I tell wonder-filled stories about hope and healing
I’ve learned to value people over products, experiences over possessions, and time over money. The greatest harvest grows where and with whom we place our minds and our hearts. Make sure the company you keep is as good as the company you provide. The path to care and concern is a two-way street. Don’t make someone a priority when to them you are merely an option. You deserve better. We all do.
“And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” ~ Rilke
My friend, Marita, sent me this quote a few weeks ago and it’s been lingering at the edge of my mind ever since. Life offers us so many questions. What should we do, go, be, and with whom? What matters most, right now, at this moment, and do we have the courage to pursue it even if it doesn’t go as we hope it will? Can we take chances? Can we let go? Can we allow ourselves to be infused with every emotion when it strikes us and really feel it down to our bones without breaking?
I’m beginning to realize that Rilke was spot on—life is about living everything as it comes. The good and the bad. The painful and joyful. The elation and the disappointment. In this way, there is no wasted time. Just experience.
My college friend, KaRyn, once write a beautiful poem and the lines from it have stuck with me for almost 20 years. One line in particular has been running through my mind lately and I think it’s the perfect way to think about change: “With hands strong enough to come home empty.”
It’s easy to take the opportunities that just come along. It’s hard to turn away or let go of something that’s not right for us when it seems like the alternative is nothingness, emptiness. But here’s what I’m learning. If we want to receive what and who is truly meant for us, then we need space. We need emptiness before we can have fullness. These days I’m reminding myself that emptiness isn’t something to fear or be sad about. It means we’re ready for what’s next.
All changes are tough, even the ones that are blessings. With every change, something dies and falls away. We mourn the loss of the good and the bad. To wipe the slate clean, we have to go through this loss of the old to make way for the new. Give yourself the space and time to process the loss, even though it may be welcomed and expected. Go through the motions. Take all the steps. Feel all the feelings. No regrets.
Author James Patterson was on CBS This Morning talking about his new book, First Love. It’s inspired by a woman he was with many years ago. She developed an inoperable brain tumor and to keep their spirits up they adopted this shared philosophy: “Aren’t we lucky that you didn’t die today?” It kept them appreciative, hopeful, and present. We’re all lucky we had today, even if it’s been the worst day, because it’s so much better than the alternative of not having this day at all. It reminds me that there are so many people all over the world who have passed on who would have given anything to have today. On the tough days, that idea keeps me going. It keeps me grateful. It keeps me smiling.
Today I stopped thinking of loss as something that has been taken away from me and instead see it as something (or someone) that wasn’t meant for me. Same coin, two sides. This side is better.
I’ve often written on this blog about my favorite happy, fuzzy pal, Phin. He is an amazing dog whom I rescued over two years ago from the Humane Society. While mostly perfect out of the box, he has struggled with separation anxiety off and on.
His latest bout has lasted for 3 months and I have tried many remedies from extra sessions with our trainer to medication. And just when it seems he has turned a corner, he is plunged back down into the depths of anxiety. His anxiety has begun to make him sick. He never touches a thing in the apartment; he just cries when I leave for any amount of time – an awful, sad, lonely cry. My neighbors are complaining every day. Despite all of the time I spend with him, he needs a home that has more companionship than what I can offer him as a single, working person.
My beautiful, kind, gracious, dog-loving mother has offered to take Phin into her home in Florida until I figure out a better living situation that will work for him. We now live in a tiny studio in a noisy city. My mom and stepfather are retired and are around most of the time. They have a beautiful home with a screened-in porch and a backyard with grass and a garden. They have plenty of sunshine and warmth, inside and outside their home.
Though I know that this is the best short-term situation for Phineas, I am completely heart-broken. He is my constant companion and a champion snuggler. No matter how tough a day I have, he is always there for me with a waggly tail and plenty of smooches. He thinks I am the best person on Earth.
I’m not sure what these next few months hold. I’ll bring Phin down to Florida on Tuesday when I visit my family for the holidays and if all goes well, he’ll be taking up residence there while I sort out a more conducive (read: quiet) environment for him. It is an awful decision to make. My eyes are puffy, my nose is runny, and I feel like a failure.
Life is like that sometimes. We have to make decisions that hurt. Despite our best efforts, things don’t always go the way that we hope they will. I just keep reminding myself to trust the process, to understand that everything is temporary, that fortune can be reversed, that light can and will return even though we are surrounded by darkness. I know this is the best decision to make in the current circumstances, but it’s not easy and it certainly doesn’t feel good.
A few weeks ago I visited the 9/11 memorial site for the first time. The last time I set foot in that area was just a few days before September 11, 2001. I was home for a few weeks during a break from The Full Monty tour. I had never been to the World Trade Center, it was a beautiful day, and I decided to be a tourist in my own town. On September 9th, 2001 I flew back to Chicago to rejoin the tour and from there I watched as those towers came crashing down. I still have a hard time believing how those events unfolded, even though I now work right across the street from the site.
I was not a fan of the design when I first saw it. I wanted it completely covered over in grass, a sanctuary to honor the thousands of souls who lost their lives there on that ground. And though I do think a park would have been better, the designer really does pay tribute to all the people we lost. A great deal of care was taken in constructing the design. There will be no way for any future visitor to forget what happened on that ground.
The fact that hit me hardest during the visit was the idea that for many families and friends, this site is a cemetery – the only place they have to visit to commemorate the loss of their loved ones. I didn’t realize this until I saw flowers stuck into the craved names of the frames that surround the giant running pools of water. These pools take their shape and position from the bases of the towers. Every visitor is hit by the enormity of those buildings and the force it took to bring them down.
The idea that I could not shake, and continue to think about every day I go to my office, is all of the lost potential that still lies in the wake of that awful day, that will continue to lie there perhaps forever. 10 years on in Afghanistan, many more lives lost, and we are no closer to a free and safe world. I wonder if that collective societal sting will always be there. On the site of this memorial, I got a very tiny glimpse of what it must feel like for all these families and and friends who are not able to move on. It’s a lovely tribute to all of those people but sadly it doesn’t seem to offer us any hope of closure or healing. The overwhelming sadness and injustice of it all is still raw and palpable.
But maybe that’s the trick. Maybe we need to confront that sadness head on. Perhaps we need to sit with it and ask it what it needs to heal. The memorial does give us a physical place to go and grieve, and to be with others who are on the same journey. It does give us a place to go to say goodbye, and in that goodbye there may very well live the opportunity to let go in some small and necessary way.
Today I will be glued to coverage of the 9/11 commemoration. My first memory of seeing the wreckage is still burned in my mind. I was in a Chicago apartment, surrounded by friends, and mourning for my home city. My current office building sits right across the street from the World Trade site. I pass it every single day that I go to the office. It is visible from nearly every conference room where I have daily meetings. I consciously think about that tragedy and its wake all the time.
2 years ago, 9/11 etched another mark into my history of my time in New York. After my apartment building fire, in which I lost so many of my physical belongings and gained a level of insight into the magic of life beyond anything I thought possible, I moved into the tiny studio where Phin and I still live. I slept on a borrowed air mattress and had a tiny plastic bag of clothes. It was a sinking, lonely feeling. “Is this what life tangibly amounted to?” I wondered.
In the coming months and years, I would embark on a personal journey with twists and turns, peaks and valleys, tears and smiles. I would question everything and everyone that filled my life up to that point. I would break down in terrifying ways, physically and mentally, and then build myself up again sometimes for show and sometimes through true, authentic growth, though it was hard to tell the difference. I would have to tear down my conception of myself and the world before the fire so that I could rebuild my spirit post-fire from the inside out. It was gut-wrenching, beautiful work. And yes, those two descriptors can be felt in a single action. Eventually it became a good kind of hurt, the way a physical wound heals, the way my muscles rebuilt themselves after I ran the Chicago marathon in October 2001, almost a month to the day after the horrific events of 9/11/01.
Rebuilding over a space that is mentally, emotionally, or physically ripped apart is part of life. No matter how terrifying the act that caused the destruction, no matter the breadth and depth of the loss created, time goes on, and life right along with it. Anniversaries give us a way to honor our strength and bravery in that moment of loss, and also in the rebuilding it necessitates. We mourn and grieve, and then keep going. And there is no shame or embarrassment in that act of moving forward. It is required; who and what was lost would also want it that way.
Today on 9/11/11, I’ll be on my couch with Phineas. I’ll be reflecting and writing, listening and watching, as this day, 10 years later unfolds in a very different way than it did for our nation and the world a decade ago. My only goal is to bear witness, and feel whatever feelings arise, to be aware and awake, and feel grateful for the opportunity to do so.
“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~ Paul Boese
I had an odd encounter on Friday that I wasn’t expecting, not at that moment, not ever. I was sitting on the steps of the main New York Post Office at 31st Street reading a magazine as I waited for my friend Jeff’s improv show to start that was playing around the corner. It was a nice night outside and I had just a few minutes to spend before heading over to the theatre.
A stranger I knew
A man stopped down on the sidewalk and stared at me. It was the guy I was dating when my apartment building fire happened almost two years ago. He was a gem in the immediate aftermath of the incident and showed is terribly ugly true colors not long after. His behavior and words were really hurtful; he kicked me when I was already down and out. We stopped seeing each other shortly after the fire, and I chose to completely cut off any contact with him. I was really, really angry with him and I had bigger issues to contend with. The last thing I needed in my life was someone like him, in any capacity.
He climbed the steps and asked if he could sit next to me, and then made a wise crack inquiring about whether or not my current apartment had caught fire, too. A very insensitive, cruel comment, especially given all of the trauma that unraveled in the months immediately following the fire. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised. Then he began his barrage of personal questions about my life, some I answered and some I left intentionally vague. I actually didn’t ask him a single question about his life because I didn’t really care what the answers were. I wasn’t happy to see him and I wasn’t unhappy to see him. I didn’t feel numb; I just didn’t feel anything. Not about him and not about us. All that anger was gone. I was shocked at how calm I felt. The conversation was only a few minutes long because I had to leave to go see Jeff’s show. We said good-bye – he went his way and I went mine – and I never looked back.
Automatic healing
Just prior to this chance encounter, I was talking to Brian about what I hoped to be able to give veterans and their families who I work with through Compass Yoga. Brian mentioned that I may want to focus on helping them heal to the point that they don’t even have to put themselves through the motions of yoga. The calm they gain through the practice with me would be with them always so that the stress response never even kicks in unless they truly need it to get themselves out of true danger. I wasn’t sure how this would work. though I told Brian I’d think about that idea.
After my brief encounter on the post office steps, I completely understood what Brian was talking about with the veterans and their families. If I had this encounter a year ago, it’s likely that I would have felt nervous, that I would have felt the need to meet his snarky comment about my fire with a snarky retort. Instead, I just told him a few details of my life in response to his questions. I was polite and detached, with no feeling about ever hearing from him or seeing him again. I was so angry with him for a long time, and I realized in this instant that I had found my way to the other side of anger as a much better person. A friend of mine once said, “You really know it’s over when you have nothing left to say.” True statement. I had moved on, completely.
The sweetness of healing found
As I walked toward the theatre to watch Jeff’s show, I thought about our immense capacity for healing every wound, no matter how deep, no matter how long it’s been with us. I found a way to feel anger and then transcend it in a powerful way. In the past year I’ve spent so much time caring for myself and building a life I truly love. It happened so gradually and with so much hard work that I’ve never taken the time to really reflect on just how much healing I’ve done, just how different I am. “You’ve come a long way, baby,” I thought to myself. “A long way. And it feels so good.”
Christa Avampato 