Tag Archives: Jessica Lakis

January 4, 2017

A Pause in the Dark

By JLakis
the-long-dark-of-moria

The long dark.

I know too many shattered people right now. After the initial anger of the Election passed into frantic holidays, the hangover of a New Year, and now through the long dark of winter, there don’t seem many reasons left to get out of bed. Unless the compulsion of work or family drives forced actions performed without joy. Helplessness, fear and exhaustion reign as the emotions of the moment. Locked inside from the cold and weather, the natural cycles of day and night cease. Just a gruesome slog through the dark.

And this is OK. These are precisely the emotions you should be feeling right now. Our feelings do have purpose.That is why we have them. And while we’ve been raised to deny our hearts’ cries for attention, don’t. Feel it. Feel all of it. Just let it wash over you, and then stop.

I don’t mean stop feeling how you feel. I mean PAUSE. The world will last without you for a moment. So pause. Don’t think. Don’t reflect. Don’t judge. Just be still enough for whatever amount of time you can gift to yourself. Shut out everything else.Your mind, heart, soul and body ARE EXHAUSTED. Aren’t they? So pause. Develop a sudden and terrible illness. Text the world your grandmother is on fire. Make your status “Dropped phone in toilet.” Then do it for real. You cut people breaks, time to carve one out for yourself by whatever means necessary.

If you can achieve “pause” for five minutes or five days: take it. You absolutely, without doubt or question or self-recrimination need to. Right now. And this is why: across the yawning abyss you see before you now, there is life. Your single, precious life. And all of the signal and unique lives of those you love and who truly love you. Everything you still love and hate and fear are there as well. But you can’t face any of it until you can cross that chasm in your heart.

You have lost something. Your guide, your bearings, your sense of the world, your comfort, your joy and righteous anger, your laughter, your silliness, your sense of your own strength and voice. You’ll find them again. But you’ll never be the same. You’ll be stronger, sharper, and bear with you forever the hard and unblinking brightness that you have earned. Your secret, sacred  fire will blaze forth from your eyes and heart, your words and deeds will kindle the fire of fellow travellers through the long dark; warm the comfortless, and sear your foes with its wroth.

But, just now, pause. Let the darkness wash over you. It will pass. The days grow longer by seconds that become hours. And on one of those days, you may stay in your clothes longer than your pj’s. Maybe not on the first day. Don’t force it to happen. It just will. You know it will. Just allow yourself this time to process all that has passed. Only then will you be able to face what is come. Pause.

If any women are interested in this post or my previous, please consider joining a new Facebook Group: Women’s Community for Psychological Strength and Support. This is a closed group, so please contact me via Messenger to be added. 

Check out my Instagram! There are pictures of things I like and hate! 😊

Got a comment? Click below! I love the feedback. If you like what you’ve read, tap Like and Share! Click here to follow on Twitter.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in blog, Uncategorized, writing

December 15, 2016

The Best Words

By JLakis

Words

Words.Words.Words.

Trump must have the best ones — held hostage under Trump Tower —  because I sure don’t got ‘ em. Not lately, anyway. I’ve had angry words. Frustrated words. Major depressive words. Anxious and frightened words. But where are my clear-sighted words? My poetic words? My witty words? The words that come from whatever that place is that I call “me”?

Since the election, words have baffled me. My words are my Voice. They are my way of communicating my experience to the outside world. I feel my anxiety rising and my heart beating faster simply thinking of using my words and my voice. This is who I am, dammit! I’m a writer. I process my experience through writing. So where is my voice? Where are my words?

And it is Him. The Deplorable One. Trump. This Election has been and still is the reliving of a trauma. It really began with the “grab them by the pussy” comment. How could any woman accept this sort of speech, when not a day passes that we can truly feel “secure in our own bodies,” as Michelle Obama described it? For every woman who has ever been ogled, groped, silenced or passed over, victims of unwanted advances, abuse and trauma, that comment shredded old wounds open. Of course, the true horror is that some women argued vehemently in defence of the remark, and even embraced it!

Are they suffering some form of Stockholm Syndrome? A legion of Patty Hearsts?

And now that IT happened, it’s worse. Women scold me daily for my assertiveness, for my apparently blasphemous notion that “women’s rights are human rights” as Hillary Clinton said, or because she said it. But there is another side as well. And that is I’ve rediscovered the value and comfort of speaking and sharing with other women. It’s a sisterhood that I once had, but lost. I lost it to an abusive husband. To someone who reminded me with every action and word that I had no value, and my words and wants were less than worthless: they were laughable. Someone who cut me off from any companionship that might comfort or lift me up. A relationship in which I had no control, no voice.

Staring down a Trump Presidency seems to me like my abuser, my torturer, has become President of everything. I’m right back in those worst moments. And it has shut me down. But realizing that other women felt the same has been a revelation! I am not alone! And these women are struggling right along with me. We can listen to each other. Support each other. Help each other find our hard won voices again. To find our words.

This is why I feel that men, with certain exceptions, cannot possibly understand how I feel this moment. How I have been feeling. If you’re a white, straight, gentile male it will never be the gut punch it is to me. You may hate Trump, disagree with him on everything, and even think he will bring on WW III, Fallout and The Walking Dead all at once, but you must have lived through some sort of abuse to get it as a straight white guy. And even there you have me beat. You are still a man and benefit from status and privilege that brings. One day you may have come home and socked your abusive father. But I don’t know if women are even supposed to do that. It makes us damaged, crazy chicks. And gloating over our shitty ex’s failures just doesn’t feel like something women can do freely or with as much glee as men speak of their “psycho bitch” ex.

That’s how it seems to me. These are my words. I don’t want or need male input on this. My experiences, my feelings, my words do not require your permission, endorsement, approval or comment. These are my words. This is my voice. I’m taking my words back. Writing this piece was scary and hard. This isn’t the sort of thing I eagerly share. Some will say I’m playing the “victim card” or the “woman card.”  And honestly, if you feel that way, you really do have the Trump card now. At least I have my voice. I have my words. These are my experiences. They don’t need your understanding. They just want the right to exist.

I have my words again.

Post script: To my sisters, let’s help each other and find solidarity in each other. Please feel free to contact me through this site (see below), or Facebook Messenger if you are interested in brainstorming and creating with me a group of like-minded women, a sisterhood of support, sharing, of laughter, joy and awesome.

Check out my Instagram! There are pictures of things I like and hate! 😊

Got a comment? Click below! I love the feedback. If you like what you’ve read, tap Like and Share! Click here to follow on Twitter.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in blog, writing

October 6, 2016

It’s All Good

By JLakis
img_20161006_152820

Pictures from my kitchen porch.

I took Paul McCartney’s advice and got a home in the heart of the country.  It’s been good for the blood pressure, even though most of my life is still in boxes. This is the sort of place where a thing is done in good time if it’s done well. More haste, less speed, I guess. Actually, not even so much haste. Just the haste of the rolling of the seasons. But most often I just sit here on my porch, or in the swing under the willow by the stream, take a walk, look at stars, notice the moon phases, and stare at the goats who live across the stream in front.

Getting here was trying. Molly, my dog of 13 years, died a few weeks before the move. The previous owners had left the house abandoned for three years, and the place and land was full of their stuff and suffering from neglect. Also, my cat ran away the first day. I spent a week and a half walking around, clinking a fork to a can, shouting “WET FOOOOOD!” But one day he just turned up hungry and miserable looking, ready for snuggles, a clean litter box and wet food. Guess he just needed his Mountain Lion merit badge.

Of course, when the first day I’d be alone rolled around, I was the loneliest girl ever. But that afternoon Stan came home with a new friend, which he held up like John Cusack with a boom box.  But, even better, it was a 3 month old Border Collie pup with freckles on her white nose. We called her Abbey Road. And she was just the friend I needed. Border Collies really want to learn! She looks to me constantly for a cue as to what she should do. So, when on my first day alone with her, she learned “sit” it was “challenge accepted” for us both!

It did take some time to bargain with my love for Molly and for Abbey. But I like to think that Molly’s independent, no-nonsense, terrier spirit haunts me like Obi-wan Kenobi’s Force ghost. Maybe showing up sometimes to deliver exposition to Abbey, or to warn me of encroaching “booshit.” Molly was a great one for hunting down and destroying that. And Abbey is my little go-go Padawan. Always eager to stomp through the trees on the hill behind the house, chase the frogs in the pond, herd frisbees, and bark at the goats, of course. She’s also the biggest love-bug. And I’ve had to defend her from multiple kidnapping attempts when we go to Lowe’s, PetSmart and even from visiting friends and family!

Mr. Kitter-kat wasn’t exactly pleased to come home to “Dog 2.0,” but now they’re great friends, and play and cuddle. He has several channels of bird feeders to watch. Wet food. And he can go out on the kitchen porch whenever he wants to dream of his days as a fearsome hunter alone in the woods. He’s a happy man.

Anyhow, after going without hot water for the first few days (which gave new meaning to “icey cold spring water”), and two weeks of having public sewer pipes laid down what can only be called “the lane,” things finally started coming into focus. Stuff is getting done. I can putter. Actually, I put in some major back and elbow grease! More importantly,  I can breathe again. From locked up in an apartment surrounded by noisy people, on a busy street around the corner from a firehouse, while mourning my dog. To long walks, starry skies, noticing how many species of woodpeckers there are, playing with Abbey, and, of course, staring at goats. Cars are so rare on the road up the hill, I watch them go by.

Sure, the house is old, and nothing is straight, but it’s sturdy and good old — like the Parthenon! A few more years and the forest would have overgrown the place. It feels like a happy house to have people to love it again. And each season has a charm and rhythm of its own. Soon, we’ll move from fire rings outside, to the wood-stove inside. And we’ll all gather before it, and say “let it snow.” More importantly, I have a space of my very own where I have many places to sit with my laptop and write. I am home.

Now, I just need the big green door-shaped sign with Gandalf’s mark, so travelling wizards, dwarves and fair folk know to stop for tea or adventures! 

For more pics of Abbey, the farmhouse, and more check out my Instagram! For even more, check out  Stan’s!

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6 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in blog, geek, nature, writing

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