Empty Space

I’ve had a weird feeling the last week or so, and there was nothing much I could attribute it to. It was a mix of nausea, exhaustion, a stomachache and an overall tiredness. It was at once a mental tiredness, an emotional wailing and a physical pain. It was all these things, and yet there was nothing much I could pin it on. I wrote about it, thought about it, ruminated on it, changed the diet around it, tried to walk it out and couldn’t get myself to cry about it.

And then it came to me: it was an emptiness. 

I’ve tried to write this blog post three times, and it hasn’t come out until now. This is unusual for me – usually I come up with an idea, toy with it a couple days, and write it in one fell swoop. My last post felt more like pulling teeth than writing, and this one is also not coming as easily as they usually do. The difference, I think, is that suddenly, out of nowhere, I’ve finished writing about what used to hurt me as if it defines me. 

A couple years ago, I wrote a post called “I Used To Be Funny,” about a shift from writing self-deprecating emails about traipsing through the world one mishap at a time into needing to take myself more seriously and writing about what I really thought and felt. Even sometimes when I wanted to write something funny, all that would come out is what you will find on my blog: deep introspection over what has made me tick, made me cry, and made me into the person that I am today.

But here’s what happened: nothing. Nothing happened, except that I had a conversation with someone who had gone through a lot more pain than I had, pain I couldn’t directly identify with because our lives are very different, and I realized that I didn’t want to engage this person based on our pain. Whereas usually I would listen to them and then break in with a similar way that I had hurt, I found that suddenly it wasn’t that I didn’t care to hear what he said, but I didn’t want to share it with him, or step into times in my life where I had felt the same way so that I could understand what he was going through. I found the thought of continuing the conversation as it was exhausting, so I changed the subject to something lighter. In doing so, I realized that suddenly, it wasn’t so important anymore: my past, the scars that I bear, the hurts I have suffered and the people who have suffered with me. Suddenly I realized that where there was once a need to explain myself in terms of my past and ruminate on it, today there is simply a desire to move forward, into whatever is waiting for me in the empty space when my need to explore what brought me here is gone.

Eleven months ago today, I arrived in Panama. I wrote a blogpost not long after defending my need to come here, explaining that I was not escaping my problems, rather bringing them with me so that I could look them over, one by one, and try to understand what they had to tell me. Obviously this is a work that is never done, but it seems that the specific hurts that I brought with me have now all made it through the line and are gone. I have looked up from my work and realized that I’ve done it: for now, and perhaps for a little while longer, my past can be safely tucked away in the past where it belongs, and I can now look forward into the future to see where I’m going after having determined with greater clarity what made me into me and who I am because of it, even if I no longer need to define myself by that information. 

It’s a little scary. I’m not sure what it will look like. The words don’t seem to come as easily here, not yet anyway, but I’m sure the more time I give this space, the more it will reveal itself to me in terms of who I want to be when I have put down all the expectations, taken away all my limitations, and moved on from what has held me back for so long. It’s a vast and echoing empty space, but it doesn’t have to be a scary one. There’s all sorts of room for growth here: for new relationships that celebrate this new person, for more time spent in the moment instead of reliving past moments, for continuing to feel lucky for the existence I have created here, not just as a shelter to weather an emotional storm, but as a place to enjoy the newfound person I have become. It’s been a rough journey, but an important one, and I’m ready for the next step: ready to explore this new empty space.

Love and vast empty space kisses

Morgan

Rewriting the Rules

I have suddenly and recently realized how much I internalized and followed a set of unspoken rules that in reality make absolutely no sense to me. Suddenly, I have the ability to think something, catch myself in the thought, and think, “Wait a minute, where did THAT come from, does it really serve me, does it have to apply to me, and have I actually found it to be true?”
And you know what, invisible audience? In a lot of cases, the answer is no.
So I made a list of 9 new rules that I’m going to strive to live by that make more sense to me than the unspoken and unconscious ones I've been buying into for so long; rules that haven't served me and have, in fact, made my life less fulfilling or much more difficult than it needed to be.

1. I do not have to work hard for my money.
Last week I wrote about how I don’t need to be so miserly with myself; that it does not actually serve me to deny myself simple pleasures and creature comforts in the name of cheap living. Another realization I’ve had lately is that working does NOT have to be hard. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that I don’t do my best when I do a job, but at the same time, somewhere I picked up an idea that it’s only worthwhile if it makes you sweat: if it’s long hours, a sacrifice of time away from things you really want to be doing. That’s just not true. Work can be fun and rewarding without being hard – it doesn’t have to be an all-consuming sacrificing mind suck.

There are actually more choices than parenthood or a career, or both, and “having it all” doesn’t mean having to have everything.
I don’t have to focus on my job. I don’t have to be a parent, either. I can have a completely blissful and fulfilling existence, living the very most of every single day and wringing the very life out of my life, without my life having to be defined either by my career or my family. I identify as a writer because writing makes me incredibly happy, helps me process and feels good, but if I never wrote a word that I wanted to make a living from, I could still be a writer, and I would STILL be a functioning, worthwhile part of the world.

I can be my own guru.
I do not have to listen to someone just because they speak with authority or are considered an authority. I can agree with someone’s message and totally disregard it because I hate the messenger. I can decide that a tried-and-true method is not going to work for me, and I can borrow small snippets of many different ideas to make up my own idea of what living a compassionate life of integrity looks like. I can discard any piece of any message that I don’t like. The most important part is that it resonates with what my gut is telling me. Period.

I get to choose my own priorities.
Even if I have nothing better to do; even if I’m totally bored out of my mind; even if I have a gift for whatever task you need done; even if it will only take me 5 minutes; even if I need the money and you’re offering it, I don’t have to do it. EVER. I don’t owe anyone anything: my precious time, energy, skills or abilities. This doesn’t mean that I don’t ever help people, but I don’t ever HAVE to help people, for any reason whatsoever. That means that when I do choose to help people, it’s because I want to, not because I’m manipulated, forced to, or adhering to some deeply unconscious idea that it is my duty as a member of the planet to sacrifice myself for others instead of helping someone out of my own volition and because I want to.

My worth is not diminishing as I age.
This one is pretty deeply ingrained and totally underground, but it’s true: every magazine, advertisement and unspoken mass media message has told me that my worth diminishes with the amount of wrinkles I gain, the amount of gray hair that grows, the more my boobs sag. That’s bullshit. With every day that I learn something new about myself, become more comfortable in my own skin and develop relationships based on what is important to me, the more beautiful I become. The people who can’t see that can’t really see me, and fortunately that invisibility can work to my advantage: I’m not on their radar, and I can spend my time with people who DO see me instead.

I don’t have to respect my elders if they don’t respect me back.
No one deserves the right to be a condescending asshole. It’s true that there are people who know more than I do about many, many things, but that does not give them the right to treat me with disrespect or talk down to me. Respect must be earned, and the idea that we’re supposed to politely listen to people who are older than us for no better reason than that is ridiculous.
On the flip side, I have many, many friends that are older than me. They have already gone through the things that I am currently struggling to wrap my head around, and yet they never tell me that my journey isn’t worthwhile or tell me how I should walk it. Instead, they are wise enough to offer me support, give me advice when I ask for it, and let me do the same thing that they did that brought them to where they are now: figure it out for myself.

I have a right to think the world of myself.
I once had a coworker named Murph. He was old enough to be my dad, and he had a daughter my age. He was telling me about her once – how proud of her he was, how self-possessed she was, and her ability to surround herself with people and boyfriends who valued her for the wonderful person she is – and I asked him what he had done to ensure that kind of self worth.
“All I did was constantly work to boost her self-confidence,” he said. “When you believe in yourself, everything else falls into place.”
If anything has become apparent to me in the last year, it is that I have been crippled by self-doubt. It is only now, after more than 30 years on the planet, that I have finally started to listen to my gut; to think that I might know better than anyone else what is best for me, and to strive to surround myself with people who see me for the beautiful human being that I already am. It feels a hell of a lot better than it ever did to have to humbly deny my abilities, play down my intelligence, interests or personality, to try to not be seen or heard so that the brilliant flame within me wouldn't burn anyone else. No more playing it small. It’s not helping anyone; it certainly wasn’t helping me.

There is nothing needy about needing people.
There is more strength in vulnerability, in opening myself up to others, and in asking for help when I need it than there is in silently trying to suffer through everything and do it all myself. It’s ok to admit that I am sometimes afraid; that I often just need a hug; that I am not an island. If I want human interaction, it’s because I’m human. There is nothing to be ashamed of about wanting to share myself with others who are worth investing time and energy in. There’s also nothing wrong with that being a very small, select group.

And most of all, I have the right to fuck up, over and over again, without having to think less of myself.
Some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned have come from situations that didn’t work – things that I thought I wanted but didn’t; things that I knew weren’t going to work but went through with anyway; ego trips that told me that I had to do whatever for whatever reason if I wanted to consider myself worthwhile.
For me, it’s become clear that striving for perfection leads me away from my humanity, and enlightenment comes in small moments, not in a bolt of lightning where all of sudden I know everything and can do everything right.
To be honest, I hope I always have something new to learn and discover about myself; otherwise the world would get really boring for an introspective person like me. However, I need to remember that just because I haven’t learned a lesson yet doesn’t mean that I have done something wrong – you can’t know what you don’t know, after all. This whole existence – all the moments of intense joy and soul-crushing pain, all the beautiful sunrises and dreary rainy afternoons – is part of the package. There’s no hurry. I will learn as much as I can in this lifetime – no more, no less. The only person I am striving to know more than is the person I was yesterday, and the only one I am now striving to be is the one I will be tomorrow.

Love and new rule kisses,
Morgan

Me, On Being an Empath

My entire life I’ve been told I am sensitive, and very rarely was it presented to me like it was a good thing. Within the last couple years, though, the word, thought and significance of empathy came to my attention; someone called me an empath and it finally prompted me to do a little bit of research about what it meant for me specifically.


Described by Psychology Today:  

Empathy "is the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling."

What I found astounded me because it described me so well. The layman’s term empathy means being able to feel what another person feels; actually taking it into yourself. This is different than sympathy, where you simply imagine what it must feel like to be or experience something from someone else’s perspective, and perhaps think about a case where you were in a similar situation and how you felt then.



Even though I had known the word empathy before, when I started to look into it and how it applied to me, the more parts of my life came into focus and made sense.

There are many positive parts about being empathic. In general, empaths are good listeners; they’re the people you can talk to when you need support and encouragement. They’re the type of people who are really good at finding the answer to questions like, “I want to surprise my loved one in a way that they would really enjoy. What would they like most?” Because an empath can feel what you feel, they’re less likely to go out of their way to hurt your feelings; they’re better at giving constructive criticism and being able to sandwich suggestions between compliments; they can be soothing and caring individuals and amazing therapists and healers.

In that sense and for an empath who knows how to deal with what they’re receiving, empathy is a powerful gift, much like acute hearing, good eyesight, or a great sense of balance. For the unaware empath, however, these “gifts” can feel like a nightmare that won’t end.

For most of my twenties, I compensated for my oversensitivity by being a rock hard bitch. When that started to dissolve, I became even more sensitive and, especially over the last couple years, I've found it tough to cope with how much I feel, not only with my own emotions but also emotions that I couldn't always attribute to what I personally was going through.

I never realized how tuned into everyone else I was until recently. I would even blog about how the volume seemed to be turned up on everyone else’s needs and ideas while my own voice was barely audible over the din without making the connection. In fact, I have realized that this is the reason I enjoy living and traveling in foreign countries. Even if I speak Spanish fluently, it is not my native language, and therefore I still have the ability to “turn off” my eavesdropping in public places. If someone’s speaking English, especially loudly or emotionally, I can’t help but understand, process and take on. Spanish-speakers, on the other hand, I can tune out, leaving me to a blissfully silent world full of noise.

The way that this has been the most harmful to me is when it comes to saying no or even saying what I think or feel to other people. I have realized that when I am having a conversation with someone, especially when it is obvious that they need something or are in pain, my first response is always going to be what they want to hear most, regardless of what those words – or actions, or jobs I agree to – will do to me, physically, emotionally or mentally. It is my first response because I have picked up on what they need, it becomes my need in the moment, and I want to fix it, partially because I want it to stop hurting them, but most especially because I want it to stop hurting me. (Note to self and others: this doesn’t actually work.)

It was also harmful to me because I would imagine how anything I wanted or needed would affect someone else, and hesitate to say it because I had already felt that pain for them and didn’t want to feel it through them again.

Before I knew this was the case, I had at least finally gotten to the point where I realized that I could not trust the first response that wanted to come out of my mouth when someone asked me for something. Instead of giving an answer in the moment, I now say I will think about it. Then I go home to my quiet space where I live alone and reconnect with what is best for ME underneath all those whirling emotions and ideas that I was caught up on in the moment. Almost always, the answer that reflects most what I want is different from the one that I would have blurted out in the moment.

I’ve been beating myself up for this for years. It is not ok in our culture to not have an instant answer; to not be able to negotiate in the heat of the moment, to not be able to state your needs when asked. It is part of a larger system, you see, which I recently learned was called the paradigm: (once again I knew the word, but never in context to myself) unstated yet understood rules about the way the world works. Or, as Merriam Webster puts it, "A theory or a group of ideas about how something should be done, made, or thought about."

Not only can I pick up on what others want or need, especially if I’m close to them, but I am also extra sensitive to this overarching idea of what I should be doing to be considered a successful part of the machine. This is why it has felt like such an uphill battle with each of the decisions I have made about my lifestyle, and why, over and over again, I have tried to justify myself and my actions: I have been trying to shut out of the ideas of what I should be despite the fact that it seems to be screaming at me in Dolby Surround Sound while I’m trying to hear myself on a cheap ass cell phone with a broken volume button.

A couple months ago, I found the Empath Community. Not only are there like-minded people there, but the woman who founded the site created a survival guide to turn down the volume on others and up on your own voice (it sounds ridiculously simple, but imagine two knobs. One says, “me” and one says, “others.” Turn yours up and the “other” knob down. Practice and practice. Also, create imaginary shields, and think about distancing yourself from anyone else when you need to connect with what you want.)

I almost cried when I started reading through the pages. Not only was I not alone, I wasn’t crazy for feeling this way, and I wasn’t weak for being unable to disconnect from what others wanted or needed, or what the culture as a whole was telling me. It had nothing to do with strength and everything to do with having the tools and believing myself when I realized that the feelings I had and the desire to fix things weren’t always my own. It’s as if my ego was trying to fulfill orders for comfort, help and support and handing them back to my body and soul without looking to see if it was more than they could handle.

There’s a single phrase that has come out of this that has become essential to me: “I believe you.” Before, I would sometimes get a pain in my chest and a panicked feeling that I could not attribute to anything going on in my own life. Now I know it’s someone else’s pain or panic I’m feeling, because I believe me when I know that instead of thinking that’s a crazy possibility. Instead of trying to unpack an emotion that isn’t mine, I let it go. When it seems like a task is small and no big deal and I should be able to handle it, but the little tiny voice in my head says no, I believe it. When my intuition tells me that even though all logic is pointing in the other direction but that tiny voice of mine chirps in to say that she thinks it’s not a good idea, I believe her. With each instance, her voice becomes a little louder, and my ability to hear her and ignore the other ideas and feelings coming at me gets better. Despite all this, I still tell someone who wants something from me that I need to think about it, because it’s still easier to hear myself when I’m alone, and I’ve decided that that’s ok. If I’m going to turn down the volume on the paradigm, I can turn down the volume on that idea too: instead of thinking I’m a failure for not being able to connect to how I feel in the moment, I can let go of that yet another self-worth-crushing idea, because the little voice that is me told me it was ok to do so, and I believe her.

Love and believable kisses
Morgan

What AM I Running From? Part 2: The Next Revelation

A couple days ago I went to see some local herbalists. I have been feeling worse and worse, and when I saw them at the Tuesday market, Elizabeth looked worriedly at me and said, “You look exhausted.”

“I feel awful,” I said, and almost collapsed crying in her arms.

I’m not very good at admitting that I need help. In fact, it’s not all that strange that I made it to this point before I reached out: in the last week I’ve been to three doctors, had 2 rounds of blood tests done and have now spent two hours with two wonderful women who offer natural remedies, all in the week that I canceled every plan I had because I can barely stand up without getting dizzy.
Anyway. I am tired, and I went to Elizabeth and Diane because the first set of antibiotics the doctors gave me for an eye infection didn’t work; next I thought they had misdiagnosed a bladder infection (I’ve had enough to know that I don’t have the symptoms) and the second round of antibiotic eye drops didn’t seem to be working either.

We got through my 10 page medical questionnaire, looked back at my history of antibiotic use, candida issues, general overall health problems and lab results and it seemed clear to them that 1) my immune system is shot from too many antibiotics, hence the ear infections, sore throat, cough and pink eye in both eyes in the last two months that will not heal 2) I am dragging ass because of a thyroid issue and adrenal system exhaustion and 3) I’m physically suffering from emotionally working through a lifetime’s worth of bad habits, defense mechanisms and fear.

We talked for a long time. They applauded what I was already doing for myself – I’ve been religious about the candida diet for a month now, plus in general I know enough to be eating and drinking a lot of the right sort of things to help myself – and it somehow came up that I have a copper IUD.

“You should take it out,” said Diane.

“I can’t believe they still are putting those into people. The toxicity is definitely not helping your system,” said Elizabeth.

I’ve had the IUD for three years. Before I had the IUD, I really and truly had nightmares of being a single mother living in a one-room shack, trying to comfort a baby, thinking to myself “Oh my God, this is real, this is not a dream and I cannot wake up,” and having no idea who the father was, let alone how to get support from him.

Since I’ve had the IUD, I haven’t had a single dream like that. I also recently heard a horrible story about an illegal abortion in a third world country that did not allow them, and after all the research about being on hormonal birth control for too long and how it can increase your chance of cancer, the IUD seemed to be a good option when I got it: no more nightmares, no worries about needing Plan B, the effects of long term hormonal birth control, broken condoms or even thinking about abortions or the emotional repercussions of having one.

Let’s be honest here, shall we? I am not sexually active enough that these are even THAT big of a deal, but when you travel as much as I do, finding yourself in rural areas in Catholic countries, the last thing you want to worry about is whether the resources available to you if you make a bad decision in the States are too far away to help you now.

At any rate, we discussed my peace of mind, other options, and the general state of my health and how it could be helped by my poor body not having to deal with yet another foreign object.
And then I went home, exhausted, loaded myself up with the tinctures they gave me and went to bed.

At 6 a.m. the house alarm went off. I’m house sitting and had been warned this would happen for often no good reason, which is what this was. Nevertheless, nothing scares the bejesus out of you like being woken out of a dead sleep…or a good dream, like the one I had been having, but didn’t remember until later.

At 3 p.m. that same day I laid down on the couch and suddenly it came back to me: the dream I had been having when the alarm went off for no good reason. I was looking at a little girl with chubby cheeks, and she was looking up at me over the edge of a countertop. She was my daughter.
In the dream, I was totally and completely content, and she was beautiful. I remember thinking in the dream that I was surprised I didn’t have a boy (a psychic coworker in a previous job I had predicted I would have a boy) but otherwise I just watched myself be totally content and interact with this wonderful little girl that was mine.

At 3 p.m., this memory of the dream set off huge alarm bells, internal this time but just as piercing as the house alarm had been at 6 a.m. Despite my exhaustion, I suddenly wanted to leap up off the couch and find the nearest sugar (which, due to the candida cluster in my gut, I cannot eat if I want any chance of getting better anytime soon); I thought about if there was any alcohol in the house (ditto for alcohol); I got a huge knot in the middle of my chest and found myself close to crying.

I stopped and looked at all this. What was this feeling, and where had it come from? It was not the dream itself that had caused the panic, but the thought that came with it: this could be my life. I could be looking at my future: I could be happy.

Something screamed NO! and tried to shut a door. The panic grew worse. Then it came to me: if I had it, it could be taken away.

This is so cliché it’s almost embarrassing. It is such a heard-of realization to have that I have thought about it many times before and always dismissed it. Nah, that’s not me; I'm not afraid of any of that shit. I am introspective enough I would know, I thought: if I was afraid of letting others get close because if they got close that meant I would be torn apart if I lost them, I would know it by now.

But I didn’t. Not in the way that hit me then. It was like realizing I had only lived in half a house, completely ignoring and unaware of the wall that blocked me off from all the best parts, and then suddenly one day I walked straight into it and panicked at the thought that once I started incorporating all the things that were on the other side, I would never be the same again.

And that’s true. And suddenly, I also know it’s true that I have purposely lived in a way that kept me cut off because it was easiest, best, because it hurt the least. This is separate from my need for alone time and quiet; there are plenty of people who have that AND have other people in their lives. This is separate from the many friends I have, but it does have to do with how much I am willing to open up to them. This has been something that was kept separate from me, because the realization that I was holding myself hostage was too much to bear.

Another realization on top of this one toppled onto me, and it rolled me right off the couch to cry on the floor in a ball. It was my grandmother. Somehow it became clear that I had gotten this idea from her death. I was 14, and Nana went in for a fairly low-risk surgery to remove a small cancerous spot on her lung – she had already survived having 70 percent of her liver removed due to cancer, for crying out loud – got an infection in the hospital and died.

And I still miss her. I was her first grandchild, and I was special to her. She’s the first one I ever remember baking with; some of my most treasured possessions are her recipes, several of which I have memorized, two of which I put in both of my cookbooks; in fact, one of those cookbooks is dedicated to her.

I don’t remember being especially devastated when she died, but it seems this idea may have stemmed from there: the idea that all you love dearly will eventually be lost to you, and therefore it’s best not to love dearly at all. That, and a lesson learned through her that cemented that idea: two weeks after my uncle, my grandmother’s first born, graduated college, he was racing a car on a track, lost control, regained it and was on his way back into the race when he turned his head to look behind him and was decapitated by a guy-wire.

I don’t mean to be dramatic, but that is truly what happened. I have heard the story countless times from my dad, who tells it without much emotion – he was 16 at the time – but each and every time, unbidden, I have thought of my grandmother, and the pain of losing the first child you ever poured your heart into, before his time and at the prime of his life, in a nightmarish and unexpected way.

So you see, invisible audience? Somehow it was hardwired into me: somehow and some way I began to associate the best kind of connection, intimacy and love with the inevitable pain of loss, before the intimacy was even there.

When I look back on the people I have let myself be close to, specifically the men I have dated, I have always been thankful that they chose to leave me, because ultimately and in hindsight it was clear that they weren’t right for me. At the same time, I never saw any other options besides them: it’s not like men have been beating down the doors to date me my whole life. What I never really considered, however, was that perhaps I didn’t even see them: that they weren’t even on my radar, that I wasn’t on theirs, either, because something in them picked up on “deeply and unconsciously emotionally unavailable” and just moved on without a thought, and I intuited “is someone I deserve and will be happy with; could eventually crush me to lose” and unconsciously turned away.

Jesus this is exhausting. I cried loudly and hard for over an hour, mostly on the floor, when I had this revelation. And then I got into a bathtub with a cup of naturally sweetened hot chocolate and laid there until the water went cold.

To be honest, invisible audience, I have to wonder if this is powerful or interesting to anyone but me; if you've gotten to the point that I have, where you wonder why you're still reading, because it seems the layers will never end and the cascading tears will never stop. I wonder at my need to write out loud, and whether it will always feel this way.

I wonder all that, and yet I know that writing out loud is the answer for me; even if all the traffic on my blog is spam traffic, even if it seems redundant and ridiculous to write this out into the internet when it's part of an important internal process, it feels important nonetheless. And therefore, if you've made it this far, I will simply thank you for reading, and I will keep writing all the same...for my own peace of mind, my own needs, and my own capability to process what I keep dredging up from the depths. Maybe what I write is helpful to you, but most importantly, know that the fact that you're reading this, whether you ever reveal yourself or not, is important to me.



Love and revelatory kisses,
Morgan

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

The Metamorphosis of the Rock Hard Bitch

In college, one of my roommates watched me blink back tears as I struggled to figure out why I hadn’t heard from the man I was dating – now I know it was my own fault, and in trying to get his attention I had inadvertently ended our relationship – and said in wonder, “Could it be, Morgan, that you’re not near as tough as you always make out yourself to be?"

Fast forward eight months or so, and my nickname had become Rock Hard Bitch amongst my fellow American exchange students in Spain, not because I was a rock hard bitch, but because all of them were surprised to learn how caring and sensitive I was underneath the rock hard exterior I showed when I first met someone – the rock hard bitch they had all originally thought me to be.

Anyone who knows me well knows what bullshit this first impression is; anyone who’s known me since childhood has likely exclaimed, perhaps more than once, “Geez, Morgan, you’re so sensitive.”

At some point, I started to make up for my sensitivity by presenting a less sensitive front: one that was rock hard, unreachable, impenetrable, invulnerable. As was the case in Spain especially, when I was as out of my element as I had ever been, I threw up those walls to protect myself and to get through the daily motions of trying to be understood and understand in an accent I was unfamiliar with, in a language I was not all that comfortable with yet, in a foreign country that was far away from the one where I had grown up – the one whose psyche had just been rocked by a terrorist attack. I was terrified, and I didn’t know anyone, so I did the only thing I knew how to do: I hid within myself and faked a confidence I didn’t feel. 

It was not the first time I’d been called something similar to a rock hard bitch, and it would not be the last. I always found the label amusing, because it was so obviously NOT me that I found no reason to be offended. I was even proud, because it meant that it was working: that I was presenting the strong person I had always wanted to be instead of the terrified unlovable child that I always felt like inside.

It’s been years since I’ve been called Rock Hard Bitch. In the past four years or so, I’ve been working hard on being able to show a more vulnerable side of myself; instead of needing to find reasons to bring others down or pick them apart to justify my own actions, I’ve been working on accepting my own humanity and the humanity of others. I have been trying to remember that perfectionism is the opposite of being human, and that perfectionism is a goal I should not strive for because it will mean striving away from the amazing subjective and varied existence of actually being a human. I have been working on this, and yet it seems that I still have a long way to go.

I gave my unfinished manuscript to a friend to read. This is a person I have shared many things with, whom I feel I have opened up to and often shown a vulnerable side to; this person is also a regular reader of my blog. When he gave me his feedback, he told me that – among many other wonderful things he had to say about my writing, things that gave me the strength to continue on when I had been vacillating on whether I should finish the damn thing at all – my book showed a vulnerable side of myself that he had never seen: the cracks, he said, in my otherwise well-put-together exterior.

Oh God, invisible audience. What have I done? What have I done by channeling that Rock Hard Bitch persona for so long that she still stands between me and my friends; my life; the person I am striving to be? 

Every day life feels very personal, very too close for comfort, very raw and terrifying to some extent. I do not walk around fearing a physical attack, but I do find that I walk around with earphones in so I can’t hear the whistles of the construction workers, I separate myself from many people whose needs feel like much more than I can bear, and I find myself spending time alone because it feels better than spending time with others that leave me feeling depleted. All this, and yet it is no longer a case of needing to be angry at those people; I do not blame them anymore for what they need from me, I have simply realized that I don’t have to give to those people and that it’s best to be away from that need. At the same time, I’ve been working on being more honest with those that I do value: showing that vulnerable side that causes me to burst into tears at the drop of a hat, because sometimes that’s just what I need to do. It’s presenting the gooey sensitive side of me and hoping to be understood, but not being attached to that actually being the case; instead, just knowing that the act of showing myself is important, not necessarily to others, but to me. 

It seems, however, that I am still a work in progress; that often I am terrified enough to throw up a wall and stand behind it without even realizing it’s there. It seems that even here on my blog I am not showing myself in all my full humanity, and you know what? It’s true. It’s true because my book IS much more vulnerable, otherwise I wouldn’t have struggled as much as I have in whether or not I should publish it. I say this before it is even done, and yet I find that NOT writing is worse: trying to hide that vulnerable part of me ultimately feels like a personal betrayal. And I can’t do it anymore, invisible audience. I can’t deny me any longer. The Rock Hard Bitch is tired of doing her job: tired of standing between me and the rest of the world. Although there is definitely still a use for her – not everyone or every situation is safe to be vulnerable with or in, after all – she is tired of working so hard with no time off. And I’m tired of letting her. So here’s to progress, and baby steps. Here’s to humanity, in all its imperfect and vulnerable glory.

Love and not-so-rock-hard kisses

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

The Pattern

I have a pattern. I’ve had it for years – probably since I was in Spain in 2001, and I found that I had to escape on a regular basis in order to feel normal, or, better yet, to feel anything but overwhelmed in the process of a year abroad that started right after 9/11, where I was trying to learn Spanish in Andalucía, where Spanish is not spoken, but chewed.

The pattern is recognizable and firmly entrenched, to the point that it was the introduction to my yet-unpublished book, Confessions of a Travel Addict, and also the introduction to this blog, which I created long ago with the idea that it would be the marketing arm of the book when it was published.
Over the years I have questioned the pattern, I have denied the pattern, and I have grown angry with those who asked me about it. “What are you running from, Morgan?” people would ask me. “Will it really help if you leave?”

Yes, god dammit. Even if I didn’t say it aloud, I would think it, angry that they even asked, and yet unsure as to why: why I felt I had to escape, what exactly I was escaping from, and how on earth to break the pattern at all, even as I saw myself play it out, over and over again.

The pattern is simple: go travel, rejuvenate, remember why I am so in love with life, remember the miracles, the joy of being in a new place, experiencing new things, meeting new people. Get to a point where I become comfortable with the idea of going home, and go. Take all that newly-minted enthusiasm and joie de vivre and try to apply it to my life; try to slide back into something that tells me what I am supposed to do and who I am supposed to be based on someone else’s standards, and slowly but surely begin to hate it. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Here are the subtle parts of the pattern that I did not realize were there: the need to put physical distance between myself and anyone who needed anything from me. Travel gave me the opportunity to reinvent myself, only socializing as much as I wanted to, spending as much time as I wanted alone, far away from anyone who might miss me, love me, or want me near them. It gave me the opportunity to simply walk away from people that were pulling the very life out of me, whether I wanted them to or not.

This is not to say that I am constantly surrounded by soul-sucking humans. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I am surrounded by people who want to be near me, who appreciate me and love me, and I have not been able to separate that genuine human interaction from the people who would take from me until I had absolutely nothing left to give. The part of my pattern that I did not recognize until now is that the answer is not in finding those who don’t need or want me in their lives, it is learning to stop giving when my quota has been reached.

It is rarely one person. Instead, it is a multitude of pinpricks in my life vest: each one is small and insignificant, until I realize that I am no longer buoyed. Instead, I am using all my energy to stay afloat, even as more and more come to me for the smallest measure of help; surely, I think, I have just a little bit more to give.

I have found something in Boquete that I have not had as far back as I remember. It is a desire to stay. As usual, I have found myself connected with people who pull pinpricks of my energy away from me; who do not understand that they can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and that the camel is old beyond its years and worn from taking on all those tiny straws. For once, however, I don’t want to leave. Instead, I want to gently move those people out of pinprick range; I want to say no, gently and firmly, realigning my life with what I want and need instead of realigning my surroundings again, again and again, in search of the perfect situation, where I am not required to give, and I do not have to take.

That situation will never come. There are people everywhere. Everywhere, people give and receive; give and take. The part of my pattern that was unsustainable was not in the leaving to rejuvenate, but in the thinking behind it, that my life would always be a chore, and that the only way to survive it would be to escape, regroup and come back. I thought the weakness was in needing to leave in the first place. Now, I see that the real strength lies in realizing when a life I have created is unsustainable; that the answer lies in carving out my space wherever I am instead of needing to extract myself and exist on the fringes, where I am safe, unnoticed, unneeded. Not only is that not actually a possibility, but it's a lonely place to be. By distancing myself from everyone, the ones who genuinely love me as well as those that would use me up, I am distancing myself not only from the unhealthy interactions, but also from the healthy ones, that would not be about taking from me, but that could literally feed me, my energy, my person, and yes, even my joie de vivre.

I am not sure if this seems like a huge discovery to you, invisible audience, but it has quite literally changed my world. It’s a little scary to think that I have created this pattern, and that the way out is to change not my location, but my situation. It means that I will no longer be able to blame others if I can’t say no; it means that I am responsible for me, and contrary to what I’ve done most of my life, I have to say no to others and yes to me.

You would think that, the way I’ve been treating it, “no” is a word much larger than it is; you would think that it has the ability to stop or start the universe. You would think that I somehow thought that my saying no when others wanted me to say yes was something that could bring the world to a screeching halt. The truth is, as egotistical and ridiculous as it sounds, that is always how it’s felt. In the past, the only time that it felt ok to say no was when I was completely at the end of my rope; when the only choices were no, or my own insanity. Even then, I couldn’t always choose myself.

It sounds ridiculous, unless you’ve done it. It sounds crazy, unless you’ve ever managed to catch yourself giving everything you have, everything you are, until you are shaking and exhausted, dizzy and spent, all because someone else wanted something, and surely, that one little thing wasn’t too much to ask of you. And perhaps that one little thing isn’t too much to ask, but on top of the rest of the requests, the needs and seemingly small pieces of straw that others want you to carry, there is enough to be too much. The answer for me, now, in these cases, in no longer to run, to fall back on the pattern that to this point has kept me alive, but to say loudly, emphatically and with no amount of kindness, speaking as much to myself as to anyone else, “Fuck you. That’s enough.”




Love and hell no 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

Choosing Me, Every Day

I have realized lately that I will pick up anything – absolutely anything – to keep from looking at myself. My favorite item is another person: all their wants, needs, fears and hopes. I want to help them, I say, I want to make their lives better. I want all of this, and yet often it comes at the expense of myself.
I have found that the best answer I can give when someone asks me for something is, “let me think about it,” because in the moment, I can’t get past their excitement or what they want or need from me. In order to connect fully with what is best for ME, I have to physically step away from them and into an empty space. I have to take some days to mull it over. During that time, I have to work pretty hard to separate what I think they want from me from what I want for myself. I find that in my head, I hear a lot of “yeah, but, they need you…they want you…they’ll appreciate you.” I find I have to catch myself, stop the train of thought and say, very firmly, “Yes, it would be good for them, but what about me?”
Recently I made the decision that I was going to wait for something better; that my choices in life are this, or something better. I made a decision in my head to be different, to act differently, to give myself more of my own time and energy, and I thought that suddenly the entire world would know that I have changed. They would know that I have given up taking on other people, that I have given up self doubt, that I have given up sacrificing myself for the good of others, although in reality no one is asking that of me; they all expect me to put myself and my own needs first.
I think this, and then I am blown away and thrown off balance when something is asked of me that does not align with these new decisions I have made. Until now, it was not actually clear to me that I have to make them again: again and again. That every day, when someone asks me if I want something that will not serve me, if I know it won’t make me feel good, I have to decide AGAIN that I don’t want it. That first time I decided it was a thought; the thoughts only go so far while there is no enticement. The actions kick in when I’m out in the real world, and people who know nothing about me – and ultimately, whose task in life is to take care of themselves, NOT me – ask me to do something that I don’t want to do, or that I know will ultimately not make me feel well.
At the risk of looking rude, ungrateful or disagreeable, I have to say no. I have to make that decision again: the one where I choose what I know is best for me, despite everyone else.
Of course this can apply to anything. I asked someone once who had almost 20 years sober if they ever still just wanted a beer.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course I do. The difference is that now I don’t act on it.”
I had this conversation years ago, and yet the reality of it seems to have just sunk in. I have to choose me, over and over again, before it can really be about me. After every decision that I make for myself, it will become easier to make another one, but that does not necessarily mean that people will stop asking me. Perhaps one day I’ll stop wanting to distract myself with the needs of others, but until then, I have to decide not to take them, regardless of if they’re offered; regardless of whether I want them or not.

Love and choosing me -- again -- kisses,
Morgan

The Me of Here and Now

I have a heart arrhythmia that is induced by exercise. It bothers me less when I’m in better shape, but I always have to be careful that I don’t overdo it. If my heart starts racing – even if I get it to stop –- it is more likely to start racing again.
Although in many ways I’ve felt that this hinders me, in a lot of ways it helps me make sure I don’t overdo it: if I push myself too hard, I know that there’s a chance I won’t be able to go any further. In that sense, I don’t do things a lot of people do: I don’t try running a half marathon without training, I don’t go on long hikes unless I’ve been getting exercise on a regular basis. Sometimes I have to stop immediately if I feel it coming on – like when I recently did the Quetzales Trail with a friend and I plunked myself down 25 feet from a rest spot in the middle of the trail and refused to move until I was sure that my heartbeat wasn’t going to start racing up to 220 beats a minute.
I should add that more than one doctor and cardiologist has told that my arrhythmia will not hurt me. It is benign, they say: it is uncomfortable, it makes it hard to continue doing what I’m doing, it makes me light headed and dizzy and makes it hard to keep up with friends, but it will not hurt me.
My body is really good at telling me when I’m at the same point emotionally, but I’m not as good at listening. Apparently, it sometimes takes a feeling of dizziness in order to get me to slow down, but that’s exactly what I need to learn to do: know my limits, my pace, and stick to them.
I realized today that there’s a voice in my head that tells me that I am not strong enough. This voice – amongst many others – looks at an opportunity, a person or a situation, and when my body screams, “No, please don’t! It’s outside of my capacity; it’s asking too much!” this voice says, “You don’t want to do it because you are weak. If you were stronger, we could handle this and everything else. If you were stronger, this wouldn’t be a problem.”
Jesus H., invisible audience. No wonder I struggle so much. Can you imagine? Every time you cry out for rest, someone hands you a baton and tells you to keep running? Of course you probably can. This can’t be a problem just I have, and yet the same voice tells me that I alone don’t have the strength to do all and be all to everyone.
I wish I were a lot of things. I wish I were stronger; that I had more energy; that I were one of those people who could live on 5 hours of sleep, who could sit up one day and decide to run a half marathon without wondering if it would kill them. I wish I found it easier to make decisions based solely on what I want, without including all the other voices and people in my head.
I wish all these things, but they aren’t true yet. It doesn’t mean I won’t get there with some of them, but it does mean that I need to stop making decisions based on what I wish I was and start making them based on who I actually am.  
I have realized that I am at a point where I have been before. It’s the point where I have been slowly but surely working to realize my dream, then I break through into an extra layer of fear. This fear tells me that I’ll never make it; that there’s no money in what I’m trying to do; that I’m CRAZY for thinking my life could be different. When I have arrived at this point before, I changed the plan. I started writing cookbooks; I got part-time jobs. I told myself that I should still be able to write what I want to write while doing all these other things to; things that will lead to financial stability; that give me benefits, that feel safer to explain to others.
The truth is, when I made these decisions before, it never turned out well. It killed my creativity, and I didn’t have the capability to both create and work for someone else. Call me weak, call inefficient, call me whatever you want, invisible audience, but having done it more than once, I now know that I am at a crossroads, and it’s time to make a different decision. It’s time to let the fear wash over me, acknowledge it, and go forward, not with who I want to be or how I wish I was, with mountains of energy and creative genius aplenty, but with who I am: scared, hopeful, and knowing that I have to guard my time and energy as if it were all I had, because really, it is.
I don’t know how it’s going to work out. All I know is that I want something different, and to get it, I have to make different decisions than I’ve made in the past. I have to choose me: the me that’s here now, so that I can take the small daily steps to make me what I want to be.

Love and today’s me kisses
Morgan

Asking for Permission

Not long ago, I sent an email to a friend, and referred to her as a writer. She replied and said she was flattered; that she doesn’t consider herself one yet. I replied back, telling her that of COURSE she was a writer. Of COURSE.

What she may not remember was a moment in 2010 when she and I had the same conversation, but I was on the opposite end. I was just about to publish my first cookbook, and I was trying to decide if I had done enough of the work – after all, I just compiled the recipes, most of them weren’t mine – to be called an author. And, if I wasn’t the author, what would I say on the last page about me? “About the Compiler”?
She did a search on Amazon, and came back with her results. I was an author. I may not remember correctly, but I believe that what she said was something along the lines of “You’re an author, toots.”

It took a lot to get there, but I now call myself a writer. I put it on foreign customs information; in profiles I fill out; I even put it down as my occupation when I got an eye exam before I left the States and ended up selling a book because of it. It took me a long time to get here, but it’s not the only thing that I am, and there are many things that don’t feel comfortable to call myself yet; one of them is author. It may feel like splitting hairs, but for me it has felt like an important one to split. I realized why not long ago: I am waiting for permission.

Permission. I have a degree in print journalism, I have written two books that are published and several more that are not. I write every day, and yet some part of me is waiting until I have published something wildly popular – like a bestselling novel – before I call myself an author. It’s a moving target, you see: no matter how much I strive toward a goal, I always find myself only halfway there, waiting for someone else to tell me what I already know I am.

This isn’t my only example. I don’t call myself a chef because I’ve never gone to school. I don’t call myself a Spanish teacher because I don’t have a teaching degree. I don’t call myself an expert in how to create the life of your dreams, because there’s no degree for that, and because I haven’t quite figured it out myself yet, even if I have started to compile the steps through years of trying to figure it out. I am waiting for permission, you see, and I have just stumbled upon a realization: I’ve been waiting for permission from the wrong people.

It all has to come from me, you see. I cannot wait for someone else to tell me what I am. I cannot wait for all the markers that apply to doctors or lawyers to be applied to writers, authors, life coaches, or adventurers. Even if I do all these things well, I have been shying away from calling myself anything that would cause someone to say, “Wait a minute, what school did you get your degree in travel addiction from?” and I would have to defend myself. No more.

My friend is a writer. I am an author, because I say I am, and because in the end, it’s me that has to believe it. I am also an inner voice coach, an adventure coach, a life of your dreams cheerleader, a Spanish coach, and a damn good cook. I am none of these things because someone gave me a certificate that said them; I am all of these things because I say I am, and I’m the only one I need to ask for permission to call me whatever I am, and whatever I want to be.




Love and authored kisses,
Morgan

The Four Stages of Change

“I had a gall bladder attack today – the worst one I’ve had in a really long time.”
I was sitting in a hotel lobby talking to my new friend Judy, a naturopath from the States who I was just about to make some phone calls to Colombia for. We trade a fair amount of things between us: Judy gives me advice on how to monetize my books and my website, and in return I give her Spanish lessons. I help translate for her, and she tells me the fastest way to get over the flu (lots of sunshine, rest and Vitamin C on the hour). I asked her about my gall bladder because I needed help: it wasn’t the first time I’ve had pain, but it was the first time in a long time, and it seemed to have come out of nowhere and taken me by surprise.
“Ok,” she said. “Do you agree that physical pain has emotional components?”
I thought back to the 40 pounds I gained without an ability to stop while I dated a man who sucked the life out me; I thought about the cough I had for 9 months while dating the same man. More recently, I thought about the stomachaches that had told me under no uncertain terms that I was in the wrong place, that had ultimately led me to where I was today, in a beautiful little house in the mountains that I love.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I agree.”
The gall bladder, Judy said, is tied to bitterness. It is also closely tied to the liver, which is tied to anger. An important part of healing, she went on, is to figure out what I have been bitter and angry about, either in the past or now, and work through it. Although she also gave me advice on how to treat the symptoms – lemon juice in my water, cutting back on high fat and greasy foods, etc. – it was her advice about processing emotions that really got to me, because it was something I had never heard before – related to my gall bladder, anyway.
I write in my journal every morning, so not long after that I sat down and thought about what was happening when I first started having gall bladder attacks. It was almost a year into my year of trying to get published; I had picked up a part-time job, and I was thinking a lot about whether I wanted to write my wine-pairing cookbooks. The money I had saved was dwindling, and my friends were telling me I didn’t have a job, even if I wrote, researched publishing and otherwise did something related to writing every single day. Bitter? I’ll say I was bitter. At the time when most of my friends were settling into career tracks and thinking about starting families, I was poor, struggling to follow my dream and yet unable to see where it would lead me. Sometimes I seemed to be the only one who believed in me, and even that wasn’t a guarantee.
I wrote about all this, and realized how deep it went; how many things I was angry and bitter about at that point. Unfortunately, though, the bitterness and anger didn’t stop there. I thought I had processed it, and within a week my gall bladder pain started to disappear, but in its place came something else: a huge wave of anger.
I suppose in retrospect it is inevitable. Before I came to Panama, I thought a lot about how to explain my need to be here, and lamented the fact that no one understood. Once I got here, I stopped worrying so much about it, and instead began to realize how wonderful my life could be when I followed my heart. Third, I started to focus on making major changes to the decisions I made so I would attract the kind of people who would lift me up instead of bring me down.
Really, I should have seen the next phase coming: the phase where I get absolutely pissed at anyone who’s standing in my way.
This doesn’t even need to be someone who is physically blocking the aisle to the grocery store, standing between me and the chocolate. I have found myself angry at anyone who doesn’t understand me, who doesn’t seem to hear me, who acts on my behalf when I have not asked for their help; the internet when it doesn’t cooperate; the men who want to date me despite their wives and girlfriends; the people who want me to volunteer, to translate for them, who don’t smile at me, or the men who whistle at me. Most of all, though, I am angry at myself.
I can recognize that it’s just a phase, but it’s just a phase the same way that you can assure a woman that the pain of childbirth will end, but that knowledge will not necessarily help in the middle of a contraction. I know in a logical part of my brain that one day I will not be as angry, and yet for now, it seems important to acknowledge this anger for what it is, and what it is supposed to be: a lowering of the bullshit bar; a sudden inability to take anymore shit from anyone.
Yes, I am over-swinging on the anger meter, but I refuse to try to talk myself down. I have done it for too long: placated, accepted, acquiesced, submitted. Although I am sure that some of you would not agree, believe me when I say that I have walked away from encounters countless times in my life, cursing my inability to speak up on my own behalf, and trying to quell my impotent rage.
I can’t do it anymore.
I cannot give anymore. I cannot give away all my energy, all my needs, because someone else has decided they need them. I cannot make excuses for others, and I cannot excuse them when they are rude to me, or thoughtless. After I put down the feeling I had that I must put everyone else’s needs before my own, I have found my own needs rising to the surface at lightning speed, spilling over the sides and flooding the room. It may not look different from the outside, but from the inside I am boiling, and I’m glad.
After my relationship with Mr. Add-40-Pounds ended, I wrote a blog post about how I wished that someone would stand up for me. I didn’t mention it there, but it was my ex-boyfriend that I wished would have acted on my behalf instead of his. Now, I am incensed that anyone would assume to know what I want more than I do; I am outraged at the thought that anyone else could make up my own mind for me. It may be just a phase, but it’s an important one: after all the grief, the fear, the questioning of whether I had enough strength to do it myself, I have found the answer: I do, I can, I will.
Don’t worry, invisible audience. I am sure that soon I will get my equilibrium back; that I will have less moments of envisioning I am slapping someone upside the head. What I hope as well, though, is that I keep a little bit of this edge, specifically the part that absolutely will not accept less than I deserve anymore. First I longed for it, then I found what it was, and now I am willing to fight anyone who will not let me have it. I don’t need to keep the archers on the castle walls, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m going to let just anyone into my fortress anymore. Instead, I’m going to choose more carefully; create a vetting process, and trust myself: if I know it won’t wholeheartedly serve me, then why on earth would I let it in?

Love and anger phase 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

There Is No Logic in Depression

Let me say first that I appreciate feedback. There is a certain amount of relief in writing to an invisible audience that I cannot see; that is mostly silent, that simply takes what I have to say and holds it in infinite thought and wisdom; to release my thoughts into the universe and know that it doesn’t matter what happens to them, as long as they are no longer stuck inside me.

As much as I appreciate the invisible audience, I am always surprised and pleased when I discover that someone I know has been reading what I have to say; even more so when they tell me that what I had to say has helped them in some way. While it always feels important to write – and I write every day, regardless of whether I share it – it is often lost on me how my writing is projecting me forward. Sometimes, it seems like the only thing it’s doing is keeping me from sliding backward into an abyss.

Very, very often, the people who read my blog posts tell me that they are impressed and moved by my courage and my ability to share such private thoughts. In this day and age of social network profiles, when everyone is privy to a lot of information about friends and acquaintances alike, it seems that there is a layer to many of us that we are unable to share. While it may seem that my admissions are courageous and deep, I always feel guilty when people tell me they’re impressed with what I reveal, and though I mean no disrespect, here is my deep down honest response: you have no fucking idea how much deeper I could go.

So here’s something that I should have written about a long time ago; something many people have come out to me about; something that should be shared much more often: depression.

I have only dabbled with this disease myself. By this, I mean that I am acquainted with people who suffer much more severely and often than I do. I mean that my depression is usually situational, and the cure for me is fairly simple: do everything in my power to get unstuck. For all of you who have ever wondered why I move around so much, why I can’t seem to stay in one place, why I can’t seem to endure certain situations: it is because I see a storm coming on the horizon, and the easiest way to ensure it doesn’t overtake me and leave me suffocating to death under a blackness that will not go away is to get out of the way before the hurricane arrives.

Before I get too carried away, let me say that there are many people who suffer depression. We are a hidden demographic; we fake it on our Facebook pages, we lie to our friends, we isolate ourselves so that we do not seem needy. Each time I have admitted my depression to someone, I have been told that I am not alone; that either this person has suffered as well, or someone they know has. All this, and yet each depressed person fights their own battle; they lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, wondering why the world is closing in on them and no one else. We choose not to share because it shows weakness; we choose not to share because we don’t want to burden others with a pain that, deep down, we feel we deserve.

This is has come up again for me lately because I find myself feeling the beginning stages of depression setting in. They are like icy cold fingers that brush at my back: I can’t see this creature, but it has begun to silently follow me. I have desperately begun the sandbagging measures to keep depression at bay: more exercise, better food, talks with friends who understand and can tell me I’m not crazy; that it’s ok to choose my own survival at the risk of looking stupid, flaky, unhinged. I am afraid, and not so much of change, but of the monotony that allows this beast to catch up to me. It drags me backwards, whipping away all positive thoughts of my future, tearing the flesh of optimism off of me, dragging me down into a pit of despair, clawing at the edges of a bottomless hole, willing myself to hold on; to not give in; to conquer this unseen evil that lays waste to the best intentions and feeds on my worst nightmares.

And as I said, I only dabble in this disease. My depression is not constant; I feel better today than I did yesterday. I can still get up and work; I still have motivation to help myself before it’s too late. I am lucky enough to recognize the symptoms and I hold the key to my own release. It doesn’t look pretty, it scares me sometimes, and yet I have a way out. Not everyone is as lucky.

For anyone who has never felt depression’s icy grip, let me try to explain. Depression is like a vacuum. It is not feeling sad; it is not feeling. The things that used to delight me become meaningless; the words that would anger me leave me at a loss for words, and the idea that I should care more than I do. Depression tells me that logically, there is no way out of my situation, because good things happen to others, not to me. Depression steals my desire, my passion, my belief in a greater good, and a belief in myself. It sucks at my laughter and washes out my ability to put things in perspective. Everyone else is right; I am wrong. Nothing I say is worthwhile. I cannot hold my own truth, or answers.

Depression is like a wet blanket that covers me, making it hard to breathe, dampening all my emotions. It makes it hard to get out of bed; it makes me feel disappointed when I wake up, because the oblivion of sleep is the only thing saving me from the pain of inaction.

So there it is for those who have never suffered from depression. Now, to everyone else: you are not alone. I have heard you, and I understand. I have been where you are. It’s a shitty, shitty place to be, and yet there are more people with you than you would have ever imagined. Depression is not something to be ashamed of. It is something you can get help with. It can end. There is no use in asking “why me?” but there is a lot to be said for “I deserve help.” For me, depression is kept at bay by following my bliss: even if it’s terrifying at times, I know that it is possible to feel alive. Exercise, good food, conversations with understanding friends help dissipate the illusion of inadequacy. So does not arguing with yourself when your heart tells you what you need. It may not always make sense, but then again, neither does depression. Depression can turn any situation into one filled with its own logic, and yet there is much in the world that is illogical. Optimism is one example. Even more importantly, so is love. 

This is not a cry for help. It is a cry for understanding. Before you decide what I need or what someone else needs to help them feel better, realize that some of their decisions that may not make any sense to you could be their attempt to stave off a personal black hole. After fighting with depression myself, it’s easier for me to notice the battle in others. Some people throw themselves into their work, some into helping others or exercise. Some people may look like they’ve lost their minds, and yet whatever they’re doing is allowing them to live another day and keep the depression at bay.
So here’s to a little understanding, and a lot of encouragement: here’s to letting each of us follow our own path, and trusting that deep down, there’s some part of us that remembers that we deserve the best, and we’re worth seeking it out.




Love and not-so-depressed kisses,
Morgan