Angela Kelsey

Tell the Story

Tag Archive: journey

  1. Love Yourself So Matcha!

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    Maybe you’re a biological mother or an adoptive mother or a step-mother or a mother to people you work with or for. Maybe you play the role of mother to animals or a business or your parents.

    Regardless of the way you mother, I hope these words that I shared with my step-daughter will help you during this Mother’s Day week to remember to love yourself as well as others. Other women, from my mother to Jen Louden and Bridget Pilloud, shared some of them with me, and I’m passing them on.

    • “Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future; therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important, it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.”– John O’Donohue, Anam Cara. This “kindness of rhythm” is probably my big overarching goal right now–all of the rest of the thoughts below should be in service not only to getting things done, but more importantly, to the goal of being kind to myself and respecting my own very personal rhythm and speed. If I get things done by beating myself up, that really defeats the whole purpose.

     

    • I am not Mary Poppins, as much as I might like to be. I cannot solve every problem anyone might have. My purse is not infinitely big.

     

    • Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. A gym lesson that applies everywhere–nothing happens faster because I rush and get rattled.

     

    • Just say no. Don’t let other people set your priorities (which of course means you have to get clear in your own mind about what your priorities are but remember that they are yours to set).

     

    • Routine is key. For you all this may be different (as in, you may have to do your sanity-essential routines late at night, whereas I do them early in the morning) but I wake up early enough to do the things that are most important to the overall sanity of the day: meditate, journal, work on book, exercise. If occasionally I only have a short time for each of these, I try to scale them all down. 5 minutes of meditation, 5 minutes of journaling, 5 minutes of work on book, 5 minutes of stretching. Doing these in the morning before I go to work means that no matter how many interruptions I have, the things most important to me, the things that really no one on the planet but me cares whether I do, will actually get done before other people start pulling at my time and energy.

     

    • Lists are also key. I don’t know if you have the energy to explore anything new right now, but for quite a while I’ve been “bullet journaling,” which means to me that I keep all my lists, my calendar, my journal, pretty much everything, in one notebook, and I always keep it with me. When I feel that paralysis of overwhelm that you described last night, I look at my list and just pick something, just one next thing that will give me progress toward one of the things that’s causing stress and needs to get done. I also use list making to clear my mind of what I worry I will forget. Put it on the list, and forget it while you do what’s really important right now. If it’s not worth writing down, it’s either not worth doing at all or can be done in less time than it takes to write it down, in which case I just do it.

     

    • Resist the tyranny of the urgent. This is easier for me since “urgent” rarely involves anyone’s safety or health. But sometimes I find that urgent things, especially other peoples’ urgent things, can take up the whole day and despite my feeling of complete depletion, I haven’t gotten anything done that’s important to me. Make the distinction between urgent and important.

     

    • Be lazy/efficient. This is small, but I try to never walk from Place A to Place B, at home or office, without something in my hand(s) that needs to be moved from A to B. I let things stack up until I have to go from A to B for more than one reason.

     

    • Keep clear surfaces. I am a little bit of a fanatic about this, but visual clutter makes it really difficult for me to sort out what needs to be done, what needs to go with me when I leave, what is just sitting around, what is mine, what needs to be thrown away. I have “staging areas” at home and at work that are always clear, except for what needs to be taken with me when I leave, or what needs to be done imminently. When I have too much clutter, sometimes the only next right thing is to take a moment and clean it up. Otherwise I can’t function, can’t see the forest for the trees, can’t find my bullet journal ;).

     

    • Back to the beginning: be kind to yourself. I find that I am most grouchy and resentful when I do not give myself kindness and space, when I feel like I’ve been running around in other peoples’ urgent matters, not keeping my routines and practices, not remembering what is really important to me.

  2. What I Learned Before, During, and After Hurricane Irma

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    My stuff that matters a lot to me fits in a small carry-on.

    My stuff that matters a little less to me fits in a small car.

    Electricity and air conditioning are luxurious necessities.

    Order is calming.

    Waiting is hard.

    My sister is brave.

    Afternoon bourbon is helpful.

    Ribs can be cooked on Sterno.

    No one wants to leave home, even when a Category 5 storm is coming, even when there is no electricity.

    Little kindnesses like cleaning-out-my-freezer casserole shared with a neighbor are appreciated more than usual.

    Imminently restored electricity makes a woman want to hug a lineman from Indiana.

    Adrenaline crash will kick your ass.

    From Mary Oliver’s Upstream:  “All things are meltable, and replaceable. Not at this moment, but soon enough, we are lambs and we are leaves, and we are stars, and the shining, mysterious pond water itself.”

  3. And here we are.

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    I started blogging right after President Obama’s inauguration, participating in optimism and a sense of community here and in my little corner of the early days of Twitter. Vice President Biden championed victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and the Violence Against Women Act was strong and enforced.

    But life–my life, your life, the life of the country–goes on, gets in the way, changes everything. And here we are.

    My brother-in-law’s cancer fight over; my sister’s grief is a little bit less fresh.

    Mr. Z and the dogs and I have moved house and reshuffled priorities.

    My book  is still in revision. I’m back to it now.

    It’s time for me to start talking again, with anyone who will listen.

     

     

  4. Grey Area

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    Life is easier, in some ways, when things are neatly divided into them/us, bad/good, never/always boxes.

    When those boxes crumble, when the lines between certainties blur, our assumptions and givens shake. Things get trickier and more interesting.

    A few box-crumbling events have happened in my world over the past few years:

    • a friend’s husband was accused of molesting their granddaughter. I believe that he did not do it.
    • another friend was attacked in her home and brutally beaten. She found her way to deep forgiveness.
    • a trusted employee was arrested for domestic violence. I decided to pay for his bail.

    In an either/or world, I believe in accusers/victims no matter what; I want my friend’s attacker to go to prison for as long as the law allows; I draw a hard line and fire the batterer.

    In the grey zone, I can be open to the possibilities of believing in the accused, marveling at forgiveness, and hoping for the batterer’s change.

    My bias remains toward accusers and victims. I believe there is no justification, ever, for emotional or physical violence and also that it is very, very difficult to stop learned behaviors like battering.

    Living a little bit more in the grey helps me better understand my own story. Living in the grey is expansive.  Challenging my assumptions makes my ultimate conclusions–or what will be my interim conclusions–more nuanced, more complex, more allowing of further refined understanding.

    Living in the grey allows the possibility of telling and hearing all the stories.

     

  5. Reunion

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    I left south Florida at 8:30 on the morning after Thanksgiving, and I was landing here again fewer than 36 hours later, at 8 on Saturday night.  A week later I have a sense of what took me back  to a very different “south”–South Carolina–and what I brought back home with me.

    There were name tags to help us remember our natural hair color:

     

    Thirty-six of eighty-nine former classmates smiled for the cameras:

    With the exception of my friend Michelle, I hadn’t seen my classmates since graduation.

    We talked about where we live, whom we live with, our families, what we’ve been doing since we graduated from high school.

    Even though I had been separated from them by geography and time, I realized that those relationships–close friends, casual acquaintances, and people whose lives I only imagined–shaped me and many of my core beliefs about myself and the world. Some of those beliefs I still hold onto, and some have been dismantled by life, but their origins were with me last weekend and are here in this picture.

    I would have liked more time with my former classmates, a second night of reuniting, maybe, when, thirty years of ice having been broken or at least chipped, I could learn more about their lives. Today I received a newsletter with more of the stories I wanted.

    And I have a clearer understanding of who I am and where I’ve been because of reconnecting with some of the people who surrounded me when I was seventeen.

     

  6. Why go back?

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    I’m sitting in the airport in Ft. Lauderdale, waiting to board a plane to South Carolina for my 30th high school reunion.

    I didn’t go to the 10th (divorcing my first husband) or the 20th (temporarily separated from my second husband) or the 25th (divorcing my second husband). Finally, 30 years after high school, tumultuous relationships in the past, I can go back.

    I keep asking myself why I decided to take this trip. I’ve kept in touch with only one friend, Michelle, who will join me for a cocktail tonight and brunch tomorrow as well as the reunion.

    Writing my memoir has meant exploring the past ten or twenty years in excruciating detail. I haven’t spent much time remembering high school. But one thing leads to another, doesn’t it?

    What do I want to know, find, experience? I’m not sure.

    I’ll know it when I see it.

  7. On Fire

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    April:

    Month of rebirth,

     month of two anniversaries.

    Good Friday, 2002: a beating, an interim separation.

    April 11, 2007: another assault, an arrest, the first night of a final separation.

    Easter weekend 2012: time for a fire.

    Tonight two Adrienne Rich poems:

    “Burning Oneself Out,”

    its last lines:

    “or, as tonight, the mirror of the fire
    of my mind, burning as if it could go on
    burning itself, burning down

    feeding on everything
    till there is nothing in life
    that has not fed that fire”

    and

    “Power,”

    about Marie Curie,

    “[who] died a famous woman denying
    her wounds
    denying
    her wounds came from the same source as her power.”

    ::

    What has fed your fire?

    Can you see that your wounds and your power come from the same source?

  8. What have you survived?

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    In From a Survivor, Adrienne Rich writes,

    Next year it would have been 20 years
    and you are wastefully dead
    who might have made the leap
    we talked, too late, of making

    which I live now
    not as a leap
    but a succession of brief, amazing movements

    each one making possible the next

     

     

     

     

    Every one of us who lives another day is a survivor of something, or everything.

    Survivors of  violent, personal trauma–domestic violence, sexual abuse, rape.

    Others are survivors of cancer, accidents, natural disasters, genocide, the suicide of a loved one.

    What have you survived? What has been your “succession of brief, amazing movements”?

     

     

  9. Adrienne Rich April

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    In 1987 I read Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born in a Women’s Studies class.

    I was 23, and I was changed forever.

    It seems fitting to read her again in April 2012,
    after a month of marvelous posts by women friends,
    after Rich’s death last Tuesday.

    It seems fitting to spend April’s posts here within the framework of her words.

    It seems fitting, too, to begin with an excerpt
    from “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law,” from 1963:

    2.

    Banging the coffee-pot into the sink
    she hears the angels chiding, and looks out
    past the raked gardens to the sloppy sky.
    Only a week since They said: Have no patience.

    The next time it was: Be insatiable.
    Then: Save yourself; others you cannot save.
    Sometimes she’s let the tapstream scald her arm,
    a match burn to her thumbnail,

    or held her hand above the kettle’s snout
    right in the woolly steam. They are probably angels,
    since nothing hurts her anymore, except
    each morning’s grit blowing into her eyes.

    ::

    Have no patience. Be insatiable. Save yourself; others you cannot save.

     

     

     

     

  10. Nest-Making Retrospective

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    On March 1, I had an idea so clear and bright that before I knew it, I was sending out this email:

    “I’m putting together a month of blog posts for National Women’s History Month. This year’s theme is Women’s Education–Women’s Empowerment. Women’s stories are near and dear to my heart, and I believe they are important to you, too.  I admire your writing, and I would be honored if you would be willing to share a story and/or photos in a guest blog post at www.angelakelsey.com.  I’d love to read your stories of women who’ve contributed to your education and/or your empowerment, in whatever way(s) you choose to define the words and convey your stories. Poetry, prose, and photos are welcome.”

    After the initial email,  I exercised no more control over this series than I did over the hydrangea pictured here, and the pieces worked together just as beautifully, just as organically. With the exception of knowing that I wanted to contain the posts within the supportive bookends of Jeanne and Julie, I posted them in the order I received them, and if you read them in order, I think you will see that a whole, greater than the sum of its parts, was formed.

    Part of me, not wanting to impinge upon the nest that’s been created of its own accord, wants to post an awestruck retrospective that simply says, “Wow.”

    Wow to the synergy and the dance of the posts with each other. Wow to the openness and the willingness of the writers. Wow to the women they honor, the personal journeys they share. Wow to those who continued the conversation through their comments.

    Another part wants to acknowledge the generosity of each woman who gave of herself and her life and her stories. Another part wants to highlight some of the themes that emerged.

    So, in awe mixed with gratitude, I do a little of each, although these pieces are so tightly interwoven that they touch each other in many more ways than I can show here.

    Wow–to Jeanne and Josie and Ann and Sally and Cheryl and Liz and D., who celebrated collective feminine power in  Fran and Marcia and The Fierce Feminine and Hey Girls, We Slipped Up and A (Wonderfully) Mixed Relationship and Her and This Little Light of Mine and Loving women comes easily.

    Wow–to Shannon and Alana, who wrote about their grandmothers in Happy Birthday Viola Sylvestra and Her Unseen Hand on My Back.

    Wow–Julie and Bindu and Teresa and Kelly and Streetlights, who wrote about mothers and mothering in Empowerment and The Birth of Compassion and The Body as Nest and Lesson Plan and A Transforming Force.

    Wow to Illuminary and Megan, who described solace and comfort in Auntie Jaquie and Someone Makes a Nest For Me Today.

    Wow to Meredith and Bridget, who celebrated women teachers in  Short But Sweet and Wonder Woman Hilda Raz.

    See what I mean? Just–Wow.

    Now: how can we continue the spirit of nest-making every day, with every breath and step?