To Barbara, A Year After Your Death

Dear Barbara,

It has been nearly a year since you died, on September 12, one day after the anniversary of 9/11, and five days before my 31^st birthday.

The day before you died, I made a meal for the ashram where we were both staying: squash enchiladas, a variation on the sweet potato enchilada recipe that I made up myself, and that I have served at various times in my life to convey community, comfort, and thanks. I made this meal for the ashram on the edge of the beautiful Kootenay Lake because I was about to leave, and I wanted to show my thanks that they had provided what I needed when I needed it: a place to rest after what had been a really tough year.

And then, in one single hour on a clear night, it became tougher still. I stood next to you as you struggled to breathe, willing the time to pass and also to stand still; willing the ambulance to hurry and simultaneously willing your throat to stop closing up in response to something you ate.

You knew you had severe food allergies; we all knew you did. There was nothing we or you could pinpoint that would have set them off, but it had happened all the same. I was the one standing next to you when you went unconscious; I told you weren’t alone as you gasped for air, and I told the people running in and out of the room trying to help that all you wanted was to breathe; that really there was nothing else that would make you comfortable as we hoped and prayed the ambulance would make it in time.

It didn’t.

In the days following your death, we talked in many groups and instances about you; about how you had already touched people with your gentleness and life; how you were so glad to be there, and how somehow you must have known; that you must have been ready to go on some level.

I listened to peoples’ opinions of this, and I stayed silent, even as tears slid down my face. The truth in that room with you was much different; never in those 45 minutes I spent mostly alone with you did you ever look like you were ready. You fought for every breath you could, and your fight for survival has stayed with me, even now.

It is something I had always wondered at: humanity’s struggle to survive; the desire to cheat death, when it is not actually possible: ultimately, it is a game none of us will win.

When others said afterward that your death reminded them how precious life I was, I nodded in understanding, but that was not the message I took from you. Instead I felt that what you had offered me was voice. At one point, you could not tell anyone that all you wanted was to breathe – not a blanket, not an oxygen mask – and when I seemingly read your mind and conveyed that, you gave me a look that momentarily did stop that clock.

I thought your message to me was that I could be a voice; that I was meant to help others by saying things that they could not say themselves. I thought I was destined to write a book that would facilitate others’ journeys; I thought my role was to take what I had learned and put it out there so that other people could gain strength and wisdom from it.

It is a year later, and I am something like 5,000 miles away from the ashram on Kootenay Lake. I am currently writing that book – editing it now, actually – in Panama, where I fled after realizing that whatever comfort I had hoped to find at home was not ultimately what I was looking for; that the people there that I thought needed my help were not only not interested and didn’t need my help, but that in trying to help them, I was ignoring myself.

It is only now, Barbara, that I think I really understand what our short time together was about. At first I thought I was the one that gave you something larger, something that I dearly wish every person could have: someone to stand next to them at the hour of their death and tell them that they are not alone. The gift you gave to me, however, was tenfold the comfort I gave to you: when I thought you were telling me to be another’s voice, you were telling me that I needed to find my own: that ultimately I was the one who needed saving; I was the one who needed to be heard, and I was the only one who could hear me.

It’s taken a whole year to figure out how deeply my own voice has been buried; how sunk in the mire I had lost my own needs. The book that was once meant to give others strength has instead given me strength: the holes I have wished to fill for others are being filled here, for me, with my own revelations and healing tears.

I am not sure if I’m in a different place than I would have been if you and I had never met, but I do know this: that I am a better person for what you gave to me, and what I gave to you.

Rest in peace, my friend,

Morgan

Mountains Out of Molehills

I have recently befriended some of my neighbors that live down the hill. Amongst their defining characteristics, they are all expats like me – although they hail from various parts of the world – they’re all men about my age, and they have fantastic potluck/dinner parties.

One in particular is a great cook, but the rest of them are great at asking if they can help with something: the first time I went over there for a Mexican cooking night, the dishes were scooped off the counter and washed as they were dirtied; the tasks I needed done were done without complaint and even with some enthusiasm, and the conversation – covering everything from living abroad to podcasts on NPR – was so enthralling that soon six hours had passed before I even noticed. I don’t think I’m totally off base at this point to say that these men are STRAIGHT. Sorry guy friends, but this sort of helpful, multi-tasking behavior is not necessarily something that I expect from you; considering that these men calmly discussed how other people in Boquete had assumed they were gay, too, I don’t think my astonishment is that out of hand.

Here’s the thing: every time I go to this house and my contribution is a dish I’m asked to make while I’m there, I bring a recipe. I bring a recipe because, despite the fact that I consider myself a “concoctionist” and therefore make things up as I go along for the most part, there is something about being surrounded by people good at what they do and comfortable with who they are that makes me incredibly uncomfortable.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. On my first date with my ex-boyfriend, we decided to make dinner at my house. He took on fish tacos, and I made a recipe out of my book, because I was too nervous to just throw things in a bowl and trust my ability to have it turn out for someone I was trying to impress. That night, Isaac asked me for my opinion on the pico de gallo he’d just made. It was delicious. I told him it might need more lime, because suddenly I had panicked, and couldn’t figure out if the right answer was to say it was great or to try and improve it. He very respectfully disagreed with me, and we ate it as is – truth be told, it was already perfect.

I remember telling someone about this first date later; about how insecure I had felt cooking with the host of a cooking show, even if that’s how we’d originally first met: because I had just published my SECOND cookbook, for crying out loud, and he had interviewed me for his show.

“Morgan, you’re one of the best cooks I know,” this friend said when I told her the story. “How could you possibly be intimidated by someone else’s cooking?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, because of how I’ve found myself feeling in the presence of my neighbors. It helped that that first night we started discussing how one of them – the really fantastic cook, actually – had healthy enough self esteem that anyone could tell him pretty much anything about himself, good or bad, and he would simply register the information without tying it to how he felt about himself, for better or for worse. Tell him he had just made the best batch of carnitas ever, and he’d probably agree with you. Tell him that you thought he’d overcooked the steak, and he’d shrug his shoulders and move on.

 I am not like that. In fact, I have found the reason that I often feel so uncomfortable in the company of these men is because they expect nothing from me but my friendship: I do not have to be the best cook there – and to be honest, I’m not – I do not need to wow anyone with all my travels abroad, because they’re just as well-traveled as I am, and I’m not even the only one fluent in Spanish.
And you know what? This is really scary for me. If I’m not impressive to someone, then what am I? If I can’t offer something to them that they don’t already have, how could I possibly be worth anything at all?

I know how ridiculous this sounds on a very basic level. I am not totally devoid of awareness of what I can offer to a new group of friends in terms of my personality or my characteristics. However, it’s brought up a very important issue that I had already been working on: if you take away or minimize my accomplishments, I struggle to believe I’m worth anything.

The second summer I lived in Mexico, I had a conversation with a woman who pointed out to me that even lazy people deserved love. My immediate, visceral response says everything: “NO,” I thought, “No, they don’t.” That means that somewhere in there, somewhere not quite hidden anymore, I don’t feel like I’m worth love if I’m not accomplishing something. If I’m just there to enjoy myself, if my only role is to be me, to know that I am worthwhile regardless of what I have or haven’t accomplished, I feel adrift and unable to find my footing. If I’m not something to someone else, I often feel like I am not anything at all.

Thankfully, aside from eating delicious food and having fun interesting company, my time with my neighbors has become good practice. I feel uncomfortable, but not necessarily in a bad way: I feel uncomfortable because I’m trying on a new skin in their presence. It doesn’t quite fit yet, but like some of the best shoes I’ve ever owned, I have to break it in before it will truly feel comfortable. As I said last week, if I want my life to be different than it’s always been, I have to do something different than what I’ve always done.

So here’s to different; to growing pains, and to new friends who need nothing more from me than me. Most importantly, here’s to being comfortable with that.




Love and still uncomfortable kisses,
Morgan

A Year in Review Part 2

Yesterday I wrote a little bit about what was happening a year ago, and how it affected me. I included a letter that I wrote to my dad, and I got an amazing response from some of you, invisible audience, who chose to make yourselves visible to lend support, encouragement and your own stories to my family and me. Thank you.
I talked a lot about then, but very little about now. Now, as I said, I am living in Panama, writing a book. The actual process of writing – which brings joy and meaning to every single day here – is helping me to unravel the things I have been through over the last year, to realize what part I play in my own story, and how my role needs to be different.

Selfish. It’s a word that I have to relearn, in a new context. Coming to Panama felt selfish. Going to Canada last summer felt selfish. Doing things that I need to do, regardless of what others want and need of me, feels selfish.

And they are. Making decisions based solely on what I want and need is a selfish act. My mistake is not in admitting to being selfish, but in considering selfishness to be a bad thing.

I cannot take care of others if I have not taken care of myself first. It is not my job to be a martyr, to give and give until I have nothing left. There is only one person responsible for me and my ability to take care of myself, and that is me. Not only can I not expect others to do this for me, I shouldn’t. It’s not their job, just as it’s not my job to take care of anyone else at my own expense.

In my original letter to my dad, there was a line that I removed when I posted it on my blog.

Originally, I wrote:
“I know my role, but I want you to know: if it were in my power, if I could change it, fix it, take it away, or even take it upon myself, I would do it. I would not hesitate for a single moment, if it meant you would never wake up depressed again.”

I took out the line first because I realized that I have learned something essentially important in this last year: that it is never my job to take someone else’s experience from them, no matter what that is: depression, sadness, or even joy. Once I started thinking about it, however, I realized that I did take it upon myself.

I have been told many times in my life that I am sensitive, too sensitive even. It’s true: I am sensitive. I can also feel others’ pain. Part of the reason that I felt I had to leave last summer was because I felt Dad’s pain so thoroughly that I started to get depressed myself. I found myself reflecting his symptoms back at him, and struggling with them, too. Recognizing this has been a huge step for me. I can let myself get flooded so much with someone else’s feelings or emotions that I start to feel them myself, whether it’s panic, fear, depression, or even enthusiasm or joy. Realizing this has made me realize that there is another possibility: I can pick up on someone else’s state of mind, and just let it go. I don’t have to take it on.

There’s a more important lesson that has come out of this, though. When I read through my letter to my dad and found that line I had written in October, I realized that I had taken on his pain, and it didn’t lessen it for him at all. Instead, my action doubled it: I could take it on myself, but that did not diminish what he felt. I was sharing it with him, but not in a way that lightened the load. I tried to sacrifice myself for him, and instead caused both of us to suffer instead.

This is what I’m here to learn, invisible audience. This is why the book is not finished. My entire life I have been picking up on the people around me, and thinking it was my job to fix it, lessen the pain or heal someone’s wounds, without realizing that I was not actually helping them. All I was doing was hurting myself so we could stand next to each other: both in pain, both bearing open wounds; theirs legitimate, mine self-inflicted.

I need to say here that, despite all the soul searching I am doing, despite the sometimes tough days that I have when I realize that I have inadvertently been making my life much harder than it needs to be, I am incredibly grateful, and ecstatic to be figuring this out. I love where I am living and what I’m doing, and I am grateful for the chance to do it. So please, take any part of my writing that appeals to you or helps you, but don’t for a minute think I am suffering in my revelations. I am here to learn something, and I’m learning it. When I look around, I literally see rainbows, I watch lightning storms roll in and cause the lightning bugs to blink furiously in response, I go for walks up dirt roads lined with fragrant pine trees, and I stand on stages, looking out into darkness, and hope that my performance touches someone. It is not always an easy existence, but it is a fulfilling one, and I am infinitely grateful to be having it, because it’s just mine. All the feelings I have around it are – finally – just my own.

Love and all my own kisses
Morgan

Sex, or Something Better

Author's note: I could write a whole blog post on the process it took to decide to actually post this on my blog. At first I just sent it out to a handful of people via email, but somehow it didn't feel right to do that, for a few reasons: 1) Like most humans, sexuality is an important part of who I am, and I know the struggle I reference in this post is not something that only I have dealt with. 2) I have found that the fastest and easiest way to realize that I am not alone is to voice the reasons that I feel alone, and therefore open myself up to the possibility of hearing others tell me that they feel the same way. 3) There is nothing authentic in hiding this part of me. If I'm going to write a book that is all about me and my life, I have to practice showing all parts of myself, including the most vulnerable parts. It's a practice, and I'm practicing. 

All that being said, WARNING: Adult Content. If you prefer not to think of me as a sexual being, I suggest you don't read any further.

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“Morgan, can you please take off your sunglasses and look at me?”

I shook my head, snapped my wallet shut and got out of the taxi. I busied myself pulling my groceries out of the back seat, but I made the mistake of looking in as I did – right into the liquid brown eyes of Irving, a young cute Panamanian who had just asked me on the bumpy ride down my driveway how long it had been since I last had sex.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I had said, staring out the window at the mountains surrounding my home in the mountains of Panama. I was uncomfortable, and yet I was the one who had brought up the conversation.

The last time I called Irving to drive me home, he showed up with a woman in his front seat – a possessive, jealous woman who had her arm across the back of his seat, creating a wall. She didn’t say a thing to me or my friend Jemma, and Irving, usually so talkative, said nothing to me either. We rode in silence until I started up a half distracted conversation with Jemma, and tried to pretend that there wasn’t enough tension in the car to cut with a knife, or perhaps, more appropriately, with a Panamanian machete.

I had just finished telling Jemma about the Panamanian taxi driver who had a crush on me and had recently asked me if he could bring over a pizza sometime to eat on my deck. When he showed up to pick up Jemma and I with a woman in his front seat, I wanted to laugh. It made me feel better, actually, because I really thought he was a cute "kid" – he’s 24, I’m 31 – and I enjoyed getting cheap rides and talking to him, but there was nothing more I wanted. I thought that would be the end of it – that this woman, whoever she was, would put the kibosh on him giving me rides for discounted prices. She was definitely possessive, and he was cowed in her presence.

The next day I got a text, that for fault of the Panamanian cell service, arrived 12 hours late.

“Hey, I can still give you a ride, but I wanted to let you know that I have to pick up the mother of my daughter (read: baby mama) and take her home.”

Aha. I wrote back.

“Just got your message. She seems to be a lot more than just the mother of your daughter. Thanks anyway for the ride.”

He never got it, so he says. Even if he had replied, I didn’t figure out for a week that my message inbox was full and that I wasn’t receiving new messages. Then, yesterday, he sent me a message.

“Why haven’t I heard from you? You don’t need rides anymore?”

So I called him to take me home after a grocery run. I brought up the subject of the woman in his car.

“That’s why you haven’t called me? Because of her?”

“I figured it would be a bad idea. She seemed incredibly jealous.”

The conversation progressed. I told him that either she didn’t know they were only friends, or that he was still sleeping with her. He assured me that the latter wasn’t the case. He asked if I would act the same way in her situation, and I said no; that it showed a lack of trust. She obviously didn’t trust him, and that if they really were just friends and co-parents, that she didn’t know that.

What I should have said more clearly is that she seemed the type that would blame the woman and not Irving if something occurred that she was not ok with...even something as simple as regular rides home in his taxi.

Somehow the subject of friends with benefits came up, or, as they call them here, “friends with rights.”

And of course, the conversation turned to sex from there.

“How can you stand it, living up here all by yourself? Don’t you miss it?” he asked.

“Miss what?”

“Sex.”

“Of COURSE I miss it.”

“So what do you do?”

I gave him a look, that in retrospect he probably couldn’t see through my sunglasses.

“What do you think I do?”

At first I didn’t understand what he said, although the word is basically the same in Spanish. Perhaps I didn’t want to. Suddenly we had crossed a line I wasn't sure I wanted to cross.

“You masturbate?”

“Yes. Yes I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well congratulations,” I said.

“It’s normal, everybody does it,” he said.

“I’m glad that’s true in Panama, too.” I said.

By then we were bumping down my driveway, and he asked The Question.

“When is the last time you had sex?”

Oh God, I thought. It’s been so long. I tried not to wail. I tried to pretend it wasn’t an important question; tried to pretend that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t lay in bed at night, wanting not just sex but for someone to hold me; to run their hands down my bare arms and take up some of my space in the bed. I tried not to think about it, and I answered as breezily as I could.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“A long time, huh?”

“Yes. Too long.”

A pause.

“Why are we even talking about this?” I asked.

“I know. Talking about sex turns me on.”

“Exactly. Let’s stop talking about it.”

He pulled to a stop in front of my house. He asked me something else about sex, I don’t remember what, but suddenly I realized I was really close to inviting him in. I realized it at the same time that I realized that I didn’t want to, for no reason I could fathom in the moment. I handed him his money and he gave me change.

“Morgan, what’s the matter? Will you take off your sunglasses and look at me, please?”

I got out of the car. I stood with the back passenger door open, and talked to him through it.
“I can’t be that woman.” I said.

I had to stop and look away. He was looking at me with something more than naked need. He was looking at me like he really saw me for what I was: a mature woman, with needs, damn it. A woman who needed someone to LOVE her, for crying out loud.

I looked back at him.

“You have things that you need to figure out with your ex-girlfriend. You are either more than you say you are, or at the very least you are still sleeping with her.”

“No,” he said. “No, I’m not.”

“There’s something.” I said.

By this time I had grabbed all my bags out of that side of the car. Instead of reaching in further to grab my backpack and risking the chance he would touch me, I went around to the other side and opened the door behind him. He reached back and held it open for me.

“There’s something you need to figure out with her. I don’t want to be that woman – I can’t be that woman.”

He interrupted me.

“What?”

“Can I come inside so we can talk about this?”

“No, because I know the real reason why you want to come inside.”

“You don’t want to have sex?”

Of course I do. Of course. I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t even really allow myself to think it. Of course I want your skin sliding over mine, the rasp of your tongue on me. Of course I need this, of course I am not built to be an island.

Of course I want this, I thought, but not with you.

“I can’t be that woman,” I said again. “I don’t want to be that woman.”

He stopped twice to yell something at me as he backed out of the driveway. He sent me three texts in succession: all this talk has made me horny; I hope you won’t stop calling me because of this; I’m sorry. I didn’t answer any of them.

Instead, I tried to decide why I had said no. It took awhile, but I realized the truth in what I had said to him, and that I had left out one part of the sentence: I don’t want to be that woman anymore.

As far as I know, I have never dated a married man, although there was one who might have gone back to his ex-wife before he officially broke up with me. I have never been a mistress, and yet I have often picked someone who offered me less than what I was worth. As much as my skin was crying out for a man’s touch, as much as I was thinking of booking a second session with a local massage therapist/acupuncturist purely because it felt so good to have a man’s strong hands on my back; as much as I took the bus sometimes simply because the money taker’s feline grace made me want to take my clothes off and he called me his “queen,” I am no longer ok with accepting less than I deserve. I am no longer ok with taking what’s there instead of waiting for what’s better. I am no longer interested in what will suffice, I am interested in what will make me sing…or scream in ecstasy.

I was sitting outside in the mist after he left, and I finally realized what had stopped me.

“Something better,” I said out loud, to my little quiet yard, my casita, the thunderclouds, the chirping birds.

“My choices are this, or something better.”

I got up and went inside, aware that I had just made a choice, and my choice was different than any choice I had made about men so far. I chose to wait for something better.

Love and better than sex kisses,

Morgan

You Can’t Know What You Don’t Know

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Last summer I was working in the kitchen at an ashram in British Columbia, and I got put in charge of hard boiling a bunch of eggs. Someone explained to me how to do it, but I misunderstood, and basically didn’t cook them long enough, then didn’t test one to see if it was done. All of them came back to us from the guests, soupy and raw.

Every time someone mentioned those damn eggs in the kitchen after that, I would leave the room crying. I don’t eat hardboiled eggs, so I’d never made them before, and since I thought I was doing it right, it didn’t even occur to me to crack one open. It was supposedly a fool-proof recipe, but I didn’t do one vital step: put the eggs in the water first, THEN bring it to a boil; once it’s boiling, set the timer for eight minutes.

I beat myself up for days, and beat myself up again whenever we were having hard-boiled eggs and the subject of the raw batch came up. I was much harder on myself than anyone else was on me: the cook in the kitchen that day took responsibility and forgave me; the person in charge of the kitchen was surprised when I brought it up as something that I was still mortified about months later. I was hard on myself the way that I have always been: I was beating myself up for not knowing something that I didn’t already know.

Yes, I should have tested an egg. However, the bigger problem is not even what happened, but how I continued to berate myself for not knowing something I had never been taught. It seems that even though I learned how to hard boil eggs, I am still working on the bigger lesson: accepting that I can’t know something until I learn it, and that  sometimes it’s not an easy lesson.

For years I have been beating myself up for things that I could only learn through experience: that I am not happy in 9-5 jobs; that I need more space than most; that I can’t speak fluent Spanish until I’ve misspoken and embarrassed myself over and over and over again. However, the biggest one that I have learned recently is that I cannot know what the right living situation is until I’ve tried it.

I am getting ready to move for a third time since coming to Panama. For various reasons the places that I have moved into have not been the right places. The hardest part about this for me is that it seems like a great idea when I am planning it out, and yet something isn’t right when I start to settle in. If I were the only one involved in these decisions it would be easier, but it tears me apart to let someone else down. The same thing happened when I went back to Wenatchee after spending the summer serving undercooked eggs to yogis in Canada: I thought Wenatchee was where I wanted to stay, until I was there and I realized it wasn’t.

This ties into a bigger realization that I have had that I try to plan for every eventuality in advance. Although sometimes this can be helpful – like carrying jumper cables in a car – sometimes it limits me, because I am always planning for the worst possible scenario. It limits me because I will only enter a situation if I can guess the outcome, then I beat myself up if the outcome is not one I predicted, and have made plans for.

I miss out on so much this way, invisible audience! How can I fully step into the adventure I am living here if I expect myself to know in advance what I want, when I haven’t ever been in this situation before? How much do I miss if I’m not willing to let myself learn the process without judgment along the way?  A lot. The answer is A LOT.

A friend’s mom told me once that there is a concept in yoga called neti neti. Although when I look up the actual meaning it’s not exactly what I understood when it was explained to me, I nevertheless took much comfort in the original explanation. She told me that neti neti means “not this, nor this;” that the only way to find what I am is by figuring out what I am not.

This is most likely a life-long process, and yet it applies first and foremost to today. Today, I know more than I did yesterday about what I want and need. Today, I am choosing to use that information to build a life that feels comfortable for me. Today, I am working on not berating myself for picking out a brick for my home and hauling it all the way up the hill to put in the foundations only to find that it doesn’t fit. Instead, I will be grateful for the knowledge that the brick gave me, and know that it’s all part of the process of learning to build.

Love and learning kisses

Morgan

Time: All We Have; All It Takes

 

Hello invisible audience,

I’ve been meaning to write, but the things I want to write about are all the same, and I don’t want to be accused (even by myself) of beating a dead horse. Nevertheless, you are invisible and I have been pondering quite a bit lately, and I find that there are a couple things that I need to get off my chest – again.

One: time. That precious little gem that is really all we have. The one thing that we bargain for, that we trade money for; that we use to buy possessions. How many hours of work is my car worth? How much of a day am I working to pay for my phone bill? How much of my precious commodity am I trading in now in the hopes that the money I make will support my leisure time in the future?

That leads me to pondering number two: why do I worry so much about what others think about how I spend my time, or where? Even more important, why do I think others are even interested in how I spend my time? Yesterday I told my mom that I felt pressure to conform: pressure to want the things so many people seem to want, or already have: stability, 9-5 jobs, company-paid health insurance, houses, kids. “But, you don’t want that,” she said, looking at me with a puzzled frown.

It’s true! I don’t! So why the heck am I constantly berating myself for not wanting these things? It is related to another one of Mom’s statements. “I hope someday you find somewhere that you really like and want to settle down and stay there.” I wanted to hang my head in shame, not because she said it, but because I constantly catch myself thinking the same thing. Yes, that would be great. It would be great if I wanted to stay in one place. It would be great if I wanted a life that was readily accessible to me without any sort of social clash. If I could convince myself despite what my soul is shouting at me, what I am yearning for, that my happiness is found in a house with a yard and a job with x amount of weeks of vacation a year and a benefits package, I WOULD HAVE IT ALREADY. I can’t. Each time I get settled into that groove, I feel more unstable than when I have no idea where I’m going next. I feel hemmed in, fenced in, terrified and depressed. I feel less alive.

I’ve been reading a book that makes me feel guilty about this. You can change, it tells me. Any time that you say you can’t do something, you’re subscribing to your own limited behavior. Except I’m not. I’m trying to buck a deep trend, and move on. I’m trying to let go of a lifetime’s worth of shoulds and have to’s and live authentically, just for me. And God damn it, it’s harder than it looks.

In the soul searching I did this summer, I realized first that I had been listening to a lot of what I thought other people wanted or expected of me. Not even what they said out loud, but what I thought they wanted me to be. This was a big step, but the bigger and scarier one was when I realized that I had been welcoming these impressions, because I could use them as excuses. I kept trying to fit myself in the box because it was easier to complain about how I felt different from inside of it. I have tried to live a life of responsibility and fun based on other peoples’ definitions because it was easier than having to admit that I found nothing they did fun or rewarding. And that leads me to horse-beaten point number three: I got myself here.

And just like I got myself here, I am the one that can get myself out. Over-stated point four: I have to choose to be authentically me, not just once, but over and over (and over and over) again. No one can do this for me. No one else is going to come to my rescue and tell others what I want and need. The only way to meet like-minded people is to continue living and know that my lifestyle will lead me to them. They’re not in the box, so why do I keep looking for them there?  Not only that, but why am I focusing on people in the box when I have so many more friends that are bucking the trend in their own way?

There’s really only one answer: time. I am going over the same things in my head and revisiting the same mental real estate because these realizations are still new and they haven’t quite sunk in yet. I am still in the phase where I am unsure about what I’m saying, no matter how good it feels. At one time I didn’t know anything about writing a recipe; now I could teach a class about it if I wanted to. In between then and now, however, time passed, I learned some things, and I gained the necessary experience to feel confident that I know what I’m talking about. I’ll get there with these poor dead-horse points, too, invisible audience. All it takes is time.

Love and time-filled kisses,

Morgan

P.S. No horses -- dead or alive -- were beaten in the writing of this post.

Asking For -- And Accepting -- Help

It has only recently occurred to me how hard I have made my life by refusing to accept help when it is offered to me.  I have realized that over the years I usually take the hard, uncompromising road of doing it all by myself. Whether it was moving everything I owned alone – I have dragged a 100-pound handle-less trunk countless times across lawns on a blanket because I can’t lift it – or refusing the gift of a paid dinner from a friend, I have been ungrateful for the gifts that were offered to me in favor of being independent.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s a lot to be said for being able to do things on my own. At the same time, there is a lot more to be said about not holding myself back. Often, independence becomes a guise for shooting myself in the foot. If the answer comes to me in the form of someone offering me a break, there is no need to run the other direction.

Not only would I refuse help, I would run away from it. It’s not only ok to need help, it’s important to take it when it’s offered to me, because it shows I'm grateful for what I’m receiving. 

I am grateful for what I’ve received. I have found that the more I profess my gratitude, the more I realize I have to be grateful for. I am immensely grateful for the lessons learned, especially the ones that include being offered help, and taking it. Acceptance is worth a thousand words. Admitting that I am worth the help being offered – that I don’t actually have to do it alone – is worth a lot. 

I am not alone. I am surrounded by people who love and support me, and they are the ones I need to focus on, instead of the ones that I’ve let into my head to tell me that I’m doing everything wrong. Although those people are actual people I know, the conversations I have with them have never actually taken place. Instead, I have begun inviting in the actual conversations I’ve had: the ones where people tell me that I’m not alone, that I’m an inspiration even when I don’t feel like one; that I am unique, loved and that my dreams can become a reality. When I focus on those words, the entire world opens up to me. 

I will no longer leave the tools I find along the way behind, insisting that I must build them myself. I will no longer forgo shelter in the name of independence. I am grateful for the friends and family that have shown me such kindness, and I am ready to use it, just like any other tool, to make my path that much easier to forge.

Love and grateful kisses

Morgan