I have created a new drinking game called “Jon Kabat-Zinn”. I created this game because I think it needs to be out in the world, but because I can’t drink without falling asleep, it’s for others to play. I could play it and drink water or tea, but let’s face it, a drinking game where you slam water just isn’t…wild. 

And I want wild. But I also want sober.

So you get drunk and tell me about the wild times.

(Yes, I am fully aware I can be wild while sober because I am wild while sober, but for the sake of what I am writing, just play along with me because you already started reading and it’s not going to be a long piece, so really, what do you have to lose? This time spent with my writing could come between you and stepping out into the road and getting hit by a car.)

Here’s the game: read any book about health that touches on mindfulness and/or meditation and every time the name “Jon Kabat-Zinn” is mentioned, drink. 

You better drink out of tiny dentist cups because you are going to get hammered otherwise. 

What I am telling you is that this guy knows his stuff.

Therefore, I have a fantasy when it comes to Jon Kabat-Zinn. It came about the twenty-seventh time I did his hour-long meditation he leads during his Master Class. I love his voice. He was born in New York and lives (I think) in Massachusetts, and he sounds like it. To me he sounds like home. Meditating to the sound of home is lovely. 

This is what I imagined the twenty-seventh time as I was lying on the floor, floating: that when I was born, the attending doctor and nurses had been trained by Jon Kabat-Zinn in mindfulness and meditation and stress-reduction and they pressed play on a recorded, looped meditation that magically was inserted into my ear in a painless and unobtrusive way, and it went on and on until I died. 

The meditation would be named FOR BABIES WHO LOSE THEIR MOTHERSHIP and it would go something like this: Feel your skin. It is both yours and your mother’s and your father’s. Feel the warmth of you. You have a heart that plays your song. Your heart sings day and night so you are never alone. Do you feel how full you are beneath your skin? You are stuffed full of life. You are full of yourself and your mother and father and their mothers and fathers for generations and generations and years and days. You are history wrapped in such a way that you can be held, that you can both inhale and exhale and know this is your body taking care of you and that even when you are terrified, you are safe. You are safe. You are safe. You are safe. You are the container of you, and you are safe. She did not leave entirely. She is in you. You are going to be okay. You are okay now. Keep breathing. Use your words. Swear if you want to. Kick chairs when the rage of abandonment hits. It’s okay. There’s always an IKEA nearby to get replacement chairs.

Unlike Jon Kabat-Zinn, I did not get a Ph.D from M.I.T, but I did get an M.F.A. from University of Oregon. This means I can make stuff up while he can explain why the body works the way it does in ways that are based on science. Adopted people need science-based people to explain to the world why losing your mother fucks with your brain and your skin and your everything else. Adopted people need mindfulness and meditation teachers to get us to relax and to feel some hope that maybe we can find a way to be ourselves.

Dear Jon Kabat-Zinn, if you press your ear to the wall, you can hear the lost babies crying. Mothers are meant to keep their children, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and we need some powerful incantations to help us along the rocky road to I can live without her. 

Maybe this could be your second Master Class: meditations for those who miss their moms. 

Thank you in advance. 

Namaste.

I’m sorry if the drinking game is in any way offensive. Humor is risky business.