Rhena Writes

Tag: life

  • Can you spot the moments of unnecessary self sacrifice?

    Daily writing prompt
    What sacrifices have you made in life?
    View all responses

    Let’s play a game. See if you can spot the moment of sacrifice.

    This morning, I was in the kitchen making my tea and toasting an English muffin. I had music on the speaker and also a podcast in my headphones. My son, pen in hand, was working on something on the coffee table.

    “Mom, how do you spell ‘doesn’t’?” he asked from across the room. He made a few guesses and eventually I went over to sit next to him to show him how contractions work. I used to be an English teacher and this kind of thing is in my wheelhouse.

    I showed him “doesn’t” and then was going to show him “isn’t.” He flopped over and moaned. He did NOT want to learn about contractions. He just wanted the one word.

    It was fine. He stated his boundary and I realized that I also wanted to have my tea and English muffin. So I turned back on my headphones and returned to the kitchen.

    A few more questions rolled in. “Mom, how do you spell favor? Mom, how do you spell echo?” At first I’d help him try to sound the words out, elongating different sounds to help him guess more accurately. But eventually I decided that I needed to just turn back on my headphones. He was fine. He might end up with a few misspelled words in his project. That wasn’t the end of the world — his nor mine. Of course, the questions continued. He said my name a few times and I didn’t respond. Finally, I turned to him, “I’m listening to something right now so I can’t help you spell.”

    He started pleading and arguing, “Music isn’t important!”

    I sat down to have my tea and muffin. He continued to ask for help from across the room. Then he tried a different tactic from shouting at me and came over so that he could speak more quietly to me. Eventually, I explained to him that I had been helping him before, with “doesn’t” and he said he didn’t want that help. I have things I need to do now.

    “Mom, how do you spell ‘crate’? Is it K-R-A-T?”

    I shook my head no.

    “How do you spell ‘crate’?”

    I continued to try to ignore him. Eventually I sat down near him on the couch so that I could write in my journal, as is my morning routine. He continued to ask me questions.

    Did you notice it? The moment of self sacrifice? Or maybe I should say moments.

    Often, self sacrifice is considered a good thing and perhaps especially so when it comes to when a parent sacrifices themselves for a child. But looking back at this morning, I can see how confusing my back and forth waffling must have been for him. On the one hand, I would say, “I’m doing something here” and then I could answer his questions. In the moment, it feels like I’m sacrificing what I want (tea and an English muffin) for him, his betterment, to teach him something. But what he is actually learning is that I have weak boundaries, that my basic needs (nourishment) are not as important as him spelling the words correctly.

    For a few moments after I told him that I was listening to something, he responded, “music isn’t important!” Indeed, I felt the tug of guilt to respond to him. Instead, I stayed quiet, listening to my music, teaching him, in the process that, yes, music is important.

    Once I sat down on the couch to write, he continued to ask questions. At first I tried to stay focused on what I was doing, but I was struggling with not answering him, “I am writing and I need to concentrate on that.” After that, there were a few blissful moments where I was writing and he was working on his project. I could see him trying to figure out how to spell “crate” without my help.

    I wish that I had allowed and trusted that my actions would speak for themselves. Had I just continued to write, quietly, I think he would have eventually caught on that, yes, writing is important. His writing is important. And my writing is important.

    And also that spelling each individual word isn’t that important. Don’t let it hold up his writing. He has a deep well of resources and knowledge inside of him that he can tap into without having to always ask me to do it for him. As do I.

    ***********************

    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. 

  • Becoming unraveled with this question: leader or follower?

    Daily writing prompt
    Are you a leader or a follower?
    View all responses

    A few months ago, my husband bought a two-player cooperative video game called “Unravel Two.” Soon after, my son asked me to play it with him. I’m not a huge video game player. I’ll play the occasional round or two of Mario Cart and I think I might have an animal crossing account that hasn’t been opened in years. I sometimes like to watch the kids play something, but if it’s something they’re really excited about, I’d rather hear about it from their perspective.

    So sitting down to play with him was a novel experience for me. And for him.

    It’s a charming game centered around two small yarn creatures who are attached to each other with a string. They have to work in tandem to swing from place to place, build bridges, jump and climb through various scenes. It’s a bit like parkour. When we sat down to play, the duo was in a park and had somehow gotten so tangled up in what looked like a bike rack that we had no choice but to start the scene over. As a knitter, the whole thing was very relatable. As a non-gamer, it was, well, not.

    My son tried to teach me what buttons to push when and I managed to muddle through some sections. Thankfully, my character could also jump on his back sometimes and we could piggy back our way through bits and pieces. But that didn’t work for everything. Sometimes, he just took my controller and pushed the buttons to move my avatar. But there were times where both the little red one and the little blue one had to be moving simultaneously. Sometimes one had to lead and the other had to follow. Connected, as they were, with this yarn umbilicus, both had a role to play.

    My son was immensely patient with me. Probably far more patient than I sometimes am when I’m trying to get him to do something in person. This is in an of itself a lesson to me about leadership and much more.

    So what’s the answer to the question?

    I’m a leader following myself.

    *************************

    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. 

  • Writing this post is one small improvement I’m making in my life.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
    View all responses

    An underground lagoon of water inside a cave. On hot days, it is cooling. On cold ones, it’s a hot spring. Either way, it is eternally refreshed by a constant stream of clean, fresh water. High above the pool, there is a space in the rock ceiling through which sun and moon light alternating stream through. The sunlight feeds the mosses and ferns that grow on rock outcroppings on the walls.

    This cave can be accessed from a tunnel. But at first, the tunnel was very small. I’ve had to dig out the tunnel bit by bit to get to the pool. I shoveled and scraped a little bit here and there, carried out the dirt and stones back out of the back of the tunnel. I had to carry it some distance from the entrance lest it built up too high and the whole thing caved in. One day, I could finally see the pool clearly. And so I kept going. Each day, the work of widening the tunnel and carrying out the garbage became easier and easier. I could even say that I enjoyed it a bit, even though it was work.

    Finally, I could reach the pool. I swam and rested. I drank the clear water. I floated and let the water hold me. It flowed around me. I could stay in here forever. But I won’t.

    The world above would miss me if I stayed here.

    And in any case, the pool is infinite, ubiquitous, ever-present. All the work I put in wasn’t for nothing, after all.

    When I started writing this blog, I didn’t set out to write every day. Even once I found the daily prompts (or they found me, perhaps?), I didn’t set a goal to respond to them every day. And yet, here I am, having just posted to this blog fifty days in a row. I didn’t ever set this as a goal. Still, it feels like something of a milestone which, in turn, feels like an appropriate moment for reflection.

    Or not.

    I had this sort of idea in the back of my head that at some point, maybe today, I’d write a “what I learned from blogging for fifty days in a row” post. Or “what happened when I blogged daily.” Or “the benefits of posting everyday.” My understanding is that those are very SEO friendly terms … or something. (The word “understanding” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.)

    But none of this has been about pleasing any other person (much less an algorithm, search engine, or even, I’m sorry to say, readers). It’s been about me. Making myself content. Giving myself space. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s been about digging towards that pool of my own creativity. And there’s still possibility there.

    So. Will I be back tomorrow?

    I really don’t know. Because the other thing this has been about has been to give myself permission to just be in each moment, to do the things that feel most nourishing to me, to always look for opportunities to extend myself grace. Who knows what tomorrow’s daily prompt will bring?

    I’m just focused on the grace, the space, the nourishment of this moment, this breath.

    ***************

    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. 

  • Free your mind…

    Daily writing prompt
    What does freedom mean to you?
    View all responses

    …and the rest will follow. — En Vogue, Free Your Mind

    Emancipate yourself from mental slavery

    None but ourselves can free our minds.

    –Bob Marley, Redemption Song

    After reading the daily prompt, I was thinking about different song lyrics that spoke to freedom. A few crossed my mind and I decided I would put them in my post, but first I wanted to listen to the music in my music player. If nothing else, to double check that I had the lyrics correct. But also just because I like these songs and wanted to listen to them.

    I opened up my music player on my computer and everything looked different. Well, not everything, but just enough that I couldn’t figure out how to search for specific songs, something that I’d done just a day ago. Unfamiliar. I was lost and frustrated. I wanted the system to work the way that I was used to, the way that I had expected it to. And it wasn’t.

    I was internally raging at the designers who made this music player, who changed it so often as to make it impossible for me to keep up who made it so NOT intuitive.

    And behind that, I was raging at myself. Annoyed that I wasn’t able to keep up with rapidly changing technology. Regretting that over the years I’ve sold off all of my CDs. It was so easy back then when I could just find the album I wanted and pop it in the CD player. Past me should have tried harder to keep everything the same for future me. Arrrgh!

    I know. It’s ridiculous. Take a breath.

    Because now me actually doesn’t want to have stacks and stacks of CDs to store and maintain. (No matter how satisfyingly familiar the clack clack of jewel case against jewel case sounds, no matter how much I relish unfolding the liner notes.) Present me really, really enjoys the convenience of being able to pull up music.

    No. This internal rage was something else. It was me demanding that I “get it right.” I’ve listened to both songs, Free Your Mind and Redemption Song, perhaps dozens of times in my life. And yet, still, part of me felt that in order to write about them properly today, I needed to listen to them again. In other words, my lived experience is never enough. Even for my own blog.

    Where does this come from?

    Something that someone once said to me popped into my head. I was in high school and I was wearing a new dress. This person came up to me and said, “I liked your dress until I saw that it had pockets.”

    At the time, I didn’t realize what an odd thing that was to say. And I suspect it’s because when day after day, people are commenting (overtly and covertly) on your clothes, the way you look, how you sound, and your body in general, one comment more comment doesn’t particularly warrant attention in the moment.

    But now-me can see how truly strange it is that someone might comment on someone else’s clothes in this way with an air of taking offense that a dress might have pockets and that said-pockets might be used and useful.

    This was far before the “it has pockets!” meme. Perhaps it is was this meme that made me realize just how “out of pocket” that comment was. (Yes. I did just have to write that.)

    So how does all of this relate to freedom and what it means to me? Some days, it feels like I’m caught under this massive pile of these sorts of comments and experiences that make me question myself. Comments from teachers and professors that infer that I’m not trying hard enough or that I’m not enough; implicitly messaging of the society that I live in that disregards bodies that look and behave like mine; the culture of comparison and competition that seeps in everywhere. It takes a great deal of my mental, physical, emotional energy to overcome these comments and expectations.

    But increasingly, I’ve been able to see where I’m getting a helping hand. People who wear dresses are suddenly on-line espousing the benefits of pockets and are genuinely excited about something so simple. This provides the ammunition I need to shoot down the “I like the ‘I liked your dress until’ comment.” Or better yet, to just ignore it. Focus, instead, on how much my daughters enjoy pockets. I’ll read a line from a book and it will feel like the writer reached out and lifted one of these expectations I’ve been living under. (As with Cole Arthur Riley’s reminder, “I am no one’s burden. I am no one’s savior.”)

    Or, yes, sometimes it’s a song. As with En Vogue’s Free Your Mind, “Before you can read me, you got to learn how to see me. I said.”

    In the end, it comes down to me. It’s, in part, up to me to write myself down so that there’s something there to be read, something to be seen.

    In other words, as Bob Marley asks, “Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?”

    ***********************

    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. 

  • Keeper of all knowledge…

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
    View all responses

    … of myself. (If you’ve been following my posts, you saw that coming.)

    I’ve sometimes thought that it would be nice to be a postal delivery person. They walk a lot of miles. I enjoy walking. And I like the idea that maybe I’ll be delivering a love letter or a postcard from some far-flung destination or a homesick lament from sleep away camp. But then I remember that most mail is bills. And advertisements. And I remember how much my dog hates delivery people and that that and the weather must make their jobs very hard. I talk myself out of it.

    So maybe I’d like to be a wizard for a day. Or a bullet proof shield, able to place myself around American and Palestinian children alike. All the children, in fact. But then I remember that one day would not be enough.

    Maybe I’d like to be a fan, strong enough to blow away all the climate change (but not so strong as to throw us back into an ice age). I think it would take less than a day. But is a fan really a job? Or just an object?

    I think I’d like to be a people pleaser and when I say people, I mean myself. I’d like to be a greeter like at Walmart — but just greeting myself, continually all day. Asking myself if I need any help and then giving it to myself.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a park ranger. I’d like to be an elder. An ancestor. I’d like to be a child again, imagining like it was my job. I’d like to be a swimmer.

    I’d like, for 24 hours, to be a connector, like of ideas. Did you ever notice that both Joel from The Last of Us and Hopper from Stranger Things are father figures in fraught relationships with super-powered teenage girls and a variation of the name Elle (Ellie and Eleven) AND they both have biological daughters named Sarah who died? I would like to connect these sorts of ideas for people because clearly SOMETHING is going on here and I cannot be the only person who is thinking about it.

    For 24 hours, I’d like to be a weaver. An illustrator. A singer and musician. A storyteller. A shaman. A healer. I’d like a day to heal the world or at least the little patch of nature outside my back door. That would probably be enough for me. I’m no one’s burden, after all. I’m no one’s savior. Are we talking about jobs? Or skills?

    If I had a day to be any job, I’d like be the keeper of the flame.

    **********

    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. 

  • Once again: me, myself, & these writers.

    Daily writing prompt
    List the people you admire and look to for advice…
    View all responses

    I admire myself and I look to myself for advice. I’ve been through some stuff and I’m unlike anyone else in the world, so I’m the best person to look to for advice. No one else understands me as well as I understand myself.

    Just earlier today, I was feeling rather anxious. I asked myself what I needed and then, based on the answer, I sat down and wrote in my journal for a while to sort and sift through my anxiety and other feelings. By the end, I came to a sort of piece of advice for myself. This advice was uniquely tailored to me and this situation and yet, it’s something that I will be able to return to again and again when I feel similarly anxious in the future. And maybe at some point I’ll be able to share this advice through my writing and it will be helpful to someone else.

    I also admire and seek advice from a great many writers. Here are some blog posts I’ve written about books that have helped me over the past year or so.

    Hood Wellness by Tamela J. Gordon

    The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

    Bad Indians by Deborah A Miranda

    Remember Who The F*ck You Are by Candyss Love

    Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley

    Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

    I will be writing about more books by writers that I admire and from whose wisdom and advice I’ve benefited, learned, and grown. If you’re interested in more book recommendations, please subscribe!

    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. 

  • A map towards myself

    Daily writing prompt
    What gives you direction in life?
    View all responses

    I am a cartographer, constantly looking for the streets and paths, coastlines and rock formations that both define me and are markers to the paths into a deeper understanding of myself. All roads lead to me and I’m currently bouncing between three often intersecting passageways on my journey to myself: body, mind, and spirit.

    Body: I listen to my body. Here’s how. I lie or sit in relative stillness or whatever type of stillness my body is asking for. I focus on my breath. The depth. The texture. The smoothness or bumpiness. I do this without judgment. My breath communicates a lot to me about the state of my body. Where is there tension? I center my body.

    Here’s an example from my morning walk with my dog of prioritizing my body. It’s very hot here right now. In spite of my light clothes and my hat and it still being relatively early in the day, I was sweating and uncomfortable as I walked along the sunny sidewalk to the nearby park. I was looking forward to walking through the cool freshly cut grass in a shady spot of the field. There was a couple already at the park with their dog off leash. Past mornings, when I have seen an off-leash dog in the park, I have gone another way even if that other way is less comfortable or convenient for me. But today, my body was insistent, craving the shady spot on the field, so I continued on. I listened to my body. There was no run in with the other dog or her owner’s. My dog and I got to enjoy the cool air of the part of the field lined with trees. The people there watched me the entire time I was walking through the field, but I just kept doing what I was doing. And here’s what I learned: I am allowed to take up space with my body. I am allowed to enjoy a walk through the park. And I can trust myself and my body.

    Mind: My mind is curious. I keep it engaged with reading and learning. And lately, I’ve been learning more about my mind by engaging more actively with my sleeping dreams. Here’s how I do it.

    1. I prime my mind both during the day and right before I go to sleep, telling myself that I am going to remember my dreams.
    2. I keep a notebook and pen next to my bed.
    3. When I wake up — whether that’s in the middle of the night — or in the morning, I jot down a few notes about any dreams that I remember.
    4. Later in the day, I use the notes to write a more detailed description of the dream. I focus on both the images and the feelings. And then I free write about what the dream is revealing to me about me. It’s both a very informative and liberating practice. And it turns out, I’m pretty fascinating.

    There are variations to this practice including priming myself to lucid dream (in other words to realizing that I’m dreaming and to consciously control the dream) and to posing a question or a problem to my dream self. It’s pretty remarkable the answers and the solutions that have come up in my dreaming state.

    Spirit: My body has created life and now I offer my spirit opportunities to be creative too. I write. I make music. I create art. I create moments and myself too. I daydream. And I return to my body, my breath, my dreams. Yes, I know that those are pathways I’ve mentioned above under “body” and “mind”. But these three parts are always connected, like a three-legged stool creating a solid base for the center of myself.

    ********

    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. My writing is offered freely here and I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • …making self into its own new religion…

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
    View all responses

    “For how else can the self become whole save by making self into its own new religion?” Audre Lorde, New York City, 1970

    This is the quote I wrote on one of the first pages of (one of) my 2025 journal/ notebook. It’s a hard question to internalize into a mind and soul full of demands to be selfLESS. It begs the question: How can one be less oneself? Or more importantly, why would one want to be less than oneself?

    I do not.

    How does one make self into its own new religion?

    I wrote a bit about this here in this blog post: Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!

    And I wrote a bit about how important Audre Lorde’s writing has been to me here in this blog post: Tomorrow, I Will Learn to Whether I Will Become an Archer.

    Yesterday, I wrote about my holidays and posted rather late in the day. I’m reposting it here because it’s connected to this quote about making the self into its own new religion. Celebrate This Breath and Then the Next.

    I’m sitting here trying to figure out how I can write a longer post on this topic. Why? There on no word counts here. This post will not be graded or assessed in any way. There’s no one watching over what I write and telling me “not enough!” Well, except for me.

    So I have to dig deeper. What do I want? Do I want to have a longer post? Do I have more to write about this topic at the moment? I must be quiet and listen to that deep, deep inner voice: the self. What do I want? What do I need? I need rest. I’d really like to read a little bit. I’m in the middle of two books that I’m really enjoying right now. And I’m rather hungry, so I’d like to get some food. And I’d like to get a few sentences written in a few other projects. I’d like to play the guitar. And I will do all of those things at some point today. None of these things feel like they are particularly selfish, even though they place my self (my needs and wants) at the center. And nowhere is my deeper self asking me to write more in this post. So I won’t.

  • The shrug emoji is my fave

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your favorite emojis?
    View all responses

    There was a time that I convinced myself that emojis were not an effective way to communicate. Yeah. I was probably a bit of a snob. More than a bit. I believed that complete words were more effective. I was awfully precious about the power of written language. But also I felt I owed the world and everyone in it. (Well, except myself.) Text me a question or thought? I’m going to respond. And I’m going to respond thoroughly and completely. I’m going to consider every single eventuality and variation embedded in the question and my response. It was exhausting.

    It’s not that I use emojis all the time now but I’ve come to appreciate them. It’s probably the influence of my kids. It’s hard to hate on anything that brings them so much joy. Parenthood changes a person. Or at least it changed me.

    Back to the shrug emoji. Maybe I like it because I’m Gen X. We’ve always been characterized as the aloof, apathetic generation. And maybe my love of the shrug is born of that. If it is that, there’s an element of “giving them what they want” in my usage of it. In other words you (the older generation) characterized us as being apathetic, so that’s what I’m going to give you. I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you that I and my entire generation are more than what you’ve reduced us to. Instead, I’m going to enjoy simply being. I have nothing to prove to you. And if you interpret that as apathy, so be it. There’s nothing to be done about that.

    The shrug is more than just apathy anyway. I had the realization recently that there’s immense power in the words, “I don’t know.” I used to feel like I had to be everything to everyone. I had to always know the answers. I had to have the right words at all times. The shrug absolves me of all of that in the same way that “I don’t know” does. I’ve taken to just saying those words, even in response to questions as seemingly basic as, “how do you feel?” I’ve absolved myself of always having to have a response to that question. To all questions, in fact. I think that this kind of behavior is sometimes called “stonewalling” and it may be considered, in some circles, anti-social. And if me centering myself above the questioning of others is anti social, then so be it.

    In other words: 🤷🏻‍♀️

  • Fave discussion topic: me, myself, and I.

    Daily writing prompt
    What topics do you like to discuss?
    View all responses

    I used to pretend that I didn’t like to talk about myself. It seemed, at the time, more polite. I’d act like I enjoyed talking about the other person, politics, the news, art, books, science, whatever topic the other person was interested in. I’m very good at listening very intently — or at least giving the appearance of doing as much — and asking all the questions to keep the conversation going towards the other person.

    I can see now that that was all an act. At the time, I truly thought that was who I was: someone able to hold everyone else’s stories and interests. The truth is that I was carving out bits and pieces of myself to make room for everyone else. The end result is that I reached middle age barely knowing myself.

    They say it’s better late than never. And honestly, I think I started to realize this just in time. Somewhere inside of me, there’s a little spark of myself, my true self, not the mask, not the illusion I created to please everyone else. But a spark is all that’s needed to create a flame and then a fire. And so I add some dry kindling (paper will do for these early stages) and blow gently. For now, even the exhalation of breath through my nose is enough. But soon, I will purse my lips and pull from deep within my lungs. I’ll push out air and form words through my throat, my tongue and teeth. These will join together to sentences and paragraphs. And each one is part of me. And the spark will become a flame and soon a fire, fed by my own care and nurturing of myself. I will discuss myself and in doing so, I will also grow myself, the same self that I unwittingly dismissed in favor of something else, outside of me, for all those years.

    And the flame is me and it grows stronger each time I speak of myself to myself. And is soon able to consume and enjoy any topic, relating it all back to myself which grows stronger and takes up more and more space. Expansive. Steady. Whole.