On Winter Gifts and Safe Harbors

By Catherine DiMercurio

As I walked along the snowy beach, the lake splashed against the frozen droplets of former waves at the shoreline. It was wondrous with the sun sparkling across the waves and the icy beach. I slid across frozen puddles, crunched across the ice that rippled like a memory over the windswept sand. I never expected to enjoy a wintry beach walk quite so much. I talked to the lake like an old friend, thanked it for being deep enough to receive my troubles and old griefs without finding me “too much,” without resentment or judgement.

It has been a year packed with some big transitions, which is why, when winter hit so suddenly and forcefully a couple of weekends ago, I didn’t feel prepared. It was a big snowfall, followed by another heavy round a couple of days later. And since, we seem to get another few inches every couple of days to add to the two feet of snow already on the ground.

I remember my father taking my sisters and I sledding when we were little, ice skating once or twice too. I wanted to like it. I did enjoy playing in the snow, building snow men and snow forts and making snow angels. But I remember being at the top of the sledding hill and feeling a sense of apprehension, a worry that we’d collide into the other children sledding down the hill. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if it had been just us. Skating never made sense to me. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was going to get the hang of on the first time out and since we only went a couple of times, there was not really a chance to improve, but I also didn’t enjoy the slipperiness, the falling. I felt clumsier than usual, and I was already a kid that got called klutzy. Despite growing up in a state known for its winter wonderland, I have always had complicated feelings about the season.

One Christmas Eve when I was still quite young, we were returning home after visiting my grandparents’ house. Our car spun and skidded off the snowy road and when it stopped, we were facing the Saginaw River. I don’t know how close we were to the river, but in my memory, I have this sense that we had narrowly escaped careening into the water. Maybe that’s why, years later, after I learned to drive, I would become extremely fearful of driving in snowy conditions. Of course I adapted, as you do when you have places to go. You do what you have to do. But possibly this early memory is at play when my driving-in-bad-conditions apprehension surfaces. Perhaps I also just have a strong survival instinct. That, and I don’t really trust other drivers who seem to have no sense of caution.

Combine all this with the anniversaries of some Bad Things happening in early December many years ago, along with the short days and lack of sunlight, and you get a very tricky time. Yet, there is a kind of unexpected vibrancy in this community I’ve landed in, a recognition of and appreciation for the natural beauty we’re surrounded by. People get out there and enjoy the lake and the woods and the fresh air in all kinds of conditions. It’s a bit contagious, even if, especially in winter, I have to work a little harder to get motivated to spend lots of time outside.

I’ve been doing okay though—snowy hikes, walks or drives to the lake, icy beach strolls, sunsets. Some days though I get hit with melancholy, or fatigue, or some other cocktail of emotions that seem to rise to the surface more readily in darker, cold months. Like many people, I walk a fine line between knowing when to let those feelings in, acknowledge them, feel them, deal with them, and knowing when to get out of the house and out of my head. I’m still learning what it means to feel the heavy feelings without falling into ruminating, stewing, spiraling.

At the worst time in my life, I felt as though I was constantly at risk of falling into a deep darkness that I would not be able to climb out of. In retrospect, I think I did fall in sometimes, though, at the time, I believed I was pulling myself up and out just in the nick of time. So when things seem heavy, I occasionally get a feeling of dread, as in, please don’t let this be that. But it has never been that again, thankfully. I have a lot more tools now, and I’ve had a lot fewer reasons to ever feel quite like that again. I don’t often give myself enough credit for the navigating I’ve done, away from dark places.

But here, where I’ve landed, I often look around at the beauty of my surroundings and thank myself for captaining myself to this shoreline city. Sometimes there are two selfs, the one who doubts and is often fearful, and the one who sees the path and makes the necessary choices and journeys. Do you believe me now? I’ve asked myself. Do I believe now that I can make the decisions that land me in the right places at the right time? Do you trust me now? We made it here, after all.

At the end of my street is a marina. The joy those docked sailboats bring me, when I see their masts jutting into the sky as I stride down the hill, is both reliable and exhilarating. Reliable joy? What a gift! A sign reads “A SAFE HARBOR MARINA.” Safe harbor. How wonderful to discover that this is what we can be for ourselves, and what an actual place can feel like. Finding that feeling after a period of drifting and searching, of looking for belonging and not quite getting there, is as magical as the icy beach, or the gathered boats snug in their harbor. I hope this winter finds you in a safe and wondrous place.

Love, Cath

On Be-ing, Figuring, and Breathing

By Catherine DiMercurio

I don’t recall a time when part of my long walk entailed two miles barefoot at the water’s edge. Where Lake Michigan splashed at my ankles as I strode south. I don’t recall ever being able to go to the beach four times in one week. These are some lovely benefits to completely reshuffling your life.

It’s still a bit surreal, the move. There is so much that I’m still processing with the way this year has unfolded so far. I’m trying to pause more. Throughout this whole process, with a million little and huge steps along the way, I have felt catapulted from one thing to the next. Have barely been able to take a moment to enjoy a sense of accomplishment at meeting various milestones, because the process doesn’t let you rest. Even on the day of the move, an enormous, choreographed event, I was barely able to take a moment to consider the enormity of it, to congratulate myself for choreographing it. There was a brief period of time where I sat with my sister at the picnic table out back while the movers unloaded the trucks when I tried to catch my breath, tried to let the big truth of the moment sink in. I had done it. Moved to a lakeside town. Gotten myself as close as possible to the lake. I had, against the backdrop of some heavy personal turmoil, gotten my old house ready to sell, endured the ups and downs of all the showings and waiting for an offer, accomplished all the work to prepare the new house for my occupancy. Shepherded my anxious, reactive dog through it all. And I had moved farther from my children, from most of my family, from all of my friends, too. All of these things swirled through my mind—the work, the pros, the cons, the hopes, the fears—for a few overwhelming moments before I was pulled back to the reality of a house so chocked full of boxes I could barely make my way through it.

And then I faced the next enormous task. Unpacking. The tiny home was barely navigable. A narrow path led through a maze of boxes. I slept on the couch, unsure how I would even move things around in order to put my bed frame back together. But in two days I created some sense of order out of the chaos, and then I worked for two days in the office I’d managed to set up, and then spent most of the weekend unpacking the rest of the boxes. I can breathe a bit again and am no longer surrounded by cardboard. The basement is still a disaster and will likely remain so for some time. I want to take a few days and just feel normal, want to immerse myself in my regular routines, but my brain is already worrying about organizing the basement, and finding a new vet and dentist and doctor, and calculating when I’ll upgrade the electrical panel and replace the aging appliances.

There is always The Next Thing. There is never a clear deck with no items waiting for our attention. I’ve known this for a long time. It’s a lesson everyone learns at some point. It makes no sense to scramble and scramble trying to get all the Things attended to for the foreseeable future so that you can relax and be happy. It just is not reasonable to postpone feeling okay until all of the worrisome items are attended to. We have to keep figuring out how to find peace and joy in the middle of it all.

But knowing this doesn’t make the mindset adjustment any easier. If there are simple ways for moving the Things to Worry About to the edges so there’s some clear space to breathe, I don’t know them. The ways I know are about conscious, deliberate efforts. Maybe this work is easy for some. For me, it’s a huge mental challenge, a heavy lift. Some of it is self-protective. There is a part of me that is convinced that the only reason I get things done and avoid having important things fall through the cracks is because I do worry. It’s as if I need to worry because that’s the only way things will be ok.

It might seem like a whole lot of exhaustive nonsense if this is not the way your brain works. I think one of the things I love so much about being at the lake is that it is capable of taking me out of that mindset. The water is a live, physical presence; the experience of being there is multisensory. It diffuses worry, calms the loud thinking and overthinking. It’s the only shortcut I know. This past weekend, I took a long walk, some of which was barefoot along the shoreline. At one point, the absence of racing thoughts became apparent. It was shockingly peaceful. For a moment, I felt like Winnie the Pooh, just strolling along, with a hum-de-dum sort of song in my head. “Pooh just is” is a line I remember from Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh. And striving for that state of just be-ing feels impossible sometimes.

Part of the problem isn’t just a brain that is wired (by so many things, some of it innate, for sure, but some of it experiential) for worry. Part of the problem is a world that’s all digital and hurry up and loud and bright and urgent and in so many ways frightening and terrible. Of course we want to remain in a cozy bubble, try to feel good and safe and separate. To eliminate as many of the things to worry about as possible until there’s nothing to worry about anymore so we can just be.

I want to believe that while there is no end to worry (do you ever worry that there is something you forgot to worry about?), that the opposite is true, that there’s no end to peace, as in, isn’t there a well of peace within us, a transcendent and universal peace? And if so, how do we get there, how do we find it when we’re lost in all the other stuff. I don’t expect to stay there, I don’t know how people could do that with life being what it is but finding a path there, an easy path, a good path, a clear one, would be nice. I’m trying meditation but it’s quite a challenge.

Maybe I have found a path, maybe that’s why I moved here. It’s surely different for everyone and probably not everyone wants to go looking for that kind of peace. Maybe we’re not supposed to because don’t we need to stay worried so that we can fix little parts of the brokenness in the world? Or do we do that by finding and being peaceful within ourselves, and bringing that energy to everything we do?

Yesterday after work I attended a program at a beautiful historic library. It was a book discussion led by a professor from a nearby university, for a book I really loved, about a man who sails Lake Superior in a dystopic, near-future Midwest. The framework of the talk was “dystopia and hope.” I contributed a lot to the conversation. It felt good. And then I drove the few minutes to the lake, strolled on the beach, watched the sun start to set behind the churning waves. I didn’t worry about finding a vet or a dog trainer or a dentist, or work, or what I’ll do with Zero if I want to go visit my people on the other side of the state. I didn’t think about the boxes in the basement, and the logistics of that space. These are things I have to figure out. But for a brief window of time, I was exploring my new community, interacting, living outside of my own thoughts, and getting soothed by the lake. I felt a greater sense of belonging than I have in a while.

I probably won’t ever stop being a worrier, but here there seem to be more opportunities to take breaks from it, and that’ll be good for me. I don’t worry that I will fail to figure out the things I need to. I just don’t always want to go through the figuring out process. It gets tiring dealing with the obstacles that come along with so many decisions. And obviously I feel a bit drained from having navigated a major life change, and that’s okay, is what I remind myself. We get decision fatigue, along with plain old regular fatigue.

But, I do know that I’ll figure out a lot of it. Maybe not all of it, and not at the same time, and often not elegantly. But I’ll do my best, as we all do, and maybe it’ll be a little easier now, here, to stay even-keel through it most of the time.

Be well. Love, Cath

On Moving through This Particular Time and Space

By Catherine DiMercurio

These past several months I have felt as if keeping my head above water takes most of my energy. Each moving-related milestone felt less like a hurdle overcome and more like a wave crashing down on me, until it is over, and I can float a little, catch my breath a little, until the next wave hits. In the midst of all the painting I was doing this past week at the new house, I was fighting to do just that, catch my breath. The task felt overwhelming, the number of walls, the trim to either paint or tape off, the cutting in, the multiple coats, the clean-up, the way the plaster was so thirsty and gulped up all the paint, the cove ceilings and their delicate curves, the yucky and ancient vinyl floorboard molding in the kitchen, the ruined window frame in the living room.

It’s been over a year since I got it in my head that I was going to move. I took my time with the process, knowing how much I loathe how urgency makes me feel. Winter and early spring were focused on clearing out the basement and making plans, and then in April and May I began to ramp things up with house repairs. Then things really sped up in June when I listed my house for sale and began searching for a new home in earnest. Now, I’ve closed on both houses. I spent a long weekend at the new house organizing some initial improvements—tearing out carpet and having a fence built—and cleaning. This past week, I went back to paint. It’s a task I always enjoy in the beginning, but by the end, I’m ready to be done. And this time the end didn’t come until the fourth room was painted on the fourth day. It was a big job, and like any home improvement task, it came with unexpected obstacles.

But, this isn’t going to be a boring home improvement post. I thought I wanted it to be about how good it felt to let this new-to-me but old house breathe and feel cared for again after a couple of years of vacancy. I thought I wanted to write about how I was trying to make this random place feel like my home. And I thought it was going to be about what a long, sometimes scary journey it has been.

Yet what is hitting me most right now, as a sit in my cozy current home now that I’ve returned from the painting week, is how confusing and chaotic prolonged transitions feel. Many people are in the midst of them now, with grown children off on new adventures or otherwise finding their footing in adult life. People are ending relationships, or starting them, or moving, or grieving, or changing jobs. Sometimes we go through big changes with others and sometimes we go through them alone. And we might have folks helping out where they can, but when we’re flying solo, the upheaval of big changes can hit especially hard.

Somewhere between wrapping up the painting of the bedroom and the office and the hallway and beginning the painting of the kitchen, I felt particularly wrung out and empty, and then I sort of remembered why I was where I was. Two miles west of me was one of the best stress-busters I’ve ever known: Lake Michigan. So that morning I made my coffee and loaded Zero in the car, and we drove the short five minutes to the lake to see the morning light play on the waves. We just stayed in the car, because we see off leash dogs all the time and that is not a great thing with a reactive dog whose training got derailed. I wanted this to be a moment of calm, so we stayed cozy, and watched the other early morning people go by, or do the same thing we were doing, viewing the lake from our cars as if we were at a drive-in theater. I’m looking forward to when I’m actually living at the new place, and I can go grab moments of lake-calm for myself whenever I need to. In this particular moment, I marveled at the way the light of the morning could be both bright and soft at the same time, and the way a gull sounds different when it’s swooping around the shoreline than a gull sounds in the old Kmart parking lot in the puddle of my childhood memories.

That moment was also a reminder to seek out calm wherever I am, lake or not. Because life can feel so big and so chaotic, whether or not we’re in periods of momentous transition. It’s not as if I forgot that I need to do that, or like I wasn’t trying all along to manage my stress with yoga and walks and early morning coffee in the yard with Zero and chats with family or friends. But sometimes we tell ourselves there’s no time, or that it won’t help anyway because there’s too much to do or our feelings of overwhelm are too great.

We tell ourselves a lot of things when we’re tired or drowning in all there is to do every day. We tell ourselves there’s not enough time to sit quietly in a safe place and catch our breath. Maybe we even tell ourselves there are no safe places, and it is tragic when that is true. But sometimes we’re still learning to be our own safe place and that takes time and practice. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we miss things that weren’t particularly good for us. Sometimes there were good parts to miss, but that doesn’t change things. We might ask ourselves why we ever thought we could handle the enormity of moving farther away than we’ve moved before and then we remind ourselves that we are, in fact, handling it. We’re almost there. We’re almost home.

And still, that doesn’t erase the hard parts. Holding two opposing truths within us at the same time can cause a bit of inevitable heartache. For reasons of financial and mental health, I need to go. To follow the dream of living near the lake, I need to go. Because I want to love where I live, I need to go, and at the same time, the fact that I’ll be almost three hours from my kids instead of half an hour hurts like hell. I haven’t made peace with that. I don’t know how to. And I guess, I don’t really want to make peace with it. I want that angst to keep motivating me to find ways to make it easier for us to see each other. I don’t want to slip in to “but it’s so far and everyone is so busy.” I want to remain highly motivated to find someone who can watch my sweet but challenging pup so I can take off for a long drive and a short visit, or to take a weekend here and there to see friends and family. People figure this stuff out all the time and I will too. It’s just, in moments of high contrast, the difficult parts feel sharper. Having just had time to hang out with my kids, the prospect of missing them is looming large.

It’s as if we have to keep finding ways to be bigger on the inside than we are on the outside, so we can hold all that life seems to ask us to hold. And sometimes there is no more room, and we have to become willing and able to put something else down so we can hold on to what we want to hold on to. Maybe there are old griefs I can leave behind so that there’s space to manage this new challenge of geography and proximity to the people I love. Maybe the perplexing problems I have for so long felt gnawing at me are less about algebra (as in, how do I solve for all these variables) and more about physics (as in, this is about the realities of force, mass, and acceleration, as in, how can I move myself forward through this particular time and space). Maybe the math analogy is bad but what I’m saying is that maybe it’s time to get practical instead of theoretical.

We’re all moving—together and separately—through this particular time and space and I hope we all find ways to allow ourselves to lean on one another and to be strong when we can’t and to be strong when someone else needs to lean on us.

Love, Cath

On Pebbles, Fish, and Feathers

By Catherine DiMercurio

Hope and perseverance take various shapes these days. My house is up for sale, and there’s a hopeful contender on the west side of the state just waiting for me. I’m starting to picture where I’m going to land, how I’ll arrange the furniture. I’m trying to do two things at once: fan the flames of my hopefulness to keep it alive, and also, maintain it at only a steady low burn so I’m not overly disappointed if things don’t go my way. That’s not an easy balancing act.

Still, when I recently visited the town I’m moving to and spent some time by the lake, I had that feeling, the one where my heart wakes up, fluttering and thundering in my chest. There is a simultaneous tug of calm peace and wild joy that tells me this is it, I belong here. I once thought love was supposed to feel that way, and maybe sometimes it has, here and there, and maybe that’s asking a lot of love.

A lot has to happen before I can move, and I’m often wondering if I’m doing it right. I don’t know the rules. I think that’s because there aren’t any. I must have made that part up, that rules exist for How to Do Things. Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that if I could a) learn the rules and b) follow them, then the result would be everything making sense and falling into place. I imagine the gentle way it will happen, the falling into place, like a gull feather softly floating from the sky, and sighing into the sand at the water’s edge. I think I’ll sit on the floor in my new house and I’ll say, I did it, I got us here. I know it won’t make the world make sense again, but it will feel better, it will feel right and good and like home. That’s what I hope. And then I’ll get to go to the lake whenever I want, and my heart will hop and dance and trip over itself on the way, clumsy and glad.

When I say that I made that part up, about those rules existing, that isn’t entirely true. I willingly bought into beliefs and norms and societal conventions and turned them into rules inside my head because on some level, rules make me feel safe. Knowing the boundaries makes me feel confident. As in, here is a closed system and once you know how it operates you can function in a predictable way and get predictable results.

Even though I learned quite some time ago that the world doesn’t work that way at all, there is a small part of me, a thin little shadow, that stomps her feet in disbelief and frustration when things happen in ways they’re not “supposed to.” And when life gets overwhelming and more variables enter the equation, that thin little shadow grows into something larger and more solid. It’s okay. It’s something you have to learn to live with. Something I learn to live with, the shadow to bargain with, that is really just a version of me that wants to feel safe and understood. I can give her that at least, even if the world can’t. I can try.

If none of this is making sense to you then maybe you were lucky enough to play by the rules whether you believed in them or not and things fell into place for you, so much so that you’re surprised when things don’t work out for other folks. Maybe you figure that they just didn’t work hard enough, like you did. Or they weren’t positive enough or whatever enough, whatever it is that you believe got you where you are.

But if this is making sense to you, then hey, nice to see you here, hope things are going okay.

It’s hard, isn’t it, to live in this liminal space with all this uncertainty unfolding in multiple directions? It almost forces you to be the calm center of it, as if there are so many forces pushing at you from the outside that all your chaotic, uncertain, wayward and worried energy is forced back toward you, and you have to learn to metabolize it all. Because if you don’t metabolize it, you start to feel like it is crushing you. I’ve felt that way recently, like I was getting smaller and smaller. Just a pebble, really. Though, pebble-sized, everything happens around you, not to you, so maybe that’s the right way. How else does one metabolize all that chaos? Maybe it passes through you, like water through fish gills, and we take in what we need to breathe and nothing else. There probably isn’t a right way. Maybe sometimes it is a pebble day and sometimes it is a fish day.

But we all have stuff coming at us all the time. Theoretically, we could reduce the amount of chaos coming at us if we could diffuse our own response, our worry and fear and what not, and only deal with the outside forces, the unpredictable things in our lives that make us feel like things are overwhelming or out of control. But that is easier said than done. Sometimes the only thing that shows us the way is our own exhaustion. When we have no more energy left to worry because we’ve been too busy coping with what life is throwing at us. There is some relief in that somehow, in being too spent to work up enough energy to thrash against uncertainty like a caught fish in a net. That’s when we get to the point of saying, I’ll just have to roll with whatever happens next. And maybe when we’ve done that enough times we won’t have to wait until we’re completely exhausted to adopt that mindset. It’ll be a choice instead of a consequence. Sometimes that’s where the growth is; some of us only learn lessons the hard way.

When I think about leaving this house, I think about all the work I put into it, and how I turned it into a safe place to land after all. It’s a cozy refuge that has served me well. I hope it will let me go, will work its charm on the right person who is ready to make an offer any moment now, so the next set of things can fall into place for everyone.

But for now, it’s wait-and-see mode. I have moments where I’m okay with that, with the not knowing, with the in-between-ness, and there’s a part of me that actually does feel confident that I’ll be able to adapt to however the situation evolves. It’s hard to hold on to that mindset, when part of me wants to lean in so badly the particular details of how I want things to happen. Hope is a funny creature to tend to, being wild and capricious and hungry and fragile all at once. That’s another thing there aren’t any rules for, the care and feeding of this creature called hope. Maybe we’ll all get it a little bit right today.

Love, Cath

On Herons, Ducks, and Dessert

By Catherine DiMercurio

I want to be a heron when I grow up. I want grace and patience.

We saw a heron this weekend, my people and I, on a walk after lunch. The heron was standing on a log in a pond, maybe about to catch a fish, maybe not, apparently unconcerned that we were nearby and watching. I wonder what it is like to be still and calm and wholly myself in the midst of a busy, busy world.

If a heron can, why can’t I?

That is, I can, sometimes, but not always when I need to.

One of the things I have always found challenging is finding a way to feel happy, calm, or peaceful in the midst of dealing with some kind of struggle. I always have the sense that once I get past this thing or that, then I’ll be able to relax, find contentment. Maybe that is one of the things this current challenge is trying to teach me. I’m dealing with a major home repair, the kind that requires financing, the kind that it is depressing to spend so much money on, where you aren’t sure you can manage it but you have to. It has left me feeling stressed, depleted, tired. Everyone deals with things like this in one form or another. We all do, throughout our lives. We go through periods when we seem to be hit over and over again.

If we’re lucky, we also go through periods where not much seems to go wrong, and we have an awareness that somehow, bad things seem to be avoiding us. Sometimes, the more things go wrong, the more things seem to go wrong, and it is too easy to lose ourselves in that mode of thinking. Every time I feel this downward spiral, I have to do the mental work of avoiding its momentum.

This past weekend, I tried not to think of the repair that is about to take place, over the course of 2.5 days. When you have a reactive dog, it is challenging to have people who need to work on your house coming into your home. I’m almost as stressed about managing Zero as I am about the financial component of this repair. The disruption to my workday is also a factor. I try to keep things in perspective, try to manage as many of the pieces of the puzzle as I can. At times I sink into a resigned sort of acceptance; this is simply what needs to be done and I’m managing it as best as I can. At other times, I struck with the impossibility of it all, with the fact that not only is there one more thing to deal with, it is a giant thing.

Throughout the holiday weekend, I tried to compartmentalize so that I could enjoy my time, and I did a pretty good job for the most part. I’ve been thinking though about the way people metabolize the obstacles in their life. Some lean into faith; they pray, or accept challenges as some kind of plan they don’t fully understand. Some consider obstacles as necessities in our soul’s evolution. When challenges arise, they are welcomed and met gracefully. Still others embrace the apparent randomness of the universe, and don’t take challenges personally. I vacillate between approaches; I try to be graceful or wise, or calm. But first, it is true that I sometimes panic, depending on the size or severity of the obstacle. I know that part of this reaction is fear, and I ask myself: can I handle this, and how will I handle this, and what if I don’t handle it well, what if I make choices that cost me in ways I haven’t anticipated. That all comes from a not-fully-realized self-trust. But sometimes, I have a sense that though I can handle something, I’m simply tired of handling things. I feel defiant. “No more,” I wish to say, shaking my fist at the universe. But in the end, the fear or panic or weariness is simply futile, and we weather what we must because there is no other way. Life moves us inexorably forward. It doesn’t matter if we feel buffeted by stormy waves, a small duck in a big lake. Sometimes I want to make myself bigger, stretch tall on heron legs, unfurl the full length of my wings and defy storms. But whether duck or heron, we all simply weather the storms in our own ways. We do what we can.

The other thing I’m learning right now is to give myself space to have those moments of panic without judgement. Somethings are genuinely frightening. A huge, unexpected home repair can trigger feelings of financial insecurity in anyone; it is natural that it would leave many people with the sense that something of our essential safety is under threat, especially if we’ve experienced such instability in the past. I might later say, “I wish I’d handled that better,” but why? It is okay for me to feel anxious, to seek emotional support from my trusted circle. I wonder sometimes why I expect that I should feel unflappable, why I view responses such as fear or anxiousness as antithetical to handling something “gracefully.” I do long to feel a sense of serenity, an inner peace that is untouchable, unable to be shaken by woes or threats of any kind. It’s not a bad goal, but if I’m not there yet, then I’m not there yet. There’s no sense in having judgement about it. Maybe going forward, when I’ve had time to rest and regroup after this particular obstacle, I’ll sink into a kind of sustainable peace that will be less disrupted by whatever the next challenge is. Or, at least, I’ll strive for that.

For now, I’ll I can do is endure this latest challenge and trust that I’ve made the best decision I can at the time. I can use all the little tricks I have up my sleeve to get Zero and me through this. And I know I have people to lean on, and I know that leaning on people makes things easier, and also it doesn’t make the challenges go away. We all have to go through what we have to go through, one way or another, though for a long time I think I sort of expected that leaning on someone was sort of like splitting a dessert at a restaurant. You’re too full to have your own, and everyone consumes however many bites feels comfortable for them. But challenges are not chocolate cake.

Take small bites and deep breaths!

Love, Cath

On Mud, March, Skinned Knees, and Transitions

By Catherine DiMercurio

The season is changing, but at times it has felt too early, given the stretch of warm weather earlier in the month, including a few days around 70 degrees. Though I do get out and enjoy the warmer weather, it doesn’t come without a feeling of worry about the overall warming of the planet. Will it be 90 in April? Part of the seasonal shift often leaves me unsettled in a different way. I’m not entirely ready to move away from the cozy feeling of winter hibernation. Sometimes my energy level lags behind the shift in seasons. More daylight is so delightful but it also leaves me with a sense of obligation to make the most of it. I will get there eventually, I always do, but at my own pace, like with everything.

I feel as though I do a lot of monitoring of my own energy level, and I tend to associate feeling good with having lots of energy. But it is certainly true that even when we have less energy, we can also be in a good state. It is hard to remove the judgment from it all sometimes. Maybe it would be better to simply assess, in the same way I check the temperature to see what to wear for the morning walk with the dog, what our energy level is and what expectations we should have that are commensurate with that level. Sometimes I forget that it is just data. Instead of saying that my energy is “low” and that I feel “lazy” maybe it makes more sense to simply say my energy is at a 3 or 4 out of 10 so today I’ll plan to manage these set of tasks and save some other tasks for another day. The world has taught us so much language that is rooted in the idea that productivity is equivalent to value and worth. We feel obligated to “make the most” of sunny days or having lots of energy. We feel good when we “get a lot done.” There’s certainly nothing wrong with getting things done and our jobs and our lives require it. In fact, there is so much required of us it’s no wonder that when we have down time we don’t want to have any expectations about our time or what we do with it.

March has been a sluggish month for me so far. Creatively, I’ve felt muddy. I am not sure why this is, as I have writing projects at all stages of development, from drafting new work to submitting finished pieces and book-length works to contests and journals and publishers. I am at the end of a pottery semester and though I don’t always get the results I want, I’ve been practicing and learning and exploring. But right now, I’m feeling like I don’t have that much to show for my efforts. Intellectually, I know that the “point” of it all is the effort, not the result. A finished or published story, or a ceramic piece that comes out of the kiln looking beautiful are wonderful things, but as many people know, the lift we get from such things is fleeting. Because that lift is simply a feeling. A great mix of feelings, actually, but of course it is the doing from where we derive our true satisfaction. Yet we do need some successes to keep us motivated. The lifts are not insignificant.

Right now I have the sense of something churning that hasn’t revealed itself, as if my brain is working on something in the background it hasn’t shared with my conscious self yet. Will it be a new writing idea, a new mindset, is it processing past emotional turmoil? It feels like something is at work beneath the surface, which makes sense for March, as roots are busy waking beneath the soil and preparing to do the work of growth above ground.

I suppose it isn’t surprising that March – a month of transition – is hard for someone who has always had a tough time with transitions. Not just large life changes but simple things, like saying goodbye to someone after spending time with them. The past ten years have been filled with a lot of transitions in terms of work and relationships beginning and ending and moving houses and kids leaving home. So sometimes I think that when seasons change, I’m bracing for transition, regardless of how I feel about the coming season.

I try to accept this about myself, because everything is easier when you’re not judging your own responses to things, but sometimes my slowness in moving toward the next part annoys me and I get impatient. Impatience gets me into trouble a lot. The need to see progress sooner than I’m seeing it, whether it is with a health goal, a writing goal, a pottery goal, or some other objective creates unnecessary tension in my brain. The pressure we put on ourselves can sometimes be motivating but can also leave us feeling abraded and aggravated. Sometimes my heart feels like a skinned knee. It is difficult to determine what is the right amount to push ourselves toward what we want to accomplish, but to not push ourselves so hard we fall down.

I used to make myself do difficult things, like training for half marathons. I loved running and I loved feeling fit, but I also clung to the idea that being able to do something challenging made me feel strong at a time where I felt like I needed to prove to myself that I was strong. Now, I want to take long hikes because I enjoy them. I combine running and walking for a cardio workout and because I do think running at that level is fun and just enough. It doesn’t need to be extra challenging just for the sake of it. Maybe I’ve run out of things to prove. Or, at least, I finally know my own strength.

Still, I have struggled in the transition from my 40s to my 50s in certain ways. As with most things, we never quite know the ways in which something is going to be difficult until we are in the thick of it. I never imagined aging was going to be effortless, painless, easy. But the challenges hit differently than I thought, and there is so much emotion wrapped up in everything that happens to people’s bodies, lives, perspectives.

I turned 50 in 2020, a few months into the pandemic. I was selling the house where I’d raised my kids, where so much of my adult life had happened. The move itself was physically demanding, with lots of work done on the new house, and on the old house in preparation to sell, along with purging, packing, and physically moving. And the move came after a tumultuous number of years, full of change and heartbreak. So by the time the move was finally complete, I crashed. I feel as though all the exhaustion from the prior years, combined with the move, all caught up with me. Catching my breath took a long time. My energy was sapped. In some ways, I’m only now recuperating. It probably doesn’t matter whether some of my struggles over the past few years were related to all of that, or to the physical act of aging into my 50s, or all of it happening all at once. What matters is how we evaluate things when we pause to take stock of where we are and where we’re going.

I think that’s where acceptance comes in. I fell out of some healthy habits in the years after the move with regard to regular, dedicated exercise, but in the past year and a half, I’ve been trying to rebuild routines that previously served me well, but also to reimagine them, since I’m not the same person I used to be. Still, I find myself resisting the term “acceptance.” It feels loaded, and two-faced. It invites me to step into this next chapter of my life and enjoy without judgement or resistance the altering of old practices and development of new ones that serve me well now, at this exact time and place where I exist as a fifty-three-year-old human. At the same time, it also mocks me and questions me. Acceptance? Do not go gentle into that goodnight! That’s a bit melodramatic to be sure, but it does make me bristle and feel combative to accept things that I don’t feel great about. I’m sure there is a balance to be found but I have not yet gotten there, and maybe the muddy, churning month of March isn’t the right time to look for it.

I wonder if there’s a perspective, somewhere adjacent to acceptance, where we allow ourselves to simply be where we are, where we acknowledge that things are not perfect, and that we struggle with this or that, and that we’ll continue to do so. We know we’ll fight some things and embrace others. We know we’ll make mistakes as well as plans—to improve or change course or reimagine. And we know we’ll enjoy some small victories; it is reasonable to expect some, to keep our eyes open for them. Maybe all of this is a part of a continual process of alignment, where who we are connects with who we thought we’d be, where we find our common ground. Acknowledge and align seems like a game plan I can live with. At least, they are buzz words I can call to mind when I’m feeling as messy as March mud, and when I forget about those sleepy roots beneath the soil stretching out and preparing for growth.

Love, Cath

On Curiosity and Conversation

By Catherine DiMercurio

How strange that September is beginning is a thought that chirps through my brain these days. This time of year is so laden with transitions it is easy to feel unprepared. The loss of light has been startling, and though temperatures have spiked this weekend, there has been a coolness to the nights and mornings that smells of autumn. The softer light and cooler air touch your skin differently. I don’t mind grabbing a sweater.

There’s much to love about what comes next, but for me, each season always feels too short (except for winter). In this space, I’ve written often about transitions and transformations.

Sometimes transitions sneak up on us the way fall does. Softly but inevitably. Not urgently, but with a quiet sureness. And internally, we feel ourselves needing to recalibrate, wondering how we hold on to the best parts of one season as we enter another.

I think of what I’ve been loving about summer and how to carry that into fall, despite shorter days and cooler temperatures. I no longer have the busyness of shifting from children’s summer vacations to back-to-school, so the seasonal shift is gentler than it used to be. But it can feel jarring, nonetheless.

At a farm stand in Ann Arbor, I bought a small watermelon, some peaches, and a couple of apples, and I thought how wonderful September is, that it encompasses all this, that it is summer and fall, in conversation with one another.

It’s easy to think in terms of conflict, where we focus on the ending of one thing and the beginning of another, and the summer people and the fall people on social media are either lamenting or rejoicing. It’s easy to look at our own apparently competing desires as an equation to be solved, where the variable, “x,” will equal something when we’re done figuring it out. We will do the math and the result will be an answer to the problems that plague us, to the what-iffing we do about both the past and the future. I’m curious about the conversation between the “this or that” scenarios we paint for ourselves. And how, amid all this contemplation, do we sustain an attachment to the present moment? How do we position ourselves fully in who and what we are right now, when we are so busy trying to solve the past and anticipate the future? We fixate on healing and learning from the past, on preparing for a future we can’t possibly know, but we try to know it anyway. Meanwhile in the present we are trying not to disappear.

Maybe the problem starts when we are little, when we are constantly being asked what we want to be when we grow up, and do we have a girlfriend or boyfriend. Why do people do this to children? This felt like a fairly common practice when I was a child. The goals were laid out definitively for us, even if we were unable to articulate them as such as elementary schoolers. We were not even allowed to live in the present as eight-year-olds. It’s no wonder it is difficult to do so now. The messaging we got from so many angles was that the whole point of life was work and a partner. So when one or both of those things don’t work out how we planned, of course everything feels scrambled. And even if everything goes according to plan, many people still find themselves with a persistent “now what” sort of feeling, since everything they’ve pursued has been external.

These days, I try to train myself to savor the current moment and it has meant a certain type of negotiating. For me, being able to fully experience the present means that I must stop trying so hard to eliminate anxiety about the future or analysis of the past. I don’t want to fight myself anymore. It’s exhausting, and it has begun to feel uncomfortable and disingenuous to wish I was different than I am. For me, the thing to do is to focus on what else is also existing right now, amidst the familiar habits of worry and rumination. Can I shine a light on it? Is it excitement? Hope? Curiosity?

I feel as though the path, for me, is peace-making with the parts of me that admittedly feel in the way sometimes. Maybe instead, I should listen to what they need to tell me, listen with a compassionate ear for hearing, not solving. Maybe if I simply say, I understand your concerns. It’s normal for you to feel that way, they will feel heard. They won’t have to shout anymore because I’ve stopped trying to ignore them. And they’ll stop feeling like I’m trying to figure them out of existence. In a way, given that anxious tendencies develop from vulnerable parts of ourselves, we have to be as patient as we would with a child, and sometimes repeat ourselves, with kindness and empathy.

Then, perhaps, once they quiet down, I can listen to the other parts of myself that don’t always get the attention, the quiet ones, who say softly that things are good, that there is much to delight in, even amidst the anxiety. They remind me to trust myself. To be curious and have fun and to not forget about open-heartedness.

Though I sometimes must remind myself to be playful and silly, I never regret it, and it always connects me with that curious, light-hearted, open part of myself. My son tips me off to the best boxed vegan mac and cheese, and I splurge and buy 12 boxes so I always have something yummy and easy on hand, childhood comfort food. I giggle as I feed my dog bites of ice-cold watermelon and he nudges me for more, his whiskers tickling the bare skin of my summer-brown knee. I sing along to the radio on the way home from pottery, windows open, bright light from the full moon shining down. I make wishes on dandelion puffs. I play with the waves at the beach.

I remember how to do this, to be delighted, to give this part of myself a seat at the table. But usually, she doesn’t want to sit still. She is laughing and playing freeze tag in the back yard with her siblings, running through her father’s perfect lawn in her bare feet, not minding that she’s “it” again. She is me, I have to remind myself sometimes, and our lungs are full of waiting wishes.

Love, Cath

On the Bearing of Unbearable Loss, or, an Ode to a Best Friend

By Catherine DiMercurio

Like any major grief, the pain you feel when you lose a pet is one of those soul-bruises that you feel every day. Your heart remembers, your muscles do, before your brain does. And then upon waking fully, you realize that this is a different world now, you are in a new phase of your life, the one without your sweet baby in it.

I lost Phin, my dog of 14 years, last week. Lost is such a nice way to put it when the reality is much graver. We bear witness to a painful decline and no matter how much we want to avoid it, we bear the responsibility for making a decision guided by love and empathy, and the desire to protect our loved one from further suffering. It doesn’t matter if the vet and countless other people tell you it’s the right thing to do. It doesn’t matter if you’ve known it for a while. You still have to make this impossible decision, and then follow through on it, and then live with it every day.

I picked up Phin’s ashes recently. It is a startling thing, to see what a body is reduced to.

When the grief hits the hardest, I try to remember how joyful Phin looked when galloping across the yard toward me. I’ve combed through all my photos and videos of him, but I don’t quite have one that matches the memory of him I hold in my head. He loved to run. He loved his walks. I aways used to say he could be at death’s door and still want to go for walks, and this was true to the end. His last walk, the day before his death, was brief, and only lasted a few minutes, a few steps. But he still stepped into the harness the way he always did, certain and eager.

In the mornings he would greet me with a wagging tail and lean into my legs the way big dogs do. Countless times during his life, he upended beverages, either by sweeping them across a coffee table and onto the floor with his tail, or by bumping into a side table and sending everything clattering and spilling.

We don’t get the same death rituals for our pets that we get with people, not in the same structured and expected way. But my dogs are the ones I talk to every single day, there for me when I wake up in the morning and when I go to bed at night. Constant companions since the pandemic sent us home from the office, never to return.

Phinny loved bread, sardines, and pancakes more than just about any other foods. Pita was the food that brought him back from the brink after a bout of pneumonia sent him to the ER a couple of years ago. The day before he died, after refusing rotisserie chicken, hunks of cheddar, a tin of sardines in olive oil, I offered fluffy, fresh pita bread. And he just turned his head away.

I want to remember all of his youthful frolicking more than his painful last days, but it’s not working like that for me, not yet. I’ve lost dogs before. I know how sharp the pain is in the beginning. I know how narrowly focused my brain is on the suffering that prompts the call to the vet. It is such a horrible call, and I think I am self-soothing, in a way, by reminding myself of what was necessary.

My dreams are haunted, but not by him. I’d welcome a glimpse of him in my dreams. I’m eager for any sign I can find that he’s out there, on the other side. I don’t know why I wholeheartedly subscribe to the lore of the cardinal being a sign of a passed loved one, but I do, and I saw one the other day when I was getting ready to take the puppy for a walk. I opened the door and there it was, flitting in the burning bush right in front of me. To be clear, the bush was not on fire; that’s just the common name of it. But a nice touch for a sign from the other side, no?

My big emotions are operating within me the way they have in the past, leaving me longing for connection but also resistant to comfort. Nothing feels quite right. I only want the softest fabrics against my skin, I can’t find anything that tastes really, really good, and there are few sounds that soothe me. I heard a bird this morning chirping in a quiet, rhythmic way that reminded me of the way Phin used to whine when he wanted something. He always sounded like a bird when he whined. When we first brought him home as a puppy, I used to think that a bird had gotten trapped in the house but then I’d realize it was him.

Overzealous gardening a few days after Phinny’s death left me with a very sore knee. Apparently “gardener’s knee” is a thing. The pain is more prolonged and sharper than I imagined anything gardening-related could be, but I think in general my body is telling me to slow down and let myself feel the things I’d rather avoid feeling. But it’s hard and it takes so much out of me. And while anyone who has gone through this understands how ongoingly brutal the pain of losing a pet is, as someone pointed out, there’s no bereavement time from work or anything. You walk into various situations expected to keep performing and sometimes it’s fine, the compartmentalizing, but gosh is it tiring. There are no shortcuts. We’re either exhausted from feeling the pain or exhausted from all the ways we try to avoid it, and we have to do both in order to make it through. Feel it, and take breaks from it.

I’m not ready for this part. I don’t want it. But I guess that’s the way it is when we lose anyone, either by death or other circumstances. But I certainly would never wish away a moment of the time I had with him, and I get that what I’m going through now, what my kids are, is the price of all that time, all those years of love and joy. I miss his earnest face and his big goofy smile and his big dog lean and his ability to see a simple neighborhood walk as expansive and fulfilling. And maybe it wasn’t just the walk. Maybe some of it was his appreciation of the company on the other end of the leash. I’d like to think so anyway. I’d like him to know I tried to give him a good life, and I’m sorry for the mopey years when everything was a struggle. Miss you, my sweet boy.

I wish this wasn’t such an inelegant attempt at expressing what this first week has been like, but we have to start processing somewhere. To anyone who has experienced this, I’m sending you big hugs.

Love, Cath

On Home and Hum

By Catherine DiMercurio

My home is full of rocks, pinecones, driftwood. Whenever I visit a place that gives me that particular feeling, the one that makes my cells sing, I snag a memento. It’s not just bringing the outside in, it’s trying to maintain a particular hum within myself even when I’m away from the places that strike that chord.

For the past several years, I’ve thought a lot about home and belonging, in ways I’d never imagined I’d be contemplating. For a long time, it didn’t occur to me to wonder how we attach our psyche to a certain place, or why. But I’ve been experiencing, for the past decade, almost, what feels like a great untethering. The bonds I have with my children will never be undone, but so much else has unknotted, leaving me free to discover myself in new ways, but also creating a sense of perpetual drift.

I’ve made this home cozy, this place I’ve landed for now. But this was a place of convenience, a place I moved to during the pandemic because I needed to move, and it was affordable, close to my then-boyfriend, close to where my kids had gone away to school, and close enough to an office I’ve been back to about twice since the pandemic began. It will soon outlive its purpose, has already outlived at least a couple of them.

Here’s the thing: if/when I move again, it will be one of the few major life decisions I’ve made completely on my own. I’ve got proximity issues and financial boundaries that will guide my decision, but there aren’t any compromises to be made with regard to what anyone else wants or needs out of this potential move. It’s not nothing. It’s a big something, which is why I’ve been trying to tweeze apart all the strands of what matters. And what I want more than anything is to feel at home, to feel like I belong in the place where I land. But what does that mean? How do I find it?

As I look at what it means to feel at home in a particular place, to belong, I study the places that have felt like home in the past and try to deconstruct memories so I can put it all back together with the pieces I’m working with now. At the same time, the versions of myself that felt at home in those places no longer exist.

I had a childhood friend whose grandmother had a cottage on Lake Huron. Once, I was allowed to go up north with her and her family to visit. I was about ten years old. I don’t remember much, except that it was stormy out, and we were inside, staring through a bank of windows out at the lightning and the rain dancing across the waves. I was transfixed. Transformed. I don’t have many memories that seem etched so clearly into my consciousness, but I know that our brains encode emotionally powerful events differently, so I’m certain that the fact I can retrieve this memory as easily as pulling a Polaroid out of my back pocket underscores how much it mattered to me.

It was because of events such as this that I began to build the wish to someday live by the water. Over the years, the picture of what this might look like, and who might be with me, has changed, but the essentials have remained the same. I always imagined having a summer place up north the way so many Michigan families do, but without a cottage that has been in the family for generations, or without a second income, the idea that I could own a second home is not within the realm of possibility. But lately, as work has shifted to a hybrid, largely from-home situation, a new idea began to take shape. Maybe I could purchase a year-round home on the Great Lake closest to me, and still be near enough for a monthly or so in-person visit to the office, which is all that’s required of me. Maybe this could be a different version of my childhood dream, one that I could conceivably execute on my own. Certainly there are a lot of factors to consider and I’m a ways off from making a decision. But recently, my son and I took a reconnaissance mission to a lake town that seemed like a decent prospect.

We drove to a small town on the east side of Michigan’s thumb. The town is perched on the coast of Lake Huron. The tiny downtown is home to a beautiful old library with a stained glass window featuring a pair of bright green dragons. Most of the little shops were closed for the season or had reduced hours in the winter, but I could tell that the vibe was cozy. There was a marina, but we couldn’t get right down to the water, so after driving around some neighborhoods, we stopped at a nearby county park so we could spend a little time on the beach. It was the last day of February and was relatively mild though the wind had a chill to it. As we headed toward the water, we could hear the waves crashing on the beach. Instantly, tension I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying in my chest dissipated. I found myself sighing and smiling as we approached the water. The waves lapped at our boots. Most of the sandy beach was covered in snow. But at the water’s edge, the churning waves were busy polishing beautiful stones, rounding off all the rough edges and leaving a swath of smooth little worlds, a multicolored universe for your eyes to take in each time the waves recede.

As always, whenever I’m near one of the Great Lakes, I hunt for Petoskey stones. I’ve never been able to find one before, though both of my kids have. No matter how diligently I have searched in the past, I’ve never been lucky enough to spot one. But that day on the beach, I did. I found one. I didn’t believe it at first. I whooped with joy and showed it to my son, then later sent a picture of it to my older kiddo, both of whom confirmed it was indeed a Petoskey.

As we walked back to the car, my thoughts churned. How was I going to do it, I wondered. And when? How could I actual bring the dream of living someplace like this to fruition? Should I? Could I? Wasn’t the finding of the Petoskey a sign? As we sat in the car, sipping our coffee and warming back up, I tried to unpack my thoughts and feelings with my son. “I have to figure this out,” I told him. “It’s a good dream.” He agreed, but I repeated it anyway, and suddenly I began to cry, though I hadn’t expect it and wasn’t exactly sure why it was happening at that moment. The tears didn’t last long, but the impact of that moment is still with me. Moments like these are evidence. They are our intuition, our gut, our true selves, insisting on what it is they want and need. Aren’t they?

It is so easy to rationalize things. To say, yeah, it’s a nice dream but the logistics don’t make sense. Or the timing isn’t right, and probably won’t be for some time, if ever, because, because, because. But I have this reaction whenever I’m by one of the Great Lakes. I had it over the summer when I camped in the Upper Peninsula. I had it when my sister and I escaped to Lake Michigan a couple of summers ago. And I had it when I was a child, staring out at Lake Huron as young child.

It’s easy to just keep making the way things are now work. To tell myself the dream is just a fantasy. To tell myself I can have it in pieces, in periodic visits to any one of this state’s beautiful lakes. Maybe it’s more special that way anyway.

There hasn’t been a time where, being near one of the big lakes, I haven’t been deeply and powerfully moved, to my core, and filled with great peace and magnificent energy at the same time. I’m certain the lakes have a similar effect on most people. But I can know only the interior of my own heart, and when I feel this tug of the water, it feels like it matters. Deeply, to every version of myself I’ve been and will be.

I have spoken before of all the erasure that happened at the time of my divorce, where I saw my future evaporating in front of me. It was as if memories of things that hadn’t happened yet were being siphoned from my consciousness. Each time I began a new relationship, each day that it progressed and still seemed full of hope, I tentatively began to imagine a new future. Is this it?, I would wonder. Is this the size and shape of it? And with each ending, the erasure began again.

To not be able to see any of what the future might hold, to not be able to imagine it the way I used to, feels the way heights or deep water feels to me—vast, threatening, frightening. (Ironic, no? The way I long to be near an enormous lake and yet the thought of being in deep water is so scary? I can’t explain it.)

My past has taught me that there is so much you can’t count on, so much that changes regardless of what you planned for, so it’s usually best to not be too wedded to those ideas. Maybe that’s why I’m resisting myself, pulling away from the dream as soon as I’m away from the water. As much as it comforts me to have a hazy outline, a plan that’s adaptable, a goal to work toward, I am afraid to claim it, when so many other things haven’t worked out.

Maybe, at the heart of it, I’m scared that I can’t trust myself to carry it out. Maybe I’m afraid that I’ll betray myself by failing to get there.

In the essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes, “Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.” The line keeps coming back to me. At times, we feel out of sync with the world around us, and then we find ourselves in a place where everything feels in tune, where we are a plucked string whose vibrations are in harmony with everything around us. When we are seeking answers, or trying to determine what path is the best one for us, how can we ignore that cosmic hum? How can I? Is it so hard to believe that I can get us there, me and all the other versions of myself who have longed for it?

Do you ever feel like you already know the answer you’ve been looking for? Or, you assume there must be something wrong about the dream because the path is so unclear, or there are things about the journey that frighten you? I don’t know if I have my answer or not. Have I been carrying it with me this whole time, like a little lake stone in my pocket? I’ve been trying to write this post for days. I keep clumsily getting in my own way. I don’t know that I’ve gotten it right. I’m still trying to peer through the clouds, listening beneath the wind for that hum.

Love, Cath

On Windmills and Waterfalls, Dreaming and Doing

By Catherine DiMercurio

Sometimes we have to protect and feed our energy.

I love a morning moon. Recently I stood under a 5 a.m. waning gibbous, after the harvest moon. I’m not sure what planet glowed nearby but between the moon, the planet, the still bright stars, and a symphony of crickets, letting the dogs out that early was quite pleasant. It was good energy to begin the day on.

I’ve been thinking a lot about energy lately. My sister recently told me about a dream she had, involving the two of us and a windmill and a waterfall. I feel things churning toward change, as if I’m at some sort of turning point but I haven’t yet discerned what’s next or where exactly I am. I liked the symbols of energy and power she spoke of.

I’ve had strange dreams about energy as well. One was about electrical cords that were plugged in in strange places, like across the room instead of the nearest outlet, so I was always tripping over them. Another was about a horse. My kids and dogs and I were in the pen with him, and he was alternately restless and bucking, or nuzzling us. Finally, we realized he was hungry, and after we fed him, he was content. This beautiful creature was trying to tell me something simple and urgent, and was getting impatient that I couldn’t figure it out. These dreams left me feeling as though I should be doing something.

On another recent morning, I stood outside at dawn, and white clouds blanketed the sky. I couldn’t get a sense of the sun rising so much as the sky began to lighten every so gradually. And I thought, maybe some transitions are like that. Soft, quiet, and so subtle you don’t notice they’re happening. So unobtrusive you can’t tell where the light is coming from. They are not full of do-ing energy but with be-ing energy.

What is the right balance between energetically pursuing your dreams and patiently waiting for your efforts to pay off? When I look at where I am, what I’m doing, and what I want, it’s unclear where I should focus my energy. Sort of. I am pursuing my writing goals; I’m not yet it a position to pursue my dream of living by woods or water; I’m feeding my creative needs not only with writing but with pottery; I’m maintaining friendships, and trying to be a good dog guardian, and doing my best to be there for my kids to the extent that they still need me to be. But a question mark hovers in the relationship category.

For a long time, I thought if I experienced loneliness, then I was not doing the “being on my own” thing properly. As if I had to prove that solo was perfect and right for me by being fine all the time. But everyone gets lonely. That doesn’t mean I’m failing. Occasional loneliness is a normal thing for everyone, for people in relationships and for people not in relationships. There are going to be times when the feeling crests, but that doesn’t mean it has to swallow us up.

I was hiking this weekend, and while I often find a friend to go with, on this occasion, my usual hiking buddies were busy, so I went alone. I was excited to explore a different part of my usual trail. While doing so, a couple came up behind me. They were walking a bit faster than I was, and to avoid a prolonged period of stalking right at my heels, they said to one another, “want to do a little trot here?” and they jogged past me and got far enough ahead that I wouldn’t be encroaching on them.

When I thought of the ease they had with one another, and having heard snippets of their conversation, I felt a sudden piercing burst of loneliness that brought tears to my eyes. How beautiful to have a likeminded partner to share a hike with, to be so familiar with one another that the conversation flows, and you instinctively communicate with one another on the trail. I thought of my past relationships, and how little we actually had in common in terms of how we enjoyed spending our free time. It’s easy in a moment of loneliness to slide further and further into the past. But I also had the very conscious thought that I did not want to let this bitter pang to continue intruding on my current joy.

I remembered something—a tool to help ground you when you’re feeling anxiety or grief taking over. I knew I needed to firmly root myself into the present moment, the beautiful experience I was having out in the world, not the twists and turns inside my head and heart. I reached out, letting my fingertips skim the bark of a beech tree, and then the next tree, and the next. I took deep breaths of woodsy air, warm and humid on this September morning. I looked down. At my feet was a fallen yellow leaf, of a shape I couldn’t quite identify. It didn’t look like anything around it. I thought it was vaguely poplar shaped, but oddly asymmetrical. I carried it with me, rubbing it between my fingers as though it were a talisman helping me ward off evil.

Because it was. Not that our emotions themselves are evil. But here’s the thing. There’s a difference between noticing/feeling your emotions and having them bond with anxiety in that toxic way they sometimes do. Anxiety distorts our emotions, mutates them. It’s a bad combo. I saw that beautiful couple being awesome in the woods together, and the emotions came at me hard and fast. Grief, loneliness, the confusion of “have I ever had that?” I felt it all in an instant. But I knew anxiety was kicking in when I began to ask the “what if” questions. What if I never find it, etc. That’s when I reached out to the trees for help. We have to know when to reach out.

Funny that I found a little distorted leaf that looked like it didn’t belong anywhere since that’s exactly how I was feeling. It’s like the woods were saying, “you’re not alone.” And that’s also when I realized that feeling lonely doesn’t undermine any progress we’ve made with self-trust and healing. It is simply another emotion. We notice it, feel it, and it’s a good sign when we can prevent it from pairing up with anxiety.

I was pleased that I’d managed to hold onto the good energy, to nurture it. But what of the other energy, the dream energy that seemed to be urging me to do, to act. Was it relationship related? Am I ready to try again? Or is it better to simply be, be me, be open to possibility, to wait and see what happens?

So much of what we want in life, so many of our dreams, are not entirely within our control, so it’s no wonder that it’s confusing when we consider how much energy to put into something. I think we have to listen to what our dreams are pointing us to, but they can be hard to interpret. Maybe the doing my subconscious was hinting at was about simply protecting my own energy. Not wasting it. Feeding it. Maybe it was about reassurance, a reminder to keep tending and keep trusting.

Love, Cath