blogslikeagirl

[blogslikeagirl]

On Selma, Redemption & Reckoning

Many a political commentator already had mentioned the karmic element of Jefferson County, where Selma is, providing the decisive votes to put Democrat Doug Jones over the top and in the US senate representing the reddest of red states. And so while my thoughts lack originality, I would change the word from karmic to redemptive. And I use redemption in the most Biblical sense. For what happened in Selma, from then to now, truly is to be redeemed by blood. To be justified for faith. And to be reminded of what Martin Luther King Jr. said about the moral arc of the universe and its inevitable bend toward justice.

For my 8yo who, until a year ago, had only known an African American POTUS and responded once to a conversation we were having about white Americans playing Nazi dressup in Charlottesville with “but I thought MLK defeated racism, mom”,  it is impossible to fathom the reality of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma in 1965. Even for myself, growing up watching Eyes On The Prize in school, the details have been muted by time. So a year ago, at Thanksgiving, we went to The Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and that spot in the museum where you walked that walk with civil rights activists across Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 and read the accounts took my breath away. This was courage. This was all the things Republicans talk of being--Christian and moral and good. And none of what Roy Moore actually was.

Courageous, like love, has become overused in modern language so as to render it almost meaningless. And yet there is no other word that comes close to depicting what John Lewis and Hosea Williams and those men and women marching with them displayed that Sunday in 1965. Williams and Lewis were the civil rights activists charged with leading the march from Selma to Montgomery to protest the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson and to fight for voting rights for all black men and women of the South who were being denied this most basic protection of the Constitution. And they were marching right into the heart of the resistance armed only with hope, determination and an unspoken promise to themselves to remain unbroken. 

I do not know how those men standing at the arc of the bridge on that day and seeing what lay ahead gathered up the guts to walk anyway, to walk toward state troopers charged with using whatever means necessary to stop them and carrying billy clubs to follow through on that edict. And I sure as hell am not convinced I would have chosen to do likewise or if I could have gathered the moral fortitude to lock arms and walk with them. 

But they walked, refusing to stand down when threatened and then refusing to fight back while being brutally beaten (Lewis almost to death). And it was the horror of seeing this scene--of the courageous being chased and beaten by the cowardly--play out on the evening news that finally forced America to its knees and the Congress to pass the Voting Rights act of 1965.  And yes to defeat Moore almost 60 years later.

For Tuesday so many black Alabamians used this right secured on this day to help Alabama elect its first Democratic senator in 25 years and to repudiate a man in Moore who has publicly stated and refused to walk back: 1. That Muslim Americans should not be allowed to serve in Congress. 2. That being gay should be a crime. 3. That every amendment after No. 10 should be repealed. And on and on and on ...   This was not a Republican versus Democrat choice, in my mind. This was not conservative v. liberal. And it certainly was not Christian v. secular. This was right v wrong, good v evil with good eventually winning--even if only by the slimmest of margins. And yet we were told by good Republican had to vote for him, that a pedophile was better than a Democrat, that a tax bill was more important that doing the right thing. Thank God, the good people of Alabama did not listen. Except for the 600,000-plus that did and Lord forgive them.

Listen, I too want lower taxes and believe my family pays an unfair share. I believe in an unfettered second amendment. I have grown weary of the the trend of charity from being a short-term hand up for the struggling to a lifelong prop for the unwilling. I want smarter immigration policy. I believe the Constitution to be sacrosanct. I believe any rights not specifically enumerated belong to the people. I believe abortion is a sin. I believe the death penalty is necessary. I believe in Jesus Christ, personal responsibility and loving they neighbor as thyself.

And yet I also believe what good is it to inherit the world (or White House, both houses of Congress and Supreme Court, in this case) and forfeit your soul. So I will not stand with or vote for racists, sexists, white nationalists, anti-semites, homophobes. And I do not need them to be accused pedophiles like Moore to take this stand. These people are not Republicans. They are not Christians. And they are on the wrong side of the bridge.

My biggest takeaway and what I plan to tell Vivian after school is we all will face crossroads like this bridge, moments where we must decide what kind of people we want to be and, maybe, more importantly, what kind of people we want to be associated with. And I’d rather walk with Lewis than stand with Moore. Or Bannon. Or Trump. And if being a Republican requires getting into bed with them, I guess I’ll be a Democrat who disagrees with my party on taxes and guns. That is a better solution that being a Republican who has to explain why my party tolerates those who hate gays and Muslims, women and blacks and links arms and walks with a man accused of molesting girls as young as 13 because they absolutely have to have their tax bill.

Good luck with all that, y’all. Call me when you give the party back to real conservatives, to people with convictions and courage and backbone. Until then, this girl is out.

jfe  

[blogslikeagirl]

The Halftime Speech

My birthday has come and gone, long gone by this point, and only now can I admit now how much this number bothered me. I was okay-ish with 40. Now, however, I find myself IN my 40s and, if I am insanely lucky(1), that means I am at the halfway point of my life. Yes, I consider myself at halftime.  When your entire adult life has been spent attending and covering and writing on sporting events, this is your language--talk of outkicking your coverage and playing it as it lays, lessons on surviving in the trenches and learning to bump and run to daylight, talk of Hail Marys and comebacks and happy endings and, yes, a slightly neurotic amount of time debating my walk-up music and rewriting my halftime speech. And now seems time for a final tuneup before delivery.

Sunday marked what would have been my dad’s 80th birthday, if only he were alive. He’s dead, of course. And I’m left to imagine what he might say if alive and what I mostly envision is him, in his come-to-Jesus-meeting style, delivering a woodshedding. I try to wish him into so many moments, birthdays and failures, heartbreaks and decisions and yet that all remains is what he used to preach and what I think he’d say. And what I keep coming back to is “get back up, dust yourself off, do all the things, and be careful out there.”

This is halftime. And I need a speech.

The best halftime speeches I have heard are almost always brutally honest, and almost always born from epic first-half failure. They start with “we are getting are asses kicked boys”.  Straight, no chaser.  About the game, and this game called my life.

So for the record, I do not believe 40 is the new 30. Forty is 40, and it is a mother. My ankles hurt now more than ever when I run. Carbs hang around longer and in unruly places even though I eat less of them than ever. Every door is no longer open. Let that sink in for a moment. I have some goals, dreams and aspirations that because of age, time constraints and circumstances beyond my control are no longer attainable. I will never have a second baby, or a TV show, or my day as a ballerina. OK, that last door was never open. What I have plenty of is regret, wishing and hoping I had chosen differently, a replay of conversations where I am left thinking if only I had stood up for myself or walked away or be brave enough to drop a “Boy bye”. This has brought me to right now and I am a sports columnist who no longer writes columns, a writer who rarely writes beyond an Instagram caption. I talk of grad school and jobs and apply for neither. I have had 10-17 more pounds to lose for forever. On a lot of days, I most resemble one of the devastated, failed athletes I tried to capture.

Over the many seasons and games, I have come to believe with unwavering conviction that there were two paths from this point, resignation or determined action. And as much as I love raw talent and charmed lives, my heart is for those who have been knocked down and choose to get up, to go on in spite, to persevere. This certainly has been me. Because from their example, we gain courage and hope and proof that even bumpy roads lead to glory if we only keep going. For there is no greater story in sport than the comeback. Its genesis is failure, the spectacular humiliation of falling short of the goal. An athlete or team has fallen on his face, been beaten or tapped out in a moment or a game or a season. And the assumption is this is the end. Except something happens, a decision to get back up, to try again then a goal happens, a few hits get strung together and the comeback is on. Only it is hard. A hole has been dug. The path back is long even if the canvas is a 60 minute game. So it is rare. And when it happens, it is the best. The crowd will applaud the decisive winner. But they will rise to their feet for the fallen man who somehow finds his way back and in the process reminds us all it is possible. So as I sit here at halftime, a little battered and a lot resigned, I keep telling myself that all the big stuff happens in the second half and almost all the magic in the fourth quarter. The pennant race, the Finals, the home stretch, the moments before the tape is broken, this is what people remember, the stuff legends are made of.  

So then so what Jen Floyd Engel if you find yourself trailing, did you not learn anything from David Freese, from Michael Crabtree against Texas, from Dirk versus The Heat in the Finals, from Michael Phelps and Jason Lezak. I can’t forget Jason Lezak? It’s not over until it’s over. And even then sometimes the end is the beginning. Nothing is too broken for God. And you can’t lose if you refuse to quit. 

Burn the boats, jfe

Footnotes: (1) My mom died at 50. So her 40s were in no way a halfway point but instead the last hurrah. At my age, she was four years away from her cancer diagnosis and eight away from death. I’d be lying if I did not admit this fucks with me. (2) The picture is from this summer, what I dubbed The Summer of Swimming. I determined to #givenofucks and swim even with those 10-17 extra LBs because I love swimming. And I did. And part of why was because I determined to lose 35-42 pounds. Sure I’ve only lost 25 of them but that’s still pretty damn good.  

[blogslikeagirl]

In Defense of the F Word

I was raised on Capital “C” Church growing up in The Lou.  This was not the happy-happy Church of “Hey, You Do You. We’re Down With Whatever”. Nor was anybody preaching the prosperity gospel of “Pray Hard And God Will Make You Rich”. No, we were raised on right and wrong, good and evil and, by all means, heaven and hell.

My dad had a fair amount of skepticism about the existence of a fiery pit below where a man could end up spending eternity for the simple act of being born into family of non-believers. This did not seem fair to my dad, and my dad was all about fair. We were well versed on hell anyway because he deferred to my mom on most things religion. And he loved to use the phrase: Go to hell or some other warm location, and thus did not want to be a hypocrite.

Now me, being me, in about fourth or fifth grade repeated this phrasing about hell or some other warm location to a classmate. I ended up in the kind of trouble one tends to get into when saying a “bad” word in a parochial school--deep and requiring parental involvement. Only when my parents were informed I had been punished for saying “hell”, my dad went into a righteous fury.  He launched into a rant about how the religious can not have it both ways. Hell cannot be both a destination for sinners and a bad word. Hell, he concluded based on pulpit preachings, was a geographic location and telling a person to go there was no different than telling them to go to Omaha(1).  And then he repeated a version of a lecture I heard most of my life: There are no bad words; only bad intentions

I tell this story now because I find myself in the kind of trouble one tends to get into when “using” The F Word while female in Texas. Deep. And requiring condemnation from the good people of Facebook. I spoke rather passionately at the Fort Worth ISD school board meeting in April wearing a “Feminist AF” shirt, with the AF standing for As Fuck in millennial lingo.

I was upset that night. Still am, if I am being honest. As a parent who bought my home almost entirely based on sending my daughter to Tanglewood, I am dismayed by the FWISD board’s outright disdain for and willingness to dismantle its highest performing school. And after my conversation with trustee Judy Needham, I have no reason to believe that board has the best interest of all students in mind. And this is my go-to-the-mattresses shirt, my I-am-not-here-to-fuck-around shirt, my I-will-not-go-quietly shirt. The sentiment is not mine, technically. This came from designer Jonathan Simkhai in response to the repeated attacks on women and their rights and debuted at Fashion Week 2017 with all proceeds benefitting Planned Parenthood. 

I make no apologies for my shirt. Or the AF.  And I certainly do not apologize for wearing it in front of the school board as their actions and the performance of schools they are charged with are way more offensive than that AF ever will be.

This seems to be the direction of the tide, however, a demand for civility when trying to speak truth to power. The FW City Council is also considering restricting any speech they consider mean, or angry, or colorful because citizens have ranted at them about police issues. This is wrong. Freedom of speech is just that, freedom. And since speaking at board meetings in three minute increments is the only voice many of us have beyond our vote, how dare they tell us what to say or how to say it. In my case, it was a district employee whining about letters on my shirt.

The first rule of sports journalism is never fight down, and so I will refrain from a long and drawn out rebuttal to anybody other than to paraphrase The Late Great Molly Ivins: If you do not like my shirt, do not buy one.

i know i know that is now an F word on a t-shirt and in a blog. Whatever will I tell my 8yo, right?  i will tell you exactly what I tell my 8yo: I showed up at every public meeting, used every ounce of my voice to advocate for you and your education. I did not say one thing in public and another in private. I was transparent. I stand by my opinions. And my sweet girl, they were not so much mad about the letter on my shirt when I spoke but that I dared to speak at all. 

Because, really, this is more than a defense of the F word. This is a defense of strong opinions and a woman’s right to hold them. This is a defense of strong women. This is a defense of myself.

Do you not think I wish somedays to be a simple girl, a girl capable of backing away from a debate, a girl who doesn’t have an opinion about whether Tony Romo belongs in The Ring of Honor or the hidden racism of Map 2 that FWISD slapped on a slide at a public meeting or funding for Planned Parenthood, a girl who demurely walked away from such arguments, a girl who said oh Fig Newton and good gracious like her mother when angry instead of f-ity FF and go to hell like her dad? Do you think I do not know my life would be simpler if so? Do you think I do not know that nobody writes angry words in the comments section under that girl’s columns and nobody tries to silence her opinions? And how much easier than would be for me and yes for you, my child?

But I am my father’s daughter, and he was right. A Feminist AF is far less offensive than an elected school board official saying “they are just a bunch of rich white kids trying to get the best education” like Needham did, less offensive than a sentence that begins “I wish I had voiced my opinion but I didn’t want to make anybody mad ...” “...y’all are rich, you do not get to advocate for your kids”. “...if you do not agree with me, you are an elitist”.

There are no “bad” words to be found yet I am offended by all of that idiocy way more than I am by a person saying ass rather than butt. And for anybody wondering “what must her parents think?” I am 99.9 percent sure my dad is thinking Give ‘Em Hell, Jennifer Erin. And he’s ready with this quote, another favorite of his from General Patton: “When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag.” 

Thanks Dad. Proud AF to have been raised by you. And Determined AF not to be silenced on an issue as important as education by people who are scared to debate facts so they talk t-shirts.

Burn The Boats,

jfe

(1) I did not escape punishment. My dad grounded me for being a little asshole which, by the way, I’m pretty sure was the word he used. 

[blogslikeagirl]

Not Your Typical Father’s Day Tribute (an ode to all of the complicated dads)

My dad loved scotch and cigars. He had a Civil War anecdote for any problem you brought to his attention--boys, weight loss, no really any problem--as well as a pertinent Robert E. Lee quote. He graduated high school at 14. He never learned to drive. He used to walk the two miles to our swim meets because he got home too late from work to ride with us. And he never missed a meet. He taught my sister and I the fine art of pine-cone hunting, introduced us to our magical backyard owl Herkemer and after my mom died he went wedding dress shopping and talked IVF heartaches and took on every little role Jane had played. Almost everything I learned about marriage I learned watching him change my mom's colostomy bag. For better or worse, in sickness and health was a promise and he did everything in his power to keep his promises. My mom was the love of his life and he never went on another date in the 18 years that followed her death. He rarely danced yet he twirled and spun at my wedding and my reception in Fort Worth. And I know in my heart of hearts the first thing he did upon seeing my mom in heaven was to ask for this dance because he spoke frequently and often of fixing your mistakes. He rarely lied. He often read. He was wickedly smart and insanely liberal. One of the proudest moments of his life was the robocall he received from the Obama campaign before the 2008 election encouraging proud young black men like himself to get out and vote. Democracy, family and education were the three pillars on which my dad's value system balanced. He loved to say that if your values change based on the actions of others then they are not actually values at all. He believed in doing the right thing even when it was hard. Especially when it was hard. And behaving with transparency and integrity in all matters. But as I told friends recently, he also frequently said things like: "If they are going to fight dirty, bring a hose and show them that you can sling the mud". He was a Tiger Dad long before that book ever arrived, and he rarely let Amy or I skate by on fine or good enough. From him I learned that sometimes your best is not enough to win, and there is still glory in trying. He loved losing battles, believing always that it was better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. He cussed like a sailor. Fought for civil rights, women's rights, for constitutional rights. He was my dad. He was my best friend.And if he were alive, he'd be at the school board with me in a Feminist AF shirt with a cigar in his mouth and a hose in his hand. Happy Father's Day to The OGOZF. The GOAT. The OG. The JEFE. I love you. I miss you. And I will see you again.

[blogslikeagirl]

The Real Genius of Frank Stella

I owe an apology to modern artists. And the places that house their finished products. Yes, definitely them, too.

Walking through what amounted to the slums of prestigious art museums, tiny sections of what looked like crayon scribbling and paint splatter from a house flip gone wrong, younger me usually noted “this is not art because I could do this”. I had opinions, strong opinions. And unlike with my sports opinions, I had almost zero knowledge on which to base them.

And then Fort Worth built The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, a gorgeous building and I stopped by from time to time. Like Tuesday. My 7yo and I have a schedule for our summer that we mostly, kind of, sometimes follow. Math Monday. Creativity Tuesday. Writing Wednesday. Science Thursday. And Field Trip Friday. Yes, I know only some of them alliterate and that bothers me, too, yet I refused to bail on creativity or do science Saturday. So this is what is, and how we ended up at The Modern on Tuesday taking in the works of Frank Stella. It was glorious, big bold swings at creation. His vibrant displays are so approachable for young minds. They are at once inspirational and aspirational, leaving a child with the feeling of “I could do that, if only mom would let me” or so I wrote on Instagram in the moment.

As the 7yo drew the images, I wrote. Mostly I wrote of how much modern art and space have in common. Neither looks like much at first glance, all blackness and nuance, but that unknown and undefinable place is ultimately where the beauty lies. 

What struck me most about his art was a little description next to a painting called “East Broadway” that was applicable to so much beyond painting or drawing or art.

“He often allowed over-painted shapes to show through in the final work, standing as records of his process.

I love this idea of letting first drafts show through, the idea of our failures and restarts being records of what came before. Somewhere along the way, we have decided that white-washed, photoshopped, neat, tidy, “likable” versions are the only things we should show thus creating the illusion that messy is what happens to somebody else when, in reality, all our drafts are rough, riddled with mistakes and that is the beauty.

So why do we hide the beauty? Why do we pretend?

I know the answer to this. I have lived this. It is because there are ruthless MFs out there who use your messy, your mistakes, your record of the process at best as idle happy hour gossip and at worst cruelty. Show the over-painted shapes anyway. And do not care what they say. This is the beauty, a beauty I was reminded of thanks to an artist whose work I previously did not know in a form I used to mock.  So yes, I’m sorry.

btb,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

What Are You Training For?

Maybe, the most inspiring athlete I have ever interviewed is Olympian Michael Phelps.

Not circa 2008 Phelps, with his eight gold medals. That was pure ability on display in Beijing. God blessed him with a body for swimming, for butterflying, for greatness. And while amazing to watch in person (yes, I count this as a professional highlight despite being pregnant and exhausted and wrecked by morning sickness), this was not relatable.  Or in other words, few watched Phelps in Beijing and thought “I can do that if I only I train”. And 2012 in London, another Olympics I covered, was not necessarily inspirational Phelps. His golds came on pure talent that year, on gutting out swims after being late to training. And he still won golds, with an “s”.

This Phelps, though, this Phelps heading to Rio after another amazing swim at The US Swimming Trials in Omaha, this Phelps featured in that UnderArmour ad above that I have been watching on what feels like a continuous loop, that guy is inspiring. Because that Phelps is inspired.

This is a guy training for his last Olympics. This is a guy training for his last chance to stand on a podium with gold, with his anthem playing, with that feeling of “Yes I did”. This guy is soaking and savoring and charged with a purpose bigger than just a race, or eight golds, or because he can, or because he should. He has a why, and why gets him up in at zero dark thirty, in at freeze-your-ass-off temps, all in on days when he was sore and tired and wanting to play video games or screw around or do nothing. Ah, to do nothing.    

That is the genius, of course, of “it’s what you do in the dark ... that puts you in the light”. Because the training for anything worth having is rarely sexy. It is most often painful and demanding and pushy and cranky.  So the why is key. I have started to read a whole book on this, this finding your why idea, a couple of times. What always stops me and why this book sits on my sad sack of misfit books on my nightstand is that seemed to apply to whys bigger than mine. To goals bigger than losing 20 pounds.

Yes, I am there again. I did a body analytics thing, you know the ones where you get in a pool and they tell you exactly how fat your are (no really, they tell you how much fat is on your body) and how many pounds you need to lose and I am there. Again. Needing to lose 20 pounds. It was 25 but I have lost five pounds over the last two weeks. And a big reason why was dialing in on my why.  I training to be at Vivian’s wedding and, yes, I realize she is 7.  I training to be there when she has a baby, to babysit and fly in so she can have vacations, to be able to tell her stories of when she was a baby, to reassure and to do all the things I missed because my mom was not around. I am training for moments already gone, like Spring Break, the ability to do four extremely challenging hikes in four days with my family, including going three miles down into The Grand Canyon and another three back.  I am training for Tuesday when she wants to go swim, so I can be all in and not sitting on the side because I hate my thighs. I am training for Saturday so I have energy to play soccer outside, or bike to the farmers market, or go paddle boarding, to do the things that do not involve iPhones or eating and sitting or sitting and eating. Though I enjoy those pursuits as well, thus the 20 pounds. 

My why is not big. It is not as sexy as Phelps. And in some ways, Phelps has it easier because his why has a definitive finish line and gold jewelry and coaches and fanfare.

My why is quite simple. I want to live a big life. I want to try everything once and be up for anything always. It is no longer about a bikini, or a size, or what FoxSports1 or Twitter trolls say about me because to hell with all that and them as well. 

And I’d love to hear from you. Tell me your why, even if it feels tiny.  What are you training for? Because the world is big and amazing, begging to be traveled and tried. Your body is powerful and perfect, hoping to be stretched and pushed and to slide into the final stretch with every bit of life used. Your life is ultimately short, and the joy must be pursued daily to get your life’s worth.

This was us, at The Grand Canyon in March, for Spring Break. This is my gold medal, days and moments just like this.

Burn The Boats, friends,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

Just as darkness can not drive out darkness, only light can. Just as hate can not drive out hate, only love can. Internet memes and Gandhi quotes can not heal what is broken in society right now, only action can.

I have been guilty of this, guilty of this wanting to say something, post something that will show my solidarity with black men being gunned down by rogue police this week and with the brave Dallas police walking with protestors being gunned down by gutless pig assassins last night. To find a pic that shows how my heart breaks for and I stand with and I am praying for Orlando, Paris, Istanbul, Bangladesh (and on and on and on) as they face Islamist terrorists. To find words for Charleston and Sandy Hook.

I believe in words. In their power. I am a writer after all. 

And I believe we have enough of them right now, enough bloviating by the right and the left, by these lives matter factions and no those live matter factions, enough praying for and standing with and quoting of MLK Jr. from the safety of our IPhones. What this world needs is action. From me. And from the lily-white, church-going, big-hearted people I come upon daily in my church community, my yoga community, my PTA community. The world needs to hear from and see us, and I am not talking about a few thoughts on a Facebook feed. They need to see us marching in solidarity. They need to hear us speaking up for them. They need to see us feeding the refugees and bringing meals to the families left behind in Baton Rouge and Minnesota and defending the many, many, majority of police who daily risk their lives for our safety. 

We have a moral imperative to act, or so I was taught. As I have said before, my parents were crazy liberals. My mom marched on Washington for reproductive rights, my dad went to Ethiopia to cover the famine. I grew up five minutes from Ferguson, Missouri (ground zero to this spiraling insanity) and my dad stayed until the day he died.

My parents were not color blind, or perfect, or PC. They simply were friends and neighbors, had conversations and arguments with people who did not look the same as they did, who had differing opinions from them, who had different experiences and thus world views. This was the lesson of my childhood.

This is also what I have learned from years of playing and columnizing about sports. Locker rooms are the ultimate melting pots, a place where Riley Cooper and Michael Vick come together and, if we do this right, learn from one another. We are on the same team here in America, from the far right to the far left, from black to white, from gay to straight, from sea to shining sea, We are bound together by the belief that all men are created equal and that true love is doing unto others as we'd have done to us.   

As I sat down to write this, I heard my dad saying "the sidelines are for cowards, Jen. Stand for something. Do something." 

And my something is to suggest this Sunday we all go to churches not our own, to churches in other parts of town, to predominantly black churches, to churches where the sermon is not what we are used to hearing, to sit with our brothers and sisters, to remind them and ourselves that we are on each other's team, that we are family and teammates and we need each other to fix what is broken. Sit and pray together. Be together. This is where I want to start. Because if we must quote Martin Luther King Jr, I prefer this: "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."

btb,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

Last week, my 7yo attended Art Camp and Wednesday was Superhero Day at said camp. I posted this pic to Facebook with this: 

We walked in this morning to a scene of most kids wearing superhero T-shirts and a few capes, and I had a moment of worry for my 7yo in full costume. My heart actually sank a little because she looked nothing like anybody else. "Are you good?" I asked. "Oh mom," she whispered in my ear, "I am amazing. It says so on my cape." My whole life I wished for that kind of confidence in my weirdness, in my nerdiness, in myself. I pray every day that God fosters this in her, that she embraces the different and perfect way he made her. Made all of our kiddos really. And I pray that God keeps working on me, to help me be a better role model of extraordinary instead of a foot soldier to blending in. #giverofnofucks #chaserofallthegoals #amazingextraordinarygirls #vmac #engelysummerof2016

What blew me away was not that “friends” like this photo. I mean, really, who can resist a girl in a superhero cape? My surprise was how many I heard from who admitted that they struggle in just situations--walking into a room of jeans-wearing ladies  in couture or into a room of Sevens in de la Renta, of feeling too fat, too flat, too other, too themselves. Why I posted this initially was my own reaction, not my 7yos. Seeing Vivian all caped-and-tulled up, my initial respnse was to offer to go get her shorts and a T-shirt. No really, I said this. I am like 99.9 percent sure this is #parentfail, to unload your fears onto your 7yo in the form of a fixing a “problem” she did not know existed. I am lucky, I realize, because she dismissed my nonsense and educated me on The Power Of The Cape. When a cape says “amazing”, opinions of fellow 7yos do not matter.  I used to be this way, too, a million years ago when I lived by The Preppy Handbook. I rocked my glasses and sweater vests and Polo button ups in a world far less structured. That went away, a commonality more more of us share than I my 12yo self ever imagined possible. My 40yo self, too. And when we come from this way of being, we waste time hiding who we are and what we are passionate about instead of sharing it. We apologize for our difference instead of letting our dork flag fly, big and proud. We deny ourselves the pure unadulterated joy of being comfortable in our own dorky skin.

This was what my 7yo modeled last week. This joy. It did not matter what anybody else was wearing; this was her. It did not matter what anybody else thought; this was her. It did not matter, did not matter, does not matter.

What does matter is how to nurture that, to build on that, to create little girls who do not mind being Rey in a world of princesses, who wear tiaras to a baseball game, who love sports or science or fashion or food, who feel feel comfortable being them and make others comfortable being themselves. The girl world has enough bullies. Enough copy cats. Enough Real Housewives and Kardashians. Enough scared. We are amazing, and I know this because it says so on the cape.

BTB,

jengel 

[blogslikeagirl]

We all do the wrong things, make wrong choices and hurt others (intentionally or not). We fall short of our standards, in a moment or in a period of time. We fail on scales grand and small, all of them nicking away at that person we wanted to be. And sorry seems not enough. Redemption feels too hard. So we keep going and we walk so far down a road that we cannot possibly imagine a way back. This was LeBron James in Miami. Signing there and winning there were not wrong. How he handled himself on his way out of Cleveland was. And unable to figure a way out, he dug in. Until that moment when one of the greatest players of all time decided to walk it back. He did this knowing just how long and hard the road was, from Miami to Cleveland, through two long season and, finally, this last little bit where he and his Cavs teammates trailed 3-1 in the NBA Finals. No NBA team has come back from that to win a championship. They won Game 5, and then Game 6. This led to Game 7 Sunday in Cali. I cannot imagine how tired LeBron must have been, the emotional weight and physical toll of two years of trying to fix a wrong, of working to fulfill a promise of bringing a championship to his home. He carried all of this with him as he closed in on Golden State’s Andre Iguodala as he went up for a layup late in Game 7. He already had covered a big gap. What was left?  LeBron answered this question by going up, going so high his head was almost on par with the rim and blocking the shot. The championship was won there. “I’m coming home” he screamed later through tears. The lesson for us mere mortals is wherever home is for you, whatever wrong you need to make right it is possible. All you have to do is start on the path back. It is never too far gone. Redemption is possible. And almost always worth it.

btb, jengel

#allthegoals #noneofthefucks #makeitright #thelittlebutfiercesociety #everygirlneedsasport #everygirlneedsacoach

[blogslikeagirl]

#protectmykid (pause) from politicians

A year or so ago, I wrote a blog called The Upside of Ugly. And I included this picture.

I stumbled upon this pic again recently and what I had written on the back years later.

“I hate this outfit and picture!” I scribbled and then inexplicably signed this little diatribe “Jen-Jen”.

Then I wrote “ugly”.

I do not remember if I wrote this last part in haste or this was my intention all along. What I do remember is about the time I turned 12 or 13 I starting to hate my hair (too brown, too flat) and my body (too pale, too not flat). What has me thinking about my captioning lately is not me. It is the transgender bathroom wars, and yes that is a thing. And not simply Target. In my wonderful little community of Fort Worth, Texas.

Mom friends have been word feuding and a local, unelected politician has called for concerned citizens to overrun this evening’s school board meeting and no less than the Lt. Governor of the great state of Texas is calling for the FWISD superintendent to resign (because you know conservatives believe in little to zero government interference) and a petition is circulating to #protectmykids with the basic premise being that my first-grade daughter is not safe if FWISD schools practice tolerance and compassion with regards to transgender students. The highlights of the histrionics of this petition include but are not limited, to:

“You send Johnny to school one morning only to receive Joanie at the end of the day?”

Yes, that is how this works. FWISD has now started doing gender re-assignment surgery during lunch. Hyperbolize, much?

“The eight pages are an astonishing and shocking rebuttal to common sense, history, and science.”

Have they read Texas textbooks? We practically invented affronts to history and science. 

And when that same local, unelected politician posted this link on his Facebook page, all hell broke loose. Search #protectmykids for a scary look at how we debate issues nowadays, including this gem from NH: “Im never going to use a public bathroom. I will pee outside in a bush before I use one again. Cuz im not taking the chance of a supposed "transgender" to not be a transgender. Theres some sick people out there that wud actually be fake about it just to look at women in the bathroom or worse childeren.”

This is what amounts to public discourse in our country right now, and what we have determined is worth fighting for. Me. Mine. And I. My kids. My safety. My happiness Even while The Bible so clearly tells us that which we do for the least of among us we do for Jesus. And there is no doubt in my mind that a transgender 11 year old is among the least of us.

What I remember about that age was how hard everything was and I did not have people at church saying God did not love me because I had straight brown hair, or that I was going to hell because of my genetics. I have very real compassion for these kids. I see the suicide statistics for transgender youth and my heart just breaks for what daily life must be like for them. And if bathroom safety helps, then, well, let’s have a constructive, non-political discussion about how to make that happen.

Do I worry about the safety of my daughter? Of course. I worry about who is at the park across the street from her school, the girls from her class who may say mean things, the people texting and driving through school zones, people who have unlocked guns in their homes that I do not know about, and the things that are so scary I wake up at 3am unable to fall back asleep. And I worry about education, too, if going public is the right choice. I worry about Texas teaching to the STARR test rather than promoting creativity and imagination. I worry about not enough recess time. I worry the food in the cafeteria is loaded with GMOs and fat/salt/sugar. I worry that we ask so much from our teachers yet compensate them so poorly. I worry the smart ones are not being challenged enough. I worry about another Sandy Hook. 

And yes, I worry about awful people using transgender rights as an opportunity to do harm.  This does not make me a bigot. This makes me a mom.

I should note the safety histrionics does feel a little bit like a red herring. At my daughter’s school, there are bathrooms for adults and for students. And this was long before transgender bathrooming became an issue. When I go read to my 7yo’s class or volunteer for science lab or so much as drop off a folder, I have to be buzzed in and check in. Every. Single. Time. To volunteer, I have to have a background check. Every. Single. Year. And when I have to go to the bathroom, I have to go to the adult one even if a student one is closer and even though I have logged countless hours of volunteering. This is for the safety of students like my 7yo. FWISD has problems; safety is one of the things they are doing right.

So why are so many riled up about bathrooms and so few about funding? Same reason we fight about ChickFilA and Target bathrooms while ignoring far bigger issues. We love easy talking points and politicians love going there because doing so riles up bases and raises funds.  Politicians--folks who have shown time and time again in Austin how little they care about public education by how little money they spend on it--are pretending to care about #protecingyourkids like this is a one-issue stance. Ask yourself, as they call on you to storm the FWISD meeting about bathrooms, why this will be a first-time interest in public education for many in attendance.

If your answer is they don’t really care, you win. 

By all means, we need to have a discussion. We need to talk about how to navigate having boys in the girls bathroom. We need to talk about what a parent is told and what is withheld. We need to talk about how to talk to our children about this. And we need to start by changing our pronouns. Our. We. Us. #protectourkids And yes, that includes the very least of them, the scared and isolated transgender ones who are struggling with added angst in an already angst-ridden time. 

I believe the best way is to engage FWISD, the new superintendent and our local schools as partners. 

Part of why I am able to go back to sleep at 3am is because I believe with all my heart that the principal and teachers and personnel at my daughter’s school have signed up for a lifetime of #protecingmykid, that they would step between a gunman and my child if necessary and that there is not a decision they make where the safety of these littles is not at the forefront. I do not want to shout at these people. I do not want to talk to them via petition. I do not want Patrick or any other politician as an intermediary. I want to talk with them about what is needed and how transgender students can be treated with the most grace and compassion yet with an focus on safety for all.

So y’all go storm and shout at school boards and sign petitions if you must. And my liberal friends, y’all go and shout down and mock anybody with a differing opinion (in the name of tolerance, mind you). 

What I know for sure, as somebody who spent most of my life professionally arguing, is this accomplishes nothing. I have really good friends, dedicated Christians and moms who have legitimate concerns. And I have really good friends, dedicated Christians and moms who just want to do right by transgender kids. There is so much common ground there; friends, Christians, moms that we can figure out how to go to the bathroom. If we just get the politicians and activists out of there.

BTB,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

Where Life Begins.  Hint: It is not at the end of your comfort zone.

In this age of internet memes and motivational quotes, I have seen this image a lot lately. Damn, I probably posted this image at some point. I now believe this to be bull spit.

My yoga friends were teasing me recently for noting “You’re still alive, even in your comfort zone.” Not very yoga-y, I realize. Yet very true.   We were all there, alive, as this conversation went down. Many of us in the very middle of this journey called life. And life does not wait until you step from your comfort zone. Life does not begin when you are ready. Life clicks on whether you are firmly rooted in what is comfortable, or right on the edge.

Admittedly, some zones are more comfortable than others; the ones entailing sitting on the couch watching Real Housewives while drinking wine and scrolling through Instagram, going to the same places with the same friends and having the same conversations. Comfortable also looks like dreaming and planning and listing what you will one day do. And comfortable sometimes looks like doing and going and going harder with the comfort being in the busy, the speed, the excuse.  I’d volunteer at my child’s school but life is crazy. Or I’d spend more time with my family but I am building my business. Or I’d go on vacation but I don’t have time.

None of these are wrong. They are just comfortable. 

This is what I mean when I say you are alive, even in your comfort zone. Because what you are doing right now is your life. And this is all you have. So, if you are waiting until you lose 20 pounds, or work gets less crazy, or you have enough in your 401K, or your kids are out of the house, or until that magical moment when you “get out of your comfort zone,” that waiting is your life. If you are waiting to write your book, or start dating again, or spend time with your kids, to take up painting or dancing, to travel, that waiting is your life. And what I know for sure is it is not waiting for you.  It is rolling along, and how you spend your days is ultimately how you spend your life.

While re-watching old Grey’s Anatomy episodes (my comfort food of sorts when I’m funking), Richard Weber delivered a nugget so good I immediately jotted it down in my notebook.

“Sometimes, you can’t see the joyful part of your life until it is over. This is it. Right now. You’re in it.” 

Y’all get this, right? There is no cliff to jump off of, not usually. The choice to step out of your comfort zone are actually little every day choices and, if you are not careful, you will miss them. And you will not notice because you are comfortable. And comfortable is fine. Unless you are looking for extraordinary.

As I am.

For me, this included taking a step back from my life as globe-trotting, go-go-go sports columnist for a while. Extraordinary, as it turns out, was writing notes for my 7yos lunchbox instead of award-winning columns. It was traveling to and from swim practice instead of to Sochi for the Olympics. It was, for a long time, being at a loss for what to say when asked "Hey, didn’t you used to be?” It was less money, less accolades, just less. 

What I created, though, was space. Space for more girls nights in with my child and more and longer talks and visits with my dad and training to be a Baptiste yoga teacher and just more of the less. And what a gift this space was because, as it turns out, this was all I had. In the last year, I have lost my dad and my sweet little dog and my last IVF eggs to an ectopic pregnancy. I feel like I have been hemorrhaging people while others have been adding them. Leaving my comfort zone gave me time with them. And what I realized this weekend, while completing my journey and becoming Baptiste certified, was I am now comfortable here.

There is no beautiful cliff. And yet it is time to leap.

As my teacher Baron Baptiste said, the goal is not arriving--no finish line, instead a constant dedication to growth and change. The good news is you get to take the lessons with you when you leap, about the more of less, about the joy of family, about the many various ways to define success, about the people you want on the journey with you, about the power of team and about the beauty of what comes next.

Life already has begun. The goal is to rise to meet it.

Burn The Boats,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

The Springsteen Pledge

"Now those memories come back to haunt me They haunt me like a curse Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true or is it something worse"--The Boss.

My first musical crush was Bruce Springsteen. I had his jean-clad butt, with red bandana protruding above my bed in a time when all of my friends were repping Michael Jackson and Def Leopard and NTKOB. I remember coming home and telling my dad about this rookie singer named Bruce Springsteen and had he heard of him. I remember him laughing, and then hours of him playing songs like The River and Thunder Road. My dad was not a music guy. He was a word guy, though, and Springsteen’s lyrics were and remain among the best in music. 

We were too late for tickets to Born In The USA. When he toured with Tunnel of Love, though, I had asked begged my mom to get tickets because she was usually the go-to parent when you needed a yes. But she said we were too young and the concert too expensive.

On the night of the concert, my dad surprised all of us with his company's tickets. I never asked so I can say this with only 80 percent certainty but I am almost certain this was his first concert. I remember catching a glimpse of him watch us--my sister, mom and I--sing and dance to Dancing In The Dark in the Blue Cross-Blue Shield box and how content he seemed to be with making us happy. This was his “rock star” quality, how deeply and completely he loved his family.

I have seen Springsteen six times since that first concert. And always, that next morning I’d call him and thank him for introducing me to the genius of Springsteen. He’d listen to me talk set lists and new favorites (Trapped!) and how well The Boss had aged. And then we’d revert to form--sports and politics. He’d say I love you. And I’d say I love you more. And then he’d say “be careful out there” and we’d hang up. There will be no such call Wednesday morning, obviously. These are the little things that death takes away, the little nicks that make grief so all consuming and so impossible to contain. And yet healing is slowly and also happening. There is something so perfect about going to this concert right at the year anniversary of his death. I hope to Dance In The Dark, and when I do I will whisper a thank you to my dad once again. Thank you for constantly surprising me. Thank you, thank you for introducing me to Bruce. Thank you for always putting us before yourself, and teaching me how. And mostly thank you for reminding me, even in your absence, to create memories, to surprise Vivian and Mac with yes, to step into their worlds and revel in their happy, to never be too busy for the stuff that will outlast my earthly body.

So this is my Springsteen pledge: To try always to live in a way that influences others after I am gone. Like you. And now as only Bruce can: Everything is everything. But you’re missing.

BTB,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

A Promise To My Dad, I Was Watching

On this day, exactly 365 days after my dad died, I had intended to sit down with a scotch on the rocks (his favorite drink) and write a beautiful tribute to him.

But he is dead. And I have written almost nothing of consequence in what feels like forever. About him. About sports. About life. I am nothing if not my father’s daughter, and he’d appreciate the many, many ways I have procrastinated returning to daily writing--the baked bread and tennis games, the over volunteering and endless yoga, too much champagne, too much food, too much everything that numbs a broken heart. 

We were so alike it was scary; scarier for him I realize only now in hindsight. My father knew his weakness. It was fear. He was so insanely smart and driven and wise yet he failed to act on so many of his goals for fear of failing, of wasting his time, of letting us down. He saw this tendency in me and pushed me to aim bigger. My guess is, from afar, it looked like he was hard on me with his unwillingness to let me back out of or cut bait on anything because I was afraid. He pushed, and then pushed some more. At my wedding, his speech was so very him. He talked of how his biggest regrets in life were the chances not taken, the moments not seized, the trips, the leaps, the paths left unexplored. “Make mistakes with yes rather than no,” he told Mac and myself.  

And I am so very thankful for this. He was trying to protect me from regret, a regret he had to have felt about a few of his own choices. One especially.  He’d hate this story. And he’d want me to share as a teachable moment (though he’d abhor that phraseology). 

Of all the things I discovered at my dad’s house, this probably made me the saddest.

It is his book.  Finished. Four hundred and one pages of meticulously researched, well written words on The Battle of Pea Ridge.

Yes, I know. This is not the subject I would have chosen or the book I would have written. He always loved The Civil War, though, and he always wanted to write a book. Growing up, I remember my dad reading and writing and planning. He talked often of “his book” and later of how he intended to dedicate it to my mom, the person who always loved him just as he was. And then, when my mom got sick with cancer, there was no more time. He worked feverishly, and we talked often of what he had learned and written and finished. One of the last trips they took together was not Paris or Italy or Australia but to Pea Ridge, Arkansas so he could do research. She wanted this for him, too.

And then she was gone and my dad’s heart broke. My dad once told me that he found writing difficult in the days and weeks and months after my mom died. He had lost his best reader and his biggest fan.  What he knew for sure is my mom wanted him to finish. And so he did.

When I came across his manuscript as we cleaned out their house, it was strewn across a desk a little disheveled and quite clearly abandoned.  I could not bear to throw it away, so I brought it back to Texas with me. It was only later and as I attempted to organize it that I realized it was a complete book. And tucked among the pages was one rejection letter, one mother f-ing rejection.

I tucked it into this folder and grieved again.

I was so mad at him for a while, for giving up, for not seeing it through, for letting the doubts of a couple of gossipy, mean-spirited people around him stop him. I wanted to call him and tell him what he had said to me so many times, people demand you play small because it makes them feel OK in their smallness, they mock you for failing because they were too scared to try, they gossip about you and your failings because their own life is so damn disappointing. This speech helped me become a national sports columnist. And Run with the Bulls in Pamplona. To scuba The Great Barrier Reef, to take a job at FoxSports, to do live TV, to take a hip hop class, to willingly and so often do things I know I’d fail at even as I knew this gave my frenemies cannon fodder. 

This was and still is the enigma of my father. He was always encouraging, oftentimes downright pressuring me to travel and try, to take risks and do what scared me, to play to win and go big. He did this because, for too much of his life, he had not.

I have told this story before but he liked to joke when I had hard decisions to ask WWJD, What Would Jim Do, and then do the opposite. He had always been a little shy and a little scared and he knew I was prone to those as well. He wanted more for me.

So he pushed me and pushed me hard. In school. And in life. To this day, I am convinced that anything less than 90 is failing and that the best skill one can possess is the ability to take a punch and get back up and that it is far more noble to die on your feet than live on your knees. 

The last card he sent me included a generous check to help pay for IVF that he did not support and this hand-written note:

“Before you do this ask yourself if you really want to, if you know why you’re doing it, and if that’s a valid reason. Love, Dad.”

His questions have guided so many big decisions in the days since he died.  And yet I am doing exactly what he did. This is why you wait to be judge-y because time and circumstance so often grant clarity, and it really is not until you are standing in the shoes of another that you can see how fraught all the choices are and how quickly our certainty of what we would and would not do fades. I see now how hard it must have been for him after my mom died because I see how hard it has been for me since losing my dad. He was my best friend. I, too, have become inert, afraid of what people might say or have said. The truth is the only reason I do not have a single rejection letter is because I have not sent anything off to be rejected. And if he were alive, he’d be livid at me. Or even worse, disappointed. 

I owe his memory better. I owe his legacy as my dad better. As he used to say, he and my mom raised me better than this. And they did.

So a year has passed, the appropriate grieving period according to my Jewish friends. And time has come to get back to playing big, achieving goals, and facing fears. Of saying yes, of being all in, of fighting back. Of writing, of telling the truth, of feeling all the feels and going for all of the goals.

What this looks like exactly I am still deciding. With an exception.

I have pondered long and hard about what to do with my dad’s book, and I think he would want me to keep trying. And I think he would want me to start writing my own.  Really writing it. Believing in it. And making it a reality.

That, and so many other things.  He’d want me to stop talking of burning boats and actually burn those mother fuckers. 

Starting in the a.m., that is exactly what I plan to do.

To you, dad. Love,

me

[blogslikeagirl]

Speaking Elle To Assholes

Panthers QB Cam Newton has been crushed by media elites and just a fans for what has been deemed his “un-classy” postgame walk off after losing The Super Bowl. Class or lackthereof is a moving target, of course.

Beyonce, too, has taken a good woodshedding for what went down at Super Bowl 50 because she dared to be political, dared to stand up for what is wildly personal to her and dared to entertain America with her badassery while doing so. Again, appropriate is a moving target.

And Taylor Swift has had to deal with Kayne calling her a bitch, with him taking credit for her insane popularity, with her talent being diminished and minimized and criticized as not arty enough. Again, talent is a moving target.

What we really mean is we want them to conform, we want them to be what we want in a quarterback, an entertainer, a friend, a person. And to get them to conform, the world has a word.

For me, it is bitch. For Newton, it is thug. For Beyonce, it is coward, fraud and that B who endangered police. For Swift, it is girl. For you, well, only you know what the word is. But there is word society calls us each of us when they want to put us in our place, when they want to shut us up, when we have been too loud, too big, too opinionated, too successful, too far beyond what is considered acceptable for whatever group we fall into. They say this to make us play smaller, or mostly to cram us back into a box they feel comfortable with.

Pretty little girl columnist. Non-threatening successful black male athlete. Or in the case of Beyonce, beautiful, non-controversial entertainer who serves at the pleasure of the audience.

Bullshit. Fucking bullshit.

As I have listened and read criticism of Cam and Beyonce and TSwift, I have returned again and again to Elle King’s “America’s Sweetheart”, a song I have been playing almost on repeat.

“No there ain't nothing that I gotta prove You think your words will make me black and blue But I, I think I’m pretty with these old boots on I think its funny when I drink too much, hey You try and change me you can go to hell Cause I don't want to be nobody else I like the chip I got in my front teeth And I got bad tattoos you won't believe”

This stuck me at the capital T truth. Don’t apologize because you did not live up to their expectations, only apologize for not living up to yours. And this starts with being OK with who you are and who you aren’t.

We all have this monster, this voice telling we us are not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, or in the case of Cam not pc enough, or in the case of Beyonce not aware enough of our place, or in the case of TSwift not talented enough. We put that voice there, or somebody else does, or a lot of somebodies on via gossip or Twitter until that word they call us shrinks us and has us playing small. Playing in a way that makes them comfortable.

For me, it is bitch. I am a MWT, after all, a married white Texan who drives a Volvo and car pool and is a member of The Junior League so thug does not do the job of putting me in my place. There has to be a different buzzword for taking down people like me. Yet I am Cam Newton.  I am Beyonce. I am TSwift. We all are. And if they try to change us, they can go to hell.

BTB,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

This Is Love.

My interest in The US Olympic marathon trials on Saturday was mostly local. As interest in sports of this kind tends to be. One of my students in my 630p yoga class on Mondays is Will Northern. He comes every week, always has gigantic smile and is my demo guy for jumping into crow. His is killer. He brought his wife, Elizabeth, with him once and I immediately developed a girl crush. She qualified to run in this Olympic trial. She trained. And she ran. Ran fast, ran hard, ran until the very end. Having been to four Olympics as a journalist, getting to know such athletes and tell their stories, I have a deep appreciation for what is necessary to even be in that field. There is a great line from Dr Seuss that summarizes this level of running to me, “of course, sometimes you’ll play lonely games, too, games you can’t win because you play against you.” So many long, lonely miles. So many mornings not pushing snooze. So much sweat, so much pain, so much resiliency required. 

So when Amy Cragg, 32, crossed the finish line first I thought “wow”. And then I saw third place finisher, an obviously struggling and exhausted Shalane Flanagan, collapse into Cragg’s waiting arms at the finish line and thought “now, that’s a story.” The story, as it turns out, is love story. Not the romantic kind, mind you. We tend to get this twisted, especially less than 24 hours after Valentine’s Day. We see “friends” on social media with flowers and champagne and cards, with tales of love at first sight. We watch movies and we have turned love into this very one-size-fits-all, girl-boy, happily-ever-after tale.

This is not that story. This is a story of a love between competitors. Between friends. And ultimately between Olympians.

In the marathon trial, third is as good as first because 1, 2, 3 all qualify for the Olympics. And Cragg and Flanagan had a plan.

“The goal is not to get on the team just ourselves. Both of us have to be there,” Cragg told reporters in LA.

They took turns leading. They broke from the pack together. They ran together until somewhere along the way Cragg realized that Flanagan was struggling and not in your typical marathons-are-a-bitch way.

“At first I thought she was just going through a bad patch, which is common in marathon, Then I looked at her and saw she was turning bright red,” Cragg said. “So I kept her calm. I knew no matter how bad she was hurting she could make it happen, but I knew I needed to help.”

I needed to help.  What powerful words. Because this was the Olympics and absolutely nobody would have blamed Cragg, hell Flanagan probably would not have blamed Cragg, if she had said “I’m sorry, friend, but I have to go.” Instead, Cragg ran and got Flanagan water bottles. She slowed her pace. She reported on the field. Cragg almost gave up her victory to ensure Flanagan would finish in the Top 3. It was only in the final mile, with second-place finisher Desiree Linden closing in, that Cragg pulled aw;ay. Won. And waited. And when Flanagan finished in that No. 3 spot, Cragg won again.

This is being for others. This is love. Yes, love is patient and kind. Love is also sometimes demanding and harsh. Love screams “you are not giving up on your dream, not on my watch”. Love reminds you of what you committed to and what can be endured. Love does not let you quit. Love does not leave you behind.

Love is saying “both of us have to be there”. Love is listening and letting yourself be helped. And happiness is believing life is better when all of us win.

Burn The Boats,

jengel

[blogslikeagirl]

How many times have you heard the phrase “Step Outside Of Your Comfort Zone”? The irony is this Facebook meme-wisdom typically is proffered by somebody doing something very much in their comfort zone, usually accompanied by a picture of a elfin-like girl blowing glitter into the world. Hell, I may have even posted such a monstrosity. 

What kind of call to action is this really? Empty words, a pretty picture? And this is the why and how I of me ending up at a hip-hop dance class on Wednesday and twerking. I signed up. I showed up. I had as much fun as is humanly possible while being completely terrible at something. This is a lot of fun actually, if you indulge in the delicious freedom of laughing at yourself. And I can’t wait for next week.

Yes, my hips are tight. Yes, I lack any and all rhythm. I am sure Missy Elliott somewhere weeps that dancers like me exist yet I envision a day when I am crushing WTF (Where They From), a dance that must be Googled and watched and watched again to fully appreciate Elliott’s genius. All of this failing is exactly the point. The discomfort is in the sucking and fear. The change comes in the doing it anyway. I left that class Wednesday fired up to create an entire syllabus of experiences that scare the you know what out of me.

The best part of this entire experience, though, was coming home. My 6yo daughter was not yet asleep and so I demo-ed this dance for her and her eyes got really wide. V: “Oh mom, you are a really good dancer.” Me: “Really?” V: “You did so good. I want to try.”

And I hope so very much that seeing me imperfectly perfect encourages you to sign up and show up, to start, to finish, to act on something that scares you--be that a class or a conversation or a BHAG.

Burn The Boats,

jengel

ps. Special thanks to my yoga buddies, Stephanie Park and Morgan Jackson, for doing this with me. Both of them were so amazingly good and so incredibly fun. Like we say at Indigo, #inthistogether 

[blogslikeagirl]

Do Something ... And Other Good Advice For Trying Times

We all have our legs blown off at some point. Who am I kidding? At many points. We all have moments or days, weeks or even years where life seems to sweep our legs out from under us, drive us to our knees crushed and unable to get back up.

For many, this is a result of divorce or a sick child, a parent dies or a job is lost, you fail, you get sick, you cheat, you get cheated on, you screw up. Whatever it is, you feel like you are going to die.

For my friend Dan Nevins, this is not figurative.

His legs were blown off when an IED leveled his Humvee during his tour in Iraq and he almost died. So I asked Dan about this phraseology before writing this because, well, this is not a figure of speech for him but a daily reality of what was, what happened and what was lost. 

“Absolutely,” was his response.

What Dan understands, maybe, better than most is we all have wounds. Some we signed up for, some we got in defense of others, some that are self inflicted, some that have healed, some that still fester, some that we hide, some where no amount of pretending is possible.  

Want the real? Bad things happen. Awful people do horrible things; so do your friends and family, your neighbors, your best friends. These can not be explained away with euphemisms or platitudes like “everything happens for a reason”.  “Fuck you, and your reason” I want to scream. Sometimes bad things just happen and they must be endured. But maybe, just maybe, by doing so, you show others that there is a way to carry the hard with grace and class and decorum, that there is life after the hard and the hard makes us strong enough to help others carry theirs.

This was my biggest takeaway from when Dan visited Indigo Yoga in December. Being driven to your knees does not have to be the end. And so I asked if I could share what I learned from his talk because, to use his phrasing, what I walked away with is “so good”. 

1. “You Are Alive, Dan. Do Something.”

What does it feel like to actually have your legs blown off? Dan talked of lying on his back, not able to sit up, his good friend dead in the Humvee where his legs were. He feels the blood coursing out of him and pain. He feels so much pain. And he thinks: 

“I am going to die”

In this moment, he made peace with his life and very interestingly his life as it had been was not what flashed before his eyes but rather his life as it would not be. He thought of his daughter walking down the aisle ... without him. He thought of places he’d never go and kisses he’d never give and thank you’s he’d never be able to say. He thought of all the life he was going to miss. Only he was very much still alive.  And Dan remembers very vividly saying: “You are alive, Dan, do something.”

Do. Something. I have thought about that sentiment so many times since hearing Dan speak and what gets me every time is how simple and extraordinary this advice is, this call to action, this reminder that when you are laying there feeling like you might die, like your life is over the key is to do something, to shove a hand in and who cares if it is imperfect, who cares if others judge how you choose to fix what they broke who cares if it flawed and imperfect. Give yourself a chance because you will blink and it will change. What Dan ended up doing was shoving his hand into his leg, trying to find his femoral artery and squeezing. He did his part and the help came. 

“I blinked and I had a tourniquet.” “I blinked and I had an IV.” “I blinked and they are getting my legs.” “I blinked on a stretcher.” “I blinked and I am on a helicopter.”

2. “These People” Have A Way Of Becoming Your People ... If You Let Them 

Dan had been in the Army for eight years, in Fort Bragg with the best of the best, the “real” soldiers. That was during peacetime. And eventually he decided to get out and go to college, get a job and a wife. He stayed involved by doing the Army National Guard, guys who were not necessarily the best of the best.

They were the just-in-case guys.  They were the backups. And they were the guys Dan ended up getting deployed to Iraq with on an 18-month tour. They became what Dan referred to as the tip of the spear, the defenders of the perimeter or the base. Dan loved serving his country yet very much remembers thinking “Man, I am not supposed to be here. not with these people.”

We all have been there--on a random Tuesday or when tragedy strikes--looking around and wondering what happened to the people who were supposed to be here.  Maybe, that is a husband. Or a best friend. Or a family member. They are gone and in their place are these people. The lesson of Dan is to give it a second, to give them a chance. Because those people, the backups, when the moment required it, showed up big for Dan. They were the ones hopping from the relative safety of their vehicles to secure the area, walking toward the explosion and into the fire for his legs, applying the tourniquet, getting him on the chopper and to the doctors.  These people were not the people Dan wanted to go to war with but they became his people, the people who saved his life, the people who were there when he opened his eyes. 

What turned them from weekend warriors to badass warriors? The belief that Dan was one of theirs and you fight for your people. Who is left after your legs get blown off might not be who you expected but those people, the people who choose to be there, have a funny way of delivering if you give them a chance. 

3. Question Your Thoughts

The thing that struck me as I listened to Dan tell his story first to adults and then again to young children was how some of his worst moments in the aftermath all happened in his mind.

Lying in a hospital not wanting to see his wife because he thought she would not love him without legs. Thinking his days of running and being active were over. Walking into a yoga studio for the first time without legs and convincing himself the whole class was disgusted by him, thinking how he had ruined yoga for them, thinking how they were thinking “How am I supposed to do yoga next to that?”

Thinking and thinking and thinking. Almost none of that was true, of course. His wife loved him. He hiked Kilamonjaro and runs and yoga-s. And after that first class, yogi after yogi came up to say they had been watching him. He had changed class for them. Only it was not disgust, it was admiration.   

This is not to pretend like there were not hard times and real challenges. There were and to say otherwise does a disservice to all of the hard work Dan did to get to okay. But the story we tell ourselves about what happened and what it means is almost always worse than what actually happened. Dan lost his legs. This is awful. And

4. The Power Of And ... 

As I think back on my own “legs blown off” moments, the only thing that kept me going somedays--OK, a lot of days--was my belief in this little word. It is powerful if used properly. Because “and” is hope, “and” leaves open something beyond the horrible thing that happened is possible, “and” is the lifeline. The genius of “and” is you don’t have to know what comes after to say it and believe in it. As Dan laid in the Iraqi sand that day, resigned to dying, he could have not have possibly envisioned his life as it was when he showed up an Indigo. He had his legs blown off and is an advocate for fellow wounded warriors. He had his legs blown off and is an impactful teacher. He had his legs blown off and has a thriving life with an daughter.  

What I learned from Dan is that the “and” is there and it can be amazing ... if you just give it a chance.    

Burn the boats,

jengel