Use your $%&# blinker – A message for drivers & lovers
THIS IS A PUBLIC SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT
SPONSORED BY JO’S PET PEEVES
My number one pet peeve is when people don’t use their turn signals.
It may sound silly, considering that hardly anyone ever does use their blinker these days. But it absolutely drives me crazy. And it’s one of the few things I can say with confidence that I am not a hypocrite on.
I’ve had passengers make fun of the fact that I use my blinker while turning into a parking space in an empty parking lot at night. But I do. It’s just habit. It’s VERY easy to do, seeing as how your hand has to brush past it to turn the steering wheel anyway. And it’s safe. And, oh hey, guess what, it’s the law.
The only time I’ve ever confronted another driver it was because he didn’t use his signal.
I was driving from my church to Round Table to have lunch with several families from church. At the intersection with two left turn lanes, I was in the right-most one, and a truck was in the left-most one. He sped faster through the intersection, but as we had nearly completed the turn, he started to change lanes into my lanes… and subsequently, into my car. He must not have seen me, or was not paying attention. But regardless, had he used his blinker, I could have known his intentions before he acted and I could’ve honked nicely, instead of laying on the horn and the brakes frantically like I was forced to do.
I had just been in a car-totaling, foot-breaking, head-aching accident the month before, so of course I was even more sensitive to this type of inconsiderate behavior than I normally would be.
So I slowed to a sudden stop while laying on my horn, and he didn’t even turn around, didn’t slow down or speed up or stay in his original lane. He just proceeded like he was unaware that anything had happened. I still don’t know if he was oblivious or just non-confrontational. But I am confrontational.
I was fuming. (This is not my normal reaction. This is one of only 2 times I’ve ever had road rage.) And unfortunately for him, he pulled into the same shopping center parking lot that I was heading to for lunch. Had I not been sure where he was heading, I would’ve let it lie, but just in case he was coming into Round Table for lunch too, I was going to take care of this then and there.
He was still in his truck when I marched up to his window and rapped my knuckle on the glass, startling him. He was in his 40s, and much bigger and stronger than I. So there I stood, in my church dress, a 22-year-old girl, red in the face, confronting him.
“Hi.” I said sternly when he lowered the window. “Did you see me back there, in the intersection, when you almost hit me as you changed lanes??” I asked, spitting the words at him.
“Oh, um, no.”
“Well, that would explain why you kept on course and made me slam on my breaks. Didn’t hear my horn, either huh?”
“No,” he said, startled, fumbling, looking down.
“Well hey, can you do me a favor? Use your freaking turn signal when you change lanes. Alright? You could hit someone.”
“ok.”
“So what are you going to do next time?” I asked patronizingly.
“I’m gonna use my blinker, and look better.”
“Good!” I said, feeling justified, but not knowing what else to say now. “Maybe try not cutting people off, too.”
“I will,” he said, embarrassed.
“Good. OK. Thanks,” I said as my anger deflated and I walked into lunch.
I was ready to fight him in the intersection, but by the end of our short interchange I realized I was really just mad that he hadn’t indicated his intentions and had nearly caused me (and potentially himself) harm.
I find that I am bothered by this in life in general. I hate the relational games we play. I hate wishy washy interactions. Ambiguous relationships are not my forte. I don’t need a label on things, I just need honesty. I want to know where I stand, whether it’s good or bad. I want to know people’s intentions so that I can react honestly, directly, and promptly.
Not exclusively, but especially in the field of potentially romantic/flirty interactions I wish that there was a “love blinker”. Something that people could and should use to indicate their intentions.
I long for the days when boys had to ask girls to dance. Now everyone’s just out on the dance floor and the dance style is such that when you are in close proximity to one another you may or may not be “dancing together”.
I think that a lot of awkward interactions and ambiguous standings would be eliminated if people were just honest and up-front, and everyone was brave enough to react honestly, too. (Boy: I’d like to get to know you more. Me: I’m not interested in dating you, but I’d like to become friends and to see you around at group things. — yeah maybe that sucks a little, but it’s like tearing off a band-aid, and then the normalcy is restored.)
If a guy approaches me, under the guise of friendliness, then he needs to be prepared to stay in the friend zone unless he communicates to me some other direct intentions/desires.
Subsequently, if a guy approaches me in a friends way, and then I start to get the jist that he is not really looking for friendship, but NOT being direct about what he wants, then I will swerve out of the lane, leaving him alone, or I will be forced to lay on my horn for fear of collision.
It works in the opposite way too, though. If the intentions are romantic, and a person indicates this, then I can be prepared to make room to let them in.
Have you ever been on the highway when someone, without a blinker, seems to be slowly drifting from one lane to another, and you’re not sure if they’re doing it intentionally, or if they’re unaware of themselves or nodding off or something?
That’s the way most people “fall” in love these days. Thats how they begin dating. Thats how they get to know people. Without intention or communication. And sometimes it works, and you end up in the next lane. But sometimes there are unknown factors, sometimes you’re drifting into somewhere that may cause a collision.
If you’d use your love blinker, then people could just politely tap their horn and let you know that you need to wait a minute.
If you don’t, you cause people to lay on the horn, swerve, or crash. It’s much messier for everyone involved, and even if there’s no harm, you might get a pretty little girl like me worked up enough that she’s hunting you down in the parking lot to tell you not to be an ass next time, and to use your freaking blinker. Even if you were unaware of what you were doing. Especially if you were unaware of what you were doing.
It’s about knowing your own intentions, and communicating them to keep people safe, and to keep the peace on the road, and in life.
So please, use your blinker.
End note: For drivers and lovers… when someone uses their blinker, respond kindly but honestly. They’re being considerate enough to let you know their intentions. Either make room, or give a little honk to let them know you’re not ready for them yet. It’s as simple as 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.
Other places are
instagram: @jrolicious twitter: @jrohanlon
storyofjoblog@gmail.com
Independent like a lion, skittish like a stray: A confession
I’ve always been independent, as far as I can remember.
When I was young I would say I was a lot like a cat. I loved to be loved. But I loved to go out and hunt and do my own thing. I had the domesticated, relational side of me, and the side that didn’t need anyone else to affirm or participate in something that I was interested in — I’d do it regardless. And I was in a family that facilitated this. I was well connected and loved in our family, so I felt safe to go wander out and explore the world alone. I was independent, like a little lioness on the plains, returning to my pack at the end of each day.
And I can clearly see now that even when I was a young kid I had a strong reaction against manipulation (my definition: trying to get someone to do something without being straightforward; coercion; trying to force a desired outcome through unclear, threatening, or illogical means).
I recall one of my childhood friends and I having the same situation play out several times. Her move to try to get what she wanted was a simple threat. Manipulation 101. “If you don’t do _____, I’m not going to be your friend anymore.”
And there’s this part of me that remembers these instances so clearly it still makes me react inside. “Fine.” I’d say, resolutely. “Don’t be my friend anymore.” And I’d go outside and play how I wanted. While I don’t think she ever meant her words, I meant mine. As a child I would rather lose a friend than be manipulated by one.
There’s this defiant voice inside me that says, “you will not get what you want out of me that way. You will not. I will not play that game.”
Have you ever seen a cat who just doesn’t want to be held anymore? And the person holding him keeps holding on, trying to pet him? What happens? His ears go flat back. His tail starts to wag. His claws come out, and he tries to get free. That’s how I feel sometimes — like people get past the point where this is enjoyable for both of us — and then it’s one sided — the person petting the cat continues to pet him because the PERSON wants to love (or control) the cat, not because the cat wants love. So the cat, independent creature that it is, claws their way out of the situation.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the term for giving into demands like that for fear of actually losing that friendship is called codependency.
I’ve begun to see, though, that this defiant streak in me — the anti-co-dependent me — is driven by something cat-like, and it’s perhaps equally as unhealthy as codependency.
***
I think it’s semi-normal to not want to spend endless time with the same person without a break. I think breaks are good. They help us keep our individuality and our individual lives. They are healthy to protect ourselves from becoming so enmeshed in a relationship that you don’t even know what you as an individual enjoy or dislike anymore.
But for me, I get relational claustrophobia. I feel confined. Like there’s not enough air. Not enough room. Not enough availability for me to do what I want. Like I’m being tied down (not in the domestic way, but in the Aslan on the altar way).
This last month I’ve started to see that it’s not my independence that drives this. It’s my fear that people won’t let me be independent anymore. It’s not that these things are actually happening, but I have a fear of being caught. Stifled. Tied down. Have my wings clipped. And as I’ve started to think about it, I’ve begun to be honest with myself: This is my greatest fear. And it always has been.
You try to manipulate me, I’m gone. You get clingy, I’m out of there. You want to spend time with me and do all the things I do, and I feel like I’m going to lose myself. You love me too much, and I worry it’s a trap.
Because we’re all human, I’ve seen people who I know authentically love me, and then I start to see their needs come out and color their “love” — I start to see that their motives are not love, they are selfish. Which should be a sign to me that they need more from me. But instead, an alarm goes off in my head that says, “This isn’t love. Run.” I’m the cat in the lap being held for too long and I start doing whatever it takes to get down. It’s a fear reaction at its core.
I respond really well to direct communication, because that’s the only way that this alarm in my head doesn’t go off. But in recent years, I’ve known smart people who I felt like I was communicating blatantly with, and now that I’m out of those situations, I see that I was being blatantly manipulated. I was duped and hurt irreparably, and it happened right in front of my eyes. So now my walls around my heart are taller and thicker, and my anti-manipulation instinct is even stronger.
And here I am, willing to admit it for the first time in my life (and willing to sadly admit that I was not always this way): I’m scared of commitment. To Jobs. To apartment leases. To roommates. To plans. To new relationships. To the Church.
Because despite my strong instincts that have protected me from being “caught” for most of my life… it happened. I was duped. I was hurt. And I just don’t know if I can live through that again.
And because of that, I’m like a skittish cat. The one that used to be a friendly pet. But then was hurt. The one who got abused, or scared, or something, and that changed everything for now.
I can feel people trying to woo me out. I see them putting the food out for me. I hear them calling for me to come out of the bushes. And while they may just want to be nice and provide for me and love on me, I’m still the cat in the bushes who waits until no one’s around, then I’ll dart out and eat the food and dart back before anyone can catch me. They probably would just pet me. But I’m terrified of being caught.
I want to trust people. But I want them to be trust-worthy. And I’m in the chasm in the middle of those two right now.
In my efforts toward bravery, I keep leaving the metaphoric bushes. And I stay out of them a little longer each time. But at the end of the day, I’m still distrusting. I still cut conversations off before they’re finished. I still leave early. I still RSVP tentatively. I still don’t like letting people know my schedule or my plans.
And I don’t have a bow to tie around this story. This is me just being honest and ugly and wrestling with my crap out loud, because my story is one of the few ways that I’m still willing to risk vulnerability over and over again. Because I believe there is the potential for healing in the act of sharing stories — healing for me, and maybe for others too.
If you’re one of the people who has reached out to me in this season of life, I am so, so grateful. I apologize for my sometimes skittish nature. And I apologize if I’ve hurt you when I’ve left situations and relationships too soon when you were really just trying to love me. Really.
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
storyofjoblog@gmail.com
Noah got drunk. (Not a movie review. Not an opinion on alcohol consumption.)
*Note: There are no spoilers in this post if you know the gist of the Noah story from the Bible or the movie trailer or general knowledge.
Here’s my caveat. This is not a movie review. I loved the movie. If you didn’t, you can still read this, though.
There’s one part of the movie that is totally biblically accurate, or, in non-christian-speak, it’s true to the book, and it’s the part that caught me off guard and has had me thinking about it ever since.
Noah got drunk.
This is after the climax of the movie. But it’s odd, because where we’d expect easy resolution to the tension of the plot line, all the sudden it just kind of fades into a weird side note about Noah getting drunk. Because Noah is a real guy, and in real life, when the storm ends and the rainbow comes, you still have to live the rest of your life.
Here it is from the book: “Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent” (Genesis 9:20-21 NIV).
This is the part that hit me hard. I had always read that at face value. Noah got drunk. I always saw it as humorous, like it was something that had never happened before. Like if your sweet, goody-two-shoes grandma had too much to drink one time.
But in the movie, it portrays Noah alone, apart from his family, spending time in a cave on the shore getting drunk. Getting wasted. Until he’s face-down, passed out in the sand, and naked.
It’s heart breaking. It’s a man who, despite the symbols of peace and hope we use to this day being delivered to his door step — a dove with an olive branch, and the rainbow of promise — he’s left alone in a new world being told it has to all start again with him. And he goes through the long process of planting a vineyard. Waiting for it to grow. Cultivating and fermenting the grapes to make wine. So finally, finally, he can have something to numb the ache. Something to drown out the screams of the drowning world that weigh so heavily on his shoulders.
Because God, in sparing Noah, pulled a merciful, jerk move. He left Noah in a place that he was never meant to be. A new Adam, so to speak. Facing a new world knowing how humans messed it up the last time, and knowing deep down that it will happen again, and that this time it will start with him and his family line.
This passage doesn’t talk about avoiding drunkenness.
It just tells it like it is. Noah got drunk.
But it took the movie to show me why. It wasn’t celebration or carelessness like I had always assumed. Noah — despite being spared from destruction, despite the promise of the almighty Creator that He would never destroy like this again — is left having lost everything. Having to rebuild. It takes him months of preparation to get drunk. Those vineyards had to be an intentional decision.
I know what it is to start over on a minor scale — to see people in my wake drowning — to be hurt by where my choices, other people’s choices, and God’s path have taken me. And I know that at the end of the day, the rainbow doesn’t just take all that away. We’re still left with a muddy, barren world. And a God who seems so merciful and loving through the storm, but who feels so distant in the rebuilding. He is there. I am sure of it. But while we’ve been rescued, we’re still reeling from everything that was lost.
If Noah was the most righteous guy out there, if he was God’s go-to, start-over-with-him guy, and the pressures of the path turned him into a hopeless drunk, what will become of me?
We don’t hear about him after that. We’re told: “After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died.”
Did he spend 350 years blacking out to avoid the pain? I don’t know. Did God use him again in unrecorded ways? I don’t know. Did God ever work in his life and his heart to the point where he didn’t hear the screams at night anymore? I so desperately hope so. Did he get to the point where doves, olive trees, and rainbows really did give him hope for the work God was doing in the world? The part of me that begs for resolution says: I’m certain he did. But to be honest, the Bible does not say.
Assuming we both end up in heaven, I’m going to find Noah, and I’m going to buy him a drink. Not a sad drink. It will be a drink to celebrate that the hope has been fulfilled and that the ache is no more.
It’ll also give me a chance to teach him about umbrellas (since they’ll be in our drinks, obviously).
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
storyofjoblog@gmail.com
2 supportive parents = 3 artist children
What do you get when a Forester and a Therapist have kids?
Apparently you get 3 artists. What?
Before she died, my sister was going to school studying math and music. To be honest, she started as a math major, because she was brilliant. Truly. And then somewhere in there, she realized what she really wanted to do was to just teach piano, which she was already doing.
She was an incredible pianist, and she’d been teaching for a few years. She was a pretty insecure person (as many of us are) and that made her come across as harsh a lot of times. But when she played piano, and apparently when she taught piano, she was relaxed. She was in her element.
I’ve become friends with some people who I discovered were students of hers. It’s a fun thing to see her through their eyes — because when she was in the midst of her art form, when she was at a piano, she was still fierce, and fast, and passionate, but she was raw. She didn’t wear her emotions on her sleeves in life, but she did wear them on her fingertips at the piano.
My brother, after starting to go to school as a pre-med student, because, similar to my sister, he is brilliant, has become a professional photographer. He can and does shoot everything from weddings, portraits, high school sports games, public events, clubs and nightlife, to car accidents and wildland fires. In this day of so many iPhone photographers, not everyone makes photography a true art, but he does.
He is an expert at capturing humanity, capturing nature, encapsulating moments that beg to be remembered. And he does it really well. His chemistry and physics professors, and many of us who know him, could see him being an astrophysicist, because his mind just works like that. But he has this desire in his heart to tell stories, to make art, to be a photographer. Maybe he will be an engineer or a physicist or something very brainy someday, too. But for now, he’s discovered an artist within his heart, and he’s letting that artist explore, breathe, learn and grow.
And I have not yet found my niche. My best subject in school was always math. It came really easily to me… and I hated it. I played instruments growing up. But I just made it my thing because I wanted to be like Julie. I took a photography class my senior year of high school. That’s not my thing either. But in my freshman year of college I took my first journalism class, and I began to think, maybe I’m a writer. As I’ve moved forward, that idea has evolved: I’m a story-teller, and to this day I’m still discovering new ways to tell the stories. I’ve started a hashtag to catalog some of my drawings/paintings etc. It’s #artstuffbyjo . I went with the vaguest thing I could think of because like I said, I’m still learning what my “thing” might be. For now, I just know it’s “art stuff.”
My words, my charcoal, my paint,(maybe someday my acting?), these are all ways to tell the story. For Jason, he tells stories through photos. For Julie, she expressed something in music that hits the human soul in a way that words cannot. We all ended up artists. Jason is brilliant in the sciences. Julie and I both have the math brains. And yet, our expressions, the work of our hands that holds meaning for us — those things are not numbers and chemicals and formulas. They are expressions of what it means to be human. What it means to feel.
We’ve always joked that “as a family, we’re good at lots of things, but art isn’t one of them.” We thought we’d missed that gene. We were wrong.
Why are we like this? How did this happen, coming from two artistically challenged parents? We all grew up reading whole book series out loud as a family. Before we could speak, as young babes, we could listen. Story-telling has been a part of our lives since then.
That’s where we got our artistic and story-telling inclination. But we ended up each deciding to follow it because of this: We had two parents who both did what they loved.
My mom works in the therapy world and she comes to life by helping people get healing in the most wounded areas of their lives. My dad was a forester, and the man will get very interested in a conversation with you if you would like to know about what kind of tree that is over there. And he can map out areas of the forest for you (literally… he does cartography).
And aside from loving what they do, they’re both really really good at what they do. My dad has been an expert witness for the department of justice in several cases about forest fires. My mom has people who have come from literally around the world to see her as a therapist.
But you know why any of that matters? Because they told us that old adage that people scoff at: “You can be anything you want to be.” They always told us that and I think they believed it. And we believed it, because they lived it in their own lives. They both did what they loved to do.
We have plenty of our own family drama and dynamics, like any family. But one thing I have always known deep in my soul is this: My parents believe in me. And in Jason. And in Julie.
They’ve always believed in us. They’ve always been impressed with our accomplishments, and their support has encouraged us to dream big, and given us the permission to dream small. They made space for us to discover what we wanted to be.
With the knowledge that they believe in me has also come the knowledge that they will still love me even if I fail. They have accepted us as we’ve each individually turned away from the traditional path of “success” that our skill sets and the world had set out for us, and turned toward something that was riskier, yet meant more to us.
Because we believe in each other, we believe that anything could happen. And we’ll support each other no matter what happens. Somewhere along the way, our family recipe for success, “do your best,” was replaced with the riskier, more audacious, “you might as well try.” And that, perhaps, is the greatest atmosphere we could have to turn our potential energy into kinetic energy. To turn our dreams into reality.
That is how we O’Hanlon artists were born.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and story-teller. 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
storyofjoblog@gmail.com
Being for people: About Encouragement, Competition, And Beauty
I have some amazingly positive people in my life. And they help me be who I am because they are so supportive.
But how do they do this besides just showing their unconditional, “I’m not going anywhere” spirit? Well, one of the ways I’ve noticed is that they remind me of my worth. They remind me of my talents. They remind me of my beauty, of what I’m good at. They affirm my abilities and my dreams. Not blindly so. They critique, they give honest feedback, they even have those painful “hey look” moments with me when something needs to change.
But, it’s because of these people that I am confident in my worth, even when I am not confident in who I am.
When I graduated college, I had a clear goal in one area that I wanted to change:
I wanted to be kinder.
I am a naturally feisty, competitive, sarcastic, funny with a little kick to it, person. As a result, my presence has a bite to it. (It often leaves a bitter aftertaste when my sarcasm has gotten away from me.)
And while I had plenty of friends who loved me, and I could’ve gone on the same, I wanted to change. These people that I had around me who were sweet, who made me feel so uplifted and valuable… I wanted to make others feel that way too.
I’ve been working on changing my spirit toward kindness since then, and I see significant changes in my heart.
I wouldn’t call myself a sweet person. I still have a large streak of feist that runs deep through me, and I think that’s ok. But, while I have a lot of room to grow still, I am kinder than I once was. I am slower to get irritated. My eyes have changed, and I don’t have to work very hard to see the beauty in each individual person.
But I still want to grow. And I’ve realized that just being someone who sees the beauty in someone is not really what the world needs. The world needs people who see the beauty in others, and who show it back to them.
I can’t believe I’m using this word, but I want to be a cheerleader. I am (rooting) for people. I want them to dream. To succeed. To love. To know they’re valuable.
It goes against the grains of my old competitive nature. But that’s the reality, is that the woman God is calling me to be doesn’t want others to fail or never try so that I may stand out. I want to be the one with balloons who celebrates the successes of people I barely know.
Because, when I am really secure in my worth, as my loving, positive people have made me… I’ve found it to be much easier to believe that other people are just as valuable as I am. And that their dreams, success, and loves, that those are worth encouraging as much as mine are, too.
And the more I trust God and what He’s doing with my life, the easier it is to be genuinely glad for others when they get things/opportunities/relationships/recognition that I wanted.
I know I’m not near there yet. It’s a new goal, though. I want to be an encourager, not spouting empty compliments, but someone who sees the good in the world, and shows the world where its good. I want to be genuinely happy for people about the happy things of life, and sad with them for the sad things.
So, my new goal is going to take more effort, but I hope someday, when people look back on my life, that it will be clear that I was for people. And I hope that somehow, as more and more people find the confidence in their worth, and begin to let their beauty shine, this legacy of encouragement that my friends have spurred in my life will continue, and that the world will become even bit brighter still.
To you who have and do speak and act encouragingly in my life, thank you for who you are and how you are. You inspire me.
The Anatomy of My Grief
That grief that stays with you like sad marrow in your bones— that is different — when the grief is still very real, but it’s lying dormant like a constant heavy burden, sometimes heavier than others, not the active grief, clenching down like a lion’s jaw on your jugular. This is the anatomy of the latter.
I feel grief in my stomach first. It’s that literal gut-wrenching feeling. As if someone is holding my insides and wringing them like a wash cloth they’re trying to wring dry. I always want to vomit, feel like I need to vomit, but it never comes to fruition. It’s as if my body knows that there is not such an easy way to release and rid itself of this pain.
I feel it in my brow, as my face contorts involuntarily into the ugly face of sorrow.
At the same time I feel it in my throat. My throat hurts, tightens, and I forget to breathe.
I feel grief in my lips. I purse them to keep the sounds of pain from escaping. I feel it in the tired corners of my mouth, and in my cheeks, as I push those muscles to capacity, clenching with the ferocity of my sadness. At some point, after too much time of my throat and lips having been sealed like a tomb, my lungs start to burn, and I remember — oh yes, breath, I need that. Maybe I have an anaphylactic allergy to grief.
I feel it in my chest. It is cliche to say — but my heart hurts. If it’s not my physical heart, then it’s something else in that space right beneath my sternum. But that place, Oh! how it burns, aches, distracts. I often find my hand unconsciously drawn to press against that spot, as if to press a button to turn off the sharp pain.
Eventually I notice a tingling in my noise — like the pricking sensation that comes with an extremity as it comes awake again after having fallen asleep.
Lastly, usually after some time, as the rest of the grief symptoms fade, my head pounds — I feel a throbbing in my brain. A hangover of grief. And the rest of my body just feels weary.
I don’t know how grief does this to me. To anyone. How is it that emotion, circumstance, something purely intangible has such a tangible effect on every vital part of my physical being?
I saw an un-attributed quote on Pinterest this year that said, “How can such pain exist without physical harm?”
I’ve asked that question a lot. I’ve started to pay attention to the anatomy of my grief, mapping it out as it rides its painful path through my physicality. But when it’s over, I am left unharmed.
It’s as if grief is a virus that fills me, attacks me, and my body feels it. But unbeknownst to me, it fights back, my spirit fights with it, and the virus retreats when it has run its course. And I’m left with more grief antibodies — a greater capacity to handle grief, to feel it, and to move on with it and from it — which will sustain me the next time.
Which gives me hope. Because if my body can endure that, time and time again, then there is still light. There is still life. My throat eventually unclenches. My lungs fill easily with air. My head stops pounding. I don’t even notice my heart when it’s not hurting. My face relaxes, my smile comes naturally again, and my appetite returns.
And if my body is resilient, how much more so is my spirit?
I get the opportunity to laugh a lot and cry a lot in life with my close friends these days. Which is a testament to this. The grief that causes my uncontrollable frowns does not destroy my ability to uncontrollably smile. Like a virus, it must run its course.
—————-
For any who are in grief, new or old, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m so sorry for your pain. You are not alone.
“It’s been 10 years.” Thoughts for my sister.
Dear Julie,
It’s been 10 years. How can that be? 10 years of life without you. 10 years of this ache in my heart and stinging sensation in my eyes and nose when people speak of loss. When they experience grief, my heart breaks for them, because I still know the feeling of my heart breaking over you. 10 years of thinking of you in those moments.
10 years of answering “how many siblings do you have” with a different answer every time.
10 years to figure out who I am apart from you. Without your influence or your example.
10 years to figure out how different from you I am.
And 10 years to figure out how similar we are, after all.
10 years of seeing things about “sister love” and feeling that hollow pang, knowing I don’t have a sister anymore.
10 years of trying to establish a “new normal.”
And after 10 years, it’s clear that we have developed new rhythms, but that we still don’t feel whole. We’re still trying to figure out who we are as a family. And that’s a really hard thing to admit. Because it’s admitting that this is not the way things were meant to be, even after all the healing, and coping and growing, and changing and redeveloping.
We have adapted, and while we have found joy again, we have entered back into life again, part of us still knows that there was another way this story could’ve gone. And I am starting to see that that knowledge will never go away completely.
Walking into this, I never knew just how long death takes its toll. Never realized how deeply woven into our stories the threads of grief would be.
Here is the truth that no one says out loud.
I don’t think about you every day anymore. 10 years ago I would’ve been appalled at myself for this being true, for admitting it. I thought about you every day for years. For the whole first year I didn’t want to move on. But my soul began to die, to suffocate from unobserved grief after a year of it. Grieving and finding joy again felt like betraying you at first. I was 15, but I imagine it must feel similar even to adults who walk through that valley.
But at some point I did establish new rhythms of life. I gradually stopped having those moments where I expected to see you somewhere, expected you to be at dinner that night, thought of something to tell you only to remember that you were no longer there to tell.
At some point, I began to be able to tell people that I had a sister, but that you had died, and I began to be able to do it without my throat tightening, without tears falling too easily from my eyes. The statement stopped being a reminder, and started being a fact.
Eventually, people stopped calling me by your name accidentally. That was both a helpful thing yet a sad realization a few years in. It meant that you had been gone long enough that even acquaintances had made the mental shift to know your name should no longer be in their “name bank” for the O’Hanlons.
People stopped comparing me to you altogether by the time I graduated high school. I had already begun to blaze my own trail. And of course by the time that I graduated college, I had surpassed the point in life that you’d lived through, so the mention of your name didn’t even come up.
I thought of you, though. I thought about the picture we took together at my 8th grade graduation. The only graduation of mine you’d get to attend. I hope you’d be proud of me, and happy for me for the happy things of my life, and sad with me for the heart-breaking ones. I trust that that would be the case. You were always really compassionate like that, deep down.
This is what makes me saddest. How much you’ve missed, and how much we’ve missed that would’ve come in your life. So much has changed for us in 10 years, I’m sure life would’ve changed for you, too.
I’ve met a few people in life who remind me a lot of you. They are people that others sometimes have a hard time getting close to, but they feel so familiar to me, because it’s like seeing a glimpse of you. It is comfortable to be near them, just as I was always comfortable around you.
Here’s another painful confession. I don’t remember what your voice sounded like anymore. I wish we had had digital cameras and video cameras back then, but I didn’t yet. I got my first one the Christmas after you died. I haven’t heard your voice in a decade.
I haven’t heard you play piano in just as long.
I know from memory what you looked like still — but the details of your face, or your person, they’re starting to get a little fuzzy. I have static images of you in mind, from the pictures, but I don’t remember how you moved.
There are, of course, lots of pictures of you at mom and dad’s house, but I only have a couple of my own. I have a picture frame collage with 2 in it of you — I have taken it with me everywhere I’ve lived — even in another country.
It is a very weird thing to look at pictures of you from the end, and to know that you are only 20 years old. You are 4 years younger than I am now. Which is so strange because you were always so much older and cooler. How could you be younger than me?
I remember what you smelled like still, vaguely, because I still have one of your shirts. I’ve washed it a bunch of times (because I’ve worn it), but sometimes, on the occasions that I did wear it, I would catch a whiff of you. I stopped wearing it because I was afraid that eventually, after too many washes, the smell would leave. That’s the last piece of your clothing I have. I just can’t get rid of it. I got rid of the rest though — which was much harder than getting rid of clothes should ever be. I blame you, and grief, for me staying out of current style for so long.
Here’s another confession. While I have gone to the cemetery a lot over the past 10 years, I have visited your grave only a dozen or less times. It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that your body is there. But I like to visit the cemetery in general, because I feel close to you there — I know that was a place you used to go when you ditched school, or just to get away from things. It is because of that, not because of your grave, that I go.
I always think of you when someone makes a comment about red heads being feisty.
I always think of you when I see one of those pens that you always used. You’re right, they really are the best pens.
I always think of you when I watch Ever After, Sweet Home Alabama (I still have your burned copy), Gattaca, and Finding Forrester (which I watched yesterday, and yes… I cried when he talks about his brother). I watched Monsters University the other day finally (sequel to Monsters Inc.) and I remembered you really liked the original. The sequel is pretty cute, too.
I always think of you when I see something or hear something about the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I remember all of those afternoons of all three of us watching some combination of that, Sister Sister, The Nanny, and Arthur that added up to an hour of our TV time. I love that we all watched all of those together.
And of course, anywhere that they sell cheap, gas station, soft-serve ice creams makes me think of the times you got Jason and I to pay for yours if you drove us there and back.
Whenever a phone book is delivered to my door step I think of that summer, and the fact that the dress you bought me was not NEAR enough payment for the hours I put in, but I had no idea at the time. I thought you were being so gracious. I wish I could rag on you now about that.
After 10 years without you, the pain has lessened, the heaviness of the sadness has lifted, but the fact is that the loss remains. We’ve lost you and life will never be the same.
And while we have to make peace with that, and we have, we do, and we will… we still miss you. We still love you. And it seems that time will not wash that away. Nor should it, I suppose.
P.S. This picture, this is how I remember you. No wonder I know how to make a splash. I got that from you, I think. (Julie, age 17, after a Mock Trial competition. Those are boxers.)
10 years
10 Years.
Written in memory of my older sister, Julie.
I last saw you alive and well and 20 years old.
We celebrated your birthday that night,
but you didn’t turn 21 ’til the next day.
We had dinner,
I assume it was your homemade favorite.
It was our wednesday tradition:
You and he would come to eat,
then we’d head to church —
Jas and I to youth group,
you to band practice
and he to wait oh so patiently for you.
That wednesday no different —
just added cake and presents.
Left the church that night, but just before I did
I peaked in the window to the sanctuary.
I saw you through the glass, playing piano,
stopping to respond to Jan’s comment.
You laughed, then started playing away again.
I turned, said goodbye to him,
(he was sitting on the bench, reading as he waited),
and we left.
The next day was your birthday.
Oh what a difference a day makes.
The only time I saw your 21-year old self,
you were not well.
That fiery sister of mine —
asleep, unconscious,
tubes coming in and
tubes coming out.
Beep Beep Beep was your lifeline rhythm.
Oh what a difference 3 days makes.
Not even 24 hours between the call of distress,
and the calls of death.
The angst of the waiting room turned to certain sorrow.
We left — evicted from a monumental moment,
from life as we knew it.
Outside, the sunshine was offensive.
The birds’ songs, inconsiderate,
as we waded into a new life we never wanted.
Oh what a difference 4 days makes.
I wonder if you’d recognize us now.
I am 24, short hair, same size, better style.
Jas is 27, taller, stronger, better style, too.
Last we knew you were 21,
but tomorrow you’d turn 10 years older.
How can that be? 31.
A third of your life not lived.
It’s raining now, and I am
within 10 minutes of being
exactly 10 years away from
the last moment I saw you — playing, laughing.
I am both sad and happy to remember
that last glimpse of you.
Oh what a difference 10 years makes.
And what love and loss 10 years cannot erase.
Please keep us in your prayers tomorrow, on her birthday, and Friday, on the anniversary of her death.
I may post some memories of her, we’ll just have to see how the week goes.
A Renaissance: My life these days.
I had this thought the other day: This is the renaissance of my life.
I am learning about music that I like, music that is out there, music that I want to sing along to. Music I want to dance to and music that dances with me. Music that makes me cry, and some that makes me smile involuntarily.
I am making art. All kinds of art. My finger nails have charcoal dust under them that will not come out with one or two washings. Charcoal similarly cakes itself into the cracks of my hands that are drying out from how often I’m washing them. My leggings have varnish on them from the bench I stained. My shoes have sawdust in them from sawing the wood for that bench. My table has sticky sections of it from glue that ran away and off the page. My walls are lined with blank canvases and empty picture frames leaning up against them, waiting to be filled with what I create.
I am writing. Sometimes even poetry. My blog and my journal give testament to the words that come from my pen, from my keys, from my pain and my hope.
I am reading again. Everything from Chelsea Handler, to biographies of Napoleon, to Calvin & Hobbes, to Dan Brown mysteries, to Hemingway and Austen.
I am learning again. Not just about art and technique, but languages — I’m learning Italian and I’m loving it. I’m eager for the knowledge and the application.
And I’m curious (as I have always been, but still) about history. I want to know more.
I’ve asked myself, “why?” Why am I doing these things? Why am I making these changes? Am I just now really discovering who I am? The typical 20s self-discovery thing?
When I’m honest, the answer is “no.” I’ve known who I am for many years now. I am not just now figuring out what I like and who I am. The fact is that what I like and who I am is changing.
I had a hunch, and in doing some brief research, I found that I was right…
The Renaissance of the 14-16th centuries started right after the black plague hit the European continent.
The “Rebirth” came out of death. Out of loss. Out of panic. Out of the forceful need to move on from “old normal”.
I am being re-born. That’s what renaissance means: rebirth. But why? Why now? Why change?
Because I lost everything. The town, the church, the friends, the family, the job, the daily activities, the passion.
Because it was time for new. There was no choice in it.
Because I am coming out of my own years of black plague. Of death. Of loss. I have emerged from my dark ages, and I, while the same person, am discovering new things, am developing new interests.
And what started out as writing to just get my thoughts on page, turned into the desire to tell a story, to relate to the common human things that we all experience. A story-teller re-born, with more freedom to tell the stories that ring true.
What started as writing poems because I needed some short form to get my words out turned into becoming a private poet. Writing poems down on napkins and in “notes” in my phone — when I’m at a stoplight, when I’m running and pause for breath, when I’m trying to sleep, when I am just so sad or so happy and I have to let it out of me, there comes words in verse, lines in waves — a poem is breathed. A poet is birthed.
To be embarrassingly honest, I started making art recently as a way to avoid something I needed to write that I knew would be emotionally exhausting and difficult. Every time I had time to write it, I’d create a charcoal artwork instead. Beauty from ashes before my eyes. I knew it would die down once the need for avoiding responsibilities was gone — but I was wrong. The desire to create is even stronger now. An artist has been born in me.
And what started as listening to music while I journaled grew into a hunger for music. I want to hear more. I even want to make music again. I don’t know how or if that will happen, but there is still plenty of time to change and discover.
I am being reborn. I am coming alive again. And I don’t know what my new passion will be. Where my new path will take me. But maybe it will take me many places: Jane of all trades, master of none. I have peace about not knowing, and joy at the thought of the journey to find out.
Maybe I am meant to be a renaissance woman, after all.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and story-teller. 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
storyofjoblog@gmail.com
A Tale of Two Strippers (PART II)
A Tale of Two Strippers: Horse Trainer and Ministry Leader (PART II)
by Joanna O’Hanlon
Originally Published in the Point Weekly in Spring 2011
Part II:
“And there’s a lady over there she’s acting pretty cool. But when it comes to playing life she’s always playin’ the fool.”
As Scher began dancing here years ago, she too was constantly on her game. For the first six months of dancing, she never drank on the job. But there came one night where she decided to have a drink. She felt like she was looser, more comfortable, and more enjoyable to the customers when she had alcohol in her system. Soon her whole group of friends had changed, and drugs and alcohol became more regular parts of her life. She heard about the money that could be made in Las Vegas, and began working there every other week, while her ex-husband had his week with their son. Then Scher’s fellow Vegas dancers mentioned how much money escorts could make.
She was still convinced she needed more money, even though she was making more than she ever had before, so she began escorting as well. As her income grew, so did her spending, her depression, and her drug use. Some of the clients she saw were powerful and famous, some were just low and lonely.
Contrary to popular belief, Scher says that most of what she was expected or asked to do as an escort wasn’t sex. Still, her whole experience in the sex-industry was a game of justification. After all, she started out with good intentions, just trying to earn a living. And her drug use was just to get her through her shifts and calls. Looking back though, Scher now estimates that she spent her last two years in the industry perpetually high.
As an escort she found herself in dangerous situations numerous times. She would get a call in the middle of the night and be given an address. She never knew exactly what she was walking into. At one of her calls when she was still employing a body guard, she was greeted by a man who looked truly insane. Scher’s instincts told her to run, but before she could get to the door, he locked her in. She screamed and her body guard was able to get in and help her escape.
Another time Scher had to run out on a call so fast she left her shoes behind. At some point she substituted a body guard for a taser to cut down on costs. Looking back, Scher can’t believe how many dangerous positions she put herself into, all in the pursuit of money.
This kind of danger of violence isn’t abnormal for this industry. In 1978 the now well-known local ordinance was created by the city of San Diego which added a few regulations—most notably, the rule that an adult entertainer must be six feet away from costumers while performing – in an attempt to reduce “crime in and around adult entertainment businesses.”
However, a study in the Journal of Sex Research from 2006 found that the areas in the immediate vicinity of three San Diego Sexually Oriented Businesses had crime rates that were more than twice as much as in the surrounding community. A Yelp user who goes by MaryJane C left a review in early February claiming that the bouncer had physically assaulted her as she was leaving from her shift at the Pure Platinum Club in Little Italy. She writes about being wrestled to the ground and then being kneed in the face and thrown outside.
Even now, in the back of the club, near the dark velvet bar stools with STAR WARS embroidered in the back, stands the manager, checking out the bruise on a dancer’s upper buttocks. She’s telling him it hurts. And she’s not the only girl here with bruises sprinkled over her body. Maybe they’re from climbing the pole. Maybe they’re not.
“London boys are staring as the girls go hand in hand. With a pocket full of innocence, their entrance is grand.”
Rose comes over and sits on the arm of my dark purple chair. “What’re you writing down?” she asks. I mumble something about it being general notes about the people in the room, the music playing, and other insignificant details. I’m just trying to avoid explaining any potentially uncomfortable descriptions I have jotted down.
“So what details are you writing specifically? I’m never sure how much I should put in my writing,” she says. Rose goes on to share that she’s been working on her writing craft in her spare time, and has a writer she’s acquaintances with who is helping to encourage her and refine her writing abilities.
I rest my arm on her bare thigh as she goes on, and it’s as if a mask has been lifted off her whole countenance. She’s coming alive talking about how, a few years ago, she discovered a love for horse training. More recently she has uncovered a love for photography, and she’s currently starting a business that incorporates her horse training, horse photography, and writing about horses and horse racing.
This new business is the reason she’s moved back down to San Diego on a more permanent basis. “I am only going to be here as long as it takes for me to get enough money to just do my business,” she says. “I just can’t let it get out that I’m here, because I have a lot of people in my life, especially with this new business with the horses, and they just can’t know this part of me. They just can’t.”
Rose gets a big, completely non-sensual smile on, different than the one she’s been wearing all night. “And you want to know what’s funny?” she says. “A lot of the tips and techniques I’ve learned about how to handle horses, they work with the guys in here too. I know how to tame them. It’s F-ing crazy how well it works!”
For Theresa Scher, this path through the sex-industry went strictly downhill as far as her personal and emotional health were concerned. One night, as she sat in a Los Angeles hotel room waiting for a call from a client, her dad called. He asked, sadly, “What are you doing to yourself?” And that was the phone call that broke this call-girl’s spirit. She knew she couldn’t do this anymore. It wasn’t a clean break from the industry, but that phone call set determination in motion in Scher’s life to leave this industry behind.
Within a year of making her break from her previous employment, Scher saw a CNN report about a church ministry for strippers. So she started a branch in San Diego. It seems more fortuitous than ironic that Scher still goes to strip clubs. But instead of making a profit, she and the other women in the ministry go in to give gifts to the dancers, to show them love and care, and to let them know that they’ll be there if they ever need anything.
A part of the JC’s Girls ministry is a bible study that meets once every other week, and the women involved almost all come from backgrounds in the industry. For these women, everything is not perfect now that they’re out of the industry, and now that they know Jesus. Many of them still deal with depression, low self-esteem, and the temptation to run back to the industry that hurt them. But like the father welcomes the prodigal son, the clubs are almost always willing to accept dancers back at a moment’s notice. This makes the temptations to return much more prominent for women who have somehow gotten out. Though they are out, the consequences of this lifestyle unfortunately still run deep. But together they hold one another up in prayer, love, encouragement, and accountability.
Most, if not all women enter this industry because of financial need. But it’s rare that they foresee the long-term effects this job could have on the rest of their lives. But JC’s Girls exists to help women who have to deal with the consequences of this career, and they want to offer the hope of Christ’s healing grace.
Honey, the dancer who just started this week, says she wants to do this forever.
Rose has been doing it for ten years, and she’s looking forward to the day she can call it quits. She’s sitting in one of the two lounge chairs in the bathroom. Her leg is crossed square over the other, her stilettos are off, her eyes are closed and her head is tilted back, resting on the chair. She’s not smiling—she’s just sucking on a heart-shaped sucker, slumped down in the chair taking a minute to break from her act. It’s now almost 1:00 a.m. She still has an hour left on her shift, and there’s a group of nine guys that just walked into the club.
“I want you to want me. I need you to need me. I’d love you to love me. I’m beggin’ you to beg me.”
Rose is back on the stage, dancing, looking sexy as hell: shoes back on, smile back on, bra coming off. The man sitting at the tip rail at the side of the stage is gawking at her while his pals laugh and call out from behind him. His eyes only move between her crotch and her breasts as he lays down dollar bills one by one on the rail like he’s laying bait for his prey. His eyes are glazed and his mouth is open. He’s mesmerized by her movements. And he doesn’t have a clue that Rose is treating him as a trainer treats an unruly horse.
Joanna O’Hanlon is an adventurer and story-teller. 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
storyofjoblog@gmail.com