The power of grace

and self-forgiveness

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

I can’t say I know how to do this, invite grace and forgive myself. I don’t think grace is something we control. I’m not even certain what it is. It’s one of those slippery words. It’s one of those I-know-it-when-I-see-it words. And I saw it, a moment ago.

I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write here. I’ve waited too long to write again, which means the works are gummed up. There was so much to write about, and I didn’t, and now that’s all past.

Then, I said to myself, focus on gratitude. I thought, I’m not running for my life from fire. I thought, I’m not cold, hungry. I thought, I’m not sick, not battling cancer. I looked down at my old girl Daisy, at my feet, her back resting against my foot, as always. I felt gratitude well up in me, knowing her days are numbered, with the big tumor in her mouth and the many vagaries of very old age.

I touched her and felt that gratitude. Then, I looked up, over the rooftops, out my kitchen nook window, and saw a figure walking in the morning sun past the auto dealership down the block and across the street. My home is perched up on a knoll so I looked down on this scene, and suddenly, tears sprang to my eyes, and I felt the ouch of the heart twinge. I felt utter compassion for this figure, tiny against the white stucco of the dealership splashed in bright morning sun along Broadway. How trusting he or she was to walk down Broadway in Oakland, this gritty, urban, crime-plagued city that is my home. How hopeful.

That flood of compassion is an interesting feeling. It’s difficult. It hurts. It makes me cry. But it also feels good in some weird way. It nails me to the spot. It brings me into the present. I spend most of my time and life, I believe, I’m learning, in anxiety. Parsing regrets from the past, future-tripping, worrying about money, castigating myself. Do I do this to avoid the painful feeling of the present? The unbearable lightness of being, as Milan Kundera put it?

People say now and again, You’re so hard on yourself. It’s true. I am. I saw my friend S. yesterday. I said, I don’t know why I didn’t pursue a career in the foreign service years ago. Everyone I meet on these calls are exuberant about their career choice. Just studying for the Foreign Service Officer Test is a revelation. It’s wonderful. I love everything I’m required to read and learn. History, government, civics, foreign policy, culture, geography, international relations, law. It’s so much fun. It’s pithy, a far cry from technology marketing, which I was mired in for the last several decades. Reading about technology and marketing trends never inspired me in the slightest.

I was mourning the lost time. But, S. saw it differently. She said, You were a single mother raising two kids. You had challenges with your ex- and his mental illness, and you took care of him too. You saved a lot of money with that job. You stayed focused. You wanted to be here until your daughter graduated from college, which she did last spring. You took a risk with your son and bought a four-plex in Oakland. This year, you took horticulture classes and created a garden from nothing. You joined the Peace Corps. You have the chance now to explore the foreign service, and you are. You’re doing great.

Why can’t I see that I’m doing great? All I can seem to see is how I’m missing the mark. And it’s hurting me. My shaky self-confidence is my biggest problem. I need to learn how to spin my life, my choices, in the positive, to recognize my accomplishments.

The other day, I went to Kaiser to get an EKG for the Peace Corps. I have a long list of medical tasks to complete before I depart in June. The woman in the little EKG room had me lie on a cot. She said, Okay, now relax. Then, she went over to a little machine.

You’re not relaxed, she said. Relax. I took a deep breath and let my shoulders sink into the surface of the cot.

You’re not relaxed, there’s still muscle tension. Please relax, she said.

Pause.

I can’t do the test if you don’t relax, she said.

As she kept ordering me to relax, I have to admit I was getting rather activated.

I breathed deeply and slowly.

You’re breathing too deep, she said. Breathe shallow.

I tried to breathe shallowly.

You’re not relaxed, she said.

This went on for some time. I was getting pissed.

Finally, she said, Okay, this will have to do. I think I got an image.

Jeez.

I was beyond annoyed, but the experience also scared me.

What if I don’t know how to relax? What is relaxation? Have I ever been relaxed? How do I know? What if my version of relaxed is someone else’s version of anxious and high-strung? And if this is true, what is this doing to my health?

That’s the thing. Now that I’m 56 and time is galloping along at a frightful velocity, I’m trying to focus on cultivating habits that will protect me from the worst of the pitfalls of aging.

I went to a dance class last night. The Filipino teacher said something like, It’s good you’re here, at dance. Sitting at home, you just sugar yourself.

I said, What? He said again, you just turn into sugar.

I thought that was interesting.

I’m observing it happening. I’ve spent the last several months watching movies on Netflix and Amazon. I’ve framed it as legit, even commendable, because I love film and want to understand and know more about it and see the really good stuff. For the most part, I do, but sometimes, I settle for garbage, and I always feels exactly the same as I do after I eat half the cake on the counter. Yucky, shaky, bloated, wasted, ashamed.

I don’t have much of an eating disorder, but sometimes I go to town on sugar. Maybe you know what I mean.

I have amazing news to report on this front though. I had developed a nightly drinking habit. It’s true I rarely over-drank, but according to the advice coming out from the medical quarter lately on alcohol, I maybe was, a bit. I was having more than one glass of wine. Usually not two, often one-and-a-half, but sometimes two, I am sure. And last Saturday, I had two-and-a-half glasses of wine for no good reason, and I was predictably unwell the next day. I felt terrible. I was deeply grateful I wasn’t nauseous, but I could feel I dodged that bullet just barely. I had a headache, brain fog, exhaustion, and a feeling of general unwellness. Alcohol also contributes to anxiety and depression, of course.

After years of committing to stopping drinking for six months, stopping drinking nightly, stopping drinking alone, stopping drinking after five ounces, and all kinds of promises and commitments that I typically broke the very day they were made, I haven’t had a drink since Saturday. I realize it’s only Thursday, but for me (and I hate to admit this), this is significant.

And you know what? It’s what so many people say. Not only do I not miss it, but I feel so much better. I’m sleeping like a baby. My eyes don’t itch. My head is clear. I’m beginning to feel lighter in my body, in my step. And I think my mood is more stable too.

To say I don’t miss it at all is untrue. I miss it slightly, from time to time. I’ve had a couple of moments of habit, in the gloaming hour when I make dinner for example. I loved sipping wine while making dinner and listening to the Jazz Oasis on KCSM. But last night I was able to note the impulse and quell it. Instead of opening a bottle of wine, I said to myself, Maybe you need a glass of water. I got a glass of water and got through the moment.

2024, God knows, was difficult. I moved out of my beloved home on Guido Street, where I raised my kids and was surrounded by dear friends and neighbors (except the one monstrous neighbor that helped lever me out of my abode). I bought a four-plex with my son and moved into one of the units and made a new home here. I lost my job of nearly eight years where I was well-paid and hit a wall on the hiring front for the first time in my life. I got a five-month contract at Cisco that then wasn’t renewed—another indignity. I applied to hundreds of jobs and rarely got a reply of any sort. I spent many days and weeks panicking.

I applied to the Peace Corps. I attended a 90-minute interview. I was accepted by the Peace Corps and invited to serve in Tonga. I accepted the invitation and am now in the process of uprooting myself again. After making a beautiful home here on Terrace Street, I’m once again disrupting my life. I’ll need to get rid of most of my possessions. It’s a huge task.

And, of course, my daughter, who is doing her own thing. I miss her a lot, but it’s okay. She needs to “individuate” — her word. And obviously I want that. I wish it didn’t have to be so incisive, total, and complete, but I can accept this. Learning to accept the absence, for now, of my daughter, has been my work this year, with my skillful, sometimes stern, therapist. Learning about co-dependence and how toxic it is has been my work. Learning about self-care, self-compassion, forgiveness, has been my work.

That last bit is work I’m afraid I’m still not doing, quite. But I’m making strides and progress in that direction.

I’m once again getting off the couch and returning to dance. I’m studying for the Foreign Service Officer Test, which is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I’m getting excited about being of service in the next part of my life. Business, technology, marketing—these have never suited me. They were simply a means to an end, a way to put food on the table for my kids, get them through school, give them a solid childhood, a home, stability, camps, music, vacations, you know the drill.

I’ve been very fortunate. I did a great job under difficult circumstances. I have nothing to be ashamed of.

The shame is really too much. Maybe it’s time to return to reading Brene Brown.

The little scurrying figure against the sun-splashed wall of the auto dealership stood for something. That’s why tears sprang to my eyes. He or she looked so small, so vulnerable. The urban backdrop looked so hard, so unforgiving, so anonymous.

That’s how it is, isn’t it. We are a flash in the pan, our little lives on this earth. We are no more than ants milling about with our joys and trials and tasks. We twist and turn and try to make sense of this life which we cannot explain and know nothing about. We try to make meaning. We try desperately to do that.

The Dalai Lama said the sole goal of a meaningful life is to help others.

We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety or one hundred years at the very most. During that period, we must try to do something good, something useful, with our lives. If you contribute to other people's happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.

If all goes according to plan and I pass my medical and legal clearances, I will depart for Tonga on June 16 for 27 months of service. I will teach English to schoolchildren in a traditional, conservative Polynesian/Melanesian society in a country that was never colonized and has retained most of its traditions. The setting is, according to my friend Enrique, in a word: paradise.

Concurrently, I’m applying for the foreign service, a dream from my high school and early college days, a dream I abandoned under the false belief that I had to be multi-lingual, that I lacked what it took. I’ve since discovered, to my shock and wonder, that I probably didn’t lack what it took to have an incredibly fulfilling career in the foreign service. It’s jibes with everything I love about myself, and with my values.

Being a “classic” liberal, I also thought joining the foreign service would be somehow anathema to my politics, but that was just silliness. The history of the U.S. is absolutely fascinating, and there are all kinds of people of all persuasions living a life of service out in the world.

Grace is that thing that makes tears well up when you witness a thing of great beauty or vulnerability. It’s about the fleeting nature of time and life, it’s about holding gently the moments of beauty in our life. It’s about self-forgiveness and compassion. It’s about gratitude and appreciation. It’s letting things be. It’s… relaxing.