kindness

April 28, 2019 By HallieZ 1 Comment

i can wait

Feeling trapped, afraid of rejection, I force the words out

“I don’t know what I want”.

He speaks clearly.

“I can wait”.

All the bells go off in my head. I am scared and I wonder if it is real, but I am not sure and I don’t know.

Softly, he cautiously voices the last thing I was expecting to hear.

“I am not asking you for anything you can’t give”.

I don’t know how to do this, really. I don’t know how to accept a man holding space for me.

It is easier for me to just assume that all men only want one thing.

It is easier to sign on for the toxic and not-nuanced expectations of what it means to be a man.

I know how to be demanded of.

I know how to give in to control and coercion.

I know how to submit, how to swear to a man that I am not real and never existed and agree that it is true, what I want doesn’t matter. In fact, what I thought I wanted isn’t something I want at all and is actually quite BAD.

He holds me close. His breath matches mine and I watch the clouds go by.

All is still.

This is new.

I am scared.

Maybe it REALLY is ok with him, if I am real.

Maybe it REALLY is ok if I want and need.

Maybe my answer is worth waiting for.

He is the men who have come into my life since my divorce and given me glimpses of what a man can be. Thank you for being a part of my journey.

January 23, 2019 By HallieZ 1 Comment

1,000 Band-Aids

I need one thousand band-aids today.

Wait.

1,000 isn’t even close to enough,, and I can feel it all around me today.

A band-aid for you Ted, in your ripped pants exposing your body to the elements. I put coffee and some donuts in your hand and I listen to a story, but I know it isn’t enough.

A band-aid for you, angry woman, who screamed at my kids and their dad Saturday at the pro-life march. My daughter’s heart was with you, but how could you know? She’s sobbing in my arms because she knows you’re hurting, for some reason, and she’s only 12, and she doesn’t get to choose where she goes. But she loves you.

A bandaid for you, rich lady. You have everything, it looks like, to most of us, but as I dust another shelf that doesn’t need dusting, my heart pounds in time with yours, and I know it’s never enough, and it doesn’t satisfy in the way that you need.

I don’t just need band-aids.

I need the antibiotic ointment ones.

Scratch that.

I need the ones with the fucking cure for all the world’s problem.

I want a miracle drug on those bad boys.

I don’t just want to put a band-aid on you, I want to wrap you up in gauze, douse you in saline solution, and sing you to sleep. Hold you in my arms. I don’t care if you smell like the street and the garbage and the pain, I want you to somehow know you are beloved.

I need the biggest bottle of lavender oil in the world and a hot tub the size of earth to hold your pain. To soak you in love.

I see you.

I love you.

July 25, 2018 By HallieZ 1 Comment

a scent that reminds me where i stand

My nephew took a nap on my bed today.

When I got home from work, I was still on a phone call, and half distracted, followed my children’s giggles to my bedroom. No sheets. No blankets. All was gone.

And a bottle of lotion that had been full only just this morning, was empty.

Indeed, the small princling had discovered Auntie Hallie’s lotion, and henceforth, had anointed all Auntie Hallie’s bedclothes with the lovely, creamy stuff.

It was pretty great.

His mama explained and showed me the sheets drying and headed off to her wild and crazy mom-of-a-toddler life.

I just now pulled them out of the dryer, and as I dragged the comforter cover off the line, it surrounded me, this particular scent.

See, it wasn’t just any old lotion the young gentleman had found, it was a special bottle of Nevea After Sun Lotion that you can only buy in some tropical locations.

When I was 21, wild, Holy, Passionate, Searching for a purpose in Brazil, I discovered this stuff on one of my random days off, on a visit to the beach with some friends.

This smell forever takes me to the time in my life when I learned:

That I could be happy

I was allowed to be happy

Jesus wasn’t mad when I was happy

Sweat made me happy

Sun made me happy.

I could wear a biking and God would still love me.

I could spend some money on something NOT essential and God would still smile on me.

Resting under a fan with this lotion rubbed all over my almost-burn was happy in the flesh.

I brought a bottle home to Oregon with me, and when it ran out, I didn’t find it anywhere again for 10 years. One day, on the island of Phuket, in Thailand, baby in arms, in a very different bikini body, I happened across a bottle in a shop.

(Don’t worry, mama to precious princling, I learned my lesson, and have a back up bottle stashed somewhere in my bedroom)

But tonight.

Tonight, in this heat wave, sweat, every curve damp, I stretch out on these sheets.

Its like a kiss from heaven, the smell that lingers on these clean sheets.

A kiss, and a reminder I didn’t know I needed so very badly tonight.

Beloved me

Precious Hallie

You WILL be happy again

You are allowed to be happy

I love your bikini body

The sun, and the sweat of your work make me happy

You’re still YOU

Here we are

You and me

Happy

June 25, 2018 By HallieZ 1 Comment

Dear Son, A Gift You Could Miss

Dear Son,

You were at your daddy’s all week, and I missed you SO MUCH!

You’re little still, and this won’t be for you to read for some time, but it was pounding in my heart today, and I thought I would write it down for you, and maybe you won’t ever need to read it, because it will be in our every day and it will be who you are… but still. Here I am, son-of-my-heart. All the love in the world for you, and, you know your mama, SO MANY WORDS!!!

Last night I went to a comedy show with some friends, downtown, and it went late. I never find myself walking through the nightlife of Salem Oregon past 10pm! But there I was.

Headed toward my car, I was. Minding my own business, skirt swishing, heels tapping, when a car full of men drove by.

(I know, gross, I’m your mom, but still… its my story, dude)

“Girl! HOT DAMN, YOU GOT AN ASS”

and then the things you can imagine that followed that.

Mama don’t mess. As you know. No, I didn’t flip them (because, I save my energy for shit that matters) and I didn’t feel ashamed (because, well, we all know I DO have an ass on me)

It took me a couple days to figure out what was simmering in my soul, after that night.

You’ve heard a lot of it, son.

“ treat women with respect, that’s someone’s wife/mom/sister/daughter”.

Its all true and good, my boy.

But here’s what my mama heart is saying.

When you treat women like that?

YOU ARE THE ONE LOSING

When you drive by, and all you see is an ass?

You miss the power in her soul.

When you declare over a woman a thing?

You miss her truth and you get stuck in your perception.

Every woman, all over the world, is holding a gift inside her heart, a gift more beautiful than you can probably even imagine.

Son.

It might be her friendship, steady and true.

It might be her voice, powerful in tenderness.

Her gift might be her body, wrapping you in comfort.

It might be the heat of her passion, shaking you to your core.

Her gift might be a truth, typed out on a paper, or etched in stone.

And son, you may hold a gift for her.

You can show up,

you can stand still,

you can drive by,

you can SEE.

You can look past that ass. And find her.

And my son.

It could break your heart, and it may break hers,

and son,

It will make you a real man.

Always, your mama

January 3, 2018 By HallieZ 4 Comments

WELCOME HERE

Remember back when people started posting these signs in their store fronts and whatnot?

I’ve always had this sort of unease with welcome signs.

They have seemed rather redundant. You’re welcome in my home. I know that. You know that. Duh. Why do I need to say it on a welcome mat?

I guess I had never really seen it from the angle of someone who knows what it is like to be UNWELCOME.

In the course of my 37 years, I can identify probably less than a dozen times I have been truly unwelcome. Each of those times was probably for less than 24 hours.

Other than that, I have always been welcome.

I have been pretty enough.

Polite enough.

White enough.

Rich enough.

American enough.

Educated enough.

I have taken it for granted, and breezed by welcome signs with hardly a thought.

When the president came into office, and I started seeing more of these sort of signs around, I was happy. Content. I didn’t HAVE one, or anything. But I thought it was a cool gesture of solidarity.

And then, I found out what it was like.

I became unwelcome in the home of my father and mother.

I became unwelcome in the home of my siblings.

I was no longer anything enough.

It’s an unwelcome that has gone on, and on, and on, for 13 months.

Sometime last summer, I saw this sign in a window of a shop, and I began to cry. Something lost, rejected, and alone in me saw that sign, and knew it was for me. If something bad were happening, I could go in there, and I would be safe. Regardless.

My eyes began to see in a way I never had before.

Recently, someone I love “came out” to me. This person, raised like me, needed a lot of courage and trust to tell me this about themself. Nothing of the culture in which we were raised would make a non-heterosexual person feel safe, enough, welcome. I was deeply humbled and shattered to think about that, to wonder how someone like this could ever really walk up to a place and know, really KNOW, that the welcome was FOR THEM.

Being unwelcome. Being unsafe, it makes you scared. Anxious, nervous.

Sometimes I get notes from people, and they say something like “you are always welcome in my home”. Most of them live thousands of miles away, but it still means the world to me, it is a statement that I don’t take for granted any more.

A woman I had never met before, at my sister’s wedding, when I was excluded from the family picture, put her arms around me and cried with me, and repeated over and over, “you are always, ALWAYS welcome in my home”.

WELCOME is powerful, friends.

This week, I finally put this together. I have had the pieces of barn wood laying around for months, and the paint, and the plan, but I finally made it happen. And here we are.

My daughter was looking at it and asked “is even __________ welcome here?” It scared me. I was sad and afraid to put this sign up. But as I paused to really answer, I was able to say, “yes, _________ is welcome here… all are welcome here, they must be respectful and kind though”. She laughed.

Oh God. Help me to live with integrity and truth no matter how confusing and rough this path is.

Grant me humility to never stop learning, never stop growing.

Help me to stop. To listen. To see.

Let me know if you need one! I would love to make you one as part of my efforts earning money to pay my over due, and apparently never-ending legal bills!

What I’m Writing