Tag: hope

Eighteen Years

Amy Clark1 Comment

“All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I’ve been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don’t mean anything
When you’ve got no one to tell them to…”

“The Story”, Lyricist-Phillip John Hanseroth

 Vocalist-Brandi Carlisle

I love stories. I see them everywhere—how they shape the world, how they build or dismantle understanding and relationship, how they are always at work crafting the person I was into the person I am becoming—never allowing complacency in the “I am” because stories are alive, they are moving and never still. I give witness to their power but don’t give my power over to them. I recognize that as often as I might feel lost in circumstances that seem to have become my only narrative, that it is my responsibility to pause, to breathe, to understand, to take back the pen, and to write my way forward. 

So, telling a story should come easily. And yet, this one, that I’ve told so many times, is resisting a new telling. In an effort to begin, I wrote the line “Eighteen years is a long time” last week and I cannot seem to get past it. I cry every time I step up to elaborate and the words I know I want to share get lost somewhere in the back of my brain. Because in that diminutive and deceptively obvious sentence are embedded not only grief laden memories of a day and the immediate days that followed, but also the vast emptiness of all that has been missed in those 18 years and all that will continue to be in the years to come.

Maybe I need a different way in? Maybe just the truth—not prettied with lush language. Maybe I can start there.

On December 16, 2004, my husband and I discovered during a less than routine ultra-sound that, at 17 weeks, our first son, Nathan, was no longer alive and I would have to be admitted to the hospital that same night to deliver into the world a child who would not only never know that world, but who would also never know his really mom and dad (and later his brothers). And the weight of his loss was heavy and immediate. I wrote his story for the first time some years ago here.

The story of that day is not the story I want to tell today…18 years later. I don’t think rehashing the intensity of that grief is what Nathan would want for his mom, so instead, my work here will be to climb out of my grief and to reclaim ownership of it and in doing so also claim my freedom from an obvious story of a lifetime of sadness. This climb presents a challenge though as this is a particularly steep one—especially today—but the effort has allowed me to realize that what was once a point of vulnerability is now this area of strength. That Nathan’s tiny life has and will continue to inspire the rest of mine. But to detail that impact even briefly, I have to share the parts of the story that are harder to see—I have to reflect on how my beautiful boy and his early departure have sown seeds of goodness in me that would not be rooted so deeply without him.

“Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.”

“Lost”, by David Wagoner

The days and months that followed Nathan’s loss coincided with what could only be named a season of babies. It was just that time in life. I dug deep and decorated my face with smiles while attending showers and sitting in hospital waiting rooms all the while my heart was sort of a Sisyphean tragedy of shattering, pasting together, and re-shattering with every passing day. 

And then one day, I was leaving a friend’s house after delivering a fruit tray so she enjoy a healthy treat while taking care of her newborn. I got in my car anticipating a tearful drive home and what happened instead shifted my entire trajectory. 

I looked out of the window and saw the sky.

As though waiting to be noticed, the sky stood still, brilliant and blue with only a few wispy clouds and without even thinking about it the words “thank goodness for beautiful things, that sky is beautiful” came out of my mouth (out loud…alone in the car…clearly, I needed to hear them and not just think them). In that moment, I knew that my life would be so much more than this impossible grief…that there were still beautiful things in this world if I could find a way to pay attention to them…that my beautiful boy’s memory would be wasted if I spent every day immersed in the depths of this grief. 

But I also knew stepping away from grief would not be a trek down an easy path. And it hasn’t been. Here I am 18 years later still writing about it—because it is hard—even when you’ve never really met the person you are missing, grief is just hard…and lasting. What remains from that day though is a practice, a gratitude practice, that has pulled me through some of my hardest days and guided me through some of the darkest wildernesses. A practice that removes me from inside of myself and grounds me in the world—reminding me there is more in this life than a moment can hold. A daily practice that I sometimes have to force because some days are just harder (and for all kinds of reasons), but still a practice that reminds me that like Lucille Clifton wrote, “today we are possible…everything waits for us…what will become/waits in us like an ache.”

And so, what has become of Nathan’s memory? 


I see him in the faces of my own living children. I see him in the faces of every single child I teach, of every child I encounter. And in doing that, I am able to speak, to parent, to teach, to lead with greater empathy. I see myself in those around me and wonder “What aren’t they revealing in their smile? What might I be missing?” And my patience grows (I mean, maybe not when I’m driving…but still) and my vulnerability emboldens because maybe I can share something that will help…or maybe I can just listen and be present. I encounter difficult things and know that they might be terrible, but I can, in fact, survive…if I just look for the sky.

So, yes, 18 years is a long time. And yes, I would prefer it if my Nathan were still here, in his senior year, getting ready for graduation and the rest of his life. But my life and that of my family is the rest of his life, and it won’t be wasted. For that, I am willing to work hard. For that, I am grateful.

A year lost

Amy ClarkLeave a comment

“…Wherever you are is called Here,/And you must treat it as a powerful stranger”

“Lost” by David Wagoner

It’s been a year. 

Today. Today makes one year.

And while I celebrate surviving that year, I have to name it Lost. Taken or Stolen might also work but that victimizes my situation and I am not here for that–that allowance would keep me stagnant in anger and helplessness. I cannot be about that anymore.

Lost. Lost speaks truth on so many levels. Most obvious of those, ground floor entry so to speak, the impact of my battle with Long Covid sapped my energy and muddled my brain’s acuity leaving me with only faded and blurred watercolor memories of the last year. So many things happened–events, trips, the life of my family–and while I was physically present I was also encapsulated in a bit of a Long Covid forcefield shielding my mind from the details, the weight, the value and thus the fullness of anything.

Lost. Second floor. Abandoned by my sensibility. For most of the year, my emotions neutralized themselves. I felt no surges of excitement, sadness, anger, anxiety, joy…which sounds sort of great in some ways, right? No anxiety for the person who has always struggle with anxiety is pretty fantastic, yeah? And I guess in some ways it was a nice departure. My body was dealing with an erratically racing heart as well as so much inflammation and overwhelm that it could not also manage inflamed emotions. Rationally, I get that. But honestly, I just felt radically empty most of the time which is why I assume the year doesn’t exist in vivid memory. Without emotions to tie to events, to anchor them inside of me, they just sort of float off into the distance leaving a vague shadow behind.

Lost. Third floor. And this cannot be overstated and is far from the cliche it sounds like: I lost myself. What does that mean?

Well, it is hard to quantify and qualify in a way that relates the compounding weight of the truth of this statement. Most obviously, in losing my ability to be fully present, to feel vibrancy of any shade of emotion, to think without roadblocks emerging between each and every thought, to participate in conversation without confusion, to remember even the simplest but most important details (this list goes on a while, I’ll stop here), it was impossible not only to be myself but to remember what it felt like to be myself. I want to emphasize that. I wasn’t just less than myself due to illness–I have been there before. I suffer with other chronic “stuff”. But I was lost inside of myself–I could not remember what it felt like to be the person I was before that positive test. Not on any given day did I feel fully me. And not on any given day could I harness the hope of finding that person because my energy had to be focused on simply getting through the day in the shape I existed. Exhausted already, I further laid waste to my energy supply in creating a mask that would hide the truth from those around me.

The things by which I identify myself–cooking, reading, writing, exercise, smiling, ridiculous optimism–had to be either relearned,  modified, or set aside. 

Cooking, my favorite way to show my love to others, transitioned into a chore. On my worst days, just the thought of standing in the kitchen and thinking through steps in a recipe, left me frozen in how to proceed. I could not desert cooking completely, but my skill and joy in it certainly deserted me.

As a reader, I found myself having to adopt new reading practices in order to maintain. Gone: my pencil in hand adept at skillful annotation and noting depth and nuance in a text. Adopted: a letting go of disappointment in myself for just reading the story without deeper investigation because I knew that reading in any form was good for my brain’s recovery.

As a writer, well, if it wasn’t mandated for work, it probably didn’t happen. I could not face my loss for words, my confusion mid sentence, my inability to see a piece through. A singular email at work could take me an hour to construct; I had no energy for personal writing. I lost my confidence in staring at a blank screen with a  brain that felt equally blank and hid behind my illness rather than writing my way through it. 

In a fleeting attempt to maintain some semblance of my former reality in the face of so much loss, I tried to reinsert my pre-Covid, relatively intense, exercise regimen (even if watered down a bit). I quickly learned that I could no longer exercise during the work week if I wanted to be able to function in the world. I had to live inside of what my doctor called “the energy envelope” which meant instead of HIIT training and weightlifting, I was walking…and not during the work week. My physical strength began to mirror my eroding mental strength bewildering me further in who it was my body would allow me to be.

The rest of the list here–smiling…optimism–existed mostly because I reached deep inside to exude a picture that would bring about fewer questions about how I was really doing. A reach that left me fatigued beyond measure.

Lost. Top Floor. My coping strategies evacuated with everything else that comprised who I had previously been. All those years of managing chronic illness while also maintaining my strength of perseverance…all those skills honed over years even in situations like Long Covid where no answers or cure were clear…none of them could be called to mind and put into practice. I tried. Believe me, I really tried. But, honestly, that perseverance took so much more energy than I had inside of me. Something as simple as starting an anti-inflammatory diet (something I have done successfully before) required more thought than I could see through to fruition. Eventually, I stopped trying to cure my Long Covid symptoms. I preached patience to myself because it was the only tool in my arsenal that I could muster. I allowed myself the grace to wait rather than shaming myself for not fighting harder. 

So I waited. Impatiently patient. Resigned to maybe never seeing “me” again. Accepting of the need to rebuild from scratch.

And then, I guess you could say I snuck up on myself, because I never saw or felt “old me” resuscitating herself. And yet, she did.

And so here I am, a year later and I am cautiously optimistic that I am on the other side. In the last month of this year, I have read a book with the complexity of thought that mirrors (almost) the way I might have before…the inflammation that has flooded and plagued my legs and hands has receded…the cardboard has retreated from its post as a blockade between my thoughts leaving them feeling connected, even if only by a thread…I have found myself more fully present, laughing effortlessly, enjoying small moments and not needing to take a nap because of the effort…I have felt like myself for the first time in nearly a year and for that, there are no words. It’s not perfect. There are still hurdles to clear and some days are harder than others. But this moment brings honesty to two things I lost sight of this last year.

Gratitude and Hope.

 

 

hope’s effort

Amy Clark1 Comment

Chronic and invisible illness has become a daily struggle rather than an intermittent one. It is exhausting, often defeating, and always frustrating. But when I am able to channel it into writing, somehow that tension and discomfort is eased. I always share the poetry of others her but rarely my own. Today that is different which brings another kind of unease. But nonetheless…it is written (and unedited), so here it is, as it came to mind and then to the page.

hope’s effort

I hadn’t imagined this particular evolution

of days. This—

well, it wasn’t foreseeable

(a game Life plays, with a smirk, knowing

its caprice will always confound human ego).

Exhaustion permeates and saturates the hours,

restricting the freedoms and felicity Joy once knew

but took for granted in her attempt to live

without bounds.

And yet…

A thread of hope rises each day—

a mirage that cleverly deceives the mind

into believing today will be different—

better. It’s what I hold to with a fervor so

vibrant that it seems to be Joy (regained) or even

Wellness (restored)—

(Is it a smile she’s wearing, they wonder, or just

gritting teeth clenched tight

in fear of revealing ___________?)

But, instead it’s just my soul—

hoodwinked, and the believing,

well, it’s kind of tiring.

Hope, these days, engenders new depths of fatigue

because the thread is too thin and elusive,

impossible to grasp

each and every, and some days,

well, I miss it completely. It floats

away—shimmering aloft, visible but…just…

out of reach…

And yet…

I always wake in search of it,

again, because without it,

I’d be laid flat in the blindness

of the not-knowing haze—of the fog

that necessitates a beacon to avoid

getting lost, or worse, giving up entirely—

which is always an easier reach—a falsely 

tangible promise of ease, an empty promise, that,

well, evaporates the moment acquiescence is 

accepted by the mind, the body in need of something, 

anything simpler than the work required in facing, 

in maneuvering the obstacles which can’t be overcome

in a single day…the work required to 

persevere through darkening shades of complexity.

And so….

When the thread of hope rises

each day, each day I will reach

for it, I will cling to it,

until its promise is fulfilled…because

the alternative, well, that’s not living, that’s 

a shadow life…a shadow of life…

that’s existence…wasted,

a promise left waiting—

–unfulfilled in my impatience for something 

immediately better, 

which, well, blinds the eye to all that is still present,

to the thread of hope rising and waiting for the reach,

each day.

And so…

I grab hold…again…and again because despite 

my body’s fatigue, my brain knows this truth—

I am not helpless, hopeless in the face of ______.

Life will change, circumstances will alter,

that does not mean they are worse—

only alive.

And that challenge, of being alive, is always worthy of 

Hope’s effort.

(all gratitude to Anthony Doerr and his novel Cloud Cuckoo Land as the line “A thread of hope rises,” which appears on p. 144 of the novel, was the inspiration for this piece)

patience

Amy Clark2 Comments

I don’t remember myself.

I’ve been sick before. Invisibly ill in insidious ways.

Lonely, as those surrounding me tried to understand, but without experience, had no foundation to allow for true belief in the turns my story had taken. Frustrated, as no one seemed able to resolve my ailments or even to incite a brief remission, a bit of respite, a break. Exhausted, afraid, broken-hearted and broken bodied. All of this. I have been all of this before in the midst of illness and yet despite the array of emotion, I’ve always been able to remember myself…for better and for worse.

The constant specter of who I used to be, what I used to be able to do haunted me without reprieve. I longed for the previous ease of propping up a smile…for the freedoms of frivolity without worry for an unforgiving symptom set…for working out without abandon because I was in charge of this body and we would be fit…for being able to honestly answer “I’m well” when asked how I was doing. I knew who I used to be, what I used to have, what I used to be able to do and I was jealous of her. Constantly. Achingly.

It took years to accept the terms of my new circumstances. To accept that the girl I used to be was still part of who I was becoming rather than extinct. That she was fully aware she was participating in a merger wherein her strength and joy and skills and hope were maintained and sharpened in this new fire faced. She populated my everyday though her life looked different. It took years to own and honor that there is no old me and new me, only me in this moment and I am always going to be in some phase of evolving into who it is I am meant to become…to honor that I still have control over the shades and hues I show and shower. But this process always included recognizing and celebrating who I’ve been along the way. And recently, that has become more difficult.

This battle back against what has evolved into Long Covid is different from all the other times I’ve faced health challenges (and there have been many). This fight has dissolved much of what I knew of myself. My brain is so exhausted and so foggy that I find myself behaving, responding, acting in ways that feel unrecognizable, strangely resistant to careful reflection and observation, interrupted moment to moment with absence of memory for what comes next, but it’s all I have the energy to produce. I find missing the small goodness of the beauty on the horizon, because I am tethered instead to what is currently right in front of me. Don’t look up or around or too far forward or back or you will lose what it is you have to do in this singular moment. Blinders are required but the blindness harbors despair for as missed moments pass, they grow heavy. I feel sometimes as though I’ve become a completely new human without the reference of experience and knowledge of who I was, of who I’ve been, there to guide me. All of my energy is focused on surviving days, getting through them, taking care of all those who count on me as best I can, which is great but I know that for now, I am not enough and also a bit of a stranger, even if only to myself. There are small touches in my manner that have evaporated and all of me is too depleted to attempt any sort of rebirth or refurbishment. Simply getting out of bed and forcing myself to get ready for work is enough to warrant a nap, but there is no time. I have to simply keep taking steps even when I have to fabricate the energy to do so.

And so I proceed having left my former self in the shadows with the hope that she will be waiting for me when I am able to pause, to take care of myself, to fight harder for recovery from something that very few fully understand. I hope that she will be there when it is time to measure this process of becoming. I repeat daily that this is just for right now, but right now exists for an undetermined period of time and there are pieces of my personality that I am not willing to sacrifice to Covid. Intrinsic empathy, generous kindness, careful words and reflection. I don’t need to be the same person I was before. That would be a denial of the experience and all it extolled. I lived it and am living it. Denying it later would make it all worthless. But I need to heal enough to deliver those elemental sparks back into being. That is the day I long for.

Until then, I will keep reminding myself to go slow and that today is not tomorrow yet. Change will come.

I can be patient.

open window

Amy Clark4 Comments

As I sit here to write this, I am sick with Covid and on my seventh day in isolation from my family, my students, the produce section at Whole Foods, and the world at large. My individual existence has taken one giant pause as I work to help my body heal and recover–and yet, the rest of the world carries on with a swiftness that renders me unable to compete. My emotions during this time have spanned the spectrum…at times angry (I’ve been so careful, so cautious, but I work inside of a school so exposure is a daily danger)…at times sad (My youngest texts me regularly from two rooms away that he is sad and misses me and I cannot even offer him a hug), at times joyful (as technology creates opportunities for connectivity even in the face of confinement). But, more than any of these, there has been panic…overwhelming fear facilitating full on panic attacks…more in the last seven days than in the last seven years combined. Not knowing what this virus will exact upon my system or the war it might wage on my family is terrifying to me. Will I be okay? Will the people I love be okay? Will I end up in the hospital, perhaps more alone than I am now? Will this linger? Will I survive?

That last question feels a bit dramatic, maybe. Except, it is the truth of the trek my brain has traveled. So, dramatic or not, it has been my reality. Why? Well, my body often exists in opposition to all I’ve done to care for it. It seems to enjoy testing the limits of my endurance, to place on trial my capacity to persevere. If there is a weird ailment, side effect, strange medical possibility…my body will seek it out hungrily…voraciously…fervently. What sounds like hyperbole, trust me, is not entirely such. I am exceedingly kind to my body, feeding it well, keeping it fit, all the things–yet it persists in rebelling. Vertigo. Unrelenting Migraine. Hearing Loss. Shingles Induced Nerve Damage. This list goes on. And so, I’ve come not to trust this body to behave itself, to follow the rules, to exist within the bounds of normalcy. And so, yes, my panic is a result of a lifetime battle with anxiety, but also as a result of not ever really knowing what my body’s next trick will be. And this, as well as concern for compromised members of my family and community, is why I’ve been so careful, so cautious, even when others thought it ridiculous. Yet, here I am anyway.

So, I’ve exerted as much energy fighting the anxiety and the frustration and the loneliness and the anger as I have ridding myself of this virus because those emotions will not be willing guides to wellness. And so I’m consciously making a list of positives (because, annoyingly, for better or for worse, this is what I do…):

  1. I’ve learned how to be dependent on others when needed without feeling guilty and my kids are learning the freedom that is carried by independence as they learn to cook some basics for themselves (their poor father is left to clean up their messes, but baby steps-at least they are cooking!).
  2. I’ve become dedicated to self care (because I can’t really care for anyone else from isolation): I am setting better boundaries instead of always people pleasing; I painted my toenails; I am stretching every morning; I am taking all the vitamins; I am binge watching “The Crown” simply because I enjoy it; I’ve opened and climbed out of my bedroom window daily to enjoy fresh air and a peaceful moment outside; and I am granting myself permission to rest (maybe it’s the truce my body’s been fighting for?)
  3. I’ve been showered in love and support and errand running and food delivery and checking in. Friends and colleagues and family have become beacons of hope and deliverers of joy not just to me but to my whole household. And all the praise to my resilient husband who is brilliantly rising to the challenges of running the show without complaint…and whose ceaseless entertainment of our teenage/pre-teenage boys has helped them to feel less afraid while mom is sick.
  4. I’ve discovered a new reading spot! Extra time alone in my room has equated to turning a chair to face the window to the backyard. Peaceful, lovely, perfect. It has been awaiting discovery and I’ve been too busy to see it.
  5. Stillness.

I opened my writer’s notebook today and the last time I had written, ironically, was in thoughtful response to Medora C. Addison’s poem, “The Days to Come“. Rereading it brought me further encouragement…especially the last stanza:

“So shall the days to come be filled with beauty,/Bright with the promise caught from eastern/skies;/So shall I see the stars when night is darkest,/Still hear the thrush’s song when music dies.”

Which also made me think of Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud” when he writes, “For oft, when on my couch I lie/ In vacant or in pensive mood,/ They flash upon that inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude;/ And then my heart with pleasure fills,/ And dances with the daffodils.”

Which called to mind Ada Limon’s “Instructions on Not Giving Up” — “Patient, plodding, a green skin/ growing over whatever winter did to us, a return/ to the strange idea of continuous living despite/ the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,/ I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf/ unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.”

Which brought me to David Wagoner’s poem, “Lost,” —“…Wherever you are is called Here,/ And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,/Must ask permission to know it and be known.”

Poetry often restores my perspective and brings balance amid whirls of chaos in a world of concern–sort of in the same way climbing out of my bedroom window and into fresh air has restored my spirit in these days of isolation. Today, poetry offered bread crumbs on the path out of the wilderness of this illness. But there is more wilderness out there for the world is not absolved of pandemic simply because I’ve encountered it.

We are all weary warriors these days. I get it. I do. But this reality continues to find new ways to make its presence felt…deeply. So it is up to us to remember that all the hope offered in these poems is something to cling to as we continue to make sacrifices, small and large, to prevent others from facing the uncertainty and danger of this invisible instigator. We need to make visible our fortitude moving forward; we need to live in love of our neighbor, taking care to take care. It is the only way forward I can find. It is a path that will be briefer with company, for together we will shine a light toward better and healthier days far more brilliantly than apart.

The window is open. I am hopeful.

wonder

Amy ClarkLeave a comment

Lately, my migraine life has had a reductive impact on my exercise life…like walking my neighborhood is really all I can do without negative effects. I mean, some days are pretty golden and I can get away with a HIIT workout or some TRX work without too much residual discomfort, but those days are becoming more and more rare. But this new walking habit is not without benefit (beyond the physical well-being bit). There is a freedom offered in these walks–they belong solely to me, a rare moment in time where I act just for myself. I determine my path, my playlist, my distance, my pace. I don’t need to weigh the opinions of others. I don’t need to compromise with anyone else. I don’t need to negotiate with or listen to anyone other than myself. It is a step toward solitude, toward peace, toward wholeness.

And today, it was a step toward reawakening wonder.

We have this glorified drainage ditch running through our neighborhood…my kids call it a “creek” but I feel like that term just transforms their exploration of it on summer days into something a bit more adventurous–I mean, come on, who wants to say, “Hey mom, can we go check out the drainage ditch?” Words do matter and who am I to deny their careful work with connotation?! On recent walks, this “creek” (I’m just going to stick with the positive nomenclature of my kids here), has been pretty dry and even a little musty. Without the nourishment of rain for the past several days and even weeks, the creek was losing its richness and its beauty was waning(yep, the drainage ditch too can be beautiful). The creek bed was still there, patiently awaiting renewal in the natural cycle of things, but the deprivation on the path to getting there was taking its toll.

And then, after withholding its gifts for so many days, the rain paid a long awaited visit.

As I was walking today through that rain, I heard a noise outside my earbuds as I neared the creek. At first, I thought a car was coming up behind me and so I glanced around to be sure. Not a moving vehicle in sight (not many care to be out and about on a rainy Sunday). Then it struck me. What I heard was not a car, rather it was rushing water swiftly running down rocks and filling up the creek–almost as if it could not get there fast enough. They cycle of hardship was ended…patient endurance, rewarded with rebirth.

It was beautiful and weirdly wondrous at the same time.

In a time when so much feels lost…when we feel so without, so lost…to witness renewal in that way, well, it restores a bit of faith that our dried out, musty selves will one day (even if it is later rather than sooner) be met again by that which makes us whole.  Even in dormancy there can still be the expectation of revival and in that time of waiting, there can even be joy. And in the stillness of that hope (okay, stillness while walking a 14 minute mile…), I thought of Mary Oliver’s poem, “Song For Autumn” and how in it she offers fresh perspective on what we think of as the hibernation of nature’s beauty in the fall.

“Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now

how comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of the air and the endless

freshets of wind?…”

Maybe the creek appreciated the rest, the time to itself, the solitude within which to appreciate the pause and the chance to just be? And maybe its reunion with the rain was even sweeter for the time without?

Maybe I am just a swoony hopeful optimist who seeks answers in poetry and nature for that which seems without solution?

But, a spark of joy was ignited inside my heart and in these days, that spark is good enough for me.

Anticipation

Amy ClarkLeave a comment

Having dealt with chronic illness for the last 8 or 9 years, one of the messiest mental mud holes I needed to dig myself out from existed in a very simple sentence starter…which existed in variations of itself but always lead to the same deleterious effects. It always went  something like this: “Back when I  could…” or “The old me could have…” or “There was a time in my life when _____ was possible”. The trouble with these statements emanates from their constant glance backwards which blinded me to my current truth. And maybe that was my mind’s ulterior motive. If I was always idolizing and gazing back at the “old me”, then the current version of myself was only a temporary imposter. I didn’t have to accept this new human with her new limitations, in her new situation. She was a lesser version of old me and I didn’t really like her very much. Her life seemed less than the one I had been working so hard for so long to create. I wanted more. I wanted what I felt I deserved.  I looked to every outlet that might offer healing because this would not  (NOT) be what defined my existence for the rest of my life. This was a “right now” scenario and I would fix what people told me could not be fixed. I tried acupuncture,  chiropractors, physical  therapy,  vestibular  rehab, essential oils, neuro-otologists, audiologists, oral  surgeons, dentists (this list  goes on for a while, you get the picture). And while I might find relief, no one held the cure…the magic potion that would restore old me and extinguish new me. I felt I had tried everything to heal myself.

But sometimes…

…we have to look within first.

One day, in a moment of defensiveness, I told a friend,  “I have a neurological and inner ear disorder; I am hearing impaired. So what?!”  And it was one of the most freeing moments of my entire life.

I had said it.

Out loud.

In the world.

For someone else to hear.

I had spoken the truth that I had been working so furiously to deny and to walk away from. In that moment, I began to nurture acceptance rather than denial. In that moment, I began to slowly and steadfastly heal myself rather than futilely and frantically try to eradicate my disorder. The path toward acceptance possesses an inordinate number of thorns and there is no map to navigate it well. It requires resilience and dedication and also, as I came to learn, anticipation of who I was becoming rather than disappointment over who I had lost. I did not need to mourn that girl who could do some stupid number of burpees in two minutes…I did not need to mourn the adventures she would never seek (because let’s face it, “adventure” was never really my thing anyway)…I did not need to mourn any of it because she was still a part of me and together, we were becoming someone stronger, someone more beautiful, someone who despite limitations still had plenty to give to this world.

And so in anticipation of who I was becoming, I fought harder.

As 2020 wears on and I feel like so much in this world is changing and shifting, I once again find myself gazing backward. “Remember when we could…” “Remember when we didn’t have to…” “Remember the days before…” Of course we all remember all these things, they are a part of us and our stories. And for a substantial piece of our lives they dictated our narratives for us. They are not lost forever, though, just in a holding pattern of sorts…wrapped in bright paper waiting for us to unwrap them again when it is safe and maybe with the newfound gratitude we are all bound to feel for what was once just the everyday.

I  find myself making this note in my notebook at school regularly: “Anticipate who you are becoming in all of this”  It is a necessary reminder when the work of reimagining school on a regular basis grows exhausting and frustrating. It is a necessary reminder when I decide how I will  react or respond to those around me at work, at home, in my community. It is a necessary reminder that this is my story and I am not a static character. I am dynamic. I am changing. And I can shape that change and my attitude about it.

Opening my mind and my heart to accepting myself, presented some of the toughest work I’ve faced…and that work doesn’t end, maybe not ever. Some days issue considerable challenges while others tender feelings of accomplishment and joy. Regardless, all the days are situated in anticipation of who I will become on the other side of the struggle and what work I can do in the moment to make that person a better one than she is today.

Neither a neurological disorder nor pandemic can change that…unless I allow for it.

All you need is shade

Amy ClarkLeave a comment

“I’d  like to be  under the  sea

In an octopus’s  garden  in the shade”

(The Beatles)

Imagine…

It is a beautiful but unseasonably warm spring day in a time before music festivals had been extinguished by the blight of pandemic. It is a day full of food and music and joy and laughter…and sweat…so much sweat. As the day draws nearer to its closing, you stand amid what seems an endless sea of humanity in anticipation of the headlining act, and in that moment, you realize that under the oppression of the heat you are faltering.  A  little  shaky, a little sick, and in need of relief, you glance skyward in hopes that even a single cloud might be dancing toward the sun to offer a brief respite. Only, there is not a cloud to be found and a bit of panic starts to settle in because you have convinced yourself that in fact you cannot survive the show without some kind of shade. Suddenly, there are too many people around. Suddenly, you are questioning your decisions–why didn’t you wear a hat…why didn’t you buy an extra bottle of water…why are you even still standing here in this misery when you could be at home, cool and comfortable…why does no one else seem bothered by this?

But then the show begins…the crowd roars as the first few chords resonate…

…and everything shifts.

As though suddenly inoculated with protection against the heat,  you find yourself relinquishing the internal panic in favor of the auditory peace of the moment.  

Washed over, baptized if you will, by the waters of this magical, musical oasis, you are            no longer languishing, but living.

You are no longer ailing, but alive.

The temperature has not changed.

The circumstances are nearly identical to what they were just moments before.

But in the shade of the music, it is all bearable and you can continue in spite of it.

Not only that, but you can find enjoyment in the midst of what was misery.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Early in our days of life at home not so many months ago, I found myself reaching out to known places of comfort. Only, as was also true of the world, what I thought I knew, no longer carried weight. I could not focus long enough to read a page of any of the books in my many stacks of “to be read” without swiftly realizing that in fact I had retained nothing and had to reread the page…again and again, until I finally put the book to the side in frustration. I  blamed the books for a while, assuming that they just didn’t suit me, before realizing that the books were innocent and it was my overwhelm that was to blame. In the face of not being able to escape into fictional worlds, I began countless blogs in an attempt to at least log the truth of my own reality, but I lacked the stamina to see any of them through to completion. And so I turned to exercise, but that too looked different at home–alone, without my friends and the benefit of peer pressure to drive my intensity. This list of “Amy’s Pursuit of Peace” goes on for quite a while and it always seemed hampered by the ever present worry of ensuring my family was at the very least “okay” as well as the constant stress of running and reimagining school from home (and also cooking…endless cooking).

It seemed every place I turned in search of shelter only tossed me deeper into the desert. No effort made seemed enough to construct substantial enough shelter from the ever brewing storms brought on by pandemic life at a time that was also marked by violence in the face of a courageous symphony of voices crying out for overdue racial justice and change…by a country defined by its division…by a litany of natural disasters unfurling their fury as though all the turmoil we felt on the inside suddenly took form in our weather. Smoke clouded vision and smothered breath; flood waters rose leaving trademark ruin in their wake; winds whipped, tearing trees and towns to pieces.

And yet, we had to persist. It was the only way to survive–fight the fatigue and carry on even when you think the next best step is too much. There was little rest, not enough relief, and the idea of a true shelter to shield us from it all became nothing more than a mirage as I stumbled through the heat longing for an oasis.

And then, one day I was walking in my neighborhood (a newfound point of peace in the midst of my surrounding mayhem) and my music was on shuffle because in a world confined to mundanity of home, a little surprise adds color to the day. The Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” came on and I had to smile.

“I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’s garden in the shade
He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been
In his octopus’s garden in the shade

I’d ask my friends to come and see
An octopus’s garden with me
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’s garden in the shade”

I mean, at first, yes, it was just delightful to imagine this garden with its caretaker who “knows where we’ve been”, and the thought of my friends being able to be there with me when we had spent so much time apart was lovely. But then I realized that in seeking full on shelter, I was actually entering a labyrinth of frustration. I had been asking for too much in desiring something that would repel the truth of the world and keep me safe inside while it happened around me. Impervious protection was not truly the goal. It would have summoned comfort, sure, but it would have also encouraged weakness rather than inspiring strength.

What I really needed instead was a little shade. A brief break to regain my strength. And even if the comfort of shade would not produce itself in obvious ways, I had to seek it out in unexpected places (an octopus’s garden, if you will).

I think we are all pretty uncomfortable right now and for lots of really good reasons, you know? It is just a hard time to be human in this world. There are no immediate cures for the myriad ills we face and in the middle of the desert, with not a cloud in the sky and no true waters of restoration in sight, shade is what we must seek and also create to get us through. My tiny pauses of peace in the shade would not be found in the usual places because the world is not its usual self. I had to initiate invention and be bold in seeking and recognizing the small moments that allowed me to catch my breath so I could be emboldened to face the next moment of struggle. I had to plant my  own trees under which I could sit from time to time to regain myself and my well being…under which I could sit from time to time to remember that even though my circumstances have not changed, there is still joy to be found and love to share.

It takes energy to create shade that will give life. And energy can be hard to muster the longer we endure.  I am trying to remember to name my shade when it is present, to rest beneath it and to recover and in my rekindled strength, to then turn my gaze away from myself and toward extending shade to comfort those around me. Because that is how we will truly survive. Selflessly together. In order to have the determination to reach the true oasis of renewal on the other side of this desert of tumult, we have to be in this with each other, for each other. We won’t all get there at the same time, but if we take comfort in the shade we create and find and share, we will all get there eventually.

found poetry

Amy ClarkLeave a comment

Last school year ended.

That’s it, really. Just done.

No hugs goodbye, no ceremony, no final exams…it just…ended. A day came that we said would be the end and that was that. Screens closed. Silence deepened. Separation spread.

Pandemic possesses the power to distort structure and plans and tradition…the power to permeate even the simplest aspects of our lives until every last detail of our day feels saturated in its heaviness. When school closed in mid-March, there was no way to predict the vastness of what it would mean to go home…especially for my seniors.

As the days wore on and their hope for a more “normal” end to the school year depleted, the struggle to persist in distance learning heightened. Sure, they were lucky to have the opportunity to continue their learning when so many others didn’t, but in the face of so much that seemed lost, in the face of the lack of closure they longed for, finishing the year, I imagine, just felt sort of pointless. Yet, they persisted.

The very last assignment that I asked my AP Lit seniors to complete (outside of their senior projects) involved the composition of a found poem. During our time in quarantine, each of them selected a poet, collection of poets, or poetic movement to engage with. Their early work in this project involved research, connection, analysis, and reflection. For their final assignment, however, I wanted to offer a new opportunity. Something that asked my students to consider the poetry as it was but to also be creative, whimsical, intuitive. I wanted them to take what they thought they knew and to redesign it. This found poem work asked them to craft their own poems, for their own purpose, but, as is true of all found poems, their lines would be pulled entirely from poems already written-in this case, those they had been studying. In a world where my students felt powerless to recreate or rearrange their own circumstances, granting them agency to re-envision poetry seemed the least I could offer.

If I am being completely honest, I wasn’t entirely certain how this assignment would present at the deadline. In any typical year, seniors would have already checked out, but this year…the year of quarantine…the year of the thief of so much… this year, they really needed to be done. I just wasn’t sure that their stamina stipend included constructing a found poem for Mrs. Clark.

True to form, though, they proved my concern to be the product of faulty reasoning.

Not only did many of my students attach notes to their poems explaining how much they enjoyed this work or how much they learned from it, but the work they composed was simply stunning.

Imagine…Adrienne Rich’s poetry re-envisioned and reconfigured to speak for women in the present moment, and I believe for the found poet herself…the lines of various Native American poets merged to create a new poem reflective of respect and understanding of belief and of a people not often honestly taught or depicted in school…Various Victorian poets blended together to set to the page something all at once true to the original movement but entirely relevant today…

Or this…a collection of lines taken from Naomi Shihab Nye and assembled by my student, Lucy…a collection of lines that when removed from the contexts of their original poems and bent to the perspective of a new vision creates new art, new meaning, new power.

Passage

(a found poem arranged by Lucy Vanderbrook from the works of Naomi Shihab Nye)

How can we live like this?

Everything we love is going away,

The spaces we travel through are short

Each thing in its time, in its place,

Otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,

 

Someday we will learn how to live

We will try not to argue among ourselves

We will forgive any anger we feel toward the earth,

When the rains do not come, or they come

 

Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges,

Stories, poems, projects, experiments, mischief

Knowing a bigger world loomed. It’s still out there,

Now we are young or ancient

Everything grants you your freedom

But we are still adrift

And then there was also this collection assembled by my student, Molly…lines borrowed from Modern and Contemporary Poets arranged to both signify the moment we currently face and also identify what is still important…what will save us…

Key of Our Times

(lines borrowed from Cummings, Dickenson, Schwartz, Clifton, Nye, Levertov, Harjo, Rilke, and Grotz—arranged by Molly Heurtin)

Remember this

love is more thicker than forget

 

Calmly we walk through this April’s day

There is a sadness everywhere present

We have changed, a little.

Number provides all distances

How much – how little – is within our power

you have seen it growing.

the immense loneliness

In the dark.

 

then you see the sun shining down

A spark of kindness made a light.

kindness – the deepest thing inside,

Deeper than the sea

Sorrow, the other deepest thing

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore.

As I read poem after poem, I found each carefully crafted to possess its own depth, its own beauty, its own perspective. I found flickers of the familiar in something brand new that presented both comfort and excitement in the reading. I found young people who were writing their way out of their heartache by naming it with the words of others.

And then a thought settled, spread roots and grew…we are in this new moment with so much unfamiliarity, so much unknown, so much fear (don’t deny it). We are grieving the difference between today and yesterday without seeing that yesterday is still today, just rearranged. We have not lost all and there can still be beauty and goodness when the lines we loved so much collide in new and unsettling ways. But our eyes have to be open to the possibility that within this sometimes (often) frightening and foreign landscape we have been forced to navigate are paths tinged with the familiar leading us to something new and beautiful—even if that is only shared vulnerability or the ability to name that kindness is all we have left.

And no, I’ve not lost my sensibility here-I know that the loss of lives and livelihood, the loss of health and well-being cannot be reduced to a platitude. But I also know that there is no making it through without hope.

And what I learned in witnessing the transformation of what was to what could be in those found poems delivered a picture of hope to me that I had not considered…the possibility that while life might look different, we possess the power to distort the loss of what was into what can be.

Reset hope

Amy ClarkLeave a comment

I realized this morning that I haven’t worn my glasses in days. Well, I think it has been days, though honestly, it could be a week or more. I actually don’t remember when I wore them last. In fact, if you asked me for their current location, a reaching guess would be the best I could offer.

And yet, I don’t seem to have missed them…their ever present weight on my face, their incessant reminders of my aging eyes as I begrudgingly reach to remove them simply in order to read my computer screen, their gentle bounce as I jog the neighborhood…a gentle jog of memory for how the world moved when vertigo was a daily friend. I really haven’t missed any of those things…at least not enough to notice their absence.

But, that singular perspective doesn’t tell the whole story because in fact I do miss the presence of the distances in my life that required the glasses in the first place–my students across the classroom from me, ripe avocados from the other side of the produce section that glimmer with the hope of future guacamole, the screen at the gym that reveals my heart rate (in some way confirming that I have in fact worked out, as though the pounding heart and pouring sweat weren’t evidence enough).

Everything these days is in close proximity…my family, the pantry, my backyard, my desk. There is no distance that requires my glasses for clarity, only a distance that is too great for my glasses to clarify. I see my students on my computer screen…I read their words and hear their voices and in some ways they are still very present in my everyday. Yet, the absence of the vibrant richness of their presence marks everyday as a bit emptier than it could have been. This is not summer. This is not vacation. This is a collection of days that were promised and then revoked, without warning. Days etched now with the wispy shadow of what should be. Yet in the midst of this distance, my affection for my profession, for my school, for my community deepens, strengthens fueled by the lens of truth held up by space and time.

Even in these strange and unusual days, when we are sheltered in our homes from an invisible and indiscriminate adversary…when we are separated from people and places and produce (sorry, I miss the grocery store…a lot)…even when we are anxious, afraid, and uncertain…even now, gratitude has a way of unfurling in small moments as the first flower of spring offers hope that despite the desolation of winter, eventually the earth defrosts and new life comes to be.

And I think that has to be where my focus turns…toward the new life that has yet to take shape…the bud, still tightly wound, yet to reveal its beauty. My focus has to be on the gratitude for that moment yet to arrive. I am not diminishing in any way the very real concerns this virus instills. Trust me. I feel them deep within my core. That fear has overwhelmed and frozen my writing for over a week now and borrowed sound sleep from my mind’s vocabulary.

It’s just that I cannot exist in that hopeless fear driven space and expect to be of use to those who need me–including myself. And so, I am simply adding a new lens to the collection. This time, the lens of reset, the lens of renewal, the lens that will allow me gratitude for this pause in life and that will water seeds of hope for the goodness already present and the goodness yet to arrive.

I still don’t know where my glasses are…I’m not entirely sure when I will find them…but my vision feels sharper nonetheless.

(a poem for you in this moment…one that I shared with my students–whose insight was stunning, I might add–take a second to read it if you can…“Today” by Billy Collins)