Salt of the Earth

“Let's think of the humble of birth

Yes, let us drink to the salt of the earth”

~ (Salt of the Earth, The Rolling Stones)

A lot of the stories I tell you are about challenges and adversity in my life with Cerebral Palsy in context, there's no shortage of that, but I practice gratitude every day because I wouldn't be able to have a vast perspective on life without that stuff. It positively informs how I engage with the world.

Most of the way I do customer service in my job stems from my ministry career and decades in the Church. Something like the golden rule and meeting people where they're at. Some of it comes from ingrained codependence and learning to anticipate the needs of my parents in their addiction behaviors. Some of it comes from living with CP and preferring to treat everyone with some level of compassion. The rest is just on the job experience, like most people.

I'm not saying these things make me a saint to people, they don't. The counter balance of the positive aspect is that I often don't like people that much. If I love you, I love you deeply, sometimes I get too attracted, sometimes I don't attach at all, and it's tricky to find balance. But for the parts of my story that bring struggle, there's beauty in my experience. A lot of beauty.

Out of pain, I made some of my favorite art in songs and poems. My song From May to May, written a year after my mother died, is an expression of love and forgiveness for the generally challenging relationship we had. I'm grateful I wrote that song in my grief so that I could sit in the love behind it for the past seventeen years. 

In my use of shape chords due to my CP, I wrote a love story through In the Streetlight that's brought me peace and grounding for the past eighteen, going on nineteen, years. I love that song as much as the story it's about. I wouldn't have my art without loss and love, which is why I named my first full length album Of Loss and Love. 

There's beauty in the brokenness that is my life because in spite of it all, I'm not broken. Sometimes I dwell on the name calling from my childhood, sometimes I wish I could safely see to drive a car, sometimes I have flashbacks over the sight of a wooden spoon. Fuck, the James Dobson method of discipline. But, I also delight in every kind word and compliment. I love the countless stories I have of car rides with old friends and new ones. I've literally lost count of the number of times I forgot to give people directions home because we were having a great introductory conversation. Every time I get angry with my children for doing something frustrating, I know that part of my frustration is because I know there's a better way to parent than what I got, even if I don't always have all the tools I want, but I know I don't want to do that to them. 

I live an ordinary life complete with the same kinds of ups and downs as the average person. But, I have an extraordinary sense of possibility because my entire life is one of adapting to whatever life throws my way. I love routine and I don't like it when that gets messed with because it's a form of peace for me. But there's no form of change I haven't lived through so I know that I can manage to do hard things.

Because I'm adapting and pushing myself to physical limits every day, one of my favorite things to do is sit in stillness with my toes in the grass or the sand and feel present in the moment. It's a simple beauty that puts a stop to the pushing, the chaos, the flashbacks, and the worries over what I can't control.