Mother Contemplating Listening

Opioid Op Ed, Herald Leader, March 17, 2024

The Lexington Opioid Commission has been meeting since October, 2023. Chairwoman Stephanie M. Raglin and Vice-Chair Tara Stanfield,  met with Mayor Gorton. Gorton made it clear she does not want a recommendation from the Opioid Abatement Commission at this time. She wants them to do the important work of listening. It never hurts to review the purpose of any project and its current strategy at any given point. 

At the most recent meeting on Feb. 9, Stanfield talked about Gorton’s expectations and the art of listening. Stanfield related her own past of not listening, of bringing “expertise” that did not fit with her clientele. 

“I keep thinking about being a young therapist getting started and out of school, on fire and ready to change the world. . . I had all the answers,” Stanfield said. “I went into practice and I realized that none of my answers were working and the patients didn’t like my answers. . . . I would tell people what to do and they wouldn’t do it. I would feel frustrated. I could only imagine how frustrated they felt. 

At the time, Stanfield was working in Eastern Kentucky in a town already ravaged by opioids. 

“We talk about the opioid epidemic{being} for the last 5 to 10 years but it’s been way longer,” she said. “Back then I was struggling. I would come in every day with all the answers. Tell people what to do; they wouldn’t do it. Sometimes they felt like they needed to tell me they were doing it, when they weren’t.”

As an impacted mother, I, too, have felt I had answers gleaned from my personal experience and I wanted action. I would listen, but only with the intention of giving advice which was not always accurate. At times I was losing hope that anything would ever change. 

Stanfield had the same experience, but then something happened. She was invited to do a training in an evidence-based practice. 

“It changed my career, it changed my life, it changed the way that I talk to patients; honestly, it changed the way I talked to people in general,” she said. “The number one thing that it did was take me out of any expectation, it took me deep into my soul that I was not an expert on somebody else’s life. 

“You can’t be. You don’t know where people have been, what they've been through. And I’m not the expert of exactly what it’s going to take for them to make a change and find their way out of the path that who knows how they got into to start with. I’m never going to know all those things. My job is to be there with them, support them, and work with them directly to find the way, whatever that way is going to be for them. The reason that this relates is when we think about substance use in a community, as bad as the problem has become, it is so complicated, just the same as it is when you think about a single patient.” 

The more OAC meetings I attended the more I learned how large this crisis was, that it was a community disease. And how important it is to hear everyone’s story. Stanfield makes the point that it needs to be treated the same way an individual is treated. We need to take the time to do it right. Listening and assessment come first. 

“When I met with Mayor Gorton it was so nice to hear that the only thing that she expects from us right now is to bring her suggestions and she doesn’t want one tomorrow because she knows it’s a big complicated topic and we’ve got 18 years of these abatement funds,” Stanfield explained. “She really wants something that will work in the community, be sustained in the community and have a shot at matching the complexity that addiction is on an individual level and on the big macro level of an actual city.

“All of us have our expertise that we’re going to bring to the table. We’re really just in the phase now of assessing the patient. All we’re doing now is to put it out there to the community to hear from our community partners, to hear from people who have experienced tragedy, because of addiction, and to really get a feel of what’s out there. Talk about expertise, that’s where a lot of it will come from.” 

The next Opioid Abatement Commission meeting is Friday, April 12 at 10 a.m. in the council chambers. In the form of your stories, bring your expertise to the table. You can sign up to speak during the public comment time. Or you can email the commissioners at opioidabatement@lexingtonky.gov.

How I learned To Focus

shibori dyed silk using he shade colors

FOCUS

In 1998 a friend suggested I learn to dye fabric, then I could cover my books in silk. I enrolled at the University of Kentucky. Six weeks after starting classes my 26 year old son had a paralyzing accident.

When I first received the call from the emergency room nurse on September 11, 1998, I assumed she was telling me the worst so I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up. I listened as she stated Donnie's condition: collapsed lung, paralyzed, no brain damage. I knew he would pull through. And I knew I was strong and in control.

I marched through those steel gray emergency room doors as if to say: Come on Donnie we can handle this, let’s go on home. Of course we couldn’t—not with all those tubes and that paralysis. The first thing he said to me, the very first thing was, “I’m sorry.” That was before all the tubes were inserted and I’m sure neither one of us knew it would be weeks before any real conversation would take place and that I would learn to read lips and tell him things from some place inside me that could only be spoken then.

Several weeks later as he became stronger and only a few tubes remained in his arm and his throat and other hidden places under sheets that I could never see, we moved on to the mundane. Who will care for his dog while he’s in the hospital and can he live on his own, even if he is paralyzed? I didn’t even ask, can he? I simply assumed. 

"Should I quit school to take care of him," I asked myself. When I realized this was forever and we both had to learn to deal with it, I decided to stay in school and learned the most important lesson of my life: focus.

The only way I could manage classes and intensive care was going to be by picking one thing. I chose the Arashi Shibori technique for dyeing fabric. Not only did I make books, I began designing collections to wear at my performances. What I discovered was that when you wear art it changes your stance. No matter how you wear it, or fold it up in your lap, it is beautiful and has energy. 

ruana using old clothes in all the shades of shade.

Threshold of Perseverance

Rearranging furniture, hanging pictures, and art the way I did after Donnie‘s paralyzing accident. After his death. I persevere. 

I saw him yesterday.  Only he was black. He was in his chair at the bus stop. 

He was leaning on one elbow to the side, the way Donnie did. 

He had a grocery bag looped across the back of his chair, the way Donnie did. 

He was sitting on a pillow to make it more comfortable, the way Donnie did.

I parked my car, took $20 out of my purse and walked toward him. 

I stood by his side to say hello and I couldn’t speak. 

My voice quivered and cracked. I wanted to let him know I cared. 

I had the 20 wadded up in my hand. I could barely get the words out. 

My son, I said, slowly, was in a chair for 20 years. 

The man nodded with an understanding smile. 

Still, my voice cracked more than usual. 

I wanted to say more but I knew my body would not allow it. 

I want to give you a gift,  I said, and handed him the 20. 

At first he resisted with the standard, Oh, you don’t need to do that, 

as I reached for his hand. I was at the threshold.

He took the 20. His voice cracked and smiled. He had beautiful teeth. 

Thank you. He  could barely speak. No  one has ever done this. 

You deserve it. 

My threshold dispersing, have a great holiday, I said. 

I  would have lingered if my body would have allowed it. 

It did not. I walked into the store to do my shopping. 

I see Donnie everywhere. I saw him at Anna's memorial. 

When I see him, there is a nauseous feeling that settles in my gut. 

The gut. That place near my uterus where he once grew remains tender. 

This threshold, this point of re-entry reveals itself so slow. 

All The Books on the Table

All the Books on the Table, Laverne Zabielski

I had a friend, an intellectual, highly feminist, well read friend. We went to writer’s conferences and feminist theory workshops. Gloria Steinem showed up at one event. Virginia Wolf was discussed and I thought I had arrived. All that searching for the deep down conversation. My friend had bookshelves filled with books, and there were books on the table and more on her fireplace mantle.

I arranged them in a pile. Like a sculpture according to title, as though each title was a line in a poem, and after the pile was complete, the poem was revealed. 

She was an icon of the academic institution. I thought she was the smartest woman I ever met, and probably was. Yet as the friendship developed, even turned to an element of love, she began  to reveal the emotional wreck that she was. Hysterical and impossible to deal with. Came from money, spent her inheritance, and spoke about the values of women and, yet, was clueless to the real work of mothers.  

It became a pattern. 

Some of the most passionate women for women’s rights had very little understanding of what it was to truly live the mother’s life.  All  the books on the table remained.

I cared less and less about  rhetorical intelligence and became more interested in the kitchen table. Coffee talk, when husbands went off to work, and women gathered their buggies and strollers, walked the neighborhood streets, ending up at another mother’s kitchen table. Small talk they called it. Was it? 

We were devoted. The books, nonetheless, all of them still became and become a draw. A habit I must break.  I must stop buying books. I think that if I buy them their contents will seep in if I lay them upon my chest and inhale.

I am pursuing my own books. My latest, the most beautiful. The crafting and placement, arranging words on the page, choosing the font, the size, when to use italics has become the new home decorating, the art by design. And while this book is for mothers dealing with addiction of children, so much of it applies to the letting go aspect of parenting. Letting go of the dream for our children, which is not their dream. 

My book will become part of all those books on the table. I will put it on top because of its beautiful cover. I will hold it in my hands when I want to remember.

Question: What are your thoughts on the hierarchy of intelligence I’m trying to express?

1988 Mothering

1988

I want to go back to the dumb days, before I had something to say. When I was happy washing tomato soup mixed with crackers out of my little girl’s hair after she dumped it there, the whole bowl of it, turned it upside down, flakes of soup soaked crackers stuck to her face.

There wasn’t anything to discover back then, in the dumb days, but get a rag and wash it off, snap a photo if the camera was near. Now, everything has to mean something. Something I ponder and sigh about, write pages about. . . . They levied my account today. The IRS took out all my money and I’m overdrawn.

I used to think there wasn’t anything else to worry about except when the final car payment was and would that Ford Custom last until then. Now I worry about how I put words down on paper, how I spread blue on white. . . I’ve got no credit and the baby got sick. Took her to the doctor and the doctor said, need my money today, Lady    . . . Sometimes I don’t even remember what I was trying to make sense of.

DJ and Johnny are screaming and fighting, carrying on. I holler “I’ve had enough! Your bed time behavior is going to change! You got it! It is going to change, NOW!” I crawl on my hands and knees picking up specks of lint while they brush their teeth and look for pajamas and toss dirty underwear into the garbage by mistake because I moved the dirty clothes hamper. 

There wasn’t anything to do back then in the dumb days except worry about making more cents, more dollars and more babies. If I had known how many cents are needed to care for a baby, I wouldn’t have made a one. But that’s assuming I would have listened to my intuition. I don’t seem to do that now, so what makes me think I would have listened to it then?

All the preaching and talking doesn’t do a damn bit a good. Your kids are watching your every move. You holler at them, they holler at you, and the bedroom stays a mess. I slam the door, sweep Cheerios off the kitchen floor, throw dishrags in the sink and the telephone rings. I sink down in my chair and quietly, softly say, Hello. Is your mother there? They ask. I AM the mother!

My Life, 1st Qtr

Base Housing, Japan

The First  Qtr 

1956 Back in the states from three years living in Japan. New to a one room country school in Perry, Kansas, we were teased by the kids at school. My brother & I told Mom. She left after dinner, went to see Mrs. Nichols, the teacher. Nobody teased us after that.

I remember 

watching the lights of the car in the gravel driveway as it pulled out onto the lane. It felt good seeing Mom to have been so strongly moved to leave that very moment after supper, teaching me a sense of advocacy. Knowing what’s right or wrong and calling it out when necessary. 

Those early days Mrs. Wisin was the alcoholic mother of my best friend Francie, fast Francie, I would eventually find out. And her sister Tina, a cheerleader & lesbian, I would eventually find out. A fact I had no understanding of its meaning.  The alcoholic & her glass of tinkling, ice, & Tina with all her girlfriends riding in the top down convertible. 

A  friend in Topeka lived two doors down in the working class neighborhood we’d moved to.  There were a bunch of kids in her family like ours, & there were fried potatoes on their stove for supper every night. The house was dark with the shades drawn, no light, not cozy & bright like our house.  

I remember the move to Rome, New York, right after falling in love with Gene Wittmen when he held my hand during the Elvis Presley movie during the Wisemen Say song & I felt for the first time the tingle of a crush that went eventually nowhere. That summer another nowhere crush on Dave a lifeguard at the public pool I walked to regularly & swam in the water beneath his lifeguard stand, me flirting & not knowing that was what I was doing. He gave me a ride home & walked me to the door & told me, standing on the sidewalk, we couldn’t date because I was a Catholic. 

Catholic & a transient from the Air Force base which I would learn my senior year in high school when I didn’t get the secretarial scholarship because of this fact. My dad called the base commander. I got it, proud, again, that my parents stood up for me.  It was the right thing to do & he did it. 

When  President Kennedy was assassinated Dad cried, right there in our living room while I hosted a sorority meeting. It was a big deal because I was the first daughter of a sergeant to be invited to join the sorority. All the other girls’ fathers were officers. I learned I could step out of my social economic class & be friends with anyone, including Lorraine a Mexican. She loaned me a sexy white dress so I could wear it to the dance on the base & flirt with the guys I’d be going to school with in September. 

And,yet, I had an attitude about the greasers in the shorthand & typing class, like I thought I was better than they were. It didn’t take me long to figure out in 1964 that going to college was not in the plans, but finding and marrying a good man was. So I did & he was good & uncomplicated & we had our first child, a perfect pregnancy. You were built to have babies, the doctor said. Of course I breast-fed. It was not a discussion. It may have been the first time I walked with attitude. I know what I’m doing & don’t tell me what to do.

Treasure, Gone, Pain

I treasure it all, too much, perhaps

the letters from the past

the artwork, the journals, old clothes. 

Gone. She has lost it all. 

I remember 

that little red teapot I had given her.  

I saw it on the stove

next to red pot holders, pans 

and coasters she made.

I saw it

the day her kitchen was adorable and clean

before it was taken over. 

The pain.

That’s how it happens, gone

one’s life is taken over by a small offering

here, this will help the night away

the energy to reappear.

just this once.

and there will be no critters, no creatures,

nothing slimy or slippery to

crawl inside your brain 

attach itself, demanding more,

or else, or else 

it will let lo0se it’s prickly tentacles

pierce crevices in your body

penetrate every painting in your brain 

until you scream 

until you scream 

release 

and give it 

the just once, one more time

like 

one more kiss, one more touch, 

one more orgasm in the nakedness

of a hidden bedroom

one more glass of wine, shot of bourbon 

not to mention chocolate 

driving across town 

for Black & Green’s organic, 72% 

Hershey’s simply would not do. 

I too truly treasure what I need 

and want what I want

supper at six and

to crawl in bed next to naked

I want what I want when I want it. 

Drug Court

My intention is to flow freely. 

To not let the phone call, earlier today 

continue to traipse through my mind, 

prowl into crevices 

seeking stories with outcomes 

to worry about or covet. 

You see, that is the challenge I seek. 

You see, when you believe 

you are an advocate 

it is hard to redefine your duties. 

You feel you must come forth. 

Of course that was easy 

when the phone call was about homework 

left at home and of course you were willing 

to drop everything, cancel your lunch date 

and drive it up to school, 

imagining the look on your child’s face.

You, Mom, came through. 

Thank you, Mom, you saved the day. 

The last thing 

you wanted 

was for your child to suffer consequences 

which could have been avoided. 

So of course when the woman 

from the drug court called this morning 

all you could say was they’re not at this number. 

Part of you was happy they called. 

You assumed they had reached out, 

was asking for help. The ultimate gesture 

only the addict can do to stop the cycle. 

And then, when the woman from the drug court 

asked you to give a message,

you realized you could not. 

The woman from the drug court said,  

OK, and hung up, unaffected.

Click. 

And you realized

They had not reached out. 

had not asked for help. 

Nothing had changed. 

Texas Road Trip Memories

Three Piles of Red West Texas Dirt

The fun pile of memories

the heat of childhood visits

where there was no pain or struggle only picnics and watermelon

walks in the dry red river swimming in the cold

spring fed pool after

standing behind the falls.

The pile of gossip and pain

who owes who what

who left who, when, and for whom where the dead are buried

and despair of

no water

no job

is too much and

wind & heat take over.

The pile of dreams

how they are moved around

piled up

pushed down

endless attempts to persevere

when red turned high contrast

to remains of cotton scattered in fields.

Laverne Zabielski

Opioid Abatement Op Ed

photo by Kevin Nance

An opioid addiction disease has taken over Lexington. The Opioid Abatement Commission recently appointed by Mayor Gorton and scheduled to meet this Friday, September 15, 2023 has the opportunity to enact solutions. Citizens are suffering. People in Lexington don’t know how to deal with the sudden rise of addicts and homeless roaming our streets, sleeping and camping on public property and often, because of a lack of public toilets, defecating.  Ky House Bill 248 provides no provisions for harm reduction or housing first. They expect complete and total abstinence. Where does the Legislature think those suffering from an opioid addiction disease are to live?  The Opioid Abatement Commission has the power to address these issues. I am grateful that the courts have ordered the corporations and individuals who knowingly allowed the proliferation of this destructive drug to pay reparations.

Recently I attended a community meeting to address concerns about homeless people lingering around the bus stop at Elm Tree Lane and Third Street. Everyone likes to relax in the shady areas in public spaces. But when trash is left behind because there are no trash cans and some could be using drugs, it makes neighborhood citizens uncomfortable and they want something to change. My hope is that those suffering from an opioid addiction disease are provided housing and access to the medical care they need, medical care that includes getting their teeth replaced. 

My daughter has been homeless, living on the street for four years. She could be your daughter or sister. If you’ve been around Lexington, you probably saw her dance with Syncopated Inc. at the Singletary Center or in Woodland  Park. Now she sleeps there sometimes. She may have served you at Alfalfas restaurant. She made huge oatmeal cookies at Everybody’s Health Food store. She went to Henry Clay High School, played basketball, and studied fiber art at UK. 

But life didn’t turn out for her. And it isn’t as if she hasn’t tried. She is probably an expert in chasing down agencies, making phone calls from borrowed phones only to listen to answering machines say they will call you back. How do you call a homeless person back? Sometimes they have phones, sometimes they don’t.

I’ve called agencies. I leave messages. I don’t get a return phone call either. And if it’s a weekend, everything is closed. Once I heard a story on the radio about how people with disabilities and mental illness qualified for a room during a cold winter. She called and all they said was she didn’t qualify. 

She and many others need housing first. A room to sleep in, not on the street or in somebody’s shared tent. A place where they can focus and get on a path toward getting off the street. You can’t get your life together when you’re sleeping in a culvert during a rainstorm. 

Some say addiction is a disease. Others call it a choice. Maybe it’s a little of both. Providing housing and medical treatment on demand allows those addicted to opioids the help they need to address their disease and make appropriate choices for healing. This cannot be done while living on the street.

Many tell opioid addicts to go to rehab. It’s not that easy. It is very painful to detox from opioids. And if an addict has gone once and not been successful it is even harder to go again, because they know the pain they will confront. Nonetheless many go as many as seven times before a successful detox. Some are never successful and they begin to wonder if there is a difference between the rehabs that Medicare pays for and the rehabs that say Medicare is not in their network. 

Some of these private rehab agencies do offer a cash plan of $30K per month. And after detox, the opioids have so altered the brain that prescription maintenance drugs need to be prescribed. Often it takes two years to rewire the brain from the damage that the opioids have caused. Detox and one month of rehab does not solve the problem. Housing, medical care, and education/job training is needed. This is what the reparations from the producers of the opioid drug crisis are supposed to pay for.

My concern is that the commission members will be afraid to draw upon the lived experiences of the addicts and their families as evidence of what is needed. My concern is that those suffering will have to remain on the street while more research is being pursued. Their lives will continue to be at risk. If we expect addicts to handle their disease, then we need to help them facilitate the complicated, maddening bureaucracy they must face in order to get the housing and medical care they need. If they are to be healed, they need to get that housing and that care now.

Published in the Lexington Herald Leader, September 13, 2023

1946 Sex Education Letter

Saturday night, early February, 1946

Dearest Ray,

Grace Laverne is planning to leave tomorrow afternoon for Canyon and Monday afternoon for Chicago.  So I want to write you this letter in order that you will have received it before she arrives.

I wish she had not insisted on going to Chicago before hand; that the plans had worked out as first arranged, the wedding in the Spring, her, and both of you leaving together.  But they didn’t and she is coming to you instead.

Now, I would be right along with her if it were not for the “small” matter of money, so I just have to trust her to your care and protection.

As long as you were here with me you were safe.  But with out my protection you might have been swept off your feet.  (“You” is plural).  Now you will not have that loving supervision.  So I am depending on you to keep yourself well in hand.  For you know the

paths of love and passion often run side by side and at times are intertwined, so that they are indistinguishable.  One doesn’t have to be bad to make a miss-step; they can be mistaken. And two people as much in love as you and Grace Laverne are could make that mistake mighty easy.  The result being that immediately your love would turn to hatred.  There is a story of just such an occurrence in the Bible, if you care to read it -  2 Samuel, Chapter 13.

Now, if just can’t bare it any longer, you can be married at once.  But be sure and let me know for by that time I may have my land money and can come up.  Besides, I want Grace Laverne married by a Methodist Minister at the alter rail of my church. 

Then there is another thing, Your parents may not believe in so much affection between two persons and they might get shocked.  There are very few persons like I am.  So be reserved but out in the open also.  I can’t stand slipping around or getting off in dark corners.  You have nothing to hide or be ashamed of.  But even so, I don’t want them to have the wrong opinion of my little girl.  I don’t want her lying in your arms; it is going a little too far and is too much of a temptation.  Besides, remember, your parents’ opinion is to be considered.

Now, I could say a lot more but I have given you a general outline and you know what I mean.  Every thing I have said has been said because I love you, I am glad to give Grace Laverne to you, and I want you to enter life together without a blemish, without a regret to look back on.  I think you are the finest young man in the world.

Lovingly,

Mrs. Tilson

Coffeeshop Journaling

The Girl at the Yellow Table

The girl sitting at the yellow table 

in sunlight in the coffee shop 

is drinking iced coffee 

eating pastry with a fork. 

She is looking at her phone

while she eats and sips.

A thick journal with a deep red cover, 

leather like, sits next to a paperback book. 

I can’t see the title. 

To her right is a colorful spiral bound notebook. 

Like me she has several books. 

Her gray backpack 

sits in a yellow chair.

She’s wearing black Ecco sandals, 

pale blue blue jeans.

Her printed top gathered under her breast 

has a scoop neckline.  

Brown glasses

her hair pulled back in a ponytail

held with a gray scrunchy 

her complexion is soft and smooth. 

A diamond engagement ring sparkles

on her left hand.

I write.

The girl sitting in the yellow chair has walked out carrying her phone

leaving books and pastries on the table. 

Through the glass window I see her 

pass out of view and then return

opens the leather like journal

and begins to write. 

She reminds me of me

only

I walk like an old woman. 

With clear skin soft and pristine

she has her whole life ahead of her. 

Unlike the woman in the courtroom earlier. 

Several felonies 

6 trips to the ER after suicide attempts 

ruddy  complexion 

streaked bleached hair

strong jaw. 

She could have once been

the girl at the yellow table 

in the coffee shop writing

before the spiral began. 

Not up. 

Down

into the maya of matter impossible to contain. 

The judge in the high seat

with a fake soft concerned voice  

cannot understand why she 

cannot get it together.  

She might have one day been holy and pure before the spiral.  

Down. 

The girl sitting in the yellow chair 

Is gone

The table empty 

No lovely journals or paperback.

Gone

A vision held for a moment.

I write 

A woman now sits in the sunlight.

She is older 

her skin rough. 

No pristine of youth.

Her body thicker.

She wears a fuchsia hoodie

her jeans well worn.

There are no soft journals.

She wears black tennis shoes 

Types on a black laptop.

Her cell phone

coffee cup

briefcase

black. 

Sunglasses perched on her hair pulled back, black.

She types with determined fingers.

Her pen, red and black, sits on the yellow table 

high contrast. 

She too reminds me of me

in the coffee shop drinking latte

writing. 

Laverne Zabielski

Happy Mother’s Day

I had a feeling, or maybe it was a desire, she would stop by. 

On Wednesday, when she had texted needing money, since all her cash

had been stolen, she apologized for not calling on Mother’s Day. 

I said, Mother’s Day is next Sunday. She said, oh. She was dark & frustrated. 

We talked a little about rehab. She said it’s hard. She said she’s close, but 

she has to make her mind up on her own. She asked if she could take a shower. 

Afterwards, I asked if she wanted a ham sandwich. She cut the crust off. 

Too hard with missing teeth. I gave her 50 & then she left. 

Today, I was looking for her to stop by or text. But her phone is lost. 

Later, in the evening, just before dark, she knocked. She was holding 

a white pillow with embroidery, holding it like a silver platter. 

There was a pink rose on top and an envelope with a big red heart 

drawn in her style of art making. On the inside, on fine paper, 

there was a note. Happy Mother’s Day! Written curvy & colorful. 

Her buggy, a.k.a. grocery cart, was parked in the driveway. 

She had pushed it all the way here. It was full of stuff.  She asked about 

drying some clothes in the dryer, but knew it was late and decided not to. 

I thanked her for the lovely pillow, gave her a hug & then she left. 

I have no idea where she went, or what her plan was for the night. 

I said, stay in touch. 

Seeking Connections

Seeking memories, wisdom, advice for nothing in particular, I turn to my artful journals and writing assignments. The ones that come through the phone, over the internet, from across the country and around the world. I seek connection through my words, reading their words. I long for a cup of coffee with them or gathering around an artist-journal-making table. 

Step one. Gather your story. Print business cards and write a mission statement. I was being cavalier when I said that to a friend. I had heard she was struggling and what I know now after my 76th year is that there is struggle everywhere. A fact I denied. I remember the man a man on the street from my past. I would’ve been a vibrant 30-year-old. I was a woman on a mission, a career mission, an independent woman. A mother from a far. Writing love letters to my children who lived in Texas with their dad. Sending them poetry and beautiful cards in the mail. Traveling on airplanes to visit. Or flying them on airplanes to visit me. Or taking them on road trips. Staying in hotels with swimming pools, eating at nice restaurants for dinner, or at roadside parks for lunch. Avocado sprinkled with tamari dipped with corn chips. My health food days had already begun.

I was an exposure to a different way. I never abandoned them. I was there full strength. In my mind, with love and connection. 

1991 Texas Kids

When I needed someone to talk to I called my mom in Texas. She was not worldly, highly educated or well read. But she knew things. She spoke carefully at the right moment when she knew her message would be heard. 

The man from my past said he read faces. I never heard of that. He looked at my face and said he saw sadness. I rejected the information. Smiling at the fact, coincidentally, that my first name was Dolores, mother of sorrows. It was as though my mother chose to call me Laverne  to deny me that sorrowful fact. 

I rejected the information the face reader passed on. My children and I were deeply connected. I was pursuing more than a dream. I had important work to do, and they too would one day have important work to do and must pursue it and therein lies the challenge of life to be imparted. The ability to determine and accept your and others important work will determine your happiness. 

That day when I was sad and called my mother and told her I had no one to talk to, she told me I could talk to anyone. A woman cleaning houses, washing floors, frying eggs in a restaurant, serving coffee. They will listen, she said, and have wisdom to share. 

Absence of Consciousness

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. ”

— Terence McKenna 

Today, I explore new ideas and ponder the crisis of the absence of consciousness. My desire for creative self expression for myself and others increases. By consciousness, I mean one’s ability to stay present, to be attentive to the moment, and act. To listen. This is not to say bounce around from idea to task. I do it with consciousness. Act on new ideas that may be old but are now appearing as new. I explore repurposing old scarves to create new fabric. I seek new ways to share my stories and techniques.

My new self publishing venture could be perceived as a new idea. I know it’s been around awhile. Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, Benjamin Franklin and Walt Whitman self published. And it has gone in and out of vogue. With our world in crisis, it’s time is now. There is a oneness that collaboration via self publishing creates.

In “This Is Us” Kevin asked, “how can I know so little about my father’s life?“ Perhaps, when Kevin was younger he didn’t want to know. Perhaps his father didn’t want to tell him. These facts are true for many of us. We don’t want to share every little detail of our past. There are many creative ways to tell our story.

I am older. I am aware that time is of the essence. I have seen and accomplished much. I must not leave my legacy untouched, to be discovered in disorganized words and stories found in boxes.

Creative self expression though self publishing addresses the crisis of the absence of consciousness. We can no longer wait for others to determine if our legacy is worthy of publication. There is not enough time. There are not enough people to do that kind of editorial intervention. We are old. We are wise. If we listen, and stay conscious, we know what needs to be said and what needs to be shared. And we know that it needs to be published, now.

Back in the day, people had separate skill sets. Writers wrote. Editors edited. Publishers had access to printers with printing presses. Today, that hierarchy is challenged. A community is desired. In the digital world, those skills sets are more accessible. Writing workshops, online and in person, abound and provide editorial intervention. Digital access provides layout and printing. Collaborations occur when a writer’s creative self expression merges with digital artists. Together, they produce beautiful and timely books. In a time when a heighten sense of consciousness is necessary, collaborating with others makes self publishing an equitable and creative form of self expression. It creates oneness. Crisis averted. Be an indie publisher. Create and Artist Book now.

To learn more about famous authors who chose to self publish click below.

https://indiereader.com/2016/10/6-famous-authors-chose-self-publish/

Finding the Right Balance to Sustain a Life of Pleasure

It all started when I realized that I always say no after a dinner party when guests, usually women, offer to help clean up, do the dishes. It’m not ready to leave the party zone, the family dinner. I want to linger in the glow of conversation, the warmth from love and food. To jump up and do dishes feels like work, it’s a struggle. I feel pressure. I don’t mind waiting to clean up slowly, one countertop at a time, gather empty glasses on end tables and remember bits and pieces of conversations as I pick up dishes, blow out candles, and scrape scraps into the compost. 

Work vs Pleasure

Finding the right balance to sustain a life of pleasure. 

A friend posted on Facebook, “I have become overwhelmed by my potential. I need to get out of my own way so that I can pursue all that I dream. I can see what I am capable of accomplishing. Only it’s beginning to feel like too much work. I have a strong work ethic and don’t want to appear weak or lazy. And while I have heard those phrases, the less you work, the more you make, the concept just doesn’t seem to fit.”  

There were many posts in the comment section. I was impressed that so many of her friends were so aware of their potential. “We need a Brag Group!” I said. We often create online spaces where we can feel safe to express our concerns and weaknesses. We seldom create places where we can just brag without fearing that subtle critique from childhood, “Who does she think she is?” When that is exactly what we eventually begin to realize. It’s no longer who we think we are, it’s who we know we are. We begin to see all the challenges we have overcome, recognize all we have learned, the elixirs have been uncovered and we realize we are heroines on a path, we have a legacy, and it must be shared. 

Based on Joseph Campbell’s work that a set of principles guide our life, Christopher Vogler writes, “Trust the path. Keep marching ahead to the next stage of life.” It’s when we listen to our body and trust that our instincts are good and natural we find a place where we will feel all our potential.

When you are feeling overwhelmed it is worth listening to your instincts. And if it feels like too much work, don't do it. At least not yet. I understand this dilemma. It used to frustrate me, and I would push on, no matter what. Now I realize this is a message to listen to your body’s wisdom. It speaks to you in many forms; emotions, pain, thoughts, and the personal critiques and edicts that you don't often want to hear. The key word is feel. This is the most important thing you need to pay attention to every day. How do I feel? Your internal dialogue, “it’s too much work,” is telling you to pause and decide if another more pleasurable approach is possible. This is your first clue as to whether or not it is something you want. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to do this? Where’s the playfulness?” When you make every task playful, when you find pleasure in what you're doing, you will be prolific. Ultimately, that’s the goal: To be playful and pursue life with pleasure.

My suggestion is to devise strategies to fall in love with every layer of your life, every task, including accounting and bookkeeping, cleaning and organizing, going through old photos and letters discovering where you came from and what you’ve accomplished. This means transforming every bit of marketing into being in relationship with others, making love to your friends and clients by the way you communicate. 

Falling in love with every aspect of your life is where your 3creative legacy lives. When you trust your instincts, discover all the layers of life you have managed and the challenges you have overcome, you are able embrace the heroic journey you have been traveling, you know what to cherish. You find the thread that weaves it together and identify your elixir, the magical potion that contains all that you have acquired and desire to share. This is how your experience the sensation of trusting the path and developing your life story instruction manual.

Developing a new strategy means that everything you do must contain the same amount of energy and excitement. I often refer to this as being continuously artful. However, since many people cannot relate to the term art, artist, or being artful, I also refer to it as being playful and giving pleasure. It’s all about feeling. When you are creating a new piece of art, or developing a program, or designing a structure, or writing a poem, you know that feeling you have inside when you are in the zone of creativity. That same feeling has to be present when you are preparing to advertise your creation, to market it, the letter you write to promote it, the records you keep for documentation. When being creative, balance and emphasis are two of the principles of design. You can find balance when working on your spread sheet simply by making each column balance and you determine emphasis when you decide what’s important when you evaluate your closing statement.  

Recently while digging through my collections of poetry and photos I found a poem I had written in 1983. It revealed to me when the power of feelings first began to resonate. I had received a note from my son’s teacher. He was three and a half. I was a hair designer at the time, and of course, each time Danny John came into the salon he wanted a haircut. I was so devastated by his teacher’s comments that I momentarily began to question my entire parenting style. Seeking pleasure in this disturbing situation, I ended up writing a poem. And so began my life of responding creatively.  

Punk at three and a half

We got a note from his teacher

I mean, he’s only three and a half

It’s the sillies, she said

he’s got the sillies

he won’t settle down

and do his work

he’s just too silly

having too much fun

he doesn’t seem to know

what is socially unacceptable.

I’ve been wondering what would happen

all this freedom he’s been having

I never say no

unless 

it’s morally wrong

or

physically damaging.

So this is how he turned out

too silly.

What is socially unacceptable, anyway? 

I ask.

Playing in his food.

Interesting, I say, considering

his favorite friend is an artist

and she calls food art

and Hershey’s syrup food paint.

Maybe he’s making food art?

And about his hair

maybe it would be better

if he didn’t get it cut so short

it disrupts the class

the children gather ‘round him

what did you do to your hair?  

they ask

and they all want to touch it.

Oh my God

they want to touch him?

He’s the one who wants it cut so short

do you think it could be

he likes to be touched?

So this is how he turned out

too silly

having too much fun

and he likes to be touched

What is socially unacceptable 

anyway?

(c) 1983

Danny John wanted to be playful and have fun, even though these qualities challenged social norms. After writing the poem I gained insight into his experience and was better able to understand my feelings. By the time Danny John was seven his feelings began to reveal themselves again during a family therapy session. My recent marriage had blended two families. Out of the combined 11 children, there were six living in our home. We had decided that a group session would be a good way to bring everyone to the table and create a safe space for them to express themselves. We went around the room and each child told what it was like to live in our family. Danny John was last. He said he didn't like it because he had to do all the work. Of course, we all looked at each other, aghast, since we thought he hardly did anything. Clearly, he felt he did too much work emphasizing it wasn’t what you did, it's how you felt.  Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There is more wisdom in your body than your deepest philosophy.” Let’s pay attention.

For instance, I refuse to feel pressured. Lately, I’m not sure if I'm always working, or never working. I work to fill stations, not to finish projects and I love every step in my process. When I’m writing and I get stuck, I move on to ironing the silk that I have recently dyed. Now that could be seen as work, especially if I don’t want to do it but feel obligated in order to satisfy a deadline. But when I can iron and also ponder an idea I’m writing about, or a letter, suddenly it is not work. 

Arrange everything so that you can pace yourself and be artful. Write down goals, however, you don't constantly have to refer to them. When I look back at things I wrote down three months ago, I find that many have been accomplished. George Szekely, a strong advocate for play and the creative process, says, ”All work is guaranteed to get better if one stays with it.”When we make the work playful we tend to stay with it longer.

Recently I was talking to my brother who lives in Chicago. I am frequently making suggestions for things he should do. He always replies, “that’s too much work.” I used to not take him serious. Now I can see that living a harmonious life is important to him and deciding to do things that might interrupt that flow are just too much work. He stays focused on what matters most, delegates when possible, is prosperous and always has time for friends and family.

Yes, getting out of your own way is an important distinction regarding choices and taking risks. The way to weed out unnecessary tasks is by seeking the playful pleasure factor. If you can’t find a way to make it fun, don’t do it. Something else that leads you to your goal will fall in it’s place. Listen to your body’s wisdom. She’s got something important to say. It’s all about feeling. Louis Armstrong said "what we play is life.” Make that your goal. What I’m playing at now is making a Creative Legacy Recall Playbook where I will collect significant photos, stories and life writing. What will give me great pleasure is to include my poem Punk at three and a half.  Thirty two years have passed since I wrote it and DJ has become a fine young man. I no longer doubt my parenting style, I claim the creative legacy of the heroine’s journey and I want you to claim yours, also.

Ambiguous Tour With Sequins

When I say, the title of my next  book will be “Everything I Need 

to Know in Life I Can Learn In Art Class,” I am not kidding. 

Marilyn said, Don’t waste paint. Don’t waste anything. 

A make-do life becomes a make-art life as I paste sequins in my 

altered artist journal and begin to define what I am thinking. 

Do I define what I’m thinking before the fact or after the fact? 

This begins my ambiguous tour through the maze of not 

what is there to learn, but what I want to learn. Take what you can 

and apply it to what you want. Joyce said, don’t let them lead you 

astray. I can see that I will have to make the list of teachers in the 

front of my book longer since my friend Joyce becomes my teacher 

by suggesting the use of metal leaf on my sequins. Before making 

art my life art, I would not have taken her suggestion seriously. 

Now it’s yes, yes, yes, teach me, teach me, teach me. Arturo said, 

bring what you are already doing to class. Jim said, keep it 

personal. How can so many people say the same thing and it be 

so difficult to understand? Do you really want to know why 

I put sequins in my book? It is survival. It is tedious. I want it tedious. 

What do you worry about, Mom? Johnny’s only 13. Of course 

he has no idea. I am old. When I was a young mother, I didn’t worry. 

Now, I know too much. Seen too much. Done too much. 

I paste sequins in my  journal. Tedious. The mind cannot worry 

when choosing a color combination for sequins. The mind cannot worry 

on the ambiguous tour through art, ambiguous art, where excitement 

and adventure live. Life is predictable. Art is ambiguous. We know 

where life goes. All over the place. And sometimes the colors smear. 

I slow down. I don’t turn the page so fast. I said, if you were to smoke

pot and I’m not saying it’s OK, but, if you were, I’d  like to think 

you were responsible, like not smoking before school.

published in Trash to Treasure

https://www.trashtotreasurelit.com/search?q=laverne%20zabielski

Parallel Comfort

Parallel Comfort

So desired

it is sought in hidden places

anguish rises from my gut

near the womb in which you grew

it leaks into the breasts

from which I nursed you

works its way into my throat

a tension pushing me over

falling me down

I write into this ache

my body calms

as does overwhelm

with desire 

to dig into my words

my only path to redemption

this drunkenness of pain

my pain, your pain 

we walk side-by-side

yet far apart

we do this alone.

Mothers of Homeless, Addicts, and Estranged

The landscape she’s created for herself doesn’t match the one I carried for her all her days in my womb, as a toddler, a teen, a young woman.

It was a good day the last time she stopped by.

I don’t know why.

Was she high or taking antidepressants instead of one of those maintenance drugs, Suboxone or methadone? 

I don’t know.

In fact it’s clear,

I don’t know much anymore

and I’m not in charge. I listen. 

If I debate her and she’s not in a good place, coming down, maybe, or from no sleep. Hungry.

I don’t know,

but that’s when I will get put in my place and I  tell her it’s time to leave, find different scenery.  I need my own landscape where the presence of her turmoil doesn’t press upon my chest,  leaving me anxious. 

****

Last night Larry and I watched The Morning Show. There was the exact scene, only it was a sister and brother. Everything the sister said to her brother, I’ve said to my daughter. And in the show, when the brother didn’t like what he heard, he yelled at his sister.  Larry and I looked at each other. “This is way too close,” Larry said. 

Larry and I think we are the only ones having this experience. 

We’re not.

We’re all worried. 

I will be teaching a class on Mothers of Homeless, Addicts, and Estranged, Writng for Healing, at the Carnegie Center in Lexington this winter. This is not therapy or a support group. This is writing, digging deep into old bones to tell our story. This is not easy.

The Night She Found Her Beat

If you’d like to listen to my reading of this story, scroll down to the link.

I’m pretty sure I was there that night when he learned to be beautiful. Only it wasn’t called The Oscar. It was Johnny Angels. It had the same layout and I danced all night. Instead of being a teenage boy, with a fake id expressing his sexuality, I was a woman who let her kids live with their dad in Texas, had two abortions, and could be anyone she wanted to be in her avant-garde hair salon wearing a black polyester jumpsuit with a rhinestone zipper and black handmade cowboy boots.

When Bradley, who booked his haircut appointments under the name Adam Stills, came in, she asked him if his mother was a poet. He asked why. She said, because your name is so poetic. He answered, no, and asked her to cut his hair so it would look like he cut it and she said, well then why don’t you? Later, when he showed her the long black silk nightgown he just bought, and  even though she had no idea he intended to wear it she said it was very nice.

All her young gay clients loved the haircuts she gave them. And they loved her, especially, when she got a Grace Jones cut. That night in 1980, they gathered around her as though she was their mother come to see their beauty. She wore a black, polished cotton trench coat, walked up to the bar and the architect whose hair she had trimmed took her collar and turned it up giving her a dramatic style. He ordered a drink and the bartender said, here darlin’ as he handed it to her.

She walked toward the packed dance floor where the music never stopped and little bottles were passed around and everyone took a whiff making the pulsating music even more intense as a couple, high up in the bleachers, was moving and gyrating.