the simple kind of life

There was a time that life was extremely simple.

There was only one path, one option, one way for my life to go. There was only one place to live and straying for even a short time was unthinkable. My friendships were sweet but had never seen the face of heartache, of trial, of war and if for some reason they had our beliefs were there to back us up, to make life easier, and to explain any negatives.

I know there was a small amount of friction between me and this life before my Arabella was born, but the day she was born was really the day my life stopped being simple, in every way. Once she was born my easy beliefs made life harder, and they made life confusing, they weren't enough to encompass what I had just done, who I had just met. Once she was born I needed more depth, more life in my friendships. Once she was born my world was open to every option, and the need in me to have something more was only heightened by the depth of love she showed my heart. I became severely unsettled. The only thing I was settled by was her.

I believe that when you search for more, life gives you more. When you search for depth, life gives you depth. When you welcome life in, true full life that doesn't close it's eyes to the ugly parts, life comes in and it comes in like a tidal wave.

From the time that I decided I wanted more and let my mind and heart feel the unsettle, the longing, the confusion I was on a new path and my simple life would never be able to keep up. I think it's easier to make mistakes on this path, and I surely did. Life got everything but simple from there on out. Every decision was a mountain to climb and every new option and idea of how life could be was overwhelming at first. Seeing people who had chosen so much differently than me, and yet didn't feel like they had sinned, or fallen short, or messed up, was shocking over and over.

How could people just be ok with never getting married? or never having kids? How were people living without religion without a care in the world about it? How were people seeing their friends through losing babies, losing husbands, losing everything without completely falling apart? And without putting all their pain on the false place of "jesus"?

When I lived inside my simple world, I was happy. It was easy to be happy. But I constantly felt wrong. I felt like an octagon dropped into a space made for a circle. It was easy to fit into it, but it wasn't me.

At the same time that I became unsettled, that simple life pushed me out. Through the past 4 years that I've made this painstaking journey out of one way I've moved out of that one town, lost many of those shallow friendships, left behind my narrow beliefs and allowed my path to change, to what is true, to what really fits me. Life was very hard the past four years, and anything but simple.

Now, life is richer than ever.

I feel like I have been through war, and come out victorious. I found who I am, I found depth, I found everything I was looking for. Life isn't supposed to be simple, people change, and that's ok. People are different. We all live different lives and chose different things, and that's ok. We lose babies, we lose marriages, we lose money, we lose religion, and it's all ok. These things happen to all of us at some point and the best thing about all of it for me, is finally being able to truly go through those things and to truly go through them with my friends. I don't feel the need to try and fix it, I don't feel confused at why god let them or me down, I don't feel a false protection from anything. Instead of giving my friends false, empty answers about god making it all better when real things happen, I have something real to offer, and I believe that's what all of this is even for.

I love humanity and I'm so amazed at how strong we are. I'm amazed at what we have to offer. I'm still shocked at how great humans are without needing a god to make them great. If we let ourselves be a part of life and a part of humanity, accepting the pain, accepting the faults and accepting our differences, life is amazingly full.

the best soup ever made

I have a tiny little cold and since the weather does as well I felt like making soup. I had a real delicious veggie full Minestrone at Rustic Canyon the other night so I thought I'd head that way in my recipe but make it my own :)


Vegetable Stock
Navy Beans
Garbanzo Beans
Diced Tomatoes
Celery
Carrots
Onion
Zucchini
Yellow Squash
Dried Thyme
Dried Sage
Bay Leaves
Sea Salt
Pepper

basically I just put the stock, beans, tomatoes and onion in a huge pot and brought it to a boil. While I was warming all of that up I sauteed the carrots and celery a bit. Once they were almost soft I put them in the pot, then added the zucchini and yellow squash. I put the seasonings in according to what looked and smelled good. I let it all cook for about 30 mins, then served it with Parmesan on top and fresh warm sourdough slices next to it!

It's too good.
It tastes like Christmas.

love changes everything, and love has changed me

Love is the most powerful thing a person can experience, give and be a part of. I have found so much love in my life and learned so much about how to give love in each different relationship this past year and a half its changed foundational parts of what makes me, me.

I've learned love through my children that is unchanging, unbreakable, mountain moving, life saving love. It's the most natural love a heart can feel. I don't have to work at loving my children and they don't have to work at loving me. It's natural to want what's best for them, to see them happy, to help them grow. It's natural for them to want to be close to me, to want to make me happy, to feel safe in my arms. It's not always easy to do these things in action, but the desire is natural and usually the action that comes out of the desire is true to what we feel, a sweet sacred love that can only be found between mother and daughter.

I've learned love through my friends that is supportive, safe, fun, relieving love that holds me up when I can't hold myself. I thoroughly enjoy loving my friends and being loved by them. I am so happy to hear their triumphs in careers, in romance, in everyday life and to be the friend to hold them up when those things all crumble or don't turn out like we all expected they would. I'm thankful to be able to be there to offer advice that I have learned from my own failures in hopes that they might skip those painful mistakes or regrets. I'm thankful to be able to be there to just listen and say nothing. I'm thankful to be able to be there just so they know someone around them understands. I'm thankful to be able to laugh with them, drink with them, and watch stupid shows with them. I'm so thankful I've learned who my true friends are and how to love them in good healthy ways that make them feel loved.

I've learned love through Seth that is forgiving, deep, true love that can somehow always make it through. I've learned that sometimes love comes naturally but has to be put into action using very hard work, humility, a lot of understanding and forgiveness even when it doesn't feel good. Forgiveness is one of the biggest freedoms that comes with loving someone and I've never felt it more than in mine and Seth's relationship. Being forgiven in such a huge way has taught me how to forgive huge. I've learned about love that doesn't naturally get through everything (like mother daughter love) but love that works hard to get through everything because the other person is worth it all. It's one of the most powerful ways I have learned to love. I've never seen love push through darkness, and drought like our love for each other has. This to me is what family is and I'm so thankful I have Seth as my family.

I've learned love, finally, through my Andy. Love that is full of fire, love that is romantic, love that is sweet, love that is peaceful, love that is balanced, love that is not self-serving, love that is the kind of place you want to make a home in and live in forever. I've learned just how traditional I really am. I've learned that commitment didn't mean what I thought it meant, and that it is very much something I have inside of me. I've learned to let myself cry. I've learned how to take my walls down. I've learned what I believe living your life alongside someone should feel like and look like. I've learned that this kind of love is simple, its not a struggle. This kind of love just exists. It comes in and makes itself comfortable inside of you and it feels really really good. I've learned that romance isn't something to be afraid of or try to run from, neither is commitment, or actually feeling things. I've learned how to be sensitive and caring again. I've learned how to be open and vulnerable. Andy's love has changed me and healed me. His love has made it possible for me to open my heart enough to learn the lessons I have from all the other kinds of love I experience. His love is the foundation of where all this love has been allowed to grow, and the starting point of me learning to love as a whole person. I am so thankful that even in as much as I have messed up, I am lucky enough to have found a man like Andy and a love like he gives me and inspires me to give back.

Love has been a struggle and a very scary place for me my entire life, but for the first time its become the exact opposite. Simple, and safe. For the first time I feel like I know how to love, in each different relationship. For the first time I feel like major parts of my heart have been healed and changed, and in that parts of my past have been washed away. Love is such a short simple word that holds an infinite amount of power to grow and change a heart. I'm so thankful my heart has been unlocked and softened.

oh bla di

If I'm learning from mistakes, I'm gonna learn a lot from the past... oh I don't know... 4-8 years... I mean 25.

It's really hard to admit you are wrong. I think it's even harder to admit when you are hurtful. It's harder yet to admit not only were you wrong, you were hurtful AND you didn't try the hardest you could to make things right.

This is where I am. I'm not the kind of person to deny when I have messed up. I think on one hand that commands respect from people, and on the other it welcomes condemnation and criticism. It's easier for people to condemn you if you actually own up to all your shit, and its definitely easier for them to criticize your actions if everyone can see them.

I have certainly messed up in more ways than one in the past year, scratch that, more ways than I can count, but I see it. I know it, and I'm in the very hard process of learning from all of it. I made even more mistakes in the years before. Some mistakes I would gladly take back no questions asked, and some I could never fully regret because they lead me to life changing love, invaluable lessons, or foundation making memories.

I failed in my marriage. I didn't just fail this last year, I failed from the start. I started unprepared, unaware, and definitely not even close to ready. I built four years of love, happiness, heartache, anger, beauty, and stifled dreams with my best friend. Those years are most important because they produced the best things either of us will ever know, our two sweet girls. But in the end I believe I didn't have what it took to be that wife, to give that love, that my friend, my husband, needed. My only regret now is the pain I caused and the lack of effort I put in to fix what was broken from the start. I can't ever know if I really had what was needed inside, because honestly, I didn't give it everything. I wish that just for the sake of my precious babies that I could say I gave it all I had. Every inch of my body, every stretch of my emotions, every working of my mind, but I didn't.

So the struggle comes now to grieve the lack of effort I gave them, to grieve the lack of effort I gave for myself. But from that, to learn, learn more than I ever have. The biggest life lesson I have ever encountered. It's a complex lesson, it has more than just one aspect, it has many, and its painful, but it's good. So very good.

I made my choice this year, the choice to give something up. That choice is done. My life holds a new choice, to make the life I already went after the best it can possibly be for my children, myself and their father, my friend. To me, there is no other choice. I can only work towards making it the best it can be. To make peace, to ask for forgiveness, to bring stability and love, this is my aim. This is my goal and I'll be damned if anyone gets in the way of it. My children will know two parents who love each other and more than anything in this entire universe, love them.

This is harder than anything I've gone through. It's so hard to be wrong, to recognize mistakes, to feel regret, to know you were hurtful, to admit you didn't give everything you could, especially to your children. But what's hard makes us grow, what we lack makes us learn, and the way we change and overcome is what not only makes us who we are, it passes on to our children. So let the condemnation and criticism come, because no one knows my mistakes and knows my wrongs more than myself, and as a result of that truth they can't hurt me or shake me. No one could be more disappointed in me, than myself. I don't need anyone else's disapproval to get the message, to learn the lesson.

Sometimes it feels like I never stop making mistakes, and sometimes I feel so defeated I almost don't remember how to move forward, but the truth is, everyone makes mistakes, it's just that most people don't let anyone see theirs. So everyone sees mine, it's out in the open, at least that makes it easier to own up to and easier to become better from. Stay tuned, and you'll probably see me fail again, but I'm not worried about my future failures because this time I know that the most important thing is to give everything I do, everything I have. I know that this way no failure can be in vain.

I’ve traded my clothes for a safety pin with a number on it
And I’m camouflaged
Wrapped in white and stripped of dignity
Here I sit
I wait
Scared
In a room devoid of atmosphere
The needle in my arm pushes cool liquid into me
I think of the things that will be pulled out of me
Out of my heart, out of my mind, out of my body

I am wasted and tired
I am ready to end this thought
I am ready to end this motion
I am ready to come out from under my covers

In silence we all stare past each other
There is no race, no status, nothing that separates us
Our naked bodies sit in defensive composure
The truth is covered only by thin white cloth
We share the same destiny
And our hearts beat together
Fast and nervous
Do theirs?

Each name that’s called thickens the air
Hope for lack of pain
Fear for conviction
Our eyes are in agreement
No one here wavers

Three seasons have passed
Only three
And I’m full again
This time it’s goodbye
This time the intention is not the same

I pick up my own iv and push it down the forsaken hallway
For one minute I am alone
Alone with my choice
Alone with my body
Alone with my mistake
The clock slows to a dreadful, pitiful tick

My eyes only search
My mind only wanders
But my heart alone catches the blood
Carelessly smothering the metal in its ugly shade of red
Instruments foreign to me scream out my name
I inventory the sizes, the shapes
I inventory my mind for all the ways these sizes are used

Just in time they are covered

The conviction never comes
The battle never starts
The wavering is not an option
Only the physical reality moves my mind

I find peace in my sleep
Peace in the pulling
Peace in the breaking
Peace in the end.

pride will shatter

I'm sure at this point it goes without saying that I am judgmental. I am definitely the kind of person who believes that everyone should live how they want and believe is right, with the exception of stepping harshly on others civil rights, but that doesn't mean I don't judge them while they are living the way they want. It's become very easy for me to accept almost anything you can throw at me. I openly embrace pretty much any lifestyle as long as it doesn’t out rightly benefit from the pain or injustice of another. The only thing I have no tolerance for anymore is Christianity.

I’m not a fan of any organized religion, but none bother me as much as Christianity. Maybe it’s because I was a part of it and I’ve seen the inside. Maybe it’s because I was a part of it and I’m bitter, although that honestly feels like the least likely option. I don’t feel bitter, not anymore. Maybe it’s because Christians are the only major religion that is bent on everyone knowing they are the right ones. Maybe it’s because I find it a foolish thing to think is true. Maybe it’s because Christians are the only ones selling their religion. Maybe it’s because you know they’re always thinking you are lost when you’re with them, praying you would someday be like them, believe like them, love the lost like them, be saved like them.

Maybe it's all of the above.

This wouldn’t be a battle for me if I didn’t have Christians in my life, Christians I hold dear and respect. There are Christians whose ideals and morals I just do not respect and there are Christians whose ideals and morals I don’t understand but respect. Maybe there will always be a side of Christianity I hate, and the rest will always be something I’m just ok with accepting for the sake of the ones I love. I think even a lot of Christians feel this way, that there is a big world of Christianity they don’t want to be associated with. As much as that is the biggest issue to me, I’ve gotten to the place where I’m not even comfortable with just the idea of believing Jesus is god, or the bible is true. In my head I just think it’s so idiotic and can’t understand why intelligent, respectable people choose to believe and follow such nonsense. This is not where I want to be. I don’t want to be one of those, an atheist who thinks they’re above everyone else because their scientifically superior brain cells out think and out analyze everyone else’s data coming up with the clearest most sensible answer deeming everyone else foolish sheep with no minds of their own. There will always be people who live as sheep, and so will be seen as such, but I want compassion and understanding for them as well. Making a better decision, in putting thought into who or what I follow, doesn’t make me a better person. It just makes me a better decision maker. And even that can be argued.

It would be so easy to separate myself from all those who follow Christianity, to cut myself off.

I think this is why the heathens stick to themselves, only bumping into the religious in freak accidental meetings and why the Christians stick to their fellowship, only straying to “save the lost”. The same reason people with kids tend to hang out with people who are just as crazy as them, fellow parents. And people without kids tend to hang out with people who live life just as well as them, eating out, traveling, spending quality alone time doing things they love, all without children screaming in the background. It lessens our battles if we stick to what we know; if we love what we see in the mirror and only look for more reflections.

I don’t want to see more of myself. I don’t want to walk around with a full length mirror in front of my face. I want to look around and see people. Fully see. I have done this and done it well. I can relate to anyone, I can put myself in anyone’s shoes and come to a clear understanding of their choices and actions. I have hypothetically put myself in terrorist’s shoes and been able to have compassion. I have put myself in the hypothetical shoes of polygamist Mormon leaders, criminals, extravagant spenders, people who just live differently than me and had understanding. I can go so many places in my mind and find the place where I relate to these people, I can relate to the feeling of walking in anyone’s shoes. Anyone’s shoes but my own, my own old, thoroughly worn, shoes.

Maybe those shoes are the most uncomfortable because I remember how painful they were, how they gave me blisters, how they struggled to fit my feet inside them, how they spoke nothing of who I was and just matched the shoes around me, how they stomped on others beautifully humble shoes.

When you come out of something I guess the only way to move forward is to remind yourself of the reasons why you are leaving. Otherwise you’d never go. But you have to get to a point where that past isn’t related to you anymore. Christianity isn’t related to me anymore. It’s nothing of who I am. It’s the same to me as Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism. None of these are a part of me, who I am now. And I need to look at them the same, with compassion and a desire for understanding. It’s time to put my shield down, drop my sword and stop battling with an unarmed enemy.
There will always be things that Christians say and do that bug the shit out of me. But I don’t need to be defensive against their desire to get me back, it has nothing on me, if something can’t take you down there’s no need to fight it.

I don’t know how to change my mind, how to see people who I think are great, but are Christians, and not have that feeling of sadness and loss because there’s a place you’ll never share, a place where there will always be a valley between your minds, your hearts, your souls. Maybe I can’t.

In the end all I can do at the moment is try to get compassion back, to fill myself again with love, to take off my atheist glasses and remember that I am the same as a gun toting, pro-life, conservative Christian republican. We both fight for what we believe and we do it because we think it’s what is good. People’s hearts are not very complex; we all want the same things at the core. So if I don’t understand why you think a man who lived two thousand years ago is the god of the universe and if you don’t understand why I think humanity is the god we need, at least we can understand where we begin. We begin at the core of our hearts where we all want love, we all want the ones we love to be around us and have all that is good, we all want to find that thing that gives us peace inside, that tells us we belong, and anyone aiming for those things has my respect whether they find my truth or not.

Let the compassion begin and the love fill me.

friend

let's go to your house dear friend
grab my hand, run as fast as we can
back to those days where the sun set high
we’ll sit in the grass by the lake
please talk, lets laugh
like nothing ever changed

let's go to your room dear friend
surround us in color in that sweet familiar place
let the yellow, the blue, reflect in our hearts
and the songs will come, its here that they start
they’ll ring through our ears, they’ll shout, they’ll play
and the melodies we make will keep us this way

great was our love, and hopeful and safe
and i’m sorry old friend
and there’s nothing i can say

there's no words, theres no pain, that can blur,

that can justify, that can turn and erase these tragic mistakes

lets go to the beginning
i’ll take up my needle and sew like i did

little stitches that patch the broken and frail
the years that have passed, lets just for a minute

let them fade, let them brake
twist up the words, the actions, the names

the ones that have pushed, pulled, and frayed
let the tug of our memories take them away


let's come back to life
i'll be the girl you met that day and you be that boy
in your dark pea coat, the idealist with lovely big dreams,

a heart too full, black high water jeans
only now we will know the great things we create
what we hold between us, what we need, don’t be afraid
together we’ve made little hearts that beat strong,

lungs that breathe deep, little feet and bright eyes.
and if all these years were made just for them,

then these years can take everything, again and again.

i'll stand with you now, i'll be what you need

in the way we love best, where i know what to give

ill admit i was wrong, ill take all the blame

i need forgiveness, and hope, my dear, i need grace
and more than those things that i might never feel
i want our friendship, so rich, and incredibly real

so let this song resound from my lips to your heart

in an effort to mend what i foolishly broke

i'm sorry i'm sorry, and sorry again

its all i can say, i'm so sorry dear friend