Family Traditions

One of the rituals my family has always shared at Thanksgiving is for each person to read aloud a passage from something we especially liked over the last year (or, when I was a kid, that we found in some book that very day). Tempted though I am this year to read passages from some of Obama's campaign speeches, instead I am going to share a passage from a book I'm currently reading to which I particularly relate:

"To write, I have decided, is to be insane. In ordinary life you look sane, act sane --- just as sane as any mother of [young] children. But once you start to write, you are moonstruck, out of your senses. As you stare hard inward, following behind your eyes the images of invisible places, of people, of events, and listening hard inward to silent voices and unspoken conversations --- as you are seeing the story, hearing it, feeling it --- your very skin becomes permeable, not a boundary, and you enter the place of your writing and live inside the people who live there. You think and say incredible things. You even love other people --- [nearly as fully and deeply as you love your own children and your husband].* And here is the interesting thing to me: when this happens, you often learn something, understand something, that can transcend the words on the paper." in the words of the character Charlotte Bridger Drummond from WILD LIFE by Molly Gloss

In a spirit of Thanksgiving for the community of writers, artists, and mothers who find each other by whatever means they do and thus discover their kinship to people with whom they share no blood ties, I give thanks for you, fellow-bloggers/readers.

Happy Thanksgiving.

If by any chance, you decide to join in this tradition and post a passage from something you've read (or written) in the past year that is particularly meaningful to you at your website, please let me know. I'd love to read it.

*The actual wording of this passage in the book is "--- you don't love your children or husband at all." I am altering it to be truer to my own experience.

It's been awhile

Yep, still here. Sort of. I mean, it's been awhile and I don't expect blogging to pick up on my list of priorities anytime soon -- but I do still expect to stop in and say something every so often. Probably just often enough to make sure I'm talking almost only to myself. But there are benefits to that.

Anymore I mostly use my writing time (a.k.a. the girls' naptime) to work on my novel. Which is great. I love it when I work on my novel. But just lately, I haven't been doing nearly as much of that as I have been working on my history as a compulsive eater. Today, 7,000 words later (yes -- 7,000; well, give or take a few hundred) I've finally sent it off to my sponsor and this afternoon I can't remember how to get into character enough to work on my novel.

This is only the very beginning of Step One -- for those of you in the dark, there are 12 Steps to the program of recovery from compulsive eating through Overeaters Anonymous (and let's just call this my online coming out party...) And I am anxious, a little, about how I am going to continue to work the steps and get any further with my novel. Especially in the holiday press of shopping, crafting, partying (I'm turning 40 in three weeks), wrapping, celebrating, etc. And, maybe I'm just not going to get any farther right now. And maybe, for right now, that's okay. Right now -- as in this very minute -- it's okay. But ask me in another ten and the answer might be different.

The thing is, over the last year it has become increasingly clear to me that I need help managing not just my eating but my thinking about my eating, and all the ways that the shame I feel about how I've eaten gets between me and the people I love most in the world. Especially with Skip and the girls, but also with my friends and family. And it's totally and uncomfortably humbling, but it's not a bad thing to ask for and get help. Mostly it's a reminder that all I'm supposed to be is a human being, which is to say: not perfect. Any other standard I hold myself to is destined to result in shame and misery because it is written into my very dna that I am and will always be flawed in simple and complex, common and unique ways.

I can't become perfect. I can, however, work on being kind, respectful, responsible, and honest with myself about the ways I am imperfect. And I'm really grateful for whatever gift of grace has brought me to the place that I understand that and am -- for today -- on that path. I'm hopeful this path will actually help my novel eventually. I believe it will.

For today, it apparently is going to help my blogging frequency, too.

Here's to a happy Thanksgiving for everyone. Yay, Obama!