Kristen Chandler's Blog

A close friend told me once that no matter how good we are at our jobs, when we’re finished we’re like a hand taken out of a bucket of water. The water closes in and it’s like we were never there. The other day I gave my students an essay by a RIDICULOUSLY successful author and many had NEVER heard of him. I mean, he was on the cover of TIME magazine a few years ago and has had two of his books made into movies. Come on, people. But . . .Hand out of the bucket. Replaced by water.

And yet . . . I’m stupid enough to think what people do with their lives does matter. Just not because it will get you on cover of TIME. We matter in our personal relationships. We matter when we are the right person at the right time . Or we matter when we create or give something to someone when they need it. When I wrote THIEF I knew it was a risk. It’s book about finding happiness, which is way less sexy than say … Incestuous dragons exploding on Mars (my next book:)). I mostly wrote THIEF to be a good read, for entertainment. But I also wrote it because the bucket I’ve had my hand in for the last five years has a lot to do with finding happiness. And what I’ve learned while soaking my hand is that we all matter. We all have the right to be happy and ability to share that happiness. What we do matters. But maybe not always the way we think. Our hand may be gone, but the water we carried . . . that’s gonna grow something amazing.

The post The Things We Carry appeared first on Kristen Chandler Books.

This weekend we made the pilgrimage down to the Fremont,  Utah, about sixty miles past the middle of nowhere to meet with an old friend. West Taylor. My time with West has inspired aspects of Thief of Happy Endings, my release coming out June 19. See West here working with Alysa, my step-daughter. Alysa has significant, painful, anxiety. When she first got in the pen she wouldn’t even look at the horse. This mustang is just two weeks off the desert and also very afraid of this interaction. They’re  teaching each other about trust and getting out of your corner.

We think the places we are  or the things we have can keep us safe. But safety really comes from being able to be okay wherever you are. The more we find the courage to make peace with those around us, the very people or things that upset or scare us most, the safer we become.

The post Getting out of your corner! appeared first on Kristen Chandler Books.

I am so happy to finally be able to announce that my new book “Thief of Happy Endings” will be published by Viking. It looks like it will come out in the Spring of 2018. Yee Haw!!

In my neck of the woods, there is a phrase people like to use that I don’t relate to very well. “My Angel Mother.” Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe in censorship. And I do believe that there are mothers out there who do angelic things. But, here’s the thing. I’m just going to say it . . .

My mother is no angel. And I really love her for it.

I’ve been blessed with two grandmothers and two mothers-in-law. I’ve had teachers and bosses who have mentored me in maternal ways. And I think it’s possible that none of these people are angels either. Not in the way I interpret that phrase, anyway.

I’m not saying that these people are not selfless and wonderful. I’m saying that they do human things, like ask me if I have the light on when I put on my make-up.  Or swear when they drop a rock on their foot. Or maybe even get a parking ticket they don’t tell their spouse about. (Sorry Mom, totally just outed you there)

I’m saying that the mothers in my life have loved me deeply, joyfully and authentically. And authenticity is not perfection.

There are bad mothers. I don’t know how to judge this, so I don’t. But there are mothers that are destructive to their children. There are mothers who don’t pay enough attention to their kids, or pay too much in ways that are hurtful. I in no way condone women or men that abuse their children physically or emotionally. That’s not okay on any day of the year. If you have had an abusive mother my heart goes out to you. I hope you can find a way to get past the hole in your heart and make something better for yourself.

But even “good moms” are imperfect. Being a mother is hard and people don’t always look good doing it, even when they are really trying. Maybe especially when they are really trying.

One of my mother’s many gifts to me has been to teach me to walk past the guilt section in the emotional grocery store of life. She still encourages me to push my cart all the way down the end of row to pick up some self-improvement –and never look back, if I can avoid it. I have looked back. But I don’t feel like I’m supposed to.

The reason I think this is a great gift is that when women feel guilt about not being an angel mother they rarely change in a positive way. They compare and despair. Not a winning combination.

I make mistakes, as a mom and as a new step-mom. Sorry kids. Good job growing up to be awesome anyway. You never stop amazing me and making me proud.

So what ever kind of mother you are, biological, spiritual, educational, (this includes men), I would like to tell you I think being an angel is less important than being a person who cares and sacrifices and keeps showing up for the people they love.

I am grateful for all the imperfect and amazing women and men in my life that cared enough to love, nurture and teach me.  Thank you moms, for helping me be an imperfect-but-trying mother myself.

Love you, Mom. You have always been there for me. Always. You’re a truly beautiful person. You taught me all the important things I know.  I admire you so much.

P.S. I think Dad knew about the parking ticket anyway.:)

So, true story, I like to obsess when I watch movies. I look for patterns and trends, as if all movies are one movie during a year. I trend-watch music and books too. And this year, cinematically speaking, is the year of the cliff jump.  Someone somewhere has figured out a way to make it look disturbingly authentic for actors to jump into thin air. And now everyone wants to do it. Take for example The Revenant. That was a jump. Sweet Leo that was a jump. Last weekend I went to see Jungle Book with my crew and I counted three such jumps. In every trailer but one, there was a cliff jump of some kind. If you doubt me, go the movies.

So, I thought, why? I mean obviously it looks cool. And someone in the computer world has figured out how to do it in a way that makes the skin on my arms stand up and salute. But after that, why? What does it say about us, as a collective audience, and as a culture, that we delight so much in seeing someone sail off into the abyss?

No idea. But on a personal level I couldn’t be happier. I’m doing some significant cliff jumping of my own this year, on a personal and professional level. And you know what? In real life you don’t always land in a nice absorbent pine tree to break your fall. Sometimes you die. Or worse, you live broken. But the thing about all scenes that involve cliff jumping is that the unknown is the only choice besides death. Going back is the end. And that’s exactly how I feel.

I am lucky enough to have friends of all ages. I get to talk to people about what they care about and what they want. I love that. And one thing I’ve come to believe from all this talking and listening is there is no easy age to be. Being five is hard, being forty is hard, being ninety is hard. All in different ways. But everybody has to keep jumping. What we did yesterday matters far less that what we do today. Today is who we are. And who we become, or where we land, depends on us knowing that.

In life there is only the cliff.  Like it, or be eaten by a giant singing gorilla. And as the boys from Van Halen used to say,

You might as well

jump.

I don’t play tennis anymore.

But when I was in high school I played four to six hours a day, five days a week all summer into late October. Winters I slacked off to a few hours a day.

And you know, I only miss it occasionally.

I fell in love with running my senior year and when I left high school I basically put my racquet away. I’d feel the absence every fall for a decade, but I wouldn’t play. For such a long time being good at tennis was so important that I couldn’t stand to play unless I was in top shape. And really, if I couldn’t blast my opponent off the baseline what was the point?

All that time and effort, learning how to move and react. All those hours watching other players, thinking of strategies. All those nights when I couldn’t sleep before a big match. Gone. Poof. Like I went to sleep an athlete and woke up a jogger. It doesn’t get much sadder than that.

But you know, things have a way of getting into your blood stream when  you’re sixteen going on seventeen. You learn stuff you don’t even know you’ve learned. At least for me, tennis was/is like that. I had an amazing coach. David Porter. He was ultra competitive. He was merciless on all of us cute little girls in short skirts. But he taught us to keep our mouths closed when we dropped a point, or a set, and move on. He taught us to run drills and sprints and play and play and play in the scorching heat. He taught us to focus on the ball, not to swear at the line coach, at least out loud, and when things look bleakest you just have to get out there and play your game. The one you have in you.

In the winter when the heat was gone we had to drag our sorry carcasses out of bed and show up for “optional” practice at 5am at the only indoor courts in town open at that ugly hour. I’d rub the sleep out of my eyes in time to hear him say, “Chandler, do you need a pair of roller skates out there?”

But here’s the thing, I’ve had a lot of things happen to me since that time that are harder than getting up at 5 in the morning. I’ve had things hurt more than blisters and sunburns and pulled muscles. I’ve had bigger loses than the state finals. Those are first world problems in the first degree. But a few of things I learned from tennis hard wired me for dealing with real stuff.

I remember the first time I realized this. I had to have a hideous growth taken off my knuckle. The dermatologist told me, as he knitted together his overgrown eyebrows, “I’ve numbed this bugger up but it’s still going to hurt like the Dickens.”

“Okay,” I said, eyes widening. What does the Dickens feel like?

“Think of something,” he said. “Something you can concentrate on.”

So I thought of standing at the net. I imagined my partner Tiffany standing behind me ready to throttle me if I missed my volley. I had to be ready to punch and then punch again if it came back in my face. Then I imagined I was racing for a ball on the baseline that had my name all over it. I was bending my knees, reaching, keeping my racquet primed until the last moment. Then I’d connect. Sweet spot engaged. Florescent yellow ball hurdling through space. And bam. You dead!

I just kept doing that, until my finger was sufficiently carved up and the doctor sent me home with drugs and a compliment. “You’re a tough kid.” His look of surprise was way better than the drugs.

Now I run marathons.  The equipment’s cheaper and the scenery’s better. And I don’t run against anyone but myself. But you know what, when things get rough, I don’t see finish lines. I find myself rushing the net, focusing on the next point not the last, remembering that I can crush the ponytail across the net with my serve if I’ll just focus on the serve and not the ponytail.

Today, heaven help me, I write novels. And it’s so much worse than high school tennis. But also so much better. And today, because I don’t know what to do, or how to do it, I am sitting here writing about tennis. Because it taught me how to be tough. When things look bleak I have to play my game. The one I have in me.

In the 1920’s the last wolf pack was killed in Yellowstone National Park. In January of 1995 fourteen gray wolves were captured in Canada and relocated to Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, amid huge controversy.  In 1998, 17 more Canadian wolves were placed in the park, and ten more from northwestern Montana by 1997.  Today, after wild swings in population, 10 packs survive in Yellowstone.

The population outside the pack is thriving. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife services:

[su_quote]The wolf population in Northern Rocky Mountains continues to hold steady. As of December 31, 2014, there were at least 1,657 wolves in 282 packs (including 85 breeding pairs) in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. An additional 145 wolves in 31 packs (including 13 breeding pairs) were estimated in Oregon and Washington. Wolf numbers continue to be robust, stable and self-sustaining in the Northern Rocky Mountains.[/su_quote]

But what about the other animals involved: elk, livestock, and humans?  And all the other animals indirectly affected by wolves changing the predatory pyramid in the Rocky Mountain west. At the great risk of oversimplifying: there is good news and bad news. And people are still divided about the issue for all kinds of reasons.

[su_note note_color=”#cffdff”]”I hoped that the controversy would have died down by now, but it hasn’t,” said Yellowstone Wolf Project Leader Doug Smith. “It remains an emotional topic, but the world hasn’t come to an end.” [/su_note]

The primary hardship at this point seems to be for elk and hunters. There’s not doubt that elk numbers have plummeted in the last twenty years. The complicated part of this is that the research, done by scientists and fish and game organizations, suggests that the elk decline is primarily being driven by habitat loss.

One three year study published in June of 2013, by Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming, found that the negative impact  from wolves, not just death, but impact, is still less than the impact from habitat loss, bears, and humans.

But that doesn’t make hunters any happier that they have to share the elk that are around with wolves.

The cattle and sheep ranchers have suffered losses but that seems to be stabilizing. Ranchers seem to be having less predation now that laws to protect their herds have been relaxed and the hunting season has made wolves that come onto a sheep or cattle ranch not long for this world.

The whole trophic cascade thing, where the landscapes does better when a top predator is in returned to keep elk and deer from overwhelming the landscape that feed other animals, that’s been proven. If you visit the Lamar Valley with all the bazillion other tourists this year and look at picture from 20 years ago you can see it with your own eyes. Tree don’t lie.

Humans, are pretty much as crazy as we’ve always been. We are as amazing and as stupid as we were before wolves were put back in the park. Nothing to be done for that apparently.

(Hint: this is not how getting divorced feels, for anyone. But it can be how kids and parents feel after they figure some things out.)

We spend a lot of time talking about the negative effects of sex and drugs in schools. But nobody likes to talk about divorce. So I thought I would… just for minute.

“We have now reached a point where fewer than half of kids leaving high school will still have their parents living together. If we knew for sure that up to half the nation’s children were going to suffer something damaging, we’d be moving heaven and earth to do something about it.” … [Penelope Leach, Time Magazine, May 25, 2015]

Can we agree that this statistic is not just life, but culture, changing? Half the kids in the US? So how are we helping kids survive the split and the aftershocks? I would say that from my perspective, we are NOT talking about it. So I’d like to. And I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this taboo subject.

My first marriage ended in divorce 11 years ago, so I have had a little time to think about how it has impacted my kids. I also work with teenage girls, so I see girls deal with divorce in some hopeful and heartbreaking ways.

Here are three things I wish all parents and children knew about divorce. I didn’t invent them. But I have tested the heck out of them!

1) Trash Talk Belongs on the Basketball Court

Before I start, can I say my ex is a nice guy? I always say that as soon as possible when people find out I’ve been divorced. You know why? Because he is. Really. And I know he is. And that right there, is pretty much how I start talking about talking about divorce. I let you know that I am not going to ask you to take my side while I go off. You’d be amazed how people start breathing again when I do this. Kids are the same.

When kids have to chose a side, a team, or a parent in a divorce it is pretty much a sure fire way to make sure everyone loses. This is not to say that some people don’t have terrible, terrible ex’s. I’m just saying that other person is your kid’s parent, so go lightly into that good rant.

2) You Aren’t Alone and Your Home Isn’t “Broken.”

When I had been divorced a year I was assigned by a local magazine to cover a camp for single parents and their children. I live in family town USA. Or so it seems. (Actually the divorce rate in my state is slightly higher than the national average.) I was worried that my kids would feel stigmatized by the camp, but they said they were fine with it, so we went.

When we walked through the door of the giant dinning hall they looked around and saw dozens of kids they knew from school. “Wow,” one of my kiddos said. “I didn’t know that so many people had divorced parents.”

Sadly, if half our kids are dealing with divorce, they have plenty of company. But they have to speak up to connect with other kids. Parents and educators have to emphasize that parent’s choices are not their children’s responsibility, and that the child of divorce should never feel ashamed to talk about the fallout with peers or teachers. Opportunities in schools for talking about divorce and blending families should be as common as discussions on sex, drugs, bullying, and how low a girl’s neckline can be for prom.

3) Whatever It Takes, Take Time To Be Alone With Each Child.

If you want to really hear what’s going on with your son or daughter you have to make time to be alone with them. I have four kids so that was hard at first. But sooo worth it. In fact I can say that it is one of those silver linings I might never have discovered if I wasn’t so concerned about my kids because of the divorce. Kids say things when they are all alone with parents that are like the Rosetta Stone to their sometimes inexplicable behavior.

I could go on, but I won’t. You can though. Anyone who has been touched by divorce, so like everyone, probably knows something they’ve learned the hard way about making kid’s life a little better after separation.

I think it’s like Ms. Leach suggests. We hate divorce and it’s horrible. But that makes it more, not less, important for us to talk about.

Last week was survivor week. No hidden camera crews. No script. Just arbitrary rules, made up by me and tolerated by my partner in research (and life). The idea was that we were supposed to simulate evacuation. I know this sounds like premeditated spontaneity. But actually abandoning a house full of kids on a whim causes Social Services to contact your next of kin.

We packed up our sleeping bags and a bad smelling tent the night before. The next morning we stood blurry-eyed in the pantry and pulled out anything we could get our hands on in less than three minutes. I claimed the one chocolate chip cookie dough protein bar. Necessities. Then we ran from the house like the cast of the Avengers was chasing us.

We headed for the mountains, two hours and one bad rainstorm away. Then we marched up the trail in the mud, ditched even the road less traveled by, crossed an ice-cold stream in bare feet and set up camp under some branches. Then we hiked, talked, slept badly and lived off our meager plunder and edible plants for a few days.

I know… it’s not most people’s idea of a good time. But we had a blast.

After that, we drove to Montana on muddy back roads to do other unnecessarily difficult but entirely enjoyable things.

And lest you think we were just messing around together, we actually learned some things too:

Dandelion salad takes a little getting used to. And butter cups — always a bad idea.

A rattlesnake coming for you in the grass can move a lot faster than you’d think.

Moose like to people watch. And they cough like old men.

When a giant black storm cloud suggests you get out off the mountaintop, you should probably listen. All hail can break loose.

There is no longer a lake in the town of Swan Lake. Or swans incidentally.

People that drive with dogs are better looking than the rest of us.

There should be a stupid people tax in Yellowstone National Park.

When your horse is named Duke, you can’t ride like a duchess.

Ice caves are epic. Even in the middle of nowhere Idaho. Maybe especially in the middle of nowhere Idaho.

Aristotle said that the value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than on mere survival. But perhaps our awareness is best contemplated when surviving. At any rate, for me this week, both were valuable.

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