2016 in review

I just got home from my honeymoon, 7 days out from saying I do to the love of my life. I'm still in the process of writing out our wedding story, with all its redemptive twists and turns. But my friend Morgan posted these year in review questions and I thought i'd take a moment after all this business to reflect on the huge year that 2016 was for me.

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2. What were 3 significant events for me this past year?

Getting married was definitely a significant 2016 moment. Committing my life to another person, when I have a messy track record with love, is huge. Along with that getting engaged was a significant event, as it began a journey of examining what i believe when it comes to love and opening myself up to it. Its hard to pick just one event for my third most significant, because there were so many and i don't want to pick one and forget one that was perhaps more significant. But I think the deconstruction of my faith, while it was a process and not a single event, has been very significant for me this year.  

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2. What were a few of the most significant moments (think small, like noticing the beauty of the bridge of your daughter’s nose, holding your grandma’s hand, paying attention to the snow fall)

Realizing the sweetness of love through my long distance relationship, finding my tribe and feeling understood, and less alone. Connecting with another person in entirely new ways (physical, emotional, spiritual, mental...), these moments at work where this spicy child will fall asleep with her hands cradling my face, the sacred beauty of forgiveness by someone I wasn't sure I would be forgiven by, coming home to myself in strange new ways. and this current moment, my first night in my new home, smelling the lemon in my shampoo and listening to my husband play video games in the background, because i never knew if i would get this moment

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5. What did I accomplish this year? List all your wins (even ones that seem silly small, like introducing yourself to your neighbor and making a new friend).

I got my first full time job, as an early childhood educator. I got married. I made new friends. I finished college. I listened to my gut. I told the truth. I completed a yoga challenge. I overcame a lot of my fears. I survived my long distance relationship (and thrived). I did laundry so i had clean clothes and made sure i didn't die in dirt (guys, sometimes that is hard), i survived the loss of some friends. 

4. What were a few of the surprise challenges you faced this year?

Being engaged was definitely a surprising challenge for me. I found it so hard to be in that space and yet felt like i had to be happy. College was another one of those surprise challenges for me. I loved my first year, so found myself confused when my second year was so very hard. I found myself in a state of deconstruction, pushing against these rules and guidelines that had been set in place for me. It felt like i was on an entirely different track than everyone else, which was a really isolating feeling. and as i worked through issues - personal, faith related and relational - i found myself deeply and painfully misunderstood. I guess work was another challenge, just because i underestimated the toll it would take, physically and emotionally.  

5. In what ways did I heal this year (emotionally, spiritually, physically)? Where do I feel freer?

I healed in so many ways this year. The deconstruction of my faith was a huge way i healed, and in turn brought me so much more freedom. Just realizing I don't have to believe everything i was told growing up, or everything that my parents believe, liberated me so much. I started listening to my gut and what felt right for me in terms of working out my faith. I started really questioning why i believe the things i believe, and i decided to stop believing some of the things that no longer worked for me. as a result of this personal deconstruction i got passionate about social justice. i was able to have conversations with people i really care about on things like #blacklivesmatter. i began to openly identify as a feminist. i used my voice to speak up for those who need a voice, who need someone to stand with them. and i let my heart be broken by the injustices of the world.

aside from this huge healing, i've also continued to do some physical healing. i started listening to my body, and am still in the journey of this as i continue to work towards getting as healthy as i possibly can be. so much space has opened up in my body through my yoga practice. and then there is the work i am doing on radical self acceptance, on viewing myself and my body and my heart with love and compassion rather than with such a critical lens.  

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9. What day was of 2016 did I feel the most alive and why?

I saved this question for last because honestly i don't know what day this year i felt most alive. i could say it was my wedding day, and that is true in a sense. i could say it was the day i got engaged, and that also wouldn't be wrong. i could say it was the day i walked out of college for the last time, and i had this sense of being able to breathe and figure things out for myself and make mistakes, and that would also be true. I could recall our family trip to the mountains this summer, or the road trip i took to new friends' wedding, or these past few days of being away with the person i love most. i don't know if i just have one day that made me feel most alive. I think 2016 was a year of being fully alive for me, the good, the bad and the ugly. i had a string of most alive days. But i think the day i felt most alive was the day i was driving back home after getting engaged. it was my first alone road trip, and i was listening to the radio and i had one of those "if this isn't beautiful i don't know what is" moments. and i had this sense that i had made it. all those hell days, all the days when i didn't think i would make it, all the days when i wanted to end it, all the pain, they had brought me here. and i didn't know what would come next, and it didn't matter. for a moment, just a moment, i felt this perfect peace, this freedom, this knowing that i was on the right path, that i was deeply, beautifully, amazingly alive 

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13. What day or season of 2016 did I feel the most discouraged and why?

I had a long season in 2016 of wilderness, of liminal space. Sometimes i feel like i am still there. This summer was an especially hard season for me in that regard. i had just gotten engaged, but we were still doing long distance. i was in the throes of deconstruction, and feeling alienated from the community i once had. there was a while where i didn't have a job, and then it was the transition into the new job and feeling overwhelmed. and in all of it i felt like i wasn't sure where to land. i remember that season most clearly in painting the fence at my parents house, listening to podcast after podcast, hoping to find someone who would say something that would speak to me where i was at. i just wanted to know i wasn't alone. i was fighting against my heart and my body and i was discouraged. some of that has passed as i have moved along that journey but some of that discouragement is still there

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11. What did I complete, release or surrender?

I completed a forgiveness journey i have been working on for years. There was always this sense of not being finished with my abuse story, and i couldn't figure out why i kept clinging to it, why there was this feeling of something in it not being finished for me. but after a few tough conversations i was able to release so much of that. I had to give up on some dreams for reconciliation, just because it became clear to me that those people cannot be a safe space for me, not because they don't want to just because of where they fell in proximity to the situation. i was able to make a lot of peace with myself, letting go of guilt and shame and moving on from the pain into the healing journey that allows me to move forward.  

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11. What am I holding onto that still needs closure?

I'm still holding on to a lot of body issues that i thought i had closed the door on a long time ago. my body has a lot of stories to tell, and i'm realizing i didn't make peace with them like i thought i had. so the story of my body - health wise, in terms of my self image, my femininity - those are all things that still need closure. 

10. In what ways did I pay attention to others and bless them or help them meet their needs? Who did I grow closer to this year?

During this year, especially in the spring, i was able to volunteer at a women's shelter. being there was probably as much a blessing and healing to me as it was to the women and children i was there to work with, but i was able to touch so many lives that way. And then daily now, through my job, I am learning how to pay attention to others, to meet their needs and meet them where they are at. 

the question of who i grew closer to this year is a tough one to answer, because this year did feel so isolating for me. in the obvious sense, i grew closer to my husband this year, as our relationship changed from dating to engaged and now to being married. i grew closer to other people who were in the same stages of deconstruction that i was, as we had this common ground. i grew closer to my sister, as we began to talk about things that really matter like racism and sexism and how it affects our daily lives. and i grew closer to myself. 

11. Where did I lose myself this year (what were my biggest time wasters and energy-sucks?)  

people pleasing. I am a recovering perfectionist and codependent so i lost a lot of myself trying to keep the peace and keep people happy and do what i thought they wanted. i put so much pressure on myself to make people like me and make sure they thought well of me that i burnt out. 

I lost a lot of myself in caring for other people too. my work is a huge outlet for that, and college was also like that for me. i put so much into caring for other people, even if that is a "good" thing that if i'm not careful i can forget to care for myself and end up exhausted. 

And as always i probably wasted too much time on social media. I wasted too much time caring about what i looked like as opposed to whether or not i was enjoying myself. 

12. What did I do right? List what you feel particularly good about. (Working out regularly, keeping a journal)

I started practicing yoga more regularly, which is something i feel really good about. i started making self care a priority. i showed up for myself, moving away from what made me feel bad and towards the things that excite me. i was able to show up for other people, which at the end of the day is something i feel awesome about. 

13. What’s on my Best-Of List for 2016?

1. Favorite Books?

I just finished Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult and absolutely loved it. I read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell this year which was huge in changing the way i look at faith and God. Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton is definitely on the favourites list. 

2. Favorite Movies?

I watched Miss You Already this year and thought it was one of the most honest portrayals of life and death i have seen in a movie. I really enjoyed foreign language films on netflix this year. i don't know if i'd say i have a favorite movie of 2016 but anything that made me feel something made the list of movies i loved

3. Favorite Restaurants?

We went to this little french place in the mountains on our honeymoon and i made smart food network like comments about the food the whole time. i think what i remember most about restaurants is the people i went there with, which means my favorite of this year would be Olive Garden the day before my wedding, the cactus club with my choices family, always starbucks (so many of my dates have happened at starbucks) and boston pizza with family

4. Favorite Podcasts?

This question was originally different but since i didn't have a real answer to that one i thought i'd share some of my favorite podcasts of 2016, since podcasts were so influential for me. the \Jesus and Yoga podcast is probably my all time favorite podcast. I am lucky to call these ladies my friends and their insight on life and yoga and deconstruction is amazing. The Romance and adventure podcast is also one i listened to regularly as i asked the big relationship questions (and its hosted by Morgan, who created these questions, and her husband). I am a huge fan of the robcast (Rob Bell's podcast) and the liturgists had some episodes this year that literally took me hours to get through because i had to keep pausing it to catch my breath. 

14. Where did joy surprise me this year? How can I bring more of that into next year?

joy surprised me this year when i let myself be present. when i dropped the business and the trying too hard and the stress and thinking i have a million things to do and when i was still, when i was really present with the people i love, when i allowed myself to breathe into the moment and feel like i had time. joy surprised me when i listened to my gut, when i opened myself up to possibility and stopped trying to fit into the things that were no longer right for me. 

i desire to bring more of that into 2017 by continuing to listen, continuing to get quiet, continuing to show up. i want to be intentional with my time, in being where i am and to not try and be a hundred different places at once. i want 2017 to be a year of intention and getting honest about what matters, a year of showing up. 

Thoughts on Sobriety

I've been thinking the last couple of days about being sober.
I'm in a place right now that's pretty alright. And by that I mean I'm not constantly being tempted to fall back into my addictions.
It's like after a storm, when the rain begins to let up a little bit. And you look to the sky and the clouds are beginning to part and the rain is still falling but not nearly as heavily and you turn to the person next to you and you say "I think the worst of it is over."
I don't want to say the worst of it is over, because it feels like knocking on wood or something. I still have struggles in my life but they feel minor compared to the hell I walked through a few years ago, even a few months ago. It's this moment when the rain is letting up and I'm looking to the sky and thinking maybe the worst of it is over. Maybe I get to be happy now, for good.
To be honest, that phrase both completely thrills me and completely terrifies me. Because I don't know how to be happy. Because there is this lull, the break in the clouds, and things get scratchy underneath my skin and I look to the sky, almost begging for there to be another hint of a storm cloud. Because I don't know how to handle being happy. All of my life, I was trained for chaos. One crisis followed another, head over heels, and I got good at dealing with it. And the stillness, the silence, the lull, scares me to death.
I look at my life now, and I feel the squeeze of normalcy tightening around my chest and I want to run from it. I don't ever want to forget where I came from. I don't, for a second, want to forget the hell I fought through to get to this point. The label of being in recovery is one of the ones I am the most proud of, and I never want to forget what I went through to earn it. I want every word I speak, every move I make to be a living memorial to the hell I went through and survived. I don't want to be detached from the pain that made me who I am. I guess in essence what I am saying is that I never want to forget where I came from.
Where I am now, the pain is mostly fallout pain. It's the aftermath of death, the aftermath of my body fighting against me, the aftermath of the addictions. The fog has cleared just enough that I can see where I am going and live my life without being acutely aware of all these things that happened to me. I'm working out and I'm not constantly being sucked into the hatred I had for my body. I'm in my relationship, happy and loved, and not constantly thinking about all the times when I wasn't. I'm sifting through the aftermath and finding out what I believe and seeing the truth about things and it is good and hard and it is all part of recovery. But sometimes it seems the farther down the road of recovery I get, the more I want to turn and run the other way. Back to my addictions, to my self hatred, to the deep dark depression that clouded my days. Because it was comfortable. because in the thick of it all there seems to be an air of worthiness.
I heard a comment by Russell Brand in an interview he did once where he was talking about addiction, and how no matter how far you went there's always the one thing you wish you'd done, the one drug you wished you'd taken. Because then it might make recovery feel a little more earned.
I'm in a place now where I'm finally reclaiming my voice. I'm telling the truth about my story, even if my voice shakes. Even if finding out the truth sometimes reveals cracks in the solid foundation I thought I had. Even if it makes me uncomfortable and I have to draw boundaries where there wasn't any before because I am finally learning that what I want matters.
I guess what I'm saying is that this is recovery too. And I never want to forget the hell I fought through to get here. I always want in recovery to be one of the labels I am most proud of wearing. I also want to learn how to be grateful for the good moments, to enjoy the beauty that I have. And I never want to take for granted what I have, to think that I have reached a spot where I can stop being insistent upon my recovery and being brutally honest about what I feel, think, experience and need. There's no recovered for me, always in recovery. There are ups and downs because that is life, and its a journey. A journey that matters more than the destination. There's always more stories to be told, more layers to be shed. And I never want to stop being in recovery.

Caring for dirt

I've been thinking about blogging for a while now. I even have little draft posts drawn up and sitting in the folder, waiting to be published.
I haven't been writing lately, though I have had the deep desire to sift through my thoughts in a more public space. Maybe its because the issues I've been coming to conclusions on are more personal, and being discreet is hard and I don't want to give any person or organization a bad reputation. I can only tell my story, but lately my story has been colliding with a bunch of other people's stories and I don't know how to write yet in a way that won't hurt the people I'm writing about.
And I wonder if it's about time I've outgrown this blog. It's been here, chugging along, since my high school days and now I have just completed my second year of college and I'm in a far different stage of life than I was when I began writing here all those years ago. I think about starting a new blog, though that task seems daunting and I don't know if I'm brave enough to be faced with the job of starting all over.
Recently my blog friend Beth has been writing about caring for dirt.
 "because isn’t that what it’s like tending to seeds before they germinate, before they sprout? You water dirt. You care for dirt."
 That's what my life has been feeling like lately. I'm waiting and waiting for something to pop out of the darkness, for my dreams to grow and develop, and sometimes I see glimpses of something green, but in the mean time I'm caring for dirt.
I just finished up my second year of college (and it was a hard year, but that's another post) and I'm in that in-between stage. I'm packing up my room, knowing this will be the last time I step into the dorm as a student. I'm going to job interviews and asking questions about what I want my future to look like. My relationship seems to be in an in-between stage.
And I can see all of these green shoots about to poke up, and for things to come out of this darkness, but right now, in this moment, it feels a lot like tending to a pile of dirt.
Its frustrating and a lot of days I end up feeling sad. I dig and dig through the dirt, trying to find the seed I planted there as reassurance that better things are coming but as deep as I dig I don't reach the seed. I'm only pulling up fistfuls of dirt.
It requires faith, knowing that the seed I planted there is still there. All these things that I long for will grow. These fruits that I crave will shoot up from the ground in the form of a tiny green stalk because I planted them there.
I don't know what this next little bit will look like for me. All I know is that right now I'm caring for dirt. And I have faith that the seed I have planted will grow.

What a Good Woman Does

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder since I wrote it last summer. It always felt too big, too messy, too vulnerable to share. It still feels that way. But I'm learning I don't want to die buried under the secrets that are crushing me. I've spent too long trying not to rock the boat, denying myself in order to do what I thought (think?) was necessary to keep the peace. Shame can't thrive once its spoken, and I have decided I'm not ashamed of my story anymore. This quote from Glennon Doyle Melton confirmed things for me. This is no longer my secret to carry. Its not yours either. But maybe some things need to be said so they can just get out there and breathe. Maybe this is a mistake, but maybe, just maybe, its the beginning of long awaited freedom.
...
"Don't you think there are some things you should take to the grave?" I thought hard for a moment and said, "No, I really don't. That sounds horrible to me. I don't want to take anything to the grave. I want to die used up and emptied out. I don't want to carry around anything that I don't have to. I want to travel light."
...

It's like a story, one that only makes sense if you start at the beginning. Problem is, I don't remember my beginning. It's like a black hole in my memory. I can feel the fuzzy edges but what's inside it escapes me.
...
I grew up in a paper hospital. Welcoming death and life in split seconds, I existed neither fully dead not fully alive. Each animalistic howl and fiber of pain medicated, drawn into submission by drugs and chemicals with names like Lexapro and Zofran. In this paper hospital, so minimized and contained in comparison to the outside world, kept safe and sterile in here as opposed to the germs, the danger of out there, I learned how not to trust my body. My body, inferior in and of itself, slipped under the hold of modern medicine. Now I'm grateful for modern medicine for without it I wouldn't be alive. Without it I wouldn't be one of the inbetweeners, existing halfway inside and half out, but very much fully dead. But modern medicine, the drugs, the interventions, the machines keeping me alive since my first moment of life, the constant scrutiny of my body by those who had gone through years of books and lectures to be told they knew my body better than I did, they took something from me. In exchange for keeping my halfways life, they taught me how not to trust myself and my body.
...
"There was an ache at this site as old as the world"
I plant myself on the grassy earth to feel connected to something. The vibrations in my body - what my sister is calling my bad aura - pick up on the frequencies around me and as I melt into the grass I feel a connectedness to every being who has ever lived that steadies me. Maybe its the hippie in me that feels secure in the arms of what the mystics call mother earth, soothed by all the death and life that has existed in this grass and under this sky. Maybe its the poet in me that believes I have so many untold stories inside me. Maybe this full ache inside me I'm trying to write out has existed inside the roar of many women. Maybe the earth reminds me of this. Of the holy hum, of the connectedness that rises up from my trauma, that we're all just vibrating off of each other.
...
It was April, maybe. Spring, but still greyish, muddy piles of snow on the ground. I don’t remember how old I was. It feels like forever ago. It feels like yesterday. It was a game – truth or dare, because the boys didn’t want to play ‘would you rather.’ I felt small and inferior, an outsider because I was a girl, so I went along with it. I don’t remember what happened first. I’ve imagined it in different ways – more or less horrific in exact correlation with my mood. I remember, though, the exact moment it started.

…

The next month’s come in bits and pieces. Like a collage, a hazy flashback movie scene. Spreading apart skin, shaking hands curling around body parts. His hands pressing down on my hips, my shoulders feeling more intimacy with concrete. A blanket fort in the basement of my grandparents’ house, my bed, his bed, the old chicken coop, the playhouse, under the blue sky. Again and again. Not just a game but a given. Not asking but demanding.
“Turn around, let me see.” I became only good for my “private parts.”

…

I held my breath. In the moments of his hands on my skin and in the ones that followed. He stole the air from my lungs, the voice from within, the fire in my belly, the softness from my face. Or maybe I gave them up in surrender, in fear. I stopped breathing, stopped moving, stopped living. The word ‘Spirit’ in Hebrew means breath, life force. I lost my spirit and I couldn’t even cry for myself.
I held my breath in the moment the curious, unwelcome hands of a boy touched my softest skin. I froze. Even my inhales and exhales felt like they belonged to him when I let them exist. So I stopped. I held my breath. Still I haven’t managed to release it.

…

It was a good number of months later before I breathed a word of it to a living soul. I just…forgot. The brain, as a protective measure, doesn’t let you remember the memory and I don’t remember what I did in those months. I wasn’t going to bring it up, ever.
When she asked me if he’d ever touched me, I lied about the damaged done. I immediately regretted telling. I felt like no one would ever understand. It was my secret. Telling it, I soon realized, was in and of itself a powerful act.

…

I got my first period on a camping trip. I bled through everything. I had awful cramps. I bled out my innocence, my girlhood.

A miscarriage is, by definition, an unsuccessful outcome of something, a failure, a collapse, an undoing. That word felt so exact for what I felt was happening to me. I named it after the season of abuse and mourned it furiously. Something died within me.

…

People believed him. It was dealt with quickly and quietly, no one asking me how I felt. My rights as the victim were constantly denied. I felt unentitled to my feelings. I learned that the only person I could trust was myself. Still the sacred act of telling became like an epidemic.
I told everyone, not only to see their reactions to my horrific news but because the act of telling became therapeutic for me. By saying it over and over, I could manipulate the telling of the story so it didn’t sound so bad. I liked the attention I got. Maybe I told because for me it didn’t feel real. Maybe I kept trying to justify and explain it to myself. The act of telling became more about me and my perceived inadequacies and failures than it was about what I was telling.
…

I swallowed God and religion back at age 11. And perhaps it was that lack of fulfillment, that mania from pursing my addiction without constant and consistent relief that turned me off from God.

The other addictions are easier to pin point, each accurately reflecting my growing self-hatred and desperation.
The days when I crumbled at the sight of a sandwich, counting calories, the razor blade, the pills, the porn, the men. Each boy, each drug, each behavior, they were all attempts to numb the strong anger I felt. My life became a survival act. My addictions, however destructive, centered around survival.

…

My life became dependent on the idea that I could make myself feel (and not feel) things. I got fat. I got skinny. I cut my hair. I cut my thighs. I flirted with strange boys. I poisoned myself. I threw up. I isolated. I tried to die. My body needed to be punished. I couldn’t trust it. All the feelings I felt were transferred to and inflicted upon my body. The pain, the sadness, the anger, it was all kept inside my body. I needed to release it, purge what he’d done to my body, or it would kill me.
I wasn’t an addict because it felt good. I wasn’t an addict because I loved getting high, or being an emotional rag doll, or inflicting pain. I was an addict because I don’t know how not to be. My body didn’t feel like a body anymore and I needed to feel it again. I was attached to no one, tethered to nothing. I wasn’t a soul or a person or even just a body. I was an ‘it’. And I learned you can only wander around empty for so long before you collapse. When a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to see it, does it make a sound?
I am a tree.

…

I wonder what the secret formula to thriving as an abuse survivor is. Or are we all just lost souls, gorging ourselves on our own leftover remains as if our bodies were the thanksgiving feast?

…

He’d been killed in a car accident. Killed, not died, taking away any immediate speculation that he’d done it on purpose.
I fell to my knees on my purple yoga mat and howled. Something inside of me snapped. My body held together by the surviving act of hatred died. My heart formerly beating cold nearly stopped, freezing over. My thoughts were an ever changing contradiction.
Relief, then howling. Love, hate. Missing him and seconds later it would all come rushing back and I hated myself for my grief. When I left that room, my grief took on everyone else's. They told me how to feel. He was dead so no one spoke ill of him. I convinced myself it was true, that he was a great guy. What happened had been a mistake, that’s all. I loved him. His death revictimized me and I ran from it.

…

The dead boy couldn’t possibly be a monster. I called it a judgment error, a lapse in reason. It was a mistake, not abuse. I’d been so close, so connected to him. I should feel honored.
When the air inside the grief house got unbearably dense, I retreated outside. The air was cold, the snow hauntingly beautiful. I made it a few feet down the driveway before I collapsed. Inside, the strings of me snapped.
I felt left, abandoned, neglected. All of a sudden the world felt too big for me. All of the feelings inside of me were like a waterfall, rising only to plunge to their death, never to be seen again. I screamed over and over, “Dear God” and “I’m sorry”, “I love you” and “Come back.” I would have done anything. The feeling of being separated was so profound and vast.
I prayed for forgiveness repeatedly. Like I’d caused his death. Like I’d plunged a knife into his chest. And maybe I had. Maybe I had by keeping his secret and playing his game. I didn’t know any better then but in that moment it felt like an admission of guilt.

…

When I saw his body, so pale and lifeless, I ran to the bathroom and threw up. I’ve spent the past 2 years running.

…

I went to a concert tonight my friend put on in a coffee shop. As he sang I looked around me. I held in my hand the hand of the man I love. I’m surrounded by so much love and hope and creativity and light. So much of what I’m only now learning is possible. I’ve spent so long running, numbing, constricting, isolating, denying, punishing. I spent so many years dressed in shame, wearing it like a monogrammed robe. “My name is…”

But that, all this, isn’t the end of the story. Today, this love, that is how I have decided my story will end.

 

(You can find the song this post was named after here)

2015

I sit down to write another year in review, and it seems nearly impossible that a whole year has gone by. How drastically my life has changed in this turning of the calendar year. For the past few years on this day, as the world waits with held breath for the new year and a fresh start, I sat dreading the year that was to come. Now, for the first time in a long time, I wait with anticipation for 2016.
2015 was a good year. It marked the end of my first year at college, and the beginning of my second. It was in January of 2015 that I got my first tattoo, and in December of this year that I got my second and third.
On a magical day in January a handsome, charming and sometimes insanely awkward young man asked me to be his girlfriend, and I said yes. It wasn't until he left for the summer to go back to Calgary that I realized I loved him. Loving him is one of the craziest, most beautiful things I have ever done, and I don't regret a single minute.
In July of this year, I walked into a room filled with 80 odd strangers, and walked out with those strangers being my family. It was in these days spent at Choices that I got my ass kicked, literally and figuratively. I saw all the ways in my life that I choose others and neglect myself. I stared down my past, and the things I wish I could run away from. I danced, wild and free, for the first time in my life and it was beautiful. I began to believe that what I say matters, that I am beautiful and loved and strong. I learned about how to relate to the world around me, and how to create a little bit more of what I want in life. I could talk forever about the changes in my life since that moment, but what I do know is that I will never stop being grateful for my Choices family. I am a free woman, creating a space of sacred love.
It was also during the heat of the summer months that I participated in my first yoga challenge: #thisisagoodbody. It was a deep, brave venture into loving myself. It was scary, and at times I would have rather done anything than write out my soul and express the deep rooted issues I had with my body. But the work I did then was the beginning of something wonderful. I realized the work of saying this is a good body didn't end when the yoga challenge did. Now, as I face uncertain health issues, it is more of a struggle than ever to look in the mirror at my own self and say that this is a good body. And yet it is such important work, the kind that starts movements. I look at the little girls in my life - the ones I spent the summer playing princesses with and eating watermelon and laughing - and I don't ever want them to know the feeling of criticizing or hating your body. And so I do the hard work for them, and for me. Because freedom is worth it, friends. I am learning that.
The big moments are also peppered with smaller moments, smaller victories but none the less important and beautiful. It was the year I wrote a beautiful collection of essays over the summer, work that I am so proud of. I witnessed the birth of my cousin's baby (on my birthday none the less). I also said goodbye to some very loved people. I learned how to be on my own, which taught me many lessons about myself and where I fit in the world and womanhood and the kind of life I would like to have someday. I began telling my story, the one I have kept locked away for so long for various reasons and even now the telling of makes my voice shake but it is a story that has lived without a voice for far too long.
And in the midst of all the beautiful, there was pain too. There were (are) moments when my health is unstable, and it takes strength I don't know if I have to keep fighting. Coming face to face with my past, while beautiful, illuminated some things it would have been easier to keep in the dark. There was the moment when I realized love was a powerful enough force to gut me. As I walked into my second year of college, I met situations that had the power to shred me if I let them, and resulted in many tears, much frustration, anxiety attacks, and showed me more of what I don't want in life. This year while I laughed loudly, I cried in equal volume. I danced, but I also grieved. I spoke boldly, but there were also moments when it felt like my voice had been taken from me and all I could do was howl in mourning. I lived, and yet there were moments I thought that I would die. I loved, but I lost.
And all of it has brought me here, heaving and panting, to the finish line, to December 31, 2015.
When the clock strikes midnight, a new year will have arrived, with new memories waiting to be made. More tears, more laughter, more joys, more sorrows, more victories, more failures. And yet when the clock strikes midnight, I will still be the same person I was in this year. The memories I have and the things I've done will carry over.
It's nice to think about new beginnings, but to be honest I don't want one this year. I don't want a clean slate, a fresh start. I just want to move forward, another chapter, filled with more.
Welcome here, 2016. I've been waiting for you.
Thank you, 2015. You've served me well.

Circling the Wagons

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles of where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. If he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place should never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat

This morning I stayed home from church, curled up in the corner chair with my tea and my journal, and listened to a podcast by Shauna Niequist.
Something about her words hit me, and I ended up crying and scribbling down notes in my journal, pausing and replaying different sections of the message because something about it hit me.
It took me until this morning to admit that this past week has been hard.
It's the first week away from PRBI, and I'm trying to adjust to a new normal. My home team has now been dispersed all around the country, I'm now committed to making my relationship work long distance, and my life has entered a season of turbulent uncertainty. And I kept buying into the belief that I should be stronger and I should be handling this better and things should be easier.
And then this morning I had a revelation.
It's allowed to be hard
For the past week, and probably even before that, I've been pushing and trying to make the whole transition season go away and get back to the happy season.
I've been wanting my old life back, the one where I had learned to become happy and safe and comfortable, not wanting to have to trust God. I fell into the lie of believing that I did my hard time, now life should be easy. My life still is very beautiful, and I am richly blessed. But under the desire to grow was a layer of fear, and selfishness, and faithlessness, and an unwillingness to let myself be changed.
It took a lot of guts to actually admit that these past few weeks have been hard. My life is beautiful and great and how can it be hard?
But it is hard. Its new and its different and its challenging me in new ways and the stretching is uncomfortable.
I've been telling the story recently of how hard it is. Ask my mother, ask my boyfriend, ask my close friends. But that's not the whole story. If I'm being honest the story includes the part where I'm failing to live with courage and hope and have instead chosen to live in a place of whining, of fear, of closing my eyes and just waiting for things to get easy again instead of letting myself be changed by the hard place.
That's not the story I want to be telling.
I was writing a blog post today for teen girls about failure, and as I was writing to them I also felt like I was writing to me. I know a lot about failure. Unfortunately I don't know a lot about coming through failure and being stronger for it. The main thing I said to them, and to me, is to remember who God says you are.
Easier said than done. Because right now the world is screaming at me that I should be better and I should know what I'm doing and I should have it all under control. Bottom line is I don't.
I want to scream back at this world "Its allowed to be hard! I'm allowed to not know!"
I keep forgetting to plug back in to the one voice that truly matters: the one that says I am still loved, that I am valued for who I am not what I do, that I am enough, I have enough, I do enough, period.

When the criticism starts you need a group of people around you with their hands up, keeping you safe and reminding you to 'do your thing'

I need people around me reminding me to do my thing. My people are scattered all around the country, and I could sit and be miserable until I get back to what I know or I could reach out. I could reach out and say "This is hard, and I don't know how to do my thing anymore, and I need you to help me."
I need people to circle the wagons, to create a circle around me of warmth and safety.
I'm not really sure how that's going to look right now, but I also know that one of the things I've been craving madly this week is community.
Life is hard, and new things are hard, and I need my people. I need the ones holding their hands up and keeping me safe and encouraging me to do my thing.
If you're out there, and want to circle up around me, let me know.

This morning I realized how much I need to lean in. If I try to stand and face this, I have no doubt it will smash me to bits. But if I let it change me, let it carry me, let it transform me, I believe beautiful things will come of it.
I want to unclench my fists and let the beautiful right now happen to me, trusting that there is something to be gained from this hard place.

2014

I sat down to write this post, tucked into a strange bed in a strange city, with the noise of boyish voices floating in from down the stairs, and I realized that this year has been so full, so heavy, so pregnant with blessings and beautiful brokenness that it's taken my breath away.
And they always say that it's darkest before the dawn
2013 was a year of hard, and heavy. I didn't think I would survive it. I didn't know if I wanted to.
That's something no one talks about, right? How sometimes the night is so black and the air so thick and everything so heavy that there is this moment, or these string of days, when you don't even want to survive.
But if I learned anything in 2014 it's the value of honesty, and how hiding from my own story, even the messy parts that make me cringe, only makes things worse.
2014 was the year of brutal honesty.
There were moments when I stood face to face with the girl in the mirror, with the ghosts of my past. What I saw there shook me to the core.
I learned to speak the truth. About my past, about who I am now, about my family, what I believe.
I learned that sometimes it's ok to walk away, and how sometimes you have to.
My friend asked me the question of what dates in 2014 will remain etched in my memory. And some days I remember, like graduation day, and my first day of college.
But others are more subtle, moments that have sunken deep into my mind. Moments like that weekend I spent alone with my brother camping, or those final moments after my last exam in high school when I knew I would be walking out of those doors for the last time. Lunch dates at coffee shops where everything changed, and I went to learn about college but for the first time I remember feeling unconditionally loved. I remember meeting this guy in a mall and we talked about writing and one comment he said still rings in my ears. And the wedding of my oldest cousin, my for longest best friend, when I cried only happy tears and just a little. I remember the trembling nervousness on that first day of college. Water/mud fights with buckets and shrieking and how after we all dried off we went for coffee. That moment when the past seems to repeat itself, when the boy from the poems becomes the boy who built glass castles inside of rib cages, and how in the split second of him walking away the glass castle crumpled and the aftermath is every truth I've spent my whole life running away from. How I spent my 18th birthday with Emily eating ice cream and laughing and bowling with oranges and salt shakers. Late nights and letting people in and playing cards and learning how to play pool and moments where my heart felt so full it nearly burst.
2014 was a good year, a hard year, a year of being put back together and my heart swelling.
I'm always a bit nostalgic about endings, even though I know that this isn't really an end. It's a fresh start, and God knows I need one. It's a chance to begin again, and again and again.

I won't run when bullets chase me,
I won't rest where arms embrace me,
I will love when people hate me, I won't hush, no you can't make me,
send the dark but it won't break me, 
you can try but you won't change me,
Take my life they will replace me,
I won't hush, no you can't make me, I won't hush, no we will sing
Where are we going? Oh I don't know, but still I've got to go. What will become of us? Oh I don't care, all I know is I'll go anywhere.
Pioneer