Too Much to Celebrate

If you’ve ever been a part of a communications project that centers around holidays, celebrations, awareness days, heritage months, and others, you’d know that it’s insanely difficult to pick and choose between what to highlight when.

For example, do you choose to focus on lighter, more cheerful celebrations or heavier, more provocative history months? Do you focus on food (such as wine day today) or the fact that today is the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death? This is a dilemma that marketing, PR, and comms people deal with all the time. 

I find that for as taxing as life has become, I have become used to weaving in and out of poignant highs and devastating lows in different hours of the same day. I’m not sure if this is some superpower or just intellectual scarring at this point, but I would like to offer this up on a day like today: pick one thing to think about and reflect on at a time. One thing at a time. It seems basic, but we all know we could use a little encouragement and a reminder every now and then to follow good advice that we used to practice and preach. One thing at a time.

George Floyd. His name was George. And take a moment (or more) to breathe and celebrate the fact that you can take a breath. Take another breath and feel your feels.  And then another before you sip your wine. And another as you note National Missing Children’s Day. And another as you wonder how Towel Day ever came to be. And another as you honor Star Wars’ 44th birthday. Just breathe. Keep breathing.

Brick Houses

I went shooting yesterday for the first time in ages. For as unique as we are, being liberal people who own and enjoy marksmanship, I’m sure my husband and I fit some stereotype somewhere with his startup-branded backpack with an old Bernie Sanders button. Ammo tins, firearms case, shoot-and-sees. Earmuffs, my “baby Yoda” hat, sunglasses, and obligatory COVID face covering (a pink camo pattern). 

We shot next to a trio of Russians, the woman of the group constantly taking pictures and video, and being annoyingly ignorant of the rules. It’s cold range, ma’am. Please do not approach the bench. Or you will get escorted out by the guy in orange with hunting boots, small beer gut, and surprisingly patient approach to people like you and your crew.

It was unusually quiet for a Saturday, the range having been recently renovated. Fresh concrete and wood, freshly painted yellow and red lines, polite people keeping their 6-feet distance – all this populated by a wide range of languages, accents, and skin tones. Yes, this is America. It’s also the Bay Area, it’s very own country. I smell gunpowder and see fit, good-looking nerds out for a few hours of bonding with their friends or parents. Through firearms.

I so enjoy being a combination of the unexpected. A liberal who likes guns. The woman who is the primary breadwinner. An introvert in an extroverted marketing job. And as I think about this, I think it’s more a commentary on why the stereotypes exist at all. It’s not me; it’s the world. Humans are wonderously multi-faceted beings. Why shouldn’t we be full of M. Night Shyamalan twists and turns?

But I’ve also not enjoyed being the unexpected. All my life, I’ve felt the need to exert a systematic release of information with people so I wouldn’t overwhelm them with the complexity of me and my life all at once. Someone once accused me – not in a good way – of always being used to being “queen nerd.” She was telling me to get off my high horse, because I was amongst other nerds. Nerds who apparently didn’t have identify crises about being nerds.  

It’s not just my geekiness that has made me an outsider. It’s also this containership-sized pile of other contradictory and challenging things that from my experience have made me… interesting? Intimidating? Odd? It’s hard to find tribe when you have the kind of shit going on.

And all of the sudden, that was broken as I started talking one-on-one with the women in a writing group/class I entered this year. Recently, one of these beauties confessed she was in the middle of a separation. As if somehow that wasn’t a normal part of our 30s/40s something landscape. I remember how awkward that part of my life was, trying to explain to someone else that my world was being dismembered, and how I couldn’t bear to process their (very natural but most unwelcome) shock and awkwardness and sorrow on top of mine so please don’t say something trite. How comforting it would have been to be in a room where someone – anyone – would just sigh, offer expletives, ask if I was “ok” or needed anything to be fed or safe, and left the silence to speak for all the unspoken. I didn’t have that, but I offered it to her. And then the thought that frees the soul came to me, “Why can’t life be like this more? Why can we just ‘let it all hang out’ like it’s normal?”

Overwhelming health conditions. Abusive relationships or histories. Children with disabilities/limitations that make life excruciating. Devastating poverty. Death and loss. Shattered family lives. Unjust shaming of the outer self. Spouses with disorders who won’t deal with them. Jobs that suck because we haven’t unleashed our personal superpower yet. Caring for older family members in decline.

We are all brick houses. Stout and soulful, not always confident but always full of power. Our physical figures (beauty standards be damned) don’t even begin to tell the tales of our brilliance and resilience.

I think I’m close to the mark, don’t you? I’m dead on target. We are all brick houses?

 

Stacked souls. Minds with “great racks.” We are all brick houses. We are mighty, mighty. May you find a group of people with whom you can let it all hang out. And shake it down, shake it down, shake it down, shake it down now…

Shake it down, shake it down, shake it down, shake it down now…