A perfectly communicable little vision of truth (parking-lot division)

A couple of weeks ago, I drove to the airport to pick up a friend who was flying in from Toronto for a visit. And since I was going there anyway, I offered to transport one of my favourite ride share pals from the south shore to catch an earlier flight out. A much, much earlier flight.

That was no big deal. I'm often awake by 4am anyway, so deciding to get up just a little earlier to help a friend catch a flight (and save some carbon) was a no brainer. What it did mean, though, was that I had a lot of time to kill in the city between the early flight and the later one. It was a good opportunity to do my once-yearly Halifax errands, but because the first flight was so early, there were several hours when nothing was open yet.

I decided I would find a quiet parking lot and settle down and try to recoup a few zzzzs. I had a pillow and a blanket, so I tipped the passenger seat all the way back, got as comfy as I could and tried to snooze.

I was tired, but I couldn't fall asleep. Instead, I sat there, thinking.

What I thought about was vulnerability.

I've been thinking about vulnerability a lot lately – in the context of privilege and racialization (inspired by articles like this one), in the context of global peace and conflict, in the context of interpersonal relationships.

But I have been avoiding thinking about vulnerability in terms of me. I have a life-long habit of trying to keep my vulnerability at arms-length by looking at it through a telescope, at the safe distance of theory.

Sitting in that parking lot, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly sinking deep, deep, deep into my own vulnerability – acknowledging how easily hurt I am, and how frightened I feel of intimacy and rejection, of humiliation and shame, of saying or doing the "wrong" thing and getting laughed at or called out.

You call that a spiritual epiphany?

I posted on social media (the best way to share how you're feeling at 5am without disturbing anyone who isn't already awake) that I thought I had had a spiritual epiphany.

That might seem like a pretty grand way to describe getting weepy in a parking lot, but that's how it felt.

It's not that I'd never felt vulnerable before, it's that I'd never felt open to feeling vulnerable before.

Always before, feeling vulnerable has felt like I'm about to fly into a million pieces, like my very survival is hanging in the balance. And that feeling is often followed by me lashing out against the person, thought or event that has stirred up my vulnerability, whether internal or external, by saying or thinking something really intolerant. 

But in that parking lot, I sat and felt vulnerable, and I found that I could tolerate it. I felt relaxed and open in a way I haven't ever felt before. I felt sad, sure. And scared. And sad. (Like, really, really, really sad.)

As Franny Glass says in Franny and Zooey (my favourite book and the one from which I stole the title of this blog post*), "I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life." The fantastic part was that I didn't feel like I was going to disintegrate and I didn't flip the channel to anger or donuts or something else, anything else, to try to escape feeling vulnerable.

Micro/Macro

That felt monumental to me. My difficulties with bearing vulnerability have been the source of a lot of unhappiness in my life. My fear of vulnerability has often kept my heart closed. And while I've gotten pretty good at keeping my vulnerability shut down, when the pressure becomes too much to bear, I have at times been prompted me to say terrible things or hold hateful attitudes toward other people, things or experiences, as a way of comforting myself and giving myself some relief from my terror of my own vulnerability.

This has had the unfortunate result of increasing the level of disconnection in my life. Which in turn makes me feel more afraid of being vulnerable.

I think I can see that same dynamic playing out in our culture at large. We have vilified vulnerability. We have made it shameful to need help, to struggle, to show weakness or even tenderness. We have divided ourselves from one another in little silos of apparent strength.

Disconnection flourishes and the solutions presented are: more stuff, more entertainment, more distractions.

It seems to me that all that buried vulnerability is pressure cooking away at both a personal and cultural level, bubbling up as selfishness, narcissism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, rape, violence, class conflict, ethnic conflict, war, genocide, etc.

No one wants to blink first.

We're scared of what might happen if we do.

We have been taught to expect that other people will reject, judge and/or exploit our vulnerability. We have been taught that help will not be available. Sometimes that is the way it is. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Hope

For a couple of weeks now, I've been grappling with all of this. Accessing my vulnerability in that parking lot felt liberating. Trying to maintain access to it has been uncomfortable, to say the least. And not very successful, either. I've shut myself down more times than a hospital ward with chronic C. difficile. Then this weekend, I was at the West Dublin Market, hanging out with many friends and loved ones.

A dear friend I hadn't seen in a few weeks gave me a hug and suggested we hang on for a few extra breaths in each others arms.

There, there it was. That little catch and shudder through my chest, back and shoulders, the release of feeling safe in the arms of someone who loves me and is not afraid to hold me and all of my fault lines.

It's in moments like that one that I think there's hope that more of us, more of the time, can learn to celebrate our own and others' vulnerability and hold ourselves and each other in it. These are the moments that liberate us. I encourage you to seek them out and to help create them for others.

*The original line I adapted for my title is "...a perfectly communicable little vision of truth (lamb-chop division)"

Body Wisdom #6: Hot flashes, shame and sugar

I've been having a hot-flashy bunch of mornings, waking up at 3 or 4 or 5 because I'm TOO HOT.

I'm discovering for myself an interesting correlation between the hormones that make me flushed and feelings of shame.

Shame is a hot emotion for me. It starts with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach: an uncomfortable, unsettled, roiling feeling that spreads up my chest, arms and face in a blush of heat and colour. Shame-faced, as they say.

For me, hot flashes feel a lot like shame. The only difference is that hot flashes don't start with that feeling in the pit of my stomach.

What's particularly interesting to me is that days when I'm having a lot of hot flashes also seem to be days when I am more likely to do or say something that causes me to feel shame. I've been wondering about how the mechanics of that work. Do the hormones make me more likely to say or do things I could feel ashamed of, or do they make me more likely to feel shame about something that I have said or done?

After much consideration, I think that what's going on here is that my discomfort is acting as a catalyst for my behaviour and the ensuing shame. Hot flashes are uncomfortable. So are many other peri-menopausal symptoms, like depression, down-spiralling self-regard, lack of sleep/fatigue or feeling like you're about to burst into tears for no reason. I also believe that a heightened sense of "not belonging" might be a peri-menopausal symptom, in the same way that it is often an adolescent one.

I think it is a pretty basic instinct to discharge discomfort by pushing it away: sending a harsh email or flippant text, making a mean joke, gossiping – essentially making one's own discomfort be about someone else.

Last week, for instance, I told a joke that seemed funny in my head, but landed with a THUD. And then the other day, I found something slipping out of my mouth that – well, if someone had said something like that to me, I would have felt so angry and judgmental. I realize now that both instances were knee-jerk reactions to feeling like I didn't belong. Both times I felt very ashamed afterward – afraid that I had been insensitive or inappropriate and either hurt somebody's feelings or ticked them off or just simply acted like a real jerk – like someone I don't want to be.

Both times I went and ate a large amount of chocolate afterwards.

And then I felt better. Well, I felt less ashamed. I did feel physically queasy, so it's probably more accurate to say that I felt both better and worse at the same time.

Making the connection between sugar and shame felt enlightening. I suppose since shame is the fear of not belonging/being loved and eating sugar simulates feeling loved and comforted for me, it makes sense that eating sugar would soothe my feelings of shame.

Sugar is a bandaid.

Sometimes, bandaids come in handy. They are great at temporarily protecting an open wound. But what I've been thinking more and more is that the hope of healing those wounds lies in leaning in to my discomfort and doing a better job of owning it.

This is a rocky time for me, and also a beautiful time – a beautiful, rocky time. I feel lucky to be where I am, to have the option of a lot of solitude and quiet and space to be where I'm at. And when I'm in a situation where I feel uncomfortable or like I don't belong, I am encouraging myself to lean into my discomfort, to breathe and to own that I feel how I feel and that that is okay, that I am still safe. And when I don't feel up to doing that, I am giving myself permission to step away – or to burst into tears – or more likely, to step away and then burst into tears.

This is going to be a struggle for me. It will require me to be much more vulnerable that I'm comfortable being. I hope I can accept myself where I'm at and feel compassionate for myself moment to moment. In all of these beautiful, rocky moments.

Shame and Body Image

I had a dream recently in which someone I know (yes, it was a man, whose name shall be withheld to protect the innocent) appeared to me and gave it to me straight:

"You're a big girl, Alex. You should wear better clothes and some make-up. Make yourself look as good as you can."

Sigh.

It was my dream, so no matter whose mouth I happened to put the words into, this is something that I am trying to communicate to myself.

So, part of me thinks I'm a "big girl" who needs to make more of an effort to appear attractive – to compensate for how I look and how society judges my appearance.

Another – much larger – part of me could care less.

Yet another part of me is in direct revolt against the entire concept of fulfilling an external beauty ideal.

And yet another part of me hates my body and lives oppressed under a lifetime of feeling too big.

And through all of those conflicting emotions and thoughts, that one powerful, suppressed opinion struggled through my mind to show up in one of my dreams and try to shame me for all of it – for being the size I am, for caring, for not caring, for being lazy, for not playing The Game.

Shame Culture, Gender and Body Image

In Dr. Brené Brown's book I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't), she writes about how shame in western culture organizes itself along gender lines. Shame for women is (mostly) about not being feminine enough (thin, modest and nice) and shame for men is (mostly) about not being masculine enough (tough, powerful, competent, tough, tough, tough – and did I mention tough?).

So, if I were a man, being the weight that I am would not be a source of shame. Because it wouldn't interfere with my ability to be (or be perceived as being) tough. In fact, I would just have a little more weight to throw around. But, as a woman, I am in violation of the demand that I be (or be perceived to be) thin. And therefore, my weight is supposed to be a source of shame.

I think this is really interesting. It seems obvious to me that shame is used as a cultural enforcer, an attempt to solidly define everyone so they stay put – in the place where everyone else thinks they should be. This shame then gets internalized and is self-actuated within individuals, even against their conscious will – as it did in my dream.

My Body Image Story So Far

I've had an uncomfortable relationship with my body image for a long time. In a culture than bases value on competition and comparison, I've always felt like I'm at a physical disadvantage. My body type as a kid was short and muscly – a combination of genetics and gymnastics. Because I was shorter and stockier than a lot of people around me, I felt inappropriately large. But there is a difference between being larger and being large. When I was a kid, I was not a big kid, but because I felt bigger, I felt big. And then I had a whole bunch of value judgments around that. And felt a whole bunch of shame.

My shame intensified when I hit adolescence. I put on weight. Part hormones, part comfort eating, trying to stuff down all of my unacceptable feelings. This is where the cultural expectations on women in North American culture form a real double bind – Thin, Modest and Nice can become an impossible set of expectations for those of us who use eating food to help suppress the feelings that are not Modest or Nice – which means we can never meet all three expectations at the same time!

Anyway, as an adolescent, I felt much bigger than I actually was. I look back now and realize that I wasted being young (and skinny) feeling fat and unacceptable.

Somewhere in there, I realized that my body image was not only negative, but also disturbed. What do I mean by that? My perception of my own body was completely variable. When I was most aware of this phenomenon, during my thirties, I could look in a mirror twice, just a couple of minutes apart, and have radically different perceptions of my body accompanied by radically different value judgments about what I saw.

I never met anyone else who expressed having that sort of experience and so I made up a name for it – dissociative body image. But a little internet research shows that the phenomenon is generally called having an unstable body image and it is not an uncommon experience for people with disordered eating.

When I lived in the city, I often had the experience of passing a reflective surface – like a building with a mirrored exterior – and not recognizing my own reflection. I didn't know what I looked like. Probably because I rarely saw the same thing twice.

And, my experiences with other peoples' perceptions of my body were often jarring to me. I would hear others' opinions with a mixture of disbelief, shame and humiliation – feeling that I were somehow ludicrous – my body was ludicrous and my mind was ludicrous for not being aware of how ludicrous my body was.

I am developing a different relationship with my body now. Living in a more natural enviroment, with few events or people in my life for whom I need to look in a mirror, I experience fewer jarring conflicts between what I think I see and what others see, or what I think I see at various times. But it still happens.

And I'm not sure if the instability of my body image has improved, or if I have just moved myself into an environment where I'm less frequently confronted with the discrepancies. I think my body image is getting more stable, but to be honest, I only dare to hope that it is getting less negative.

Body Image vs. Body Experience

There is a major difference between my body image issues and the way I feel living in my body. Living in my body is an experience I truly enjoy. Apart from times when I am seriously ill (like that time I had a gastric ulcer in my late twenties – UGH!), I love being in my body. My body is strong and capable. I can do the things I want to do with ease – stretch, dance, get myself around, work, lift heavy things, sleep, wake, work, play, laze, read, write, sing, create and appreciate music, etc. etc.

Each of my five senses is a source of great pleasure to me.

I am endlessly moved, entertained and pleasured by the beauty my eyes perceive, the delicious things I smell and taste, the sounds I hear and the luxury of touching and being touched. Even the soft tip-tap of my fingers touch-typing on my computer keyboard is delightful to me.

The question is, if my body is so perfectly able to do all of these things that I love to be able to do in it and through it, what is my damn problem?

Back around to shame

The way I see it, there is shaming and there is shame. Shaming is imposed from the outside: advertisers, media, peers, family, and selves shame other people and ourselves if we are perceived to lie outside of the accepted norms. Shame is what individuals feel in response to shaming.

Disrupting shaming in such a shame-based culture is a big project. It involves changing the way many people think, feel and communicate – often against their own self-interests. Advertisers use shaming tactics to manipulate people into spending money. Often people use shaming to manipulate themselves or others into doing things that they desire them to do.

Shaming is also used to silence people and to shut down uncomfortable ideas. When Dr. Brené Brown posts ideas and research on-line that stir up people's shame, the vicious comments rarely focus on her ideas – they focus on her body. Those comments attempt to shame her for not being thin enough, in the hopes that she will stop writing about shame.

While the cultural shaming is overwhelmingly difficult to change, we can change our approach to it and our willingness to feel shame in response to shaming. We can work with our own shame. We can transform it. We can become shame resilient.

For example, Dr. Brown says that one of her main shame-resilience tools for on-line comments is a tiny piece of paper she carries around in her wallet with the names of the handful of people whose opinions actually matter to her. When she receives a shaming comment on the internet she can check, "Is this person on my list? No. Then it doesn't matter what they think."

Each of us has the ability to choose to buck the system and refuse to accept the dictates of societal shaming. I don't have to accept that it's shameful not to be Thin, Modest and Nice. I have choice.

Transforming shame

This past summer, my friend Jonathan Rotsztain gave me a copy of one of the books he has written and illustrated. The book is entitled Everything that's wrong with my body. I recommend you read it now on Jonathan's web site (Note: adult content). The book is an inventory of everything that Jonathan feels is wrong with his body – too much hair in some places, not enough hair in others, every perceived bump and flaw and wrinkle. Every time I read Jonathan's book, I feel deeply moved. I am moved by Jonathan's honesty and his courage.

And I am moved by the way his book makes me understand that the negative feelings we have about our bodies are not the whole story. Not by a long shot.

This morning, I did an exercise. I created an inventory of everything that I feel is wrong with my body. I listed 28 things. Then I made a list of everything that I feel is right with my body – 35 things on that list. And as I've continued writing this blog post, I've thought of more things to add to both lists.

I am not as brave as Jonathan. I don't feel ready to post those lists publicly or transform them into art. But I will tell you this: the feeling of making those lists was deeply instructive. I made the shame list first – and I felt shame and self-judgment. I felt disgusting and discouraged. I made the list of things that please me about my body second and I felt pleasure, smiles and contentment. And those feelings washed backward toward the shame list.

I believe that if I can focus on the places where I love myself and my body, I might be able to build resilience around the shame about some aspects of my body. And become – gasp – a more integrated person. And hopefully, a more integrated person who will no longer have dreams about people telling me I should wear make-up and make more of an effort.

Shame and vulnerability

A dear friend recently sent me a link to watch this long-format (90-minute) interview with Dr. Brené Brown:

http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2015/09/brene-brown-rising-strong/

I've been a fan of Dr. Brown and her work for a number of years. She's a researcher-storyteller who studies human connection, shame, vulnerability and wholeheartedness. I've written about her on my blog before because her work was the inspiration for me giving my tiny house its name: Wholehearted House.

I've mostly come in contact with Dr. Brown's work on-line, in the form of TED talks and podcasts, but watching the long-form interview with Chase Jarvis inspired me dig deeper into her work by reading the books she has written. So, I put in requests for all four of them at the library.

Her books, in order of publication, are 1. I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't), 2. The Gifts of Imperfection, 3. Daring Greatly and 4. Rising Strong. The first book is about shame, the second about vulnerability, the third about courage and connection and the fourth is about the process of using shame resilience strategies to work through shame triggers and build greater connection.

My personal journey with shame

I grew up with a legacy of shame in my family that came down from my very staunchly Victorian, Methodist great-great-grandparents on one side and equally staunch Roman Catholic great-great-grandparents on the other side (all of whom were no doubt only bringing their beliefs forward from their parents and they from theirs, etc.) Expectations were high in my family – for intelligence, achievement, post-secondary education, morality, etc. And the punishment for failing to always conform to those high ideals (i.e. being human), was often shame.

I'm not pointing any fingers here. I don't think the shame in my family was malicious in its intent, it was just the way things were, the way they have been for generations. As Brené Brown points out, shame is a universal phenomenon, experienced by every human who isn't a sociopath. In North American culture, I would say that shame has grown to be a basic operating principle in a majority of contexts. I have definitely worked in offices/for clients and had friendships and intimate relationships that functioned predominantly in a culture of shame.

Shame is a fear of disconnection, of not being worthy of love and belonging, and as such it strikes at the core of us. Love and belonging are two of our most basic human needs.

The cultures of shame I have experienced have included messages and feelings like the following.

You're no good/not good enough and therefore:

• this is all your fault, or 
• you should feel ashamed of making this mistake, or
• I am better/more important/more powerful/more entitled than you are, or
• you're not getting a raise/not worth the same salary as your equivalent colleagues, or 
• I'm not going to talk to you anymore, or 
• I'm going to say bad things about you behind your back, or 
• I am telling you on your Facebook wall that I despise you/your beliefs, or
• I am withholding love/sex/connection from you.

Shame tends to get around.

Sometimes I have been the one shaming (I include judging and feeling contemptuous here) other people and sometimes other people have been the ones shaming me.

I have often found myself in "shame loops" – where my shame has gotten stirred up and my response is self-righteousness or judgment which I hope will trigger someone else's shame and protect me from my own. The loop part happens when the other person in the dynamic turns around and shames me right back. And so on. And so on.

Shame – and the vulnerability it stirs up – are deeply painful and difficult to bear. Because of this, they are highly transferable. Too painful to accept and process, we tend to act them out and try to get them off our plates – like hot potatoes. It seems easier to pass shame on than to work shame and vulnerability through.

When I am not successful passing shame and vulnerability on, I tend to armour up against them in an attempt to wall them off. Brené Brown outlines three main forms of armour that people put on to protect against the vulnerability of shame: foreboding joy, perfectionism and numbing.

The booby prize of perfectionism

For roughly the first three-quarters of my life, I lived very deep in the realm of perfectionism. For me, the thinking was: only perfect people are worthy of love and connection. Of course, I knew I wasn't perfect, but I sure was trying. (Very trying, as we sometimes joke in my family). I wanted to be worthy of love and connection – and I thought that being perfect was the only way to achieve that.

After a whole lot of therapy, at some point in my thirties I was able to gradually let go of trying to be perfect, most of the time. I learned how to cut myself some slack, but I think I simultaneously gave up on the hope that I would ever be worthy of love and belonging. I changed my behaviour, but I didn't change my thinking. I still believed that only perfect people are worthy of love and belonging. And since I finally understood that perfection is impossible, that I was not perfect and never would be, I did not deserve love and belonging. Plain and simple.

With that kind of thinking at my core, it is no surprise that the relationship I had been in for a many years collapsed. Looking back now through this lens of Dr. Brown's shame research, I can see how that relationship fell apart largely because of shaming and blaming. Brené has a great line: "If blame is driving, shame is riding shotgun." (Daring Greatly, p. 195) I can see how I wasn't happy and couldn't accept that that was my own responsibility. I needed to work through my own vulnerability and make my own peace with myself and my life. I needed to believe that I was worthy of love and belonging. And I believe my partner needed to figure out similar things for himself. Because we weren't yet able to work through the things we needed to, we resorted to passing shame back and forth between us, stomping on one other's vulnerability, and getting angry and frustrated with each other for not being able to solve/remove each others' difficult feelings. Shame and blame were fundamental to the way we related to ourselves and to one another. And that dynamic went from uncomfortable to intolerable to impossible.

The difference between shame and guilt

Perfectionism is a both an armour against feeling shame and a major re-enforcer of shame. The thinking runs like this: If I am not perfect, I am a flawed/bad person. This is where Dr. Brown's distinction between shame and guilt – between one's essence and one's behaviour – comes in. Brené Brown distinguishes shame from guilt by explaining that shame is experienced as I AM bad in contrast to guilt which is experienced as I DID something bad.

Guilt holds the possibility of change, hope, agency. If I have done something bad, I can make amends, seek forgiveness and strive not to do that bad thing again.

Shame, on the other hand, robs us of agency. If I am a bad person, there is no point in trying to make amends and seek forgiveness. I am simply doomed to a life of being bad, and therefore unacceptable,  unworthy of love and connection.

Framing an incident as I DID a bad thing and am still WORTHY of love and belonging creates a very different experience from I AM a bad person and am fundamentally UNWORTHY of love and belonging. (In the language of perfectionism, this can translate to I MADE A MISTAKE and am still WORTHY of love and belonging versus I AM A MISTAKE and am fundamentally UNWORTHY of love and belonging.)

When people frame their experiences through the lens of guilt, there is hope for a positive outcome. An experience can be turned around.  Something "bad" that threatened disconnection can transform into closer connection.

When people frame their experiences through the lens of shame, the opportunity to transform disconnection to connection is lost. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, depression, eating disorders, and a number of other behaviours that can cause a great deal of damage to individuals and their connections with others. It seems to me that these are essentially manifestations of the main armour tactics Brené Brown lays out: foreboding joy, perfectionism and numbing.

Shame resilience

Since shame is a universal experience, it is not something that can be eliminated or "cured". However, what we can do is develop shame resilience – ways of using courage, critical awareness, reality-checking and vulnerability to work with the shame we experience and move through it more smoothly. We can transform shame from a weapon we use against ourselves and others to a tool/educator that we use to grow into greater connection with ourselves and others.

Dr. Brown lays out a number of tools for building shame resilience that she has identified through her research. These are ways in which people go from thinking I am flawed and therefore unworthy of love and connection to I am flawed and also worthy of love and connection — and not worthy despite being flawed, but because of being flawed and because of finding the courage to accept being flawed and the vulnerability that comes with that.

In our culture of blaming and shaming, we are all faced with the struggle of shame and "shame hangovers". We can deflect, we can wallow, we can resist. Or we can lean in with our vulnerability, accept ourselves, learn how to be ourselves and to have more grace around our humanness and our shame.

I am not going to try to explain Dr. Brown's tools for shame resilience here. I couldn't possibly do them justice in a blog post. If you are interested in knowing more, I urge you to read Daring Greatly. After getting this book from the library, I've decided that I want to own a copy so I can have it on hand while I continue to do work developing greater shame resilience (I feel the need to give a shout-out here to my awesome local booksellers at Lexicon Books – thank you for ordering a copy of Daring Greatly for me to buy).

A postcript about parenting:

I am not a parent, but I have been parented. And so while I hesitate to put this forward because I fear that some people might tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about and that this is none of my business, I'm going to put this forward anyway: I think Dr. Brown's writing about parenting is amazing. She doesn't give specific advice about how to parent – she describes a path to becoming an engaged and vulnerable parent raising children in a family that is committed to creating shame resilience in every member of the family. Even if shame is not a major issue inside a given family, it is so prevalent in North American culture that it is very often an issue from a very young age in schools, on sports teams and on playgrounds (manifesting as bullying, clique-y-ness, shaming power trips – yes, with that last I am thinking of one of my junior high school gym teachers). With this in mind, having an eye to shame-resilience as a parent strikes me as a very valuable thing for children, parents and our culture as a whole. If you want a quick sample to see if Brené Brown's approach to parenting appeals to you, check this out: http://brenebrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/DaringGreatly-ParentingManifesto-dark-8x10.pdf

The Move: Part 2 (in which I shovel snow and name my house)

Well, we couldn't move the house yesterday.

It didn't get cold enough on Monday night to freeze the driveway solid and we weren't prepared to attempt it if there wasn't a reasonable prospect of success.

It's a tricky thing: a single lane of long, curvy driveway where there are only two options: make it to the top to deliver the trailer and turn the truck around in the field or get stuck and back the whole way down. With a 35-foot trailer hitched behind an 18-foot-long truck.

Not for the faint of heart.

But I really, really, really want to get her in place. The fellow who's agreed to tow her for me is going away in a couple of weeks, and it's not going to get any drier or more solid up there until after the spring when we can get some work done on that stretch of driveway.

So, yesterday afternoon, some friends and I got together to shovel all the snow and ice we could out of the path, in the hopes that frozen dirt will be more solid than a mix of frozen snow and ice and dirt.

It's minus 5 degrees (Celsius) now and has been most of the night (and yes, it is 4 in the morning, I couldn't sleep) so hopefully there is something resembling a good solid road on that hill.

If you pray, please say a little prayer for us. If you're a sender of good vibes, please send them our way.

Uncertainty can be stressful

Meanwhile, I've been feeling a little stressed. It's hard to live in a state of the unknown, especially when the unknown outcome is close to one's heart. It stirs up a lot of vulnerability for me.

I've been trying to stay calm and happy. I know she'll get up there one way or another, now or in the spring. Knowing that doesn't always help, though.

So, rather than trying to pretend that I wasn't having any feelings, I put some energy into thinking about vulnerability and uncertainty, and since I know that I love the way Brené Brown talks about those things, I looked up this TED talk and watched it again. I hope you have 20 minutes, because I would like to share it with you. It seems to me to contain a simple recipe for how to live a good life, a whole-hearted life in the face of uncertainty and vulnerability (which, let's face it, crop up for a lot of us, often):

This is part of what this tiny home is about for me – shaking off the numbness of being stressed out by debt and feeling weighed down by my stuff – to take a calm, reasonable approach to living, to find a bit of discipline in a simpler life and to become more fully alive – through working harder for my necessities and being responsible: to the earth, to my heart and to my peace of mind.

This period of struggle has given my house a name

My friend, Danette (brilliant creativity coach at The Radical Creative Sanctuary), asked me yesterday if I ever name my dwellings. I never have before. I've lived in houses with names, back in my uni residence and Campus Co-op days: McCaul House, Lowther House, Savage House, and a house we called Six-Twelve.

Through the process of the past couple of days, my thoughts on Brené Brown's research and Danette's insightful question, I'm moved to name my house and I think I've found the perfect name for her: Wholehearted House.