by susan | Apr 10, 2022 | Uncategorized
not that I’d rather be something else, but being human is hard. damn hard.
yesterday I wrote a bigger-than-expected check for taxes, received word that I did NOT receive a residency I’d applied for, had a client cancel last minute, and broke a tooth eating a carrot.
today has been better.
tomorrow… I have no idea.
where do we find the courage to continue?
I began this post three years ago, march of 2019, an entire life ago. and I pulled it out of my drafts folder last night when my dog peed on my new rug, my electrical outlets in my bedroom stopped working, and I found myself tearful at dinner with friends because they all seem to have better connections with their loved ones than I seem to.
it’s damn hard to be human.
in the past three years I have experienced incredible moments and times and events, felt awe and wonder and gratitude and appreciation. I’ve been gifted with love and support. I’ve received over and over again. I’ve experienced times of belief in both myself, and in my ability to create the fulfilling life I desire. and I’ve also experienced loss, grief, frustration, impotence. anger. sorrow. moments of hopelessness. times when one of my first thoughts of the day is, I can’t wait to put my pajamas back on and go bed tonight.
and yet, here I am.
hear I am. listen.
like most everyone else, I will keep moving. I will listen to myself, to my heart, and make every attempt to follow where it wishes to lead me. it doesn’t always make sense to me, but I continue to believe that one day it will. rachel botsman describes trust as an active, responsible ‘confident engagement with the unknown.’ let me, let us all, learn to truly trust.
signing off, perfectly imperfect human that I am,
and sending all the love in the world your way. may you always feel the hands and hearts of others holding you.
by susan | Mar 21, 2022 | Uncategorized
I have large hands. Strong, capable. They can reach a tenth on the piano: an octave plus two. I’ve at times been embarrassed to hold hands with a boy because mine often equals in size or—quel nightmare—outsizes his. Sometimes it’s a delightful coupling, fingers knit together, skin smooth, a bone match.
Lifelines, fingerprints, things we are born with, that die with us, unique, designs of our skin.
Long ago, perhaps 800 years before us, a gathering of Anasazi built a home in the cleft of a rock ledge. They built rooms, separating them with walls made of rock and mud. They created look-out holes, and places to store corn and seeds and nuts. They added decorative touches to some walls—small stones of varied colors—and painted others. Some walls were smoothed by the passage of time, moisture, wind. And others were smoothed by hands.
There are myriad ways to play with mud. A potter shapes clay, a toddler splashes dirty pools of water with hands or feet. Some squeeze it between their toes. Others pay hefty fees to sit in it, be coated with it; some of us have the same experience at the edges of riverbanks. Soft, moist earth is sensuous, decadent, pleasure inducing.
It can also be practical, necessary; we build tools, instruments that facilitate our daily tasks. As the Anasazi built pots and urns and walls.
I stand before a handmade wall at Moon House Ruin. The red brown mud, patted into place all those centuries ago, still holds fingerprints, lifelines, the unique designs of those hands that created this wall. I lift my hand and place it gently upon the indentation of someone else’s hand. Gratitude, honor flood me. I am somehow able, through solidified earth, to touch one facet of a human who created a home in this cleft of rock ledge an eon ago. Eight hundred years ago the human being who shaped this wall could never have imagined me, in my Scarpa shoes and Outdoor Research jacket, my Old Navy tights and Smartwool socks, my iPhone and Camelback and Kind bar in my Osprey backpack. Who else has placed their hand against these dips and swirls and indentations? And for how many more decades, centuries, will others continue to do so?
I have found a man whose fingers knit with mine, whose palm neatly presses against my own. He stands with me at this wall, places his hand into the same whorled depression, and shares with me the wonder of being a human upon this earth.
Moon House Ruin is on Cedar Mesa in Bears Ears National Monument.
by susan | Apr 26, 2021 | Uncategorized
Two and two are four,
Four and four are eight,
Eight and eight are sixteen,
Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two…
As a little girl I sang these words over and over; something about the melody mesmerized me, a bit forlorn, a tad melancholy. As I consider the lyrics today, I feel two forms of pertinence.
First, the inchworm is being chastised for measuring the marigolds while not connecting with the beauty they hold. An ever-present lesson.
Second, there is a subtle message that small movements-pieces-parts add up, eventually, to something much more significant.
As we sit in the latest iteration of our global pandemic, with frightening case numbers in India and significant reluctance in the United States to vaccinate, I cling to what nature’s beauty and the promise of small steps assure us: this too shall pass. Stay grounded, stay purposeful.
Two and two will always be four.
And a close-up view of a marigold is worth contemplating.
by susan | Mar 16, 2021 | Uncategorized
I love riding my bicycle. If you know me at all, you know this.
Riding up a canyon, especially early in the morning, transports me to another world, one that fills me with delight, wonder, awe.
Living in northern Utah, however, means snow and cold and rain during the winter months; these put a damper on cycling. Thus I turn to other activities. I ride a trainer, indoors, and then I hike or skate ski, depending on conditions. Life in cycling season is great, and life in ski season is pretty darn great too.
The shoulder seasons get me.
Travel industries call the time between high and low seasons “shoulder seasons,” and I’ve adopted this phrase for my transitions between consistently being able to ride outdoors, and not.
Right now I’m in a shoulder.
Skate skiing has been mostly fabulous this year, and I’m finding myself a bit sad to think of it ending. The warm weather we’ve been having, though, is melting track quickly, and each time I skate I mentally prepare myself for it being the last. And, it’s not quite warm enough to be excited about being on my bicycle. Spring weather here is fairly unpredictable, thus I’m in a state of transition that feels amorphous.
Which matches my emotional state.
We are beginning a transition from full-blown pandemic to… well, less-full-blown pandemic. As vaccination numbers rise, hope for a different future does as well. This will lead to numerous changes; most are welcome, but some are also challenging.
Just as I’m a bit reluctant to give up skiing—although I so love cycling—I’m a bit reluctant to give up the structure I’ve developed over the past year.
I want to return to practicing psychotherapy in person, from my office…sortof.
I want to be free to socialize again…I think.
It will be so great to go places where others freely move about and don’t skirt their fellow humans…perhaps.
This amoeba-like state, shape-shifting, always throws me.
But this morning I realized that instead of letting myself get lost in the discomfort and unknown, my task is to embrace it. Without this phase, the next good thing isn’t able to present itself.
If I resist this, I’m stuck here.
So… this is just the next step toward the future, toward what I’m working to create. Instead of getting tangled in the discomfort, it’s time to celebrate reaching this point. We’ve come a long way, baby, and we can handle whatever the universe next throws our way.
by susan | Jan 31, 2021 | Uncategorized
A clench, a tightening in my gut, and the sudden nausea, the scream inside my head, “no, no, I can’t hear this, please stop.” Rocky hillsides line the freeway, and although they are as familiar as they are unthreatening, I feel suddenly unsafe, at risk. Of what, I don’t know, perhaps a form of implosion, a caving in of my own structure. I can’t hear this anymore.
It contradicts—it attacks—almost every value I hold, it claws at my character, it eats away that which has held me upright my entire life. These conversations have taken too great a toll on me during the past four years.
We are in the canyon, ten minutes from the Nordic ski track, and I can barely contain my upset. I eek out the words, “this is hard for me to hear, I don’t want to be talking about this right now.”
“Right?” he says, then continues, more words flow past as we near the exit: QAnon, gun in her purse, committee, lawmaker, Georgia.
I can’t make eye contact. I must look as ill as I feel. I sense him turning his head to check on me—I’ve gone quiet—as comprehension dawns.
“So, Greg and Jeannie had a good ski up Millcreek last night, he got home soaked, but he’d had a great time—it snowed on them, they made it maybe two-thirds of the way to the top.”
My silent gratitude fills the car. the nausea recedes; a weak smile appears. I climb back out of the dread, the despair. Dust off my character.
Snow fell last night, seven inches, perhaps, and the parking lot holds few cars. We climb over the snow berm and follow deep boot tracks down the slope to the start of the track. It takes me longer than usual to clip boots to bindings. I work to dig snow from around the metal bar, and Tim uses the tip of his pole to assist. The bar can’t clip in if it’s surrounded by any kind of debris. Once the bar snugs down into the notch, I push down the lever and I’m in. Second boot, in. Snow flocks the hillsides, and lies thick on every exposed branch of the pines that line and dot the track. A coyote yips on the far hillside, then bays and yips his tale again. Thick gray clouds sit on the mountains to the south, to the east. Wind chills the air.
The track has been groomed, but it is soft and the few who’ve skied before us have churned more than firmed the snow. We glide, then pick up speed on the downhill and the gift of being here settles over me, the demand for focus to keep myself upright, to be efficient, to notice my poling, my knees, my breath. There is no room here for that which pulls me apart. There is simply beauty, delight, companionship. The drive to be the best I can be in these moments, while accepting that however I am, today, is just fine. What holds me together are foundational aspects of who I am: kind, compassionate, conscious, aware, able to see the big picture, willing to educate myself, able to hold two possibly conflicting thoughts at the same time.
The binding system for Nordic skis is incredibly simple. The notch, the bar, the lever pressed down to hold the bar in place. The toe of the boot is held firm, while the heel is free to move up and down to propel the ski forward on flat and uphill terrain. The system is well-designed, replete with efficiency and integrity. It’s a necessary foundation for skate skiing; I respect it and have learned to clean the bar. I know that without this piece I cannot experience what I wish to; I also know I must take care of it. I expect it only to do its job, but to do that job well.
So that I am then freed to do mine.
(title taken from an excellent article on cross country skiing in the Tahoe Trail Guide written by Jared “schoolboy” Manninen)
by susan | Jun 11, 2020 | Uncategorized
my left toes wedge into a minuscule fissure in the rock face, and those on my right seek purchase somewhere, anywhere. a smooth, blue rope attaches to my harness with a figure eight knot and stretches upward against the rock face. it is held, far above and out of view, snug and secure, by someone who believes in me.
my right fingers grip a small knob of rock, and my left are jammed into a crack in the quartzite. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t believe in myself. I press my hips toward the wall of rock I’m climbing, look down at my right foot, and consider my options, what tiny dip might support my weight, what other way I might possibly adjust my body so that I can move up the cliff. I have nothing; there is nothing I can do. I shouldn’t be here.
but I am here.
what is my next move? I voice these words; the rock absorbs them. for a moment I am still. I repeat the words, and I calm. adjust my right hand, look down, see a possible ripple to which the edge of my foot might cling, pray, test then press down on my right foot, and release my left hand to move it up the crack onto an impossibly tiny but solid ridge.
what is my next move?
surveil, contemplate, test, advance. I don’t let myself look down.
when I reach the peak, there is a pause before my partner and I reattach the blue rope to our harnesses to rappel down what we just climbed. a scraggly, stunted tree sprouts from a crack in the rock and its leaves are effusively green, pliable, soft between my fingers. below us, a sea of pine, oak, aspen. purple and gold crags across the canyon, afire in the evening sun, are, at the moment, my equal.
trust the equipment, trust my partner, trust the mountain. trust myself.
trust that a next move exists.
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