My Heart

  • My Heart

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    My Heart

    By Karen Handyside Ely

    My heart is a newly uncluttered closet. Organized and cleared of discarded outfits that smothered the floor, made movement impossible, allowed no forward progress.

    The air, once static and heavy with body-image accusations, is now peaceful and fresh. Eerily quiet with a hanging row of color-coded dresses that don’t hurl recrimination and neatly stacked t-shirts, crisply folded and segregated. Controlled. Smelling faintly of the lavender sachet I’ve finally replenished on the bottom shelf… now that I can reach it.

    Favorite sweaters, unworn for ages, have been lovingly salvaged, gently removed from their hangers, and boxed for consignment shops and resale. Traitorous pants and blouses, once thought to be friends, are stuffed haphazardly into hefty bags to sit out on the sidewalk for donated pick-up.

    My heart is a freshly weeded garden, no longer raucous with errant fruit and thorny, overgrown blackberry vines.

    The vines must be cut back. They have overrun the garden. Sweet berries have been harvested, the memory of their syrupy tang still coating the back of my tongue. It is hard, punishing work, leaving bruised and bleeding hands inside scruffy gardening gloves. I love my berry bushes, but they put up a fight when I try to tame them. They take up precious space. They have run their course.

    I’m sad but content in this season of my life – rethinking, regrouping, reprioritizing. A process that is painful but cleansing. A surgical and focused attempt to remove what doesn’t serve. Saying good-by to illusions of “what was” that have piled up on the closet floor. Illusions that are now choking new growth in the garden.

    This is not a personal rebuke of friends and family, who have disappointed my idealistic expectations. Just a reshuffle of who and where and how I spend my time. I’m saying good-bye to my own hurt feelings and the painful disconnection that is muddying my water, over-running my closet, dominating my garden. I am losing my fear of letting go of what has already changed to make space and sanctity for what is to come.

    “My Heart” was inspired by the writing prompt, Metaphors and Hyberbole.

    There are some who say that Karen Handyside Ely was born with her nose firmly planted in a book. She is a life-long lover of unusual words, lilting phrases, and absurd stories.

    After a brief stint as a credit analyst in San Francisco and New York City, and a 30+year career as a mom and “professional” volunteer in Scottsdale, AZ, Karen retired to her beloved hometown of Petaluma, CA.

    She delights in difficult crossword puzzles, singing with the Petaluma Choir, and anything baked by her husband James.

    Karen has been published in “The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries,” “The Write Spot: Reflections,” “The Write Spot: Possibilities,” “The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing,” and “The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.”
    The Write Spot books are available from your local bookseller and on Amazon (both print and as e-readers)

    Marlene C

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  • You Think You Know Me

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    You Think You Know Me

    By Karen Handyside Ely 

    You think you know me, but you don’t know…

    that I am struggling with a powerful bout of depression. I’ve battled it before. I’ve been in deeper, darker, more dangerous pits. This current episode has rolled over me slowly. Not a storm, but more a dense, thick, cloud cover, wrapping me in the heavy humidity of numbness and ennui, pinning me to the ground with a listless, languid, low-grade despair that makes me want to sleep all day.

    I’m suffocating one breath at a time… in slow motion. This time around, my depression isn’t a raging sea, which has been my usual experience, but an ebbing tide that creeps back over the sand as the fog rolls in to smother the beach.

    I could cry, just writing this, but I don’t. I continue to function, smile, interact. And I try to fight back. I fight with prescribed medication. I fight by restricting alcohol and chocolate – alcohol because it provides temporary, false relief that will ultimately kill me, and chocolate because of my natural proclivity to drown myself in calories, which will also kill me.

    I work with a counselor. It doesn’t feel like it helps, but I know it will. I know I WILL get better. I always have before. My hope has not completely flickered out. I think this is partially a delayed reaction to the covid years, a sort of PTSD, now that the crisis is over (as “over” as it can ever be.) I lived in fight mode for 2 ½ years and managed to keep my head above water, legs propelling me forward. Now my strength and discipline are gone. I’m left with a sorrowful emptiness that I cannot shake.

    For now, I am trying to be gentle with myself. I’m clearing away the unrequired obligations in my life that do not bring me joy. I am de-cluttering the way I live, ala Marie Kondo. I am reintroducing the activities that used to motivate me. I am withholding self-judgement, the hardest exercise of all, and learning to love who I am, not what I do or how I look.

    I don’t think that I am alone. Yes, I have a medical diagnosis of depression, but I can sense the sad fatigue that clings to people around me wherever I go… in grocery lines, or shopping at TJMaxx, in airports and zoom meetings. I think so many are coping, on some level, with this feeling. It hides behind frantic busyness and red-hot anger. It lurks beneath everyday smiles and societal pleasantries. Most of us aren’t incapacitated by it, but the weight of what we carry has become a constant. You think you know me, but you don’t. Right now, I grapple with knowing myself.

    Karen Handyside Ely was born and raised in Petaluma, California. She delights in difficult crossword puzzles, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and traveling with her husband, James.

    Karen has been published in several Write Spot Books:  The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, The Write Spot: Reflections, The Write Spot: Possibilities, The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing, and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year. All available at Amazon and your local bookseller.

    Marlene C

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  • Humor

    By Karen Handyside Ely

    When the day is dark

    humor will light my way.

     

    When the world crumbles

    humor will shore me up.

     

    Tears will flow, not from sorrow,

    but born of laugher.

     

    Nothing is so bad that

    humor cannot soften it.

     

    Nothing is so sacred that

    humor cannot humanize it.

     

    When the only way “through”

    is a walk of fire,

     

    humor will insulate my path.

    As long as we can laugh

     

    at the absurdities of life,

    we can persevere.

     

    Humor cannot change our challenges,

    but it can grease the skids,

     

    shepherd us along,

    help us to survive.

     

    I will face each day with humor and the grace it provides.

    As long as I can laugh, I can breathe.

     

    Humor is my lifeboat,

    my safe space,

     

    the fuel my soul runs on.

     

    Karen Handyside Ely

    Karen was born and raised in Petaluma, California. Upon graduating from UC Davis, she worked in San Francisco and New York City in corporate finance. After a 30-year career as a mom and “professional” volunteer in Scottsdale, AZ, Karen returned to her beloved hometown in Sonoma County.

    She delights in difficult crossword puzzles, the Santa Rosa Symphony, and traveling with  her husband (of 35 years) James.

    Karen has been published in The Write Spot to Jumpstart Your Writing: Discoveries, The Write Spot: Reflections, The Write Spot: Possibilities, The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing, and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year.  (all available on Amazon).

    “Humor” is featured in the newly published The Write Spot:Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, available at Amazon.

    Marlene C

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