What we receive when we let go of guilt, blame, opinions, & expectations

This weekend I re-heard poet Rebecca Dupas say, in her gorgeous poem "How to Slay a Dragon," that:

until you let their opinions go
you are the only dragon that needs slaying

Wow do I love these words. This poet.

This four-part essay contains a spoiler about her poem, so if you'd like to hear her speak it first, and feel surprise and delight, do that now.

Part 1: The joy of the wild goose chase

Her words reminded me of something I once thought, and wrote, but I couldn't remember exactly what, or where, because I'm 55 now, and I've both written and forgotten a lot. But this spark of vivid life– this sparkle– from Rebecca Dupas just would not leave me alone. Thank you, poet.

Thank you, spark.

I dug into a pile of my own books. I couldn't find it. So, then I dug into my old website, Collective Self. I had once felt something so so similar. Why? And what had I written?

Finally, I found it! In a poem published nowhere but my own old blog. I found my flash poem called "How to Be Heard by a Total Asshole." Flash poem just means that it poured out of me in response to deep pain and grief and love, and I shared it with the physical and online worlds with zero editing and minimal worry. Which is no small feat, I've learned. This essay contains a spoiler about my poem too, so if you want to read it first, go do that now.

I wrote "How to Be Heard by a Total Asshole" in the summer of 2014 at a time my extended family felt like it was completely shattering around us as Mom's Alzheimer's symptoms worsened in mid-stage, and Dad was getting less and less sleep and his health diminished under the weight of caregiving, and we tried to hold the painful loss of both beloved grandmothers– all of which happened to us in the span of roughly a year. For me it was also a time when almost all of the beloved, trusted, kind adults older than me in the family were clearly deep in grief and– like I now know, all adults holding massive grief but not talking about it or sharing it and holding it alone instead of together – being assholes to themselves and each other.

As the oldest cousin and in my mid 40s back then, at first I was desperately trying to figure out how to be different than the elders I loved who were now being assholes to each other. For months, I tried to stop my dad's and aunts' and uncles' pain and sorrow from deepening and flooding down into my cousins, my sister, and me, further fracturing the family. For the record, I failed. Also, for the record, today, I'm so glad that I did. Sometimes things just have to break. And we just have to let them. Because we need them to. To become something different, bigger, even better.

I wrote a lot of full-of-pain poetry back then. Poetry releases collective sorrow, loss, and pain into the sky and into a larger collective better equipped to hold the pain of loss. Whenever I share pain via poetry, somebody shows up and says simply, "Me too." With zero judgment. Back then, I learned that not everybody loves that. Some hate it. Some experience my emotions, and poems, and the act of sharing pain herself, as an attack on them. Even to the point that they'll leave me. But I digress...

What those regularly in touch with their feminine side have in common

Ok, back to today. Still holding on to the dragon spark from Rebecca Dupree, I found this line in my own poem:

lose sight of that and in one breath, one single moment
you become the asshole in the conversation

Like her "How to Slay a Dragon," within which [spoiler alert] you realize that the absolutely horrible person who approached to talk to the poet isn't a mean, intrusive stranger who approached her in public but is actually a voice in her own head (playing back cruel voices from her past), my own "How to Be Heard by a Total Asshole" also [spoilier alert] shifts from locating the total asshole outside of myself to locating the total asshole within myself.

These shifts aren't about holding others' BS as our own. They're not about taking responsibility for somebody else's actions, beliefs, and words. They are awakenings. They are power moves of a higher order. Eleven years ago, when I wrote my poem, I wouldn't have said that about what I did/wrote. But I can so clearly see it in both "How to Slay a Dragon" and in Rebecca Dupree herself that I can't help but see and feel this in both my poem and in me. Thanks again, poet. You're out here changing both yourself and your world. I see you. And I love you.

Here's one secret about what women– or those regularly in touch with their feminine side, which isn't always women– have in common that many men don't yet: gratitude. We need each other and we know it in our bodies, our bones, our histories, and our souls. So, we can connect to almost anyone via gratitude. And we can let go of almost anyone with gratitude. And we know it, when we trust our own bodies. So many straight men still don't have this. Being trapped in a self-abusing place where expressing natural human emotions like empathy and gratitude is forbidden, externally and internally corrected, or experienced as a weakness must really, really suck. Oh, brothers. But I digress...

I'm old-ish now, so I've learned from experience that we can't force other people to change. We can't even force ourselves to change. Force is a fool's game, gentlemen. When we're violent with ourselves, we can't see this. When we're gentle with ourselves and others, we live and know this, through and through. And, like all living beings, we can and we do change in response to recognizing ourselves as part of something wider, wilder, weirder, more beautiful, more grateful, more graceful, more supportive, more loving, and/or braver than we could imagine before, on our own. We trade up every chance we get. I think of this as I watch every video of crowds of hundreds and thousands coming for ICE agents. I think "Dear God, these poor men traded up into ICE." I'm not condoning or excusing a single horrible thing they're doing. I'm just noticing. That's what I do. How absolute shit does your existence have to be to imagine that the globally watched and despised cruelty of ICE is moving up?

I love that Rebecca Dupree imagined and named our internal re-playing of cruel voices from our pasts as a dragon, and I love that I described the same thing as being the total asshole that needs to listen even more closely. If I do say so myself, my words from 2014 feel spot-on for a white woman living in the U.S. then. And maybe even now. ;-) Rebecca slays her dragons within whenever she lets the opinions and expectations of others go. I do that too, some days. And I have more to do than that. Some days I let go of the total asshole within me by befriending her to better understand what it takes to push loving-and-generous-by-nature living beings into asshole behavior, learning to notice when the asshole is me and when I'm unsafe and hurting others, learning to forgive and be grateful for myself and my ancestors (everyone who came before who influenced me and mine), and even greeting my total asshole self like a friend as she approaches, and leaning on her, when needed. That's new for my kind, quiet, remarkably conflict-avoidant self/family/community.

That I can say "Hello, Asshole. Hello." to myself, without guilt or shame, is power. It's feminine power, rising. Communal power. It's human evolution. Revolution. It's white women catching up– and long overdue– depending on your perspective. It's moving past blame, guilt, shame, opinions, and expectations that women (I can't speak for everyone) have been asked to hold for generations and that some of us held internally until the weight of them caused us to overflow with them (and many white women of power to force them) onto others. This is something that the men currently running the U.S. federal government still can't find it within themselves to do at all. They're stuck, trapped, spinning in circles of blame and shame and hate, and casting pain in all directions and onto everyone else as they spin. While the whole world watches.

And. Moving past blame, shame, guilt, opinions, and expectations together is something that the rural, and suburban, and urban women now taking on ICE (often with little more than their friendships, mouths, whistles, phones, courage, rage, and minivans)– to stand with neighbors protecting their families and children from the fearful, blaming, fear-spreaders of ICE– can find within themselves. We can. Our asshole self doesn't stand alone anymore. She stands shoulder to shoulder with those defending themselves against bigotry, misogyny, and all violences– all of which are just disconnected, isolated, angry, blame and shame.

We're literally overflowing with empathy and gratitude and rage and all the other emotions we don't have to fear because we can feel them, together. And we can be grateful for all our emotions.

Women and everyone standing together without the guilt, shame, petty judgements, expectations, or blame of the past– are the revolution. Every moment that we drop these things, we're revolutionaries. Don't underestimate the people out there in silly costumes. There are a lot of parts to play now, and moving without guilt, shame, petty judgment, or blame sometimes requires frogs and ducks and pigs and unicorns and ladybugs. There is deep joy here. We hold that!

We're learning how to become larger communities, larger selves, and how to channel our collective inner assholes and use them for community and global good now instead of individual self-protection. And in this horrifying time in the U.S., that, at least, is powerful and beautiful. Women, nonbinary folks, queer folks, indigenous people, people of color, people with disabilities, elders, veterans, union members, government employees, children, the working class, sensitive men who happily stand with us, and everyone else now harmed financially or physically attacked by this regime are coming together– more powerful and beautiful than we'd imagined separately. Robert Reich calls us "the sleeping giant." He's not wrong, though I prefer the words awakening dragon.

We're not powerless. Together, we're dragons. Giants. What might we be capable of together if the dragons of the world and the total assholes of the world found themselves, ourselves, within each other? Good news! Most women already do. A lot of folks do. We do this all the time now. And when we don't, we long to. We long to be part of something greater than the selves being attacked by an abused and abusing, delusional, demented, cruel regime of men so disconnected from a loving reality that they don't realize what they're fighting for is more suffering, pain, delusion, and death. Fighting against what life herself– and the living, connected being within you– truly wants, guarantees you'll spin in circles. Life's no fool.

What creators have in common

Return to the two poems for a second. In both poems, we wrote about when we've internalized other people's horrible words/pain/trauma and how those words play back to us, within us, spreading like poison within us. And, in the same space, we also wrote about the moment when we realized that the person we have to hold to account, today, isn't someone else. It's ourselves. Allowing past cruel words, and that pain, to play on repeat within us– that's on us. We recognized when it was us holding on to anger and hate, and when it was us spreading it. We even recognized that if we try to spread hate to others, it always lands, most fully, back on us, within us, again. That's there. Between the words.

But here's the thing.

Creators don't spread hate.

Creators may spread love, grief, loss, sorrow, beauty, curiosity, wonder, connection, whimsy, play, joy, and help. We may even spread rage some days– an emotion that emerges fast, like fire, to wake us and get us moving faster back toward connection or toward separation for now. We spread rage about losing who and what we didn't consent to lose, and who and what we hate to lose, and who and what we mourn. Creators howl at the moon like wolves some days. Howl together and you'll find a place where sorrow, rage, and comfort move together and flow through you.

And. Creators don't spread hate. We don't. We may surface hate, examine hate, wonder about hate, and, we also do what life herself does: we surround hate with everything that is glorious about this life, this planet, this place, these friends, families, bodies. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "Hate within me now has a 3-minute shelf life."

And let's talk about creators for just one more minute. Rebecca Dupas: wow. I just adore her gorgeous, honest, well-crafted poem. I especially love the way she embodies it: speaking it so the sparkle is in her eyes and hands and even surfacing in her smile at the end, not just in the words. And, I now adore my rough, unpolished, screaming-at-the-universe-because-none-of-the-adults-in-my-family-are-listening-to-each-other's-pain-anymore, caregiver's poem, too. She speaks her poem to a human audience. I spoke mine to the Salish sea, some seals, my dog Eva, a few people who loved me, and with a few relatives who kept saying they loved me while most of their actions and words said otherwise. I was far too exhausted and weepy back then to read it aloud to humans. I love words on the page, and my own quiet wandering and wending and following of the pain and joy weaving through our family and world to find my way forward. And, I did find a way forward back then. Or, I should say WE did. We found our way forward. Because back in the fall of 2014, my brave sister stood with me and helped me find my way back to myself, back to loving, and back to peace.

Everyone is a creator. Everyone. Slay or befriend the voices within that tell you that you aren't creative, aren't a creator, aren't good enough, aren't loved, and aren't meant for these terrible days. Slay the voices that tell you you're so much less than you/we really are. Friends befriend the asshole within. Community slays.

Part 2: Bravery in creation

Bravery always knows when bravery is present. Bravery feels bravery's presence. And its absence.

Always. Even across language and other real and imagined barriers.

Even when your brain is having a total meltdown or is too scared or outraged to speak. Even when we're angry. Even when we don't like a whole lot about someone else or what they've been saying or doing. If bravery is present, that's all the thread we need to start weaving ourselves closer to brave others. Bravery within can also be the sign that it's time to stop weaving here: coming to the realization that we'll be braver separately than we are together.

If you can't see or feel bravery in another, one option you can choose is to be braver. To speak. To create. Whether you feel alone in your bravery or together at first, bravery is a collective activity. If you can't feel bravery in someone else, another fantastic choice is to simply walk away so you can all keep working on bravery within without receiving and causing more damage and creating even more distrust. If you feel entirely alone in your bravery, you can also go outside and touch the earth with your skin. Home planet to earthling. There are billions of beings beneath your feet, supporting you. Walk or look outside. There are so many beings in your community: from birds and cats and frogs and pollinators to flowers and trees to plumbers and electricians and teachers and friends. Just because community members are wordless, doesn't mean they're not rooting for you and helping you. Just because you disagree about some things doesn't mean they're not supporting you somehow. Even loving you. Or trying to. In their own way.

The me of 2014 was brave to try to hold her shattering family together. And, she was even braver to let go of people when holding on to the past kept isolating, hurting, and physically sinking her and those she loved.

Today, though it still hurts a little bit to read, I can again deeply love the cousin who showed up in the comments section after the poem "How to Be Heard by a Total Asshole" to, once again, correct my experience and perspective on what was happening in the family at the time. Back then, her words struck our sleep-deprived, struggling, stunned, and wounded selves like bullets, and she sprayed them at us regularly. She kept defending "the family" from us. From the people who, until then, thought that WE were the family. She taught us differently. At that moment in time anyway, we were not her family. My poetry clearly felt exactly the same way to her. Like an attack. We had to part back then, because I can't be my true, most loving, brave, vulnerable, powerful self without poetry, and she couldn't live with the experiences– my experiences– that I shared via my poetry. I now understand that those who feel the need to correct poetry– to set the factual record straight within something that is a ball of pure raw emotion, love, grief, loss, and pain releasing into the air so that a body or bodies can move again– are in deeply painful places themselves.

I can't be my true, most loving, brave, vulnerable, powerful self without poetry

The pain in me now sees the pain in you, cousin... now that I've rested, breathed, healed, and been held by so many others going through what we've been going through, without judgment. I had to let you go for a while, so that the permanent breaks between some in the family didn't become a permanent break between us, too. No regrets. No judgment now. We'll find our way back someday. Or not. Sometimes we have to find new people to help us hold pain we cannot possibly hold and process alone. Sometimes we have to let others go so we can breathe, move, get help, and heal, and so they can, too. This is not the way I would run things if I were in charge of the universe. In my universe, there'd be no distance between us. And. I'm not in charge of everything here. I'm not even in charge of most things here. I can't even get my 14-year-old cat, who deeply loves me, to stay off the counter. And. Walking away so you don't keep hurting each other deeply can be a profoundly loving act. Even when it feels like taking a meat cleaver to your own beloved body, heart, and soul.

Part 3: Sharing what we lean on here

Reflecting on the two poems and on our experience here since I wrote that poem 11 years ago, I pulled together this list of experiences that help us slay/befriend the dragons within us and that help us be heard by and befriend total assholes, including the total assholes lurking within us when we're stretched too thin and believe we're alone. Things that lead us to community that can slay or befriend what we can't slay or befriend alone. To let go of and move with/past the opinions, blame, petty judgments, and expectations that stand in the way of us becoming who we most want to be next, we can lean on any and all of these things.

Skim through these lists. Plan to get really good at just one of the things here. Just one. Since we're all connected, one is enough. Eventually, one may not be enough for you, and you'll find yourself getting good at something else in this list. And then, eventually, planning itself interferes with becoming who and what you're becoming next. Befriending chaos, or recognizing mischievous spirits/co-conspirators, or feeling wonder, for example, can't be planned. They require full presence. Not planning.

Personal:

• Quiet reflection
• Noticing connections between/among our experiences
• Creating something that brings you joy
• Reading or listening to or watching what brings us joy and paying attention to what stretches us/this body lovingly and what just hurts us/this body
• Writing or sketching in journals
• Resting
• Playing
• Singing
• Wandering alone
• Wonder
• Surprise
• Curiosity
• Imagining and re-imagining
• Cracking yourself up
• Foraging or gardening
• Howling at the moon or screaming. Literally, not metaphorically or silently
• Stretching and moving somehow, such as dancing, running, swimming, and walking
• Pain and loss that you held on to for too long all by yourself– and you know it
• Anything you do on your own that makes you feel more like your true, most loving, self over time– a self who is less burdened by blame, petty judgment, cruel words, and expectations– and a self more connected to life as a whole. Or that brings you closer to that self. Or to a more trusting and loving collective self

Interpersonal:

• Hearing and witnessing other people's experiences and stories (full experiences and stories, not just soundbites and tidbits)
• Sharing connections between/among our experiences
• Shared humor and laughing together
• Conversations with true friends willing to lovingly say "Bullshit" (or your equivalent word) out loud when they hear bullshit, even from you, and even if it might cost them you
• Support groups
• Sharing pain and loss and grieving together
• Stubborn, fiercely loving family/friends that stick with us and won't let us STOP at blame (because when we're blaming then we're in the middle of a painful story and also in an important find-your-voice-and-use-it stage, but we're unlikely to reach the end of the story until we move with and through and even past blame together)
• Stubborn, fiercely loving family/friends that separate from us (either temporarily or permanently) to stop growing pain and anger and blame from becoming hate and contempt that spreads inward and to others, potentially sinking everyone
• Letting go of our own stale, hurtful opinions and beliefs when we learn and understand more than we used to know and understand
• Respecting those present enough to listen until you learn something about how others– different from you– demonstrate respect and love
• Therapy
• Dancing, drumming, or creating music together
• Moving and taking action together
• Participating in/attending in-person activities and events together that connect you to neighbors in new ways, such live theater, concerts, protests, school and sporting events, readings, lectures, volunteering, library events, or standing up to people in the streets attacking neighbors, elders, and children (such as this regime's version of ICE and those currently cos-playing as "homeland security" who are doing nothing but causing pain and spreading fear), etc.
• Cooking and eating together
• In-person community beyond online community. Bodies and faces that show up, in person, to have fun and help each other
• Letting go of other people's opinions and expectations together, instead of alone. Becoming "women who slay" or "creators who slay" or "people who slay."
• Playing together
• All shared curiosity
• Delight

Societal:

• Co-create:
  • organizations that celebrate and support life on earth and the living (tip: having conifer trees or oceans, or other beings whose lifespans are far longer than human lifespans, on your advisory council or board of directors, is especially useful)
  • gathering places, towns, fields, cities, forests, beaches, waterways, and regions that celebrate and support life for all living beings present (think that's impossible? spend all free time watching what forests and indigenous peoples do)
  • governing bodies that celebrate and support life and the living and the planet we all live on (If you do this, make sure to include those who don't want or need governing bodies at all. If you don't, you may find yourselves constantly trying to force things in places where you really should be listening, learning, and receiving.)
• Change or leave organizations (and beliefs) that ignore the needs of, exploit, or oppress the living. When you do, both your chatty self and your wordless presence or absence help do the same.
• Seek out and share stories of others co-creating to celebrate and support life and the living today– and stories from history of others who've been doing the same for a long time– so that you can continue to trust and believe that others will do the same elsewhere, and for a long time after you're gone, too, so you don't burn yourselves out imagining you have to fix everything.
• Embrace emotions and interpersonal conflict. Walk toward them. Sit with them. Spend enough time with them, and you figure out that emotions are among the superpowers of living beings on earth. And you learn that interpersonal conflict is just a sign to slow down, and to deepen, or a sign that collective re-imagination needs to happen before lasting progress will occur beyond this point.
• Lead with collective heart/vulnerability/bravery/tears, and a wide openness to learning, so that you can recognize others doing what you're doing even when they're using different language, and methods, and they are centering on loving different living beings than you are. This shortens periods of blame and minimizes the internally felt need for all violences, from abuse to genocide
• Celebrate seasons, celebrate ancestors, celebrate when you accomplish new and fun and difficult things together, and celebrate when you make mistakes as signs that you're creating and learning and living together, not isolated and alone

Global (or universal or multiversal or spirit or God, aka, the really big we):

• Wilderness
• Silence
• Listening to the voice or music of a whole place, neighborhood, city, region, ocean, forest etc.
• Beauty and grace that you feel all the way into your soul and out the other side into the souls of those around you and the whole place
• Mischievous spirits/co-conspirators revealing themselves to you– and speaking to you– via eye sparkles or goosebumps or sass or full and loving presence
• Every moment of befriending, leaning on, and caring about all life
• Whole-community rituals such as whole-community conversations, music making, cooking for/in community, celebrations and parties and fairs, prayer, collective art, story gathering and telling, and mourning/grieving rituals. Rituals– it turns out– that are remarkably similar to other whole-community rituals across earth. Across our beautiful, glorious differences
• Chaos and befriending chaos
• Feeling like you're a glitch in the matrix. Liking that you're a glitch in the matrix. Liking that you're here to change an always-learning world for the better
• Wordlessness and wordless communication. This can mean sensing what others are feeling or thinking, or knowing others so well that you know what they'd say/think/do, or carrying the perspectives of others within you near your own perspective, or communicating wordlessly or with wordless living beings or across language barriers, or noticing wordless body responses such as goosebumps, arm-hair rising, neck tightening, stomach knots, and awe-filled or curiosity-filled sounds that escape the body before thought happens, or tuning in to collective instincts and intuition
• Feeling like you fully, wholly, truly belong someplace
• Feeling like you don't belong at all and that you must come from a different place, time, family, or planet
• Unshaken wonder and unshakable gratitude for life, most days
• Eyes that are either sparkling with humor, playfulness, and love or weeping with shared loss, sorrow, grief, and wonder
• Feeling for and loving and grieving as deeply for people you've never met, and other living beings, and places you've never been as for people you know and love personally and land you know and love deeply
• Connecting with spirit(s) or the universe or nature or God/Allah or goddesses or with [whatever words you and your people use to describe the experience of being connected to everything and alive as a creative, always-creating-and-being-created beings]
• Mutual aid as just "that's who we are and how we do things here"
• Feeling boundless, incomprehensible, joy or generosity as you move in the real, often painful, world
• Respecting, or caring for, all those who don't respect you back, because your respect is for life herself, as a whole, and that happens to include both you and other abused humans who've gotten way off track from who they truly are as living beings. This does NOT mean accepting, allowing, or staying silent in the face of abuse and other self-hatred-induced violences. This means sharing the hurt within us and either staying present with painful change together or leaving to find communities that slay the dragons that your current family/friends/community/region/state/country/collective/pack/tribe/pod can't slay alone.
• Deeply felt humility. Letting go of our people's expectations for how things ought to be/should be and admitting there are wider/wiser forces at play than what individual humans or even well-connected human groups can imagine on their own. The universe/multiverse/planet/God/life/death is so vast and mysterious that nobody among us can fully understand this place and life. I love this so much. Internally I think of this as "How tiny, fallible beings help ensure that true power (or God) can never mean being an arrogant, condescending prick." ;-)
• Dropping expectations that others be where you are emotionally or spiritually or physically or mentally and dropping expectations that you yourself– as individual and collective beings– must always be in the same state.
• Awe and curiosity as your constant companions. Fear and anger and conflict and grief as helpful, sometimes needed, friends.
• Radiating deep and abiding love of life from within. Even when it manifests as prophetic, misunderstood, words, like "I have zero fucks left to give."
• Peace

These are some of the ways we figure out how to locate and slay/befriend the dragons within us and around us here. Some of the ways we figure out when we, ourselves, are the one being the total asshole or setting ourselves up to become the total asshole, again. And when it's time to walk away from someone. And even when it's time to return. Sometimes, we return.

Wow are these important ways of being and skills right now. Now. When so many of us are bogged down by grief and overwhelmed by modern isolation/separation, exhaustion, exploitation, overwork, pain, rage, and violence– all of which make us easier to manipulate. And when "keeping people trapped in constant fear, hate, blame, and poverty" is being funded by global billionaires who own corporations, yachts, jets, many governments, and mainstream media in many countries– people who have unprecedented wealth and reach to the point that they can mistakenly believe the delusion that they don't need others and are better than others, and so they end up not growing and changing and evolving their loving selves, like the rest of us do. Imagine believing that the only way to prosper in life is to hurt and hold others down! Talk about delusional.

When we don't pay attention to our own human emotions and other whole-body responses, and value them, share them, and understand them together, and feel gratitude for each other, then we end up in exactly the place the United States finds itself today: stagnating and being drug under by the weight of our own chronic anger and by blame so entrenched that it feels like we can't escape it. Mistrusting, hiding from, or attacking others while simultaneously struggling to keep our own heads above water. Fluctuating between our inner child's natural longing for play and safety and fun, our grown up changemaker's desire to fix things or burn the entire government to the ground and start fresh with way better people, and our inner playful elder's centering on the breeze on our face, smiles in each other's eyes, wonder, and the peace of here that passes all understanding.

Or not. I could be wrong. Girl, I so often am.

Part 4: Stepping past our own expectations, again. To find peace, again

When we're young, we think we'll learn these things once and we won't forget, so of course we won't make our old mistakes again. Then we get older. Welcome humility. Welcome life. Life throws us bigger challenges. And some mistakes are ours to make a lot more than once. Letting go of guilt and expectations (theirs and my own) and finding peace afterward is, apparently, my own lesson to learn on repeat until it sticks. Maybe the things we learn multiple times are the things our whole family or community or whole species is learning. Maybe it's ok that we have to learn some things again and again, until we grow closer, more loving, and wiser together.

This summer, I had to let go of expectations that I really, really didn't want to let go of at all. I had to let go of my own "But this is HOW IT SHOULD BE!!" again. Yes, I was screaming that internally some days. (Ok, for several years.) I kept hanging on to what was and to how things ought to be. I'm still learning to stop doing bloody battle within myself trying to make things different than how they simply have to be right now whether I like it or not. I am learning to be this new me now. And new collectives. I find my people this way now... My people are people who howl at the moon, face grief and loss together, take responsibility for their own emotions, play and work together– both– and who can say to themselves, and then others, as Rebecca Dupas said to the judgmental, condescending voice coming from within her:

You're talking to a woman
who has a radical acceptance for whatever God has for me.
I said, "Honestly, I'm at peace."

Being at peace includes realizing that I'm not for everyone. Sometimes, even people I love. Now and then, even earlier versions of me.

And it means realizing that there are times when I have mountains of expectations to let go of. There's no shortcut to peace or enlightenment: it's often a slog. Like a 4-part essay. For me, the hardest life lesson to learn– by far– is noticing and letting go of my own expectations when I realize that they're what's standing between me and peace. Between me and love. Between me and who I want to be now. And, instead of holding expectations, simply accepting what is. Accept what is. Face it. Hold it. Mourn. Notice. Learn. We can receive peace anywhere, including in places and from people who aren't even offering peace because they don't have one spare drop left of it to offer another. Only I can offer complete peace to myself. Recognize that peace is always an option. Feel peace within me. Forced peace isn't peace. Oppressors can't offer peace. They don't have it. We do. I watched friends surviving an ongoing genocide to learn that one. And empathy doesn't forget, even when the brain does. I stood with my Mom and lived with her and Alzheimer's disease for decades to learn that. Those who come for empathy or see empathy as a weakness are trying to destroy memory herself.

Rebecca the poet has faith in God and her wild, wise, and wonderful imagination to lean on. Lori the poet has similar imagination and the Universe, fields to roam in, and a forest of Douglas fir trees, wild roses, and stinging nettles who've watched me tackle greater and greater challenges to learn to let go of expectations. I clearly didn't want to learn this, since I'm only facing this fully at 55. Dude, I love my expectations! Look how far they got us! And, until I fully let go of certain expectations this summer, I was drowning in isolation and pain, then blame, then I hurt people I loved, then regret. I couldn't be the great community member, or friend, or sister, or creator, or elder care partner that I can be until I let go of my own expectations and fully faced the loss and grief below them. Mom's in hospice now. We expect to lose Mom this year. And I won't just lose her. She's so with me and within me now that I'm not even that worried about losing her body. Because she'll still be here. Fully present. Fully loving. Making sure I laugh, like always. No, the loss I'm facing is the loss of who I used to be. I am being changed again by the world I love. And this time I expect to lose everyone not fully present and able to hold really big loss and grief together. That means losing the old me. And others, too. That's potentially a really BIG loss. That's what I'm preparing for now. What we're preparing for now.

I am being changed again by the world I love.

Letting go of your own expectations and guilt, and facing loss and grief together, and just opting to receive peace (or giving up and receiving peace or praying and receiving peace) instead is Emotional Maturity 401. This is a master class in being fully present, fully supported by all of life, fully loving. And receiving fully, gentle folk, not just giving and giving and giving until you're alone, exhausted, hurt or sick, and then angry, and then hurtful. It's the willingness to say "Yes, this is happening." And instead of stewing about it on your own for what feels like forever, simply letting it go or accepting that you're part of something bigger, speaking up, and saying "This is happening. It sucks. Let's do something about it, together, today."

I feel like I'm getting so close to being able to let go of my own expectations and guilt to receive peace instead. Some days I'm there. Thanks Mom. Thanks aunties. Some days I'm not quite there, as my partner, and more recently my sister, can attest, but I'm getting so much closer. We get there together. Thank you, forest. Thank you, local community. Thank you, online community. Thank you, Rebecca Dupas and "How to Slay a Dragon." Thank you, wise and imperfect ancestors, family, friends, and selves, who got us this far.

And a big hug for everyone close to me who has experienced my poetry as a personal attack. I can't apologize for who I am anymore, but I can hug you. What I create is always about what I'm experiencing and feeling and always for humanity as a whole, too. It's always personal for me and always global: my work and I are always both. This makes me me– my most playful, vulnerable, loving, and brave self– but it doesn't always make me easy to like or love. I recognize that my openness has been experienced as dangerous. That some would prefer me chatty in person vs. so write-y write-y all the time. I know that some experience my sharing shared pain as an attack. I realize that I'm not the only one willing to take emotional bullets for me, or for our friendship or our family or community, or for life herself. I also know that my words have a tendency to awaken sleeping internal dragons. This is why I take my time. Move slowly. There is great power here– between us– and together our hearts and words and actions can burn whole empires to the ground. Let's make sure we're burning only what needs to burn.

And, in person, when speaking, I know that I can be the total asshole in the room accidentally, like everyone else can. In writing poems and essays, though, the worst I can be is the total asshole in the room on purpose– present enough to break open what deeply needs to break or to take heat that somebody else is tired of taking or to fight for a relationship or to honor and say goodbye to one I've deeply loved. Being fully me still feels naughty. But good naughty. I'm aware that it takes a special kind of bravery to be close to a full-time writer– maybe especially one who dwells in wonder, grief, sharing reality, community, loss, and magic as poet, essayist, herbalist, and playful, and sometimes infuriating, elder. And, it also takes a special kind of bravery to step away from me to protect much-needed peace. With expectations dropped, I can love you no matter which direction you choose to step. Walking away is ok. Really really.

In August, thanks in part to my own expectations, I was hurting so much that I hurt others. Today, I'm different again. I love those still showing up and those moving away from me now with equal admiration and respect. And I deeply love me/us/here again. It took a lot of letting go of my own expectations to get here. And a lot of receiving of the kind of you-have-my-full-attention love that we all deserve to receive as living beings here in this glorious, magical, and sometimes horrible, place. Here, we insist that we love ourselves and each other deeply or we walk away. We don't settle anymore. Hello, dragons. Hello.

That's what we receive when we let go of guilt, blame, opinions, and expectations that no longer serve anyone. We get to be ourselves again. Dearly beloved selves. And we get to receive and give the abiding, fierce, fully present love that we all need and deserve as living beings. We're not settlers, here, anymore.