mark sings goody, goody for rachael, last night when we welcomed rachael and brian into our urban family

I’m sitting in my kitchen, writing and listening to music with the hum of commune all around me. For my whole adult life, my front door has been a revolving door of happiness with all manner of people coming and going, my couch a perpetual way station, my dining room table, a final destination for stories waiting to be told.

All this faded rather quickly with the end of my marriage a year ago this time. For the years leading up to that separation, I told myself over and over again that we’d all be okay, as long as that commune stayed, that collection of friends and feast that kept my house buzzing and alive in certain ways. But then almost overnight, that thing completely disappeared. People stopped coming over and when there was a chance to be altogether, I often begged off. It was too painful to have people in the same space where we had once been a sweet urban family without so many splinters or fractures. I didn’t want to feel anything, and it was easier to just shut down and let that kind of connectedness slip away.

But not living in community has had a really big toll on me and my kids especially. We’ve never functioned as a single family unit. We have no rhythms for that really. It’s not really us, to sit just three at a table. It seems like there’s about five to eight people missing at least, and it feels strange. We’ve coped by retreating to all of our screens. And I went back to my pre-family and baby/toddler days where I stayed up all night and cat-napped during the day–night felt so much easier than being up and around in a quiet house.

Two weeks ago, our sweet friends Brian and Rachael moved in, making our third floor their landing spot after a seven month bike tour of the United States. Almost immediately, the kids and I looked at each other like we’d just won the lottery. Instant commune. Brian and Rachael are serious community people, they know how to cook together, how to move in and around a house with the kind of ease reserved for people who feel deep down that together is always better. I immediately felt exhausted, my whole body kind of letting down after steeling myself against how quiet it’s been and how sad we’ve all been to not live in the midst of a busy urban family. I realize all the ways I’ve been holding space and all the ways I let the space go, because it was just too hard to do it alone.

There’s a different feeling to this urban family, too, one that feels really old and familiar to me, like my childhood in some ways, so I’m absorbing that. How odd it is to be seen all the time and received in a particular way that reminds me of who I am and who I was before I made so many hard decisions.

My faith has been so tested these last few years…I’ve had to give up so many things I believed in so I could sit with nothing and be okay somehow with the great Void. It’s felt really dark and really hopeless at times, and I have been taken down to my core in ways that really rattled me and made me worry I was losing my mind. But today, with the sounds of family in my house and my front door starting to open again with friends, old and new, I’m remembering I have something to believe in, and that it’s okay to let down and let myself feel just how hard it’s been to wonder if there was nothing to believe in after all.

not too late to get into Wild Precious Life: Love Letters from a Hopeful Girl. Register here…six weeks of stories, wisdom and secrets, now-december 31, 2011.

in Haiti last weekend

I couldn’t have said this before, but I can tell you now.

Nothing lasts forever.

Before I would have said things like love lasts forever or family lasts forever or commitment lasts forever or friendship lasts forever, but the truth is everything changes, everything fades, nothing stays, not a single thing.

Before I would have cried if you had told me that, I would have pleaded, I would have said, no, don’t say that, that’s not true, I’m with you, we are together, we’ll always be together, maybe not like this but in some way, I hate it when you talk like that.

But not now.

Now I know that you are leaving and that I am leaving and that we are forever moving in directions strange and mysterious, that neither one of us can control or predict, no matter how wise or connected or knowing we are about this and everything else.

Before I had glimpses of this and so I mourned, how I mourned. Every second you were with me, I was grieving your going, imagining the last day, the last kiss, the last moment just in case I missed it when the time came, just in case I didn’t see it coming and you caught me by surprise.

Before I went over every scene, every sentence, every word. I examined each one for clues like a detective. Are you leaving now? How about now? And now? I missed every second you were here wondering when you would make your exit, but I don’t do that anymore.

No.

Now, I soak you in like sunshine, now I listen to every word like it’s a poem and I might joke about what the words mean, but the truth is those words, they wash over me like music, and I let them hold me and nourish me and delight me, I don’t worry one bit, because you’re here, right now, right this second and I know if that cannot be enough for me, there is no love in me, no hope, nothing worth saving at all, except this odd collection of doubts and fears that wreck me before I even start.

No, now I see another way, a way without definition, without explanation, a way where I stand completely still without expectation and I let things be what they are. I let I say, passing over the foolishness of the word, because I still think I’m the one in charge of keeping the sun on its axis. Because I still think this is a choice I have, instead of a truth I must live in, the rest a strange and torturing dream that always keeps me under.

Before that dream was my reality, an ever present nightmare, the illusion that I could shape and shift the planets at my will, bringing you closer here, sending you further away from my center there, but I know now that’s not true. I know you turn on your own trajectory, that sometimes we pass close and other times we pass far, but that the sun is its own entity and that we are merely pulled and pushed in circles around her, as we spin, spin, spin.

This is what I tell myself now, now that I don’t know the answers to anything. Now that I lost everything because I thought I had it. Now that I found my voice because I could never explain anything. Now that I am sitting here writing this letter that you will never read because I never sent it, because I didn’t want you to know that I ever wanted you to stay in the first place, that you might not even come after all, that you might never have even been here the way I imagined, except in the goodness of my mind–the only place I can always have you–a reminder that I am not as lost as I think I am, that I have made for myself without my even knowing–my heart, a humble home.

…more letters like the one in Wild Precious Life: Love Letters from a Hopeful Girl. Register here…six weeks of stories, wisdom and secrets, starting nov 13-december 31, 2011.

a private space devoted to my stories, secrets and wisdom from a life unexpected. seeking fellow travelers, wanderers and souls hungry for courage, transformation and growth. register for $55 here, open for six weeks from november 13 until december 31, 2011.

I’m happy to announce today that I’m opening registration to Wild Precious Life: Love Letters from a Hopeful Girl, a private space dedicated to personal stories, secrets, images and wisdom from the last three years of an unexpected adventure. Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling more and more compelled to tell the stories of what has happened in my life behind the scenes of this blog. I knew I needed a safe space, a private space–somewhere I could let my hair down, so to speak, and tell the truth about what it’s meant for me to become alive in my heart, my mind, my spirit and my body. I also knew I needed a space to share the deeper wisdom of this journey, somewhere I could be sure that people were really listening for the sake of their own path and not just watching from the sidelines.

Wild Precious Life is the answer to that need–a private, password protected space where I can write for a community of friends and allies who are working their own stories of transformation, discovering their own wisdom, one tiny brave step at a time.

This is for you if…
you love what you’re reading here
want to know more about what happened in my personal life over the last few years
are hungry for homegrown wisdom
are going through a time of transition
have more questions than answers
are curious about coming into your skin and honoring your body
are drawn to rituals, little ceremonies and other sacred ways of finding your path
you love a good story
don’t mind being surprised
love mystery, myth, meaning and magic
need inspiration to be brave with your own wild, precious life

You can expect…
Two entries a week at a minimum (I anticipate posting much more)
Intimate self-portraits
How-to rituals for navigating your own transitions, doubts and wonder
Sneak peaks at my memoir and other experiments in writing, poetry and prose
A warm, inviting place to listen, learn and reflect on your own longings and dreams

How it works…
Register here and you get access to Wild Precious Life from now until December 31. This is an experiment for me in creating a safe private space, and I’d love you to join me.

Why this? Why now?
Over the last few months, I’ve been feeling a strong draw to be more boundaried about my personal journey, especially in the online space. I also wanted to tell more stories from certain chapters of my life that are best shared in in a more cozy setting. I imagined a space that had a definite entry point, where I could know that everyone in that room was there on purpose and hadn’t arrived randomly for this reason or that. Wild Precious Life is my answer to that.

What happens to this blog?
jenlemen.com will remain with images and a weekly post, but from now til the end of the year, I’ll be putting lots of heart and soul into Wild Precious Life. If you’re feeling any tug to not miss a thing and your gut tells you this is for you, this is a big risk for me, and I’d be so thrilled for you to join me on this six week adventure!

Go ahead, let the ball swing, it’s time for everything to be gone now. The old ways, the old dreams, the old structures you propped up with your impossible will and foolish, stubborn determination. Your insistence is no longer needed. The same goes for your visions, your delusions filled with other worlds, other realities, other lives that only exist in the beauty of your untamed feral mind. Do not mourn, and by all means, do not cry, for this destruction is not for the purpose of suffering or pain or even the difficulties of dying, but for a clearing, a wide open space where something new and amazing can be grown instead of built. Building was never your strong suit, try as you did to adapt to this or that mode of construction. You are more like a sower, than an architect, as anyone who has seen the drawings on your napkins could have already told you, not to mention your half-completed buildings.

When did your mind ever conceive of anything in straight lines? Do you ever remember a time? When did you ever take into account the building codes or the classifications of certain materials?

That’s what I thought.

No, you have always been more of an artist, wandering around in the woods behind the houses, picking dandelions that could be woven into crowns for unsuspecting kings and queens who never really wanted to reign in your kingdom. No, you have always been more of a naturalist, examining mud for the properties required for sculpture. No, you have always been more of an adventurer, culling through unnamed and unknown fruits and vegetables at open air markets where you know deep in your heart, the ingredients are waiting for a fine and unforgettable stew.

Doesn’t that sound right?

Good thing for you, everyone already knows, though no one ever thought it would come to this. That wrecking ball thing? Most of the time, you just leave the building, before anyone knows you’ve slipped out the back door into the garden. But, no, now, things will be different. You will make announcements. You will say with your very own mouth the answer is no. Not this. Not now. Not ever.

Let the ball go. Let the rubble pile.

You are lighting a match, you are letting it drop and with that fire you will burn every old and stubborn thing in you that wanted to bend the world to your liking. You will burn every impulse you had to mold when the best thing would have been to break and let the pieces fall where they may. You will burn the part of you that insists on knowing, on seeing, of shaping when the deepest truth is that no one knows how a seed grows or what happens in the dark earth hidden from light.

This destruction is necessary and holy and beautiful, so let the wrecking ball come. There are stories waiting to be born in you. There are gardens waiting to be planted. There are the unruly curls of your own wild head that will happily bend to receive that crown of dandelions and in doing so you will feel no shame or embarrassment. Yellow was always your color.

The ones meant for you will come close to your side, you will not even need to call their names or sing them, the way you always do in the car when you think they aren’t listening or caring as much as you do. They will come close to you, the way your heart always felt close to them and you will accept your togetherness in whatever form is best for lovers, friends, family of the sort that feel as familiar and mysterious to you as the bright night sky. You will have an easy companionship, in the quiet spaces, and no one will say one word about that wrecking ball, they knew all along, your blueprints always looked more like storybooks, you were always meant for more unwieldy forms of creation.

So stand back, let it all go.
Don’t be afraid.
You cannot lose anything that was always meant to be yours.
You cannot have something when the only person who ever wanted it was you.

A new world is waiting underneath all that rubble and when you see the land underneath, you won’t regret being brave and you will know it wasn’t foolish after all, to let yourself be seen for who you really are.

This blog gets a major overhaul this week, as does most of my online work. So if the lines look crooked or this blog explodes in midair this week and disappears into oblivion, that’s why. Excited.