Tattoo

Body art is like memoir. Wearable, life long memoir. Tattoos are visual story tellers. They speak in pictures of what lies beneath the skin. View someones tattoo and you have a window into their soul, even if that soul has morphed or evolved dramatically since the art was inked. At some point that tattoo was their life in a portrait. 

Not all tattoos are beautiful or even G rated. Perhaps that's why I love them. Many are like the scars of the heart, seen by the naked eye. Tattoos are evidence of living. Like intimate history texts, or photographic diaries.  They represent struggles, wars, hopes and dreams or even just drunken nights. It is why I can forgive a skull with a knife through its eye and why I understand the cartoon dancing pig or even the well endowed red hair woman wearing more smile than anything else. Tattoos are evidence. Life happened to these people. Not all of it was pretty. And that's why I think tattoos have value. I agree, they are not for every one, but tattoos are memoir. And here in lies my fascination.

As a writer of memoir people often tell me they don't read my genre. I beg to differ. They do. Everyone reads memoir, they just don't see themselves as readers of personal stories. Perhaps they aren't able to interpret those stories, but they are there to be read.  Anyone who has a relationship with another human is reading memoir. Body language is memoir, conversation is memoir, paintings, photographs, love letters, any letters, any time we show ourselves to another person in any capacity we reveal who we are. And that is memoir. In the broad sense of the word, it is personal narrative.

Memoir is everywhere in our world. Personal narratives are constantly on display. Tattoos if you will, of life and living, in all its brazen glory. If you are a writer like me, you are likely as fascinated by people as you are words. As taken by interpreting memoir as you are creating your own fictional landscapes. 

The power of well written memoir is that the reader is more acutely aware of the intimacy they are sharing. And the better the writing the more mind blowing that intimacy is, and the more profound what we, the reader, are able to take from it. The authors of great memoir give us something fiction cannot.  Real life. But more than that, it is the meaning and purpose of real life through another's eye. Memoir is a walk in another humans' shoes, or perhaps a walk in another humans' soul. 

Like tattoos, memoir is human narrative that will be with us for life. Memoir is the imprint of living which we leave for future generations. May your memoir count. Your tattoo be something you want to live with, and your memoir reading be as wide and varied as life itself.

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Words Save Me

If I ever need a gray day to look brighter I take cover under lavish words. The kind you can spread above yourself and color your skies. The kind you can stretch upwards until it seems like tomorrow is not so far out of reach. Words that drip from books and then bloom under my feet. Words that seed themselves in my heart. Words I can gather and use to softly line the inside of my thoughts. Words I can climb into and climb out of at will. Words that give a grasshopper wings and a tree its roots.

These are the kinds of words I feast on and swim in and dine with.
This is the reason I wish my house was made of books. Because you can huff and puff and blow, but the words remain on the page. Like anchors. Like lighthouses. Words come for me. They rope me in. They throw life rafts and inflatable rings. They call my name in the shadows of life. They sound through my fogs. And they wait patiently for me to write them.

Words save me. Repeatedly. Whether I am reading or writing. Words fill in the gaps when my heart struggles to beat.

I will forever be thankful.

What about you? What do words mean to you?

Life, In Spite of Me

Life, In Spite of Me by Kristen Jane Anderson with Tricia Goyer

Every now and then a book harnesses the power of words in a way that makes you believe language was invented for the sheer purpose of this story. Some words reach out past the confines of pages and print that hold other words back. Some words open the palms of their hands to release a fragile winged thing we know as hope. Some words reveal the scars on the way to healing and show that there is beauty in brokenness and value and purpose in life, especially when we least see it. This book is such a book. 

Kristen Anderson chose death. She lay across the train tracks waiting to leave pain behind. And she was given life.  

This is the story of how she found the gift in her living. 

I can't say it better than Kristen herself,

"To anyone who has ever questioned the point of life or wondered why you're alive, and to those who want to help the hurting. This book is for you." 

I read this book in three hours straight. You won't want to put it down either. If you've ever questioned the point of memoir or the power inherent in sharing our stories, exposing the dark to the light, then take a gamble on this book. When I was walking through the graveyard of my life, many people around me told me they did not know how to help. They did not know what to do. This book is what to do. Have it on your bookshelf. And offer it out freely to every bleeding soul you meet. Connect. Be the person who says,

"Here is the story of someone who found hope. Do you want to read it?"

You never know how your words may matter. 

And if you are reading this right now feeling nothing but a void around you, profoundly alone, then Kristen has this to say to you, "Suicide is never the answer. There is too much to live for. Keep fighting. Please don't give up. Reach out for help. you won't regret it... God has an amazing plan for your life, even if you don't have a plan for yourself. He has hope, even if you don't have hope for yourself. He loves you immensely, even when you don't love yourself. He see beauty in you, even when all you see is a mess."

There is help for hurting lives. I would not say it if it were not true. 

Visit www.reachingyou.org to find out more.

Kristen's book is available from amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Spite-Me-Extraordinary-Choice/dp/1601422520www.amazon.com/)

And WaterBrookMultnomah.com

And because I believe in the book I am going to buy another copy and give it away to someone who reads this blog. If you want to win a copy please leave me a comment in comments section of this post, or email me at tab[at]zaeya[dot]com and tell me why you want to own this book.

Thanks.

Tab

X

Alive

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who come alive."

 ~ Howard Thurman

On bad days, when the clouds hang wet and low in my skies, I think about this quote. Sometimes I think too many of my life's decisions were made out of fear of really living. And then I think back to the places I've lived and the valleys I have walked through. And while I may not have climbed to the top of Everest yet, I have climbed none the less. 

Because I wanted to come alive I realize that in many ways I have lived. And in living I have come alive. I have pushed my limits just trying to be me. And though I fail more often then not, the desire to be fully alive has introduced me to many places and many people, not in the least myself.  

That simple desire, to live, to come alive, is why I got married. It is why I taught in Hong Kong. It is why I knew I had to see Colorado's Rockies, the Effeil Tower, the impossibly clear seas of the Maldives, and every other place I 'wasted' my money traveling to. 

It is why I wanted to be a mother. And what keeps me going when that desire means wiping, washing, sticky fingers and tears. Lots of tears. Theirs and sometimes mine. It is why I stay married. Why I love. Why I risk the hurt associated with opening your life to another human. It is why I coffee with friends and movie with him. It is why I box. It is why I run. It is why I eat cupcakes when perhaps I shouldn't. It is why I call myself a Christian. Why I long to know Him better. Why I pour my life before out Him. And trip over myself learning to trust him

And it is why I write. 

Oh God. 

It is why I write. 

If there was nothing more that I ever got to do in this life, I realize that I have done already what makes me live. I just hope I get more days to color outside the lines and see how much more glitter I can add to the picture of me.

What about you? What makes you come ALIVE?

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Too Small Words

Thank You
Two Small Words
Too Small Words.
Really. Those words are too small.
We say thank you for doing the dishes, thank you for opening the jar, thank you for minding the kids, fixing the car, doing the ironing, weeding the garden etc etc. Thank you is fine in all these places.

But what about when you are saying thank you for being the one friend who didn't walk away from me, thank you for being the husband who stayed when I fell apart, thank you for the gift of my children, thank you for health and hope and days to live out my dreams and a place to call home?
What about thank you for listening, thank you for the arms around me while I cried, thank you for not finding me disgusting and pathetic when that is all I could find in myself? Thank you for standing with me on the edge of myself and holding on tight?
What about thank you for walking through the graveyard of my past and thank you for believing there is always a new dawn after midnight?

How is Thank you enough in any of those spaces?

I was thinking about all the people who have held me in different ways in different places in my life. I was thinking about the simple things they do and did that kept my world spinning during the last two years of my life. The smile. The touch. The phone call. The email. The listening. The mountains of listening. They have been apart of every stitch  made in this thing I call a fresh start, and I wonder, how Thank you is ever ever enough?

And then I took a mammoth look at how far I walked to get to a place of having so much to be thankful for. And I realized that no two words could have been harder fought for, or heavier to hold then the Thank You I have carried through all the valleys and across all the rivers in the past two years.

When I say Thank You I mean it with the determination of a climber who has finally scaled Everest. I mean it with all the heart of a mother holding her baby for the first time. I mean it with the passion of a reunited family.  And in all those places, in all those spaces 'Thank You', those two small words become oceans crossed. They become galaxies I give. They are infinite words. As deep as they are long. Timeless. Ageless. Full.
I mean them in my brokenness and in my strength. I am within those words.
So Thank You.

To those who know what I mean when I say them.
Thank you.

And you know who you are.

What about you?
I wonder, if you could fill thank you with everything you mean, what would it contain and who would you give it too?

PS- If you came by, commented, joined my blog, emailed me to touch base or simply read my words today, thank you.
It seems a simple thing you do, but to a writer a reading eye is never a small gift.
Thank you.
You get how I mean that, right?  :)

Hold the Rain

Have you tried to hold the rain?

It's spitting wishes dripping through

your boney fingers

where hope once was, there is now a damp feeling

something familiar

something you once though you might escape

Have you tried to hold the rain?

if only there were enough afternoons

to stitch together childhood

in between the leaves

underneath the flowers

Have you tried to hold the rain?

Pretend is not a game

it's a place a little girl lived

a cotton place

with candy floss

and good things, sweet and filling

Have you tried to hold the rain?

Tired from garden fairies

and needing home and bath

mother's arms

anyones arms

and a place to curl up and giggle

you left pretend to seek

Have you tried to hold the rain?

When the skies opened

you were the first to run

weed like

free

yet rooted in the earth

arms out stretched you wished

the cool on your face could last

Have you tried to hold the rain?

Another muddied mess

another gray day that came

and went

without the sun to follow

another cloud without its silver

a space left to fill with something

how many years would pass before

you found the words and writing

the life and family

that finally held the rain.

Cup your hands.

Have your tried to hold the rain?

~

What about you? Do you don't know what it is like to look up at opening skies and wish you could somehow make the cool it brings lasting? That used to be me. I have since found a way to hold that rain. It is in the words, the writing, the family and the love I build around me. What do words and family bring to your life?

When a Tiara Falls

The tiara fell from the head of a little princess who was rocked by hands that bruised and never told her she was beautiful.

Thirty years later I found it.

Mashing around in the crud of my past my fingers brushed against the edges of words that I wanted to caress me, but never heard in childhood and had little idea how to wrap around me now.

Yet there underneath my faded sense of worth lay the tiara, lost among all the diamond tears I have cried. Stained with rusted and dented, but still it was mine.

Today I put it on...

What about you? What have you lost? What have you found?

Dead Letter Department

There are some days when I wonder if what I am writing will ever matter to anyone other than me. Some days, hail from the grey sky days, I wonder if the written word matters at all. And then I am reminded...

I wanted to share this story with you. It is not my story and I did not write it. Sadly, the author is unknown to me. But the story is worth retelling because it says to me that words matter, especially if they only matter to one or two people.

~

A Writer in the 'Dead Letter' department of the Postal Service.

Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my
4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words:

Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you
in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as
my dog even though she got sick.I hope you will play with her. She likes to play with balls and to swim. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her You will know that she is my dog. I really miss her.
Love, Meredith

We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office. A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.

Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, 'To Meredith' in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, 'When a Pet Dies.' Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith

and this note:


Dear Meredith,
Abbey arrived safely in heaven.
Having the picture was a big help. I recognized Abbey right away.
Abbey isn't sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays
in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog. Since we don't need our
bodies in heaven, I don't have any pockets to keep your picture in, so I
am sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have
something to remember Abbey by.
Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you
write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I
picked her especially for you.
I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much.
By the way, I'm easy to find, I am wherever there is love.

Love,
God

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What about you? What reminds you that words matter?

A Fist Full of Colors

I have a fist full of colors. Possibilities attached to strings I hold in my hand. A fist full of breath. A fist full of life that has yet to be lived. Colors of dancing begging to be released, longing to float, waiting to fly...

but I hold them up to the sun and panic.

"What if?" I ask myself.

"What if?" I whisper to the vast blueness.

"What if I am not enough? What if I am too much?"

"What if no one comes to find me? What if everybody comes, but I can't be found?"

And the questions pluck the wings off butterflies.

They suck the air out of flight.

And suddenly what I am holding seems too small to have significance. Too many to expect them all to fly. Too few to think that if they did rise on the winds that any would weather the distance.

When I fist saw these colours they were not the strings in my hand attached to balloons, but the immature squiggles of coloring. My pudgy fingers clumped around a pencil I could not control and had no hope of using to turn into beautiful marks on a page.

The colors were just a mass of lines circling a page.

Free and wild.

Unplanned and unknown.

Some days at the bottom of wells I loose sight of the skies. Darkness places his cold face against my cheeks and curls his lips around lies. He nails rake across my skin telling me that I am empty. There no balloons. I never had anything worth releasing.

But I feel the tug at the end of strings. Something is in my hands. Something I care about. And I remember the colors. How I filled those childish drawings with life and longing. How I want things that matter. Things that were given to my heart to long for. Things that I want others to see. Colors. Free and Wild. Unplanned and still largely unknown.

When I climb up and out and find my feet beneath the skies again, I shake and shiver. The remnants of darkness that wants me alone and all to himself.

But I am here. Beneath the blue...

I have a fist full of colors. Possibilities attached to strings I hold in my hand. A fist full of breath. A fist full of life that has yet to be lived. Colors of dancing begging to be released, longing to float, waiting to fly...

Release them Tab. Nothing happens while you are holding on, except the holding. Let them go.

~

What about you? What do you hold in your hand and long to release?

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Ali anyone?

What we say lingers if it inspires others.

Muhammad Ali had 'fans' on both sides of the fence. Those that loved to hate him and those that hated to love him... but did anyway. The man was compelling. When he spoke he usually had an audience. In fact I think he did some of his best fighting with his mouth.

Those of you who have been following me for a little while, might know that I box. Real boxing. Real blood. Real sweat. Real tears. Okay, I haven't cried.

Yet.

Though some training sessions push me in that direction for sure!

Anyway, the gym where I train loves to quote the 'god' of our sport. Muhammad Ali's words can be found sprawled across our the top of our training schedules and across the message board. I love a good quote. And today I thought I'd share those that inspired me when I am dying a happy death doing push ups or 3min sparing practice...

(3 minutes is a damn long time sometimes!)

Funny, they are the same quotes that inspire me when I write...

MUHAMMAD ALI

"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."

"I hated every minute of training, but I said to myself, "Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."

"The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses- behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights."

How true is that?

A powerful mouth, no?

What about you? How is your 'fight' going behind the lines? Feel free to share the quotes that inspire your writing. I love a good quote :)

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Itch

Ever read Eat Pray Love? No? Me either. I am reading it at the moment. In the spirit of reading in the genre I write, I have read more memoirs this year than ever before. And I have a question. I want to know... what is my word?

In Elizabeth Gilbert's books she says (among many other lusty, pearl like sentences)

"...every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most people who live there."

She names a few cities and their 'words.'

In Rome the word is SEX.

In New York the word is ACHIEVE.

In LA the word is SUCCEED.

This got Matt (husband) and I thinking...

We came up with a few of our own.

In Hong Kong the word is WORK.

In Brisbane (Australia) the word is LIFESTYLE.

On the Gold Coast the word is SELF or possibly PLEASURE.

Families have words too.

In my family the word was SURVIVE.

In other families the word could be PERFORM, ACCEPT, REJECT, or maybe, just maybe, LOVE.

But far more important is the question, "What is my word?"

I asked Matt what he thinks his word is. He said, "MATTER." I like that. And that word is very telling. Matt wants to matter. He wants to make his life matter. He wants to matter to himself and to others, and most of all to those he loves. He wants to matter right now and later and after he is dead and gone. In fact, he especially wants to matter after he is dead and gone.

This word is one of the reasons I love Matt. He does MATTER. A whole lot.

But it didn't help me answer my question.

"What is my word?"

I said, "CREATE." Create my life, my words, my writing, my wants and desires and passions. Create myself...

But Matt thought it was more than that, because there is a reason I create. Something beyond the creation.

I agree. But I don't know what it is.

I've been thinking about it all night. And finally I have decided...

Life has many seasons and I think that in each season, and possibly even throughout that season, our word changes.

Mine used to be ESCAPE. It has also been WORK, IGNORE, RUN, HIDE and SEEK... Later the word became US, BABY and FAMILY. I have always wanted to own the word BELONG and HOME. Sometimes my word is CHILD and PLAY... occasionally it is ME.

But right now, in this season of life, my word is ITCH. Yes ITCH. Like a dog. I want... I really want and boy, oh boy does that make me ITCH.

I've tried ignoring the itch, running from the itch and scratching the itch... Then I thought to myself, "Tab, why don't you just be still with the itch?" I mean if you itch, and you can't stop the itch or escape the itch, then let's just quieten down and oh, I don't know.... notice the itch?All my life I have been busy moving around trying to minimise the discomfort, trying to do something about that itch. Trying to lead instead of follow. Trying to fill instead of empty. Trying to fix instead of allowing something to be broken. What about doing...nothing? What about just letting it ITCH?

So that's my plan. I have just decided to sit still and notice the ITCH.

What does it want? What does it tell me about what I want? What does it tell me about what I need and what direction I should go in order to give myself what I need?

I'm looking forward to finding out.

What about you? What is your city's word? What is your word? And what does that tell you about you?

Words Between Us

You slipped into my life sideways. Into the backseat of a conversation I’d been having with my parents since the day I was born. Words with broken glass edges that severed threads inside me. Empty words like drift wood on the  silence in ocean divides within my family. I picked up the glass pieces of those words, desperately searching for my reflection. There was nothing, and I hung my head in hopeless disgust.

But when you spoke I tasted laughter. And something else that I had no words for then. We were young. Very young. But the words were there. And slowly I lifted my head.

I was unprepared for you. What did I know about how good it would feel to be heard? What did I know about how to hear you? But you stayed. You spoke and it resonated inside me. You looked and you saw.

My own words were the rust on your hands, the cut from a barb, innocence mixed with brutality. And sometimes there was nothing to say. Nothing you could say. Nothing that would make anything better.

Words began to pass between us. Ripe words, bursting with the seeds of our future. New words. Words I had never spoken and never dared dream I would.

Some words were still spoken in darkness, others ventured their toes into the cool spring that ran between us.

Something flowed in the delicious scent of those words, good things we rolled around inside our mouths and sucked on like candy.

And marveled as I heard my own voice beginning to join yours.

How many words since then have passed between us?

Will you marry me?

Want to hold our son?

Can you hold me?

I love you.

And finally, when we realized we could each speak the words we need to hear for ourselves and for the other we whispered, I need you.

Happy Birthday, Matt.

The man who spoke my first giggle. How far we’ve come. May we speak, even as wrinkles fold their lines upon our faces and time eventually takes us with it.

 

 

Lost in English Translation

I don't know... I can't think straight today. I got in at some ungodly hour of the morning, actually it was only 1 am and I do remember, not that long ago, that 1 am was the start of many a great night out. I went to PINK's concert last night. UNREAL! UNREAL! UNREAL! I will come down from Planet Unreal at some point today, but seriously, what an amazing show. You just gotta admire a girl that can swing sixty odd feet in the air, hanging by one leg, and still manage to belt out her songs!

Okay, all that has absolutely nothing to do with today's post. Except that hearing Pink's accent last night did start me wishing that we were back in the USA. I sometimes find myself watching American sitcoms just to hear that accent. How is it possible to love two countries with equal passion? My eldest son was born there, so the USA will always have a special place in my heart. We lived in Denver for almost three years, working and traveling around, and I am blessed to have some amazing friends living there.

But, and here's what I wanted to post on today, I learnt that English is not always English. At the time we had just moved from Hong Kong, where we had more than a few communication frustrations, and I was breathing a sigh of relief upon arriving in the US. I wouldn't have to request an English speaker when going shopping or use sign language to direct a taxi driver. And I wouldn't have to barter in my broken Cantonese at the wet markets. I am Australian, they are American, but we all speak English... right?

But I was wrong. Often, very wrong. Okay, not about the wet markets, but I quickly learnt that our car had a trunk and not a boot, a hood and not a bonnet. A lovely Mexican working in KFC taught me that a biscuit is not a sweet food, but a dough like thing that went well with chicken. The word I was looking for was cookie. A lady in the LAX airport introduced me to the phrase, "Sit your fanny down!" while screaming at her runaway kids. The word 'fanny' has quite a different meaning over here. Let's just say that you wouldn't yell for your kids to sit down on it.

And my own mother (who came to visit) reinforced the concept that Australians and Americans are referring to very different items of clothing when they say the word 'thong'. I never could return to footwear department of Target after my mother yelled across the store, 'Gosh Tab, aren't these thongs just adorable!" "Flip flops, Mum. They are flip flops!"

And some of this vocabulary made it's way back to Australia with me when I returned. I still go searching all over the house yelling, um, asking, "Where's my damn cell phone?" when the term we use here is mobile. I still pack a diaper bag for my son, even though my mother loves to correct me. "It's a nappy bag, Tabitha! A N-A-P-P-Y B-A-G!"

Yeah, yeah.

I'm just grateful my son never had a pacifier. I would never hear the end of that one.

"A D-U-M-M-Y, Tabitha. It's a dummy!"

So, some words can not be escaped from, even though my accent has now washed and I can once again say 'G'day mate' without raising an eyebrow from my fellow Aussies. Actually, no one here says G'day mate, do they? Nor do we chuck another 'sanga' on the barbie. Although we definitely have BBQ's and heaps of sausages... now I'm hungry.

My point to all this? Nothing really. Just missin' the USA and wishing I could hitch a lift back to my other home with PINK.

So here's to PINK and all the Americans I love. You know who you are! :)

Oh, and I promise to get back to writing about books, bubs and... writing first thing next post. Promise!