Fail. Win. Repeat.

This seems to be the repeating, never-ending cycle in my life. Two steps backward, one step forward, keep trying and keep moving because that's better than just being stagnant and static. And sometimes it is so frustrating. I can't tell you the number of times I have said to myself, "Are you kidding me? I made the same mistake again? I really messed that all up. For the 1,348th time." And then I'll have a tiny bit of progress, and then make another horrific mistake and get upset all over again.


Life doesn't have an instruction book. Sure, there is the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, thousands of self-help books, motivational speakers, spiritual guides, the "Worst Case Scenario" series... But until I find something that actually says, "Katie, when faced with (x), do (y), and do it every time," I'm going to go ahead and say that we are all here figuring all this stuff out on our own. Especially if we follow the American social norm of not asking for help, stuffing our problems, not expressing appropriate and healthy anger, denying our need for any sort of counselors or therapists in the course of our 80+ years (why it's socially acceptable to go to the doctor for every little thing but not to a therapist for the big and the small, I will never know), not fostering a sense of community, creating and existing in dysfunctional families and other relationships... It's no wonder a lot of us feel lost and confused much of the time. I certainly do.


At a previous job, we were having a staff meeting one afternoon. One of my coworkers, an honest and straight-forward gentleman, said, "I just want to know if all of this chaos is normal. We don't know what we are doing day to day with all these changes. Is all this madness okay? Or should we know what we are doing at this point?" And that resonated; what he'd said described my life perfectly.


Here's a secret that I'm going to put out there: I don't know what I'm doing about 99% of the time. I will attribute about 1% of the good I've done in my life to actually knowing something and learning from experience. The other 99% is all by the grace of God, or luck, or coincidence, or whatever you believe that exists outside of human choice and will. It has not been me, because I have no idea what I'm doing in this life.


When I do gather up my courage and try to do something out of the norm, try to get help for something or make a change in my life, I have no idea if it will succeed or not. I love this great quote that has been attributed to Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." It seems that in my life, and especially in the last 3 years, I've tried dozens, hundreds, thousands of potential solutions to problems. There is this pattern of exploring every option before finding the right one, the magic perfect solution that actually works or makes any sort of progress. And this latest trial is no exception.


I have just finished up a 3-year experiment that has failed. And if you know me, you know how much I dislike failure. It's not so much that I can't fail or that I'm above making mistakes. It's more that when I believe (in) something, when I put my whole life into something and it turns out to not work out the way I want, I question my own intuition. I question my ability to "read" situations, to read people and the real story that usually happens behind the curtains. When I believe something to be true or believe in something, whether it is based on intelligence or faith, I trust my own gut as well. And when it turns out differently than what I expect, it throws me for a loop. I start to distrust myself, my gut, when so many times it has guided me in the right direction. A lot of times I attribute my gut feeling to prayer: I talk with God, I wait for an answer, and I act. And recently, what I thought I heard, the conversation I thought I had with a Higher Power, seems to have gotten lost in translation somewhere along the way.


I thought I could fix some problems in my life on my own. I thought with the tools I had, with what I had learned and with my life experience and with just believing in something enough, I could overcome an enormous challenge in my life. And maybe in the future I can. But what I learned recently, what I learned this week, was that for now, I can't. For now, all I need to do is say, "I need help."
It is so hard for me to ask for help. I've discovered that this is a common problem with many of us; but why? Why do we feel like we can do everything, solve everything, on our own? It is okay to ask for help, and I would even say that it's incredibly foolish to not ask for help from time to time. There is so much knowledge out there, from people's life experience, from science, from the history of the world... It is okay to say, "I don't know what to do. I'm going to ask someone who may know more than I do about this."


There is something so freeing about that, too... about looking at a situation, and realizing that for now, not necessarily forever, it is bigger than I am. With the tools I have and what I have learned, I may still need some extra assistance. And that even though it seems like an incredible failure, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's a victory, for now. And then down the road in the future, I can try again. Or try a different path altogether.


Many people think that in the Bible, Peter failed when he tried to follow Jesus out on the water and started sinking. But Peter was the only one who even attempted to follow Jesus out onto the water. The other disciples stayed inside the boat, not even testing their faith or Jesus' power. But Peter wanted to try.


I think of these past 3 years as me trying something that I wanted to try. I really wanted it to work, I thought that it would work, and for now it didn't. But I tried. Maybe that's victory enough for now.

Abundance

As I was talking to a family member tonight about some financial issues (it's tax season, after all), I felt a sense of panic taking over my brain. I've had a couple of super-duper-major expenses since February, and also, because of my time away from work, I haven't gotten a full paycheck for almost 3 months. This combination of factors caused me to get caught in a mental loop of, "Holy moly, what am I going to do?"

I hung up the phone dejectedly, turning numbers over and over again in my mind. And feeling sorry for myself. I kept saying to myself, "Why did I ever want to be a teacher? Why did I ever want to work in non-profits?" What sounds like such a good idea as an 18-year old just entering college is sometimes not that realistic with real-life, mortgage/health insurance/transportation costs, ball-and-chain bills. After a few minutes of fretting, I realized I needed to break this negative thought-cycle before I got swept away.

I immediately found some chocolate, took a hot shower, and kissed Vinnie, my dog and go-to source of instant comfort. These 3 things may not solve my problems, but they make me feel better, at least temporarily.

I'm not sure if it was the chocolate, the shower, the Vinnie kiss, or a combination of all 3, but I started thinking of the situation I'm in now, and if I made the best decisions I could have made. And I decided that indeed, absolutely, I did. The two big expenses I've had since February were totally "worth it." One undoubtedly changed my life, "saved" my life in a sense, and the other will greatly improve Vinnie's quality of life. They were no-brainers, as far as making the decision of whether or not to spend the money on these things. The benefits of the first decision have only started showing up in my life, some of which I've written about in blog posts and on Facebook since early February. But even in just this short of a time, it is shaping up to be one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life, if not the very best.

I also considered all of the examples of abundance I have experienced in the past couple months. My life has been so blessed recently, for so many different reasons. New job opportunities presenting themselves, landing right in front of me. New assignments, projects, even house-sitting gigs. Coincidentally (or divinely?), I've been asked by five different people recently if I would house- or dog-sit in the next couple months, and it's not even summertime. There have also been people reaching out to me, caring about me, showing me love and compassion and generosity. Family members helping me with a variety of things, friends randomly making me macaroni and cheese, inviting me to dinner, bringing me cookies, sending me loving emails, including me in events and then purchasing my ticket, letting me know of interesting opportunities, offering assistance before I had the chance to ask, rides to the airport, help with my taxes, thoughtful phone calls, out-of-the-blue messages and demonstrations of love. I have such an abundance of wonderful people in my life... both new connections, like the amazing and inspiring friends I met while I was away and also the recent date I went on, and the fantastic people I've had in my life for a while. If I think about the sheer quantity and quality of love I have in my life from these wonderful souls, I realize I am the richest person in the world.

As I looked at the situation a little differently with less panic and more gratitude, I realized that there is so much "good" in my life. Not just right now, but always. So many gifts, so many opportunities, so many friends and family members who seem to be going out of their way to bring goodness, affection, love, and abundance into my life. It is truly a wonderful thing to witness, and it is funny, comical even, to think for even an instant that I am lacking in any way. It is all going to work out, and not only that, but it is working out. I know that if I had to choose, I wouldn't want any other form of abundance in my life than what I am currently experiencing. I am so incredibly grateful.

Is it all about people?

I'm struggling, albeit happily, with the very wonderful realization that it's all about people, and it's not all about people at the same time.

While I was away, I was forced to face the dependence on people I had developed. In leaving my home, my job, my car and my cell phone behind, I was suddenly cut off from most forms of communication, unable to drive wherever I wanted to meet up with friends, and not being easily accessible in the same way that we all are now with our cell phones in our pockets wherever we go. While it was somewhat nice to have a break from all of the stimulation and instant gratification that Facebook and email provides, it was also really difficult to have this amount of time, 27 days, away from all of my normal forms of comfort: Vinnie, friends, family, connection to the outside world. I'm a connector, and I love being connected with people as much as possible.

I did have God, and having a month away from my closest friends was a great reminder that God is really the primary friend. Capital "F" Friend. It was nice to get reconnected to Him, although I hadn't really felt disconnected. It was just more that I hadn't put enough weight, energy, emphasis, into my relationship with Him. It was a good time to think about my Creator and this life that I have been given, and what is most important.

One thought I had was, "Is it all about people?" My whole life has been centered on people; my friends, my family, what I can do for them to enrich their lives, what they can do for me... I live for people, and after God, there is nothing that is more important to me than the connections I have in my life. Things that I do, choices that I make, sacrifices, employment positions, where I live, what I do with my time, what I spend money on... they all revolve around people. The other things, the actual job or the house or the hobbies, are just secondary, not as important as, not worth as much mental space or time as people.

And since I've been back, I've realized that while it is all about people, it is not about people as well. Weirdly, both are true.

If I were on a deserted island, and all I had was God, I know, somewhere in the center of my heart, that I would be okay. I may get lonely from time to time, I may want to hear something other than my own thoughts or own voice, but I would be okay. Because truly, we are all here in this existence by ourselves. We are surrounded by people all on their own individual journeys, but we have to make it on our own. Make our own decisions, be okay in our own skin, be okay with the life that we have created. And as I realized recently, we have to love ourselves. No matter how many times someone says, "I love you," it doesn't really "click" until we can feel that love for ourselves as well. No one can do it for us. 

We also can't depend on other people. Not because they are not dependable, but because it's not fair to other people to become dependent on them and to have that feeling of neediness in a relationship. We all need things from time to time, and can feel needy, but when it becomes more of a characteristic and a part of our identity than just having a bad day, it is too much. There is a great quote by author and priest Anthony de Mello which says, "Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you.” When we have dependency on other people, we tend to rely on them to make us happy instead of finding that happiness ourselves.

But on the other hand, somehow not contradictorily, it's all about people. We are not all on a deserted island; we are here together. And some of the best glimpses of God I have ever seen have been through my interactions with people. I think about all the ways I experience love even in a single day, and how much love there is in my life, and in the lives of those around me. All of this love, in my opinion, comes from God, as "God is love" (1 John 4:8). 

Jesus said, "‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And ‘Love your neighbor as yourself'" (Matthew 22:37-39). Loving others is second only to loving God. 

So, today I was reflecting on some recent interactions with friends and family, and realizing this wonderful contradiction was rolling around in my mind. It was like realizing that it's all a win-win situation: We don't have to depend on people because we can depend on God, and also, there is so much love all around us, for us, like a gift that keeps overflowing. It was a great moment. 

Now what?

As many of you probably know, I came back from a month-long retreat a couple of weeks ago. It was a hugely transformative time, something that changed my life drastically (and now that I am back in real life, I am happily seeing the changes occur in my every-day feelings, interactions, and routines), and something that seemed to be exactly what I needed. So, now that I'm back, what does this all look like?


I'm kind of figuring this out as I go along. Although the month away was the hardest month of my life, I also knew it was a contained, limited time. And it was a relatively unburdened time; I didn't have the distractions of a job (or several jobs), of taking care of Vinnie, of being tied to my cell phone, of driving several hours and dozens of miles every day, of having to cook and plan a healthy menu every meal. (I mean, not that I do that last one in my normal life, but... I felt especially unburdened by this since someone was feeding me a healthy breakfast and lunch every day and all I had to worry about was dinner.) So, even though it was difficult, it was easy as well; my only requirements were to wake up, eat breakfast, and show up, ready to be real and authentic and vulnerable... Kind of like what I attempt to do in real life. No one asked me to "be" or "feel" anything. I didn't have to wear a mask, or have any expectations placed upon me, except that I show up and be as brave as I can be. It was awesome.


Before I came back home, I realized that I had no idea how I was going to feel once I returned. I had a lot of worries: "What if I lose the sense of peace I've found here?" and "What if things go back to exactly how they were when I left?" and "What if all that I've learned here leaves my mind as soon as I step out these doors?" Each time one of these thoughts would come, I would just take a deep breath and think, "I have no way of knowing until I go home." There was no point in worrying about it, and especially not while I was still on this retreat.


But I didn't need to worry. Each day I had so many revelations and insights, and to think that I could be unaffected by all of this change and progress and growth... Well, that's a silly thought. When something so big, so life-changing, happens, how could things ever go back to being the same? Things will never be the same again, and this is a very good thing.


I don't know if this makes sense, but... I'm completely different, but still Katie. Still weird, quirky, sensitive, intense... but different. I don't know how to describe it. There are definitely no words that come close to how I feel. But just in my own skin, and being with myself, there is a sense of peace. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in my blog entitled, "Loving Ourselves." There is a sense of confidence as well. A type of confidence I don't remember ever having... Actually, scratch that. I think I was pretty confident as an innocent little kid, standing in front of the video camera and making hours and hours of home movies. (I wrote about that in "The World Is Round," in case you have endless time to sit around reading all my blogs.) On a related note, reading the blogs I wrote while on my retreat is kind of surreal. Like I see them as a black and white photograph from the past, but so full of meaning and depth. But back to confidence. I hadn't felt that type of confidence for decades, and now it's back, and I like it!


I was at work today, and had a couple of moments where people talked with me. And something in the way I responded, in the way I smiled at them, felt different. And interacting with people at church, and with my closest friends, and the ways I deal with conflict... Since being home I've already made a couple of big mistakes, and in the past these types of things would eat at me for months, probably years. But somehow, for some reason, I've already forgiven myself for these mistakes. Even though I feel horrible about them, and really wished I hadn't done them, I'm able to be compassionate with myself. Self-compassion, with the gentle reminder that I could have handled something so much better, seems to be such a healthier and more productive way to create change. Who knew? And the voice, the voice of criticism, the negative voice that had been haunting me for decades, seems to have almost vanished. This is amazing. AMAZING. Today I did something ridiculous and heard the former routine criticism, "You are such a stupid idiot." Immediately followed by, "No..." and a sense that that critical voice had no room or relevance with me anymore. And to be honest, that voice hasn't made much of a peep since I left for my retreat, about 6 weeks ago. So I've discovered that not only are my interactions with others different, but my thoughts and treatment of myself are different as well. I like myself! I could spend time with myself and be perfectly happy.


So that's what it all looks like now. I'm sure things will keep progressing and I'll have more insights as I continue on this journey. For now, I'm grateful for what has taken place, and curious and eager as to how it will unfold as time goes on.

The Puzzle

I just got back from a 27-day journey, one that changed my life. I spent a lot of time reading, meditating, praying, talking, pondering, thinking, writing letters, journaling, swimming, and ... doing puzzles... for the first time in probably 5 years. Puzzles were something that my friend Golnar and I used to do all the time together, and so, while I was away from everyone and everything I knew and loved, doing puzzles was a way to feel close to Golnar. And, puzzles are a great way to process things. You can sit there for 3 hours just puzzling away, and your mind is free to think about whatever it wants to. Almost every single night of these 27 days, I would sit down at the coffee table for an hour or 3, and if something was troubling me, or I didn't have an answer to something, I would usually have the answer by the time I stood up again. AND, bonus, the puzzle would be closer to being finished. Finding puzzle pieces that matched was like finding emotional, mental pieces and putting them where they belonged. Truly a wonderful activity.

Okay, but this blog is not overtly about cardboard puzzles. This blog is about the overall picture of my journey, or at least a glimpse of it, and maybe a little bit about the many puzzle pieces of my life. One thing I realized while I was away: Before I left, I was seeking answers in my life, trying to see how all the pieces fit together. Amazingly, I got some answers on this journey. There were many times, probably half a dozen, where I had an amazing revelation about my life. I would just be sitting there thinking, or talking with someone, and something would click in my brain. I would have a life-changing moment where I would see something in a new light, or the missing piece would suddenly appear. So, over the course of 27 days, I had probably 5 or 6 of these major life-changing moments, and these were all interspersed with smaller revelations, things that maybe were not as life-changing, but still pretty amazing. Every day was like this amazing gift, full of new ideas and conversations and people and solutions and revelations, great and small.

And I also realized while I was away that even though in my 31 years of life so far, when I often felt lost, frustrated, even hopeless, I was still always seeking. Even when it looked like I had given up or was going about it all the wrong way, deep down I was looking for the right answer. I wasn't sure how to go about it, what the right answer was, but I was always trying different things and trying to find the best way. And somehow, even the backward steps led to forward progress, eventually. But how much easier it is when we can move forward to go forward, and not do things in such a roundabout way.

I think life is this giant puzzle, for each of us, that we have to solve during our years here. We may not ever get all the answers. We may find that we have some missing pieces, and while we ourselves are whole and complete beings, there may be aspects of our lives that still confuse us or remain a mystery. But for the things that we can find clarity on, it is our responsibility to do so. We have a responsibility to ourselves, of course. But also to others, as we interact with those around us and we want to offer ourselves to them at our very best, with as many of the pieces completed as we can. This doesn't mean we have to be perfect before we can interact with others, but just that we are giving the best of ourselves to our loved ones. And we also have a responsibility to God. We are asked to seek God, to seek Jesus, numerous times throughout the bible. Life is one big puzzle that we never stop working on, in which we never stop trying to gain greater clarity. Otherwise, what is our purpose here if we stop seeking answers?

I am grateful that during this time away, I felt like I put more pieces of my life together than I have ever done in such a concentrated amount of time. There are still so many pieces and mysteries that I can continue to solve (I mean, come on, I'm only 31), but I am so grateful for what was done in my life the past month. Thank God.

How much we love

Love. It's probably my favorite topic, and here is yet another blog post about it.


I think about the people in my life and how much I love them. And I was wondering today if I love everyone the same. And not just the family and friends that I have, but people I come into contact with on a daily basis. Acquaintances, people at the supermarket, librarians, my boss and coworkers. Even people I pass on the street whom I've never seen before. People I read about in the newspaper. (Okay, who am I kidding. Who reads the paper anymore? But online.)


And the reason I thought about this is because of the concept of God as love. At my church, in big letters front and center, it reads, "God is Love." These 2 concepts have lots of similarities, but the one I am thinking of is this: I don't know if I can quantify love, just as I can't quantify God. If I say I love someone, can I quantify that? Can I compare it to how much I love someone else, if love is truly God?


We all have relationships in our lives, and we give these relationships different priorities and different weights. For me, there are friends and family members whom I tend to talk with more, seek out, spend more time with, for a variety of different reasons. We have a good connection, we make each other laugh, we have common interests or activities, I may trust them more than anyone else in my life, I feel more affection towards them than towards others.


But I don't know if I love them more than I love others, because love is this universal gift that we get from God, and hopefully from those around us. But even if we don't have much human love in our lives, there is still so much love out there for us; from God, from our pets and animals, from nature. And that is love that we don't even have to work for to obtain. It is a free gift, ours if we will accept it, and even if we won't accept it. But we can embrace it if we choose.


So I guess if we look at love this way, it becomes more difficult to quantify. It's a constant, an immeasurable concept, a wonderful gift.

Loving Ourselves

I had a major revelation today. Life-changing. I know I say this quite a bit, but at this season of my life, I'm having a lot of life-changing things happening. Life-changing thoughts, revelations, conversations. Anyway, the revelation was:

I love myself. Wait, let me say it again, this time with feeling.

I LOVE MYSELF.   

Do you all love yourselves? I hope so. For me, this was a new feeling, so new and amazing and wonderful that I had to rush to a computer (not an easy task on this journey I'm on) and blog about it.

I'm not sure I've felt love for myself before, in the way that I experienced today. Sure, I have intellectually loved myself before; I have looked at myself objectively, asked myself if I would be friends with myself if I happened to meet "Katie Brotten" in a class or at church or through a mutual friend. Yes, I probably would become friends with myself. I have thought about things I've done in my life, to see if I'm proud of those things. Yes, I'm proud of those things. I think about certain qualities I have that I'm happy about. I love those qualities, and so can connect the dots and feel love for myself because of those qualities. I looked at things I've gone through and tried to see myself as the kid that I was at the time I went through those things, and felt love for that 5-year-old or that 10-year-old, even 23-year-old, 31-year-old. Yes, I can love that person who went through those things. I feel compassion for her, I feel a sort of protectiveness over her. Sure, I love her. I love myself. Why not?

These are all important things, but what I felt today was different. It wasn't based on what I have accomplished or what I went through. It wasn't based on if I was, by my standard, a "good enough" person to be loved (because, everyone is good enough to be loved, by people, by their dog, by God... there is not 1 person who isn't loved by God, and loved immensely and unconditionally by God), or by whether or not I was worthy of being my own friend. It wasn't based on any of these outside factors. I just felt, somewhere in my soul, in my body, in my mind, in my heart, that I loved myself. I started smiling, and I felt such a wonderful sense of peace.

The funny thing was, this all came about as I was talking about things I didn't like about myself. I was talking with a group of wonderful people I have met on my journey, and we were talking about the things in our lives that bring us feelings of guilt, or even of shame. The parts of ourselves that we don't like to talk about or share with anyone, because we think, "How could I be like that? How could I have done that, said that, acted that way?" And somehow, in the midst of this conversation, I suddenly felt so much love for myself.

We all have areas in our lives we would like to improve upon. Aspects of our personality, flaws in our character, our perspective and the way we view the world around us, things that we allow ourselves to do or say that may not be the best... This is kind of why we are here in this life, to become our best, to grow and progress and be more like who we want (or who God wants us) to be. This is a journey that we are all on, a lifetime worth of work. This is my perspective, anyway, my view on the purpose of life. I am going to continually learn and grow and progress, and never say to myself, "Okay, I've done it. I have no more room to grow as a person." I want to be open to ideas of improvement, open to change, for my entire life. That feels like success to me.

And I can love myself the entire time. I don't have to start loving myself only when I have reached this benchmark, or this milestone, or have ironed out this particular flaw that I see in my character. I not only "can" love myself, but I "do" love myself, and when I felt that today, maybe for the first time ever, I felt joy. And I felt so much love. It just washed over me. I saw myself as a person with flaws, with funny little quirks that so often seem annoying and frustrating and even horrible. I saw myself as someone who is always searching and seeking, open to new ideas, open to improvement. I saw someone who made mistakes, who will probably continue to make mistakes, and somehow, I love myself even with those mistakes. And maybe, as weird as this sounds, because of those mistakes. Because I could see them, because I was acknowledging them, and because I was seeing what I could do to not make those mistakes again. It was like the pressure was off; I'm human and make all sorts of mistakes, and yet I am loved and lovable, and love myself. I am trying my best in all sorts of situations, I sometimes stumble, I sometimes do incredibly ridiculous/stupid/needy/irritating things, and yet... love. I think another thing that happened today, and I'm only realizing it now as I'm writing, was that I forgave myself for mistakes I've made. It was love and forgiveness all together, and it was awesome.

I am trying to explain what happened for the sake of communication, but more than what I have written, it was just a feeling. It seems silly to try to intellectualize it now, because how can we intellectualize a feeling? Love usually is just a feeling, after all. How many of us can say, "Well, I love him because of these 17 reasons and that's it," or, "My love for her is at about an 89%; not enough to get married, but getting close." We love because we love; there is not some formula or reasoning involved. It's just love.

It's been said that we have a greater capacity to give love when we love ourselves. It's also been said that we can understand other people's love of us when we love ourselves. I am so grateful for today, and for this revelation. God is good. And God is also love.

Our Perception of God

Recently I heard something interesting about our perception of God. I can't remember exactly who came up with this concept, but... it was either a theologian or a psychologist (meaning, I didn't just overhear a couple of people pontificating at the bus stop. Not that good, valid ideas can't come out of that scenario too, of course).

The concept was that our perception of God comes from the primary caregiver we had as a child. They were our first exposure to authority, to someone who cared for us (or was supposed to care for us), to someone who loved us (or, again, was supposed to love us).

This made me think about all the different types of caregivers people have while they are children, and the ramifications of these different caregivers on our perception of God. What if we had a caregiver who neglected us? They may have been the primary caregiver, but maybe they left us alone for hours, days at a time, and weren't really present in our lives. Maybe we would think that God was absent and wasn't really there when we needed Him. Or what if our caregiver was harsh or strict with our behavior, or unforgiving of our shortcomings, and seemed to have conditions placed upon their love for us? In the bible we read that God is forgiving and loves us unconditionally, but I wondered if that would not be the way we would perceive Him if we had not yet experienced unconditional love from our parents. However, if our parents were warm, gentle, forgiving, tender, affectionate, and always there when we needed them, we may have a similar view of God. And if we find that we had some negative experiences with our primary caregiver, but yet feel that God has a different identity or role in our life, I wonder how much effort it would take to change our view of Him into the one that is presented in the bible.

As I thought about this more, I realized that I had another perception of God, separate from the aspect of the primary caregiver. I realized that I have always considered God as a male, having a masculine identity as opposed to having no gender, or being neutral, or being feminine. In my life, I connect emotionally, socially, and intellectually with both males and females, but tend to have connections with more females than males. Maybe this is normal for all females, but I always attributed it to the fact that I am gay. I have a bunch of female friends, I have a bunch of male friends, but if I were to split it up in percentages, my female friends constitute 90% of my friendships. I was wondering today why I have always associated God with the male gender. Maybe just because He is almost always represented in the bible with the male pronoun, but even as I realize that now, intellectually, He still seems like a male in my mind. I wonder if anything would change in my relationship with Him if I started focusing on him being gender neutral or having a feminine identity.

These are all kind of half-thought out ideas. If you've made it this far, thanks. :) I'll have to develop this a bit further.

The World is Round

Had a conversation today with someone that was life-changing. I was asked what I was like as a child, and I immediately thought of the hours upon hours of home videos my grandparents have in their house of me just... talking. At 7, 8, 9 years old, I would just sit in front of the camera and talk animatedly, sing songs, interview my 2-year-old brother as if I were a talk show host... just anything I could think of so I could be a chatterbox and talk non-stop for hours at a time.

 

Then I started wondering what happened to that animated person, that girl who would sing off-key and laugh and make up stories, who would tell jokes to the camera woman (hi grandma!) and pull my brother away from his G.I. Joes so I could re-create our own personal Oprah Winfrey show. (I know, the resemblance is striking.) There was such life there, such innocence and purity, and so much energy that kids are known to have. And I ran with that energy; I was off the walls. No wonder my parents signed me up for every available sport; they probably just wanted me to expend enough energy so I would stop talking for half a minute.

 

As I continued in conversation with the person who asked about my young self, I realized I had held onto something for 20 years or so that I had never expressed out loud. It was a negative event in my life, something that someone said to me that really hurt me. Sure, I'd written it down, I'd journaled about it and probably even written about it to a friend, but I had never been able to say it out loud. There was so much shame involved, and embarrassment, and pain, and for these reasons I could never audibly say it. But today, in this conversation, she urged me to say it. Because in saying it, she explained, I could shed light on the lie that it was and expose it to daylight, expose it to the truth.

 

For example, let's say that when you're 5 years old your uncle tells you that the world is flat. You are just in kindergarten and so you believe them, not having any other influences or facts. They repeat this fact to you for years, and even when you learn in school that the earth is round, you always sort of question if it really is round. In the back of your head, you think, "But my uncle said the earth was flat, and he seemed so certain, so..." And because of these differences of opinion, you never voice what your uncle said. Maybe you're afraid he was wrong and you don't want to expose his ignorance. Maybe you are embarrassed that you are related to someone who believes something so ludicrous. Maybe you're afraid the rest of the world is wrong, and if you tell people what your uncle said, they will suddenly realize he was right, and it will cause your whole world (literally and figuratively) to come crashing down. You don't want to believe your uncle, but why would he tell you that over and over again if it wasn't true?

 

So there I was today, being encouraged to voice something and expose the lie for what it was. After thinking about it for 5 minutes, feeling my heart beat faster, my palms become sweaty, feeling a bit dizzy, seeing spots, and literally thinking I was going to fall out of my chair, I just said it. And guess what? The world didn't come crashing down. I repeated something that someone had said that I'd been hanging onto for 20 years, and as soon as I said it, I realized how ridiculous it was. It didn't even make sense. When shown the light of day, its validity and power over me vanished. And it vanished itself. And at 31 years old, I could have felt sheepish for having such a physical reaction to saying a few words, but when I put myself in the shoes of my childhood Katie, the fear and embarrassment suddenly didn't seem so silly.

 

And then I immediately felt exhausted and wanted to cry, and realized that when you hang on to something for 20 years and longer, it can be an exhausting process to finally release it. But you also feel so much lighter.

 

 

Learning a lot on my journey. These 10 days have been, hands down, the hardest days of my life, but they have also been some of the best, most enlightened, exciting, and most inspired days as well. Funny how sometimes those go together. 

I'm realizing that it's okay to be human, it's okay to make mistakes, and it's okay to try again and again on some things. We are all here to learn, to love, to live in the best way that we can, but we also have the obligation to continue to improve ourselves and our situations. So far this journey has been a wonderful time away, as it takes me away from all the things I use to not think about the really important things, the things in my life that need attention: God, reflection, prayer, mindfulness, bringing more gratitude into my life, getting more tuned in to my emotions and why I do things, increasing my joy, thinking about the ways I want to be better as a person and bring more energy to my life and my relationships. It's amazing what one can do inwardly when they decide to take some time away from the things that tend to numb our emotions. For me, that's a variety of things, but mostly an overabundance of sugar, my phone, and Facebook, all of which have been non-existent or almost non-existent these past 10 days. I guess that's what the journey was all about for me, just going somewhere or getting to a place where I could spend time away from the emotion-numbers, have to face my feelings and face my life. And today was definitely a day of facing my fears, feeling the emotions, and bringing some truth to a place that needs healing. Because the world is in fact round, and it's about time I cleared up that major misunderstanding.

Perfection and Shame

I want to be perfect, all the time. Say the perfect things, do everything perfectly. I think a lot of us would like to be perfect and never make another mistake again. But of course, doing and saying everything perfectly is an impossible expectation.


I think my particular focus on perfectionism comes from being a Type A person, being the 1st born in my family, being anxious, and having 25 years of OCD under my belt. And OCD is like perfection on steroids, and then multiplied by 100. Just as an example, when I was about 6 years old, I became obsessed with perfection. I wasn't sure what was going on at the time, but there was a definite shift in things, and suddenly perfection became my life. I had to do things over and over again until I got it right. Writing, playing sports, getting dressed... One morning, I was particularly anxious, and had to put my shoes on 17 times in a row. Each time I did it, I didn't tie the knot perfectly, or the tongue was bunched up, or whatever. And because the whole process had to be perfect, I had to take both shoes off and start again from the beginning. About 20 minutes later, when I finally felt okay with the process, I was in tears. Frustrating. This same focus on perfection exists in my life today (although not with shoes, but other manifestations). It's a ridiculous part of my life.


While the OCD perfection is an anomaly, it did set the stage of my life of always trying to be meticulously perfect. And whether or not your particular drive to be perfect is as extreme, most of us experience the day-to-day pressures we put on ourselves to be perfect, to live up to the standard we've set. I wonder why there is such a focus on being perfect. In this society, in our families, amongst our friends. We all know we make mistakes. We all know that for the most part, we have the best intentions. Why do we set such impossible expectations for ourselves and others? Not only do we expect ourselves to be perfect, but we also demand perfection from those around us.


At the core of our being, we are all trying our best in this life, trying to love and be loved the best we can. Sometimes we mess up; we can be pushy, or rude, or be needy sometimes. We have miscommunications with people, we can be oblivious to their needs, we can be careless or thoughtless, or we can follow our egos and make a mess of things. There are so many ways to make mistakes, regardless of our good intentions. But maybe that's okay. A friend once told me, "If we were all perfect, what would be the purpose of being here?" I think there is a purpose to this life, and that purpose, in my opinion, is to become the best versions of ourselves. Our highest self, the one who loves and gives and comforts and spreads joy, who forgives and is always kind. Who reacts to friends' offenses with a smile and a hug, and a reminder that they are loved. I see these qualities and characteristics in my friends and family members very frequently, and every once in a while I see myself reflecting these qualities. But no one is there yet; we all have days where we could have done things so much better. 


I can think of 2 things that are important when dealing with our own and others' imperfections: The first is to forgive ourselves when we make mistakes. There is no point in beating ourselves up for things that we wish we would have done differently. There is no point in living with the shame that we hang onto over mistakes we've made. If we learn something from a mistake, we probably won't make that same mistake again. And if we do make that mistake again, maybe it's something that needs a bit more time and effort to remedy. And maybe it needs more love and compassion. Whenever I'm not being my highest self, whenever I am panicked or start to shut down with a friend, that behavior comes from a place of pain. Maybe not even reasonable pain, but it is a response out of fear, and fear is rarely reasonable. And when that friend reacts with love, gives me a hug, says something kind and gentle, it turns the situation around. We are all trying our best, remember? Reminds me of lyrics from an Oasis song. "Someday you will find me. How many special people change?" The real me is there, sometimes covered by a defense mechanism or a wall or a fit of panic. But I'm under there, and always trying to grow and progress and change into a person who does not put up walls so quickly. Who does not shut down at the first feeling of vulnerability.


The 2nd thing is to assume the best from our friends. Whatever they do, whatever they say, assume the best intentions. That's usually what they are trying to convey anyway, and it is our own background noise that sometimes gets in the way of hearing the truth. It goes the other way, too. If our friends assume the best intentions from us, a lot of miscommunications and misunderstandings can be avoided. How many times do we assume something about a friend, and later find out that our assumptions were totally off? When I was in high school I sent an email to someone at the beginning of the summer, and never heard back. The entire summer I thought he didn't like me, that I was "too much," that I had somehow crossed the line. When I went to talk with him when school resumed, it turned out he had never even gotten the email. I had assumed something for months that wasn't even true. We had a good conversation and have been great friends ever since.

Brene Brown, researcher and TED speaker extraordinaire, gives a great talk on shame vs. guilt. "Shame drives 2 big tapes: 'Never good enough,' and if you can talk it out of that one, 'Who do you think you are?' Shame is not guilt. Shame is, 'I am bad.' Guilt is, 'I did something bad.' Guilt: 'I'm sorry, I made a mistake.' Shame: 'I'm sorry, I am a mistake.'" It's interesting how we can make a mistake and then paint our entire existence as the mistake. Like we are sorry for what we did, but so sorry that we apologize for existing.


At some point, we have to let go of the shame of our mistakes. We have to move on, and not cling to the impossible ideal of perfectionism. We are going to make mistakes in this life, and as long as we are trying our best, that's okay. We are all amazing beings, and sometimes the best parts of ourselves get hidden beneath all of this shame and criticism, both self-criticism and criticism from others. If we continually focus on the areas of our lives where we are our highest selves, we will be so overcome with love for ourselves that it will lift us up. Loving ourselves, and loving others, seems to be the solution to most problems. And, when you are so full of love and gratitude for yourself and for others, no negative feelings have a space to be there.


Here's to always knowing that, no matter what we do or say or feel, we are amazing. That is our core, that is our identity. We shine.