Angela Kelsey

Tag Archive: voices

1. Love Yourself So Matcha!

   May 10, 2018 11:31 am Comments Off on Love Yourself So Matcha!

   

   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

   September 25, 2017 10:00 am Comments Off on What I Learned Before, During, and After Hurricane Irma

   

   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. Reading Magic and Loss

   July 30, 2017 4:17 pm Comments Off on Reading Magic and Loss

   Over the past few years, I’ve read fewer books than ever before, and of those books, even less fiction.

   I’ve said that the internet has melted my brain, wrecked my attention span. Or maybe the problem is my 50-something vision, or my glasses, or the quality of the light by my bed.

   I listen to podcasts while walking Sadie and getting ready for work and washing dishes; I read everything from news to email to long articles to social media to forums to product reviews on the internet from waking to sleeping, on my desktop, laptop, and phone.

   I listen to audio books on long drives; the music that calls me is still the music with lyrics I care about.

   There is no shortage of words in my life; only a shortage of (the reading of) books.

   But still rising from all those words is a longing to be immersed in another person’s thought processes, as well as the ability to make notes and reread, that comes a weekend with a physical book. And I was determined to finish reading a book.

   On the top of my stack was Magic and Loss by Virginia Heffernan. I’d heard her interviewed on Dan Harris’s 10% Happier podcast and I was intrigued by her story and the possibility that the internet is “among humankind’s great masterpieces,” as the blurb on the back of the book suggests.

   Part philosophical deep dive, part history, part memoir, Magic and Loss touches on many of my preoccupations: technology (and the way it’s changing my brain every day), one person’s story, religion, writing and story telling.

   And Heffernan wouldn’t judge my 2017 reading habits: As she says, “Codices, scrolls, leisure, work, epic poetry, tweets: let’s call it all real reading.”

4. And here we are.

   July 17, 2017 10:40 am Comments Off on And here we are.

   

   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.

    

    

5. Grey Area

   July 6, 2017 9:26 am Comments Off on Grey Area

   

   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.

    

6. How do you know?

   February 16, 2014 11:05 am Comments Off on How do you know?

   
   

   You probably know the story: Dylan Farrow’s open letter to Woody Allen. Woody Allen’s op-ed response.

   When I read Dylan Farrow’s letter, I was sure that she was telling the truth. I’ve heard enough victims of child sexual abuse write about the pain of their experience and the aftermath on IRL that I am familiar with survivors’ shame, reticence, and knowledge that a shitstorm of judgment is likely coming their way from both people in their inner circles and people they’ve never met.

   I am strongly biased in favor of anyone brave enough to come forward with her or his story.

   And then a friend told me that her husband has been accused of abuse by a young child. I know enough about the logistics of their situation (who is alone with the child and when, how visits are conducted, that sort of thing), that I don’t believe that he could have abused the child.

   Maybe someone actually abused her; maybe someone abused her by coaching her into a story that’s not true. I don’t know. I know that she was never alone with him, especially in the ways that she suggests in her story.

   In this situation, I am not relying on what I believe about the man’s character or the child’s likely truthtelling. I know that people are not always what they seem.

   Now the investigation continues, and I hope that the truth will come out and the child will move on in safety.

   But my automatic bias in favor of the accuser is shaken. I can see at least the possibility of another side. That’s probably a good thing.

7. Feminist

   May 5, 2013 7:53 pm 1 Comment

   Things get weird pretty quickly when your search term on a stock photo site is “feminist.” Women with ropes, women with boxing gloves, women with their stiletto’d feet on the throats of men. Try it and see. Here’s a strange one. What does it mean?

   

   To me the word has meant something simple and basic: pro woman. Women can or cannot be feminists. Men have the same options.

   I am a feminist; I happily take the label.

   When the pop singer Katy Perry said last year that she wasn’t a feminist, she elicited reactions ranging from “Katy Perry is an idiot” to “maybe if feminists didn’t think Katy Perry was an idiot she would be more likely to identify as one.”

   I rely on the recommendations of Mr. Z (who calls himself a feminist, by the way) to read a tiny fraction of the articles in the issues of The New Yorker that pile up on the coffee table. A couple of days ago, he suggested that I read an article by Susan Faludi about Shulamith Firestone.  I recommend that you read it, too.

   Firestone’s name is familiar to me, but by the time I was reading feminist theory in the 1990s, she and other “second-wave” feminists (Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Kate Millett, for example), no matter how influential, were already sort of “vintage.” I didn’t know her ideas and I didn’t know her story.

   Firestone’s ideas are still radical and fresh and needed forty years after she first wrote them.

   Firestone’s story is tragic and compelling and all too familiar.

   If more women and men knew about the feminists on whose shoulders we climb, would more people be honored and humbled to share their label, identify as members of their tribe?

   I think so.

8. What have you survived?

   April 5, 2012 8:22 pm 3 Comments

   

    

    

   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. Nest-Making Retrospective

   March 31, 2012 4:59 pm 2 Comments

    

   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?

    

    

    

10. The Body as Nest

    March 29, 2012 7:45 am 6 Comments

    Today’s Nest-Making guest post in honor of women and Women’s History Month is by Bindu Wiles. It’s a milestone post  for two reasons: it’s the blog’s 500th post, and more importantly, Bindu is one of  the  first people I met online to become  dear  to me offline as well. I’m very happy to have her words and images here today.

    ::

    In honor of all the women who have given their bodies

    as a soft place to fall

    to rest upon

    to enter into the world

    to bear witness

    to hold

    to love.

    We are all mothers of some sort.

    

     

    

    

    

     

    

    

    

     

    

     

     :::

    Bindu Wiles is in a deep mid-life crisis that she is walking, writing and photographing her way through. She has an undergraduate degree in fine art (photography) and 3 graduate degrees because the one she really wanted all along was an MFA in writing, which she finally received at 47 years of age from Sarah Lawrence College. The tattoo on her left forearm sums up her life motto: Art Saves Lives. She has completed a 300 page memoir, her essays have been published in various literary journals, she is bringing more of the under 12 years of age crowd into her life, and is always up for a good laugh. In fact, she is trying to stay in a state of silly as an approach to aging.

    ::::

    Looking for more Nest-Making posts? You can find them here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.