Elevate

When I got fired from my job in June, it pretty much knocked me flat. Not only had this been a job, it had been a calling. Add to that the betrayal by people I'd thought were my friends.

My true friends rushed in to lift me, like emotional EMTs.

Amy said, “You haven’t lost anything. I know you will find the medicine in this poison.”

Dani said, "You’ll get through this, and I will help you.”

Erin said, “Fuck them. I’ll be right over with wine and take-out,” which at the time were my favorite words.

My facebook inbox lit up like a Christmas tree as my friends across the country got wind of the news. They said, “We love you. We’ve got your back. Nothing can erase all the good work you did.”

A few days later I talked with my friend Julie, and she said, “They haven’t knocked you down. They have elevated you.”

“Elevated me? How?”

“Because I know you. You will find the good in it. You’ll write about it, and you’ll share your story with others. In the end you will be stronger because of it. You will rise above this, and that’s how they have elevated you.”

Of course, I hadn’t thought of it like that.

Author and spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson says that when someone deflects a miracle from you, when they block goodness that is meant for you, the Universe will hold the miracle in trust, and will find another way to make sure you receive it. It may come from another person or a different job, or another door will open that you never knew existed.

In other words, when someone tries to knock you down, you should really thank them for teaching you courage and strength, and also for teaching you who you don’t want to be, because in the meantime, all the good things that are your due are still on their way.

No one can really ever take anything from you. It’s up to each of us to lay down in defeat, or to elevate.

I choose to elevate.

Tammey

 

Tammey and I, talking about life.

My cousin Tammey and I were born just months apart and grew up together like Irish twins. Our mothers are sisters. Sometimes, she and my cousin Tracey lived at my house. When my mom’s life was falling apart, we lived at their house.

In our families, there was chaos swirling around us, but we clung to one another for stability. Tammey was only nine months older than me but she always treated me like her baby. She was protective of me. When we were four-years-old and there was violence in my home, we held hands and hid in the closet together. When we were eleven years old, she saved me from drowning in the ocean. In our teens, she taught me how to stand up for myself in a fight. She taught me how to hold my liquor, and what to do when I got my period. 

In our early twenties, Tammey and I both had daughters. Just like us, our girls were nine months apart. Tammey's daughter, of course, was older. Tammey was sweet-natured and generous, but being the tender heart that she was, she wasn't able to heal those wounds from our childhoods. Not that she didn't try. She really, really tried.

Our sweet Tammey was found dead in a hotel room on Saturday night. We don’t have the autopsy results back yet.

I honestly don’t know how life goes on without her. She was such a huge part of my growing up, and is such a huge part of who I am. I told Troy I feel like I've lost a limb. I can hardly put one foot in front of the other.

My first memoir is filled with stories about her. They are all I have left. 

When my friend Phyllis was dying, I asked if she believed in an afterlife. She said she believed people lived on after death in the stories you told about them.

If that is true, I will tell my stories about Tammey.

This is one…

Summer, 1975

It’s a perfect summer day at Malibu beach with just enough breeze to keep you from sweating.  Tammey, Tracey and I unpack the cooler and set out chips and sandwiches while mom puts a t-shirt on Christopher, who’s running around like the Tasmanian devil. We smooth out our towels and lay on our bellies to eat our sandwiches. Tracey has to make an indent in the sand with her elbows because she’s getting boobs now. Me and Tammey don’t have those yet so we can lay flat and comfortable. I’m so glad to be back with my cousins again.

Mom finally brought me home from Aunt Laura’s. I lived there for the whole fifth grade. We got our house back from those renters, but they trashed it. The carpet is all ripped up, the pool is a green swampy mess again.

Mom lays in a beach chair reading a magazine. Tracey sets up her portable AM radio and spins the dial until she finds a song we all like. Band on the run blasts from the little speaker. Tracey sings along, and I do the harmony part.

Christopher runs around kicking sand in everyone’s faces.

“Stop it, hyper!” I yell at him.

“Oh, he’s just having fun. Leave him alone,”  Mom says.

“But he’s getting sand in my sandwich!” I protest.

“Why do you think they call it a SAND- wich...ha ha ha,” Mom says.

I roll my eyes, “Oh brother. Don’t be such a dildo, Mom.”

Tracey’s eyes go wide, she spits out her soda and starts cracking up. Tammey is laughing too.

“What did you say?” Mom hisses, squinting her eyes at me.

I look at her, then at Tracey and Tammey who are hysterical.

“What? What did I say?”

Her look softens a little. She leans in closer to me.

“Do you know what that word means?”

“What word…. dildo?” and there go my cousins, cracking up again, even harder this time.

“Stop saying that!” she says in a hushed whisper, and looks around at the people next to us to see if they heard. “What do you think that word means?” she asks.

“I don’t know….. does it mean…silly?” I say, starting to feel kind of stupid as my cousins howl and roll back and forth on their beach towels.

Mom puts her hand over her eyes, then looks up at me.

“C’mere” she wiggles her finger toward her. I crawl over. She leans toward me and cups her hand against my ear. “It means….. It means….. artificial penis.” she whispers.

I back away from her. “Ewwww! Gross!”

My cousins are laughing so hard they have tears running down their cheeks. Even though I feel completely stupid, I have to admit it is pretty funny, and we all have a good laugh except for Christopher who keeps asking, over and over, “What tho funny, what tho funny?”

We finish our sandwiches and get up to throw our trash away. The sand is hot under our feet and the breeze has died down.

“Did your mom tell you what dildo means?” Tracey asks me as we walk back from the trash cans.

“Yeah, it’s an artificial penis, whatever that is.”

“No, it’s not.” Tracey says, “It’s a fake dick.”

Tammey cracks up, “You said dick!”

She grabs my hand, “I’m hot. Let’s go in the water!”

Tracey, Tammey and I race toward the water and dive straight in so you don’t feel that first shock of the cold. This is a perfect day. Me and my cousins, body surfing in the ocean. We ride in wave after wave to the shore, then turn around and jump right back in. Tracey gets out after about twenty minutes to work on her tan, but Tammey and I stay in until our hands are pruny and our faces are beet-red sunburned.

“Let’s swim out past the waves so we can rest for a minute,” Tammey says.

We swim out further where we can tread water, up and down over the swells, the sun glinting off our faces. We’ve been in the water so long our teeth are starting to chatter, and we’re getting all giggly.

“I can’t believe you called your mom a dildo!” Tammey laughs.

“I know!” I start to laugh too. The more I think about it, the funnier it gets. Even though I didn’t know what it meant, I’m kinda glad I called her that. She didn’t care when I wanted to kill myself, she sent me away and kept Christopher, she ruined everything with Dad. I laugh harder.

“And I got away with it!” I can’t stop laughing. And it’s just me and Tammey, laughing and floating out in the middle of the ocean, like two little corks bobbing on the water. The sun on our faces, laughing together. It feels perfect and happy and safe.

Tammey imitates me in a dumb voice, “Mom don’t be such a dildo”, and the waves of laughter start up again.

I’m laughing so hard now I can hardly breathe, but I can’t stop. The laugh is coming from somewhere deep inside me like it has power of its own.  I start to feel weak. That giggly, dizzy carnival ride feeling…the buzzing in my head. I try to tread water, but my head goes under. A huge gulp of salt water floods my mouth and goes up my nose. It burns. I sputter and laugh and choke all at once.

Tammey sees me go under and stops laughing. But I can’t.

“Are you okay?” she shouts with a worried frown.

I keep laughing and choking. Another swell pulls me under, and then another. I hardly have the strength to pull my head above water now. Salt water burns my nose, throat and eyes. Tammey screams my name as I go under again. I can hear her through the water, all swimmy and gurgly. My arms and legs feel like they’re made of rubber. Tammey grabs my arm and pulls me up.

“Hold on to me!” she shouts, and puts my arm around her shoulder. I lean against her back, choking and coughing. I look toward the lifeguard tower but they’re talking to some girls and not looking our way.

Tammey swims strong over the waves, pulling me with her. I’m not laughing anymore. My head goes under but she yanks me up.

She swims to where the waves break, and shouts, “DIVE!” I see a huge ten-foot wave towering over us. Oh god, Oh god.

“Hold your breath!” She grips my hand tight. The last thing I see is a huge wall of water, then Tammey is gone.

I’m tossed around like a rag doll in a blender, sand in my ears and eyes, rocks and shells hitting my skin.  The rip tide is a magnet pulling my body out to sea. Another wave sucks me up and spits me out. The current pushes me, my belly scraping along the rocky shore until I don’t know where I am. When I open my eyes I’m laying face down in the wet sand. Tammey lands about twenty feet away from me. She jumps up and runs toward me. I hear her shouting my name but I can’t answer. She kneels beside me. I’m breathing so hard the air burns my lungs like a fire. I look up at her, too weak too move. She is all sparkly-wet, sun-bleached white hair, tan lean arms and sunburned face. Everyone always said how fragile Tammey was because she was only two pounds when she was born. She was so little and skinny, and the grown-ups said we had to be careful with her, but the truth is she’s always been stronger than me.

“Take my hand” she says.

Two lifeguards run toward us with their orange float things.

“Hold on! We’re coming!” they shout.

Tammey looks their way and puts her hand up as if to let them know she’s got it all under control. They slow down their pace as they see Tammey pull me to my feet.

“Hey, is she okay? Do you guys need help?” One of them shouts as he gets closer.

Tammey wraps my arm around her shoulder.

“Not anymore” she says, “I’ve got her.” She holds me tighter.

“You sure you’re okay, little girl?” one of them asks me. I bend over with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I nod my head, huffing and puffing.

“Good job, kid,” The lifeguard says to Tammey. The lifeguards wave to us as they turn and head back to their girl-watching at the tower.

Tammey rolls her eyes at him. “What a dork.”

She walks me back to our towels, where Mom and Tracey are sleeping and Christopher’s making a sandcastle. I feel a lump in my throat but I won’t cry. Not in front of Tammey.

Tammey looks back over her shoulder at the waves that are coming in huge and really crazy this late in the day. She squeezes me tighter with her lean strong arms.

“We made it”, she says.

How I lost Everything, and Why I'm Grateful

Love is a lot like fire. A small flame will be extinguished with the slightest puff of air, but put wind to wildfire, and watch what happens. In my experience, tragedy was the wind- the small wind that killed every small flame, the Santa Anas that caused love to erupt in furious glory. This is a story about fire, and passion, and total devastation, and love.

On the morning of November 18^th, 1994, mine was the happy family who seemingly had it all; a strong marriage, two kids (one girl, one boy), a gaggle of adopted rescue pets. My husband Troy and I each had our own businesses that we ran from the large home we were renting. We volunteered at our kids’ schools and in our communities, threw fabulous parties, took business trips, had lots of friends and a busy social life.

But that night, we went to bed in a burning house. A freak electrical short would begin smoldering in the walls as we slept, erupting into hellfire in the middle of the night. The fire pressed us up against the windows, gasping for air, our skin burning. We were forced to jump from second story ledges with our four-year old son, onto the cement below. (Our daughter, thankfully, was at a sleepover). The inferno raged, windows blowing out, our animals trapped inside, as we stood at the side of the road, helpless, sobbing, unable to get past the walls of flames to save them. Troy put his arm around me, wiped the tears from my face and said, “God’s got them now…and we will come back stronger.” I wanted to believe him, with everything in me I wanted to believe. But just the night before, I’d had a horrible, vivid dream that we would lose everything. Little did I know, fire was only the beginning.

We were released from the hospital the next day, November 19^th,  injured, homeless, jobless. We had not a single possession. Our lives were a blank canvas, at once terrifying and liberating.

We thought we had lost it all that night; our five beloved pets, our memories, our accomplishments, both our jobs, and our home- (with no renter’s insurance). But in the coming year, we would suffer much greater loss that no insurance policy could have protected us from: the betrayal by friends, the loss of faith and trust, and perhaps the hardest to endure – the loss of self.

Until that night in November, I was the strong, independent woman who owned a national business, volunteered for my kids’ school, flew to New York every season to sell my clothing line, was the Daisy Scout leader, and singing at gigs on weekends. I was also the woman who had been carrying a secret all her life. Standing toe to toe with Death awakened me. I could no longer hide from the truth of my own life. First I would have to unravel completely to find out who I was, what I was made of. Everything I once felt certain of would be shaken loose like soil from the roots of an upturned tree, leaving me raw, exposed. Eventually I would have to find a new way to take root within myself.

While busying myself with so-called important things, I had managed to outrun my past for a long time. But with all my distractions burned away, all that was left was the real me- the girl whose father was in prison, whose mother worked nights in a bar and had to use food stamps to buy groceries. The truth was that I had been born to two teenaged rebels – that my conception was a terrible mistake my grandfather had tried to end. My real name and birth certificate were hidden. I was told by my mother to never tell anyone who I really was, who my father was, where I came from. I obeyed.

Tragedy weakened my fault lines - allowing my inner demons to come out and dance. The strong image I had once projected evaporated like the mirage it was. Friends who had been attracted by my strength and perfect image were repulsed by my weakness, and began to pull away one by one, leaving me to experience this time of intense loss alone. And then, as one catastrophe after the next hit, I unraveled. I became clinically depressed, struggling with persistent suicidal thoughts. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the grip of post- traumatic stress disorder from both our fire and my childhood. In the coming years, I would have to fight harder than I ever knew I could to pull myself back to center- to be a woman my husband and children could be proud of.

My sweet, kind and generous husband, who was and still is the love of my life, had grown up in a Brady Bunch world. He had never been faced with anything like the catastrophes we endured. The next several years would test his endurance and courage, and his ability to love me.

Together, Troy and I worked hard to come back from the edge of disaster, but experienced such a long run of bad luck we began to wonder if someone had put a hex on us. We were ripped off by shady landlords. We lost three homes in the span of two years. While I was homeless, my business partner embezzled all the profits from our company, destroying me financially. We lost our credit, were forced into bankruptcy, and, because life has a sardonic sense of timing, both our cars blew up (and then one was repossessed) and our son needed surgery. And yet, through all this, we experienced beauty in the wreckage. There were new friends that showed up at just the right time, work opportunities that saved us when we were on the brink. And there were perfect, joyful moments with our children that gave us hope. There were times when we were so destitute, our utilities were cut off. Instead of crumbling in defeat, we chose to pitch a tent in the backyard and camp with the kids, roasting marshmallows and looking at the stars. Some days knocked us flat with depression. But on other days, we got up and played guitars, wrote songs, made art, and had parties- just the four of us. With nothing, we created, and celebrated, and found out that our hearts had the amazing ability to regenerate after being shattered.

Tragedy brings out the best and worst in people. It brings out the do-gooders and opportunistic scavengers alike. It shows you who your true friends are, and who they aren’t. And it widens every crack in the foundation of a marriage, until you wake one morning to find the Grand Canyon running straight through your living room.

Troy and I had a deep, soul-mate kind of love. We were optimistic people, believing in the golden rule, that all people were basically good at heart. We believed that living honest lives and being good people would insure us against tragedy. But life taught us  otherwise. Bad things do happen to good people. People are not always good at heart- in fact, some are just plain rotten. In addition to the stresses upon us, our faith was shaken, our belief systems shattered. We had each brought our fair share of baggage into the marriage, and it was all dumped out on the floor now.  Weakened and depressed, we were no longer able to be a light for each other. We couldn’t keep each other afloat when both of us were drowning.

After three years of taking life’s punches, we were pushed to the point of separating. Troy packed the car with his belongings and we tearfully broke the news to our children. But when it came time for him to drive away, neither of us could move. It was too painful to stay together, and too painful to part. On that day, we had to make a choice between love and fear. After days of crying and soul searching, we chose love. We found ours was a big flame, the winds of tragedy only making it more fierce.

Fire has a way of purifying and reforming. During a forest fire, the intense heat causes seedpods to burst open. After years of lying dormant, only catastrophe could make them take root. The scorched earth then becomes fertile soil, making the forest lush with new and different life. So it was with our lives. In the aftermath of all that loss, new seeds were planted that blossomed in ways we never could have foreseen.

Faith is not something that can be manufactured, or gleaned from books. Faith is hard earned, and, like courage, like a beating heart, is a muscle that must be worked. I had to try with everything in me to believe, when there was nothing to believe in. If I didn’t, my children would grow up in a hopeless world, and that was unthinkable. For their sake, I had to find my faith. I had to believe that there was a reason for everything we had lost. I had to open my eyes to see that there was hope in the midst of every crisis. There was the kindness of others who came to lift us back on our feet, like stars that shone brightly in the darkness. There was the discovery that, although we had lost everything, we still had our ability to dream, to love, to create, to hope, to remember. No fire could take that from us.

Tiny sprigs of hope began to spring up through the cracks, when we made the choice to risk our hearts and believe in goodness again. And gradually, because of that faith, things began to shift.

After the bankruptcy we worked diligently rebuilding our credit, and four and a half years after the fire, on the day of our tenth wedding anniversary, we bought our dream home- a cabin nestled in the side of a mountain- it’s foundation bolted on rock. We renewed our marriage vows, and were given the keys to our home.

Eighteen years have passed since the fire. Cristen and Taylor have grown up, and we have since been unexpectedly blessed with another son, Evan, as well as a grandson, Ayumu. My house is once again alive with rescued pets, cluttered with sentimental treasures, my photo albums full with new memories. There is a comfortable distance separating us from that time, and yet it will always be a part of who we are. We are stronger now, and dare I say, although I would never want to re-live those years, we are better for having lived through it. I found faith and courage in the ashes. I found my true self. Our marriage, our family, and most importantly, our optimism and spirit survived. There is not much that can shake us anymore. We shrug off challenges others might view as catastrophic. We know what catastrophe is. We can still see it in our rear view mirror.

What I learned is that every tragedy holds a gift, an opportunity for us to learn and grow. I believed this the day after the house burned down, in a Pollyanna sort of way. I didn’t know then how hard I would have to mine for it, how deep I would have to dig, how much I’d have to lose to find myself. Writing my book (What Doesn’t Kill You- How I lost everything and found myself) has helped me to see clearly the beautiful moments- the tiny miracles in the middle of mayhem that bloomed like lilies in the muck.

I’ve learned that life offers no guarantees, and no insurance policy will truly protect us from unexpected tragedies. Our possessions, job titles, our stations in life are fleeting, and even our relationships with those we most love can change. All we really have is what we carry inside us; our spirit, our courage, faith, and our ability to love.

Here is what I now know for sure: Every day that we are alive is a new beginning. And just like that forest after a wildfire, there is a seed of greatness in every one of us, waiting to break open. It is never, ever too late to bloom.

We still live in our mountain home, cemented in rock.

It is one block from the fire station.