Thankful for Rubbish, Thankful for Diamonds

Today I say "F%$! it" as the less sophisticated more worn down of our species may exclaim. I've been wanting to start writing again since August and my efforts have been slack. Today I have feelings, feelings I cannot neglect to share and so today I begin again, today I start over for the umpteenth time. After all, we are always growing, when we stop growing we may as well die.

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is the quote that sparked me to write, the material, however, has been lingering for months, floating and buzzing in my thoughts. I've experienced more, grown more, and learned of love more in the last 6 months then I thought possible. I'm surprised that my brain and/or heart have not spontaneously combusted. I guess that this is life's natural progression. When we step outside of our comfort zones and when when we gain introspection, we immediately hit fast forward on growing, learning, and loving. It is a great thing, but it hard at first.

Yesterday was thanksgiving and I was alone. I was not "literally" alone. I spent most of the day at my job as a nanny. I watched over some lovely children and ate some delicious, very perfectly prepared food. But I was alone in the void of the familiar, in the void of tradition, in the void of "My" loved ones, alone in the void of being around the people who are a part of me and have shaped me. The people who have been a part of all of the other 23 thanksgivings of my life. I always thought thanksgiving was a beautiful holiday, but yesterday it's beauty was astounding. It, I believe is my favorite day of celebration. It is one of the most simple, yet beautiful concepts. Gratitude is universal and of the utmost importance. Yesterday also epitomized the theory that we don't always know what we got until it is gone. I've been in and out of seasons of great complaining and thought of feeling I had not gotten to the place I wanted to be in by my age. I would look around and see what others had and I would want to be there. This is why I made a long series of decisions that landed me in the prestigious enclave that is Fairfield County Connecticut. However wrong the thoughts that got me here may have been, many of them were right, and fate has landed me exactly where I need to be. Even if it is a school of hard knocks where I realize many things right in front of me were so beautiful yet I misunderstood them and took them for granite.

Ironically, this year, I am most grateful for the rubbish in my life. I am grateful for the insecurities that forced me to make decisions that led me on this path. I'm grateful for the negative relationship patterns that have showed me what I do not want. I am grateful for distance. Distance between me and people that I love, distance that gives me clarity. Clarity to see how much I miss the positive people. Distance to escape the negative patterns, and learn how to break patterns without dismissing the care I have. Distance that has given me solitude (even if the solitude has been painful). Solitude to be selfish in ways I never was, and to see the ways I was unknowingly selfish before.


In addition to distance, I'm thankful for catastrophe. Catastrophe has not been unheard of in my life. It has been in my life under the mask of bad patterns in communication and insecurity and in dealing with others in states of catastrophe. This year, however, I've had my own share of more obvious catastrophe. I quit a job, I moved on a whim, I had my house flood, and I felt I had no one to help me (even though this was not true). To be dramatic, I've felt homeless, more alone, and less successful than ever before. However, all this rubbish has a beauty hidden deep inside. We'll call it emotional recycling. I'm now able to pull out parts of myself that had been bogged down. As I sort through the detritus, I'm finding diamonds.

There are many diamonds in my life. Most broadly my sister, my mother, my father, grandmothers, family, new friends, old friends, shelter, food, health and self discovery. Conceptually I am thankful for intelligence, charm, awareness, compassion, unity, justice, community, love, opportunity, and forgiveness. Specifically I'm thankful for the people who make the world beautiful and for having the privilege to know so many.

Stormy Weather, But No Fatal Disaster

It's been a long time since I've dedicated myself to writing about "life" as this outlet was so intended. It is not that I've neglected this outlet, but rather I've been completely and utterly perplexed at where to start and have been somewhat bewildered by the last 4 months of life and the act of putting all my adventures out in words for the world to see. At least daily, I think of new posts, but by the time I get home at night the motivation and creative energy is gone. Today, I will push back my need for thorough evaluation and I will catch up on my life. The past two months, have been filled with lots of quiet moments and many sleepless nights for contemplation. I've evaluated my life until I'm blue in the face. The analogy that first comes to mind is a "natural disaster". I don't want to be dramatic nor narcissistic in saying that my life can be synomynous as a monumental disaster, like katrina, but it is the best analogy I can come up with. Why do I describe my life as a natural disaster you may ask? I am after all in a beautiful new city with an excellent paying lower stress job and I have hope for the first time in a long time. These are all truths and they are the reason I feel my life has been a disaster. I am living in the calm after the storm.

 First, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters share one major theme, they are uncontrollable and reek their own course. This uncontrollable element directly parallel's my recent journey. There were certain big storms that I had absolutely no control over. They came out of the blue sometimes, and sometimes there were forecasts that predicted them. Even when predicted, instead of evacuating to safer ground, I fearlessly and more often stupidly stood my ground and was enveloped by the storm.

Secondly, natural disasters have a beauty of pulling resources and bringing people together. Natural disasters show us as human beings, that sometimes, and more often than we would think, we need support and we cannot do everthing on our own. In this same theme they can show the most cherished depths of the human soul. The parts that are selfless and loving and encouraging. They bring out the best in people. I have spent the last few months evaluating the people in my life and I've come to some very shocking conclusions. The first being, I am overwhelmingly blessed to have an abundance of loving, selfless people in my life. Then I abruptly came to my second conclusion that I do not appreciate them or trust them in the ways that they deserve. I learned to rely on these people in a matter of hours and I also began to reconnect with the side of myself that is more like them (loving and selfless that is).

Lastly they disasters leave a feeling of calm and accomplished survival at their conclusion. They leave people feeling a mixture of contridictory emotions. The relief of the storm being over mixed  strangely mixed with the dissappointment that the excitement of the storm is over. These initial emotional roller coasters are followed by the arduous task of picking up the pieces and sometimes starting over from scratch, as many had to do in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

After all this contemplation, I realize, weather is unpredictable, but it also follows patters. There are, have been, and will be many storms. I'm blessed to have never had an earth shattering event that leaves me feeling much like New Orleans after Katrina. My storms have been mild, but frequent of late. I'm not starting over, but rather adapting.

My adaptation sent me on a summer full of discovery....
 Only 4 months ago, I was still spending time in my cubicle as a social worker, finishing up casework that should have been done a month prior. My heart was filled with release over leaving with tinges of remorse over the feeling of utter failure in most of my cases.
Only 3 months ago I said goodbye to everyone I loved in Georgia to head four states away to teach. I drove through Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. I've never cried as much as I did on the trip to Memphis. It rained the entire way. It felt wrong, it felt like running from a tornado into a hurricane. The drive was flat, redundant, and dismal.
Only a little over 2 months ago, I made the drive back through Mississippi on a hot summer night. Driving all night through the same states back to Georgia. I was filled with failure. I quit something wonderful, but something that I was not ready for. Instead of failing as a teacher, I decided to quit. I never quit and this feeling was relieving and frightening. For the first time in a long time, I had no concrete plan. I somehow was not panicked. Opportunity fell into my lap and I began making new plans, plans revolving around a job that would be completely different from everything I'd worked toward, yet deep down, I knew it would teach me what I need to be the best social worker, and better yet person. A job that would allow me to use my strengths and give me time to breath. A job where I could still work with children, but I would not be burdened by the horrors that the children were experiencing. Instead, I get to work with children that are loved and protected, the way that I hope and pray all children will be.
So only a month ago, I packed up my car for a second time and I started on my second biggest journey. (interestingly enough, my two biggest journeys happened during the same summer) I drove through more states than I'd ever been through, in traffic I am thankful that I made out of alive. I saw many loved ones along the way and met new friends on the journey. The journey was tiring, but it felt like I was headed toward the right things. It felt like I was challenging myself and also letting go. I was leaving home.. Georgia that is. I'm now for the first time realizing that Georgia was home. I'm learning that it was in Georgia that I became the person I am grew to love the people who are now most important. This is what makes a place home. The good and the bad, I will always be a Georgia peach at heart. After letting go of Georgia, I made many stops, and finally arrived at my new home in Connecticut. There will be a post dedicated to this entire journey, but that is for another day. I am now living in my new little cape cod in a state that I knew nothing about a little over a month ago. I am now a small town Georgia transplant living down the street from a yacht club in Connecticut and working for people that have more money than the town I grew up in grossed in taxes. I'm discovering new places while I continue to discover myself and where life will take me. I am happy and I am loved. I am blessed.


This is a one of many rainbows I saw along the way driving to Connecticut. I think it had been several years since I could remember spotting a rainbow in all it's glory.

After all,  some of the most beautiful sights in nature are either before, in the midst of, or after a storm.

Short Lived Dreams

This summer started out as a combination of my childhood, freshman year, and all of my mothers worse nightmares. Going to Walmart is a night out on the town, dorm life, lucky charms, pizza, sack lunches, and a truck drives around every morning spraying for bugs. This was my life during Teach for America training in Cleveland, Mississipi. There were several factors that distinquished this experience fromt hat of my childhood. The first being that I was surrounded by some of the most visionary and driven people. The second being that the stakes were high and I had a responsibility to the children I was and would be teaching, to help change their trajectory. This mean little to no sleep, little to no appetite, and little to no freetime. There was little time or energy to write about the day to day emotional struggles that I faced during these two weeks, but these two weeks were life changing. They broke me down and forced me to make a decision that had been long overdue. During these weeks I hit rock bottom. 

Sometimes it takes rock bottom to show you what you have been blind to. I hit rock bottom. Rock bottom was somewhere between crying myself to sleep and feeling that everything I'd worked so hard for made no sense for my life anymore. Rock bottom was quitting an opportunity of a lifetime because I was not prepared. Rock bottom was sorrow, pain, isolation, and hopelessness.

How did I get here? The girl that smiles 90% of the time and always chats joyfully. The girl who has a million and one people who love her. It didn't happen overnight, but the interesting fact is that it was revealed in a night. The revelation being simple, fear and insecurity had taken over the parts of me that had in the past shown so brightly. They had reduced me to a sad and confused young lady.

Fear is one of those tricky oxymoron's that is hard to navigate. Fear keeps us from running out in front of cars, drinking and driving, stripping down naked and running around in the rain (ok maybe this one would be ok every once in a while), and laying in bed everyday during those times when life pulls us downwards. Conversely, fear also keeps us from realizing our potential- fear is the voice in our head that says we will fail. Fear is the feeling that because one bad thing happened that nothing good will ever happen again. Fear cripples us, but fear can also drive us.

I had allowed the fears of the past two years to infest my mind and body. I was crippled by the haunting fact that maybe I couldn't change things, maybe I was as powerless as I had so often felt as a social worker or in my most of my personal relationships. Self awareness had granted me knowledge of this fear all along, but I was panicked and didn't know how to do anything positive with the knowledge. I instead escaped the fears by what I thought was a positive change, a new city and a new career. I'd still get to help the children that tugged at my heart so dearly, but I would be able to run from the past.

After several sleepless nights and the realization that I was incredibly per-occupied and therefore severely ineffective with my third graders, I broke down. I stopped doing my lesson plans and told myself I had two days to determine what I could do to fix the problem. For the first time in two straight weeks I ate a full meal, slept a full night, and went for a long run. I then tried to work on my lesson plans again, but the crippling fear overwhelmed my body and I knew that I had made a mistake. I knew that I wasn't in a place to help those of our society being held back because I needed to break free of my own chains. I told myself for the first time in a long time, that I could take care of myself and only myself. I wrote the hardest letter of my life, I developed a plan so that I would not end up homeless and unemployed myself, and I packed my bags.

I left at 9pm and drove 10 straight hours through Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. It was the most revolutionary journey of my life. I could feel the history and the stories of these roads. The stories of the people of the deep south, plagued by oppression and poverty, yet also filled with kind and good hearted people. It was as if the roads, in the darkness of the most isolated parts, were speaking to me. They were reassuring me that I would be ok, just as they had survived their histories. The roads also spoke a different tune. A tune of passion and controversy. They spoke of the people who constantly fought the odds, and they reminded me that I should never loose the fire that set me along the path I had led. They showed me that I must learn to balance the fire with kindness and never forget about or give up on myself. Around Atlanta, I felt I was home, and had nothing left to learn from the roads. At this point I almost fell asleep at a rest area, but I pushed on through the last leg, home to my beloved Athens and I slept for 12 hours through the day and woke up ready to face my next chapter.

If there is a song that sums up this chapter of my life, it would have to Imogen Heap's "Speeding Cars".

Teacher Face

As I begin thinking about transitioning into my new job in a few months, I can't help but be a little worried. As a foster care worker, I have had minimal time with my teenagers. After most encounters with my teens, I am left feeling as if I am the singularly most funny human being to them. Granted this is a very self important assumption that I have any role in their life or even merit thinking about. More that if these kids do manage to think of their goofy case manager, the first thing to come to mind is just this- goofy ;).

I've been told I'll most likely be teaching high school special education and so I'm guessing I will now have a class of at least ten teenagers. I'm baffled at the task of convincing them to take me serious. I have struggled my whole life to get most people that come into contact with me seriously, and convincing teens of this seems to be a daunting task even to the most structured and established teachers.

While I wrinkle my brow in worry over the anticipation of my new classroom, the worry is somewhat alleviated by a very humorous issue. The thought of being strict with my future students always brings two very humorous thoughts to mind. The first thought being the song "Teacher Face". During my internship with Teach for America, some corps members cleverly changed the words to "Poker Face" to "Teacher Face" along with some other witty lyrics I can't remember. As my brain starts singing "I'm gonna put on my my my Teacher Face.. my Teacher Face... ", my mind always drifts to a picture that the ever so talented Kyle Williams took of me when he suckered me and my roommates Erin and Devin into being in a Charlie's Angels themed photo shoot. So for all of you out there concerned about me teaching in the inner city schools of Memphis, TN, please picture this photo. I'm hoping it will leave you crying with laughter and squelch your worries, as it does for me! 

Basket of Emotions

The basket is beginning to fill up. I got the most monumental news I'd received in my entire life yesterday. I was offered the opportunity to move to a brand new city, where I know no-one and teach special education in an risk-school. I'm excited, terrified, sad, grateful, conflicted....

I've always wished I was one of those stoic people who show no emotion. The ones that drive me crazy because I'm often so perplexed at how to read them. I think these people are generally boring, but if I was this person I would not think I was boring. I would not such a roller coaster right now. I would also be essentially an entirely different person. It is my emotional side that draws me to all the good things I've ever done and wonderful people I've ever loved. It is my emotional side that makes me good at caring for people, encouraging people... I have, on less confident days, and in less freeing experiences, wished that this side of me would become more quieted by my logical side. As I've grown, I've realized that they are both integral parts of my being and I would be incomplete if either changed. Raw emotion without regulation or understanding can be dangerous, but when I use the two together, I am strong and able to make a difference.

The last two years seem to have flown by and looking back I sometimes feel that this is when my distaste of my emotional side started. I then realize that this is when my emotional side was taxed and stretched just a little to far. This has a been a period of breaking down walls and insecurities to allow me to build back up. A time of great challenges and growth. Growing pains if you will.

I'm not 100% what my decision will be, but I'm ready to continue growing stronger as I try to help put more good in the world than I take away. What ever the next step is, I'm advancing with simplicity with this single philosophy leading the way- pouring positivity into the world. I know I sound naively optimistic, much like my younger self, but this is the attitude needed to get through. This is the attitude that drove my passions and will drive them until my time is up.

Thanks to everyone who has taught me to spread joy because you have given me pieces of your joy and spread them to others as well.

Anticipation

On first thought I wanted to name this post anxiety, but for more glamorous marketing I chose anticipation (the socially acceptable cousin to anxiety). 

I'm sitting my fairly small bedroom (my queen size bed takes up about 90% of the room). This room has been my solace since August of last year. It has been my sanctuary, despite its somewhat lacking size. It has calm lighting and soft colors and is free of clutter or decoration. It is simple and it is a retreat. In this room I left behind the over sized antique room of my old home. The home that contained two very monumental yet powerfully shaking years of my life. A home rich with age in this world but also rich with age in my life. Age meaning that I aged in that room and felt bitter sweet about leaving the reminder behind and moving to my current location.

Now back to what I'm doing in this small bedroom that is creating its new memories as I do more soul searching and living in these new four walls. I'm laying in my bed, knowing that I will not rest tonight because I'm waiting on some important news. News about a new opportunity in my life. An opportunity to leave the last three years behind (in physical sense, but never in my heart and mind). I applied to teach for a program that goes into at risk areas. This would mean leaving my current world and all the people in my office I've grown to love. More importantly, this would mean leaving the cases that I've poured the better portion of 2 years into and becoming a part of the cyclical problem with child welfare. I feel as if I'd essentially be giving up on one aspect of child welfare to pursue one that I feel may be more alligned with my heart and more conducive to my sanity...

I'm left in utter anticipation... I'm attempting to calm my nerves with Chamomile tea and David Gray. This is helping but leaving me slightly depressed. I'm reminded that even if I am accepted into this opportunity, I will still have to leave a life behind and leave some very important people behind. Potentially everyone in my current life could be 2000 miles away in less than a season. This thought leaves me with a barrel  of emotions. A barrel of emotions I can't even begin to sort out at this time. I'm going with the philosophy that I will take things one step at a time. For my brain, this is nearly impossible. I'm of the disposition that I am constantly planning and anticipating and this is how I've always thought I've survived, yet I'm beginning to wonder if it is what has held me back.

Just writing this all out, I feel a little more calm, and yet only grazing the surface of the emotional basket that lies ahead. David Gray seems to fit the mood most perfectly. Lyrics always capture my emotions more clearly than anything I can every expunge through my own lips (or fingers in this case). Ironically the songs Freedom and Fugitive portray very different meanings. Fugitive makes me feel inclined to run towards the freedoms of new opportunity while Freedom leaves me back in the feelings of loss that I am anticipating if this choice becomes available. Maybe I'm just hopelessly looking for someone like David Gray to sweep me up, Sail Away With Me, and help all this confusion stop. If only life were a romantic comedy (I'm told that is why women are so screwed up and I'm beginning to feel this may have much truth).