In March of 2020, we all sequestered in our homes. What’s a creative to do? What’s a collaborator to do? What’s a leader to do? Make something, that’s what. At least for me, having a project to dive into gave respite from the strain of being trapped inside with no major creative project to manage.
I hopped on Facebook and Zoom to gather a team of like-minded, intelligent women. We all work in creative fields, we’re all connected to the crazy world of Renaissance festivals. And thus, LadyFaire Magazine was born, debuting October 1. On April 17, we hit the first big milestone: 10,000 website views.
I am abundantly proud. We have created content ranging from archery to seasonal recipes to ancient fairy tales from around the world. Travel hacks and tea varietals are shared, stunning weddings depicted. It’s really, really lovely.
In what may have been our most ambitious undertaking, we gathered a group of BIPOC from festivals all over the country and held a series of Zoom sessions and Facetime calls that resulted in a two-part informative piece about diversity in the Renaissance festival world. It was eye-opening, and we are grateful to all those who were willing to be interviewed.
Over the next few weeks, I will be posting the individual stories here in my professional blog. But for today, let it be said how grateful I am to be leading such a fantastic team of women creators, writers, and entrepreneurs.
Cover Photo Production Credits: Josh Baker of AzulOx Visuals. Model is Jennifer Lynn Larsen Headdress by Jennifer Ayers Bow by Grozer Archery Quiver, Thumb Ring by The Flying Hun-Archery and Leather
An anchor that is sustaining me as I begin to walk my life in a new path, a solo path, is that I am not really alone. I am blessed to have three children, and the raising of them made me a woman capable of bravery. Let’s share our stories of bravery with each other, whether they come from the crucible of motherhood, or from some other place of deep rooted growth.
I believe, perhaps too strongly, in living a life with a plan. Not for me, the aimless floating in the Flow! Rigorous self examination is a constant. So, in an effort to keep my life, including relationships and work, on a productive trajectory, I ask myself: What is my goal? Who am I trying to reach? Why?
I’ve landed on this: I am hoping use the stories of my own life to connect women to each other, for I believe it’s in authentic connection with a medley of others that we create the sort of beautiful song that our lives are meant to be. Old and young. Faith-led and ambivalent. Married and single. Mother and not.
When a woman becomes a mother, there’s an alchemy at the soul level: love fuses with fear; self-awareness morphs to other-awareness. We are changed by becoming mothers. But as the mother of an adult daughter who is not sure she will ever choose motherhood as well as a daughter who embraced it at the by-modern-standards-young age of 24, I bear witness to the power of the life lived on either side of the coin. It is beautiful to watch a woman exercise choice over this profound condition called “Motherhood.”
Becoming a mother is, for many of us, a beloved experience. Not for all, I know. There are women for whom motherhood is a burden. Maybe for practical reasons like health dangers. Maybe because the partner is cruel. Perhaps because there is not enough money or danger lurks in surroundings. Becoming a mother is, for some of us, impossible. We all know a woman whose empty arms ache. Some are forced to make the bitter choice of whether to carry a terminally ill baby to term. My heart hurts for all of these women.
There are women who become moms through adoption or fostering. That’s its own damn miracle. And sometimes, men do all the parenting themselves and it’s pretty amazing.
Lots of babies are born by C-Section. Equally miraculous, and not one whit less blessed or authentic. My pregnancy and childbirth story just happens to be a bit more conventional. I love it, because it’s my story. I bet there are elements that all moms share, no matter the route to motherhood: the sweetness of holding a child, the agony of watching a child be ill or injured, the long nights of worry and wakefulness.
For me, becoming a mother was magical. Of course, many moms both cherish the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, but shudder a bit, too. Let’s get real and honest: it hurts. Growing a baby is wonderful, but it also stretches your ligaments painfully. Feet swell. Rings get tight. Backs ache. Braxton-Hicks contractions twinge. Stuff leaks out your lady-plumbing. Hairs grow in previously smooth places. Comfortable sleep becomes quixotically impossible.
My first full term pregnancy was pretty easy- my body responded to growing a child with a lot of enthusiasm. I was a college student, so I did all my projects ahead of time, to be ready. I nested by waking up one night, just a few days before labor, and scrubbing the baseboards of our student housing apartment with a toothbrush.
The second pregnancy was less peaceful. We discovered I was pregnant while my husband was in the hospital, recovering from a near-fatal bout with viral spinal encephalitis. I had confided in his doctor that I suspected I might be pregnant, and worried that his disease might have gotten to the baby. He assured me that that would not be the case, but tested me anyway. I wore a pacifier tied around my neck when I went to visit Travis in his hospital room. and his face first showed confusion, then joy as he realized that he was alive, and he would be a father again. We were facing medical bills and unemployment, but those mountains seemed insignificant against the knowledge of just how close he’d come to dying.
The third, though, her birth was my favorite. We had looked into a home birth for purely monetary reasons. My husband worked for a church that did not provide health insurance, we were living in a state where my teaching certificate was not valid, and any part time job I could find didn’t pay enough to cover child care costs.
In 1994, home birth was definitely a fringe undertaking, more so than even now. We researched and met with a midwife named Ruth, she was very nurturing, but also pragmatic. She would not brook any argument on one issue, in fact, I had to sign a document on my first visit: if, at any time, she felt I or baby were at risk, I had to follow her directive to go to the hospital. This was the very assurance that was at the top of my wish list, I knew I did not want a midwife who was so committed to the global cause of home birth and natural medicine that she would put my baby’s life at risk to prove a point. I had one visit with an MD, then spent the rest of my pregnancy with Ruth overseeing my care.
Libby didn’t seem to want to be born. At church, our preacher took the pulpit after a rousing rendition of “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,” looked over at me, and kindly (and laughingly) proclaimed that “When the roll is called up yonder, Kim will still be here.” Waiting for the baby, her meant. The congregation had a good chuckle- they were anxious for that baby to arrive, and a little worried about our unusual birthing plan.
On a September Sunday, I awoke to the sound of a popping cork; labor had begun. We called Ruth, then did what we had practiced: I walked the little house for hours, Travis following behind with a towel (thank God we had wood floors) and squatted deep at each contraction. Our other two kids awoke just at the moment I needed to start pushing, so , we bundled them off to church with neighbors, and then got to work.
On a bed covered with protective sheets, Travis leaned up against the headboard, I planted myself between his knees, and had the most primal and beautiful experience I can imagine. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and when Libby crowned, Ruth laid her hands on Libby’s head and prayed her into the world. Libby was born wrapped in blessings.
That blessed baby is a now a mother. I held her right knee and coached her during the births of both of her children, and watching my grandchildren enter the world has been a gift of immeasurable value. Libby is a woman who has fulfilled one aspect what womanhood means for her.
I have another daughter. She is walking a different path. She has, for now, chosen to build a life of independent creativity.
She is a writer, a filmmaker, and an explorer who jokes that her projects are my grandbabies, for she labors intensely to bring them into the world. I love that. She digs deep into the heart of feminism, she stands strong at the intersection of activism and art. She, too, is fulfilling what womanhood means for her.
These women, these creators-of-art, pioneers-of-independence, activism-as-caregivers have always been among us.
We haven’t always appreciated them like we should, instead assuming them to lonely and unfulfilled, we’ve pressured them to conform.
I believe the act of creation is what changes us. Whether it’s a child or a book, a family or a film, magical alchemy occurs when it’s done with the intention of love. It may even be both: motherhood and art. May we embrace and bless the women who choose motherhood, and also those who walk a different path. Fulfillment is not, after all, found only in tradition; it can be found equally in divergence.
An anchor that is sustaining me as I begin to walk my life in a new path, a solo path, is that I am not really alone. I am blessed to have three children, and the raising of them made me a woman capable of joy, even now that they’re grown and I am living on my own. Let’s share our stories of joy with each other, whether they come from the crucible of motherhood, or from some other place of deep rooted growth.
I used to think of myself as having “given up” my young adulthood to be a mother. It was a sacrifice, almost a burden. I didn’t get the time that so many of my friends did to work for a while, get some money in the bank, maybe get a down payment for a house saved up.
I looked at it as my lost youth. What I know now is that my children saved the joy from my youth, and they helped me carry it with me as they grew.
I have had to make a major shift lately because if I didn’t, I was going to move into this next phase with a lot of angst and resentment, kicking and screaming. The Empty Nest is a monumental transition. I had to shift or suffer, wasting the next 25 (hopefully) years unable to enjoy and appreciate what life was giving me. I enjoyed a Facetime call with three of my best college friends earlier this week; we suffered the travails of sorority rush when we were just eighteen years old, and now we bemoaned the travails of wherever we are in our motherhood journeys: two empty-nesters (though my house is not actually empty), a mom who has just one senior-in-high-school daughter left at home and can see her freedom beckoning like a fluttering will-o’-the-wisp, and a mom who has seen her eldest through a grueling triple organ transplantation and is now fiercely protecting her younger children from a negligent, violent husband whom she is divorcing. We are all happy about our motherhood and struggling with it in equal measure.
I am changing the way I think: I am glad I started motherhood so young! It means I get to enjoy this new phase while I am hip and (relatively) healthy. And, more significantly, I am owning this thing that people keep telling me, but that I have had a hard time believing: I was a pretty good mother.
Ready Like a Mother
When I became a mom, I had to figure it out. I hadn’t had healthy mothering in my childhood, so my tool box was pretty empty. My mom was debilitated by mental illness and addiction, was damaged by faith and desperately lonely in a house with four other equally lonely humans. I looked to relatives and friends’ moms to help me figure it out. My friend Chellie’s mother, Bea, stood across her kitchen counter and offered sage advice while feeding me scratch-made chocolate cake. Carol Brady, Samantha Stephens, and June Cleaver were role models. When I became a mother, I didn’t have peers to emulate; my best friend and I were the first in our college class to get pregnant. She and I had been roommates and pledge sisters, and we had our first babies just six weeks apart. She was just barely ahead of me on the question train: how to get the baby to latch on, when to add cereal, how to manage tummy aches, and such.
A theme of my motherhood was to protect them by being around just enough: not a helicopter, instead maybe a stealth missile. I wanted to keep them safe while instilling courage, so I instructed them, at ages 4 and 6 to “hold onto my pockets” so that I could carry their baby sister into stores. They never did let go, not once. As they grew older, I didn’t spy, I never did read a journal, though I did go through some drawers. On the night of my eldest’s eighth grade dance, I dropped her off and pretended to drive away, then sneaked back into the cafetorium and hid behind a pillar to watch her have fun with her friends in the dress I’d put the finishing touches on just a few minutes before. In my mind, the dress was my back pocket and I was at that dance with her, still protecting from afar.
Now, I am a grandmother, with a nine-month-old grandson and a twenty-one-month-old granddaughter; they, along with their parents, live with us. I was not ready for this new role, this new identity. Because I started my family so young, I was looking forward to the span during which my own kids were grown and independent, so I could be a little selfish with my time and resources. I thought I could pretend to be ten years younger and travel the world, just being indulgent and drinking pomegranate mimosas. Of course, that’s not how it worked. Honestly, when do our plans ever really go like we thought they would?
On the day my daughter and her partner told us about grandbaby number one, we were sitting at brunch at a local restaurant. I knew something was up and asked my daughter to accompany me to the restroom, where she told me she was pregnant and I slid down the wall and plopped gracelessly on the cold tiled floor (it was a nice restaurant, the floor was clean. Thank goodness we weren’t at a truck stop). After the meal, we continued the conversation at our home, and when they left after a long talk about the impending baby, I just leaned over into my husband’s arms and bawled, “I am not ready to be a grandmother.” “I know,” he sighed, “but are you ready to help your daughter be a good mom?” Of course I am.
The Awesome Power of the Grandmother
I remember the awesome influence of my own grandmothers, especially my grandmother June, whose life was a testament to the beauty of resilience and generosity. She never had a mother of her own, and her father was murdered when she was a young woman, and like me, she had to look around her for women to be role models into motherhood. She taught me about the importance of skin care, and that sitting on the porch watching birds was, in fact, a valuable way to spend time.
Her house was imbued with the magic of hospitality, space to be myself, and a place to imagine: an attic room. The stairs were behind a beautiful oak door, and once climbed, revealed a sublime room with an old iron bed, shelves upon shelves of books, boxes of toys and dress up clothes, and a window seat. This room was where I felt more at peace, more myself, than any place I had encountered. In this room, perched on the window seat, I drew pictures and wrote stories, dressed as a lady, danced, and read books. When I read Little Women for the first time, I recognized Jo’s love for her attic. I had my own attic to love. Almost always, when I was there, my mother was in a completely different town, so the pall of her depression was lifted. My introverted little soul could fly free, all under the gentle and generous eye of my beloved Grandma June.
To become a comparable source of joy and a well of confidence for my grand-kids and, more importantly, their mother, to continue to nurture my relationships with my adult kids who remain single, requires that I look backward into my own child-rearing years. I want to remember, from their births to their graduations and beyond, how I explored the idea of being a good parent as well as how I messed up royally but stayed in the game. I want to acknowledge that I was a good mom, which means I need to figure out how I did it. How I still do it. Because I am definitely not finished being a mom. Nowhere near it.
Lessons from transitioning to being a mother, then to grandmother:
If you’re young, look around for role models and don’t be afraid to ask questions.
If you’re older, look around for younger adults who need mentors. We can be a pretty isolated society. You might have a church single or a teen neighbor who could use a friend who’s got a lot of life experience.
Protect, but don’t rescue. Don’t hover. It’s not good for anyone.
Apologize to your kids when you make a mistake. They’ll remember that as they grow. It teaches them that it’s safe to be imperfect.
Write down or otherwise record the moments when you stumbled to goodness. Too often, we focus on the extremes: the picture-perfect happy, glossy moments, or the times when tragedy happens or fierce disagreements cause heartache. I think that lasting joy is found in the middle, those moments when life is just rolling along and you stumble sometimes but you keep going and growing.
Save some toys for your grandkids.
What wisdom do you have about mothering, or empty-nest transitioning? Share, I’d love to learn from you!
Many who know me believe my life is magical, that the shadows of my childhood have been banished. And in some ways, they’re right. My adult life has been enchanted: a long marriage to my best companion, glasses of wine, beloved friends, grandbaby toes and giggles under my roof, puppy kisses, wonderful books, all that stuff. My life seems pretty charmed.
It’s got some darkness, too. There’s some Maleficent energy to counteract the Aurora sparkle. All authentically lived lives are that way; anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t living in truth. Sometimes, we’re floating above the trees, but other times we’re mired in the muck of life’s sorrow.
Maybe the most fantastically and imaginatively magical part of my span here on this beautiful orb called Earth has been the fairy element; yes, I have been a fairy, the professional kind who gets paid to don wings and glitter and charm the public. Bruises have been suffered from the weight of wings. Tears of “smile fatigue” have been shed. Knees have suffered from kneeling to the level of a four-year-old’s bright face to hear a sweet whisper.
In the early years of my fae life, I embodied the nymph Nimue in a silver dress that was a replica of Drew Barrymore’s in Ever After and a crown so tall it caught on the tree limbs from which I attempted to enter a fog-laced stage. The actor playing Merlin cackled under his breath as he surreptitiously disentangled me as I sang.
I walked the gravel paths of the Renaissance festival where I worked as two queens of literature and myth: Mab of Celtic lore, and Titania of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Every day, I donned wings and glitter, accessorized with a pouch full of glass stones to give as favors to the small children who timidly approached all day for a little dollop of fairy enchantment. Each morning, I danced with abandon, spinning and skipping to the most delicate and playful music played by flute, cello, and harp; as I twirled, the sun glinted off my shimmery wings, the iridescent cobalt blue silk I wore shifting and changing colors. Those moments of abandon reminded me of being a little girl twirling in my front yard until I was so dizzy I lay down to watch the azure sky spinning above me. You only get those kinds of moments in your adulthood when you decide to stop worrying about being respectable and start allowing joy to inhabit you.
In the Quiet Time, that period when my throat was silenced by a vocal cord injury, I created a fairy persona, Hush, a playful sprite who collected found sparkly things, magpie-like, and spoke only with my hands and face or the musical toots from my little pottery ocarina. Being a fairy, as an adult, gave me a voice and the chance to revisit the little girl who had struggled and been so lonely. Hush, Mab, Titania, and Nimue blessed me with an opportunity, undergirded by the security of knowing I was surrounded by family and friends, to play. It’s like that scene in Stephen Spielberg’s movie Hook when the Lost Boys try to get the adult Peter Pan to cut loose with them: they play, and he just takes a ball to the gut. Once he has been in Neverland long enough, though, and remembers the love of his children back home, he can play. And fly.
Dragons and Time Clocks
About five years ago, I stopped playing. Packed away the costumes that represented characters I had inhabited, stopped auditioning for plays and musicals, just settled down. Settled into the organizational tasks of my job without the relieving balance of fun, whether at work or on my off time. Though these days, I play tag and peekaboo with my grandkids, those games, while special because of the giggles and memories of their baby laughter, don’t stimulate brain and activate my body in a challenging, restorative way.
I went looking for information about adult play, not expecting to find much there. Who, after all, believes that playing is an important part of adult life? It turns out: a lot of people, including mental health professionals.
“Play is being joyfully immersed in the moment, and as adults, we rarely do that.In a way, it is an active form of mindfulness, which is widely recommended and advocates being present and in the moment. Mindfulness has been proven to alleviate anxiety and depression. Studies also suggest that it can help you manage stress better and maintain a healthy weight,” says Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, Professor of Developmental Psychology at New York University.
Not so very long ago, our office (which has undergone major turnover that has rendered the following scenario obsolete) staff kept Nerf guns and tiny catapults at our desks. It was not unusual for spontaneous battles to break out, and wild laughter would fill the empty spaces between desks and meetings as we bonded and decompressed. Our staff felt more like a team back then. Playing in our offices as well as in our personal time helps us to feel better. It keeps us sane and healthy and happy. It helps us to connect in an authentic way with others. Imagination and play defeat the dragons of boredom and isolation, at work and at home.
Once Upon A Time…
I was my own Tinkerbell. Nothing more magical than that. I learned to play, and to fly, and to trust my own inner voice; the restored voice that can sing or speak truth, even when intertwined with the snares and branches of the expectations or foibles of others. I developed the strength and power to face down dragons, the real ones: family trauma, addiction, loss. I’ve lost touch with that power, though.
So here’s my magic spell, distilled from all the little tokens ever given to me by children who believed: don the tulle. Swing the wooden sword. Wear the wings. Write the poem. Find friends who will play and make the magic happen with you. Speak the truth. It’s all love, and that’s what we need most to vanquish the sinister shadows.
School started this week; with students split between virtual and in-person teaching, economic disparity and the limitation of resources for students in the lower socio-economic strata has been thrust into sharp relief. Kids without high speed internet, quick pay Amazon options, or college-educated parents are in a pickle.
I was one of those kids, back in the 1970s, before high speed internet. But the plight was the same. Disparity is a constant, after all.
Ramona celebrates a new book.
We didn’t keep books in my house. My parents didn’t read much themselves, and they definitely didn’t read to me. My literacy was fostered by the captions on coloring book pages, Sesame Street, and The Electric Company. Then I discovered the library at school. Ramona Quimby became my best friend in the years when my unbathed, scraggly self didn’t have pals. Beezus was my big sister, Mr. and Mrs. Quimby my parents. Though I never would have dreamed to indulge the sass that lay buried under my compliant surface, it was there. Every time Ramona mouthed off or struggled with her woolen stockings, I loved her. The days at school when we received our Scholastic book order forms were highlights that thrilled me; on newsprint paper was a four-page brochure of paperback books we could order. I saved up, or sometimes my dad had a little spare change, and I proudly turned in my order, anticipating the day a box of books would be delivered to the teacher and I’d have something new and wonderful: with a slick, untouched book cover that would open upon magical words and worlds, I could inhabit every wish I had ever made. Even in the seven years I taught elementary school, I kept up these book orders, bookworm-y teachers love getting new books just as much as bookworm-y kids.
I learned that our town had a portable Book Mobile, a converted bright blue school bus, it was an extension of the town’s public library and traveled to all the elementary schools in the afternoons so that kids who didn’t have transportation to the library could access its wonder. A Wrinkle in Time never had a more devoted follower. I made Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit my own fairy godmothers, Charles Wallace my brother. I imagined visiting other dimensions by tesseract. I wondered what a Bunsen burner was and how a mom could be a scientist.
I saved my pennies for the book fair and bought a graphic novel of Dracula. My maternal grandmother took me to the library when I visited her in New Mexico or, later, at their lake house in Brownwood, Texas, and I checked out Lois Lenski’s Strawberry Girl over and over. It was a summer touchstone, I only read it when visiting my grandma. My paternal grandmother had Encyclopedia Brown books in the den, and I tucked in on the bright orange mid-century linen couch and read when it got too hot to play in the west Texas sun. I wept every time that Old Dan and Little Ann perished at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows.
Once my teachers noticed my voracious appetite for books and looked at my grades in spelling, they realized I could be a contender in the Scripps spelling bee, it’s the one that you still see on television. Now I had a booklet of words to study and learn! I cloistered myself in my pretty yellow room, copying the words over and over with a pencil or recording them in the cassette player my dad had bought as an Amway tool. I carried my booklet with me everywhere, and begged people to quiz me over words.
At the bee, as each word was called, I repeated it, closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and visualized the page. Here was the miracle of my spelling strategy: I could see each page, find the word’s location on it, and, using my finger to trace the letters as my right hand hung by my side, spell it perfectly. I spelled with confidence, emphasizing each final letter with a declarative tone that left no room for doubt. I wasn’t smug, I just knew. I trusted my own voice and my own gift. The youngest girl in the competition, I watched competitor after competitor leave the stage and take a seat at cafeteria tables. Then, a snag. A problem. A hitch. The pronouncer called out the word “forte,” pronouncing it “fort-ay.” This was not a word that had ever been called to us in our after school practices with Mrs. Goodwin. My brain searched for such a thing on the F page that existed in my memory, but came up with nothing. I asked for both definition and sentence, neither helped. I relied on my phonics comprehension, took a deep breath, and spelled the word phonetically: f-o-r-t-a-y? Ending my spelling on an upward inflection alerted everyone in the room that I was unsure. I waited anxiously, but not for long. They rang that stupid little silver bell. Ding! Neither my homeroom teacher, who had been the coach at school, nor the pronouncers at the table caught on to the fact that the word has multiple pronunciations and meanings, and so one was giving me “a person’s strong suit” and the other was giving me “the musical term meaning to get louder” along with both pronunciations. I was thoroughly lost. When I sat down, I spelled every word to myself, furiously and correctly, for the rest of the contest.
Our bookmobile looked a lot like this one!
You never forget your first spelling bee loss.
As I continued up grade levels, I kept spelling, and I kept winning. When I won the eighth grade bee, and thus the right to move on to the district level competition, the Jackson Middle School newspaper sent a boy to interview me, which he did before the tardy bell rang in English class. We were surrounded by other students, who were listening attentively:
“Why do you think you’re so good?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I guess I just have a knack for it.”
He didn’t recognize the word. He did not have the vocabulary.
“A knack? What’s that? Are you trying to show us how smart you are? How much smarter than all of us?” He laughed. Others laughed. I was both embarrassed and indignant. Why should I have to pretend I didn’t know these words? Why should I have to dumb down my vocabulary, which was extensive, to meet the lower denominator? I learned to be more discreet about my intelligence that day. I didn’t stifle it, my hunger for words was too powerful to ever be curbed, they were the flame that fueled every step, every decision I would ever make. Words, books, stories, they were a candle in the dim shadows.
I kept competing, and winning, in spelling all the way through high school. I even have two adult spelling bee trophies that I treasure. I admit that I mentally correct spelling on social media, and the office has me proof everything.
Studies indicate a direct correlation between literacy and mental health. Being equipped to succeed in reading or given the opportunity to develop empathy through identification with a character helps kids to move through the world in emotionally healthy ways. Books and words saved me when I was a struggling kid. They still do, and all of us who are fortunate enough to have easy access to knowledge and its delivery systems owe it to our fellow humans to find ways to share the light.
So, what’s your favorite book?
***
If you’re interested in supporting literacy, here’s a link to the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation.
I sense in my bones that the long pause of spring and summer is over. The pace of our lives is quickening. Months of binge-watching Tiger King (a show which ultimately hurt my heart, I wish I had never seen it) and rereading the Harry Potter books are coming to an end. Maybe it’s because school is starting, the election is ramping up, tickets went on sale for the festival where I work, a festival that plans (perhaps foolishly, but no one asked my opinion) to open October 3, as is tradition. The light is changing, and with it, my own inner metronome is recalibrating to a steadier, quicker tempo.
I have never really been a morning person. I don’t hit the ground running. I sort of slog into my day, shuffling around in a haze of clouded, fuzzy thoughts. Coronavirus quarantine has exacerbated this tendency, for months I slept in until mid-morning, waking up just early enough to make a phone conference meeting at 10:00 twice a week. I didn’t start working until afternoon, I have been fortunate enough to be allowed to work from home, and working on my own schedule has meant later hours, albeit always in yoga pants, rarely in anything with snaps, buttons, or a zipper.
But a couple of weeks ago, I began to desire an earlier start to my day.
The fog is lifting.
The cobwebs are blowing away.
The dust is shaking off.
I’m taking real, measurable steps to reset my days, for while I no longer want to be driven by compulsive productivity, I do want to create and make work that is valuable and moves the needle toward positive change and the realization of my deeply held, lofty dreams.
I am getting out of bed earlier and then making it.
I am riding my bicycle in the early morning hour, before 9:00, when the south Texas heat is still just a glimmer.
I am journaling in the form of my morning pages, according to the method of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a practice that helps me set my intention and connect with my innermost motivations early in the day.
Of course, it’s yellow…
I am reciting my “litany of blessings and thanks.” I keep a recipe card file, a vintage one from the early 1970s I found on Etsy, within it are index cards where I have written the names of people who I know are struggling or have a need. I read their names, and then simply say, “Be Blessed.” I speak it at my window, where I can see all the treetops and I send their names into the sky and the trees. Praying this way has become such a balm to my spirit, it has lifted the burden of the wordy prayer where I struggle to articulate my thoughts, thinking I need to somehow find the right, perfect, mellifluous words that will translate my thoughts in a pretty enough way to get the Divine One’s attention. Also, I don’t fall asleep. And, to be rigorously honest, this way of praying is efficient. My home is not a place where lengthy prayer sessions are even possible. Spending just a few minutes in a prescribed ritual has given my spirit structure, as sense of safety and well-being. I understand the Catholic rosary tradition in a whole new way, it’s the contact with God that matters. She can hear the communication of our souls in the simple, repetitive phrases, “Be Blessed,” or “Thank you.” It is enough, for what is prayerful communication but the opportunity to commune?
And then, a small protein-rich breakfast. Now, I am ready to face my day. To tap into my dreams for my career, to write, to create, and yes, to do the mundane tasks that accompany any job: emails, deliverables, meetings, schedules, and timetables.
These routine actions are signaling to my spirit that the challenges of the life I am meant to live on this day are ready to be met.
Dear reader, do you have routines, whether early or late, that help you stay on track? I’d love to know them, I believe we can all learn from each other! And if you’d like your name on one of my prayer cards, say the word. Have a blessed day!
“Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart. Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless my reed pens and my inks. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight. May they be visible to eyes not yet born. When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings
The reclamation and rediscovery of my voice have been the driving throughline of my life since 2011 when my vocal cords were damaged resulting in a year of silence. I already felt pretty invisible in my daily life, as though I was seen and heard only by my husband and kids. Though I regained my voice through the miracle of a silicone implant, the trauma of the muteness has never fully left the deep recesses of my heart and soul. Those who have known me in an up-close way, or who read my work know this truth about me.
In her latest and most audacious work, inspirational author Sue Monk Kidd imagines another invisible and unheard woman, telling a life of her creation, a wife of Jesus during the period of unknowing: the years between his temple conversations with the rabbis and the day he stepped into the river Jordan to be immersed by John the doomed prophet. Only an undiluted curiosity undergirded with a fertile and open mind will be able to read this beautiful fiction unthreatened.
We meet Anna as a teen, full of restless joy and enormous dreams of writing, a voracious reader who had begged her father unrelentingly to be taught how to read and write. Anna is a young woman of expansive ideas trapped in an ancient patriarchal culture. I recognized her heart-cry immediately, I too was once a young bookworm with a passion for justice and a tendency toward the favoring the underdog.
The Hebraic culture of the New Testament era comes vividly alive in the author’s adept hands. Ms. Kidd revealed in an interview with researcher Brene’ Brown that she spent 14 months of eight-hour days immersed in history and religious study, joking that she was smitten by Roman aqueducts in Galilee; her daughter finally intervening with an exhortation to get on with the writing. Her dynamic descriptions of the terrain, the architecture, the food, the daily life are so real I expected to see dust on my sandals and to smell olives on the breeze upon lifting my eyes from the page.
Anna is to be married to an old man in a play for power by her father, a wealthy, landless scribe in the court of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch who would eventually see Jesus in his court. Events twist and turn, and Anna is instead married to young Jesus, a man so full of compassion and the spark of joy that he is utterly captivating. I have wondered since I was young enough to watch Sunday School stories be told by puppets and felt board cutouts what the young man Jesus might have been like, and this imagining feels completely credible.
Ms. Kidd is careful to craft a plot that is fully supportive of the sparse details of Jesus’s life that are written in the Biblical gospels, she doesn’t rewrite or recreate Jesus and his ministry, she simply attempts to create a fictional idea of what might have been, and in doing so, she provides a feminine window into the early Christian world that has not often been seen. Anna is, in truth, a proxy for all the women who have ever felt absent in the Jesus story, who have been unheard in the power plays and overlooked in the histories executed by men. “The deeper we go into our own experience, our own journey, the more likely we are to hit the universal,” says Ms. Kidd.
As a companion read to The Book of Longings, Ms. Kidd’s spiritual memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, is a remarkable deep dive into the fracturing and rebuilding of feminine faith; it too is universal. I have been working through it for some time. I say “working,” because the truth of what Brene’ Brown calls her “mid-life unraveling” is unfolding in my own life, and has been for a period of long years. It was only in the last three that I began to tiptoe from the desert created by church trauma to embark upon newer vistas of grace on my way back to verdant faith. Reading the final chapters of Dissident Daughter simultaneously with Longings scored the truths of both deeply into my heart in the same way that Anna inscribed her prayers into a bowl: women are deeply, tenderly, radically loved by God.
If a reader can access her imagination and be unafraid to ask “What if?” there is abundant grace, wit, and courage in this gorgeous novel. What a bold, yet humble gift is Sue Monk Kidd. I encourage all to read, and to listen to her episode on Unlocking Us. Its radical, gentle message is both balm and benediction.
“Phooey,” I replied as I stood in the torrent. And then I laughed. I laughed out loud and I snapped photos and I dug my bare toes into the wet sand. It was no coincidence that the storm had a feminine name this time and I met Hanna head on and ready to be filled with feminine strength. What I didn’t expect was the joy, the sheer joy that her wind-and-water-dance would engender in me.”
Sometimes the big life lessons, the ones that alter your perception, the ones that are like the tiniest shift in the tube of a kaleidoscope leading to the unfolding of a fresh worldview, happen in unexpected places. Maybe it’s a change of scenery that can knock us out of the stupor of automatic living. That happened to me this week, on the south Texas Gulf Coast. In a hurricane.
My husband and I had this trip planned for about a month. By planned, I mean I had simply booked a bungalow for a week and let a friend who lives in the area know we would be in town. There was no agenda, which is unusual for us. When we travel, we typically have each day scheduled with trips to museums, cathedrals, and theatres; our vacations are never restful. But Covid has forced a new kind of getaway for us, that of little plan, lots of naps. We had been looking forward to the trip, we really needed some quiet time, what with two babies (and their parents) living with us, with bonus grandkids visiting as well. There’s been a lot of joyful noise at our house.
A few days before our scheduled departure, a tropical depression popped up in the Gulf; within a day it had been upgraded to a tropical storm. I contacted our hostess to see if we could delay our trip by a couple of days to give the storm time to play itself out. Unfortunately, the bungalow was booked for check in just a few hours after our check-out. So we loaded up the SUV with a beach umbrella, ice chest, a DVD player and our new boxed set of “The Office,” and headed south. Just a few minutes before we crossed the tall bridge over the bay, my phone buzzed with a weather alert: the storm was now expected to hit landfall as a hurricane. We contemplated turning around and going home, but the bungalow was paid for. On the advice of my local friend, we continued to our destination to assess if it felt safe, with an invitation to hunker down at her heavily fortified hurricane-proof place if needed until the storm passed.
When we arrived, we found a cabin that has stood since the 1940s, its deep pink stucco walls surrounded by live oak trees of such girth that the house is ensconced in a sort of protective shell. We unloaded our belongings and settled in, getting a feel for the history of the place as our hostess, Juli, chatted at length about her own life as caretaker of the home. The smooth, timeworn floors are the original pine, tinted in a seafoam green wash that lets the natural patina of the wood peek through, and I slipped off my flip flops to walk on warm wooden floors that simply can’t be replicated by modern materials.
Then I headed outside, where I immediately wrapped my arms around the enormous bent limb of the largest of the great lady trees; I told her hello and asked her to protect us in the storm ahead. I descended the grassy lawn to the water’s edge to snap photos and sit on the wooden picnic tables that are mounted on stilts just where the tide can ruffle one’s dangling toes as it repeats its perpetual dance, advance and retreat, advance again, retreat again. When I went to bed that night, it was a challenge to sleep deeply, I rose several times to look outside and see if the storm was arriving.
Hurricanes travel in large circling bands of wind and rain, there is always a precedent as the outer bands of the system make landfall, and overnight, the waves at the shore splashed higher, the strengthening wind was made evident in the movement of the trees. When morning came, we made a quick trip to the store for rain ponchos, then I put the phone in a waterproof sleeve and headed outside.
I was drawn to the storm, compelled to stand in it. Throughout the day, as the storm made landfall, I continued to run outside, staggering a little in the buffeting wind, getting soaked with rain, sprayed with salty seawater, and feeling utterly alive and completely defiant.
“Stay inside where it’s safe!” I could hear the voices speak to me. “You can’t take a risk- too many people need you (which is patently untrue these days, I have never felt less relevant in my own life, but we’re sort of programmed that way as women- to assume we’re needed to do the laundry or some such chore). What if a tree limb blows and hits you in the head? What if a sheet of rusty tin slices into your gut? What if the water swallows you up?”
“Phooey,” I replied as I stood in the torrent. And then I laughed. I laughed out loud and I snapped photos and I dug my bare toes into the wet sand. As the storm progressed, I stopped taking photos and moved about 15 feet back from the shoreline, far enough from the waves to avoid being blown into the surf (hurricane winds have that power) but close enough to feel, really feel, the force of Hanna. It was no coincidence that the storm had a feminine name this time. Hurricanes alternate between male and female names, and I met this one, a lady, head on and ready to be filled with feminine strength. What I didn’t expect was the joy, the sheer joy that her wind-and-water-dance would engender in me.
I’ve lived an adult life of safety. My family of origin was turbulent. My mother was an abuser. I married very young, intent on creating a new home, a new life that was reliably secure. Its certainty has been challenged a few times, that’s for sure. And under all that, under the suburban idyll, the sweet hubby, the three kids with cute snaggle-toothed smiles and the dogs and the baseball bats and ballet shoes, my spirit ran restless. I made the mistake of confiding it to my mother-in-law once, this desire I had to move our family to a new place, simply for the experience of being somewhere new. “You can’t go somewhere new just for the sake of it, Kim,” she said. “You’re a mom. You owe your children stability. Safety. No, put that dream away,” she said.
Hers was the voice I heard behind me as I turned my face to the rain. I don’t fault her, not at all. She was right in the sense that it was not the right time to go adventuring. We didn’t have a financial safety net that would protect our kids while we gadded about; I had grown up with the spectre of poverty and wouldn’t inflict that on my kids. So I did it. The safety.
But now, I am hungry for something new. Something dangerous. A thunder of the spirit, a wind-shaking of the foundations. I sense it in my friends, too. In so many of the women of my generation whose moms may have marched in the women’s rights movement of the 1960s or who sat at home folding diapers and watching the bra burnings on tiny televisions but ultimately settled for the safer path and encouraged that for their daughters as well.
I think women have too long been denied this restless hunger. We’ve been told to play it safe, to care for our families, our communities, our churches. We’ve ignored the calls of the Feminine Divine to practice radical, risky love in favor of feathering safe little nests. There is a place for those nests, to be sure. But they are not our only calling. We are called to challenge injustice, to heal old wounds, to speak Universal Truth, to form circles of protection and friendship with other women, with bands unfurling and extending into the world to love men and nurture kids. Think of the good that can happen when women stand in the surf and shout their moxie!
If we will but avail ourselves of the wild love of Goddess and each other, if we will learn to listen to the inner voice who teases us into dancing, if we will look around us for the adventures waiting to be had, our lives will grow as powerful as the storm, and as gorgeous as the calm which follows it.
Not too long ago, I found myself sitting on the sofa, my hand going numb from the weight of my toddler granddaughter who was sleeping in my lap, settling down from the pain of an ear infection.
I was frustrated; I had plans for tasks I had intended to accomplish that morning, though I can’t for the life of me remember what they were. But I knew the clock was ticking, and I felt it like pressing on my spirit like a leaden weight; I wasn’t getting anything done.
But then… I stopped. I listened to Hazel’s sweet inhalation and exhalation, then expanded my awareness beyond just the two of us to hear the birdsong outside my window. I had a sudden realization:
I am simply going to stop counting the years.
It’s not worth it. The angst of aging, the fret of schedules, the tyranny of the clock. I’m weary of agonizing over it. It’s a waste of, well, time, which is too big, too expansive, and too weighty to be carried like a stone shackled to the ankle.
Marcus Aurelius said that time is like a river, it’s become a cliche’ that works: Time is a river everflowing. I choose to stand in that river, letting the cool water lap my calves and its burble tickle my ears. But it’s more.
It’s laughter gurgling. It’s a helium balloon floating. It’s a baseball game played without a clock counting down the seconds of a quarter. It’s the bent clocks of Dali and the poetry of the Psalm where a day is, to the Divine, like a thousand years.
A life without fear of time? Oh, yes.
Certainly, I will keep appointments at their intended times, that’s courtesy and professionalism. It indicates I respect others, and I am all for that. And I’ll be sure to note movie times when we finally get to go back to the theaters.
But quarantine has taught me that time as we have constructed and conformed to it is a cage. Who hasn’t looked at the person sitting next to them on the couch and asked, “What day is it?” at some point since the world paused? We’ve seen what life looks like when not lived with a metaphorical clock hovering overhead like Big Ben in London, clanging to move people along, heads down and destination-bent. I am learning to prefer to meander. To look up. To revel in the time which The Divine One has given me.
Rob Bell, on a recent episode of his podcast, says, “Previously [to Covid], it was, ‘How much can I fit in?’ It was about productivity. But in the future, time will start to mean other things. Like, what can we experience together? The experiences we love most in life are those when we lose track of time. I think in the future we’re going to see people move toward fewer activities, but fuller days.” Days that are less busy, but are richer.
That speaks a truth that resonates with me. It sounds amazing. May your days be blessed with time with those you love, doing what you love, making memories and living a rich tapestry of experiences.
Cathy stands there, slack-jawed, stunned in her American flag tee shirt and jean capris, salt-and-pepper bob riffling in the breeze that makes door monitor duty bearable on a Texas day with temps around 100 degrees. Taking my measure, as I take hers, only our eyes with lifted brows visible to each other over masks.
I have just revealed that I vote Progressive, and it lands upon her like a wrecking ball. She is knocked off balance by my conviction, a conviction that was informed, not ignorant. Not accidental. My purpose, my work and writing, have always been about grace. Resilience. Healing relationships. For me, faith and political ideology are intertwined in my purpose. But that’s not so for everyone. We should all have a deep appreciation of the beautiful mosaic of our diverse worldviews.
Cathy didn’t.
So then came the arguments: Muslims are in charge of our schools and Christians are being sidelined, the Founding Fathers had no intention of keeping religion out of government, that was only meant to be a one-way street that protected churches from government interference.
This lanky, opinionated, perhaps lovely person and I crossed paths this week when I worked as an election clerk in my local primary runoff election. She’d arrived a little late in the pre-dawn morning, Old Glory mylar balloon affixed to her purse strap, ready to help set up tables or clean. I had already hung all the various postings about ballots, voter rights, social distancing, and concealed carry. At 6:55, I headed to the exterior door at the school entrance so that I could redirect voters to the gymnasium at the rear of the campus. Though I was initially meant to sit in that spot for only a couple of hours, I enjoyed my post. I could easily maintain a safe distance (I am at high risk for Covid, as I have an autoimmune thing) while being friendly and helpful. So I stayed put. It was hot, but I am pretty tolerant of heat if I am adequately hydrated. My husband had brought me an ice chest filled with Diet Dr. Pepper, sparkling water, and snacks. I had a Sue Monk Kidd book to read.
Around lunchtime, Cathy escaped the heavily air-conditioned gym to sit outside and warm up. She perched on a corner of a wooden bench and commenced to chat. Now, we weren’t wearing party affiliations on our name tags, and she had arrived after the election judge checked me off the list as being the Democrat clerk, but living in a county that skews heavily Red, I imagine she assumed I was one of her kind. That happens a lot around here.
There’s this interesting thing that happens to folks like me, folks who are highly empathic. People talk to us. And I don’t mean they chat about the weather. They share. Before I knew it, I was hearing about her alcoholic father and how Al-Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholics had made her life so much healthier and happier. That’s fine, I am always glad to listen. She wasn’t unburdening, her spirits were high, she was simply being frank about things. I’m frank, too. I talked about my kids a bit, my grandkids live with us and I told stories about their personalities. In the course of the conversation, I mentioned my daughter and her “partner.” Cathy’s eyes widened. She couldn’t let it pass.
“Your daughter’s partner? What does that mean? Is she…?” She couldn’t say it. She just couldn’t. But I could hear the unspoken words floating in the air: a lesbian…? I confess I let it hang for just a second longer than was strictly necessary, her squirm was delightful. “Oh, she and her boyfriend are planning to get married. Their relationship just hasn’t followed the traditional timeline, they’ve done a few things in a different order! Hahaha!” Relieved, Cathy showed no interest in my grandchildren. She showed a lot of interest in my daughter’s relationship choices. Marriage was to be achieved, posthaste. She conceded that our country’s tax codes are not supportive of marriage (score one for the covert liberal sharing space with her).
I moved the conversation along, told her a little about my older daughter, the one who divorced after seven years in a relationship that resulted in just one year of marriage to a man who was tormented by an addiction to opioids and lying. Cathy had sympathy for that situation, she understood about addiction after all, and she applauded my daughter for giving it a go. Yet she was firm, “the traditional family unit is the foundation of this country. We cannot survive without it.”
Uh-oh.
My daughter has a vibrant family of origin. But as a single woman living in LA, she also has a family of her own creation, friends and companions who uphold each other in times of strife. Family comes in many forms. It is not only and always mom, dad, and 2.5 kids. I thought, too, of my single son, who may or may not ever marry. I decided not to even bring him up. I clenched my lips tight and let my eyes glaze over. It was time to disconnect. My empathy had run out.
She was sufficiently warm, so she went back inside and I was relieved. I continued to read and highlight my book about feminist divinity between offering instructions to the assortment of voters, “You can reach the gym at the rear of the building by driving to the next left turn, or you can walk on this sidewalk, just follow the red signs posted on the fence. Thank you for voting!”
When it was Cathy’s turn to vote, she came out to get her ID out of her car, and she paused at the curb, clearly wrestling with some thought. She turned back to me, compelled to ask if I had actually read the platforms of both parties. I suppose my tolerance of unmarried daughters had prodded her concern.
I didn’t know it, but on the day in 2016 when I slogged through pages and pages of dry political jargon at my computer in anticipation of the conventions, I was being prepared for this day. This very exact moment in time.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I have. And what I found, as I read them both, was that the Democratic platform aligns with my core values. The Republican one doesn’t. At all.” And there was that stunned look. I could almost see the wheels turning, the assumptions crumbling. I am white. I am middle class. I have nice clothes. I am educated. I am not the sort of person she assumes votes Democrat. “But, the Democratic Party isn’t pro-Christian!”
“I am not a Christian,” I reply, straight-faced. Calm.
She stammered. She argued. She tried to make a case and I was having none of it.
I am not a Christian. Certainly not an American Evangelical. I have a deep, abiding relationship with the Divine One that has absolutely nothing to do with contemporary American churches. I endeavor for that relationship with my Creator to imbue my treatment of the people I meet; it informs how I vote and donate money so that the people I don’t ever get to meet are treated compassionately. I am not perfect at it, but I try.
This woman had, in just two short conversations, canceled the lives of my daughters, my son. She’d negated my own value and worth as an American citizen because I don’t share her faith.
So right here, for the world to see, I am making a statement of political, civic faith:
My grandchildren, who are eligible for the Daughters of the American Revolution while also being first-generation Americans of Mexican descent, are equal participants in the American pursuit of happiness.
Single Americans are equal participants in the American pursuit of happiness.
Couples who live in partnership, whether married or not, are equal participants in the American pursuit of happiness.
People of different, or even no, faiths are equal participants in the American pursuit of happiness.
BIPOC are equal participants, as are LGBTQ+, First Nation, convicted prisoners, and even people who love cats. Perfume-scented drivers of Mercedes and smelly pushers of shopping carts containing all their earthy possessions, all equal participants. Those who watch MSNBC get a seat at the table. So do those who watch Fox.
I contend that traditional families as traditionally defined, are not the foundation of this country. Relationships, connections, caring for our fellow humans are. This country’s foundations are built on the rock of diversity, service, and activism. Freedom is our foundation, grace is the scaffold, and the whole structure ascends upon “ladders of opportunity:” authentic equal opportunity. The house of this country has rooms for all of those who yearn to create their own life stories. And I will, to the best of my ability, wield my gifts and my voice in honor of those stories.
In the words of national treasure, Dolly Parton, who has herself wielded her inimitable voice for good:
“Oh, sweet freedom, may you stay
In our land and lives always
And may peace and beauty fill our hearts anew
And may we all stand up for you
May our thoughts and deeds be true
And be worthy of your stripes…red, white and blue.”
May the Divine One bless America and its citizens. All of them.
Kimberly Bryant, MA 