Wonderfully Imperfect

About This Site

i am a woman on the edge -- on the edge of greatness, of mania, and of wonder and amazement, all at the same time.

i am an artist and a corporate refugee, who has struggled and derailed and been really STUCK....and who continually dusts herself off.

here i share my artistic and personal journey, and how i became known as the "princess of getting up again" and the "imp-ress of imperfection."

it's a celebration of continually focusing on "being where i am," and never coming from a place of lack or "not good enough". it's a celebration of being "wonderfully imperfect", and you're invited!

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a friend shared recently about her “broken” family

i realized that although i came from a very dysfunctional home
(hey, didn’t we ALL?),
i never really thought of my family or myself as being “broken”
until my older sister died,
when i was in my early twenties.

the alcoholism, the learned behaviors of manipulation and lying
...feeling like an imposter....WHATEVER:
i knew where that came from, worked on it...still am…
...but just figured it was the usual “stuff” of life.

i loved my family and felt loved.

then my oldest sister died.
her death was the first of many,
but the most significant in our family,
if one can ever consider the idea of “prioritizing” multiple losses of that nature.

my mother never put up a christmas tree again.
never had a major family dinner or major gathering.
never opened the boxes of her things, sent to us by my brother-in-law.

somehow, it was the beginning of the end
and the undoing of an already fractured family.
we were all adults,
but each began “acting out” in various ways.

add to it a few major illnesses and breakdowns, losses and events,
plus some more deaths along the way,
and it became not a matter of “breaking with my tribe”
but realizing that the few of us left in the tribe were too broken
and had not much to give to ourselves, much less anyone else.

no wonder i married a man with his own breakages,
and created my own, new broken family with his children
and his ex.

it was what i knew.
drama was comfortable.
crisis and chaos were normal to me.

somewhere along the way,
i began recognize that i have a tendency to self destruct.
i own the choices i have made.
the reasons have roots in the past, but if i continue those choices,
i am affirming my broken-ness.

so i struggle against it, on a daily basis.

yet ---at the same time---
i value the “broken-ness” of where i am and have been.

i do not believe i could not begin to create the things i am working on for myself,
had i been complacent.

out of anguish comes light.
(although it DOES take it’s sweet fxxx-ing time!)

when i create a mantel for someone,
using broken china & seashells & stones,
i marvel at the BEAUTY created with broken things.

so i tell myself
(when i once in a while fall into a whiny mode, or into “victim-land"),
that “broken” is synonymous with REBIRTH.

maybe it’s the Scorpio in me, but “breaking with your tribe”
suggests to me the story of CREATION....

...of a glimmer of light shining over the dark, dark lake.

...of a new race, a new people, a new planet.

not such a bad thing.

when i was first a stepmother
to two rowdy little boys
whose mother was friggin absent
even when she was in front of them
if you get my drift

i would get really overwhelmed
by the situation
by their neediness
by the huge void i could see
being created
and by what i worried was to come
in the future

i would focus on what i didn’t know
and on how much they
would need me
since their parents
were so freaking polarized

i dwelt on how lacking i was
and surely would be --
what did i know about this shit?

the battles and the escalations
and how “out there” the mom was
made my dysfuncional upbringing
pale by comparison

on top of that,
my brother was quiet and geeky.
i grew up with geeky sisters
not little boys
who farted in line with me at the bank
and got grubby and smelly
who played every sport known to man
and went to sleep with frogs in their bed
and sidled up to me, wanting to know
how that man down the street
could actually be named DICK????

(think about that, thru the mind
of a small boy....wouldja?!)

oh god,
i asked,
am i gonna be worthy
or just totally add to this
fucked up mess?

then i read somewhere
that we grow in parenting
as our kids (biological or otherwise)
grow

we are “as old” as parents
as our kids are
in age
or something like that

somehow that helped-
somehow i GOT
that it’s gonna be OK,
somehow

i often forget
but this i KNOW,
re parenting and everything else:

we have everything we need
we have everything we need
we have everything we need

(NOTE: ONCE IN A WHILE I’M SHARING SOME PIECES OF POSTS
I WROTE TO MY ONLINE “LIST”...

I CAN SAY ANYTHING THERE AND I’M FEELING LIKE IT’S GOOD
TO SHARE IT HERE, TOO!)

THIS IS SOMETHING I WROTE TO A DEAR ONLINE FRIEND:

i’m seeing SOX on little boy feet,
--lovely stinky feet---
the kind of feet that you pet the kitty with,
(although the kitty sometimes snarls)

and that you curl up into a ball with,
as you snuggle on the couch
with mom and bro-bro and who knows who,

in a big soft mix of lovely body parts,
little boys and moms all jumbled together

oh girl!
how rare and wonderful
are the views you provide your kids!

you have the toughest job in the universe
oh yeah

and even if you --if we--are often imperfect-
i firmly believe
we are the perfect parents
at this perfect time
for what our kids need RIGHT NOW

for we allow them to learn
the JOYS OF THE JOURNEY:

we give them the gifts
of seeing us dream
and of hearing us give thanks

from us, they learn to hope,
straining to hear our whispers
as we wish upon another star

they get to feel us tremble
as we risk!
as we LOVE....
as we step out into the unknown
and as we- GASP - allow them to risk, too

and when we fail
they see us pick ourselves up
and BUST OUR BUTTS!

we rise to meet the day,
with new hope
and new promise
(quite often while wearing crazy socks)

YES, we might sometimes wish
for our sons
and step sons
to have known us in a more perfect light-

oh, sure, we could have saved them hurts,
if they could already’ve learned the things
we only now are divining

but maybe
what they most need (or needed)
is to know IT’S OK:

it’s ok to figure it out as you go
it’s ok that some things taste sweeter
the second time aroundi

t’s ok to be wrong
it’s ok to be YOU
(actually it’s pretty fucking special!)

how wonderful
that they’ve learned how special they are
and learned that they have a mom
who is ever present to her feelings!
who has learned to honor her best self
and who challenges those around her
to be their best, too

i honestly don’t think i could ask for much more
than the example that you, my friends, set
for everyone around you!

i hear so much love
when we talk about these things,
whether it’s kids or grandkids or
a friend’s kid or whoever

and i know that this love
rubs off in ways
we cannot even imagine—
IT’S MAGIC

i trust in the magic
i trust in the universe
i trust

there’s something that helped me process getting fired
and starting over
AND OVER (lol)

i realized one day
while reading jacket covers in a bookstore
that there were all these GLOWING words
about every author…

oh the careers they’d had!!!

every one seemed so talented,
so incredibly diverse!

i have to admit, on that particular day,
i was insanely JEALOUS

how dare they fucking be sucessful
when i’m struggling to make a living
and feeling like a FAILURE
and i can’t figure out what i’m supposed 2B doing?!!

then, somehow, it hit me

many of them had had many, many careers—

and i began to wonder
if some of those changes
WERE NOT BY CHOICE--duh!

for some, no doubt,
those twists and turns were from grasping
at the very straws
i was bitching about
and staring in the face.

in an instant, i realized
i could write my story
with my lifechanges as a wonderful narrative....

....or as a victim.

now, often......

I’M TRYING LIKE HELL
to come from a place of thankfullness
for a new opportunity

(deep breath here...)

years of being politically correct
have taught me to often not say what i think

(guess that’s why i love my online friends so much!
no holds barred there!)

i’m realizing, though, that
the things i keep to myself
are the things i should MOST say in my marriage.

i can see how my mom
grew to loathe my dad

(living with an alcoholic can do that)

i was brought up to not value men
(but of course I CRAVED THEM--

i bought into all that “need them to complete me” BS
for a while
(especially after growing up gawky and geeky
and being ignored or made fun of by them
during those lovely teenage years)

however, as i got into my thirties
it very much became a case of
“easier to ask forgiveness than permission”
which turned into not even bothering 2discuss things

i had a good job
i didn’t need a guy for money
and no longer, for validation

i just did what i wanted, traveled, etc
and told him i was doing it.

a lot of it i blamed on my career....
....but truly i was just inconsiderate.

i operated under the assumption that
i was “on my own” ....when i really i was not.

i ran fast and hard for many years
and ignored things about my body,
my marriage
and my life.

i some ways i was running away,
and i knew it.
i was escaping
instead
of working to change the things i didn’t like.

i wonder now --
would anyone have gotten thru to me?
major events had to happen for me to pay attention.
job losses. shingles. crashes. deaths.

what was i waiting for??
god on a billboard??
god in an email?
god hanging out at the frozen foods section?

i can only love ME, RIGHT NOW.
i can only look back without reproach.

i can only go forward.

AND NOW:
how sometimes excruciating
but how joyous for us
to finally examine all the nuances of “PARTNER”

it ain’t easy....
but it’s the journey
of a lifetime

i really meant what i said yesterday
about being GLAD TO FEEL

there are times we move forward, and
we are inclined to see that as progress

FUNNY: when there is lots of activity
the world sees this as success

yet i believe we need the times we derail and get stuck

we need times that --whether deliberate or NOT,
we STOP AND THINK
and allow ourselves the luXury of revisiting things,
those things we usually don’t want to remember

all of this has value
all of this has it’s place,
whether the world rewards it or smiles upon it

it’s just part of the cycle

it’s yin and yang
light and darkness
push and pull

IT’S BEING MINDFUL

and although uncomfortable,
it has it’s place
in the big scheme of the world

(hmmmm..... just like each of us do)

ahhh...that made me smile!

i started this blog
as a way to release

i’ve had kind of an interesting life
(or so i’m told, whenever i’ve taken the time to share it)

i always said i never wanted to be bored
(FUNNY HOW GOD CHOSE TO PUT THAT PRAYER AS A PRIORITY!!)

i don’t have a ton of friends locally anymore

i’m realizing that i really used to have “work aquaintances”,
and a couple of good friends
but those have moved away, in recent years
leaving me, i must admit, a little isolated

i grew up in a home
that encouraged introspection and being alone
(ah yes....academia + dystunction + alcoholism
leads to a lot of closed doors)

i’m often closer to online friends
than the ones i smile at, face to face,
as i run into them at the drycleaners

i’m working on breaking those barriers down,
cuz i KNOW i’m the one who put them up

still, there’s things that happened
that seems like long ago
that shaped me
and that i LET shape me

and if you didn’t know me back then
you’d never know

i keep em buried
i bring em out once in a while
(like trotting out a poodle for show)

when i think it’s safe

AND IT’S TIME

i can feel it:
they’ve sat long enough
heck, i’ve sat long enough

when i share, i find i give voice
to others,
who think they’re weird
or warped
or disfigured and damaged

*****

yes, it’s painful to GO BACK
but at the same time
it’s cathartic
I NEED TO REMEMBER SOME THINGS I BURIED
I NEED TO RECONNECT WITH PIECES OF ME THAT I’VE LOST
I NEED TO FEEL, EVEN IF IT HURTS

i cried earlier today
revisiting the past,
reliving MY hurts as i heard my friend’s tears

sometimes it’s not what happens
but HOW YOU REACT
and motherhood and STEP-MOTHERHOOD
was FREAKING TOUGH

that said
i love my stepkids
i think of them as my kids,
my own....
but i know there’s days
they could care less

sometimes it hurts to remember
today HURT LIKE HELL

but without remembering
i wouldn’t appreciate
the life i have
and the love that spills over

NOTE:MY GOOD FRIEND IS GOING THRU A REALLY HARD TIME…

SHE’S A SINGLE MOM, DIVORCED WITH 2BOYS...WHO IS TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF HER EX’S VENOM....
AND MORE IMPORTANTLY....TRYING TO INVOLVE HIM IN HIS CHILDREN’S LIVES

AND SOME DAYS IT NEARLY KILLS HER…
THIS IS WHAT I SHARED WITH HER:

oh girl
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

i know you are EVERYTHING
for those little guys!!!

and i know, babe
that EVEN ON YOUR WORST FRIGGING DAY,
THE DAY YOU ARE CURLED UP
IN THAT BALL

they still know YOU ARE THERE FOR THEM
THEY KNOW YOU LOVE EM
EVEN WHEN YOU YELL
EVEN WHEN YOU’RE EXHAUSTED
EVEN WHEN YOU’RE CRYING

AND EVEN WHEN THEY COME BACK FROM ASSWIPE’S HOUSE
AND FROM WHATEVER SHIT HE PULLED THAT DAY....
they know they are
LUCKY BOYS

being with you is their security
being with you is their joy
being with you teaches them

that LOVE IS KIND
that LOVE DOESN’T HAVE TO HURT
AND YELL AND SCREAM AND BLAME

teaches them that yes, we STRUGGLE
BUT WE DO IT FOR PEOPLE WE LOVE
and WE DO IT TOGETHER
AS A FAMILY

the lessons they get from you,
they COULD NOT GET ANYWHERE ELSE

yes it’s hard
to be that person,
that god-like structure
who KNOWS AND DOES AND TAKES CARE
OF EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE
(and puts herself so frequently last)

i wish i lived closer to you
i wish i could fly over
(today it would be on my fucking broomstick,
cuz yes-sir-ee this has pushed my buttons BIGTIME)

i’d cook some meals
and freeze em
and do laundry
and clean the house
and mow the yard
and paint some jeans and things to sell
to help with the bills

so you could just be the mom
and enjoy your little boys
and maybe even relax
after little boys go to sleep

(ya know, even god rested on the 7th day)

sigh

all i know is that
BEING THE MOM IS THE MOSTEST
AND THE BESTEST
AND THE HARDEST

just hold on, sweetie

i’m seeing a big celestial brush with gesso
covering our love
and our good wishes
and our prayers

and stiffening those prayers, somehow
with little celestial glue strands

they hold you up
they turn translucent

sometimes they twinkle
and shimmer around you…
....and those lovely, lovely boys

please think of us when you see the stars:
when you see lights
in the distance,
and candles glowing
and flickering softly

know that we are there for you
WE WILL SEE YOU THRU

***************************

as annie lamott says,
there are two prayers:

THANK YOU, THANK YOU GOD
and
LORD, HELP ME, HELP ME

big sighs tonite
big blessings we ask
big thanks we give

NOTE:MY GOOD FRIEND IS GOING THRU A REALLY HARD TIME…

SHE’S A SINGLE MOM, DIVORCED WITH 2BOYS...WHO IS TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF HER EX’S VENOM....
AND MORE IMPORTANTLY....TRYING TO INVOLVE HIM IN HIS CHILDREN’S LIVES

AND SOME DAYS IT NEARLY KILLS HER…
AND READING HER MAILS BRINGS BACK TO MUCH PAIN TO ME,
BUT I HAD TO LET HER KNOW THAT I KNEW WHAT SHE WAS GOING THRU --

THIS IS WHAT I SHARED WITH HER:

i had to take a walk
to get away
for a while

this whole thing brought back so much pain
and anger
and the damn fucking frustration
of dealing with bob’s ex
during my late twenties and all my thirties

she was much the same as the FXXXTARD
you described.

and yes the boys were very confused
and she said shit we couldn’t control to them,
shit she had no business saying,
plus IT WAS ALL LIES!!!

and for what???
WHYYYYY??
DID SHE ENJOY FUCKING THEM UP??

to hell with what she did to me and bob!!
(or more accurately,
TO HELL with WHAT WE LET OURSELVES DWELL ON,
about WHAT SHE DID and SAID--

but why did she wanna screw up
her own kids???

i can guess
it was to cover up her guilt
at having an affair
getting pregnant
and leaving 2little boys
ages 6 and 7 and a half

so she justified her anger
at herself
or maybe not being happy in her marriage
and not wanting to move or take action
or WHATEVER

by going on a BLAME SPREE

she might as well have taken a gun to him
or to them
or to me
cuz the damage she did
WAS ABOUT THE SAME AS IF SHE HAD.

and yes, i blame myself
and i blame US
for letting it get to us so much.

BUT IT WAS SO TOUGH
to deal with her all the time.

i wish she would have moved when
she said she was going to.
but she stayed around
and yes, they saw her,
and yes she called them,
sometime frequently,
sometimes not.

always outta the blue,
changing whatever she agreed to
the day before,
expecting us to change our stuff
or just telling the boys whatever she was doing
so the boys would tell us the new plans…

and then cancelling that again
or may be not.

all the times,
they got disappointed in some way.
all the times coming back fucked up
and angry and MAD AT THE WORLD
and TAKING IT OUT
ON ************** US ****************

and ONCE IN A WHILE
going with her,
and it being everything they wanted--
she was nice--
she was calm--
she had money --
she bought them shit we wouldn’t
and promised them more
if they came to live with her

“OH WOULDN’T BE NICE TO LIVE TOGETHER...”
man, i hate that fucking song.

but then reality would set it,
she’d be her bizarrely fucking self

i used to wish she was on drugs
so i could explain her behaviour

BUT NOT

YEP, SHE PLAYED WITH THEM GOOD
AND THEN THEY TOOK IT OUT ON US…
EVEN WHEN THEY DIDNT KNOW WHY

cuz you know you can only take it out
on the people who won’t leave you

i always wake up at 3am
it’s a habit

i honed it, after years
of waking up and worrying about her

about them

about how they would grow up
about my marriage
and whether it was worth it to stay
cuz as much as i loved him
and loved them

IT TORE ME UP INSIDE ALL THE FUCKING TIME

AND IF I WANNA GO THERE.....
IT ACTUALLY STILL DOES

after years of munching on depression and anxiety,
with a little bi-polar sprinkled on top,
i’m doing better at recognizing where some of my “stuff” comes from.

adversity hones us in different ways.
there’s no rhyme or reason to why some people can go through hard
things and come out loving and joyful,
while others forever see the world as menancing.

the thing that can set me off is often NOT what is going on, right that minute ---
instead, it’s often my beliefs or fears about the situation.

usually, when i examine how i’m feeling,
it goes back to habits and ways of being that i learned as a child.

i often think of my own “armour” and how i learned to deal with people, authentically and inauthentically,
i know much of it i learned from my mom.

she was of Norwegian and Swedish descent. 
her mother died giving birth to her (Toxemia was fatal in 1926)
and so her dad went back to Norway
after trying, on his own, for a year or so, to work his farm as well as care for a baby.

she was raised by his brother and his bother’s wife,
with her cousins (their children),
on a South Dakota farm, during the Depression.

“ma” and “pa” already had 21 kids before they took her in!
they had a range of kids --from those in their early 20’s
on down to the youngest group, kids about 5.

i guess folks needed all those kids to work the farm.
(now you know why so many women died in their thirties!!)

her life was like that of most people during the Depression --
lots of hard work, not always enough to eat.....

but she said she felt loved “for the most part”.

i can’t imagine that there was much time for what we think of today as “family time”.

after grade school, my mom worked as a live in housekeeper
so she could attend the nearest high school, in a town 50 miles away.

she came “Out West” after graduation with one of her cousins and ten whole dollars.

in washington state she worked as a secretary for an admiral in the Navy.
(she said she really wanted to be “Rosie the Riveter”,
but answered “yes” without thinking, when the hiring person asked her if she could type!)

she soon met my dad, a young Marine who smoked Lucky Strikes
a charmer
who had a bit of a drinking problem
and had joined the military to get out of an Illinois orphanage.

she had their first baby at 19,
using a bureau drawer in her small room as a crib,
on a ship bound for china, en route to where my dad had been sent.

hearing these stories as a child,
eating TV dinners and watching the Viet Nam war unfold,
my mother made her life sound normal

but i wonder

from my mom, i learned to turn away from people or dislike them, before they had a chance to dislike me.

i learned to come from a place of worrying that there would never be enough.

i learned to be ashamed of being different, and to hide my true self in many ways.

i remember as a child, always having a sense of dread, of forboding,
about what was going to happen. 
i was always waiting for the shoe to drop.

even into my thirties, i still carried pieces of that with me!
(i am embarassed to say that i remember crossing my fingers,
when we would be about a block or two from home,
praying that the house hadn’t burned down or some calamity hadn’t happened.....

.....shades of my mother.)

i’m still un-learning these things and others.
i don’t blame my mother or my dad or anyone.
they learned certain behaviours that worked for them,
in order for them to feel they were ok or to survive.

i adopted certain ones that i thought worked for me,
some without even thinking about it—and some deliberately.

one of the biggest lessons i’ve had to learn and re-learn, is that i have the right to be happy.

and i often have to RECOGNIZE that i am happy.

to recognize that happiness can exist, i
n the middle of a little chaos or problems or whatever.

to recognize that it does not have to go out the window with calamity.