waking up

As I turn over in my bed, I silently thank God for the darkness of the predawn and for the shroud of warmth my red flannel sheets provide; they are a loose midnight skin. I stretch my limbs until they are long and stiff, imagining invisible hands gripping my wrists and ankles and pulling, leaning away with the full weight of a body. I arch my back, attempting to increase my length another inch. I hear the pop and feel the release of air from my joints; I press my heels out and hear them crack.

Sighing, I relax my body again, arms and legs going soft and slack like wet noodles. I lower my jaw and open my mouth wide to let a yawn escape my lungs, taking a full swallow of the dark morning air; a surge of sleepy breath quickly follows. I turn my head to the side and back again, testing my neck muscles. My eyelids are heavy, reluctant. I open and shut them slowly, again and again, letting them drop their heaviness one lead weight at a time. There is no hurry to wake up.

I lay back and pull the covers up close to my chin. I curl and uncurl my toes slowly. I feel the cool air tickle the insides of my nostrils as I pull it in; my chest and belly fill in response. I release those breaths I dreamed on, letting them go, feeling loose and deflated. The weights on my eyelids begin to release and I continue to open and shut them, testing their lightness.

I do not know how long I have been sleeping.

I am waking up. For a time, I felt as though I were pulled under, as though sleep loomed over me and at last swallowed me whole. The shades of indigo that held me in the night are fading, lightening imperceptibly to the color of a robin's egg. Sleep still clings to me, having settled into my bones in the night; I am beginning to inch toward waking as the iron weights around my ankles dissolve in the morning hour. Soon I will move freely again.

I will continue to yawn and stretch and test the weight of my eyelids. I will continue to breathe slowly, deliberately. I will curl and uncurl my toes and rotate my ankles. I will lengthen my arms and legs and savor the release of stiff, sleep-locked joints. I will feel blood moving to my face and fingertips and toes in a slow fizz. I will take gulping lungs full of air and feel my belly inflate. I will hold it and let the air go one breath at a time. I will do it over and over again.

The moment will come when I pull the sheets down, squeeze my abdominal muscles and sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. I will rise and stand, prepare myself to join a world awake and moving. When the sleep is deep and still, waking cannot be rushed.

I am waking up.

waking up photo by kirsten.michelle

quiet

I've got to tell you, friends ... I don't really get this whole going quiet thing I've got going on. I don't understand this need I feel to keep secret and to guard those things that have been planted in my soul. I don't understand why I don't feel like saying anything right now.

But that's how I feel.

So much happened for me at the Writer's Conference: things to do with writing but even more than that, things not to do with writing. Things that spoke to those places where remembering hurts; things that I felt pulled toward for reasons beyond my understanding. In truth, a substantial portion of what made that time away so good for me were things that made writing take a backseat. These are things that, while not particularly personal or private, are things that I'm just not ready to share right now. I don't know why.

Like I said, I don't get it. It doesn't make sense to me. But maybe it's because these things are like seeds planted deep in the cool earth, waiting to die and take root; waiting for the proper amount of water and sunlight and time to coax forth life. Slowly green shoots and leaves will push from underneath the ground, and finally one day, bloom.

ravine photo by kirsten.michelle

places of peace & rest

I'm back {just barely}.

I'm tired.

I hope you will allow me to be mostly silent at present as I gather my thoughts together and reflect, holding them close. But also allow me to share with you some of my new favorite views and places ...

mount hermon photos by kirsten.michelle

what she needed to hear

I've been remembering her. I can't say much here right now about what or why she chose not to remember. In a way, it started with declaring aloud thoughts about my body. That brought me to writing a book proposal and finally to confronting a place where memory failed me.

And then I started to wake up. Numb places came awake with sharp pinpricks of feeling. So I sat with her. I began to earn her trust, slowly. She began to speak, and I just listened. I didn't turn away. I let her cry out loud, and I cried with her. We still have yet to find the bottom of the wound.

There is more work to be done and I know that there will be tears on the path ahead. But I'm thankful that at a time when she was tender and receptive, these words crossed her path again. Words that she had heard before, but ran over her like water over a rock. And now she is like a sponge, soaking them in. Daring for the first time to believe that they are not only true, but meant for her.

that I would be good

alanis morissette

that I would be good even if I did nothing

that I would be good even if I got the thumbs down

that I would be good if I got and stayed sick

that I would be good even if I gained ten pounds

that I would be fine even if I went bankrupt

that I would be good if I lost my hair and my youth

that I would be great if I was no longer queen

that I would be grand if I was not all knowing

that I would be loved even when I numb myself

that I would be good even when I am overwhelmed
that I would be loved even when I was fuming

that I would be good even if I was clingy

that I would be good even if I lost sanity

that I would be good

whether with or without you

remembering her

I'm hitting a wall.

I've been working on my book proposal and I'm hitting a wall, but it's not what you might think. The words come freely and prolifically, except for when I try to remember her. I'm trying to plough full steam ahead and find myself bumping up against a wall of forgetting whenever I try to write about her.

Maybe that's the problem: I'm writing about her. I'm not thinking of writing about me, the thirteen-year-old who learned to cope by building walls. Disconnecting. Responding to her body's perceived betrayal by treating it like her enemy. She turned away from the body she lived in, putting up heavy barriers in the roadway of communication between herself and her flesh. At some point she said, Okay, Body. If this is how you're going to be, we're not talking anymore.

I can write freely of the ensuing bout with anorexia, about the numbness I allowed following the car accident, about the arrhythmia that held me prisoner for a time during my senior year in college. But I can't remember her. She made a deal with herself to choke off any pathways of remembering, to burn the bridges that might lead back to those painful places of being burdened with a body. I trust innately that I cannot sidestep these places or take a detour; without fully understanding why, I know that there are not any shortcuts to take if I'm going to be faithful to the story God wants to write, a story that I believe He intends to direct to a destination beyond my imagining, a place I can only describe as claiming His grace in and for the body. My body.

I remember learning a great deal about the nervous system following my car accident in 1996. I would frequently experience numbness in my face, tingling in my limbs. My neurologist explained to me that when the nerves are overstimulated, they begin to shut down, to turn themselves off. When the signals and stimulus gets to be more than they can handle, the flesh stops feeling altogether. The brain refuses to process the signals from overloaded circuits. Numbness is the result.

I think that's what I'm contending with here: a thirteen-year-old who was overloaded, ill-equipped to manage all the changes thrown at her, both from inside and from outside her body; she disconnected from those things she could not reckon with at the time. These are the very things I need help to remember.

I called my Mom this afternoon and asked her for what she remembers from that time. And that helped; I remember far more now than I did before I spoke with her. And some of her memories of that time brought fresh tears to my eyes; those numb, cold places are starting to tingle with feeling. They're waking up and for the first time in seventeen years, I'm taking notice of those sharp slivers still embedded deep in my flesh. I'm afraid to feel those things fully, to allow myself the space to fling open wide the gates to those memories.

I have a compass now, a direction; hearing these things from her helped me to get my bearings. I can begin to remember now, to take stock of my surroundings, and to continue walking, learning to trust in the grace that is now with me, and in the grace that is waiting for me in the hidden and forgotten places.

kirsten, circa 1990 {taken by dad}

for judy {spicy quinoa & lentils}

NOTE: The content of this post is now lives here.

I'll be back right after a reserve myself a room in the nearest space with padded walls. :o)

the story behind & the path ahead

I'm tired. It was an especially busy week at work; I facilitated my first-ever training class on Monday, putting in a twelve hour day. It went well, but it took a lot out of me and set the tone for my week; I just haven't had the energy to be much in this blogging space.

I was overwhelmed by the responses to my last post. What was reflected back to me in your comments and e-mails blessed me beyond my ability to express. I was awestruck, amazed at the variety of connection points you shared with me, honored that some of you have shared with me that you are passing this on to others.

As I read your own reflections, I remembered her more: the adolescent me, the thirteen-year-old girl who wished she were thinner, prettier. Someone else, even. I can't forget her: I remember her awkwardness and insecurities, her self-loathing. I also remember her with the eating disorder, slowly stripping herself with physical neglect and a merciless interior dialogue; I remember her with the neck-brace, who went numb from the inside out. All these different incarnations of me are alive and breathing inside me, stacked one inside the other like nesting dolls, each with her own story to tell.

As I contemplate my first-ever book proposal and outlines for some magazine pieces for the writer's conference I'm attending in two weeks, I’ve thought of these stories that are uniquely mine, the stories that are layered one upon the other; I’ve thought of the journey these girls have taken from there to here, and wonder what roles they might play in the path ahead.

I may be stepping away from this space for a bit as I do this, focusing my attention on being present and available for those words to come. I'm sitting before God with open hands as I do this, making the whole of my heart and my experience available to Him, wondering what story He wants to tell, wondering how He will translate my experiences into something real meant to reach the heart of another. As I think again over the words you gave back to me, I am struck with the reality that I'm in sacred territory, being asked by God to speak into people's lives, to be a conduit for for His grace and truth to be imparted to the hearts of real people. I am responsible for stepping out of the way, allowing Him to tell the story He wants to tell through the lens of my experience.

This is His yes over me.

I feel a certain weight of holiness in what lay before me; I unlace my shoes and strip off my socks, knowing I tread on holy ground.

path photo by kaari, posted on flickr by kirsten.michelle