It Will Only Hurt for a Moment

As I lay on the couch, cocooned under a light blanket, in the throes of shivering feverish shudders, I argued with myself about reaching up from beneath that shelter to grab a heavier blanket. I wanted it so badly; it was draped across the top of the same couch, yet my fear of the intensely painful symptoms resulting from any movement, stopped me. I argued, justified, and taunted until finally, I just did it. New waves of nausea and misery wracked my body...but in a few moments it was over...and I laughed. Many of us do this everyday: afraid to move on from a situation, even though we know we will be better off. We stay--wishing, obsessing, arguing--but in the end, we can only help ourselves (and oftentimes, others involved) and know that the pain it causes to move on will pass. And then we will fly.

Do Your Thing

It is that thing that is closest to love, making you do things you would not ordinarily do. It is a different form of love. It is passion and joy. When you are doing it, you lose all sense of time; you forget to eat and sleep. It is that thing you have done since you were a child. If you have a child, they have told you that you should be doing it. You can't stop thinking about it even if you tried because it keeps coming up in your daily life: in movies, books, conversations, and most amazingly, in the people you meet. It is that thing that makes others secretly think you are crazy for giving up a stable, decently paying job in order to pursue your dream of doing that one thing. For me, it is writing, writers, and butterflies and my life is transformed.

Look Who Else Says to Dance (not Ellen...but we know she does, too)

Literally, within a few hours of deciding to post my old Dancing Upside Down piece last night, I was in bed leafing through a book I had just bought as a gift for Nathan or for all of us as a family--I had not decided--which was why I was looking through it, to see if he would like it. It's called Daily Joy and is a book of 365 photos with inspirational quotes by some of my favorite people. The book was put out by National Geographic, one of Nate's favorite organizations, and the photos are stunning, of course. Each page is dated, and there, right at the start of the book (I opened up to it--it's for January 4), is a quote by Rumi: .

Dance, when you're broken open. 
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you're perfectly free.

Dancing Upside Down

I need to use my own words...

In October of 2011, I did four little writing projects: my life story in 150 words or less. Yesterday, while revising a larger project, I was sifting through some of my old pieces in search of a particular one to assist me with that larger revision. The piece I was looking for was one of those four short projects and was saved with the other three. When I pulled them up, I realized I could use my old words just as I was using other writers' old words. The Dancing Upside Down Snoopy was just what I needed to read, so maybe it's just what someone else might need to read too. (I did blog about this one when it first happened in September 2011, but this version is a bit different, not only for its brevity, but because I wrote it to encompass more of my life.)

I will print one piece each day for the next four days, just...because...they are my words and that is what a blog is supposed to be...


My dad always loved Snoopy. On a particularly dissonant day in September, I placed a dancing Snoopy sticker in my journal to somehow ensure my dad's guiding presence. The next day, I realized I had inadvertently stuck Snoopy upside down...

During my first thirty-three years of life, people doubted and awed as I deftly managed my riotously convulsing father through his daily grand mal seizures. To them it was improbable and precarious. To me it was just life. I danced when others could not hear the melody.

That day to day training taught me to flex and flow and be supple of spirit. My husband lives in Arizona while I raise our kids here in Michigan. Though we chose, we never expected...nearly three years now...but we dance. Even when we look or feel upside down, we find harmony and we dance. Thanks, Dad.

More Fitting Frankenstein

"...and if I was ever overcome by ennui (to put it lightly), the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits."

                                        Mary Shelley  Frankenstein

Fitting Frankenstein

"Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. The sun might shine, or the clouds might lour; but nothing could appear to me as it had done the day before."
                                                                Mary Shelley   Frankenstein

Scattered Like Marbles

"...when, all in a moment some confounding remembrance...would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and scatter my wits again. Scattered wits take a long time picking up; often, before I had got them well together, they would be dispersed in all directions by one stray thought..."

"Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day."

                                                                                   Charles Dickens, Great Expectations