Happy Birthday To Me - And a Challenge to You!

I will be 40 this month and I am so excited!!! I've been talking about it forever. I feel like I have lived half my life already but I feel a shift happening. It is happening in the earth right beneath my feet. It's happening in my mind taking me to places and showing me things that I didn't know existed. And it's happening in my heart allowing me to love people and things I never thought possible. But mostly allowing me to forgive moments and events that I have held on to for far too long. And the most important part is that it has allowed me to forgive myself - or at least get on the road to forgiving myself. All the times when I felt I wasn't enough. All of the times I didn't show up for myself. All of the times I didn't live up to my "potential." What a horrible word "potential" it should be banned from the English language. We are not potential. Every moment of our lives we make decisions, we love, we live - and if we stopped thinking of ourselves as beings in search or on the march for our potential then we would be happy right where we are. We have nothing to get, nothing to reach for. We are perfect right here. I have tried to reach my potential ever since some misguided high school teacher wrote in a college recommendation that I had lots of it. Well, whatever he thought was my potential and what I thought was my potential were probably not the same polar opposites actually. And I probably exceeded his expectations but fell desperately short of my own. So I am taking that word out of my vocabulary and definitely not using it with my own kids. It sets up impossible goals even if you are only slightly damaged, meaning you have just a tiny bit of work to do on yourself. But when you feel you are riddled with holes that need to be filled - potential can become your arch-nemesis.

Potential is defined as: : existing in possibility : capable of development into actuality . Capable of development into actuality? Then what the hell are you right now? See where I am going with this? We are capable of becoming something. We are already bright, beautiful, full right here. Exist in this moment not in one that hasn't arrived yet. Just like my daughter always says - tomorrow never comes. It's the same way with potential.

But this is not what I wanted this post to be about. I want it to be about celebrating this month with me. And helping move forward through the next 40 years. So I am asking for a HUGE present from each of you. It is a challenge that may very well take you all month to complete but I am hoping that you will do it.
This is what I wrote as a Facebook status but it wouldn't post -- too long! I have been known to be verbose!

Today is the first of July! On the last day of this month I will be 40 years old! So I feel allowed to ask a favor of those who will do it. Send me 40 pieces of knowledge. They can be lessons you learned the hard way, or the easy way or the love way. They can be funny things you think I should know or how to heal a broken heart or make perfect scrambled eggs! What do you know? Share it with me. Each of you give me 40 gifts whether you know me well or not. At the end of the month I am going to publish it into a little book to keep with me and help get me through the next 40 years! Write me at facebook, here or @ keishakogan@gmail.com! You have all month, and I will remind you!


I am going to do the same thing. Write 40 pieces of knowledge. 40 things I "know for sure," to quote the guru Oprah (do you realize she is a guru - crazy!). Please do it - it's not just a gift to me but hopefully a gift to you as well! And if you know someone who knows me who doesn't read this blog or isn't on FB - send this to them. I want a HUGE book actually by the end of the month - truth be told.

I love each of you fiercely!

Keisha

Eat, Pray, Love and Navel Gazing

Okay, I am a bit behind. I just saw the movie after reading the book months after it came out. I could have skipped the Italy part of the movie but was completely in love with the India - pray section. Partly because a secret desire of mine is to go to India, study with a guru and be silent and serene for weeks. But serenity begins within. So, I really don't have to go anywhere for that. What the movie did do for me, that the book didn't as much, was bring to clarity Elizabeth Gilbert's excessive navel-gazing and privilege. A successful career, money in the bank, no children and now no husband. She had no attachment to anything that walked on this earth so she could go and "find" herself. Which has always been the job of priviledged, mostly white, people. But then I had a thought: I come from some of the strongest stock of people in the history of this universe, anyway. Black people could have gone the way of the dinosaur, but we didn't. We adapted and survived and each generation works to improve upon the wonder of those who came before, well at least some of us do, and those of us who can work like hell to help those who can't yet. So I don't need to go anywhere to find myself. I am right here.

So, I will feed myself in my own kitchen. Pray on my own floor. And find love in my bathroom mirror. Let's start with the eating part. And I know some of you are sick to death of the myriad of blogs I have. Impossible to keep up with all the stuff going on in my life. I know. Better living through chemistry helps. And I tend to lock onto an idea and then see another bright and shiny thing and lock on to that. No longer. I have my kids this summer because we cannot afford to send them to camp in this expensive city, so I have picked up the recession camp blog. This blog, Nanda Mama will always be home base for me to come back and reflect and hopefully start a dialogue on some of the things that make me go --- hmmmm. But yes I am adding another blog to the list and it is entitled quite simply - Keisha-Eats. For years I have dabbled in healthy eating even before I went to IIN - Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Finding my health, healing my gut, soothing my soul, has been an eternal struggle. So I made the decision to give myself a couple of gifts this year. Nothing strenuous. Nothing outrageous and barely possible. And nothing expensive. I am going raw vegan, as best I can, for the summer. Cancer kicked my ass - no sense in lying about that. And even though I ended treatment three years ago this coming July, I am just now dealing with the fallout, the emotions, and the anger of having had to go through that particular life lesson. And the fog is finally starting to lift. I am a life learner. And also someone who feels that she has quite a few books in her to write. But still trying to figure out what it is I want to write about. What do I want to say? So many things. There are so many things I am interested in that I am hoping this time - this year - I am giving myself to center and come home to myself will clarify some things. So stick here if you want to hear my daily, weekly, monthly musings on life and whatever other piece of lint I pick out of my navel. Come to recession camp if you want to see how I get all four of us through the summer with nothing more than a metrocard. Or come on over to my newest venture Keisha-Eats, which will make it's premiere soon. Loving you all fiercely!

Be well

Ask and you shall receive....not always

This post is specifically for Gen X-ers. If you were born before or after this moniker's designation keep it moving. Remember women when we were coming of age we were instructed to speak up - to ask for what we needed and wanted? That wasn't a complete statement. What should have come after that was "and be prepared for the person to give it or not." I think I missed that part of the conversation. So for the longest time I thought that when I asked someone for something because I had spoken up and used my voice that they were going to give it to me. But it is much more complicated than that. And today I had one of those moments when a lesson is not just an epiphany but it has become part of your personal ontology - it has been ingrained into your belief system.

I have every right to ask others for what I need and what I want. And they also have every right to say they cannot or worse yet, will not give it. But then there is a third part to this conversation - I then have the choice of accepting their answer and them as someone I want to keep in my life or let go of. HA!!! That lesson took years for me to get.

Each person is unique and has their own issues and we get to decide if we love them enough to put up with those issues. Love them, not like them or think they're cool, but love them enough. I have a male friend who is not the person I go to when I am in emotional crisis. He is horrible at being supportive and making me feel better. But in one specific instance I needed his support and I asked him to meet me as best he could. He couldn't do it. Big choice to make for me. After I assessed why I needed them to be there for me in a way they never had before, I decided that yes, I can keep them in my life because I love all the other ways they show up for me. And I knew - going in that he wasn't going to be able to fully show up for me - but he was the only person I could ask at that moment. And secretly I wanted to see if he could bend, even just a little. He can't. I tested him and now I know for sure. And he is still on the island.

There have been people that I have used this test with as a way to get rid of them. I ask them for something I need, they can't give it and they get voted off. It sounds harsh and cruel but it really is an important test for me. It allows me to see if I am keeping people around who feed and nourish me or if I am keeping them just because they have been there so long and they are comfortable. If I want comfort I'll buy uggs. If I want support I will keep friends who can give it. You know how the clutter gurus always say only keep things in your house that you absolutely love and give the other stuff away to someone else who could love it? That is what I am doing with the people in my life. Only keeping the ones I truly love - their light and dark sides. Their shadows and their brilliance. And I am urging you to do the same. Are their relationships that no longer serve you? Do you absolutely love them? Then let them go. And bless them and leave them to find someone who can truly appreciate their particular beauty.

I am so glad that this lesson no longer comes in snippets of light but that it is firmly a part of my world now. No need to be mean, just release. I thank Grace for this latest piece of wisdom.

Amen.

May cool winds fan your skirts
Keisha

Hotel California

That song scares the crap out of me. Which is one of the reasons I have it on my playlist but with the prophet singing it. When I was little I would hide whenever I heard it. I felt as though demons were coming out of the song and coming to get me. As I got older I figured out that the song was about drug addiction. It made perfect sense then. My father was an addict as were ALL his friends, which is not unusual. I remember watching them all go in and out of recovery. And when most of them came out for good they had AIDS, thanks 80's. From 1985-1991, I was to attend more funerals than probably I would attend in my entire left. Friends just kept leaving. But there wasn't the same kind of love and recognition for these friends outside of their little family. The most sympathy went to hemophiliacs or those unfortunate to get tainted blood during a blood transfusion. The next were gay people or women who caught it from a gay man on the down low. Honestly gay men did not get a lot of support outside their community either. But if felt like the bottom of the barrel were those who had drug addictions. These people were just deviants. And they somehow deserved to suffer and to die.
I remember working as a candy striper at Mount Vernon hospital during the 80's. I worked on the oncology and geriatrics floor. And I remember one patient clearly who was on the geriatric floor. He had all kinds of health signage on his door. Where a face mask, wear latex gloves, wear full frontal paper gear, wear feet protectors. This was obviously before the hazmat suit because I am sure I would be decked out in that too, just to bring this man his lunch! Turns out he was a Catholic priest all of 40 years old. On the geriatric floor because he had AIDS. Didn't ask him how he got it - which was usually the first question when you told someone, or most likely it was found out, that you had AIDS. I didn't care. I wanted to know if anyone came to see him. No one. His parishonors were told that he had been transferred. The other priests didn't come to visit him or to pray for him. I visited him every day I worked there. And I would read to him (funnily enough not from the Bible). He would ask me about school and my family and what I did for fun. And I would ask him why he chose to be a priest. And why no one came to visit him. And then one day I came to see him carrying a copy of Plato's Republic, because I felt he should have to sit through it too since I was reading it for the third time at this point. And he was gone. The bed had been stripped. All the warning labels had been removed and the room smelled like that disgusting hospital sanitizer and bleach. I knew where he was. So, I asked the head nurse on the floor when his funeral was and she said she didn't know if he was having one. I checked the paper for his obituary - nothing. I went down to the morgue and asked what mortuary he had been sent to. And they told me he would be not be embalmed because few funeral directors would agree to do that. And they didn't know where he was buried he was picked up by the county. No mass. No last rights. No respect. I had a hard time with G-d after that but an even harder time with His emissaries. How could a person's life be given so little value? Back to Hotel California.
That song continues to haunt me because I think of addiction and how prevalent it is - and how easy it would be for me to become one - after all I have strong genes in that area. And to never escape. To constantly be at the mercy of a part of your brain that needs and you can only overcome the need through will. And I think about that last line - "You can check out any time you want but you can never leave." This idea of addiction is part of my previous post about mental illness. There is a certain cruelty to being trapped by your mind or your chemical make-up or your genetic make-up. And yea, I know you can overcome just about anything, but somethings feel like an uphill battle, a true war. Doesn't mean we don't do it - everyday. But like the priest buried alone with no mourners - it feels unfair. It is unfair. And it is also life.

When you want to do the right thing

Have you ever - and be honest here - done something that you really want to do even though it might not be the best thing for you? When you aren't thinking with your head - as a matter of fact all reason has gone out the window and your heart is answering all your phone calls;and responding to your emails and sending your text messages. And you keep trying to get your rational mind back in charge of things. You will it to take control but it doesn't happen. You sit and meditate and make pros and cons lists and your heart keeps winning. Is it okay then to walk that road?

I think sometimes it is right to walk the road your heart has laid out for you. Because you can rationallize anything. Really you can. And when you think about what it is you want and where it is you want to be - life can be be fun and exciting and different all at the same time. But there is something about being a "grown up." And when you are trying to be a grown up you have to think about what is best for you. What gives you the best outlook and the best results and makes you look the most responsible. But maybe that is not where you are supposed to be. I believe that G-d kissed the place I am in my life right now. I believe that. But I often feel as though I am fighting with what G-d might actually want for me. Thinking that I know better and that I am rational in this moment, when what the moment really calls for is my for my heart to be open, that I am going to get the best result. Not true, no way no how.
I have a choice to make. And it is a choice I have been avoiding for quite sometime feeling that once I made the first choice there was no going back. There was no place to rest and no place to hide. I made that choice and I cannot, under any circumstances, change my mind. But that is not true. By virtue of my femaleness, to be base, and by my humanness to be broad, I can always change my mind. Always. And right now I am at the point when I want to flip a coin and let it decide for me. And then see if I keep doing best of out of three or best out of five if I don't get the answer I want. Ha ha. That will tell me the truth.
But for the time being I am going to wait until Mercury is out of retrograde and then make my decision. Make my decision based on where my heart and my head stands. I am sure I can get them to compromise with each other. We shall see....

Where you are right now

The place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you
wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
Against the earth and the sky,
the beloved has bowed there-
...
The beloved has bowed there knowing
You were coming…

~Hafiz

March is Ovah! I am so happy. Mercury is in retrograde and for some reason it is not causing me as much agita as it has in the past. Probably because I was ready for it. But this March has been better than any in a long time. It is usually my most depressed month where I reflect on my life, my losses, and lament the fact that its time for my yearly ct scan. Even though I am quite convinced that cancer is never coming back, that appointment still causes fear because - what if? This year I decided to live without the what if. I decided to honor the words of Hafiz (and some have attributed it to Rumi)to bow in the place that Grace has chosen for me. What I love about this particular translation of Hafiz is when it says "The beloved has bowed there knowing you were coming..." My name is Keisha and there have been many interpretations of what it means and where it comes from. It's Arabic, it's Hebrew, it's African - but they cannot locate one particular part of Africa. But the meanings are often very close meaning favorite or my personal choice - beloved.

I think about that section of the poem how the Beloved bowed where I am. I bowed where I am and chose this path. Everything I have done in my life prior to this breath was my choice. And Grace kissed my journey every step of the way. I can then take full ownership over my life. The wonderful and the challenging. I have often heard people say that they would not change a thing in their life because it would alter the place where they stand right now. I completely agree. While some parts of my life have been hard and painful I would not change them. And moreover, I made a choice to live it. I bowed and kissed every step of this path.

There are two folk stories that I love. One is an Islamic on and the other Jewish.
I cannot account for the truth of either of these stories just that they were each told to me by a Muslim and a Jewish person, respectfully. The Islamic story is that in the womb the baby is shown their entire life. The ups and downs the triumphs and pitfalls and they are asked if they chose their life. If they do they come forward into light and if they do not - their life ends with their no. There is a similar story in Judaism where there are a finite number of Jewish souls and before they are released from Heaven to come and be born of a woman they are shown their entire life. They are not given the choice to live or not. And right before their spirit falls to take its place in their mother's womb an angel of the Lord places his finger over the spirit's top lip and says "shhh, don't tell what you know." That accounts for the indentation in all of our upper lips. A reminder that we came from greatness and we choose to be here. But moreoever that we know perfection exists and our life is a journey to remember those two or three great images in whose presence our hearts first opened - Camus. Perhaps they were the images of an angel, or of our 10th birthday, or of our death. Who knows. But our being here is no accident. Either we chose or the Beloved chose for us, either way it is now up to us to make it the best ride ever. Every day. Even when it's hard.
March is over. Let the Spring begin.

And You Shall Be Love

I have to come back to the previous post and work out some of my faulty logic. But before I do that, I have been thinking a lot about love. Such a beautiful thing - word, right? We all want it and we seek it and we acquire it and we lose it and some keep it. Valentine's Day, wedding anniversaries, babies being born, marriages. All of these events signify the love relationship. This year I got a lot of "Happy Valentine's Day" messages. I wasn't quite sure what to do with all of them. What does that mean that you want me to have a happy Monday? Or you want me to eat some chocolate? Or you want me to feel loved today? I particularly like the last one. So, yes I will feel loved today. Mind if I keep it for the coming days as well?

March is three days away. March 3rd will be the 20th anniversary of my father's death. And I never forget that day. I never forget where I was when I found out and how it sort of rolled over my and spilled down my back like the first moments in the shower or under a waterfall, should you be so lucky to stand beneath a waterfall! Now at the 20 year anniversary it is particularly difficult to see the day approach. Time should heal all wounds and make things easier to bare. But for me it just gets harder. Because I tend to think of all that was missed in the 20 years. Having my father walk me down the aisle (or through the hotel room to the terrace) on my wedding day. Being present when my children were born. Teaching my boys about football and baseball and telling them jokes and holding them on his knee and giving them pats, because: "Pats are very important." And I try not to live in regret or missed opportunity, especially with things I could not/can not prevent like death. But March is the month that I allow myself to wallow and to "harrow my own personal hell." It makes Aprils' showers a welcome baptism. Just like Jesus!

A few months ago I was diagnosed with ADHD. Now I know for a lot of people that is not a "real" thing. And as I went through school and succeeded in various ways I realized that not being able to concentrate, or prioritize or complete a simple task, was a character flaw. It could not possibly be something amiss with my brains firings. And it became a thing that caused me so much shame. I did not feel smart. So I must not be smart. And despite having a rather extreme form of ADHD I did manage to have some successes in school, partly because I had to develop my verbal and social skills to combat my inability to parse mental activities. The one place I did well was in theatre, as a director. I had stage managers, designers and assistants to help me with the details of a project so all I had to do was deal with the forest, leaving them the trees. And I loved my designers and stage managers who could pull what I couldn't say out of my quagmire of a brain. And yet, Grace would appear, often just long enough to give me a glimpse of how to fix something making the work okay. But my early work often lacked resolution or clarity at the end. And the end is the hardest part of creating a strong piece of theatre. So even there I was receiving the same critique over and over again - your piece has no ending Keisha. What do you want the audience to leave with? I couldn't make it to that point. And I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't know how to fix me. I also don't end relationships very well. I get tired of the tedium of dotting i's and crossing t's. And I just let things go and end however they will. Often not being able to do the rigorous work of making love last and of ending it with good feelings intact. So I stand eternally grateful to those who have loved me enough to stick around even when it was quite obvious that I had gone off the deep end a few times! And yes, I can laugh about it now!

Can I blame ADHD for this. Well, in a way and then again not at all. But what I can say is that I am angry. Angry at the amount of time it took this diagnosis to come to the fore. Angry at each and every teacher who didn't try to help me get through this challenge but rather wrote me off as not being that smart. And pissed as all hell at my parents for not expecting better from me after a time. And for settling on where I had gotten to and not on where they truly knew I should be. I never settled in a place. I always have berated myself for not doing better and not being more. I felt it in me - that I had never achieved and surpassed my potential. And I am made at myself for that. And now that I know that indeed there is something amiss with my brain firings, and that it can be helped, I want to jump ahead and start achieving all the things I have always wanted. But I am stuck in regret. Stuck in it deep. And I am pissed off. Wow, I am probably the angriest I have ever been in my life.

And I am discovering that anger is a useful emotion if it pushes us to work through it and get to a better place. And so this coming month of March when I am usually all sad for all the things I have lost I am instead going to focus on all that I have missed. All the ways I wanted my life to be but it wasn't. All of the moments I wanted to have but I didn't. And all of the things I wanted to accomplished by haven't. I am giving this month to myself as a gift. Time to work through my anger and my hate and my out and out fear.

So what do I regret? Missing the time with my father. Missing being able to truly engage in my studies. Missing being the academic scholar and world-shaker I always felt called to be. Missing living a BIG LIFE, instead of the smaller one I resigned myself to. Missing giving my children the home and the life and the love they so deserve. Missing the organization and the rigeur that would give me a sense of accomplishment. Missing my Tony, Emmy, Grammy, and Academy Awards. Being as completely unreasonable about how my life may have actually been. And then on March 31st, I will say good-bye to all my regrets in some kind of ceremony. And on April 1st I will await the rain to wash the remnants of my past of self- hate and recriminations good-bye.

I started this post talking about love and my father. And I end it thinking again about love and my father. My father lived his short life with many many regrets. And I know it was because he was trapped in the circumstances of his birth and the limitations of his mind and I feel that pain right now. My father was 44 when he died. I will be 40 this summer. And I refuse to enter that decade with the same recriminations my father died with. This is an opportunity to get off that particular wheel of life. To end the negative karma. So that my love and gratitude and completion is the gift I give future generations - it is my good karma passed on to my children and their children and....

Kahlil Ghibran wrote this:


* When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
p. 11
All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only
love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you
shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears...For love is sufficient unto love.
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

And I shall be love


in peace,
keisha

Photo Credit: Flickr best pictures of 2010