april showers {4/6/14}

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a long wait {3/31/14}

On this, the last day of March and the first day it's reached 60 degrees in Chicago this year, I've been thinking about how hard it is to wait for change.

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Change almost always takes longer than we want it to. Longer than we think we can stand. Gray day after gray day we wait, and the branches stay bare.

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Sometimes it feels like change will never come. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it takes decades.

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Sometimes we find beauty in the bareness. Sometimes we find peace in standing still.

But a lot of the time we rail against the darkness. We cry for life to be different. We grieve for wanting unfulfilled.

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Though the branches remain bare, the sky is blue today. The warm breeze promises blooming. No matter where you are in your life, change is coming. Fight it, grieve it, welcome it, embrace it. Whether it melts away the darkest winter or strips the blossoms from the trees.

grammer {3/19/14}

I've written in the past about how much I dislike social media. If it were up to me, Facebook wouldn't exist. And don't get me started on Twitter. Don't even get me started. (hashtag 80s standup). But there is one social media program I actually love, that I check every day and would miss if it were gone: Instagram.

For me, Instagram is like a conversation in pictures. You show me a piece of your world, and I'll show you a piece of mine. I mostly follow friends, but I also follow artists, photographers, and complete strangers who happen to take lovely photos and often pair them with lyric captions. I only check my feed once a day, first thing in the morning, while I am still in bed. It inspires me to start the day with my eyes open, to look for those moments where (as Cartier-Bresson says) the heart, eye, and mind align.

Or to see cute pictures of my friends' pets.

Either way, I like that Instagram urges me to live in the moment. To look for bursts of color and patterns of light and shadow. To tell a story with an image. To clip a piece of my experience and toss it into the wind.

I've added an link to my Instagram account here (check out the social media bar on the left). Let's share pixels! 

all you need {2/14/14}

Maybe it's because this holiday isn't quite so kid/family centric. Maybe it's because there isn't as much societal pressure to participate. Maybe it's because it isn't commercialized on the level of Christmas. Maybe it's because I need a splash of red in the middle of winter. Or maybe I just love love. Whatever the reason, I'm a sucker for Valentine's Day. Hope the love of friends and family warms your heart today!

spring is coming {2/1/14}

As much as I'd like to live in a milder climate (and believe me, this year it's at the top of my to-do list), there is something compelling about the weather extremes of the midwest--particularly the transition from winter to spring. For nearly half the year the world seems dead: bare branches, snow-buried grass, gray skies. And every year it feels like we are trapped. Like THIS IS IT. This is the year that winter will go on forever. But the days get longer, the sun gets warmer, the snow melts, the birds sing, and the trees unfurl their leaves. Spring. A miracle.

When life's pattern is smooth, predictable, it becomes easy to take things for granted. But these seasonal transitions remind me that nothing is permanent. Not depression, anxiety, or grief. Not joy, happiness, or peace. These seasons remind me not to cling to what's pleasant or push away what isn't. They invite me to be with what is.

(They also invite me go through old photos and reminisce about summer. I guarantee if Buddha had lived through three polar vortexes, he would have done the same thing.)

note to self {1/29/13}

Know this: the second half of your life will be bittersweet. This is okay, as palates change with age. You will never stop missing people and animals and places in time that have left you.  Your natural reaction will be to recoil, scramble, blame. This is okay, too. There are guides who can lead you back to your breath. Pema Chodron is one of them. Your best friends, worst enemies, and pets are others. 

Know this: you are going to fail. You are going to fall hard and fast, flat on your ass.  You are going to be embarrassed. You are going to be ashamed. You are going to be angry. This is better than okay. This is necessary. Fail as often as possible. The more you do it, the less it hurts. And sometimes, more often than you’d think, you surprise yourself. You succeed. 

Know this: there is time. It doesn’t feel like there is enough, and maybe it’s not enough for everything. This has to be okay. This is something that will not change, no matter how many movies about gorgeous teenage vampires you see.

Know this: there are crumbs of comfort all around you. Soft sweaters, warm rooms, little squares of sunshine. Pay attention. Collect them. In the leanest of times they can sustain you.    

Know this: you can get used to anything. This is the beautiful, terrible secret of life. You don’t want to, and you shouldn’t have to, but you can. You will. 

postcard from january {1/21/14}

Looks like we will be earning our summer this year...

above zero {1/13/14}

A break from the darkness, the deep chill. Isn't that really all any of us want? A chance for a bit of light and warmth. A chance to catch our breath and feed our souls.

Today I took advantage of the sun and melting snow to snap a few polaroids. Enough soul food to get me through the next polar vortex, I hope. And, whatever weather you are weathering, dear reader, I hope you are feeding yourself too.

winter light {1/6/14}

What with the holidays and all, I haven't been taking many photographs. None, actually. Now that I have been home for almost a week, I decided to pick up my camera again. But what to photograph? It's -15 degrees outside, and there is at least two feet of snow on the ground. 

Luckily I have a system when I'm stymied, photography-wise: Look for the light. I forget sometimes that it's as simple as that. 

Now I'm not always the hugest fan of winter. I don't mind the cold so much as I mind the layer of gray blotting out the sky. But when the curtain of cloud cover drops, the winter sunlight falls over the frozen world like a layer of pale silk. It is, truthfully, my favorite light to shoot. 

Stay warm, friends. And when days of darkness begin to wear you down, remember to look for the light.

merry or not {12/18/13}

For the past two weeks I have been trying to find the right words for an eloquent post about the holidays and grief. Today I gave up and decided just to write this.

My parents and I look startled in photographs taken the first Christmas after my brother died. In the photos where we manage smiles our faces are pained. When I remember that Christmas I feel a little breathless, as if someone has punched me in the gut. 

Here's the thing: I pride myself on being able to tell people that living with the suicide of a loved one is possible. Life does go on. You can forgive. It's hard, and it takes time, but yes, it really does get easier.  

Except for this, for me. In the last nine years, I haven't recovered Christmas.

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It really bothered me at first. Christmas had always been a warm, gathered glow in the center of my chest. Through all the changes in our lives--moving from Michigan to Alabama, moving from Alabama to Chicago, getting married, Matt going off to school--my feelings about Christmas had remained the same. 

As the years without my brother wore on, even as my grief softened and my relationship with his death changed, I continued to dread Christmas. The travel wore me out. The large gatherings of family overwhelmed me. Gifts seemed hollow and wasteful. I wasn't grieving any more, so where was this coming from? 

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The holidays are our lives as they are, intensified. If our parents are divorced or some of our relatives don't get along, we are forced to split time. The people we've lost, or the children we've been unable to have, are empty chairs at the table, ghosts in the pauses in conversation.

But that's only part of it. The real culprit running underneath it all is the expectation that we are supposed to be happy. Merry. Joyful. It is, after all, "the most wonderful time of the year."

One of the roots of suffering (according to Buddhism) is the refusal (or inability) to accept impermanence. We grasp at pleasant feelings and push away unpleasant ones. After Matt died my warm, chest gathered glow disappeared, and I wanted it back. Year after year I did all the things I thought I was supposed to do (baking cookies, hanging ornaments and lights, sending cards, giving gifts, singing carols), all with the intention of resurrecting a feeling that was never going to last.

This year I am giving myself the gift of permission to experience the holidays as they are, and myself as I am. I'm allowing myself to feel the losses of the past several years. I'm blowing off Christmas cards altogether (sorry everyone). I don't even have a tree.

I hope that in future years I will continue to make whatever changes I need to make to honor and accept however the holidays feel. I hope others will do the same. 

Whether you're having a merry whatever-you-celebrate, or doing whatever you need to do to survive, I wish you peace and gentle awareness. And the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. 

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