Tag: healing

Coffee, Angels, & Hope

Published on by janna9 Comments

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Two Cups is my metaphor for life. One cup overflows with gratitude for all the blessings I’ve come upon as I’ve walked the path only I could walk—infinite, really. The other cup, only filled partway right now, are heartaches I’ve collected along my almost fifty years of living in this crazy world. It feels like a healthy balance to have so much goodness and a few hardships too. Perfectly imperfect. It’s kept me shooting for the stars while remaining grounded in real life too.

I’m extra grateful this year as I’m still here, sitting on my couch with a book about Christmas, Paris, love, and the heartache of loss. My cat is curled next to me whistling in her sleep, the fire crackles below four Christmas stockings my grandmother made for me and my three girls. The darkening sky above the bay is a soft grey, one that whispers words of serenity and peace.

This summer while on a vacation in Peru, my girls and I were in an accident where I was directly hit by a boat while we were motoring back to our cabin in the middle of the Amazon at night. I blacked out but heard the sound of a fishing boat hitting ours and then me. It took another two to four days before I realized I had bruises on my arm, dislocated ribs, and a head injury that has a 60-90 percent mortality rate. After the accident, my girls and I were taken by a different boat to the third-world-strip-mall, urgent care to have my lip sewn back together. Novocain was injected, but I wasn’t numb to the needle and thread pulled in and out of my gums in a hallway surrounded by the soundtrack of devastation. Nine stitches, mostly on the inside, answered my prayer that it would be “better than I think it will be.”

The next morning I drank more coffee than I usually do because I had a Seattle-sized tumbler with a lid for my swollen lip covered in a bandage. And, perhaps, I was in shock and kept sipping, reliving the events of the previous night. “What the hell? It’s a family vacation!” What was happening inside my head was the bleeding veins between my skull and brain on my left side were being constricted by the extra caffeine. It only took a half hour for the bleeding to stop before my body encapsulated the blood like a blood blister and pushed my brain over just enough to give me a freight-train headache through the center of my being. This headache was enough to get us out of the jungle and back to civilization where there is migraine medicine, a real hospital, and people who could help me and my three kids get out of the country. We got our two weeks worth of clothes and souvenirs packed and back on the long, narrow boat for the 45 minute ride to the tiny airport and then to Cuzco at 12,000 feet where we spent the afternoon waiting for our flight to Lima. It just so happens that altitude is also a blood vessel constrictor. Lucky for me.

But for the Starbucks mug I got in Lima at the beginning of the trip, drinking too much coffee, and having lunch at 12,000 feet, I might not be here this Christmas. I would have stayed for another day and a half in the humid jungle where blood vessels remain in full dilation. I would have thought my headache was a regular migraine with the added benefit of being hit in the mouth and this would have caused me to continue to bleed until it was too late. I may have been on the airplane with my three kids heading back the next day. I may have had to have surgery in Peru to relieve the pressure of two days of bleeding inside my skull. If I would have made it through, only 30 percent make a full recovery after surgery when bleeding is undetected for too long. This is what makes subdural hematomas the most severe of head injuries—you don’t know it’s serious until it’s almost too late.

Angels were in the Amazon. There were so many things that could have gone wrong. The first being, our group of eleven didn’t get thrown into the murky water where caiman (alligator family) and other terrifying creatures live. There were five kids on board… Just the trauma of being thrown into that water in the dark… I believe my angels were my four grandparents I’ve lost in the last handful of years – Elwyn and Shirley, and Alice and John. I was protected in the Amazon until we were able to get all the way back to Seattle where I realized I might have a severe concussion. Yep, and then some. And, I was protected at home when I sent a prayer request because the hematomas got bigger and surgery was a real possibility. Hundreds of Facebook friends responded. I was sent to a different doctor at the last minute and he said we would wait despite the CT scan. After two weeks of excruciating headaches, they stopped completely with the prayer, thoughts, and love that were sent my way—the very next day. Gone.

***

Four months later, I’m doing so much better. Christmas is busy always, but it’s seemed like a little extra overload this year. Cookies didn’t get baked and not enough holiday movies watched from the couch all together. We had to get two Christmas trees because the first one was picked out in haste during a homework break at dusk. It was too small, “just not right.” Not to mention two sets of cards because there was a typo on the first set. Once again, life moving too fast.

The moments though… We had the best time shopping for each other in Seattle. We saw Annie: The Musical at the 5thAvenue Theater. We watched a couple movies and got to sleep in a few days. My family, aunts, uncles, and cousins came over for Christmas Eve. It was magical. Our morning was lovely too – matching pajamas, Christmas music, the fire flickering, twinkling lights on the tree and mantel, presents opened, and pumpkin pie and homemade whipping cream for breakfast. Around noon I helped my girls put all their things in Ellie’s car and off they went to celebrate the holidays with their dad and his family.

The house is peacefully silent now. I’m still in my pajamas and the filtered sun won’t shine again until tomorrow. It’s not picture-perfect, but it’s been a beautiful day. I’m surrounded by love and grace. My girls gave me the softest blanket I’ve ever touched (ever), photographs of my girls with Santa through the years sit on the table behind the couch, a nativity scene on the piano, a “perfect” (second) Christmas tree with ornaments I’ve collected since I was young, art, flowers, and even my cat and dog, surround me as a reflect on where I’ve been, how blessed I am to get to live this life of mine, and what’s ahead in the new year.

We all have moments of absolute magic and moments of deep grief for what was lost or what will never come to be. Me, too. I’ve decided I’m going to live for the magic, the connections to others whether minutes or a lifetime, and, most importantly, for the love I can give to those in my circle and their love given right back.

This is life. It’s two cups at the same time. Sometimes one cup is overflowing like a Starbucks cup from Peru. It’s easy to keep refilling until you have to get out of the jungle—right now. The cups are not always marked clearly. The cup of heartache just might turn into the cup that saves you, but patience is required. It’s happened over and over for me.

The only thing I need to remember is to accept whatever comes, have faith I will be okay no matter what, and hold onto the hope that is infused in both cups. I’ve learned that everything in this beautiful, messy life is meant for me. I get to decide the narrative, even when it’s as crazy as a rogue fishing boat hitting me in the middle of Peru on our family vacation.

There is always, always something to be thankful for… Today, I am thankful for every single thing because I almost lost this life. This Christmas I was given perspective and that grace surrounds me like the softest blanket I’ve ever been wrapped in.

May you also know for sure that no matter what, life is so, so good. Love and grace are protecting you too. xo

Magic Can Be Found in the Darkest of Places

Published on by janna4 Comments

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This is one of my favorite sunflower pictures. I was in Upstate New York at Old Stone Farms, an inn near The Omega Center. It was a healing journey that August after getting my family (all five) through a cataclysmic transformation that left me emptied of who I was, am, and would become. My kids would be away from me for two weeks; an incomprehensible amount of time in any scenario but especially this one. It was a nightmare I desperately wanted to wake up from. I couldn’t wait for them in the house where there had been magic a lifetime ago, moments ago.

Through the poisonous fog and acid rain, I reached out toward the only thing I could do – write. Despite my past career in marketing, a graduate degree in business, and an ambition that used to propel me through the narrowest of passageways, my soul gently told me to write books about people, everyday traumas we unintentionally inflict on each other, and relationships starting with the parent and child, my dad and me. I traveled thirteen hours by car, airplane, train, and a night in Manhattan to get myself to a memoir workshop where Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, would be speaking among others. I spent five days at this lovely inn, mostly numb in my exquisite room, a blend of old and new. On the door was the word Spirit.

The ones who managed the inn were soft and loving, made me feel like I belonged right there on the other side of the country from home. They checked in on me when I didn’t come to dinner. “Are you okay? We were concerned about you. Can I bring you something?” the woman asked. Equestrian therapy, massages by a goddess (a young single mother with a singing voice like an angel and a spirit for listening), walks, yoga, reading, seclusion filled my days until it was time to move to the more austere Omega Center for the five-day writing workshop.

This photograph, half blue sky and the other a dense forest with a bright, golden sunflower in the center, reminds me of how far I’ve come. Writing was but a seed three years ago, it was the only direction I could go, and now my book is in its final stages of being completed. I have walked through the darkest forest and come to the other side where blue sky and bright clouds can be seen again.

This trip was magical and not in a euphoric, picture-perfect sense like life used to be. It was magical because I was on my knees like I’d never been before; because I allowed sadness to overtake me and because I allowed the kindness and concern of others to envelop me at a time when I couldn’t meet them at that place. I could only receive and say thank you. It was magical because there was love. It was the love you feel for someone who has done something brave and courageous, it was the love I have for my girls. I allowed myself to love and care for me, for maybe the first time in my life, and it made all the difference.

Walking Out the Door

Published on by janna2 Comments

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Have you ever been afraid to be away from your house? Afraid to say yes to anything—an invitation to a get-together, a party, a walk in the forest with friends? Have you been the kind of afraid that does not consult with your head, you just turn the other way and run or stay in a book on the couch or in your bed for twelve hours awake seeing nothing, listening to the sound of your own breathing?

I have.

It’s not who I am, I’ve always said yes, at least since I decided that I wanted to be a person who always said yes. I turned the button to fear off completely. I said yes to the things that made my heart quake but ventured forth anyway. I said yes even when every cell in me screamed NO! I turned my head, smiled and said, “Yes, I would love to, give me two minutes.” I said yes to selling books door-to-door for thirteen hours a day, on commission, in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the summertime! I said yes to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane at 13,000 feet in the air, hurling myself down black diamond ski runs before I really knew how to ski, going away to college a couple months after my third stepmother died of cancer, getting married the first time even when my dreams all but slapped me in the face and told me to run because somehow the dream world knew I was not ready. And then I said yes to leaving the boy I’d grown up with because eventually, my heart message made its way to my head.

My internal guide was rendered voiceless from a very early age. I said yes to moving to New Jersey, going to graduate school at night while working fifty hour work weeks, and climbing the corporate ladder faster than others thought was appropriate. They complained. “Why does she get a different ladder?” I said I’m so sorry, you can come this way too.

Climb that mountain? Yes. Run that race? Yes. Grab my friend out of the abyss? Yes. Have a party? Yes. I said yes I can do that until I could not say yes one more time. I said yes until even speaking the word was too much. And then I stopped—for an entire year. I followed the breadcrumb path to my girls’ school and back, to the store and back, the soccer games and back. It was all I could do. Friends said, “I miss you, let’s have coffee or lunch.” I said I would love to but I couldn’t reach out farther than my own front door.

Last September, my head told me I needed to get myself back together. I’d been talking about writing a book for three years. I’d read a hundred books about writing a book, sat through a hundred hours of lectures, written hundreds of pages of notes in notebooks, and my mind swirled the story around hundreds of times yet I had not opened up my laptop and typed one word. Write the damn book! my head screamed. You are all talk, no action. Maybe you can’t do it. Maybe you will never recover from losing the life you thought you had. Maybe you will never be the person you used to be…

 I could hear them through the walls. “She used to do it all, but she was never the same after the divorce,” these people whispered.

And then courage floated in on a rain cloud one fall afternoon last year. I decided that I needed to be accountable if only to myself, so I signed up for an online class that came with a book coach. I sent ten pages in every week and Collette gave me feedback; she was a cheerful coach who told me everything I did was great. It helped. I could do this class sitting at my kitchen table with my dog next to me on the floor and my cat vying for a nap on my keyboard while I watched the weather coming and going.

I decided I needed to meet other people who write books and learn what they learn, so I signed up for a workshop on how to write that took me to Salem, Massachusetts where girls were deemed witches if they dared to speak their mind once upon a time. Thankfully, my lovely friend, Angela, joined me. My true self was coaxed out of hiding just a little bit more.

My head told me I needed a goal. You need to write this book before the end of next summer, she said. So, I signed up for two different writer’s conferences the following July and August to pitch my ‘finished’ book to agents and editors. I did it all in an afternoon. It was easy. I just sat down at my computer with my credit card while my heart felt happy surrounded by spa music and crystal rocks. I did it, I said. Oh, wait…

New York City was the last of my accountability action plan. I really wanted to cancel. I’m not done with my book is an easy justification. Agents only want finished manuscripts you see. I’m super busy, I’ll miss Lexie’s summer camp play, I’ve been gone too much, Sage and Apple have a hard time when I’m gone, there are only a couple more weeks of this gorgeous summer in the Pacific Northwest… The reasons went on and on.

The real reason is it scared the hell out of me. It scared me to get on an airplane and fly to New York—something I used to do without a second thought. It scared me that I don’t know anyone. It scared me that I would have to make my way from New Jersey into Manhattan on the train, which I’d never done before. It scared me that I would be told no, you’re not good enough over and over. It scared me to leave my house by myself, without the responsibility of being the mother. (I have a special cape I wear so my kids don’t pick up on my anxiety—it looks like a pasted on smile.)

But I did it anyway, just like my old self but the fear button is stuck in the ‘on’ position now. It was okay that I was feeling scared, I walked forward anyway. Maybe it would take four hours to figure out the train, but there is no hurry. I told myself it doesn’t matter what happens, it’s good enough you are here.

I happen to think my book is good and that when it’s published it will help many people navigate divorce in a more compassionate way because they read my story. This is enough. I remind myself that when I’ve been the most successful it’s been after I’ve had the most dismal failures or that ‘no’ was said to me more than anyone else in the group or that it simply doesn’t matter. I’ve succeeded if only because I’m sitting in a Manhattan hotel room after pitching to a handful of agents and I accomplished what I set out to accomplish: I have almost finished a book, I’ve put my shattered heart back together, I’ve forgiven those who were responsible, and I walked out my front door. I am moving forward body, mind, spirit, and heart. I am not broken anymore, but I am changed and for that I am grateful.