my weekend reading list.

because these are too good not to share.

read this. then read it again.

my love for anne lamott knows no bounds. 

mindy kaling's mama was a wise one. 

i'm going to read this a few more times over the weekend. such a lovely look at writers who really pay attention to the important things.

i hope you have a fabulous weekend!

shameless loves over on "my name is yeh."

the gal who runs this fun and funny blog ran my own shameless loves list. lists like this are fun. 

lists in general are fun.

seeds and roots.

"scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. terrify and terrific. every negative experience holds the seed of transformation."

-alan cohen

for the prayers we hold in the silence of our hearts.

one of my favorite parts of church has always been the "prayers of the faithful," particularly this line:

for the prayers we hold in the silence of our hearts

i love how those words sound together. the silence of our hearts, so much happens there.

as the priest said those words sunday morning and i sat in the pew with a hand full of animal crackers i thought about all of the prayers i keep quiet. the prayers i'm afraid to say in my head, in the bath, while falling alseep at night. 

thoreau tells us to live the life you've imagined. 

this is hard for me, so very hard for me.

being afraid to ask for something means i'm afraid to acknowledge wanting. wanting leads to disappointment. but it leads to so much joy too.

joy is wonderful. joy is contagious when you let yourself feel it. give yourself permission to have the life you want. to go after the life you want. you deserve that much. until you believe that you won't go anywhere. 

some days i believe this with every part of me and no one can convince me otherwise. other days no one can get through to me, least of all myself.

it comes down to self-worth, how much we love ourselves. some days are hard. still. i wonder when the hard part will stop or when it will feel less. i have faith it's going to happen. but sometimes things, all of the things on my plate, are really fucking hard. sometimes i want to eat a spoonful of cookie dough for breakfast. so i do. then i have a second. and i don't want to go to the gym. and all i can do is sit and worry. i'm so very good at that. but as hard as it is for me to believe sometimes, i am thankful for these moments. the moments when i shake myself and wake the fuck up and say, this is a bad moment, not a bad life. stop.

a bad moment does not equal a bad life. say this over and over and over.

i go for a walk. i sit down and write. i tell myself that tomorrow will be better. 

i believe that tomorrow will be better. today can be better too. we can make things better.

i resolve to go to bed early and wake earlier. i resolve go to the gym when it's nineteen degrees outside and i'd like very much to sleep another hour. my body, my mind, my heart all need the gym. i resolve to take that extra energy and do something with it. i resolve to put up my tree. i resolve to listen to dean martin and frank sinatra and nat king cole, men with lovely voices. i resolve to stop obsessing and looking in mirrors and being mean to myself. i resolve to say thank you everyday.

i have worked too hard to not continue to bring good upon my life.

i resolve to think of the good. always think of the good.

the prayers we're afraid to say out loud are always the loudest. faith takes work. i'll get there. i have faith we all will.

pretty things. because today i need some.

photos via and pinterest.

this is how you love yourself. you listen.

earlier this week i got a phone call. i had a decision to make. and i made it within the first five seconds of listening to the message that was left. this is called listening to yourself. people rarely do this anymore. my gut told me what to do, but it wasn't enough, not in that moment. because i needed more. for better or worse i always want more. that's what happens when you spend so much of your life wanting less, wanting nothing. you wake up one day and feel true desire. want is hunger for more, for life.

i pray that feeling never goes away.

i listened to this voice mail. i felt my body tense. i did what i do when i feel lost. lost but worse than that, full of doubt. knowing, truly-knowing-in-my-bones-what to do but doubting myself.

i asked for help.

i called ben and shared the news of this voice mail, news that would've made me happy and yelp for joy had it been right, had it felt right. i called and emailed the girlfriends i trusted. i received a resounding response: you have to listen to yourself. listen to your gut.

while saying and typing these words to them there was no yelping. there was crying . there was no joy, no excitement. 

these are signs. if your first instinct is to say no that is all the sign you need. if you hear every part of your body saying no to something you had better learn to listen.

when we don't listen to ourselves we break our own hearts. i've built my own back up enough to know i never want to do it again.

when you don't love yourself, at seventeen, you find yourself eating roast beef sandwiches in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. you find yourself crying and shaking and playing music so loud your head hurts, loud enough so you don't hear anything else. but the thing is, it can never be loud enough. you find yourself throwing up in a grocery store parking lot later that day because you ate too much. again. you ate to fill the void food was never capable of replacing. you find yourself at 293 pounds.

when you don't love yourself, at twenty-three, you find yourself hearing one of your best friends say, "birthdays aren't a big deal to me." when what she really means is "your birthday isn't a big deal to me." you spent years at the helm nurturing and making the plans and cooking the pasta and baking the chocolate cakes and hanging the streamers. you hear these words and you tell yourself, this is not enough. this is not true friendship. 

things change and sometimes friendships fall apart and it's a sad thing, this breaking of a family. but this is life and sometimes it's better to have things break for the sake of one part of the unit growing stronger on her own.

when you don't love yourself, at twenty-six, you find yourself on the front step of a hardware store sitting next to a boy who has nothing to offer you. you finally say the words you should've said months prior. the words you continued to push down and ignore. you sit there and wait. you like to wait. you are happy to wait for everybody else because it makes you feel good. it doesn't make you feel good at all, but this is the lie you tell yourself. you think of all the waiting and settling you did, not just with this boy but with those that came before him. with the hollow friendships with people who only cared on their terms, who never cared enough.

you say to yourself, this person was never enough. i ignored that and in turn, felt like i wasn't enough. i am enough.

i am enough.

love yourself enough to say these words, the words that get stuck in your chest and sit there getting heavier as days and years pass. the words that keep you awake at night and distracted at work and at the gym and on the train and in the shower.

when we don't listen to ourselves we settle. we settle and accept the measliest offerings from people. because that is all we think we deserve.

there are small signs, whispers, that are messages from the universe. and you reach a point when all of these tiny signs you've spent more energy than you knew you had pushing down finally become screams that will no longer be ignored. you do not love yourself if you ignore how you feel. listen to your heart. stop ignoring it. this is how you love yourself.

i have come far enough in the past three years to know that i deserve more than what that voice mail would've given me.

we find ourselves in these sad and hollow places and then we find ways to save ourselves. it can be done. i am proof that it can be done. we must lose ourselves, often in the most desperate ways before we can go about being found. finding leads to fixing. believe that you can do this. this is how you love yourself.

loving and listening are two big parts of an even bigger puzzle. they belong together. you can't do one without the other. 

when you love yourself, at twenty-seven, you find yourself in a dark movie theater sitting next to a man who wipes away your tears, who does ten million tiny, beautiful things for you and to you every single day. as this man sleeps in the other room you say a quiet prayer that you found him. and that you found yourself first.

you listen. to your heart, above all other voices. this is how you love yourself.

Try to be alive.

Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. 

-Ernest Hemingway

day 18 of giving thanks. for ben, on his birthday.

on the eighteenth day of this thanks-filled month i am thankful for you, benjamin. so-very-glad-i-listened-to-molly-five-months-ago-thankful.

for your name. ben. it's warm and wholesome. just like its owner. 

for coming into my life and shaking everything up. and for helping me feel true peace at the same time.

for letting me be a part of all the parts of your life.  

for introducing me to your sweet and beautiful daughter. for showing me what it's like to love someone with every breath. for letting me be witness to what a strong and kind father you are. 

for making me laugh until i can't breathe. for giving me butterflies when we went to that lovely italian restaurant two weeks ago. it felt like our first date and i loved that. for making me shake when you kiss me. still. for always reaching for my hand, especially when i need it. for knowing when not to say anything and just hold me. for knowing the words when i don't. for knowing. for morning snuggles with eva. for reminding me to breathe. for eating the insides of my egg rolls. for your eddie vedder voice. for letting me pick the driving music. for setting parks and recreation to record as a series; i never even asked you to do that. for having a jogging stroller and letting me take eva for runs with it. i love that stroller. for being "doers" as my friends call us, and for all the memories we've made.

for being as hungry for life as i am. 

for always asking how you can help and for understanding how hard it sometimes is for me to let you. 

thank you for helping me feel protected and loved and adored. and appreciated. 

thank you for being my partner and my friend.

i feel like i've known you my whole life. and i'm incredibly thankful for that. i don't know how i got so lucky.

ben, i wish for you the happiest of birthdays. i love you.

on repeat all weekend.

on crying in cabs. and minor apartment fires.

i cried in the back of a cab last night. 

the driver asked me how i was and i started to cry. i'd already been crying on the corner of state and madison while waiting for a bus that didn't want to show up. for twenty minutes it didn't want to show up.  

i was tired of waiting (so many times lately that sentence has echoed in my head). so i got in a cab.
  
"what's wrong?" he asked with a very heavy eastern european accent. "you coming from work?"

"no, class. i had work and then an important meeting after work. it's just been a long day."  

more tears. 

i kept looking at the blinking red seat belt symbol because he wasn't wearing his.  

"things happen for a reason." he said with all the confidence in the world.

i laughed and nodded. the nodding only served to shake the tears loose.  

before the cab, after the work and the meeting and the class i went to target to get a few things. while the cashier scanned my items i looked at the reese's peanut butter cup on the belt, at the end of my items. i stared at it.

i thought about what i said just a few hours before this: "this just in: chocolate doesn't solve problems." 

i thought about the four reese's peanut butter cups i had over the weekend while running errands. 

i thought about how fucking good a reese's peanut butter cup tastes. but better than the taste of that is not wanting the taste of it. not if it means ignoring other feelings. there's nothing wrong with chocolate. but there is something wrong if the desire is rooted in fear and anxiety.

i thought about the fact that i know, i know i didn't want it.

it won't fix anything. 

numbing doesn't fix anything.

i put it back. 

i got home and did the only thing i could think of to feel better in that moment.

i called my mom.

"what's wrong, honey?" 

those words, just the sound of her voice saying those words.  

i sat at the foot of my bed and cried.

"it's hard to convince yourself that you're good enough when you can't seem to convince other people. i'm so tired, mom."

"something good is going to happen. it is." she said. 

faith. 

i stopped feeling sorry for myself. i got off the phone and sat down at my desk to wrap ben's birthday present. the pine forest candle i'd just bought made contact with the tissue paper. i distinguished it immediately.

a fitting end to the day. i did laugh, though. thank God i laughed.

but i'm moving. i'm doing. and good things are happening. i'm making things happen. 

i said a prayer and fell into my bed. 

like being found.

❝

I got lost in him, and it was the kind of lost that’s exactly like being found.

— Claire LaZebnik  

how we become ourselves.

on my bus ride home the other night i listened to this and read this. over and over. the combination caused me to write a lot. a whole lot in those sixty minutes. the margins on that piece of paper got real full real quick. 

i read the essay again on my way home last night. 

if you've never read anything by anne lamott please start. 

how do we become the person we're supposed to be?

the person we're supposed to become. the person we will become. 

i take comfort in these words, that it's possible. this becoming and growing will happen. this is how life works. 

you don't think your way into becoming yourself.

i am revealing myself to myself all the time. what am i learning about who i am? a lot. and the list keeps growing. 

i'm thankful for this.

the love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode. 

i am someone who is very impatient. i am this way because i wasted so much time. i squandered time. i robbed myself of a life before i realized what a beautiful one i wanted for myself. and right now i have so many pieces of the life i imagined. but i cheated myself. it's the truth. i robbed myself of years. years. and it's a constant task/struggle to get to a place of forgiving myself for it. when i first started with jim he looked at me and said, "you're making up for lost time." (hence the roadrunner speed.) he was right. of course he was right. 

i pray that when people are gently confronted with things that hurt to hear that they'll take a moment to really hear the words. sometimes words are hard. but the ones surrounded by love are easier to accept. 

i have to force myself to stop. to take a full stop. but i'm surrounded by good people who help with this. spending time with a very calm man and a very active and happy toddler make it easy to feel joy. at constant intervals. 

i am someone who wants a lot. 
i want more.
it's within reach.
i can feel it.

i am an emotional person. thank God for that. it took me twenty-seven years to become one and i'm not about to turn it off or turn it down now. 

dealing with your rage and grief will give you life. it may not look like anger; it may look like compulsive dieting or bingeing or exercising or shopping. but you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger.

all of these things are rooted in deep and heavy anger and sadness, often in equal measure. and this is hard to imagine except to those who know. but dealing with things takes a long time. there are steps upon steps that consist of  "dealing with things." grief has to be organized and compartmentalized and attacked. but only when you're ready. and it's the moment when you feel your anger seeping through your bones, when you want to crawl out of your skin and scream. that is when you're ready. that's when i was ready. it may be different for you. 

anger holds us hostage. anger is poison. feeling in general is tiring, but more tiring and poisonous than that is slowly killing yourself. people do this a dozen different ways. none of them are small. 

it takes a long time to put yourself back together, much longer than it takes to completely fall apart. the falling, the dissolving, is a slow death. if you're actively killing yourself then you aren't living. if a person wants their life back, wants a life, they must make that decision with their entire heart and take the first step. and never stop. no one can do it for you. people can help, if you let them. but you must take the big steps on your own. and you must let yourself love yourself. allow yourself that feeling. 

how am i becoming myself? so far, lots of mistakes and wrong decisions and self-doubt. addiction and therapy and poisonous foods and toxic people. letting these things go. lots of crying and yelling. quiet mornings spent in my favorite chair. anne lamott and mary chapin carpenter and the writing that won't stop after spending time with these women. big bouncing happy dogs. the strongest women in my corner and a green chair in the office of a former chicago cop. running and biking and boxing early on saturday mornings. coffee and sarcasm and laughter and patience. and love. 

and finding my voice. 

to love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. and now is all we have, and love is who we are.

amen.

blocked.

sometimes jim really has some gems. this was from a few months ago.

“do you know about flow?” he asks.

“you mean like a river?” i say while making waves with my hand.

“my wish is for you to feel that in your life,” he said.

i smile. it’s a heavy but happy smile.

"i picture a polluted river full of garbage and a huge tree in the middle blocking everything," i said. "not everyday, but sometimes."

he looks at me with heavy eyes.

today is one of those days. and i'm doing everything in my power to change it.

day three of giving thanks.

i'm thankful for the walk i took this morning. i was lost and couldn't find the newberry library, where i had to go for a class project. i wound up walking up and down dearborn trying to find walton st. i walked and walked. past beautiful houses and windows full of pumpkins. past half a dozen dry cleaner's and mums on front porches. i took the time and just walked. no music. just me and the sounds of the city early on a saturday morning. 

thank you, legs.

(i'm going to post the rest of these on my facebook.)

life, as of late. day two of giving thanks.

 

i'm thankful for these people, this city, these colors and sounds and smells. i'm thankful for these memories.

love list. and day one of giving thanks.

the fact that ben had coffee waiting for me first thing this morning. and leftover chinese all warmed-up. the suit he was wearing didn't hurt. at all. spotting red cups from starbucks all over the city. nashville and its music, especially this song. ghiradelli's milk chocolate and caramel bar and it being the only chocolate i crave. i like holding out for the good stuff. like sharing my english muffins with eva. lemon cupcakes from sweet mandy b's. women with strong voices: mary j. blige, mary chapin carpenter, kathleen edwards, anne lamott. my camera. christmas music becoming more present. christmas decorations at macy's. really good $4.00 sushi, convertible mittens, children dressed as cowgirls and ninjas and farm animals. practical magic and accepting that i'm sally. the man at the trunk-or-treating event we took eva to on sunday with the lobster hat, for telling us about the hot dogs inside and that eva could ring the church bell. allergy medicine and asthma inhalers and the knowledge that one day, hopefully, i'll no longer need them. the head and the heart and what a great name that is for a band. this man. this. which prompted the walk i took at lunch. and
this. which broke my heart in the best possible way.

every day this month i'm going to write about one thing i'm thankful for. give it a try. it feels good.

day 1

my blog.

i'm thankful that i started this blog in the first place, a year ago next month. this blog, my place, my church. a way to keep myself accountable. i need to write everyday. that really is something i should be doing. i'm thankful i've kept it going and people are responding to it, both the good and the ugly parts i share. i'm thankful for my friends who share it with their friends. i'm thankful that both women and men are emailing me in response to my posts. i'm thankful for the amazing support i've gotten and continue to get from the people i love, who love me in spite of and because of the things i share.

thank you, thank you, thank you. it really is its own beautiful prayer.

a new month. a chance to press the "restart" button.

(via)