Joys! blog

Dang!  I can't figure out how to embed the photo in this post, so I regret you'll have the disadvantage of having to follow the link to see it. 

It's not me, and certainly not Mr. M, in case you were wondering.  But I'd love to be so bold, to feel such freedom and comfortable-ness in such a natural act.

Once again, I'm indebted to the TravelinOma for the photo, and the Be Real assignment that follows.

~Describe yourself from a friend's point of view. Does she know the real you? Do you want her to?

I think there's only been one person in my life who knew the real me, the real-and-complete picture of who I see myself to be ... and who loved me as she saw me.  That was Colleen, my "fairy godmother," my friend and former therapist.  When she was my therapist, I bared myself to her completely.  I learned in ten years of therapy that it was not only safe to be totally authentic, it was the best way -- maybe the only way -- to truly heal.  And then after I left therapy and continued/built a friendship with her, I still seldom held anything back (at least, until she got very, very sick).

And then, a year ago last week, Colleen was admitted to the hospital and a few days later, had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from her brain.  By March, she made her transition to the great Next Thing.  (It's so hard to write the word "death" about her, partly because of who she was/is and partly because of what I believe about "death" ... but some folks don't understand the change in state if I don't use the D word.)

Aside from the day-to-day missing her -- missing her stretching and sometimes snoring next to me in weekly yoga classes, for instance -- my deepest loss is the loss of that knowingness of me that only she held.  It's not that I actively hide much of myself from the people closest to me, or even that I have to hide much of myself from the world at large, but there simply isn't enough time for anyone else to know all there is to know about me, there isn't enough history of knowing me.  So I am alone in an unexpected way, with an unexpected depth of pain.

I suppose my task is to move forward without focusing on this past, this lack.  Not to begrudge others from what I can share with them today, nor to be frustrated or angry with them for not knowing me the way she did.  And I imagine it will take some time to build friendships that I can trust for the depths of intimacy.  But surely, in the 30- to 50-years ahead of me in life, I will find fully intimate friendships again.

Back to the photo, it's easy to picture myself with Colleen in that pose, walking naked into the surf together.  We hottubbed together in the nude often enough, showered in the gang showers at the Y on a regular basis.  Never was there any romance between us, but I learned an easy physicality with her that's been an ongoing gift.  So, so many gifts.

And although this doesn't feel like a well-composed ending, it's time for me to step away from the computer, take a shower (to get back in touch with my physicality as well as to cleanse my skin and hair), and enjoy some real life.  I invite you to write the assignment, and then to do the same -- be real!

I wrote it but kept it private.  How about you?

I'd almost forgotten this blog (again) and then a friend of mine asked me about it the other day.  Hmm.

And today I've been websurfing, and found an online writing class that intrigues me.  This post in particular inspires me, so I will link to it first and then attempt to follow the directions myself, privately, as assigned.  (Don't worry: the assignment isn't a killer piece of writing to do. You can do it!)

At this moment, I have insufficient time to write any of the myriad topics circling around inside me, but I've felt compelled to post to this blog once again, with an intention of regularity.  My commitment to joy is feeling like it needs to become a priority again, following the long illness and then transition of my beloved fairy godmother.

More to come.  I just wanted to make my intentions known.

I am a firm believer, from years and years of life experience, that Life Gets Better if you let the bad things go and not stay focused on/entrenched in them.   Life on this planet right now really is an ongoing lesson in change and transition.  It's helpful, if you can remember that you're existing in a Stream of Wellbeing, that as long as you don't cling to Bad Stuff, the stream will carry you along to someplace better, more beautiful and enjoyable and even exciting.

In my experience, when you're in A Bad Situation, it's best to look around to learn what you can from that situation and then get OUT of it.  Think a moment to see if you've learned things already, and know that you'll probably learn more with more reflection and time.  Okay, so now you're moving on ... sooner than you expected, certainly, but sometimes it doesn't matter who initiates the break.  It may feel rough for awhile until you find your footing beneath you again, but life WILL get better again.  I promise.

Right now, you're in shock.  Your job in the moment is to be as gentle with yourself as possible right now until you can move to the next stage of your life.  See if you can find The Good Parent place within yourselves, and think of The Shocked Person as a small child who you love -- parents can't take away everything that's hurtful or shocking to little people, but they can find ways to soothe and nurture and support little people while they're going through rough times.  Do this for yourselves, and for each other.  Don't let The Little Shocked People be in charge of your lives these days, at least for no more than an hour or so at a time -- don't go on big spending sprees or think that a big screen TV will be the best gift Santa could bring you this year, don't eat crap every meal or chocolate candy for dinner, don't let yourself watch schlock TV or play WoW for more than an hour or two at a time.  Remember to get to bed at reasonable times and try to sleep reasonable amounts.  Sleep is reparative.   Eat chicken soup (or the veg equivalent).  Snuggle with that gorgeous baby of yours and remember that the three of you form an invincible family unit: that his love for YOU is just as sustaining as yours for him.  His giggles and smiles and snurfles can remind you that you still have plenty in the world to smile about.

When you can, count your blessings.  Among them are the lessons learned the hard way.  Be grateful that you're smart, healthy, strong people, that you have supportive family and friends, that you live in a country with lots of opportunity (and some support mechanisms, however imperfect, that you will be able to rely on).  Don't live within your fear, but remember that, under all the perceived threats, your Spirit is alive and well and will remain so.  Even if every worst case scenario would appear in your lives (and they won't all come crashing down at once, trust me), Who You Are will remain, and can be strong and unscathed, and you can be grateful for that.  The love you feel for one another, and the love you *get* from one another, is as sustaining as oxygen:  breathe it in, and breathe it out toward each other.

Gratitude for the littlest things can add up to help you feel a wee bit better, and then a wee bit better than that, and better than that, and so on:  be thankful for fresh air to breathe, for the warmth of snuggly blankets and PJs, for soup that tastes good and is good for you, for the sensation of your lover's lips on yours, for the sweet smell of baby skin, for your ability to soothe and feed your child from your own body, for the love you've experienced and known to be True in your lives.  Don't simply say the words:  FEEL the goodness of these sensations, and be grateful that you can feel them.  Soak up the healing goodness of these things and allow each of them to heal you in small ways, and allow each small healing to build upon the previous one.

The goal isn't for you to wave a magic wand and suddenly feel ecstatic.  The goal is for you to feel just slightly better than you do right now:  instead of feeling despair and powerless and depressed, it's better even if you feel somewhat unworthy of all the gifts the Universe has given you ... better still to feel jealous of people who are more secure, or rageful and hate of the people who instigated this period of shock and despair.  Eventually you can work your way up from that hate to feeling merely discouraged or worried or doubtful or impatient.  If you find yourself feeling really enraged right now, that's an IMPROVEMENT over feeling desperate.  Don't let folks shut down your feelings, whatever they are.  Find the energy within them and reach for a slightly better feeling than what you're "enjoying" in the moment.

Feelings are fluid, and they're *entirely* changeable.  That's not to say anyone's found a magic wand or a lightswitch to flick, but you CAN choose what you're thinking about, and you can choose to think about something a wee wisp better than what you did a minute ago.  Doing so, moment by moment, your perspective can improve and your feelings can help you remember that you're still in the Stream of Wellbeing even if, for the moment, you feel as though someone's dropped a big rock on your head.  In time, the Stream will help scootch you out from under that rock and float or swim onward to the next experience that will feed and sustain and heal you.

Some days, joy comes easy. Some days, notsomuch.

This morning I'm feeling pretty darned joyful.  I've got a big trip/meetup with friends in San Francisco to look forward to, I've been crafting out the wazoo in preparation for it, I'm doing research on fabulous places to visit while I'm there, and I'm getting a break from 24/7 motherhood for more than 72 hours, straight, for the first time since my #1 son was born 7 years ago!  I'm so excited these days that I'm practically dancing everywhere I go!

But there are other days which I have experienced more often than not, when joy isn't my first reaction to the day. Or night:  I'm a fairly regular insomniac, and I find those hours, in particular, I'm especially prone to worrying and catastrophizing.  Years ago, when I was working 12-Step programs on an hourly basis, my friend Frank taught me to say this to myself when I was insomniac:  "I do not do my best thinking at 3 a.m.  I think much more clearly at ... 10 a.m.  Yes, at 10 a.m. tomorrow I will be awake and I don't have another obligation, and I will think about this problem then, so now I can go back to sleep, because I have set an appointment with myself to attend to this issue."  Sometimes it worked.  And Frank's corollary trick was that, if at 10 a.m. the next day, I didn't happen to remember that I'd set an appointment with myself, then I'd have to set a NEW appointment, and still not worry about it at a random time.  That part was crazier, it seemed, but it also made sense in a strange way:  if I came to a situation from a worrying perspective, then I was unlikely to be able to solve it at that time.  But if I made a plan to think about it from a "professional, objective" place (aka, the mindset I have to get into when I have an appointment with someone), then I have a better chance of coming up with a healthy, sane solution.  Today as I'm writing, it reminds me of an exercise that Christine Kane wrote about in her blog recently, about thinking of situations not as "problems" but as "opportunities."

Another response to insomnia that I've learned, and sometimes remember to practice, came from Wayne Dyer.  I can't give you a specific citation to where and when he said it, but he wrote once that, when he awakened at an unusually early hour, or in the middle of the night, that he immediately got up and went to sit down with a notepad and write whatever came to him.  He believes that the middle of the night is when God wakes you, able to get your attention because your other distractions are quiet.  I think he said this idea came to him from a Bible passage, although I'm unable to give you that citation, either.

But in my experience, it's a helpful practice, sort of a variation on my basic meditation practice.  So one night a couple of weeks ago, when I awakened at 2 a.m. for no good reason and with a couple of lines from a song repeating endlessly in my head, I heeded the lyrics and the memory of Dyer's directive.  I hauled myself out of bed, and went to sit in my living room with a notebook and a pen, and wrote this:

"And this is Grace, an invitation to be beautiful."

It's 2:30 a.m. and I'm insomniac, with that song lyric repeating itself over and over. Let's see if Wayne Dyer is right and God has awakened me in this early hour to tell me something.

I closed my eyes and started listening to my breathing, and here's what came to me:  "Of all the bazillions of things going on that are going RIGHT, why are you worrying about anything?  Breathing is good ...” [and I came back to my breathing, noticing that, yes, breathing is good.]  “Your heart pumping blood throughout your body, carrying oxygen and nutrients … that’s good, too, right?”  [and yes, I could hear my heartbeat, feel my pulse and imagine the healthy heart pumping].  “Your digestion is working properly … Really, your whole body is really working quite well.”  

It was true, and as I breathed and listened to my breath and sat with and within my body, I felt my shoulders drop.  I hadn’t realized that, in my worrying and tension, they’d risen to my ears, but now I could relax.  As I sat and breathed, my awareness extended outwardly.  “And the trees outside, they breathe in your carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen for you, that’s good.”  Yes, it’s remarkable, the system that provides all living things with the air they need.  “And the water cycle, rain turning into puddles, into streams and rivers and oceans, then evaporating and becoming clouds, and rain again.  That’s good, too.”

With this whispered lullaby soothing my anxious monkey mind, I felt appreciative for my breath, for my body, for the trees and clouds outside, for the world and the universe and everything beyond it … and I felt a deep relaxation moving through me.  The childhood prayer, “God is good” floated through my mind, and I smiled, preferring that to the nighttime prayer I’d been taught as a child, and preferring this method of checking in with God even more.  After a few more moments of listening to nothing but my own breath, feeling love and the oneness of life and gratitude, I closed my notebook and returned to bed, falling almost instantly back to sleep.

Interestingly, although I’d intended to follow Dyer’s lead and write down in my notebook what I “heard,” I didn’t feel moved to do so in the moment.  I felt moved to go back to bed, and I did, dropping to sleep with ease that’s normally unknown to me when I wake up with insomnia.  And in the morning, I got the clear message that I needed to write about the experience in this blog … but not just yet.

Until now.  Despite the long list of things I need to do today, I’m moved to write this now.  (And apparently, because the Vox doesn’t like a particular angled symbol I’d used instead of the squared-off parenthesis in my earlier draft, to spend even more time reconstructing and polishing the rest of the post!)

For those who are curious, the lyrics that were cycling through my consciousness came from Sara Groves, “Add to the Beauty,” one of the songs on my “Good vibe” playlist that I posted earlier.  Normally, I don’t seek out “Christian music,” but I first heard this song courtesy of the Onecast, and I’m very grateful for the introduction.

We come with beautiful secrets
We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls
We come to every new morning
With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold

Redemption comes in strange place, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That's burning up inside

It comes in small inspirations
It brings redemption to life and work
To our lives and our work

It comes in loving community
It comes in helping a soul find it's worth

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That's burning up inside

This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful
This is grace, an invitation

Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces
Calling out our best

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That's burning up inside

So.  Now it’s posted, and I hope that you’ll share with me what feelings this post has brought up for you.  Thanks for reading.  (And if you read the first half of this once already today, thanks for coming back for the rest of it!)

I've been reading Peter Walsh's It's All Too Much, and he says the most important assignment that he always gives his clients is

Imagine the life you want to live.

Once you have that vision, you can figure out the details of how to get there, not the least of which is how to purge, organize, and arrange your home to help facilitate that imagined life.   Clutter isn't about the "stuff," he says.

So this assignment has my attention these days, the possibilities of creating my own ideal life. I've spent the last seven and a half years acting primarily in response to my children.  When you're a nursing mother, an attachment parent, a practicing Nonviolent Communicator, you learn how to recognize and meet your needs while finding joy and satisfaction in being of service to your growing children.  Becoming a parent, particularly to a newborn, is really akin to starting out on an 18-year Buddhist retreat or joining a monastery.  You can rebel against your new reality, but short of abandoning your child (literally or emotionally), you're pretty much in it for the long haul.  It makes sense to me to learn how to adjust my thoughts, and thus my emotions, rather than demanding that my world adjust for me.

But this fall my baby will start kindergarten, alongside his big brother, who will enter first grade.  For the first time since my #1 son was born, I will have the hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, to myself.  Rather than slipping into this new era thoughtlessly, it seems an ideal time to Imagine the Ideal Life.

I'm lucky enough to have a husband and partner who's willing to support me financially, and I recognize that this fact puts me into a sort of protected space that many of you don't have access to.  Still, I'd encourage you to spend some time imagining what's truly ideal for you, even if it seems unobtainable, given your current circumstances.  Surely you can take some steps toward that ideal place, which will be an improvement over your current situation.  Or maybe you'll discover, as I have, that Ideal really is right around the corner, near enough to touch.  Maybe finding Ideal is less a matter of moving dramatically than it is cleaning your proverbial windows, seeing your current surroundings in a new light, reframing what's already here.

Today I spent a couple of hours working in my flower beds in front of my house, an activity I haven't done in two years.  Somehow, every time I get away from working in the dirt for awhile, I forget how satisfying it is, how much I enjoy it.  Similarly, I can get caught up in the old voices in my head that insist that I hate any and all housework, and forget how satisfying it is to fold fresh laundry or have all my dishes clean, for instance.  I get caught up in The Stories I Tell, as Pema Chodron says, rather than the experience itself.

I still don't have a clear picture of The Life I Want To Live, but certainly, some facets of it are coming into view.  I expect you'll be reading more from me on this subject as it becomes clearer to me, and I invite you to leave me a comment with your own insights and perspectives.

Here's an 18-minute video that's well worth watching even if you're not a designer, about how design can make you happy.  There's a lot to think about in there.

(I'd have uploaded it, but it's too big for Vox.)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/50

(And yes, I'm cogitating about more posts, lengthier ones with original thought in them ... they're cooking, I promise.)

Never fear!  I haven't abandoned this blog, only gotten distracted awhile!  And I'm working on a major, mondo message to post, but I've got a lot of polishing to do on it.  No point in putting something on here that will confused rather than enlighten, right?

In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you my "Good vibe" playlist on my iPod.  This is the music I listen to when I want to boost my spirit, my emotional vibe.  Some of the music is there because I have sentimental connection to it, some because of the rockin' rhythm, and others purely because of the lyrics.  (And some of it is decidedly naughty, but I find it pleasurably so.)  Most of the time when I listen to this playlist, I'll skip over particular songs, and I'm always on the lookout for new music to add and shuffle through here.

If you've got suggestions for music to add, I would LOVE to hear them.  What music makes YOU feel happier?

Name, Artist
You Are The Universe    The Brand New Heavies
May I Suggest? (Duet with Michael Feinstein)    Lee Lessack
This Is Your Life    Joe Cocker
Back To Me    Kathleen Edwards
Don't Worry, Be Happy    Bobby McFerrin
Do You Realize??    The Flaming Lips
Exactly    Amy Steinberg
Add to the Beauty    Sara Groves
Make Someone Happy    Jimmy Durante
The Good You Do    Christine Kane
Funkier than a Mosquito's Tweeter remix    bangers&mash/ Nina Simone
Better Than This    Kimberley Locke
Better Together    Jack Johnson
U + Ur Hand (explicit language)    P!nk
Only One Shoe    Carrie Newcomer
Unwritten    Natasha Bedingfield
Don't Stop    Fleetwood Mac
Wonder (Remastered Single Version)    Natalie Merchant
If You Love    Howard Jones
No One Is To Blame (New Recording)    Howard Jones
Things Can Only Get Better    Howard Jones
We Make The Weather    Howard Jones
You're The Buddha    Howard Jones
O-o-h Child-The Posies    Various Artists - Pravda Records
P.O.V. Waltz    Harry Nilsson
I Feel The Earth Move    Carole King
Think About Your Troubles    Harry Nilsson
Anyone At All    Carole King
   
   

And please do share!  Tell me what you like, and if anything here surprised you.  If there are some that you want to hear and can't find, maybe I'll post some of them here in the audio section.