Our interstate move of 325 miles due east on U.S. Highway 40, formerly Route 66, that iconic highway through the American Southwest, took us from one rental home to another. A month later, I sat in a closed graduate seminar, having received a coveted “yellow card.” By some stroke of magic, the professor had read my master’s thesis.
“I know your work,” he said, signing the over-enrollment waiver.
For the next several years, I studied, wrote, taught, ate, slept, and moved through marriage and motherhood (and one more rental)—all toward the goal of completing the PhD in English while my then-husband cycled through professional jobs and both of us recovered from eight years of cross-cultural Christian ministry.
My academic life, and increasingly my social life, revolved around the University of New Mexico campus and environs. As it happened, we attended a church that afforded convenient parking within walking distance of the Humanities building, a treasured blessing long after I stopped attending services. The last sermon I heard was Rev. Kathy preaching on the wedding at Cana, when Jesus turned water into wine.
“What do we do with the signs we see?” she said. “What are we seeing that we’re not seeing?”
I received communion and participated in the comforting ritual exchange, Peace be with you…And also with you, both for the last time before devoting myself to studying for three comprehensive exams and diving into the depths of dissertation research. For years, I deeply missed the act of someone granting me peace I couldn’t find within myself. The church had offered stale encouragement when we sought pastoral counsel about our dying marriage. The more-prayer, more-Bible, and more-faith formula wasn’t working. I appreciated the large bags of non-perishables left at our front door, but peanut butter and canned tuna could do little toward healing the family or completing the PhD.
The river of circumstances cascaded onto my shoulders and threatened to sweep my children into its fluvial current. To stay afloat, I would call my childhood friend, Mandy, and visit my therapist. Thus buoyed, I passed all three comp exams, but self-doubt had become a habit.
Anxiety worsened after the initial euphoria of my husband’s having moved out of the house, at my request. Enough. I asked my therapist “should I stay or go?” months into the separation. Instead of answering, she pointed to my bandaged right index finger.
“Oh, this? Sharp knife, soapy water, and stitches. And my eyes felt gritty, like sand. The doctor gave me drops for scratched corneas and told me to stop reading!”
“What is your body telling you?”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. ‘Don’t self-sabotage’?”
“See, you do know. What else?”
“Slow down. Pay attention.”
A few days later, after taking both kids to school, I parked in our driveway and set out on foot, walking east along the concrete ditch and uphill on the arroyo trail toward Albuquerque’s mountains. Glancing at my watch, I picked up the pace. Keep going, Andrea. Walk away from the marriage and stay on the dissertation path. You can do this. You will finish.
Wildflowers shot out of cement cracks in scraggly outbursts of purple and orange. I identified them aloud with each step—NIGHT-shade, PEN-ste-mon—the same way I had committed facts to memory before taking exams. As I named them, PAINT-brush, GLOBE mallow, I thought about emerging and growing according to one’s nature. Even under duress.
After a mile, I headed back downhill toward the black escarpment of the city’s west mesa and the distant, dormant volcanoes. Mindful of the path, I noticed something brown and white nestled in an asphalt crevice. I stopped. My brain registered an instantaneous craving. Listen to your body.
I picked up the stale half-cigarette and held it close to my face, inhaling the scent of cured tobacco. I don’t smoke, but placed the stub safely in my pocket. At home, I found a book of matches next to bamboo skewers and birthday candles. Before I could talk myself out of it, I unlocked the back door and stepped outside onto the dusty, un-tidy patio. I took the stub out of my pocket and sat in the aluminum lounge chair, careful to avoid the ripped webbing.
Two unsuccessful strikes. A flame held to the cigarette. Bitter nicotine taste. Your body is telling you something. Lips tight around the speckled filter, I knew better than to inhale that first draw into my unpracticed lungs, so I released the smoke cloud through an open mouth.
Before my teenage Christian conversion, Mandy and I shared menthol cigarettes purloined from Mom’s purse or, when we had one, a joint. She’d go home and I’d do my homework until 5:30 pm when mom came home from work.
But life changed when Mom underwent her first neck surgery and my step-dad went to jail for embezzlement. I washed dishes, dusted the living room, and carried laundry to and from coin-operated machines. I fielded phone calls from bill collectors, made dinner. Mom and I were both tired. Those adolescent scenes triggered muscle memory.
Why smoke now? Should I stay or should I go?
I stubbed the cigarette into the sink and shredded it in the garbage disposal with hot, soapy water. After a quick shower, piece of toast, and second cup of coffee, I sat at the table with my books, pens, and sticky notes.
After dinner, homework, baths, pajamas, and snuggles, the kids settled into bed with books and dreams. Once they were asleep, I called Mandy. “I felt like I was back on that cinderblock wall!”
“Do you remember when we poked tobacco out of your step-dad’s unfiltered cigarettes and replaced it with dried rosemary from your Mom’s spices?”
“God, we were desperate ninth graders!”
“But you’re not desperate now, just stressed. I get it—you’re the mom, you’re the grad student, but the next time you need a cigarette, honey, buy yourself a fresh pack!”
BIO: Andrea Penner resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she writes poetry, prose, and memoir. Her work appears in anthologies and literary magazines, including Neologism and Sky Island Journal, and forthcoming in Open Shutter. Her second book of poetry, Rabbit Sun, Lotus Moon, was a 2017 poetry finalist for an Arizona/New Mexico Book Award. Once upon a time, she did full-time Christian ministry, but left the faith to find faith in herself, all of which is the subject of her memoir-in-progress. You can find more of her work on Substack, In Our Own Ink on Substack.
feminismandreligion.com 
Wow – it really is a radical act to tell the truth – to acknowledge how addiction operates, to listen to our bodies – oh what a challenge in this age of the Anthropocene – when individuals,, groups, parties, politics, culture, Earth are split into fragments – fragments that ‘rule’ – how do we trust our bodies to lead when we don’t even have a connection to them? the Mind – Body Split is endemic… this is a powerful essay that examples the craziness we are living. Thank you.
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Thank you, Sara, for engaging with this topic. Even without addiction (in my case), the body latches onto momentary solutions. We can harness the craziness when we listen carefully and respond thoughtfully to the message. Revolutionary moments can be quiet, internal–as was much of my journey–but I’m also exploring the loud, explosive, finding-my-voice events in the memoir. Stay tuned…. :)
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Yes, our body is always communicating with us. Unfortunately, since we are rarely paying attention, it often resorts to pain and sickness-essentially shouting and even temper tantrums- for us to listen. Im glad you heard the message before your body took more radical measures!
What really strikes me in your story, however, is how we are not stagnant. We tend to cling to identities as pillars and foundations to bolster us. Your story, your life, is a magnificent illustration of our need to periodically shed our skin, cocoon and emerge as something all together different. The child, the teenager, the wife, the minister, these were (and perhaps still are) true selves- they simply are not your full self.
When I was only 20, I struggled with the god I had loved so dearly, the God of my Christian faith, which was male, suddenly understanding that as long as God was male, male would always be “god” in our culture. Yet, is not God always creating? Always pregnant and birthing? Be* Being * Becoming. Understanding this-physically as well as intellectually- has never left me. The Divine is deeply feminine and so therefore, I am divine. Understanding ourselves this way is incredibly liberating. All the roles and identities that we claim can fall away or morph as needed.
Your story is a beautiful testament to this, reminding others of our true essence and endless possibilities.
Thank you for sharing. Blessings and Blessed Be 🧡🔆
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Yes, Jan — the true self, but not the complete self. I like that. Thank you. ~ When I taught college English while a mom with two young children, I would sometimes take a few of my kids’ books to ENGL 101 as object lessons (e.g., Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax when we were doing a unit on the environment to complement the academic texts by Dillard, McPhee, et.). I shared with the students that when they got me as an instructor, they got all of me–mom, teacher, grad student, etc.–I didn’t have the energy to compartmentalize and split myself into separate entities–one body, one person! At that time, Alannis Morriset’s anthem was popular, and if it came on the radio as I was driving home from class, I’d belt it out. You know the one, when she claims herself as “a bitch…lover…child…mother.” who “wouldn’t have it any other way”!
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Such a wonderful, insightful post and a truly important message. Your post made me think of all the ways girls and women are taught to NOT listen to their bodies in our western society even from infancy — to wear clothes that are uncomfortable, restricting, and sometimes injurious, to not listen to that voice from our gut saying that something or someone is dangerous, to keep on going to meet family and professional responsibilities long past the time when our bodies need rest or to risk injury or death to meet our perceived cultural responsibilities. May we all remember that the phrase “listen to your body” is a prayer to bring us to the sacred responsibility of caring for this gift of our bodies we have been given.
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Carolyn: Thank you for the comment. I am always looking for new ways to think about “prayer”–it is a human impulse, yet so burdened by religious baggage that sometimes I am reluctant to apply it to my experience. I appreciate the insight you bring, that maybe “listen to your body” is a prayer.
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Thanks Carolyn, I agree, what scripts we have swallowed whole!
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What a fun story! There is a saying, the body never lies. Feelings are more accurate than thoughts and the gateway to our intuition. So much healing is possible when we can simply allow ourselves to feel what we are feeling, instead of blocking our feelings, we let the energy that is feelings run through us, beautiful.
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Thank you, Cate. “Scripts we have swallowed whole….” and the recordings we replay in our heads. (I almost said, “tapes,” but I guess that’s so twentieth century!)
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Yes Andrea generational scripts that girls and women swallowed whole, are played back to us in tapes and now we get to spit these tapes up for good! This is an exciting time for girls and women, in spite of the push back we are witnessing, we rise again! Women are now coming together, patriarchies worst fear and it’s exactly what we need to do. This is how we end 5,000 years of patriarchy, by naming what happened, by women telling our story, beautiful! What I know for sure is that patriarchy created/creates mental illness, incredible suffering, alienation from ourselves and God, we are cells of God everything is. I am not willing to defend my worth/existence to mortal men or women (who want to keep girls and women small), God is who we are, that’s it.
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Such an important reminder! Listen to your body- our authentic authority and divine self communicate with us in an intimate way in our physical being. I was struck by your accounting of how you noticed the plants that were growing in the cracks in the cement and could call them by name. A deep connection to be sure. You thought about “growing and emerging according to nature.” Then I’ll admit that I was surprised when you also found a cigarette butt to engage with. Tobacco is also a plant and it sounds like one that has lessons for you to continue to explore.
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Thank you for reading and responding. If tobacco has anything more to teach me (and it may), it won’t be from lighting up! I often write and think while I walk. I write poetry, free verse, but sometimes when I walk, the rhythm turns to rhyme in my head–I repeat the words over and over, timed with my footsteps, so by the time I get home, I have a poem I can write down (and revise). It’s how I wrote “Bury me under the chocolate flower/ scatter me to the sea/ lower me under loamy earth/ covered with aspen leaves….” In the final stanza, I repeat lines to conclude: “…so bury me under the chocolate flower/ scatter me to the sea/ release me in a river’s meander/ let me choose my eternity.” (Rabbit Sun, Lotus Moon, 2017).
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If I have more lessons to learn from tobacco (and I may), I will learn them without lighting up and inhaling! Walking and naming are meditative for me, and they help me write poetry. I typically don’t use rhyme schemes in my poems, but the ones composed on walks are often more lyrical. You can hear it in these lines from “Bury Me Under the Chocolate Flower” from Rabbit Sun, Lotus Moon (2017):
Bury me under the chocolate flower
scatter me to the sea
lower me into loamy earth
covered with aspen leaves…..
[and after 2 more stanzas, it ends]
so bury me under the chocolate flower
scatter me to the sea
release me in a river’s meander
let me choose my eternity.
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