speak!

Most people who know me well know that I'm more of an introvert than an extrovert.  When I am first just getting to know someone and I tell them this, many people have been surprised.  I like to be friendly and social and meet new people.  I'm at a point in my life where I'm less concerned about what others think of me so the shyness from my childhood is less apparent and I'm more confident in who I am.  However, I process internally and definitely more goes on in my mind than comes out of my mouth.  Sometimes, this is a good thing...internal monologues save me from several awkward situations!  Other times, I wish I spoke up about my thoughts and feelings more.

Running the Hood to Coast race and raising money for clean water with World Vision has helped me to speak up, albeit mostly out of necessity.  I mean, you really can't attempt to raise $10,000 without speaking up.  The first year I did this race, I was terrified of the fundraising!  How can I ask people for money?  What if they think I'm nuts for attempting both the fundraising and the race?  What if I can't raise any money?  So many fears that could get in the way of speaking out, but I faced them and pushed through and spoke.

That first year, a funny thing happened. After I began speaking out, I felt more confident.  I felt more like myself.  And I was shocked that people listened!  Not only did they listen, but they gave and supported me and prayed for me.  I couldn't believe how free I felt when I spoke up.  And I couldn't wait to do it again.  So I did for three more years and I don't have any plan to stop.  I cannot wait to keep speaking up for World Vision and the need for clean water in third world communities.

Lately, I have been reminded of how many times I have ignored a tug on my heart to "speak" and let a moment pass me by where I had something to say but let my introverted tendencies take over instead.  How many times have I ignored my intuition and then regretted it later?  So many times.  With God at the helm of my heart, I can't help but believe that God is calling me to take a chance and speak out more.  That this is who God has called me to be.  A woman who speaks.

I have been listening to this tug more recently.  On my plane ride home from Oregon, I felt the tug to speak to the woman next to me.  I began a conversation and initially, I thought the tug might be that maybe she needed to hear something I had to say.  But at the end of it, she had something to say to me that I needed to hear.  That small conversation blessed me so much and it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't listened to that still small voice to speak.  I want more of this.  More conversations.  More boldness and confidence in my words.  More feeling like myself and the woman I was meant to be.

I'm ready.

dance with me

Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to be a dancer.  There are pictures of me at 3 years old partner dancing with a toddler life size Sesame Street Ernie doll.  I begged my parents for dance lessons when I was little, but wasn't able to have them.  I always looked forward to dances in middle and high school and learned some pretty sweet (and not so sweet) moves then.  I choreographed my first dance number in my high school musical as Tiger Lily in Peter Pan.  In college, I took swing dance lessons at campus events.  I began choreographing other dances on my own..and won a lip sync contest with four of my friends as *NSYNC.  For a while, I got into the salsa community while living in Chicago and loved being able to go out and dance the night away.  Most of my friends know that my best party trick is to perform a Britney dance.  When I moved back to Connecticut, I finally took a real ballet class and loved it.  When I think about it, even without real formal training, I already am a dancer.  I feel free and like myself and happy when I dance.  I love it.

Most recently, a friend introduced me to the local swing and blues community.  I've decided that this is my new adventure, my new challenge.  I want to be a Lindy hop dancer and I want to get good at it.  I bought the shoes.  I signed up for a dance weekend in September and I'm looking into attending a second.  I'm going to go to social dances weekly as much as possible this summer.  I'm committed.

One thing I am learning in this experience is how to follow.  I've done partner dances before but I've always struggled with following.  I have leader traits by nature (I am an oldest child after all) and I like to be able to know what is coming next.  Learning how to trust someone to lead me and let me know what the next steps are is counterintuitive for me.  But in Lindy hop, as the follow, you have to trust that the lead will know where to go next.  I need to learn how to trust my partner, how to communicate with him through our movement, how to connect with him through the dance.  Dance is communication without words.  I'm learning how to listen to my partner by following how he guides me without telling me.  Most times, I get it right.  But there are many times when I try to take the dance back and I forget to listen.  I try to take a turn before my partner has asked me to or I think we're going to a close position but he meant to keep us in an open position.  Then we pause.  Usually I laugh and apologize.  And then my partner guides me back into it and we try again.  Sometimes, a mistake can turn into something beautiful and we figure it out without the pause.  But I still have to trust him, return to following him, and allow him to lead me in the dance.

The other day I read the following in a devotional as if God were speaking to me:
I want you to trust Me enough to let me lead.  When a couple is dancing, one of them leads and the other follows.  Otherwise, there is confusion and awkwardness.  Dance with Me, beloved.  Follow My lead as I guide you gracefully through your life. (From Jesus Always, by Sarah Young)

It's strange to me how sometimes things in my life line up with what I'm going through spiritually.  Although, when I think about it, of course it's not strange...that's how God works.  Always communicating with me not through words, but through movement in my life.  Like in a dance.  Lately, I have been frustrated with God for many reasons.  It's just one of those tough seasons and I am very ready for that season to be over.  Similar to learning Lindy hop, I'm struggling with following.  I want to know what's next.  I want to make the choices and move things forward when I am ready for them to move forward instead of trusting God to move and guide me without speaking.  Like in a dance.  If I try too hard to make life happen the way I think it should happen, it becomes confusing and awkward.  Like in a dance.  Life becomes graceful again when I trust God to let me know the next move right at the exact moment that it needs to happen.  Like in a dance.

I have needed this analogy so much right now.  The more I think about it, the calmer I feel.  When God speaks to me in ways that speak to the heart of who I already am (a dancer), I feel loved and seen and known.  As I'm learning to follow in dancing, I am understanding in a new way how to follow God.  What it means to wait for the next move in the dance by trusting my lead.  As the follow, I don't have to think about what's next.  I just have to listen to what's being said without words through the connection.  God does this too when God dances with me.

Being asked to dance makes me so happy.  I love learning how to follow, communicate, and connect with others through dance.  I love expressing myself in this way.  And I love that in my spiritual life, God wants to dance with me too.

taboo

With the recent very public suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I've been thinking more about why the topic of mental health still seems so taboo in our culture.  For me, as a licensed professional counselor, mental health is a daily conversation with my professional peers and co-workers.  I hear words like safety plan, protective factors, positive supports, mindfulness, self-care, coping skills, anxiety, panic, depression, self harm, behavior plan, and several others on a regular basis.  I have no problem talking about what is needed to best help my clients and assessing their mental health.

However, when it comes to our own mental health, it becomes more difficult.  Even being a mental health professional, talking about my own hurts and struggles can be a difficult thing.  It's an ugly side that feels much too vulnerable to share with the world at large.  Even when I share with those in my close circle, I feel so exposed and I worry that I'm placing too much emotional strain on the people I care about.  So I hesitate to share.  I hesitate to talk about what my feelings truly are when I most need the support.  I pause to reach out to family and friends that have loved me for my lifespan, even though they have proven time and again that they are reliable, trustworthy, loving and forgiving when I have been at my nastiest and ugliest emotional depths.

I have these positive supports in my life and I know I can count on them.  And still, reaching out when I need it is tough.  I get it.  I understand why a person might choose to end their life instead of continuing to feel at their ugliest and most painful points.  Depression is deep and dark and unpredictable.  Anxiety is quick and sharp and overwhelming.  If you have felt these things time and again and feel as though you have done what you can and you still feel them so intensely, I can empathize with why it is hard to move forward.  If you have never felt this way, it may be tough to understand when someone you love is going through it.  Depression or anxiety is not a physical illness that you can see in an x-ray like cancer.  But they are a cancer.  You get treatment for a while at a certain intensity, then you get better, so you scale back on your treatments.  You go into remission and life goes on and you feel better and you remember why you love life.  But then, when you least expect it, a trigger hits and the life-stealer is back.  The cancer has returned.  And when it returns, sometimes it's more intense and sometimes its less.  Sometimes it lasts longer, sometimes shorter.  Unpredictable.  Overwhelming.  And it feels discouraging.  If Kate and Anthony dealt with these feelings over and over with no end in sight, I can understand why suicide may have felt like a valid way out.  Mental health symptoms might not be seen like cancer can, but they kill all the same.

Please talk about it.  If you are experiencing one of these things, please reach out when the weight of sadness gets to be too much or the fire of worry overtakes your thoughts.  Use resources like the suicide hotline, 211, and mental health supports.  If you know someone in your life who is experiencing these emotions, please let them know they can be vulnerable with you.  Reach out to those in your life who have struggled with this before and let them know they are loved and have value.  You may not know when a loved one is struggling and sometimes that kind word, text message, or hug can occur at exactly the right moment before you even knew that it was needed.

If you don't know what else to do, the best thing is to just be present with someone who is struggling. One of my favorite examples of this can be found in the Bible in the book of Job.  If you don't know the story, the short version is that Job was brought through significant emotional, physical, and mental pain and loss.  Right after all of this occurs, three of Job's closest friends come to visit him.  When they see him, they openly grieve their friend's losses.  And then they sit with him.  For seven days.  Without speaking a word.  To me, that is beautiful support and validation.  You don't have to fix it or know what to say.  Just be there and let your loved one know that you'll be there when the feelings change again to help them pick up the pieces and move forward.

And when they are ready to talk about it with you, they will know that for you, it's not taboo and hopefully, another life can be saved.

The Weight of Sadness
If you have ever known the weight of sadness
you know it feels like a stone tied to your heart
pulling your emotions down into dark waters.
You try to loosen the knotted rope,
but it doesn't give.
You try with all your might to loosen the stone,
but it just sits.
You ask for help from a trusted few,
but sometimes all they can do
is sit next to you
in the dark.
~EES

longing

I always have mixed emotions about Mother's Day weekend.  If you know me well, then "it's complicated" pretty accurately describes it.  Loss of biological mother relationship.  Grateful and Love for a mother who is "stepmother" by blood only and my true mother in every other sense of the word.  Longing for the children that have not yet been born to call me mother.  Complicated set of emotions?  Yup.

The past few days have really rubbed some salt in that last wound.  Please hear me out entirely...I'm not upset by the recent birth & pregnancy announcements.  Babies are a beautiful thing and I feel genuine happiness for my loved ones who get to experience this beautiful phase of life.  But, these emotions are complicated.  Hearing about how it's true for others also exacerbates the wound of longing for what has not yet come to be for me yet.  Whether you're longing for the same things or longing for something else to break and bend in your life, I know this is a feeling many can relate to.

How do you cope with the longing and waiting and not having answers?  In the past, I have leaned on my faith in God.  Not to say that I'm not now, but with each year, it becomes more difficult and more painful.  How do you reconcile a loving God who continues to allow the longing to go unanswered?  I hear stories of others who have seen God's faithfulness in one way or another but for me, nothing.  No response.  No change.  No reconciliation of the longing.  Even a change for what I'm hoping for in my life would be some sort of response from God.  Some kindness and acknowledgement of the pain that continues to permeate my life year after year.  To be completely honest and vulnerable in this space, my faith seems to become more doubt filled with each year that passes.  I wish I had answers for these questions, but I don't.  Do I still believe God loves me?  Yes.  Do I feel it right now?  No.

I'm writing this not only to express some feelings that I truly struggle with, but also with the hope that someone else reads it and thinks "me too".  Know that you're not alone.  Know that Mother's Day is difficult to many.  It's a beautiful day to celebrate a gift that many people are blessed enough to experience on one or both ends.  But it's also so painful to many of us who are remembering, hoping, praying, longing.  Maybe your mother is no longer on this earth.  Or maybe she wasn't the mother you really needed her to be in this life.  Perhaps you're angry at her for not being able to cope with her own demons to be there for you.  Or maybe you're like me and are grieving that no children call you that beautiful word, "mother".  I hope that on this Mother's Day you will know comfort that you are not alone in coping with complicated emotions and unfulfilled longings.  I'm right there with you, working out the longing.

healing

Healing is a topic I'm pretty familiar with.  As a child and family therapist, I often talk about healing with my clients and how the process can take a lot longer than expected.  One example I use to illustrate this is that healing isn't a straight line, but a line that continues to circle back before it moves forward again, making a series of loops that is constantly moving forward and up.  During a season of healing, there is a lot of forward movement but there is also backward movement.  Right when a client seems to demonstrate that they are making significant work towards their goal, they come in and report that things have started to feel bad again and they are struggling.  I often use this illustration and draw this looped line for them to demonstrate that just because they are on the backward slide of one of the loops and feel like nothing is getting better, they have still moved forward and will soon be on the forward movement side of the loop helping them to feel as though they are making progress again.  Some clients benefit from this illustration, others still struggle, but many are reminded that healing takes time and are able to feel positive about the work they have done.

Yes, this is an illustration that I am familiar with.  Yes, I am comfortable encouraging others in their own healing.  But when comes to my own healing, well that is a different story!  The past 7 months after my surgery have had a lot to do with healing for me.  For a while, it did feel like I was in that forward motion and continued to keep moving forward without any backward movement.  I did everything the doctors told me to.  I followed the rules and pushed myself enough but not too hard.  And then I got the approval to run again and all seemed to be going as planned.

But in January, after a run, my back muscles let me know they weren't quiet there yet.  I spent the afternoon in pain and iced and stretched.  The next day wasn't much better.  After two months of being off taking daily ibuprofen and muscle relaxers, I was back on them just to help myself get through the day.  Even swimming was difficult and I had to take it easy again.  I thought I had done everything correctly and in my head, that meant that healing would continue to move forward in a steady line as it had in the previous months post-surgery.  I had forgotten about those dang loops and the backward movement.  I stopped running.  I took advantage of snow storms to rest from playing volleyball.  I stretched and iced, then stretched and iced some more.  I felt frustrated and alone and worried that I would never be able to run again.  My body is also used to exercising at a certain level and because I wasn't, my body started changing where I gained weight in areas I usually don't gain weight in.  I began to feel uncomfortable in my own skin and I felt as though I couldn't do anything about it.

Going through this, I was reminded of the healing loops analogy.  I realized I was in a back loop and while I had previously made forward movement, now I was experiencing regression.  And I was not patient.  To help, I decided to be intentional about taking work out classes that would challenge me but also work specifically on my lower back muscles and abdomen.  For lent, I decided that I would take Pure Barre classes 3x a week instead of focusing on returning to running.  I wanted to be intentional about allowing myself to heal and I felt that using the season of lent would help me lean more fully on God for support.  I needed God when I heard a new song that I wanted to run to.  I needed God when I drove by early morning runners on my way to class and I felt jealous that they could run.  I needed God when my muscles burned from all the ballet moves Pure Barre had me do.  I needed God when my clothes didn't fit the way they used to and I couldn't return to my "usual" routine to help change that.  And I needed God to ease my anxiety about whether I would ever run again.  I learned a lot about patience with myself, accepting the limits of my body, and feeling ok with a new routine.  I was reminded of how God can be quiet and firm and present and hidden all at the same time.  I needed that season to help me get back on a forward moving loop.

During this time, I have been acutely aware of how there are people in my life who had also been working through some kind of healing.  I saw broken relationships, death, physical ailments, changes in jobs, and loss of future dreams.  But I also saw community gather around these people and support them through their healing.  For me, I am so grateful for my faith in God and for my community of supports in family and friends.  I don't think I could find a forward loop again without those in my life.  Regardless of your beliefs, find your community and your supports when you are healing.  Be kind to yourself when that wave of pain comes over you again and you're not as far on the healing journey as you had thought.  Be patient when healing doesn't go quite as planned.  And remind yourself that it's only a season.  You will be on a forward loop again before you know it.