When The Answer Is No

I have been thinking a lot about rejection lately.  That's probably because I've faced it pretty regularly during this season in my life.  Some of this rejection has been career-related.  Some has been in the ever-constant search for that Special Someone.  And some has been self-rejection.  Rejection has seemed to become a recurring event in my life.

And it always sucks.
Hard.

My experience with rejection seems to go like this: I read/see/hear the "No."  It's like someone has just up-turned a bucket of numbness over my head.  As the numbness trickles down my body I start to wonder if maybe this time I won't feel so horrible about it.  That thought, though, is evidence that the numbness is wearing off, because suddenly I can feel the acid burn in the pit of my stomach.  There's a pressure in my chest that makes breathing difficult.  It squeezes and squeezes until one fat tear spills onto my cheek.  And then...well.  The floodgates have opened.

Actually me once I start crying

"How to Deal With Rejection" has been a session at pretty much any conference I've attended.  I've sat in several of these sessions and here's what I've learned: Rejection sucks and it is all a part of the process.  You will be rejected. Everyone will be rejected.  It's not personal, so once you accept that it becomes easier to deal with.

Helpful, right?  You're left with little nuggets like this:

I mean, it's a good quote, but seriously...Not helpful in the moment.

So I decided to write down the ways I actually, practically deal with rejection when it happens.  Maybe it'll help you, too.  So, without further ado, here we go:

- Take a deep breath.  And then take another one.  And another.  I know it feels like it will hurt to breathe.  There's a pressure on your chest that seems to be shoving your heart and lungs down into the burning in your belly.  It seems safer to take shallow breaths.  I know.  But I promise you, the pressure will actually let up as you breathe.

- Related: Get some fresh air.  I don't care if it's 7* outside - you need some fresh air.  Crack the window in your car and crank the heater.  Hug your heating pad and wrap yourself up in a blanket so you can stay warm while also being able to breathe something other than stale air.  I can't overstate how important oxygen is right now.  It is major.  

- Drink some cold water.  And I do mean cold.  Everything is kind of burn-y right now, so you need to counter that.  Later on you can have the comfort of hot tea, hot cocoa, or hot coffee, but right now just try some ice water.  It will help.  I promise.

- Also related to water - wash your face.  Seriously.  It's amazing how refreshing and humanizing this simple act can be.  Yeah, mascara may run and your eyes may still be red, but you feel better.  You know that first shower after you've been sick for a while?  Yeah...this is a miniature version of that.

- Eat something good for you.  I know the instinct is to drown your sorrows in fried food, chocolate, and alcohol.  And those things all have their place.  But if that's all you consume your body is going to feel crappy.  Try some sauteed veggies (I like fajita veggies, myself), or a fresh salad.  Something refreshing, that will help your physical self feel better.  It translates to the emotional self.  Really.

- You'll have to walk a fine line with this one, but listen to a song that expresses how you feel.  Personally, I like Chasing Dreams by Dave Barnes for creative rejection, and Sad by Maroon 5 for breakups/romantic rejection.  As I said, it's a fine line, because it can be too easy to be sucked into the vortex of "Woe is me," but sometimes we need to hear someone validate what we're feeling, and music can do this in ways nothing else can.

- You know that movie/TV show/book that never fails to make you feel better?  Yeah, go watch or read that.  Your brain will probably try to convince you to stick with the sad song.  Don't.  And I bet when you first press PLAY or open the book you'll want to stop.  Just sit with it for five minutes.  My most recent choice was You've Got Mail.  It didn't disappoint.  It was like being hugged by an old friend.

- And speaking of being hugged...find someone.  If you're a hugger, ask for a hug.  Sometimes I stop at my sister's house just because I know I'll get a hug from her and at least two of my nieces.  If you aren't a hugger, that's fine.  But find your someone anyway.  You know that someone - the person who can sit with you without saying something, or who can listen to your disbelief and pain, or who can make you laugh (or at least smile).

- Go to sleep early.  This one is tough, I know, because when you go quiet is generally when your brain is finally able to run through all the things.  And it's easy to replay the rejection again and again.  Do what you can to stay in this uncomfortable place.  You may cry (I always do).  You'll probably need to focus on those deep breaths again.  But turning to face that rejection head on will lessen its power.  It will allow you to stand up and try again sooner than if you try to ignore and/or power through the pain.  Also, as an added bonus, this quiet time is when you are finally able to hear what you need to recover.

Because that's what all this really comes down to.  Your body will tell you what you need.  If you can sift through all the noisy pain of rejection, you'll be able to know exactly what will help.

And at some point, you'll be able to face the idea of trying again.

From 'Truce,' by Twenty-One Pilots

Artists, We Are Needed

Artists, we are needed.

I know. It's too hard to find it, to tap into that creative space and pull from it.  We are too vulnerable; with everything going on in the world and in our nation, it just hurts too much.  I know.  I feel it, too.  But we are needed.

It hit me today as I sat at my desk, humming the refrain of 'Hallelujah,' over and over again.  Cohen, I thought, was a poet.  He would have been able to make sense of this.  Because that's what poets do.  As Gwendolyn Brooks said, and my sister lives, "Poetry is life distilled."

I will (with all due respect) take this one step further: Art is life distilled.  It is finding the essential and extracting it.  You've felt it, right?  Something - word, song, photo, paint, animation - something hits you with a ferocity that leaves you shaking.  It makes you realize, as though for the first time, that true beauty is a jagged edge.  It tears you open and drives you to your knees, leaving you gasping and quivering, and somehow in need of more.  You are changed.  Tender, open.  Broken.

So we are driven to our craft, to our art.  We find it deep within us and we pull it out.  It may be loud, it may be soft.  It could be for the world to see, or the solace you find in your quiet garden.  But you create.  You recognize the need.

Artists, we are needed.

We need to show up and let the light shine through our brokenness.  Because that is our super power, our secret weapon: we do not cover up the hurt.  We use it.  We harness it.  We face it and direct it.  We are broken open time and time again, and it lets us see the world with a vision others refuse to face.

We breathe in hurt and breathe out love.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Artists, we are needed.

We are needed to take a step forward, even though the air is heavy and the bog hinders our progress.  One step, and then another, and then another - until the earth firms beneath our feet just enough for us to rest, for only a moment, before moving again.

I have been suspended this week, held in the air, frozen, unable to move as I looked all around me.  Looking through the words I have seen hurt.  Hurt all over.  I see it and I feel it.  It presses on my shoulders, my chest, my back.  Down, down, down.

I turned to look for the light, and saw in surprise that it shone through me, through my broken parts.  So I took a deep breath, and then another, and then I lifted my head.

I cannot promise it will all be okay.  I don't that it will; I am not a Seer.  I can look at the past and see what we've survived, and I can glean hope from that.  But empty assurances are not helpful, especially to those who feel fear and hurt and despair directly in their lives.  So I won't offer them.

Instead, I promise this: I will watch, and see what is going on around me.  I will listen and hear what those who are afraid and hurting have to say.  I will make certain my path is safe for any who come across it.  I will be the vessel for the Speaker: Come to me, He says, and I will give you rest.   The sun will rise and set, and I will let it shine through me.  The earth will turn on its axis, and I will mirror the dance.  The wind will arrive, sometimes drifting, sometimes whipping, and I will let it blow through me, sweeping away the darkness.

Artists, we are needed.

But what if - you ask - what if I don't create art?

I have a secret for you.  Come close, and listen.

Artists, I believe, are nothing more or less than those of us who still remember we are all human.  We live our art in an infinite number of ways: gardening, cooking, writing, painting, designing, dancing, animating, singing, composing, speaking, running, lifting...the list goes on and on.  The only thing that makes us artists is the recognition that we share a nature.  We see that the lines of connection have been covered, they have been twisted and stretched and even torn, but they have not broken.  We are still all connected; we belong to each other.

We see this and we live this.

Artists.  We are needed.

This Elevator Is Making Me Dizzy - OR - Adventures in Hotel Travel

This is it.  This is the day. 

This is the day of the WARRIOR DASH!!!!  Let us rejoice and be glad it's finally here.  Let us also keep our thoughts from the idea of what lies ahead and remember that we signed up for this so we will do it, gosh darnit.  Because our stomachs have recently been filled with banana, bagel, and coffee, and the butterflies that take flight when we think about the Dash don't exactly sit well with all that food.

But hey, it was a continental breakfast....I had to take advantage of it!  Even if that did mean eating more sub-par food than I actually wanted to.  It's one of my weaknesses.  I have a soft spot for a good continental breakfast, and by "a good continental breakfast" I really mean, "any continental breakfast."

Is it the packaged muffins?  Maybe it's the 2 types of cereal they offer - bran flakes or corn flakes - that have probably been in those containers with the plastic scoops for at least a week.  Or maybe it's the packets of hot cocoa.  I love hot cocoa.  And coffee that tastes like it was brewed in a gas station.  I love that stuff.  (Really...ask my friends.  I really love gas station coffee.)

And how could I pass up the opportunity to sit awkwardly with other hotel guests while we all watch ZzzzzNN - I mean CNN - against our inclination?  I suggested changing to the Disney Channel, but no one jumped on that idea, which is strange since half the people eating looked to be under the age of twelve.  I couldn't have been the only person there wishing we could catch a rerun of Wizards of Waverly Place.  But, unfortunately, the little soccer team either didn't hear me, or they just didn't care, and shortly after making my suggestion my mom and I went back upstairs. 

My mom is here!  Did I tell you that??

She felt sad for me that I had to come on this trip on my own (my co-warrior, Lara, got sick, and I do hope she is feeling better!), so my mama decided pretty last minute to come with me.  It's been a long time since I've had hours of one-on-one time with my mom, and it was pretty great!  The drive up definitely passed more quickly than if I had been on my own, and it was really great to have someone to laugh with.

Which is a good thing.  Because from the warning from the clerk about the bed ("Now, you do realize there is just one bed, right?") which was the first clue that the "queen size" bed was not actually a queen, to the crazy blinking wrench on the thermostat ("Mom, I think that means the AC can't turn off!!"), to watching a fully grown woman walk around the hotel in boxers and a t-shirt ("Isn't it strange how in a hotel people do all the things they would NEVER do at home?  Like walk around a public place in their underwear?"), to the conversation with one of the soccer moms in the elevator ("Yeah, our girls are headed to a costumed soccer tournament.  They're the Zombie Grass-Fairies."), there's been no lack of laughable things. 

Side note:  I want to be on that soccer team.  They sound extremely cool.

And here's to hoping that I can laugh my way through the WARRIOR DASH!!!!  Because now, just thinking about it, those butterflies are taking flight again.  So Mom and I are going to hit the town for a bit, do some sight-seeing.  (It shouldn't take too long here...my view from the hotel window is the back of the hotel's facade.  And the freeway.  And some weeds next to the freeway.)  I promise I'll blog about the Dash.  If nothing else, you'll get to hear an awkward story of the day I decided to be a warrior.

Till then, think good thoughts and send some prayers up for me.  They will be most appreciated.

Lioness

It has been a long while - yet again - since I have opened this page and written a new blog post.  I have had so many things to blog about, so many experiences I've wanted to share, but somehow there hasn't been enough time to sit and write about them. 

And that's okay.  Really. 

I wanted to share about the amazing experience of Candlelight Caroling at Disneyland (sometimes referred to as "My Hometown").  Not long after I wanted to share about reuniting with my LOGgers at the LOG Christmas party (LOG stands for Love of God, by the way) and how uplifted my spirit was after seeing them.  Then I wanted to reflect on the sadness I felt recently about witnessing a family reach their breaking point.  And then I became - somehow - embroiled in a huge, disgusting drama about what is deemed to be appropriate and inappropriate for today's Orthodox Christian. 

Done.  I shared them all.  Boom.  In one, fell swoop I clued you all in on the delights and struggles of my life as of late.  Well, sure - there's always more to a story, but I don't really feel like going into any of them right now. 

Instead I want to share an experience I had while I was (finally) falling asleep last night.  I felt unsettled and frustrated, angry and hurt.  A million words were flying through my head.  Words people said in anger or in defense, to hurt or to soothe.  Words I wanted to say.  Words I knew I shouldn't say.  Words danced around, in and out of my grasp, until I became frustrated not only at the situation I found myself in, but at the words that usually came so easily.

I love words.  I think words are - truly - awesome.  I love that words can communicate, distract, enlighten, darken, heal, hurt... There is power in words.  There is play in words.  There is joy in words.  There is a certain melody and dance to the rhythm of words, and I love to play with it. 

That being said, I get very clear mental images sometimes.  They frighten me sometimes because they come from nowhere and can be so clear and vivid that I find myself distracted from reality, if only for a moment.  Usually I find words to accompany the picture - that tends to come easily enough.  A descriptor, a mood to the image comes to my mind and I find myself back in my comfort zone, the land of words. 

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep I had a vivid picture appear in my mind.  It was a picture of me.  I picked up a piece of broken glass, the piece of a mirror, and I saw my reflection.  This reflection shocked me.  It was not me, or anything that I thought resembled me. 

My reflection was a lioness.  A lioness that gave me a smile of sorts, a homecoming, a "so glad you finally figured this out," kind of a look.

I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my lips.  I would never have assumed to be a lioness.  A bird, sure.  I can definitely be flighty at times.  Mayhap even a horse.  I enjoy a certain amount of freedom, but am a homebody and a hard worker.  But a lioness?  No.  She is fierce.  She is strong.  She is a fighter.  She may not be as delicate as some animals, nor as exotic as others, but she is a force with which to be reckoned. 

When I woke up today I could actually feel her - my - power.  As I pushed out of bed I saw in my mind's eye her shoulders as she pushed to standing.  As I went throughout my day I felt in myself a new kind of power - new but not foreign, as if it had been waiting for me to claim it, to own it.  I became glad of a new facet to my identity. 

I am a lioness. 

Look out, world.



Painting credit: craftworks.wordpress.com