I had a serious medical scare this week, and the last two days were spent curled up on my bed, crying. I was terrified. I thought my life was about to change forever. It was one of those times, one of those many many times, that I thought to myself, there’s no way I can get through this. I prayed the prayer of the truly desperate, a repetitive “help me help me help me” that I chanted like a mantra hour after endless hour. I knew God was there, I knew God could hear me, but I was too frightened to quiet down and listen for an answer to my pleas.

This morning I remembered a book I read recently, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I remembered a passage from the book where she spoke of her own desperation, and they way she reached out to God. I remembered it because God answered her, directly, clearly, specifically. On page 54 Elizabeth writes,

“What I write in my journal tonight is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say I don’t want to take the drugs [antidepressants] anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I’m terrified I will never really pull my life together.

In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it- I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

This is her god, she explains. Loving her. Answering her. Protecting her.

So this morning, remembering all this, I closed my eyes. I quieted my mind. I asked God for help, and then I picked up a piece of paper and a pen. This is what I wrote:

I love you. I will take care of you. You will be okay. I will never leave you. You are strong, you will persevere. You are my child, my daughter, my beloved. I am always with you.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is my god. Loving me. Answering me. Protecting me. And I will be fine.

I was talking to someone yesterday about shame. Shame is a powerful, powerful thing. Once submitted to, it can control you, shrink you, morph you into someone unrecognizable. I have lived with shame for so long. I was ashamed of my depression, my cutting, my drug use, my promiscuity. Ashamed of being raped. Ashamed of failing at everything I tried to do. Embarrassed about marrying so young, and ashamed of letting the marriage fall apart. I felt imprisoned by my shame. Not only did it make me feel like an absolute shipwreck of a human being, but it prevented me from ever growing or evolving. Shame drowns you; it wraps its spindly fingers around your hair, pulling you down beneath the surface until you can’t breathe anymore. And if you don’t fight it, if you don’t kick and struggle and swim towards the light, the shame can eventually kill you.

But things are different for me now. I did fight it, and it doesn’t define me anymore. As I was explaining this to my friend, I started to think about our resilience as human beings, our ability to heal.

“Think about our bodies,” I told him. “If we cut our skin or break a bone, our bodies know exactly what to do. They send out the troops to stop the bleeding, grow new skin, reconnect the bones. And all of this takes place without any input from our brains. We don’t think to ourselves, ‘ok body, time to heal.’ It just happens. So think about it. If our bodies can do all of this completely without the direction of our conscious selves, imagine what our minds and our hearts are capable of.”

We’re amazing, us humans. My own resilience has astounded me on more than one occasion. My strength and persistence and will to survive, even at my deepest and darkest moments, is miraculous. And every time I overcome something big, like shame or guilt, I grow and become better. I am just that much stronger and able to deal with the next hurdle I encounter. I feel so blessed to be here on this earth, living in this body. I may hate my thighs, my eyelashes may not be quite as long as I wish they were, but my god. Look at me. I am a living, breathing, fighting, healing wonder. And I think that’s amazing.

I was brushing my teeth last night, leaning over the sink and examining my pores in the mirror, when I noticed something. It was so shocking, so unexpected, that I actually dropped my toothbrush and just stood there, staring at my reflection. I blinked. And then I said it out loud because an important truth like this should never be kept inside: “I am a pretty girl.”

I’ve been waiting to feel pretty my whole life. I always knew I would someday, I’ve always had the impression that my body is like a fine wine, or a particularly smelly cheese: I just get better with age. I remember perching on the bathroom counter at fourteen, feet in the empty sink basin and knees drawn up to my chest, sobbing deep, nauseating, gut wrenching sobs. I hated my body, I hated my face, I hated my hair, I hated myself. Because at a time in a young person’s life when the only thing that matters is belonging to the herd, I didn’t. And I felt like I never would. “You’re gross,” I would snarl at my reflection. “You’re disgusting and ugly. No one loves you and no one ever will.” It hurt to feel those things, to look into the black hole of my future and imagine feeling that way forever. But somewhere, deep inside, I didn’t really believe it. There was something more than hope, something stronger, that told me things would be different someday. That I would belong and be loved and be okay. I figured I would wake up on my fortieth birthday and suddenly feel beautiful. After all, aren’t the women who have survived the terror of their teens, the uncertainty of their twenties, and the confusion of their thirties the most stunning creatures you’ve ever seen? I couldn’t wait to turn forty and it shone like a beacon in my future, this wonderful thing I was waiting for. I settled down to let the years pass.

So what changed? What has made me realize, at the tender and uncertain age of twenty-four, that I am a pretty girl? After all, I still don’t run with the herd. I still feel fundamentally different from my peers, and I still have that paranoid and sadistic little voice whispering in my ear that everyone in the world has a secret key to life- and they all get together on the second Monday of every month to figure out ways to keep me from getting a copy. But what I now believe, what I know to be true, is that it takes guts to love who you are and show your real self to the world. It takes gumption. It takes moxie. And all of that courage is beautiful. My days now are spent embracing who I am, rejecting those familiar negative thoughts and whispers. I draw strength from others around me and I take a heaping spoonful of bravery with each of my meals. It’s as important to my emotional survival as calcium is to my bones; without it I grow brittle and weak and someday I will break.

When I met Anne Lamott at her book signing a few months ago, I asked her how I could be as beautiful as she is when I grow up. “Sunscreen,” she told me. “Lots and lots of sunscreen.” But I disagree. It’s not a wrinkle-free face or shoulders clear of sunspots that determines a woman’s loveliness. It’s the knowledge that who she is is special and wonderful. It’s holding on to the parts of herself that are different and unique and knowing that the world would be missing something important if she weren’t there. This is different, I think, from having an over-inflated ego. It’s not having so much pride that your head won’t fit through doorways. It’s valuing who you are.

I do value myself now. And I love, I am amazed, that catching my reflection in the mirror no longer reduces me to a desperate, weepy mess. It makes me smile.

Ever since Ammon filed for divorce I have been low. Very very low. I am so overwhelmed by all of the stress and emotional trauma of the last few weeks. I have no idea how to deal with all of this, how to make the right decisions for myself and my daughters, how to just make it through each day. I feel lost. I feel powerless. So I’ve started going to AA meetings again.

It has been about five years since my last AA meeting, six or seven years since I’ve gone to meetings regularly. I basically used church to replace the need for support, and that worked well for awhile. The meetings I went to before were all full of young people, most very new in the program. It seemed like a pick-up scene, people showing up just to be seen and to meet up with friends or flirt with each other. I wasn’t getting very much out of the meetings that I went to, so it wasn’t hard to stop going. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on much. But when my marriage started to rapidly fall apart I looked up and realized how utterly alone I was. No church, no network of supportive friends, just a few wonderful people smattered here and there who reached out in the ways they could. They have been helpful, absolutely priceless people to have in my life, but I needed something more. I needed to feel safe somewhere. I wanted to feel like there was somewhere I could go where I would belong and be accepted unconditionally. So I looked up the meeting schedule online, found one nearby, and showed up.

It. Was. Amazing.

The meetings I have found in the town where I live now are so different from the meetings I went to before. The people come from everywhere and the rooms are filled with a bizarre mishmash of folks who, under normal circumstances, would never have crossed paths. The focus isn’t on the social scene of AA, but on recovery. On solutions. And the openness and honesty that is spoken in those rooms splits my heart wide open. The moment I walked through the doors of that first meeting, I felt like I belonged there. Like I was wanted there. Good lord, what an amazing feeling, to feel wanted. And not only wanted, but admired- I’m coming back to meetings with a good chunk of sobriety under my belt. This month it was eight years. And these people who I’ve never met before are proud of me for that. The support I have received has been immeasurable, pouring in from all sides from people who tell me, “You’ll be ok. You’ll get through this. I’ve been there.” And I believe them, because I hear their stories of heartbreak and failure and desolation, and of how they made it through to the other side.

I even got a sponsor- a beautiful woman with an unbelievable story of recovery. I’m meeting with her for the first time this morning, and I am so eager for her to lead me through the twelve steps. I’m so incredibly relieved to be around people who understand me, who don’t judge me, and who are a source of endless support and encouragement. And I have to tell you- all you non-alcoholics out there? I feel really sad that you don’t have this in your life. Everyone should have the amazing gift of being able to walk into a room full of strangers any day, any time, anywhere in the world and feel unconditionally accepted. I feel so very lucky.

I’m starting to have this flutter, this tiny little feeling flickering at the base of my spine. It’s telling me that maybe- just maybe- I have something worth saying to this big, vast planet. Blogging is good, but I blog for me, not for anyone else. I blog to get me through. But now I’m starting to feel like maybe I have something I can actually contribute. It’s an itty bitty little feeling, fragile as a candle flame, and easily extinguished by those giant winds of shame and self-doubt that whoosh and rattle through my bones. But lately when that small feeling flickers and dies, I’ve found myself fumbling for matches in the dark, determined to get it burning again. It’s something I have to protect and nurture, shield from the harmful forces of myself until it’s strong enough to handle the unpredictable winds of my insecurities.

I signed up for a four week writing course that starts tonight; the quote in the brochure said, “It’s none of your business what you write!” I like that. I like the idea of paving a road in myself for my writing, bypassing all my crazy head tricks and letting it just flow out on its own. I can do that, I think. When I saw Anne Lamott speak a couple weeks ago, she said two things that really stuck with me. She said to space out a lot. As much as possible. And don’t be afraid to screw up big. I can totally do that, the spacing out and the screwing up. So maybe I can do this writing thing, too.