Love, Liz

I was going through it. I mean, what else is new? But this particular time, I was really going through it.

And, I needed to stop. Quickly.

After working for my whole life, starting with selling greeting cards door to door at age twelve, I had quit my job to say home with my baby boy. I was forty one when he was born - so I wasn’t messing around. Energy is at a premium in your forties, you know what I mean? I had my priorities in clear focus. My son. End of list.

Divorce wasn’t on the bingo card. Especially eight months after moving into the new house I spent all my money on.

Parenting a toddler while looking for a job is already a juggling act on a unicycle, but the shrieking panic of a mortgage with checks bank account eleven dollars to your name is another box of cheese altogether. I was already whittled down to a nub, having spent the previous few years watching cancer steal my father from my arms, which happened three weeks before we moved in. To say that I was having trouble gathering my thoughts would be a staggering understatement. It would be like saying the passengers of the Titanic were having trouble keeping their undergarments dry. We were all drowning.

Look, I made it. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t make it. Friends showed up in rowboats and took me places to yell and party and relax. My mother threw me life preservers and floated dollars, home cooked meals, strategy sessions and babysitting services. Even my dad, from wherever it is dads go to worry about thermostat settings in the afterlife showed up in my dreams. No one let me stay underwater. No one agreed that I was finished. No one let the self pity win, even when I insisted.

But getting the inside of my head straight was a different story.

I used writing for clarity, wrote to do lists, wrote rules to follow, wrote about new career goals. I had to create a whole new direction and go up new flights of stairs and ascend new ropes in the gym class of life. But mostly, I had to remember who I was, before all this mess, to get myself off the ground. And I couldn’t do it when the voices in my skull kept asking me what I could have possibly been thinking, how I could have screwed up my son’s life before it barely began, and how I could have been so stupid.

Hi Liz,

It’s hard now, and it’s lonely. But you are stronger than you think, and you are beautiful and you have love all around you. Don’t give up.

Love, Liz

One of the things about the degree of separation you get from creativity is that when you see yourself from the outside, you don’t have to be a jerk about it. You can beat yourself up while you're in your head, sure. I’m great at it. But at a point, I had to be pragmatic, at least that’s what the bills that kept coming to my house implied. I had to work, I had to somehow keep walking. And I had to show my son what it looked like to change out of pajamas once in a while and carry on. So, I had to make myself believe I could do at least one of those things.

Hey Liz,

I am so lucky to have you in my life. You are perfect, right now, exactly as you are. I love you.

Love, Liz

I needed to find compassion for my many, many, many mistakes. I needed to get a foothold on confidence and self-esteem. And I needed to figure out how to give the forgiveness that I never had trouble giving to others, to myself.

How? I mean, really, how? I was a jackass by every objective measure. I had botched things in such a huge way, how could I possibly begin to turn that frown upside down and not slap myself for even attempting such optimism? Not possible. For me.

But, the book? The girl in the book? Oooooof. She was a mess. She was a different story.

I used the degree of separation. I cheered for her. The broken one. The hurt one. The one I wanted to get back up. Not me, the idiot. Her. The sweet lamb who made some bad choices. Her. So, I wrote notes we would find together in the pages ahead. When we both needed them.

Dear Liz,

Have I told you today how beautiful and sexy you are? Have I told you how much I love you? Well, you are and I do.

Love, Liz

I couldn’t do it for myself, I couldn’t say it when it was for me. But I could do it for her, I could write it when it was in red ink in a journal sitting on a table.

And I did it until the distance between the words and my actions got closer and closer. Until the rules I made for myself became how I walked in my world, until the pain I closed beneath the cover of my journal became processed emotions and broken patterns. Until the uncomfortable praise became spoken mantra. Until the girl in the book became the woman in the room.

It’s not easy, and I won’t say I feel awesome all the time because that wouldn’t be true. But this tool is always available, through creative practice, any creative practice. So remember that the next time you’re having trouble keeping your undergarments dry.

Dear Liz,

You made it to here. No matter what happened or how hard you cried, you and your baby boy made it to here. And that was the goal. And that is worth cake. Also, I love you.

Love, Liz