The Lullaby of Letting Go

There's an adage I love that says that nothing I've ever let go of didn't have claw marks on it. There's another that tells us that we must let go or be dragged  (anyone who's water skied knows that one). Why is to so very hard to let go, once we've got ahold of something, whether it's a person, a job, an idea or philosophy, a situation, stuff, etc.?  Why do we hold on well past the expiration date of relationships gone bad, situations that have begun to stink with decay and possessions that have turned the tables and now possess us, rather than the other way around? In the fifth installment of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, Lover Unbound, there’s one of those scenes that is so real, it's like a splash of cold water to the face. To the point where I felt the need to check my makeup to ensure I didn't have raccoon eyes from the drip. Sometimes, I completely forget I'm reading paranormal fantasy. So even though the scene in question involves a dead woman deciding whether to leave Limbo and ascend to heaven by letting go of her earthly love, the emotions were so raw and so real, I felt like I was that character, struggling with how to let go the ties that bind her to her love, knowing that she needed to do it, but having no idea how.

How many of you have been there?  God knows I have, more times than I care to count. Because even if the will is there, or at least the intellectual understanding that the time has come to pry our fingers loose, sometimes the letting go just doesn't happen. This is where misery comes to visit—sometimes for a long time.

I can't be the only one who tells myself that I'm going to be ruthless about spring cleaning and that I’m going to throw or give away all the stuff I haven't used in a year, only to have a pathetically small pile at the end of the day. Because, you know, I might fit into that fabulous little black dress that is definitely too little for me these days sometime in the unspecified future. And I know I'm not the only one who used to make deals with myself, and also my friends, that if he put me down one more time, I was going to tell him it's over, only to find myself making excuses so that I didn’t have to make good on my promises to let go. 

The truth is I'm not very good at letting go, but in my defense I don't actually understand the mechanics of the whole experience. Luckily, I have JR Ward to teach me life lessons that she puts in the mouths of ghosts and vampires. Ms. Ward tells us that letting go means accepting what cannot be changed without any hope or expectation. Letting go, according to JR Ward, means acceptance without bargaining or trying to control outcomes. It means accepting that love doesn't necessarily conquer all, life isn't always fair, and the good guys don't always win. These are tough truths to swallow, even when they are sugar-coated in some of my very favorite fantasy stories. 

Letting go is hard. No two ways about it and no getting around it except for through it. I hate that. It’s getting to the place where we can look at reality with the scales fallen off our eyes and accept what is in front of us to see without thinking there is any escape from reality. Getting to a place where we can let go is a process. For me, it's an expression of grace, something I cannot will myself to do, that comes when it comes, on someone's timeline not my own.

If I were a Vulcan, it would probably be easier. I could apply my not-inconsequential intellectual skills to completing a cost/benefit analysis on should I stay or should I go now. And then do whatever logic dictates is the best choice. Because if I go there will be trouble, and if I stay it will be double. Go, it is. Except it doesn't work quite as cleanly as The Clash would have us believe. It's not always a matter of the mind, but rather a total eclipse of the heart (OK—no more song lyric references—I've been watching too much Lip Sync Battle, apparently). We get attached and stay attached. Like barnacles on the bottom of a boat. We need to be scraped away from that which no longer serves us, painful and messy as that can be.

But the payoff is Divine.  The payoff is serenity. The payoff for letting go is peace.  It is the most beautiful lullaby I’ve ever heard, lulling me to a place of deep surrender and harmony.  The price is high, but the reward is worth it.

It’s sad but true that everything I let go of has claw marks on it.  Even though I know that it’s something I need to do and that I will feel glorious when I actually manage to do it.   On the other hand, acceptance and letting go are not for the faint-hearted. This is the stuff of epics, don't kid yourself. Take it one day at a time and ask for help. I certainly do. In fact, I'm going to finish this post and go back to my current life coach, JR Ward, and get all the help I can get. That lady knows from whence she speaks. She's as real as they come, imbuing all her fantasy with ground truth. I'm holding onto that. 

Freaks and Geeks

I was in my car the other day with my family. I'd forgotten my ear buds, and so, while my husband and kids retreated to their own worlds, attached to their media through the wires coming out of the cartilage on the sides of their heads, I listened to my audio book on the car's stereo system. All good so far. I was enjoying Lover Unbound, book four in JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series. This offering is about Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, and doesn't that name just make you want to run screaming from the room?  On top of that, poor guy had a difficult childhood (his father's name probably gave you the first clue about that), and he's got some serious psychological issues and a complicated sexuality. So, here I was, driving in the car, listening to my beloved BDB and knitting a baby blanket for a friend who gave birth five months ago (I knit--and I know—seems totally incongruous with everything you think you know about me. But don't worry, I also have a hang gliding license, so my street cred should remain intact). Anyway... I'm tooling along when one of JR Ward's famous, scorching, explicit sex scenes begins—over the stereo system. Oops. As I fumbled to turn the damn volume down, wildly glancing back at my teenaged sons, I realized no one was paying any attention. So, I did what any book addict would do: continued listening while laughing to myself at the ridiculous situation. I decided to file the whole thing in my "Problems I never thought I'd have" drawer. You probably won't be surprised to know that all of the above has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of today's post. I just wanted to share. The subject is about being social, popular and attractive in our youth—or not—and how that experience affects our characters and our lives into adulthood. In Lover Unbound, Vishous' mate, Jane, is a serious sort—a gifted, human surgeon who is brilliant but somewhat plain. She was definitely not part of the in-crowd as a girl.  I love it when authors make the love interests of spectacular alpha males less that heart-stoppingly beautiful. It gives hope to the rest of us and soothes the tight, hurt places in my inner child who was never in the popular crowd and always wanted to be.

Not being included in the A-group throughout my elementary, middle and high school years definitely left its mark on me and, I have to assume, countless others. Even when we were not bullied, the fact remains that those of us who watched the beautiful people from the outside in were negatively impacted by default. No one likes to feel excluded. Especially when that which we are being excluded from looks so amazingly fun, exciting, vibrant and attractive--as the life it represents pulls us like a moth to a flame—only to have us butt up against the invisible wall that separates us from the popular people—while simultaneously allowing us to see in and understand exactly what we are missing. Bummer all around. 

I know I'm not the only one who felt this way, as I had friends who were in exactly the same boat. And until we all learned to accept ourselves, our friends and our social position in the highly-defined hierarchy that is high school, which would put the most disciplined military unit to shame—no fraternizing there—most of us were left feeling like there was something about ourselves that was inherently insufficient.

So, what to do with all of this angst as a newly minted teenager just learning how to fit into the world? For people like me and Jane in Ms. Ward's book, we retreated into our fortresses and made sure to bar the doors behind us. For each individual, that fortress is different—it could be one's art, or a physical gift, like dancing or gymnastics, for example. For me, like Jane, it was my intellect, which never let me down, and which made me powerful and lent me strength to resist the messages of inadequacy that not being popular caused me to play in an endless loop in my head. I retreated to my books and my studies and made sure I was the smartest of them all.

Like Jane with a scalpel in her hand, my brain made me strong and confident, and allowed me to accept that while I wasn't beautiful, I was worthy in another, more lasting way. And because I am human, I worked hard to talk myself into the proposition that being smart was superior to being pretty. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I ever quite believed my own mental patter when I was younger and it mattered most.

And while the pain of being snubbed was difficult, I can look back now with gratitude that because I had fewer social opportunities, I was able to focus all of my attention on my schoolwork and the development of my cognitive and intellectual skills. These skills have served me well in life, but they are also the bricks I use to wall myself off from people and social situations that represent any danger of taking me back to feeling like that sad teenager who wasn't going to get asked to the prom by anyone at my school.  But don't feel too sorry for me—I I took myself right out of the running for the attention of the boys my age—who weren't interested—and got myself a date with an older gentleman—much older—to escort me to my prom and cause a scandal at the same time—so take THAT, all of you beautiful people!  My date was the only one who could legally buy booze, too, so we were a very popular couple, nah, nah.

So what is my point, beyond a trip down memory lane to a difficult time in my life?  The point is one that Bill Gates made a couple of decades ago. Beauty and physical prowess fade. Intelligence only grows over time and becomes more powerful. It's not the meek who shall inherit the earth, it's the freaks and the geeks. I wish I could go back to my teenaged self and tell her, "Don't worry—it's all going to be good. Your teenaged nemesis is going to grow up and be a one-hit wonder on the screen, and you're going to have a life beyond your wildest dreams."  I might have understood that better if I'd been able to read about Jane and Vishous when I was younger. Unfortunately, Ms. Ward started publishing her amazing novels relatively late in life--hers and mine. But, to all the girls and boys who now have their noses pressed to that invisible wall, I say, take heart. Those folks on the inside will be working for you some day

The Power of Purpose

I know a lot of people fantasize about winning the lottery. In the dream, they tell their bosses to take this job and shove it, and they live out the rest of their days free and easy, living large and in charge. The idea of not having to do anything, and being able to decide how to spend our time seems achingly compelling. In fact, we have a whole structure around this possibility--it's called retirement. In a perfect world, for many of us, we get to stop working while we still have some physical and mental capabilities left, and we live out our golden years doing...something. The question, however, is what? I'm still with Butch O'Neal and the Black Dagger Brotherhood, which is ironic, as he is one of my least favorite characters. But he's offered me a lot of food for thought. Which seems to happen a lot—people I don't like being the ones to teach me things I need to learn. But I digress. What's new?  Anyhoo, I've talked about how Butch was plucked from his life to become involved with the Brotherhood here. One of the many things I love about JR Ward is that she doesn't take the easy path. Instead of Butch riding into the sunset with the Brotherhood, we see what happens to him, living on the margins of their world. Butch has a place to live, a killer couture wardrobe and close friendships with the Brothers. Sounds just like the won the lottery, right?  Except the one thing. Butch doesn't have something to do. An activity that provides purpose for his life. A reason to get up in the morning and greet the day with enthusiasm. And without that, he's lost and miserable.

People think it would be wonderful to have all the free time in the world. What do you do with that time? What do you do when you have no place you have to be in the morning? How do you structure your days so that they are purpose filled, without any external scaffolding? It's a question my husband, as a financial advisor, faces from his clients all the time. It's a question some of my friends are asking themselves. Is there life after work? Is there life before and during work if the work is not meaningful?  Where do we find meaning, if not in purpose?

I'm not saying that not having to worry constantly about money isn't great. It most certainly is. But I'm also not saying that having the means to choose how to spend one's time is the walk in the park that those who don't have that luxury think it is. Because it's not, as Butch so clearly shows us. Yes, it's nice to have great clothes and to live in a great place. But even when we have meaningful relationships in our lives, there is still something missing when we lack purpose to fill our time, engaging in activities that express ourselves in some way and go beyond the necessary to the visceral.

We all engage in necessary activities. We bathe. We sleep. We eat. But unless eating also involves cooking, and unless the cooking is an expression of our creative center (which it most definitely is not for me), then we are just doing what we need to do to survive, but not to thrive. And this is true when our activities consist of the actions necessary to fulfill our responsibilities to those we love. I take great satisfaction in feeding my family and supporting them in their endeavors. There is joy in such activity sometimes as well. But these actions don't feed my soul, which needs action of a different sort. 

What action is that, you may ask?  Great question, and one I've spent considerable time contemplating. What feeds the soul?  On my Twitter profile (@truthinfantasy), I have a quote from Walt Whitman that says, "Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."  I love this quote. But what does it mean?  Where do we find our truths?  Unfortunately, no one can answer that question but us. And it's not necessarily an easy question to answer, although some of us are blessed with certainty in their passion, I'm not one of them. I'm a multi-passionate person. I haven't been able to focus down on any one thing that provides purpose in my life. But I haven't stopped looking. 

Because there is power in purpose. It is the power that fuels great feats of human achievement and drives us to excellence. Purpose gives us wings to fly and the ability to do things we didn't think ourselves capable of. Without purpose, we tend to be sad sacks of flesh housing blood and bones, without the animation of inspiration. So it is worth looking for, and worth rejoicing when we find it.

I’ll give you a hint about Butch.  He finds his purpose in the end.  HEA and all of that.  Would that it were so easy for the rest of us.  Having said that, I must also say that I love JR Ward. She "gets" all of this, and more. She has clearly found her purpose in life and thank God for that, as she brings joy to thousands, if not millions. And I have found some purpose and quite a bit of power in writing about her brilliant books. Good stuff all around. For today, it's enough to thrive.

Plain Talking

If you've read my bio, you know I'm from New York. I'm also from a large and loud extended Eastern European family. We talk with our hands a lot. At extreme decibel levels. Sometimes, we scare outsiders. Often, we offend them. But, honestly, I don't care. We are who we are, and I'm glad we're loud and proud. Because the other side of that coin is that we are direct. We will definitely tell you if your fly is open, you have a hole in your pants, that your breath smells like three day-old fish and you have spinach in your teeth. And we'll hope like hell you'd tell us too. Except you probably won't. Unless you're also from New York. I'm still listening to the Black Dagger Brotherhood by JR Ward and I'm somewhat annoyed by what was a minor plot line currently being developed in the third book, Lover Revealed. Butch loves Marissa. Marissa loves Butch. But, apparently, neither of them is from New York, because they are both laboring under the misperception that the other is uninterested. I really can't stand these plot lines. This is like mistaken identity and frame-ups. Boh-ring. Eventually, you know it's going to get sorted out, so there is no mystery or even any originality with this plot device.

This storyline annoys me because I absolutely, positively cannot relate. Why the hell wouldn't these two just speak plainly to each other? Cards on the table instead of close to the chest. What you see is what you get. Shoot from the hip and ask questions later. OK, perhaps there is a small purpose to prevarication, subtlety and circumspection. But I can't do it. I hate it. I would always rather know exactly where I stand than wonder, mooning about, applying my not-inconsequential analytical skills to a black box situation.  None of us is a member of the Politburo, so there is no reason to be a black box. I shouldn't have to guess what you are thinking and feeling if we are relating to each other properly.

Because the only reason to be so stingy with the 411 on what's going on is our pride. And we all know what comes before the fall. That's right, our big, fat egos, our puffed up pride, slithering in our ears like the Khan worms in the second Star Trek movie, telling us to protect ourselves. Our egos tell us to act cool, pretend we don't care too much, so no one will see how small and vulnerable we are. Our pride moves us to wait before we call someone back, or at all, to adopt a casual attitude about people and situations about which we feel anything but casual. To hide our enthusiasm and passion and excitement and inspiration, lest others find us too exuberant.

And to my ego I say, "Bite me. Leave me alone. Get the hell out of here."  Passion is a gift. Inspiration is divine. Enthusiasm is contagious. Why in the world would we want to throw a wet washcloth on all of that beautiful feeling, threatening to overwhelm us like lava down a volcano?  Oh!  Maybe that is exactly why we do it. We're scared of the heaving magma. I get it. We might get burned. Hurt. Maybe even dead. I've heard strong feelings can do that to a person.

Wait!  No, they can't. Feelings aren't facts. Even though feelings themselves can seem like having surgery without anesthesia, but, in reality, it just feels that way. This is virtual pain, not literal torture. So we can survive it. Maybe learn something. Maybe not. But whatever happens, at least we didn't put the kabosh on our emotions in the name of preserving our street cred. Be real. Tell it like it is. Take a chance and let the hope and anticipation and yearning out into the world. Act like you're from New York. 

We New Yorkers are a direct bunch. Full frontal all the way. Saying' it, but not spraying it. We are the most exuberant people on the planet (except maybe the uptight Mayflower types--you know the ones I mean). And it's amazing. It's why New York is so full of life and why guys and gals with stars in their eyes flock to the city like flies to dung. They all want to participate in all of that teeming, vibrant, pulsing life. They want to feel.

Unlike some of us who like to pretend that we don't feel a thing. The Vulcans among us, who I've written about before. The ones with ice water flowing through their veins whose cards are up their sleeves, nowhere near plain sight. Folks like this eschew plain talk and they live by the never let them see you sweat code of conduct. I want you to see me glowing--it's how you'll know I'm in it to win it.   

I encourage all of you to put on your Rudy Guiliani and let it all hang out. 

The Great Escape

I know you'll all be delighted to know that I've finished listening to the second book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series and I'm making my way though the sixteen glorious hours of Book Three, Lover Revealed. This one is focused on Butch O'Neal, a human living on the margins of the Brotherhood's world, neither integrated nor completely excluded, but living limbo somewhere in between.  Butch is an interesting character. He is one of several characters in the series who get plucked from their everyday lives and vanish without a trace to become part of the vampire underworld in which the stories take place. These characters just walk away from their lives, without even a backward glance. The author, JR Ward, explains this by saying that Butch and the rest lack family and close friends, and that they work in jobs they don’t like and live lives in which they are not invested. These are sad people, from my perspective. In JR Ward's world, however, this quotidian dislocation is considered a positive, not a negative, as each of her carefully constructed characters move onto something better—lives that are full and meaningful and overflowing with connection and purpose, all of which were missing in their former incarnations. I get that, and, of course, she needs to populate her plots, but I question the validity of some of her assumptions. The problem with starting a new life is that we take ourselves with us. 

Shortly after the birth of my children, I used to have a fantasy. It was a fairly well-developed daydream, and I spent considerable time dwelling there, which was not time well spent, unfortunately. My fantasy had a shorthand, and my husband would sometimes ask me, after catching me staring into space for too many seconds in a row, whether I had traveled to "Nepal."

I've mentioned before that I had a hard time when my kids were born. I was both physically and emotionally unwell. It was a very dark time for me, made all the more difficult because I had worked so hard to have those babies and almost nothing went well with the experience. I felt trapped in a body and a life that didn't feel familiar or comfortable, and I was scared and confused. My response to these realities was to fantasize about escape. I hadn't yet discovered the joys of reading paranormal and urban fantasy, so I wasn't aware of the whole poof-yourself-out-of-your-current-life-and-replant-yourself-into-a-better-alternative-reality motif, but I would have been all over that action if I'd known about it. The idea of being Butch O'Neal would have been very appealing to me.

Instead, my fantasy involved moving to the most remote, inaccessible place I could think of and living by myself in a cave and not having to deal. At all.  For me, Nepal seemed like the perfect place to do my imitation of the invisible woman, who's there one minute and gone the next. Beam me up, Scotty. 

So, my fantasy was called Nepal, which was code for “I-want-to-run-screaming-from-my-life-as-far-and-as-fast-as-I-can-where-no-one-can-find-me.” And I "enjoyed" my time in Nepal, at least on a relative scale. I recognized that Nepal was a better place to go than, say, substance abuse or any other form of actual self-destruction, which was a road I'd traveled in the past and had no wish to revisit. It was the least bad option in a range of not good choices. 

And even though I knew, mostly, that Nepal was a fantasy, I'd be lying if I said I didn't give actual consideration to implementing the plan to ditch my life and start all over with a "clean slate," whatever I thought that meant (remember, my brain was not firing on all cylinders, given my post-partum hormonal upheaval—I was really not myself in those days). Thankfully, however, enough of my higher-functioning faculties were still working well enough for me to realize a few immutable truths.

The first truth is that you can't escape your past. As I thought about life in that cave in Nepal, I appreciated that no matter what, I was a wife and a mother and nothing, including total separation from those who conveyed my relationship status upon me, would change that. I would still be someone's wife and two someones’ mother, even in my Nepalese cave. I would simply have failed in those roles, not escaped them.

The second truth I could not deny was that I'd still be me in that cave. I would have to take myself with me—not just the roles I played in others' lives, but the role I play in my own drama—the starring one—as I was the agent of all the commotion in the first place. Even in Nepal, I couldn't escape myself. And if I had created circumstances in the good old U. S. of A that I didn't like, then it would only be a matter of time before I created similar problems for myself in Nepal. Only then, I'd have other complexities to add to the drama, including a lack of indoor plumbing and electricity, not to mention the mess I'd left behind.

When I read about Butch O'Neal, who gets his HEA, of course, I wondered about it all. This is JR Ward, though, so she makes it work because each of her characters does the hard emotional and spiritual labor necessary to grow and progress and achieve the HEAs they get. So it didn't bother me too much. In the real world, however, the work we are called to do is most often accomplished in the life we have, not the one we wish we had.

I remember taking scuba diving lessons (as a token of my love for my husband, because I am deathly afraid of the water). I've forgotten most of what I learned, except one thing that has stayed with me all this time:  the instructor explained that when you are sixty feet deep, you've got to solve all your problems where you are, with the tools at hand, in the environment you're in. Because the solutions are not at the surface. Once you are safely there, you will, by definition, have resolved your troubles.

It's the same with life. We have to tackle adversity where we find it, not run away from it. If we feel like we're underwater, we probably are, and we need to figure out how to resurface and breathe again. But we have to do that from where we are, with the tools at hand. And it can take a while. If you shoot to the surface from sixty feet deep, you risk the bends and possible death—you need to surface slowly, stopping along the way to let your body acclimate and your lungs work under the decreasing pressure. If that's not a metaphor for life, I don't know what is. 

I never did go to Nepal. Or anywhere near there, thankfully. I realized that such a place didn't really exist, and that any attempt to go there or to try to find it was a losing proposition. I'm grateful that I didn't have a life I could just opt out of. I'm grateful that I didn't choose to opt out anyway. I'm grateful that those closest to me didn't give up on me and helped me break through to the other side of the nightmare I had mistaken for an escapist fantasy.

First, Do No Harm

"But I didn't mean it; it's not my fault."  My kids seem to think these are magic words, words that have the power to negate the consequences of any misconceived action they incorrectly choose to take. I've explained again and again that just because we don't intend to hurt someone doesn't mean that they don't bleed. I've pointed out that whether they meant to break the fan with the lacrosse ball, the fan is still broken. We still put people in jail for manslaughter, even if it's involuntary. And while good intentions definitely count against the degree of culpability, they fall into the same category as remorse after the fact: nice to have and relevant toward calculating the probability of future misdeeds, but immaterial to the outcome at hand. Why am I thinking about my personal parenting challenges in this moment? Well, I'm still engrossed in the Black Dagger Brotherhood (I'm listening to it on Audible and each book is about 15 hours of blissed-out pleasure, so you'll be hearing about JR Ward's amazing vampire warriors for some time to come, as there are 13 books so far). The second book in the series, Lover Eternal, focuses on Rhage (all the Brothers have cool names, and many nouns and proper nouns in Ms. Ward's world come with an extra "h," just so we know it’s an original language—sort of). So, Rhage is a Brother with a scary alter ego. As punishment for past transgressions, he has been cursed to shift into a mindless, dragon-like beast when he loses control. Can you imagine?  I would spend considerable time in my dragon form if I shifted every time I lost control of my anger. But that was the point of the curse--to teach Rhage about control and to teach him about restraint. When we meet him, he is a hundred years into a two-century curse. He's learned to control himself to some extent, and he's achieved a measure of humility, which was another objective of the deity who cursed him in the first place.

Rhage is like my kids. As he's explaining the circumstances that led to his being cursed, he told his prospective mate, "I'd always told myself because I meant no harm, anything that happened wasn't my fault. But then I realized that carelessness was a different form of cruelty." Gross negligence and willful disregard for the safety and lives of others is a crime in our society. This applies to people’s emotional safety and the lives of our spirits as well.  Carelessness with others’ feelings is also another form of cruelty.

Over time, Rhage came to realize that intentions weren't nearly as important as actions. When in his beast form, Rhage was an indiscriminate killing machine; an animal with no particular ill intent toward anyone or anything specifically, but deadly and destructive nonetheless. He began understand that even without an intent to harm, his Brothers would be just as dead if his beast got close enough to kill. Actions speak louder than words, after all, and certainly louder than our intentions, which exist only as thoughts in our minds.

We are judged by what we do, not by what we want to do or don’t want to do. There are no thought police out there (Fox News doesn't count). No one really knows what goes on in our heads, and therefore the why of what we do is not nearly as important as the what.  I'm sure we can all think of examples where we did great wrong while trying to do right.  Doctors take the Hippocratic oath because they understand how much damage can be done in the name of trying to heal. How many times have we gone to the doctor only to find that the cure was worse than the disease? Personally, I have too much experience with that particular party. I'm regretting the invitation next time, thank you very much.

In Lover Eternal, Rhage originally believes himself guilty only of accepting what is offered, a misdemeanor at best, in his own mind. At first, he doesn't understand the nature of his sins. He thinks that if it is on the table, he has the right to pick it up—regardless of whether what is offered rightly belongs to another, or if it is forbidden. Frankly, I don't understand his confusion; he should ask Eve about accepting everything that's offered. Didn't work out so well for her either. In truth, we have a responsibility for discernment. We have an obligation to do our due diligence, lest we transgress without intent or even understanding. For me, if I'm going to break the rules, I want to know what they are so I can make a conscious choice about it. I have no interest in mindlessly wandering into the line of fire. I only want to go if I've planned ahead and worn my Kevlar and maybe learned some evasive maneuvers so I can go to dangerous or forbidden places undetected and unscathed.

I can't think of anything worse than hurting someone by accident. That feels maximally awful. I don't want to hurt anyone on purpose, either, but being an accidental bitch is so not in my wheelhouse (if I'm going there, it needs to be with malice aforethought, thank you very much). Because there are those out there who wouldn't even tell me that I've hurt them (this drives me nuts, I might add), and so I live in fear, like Rhage, that I will inadvertently damage those I care about, which would be devastating.

So, first, do no harm. These are words to live by. Second, don't hide behind an innocent intent when the consequences of our actions are deleterious. We need to own our deeds, whether we intended them or not. Which leads to the admonition to do what we mean and mean what we do. We must take action mindfully and with consideration of foreseeable outcomes. And in this way, we can, like Rhage, cage the beast, and live in love. I intend to do that.

Friendship, Part II

In my last post, I was inspired by the long-term friendships of JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood to expound on the joys of old friends. Today, I'd like to continue to explore the phenomenon of friendship, courtesy of the BDB, and discuss the excitement and pleasures of new friends. In JR Ward’s world, new friends (and therefore characters) are added with regularity, and they are integrated into the existing structure almost seamlessly.  In this particular instance, I think there is more fantasy than truth in the instant bonding, immediate trust and smooth transition into to new roles and relationships for all. I'm not saying that new friendships aren’t wonderful, because they are.  I think it just takes a little more effort and time than Ms. Ward depicts. Nevertheless, her description of the delights of new friends is exceptionally well done. For me, a new friend is anyone I've met since I was about 18 years old.  I have a couple of close friends from college and graduate school, and I've also made friends from the various aspects of my diverse professional life.  I've met wonderful people as a new parent and as a not-so-new parent. I have found that new friendships have somewhat different characteristics and tone than really old friendships. Different is not better or worse, it’s just not the same. And variation is the spice of life, after all.

New friends know us as we are now, more than who we used to be. Because they came into our lives after our misspent youths, they have no preconceived notions of who we used to be or where we came from. We get to be judged on our current merits. Because of this, we can neither rest on our laurels nor feel compelled to overcome any negative impressions from our pasts.  This can be very freeing. New friends even refer to us differently, as the nicknames of our childhoods fall away to be replaced by more adult nomenclature. We're not the same people we were way back when, and the grown up handles reflect that.

Old friends stay connected often by the weight of time served. That is not to say that we maintain old friendships from inertia, just that what we had in common with someone in kindergarten—like being in the same class—does not necessarily last into adulthood. So we often have divergent pastimes and passions than our old friends. With new friends, we tend to connect because of common interests, work, or functional commonalities--like new mothers meeting day after day at the playground with their kids. So we often have more in common with new friends, a ready-made scaffold on which to hang the new feelings of bonding and connection. Not to mention activities. I seem to spend a lot of time “hanging” with old friends while actually doing things with new friends. That is not always true, of course.

We are more mature now, and new friendships tend to be less tainted by competition or jealousy (not that teenaged girls are jealous or competitive!) More to the point, where we have little resistance to descending into childish behavior with old friends, we don't usually indulge our impulse to immaturity with newer pals. That is a good thing, by the way. New friends expect to be fitted to the existing structure of our lives, rather than expecting us to rearrange ourselves around a long-standing relationship. They have existing lives too, which we are expected to honor and accommodate. This makes new friendships more flexible sometimes, which is also a nice bonus.

After college and graduate school, it is more difficult to make and nurture new friendships. We have less time, and we have less energy as well. It was one thing to go to classes all day, party all night, and have plenty of energy left over when we're in college. It's quite another to get through a grueling work day, realize you have to come home and actually make dinner, and somehow find time to fit in a workout and time for old friends.  Newer friends  can fall to the end of the priority list unless we work with them and spend time with them on a regular basis.

But that is one of the gifts of new friendships. They are harder to cement, so we value them all the more because we know the effort it takes to make the friendship work. There are also more hurdles to overcome: does our spouse like the new friend, are our schedules compatible, do we have similar world views and opinions? If all the myriad conditions have been met and we decide to make the investment in the new relationship, it usually means it’s a good fit and a close connection when it happens.

Friends are the family we choose rather than the one we are born with. I'm sure there are lots of people whose families of origin are lovely. I don't happen to be one of them. The family I've created with my husband is absolutely wonderful, but at this point in the game, our children are not supposed to be our friends. They still need us to be their parents. So my friends, my family of choice, are that much more important to me. Having a variety of friends from all walks of life is particularly wonderful, as we can give and receive just what we need from the just the right person. So, whether old or new, friends are the ties that bind—kind of like Spanx—holding us together when we need it most. 

Friendship, Part I

To my old friends:  you know who you are and you know how much I love you.  I'm still enmeshed in my second full repeat exposure to the Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward, and I can't seem to get enough. Not only am I happily drowning in all that leather-clad goodness, but listening to these books has opened the floodgates of my creativity and the ideas are coming almost faster than I can write them down. Talk about a win-win situation. But my personal happiness is not the topic du jour. Or perhaps it is. I just wrote about how the BDB series led me to think about the common human need to belong, and that, in turn, has led me to contemplate the blessings of friendship. Particularly of the long-lived variety (although I have some thoughts on newer acquaintances as well, which I will share in the second part of this post on Thursday).

Old friends knew us before we became who we are. They know what made us who we are—our parents, our siblings, our childhood friends and enemies. They know what we looked like throughout our awkward teenage phase, as well as the disco phase, the Goth phase, and the ever-popular hipster-hooker phase. And they may even have pictures. But we know that they will never show and tell. We can trust them with our secrets. We have faith that they won't betray our transgressions,  our pettiness, the times when we were less than our best selves, largely because our best selves had yet to be created. Our old friends knew us before we evolved. And I'll speak for myself here, but my unevolved self was a hot mess, not to put too fine a point on it.

Old friends speak to each other in a special language, and sometimes with no language at all. We have inside jokes and obscure references. We can have whole conversations with a look—kind of like Mac and Barrons in the Fever series. We can meet each other's eyes from across a room and know exactly what we’re thinking. We explode into hysterical laughter at exactly the same time, overcome with a private realization exclusive to us, usually based on a common experience from our shared past manifesting in our current shared reality.

Old friends celebrate and rejoice with us, because they know how much that win meant; they've been there when the tide was against us and understand the toll it took. They grieve with us because they get the depth of our despair; they understood the intensity of our feelings and the true nature of what we have lost. They smile when someone praises our spouses and partners because they've seen what we've chosen in the past and know just how far we've come. They marvel at our children and wonder how the best of us has been passed along to the next generation. They validate, they criticize, they lift us up when we need support and take us down a peg when we've gotten too big for our britches. There is never a question of abandonment or moving on. There are no thoughts of betrayal or exploiting weakness. That is the gift—we can show our soft under bellies (not to mention our sagging tummies), secure in the knowledge that we are safely held no matter what.

Old friends have seen us at our absolute worst and at our triumphant best and they love and accept it all. We can be wholly, fully ourselves, and maybe even take out our inner children together occasionally and play like we're not middle aged women anymore. We can also be middle aged together, assuring each other that whatever the calendar says, we're still young at heart, and we can still rock our stilettos, even if our feet are a bit worse for the wear.

Old friends never bullshit us, and they tell it like it is. But we don't get offended because the advice, or criticism, comes with the associated certainty that even if we do exactly the opposite of what our friend thinks is right, she'll stand behind our decision and be there to help pick up the pieces when it all comes apart, just as she predicted. With nary an "I told you so."  Or maybe just a quick one, after we've dried our tears and can laugh just a little at our stupidity and ourselves. Our friends will definitely laugh with us. And maybe just a little bit at us, but with lots of love and tolerance for our foibles and blind spots and our stubborn insistence on doing it our own way and damn the consequences.

At this stage of life, I have friendships that have spanned almost five decades, which is mind boggling in and of itself. The best part of old friends is that we know they will continue to make the journey with us as we embrace each new chapter. They will be there to tether us to the finest parts of our pasts, and to face what is yet to come, both good and bad. They are there to remind us of who we have been and all that we have become, a yardstick by which to measure our progress, a touchstone to hold us to this reality when the path is difficult.

Old friends are like the most comfortable pair of slippers we've ever worn. They are our threadbare pajamas that we can't relinquish because they are so soft and they fit so perfectly and they just feel so good. Old friends are the place we can be ourselves so completely that we can forget we're not alone. And we're not alone. We're living in a Carole King song.  We are blessed and rich beyond measure. And not just because we get to listen to all the Black Dagger Brotherhood books on Audible. Lucky, lucky me.

I'm with the Band

The need to belong is a basic human experience. We all want to know that somewhere in the world is a place and a group of people we can call home, even if the location and group are virtual and not concrete. Sometimes the need can be visceral, raw and deep. When the need is unfulfilled, it is devastating and self negating—we feel less of who we are because there is nothing to which we belong. And when our need to belong is met, there is no feeling that compares. It's chocolate melting in your mouth, a warm puppy in your arms, the soothing balm of ice on a burn, winning the lottery and fitting into your skinny jeans all rolled into one. Today, and not for the last time I'm sure, my thoughts are inspired by JR Ward and her Black Dagger Brotherhood, which I'm listening to while I read a new author, Robin Hobb (whose works I'll be writing about in the future).  I'm listening to Book 2 of the BDB, Lover Eternal (the only thing I dislike about these books are the ridiculous titles-- I should look to see if Ms. Ward is published by the same house as Nalini Singh, who gets the prize for silly titles). The theme of belonging and what it means for individuality and it's expression, the ability to be independent, and the condition of being whole and complete is woven through all of the BDB books, in a myriad of ways, from belonging to a specific race, culture, or sub-culture, to a soul mate, and to a larger societal group or caste. It must be a subject about which Ms. Ward has given a great deal of thought, because she writes about it so profoundly.

As its name suggests, the Black Dagger Brotherhood is just that, a brotherhood of individuals, at first only males, but later expanded to include females. As I'm reading the books devoted to the original six Brothers right now, I'll keep my references masculine for this post. These guys are tight, in the way that only centuries together and a combat group mentality could make them. The group has been forged in the crucible of battle against a common enemy. Moreover, their service to their people (civilian vampires, just in case you were wondering, cause it's all about those fangs for me, never mind the bass) has made them a breed apart--outsiders to their own kind. Which makes belonging to the group that much more powerful.

The Black Dagger Brotherhood is a cohesive, homogenous unit.  But it’s comprised of beings who could not be more diverse, which is an interesting phenomenon.  The group nurtures the Brothers’ individuality in a healthy way. Each of the brothers is not only allowed but encouraged to be who they are, knowing that their brothers will tolerate their idiosyncrasies, tread lightly around the damage caused by their troubled pasts, and protect their vulnerabilities.  As brothers by choice and not biology (except for one set of twins), these males know that their triumphs will be celebrated and their achievements recognized.  It’s the best kind of family—the one we choose (which doesn’t, of course, preclude a blood connection but doesn’t require one).

The group we belong to should be a support network, a safety net, and provide the confidence of knowing that someone, or more than a few someones, are always going to have your back. When we feel safe and supported, we can do anything. And because the group is more than the sum of its parts, the individual components, the members, are stronger, better than they otherwise would be. That is the best part of belonging, at least in my book.

I suspect that JR Ward knows a thing or two about the need to belong and perhaps what it feels like not to have that.  There is no way she could write so convincingly of the longing of the lonely-hearted if she didn’t have some experience in that area. I can relate, though I wish I couldn’t.  I spent the better part of my childhood feeling like an outsider—within my family, at school, with boys my own age, with life in general.  Sometimes feeling like we don’t belong has more to do with the chaos in our heads—chaos that we’re sure no one else feels.  And many of us grow out of that phase—thinking we are terminally unique and that no one else in the world feels as we do.  And we realize that our outcast status is a self-inflicted wound that we can cauterize at will.  But then there are the poor unfortunates out there who never quite figure out that we are all struggling, and that we are all insecure, and that there is no imperative to remain on the outside.  We can all belong, simply by virtue of letting our humanity out and showing ourselves to our fellows.

Groucho Marx famously said that he wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have him as a member. I don't believe that. I want to belong. I want to know that there are people in the world who love me, have my back, and want me to succeed beyond my wildest dreams. Do you think maybe I can join the Black Dagger Brotherhood?  Actually, I don’t need to.  I am fortunate enough to belong in many different ways.  I have my family, my social circle, my faith community, and the group of writers and readers I’ve met through my work and my interests. I am, therefore I belong.  We all do.

The Two Faces of Hope

Like the three faces of Eve (for all you old movie buffs), hope is a schizophrenic bitch. On the one hand, as Karen Marie Moning will attest, hope strengthens (and fear kills, as I've written about here). On the other, hope can be the tie that binds, and cuts, and hurts more than any other pain possibly could, as Lilo Abernathy tells us in her Bluebell Kildare series. And, as I am endlessly curious about such things, how can the same feeling elicit such divergent responses from us?  Under which conditions does hope strengthen? When does it hurt?

I thought the answer in this instance, like so many others, might lie in truth. True hope gives us strength. Strength to go on, to endure, to persevere. False hope, by contrast, is a harbinger of death; it creates unrealistic expectations that, when disappointed, crush us under the weight of being dropped from a high place. Upon further reflection, though, I don't think I'm right, and it took JR Ward to show me the error of my ways.

I'm reading Book 13 in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. And boy, oh boy, are these books good. And rich, and complex and real as words on a page (or screen) can possibly be. I could probably write blogs for months based on inspiration from this series alone. And I likely will. In fact, while I'm reading The Shadows, I'm listening to Book 1, Dark Lover, on Audible in the car and while I'm in my kitchen (hey, I need something fun to distract me from the drudgery that is cooking and preparing food!). So it's a double dose of BDB goodness for me. Yippee. But back to why Ms. Ward is relevant to this post. In the most recent book, one of the male characters, Trez, is in love with Selena. Selena is sick, dying from a rare and terrible disease. She and Trez have only a little time together, and they want to make it count. He is determined to give her whatever he can. And he concludes that the most important and valuable gift he can give her is hope. Right up until the last minute, he can act like they have forever. Even if they don’t.

So even if it may be false, it appears that hope is productive, not destructive. This basically shreds the truth and fiction theory of hope. And in fact, one cannot know if hope is well-founded or misplaced until one is looking in the rearview mirror on the situation in question. I remember clearly when my husband and I were going through fertility treatments, desperately trying to get pregnant. The hope of success was the only thing that kept me going during the roller coaster ride of emotions the process generated. It was so hard. And I clung to the hope that I had, but, as time and procedures and drug therapy continued, my hope became a threadbare thing, with weak spots in imminent danger of ripping entirely. Until one day, when an urgent situation on Thanksgiving Day caused me to see a new doctor who happened to be on call. He spent two hours with me. And he told me I would be successful. Straight up, “you will get pregnant,” he said. And renewed hope bloomed in my heart. It was the most amazing experience. It felt like I had been thrown a lifeline. I held on. I had renewed motivation. Just when I needed it the most, hope strengthened. And he was right. I was ready to give up. The gift of hope made all the difference. And it was well-founded, but I didn’t know that till I had two bouncing baby boys in my stroller.

In other situations, hope can be a cancer that eats away at our good sense. Like for Blue, with Jack Tanner in Lilo Abernathy's series. Blue fights the hope she feels that Jack will eventually soften toward her and acknowledge their mutual feelings. She has experienced the yo-yo of his emotions for so long, she eschews hope as a portent of crushing disappointment and unfulfilled expectations.  Nothing hurts more than when you hope beyond hope it will happen, or you will get it and it doesn't and you don't. It's better to abandon hope, all ye who enter such situations. 

So, clearly the distinction isn't truth. Or maybe it is, because hope is true until it isn't. And sometimes hope is something we force ourselves to sacrifice because having it hurts more than letting go. So, if we give up before the miracle happens and consciously uncouple from the hope in our hearts, was the hope false in its failure, or did we merely create a self-fulfilling prophesy of failure when we let go prematurely?  Makes my head spin. Maybe hope strengthens until it doesn’t, when the scales finally tip, and the camel’s back finally breaks, at which point success would be pyrrhic anyway.

I don't know. It is said that where there is life there is hope. And sometimes that is both a blessing and a curse. Maybe it is a function of perspective. A pessimist fears her hope, while an optimist fears her fear, according to the poet James Richardson. Maybe hope isn’t a schizophrenic bitch, but I am.  I hope not.   

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Fall

There is something seriously wrong with me.  And no, it's not that I constantly digress when writing these blog posts. It's a much bigger problem:  I can't enjoy my down time unless I know with certainty that it's a choice. You know what I'm talking about: it's only fun to stay home on a Saturday night curled up with your latest fabulous fantasy novel (say, Thea Harrison's two new awesome offerings or Lara Adrian's just-published Midnight Breed novel, or the new Jeaniene Frost book, for example) if and only if I know I could be doing something else, and I just don't want to.  In the same way, I find that vacation is a lot more fun when my work is fulfilling and I'm making a decision to put it aside to go away somewhere and play. I like having options; life is so much more interesting when we are making affirmative choices, rather than letting life happen to us.  Being reactive is no fun.  It's all about being proactive, but proactivity requires a comparison between at least two alternatives. Choices create contrast.  And contrast creates the sharp relief and helps us to see our lives with true perspective.

So, I'm in an in-between place right now, but instead of enjoying my break and feeling grateful for the slow, end-of-summer pace, I'm totally stressed that there will be no end to my break and my life will unfold without purpose or meaning. Really?  Do they have a name for this kind of consistently-catastrophic-thinking- despite-all-evidence-to-the-contrary? Do I actually believe that this moment of down time signifies the end of all choices for all eternity?  Am I really that pathetic?  If I ponder long enough,  I'm sure I can think of a character this relates to—some sad sack minor character who acts as a foil highlighting what not to do for the main characters who would never think or behave in such a self-defeating way. Or if they behaved this stupidly, like Pia with her first dumb-ass boyfriend in Dragon Bound, for instance, they get over themselves quickly because this is such a silly way to be.

But I can't seem to help myself, unfortunately.  I'm between fantasy series, I'm between work projects, and, frankly, I'm between success and failure with respect to this blog (although you can certainly help me tip the scales toward success by reading, liking, commenting on and sharing my blog/website--pretty please?). I absolutely HATE the in-between. But, again, that is just a shortsighted attitude that discounts the long-term likelihood that nothing stays the same forever and neither will this.

It is also unrealistic to think a life of meaningful evolution is going to be a completely linear progression. Two steps forward and one step back. Or, less dramatically, two steps forward and then a bit of a break to recoup, recharge and reflect. This is a good thing, right? Yes, it is. But I'm the kind of person who believes that if I'm not moving forward then I must be moving backward. And while that may be true in theory, it is also true that while we are smack dab in the middle of everything, it can be difficult to judge our actual location on the path of life.  And, in reality, slowing down does not necessarily mean sliding the transmission into reverse. Neutral is a gear in which we can move forward as well as backward--or just stay in one place for a brief time.

Often, progress can only be perceived in the rearview mirror. Sometimes, when it seems like we're going nowhere or regressing, from the perspective of hindsight we can see that we were actually moving forward by leaps and bounds. Even if it doesn't feel that way in the moment.  We see this in books all the time, where an apparent set back turns out to be the set up for good things that come later. Pia and her penny are a perfect example of that. Or Elena being hired by Raphael, Sookie and the Rattrays, or Bella getting kidnapped by the Lessers. There are so many examples in fantasy, as there are in life.

So a bit of faith is probably justified that all will be well and that inspiration or at least an interesting project will arrive at my doorstep any time now. I can probably relax and enjoy this in-between time where there are few deadlines and demands.  I can sink into summertime for a little while longer and let the living be easy. I can probably stop waiting for the other shoe to fall and just put the damn things on already and walk away from this counterproductive activity.

The Wanted

“Glad You Came” by The Wanted is one of my favorite songs.  I love the clever lyrics of the refrain where the last word of the previous line becomes the first word of the next line.  It also has a compelling rhythm to it that pounds out in a very demanding way.  The whole thing kind of reminds me of sex where one thing leads inexorably, but a bit unexpectedly, to another—all accompanied by a strong and steady beat.  All good here.

 I was reminded of the name of the group as I read The King by J.R. Ward.  One of the elements in her world building is the idea of the bonded male (world building is an important element of fantasy writing where the lay of the land is explicated and the laws are set out- and it’s really important for an author to be consistent- so that there are no incongruous deus ex machina moments—like when Batman is always able to pull exactly the right tool or device out of his utility belt to solve the problem of the hour—that always annoyed me), because nothing will cause a fan backlash faster than when a writer colors outside of the lines with respect to the rules he or she has developed.  So, for example, it would be the height of illegitimacy for one of J.R. Ward’s vampires to be able to go out during the day (unless they are half human) or for Sookie Stackhouse, who reads minds, to suddenly become telekinetic when that was not one of her stated abilities.  Being consistent in world building is important for verisimilitude—which is a critical characteristic of good fantasy, ironically.  But I’ve digressed quite a bit.

Back to “The Wanted” and how it relates to The Black Dagger Brotherhood series.  As part of the internal rules, each vampire male bonds with a specific female who becomes his mate.  And when a male becomes bonded, it’s for life.  And while it doesn’t seem to work quite that way for females, it always seems to work out such that the bonded male woos and wins the female he desires, and she, in turn, becomes totally devoted to him.

I think Stephanie Meyers in the Twilight series said it best: when a male is totally focused on a female, when he loves her beyond reason and would do anything to see her happy and content and always puts her needs before his own, why wouldn’t she respond with reciprocal feelings?  Well, there’s the stalker angle, where that kind of devotion could be a little creepy, depending on who the guy was.  But, in these books the guy is always super-hot, smart, competent, and successful.  So what’s not to love? It’s a dream come true, at least for most women, I would guess (but let me know your thoughts on that, for sure).

And there’s the rub: it’s all a dream—just a fantasy.  But, as this is a space devoted to finding truth in fiction, let’s delve a littler deeper to find out what this trope actually means and why it’s repeated so often (Kresley Cole’s Immortal After Dark series, Thea Harrison’s Elder Races series, and G.A. Aiken’s Dragon Kin series, to name just a few, all contain variations on the theme of the bonded or mated male and his singular female).

Because in truth, don’t we all want to be wanted with that kind of intensity? I know I do.  And I figure I’m not terminally unique, more’s the pity, so I must have a lot of company at this particular party.  Being wanted is heady stuff. Being wanted elevates us, makes us feel desirable and enhanced (unless we pull a Woody Allen and decide we’d never want to join a club that would accept us as members- but that is a different problem altogether and a subject for another post).  Don’t we all dream of being pursued- with intent and persistence?  Of being chosen over all others and recognized as being special—at least to one among our species (it’s not quite the same to generate such dedication from our dog).  Doesn’t it play right into our deepest desires to be singled out with laser-like focus as the object of someone’s undying love? Wouldn’t such an event validate us in a way that we long to experience? I will only speak for myself here, but my answer is a resounding “Hell yes! Where do I sign up for that?!”

To be so decisively, definitively, demonstrably loved and wanted, that is the ideal, and that’s what these books are reflecting—our deepest desire to belong, to be a part of something bigger than ourselves—to be half of a consuming love for the ages.

And, I believe some of us do get that, but they are the lucky few, and it’s not clear to me that these chosen few share any particular characteristics or physical traits; I’ve met some really physically unattractive women whose husbands are utterly and completely besotted with them, so it’s not about external beauty, for sure, and I’ve met some men who seem like total jerks, and their wives kiss the ground they walk on, so it’s not a personality contest, either.

But mostly, the ideal is a fantasy—a perfection toward which we strive while recognizing the simple underlying truth that we all just want you to want me, like the old Cheap Trick song says.  And even if it’s not perfect, it’s still deeply satisfying when we feel way, even just a little.  And the ideal, as represented in these awesome reads, reminds us that because this is our world, and we get to do at least some of the world building, the need to be the wanted is as compelling for men as it is for women, and women would do well to remember the Golden Rule in these situations. When we offer the status of the wanted to another, it’s a good bet that those feelings will be reciprocated, just like Stephanie Meyers says.  Score another for truth in fantasy!