Really your whole life will get better if you stop everything and listen to this song “Anxiety” by Ze Frank–a kid song for grownups he did collaboratively with readers on his blog. I’ve only listened to it one hundred times today (so far)–that’s how much I love it. You can download it for any price here or listen for free here. Really there’s no independent artist on earth who deserves your money more than Ze Frank. I adore him.
In spite of really tough events today (mostly finding out Odette needs a second surgery on Wednesday to deal with complications from the first), I’m feeling truly fine tonight and a little bit more calm in my heart than I have in a very long time. Throwing up on my blog yesterday helped a lot. Thanks for listening.
How’s everyone else doing? Feel free to say your highs and lows in the comments below.
I had the unbelievable chance to talk to Cokie Roberts today–made possible by a press badge from my job at PBS Parents Supersisters. My sister Kris and I spent most of the day in the Media Tent with our good friend PBS Wonder Woman Jeannine Harvey, talking to children’s book authors for the blog.
While Kris was charming the socks off the amazing Marc Brown, I was thinking up excuses to chat with somewhat scary looking Salman Rushdie. Under what circumstances are the author of Arthur and the author of The Satanic Verses ever in the same 300 square feet? It was a surreal kind of day.
After we finished the bulk of our interviews, I stayed behind for a chance to talk to Cokie Roberts. When her daughter Rebecca was about Madeleine’s age, Cokie was calling in her reports under gunfire from a near civil war in a foreign country. This, after insisting that her children have the chance to live overseas while she and her husband continued their assignments. They (and their kids reportedly!) didn’t regret it. I can’t tell you how much I admire this woman’s steadiness and courage.
The second I sat down to interview I felt like crying. There’s something about meeting women who you know are brave and have weathered storms with their power intact that affects me. I want to take my shoes off and honor this sacred ground. I felt this way talking to Elizabeth Edwards last year. There are things these women know that I need to hear.
Cokie softened the second I teared up and leaned in the way mothers do when they know your heart is spilling over. I asked her a few questions–the bulk of the interview to be posted on Supersisters–but here is the part I want to share with you. I asked her if there was ever a time when she had felt the pull between her dreams and plans and her family, if she ever felt torn, wondering what to do.
“Yes,” she answered, with so much passion. She told me how she really felt it when her children were young, and how easy it is to think that the pull will pass, but that it really doesn’t. That someone would always need you–a friend, a spouse, an aging parent. That it’s part of our lives as women and that the key was to learn how to juggle, how to manage it, how to make things work anyway.
It’s funny how that answer comforted me and how deeply it affected me. I soaked it in without thinking or words, so it’s hard to write about it right now, but I so desperately needed to hear this. Pretty much ever since I’ve had children, I’ve been somewhat tormented by that pull. At one point, I went through a four year period where I had recurring chronological dreams–intense, vivid dreams that wake you up at night–speaking to that pull. To know that the pull is a constant, not an obstacle or a temporary speed bump, opens up new possibilities for me. It’s one of those things that is probably obvious, but I have been completely unable to see it.
I wish this were a beautifully written post that really captured all the power and wisdom of these tiny moments, but all I can say is that I’m really deeply grateful for today. I hope I can be the kind of older woman someday who inspires somebody younger to be brave and to take incredible chances for love and wholeness and peace (because I did it myself), all the while being willing to endure the pull with dignity and grace. That’s the most any woman can hope for, don’t you think?
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
–Erica Jong
All you daring souls who know what Jong is talking about, leave us your thoughts in the comments below.
My longtime soulsister and partner-in-crime Rachelle Mee-Chapman recently recorded this essay on podcast. It is so beautiful and so true, I promise you will be so glad you listened. Here’s an excerpt:
It is not a surrendering of self. But rather, a time when you scramble a bit to find your footing, and then stand in your own power and look the Vast Beast in the eye and say, “I choose this.” I choose this thing that can both protect me and tear me apart; that can and will bring me my most enthralling joys and my most excruciating and unanticipated pain. I choose the risk. I choose the possibility of endings. I chose to be as simpatico as old souls and to be equally, heartrendingly misunderstood. I choose to be at intervals rashly taken advantage of and unexpectedly worshipped. I choose this terror and this beauty. I choose love.
–Rachelle Mee Chapman
Do you have the courage? The heart? To choose Love?
Special birthday wishes to my friend Jen Lee. I’m so glad you were born.
For those of you unfamiliar with this clip, it’s from a sequel to Peter Pan where Wendy’s daughter struggles to believe her mother’s stories of Never Never Land could possibly be true during a time of war and uncertainty in England.
This song captures how I feel these days. God bless Jonatha for writing it. It’s been a very weepy few days as my soul continues to melt into a new way of being. Your comments on the last few posts about dreams have given me so much to think about–thank you so much for being in this with me.
Here’s hoping you have eyes to see this morning that the world is made of faith and trust (and pixie dust!)
Odette, in the surgical waiting room, ready to be admitted
I loved this comment from Jennifer on the All the Glitters Might Be Gold post. There’s so much wisdom here and so much truth, I wanted to make sure you had a chance to see it.
As someone in their late twenties who recently lived through an experience (in Africa) that deeply tested my idealism, I think it is a question we should be asking. Children get so many messages from different places. First it is “dream big–anything is possible”. Then in high school the subtle message is “don’t dream too big because then people might not like you–but make sure to accumulate money and prestige”. And then in the early twenties, “don’t dream too big because you’ll be disappointed and/or won’t be able to support yourself.”
And yet, it doesn’t seem like there are many people out there talking about dreams as they truly are–guides on our path to a future that is possible, but not sure, and that to pursue them is far more challenging and filled with uncertainty and fear (and aliveness and love) than the paths of least resistance that society often says we should take.
Perhaps the greatest threat to our dreams is what we do with them when they do not pan out (because inevitably they will not unfold exactly as we expect–there will be moments that feel like profound failure). Do we let our disappointment and sense of failure consume us, and transform our souls into a perpetually cynical half-aliveness, or do we accept the present situation as it is, open our hearts to the ways it can teach us, and let our dreams be reborn continuously from our souls as they are now?
Do you have the courage to let your dream be reborn? Can you let that dream be your teacher? I’m musing on this today, and hope you will too, dear soul.
We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.
–Ben Okri
I come back to this quote all the time, taking comfort in the fact that we are not alone in the wonder and mystery of how our lives unfold. And this TED talk is staying with me these days, too. Of course, I have no idea why, but I love the tenderness in these stories, the simplicity of these plans. I have to believe that all of our dreams matter–no matter where we live, how rich or poor we are or who we are. Fast forward to the eleven minute mark. Totally worth it.
(clockwise) with eli in a diner in NYC, looking out Nick’s sunroof driving home, having a playdate in Central Park with the enchanted amelia, sigur ros concert at united palace
Home now after a whirlwind last few days. I never know how to be in New York for twenty-four hours when everything in me screams I should just move into Jen’s entryway closet. Still, I was thrilled for the chance to see Sigur Ros and happier still to spend time with Amelia and Lucy, those little monks of happiness I wrote about last spring.
Lots to think about from the last comments. Much more this week…
I remember being cautioned in my early twenties about taking my dreams too seriously. Life isn’t like the movies, my friends in their mid-thirties told me sadly, and I remember being vaguely stunned and more than a little disappointed. I took their sage advice and adjusted my expectations accordingly. But now coming into my forties, I see their response to me as more commentary about their own disappointments than any honest critique of my lovely, untamed heart.
Less is more, the old saying goes, and so we make do, thinking ourselves grownups. But what if more is more? What if the answer is to go deeper into our longings until we find the stillness that is more and more and more and more? What if in listening to those dreams we find more peace, more pain, more calm, more love?
I think about this now as I raise a young girl. I want her to find her heart’s dreams–all the glitter, all the gold.
Sometimes you can’t see.
Sometimes you can’t understand.
Sometimes you can’t explain.
Sometimes you just don’t know.
That’s me right now, and let me tell you it’s not my favorite place to be. But. I’m finding that in not knowing, there is a certain kind of stillness, and another kind of peace and a teeny tiny voice inside that I can sometimes just barely hear, telling me I’m not alone.
And I have to tell you, seriously, nothing in this world is better than that. Now I just need the volume turned up on that voice–and quick!
May the still small voice find you in your not knowing this Love Thursday, and may you know in some new and very kind way, you are not alone.
Thanks for listening.
My name is Jen Lemen. I'm messy, hopeful,
enthusiastic and helplessly in love with the idea
that stories can change you and me forever.