Oh, what a life

Hello friend,

Fair warning, this one's long. Go get yourself a coffee or a tea. I'll wait.

Music showed up in my life in a big way this week, so I thought I'd share three songs with you.

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THIS WEEK

Here's something you might not know about me. I have a funeral playlist. An actual list of songs I want played at my funeral, and my daughter has it, because apparently I'm the kind of woman who wants a say in the music even after she's dead.

This came up this week when I was filling out a questionnaire for a job application. One of the questions asked what my entrance song would be. Easy. December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night) by The Four Seasons. Then I mentioned it's also one of my funeral songs, which apparently isn't a normal thing to tell someone on a job application. Who knew?

When I hear that song, I don't hear December 1963. I hear August 1968. August 10th, 1968, to be exact, the day I was born. And I see my family. There was a little pocket of time, maybe five years, when we felt whole. Weddings and parties with my cousins on my dad's side, and my brother right in the middle of it, welcomed and included. I can still see him dancing.

And my mother! My mother was in her cougar era. My dad had been gone long enough that she'd found her sparkle again, and she was alive and laughing and dancing. There's a story coming about that woman in a few weeks, and trust me, it's a good one.

Then life happened. There was alcoholism and estrangement and death, relationships that didn't survive, things that changed our family for good. But that pocket of happiness was real, and nobody can take it away from me. When that song comes on, I'm right back there.

There's another reason I want it played at my funeral. My spirituality is a big part of who I am, and I don't believe this human experience is all there is. But this trip, the little snippet of time we get here as humans, is so bloody short. When I hear Oh, What a Night, I hear myself looking back at the whole thing and saying, "Fuck, that was something, wasn't it?"

Life can be horrible. It can be treacherous and tragic and downright cruel. It can also be joyful and hilarious and so full of love you don't know where to put it, sometimes all in the same damn week. Even knowing what I know now, the heartbreak and the ugly bits included, I'd come back and do it all over again. I'm glad I was born. I'm glad August 10th, 1968 happened.

Oh, what a life.

The second song is Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me by Gladys Knight & the Pips. Most people hear a love song. I hear something a little different.

Years ago I was spending time with a very dear friend I hadn't seen in a long, long time, and at one point he looked at me and said, "Karen, I couldn't tell my life story without you." I've carried that with me ever since, because none of us can tell our stories without each other. The people who loved us and the ones who broke our hearts. The ones who stayed, the ones who left, and the ones who walked in for five minutes and changed the direction of everything. They're all in there.

I think of life as a big, messy masterpiece of a play. People enter and exit the stage, some in starring roles and some for a scene or two, and every one of them adds something. So when I hear that song, I hear a love song to myself, to God, and to every single person who has ever crossed my path. Even the ones who made life difficult. Maybe especially those ones, although I'd have appreciated it if a few of them had been slightly less enthusiastic about their roles!

The third song is Hold On. It's a Christian song, and it has carried me through some pretty dark places. I've never been interested in fitting my spirituality into a neat little box. My relationship with God and Jesus is personal, and I live it my own way. This song speaks to the part of me that sometimes just needs to hear two words. Hold on.

As some of you know, I've had a rough couple of weeks. Rough doesn't really cover it. I had what I can only call a bit of a breakdown. I was overwhelmed and exhausted and in a kind of despair I hadn't felt in a long time. I felt lost, and somewhere in there I'd lost sight of what I was doing and why.

So I listened to Hold On, and I held on. Nobody waved a magic wand. Nothing suddenly became wonderful. Sometimes holding on is all you've got. And slowly, the clouds started to part.

Then I remembered something I'd already been told. A while ago, on a silent retreat, I went for a walk in the forest with Jesus (yes, that's something I do), and I had this beautiful moment of clarity. It was about stories. Women's stories, our stories, the ones we carry and the ones we never tell. It was about The Crone Stories.

Somewhere between that walk and now, I'd wandered back into my old world of coaching and advice, trying to work out what I was supposed to teach people. It was burning me out again, because that isn't where my heart is anymore. I'm done giving advice. I want to hear how women have lived their lives. I want to sit in the circle and listen, to the funny stories and the heartbreaking ones, the ones that make us squirm and the ones that make us feel a little less alone. I want to be the woman who says, "Oh my God, you too? Tell me more!"

I think I've always been a connector, a story keeper, someone who loves bringing people and their worlds together. I'd just forgotten. Well, I remembered, and when I remember something I get a little enthusiastic. I was up until three in the morning rebuilding my entire website, because why would I do something sensible like sleep? But I was excited again, really excited, and it's been a while.

Years ago I bought my mother one of those books, something like Mom, Tell Me Your Story, full of questions about childhood and family and love and all the things you wish you'd thought to ask. She filled out a few pages. That's it. Not for lack of stories, believe me, that woman had stories. She just wasn't going to sit down by herself and write them out. She needed someone across the table asking.

When she was dying, I had a two-year-old and a life that felt impossibly busy, and I didn't make the time to sit with her and ask. I wish I had. There are things about my mother's life I'll never know now, and that has stayed with me.

So I made something called The Stories We Carry: 12 Questions Worth Asking Before They're Lost. It's a small set of questions to open a conversation with your mother, your grandmother, your best friend, your kids, or yourself. Nobody needs to write beautiful answers in a fancy book. These questions want a cup of tea and a kitchen table, maybe a glass of wine, a few laughs and a few tears. Our lives get so much richer when we know each other's stories.

So that's where I am this Monday. Still a little tender around the edges, feeling more like myself than I have in a while, and very, very glad I held on.

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A QUESTION TO CARRY

Something to sit with this week.

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You're already here reading my Monday letter, so I want you to have a copy of The Stories We Carry. You never know what someone will tell you when you finally ask.

Oh, what a life, my friends.

In love, light and laughter,

Karen

P.S. Here's the new site. Come have a look around.