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Over the last 24 hours, I have spoken to loved ones about connection. A friend trying to connect with her husband of decades, a mother trying to connect with her adult son, and a friend trying to connect with her sister.

The building blocks of relationships are never clean – cuts are made, slights are stored, memories accumulate – and it seems nigh impossible to have a beginner’s mind with so much history calcified.

I’m trying to learn new ways – letting go, letting them, beginning again, and yet those old ways of being are so entrenched it’s hard to be a new me. I have the memory of an elephant and the patience of Job, which means that I could endure so much hurt from you but then when my limit has topped off, I check out – completely.

My friend, Tommy, says there is nothing deader than dead love. I’ve felt that before. In 99% of my love relationships, love has not died, it has evolved. Only one relationship ended bitterly with me wishing I had never met the person. Perhaps that is why they continue to be an outlier and one that leaped over into my list of regrets.

Regrets, I have a few.

It’s the outliers that really make you who you become next though. I’m not the same Rachel. That’s a good thing. Yet, it has been 14 years since I’ve had a relationship (read: that lasted over three months) and this means I don’t really know who Rachel in love is anymore.

My connections are forged through friendships, as a parent, as an aunt, colleague, sister, niece, cousin – these connections I work on and hopefully they have helped me evolve into a better version of myself. It’s possible – being a woman – that these connections will be what remains.

I’m in the autumn of my life – this has always been a profound season of nostalgia for me – I don’t want to lean back into nostalgia though I want to be a pioneer into leaning forward into all the connections that await.

More will be revealed.

Late into a big event we had the Hall, I started limping around. I had been up since 3:30am getting ready and by the time I hit the 12-hour mark of continuous movement, lifting, squatting, my body started resisting. The very next day after lifting, moving and squatting to pick up the chairs and wipe down the tables and set up for the next event, I thought to myself – just get me through the next few hours.

Miraculously, my body did it. It hosted over 500 people over the course of two days by moving, lifting, squatting, stressing and then on Sunday afternoon I went deep into the couch to Lounge for the Lord as I like to put it. My body needed a Sabbath.

The next two days were spent cleaning up, which involved lifting heavy bags of gumbo bowls, bottles, cans into the garbage bins, moving and stacking sacks of wood chips we had bought as a hedge against the rain, and putting chairs and tables back in place. A lot of what I do is rearrange – I move things out of the Hall into my house and vice versa. I do this with handtrucks. One handtruck holds four extra large ice chests that I stack on top of each other and then bungee chord all of them together. Yesterday, as I stacked the ice chests and was trying to top the stack off with the fourth one while standing on a stool, I tipped over, fell into the four ice chests and came down hard on the hand truck metal plate.

Then I was back on the sofa with an ice pack in my groin where, with my entire body weight free falling, I had landed on the most unforgiving industrial size handtruck. I was grateful it wasn’t worse, it could have been, but I was still in pain and rueful that once again, I had pushed my body to the breaking point.

Folks are always saying you need to ask for help. I do and could not do this without help. Two friends/neighbors always come to help me when I call, but there are some things that I don’t call for because I believe I could do it myself. Lately, the answer that comes back from body is a resounding why? Why are you putting me through this?

I had just finished a long bout last year of a right hip problem that required xrays, mri’s, physical therapy, casterol heat pads, anti-inflammatories, and now here I am in pain once again after moving into a period of being pain-free that I was hoping was here to stay for a while.

Surely, I need to re-evaluate my lifestyle.

Someone wrote they lost their home in Pacific Palisade, and I went online to see about the damage, having only thought of the area as L.A. – a whole swath of Southern California. Most of the Pacific Palisades headlines talked about the dangers of wanting to live in a beautiful place and how insurance was sure to leave the area. It reminded me of the aftermath of Katrina when my cousin’s husband in Florida said, “Well, that’s the price you pay for living there.”

Infuriated, I pulled the car over and yelled, “What??? The price we pay for living here. This is your husband’s response?”

We all live here and there. We are all vulnerable to weather. The appropriate response is not why?

The utter shock of a weather event devastating your home is a state of vulnerability unlike any other. My blog was well underway when Katrina hit, and I managed to write myself through the hell we all went through – but even looking back, I don’t feel as if I cut through to the depth of our trauma.

Ten years later, in 2015, during the commemoration activities in New Orleans, I lay in my bed curled in the fetal position. I had PTSD. I did what I always do – I wrote about it. No one had arrived to address our mental health in 2005 – people came to help rebuild, to help restore, to help renew, but our mental health remained stuck in that one moment when we realized there had come an end to the safety we had assured ourselves was ours.

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end

This is my missive to you, whoever you are. I’m calling in your support in an area of my life that I need guidance with – how’s this for vulnerable?

I would like to know how to do all that I want to do in life and not burn out, not exhaust myself, not end up with no time left for me.

What this would look like is I could say no to doing all I want to do because I don’t have time in my day to do all the things I would like to – and that is okay. It’s possible I will leave this earthly realm not having done all that I want to do, accomplish all that I want to accomplish, and create all that is inside of me.

We went around the room yesterday morning in our exercise class and named what our theme for the year would be. Mine, of course, is vulnerability. Others called out trust, love, appreciation, patience.

Not doing feels vulnerable to me.

Prioritizing myself feels vulnerable to me.

My schedule expands even though it is typed and printed and appears finite.

I’m asking for support to discern which sparks are for me.

I’m asking for clarity as to where to focus.

I’m open to new ways of looking at time, schedules, capacity, desire, validity, work, life balance.

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, poet, social activist, and a mystic wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1960):

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom, which makes work fruitful.

I belong to so many support groups, it is mind blowing. I’m in a parent support group, a parent coaching group, an alumni parent support group, a two-hour adult children of alcoholics group, my own therapy and then there is the improv class.

The improv class is scary. Vulnerable scary. You get all your fears activated right up front – I’m not that smart, that clever, that quick, that creative – oh, the list is endless of what you are not and I am not. And yet we show up, this cohort of once ingenues and now in our nth season, we are seasoned – we show up, we take instruction from a pro, and we leave gutted from laughing so hard.

We belly laugh.

We laugh till we spit.

We laugh on the floor.

We laugh at each other, at ourselves, at all the crazy that comes out of each other’s mouths, brains, unconscious and subconscious minds – the therapeutic element of free forming stories, ideas, concepts, characters, scenes and even a simple sentence is proof that making yourself as vulnerable AF is alchemy for the soul.

Each week, I sit in a two-hour meeting where I unravel the carefully composed narrative I have created about my family. This is the story I have told myself, as well as others, for so long.

In the meeting, I’m asked to take a closer look and like any good story, there are stories hiding within the story, and none of the characters are truly who they seem at first gloss.

In the long held version of my story, my father is a hero, my mother is beautiful, and I’m the beloved baby girl in a family of eight. My family, my siblings, are all close knit. We have a shared history, culture, religion, timeline, and memories.

In this meeting, we list adaptive behaviors that helped us cope – me with a rageaholic father, an alcoholic mother, and a family unit so enmeshed and codependent that none of us knew where we began and my father ended.

Until my dad died, then the narrative pulled at our seams. My sister spun off from the family. My brothers’ children shot out in varied directions. Everyone coped in a different way. I seemed okay. I just kept adding coping mechanisms.

My laundry list of responses, reactions, and skills I now realize infected and affected every relationship I have had in my life. Who knew?

Nowhere are you more vulnerable than when you begin to unravel your origin story.

Last night, we were talking about shame and regret. I spoke about my son, how he needed to feel safe, and I did not feel safe enough to give him that space. It was only last night when I was able to say aloud, without flinching, “My son needed to feel safe (and then added) and so did I.“

I, being the young girl, who always showed up in me when my son was dysregulated. The little girl, scared and tired of chaos, who lives inside me and needs to be reparented. I try to give her as much love as I can now that I know what she needs.

Safety. It’s one of the biggest gaps in most of our recovery stories. It’s in my son’s story and mine. Lack of safety is what separates healthy families from the ones from which we need to recover.

Today is my father’s birthday. He would have been 99 years old. Thirty-seven years ago, my dad raged into an early grave at the young age of 62. He was everything to me for so long and yet, because I feared this bull of a man, I stayed clear of men like him my whole life. That was one of my coping skills.

The idea of a spiritual journey without a destination struck me as harsh. The journey is opening yourself up whether emotionally, spiritually, lovingly, whichever, or all together, with a destination in mind.

I look for signs of spiritual, emotional, and intellectual maturity in people. I look for it in myself. The destination is right at that point of connection – did we all move up to the same wrung? Or have I rounded the bend and met one of the charlatans and flying monkeys I thought I had left behind?

Muy importante.

If connection is not the destination than I don’t know. I’ve learned in the last year that the opposite of addiction is connection. That connection is where we have the potential to meet our truest self. And that is vulnerability.

Every experience I have had has opened me up to growth – the struggle, the knowing, the compassion, the growth. So it’s movement towards something – I’ll name it vulnerability. Because often my experiences have led me to dissociate, isolate, and have an adverse reaction to connection. The growth is what pushes me to stay open to the experience.

I’m growing towards staying open to uncertainty, to struggle, to weathering it all with compassion, and to staying the course on my spiritual journey even when the destination is opaque. It’s always the beginning of the world again where nothing has taken shape and I’m standing in the primeval waters, waiting to know.

One of my favorite meditation teachers offers this:

The invitation is to acknowledge the truth:
I am afraid of the unknown 
I don’t really know how this should go
I don’t really know what should happen
I don’t really know what’s best
I don’t really know what is expected of me
But something in me is open to find out 
I trust in life 

~Tiger Singleton 

Trust = Vulnerability.

“I’m going in” is what I told myself at Story Slam last night, but luckily so many people had signed up, I didn’t have to take my turn. While I was waiting, I thought about how my story was a tale of embarrassment very unlike the Christmas stories being told.

I felt ambivalent leaving, in one sense I didn’t have to tell my story, but on the other hand, I know sooner or later, I would tell one of my stories, most are embarrassing stories, and now I have to wait.

After Story Slam, I went to talk to the Alligator about our big outdoor event on Saturday. The weather has taken a turn for the blistering cold, and I believe it will work out.

“But Thursday and Friday will turn the place into a muddy mess.”

Me: It won’t be raining on Saturday.

“But the wind will be 20 MPH, this is going to be bad.”

Me: Yes, and all of the chefs have tents. We could put hay down if it rains. I believe it will all work out.

“I’m not into that woo woo stuff.”

That’s when I realized that in order for my magical thinking to work, I needed buy in. Instead, it was me buying in – to the big whopping tent, possibly multiple heaters, and suddenly I felt vulnerable to forces I had no control over – not weather, but man.

I spent three days with my teenage son in the desert and had a realization. I’m getting older.

I have been able to fake that I am 50 years older than him by keeping up with his energy level. I have a high energy level. A new realization set in when I was in a higher elevation, exhausted from waking up in the middle of the night to catch an early flight, and all the comings and goings of my normal life. There was no hiding my age.

I felt we were both too vulnerable to name it. Tin was experiencing a death in his life for the first time that wasn’t an animal. He felt vulnerable, scared that something might happen to me now. I couldn’t say with any assurance that he was wrong. And I couldn’t say to him in his vulnerable state on that day, that I needed to slow the pace, to rest, and to chill. These are not words he has ever heard from me, but it is what I wanted to say this time. I needed time.

I came home and after doing the things I needed to do, I woke sick. I stayed in bed for five days tending to this body and my health because I knew that I need rest. I needed time.

What does vulnerability look like? I was thinking of the idea of this new solar cycle I’ve entered which has 24 years in it. In 24 years, I would be 89 (ahem). I would be lucky to live a healthy life till I’m 89 years old given that both of my parents died young, my father at 62 and my mother at 74. My grandparents lived into their 90s though. There is no sugar coating turning 89 years old. You have earned the right to rest!

At 89 years old, my son would be 39 years old. I would love nothing more than to see him flourishing as an adult in his own way, in his own rhythm. Then I could quietly go on.

I am going to open myself up to the aging that is happening to me. It is slowing me down. It is opening me up. I’m growing wiser, more spiritually fit than before. I am telling the people I love how I feel about them. I’m getting my affairs in order – will, power of attorney, medical power of attorney – and I’m looking forward in my life, not backwards, because I intend to make use of these minutes, hours, days and weeks, months and years. Good use. A good life.

I went to the synagogue begrudgingly one year, because my son was studying for his bar mitzvah. I had taken to spending the high holidays in my own celebration for years – honeycakes, apples with honey on Rosh Hashanah, and a day of no screens, just meditation and journaling for Yom Kippur – this felt holy holy to me.

There I was sitting in a stiff chair in a synagogue listening to the chanting (and if it is not Sephardic, it still sounds alien to me), and I was looking through the prayer book and reading the margins. In the margins, are quotes and words of inspiration. On this page, there was a quote from Elie Wiesel. Wiesel was a holocaust survivor and an author as well a Nobel Laureate. The quote said, “The gift that God gave Adam in the garden was not how to begin, but how to begin again.”

I could hang my hat on that one quote.

The struggle is often how to begin again, not could I begin again. And the knowing is deep inside me. I know how, I struggle because I’ve gone astray, I’ve wound up in a place where I’m circling the drain of flying monkeys, irresponsible eating, drinking, smoking – read: indulging in nonsense, or my favorite drain – the one where I spiral into believing I’m not good enough for what I want, what I want to do, what I believe is true.

I’ve been sitting back and watching my son who is nearly 16 years old work on issues of feeling not good enough and I want to jump out of my seat and yell YOU’VE GOT THIS. I’m not going to lie, I have jumped out of my seat and yelled, whispered, written and text him this message over and over. Alas, I’m a fixer and I’m trying to fix his brokeness, and what do we know about fixers – they need to fix themselves, right?

So I grapple with the I’m not good enough when I say to myself I don’t know how. I don’t know how to do what I want to do. I don’t know how to begin again. I don’t think I’ll ever write a word again. I don’t think anyone reads blogs anymore. I’m not sure anyone reads at all anymore. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t think I’m good enough underlines each of these thoughts.

I saw the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama) speak to a crowd in New Orleans. I was thrilled to be there – imagine the Dalai Lama had come to the United States! What he said that struck me the deepest was this: when he first came to the West he was surprised to experience that we don’t have a lot of self love. He talked about how important it is to love yourself. He didn’t say but I read between the lines that he decided to dumb down his message of spirituality to love yourself because he truly believed that is what we need to hear in this country.

I brought this up at a retreat with a man who said he didn’t believe in loving yourself. “You have to love God first.” I stared at him. Yes, and?

One of the steps into vulnerability is loving myself. When I am not taking care of my needs – my rest, my nourishment, my heart, my spiritual growth, my emotional connections – I wind up masking this fear of vulnerability by telling myself I am not enough to deserve this care.