Musings

Three Things, Issue Thirty-Nine

Published on by trixie

ONE: DEATH

I was thirty-five years old before I ever attended a funeral or memorial service.

Both sets of my grandparents had died during my lifetime and yet I never attended their funerals. Granted, I was young when most of them passed away, but my parents never seemed to press the issue of my attendance. I was a clingy, emotional child and imagine it was simply easier for me to stay home with my sister. It was as if one day my grandparents were in my life and the next day I never saw them again. My parents didn’t talk about it much. The concept of death was confusing and mysterious.

My mother’s best friend, Betty, passed away from complications of lupus not long after her retirement. By this time I was at the end of my teenage years and I loved the rarely-seen playful nature that Betty coaxed out of my mom. I hold images of the two of them curled around mugs of thick coffee and a plate of store-bought taffy cookies, planning and conspiring day trips here and there, mapping out adventures to be had. Betty’s eyes always sparkled with the hint of inside jokes that made my mother blush. She’d compliment my long, smooth legs, making me feel beautiful and confident while she questioned my choice of boyfriends like a protective aunt.

Her illness and death came far too soon.

I was at my boyfriend’s apartment when out of the blue, I sat up abruptly and insisted I had to go home. I felt an urgency to get to my mother and be with her. I couldn’t explain it, but when I walked in the door, she was in tears and told me that Betty had passed away that afternoon.

Knowing without knowing.

Betty’s family planned a memorial service–a celebration of her life–rather than a funeral. It was a warm summer day full of sunshine, the event held in the lush gardens at Betty’s daughter’s home. My mom and dad and a sibling or two attended, but I did not. I couldn’t face the inevitable avalanche of emotion.

I used to worry if I started crying, I’d never stop.

My mom was never the same after Betty’s death. And death remained a strange, abstract concept to me. Betty didn’t seem dead and I found myself expecting her to arrive at the door to whisk my sad mother away to points unknown and bring her back breathless and happy again.

A tightly-knotted boulder of emotion sat low in my belly the day I prepared to attend my father’s memorial service. Please, God, don’t let me cry, was my impassioned plea. I was thirty-five and still worried that if I started crying, I’d never stop. It was months after his actual passing and I had seen his dead body and confirmed that my father was no longer in the building. But this was my first experience with real grief.

At the service, I started crying and I felt like I’d never stop. At first, I was ashamed of such unbridled emotion and tried to choke back the sobs which only resulted in strange, snorting sounds. But then, as abruptly as a flick of a switch, something changed. My dad just died! I should be crying if my dad just died! The less I tried to rein in my natural emotion, the more everything became bathed in a soft, gentle energy of mourning. My uncontrolled hiccuping sobs relaxed. I was so, so sad and it was just as it should be.

My daughter and I walked into the cavernous auditorium of the church where Ellie’s service was held yesterday. A familiar knot in my belly, I recognized the fear that I would never be able to stop the tears once they began to flow. Photos of Ellie, emblazoned across the stage, as tall as a movie screen. Please don’t let me cry rose up in my subconscious again, afraid of looking foolish amidst these hundreds of mourners. If you need to cry, cry spoke the pastor leading the service. If you need to laugh, laugh he gently reminded us.

And we did, the whole mess of us. Remembering, honoring, crying, laughing, mourning. The reality of death, the finality and unfairness of it all. The celebration of a brilliant young woman who packed more love and life in her 17 years than most of us ever will. The full spectrum of grief to joy and back again, shared in community in its untidy entirety.

Death, not so much an abstract concept anymore, but death as a part of life.

TWO: APRIL

“April is the cruelest month…” ~ T.S. Eliot

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln (April 14, 1865)

Adolph Hitler’s birthday (April 20, 1889)

The sinking of the Titanic (April 15, 1912)

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1968)

Chernobyl disaster (April 26, 1986)

Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995)

Columbine (April 20, 1999)

Virginia Tech shooting (April 16, 2007)

Deepwater Horizon explosion (April 20, 2010)

The Boston Marathon Bombing (April 15, 2013)

Prince died (April 21, 2016)

We’re in the homestretch, friends. Hang on. Care for each other. Pay attention. Love each other.

THREE: HEALING

The human body has always fascinated me. When I was young, I’d put my face up close to cuts and abrasions and study their progress of transformation. I’d watch as the inner tissue would begin to knit itself back together again and marvel at the way the body healed itself from the inside out. I wasn’t a scab picker, but I loved the moment the crusty lid of a wound would release to reveal the baby-pink skin beneath. I’d watch as the soft pink took on more color and after a week or two it took a bit of searching to find the spot of injury again. Bruises were cool, too. Such an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colors and healing just beneath the skin.

I love my scars.

The bumpy, keloid scar on my shoulder from a scald of spilled hot tomato soup. The lump of a scar on my right cheek where my brother clocked me with a ceramic mug of hot coffee and another scar on my nose from the sharp slice of the broken mug. The numb, white line of a sliver in my thumb from a slip of an Exacto knife while trying to get the very last bits of an expensive hair gel out a bottle. The straight slice of a laparoscopic scar from my appendectomy that sometimes gets mistaken for a bellybutton piercing. My right ankle, a multifaceted roadmap of scars from a broken and dislocated joint and slow-to-heal incision. If you tap the outside of my ankle, you can feel the metal plate and screws that live there.

A story for every imperfection. Each wound creating the complexity of a human life, each one a unique journey of pain and healing.

My surgeon warned me that the incisions on my ankle might be slower to heal because of it being further from my heart. Less circulation. He was right. Even once I was cleared to walk again, the surgical sites stayed open and sometimes angry. I cared for them meticulously, but worried about my upcoming trip to the coast where I’d be tempted to put my feet in the ocean. Just be careful, the surgeon advised. My eyes rolled. I was over three months post-op and weary of my limitations.

I’m not sure I know how to be at the ocean’s edge and not let the icy Northwest coast salt water wash up over my feet and ankles. It always seems like a necessary baptism.

Each night, I’d make sure any sand and grit was rinsed free before applying antibiotic cream and bandages. I was careful.

Home again after five days at the coast, I bent over to inspect my wounds. I looked closer and was amazed to see the sure signs of healing. The incisions, less red and angry, no longer bearing a constant, sore ache. Edges beginning to knit together, the soft pink of new skin.

Holy water.

Heart wounds are deep and tricky. There’s often talk of healing after loss, but I don’t believe that. At least not in the way our tissues heal and over time we have to search for that place of injury again. Each loss I’ve suffered leaves a hole, a chasm, a fissure that always remains. No amount of stitches or time or carefully applied cream will close that space. But instead, a new normal. A beating heart, riddled with a tapestry of tender holes where love has lived. Unseen, but those holes forever filled with a soft ache of sadness.

Soon, my feet will be at the edge of that very same Northwest coastline again. The expected, sharp gasp of breath as I let the frigid waves lap and splash at my feet and ankles, toes curling into soft sand. Ebb and flow, wild and messy, an offering of tears and grief.

A necessary baptism.

Holy water.

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

~ Leonard Cohen

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three Things, Issue Thirty-Eight

Published on by trixie

ONE: CONTROL

Do you believe everything happens for a reason? asked the text that arrived late in the night. Awakened by my phone’s vibration, I squinted my eyes and struggled to make out the blur of words before rolling over and falling back asleep. Waking up the next morning, the question haunted me.

Do I believe everything happens for a reason? No. I believe that we desperately want to believe that there is Divine order in everything–the good, the bad and the ugly. To believe that there is some greater force at work when our life is crumbling down around us gives us hope and comfort and there’s nothing wrong with wanting hope and comfort. I get that.

But it’s not what I believe.

To believe that everything happens for a reason means that there was some Divine intentionality involved in the anguish of a vibrant, smart and kind teenage girl on the cusp of her life and her desperate choice to deliberately end it. To believe that it happened for a reason would imply that this soul was plucked out and chosen to suffer. Unlike this young woman–whose own steadfast faith shined like a beacon for others–I often struggle with my beliefs, but what I know for sure is this: any God I believe in would not intentionally inflict such horrific pain.

Our community has been pummeled by a series of unimaginable losses: the sudden, unexpected death of a husband and father; the accidental death of a local pastor’s son, on his way to complete his first year at college; the suicide of a high school freshman from a neighboring school down the road; and the suicide of a high school senior, a young woman I held close to my heart and for whom I grieve deeply.

Bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, the worst happens to the very best.

Did he have heart disease? Did he exercise? Had he been to the doctor recently? 

Was he paying attention? Was he drunk or on drugs? Was he on his phone and distracted?

Surely, there must have been signs. Did he seem depressed? Was she on medication? Was she being bullied? Didn’t her family know?

Our grasping for control shows up in the questions we ask. We want to make sense out of the senseless. We want to make sure that this doesn’t happen to us. Please, please, dear God, don’t let this happen to us.

I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, but I do believe in the strength and resiliency of human beings. Life will test us in ways we can’t comprehend–this is part of the mystery of life. There is wisdom and valuable perspective to be gained from the trials we go through, if we’re able to withstand the challenge and get to the other side where we begin to see the light of day again. I believe there is a circle of humanity that exists that connects those who have suffered to those who are suffering and in those connections we find solace and strength. Within those connections, we learn what it means to be fully human.

The truth is life is hard and some days it will crush you. The truth is mental illness is real and depression can be deceptive and insidious. The truth is some people’s superhero strength is their weakness. The truth is we have so little control over so much. The truth is scary.

The truth is we are not alone. You are never alone. Life can be hard but it can also be breathtakingly beautiful and full of joy and hope. A life well-lived is one of vivid contrasts.

We are all in this together.

TWO: GRIEF

In a lighter moment recently, I imagined our path through grief like sampling at a salsa bar–sometimes it’s fiery and fierce and you don’t think you’ll survive. Other times it’s mellow and slow-roasted with a familiar smokiness when we taste it on our tongue that brings back rich memories. Then there’s the astringent, bitter one when our impulse is to recoil and spit it out and rinse our mouth with something soothing. The surprisingly sweet salsa of grief–still sharp with spice but with the relief of sweetness on your palate at the end. The grief salsa I like the least is the one that takes you by surprise without warning. A sneak attack when you are just going about your day, not expecting the slap and sting. The one that brings me to my knees.

Grief looks like this: padding aimlessly through the house on a Friday morning, opening and closing the refrigerator, sniffing the butcher-papered package of ground chicken meant for meatballs you bought five days ago that you haven’t been able to fathom cooking since the black velvet blanket of sadness descended. Then repeating the same pattern three, four, sometimes five more times.

Grief looks like simultaneously wanting everyone to leave you alone and wishing a group of friends would appear at your door with a grocery store sheet cake and plastic forks.

Grief is inconvenient. Grief is messy. Some people will tell you they’re tired of your grief by encouraging you to “get over it”. They might use different words, softer words that mask the intent, but the message is the same. These people are not your friends.

Walking the path of grief means knowing where you stand within the concentric circles of the blast radius of the explosion, then reaching in to lend a hand, an ear, a shoulder to those standing much closer to the eye of the storm.

If you’re in the eye of the storm, grief means allowing us to help you.

Walking the path of grief is not the scenic route but there is no other way through. There are massive inclines that will test your stamina and your lungs will ache with effort. There are labyrinth-like switchbacks and dead ends that will play with your mind and make you think you’re losing it. You’ll encounter others on this path and it’s important to hoist those that are struggling on your stronger back, maybe just for a few steps. And when your legs shake and tremble, remember to rest. And then get up and take one more step forward.

Grief feels like the skin on your face drawn dry and tight by so many salty tears and snot. Eyelids so swollen that lashes retract and disappear.

Grief means tucking yourself into bed at night and realizing that you didn’t feel that sharp sadness today and then feeling guilty about it.

Grief means looking out the window and wondering how the world can keep going when everything in your world seems to have ended.

Grief means remembering that life is for the living and through our living, we honor those we have lost.

One more step. Just one.

And that’s how we get through. There is no other way.

THREE: PRAYER

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is…” ~ Mary Oliver

This past week I have prayed like a motherfucker.

My faith has always waxed and waned, but I know how to pray. One of my favorite prayers I learned at the Lutheran church I attended for about a decade included the words, ” Dear God, help me in my disbelief.” Even as the daughter and granddaughter of ministers, I was always encouraged to question. Blind faith was for fools, I was taught, and my parents didn’t raise a fool. When I was younger and went through challenging times, my mother would often say, “I’ll pray for you.” I wasn’t sure who or what exactly my self-described heathen of a mother was praying to, but I liked that she did.

Eyes closed, squeezing out more tears than I imagined I could ever produce, holding the warm hand of this young woman I loved. Please, God, please. Please. I felt like a hypocrite, desperately reciting clumsy petitions to a God whose viability I regularly questioned. Awkward and afraid, I asked her sister if she wanted to lead us in a prayer, knowing how much faith meant to this family in so much pain. And with composure and fortitude and conviction fitting someone decades older, we gathered around the hospital bed and she did.

In that moment, I felt comfort. I exhaled.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

I prayed like a motherfucker this week, praying for a miracle. I prayed that the brain damage would be miraculously reversed and this beloved young woman would sit up in her bed, yank out the tubes that were keeping her alive and laugh at the crazy joke she played on all of us. But this young woman with the mischievous glint in her eyes and deep belly laugh walked in kindness above all else. She would never have thought it was funny to worry and hurt so many people she loved.

So what exactly are we praying for? someone asked me.

Peace. Comfort. Understanding.

I don’t know, I answered.

My daughter dreamed of the young woman and her sister with whom she had shared so many memories. In the early morning hours of the day this young woman took her last breath, my daughter had a dream of being embraced in a hug with these two dear friends of hers. The young woman, consoling her sister and her friend, repeating these words over and over and over again:

It’s gonna be okay. It’s all gonna be okay.

But right now, it’s hard as hell.

 

 

 

 

Three Things, Issue Thirty-Seven

Published on by trixie

It’s been a brutal week. Hellish even, with multiple punches to the gut and solar plexus that make me feel like I’m drowning. I’ll get my bearings enough to reach for something to grasp onto, only to be sucker punched while I’m looking the other way. This is the tough gristle and jaggedy bone of life. The stuff you never want to have to deal with but you do, riding all the waves of grief and ache, letting each pass through until the next one inevitably hits.

Life and death.

It’s not my intention to be alarmist or unnecessarily coy and I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t right now. Don’t worry about me because I’m okay–this is more about the people I love and my community at large.

Today, here are three things that matter.

ONE: LOVE

At the end of our lives, all that will matter is who and how we loved.

This is not an original thought, nor terribly earth-shattering and certainly not very complex. But it’s not an empty, airy-fairy platitude either.

I taught my yoga classes last week on the theme of “keep it simple”. As humans, we are gifted these phenomenal brains that like to over-think, analyze and criticize. While critical thinking and an analytical mind can serve us in many realms, we often let our brains get in the way when it comes down to our relationships.

Love hard and long. Love as clearly as possible. Love without regret.

Keep it simple. Love each other. And allow others to love you, in all those bumbling, imperfect ways that we humans tend to do.

TWO: ATTENTION

Pay attention to those you love and how you love. Pay attention to what’s going on within you.

If we’re lucky enough to live a few decades, it’s inevitable that we strap some pretty impressive baggage to our backs and lug it from one relationship to the next. No one gets out of here with a perfect record.

So take a few moments each week to pull your head out of the rat race, unplug from the busy effort of day-to-day living and get quiet. Notice your breath, notice what comes up. Sit with it. Squirm a bit. Watch yourself want to leave but stay anyway. Your breath serves as your anchor.

It’s so simple and not easy at all. Paying attention is one of the most valuable practices we can do for ourselves and with others.

Bring that quiet awareness to your loved ones. What do you notice? Listen. Listen to what they say and listen to what they don’t say or maybe can’t say. It’s not our job to be mind-readers of the people we love, but it’s important to recognize that we all have moments when we struggle to express ourselves clearly.

Look up from your phone, from your work, from your navel and look around. Pay attention.

THREE: GRACE

And when you screw up–because we all do–give yourself grace. Then, take a handful of that grace and share it with someone else.

We all stumble and fall. I know it doesn’t always look that way from the outside. Scan your social media feed on any given day and look for evidence of an imperfect life and you might be searching for awhile. There’s always been the tendency to want to “keep up with the Joneses” or gaze longingly at your neighbor’s greener grass but social media has heightened our propensity for comparison to others. Those exotic vacations, all the happy family holidays, the sexy new jobs and fancy, expensive meals that it seems like everyone else is partaking of but you. Extend that grace to the folks who put the extra effort into portraying a perfect life and understand that it usually stems from our basic human desire to be loved.

Grace. It’s so simple.

When you get caught up in the minutiae of life and you miss the bigger picture, grace.

When you love others without first unpacking all that complicated baggage strapped to your back, grace.

When the people you love love you back in their messy, imperfect ways that we humans tend to do, grace.

At the end of the day, grace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Press Pause (or, One Thing)

Published on by trixie

I’m taking this week off, dear readers. I’ll be back next week with another installment of Three Things but until then, here’s a little something I wrote about Easter just one year ago.

HALLELUJAH, INDEED

I was in my early thirties and my mom was still giving me an Easter basket.

My extended family of siblings and nieces and nephews had gathered at my eldest sister’s property in Redmond for our annual Easter egg hunt and my mom, with an index finger pressed to her lips to ensure secrecy, beckoned me to her bedroom. Don’t tell anyone, she admonished as she handed me a brown wicker basket filled with lavender plastic grass and Cadbury eggs. I giggled. I was the youngest of seven and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a bit of preferential “baby of the family” treatment now and then.

Easter used to be a big deal. I am the daughter and granddaughter of Lutheran ministers and understood the significance of the holiday in Christian theology. As a young girl, Easter Sunday meant big, formal dinners with relatives we rarely saw. Ham, scalloped potatoes, asparagus. Rhubarb pie, if we were lucky. The Saturday evening before Easter was always spent curled over mugs of vinegar-scented egg dye, creating colorful hard-boiled eggs in pastel hues. As we got older and my siblings had their own babies, the holiday moved north to Redmond, to my sister’s five acres in the woods. She spent hours of effort planning, stuffing and hiding dozens upon dozens of plastic eggs throughout the dewy flora and fauna. The egg hunt was a production of grandest proportions and afterward we’d gather for another feast–less formal by now and punctuated by happy shrieks from babies and toddlers–but no less magnificent.

By the time my kids were born, the five acres had been sold and the annual egg hunt pretty much retired. The Mister and I spent a decade or so doggedly attending church at a progressive Lutheran congregation nearby. I had a close friendship with the pastor who confided in me that in clergy circles “Holy Week” (the week between Palm Sunday and Easter) was widely regarded as “Hell Week” due to its demands on church leaders. For a few years, I did the whole shebang–smudge of ash on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, congregational soup suppers during Lent, waving palm fronds on on Palm Sunday. And then, after a less-ambitious egg hunt in our surburban yard, we’d drag our kids to the Easter Sunday service. The normally half-empty worship sanctuary now bursting at the seams with the C & E parishioners, or “Chreasters”–those folks who only step into a church on Christmas and Easter. It wasn’t long before our family decided to skip the crowded holiday service altogether and enjoy our deviled eggs by ourselves.

I made a valiant attempt to keep the Easter train chugging. I offered to host a big dinner at my house, but by now most of my sibling’s families were grown and moving on to other traditions. Last year, with my son in Philadelphia and myself in Portland at a writing workshop, I bemoaned the fact that Easter was, in fact, dead. “It’s not like we ever really did anything to celebrate,” my daughter said. Ugh. That made me sad.

So, this Easter, with my kids now 22 and 18, there will be no baskets filled with fake grass. (The cats always ate that stuff anyway, and we’d find it, well…you know, later.) I completely understand my mom’s insistence that I still got a basket, even when I probably shouldn’t have. It’s that last-gasp-grasp to cling to the way things were. Honoring traditions that perhaps have been worn hollow. Wanting to halt the passage of time. A desire to keep our kids (and maybe ourselves, too) just as they were, as opposed to embracing who they are now. I get that. Holy Jesus and Mary, I totally get that.

Instead of ham, there will be salmon on the grill. Green beans and smashed potatoes. Homemade peanut butter eggs and bags of the only candy that counts on Easter–those little chocolate Cadbury eggs with pastel-colored crunchy shells.

Hallelujah. Happy Easter.

Three Things, Issue Thirty-Four

Published on by trixie

I’m going back to basics this week, pals. Returning to the original format of Three Things, mostly because I can only mine the deep, dark depths of my soul for so long before I need to come up for air. Excuse me while I suck in as much life-giving oxygen as I can. In the meantime, here’s this week’s Three Things.

SOMETHING I’M LISTENING TO: EVERYTHING, ON SPOTIFY

Music is the marrow in my bones, the plasma in my veins, it’s the pump of my heart that sends life pulsing through my body. Raised in a house filled with a full spectrum of art, music has always been the most powerful influence in my life.

It seems just like yesterday and also a million miles ago when I sat in a Starbucks in the early 2000s and breathlessly picked out ten songs of my own choosing and burned my very own custom CD at one of their now-defunct Hear Music bars. Not long after that, iTunes launched and shivers shot down my spine when I realized I had a seemingly limitless library of music at my fingertips in my very own home. Down the rabbit hole I tumbled, sometimes losing myself searching for and downloading music for hours on end. When the first iPods were introduced, my mind was officially blown. My mom was still alive when I tried to explain to her how thousands of songs could be stored on this wee device. I don’t think she ever quite grasped the concept.

My kids have chided me for holding onto to my quaint iPods and allegiance to iTunes for so long. Although I may not be quite ready yet to surrender my tiny blue iPod Shuffle that clips to the hem of my shirt while I’m sweating on the elliptical, I am slowly coming around. I know music streaming is where it’s at and I need to start putting all my eggs in one basket, musically speaking.

Spotify has been around for ten years now. Developed in Sweden, it was an easy choice. I’ve actually had a Spotify account for a number of years, but only recently upgraded to their premium service. I love that I can listen to Bach on Sunday mornings and obscure 70s disco tracks while I cook and switch between the two with a tap of my finger. Chill downtempo dubs? Yes. Trap and 80s house music? Sure! A little Chet Baker vibe mixed with early Johnny Cash? It’s all so easy and right there. Of course I have my favorite songs and artists, but nothing thrills me more than to discover brand spankin’ new music. That never-before-heard song that makes you swoon, that artist that blows your mind, that one trigger that sends you down the rabbit hole again and sets your soul ablaze. Once you’ve used Spotify for awhile, their Discover Weekly playlists become more and more perfectly customized to your tastes. It’s like cracking open the most beautiful Easter egg and discovering oodles of shimmering gems inside.

By the way, did you know Madison McFerrin is Bobby Mcferrin’s (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”) daughter and her music is dreamy and to-die-for? Thanks, Spotify.

I create custom playlists for all my yoga classes and am often approached about the music I play. With over a hundred playlists on my iTunes account, I’m in the process of switching them over to Spotify so that folks can eventually access all my playlists there. I’ve linked my Facebook to my Spotify account, so feel free to find and follow me on Spotify–my user name is “trixiekat”. Once there, you’ll be able to see what rabbit hole I’m presently in and maybe even take a tumble down alongside me.

C’mon in and join me. We’ll hang out.

SOMETHING I’M COOKING: HARISSA CHICKEN AND CHICKPEAS

Speaking of rabbit holes, lately you’ll find me in the one filled with chickpeas.

Honestly, I’m not a big fan of hummus, but give me chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans) in their whole, unadulterated form and I’m in heaven. In my younger days, I’d often crack open a can and just eat them on their own. So when I found myself searching for a way to put a jar of harissa paste to good use, this recipe caught my eye.

Trader Joe’s is my favorite place to discover inexpensive little jars of interesting condiments, sauces and seasonings. The bright and fiery orange-red jar of harissa called my name and I dropped it in my shopping cart without much forethought about what I’d use it for. I brought it home and there it sat in my pantry–always so pretty and inviting, but mysterious and exotic, like that attractive stranger you notice in line at the coffee shop but can’t imagine ever talking to.

So now what the hell do I do with it?

After a bit of research, I learned that harissa is a smoky-spicy condiment from Northern Africa–Tunisia, to be exact. Made from peppers and spices, its purpose can be as simple as swirling a small smear into your scrambled eggs for a morning jolt of zing or making it the featured player in a more complex dish. You can make your own harissa fairly easily, too, and thereby control the heat a bit more. Apparently, each jar and tube of harissa can vary widely in the hotness department, so make sure you give yours a nibble before dumping the whole thing in your pan.

The Trader Joe’s harissa packs a mighty punch. You’ve been warned.

I know the Instapot is all the rage these days, but if you don’t have a well-seasoned cast iron pan, don’t even start with me. My cast iron pan gets at least as much use as any of my other cookware and yields results that you just can’t get in a standard frying pan. Cast iron easily withstands a high heat to get a wonderful caramelized crust on things like veggies and meat, and then can get tossed right into the oven for finishing. This recipe can be made without a cast iron pan, but it’s so much better and easier with one.

Harissa Chicken and Chickpeas uses bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs which I adore. You can probably substitute boneless, skinless thighs, or even chicken breasts if you must, but why pay more for less flavor? I love the crispy sear the skin develops with the high heat and the meat cooks better, tastes better and stays super tender when cooked on the bone. You can play around with the amount of chicken stock, giving it more or less sauce as you see fit. I was grateful to have a pile of couscous flavored with stock alongside the chicken to cut the heat a bit. Plain yogurt with a drizzle of good olive oil would be a nice, cooling accompaniment as well.

The best part of Harissa Chicken and Chickpeas is that it’s done in one pan–simple, inexpensive, packed with flavor and spice. Also, chickpeas.

More chickpeas, please. And pass the harissa.

SOMETHING I’M DOING: THE HARD THINGS

My parents gave me many gifts, not the least of which are my love of music and cooking really good food. But in the area of discipline and buckling down and doing the really hard things, they were a bit remiss. I like to give them ample grace, though, knowing that I came along as a seventh surprise towards the end of a wild, crazy ride. I get it. They were tired.

As I grew into a teenager and young adult and found myself faced with a daunting challenge or two, my mom would wring her hands and tell me I could quit. Sometimes she told me I should quit. She hated seeing me upset. Granted, I’ve always tended to feel and express things in big ways–I’m not much for subtlety or a poker face. As a mom myself now, I understand how tough it is to see your kid struggle. But you know, it’s not about the mom. It’s about the kid learning what it means to do the hard things. And how.

Yoga has been my greatest teacher on learning how to do the hard things. Physically, without a doubt–putting in the time and effort to build enough strength, endurance and body awareness to take myself into more advanced postures was where it began. But then came the mental test. Holding a simple pose for an extended period of time, watching my mind shift into overdrive and doubt. Convinced I can’t withstand the challenge, daydreaming of leaving my body and running out the door to find relief. Overwhelmed with fear and self-loathing, my worst enemy is almost always myself.

I’m still learning how to get out of my own way.

So it goes with writing. There is a common misconception that writing comes easily to writers. Any ease of writing that I’ve developed has come primarily from practice, not from any innate gift of creativity or expression. I think most writers would agree that while writing is not easier for us, it is much more necessary.

And sometimes it’s necessary to do the hard things.

Week after week, I write. I struggle. I doubt. I want to quit. My pity parties are unparalleled. Over time, I’ve grown more comfortable with writing poorly so that I can go back, revise and write better. I watch my mind flail and falter into the same self-defeating thoughts I’ve learned to identify in my yoga practice. Through my yoga, I begin to make the connections. I start to understand how I am prone to undermining my very necessary writing practice as well.

And so it goes with life. We show up. We don’t quit. We write that first word of the first sentence of a new paragraph and cringe. We do the hard, necessary things and maybe, just maybe, it gets easier.

I’ll make the playlist and bring some really good food along the way.