Dig if you will the picture...the whole picture.

I have been thinking about something for a while now, and I just haven’t been able to process it, and make it into something palatable.

We live in a world where what people think about us is actually more important than if people know us and like us as we truly are. I have read about the links between social media and depression, but while there is no question anyone who “exists” in social media should do so with the full understanding that what we see about other people is only part of the real story, this idea of projecting a certain image of ourselves is not really new.

My five-year-old just finished preschool, and we’re staring down the barrel of kindergarten. Nothing is easy. Just last week, we went to kindergarten roundup, and my daughter has zero filter. It happens to be that a handful of her preschool classmates will be joining her at her new school. It also happens to be that one of the little girls in her class doesn’t particularly want to be her friend, and my daughter was eager to share this information with everyone she met. Each time, I felt the fire in my cheeks as she revealed this information so matter-of-factly. At at least two points, I took quiet opportunities to explain that we shouldn’t talk about the situation.

“Why,” she asked me. And the truth is, I really don’t know. So, I told her that even if it’s true, people don’t like to hear that. Again, she asked why. I still didn’t have an answer that made any real sense, so I just told her the truth. Grown ups are dumb.

Sure, it isn’t relevant to everyone that another child doesn’t want to be friends with her, but is the truth really such a terrible thing? Is an unpleasant or uncomfortable situation really the death knell of one’s social existence? Is saying what we really feel, think and believe chasing people from our lives whom we should be fighting to keep?

At one point, the importance of projecting a certain facade or image to exist within specific dynamics probably seemed like a good idea to someone. Everyone knows you don’t talk about politics, religion or money—although I would argue plenty of people don’t care so much about that last one. Everyone knows that you should only talk about certain things in whispers so things don’t get around. Everyone knows that openly asking for help is a sign of weakness. Everyone knows that it’s more comfortable for everyone else if nobody knows you have any problems or challenges.

And all in the name of maintaining social connections on which our lives depend, we isolate our true selves in fear that the friends we’ve collected through our public identity will see the truth and shun us.

So, we share our happy moments, our beautiful photos, our vacations, our accomplishments, and our triumphs. We carefully manicure these moments, and curate an existence that allows others to both feel comfortable about who we are, and possibly a little envious.

We watch for “likes,” “loves,” and “lols.” We’re sad when we don’t get the responses we were hoping for, even though a smiley face on a screen is about as real a commentary on who we are as the pretense that we didn’t take the photo we posted twenty times, crop out the stranger’s elbow that accidentally got in, and then enhance it with a filter.

Some of us crave that interaction so much, that we are devastated when we don’t get it. And then there are the people who see all of these amazing and dazzling moments everyone else is experiencing, and they question the value of who they are, or even their own lives. Now, realize, I am not saying our vacation photos drive other people to self harm, but for someone whose self image and self criticism are as unrealistic as the rest of us only posting the bright side of life, we probably aren’t a great source of comfort.

We swab the lens on our lives to make everything more acceptable, more beautiful, and more beyond the real. And no one is any the wiser.

Or else, we don’t. We don’t sugar coat life. We don’t pretend everything is easy. We don’t pretend to have an inauthentic existence or life. We acknowledge that getting our kid through preschool was challenging. We acknowledge that we lost our job six months ago, and we’re just getting back on track. We acknowledge that we started running again and cut out soda, but stress made us backslide. We acknowledge that we’re real people, living real lives, and even that we don’t always see the world around us with the same eyes. We say ‘uncle’ when we’re struggling and we hope one person we know might understand and be able to lend an ear, a shoulder, or a hand. We share an unflattering photo or moment with our kid, and we later realize we made a mistake—and we say so.

I don’t want a perfect life or a perfect existence. When I scrapbook a trip, I include the blurry photo of the castle in case I never get to see it any other way again. I am okay if people know I struggle, because if they have seen me at my worst, they know how incredibly hard I have worked and fought to dig my way out. And isn’t that just as worthy of a triumphant selfie or cake, as everything going according to plan? I’m okay with telling the story of our first trip to Ireland, and how we got to see almost nothing, because of an agricultural disaster, and illustrating it with photos of some kittens who were playing on the grounds of a hotel at the Giants Causeway as I regained my composure over the disappointment. Things like that make real life stories. They make us who we are, and they challenge us to try again, or even to look back and find the good in a moment that wasn’t so good at the time.

The Turoe Stone-County Galway. The worst photo has the best detail. 

I don’t want people to like me because I pretend to live and breathe the same way they do. I don’t want my daughter to tell everyone some kid from her class doesn’t want to be her friend, but I do want her to understand that is going to happen, and that she should never try to be anything she’s not so someone who doesn’t like her will.

Our lives are made up of all of the perfect photos, and the blurry ones. Leaving something out because it doesn’t reflect perfectly to others is only leaving out the possibility that someone else needed that moment—that seeing that moment gave someone a chance to say “Me too, I thought I was alone, but now I know I’m not.” That picture is always going to be worth a thousand words.

“We’re all stories in the end.” We just don’t always see it.

Almost three months ago, a friend asked me for help. She was writing her story, and she wanted me to help her finish it. I admire, respect, and adore this woman for so many reasons—her tenacity, her vision, her strength. When I think of her, she’s so much of what I always wanted to be. I didn’t know how I could possibly help her write her story. It seemed too important—too beyond me.

But in spite of how doubtful I was that I could help someone like her with what I saw as such a personal, and monumental task, I couldn’t say no.

As we began the collaboration, we often kicked off each session chatting about ourselves, and sharing each other’s histories. Our backgrounds are quite different in many respects, but we share some painful experiences.

I go to her house to help her tell her story, but often end up telling some of my own. We read through bits of her manuscript in order to build upon what is already such a rich and colorful story, and as we talk about moments in order to paint our picture, we trade parts of our lives we typically don’t share with others.

One day, she asked me if I had ever considered writing my own story. I quickly brushed off the idea, because in my mind, my story is not so unique, interesting or special. In my brush off, I alluded to the fact that when I blog, I occasionally share the general idea of parts of my life that help me explore the ways in which we deal with trauma, abuse, healing, family dysfunction and human foibles. But I can’t imagine anyone caring to read the details of my life—the nitty gritty.

I think many of us look at ourselves and don’t really see the whole picture. We don’t see ourselves and the things we have been through or accomplished in the way others do. It’s as if we just aren’t able to see ourselves or our experiences as enough—as worthy.

I know I do this all the time. It’s first nature. I constantly believe nothing about me or my life is equal to anyone else’s. It’s always less, and every time I share even the slightest detail, I feel embarrassed that I allow any of us to take up emotional space—anywhere.

Another friend recently shared the details of her very personal loss when she was pregnant. I identified with so many of the feelings she shared, and I responded to her story. Even in doing so, I was quick to discount my own experience, because even though I had felt the pain of loss, I also felt my own experience was barely worth mentioning, simply because in my eyes, I had been through so much less than she had. What right did I have to hurt? This friend is another amazing woman, whom I respect and admire, and am humbled and grateful to know. In spite of her own losses and pain, she digs deep into her being and does everything she can to make the world a better place everyday. I let far less get me down, and I can barely juggle getting my daughter out the door for school and remembering to return library books.

I am not looking for anyone to argue that I am wrong about what I see when I look at myself, or my history. But I do think that there is a sadness about the way many of us look at ourselves and see less.

I mentioned my writing friend’s vision as being something that I admire. When she looks at people she sees things other people don’t. She looks at people and asks herself what their story is, and how she can share it. And what’s even more amazing is that she knows sharing other people’s stories is a gift to them. I know this from personal experience, because it’s a gift she gave to me a while back.

She was a driving force behind a story about my daughter that gave me an opportunity to see her in the way others see her everyday. In our day to day lives with our families, we often end up missing sweet moments, because another moment didn’t turn out the way we hoped. We get stuck in the business of our own worries and forget to step back so we can see the picture more clearly. We may not even realize or believe that there is a picture to see, or a story to tell.

Just for one day, I wish that every one of us who looks at ourselves under a cloud of mundanity or unworthiness could see our lives and stories in the way my friend does. I wish we would look at our lives—even in our worst moments—and instead of being afraid of how painful or how dull the next moment might be, we would wonder what happens next. We would wonder about the next page of our lives in the same way we might stay up late at night,  trying to get through just one more chapter of that book we can’t bear to put down.

I don’t have that vision. I don’t have that belief that my own story is worth reading. But we all need someone in our lives who does, and who is willing to show us we’re wrong.

The lies we eat will starve us all: why I march, even for those who disagree with me

There’s a quote I try to remind myself of, everywhere I go: “We all eat lies when our hearts are hungry.” Thinking about it reminds me that I may not understand the pain someone else is experiencing, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real, and pain often undermines a person’s capacity to see the truth in front of them.

It’s not always easy, especially when someone’s pain has allowed them to believe in things that cause pain and harm to other people. As humans, we have something that other animals do not—a very well developed ego. It’s easy to think that when we look at the world around us, ours is the only true picture.

This matters, because this blindness has brought humanity to a dangerous crossroads. We’ve been here before, but some of the possible outcomes are more dire this time—for all of us, even for those who can’t see it.

On Saturday, I attended the Women’s March in my neck of the woods. This is the third year I have attended one. I also sign a lot of petitions and send a lot of emails to the elected officials who represent me.

I’m not suffering. I have a great life. I have just enough to do a lot that I want, but not so much that I don’t appreciate things when they are special. I’ve suffered abuse in my lifetime, but I survived, and I’ve healed. I admit, I didn’t get the justice I might have liked, but I hope and believe that Karma will step in someday.

So if I am good, why do I go to marches? Why do I pester elected officials? Why do I think anything around me is wrong?

Well, I can tell you that I don’t do it for myself. I do it for my daughter. I do it for the children of people I will never know. And I do it because I am in a place where I am able to see the pain of other women—other human beings—and I want better for them, and for all of us. For me, going to a march or gathering is a privilege and an opportunity. It’s a chance to listen to people from many different backgrounds and circumstances talk about their experiences, their struggles, and yes, their pain. These people who are gracious enough to share without malice the hurts inflicted upon them, and the different painful experiences they have encountered don’t owe me an education on the subject of women’s rights or human rights.

It isn’t their job to instruct me on the discrimination they have faced, the hardships they have suffered, or their life experiences that are so different from my own. But I see it as my job to learn anything I can, because I believe them, even though I have not been in their skin. Believing and seeing their pain doesn’t make me special. It doesn’t make me an activist. I’m not trying to be anyone’s hero. I just care. I care to help someone else. I care to set that example for my daughter.

That same need to care about people with whom I find common ground and agreement is the reason I can see the pain of people with whom I disagree. Now, there certainly are people who aren’t suffering, and for whatever reason, they can’t or won’t see other people’s truths or care about them. But based on the current climate of fear mongering, heightened racial tensions, political friction, and outright hatred, I think a lot of the hole we have dug is the result of pain.

And “we all eat lies when our hearts are hungry.” Right now, there’s a very large group of people in the world who are so hungry, they are willing to swallow down any hateful and terrible lie about others that is placed in front of them.

It has always been this way.

According to the Gospels, Jesus was brought to trial for a number of crimes. Among those crimes, he was accused of sorcery and using the power of demons to exorcise people. He was also accused of breaking the Sabbath and claiming to be King of the Jews. He was deemed guilty, and crucified.I am not able to attest to his guilt or innocence when it comes to breaking the Sabbath, or claiming to be king, but I think we all know that the accusations of sorcery and using demonic power were lies. Those present, ate those lies anyway.

In seventeenth century Massachusetts, more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft. The accusations included everything from women cursing children, midwives practicing dark magic and sacrificing babies to the devil, being responsible for the deaths of farm animals, and making poppets—dolls—that could be used to inflict pain on others by different methods. Obviously, the accusations were lies, and in several cases, the accusers and their families had something to gain by telling these lies. They were eaten up, and nineteen innocent lives were swallowed along with them.

Fast forward about 200 years, to a massive refugee crisis, in which millions of unwanted immigrants are trying to come to America. They’ve suffered unthinkable hardships, starvation, disease, oppression. They don’t share the prevalent faith. They’re unskilled. Nobody wants them. Many believe they don’t have anything to contribute and will be nothing but trouble.

Hundreds of thousands of those refugees are so desperate, they take dangerous, and often low wage jobs that nobody wants. They are openly unwanted and despised.

A few generations later, the descendant of one of these terrible refugee families would become one of the most beloved presidents our country has ever had. But at the time the Kennedy family left the Irish Famine behind, they were one of the millions from which Nativists strongly believed we needed to be protected.

The millions of other Irish immigrants were the laborers who built bridges, roads, and infrastructure that is still the backbone of America.

Today, we face many crises, and are in the midst of some of the most hostile political, racial, and socioeconomic friction in our history.

My oh so clever sign. 

We have hard working Americans failing to make ends meet, let alone achieving the “American Dream.” Workers whose families have been struggling for generations have long felt their struggles and pain were being ignored, or doubted. Many of those families and individuals have been starving for almost as long as there has been an America. They can’t break even, and they never get ahead. They don’t have savings. They can’t afford decent healthcare. The hunger they live with has cast them into the depths of starvation.

“What about me? Nobody is feeding my hunger. Nobody is trying to help or save my family and me.” Their inability to feed themselves leads to a sense of feeling that if they can’t get help, nobody should get help. Anybody seeking to make an even playing field through fighting for healthcare, equal pay and income equity must be lazy, untrustworthy, just sponging. Anyone trying to come to America is a threat. Anyone who doesn’t look, talk, believe like me or speak my language will overrun the “rest of us.”

Of course, these are all lies. The majority of the people seeking refuge or equal rights want exactly the same things these starving people want. They want their own pains and hurts to be acknowledged and healed. The majority are not looking for more than they are willing to earn or pay for themselves.

But “we all eat lies when our hearts are hungry.”

Some of us fight, march and speak out—not because we ourselves are hungry, but because we see the hunger of others, we know the danger of the lies that are being served to them, and we have seen the terrible things that can happen when those lies get eaten. We also see that the people serving those lies have an agenda that doesn’t include ending the hunger—or even easing it.

When someone tells you something outrageous, there’s a reason, and you can usually learn the truth by discovering who benefits most from that outrageous statement.

We are choking on lies.

The Great Depression—from darkness to light.

So, when you have cancer or any other kind of serious illness, you kind of get a pass for focusing on yourself, and setting everything else aside but your health, your family, and your situation until you get well. No one expects you to keep up with fashion trends, Hollywood news, or politics. They understand that you are just doing your best to breathe.

Some illnesses aren’t so obvious. There are some illnesses that we have been conditioned to believe we can manage on our own, or that we should be able to get passed, simply with positive thinking. Some illnesses carry a stigma that makes the load you’re carrying so heavy, you simply can’t see beyond your symptoms. Even so, when you have some illnesses, almost everyone around you expects you to be able to interact as if everything is normal. They expect you to wear a smile throughout your day, no matter how sick you feel inside. They are frustrated when you seem oblivious to what is happening around you, and sometimes, they find it so hard to understand that you are sick, that you feel yourself being pushed to the edge of everything. It’s kind of like being in a litter of puppies and being the runt—everyone understands you aren’t going to survive, and even mom doesn’t see the point of nursing you.

Those kinds of illnesses don’t discriminate, and you often find yourself living in a constant state of blindness—your world is so dark, you can’t see anything beyond yourself. The trouble with that is your blindness is often mistaken for self-centeredness, and people believe that you are an asshole and a lost cause.

Depression and anxiety are insidious. They may begin with a specific event, or they may be a lifelong undercurrent waiting, to take you down when life throws you even a subtle curve.

I know this well. I have suffered from both at different times, and for different reasons.

At one point in time, I was given a diagnosis of dysthymia—basically a low level, functional type of depression. It allows you to do most everything you need to do. You do okay at work—maybe even better than okay. You take care of your responsibilities. You don’t land in a padded room, or become a serial killer. Your outward functionality allows everyone around you to believe you’re just fine.

But just as I have faced this kind of depression, I have also faced the kind of depression that swallows you whole, and barely allows you to get out of bed everyday. The kind of depression that makes you look around, wondering if anyone would miss you if you just stopped existing—almost savoring the idea that they wouldn’t.

While everyone around you just decides you’re an asshole, and that you don’t care, you actually do care, but can’t find a way out.

I never fully understood this aspect of anxiety and depression until I saw the cycle play itself out in someone else. It’s incredibly hard to watch people you care about living in total darkness. If you’ve been there, at least you know that the person isn’t in the dark by choice, and you know you they can’t get out alone.

When you are in that dark space, you have no idea how to get out, and you might even be in denial about being there. If you’re lucky, someone tells you, and hounds you until you get help. Maybe they give you an ultimatum you can’t ignore. Maybe the help you get pulls you out. Or maybe it’s like being in a boat on the River Styx, and there is no way out until you come to some kind of end. If you’re lucky, that end is just the conclusion of whatever catalyst got you there. But getting out is only the first step toward getting well. It may take a while for your brain to work again, for your eyes to see, and for you to stop finding yourself at the door to the darkness—almost as if you want to knock and get back in.

If you see someone you care about going through this cycle, every day is a tightrope walk. And surprisingly, the only way you know that the person is recovering is when they see something outside of themselves, and it utterly breaks their heart. To be honest, when you’re in that darkness, it’s a total waste for you to watch the news, try to keep up with current events, or participate in anything. You just can’t see.

Anxiety and depression are worse than prison. They’re more like a POW camp, or a concentration camp. You don’t expect parole. Depending on how deep in the hole you are, you don’t taste your food, smell something burning, or hear yourself screaming. You eat because you’re supposed to. You go to work because you’re expected to. You don’t really sleep, you just lay still while terrible scenarios play out in your mind—unless you medicate,and that offers its own set of problems.

With all of this heaviness weighing on you, you think getting out will be like watching a hallelujah choir, and that you will be able to breathe fresh air again. It’s confusing, unsettling, and frustrating when nothing close to that happens.

The picture is bleak, dark, and heavy, but the reality is you can’t find the light until you fight your way out of the dark, and realize that you may have to fight that battle every day for a while. And you might feel a punch in the gut every moment when you realize that you couldn’t see for such a long time. It’s a horrible cliche, but there are only a couple of ways out. One is simply stopping. The other is stumbling around in the darkness until you get through.

Sometimes, you’re lucky, and the people who really know who you are, and really love you will wait. They will forgive you for seeming not to notice their struggles, and how hard they have to work without you. Sometimes, they will desperately try to pull you out. And even if every attempt they make fails, they will love you anyway.

Crash and burn—we are more than what we do

Once upon a time, we all planned to be rockstars, famous artists, novelists, actors and actresses. People told us we were silly. People told us to work toward the achievable, the responsible, and the practical. But what people never helped us learn is how to be comfortable in our own skin, and able to define ourselves by something other than our careers, our bank accounts, or how we compare to others.

As we grow up, we often realize that our hopes and expectations don’t fit on the plate in front of us. Who we are changes—often without informing our dreams. We develop connections with people, and those connections turn into roots, and we are no longer accountable only to ourselves. When we take risks, we are no longer taking them alone. And sometimes, we crash—hard.

We live in a time where it’s possible to share every aspect of our lives with the rest of the world, whether anyone with whom we share cares or not. When we see what our peers share, instead of interpreting it as their personal reflection of their lives, we allow it to be a reflection on our own. And in doing so, we somehow miss some importance facts.

Just as we choose what stories to tell, what photos to share, and how well we are succeeding, we also choose what stories we tell no one, what images we want to hide, and what failures take us into the dark. It’s not that we intentionally lie or mislead, it’s simply a matter of careful editing.

The combination of unrealized expectations, and seeing the edited versions of people with whom we compare ourselves can be a toxic one.

As children, our parents see us as an extension of themselves, and their beacon into the future. They worry that they will fail us if they don’t encourage or push us to do well. They encourage us to achieve more than they did. They want us to be successful. I don’t think it’s maliciousness, but when we attach those efforts to our dreams, we often find ourselves feeling like we failed if we settle or land somewhere short of those dreams. If something doesn’t feel or seem perfect, it can’t be right. It can’t be good enough.

At many different points, our family—especially our pre-child family—looked like “couples goals.” We traveled here and there, flitted off to this concert or that, and appeared to be the picture in the Pottery Barn frame. People didn’t see the unedited version of our lives, and even when we did try to share that version, it didn’t convince people that we were just like everyone else.

When my rock bottom hit six years ago, all the pictures became ugly, distorted, and I felt everything in my life had been a waste. The failure I felt sent me into a tailspin of disillusionment. In my mind, I had done everything I was supposed to do, but I hadn’t achieved any of my career goals, or dreams, and I had sacrificed half of my life on earth spinning my own wheels. All I had that I valued was my husband and my dog. Without those threads, I honestly don’t know if I would have made it. They were the only reasons I got up every day.

After crashing and burning up, all I knew to do was just try to breathe and put one foot in front of the other. It has taken me years of distance to understand that nothing was a waste, and sometimes bad things and situations just happen. I also learned that no career goal was worth sacrificing my own life for. The craziest part of believing that it was, is that the goal had absolutely nothing to do with my dreams. It was an accidental job that I thought I could turn into something more, since I hadn’t succeeded at becoming a famous foreign correspondent or bestselling author.

It’s hard to find the light of what’s real,
when the fog of what you think you should be gets in the way. 

How distorted does your vision of self, and your attachment to unrealistic expectations have to be to try and fill the void of being a famous writer with advancement in a veterinary company? Yeah, that was definitely not working out for me. I found myself nowhere that I had ever wanted or planned to be. I was honestly really good at what I did, but it was also true that I was the only one I should be trying to please. For my whole life, I had believed everything I did needed to be more.

Over the last year or so, I have watched expectations and reality crashing with someone I love. I have watched him struggle with being somewhere he didn’t want to be, the disillusionment and self-doubt that resulted from reaching for something that wasn’t really there, and the displaced dust rise from his thud back to the earth. And just like when I found myself at rock bottom, he is lucky not to be going through it alone either.

The distorted reflection of what success is blinds us to ourselves, and all that we actually have accomplished. It steals the simple satisfaction of doing well at something, even if nobody else is watching or cares. That distortion can drive us to chase after phantom goals—phantoms we never really wanted, but thought would put us further down the path to where we really do want to be.

It’s hard. When we meet new people, one of the first things we ask the other person is what they do. In reality, what most of us do in our working lives is a very tiny line on the map of where we have been or where we are going. And yet, we rely on that line to draw a picture of who and what we are. It’s no wonder it’s so easy to feel incomplete. We leave so much of ourselves out of the picture.

The painful truth is that we aren’t all intended to be rockstars. We’re not all placed on this earth with the capacity to cure cancer. Not every one of us is going to Mars. And somehow, we have to embrace that not being those things doesn’t make us less.

Nearly fifty years in, I still want to be a rockstar—or at least some version of rockstar. So, I in no way exempt myself from moments when I ask if what I am now is all I am ever going to be.

Right now, I am trying to learn how to be a badass mom, to a badass girl, with big challenges, and I am trying to nurse the person I love most through the pain of a jump that landed short of his hopes. I have to lay my daughter’s foundation, while helping my husband rebuild his own. I don’t know how I will define myself a year from now, but who I am now, is vital to who these two people in my life will be, and no matter how much my own dreams mean to me, they’re never going to be as important as what I am doing right now.

Sometimes, it’s okay just to be good at what you do, or even just really working at it. It doesn’t mean you pack away your dreams, it just means you color your hair with red streaks to remind yourself that you’re not done—you’re not in a box. It means that you stay up after everyone else is asleep, and try to apply the concept of “use your words” to yourself, so that flickering dream doesn’t burn out along the way.

It’s up to us how we define ourselves, not to someone else’s perfectly edited image, or the worry that we aren’t living up to some imaginary mark on an imaginary measuring stick. Sometimes, we someone to tell us that, and then someone to keep reminding us.

Coming out of the attic—The weirdness and oldness of being kind.

We live in a world where cynicism has become the norm, and if someone does something ordinary, we often think they have done something amazing, or that they have some underlying agenda. We don’t expect anyone to help us. We don’t expect anyone to think about us. We don’t expect sincere, random kindness. We don’t expect someone to care.

I think we have so disconnected from each other that courtesy, gratitude, kindness, and just simply lending someone a hand has become uncommon. Instead of these ideas being a common thread, they have come to seem bigger than they were ever meant to be. The mere idea that someone would help us out or do something kind for us is so uncommon and unexpected that it feels more like a gift.

I know this, because I feel that way almost every time anyone helps me out in a pinch, or does something for me that I didn’t expect.

Hand made card from Kat Hodes. 

Five years ago, we moved from a large city to a comparatively small town.The town we live in now happens to have been established as a village for retirees who wanted a nice, quiet place to escape to—and to play golf. I almost immediately noticed that people treated each other differently here. I never associated it with anything but the fact that we weren’t in a big city anymore, and this is just the way small towns are. But in waking up at 3 a.m. thinking about it, I think it’s less about geography and more about time.

We bought, and moved into our house here just a couple of months before we had our daughter. Within a day or two, there was a knock at the door, and a plate of homemade baked goods arrived from our neighbors. We had lived in our previous home for about sixteen years, and we barely knew any of our neighbors, so this plate of cookies, and sweets seemed like a big deal.

The weirdness of people being kind didn’t stop there.

In the years since our daughter was born, we have gotten to know both of our next door neighbors very well. Our daughter frequently asks to visit one or the other, and she is almost never turned away. One evening, I was out on an extended errand. My husband had been battling an issue with one of his shoulders, and earlier in the day, had been given a steroid injection to help alleviate the pain. While I was gone, he had a bad reaction to the medication, and became acutely ill. I was more than a half hour away, and he really felt he needed to go to the emergency room. He was at home with our daughter. I wrapped up my errand as quickly as I could, and headed home. Within a few minutes, he texted that our neighbors were watching our daughter, and he was headed down the hill to the emergency room.

All the way back, I kept thinking “It’s so late. I’ve got to get to the house and get our daughter, so our neighbors can go on with their evening.” I drove right past the hospital, and directly to the house. I headed to the neighbors to get our daughter, apologizing for the inconvenience. My neighbor’s response was “Why don’t you go back down, and be with Jeph? Willow’s fine here with us. Don’t worry about it.”

Those precious books from Julie Lancaster.

I think my jaw hit the floor. As it happens, not only were 
they watching our daughter, but their son, who was there for a visit, had driven my husband to the hospital.

Over the last couple of years, they have watched our daughter at least two or three other times. One of those times, there was a knock at the door, and my neighbor said Willow was more than welcome to come over and play with their grandson. I was in yoga pants, with a mom bun, and I am sure looking God-awful. I quickly straightened myself up, and headed over. I didn’t want them to have to manage both their toddler grandson and mine. The least I could do was help out.

When I knocked on the door, my neighbor was surprised to see me.

“Why don’t you just go on home, and take a little bit of time to do whatever you want,” she said. Even now, when I think about it, I feel tears welling up in my eyes. It was the simplest thing in the world to her and her husband, but it felt like everything to me that someone would offer me an hour or two to myself. I don’t remember what I did, but it felt like I had been offered a new dress, shoes, and a night on the town.

My safety pin Lularoes from Amber. 

One day, as I sat at their kitchen table, chatting, I thanked her for letting our daughter just come over and “invade” their home—because when Willow goes to people’s houses, it is often a “home invasion.” My neighbor explained that it was no problem, and that they were returning the gift. When her husband was in the military and they were stationed in Europe, their children had spent almost as much time at the neighbors’ as they had at home. It seemed fair to them that their home should be open to their neighbors’ kids as well.

I could immediately picture her in a little European town, with her kids, and without a lot of personal connections to rely on. How amazing was it that her neighbors had made her children
welcome, and given her the break she really needed?

People just don’t do that kind of thing anymore.

That, I think, is the reason why it seems strange when people do something simple for us. It’s just not something people do nowadays.

When I was young, I spent a lot of truly happy times with one of my grandmas. When I went to her house for a sleepover, she let me be involved in anything she was doing. I was in the middle of her baking, cooking, and sewing. She always had Nesquik strawberry milk mix, and vanilla ice cream for shakes. She always had crunchy peanut butter, and Seven Up.

My grandma worked in a factory for more than twenty years. She always talked to me about the people with whom she worked. She would tell me about the cake that she had taken to work for this person, or the sock monkey she had made for this one’s grandkid. Of course, she would also tell me about the practical joke she had played—leaving a rubber bug on the seat of the woman who worked next to her. My grandma was always doing something for someone else. She didn’t have much—she still doesn’t—but she always had thoughtfulness for other people.

When Ginnifer gives you the moon.

If she found out you liked something, and it was your favorite, she would make sure you had it when you visited, or got it as a gift from her. Sometimes, it would be something silly, like a jar of crunchy peanut butter, because your mom and dad only bought creamy. Another time, she would give you the aluminum tumblers your great-grandparents had that you used when you visited them decades earlier—just because she remembered how enamored of them you were when you drank orange juice out of them in the mornings while you were there. It didn’t matter if you hadn’t thought of something in years, because she would remember that it had once meant something to you.

It’s easy to say that of course she would do those kinds of things for me because she was my grandma, but she would do those kinds of things for anyone. She didn’t have a lot, but if she could do something small to make someone’s day, or help someone out, she would. Even after I grew up, if she ran across something that reminded her of me, or that she thought I might like, she would gift it to me.

It’s rare when people do those kinds of things now. It’s rare to do something for someone without occasion, and that rarity perpetuates our feelings that small, kind gestures are strange.

As often as I have been on the receiving end of these rare gestures, I have probably more frequently been on the giving end. I don’t say that to pat myself on the back, or qualify myself as a professional kindness administrator. I just think that maybe a little of my grandma rubbed off on me. I can’t count many things that my family passed down to me that were positive, so I will happily note anything, no matter how small or quirky.

I am a deep feeler. I see that a lot in my daughter. I form attachments to people quickly, and those attachments often run deeply. I don’t know how to just care a little bit. From time to time, it hasn’t worked out well. I think it’s the strangeness part of kindness that makes people uncomfortable, or uncertain.

I lost my dearest friend for a while, in part because of my inability to measure how much I cared for her, and how much I just wanted to spend time with her. Somewhere along the way, she mistook something I wanted to share with her for something I didn’t intend. She had no idea how important she was to me. It was the start of my learning that I have to make clear to people who I am, and what they mean to me. I consider that lesson a gift, and that gift gave back when we were able to get back in touch with each other, and I could tell her all that had taken for granted that she knew.

I am sure that I have inadvertently “chased off” other friends who didn’t understand me, or who were just used to people doing things for them with an occasion, or an agenda.

People often talk about “old souls.” I don’t think I really considered myself to be one before. I just thought I was weird—that I am weird. I know I my path got twisted by trauma early on, and then twisted more later. I know that continues to color who I am. But I think the “weirdness” of simple kindness, a willingness to lend a hand, or to remind people that they matter is “oldness.”

It comes from thinking in a different time. It comes from the place in your mind that stores the stone you picked up in Limerick, the screw back earrings you fell in love with when you went garage saling with your lifelong best friend and her grandma when you were kids, and the Lularoe leggings with safety pins another friend surprised you with when you were just starting to become an activist. There is nothing that someone does for me that doesn’t get stored in that dusty old place. There is no memory or gesture that doesn’t find its way into that trunk. I don’t know how to quantify or meter out caring about people, and thinking about what I would want or need if I were in their shoes.

Some people might skip the mental “attic” and call me an empath. Maybe I am. I don’t know. I do know that it is sad that we have gotten so far away from realizing we’re all in this life together that we are surprised when someone does something human for us. It’s not a judgment about individuals, backgrounds, or socioeconomic identity—none of those things. It’s not even necessarily a judgment, but an observation.

Does it really require magnanimity to help someone find the right person for a job they need done? It’s maybe a text or a phone call—not crossing a highway in heavy traffic. Is honoring someone for their selfless hard work under sometimes tough conditions generous? Is a friend mentioning something they love, and you diving into the internet to find it, or learn how to make it a grand gesture? Is a friend or neighbor offering to watch your child for an hour or two a wild imposition on them? Should any of these things be strange or uncommon?

Call me old fashioned, but when you look at the world around us, and the direction we seem to be going, isn’t it possible that a few more simple gestures of kindness, or a willingness to help someone out of a spot might actually be the way to really make things great again?

Things don’t get better, and the potential of humankind isn’t realized by keeping our heads down and staying in our own lanes. Our children don’t grow up knowing to step up when a classmate is being bullied when we keep to ourselves. Our friends don’t always know how much we love them if we don’t put ourselves out there and say the words. We don’t live the words so many claim in faith when we just take responsibility for ourselves and expect everyone else to do the same.

If all of these things seem like more, I think no matter how much we have—money, houses, stuff—we don’t have anything at all.

I can’t just watch: the fall of a nation

I have really been struggling the last month or so. The path we are on as a nation has begun to feel as overwhelming to me as it was in the early days following the 2016 election. Just like those days, I have been finding myself daily in tears. I have felt fearful about the future. I have several times thought to myself “But for the grace of god.”

There hasn’t been a day since November 8, 2016, that I didn’t wake up feeling an undercurrent of dread. But with the murder of reporter Jamal Khashoggi, and our president’s continued friendship with Saudi Arabia, due to self-interest, my dread has been freshened, and my worry about our path renewed. When it was followed by the bombs sent to Democratic leaders and opposition, people being shot because of their color, and others being killed while they worshipped, I have increasingly felt worn down.

A couple of months ago, I was coming home from a trip to Kansas City. I stopped at a Walmart in a small town to grab something. I had decided that I wanted something fizzy, but not a regular soda, and I wanted a healthy-ish snack that would be easy to eat while driving. After two days of fast food, and too much soda, I just wanted something “nice.”

As I walked toward the entrance, I passed a truck with a bumper sticker declaring mistrust of the mainstream media. The truck was really beat up, and had seen better days. For whatever reason, I imagined what the owner must be like. I thought of a rough, over tanned, middle aged man wearing a Mossy Oak hoodie, and walking stiffly through the aisles of the store. He was a hard worker who had trouble making ends meet, and every time he almost made up a little ground, something would happen, and the little bit of extra cash he had would be gone.

The person I imagined made me feel guilty and sheepish.

I struggled to find anything like the blood orange soda I had picked up at a specialty store in Kansas City, and the only snack that kind of seemed nice was a small bag of Dove dark chocolate covered almonds. Again, my feelings of dissatisfaction about what was there made me feel guilty.

I thought about the owner of that truck again, as I made my way back to my car. I considered that many of the people I disagreed with who are like the truck owner I imagined are in a similar situation to those living in an American inner city. It’s easier and cheaper to grab a soda and a Snickers bar than to find or afford something “nice.”

I quietly vowed to myself that I would be more conscious—that I wouldn’t allow my difference of opinion, beliefs, and circumstances to dehumanize people like that truck owner. It occurred to me that when I slip, and judge someone for who they are in that way, I am no better than they are when they dehumanize blacks, immigrants, refugees, and people who worship differently than they do. I also felt angry that rich powerful men had so successfully exploited these folks by planting and fostering the idea that they are struggling because blacks, immigrants, and refugees are “stealing” something from them. They foster the idea that those people who are different somehow have it better than they actually do.

I still feel that way, even after the violence of the last several weeks, but now, my fear is getting stronger.

Eleven worshippers from The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania we’re shot down during Shabbat Service last weekend. One of those eleven people had survived the Holocaust, 
and come here to live without fear, only to be murdered by another man who hated her because of her faith.

In the early days of this president’s administration, I often saw these quotes turning up:

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” ― Albert Einstein

“If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done during the Holocaust, you’re doing it now.”

In the early days, the hateful rhetoric and actions by the president were strong enough to make many of us feel that we could not just stand by. Many conservatives—Republicans—thought we were being hysterical, or crazy. But we felt we were witnessing the initial steps down a dark path.

I am still trying to uphold the silent vow I made in that Walmart parking lot, but it’s hard. It’s hard to counteract ignorance, fear and hatred with kindness, understanding and forgiveness.

And now, I am so worried. I helped canvass for a local candidate last weekend. Aside from my introversion, and insecurities about talking to people I didn’t know, I also worried—“What if someone gets angry? What if someone has a gun?”

I have been thinking all of this week about the thousands of our troops being sent to the southern border. I thought about the kind of strength and fortitude it would take to stand up and disobey a direct order or deployment. I wondered if there are people strong enough to do what is right.

I thought about the days of the Gestapo rounding up Jews, gypsies, the mentally disabled, and gays to go to concentration camps, or to be killed. I thought about how easy it would be for that to happen here—even without our military’s participation. I thought about the people who always talk about how the Jews were left defenseless because the government disarmed its citizens, and the frequent reminder that this is a perfect example of why gun safety reform is actually an attempt to take away people’s guns. Because there are more guns than Americans, it would be easy for this president’s base of supporters to take action, and start rounding up people in a show of support and strength.

Thinking about all of that, and my feel real sense of fear about that also made me feel angry, because it makes it hard to keep my vow. And it makes me think of the wealthy conservative Republican who just wants to keep every single penny he can grab, and how much he benefits from this level of fear, upheaval, and hatred. I thought about how often they try to take the moral high ground and talk about their love of Christ.

If you’re a Republican in the House or Senate, and you are quietly pretending that the worst isn’t really happening before your eyes, and you don’t need to change course, you are doing, right now, what you would have done in Germany as Adolf Hitler rose to power, and foolishly led its army into Russia. If you are an evangelical Christian ignoring all evidence that the president is black to his core and evil, because he promised to end abortion, you are doing what you would have done when your Jewish neighbor’s were being driven from their homes in cattle cars. If you are turned off by our political system, and think all of the choices are equally bad, and people who want to hold our leadership accountable for homegrown terrorism are crazy, that’s how you would have felt when piles of books were burned in town squares. If you are a white woman voting like your husband, because you don’t want to make waves, and you don’t want your way of life disrupted, you are doing what you would have been doing while children were being ripped away from their mothers as they were led away to die.

There are plenty of people who might read my words and say that I am just extremely paranoid and crazy. I’ll bet there were plenty of people just like me in Germany.

If we allow this downward spiral to continue, we will all be to blame, and the results could be dire. If you ever wondered what you would be doing if you started to see that your country was crumbling in front of you, you’re doing it right now. How will you face yourself? How will you face your children? How will you face the world?