“You need not apologize for being brilliant, talented, gorgeous, rich or smart. Your success doesn’t take away from anyone else’s. It actually increases the possibility that others can have it too. Your money increases your capacity to give money to others, your joy increases your capacity to give joy to others, and your love increases your capacity to give love to others. Your playing small serves no one. It is a sick game. It is old thinking, and it is dire for the planet. Stop it immediately.” ~ Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth

The sun is shining inside and I can’t hold it in. My thoughts jump from boyfriends that didn’t make the cut to a small tussle I had with a co-worker recently. Somehow they are connected. The middle ground is so hard to find. That place, that magical place, where I can assert myself and people around me don’t find it intimidating. To a large extent, it is why I am shy. There is much more certainty than is proper behind these downcast eyes. But when I unleash her, there are consequences. Everything from being alone on Saturday night to snarky remarks.

I am not trying to boss you.
I have an opinion.
Stating it implies nothing about your worth.
I am not trying to put you in the deep shade.
I am trying to shine.
Shine with me, next to me, grow in my light.

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i found me. surprisingly i was there all along. but the transition from your stool to my own took longer than i thought. most days i never thought to escape. honestly not even sure if i wished it.

remember how you used to sit me down in the bathroom for hours to set my hair. especially the night before school pictures. you were so careful with the hot rollers. every single strand was in place before you’d consent to securing it. every section meticulously brushed. i’d preen when you were done. somehow only you could make me feel that beautiful.

the stool became a throne when we bought grandmas house. made of metal but painted creamy offwhite, i sat ensconced in style. certainly not yours though. you would never have purchased such a thing, all curled armrests and decorative scrollwork. once meant for a pretty lady to sit before a vanity mirror, i sat before you.

the throne was my power and shame. my reign upon it rather embarrassing. it kept me your little girl who didn’t like walking barefoot in long grass and who prissed her curls for the camera too long. where hairdressers invented frankenstein versions of myself to look at, you at least found something of the emerging me. so there was reason to endure.

recreating that moment over the years without you has been painful. always torn between some notion of beauty and some inkling of myself. your ghost ever at my shoulder. did I feel beautiful? sometimes. mostly ridiculous.

many years later i sat before different hands. i’ll always wonder what made that day different. which stars were in the sky, what made me call for that appointment, why i got that girl. the time had come. i watched her and the horrific invention in the mirror cracked and fell away.

a whole person unearthed, chiseled out from a brush and a blow dryer, so long undiscovered at your hands or mine.

and what she found came home with me. she did not hide. i could bring her forward any time i choose. the inner lining of the cloak i’d long worn.

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Or, if it was a book…

Where is your Internet heart?
Revisiting online privacy and presence

amidst everyone freaking out about facebook latest changes to privacy, friends leaving facebook and other friends discussing blogging, I’ve come to the conclustion that my loyalties are in the wrong places.

Facebook has been bothering me for other reasons on top of the current uproar. And the pile of stress was so high that I finally recognized it for what it is. A constant flowing stream of updates and applications that have little importance to my daily life. My exuberant reach at the start went way too far. My daughter said it best when she confided: “Mom, I like being involved and busy, but I don’t like doing everything and having no time to relax.” Exactly! Thank God for my ten-year old fount of wisdom.

The deluge coming from Facebook feels just like that to me. Too many people to keep up with. One liners are funny when you post them on a wall, but do they penetrate? are they a building block? do they make a friendship when after years the only thing left is a hyper-link from one insecure social media webpage to another. There was way too much time reading somethings and not enough Skype calls to my girls, my real friends who have been there through thick and thin and who read my blog. Not enough blog writing – you should see the backlog in my drafts! – and expressing and reading and spending time with the people that matter.

So after much hand-wringing – just ask my husband how many times I asked him a question like “what will people think?” or “will they hate me?’ or “should i tell them what i’m doing?” still trying to please – I seriously downscaled my Facebook: chopped my friend list in HALF, tightened privacy settings and removed any information that I do not want totally public.

When I left high school, I made and kept a promise to myself: that I wouldn’t feel obliged any longer to keep in contact with people just because there were the only game on the block. Facebook changed all that and put me right back in 1995, a pleated plaid school skirt standing in front of a baby blue locker absolutely covered in pictures of people who don’t call me on the weekends. Sheesh, why did I do that to myself?!

Where is my Internet heart?

Where my real one is. Right here. And from now on, my online presence will not be what Zuckerberg wants. It will be what I want. And I like Twitter better anyways.

ps. In case you haven’t heard… http://www.quitfacebookday.com/

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That knowing feeling.

That indescribable assurance that what you are doing or about to do is the right decision.

Where does yours come from?

What faith calms your twittering heart when on the verge of a yes or a no?

I used to rely on my religious faith, based in Roman Catholicism. But – as long time readers know – I don’t find much comfort there these days.

Knowing that God loved me, knowing that I had followed all the rules, knowing that I had been taken care of many times before lent a certain credibility to walking into darkness. I could do it.

See, I think with religion, answers were easy. Or rather I thought that with religion answers *should* be easy. Like, if you are X, then Y is the decision you make. But even that is not right and not good. I threw out that book long ago. Cookie cutters I called them. Bah. Boring. Restrictive. Let me out! I screamed without knowing I screamed it. And when I finally heard myself, it all went… kaboom!!!

Kaboom was fun and freeing and all, but now I feel flag-less. Who am I cheering for? Me? Wow, that seems vain. And yet, who else will do it and who else deserves it?

I’m on the verge of making a decision. I’m scared. I can’t depend on religion to offer solace, I can’t depend on someone agreeing with me, it’s just me. Yet I want so desperately to know that I am doing the right thing. I need the security of being sure.

I have always always wanted to be the good girl. I try to blame my mom for that. Certainly she didn’t make the sentiment any easier. But that idea seems so seminal to who I am and has sprouted again in another generation that it starts me wondering that maybe it is simply who I am.

What a boring life, eh? To always want to be good. What IS good? For you it is surely different than for I. And yet both good.

Wow, to even acknowledge that enough to write it threatens the borders of my mind. And yet life will not let those borders be, events constantly acting as waves against the fences built so high by some strange combination of genetics and environment.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

Maybe all those years, I gave religion the credit where it ought to have been my own back getting the pat.

But if that is true, why does knowing now still seem so frightening? Why do I need someone to tell me its OK? How many books have I read in so many different genres by widely different authors who teach the same lesson over and over? How many blog posts must I write? (Yes, even my little blog is a humble acting out of what seems to be my life lesson.) How many times do I need to hear it before patterns and anxiety dissolve?

I must beat this out of myself. For I must foster a new person, let her grow up without this hindrance, for she is a radiant beautiful thing. And I want her to know it.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
— Henry David Thoreau

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be careful how you define yourself. the past few weeks have brought monumental changes to my life, both of which I had tidily put in under the “that’s not me” place conveniently located at the back of my mind. oddest of all… I’m delighted!

#1. I got a great cut and color! walked out of there feeling like a million bucks. not that the shape was much different than usual — little past shoulder length, layered near bottom and around my face, thinned and long bangs for interest. but the way she styled it took my breathe away. rather than straightening it with a flat iron, she used a round brush and blow dryer. the effect was stunning. not that I’m trying to brag lol. but my hair was blessedly straight up top without frizz and yet it’s natural body hadn’t been stripped away and the bottom could flip and bounce and have fun. looking back at me from the mirror was the me I always hoped to see but never dreamed I could be.

I tell you I wanted to sing! so first thing upon leaving I march myself into a pharmacy to buy an identical brush and later found to my wondering eyes that with my old blow dryer and an extreme helping of patience, I was able to replicate the same result as my stylist. this from a girl who swore she never stand in front of a mirror for more than the ten minutes it takes to brush my teeth apply moisturizer and basic makeup.

#2 I got a job. a real one. with a salary and vacation time and benefits and security and everything. it’s my very first. seems like the girl who always falls asleep during movies does fairly well working graveyard. and that same girl who thought she’d never be able to work with so and so dearly loves her new work partners from Jamaica and Ireland.

so what does this mean? these things happening that I never thought would. it means my imagination is starting to believe enough to peep out of it’s little closet. it means life is still wonderful and least of all predictable. it means I’m starting to believe in miracles.

to top the day off, here’s one more thing i thought i’d never ever do….

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