Accepting What I'm Not

The Middle Mish-Mash and Perimenopause Portal

Nothing like an equinox for revving the internal fire. I’ve been in daily conversation with myself (for years) about whether any of what I do or share is useful to the larger collective, especially during these scary and devastating and—goodness, I hope—expansive times. I never want to be more noise in an already too loud world. Shouldn’t people be paying attention to that excellent article in The Nation or becoming on-the-ground activists around climate change, racism, genocide, and the election instead of reading a post from me? It reminds me of a hazy repeated memory of being a sweaty, curly-haired four-year-old in the backseat of our car in the Dominican Republic when my mom would stop at the light and roll down the window to buy avocados or hearts of palm from the man balancing them on his forearm in the middle of the road. I would wonder: why is he out there all day in the hot sun (a projection on my part, of course, maybe he loved that job) and why are we in here. Why do I wax on about anything else, or—gaaaawd—Hungry Molly, my latest, when the world is ailing?

Then an email arrived: “Please, please, please continue sharing about you, your life, your world, your experiences, noticings, wonderings, wisdom. Your shares are so fueling for me and I learn so much from you.” That one prompted me to really take in all of the others. There have been so many lovely emails from readers.

I cognitively know that The Silencing Voice within any of us is over-culture. Silencing is different from discernment. Often it’s right to choose to be quiet in a group or to actively make space in a circle for other unheard voices. But complete silencing is just another weapon.

I drew this ouroboros next to my girls the other night. Cycles. Death. Re-birth. Continual renewal. Loved the process of trying to draw diamonds and then giving up and allowing the wonky shapes.

I’ve been walking alongside Hungry Molly this month.

It’s messy, you all.

It’s about baby-hunger and food and also NOT at all about food.

I’m hungry for permission that my true alignment is okay.

I’m hungry for someone to say, “It’s okay that you aren’t glued to your phone.”

I’m hungry for permission for a slower pace and less volume in this modern world.

I’m scared that if I choose the last one, I will lose everyone/thing I love.

My fear of disconnection makes me even hungrier.

And that hunger then requires a numbing agent.

It’s too much to feel.

This disconnection—in my own personal life, between people and our mother earth, between people and people who are all people but seethe against each other.

Yet, I must feel it.

I’m the only one who can give it myself permission.

My family and friends would say that I’m a confident and strong-willed person. I follow my impulses and mostly do what I want to do and rarely bend to what I’m supposed to do. And yet, the friction around how to be a good modern person is very alive in me.

On paper, I am acknowledging that I will never be a person who contributes to the world by being a savvy economist or consumer and gatherer of 1,000 important media resources (some of my friends are so gifted at this) or woman who has her finger on the pulse of every nuance of all the latest social and political trends. Part of me has believed that I should be and would be better for humanity as that type of human. My mind could make me it do it, but my body? Well, she’s a hard no.

I could do it in a smaller pond.

I might even want to do it in smaller pond.

But we live in a huge, roiling ocean now. There are no more small ponds.

So, I’m letting go of all that is not in alignment.

I’m accepting what I am not.

It’s the current era + my stage of life. Perimenopause—what a wildly profound portal. A friend my age recently said she’s encountering her own young wounds in massive ways and actually meeting them as an adult. Growing into an adult on the inside not just the outside. Yes! Me too. It’s awkward. This becoming is like puberty but in reverse: starts and stops, headway and backpedals, enlightenment followed by mud followed by stardust. Mish-mashy. Messy middle. Take it or leave it. I will disappoint some people, maybe even the people I admire and love the most. Oh well.

Hungry Molly is saying LISTEN.

Natural water. Animals. I'm in. (I'm learning how to take care of an old ranch horse and it's been deeply humbling and grounding, whoa)

I’ve already listened so much, but this kind of listening leads to choices that might elicit hardcore judgment from people I value. Who is she to prioritize outdoor time when no one else gets to, who is she to take in the news one day a week instead of everyday, who is she to bow out of social media completely, who is she to say no to all the noise when the rest of us have to bear it, who is she to sit down for an hour to eat her lunch and consume or do nothing else while doing it, who is she to make a kinder life for herself, who is she this weak human who can’t handle the crush?

Their voice?

My voice?

Same voice.

I want to say that…

I contribute to the world by being a long-distance mountain walker who prays as she walks, an imperfect mother committed to breaking cycles, a canary in the shared coal-mine who doesn’t like yellow, a creator and facilitator of hundreds of human healing story circles, a lying-on-the-earth woman, a sensory and sensual mammal who plunges in cold rivers, lakes, waterfalls, a language-disrupter and a challenger of what is deemed normal, a connector of people to people, a wise witnesser who infuses her own life-force by being witnessed, a word-lover who uses fewer words as she gets older, a plant communicator, a mystic animist animal-lover who traverses other realms, a volunteer, a global curious human who loves ‘less is more’, who wants to go in deep not horizontal and scattered, who is often two steps ahead of the zeitgeist, who has always been 100% devoted to inhabiting and playing in her body even as she struggles with it.

I will do me. You do you. The world will benefit from it.

May that be enough. Think about what we could all do with the energy spent trying to be anything other than what you are.

That is OBVIOUS.

But part of our modern social media wound is living saturated with standards of how a person is supposed to be on many levels and it’s fucked with so many radiant humans I know. Maybe we’ve come to place where a good person is someone who spends all day on a phone re-posting memes and sharing political news. I know that act is useful but it’s not the kind of useful I want to be. Bring me the in-flesh humans. Bring me the gatherings. Bring me the glorious mess of navigating and rupturing and repairing in relationships.

Connect me.

That’s Hungry Molly’s cry for help.

Connect me.

Connect me.

I’m listening. I’m doing it.

Connecting her to herself and to what lights her up. That’s it. Simple.

What do you want to connect to?

What are not? What are you?