Category Archives: Marriage

Something Good.

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I think I might have already mentioned this, but when I am feeling bad, I will often ask Eric to “tell me something good.”  When I need something to hang on to, to make me feel better, something to show me that it’s not all bad.  When I am in that dark hole, way down at the bottom, and the mean things with teeth are down there with me–“tell me something good.”

Picture by Cubby

He’s really good at it, because even when all he can think of is “I love you,” it totally works.  I mean, how great is it that the person that you picked and who said “yes” eighteen years ago, and knows you better than anyone, knows all the embarrassing and ugly stuff, continues to love you?  He usually is able to give me a whole list when I ask him, followed by a hug and “what can I do for you, how can I make you feel better?”

But wait–this isn’t a post about how great Eric is, even though that’s true.  This post is about a new Monday feature I’m starting today on this blog: Something Good.  I like the idea of gratitude generating joy, and the opportunity my gratitude has to spread joy when I share the good things.

Here’s today’s list:

  • Monday Morning Yoga. For the past four and a half years, I have been going to a 6:30 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning yoga class.  The teachers have remained the same, and there are two other people, along with a rotating cast of about 10-15 others, who have also attended for all that time.  It is a constant comfort, while it continues to challenge me to keep changing and evolving.  These classes were the beginnings of my yoga practice, and I am so grateful.
  • My Dogs. I promise I won’t list them every week, but I totally could.  These furry boys are at the center of my life, and live right in the middle of my heart.  And Obi might be physically gone, but he is still with me, with us.
  • Kind Over Matter.  This is on of my favorite websites.  It is a collection of daily goodness that comforts and inspires me.  There was a guest post today, “Be the Rabbit” that was so great, made me think of my dogs and helped me to think of another strategy for taking better care of myself.  “Kind Over Matter is a place that is filled with kindness, inspiration, creativity, truth, gentleness & love.” Amen.
  • Blogtoberfest. This event challenges bloggers to post to their blog every day in October.  It was perfect timing for me, because I had just started this blog, and committing to daily posts gave me the discipline and inspiration to really get this thing off the ground.  I might have already faltered if not for Blogtoberfest, but with it, I feel settled and connected to this practice, and can already see it’s value, shared and internalized.
  • Writing This Blog. Writing publicly and daily is really good writing practice, and as I have mentioned before, people like Malcolm Gladwell (who wrote Outliers: The Story of Success) would argue that it takes some 10,000 hours of dedication to a craft or profession to become an “expert,” so the more practice, the better.

And also, a few times in the past weeks, as I have been writing a post, a line emerges that shifts things for me.  Yesterday, it was this one: “it’s actually my heart that is starving and this is not going to feed it, never going to satisfy that hunger no matter how much I eat.”  Holy Wow.  It feels like there’s this deep wisdom bubbling up, and this practice gives it space, power, a voice.

  • A moment of gratitude from one of my favorite movies, Joe Vs. the Volcano: “Dear God, whose name I do not know – thank you for my life. I forgot how big… thank you. Thank you for my life.”
  • Your turn: tell me something good.

All I got right now is “try.”

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Last night, while checking my blog stats, I realized that someone had unsubscribed from my blog.  I spent a frantic ten minutes tracking down who it was–thankfully it wasn’t someone who knows me “in real life.”  And yet, I still felt sad.  Why don’t they like me?

I told Eric, and he said “So? You don’t care do you?”  Well, kind of.  I want people to like what I’m doing.  He said “I thought you were doing this for yourself?”  I am, but if I didn’t care what anyone thought, I wouldn’t do it quite so publicly.  I want people to read it, I want an audience.  I want people to think it’s worth reading.

I want people to like me…

Ah, there it is.  The problem, the central issue, the heart of the matter.  I don’t want to be famous, I want to be adored.  I want permission, I want approval.  And it hurts so much more to get rejected for who you really are and what you really care about.  In an article in the January 2011 issue of fear.less magazine, the author Steven Pressfield says “I think we’re all terrified of that, to be what we’re meant to be. Because then all the responsibility lays on us and we can’t hide behind anything.”

And yet, once I realized who had unsubscribed, it made sense.  She was a 20 year old student from New York who loves books and reading and who’d found my blog because of a post I’d written about how much I loved reading.  She thought that this was a blog about reading, the love of the word.  And it is, in part.  But, I’m sure that my posts this weekend about death, cancer, and marriage freaked her out a little.  This wasn’t what she’d signed up for.

But it is what I’ve signed up for. I am going to show up, I am going to try. I don’t want to stop, and there is still work to do–great work if I can just figure out exactly what. So, here I am: all in. The habitual numbing out that I have practiced for so many years is sticky and I feel claustrophobic in my stinky little cocoon where I’ve spent most of my time. It isn’t working anymore. Something has to change. I have to save my own life.