I will die if I don’t eat.

As a child, every morning upon rising, I recall my mother’s first words:

I will die if I don’t eat something when I wake up.

I think truisms from our youth get absorbed like sun rays on the skin, changing our color into a new shade of desperation. And so I too became convinced that imminent death awaited those who did not eat upon rising.

Perhaps this self induced anxiety contributed to food issues later in life.

For my own children, though, not wanting to become my mother, I moderated the declaration:

I cannot function if I don’t eat first thing in the morning.

Somehow that seemed closer to the truth for a gypsy mother raising children, which I considered a step up from the wolf mother who raised me. Lest you find that a harsh description, bear in mind this is the mother who declared her entire lifetime that she adhered to the parenting practice of benign neglect. Her pride in having mastered that technique was palpable. The fact that it horrified everyone who ever heard her declare it always escaped her attention.

For some reason, many of her truisms were sustenance related.

If you drink water, you will get worms.

Every child needs to eat a pound of dirt a year.

When you are young, these truisms get internalized, I think, often in ways too deep to be easily recognized by our daily, conscious, functioning self. But since I am no longer young, I have been experimenting these last few years testing the hypotheses that have ruled my existence for all of my life. And here is what I have discovered:

I do not die if I don’t eat when I get up.

Every sunrise finds me walking on a coffee fueled adventure, and my dead body has yet to be left on the trail. I have not had to drag my calorie deprived body down the trail nor boost it into my car. Some mornings, I manage to hike without even having coffee in my system.

The world is full of miracles.

In fact, I have found that I don’t die if my lunch happens at 3 pm instead of noon, or my dinner at 7 pm instead of 5 pm on the dot. So much anxiety in my youth was fueled by what would happen if meals did not occur on a regular, arbitrary schedule, regardless of connection to actual hunger.

I might also point out that though I am a copious water drinker, I have yet to be diagnosed with worms. To be fair, my mom did grow up in a time when water purification was not a priority, so this may have been true for her. But we were raised in a time when a simple turning of a handle on a faucet brought unlimited, safe drinking water.

The world is full of miracles.

And as for the pound of dirt? Unless you count the dusty expectations that were never met, or the shifting sands of my own perceptions, I believe I am pretty dirt free.

Of all the truisms, though, that infiltrated my developing soul, the most damaging was this:

Mitchell women are different.

This was usually uttered when confronted with a woman who seemed put together and strong and confident. Mom would let me know in no uncertain terms that women like this were shallow and not worthy of imitation.

Since everything admirable in other women was met with derision, I stopped observing or emulating to protect myself from her disapproval and thus never learned the language and culture of women until I spent a week in the North Cascades wilderness on the first all women Outward Bound journey.

That is a story for another time, but I will tell you that the most valuable lesson from the journey was simply this:

Mitchell women are women,

part of a tribe characterized by courage, compassion, and grace, and linked forever together by our shared experience in a world that fails on far too many occasions to notice and acknowledge our strengths and our innate competence, individually and collectively.

We are the glue that holds the world together, whether we dress in designer clothes or tattered jeans. We are the heart and soul of humanity, whether we have monthly pedicures or leave traces of hand clipped toenails on the worn carpets that cover our floors. And we are the conscience of this human existence, whether we run board meetings or cry ourselves through another diaper change, exhausted and alone.

We are women, regardless of our last names or upbringing, and we are a better tribe when we celebrate each other and lift each other up, disdaining the eye of judgement and embracing the heart of acceptance for our unique abilities and passions.

So go forth, tribe members.

Eat breakfast whenever you want…or not. Drink lots of water without fear. And don’t worry about the dirt. Leave it where it is on the ground.

It was never meant for you anyway.

I need a leash

Six months ago we became “people who have a dog to walk every morning.” Nearly every dawn, from below freezing to over 80 degrees, we have walked at Canoa Historic Ranch because, we tell ourselves, “it’s Zuni’s favorite place to walk.”

For many months, we were content to let her walk beside us on a leash. But as her confidence grew, we wanted to train her to be off leash but still on the trail. It was an easy journey, as she is very content to be with her tribe.

A non-reactive dog, she has been surprised by deer crossing the trail, flocks of birds flying in front of her face…every manner of creature surprising her, and yet she cares not. She often stares with a bored indifference as she studies the activity like a person would a bug in a jar. She seems to be content of be “free” but still tethered in her spirit to the trail.

Not so for Ginger, a rescue we would regularly meet on the trail. We would often catch sight of her bounding through the desert territory with reckless abandon oblivious to the dangers, and her owner, herself accustomed to the wilds of Alaska, simply equipped her dog with a large bell in order to keep track of her.

I thought of Ginger this morning when Zuni and I walked the trail, sans The Boy. Taking our normal route, I noted her “alert” body stance and careful sniffing. We were nearing “Coyote corner,” an area that we walk through every morning. But never if The Boy is not with us.

Even off leash, she stopped, turned, and then sat down facing the opposite direction and assumed the “put on my leash” look. Complying, I then waited until she was ready to move. When she did, it was away from the dangers she could smell but I could not see.

Moving away from danger, she was confident and quick moving, leading the way as she would do when off leash, but feeling more secure connected by the leash. Her spirit knew that a better choice than moving unhindered towards the danger was moving away, tethered, to safe boundaries.

Oh, how I wish I had learned that lesson earlier in life. I spent most of my young life living like Ginger, craving absolute freedom, ignoring the real dangers around me, and thinking I could move through life “unleashed” without consequences.

But there are always consequences.

In these reflective years, it is impossible to look back and not see a swath of destruction left in the wake of my “absolute” freedom. And perhaps of all the ill effects, the most damaging were to my own soul.

Over the decades, I have come understand that true freedom comes from having boundaries, and that being “on leash” is necessary to protect me from my “Ginger” nature. Living life untethered left too much wreckage in the rear view mirror.

Yes, I still adventure and still lack discernment when it comes to being “off road”. Thinking through a spur of the moment thought is a skill still in infancy for me, especially when it comes to exploring new places and experiences.

But when it comes to matters of the human heart, being on leash is simply a kinder, gentler, safer way to interact with the world around me. It keeps me close to my tribe. It keeps me protected from real but unseen dangers.

And it leaves no trail of regrets.

The other side of fear

Having endured the, “just throw her off the dock and she will learn to swim,” philosophy of child rearing, my fear of water became deeply ingrained after being forced to “walk the plank” on a family camping trip.

The lake into which I was tossed, inaccurately named Clear Lake, was in fact a shallow, crappie filled lake which, in summer heat, resulted in a fair number of dead fish floating on the surface. That fateful day when forced off the dock and into the tepid water, upon surfacing I noticed a young boy picking up the chant of the children on shore. “Look at all the dead fish….look at all the dead fish.”

He turned toward me in the brightly colored inner tube and continued his chant. It was not until he was fully turned that I noticed the milky, unfocused, eyes. He was blind.

From that moment on, panic settled in my veins when around water.

It exploded at odd times. Once on Lake Chelan, seeing the clear water and telling myself nothing bad was in the water, I attempted water skiing. When I fell and had to wait for the boat, screams engulfed every fiber of my being, and when I was finally pulled in, I was swallowed in paroxysms of uncontrollable sobbing. When fear finally settled down, embarrassment rushed in to take its place.

That memory made it difficult to consider a family trip to Hawaii, but the family seemed excited, so I reasoned the clear water would make it okay. The first day, as the rest of the family dove in. I stood on shore, bile rising in my throat with shame as a chaser.

Left to my own devices on shore, I put my toes in the water and practiced deep breathing until my heart rate settled down. Then another inch deep and breathing. Then another and another. Gradually, I was up to my knees…still breathing and still fearful.

But I was in.

Each trip to the islands, I repeated the ritual, but made it a little further until I was able to snorkel. Always tethered to a body board “just in case”, Tim had to swim next to me holding my hand. The next trip it became okay to just hold his shirt as we swam side by side. Then perhaps just a foot or so away.

One summer at Waimea Bay during calm waters, I started out next to Tim, as was my ritual, so I could feel safe. But a flicker of movement caught my eye as a sea turtle swam below me near the bottom of the sandy sea. Transfixed, I began to slowly follow, noting how the flippers cut through the current and how the sun shafts slipping through the water made plaid patterns of light on the shell.

Feeling tired, I came up to clear my mask, and when I turned towards shore, an awful realization hit me. Tim was nowhere to be found, and I could see the shore a considerable distance away. Old familiar feelings began to creep up my throat, stalking me with crippling memories and promises of dangers in the deep.

Breathe deep…breathe deep.

Somewhere in the middle of my breathing, my whole body relaxed. I let my legs hang loose in the deep waters as I soaked in the view of families in the distance on shore. Tim’s form could be seen far ahead snorkeling around a rock, set free from the tyranny of my fear. And a new emotion enveloped me.

I was free.

Free of the paralysis of old memories.

Free of the fear of the unknown.

Free of my inability to find a clear path to joy.

There is an old saying in spiritual circles that you keep moving through doors until God closes one. But my fear of water taught me a different lesson. Sometimes the door that starts to close has a large name plate that reads, FEAR, and sometimes we need to stick our foot in that closing door and walk through anyway.

Monsters were not waiting to devour me in the sea.

Beauty was waiting to engulf my spirit and expand my soul.

And, as I have been discovering, the rest of my fears have contained the same promise.