Author: Jason Zerbey

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Note to Self: Get Fitted for a Lampshade

Authenticity. I strive for it in my writing and speech at all times. But sometimes I don’t like my authentic self. Sometimes I get pissed off on a soccer field and cut someone down with cleverly hurtful words. Or is that not me? Is that possession by these demons I’m trying to exercise? Like they come from a place much older than me and have a power over my will. Exhaustion, pain, fear…just a little and the demons get a turn at the wheel.

It’s not me. It doesn’t feel like me. I’m the one with the silly hat, dancing around like all there is in the world in that moment is that song.

I’m most authentic when I’m most present: in the dance, on the date, or in the game instead of in my head about other players. When I’m present I’m not worried about appearances, past injuries, or what might be gained from the moment. I direct all my energies to the moment, to the eyes across the table and the shapes and stories formed by spoken words.

It’s the greatest feeling to be present. It is when I most connect with humans, God, nature, and the experience of living, sometimes all at once.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Unschooling Made Me A Better Lover

When I began homeschooling my sons I was constantly filling with expectations and assumptions about what we should be achieving. Those turned into disappointments for myself, my wife, and my sons. Happiness and peace became ever more elusive. We were floundering when I finally gave up on “teaching.” I became a facilitator, there to carefully listen to and watch these young humans whom I loved, and to take them the places they needed to go. Whether it was a book, museum, nature program, road trip, or simple playground, my role became to observe their thirst and lead them to water.

I slowly learned that I had to trust in their self-navigation, not only allow them to go down seemingly useless avenues, but to encourage their journey. I reminded each to own it.

Each avenue is paved with questions. Humans are natural question-making machines and we are so much better at this fundamental skill when we are young. By watching and listening I have rediscovered my own passion for discovery. I’ve gone down the paths cut by my own questions. I’ve allowed myself to be carried along and have found ever deeper questions.

These skills: listening, watching, and questioning in love have changed the way I interact with people. I’m quieter, I see and hear more. I try to treat everyone as someone I could love. It’s remarkable to listen to someone as if they are your closest family. Intimacy becomes something beyond physical touch. It becomes an act of vulnerability, a moment you can share with a near stranger. If you find a person who is willing to string enough of those moments together, you can create a space where physical intimacy is an extension of the loving attentiveness. Listening, watching, and questioning in love without assumptions.

The last benefit I expected to accrue from unschooling was to become a more complete romantic partner. As I apply the principles of love and trust to more of my thoughts and actions, I am consistently rewarded and continually more capable of caring for those I love.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Duality and Divinity

John 1:1-5 (ESV)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Reverend Karen Covey shared this verse during a casual service in a wooded park this morning. The sun was bright and unseasonably warm and we were invited to spend quiet time among the trees in thoughtful meditation.

I was drawn to the edge of the woods, to the uninterrupted sunlight pouring in from the east. Still amidst the trees, the shadows pointed me toward the sun.

We can’t find the light without orienting against the dark.

The power of creation is our divine gift. Our word is the expression of our divinity. There’s no choice in that. To speak or write is to create. We can use this power to build a world of love, truth, compassion, and understanding, or a world of lies, deceit, fear, and assumptions.

It’s not easy to speak the truth. It’s not comfortable. It feels so much easier to swallow the assumptions and go along to get along. But it can’t be sustained. That world of lies will fall apart around you, bringing down those you love, yet not enough to tell the truth.

What will you create with your word today?

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Love and Respect Yourself

Hi,

I just read your post about hating your body. My life changed when I realized it wasn’t my body, or habits, or temper that I hated, but my actual Self. “Hate” may be too strong of a word for me, but I was lacking in self-love to a destructive degree.

I read Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life early this year. I can’t recommend it enough. Diet, exercise, and “healthy” routines won’t fix your soul. Getting on a daily (as many times a day as you can stand) regimen of self-care and self-love will bring all the changes you want for yourself.

I can tell you, it was disturbing to discover how much I disliked myself. It’s not fun to listen to my self-critical voices (there are many), but engaging with that in myself has helped me find forgiveness for my Self.

The good habits come. When you really love yourself, you’ll treat yourself like someone you love! How ‘bout that!

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Grief and Comic Books

My sons used Christmas money to explore our favorite comic shop today. I remembered how I discovered the Hero’s Journey in a similar place, feeding my imagination for what one person could accomplish with the proper will.

We came home with piles of adventures and closed the day with a viewing of Avengers: Endgame.

The heroes who had survived cataclysmic defeat are the archetypes of grief. Captain America remains the eternal optimist, the unshakable hero who can only believe that good will come. Hawkeye gives in to darkest resentment, taking out his pain on the reality that has betrayed him. Black Widow works and works and works, she works herself to death fighting against the tragedy. Iron Man escapes from the past into his new reality, he discovers what he had before he lost so much. Thor escapes into self medication and pity, drinking himself into solitude.

Each of these archetypes has lived in me at times, but there is one character that I most aspire to personify. Bruce Banner turned inward, he stopped fighting the monster inside. He spent time with the Hulk. He learned about it. He learned about his darkest parts. In doing so he integrated his most destructive power with a mind focused on the good.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Best Christmas

Holidays are where I notice the biggest changes in our lives.

The house isn’t as colorful as it has been in the past and it isn’t filled with wonderful smells of food made with loving care.

But it is so peaceful. Christmas music plays while my boys quietly build their Lego sets and I lay back in bed, taking time for myself. They were excited for the most modest gifts. I feel like I know them better than ever, that our loss and struggles have brought us closer together.

All our fortunes bloom out of the unfortunate.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Embrace Your Freedom

In the weeks after Mary’s death I wrote about how music had lost its power over me.

I was living a robotic existence. It was too too risky to feel anything at all. I had intuitions about the importance of love, but I wasn’t ready to experience it.

The road trip we embarked on started with a weekend of music that would break me out of the armor I had built.

As Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band tore through “Lay Your Burden Down,” I had my son on my shoulders, my feet in the mud, and tears framing the smile on my face. Mary and I had danced in front of them on a special date weekend. All the emotions I hadn’t let myself feel poured forth. I let myself be free to feel.

Music touches me even deeper now. Everything does. Freedom means being able to explore further, especially within.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Don’t Overdo

We don’t have a tree up, I haven’t acquired stocking stuffers, and I’m not sure where the stockings are.

These were all on my mind as I pulled this card from don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements deck.

Now I’m thinking of Halloween. Mary was Tippi Hedren from Hitchcock’s The Birds one year before we met. She took bloody pecks out of a stylish blazer, wired birds around her, and had more birds torturing her hair. It was brilliant.

We overdid it all. Costumes, hikes, meals, decorations…we never sat for more than an evening by the fire. Even that would be rife with problem solving and planning.I don’t know if that’s what left her depleted and unable to fight off the infection, or whether she knew in her soul that her time would not be long. Both could be true.

I’m finding my pace. I’m learning how to rest.

I’m going to do my nest today.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Night Out at the Bar

Alcoholism.

I’ve written very little about it since questioning whether I was an alcoholic almost a year ago.

I stopped drinking on Halloween night, 2018. It was two months before I felt my mind begin to clear. I was entering a romanic relationship with a woman who had a history with addict partners. With her help I stared down two decades of unhealthy patterns and concluded that I had a serious problem. In truth, maintaining the relationship was a significant motivation in my quest to make myself better. That and being a better father to my sons drove me towards therapy and weekly (at minimum) AA meetings. It was all helpful. It was all necessary for me to spend serious time exploring my past and working through my guilt and shame. Why would I quit drinking for this woman and my sons, yet I hadn’t for my wife and those same sons?

I was missing a key element to my healing and it wasn’t until the romance was ended beyond my wishes that I discovered that key. Suddenly single again, I set to meditating and reading more. I picked up Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. It spoke immediately to the hole inside me. I was lacking in a love for myself that was crippling my desire for self improvement. I took on the daily affirmations and listened with care to my self-critical voices. I found inside myself an ability to heal. I didn’t need the therapy sessions or AA meetings anymore, I needed to spend that time expressing love and care for myself. I found an internal drive to push away the things that did not nourish me. Identifying as an “alcoholic” was no longer appropriate. I had broken the patterns and swam in the darkness that had lead me to self medicate. I loved myself too much to do more harm to my mind, body, and soul with alcohol.

I went out last night and danced among the drinkers. There were friends there, but I was primarily there on my own. A lot of it was uncomfortable. I still feel like widowhood is a contagion, that people are too vulnerable to come near that pain. It’s often easier to be around strangers. The music was good and I fell into the bliss of moving to it. It didn’t matter who I was, or wasn’t, dancing with, I was experiencing the moment just for myself.

Not drinking turned out to be the easy part.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Still Present

Mary visited me again.

This inspirational card has floated around our lives for more than a decade. I don’t know where Mary found it and I never paid much attention to it on our dresser or her nightstand.

Having no clear connection to our life together, I was tempted to toss it in my efforts to make room in our lives. Physical health and wellbeing has been paramount in our family transformation and I didn’t think I needed a reminder. I checked myself on how easily bad habits form and old patterns return and placed the card between our kitchen and dining room.

A day or so earlier, I was at Lanikai Wellness Studio for a yoga class and purchased a deck of cards based on Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I have a long to-read list and thought this would be a good way to bring Ruiz’s wisdom into my life. I also hoped they would provide material for a new blog series.

I sat down this morning to flip through the cards for the first time. This same card was in the first ten I read. We didn’t own the book. We never discussed Ruiz. I didn’t discover him until after Mary passed and there’s no indication of his name or the book title on the cards.

This is my first real holiday season alone. A friend buoyed me through my first Christmas as a widower, but that friendship has been lost. As much as I trust where I am and the good things that are to come, the loneliness is weighing on me.

This week I came home from a brutal two hours of soccer. I was hammered in goal and on the field, nothing seemed to work in the back-to-back games. I was wiped out emotionally and physically. I was useless to my sons as they warmed up leftovers and served themselves dinner. I wondered what I was doing wrong, how I got to this place.

I had a dream that night that Mary had been in the stands watching our boys and watching me play. I ran over to the edge of the field to ask for help with something small. It startled me and I woke angry. I envisioned the stands again and I took her away. It wasn’t like a dream. I can see the empty spot at the end of the metal bench now. I could have told her how much I loved her, how blessed I am to have had her, how important she was, and is, to me, or I could have just smiled and enjoyed a moment seeing her again. But I erased her. I was angry at myself for a foolish fantasy.

So she’s back this morning telling me to take care of my body. She always protected soccer for me. She would come home from a long day of work, start making dinner, and send me out the door, no matter if the boys were being disagreeable or impatient, or if coats were still on the floor from our afternoon adventures. She was always there later to hear about my frustrations and successes on the field. I can hear her drowsy, mumbled, “I’m listening,” as she fought off sleep after a late game. She was listening, she was always present. She was so good at being present that she still manages it from time to time.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason