Just say know.

You want him to know. Know what? Whatever. Just know. Know that sexy lingerie seems like an intimate gift, if he really knew you intimately he’d know you’d rather have the newest book by your favorite author. That you’d die for your children, but you’d give anything if he’d take them completely away for a long weekend. That though it looks easy to keep all the balls in the air, it’s nearly killing you. That you’re worried. All the time. About everything. And that it would mean so much to you that, even if he doesn’t know, he wants to know.

When you call your best friend and utter half a sentence, she can finish the rest of it. Because she knows. But she’s not your partner. It’s not her life you’re sharing. It’s his. And you want him to get it.

But he doesn’t.

Some experts say he can’t. Sounds sexist, but some research says he’s not programmed to think the way you do. It's a fact of genetics that what seems logical to you just doesn’t make sense to him. (No, he’s not nuts. He’s just wired differently.)

That’s not to say that he can’t learn. With some practice, he can start at least to hear. But that’s his work to do, if he chooses it.

Your job is to stop thinking he’s just going to know. In fact, to quit worrying about whether he’s going to know or not. Your job is to make sure you know.

I’ve found that since I’ve been partnered—and especially since I had a child—it’s harder to think about myself as an individual. Somehow, when I start to think about what I need, what I want or what I want to do, the needs and wants of the rest of my crew creep into my reflections and decisions. It’s as if, when I married and had a baby, my own desires got taken from me and poured into a mixing bowl with my family’s. And for the life of me, I can’t unmix myself.

Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. But I just don’t want to completely lose myself in the mix. I don’t want to forget what I want. I don’t want to forget what I know about myself.

I believe you need to know your true needs—from the inside out—and to speak them first to yourself. To look in the mirror and say:
I need four days alone.
I need cotton pajamas and the new Toni Morrison novel.
I need to find a way to rest my worries.
I need to stop needing to juggle.
I need to let some of this Super Woman stuff go.

You need to know. To admit what you know. Then give yourself that. Without guilt. Without apology. Without self judgment. Accepting that it’s okay to need what you need. Understanding that giving yourself what you need is okay, too.

Insist Upon Your Life

“You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die or insist upon your life.” —Odetta

Odetta, the legendary folk singer, died on Tuesday at the age of 77. Her interview for the New York Times' "The Last Word" is a video worth watching. She is a beautiful, strong, wise and elegant woman in the way the Earth herself is beautiful, strong, wise and elegant.

Sounds Like a Plan

I like to think of myself as a planner, since I operate best when I can have things laid out before me. But, in truth, I don’t plan so much as I actively look for and affirm interesting opportunities to present themselves. The plans come after the fact—based on what I can envision around the next curve in the road.

This paradoxical combination of creative calculation and reliance on faith—not blind faith, but faith that peeks through its fingers at the possibilities that lie ahead—has worked well for me.

Until recently.

For the past few weeks, the future I’ve seen and the plans I’ve laid have ended up in a multi-car pile-up. A job that seemed meant for me dissolved before I could claim it. The book proposal that generated so much excitement is still waiting for a publisher to claim it. When a potentially career-changing writing gig fell through, it wasn’t a simple matter of that magazine’s editor not liking my story idea. The whole magazine folded. How’s that for having a door slam on your foot?

And that’s just the work-related stuff. All around me—in my home, in my relationship, with my child—things are breaking down, springing leaks, sputtering, fizzling and wobbling unsteadily. My life is, as we say in the vernacular, a hot mess.

I don’t know whether to blame the ineffectiveness of my planning or the astigmatism of my faith. I tell myself that if I had planned more effectively, maybe my life would be on more solid footing. Or if my faith were less blurred, maybe the need for solid footing would be moot: I’d be flying on wings.

But maybe not.

Maybe blame, with its negative implications and guilt association, is unnecessary, because maybe what I am experiencing is just the dip and dive of life. Maybe this is me falling free of a plane I’ve been pushed out of, dropping from the sky toward the open arms of earth and feeling the fierce pull of gravity in the long moments before my parachute opens. (At least I still have enough faith to believe the parachute will open.)

Today in the mail, I got a little postcard that says: “We affirm that divine order is at work and that Spirit is guiding us each step along the way.”

Maybe all this is just part of the plan.