Hi.
This morning I wanted to run away as fast as I could from my life. From the four needy, whole-hearted humans I’m in charge of raising. From the husband who triggers everything. From the white tufts of dog hair accumulating in every corner of my home.
Last week I sent a screenshot of my journaled page of “truths” to my best friend. It was bleak.
In the last month I’ve spoken in front of a handful of professional humans. By “professional humans” I just mean people who are trying very hard to show up fully—a monumental feat in 2025. They are humans who are seeking something truer, hoping to acquire some tools, wisdom, and nourishment to help them on their journey home.
After one of these events a woman approached me and asked for a moment of my time. She explained that, despite decades of sobriety, huge strides in her healing and mental health, and a lovely life with a healthy, happy family, she still felt some degree of emptiness. She believed I could offer her something to make things more bearable. Maybe even wonderful?
At another gathering a woman said, “I’ve been using opiates in one form or another for two decades. I’m looking at you up there and I’m wondering how long it’s gonna take me to smile like that. Because if it’s just gonna feel like this—if I’m just gonna be white-knuckling the rest of my life—I may as well just fall back into the spoon.”
I breathed deeply, and teared up a little.
“Hi, thank you for being here. Thank you for showing up and speaking up. I’m really honored and happy to be here with you today. I have some hard news for you: I have over ten years of sobriety and I still feel like I’m white-knuckling it sometimes. Often times? Depends on the day?
The really fucked up thing for me is that nobody told me they didn’t know what they were doing. Our parents and grandparents and the people on TV just went about paying their taxes, signing us up for basketball camps, taking roadtrips, pulling weeds from the garden and they behaved so nonchalantly about the whole thing. Not one of them pulled me aside and with loving bewilderment whispered, ‘I have no clue how to really do any of this. I am very afraid and also find great joy in certain things’.”
I told her about the journal page and what I had confessed: I hate everything. In that moment, on that day, I hated everything. Which sounds insane for a 2x cancer survivor with four miracle children and a out-of-this world story of hope and healing. You really should be more grateful and grounded, Claire.
We went on to discuss how important community is. I explained the difference between distress and eustress, “Distress is harm, eustress is hard. Eustress is dopamine city, distress is sympathetic activation, tissue damage, and disease. In my family we say ‘Goodhardgood.’ It means that something can be both good and hard at the same time.”
They’re nodding. This feels true to them. A decade later, it still feels true to me. “I am with you.” I assure her.
The gift/curse of the enneagram four is our ability to feel to edges of everything. In stress, we get stuck there and our isolation fuels stories of elitism and shame. In health, we allow the experience to inhabit, and then metabolize. I like the image of an open window with sheer, white curtains—the emotion floats in and then floats right back out. The good, the hard, the ugly, the glorious. In a timely fashion, fingers crossed.
The problem is: we can only feel joy to the extent we feel grief. We can only connect to the extent we allow lonely. And so on…
They wanted my smile, they wanted something they perceived I had that they didn’t. I’m white-knuckling it, too, team.
So either: I’m pretending, or I am a very professional human. Either I’m faking and the smile is facade, or I am seasoned. I think I just really love open windows. I think I just can’t endure a world and life that feels untrue anymore. I think I’m willing to risk anything in my pursuit of Love. I think my Source, my Higher Power, is so securely knitted to each cell that I can’t exist outside it. Whatever “it” is.
If you want that, too, I’m happy to hang out here a little longer with you.
I cannot guarantee that I will make your life feel less hard, I believe white knuckles are just a part of the human experience. We can try breathing deeply though? Some days will feel bleak and empty—we allow that. Other days you will feel a creative fire burn in your belly and it will inspire the most beautiful expression of God and you and life! Sometimes they’re seconds apart.
I used to think this was mental illness, now I know: it’s just full-blown, professional humanity. It’s life fully lived. Please don’t fear it, do not fear your edges. If you allow your fear of the hard stuff to win, then you won’t ever really metabolize the good either. I promise you will survive. Look! I did! Mostly!
I used to think it “should” look a certain way, the way they all appeared to my younger self: in control. If I close my eyes though, time travel back, and take a look at their knuckles, all I see is cartilage bulging through their epidermis. Anyone who tells you they aren’t grabbing at loose ends, or struggling to release them, is an amateur human. We love them, we do not trust them. They will come around eventually.
I want to run away a little less now, because I’ve taken my broken heart and created art. I have a date at the art museum with a friend that I wanted to cancel because I’m feeling especially human, but I won’t do that, because it’s the gift I can offer. The gift I can receive.
Trader Joes had a gorgeous selection of flowers this week and the arrangement in front of me invites a smile. My tea cup is full of warm water, and I cannot get over how miraculous scrambled eggs are, so much nutrition, so easy to prepare, such a gift! My kids don’t have pediatric brain cancer like my sister did, and they are beginning to understand the art of GIF-giving (?!!). David is here, and is committed to staying here even when it’s tough. The dog is an angel from heaven and the whole neighborhood knows it, even if she is clinically,
“the hairiest dog I’ve ever seen”—Her vet.
This afternoon I will sit on my back porch under the western sky and exhale peacefully, because I don’t have to lie anymore.
