I had no choice but to let him go.

Half his blood was there.  He was born there. He belonged as much there, as he did here, and perhaps now, even more so.  What kind of mother would let her 16 year old boy fly half way around the globe for an open ended length of time, to land into the arms of an estranged father, culture, family, language?   I had no choice but to surrender to his inner calling and to my own knowing that this journey for him was essential to his growth.  I trusted what he needed for himself. His placenta was buried there next to the family temple, along with past and future generations. And now, he was being called back to his roots, as I always knew one day he would be.

I could not stop thinking of all the dangerous things that could happen to him when he left.  I had lived on that island for seven years and the darkness of it beats like it has a pulse of its own.  Where road rage, venomous snakes, spiders the size of starfish, and black magic breathes through the dark veils of jungle riverbanks.  The haunting melody of its temple walls swaying in ceremonial procession, was now beckoning my son’s return.

As he boarded the plane at midnight, tears fell like a monsoon of emotion flooding the terrain of my motherhood.  Submerged in my own fear, my own absolute amazement of his courage, his rite of passage,  I took a deep breath.  It was all I could do to find my way back to his eyes- dark like mine, burning with intensity, mystery, and a wisdom that stunned me.

He looked like a man as I watched him board the plane through the glass wall that now separated us.  He held his head high, and I could not help but be completely endeared to that famous Balinese dude swagger as he moved from deep inside the curve of his lower back.

His slow purposeful walk embodied the strength he was born with.

I held my breath as I weaved a prayer deep into the sky that was about to take my son half way around the planet and away from me.  And with all my heart, I exhaled life into these words:

Heart Waters by Leslie Caplan

“Dear Bali, you birthed me into a mother as I birthed my son to you 16 years ago.  He returns to you now, on a solo journey of self-discovery.  Keep him safe and protected in the womb of your love.  He is yours now.”

With the umbilical chord cut and hanging like a vine in the indigo sky, I watched him take his first step into manhood.  Through the glass wall that stood between me and my son, I saw him blow me a kiss and mouth the words, “thank you, Mama. Love you.”

My heart ached so deeply, I could feel it in my womb.  It broke open and outward into a rhythmic, pounding pride of fierce love for this courageous young man who was headed into the abyss of his own heroic journey.

Without me, for the very first time.

We’ve posted the second part of that interview, starting where host Robert Davis asks, “What, exactly, is Dare To Be Fabulous?”

Listen by clicking here:  Light Transitions Radio interviews Johanna about DTBF

This segment of the interview runs 18 minutes to the end.  The full 37 minute interview is available on the Light Transitions Radio website.

DTBF!

Tracy Seeley grew up in Kansas, but eventually migrated west by way of Texas and Connecticut.  She currently lives in Oakland, California and teaches at the University of San Francisco, where she also co-directs the Center for Teaching Excellence.  She has published scholarly essays, literary essays, and a memoir,

I am a writer.  If you knew how long it’s taken me to say those words aloud and believe them, you might wonder, or feel pity, or catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror.

1968:  For my 7^th grade history class, I write a story about how early humans had learned to harness fire.  It involves a love story between a boy and girl about my age, and ends with some sweet cliché like, “they brought light to the heart of darkness.”  My teacher writes at the end, “Beautiful. You should be a writer.”

1972:  I’m a junior in high school, infected with Romantic notions of everything, from love to nature to art.  My parents have divorced, my mother is fearful, depressed and working two jobs, and I’ve lost two friends, one to drowning, another to a bridge abutment in one of those terrible after-graduation crashes that annually claim the young.  In my notebook, I write: “I’d like to be a writer, but I haven’t suffered enough.”

1976:  For a British Novel class in college, I write an essay on Tess of the D’Urbervilles.  My teacher writes at the end, “Beautiful.  You should be a writer.”

1985:  I’m in the midst of my doctoral studies in literature.  In a journal I write, “I bought this notebook a year ago because I want to be a writer.  But the pages have been blank…because I’m afraid.  I might not be any good.  I might be mediocre.  But as long as the pages are blank, I can still believe in the possibility.  If I commit myself to paper, I might have to stare my failure in the face.”

It pains me now to read those fearful words undercutting such clear desire.  I see it so often in my students, too, that need for perfection and approval that makes everything they do disappoint them.  In the years that followed that entry, I finished my Ph.D. and became a writer of sorts.  I published scholarly essays on works by other writers, like Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, and Joseph Conrad.  I became a fine teacher and a skilled researcher; I became a minor expert in my field.  But that wasn’t the kind of writer my teachers had meant; it wasn’t the kind of writer I dreamed of becoming in high school, or college, or graduate school.  I knew I had more gifts to offer.

Skip to 1999.  Yes, it took me that long.  My mother died on February 19.  My father died two weeks later.  And suddenly there it was: mortality is real.  If I was ever going to write, I needed to start now.  I’d long harbored the thought of going back to Kansas where I’d grown up, to visit the thirteen addresses of my childhood.  My mother had recorded them all in my baby book, and I’d carried the list for decades thinking, here’s my first book.  But for decades, I hadn’t started.  Now, my parents’ dying hadn’t made me fearless, but it made me determined. I wouldn’t let fear stop me.

Timing can be everything.  Just when I’d made up my mind to finally write, my sister sent me a gift.  She’d come across our parents’ home movies among my mother’s things, and she’d had them transferred to DVDs.

In grainy, saturated colors, my life in the sixties rolled by.  Me in my Brownie uniform, my sisters and I opening Christmas gifts.  And then the scene that reminded me of who I could be when I set my mind to something.  I was 8—well past the time, I thought, when I should have learned to ride a bike.  But my father hadn’t gotten around to helping me and I was tired of waiting.  So one summer day, I took my sister’s bike to our back yard, straddled the bar, put one foot on a pedal, stood up, and started to roll.  Before I could pedal a second time, I fell over.  I got up.  Tried again.  Pedaled two or three times and fell over.  Got up, tried again, fell over.  All afternoon, I fell and got up, again and again and again.  And all afternoon, I practiced and got better, and finally I could ride.  I could ride in wild and wobbly circles around the yard.

My sister and I put on a circus that night for our parents, and though I hadn’t remembered this part, my father brought his camera.  Now, there on the DVD was a little girl wearing a plaid shirt, riding her bike like the wind.

I kept the image of that little girl in front of me when I finally made my trip back to Kansas and when I started writing my book.  I knew I had to be willing to fail, get up, and try again.  This time, I also took a deep, brave breath and asked for help.  I hired writers to work with me and read my early drafts.  And I can tell you now those drafts were bad.  But I kept at it, knowing as I’d known when I taught myself to ride, that I’d get better if I just kept trying.  And I did.

My Ruby Slippers: the Road Back to Kansas was published on March 1, 2011.  One of thousands of books that came out last year.  Nobody knows what a victory it’s been for me, what a thrill it’s been to take it out on tour.  Except maybe for that little girl who’s still out there somewhere, riding her bike like the wind.  And now, you know, too.

DTBF contributor Terri Lyne Carrington poses backstage with her 2012 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

DTBF!

“…as cliché as it may sound, I am finally daring to be my fabulous self, however it may turn out.”

So writes Terri Lyne Carrington in her DTBF story, “Full Circle.” Well, she’s doing a great job at it!  Terri Lyne’s “The Mosaic Project” is up for Best Jazz Vocal album at the Grammy Awards this Sunday.  It’s an album she produced and which features the talents of other fabulous female jazz artists, including the ever lovely Dianne Reeves, another DTBF contributor (“Talking to the Devil.”)

We celebrated their album when it came out last July.  This Sunday, we’ll be applauding them again.

DTBF!!

]]> http://www.daretobefabulous.com/wp/2012/02/dtbf-contributors-up-for-a-grammy/feed/ 1 http://www.daretobefabulous.com/wp/2011/10/pema-chodrons-online-retreat/ http://www.daretobefabulous.com/wp/2011/10/pema-chodrons-online-retreat/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:32:20 +0000 DTBF http://www.daretobefabulous.com/wp/?p=1144 Shambhala Publications is offering DTBFers $20.00 off of Pema Chodron’s online retreat. The theme of the retreat is “Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change.” Just click on the retreat banner at the top of our Celebrated Contributor page to register.

This retreat has generated a lot of excitement because it could be the last opportunity to see Pema teach before she goes on retreat for a year!  It will be streamed live and will include full access to the three-day event in real time via live webcast from October 28-30, as well as video playback until December 31, 2011.

In further celebration of Pema, we are re-featuring her DTBF story, “Why I became a Buddhist,” presented as a six minute video.why-not/

We welcome your comments below any of our stories or blogs!

As always, we also encourage you to share some of your own DTBF stories with us!
Check our submission guidelines for more information.

The Roman Catholic Church has reacted harshly to this proposed legislation, calling it “absurd.”  The Rev. Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese for the capital region said,  “This is a proposal made by people who do not understand the nature of marriage.”  I don’t know where he’s been lately, but anyone can attest to the fact that divorce has become an increasingly common occurrence.  I can’t speak for Mexico City, as I don’t live there, but I’d say as many as 95% of the people I know who are fifty and over have experienced divorce.  I’m sure none of them expected that going in, but it’s still a fact and I think it merits attention and discussion.

The proposed legislation in Mexico City suggests an estimate on the duration of a marriage contract that is no less than two years, and as long as “’til death do us part.”  Personally, I think this suggestion makes great sense.  Marriage, by civic standards,  is a contract, despite what the Roman Church might state, and I think that having a discussion about the terms of this contract, prior to signing it, is a prudent and sensible thing to do.   Isn’t that the understanding with any contractual agreement that we sign?

I’m not married, but I’ve written here about almost doing so when I was twenty-four (see “I Canceled My Wedding.”) Fortunately, I opted out in time, rather than ignoring my second thoughts, going through all the paces and then watching the marriage sour and turn to divorce.   Our relationship lasted a total of seven years, which is a time marker that stayed with me.

Since that experience, I have often opined that marriage contracts should be offered in definite year increments, with the option of renewal.  Seven seems like a good number, due to the concept that our cells and our bodies completely change in seven year increments, and that we subsequently live our lives in seven year cycles.  Or at least, that’s a known hypothesis.  (Thus, the “seven year itch.”)  Well, why not make marriage licenses into renewable seven year contracts?  Then, when the time is approaching for renewal, you can revisit what you have, discuss it with your partner, and decide if you’d like to renew.

I’ve been with my love Henri for nearly ten years now.  He’s privy to my renewable contract concept and agrees with it.  When we got to our own seven year mark, we talked about it and happily opted for renewal.  For us, it’s not a written contract that we share, but one of mutual understanding.  Currently, we have no desire to have the state sanctify our relationship.  We also don’t have children (not counting our kitties, of course.)  If we did, I agree with one columnist who suggested twenty years as the possible minimal term for a couple who wants children.

People get married for many different reasons.  Why not revisit our approach to marriage and treat it as the contract that it truly is?  Discuss all the terms.  Agree to them.   If “’til death do us part” is the way you want to go, then so be it, that can be the length you determine.  Romance is wonderful, but at least, honest communication and mutual understanding will be part of the deal before you sign on the dotted line.  My guess is you’ll be happier for it, and so will the courts.

Here is an excerpt from her website:

“Terri Lyne has recorded an ensemble CD with some of the world’s top musicians, performing music that celebrates different aesthetics in music and in life.  ”The Mosaic Project” is a celebration of female artists with Terri Lyne being joined by some of today’s most celebrated female instrumentalists and vocalists in the world, ‘women with voices,’ coming together to support and celebrate each other from a musical and social perspective.”

Check out “The Mosaic Project.” You can order it, watch a special behind the scenes video about it,  and download a free MP3 from the album.

DTBF!

Johanna

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta is a writer living in Boise, Idaho. Her poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in

Earlier this month I gave birth to a daughter. My first. She was born with midwives but had to go to St. Luke’s for an infection. She had an IV in her hand, and when it wore out after a day, they put it in her other hand. Then her foot. Then her other foot. I watched each part of her 7lb-10-ounce body turn scaly as it got wrapped with IV tape and parched by the dry air of the NICU. I wanted to rub oil onto her extremities. I wanted to touch each dry part and make it moist, but she was connected to wires and away from home, not ready for me yet. Every part of her dried out that first week of her life, her eyes, her small inverted nipples, her fingers. Everything but her lips. Her lips stayed perfect — soft and moist. I talked to her even when I couldn’t hold her. I told her about myself, about some things I had learned. I told her, one evening, about need. About how important it is to need people, not things. How not needing too many things makes a person portable, able to travel light. I told her things I learned almost a decade ago, from being addicted to chapstick.

Since discovering lip balm at age ten, I put it on my lips between 50 and 100 times a day. These are real numbers, by the way, not fuzzy math. I had to keep it with me at all times: I had vanilla lip balm in my glove compartment; Nivea rose in the pocket of whichever boyfriend I was dating; standard cherry chapstick in my backpack; Body Shop strawberry next to my bed; Rachel Perry banana-coconut in the kitchen; and my favorite of all, Montana huckleberry in my purse – that one I always ordered in bulk in case I ran out.

Jump forward eleven years – I had just graduated from college, and I used the first paycheck of my first writing job to book a trip to NY. I packed clothes for a week, my notebook, toothbrush, and half a dozen tubes of lip balm: plain mint, gooey grape in a tub, Dr. Pepper-flavored, banana-coconut, lemon-lime, Montana huckleberry.

I stayed with my friend Yo-El who was a first year medical student, and spent my first day exploring. When Yo-El finished class, I met her for oysters at a little restaurant near Battery Park. I was telling her about my day when she interrupted me and said: “Hey, Liz, when’s the last time you looked in the mirror?”

“What?” I asked. “I don’t know. This morning, probably. Why?

“Well,” she said, “I was just wondering what’s wrong with your lips.”

She ushered me off to the bathroom to have a look.

Both my top and bottom lip looked as if they had been burned. They had this awful blistery flakiness, and had turned a bright lipstick burgundy. The corners of my mouth had cracked into sore-looking circles, sort of like the red dots on clown-cheeks.

Perhaps, I thought, I needed better lip balm. I dragged Yo-El out of the oyster bar and to a Walgreen’s a few doors down. I bought a new tube of Vaseline lip therapy and thought that by the end of the night, the problem would be solved.

But the next morning, my lips had gotten worse. When I got up for breakfast, Yo-El was sitting at her kitchen table, practicing her sutures on a piece of raw chicken, and still she looked at my mouth and said, “Gross.”

In addition, she began trying to diagnose me, telling me all of the things it “might” be – such as oral cancer. “That’s what it looks like,” she said apologetically. “Oh, I hope it’s not squamous cell carcinoma! Or worse …  what if it’s syphilis? If it is syphilis you’d better treat it – untreated syphilis can lead to blindness. Or you might have Steven-Johnson Syndrome. That wouldn’t be too bad – except that it’s untreatable.”

I still thought the problem was as simple as my needing more lip balm, so I went out and bought something stronger, with soothing herbs and lavender.

But this new lip balm didn’t work, either, and my face was getting worse; the cakey redness was spreading down toward my chin and up toward my nose. So I cut my trip short and went home that day. As I took the subway back to my apartment, I noticed tactless people – mostly children and very old people – staring at me. It was disconcerting.

That evening, I had had enough. I had two more weeks before my college health insurance ran out, so I gathered every lip balm I owned and frog-marched myself to University Health Services. I wasn’t sure which floor to go to – was this an Ear, Nose, and Throat Problem, or simply Dermatology? Should I go to Sexual Health, or the Cancer Center? It turned out that all of the different wings closed at 5pm, so any problems afterward were considered Emergency.

So I waited in the Emergency Room, sitting among people with broken arms and legs. And finally I got called back. The doctor looked exhausted, like those interns you see in movies who haven’t slept for 3 days. “Well?” he said. “What is the problem?”

I explained about my mouth.

“Did you try lip balm?” He asked.

“Yes!” I said. “About twenty different kinds!” And I opened my purse, and out spilled plain mint, gooey grape in a tub, Dr. Pepper-flavored, banana-coconut, lemon-lime, Montana huckleberry, and dozens of other kinds that I had tried and that had failed me.

The doctor wanted to know how long I had been using lip balm. I told him eleven years.

Then he asked: “How many times a day would you say you use it?”

I decided to give a conservative answer. “About thirty,” I said, casually. “Give or take.”

“Thirty!” He said. “Jesus.” It dawned on me then that this had to be serious, as the doctor probably wasn’t supposed to say “Jesus” in front of patients.

He put on gloves and examined my mouth. He took a culture. He left the room and returned a few minutes later, and said:

“The problem is that you are addicted to lip balm.”

He went on to say that my lips had stopped producing moisture, and that the only way to fix this was for me to go cold turkey.

I told him that that wasn’t an option. I asked, “Can’t you send me home with, like, a prescription or something? What is normally done in these cases?”

He gave me a scornful look. “We don’t see a lot of lip balm addicts in the emergency room.”

But he disappeared again and returned with a sample tube of steroid cream, the kind you use for athlete’s foot. “You may put the cream on your lips twice a day. No more. If you come back here in a week addicted to this cream, I will refuse to see you.” Then he left the room for good, leaving me in it, surrounded with colored lip balm tubes poking in all different directions.

It was a sad walk home that Saturday night, but I courageously stopped at a trash can in Harvard Square, surrounded by punk teenagers and homeless people, and I began to empty my purse. Down went plain mint, gooey grape in a tub; down went Dr. Pepper flavored, banana-coconut, lemon-lime. Down went all tubes, including Montana huckleberry.

There is an invisible line dividing before and after in most addictions, and even in such a ridiculous one, the line existed.

The things I couldn’t do until my lips healed included kissing (when I tried to kiss my boyfriend, he refused because he said I was “scaly”); eating spicy food; taking big bites of any food; and using lipstick. I learned this last rule a month after the initial flare-up, when I tried to test the doctor’s orders by using moisturizing lipstick – and I ended up, once again, with starchy clown-lips that took another month to heal.

But soon I learned that there were also things I could now do: for example, swimming. I used to have to stick near the sides of the pool or the lake, because even in the water I needed to have fast access to lip balm. But now when I went swimming with friends, I could swim out further. I could also travel more lightly, since I no longer needed to carry a purse to tote around all my lip balms. I could just stick money and keys in my pocket and go.

And it made me wonder: what other things did I think I needed that I could give up?

First on that list was the boyfriend. He was a place-holder, you know the kind of person you date while waiting for someone better to come along, and also I could not get him to stop using the word, “irregardless,” which is not actually a word.

I thought: I don’t need him.

Then I realized how many belongings I had that I didn’t need. That year after college, I started giving them away. It was sort of the beginning of my life as a generous person. If I wasn’t using something well, I felt that the thing should go to somebody who would love it.

I moved into a smaller apartment. I looked at my life and all its commitments – did I truly need to be a member of this club? Was that friend actually a good friend? Did I need this job, or was I just wasting my time and keeping it to feel safe? I reexamined every thing, every person, and every commitment that I had. And I consciously chose to either keep them or let them go. I began traveling lightly in a whole new way, choosing to focus my time and energy only on the things that mattered to me. And it was all because of lip balm.

And  that’s how lip balm became a divider between my teens and my twenties, an  addiction that I left behind in one decade to move, unaddicted, into the next.

Cause to Celebrate.

Let this day be a reminder to spread the love to your sisters far and wide.

And to take action to help the ones who need it.

DTBF!

Johanna  & Patti