Project Miracle
I read, re-read, and listen to all words written or spoken by Anne Lamott. Nearly two years ago, when I first moved here, I read about a project she did with a friend, Project Miracle. I believe it was from Bird by Bird. For Project Miracle, you commit with a Trusted and Willing Other, each day, before anything else, to email a list of things for which you feel grateful, even the shitty things. That turned about to be as challenging as it was fun, the shitty things for which to be grateful. The deal is- you each exchange lists but….no feedback allowed. This project may be the only ritualized part of my life to which I have fully committed, since our dislocation relocation. As I look back over my sent emails, I see how the act of ritualistically acknowledging and sharing my first thoughts has helped me to practice acceptance for unpleasant facts. The no feedback or responses policy allows me to express things like: I am grateful that my mother is not more unkind to me than she is. Because I don’t want a cheerleader suggestion to see it differently. That is my space for acknowledging painful truth, on my way to acceptance. Anyway, below are some items from recent emails: (more…)
My truth is that I mostly do not have a choice about my first thought, but I do have the choice to indulge it or to redirect my thoughts AWAY from obsession or reactive behavior. I learned this practice late in life. Being commanded to lighten up and get over it drove me more deeply into darkness and shame over my complete lack of knowing how. It was essential that I do so, if I wanted to belong. I see now, that it could not be modeled. You can’t teach someone how to be an entirely different person from whom they are. The message was “Be Different from how you are, dammit”. To this day, I cannot. And the miracle is- I do not apologize or even feign an intent to be other than how I am. I strive to be spiritually stronger, and to engage a closer connection to God. That will allow me to mature into the person I am meant to be. Conforming to the will of another human won’t. I don’t know what makes me a sensitive and expressive empath, picking up on energies around me, while others remain deeply unaffected. I did not choose it and I cannot un-choose it or judge it. When having your feelings and truths debated and punished is a pattern, it is time to remove yourself. Patterns don’t lie. 
After more than a year of wrestling with the reality of having my family of origin show me for the last time how little I mean to them, I am feeling as if maybe I am ready, to intentionally, for a few minutes each day, focus on doing something physically, mentally, spiritually to elevate the quality of living for myself. It has been difficult to exist in close proximity to people dedicated to erasing and silencing me. My internal fight with this reality has been all-consuming.
Ugh…my boys deserve much much more than they are being allowed. Deep sigh. I am more tired of this grief than anyone is of hearing 
about it. The most painful part is that my family denies that there is anything to grieve and that my need to do so, is further proof of my well-earned banishment, and overall defective and troublesome existence. I have committed to the process of releasing my family, all of them. I don’t know why I thought my mother’s cancer or my move here would have changed anything. It really did not, it changed my geography and my willingness to show up– to be of service at a critical time. And it allowed for my ex and my sister to get to know each other and to enjoy(while denying) a shared contempt for me. They both get the ultimate triumph at the expense of my innocent young sons. I divorced myself from each of them for identical reasons and now they are affirmed and gleefully(no joke) united. Seriously, is it acceptable anywhere for a woman to bond with her sister’s ex at sister’s children’s expense? I cannot help but judge. I see why my ex is into it. Totally. He is far more forgivable here than she is..I guess because she claims to care so deeply for family and my sons-but these actions are so diametrically opposed to family values or any values, really. When I asked him to step away so that maybe we could heal, he laughed and said; “Why should I? They have zero intent to work it out with you.” I suggested that he might then for the sake of our children. Deep sigh.