Let’s talk about how we’d answer, “How are you?” if the question meant, “No for real. What’s up for you?” Serious, silly, sad, outrageous, happy, a tangent or geeking out on your favorite nature phenomenon like mine—it’s all welcome here.
What a beautiful, Holly-ish connection you've made between your painful, perplexing health condition and the cicadas. You have transformed the ritualistic "How are you?" into a gateway to meaningful connection. Rats, leave Holly's spine alone!
I love this check-in, Holly, and I'm so sorry for what you are going through. I hope you have answers and a way forward soon.
How am I really? I'm not sure. I just left a live workshop that I was excited to attend because we were soon going to engage with one another (the whole reason I joined) and I couldn't do it. So what is that?
It may have something to do with the weird day yesterday that started so perfectly curled under a blanket with my granddaughter, doing an on-line jigsaw puzzle together, whispering to each other so we wouldn't wake up her brother and grandfather. And then later that day I attended a Celebration of Life for another grandmother not much older than me, who died suddenly, unexpectedly. What moved me most was meeting her 8 week old great-grandson. He was born just in time for her to hold him in her arms. I couldn't take my eyes off him. There was something oddly comforting about him being there. Something hopeful. Then I read your reference to "blueprint." There he was, a blueprint and there she was, snuggled inside his DNA.
Awww, gorgeous, Cathy. I will keep think of this--"There he was, a blueprint and there she was, snuggled inside his DNA." You know the saying, a picture says a thousand words. This line is the written equivalent of that. So much here.
Isn't it funny how sometimes we find ourselves just not in a space for what we thought we wanted or might definitely want on another day. I'm glad you followed the wisdom of knowing you weren't there and allowing yourself to follow it.
I'm so sorry for the loss of your friend. Sending love and comfort your way. And thank you, thank you for sharing.
"What are you telling me. my brilliant protector" is itself a brilliant approach. (Autocorrect plus clumsiness had that initially as my brilliant protractor).
For me, I'm away on a family vacation in Europe so my mood is pretty good, although I miss my Shih Tzu Sophie. Every time I see acute small dog....
But I feel as if by going away for eight days, I'm able to leave much behind.
I mean, protractors can be pretty brilliant, I suppose. ;)
Sophie! Isn't it lovely how you fall in love with one dog and you can't help but feel a little something for all similar creatures that cross your bath. I'm so glad you're with the family and able to leave much behind. There's something special about being able to have space, even from stuff we love. Enjoy!! And thank you much for sharing.
Hang tight my friend. I know all too well the feeling that my body is "against me". I wish you answers and more importantly, solutions, or at the very least steps toward better feelings. Thank you for your vulnerability. Oh how I bet you wish it was the (still annoying) but more mundane peri-menopause as we discussed earlier.
It turns out my menopause is not so peri and I recently started estrogen and several of my symptoms seem to be improving! Fingers crossed that it's not just a randomly good week and instead a sustainable improvement. 💕
I do wish such a thing, for sure. Apparently, I still have that to look forward to. Aw, the cycles of life. ;)
I'm so very glad the symptoms are starting to improve and hope it's not random. I've heard very good reports about the difference estrogen can make. Yay for sustainable improvements. And thank you much for sharing!
Holly, I loved this post. I’ve been thinking about the cicadas too, and wondering how I’m going to perceive them- whether as a storm and an annoyance, or as the magic that they are, or both.
I’m … uneven. I was wonderfully steady for months, well in control of my feelings, until a few weeks ago. Lately, my highs are really high and my lows are really low. I snap at small things, I toss and turn in my bed, I resent, I chide, I shame (the chiding and shaming I at least have the decency to do only to myself). I am trying to go back to my thikr (the remembrance mantras of my tradition) and when I do remember to make remembrance, the rage/sadness/loss is not gone but a bit more stilled.
I love this answer, Noha. I'm guessing both is going to be your response. Keep us posted. It is magical to think of this life cycle.
Thank you for sharing. I love imagining you turning to your thikr, the stillness you find. It's another magical cycle I suppose, the humanness of how steadiness can give way to turbulence and on and on. To the extent that I could, I'd love to sooth some of that chiding and shaming in the way sharing it can sometimes distill just a bit, like stretching it thin among people who see you and appreciate all you hold and are.
To the decidedly humanness in us all, my friend. Enjoy/curse the cicadas when they arrive. It's all true at once.
It’s all true at once! And yes, sharing it out loud totally helps. I had a nice venting session with @Isabel Cowles Murphy this morning and I did feel much better after that and a long bike ride with the boys (I tried to remember to bring my mind toward thikr as we rode whenever it got quiet).
I am so sorry you are having to experience these things. Not just the physical discomfort, but that worry. Am I turning to locust shells? I wish you well, my sensitive and talented friend.
Never known the cicada thing, pretty sure they don't live in California, but I definitely know the burrowing and the dormant and the springing back to life, ready or not thing. Not loving the "rat-bite" and "dissolving ankles" and other ghoulish nomenclature from your medical team, but if they are giving you the very best care, I suppose they can be forgiven. Holding you in my heart, my dear. 🩷
For real what's up with me? I've been firing on all cylinders trying to get Qstack ready, keeping up with "Lamb" and my reading, and think I have just enough to get me over finish line and then I'm going to need to take a minute. ;) xo
No, no cicadas in California, as far as I know. It was in West Virginia, early 2000s when “mine” ascended to earth. And I was completely taken aback, having had no previous warning this was a thing. 🤣
Thank you, my friend, for your support. And thank you for sharing. I’m glad you foresee a time you might get a bit of a break. Between QStack, Lamb, Whitman, and all else you have brewing, you must certainly have been going, going, going for a hot minute!
Beautiful words, Holly. And a very apt metaphor. I so admire that you are trying to see your health condition as a message. That type of reframing is such a powerful thing we humans have the ability to do. :)
Thank you, thank you, Michael. Yes, reframing is everything. I’m a huge believer in the placebo—not as some sort of a trick but as affirmation of the mind’s power. I think these fall in the same realms.
Even though I’ve never experienced the tornado of locusts, I feel they have taken up residence in my head this week, swirling my accustomed dizziness into a whole different level of instability. I know this place, I try to remind myself to surrender, allow, feel the frustration and desperation…and love, never forget to love, myself through it. Offering this to you with a virtual hug, dear friend.
The kaleidoscope of time calls me to deepen into comfort with complexity, letting the bright and dark bits be illuminated for all to see. And yet my habit is to fight it with bland conformity, safety. Currently, healing from major surgery, this tendency is heightened to careful, frightened lack of comfort. Fear. I can rationalize it more than ever. And the habit aches more than ever, echoed by the corporeal pain, even the fear of pain, and the fear of the fear of what if...?. Physically, I recognize a crux point, a place to focus all my misgivings. It is a major joint. Mentally, emotionally, it is as a major part of my being human. My fear of trusting being truly seen. Mirrors upon mirrors (nightmares upon nightmare, miracles upon miracles ;-). My current kaleidoscope-as-metaphor for change, the risks of stagnation, the impossibility of holding back the shifting prisms, the missing out on the changing and beautiful patterns, the lubrication of the wheel of habits, might be a helpful way forward as I heal and learn to move again without the fear of dislocation.
Thank you for asking, my friend. Thank you for your courage, for speaking and telling and writing and exploring and risking and loving and caring. (And for forgiving my lack of commas. I like and. And takes up a space that commas cannot always fill.)
And does indeed take up a space quite different from a comma. ;)
Thank you for sharing, my friend. I am endlessly grateful for you, for your words and your brilliance and your ear and your kaleidoscope and your metaphors and for us having each other to go through the things together with.
May you deepen into comfort, into illumination of all the bits. And may you heal swiftly. So much love your way.
As the kaleidoscope may be my guiding metaphor, I love this piece of the locust as yours. There is so much we don't notice. Life changes when we cannot help but notice. 17 years, 13 years, 45 years, so many years, you have been taking in this information, the messages in the humus and the limbs and twigs. It's all making its way to the surface.
Holly, "for real": I've just been through a scary health challenge that took three months and a surgery to reveal that I am fine--that delayed my reading of my favorite writers. So, I do understand the q.: How are you? when no one actually wants the answer and I foolishly, when the threat as over, actually said in to one person what happened.
Holly, I need you to check your email because I have a question about your point of view question for "This Writing Life."
This post: Lovely and, as usual, vulnerable post.
Another time, I'll tell you about my youthful experience with locusts.
Oh, Mary, I'm so very glad you're fine. And I'm sorry you had to go through uncertainty and surgery to get there. Thank you very much for sharing. Oh, I await the youthful locust experience for sure!
It's funny, the "how are you?" question. My friends tease me about my use of "fine." I often say to myself and sometimes out loud, "Everything's fine," or, "All will be fine," or, "All is as it should be." I don't use this in the way of dismissing but that it's calming for me to realize that this is also true--along with the truth of whatever else is going on. A friend the other day responded, "No. It's not fine." And I said, "Well, I didn't say it was fine, fine." 🤣
I saw and responded to your email. Wise to point it out. I'm a bit farther behind on emails than typical. Looking forward to to the next "This Writing Life"!!
I'm swirling in so much panic and dissociation that this invitation feels.. very very brilliantly fortuitous. every single thing I'm doing seems like a distraction from something else more urgent that I should be doing. which is another way of saying that I'm probably in crisis. but there have been moments of loveliness for sure today, including a cool night breeze on the rooftop.
Thank you for creating this space and sharing your heart and consciousness here. I do hope there is ease and reprieve for you, hour by hour.
Oh, margosa, thank you ever so much for sharing. I know about distractions and crises and "shoulds." May this sharing be a way to stretch the panic and difficulty just a bit, so maybe a bit of it can dissipate like a cloud, knowing others see and hold you from a far. I love that you've found a night breeze on a rooftop. I do so love a rooftop. I echo your hope for me for you. It's a beautiful one--ease and reprieve, hour by hour.♥️♥️
I am wishing you the very best of outcomes for your health now. Also now, I am just okay, getting over a nagging head ache. Gosh...i hate getting it. A weird sinus one. Thankfully, I'm fine enough now to scrub the floor. For lovely distraction in nature, I enjoy the birds. Ones singing from the yard and reading about them in magaines and books. I should visit a bird sanctuary one of these upcoming summer days. Hearing them, seeing them gives me such pleasure...more than I ever imagined before.
Marinarena, thank you for sharing. I hate you getting nagging headaches right alongside you. May it continue to dissipate. May you continue to find relief and bathe yourself in the singing of more birds and whatever other pleasure that can find its way to you. 💕
Thank you, thank you, Nathan. Not behind, perfectly on time— always and whenever. :)
And I love that you picked out that line. I wrote it and rewrote it, or the ending anyways, and finally decided blueprint—which I’d started with—was right. I love it when a writer whose work I admire picks out a line I thought a lot of or about.
I hope you get some answers and a treatment plan soon. I'm glad you found a support group online. This reminds me of a friend who had a reaction from taking an antibiotic. He could barely move without pain for so long. It took years but he has recovered. But what a scary and dibilitating situation to be in. I believe you will get better just like my friend did.
We have 9 more days until we hop on a plane to Colombia. It is a bit stressful. I have lots to do and so much I need to not forget. And I want to catch up on my life in this country before I leave for another. My blog, correspondencia with friends, reading the work of my friends. I have been thinking about your idea to start writing on Substack. And I have a story for your give and take posts. But how do I find the time? I am always overwhelmed. But Greg and I spent a good day, 2 miles high in Leadville, Colorado. It is always so interesting to come to the end of a day and realize that you've really had a good time.
A few years back I was in Pennsylvania visiting family when the cicadas emerged. They were so amazingly loud. It was wounderous.
What a beautiful, Holly-ish connection you've made between your painful, perplexing health condition and the cicadas. You have transformed the ritualistic "How are you?" into a gateway to meaningful connection. Rats, leave Holly's spine alone!
I have the same message to the rats! And I send a big virtual hug to you, Holly.
Thank you, thank you, Jeffrey.😊
Hear, hear!! (This to the rats ;).) Thank you, Rona. I so delight at you finding things Holly-ish.
I love this check-in, Holly, and I'm so sorry for what you are going through. I hope you have answers and a way forward soon.
How am I really? I'm not sure. I just left a live workshop that I was excited to attend because we were soon going to engage with one another (the whole reason I joined) and I couldn't do it. So what is that?
It may have something to do with the weird day yesterday that started so perfectly curled under a blanket with my granddaughter, doing an on-line jigsaw puzzle together, whispering to each other so we wouldn't wake up her brother and grandfather. And then later that day I attended a Celebration of Life for another grandmother not much older than me, who died suddenly, unexpectedly. What moved me most was meeting her 8 week old great-grandson. He was born just in time for her to hold him in her arms. I couldn't take my eyes off him. There was something oddly comforting about him being there. Something hopeful. Then I read your reference to "blueprint." There he was, a blueprint and there she was, snuggled inside his DNA.
Awww, gorgeous, Cathy. I will keep think of this--"There he was, a blueprint and there she was, snuggled inside his DNA." You know the saying, a picture says a thousand words. This line is the written equivalent of that. So much here.
Isn't it funny how sometimes we find ourselves just not in a space for what we thought we wanted or might definitely want on another day. I'm glad you followed the wisdom of knowing you weren't there and allowing yourself to follow it.
I'm so sorry for the loss of your friend. Sending love and comfort your way. And thank you, thank you for sharing.
Holly,
"What are you telling me. my brilliant protector" is itself a brilliant approach. (Autocorrect plus clumsiness had that initially as my brilliant protractor).
For me, I'm away on a family vacation in Europe so my mood is pretty good, although I miss my Shih Tzu Sophie. Every time I see acute small dog....
But I feel as if by going away for eight days, I'm able to leave much behind.
I mean, protractors can be pretty brilliant, I suppose. ;)
Sophie! Isn't it lovely how you fall in love with one dog and you can't help but feel a little something for all similar creatures that cross your bath. I'm so glad you're with the family and able to leave much behind. There's something special about being able to have space, even from stuff we love. Enjoy!! And thank you much for sharing.
Hang tight my friend. I know all too well the feeling that my body is "against me". I wish you answers and more importantly, solutions, or at the very least steps toward better feelings. Thank you for your vulnerability. Oh how I bet you wish it was the (still annoying) but more mundane peri-menopause as we discussed earlier.
It turns out my menopause is not so peri and I recently started estrogen and several of my symptoms seem to be improving! Fingers crossed that it's not just a randomly good week and instead a sustainable improvement. 💕
I do wish such a thing, for sure. Apparently, I still have that to look forward to. Aw, the cycles of life. ;)
I'm so very glad the symptoms are starting to improve and hope it's not random. I've heard very good reports about the difference estrogen can make. Yay for sustainable improvements. And thank you much for sharing!
Holly, I loved this post. I’ve been thinking about the cicadas too, and wondering how I’m going to perceive them- whether as a storm and an annoyance, or as the magic that they are, or both.
I’m … uneven. I was wonderfully steady for months, well in control of my feelings, until a few weeks ago. Lately, my highs are really high and my lows are really low. I snap at small things, I toss and turn in my bed, I resent, I chide, I shame (the chiding and shaming I at least have the decency to do only to myself). I am trying to go back to my thikr (the remembrance mantras of my tradition) and when I do remember to make remembrance, the rage/sadness/loss is not gone but a bit more stilled.
I suppose I am decidedly human. 🖤🖤🖤🖤
I love this answer, Noha. I'm guessing both is going to be your response. Keep us posted. It is magical to think of this life cycle.
Thank you for sharing. I love imagining you turning to your thikr, the stillness you find. It's another magical cycle I suppose, the humanness of how steadiness can give way to turbulence and on and on. To the extent that I could, I'd love to sooth some of that chiding and shaming in the way sharing it can sometimes distill just a bit, like stretching it thin among people who see you and appreciate all you hold and are.
To the decidedly humanness in us all, my friend. Enjoy/curse the cicadas when they arrive. It's all true at once.
It’s all true at once! And yes, sharing it out loud totally helps. I had a nice venting session with @Isabel Cowles Murphy this morning and I did feel much better after that and a long bike ride with the boys (I tried to remember to bring my mind toward thikr as we rode whenever it got quiet).
Lovely!
I am so sorry you are having to experience these things. Not just the physical discomfort, but that worry. Am I turning to locust shells? I wish you well, my sensitive and talented friend.
Powerfully written, Holly. I'm sorry I'm so behind here, but I'm slowly catching up.
I hope you manage to get an updated diagnosis soon and have answers and a means forward.
"In a pupal state, pale pink, the veiny balls were at once lifeless and blueprint." -- great line.
Never known the cicada thing, pretty sure they don't live in California, but I definitely know the burrowing and the dormant and the springing back to life, ready or not thing. Not loving the "rat-bite" and "dissolving ankles" and other ghoulish nomenclature from your medical team, but if they are giving you the very best care, I suppose they can be forgiven. Holding you in my heart, my dear. 🩷
For real what's up with me? I've been firing on all cylinders trying to get Qstack ready, keeping up with "Lamb" and my reading, and think I have just enough to get me over finish line and then I'm going to need to take a minute. ;) xo
No, no cicadas in California, as far as I know. It was in West Virginia, early 2000s when “mine” ascended to earth. And I was completely taken aback, having had no previous warning this was a thing. 🤣
Thank you, my friend, for your support. And thank you for sharing. I’m glad you foresee a time you might get a bit of a break. Between QStack, Lamb, Whitman, and all else you have brewing, you must certainly have been going, going, going for a hot minute!
Beautiful words, Holly. And a very apt metaphor. I so admire that you are trying to see your health condition as a message. That type of reframing is such a powerful thing we humans have the ability to do. :)
Thank you, thank you, Michael. Yes, reframing is everything. I’m a huge believer in the placebo—not as some sort of a trick but as affirmation of the mind’s power. I think these fall in the same realms.
I agree for sure, the same realms indeed. :)
Even though I’ve never experienced the tornado of locusts, I feel they have taken up residence in my head this week, swirling my accustomed dizziness into a whole different level of instability. I know this place, I try to remind myself to surrender, allow, feel the frustration and desperation…and love, never forget to love, myself through it. Offering this to you with a virtual hug, dear friend.
Aw, what a perfect offering in this moment. Thank you, thank you my friend. 🥰
The kaleidoscope of time calls me to deepen into comfort with complexity, letting the bright and dark bits be illuminated for all to see. And yet my habit is to fight it with bland conformity, safety. Currently, healing from major surgery, this tendency is heightened to careful, frightened lack of comfort. Fear. I can rationalize it more than ever. And the habit aches more than ever, echoed by the corporeal pain, even the fear of pain, and the fear of the fear of what if...?. Physically, I recognize a crux point, a place to focus all my misgivings. It is a major joint. Mentally, emotionally, it is as a major part of my being human. My fear of trusting being truly seen. Mirrors upon mirrors (nightmares upon nightmare, miracles upon miracles ;-). My current kaleidoscope-as-metaphor for change, the risks of stagnation, the impossibility of holding back the shifting prisms, the missing out on the changing and beautiful patterns, the lubrication of the wheel of habits, might be a helpful way forward as I heal and learn to move again without the fear of dislocation.
Thank you for asking, my friend. Thank you for your courage, for speaking and telling and writing and exploring and risking and loving and caring. (And for forgiving my lack of commas. I like and. And takes up a space that commas cannot always fill.)
And does indeed take up a space quite different from a comma. ;)
Thank you for sharing, my friend. I am endlessly grateful for you, for your words and your brilliance and your ear and your kaleidoscope and your metaphors and for us having each other to go through the things together with.
May you deepen into comfort, into illumination of all the bits. And may you heal swiftly. So much love your way.
As the kaleidoscope may be my guiding metaphor, I love this piece of the locust as yours. There is so much we don't notice. Life changes when we cannot help but notice. 17 years, 13 years, 45 years, so many years, you have been taking in this information, the messages in the humus and the limbs and twigs. It's all making its way to the surface.
That it is. A slow movement upward. 🥰
Holly, "for real": I've just been through a scary health challenge that took three months and a surgery to reveal that I am fine--that delayed my reading of my favorite writers. So, I do understand the q.: How are you? when no one actually wants the answer and I foolishly, when the threat as over, actually said in to one person what happened.
Holly, I need you to check your email because I have a question about your point of view question for "This Writing Life."
This post: Lovely and, as usual, vulnerable post.
Another time, I'll tell you about my youthful experience with locusts.
Oh, Mary, I'm so very glad you're fine. And I'm sorry you had to go through uncertainty and surgery to get there. Thank you very much for sharing. Oh, I await the youthful locust experience for sure!
It's funny, the "how are you?" question. My friends tease me about my use of "fine." I often say to myself and sometimes out loud, "Everything's fine," or, "All will be fine," or, "All is as it should be." I don't use this in the way of dismissing but that it's calming for me to realize that this is also true--along with the truth of whatever else is going on. A friend the other day responded, "No. It's not fine." And I said, "Well, I didn't say it was fine, fine." 🤣
I saw and responded to your email. Wise to point it out. I'm a bit farther behind on emails than typical. Looking forward to to the next "This Writing Life"!!
I'm swirling in so much panic and dissociation that this invitation feels.. very very brilliantly fortuitous. every single thing I'm doing seems like a distraction from something else more urgent that I should be doing. which is another way of saying that I'm probably in crisis. but there have been moments of loveliness for sure today, including a cool night breeze on the rooftop.
Thank you for creating this space and sharing your heart and consciousness here. I do hope there is ease and reprieve for you, hour by hour.
Oh, margosa, thank you ever so much for sharing. I know about distractions and crises and "shoulds." May this sharing be a way to stretch the panic and difficulty just a bit, so maybe a bit of it can dissipate like a cloud, knowing others see and hold you from a far. I love that you've found a night breeze on a rooftop. I do so love a rooftop. I echo your hope for me for you. It's a beautiful one--ease and reprieve, hour by hour.♥️♥️
I am wishing you the very best of outcomes for your health now. Also now, I am just okay, getting over a nagging head ache. Gosh...i hate getting it. A weird sinus one. Thankfully, I'm fine enough now to scrub the floor. For lovely distraction in nature, I enjoy the birds. Ones singing from the yard and reading about them in magaines and books. I should visit a bird sanctuary one of these upcoming summer days. Hearing them, seeing them gives me such pleasure...more than I ever imagined before.
Marinarena, thank you for sharing. I hate you getting nagging headaches right alongside you. May it continue to dissipate. May you continue to find relief and bathe yourself in the singing of more birds and whatever other pleasure that can find its way to you. 💕
Thank you, thank you, Nathan. Not behind, perfectly on time— always and whenever. :)
And I love that you picked out that line. I wrote it and rewrote it, or the ending anyways, and finally decided blueprint—which I’d started with—was right. I love it when a writer whose work I admire picks out a line I thought a lot of or about.
😁
I hope you get some answers and a treatment plan soon. I'm glad you found a support group online. This reminds me of a friend who had a reaction from taking an antibiotic. He could barely move without pain for so long. It took years but he has recovered. But what a scary and dibilitating situation to be in. I believe you will get better just like my friend did.
We have 9 more days until we hop on a plane to Colombia. It is a bit stressful. I have lots to do and so much I need to not forget. And I want to catch up on my life in this country before I leave for another. My blog, correspondencia with friends, reading the work of my friends. I have been thinking about your idea to start writing on Substack. And I have a story for your give and take posts. But how do I find the time? I am always overwhelmed. But Greg and I spent a good day, 2 miles high in Leadville, Colorado. It is always so interesting to come to the end of a day and realize that you've really had a good time.
A few years back I was in Pennsylvania visiting family when the cicadas emerged. They were so amazingly loud. It was wounderous.