Fragile Embrace

It’s been seven years since I got the telephone call that changed my life. Sitting at my desk in the early evening quiet, finishing this task or that, I wasn’t prepared to pick up the phone and find out that I had cancer.

No one ever is.

And now its back.

This kind of bad luck, like any other bad luck, presents us with an opportunity to find out just exactly what kind of human we truly are. Stoic? Afraid? Arrogant? Humble? Weak? Strong? 

All of the above, I think.

Our emotional go-to’s when a bomb drops in our lives is wide-ranging. But one thing is certain — we are never just one of anything. There are times when we buck up and stand tall, then there are times we find ourselves curled into a ball, weeping at what has befallen us, unable to run the clock backward and avert the devastating event. We are time’s prisoner even as the world whirls on all around us. 

Yet when we come face-to-face with the frailties of the human condition we discover one undeniable thing: We are all the same. Exactly the same. Our blood runs toward the heart, then out again. Our lungs expand, then contract. Our eyes open, then close. We live through it all — the illness, the death, the trauma, the destruction of our families, our homes, and our lives. Yet we survive. And we survive despite the fact that, relative to much of what surrounds us, we are no stronger than the powdery flock of a butterfly’s wing.

But it is from this, our frailty, from which our strength springs.

And we endure.

Begin Again

Standing on one leg with the other wound tightly around my calf, my arms intertwined like mangrove trees, palms glued together and fingers pointing skyward, I swayed, then teetered, then promptly fell out of of Eagle Pose. If I’ve learned one thing practicing yoga, it is this: It is self-defeating to look around the room and compare myself to other practitioners. So I don’t look. I keep my eyes fixed on the knot in the wooden floor in front of my mat and do as my instructor says.

I “begin again.”

I just keep trying till I get it right. Or until I don’t. It’s all in the trying, after all.

This little two-word mantra has rescued me in moments outside of yoga as well, like when I’m frustrated because my day hasn’t gone as planned, when I’ve let slide some commitment I’ve made, or when I’ve spent too long wasting time on depressing news (or Facebook!). It's also useful on those occasions when I find myself growing tired of my own pity party, or spinning out on all the reasons why my life hasn't turned out exactly the way I thought it would.

Stop — begin again, I tell myself. Come back to now and just start over. 

Too often we castigate ourselves for not being the wife, husband, mother, father, child, sibling, or friend that we think we ought to be. For not ticking off all the boxes on our to-do list. For getting so wrapped up in the day’s chaos and distractions that we forget to experience the precious moments as they arrive, unheralded and ignored. When this happens, it's worth remembering that we can simply take a step back, a deep breath, and start over.

There is no limit to how often we can reclaim our renewed enthusiasm for whatever the moment brings. We can begin again anytime. We can teeter and fall, we can fail completely, and we can always hit the reset button — each moment a new beginning.

Starting now.  

Lucky 7

This is the seventh birthday that’s come along since I was first diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. And believe me, I’m as surprised as anyone that I’ve made it this far.

Birthdays, and how we celebrate them, are individual to each of us. They are the one day each year when we acknowledge our debut into the world — crying, red-faced heaps of tissue and blood and teeny tiny parts that our parents couldn’t quite believe. Little blobs of nothing — of everything. Tidy packages of knowledge and feelings and desires waiting to bloom into whatever it is that we would someday become. And the beauty of it all is that no one knew. Not what we’d think, not how long we’d live, not whose lives we’d touch or the mark we would leave on the world.

But now we know. Part of it, at least. Or we think we do.

Each year when a parade of candles threatens to set the house aflame, we reassess. We judge our failures and praise our achievements and thank the Universe for our one and only precious life.

If we’re lucky.

I’ve said a thing or two about cancer over the years, but a recurring theme blazes into view each time I circle the sun, and that is how joyous and frightening it feels to live life so close to its surface. To fully experience and appreciate the tenuous grasp we have on our mere existence, and to see the world through that lens. 

I would take back nothing I’ve learned in these last seven years, though I would gladly do without the cancer thanks very much. Though in truth, one bore the other. Cancer lets you circle the days on the calendar, not mark them off one by one. It reminds you that so much doesn’t matter a damn, and so little matters most of all.

Birthdays. A time to reflect, to consider who we are, and who we have yet to be.

The happiest of days.

New Day. New Year.

For years now I have somehow managed to escape the holiday madness by hiding on the residue of a volcanic hiccup in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The days here, like those back home, pass differently, though predictably.

The sun rises to the cool morning trills of Amakihi and Kiwikiu birds, surely nature’s perfect alarm clock. As morning warms to afternoon, the whirl of the globe sends the Pacific waves crashing along the shore. Bodies lie strewn across the glittering sand, toasting brown, then browner, under the island sun. Occasional clouds provide a welcome shower and shadowy respite from the blaze, soon followed by the end of day marked by everyone’s rush seaside.

Sunset in Hawaii.

Despite the moniker, those drawn to the water’s edge invariably witness not the sun going down, but the islands turning their back on it’s tangerine glow. Tick by tick, we watch quietly as the minutes pass effortlessly from our grasp — no clutch strong enough to hold them. The fireball disappears before our very eyes, leaving in its wake only amber and lavender clouds.

Another day gone, we turn our thoughts to what lies ahead for the next. The plans we’ve made. The thing’s we’ve yet to accomplish. Tomorrow I will do what I did not do today — pay bills, go to the grocery store, and finally mail that (now belated) birthday gift that has sat on my entryway table for two weeks. We make our promises. We set our resolve.

The earth’s yearly passage around the orange orb is not quite so stark as its daily revolution, but it evokes much of the same. Promises of a better us in the days and weeks to come. Better eating habits,  better exercise plan, finishing some long-awaited project or finding a new job. In addition, coming full circle around the sun often tempts us to resurrect all that has transpired in the last twelve months — some of it glorious, some of it less so. We have experienced both boundless joy and seemingly insurmountable challenges. Yet we have all made it to here. Together.

And now?

Now we press onward as before, knowing that nothing behind us can ever be changed, and nothing before us is ever certain. We will resolve to do better, for ourselves and for each other. And we will keep our promises, in whole or in part. But the coming year needs no more than our pledge to welcome each dawn as another chance to become our truest and best selves. Each pass of the sun across our landscape, wherever we are, gives us the chance to bring life in close — nurturing and tending our garden of family and friends as never before. Each new day gifts us as well with another chance to make our voices heard across our collective communities, from our school boards to Pennsylvania Avenue. We can, by our efforts together, bring about the change we want to see in ourselves, and in the world. 

So as we resolve to cut back on our carbs and get to the gym more often, let us also resolve, together, to #Resist #Persist and #StayInvolved. 

Welcome, New Year.

We’re ready.

Goodbye, My Friend

You may remember reading about my friend Jack in Not All Bad Comes to Harm You. I am sad to say that he has recently passed from this world after 96 amazing years.

Jack's eye for beautiful graphic design allowed him to create renowned works in typography and printing that will live on for generations to come at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and elsewhere. 

Happily, he lived to see his memoir published this past fall, Oxen. Plough. Bicycle. Photographs & Fragments from a Tuscan diary, 1956-1958, described as "a portfolio of nine gelatin silver prints with broadside, letterpress with handset type, by Jack Werner Stauffacher, recipient of the American Institute for Graphic Arts’ AIGA Metal, the highest honor of the design profession." I still hold fond memories of reviewing the draft pages of the book with him on our ferry rides together several years ago.

As is evidenced by the tributes to Jack in the San Francisco Chronicle and our local newspaper, he was a man who truly knew his purpose and embraced his gifts. We were fortunate to have his inspiration in our midst for so long.

Jack often reminded me that life moves ever onward, and far too quickly. "Ride gently; take wine and bread and cheese. Stop in a meadow in the midst of your journey and enjoy." I try, every day, to heed his words.

He will never be far from the thoughts of three children and his wife of 70 years, the lovely Josephine.

Rest in peace, my friend.

Stronger Than You Think

Vashistasana. This Sanskrit word is used to describe a yoga pose that requires arm strength, core strength, and more than a dab of determination. Each time I do it I find myself counting silently to twenty seconds, hoping the instructor will get us to the next pose before I hit thirty. And each time I silently repeat the words she’s said so often during class: “You’re stronger than you think.” 

She is always right.

I found myself reciting these words beyond my yoga practice recently. This time of year requires so much of us, both physically and emotionally. It threatens to exhaust us with task lists, time commitments, and obligations galore. It compounds our already-busy lives with added layers of physical demands and emotional upheaval. 

Society’s dioramas feature lights and glitter and gifts wrapped in green satin bows. Our mailboxes burst with catalogs picturing holiday perfection. Our television loops Budweiser commercials that make us cry. We are saturated with the expectations heaped upon us by the month itself, unlike any other month in the year.

For many, the cacophony of celebration is euphoric. For others, it brings crushing memories. It is the first December since the divorce, or since a loved one died, or since an illness has consumed us and changed our lives forever. We relive holidays past, ones in which we were disappointed as a child, or hurt as a grown-up, or in which we saw ourselves as happier and more carefree. Some consider whether this December will be the last on earth, or where we will be this time next year. At times, the inner turmoil seems overwhelming.

But we are stronger than we think.

We face so much in life that challenges us every day, not just during the holidays.  Sometimes what we face seems too difficult, impossible to handle. And yet we do. Somehow we manage to pull ourselves up and dust ourselves off and just get on with living. We do it because it is the life force within us that lets us face the impossible and survive.

We are strong when we cry. We are strong when we grieve. And we are strong when we celebrate a new day by breathing in the fresh morning breeze and snuggling into the wooly scarf around our neck. When we allow ourselves to be in this moment, and no other. We are strong when we bring ourselves home to our own soul.

We are always strong. 

We are stronger than we think.

I Am Here.

If you practice yoga you already know this: It looks easy, but it's not.

Like most athletic endeavors, yoga is one of those things that makes you feel physically better (and proud!) when you're done. It also has the added benefit of providing another kind of boost . . . one for the mind.

We almost always begin with Downward Dog (not my favorite pose, by the way), during which point the instructor invites us to ground ourselves in the present. To arrive in the moment. To show up.  

"I am here. Here I am. That's what I say when I find my mind starting to wander," she says. Okay, I think. I'll try it. And I do, but it doesn't really work. I'm too focused on the pressure in my hands and wrists, and wondering when we're going to get to that Child's Pose. Or better yet, Shivasana. But I manage to finally "arrive" and work my way through the various postures until, at last, we are finally lying on our backs. Success!

Later that morning I go for a walk. The air is immoveable and warm, over eighty degrees already and not yet noon. Not feeling all that great, I find myself caught up with worrying about, well, having cancer. Yea, it happens sometimes, despite my best efforts to keep a lid on it. Before I know it I have tumbled down the rabbit hole -- How much longer do I have? I'm tired of feeling bad. I want my old self back. Yada yada yada. Then I remember...

I am here. Here I am. 

I take another two steps, and repeat,

I am here. Here I am.

The trees shade the sidewalk on one side of the street as the sun still climbs toward its noonday peak. A man pushes twins in a tandem baby stroller up the hill toward me. He's wearing a sweatshirt. He must be burning up, I think. His wife, following behind, instructs him in Indian. I don't understand her words, but I can see the beads of perspiration popping out on his forehead. He must be thinking . . .

I am here. Here I am.

Or of ways to shut her up.

I am stomping downhill, quicker now, taking long strides with what my wife calls "praying mantis legs." Sometimes going downhill seems harder than going uphill. Is it a trick of the mind? The shadows break into glaring light. I squint behind my sunglasses. It is hot again.

I am here. Here I am.

Thoughts of cancer turn to ones of the planet melting. The floods. The fires. Impending nuclear doom. What can I do?

I am here. Here I am.

The sun begins to feel good, as does the solid ground. The shade is cool. My rubbery sneakers land and bounce, lifting each foot in turn. My legs are a miracle. I am grateful for them. And for everything, really. The sun, the sky, the feeling of my own skin.

I am here. Here I am.

We plan. We cogitate. We reminisce. We worry and fret and agonize and fuss, then we do it all over again. We let our thoughts control us instead of the other way around, and it's exhausting. All the while we have the power to bring our attention back to the present moment, which is all we really have, and yet we've made running away from it practically an art form. Life can't be spiraling out of control once we understand that we never had control to begin with. Take a breath, then say it with me,

I am here. Here I am. 

Earth, Wind, and Fire

Few of us can imagine the terror of having our homes and communities savaged by windswept, roaring flames. My heart breaks for my friends to the north in California’s beautiful wine country even as the wildfires continue to rage all around them. I cannot imagine their terror. Their shock. Their utter disbelief in Mother Nature’s fury. 

It seems like only yesterday when I wrote about the devastating impact of hurricane Harvey, yet I find myself once again moved by the cloud of uncertainty under which we all live.

So much of what we take for granted, and even that for which we are mindfully grateful, can be gone in an instant. Life as we know it slips through our fingertips no matter how hard we try to contain it, to keep all as it is. We know this. But few of us live a life filled with this awareness. Instead, we bump and bumble through each new day ticking off this thing or that needing to be done. We rush to work and home again. We feed the dog. We forget.

If nothing can stop the ferocity with which so many are being battered of late, whether by fire or flood or random acts of senseless violence, at least let their suffering be not in vain. Rather, let their incomprehensible devastation lift up each of us to a new level of appreciation for our one and only precious life. And let us, in return, help renew their spirit of hopefulness. 

And let us not forget. 

Your Passionate Life

Few things in life bring more delight than being in the presence of extraordinary artistic expression. Whether it’s sinking into Monet’s Water Lilies, or floating along with Misty Copeland’s grand jetes in Swan Lake, or melting into Andre Bocelli’s Ave Maria, the immenseness of such raw talent is impossible to deny. The power of such artistry can be overwhelming, shifting our emotional tides until the spillway erupts. Such reactions come unbidden, unstoppable because they flow from the pure magic that exists when keeping company with the awe-inspiring. 

Sometimes a masterpiece is so moving that we can almost feel the pain of its creator as we imagine the untold attempts to achieve such perfection. We can only guess what it took to get [the painting, the dance, the song] exactly right; often it has taken a lifetime.

It was my good fortune recently to experience the sumptuous voice of k.d. lang echoing in the halls of Canada’s historic Royal Theatre. We sat on the edge of our seats, mesmerized, as she skillfully pruned each musical note, tending to them one by one before allowing them to fill the concert hall like a hundred thousand Queen Anne roses. As a young girl, k.d. recognized the gift with which she had been imbued and set about to create a life in tribute to that gift; a gift she knew she was meant to share with the world. And share she has.

We all have gifts to be shared, but too often we have cloaked them with other endeavors and allowed them to fade into near non-existence. Yet they remain where we left them, locked in our psyche, just waiting for us to turn our attention to them once again.

Even if we didn’t cultivate these innate abilities from our youth — whether from lack of support, encouragement, or opportunity —  our winding path to adulthood has brought with it the wisdom to finally appreciate our endowments for what they are. There is something that moves all of us — something special that makes us feel complete.  

It may have been a long time since you thought about your childhood passions and dreams. You may think you’ve forgotten them completely, but take a moment and try to remember. In fact, take a few hours. (I know you “don’t have the time,” but seriously, do this for yourself). Go find a quiet place and just think about what it is that you feel most deeply pulled toward now, as an adult. What is that undeniable force that calls to you? What brings you real joy? 

Maybe you like to draw. Or build things with your hands. Or sing. Or tell stories or write poetry or plant flowers or care for animals. Something exists there, in each of us, that can lead us back to our passionate participation in life once again. So long as we take the time to reflect on who we are, and what deeply moves us, there is still time to make a course correction to get back on our intended path.

Yes, there is still time, but there is no time to waste.

Go. Find your passion again.

Harvey

I had already written a post that was ready to publish, then came Hurricane Harvey.

The devastation in Houston is almost incomprehensible. Thousands and thousands of people have lost everything they have, except their lives. Some even lost those. The heartbreak is difficult to watch. We want to do something. Say something. Help in some way. But some things simply cannot be helped. Some things just are.

Devastating events are seldom as public as Katrina and Harvey. More often, devastation happens privately. A husband dies. A child is hit by a car. A woman goes blind. These personal tragedies happen ... Every. Single. Day. In the coming weeks, the public destruction of so many lives will become less public and more personal to those who survive. Extremely personal. They will rant and rage and shake their fists at the sky. They will weep. They will suffer their own anguish in a way none of us can imagine. Then, when their own storm of fury and tears has passed, they will be still. And they will see the gift that is their life as never before.

When we face what feels like insurmountable challenges we often ask, why me? Why is this my life? Why is this happening to me? We take it so personally. I know. I've been there.

But make no mistake, you have not been hand-selected out of a crowd of billions to suffer your own particular fate, though I’ll be the first to admit that it sometimes feels that way.

Long ago I stopped struggling to discern some divine purpose for my cancer diagnosis. Instead, I have tried to embrace my new understanding of life that arrived as a welcome side effect. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I lose sight of the fact that each breath is as important today as it was yesterday, especially when I get caught up in some drama over this thing or that, and forget that none of those things are really the point. 

Thousands of people will learn in the coming months, or years, what this means -- long after they have faced the all-consuming task of getting past today. They will be able to see the bigger picture in the context of the dust specs swirling to blind them. They will step back and take a breath and observe where they are. They will listen, and hear what they are hearing. They will love, with all their might, those who surround them. And they will live fully, experiencing each day as if it were literally the last. 

Because it could be.

And we are, each of us, well served to never forget that.

Resilience

We have a baby fawn in our neighborhood. A three-legged one.

First spotted outside the kitchen window picking her way through the flowers in our garden, she peeked her perfect little head just over the shrubs, fixing her chocolate brown eyes on us. It wasn’t until she began to move that we realized her rear leg was broken. Having endured a broken leg myself, it made my stomach turn just to look at it. But there she was, seemingly unaware of her impaired limb as she made her way from bush to bush, snacking all the while.

We called for help, to no avail. The humane society wouldn't come try and rescue an injured deer on the move. All we could do, they said, was to keep an eye on her.

And so the vigil began. Since that first encounter we’ve watched for her daily appearances, carefully chronicling her well-being. Is she alone? Has the herd rejected her? Does she appear to be in pain, or immobile?

No to all of the above.

It seems that our little three-legged fawn is pretty resilient, which probably shouldn't come as a surprise. Homo sapien and animalia alike, we have a way about us that makes us go on in spite of life's difficulties. And whether those difficulties come in the form of broken limbs, broken families, or broken hearts, we manage to pick ourselves up and get on with the business of living. It’s just what we do.

I heard Rachel Naomi Remen tell a story once about her encounter with a small, green  leaf growing out the side of a concrete wall on the streets of New York City. She stopped in her tracks to consider the tenacity with which the plant was imbued, given its obvious hostile environs. To her, it exemplified the very nature of life — a will to live. To exist. To push our way into the world and flourish.

We all have that. Just like the leaf and the baby deer, our innermost selves know how to guide us toward that ray of hope and fortification we need to endure. 

And though our struggles may at times seem solitary, they are not. Struggling is what we have in common with every other living thing. Maybe just knowing this — that we are not alone in our endeavor to exist — is enough.

Or maybe it is enough to simply know, with gratitude, that we are alive.

Together. 

All of us. 

The Sound of Silence

After reading my last blog post, a friend asked, "So, what is a silent retreat like?" 

I paused before responding, not knowing exactly how to answer. If you've never attended a silent meditation retreat you probably have one or two preconceived notions, like I did. I promise you, none of them are accurate. So, then, how to sum it up?

It is sweet, and tender, and not for the faint of heart.

It is walking through the foggy morning in Geronimo Valley cradled by the graceful hills of the coastal mountains. It is savoring a breakfast of homemade granola and chai tea, made by kind and loving hands and offered without recompense. It is devouring a syrupy sweet, stewed apricot as tears slide down your cheeks because you can taste your own journey, and the journey of those around you. It is embracing the deep understanding that all our journeys begin and end the same way.

We are human.

The sound of silence is deafening. You can hear your own blood coursing through your veins in a world devoid of constant disruptions from man and machine. It is a silence known only to prisoners in solitude, I suspect. And then probably not even a silence like this. There are no clanging doors. No keys in locks. Few locks at all, really. Everyone, and everything, is open. Every door and every heart.

If you look -- and you will -- the birds will flit from one microscopic morsel to another, serenading you with the flutter of their wings. The cacophony of growing plants is irresistible to the ear, as is the summertime drip of rivulets from winter's robust stream. All of it alive. So very alive. 

Like you are.

You breathe in your own aliveness.

You gather with others, your souls shouting your humanness as you turn inward to understand the nature of what that really means. Not looking outside or elsewhere for some Great Other to save you, but seeing yourself as who, exactly, you are. Human beings. Alive. Alone. Yet connected together by that silvery thread of life. 

You set your intention for the day -- to be kind to yourself, and to one another. You take responsibility for your own actions, and words, and -- most especially -- your thoughts, which guide your every move. You uncover layer after layer of who you think you are, and who you hope to be. 

You learn to notice the feelings of joy, or sadness, or anger, and by merely noticing to clearly see them for what they are. They are not you, but a story you tell yourself. You learn not to get wrapped up in these stories but to view your human experience with compassion and kindness, and to forgive yourself for not being as "perfect" as you think you should be. And to live with things as they are, not as you wish they were.

And above all, you experience the now of it all. What it means to be fully present. Whether you are sitting on a cushion breathing in and out or walking slowly, tracking with the precision of a violinist the movement of your human body passing through the air, one foot landing softly after the other. It is a deepening -- a slowing down to grasp living in a way that leads to a life of completeness rather than rushing from this thing to the next. It is a letting go of all that pulls and tugs and separates us from one another to a place of pure peace in our own existence and connection to all of humanity. It is breathing in this moment and no other. It is opening to the fullness of your human experience. It is the most peaceful, serene essence of what it means to truly exist in the reality and beauty of now. 

"That sounds amazing," said my friend, her eyes wide with wonder. 

"Yes. It was," I replied.

Life is amazing.

Right here.

Right now.

Unlocking the Door

At first I felt uncomfortable. Then guilty. 

After checking in for the week-long silent retreat at the Buddhist meditation center tucked away in the rolling hills of Northern California, I returned to the registration desk to ask the kind man for a key to my room. According to the welcome letter, I was "invited to request a key" if I wanted one because they don't automatically hand them out. [NOTE: A Buddhist retreat is not a hotel, in case you were wondering]. He pulled out a sheet of paper with the room numbers listed where I could sign for the key.

Mine was the only signature on the page.

I took the brass key on the red, stretchy wrist bracelet and thanked him, then made a quick exit. Just the taking of it made me uncomfortable, like I had already failed some kind of test. But I reasoned that I needed to lock my room because I had my iPhone, iPad, wallet, and thousands of dollars worth of cancer medication that might be mistaken for something with juicy street value by a would-be ransacker. I was just being prudent, I told myself (even though I had brought with me the exact things I was asked to leave at home, but that's another story). You know what they say, "trust in God, but tie your camel." Or maybe it's just my wife who says that . . . anyway, it always makes me laugh.

The door locking/unlocking thing went on for several days. I had my own room, as did many others in our small residence dorm, but I noticed that no one else was using a key. They all came and went as if without a care, leaving their doors closed, but unlocked. I found myself wadding up the stretchy bracelet and hiding it in the palm of my hand as I came and went, shoving the entire thing in the pocket of my sweater as soon as the door was safely locked and I was on my way out of the building. But as the hours and days passed, the key felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Just the having of it felt like a burden -- like a boat anchor, or an old, leathery skin I could not shed.

I had trust issues. And it showed.

Whenever it started I can't be sure, but I had reached full adulthood with more trust issues than any one person should have to bear. Maybe it was the constant mischief at work over two decades of law practice -- promises made without concern as to whether they were kept. One good deed deserved not another, but a stab in the back. Maybe this is where "CYA" (cover-your-ass) memos became a way of life. No one could be trusted. Not the lawyers, not the clients, not my ex. None of them. People steal things, constantly. The world is a desperate place. Leave your car unlocked and somebody takes your smelly gym shoes. Leave your house unlocked and there goes your flat screen television. And your watch. Oh hell, lock them both and somebody will break in anyway. And if it hasn't happened already, it will.

But the burden of constantly looking over my shoulder, accounting for every minute, of protecting every asset, of keeping watch lest someone take, take, take, had grown heavier than I had realized. Creeping into my retreat consciousness came the awareness that I had really wrapped myself around the axle. I mean, if you can't trust your fellow yogis at a meditation retreat, then who can you trust?

Ultimately I succumbed, and mid-week I finally hung the key on the back of the door handle and headed off to the last meditation sitting for the day, door unlocked.

I can't begin to tell you what a relief it was not to have to worry about the embarrassment of being seen with a room key or unlocking my door with it (as if any other retreatant was watching me, which they weren't!), or worrying if someone was going to take my things. Just letting go of that concern cleared the way for so many other moments of realizing how different my life could be if I just relaxed a little. Trusted a little. Took a risk on a kinder, gentler way of life. Now that's not to say I'll be strolling down a dark alley alone any time soon, but life is so much quieter when the underlying buzz of paranoia that comes from being constantly watchful and on guard all the time is gone.

And all it took was one small thing. 

Unlocking the door.

Remembering

The afternoon was brilliant blue, like that robin's egg kind of blue that peeps out from the straw of a perfectly formed nest. Roses were scattered in abundant, sorbet-colored clusters around the yard in mismatched metal pails on cloth-covered tables, their scent gently caressing those who wandered by. Row upon row of white wooden chairs were filled with friends and family fanning themselves under the summer sun in their black jackets and dresses.

Jim would have loved this. 

Our friend and brother and cousin and husband and son drew hundreds to this spot on a sunny, California afternoon to remember him and pay tribute. His spirit walked among us as those who loved him shared stories of his life, of his infamous smile and warm embrace, and of his unending kindness for both man and beast.

We shared tears and hugs and lamented together that he was gone too soon. Far, far too soon.

Isn't it always too soon? 

It is both shocking and deeply sad to see the shooting star of one whose love and energy knew no bounds suddenly disappear from the sky. An abrupt death, while we all portend to welcome it for ourselves, leaves in its wake a harsh emptiness for those left behind. But would we have it any other way? Surely not -- surely we don't wish a slow, lingering death that drains the color and soul and light? We don't wish that for ourselves, or for anyone we love and hold dear. 

But what we do wish for, always, is more time. We desperately wish for the one and only thing that we cannot have. We wish to run farther and laugh louder and cry harder and hug more, and to continue sharing the trials and tribulations of walking this earth with those that mean the most to us.

And so we gather . . . to remember.

As I sat listening to stories of Jim's passions and joys, of the love he shared with so many, of his optimism and bright smile and kind ways -- I wondered, as we all do at one time or another, how I would be remembered. Who would remember me? What would they remember?

This thing we do -- this gathering to memorialize the life of the ones we hold dear -- presents an opportunity not only to reflect on the life of those we have lost, but for self-reflection as well. A time to consider where we are in this world, what we are doing, and for whom. What good has come of the life with which we have been blessed? Are we truly living our best and most authentic existence?

Experiencing the loss of a loving human spirit allows us to turn and face a new direction. Take a different step. To find and pursue our passion. To renew our commitment to touch others in a way that brings hope and joy. It allows us to reignite our own inner light to burn brighter for ourselves and for those around us. And if we are lucky, it gives us a chance to celebrate and honor those we love and live by their example.

Remembering those who are gone allows us to grow. 

And grow we will, for they have been our soil.

Perfect Imperfection

The egg. Perfect in form, shape, and texture. Whether holding its fragile embryo for warming under a chicken's wing, or suspending the yolk for a sunny-side-up breakfast, perfection like this demands your attention. 

There are a few other perfect things as well, like the smell of a puppy, a baby's tiny fingers, and a clownfish. There's also the sun and the wind and the Pacific Ocean. And mountains. And snow. And flakes of snow. There's that pile of leaves in your front yard, including that one perfect leaf from which you can sketch a masterpiece.

It's all in the seeing.

And yea, there are less than perfect things too. Mostly, life. But do we have the same appreciation for life's imperfections as we do for the egg? Doubtful. Instead, we grouse and complain and twist and turn and try to make things perfect anyway. When life comes at us in waves, knocking us down, we often resist perfection in the making. A broken leg here, a herniated disk there, or a kid with chicken pox. A company takeover, a divorce, and the unplanned move you were forced into when the landlord raised the rent. Life's waves come, great and small. Always relentless. And beautifully imperfect. Each moment providing opportunities to grow and learn and become more perfect versions of ourselves.

It's all in the seeing.

The Cobra

It was innocuous enough, that tiny note in the far corner of my monthly calendar sitting open on my desktop computer. I looked again to be sure. Yep, there is was. The small yellow-orangish glow outlined the even smaller black characters that I see once a year: “Diagnosis 3-18-11.” It’s an annual reminder I could probably do without. 

But here we are. Six years later. 

It cannot be emphasized enough how the magical combination of excellent healthcare providers, pharmaceuticals, and a huge dose of good luck has kept me alive all this time. Seriously. Few women are diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and live to tell. But tell I did.

A long-time friend from the East Coast texted me bright and early this morning to say she stayed up all night reading Not All Bad Comes to Harm You. It had been sitting on her nightstand waiting for the perfect moment, as most books do. Mine was no exception. After telling me she loved it and was going to get a copy for a friend, she wrote, “I didn’t think I wanted or needed to read another book about cancer, but your book is SO much more! Please stay alive to write more books . . .”

Barely awake in California, I stood barefoot on the cold kitchen floor, contemplating her message while sipping at a tiny cup of hot espresso. “Please stay alive to write more books . . .”

Yes. I’d like that. It is my fervent wish.

But each new day is another wrestling match with the cobra as she tries again and again to slither her way out of the basket. I hold the lid firmly shut, feeling her knock about inside. When she flicks the lid sideways for a moment I see her beady eyes watching me. Shifting. Then still. No quick movements, I remind myself, backing away slowly to slip back downstairs where the glow of my computer screen waits for the next jumble of words to fall from my fingertips.

She won’t stop me. Not today. 

Today I will write.

And I will keep on writing. And writing. And writing some more — until that second book finds its way into the hearts and hands of those who share our greatest common purpose — to find the truth of who we are, and to live the joyful life we are meant to live.

It’s coming. 

Slowly, but surely, it’s coming.

We each have things in our lives that threaten to derail us, annihilate us, or put us in our place. But it is up to us to choose whether to keep the lid on them, or unleash them to rule our lives.

Today, my lid stays on.

Time

Ten minutes.

Ever think about how long that is? Or how short?

If you’re excited about getting on a ferris wheel ride, ten minutes drags like Will Smith's alien in Independence Day. If, on the other hand, you're taking an exam and still have one more essay to write before the bell, the last ten minutes flies like the Concorde. 

When we were young, we thought that time just went on and on; that we had "the rest of our lives" to do whatever the thing was that we wanted to do that our parents forbade. We heard the phrase "time flies” again and again, yet we didn’t heed the message. But as we grew older we started noticing the hands on the clock, now moving at the same dizzying pace as they did during a college exam. Round and round, faster and faster. And once we finally began to understand that time truly is fleeting and that there is no way to wind the clock back, we began regretting certain choices we’d made about how we spent our time, all the while clamoring toward making the most of the time we had left. 

Unfortunately, time travel still isn’t real and the earth still spins in the same direction every day, so we are (mostly) stuck with the decisions we make about the how to spend our time. But each new day presents another chance to listen to our deepest, truest, innermost voice, which will tell us the right thing to do, and the right path forward. Every time.

We’ve all suffered the consequences of spending our precious time on the wrong thing, whether it’s living with the pretty couch we knew would be uncomfortable, or working overtime when we knew we should be at our kid’s soccer game. And we've all wasted time dating someone far too long, or staying in a job we should have quit, right?

But regrettable or not, our past decisions have created the kaleidoscope of us --  of who we are now. Looking back is useful, but only to examine our decision tree and and see how we got from there to here. Looking forward, on the other hand, presents the opportunity to make choices thatserve our truest purpose. But how do we know what that is?

We listen. Our inner voice is always there, telling us whether we are moving in the right direction, and whether we are living the life we are meant to live. All we have to do is listen, and then act on what we already know to be true.

My mother used to watch a soap opera with the advertising slogan, “Like sands though the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

Turned over an hourglass lately? Imagine you did. And imagine every grain of sand is a day of your life.

Listen to yourself. Find out what's next. Then go there.

It's about time.

Pink for Freedom

On January 21, 2017, I marched with millions of women around the world to protect America from the tyrannical rule of a man with no moral compass. In solidarity, we wore pink hats with pussy ears to make the point that our freedoms and rights as women (and our pussies, for that matter) aren't up for grabs, contrary to what this man seems to think. 

But as we marched I realized there was more to it than that -- though that would have been enough. We marched to show our fellow Americans, indeed, to show the world, that we have not forgotten how far we have come, or the cost of getting here.

The now undeniable Russian interference in our election weighed heavy on my mind as I visited the war memorials, as did the knowledge that my father, a World War II veteran, was probably spinning in his grave after having lived most of his life during the Cold War, anti-communist era that followed. My brother survived Vietnam, though almost sixty thousand other American soldiers did not. And toward what end? To try and prevent a small country on the other side of the world from being taken over by communists -- the ones who control the press, eliminate free society, and silence their detractors. And though we failed in our endeavor, those men and women gave their lives to try and keep that from happening. It was that important.

Has America already forgotten? 

Yet here we are, decades later, and face-to-face with a United States leader whom the reviled communist regime helped elect. A leader who thinks Russia's murderous dictator is an exemplary role model.

What have we done?

I stood silent at the memorial wall. I touched the names engraved patiently, precisely, and with the utmost care. I remembered them, and why they died.

And I cried.

I cried for them. And for America. And for what we've become that a man with so little regard for honesty and truth and human decency toward others could stand at the helm of our great ship as she lumbers and lurches forward in the waves of change, threatening to capsize her completely.

I cried for the men and women who gave their very lives to preserve those freedoms promised to us all when this nation was born. 

And I considered again why so many millions of women came together in the largest civil rights protest of all time; a protest that literally circled the globe in all its pussy-capped, pink glory. A cacophony of drums and footsteps and voices in every language demanding to be heard. Crying out against a world in which, if the new resident of the White House has his way, we will be marginalized as human beings and compromised as a nation. 

And we vowed, each of us, that against this we will rise -- we are rising -- so that those who came before us will not have died in vain while defending the torch-bearing guardian of our shores.

I was inspired by Dr. King's words, forever memorialized both in granite and in the hearts of the marchers:  "Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world in which to live."  (Dr. Martin Luther King, D.C. 1959). He knew the struggle. He knew what was at stake. He wanted the "finer world" for us all, and lived with hope for the great nation that America could someday become.

And so, we marched. For miles we marched. For hours we marched. In the cold we marched. For ourselves, and for our mothers and grandmothers, and for our children and grandchildren, we marched. 

We marched together. All races and genders and ages and backgrounds. All of us who have melted and blended into this great American democracy, from all manner of time and place. We marched because we will not take for granted, and will never give up, the freedom and rights for which so many have died. 

Because freedom -- our freedom --  is not free.

It is never, ever free. 

Paint Your Life

I am knocking on the door of another birthday, my sixth one since I was first diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. The fact that I'm writing this confirms the obvious: I'm still alive.

Six years ago, a couple of weeks after my birthday, I received what might have been a lethal diagnosis. My odds of survival weren't great, but neither were they nonexistent. At that time I didn't know what the future would hold (kind of like now, I guess), but the news brought the canvas of my life into sharp relief. Bright colors abounded, but there were gaps here and there and, of course, a few dark corners. Like an unfinished tapestry, my canvas was an incomplete picture of the person I would become. I had no idea at the time that the devastating news of my illness would bring so many changes.

So here we are six years later. I have retired from the practice of law and fully embraced my life's true calling. I write this blog, have published my first book, and have a second one in the works. Seems that a lot has happened in a very short time -- a lot that I never imagined or dreamed of six years ago.

Understanding there are a set number of pages to turn on the calendar has a way of bringing to the fore those things that are really, truly important. The shit falls away. You can see clearly. My face-to-face with mortality opened my mind to the humanity -- and lack of humanity -- around me every day. It made me grateful for the compassionate, spiritually generous, kind people, and allowed me to freely release my emotional investment in the spiteful and soul-dead. I weeded the garden of my life, leaving only those from whom I could learn and grow and with whom I could share a loving and mutually-respectful relationship. It felt like cleaning out the garage and getting rid of the crap you don't need. Only better. And it has been like that for the last six years. I have allowed myself to recognize where things in my life needed to change, and how to cultivate and grow those things I had long neglected or ignored.

Opportunity for introspection is a gift that comes in many forms. Sometimes it comes in the form of catastrophe or disaster, but slogging through the worst of it can bring bright and beautiful change. And, it gives us another chance to work on our painting.

One More Day

Each night my wife falls asleep on the pillow next to mine in about ten minutes. I'm envious. It  usually takes me an hour or more to get to dreamland, which means that most nights I get to watch her sleep for awhile. But watching someone enjoy a peaceful night's sleep has its own way of smoothing out the day's potholes. When I turn out the light, I can hear my heart's little sigh as I become succinctly aware of the good fortune that brought her into my life. I am blessed beyond measure. And just before I close my own eyes and fall asleep, I ask for that which only time can give, and all that I could ever want --

Just one more day.

Ever aware of life's brevity, I always hope for at least one more day to spend with the love of my life -- to hear her talk and laugh and watch her play with our tiny poodles. To feel the touch of her warm hand when the world feels particularly cold. Just one more day is all I ask. And I ask for it every night.

Each of us knows all too well that our life, or the life of someone we love, can be over in an instant. Often there is no warning. And when the unthinkable happens, it destroys us as completely as any force of nature ever could. The gaping, open wound takes an eternity to heal, if it ever does. The scars remain. Nothing is the same. We are undone.

This awareness should make us immensely grateful for each new day, but does it? Do we consciously even think about it? If we did, would that change how we interact with those we love?

And knowing this, do we reexamine our own true purpose; our own truth? What if we knew that this was our last day -- what would we do differently? Do we consider how we might change our world and our relationships with the people in it if we knew that tomorrow would, in fact, never come?

None of us wants to face the reality of our own mortality. We go about each day doing whatever it is that we're so busy doing, giving nary a thought to when "the end" might come, or what we could or should be doing before it arrives. And why not? When you think about it, what could be more important?

Given life's uncertainties, isn't it worth asking ourselves if our current path is the right one? And if it isn't, then isn't it worth asking how we can get ourselves on the right one?

A new year is right around the corner. If we're lucky, we have one more year.

Or, maybe, it's just one more day.