Jo’s 26 before 26 list
Here are my 26 goals to accomplish before I turn 26 on August 7, 2015
1. Climb another 14er
2. Do a cartwheel
3. Read a Graphic Novel
4. Write/Draw a cartoon/comic series (short or ongoing)
5. Return to Büsingen, Switzerland
6. Read the Brothers Karamozov or Moby Dick
7. Read another Hemingway novel
8. Continue learning Italian (complete work books on my own, take another class, or some tangible effort like this)
9. Start a book project writing biographies on regular everyday-Joe people in the US
10. Write 12 more poems
11. Go to another concert/show
12. Go to a new country
13. Make 4 new oil paintings
14. Get something published in a non-trade-journal magazine
15. Try slack-lining
16. Play disk golf
17. Learn a new card game (and remember how to play it later)
18. Try a completely new food
19. Learn 4 line dances well
20. Try 6 new whiskeys
21. Go to an Imax movie (real movie, not science/museum movie)
22. Read Twilight
23. Read the Psalms at least 30 days in a row and meditate on them
24. Learn all the US Presidents, memorize them. (I’m embarrassed to put this on here, but seriously, this needs to happen now, as it’s way overdue).
25. Learn more about current politics and news and voting schedules.
26. Watch the sun rise over the ocean
Note: I created this In the first week of being 25 and have since already begun accomplishing some! Updates to follow.
Goodbye always makes my throat hurt
About six years ago now, I left my college, and then left my hometown to study abroad at a small school in Switzerland. And I mean small. I thought that I had read or been told that it was a school of about 500 people. “That’s pretty dang small,” I had thought. The two people I knew of who had studied or worked there both raved about how amazing of a place it was.
That, plus it’s physical address and the fact that it was small was all I knew of the school when I decided that I would study there the next semester.
It wasn’t until two days before I left for the semester abroad that people were asking me more about the school and I realized I really didn’t know anything. So I ended up googling it, and looking at it on google maps and seeing that it was right across the street from the Rhine River — awesome — and across some fields from the dense German forest — that would be fun — and then I saw, it’s in a tiny village, literally one street runs through the town. One street. Small freak out moment.
Then I was reading some more on the school website. And somewhere it mentioned it’s school body of “approximately 50 students.”
If you’re not great at math, let me do it for you — 50 is a lot less than 500. A LOT less. I had already suspended my enrollment in my regular university. I had already paid for the semester abroad and had already bought plane tickets. And seemingly didn’t have any other option but to go. But when I learned that there were only 50 people really did make me panic.
“What if there are no cool people in the 50? What if I won’t make any friends? What if I’m miserable?” I had asked a friend of mine rhetorically, panicking. I often agree to do things that I don’t know a lot about. I suppose it’s the adventurer in me and my keen sense that I will be able to adapt no matter what.
But when I learned how few students there were, and realized how extremely little I knew about the whole living-4-months-in-a-foreign-country thing, I did experience some anxiety.
When I arrived, I found there were actually only 25 students, and they were varied, and interesting, and difficult, and wonderful people to study and live and be with. Two buildings held our entire lives. We lived in that one-street village, Buesingen, and we were each other’s peers, and study partners, and roommates, and dinner guests, and movie-watchers, and walk-takers, and river-swimmers. We were all from elsewhere, but all we had there was one another.
It only took 3 days for me to feel like I was at home. Something I had never felt anywhere besides in my hometown where I had been born and raised. It took 3 days for me to decide that one semester wouldn’t be enough. And quickly I found a way to work for the school to support my dream for one semester to become a year.
But still, one year is not a lot. That was one of the unique features of the school in Buesingen — every semester held some new faces and lost some old ones. Even in a school body of 25 students, there was turnover.
I asked one of the students there at the very beginning how she handled that turnover. “You are so sweet and welcoming. How do you do this? Becoming friends with new people every semester?”
“Well,” she said matter of factly, “you have to make a decision every semester. Don’t let new people in, or choose to have your heart ripped out every semester. I choose the latter.”
I am so glad that I asked her that. Because while she, and the others who embraced me so well there taught me so much about how to connect, they also taught me so much about goodbyes. And see you laters. And see you soons. They taught me that it’s an art form and a discipline to open your heart even knowing that the hurt of separation will come shortly. And they taught me that it was worth it. They were practicing vulnerability before Brene Brown made it cool, and they were doing it without the label. But what’s true is that because they were welcoming and open, and because I was the same, we forged friendships that still have lasted over the span of continents and oceans and years.
I recently was able to return to Europe and see, not all, but many of my good friends from my time there. It was so good to be with them again after 5 years since our goodbyes. I know that we are still friends because we decided the hurt of goodbyes with close friends was a worthy price to pay for good friendship.
As I said goodbye to them this time, my throat hurt again. And as I moved away from Rocklin earlier this week, I said more goodbyes. And as I camped with people from home this weekend, I said more goodbyes to them as I am moving to another state within the week.
And yet somehow, the goodbyes are still worth it.
I used to think this was a curse that I kept feeling led to live a life of comings and goings. I felt jealous of those who never had to say goodbyes.
But, I have such a different perspective now. I agree with the ever-wise Winnie the Pooh.
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
I’m about to embark on another adventure that I know nothing about. I know that in the comings and goings, I will have to decide to keep closed, or to open myself and have my heart ripped out. I choose the latter. And I’m confident that it’s worth it.
Jo O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
Other places are
instagram: @jrolicious twitter: @jrohanlon
I listened because he made me laugh – thoughts on Robin Williams
When I saw that Robin Williams had died, I cried. A few silent tears ran down my cheeks at first. And then they just kept coming. Out of nowhere it seemed, I had grief for a person I had never met. This has happened to me when they are related to someone that I care about and know. Or when they have died and some tragic way — victims of social injustice or war, things like this.
But here I was crying for a man I never knew who had always made me laugh.
I’ve gotten in the habit over the past year of listening to comedians on Pandora online. Robin was one of my favorites to listen to. Through Pandora and Spotify I’ve listened to everything of his that is available on the free online mediums. He is hilarious and rash and crude and stop-you-in-your-tracks because what he says is not just funny, it’s true.
His films like Goodwill hunting have touched me greatly. Dead Poets Society is why my favorite English teacher became a teacher. People always laugh at him when he admits that, but he continues to admit it because it’s true, and really it’s a powerful movie for those that it speaks to.
I remember watching Patch Adams when I was young, and being fascinated with the idea that laughter could also be so real and so vital. I think that’s part of what Robin Williams was doing with his life – he was using laughter to get the real stuff with people.
I am at a pretty jaded point in life right now. I have hope, which is a new phenomenon again for me, but this past season has been a very dark and very skeptical one. I have battled depression. I have known the hard work of choosing to get out of bed and face the world for another day. I am distrusting of men. I am distrusting of friends. I am distrusting of the church. I am distrusting of church people. I am distrusting of pastors. I am distrusting in general.
But the church that I go to here in Granite Bay, Bayside Church, is a little bit different. They’re using the Miyagi method of doing one thing while really teaching me another. (Wax on wax off really is the karate chop.) And when I go to church and Pastor Curt Harlow says the funniest stories that I’ve heard in church, I laugh really hard. And before I know it, my guard is down and he’s talking about God and about what God has to do with me. And I’m willing to listen because he made me laugh first before he tells me the true stuff, the hard stuff, the stuff that sometimes hurts to hear, but that I need to hear.
I believe this is why Robin Williams was so influential to me, and many others. He made us laugh at inconsequential, very funny things. He even made us laugh in the midst of really hard things. But in his roles, his characters never left it there. The characters Robin played were those who made you laugh, and then got to what was real, got to what was at the heart of things. I’m pretty sure Flubber was the only one of his movies that I didn’t cry in. And this was true even before I really was a crier. He just had a way to, somehow through a TV screen, touch my heart in some of the most vulnerable, raw places. To reach me in my pain even as the character of a fictional plotline. He brought stories to life in a real way that made them affect me as a real person in the real world with real problems. He was an artist that was able to take fiction and make it important to those who were living true stories.
When I was young I had a book save my life. After my sister had passed away and had been trying to become her, in a way. The book Ordinary People was what caused a breaking point in me that was a pivotal moment in my story where I knew that I either had to end it all or had to start living as myself. This is a story I’d like to tell in detail at some point, but today’s not that day. But it was a pivotal point in my life, and it was a fictional book the convinced me that somebody out there understood me. And up until that point I had been convinced that nobody could possible understand. And the fact that there’s a stranger, an author who I had never met, who penned character lines and a fictional story, could understand what I was going through — that changed everything.
Robin Williams has played many rolls which have played similarly significant moments of “I understand” in my life. And not everybody can play those kind of roles. In fact, he’s the only one that I know of that does it as well as he does.
As I was reading the book Ordinary People, Robin Williams was specifically who I had in mind as being the character who made such a significant impact in my story. He was who I pictured being Berger the therapist who spoke truth into the main character’s life and, subsequently, spoke it into mine. I don’t know why thought of Robin Williams in that role, he didn’t play in the movie Ordinary People, but at the time that’s just who I imagined. Someone with kind eyes, who makes you laugh, sees through your bullshit, and then tells you the hard truth. Someone who understands.
I don’t know what Robin was like as a person. But as a comedian he was hilarious, and as a story-teller, he was influential in real lives, and he will be missed. His relate-ability in both the laughter and the seriousness were what continually made him a presence that I believe made people feel like somebody may really understand them.
While his fictional characters have touched me I believe the man behind them was the one speaking truth in a way that made it matter in real life. I believe the man behind them understood the pain of the world. And he was the rare type of man who could both lighten that pain but also validate it.
Rest in Peace, Robin.
“This Isn’t Funny” — A fictional short story
*This is a fictional short story I wrote as a part of my list of 25 goals to accomplish before I turned 25.
This Isn’t Funny
A Short work of Fiction
by Joanna O’Hanlon
“Hi!” she said, smiling while leaning in to give him a peck on the lips when he opened the door. He looked confused. He wasn’t expecting her. He was glad she was there, she just always told him when she was coming over. But she hadn’t this time.
He had been curious and slightly annoyed when the doorbell rang.
He was home alone — well, at his parents’ home, which used to be his home, but now it felt unnatural for him to be spending all his time there. To be staying, no, living, in his childhood room. At least it didn’t have bunk beds anymore for he and his older brother. But, still. They kept those goddamn bunk beds forever. Even after his brother had left for the army, and he knew he’d never come back. But still they kept them. Wouldn’t let him nix the top one and pretend to be the only actual inhabitant of that room. No, Bill’s stuff had to have a place to stay in case he needed to move home again. Or visit. Now that Bill had been married for 10 years and lived on the other side of the country, they’d finally agreed to get rid of them, and get a queen bed for the room. It’s about freaking time, he had thought when they finally made the change. That was about two months before he got the diagnosis and moved back in with them. Two months before everyone started to know, to say, that he was dying.
So he was home alone, in the middle of the day, watching CSI reruns on daytime TV when the doorbell rang. He’d thought maybe it’d be one of those young, bright-eyed, naive Mormon boys in their white shirts and name tags. He was annoyed at the thought because they were the only people who wouldn’t just shut up when he dropped the “thanks, I would, but I’m dying” bomb on them. That was just fuel for them. If only they didn’t come to his parents neighborhood so much. But they did.
He’d started to play a game with them: “How fast will your drop your convictions” is what he called it in his head.
He’d invite them in and then offer them a coke. They’d say they couldn’t drink caffeine. So he’d bring them a beer.
Soon he would ask them if they wanted to call their parents. He wouldn’t tell. He promised. Or maybe they’d like to Skype with their girlfriend. He had FaceTime on his phone. It was so simple… wouldn’t she be so happy? Their girlfriends must miss them so much. Maybe too much. “Maybe distance doesn’t make the heart grow fonder… ” he would say, trailing off at the end, sounding sad and concerned for them.
And lastly, if they asked to use the restroom, he’d be sure to call out, “the playboys are under the sink!” as they walked into the bath room. He’d never been a big playboy fan himself, but he’d bought a copy specifically to put under the sink. Just in case he actually got them to abandon their convictions.
That’s the thing when you’re dying, he thought. It brings out the devil in you a little.
He didn’t mind religion. And he actually didn’t have anything against these guys that would come to the house other than the fact that he was bored out of his mind, sitting at his parents’ house, with nothing to do, waiting to die. And it annoyed him that they cared about more than death. It’s insensitive to talk to a dying man about his soul – he thought.
But when he’d opened the door, already with a coke in his hand, ready to start his game, but not really feeling up to it, she’d been standing there. In a yellow sundress with an old fashioned picnic basket in her hand. She kissed him briskly and then slid past him through the doorway into the living room in the way she always did. She was fit and thin, but not skinny. But the way she moved – light as a feather – and the way she smiled and always knew what she was doing, where she was going — it made her seem like she was much more slender and dainty than she really was. It was endearing. She never seemed fragile, no. She reminded him of the wind. Powerful, but graceful and light.
He was moving slowly, turning to follow her into the living room when she’d already popped herself down onto the area rug and was sitting, cross legged, shoes off, looking up at him with a look of self-contentment in her wide smile.
His confused look gave way and he laughed. She was beautiful. Like a piece of art. Too goofy and too excited for the girlfriend of a 25 year old cancer patient. That’s what made her perfect. Everything else in his life had gone dark. Even the Mormons, when concerned about his soul, got a graver facial expression when they knew he was sick. But she kept smiling. Kept laughing. And with that yellow dress — man, she just looked like sunshine.
“What are you doing?” he couldn’t help but smile at her as he asked it.
“Well, we’re having a picnic!” she said, confident, pleased with herself for the idea. “But I wasn’t sure how well you were feeling today, so we’re just going to have it here, on this rug.” She softened a bit as she said the last part, her tone asking the undesired question — “Are you feeling up to it?”
“Picnics shouldn’t be on rugs,” he said, his smile slipping. These moments were not uncommon — the ones where she was a beam of light, reminding him that he was 25 and alive, and when, instead, he could only think of the fact that he was 25 and dying.
He plopped down on the couch behind her, to the side of where she was sitting on the floor. He sighed, leaned his head back on the back of the couch, and reached his hand down toward her, open.
She twisted her torso around toward his legs, and reach her hand up to his open one, lacing her fingers through his.
“We don’t have to, buddy, if you don’t want to,” she said softly. She was tracing the outline of his fingers and hand with her index finger — something she always did subconsciously when she was comfortable or comforting him. Same as the way she called him “Buddy.” He always noticed both of these things, but never had said anything. They were those things that made him feel normal and young and in love. He knew her. Her little quirks. Her ways. The ones he wasn’t even sure she was aware of.
He still didn’t say anything, just left his hand open to be traced, flexing his fingers up one at a time as she followed their edges.
“I just know that you’ve been bored, and I love being with you even when we’re doing nothing. But I’ve been trying to think of how we could do something that we used to do. Nothing big, just the simple stuff. Like just going out to eat or stuff like that. So this was what I came up with… ”
She felt herself rambling. “I know, it’s kind of a stupid idea… with the picnic basket and everything…” she finally trailed off.
He was listening. Thinking. She knew this. He took a long time to respond sometimes these days. There was a lot on his mind, she knew. And unlike her habit of thinking things through out loud, he didn’t say what he thought until he knew what he thought.
She had learned this about him before they knew he was sick. Now it was even more exacerbated. But she was OK with it.
She sat for a few more minutes like that, sitting on the ground with her head leaning gently against his leg, tracing his fingers. She had his hand memorized. She closed her eyes, and tried to remember his different features while she waited in the silence. She’d been doing that a lot more recently. Trying to memorize every piece of him while she could.
“It’s just,” he said finally, still with his head back, staring blankly at the ceiling, “you can’t have a picnic on a goddamn living room rug. And I don’t think I can handle going up to apple hill or down to the river or anywhere where a goddamn picnic should happen.”
“Careful there, Holden Caulfield. The whole phony world isn’t out to get you,” she smirked as she said it. He brought his head upright and flicked her hand playfully.
“You know what I mean!” he said, a little exasperated, a little playful. She gave him a sad smile.
“I know. I know, buddy. It’s ok. We can just call it what it is, and eat our sandwiches on the couch and watch TV like normal Americans. No picnic. No goddamn pretending.” She glanced at him to make sure he’d caught her little quip.
He’d been saying goddamn a lot. He got it from one of those CSI characters who he couldn’t stand at first, and now he was talking just like him. The word also lent itself to sad, angry, dying 20-somethings.
But that’s not who he wanted to be.
He grabbed her hand and pushed himself up, pulling her to a stand with him.
“Nope,” he said stubbornly. “You’re right. We’re gonna do this. It’s gonna be great.”
“Really??” She said, her excitement coming back again. Even if he wasn’t stubborn, and feeling slightly hurt by the Holden comparison, he wanted to do as many things as possible to make that smile of hers shine. It was like medicine that didn’t make you barf your guts up and have your hair fall out — which, by the way, is the best kind of medicine.
“Let’s go into the back yard though.”
“Yes! Brilliant idea!” She squealed a little. Her dress swirled with how quickly she turned around and bent down to grab the picnic basket.
He followed her outside, guiding her through the door with his hand on her lower back. This was one thing she loved — the guy’s body was dying, but his chivalry was alive and well. Not in the macho-man way. But in all the simple things. Her glass was always filled. Her door always opened. It was like he was still trying to impress her — and he did. He always would.
She spread out the blanket and brought out a few throw pillows from the couch and they set their picnic space up like the magazines and movies tell you it’s supposed to be. They’d never actually picnicked like this before, with the basket and all. But for a pretend back yard picnic, it was actually pretty great.
“Look!” she said. He looked where she was pointing, over by the tree. There was a squirrel almost all the way down the tree, clinging to the trunk, deciding his next move.
“How cute! Look at him!” She was already up with a piece of sandwich in her hands going toward the squirrel before he could say anything. “See, we didn’t need to go somewhere else. This is so picnic-y! We’ve got a squirrel. It’s like we’re in Central Park.”
He’d seen this squirrel before. It had a nest up in that tree and whenever he’d left the sliding glass door to the back yard open and just had the screen door closed, it would come up to the door, look directly at him, and begin gnawing on the screen. No matter what he’d done or how loudly he’d yelled, this goddamn squirrel would not stop. Not until he got up from the couch, walked all the way across the room and finally started to open the door. Then it would run away and run half way up the tree and just stare at him, taunting, waiting. One day it had actually tried to dart inside when he’d opened the screen door. He’d tried to kick it and had missed, but had scared it enough to do the trick. That had been the last straw though. He had vowed, one day that stupid fur ball was going down.
She was getting close and he was trying to say “No, babe. Don’t feed that little bastard…” when the squirrel darted down, grabbed the sandwich piece, and bit her finger.
“AHHH!” she screamed! That freaking squirrel bit me!!” She yelled, laughing and in pain. She couldn’t believe it. “He FREAKING bit me!”
He picked up a rock and threw it at the tree, but the squirrel was already up and gone to the trees in the neighbor’s yard.
“Well,” he looked at her with his sarcastic smirk, “you were the one who wanted to have a picnic…”
“Inside! On the living room rug!” She couldn’t stop laughing. “But this really hurts! I’m going to get rabies. And go crazy. And then people really won’t know how to handle you. ‘Oh no, there’s the dying cancer kid with the crazy rabies girlfriend. Look away! Look away!’ Is this what you want?”
Her ability to make everything about her always made him laugh. He had cancer. And she was looking for sympathy for pretend rabies. From a pretend picnic.
“Let me see this rabies bite,” he said after he’d stopped laughing at her.
“THERE!” she said like a toddler, shoving her finger in his face.
“Here I’ll kiss it and make it better,” he said playfully,
“No!” She pulled her hand away. “Then you’ll get rabies too. Stop trying to steal my thunder, ya jerk.” She stuck her nose up in the air as she marched back to her side of the blanket and took her seat again.
They ate the sandwiches, and drank champagne out of those plastic wedding champagne flutes that you have to pop together, and he entertained her fancy notions of “It will be fun! Feed me these grapes like I’m a Roman royal!” And she’d made a cake – his favorite, not hers — German Chocolate.
He couldn’t believe she remembered. He told her this was his favorite when they first, first met. Before they were friends, or “talking”, or dating or anything. You know, when you play those get to know each other games and you text back and forth random questions about each other. She’d asked what his favorite dessert was. That was one of her very first questions. And then they’d never talked about it again.
He hadn’t had it in years. Not because he couldn’t, just because he was too lazy to buy a box mix and make it, and most people in his life liked other things better. He wasn’t really a sweets guy, anyway. So his splurges had always been for chips and crap like that.
The last time he’d had German chocolate cake was on his 9th birthday. His brother was still at home, his parents still seemed happy, his grandparents were even there visiting. It had been his best birthday.
“What’s this for?” he asked, memories flooding him. Maybe she forgot and it was just coincidence.
“Well obviously we needed dessert,” she said as if this were the same as “obviously we’ll be breathing air today.”
“And this is your favorite, right?” she said simply, distracted while she was pulling the cutting knife out of the picnic basket.
“Yeah,” he said, staring at her. She was unaware of his eyes, of his awe. He always looked at her with a kind of awe. Everybody else noticed. She just kept doing her thing, though. Unaware or unabashed by it all.
“Yeah, it is.”
“So I baked one!” He thought she was so cute when she was proud of herself like this.
She was still looking down, fussing with the make-shift cover she’d made for the knife when he saw the squirrel. He couldn’t say anything before it had run, no leapt!, directly up the blanket and landed on the cake.
He swung at it with his fist, but it dodged him, jumping onto the picnic basket and his hand went straight into the cake. He was up on his feet faster than he’d moved in months. This was it, he was going to catch that squirrel and end this.
The squirrel hopped from the picnic basket onto his girlfriend’s chest, clinging to her dress, scratching her. She screamed.
“Get it off me!” she said trying to push it off with her hands. He grabbed for the squirrel, but the damn thing dodged his grip and skittered up his arm and literally to the top of his head. It was holding onto his hair, he was spinning in circles, frantic, not sure what to do, when he grabbed for it and finally caught it. The squirrel bit him square on the hand between his thumb and index finger, right in the webbing.
The squirrel locked his jaw, biting down on him and he started flinging his hand up and down trying to shake it off. He was in this angry frantic shake when he heard a laugh.
She was laughing. Softer at first, and then it was her full belly, fill-the-whole-backyard loud laugh. She was laughing at him! The squirrel was biting down on him in a death grip and he was ready to kill this varmint and she was laughing!
“Stop laughing!” He yelled, still shaking his hand up and down as hard as he could, obviously panicked and in pain. “This isn’t funny!!”
“I’m sorry!” She breathed in between her bursts, “I can’t stop!”
“This isn’t funny!” he yelled again, louder. He ran close to the tree and just as he tried to smash the little bastard’s body against the trunk to get him to let go, the squirrel let go of his hand, and jumped onto the tree scampering up, and his fist hit the trunk of the tree at full swing.
“Ahhhhhh!” he screamed. “ARGHHHHHH!!!! AHhhh ha! ha.” He screamed, and as his breath sputtered, it turned from a scream of rage and pain to a chuckle. He felt his anger deflating and he continued to hear her loud laughs from behind him.
When he turned around, in a instant he took it all in. He saw her and her yellow dress with little rips and with chocolate cakes smudges from the stupid animal. And he saw the cake, ruined, his bleeding, hurting fist still bearing a large portion of it, and the picnic set-up scattered by the panic dance with the squirrel. And there she was still laughing. He bent over, hands on his knees, catching his breath, when he saw her start to flail her hand up and down mimicking him while her loud laughs washed over him like waves.
Then he smirked.
“This isn’t funny!” He imitated himself in a sing-song voice, still bent over, looking up at her bright, open-smile face. And then he got caught in her happiness. “It’s not funny!” he said again, laughing, and starting to fling his hand again and spin in circles. re-creating his squirrel hatred dance.
She had flopped herself over, laying down on the picnic blanket, shaking with laughter. She couldn’t catch her breath. He kept going like this until his energy gave out, which was soon, and then he went and laid down on the chocolate covered blanket behind her.
“It’s not funny!” he laughed again, softly, close to her, as he playfully bit her shoulder.
“Hey, don’t bite me!” she yelled.
“Sorry, can’t help it. I’ve got rabies now, too.”
“Thunder stealer.”
Their laughs died down and they laid there in the messed up picnic for a moment before he said anything.
“How’d you remember this was my favorite dessert?” he asked.
“I remember everything about you. I’ve been memorizing you since the day we met.” It was a weird thing to say, but it was out before she knew what she was admitting to.
“But,” he paused, hesitating, “but we met way before I was sick.” He couldn’t put into words the question he implied.
“I know,” she said without missing a beat. “But we’re all dying sometime. I just knew you were someone I want to remember.”
His throat tightened. Something like gratitude and wonder and love stung at his tear ducts. He brushed past it quickly.
“Well, now that you have rabies, your time may be short. I guess it’s good you got a head start,” he said.
“Exactly! ” she smiled again. “Also, as I’m now dying, I better start to get some special treatment or something. That’s how that works right? Do they have a make a wish foundation for 20-somethings with rabies? Maybe I should have a statue carved of me so you remember how beautiful I am. Will you love me still when I start foaming at the mouth? We should have another picnic before then…”
He kissed her to shut her up. That’s what he let her believe, at least.
Nobody dared to laugh at death and prepare for it like she did, he thought. He didn’t understand it, but she, this living ball of sunshine, was teaching him how to die.
* * *
His cancer was fast moving. That was the last of the good days. Within two months, he died.
And when he did, she wept and screamed, and camped out all day in his parents back yard with a 22 until she killed that goddamn squirrel. And on the day of his funeral, she wore her yellow dress with the little rips in it from the squirrel’s claws. And through tears, she laughed, sadly, at him again as she told the story to her table of friends at the funeral reception. “‘It’s not funny!’ he yelled at me. But there’s nothing NOT funny about a sad dying guy fighting off a squirrel covered in chocolate cake.”
“You shouldn’t laugh at a time like this,” an older woman said, scornfully, passing by their reception table. “Disrespectful…” she muttered.
“Did she not hear the part about the goddamn squirrel pouncing on the chocolate cake like we were in a freakin’ cartoon?” she asked her friends, feigning a smile, but feeling that tightening in her throat and chest.
Her friends chuckled a little, and the conversation went on to other, less humorous memories about him.
She wept in her car in the parking lot when she left. And ugly mascara tears dripped onto her yellow dress near the little rips where chocolate stains once were.
It would be harder to laugh now, she thought. Not because of grief or death or crap like that. Ok, maybe some of that. But mostly because nobody let her, encouraged her to laugh at things like he had.
She’d memorized that way he looked at her when she laughed like that — like he thought she was sunshine in Seattle, she thought. He’d looked at her that way since the first day she met him. She’d pretended not to notice it. But he made her feel like she was sunshine in a world where everyone was wearing sunscreen. Everyone but him.
She was just now realizing, he’d been helping her discover how brightly she could live.
“Goddammit, buddy. I miss you,” she said out loud to her empty car.
She took a deep sigh, then mimicked again, “‘It’s not funny!!'” her burst of laughter louder this time, tears and mascara still on her cheeks. “‘It’s not funny!'”
She kept saying it and playing the scene over and over in her mind as she drove away, both laughing and crying at the same time.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
Other places are
instagram: @jrolicious twitter: @jrohanlon
The year of failure — Thoughts for my 25th birthday
In 2 days, I will turn 25. Kind of a big birthday in my eyes.
On my last birthday, I wrote a column about the discipline of celebrating what is good, even if life is hard. It was a good piece that I still think I should abide by. The thing is, I wrote about how life is really hard sometimes, and that in those times, it’s easy to want to just ignore the opportunity to celebrate. When birthdays come after a death, it’s easy to just want to skip it. When holidays come after divorce, it’s easy to just want to ignore them. But really, we should celebrate. Even when we don’t feel like it.
I wrote: “It is not easy. It is a discipline. But the discipline of celebration itself helps to bring me back to life again. I believe life is always worth celebrating. And in the midst of life being hard, I intend to choose to celebrate what is good.”
But then when the actual day came, it was easier written than exercised. I had horrible hives on my birthday all over my back and stomach, and by lunch time they had crawled their way up on my neck and face. (For perspective, to me, the ninth level of hell would be itching without ceasing.) I ended up leaving work to go to the doctors because I was so miserable and it continued to get worse.
My family came together to have dinner with me, and I couldn’t even tell you where we ate. They talked about things and I was miserably distant, not able to think of anything but the itching, my migraine, how tired I was from the shots the doctor had given me, and how my sucky broken life was hard enough to try to celebrate without all of this.
We got back to my parents and were about to open presents when I started crying and canceled my birthday. “Can we just not?” I said. “I don’t want to open these presents. I’m miserable. I have no idea what you guys talked about at dinner. I just can’t do it. It’s too hard.”
And I sobbed as my dad and brother waited, unsure of how to proceed, having gathered in traditional O’Hanlon family places for birthday-present opening. My mom came over to the side of my chair and told me it was OK. We didn’t have to do it if it was too hard. They wanted to celebrate my life, but not if it was too hard for me.
So after writing about celebrating what’s good, and deciding that’s what I was going to do, I instead canceled my birthday with itchy, drowsy tears.
But, through those tears, I asked if we could have a re-do the next week. Which we did. It wasn’t really a special thing, just family dinner again. But at least I was mentally present that time. I wanted to try my hardest to celebrate what was good in life. But to be honest, it was a real struggle. And I flat-out failed the first time I tried.
But the thing is, I tried again. I asked for a re-do.
And that’s how I’m trying to live my life these days and years now. I’m trying to identify the ways I think it’s valuable to live, but sometimes those are hard ways to really live out. So I try. And when I fail, I try again. And even when I succeed, sometimes it’s not glamorous. It just barely qualifies.
But as I’m getting older, that’s actually one of my things I’m trying to do more — I want to fail sometimes. I want to be trying to do the hard things. And that means failing sometimes. And sometimes it means making it — barely — and not in the way I thought I would. That’s what my life is about these days — trying to dream big dreams, tackle big goals, and have grace for myself along the way. Because it’s true, sometimes I will fail.
As someone who always accomplished what I’d set out to do before, this has been a different approach to life for me in the past year, and I think it’s been a really healthy shift. I’ve failed at more things this year than maybe any other year. And I’ve also grown personally this year more than in any other year.
So, the world can know that I started off my 25th year by failing. And by the end of that year now, I’m OK with that.
I’m going to celebrate my 25th birthday by playing mini golf, which I have never done. So I’m betting there will be a fair amount of failing on this birthday as well. But I’m excited to try!
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
Other places are
instagram: @jrolicious twitter: @jrohanlon
Waiting for hope — the light at the end of that tedious tunnel
About a year and a half ago, my world shattered. Today is not the day for those details. Just know that I don’t use the word “shattered” lightly. I lost people, places, calling. I used the word “decimated” a lot.
I walked around in a fog of grief: The heaviness that weights you, making every single task a deliberating, exhausting undertaking. I wasn’t even sure of how I was spending my days. Time got away from me a lot as I sat in my thoughts and memories and questions.
At the beginning, right when everything shattered, a friend sent me a quote from George Matheson that has kept me going like a light at the end of a very very long, very very dark tunnel: “Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope. I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope.”
This has been a season of waiting for hope. When the word “decimated” describes your life, it’s hard to have hope. I didn’t. I was hopeful for hope. And that’s a hard distinction to make, and a hard thing to admit.
This is part of a poem I wrote on January 29, 2013 in the midst of my heavy, empty season.
…Yearning for a new life, a new land, for some hope.
I can see it on the horizon, but the horizon is far away.
I hope I’ll someday get there, but it won’t be today.I want the joy of healing, i just haven’t found it yet.
Today I’m still alone, my companions heartache and regret.Soon I’ll trade them in, trade them new, for hope of better things,
But today I’m lost. I cry. I grieve.
Here are some lines from a bit later in the journey:
I want to have hope
right now I have none
(I want to be done).
But I am hopeful for hope
— I believe it will come.
I have not known hope in 19 months. That is, until a few weeks ago.
The logic in my head said that things would progress in life. That I could rebuild. That in time, with effort, it wouldn’t always be like this. But my heart could not feel it, could not believe it.
But after 19 months of my heart being earnestly on the lookout for hope, I found it.
I’m like Kevin in Home Alone, having the revelation and yelling at the furnace “I’m not afraid anymore!”
DO YOU HEAR ME? I HAVE HOPE!! I FOUND IT!
My soul feels like a broken jar that leaks, but enough has run into my broken heart for long enough that what is being poured in is overcompensating for what the cracks are leaking out. It’s taken a while to fill up because of those cracks. But I’m full again, and filling still.
And I believe part the reason is that in the last few months I’ve begun to take the hard, painful, intimidating step of telling my story — to people I have known for my whole life, to people who I’m just meeting. I’m telling my painful story, again and again, and in the telling, I feel myself getting fuller. I feel the cracks in my heart and my life decreasing in their gaping size.
I believe this is the stage of grief that they call “acceptance.” I had accepted it for myself a while back. But this step of accepting my loss, accepting my story out loud, is different. It is scary and powerful and freeing. And, it turns out, in the breathing out of the painful story, hope is breathed in.
Last week, I found myself thinking, unfiltered, “I love my life” as I went to bed. And it was true. It’s not even a great life. But I love it and the people in it. And it’s because I’m in love with life again. I’m full of hope again. I’m excited again.
photo credit: fanz via photopin cc
Like walking down a dark tunnel toward the light at the end, I could see hope ahead of me this whole journey. My eyes were on it. My focus was toward it. But that night last week was that moment when you finally realize, you not just see the light, you are in the light. Under it. Surrounded by it. You may still be in the tunnel, but you are engulfed in the light of day ahead.
I laugh easily now. Often too loud. The loss doesn’t seem as heavy on most days. The broken pieces don’t feel so “decimated” anymore. The effort it takes to breathe is unnoticeable, as it’s meant to be. I know how I spend my days, and I spend them doing things I love, things that bring me back to life.
I am engulfed in hope.
And I’m giddy like a little kid on Christmas about the whole thing.
And to you who have walked with me through the tunnel, who have assured me that the light of day at the end is real when it felt like it was just an illusion — thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let’s celebrate. You were right!
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
Other places are
instagram: @jrolicious twitter: @jrohanlon
On being replaceable – You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone
Recently I was with a group of people and we were talking about what was going on in our lives and the topic turned to one of the girls there who is leaving her job soon. “I know it may be bad,” she relayed, “but I’m really giving it my all now. I want them to miss me when I’m gone. I want them to be sad to see me go, and not think ‘Oh, she was leaving, that’s why she was slacking those last few months.'”
Other people in the room chimed in saying they felt the same way. It was quickly clear the desire to be hard to replace seems to be almost innate. Except in me.
For a long time now, I’ve been trying to make myself replaceable. And it’s just been the last few months that I’ve really realized how this mindset has sunk in to most every area of my life.
I create “truck binders” for projects I work on so that if I were run over by a truck, someone could use the binder to carry forward. I delegate tasks and responsibilities to teams and train others how to do my job in my absence. I plan ahead and I make notes about what I do and how I do it. And I’ve realized, I keep people at bay in my life, and I try to get them close to other people who could fill my role when I leave.
When I left for college, I didn’t want to be replaceable, because I wanted to stay in my hometown. But because I left, I wanted to see my people taken care of. I was happy for her when my best friend began to be good friends with another girl who is her best friend to this day. I was glad that someone could fill the hole I left in the day to day life of my friend. I’ve been tentative to sign art pieces that I make for people as gifts, because I want them to be able to enjoy the art piece regardless of what happens to me. I don’t want them to have to remember me with each glance at it if they don’t want to. (I know this is poor logic, and not healthy, but it’s the truth.)
In my self-realization that I do this, this is what I’ve found.
***
I mentioned in my “write your own eulogy” post that I always thought I would die young. As early as I can remember I just assumed this to be true. I told this to my friend recently and she said, “see… that’s why I’m scared to have kids. How do you know that your toddler is thinking about death? That scares the crap out of me.”
And really, she’s right. How would anyone have known? I never bothered to mention it. I just thought it was a given. I was extremely happy and adventurous and risk-taking. I was well socialized. I connected well with people of all ages. But I’ve always thought my time was limited.
The only thing I can think of that I believe made me assume my life would be short was this: My mom always used to tell us stories about her and her brothers as they were growing up. One of my uncles was older than her and one younger. But the thing was, in the story I had two uncles, but in life I only had one. Her younger brother had died before I was born. I only knew him through the stories.
And somehow I think that my little mind drew a lot of similarities between myself and my Uncle Randy. We were both the youngest of 3 kids. We both had allergies. We both got manipulated by older siblings, but still loved them. Just typical stuff. But somehow I believed that my fate would be like his – I thought my life would be short. So I lived that way.
When I was in 6th grade I started to have medical problems. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong but I underwent test after test, with no results giving an answer. I had my blood drawn weekly for a while for these. I saw specialists. I missed lots of school. I was just waiting for what I knew would eventually be a fatal diagnosis. I could manage life 5 or 6 days out of 7, but I missed at least one day of school a week. But on my good days I would play hard, laugh hard, study hard, and be who I wanted to be. I knew time was short.
And then, when my medical problems were still going on, but were becoming less demanding, and almost seemed like they were fading, my older sister died suddenly.
I felt like the universe had gotten confused. She was supposed to live. My brother too. They were supposed to live long, full lives. They were both so accomplished. So smart. Smarter and better than me, I always thought. It was supposed to be me. I had always known. It was supposed to be me who died young. I was supposed to live an entertaining full, short, life that she could tell stories about to her children. It wasn’t supposed to be her.
I was ready for the fatal diagnosis. I wasn’t ready for the fatal call of someone else’s death, though. Cancer, some weird disease, “You have 3 days to live,” I could’ve handled. But watching the life go out of my brilliant, vibrant, feisty, 21-year-old sister who had so much promise for the world and for the people around her — that ruined everything I thought I knew about how to live well and die well.
This death was not like the movies, with time to prepare and goodbyes properly said. It was her birthday 3 days before. We didn’t get to say goodbye. She didn’t get to graduate college one month later like she was ready to. She didn’t get to celebrate her one year wedding anniversary that summer on the cruise they had already bought. There were no tears of parting on her part. It just ended. Like a book that just stops a quarter of the way in, leaving you hanging, knowing there was supposed to be more.
My poetic notions of short life well lived were smashed. This was not like that. This was a life-halting, heart-breaking, “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO F***ING DO NOW!?!?” chapter. It was not poetic. It was horrendous.
photo credit: mugley via photopin cc
And what had once been a decision to live fully so that I’d soak up all opportunity and so that people could remember me in their stories they told, turned to a desire to minimize collateral damage. I know the pain and ache of someone dying. And I, still subconsciously believing I would die young, was determined to lessen that pain for others as much as possible.
I wanted to be replaceable. I wanted to be able to die and have everything go on without me as smoothly as possible.
I wanted to prepare people for my death — living like a cancer patient without the diagnosis. I wanted people to know how I loved them, cared for them, and that they didn’t really need me. That there were others who could fill my slot in the program of their life.
The first time I talked about “when I die…” to my friend Kate, we were roommates in college. I don’t even know what I said, but probably something flippant like “when I die, I want to have “Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta” on my tombstone. I didn’t know it then (this is just how I talk and think), but she got really angry with me for thinking about death, and talking about it so frankly.
A couple of years later, I had just attended yet another funeral for someone I respected, and I wrote an email to Kate. I told her if I died I wanted her to speak at my funeral, and there were certain things I wanted her to mention: One, namely, is one time that I had the best parallel parking job in the world, on the first try, in golden gate park in San Francisco, and we took a picture that she made me promise I wouldn’t use to brag. I asked her to show said bragging picture, because hey, I’d be dead.
It was in her gracious response that she’d let me in on her reaction to my candor about death. She understands now that it’s part of how I live, but I had never known before that it had angered her and made her sad when I brought it up the first time. Which is understandable. There I was, getting to be great friends with someone, and simultaneously trying to keep a distance, to prepare her for life without me, to make myself replaceable. I believe I may well live a long life now. But I’m still scared of hurting people. I’m scared of leaving a wake of pain should the unexpected happen.
But the thing is, I’m not replaceable. I work hard to make sure I am replaceable in my jobs and roles in life. Because those things you can be replaced in. But I cannot be replaced as a person. Nobody can. I’ve believed that about others, but I thought I could be the exception if I tried hard enough.
I’ve had other people who have stepped in and acted as big sisters for me. But nobody will ever be Julie. And the fact is, if her death had happened like the movies, and we’d had our time for goodbyes, it wouldn’t have made it hurt less. It wouldn’t have lessened the loss. She would still be gone, and still be irreplaceable.
Positions are replaceable. People are not.
So I am working on trying to let myself see this and embrace it in the ways I relate to the people in my life. Because I’ve realized in my efforts to minimize pain for people at my potential leaving, I’m actually stunting the joy of relationships for myself and for them.
I want to step into the fullness of who I am and embrace the value of that woman. And as much as I don’t want people to bear the hurt of loss that I so well know, it’s a lie to go on believing that I can prevent that. Loss and pain are certainties in life. I’d like to focus from now on at caring, loving, giving, and being the kind of friend that I would never want to see leave my own life.
And it’s OK if you miss me when I’m gone.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
Other places are
instagram: @jrolicious twitter: @jrohanlon
Tackling myths & clichés: When Life gives you lemons
Tackling myths & clichés: When Life gives you lemons, make lemonade
First of all, life doesn’t give you lemons.
But since we’re talking about them, you know who has a lot of lemons? The Italians. And they’re some of the warmest, happiest people out there. Go to Sorrento in Italy and tell me that you do not love all of the lemony things. I dare you. Lemon scented soap. Lemon chicken. Lemon liqueur. Lemonade. Lemon candies. Lemon paintings and tables and glasswork. Lemon towels and pottery. Whole shops full of lemons and lemon-inspired things.
Lemons are not a bad thing. But the pain of life, unfortunately, is not like lemons at all. Lemons, if eaten plain, are pretty sour, but to be honest, they still taste pretty good in the realm of things.
And that’s the reality — you can make lemonade out of lemons because they taste pretty good to start with.
You know what life gives you that you can’t make lemonade out of? Crap.
Ever heard that saying, “You can’t polish a turd?” It’s true (I’d imagine). You can’t. You also can’t make lemonade out of it.
You can’t make lemonade out of your life falling apart.
You can’t make lemonade out of your loved ones dying.
You can’t make lemonade out of betrayal.
You can’t make lemonade out of a broken heart.
You can’t make lemonade out of losing everything.
You can’t make lemonade out of abuse.
You can’t make lemonade out of poverty.
You can’t make lemonade out of a fatal diagnosis.
You just can’t. You can’t make lemonade out of those hard, painful, gut-wrenching things in life.
Nor should anyone persuade you to try.
It’s ok to let the bad things be bad.
It’s ok to let the painful things be painful.
Don’t be persuaded to try to act like the silver lining is all that matters. Because your pain, your ugly, horrible plot turns of your life that you’ve had to endure — those matter. Suffering matters.
Redemption matters, too. But your suffering matters in its own right, even before you may see any good come from it. If you’re experiencing pain or suffering right now, I am so sorry. You matter. And this season of life may not last forever, but I am sorry you are in it right now.
Beauty does come from pain. (It exists apart from pain, too.) But it’s not that your pain has to be beautiful. It’s not that you have to use lemons to make lemonade. You don’t have to transform your grief into a sweet summery treat overnight.
The reality is that when the hard pain of life comes, and you endure, beauty and life can spring forth again. Your story doesn’t have to end in pain. But you do not have to sugar-coat those painful times. It’s ok to not be ok.
It’s ok to not be the ever-singing optimist lemonade-maker.
And there’s one more thing. While those hard pieces of life are more like crap than they are like lemons… crap is good fertilizer. You can’t make lemonade out of the crap of pain. But as you journey through these hard pieces of life — as you grieve and are honest about the fact that this feels like something you never wanted to go through — your life is being fertilized. You don’t have to make lemonade. Just journeying through your pain will fertilize your life for potential beauty to bloom forth in the future.
photo credit: DanieleCivello via photopin cc
So in your own life and in the lives of those around you, let the hard parts of life be just what they are. Hard. Painful. Heart-breaking. Life-altering. I-wish-this-never-happened saddening. I-want-to-punch-a-hole-in-this-wall maddening. I-just-don’t-think-I-can-take-another-day-of-this-reality exhausting.
There is hope for healing and new life in the future. But in the midst of fresh pain, that’s hardly a refreshing drink of consolation. And that’s OK to admit.
Later, when you have grieved, when you have slept, when you have plodded forth for what felt like too long and you come into a new season of life where you’re ready to rebuild, re-dream, and to come alive again, you can plant a lemon tree later in that fertile ground of your life and make lemonade if you really want to.
Or just ignore the rules and plant something sweet like oranges or berries to begin with.
Revised saying:
I’m sorry life is so painful and crappy right now. I’ll sit here with you in the stench of heart-break and life-ache. And I’ll be here still when you want to plant something new. But no rush. Take the time you need.
It’s not as catchy, I know. I’m OK with that.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
If I died today – A Eulogy for myself
A few weeks ago I wrote my own eulogy. It’s a writing exercise I’d heard of many times, but one I had never done. But, I’ve thought about my own death since I was a young kid. As someone who always assumed I’d die young (a belief I’m just recently beginning to challenge internally), I’d thought about this type of thing many times before.
The difference is that I wrote this eulogy as a sort of “weekly review” of my life in the most grave sense. And then two days later I was in a doctor’s office having them tell me, “Well, with you being as young as you are, it’d be rare that this is cancer, but we need to be real that that’s a real possibility here. We can’t do anything now. Come back in 3 weeks.”
I’ve been thinking about this eulogy a lot over the past few weeks, and while I understand that I don’t control all of my fate, I went from being scared and overwhelmed, to being determined that this is not where my story ends. That I will not let it end right as I was on the brink of what I talk about below.
I have since received the good news that I am (almost) in the clear cancer-scare-wise. But it has been a poignant few weeks and I’ve realized that I am not done fighting. I am not done adventuring. I am not done working on things and becoming the best version of me that I can be. I will not lay down and die. If I die right now, I will die fighting if that is an option. But as long as I am breathing, my story is not yet finished.
So, here’s my weird eulogy post. It’s a mix of attempted honest self-reflection and how I hope, maybe, people would remember me should the story stop here.
*****
NOTE: NOT A SUICIDE NOTE. NOT AT ALL.
Joanna O’Hanlon died today. She spent her last day reading blog posts, having fun texting a cute boy, and trying to sort out information from other “productivity” blog posts that she could steal and make her own for a company blog. She was trying to get this done by 3pm, but her mind kept wandering. She went on a run, finished an art project, and went to a cheap movie. It was an ordinary day.
She didn’t know today would be the last day. She would’ve bought and eaten dessert at lunch had she known. She did try V8 finally for the first time before she passed though. She’d continually passed that option in life until today. She actually really liked it, even though it was like drinking cold tomato soup.
The story ending as it is, is a tragedy. She was on the brink of new life. On the brink of hope. On the brink of finding meaning in life again. But she hadn’t quite teetered over the edge. She had weathered the horrible, vomit-inducing, life-wrecking, heart-bulldozing times. She’d wandered in the desert. And when she was almost into the new, beautiful, life-giving season, it just stopped. That’s what makes this so sad. Knowing that joy and hope and adventure were right around the corner.
She had no real romantic involvement ever in her life. She struggled with receiving love. Her independent spirit was her fateful flaw. “You never needed anybody,” her best friend had said to her one time. But in the last year, she’d learned what it was to need people, and to need them without being able to ask for them. And they showed up. Again and again they showed up. She was working on making that translation into her romantic potential. But before she died, she knew she was loved. Not by a man — but by many men and women who gave her their love when she was really broken. When she felt the most unlovable. When she really needed love.
She was reckless in her honesty. She defied the regular rules of propriety about what you could say out loud. She was honest about how she felt, about how life felt, about how death felt. She couldn’t stomach the trite positive-spins that the church and the ignorant put on pain. She would speak out against that with colorful language deep from her gut anytime she heard it. She made many people uncomfortable. And she wasn’t sorry about that. The truth was important to her, because she saw what lack of honesty, what positive-spins and secrets did to people. She’d been hurt by that before. She was finding freedom in the truth, and she wanted to share it with the suffering, even at the cost of making the non-suffering uncomfortable.
She dug into her pain. She let it fill her. She let it burn away the excess in her. And she sought healing. She so badly wanted to be healed. But when God told her he wanted to use her while she was still broken, she cried, and said OK.
Jo loved God. He was her only constant in life. She looked like a wanderer to many. She was, I suppose. Her heart was not at home. It had known pain. It had loved this world. But the only real roots she had were in her God. He had held her, traveled with her. She loved God because he was good in a world that so often felt bad. She loved him because He was there for her when her pain and shame were too much for others. He was there when she wandered. He was there in the wails in the middle of the night. She loved God in the most selfish way possible — she loved Him because she needed him and trusted him. And because she knew He loved her.
Jo loved life. She loved to laugh at funny things. She laughed and squealed with joy when she did child-like things like go to the carnival or swim in the snowy river. Joy might’ve looked like it came naturally to Jo, but really, it was a choice. A choice to not let her sorrow hold her. She would seek joy out. It was a priority in her life. Fun was a priority in her life. She believed she was on an adventure. She chose to believe that.
She really liked high places. She was a climber. Always had been. She could still be seen sometimes on a run, coming across a play ground in the neighborhood, and swinging unabashedly on one of the swings — swinging higher and higher until it felt like her adult-weight would make the whole thing topple.
She loved people. Especially broken people. Especially people who had shown her love. She thought nothing of giving time, money, opportunity, or energy to make these people a priority in their times of need. She needed to work on making them a priority when they weren’t in need, too, though.
And she loved stories. Her curiosity was a bit much for most people, so she was learning how to curb it for the sake of others. But she always, always wanted to know more. She wanted to learn about people and places and things.
About what makes the pressure in a fire hydrant so great that the water literally SHOOTS out of it, while the water in nearby houses simply drizzles out regularly. And which Roman emperor built the coliseum, and which one finished it. And what’s the difference in technique/approach of a barber verses a hair stylist. And how to put in a pool. And how Lewis and Clark crossed the Columbia river. And how did they know they would even find an end to the continent? And what seasonings are in V8? And how did you get to be the person you are today?
Her curiosity for knowledge, and her love of stories defined her. There were six words that always caught her interest: “Let me tell you a story…”
She was working on writing her own story, too. It is incomplete. But so is life, I suppose.
She is survived by some of her immediate family, not all of them: her mother, her father, her brother. She is survived by extended family and her friends — too many good ones to mention them all. But they live all over the country, all over the world. She is survived by her town: Oroville – the land of the hopeless and broken and stuck. She really loved that town. We don’t know why, but she did.
We don’t know what we should do with her body. She used to say to just throw it in the sea because it was the cheapest option. But we’re not sure it’s the cheapest option. And we’re not sure if that’s what she wanted anymore. She had definite desires — but they changed… it was hard to keep track sometimes.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
“I’m beautiful. I know because you told me.” – What makes us beautiful
Recently I was with one of my friends, and we were talking about working out, and summer, and diets, as many conversations between women go. And then she said it: “I’ve just been feeling so bad about myself recently. I haven’t even wanted to leave the house.” I was pretty shocked to hear those words coming from my beautiful, strong, fun friend’s mouth. “What?” I said. “Why?”
She went on to talk about feeling bad about her weight and body, something I believe 90%+ (if not all) women are familiar with feeling sometimes. Still, as her friend, with eyes outside of her own, I have never not seen beauty in this girl. She is one of those girls where I already feel happy for whatever man she ends up with because she is such a catch. If I’m honest, she’s one of my most favorite people.
And here she was, talking about having avoided going into public. My heart sank, but it also resonated with her.
I remember a time when I was at the end of my year studying abroad in Switzerland. There were only 25 students in the entire school, and we all lived in the same building and did life together pretty much all the time. We had class together, meals together, homework together, watched movies together, went on adventures and vacations with each other. We were, I imagine, about as close-knit as a group of people from all different countries could become.
At the end of my second semester there, it was Christmas time 2009, and we were having a school christmas dinner and talent show. The semester was wrapping up and I had much on my mind and my plate: finishing school assignments, packing my life back into two suitcases, finishing up work for my job there. And I was pushing the envelope on trying to get many of these things done right before the Christmas dinner.
As others had started to get ready I had kept working until it was about 10 minutes till the start. I was about to go down to the dinner when I realized that everyone was dressed very fancy. It was a formal dinner, and I hadn’t realized that before.
My hair was not done (it either needed to be washed and air-dried curly, or needed to be curled with a curling iron… the curse of the in-between wavy/curly hair). My make up was not done. I didn’t really have anything to wear. And on top of it all, I had the stress and emotions of finishing one of the best years of my life, and facing goodbyes I did not want to make.
The realization that it was a formal dinner just pushed me over the edge. Like my friend, I didn’t want to leave my room. I didn’t feel beautiful. With the people who were so close to me, whom I was so comfortable around, and whom I had never once tried to impress before… all of a sudden I didn’t feel beautiful enough, I didn’t feel fit to go. And I was going to let that stop me from spending the last night all together with these people who I had come to care for so deeply.
Because thats what happens when we lose sight of the beauty that’s in us — we begin to withdraw, to isolate, because we don’t feel fit to share in life with others in whom we can see beauty.
It took the prodding and convincing of two of my best friends to make me go. They helped me figure out that I had something that would kind of work to wear. And they convinced me my hair was fine. They waited while I did a very quick makeup job to get some of the shine off my forehead. And it really was a wonderful evening. I still didn’t feel beautiful when I entered, but by the time I left the evening, I had forgotten about what was beautiful and what wasn’t altogether. I was welcome. I was known. I was loved. And that seemed to be all that mattered once I got down there.
I’m convinced that beauty has less to do with looks, and more to do with being loved, being accepted, being welcomed, being known. And about extending those same things to others.
My friend that I mentioned as beautiful before — in looks she truly is. But so are lots and lots and lots of people. What makes her SO beautiful is the way she smiles and laughs. The way she cares so deeply. The way she makes me feel welcome and loved. And the way that she is welcomed and loved by those around her.
The thing about beauty is that we can see it in others much more often than we, as women especially, can see it in ourselves. We need to make sure that we are mirrors that show others their beauty. We need to make sure that we are the friends that draw a beautiful girl out of her room or her house and bring her into places where her beauty both shines freely and simultaneously doesn’t matter anymore in her mind because she is so welcomed and accepted. We need to make sure we surround ourselves with people in our life who will be mirrors to us when we forget our own beauty.
Beauty, when mirrored, is magnified. When you act as a mirror, your own beauty shines brighter too. Because, beyond looks, beauty is that something special within us that is able to both be loved and to love; both to be welcomed and to welcome; both to be known, and to know; both to be accepted and to accept another. Beauty can’t exist fully in isolation. It blossoms in the presence and relationship with others.
It’s no coincidence that the most beautiful people I know are those whose mirrors shine others’ beauty the brightest.
You, you reading this. You are beautiful. You are lovely. May you find the friends who are mirrors to continually show you that. And may you be a mirror to show the beauty of others.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
Other places are
instagram: @jrolicious twitter: @jrohanlon