Be the change you want to see.

I've been looking at my face in the mirror lately, and, it's not like I don't like what I see! It's just that there are definitely signs of aging showing up, even beyond what I already knew about the wrinkles, and the bits of my face that are sagging, and the little dark hairs that started showing up on my chin about a decade ago and has since spread to my lower cheeks blow my cheekbones and under my chin and all kinds of places. The other thing that I've got going on right now is these little tiny rough patches of skin. They're mostly the same skin color as the rest of my skin which is to say mostly hail pink into light tan. The first one that showed up I asked the dermatologist about and he said it was a normal thing that some people just get and I didn't have to be worried about it. And they're rough and they don't go away when you pick at them.

Now I have an association of myself with my mom, and also with my grandma on the other side It's funny I remember my dad's mom better and in detail in a close-up kind of way, I don't think I saw my mom's mom in full sunlight very often Most of my memories of her have us staying at their mobile home in Aptos which is near Santa Cruz, and everybody sat in the house when we would visit and everybody would smoke all day when we would visit. So aside from Grandma and Nez being a little bit fuzzy around the face I don't really remember and I know she passed on when I was 17 or 18, so it's 30 plus years now. The funny thing is that Grandma Bert passed on when I was 11 or 12 and I just remember her whole look in much more detail. Anyway it's helping me a little bit to verbalize all of this, thank you speech to text! And just yeah thanks to any of you who are reading this I just needed to empty out my head for a minute.

Because I put off deciding to engage with audiology after a year ago this past June's hearing test, had to have ANOTHER hearing test today before we talk about getting fitted for hearing aids.

Did you know that they have bluetooth capacity now if you get certain models?

You can pipe a phone call to your aids and you can manage the controls on your phone, and they now have rechargeable batteries.

I have pamphlets to go through on three different companies Kaiser uses for the aids, and I think I'm seeing the doc for the fitting on Thursday (2 days from now).

Tonight i started my occasional reread of The Dark Is Rising, that iconically witchy and spooky Newbury Award winner...

as the kids say these days
#mood

thinking back on the rest of the year, I have to admit that some really good things got done.
rephrase.
I DID some really good things. Some hard things.

possibly one of the hardest things i did was to really write a proper apology for something I said and did when i was sixteen, dumb and lonely and hurting. I lashed out at someone from that place, someone who I thought was part of my hurting but it turned out, not.

we connected on facebook sometime in the last year and a half or so. and I wound up offering an apology, and sharing the WHY of me hurting him intentionally, because i had done that, and I hoped that having context would help him let go of any lingering bullshit from that moment in time.

turns out, I'd only ever spoken about this to therapists. well. therapist. And now that #metoo has entered the global lexicon, it finally felt safe to speak of it, where I felt so much shame about being bullied in the particular way that led me to lash out at E.

i've been describing the release of sharing that story, as like when you get a long deep redwood splinter in your hand. and you work for awhile and you get MOST of the splinter out but the tail end is still stuck in there for AGES and it gets infected and it's painful and you just have to work around it for a long time.

and then one day, you wash your hands in just the right way, and that last bit gets released. Adn you can work it free, finally, and finally you can heal the infection, work out the scar tissue. Un-adapt all the habits you built because that fucking splinter had (I have a momentary reluctance to own this word for my situation but) WOUNDED you.

the particular type of bullying and the story i told around it at the time opened the door wider for me to be in abusive romantic relationships for *counts* at least 10 years? Probably longer.

that splinter is GONE, now.

and I told E. he didn't have to reply to my story but that I hoped he'd accept my apology.

and Elizabeth Regnant, self-crowned, walks out from the shadows and into the light, claiming the throne and crowning myself.

I had so much power and I had no idea.
I had so much potential and I couldn't see it.
I was bound for so long by the stories the world told about me.

I am not bound.
I understand my potential.
My power is clear and near at hand.

I am the storyteller.
Old women are the keepers of the stories.
Old women are the truth tellers.
Old women don't tolerate bullshit, and we enunciate clearly when the emperor has no clothes.
Storytellers are dangerous, we change worlds.
We heal. We make things right, even if just in the story.
We break things in the story so that everyone can recognize the brokenness in their homeworld.

Storytellers are full of power. In some ways of thinking, it's the only power.
If you tell the stories and people believe them, those stories change lives.
Stories... are everything.

every belief system is made of stories. every political movement is made of stories.
every human relationship is made of stories.

See the stories clearly.
Tell the stories wisely.
Demonstrate your love and your understanding through your stories.
Don't fling them about frivolously.