Category: Writing & Reading

Nature & Spirituality, Sickness & Health, Writing & Reading

The Last Week of March

Diana

2017-03-31 Embrace the magic that lives within you dianaklein.com

I am thinking that I will change my posting style on this blog a bit—to write smaller pieces, largely thoughts and vignettes from my daily life, share peaks into my art journal like the one above, and, perhaps, to post more frequently. This week, I’d like to share with you a collection of these.

On Monday, my mother and I were at Hobby Lobby and saw a sign that read:2017-03-31 Wild and Free dianaklein.com

I said, “That’s what I want to be right now.”                                                                                         She replied, “I was just thinking the same thing.”

On Tuesday, I was going through a journal I wrote when I was in Ireland and Scotland for two weeks back in 2010. I love the funny little things it reminded me of, like the Irish tour guide saying to us in regard to seatbelt wearing “It’s compulsory, but it’s your choice.”  Also, that the Australians on the tour started to call me DD, short for Deadly Diana (which, if you know how mild mannered I usually am, is pretty funny).

It got me thinking about the different nicknames I have acquired over the years.  In my childhood, Dizzy Diana (all too true, I experienced a lot of vertigo) and Doctor Diana (you had to be there), compliments of my sisters.  Sneaky Pete from a teacher in the fourth grade (I think because she thought I was cute?  Still curious about that one).  Princess D from my friends in college (they had fun imploring me to “let down my hair”).  Other than my given name, I am now most often called Nana (a mash-up of Aunt Diana)—this by my nieces and nephew and to the utter confusion of people who think of Nana as another term for Grandma.

I recently started the free daily yoga challenge on doyogawithme.com and am really enjoying the beginners’ practices even though I’ve been doing yoga on and off for some 15 years. They are slow and gentle classes that don’t cause me any muscle ache from exertion the next day, so they are perfect for me right now as I am on a self-nurturing-take-things-slow kick right now.  During one of the classes, the teacher encouraged us to feel a sense of ahimsa (a Sanskrit-derived word meaning non-violence) toward ourselves, to demur from self-criticism and negative self-talk.

I was amazed to discover that, after years of attempting to practice self-compassion, in that moment, I still felt an aversion to such a thing.  I felt, on some level, I didn’t really deserve my kindness.  I was astounded, though I probably shouldn’t have been.  But, I will keep trying.  It seems to be the only way forward.  I have recommitted myself to quelling the battles beneath this skin, amid the walls of this skull.  No doubt, I will fall off the wagon yet again and find reason to take up arms against myself, but I will keep trying, keep doing, because it is the only way to heal myself and the only way to help save the world.

So that was some of my week. What are you thinking about?  Do you want to be wild and free, too?  What nicknames have you had?  How is your struggle with self-violence going?  I’d also love to hear what you think about my new format.  Have a lovely day and thanks for reading! 🙂

 

Writing & Reading

A St. Patrick’s Day Feast of Tasty Irish Writing

Diana

2017-03-17 Christ Church Cathedral St. Patrick's Window (Dublin) | A St. Patrick's Day Feast of Tasty Irish Writing | dianaklein.com

The Gluten Free Irish Soda Bread Muffins are in the oven, so while I wait to please my gustatory senses, I thought I’d use the time to share a few yummy bits of writing—passages that feed my reader’s soul—I have found whilst reading Irish authors.  And boy, is there a plethora of delectable stuff from which to choose.

Especially from Oscar Wilde, who was nothing if not quotable. I opted for this one because it’s probably one the first from him I ever heard, and I like to think about making my diary much as this character’s is!

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.  – Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

This one is from A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy—a prolific author, famous for weaving together the stories of disparate characters.  I like this one because, it’s just so true to life—and just for the sake of clarity let me tell you that Gloria is a cat and Chicky is a human.

Within seconds, Gloria appeared, looking hopeful, wound herself around Chicky’s legs, then sat down for some urgent leg-washing. – Maeve Binchy, A Week in Winter

I’ll admit that I haven’t yet had the guts to tackle James Joyce’s Ulysses, but I have enjoyed some of his short stories, including those in the collection called Dubliners.  My favorite is “The Dead” which ends with this gorgeous and haunting passage:

It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight . . . It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

– James Joyce, “The Dead”

Okay, so these last two—both from Eoin Colfer—best known for the Artemis Fowl series—are a bit on the course side, but I think they’re still worth reading, even if you’re not into that sort of thing. The first is from Half Moon Investigations, a delightful middle grade version of a noir detective story.  The second is from Screwed, which is, I suppose also a noir detective story, just of the adult variety.  Anyway, I absolutely love the grossly accurate description in the first one and the funny imagery in the second.  Oh, and they’re that much better if you imagine them in an Irish accent:

Unfortunately, when I say Doobie was snot-nosed, it’s not just a turn of phrase. Doobie never went anywhere without a couple of green yo-yo’s hanging from his nostrils, which he then snorted back up so hard that they wrapped around his brain.

– Eoin Colfer, Half Moon Investigations

This room has no windows and only one door, which is blocked by two buttery cops, so I’m gonna have to go through the wall.

Go through the wall?

Even thinking it sounds ridiculous. Nevertheless it’s either that or the aforementioned ball slicing. I crab roll onto the bed with just enough momentum to come to my feet.

“Hey,” burbles Fortz through the blood. “Stop! Police!”

In the words of the sweatband-wearing fuzzy legend J. McEnroe: “You cannot be serious!”

I bet McEnroe said “fucking” all the time off camera. You can just imagine it coming out of his face. – Eoin Colfer, Screwed

There are so many more wonderful Irish writers to quote (which ones do you like?), but my soda bread muffins are out of the oven and simply begging to be eaten with a steaming cup of Irish Breakfast Tea, so I’ll simply say, Happy St. Patrick’s Day and may there be many yummy books (Irish and not) in your near future!

 

Sickness & Health, Writing & Reading

Saying Yes with Shonda Rhimes

Diana

Year of Yes Saying Yes with Shonda Rhimes | dianaklein.com

I am ridiculously late getting on the Shonda Rhimes bandwagon—about 11 years late.  I blame the TV promos for shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal.  What I saw when I watched those promos is how much I was going to have to swoon over Dr. McDreamy and how often I was going to gasp at the actions of a gorgeous woman in gorgeous clothes having an affair with the president.  Those promos told me nothing of the girl power, the total badassery (it’s a word, just ask Shonda’s spell check) I would get to experience by watching those shows.  They did not tell me that I would get to see stories about people who are, like me, “dark and twisty” and loveable.  Those promos didn’t say a word about a short African-American super hero named Dr. Bailey.  They did not mention that the shows would explore the many double standards women and girls face in the workplace and at home.  Or that those shows would talk about the fact that some women don’t want children—not because they have shriveled up prune hearts, but because they want to give everything to their careers—and that’s okay. 

 

In spite of all this misinformation, one day last year, Netflix recommended Scandal to my mom, and I happened to wander in during the third episode.  The rest is . . . well, A LOT of binge watching and a lot of feeling proud and gratified that a woman is standing up in television and telling stories, in particular women’s stories, in a way they never have been told before. 

 

Suffice it to say, I enjoy her work and I had already taken to “dancing things out” (in my underwear, when necessary) when I picked up her 2015 book Year of Yes.  I got about 50 pages in before I realized that I could not keep this fabulous writing, this humor, this wisdom to myself.  I needed to read this book aloud.  I needed to hear Shonda’s personal, conversational style floating on the air, dancing like dust motes in the sunshine.  As in so many cases, my mother became my audience for this.  We laughed and cheered our way through the book.  We nodded and said, “Amen”.  We had a great time. 

 

            Much as the title states, Shonda (I use her first name in this piece not out of any kind of disrespect, but out of the sense of camaraderie I feel.  Read the book, and I think you’ll agree that Shonda would be okay with it.) finds herself committing to saying yes to everything that scares her for a year.  She’s not happy about it.  She’s not the least bit excited about it.  But she recognizes that she’s not enjoying her life and things aren’t going to get better if she does not take action.  She tells funny, touching stories about her life, her career, her family.  She talks about saying yes, and she encourages the reader—me—to say yes, too. 

 

She reminds me that the best way to handle confrontations is not to back down and crawl into a hole, but ALSO not to become aggressive.  It’s to calmly, neutrally ask what a person means by what they are saying.

 

She tells me to stop brushing off compliments as though I did nothing to merit them and instead, simply smile and say, ”Thank you”.

 

She informs me that no one is doing it all perfectly.  No one can do it all, not her, not me, not anyone.  That is not how life works.  That is an impossibility.  There is always a tradeoff.

 

She reveals to me that she has realized she had been saying yes to a detrimental nutritional lifestyle for years and that she now she is saying yes to a healthy body.

 

Suffice it to say (again), I recommend this book.  I particularly recommend enjoying it with someone else—either reading it aloud or reading it concurrently with someone with whom you can say, “Amen”.  And with whom you can laugh (I’ll never hear anyone talk about meeting their client without an inner giggle ever again). 

 

Since I started reading Year of Yes, I’ve been trying to see where in my life I need to say yes more.  In a way, it’s much more basic than that though.  It’s not really about saying yes to one particular thing or other.  It’s about saying yes to me—to all of me.  To stop thinking that I am better or worse than I am.  To be honest about what I want, what I can do, and what I am living for—to say yes to all of that.  And to follow through on being who I already am.

 

 

 

Mindfulness, Nature & Spirituality, Sickness & Health, Writing & Reading

How and Why I Give Myself a Little Credit

Diana

bear-witness-to-your-own-goodness-learni-to-give-myself-credit-dianaklein-com

Where am I losing energy? I ask myself this question a lot.  I want to know what is draining me, what is pulling me down.  I want to minimize those influences.  Sometimes these things are, partially or completely, beyond my control—doctor’s appointments, conflicts with loved ones, stores with disturbing fumes.  In these cases, I can take deep breaths.  I can take it slowly.  I can limit my exposure to necessary, but distressing situations.  But, in the end, I really just have to shrug my shoulders and go through them (Squelch! Squerch!  See last week’s post about this.)

I’ve been realizing recently though, that there is at least one way in which I am losing energy that is completely within my control. It’s the way that I talk to myself.  I know, this is not news.  Some 2500 years ago, the Buddha was warning folks that “what we think, we become”.  But I’m speaking very specifically here about my attitude toward how I am approaching any given task.  I have noticed that very often I am telling myself that I am not doing a good enough job.  The song goes a little something like this: It’s taking me too long to shop. I am paying too much for this box of granola bars.  Why can’t I write faster?  Why can’t I always make the perfect egg?  I’m not learning fast enough.  I should be making better progress.  I can’t believe I spent so much time playing games on my iPad today.  I should have been nicer to that stranger.  I should be getting more done.  I should have gone to bed earlier . . .

You get the idea. If I let it, my dissatisfaction with myself becomes a constant drone behind all my other thoughts.  It’s not fun.  And it’s been kicking my ass.  It’s been me, kicking my own ass, draining my energy, allowing my power to squirt out every which way.  Not cool.

So what’s the antidote? Well, of course, there is the wonderful practice of mindfulness in which I catch myself having these destructive thoughts and counteract them by expressing self-compassion—maybe with a hand on my heart and an internal assurance of, “It’s okay, Sweetie.”  If there are any casual observers of my behavior out there in my town, they can vouch for the fact that I have my hand on my heart, a lot.  It works. But, what if I forget?  What if my mindfulness is not working very well, and I get to the end of the day, and find that not only have I been disapproving of myself all day, but I didn’t even notice I was doing it?  Well, that’s when I get out my gold stars.  You think I’m joking.  I’m not.  gold-stars-learning-to-give-myself-credit-dianaklein-comI now have several exciting sheets of congratulatory stickers (like the ones used by kindergarten teachers) and, as I record the events of the day in my journal, I think of at least one thing I accomplished, write it down, and I plop one of those stickers down next to it.  Sometimes it’s for doing something I was scared to do—like expressing myself honestly even though I feared retribution.  But the bar is not always that high.  Sometimes I give myself a gold star for vacuuming.  Sometimes it’s for self-care, like say, napping.  You’re laughing right now.  I get it, but the truth is that if you’re like me, you do a whole bunch of things during any given day for which you give yourself no credit, whatsoever.  Why?  Because “You’re supposed to have done that.  You don’t get a gold star for brushing your teeth, or feeding your family, or hugging your kids when you’re an adult.  That’s ridiculous.” finished-productivity-stuff-learning-to-give-myself-credit-dianaklein-com I agree, one hundred percent—but ONLY, if you are asking for that gold star from someone else.  I can’t expect other people to get excited about my taking good care of myself.  I can’t expect them to reward me.  But when I acknowledge to myself the things that I am doing—even the stuff that I “should” be doing as a matter of course—I shift my self-attitude from a person who’s failing all the time, to someone who could maybe do some things better, but who is also doing a heck of a lot of things absolutely right.  And that chick, definitely has more energy than Perpetually Failing Woman.  Plus, she’s a lot more fun to be around.

P.S. If you like the opening image, you may want to follow me on Instagram or Facebook. I post new art images daily.

Nature & Spirituality, Sickness & Health, Writing & Reading

Coping Advice from a Children’s Book

Diana

2017-01-27-coping-advice-from-a-childrens-book

One of my favorite picture books of all time is We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen.  I was introduced to it one summer, almost twenty years ago, when I worked with a class of autistic children as a teaching assistant.  This book was a particular favorite among the kids, and I read it aloud over and over and over.  It’s a good thing for me that I fell in love with it.

It drew me in with its repetitive and rhythmic nature. And I enjoyed playfully acting out the story.  Each section begins with the same chorus: We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one.  What a beautiful day! We’re not scared.

It then goes on as the bear-hunting family is confronted with one or another natural element—grass, a river, a snowstorm—that they must conquer in order to continue their hunt. And as they face each obstacle the family declares: We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it.  Oh, no!  We’ve got to go through it!

And so they proceed, relating the sounds they make going through each experience. Amid the grass it is: Swishy swashy! Swish swashy! Swishy swashy! In the river, it’s: Splash splosh! Splash splosh! Splash splosh!

My favorite though, is the mud the Thick, oozy mud. I like to think about it as I determine to tackle complications and struggles in my life—the small things, like going to the dentist; the big things, like submitting my novel; and the heartrending things, like my cat acting like she’s on death’s door (though, thankfully, she seems to be improving.)

I could wring my hands and rend my clothing at any of these things, but instead, I try to think about the mud. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it.  Oh, no!  We’ve got to go through it!  Reciting these words to myself helps me smile—however slightly.  It makes me feel that things are a little less wrought with difficulty than they may immediately seem.  Unpleasant though the situation may be, in some way or another, it’s a beautiful day! and the rest is all just mud to be gotten through.  One step at a time.

Squelch, squerch! Squelch, squerch!  Squelch, squerch!

 

 

 

Sickness & Health, Writing, Writing & Reading

The Values of Silence

Diana

My fingers hover over the keyboard. I have so many thoughts, so many reactions.  Sometimes I even type them out, giving fleeting voice to my opinions, but always—almost always—I think better of it.  I hit delete.  I watch as a blinking cursor erases my feelings one letter at a time.

I don’t think I need to say that it’s been quite the week. We all have feelings and many of us are expressing them—some in beautiful ways, some in hateful, many somewhere in the middle.  Mostly, I have resisted expressing my political opinions anywhere on the internet.  And after all that has happened, all that may happen, I wonder to myself why and if such a decision been wise.

The why is fairly easy: I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to get into it with anyone—start a battle that no one will win.  I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.  I don’t want my words to be mis-taken.  There are people in my life whom I not only dearly love, but also deeply respect who vote very differently from the way I do.  I live in a predominantly red community.  Why risk a potential rift?  I hate rifts.  I abhor violence.  It feels, at this moment in time, that we seem unable to speak to each other civilly—that a disagreement about ideology immediately devolves into name-calling.  Demeaning the value of each other as humans whether they be called “deplorable” or “nasty” seems to be commonplace.  I don’t want to participate in this.

When I was writing my memoir about my diagnosis and experience of having CFS a decade ago, I agonized over how to portray certain people in my life—people who have hurt me excruciatingly.. I wasn’t sure that being candid was the right thing to do.  Who might I hurt by speaking my truth?  Was it worth it?  I also didn’t want to use “being authentic” as an excuse for calling people out in a childish way.  Even when I wrote my first novel, I worried how members of my family would interpret certain aspects of it.  Would they be upset?  Would they be mad at me?  I can’t stand it when people are mad me.  It feels like attempting to get a foothold on crumbling land beneath me.  It feels devastating and lonely.  So I have censored myself—a lot (it’s actually part of the reason I have not submitted my work as much as I should).  Some of it has been wise.  I have been grateful when I have held my tongue in situations in which I would have liked to spit fire, but I wonder where exactly the line is.  At what point does silence stop being golden and start becoming a prison warden?

Well, I guess, that point is now. People say that some of us are taking this too personally.  But it is has become personal.  My opinion about what constitutes good government policy differs greatly from that of President-Elect Trump.  That would have been enough for me to not vote for him, but it wouldn’t have made it personal.  What made it personal, was the fact that I, and many women whom I care about, have been victimized by men, and the words and actions of Mr. Trump have ripped open those wounds.  The fact that so many people voted for him feels like an endorsement of a man’s right to hurt and debase women at will.  I know this is not true.  I know that if you are reading this and you voted for Trump, you were not thinking about me or any of my friends who have been through similar things.  You were thinking about Right to Life or the next supreme court justice or repealing Dodd-Frank or any number of practical reasons—maybe even personal reasons—why you felt that Trump was the best choice for this country.  People are suffering and they saw this man as a way out.  I get that.  I can respect that.  But I also weep for it.  And I don’t know how I am supposed to forget all the varied hateful things that Mr. Trump has said and give him my support now.

I have been silent. I have been fearful.  Today, I am saying a little.  How much will I say in the future?  I don’t know.   A part of me wants to speak for myself and for others who cannot, but I still don’t want to start a fight.  I don’t want to cause irreparable damage.  Honestly, I don’t want to put myself in the line of fire.  A part of me just wants to meditate and pray and spread love with smiles and music—and I will do that.  But is continuing silence wise?  Is it responsible?  Can anything be solved without respectful discourse?  I don’t know, but I heard a stat this morning that chilled me to the bones.  Approximately 49% of eligible voters did not vote in this year’s election.  Almost half of the people who have the ability to help decide how we will treat our children, our fellow citizens, our country were completely silent.

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CFS, Reading, Sickness & Health, Writing & Reading

Coming Home to My Body

Diana

curiously-smiling-attentively-coming-home-to-my-body-dianaklein-comMy mother and I are walking together this morning. It’s already apparent that it’s a tough one for both of us, but we still do our daily check-ins.  “My legs are hurting a lot,” she tells me.  She knows that the pain in my legs have been a merciless for several days now, so she adds, “Maybe your legs said something to mine, and it spread.”

She’s making a joke. I know this.  But this morning, I am not in the mood.

Despite the pre-dawn darkness she senses my chagrin. “Not you,” she assures me, “your legs!”

“My legs are me,” I explain.

This is a fairly new admission for me. I have spent many, many years dissociating from my body, talking about it in the third person, distaining its weakness.

There’s an interview with Toni Morrison from about a year and a half ago during which, because of chronic pain, she talks about her body in a similar way. “I did so much for you, body, why aren’t you helping me now, when I need you?  I was so nice to you.”  When asked if making peace with her body was hard, she confirms “I do feel like I’m under attack.”

It’s easy to feel this way: My body is failing me. My body hates me.  I hate my body.  I felt this way for a long time.  Oh, I paid lip service in yoga classes to “listening to my body”, but my subconscious was really thinking: Listen to my body? Are you kidding me?  That bitch doesn’t know shit!

Then, in my mid-twenties, a hypnotherapist told me to “Be in your body. You want your body to be there for you, so you need to be there for it.”  I was a little confused.  What does she mean, be in my body? I am in my body, aren’t I?  But then I started thinking about The Robber Bride, a novel by Margaret Attwood I’d read some years earlier.  In it, one of the female characters describes being repeatedly molested as a child, and that her response to this was to leave her body, so that she wouldn’t feel everything that was happening to her so intensely.  This is one of the things I love about novels—they teach so much.  They teach you things you don’t know you need to know.  I had thought, at the time, that Attwood was speaking metaphorically or at the very least, metaphysically.  People don’t really leave their bodies, and if they do, it happens very infrequently.  It took a few years for me to realize that Attwood and the hypnotherapist had it right.  We do leave our bodies.  We hover around them because we have so much about which to think—or so much from which to escape.

My departure from my body was mostly because of the pain. I couldn’t understand why meditation teachers kept wanting me to scan my body.  I knew what my body felt like.  It hurt.  A lot.  I didn’t need to know anything more about it.  I didn’t want to know anything more about it.  I wanted to feel something different, something better.  So I took off, without realizing it, without meaning to, I just left.  It seemed better that way.

But it wasn’t. My retreat from pain was also a retreat from my life.  I became less connected to myself and to everything else.  How can you truly taste an orange if you’re not really there?  How can you taste any of the fruits of life, if you are constantly running away?  Though perhaps, I wasn’t experiencing as much pain, I also wasn’t there for myself.  I had less agency in my life, less ability to accomplish things because I was taking refuge in fantasy and a future that might never come.  Leaving can be okay for a while.  Sometimes we all need a break from reality, but I came to realize that for me, giving up the pain meant giving up everything.

And even then, the pain chases me. Without my attention, my body becomes tenser, harder, unforgiving.

I have taken to doing body scans again—nothing formal, usually it’s when I lie down to take a nap, and I often fall asleep before I finish. But I try to feel the full weight of my body falling into the bed.  I start at my feet, feeling them, expressing some appreciation for them.  I work up my body in this way.  Relaxing into the pain.  Filling the entire volume contained by my skin with my presence, flooding the space between my cells with my being.  Some months ago, without really thinking about it, I started telling myself: This is my body.  It seems kind of silly to remind myself of that and as anyone who has spent much time going to a Catholic church knows, those words can’t help but remind me of the mass.  It seems appropriate somehow, though—that here be an inherent holiness to those words.  That fully inhabiting one’s body could be a sacred act.

When I do this, the pain does not go away, but I feel more relaxed. I feel like my body and I are in this thing together.  We are not at odds.  We are not separate.  I believe, I know, that I am more than a body, but I am also this body.  This body is home.

The artwork for this post was inspired by the work Austin Kleon and Cindy Shepard. If you like it, you might want to check out their stuff, too.  Also, if you enjoyed this post as a whole, please consider sharing it.  🙂

Sickness & Health, Writing, Writing & Reading

The Wisdom of Narrowing

Diana

A few years ago at a Sheep and Wool Festival amid stalls of colorful yarns of all kinds, my mom and I stood there and agreed: weaving was off the table. At least for this lifetime, this was one fiber art we were going to forgo.  Though we both found looms and their products tantalizing, we knew that, for us, there simply wasn’t enough time for it.

I have made more decisions like these lately—especially as I have trying to pare down my belongings. I am not, by any means, a hoarder, but I have often had difficulty getting rid of a thing because of the fear that I might someday, in the vast unknowable future, need or want it.  Reading Marie “KonMari” Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Cleaning Up (like just about everyone else) earlier this year, gave me the impetus I needed to try again.  I liked the idea of not being weighted-down by objects and of surrounding myself only with things that, in her words, “spark joy”.  Did I follow KonMari’s method to the letter?  Uh, no.  But I did, almost three years after I moved, finally open every last box I had stowed in the garage and edited many crafting supplies and several books.

As I contemplated each piece, I again felt the familiar tug of anxiety at my chest. Am I being stupid getting rid of this? What if I want it later?  I don’t have a lot of money and it might be expensive to replace.  In these moments, I did not hold the item quietly and ask myself if it sparked joy as KonMarie would have had me do.  Quite frankly, I forgot all about that.  Instead, I thought about what I was giving up by holding onto any given item.

I, like all of us, have a limited amount of time on this planet. If I choose to do X, say make rag rugs from old fabric, that will take energy and time away from doing Y, say writing.  Is making rag rugs important enough to me to take time and energy away from writing.  Would it help me in any way?  Well, the answer for me is no.  Like weaving, rug making could only be considered a backup plan to the other things I am more passionate about in this life.  And, the problem with holding onto the fabric that would be perfect for rug making only keeps the possibility of doing it, however faintly, alive in my mind.  One could say, (and I have) okay, you don’t want to do it now, but maybe in the future . . .  So the idea gets still more life, a tiny trickle of energy gets siphoned off to maintain something that, in all likelihood, I am never going to do and, for which, I feel only a minor excitement for anyway.  I don’t know if there is any physical truth to my energy drain theory, but there is sociological research that indicates that people who commit fully to a goal are more motivated to fulfill that goal than those who have “backup plans.”  It makes sense, I mean, how committed to something can you be, if, somewhere in your mind, you are still entertaining other options?  Plus, I think most of us probably have enough anecdotal evidence that single-minded people tend to be the ones who get the most done.

focus-narrowing-my-focus-dianaklein-com

Narrowing one’s focus is effective in writing, too. When I was 15, at Oprah’s urging, I read Toni Morrison’s Beloved for the first time.  It was my initial foray into reading contemporary literature and, holy smokes, what an introduction.  Considered by many to be the best novel of the 20th century, its narrative about slavery and love is as brutal as it is beautiful.  I felt breathless as I discovered how amazing and powerful prose could be.  How a mere 95,000 words, strung together like a magical incantation, could change me so profoundly.  Shortly after reading Beloved, I saw an interview with Toni Morrison in which she explained that her purpose, in writing the novel, was to examine slavery in a way that she had not seen it done before.  So many books had tried to capture the immensity of the American slave trade, but she felt their scopes were too wide.  She decided to go narrow and go deep. By telling the stories of a few individuals with whom a reader could feel a sense of intimacy, she was able to convey the horror of slavery so much more poignantly than by rattling off numbers that, no matter how big and atrocious, had difficulty making it past the mind and into the heart.

Go narrow and go deep. I think of this when I am confronted by the huge swathes of possibilities presented to me each day.  When I open my email account and see a plethora of urgings to go in any number of different directions.  I can’t do it all, and trying to will likely mean that I end up doing nothing.  So often when we think of investing in our futures, it’s about obtaining something—classes, books, materials—which, in many ventures, is important.  But, for me, right now, narrowing my focus is the best form of self-investment.  As I say no to many things that are not quite right for me, I am making my yes to those things that are most significant to me that much stronger.

This is becoming my practice: I look at each item in my life—physical and psychological—and I ask myself, Is this what you want to spend your life on? It’s tough when it’s something that looks cool, when my anxiety flares up that maybe I’m missing something (which is ridiculous since we are always missing many things!).  But it’s wonderful when, for example, I am hugging my niece—her buoyant spirit flowing out to meet mine—and the answer is like a chorus of bells all tolling, “Yes!”

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CFS, Mindfulness, Sickness & Health, Writing, Writing & Reading

The Power of Small

Diana

I crashed last weekend—exploding pain, unforgiving tiredness, the works. It was particularly disappointing because I had been starting to feel like I was building up a head of steam—moving in the direction I wanted to go.  I had plans.  I had thoughts and ideas sprouting and multiplying.  There’s so much I want to do!  And then plop—the other shoe drops.  It happens to all of us—we feel energized to make exciting, positive change and something happens that we didn’t plan for or something reoccurs that we should have seen coming.  A fly gets in the ointment.  A wrench is thrown into the works.  Our best laid plans go so infuriatingly awry.

When this happens, my instinctive reaction is to do a post mortem: What happened? What did I do wrong?  What did I not do?  This picking apart usually takes place in the presence of my mother, who listens patiently and then says, “Or maybe it’s none of those things.  Maybe it’s just the cycle.  Maybe it’s just what’s happening now.”  At which point, I take a deep breath and grumble, “Yeah, maybe.”

Of course, she’s right. Most of what’s going on is beyond any sense of my control, and I just need to ride it out.  My struggle with it, however, has to do with my expectations.  They have a tendency to get away from me.  I do one thing and then want to, or feel I should, do more and more.  Some years ago, a member of my then writing group brought up the notion of setting a deceptively small goal.  I took to the idea and kept telling myself to “start small”.  However, in the hands (and mind) of a Type A personality, this mantra developed a major flaw.  I might be willing to start small, but all too soon, my mind says, Hey, we better put the pedal to the medal if we’re ever gonna get anywhere! Which, of course, devolves into a wild attempt to do more, which in turn tires, overwhelms, and frustrates me to the point where I am ready to throw in the towel.

start-small-snail-dianaklein-comIn light of this, my new motto is: Start small—and then keep going small until you get whatever the thing is you need to do done. It doesn’t quite trip off the tongue, but, when I think about it,  it is pretty much how I made it through college.  When completely cowed by the mountain of writing I needed to do and the soul-crushing fear of not being able to do it, I would start by opening a document, forcing myself to add one sentence (more if I could) and then, moving to the next paper, do the same.  I would rotate through all of my current projects in this fashion.  Write a line, switch, write a line, switch.  After I had a draft down, I could go back and check for cogency and fix any problems, but it was getting that first layer down that was the biggest challenge—which I overcame only by taking it piece by piece, sentence by sentence.  I still write this way when I am stuck.  I ask myself, What’s the next line? I don’t think about what will come after.  I only have to write one sentence.  And once that’s done.  I do it again.

It can be hard to commit to small steps like this because societal norms so often tell us that if you can’t have the thing you want by tomorrow, you’d best not pursue it at all or worse, it’s not worth having.  I mean, why even bother?  Many of us, when we decide to turn over a new leaf, want to jump in feet first. You see books on lifestyle makeovers and they are all about making wholesale changes to one’s life.  We tell ourselves, we will do everything according to this new code: eat better, sleep better, do yoga, meditate, be creative.  And we forget that our lives are still our lives.  I think people feel either: that they want to change everything all at once without regard to whatever else is going on in their lives or that they are too overwhelmed by their lives to make any changes at all.

do-the-thing-you-can-do-the-power-of-small-dianaklein-comThere is an alternative. Start small.  Do the thing you can do—this is advice I have given myself regularly over the past 20 years (when I haven’t been busy trying to outsmart myself).  If you can meditate for two minutes a day, then meditate for two minutes a day.  If you can eat more vegetables, but can’t eat less sugar, than eat more vegetables and don’t eat less sugar.  And, *this is key*, don’t let your mind sell you a bill of goods that you are somehow falling short!  The saying A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step is, perhaps, a cliché, and, of course, you do have to take all the succeeding steps after that first one if you want to get to your destination, but if you tell yourself that that first step is not, won’t ever be, enough, you will never take the second.

I have big goals. I don’t know if there are enough steps in this body to get me there, but I want to keep walking towards them.  I want to do the thing I can do, consistently, and be proud of each step, giving it the recognition it deserves, because, in a one million-step journey, step number 45,682 is no less important than number 999,999.  Without either, small, seemingly insignificant movement, you will never reach your goal.

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Art & Crafts, Nature & Spirituality, Sickness & Health, Writing & Reading

Invoking Saint Frida

Diana

I spent a lot of last weekend in doubt. This is not an unfamiliar place for me.  I frequent the land of doubt on a regular basis.  The source, this time, was my last two posts on running.  Should I, as a CFS sufferer have written about that?  Should I have admitted that I can run now and again?  That right now I am choosing to run, even when there are many other things I cannot do?  When, on a good day, I can only work about four hours?

I felt strange when I started running again in August. I almost didn’t want to see my sister on my run because I was scared to admit that I was able to do it again.  The fear came from two places 1)I didn’t want anyone to think that this meant I was all better, and now could do anything and everything, i.e., I didn’t want people to expect more from me, because I knew I couldn’t give it.  And 2) I was ashamed.  I was ashamed that I was choosing to run rather than do something that might make money or make someone else’s life better.

And when I shared my two posts about running on this blog, I again felt conflicted and scared, and yes, ashamed because I am always scared of what people will think of me. I am scared that they will think I am weak, stupid, free-loading.  I am scared other CFSers will get upset because they aren’t able to run, and my posts might give the impression that they should be able to.  Or maybe people will think that I don’t really have CFS or any other illness since I can exercise at all.  CFS is a highly variable—not only among the afflicted population, but also in an individual.

On Sunday, I listened to a wonderful dharma talk from Tara Brach about how we try to control so many aspects of life and how these attempts ultimately remove us from those things that most make life enjoyable, namely connection and presence. I realized that (once again) I was trying to control what others think of me—my family, my friends, and all the good people of the internet.  And the truth is: it’s a fool’s game.  There is no way to win.  No matter what any of us say or do, no matter how perfectly we curate our feeds and our public lives, someone—perhaps many people—are going to take issue with some aspect of our behavior.

And it’s not always about us. As a senior in college, I took a class that was meant to integrate all that a student had learned within his/her major.  At the beginning of the semester, we were given a list of about 75 names and theories which we were instructed to look up and study independently.  At the end of the semester, we would be given a test on the information—20 questions, matching.  We were warned how challenging it would be and that often students did not excel at it.  I (for some inexplicable, bloody-minded reason) decided to attempt to ace it.  I spent hours looking up the names and making notes on whatever I thought the professor might think was pertinent enough to test us on.  And then I carried my little index cards everywhere, pulling them out whenever I had downtime.  When the professor gave back our tests, he told all of us that someone—not naming any names—had gotten a perfect score—something he hadn’t seen in a while.  I didn’t show anyone the 100 at the top of my exam paper, but as we filed out of the classroom, the other students looked at me knowingly.  One woman, who I had hitherto considered a friend asked, “Did you sleep with him?”  I didn’t even know how to respond.  I was so horrified and confused.  “How could sleeping with the professor have helped me on an objective test?” I wanted to ask, at the same time wanting to demand, ”How dare you?  Is that really what you think of me?”

I am convinced now that it wasn’t what she was thinking of me that caused her to lash out in that moment. It was what she was thinking of herself, how she was feeling about whatever grade she had or had not gotten.  In that scenario, I did everything right.  I worked hard and I achieved success.  And somehow, my behavior (or her reactions to my behavior) still caused pain.  If I were to get it twisted, I would think that I maybe I should have dimmed my own drives and accomplishments to make her feel better, but I think we can all agree that that would have been ridiculous.

What’s the answer then? I don’t know what it is for others, but for me, it’s to forget about trying to control others’ perceptions, and, instead, whip up as much daring as I can in order to be authentic—because I think that’s one of the ways we help each other (and ourselves)—by being vulnerable, being honest, and sometimes, admitting that which is difficult to admit.

invoking-saint-frida-dianaklein-comAs I think about these things, my eyes fall on a candle that lives on my desk. It’s from a line called Secular Saints by philosophersguild.com.  It looks like the regular seven day prayer candle with which most Catholics would be familiar, but instead of featuring the Sacred Heart or Saint Jude, it bears a portrait of Frida Kahlo.  I have long felt a deep connection with this Mexican artist, not only because she composed fascinating and bold paintings, but because she did not shy away from letting people know what she was feeling—the physical and emotional pain that walked with her throughout her life.  She did not try to be perfect—if anything, she exaggerated her perceived faults.  And though she is not a saint in the Catholic sense, I feel myself wanting to invoke her audacious spirit.  There’s a “prayer” on the candle which I like well enough, but my personal petition goes something like this:

O feisty Frida, help me to embrace my flaws and everything that is wrong with my life. Help me to know my true self and to show that self no matter who is watching.  Help me to be brave and bold and to act with resolve and passion.

 What keeps you from being authentic? Do you call on a saint (secular or otherwise) to help?

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