“Where does it hurt?”

That’s the question Civil Rights legend, Ruby Sales, began asking at the beginning of her activism. She talks about this at length on an On Being episode with Krista Tippett, a conversation I’ve listened to or read the transcript half a dozen times. It’s a question that is meant to prompt recall, to help us tell the story about the choices we make. It’s all information.

This question came to me at the right time. It was 2016 and I’d already begun a personal excavation, but it helped me soften the experience. You can’t ask that question without compassion. It’s not asking about blame or regret, it’s just asking about the pain. Once I could identify it, create an environment for healing by wrapping it with love and care, only then could I mine it for the lesson.

Before this, if you’d have told me that my deepest fear could be my greatest gift, I’d have rolled my eyes so hard I would have injured myself. I wouldn’t have even been able to articulate what that was and certainly not without listing all the people who should be on trial for causing it. And while I now know that that is also necessary information, staying in the blame doesn’t help me heal the wound. And if I can’t heal the wound, I’m just busy nursing the wound.

So now I’ll ask you: Where is your most tender pain point? How did it get there? Mine it for information, what can you learn?

I can tell you mine. It’s rejection. And because I’ve been rejected and more painfully, my ideas have been rejected, just the fear of it can drive the bus. It’s good information. It’s why I want my work to be meaningful. And now, it’s the purpose of my service, I want your work to be meaningful too. This is my gift.

YOUR lesson is YOUR gift. And I hope you’ll share with those who need it too.

Next week: I’m on vacation! See you the following.

My new campaign, creating images for creative women over 40 to support their transitions, their dreams, their new identities, is a joy. If you are changing careers, turning your hobby into your hustle, or just need validation that your are the artist you’re ready to say you are, I’m booking image sessions starting at the end of the Summer and into Fall.

While I’m working on refining my The Unruffled website, you can go to my online photography portfolio for more information and find a contact form for session inquiry. Not in the Austin area? Let’s have a conversation. I’d love to come to you!

And that is the problem with need-holes.

When my life gets tedious, mediocre, BLAH is exactly the place I struggle the most. When I have to do the dishes, again, when I have to make dinner, again, when one week becomes indistinguishable from the next is when my brain starts seeking stimulation. And yes, a trip to the museum or a movie would most likely satisfy, but that is not where my thoughts go first. That feeling of lack, void, is the hole I filled with booze or sex or new shoes, so now when I feel its insatiable mouth gaping open, my first thought is ACT OUT.

I can't always see these feelings coming, but the longer I'm sober, the more certain patterns become clear. This is that time of year with Halloween on the horizon, I know Christmas and the New Year will come blazing in like a speed train and I'm already regretfully looking back at 2018 wondering if I've done enough, if I've landed where I want to be.

Um, future-trip much?

I've found myself fantasizing that I'm floating in a lake with my ears underwater, where all I can hear is my own heartbeat. If I stay there, time seems to stop. I just want to float and float, oblivious to time, ignorant of its slippage.

Let's face it, I still want to change the way I feel. I don't want to sit with it, move through it, lean into it. I want to throw any self-helping book-quoting meme across the floor and watch it smash into a bazillion pieces. But I don't. I don't act out either. I stitch. Stitching, with a threaded needle, is the one thing I've found in sobriety that forces me still except for my hands and that thread, in and out. It's the one thing that makes me okay with the maddening idea that I have to just stew in my feeling of lack, that there is nothing outside of me that is going to fill my hole so I may as well stitch up my fucking jeans because nothing else is going to get done and I have to be okay with that because I am okay. Time will still slip, dishes will once again accumulate in the sink, I'll make burgers for the 20th time this month and soon enough, it won't all feel so dreadful as it does now. I once heard that if you are drinking (or insert whatever you use to fill the need-hole) to make life tolerable, you must look at what is intolerable. Even though I haven't had a sip of alcohol in four years and some change, this feeling is here to remind me that I'm only tolerating some things and my guess is, it's bigger than dishes.

*Addendum: I published the above words in a newsletter that went out to my subscribers earlier this week. It resonated with many, so I wanted to add some thoughts I’ve had since.

I don’t think there is a cure for pain, as Morphine’s Mark Sandman’s words searched in song, but if he ever arrived there, he surely wouldn’t need his drugs. I wish that Mark’s addendum would have been that he found it, but his heart finally broke all the way on a stage in Italy in 1999. I guess my conclusion thus far is no conclusion. When pain comes, we have to see it, acknowledge it like I did in my words above, recognize that it’s in the room, give it a comfortable chair. Let pain prop its feet up, as it may be here for a while. See pain as a teacher because without the contrast, we wouldn’t really know joy. And when pain gets up to leave, know that it is never Goodbye, only Until We Meet Again.

It is no cure, but what I have realized in the last few days is I am much better when I have goals. Maybe that is my future-focused tendencies but I got out my Name-It Journal and jotted down the Big Ideas that I’d like to see to fruition in the coming months. I put so much energy around that yearly calendar flip, but it really is just an arbitrary construct and time is as expansive as I intend it to be. Over four years ago, I left the particular pain I co-created with alcohol behind, so I now have room to see that when I am feeling angsty, it is always something bigger than the dishes. The creativity I am not bringing forth will always be a pain-point for me, the universality of that said best in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas 70,

If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you.

It’s no cure, but it is a solution.

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Well that’s good to know.

Can You Fill Up This Need-Hole For Me, Please?