bipolar girl rules the world

Happy 2010!

2010-01-03T17:00:00.002-05:00

Hey y'all...

I think this is going to be a really good year, and I say that in spite of the fact that I have been sick for the last two weeks with some kind of scary chest coughing kind of thing. I'm not scary-sick, just cruddy sick, but the cough scares people. Seriously, it's loud.

The good news is that I got in my first MFA application on time (wahoo!) to UNC-Wilmington, which is tied first place with Rutgers-Camden as my first choice of programs. I've got another five or so applications due by February 1, so we'll see how it goes.

I've got lots to share, so I'm going to try to post more regularly... (she says, again!)

At the North Carolina Writers' Network Conference...

2009-11-21T18:40:00.002-05:00

I'm so inspired! I'm feeling affirmed as a writer, and believe that applying to MFA programs for next year is the way to go. I have SO MUCH to learn -- and I say that in a totally non-self deprecating way. Plus, two very critical ideas came to me while I was participating in the classes: a way to correctly structure a story I've been suffering overAND the opening to my MFA application letter (the answer to "why I want an MFA" and "why I want one from you -- rather, the U).

The pieces in my life are coming together. I have structure, I have joy, calling, purpose...I'm more than "not depressed." More often than not, I'm feeling good. Still working out some kinks, but "more often than not" is still miraculous.

heading in the right direction

2009-08-22T00:06:00.002-04:00

Some combination of the meds finally kicking in, the kindness of friends, the ever-present love of family, a lot of prayer ... whatever it is, I'm feeling more like me.

I just wanted to say that on my blog. I have a lot more to say about it all, but now I'm tired. My Wonder-dog of 17 years passed over today. It was about as beautiful as it could be. I'm flooded with gratefulness.

She waited until the Effexor kicked in to go. No one can tell me different.

still crazy...

2009-08-10T19:42:00.002-04:00

after all these months.

I count as the beginning of this particular round of depression March 15, when I went to Pendle Hill and slept through too much of my precious time there, due to a medication change which led to all kinds of intense physical symptoms, which led into an rather intense depression which is still hovering around me like humidity in NC in August.

I'm at the point where I think people become vulnerable to joining cults, or the military. I just want someone to tell me what to do to get better. New meds take time to work, and I think they are helping, but still...trying to accomplish anything can be excruciating.

God, this has been a long haul.

church

2009-05-24T12:54:00.002-04:00

I struggle to get to church most Sundays. Though 11 a.m. isn't exactly early morning, it's not my best time of day. But it's more than that -- I expend so much energy towards squelching frightening feelings of depression that it's frightening to think about opening up to God. My reactions to the flowing of the spirit are unpredictable, and what I strive for when I'm depressed is a kind of manageable sameness.

This sameness hurts to maintain. I'm tense and tight and afraid of each next moment. I may push myself from one thing to another, but mostly I'm wondering when I get to stop. Stop as in go to bed and end my day, but also just STOP. I struggle to imagine how I might continue like I am for much longer. It's not a suicide wish, but more of a, I wouldn't mind if I could finally give up and not have to try so hard. I've been in this particular wave of depression/physical illness for over two months now. I'm running out of stamina.

In today's sermon, Pastor Gayle preached about the fire of Methodism, and asked, repeatedly and effectively, if the fire had gone out. I understood the fire as passionate engagement with faith and with the world. I kept picturing my fire as smothering under damp clothes, gasping for air. I believe I am in a time of brokenness, and that in all times of brokenness, there is a possibility of radical rebirth. That's what I want from this time, not some weak return to the status quo, which wasn't all that great to begin with. In my current state of being, I have had no choice but to become very clear that my survival depends on reaching out to others and being willing to ask for help. I've also experienced a renewed commitment to my creative goals, and a very clear knowing that I have no choice but to write -- or create -- from exactly where I am (considering emotional states as a place) in the present moment.

I've also received a renewed faith in the present moment, for two reasons. One, the present moment is all I can freaking manage. Thinking ahead to the next moment can be terrifying, and I inevitably predict failure. I've also begun to give myself a lot of credit for small things, like taking a shower, getting to a cafe to get some work done, calling a friend, or showing up to meet a friend for lunch. I tend to give myself credit for NOTHING, not even significantly larger accomplishments, so this marking of small things is good practice.

All that said, I've had several harrowing days in a row, where transitions from one thing to the next have involved periods of crying in my car, unsure of what to do next, and afraid of slipping and falling into despair. I went to a church event yesterday (Saturday) and as I left, people kept saying, "see you tomorrow" and I kept thinking, what is tomorrow? And of course, tomorrow was church. Right. I knew that.

So I really wanted to show up at church, and not just show up, but hang around afterwords and get and give a few hugs. This behavior is new, as I ususally slip in and out so as not to be noticed by the nice people who would actually show pleasure in my presence. And so I arrived twenty minutes late, just in time for the sermon, which I mentioned above. It was a communion Sunday, which always gets to me for some reason. And then our lay leader Sharon prayed for me as I kneeled at the altar.

There was something about the way she prayed -- fiercely, with our hands clenched together -- that built on the words of the sermon and allowed them to seep beneath my skin. I remember her asking that the fire of God might shine within me and without and that I might share my light with others. But it was the experience of the prayer, even more than the words.

I have been holding my breath for days. You know how people will tell you to take deep relaxing breaths and all that does is make you gasp a little bit harder? These soft, full breaths came of their own accord, and I received a glimpse of how I might feel if I stopped choking on the smoke of a smothered fire and instead, allowed in enough air for a sweet, small flame.

I'm not up to any ravaging, cleansing flames right now; even a flickering candle is enough.

an excerpt

2009-05-17T18:54:00.003-04:00

I'm writing from depression-space still...I have ok moments and terrifying moments; in this moment I'm ok.

I'm doing some writing -- certainly capturing the 100% gen-u-ine depression experience. Hard to tell what is valuable at this point, whether I'm asking a reader to spend too much time in my head.

Below is a small piece...where I just might find some meaning in what is happening to me...

***

...to move out of crisis mode, I have to tackle all fronts: new doctor, new meds. maybe a new diagnosis. But clearly, this depression is not just chemical; it’s structural. Structural in terms of needing structure in my life, but also structural in that depression is the frame much of my life hangs upon; it is a stable part of my identity, regardless of how much I hate is devastating effects. To recover from depression there is a certain amount of dismantling that I need to do – and it is in the deeply depressive state that I fall apart most completely. Ironically, this collapsed state offers hope that I might alter how I function in the world. I have something to learn from this place: fragile, permeable, and inescapably dependent on others. My myths of separateness and individuality fall away. I am staying with my parent’s for a few days, and the relief of not being alone is seismic. My mother and I go to Starbucks and we both work on our art – I write, she paints with her colored pencils. This is the creative support I need – two artists, generating focus and energy working together.

So how to do I use this time to move towards health and wholeness, when I’m clearly in survival mode? In between free-falls, I can watch out for what feeds me and what sends me hurtling into negative space. I am deeply frightened by how I am feeling; there is no possibility of ambivalence towards my current state of existence. If I don’t make plans to meet with someone each day, the results are terrifying. I have no other option than to break my day into the smallest possible increments. I wake up and get out of bed by bargaining with myself: take a shower. After your shower, you don’t have to do anything else unless you feel like you can. Take your meds. Brush your teeth. Put your clothes on. Asking any more of myself is asking too much.

I knew you were depressed, says my friend Chris, when you told me that your goal was to get up, take a shower, and get dressed before I came to pick you up for lunch. Usually that is not a goal so much as it is just what you do in the morning. This is true; but the minute nature of each step is also keeping me firmly grounded in the present moment, a discipline that most religious philosophies concur is an ideal state of being. It is when I imagine a future based on my current desperation, or look at the past through eyes glazed by depression, that my world becomes uncontrollable and I lose myself in despair.

depression just isn't all that exciting to write about...

2009-05-04T15:53:00.002-04:00

It's not wanting to get out of bed...
but staying in bed with my mind racing over various very stressful things, both real and imagined.

It's about making plans and not being able to show up.

It's about thinking for hours about taking my dog for a walk.

It's about finding the prospect of feeding my dog (browning burgers on the stove) overwhelming.

It involves not being able to figure out what to wear from a closet full of clothes.

It is about resisting the couch.

It is about reading the paper so long that the text begins to spin in front of my eyes. Reading so long to avoid having to decide the next thing to do, and to avoid the guilt about not showing up.

I'm writing now to try and center myself, to ground myself in the real, because writing sometimes does that for me.

today didn't suck...

2009-05-03T18:56:00.003-04:00

as bad as yesterday...

and yesterday didn't suck as bad as the day before that.

In depression world, this is progress.

I get points for making it to church today. I get extra credit points for hanging about after church today long enough to get asked out to lunch -- and then I actually went. Normally I slip out the door FAST, and I almost always come in late. Some days I just can't handle people being nice to me, and at Calvary United Methodist Church, there are always people who want to give me a hug or smile and say hello (oh, jeeeez). It's just too much to take.

The extra credit points are for CONNECTING, which does help me get out of my head (which right now is not a very nice place to be). The depressive urge is to ISOLATE, which feels safer, but actually is not. And lunch was a lot of fun. Which was good, because I wake up with a lot of fear about what the day will be like. Ok, yah, I made it to church, but what will happen after that? When will the anxious ugly scary brain take over?

In her sermon, Pastor Laurie took us through the loving kindness prayer today -- one version is to pray for health, happiness, wholeness, and something else (I know there were four) first for yourself; then for a person you feel neutral towards, then for an enemy, and then for the whole world.

To be depressed is to be self-involved (in my opinion), but even so -- the worst enemy I could imagine was my own depressed brain. I'm so angry and scared by this depressed part of me that to pray for it felt dangerous. I'm not sure I would have tried it alone, but I was in community, so I gave it a go.

There wasn't any miraculous healing (now that would have been a good story) but prayer doesn't necessarily lead to obviously miraculous results. I'm still figuring out who is this "I" that tries to fight/work with/outwit my depression -- who fights and fails, or struggles and has moments of ok-ness. At lunch I may have even felt good for a bit, which is no small thing.

So after lunch, I walked my dog, and then went with my parents to see The Soloist -- the movie about the homeless schizophrenic brilliant musician befriended by a LA Times reporter. Great movie, if a little intense for me at this time. The connections between brilliance and mental illness are perhaps a bit overstated; where is the movie about the average musician with schizophrenia? You know he or she is out there.

While I might not use the word brilliance (though my mother certainly would) it is difficult to separate out what of my creativity, drive, passion is connected to bipolar illness. I've written and thought a lot about this idea lately -- bipolar disorder as a part of me, something that cannot be cut out without losing something else about me, something of value?

Time to watch the hockey game. Go Hurricanes!

depressed girl has her say

2009-05-02T14:54:00.001-04:00

In this moment I am wearing the same shirt and t-shirt (1996 Atlanta Olympics) that I have worn since Thursday evening. It is Saturday at noon. Needless to say I have not showered. I didn’t really sleep on Thursday night, so that made Friday difficult. Finally could close my eyes yesterday around 5:30 p.m. Missed hockey play-off game and dinner with parents in spite of much phone encouragement from both.

I just hit save on this document. I am writing instead of crawling back into bed. So hello depression here we are again. You are depressed, says my mother, who should know because she came over on Tuesday and Thursday to get me moving. Your father thinks it’s acute she says. He wants to come over and help you with your yard. For some reason this idea makes me weep. He wants to help. Why can you let me help you and not him? It’s not that. It’s just that I don’t want to be helped. I want to be 38 years old and able to keep my own yard under control. 38 years old and able to keep my kitchen floor clean.

I have only just left the house long enough to put Kacey dog on the leash and take her out to pee. At 3:30 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning, I took her for a little walk. I was up. I can’t really be seen like this, in this t-shirt and shorts, so 3:30 a.m. is good. The pavement outside my house is brand new, black and shiny. I walk in my bare feet. I walk around long enough for Kacey to do her business; I feel a sense of accomplishment. I am also feeding her. This is good. All I ate yesterday was oatmeal. Could I finally be one of those depressed people who lose weight when they are depressed? That would be so great.

See, I can still make myself laugh. And then cry a little, too, but not huge desperate wailing sobs, so that’s good. I guess the good news is that I finally believe that I’m only going to write the book, this book, from exactly where I am in a particular moment: that bipolar girl depressed girl is going to be the one who writes it, not wellness girl, or miraculously healed girl or never depressed again girl or victorious girl or any version of totally together, keeping it together etc. etc. etc. No we are keeping it real here at Bipolar Girl central, and right now real kind of sucks.

My mom meant it matter-of-factly, you are depressed. She never every meant it as an accusation, just ok, you’re depressed so now let’s fix it. Then I started crying so she felt bad. I feel like this massive failure, falling back into depression. Here I am with the great therapist and the weekly support group and access to medicine (though maybe not exactly the right medicines) and my parents paying my $540 a month for health insurance while I try to be an artist and find a sustainable way to live my life in alignment with what I feed called to do in the world. I got an email this morning from a woman who read my blog and felt like it helped her. In spite how I feel right now, I do believe that there is something I have to offer the world from this shitty, shitty set of experiences. So as cheesy as it sounds, thanks Teresa, you’re why I’m writing right now instead of hiding under the covers of my fabulously comfortable bed. I have the softest sheets in the world, and what my friend E. and I call the single girl’s bed – four pillows and a body pillow.

What I struggle to write about is how depression, bipolar, the whole mental illness gig intersects with the rest of Dawn. So, my therapist said – and though I pay her, I believe she means this – that I posses “vitality, passion, and creativity.” Ok. I think so too. (Parenthetically, I just opened the shades to my office to let a little light in. I think this is a good sign.) So, how do I piece out the parts of me that are depressed? How do I differentiate my enthusiasms from mania? Is my depression chemical, a moral failing, or some combination of both? Is it a spiritual condition? Is it paradoxically because I’m moving closer to being in the world how I want to be, and so the old mechanisms are tearing back to visit, in a gasping stand against progress? And how the hell am I supposed to think about all of this, and what the hell am I supposed to do?

A trip to the psychiatrist, and a physical, says my mom. She knows it’s not that simple, but it’s a concrete place to start. I put in a call to a new psychiatrist, and I’m waiting to hear back. My mom and my therapist (the ace treatment team) think it’s a good idea to try someone new. I can talk to anybody, and I find it hard to communicate with my current doctor. It may be time to change my meds. I hate thinking about changing my meds. I’ve been on basically the same for almost five years and I’ve basically been ok. Basically.

I’m terrified at the prospect of making changes, because that’s what kind of started this wave of shittiness in the first place. We added Drug X to counter racing thoughts. Might be helping, can’t be hurting is what I said to my doctor. She yelped. Don’t let Drug X manufacturer hear you say that. Either stop taking it or try a higher dose. So I tried the higher dose, and the racing thoughts stopped. Mostly because I was asleep all the time. The drug knocked me out. And then I accidentally doubled my dose of Drug Y. Which went all toxic on my system. My body felt terrible. I couldn’t sleep. I slept too much. It was a relief to get back to just the generally crummy ache that I associate with being depressed.

I have a new question. What does depression really look like? Is it the numbness and tiredness a means of protection? A safeguard against the howling fear, the deadly sense of inadequacy, the hopelessness that threatens to take over unless I move very very quietly. Which is it? The numbness or the howling? Would it end quicker if I howled more?

My parents are coming over in an hour or so. I’m grateful and also kind of scared. Compassion is frightening, because if I let myself feel too deeply I might fall apart; encouragement brings up fear, because what if I can’t do something, anything; offers of help bring up self-contempt because I should be able to do it myself, to function as a normal. As yes. The hovering normal adult. The Dawn without bipolar. Without depression. She’s married to her college sweetheart and has two children. She’s not needy. She’s traveled to other countries and worked with NGOs on children’s literacy. She is not relying on her parents for money.

But what does she do? Is normal Dawn the vibrant girl that the college sweetheart fell in love with in the first place? Is she – me – creative, an artist, a writer? If so, what would I be writing about? I kinda hoped I’d be writing this book with a little more distance between me and the subject matter. Between me and my life.

Back into my life: I want my parents to stay away; I want them to be here. I want to be alone in my filth (it’s not really that bad); I want to try and shower and step out into the day. I am on this edge all of the time. Can you imagine how incredibly tiring it is, each micro movement being considered so closely? Each possibility weighted with – here, you’re fighting depression! Here, you’re giving in! Maybe tiredness emerges from depression as a protective mechanism. Asleep I don’t have to feel, consider, be. Depression as the anti-is-ness: is it a good idea to just be in the moment when in the moment I sometimes feel like I’m dying? Still, it’s better to be in the moment than to consider the next one, to get caught up in thinking this way of not-being is all there is and all there will be.

Yet even in my current state of broken-down-ed-ness, I can see slivers of hope. I close my eyes and I see a showing of hands waving across a wide sea. And I’m writing, so I must believe in something. And I'm sharing my writing, so I must believe in something more.

anxiety

2009-04-25T08:23:00.002-04:00

I want to post every day but I didn't yesterday, but here is something I wrote yesterday, so I think that counts.

Bipolar Episode 14
I am walking around the house wearing just a bra. I empty three quarters of the dishwasher. I obsess whether or not the recycling truck will pick up three weeks of my newspapers, milk cartons, and aluminum cans. Have I done something wrong? Are my cans and newspapers organized improperly? Maybe I should finish getting dressed. Maybe I should eat. I call a friend and talk for an hour. We’re both dealing with anxiety. Neither of us likes it. Is it chemical? Is it because I’m not Zen enough and need to meditate more? I’ve been trying to get outside and mow my lawn for two hours now. I’ll check my email. I’ll search the web for something that seems very important. I’ll move and dust the boxes under my bed so I can vacuum my bedroom. I’ll dust the shelves, but barely. Did the truck take my recycling? What will I do if they didn’t? It looks like my neighbor’s recycling is still there. I’m going to mow my lawn, so will I just move it to the driveway? And then what? For the last several weeks it’s been too much to get the recycling out there. Dragging it all to the curb feels like a moral victory. After talking to my friend I felt calmer. Not so much now.

Racing thoughts. That’s what my therapist calls them. I took my pills. I had this one pill that really helped with the racing thoughts. It also made me dangerously, completely tired. I’d hit one in the afternoon and it was no longer safe for me to drive. When I try to slow down and focus I see these little spots of light in front of me. It’s true that I’m less anxious when I’m asleep, but that is not a good long-term strategy. I have this little pill, just .25, hardly anything at all, that helps, I think. But I resist taking it because I want to be able to fix this myself. I want to not be anxious. I want to be productive in a slightly less manic way. I want to be able to have some sense of what I have accomplished, which is hard to do because I’m working in an altered state.

Ok, that’s it. I had to go outside and check if my neighbor’s recycling had been picked up. No, and not the next house over, either. I can hear the truck now, outside of my house. It’s beautiful out, a North Carolina spring day, sunny and not too warm. My yard is a disaster, so I think, ok, I’ll take it one step at a time. Mow the lawn first. Use the weed wacker. The other day I took my weed wacker to Home Depot because I followed the instructions to re-thread the unit and it got stuck. All I wanted was to buy a replacement piece – please, sell me something – but the guy was on a helpful kick and fixed it, but I know I won’t be able to do that again because his hands were really big, and mine are not. And nobody knew if these replacement pieces would fit my machine. And it was 3:55 when my mother called me and I was supposed to be at my therapy group at 4:30 p.m. and I needed to take a shower. Thank God she called and talked me down and out of the store, but REALLY, when someone wants to buy something, why would a salesperson block the transaction? Should I have to beg, please let me spend money in your store?

Back to the yard. I plan to use a completely un-organic means to kill the weeds. I don’t have the energy to research other options. I already have to research whether or not the replacement piece at the Home Depot will fit my machine. At some point, I’ll borrow my grandmother’s thing-a-ma-gig to trim my bushes back from over the sidewalk. I’ve been trying to get outside to work in the yard for several hours now. Actually, several days, even weeks. I’ve had three men come to my door and offer to mow my lawn. One of them stopped by twice. This is a sign.

It takes so much energy to hold myself together, I said to my friend, who is also anxious. What would happen if you didn’t hold yourself together? I don’t know, but I’m clearly not able to consider that question at this time because it’s frankly not possible to consider because I am working very very hard to keep moving and not stop moving because to stop means that I might stop for a really long time and not get anything done at all. I can go to sleep at 5 p.m. and not wake up until morning, and feel very guilty about my dog who is incontinent anyway, so I don’t feel as bad because then she just pees in the house, and only in the guest bathroom which is incredibly considerate, she’s always been that way, and now she is sixteen, it’s hard for her to keep food down, and she’s seriously slowing down, and it’s likely she’ll die soon and then I won’t have the sweet comfort of another being in the house, the sound of her breathing while she sleeps on her dog bed right next to my bed. Though I won’t miss cleaning up pee and vomit, I have to admit that is true.

Is anxiety about repressed anger and emotions that cannot be expressed so they twist and turn and become this other thing? Am I just a bit manic? It feels like all I can do is to keep trying to get to the next thing. Dishwashing, emailing, washing clothes, sorting clothes, making lunch, getting dressed (eventually putting on the rest of my clothes), planning to bring up my summer clothes and putting away my winter clothes which makes sense because I can carry the plastic bins down the back stairs outside when I go down to mow the lawn.

I had this whole month or so where I tried the new medicine, the one that put me to sleep, and I also screwed up and doubled my dose of another medicine, and I was shaky and my mouth tasted metallic and I couldn’t really function all that well. I feel like I lost a month or more, more even because then I had to catch up on all I didn’t do in a month, like pay bills or respond to emails, or mop my kitchen floor which is really pretty gross. And getting my sleep back on track – with the sleeping during the day I wasn’t so much sleeping at night – took even longer.

If slamming my head against the wall would make this racing stop I would do it, but unfortunately, it only works for a minute. My body is vibrating, my skin itches, I’m wearing the loosest possible clothing because otherwise I might tear it all off and end up nekked.

Did I mention I need to go to the mall to return those shirts my mother gave me that don’t fit? And mail back that bathing suit that doesn’t fit, which makes me sad because I’d really like to get it together and start swimming laps again. Getting it together enough to leave the house is a bit intimidating, though.

I’ll try. Try to notice my feet in my pink Crocs pressing into the floor. Try to be aware of my body in space, of each movement. Try not to spin off into the anxiety vortex. Stay. In. This. Moment.

Hungry. Smoothie and peanut butter on toast. Finish emptying the dishwasher and load the dishes on the counter. Leave the laundry alone. Mow the lawn.

At least they picked up the recycling.

Addendum:
And so this is what happened. I sat in the sun, present to the warmth on my skin, and I got terrifically sleepy. So I went to bed to take a nap around 2 p.m., skipped an evening outing, which it would have been really good for me to attend, lots of folks that I like and who like me. Then I slept until 10:30 p.m. and woke up and had cereal. It was hard to go back to sleep after that and so I dosed in an out all night. Got out of bed at 7:30 a.m., made eggs for me and my dog, and now I am bound and determined to do ONE THING AT A TIME: eat, vacuum, mow lawn. I feel pretty calm in this minute. We’ll see how it goes.

i'm a little taken aback...

2009-04-23T22:40:00.002-04:00

by how much my post from December 09 still applies. Lots of the same issues going on...

I want to post a little each day on this blog, just as writing practice.

Today has been a jangly day. I sent out an announcement about my new documentary project consulting business (yay!); sent out a no to an opportunity to write a newspaper article (not thrilled about that, but at least I was accountable; paid most of my bills; completed a consulting project (yay); and thought very hard about tackling the foot tall weeds in my yard.

This description doesn't sound so bad, actually, but it leaves out the anxiety so intense that I can actually see little dots of light in front of me. My mom visited this morning and that was a tremendous help...

Perhaps my most important accomplishment of the day was updating my Netflix queue to reflect who I actually am (intelligent comedy, vampire series, and misanthrope doctors) vs. the films that have sat by my DVD player for a month (foreign drama and a very bad "This American Life" tv series). I was going to quit all together, but I'll give it another chance.

I also took out my recycling, which was a major accomplishment as it had been a few weeks. It felt like a real moral victory, which should tell you something about how I've been lately.

g'night.

sitting down to write

2008-12-17T12:58:00.004-05:00

I'm embarking on this journey as a working artist - which means, to me, that I'm stating through word and action that my writing and my documentary filmaking are my real work. The job that does-not-quite-support me is simply income. Even my cocktail conversation -- my answer to the what do you do question -- has changed. I'm working on a book, and a documentary film. And I do this internet/print marketing gig for money.

At a party, I mostly leave out the fact that the woman I work for refers to me as a "personal assistant." I don't actually mind being called a personal assistant. I'm getting paid a decent amount of money, and part of my learning around this job is that I don't get emotionally invested in what I do, or the people I work for. That doesn't mean I don't care -- I do. But craziness exists in EVERY workplace, and this is practice for me to keep my head and my heart out of it. When my income producing job was also the work-of-my-heart (as in my time at the Center for Documentary Studies) I got completely wacked out on office politics. Any reasonable person would have, to be sure, but I chose to let it crash over me like a North Shore wave.

In certain circumstances, I'm just fine if folks don't ask me "what are the book/documentary about?" I can live without going into the details of bipolar disorder with an almost stranger when I have a plate of sausage ball in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. On the other hand, even at my parents' holiday open house, I found myself in more than one deep conversation about depression, mental illness, and struggle -- while standing next to the fridge, or on the couch. By then, I'd switched to Diet Pepsi.

I hope my penchant for intense dialogue won't stop you from inviting me to your party. I'm a lot of fun, and I looked really pretty in my sparkly holiday garb. Lots of people said so -- not just my parents.

Ok. Not unlike what happens when I sit down to write, now I'm going to get to the idea that got me writing this afternoon.

I am in transition. With this whole trying to be a working artist, there are so many steps. First was finding a part-time job that didn't suck out my soul. Done. Actually, first was to decide I wasn't going to jump back into a full-time job; instead, I am working to keep focused on my identity as a "community based, mixed media, conceptual artist/activist" that was so nurtured at Pendle Hill. I am going to remain spiritually grounded (that's only going ok).

I'm getting screwed up with verb tenses, here. I will, I have, I am. None of it is working. I have a whole 'nother post -- actually, I have a chapter, gosh forbid -- that I want to write about the dangers of not only negative predictions, but of the potential tyranny of positive ones.

Here's what I wanted to say when I first started writing. That in order to write, I can't just say, ok, there it is, on your calendar: "Write, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., Wednesday." No, it starts back with getting to sleep at a reasonable hour on Tuesday night. And getting to work on time. And maybe exercising. It's a whole life I'm trying to construct -- a life I want to be present in.

I'm tempted at the cellular level to write from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m. I'd get a lot done. But the next day, I'd be sick with emotion, not to mention how my body would feel. If I fell into a pattern like of late night/early morning and then sleeping much of the day, not only would I lose my job, but I would also be dangling bloody meat before the ravanging wolf of bipolar disorder. Here, kitty kitty kitty.

I'm having to learn a whole 'nother way of being a creative person, one that does not involve painful sprints and abrupt, muscle tearing, screeching halts.

I don't feel sweet about having to learn a new way of being. It's not entirely new -- when I worked in clay at Pendle Hill, I created and presented art without the sprint. Not without angst, but without the crazy. I was, however, living in community. I was being fed three meals a day. I was hanging close to God, and I had the best teammate EVER in launching the exhibition. I wasn't so dang alone.

The alone, well, I need to work on that. While to say that my Mom totally rocks is an understatement, I looked at my social calendar this week, and it was like, "Mom" three times. That was it. Now, that's my own fault. I now have two additional engagements, neither with family members. But I just haven't reached out to the amazing community here in Durham the way I need to. I have friends, I just need to take the initiative and get out there...

In summation: my first job isn't being an artist. My first job is being present, being well, having a LIFE. I'd like to skip that part and get right to being a writer and a documentary filmmaker. Frustratingly, that won't happen, not for any sustainable period of time.

I feel so jangly, in pieces all over the place. But in this moment I'm writing. And in this moment. And in this one...

this morning, I write

2008-12-06T12:43:00.002-05:00

Last night at 4:30 a.m., I woke up with words ready to be put down on paper. I thought about getting up, and then thought harder about falling back to sleep. I'm serious about working on my Bipolar Girl Rules the World memoir -- a real honest to goodness book -- and the feeling of that early (too early) morning desire stayed with me until after I had eaten my oatmeal, drank my coffee, and put aside the New York Times Sunday Styles section.

So I've written for at least a couple of hours on what I imagine to be the Introduction -- I know that I've written long enough to get hungry again, and to do three loads of laundry. I was pretty grossed out by what I was writing when I started, so it was a moral victory to continue onward. I'm going to take the radical step of stopping now, and giving myself some credit for getting work done. I even have a calendar I use to mark out the work I do on my own creative projects, to show progress, and to present evidence when my emotions lean toward catastrophe (you never, you won't, you can't, how dare you believe).

I think I'll post essays as I go along, and I would obviously LOVE any response to my writing. Right now, I'm working on three sample chapters to submit to agents. At the North Carolina Writers Network fall conference, I took a step past the slush pile with two NYC agents, and was asked to submit a proposal for the BPG book. So I guess I better write the darn thing. But I'm building up good support team -- an editor to read the chapters when I'm ready, a possible writing group, and an ex-Random House editor to vet the whole proposal when I'm ready. None of this (except the writing group) is free, but it feels like the right people are lining up to help get'er done.

this is what normal feels like...

2008-11-06T10:26:00.004-05:00

Abandoning the idea of "what is normal?" for a moment (we can define it, possibly, as the land of "not depressed"), I'm finding myself thinking the following on a fairly regular basis:

"So, this is what a cold feels like, you know, to normal people" (just a cold, not an indicator of moral failings or a harbinger of doom because I have to stay in bed more than I'd like).

"So, normal people sometimes don't keep their kitchen clean when they have a cold because it takes all of their energy to get done what absolutely needs to get done" (not, I am committing a deadly sin of sloth, and therefore, the rest of my life will fall apart and I'll be drooling on the floor before you know it).

Just for example.

I think catastrophizing is a pretty common technique for us bipolar girls. It's a learning process to know that sometimes, a cold is just a bad cold (and miserable, but not, you know, all defining of my character and such).

how much longer can I say I'm in transition?

2008-11-06T09:45:00.004-05:00

hello, y'all...

This is a letter I sent to my Pendle Hill friends (edited a bit for this blog)...posting here to give you a sense of what the summer was like...

I wrote this in August, after months of isolating myself (somewhat painfully) for a couple of months upon my return home...

In the letter, I refer to a possible job at Pendle Hill -- I did get offered a job with the hospitality team, but it wasn't possible to make accommodations for the Kacey dog, so it didn't work out. Which worked out fine, because being home has been really good (ultimately!).

You can see many of the images I'm talking about here...
*****

I have moved my computer and printer to the kitchen table in my lovely house – the kitchen gets lots and lots of light, and besides, my office hasn’t quite recovered from my move back from Pendle Hill earlier this summer. I have my screen-saver set to pull photos from the couple of thousand I took while I was a Pendle Hill, and so I’m caught by images and memories as I walk by on my way to fill the dishwasher or do laundry. And I literally am caught – my breath jumps and I remember the crucifix and belly cookies, or Julia and Mary Elizabeth quilting and knitting (respectively) at the Academy Awards party…or, or, and…

Ok, and honestly? I look at some of the photographs and say, wow, those are really good. I took my computer to my therapist’s office last week and showed her some new work I’d done, of driftwood and oyster beds off of Bogue Sound. I cried as I forced out, “these are really good, aren’t they?” I’m not getting out of this one: I want, need, and would be doing the Spirit a disservice if I don’t keep up my creative work. Besides, I want to live up to my title of “spiritually grounded, community based, mixed media artist/activist.”

SPEAKING OF WHICH: I turned in a GRANT PROPOSAL for Bipolar Girl Rules the World and Other Stories!!!! Just yesterday!!! Obviously, I hope I get the money ($5000 to put towards an animation sample) but most importantly, I feel like I announced to the universe, “ok, I’m really serious about this project!”

I was surprised to learn that my fall would not include a return to Pendle Hill as a member of the staff; it wasn’t the right time for me and my dog Kacey (who is nosing my leg as I write this) to head back north. I feel some sadness, of course, but also, some clarity about building in the supports and structures I knew I would find at Pendle Hill and creating them in my life here in Durham. What surprised me about not coming to Pendle Hill this fall (where I imagined taking a job that would allow me to follow my creative callings) was an awareness of the strength of my call to be a conduit of radical hospitality. So I’m trying to figure out where hospitality fits – a deep desire to offer the grace of God to others, in down-to-earth and practical ways – in figuring out my next steps.

Although I have spent a great deal of time this summer with my extended family, I am quite isolated in my day-to-day life. I am lonely; that I haven’t been in a place to connect with my Durham folks. I’d say I’m about 60% positive and hopeful to 40% numb and despondent. That’s not a bad percentage. (And in this moment, I’m fine!). I feel like I’m struggling with real stuff, not made up phantoms. So I’m doing some of the work to reach outward, and make commitments to see people again.

In some ways my life looks very much like pre-PH, but it is different. I’m struggling, but with a level of self-acceptance that is new to me. I’m seeking a way that my next steps – creatively and otherwise – can bubble up out of me, rather than being beaten out of me through self-judgment and despair. A friend succinctly summed up what I think was one of my most important Pendle Hill learnings: I want to live my life out of love and not out of hating myself – creating a life out of a desire for self-expression and overflowing spirit, NOT out of a sense of inadequacy or “not enough.”

That said, I absolutely MUST find a writing teacher, and some photo/film comrades as well. I’m planning on turning one of my basement rooms (a garage, really) into an art studio, where I can paint on the walls. I also want to paint my kitchen. Some of the being alone time has been nesting. And letting go of stuff. I have at least ten large garbage bags of stuff I’m taking over to Goodwill. It is SO the right time to empty my life of things that weigh me down, make my life more complicated. It feels really good.

I think I put off some of my mourning for Pendle Hill in early June because I though I would be coming back. Of course, each of you wouldn’t have been there, so I much have been fooling myself. ☺ I miss you, truly – my heart aches for y’all. I have loved reading your missives – please keep writing! And sign-up for the work weekend in the spring, like Mary said. I’m going to, and I am totally and completely broke right now. I’m living off of a minute settlement from a car accident almost two years ago! The timing of the check was just right, though…I’ve forgotten the pain and suffering, and now I’m just grateful for the cash!

this morning...

2008-03-01T13:37:00.002-05:00

I cast the belly of M. in plaster. She is 87 years old. The experience was a holy one -- rubbing the Vaseline on her belly, pouring the plaster in her belly-button, and then laying down the plaster strips and burlap, all the while marveling at M.'s trust, and how open she is to new experiences.

M.'s presence has been an enormous gift to me this term. She reminds me of my father's mother, the grandmother I call Nana.

This morning, M made a comment about how hardworking I am, and I was caught surprised -- surprised but pleased, because a comment about hard work from someone who is 87 years old is no small thing.

So I thought, is that true? Do I work hard? Anne Lamott said that we often lose the ability to see our lives clearly, that it is sort of a security measure for when it just isn't safe too see things the way they are -- because we are too vulnerable (as with children) or just don't have the capacity or skills to deal.

So part of me says, yes you are a hard worker, of course you are. And part of me says, really? Do you thinks so? And another part says, we'll, there is one way to find out. You could, you know, observe, track, pay attention.

I want to learn how to live with out this breathless feeling of lack. Those lillies of the field, they neither toil nor spin, yet God loves them. Mary sits at Jesus' feet while Martha runs around getting everyone cups of tea -- Jesus tells Martha to chill out and do what her sister is doing (I always thought that Martha was just doing the best she could)...

So is the question, "Am I a hard worker" not even all that relevant? Is it a different question, "Am I serving God with all my heart, or as much of my heart as I can?"

I mean, who gages hard? Do I want to ever work 60 hour weeks in dysfunctional environments ever, ever again? No! I want to fight against the dizzy tide of fast and faster still. I want to keep God at the center, my center. I can't serve if I'm ragged and distant.

If I'm having fun, does it count as work? If I'm not worn out and exhausted, am I working enough? If I keep my priorities in order -- God, community, creativity, service -- and live of those commitments and I feel healthy and satisfied...if I decided to live without the guilt of never enough...what would happen then?

Well, what would happen?

i am annoyed

2008-02-29T22:22:00.002-05:00

Today I was compelled to stand up in meeting for worship and say:

I am annoyed at God.
I have been studying the Psalms and I know from this work that God is open and available to the full spectrum of human emotion.
And churches don't often share the angry psalms, the verses that say, where the heck are you, God.
And I am annoyed at God.
On Friday, I was joyous and content. I felt close to God, sheltered, covered.
I couldn't stay with those feelings.
Now anxiety hovers so close to the surface.
I am afraid that I will fall back into depression.
I will not -- I cannot go back there.
What I want from God is a guarantee that I will not be depressed ever again.
God will not give me a guarantee.
In the past when I have stood up in meeting it has been to express gratitude.
I have meant it every time.
And I guess I am grateful for yet another opportunity for growth, to learn again what it means to be part of a loving community, what happens when I ask for help instead of hiding.
I used to think it was up to me, whether I let God into my life...or not.
That I could control this process somehow. Like God wasn't going to do what God wants to do.

And then I ended with something about Grace. This transcript is only an approximation. I wish I could remember it more clearly.

What I know is that I shook before I spoke, and that my chest was tight, and I was short of breath. What I know is that after I spoke, I could breathe, and I felt lighter.

Throughout the day, different folks came up and thanked me for my message. That was great, but what I couldn't get over was how different my chest felt after I spoke. And when folks came up to me immediately after the meeting, with loving concern, I was like, no -- really -- I feel ok.

Now the great ending to this story would involve throwing out my anxiety meds, or something like that. The truth is, there is still a lot of anxiety hovering below the surface. It doesn't take much for me to feel my breath shortening or to feel shaky and disoriented. But rather than getting caught up in "this will never go away," I'm trying to adapt. Get sleep. Eat healthy. And allow more time than I usually need in order to get things done, because I can't afford to rush--I feel too bad.

And I'm also trying to see anxiety as a time of being particularly attuned to what is going on around me. God knows (you do know, don't you?) that I don't want to live like this, but I can gather some interesting information...

Saw Anne Lamott this evening at the Free Library in Philadelphia. She was hilarious, wise, compassionate, kind. And hilarious. She said some things that were hard for me to hear because they were so true. About relationships, and saying no, and boundaries when caring for others, and how we are drawn away from our birthright as children of God by being consumed by a fear of being judged by our outsides. I'm so not getting this right, what she said was amazing and I really hope the talk will be on-line some where so I can listen to it again soon.

g'night.

power bars

2008-02-28T14:07:00.002-05:00

One of my post-Pendle Hill challenges will be eating right. Here in the Main House kitchen, I get to eat salads at lunch every day that would cost at least $6 at the Whole Foods salad bar. For the whole lunch I eat (soup, salad, home-made bread and tasty leftovers) I would easily be paying $12. It's HARD to eat well as a single person...I've torn the lettuce and cut the carrots for 65 people, and it's not as tough as trying to keep a bag of greens from composting before you get a chance to eat them all.

So I missed (the fabulous Pendle Hill) lunch today, and dug out a Balance Bar Gold (caramel nut) to sustain me until I could grab a bite to eat.

Ok, that thing was disgusting. I used to eat them all the time.

Were they always gross? Have I just gotten used to eating real food?

What will I do?

a few PPH (post Pendle Hill) thoughts not ringed by terror

2008-02-28T13:47:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I had my first productive PPH thoughts this morning:

1) I will pay attention to leanings, and understand that exploring an option does not mean a commitment.

2) For the sake of my whole being, I must continue to make it a first priority that I live a God-centered life. (I'm not saying I always keep this priority now, even in the sacred space of Pendle Hill. But I see the difference in my life as a result, and it simply does not make any sense to do otherwise.)

3) I am willing to be underemployed in order to give my art, spirit, and emotional life room to develop and grow. Especially if the work is life-and-spirit filled for me. Note to Mom & Dad: I am NOT selling myself short or saying that I don't deserve to receive fair renumeration for the work that I do. Really. I'm just opening up some space in a time of transition.

4) I don't want to jump immediately into some huge job that will take all my attention and energy. I want to practice living/working outside of Pendle Hill without sabotaging myself.

5) I want to earn enough money to support myself, and I am willing to live on a budget (and stop buying stuff) in order to allow room for the spirit to work in my life.

6) I am also willing to throw all of the above out of the window, because, to love God means knowing that you just don't know what the heck will happens next. I may be the executive director at a major non-profit organization with a 25 million dollar endowment starting July 1. Who knows?

I've decided to try and post every day...

2008-02-24T08:48:00.003-05:00

We'll see how it goes. I want to get back to basics, just putting down a few thoughts and not getting too caught up in how good the writing is, or isn't. I wrote a few longer pieces that I got kind of bored with, and never posted.

So today, at 8:50 a.m. here is my thought for the day:

In response to a particular dilema I faced (in the realm of the heart), my friend L. said:

"Move forward with discernment and courage."

A terrific idea in most any circumstance.

I'm off to meeting for worship, and then to the last session of my Centering Prayer class -- which has been totally amazing. Then out to buy red fabric to create a red carpet for the Pendle Hill Oscar bash this evening...

Feelings...nothing more than feelings

2008-02-12T17:38:00.003-05:00

I've been sick over the last three days, and as my friend E. confirmed, "I don't do sick well." It's kind of a long story, but my experience of my bad cold (it's a really bad cold) also involves feelings of guilt, resistance to the care of others, and fears that I'm really not that sick, and I'm just a wimp for, you know, acting sick.

Whatever. It's just another FGO (f^&*ing growth opportunity), as we say here at Pendle Hill. And I've been doing an ok job taking care of myself (I watched four episodes of "Ugly Betty" on the web yesterday) and I've been gratefully accepting soup and refills of my big glass of oj/water/ice from the kitchen across the quad.

Sara said she was praying for me to get better. What do you do with that? And all the "hope you feel betters" and "is there anything I can do to helps" You mean they love me, they really love me? For goodness sakes. Hmm, then where is all this judgment coming from? Could it be...moi?

Anyways, me "not doing sick all that well" also has something to do with how physical illness (at least of the snotty, voice-losing, nose blowing kind) is more obvious than sickness of the brain, meaning depression, bipolar, etc. This is in no way to say that one is harder than the other, or that there isn't also lots of cultural baggage around physical illness. But for most people, a cold or serious menstrual cramps are easier to relate to than depression -- especially since many people equate depression with having a bad day. It is a bad day, a very very bad day. But not quite the same.

I got away from the original reason I started writing this post -- I hope you're still with me. One of the gifts (it's a gift, it's a gift, no really, it's a gift) of my time at Pendle Hill is the time to more fully experience feelings that kind of got shoved down PPH (pre-Pendle Hill), due to lack of time, or courage, or the possessing the skill set to survive the said experience. It's hard work.

One of my cues that hard stuff is coming up is that I start to hear -- feel -- "I'm dying. I'm actually dying. Wow. This is what dying feels like." The "dying" feeling comes when my being becomes aware ("realizes" is too much of a head thing -- this is a full body experience) that a very big part of my identity is about to let go. Some deeply held belief about myself is about to rise up above the surface, crack, and float away (I'm working with an iceberg visual).

The first time this happened I was in a class on non-violent communication (NVC). There was a lot of talk about self-compassion, and part of me was listening and participating, and part of me was going, "I'm dying. Wow, this is what dying feels like. I'm dying. Hmm. Dying." During a break, I spoke with my friend E, who conveniently, is also a Shaman. I looked straight at her and said, "I think I might be dying. You're sitting behind me (sort of next to me) and I need to know that if any Chinese stars come through the window, you've got my back."

Without asking for any further explanation, she said, "No problem. I'll stay next to you."

This is why I love Pendle Hill.

I've gotten the dying feeling a few times since then, and I know now that it signifies a painful transition, a letting go, and ultimately, a new space is created for something new to emerge. I can't help think of the "Alien" monster bursting out of Sigourney Weaver's belly -- nothing about this process feels pretty. Necessary, yes. I'm grateful, yes. Anyway (and I'm not complaining), it's hard work.

Pendle Hill Update...

2008-02-10T19:43:00.000-05:00

To my friends in the blog-o-sphere...It's just over half-way through my time at Pendle Hill, and I'm posting an update I sent out to some folks via email. I'm hoping to post more often on my blog these days -- a task made easier by finally having internet access on my hall. I've got to be careful though -- it's too easy to get lose time on the web...

Enjoy, and see you soon!
d

Dear Friends,

I’ve been wanting to write and say hello to you all for quite a while now; what I’ve been experiencing is that when going through an intense, challenging, and ultimately wonderful experience, it’s sometimes hard to gain enough distance to create a semi-cohesive narrative. So here I am, in term two, ready to report back to the base-station – the amazing community of folks who lovingly sent me off on my adventure at Pendle Hill.

I want to say THANK-YOU to each of you who took the time to send me your great good wishes upon my leaving CDS. Though my time at Pendle Hill has definitely affirmed that I made the right decision to move on to a new opportunity, the emails that were sent in response to my announcement made a HUGE difference as I took the leap into the unknown.

Now that my second term at Pendle Hill has settled into a routine, I’m excited to report that I could not have imagined the transformation(s) I would experience in such a relatively short period of time. I think part of it was that I was ready to jump in – though I’ve experienced some serious resistance to change (the worst patterns are both unbearable and somehow comfortable), the amazing thing is that I have the time and support to observe of what is happening – of patterns of thinking and behavior, of reactions to people and circumstances. I can’t even begin to tell you what a gift it is to have time to be mindful and then to process my observations.

Other resident students at Pendle Hill include a Methodist minister; a Unitarian minister; a former development officer (who raised 8 million dollars for her last project with the Philadelphia parks system); a 20-year old from Kenya, a shaman/healer/Quaker; an environmentalist with the email address “theearthquaker@hotmail.com;” a youth advocate from Rwanda; and a Southern Belle who attempts to mother us all and teaches sacred chanting and dancing…it’s a pretty amazing group of people.

Another thing about living in community is that if someone drives you nuts, there’s no escaping him or her. So there is ample opportunity to explore the idea that what you find most frustrating in others is also what you need to work on in yourself (or at least take the time to understand why a particular behavior makes you so nutty). But for the most part, I deeply value the experience of being in community. It helps a lot with my tendency to isolate when I’m having a rough time – if I want to eat, I can only spend so much time in my dorm room without having to walk over to the dining hall. And I feel safe here, with many folks who are in similar spaces with regard to life transitions and emotional and spiritual growth.

At Pendle Hill, we have the Quaker meeting for worship every morning, meeting for business, and in the fall, our class of students collectively coined the term “meeting for napping.” There is something about deep change that is just exhausting, a kind of spiritual narcolepsy. When I first arrived, it was my goal to find a favorite place on campus where I could go and write. A few weeks into term, I realized I had three favorite napping placing, but still hadn’t picked out the right place to sit down with my computer and write. (FYI, my favorite place to write is in the art studio – generally, my favorite place to be for everything.)

I took two courses in the fall term. “Grounded in the Spirit, Acting in the World,” explored the connections between spirituality and social justice. I’m looking forward to working further with Niyonu Spann, the course instructor and former dean of Pendle Hill. Her approach to diversity work is exciting. Niyonu invited me to participate in her “Beyond Diversity 101” course this spring, and to work towards being a part of the team of trainers who deliver the program. (Here is an essay by Niyonu that explores her philosophy.)

My second course last term was called “Spirit Taking Form: Clay and Stone as Spiritual Grounding.” Let me be clear: I love working in clay. It’s muddy and messy. It’s extremely tactile. And until you fire it, it’s completely recyclable. As a way of shifting back into a creative life, it is the perfect medium – and because I’d never really experimented with clay before, my self-judgment quotient was exceptionally low.

What has emerged from several aspects of my Pendle Hill experience is a collection of work I’m calling “The Belly Project.” The short explanation of the project is that I’m making plaster casts of bellys (including my own) and then using the casts to make clay sculptures. The glazing/designs of the final products are determined in collaboration with the belly owner. I’m also interviewing folks about their bellys – I’ve found that bellys are a topic lots of people want to talk about.

I’m INCREDIBLY excited to report that my “belly” work will be on display in the main gallery of Pendle Hill from mid-April to July. It’s great to have a space and deadline for the project, and it feels good to me to further ground my identity as a “community-based, mixed media, conceptual artist” (my working title!).

So – this term I’m taking courses on the Psalms, one on different forms of prayer, and one called “In the Beginning Was the Word: Looking Again at Religious Language; Seeking a Powerful Faith,” which is confusing to explain (as the title might suggest) but taught by an excellent instructor. All of these courses, and my (almost daily) attendance at meeting for worship are deepening my faith in God. God feels present to me, less a special occasion visitor, and more like a frequent (and welcome) companion. Which is good, because I feel I’m being asked to stretch myself, and open myself, to possibilities I could not have previously imagined.

More prosaically, I’m continuing my role as a Pendle Hill hospitality queen (working at the welcome desk), which still involves a start-time of 6:30 a.m. a couple of days a week. The community ethic of shared work, viewing service as a holy act, and the environmental philosophy (most of the “waste” at Pendle Hill goes to recycling, composting, or the chickens) both enable Pendle Hill to function and provides a deeply grounding community experience – kind of a sweat-based spirituality. One of my favorite jobs is hauling and spreading woodchips (donated by a local lumber company) on the walking trail; having walked on the path many times, I know how much enjoyment is existence and tidy upkeep gives residents and visitors alike (I know this is sooo geeky, but it’s true.)

After this initial update to y’all, I plan to start updating my blog “Bipolar Girl Rules the World on a regular basis. (Speaking of which, Bipolar Girl the documentary is still in the works!) And I’ve messed around with a website to share of my photography and other creative pursuits – you can find my artist statement for “The Belly Project” here.

It’s also been wonderful to have a chance to reflect on the richness of my home community. I miss being around friends and family – and my dog Kacey, who is being cared for expertly by my sainted parents.

To sum up, I’m wildly grateful. It’s amazing when I contemplate what might happen during the remainder of my time here at Pendle Hill.

Thank you for being part of my journey!

Blessings,
Dawn

Even the fat parts?

2007-10-08T11:51:00.000-04:00

The other day in meeting, someone quoted a t-shirt -- "God loves everybody -- no exceptions." Which is a really good concept to keep in mind...lest we fall prey to the seductive belief that "God hates all the same people we do" (to paraphrase Anne Lamott). The person speaking went a few steps further, saying that not only is God in everyone, no exceptions, but that all parts of each of us is God. Not that we are God, but that all of us is God. (I'm not sure this is making sense, but I'll keep going.)

So today I was sitting on my bench (not technically mine, but I like it a lot) and considering this idea -- that all of me is God -- when the thought popped into my head -- "wow, even the fat parts?"

And then I started laughing out loud -- by myself, on my bench -- well, because I thought it was funny. And then, I heard/thought:

"Yes, even the fat parts."

And then I laughed and also got choked up, and I felt good.

my first pinch pot

2007-10-07T11:49:00.000-04:00

pinch pot: roll clay in ball. stick in thumb. pinch sides between thumb and fingers. make pot.

That's the basic idea, anyway. And the assignment this week for my clay class: make seven pinch pots. Show up in the art studio every day. Show up. SHOW UP!

Those are my italics, my bold, my all-caps. Just, you know, working on some issues around the whole showing up thing...

So I'm sitting on the porch behind the art studio, gorgeous day, with my ball of clay. And I know you are going to be completely shocked by this, but the first pinch pot I made wasn't very good.*

Anyway, I got all icky and judgmental about it.

It was good though -- to be able to observe how icky and judgmental I felt. I mean, I've never made a pinch pot before, not that I remember. So legally, technically, it is unreasonable to expect that I'll make a fabulous pinch pot. There have been people making pinch pots for decades -- or even, say, for a week or so -- who might wonder why I think my pinch pot should be so fabulous after only making, um, one.

Anyway, it was good to watch those feelings come up, good to say, "oh, hello, you" and then good to go an lay in a hammock with a small ball of clay and stick pieces of it on my thumb and pinch a few more pots. It was helpful, because when I sit down to do something it's reasonable to expect I'm pretty good at (say, writing), those same feelings come up. Nice to know how unspecific these ugly thoughts are -- how context is almost nothing to the scared kiddo who wants to make art and yet doesn't want to make art, unless she can be certain ahead of time that it will be um, perfect.

Maybe not perfect, but at least pretty good. At least not horribly embarrassing.

And before, when I said I'm "pretty good at (say, writing)," I hope you don't think, I was, you know, bragging.
______
*I actually am not qualified to say what is and is not a good pinch pot. I may be a pinch pot prodigy. I'll let you know.

more thoughts on work

2007-10-07T11:23:00.000-04:00

I like the dishwashing job at Pendle Hill -- there is a good rhythm to it, if you're working with the right person, and you don't have to be too perfect. One person stacks the plates and cups on racks, rinses them with a spray-thingy, and then sends the racks through the washing/sanitizing machine. The second person stands on the other side of the machine and unloads the racks of plates and bowls, and puts away the cups, silverware, etc. The second person also provides quality control -- there are certain seeds and grains, for example, that are fairly persistent in clinging to cereal bowls. (When you work dishes, you start seeing certain sticky foodstuffs -- like oatmeal, for example -- in a whole new way.)

On this particular day, I was working with the right person -- L., who I have experienced in the past as a very helpful and nonjudgmental individual. I was unloading the dishes, and was having trouble fitting all the bowls into the proper sorting area -- there were t00 many to fit. So I just placed some bowls on top of the bread plates, and continued onward.

When I went to roll the dish cart into its place at the head of the buffet line, I realized that there was another slot for bowls. So I moved the bowls to the right place.

Writing this down, it is such a non-story. But I had this huge moment, because I was so glad that L. had just let me figure out where the bowls should go. Now, he might just not have noticed that I had the bowls in the wrong place. He might have noticed, and decided it wasn't a big deal if the bowls were in the wrong place. He might have noticed, and figured that I'd figure it out.

What I noticed is just how relieved I felt that I'd been allowed to find out where the rest of the bowls went. It felt great. There you go, that's where they fit. Look at that. Great. I'll do it!

It's not like if he had said, Dawn, there's more room for bowls on the other side, there, I would have minded. And again, this seems like such a non-story that I feel like I might start over explaining. So I'll stop. Tell me if it makes sense to you.

good morning mary sunshine

2007-10-07T10:53:00.000-04:00

Gentle Readers: If you don't know me very well, what you need to know to understand this entry is that I am not so much "a morning person." If you know me at all, you know that my first name, "Dawn," is nothing more than a cruel joke. But maybe not for long!

One of my jobs at Pendle Hill is to take a few shifts running "the Bubble," which is basically the front desk of the kitchen/hospitality area. Two days a week, I work the morning shift, which requires that I show up one-hour before breakfast (6:30 a.m. on weekdays, 7 a.m. on weekends).

This morning was my orientation shift, and I got there early -- I was the first one in the kitchen (gooooo me!). Part of being "the Bubble" (I'm not sure if I am the Bubble, or if I'm working the Bubble) is helping to setup for breakfast. And ringing the morning bell.

So at 7:30 a.m., I walked into the food-storage closet and pulled down the wooden handle that attaches to a thick rope, that attaches to the bell.

I rang the bell about a dozen times; the ringing can be heard across campus. The bell signals that it's time to wake up, at least if you want to eat breakfast. The bell also rings 10 minutes before mealtimes, and I think, before worship.

Let me say that again. I was the one who rang the Pendle Hill wake-up bell.

Though I was in the midst of running around, brewing coffee and washing fruit, I did take a moment to breathe in this amazing fact: not only have I shown up every morning this week for breakfast and morning meeting, not only have I risen to the bell, but I am the bell.

p.s. People who are "keeping silence" can be really cranky when they want their caffiene. Like, I saw you gesture the first time...I can't make it brew any faster...

work

2007-10-04T11:28:00.000-04:00

Working with a team weeding the asparagus patch yesterday (an asparagus patch! how amazing!) I once again became aware of how important it is to me that the people around me think I'm doing a good job. Not just a good job, but that I am trying my hardest and not acting lazy.

The shame, or more correctly, the fear of shame and judgment, made the first bit of the weeding quite unpleasant, even though the actual weeding was fun, because the grasses were huge and easy to tear out of the ground, and the company was good. I was able to observe my misery, and to notice that I wasn't judging anyone else's performance (being far to busy judging myself). And I thought, well, if I did come out of my self-involved weedy haze long enough to observe how anyone was working, or not working, would I really be inclined to judge? Probably not.

So I did, then, try to just weed and be in the moment with the weeding. And though it was hot and humid, it was a satisfying experience -- both the doing of the work, and seeing a whole piece of ground cleared.

To do a good job is not a bad goal to have, but I think I have to let it go for now. I don't see how it helps my experience here, quite frankly. Perhaps I will try to trust that my best effort in a given moment is enough, and that enough best efforts will sum up a decent life.

I have to acknowledge that I don't know what the edge of good enough feels like. I do know that a fear of not being good enough no longer serves me.

wherever you go...

2007-10-04T11:16:00.000-04:00

I did not sign on to my time at Pendle Hill expecting ease. I expected moments of grace, which have certainly appearred. I expected to be challenged; I desire change, a letting go of old, less than helpful patterns. In seeking to be more present, closer to God, I expected some -- lots -- of internal resistance.

In a sad, worn-out way, the behaviors I seek to shed offered their own comfort. And the very real leaving behind of my community of friends and family is its own kind of pain.

It helps to see that being here is an intense, breaking down experience for many of the other resident students. I am not the only one crying, or the only one who is finding it necessary to take long naps. The itching of the poison ivy rash that covers much of my body adds a small element of hysteria to my emotional make-up.

I'm afraid of sounding ungrateful, but I also want to honor the complexity of my experience here at Pendle Hill.

here's how goes it...

2007-10-03T21:08:00.000-04:00

at least with the blog, for the time being. I don't have internet access, as yet, so below are a few posts from the last five days or so at Pendle Hill...

I had only a few minutes to post things, so keep in mind, these are the pieces of the whole, not the whole, even more than usual.

love y'all,
d

The Poison Ivy Index: October 3

2007-10-03T20:49:00.000-04:00

THE POISON IVY INDEX:

On a scale of one to ten, please rate your current discomfort: 6

Please list the areas of your body that demonstrate the effects of poison ivy:

* behind right ear
* under chin
* on neck, right side
* my left arm (healing)
* the undersides of my right and left arms
* right breast
* belly
* left thigh
* top of left knee
* behind right knee
* behind left knee
* right ankle
Plan of action: Started taking oral steroid today. Warned community to be alert for intense outbursts of rage. Continuing with cream, Benadryl spray, and magic Lavender water (thanks, Mary).

Going Off to Quakerland

2007-09-29T22:12:00.000-04:00

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Quakerland. That’s what my friend C. calls Pendle Hill – Quakerland. "Hope you’re having fun in Quakerland – going to meeting, weaving baskets, protesting the war – whatever they do up there…"

The decision to go to Pendle Hill, the temporary shut-down of a life in Durham (quit job, rent house, say goodbye for now to friends and family, leave my dog with my parents, clean house, mow lawn, and then PACK) happened in less than a month. The body isn’t meant to move that fast, honestly, as evinced by the wicked case of poison ivy that’s taken over my body.

THE POISON IVY INDEX:
On a scale of one to ten, please rate your current discomfort: 9
Please list the areas of your body that the effects of poison ivy:
* behind right ear
* on neck, right side
* the most hideous patch (where it all began): my left arm
* the undersides of my right and left arms
* right breast
* belly
* just above lady parts
* left thigh
* behind right knee
* right ankle
Plan of action: Antihistime (2) and Steroid Cream (prescription, running low). On Monday, call Dr. to prescribe an oral steroid, because this isn’t getting any better.

I have to pause here and thank EVERYBODY who made it possible for me to turn my life upside down so efficiently. First, my Mom and Dad – without Mom, I’d still be packing, and without Dad, I’d still be hidden in the grasses that sprouted chest high in the back yard (I’m exaggerating slightly). And I MUST thank April for all of her help leaving CDS and seven years of stuff, and for organizing a great going away party and an amazing going away gift (more on that later).

The thanks could go on, and will go on, but I’ve got something else to say now.

A seven hour drive took two days. Part of it was car trouble – I had to pull into a Toyota dealership that blessedly appeared along I-95 near Richmond because my hot engine light twinkled on and off, on and off for about 30 seconds. It took about four hours, though it was ok with me…I organized the papers I’ve been shoving in my bag for the last month, the “this is important but I can’t deal with it right now” bag…and then I dealt with financial matters online (wireless internet at the car dealership, very cool).

By thr time the red temperature light flickered again, I was near Woodbridge, by the Potomac Mills outlet. The traffic was slowing to a stand still. Mom and I had finished loading my car around midnight – and for the second night in a row I got about 5 hours of sleep. I’d been up since 5:30 a.m., on the road since 6:15 a.m., and I barely felt human. I certainly didn’t feel capable of dealing with the feelings that were going on inside of me. I didn’t feel capable of meeting a whole new group of people, of performing me, though as my therapist Nyra said, I didn’t have to perform – I just had to show up.

So I stopped, and got a hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express, which I completely endorse as a wonderful hotel. I spent a frustrating time trying to find Internet access because I suspected that it would be cheaper to reserve the room online, and I was right – I paid $117, and the lady at the desk quoted a guy who wandered in $149. But the effort knocked me out…at one point, I had a vision that I would take a nap, and then head to the mall for a bit of retail therapy, and maybe catch a mindless movie.

Instead I slept from 5 p.m. to midnight, and then from 12:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. I blissfully swallowed two Benadryl and slathered myself with steroid cream.

The next morning, I was still scared, but I was human again.

It seems wild that I was surprised by the fear. I’m stepping into a fairly structured environment – from 7:30 a.m. breakfast to 9:15 p.m. closing meeting. I’m coming to a place with the clear objective of being present – a requirement of being present several times a day. I sat on a bench this evening, being quiet, looking for W. who had my packet and my name tag. I was suddenly and severely gripped by a deep need to find the closest Target.

I’m not kidding about this urge at all. I could feel a hovering sensation – feelings, feelings everywhere, threatening to knock me dead. It was terror, but in that moment I both felt the terror and also, felt it break. I was still afraid, but I felt, then, that my fear made sense. I mean, come-on…I’ve left my comfort zone, as imperfect as it was, big time. I’ve left my essential coping strategies behind. This is intense stuff for me.

As I was leaving Durham, I’ve been saying to everyone – I’m grateful, terrified, and excited about going to Pendle Hill – but I don’t know that I had time to really experience the terror of leaving my community and heading somewhere almost completely new. I did make the decision to spend the night outside of Washington D.C. for a number of very practical reasons – not wanting to sit in traffic, not wanting my car to overheat while I was sitting in traffic, the fact that I was physically drained by a lack of sleep and the awful itching and burning of the poison ivy.

But I also think I needed a holding area between one life and the next. The sanctuary of a hotel room and a good nights sleep.

As a result, I missed the first day of orientation, and some good getting to know each other exercises. But before dinner, I was welcomed with a great hug by the Dean, and I do have nine months to get to know these folks – my 13 companions on this journey.

It’s 10:46 p.m. and I’m going to sleep. Breakfast on Sunday at 8 a.m., then meeting after.
I’m obsessing about what to wear, though I think I brought too many clothes and not necessarily the right ones. I was weighed at the doctors office the day I left, and I weighed more than I have in a while. I’m trying not to think about it, but weight is such a reliable way to feel bad about myself, it’s hard to resist.

I might go into Philly with another resident student for meeting (after the PH meeting). Or I might skip it and walk into Media, the closest town. Or maybe I’ll nap, or finish organizing my stuff (clothes are put away – as long as I don’t actually disturb the drawers and closet in any way – like by wearing the clothes – everything fits. At least for now. Still have my office to set up, but that can wait.

I’m writing with my computer on a pillow, sitting on my twin bed, with my own comforter and pillows. My queen size duvet looks pretty on the bed, with the sides almost reaching floor. I'm on the second floor, so I feel good about leaving my windows wide open.

It's funny how Southern I feel here. More on that later...

d

i have left chronos time...

2007-09-20T06:25:00.001-04:00

and I am flying along in kyros time. Chronos, chronological, where life transitions take months and change is sensibly incremental -- gone.

Nope, I'm in kyros, where minutes and hours and days are shown to be the arbitrary human-made structures that they are...

that to say, the hovering presence that was too much to even write about in a previous blog post...well, it's happened.

Over a period of weeks (literally, weeks!), I was invited to apply for and received funding to participate in the resident program at Pendle Hill, "a Quaker center for spiritual growth, study, and service" outside of Philadelphia, PA. I leave Durham on September 28 and will be living at Pendle Hill until June.

I've quit my job and rented out my house. My parents are keeping my dog (this is hard, though not for Kacey -- she'll be happily spoiled and loved).

After all of these years of saying, I want more time for my own creative work, I want to be more present in my life...we'll, folks, I'm taking the leap.

more soon.

d

me of little faith

2007-08-24T15:38:00.000-04:00

Seek and ye shall find support -- at least if you have totally kick a*! friends like mine! As you may have noticed (say, in my last post) I'm struggling with the whole idea of accepting grace, of staying in the present moment.

I'm not always so great at reaching out for help outside of my family. But darn, this is so great, I might do it more often!

I wrote to Pastor Pam, and she sent me this piece of scripture. Anyone who knows me will get that it's funny that I'm being asked not to worry about what I wear.

Matthew 6:25-34 (NRSV)
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today.

thank-you, thank-you

2007-08-24T10:37:00.000-04:00

I received some WONDERFUL support this morning from my friend Jerry, along with this fabulous quote:

Willy Wonka: But Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted.
Charlie Bucket: What happened?
Willy Wonka: He lived happily ever after!

Thanks, I needed that! (What commercial, tv program is that phrase from?)

Please check out Jerry's funny, smart, and engaging blog @ http://www.idiomsavant.typepad.com/

when the gods want to punish you...

2007-08-24T00:04:00.000-04:00

they answer your prayers. I think that's Meryl Streep's line to Robert Redford in Out of Africa. I don't believe those words -- I don't, truly. But here I am...and so much is coming together...and I'm eating frozen pizza and goldfish crackers.

By which, I mean, I'm still afraid. But I almost have a second audio documentary I'm truly proud of, a radio station in Santa Cruz picked up my last piece, which is cool, and I haven't forgotten about Bipolar Girl...

And then there is something hovering out there, something powerful, that I'm not even ready to write about yet.

But I do need to write, that much is clear. I feel so much better now. WRITING GROUNDS ME.

So for now...one-mindfully, I will finish this sentence. I will brush my teeth, wash my face, listen to my audio books, until I fall asleep. And I will tackle tomorrows challenges -- and attempt to accept God's grace -- TOMORROW.

Just for the record, I'm MUCH better at tackling challenges than accepting grace. But I'm working on it.

fear itself?

2007-08-14T21:30:00.001-04:00

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
-- Audre Lorde, 1934-1992

This quote from Audre Lorde is my email signature. It is also the first words at the top of my blog.

Tonight, I am breathless with fear. I am on the edge of completing a documentary audio piece that I've been working on (with a rather large gap in the middle) for over a year. I'm working with literally one of the best (if not the best) editors in public radio. In addition to this smaller project about one of my close friends Pam -- who moved up to NC after Hurricane Katrina -- D. has agreed to be an editor on "Bipolar Girl Rules the World." So it would be really good for me to talk with her about that project too.

I am a genius at helping others step over that bump of fear. And so tonight I managed to help myself step over mine. I called a friend and shared my fears. I got told that I'm a goof ball and to get over myself. I then took small steps to make sure that all of my tape was transferred to my new computer and that all the files were present. It's now 9:20 and I've printed up my 14 pages of transcripts that I did last summer. I may go home and listen to some stuff or I may just go to bed.

Stay tuned. Will Dawn continue taking small steps and move forward on the creative work she now has an opportunity to complete? Or will she derail herself in some spectacular way? Will she literally die of fright? Or will she decide that, as Audre Lorde says, that believing in one's vision actually results in being less afraid?

on reading

2007-07-24T11:58:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me to feel a little silly about how deeply invested I am in the Harry Potter series -- my anticipation, my midnight tryst with hundreds of other fans (of all ages), and my dream of sharing these books one day with my child/children. I will say that I don't know if I would have sobbed quite so loudly if it hadn't been, well, that time of the month. But what of it? Why not cry about a book? About a ten year investment in a gorgeously developed gang of characters?

So the feeling of sillyness came up, and I looked at it, and thought, hmm, how interesting. And instead of shame, a wave of gratitude for READING, and writers, and books gracefully rose to the surface. My mother and her mother have modeled reading for me my whole life. I don't ever remember not reading as a child. And looking back, at the hundreds of books I have read, and the many, many I have reread, I think -- what a gift. All the complicated, difficult feelings I experienced as an adult -- reading saved me. While I didn't have the skills to negotiate the depths of my depression (or life) induced misery, I could READ.

I don't know how many times I read the Anne of Green Gables books as a child and teen. As an adult, I read and reread Ellen Gilchrist. Sometimes, books were like air -- I'd gulp desperately and finally, breathe easier as I turned the pages.

Sometimes, books were a way of numbing out, to be sure. But more often, I think, reading was an escape to something. A place of presence and meaning, of authentic emotion.

done for now,
d

harry potter, harry potter

2007-07-24T11:13:00.000-04:00

I won't say anything, anything at all about the plot, because i'm afraid that anything i say might give something away. What I think I can say...

1) Last night, I ate a good, healthy meal and then permitted myself the luxury of uniterrupted hours. I finished the book. I read it really slowly, referenced past novels so that I fully understood the significance of each horcrux, and rereaad chapters as I went through so I made sure I knew what was going on. I didn't want it to be over.

2) Now that I read it, I keep going back and rereading parts.

3) I sobbed through several chapters. I cried so loud that my housemate came to check on me. I also laughed out loud through several moments.

4) I will be able to read the series to my unborn/not-yet-adopted children. That to say, the ending satisfied me deeply.

5) I need to wait awhile before I download the audiobook. Readling Deathly Hallows was a really emotional experience.

Thank-you, JK Rowling. Reading your books, especially Deathly Hallows was a truly wonderful experience.

p.s. The image above is the cover of the UK edition of the book.

p.p.s. check out JK Rowlings personal website. It's pretty great.

recent obsessions

2007-07-12T23:20:00.001-04:00

amy winehouse
I can't stop listening to this album. And watching her videos online. she's amazing.

charlaine harris
She's a mystery writer, and I've never really been a mystery reader before. I got way hooked on her "Southern Vampire" series, starring Sookie Stackhouse, the telepathic waitress (my Mom did too). Now I just finished another series of hers -- the Lily Bard "Shakespeare" books. Strong, complex, southern heroines. Funny and well-written.

the upcoming release of The Golden Compass
the movie. 12.07.07. One of my favorite books is becoming a film. Please read the book, if you haven't already, or listen to the AMAZING audio recording. And Daniel Craig, of 007 fame, is playing Lord Asriel. Enough said.

the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I'm torn. Do I read it quickly and find out who dies? But then, this is the LAST one, so I should read it slowly, right? And what if JK kills....Harry? Can't do, can't be. How could I read this book to my hypothetical children and get them all invested in Harry Potter if he's going to die? Unbearably, I have a board meeting at 9 a.m. on the Saturday (12:01 a.m.) it's released.

tomatoes and blueberries
It's that time of the summer. tomato, basil, fresh mozzarella. bliss. And though the blueberry harvest was hit hard by the spring freeze, both the picking and the eating (with homemade shortcake) was still perfect.

summer movies
Live Free or Die Hard.
Bruce Willis, as you might have heard, brings down a helicopter with a van. It was totally awesome.

back to black

2007-07-12T23:01:00.000-04:00

it's just been that kind of day.

or pieces of several days broken up by ok moments.

i'm in a kind of numbed out daze and i'm not exactly wild with coping mechanisms at the moment.

i have work to do that i'm not doing. i have something to turn in tomorrow that i have GOT to review before mid-morning. it's now 11:07 P.M. and if my summer house-mate hadn't let out my dog, I'd also be a terrible dog owner.

i am almost three-weeks overdue on an email i promised to send.

i have laundry to put away (this is not tragic. it's just that i could be creating some sanity in my physical environment if i hadn't been doing all kinds of ridiculous distracting stuff for the last few hours).

my head just won't stop with the mean self-judgmental crap.

well, it does sometimes stop.

well, it just hasn't stopped for several hours.

ok. this is funny. writing this post has somehow broken some kind of spell. i hope the break lasts long enough for me to pack up my computer and go home. if i can at least get to sleep at a reasonable hour then tomorrow doesn't have to totally suck.

i'm lonely, i think. well, last time i checked, that wasn't a crime. it doesn't make me weird that i'd like someone to love and to love me back. not too weird to want a family of my own.

mostly, i do ok with this wanting. mostly i cope with this particular kind of lonely. i'm grateful for lots of good things.

well, tomorrow is another darn day.

2007-07-07T01:48:00.001-04:00

partcipating in the wave

2007-06-11T12:15:00.000-04:00

Many Sunday nights still evoke that "haven't finished all my homework," feeling, and I was filled with a pretty good amount of anxiety last night. I was with my family (my brother was home from California!), trying to relax while watching television and sewing a book. (I was already weepy for various reasons -- none of them particularly relevant -- so I decided to go upstairs and have a good cry.

So I'm upstairs, splayed out on the floor, somewhere between a weep and a sob, and I'm thinking, ok, when I leave my folk's house, there's got to be some way I can numb out. Of course, on a Sunday night at 9:30 p.m., there's only one place to go for the "wander around and look at things to buy" drug: Wal-Mart (dun-dun-da-da). So then I think/say, with no small amount of desperation: "Don't make me go to Wal-Mart!" and then, out of me came something between a sob and a laugh. And then more laughing.

Part of this whole Dialectical Behavior Therapy thing is the idea that emotions are waves -- that you can experience them, but at the same time, step back a little and say, ok, whatever I'm feeling will crest and subside. And that's what happened. And what I'm noticing today is that I am feeling so much better. I was able to get out of bed, and get going, and turn in the work assignment that was days late without too much drama.

What I'm seeing is the quantatative effectiveness of DBT. The time taken last evening to have a good cry, to endure the wave, and make myself laugh, is having a multiple effect today. Very time effective.

Part two of all the angst this weekend is that I'm noticing the exhausting effects of my endless busyness. I fell asleep at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, and didn't wake up until the next morning. I'm guessing I'm not more busy, but my craving for quiet and presence is growing stronger, and I'm more aware of the distance between my chronic business and what I'm striving towards. (Can one strive towards less busy?)

The drawing is my interpretive attempt at conveying both the waves and my sprawled body on the floor of my parents guest room.

l,
d

When Things Fall Apart

2007-06-08T08:48:00.000-04:00

"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth."
-- When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron

This quote (and book) has been a help to me this week.

Also:

COMPASSION IS REVOLUTION

Enjoy.
d

it's official...

2007-05-24T20:34:00.000-04:00

my application was received by Women Make Movies.

NOT accepted, but received.

I got the application in just under the wire (which I'm sure is just SHOCKING for those of you who know me), so I wasn't going to make any assumptions until I got the confirmation email:

Dear Applicant—

We have received your application for Fiscal Sponsorship with Women Make Movies.

Due to staff and Review Committee participation in upcoming film festivals, our notification date has been pushed back by a couple of days: We will be sending notification letters via email by June 22. You will be notified either way by that date, via this email address you have provided us. Thank you in advance for your patience!

Thank you for your interest in Women Make Movies’ Production Assistance Program. We look forward to reviewing your proposal.

Best Regards,
Production Assistance Program Staff

So -- when I know, you'll know!

But honestly -- and I'm 95% sure I mean this...

I hope WMM grants me fiscal sponsorship. I do. BUT I will say that getting the proposal done and turned in was a big deal. Bipolar Girl, no longer just an idea, but words and ink on paper! MOST importantly, I stayed pretty calm throughout, got a decent amount of sleep, and didn't crash after. Did I mention I didn't crash after?

I have told dozens of people, "go ahead and apply, and if you don't get approved, they'll tell you what to fix and you can resubmit." I think I believe it. So, that's what I'll do.

And finally, thanks Mom&Dad. We did it!

having one's atoms rearranged is not always a pleasant thing

2007-05-24T18:07:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned Dialectical Behavioral Therapy in previous posts; the once-weekly two hour group sessions and then an individual therapy session are making a huge difference in my life -- I can see the positive changes. It's all very solid and skills based -- practical skills to help sensitive people transform into sturdy sensitive people. I've held for many years that insights -- even brilliant, life-changing ones -- are only so helpful without a plan of action.

My last big moment o'truth came when my therapist and I were talking about how hard it is for me to hang on to positive emotions -- I finish something I'm proud of, or have a good day -- and then I come home and want to avoid how I'm feeling by eating something yucky or wandering around to WalMart (only if it's late and nothing else is open -- still, it feels gross).

So N (that's my therapist) gently suggests that one of the reasons I might be afraid of holding on to positive feelings is because in the past, I had trouble distinguishing between positive feelings and mania.

It was a huge moment. YES. This weird avoidance thing (I mean, why would anyone want to avoid feeling good) wasn't just about self-esteem, or the manic cycles that occur when I work my heart out getting something done (and don't get enough sleep) and then crash into a deep depression (boy, howdy, that's a lot of fun).

But the REALLY AMAZING part of the revelation was that I knew that I am learning the observational skills to discern:

oh, this is what happy feels like.
or,
oh, this is what mania feel like.

I can check in with my body -- happiness feels very flowy, and even excitement feels like it's coming inside and flowing outward. I feel very certain when I'm happy. I feel grateful.

Mania feels like it's coming at me -- and I breathe funny.

So I've got these mad skills to put my brilliant moments of self-reflection (and the trusted observations of those around me) to work.

I'm learning, slowly, to bear all kinds of emotions. I remember the first time I watched "sad" get born, then crest and fall. And I survived without distracting myself with some kind of not-so-helpful behavior.

Some people may be born with the ability to exist with their emotions quite naturally. I spent years fighting them, and with good reason -- sometimes, they were way scary, and out of control.

I'd like to say I'm gracefully accepting these good, positive changes in my life, but I am sometimes scared. Between Tuesday's therapy and Wednesday's group session, I'm a often a wreck by Wednesday night. And then there is this _life_ that I'm supposed to lead. Your life is the laboratory, N said to me last night, as I sat clutching my cell phone, weeping in my car in the WalMart parking lot (that's a whole 'nother story).

Basically, I feel these shifts happening at the atomic level in my being, but feel like I have to keep the outside looking pretty much the same -- all right folks, keep moving, nothing is going on over here!

Sometimes I just get tired.

Sometimes even the good changes are exhausting.

In this moment, however, I feel hopeful.

Bipolar Girl Rules the World and Other Stories

2007-05-22T18:28:00.001-04:00

There is SO much I want to say, in returning to this blog.

But the most important thing...on Sunday, July 9, 2006, I wrote that "someday, I would make a documentary film with the name "Bipolar Girl Rules the World," but until then, it's my blog." Well, on May 15 I turned in my proposal to Women Make Movies, a fiscal sponsorship organization in New York, NY. So if they say "yes," I'm officially open for business (meaning, I can raise money for the film).

Anyways, I did it!

The goal is to have the film done by around this time in 2009.

Ok, so one step at a time. Right. One step at a time.

For now, enjoy a rough sketch of Bipolar Girl! Notice her levitating pink cowgirl boots! And look for more updates soon!

these are the cute shoes

2007-03-02T15:31:00.000-05:00

The last shoe photo on my blog garnered many positive comments, so I can only imagine many of you are wondering, "what are those cute shoes Dawn referred to in her last post?"

Well, let me show and tell. My new favorite shoe brand is Seychelles. I've almost worn out my pointy toed red flats I bought this summer; here are my new khaki green wedgies.

progress?

2007-03-02T14:47:00.000-05:00

Did you know...

"In 1986, EPILADY launched the first electric hair remover, pioneering the most significant revolution ever in the market of hair removal."

This is relevant, why?

Because as a sophomore in college, I remember ranting at Edwin, my boyfriend's roommate, because he had an ad for EPILADY hanging on his side of the dorm room: "You realize that picture on your wall is an ad that promotes the idea that women should tear their hair out at the roots! Can you imagine what that would feel like? Can you imaging doing that to yourself?"

I suspect he was interested in the blond-in-a-bathing suit in the ad, and not the actual hair removal product.

This was Dawn, feminist, circa 1989.

Dawn, feminist, circa 2007, believes that women who choose to wear uncomfortable shoes that make their legs look great are not mindless victims of the patriarchy (though she might save those shoes for special occasions without much walking involved, and is in fact, at this minute, wearing wedge heels that are both adorable and comfortable). She also believes that the way one chooses to dress can be an act of self and artistic expression, while also acknowledging that our cultural definitions of beauty are often unfortunately limited.

The main thing I want to say here is that last night, Dawn, feminist, circa 2007, ripped out (at the roots) her own stray eyebrow hairs with an at home waxing kit. This eyebrow experience was very painful, but I will probably do it again because in the few times I've had this done at a salon, they always take off more than I want. So imagine, it's kind of like pulling off a band-aid, but more painful. I was not capable of doing it quickly; maybe next time, I'll work up more courage.

So I acknowledge I may have been brainwashed as far as eyebrows are concerned. On the various makeover shows I deeply enjoy (I believe in the power of personal transformation -- though I DO NOT watch shows that involve plastic surgery), it's clear that the shape of one's eyebrows makes a big difference in one's appearance -- and this is true for both men and women.

The "Eyebrow King," Damone Roberts, believes "every person is beautiful in his or her own way, but does note that 90 percent of all women have the wrong brows for their facial structure. Damone says, 'It's the most underestimated important feature on the face.'"

I encourage you to read Damone's bio here. He really is called the "Eyebrow King," and "his work has been recognized in Vogue, In Style, USA Today, US Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Allure, Newsweek and countless others."

The Wall Street Journal?

One last thought...though a 10X magnification mirror can be helpful when grooming, always remember that objects are in fact 10 TIMES LARGER than they appear. Check in with your regular old vanity mirror before taking any drastic measures.

discernment, passion, etc.

2007-02-28T16:03:00.000-05:00

God is endlessly imaginative, and the function of discernment is to enter creatively into God's vision for the world and to collaborate with the Spirit in making that vision a reality. -- David Lonsdale, 20th century English Jesuit writer

This quote began my church newsletter for March, and I like it very much because I feel like it gets at the balance between God's will and the responsibility of an individual to participate in the act of creation -- creating relationships, art, peace, fill-in-your-desires here.

Another take on this idea is that when you are fulfilling God's vision for your life, you feel deep joy. I have experienced this feeling, and it has been true for me. Perhaps because I've spent a lot of my life caught up in other's expectations of me, this ringing true, full-body joy is incredibly important to me.

It's important for me to say joy, and not happiness, because I am often quite scared and fraught as I take these journeys. I wish it was easier. Actually, it's the showing up that is hard. The actual work tends to be quite wonderful.

getting a grip

2007-02-26T11:06:00.000-05:00

B. and I have been talking about producing an animated documentary about bipolar disorder for about a year now.

Yesterday, we met and actually put ideas on paper!

I was gripped by anxiety for and aft. But I broke the process down step by step (get out of bed. take a shower. eat cereal, drink coffee. get dressed. get stuff together. get in car. get over the fact that you are an hour late. call B. and make sure it's ok that you are going to be late. etc.).

I think the anxiety and insomnia I've been dealing with lately has something to do with actually feeling fearsome feeling, rather than shoving them down. It is my sincere hope that ultimately, hanging out with the hard stuff (which includes both difficult and very pleasurable emotions) will lead to a more of an integrated Dawn, better to handle moods and strong emotions.

Shoving down, squelching, swallowing, however you want to put it -- leads to exhaustion, sadness, and difficulty taking in -- really getting on a gut level -- my accomplishments, contributions to the universe, etc.

SO...the main point of this post is, we did it! We took an important step forward. The anxiety, however sucky it was to experience, didn't stop me from showing up.

Wow!

gratitude

2007-02-22T16:40:00.000-05:00

Last July, I wrote a blog entry called "Ugly Thoughts" (click on "Ugly Thoughts" to read it, if you want to).

It involved my time on a selection committee for the Hines Fellowship, and being kind of jealous of the four young women who were receiving the opportunity to travel internationally and domestically to do documentary work with organizations that focus on children.

We're in the selection process again, and I'm just grateful that I've apparently gotten my sense of possibility back into place. I'm unstuck, which is great. I'm not feeling jealous anymore, but inspired.

What do I want to do? It's a fun question, and I have lots of ideas...stay tuned!

What Actually Happened on Ash Wednesday

2007-02-22T14:06:00.000-05:00

Through a perfect storm of work craziness, tiredness, and a state of anxiety due to hunger (writing those down, I see themes emerging as far as emotional vulnerability is concerned), I missed my DBT group session yesterday. DBT is short for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a combination of group and individuals sessions that teach skills to help manage emotions, negotiate life in very practical ways, and basically, to thrive in the world as a sensitive person (or you could say, “a person who struggles with a mood disorder of one kind or another”). One of the therapists says that she wants us to become “sturdier.” The fact that I missed a session is kind of a big deal because you're "allowed" four absences in the fourteen month program – after that, you have to pay the $50 per session whether you show up or not. So I think it’s ironic that I missed the session by failing to use the skills I’m trying to practice in the group.

A little before 6 p.m. I managed pull myself into the present moment, and made the decision to miss the last 30 minutes of the DBT group in order arrive at the Ash Wednesday service on time. I arrived a few moments after 6 p.m., only to find that the service didn’t start until 7 p.m.

There’s a chapel at Calvary, small-ish, that I like quite a lot. There is an altar with lots of candles, so I lit one, closed the door, and set my phone to go off in thirty minutes. For the first time in a while, I was able to meditate.

Sitting on the floor of the chapel with my legs crossed, I focused on the candle flame. First I could feel my body gradually coming into itself. Legs connected to floor. I felt balanced, comfortable with my legs crossed, leaning back a little. I could feel the tension in my back, arms, and shoulders.

At the meditation retreat I attended over New Year’s, I cornered the (amazing, wonderful) instructor and asked, “Really, no, really. What does a peaceful mind look like? What am I trying to do?” She took my question seriously, and the most helpful thing she said was, “You may have to come back to your breathing 10 times, 100 times, a 100,000 times. The meditation is the spaces between the times you remember to come back.”

With her permission to fail/succeed a 100,000 times, I felt the freedom to explore meditation, and felt less frustrated, less wrong.

So the meditating in the Chapel was good. There were moments of stillness, quiet. There’s a great quote (source unknown) that goes: “If you’re busy, meditate. If you’re really busy, meditate more.”

I have less to say about the actual service, except that the scripture included one Psalm 51, one of my favorites:

Create in me a clean heart, O God;
and renew a right spirit within me.

Though it leads up to a dark time in the Christian calendar I like Lent. It’s popular to skip Christ-on-the-Cross and jump straight to the bunnies and baby chicks of Easter, but that doesn’t seem authentic to me. And my world gets muddy, frantic, so time to focus on the spirit, on God’s will for me in the world, is a good thing.

So with the grit of mortality on my forehead, I entered the next forty days (not counting Sundays).

Lenten Promises/Gifts

2007-02-21T10:31:00.000-05:00

This year, my Lenten promise is no unnecessary purchases of things. Movies ok. Food ok. Clothing, accessories, books, music -- not ok. (This isn't a judgement against consumerism, it's just something that feels right for me to do right now. I'm having money anxiety, and I tend to shop as a way of avoiding feelings.) I understand Lent as a time to come closer to God, and the thing/thoughts/etc. that you "give up" are in the spirit of making more room for contemplation, quiet, etc. Not to give up things that are "bad" for you.

So this evening I'll go get ashes smudges on my forehead. Since I didn't grow up as a Christian, the meaning of such rituals (and this includes communion -- which is an intense and moving ceremony for me) don't necessarily make sense in an intellectual way (Not that I don't get the ashes to ashes thing). Sometimes, like this evening, I'll show up open to the experience, and see what happens.

I receive daily emails from "The Upper Room," with Bible passages and pithy reflections from various sources). Here's today's scripture reading...

Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts, and not your clothing.
- Joel 2:12-13 (NRSV)

"Rend your hearts, but not your CLOTHING."

So smart. It's Lent and all, but why wreck a perfectly good outfit?

you can't fool sleep

2007-01-31T23:32:00.000-05:00

Being bipolar girl, I tend to pull off large projects -- in my case, events involving lots of planning and people -- with huge pushes towards the end.

I've learned how incredibly necessary it is that I work with people who break down things into time-lines, who think about deadlines before the drop-dead deadline, and frankly, folks who can hold it together if I can't get into work on a particular day because I'm plastered to my bed with anxiety and depression...

I also have learned over time that if I plan ahead, I can get help. I can delegate. I can empower people to do their thing. I have, I believe, become a much better micromanager over time (meaning, I micromanage less). Working with people I trust, not only do events/projects/etc. generally turn out better (sometimes wildly, imaginatively, qualitatively, quantitatively, better), but these successes plant a hope that some day, I'll be able to start a five day or eight day event feeling, well, rested (or well-rested).

I could talk more about functioning at work as bipolar girl, but now, at 11:43 a.m., with an early start tomorrow, let me tell you THIS:

After numerous nights staying up (not just up, but in the office) until 2-3-4 a.m., my bones aches. My brain's fuzzy. My body vibrates (not in a good way). I feel fragile -- physically and emotionally. On my way to the car today, I tripped and fell -- and let me tell you, there's nothing like hitting concrete so hard you tinkle that makes you feel happening and in control.

Now, I'm going to get a good night of sleep tonight (6.5 hours!). And for the next few days, I'll take deep breaths, and even when I have to perform my public self in front of a crowd, I'll dip into the well of whatever has allowed me to move through rough/shaky feelings and (ta-da!) *shine* for most of my life.

I love my job, especially the part of my job that involves all these people who are passionate about documentary work coming to learn new stuff. I want to change so that I can more fully appreciate how much fun it is, so that I can address the hard work with a rested self, and feel full at the end. I want to be able to enjoy how good I am at what I do.

You can't fool sleep, because if you could, I would do it. I've tried, tried, and tried again. Bipolar girl can't mess around. It's dangerous. It sets me up big-time for a crash. I need eight or nine hours. That's my goal for tomorrow night.

'night...

she walked back into the room quietly

2007-01-26T20:46:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a dear friend about struggling with the times in my life when I just can't get things done the way I want to, and how shaming and awful it feels when my inability to get work done negatively impacts those around me. How hard it is to know that I'm making someone else's life more difficult, even as I get on some level that I'm doing the best that I can while struggling with depression, anxiety, etc.

I don't know how you do it, she said.

Well, I said, I have a lot of very compassionate people around me. A lot of care, a lot of support.

And then I paused. This was a friend that I could risk being honest with.

And will, I said. Force of will. And it's ironic, because for so long -- fifteen years or more -- I thought, if you just try harder, you'll be ok. You are not trying hard enough. But by some gift of grace, I can see now that another reason I'm ok -- functioning in the world, more or less -- is that I have been trying so hard.

My friend affirmed, that yes, it is also you, trying so hard.

May I please state for the record that I'm tired? I'm working so hard at the moment to get better -- in group therapy, regular therapy, being vigilant about my meds, etc. etc. -- because I have hope that there is way for me to be in the world that doesn't require that I work quite so hard.

It's not that I'm afraid of hard work -- it's part of my identity, this idea that I work hard. But I desire a new struggle, something that feels different. Fresh. Not these stinky bedclothes of depression, anxiety, and mania, oh my.

shoes make me happy

2006-11-03T16:55:00.000-05:00

I was just reading another blog and the author put a picture of a pair of her new shoes on her site, and since I'm wearing my fancy new shoes today, I'm posting two different views on my blog. Please notice how fantastically well they match my jacket while not yet being too matchy.

And yes, I'm hiding my face behind the shoe. I'm holding off on posting a picture of myself for the time being. Not sure why, because it's not like I'm keeping much to myself.

Oh -- it's interesting to me who reads my blog. Like, A., who technically works for me, but in reality (and maybe this just makes me more comfortable to think this way) works with me, said to me the other day, "If your boss had a blog, wouldn't you read it?" Yes, indeed, I would. She later said that she liked it, really.

One last thing. I'm struggling much with the whole being present thing. I went to swim today, and realized that I'd swam eight laps before I remembered I was in a pool. Meaning, my mind was racing about all the things it was racing about in the office, and it took that long to even notice that I wasn't noticing where I was. You know, in water. Thankfully, I can swim on automatic, though I did try to focus more on the experience of moving through water for the rest of my swim.

Enjoy the shoes.

the O interview, 2017

2006-10-29T15:17:00.000-05:00

Folks,

Just want to say...it is singularly terrifying to post this piece of writing. I am afraid you will think I'm full-of-myself, or fooling myself, or that I'm just kind of stupid. I find it so much easier to be self-deprecating.

On the other hand...

I do believe that if we put our desires out into the world that God/Source/Spirit/Energy responds. So even if I don't end up on the Oprah show in 2017--well, the three pieces of art I mention in this post are gifts I want to give the world, and to create for myself.

Also, a cool thing that happened while I was writing this piece is that ideas came to me -- that I had never thought about performing the shopping play in a mall, though it makes lots of sense to me, and I didn't have a title for my series of essays on water, either.

If you do your own Oprah interview, I'll publish it here!

Dawn

*****

The Oprah Show: Sometime in 2017

O: So Dawn, in Water: An Autobiography, you write about your 36th birthday being a real turning point for you.

D: On my birthday, I made a list of my goals for the year. And at the top of the list were three things – get good sleep, exercise, and eat healthy. I listed other goals – spending more time with friends, shedding responsibilities (without taking on new ones!), and making time for my creative self -- but it was absolutely clear to me what my priorities needed to be – and sleep, especially was at the top of the list.

But of course, knowing what I needed to do and actually doing it were two very different things.

O: Oh yes, don’t I know.

D: I think it’s safe to say that everyone around me had heard me say for years, “I need to slow down. I need to slow down.” And it was frustrating that my number one commitment – just to get enough sleep! – was so difficult for me.

O: So what made the difference? What actually allowed you to make the changes in your life that allowed you to create – to produce these plays, films, and writings – and now a book! (audience applause) that people connect to in such an intimate way? Because that’s what I can’t get over – this book is so funny, and self-deprecating, and it’s – you know, I can sit on the beach and just flip the pages…but girl, when I put it down -- you are deep. You are DEEP! These funny little stories…

D: I’m so glad you think they are funny…

O: No, they are funny! But you are dealing with some deep – well, let’s talk about Water…

D: Well, I think that connects back to the other question – about how I, well, finally got enough sleep (audience laughter).

O: That is revolutionary, you know – how many of you in the audience get enough sleep (audience groans, 10-15 people raise their hands). And how many of you have children (about 10 of the hands drop). It's hard -- it seems to me that women, in particular, neglect their most basic needs, and don't even know that's what they are doing.

D: Right -- exactly. Well, what I did -- I decided to take the sleep thing really seriously. It began to represent something big to me – the whole idea that I was valuable, that I was a child of God, that I had ideas and passions to share with the world. I felt like, if I can’t actually commit to going to bed at a certain hour most nights, how seriously can I take the rest of my goals? How could I have faith in myself to step out into the world and follow my dreams if I couldn’t even commit to getting enough sleep?

And also, being bipolar, sleep is critical. Some people can go without sleep – put in a few all-nighters and be ok – but losing sleep sets me up for a big depression. My mood is so obviously sleep-dependent.

O: Ok, so sleep – what else happened?

D: Well, the other thing that happened is that I began to own my creative power. I realized that I had a number of creative ideas that were unrealized -- but that I could see, in their entirety, completed. That I knew the first step, and the second step, and believe, through my wobbly faith in God, that the next step would appear to me as I moved along. I have always had a lot of ideas, Oprah, too many, sometimes. But these ideas – they were so tangible, so solid I felt I could hold them in my hands.

O: And your first idea – it was a documentary, right?

D: Yes. An animated documentary about bipolar disorder. And how that happened – the path was definitely made by God. Who I met, the brilliant director I partnered with, the people who agreed to be part of the story, the resources that appeared – it was all already out there.

I lived with that knowledge for a long time – that creative projects could work that way. I had some small successes where I saw that the creative process could be, well, if not painless, at least it could be spirit-filled. So I believed that the pieces would fall into place, but I wasn’t ready to take the leap. And it was about the time that Water started to form in my mind. It seemed everywhere I looked, the idea of water, in all its incarnations – ice, vapor, flowing water, oceans, rivers – and also, floating, drowning, surfacing, swimming. Around that time, I also started taking my swimming seriously, training for open-water swims.

As all these ideas were floating around in my head (sorry about that), I kept going back to the thousands of laps I swam as a child on my neighborhood swim team. I learned to trust water. I trust the way my body moves in water. It’s a faith born out of practice, not just belief. I wanted to know – how could I build that same – that same embodied trust in my spiritual self, my creative self?

O: So many people think that you should be able to just transform overnight. It’s about building trust, building faith. Even the big leaps – the "aha" moments – it can take years to make the changes, to live into the “aha” moment.

D: Well, yeah (grimacing). It would be nicer if it didn’t work that way, but that does seem to be how it goes.

O: (laughter)

D: I think two approaches made it possible for me to move forward, to create the kind of life that I had dreamed of living for such a long time.

O: Right – because you said in your book that you feel you lost much of your twenties to depression, and that a lot of your thirties was a catching up time.

D: Yes, that’s right. So on the one hand, there was the microcosm: get enough sleep. On the other, there was the big dream: find a way of living that would allow me to spend a significant amount of time on the projects I felt called to do. And I decided in my birthday month that I would spend the next year learning the skills I needed to move toward my goals. Because honestly, if I had won the proverbial lottery and had all the money in the world and didn’t need to work any more, I don’t think at that time I had the skills to create the life I wanted.

O: Money is nice – it helps, I’m not saying it doesn’t make things easier (audience laughter) – ok, it can make certain things a lot easier – but it is not the answer. Speaking of which – I hear you got a sizeable advance for Water.

D: Yeah…not quite sure how that happened.

O: It might have been the success of The Art of Shopping – and believe me, there are not many plays that have reached that kind of audience. It first played in – where -- Durham, NC – (Dawn nods)and then in all these towns and cities all over the country. And then it moved to off-Broadway. That’s kind of backward…

D: It was just, well – how it happened! I’d done a bunch writing on my own – my partner said I didn’t need to interview anyone, that I had enough personal experience to write a thousand pages…but it was so much fun to talk to women about shopping! I’d done – I don’t know, fifty or sixty different interviews and mixed my own experiences with the interview sources.

There were three women who collaborated on the play with me. I’d never written a play, never staged a play, but there was a group of us that got really excited about it, and we pulled it off. We actually did the first performance in a mall – it was a fundraiser for a mental health organization that focuses in particular on women and children suffering from mental illness and living in that gap between Medicaid and having insurance. It’s a very personal cause for me, as you know – I’ve been so blessed to have access to health care, and the substantial support of my parents and friends.

O: You tell some of these stories in your bipolar documentary – the struggles of these women, and what they have to go through to get help – it’s staggering.

D: Right – so through my awareness work around these issues, I was asked to do a fundraiser, and we thought staging a a dress rehearsal of Shopping would be a good way to get a sense of the audience’s response. It was so much fun, Oprah! People stepped out of the flow of shoppers and came over to see what was going on, and they stayed! It was so exciting to see people connect with what was happening, in this enormous courtyard,, with the echoes of the spaces and so many of the shoppers bustling by… after that experience, we just decided to keep doing the play in, well, unconventional spaces. The set is so simple – three dressing rooms, a clothes rack – and of course, the clothes… we're pretty mobile. And even when we had a longer run at a “real” theatre, we kept the stages just that simple.

When I decided to write “The Art of Shopping,” it was at a time when I was recovering from, if not a buying addiction, at least a shopping addiction – meaning, it was the walking around a mall, or the Target -- Tar-jay -- and just looking at things, sometimes buying, but not spending out of control…it was a habit from my days of dealing with severe depression, when I was grateful just to have a distraction from the pain I was feeling – it was a time when being numb was hugely preferable to what I was actually feeling. And one evening, I was in a TJ Maxx around nine p.m. and I thought, what if the creative energy of the women in this room – because honestly, it is mostly women – what if this energy was harnessed into something else? What are we not doing because we are here shopping?

O: I don’t know, if I’d want to give up shopping, though (audience laughter).

D: No, of course not – me neither…because shopping – the way we present ourselves, the objects we choose for our homes, our shoes

O: You know I love some shoes (audience laughter).

D: Yes! Accessories, how we dress our children – shopping can be a supremely creative act. So I wanted to write about shopping in its complexity – not an anti-consumerist rant, but something we could identify with, a celebration that would also make us think about where our clothes come from, and that maybe there is something else we might do, some nights, instead. I still shop…

O: Especially since that book advance! (audience laughter).

D: Well, yes…but I’m present now when I shop. I’m not numbing myself. (Dawn tears up).

O: (Oprah reaches across to squeeze hand).

D: Honestly, Oprah. There were times – months, years, -- where I never thought I would get to this place. And I don’t mean Oprah’s couch. (audience laughter). I mean a place of contentment. A place of trust in God, in the universe. I’ve been – well, the best way I can put it is to quote myself from Water. I’ve been swimming laps for over a decade now. I’ve been swimming in a pool of faith. And thousands of laps later, I know – I don’t just believe, but I know – that all I have to do is dive under. And I’ll surface. And swim on.

O: Amen.

an addendum

2006-10-17T15:51:00.000-04:00

I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. last night reading Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer by Lynne Cox. By page 134, Lynne was 18 and had swum the English Channel twice, and breaking the world record both times.

This I have learned. The English Channel is really, really cold. Also, depending on the currents, the swim can be 30+ miles. And it seems to me that she trained about six hours a day.

Now, she did break the world record, and that definitely wasn't part of my "swim the English Channel by 40" objective. I was going more for "make it across."

Well, I'll keep reading. And find an intermediate goal, maybe something close by and a bit shorter.

And I'll definitely get into the pool today.

swimming the english channel

2006-10-12T14:50:00.000-04:00

The English Channel is 21 miles wide. However, the hardy individuals who swim across the English Channel rarely swim only 21 miles because there are currents to consider and it's a major shipping thru-way, and then there is the weather...

Why do I know these interesting facts?

I got my pool membership today, and I’m drawn and drawn again to swimming, and to water. I can’t wait to get into the water. So of course, I think, why don’t I swim the English Channel? Isn’t that what anyone would think? Or is it this kind of thinking that makes me special/insane?

So I google “swim ‘English Channel.” Another interesting fact: most of the women who swim the English Channel are definitely – well, they are curvy, zaftig, however you want to put it. Bottom line: they have some weight on them, which (and this is very important) keeps them warm. From the photographs I’ve seen, this is not a sport for skinny people. Do you know that woman named Alison Streeter (that's her, in the photo above) holds the world record for channel crossings (43 and counting, including a triple crossing). Alison looks like a very nice person. Rather than giving the air of a super human athlete, she seems, well, down-to-earth, very much like she might get up in the morning and say, let’s go swim the English Channel again today -- wanna join me?

Back to earth. Two goals: start swimming 3-5 days a week, at least a half mile each day. And for the “Documenting the Sacred” class I’m teaching, commit to polishing at least three essays around the idea of spiritulity and water.

And if I do that, look into open water swims for this spring/summer.

Maybe I'll swim the English Channel by the time I’m 40. I feel a little foolish and audacious, but what the hell – it’s my birthday. And wouldn’t it be fun if it happened?

p.s. I’m also going to purchase Lynne Cox’s Swimming to Antarctica, because outlandish goals require new books.

na na na na na na today is my birthday...

2006-10-12T14:31:00.000-04:00

and though not completely free of the funk of my last post, I'm having a good day. Lovely breakfast with mom & dad, lovely cake and singing from work-folks, lovely wishes and flowers and presents...and phone calls with good wishes.

and then out tonight on a surprise birth-day-date with L., and then we go to my folk's house on Friday for my favorite supper (chuck steak) and homemade mocha cake (thanks Oma!).

Then a weekend with no plans. It's kind of an amazing feeling. Who knows what I'll do! Or not do.

I'm grateful, grateful, grateful. For family, friends, a home, a sense of dark humor, for sustenance. I’m a lucky bird.

So thank-you, you, if you are reading this message. If I know you, thanks for all you bring to my life. And, um, if I haven’t called you in a while, I will. I really want to get together. Soon. More then likely, I miss you. It’s just that my priorities have been out of whack and I’ve been fighting a blue mood, and, and – well, I miss you. Y’all know who you are.

Maybe birthdays could be kind of like the day when the library lets you bring your books back without paying a fine? And you could let me back into your life even though I haven’t returned your phone call/email/etc.?

Not sure how all that came up.

Happy Birthday to me…and many more.

i hate everyone

2006-10-10T13:33:00.000-04:00

I can't quite stand films about shiny people -- for me, Meg Ryan personifies shiny -- who go through predictable, narratively simple life struggles that end in happy resolutions.

So of course, I loved Little Miss Sunshine.

I saw Little Miss Sunshine a couple of weeks ago, and the film satisfied me in deep ways. It was funny, sad, well-written, well acted -- I could go on and on. Most importantly, films about broken people who find hope make up my favorite genre. And when I say broken, I don't mean broken, like a horse is broken -- I mean people with visible fissures, messy people, people who don't have "it" together, whatever "it" is. I mean, of course, people like me, who couldn't pull "it" off even if I wanted to. Okay, I do want to, sometimes. Perhaps I could handle a little less of the delightful process of self-growth, the endless breaking down and building up of spirit and personality.

If you haven't seen the film, you can get the plot summary here, but essentially, the film is about the Hoover's, one of "the most endearingly fractured families in recent cinema history." And one of the characters is Dwayne, a Nietzsche lovin' teenager who has taken a vow of silence. He occasionally uses language by writing sparse words on a notepad. At a point in the film, he writes I HATE EVERYONE. When his Uncle Frank asks, "even your family?"Dwayne underlines EVERYONE twice.

Now, I do not hate everyone. I do not, especially, hate my family. But the sentiment connected with me in some way -- enough that I searched for a movie poster online, enough that I printed a copy and hung it up in my home office.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm drawn to the sentiment of "I HATE EVERYONE," but I’m beginning to wonder if morose is some essential part of my personality, if I’m kidding myself that I can become an integrated, spiritual person with joy in my (god damn) heart. If so, I certainly haven’t honored morose over these many years of my life. (I just looked up morose, to check and make sure it was the word I’m searching for, and it does work – “having a sullen or gloomy disposition".) Is it possible, that while fighting depression for more than a decade, I’ve demonized my sullen and gloomy side?

And how have I compensated for that demonization? I married a really angry person who did hate everyone. G. has a cute saying -- the difference between you and me is that you like people and I don’t. I found it charming. I was also pleased that someone who so evidently didn’t like people was in love with me. It made me feel special. Let’s not delve into that too deeply, shall we?

Since I wisely left that relationship, I’ve found other angry people to admire (and a kind, loving, and witty L. to date). My new credo: watch the angry people on television, but don’t date them. I’m drawn to really bitter comedians like Lewis Black, for example. To the understated expression of disbelief and outrage of The Daily Show. And of course, I adore Southpark – in whose anger, biting wit, satire, and refusal to hold back about anything I find a deep, satisfying release.

More times than I can count, when people have learned that I struggle with depression, I’ve been met with flat-out disbelief – occasionally shifting to an out-right refusal to believe me. “You’re so cheerful, so outgoing, etc. etc.” I still remember what a rather bitter goth chick wrote in my senior high yearbook – essentially, “you continue to smile as the world falls down around you.” Obviously, it was not a compliment. And even then, I sighed at the enormous gap between my public self and how I felt inside.

My hopeful, cheerful, outgoing self is real. I don’t feel like I’m “faking it.” But clearly, some part of that identity is an overcompensation for my depression. And I think my tendency towards depression has made me overly wary of my morose self. It’s scary to experience negative feelings when I don’t know if I’m having a genuine feeling or if the scales are tipping towards weeks or months when I struggle to get out of bed (note: “morning” and “morose” are in the same column in the dictionary).

And let’s face it, I want everyone to like me. Mostly everyone. I’m no saint – I do sarcasm pretty well. But I’m afraid a lot. My depression makes me vulnerable. I could (and do) screw up at any time. So I better dance, dance, dance while the going is good.

I do like people, especially people who are broken and not afraid to show it. Liking people makes it hard for me to be political on a large scale – I do better with relationships, dialogue, microcosm stuff.

I think mostly, I’m tired. I’m so tired I could weep. Taking a vow of silence sounds good to me. Alas, I am a professional extrovert.

It’s my 36th birthday this week, and I’m singularly unexcited. More trying, more trying, more trying. I know I’m not alone in being tired. I know I’m not alone in wanting peace. I know my mental illness doesn’t make me special, that suffering is perhaps the most egalitarian state of being.

Maybe I just want to hang out in morose for a while. Maybe I just want to know what morose would be like in public. What would happen if I let go of being so damn happy? What if I didn’t shove down anger, if I called people on their shit more often? What if I didn’t go so far as to hate everyone, but tried hating a few people, and what if (and this is a revolutionary thought) I went ahead experienced what it's like for a few people to hate me?

If you hate me and you are reading this, send me an email. I promise not to try to convince you to like me. Ok, I promise I’ll try not to try to convince you to like me.

i love my family

2006-09-09T22:46:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my grandmother's 80th birthday. We call her Oma -- growing up it was Oma and Poppop, Oma and Poppop. Poppop (Oma’s husband) died seven years ago, but he was with us today, in spirit -- I have no doubt about it. Nothing was more important to him than family, and for Oma, the biggest gift we could give her was all of us together. We (my mom, dad, Oma, and I) drove from North Carolina to New Jersey; my brother and his new wife flew in from California. My mom's two brothers and their families were here too -- all Oma's children, their spouses, and grandchildren.

I can hear my family downstairs -- my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. I can hear my Aunt Shirley laugh and someone is singing -- actually, several people are singing. Two TVs are on – cars race around a track on the big TV, and in the kitchen, chairs circle around a tiny TV playing a home decorating channel. I want to write about all I'm feeling in this moment, but i also want to go back downstairs and join everyone, be part of the noise, the semi-chaos, the energy.

So for now, I'll just say this: I'm grateful, grateful, grateful. I'm grateful that we all love each other so much, and perhaps more importantly, how much we like each other. I'm grateful that we all give good hugs. I'm grateful for the beautiful day, for how loud we are, for how accepted and loved I feel. The way we go back and forth, sarcastic, loving, funny, loud. I know I keep saying loud, but people are generally much quieter in the south. I don't mind it so much, but I'm aware of how much free-er I feel to be myself. It's like traveling to the home of my ancestors, speaking my mother tongue. Something in me relaxes and feels right, in a way that I don't quite feel otherwise, even though I've lived in the South for 28 of my 35 (almost 36) years and consider it home.

Not knowing when we would all be together again, Oma wanted us to take a group picture. I came downstairs all showered and clean, and I said, "Look, let's take the picture before I either get sweaty or spill food on myself." I told that joke several times and each time, a different family member laughed. (Telling jokes and stories over and over again seems to be a common family trait.) They laughed because it's true, though everyone also agreed it was a good idea.

There were several artistic directors for this photoshoot -- lots of ideas for how to fit fifteen people in the picture. We were laughing from the beginning -- Morgan, a sophmore in highschool, posing on a faux bearskin rug, plus all the adjustments it took to make it work, not to mention all the opinions that needed to be considered. We took three nice pictures, everyone smiling, and then Morgan and I posed as models on the floor. Everyone joined in, and the resulting photo is posted here.

This photo turned out to be Oma's favorite picture. Morgan said it best, and often, sort of laughing, but utterly serious -- "I love my family." I'm not sure everyone would get us, but we definitely get each other.

stuck

2006-08-29T16:05:00.000-04:00

I'm painfully, ruthlessly, stuck.

The hubhub of the summer is over (the summer is over? how did that happen?) and I happily anticipated shifting into a regular schedule and approaching life in a measured way, with my goals of moving towards wellness (including sleep, healthy eating, exercise), nurturing relationships, and making time for creative acts at the top of my list of things to do. Also, I looked forward to creating a clean, orderly environment, with a clean house and organized home and work offices.

Who was I kidding?

Unless I suddenly and completely transformed overnight into some completely different person, achieving the above objectives were extremely unlikely.

That last sentence was NOT self deprecating. Actually, as I wrote it, I felt a resounding sense of TRUTH. The goals I set for myself, hoping to build on the "back to school" impetus, were unrealistic. Not ultimately unrealistic -- they are certainly good goals to have, but the changes are not going to happen overnight.

Well, that's depressing, but also a relief.

I've been hiding the last few days, filled with paralyzing anxiety, unwilling to face the world.

I guess the painful, semi-hopeful, mortifyingly slow process of change is preferable to existing in a hallucination where it is indeed possible to transform overnight. Especially when the hallucination isn’t an innocent one – it’s poison, I tell you, poison.

it must be fate...

2006-08-15T18:49:00.000-04:00

One last thing...
Target is a sponsor for Weekend America! For those of you who know me & my Target obsession -- um, I mean, how much I enjoy my Target shopping experience, you'll recognize that this is definitely a sign.

letting be, making space, filling up

2006-08-15T18:45:00.000-04:00

Since I'm on the topic of the "Our New Orleans" course (see earlier post) I'm recycling a piece of writing I did after one of the classes. Enjoy.

May 16, 2006

Many of you know that the "Our New Orleans" class I've been teaching for the last five weeks has been a sacred experience -- from my collaboration with Pam Broom, to the Katrina neighbors who agreed to participate, and the way that each element of the class that I have trusted to work out has indeed, worked out.

Tonight, I showed up to teach my "Our New Orleans" class empty, shaken, and tired.

I sat there next to my co-teacher Pam and thought that I should say something to get started -- I wrote down the things "to do" in class today, and then still, I didn't say anything as the participants in the class spoke to each other. I thought Pam might say something, but she didn't.

About ten minutes later, Nana, one of the participants from New Orleans, walked in with a white plastic grocery bag and a plant in a turquoise ceramic pot. Nana is a priest -- she trained for the priesthood in Cuba. She had prayed for us this morning at the Eno River, and she had received the message that she should present an altar for this evening's class.

So she set out a simple navy cloth napkin on the table, and April filled a clear glass bowl with water. She poured essential oils into a burner (one of those ones that are heated by a tea light) and it was a fresh, clean smell -- nothing heavy or muddying. She told us that all the elements of the earth were there on the altar -- pebbles from the river in the plant (minerals), the earth, water, etc. She invited us to each place an object onto the altar if we felt comfortable doing so. I placed both of my rings -- one from my parents, and one I bought in California as a reminder of the writer Amanda Davis, who I interviewed three days before she died in a terrible plane crash with her parents. Others stood up too, and place rings and necklaces, and one woman placed a flash drive with her photographs stored on it. We all shared stories about our sacred objects.

The "theme" of this evening's class was spirit, and almost as an afterthought, I had given the class Anne Lamott's essay "Traveling Mercies" to read, and a poem that serves as the epigraph to the book Traveling Mercies,” one that begins:

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank-you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms with our
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank-you

So I suggested that we each read a few lines of the poem, and I began. We went around the class, everyone reading a line or two or three -- it was up to each person. And Pam, who was sitting to my left, read the last line.

We all looked at each other, and Hei-Yesh (Pam’s daughter, and a writer/filmmaker) said what we were all thinking -- there were the exact number of lines for everyone to be able to read a part.

And the Anne Lamott essay, which I almost didn't give the class, turned out to be really important. I wasn't sure that students would want to discuss it, as it was only tangentially related to documentary work. But when I asked the class what they wanted to do today (by then I'd realized that I was thankfully not in charge), they wanted to talk about it. One of our Katrina neighbors told us she cried as she read it in the airport on the way to New Orleans for her graduation from Tulane (with a master's degree in environmental engineering). Another woman told the story of her mother's death; there were so many stories. Women told about how they grew up with the phrase "traveling mercies," in their families, in their church.

One of the things Anne talks about in the essay is how that when a lot of small and large things begin to go wrong, "it is to protect something that is big and lovely that is trying to get itself born -- and that something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible." And how easy it is to believe that when it's other people's stuff that is going wrong, but when, as Anne says, "it's my stuff, I believe the direct cause is my bad character."

Anyway, in the essay Anne is driving to visit a childhood friend and her mother (who is very sick and close to dying) and a bolt loosens in her Volkswagen on her way over. She is unable to visit that day, but when she arrives several days later, she is able to be present for her friend and her mother, and she writes:

"Now, maybe you think it is arrogant or self-centered or ridiculous for me to believe that God bothered to wiggle a cheap bolt out of my new used car because he or she needed to keep me away for a few days until just the moment when my old friend most needed me to help her mother moved into whatever comes next. Maybe nothing conscious helped stall me so that I would be there when I could be most useful. Or maybe it did. I'll never know for sure. And anyway, it doesn't really matter."

Nana read this passage aloud to the class. And she said that it did matter. That our culture has gotten so far away from the beliefs about how the spirit works in our lives, as an active and present force, and that this belief is common to many cultures. That we need to understand that "life moves in a divine order."

I know I feel that way about meeting Pam, about the class, about it's participants -- I've felt that way from the beginning. There are times I feel that with certainty. And lots of the class participants felt that way too.

We have to move slower, Nana said. Move with confidence and grace. Slowly.

April and I exchanged a long glance. I work with April more closely then anyone, and she probably knows better then anyone the spurts of speed that move me through my work; she definitely suffers for it on occasion.

Hei-Yesh shared a piece of her writing; one of the participants played a part the video she is working on -- Darlene, her project partner, sharing stories from her life in New Orleans. And Nana asked if she could sing to us. And she did.

Listen more often to things than to beings
Listen more often to things than to beings
Tis the ancestors' breath when the fire's voice is heard
Tis the ancestors' breath in the voice of the waters

Those who have died have never left
The dead are not under the earth
They are in the rustling trees
They are in the groaning woods
They are in the crying grass
They are in the moaning rocks

Listen more often to things than to beings
Listen more often to things than to beings
Tis the ancestors' breath when the fire's voice is heard
Tis the ancestors' breath in the voice of the waters

Those who have died have never left
The dead have a pact with the living
They are in the woman's breast
They are in the wailing child
They are with us in our homes
They are with us in this crowd
The dead have a pact with the living.

Listen more often to things than to beings
Listen more often to things than to beings
Tis the ancestors' breath when the fire's voice is heard
Tis the ancestors' breath in the voice of the waters

She sang a cappella. Sweet Honey and the Rock sings this song, if you want to hear what it sounds like.

There are so many more things I could tell you about the class this evening. Things that were really funny (the mother-daughter dynamics of Pam and Hei-Yesh), the kind laughter at my expense, how grateful I was to be able to share freely. How in the end, bringing my emptiness to the class, and not trying to compensate, and just letting things be actually worked. It created space, and someone else stepped in.

I asked the class what they might want Pam and I to teach next fall. One person asked, could we have a class that is just like this, the way we talked and shared today? After some discussion, I said, you know, the power of doing documentary work is that we can take what happens in this room and spread it further. What if we teach a class called "Documenting the Sacred?" It could go in a lot of different ways -- people could work with partners, or by themselves...and document whatever they believe is sacred. And we’d have a project to work towards.

No decisions were made, but it feels like a good idea.

I asked Nana to close the class for us, and we all held hands (right hand over left hand, though I thought it was supposed to be right arm over left arm, and wondered why Pam wasn't doing it right -- until I noticed the rest of the class wasn't doing it, um, right either). Anyway, Nana prayed (a very open, nondenominational prayer) and the class ended.

As we were walking out the door, I suggested to Nana that she think about co-teaching the "Documenting the Sacred" class with Pam and I.

"That never occurred to me," she said.

"Just let it sit a while," I said, "see how it feels to you."

"We can see how far we can stretch the academy," Nana said, "What kind of class we could shape within that."

Nana had said this before -- talking about "the academy" and questioning what kind of class we'd be allowed to offer.

"Well I direct this program," I said, "so I am the academy. We can do pretty much whatever we want."

I think she could see that I was about to step away from that declaration, and she said, "No, that's good. Own your power."

I think one of the reasons I'm struggling so much these days is that I do spend time in the light of God, with a sense of what I have to offer the world. The ideas I'm thinking about and sometimes writing about are important, and I know it. I am arriving. I'm on the precipice of living into my promise, and then on days like yesterday, I'm so filled with fear and panic I can hardly breathe. It comes out of nowhere -- and at the same time, it's utterly predictable the way it happens.

Anyway, on Saturday, everyone in the class is bringing their video and audio tapes, their photographs, their writing, back to CDS and we’ll start to assemble their projects – which I’m very excited about. And by next class, I’ll have some of my own writing done for the collaboration Pam and I are doing (as teachers, we have to do the same project the class is doing). So we’ll be back “on track” with our class, except I don’t think tonight was “off track,” at all.

just doing it...npr, here we come!

2006-08-15T18:35:00.000-04:00

I just sent a pitch to Weekend America for four of the audio docs (that came out of the "Our New Orleans" class I taught with Pam Broom this spring) to potentially air around the whole "Katrina anniversary" time. The pitch is below.

Ok, so maybe they'll take a piece, or all of them, or none of them. But I sent the pitch! I just did it, and there were even typos (as I noticed upon re-reading after hitting send). Anyways, the moral of the story is I moved past inertia and did it -- didn't just talk about it, but did it. Writing and sending the email feels like its own success.

Yay me!

Here's the email:

Laurie --

We emailed back and forth briefly last fall after meeting at Third Coast, and I'm writing now with a pitch for a series of audio docs that were produced (or are in production, to be finished soon) as a result of a class at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Pamela Broom (a Katrina neighbor who moved to Durham with her family from New Orleans) and I co-taught a course titled "Our New Orleans" that partnered Katrina neighbors with documentary artists in our Certificate in Documentary Studies program (this is an open admission program, with students from varying backgrounds and skill levels, ranging in age from 16 to 70-something).

You might remember that I was one of the (foolhardy) individuals who pitched stories during the Third Coast session, "You Had Me at Hello: The Art of the Pitch." On the panel, Jeremy Skeet said "We're not doing any more Katrina stories," and then clarified that Weekend America wasn't interested in telling the same Katrina story we'd already heard over and over. Jeremy's statement had a real impact on the way I went about helping to design the course and the way I thought about telling stories around Katrina in general.

We asked the collaborative pairs to decide jointly on the topics to be covered and made it clear that the stories did not have to focus on anything Katrina related. The Katrina neighbors could be full artistic partners (editing/printing in the darkroom/etc.) or be involved to the extent they were comfortable and had time. In many cases, collaboration meant that both of the participants shared their stories -- mixing up the relationship between the storyteller and the "story listener" -- and both individuals became part of the final pieces.

To get to the actual pitch -- there are four potential pieces from the class that I think would work well with Weekend America's approach and format, and would present a distinct and creative alternative to the barrage of "Katrina Anniversary" stories we'll be hearing in a couple of weeks. Each piece also involves different members of the Broom family -- Pam (50), the mother of Hei-Yesh (23) and grandmother of Shanti (5). The pieces range in length from 4-8 minutes.

My piece, in collaboration with Pamela Broom explores the ways we connected after meeting on a 37 hour bus ride (to and from New Orleans), and how much the relationship with her an her family has meant to me. It also explores our creative and professional collaboration, and the transitions she has gone through over the past year. A second story threaded through the piece is her relationship with her father (who was murdered in New Orleans when she was seventeen years old) and how her initial experience of fleeing New Orleans after his death came back to her in surprising ways as she worked to make a new home in Durham, NC. Incidentally, I'm participating in an audio intensive at CDS with John Biewen and Deb George for the rest of this week, and a version of this piece will be completed on Saturday morning (8/19/06).

Bria Dolnick and Hei-Yesh Broom, both in their early twenties, recorded their stories (both fiction and non-fiction narratives) about the cities they call home -- Chicago and New Orleans, respectively. This fast paced montage explores themes of missing home (whether leaving by choice or through circumstances out of one's control) and what distingushes home from other places -- sounds of the trains, a particular radio station, streets walked and routes taken every day. Both Bria and Hei-Yesh are excellent writers, and it's a compelling piece both in its content and rhythmically -- sound of both cities are also part of the piece.

Kavannah Ramsier collaborated with five year old Shanti Broom on an audio documentary and a picture book that Shanti drew and Kavannah compiled. What Shanti misses, and what she remembers about Hurrican Katrina, are stories I have not heard before -- what do home, community, spirit, and memory mean to a five year old? Kavannah also considers what it means to collaborate a young child. She has a complete script of her piece and is currently in the editing process.

The final piece is a spoken word essay called "After the Tears" by Hei-Yesh Broom. I recorded her reading her writing and with editing, I think it could be a very powerful story. Her style of is deeply emotional and electric.

Please let me know if you are interested in this series as whole or in any of the individual pieces. I hope you are having a good summer, and I look forward to hearing from you.

best,
Dawn

opposite action -- what a feeling!

2006-08-08T22:20:00.000-04:00

Hello, friends of the blog-o-sphere...I'm back!

Today I woke up tired and achy -- it's that time of the month, don't you know, and my discomfort (read: cramps from my knees to to my abdomen and lower back) has been getting worse over the past year or so. My mom just gave me an article about birth control pills that control your cycle so you only get your period every four months. Tho' birth control isn't really an issue since I'm dating Liz, the idea is appealing for other obvious reasons.

What's worse is that my weight apparently ballooned to 500lbs overnight.

Or that's how I felt, anyway. And my appearance didn't help. I was wearing a skirt that was too big, a t-shirt that felt too tight, and my underwear kept falling down below my belly. I didn't shower this morning (that doesn't happen too often) and I'm way overdue for a haircut, so my bangs were either covering my eyes, or I had to shove them off to either side in an unattractive way.

And when I get to work, I immediately spilled coffee on my light-blue-too-tight-feeling-t-shirt.

So I made it through most of the day, and then since I'm teaching that evening I went home to let out my dog. I also slept for a half-hour, a knock-out sleep, and woke up drooly and still weighing 500lbs.

This is where I decided to try opposite action. Opposite action is an idea from dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) that basically says, when you feel one way, do the opposite of what you are feeling. I can't always do that, of course, and the simple idea of opposite action is tied to other DBT concepts and skills -- but sometimes, I can. And it was important to me that I get myself together and get out of my funk (and my house), because the class I was facilitating this evening really mattered to me. Opposite action (or DBT, for that matter) isn't about avoiding feelings, but about dealing with them effectively. And I was feeling semi-hopeless and lethargic, unattractive and just generally gross.

So I took a shower. I used my ridiculously expensive body scrub (called “Gloomaway,” it's a grapefruit-scented delight that Origins is inexplicably discontinuing). All the metaphors about showers and water and washing away and starting fresh and clean work for me -- both in positive and negative ways. When I'm stuck in depression showering can be impossibly hard. I think my inability to move from the bed to the bath is some kind of resistance to moving outward into the day, besides me being generally wiped of energy.

As a reward for today's successful completion of the shower, I sprayed myself with the indulgent perfume I purchased because Origins is discontinuing the aforementioned favorite grapefruit scent, and it was my last chance to own it ever.

I decided to wear this 1980s Flashdance tee (mine is in "Aztec teal") I bought at Target weeks ago, but hadn't yet gotten the gumption up to wear. I paired it with a tank underneath and a pair of capri jeans. Since I believe if you are going to work a theme, you should go all the way, I also put on a pair of two-inch orange-hoop earrings (that match my orange watch). I almost chickened out about wearing my leopard print slides (with three-inch wooden heels), but I ran back into the house and put them back on after opting for my more conservative but still cute light-green-leather-strapped-wedged-heeled-espadrilles.

I also put a sparkly barret in my hair to keep those darn bangs out of my eyes.

Leaving the house, I didn't really know what I looked like -- meaning, I knew that I didn't really have any perspective on my appearance, because my sense of my body was clearly distorted. But I had taken care of myself, had fun, and I was wearing two-inch-orange-hoop-earrings and leopard print heels, for goodness sake. And I kept hearing "What a Feeling," the theme song from Flashdance, in my head, which was a vast improvement from all ugly thoughts that had been residing there previously.

When I walked into the classroom, and two of the class participants (also two of my favorite people, and not just because they said what they said) exclaimed over my appearance:

“I don't want to draw attention, necessarily,” D. said, “but have you been losing weight?” I smiled and looked down, and mumbled something about trying not to think about it too much. D. understood, and clarified that I looked good, whatever it was, that I was cute before, but that something was obviously going on.

“And what about your hair?” said C.

“Oh, I just need to get it cut. I'm way overdue for a haircut.”

“No, it looks cute - did you do something to it?”

They also asked if I was seeing someone - because maybe, that accounted for the glow they sensed about me. Well, that, is of course, true. The whole being-in-love thing does brighten one's countenance.

I stopped myself from arguing with them, from telling them that far from losing weight, I now weigh 500lbs. I smiled and accepted their compliments, and marveled at the power of opposite action.

The other thing that happened while I was in the process of opposite acting was that I was able to clarify my goals for the class that evening, and come up with some ideas about how to achieve them. Perhaps most importantly, I made a mental note that this outfit is cute, and that it could be deployed at a future date when necessary.

helphopehelphopehelp

2006-07-26T14:03:00.000-04:00

Last week, I faced a situation I knew would happen when I started writing a blog – not just a blog, but a blog titled BIPOLAR GIRL RULES THE WORLD.

I was in a BAD PLACE. It’s hard to break out of shame, fear, sadness, and hopelessness and write anything. I was in the BAD PLACE where I thought enough is enough. I’m tired of working so much on self-growth (insert sarcastic tone wherever italics appear), and spirituality, and really what is the point? Why bother going to my fabulous therapist, or talking to my wonderful friends, why bother asking for help. What is the point? I’ll just end up again, here, in this horrible sucky place.

What made the BAD PLACE worse is that I had just left my extended NJ family at the beach. Let me tell you about my NJ family. I open the basement door, and everyone – my grandmother, two sets of aunts and uncles, my parents, and five cousins – ranging from 15-22 – are hanging out one floor up. I let my dog off the leash, and she runs upstairs. The general loudness of the room – talking, television playing, laughter – turns to exclamation. “Kacey’s here, Kacey’s here!” And then I come up the stairs and I am greeted by smiles, and love, and every single person gets up to hug me. Eery single one of them. Good hugs, too, strong-armed and substantial. It’s enough love to get anyone through a desert of loneliness.

Now, only being able to spend a couple of days with my family because of work did contribute to the BAD PLACE. A stomach virus and an incredible amount of work to accomplish also precipitated the BAD PLACE.

But the worst part of the BAD PLACE was to be aware of my outrageous blessings, the love of my family and so many good gifts – and not be able to feel them. To know I should be wildly grateful and to be constitutionally incapable of feeling gratitude. The shame and hopelessness of that state is what makes a BAD PLACE even worse.

Perhaps worse than depression is the fear that depression will never go away, or if it does go away, it will only be for a short time. Ah, and tricky, tricky depression, you smarty pants, the fear that depression will never go away is a standard symptom of depression. There’s a way of living with depression (and by “living with depression,” I mean, acknowledging that it’s a fact of your life that there is this thing, depression, that you are vulnerable to) that is constructive – eat healthy, take your meds know you need to sleep enough, try to get exercise – it’s a preventative medicine kind of thing, like any other illness.

But then there is the feeling that depression and hopelessness is hovering, ever-present, and even if you feel ok right now, in this moment, you are not safe. It’s not safe to make plans for fall or fall in love or apply for graduate school or take any kind of big leap because you just don’t know who you’ll be in a week, a month, six months, a year.

Now, this feeling is could be called an exaggeration of the “well, you just don’t know,” that everyone has to live with on some level or another. If you want to make the gods laugh, tell them your plans, someone said.

But I seem to have returned from the BAD PLACE with a bang.

I had a few gen-u-ine miracles in these last couple of days that require writing about, but with more time and thought then I have today. Miracles seem to come just at the wonkiest times, unexpected.

My most basic theory about miracles is that there are two parts to any miracle: the miracle itself, and then recognizing that the miracle occurred. It is possible to be so busy, to be in an altered state and utterly un-present, that you’ll miss a miracle. My sense is (and I guess this is part two of the theory) is that it is more than likely you will get another chance to see the miracle – it will happen again in another time and place, and maybe this time you'll be ready and watching. I have this vision of a patient, world-weary God saying, “Well, it didn’t work this time, I’ll try again later.”

One last thought – I don’t think I came up with this idea – but I’ve talked about a lot with Pastor Pam. There are two basic prayers (I’m breaking it down today): helphelphelphelp and thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou. I think there was a third one but I can’t remember it right now.

This is a little cutesy, but I’ve been thinking about the connection between help and hope. Just asking for help (something I can be exceptionally bad at) implies hope. It implies that you think that there is a point in asking. Plus there is this nifty little thing that they are only one letter different, and if you say them one after another really fast they begin to sound alike.

The help prayer, even when it doesn’t feel like it, is the hope prayer too. Plus it’s simple and easy to learn, nondenominational, all purpose. You can write it on your hand with a Sharpie if you need to.

And yesterday's miracles involved reaching out for and accepting help.

Anyway, the BAD PLACE feels beyond help or hope, and gratitude is only a knife in the side.

It’s hard to write about the BAD PLACE from within it, but I will try. I don’t want to be so cheerful about being bipolar that you all start to hate me.

Love,
Dawn

p.s. I think the third prayer might be, “oh s*#$t” or something a little stronger, if necessary.

random anxiety (or not)

2006-07-23T15:54:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that I can get anxious over what flavor of frozen yogurt to choose, but in the face of fairly major life issues I can hang in there pretty well.

This isn't really a major life issue story, but it's a random thing that happened today, and I think I can write about it quickly.

I'm in the Target today, picking up stuff for the video institute (drinks, office supplies, etc. -- one of the great joys of my life is being able to purchase office supplies for CDS programs) and I take my full cart to the Starbucks to slap down my $2.68 on an iced venti Americano (mostly ice, very little water). I look in my enormous red faux patent leather pocketbook (thanks, Courtney), and my wallet isn't there.

I've been leaving my purse all around the building during the institute, so my wallet could have easily been filched by anyone wandering the building. So it's not unreasonable to think it might have been stolen. I also have a habit of leaving my purse in the front of my shopping cart (in the kid seat) and walking a few feet away to grab something off the shelf, so it could have happened that-away too.

But there I am, calm. I think, well, ok -- I can probably find change in my purse and my car in order to purchase the folders we absolutely need this afternoon. And the Guest Services desk will probably be willing to keep my cart of non-perishable food items until I can come back to make my purchase.

Then I think, I hope whoever stole my wallet really needs the money, and bless them, bless them. (I'm no saint -- there might have been $30 in my wallet, and I can cancel all my cards, etc.). The possibility of my wallet being stolen makes me oddly grateful, knowing how lucky I am that the money in my wallet doesn't really make a difference in my ability to eat or pay my bills or anything like that. I mean I just tried to spend almost $3 on a cup of coffee. And besides, my driver's license expired last October, so I needed a new one anyway.

Fortunately, I realized that I had both my checkbook and my passport (in my purse because of the expired driver's license, its presence is also reassuring lest I need to flee the country), and therefore I could pay for my groceries.

In my relief, I also went and wrote a check for $2.68 for my venti iced Americano (a Starbucks in a Tar-jey -- it's almost embarrassing to acknowledge what an obvious marketing demographic I really am).

In the end, when I went out to my car, I found my wallet under the passenger side seat.

This might be too much of a reach, but I’d like to use this incident as a theologically teachable moment.

I don’t think God or Jesus or whoever had anything to do with my wallet disappearing from my gigantic red pocketbook (However, I know that God had everything to do with my friend Courtney and I finding that pocketbook in a $5 clearance bin, and with Courtney’s generosity in purchasing me the said pocketbook). I do think, though, that my gratitude and calm had something to do with my experience of the S/spirit.

I believe that God places people in our path, opens doors, pushes us in certain directions, but I think there is a very complicated relationship between our own intentions and openness and how God (spirit, energy, etc.) works in our lives. I’m learning to recognize those moments when the spirit is present – but how that works is another story, for another day. But being present and grateful is the way to go, I think.

Now if I could only let go of my anxiety around little things, and things that don’t actually happen….

p.s. If you follow the frozen yogurt link, you need to hang in there til' the end to get the frozen yogurt reference. But I think it's worth it.

drop waist dress

2006-07-20T12:06:00.000-04:00

I made this commitment to short assignments a few days ago, and you can see how well its gone so far. It takes longer to write good short pieces -- long rambling ones are easier and quicker.

And I got caught up in this idea that if I am going to publish writing for people to read on this blog, then it should be thought out and revised.

So now I'm reminding myself of my goals to write everyday and get over being a perfectionist.

So the thought that has been hanging out in my mind over the last few days is a little story about why I decided never to wear drop waist dresses ever again, which is actually a bigger story about being a -- curvy, plus-size, large, fat, zaftig -- woman and refusing to dress like one.

Drop waist dresses came back into my mind in part because my grandfather, who I called PopPop, didn't like to see me in clothes that were baggy. It was PopPop’s birthday on July 10 (he died seven years ago), and I've been thinking about him a lot lately.

For a woman with my hourglass curves, a drop waist dress draws attention to the largest part of me and just hangs on down from there. I think it was something about the way PopPop saw me, and what he liked to see me in, that moved me towards the decision to boycott the drop waist.

For me, drop waist dresses are about hiding and being ashamed of my size. I'm not saying I'm completely comfortable with my 230 pound body, and I do have moments of deep insecurity, but at the same time, I'm so much more accepting of myself than I was a hundred pounds ago. I think because I've had to face and deal with my size that I'm actually a lot healthier then a lot of women about how I feel about my body.

There is such a huge fear of fat in our culture, and in some ways, I've overcome it. I'm fat. I lived. I am still me, I am still loved. My fear of being fat when I was younger was huge, took up an obscene amount of time and energy, and um, I wasn't fat.

So this was supposed to be a short assignment about the topic of drop waist dresses. Short story: they don't look good on me. I don't want to hide, and besides, wearing something baggy doesn't hide anything, it just makes you look bigger. I began to dress sexy and in bright colors and in fitted clothing because I was saying, look, here I am. I may be a fat girl, but I can still rule the world.

I have fun with clothes. I don’t jiggle or show too much skin. But I dress like I am comfortable in my body. I dress like I like myself. What may have started out as a form of rebellion against our culture’s expectations about fat people is now a part of who I am, what I’m known for, and a form of self-expression I really enjoy.

I am a part of a very balanced and healthy program at the Duke Center for Living that is helping me let go of weight. I’m healthy, but I’m concerned for my future, and I want to be able to live a more active lifestyle (here I want to say that I completed a sprint distance triathlon at my current weight). But I know absolutely that I have to approach my health from a place of self-care and kindness, NOT of shame and self-hate.

So, in conclusion, drop waist dresses look very nice on other people. But not on me.

We write short shorts...

2006-07-20T11:26:00.000-04:00

Either Anne Lamott or Natalie Goldberg (my two writing spirit guides) has an exercise called "Short Assignments," and that's how I'm going to approach my blog for the next ten days or so. Short-shorts to keep me writing and help me get through the Documentary Video Institute, where twenty-four students descend upon CDS from across the country to learn how make movies in eight-twelve hour days (on average). It's fun, but kind of exhausting. Enjoy the short-shorts!

out of order

2006-07-18T21:27:00.000-04:00

hello, blog-o-sphere,

I haven't given up on the blog, I've just been out of town (to the beach to see my wonderful family from NJ) and out of order, meaning, I have a stomach virus. Not bad enough to blast with antibiotics, but still rotten enough to make me both tired and stupid.

so, um, I'll post tomorrow.

ugly thoughts

2006-07-14T12:21:00.000-04:00

I spent the morning looking and listening to some really wonderful photo, audio, and video work done by three of the four Hine Fellows, young women who will travel to regional and international fellowships that combine social action with documentary work. The fellowships focus on organizations that work with children.

There is a part of me that is elated by the work and by the journey these young women are about to take. I'm excited and proud that two of the fellows are a part of the program I direct -- in the past the fellowship has been given primarily to undergraduates, not participants in the Continuing Studies program.

But then, the ugly thoughts gargle in my throat -- jealousy and grief that materialize as a childish resentment -- I want to travel, I want to make art, why don't I get to go? I spent so much of my twenties mired in depression, and I am just now coming to a place where I can properly grieve that time. I used to say, quoting Dorothy Parker, "I spit on the grave of my twenties," and while the biting humor of Ms. Parker is always a comfort, it doesn't quite capture the complexity of my feelings. Though I will say, my thirties have been so much better, I can't even tell you. And for the most part, I anticipate that life will continue to improve.

Now I know, I'm only thirty-five, and my life is far from over. It's not like my twenties were the only time available to me for travel and adventure. But now, I have a beloved I treasure, a job I like, and an artistic community I value. I have good, dear friends, and a top-notch spiritual community. My parents and two grandmothers are close by. I own a house, and I'm about to buy a couch, for goodness sake. This groundedness is so important to me and I don't want to walk or fly away from my many blessings. And I know I don't have to go somewhere else to make art, or to address social concerns.

I don't live my life wishing the past was different. I have moments, and sometimes sadness overwhelms me. The years I lost to depression are worth grieving, but getting lost in grief and regret obviously doesn't let me move forward.

So there are my ugly, self involved, thoughts. Well, so what. I'm moving on.

bipolar girl rules the world, part 2

2006-07-12T15:24:00.000-04:00

The original inspiration for the title "bipolar girl rules the world" goes as follows...

Clark Kent transforms into Superman. Peter Parker into Spiderman. What's his name into Batman.

I think the difference between the Dawn that is so debilitated by depression and anxiety that she can’t even get out of bed and take a shower and the Dawn who is out in the world doing good stuff is at least as much of a transformation as any superhero.

So someday, “Bipolar Girl Rules the World” (working title) will be an animated documentary about bipolar disorder. I want the approach to be different, less clinical, more experiential (and experimental) then most of the work on mental illness out there.

I work in a creative field with an amazingly supportive supervisor. My coming out process was critical to my healing (and breaking through my deep, dark, ugly shame), though I know that’s not true, or possible, for everyone. It took ten years for me to be properly diagnosed and by that time, not telling people was not working. I got the support I needed because I was honest about my illness. It was absolultely terrifying to tell the people who needed to know, but I wasn't functioning and needed to be upfront about why. It was an act of desperation, at first. And I was so blessed, so incredibly lucky, at the loving and positive responses I received.

I’m out there about my illness not because I want to be defined by it, but because I want people to understand that it’s a part of me, and because I hope that my lack of shame will help people see the illness differently and that people who share the illness will feel support and connection. That’s how I feel when someone shares their truths, whatever they are. Writers like Anne Lamott, or musician Mary Chapin Carpenter, both speak openly about their struggles with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, etc. And it helps me be not so crazy, and frankly, to say, well, I think she’s an utterly amazing person, so maybe there is hope for me.

In part, what prompted my openness is a piece I produced for the radio, where I came out about being bipolar. It’s a part of what spurs me creatively and politically– not the illness itself (I’m much more productive creatively when I’m level), but a desire to tell my story and the stories of others who deal with mental illness. The radio piece was call “The Three Furies: Poverty, Addiction and Mental Illness” and it aired about a year ago on WUNC as part of the NC Voices on Poverty series. You can listen to it here.

Anyway, being bipolar girl out in the world isn't always simple or easy, but it has been the right choice for me.

there sure was a lot of Jesus in that post

2006-07-12T13:13:00.000-04:00

I'm paraphrasing my mom, who attended church with me one Sunday, and said, "Well there sure was a lot of Jesus in that service." My response was, "Well Mom, it is Easter."

My mom is a very spiritual person, and she likes the kind people in my church, and believes that my spiritual life is a very important part of my overall emotional health. She think it helps me to go to church, which it does, and for a while she would call me on Sunday mornings and say "This is the Lord. Get up and go to church."

But I also know that when I talk or when she reads my writing, and I say something like, well, Jesus, she mentally translates it to spirit or God and feels like she can relate better to my experience in that way. And I want to welcome you to do the same when you're reading my blog.

Given some of the more upsetting representations of Christianity today, I do feel it's important to say that while I found my spiritual home in the Methodist church, and understand and know God within the specificity of Christ's love, I don't feel it's the only way to connect with the spirit, or more right or relevant then Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, trees, birds, Jungian archetypes, or the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan (though I can say from personal experience that’s a dangerous route to take).

I do believe that different faiths can learn from each other, and that we can deepen our own spiritual practices by learning about the ways other people understand God.

But I also feel ambivalent about the way the dominant culture will adopt or trivialize “ethnic” spiritual traditions, like Native American ceremonies or African drum circles (ok, the truth is, for some reason, I find those white-people drum circles on the lawn at Weaver St. Market in Carrboro unreasonably annoying. But I’m not claiming my annoyance is a fully developed theological statement).

For me, it’s about going deep into a particular faith tradition, and not taking a smorgasbord approach. Like the Unitarians, for example. What is up with the Unitarians? Wiccans, Christians, and Buddhists, oh my!

A shout out to my favorite Unitarians, Barbara (who was raised Unitarian – I didn’t even know that could happen), Amy, and Alison.

If my attempt at humor in this post was not successful, I apologize to white drum circle members and Unitarians.

blueberries in abundance

2006-07-10T22:51:00.000-04:00

This morning I got up at 6 a.m. to drive to Few's Ford on the Eno River, and set out banners to direct folks to my sweetheart L's baptism. It was a glorious day; I placed the altar right by the river, and reveled in the morning and my ability to get up early for a good reason.

The baptism was a sacred and joyous event, with L's parents, friends, and members of our church there to celebrate her and her decision to be reborn into God's abundant love. (How I came to the place where I could say things like "reborn in God's abundant love" is its own story, one I'll definitely be writing about here.)

I hosted a blueberry pancake breakfast after the baptism; the blueberries were ones that I picked myself on the Saturday before July 4th. One of the many wonderful things about being with L is that she initiates things like blueberry picking -- something I like the idea of but probably wouldn't have found the time to do on my own. But she was passionate about picking blueberries and blackberries (though you need to get there first thing in the morning for blackberries -- 8:45 a.m. was too late). And so it was right that the blueberries I picked with L and her friends were brought into the day of her baptism, and with the berries, the experience of that day.

I'd never been blueberry picking before, so I didn't have any idea what it would be like -- I wasn't even really picturing bushes, exactly.

So first, I experienced an embarrassing wonder of seeing actual blueberries growing out in the world -- not in a package in a grocery store. Then amazement at how good each one tasted. The feeling of the ripe ones dropping easily into my hand.

L went to search out her friends and I found myself alone for a little while, picking one or two or three blueberries at a time, and dropping them in my bucket. I started to pray, or meditate, in gratitude for the sun and the coolish-morning air, and the sweat on my face and the feeling of the dampness of the ground seeping through my overalls. I sat and stood by this one bush for a long time, looking and feeling for the ripe berries.

I’ve been so raggedy and anxious lately. I’m so tired of answering “busy” when someone asks me how I’m doing. I’m tired of the whole wonky culture where being busy, or too busy, means you must be of value or worth something (am I projecting my own stuff out there?). I’m over “busy” conceptually, but I’m struggling to make the actual, um, you know, life changes.

So here I am in the blueberry field being still, present, and having a meta-moment of, “oh, this is what being still and present feels like.” Oh, this is what I want. Good to note. Keep an eye out for it happening again.

Before we arrived, I was worried the berries were going to be picked over, that we were too late in the day, etc. As I focused on that one bush, the anxiety dissipated, even before I wandered further into the field and realized and I realized that there were bushes that were overflowing with berries, and that my careful pick-pick-pick wasn’t really necessary. Of course, it was necessary, it was the essential blueberry picking experience I was destined to have (whoo-ha), but as I moved along was able to fill my bucket pretty quickly – which was good, because religious experience or no, I wouldn’t want to hold up the group.

In the midst of my blueberry-bliss, I sent a prayer to the folks who pick blueberries for a living (or for less than a living wage). My friend and colleague Tennessee Jane Watson works with the Maine Migrant Health Network during the blueberry-picking season. Found her family website here. She’s even more amazing than this description makes her sound.

Go, go, blueberry picking. Herndon Hills Farm is no more than five minutes from Southpoint Mall – they have the “NO MALL” sign on their garage to prove it. This farm captures the Platonic idea of a blueberry field -- it looks like a rose garden. Give yourself an hour and end up with 6 lbs of berries at $2.25 a pound. You’ll find they go very quickly, especially if you eat them out of the freezer like candy. Directions are below.

P.S.
At one point in writing this entry, I actually referred to a blueberry as “a sweet orb.” Yes, I did. It’s such a terrible phrase that I just have to share it with you. I hope you cringe with delight in its awfulness.

Herndon Hills Farm - Blackberry, Blueberries, Muscadine Grapes
7110 Massey Chapel Road, Durham, NC 27713.
Phone: 919-544-3313. Click here for a map to the farm. Email: Open Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday 7 am-7 pm; July thru Oct 15. Typical harvest dates:
Blackberries & Blueberries - early July-mid August
Muscadine Grapes - early September-October.

Directions: From I-40, take exit 276 south on Fayetteville Road. Take 1st left on Herndon Road, go 1/2 mile, turn right on Barbee Road. Farm is 1/4 mile on right.

bipolar girl rules the world

2006-07-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

Someday I'll make a documentary with this title, but until then, it's my blog. And though I am indeed a bipolar girl (bipolar-2, heavier on the depression, with a fortifying dose of hypomania), I am also deeply grateful for the powerful cocktail of (in no particular order) pharmaceuticals, family and friends, religion, and professional support (aka a really good therapist and a top-knotch psychiatrist) that keep me mostly healthy.

I don't just see myself as bipolar. I contain multitudes. And even bipolar doesn't quite get it right as a description of my experience. I don't experience hypomania and depression as distinct states -- it can feel quite muddled. And I'm quite invested in this idea of muddled -- and don't have much patience with binary oppositions -- so the name of my blog addresses that concept too, in a round about way. Red State/Blue State, Straight/Gay, Male/Female, Black/White, Christian/Everything Else -- none of these differences makes sense to me as absolutes. I have passionate beliefs, but I feel just as passionately about listening to people. I get mad, of course, when confronted with hate and close-mindedness, but, well, I know I'm capable of the same darn thing.

"Bipolar Girl Rules the World," is also, well, a joke on myself in a number of ways. Lord help me, I don't want to rule the world. I'm working very hard to let go of the illusion of control. I believe that we take small steps forward, seek out our calling, but we can't know where we'll end up. I pray, ask God for guidance, but hello, surprise, tah-dah, oh heck -- I don't know what is going to happen. I say this so simply, but trust me, this process of letting go is excruciating.

I have a friend and religious mentor, Pastor Pam, and I've watched her place her life in God's hands for many years now. Her journey inspires me and frightens me a little too. She is fierce in her faith, and very human, and today she preached her first sermon in her own church in a small town in rural NC. So a shout out to Pastor Pam, and lots of prayers for her and her parishioners.

In Pastor Pam's honor, here's to the fear, and the promised freedom, of letting go.

why blog?

2006-07-08T14:21:00.000-04:00

I'm blogging because I'm sitting here thinking what would be the exact perfect way to start this blog and I want to let go of some of my perfectionist tendencies.

I'm blogging because I like to tell funny stories on myself.

I'm blogging because lately I've been creating all of these stories in my head and I want to write them down.

I'm blogging because I think that some of the things I have to say are relevant to other people, their struggles and joys and just the day-to-day getting by of it all.

I'm blogging because I'm working to be present in my life, to really engage, to fight against numbness and despair, and I think writing helps. Plus, I'm thinking about the ideas of presence and spirit in so many areas of my life, I think it will be a recurring theme.

I'm blogging because I'm seeking community and dialogue around ideas that are important to me.

I'm blogging because the idea of linking to other website, and including images and sound sounds like a lot of fun.

I'm blogging because I'm inspired by my friend Jerry's blog (he's a comic genius, don't you know).

I'm blogging because I write about my family and friends, and this will be an interesting place to begin to think about what it means to negotiate those public/private boundaries.

I'm blogging to get into the discipline of writing something every day.

I'm blogging because I believe to be a writer, you have to write stuff, and maybe, pieces of this blog can be starting places for other, larger projects.

Ok, so there you go. I'm blogging. I am a blogger.