Circle Time

Nothing went according to plan yesterday. Notice I left out the “my” in that sentence, but it’s implicit. Maybe everything went according to some other plan, or maybe (as I suspect) there is no plan, because, really, even if you’re someone who thinks “everything happens for a reason” - no matter how omnipotent a force - what force has the time or energy to manage 8 billion different daily plans in any way that would satisfy everyone? What force could balance the scales of karma not just for today, but for as long as human beings have existed? And the earth was here long before humans, so why would we assume there’s some entity or energy preoccupied with one life-form on one planet in a vast universe? You got married yesterday and the weather sucked even though you prayed for perfect weather? What about the kid who prayed for snow because he wasn’t ready for the test, doesn’t he matter? Or the farmer who needed the rain because the drought was killing his crops…what about him? A loved one died even though you made all kinds of bargains in your mind about how good you’d be and all the things you’d do if they were spared? What about the mom who prayed for a heart for her dying child? 

Or maybe there is some all-knowing energy trying to manage 8 billion different daily plans, and that’s why everything is fucked. Scratch that, not everything is fucked, just a lot of things that seem like they should be simpler or easier or more obvious or less fraught are exceedingly…fraught.  

There’s a face and a voice I am so tired of seeing and hearing I can’t believe it. I bet you know right away the face and voice I mean, which is saying something, because of the whole 8-billion-people-on-the-planet thing. If I rubbed a bottle right now and a genie popped out and granted me three wishes, I’d ask for that loathsome, withered reptile of a man to retire from the spotlight, along with every person who thinks the way he does. Just the whole lot of them, somewhere we never have to see them or hear them or be in jeopardy because of them, again. They can have a nice, big island somewhere, I don’t need them to suffer. They can take Leon, and he can give everyone cyber trucks. They can run things any way they like, make whatever rules and laws they want to, pass bans to their hearts’ content, pray to whatever god they like, or not. Just, they’d have their own internet and WIFI that only worked on that island, and we’d never have to hear from them again unless we wanted to visit. I know some of us have family members we’ve lost to the gaping monster called Misinformation. 

See? I’m nice. Isn’t that pretty? Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

Picture if you will, a forty-foot toddler, but it’s all gone wrong. His skin is grey and saggy, his eyes are wild, his hair spills out in every direction, and he always has heartburn. He’s claw-footed and carries a club that he swings in every direction, taking down whole towns sometimes. Endangering girls and women everywhere, the entire LGBTQ community, BIPOC, and meteorologists, too. “They’re having abortions after birth! They’re performing gender reassignment surgeries at recess! Legal Haitian immigrants are eating the cats and dogs in Springfield! The Democrats are controlling the weather! They gave all the FEMA money to migrants!” He stomps his feet and swings his club. Whenever he opens his mouth, he lies. 

Photo by Mark König on Unsplash

But they could take Misinformation to the island since they like him so much, and they could have all the water, food, shelter, sunshine, medical care and whatever else they needed. Also, I’d ask for good health for me and everyone I care about, even some folks on the island, healing for the planet, and peace everywhere. That’s probably more than three wishes and I’m not waiting for genies, but it’s nice to dream.

I watched the 60 Minutes interview Monday night and started thinking about this breed of man who talks to women and you can see the disrespect. They don’t talk to women, they talk at them and over them, with the arrogance and entitlement of a person who has never had to question their right to take up space in a room, and a voice dripping with derision. I remember being in Mary Gordon’s writing class at Barnard years ago, and how I felt like I’d won some kind of lottery ticket. I’d read everything she’d written. When she assigned reading in class, and writing assignments to go with it, I’d devour the reading and agonize over my writing response. 

She was going to read my words after all, and I didn’t want to come off like some wordy college student trying to sound smart. I wanted to have something to say that might be interesting, or at the very least, wouldn’t be a waste of her time. I didn’t want to turn in a piece of writing that would make her sigh and shake her head in the early morning hours as she graded papers, maybe at a desk by a window overlooking the Upper West Side, or at night, with her den lit up by a lone lamp, maybe with a glass of wine and some Miles Davis in the background. I didn’t know what her life was like outside of school, where she lived, if she lived alone, or when she graded papers, but I understood she was a full human being with a whole life, and that at some point, she’d be devoting some number of minutes to something I’d written. I didn’t take it lightly. I’d spend time searching my brain for the exact right word, I’d edit, edit again, and then edit one more time for good measure, trying to clean up my sentences and lose anything that didn’t need to be there. 

I would never raise my hand in class, but that wasn’t new. I’d always hoped I wouldn’t be called on, for my entire school career - not because I didn’t know the answers (I fucking did), but because I questioned my right to take up space. As a kid, I was very shy. I used to panic at circle time in kindergarten when we had to say good morning and say our names and one thing we liked. One thing I liked? But some new thing every day? Would everyone remember what I’d said yesterday, and the day before? I loved when my mom was running late and I’d miss circle time. I didn’t like everyone staring at me and waiting for me to speak. If someone had asked, I would have liked the world to swallow me if it meant I could avoid circle time. Maybe it could spit me out later. 

Ah, the seventies.

It didn’t get better in elementary school or high school, it didn’t get better in college. People who would get to know me after a while would say they’d thought I was aloof at first, but I’ve never been aloof a day in my life. Just stuck inside my own head until I learned how not to be, which took decades. And let’s be real, I’m still stuck inside my head a lot of the time, it’s just now I know how to come out, and I no longer suffer from the delusion that I’m the only one who has a hard time in this violent world many days. Now I know everyone is hurting a lot of the time, and the best thing I can do is make myself a safe place to land, and be transparent about my own vulnerability. 

So, Barnard, 1989,  Mary Gordon’s class, my sophomore year, her second year teaching there. These dudes would amble in and sit down, legs spread, relaxed as pie. They’d raise their hands and talk and talk and talk some more, but they wouldn’t be saying anything. “Yeah, like, I read the story and like, it was really cool. Like, I get the way the use of metaphor really made everything layered. And like, yeah. Clearly they’re having a conversation and it’s probably, like, about abortion, but like, yeah. The hills and everything, and the train station and the whole setting was, like, deep.” Kill me now, is what I’d think. I couldn’t believe it. They’d just prattle on with ideas that weren’t fully formed and didn’t mean shit, wasting time I would have liked to be filled listening to her. After a while I stopped paying attention to what they were saying, and started watching her face. I’d study it to see if I could read her expressions, even just an eyebrow twitch. Of course I could be wrong, I’m no mind reader, but I felt pretty certain she was also thinking - what the fuck are you saying, and why do you imagine the sound of your voice is better than silence? Or maybe she was used to it by then, and I was still appalled. 

I was terrified of getting things wrong, too, especially in public. Not that it was okay when it happened at home, either, but at least there no one could see my shame, and no one could see the price I’d pay. When I was growing up, my mother was not one to heap on verbal praise, and she was not demonstrative with me, but she had no problem at all expressing disappointment, anger, or dissatisfaction if I made a mistake, didn’t live up to her expectations, or caused some kind of unpleasant issue that required her attention. My dad had flash rage, so if I did something to upset him, he’d yell, and occasionally whack me upside the head hard enough my ears would ring. 

As a kid, my nervous system was fried most of the time. When I did get called on in class, my voice would shake, my hands would shake, and my heart would beat so loudly I felt sure people could hear it. My cheeks would get hot, and I knew if anyone looked at me, it must be evident. My junior year of high school I accidentally won the Doris Post Speech Award, which meant I had to deliver my speech in the auditorium, in front of the entire school, teachers and principal included. I was about to skip my senior year and head to college the following fall, so this was the closest thing I’d get to some kind of big event to cap off my high school experience. There wasn’t going to be a graduation for me, but I did not want the Doris Post Speech Award. I did not want it so badly, I begged my English teacher to give it to the runner-up. When I say I begged, I want you to understand I sobbed. She would not relent. 

The day I had to give the speech, I really thought I might die. I thought I might have a heart attack at sixteen, right on the stage in front of everyone, and maybe set some kind of record for the youngest person ever to die from stress. At least that would be something. It wasn’t until I was up there that I realized I was the only girl on stage. Every other grade, a boy had won. And when I thought back to previous years, I could not recall speeches of any other girls, could not remember a year when a girl had won. I’d been at the school since seventh grade, so in five years, could it be that no other girl had won in any grade in any given year? That didn’t seem possible to me, but try as I did, I could not recall a single example. That gave me some kind of courage, enough to get up and get to the lectern and get out the first few lines. When the whole place broke into laughter, I relaxed. Then I enjoyed myself. I brought the house down, even the principal had his head thrown back, howling. It felt great, I was flying high for hours.

If you think that cured me of a fear of speaking in public, I’m sorry to disappoint you. It helped, but it was a temporary fix. Years later I showed up at the yoga studio where I’d completed a teacher training, to take class with one of my favorite teachers. The manager came over to me and pulled me into the office. The teacher was having an emergency and wasn’t going to make it to teach, could I please do it? I stared at her like she had shape-shifted in front of my eyes. Like she’d suddenly turned into a basketball or fire hydrant. I told her I was really sorry but there was no way I could teach, I’d done the training because I wanted to understand the philosophy, not because I ever intended to get up in front of a room full of people and lead a class. She looked panicked. There were a good thirty people waiting to take class, and it was a terrible thing to cancel. She told me there were people who’d never been to the studio before, who would likely never come back. 

I thought about how I’d taken two subways to get there, and arranged my day so I could come, and realized other people had done that, too. Suddenly it seemed like the lamest thing that I’d let my ego be the reason people didn’t get to practice. My fear of not getting it right, or not being liked was about me, not them. So I did it and I didn’t die. In fact, as soon as I put the focus on them and not me, I was fine. And they were busy breathing and making shapes with their bodies, and I was reminding them to pay attention to what they were feeling and to try to stay curious about it. After class people were all glowy and sweaty, their eyes were lit up and their shoulders were relaxed and they looked grounded and present and so much happier, and I thought, wow. I had something to do with that, what a great fucking feeling. And I kept doing it, and I still do it. And I lead retreats and can sit in a circle and talk about anything. 

But when a student who coordinates TEDx talks asked me to do one years ago, or when my book came out and I had to stand up in front of rooms full of people sitting in chairs staring at me - and I was supposed to talk to them and read to them? I might as well have been five years old at circle time again. I like this part - sitting in my den telling you how I feel and what I think. I love when you comment back and we have a fun conversation. I’d love to have coffee with you one-on-one (maybe, I mean, I don’t know all of you, so don’t message me about coffee), but a group of people sitting in chairs, staring at me expectantly? I’m probably gonna need propranolol for that, and I don’t care if you judge me for it. Just like I’m probably gonna need Xanax if I have to have an MRI, because I developed claustrophobia after my mom died. Which is weird, right? Totally caught me off guard because it’s never been a problem for me, but the nervous system is sensitive and trauma is trauma, and there are times when deep breathing might not be enough.

I got through that first MRI without Xanax, I did manage to breathe through it, but the next time I needed one I took the drugs, because I have nothing to prove to anyone, not even myself. Well, wait a second, that’s bullshit. I’m just remembering what actually happened. I posted on threads asking for advice about whether I should try to get through it or take the drugs, and Lauren Hough texted me and told me to take the drugs. Which is why we all need friends to remind us not to be nuts sometimes.

It turns out they don’t give out awards to people for never needing help, or for always seeming okay. They don’t give out awards for learning to take up space in a world that tells you you have to earn it. They don’t give out awards to single moms who manage to get up and pack lunches for years, and make sure their kids feel loved and are clean and happy on their way out the door. They don’t give awards to daughters who are easy and helpful and get straight A’s and never complain and just repress it all until they have eating disorders and migraines.

Unless you’re a straight, white man in this country, you have to fight to take up space, even a small amount - it isn’t a given. And you’re going to have your own personal experiences that make it harder or easier to do that - much of it based on whether you felt your needs and feelings were respected as a kid, whether you generally feel safe in the world or not, and your natural disposition. Also, whether you believe you have anything of value to add to the conversation, which is going to be wrapped up in your self-esteem, and whether you’ve overcome messages that your worth as a girl or woman is based on how you look, whether you have children, or whether you possess any intrinsic value just as yourself.

I hated the way Bill Whitaker spoke to Vice President Harris. It reminded me of so many obnoxious men who’ve looked at me in that same way over the years. That skeptical, prove-to-me-you-have-something-worthwhile-to-say-even-though-I’ve-already-decided-you-don’t tone. It is amazing to me that at the beginning of every interview she gives, she’s there having to name her long list of accomplishments, whilst running against a man whose most notable feat is making people feel proud about expressing the very worst in themselves. I’m old enough to remember a time when people would look around before they told a racist or sexist joke in public, when they’d lower their voices. Those days are behind us at the moment, the monster of Misinformation making nothing off-limits. 

My plans changed yesterday for a whole bunch of reasons. I had to “put out a fire” I didn’t anticipate in the morning, I had a lunch scheduled with my literary agent whom I adore, and one of my closest friends was here from out of town and wanted to meet up at 5. But my plan had been to spend most of the day writing, and my initial reaction as things began to pile up was anxiety. I don’t like writing under pressure, I like to be mostly done on Thursday morning so I can polish one more time and publish. But you know what? I ended up having two of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time. The kinds of conversations you can have when you don’t even question whether it’s okay to take up space, where you aren’t choosing your words carefully, because you know that even if you get something wrong, this is a person who knows your heart. The kind where you relax and open and laugh and maybe cry, where you can express your worries and fears and know that anything you say is safe. It was better than any plan I could have made. 

If there is anything more priceless and tender and worth celebrating than the people in our lives who love us, and the people we love back, I sure don’t know what it is. And I wouldn’t trade that stuff or those people for anything on earth. We have a choice to make about the kind of world we want. The kind of messages we want our children to absorb. The kind of environment we want to wake up to each day, whether we want sanity or chaos. Whether we want some hope of being able to get to work to make things better, or whether we’re going to set the whole thing on fire. I want beauty. I want peace and art and long conversations. I want music and poetry and kindness. I want to swim in a creek, hike with my dog, and watch the sunset. I want a world where people feel free to be themselves, to open their mouths and speak, to open their hearts and love who they love and live in whatever way they want to, as long as it isn’t hurting anyone else. I want my children to be safe at school, and yours, too. I want women and girls to be trusted, respected and seen as the full human beings they are. I want to wake up in a world where I feel hope, not despair. I want us to defeat the monster and maybe meet up for circle time. I think I could show up, just as myself in a world like that, and tell you the thing I like most today is hope.

If you’d like to meet me in real time to talk about taking up space in this world, the kind of world we want to create, the effects of trauma, and the importance of friendship, I’ll be here 10/11/24 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version. And thanks so much for your incredible comments and re-stacks. I heart you so hard, and I’m so thankful you’re here.