June 18, 2023

I just came back from Pennsylvania to celebrate my father’s and his 7 year younger sister’s June 6th birthday - they turned 85 and 78. It was a really really meaningful trip.

Interesting things were revealed to me, and so I spoke up more than ever before. The spiritual (inner) invitation is ALWAYS to speak up, show up and heal ourselves.

It’s taking me longer this time to come back into myself. I’ve been more numb than usual, I’ve decided I don’t belong anywhere more than usual, and I doubt that I have anything to teach anyone, more than usual.

Am I like the native California orange poppies in my garden?, prolific, blossoming and then over, but most of all pretty pointless, because my mother wouldn't plant them in her garden.

And yet there is love.

The general family sentiment is just because I can and DO write, doesn’t mean I should. Just because I used to be a good paid graphic designer doesn’t mean anything now. The Love Letters I write are too self centered. A pure documentary would be the better route because it’s ALL about the subject, this intertwining of Souls-concept is too hard to prove worth. And there will be more critics, not just my family, who will say that my love letters have an agenda, to serve ME, more than my subject. Which is also absolutely true, but people like my family will NOT understand how this is showing up for myself, when the world has rejected me. I like to believe that my father vaguely understands what I am doing. I am within the realm of Having Faith, after all …

Needless to say I needed some kind of a sign.

On July 5th I turn 55 and it could be a difficult birthday for me looking at what a late bloomer I am, and how everyone else is winning.

Today I delivered 2 tiny light bags of groceries to an apartment in San Francisco, always kind of expecting the door-dash customer to be a wealthy successful 30 year old SF tech person, like the guy I delivered to yesterday.

I am terrified to enter apartment buildings, open doors, which is just another reason I love to work behind my desk and be a graphic designer.

I said a little prayer, went into the apartment, noticed that the # I wanted was right at the entry. Tiny relief. The door opened and there stood a tiny old woman, hunched over her walker, kindly asking me to put the 2 bags on her tiny kitchen counter. I was too scared to look at the room, and in hindsight, was this old immobile woman going to attack me? Where does my lack of feeling safe come from? I sort of calmed down, stepped inside, kept my eye on the door and put the 2 bags on her counter. I drove 16 minutes one-way to deliver 2 little bags of groceries, which said more about this woman than anything else.

And then my heart cracked open.

She thanked me, so meekly. I asked her how she was doing, trying to connect a little, even though I was on the clock. ‘Oh, I’ve been better’, she said. But she quickly added that the weather is so beautiful today. I can’t remember what I said, but I ended it with “You take good care of yourself.” This is when I am so happy that my gray hair shows when I have my hair pulled back. I hope she noticed. I wish I could have handed her flowers, or a homemade meal and dessert or a hug. I wish I could stay in touch.

I will never forget this tiny connection, it was so pure and it was based on mutual vulnerability.

I was transported to the days when I was little and visited nursing homes with my Dad - my now retired United Church of Christ pastor father - when he did pastoral care as part of his work. He brought in so much JOY and energy to the old people he visited. Double joy happened on the days his wide-eyed young daughter was with him. I loved going with him and he loved that I wanted to go with him.

Of course today when so many parts of my life are not going well, I look for a sign of something External that makes me feel like I’m going in the right direction.

But I keep going back to this old woman I met today. As I write now I feel goosebumps because of her layers of vulnerability - her age, her immobility, her isolutation, her lack of obvious riches, her ability to say one positive thing when there was so much pain.

She is trying to bear her life so well. The moments with her made me remember that the only thing that matters to me is lifting up people who are suffering, and in their vulnerability. Just like Dad did. My pain is very different from this woman’s pain, but I just felt LOVE in that little apartment when she and I spoke to each other. I was grateful to meet her.

may not ever uplift my family members, which feels sad to me, but I’m realizing my family might not be the point of my journey - it’s too soon to tell.

There is going to be someone out there who just soulfully loves to read me and feel my art. There are people who are going to be able to tap into my broken heart, and that will be the Why, just like the lady today was my Why.

This woman was my Sign. I needed her today.

That’s the kind of a space I want to create. Where there is real vulnerability and real love, even among strangers. Where we are stripped down to nothing left but our Hearts, where there is no ego between us - it’s just raw pain and love and gratitude.

I would not have tapped into this space with her if I didn’t do a DoorDash this morning.

And I will never know who else I will find in this temporary, eternal space that is pure love, if I go back in my safe hole to hide.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad, for helping me remember what pure love looks and feels like. (And I’ll add, my mother knows this space too.)

The art - maybe very simply, shows the tension and the love and the organic way that love always finds the surface where there is air, beauty and light again.

Photos … Dad picking me up at the Amtrak train station even though his legs don’t work so well anymore. My homemade card for his birthday. Dad when he was little. Dad in 1969 (?) with my Great-grandmother who fled East Prussia before the end of WW2. Dad resting on Mom’s lap while she is knitting, the ultimate couple-photo. Me and Dad on the porch. Flight views, I love it when I’m flying over the West Coast on my way home.

xo,

Anne

◉

◎

⦿

◎

◉