2010-08-19_07-48-00_294.jpg, originally uploaded by jhnsn728.
Almost two months hovering around 230. I am happy to not be moving up in August — this is a first! However, recommitted to moving downward in pounds heading into the fall. Also, finally getting a new pedi on Saturday!
A couple of years ago, I was experimenting with a new journal style (for those of you who don’t know this about me, I’ve kept some form of journal or diary since 1973). I bought a blank book, then wrote a list of words on the first page. The challenge was to take one word at a time and write about it until I didn’t have anything else to say.
Most words on the list took two or more pages to fully explore, though a couple took less. For the word “fulfillment”, I wrote:
“My life has always been full. Full of work, full of activity, full of obligations, full of ‘shoulds’, full of food, full of fears, full of expectations, anticipation, potential. It was so full I was completely overwhelmed much of the time.
It has only been recently that I’ve realized that a life can be very full without being filled. My goal now is to figure out what I need to do or change to experience ‘filled’. The paradox is that the first step is to pare down, purge, create space. There has to be less to make more.”
So, here I am, a couple of years older and, hopefully, worlds wiser. My life is still full, especially in August. But it is also much further along the way to being filled. And by filled I actually mean something akin to sated or satisfied. The activities on which I spend my energy are meaningful in ways that I hadn’t really experienced when I wrote the journal entry above. And I was definitely onto something when I said the first step was to create space.
In the quest to make space in my life, I have had to examine my time and figure out what stays and what goes. I purged my closets, my craft room, my psychic baggage. I now spend a lot less time filling time, and a lot more engaging in experiences that are satisfying at the soul-deep level. I’ve learned that really good, and good for you, food sates your appetite in a way that junk never will — and this is true for the things I put my heart into, as well the things I put into my mouth.
A few weeks ago, an old friend said to me, “You have a very full life.” I hadn’t thought of it, but I loved hearing it. My life is full in the sense I imagined it could be when I wrote that journal piece. This kind of full, this style of fulfillment, leaves plenty of room for growth and adventure. For new people and places. And it creates its own atmosphere of contentment even in the harried and difficult seasons of the year.
Thursday, August 12, 2010, originally uploaded by jhnsn728.
My birth certificate reads: Jenifer Ann Hanson. My parents told me, when I was young, that they spelled Jenifer with one “n” so that they could call me Jenny but spell it J-e-n-i. Until I was in graduate school, everyone in the world called me Jeni. Once at the University of Iowa, my faculty called me Jenifer because that was the name on the class lists, and I didn’t bother to correct them. I liked the new identity that going by my full name provided. Jeni was young, uncertain, self-conscious, girl-y. But Jenifer was a mature and professional woman. Pre-1986: Jeni. Post-1986: Jenifer.
A lot of other life-altering events and processes took place post-1986 as well. Including an almost complete break with the friends who had been important in my life until then. I held onto family, and one or two people from graduate school. Every five years or so, I’d be in touch with my college roommate, Vicky Powers Wong. But other than that, there was a defining line that broke my life into two halves: before and after. Some of those relationships ended in the normal course of life events which take us into new arenas, keep us busy with the daily tasks of living, and generally make it difficult to maintain contact (especially in those days, before cell phones, text messages and facebook). Others ended over hurts, breakups, misunderstandings. And some just from my own laziness about staying in touch, and friends who eventually gave up when I clearly was making no effort.
After a while, I realized I missed these people who had been such a part of my formative years. By then, though, I didn’t know how to bridge the gaps and I lacked the self-confidence to believe that they would want to have me in their lives again. There were no high school or college reunions for me…well, there was one disastrous reunion at Clarke where my nerves led me to drink too much and say exactly the wrong thing to everyone I saw. That cemented my belief that the past was sealed to me, and since no one would speak to me by the brunch on Sunday I know I wasn’t imagining it!
This summer, when I least expected or looked for it, reconnection has happened. I owe much of it to facebook, the rest to people with loving and forgiving hearts. While each person I’ve reconnected with has been a joy and gift, there are three in particular to whom I owe a debt – Mike, Carol, and Marty. And here’s why: these three people knew me intimately at times in my life when I was both my best and worst self. They saw me grow, strive, learn…they also saw me smoke, puke, make a fool of myself in public. They always believed in the person I could be, even at times when I was far from behaving like her. And after years of silence, these three who have reason to shun overtures from me, welcomed me back into their lives as if I am my best self now.
As part of this incredible summer, people from the before and people from the after have been meeting one another. For me, this has been a little surreal at times (as it was for Mike when everyone knew his name before my introduction). When my sister Gwen’s family finally met the Dennis family, after more than a decade of hearing about one another, I was surprised by how much fun we had (and that my neices think its a good idea for us all to vacation together next summer). Suddenly, people who have always known me as Jenifer have decided they have permission to call me Jeni — and those who have always called me Jeni have adamantly refused to call me anything else, unless they are making a point. There is no longer a separation between people based on the name they use for me.
More important, I feel like there has been a reunification within myself, as stunning on a personal level as the reunification of Germany was on an international level. I am whole in a way I wasn’t before – I embrace all versions of my name, my self. There are still unmended relationships from my past, a couple of people who haven’t accepted my friend requests. But I want Carol, Marty, Mike — and all of the rest of you who have taken me back into your graces — to know how grateful I am. The truth about real relationship is this: how I feel about myself and/or you in a particular moment may vary. But below that, in the deeper always of my heart, there is love.
Affectionately yours,
Jeni
2010-08-05_06-59-07_863.jpg, originally uploaded by jhnsn728.
Well, I guess July did finally catch up with me! Really working on not being a food and exercise wimp in August. This month has derailed me a number of times in the past, due to the extreme busy-ness and stress. If I can navigate August well this time, I will be able to handle anything that gets thrown my way!
Potlucks. I cannot say how many times in my life I’ve inwardly groaned at the thought of attending one. And not only because I’m too lazy to make a covered dish to bring, though I am. The thought of eating a mish-mash of food I generally wouldn’t serve at home, and making small talk with a bunch of people crammed in a room somewhere…well, you can tell from my description that I haven’t been much of a fan of the whole potluck experience.
That may be changing.
Today, my little house was filled to overflowing with people who arrived in a swarm (like a plague of benevolent locusts?!), set out food and condiments, made themselves at home and generally settled in for a good, old-fashioned eatfest. Except that the food included delicious salads, fruit, low-fat key-lime pie, and fresh corn dip (alongside the traditional brownies, better than sex cake, pulled pork sandwiches, and chips).
Ok, so I was actually hosting a potluck (to celebrate my own birthday, nonetheless). But as I looked around, at friends and colleagues talking and laughing, all jammed in the living room to be together rather than spread out in the small seating areas I had arranged throughout the main floor rooms, I had a moment of clarity. Potlucks celebrate community, and the community seated in my living room is one we have been creating for a long time.
We have shared road trips, disasters (both natural and of human creation), births, traumas, bike rides, weddings and karaoke nights. We have shared the range of human emotions, we have offered words of comfort and support. We have made each other laugh when feelings of anger, sadness, or hopelessness threatened to overwhelm. Not each person in the room has been part of every one of these events, but that’s how communities work: they share the load — whether that is the work of preparing food or the effort of finding a smile on a tough day.
Not to worry, I didn’t spend all my time lost in introspection — mostly I enjoyed the event and the moment I was in. But later in the evening, in Iowa City, Wendy and I wandered into a shop which sells a line of greeting cards that really appealed to me. One spoke to me in a particular way about the day’s events. It says, “Some people call them decades — I prefer to call them my ‘collected works’.” (Curly Girl Design/Leigh Standly) And it struck me that being a part of my community of friends, being one of the weavers of this large web of relationships, is a part of my “collected works” I’m both proud of and immensely humbled by. And I will take every opportunity to celebrate this — even if it means becoming a fan of the traditional potluck.
2010-07-29_07-19-10_819.jpg, originally uploaded by jhnsn728.
At least aftereffects of birthday celebrations aren’t showing on the scale! July has been a tough month to move forward, but I’ll take holding steady…for now.
My sister, Chris, was born 13 months before me. My brother, Jeff, 13 months after me. Throughout our childhoods and teen years, we did the same things, met the same people, experienced the same milestones of life at virtually the same times – or each on the heels of the others. That all changed in July 1980. On a very hot day, July 19 to be exact, Chris married Dave Finnegan and began what has, this week, been 30 years of life together. Not too many years later, in 1982, Jeff married Marsha.
On Monday, Chris and Dave’s 30th anniversary, I was in Cedar Falls visiting Jeff and Marsha and marvelling at the passage of time, the beautiful family and life they have created together, and realizing that my life stopped including the same milestones as theirs way back in the 80s. Back then, I didn’t think much of it. I assumed that, like them, I’d meet someone, fall in love, get married, have a family.
As time passed and that didn’t happen, I rolled with it. Throughout my 20s, I didn’t worry much about getting married. Sometime in my mid-30s, I started to realize that it might not happen. It was easy, for the next decade or so to imagine that the problem of a husband or lover would resolve itself if I just lost weight. As long as I told myself the reason no one wanted me was a physical issue, I could allow myself to believe that other people’s shallow feelings were to blame.
But deep down inside, I wondered. I was a lot like Jennifer Anniston’s character in the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You”. At her sister’s wedding rehearsal dinner, a cousin gives a toast, intended to include good-natured ribbing about the character’s single status, that goes too far. Anniston walks away from the table, and her father comes up and says, “Cousin Joe’s a jackass. Always has been.” Anniston’s character says, “I know. And yet, even HE is married.” As in, “If that ass can be married, what is so terribly wrong with me? Because I must be really unlovable or things would be different.”
Next week will include my 49th birthday. Not really a milestone year (watch out next year, though!). I’m still single. As I’ve lost weight, I’ve had to confront a host of toxic beliefs I’ve been carrying around in my heart. One milestone I’ve recently celebrated is actually believing I am someone to love, not just someone who can love. Another is that, after years of wishing for a passionate lover to sweep me off my feet and change me or my life for good, I’m actually happy with my life and am not looking for a hero or savior.
Here’s what I find myself wishing for now: an intimate friend like my siblings have found. Someone to share my daily life and mundane tasks with — someone to split a sandwich with, if I’m not hungry enough to eat a whole one. These are the things I envy when I see my siblings’ and parents’ marriages. Well, that and the way they run interference for each other, softening the blows life deals out, soothing hurts, or telling each other the truth when they need to hear it.
Don’t read this post and think I’m sad or lonely. I’m not (well, only a little and only some of the time — and I understand this is the case for married people, too!). I accept that I don’t control what the future holds and I’ll be okay whatever does or doesn’t happen. More importantly, recent insights make me, finally, feel that diverging from the path Chris and Jeff took, and hitting a whole different set of milestones, has been a worthwhile journey, after all.
2010-07-22_08-31-16_400_Cedar Rapids.jpg, originally uploaded by jhnsn728.
Not bad for a week of feeding company or being company elsewhere! Thanks, Marsha, for the delicious, light chicken curry salad!
Saturday night in July, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My friends Molly and Sarah and I sitting in section F, halfway up. The ice arena floor, bare cement with huge florescent pink ovals taped to it. Women in skimpy clothes, bearing names like Krash, Toxic Angel, and (my personal favorite) Amelia No-Heart, roller skating in circles occasionally elbowing or pushing another skater to the floor. Yep, the Cedar Rapids Pink Ladies Roller Derby was in town.
At first, we had no idea what was happening on the floor. But we eventually caught on, and enjoyed learning the strategy and seeing the display of sheer chutzpa. Molly hoped for harder hits, while Sarah thought about what her Roller Derby moniker might be: Sarah Lee POUNDcake or Sarah Lee CupCRUSHER? I was in awe — these women were displaying part athleticism, part showmanship. And all of them were just putting themselves completely out there. All body types, no holding back. (OK, maybe a little holding back — it was an exhibition and they were competing against their own teammates).
In the spirit of the roller girls, I want to talk about power and strength. Mental and emotional toughness. Whether and how any of those concepts apply to me!
A Roller Derby Newbie’s Guide to Girl Power
I’m sure there are other items I could add to the guide above. I must say, I am looking forward to seeing an actual competitive match. One other thing about attending the roller derby: it reminded me how much I’ve always loved to skate. Anyone care to join me at the local rink for the free skate?
Jenion 