Gratitude, Day 99

Meditation 
quiet solitude
ceremony
mandala
Robin, Lisa, Kat, Tracy
Abundance
creation
joy
laughter, tears, crazy love
self-love, heart cookies, wisdom (strangers', friends', my own)
my teachers, bear-caves
good coffee, morning sunshine, cool breeze, wind chimes
my red bicycle,
books. Books. Books.

Poems
Andrea
the red wheelbarrow
rain
tiny flowers
pieces of you
sharing
touching
hot heavy dirty 
misty mountains
quiet roads
music that makes me wanna
laughter dance joy come
now now now

You. You. You. 
Me. 

What to Do When You Find Out That One of Your Best Friends Has Cancer

(A Prose Poem)

Cry for a long time. Think about how unfair it is. Think about how much you don’t want your friend to die. Think that you should never say the word “die” in front of her. Try to figure out what you can post on her Facebook wall that isn’t “I don’t want you to die.” Cry some more. Try to think of something funny to help you stop crying. Fail.

Think about how selfish you are. Think about her two kids. Get angry. Think there is no god. Think how a god that is supposed to be Love could make something like this happen to someone as amazing as your friend. Cry some more.

Get up off the couch and finally tell your girlfriend why you have been crying. Hear yourself say the words “R**** has cancer,” as you look out the window at the leaves shaking on the tree and the unusually gray summer sky and think that this image will be forever burned on your retinas as the first time you told someone that R**** is sick. Think again that you don’t want her to die. (She is so young!) Think about how much she has taught you and how she is wise beyond her years. Think about how much she has taught you about living and resolve to do everything possible to help her.

Resolve not to be selfish and make this about you. Recognize that this is her fight. Promise to be there for her. Wonder what “There for her” means in this situation.

Does it mean taking care of her kids when she can’t? Making dinner and bringing it to her house? Driving her to chemo treatments, holding her hand? Making her laugh through the pain? Cleaning up vomit? Worse?

Resolve that it does not matter, promise yourself that you’ll be there for her no matter what it takes, how grizzly it gets.

Go outside. Take deep breaths.

Dig in the dirt. Lift heavy things and throw them around the yard until you are exhausted and sweaty and covered in dirt.

Be grateful that you are healthy. Feel guilty for being healthy. Realize that it’s ridiculous to feel guilty for your own gratitude, promise not to waste any more energy on guilt.

Drink some tea. Care for yourself. Make crepes with Nutella and bananas and bake bread. Eat two servings of each. Wonder if you should bring some to her. Think that you should probably be bringing her green juices and turmeric supplements and an all-raw diet.

Promise yourself that you will learn everything about anti-cancer diets and bring her fresh food every day.

Worry that you should not do too much for her or you’ll make her feel weird. Tell your son about the cancer. Feel bad when he does not know what to say, and assure him through your tears that you were not seeking to be comforted, even though you were. Listen as he sounds relieved and starts piecing together words to process the shock. Words like “Unfortunate. Unfair. Devastating.” Words like, “I’m trying not to make this about me.” You and me both, Son.

Feel grateful that you have a son who has grown into such a sensitive and caring young man. Feel grateful that you have been allowed to see your child grow up. Feel grateful that your two boys are healthy. Feel guilty. (Strike that --no more guilt.)

Hand-sew a lavender eye pillow and think it looks like a third grader made it. Wonder if you should give it to her. Realize she’s a yoga teacher and she probably already has 6 eye pillows. Go to bed and watch tv with your partner. Cry some more.

Lean on your partner. Heavily. Lean on her until she feels like she is going to break, but then remember to care for her too.

The next day at work, Google “What to do when someone you know has cancer.”

Find this blog. (10-practical-tips-for-the-first-10-days-of-cancer/)

Resolve to rally a team of dedicated friends and family to help your friend. Send out an email asking your mutual friends what needs to be done. Receive responses while checking work emails. Find out there is already a task force in place. Thank God for your community.

Wonder who would be on your task force if it was you instead of her. Wonder how many times you will wish it was you instead of her. Regret instantly that thought & try to banish it from your mind. Know it is just the depression talking.

Focus on only having healing, positive thoughts. Realize how ridiculous that is and decide to let all thoughts have their place. Decide you will do everything possible from this day forward to make this a life worth living. Look into doing volunteer work in Africa. Resolve to spend less money on frivolous things so you can start saving up money to go do said volunteer work. Resolve to spend more time with your kids and working towards your goals. Resolve not to waste another day of your life doing something you don’t want to do.

Realize that you are needed right here. Right now. Realize that this is your work, to be present with your friends and to be a mom to your kids and to be a family. Resolve not to waste time on guilt and to remain focused in the present.

Go home, take a shower, cry. Go to meetings and plan fundraisers.

Repeat ad nauseum.

(This poem appears on Rebelle Society. )

Divinity

You are Divine Inspiration

You are not separate from me

You are everything which Is.

You are beauty incarnate.

You are a body, but you are

not only a BodyBeing

you are a Light Being.

You are divinity,

non-interrupted.

You are the Grandmother’s singing voices

creating the Sacred Song.

You are a dancer

a Shiva

a goddess

a Festival celebrated by thousands

of devotees twirling in colorful robes.

You are the Light

which you see in yourself when

you close your eyes and

listen to the Wisdom

That is come down

through the ages

Through the Grandmother’s tongues.

You are Consciousness

and you are stars

you are the space Within

the Stars

You are the light that

bounces from the sun to the

earth and back again.

You are the kindness in a stranger’s eyes

You are the gentle rain falling on a summer’s day

You are the thunder and the lightning.

You are the destruction

and the Creation.

You are all of Us.

We are all You.

You are the dancer/gymnast/artist/poet.

You are the elderly woman who no longer leaves her house

You are the baby

with eyes open to the newness of

Everything.

You are the mother holding her child for the first time,

You are the love that shines between her eyes and her infants’.

You are the vastness of the ocean.

You are the trickling mountain stream.

You are the glacier

You are the grain of sand in the Sahara.

You are the entire Sahara.

You are the perfection

of a ripe plum

hanging off of a tree, its leaves shaking in the warm breeze

of an orchard.

You are the bee that fertilized that flower

that became the fruit.

You are the seed that became the tree.

You are the roots.

You are the bird that flies above.

Dear Ten Years Ago

Dear Ten Years Ago,

You didn't know you were a Queer.

(or, you did but you were still trying to hide from it.)

You were 26, pregnant with Baby number Two and still married for the first time.

You were perpetually unhappy.

You lived in a little house on Lemon Street,

the one with the awful brown 70s carpet and the five citrus trees in the yard.

Two of the lemon trees had cross-bred with grapefruits to create some kind of

Abomination Fruit.

Under the shade of these trees in the mornings,

you would go and sit in the grass

to meditate.

Dreaming of the ways you would make your life better,

Someday.

You still dream of that someday,

But now you know that life can be better,

And it is in so many ways already.

You know who you are now. You know that the little fling

you had with your best friend when you were both 25,

the one that didn’t mean anything,

wasn't a fluke. You know that your depression didn't happen

just because your mom had it, or your grandma did.

You know that life is better out of the closet.

You also know that every day is not going to be easy.

You know that life outside of the self-imposed closet is

still just life,

and that some days will be hard.

You know that Grief

with her dark veil

will still sneak up on you

at inappropriate times

and you will excuse yourself from a meeting to

cry in the ladies’ room.

You will close the stall door just as the tears begin to flow.

You will sit down on the toilet seat,

sinking into that grief

and let it flow out of you.

Because you will know that

“the only way out is through.”

And you will wake up one day

and finally feel that the

weight of it is no longer sitting on your shoulders.

No longer with you at every turn,

no longer a burden you must carry with you

until the next time

you find it lurking around a dark corner

of your mind.

You will see that grief will always be with you,

in some small way

but that it needn’t consume you.

You will see that a piece of toast with butter

and a cup of tea

can be beautiful things.

And you will keep doing your practice.

You will write yourself this poem.

You will realize that you are still so young.

And, in another ten years you will write yourself another

and be amazed at how far you have come.

(inspired by 
Stay Here With Us:

poet Andrea Gibson’s project to combat suicidality) http://stayherewithme.com/2013/07/

A prose poem in list

1.
ONE day that doesn't require anything from anyone. 
2.
Just one day to sit in a pool, stare up at the sky, read a book, stick my hands in soil. 
3.
Stick my toes in sand. 
4. 
Daydream. count clouds. paint, draw, doodle. 
5. 
Make cookies that no one but me will eat. Eat half the dough and throw the rest in the freezer for a rainy day.
6.
Jump on a trampoline, skip through the park, jump rope.
7.
 Sit quietly for an hour in my backyard doing absolutely nothing but drinking iced tea and looking at my toes next to the grass. 
8.
Watch grass grow. 
9.
Pick flowers and then pick the petals off one by one.
10.
Drink hot tea and imagine the possibilities in the tea leaves. 
11.
Bake bread, get my fingers in the dough, squish them around. 
12.
Let someone else clean up the dishes. 
13. 
Watch movies and eat candy until I feel sick to my stomach. 
14.
Sit in a paddling pool in the backyard and watch bees. 
15.
Quiet the loud in my mind. 
16.
Quiet the fear. 
17.
Quell the anxiety that encroaches when I have no freedom of thought.

What does it mean to be the sky?

You are the sky.

Everything else – it’s just the weather.

Today I am experiencing a storm
inside the skies are blustery and dark and tumultuous
even though the sun is shining outside, as it must always do in 
Phoenix in June.
Surprisingly, 
I have been living under this bright sun, and so
thankful to be there, for so many months, 
I had almost forgotten what it was like

to have my sky darken, 
the clouds pass over
for no apparent reason
other than a shift in the air pressure
or a butterfly flapping its wings in Cuba.

Much like weather, 
my mood can darken with a small twist, a thoughtless word spoken by
my girlfriend or a thought that passes through my head uninvited.

Living at the whims of my own emotions
is never
a day at the ball park

especially when the night is long and 
I only sleep for 3 hours and
when i do sleep the dreams are full of 
random wild children and plastic wagons being pushed into a 
blue clear sea, only to find that when i land with a splash in the water i am holding my favorite book
above my head, trying to save it. What would 
Freud say about that dream? What would you say?

This week I cut off a piece of my finger.
This is not a metaphor, I actually did cut it off
by mistake, in the kitchen on Sunday while
making dinner for my kids and my girl.

I feel like a part of me was left behind on that cutting board
but in fact, it was wrapped in a plastic bag, packed in ice
toted to the E.R. and then placed in the 
medical waste receptacle, because it could not be reattached.

The sun/son

Her mind has entered into a place of
no-mind
she cannot tell if this is a good thing
or bad
but the sunlight on the desktop
is beautiful
she moves through her days
endlessly
pursuing the happiness
that she knows resides in her heart
if only she can access that
tight closed place

The sun
on the mountain
in the morning
on the drive to work
inspires her to exclaim to her son
Oh! Look at that!
As the moon on the other side
shouts out to her
you can do this!
You are going to be fine!
Even if your period never comes
and the IUD you got when you
were still married to your husband
is shouting out in pain
trying to expel itself from your body

you can take one small step and
one deep breath
you can drop off your boy and
go to work
you can marvel at the beauty of
the sun.