Dangermond.org

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.

_{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.”

_{The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad – fourth chapter. 
This writing came from the fourth 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.

_{The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad – second chapter. 
This writing came from the second 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.

_{The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad arrived yesterday. I read the first chapter.
This writing came from the first prompt by Dani Shapiro:
What would you write if you were not afraid?}

I’m going to create a journal that has JOY on one side and PAIN on the other, and then I could just make a list.

While I was in Arizona for this past visit with Tin, our cat, Lord Chill – Chilly, Chilly Willy Ding Dong, the chillest dude on the planet – went missing. I got home with my heart in my throat wondering and worried. Then as I was checking Wild Thing for my maiden voyage, the battery seemed dead. My friend, Craig came over to take a look at it. He took the battery to the shop to charge overnight so that I could leave the next morning.

While he was gone, my neighbor called, she had found Lord Chill under her house, dead.

From Friday to Thursday, I had kept hope alive that Chilly would make his way back. That he would curl up on the back of the couch with his paw brushing my neck and then would follow me into the bedroom and curl up behind my knees while I slept. I pictured Chilly as he and my youngest dog, Olly, would run through the house and play their game of dog and cat. But on Thursday, I went to bed bereft of one good memory – instead, I held grief like a stone in my chest.

There was only one person I wanted to call – my mother.

On a parent coaching call, we talked about research that shows a mother’s voice is like dopamine. If a baby is fussy, a mother could just speak to them from across the room and the sound of her voice would soothe. But as that same child crosses the 13-year-old threshold, a mother’s voice has no effect. As in ZERO. As a matter of fact, a stranger will light up the dopamine in a teenager’s brain 100% more than a mother’s voice. This is a built-in aid to individuate and separate for the teen.

But I’m here to say that my mom died when I was 50, and I still longed to hear her voice on the other end of the phone. She would have felt the loss of a beloved cat and cried with me. So perhaps, there comes a time where that voice does become soothing again. Perhaps, it is only the memory of my mom’s voice from childhood that gets activated when I am trying to self-soothe.

After I hung up with my neighbor, I called my friend and other neighbor, Terry. He came over and crawled under Jenny’s house as I sat splayed legs in her driveway balling like a house on fire. Terry wrapped Chilly’s body and dug a grave by the LOVE sign. I said a few words about a cat, whose owners didn’t want him, and Tin and I, who were mourning our other cat (Little Harry) who we had loved so much and didn’t want another cat, and how that is how we met Chilly – he needed us and we needed him and we came to be a family and how much love Chilly had brought out of us during our time of grief – it’s amazing how much you are capable of loving after losing.

That evening, during Lava Lounge, friends came to celebrate and dance with me for my impending birthday, and Terry brought over a cake he had made for me – a praline lasagna gluten free yumness. Last year, his wife, Donnell had made my gluten free cake. How well I am loved is never subject for debate.

The next morning, with a stone in my heart, I backed up my car and put the hitch on Wild Thing and my friend, Kim and I drove away honking the horn, determined to have a good time. It was my 66th birthday, and my bucket list of owning a camper and heading to the woods had become a reality after all. We went to Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham, AL, about four and a half hours on the road as we moved into hills with lush foliage lining the highway.

The weather called for rain every day. And rain it did. We had just set up camp and were getting ready to go explore when the downpour came, and didn’t stop. Kim braced herself to grill our dinner with a huge umbrella I had brought mostly for sun shelter. In our camper, we had our food, our books, our light, and our laughter and the rain didn’t bother us one bit.

Like gals are want to do on any trip together, Kim and I talked. We hiked and got lost on a small trail – like seven miles lost and talked. My geographical disability was well known but Kim had hid hers. We walked in silence. We sat on a log and meditated to Tiger Singleton. We walked and talked. My niece and her wife who lives 20 minutes away hiked in to get us because there was no coming out where it wouldn’t take a 12-mile hike. It was all marvelous.

In the coziness of the next downpour, Kim and I ate another dinner grilled by Kim in the rain, and we talked about our hearts. Kim shared more details of a heartbreak while I shared a heart’s desire with her. And when our sated, content, and happy hearts were full, and we leaned into the evening’s slumber. My phone dinged. It was a text from a person I have opened myself too – been vulnerable with – and the message sent quietly closed a door in my heart. Kim was incensed, while I was okay.

We drove home on Sunday. We both sang the words to every song on my playlists. Kim has a beautiful singing voice — me, not so much (well, truthfully, not at all). But what I love about Kim is that she doesn’t mind me singing full throttle along with her.

The next morning, I got up to write in my blog. I had feelings pouring out of me, energizing myself out of the slippery slope to numbness, and I felt secure enough to sit inside all the feels – the grief of having lost Chilly, the sadness that Tin was having a rough week and didn’t want to talk to me after I left, the joy of having a successful maiden voyage with Wild Thing, the pain of a connection to someone else narrowing, the joy of having backed the camper up all by myself (confidently), and as I sat at my desk to write, I found out someone had bought my url – dangermond.org – that I have owned for over two decades.

As I wrestled all morning with trying to recover my domain (isn’t there a metaphor in this statement?), I realized how okay I was with all of this. I grieved losing Chilly who had brought so much love, and I was so happy to have had Chilly in my life for seven of his 13 years. I was disappointed that someone I had let myself be vulnerable with had sent a text message to me that made me sad. I had spent two decades laying myself vulnerable under a domain of a last name that is not even mine – it was a name I married into – and kept – and now will be migrating dangermond.org over to racheldangermond.com. And hey, I’m okay with this.

I’m following my own Route 66, a journey that has taken me over hills and down holllers, that has stretched from heartache to belly laughs, and at the end of the day on my 66th birthday – May 2, 1959, I marvel at my life. There is a certain joy in knowing there are those people and those places that still light a fire in me even while a hard rain falls.

Remember when you first found love how you felt so good
Kind that last forever more so you thought it would
Suddenly the things you see got you hurt so bad, so bad
How come the things that makes us happy makes us sad?
It seems to me

Joy and pain are like sunshine and rain
Joy and pain are like sunshine and rain, woo

Love can be bitter, love can be sweet
Sometimes devotion, and sometimes deceit
The ones that you care for give you so much pain
Oh, but it’s alright, they’re both one in the same

~Frankie Beverly and Maze

Urban Dictionary: Do it “for the plot”: the conscious decision to see yourself as the main character of the story that is your life. You maintain the outlook that every moment – good or bad – is merely a plot point for your larger narrative. You are the writer, producer, director and star of your life. Start living unapologetically and give them a plot twist that no one saw coming.

I did a vision quest a few years ago under the tutelage of my friend, James Inabinet, which offered up the bald eagle as my totem. The coincidence of my being bald and having a bald eagle totem and that day James seeing one of only two bald eagles he has seen out there was not lost on me. The eagle is my pointer – it’s a predator that flies high in the sky seeing everything in laser focus from a distance. 

It’s a Buddhist prompt to stand outside of myself yet be in my true self, far away from the madding crowd. 

It’s a reminder to see the chaos arise and dissipate without being subsumed into the drama. 

It’s the Paramis that states when the wave is coming, stand and let it wash through you. 

And oh, I try. 

This weekend with my son, Tin was listening to a rap song where the refrain was “bitch, don’t block my flow.” The rap my son listens to is for another discussion, perhaps.

We were talking about feelings. Tin was saying some of his friends don’t show theirs. He said, this one doesn’t ever show his feelings. This one won’t admit when he is sad. This one has anger issues. He said these things as observation of others yet also they seemed like a mirror to himself. He, like his mom (ahem), is a person of rather large feelings. And at times, both of us mask these big feelings with other big feelings – we appear irritated, angered, and withdrawn when we really feel sad, abandoned and lonely.  

My eagle totem points me to a feeling when it comes on so loud-like to observe what is the feeling behind the feeling. This has been a large part of ACA, uncovering the childhood feeling behind the adult behavior. I get anxious when my son is dysregulated because I grew up in a chaotic family. What I need is to be aware that my young Rachel needs parenting – a supportive adult to say it’s okay because the present Rachel has the capacity to make her feel safe and loved. 

The eagle points me to watch my son grow dysregulated and sit beside him as he uses the coping skills he is learning to come back to center. Not fix but stand. Not dysregulate too but stay true to me. 

During the weekend, Tin and I walked to a nearby nature reserve that had a large labyrinth. I had taken a walk there the morning before I picked up Tin. It was the desert landscape in a micro environment – dry, dusty, and full of wonder. 

As we made our way to the reserve, we passed horse stables and a large tract with multiple stables and horses in fenced in areas. Tin talked about what kind of horses they were. I steered us towards the labyrinth. The first day I saw it, I was by myself, and I was reluctant to circle the inside because a man was sitting on the bench staring dead center at the middle. He gave me the creeps. 

This time, no one was near, so Tin and I entered the labyrinth and within two or three steps, Tin sprinted ahead of me kicking up dust, and while he was finding the path, he stepped off of continuous path and found a dead end, and said aloud, “this is hard,” then he turned and rejoined the labyrinth and kept going, finishing before me. He stood in the center proud of his effort and was smiling till I took a photo of him. 

When I arrive in Tucson, I go to the grocery and buy familiar items. I pick up a bouquet of flowers. I enter the house ready to make it home, if just for the weekend. The plot I am writing is one where I am home (even when away from my physical one) for both myself and my teenage child. I know how to play house, I’ve been doing it for years.

I am also welcoming plot twists. 

While we were together this weekend, Tin said that he doesn’t know if he wants to come back to Mississippi. “What’s there for me?” He doesn’t know where he wants to end up – but mused: maybe Atlanta, California or New York? I said I know the feeling, I said, if he didn’t return to Mississippi, would I want to stay? 

The twist is to open to the unknown, to give into vulnerability. None of what has and is unfolding in my life was part of my conceived plot, so why not open it up more: to not knowing, to being love, to living acceptance, to being vulnerable, to continuing to write this fascinating story with no idea how it ends up.

I’ve come to feel a connection to Tucson. When I enter the stark desert light and drive past saguaros that look like phantoms, trees more barren than lush, and rock and gravel front lawns, I smile now. At first I was surprised by it all – an alien landscape, I called it – but now it is familiar.

I was cruising down a main street lined with palo verde trees in brilliant bloom – a thousand yellow flowers fill canopies – and I saw a man sitting on a low ledge holding open a yellow umbrella for shade and the image stuck in my mind. Wow! How incredible that at this moment I saw a painting in real life. Because an artist’s work is to help us see, and nature is an artist, providing a showy monochrome of yellow under harsh sunlight against a flat background. The image looked manipulated. AI even. It was striking.

Later, as I walked to the nature reserve just blocks from my Air BnB (another plus about Tucson are all the reserves and natural areas), I saw purple cactus in bloom, more signs of a desert spring, and it gave me tremendous joy to be right where I was at exactly at this time.

I arrive in Tucson each month and set up “home” so I can pick up Tin and we can be together in a comfortable setting. It’s no easy feat to create something that feels normal when living with a teenager is abnormal. Here is a person who wants to be close but whose entire body language eschews connection. And yet this is becoming familiar – navigating connection without sharing the same language or desire. When a baby eagle is ready to take flight, the feather fluff of the nest has started to fall away making it a nest of thorns. Its discomfort makes the chick want to fly away to find something more comfortable.

I know how long it takes to feel comfortable in your own skin – your true home – and so I still want to protect this chick. I want to hold this prickly cactus, even though it is filled with thorns and tough on the outside.

I lost all of my hair in early 2012. A friend had a book that correlated feelings to a physical condition and hair loss fell under humiliation. I hadn’t considered this feeling in the chaos of feelings I had at that time, but in hindsight it was appropriate. Leading up to my hair loss was a laundry list of loss – divorce, career, babies – it was a heady list that made losing my hair seem just one more thing.

In 1990, I had moved to San Francisco and fallen into a bowl of milk after a few missteps. I was hired by an independent research firm to write about public companies, which led to leading a global group across multiple sectors that included companies who manufactured heavy equipment to the internet. I hadn’t realized that during the decades of working nearly all hours of the day and most of the night that my identity had become firmly rooted in my career.

I was a successful investigative reporter and editor for one of the largest independent research firms on Wall Street. This was who I was. And then one day I wasn’t. For years after losing my job, I grappled with the who I am part of my existence. I stretched out into different areas – mediation, meditation, facilitation – and though these were all part of my learning, not one became my identity.

Last night, I was sitting in an ACA meeting and we were going through a list of feelings. When we got to humiliation, I raised my hand. I knew what this feeling was. I knew what it was like to be a workaholic and to put all my eggs in one basket and then suddenly to have the basket tipped over and to feel empty. The humiliation of having no hair was nothing compared to having no career, no identity, no me.

And then as I was speaking about my past, I began to realize I have yoked my present identity once again to my work. Running the 100 Men Hall has been a passion project for me since 2018, where I became part of the narrative of this historical landmark. I said, “Now that I’m thinking about it, my identity has become running the Hall.” It made me reflect on my efforts, not always successful or intentional, to strike out and create my life independent of this work.

Like – I purchased the vintage Shasta camper to be someone who spends time in nature.

Or, I started writing this blog again to return to my first love, writing.

My friend who invited me into the meeting said my writing is how she knows me. And the host said she doesn’t know me through the Hall. My friend encouraged me to make a pie chart of those things that identify me. She said in recovery she had done one, and it helped her understand that her perfectionism in work could falter and there would still be so many pieces of her, all of which contributed to her self-esteem.

I have to work on shoring up my self-esteem pie – I’m a mother, a friend, a writer, an aunt, a sister (more blanks to be filled in) – so that when the time comes to move on from running the Hall, it won’t feel like an evisceration, but more like making room for the next great thing in my life.