Category: Community

The Uses of Sorrow

Someone I loved once gave me 
a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. 

–Mary Oliver

It’s been two years since I lost my family. 

Two years since I’ve seen my mother, or talked to my brother. 

Two years since I visited Alabama for the last time, only to find out that I’m no longer allowed to be around my nieces. 

Two years since I had to tell my child that the cousins she was looking forward to playing with would no longer be in her life or mine (my child was 5 years old).

Two years since I learned that I would no longer be able to walk into my childhood home, as my brother and his family moved into it with my mother.

All of this happened in such a startling way, it’s hard even now to piece it together. 

And of course, none of this started on the weekend we visited. This was the last incident in a long line of them. But it’s where that story ends, and another one begins.

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We planned the trip at the end of summer, right before Zora started Kindergarten. We rented a condo with a nice pool so the kids could come over and they could all play and swim together. All of this was communicated to my mother and brother, and agreed upon. 

Unbeknownst to me, my brother and his wife had been fighting about us visiting for weeks–my sister-in-law having decided we were no longer allowed to be around “her kids.” 

Yet no one told us. We drove 7 hours to Alabama, completely unaware of what was about to happen. 

You might be wondering WHY at this point. Why would someone cut off a family member? What egregious, horrible thing had I done? Was I unsafe to be around children? Had I hurt or neglected any children, including my own? And why in the WORLD did no one let us know this was happening? Why would they set us up for this kind of devastation?

Some of these questions are impossible to answer and I’ll never understand it. 

But ultimately, all of this comes down to who I love. WHO I LOVE.

Not who I hate. Not what I’ve done. Not my character, my actions, my behaviors. Who I love.

So let’s talk about love for a minute. On that drive back from Alabama two years ago, I grieved hard and tried to make sense of what happened. I thought about–and talked with my wife about–the concept of love. What is it really? For me, for us?  

I can’t define love for anyone else. I can, however, choose to only let in what feels like my way of loving and let go of the rest. And for me… 

Love is wanting others to have the privileges that you have. 

Love is my friends and community dancing at my wedding, because they know how hard my wife and I fought for our relationship and the tiny being that was already growing inside of me.

Love is dear friends offering to help us create a family, and those dear friends BECOMING our family in the process.

Love is my adopted mama showing me how to mother through her nurturing, her protectiveness, and her occasional kick in the ass when I’m off the path. 

Love is medical providers honoring my family, respecting us and acknowledging out loud that they are here for us. 

Love is friends who are stand-in siblings, fierce and loyal, ready to form a circle of protection around us with a moment’s notice.

Love is kind neighbors who only care that you’re a good human and let you borrow their tools and drop tomatoes at your door. 

Love is a school that flies rainbow flags and celebrates diversity, because then your child knows and feels her family’s worth and belonging.

Love is marrying an incredible human–regardless of gender identity or sexuality–who shows up every single day and reminds you that you are worthy of love, connection and belonging.

Love is a child who knows she’s safe in her family–who knows that even though some people don’t think her family should exist, they do in fact EXIST and she proudly proclaims it without any hint of shame or fear.

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Something died for me that day, on the drive back to Asheville. All the years I spent trying to prove my worth to my family, trying to twist myself into knots and belong…it all, finally, started to fade away. 

I realized that by holding onto people who couldn’t possibly love me, I wasn’t truly letting in all the love around me. 

My sister-in-law didn’t know it, but she handed me a gift that weekend. 

I could write a novel about the ways love has saved me, over and over again, ESPECIALLY since that weekend.

That picture you see at the top of this post? My daughter drew that months after we returned from Alabama. Those were the words she wanted to make sure her teachers wrote down.

Love is love is love. And the kids are alright. 

Love and Pride,

Amy

My 6-year old brought home library books from school last Thursday, like she does every Thursday. It’s always fascinating to see her choices–she’s super into science and the natural world, so there’s usually one related to that.

Last week one of her books was about sea creatures. And let me tell you, in case you don’t know–there are some really, really weird sea creatures out there. 

But the most familiar one to me was the hermit crab. Though I know some hermit crab facts, reading about them hit me in a different way this time. 

Hermit crabs are not actually hermits, they’re communal creatures.  In the wild, they’re found in groups of 100 or more.  And though they’re known for their shells, they don’t actually make their own–they forage for the homes they carry on their backs, and they’re known to be quite particular about which shell they choose.

So when a hermit crab grows larger, the old shell it’s been living in starts to get uncomfortable. There’s not enough room for this version of the crab, and it starts to look around for the right new home–one that’s large enough with room to grow, but not so big that it doesn’t fit. The old shell is given up to the community, where it will fit a smaller crab that also needs a new home.

And so it goes, this process of growing bigger, getting uncomfortable, and shedding the old to make room for the newer, more evolved version. 

What if the crab got stuck? What if it was so afraid of leaving what was familiar that it stayed smaller, dealt with the pain of the known to avoid the risks of the unknown, the risks of expanding and demanding more space? 

That’s a very human thing to think, and luckily hermit crabs–though quite smart–just don’t think that way. So they live their crabby lives, doing the next right thing and taking up the space they need.

We humans, however, are notorious for getting in our own way.

Are there ways that you’ve grown larger, and the old life just doesn’t fit anymore? Are you feeling constricted, but you’re afraid of change? Is there room in your current “shell” for a more evolved, expansive you? And most importantly…will you let yourself look for and accept what you need?

Be the hermit crab, my friends.

♥️, 

Amy

An inch is such a tiny measurement, isn’t it? 

I know you all understand what an inch looks like, but for the purposes of this blog, here’s a visual:  ___________

I was reading an article published by the National Ocean Service (NOS) about the impact of one inch of water for cargo ships.

A ship needs a certain amount of water to float and not touch bottom; the water depth is called the ship’s “draft.” The more cargo a ship carries, the more it will weigh, and the more it will sink and need more draft. 

Even a slight decrease in the depth of a waterway will require a ship to carry less cargo. And conversely, one more inch of water means larger ships with millions of dollars more cargo. It also means fewer total trips to carry all that cargo, which translates to less environmental impact and cheaper goods. 

The NOS states that one more inch of water depth in a port means that a cargo ship can carry 57 more tractors.

Let me say that again. ONE MORE INCH of water depth means a cargo ship can carry 57 MORE TRACTORS. 

Isn’t that wild?

When I think about that huge cargo ship carrying all those tractors, I imagine the water underneath–how the water cradles and holds the ship upright, how it cushions the impact of all that heaviness, and how even one more tiny inch makes such a huge impact in that ship’s ability to carry the load and do what needs to be done.

And then I consider how a healthy community functions. How each of us alone is one little inch of water, but together we can move even the heaviest load across an ocean. 

What we can achieve alone pales in comparison to what we can do together.