Mapped Out

February 18, 2024 / Hermionejh

I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that my body – especially my face – is more and more a map of my life, but it feels that way.

The permanent crease above my left eyebrow lets me know that my quizzical expression is lopsided – it seems my right eyebrow doesn’t care to express itself much. The same goes for my ever-deepening smile creases that have a deeper groove on my left side than my right, and how apt it is for an inner life and outward life often at odds that has left visible reminders.

I chide myself for wanting to erase those lines and creases – my vanity wanting a smooth, un-lined face forever.

I have lived. The years keep going by leaving time’s impression, not really having much to do with who we are inside. We are semi-ageless. It seems like it would be a tragedy to stay the same – never deepening our understanding, knowledge or experience.

I get it that so many would strike that bargain – and are doing their best to keep time’s imprint off their bodies. Half of me wants that too.

Wrinkles do not confer, and should not imply, wisdom, after all – just that we’ve lived long enough for our bodies to start breaking down.

The work to stay healthy and functional seems to fill up more time and can feel daunting.

It’s probably a question of available energy than motivation, but I am more alive when I’m doing things I love, and especially getting out into the woods for long hikes.

As stupid as it sounds, I’ve started understanding how we’re everything and everything is us. I have the same elements as the chair I sit on, the floor I walk on, the metal in the ladle and the clay or ceramic of the bowl that contains the soup I’m eating, that also contains the elements of my body.

I’m not even stoned! But, yes, we are made from those elements too.

This isn’t new information to any of us, but the perception or feeling is different. It feels more visceral now. Is that wisdom? I think my brain just loves rabbit holes.

The minutiae of the outer world has become more fascinating.

I never had time nor inclination much for that when I was younger – not that I didn’t appreciate the beauty and intricacy of the world and the phenomenal unlikelihood and mystery of life itself.

Maybe it’s because I’m no longer preoccupied with raising my child or finding someone to share my time or my life with. I suppose it’s different for everyone.

Maybe it’s also because I feel my mortality more strongly than ever and I want to be here as fully as possible for the time left to me.

As for any of us, my last day here could be today.

It’s like a deadline is fast approaching and the urgency to get get my shit together to have my portfolio or the highlight reel of my time here ready for who or whatever might review it on the other side from here feels more imperative.

That might not at all be a thing, but my anxiety about the possibility is clearly nerve-wracking.

Will they like me? Did I do alright? Will they forgive me if I fucked up the one job I was supposed to do here (the instructions of which somehow got lost) – or was I just supposed to wing it all along – and we’ll all laugh about the big tangled mess I made?

I hope it’s the latter because the worry is being mapped out all over my ever-creasing face.

Love Is

February 15, 2024 / Hermionejh / 4 Comments

Because there is love we exist. Not because of sex, even though that’s literally how we’re here (most of us anyway), but we exist because we form bonds of family and friends. We can even bond with strangers, with characters in books or on film or other mediums.

Our capacity to love never diminishes.

We might become bitter, or angry, or vengeful, but find a way to crack that and love can enter, fully.

Removing love can make us feel broken, incapacitated, but it never ends our ability to love if we had enough love and appropriate touch in infancy and early childhood.

Love is the center of our being and emanates from our heart – which is where our goodness and spiritual connection also stem from.

Love can and has changed the world, and love can save a soul, and heal our entire planet.

We get to choose what we leave in this world. All we can do is pass on our love, and knowledge and wisdom. The rest falls away.

Love is steady and unceasing, but it must be chosen and practiced and remembered.

Choosing love isn’t always easy, but it’s an open invitation, just waiting whenever, if ever, we’re ready and willing.

I Forgot

February 13, 2024February 13, 2024 / Hermionejh

Our brain and body’s super power is perseverance.

We forget childbirth’s intensity, and blunt trauma’s pain. We can remember that it was awful, but not really feel the raw intensity.

Our brains anesthetize us against horrific events. We go numb.

My partner was in a horrible accident that rattled his brain so bad the doctors had to drill his skull to relieve the pressure, and he fell into a coma for several weeks.

The doctors told his parents they were likely saying goodbye to him and to try to prepare for that.

He doesn’t remember a thing about the accident. He remembers leaving for a party with his friends, and waking up briefly in enormous pain at the hospital, only to sink down into oblivion again. The next time he regained awareness, he was being wheeled into rehab where he spent painful months while learning to use his voice after being intubated so long, and to use his body again.

He can only recount what the driver (his cousin), and the medics and hospital staff, his parents, brother, and his girlfriend told him about what happened.

They can barely talk about it to this day without choking up.

Had he died, he would have been in blissful ignorance.

This is my dark time of year. I forgot.

How, you might ask. How, when it happens every year? I can only look at you in silence. I wish I knew.

I think, perhaps, my brain anesthetizes that particular knowledge, which is difficult because I am woefully unprepared every year. It would be funny if it weren’t so devastating.

But this year there are extenuating circumstances. The death of friends over the past year, and most recently a sister, pushed my preparation for this dark time completely out of my mind.

I use my lighter times of year to shore up my psyche, my resolve, and practice my emotional and mental tools I have learned over the past thirty years.

And then it seems to all fall apart in my moment of need – as though I’m fresh on the planet and have no idea what this thing called emotion is or how to handle it.

Maybe I can come up with a safe word or phrase my partner can say to me, like “It’s the fucking trauma, stupid!”

Yeah, that would go over so well! LOL

Maybe “Keep it simple, sweetheart,” would suffice.

Past Present or Present Past

February 13, 2024 / Hermionejh

I dreamed I saw a young woman who had red hair in a long thick braid like my sister used to wear her hair when she was younger. I didn’t dream of my sister – just a stranger.

What did that mean? Anything? Nothing?

I’m stuck in this wanting place. I recognize it but I don’t know what to do about it.

Why am I hanging onto the past? What do I think is there? Maybe it’s a kind of protection from the reality of now.

The past is long gone – I know that. I know there’s no going back, nor would I honestly want to. It sucked back then – but I was a part of a tribe.

A fucked up tribe, but it was as fun and interesting as it was terrible.

I didn’t know how to live this life. I only knew how to react to it.

I dreamed of being famous because it looked like an inoculation against the hell of life as I saw it.

I didn’t know that they were just people in another kind of hell. Some of them were genuine and good, and some were shit in reality. I wouldn’t know that for many years. I only saw the fantasy and the potential ticket out.

The older girls I got to hang around with seemed worldly. My sisters didn’t want me around them, but they were overruled by the clan leader. She was the arbiter of all things back then – at least to me.

She deemed me worthy, and so I was – at least when she was around. Mostly the older girls, including my sisters, kept to themselves, but I always got to hear about their adventures.

One of the girls, just a year older than me, was a true friend to me, but even we seemed to pass in and out of each others’ lives. We had a bond beyond time and space though. We belonged to each other without having to declare it – although we did become blood sisters by cutting our fingers and pressing them together to mix our blood.

She pierced my ears when I was 12. She was a mother hen toward me and did what she could to protect me.

I didn’t know that I needed protection, but she saw how I blew with the wind. She kept me safer than I would have been on my own. The wolves were always at the door.

She left the world last May and I so wish I could talk to her about my sister’s death and hear what she would say to me.

I keep thinking I should just go join her, but I can’t for several reasons, the biggest being that I don’t know if I would find her out there. What if suicide fucks you up on the other side from here?

My therapist said to hear what she would say to me, but the thing is she almost always said something I wouldn’t have thought of. She also didn’t judge me or tell me to have a better attitude or that everything would be alright. Just that she loved me and was here.

But she’s not anymore.

I have to figure it out from here.

I guess I always did figure it out anyway, but knowing she was in the world helped.

My sister was a jerk to me quite often. It was how our family abuse twisted her, but she came into this world with her own essence just like I did – just like we all do.

It feels stupid to miss her. But it’s complicated. She brought fun & high adventure in our early lives regardless of her prickliness.

I don’t know if anything truly exists after this life, but her story has ended.

The ringleader of the group of older girls died a few months after my friend died, and then my next oldest sister a few months after that.

I’m worried that I’m just going to see all my friends and loved ones die before I do, but I have no control over any of that.

I wish we would all just leave this world on the same day and have a plan to meet on the other side – if there is an other side, but it’s not my deal.

Being here at all was never my deal. But here we are, so, good luck, I guess?

I’m not pondering or railing against anything that hasn’t been pondered or railed against before, I know.

There are thousands of books and programs and gurus and religions who all say different, albeit similar, words and thoughts about the why of this place, but the bottom line is that no one knows – and anyone who tells you they do know is deluded or lying or mentally ill.

“Life is pain, Highness, and anyone who tells you different is selling something,” from The Princess Bride.

Twyla Higgins, In Memoriam

January 26, 2024January 26, 2024 / Hermionejh / 6 Comments

Twyla Higgins passed away peacefully at home surrounded by loved ones in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on December 16, 2023.

Born in Passaic, New Jersey on March 6, 1958, Twyla was an adventurous firebrand of a woman with long red hair and a bright smile who rarely let an obstacle stop her from reaching her life goals.

She was fearless in her youth, from pushing through crowds to stand front and center at hundreds of concerts, to going wilderness camping and canoeing in Maine and New Hampshire by herself, as well as with friends, to taking the yearly “Polar Bear Plunge” Challenge for a New Year’s Day ocean dip, and sometimes skinny dipping at the beach on hot summer nights.

Spending summer and autumn nights around the fire-pit talking and laughing with her partner, Bill, and other company was another favorite activity. As time passed, Twyla’s interest in music and concerts remained, but she preferred reading, gardening, and tending her property.

The fourth of six siblings, Twyla lived in southeastern Massachusetts until moving to a western MA commune with her mother, her two sisters, and her younger brother when she was 13. She left the commune at 16 and moved in with family in Colorado for a year or so before heading back East. She settled in RI in the 1980’s. In 2004 she bought her home in Pawtucket, where she remained until her passing.

Twyla earned her Associate Degree in Nursing from the Community College of Rhode Island in 1991. In 2016 she received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Rhode Island College. Twyla’s passion was diabetes education and she loved her work.

Twyla leaves her partner Bill Blair of Pawtucket, RI, her siblings Clarke Higgins of Middleboro, MA, Jerri Higgins and partner Andy Kostecki of Montague Center, MA, Jacki Pinger and husband Andy Pinger of Brattleboro, VT, and Marc Brousseau and wife Dorothy Brousseau of Claremont, NH. She also leaves her nephew Austen Bartels (nee Higgins-Cassidy) and wife Mikaela Bartels of Malden, MA, and her niece Amealia Brousseau and wife Alexandra Elias of Orchard Park, NY. Twyla was predeceased by her mother, Doe (nee Doris) Brousseau, her father, Alan Higgins, and her brother, Scott Higgins.

Memorial contributions can be made to the National Scleroderma Foundation or to organizations preserving our oceans and wild spaces.

Love Remains

January 15, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Sometimes I wish I could visit my friends and family during the best times in my life.

I would ask my favorite Grandpa & Grandma what their lives were like, and if they felt content. What challenges did they face and surmount? Did they ever ponder life’s existential questions, or was it a life too busy with ordinary concerns?

Like so many stories about going back in time, I don’t know if I’d change anything that would affect my life now (unless it was for the better).

And even if I thought that changing something would obviously better my life, I’d still be taking a risk that the opposite would be true.

It’s not really situations that I want to re-live, it’s to revel in my connections with friends and relatives – especially those that have passed on.

But, if I could time-travel, would it be helpful or harmful for my mental/emotional health? Would I find what I was looking for?

Am I just imposing what I wish now on what was?

I am betting those moments I want to recapture in their fullness are only partially, or even barely, what I’m attributing to them.

It’s deep and abiding connection with those who share my values, kindness & humor I seek.

Laughter is one of my favorite lights in the dark. Gladness and companionship continue warming my heart long after parting company.

‘Cultivate what is missing here and now,’ my inner wisdom whispers. Trust that my loved ones passed on will greet me at my end – but that I still have (hopefully) many good years to carry on in this world, and to create the kind of life that matters to me.

I’m not forgetting them; I’m bringing them with me. Their laughter can still ring in my ears, and I can revisit the love & goodness we all shared any time I want or need to.

Love remains.

She Was Here

January 11, 2024January 11, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

I pick up a paper from the growing stack of papers, and sympathy cards scattered here and there on the table, and I put it back down. I seem to walk in circles – doing mindless tasks, and chores – but nothing that requires real focus because I can’t seem to get myself together lately.

I’m supposed to be writing her obituary, but I can’t. It nauseates me to think of it – like maybe I’m making it real? I don’t think that’s really it. Maybe it’s that I have to face all that her passing means.

Any chance of a closer relationship is gone. While we both lived there was the possibility.

What is an obituary anyway? So much is left out. It’s the highlights, the best of them.

We don’t talk about the trauma much, if at all – or the pain and lingering hurt. That’s for me to work out alone, but it makes the writing seem disingenuous.

She was this, and that. She did these things, and then she left.

She left in the middle-ish of her life, and didn’t want to go – but not many of us do, regardless of our age.

She had a small life that she enjoyed, and she worked hard.

She didn’t know that she was getting sick, or that once she got sick it would be two & a half months of progressive hell with the hope that she’d regain function that never happened.

Her partner is devastated – shell-shocked really – and just a shadow in his own life now. Work is what saves him from the gaping hole of grief.

Her chair sits empty – her belongings mostly gone. How quickly physical traces got erased.

Do I want a shrine to her? Don’t we all deserve a shrine? We lived, dammit! WE WERE HERE.

I see my favorite picture of her in my mind’s eye. She is standing on a hill, maybe, with an Aruban breeze whipping her long copper red hair into her brightly laughing face. The beaming sun brings the feeling of warmth and being fully alive into that moment she was captured mid-laughter.

That was one of the happiest periods in her life. That’s when we were friends & I got to enjoy her company – her sense of adventure and be part of her strong, independent and earthy existence. She was fearless and exuberant. Her life was filled with activity: camping, canoeing, sunbathing, swimming, singing, dancing, and laughing.

But life moves on. She was better at letting go than I was. She went to nursing school, and finally got her bachelor’s degree focusing on diabetes education where she began a career.

She liked her house and her garden – so many things she did on her own.

She was good to my son, her nephew.

Time took away her sense of fun – or maybe that was what she thought maturity was.

Maybe we all figure out what’s comfortable for us, or what we’re willing to accept. Or maybe time just goes by regardless of what we’d like.

She was important to me. She was family. She showed up and made a point to have at least four gatherings a year.

I wished she had been kinder to me as time went on, but I didn’t recognize that maybe she was changing in ways that she didn’t understand herself.

Accepting how she changed was hard for me. I’ve changed too. Time changes us all whether we know it or not.

We have an essential self that gets buried under life’s burdens, but we can still shine through.

I will remember that laughing young woman, grateful for all she gave me as her sister, and hoping that she remembered the goodness we once shared.

I love you Twyla. I hope you’re in your happiest self, sparkling among the stars.

Strangeness

December 30, 2023 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

It’s this inbetween-land. Everything looks strange and inaccessible, but it’s also all familiar and available. I think I’m not liking this aspect of human-being.

Anger has saved me lately. It’s raw and vivid, and takes me out of any other feelings. Its also cold and callous. I see pain around me, even within me, and I’m not moved – except sometimes I am.

I will come back to balance & center again – but I’ve been trying to drink it away, and all I get is 15 or 20 minutes of relief, but hours or a day of feeling sick.

It’s not a good trade off. I feel better when I don’t drink, plus I can’t afford it anyway.
I can’t sustain anger either. I have to let the grief be there. I don’t want to talk, I have to walk about and let all of it be there.

So I’ll leave the booze to those it won’t try to kill, and I’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other.

My sister got very sick, fairly quickly – even if it had been signalling its arrival for several years. It was hard to see what was happening until the worst happened.

Systemic scleroderma is a lot like cancer in remaining a general malaise for a long time before it erupts. Some get a milder version they can live with, but my sister got the worst version. It was relentless.

Her death was a relief for her because there was no out. She wasn’t traumatized at the end, her breathing got fast for a few minutes and then just stopped. We did all we could & in the hours before her passing we kept her comfortable, and kept telling her we loved her.

Don’t make any major decisions for a year wiser people say, but all I want to do is run. I want to move to another country or another planet. I want to not be at all anymore, and not because I’m grieving over my sister’s relatively early exit, but because there will be more.

It’s never going to end – it was just much less of it earlier in my life.

Maybe whatever comes next will be amazing and I’ll be so happy once I’m there, but as I am still earthbound, I have to deal with being human. If I hurt myself through carelessness, I’ll just have those consequences on top of getting old or sick.

If I’m going to be here, it’s important to me to be in the best shape I can to live the rest of my time well, and I will deal with my death when it comes.

Sisters Forever

December 14, 2023January 7, 2024 / Hermionejh / 6 Comments

So, what is there to do, after all, when the hard news comes that you knew was coming?

You also knew, and held out hope, that sometimes circumstances come together to change momentum’s direction, or change a person’s mind and will to continue on.

Hope was needed, but now it belongs back in its box.

The story’s end is known – only the timeline alters.

There is no changing what is happening, but I don’t have to hold my breath, or keep anxiety in my heart or mind. It won’t help, and it’s not compassion or acceptance.

What if she were going to a privately held party on a remote tropical island where everything is as you wish? I would feel envious instead of anxious, but I would be happy for her.

I wouldn’t try to delay her flight, or talk her out of going based on my fear.

She’s got her party hat all picked out.

Her dress is floral and flattering, her sandals and bag match, and her heart becomes light and joyful upon her arrival.

Maybe the flight was dreadful and terrifying, but the warm breezes embrace her as she disembarks. The distress of the difficult journey falls away as she gazes upon white sand, an azure ocean, and a forget-me-not blue sky.

Relatives and friends from her entire life are there to greet her, and celebrate her arrival.

She pauses before walking off because she hears crying in the distance – tears for her, and she looks for a way to ease them.

She sees an oyster shell at her feet and picks it up. She somehow knows that if she blows on it, the breeze will whisk it away into the ethers and it will soon gently fall at those sad ones’ feet.

They can know that she is now safe, and happy, and free.

All is well, and as it should be.

Do You Trust Your Instincts?

November 22, 2023 / Hermionejh

My instincts told me to answer this writing prompt today – just kidding!

Do I trust my instincts? I think the poster meant intuition because humans do not strictly have instincts.

The answer is sometimes. I will follow it even if I’m wrong, which I often have been – especially when taking an alternate route while driving somewhere and getting far more lost trying to follow my intuition!

Sometimes it’s my inner voice demanding “Get out of here, NOW!” Other times it’s wanting to be careful of someone I’ve just met. I have seen that warning be unfounded, and I think I might have a faulty “people sensor”.

I will still listen to that sense because being right about them could mean terrible consequences for me.

Several weeks after 9/11/2001, I had the opportunity to go to a Boston Red Sox game with my mother and son, but I turned it down because there was a terrorist threat warning that day. Hundreds of people went anyway, and nothing bad happened except the Sox losing the game.

I still feel like a scared jerk about that – but the consequences if a bomb went off, or an attack happened, felt justifiable to skip it.

I’m not a huge risk-taker, but I have taken risks. So far, so good.

The worst risks are monetary. As a person in poverty, I have thrown a couple hundred bucks away on pyramid schemes that were very effectively talked up. If I worked hard at selling (and recruiting), I too, could be driving one of those pink Cadillacs.

What wasn’t clear was the amount I would have to hustle to sell and recruit to reach that lofty goal.

I was lucky to get out before being burned even more because it takes a sales personality and enough money up front for inventory – neither of which I have.

The good news(?) is that I learned another thing I was terrible at.

I am a good cook, but do not wish to be a chef. I’m good at listening, but don’t have the money to become a licensed social worker. I am a healer, but cannot quantify that into dollars.

I would have to accept donations if a client felt my help was valuable. That is not reliable income, and a landlord or the electric company, or any other utility company, is not known for mercy.

I see people charging hundreds of dollars per session for healing work, and all I know is that I experience some kind of energy flowing through me, but have no idea if I am directing that energy properly – or if it really works. I detest ripping people off.

Are you someone with good intuition? Do you think it is innate or something you cultivated?

If you are someone who has financially succeeded following your ‘instincts’ or intuition, how and what did (or do) you do?

Happy Thanksgiving all, and as always, thanks for reading!