A Taste of Freedom

Every once in a long while, I get a glimpse behind the curtain.

It smells a bit like the first whiff of lilacs in spring. It looks a bit like a sliver of sunshine from a door inched open from darkness. It feels like featherweight joy. The casual, quotidian joy of what life could be if I truly recognized it as the experiment it is, a world in which the title I carry, the job I go to, the investment I make or house I buy has no more significance than the paper on which those accumulations are recorded. A world in which the only real consequences lie in how my actions resonate to my fellow Earthlings, human or other. A world in which there is no boredom, no routine, no apathy, but perpetual recognition of the everyday glory of engaging with it as a human being in this moment.

Of course I can apply for that out-of-my-league job or connect with that out-of-my-league person because the leagues are an illusion, They’re part of a bullshit, manufactured hierarchy intended to keep us isolated from one another so we don’t recognize our interdependence and the shared goals of love, happiness, and peace that would allow us to stand against any autocratic, selfish, destructive entity.

Failure is a lie because it implies an end state, a state of perfection not reached, as opposed to an experiment, Every time something doesn’t turn out as expected, that should be a celebration of change and education and novelty. Success is okay, but it carries the delusion not only of achievement, but of Arrival – of an ending. Failure reminds us that we just fucking around trying to get our bearings here, people in a world that is (in my country) constantly mocking, denigrating, obscuring, and flat out denying the truth that there is another option, a more joyful path, a lighter way to live. Sometimes I can see that path, when the fog clears.

And then sometimes I’m burdened with the pointlessness of existence, a heart-heaviness that makes everything seem useless, every meaningful action impossible: a trap of swampy ick that I know I will ideally just acknowledge, not give it unearned importance or attach any other unpleasant emotions to it, but which instead I often wind up waiting out, holding on til bedtime and hoping the next day will be springier, sunnier, better. I will have moments of thinking I am in much worse shape than I thought, that maybe the miasma of loathing is thicker, deeper, more insidious than I choose to acknowledge, that this is not a moment, but a step down to a pit of ever-increasing bleakness.

And then the normal comes back, and sometimes the special.

The brain is a terrible therapist. Much better the body. Sit. Recognize. Breathe. Carry on. This moment doesn’t need a story or a prognostication. It just needs to Be, with the inevitability of change as it’s lowkey mascot.

You thought this was going to be all about awakening and awesomeness, didn’t you? Well, SO DID I. Once again, things have not turned out as I had hoped or expected. C’est la vie.

Anyway, that’s my Sunday. How are you?

Woman Hating and Hatefilled Women

I was going to do a confessional post about my personal history of sexist, borderline misogynist thought and behavior, and I will, soon. But I have been confronted again by a me-averse woman in a position of power, and this history deserves its own investigation. Doubtless some of the same fucked up motivations will stand out when I turn the light on myself.

I’ve experienced plenty of sexism in my life, but all of the blatantly punishing sexist behavior I’ve been forced to put up with has come from women. Once in high school, once in grad school, and now at my job.

When I was a Junior in High School, our retired, male drama teacher was replaced by Ms. Martin, a bland, mostly forgettable blond woman in her 40s. I was disappointed by the previous teacher’s departure, in large part because he clearly liked me, and as a junior, I might now (juniority!) have a chance to earn good roles in the school plays. The now departed senior class was filled with talent, but this crop of seniors didn’t have a lot of dedicated actors. This was my chance! Yay, ME!

Or so I thought. After a semester of me working my ass off (you ask for a monologue, I’ll give you a one woman play), and of course trying to get Ms. Martin to like me (because that is a weakness of mine), I auditioned for the musical, Oliver! I knew it well because I’d been one of the urchins in a production when I was a kid. I’m not a great singer, but since we were an all-girls school (my two year punishment for skipping much of 8th & 9th grade), there were plenty of roles open. And we didn’t have great singers. After a long audition and callback process, all my classmates agreed that I would surely be Dodger or Nancy and I was antsy with excitement on the day the cast was to be announced.

But before that happened, Ms. Martin asked me to come to her office. She closed the door. She said, “Z, before the cast list goes up, in case your name isn’t on it [she was the one and only person who put the names on it], I want you to know why.”

“Oh. Okay.” I was already hurt, but curious, and took the “in case” seriously. Was there something I could do now, here in this office, to earn that spot?

“Well, even if you did give the best audition, I feel that if I cast you, you would rile the troops against me. I mean, why would I cast someone who’s great who I can’t control, when I can cast someone perfectly good who I get along with fine?”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” (Yes, I said thanks. I was in shock.)

I walked upstairs to my Physics class and told my best friends, my drama friends, what had happened. They all agreed it was awful. I had never “riled the troops” against her, or anyone. I had asked questions in class, I had wondered why we were doing things – the kind of behavior that made confident teachers love me, and the kind of love that made me feel comfortable in school in a way I never had at home or, since, at work. In school, in the schools I went to, good teachers genuinely wanted students to question them, challenge them, bring in new ideas. I’ve never consistently experienced that in any other type of institution.

So the cast list went up, and the friends with whom I had sought comfort were on it, and I wasn’t. And they stopped talking to me. Junior year was miserable. When I finally got one of them to communicate, late in the second semester, and asked why they cut me out, she said she didn’t know. It just happened. But I knew when it started. And, ridiculous as it was, my existence apparently undercut their talents. If I hadn’t told them, they wouldn’t have rejected me. But I had to tell them, because when you have been targeted you feel alone and you feel a little like you’re losing your mind and you seek solace in your friends. Ms. Martin didn’t just take away a stupid performance, she indirectly deprived me of my support system. Fortunately, I had friends who weren’t actors, in the class above me. I made sure to get the fuck out of that school once they graduated. I even moved across the country to do it. I took my chance making friends in a new state my senior year over staying with a bunch of lost souls who left me to drown alone. I don’t hate them, but their weakness was a crushing revelation.

Over a decade later, I was happily studying literature in a small Graduate program in Southern California. It was intimate and the professors were challenging and smart and I was super excited about my second semester, because I’d decided that 20th century American lit was my true love and I’d be able to take two classes in that genre. Both with the same professor, it turned out, who was also the head of American Lit in the tiny department, which had only 3 full professors. The first day in my first class with her, she asked a question about something in the play we were reading. It wasn’t a very good question, and the dozen folks in the class met her with silence. I have always felt bad when teachers are met with apathy, deserved or not, so after a minute I took a stab at it. She was unimpressed with my answer, and responded in a way that misinterpreted what I had said. I attempted to clarify, and was met with

“Z, you shouldn’t be so contentious.”

Again, I was stunned into silence. Was I picking a fight? I thought we were just having a discussion. I was thrown and dizzy and didn’t say anything else. She rambled on with her theory. No one responded. At the mid-class break, a half dozen people, most of whom I didn’t know, surrounded me outside the building.

“What was that about?”

“Do you have a history with her?”

“Why is she after you?”

I was so grateful, again, to have my perceptions and my sanity validated. I told them I had never met her before that night, and there was a lot of head shaking. As I trudged on through the semester, two of my three classes with this so called Feminist, Ms. Martin (I am not shitting you), I found out that no one thought she was a good teacher, and legend was she found a female student to pick on every year. Though no one directly stood up to her behavior (it was hard, because it was subtle), I was still comforted when classmates, some now friends, confirmed that she regularly dismissed my contributions as irrelevant or offbase, then attributed them to other students with praise. She gave me A minuses on every paper, and when I would ask what was missing, where I could improve, she never had an answer for me. Her class was the only one in which I received less than an A for my semester grade. (Why did I keep making comments in class? Because I love discussing literature with others more than I hated validating her leadership by actively participating)

But the greatest comfort (and most shocking part of this story) was when the head of the department and my randomly assigned advisor, an equanimous, brilliant little woman with whom I had taken a few Early Modern Lit classes, met with me to discuss my current classes and plans for the next year.

“So, how are things with Ms. Martin?”

I was a bit surprised by the question. “Well…” how much could I tell her?

She got up and shut her door, then returned, sat down, and waited. I told her just a little of what had transpired between us. She told me that Ms. Martin tended to feel intimidated by certain female students. She said she thought Ms. Martin was “not very smart” and “not a good teacher” and was probably threatened by me. She said she was sorry that my interests lay in Martin’s so-called area of expertise. But she was a full professor and there wasn’t much that could be done. Maybe I could avoid her classes going forward?

But she taught most of the American Lit classes, and if I attempted to earn a doctorate I would have no choice but to have her on my committee. So I completed my Master’s and left. At the top of my class, despite Martin’s machinations to cut me down.

Most of my teachers and bosses have been female. Some were good, some weren’t; but until recently, I’ve only had clear, personal problems with those two. Most of my close friends are female. My beloved online sangha is almost entirely female. My fortifying DEI Officers were, until recently, all female.

So it was shocking to get hit with another vindictive female authority figure, at my age. Or not so shocking. The head of HR definitely falls into that pseudo-feminist, going after women, category as well, but I’ve dealt with her for years now. As much as I wish she weren’t there, I at least feel like I’ve seen her worst and can handle it. But now there’s this new CEO. And it is so hard, friends. It is so hard feeling hated and gaslit.

And alone. I attended a training today where the CEO sprayed her hypocrisy all over the Zoom, talking about how important it is that we talk about things in the open and have difficult discussions. Meanwhile she is actively blocking my work and excluding me from opportunities because I’ve questioned her decisions and stood up to her abusive behavior. And none of my like-minded homies were there to text our frustration at each other. I was literally screaming at the screen, with my video and mic off, while she blathered on with her lies. Could you hear me? I’m sure my neighbors could.

So what’s the lesson in this moment? I can find at least a couple.

I gotta get out of this place. Every time I’ve been fired (once) or laid off (once) or quit a job, it’s always pushed me in a better direction. I have to trust that it will likewise do that this time.
Being covertly targeted feels awful. It’s been so long, I had forgotten what it feels like. It is a form of gaslighting and even though I know that term comes from the titular play/movie, it is far more apt than that. It burns and consumes. I feel it eating away at me, and feel the self I bring to the workplace markedly diminished, weakened, charred. Not having allies present to confirm the behavior makes it worse. As I sat writing, burning up in the glow of hypocrisy this week, I thought about all the women and Black and Native and LGBT and other members of non-dominant groups who have been disbelieved and ostracized and shamed and laughed at and had their stories and their feelings dismissed as fantasy or paranoia. My heart opens to them. I don’t like being back in this space, but it does me good to get another taste of their pain and recognize my own complicity in some of that marginalization (again, Feminist Failure blog to follow).
Being decent, honest, well-intentioned, or even right does not mean people will like you. At times it is precisely why people won’t like you. And you gotta decide what you’re willing to risk to keep doing what you think is right, and what it is in your nature to do.
Nothing is certain. You can’t control anything but your own reactions.

I keep telling myself that. One day it will sink in.

Thanks for letting me get this off my shoulders. I’d like to keep it there.

Feelin’ It

I recently finished a fascinating book called The Extended Mind. (If you’re on Goodreads, you can find my review he re.) It covers all sorts of realms where we store intelligence, adaptation, knowledge, and wisdom beyond the skull, starting with the rest of our own bodies. I’ve been all up in listening to my body since I started body scan meditation over a decade ago, but interpreting that as a kind of intelligence is new for me. The combination of body awareness, interpretation, and situational analysis has had some interesting results of late. Here’s one example.

I did a session of “below the belt” exercises yesterday, following my virtual kickboxing platform, and decided to perform the dead lifts I usually skip because they always hurt my back. They weren’t so bad this time, but I still had some pain. B was up when I finished, so I mentioned it to him. I showed him what I was doing & asked what could be wrong. He said I was bending my back. I said I wasn’t. He demonstrated. I didn’t see the difference. Eventually he said I should tuck my butt more, and that made sense. I tried it. He might be right. Pretty dull scene.

Behind the scenes: drama! When he said I was doing it wrong, I immediately got defensive. I noticed this when we were moving cedar planters in the yard over the summer, too. B said I was lifting with my back and I responded maturely with something like, No I’m not! or So’s your mom! and left both of us mildly annoyed. I was just as defensive this time, but decided to be “adult” and power through it. Once the instruction was over, I took a shower and sat down to unpack what had actually happened.

What actually happened is that when he corrected my form, he used a tone he doesn’t use often – slightly excited, slightly loud, and with a bit of upspeak at the end of the sentence. My body immediately went defensive. I could feel it: a tension that my brain interpreted as a threat, and to which I immediately wanted to respond with denial. I assume it’s a holdover from childhood, from a father who responded to every mistake and demonstration of ignorance as if I were deliberately fucking with him. This would lead to a long (sometimes hours long) narcissistic and inane lecture or interrogation in which I was not learning or growing or investigating, but just desperately trying to come up with the answer that would get him to stop.

The response is different with B – I don’t see him as a threat, but the physical tension motivated by the tone caused me to react with a defense of my intelligence, an ego defense that makes it impossible to learn. I didn’t forget about the yard incident; I knew my response was not ideal, but I assumed it was embarrassment, not wanting to be wrong. The thing is, I like being wrong these days; I’ve actively worked on detaching any ignorance I unwillingly harbor from my self-esteem, or from myself at all. It’s been incredibly liberating, and these days I usually don’t have to work through much of my own shit before I can come to a place of openness and acceptance. Why was this different? Well, it turns out I’m more forgiving of content than style. If B had said the same words with a different inflection, there would have been nothing to overcome. I memorize the exact phrasing of every singer or every song I’ve ever liked, and apparently the exact tone of every phrase that has ever hurt or humiliated me. The ears keep the score.

Though I didn’t fully understand why it was happening, I was able to observe my body with just enough distance to recognize that my reaction yesterday was unreasonable and unhelpful. I couldn’t make it go away, but I could decide how to react to that feeling. Instead of saying, “you’re wrong” again, and giving into the amygdala hijack that was taking place in my monkey brain, I decided to white knuckle my way through it and take the imperfectly articulated advice.

Progress, but still not ideal.

Once I figured out what had happened, I talked to B about it. I said he had used a certain tone that he doesn’t use often, and that probably came out of concern for my physical safety, but which my body interprets as a threat to my intelligence. My reaction to that type of threat is to get defensive, which makes it hard for me to reap any value from what he’s saying. He said he wasn’t entirely sure where the tone came from, and didn’t know if he could stop himself from ever using it again. I agreed, but said I wanted to explain what was happening so that we would each have a better understanding of the dynamics underlying those interactions in the future. I think we both walked out of the assessment without any wounds or additional defenses, and with a better understanding of each other.

I don’t know whether his tone was caused by fear, if he uses it with other people, or if investigating that fear might help him modulate his communication style in similar situations with me or others going forward. That’s his journey. For my part, I now have an ally in breaking up similar chain reactions going forward. That’s potentially one less wound, one less grudge, one less bitter pill to carry around and cram down someone else’s throat.

Healthy for me? check

Healthy for this relationship? check

Good for the world? check.

Is this ridiculously boring? It sure feels like it might be. (Ever listen to someone talk about meditation? I sat without moving! I observed my breathing! Jesus.) To me it is thrilling. It’s like I’ve been hauling around this box of tools for decades, and I suddenly know how and when to use them. All these gifts, all these answers that I didn’t know were here all along.

Still haven’t found the tool that fixes my employment situation. More on that another day.

Tell Me I’m Wrong

I like it.

I do. It’s new – maybe a few years that I’ve had positive reactions to being accurately corrected – but it feels so good when I do. It actually gives me a physical rush. Maybe rush isn’t the right word. It’s like a piney breeze softly winding through my body. It feels like freedom.

When I find out I don’t know shit…

I don’t know why, but it feels like Freeeeeeeeeedom
(thank you for the only upbeat popular songs of 2021, Mr. Batiste)

Oh, don’t think it’s always been this way. It definitively ain’t. I’m one of those people who has had a lifelong embarrassment of showing ignorance. Not any ignorance: I allowed myself some realms of detached unknowing. Mostly in realms I didn’t care about. You could tease me relentlessly about never having seen a full Star Trek episode or most forms of etiquette or different cuts of meat or fantasy novels and I’d laugh it off. But for a shockingly, shockingly broad swath of topics, not knowing something churned up not interest, but shame. Even some things I didn’t give two shits about, like the names of different kinds of rocks. I’d still feel stupid because I know we covered that at some point in grade school. So I should know it. Different kinds of architecture? Never studied it, but I know educated people often do, so I should know it. Damn near every event in history, every geographic location, every word in Spanish, every philosopher, every person who ever accomplished anything noteworthy, every non-obscure scientific theory.

Everyone who shares this affliction has their own unique backstory, I’m sure. As a child I was shamed and sometimes psychologically tortured for hours if I failed to define a word correctly or adequately explain why a race riot somewhere in Asia was noteworthy. And it wasn’t just facts or intellectual prowess I was expected to excel in, but physical activities as well. If I didn’t rapidly learn how to hit a tennis ball without lobbing it over the fence or catch a baseball thrown with some velocity at my face, I was met with anger and heaping gobs of disappointment. Is it any wonder I mournfully sat out softball while my BFA class got to know each other on the field my freshman year in college? Or wouldn’t partake in any new activity until I had already practiced on my own beforehand? There was also a fun little twist in that my abuser often accused me of “pretending not to know.” I really wonder where the hell he got that one. What kind of masochist did he think I was, to invite hours of soul-crushing confusion and barely contained violence just for fun?

Weirdly, or not, I have treated myself with much the same bad logic. I put a slightly different spin on it: knowing that I don’t know an answer, I’m clearly not faking it, so at least I don’t have that bullshit to contend with. Instead I see my ignorance as a personal failure. For someone who considers herself logical, it really doesn’t make any more sense than my dad’s accusation. If I don’t remember something from high school, did I choose to forget it? Obviously not, so how can I blame myself? More things are forgotten than remembered by every person, every day. And even more things are never acknowledged in the first place. We’d be unable to function in society otherwise. Perhaps I didn’t study hard enough, but considering the overwhelming mass of things I expect myself to remember, “enough” is an unreachable goal. Many crucial facts are things I didn’t even learn in class, things that might have been casually referenced in passing. If I had worked to commit to memory every stupid tidbit I’m expected to know, I wouldn’t have lived a life.

What if my ignorance is, Buddha forbid, just plain old stupidity? I certainly can’t blame myself for that. And if I am intellectually stunted, I’ve done remarkably well for myself.

Why does knowing things even matter? What wisdom or insight or empathy or connection is gained simply by carrying oodles of items around in your head? What real knowing comes of it?

Of course, if talking oneself out of bad habits were enough to erase them, we’d all be a whole lot healthier. My intro was an optimistic exaggeration. There are still too many areas or scenarios in which I feel that shame creeping in, and one of them will be put to the test yet again for the umpteenth time next week. I’m taking a Spanish class for the first time since 2019, and as much as I love the language, relish speaking it, and crave fluency, practice has always been an opportunity for me to start waving that flag of self-loathing. I can rationalize my way out of the wise analysis of previous paragraphs with the simple fact that I have been studying Spanish off and on for decades, so obviously I should know it perfectly by now. I will also be participating in an Mindfulness Intensive program during part of the semester, so I’m hoping that will help me process any fucked-up feelings I’m experiencing.

The irony (so often with the irony) is that I may be right about my language expectations. It is entirely possible that someone who has been studying as long as I would know the language at least comfortably, if not fluently. According to language experts, the main reason I haven’t gotten there is because I don’t spend nearly enough time actually interacting with people in Spanish. And why? Because I’m afraid of being wrong. You see here, that old Buddhist mantra creeping in – you can’t really love others until you can love yourself. Our fears create the scenarios we fear.

Alan Watts, apropos of I don’t know what, once said that the Japanese in Japan were generally excellent English speakers, but an Englishman had to get them drunk to hear them talk because they were too afraid of embarrassing themselves to try when they were sober. I empathize, mis amigos. Your culture of shame is far vaster than my culture of one, but I feel you.

I have come up with a procedure that would get rid of all these self-positioned and self-perpetuating obstacles: just detach the identity from the emotion. Because it’s not the embarrassment that kills you, it’s the shame – it’s the attachment of the embarrassment to one’s sense of self that creates the shame. I deal with this whenever I try to get White people to talk about race and racism, and it does get frustrating. At times I just want to shake them and say, “your ignorance is not your fault/you didn’t choose to be raised under White supremacy/you’re not doing anyone any good by hiding from it/ you can make things better for yourself and others if you just open up, allow yourself to be wrong, and grow.” And of course, I recognize that I am in the same boat, just on a different river.

So I am not there yet. But feeling that freedom of openness, of detaching my mistakes from my identity, of just letting them be and moving on, should make it easier to welcome that liberation with my Big Enemy of the language I should know. We’ll see. I’ll keep you in the loop.

Imperfect Work

a minus I spent several months of last year trying to brainwash myself out of self-loathing. It was helpful, in that I learned quite a bit, and the intellectual path is the quickest way to my heart, but I don’t know that it accomplished its goal in any significant way.

The better way, probably, is to keep working on doing the opposite of what my loathing overseer demands, on a pathetically constant basis. I will (try) not to yell at myself for breaking a plate or overcooking rice, or assume everyone else’s ideas are better than mine (until I decide they’re all inferior – or vice versa), or make every moment quantifiably “useful,” or force myself to a certain level of perfection before I share anything with anyone.

That’s where you come in!

I haven’t written much lately, and haven’t blogged nearly as much as I was intending to overall. It’s hard to churn out even two posts a month when every piece has to be without errors, coherent, and cohesive. I’m not saying what I have permitted was good, it just isn’t full of bad-person-mistakes. It’s taken me a while to accept that perfectionism is a problem. To be honest, I still don’t. But I do recognize its destructiveness, and the hypercritical source of it. For some of us, if we don’t perform to a certain standard, we are unworthy of being accepted and loved. That is totally rational, as far as I’m concerned, but I know that I am fucked up and I Am Working On It.

So I am going to attempt to post once a week for the next several months. Putting out that much with work & projects & language study & volunteering & meditation & exercise & dog & guy necessarily dictates a minimal amount of edit time, but in order to head off any sleepless nights and screen blindness, I’m setting some rules around it (which I will Not Hate Myself for Breaking).

This is post number one. Discúlpame.

Thanks for Not-things, 2018

In Nest Birds Wildlife I am thankful for countless entities in my little life, and I’ll happily tell you all about them some drunken night, but this year’s statement of gratitude has come out of a different place.

I am thankful for being unmoored.

For feeling insecure, for being unsure, for being uncomfortable

For every time I didn’t have a strong opinion, or wasn’t willing to fight for my side

For every time I realized I was wrong, had been wrong, for years, decades. I am so very wrong.

For every person I lost respect for and every one that no longer inspires feelings

For every thought I no longer think & every song I no longer hate

I’m probably no better than my Thanksgiving 2017 self, but many mini revelations have left me feeling vulnerable & ignorant & exposed & inspired in the past year and I am hungry to put all this not-ness to work.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. (Pema Chodron)

Self-Loathing and the Second Language

se habla espanol I’m writing this from Costa Rica, where I have ensconced myself in una escuela intercultural in an attempt not just to improve my Spanish, but to get over my fear of speaking it. I had another one of those “no shit” revelations last week, to wit: I can choose to be happy about how much Spanish I’ve learned instead of being disappointed in how much I’ve forgotten or have yet to learn. Yeah. Who would have thought that was an option? Not me. It’s certainly not my default position. I have always been disappointed in my failings in Spanish, at least ever since my very first year of studying the language in 7^th grade. I grew up in a neighborhood of Mexicanos y Puertorriqueños = I should have already known the basics before I ever stepped into a class. Seemed reasonable to me at 11. And at 40. Continue reading “Self-Loathing and the Second Language” →

How Winter Kills*

winter Woman & Guy go out for dinner & a movie at the art museum. Pleasant conversation follows – good film, bad audience; good food, bad waiter – as they join the line of cars waiting to exit the parking lot. Woman, sitting in the passenger seat due to her low tolerance for alcohol, looks at her sideview mirror and remembers she got the car – finally, right?! – washed today. Did the mirror get moved? She asks the man if he can see out of her mirror. He doesn’t answer. She waits. She calls his name. He responds with mild defensiveness. She sighs, “it’s just … exhausting!” She presses her palms against her face, hard, and wills herself not to cry.

And just like that – winter depression makes its grand entrance! Continue reading “How Winter Kills*” →

On Getting Older – a Bonus Birthday Post!

100 birthday I’m not someone who tends to freak out on my birthday. I don’t call exceptional attention to it either. But this year I’ve decided to give myself a more significant gift (dinner, fancy drinks, a movie, the pedicure I’ve been talking about for 5 years, Cadbury milk chocolate eggs, 2 days and 3 glorious nights off the anti-inflammatory diet, 3 days without working, 2 days without touching a computer) and to try and articulate some recent thoughts I’ve had on getting older.

Continue reading “On Getting Older – a Bonus Birthday Post!” →

Separation Anxiety: Is Feeling Separate the Enemy of Happiness?

Zoe and I were sitting around a bonfire at an open prairie campsite when a chipmunk cautiously ventured from the tall grass onto the mowed trail next to us, grazing for crumbs. The little guy was easily spooked, darting undercover at any sudden movement, but who could blame him? Birds of prey hovered constantly overhead, scanning. Our chipmunk lived under relentless threat of death from above. Continue reading “Separation Anxiety: Is Feeling Separate the Enemy of Happiness?” →

clawing my way to enlightenment

Category: insecurity