WAIT! DID YOU FORGET SOMETHING?

(Mis)adventures in online shopping, soul retrieval, and Mazzy Star's "Blue Light."

Hi readers! Thank you for being here, however it works for you. I appreciate you! Feel fee to share your own stories in the comments, or say hi, I love hearing from you, too. And now for this week’s tiny tale. Oh the funny things we do when we’re afraid. xx Alexa

Writing, not online shopping, I swear!

Here’s a little story about dresses.

I love dresses. I rarely wear pants. Dresses are beautiful, flowing, and they make me feel free.

However, during the early years of the pandemic, I had *a bit* of an online shopping addiction and I most certainly did not feel free.

At night, after tucking my kids in bed and finding myself unable to sleep, I’d sit in the glow of my laptop’s blue light and shop for dresses. Dresses for a life I was most certainly not living, dresses I had no where to go in, dresses I could not really afford.

The twist was that I was hunting for dresses I’d owned years ago, when I was singer-songwriter out on the town, with places to go. Before becoming a mother. Before my son Lou’s two bouts of cancer. Before Covid-19.

Before…whatever this new reality was.

I didn’t have much money, so I’d shop sales, The Real Real, or Poshmark. I’d put dresses in online shopping carts and then wait for the blitz of follow-up emails, with subject lines like:

You’re so close!

Quick, get it before it’s gone!

There’s still time!

Wait, did you forget something?

I don’t know, did I forget something?

I’d press PURCHASE just to prove that, no, I did NOT forget something and I am still very much here!!!

I had already spent all of 2019 trapped inside a hospital room with Lou. I had already done masks, gloves, and germ warfare. Lou had gone back to school for two weeks in February 2020. I had played a show. A return to normal seemed within reach.

And then it was March.

I was trapped again, this time inside our funny little rented house on the funny little dead-end street down by the tracks, losing what was left of my funny little mind.

Twice a day, a freight train inched by, shaking the house, and briefly shaking me out of my stupor. I was blue, as blue as the blue light of my laptop at night, in the small pocket of time I managed to carve out for myself.

“It’s so crazy,” friends who had not been locked up since April 2019 sobbed to me on the phone, “I’m looking at our calendar, all the things we had planned…”

Yes, that’s how things fall apart!

I had hoped to be of service, at least compassionate. After all, I was used to this — the whole world was now suffering in ways my family uniquely understood. I practically had a masters degree in fear and “not knowing.”

Yet — my big event of the day was skipping down the stone steps to the mail box. I loved seeing my name on the cardboard boxes and packages.

Alexa Wilding! Remember her?

I felt an adrenaline rush not unlike what I’d experienced riding in the ambulance with Lou, pacing the PICU, or waiting for his scan results.

I didn’t know how to not be in danger, to not have my cortisol spike on the hour. Cutting through the tape and into the cardboard, or ripping open the large envelopes, was a deep, much-needed release.

But of course #DressGate didn’t fill the void.

After we left the house down by the tracks, I re-sold most of what I had no business buying in the first place, sending the dresses on a reverse migration to their new rightful owners, and refilling my bank account.

I was ready for the future. I didn’t want to party like it was 2010! Yet…arranging those frocks in my closet, while they were briefly mine, had me searching for parts of myself I feared were lost forever.

Every once in a while, unable to sleep, I’ll find myself tempted by my old funny business.

“Wait, did you forget something?

I take a deep breath in the blue light. I ask myself what it is I’m really looking for…

In the shamanic tradition, there’s a practice called soul retrieval. A shaman drums alongside you, entering a journey during which they call back your lost parts — not to go backward, but to reintegrate the parts of you that had to go into hiding, just to survive…

You’re so close!

Quick, get it before it’s gone!

There’s still time!

But these days, I’ve come to soothe myself with words, with favorite songs, instead.

A MEDITATION

May I honor all the *funny* things I did to survive.

Feel free to share something *goofy* you were up to just to get through. I love hearing from you. I’m sure I’m not the only one who goes *a little cuckoo* when they’re afraid. So here’s to grace…

Sending love, and may all beings know safety, happiness, health, and ease.

xx Alexa