Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

The night I learned Thea Angeliki had died, I was on an annual retreat I take, and I had briefly interrupted the silence to spend a couple hours in a writing workshop about belonging. The facilitator asked us to list the people and places to whom we belonged, and then to choose two of them and write about them. For reasons that weren’t clear to me at the time, I wrote Thea Angeliki’s name down—and then decided to write about her. This is what I wrote. Two hours later, in my room, I was weeping because I had a message on my cell phone telling me Thea was gone. I’m sorry she never got to read this, but I wanted to post it here and to pass it on to others who loved her. ----- In my first memory of Thea Angeliki, she is standing at her kitchen counter talking to her cat, and my sister and I are looking at each other across the table and smiling. My mother was with us, as was my aunt Katina, and because my mother was well, I know I must have been younger than 10 (unless this trip happened i...

"Wanting to find a place where everything's okay is just what keeps us miserable. Always looking for a way to have pleasure and avoid pain is how we keep ourselves in samsura (the vicious cycle of suffering during our life journey). As long as we believe that there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable. The truth is that things are always in transition. 'Nothing to hold onto' is the root of happiness. If we allow ourselves to rest here, we find that it is a tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. This is where the path of fearlessness lies." --Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun So many things right now are in transition, uncertain. I am in financial crisis again--the adoption assistance check didn't come on time (which happens every July, but this year, I forgot about this and didn't plan for it), the state government has shut down which will mean I am paying for more of Lisa's services (therapy...

Sometimes, when things were very serious—like during my mother’s long illness—my Nono would find a way to make everybody laugh. I distinctly remember a time when we were all gathered in the family room in the house where I grew up. We were talking about ordinary things (I think I was answering a question my Nona had asked me about how school was going), but the mood was dreary. Although I can’t say for sure when this happened, but I know my mother was still alive but not in the room, so she was likely in the hospital, which means I was between 9 and 13 years of age. In any case, quite suddenly and totally out of the blue, my Nono did a summersault off the couch. It seems impossible that this is a real memory, but I swear it happened. My sister and I burst out laughing. Nona was shocked and said, “Taki, what are you doing?” but then she started laughing too. He had a way of lightening things when they were too heavy. He had the best sense of humor of anyone I ever knew. He was almost ...

So, let me get this straight: S cannot stay by herself without getting on the internet and spending $100 she does not have or taking money out of my wallet and going to the store and getting, then eating, an entire box of Oreos. She can't get her homework done without someone sitting next to her. She has no idea how to function in most social situations. She would spend hours twirling around on pointe if she could. She's making progress in all of these areas--lots of progress, actually--but, bottom line, she's not going to be able to be on her own when she turns 18 in a month. Still, she needs a diagnosis other than her current diagnoses--math disability, PTSD and ADHD--to get any resources post-age-18. All right, not a problem. The school is going to do an evaluation, required every two years for any student receiving special education services. Only the "evaluation" includes two tests and an "interview" (questionnaire) that I fill out. Also, her specia...

It doesn't seem possible that it's been three months since I last posted here. We didn't have e-mail access for awhile, due to a virus I ultimately decided not to bother to fix, having spent way too much money on an old computer. I bought a laptop I couldn't really afford, finally, last week. It was nice not having a computer at home in many ways. I read a lot more. S and I argued a lot less. I was able to leave work at work more often (though I also ended up at work until 2 or 3 in the morning far too many times, rather than having the luxury of working from home when things absolutely have to be done). To actually catch up whoever is reading this on what's happened in the last three months seems rather pointless...and so, in lieu of doing so, I'll make a list of lists. Things I'm Excited About This Summer --Having more time to write, read, and spend with S and with friends (I only work half-time in the summer, starting June 1) --Taking a retreat (hopefully...

Dear Mom, Twenty-seven years ago today, I lost you. As trite as it is to say so, it is hard to believe that many years have passed. Now that I have a daughter, I have a different kind of context for understanding that day, and what happened before, and what came after. I know now that children who experience trauma tend to get stuck at the ages of that trauma, to return to old coping mechanisms they used at that time when things get hard, to view the world always through the lenses of that trauma. And sometimes I still feel, at 40, like that 13 year old girl who pushed her way through to the office that had turned into a makeshift sick room and demanded to know where you were. The one who, the night before, wanted to see you--had to see you--so she pushed her way in and held your hand and realized for the first time when you opened your eyes and tried to focus on her and couldn't that you were definitely going to die--and that you were profoundly sorry. But I'm writing to tell ...

It’s my birthday today, and I’m taking the day off of work, a day of reflection and retreat. The only thing I have scheduled is a massage this afternoon, my first in more than ten years. I have been looking forward to the day all weekend—but it started out, somewhat predictably, in not exactly the way I had hoped. Over the weekend, S and I had some good talks about how she needed to take more responsibility around the house, to take better care of herself, her animals, and her environment. I have realized that over the last year I’ve been depressed, and that many of my expectations of her, for that reason and others, went out the window. We have talked about how I want to turn that around this year, to find a way to keep our place neat and clean, to use our time wisely, to live more healthfully. To her credit, she was on board with these new year’s resolutions, overall, and she helped me give the house a thorough cleaning over the weekend and did all her chores last night. Mornings hav...

I think we got it right this year. We drove for two days toward Ohio, where my family is from, with a carload of gifts and our dog. We got a hotel (generously paid for my aunt C, who raised me, as an early birthday gift), so we had our own space to just be together and with our dog. This made every moment we were with family poignant instead of exhausting, I think. The slow drive back home was a slow reentry into our own time and space. We spent a lot of time holding my new nephew, and playing with my other nephew, now 6. We made a snowman and ate way too much and went to a couple museums on days when we needed to be alone together and laughed a lot with the extended family. And, of course, we sang. This is always the highlight of the holiday season for me, when we all gather together on new year’s and sing the traditional Greek carols. In the song, we invite St. Basil, and each other, to sit and eat, sit and drink, sit and tell each other our troubles. We sing about endings and beginn...

It has been a strangely beautiful and poignant 20 or so days since I wrote the last entry. After S and I wept and talked on the couch that day, after J and I exchanged those e-mails about the NPR story she had sent me, something in me began to shift. I was suddenly stronger, no longer relying on J or S or anyone else to carry me, as I had been, I realized, for much of this semester, maybe even this year. I have been feeling stronger and more able to really enjoy each moment for what it is. Thanksgiving weekend was wonderful; S and I reconnected and spent a lot of time cuddling and talking. We got a gigantic Christmas tree that I couldn't really afford and a beautiful wreath for the front of our house and we spent all weekend decorating and admiring it. It tipped over multiple times, three of S's favorite ornaments broke, there were tears that dissipated into S saying, "But at least I have beautiful things now that are mine, even if sometimes they have to break." And t...

S has been out of control lately, beyond anything “usual,” even for her. She’s been consistently mean and violent and screaming. She created a fake ebay account and purchased $400 worth of items, and this has been a nightmare to fix. She is eating whatever she wants at lunch at school, mostly sugar, and refusing to eat the healthy lunches (or, for that matter, suppers) that I make; food has been an issue all along, but it’s really escalated recently. Worst of all, she is showing little remorse for her actions. Every little request turns into a fight. Every boundary is a challenge meant to be broken. Even if she agrees—yes, you’re right, I can’t handle the computer, please take away the keyboard and mouse—the next day she is screaming at me and her college buddy because I’ve taken away the keyboard and mouse. Living in my home has been exhausting. This past Tuesday, things reached a head when she blew up and cussed at a teacher. Up until that point, most of her aggressive behavior had b...