When my mother was dying in East Jefferson Hospital in November of 2009, I didn’t know my son had already been born. I had braided her once thick hair into tiny braids on each side of her face, which gave her a youthful appearance. She had entered the hospital on Bastille day, having called me late in the evening saying something’s wrong. I was walking home to the LaLa from Swirl with Tatjana, who was very drunk, so that when my mother called, I helped Tatjana slide down onto the sidewalk while I spoke to my mom.
I was at my mom’s house in record time. She lived in Metairie, in an apartment complex with mostly workers from Honduras and Nicaragua. I went up the concrete stairway to the second floor taking two steps at a time. Two men were sitting below, outside their half opened door where Spanish music was wafting in the humid air. I said, “Buenos,” as I passed them. When I got inside, my mom was in her bed, wearing an emerald green nightgown. She had been throwing up red wine in a cup. I sat on the bed and asked her what was wrong, and noticed her whole body was twitching. Soon she was in a state of high agitation.
“Mom, we have to go to the emergency room,” I said. In the next few minutes, I was able to find her purse, get her shoes on, and half carry her down the stairs as she moaned. When the men saw us at the bottom of the stairs, one said, “¿Que pasa?” I kept moving and wasn’t in any mood for niceties. I tried to heave my mother up into the passenger seat of my truck. One man was coming towards us to help. By now both men were getting louder. ¿Qué pasa, Patsy? No te mueras, Patsy. ¿Qué pasó, Patsy? No te mueras, Patsy.
My mother was having a heart attack. I spent 24 hours with her in the emergency room at East Jefferson as they stabilized her. [And had I known what was coming next, I would have let her die in her bed with me by her side.]
For the next days, weeks, months, my mother was stabilized then detoxed and had to be tied down then fell, then started a series of bodily shut downs that led her to have a tube in every orifice in her body. She was in and out of ICU. A month in, she got up out of her bed and fell flat on her face and had to be rushed to surgery to fix a broken nose and cheek.
During this time, my whole life was in a downward spiral. The 2008 recession had hit my company and my sector hard. I covered global media for one of the largest independent research firms on Wall Street. Media was in the crosshairs of a 20-year secular change while Wall Street was in a downward cyclical spiral. All of this was a backdrop to my house terrors that ruled my life from 2005 to 2007 to get passed Katrina and into the LaLa – the house of my dreams.
I was two failed adoptions in as I sat by my mother’s hospital bed. She rubbed the side of her bed in a provocative motion, staring at me through her once glamorous green eyes now covered in a milky film that made them look like fish eyes as she pronounced, “I’m making room for the baby.”
I closed my eyes and put my forehead down on the side of her bed. My tears were hard to summon because I had cried too many of them. “There’s no baby, mom. The last adoption failed.” She smiled coyly, milky-eyed, and rubbed some more: “I’m making room for the baby,” she said.
Towards the end of November, the team of doctors began talking to me about long-term care or hospice where my mother would be kept alive until she couldn’t. I went to her hospital room one day and crawled in bed beside her. I put my arm over her chest and whispered in her ear. “Mom, it’s okay to let go. I love you. I know you love me. But you can let go now.”
She fell asleep. I got up to use the bathroom, and when I walked back towards her bed, she was beckoning me over with her curved pointer finger in an exaggerated fashion much like all of the gestures I had ever seen her make – dramatic, with flourish – I approached the bed and moved closer to her lips that were pursed as she started to say something.
“I thank God every day for you,” she whispered.
Sixteen years later, I sat in an ACA group and talked about how my mom had let me down. How her alcoholism had meant she couldn’t be present for me, she couldn’t be a role model for me, she couldn’t be at graduations, she couldn’t protect me from my rageaholic father, she couldn’t show up for me the way I had wanted her to. I had written my mom a letter in 1990 that accused her of her crimes. I had declared I had wanted Helen of Troy as my mom – a strong woman, someone I could model my womanhood off of – instead I had been given her, a beautiful but weak woman who saw the world through Chardonnay glasses.
This was not my finest moment.
I have slowly built a portrait of the paradox of my mother in my mind – a woman who loved me, who so desperately wanted to get off of the dairy farm she was born into, who married a foreigner to show her the world, whose world grew smaller instead of larger as we moved and moved and moved, whose beauty knew no bounds, who had two daughters and four step sons – the oldest closer to her age, who lived in Cuba, Nicaragua, San Salvador, Puerto Rico, Panama and all around the the U.S. with a rageaholic and jealous husband. Who urged her daughters to never get married, told them they could be anything they set their minds to, while she answered, “Yes, sir,” to my father and couldn’t leave the house without his permission.
In my son’s creation story, he is born to another mother, but he has chosen me to be his parent. When he was nine months old, I told him my mother drew a gold thread from him to me, and after she died on a Monday, the journey was set in motion. On Tuesday, I would fly home from NY, we would bury her on Wednesday, on Thursday, I would get sick from all of the stress, on Friday, I would receive a call, a baby boy needed me, come now, I would drive in my car on a Saturday, collapse in my friend’s house on Sunday, and on Monday, I would meet my son. A gold thread tethered me – one Monday in December, I went from tending to the body of my dying mother to the following Monday tending to the body of my infant son – one profound AF week.
The first thing I said to my son after I strapped him into the car seat and drove towards Indianapolis where I would stand in front of a judge to legally adopt him was, “I thank God for you.” Now I’m the mother who will be judged for all my shortcomings, for all I didn’t do or say, for all the times I have failed him, for being a paradox.
A group of German journalists came to the Hall for the Cedric Burnside show on Mother’s Day. Cedric played one of my favorite songs of his, We Made It, and introduced it by calling me up to dance.
For a person who loves to dance, what is better than owning a dance hall? Not much, I can assure you. One of my favorite videos was the small after party some of us had after cleaning up from a drag show one December.
While Cedric sang We Made It, I tried to get people up to come dance with me, and noticed one of the German tourist, a tall gorgeous blonde, who had been taking a lot of photographs, sitting at the corner of a table by the dance floor. I beckoned her to join me. She kept shaking her head no, shaking her entire body no.
Later this week, the same woman returned with a smaller group for an interview and tour of the Hall. I asked her why she didn’t dance, and she said, “I can’t.” I egged her on a little, telling her dancing is good for the soul. She said, “I used to dance when I was younger, but now I don’t know, I’m too shy.” I told her people get self-conscious because they believe other people are watching them, but dancing is about moving your own body and it’s about freedom – your interpretation, your moves, your body.
I want to remember that dancing is always available to me. In my kitchen, in my bedroom, and lucky for me, in the Hall. Every Thursday, we have a little dance party. Lava Lounge is our happy hour and when Jesse plays the right song, at the right time, it gets us on our feet and moving our body.
My friend, Ann, sent me this song because she said it made her think of me. I would ask you to play it and see if it makes you want to dance. And while you’re dancing, think about how small your problems seem as you move around with joy.
Alan Watts wrote: “We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”
Proof I was trying to get this blonde to dance with me.
Swimming through the myriad thoughts I am having are:
I’m imagining how to interact with Tin via the phone and during my next visit. He’s digging in his heels and not able to see the long view. And he is pointing his finger at me as the source of what ails him.
G-man has been particularly non-communicative this week, which concerns me for his well being. When someone shuts you out, it has more to do with them, than with you. (see #1)
How do I want to spend my time on earth since it is later than I think.
When people ask me these days, how are you? My response is always good enough. And it is true. My years ahead are far fewer than those behind me. I have friends who are dear to me. My health is relatively good – some stiffness, some reduced capacity, still enjoy riding my bike, looking forward to swimming again, plus I have newfound clarity after my cataract surgery this week.
I know I am a good enough mother, and I struggle with communication and Tin. He’s a my way or the highway type person, yet he calls me controlling. Sheesh. I know he is in the best place possible, and yet I try to understand how he might perceive his situation. Reports I receive from others are that he is doing fine, but he would have me believe otherwise. So I have to have faith, not doubt, that he will grow more comfortable in his own journey.
I’m thrilled about Wild Thing, my vintage Shasta camper I bought earlier this year and the adventures that await. I find myself in search of circumstances that would enable me to strike out on my own. Yet, just yesterday, a situation presented itself and I fell back into, would I be safe there? Alone? So I have some fear and some excitement bottled up in Wild Thing. And I have a great need to get away with no thing to have to do, no person to have to answer to, no demands.
I am trusting that how I am really is good enough. I made this collage a while back after summoning my idea of a higher power. There is a lot of imagery in it about seeing and knowing and loving. Trust and faith are at the core of my good enough-ness.
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad. This writing came from the prompt by Nora McInerny: How are you really?
My friend, Kat, introduced me to an album that is on repeat in my head, in my car, on my phone – Cleo Sol’s Gold album. Let me break this down for you:
The first song on the album is There Will Be No Crying. Here is some of the lyrics from this song:
The light, it covers me ‘Cause I just wanna be somebody Darling, we ‘Cause sometimes you need, someone I just wanna feel something real
I started listening to this song in earnest especially as things with the G-man were heating up. The sensuality of Cleo’s pacing and singing had me all up in my feelings. This part – I just wanna feel something real – went deep. My heart had arrived, after a very long hiatus, back in my body and front and center of my desire.
The next song – Reason. This part right here:
Can I be honest with you? I hope you receive these words with grace ‘Cause I can tell that you Won’t let down your guard or put love first
[Chorus] There’s got to be more believers Our life is the life that we want Let love in for completion
Okay, my older brother accused me of being a romantic when I married my first husband. He said, “You aren’t dealing with reality, Rachel. At the end of the day, when you come home, will you be able to have a conversation with him?” My brother was shamefully accurate, but I chose to ignore him and believe in the love I was in. G-man is all about his strict boundary to remain aloof and stay a player. I decided in my (romantic) brain to create a sacred space around me with him. One where, if he chooses, he could let his guard down. I do this for me. I do it for the love I imagine.
Next song – Things Will Get Better. “If God called you at 5am/Would you get on your knees/Or would you get up and leave?” [I’m begging you, please listen to this whole album – multiple times.] This is the article Kat sent me about Gold – Phil Cook’s review on Instagram.
So by now you realize I have kept my heart locked up, safe for a very long time, and that coincidentally or not, when I set my intention to unlock and let myself be vulnerable, G-man walked in. And let’s give him credit for having that kind of BD energy that would make me respond. God sent Moses a burning bush to get his attention, and theologians believe it would take a whole lot more than that to wake folks out of their slumber these days. So I needed a big, loud push. And let’s also say that if G-man does nothing else, his presence has caused a deep thaw in my cold, cold heart. So this next song, Only Love Can Wait, is for me, not for him.
Only love can wait (Only love)
[Verse] You are so gentle yet so hard But it’s hard to be different Be strong You are the joy in others’ life There’s times when you need someone To be there You have a gift inside So why are you hiding? Why are you hiding? Oh, you are the way So don’t rush your peace It’s forever Forever
I’ve listened to this record 100 times just like Phil Cook says in his review, and I always started at the beginning and listen to it all the way through to the very last song. Every single time, I am called to LOVE. Called, as if it were my destiny to be loved, to love, to have love in my life. I bow down to you Cleo Sol – what a beautiful and graceful soul you are to have shared your gift with me and the world.
Next song, Please Don’t End it All. Oh my, this song makes me feel so deeply for my two friends who took their life, my friend who almost took his life, for the times when I’ve considered a complete erasure myself. My friend, Flower, says, Hope Dies Last, and we all know that it is the darkest before the dawn as my father was always wont to say.
Everybody’s going through changes Live your truth By grace, hold my hand, don’t be afraid
So I am a romantic. AI says: “A romantic person is characterized by their tendency to express and experience love in a passionate and idealized way, often valuing emotional connection and expressing feelings openly. They might be thoughtful, giving gifts, writing love letters, or planning special dates. Romantics may also be idealistic, empathetic, and emotionally expressive.”
I cannot hear the next song without thinking of G-man, who came to me one day with his two journals in hand, lots of writing in big loopy script that I couldn’t help but notice. He wanted to talk about his past life regression, and how he had been an angel of darkness and of light and is here now on this earth to yoke these sides together in him and the world.
LOST ANGEL
I was lost But it’s over now I can change I choose faith over doubt ‘Cause I know My time will come And through love Our souls unite Our Gods may be different But they see us all the same I can see That I cannot exist Without your presence
When Cleo gets to the part where she belts out I need my angel now – wow, the force of her beauty is breathtaking. I always belt out along with her in a voice that never comes out as I would imagine – I am deeply envious of vocalist – what a gift they have – but I feel it as deeply as they do. When Cleo sings about an angel, I think about G-man and his belief that he is one – dark and light – and I feel a deep connection to this idea of him.
Do I need to tell you the feelings that come up with a song titled Desire? Um, most likely not, the lyrics speak for themselves. Listen to them. In Your Own Home is so powerful:
Don’t you ever Be afraid In your own home
This next song, a beautiful meditation, Life Will Be:
[Chorus] Oh, life will be Just you believe in you Oh, life will be Just you believe in you Oh, life will be Just you believe in you Oh, life will be Just you believe in you
The album ends with Gold – the title track – I believe that your love is gold/I receive that your love is gold.
Each song on GOLD transports me into a world where feelings take over the realm of logic, where feel is more real than all the thought and thinking you could throw at me. I love swimming in these warm waters.
Pause. This week sent a chill into this burgeoning, wonderful energy that has been heating up with the G-man – it could be a pause? an ending? a ghosting? – my friend put on her psychic hat when I brought it up and threw my words back at me: “more will be revealed.”
The Hall has no events this weekend. I am not traveling to Arizona to see my son this weekend. This means I’m free this weekend. A rare treat. I’ve time on my hands, which has made thinking too easy. My meditation this morning was about when life tests you: it spoke about derailment being part of the package. My friend (who rarely puts on a psychic hat but happens to be down with Covid right now so she is improvising) said the same – look at this as a test. She advised me to write down what brings me joy. The meditation also urged me to re-articulate my vision, trust in time, and reclaim my power.
I want to be free. I want to feel vulnerable. I desire intimacy. I trust my gut to guide me in its direction. What a wonderful world where I have the grace to open to love, to be reminded love is not “out there”, and to come home again and again to find the profound love is in me.
My friend, Tommy Crane, bought a house on Main Street in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi. I came to visit him a few times, and then I came without him, and then came with Tin, and once with my writing group. I would turn off the I-10 onto Highway 90 from Exit 2 (there is no Exit 1 as you come over the hill and into Mississippi), and the atmospheric energy would fall and keep falling till I turned onto Main Street and felt like I was away.
And away was where I wanted to be.
Bay Saint Louis represented a shift in energy for me. Tommy’s house, my walks to the beach, lunch at the Mockingbird Cafe, these were places I would go, alone, or not, and feel a vibe that helped me lose myself in my writing. And it was a time of a crossroads for me. At the end of 2011, I had been let go from a company I had given my all to for more than two decades; the company asked me to sign a nine-month non compete, and I told them to fuck off and two clients came with me when I left.
One client stayed with me for four months and then ended up leaving his career job after 27 years. My contract was not renewed. I now had one client, half of the revenue. It was a difficult time. I had a toddler in a three-room apartment having given up the LaLa, and I had no hair. To rent my apartment, I had worn a wig because I was still getting used to myself being bald. While I waited for the landlords to come into the coffee shop on Esplanade Avenue, a man came in and we were talking for a bit.
After I was leaving, the man followed me out and asked if he could call me. I gave him my number. He was handsome and our conversation had been interesting. And I forgot I had a wig on. So when he called and I saw him the second time, I felt compelled to wear the wig again.
But I digress, Tommy helped me find another house in MidCity that I bought with my savings and the little bit I eeked out of the LaLa where I had invested my life savings. I had been living in the Cleveland Avenue house for five years and for that long had attempted to reinvent myself through my work. Mediator. Facilitator. Writer. Nothing was gelling into a bonafide revenue stream. So I had entered the world of conventional jobs and put a resume together for the first time in over 25 years, and applied for two of them. I was referred to the Chief of Police because his spokesperson was leaving to work for the new mayor. I also applied to Ruby Slipper who was looking for a marketing director to help with their expansion into Tennessee and other parts.
I was highly qualified for both positions, but my age was undeniable. Over 50, yikes, what could I say? A friend called me and warned me about the spokesperson position. He had done it before and said, “Rachel, you can’t unsee leaving your house at two in the morning because there is a dead sixteen year old lying in a pool of blood somewhere, and you have to respond for the news.” I couldn’t leave my house at two in the morning because I had a child, and I was by myself. So I thought I would get a roommate. This was how desperate I felt.
One Jazz Fest, when my house was rented out and I was staying at Tommy’s Bay Saint Louis house, I was sitting outside at a picnic table on Canal Street working from my computer. An acquaintance, Dean, was sitting across me doing the same. Tin was supposed to not be in school, but turned out to have testing all week, so I had to drive him into New Orleans every day. His school was blocks away. Our house with Jazz Fest people was blocks away. I received two emails simultaneously – one from the police chief, one from Ruby Slipper – both said the same thing – they were moving on with other candidates and thanked me for my time.
My breath caught, and I knew that I was going to cry so I told Dean I’d see him later, and had to go. He saw the look in my eyes and asked if I was okay. No, I said. I got in my car and drove to City Park just blocks down the bayou. I passed the LaLa and kept driving until I got inside the park. I got out of my car and started crying and walking and crying and walking and crying and walking and crying and walking and finally when no one was around, I got down on my knees in the thick grass and said: God, what do you want from me?
Later, I picked Tin up from school and we drove back to Bay Saint Louis. I had gotten him a big chocalocka smoothie. He loved these but I always only allowed him the small serving but today because he had been testing all week, and it was Friday, and I was in a catatonic state, I bought him a large one. When he got in the car, I handed it to him and he said he didn’t want it. So I said fine and started drinking it myself much to his horror.
We drove in silence. He fell asleep. I fell into a stupor.
In Bay Saint Louis, we went for an early dinner to El Maguey, a Mexican restaurant where we knew most of the Mexican staff. I order a Crown on the rocks, which the bartender always gave a heavy pour to, and Tin and I sat in mostly silence eating chips and salsa. Both of our thoughts were elsewhere, and I was going through the motion of engagement. I said to him: tomorrow we’ll spend the day at the beach.
When we got back to Tommy’s house, I got his step stool and went out to the front porch where I had bought lightbulbs that repel gnats to put into the sconce. When I unscrewed the sconce it tipped out of my hand and crashed to the floor, shattering glass all over. My breath caught. I felt doomed. I swept up the pieces and brought everything back in the house, and sat at my computer, while Tin watched a TV show.
Tommy was selling his house because he had bought a piece of property on the beach. He was going to build his own house, and he had offered that I could build on half of his land because it was too big for him. I had thought about moving to this place where I had been moved to forget time, to lose myself, to be a writer, which had always been my dream. But the reality is I had to earn a living, and what would my job be here on the beach?
I sat staring at my computer waiting for a revelation but none came. At 8:15 PM, I told Tin, let’s go to bed. We both slept in Tommy’s master bedroom, which had blackout curtains and was deliciously pitch dark. Tin was asleep almost immediately, and I lay there staring at the void. I prayed. I’m not an every day pray-er but I was in the foxhole and I was praying. Then hours later, I woke when it was still dark outside, my body felt restless and rested, and I quietly got out of bed and left the room.
I made my tea and went to my computer. There was a text, a weeks old text, from Brenda, a friend Tommy had introduced me to who lived here on the coast. The text said, “I thought of you” and had a link that took me to a site that said, “Live in a Blues Hall” – when I had clicked on it weeks earlier, I was determined to get a real job and this was nonsense. Now, in my quiet hours of desperation, it was an option. I clicked again, and couldn’t understand the configuration of this Blues Hall or how we would live there, but the price was in my range, since Tommy had already priced my house in New Orleans to sell, and they would be equivalent.
By 8AM, Tin had woken up and I was already dressed for the beach. I told him to put his bathing suit on but we were going to stop somewhere first. I had called my friend Matt, also a friend Tommy introduced me to who was a local realtor, but when he didn’t respond, I called the selling agent, Katie, and asked if I could see it first thing in the morning.
When Tin and I walked up the front porch steps to the Hall, we had no idea what to expect. I was a desperado running into the arms of any person, place or thing that could save me. A man with tattoos opened the large front door. It was Jesse Loya, the owner, and I walked through the threshold of 100 Men Hall and was struck by divine clarity that this is what I would be doing next.
Photo by Ann Madden This was taken after Hurricane Zeta sent a tornado that took the roof off in October 2020 and the silver lining was being able to have the Hall painted.
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad – fifth chapter. This writing came from the fifth prompt by Pico Ayer: What is the place that has moved you to forget the time, to lose yourself?
In a group meeting the other day, we were speaking about a time when you learned a behavior as a child as a coping mechanism, and how you brought it into your adulthood, and why it no longer serves you.
My father loved to play backgammon, and he had friends over playing in the living room. I had come into the room and he said something to me, and I said something back, and for the life of me, I cannot remember what was said or even a feeling attached to it.
My father was rageaholic. My mother was an alcoholic.
All I knew is that it made my father mad. When his friends left, he confronted me by cocking his arm back and punching me closed fist, full force in my face, which knocked me back into the fireplace. I jumped up and stood in front of him staring him right in the eyes and daring him to do it again. He looked at me disgusted and left the room. I can remember thinking – come on motherfucker, hit me one more time. I was 13 years old.
Seventeen years later, my mother recounted this story. The way she told it, was do you remember that time when you defied your father, you stood up to him. I don’t know where you got your confidence from. And I remember thinking – bitch, where were you? Who was protecting me? I was 30 years old.
I told this story in ACA, and then the story lingered and blossomed inside of me into a healing. I carried that “bring it on, motherfucker” stance into my adulthood. You can’t hurt me has always been my go to position. It took so long to realize that you could hurt me. The realization that I hurt made me start identifying times when I was hurt, and the feelings associated with being hurt. Feelings I never knew I had because I had become so adroit at masking and numbing myself.
My son came into this world like a ball of fire. He entered my ozone layer and caught my whole world on fire. This fiery meteor set me on a path of healing that made most of my work before him seem like child’s play. Today is Mother’s Day. I told my friend in ACA that mothering has been so hard, it has been harder than I envisioned it ever being, and it’s not what I thought it would be. I so wanted to make up for the lack of mothering I had. Her response was, “Rachel, you are the mother you wanted to be. You have a challenging child.”
My memoir – Mothering is Mother Fucker – will come out one day. In the meantime, being a mother to myself has been the greatest gift my child could have ever given me. To my 13-year-old self, I say, “I’m here now. I’ll protect you.”
photo by Marc Pagani
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad. This writing came from the prompt by Rachel Schwartzmann: Do nothing for five minutes and then write down your thoughts
On April 14, 2023, I was on the phone with my friend, Brian, who lives in New York. I call him Possum. He said he needed an accountability partner, someone to help him straighten up his eating and drinking habits. He asked me to be that person.
At that moment in time, I was not a model of nutritional, healthy living. When I was running around during an event and not having time to eat, I’d pull into McDonald’s and order a large diet coke and large fries. My drinking consisted of Aperol Spritz – which I blame Ann for introducing me to after her trip to France – those concoctions cost me about 250 calories each and never had I had just one.
But he pushed a little more, and I caved. Our birthdays were around the corner – we are both May babies, and usually birthdays are for splurging not for fasting. But I jumped in with him and on April 15, 2023, I began a daily practice of not drinking alcohol.
I dieted also and ended up losing about 27 pounds that I oh, so miraculously have put back on. But that’s another blog post. Me and weight – sheesh. I am trying to love my body because it’s a workhorse and it does a lot of my humaning for me. But loving it is a work in progress.
So I quit drinking. Around this time, my son was undergoing an existential crisis – he couldn’t live with the chaos in his mind so he self-medicated and our world was constantly tumbling down. I needed to be present. Even one glass of wine could tip me over to the “why are you doing this to me?” mode of thinking, rather than how could I help you mode I needed to be in.
My mother was alcoholic. I think I mention this sometimes but not all times. Her alcoholism caused her to disappear in plain sight. It’s a phenomenon I found in lovers and husbands – that far away look. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
I never called myself an alcoholic. I referred to myself as a lush. I was not that capable of having one glass, it was always let’s share a bottle glass of wine.
By the time I was entering my 50s, a glass of wine meant sleepy time for me. I have fallen asleep at dinner parties, at shows, pretty much anywhere I could cozy up and rest my weary head.
I quit drinking on April 15, 2023, and this has become my daily practice. It helped me be a better parent. It helped me heal my inner child. It helped me enter a world of sober living that my son’s recovery introduced me to. It helped me find Adult Children of Alcoholics, a group I should have joined when I was a young woman, but am so glad I joined now.
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad – third chapter. This writing came from the third prompt by Michael Bierut: Write about a time when you began doing something daily
I began writing my blog in 2004, because my work as an investigative journalist on Wall Street had consumed me. I was desperate for a creative outlet. I was writing elsewhere – morning journaling, a couple of essays on Medium: ode to my truck, the challenge of parenting my son. But it just seemed each time I would come back to my blog.
Entries in a blog have a feeling of smoke and mirrors to me. It’s easy to believe no one is reading my writing especially if no one says they are reading it, and fanfare does not accompany each entry. Then what? If a tree falls in the forest? The sound of one hand clapping? I remember when my ex husband, Steve, designed my first blog under dangermond.org, and I sent out an email to my friend group that I had started a blog! Big news for me! Crickets from them. No one really knew what to think about my personal life getting distilled into words on a screen.
No matter – I kept writing – I wrote about wanting a child and miscarrying. I wrote about love and loss. I wrote about wanting to go home to New Orleans, and then I wrote about losing home in New Orleans. And loss. And loss. I have written about love and loss so much – it seemed that I had nothing else to write about but those topics. And then one day I wrote about my son, but I switched to a new blog – Transracial Parenting – which I have since taken down.
Today, I wrote about dog legs in The Writing Room at 100 Men Hall, which meets the second Saturday of each month and warned my essay may or may not go on my blog. But I am posting it because I have made a commitment to vulnerability this year. And nothing I wrote is something I haven’t told those involved. So there is no mystery unraveling here on the pages. Ellen Morris Prewitt – our fearless writer in residency at the Hall gave us our first prompt, which was Write about difficult things I do or did? And this is what I wrote:
How not to have sex with a man while leaning deeper into a relationship with him
I had made up my mind before I walked in his house and saw the flyer on the refrigerator. I told G-man (this is obviously a pseudonym) that I wanted to have a pre-game talk before I would go out of town with him. He wanted to go to Nashville that weekend and take me to music venues along the way and back. I couldn’t go that weekend because I had several events at the Hall. So he asked me to have dinner with him before he left.
When he picked me up, he asked if I’d mind driving his car so he could get his truck out of the shop because he needed it for his trip. That is why I was walking in his house and that is why I said, “Holy Shit!” as loud as I did when I saw the flyer on the refrigerator. Don’t get me wrong, I felt safe there in his house with him even though I had turned him down eight months earlier when he asked me to look at all the equipment he had in containers on his property. “Anything you want or could use, it’s yours.” He had been a restaurant owner, owned bars, and was a disaster chef, and he had equipment.
We had started the pre-game talk on the way to the car repair place, I could tell he wanted to know what I was going to tell him. He said, “Do you want to talk about it now or over dinner?” I said, “I could tell you now. I want you to know I’m not having sex with you. You have made it clear that you don’t want a relationship, and just want casual sex, and I am very clear that I won’t have sex with someone without my feelings being involved.”
I could tell this flustered him, but keep in mind at this point, I hadn’t seen the flyer! Holy Shit! I said when I saw Trump on his refrigerator. My back was to him because I had entered the house first. He said, “You don’t think I knew you were a flaming liberal before I even saw you? I knew when I heard you speak.” Well, I wasn’t expecting this was all I could think, and I turned to him and said, “Let’s put a pin in this for right now.”
I had been attracted to G-man before he even turned around in the office shop. His back was to me, and my arms felt like they were made of energy and they wanted to wrap around him. Him being the stranger who was in line in front of me. I had just come from a TV promo, I was dressed up and not in my usual dog and cat hair covered work clothes. He turned around and after one second said, “I like your haircut.” I smiled, men are always commenting at how smooth my head is especially men who shave their head. I responded with my usual retort – all you men are jealous of this and I ran my hands over my smooth head. The clerk abruptly announced: Ms. Rachel, here is your stack. And she handed me all of the posters and flyers and signs I had come to pick up.
I had people waiting for me everywhere, Booker Fest was starting the next day and so I turned and left. But the feeling lingered. Who was that man? I called the shop when I was back at my desk and asked. She said I don’t know, he came in to make copies, but let me see his name on the receipt. She came back to the phone and said, G-man and gave me his last name, which I Googled – because after all I was an investigative reporter for more than two decades. He was married and owned a restaurant and venue in California. What was he doing here in Bay Saint Louis? Didn’t matter, more important than he didn’t live here, he was married.
I let it go.
But he didn’t go.
Three weeks later, I walked into a meeting group I had just joined, and I sat next to a man and had a strange feeling but most everyone in the room was a stranger so I didn’t connect any dots. When the meeting ended, the man turned to me and said, “We’ve met before.” Really, I said. “At the office shop.” What in the world are you doing here, G-man, I thought, and didn’t say, and thought again as I walked out of that house and into the night and into my car. The next morning the host called and said the man I was sitting next to had asked for my number because he had a ton of equipment I might be able to use at my business, 100 Men Hall.
I called him, we talked, he invited me to come look at what he had, and I made a plan to go on Friday morning of that week. Then I changed my mind. I sensed a yellowish flag, one that was about safety, as in I don’t really know this man, he’s big, and so I’m not driving out to the Kiln to go into containers with him to look at his (and I’m going to put solid gold quotes around this word) “equipment.”
This was only the beginning of what brought me to walk in his house and notice the Trump poster and be able to hold that in abeyance until I was ready to discuss all that this meant to me. We spent an evening together and discussed all the ways we are different and what came out of this long-winded discovery was pretty much all the ways we are similar – absent maybe just our political beliefs.
So much so that the very next day when I was about to say something really nasty about a person with a MAGA hat on, I stopped myself because I thought, what if G-man was wearing that hat, and I had a very complicated reaction to my pause and redirection. All of this thinking and new information caused such an eruption in my central nervous system, which started reverberating throughout other areas of my life. Let me stop right here and say this in case you don’t know me – I have not been in a relationship for 12 years, and I am a person who lived inside a relationship all my life – I was a serial monogamist, and I am attracted to G-man, and I am repulsed by the cult of Trump, and now I was in a very complicated way about all that I thought I knew. It got me to thinking and feeling, and I started walking into rooms in my mind that I didn’t even know existed.
In 2021, when Black people were dying on the news on the daily, the pandemic was raging, and everyone was out of their minds with rage and disgust, the Hall’s membership organization marched under the banner Women 4 Progress. Over 250 people came to march with us. Now in 2025, we have been mulling over marching again, joining the throngs across the country who are protesting and resisting the changes happening. One of the rooms I walked in was to approach all of this from a radically different point of view, why not do something that would bring us all together instead of furthering our divide? I spoke to G-man about this idea, and he was game to co-host an event with me – an event that sets out to accomplish a loaded task – how to get everyone to play together for one day so we drop the pretenses that we are so different from each other.
It turns out that G-man and I are on the same wave length. He feels divinely sent to do this work – to bring opposing sides together. He is firm about not wanting a relationship, yet he is open to a friendship. I do want a relationship, not necessarily with G-man, but it is something I would welcome in my life. But more than any of it, I seek connection, I think we all do, and we all need more of it not less, and let me tell you, G-man and I are connected – I told Adam point blank – I have met the Other and guess what, I kinda like him.
People come into your life for a reason or a season. G-man slipped into my life for a reason – already he has stirred up my closed mind and heart, and I want to remain open, and as always, more will be revealed.
The second prompt Ellen gave us was to flip it – and write about a happy, quirky, unexpected thing that took you to a good place:
How to relate to a self proclaimed (hot) dawg
G-man was an unexpected dog leg when I met him. From the energy that propelled me to get closer to him in that first meeting to the months we have spent together meeting weekly and exposing our personal stories in a group setting, he was unexpected.
Before he came along, I had finally risen above a series of unfortunate events that had led me to be single for 12 years. I had adopted my child the year I turned 50, the year my mother died, and from that moment forward, everything that happened to me was unexpected and created moments of confusion that required creative solutions on the fly. I lost my job, I lost my hair, I lost my house, the series of losses were all that I wrote about and all that I dwelled on.
I rose to each occasion, albeit none of it was easy.
And then one day in 2024, I told my beloved therapist, Adam, that I was ready to open my heart. I think I took him by surprise because he said, “Really?” instead of “Finally!” And I just replied, Uh huh, pretty confidently. So Adam laid out a plan for me to write a bio on this proposed person. Only, I couldn’t at first. When I would think about what a potential relationship would look like I only knew about partners I had known, and I have changed so much in these last twelve years that a prototype from the past was not going to be a good fit for me anymore. So what would a hypothetical person look like, be like, feel like, act like in real life? I didn’t even know what love and a relationship looked like, was like, smelled like, felt like in real life. I’m not even sure I know what real life is either.
So let me tell you, hands down, G-man on the surface was not part of the bio I finally wrote with Adam’s help. Adam told me to think of qualities that I wanted in a partner – top of my list was kindness, which mattered more to me than smartness, which used to top my list. While I wrote this list of qualities I would seek in a person, I held onto a shadow list in my mind: This person’s entire family would be dead so that I would not have any in-laws to deal with. This person would be financially self-sufficient, but not have to work, but have something to do so they were not just hanging around doing nothing all day. This person would have their own house and their kids – if they had any – which would be better if they did not – would be grown and live in a foreign country. This person would have a dependable car. This person would be healthy. This person would not require a purse or a nurse – something that when you get to my age men seek (I have come to find out).
Of course, G-man, who I am most definitely attracted to, is messy. He is a self-admitted dawg when it comes to women. He has been married three times (ahem, like me) – and he has a young son (ahem, like me). His health is questionable as he has upper respiratory complication from Covid that gives him chronic hiccups. He is also at a crossroads in his life – he is too young to not work, and he has made fortunes and lost them several times, and he is now trying to figure out what his work will be that will take him through this next chapter of his life.
Months into our meeting, I couldn’t understand why he was always so hot and cold with me, but then I learned he was seeing someone. I actually received this news with a sense of relief, because G-man no longer had to be viewed as potential relationship material, he could just be G-man. And I could finally now go look at that promised equipment without any fear of anything happening to me or between us.
Months later, his relationship ended, and he asked me out to dinner. So I was back to thinking about him. Then he went on a trip and returned with a renewed commitment to having no relationship goals other than sport fucking. Back to my list, I thought – I wouldn’t say that G-man leads with kindness, but one day he told me he parked a certain way so that I could always have room to park at our meetings and I thought – okay, I’ll give you that G-man, that’s kind. G-man came over and burned a big trash pile at the Hall even though he is adamant about not wanting to be part of my Hall Husbands. He taught me how to back up Wild Thing, my newly acquired vintage Shasta camper. Still I found that I was sizing him up – sizing him up against my list and noticing how many entries he had on my shadow list as well.
Every time I chalk up enough shadow points to dismiss him, G-man surprises me. The fact is that G-man has entered Rachel’s life at a very interesting inflection point. (Go ahead and allow me to refer to myself in 3rd person since I’m calling this man G-man – anything goes here.) I had decided that in 2025 my task was to allow myself to become uber vulnerable. I would tell people what I was feeling at the risk of seeming weak or stupid. I would take improv. I would start writing my blog again. I would open my heart to potential love in a way I never had before.
I would raise my flag on the hill of love with this one goal – I am going to meet someone I could be intimate with because I believe intimacy is the final frontier – and I would die on this hill, with a partner, or alone with my desires.
And so G-man was unexpected, but not really – he is a hot dawg of a dog leg of dog legs and it just so happens that this year, I put a sticker on my 2025 calendar that says THAT DOG’LL HUNT.
Yesterday, was a day for the books. More was revealed about the person who had made me sad, and a few conversations led to a deeper connection, more unearthing of our truth. A conversation with Tin helped me understand how he is where he needs to be most and ended with I love you’s that he initiated. Lunch with a dear friend and dinner with two others and once again, I claimed my stake in being one of the lucky ones.
Here are ten things I noticed yesterday:
I noticed flashes of shadows in my driveway, in my house, on my screen porch and in the Hall. Each movement made me think for a moment it was Chilly about to rub his soft neck up my ankle.
I noticed a turkey vulture wobbling in the air as I drove down Highway 90, and it reminded me of Ms. Terwilliger from California, who said vultures wobble in flight because their prey is dead, while hawks stealthily glide with wings straight out as they swiftly move on their alive and alert prey.
I noticed how soothing it feels to enter my bedroom. The deep red wall that Robyn painted a few years ago is based on a color that Adrienne Brown David had made. The orange velvet curtains designed to block the light that remind me of Lucinda Williams’ song: Baby, see how I been living / Velvet curtains on the windows to / Keep the bright and unforgiving / Light from shining through … . A lot has been written about Williams’ lyrics, a metaphor for creating a life that keeps the harsh reality from entering. My bedroom decor may have held an unconscious desire to fortify, but it has since shape-shifted into a sanctuary, where all feels holy.
I noticed the large bouquet of flowers on my kitchen counter – purple alum, parrot tulips, Louisiana irises with beautiful red foliage – my neighbor gave to cheer me up after finding Chilly’s dead body, and each time I noticed them, I repeated, “I miss you, Chilly.”
I noticed the ceramic tile my other neighbor hastened to paint Chilly’s name on for me to put in my garden. The ink has run down the tile and almost disappeared because it had not set and it rained. Now even the dripping remains of letters warm my heart.
I noticed the Oakleaf hydrangea in its splendor outside my kitchen door. A plant that I placed in four different areas until it took hold in this one and declared, this is home for me, and began to show off in the most brilliant way only a flowering bush can do.
I noticed I hadn’t covered Wild Thing, and I’m hoping that a lot of water hasn’t gotten through the vintage jalousie windows.
I noticed how easily he felt slipping off his shirt to change in front of us, and I was trying not to watch but patterns of chest hair and back hair and folds of skin, and the tattoos were noted.
I noticed how much stuff one person can accumulate as I went through large containers, trailers, sheds loaded with all the equipment being offered to the Hall.
I noticed how three acres in the Kiln, mostly cleared, does not look as big as it does in my mind’s eye. The Hall is on one acre, he lives on three acres. I feel a need for acreage (read: escape, woods, away-ness to think and write and be). Three acres, I noticed seemed too small for my plan.
My Oakleaf hydrangae in all its glory – Spring 2025
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad. This writing came from the prompt by Ash Parsons Story: Ten images from the last twenty-four hours
In my past facilitation work we always used ice breakers. Some of my favorite ones were everyone telling the group where their name comes from. Naming is a laden task not only for babies, but for pets, and perhaps houses and camps, and maybe even cars. Naming the feelings that come up with names is also a thing.
Another ice breaker – and this one I saved for seasoned groups who knew how to check their egos at the door, who knew how to hold other people’s comments in wonder and confidence, and who were ready to expose themselves a bit more than they had in the past – was to have two people sit across from each other and look in each other’s eyes for one minute. You have never experienced eternity until you have done this exercise. But it’s oh so good – I once looked into the eyes of a man I have never seen since, but I still see his pale blue eyes and each wrinkle that surrounded them.
I was in therapy yesterday, and we were speaking about the past two weeks’ events. I was talking about this person I’m interested in, and how they sent a text where they shared their exploits with me. Adam asked me how I felt in my body (he loves this question) when I read the text. I said, “I felt gross. GROSS. Gross that they are doing this, gross that they are sharing this, and gross that they think I want to be any part of this.”
But that isn’t what I had told them. I told them simply that I feel sad when they share this information with me. I said I need to not hear this. I used my feeling statement instead of judging their behavior. They have made it clear they want to live in a world of stimulation, a constant buzz despite the recovery ether we both now breath in, and I have made myself clear from jump – I’m here for intimacy, the final frontier. I want, need and deserve a Higher Love.
I am aware of this.
Yesterday, I came home from a long day of errands, and there was a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, with the sweetest note that even now brings tears to my eyes. It was from one of my neighbors who said she was so sorry to hear about Lord Chill. She told me, “I loved your kitty!”
The world is filled with love. Everywhere I look there is love. I love, I am loved. My cat, Lord Chill, was loved AF! I know love. I know how to recognize what isn’t love.
I am seeking higher love in a partner – the transcendent kind that goes beyond stimulation and flows into transformation.
I have the capacity for it. I always have. I had to do a lot of healing, and Baruch HaShem, my son pushed me into a fire of truth to find myself, and thankfully, I have an amazing therapist who helped me navigate all the damn healing I had to do AND that fire and alchemy burned through a lot of what has kept me from fearlessly loving and now, I am ready for it. And I’m built for it.
I am aware of the fact that Higher Love may or may not happen in my lifetime.
And I am okay with knowing this, with continuing to be open to Higher Love, and with failing miserably at seeking it.
I am a pioneer in vulnerability and love. This is my work.
French Potager flowers from Kerry Rosendahl, my neighbor. So sweet and thoughtful. Everytime I look at them, I say out loud – I miss you, Chilly.
The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad arrived yesterday. This writing came from the prompt by Dani Shapiro: What would you write if you were not afraid?
