An Invincible Summer - A Woman's Journey

The solution is to become your own loving parent.  In ACA, we recognize that our parents fell short in many ways. They may have been alcoholics or addicts, they may have been physically or verbally abusive or may have simply lacked the tools to care for us in a loving, nurturing way. Or, like my father, abandoning the family in every sense of the word.  While all that was happening, we, being little tiny children, developed tools to deal with the life we were handed. Often times, those tools saved us. Whether it was knowing when to hide or be scarce, or figuring out how to feed ourselves as a 4 year old, or knowing how to gauge the adults mood at any given time, or just learning how to not show emotion because the reaction to that would be cruel or dismissive. These tools worked well until they didn’t.  Now we get the choice to change the narrative. We get to figure out what those ill adaptive tools are. That can be hard work because they have been with us for such a long time that the

We talked about doing it for awhile. There are already quite a few “Little Libraries” in the neighborhood so we knew we weren’t going to do one of those even though I love them.   Neither of us being especially handy, we had to wing it. It took way longer than we had hoped. Eventually I found a wine gift box that held two bottles. I removed the lid and hinged it to the top of the box. I used my router to put a slit in the top to the box so that we could slide some clear acrylic to keep the weather out. Found a mailbox base to attach it to the post. Spray paint in a color that blends into the landscape   The Boy Scout got help from Gary, our dear neighbor, that has to be 85 if he’s a day. They dug the post hole and Gary helped him keep it level as he put the cement around the post. This is our Poetry and Prose Box. We are putting in words that we find beautiful. The current entry is quite special. The first time I heard it was 40 years after it was released, when my new boyfriend played

I spoke to him, that brother of mine.  It was filled with minutiae and emotion, the everyday and the cancer in the brain. He told me how his desk top is a picture of our mother as a young women. He says he thinks we look so much alike, Mom and I.  I hail from a tall family. Laurie is about 5'11", Sal and Pam are at least 5'10" and my little bro, Tommy, is 6'2"ish. Somehow John and I got missed. He comes in at around 5'9" and I, 5'7" on a good day. John stayed trim and buff all his life, despite his hearty consumption of cigarettes and weed.  Right now, after radiation and chemo he is weighing in at 127lbs which is exactly what I weigh. He says don't count him out. Always a rebel, why would it be any different while fighting lung cancer that has spread to the brain.  We cried and we shared family photos. He is leaving today for Texas where he will buy a home. His wife has connection there and she will need it in the not too distant future

Today, every one of my siblings are together.  For the first time since the day our mother died 15 years ago they are sitting at a table. swapping memories, laughing at old jokes and holding space for our mother who would have been thrilled that they are together. I ache that I am not with them. I feel sad and angry that I am not where I belong. I wish they had told me. Maybe I could have gotten a last minute flight...maybe. The family black sheep, the first boy after three girls, the fearless (perhaps reckless is a better description) playmate of my childhood is dying. 4th stage lung cancer, just like our father. God, he had hated our dad and yet he had carried on the family tradition of abandoning families, lying and manipulation, and that beaut of a characteristic....addiction (although, admittedly, his drug of choice has been far less destructive than that of our father's). I don't know if he's seen the errors of his ways. I don't know if he is still and forever the

The first time I truly grieved is when I lost my mother. I recognized and allowed that grief to wash over me, to sit with it. Still today, it brings a tightening of the muscles that allow the breath into my lungs, not like it once did, but as a reminder that we do not lose dear ones without them taking a piece of us with them as they go. As if our beloved takes a reminder or a token with them, to hold on to when they need verification that their time here was not a waste. A piece of our heart might bring them comfort in our separation. I had experienced loss before that year, of course I had, but our family was not learned in the ways of feeling hard emotions. A person needs to be taught how to feel. I learned to react and harbor anger but the other things just sat there, ignored instead of processed and allowed. Anger and I have been well acquainted over the years but anger, and mere happiness, are hollow echoes in comparison to the complexities of real feeling like joy and pain, peac