Well, hello again. It has been almost two years since I last wrote here. That is a long time for someone who still writes almost every single day.
I didn’t stop writing. I stopped sharing.
There were reasons for that. For quite a while, I was involved in a legal situation that made me feel that putting my private thoughts into a public space was simply not wise. I had learned, rather painfully, that words offered vulnerably and with good intentions can sometimes be read through a very different lens than the one through which they were written.
And so I became quiet here.
That chapter of my life is finally over. And now I find myself wondering what I want this space to be again. Because I am definitely not the same person who started this blog years ago. I am not even quite the same person who wrote my last post. So much life has happened.
My children have continued the astonishing process of becoming adults. One is already there, technically anyway, and the other is rapidly approaching it. 🙂 Parenting older children has taught me an entirely different version of motherhood. When children are little, so much of parenting is doing. Feeding, driving, organizing, fixing, protecting.
As they get older, I think parenting becomes increasingly about learning when to hold on and when to let go. When to help and when to allow struggle. When to offer advice and when to simply say, “I’m here.” I am still learning that one.
I have also been thinking a tremendous amount about relationships. About love and attachment. About trauma. About why human beings sometimes hurt the people they love. About the difference between understanding someone’s pain and excusing the ways that pain affects other people.
Perhaps most importantly, I have been learning that compassion and boundaries are not opposites. This has actually been a profound realization for me.
I have always believed very deeply in compassion. I still do. Maybe more than ever. I believe that if we could somehow see the complete story of another human being, every frightened child they once were, every loss, every rejection, every moment that taught their nervous system what the world was like, we would understand one another very differently.
But understanding why someone behaves a certain way does not mean that every behavior is acceptable. You can understand someone’s wounds and still say, “You cannot treat me that way.” You can love someone and still have boundaries. You can have compassion for another person’s suffering without taking responsibility for fixing it.
And perhaps one of the hardest lessons for someone like me: you can love people deeply without making their happiness your job. I am still practicing that one too. 🙂
This year has also reminded me, rather brutally at times, that life is extraordinarily fragile.
There has been illness around me. There has been loss. My beloved little dog Dolly, who was my companion through some of the most tumultuous years of my life, died this spring. And then, only a month later, my 18-year-old nephew died unexpectedly. There are some losses for which I don’t think human beings are supposed to be able to construct a satisfying explanation.
Sometimes, something is simply devastating. And maybe the spiritual work isn’t finding a reason why it happened. Maybe the work is allowing grief and love to coexist. I have heard some people say that grief is gratitude with nowhere to go. We hurt because something mattered.
And somehow, even after terrible things happen, the world continues offering beauty. Someone laughs. The sun comes through the trees in exactly the right way. Your child tells you something funny. Someone you love reaches for your hand. You eat something delicious. You hear a song that makes your whole body feel alive. Life keeps saying: I am still here.
And lately I have felt increasingly drawn back toward something else that was once a very important part of my life: my Jewish community.
For almost two decades, my family attended Friday night services nearly every week. It was our spiritual home. After my divorce, returning there became incredibly painful. The building itself seemed filled with memories of a life I had lost, and for years I mostly stayed away except for important occasions and the High Holy Days.
But something felt different this year. At Yom Kippur, I stood in that sanctuary and read a passage by Maya Angelou about forgiving ourselves. And somehow, this time, I didn’t feel only the ghosts of my old life. I felt something else. I felt like maybe I could come home. Not home to the person I used to be. Home as the person I am now. That distinction feels important.
For a long time, I think part of me wanted healing to mean getting back to some previous version of myself, the professor, wife, mother, scientist, friend, community member I once recognized so easily. But I don’t want to go backwards anymore. There are things about the person I was that I miss. There are things about her that I love. There are also things, many things, she didn’t understand yet.
She didn’t know how much life was going to ask of her. She didn’t know how complicated love could be. She didn’t know how much she would lose. She also didn’t know how much she would experience.
And I think that may be one of the biggest things I have learned since I last wrote here.
In my last post, I wrote about the idea that perhaps we are here to experience, that life is not something we are supposed to perfect, but something we are supposed to live. I believe that even more strongly now.
I have had experiences over the past several years that I never would have chosen. Some have been extraordinarily painful. Some have been beautiful. Some have been both.
But they have all taught me something about being human.
These days, I am increasingly less interested in dividing people into “good” and “bad,” or experiences into “successes” and “failures.”
I am more interested in asking:
What is this teaching me?
What is this showing me about myself?
Where am I acting from love, and where am I acting from fear?
What belongs to me, and what belongs to someone else?
What can I change?
What do I need to accept?
Where do I need a boundary?
Where can I offer compassion?
And — a question I come back to again and again — Who do I want to be in this moment?
I don’t always get the answers right. Definitely not.
I am still capable of making mistakes. I still sometimes over-function for the people I love. I still get anxious. I still try to control things that aren’t mine to control. I still sometimes react instead of respond. I still have moments when I desperately want the universe to operate according to Laura’s Very Reasonable Plan For How Everything Should Go. 🙂
Apparently enlightenment remains a work in progress.
But I also feel an enormous amount of gratitude.
I am 48 years old.
My children are growing up. My career is evolving. My understanding of love is evolving. My spirituality is evolving. My relationships are evolving. I am evolving.
And I don’t know exactly what the next chapter looks like.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I don’t think I need to.
Maybe I can simply keep paying attention.
Keep learning.
Keep loving.
Keep creating.
Keep setting boundaries when boundaries are needed.
Keep forgiving other people.
Keep forgiving myself.
Keep noticing how unbelievably beautiful this strange, difficult, heartbreaking, hilarious, precious experience of being alive can be.
And perhaps I will start writing about some of it here again.
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