Rhena Writes

Tag: life

  • If a gift falls in a forest and no one is there to receive it, does it make a sound?

    Gifts, the having of, the creation of, the giving of, the receiving of: it’s all been on my mind lately. I often talk a big game about the spirit of how I give. Sometimes I’ll make something handmade — mostly knitted — with the intention of giving it to someone specific. Hand knitted items are work. They take a lot of time and a lot of thought. But this is all a process that I enjoy. Knitting nourishes my soul — the act of then giving the item to someone else is secondary to all of that.

    And what I try to keep at the forefront of my mind is just the idea that once I give the gift away, it’s out of my hands. I give in the spirit of not expecting even a thank you in “return”. The intended recipient has rarely asked for the gift, after all.

    One time, however, my philosophy around giving these times of handmade gifts was tested.

    I made an item for someone. As usual, I sent it off. I did track the package (maybe that was my first mistake so I knew that it got at least as far as this person’s front porch. And then: I heard nothing back about even receiving the gift. Not a text, not a note, nothing….

    So of course, I started to make up all sorts of stories in my head. The person hated my gift. Someone stole it. This person was busy and forgot to contact me. I considered cyber-stalking them to see if I could see the gift in any on-line pictures. I debated asking mutuals if they had seen the gift or to try to subtly mention to the recipient to find out whether they received it. I thought about how I could ask the person directly. If someone stole it from their front porch, surely they would want to know that so that they could… what? I don’t know. Around and around I went in circles in my head.

    There was nothing I could do that didn’t go back on my original spirit of giving a gift. I just had to accept that I may never know what happened after it left my hands. And I had to trust that it will land where it needs to be.

    But what I do know is that it did what it needed to do for me while it was in my hands as I was creating it. And even now, it continues to serve me by teaching me lessons about sharing gifts. Of course, I’m talking about both tangible and intangible gifts. It’s no coincidence that the meaning of “talents” in the biblical parable means monetary wealth as well as gifts both physical and spiritual. I have received certain abilities including the focus required to be able to knit. I show my gratitude for these abilities by using them and then, in turn, sharing them with other people. What happens after that, what the next person does with that is out of my hands, literally.

    Of course, I’m writing also about things like creating a blog and sharing it on-line. The time, focus, vocabulary, etc… that I use to write a blog are gifts given to me. And once I send these words out into the universe, I can’t control what happens to them.

    When I sit down to knit, I focus on the tactile sensations of the needles slipping through my fingers, the softness of the yarn and the squishiness of the fabric that’s emerging from the two. I relish in picking out colors and patterns. I sometimes sit back in wonder that my body and brain are able to coordinate to create something that might be useable or beautiful or both. Nowhere in this sheer joy is there any consideration for how anyone else might respond to my knitting.

    It’s taken me a long time to feel the same way about my writing: that it’s the process of using this gift that I’ve been given, of unraveling words and ideas and images on the page. And then, yes, hitting publish or send or share. And to just sit with the process without thinking about where it might land and how it will be received.

    And, yes, of course, I’m also writing about parenting and sending my kids off into the world, trying to be present to them when they are with me and then trusting that they will land where they need to be even if I don’t know where that might be.

  • It was only an inch or two of snow.

    We had a little bit of snow the other day. I really needed to watch my kid filled up with joy so the timing was perfect. As we stepped into a little forested area walking up to his school, I could feel and hear all the stress exit his little body. The quiet and calm of the snow just pulled it all right out of him.

    On the walk back, I had to focus so completely on what my body was doing in order to not slip that there was not room in my brain for anxiety. I was reminded of the rainy season when I lived in Karenni Refugee Camp #3 in Mae Hong Son, Thailand. The dirt paths would all become slippery and my nordic flatlander body wasn’t built for even these slight hills. I’d have to focus completely on each step in order to not slide down the clay-like dirt. But it’s a practice in embodiment that I’ve learned to appreciate. I was turned into the very soles of my feet to guarantee each step was sure.

    This type of hyper-focus on my body, alongside gratitude, and being immersed into this little patch of nature create a castle wall against anxiety. The gratitude comes easy right now: I need only look backwards a little. This time last year, I was still weak from chemotherapy and I still had surgery and (unbeknownst to me at the time) radiation ahead of me. So these sorts of walks, especially in the snow, were much harder. And the knowns that I was facing in my future were much scarier than this year. The trickier, unpaved bits of this walk are lined with trees which make for nice sturdy bodies to lean against when I do need a rest. It’s a welcome reminder that Mother Earth is always holding me.

    Last week, I cried when I walked into a nearby stand of trees and realized that at least four or five of them had been cut down. The tears came faster than the emotions. The thing is that I knew that this was going to happen. The county has been making plans for redesigning that area for years and I’d seen the telltale neon pink spray paint on the tree trunks the week before. Still, I felt their absence right in my chest. And at first, when I started crying, I felt so silly and a little ashamed: here I am a full grown woman, a mother, weeping over trees that I knew were going to have to be removed to move room for something else. I tried to explain it away at first: oh, I’m just tired or hormonal. But then I realized that I was just sad because the trees were gone and dead now. And that’s sad. And it’s ok to be sad about that.

    It was only an inch or two of snow and it didn’t even stick to the streets. But it’s these subtle shifts and changes that can make all the difference.

  • Back being a human on IG

    Well, I started a new Instagram account (Rhena Writes) yesterday or maybe it was two days ago. In any case, I’ve already wasted a bunch of time getting sucked into the scroll. But! I posted one thing on my account. It was a collage-type, multimedia thingy.

    In any case, two observations about my experience taking the leap back into social media. For a while now something (an inner voice? or an outer calling?) has been telling me to get back on Instagram. I have an internal drive towards self expression. This is called, “being human.” And, sadly, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get someone else to see my talents, gifts, and self and to grant me some kind of permission or approval to express myself. This is nonsense. And this is perhaps especially nonsensical in the age of the internet. And nonsensical to the point of tom-foolery in the age of AI.

    A lot of my hesitation around IG is that I was afraid that once I was back on, I would end up getting sucked back into doom scrolling or even hope scrolling. Either way, I’d be flicking my thumb over and over in hopes of getting another hit of … of what? Confirmation that the world as we know it is ending? Confirmation that it’s not? Some sort of sense of connection to the other?

    Well, and of course, this fear came true. I got back on IG and as soon as I opened it, I was sucked into the scroll. It was just like when I get on Duolingo (the free version, of course) and after my lesson, I’d get sucked into the advertised games. I had to encounter a few puzzle-game-app hangovers before I woke up to realize, “Where did the time go?” In a way, maybe I had to have those experiences in order to overcome the challenge of not falling into the Duolingo advertised game trap (while still getting my free Norwegian lessons). So each time an advertisement comes up now, I have the script to just click by. I have my habits and routines on stand by. (I do Duolingo with a journal, a book, and my knitting nearby so that I am ready to move on to something that brings me more joy than game apps.)

    So fortunately, I had my strategies and I was familiar with how my brain would work in these instances. So, yes, I got sucked into the scroll a few times over the past day as I went on to IG to set up my account and then to post, but by the second time, I had my journal, book, and knitting at the ready to pull me out of the scroll.

    That was issue one with getting back on IG and I dealt with that handily. Rhena: 1 Scroll: 0.

    The next issue was the doubt that comes into play when creating a post. Creating the collage brought me great joy. My watercolor paints are these charming nuggets in a little tin. I love to tear paper and watch the raw edges emerge. But I also love to use scissors to cut and reveal the shape of the paper. In any case, I was quite pleased with my final product. When I took a picture of it though, it felt flat. Of course, I went down the hole of “Oh, this isn’t worthy of posting here.” This train of thought is worsened, of course, when I’ve just been sucked into beautifully produced images and reels against which, it feels like my little paper and glue stick crafts will not stand up.

    Well, I also thought: fuck that.

    And, I posted my little picture of my little craft that brought me so much joy to make.

    So that’s what I’ve decided to do when I can: wave my little joy flag from my little corner of the internet.

  • I’m writing this instead…

    … of playing that game that was advertised to me on my language learning app. Those ads are a small price to pay for a free service. The one I got sucked into most recently is the one with the balls of yarn and the dragon going after the kitten. Did the algorithm know that I knit and what my eastern zodiac sign is? Sure I also have a cat allergy but that doesn’t make me a monster. I’m still going to try to save the kitten, right? I’m frightened by how much they know about me. It’s not really those little details about my hobbies and autoimmune issues that I’m worried about. It’s that they seem to know how my mind works. Like, how difficult a task has to be to get me and keep me engaged without it being so challenging that I give up altogether. It was so easy to just keep clicking “retry” — so much easier than putting down the phone. And the music? It just built the tension, made me feel like I was on an adventure that I needed to complete, made me feel like matching these colors was somehow important.

    I got sucked into it for far too long last night. My problem — or one of them at least — is that I didn’t prepare myself by having something else to do instead of playing the game when it was advertised to me. Next time, I’ll have a book on hand that I can just pick up and read while I wait for the ad to time out or whatever it does.

    I used to play Tetris as a kid and I remember that feeling of the little shapes falling in front of my closed eyes as I was trying to fall asleep. Last night, it was those balls of yarn and the fiery dragon.

    And somewhere in the back of my head, I think, “Well, games and playing are good for me and my brain. Puzzles keep my brain engaged and active.” But do they, really? Am I actually having fun when I’m matching these colors? Or is it just that the games are tapping into some primal part of my brain that developed when searching for patterns in the environment was tied into basic survival.

    The other day, on my walk, I went to retrieve pinecones from a nearby tree. I was aware that this was the season when this specific tree would drop its pinecones that are the perfect size for the firestarters that we like to use and make. Searching around the base of the tree, it’s that same sort of primal lizard brain that the game activates. It’s the foraging brain looking for a specific shape and color against the grass. But outside in the open as my pocket filled up, it was easier to turn that off and walk away. Easier, anyway, than clicking “retry” on the yarn-dragon-kitten game.

    And this, too, this blogging … this writing and sending my words out into some unknown world … this is one of the ways in which I’m trying to replace the easy “retry” clicks. I leave my blog page open. I joined a challenge this month in my writing community to write a certain number of words each day. In this community I’m getting cheered on and supported in my writing endeavors. I try to remember every day that what I have to write and say is important. And in these ways, I try to make writing and blogging … if not easier than clicking “retry”, then certainly more rewarding. After all, the kitten is just pixels. I’m a real person.

  • How Will They Know I Love Them?

    This is the story of how I struggle with saying no to my kids. And also the story of how I struggle to say yes to my kids. And also of how I struggle to say yes to myself. And so therefore perhaps it’s about how I struggle to say no to myself. I guess maybe I could therefore say that it’s about how I struggle with decisions. And maybe that means that I struggle — and usually fail — to recognize the abundance that has been gifted to me.

    It begins with a corn dog. It was the weekend. My daughter wanted one. What she really wanted was to go to one of her favorite restaurants to get a corn dog and a bubble tea. But she never told me this directly, she just kind of hinted around it. I would like to say that I have a strong “mother’s intuition” and that I pay attention so closely to my kids needs and wants that they never have to express them: I just know. But that’s not what’s going on here. At first, I thought that my kids don’t always ask for what they want directly because they don’t like to hear “no.” But I’m starting to realize that my kids sense that I struggle to say “no” to them. They don’t like to see that struggle and so they edit themselves before it even gets to the whole asking directly for their wants and needs. They kind of “test the waters” with hints and indirect comments. It’s not to save themselves from hearing a no. It’s to save them from having to watch me flounder and go back and forth and try to make a decision.

    So I knew that she wanted to go get a corn dog. (Honestly, she’d probably want to get a corn dog every chance she got so this wasn’t any sort of revelation.) And I went back and forth inside my own head on whether or not I wanted to take her to get one. It would take a while, a chunk from their day off from school. But it’s always nice to have these types of trips with her or, really, any of my kids. Corn dogs aren’t the healthiest option, on the one hand. On the other, part of me really does believe in a sort of “do what you enjoy” attitude. We didn’t really have a set lunch at home so why not go out and get something? But, then again, I also had things I wanted to do and enjoy at home. And she had never really asked directly to go. I’d like to think that if there’s one lesson that I’m trying to instill in my kids, it’s to ask directly for what they want from me. And here I was trying to come up with an answer to a request that she hadn’t even made yet.

    And here’s the real crux of the struggle, “If I don’t anticipate and meet their every hearts desire, how will they know that I love them?”

    So I was in this internal state of debate, letting all of these back and forths slowly eat up my morning. Finally, she asked me, directly, “Mom, do you like the corn dog restaurant?”

    It was the first direct question she’d asked all morning about lunch and it wasn’t at all the question I’d been planning for.

    “Well,” I explained to her. “I like corndogs, but they aren’t the healthiest option for me and I’m trying to focus on eating in a healthier way these days.”

    And that was it. She didn’t mention the corndog restaurant again the rest of the day to me. She asked me to help her with cutting celery and onion so she could make herself a tuna melt, which she seemed perfectly satisfied with. And we had a perfectly nice time at home. We’d played volleyball together in the morning. Later, she came to me and asked if I’d play with her again. I was in the middle of writing a poem so I told her, “no.” She tried to convince me a little more but I stuck to my commitment to my writing.

    Of course, it wasn’t easy to say “no” to her. She wanted to do something perfectly wholesome with me, her mother outside on a lovely day. And, of course, in the back of my head, there’s always the thought, “one day my kids will move out and be on their own and I won’t have a chance to play volleyball on a beautiful fall day with them.”

    Later, I found out that she took that time to clean her room.

    And I realized that my always giving more of my time, my attention, my energy every time they ask for it isn’t helping them. I realized how much they are really, truly watching everything I do and soaking it all up. When I say, “no” to them, often it forces them to figure out a way to say, “yes” to themselves, to improving their environment, to taking care of themselves and their health. I had been modeling self-love all along and didn’t even realize it. But she had seen it. And now she could practice it for herself.

    “If I don’t anticipate and fulfill their every want and need, how will they know I love them?” They will know I love them because they see how I love myself. They know I love them because I do.

  • The Fall and rise of yin. (And Happy Halloween.)

    Autumn brings the rise of yin energy, which I’m happily receiving (which, is, appropriate given that yin is in part about receiving). I live in a place where capitalism, patriarchy, etc… creates an imbalance of yang energy — the more fiery, get stuff done, always be on the go, make, produce or die kind of energy is always around. It’s a little too easy to tap into it. To the point that even when I’m even wondering: “is it possible to embrace yin energy TOO MUCH?” This is about sitting back and receiving, after all.

    The other day, I went to Trader Joe’s and picked up some flowers. At home, my daughter and I arranged them into a vase. It’s beautiful. I’m really proud of it. And every time I look at it, I think, “wow, that’s really beautiful” and I appreciate myself for having picked out and purchased the flowers and for having created a moment with my daughter from which emerged something beautiful.

    Isn’t it beautiful? Of course it is.

    I give it a 10/10 no notes. Would recommend. It was a completely perfect series of events and lovely outcome which I continue to enjoy.

    And one of the best parts of the whole thing was that I just received all of that. I didn’t doubt or question. I didn’t hedge. I didn’t think, “oh, I should have done this differently” or “this isn’t quite as good as that other bouquet, experiences, moments, thing that I saw on social media, etc…” I’ve experienced each step in the process of creating and I’ve enjoyed it and moved on to each next moment. Now, I look at this bouquet and think, “that’s really lovely, it really brings me joy and I’m so glad I did that.”

    It’s taken me work, a lot of work, to get to this point where I allow myself to just enjoy these experiences and connections and beauty. But the more I do it, the more I think, “I made something beautiful” or “I’m really proud of what I did” and the more I share these moments (for example here on my blog), the more they build and accumulate and snow ball. They drown out the hesitations and doubts.

    A thing that my daughter taught me recently. The reds and oranges and yellows and browns of autumnal leaves are always there. But from spring through summer, these colors are covered over by green. In the fall, the trees pull back their chlorophyll, which is no longer useful to them and what is revealed are those shockingly beautiful colors that have been there all along. I love a verdant summer. But I cannot sustain that: the constant going and growing and moving and producing. Even the trees can’t sustain it. And what is there underneath, once all that green has run its course and is pulled back, is just as beautiful AND has been there all along. Now is the chance I get to admire all that has been with me underneath the green all the time. I’ve always had it in me to choose a variety of flowers and arrange them into something striking. Now, in the yin energy of fall, is my time to appreciate that and all my other gifts. I hope you can too.

  • Summer break begins

    It feels like this is the first day of summer break even though the kids have been off for school for a couple of days and even though summer doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow. I think it’s because my husband is off of work today. And this time last year, I was dealing with a new cancer diagnosis. I was so consumed by all of the appointments and details, getting through each day, I was barely aware of the seasons changing. It was a hard time.

    This summer, I’ve been able to look a little bit further forward, planning outings, swimming, taking advantage of farmer’s markets and other simple things that I completely missed last year. I started to try to plan today with my kids, going out to a museum. I was surprised that it was the kids who put the kibosh on that plan. They wanted to laze around a bit, read and maybe go up to swim at the neighborhood pool, enjoy what their own house and backyard have to offer. I realize now that part of me was feeling so guilty about all that I couldn’t do with them last summer and I was kicking off this summer by trying to compensate. As always, I over shot. Thankfully, my kids pulled me back.

    In myriad subtle ways and just in their being, they remind me that we can all be content with what’s right in front of us. We have already been given so much, there’s no need to keep striving for more beyond that.

    So instead of hoping on the metro somewhere else, my son and I made oatmeal raisin cookies. When he was first in kindergarten, I used to make them about once a week. He loved these cookies. It was such a simple pleasure and he acted as if he was starving in the desert and these were actual mana. Today is the first time he’s actually made them with me. I’m shocked by how capable he is, and how much he seems to enjoy my company. And I didn’t need to go even outside of my front door for these experiences and lessons.

  • Still learning.

    Is it a boundary setting hangover? Is it a vulnerability hangover? Is it a lack of boundaries? For all of my talk (writing) about how I’m trying to focus on myself, I still do it. I give too much of myself. I let other people make decisions about how I’m using my time and my energy. I keep putting oxygen masks on everyone else because, “What will they think of me if I’m sitting here putting my oxygen mask on when there are other people who don’t have oxygen masks on?”

    I keep forgetting the rules: What other people think of me is none of my business. And also: Do unto others what I would have done unto me. I am perfectly capable of putting on my own oxygen mask. I’d rather do it for myself than have some random passenger who thinks I need help but doesn’t have his own oxygen mask situation sorted help me.

    Here’s the thing. I’m learning.

    The other day, I went for a swim. A few days later, I felt rather sore. I probably pushed myself too hard. And I can kind of remember the exact moments when I pushed myself too hard: when I wanted to get another lap or a few more strokes in when I should have actually just slowed it down a little. So the next time I went into the pool, I was a little bit better about listening to when I need to ease off a little. My body is good about telling me.

    Another day, I gave someone just a little more time than I actually had. It threw off my whole day. And it probably disrupted my sleep that night. Next time, I’ll back off a little bit more in that arena too. When I was younger, it always felt like I had endless amounts of time to give to other people. Like a cup of coffee or a beer could easily turn into two or three and then a whole afternoon or evening. When I write about it now, it sounds kind of romantic. Youthful. This kind of feeling that I had all this time.

    Maybe it’s the cliche of the mis-spent youth but that feeling of just having hours and hours, endless days? Too often I spent it on the wrong people. Not that these people who I was spending time on were bad (although some of them were) but that I wasn’t spending that time on the one person I should have been: myself.

    I’ve only learned very recently that I actually really enjoy my own company. I enjoy being by myself. Yes, of course I also enjoy being with some people, some of the time. But I enjoy being with myself all of the time.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Brain fog, bills, and breath.

    I would have liked to have gotten here, to blogging earlier today but I’ve been on the phone with insurance, e-mailing and leaving voicemails with cancer center billing departments. It seems that at least one place is trying to bill me a second time. I triple checked my credit card statements. Brain fog from chemotherapy is a very real thing, my doctor (whose office sent me a bill for a payment I already made) assures me. So triple checks it is. I pulled out my calendar to make sure the dates of the payments and appointments lined up, that I didn’t just mis-remember everything through the brain fog. Sure enough, they charged my credit card.

    I didn’t sleep well last night — another side effect of one of my medications, apparently — and so I really would rather have been taking a cat nap or even just reading. OK, let’s be honest, even if I’d slept well last night, I would not have wanted to have to spend my morning dealing with medical bills.

    And the other one, well, I guess it’s my fault for not reading the fine print before receiving radiation treatment. Or not asking questions like, “how much is this going to cost me?” ahead of time. I guess I have too much faith in insurance companies to do the right thing and for providers to be up front about how things are going to be billed.

    It’s exhausting. A good chunk of my time, I was on the phone just trying to get to a live person, inputting the same information over and over and then when I finally got a live person, it was someone from a pharmacy, not billing. TWICE. Plus, the line was all crackly and there was some sort of lag time in our conversation. As if we were all in 1979, trying to make an overseas phone call. And, yes, part of me did think that this was by design, that the insurance company makes all of this as unpleasant as possible, hoping that you’ll give up. And I guess eventually I did.

    This is hard. Really, really hard.

    And, yes, I can turn to my breathing and meditation and all the rest of it to get through these moments, but the bills are still there. I can’t breathe the bills away. If I’d known how expensive cancer was, I wouldn’t have asked for it. Oh, that’s right. I didn’t.

    Still, there’s something about not receiving bills until all of the treatment is done that feels kind of gross. It would have been easier to swallow had I been told that I was going to be billed this way ahead of time.

    And right now, I just kind of need to write through all of this, just get it out and into the world. I wish I could be using this time and energy to write something beautiful and creative, to escape into something else. But right now it’s more helpful to me to write something real. And to try to be grateful that I have some place to at least do that.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Moving on from the Daily Prompts

    For the past several months, I’ve been posting every day to this blog. They’ve all been responses to the daily prompts. It’s been immensely helpful in building a daily posting habit. And I’ve been actually quite pleased with a lot of the writing that I’ve done in response to the daily prompts.

    There was a time in the past when I would have viewed daily prompts as a sort of crutch. What I believed was that I should be generating my own writing and ideas and creativity on my own, with no assistance from beginning to end. “Real artists”, I thought “are spontaneously inspired.”

    Of course, now I realize the ridiculousness of this way of thinking. Inspiration can come from anywhere and that includes daily prompts (even ones that are AI generated). More often than not, having the prompts pushed me into the flow state that I needed in order to write.

    They ushered me to this point of being able to push myself into that desired flow state on a day to day basis.

    Here’s the other thing. I realized that part of why I was using the daily prompts is that it connected my blog to other readers. The result was that I got views and even likes. I’ve written a big game about how I’m not in this for the likes or even for the views and yet here I was, responding to the daily prompts each day in part to get the views and likes. I’ve gotten pretty good at linking the daily prompts to whatever I wanted to write about anyway, whatever happened to be on my mind. Even today, the question is about retirement and it would be easy enough to think about this as a “retirement” from daily prompts.

    But I’m not going to do that.

    I still believe, perhaps even more fervently now, that inspiration can come from anywhere. But I’ve also decided that this blog is my own space, to do with it as I please, to express myself as I’d like to, to write about what’s on my mind and what my interests are. That is inspiration enough. I am my own inspiration. I’m glad I had these daily prompts to get me here. And also glad that I’m ready to take off on my own.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!