“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” — Mary Oliver

The other week I turned down a guy that asked me on a date. He’s the first person that’s asked me on a date since my divorce. Because of this, I felt obligated to say yes. And I did, initially.

I’ve questioned how dating would go down for an old school gal that’s not into dating apps. Not yet, anyway 😉

My neighbor, who is a dear friend, mentioned to me the other day how she’s hoped for me to find a partner — one that’s deserving. The other day my friend told me she wants me to get my groove back. Another friend asked me if I was interested in dating at all.

Not intended pressure, but rather a hope rooted in societies view that to be happy, we must be partnered. To be whole, we must be paired with an equal half.

And yet, we’re not born as half a human. We’re whole, on our own.

I can see how this may read as a single woman’s plight to justify her alone-ness. Siri wants to autocorrect aloneness to loneliness and I have to correct her while I laugh at the irony. The two – alone versus lonely – are vastly different. I hear Dr. Dog in my head,

And we’re sitting in the rain
And we’re feeling like the weather.
You could say that we’re alone
But we’re lonely together.

I’m far less lonely now than I was when I was married.

The truth is, I’m not into dating another because I’m dating myself. I really need this time to be with me. I’ve been through a trauma that has resulted in so much confusion, self-doubt, and feelings of unworthiness. I’m acutely aware of my broken pieces; of the gaps in my chain, the holes in my field. Putting in the time and work to heal feels like the ultimate act of self-care, of self-love.

My mantra that I say to myself, especially on the nights where I’m awoken from my own racing heart, is “you are enough”. But it’s not enough to say it, I also have to act on it — to treat myself with respect, compassion, and love.

How does self-worth translate into different actions?

It means saying no when I feel a societal obligation to say yes. And it means giving the time, attention, and nurturing I’m led to believe that I owe to others, to myself.

It seemed fitting that the same day I turned down the date, a dear friend sent me a text about wanting to go to Mexico and asked if I wanted to go check it out with her.

I’m paying much more attention to the intention that drives my actions; taking notice of what I say yes to and what I say no to. Learning to love myself truly is turning out to be the greatest love of all.

Now excuse me while I exit stage left to go jam hard on Whitney Houston while I pack for Mexico.

This time last year was the beginning of the end of my marriage though I suppose if I was able to zoom out at the time, the beginning was much earlier; buried beneath debris that hid in plain sight but would have to be uncovered, pieces dusted off and broken like fragmented sentences that needed to be piece parted together to read coherently. Truths sometimes lie in cracks and crevices. Today we’re in collective disarray and I know there are still many with added turmoil that sometimes feels greater than this pandemic itself. And so I wanted to say to anyone in the struggle, keep going. I can still remember the heaviness of those days, the panic that landed me in my doctor’s office questioning the force of my beating heart that felt like it may push through the woven fabric of my clothing. My insides begging to be seen. My hurt, looking to escape. For some things in life, time is the only solution. No amount of searching or healing or mending could have happened in a single day. Today is as good of a day as any to recognize how far I’ve come. May this post be a token of hope to anyone that needs it. Keep going.

When my life became unmanageable, I knew the answer would ultimately lie within myself. It’s hard to see because it feels much like a garbage truck just backed the fuck up and dumped a lifetimes worth of discarded waste on you. It’s a disorienting experience to no longer feel an attachment to any one reality. Being a doer, my first instinct was to start cleaning up; sorting the trash, compartmentalizing, deciding what – if anything – was salvageable. And then you start to realize that not all the trash is yours and that picking up after someone else who is still making a mess is futile in the same way picking up after a toddler is. And so you turn back to your side of the street, cleaning what you can. And the answers lie somewhere in there, in your own cleanup.

I’m still casting out nets in search of my own answers. Pulling up bits and pieces of bigger truths tangled together, interwoven in garbage that doesn’t matter. Like panning for gold and looking for the few golden specs buried beneath piles and piles of sand. Finding the nuggets worth polishing and then returning to look for more.

Truth finding. Reality shaping. Buried in tangled webs of delusion and lies.

In questioning where I went wrong, here is what I’ve learned: I didn’t trust my own reality. I allowed others to wash my windows only to realize that they weren’t being washed at all but rather smeared with shaving cream and the promise that they were sparkling clean. I’ve learned that nothing is as clear as when you do the cleaning yourself and trust in what you see, what you experience and own all of that, as your reality, not theirs.

Today I stand rooted in my own reality. It’s an empowering place to be. It’s good to be here. Side stepping as I go, sure, but moving. Always moving. Forever searching, taking inventory, and learning.

Read this, and couldn’t relate more: When a family is steeped in denial, the person who is trying to say that “the emperor has no clothes on” is generally viewed negatively by those who are not willing to see what’s really going on.

Today I stand confidently in my own truth. Before I welcomed the opinions of others that didn’t live my same experience and so it was like trying to look out a window that was constantly being washed with shaving cream; clouded by confusion, misinformation, manipulation, and / or denial of others. It’s taken me a while to learn to trust myself and my gut and now that I’m there I can’t believe I spent so long allowing others to clean my windows.

Image by photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Oftentimes one of the kids will come up to me, frustrated and whiny about something they can’t pull apart or remove from whatever it is they’re trying to remove it from. I watch them try with all their might; the kind of frustration and might that more-times-than-not results in the damn thing being broken rather than set free. I was reminded of this this morning when I was emptying the dishwasher and I couldn’t get a lid to one of Sonny’s sippy cups out. The lip of it was stuck on some prong and I quickly realized that no matter how hard I pulled, it wasn’t going to separate. Pulling harder was not the answer and would have actually led to the lid and / or the rack breaking. It’s like having your fingers stuck in a chinese finger and the desperation to be free makes you pull all the much harder and as you’re pulling harder you’re simultaneously spending whatever was left of your patience and patience is soon traded for panic. I always tell the kids, if what you’re doing isn’t working, maybe there’s another way; a better way, an easier way.

As I turned the lid of the sippy cup to dislodge it from the prong it was caught on, I realized that oftentimes tugging at something gets you nowhere. That sometimes the answer is an about face, a turn in the other direction.

Filed under: ordinary life happenings that remind me I’m on the right track.

Image: a self portrait wearing a tank that reads “free as a bird” backwards and is slightly out of focus.

“Jackie wants a black eye, some proof that she’s been hit” – Dr. Dog.

Last night I had a dream that I came upon a gas station where he was involved in a confrontation with a group of men. He swung first, but they were swinging back and he was in danger. I remember looking at the welt forming on his forehead and having a sense of relief come over me… now people would see him hurting… Know he was in pain. Maybe they would help them. Maybe they could help him. He’d never let me…

I read a book my mom (bless my mom) bought the boys about worries following the divorce. In the book a little girl has been shoving all of her worries into one big Santa Claus size bag. Of course the bag gets heavier and heavier to lug around and the bag is invisible so no one even knows to ask her if she needs help carrying it. Through a chance meeting with a wise older woman she discovers that if she takes the worries out of the bag and acknowledges their presence that they’re not all that daunting. By discussing them, she’s able to let them go, to empty her bag.

It’s a simple book with a simple message but it reminded me of those lyrics by Dr. Dog and how we all – to varying extents anyway – carry invisible weights that would never show outwardly if we didn’t openly discuss them. The lyrics take it a step further, calling us to question how life would change if that bag of worries were all the sudden visible; if internal pain showed up on our bodies in the form of bumps, bruises, visible ailments. I question what I would look like, what the people I love would look like, what the people I’ve lost respect for would look like.

What if those who suffer internally were forced into wheelchairs, unable to walk. Or maybe their ailment only required them to need crutches. Whatever the degree, how different would life be if we all knew and could see their handicaps? Surely people see someone in a wheelchair and know they may need to hold the door, offer a push up a hill, and so on and so forth. No one disagrees on what the needs are and the magnitude of the problem because the handicap is there for us to see and the resulting limitations are perceived relatively the same amongst most.

If we were forced to see, we’d be forced to confront. And if we’re forced to confront, we’re suddenly accountable. With nothing hidden, perhaps we would see that we’re all suffering something. Maybe the healing comes in communal suffering… “we’re all in it together now, as we all fall apart”…

If only we could see what’s on the inside. If only the person in desperate need of a life saver was visibly drowning. It’s a rabbit hole, filled to the brim with an abundance of “if only”…

And so, here we are, handicapped by things only we can acknowledge, things only we can chose to discuss, or not; cans of worms we can keep the lid on, or open. Our health relying on our own self-awareness, on our willingness to embrace vulnerability, on our own inner strength.

Ain’t that a dangerous thing?

As for me? The more I talk, the better I feel. My worries are still heavy and I carry them with me but I’m not carrying them alone. And the more I share, the more I’m able to release. And that is everything.

Being okay with divorce does not mean there’s no struggle but rather that the struggle is a necessary part of the equation that will ultimately lead to growth. The mess, the heartache, the confusion, the uncertainty, the stress, I fully believe will bring us all to a better place if we invite the struggle. I’m inviting the struggle.

I got a text from my girl Shelby yesterday that reminded me of just this… and it tied in so perfectly with something else I had read recently about happiness — the general point of both being that happiness does not mean that you ignore the negative emotions in your life; but rather you acknowledge them, you do what you can with them, and you continue to grow in spite of them.

I’ve always felt that way — and in a weird, twisted way, tragedy has always excited me some… because there is so much potential for growth in times like this. It doesn’t make the hard days enjoyable but it certainly makes them worthwhile… knowing that they’re necessary and not going away. I know that accepting that and working within those parameters and continuing to grow anyway is where my superpower lies… to feel it all and wake up the next day still ready to get up and take the bull by the horns.

We’ve all had that one person—that one person in our lives that we always find ourselves saying, “If only they would…” Month after month, year after year—we love them, we care about them, we worry for them, but when we turn off the light or hang up the phone, we think to ourselves, “If only they would…”

Maybe it’s a family member. Maybe they’re depressed. Heartbroken. Despondent. Maybe they don’t believe in themselves. And every time you see them, you try to fill them with love and confidence, you compliment their new Spiderman shirt and tell them how bitching their new haircut is. You casually encourage them and offer some unsolicited tips and recommend a book or two and silently say to yourself:

“If only they would believe in themselves…”

Or maybe it’s a friend. Maybe you see them fucking up left, right, and center. Drinking too much. Cheating on their partner. Blowing all their money on their odd yet obsessive go-kart hobby. You pull them aside and give them the hands-on-the-shoulders pep talk that friends are supposed to do. Maybe you offer to take a look at their bank statement and maybe even give them a loan or two. Meanwhile, in the back of your head, you keep thinking:

“If only they would get their shit together…”

Or maybe it’s the worst. Maybe it’s your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend. Or even worse, it’s your ex- husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend. Maybe it’s over but you keep clinging to the hope that they’ll somehow change. That there’s some special piece of information that they missed that would change everything. Maybe you keep buying them books that they never read. Maybe you drag them to a therapist that they don’t want to go to. Maybe you try leaving tearful voicemails at two in the morning, screaming, “WHY AM I NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU?!!?”

Yeah, like that has ever worked…

We’ve all got that person in our lives. Loving them hurts. But losing them hurts. So, we decide, the only way to salvage this emotional clusterfuck is to somehow change them.

“If only they would…”

On my speaking tour this spring, I held short Q&A sessions at the end of each talk. Invariably, in every city, at least one person would stand up, offer a long explanation of their messed up situation and end it with, “How do I get him/her to change? If only they would do X, things would be better.”
And my answer, in every situation, was the same: you can’t.

You can’t make somebody change. You can inspire them to change. You can educate them towards change. You can support them in their change.

But you can’t make them change.

That’s because making someone do something, even if it’s for their own good, requires either coercion or manipulation. It requires intervening in their life in a way that is a boundary violation, and it will therefore damage the relationship—in some cases more than it helps.

These are boundary violations that often go unnoticed because they’re done with such good intentions. Timmy lost his job. Timmy is laying on his mom’s couch, broke, and feeling sorry for himself every day. So, Mom starts filling out job applications for Timmy. Mom starts yelling at Timmy, calling him names and guilt-tripping him for being such a loser. Maybe she even throws his Playstation out the window for good measure, just to give him that extra oomph of motivation.

While Mom’s intentions may be good, and while some may even see this as a dramatically noble form of tough love, this type of behavior ultimately backfires. It’s a boundary violation. It’s taking responsibility for another person’s actions and emotions, and even when done with the best of intentions, boundary violations fuck relationships up.

Think about it this way. Timmy is feeling sorry for himself. Timmy is struggling to see any point in living in this cruel, heartless world. Then, suddenly, Mom comes in and trashes his Playstation while literally going out and getting a job for him. Not only does this not solve Timmy’s problem of believing the world is cruel and heartless and he has no place in it, but it is actually further evidence to Timmy that there is something fundamentally wrong with him.

After all, if Timmy wasn’t such a fuck up, he wouldn’t need his mom to go out and get a job for him, would he?

Instead of Timmy learning, “Hey, the world is all right, I can handle this,” the lesson is, “Oh yeah, I’m a grown man who still needs his mother to do everything for him—I knew there was something wrong with me.”

It’s in this way that the best attempts at helping someone often backfire. You can’t make someone be confident or respect themselves or take responsibility—because the means you use to do this destroys confidence, respect, and responsibility.

For a person to truly change, they must feel that the change is theirs, that they chose it, they control it. Otherwise, it loses all its effect.
A common criticism of my work is that, unlike most self-help authors, I don’t tell people what to do. I don’t lay out action plans with steps A through F or create dozens of exercises at the end of every damn chapter.

But I don’t do it for a very simple reason: I don’t get to decide what’s right for you. I don’t get to decide what makes you a better person. And even if I did decide, the fact that I told you to do it, rather than you doing it for yourself, robs you of most of the emotional benefits.

The people who tend to populate the self-help world are there because they have a chronic inability to take responsibility for their choices. It’s full of people who have floated through life looking for someone else—some authority figure or organization or set of principles—to tell them exactly what to think, what to do, what to give a fuck about.

But the problem is, every value system eventually fails. Every definition of success eventually turns up shit. And if you’re dependent on someone else’s values, then you’re going to feel lost and identity-less from the start.
So, if someone like me stands on stage and tells you that for half your life savings, I will take responsibility for your life and tell you exactly what to do and what to value, not only am I merely perpetuating your original problem, but I’m making a killing while doing it.

People who have survived trauma, who have been abandoned or shamed or felt lost, they’ve survived that pain by latching onto worldviews that promise them hope. But until they learn to generate that hope for themselves, to choose their own values, to take responsibility for their own experiences, nothing will truly heal. And for someone to intervene and say, “Here, take my value system on a silver platter. Would you like fries with that?” only perpetuates the problem, even if done with the best of intentions.1
(Caveat: Active intervention in someone’s life can be necessary if that person has become a danger to themselves or others. And when I say, “danger” I mean actual danger—they’re overdosing on drugs or becoming erratic and violent and having hallucinations that they’re living with Charlie in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.)

HOW CAN YOU HELP PEOPLE?

So, if you can’t force someone to change, if intervening in their life in such a way as to remove the responsibility for their own choices ultimately backfires, what can you do? How do you help people?

1. LEAD BY EXAMPLE

Anyone who has ever made a major change in their life has noticed that it has a ripple effect on their relationships. You stop drinking and partying, and suddenly your drinking friends feel like you’re ignoring them or are “too good” for them.

But sometimes, just sometimes, maybe one of those party friends thinks to themselves, “Damn, yeah, I should probably cut back too,” and they get off the party boat with you. They make the same change you did. And it’s not because you intervened and were like, “Dude, stop getting blackout drunk on a Tuesday,” it’s simply because you stopped blacking out, and that became inspiring to others.

2. INSTEAD OF GIVING SOMEONE ANSWERS, GIVE THEM BETTER QUESTIONS

Once you recognize that forcing your own answers on somebody sabotages the benefits of those answers, the only option left available is to help the person ask better questions.

Instead of saying, “You should fight for a raise,” you could say, “Do you believe you’re paid fairly?”

Instead of saying, “You need to stop tolerating your sister’s bullshit,” you could say, “Do you feel responsible for your sister’s bullshit?”

Instead of saying, “Stop pooping your pants, it’s disgusting,” you could say, “Have you ever considered a toilet? Here, may I show you how to use it?”

Giving people questions is hard. It requires patience. And thought. And care. But that’s probably why it’s so useful. When you pay a therapist, you’re essentially just paying for better questions. And this is why some people find therapy to be “useless,” because they thought they were signing up for answers to their problems, but all they got was more questions.

3. OFFER HELP UNCONDITIONALLY

This isn’t to say you can never give people answers. But those answers must be sought by the person themselves. There’s a world of difference between me saying, “Hey, I know what’s best for you,” and you coming to me and saying, “What do you think is best for me?”

One respects your autonomy and self-determination. The other does not.
Therefore, often the best thing you can do is simply make it known that you are available if a person needs you. It’s the classic, “Hey, I know you’re going through a hard time right now. If you ever want to talk, let me know.”
But it can also be more specific. A few years ago, a friend of mine was going through some shit with his parents. Instead of giving him advice or telling him what he should do, I simply told him about some of the problems I had with my parents in the past that I believed were similar. The goal wasn’t to force my friend to take my advice or do what I did or even to give a shit about what happened to me. That was all up to him.

I was simply making an offering. Putting something out there. And if it was useful to him in any way, he could use it. If not, that’s fine too.

Because when done that way, our stories carry value outside of ourselves. It’s not me giving him advice. It’s my experience lending perspective to his experience. And his right to choose and take responsibility for his experience is never impeded, never encroached, always honored.

Because, ultimately, we are each only capable of changing ourselves. Sure, Timmy may have a sweet-ass job and one less Playstation, but until his self-definition changes, until his feelings about himself and his life shift, he’s the same old Timmy. Except now with a much more frustrated mother.