misery is wasted on the miserable

I love the show "Louie".

I've been watching the newest season on Netflix over the past few weeks, and I gotta say, it's a little strange getting used to the fact that this very funny, often crude show has taken a turn this season to focus more on... feelings. Like, love feelings.

But, I gotta say, it's has a few wonderful moments. My favorite so far comes from Episode 10 'Pamela: Part I'. Louie fell in love with a woman in his apartment building, but she was from Hungary, and had to move back. In this episode, he's mourning her move, and talking to his nutty neighbor/doctor about it in an opening scene. He's bummed, he's heartbroken, and his nutty doctor says maybe one of the most brilliant things I've ever heard about heartbreak:

I've been dealing with heartbreak a lot lately - getting over it myself, seeing friends go through it - so that's probably why this touched me so much. We've all dealt with it. But I've noticed that when I start to feel it coming on, I get this odd excitement about it. It sucks, but it reminds me I'm alive. This clip speaks to exactly what the experience should be like, at least in my opinion. When I'm trying to coach a friend through it, I often want to pass along this "idea", but I struggle getting him/her to understand exactly what I mean about that weird positive aspect of feeling hurt, so I end up dropping it. But I'm thankful that this nutty doctor confirms that maybe it's not such a far-fetched idea after all...

Or maybe we're just both nutty.

hope in a "hopeless" place

(Rihanna? Hello?)

This is going to be very short. It's one of those too-hot-outside-and-inside-to-do-anything kind of nights, but I wanted to make sure this got acknowledged in this little space of mine.

I work at a family homeless shelter. After 10 years of different rounds of staff working to grow this place into what it is now (it's really great), we have officially outgrown our teeny tiny closet of a shared church office and are moving into a big, brand new, beautiful place a few blocks away. With that, comes a lot of packing and going through tons and tons of old papers, boxes, and so on.

My boss - our Executive Director who has been with the shelter since the beginning - was going through some old files when she stumbled upon this sweet piece of paper:

"McKala Grace. Born 5:40 AM Sunday 3/9/03 in the Goose Hollow Shelter lounge - on the couch!"
("Goose Hollow Shelter" is the name of the shelter that our families sleep in at night.)

It's hard to work in a shelter - especially one that focuses its work on children experiencing homelessness - but this sweet piece of paper served as such a good reminder to me that, although these families don't have a house yet, many have indeed found a home here.

No one wants to be living in a homeless shelter, especially with your kids at your side, and although at times it may seem like a place where your life is falling apart, just like that, life can start again.