FAIRYTALE INCINERATION (REMAKING MY STORY)

 A week ago I finished the first draft of my first book. 

It's a love story, the only kind of letter that I can give

to the mother I am no longer connected with physically.

It spans about fifteen years of my life, starting at age 5

and (I hope) will give readers insight into what it's like

living with chaos as a constant-the impact

that has on children, the kinds of limitations people

who are raised in that system live with, and the unhelpful, predictable

ways that shame encourages people to behave

when faced with something that can't be 'fixed'.

While it would be absurd to claim that I knew the impact 

tacking my story down would have on me,

 my intuition started gently nudging me and then yelling at me

that it was the next right step and that I would regret not taking it.

So I listened and wrote several thousand words

to describe my experience.

I'm glad I did it but there have been some surprising results.

I didn't expect it to change and settle the pieces of my soul

in such a profound way.

I mean....it's my story right? 

I was there!  It happened to me!

It shouldn't be new or have layers that I didn't see before.

Right?

Whelp.  Turns out that is wrong.

Much of it happened around me or to me

before I had language or perspective or choice.

Pinning down the details, doing the research to confirm places, dates

and artifacts helped me sort out the things that felt more

fantastical than real.

It let me see the contrivances or caricatures that 

were presented as fact to explain heartbreaking disappointments.

It let me see the patterns and inevitability of repeated

behavior that went unaddressed because it would ask

bigger questions of the family system, the players within it,

and the structures that are supposed to protect or support.

Bringing everything into focus-abuse, trauma, mental illness,

poverty, pride, familial shame and systemic struggle-

helped me kill off the villains and superheroes that have

existed as shadows of the real people in my history.  

Instead of black sheep and angels, 

saviors and devils, 

main characters and bit parts, 

I have living breathing humans who wander my memories now.

Each of us is imperfect in our choices,

doing what we know to do in order to get our needs met

and failing in small and large ways along the way.

It's remarkably healing to count the cost and forgive the injuries.

To see the humanity within each family member instead of 

limiting them to a series of heroic acts or destructive choices.

Transformative even.

It's almost like Jesus really knew what he was talking about there.....

I'm not the same person I was when I started writing this book.

I like her-this newer, less reactive version.

Finishing the first draft is not the same as finishing the book

but it is an important milestone that deserves recognition.

I find celebrating personal milestones difficult-

particularly when the achievement is mostly going to be an 

internally recognized event.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one videos it or gets paid 

for the lumber, did the tree really fall?

Reward for a performance well done is mother's milk to me

so unlearning that as the point of everything I do will 

probably take 22 more years.

I may never make a dime off of this book.

It doesn't matter.

I've already earned more than I expected before writing it.

That lesson alone deserves a candle or some confetti or at least

an extra hike and a pumpkin spice latte.

Taking time to celebrate is holy ritual,

as important as broken bread dipped in grape juice

or heads bowed around a table.

As the boss of this life of mine, 

I ordered myself to take a week off from the work of my life (writing)

to let this milestone settle in my bones.

Much of being an adult (I've learned) is making yourself 

do things that no one else really cares if you do

FOR YOUR OWN GOOD

and by doing those things, we actually turn the world

into a place that gives two sh*ts about our own health.

We become the safety, security, and nurturing 

that we need in the world first.

Then we can do it for others.

When our cup is filled up, it will spill over.

During my work hiatus,

I had several shifts at my new paid service project,

smiled and laughed with strangers and new friends,

searched for and found GOD in the birds and the trees and lattes I served customers.  I had spiritual direction and therapy.

I organized a few life details that I'd been ignoring

like covid boosters and started watching Grey's Anatomy 

for the first time ever with my best girl.

As the kids would say, it's been FIRE.

(apparently 'lit' is oldschool now ya'll-keep up.)

Today, I will start the next phase of this book writing business

and for me that means I need to have the tangible 

paper copy in front of me to read from start to finish.

I have thirty four chapters and 134k words.  

I need to tighten that up to somewhere around 27 chapters and 100k words.

I'm looking forward to the artistic/business part of this effort even though

(or maybe because) it'll be a different kind of hard.

Yesterday I sent my draft to a local print shop so that 

I can be prepped and ready for reviewing the draft.

And I hit a brick wall.

The print shop lost my order, then lost their whole database.

It was a little chaotic and disorienting to send this work

of mine out into the world and have it be lost immediately

so I understand why I jumped into minimizing my need

to have this book printed on actual paper.

It doesn't matter after all...not to anyone but me.

I could probably still do the next necessary step if I 

just contorted myself a little

into something that made this easier for all of us.

I could do all my editing virtually, inside my docs.

Except it didn't feel right and I knew those first thoughts were lies.

I need the paper version to read it instead of trying to fiddle with it.

I need to know what the reader knows.

I need a physical copy to hold in my hand.

When the print shop manager called me 'baby' the sixth time, I smiled.

My working title for my book is 'Dollbaby' and I realized all this struggle

was God asking me a question.

Do I want this enough to push through the discomfort?

See, a very common fairytale that is alive and well in our world

suggests that if something

we want isn't super easy, then we should just give up on it.

If the boy doesn't lock eyes with you and forsake all other

possible women, then he isn't your 'one'.

If the job doesn't fulfill every single one of your professional 

aspirations (and your ego) then it's time to move on to greener pastures.

If the car won't start or you spill coffee on your pants or

you forget your resume, then you should just give up on that dream.

If we have to try, particularly in a way that feels uncomfortable

then we are in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong body, wrong life.

This is a lie but since it's different for each of us

and since we HATE to be uncomfortable more than anything

it's a lie that we fall for regularly.

We get close to the thing that is for us and then a little speedbump

convinces us that maybe we don't want it that much

or that road is not for us after all.

We decide that we took a wrong turn when we actually

finally found the path that no one can claim except one person.

You.

Or in this case-me.

See, no one in my family wants me to write this memoir.

The family members that are usually happy to promote my perseverance

over all the terrible things from my childhood

 have either attacked the content (that they haven't read)

or forcefully reminded me that this is not a good idea, that I should just

leave it all in the past where it can't hurt anyone.

There are a couple that are insisting that their experience

with a particular family member negates my experience with a particular

family member.

No one wants to know what really happened to me,

what made me into this high achieving person who 

thought all emotions belonged in a box and the best thing

she could do for someone she loved was hurt herself indefinitely.

No one wants to understand why addiction was a viable choice

for a child who wasn't loved or cared for by anyone.

No one wants to understand why mental illness can't be explained

away as bad behavior or greedy choices.

Once again my family of origin is deciding to pick shame over vulnerability,

death over healing.

They are allowed to do that.

I couldn't stop them as a child and I will not be using

every ounce of energy as an adult to bleed out for their comfort.

It is more than enough to realize that silence on this story hurts me.

It killed my brother.

It continues to haunt my entire family.

I won't hold it any longer.

I won't eat the sins of my forebears 

or pretend that they were all one person's fault

or stick to the story they all agreed on long before I was born.

I'm going to push through and talk about my experience.

I've been very careful to tell only my side of the events

and corroborate as much as I can with public records.

There is way more that I can't confirm or talk about 

because it is not my story to tell.

But what is mine, is mine.

I won't let anyone else horde it or manipulate it

or intentionally misunderstand it any longer.

It will see the light of day, one way or the other.

Even if I get sued or kicked out of the family or 

if unknown bystanders think I'm a freak.

I owe myself that.

I owe my brother that.

Probably I owe some other lost and lonely people that I'll never know or meet.

I can't worry about things that aren't my business

including what strangers on the internet think about me

or what my third cousin has to say about people who are 

either dead or estranged from me.

I had four visits to the print shop.

I had to email over the entire book.

Twice.

They printed me 80 copies of one single chapter.

I had to get them start over and do it again.

I made friends with the sweet manager who really

wanted to give me something 'extra' for all this trouble.

I don't think I was successful in getting her to understand that she already had.

I am not worried about the time or struggle to get over this part.

It takes what it takes and I'll work on it until it's right.

My next right thing is already waiting on me and I'll be working through it

for the next few weeks.

That's the first draft of my book.  Isn't she lovely?

I don't want anyone to think I'm recommending throwing yourself

at something impossible until you bleed out on the field.

Lord knows I've done my fair share of that so believe me when I say

there is a time to throw in the towel.

Quitting is a holy choice that needs to be in everyone's toolbox.

I'm quitting the fairytales and remaking my story,

I'm quitting the 'easy' button that takes me right back to 

the jail of workaholism and cleaning up,

I'm quitting shaving off essential bits of my makeup in 

favor of other people's comfort.

This whole year is about quitting what isn't good for me

so if you need to quit, DO IT.

I'm just trying to say that if the path you're treading is always easy,

if you never have to struggle or question if you should take an exit,

it's probably not your path.

Four lane highways, paved and maintained by the social structure

rarely take us all the way towards where GOD means for us to be.

I may spend some time on the four lane highways of life again

which might include some corporate work or following some scripts

that have been set down by previous generations.

I'm grateful often that those shortcuts exist and I'm privileged enough

to be able to navigate them.

But I won't be making the mistake of thinking that four lane road

is the best path towards what is meant for me

or that small detours imply I'm going in the wrong direction

when I finally make it into the wilderness.

Fairytales exist on the page to communicate simplistic

ideas to us that keep us within the lines of social norms.

They shouldn't exist in real life, walking around and 

interacting with us or as a blueprint for a life well lived.

Happily ever after is vague hand waving.

Let's be wild right now.

A little corporate humor for you...

A TIP TO REFRAME FAIRYTALES (ACCEPT WHAT IS)

A side effect of a childhood filled with near constant chaos is that I know how

to live through a lot of weird and disorienting crap.

I developed several coping mechanisms in my late adolescence

to help me waddle through situations that the fairytales didn't cover.  

Today's tip has been particularly

helpful when my expectations

for how someone should act or behave

isn't lining up with how they're actually acting.

While I've used this little tip on and off for years,

in the past weeks I've heard it come out of my 

mumbling, prayerful mouth at least 10 times a day.

Shock and grief have barrelled through my extended family

and friends and I find myself sending it to them

more often than I ever have before,

sometimes with swear words on the ends to give it 

an extra push through the heavy mists of grief.

This little ditty has kept me from extra suffering

and from doing several meme-worthy acts for many years.

Accept what is.

It's is a short way to remind myself

to stop over-romanticizing about what should be

or could be and just accept the data around me as accurate.

I can feel your chuckle from here.

Who doesn't accept what is?

Fuzzy headed nincompoops or naive little babies

are the only people who don't accept what is.

You have to accept what is!

Living in a fantasy land is totally ridiculous!

I never do that!

Bless your heart.

Telling yourself that you never do this

is in itself a fantasy.

Unless of course you're not a human reading my words

in which case feel free to impart some of your own cultural 

obeservations in the comments or my DMs.

On the wall at Cafe Diem, a great little coffee shop in PBO

Humans constantly tell ourselves all kinds of underlying stories,

a kind of collective experience to be able to tolerate

the bullshit that happens whenever two or more of us are gathered.

Here's a non-familial example for you to examine for a sec

that might illustrate the most benign version of what I'm talking about.

In the US, we all drive on the right

side of the road and stop at the big red octagons at intersections.

If someone drove on the other

side of the street or failed to stop at the stop sign, we would agree they are 

out of bounds, wrong, deserve to be fined and are acting dangerously.

This is a collective expectation of behavior that we've codified with law

and we reinforce with signs, infrastructure and consistent training.

If anyone argues that the car in the scenario above 

wasn't on the wrong side of the road

we would cite witness testimony, video evidence and damage to other

people or things to convince the confused party.

If anyone still insisted, they would be considered crazy or dangerous.

We would be frustrated that they won't accept what is

in favor of a story that rejects the facts or the data.

However, when it comes to human relationships 

we've got a different kind of dynamic going on in our western culture.

The closer or more intimate a relationship is supposed to be

the deeper the fantasy story is embedded in our psyche.

We have a collective understanding

of what makes up a family and the roles of each of the key members.

We also have a pretty robust outline of what kinds of feelings

each of those members have for each other based on their roles.

There are parents and grandparents,

children, aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings.

These are the main roles right? 

We call anyone who has these roles 'family'

and then we make all kind of prouncements about 

what someone with this role feels, does, owes the other labeled people.

It's universal!  This connection is thicker than water.

Right?

Highly recommend this book-click here.

I have a very large, very chaotic family and 

when I was younger, I had a lot of suffering

because almost everyone in these roles inside my family

acted differently than I was taught to expect.

Sometimes the feelings and behavior and values of the people with these labels

lined up with what I was told the job description was.

But often, it didn't.

Wives who didn't respect or value their husbands.

Husbands who belittled or beat their wives.

Parents who neglected and abused their children.

Siblings who cheated, slandered, or actively worked against each other.

Grandparents who were neither wise nor measured.

Children who honored neither parent or themselves.

After several years of trying to reconcile the actual

humans in my life with how they were supposed to be

I gave up and decided to accept what is.

I quit trying to make the data match the story

and I accepted that the story might be wrong

or at the very least grossly over-simplified.

Parents don't always nurture and protect.

Women are not universally helpless, gentle or maternal.

Men are not universally aggressive, strong, or protective.

Deep emotions like trust, respect, and adoration are earned

with persistent action over time, not awarded blankly because of a title.

Everyone can make mistakes, some of them catastrophic, illegal 

or seemingly unforgiveable.

Unfortunately, we're all human and that means we're all messy

in some fashion.

There are collective expectations that we don't fit into.

Accept what is.

This also means that we often get some things very, very twisted.

There are a lot of people who equate violence with love

in a gazillion ways.

For example, if you love your children

and your parents beat you

then beating your child means you love them.

This is a false equivalency.

You actually don't EVER need to spank, slap, beat,

belittle, shame, or hurt a child for them to learn discipline.

Discipline is self control and you can learn it from other people 

who have self control in non-violent ways.

Growth is always uncomfortable but it doesn't have to be traumatic.

The fairytales make it more traumatic, not less.

The sun setting off the edge of the world at Ocracoke Island, NC (not a fantasy)

Many people have a hard time separating these fairytales from reality

because to call the physical or emotional violence

they experienced by it's real name would threaten

their underlying role of the parent they love deeply.

This is really hard to communicate in a straight way.

To say it more clearly:

There are a lot of people that still think beating a child

is a loving act because their parent beat them and to question it

would threaten the fantasy they hold of their parent.

It would also threaten the fantasy role they hold of themselves as a child.

It may threaten the fantasy role of the parent that failed to protect them.

It may threaten the fantasy role they hold of themselves as a parent.

It's a mess to try and accept what is!

I recommend a therapist to help if you are struggling here.

It's one of their primary gifts to you-the holding of the feelings

while you navigate the complexity of your family.

You can choose to accept what is instead of pretending.

That doesn't mean that you're judging or rejecting

or blaming the human person in that role.

I mean, you may do that for a while but in my experience

it passes pretty quickly once you stop trying 

to make the person fit into the fantasy.

It's much easier to forgive a real person for being human 

and making mistakes

than to forgive a super-human fantasy 

person who was supposed to be perfect.

I'm not saying this is easy.

It can be very painful-mostly because the story that everyone else

seems to share will never apply to the thing you're having to accept.

It is better though.

I notice that once I let go of my expectations

of how it is supposed to be, I can

 create something different to take its place.

Acceptance relieves me of my anger at what should have been

and allows me to appreciate what is.

I've applied this to so many relationships over the years.

Professional, familial, friendships and religious affiliations.

When things get complicated, I find it really helpful

to break it down into facts and data

instead of archetypes, shoulds and expectations.

It is always uncomfortable but it has improved my quality of life

immensely.

Accept what is.

About your family member who is also an addict, mentally ill, or just a jerk.

About your child who is angry at you for your abuse of them.

About your own failures and imperfections.

About your boss who really sucks at some things.

About your friend who keeps trying to hand you that crap.

About your religious leader who is struggling with affirming GOD's creation.

About your political leader who is putting power over your interests.

There will still be suffering, but it will be clearer 

and more accurately named.

A sweet note from my friend Elise with a few of her memories of Andy

WHAT BRINGS US TOGETHER (CLEARING UP A MISCONCEPTION ABOUT OUR MARRIAGE)

 

I've said before on this blog that my life fell apart

a few years ago and refused to be put back together

in the same configuration.

The short hand version is that my marriage

was over - every vow broken, every simplistic understanding

of the life we thought we had together was shattered.

We had two kids, a mortgage, and retirement plans-

our whole adult lives were built around each other.

It seemed reasonable at the time to expect that 

these structures would have enough substance 

and heft to keep us on track.

None of it did.

Within days, our life together

 dissolved like cotton candy in water.

Poof.  What now?

 I haven't gone into details too much about what I consider 

'our' combined story.

I can barely report on my own feelings, experience and 

a few sparse facts-much less try and represent another person's

in a way that still respects our psychological safety.

Those early days and weeks after the dissolution

were so lonely.

As we slowly pulled through the detritus of our life

together, we mourned the lack of community or 

role models in this area.

No one talks about 

what to do once you've managed to

destroy what our culture sees as the defining 

relationship of adulthood.

When they do, it's typically in a sensationalist way.

Kick him to the curb.

Take her for all she's worth.

Figure out which of you is the villain,

or at least THE MOST guilty of fault

and then set that person's life on fire.

What if you don't want to destroy the other person?

What if you want to try and understand 

what went wrong and how you contributed to it?

What if you would like an example of

maturity, accountability and grace?

That is almost impossible to find in media

and while I'm sure they exist in real life

-no one talks about it.

After the dust settled, we eventually realized

 that we could be that very thing 

we needed so much in the early days - an example of 

a different way to navigate the breakdown of a marriage.

We shared our willingness to help support

anyone else in our community with our pastors

and a few other trusted advisors and that

recently culminated in a podcast for our church.

The Peak Church actively works to connect those disconnected.

Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to 

touch base with us and give us feedback.

While I'm grateful for the support,

there's a theme that keeps coming up in the commentary

we're getting and I want to make sure that I'm 

not complicit in another kind of fairytale.

I am forever anti-fairytale and I just can't

relax thinking that I might have given anyone

the impression that we're trying to perpetuate one.

#quitting

A couple of people have commended us on staying married.

Almost as if the legal corporate structure of our

relationship remaining intact is a major consideration

in the validity of our story.

Something along the lines of:

Wow!  That was a lot of pain and anguish

you guys went through but since you stayed

married, you must have really figured some stuff out!

or

All of that mess was worth it ultimately b/c you didn't get divorced.

or

Way to keep your promise to God!

I'm sorry if we gave you the impression 

that we somehow deserve an award for 

not getting legally divorced.

In our hearts and minds-we did get one.

We broke our covenant with each other

and with GOD.

We didn't honor, didn't cherish, didn't stay true to any of 

the naive concepts we promised to each other on our wedding day.

We rejected each other and 

sometimes actively sought to hurt the other in the name of 

our own desires, unresolved trauma or needs.

We own those hurts, have begged for and 

given each other forgiveness for them,

and agreed to start something new now that

we're more mature versions of husband and wife.

#tea

This year we'll have known and been in relationship 

with each other

for quarter of a century.

Some of that unmarried, 

some of it within two different types of covenants

-one we understood only after we broke it, 

-one we agreed to in detail and commit to daily. 

At this point, I can say with a high degree of certainty

that we will always consider each other family.

We will dance with each other at our children's weddings.

We will laugh with our grandchildren

and celebrate each other for the rest of

our time in this plane.

I will always cheer for him and he will always cheer for me.

I don't have any value placed on the number of years

since we were incorporated as a legal entity.

We may stay legally married.

We may not.

It is frankly-irrelevant.

I'm being pretty clinical; unromantic.

I'm doing that on purpose.

We do not measure our relationship together

by the number of years we have been in service together.

There is no retirement package,

no gold pen or promotion that we're holding out for.

If we have any measurement,

it's how well is each of us thriving (individually)

and how much our combined support of each other

can improve the other person.

How care-filled can I be towards myself?

How care-filled can I be towards my partner?

Is there room for the Divine/God/Mystery to work between us and on us?

We hold all of those things with equal weight in the 

balancing of the books.

I want to say it again so I can eradicate 

any romantic or flowery notions.

If we thought we would thrive better divorced,

if we thought we would be better served by separation,

we would make that happen.

That is not a failure nor does it diminish 

what we mean to each other.

Make no mistake-our story together is a love story.

Our relationship is incredibly precious to us

and is a source of stability, growth, and delight.

No matter what, the story that our 

individual lives tell and the story of our shared

life together is beautiful-

chock full of deep love and commitment,

free of shame and lies.

But we have learned the hard way that 

fairytales make it fragile.

Happily ever after doesn't live here anymore

but the seeds of it need to be continually stomped out if we want to 

remain healthy and committed.

So if you are tempted to think that we've got it together

because we've stayed together

I want to make sure I'm clear that isn't our story.

Don't make an altar to us in the name of marriage

and for goodness sake don't decide that we're in any way

opposed to divorce or have any qualification to 

evaluate another relationship.

Finally, if you are ever in need of a connection

to discuss the complicated dance generically called marriage-

we are delighted to listen, unqualified to judge anyone

and have enough experience to understand

very little.

You know where to find us.

NOTHING IS WASTED (NOTES FROM THE EDITORAL FLOOR)

The world is a lot right now.

I mean-the world has always been a lot-

maybe I'm just more aware of the profound fecundity

present in simple things right now.

In a time and place that seems to be insistent on scarcity

I keep being hit over the head with abundance.

Except with words.

I don't have a lot of words lately-

at least not the kind that hold my attention long enough

to be strung together into sentences.

There is so much to witness and process,

that I rarely feel that I've got something to add to the cacophony.

Or maybe it's all I can do to hang on myself.

Most days it's difficult to pull the tangle apart

well enough to understand my own perspective.

It feels nearly impossible to share any kind of insight.

Also, I am on the computer errr damn day from 7am until 7pm.

It's a zoom life right now and in spite of my blue-blockers

and my melatonin, I'm feeling more and more like a frantic monkey

stuck inside a space ship.

It's no secret that I'm often offended by the lies we tell ourselves-

so you won't be surprised that someone using words to hurt

themselves was the push that motivated me to come back to

the screen after hours.

Just so we're clear...I've used this same lie in the not to distant past.

I bet you have too.

I hope we all find the keys to freedom by connecting.

If I ever say something that causes you to shackle yourself

tighter with shame or heaviness-please reach out to me

so I can make amends and adjust my words.

I have a friend who is going through something hard

and she was talking about all the time she wasted

by bending and twisting herself into a situation that doesn't work.

She was full of self-judgement and shame.

She should have known (she said) that it wasn't a fit.

She should have called time earlier instead of doubling down.

She was in full blown crisis over all this wasted time

and she could not get past that to see anything else.

What a waste was said over and over.

While is is true that she spent a lot of time in a certain posture-

it is not true that the time was wasted.

Friends...NOTHING is wasted.

There are layers in this lie-

and that's part of why it's so powerful.

Sneaky lies are sometimes hardest to see.

I'm going to try and break down the layers

but it'll take a minute.

First of all-time is a human concept.

We made it up and we get to decide what it means.

We generally agree as modern humans on the hands

of the clock and how that time passes.

We've created international boundaries that

help orient the collective group so that we can 

efficiently do things together.

But a second is not a real thing.

It can't be held, tasted, or felt.

Some seconds seem to drag forever,

others fall like water through a sieve.

How can you waste something that doesn't exist?

Do you know how much time you have left on this plane?

How many minutes, seconds or hours are in your account?

What does it look like to fritter away time?

Are you throwing seconds in the trash by not experiencing them?

Who qualifies the proper use of time?  Do they wear a uniform?

Have a badge or an official second keeper?

Are there categories or gradients of time?  

Useful through wasteful?

Where does sleeping fall?  Reading fiction?  Laughing?

Snuggling a baby?  singing?

Does time increase in value that can be traded on some 

international exchange system?

The person who decides the value of your time is you.

You're choosing how to look at that concept every single time you think of it.

Here are some questions to consider:

What if you have exactly the right amount of time?

What if the time you have is more than enough?

What if all time you have is equal in value and that value is infinite?

Next, let's talk about experiences

and how those things get processed by your personal narrator.

I think we all have our share of choices we wish we didn't make

or roads we would have preferred to have avoided.

Or those things that happened to us that weren't 

a result of our own decision or active choice.

We start from an early age deciding that some 

things are positive and some are negative

and this is our first step into a fundamental human 

behavior:  story telling.

We live and breathe in story-using it 

to do incredible (and sometimes terrible) feats of magic.

Often our only novel is the story we tell

ourselves about our own life and our only audience is ourselves.

When something doesn't fit into a nice neat chapter

in that biography, we want to throw it out as part of a rough draft.

Here's the main problem with kicking out certain experiences:

you're in the middle of the story.

You can't actually see where this is going yet.

And that will forever be the answer as long as you're alive.

Trying to edit your story in real time means you're not living

the actual life in front of you.

This is why we go to therapy-because we get stuck

trying to take out chapters that hurt us or don't fit

so that we can actually move forward to new experiences.

A lot of what you learn in therapy is that you 

need to accept that chapter and stop trying to

sugar coat it into something that fits better or pretending

that it didn't exist at all.

What you tell yourself about the story is often

more important than the actual events that took place.

For those of us dealing with traumatic chapters, here are a few more thoughts:

Acceptance does not mean approval.

You are the author of your story-but you are not

the omniscient controller of events.  

When something terrible happens, you couldn't have changed it.

You can only change how you understand the event

and if you're trying to cut it out, you

are not allowing yourself to have the power that is actually yours.

Find a good therapist and work on yourself for as long as it takes.

That is not wasted time.

Rob Bell's new book is excellent

Finally, let's talk about how we assign value to experiences.

We each have an internal evaluation system

that starts assigning labels to experiences from the second

we are born.

And our brain builds from early, simplistic things

to more complicated or nuanced things.

'Food is good' grows into a preference

for certain vegetables over others.

But our overall life is not actually a linear experience.

What the baby version of you thought was

amazing will bore the adult version of you.

We are not all lamenting the wasted time

we spent pushing a walker as a toddler.

That's because we understand it was something

we needed during that time period.

We don't look at elementary children with disdain

when they become obsessed with power rangers

or Pokémon or certain book series.

We understand that's what is lighting up their brains

in this moment and we don't try to somehow make 

those preferences make sense in the life we project for them 

twenty years from now.

We allow them to find themselves and discard

items or ideas that don't serve them anymore.

Unfortunately, we call this childhood and stop allowing

it in ourselves at some point and that is a great mistake.

Play is as important in adults as it is in children-

it just may look a little different.

I want to be very explicit.

I'm not trying to subtly tell you that the things you experience

are all lessons that can be used.

I will tell you directly that there are LOTS of experiences

that turn out to be lessons that can be used or built on.

But not everything is a lesson sent here to teach you something

in an existential way.

Even if you manage to use it later, 

not everything will be understood by you in real time.

Most things are best viewed without the lens of judgement.

Somethings just are...or were.  But they were not wasted.

Nothing is wasted.

Everything is (or can be) holy.

Everything is (or can be) profane.

You get to decide.

Here are some other things that aren't wasted:

that long term relationship that didn't culminate in marriage or children

the years of marriage where neither of you honored or cherished

 that terrible fight you had with your brother just before he died

the years you spent hiding in alcohol or drugs

 that time binge watching Peaky Blinders with your half grown kids

 the carrots whose tops got eaten by bunnies 4 times in a row

the classes you took twenty years ago that don't apply to your career

the friendship that grew distant over time

the time spent trying to decide how you want to make money

the money you spent buying love or affirmation

the award you chased that didn't result in acceptance

the energy you spent hiding abuse from those that love you

the rage you feel inside when your father starts talking politics

the time spent worshipping at a church who doesn't think you're a whole person

the love you gave that wasn't returned

the love you that still fills your heart after the person has moved on

Nothing is wasted.

What would be on your list of wasted things?

Feel free to share the chapters you're trying to rewrite

so that the power they hold over the story can be reclaimed.