My Femininity in Pink

For me, the color pink is fraught with judgement and self-loathing.  Pink is everything I disrespect in me, everything I find weak in femininity.  It is embarrassed cheeks, shame, vanity and shallowness.  Pink is sugar and spice and everything nice.  Pink is everything I loathe about being female.

Pink and I have been enemies from the beginning.  Baby dolls and frills, not for me. These were the soft pursuits of my sister, my life-long adversary.  My sister was pink; she played house quietly, cried easily, and tenderly cared for her dolls.  My playthings were the great outdoors; I climbed trees, moved dirt with my Tonka trucks, and rode around on the back of my dog.  My bike was blue, my room was blue, and there wasn’t a ‘girl’ thing to be found within my bits and bobs.

I was small and mighty, a tiny tyrant, a peanut-sized scrapper.  Often, I was the star entertainment for the men at family dinners; I would wrestle any one of my male cousins to the ground, a ten count for five bucks.  It was a killing for a killing.

Despite maturity, I continue to recoil at the first sign of femininity. It is my first reaction; a modicum of pride and vanity keeps me from a complete rejection of the tools of attraction.  I tentatively apply small bits of paint to my eyes, Monday through Friday only, and polish my nails to a buff shine.  I debate the energy-time- comfort ratio with every outfit selected.  Sporty is a style, and it can be done well, thank you Athleta and REI.  The Boomer generation labeled me a ‘Tomboy’, a category so delicately assigned to me just yesterday by a patient (even though I had a skirt, tights and clogs on).  I can’t dress it up; but it seeps from my cells.

My rare femininity is quickly rationalized.  My love for flowers, excused by my love for the wilderness.  Flowers grow outside, enough said. Flowers are for everyone, again, enough said. Besides, orange flowers are my favorite, not pink – and roses, I don’t like roses, enough…..

Clearly my childhood messaging runs as deep as coal.  Even in my middle years, I fight my own judgments and assertions.  When spotting a woman of any age, especially over 30, clad in pink or sequins, I immediately exclaim, “God Help Us!” – knowing in my heart of hearts she is wrought with drama and vanity, dulled intellect and useless pursuits. Messaging, messaging, messaging of weakness and misogyny, this must stop.

It is time to end this adversarial relationship with pink.  It is time to select a new reel, a new soundtrack for my life.  It is time to make friends, or at least acquaintances, with my femininity.  It is time to see femininity as strength and courage, as unity and oneness; to see all women as beautiful.  It is time to find beauty in all that is feminine and all that is feminine in me.  It is time to stand strong with women, pink hats, pink ribbons, pink hearts, and celebrate the beauty in all of us.

Orange is my Color

I am here, in Music City, the landscape freckled with oranges, yellows and reds.  Fresh from the Evergreen State, with its glacier-capped mountains and cedars large enough to drive a car through.  My head is still saturated with green, the green of moss-covered firs, ferns hanging from gorges, jade glacier ice, and teal alpine lakes.  Oft on the mountain in Fall, the bugs long gone to rest, I watch her don a cloak of beauty, reds and oranges in the undergrowth and sweeps of snow on tiny alpine trees.  It is my favorite time to be on my mountain, my spiritual home.  Now far from home, struggling to love this land, I have found joy in the brilliant weave of color Fall brings.

Orange is my color – it is happiness, warmth, energy and light.  Orange is the color of my heart, the color of song, and the color of joy. A tree gone amber or a field of tangerine bloom catches my breath, sails my soul. I honor orange with a leading role in my closet and a generous sprinkling through my home.

My heart responds with worship amidst the orange towering spires and arches of the Southwest.  I speak to my ancestors and commune with God in the land that surely, I once lived.  In this sacred space, as soon as my feet connect with the persimmon soil, I am with God.

After my first trip to this heaven, I painted my den the color of the sun hitting the red-rocked arches.  It had to be the den, the room I warm myself by the fire, gaze into while cooking, and map out our homeschooling days.  I could not bear the disconnection from my sacred land.  I wanted to feel the expansion of my soul once more, know again the feeling of being in my ancestral home. The den is my room and I painted it the orange.

The orange room became my sanctuary, the room I sought comfort.  As my marriage dissolved, as I lost a baby from another love, as I fought for breath when asthma squeezed my effort, my orange room, my sanctuary, helped me find my center, my peace and my comfort.  The orange of the arches soothed my soul and brought me back home.  Orange is my color.

Scent of a Man

For the first time in my life I am without a man.  I am without a man, a lover, a companion, a husband.  It has been a year since I felt the soft caresses and heard the utterances of love.  It has been a year, yet, I do not miss it.  I am, unperceivably and unpredictably, content and for once in my life, I am enough, not wanting, not needing, but enough.

Contentment, so rich, so new, it wants savoring.  I am drinking it in, present in my oneness, my wholeness.  For the first time, I utter the words, “ I am not ready to date, still transitioning,” and “I don’t want to date when I am fresh in my loneliness,” and “I want to  be settled first, not wanting to soothe this pain with men.”

For so many years I used men as salve, as bandages, as shields covering old scars and wounds.  I needed them in constant flow, unwilling, unable to look at those wounds. But now, after years of hard labor, I have stumbled on worthiness and enoughness.

So, I wait.  I wait and I discover new joys, joys of solitude, of stillness, of quiet.  I savor whole weekends without conversations, without commitments, without compromise.  I devote more time to my pets, writing, long walks, reading, making only food I love.  I devote time to making friends with this new territory, this new-found freedom, finding joys and peace hardly imagined.

The journey of solitude has been my greatest gift to myself, but I fear something is shifting.  I find myself now wondering what kind of man I will meet in my enoughness.  What kind of man will love someone worthy of love, someone already complete.  I find a small joy in imagining, this, wonderment being enough.

Now, as I walk through my home, the scent of man tickling my nose, bringing back the memory of a hand on my back, whispers on my neck, the want in my heart, I wonder if I am ready.  I take a deep breath, breath it in, the man scent, the smoke of it curling through my body.  I hover, over the leaflets from the Macys flyer, opened and scattered across my counter, filling my house with the sweet scent of man, taking it all in and wondering if it is time.  Oh, Macys, you have stirred the beast

Making Friends

I am set on making friends with the South, a daunting task to bend my stubborn soul and to see beauty where I refuse to look.  The trail, as always, is where I do my work, where I untangle the threads of disappointment, anger, trauma, and loss…The trail, as always, is where I weave a new story of hope, strength and courage.

The trail, here, in summer, is hostile and fierce, with its burning sun and air that tears open my lungs, with its biting insects and afternoon rain; it is an unlikely solace.  This is my story, my truth, the yarn I use to convince myself to wait, a little longer.  The real truth, the truth I am not yet ready to know- it is my anger burning, my mind searing and my heart biting.  I am still bathing in my disappointment and grief, not ready or willing to leave it with the trail. I want to soak in it a little longer, use it to fuel scraping the deck and hacking weeds- I need the power of my anger to conquer the years of neglect my new home has suffered.

I tell myself the fall will be a good time to begin a new journey, a journey to shed this cloak of wrath.  I promise myself cooler air, distant sun, glowing trees of orange and yellow, biting things to bed for the season, this will be the right time to ease my soul.  Fall is the right time to put this wrath to sleep for the winter.

So, this is the day, I decide, out on my deck, oversized cup of coffee twice heated, cooling while I take in the fall of the South.  This is the day, the last week of November, crisp air, sun warm on my back, lawnmower in the distance.  This is the day, shuffling leaves, driven by a gentle breeze carrying hints of wood smoke and earth.  This is the day, chattering squirrels, frantic in their final prospect to store acorns.  This is the day, glorious trees, oh the trees, the magnificent trees, oranges, yellows, reds, radiant in the sun, glowing against the cobalt backdrop.  This is the day I will begin my journey.

I know today, for the first time, that I will find peace in this land, in the stillness of this place where I can slow, write, walk, and settle, even in late November.  I am suddenly grateful to be here, today, despite my struggle, despite the difficulties I have found in this land.  Today I am grateful that my new-found solitude has, in return, offered me a chance to settle and find peace.

Depression

Disappointment drips off walls

In the cavern my soul once lived

Pushing, I search the dark

For Solace, Light, Reprieve

Stumbling, my will

Struggles, Flickers, Dies

Crawling, pulling

Over boulders of failed love

Straining, the wind crushes me

Messages of worthlessness

Traveling, black icy waters

Lick my feet

Slowly, silently, I slip

Returning to the earth

Without a goodby

Without a whimper

Without notice.

 

If we were having coffee- Morning

If we were having coffee, last night’s confessions spinning in our hearts, empty wine glasses on the floor, fire embers smoldering,

If we were having coffee, morning sleep in our eyes, sun streaming through blinds, bird song in the distance,

If we were having coffee, snug in our pajamas, dog curled in your lap, kitten threading my legs as I pour,

If we were having coffee, you here with me, in this very place, I would tell you, for you, I am grateful, and I would tell you I love you.

Past Love

I don’t know why I think of you so often.  Many men since you have proclaimed me no longer precious, but you, you hurt the most.  Maybe you hurt the most because you were the first, the first to put me aside, the first to say I was not worthy, the first to say I was not loved.

Maybe you hurt the most because you are still near, entwined in my life, knotted by our tribe, so we speak oft about our common ground.

When we do speak, I am overjoyed to hear from you, despite its purpose, despite the fact you are all business.  I want to shout, “Oh! Let’s do be friends, lets do be kind and tender to each other!!”

And when you are tender, when you let slip a kindness, I cling to your words – your kind words are still precious to me, even when raked from the ones intended to hurt.

Maybe I think of you often because the last time we spoke, I was sure you were living the life you always wanted.  You were completely you- while the rest of us struggle to find our true selves, to find our unique space that fits like skin.  You are beautifully there, beautifully settled in your own skin.

I think about now if you met me fresh would you feel the same.  I wonder if you would say, “you remind me of someone I once knew, only your skin, your skin is different.”  I wonder if you would feel tender, gentle and kind or would I, once again, bring out your cruelty and disdain.

Often I think about you and wonder….

Canyons

Canyons

My heart cries out

Echoing through the canyons

Seeking, beseeching, frantic and wild

My heart cries out

Echoing through the canyons

Searching, whirling, high and low

My heart cries out

Echoing through the canyons

Unsoothed by the caresses of wind

Unsoothed by the bold scent of pinon

My heart cries out

Echoing through the canyons

Until it is a soft whisper, hoarse and raw

Carried on the wings of a red-tailed hawk

My heart cries out

“Please, please, love me!”

First Sighting of Bryce Canyon

First Sight of Bryce

I am aghast, thrown to my knees, dizzy with wonder, without comprehension, without words.  I have stepped off of earth and into heaven, into God’s home, into a sanctuary for my soul.

I have lived on this earth 32 years and not known.  I have lived 32 years and have not felt my heart soar and rest on the arches of this land, the Dr Seuss spires, the living soil.  The bespeckled rocks and shimmering sand as far as I can see is surely where God lives.  It is surely a sanctuary.

Who knew in the planning of this trip.  Who knew as I mapped our way to our distant family’s arms, plotting out National Parks and National Monuments to visit in route.  Who knew the splendor that awaited us as we snaked our way south.  But here I want to stay.  Here I want to stay wrapped in God’s bosom, here where doubt and disappointment once lived now is filled with hope and love, here where I am sure, for the first time, that God lives.

For years to come I will revisit this land, annual pilgrimages, to walk the trail for days in prayer and contemplation.  I will walk, divining ways to carry on at home, to provide a meaningful life, to be a mother, a wife, a nurse, a good person.  I will devise a way to continue at home with empty buckets, with feet shod in cement, with the pretense of a happy family carried bravely on my shoulders.  I will strive on and always fall short.

But here, here in this place, my buckets overflow, I am renewed, I am new. I am new and ready to face the Herculean challenge awaiting me at home.