the knowledge that I've done everything I could.

It will always change. There will always be more to learn, more to feel, more to process. That's good. That's right.

That's the journey.

I feel more alive now. I was afraid I'd feel old, afraid getting older means getting boring. I realize now that getting boring is a choice.
I also realize there will be some reprioritizing.

At 16 I was going to live fast and die young. At 18 I was going to have every (inebriated) experience. At 21 I was convinced my only qualifier would be "fuck up." Self-indulgent, but true.

And now.

Now.

Now I recognize my role as tool, an instrument, a weapon, a balm. I recognize my usefulness. It is awe inspiring and terrifying. I'm not just responsible for me now. I'm responsible for the person I must become.

Fuck.

But when my body is consistently filled with the energy of a hundred loving hearts, when my mind won't rest, weighted by the injustices perpetrated by apathy, when my arms are wrapped around my babies...
It doesn't even feel like a choice. Now it's a privilege.

Especially considering the starting point. Self-loathing, codependence, addiction...

And now.

Now.

Sometimes I weep with the joy of it. It overwhelms me. And sometimes I'm still buried deep in old pain with only a hope and a commitment to sustain me.

And it is enough.

I am enough.

This mindset is great, but I'm living now in the understanding that my sobriety cannot be for anyone but myself. It's a big part of the struggle I'm having currently, remembering why I am so much better, happier, prouder, now, over a year sober. Still workin' :)

I am sharing this experience because I've recently been feeling the weight of it in a way I hadn't previously. I am hoping that giving it voice will clarify things and enlighten me, but if nothing else, at least I can share.

I am a proud person. It's not a characteristic I love or hate about myself. It's just true.

Because of that, and because of the cultural framing around body image, I avoid discussion of my own body, esteem, and appearance, because I feel that admitting to doubts and self hate would be a display of weakness uncharacteristic to the image of myself I have built. Or I think I have built. Or tried to build. Writing these things causes my discomfort, but I am attempting to be present, regardless.

A little less than a year ago, I made several personal changes. The decision to get sober was initially a reaction to the lack of control I was experiencing in my life, but it promptly forced into motion a number of other introspections that had almost farther reaching consequences than the sobriety itself.

One of those was my decision to cut diet culture from my life. I have struggled with and vacillated on my personal opinion of my body and dieting itself for most of my life, as, I think, do most women in this country. For years I tried to lose weight or shape my body in a certain way, with a definite moral worth attached to my success or failure. And because dieting is inherently, destructively fallible, I would succeed and feel validated, and then fail. And the sense of personal worthlessness and loathing I associated with the gain of even a few pounds was paralyzing.

Of course, at that point in my life, I hadn't yet named, claimed, or addressed my mental health issues, so that certainly didn't help. But after years of placing worth on that facet of my existence (like I did with so many other things I had no control over: intelligence, musical ability), I realized that the parts of myself I should be judging and weighing and promoting were the parts of myself I had worked for,  things like my compassion, my teaching ability, my social skills, my leadership. I realized that for as long as my appearance dictated my worth (and not even my appearance, my impression of my appearance), which inherently placed my value in the hands of other (white, male, cis, wealthy, closed-minded) people, I would be full of self-loathing and useless as a participant of purpose in this world.

So I said fuck it.

I stopped thinking about calories. I stopped thinking about weight.
I eat when I'm hungry. I am active as often as I can be.
I try to eat for energy, and because food is awesome.
I try to move for my mental health, and the enjoyment of the feeling of inhabiting my miraculous body.

I grant myself kind forgiveness when I, frequently, fail.

When I made this choice, I proactively disconnected my physical appearance from my self worth.

The biggest success I've had is eliminating the reaction to feel self loathing when I'm eating something delicious but calorically loaded. As time has gone on, as I am actively positive toward myself, that reflex has relaxed and for the most part I can eat what I want without guilt or shame. When I do feel those things, I have strengthened the muscle of rerouting my thoughts, reminding myself that food is delicious and completely unrelated to my ethical worth. It doesn't matter what I look like. There are other things of greater value.

BUT, I made those decisions when it was warm out. I walked everywhere, I was never in one place for long enough to really overeat often, and I was always outside. Combined with the calorie cut from not drinking, I actually lost weight.

And I didn't catch myself when the pride I felt about the changes in my life came from how I looked as much as how I felt.

Now, in the winter months, after the holidays, after lying in bed watching Netflix and eating, I have gained some weight. And the progressive mind frame I thought I'd perfected is a bit harder to come by. The choice to live fully, actively, healthily, but separate from the social value placed on weight and "fitness" ( because we all know it's not about health, it's about the look) is more of a struggle.

I've been walking everywhere I can because I love walking and because exercise makes my brain happy. I've been trying to cut back on the genuinely unhealthy eating behaviors. (Oh middle-of-the-night ice cream, I love you.) After holiday eating, I notice my body craving more fruits and vegetables and less crap, so I'm working to focus on how I feel. I feel happier, stronger, less sick when I'm eating with more balance than I have been. I understand that moderation is something I struggle with (hence the need for sobriety) and that applies to food too. And I'm trying to look in the mirror and appreciate and love and dote on every stretch mark and added inch. Because it's me. Because my worth is not earned, it is inherent in my humanity.

It's a delicate balance because I like the way I look, generally, and love my own style. I love my boots and my tattoos and my hair and my button-ups. Things I've chosen. It's hard to remember I didn't choose my metabolism, that controlling every calorie, will not, CANNOT be my priority. But it's ok to think about the way I look. As long as it's mine. As long as it's with love. As long as it gives grace and understanding to the realities of my body and my world and the fact that I have no right wasting my energy, or my skills, or my journey on self hate, so I better get loving.

It's hard to say these things. I feel like and am afraid that people will hear me saying, "Waaaah, I'm faaat, siiiigh," instead of  "I'm beautiful and fabulous and strong and gifted and determined and some days that takes more work that others."

Those of you comfy and happy in your diet and exercise, rock on. I know you feel great, and I'm excited to get my body back in balance. But those of you somewhere in the middle...

I feel ya. You're gorgeous. But you're also more than that. And I hope you are prioritizing your life with the knowledge of your infinite worth, giving yourself that love and forgiveness when you forget.

I do not believe in casting a blind eye on data. I read the news, the articles. Common Core and standardized testing are a load of corporately packaged horseshit. Its difficult going to work each day knowing in order to educate, you must first wade through regulations born from fear, and greed, and privilege disparities that are literally tearing our children apart.

I get it. I GET IT. Teaching is a bitch. As a teacher you are GUARANTEED to work overtime, unpaid. You will MOST CERTAINLY be disrespected frequently. I can promise you will be blamed, often, for things that could not possibly be your fault.

Still teach.

Flaws in parenting, upbringing, home life, work ethic, determination and educational value will become your problems and you WILL NOT be provided with adequate tools to solve them. Students are more unmotivated than ever, and it WILL be cast as your fault if they fail, but you’re too nice if they get As.

Still teach.

You will be purposely misunderstood and willfully misquoted. You will receive little societal respect. You will spend more hours with other people’s children than your own. You will spend more time on bureaucracy than wisdom.

Still teach. OR don’t.

If these are things which you are not committed to experiencing, then don’t. If you are too proud to hear that you are only part of a whole, certainly don’t. It’s doesn’t make you a bad person, and I thank you for your honest self-analysis. But know that that is the deal. I am continuously asked to step away, as if difficulty and disrespect from children should deter me, as if somewhere along the line we forgot that that is much of adult interaction as well. I am repeatedly reminded that as a professional, I deserve better, as if I am somehow unaware of the hardships of my chosen career path, as if somewhere there exists some perfect, faultless work. 

There are a million articles about why to stop teaching, why to not even enter the profession in the first place. And they speak an inarguable truth. Teaching is NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE.

It is harder. It is more tiring, and draining, and NECESSARY then perhaps ever before. Our world is plunging into a new age. Of course the concepts that fed useful workers into the system of Industrialism are no longer the most pertinent. And instead of taking a responsibility as a whole country to prepare our babies for THIS world, a world that we have broken and returned, instead of looking our forefathers in the eye and saying, “I shall go further still”, instead of OWNING our hurts and our hearts and our privileges and our failures, we (as a country) are turning a blind eye.

It’s not enough that my students can regurgitate information. I must make them self sufficient, as we continue to allow for a government whose priorities leave our brothers and sisters of color and LQBTQI family to figuratively and literally wither and die. But I don’t need to protect my students. They will protect themselves. Let me arm them with hope and open minds and thoughtful voices. Let me tell them where we as people have come from, what are hearts are made of, and how we have failed them, so that they may succeed. May they be critical of the world they live in, knowledgeable on how to educate themselves, and unswayed by public or popular opinion.  Let me create the kind of student-citizen that we so desperately need now. The kind of student-citizen that DESIRES to educate THEMSELVES.

For me, born into a life of privilege, the answer seems inescapable. Not because I’m better. Simply because I am called. And as I do my best to lean into the discomfort with grace (and fail publicly, frequently), I need to be clear. If you are called, if you are fierce, if there is discomfort of others surrounding the choices you’ve made, there will always be someone telling you it is too much. Whether it’s teaching or ministry or parenting or business, there will ALWAYS be someone explaining why you shouldn’t, why you can't. I’m here to remind you. Not that you SHOULD. But that you CAN. You are strong enough, brave enough, smart enough to make that choice for yourself.

If teaching is yours, if it is in your heart and mind, we need you. It will be too much. Almost constantly. But my experience, my truth, means that many of the sentences in “Why I Quit Teaching” articles are only half finished. At the other end of all that difficult, often painful giving of one’s self is the most potent energy and love and purpose and rejuvenation I personally have ever experienced. You will have an unquestionable purpose. If you are called, I promise, you are strong enough. Not that you’ll never break down, but that you are made to be rebuilt. And what a thrill to stand shoulder to shoulders with all those brilliant, fearless, everyday humans, the only people that have ever had the capacity for creating change.  Stronger, wiser, and more full of love.

So, you could quit.

But I’m willing to bet you’re braver than that.

I've been thinking about energy and space. About deserving to take up space, to require energy. We (especially women) are told it is best to be quiet and small, that thin is the most desirable, to be quiet is preferred. We feel guilty when people spend time or energy on us, like we are an inconvenience. How foolish.

It doesn't really matter what you believe in for this fallacy to be foolish. If you believe in God, Fate, Science, anything at all... You cannot deny that you were put here.  Not someone else in your place. You. Your life. Your body. Your experiences. Your soul.

It seems to me that if you believe anything at all, then it is not only foolish, but even disrespectful to take this attitude. You are not an inconvenience. You were placed here with a purpose. Don't second-guess the magnitude that. Don't undervalue your unique role. The cards are stacked against us, as a planet, as a species... and yet... here we are.

No. Here YOU are.

You, with your dreams, your ambitions, your actions, your voice. You were not an accident. And regardless of where your life takes you, you never will be. I say you, because I have claimed me.

I claim my unmeasurable strength, and my courageous vulnerability. I claim my actions and my words, even the ones I regret, because they are mine, and I am with purpose; a person with purpose has no baggage or loose ends, only new beginnings and great humblings. I claim my body, every pucker and sinew. I was made out of love. I chose love for my actions and my life. If I am to be strong enough to love in a way that changes things, I must love myself first. I claim my faults, in the way that I see them and work diligently to mend them with self-forgiveness. I claim my weaknesses, in the way that I work tirelessly to turn them into strengths. I claim my triumphs as 1 part endless exuberance and 1 part countless blessings. I am strong because I stand on strong shoulders. This good is mine to share because it was shared with me.

I deserve space and energy because I have chosen a life that endeavors to create. But even more that that, I deserve space and energy because I am. And so do you. Embrace your purpose. It does not have to look grand. It does not have to move mountains or sway nations. It is enough to touch a single life. It is more than enough. It is all we can ask for, that we might fight harder, longer, for the things that we truly care about in the presence loving people and genuine challenges.

We all deserve a chance at that fight, but as long as you are sitting back and allowing the world to tell you your place, you won't be able to give yourself what you need. You have the strength. You've always had it.

How beautiful. And how profoundly deserving of all the time and space and energy this world has to offer you. And you to it.

Well, that sucks.

I am finding myself profoundly overwhelmed. I understand that the task at hand in this particular job is a very different task than many other teaching jobs. To be frank, that understanding is not really helping. 

My children are starving. They're sick. They have few coping skills, and even less of a safety net. They are angry. They have a right to be. 

I understand that loving them is what they need. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to have that love to give when so much of my job is allowing hatred and violence and disrespect to be aimed at myself. I am not immune. I am not invulnerable. And not a day goes by without a threat or curse or assault. It makes me tired. It makes me angry. It makes me want to walk away from that school and never come back. It makes me want to scream at them the way they scream at me. 

But then...some of these children are wonderful. They are so kind and funny and wise. They are still children. They are still ill equipped to face the world. But the life they seek is still seen through a filter of hope. And they want so badly to be loved. There is a little 2nd grader who wraps her arms around my knee and rests her head on my leg whenever we have carpet time. There's a 7th grader who smiles at me with this goofy, toothy grin so full of affection that no matter how angry I am, I can't help but smile back. A 4th grader that stays up all night babysitting his little niece and nephew, but still comes to class every day, and listens sincerely when I tell him he is better than the behavior that he shows. He actively works on it. A 3rd grader who comes in to my room before school most mornings, just so someone will talk to her. She has so many siblings that no one spends much time with just her. A quiet 7th grader with a mouth like a sailor, an attitude, a mean stink eye, and the most beautiful singing voice. I saw her smile for the first time in choir. She's extraordinary.

I found out last week that my job is at risk. That there is a very good possibility that I will be forced elsewhere. In a way I am a little relived that someone might tell me I need to find another job. And at the same time, my heart breaks that I might not be able to stay here with these amazing little people.

I guess the best solution is to live in the moment, fully. My project of late has been to love them. Love them better, love them more, love them actively, love them completely. And maybe, in the end, that will be what makes the difference.

I listened to a wonderful NPR interview with Glen Hansard this morning, and the host was asking Glen what this newfound fame was like. Before Once, before the Frames, Hansard was a street musician, so the host had a good question there. And Hansard gave a really wonderful answer. He said that as overjoyed as he was with all the new experiences and outlets and support, there was a profound sadness to his transition into fame, a sadness that for the longest time, he couldn't put a finger on. As the interview went on, he told the story of having the opportunity to sit down and chat with Bruce Springsteen and they talked about this process, this sadness. And Springsteen's advice was: FEEL IT.

Ahhh! Yes! And how under-appreciated this sentiment is! I think it's important to acknowledge that every choice to do is a choice not to do everything else. Every moment of growth is a movement away. Every wonderful change is a parting with your old self. It's a loss. And it's painful. AND THAT'S OK.

I'm glad to have heard this. I've had conversations with so many friends recently about how our lives are better than we ever could've hoped, we're better equipped than we ever thought possible, and the facts on paper are starting to look more and more like the world we dreamed for ourselves. And we feel guilty for the ache, the homesickness, the loneliness. But to see it through this lens, as a celebration as well as a mourning, to know that it is not only to be expected but that it's important... there is comfort in that. Or maybe just hope.

The response is what matters. The response is what hurts or heals, mars or marries. You can either resist in fear and be torn in half your whole life, or simply commit to allowing the change to happen, no matter the discomfort. No one said it was going to be so difficult. But it's nice to have some company here, even if it is simply a voice on the radio.