mind body mama: help me, help me, help me

My friend needed some help—it felt like big help—but first she wanted to explain and apologize for the way she needed to be helped, especially the parts that made her feel ashamed.

I called bullshit on that.

“That’s not how it works,” I told her.  “We don’t pass judgment on your shit.  We don’t shame you.  We just try and give you the help you need, in the ways you want it, to the limits of our abilities. That’s who we are to each other.”

It reminded me of BirthPie saying, “Know your resources.”  Teaching me in word and deed to help and be helped.

It reminded me of my colleague Katie sitting with me when I could no longer hold the bad feelings at bay.  The moment I fell into that accordian of time called triggered that collapses now with three years ago and twenty years before that, when the sea of feelings you drown in are far beyond what this soft morning calls for.

I tried to apologize for making her sit with my terror and rage and confusion and grief.

“It didn’t happen to me,” said Katie.  “I’m just spending a pleasant half hour with you.”

It reminded me of the little room where I tell and tell and tell, to the limits of my memory and courage any given week.  It reminded me of my therapist saying, “If I had to think of one word to describe you, that word would be brave.”

Dorothy Bernard said, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”

Anne Lamott says her favorite prayers are “Help me, help me, help me,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

The more I think on it the more I have to believe that they are the same prayer.

There is no “help me” without gratitude that the help will be forthcoming.  There is no “thank you” without acknowledgment that the resource exists to assist. 

There is no bravery greater than setting aside shame and apology. 

There is no courage without help.

mindbodymama: A Brief History of Me

I wanted to feel safe. I was always afraid.

I wanted to have dreams.  I thought I’d have the wrong dreams.

I wanted to belong.  I was always hiding.

I wanted to have friends.  I was too shy to make friends.

I wanted to be strong.  I was always crying.

I wanted to tell the truth.  I kept quiet.

I wanted to be loved.  I was always alone.

I wanted to have faith.  I didn’t believe what they told me.

I wanted to have a body.  I was ashamed.

I wanted to love a girl.  I was hurt by a woman.

I wanted to go to Brown.  I went crazy.

I wanted to study English.  I studied religion.

I wanted help.  No one helped me.

I wanted to have a home.  I kept moving.

I wanted to have a friend.  My friend died.

I wanted to love a girl.  The girl I loved left.

I wanted to have dreams.  I dreamed of being a mom.

I wanted to feel safe.  I learned to fight back.

I wanted to be a writer.  I became a martial artist.

I wanted to have a body.  I moved into my body.

I wanted to belong.  I came out.

I wanted to be strong.  I was brave.

I wanted to love a girl.  I love my wife.

I wanted to be loved.  My wife loves me.

I wanted to feel safe.  I taught others to be safe.

I wanted to be a writer.  I stopped writing.

I wanted to have a home.  My house is filled with books and music.

I wanted to have a body.  I grew a baby in my body.

I wanted to be a mother.  I am my daughter’s mother.

I wanted to have a friend.  My friend taught me to be a mom.

I wanted to feel safe.  My daughter is safe.

I wanted to be strong.  I keep fighting.

I wanted to have faith.  I prayed for courage.

I wanted to feel safe.  I left people who were not safe.

I wanted to have friends. I lost friends.

I wanted to belong.  I found better friends.

I wanted help.  People helped me.

I wanted to tell the truth.  I started writing.

I wanted to have faith.  I grew my faith.

I wanted to have dreams.  I still have dreams.

mind body mama: Whatever happens

Adrienne Rich wrote very specifically (some said “graphically”) about making love with a woman.  She wrote of body parts, of sight and touch.  The immutability of transient physical experience:

This happened.

This was.

There are women’s bodies I have known as well as the bodies of my lovers. 

There are women’s bodies I have known better.

I have known the fake and the fist and the follow through.

I have known the hanging lock, the thumb lock, the kotegaishi.  On a small hand, a larger hand, a hand with callouses, nails dark with grease. I have known exactly how far one wrist, one shoulder must be pushed to cause pain.  And how differently far another.

I have known the snap of tendons over a joint not my own.  I have known the tang of sweat in the clinch, the heaviness of a leg in the partner stretch, the breeze from a kick that kissed my cheek.

I have known how she leaves the ground with both feet as she spars, knees high like a step dancer.

I have known knees, insteps, hands in my groin.  I have known the smell of breath, armpits, hair, skin.  I have put my foot to her foot, knee to her knee, hip to her hip, palm to her collarbone, hand between her thighs. I have stepped under her, bent my knees, lifted her onto my shoulders. 

I have felt my elbow pulled like a wishbone in her hands.

I have taken a kick to the kidney, elbow to the nose, punch to the face, my brain concussed in its bony cage.  I have been sore the next day, bruised the next day, unable to bend, run, work, find my way out of the subway.

I have closed my forearm against her windpipe, pulled her hair against my face. I have put my hands around her throat. I have buried my hand in her soft buzz cut, grasped a handful of curls crisp with hairspray, closed my fist around her shiny ponytail.  

I have felt the mat on my back and her hips on my abdomen, hands pinning my wrists. 

I have known the rhythm of sticks like handclap games, disarmed the rubber knife, swung the bo staff. 

I have known the patterns like dance and a roomful of bodies moving in unison.  I have known the black canvas uniform sodden with sweat. 

I have known the bodies of women not with words or sight but in the shape of my body against them, our muscles straining together.  I have known a wordless sisterhood of study and struggle. Our bodies have made the same movements.  My bloodstream is freighted with the memory of their touch.

Whatever happens, this is.

mind body mama: Unknown Unknowns (II)

The truth is that many of my life’s blessings—big and small—were surprises.  They are things that, before they came to pass, were laughably unimaginable.

I did not know the child I grew in my belly would be the funniest, smartest, quirkiest, strangest and most wonderful person I have ever had the honor to know.

For far too long I did not know that I am wired to love women, that desire and affection for me would most often and most deeply be directed towards females.

I did not know that my wife and I would become the kind of couple who can handle grief, and trauma, and expensive traffic citations that leave you stranded in another city at dinner time, with humor and grace. 

I did not know that the brown belt karateka who handed me her baby so she could pull out her breast would help me learn how to be a mama.

I did not know that the girl who broke my heart in 1991 would ever say, “I always regretted the pain I caused you.”

I did not know my inlaws would let me show how much I love them.

I did not know that I could spend more time in sadness and less in anger and I would not die, in fact, I would be stronger.

I did not know that I could punch so hard it shakes my bones.

I did not know that I could run up the longest, steepest hill in town, do pull ups, wrestle with boys.

I did not know that a stranger I saw around the gym would someday help me in ways for which I feel a gratitude so profound it knocks me sideways.

I did not know that the kung-fu Smithie, and that woman from church, and that Jesus-praising mama from play group would become people without whom I cannot live.

I did not know that the bartender at the corner dive would know my name and what I drink and where I work and wave to me in the early morning when he walks his dog.

I did not know I would spend a year at that bar with my oldest friend watching her become more and more herself.

I did not know that I would learn new ways to be a sister, ways that put love first.

I did not know that I would begin to tell the truth about the things that happened to me, the things that were not my fault.

So many blessings, big and small, were at one time things I did not know.

There are, in any moment, so very many things I still don’t know.

mind body mama: Unknown Unknowns (I)

A few weeks ago I had the incredible honor of serving as a friend’s “chaplain” as she jumped one of the hoops in the path of becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister.

She picked me up at 5am and drove me to Boston.  The day began as we travelled and we entered the city before it was really underway.  We parked under the Common and drank fancy coffees and reviewed the five or seven Important Points she had memorized for the meeting. 

We arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time and entered and waited.  And  waited, and waited and waited.  In nearly an hour no one came to her to say, “Welcome,” or “We are running late,” or even, “Why are you here?”

Her confidence ebbed as the minutes ticked away.  She looked at the scraps of paper in her handbag, but nothing confirmed that we were in the right place at the right time.  “This is a test,” she whispered, looking for the webcam. “They’re watching me handle this.”  She fretted, and tried not to fret, and smiled gamely, and finally put her head on the table.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said.  “I don’t know what to do.”

I thought a moment about whether or not to say what I really thought.  I thought, my friend is beloved at Our House of Worship.  Any number of kind and grounded and compassionate people would have gotten up at 4am to accompany her.  One who might have made her breakfast, or another who would have offered to pray with her.  Somebody who could have made her laugh.

She picked me.

I figured she knew what she was getting.

So I said, “It’s true that you don’t know what’s going on.  But really, that’s one of millions of things that you don’t know.  It’s just the only one that’s got your attention right now.”

It is so easy for me to go to the worst-case scenario.  It is so easy for me to imagine the bad outcome—or the several bad outcomes—that might ensue from any set of circumstances.  Even now, on my desk sits a permission slip for Small’s upcoming trip to Boston during which she might get into a bus accident or a boat accident or wander away from her group at the museum or aquarium.  Or fall ill or become injured or get motion sick or become overtired or forget to eat or feel sad and lonely.

I do not look at that permission slip and think, she might discover a life-long love of aquatic science.  She might laugh all day with her friend C. and tell stories and sing songs.  She might feel salt spray on her face for the first time, she might have to be dragged away from an exhibit because she is engrossed in the description.  She might meet one of her favorite animals—the Emperor Penguin—face to face. 

She might feel scared and get through it.  She might ask a grown up for help and receive it.  She might learn something about her own resilience, her own endurance, her own ok-ness.

Those examples don’t come as easy to me.  They don’t leap to the front of my mind.   I have to remind myself that in this enormous universe of abundant possibility, there are as many good things I don’t know as there are worst-case scenarios.

mind body mama: Formerly Known As

When Jender and I left the School Formerly-Known-as-Love we left our teachers and our students, old and beloved friends, the style of karate we had in common, and the blue tumbling mats I bought for my black-belt test.

Our hearts were burned by betrayal.  

Fool me once, we said.

We’re done, we said. 

Never again, we said.

So we played tennis and watched softball and tried some kickboxing classes and went to the bar.  We talked about Rachel Maddow and shiny lipgloss, women’s soccer and sex toys, zombies and Joss Whedon.  We talked about survival and racism and religion.  We loaded the jukebox with dollars and played fuck you songs and hoped for a bar fight.  We wore tiny dresses and did tequila shots at the most badass birthday party I’ve ever seen.

Sometimes we taught self-defense to women and girls and knew that this is the work of our lives.

Everytime I thought about training my heart hurt.  Everytime I thought about not training my heart hurt.

Sometimes I stood at the studio window at the gym where I work and watched the traditional Korean martial artists in their white gis punching and kicking.  Sometimes I watched the Coach teaching a mat class, holding someone in a crazyass pin while he explained a detail of technique to the two or three others leaning in to see.   Sometimes I went to boxing class and wailed on the hanging bag and jumped rope while the theme from Rocky blasted my eardrums.

One day I bowed into that mat class full of boys and started learning how to wrestle.

A blunt bulb of desire sent out tentative roots in the scorched earth of my heart.  The quiet space of beginner’s mind to which I have returned over and over for twenty-three years opened up in me like a still silver lake. 

People think martial arts is discipline, self-control, mastery. But for me it is a hunger.  It is insatiable curiosity.  It is a blind and wordless drive like lust: to know more, to do more, to feel for one more moment the power of my body and another’s body and the meeting of our abilities.

I asked the Coach to be my teacher.

I asked Jender to come along.

So once again I am having that life in which my car has striking shields and breaking boards and boxing wraps and a canvas gi in it.  I find scraps of paper on which I’ve written “confrontation management, straight arm, ram shield, low tackle, canines” and it makes sense.  Before worship Jender and I meet at the gym to punch and kick and grapple, and we find bruises like love bites the next day. 

Sometimes my heart still hurts but more often it sings of hope.