CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
The First Year
The Second Year
The Third Year
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Work
TREES TALL AS MOUNTAINS
The Journey Mama Writings: Book One
By
RACHEL DEVENISH FORD
First published in 2013
Copyright © 2013 Rachel Devenish Ford
Cover art by Chinua Ford
racheldevenishford.com
For Chinua, who is better than I could ever write him to be,
and for Kai, Kenya, and Leafy, who taught me to be a mother.
INTRODUCTION
I started keeping my blog, Journey Mama, in the summer of 2005. I had just moved from San Francisco to the Redwoods in Mendocino County, California. I had been working on my first book, dogged and determined, for about eight months, but when I moved, my living situation changed in such a way that I found it pretty much impossible to continue writing my novel. I didn't have a clear space to write every day, I was living in a one room cabin with my husband and two kids, and I was pregnant. I set the novel aside and started to write a web journal. It was much simpler for my poor abused mind (pregnancy seems to suck the creative juices straight out of my bones) to find interesting ways to write about my day than to continue creating the world I was trying to create in my book, and I didn't want to get rusty from not writing.
The other reason I started the blog was that I had descended into a sort of morbid victim mentality, a self-pity that clouded everything. I had been struggling with depression for years, and I felt like my life had sort of plopped on top of me and wouldn't get off. I was twenty-five, I had a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and I was pregnant with my third. I was an artist working in a job at administration and the utter servanthood of mothering. I felt cheated. None of our kids were planned, and I loved them to death but I felt, well, like a victim, like all the little things that happen in an ordinary day were making me crazy. So I started to write about my life, and in writing stories about my days, I floated to the top of them, I stood at the crest and looked down on my daily happenings, and I laughed. I made other people laugh, too. I became an author in my life, rather than having everything read to me. I felt like I was driving the car.
A bit of background: My husband and I work and live in an intentional community that helps people on their path in their relationship with God, at the time namely young people who had been living on the streets of San Francisco or other cities in the U.S. Chinua and I had been working with this community since before we were married and it was a wonderful, wild, messy life.
Just before our time at the Land from 2005-2007 we lived in a flat on Haight Street in San Francisco with around twenty other people. Every room had a loft built into it to expand the space vertically under the fifteen foot ceilings. We slept with our two kids in one of these rooms and—with a shudder— I remember how often I climbed up and down the ladder to nurse my daughter or take care of my son in the middle of the night. We shared bathrooms and the one small kitchen with those same twenty other people, elbowing our way past each other in the mornings, all the sleepy parents gathering around the breakfast table with the kids, taking turns with the highchair, just hours after the last late nighter singles had left the kitchen. Community was our life, it was all we knew and we were still working out the kinks of growing families within community. Our shared lives were chaotic and amazing. We had so much fun, we made a lot of mistakes, we loved a lot of people. It was from here that we moved to the land, in 2005.
The Land was an old resort with wooden cabins deep in the Redwoods, hours away from any big city. It was on the Eel River—a quiet place with trees and needle strewn paths, falling down houses, old vehicles in the field, large vegetable gardens. The Land was a place for people just starting out on their journey of Christian faith to learn about life with God. It was a place of teaching and work, a place to live among other believers and grow. There were a lot of people who came along with drug or alcohol addictions. At the time we lived there, it also became a welcoming place for travelers— a sort of faith inspired haven where people—travelers, seekers—could come to stay and sing worship songs around the fire.
At the time of our move, I had just begun to put the pieces together and realize that I was struggling with anxiety and depression. I had a name for what was hurting me for the first time, and I wasn't sure what to do with it. But I was writing my way through it, as well as writing my way through the questions and struggles I had with young motherhood. After hiding how I felt for a few years, I made a complete switch and decided to have honesty as my road and my horizon. I was almost ridiculously honest, vulnerable, open, and it changed me. Before, I felt that I was in a box, alone with a brain that wasn't always safe for me. Though I lived with so many people, I felt unable to communicate how I really felt about parenting or the darkness that sometimes had me reeling. But as I wrote honestly I discovered that isolation was half my problem. And people identified with the things I was writing, letting me know again and again that something I wrote spoke to them or for them.
People have told me that they have gone and read through all my archives. I can't even imagine the amount of clicking and loading pages one has to do to achieve that. But last year, looking back through the shoeboxes of my blog, I saw just how much I had written—so many words, so many thoughts. My life as a writer can be seen so clearly in the sentences that have been added to one another slowly through the years.
I have combed through the shoeboxes and found the best posts to compile in this book. I picked the ones that most accurately showed my life at this time, as well as the ones that lifted me and made me laugh even all these years later. This first chronicle spans the time between first moving to the Land, and leaving with my family to move to India, nearly three years later.
Now, when I read through these old words, what first comes to mind is that I was so young! I was unsure. I was overwhelmed by parenting young children. I want to take my young self, sit her down with a cup of tea and tell her, "Love, it's going to be okay. Go easy on yourself."
But in my writing I also see a story of a girl who is trying to make sense of difficult things and find humor in them. There are funny stories in here, joyful stories, stories of the serious anxiety I was fighting. There are stories of love and grief. Telling stories about our days is a way of showing love to our lives. I believe in the power of honesty and vulnerability to bring light into dark places and to break through the darkness of isolation. As you read, I pray that the chronicle of my life during this time would entertain you, inspire you and keep you, maybe make you feel that you can join in your own life, that whatever you are going through, you can tell stories that will help you find your way.
the first year
In the first year I discovered the joy of writing stories. I saw that I could take my days, and by writing about them, make them my own. I could tell stories about embarrassing or humiliating things, and the stories would make me (and others) laugh. By writing about the humor and beauty that was in my life if I looked for it, I was giving love to the wonderful and sometimes difficult life I'd been given. Writing about my life was shining love into it, writing about my days gave them a new softness. In my depression and anxiety I had begun to feel that the days that stretched out in front of me were a dark, terrifying wilderness. As I wrote about moments along the way, ever
ything looked more friendly, and I discovered that the days are only days. I received and gave love as I untangled my thoughts through the act of writing, and discovered something wonderful. Truly, life was funny, surprising, and beautiful. I told myself the truth, again and again, and I began to believe it.
August
August 16, 2005
Lately I've been thinking about life in the woods. I suppose the term "the woods" could be a euphemism for more than just living in the redwoods, because I've been struggling on and off with depression now for almost four years, and in a way it has been like walking through a deep forest— sort of a secret one— a dark place hardly anyone knows about. As in any forest, patches of light shine through here and there. Sometimes I walk into a clearing.
Life in my woods— my depression— is darker than life here at the Land. My woods are cold, all the time, and cheerless. Also, lonely. The Land is hot at this time of year. There are people all over and it is full of mirth and companionship. The sun shines through the trees everywhere you look, creating delightful variations of green and gold. It is a place of alternating patches of shade and sun, a place of constant light and breeze. When I hang my laundry on the line I can see the river far below me, flashing silver through the trees. This is the physical reality of the place where I live. Why, then, are these woods I walk through in my mind so bleak?
I suppose the main thing that hits me when I step into a particularly dark patch in my woods is panic. The light is gone, and with it has gone the memory of returning light, of a path that eventually will reappear in front of me. This is a poetic way of saying that I simply lose it. I lose it and don't regain it until I somehow find some calm. Which can take, well, hours. I tend to rant and rave, mostly to my husband, who does his best to keep his head above water. It is the panic that leaves me huddled at the base of a tree, afraid to walk any farther.
It is the panic that causes me to question my life: my usefulness, my calling, my ability to be a mother or a wife. It is the panic that causes me to say stupid things.
I need a new bag of tricks. Since I became a mother, my old tricks for calming and re-centering no longer apply. I can't spend hours sitting in the tub, or reading some kind of sword-swinging novel that takes me into another world. (Actually, I do still read sword-swinging novels, but I read them mostly at night, when I really should be sleeping). I can't write for hours at a time, can't sit and think for hours. You get the picture. I need tricks that don't take a lot of time, that bring me back into the sane world in time to put food in the babies' mouths.
I guess finding this bag of tricks could be considered a mission to keep me sane. I have been thinking about it a lot today, this depression business. The question of sanity. Why I sometimes temporarily lose mine. And I've been questioning things: Is this what I really want to have define the first few years of my married life? Of my life as a parent? This deep forest that surrounds me? Can I fight out of it? Is it too thick? Are there sunny fields to break into? Or should I walk along in peace, willing for it to remain dark?
Maybe I will find a silvery stream to follow, which will take me to larger places. God has always been with me, through these difficult times. The most life-giving thing that I've learned in this time is that God still loves me, no matter how much I despise myself for failing, over and over again. He will never despise me. He will set my feet in a spacious place. The roots of these trees can't keep me.
August 17, 2005
After yesterday's entry of depression and darkness I want to say that we are all still here. Everyone is fine, and I am finding healing in the water sounds that make their way up to me from the sun-speckled river. Every day I hang laundry. Every day I drink tons of water and herbal pregnancy tea.
Right now it is nighttime and the kids are sleeping in our one room cabin. I am sitting on our couch, listening to them sleep. I am quietly happy. I have two favorite possessions. Well, maybe three. Number one is my doorway to writing— my computer. Two: my couch, a love seat, really. The place where I sit to read and write. Three, my little red kettle. I just bought it, and I am having so much fun boiling water in it. There, you know my secret. I am a complete nerd, and I get excited about boiling water. But it is part of the tea fixation, and there is really nothing that can be done for it.
I just ate a third of a pint of Ben and Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream. I can never eat more than a third. Maybe a half. But never, never, never the whole pint. It's my teeth. They are far too sensitive for such shenanigans. The layer of protection over the nerves in my teeth is made of saran wrap.
It was a good day for healing. A breezy, not too hot sort of day. A day in which I didn't lose my cool with the kids. I puttered around our little cabin, sorting things out, organizing. Slowly but surely everything is coming together. I think a lot of the healing of the panic of depression will simply come from being quiet. From not trying to be anything other than exactly what I am right now. And that is the kind of day that I had today. Rejoicing in my little home. Boiling water for tea. Hanging laundry. Reading Goodnight Moon to my kids.
I remember that it is okay to be nice to myself, because God is always nice to me. And because He is nice to me, I can be nice to other people. There is enough niceness to go around. Sometimes being nice to myself means ice cream. Sometimes it means letting myself clean my home, not feeling like I should be doing something else. It means watching the kids sleep, with their little eyes all scrunched up, until I feel that love that feels like sadness. It means taking a five minute shower and then racing into bed and diving under my down comforter. And quietly drifting to sleep, held up by the knowledge of God's tenderness towards a failure like me.
August 18, 2005
I really want to get back to India. This is what I am thinking about, right now, after having got the kids into bed. I'm listening to them breathe: Kenya's soft whiffles and Kai's heavier stuffy breathing. He has the breathing of a kid with allergies. It's cute and sad, all at once, and when he's awake you can tell that he's getting a little too intense by the fact that his breathing starts to sound like a Komodo dragon.
But back to India. What's so great about India? I'm sure lots of people have wondered this over the years, as Chinua and I have gotten a little wild-eyed in our ranting about how much we love India and Nepal. Our love for India is one of the ways that we knew that we were made for each other. We tell the same crazy stories over and over again, in different groups of people. I know that one or two people have heard our stories a few too many times, and we probably are in danger of having something thrown at us in the near or distant future, if we crack open the leper-in-Kathmandu-van-running-out-of-gas-in-the-mountains-and-us-hoofing-it-home-story one more time. It's true, we do have some crazy stories. Sometimes I read those travel anecdote books and I want to say, "Huh. That's nuthin." It's the result of budget traveling in one of the most eclectic and unpredictable places on earth. Crazy things just happen.
On my first trip to India, Chinua, our friend Timothy, and I decided to go on a camel trek. We set out with our three guides into the vastness of the Rajasthan desert one afternoon, on three tall and grumpy camels. Tim's camel tried to bite Chinua's camel on the neck again and again, whenever we stopped for water. Mine was a little more placid, but once, when I was in the middle of clambering on, he stood up, leaving me dangling by one leg, a good thirty feet off the ground. Thirty feet or ten feet. Something like that.
Our three guides were about ten, eighteen, and sixty-five years old, respectively. The youngest boy was a cruel tyrant of a camel guide, whipping his camel with gusto while we protested without effect. My guide, the eighteen-year-old, was a romantic who whispered sweet words in my ears while Chinua tried to keep him in check from his own camel, which was trailing behind. Eventually my elbow in the guide's ribs stopped him for good. The old man was a character. He didn't understand a word of English, and his solution to this awkward problem was to join Tim, Chinua, and myself when we were talking and act as though
he understood the conversation. He nodded where appropriate, made noises like "Aaah, aaah, aaah," and laughed when we laughed. We caught onto him after a little while. Since camels are so tall, we were always in danger of being decapitated by the power wires if we didn't duck, so our oldest guide kindly warned us by saying, "Campum!" (" careful", in English, but in his English) every time we got near one. Eventually my youthful and peer-influenced guide noticed that we laughed when the old man said this; "Campum. Campum. Campum," so he turned around and addressed the old man with scorn. "It's not 'Campum,' it's 'Calpool.' To this day, "Campum" and "Calpool" are still just as funny to me. This is why I love India.
Riding a camel is not as crazy and adventurous as you might think. Rather, it's a little staid— plodding, one might even say. We three plodded along, swinging with the camels' wide gait, growing stiffer and stiffer, holding onto our guides who were sitting in front of us. When the sun started to get low, we stopped, deep in the desert. We could tell that this was their usual stopping point by the fact that there were old dried piles of camel dung scattered around. Our elderly guide began picking them up in his dhoti, a thin wrap that is tucked between the legs and tied, a garment which is worn extensively by men in Rajasthan. Then, he put the camel pies in a pile and set them on fire, so that he could cook our dinner. Well, we were used to burning dried poo, it is a smell which pervades India. India would not be India without the smell of burning dried poo. It's a very nice smell, smoky and sweet. But then he washed and dried our dishes with the same dried-poo-handling dhoti, and at that point we were a little grossed out. We are tough cookies, though, we can handle anything.
Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1) Page 1