me as i am

oklahoma, the cold, and the world :)

2011-12-18T08:08:00.000-08:00

i love the fall and the winter. i love the leaves turning. then the leaves falling and the branches bare. the chance for snow. the increase in nighttime. one year, i lived in a country that didn't have "daylight savings time" and it felt wonderful. growing up with shifting our clocks one hour back in the fall and one forward in the spring, i never realized how utterly disorienting it is at so many levels. it felt so natural and comfortable to have no disruption to the shortening of the day that winter. hopefully one day our country will eliminate that practice.

the cold, especially rainy or cloudy cold days are my favorite. i love snuggling by a fire, wrapped in a cozy blanket. heading out into the brisk air with my old yellow scarf and mittens. corduroy pants. bulky sweaters. thick argyle socks. so why don't i live in a colder year-round climate? only because when i met my husband, he was finally, for the first time in his life, establishing roots. having never lived somewhere for more than one year at a time, he'd now lived in this town and worked at this job he loved for years! i grew up in one house from the age of one until i left at eighteen for college. he went to about ten different grade schools. didn't even remember all the homes he'd slept in, or teachers who'd taught him.

i didn't really need to move away. i was happy to stay. oklahoma is a place i always wanted to leave, growing up. being a liberal and agnostic, in a conservative and strongly christian state, i always felt odd here. i wanted to go somewhere where i would feel surrounded by like-minded people.

but now that i'm grown, i realize that i'm ALWAYS surrounded by like-minded people :)

even if our beliefs are different...even if our politics are different...when i look at another person, i know that they have a story. they have a family they came from. they have memories that affect them. they feel love and pain and sorrow and joy. at least i hope they do. i think about the fact that whatever clothes they are wearing, they picked those out. they looked at that shirt on the hanger this morning and chose to wear it today. or maybe they were too tired to think and just put it on thoughtlessly. maybe they looked in the mirror while brushing their teeth. maybe they thought something about themselves or about the day ahead of them. maybe they wanted to say something important to someone this morning but didn't have the time.

whatever our connections, i know that they are there.

i know i'm not alone in this world. no matter where i am.

my favorite thing i learned from traveling, working and living in other countries, is that the world actually is small. it doesn't matter if someone speaks a different language from me, grew up in a country that was impoverished or war-torn, has a completely different historical and religious landscape...we are all human. we are all in this together.

“A stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet.” ~Will Rogers

what i really wish we would say in schools each morning :)

getting caught up

2011-12-15T15:10:00.000-08:00

sometimes i have no idea what makes me cranky or irritable. i'd always like to be able to blame it on something biological like illness or lack of sleep or hormones :) but sometimes i'm cranky even with nothing easy to blame it on.

this week i have been trying to get caught up on the house business. i try to keep on top of the records and filing and organization and recycling and laundry and all that sort of business. but this summer we moved and i'm still trying to comfortably ride this horse that started running much too fast for me a few months ago.

it's hard to admit when you feel overwhelmed or behind...

when you have control issues :)

for me though, it's helpful when i check in on things like this, because if i've gotten behind, it's another indicator of how i'm doing overall. and when i see i got behind, i can think, oh no wonder i've been feeling cranky and overwhelmed.

i realize that horse i'm riding has been dragging me along and my foot has been caught in that stirrup. so i pull myself back up and balance the books and make a big pile of recycling rubbish full of needless mail people send to the house, and then do a mountain of laundry, and put things away that piled up on the counter...

and finally that horse doesn't feel like it's running so much anymore.

we can start to mosey :)

and i can finally breathe and take in the view...

progress not perfection

2011-11-28T21:17:00.000-08:00

i did it. i was able to pause mid-conversation. catch myself in the middle of an old negative pattern. and think about what i wanted to say next.

before i said it :)

normally, when i get caught up in an upsetting dynamic, something repetitive especially, it can be so hard to break out of that. to see anything other than my own perspective. to be able to consider that the other person might actually have more to offer than i am assuming they are capable of in that moment. that the conversation could possibly go another way than how it always seems to go...

the idea is, when you find yourself slipping into an old rigid negative thought pattern or interaction with another person, you have a choice. you can break your habit. you can change your perspective. you can say something new. ask a question instead of continually trying to push your own view forward. listen instead of focusing on getting heard.

we have options.

it might not change the other person's point of view, or the way the conversation goes. but it can. it did for me the other day.

it felt like i had been having a recurring dream for years of heading down a dark corridor and i just knew none of the doors worked, so i just headed straight down the hall, running, looking for light. convinced there was none.

but this time i slowed down. paused and was able to turn to the right just a tad. and found a whole new way to go. a room opened up in front of me and all of a sudden i could breathe and see things i didn't know were there.

perhaps one day i can actually be better at all this on a regular basis. that i could get to the point where a conflict begins and instead of my flight instinct kicking in and my throat closing up and my heart racing and fear beating in my stomach...

i might just be able to say to myself instead...huh...isn't this interesting...i wonder what is going on here and what i can learn from this.

and feel calm :)

and proceed...

"Be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

it's ok to cry

2011-11-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." ~Kahlil Gibran

i never knew i was a crier growing up. my mom would cry easily and frequently, and we would even laugh at her, "there goes mom again, crying..." and she would even laugh at herself. it was not a disturbing thing. we all were used to it, it seemed.

somewhere around age 18, i was able to connect to my own emotions for what felt like the first time since i was really little. somewhere along the way growing up, i learned to stuff my feelings, to numb, to detach, to the extent that i never knew what i was feeling. even that i felt. i never cried. i didn't care about much of anything or anyone.

but given the freedom to speak my mind about what mattered most to me, to be my true self, without having to please or live up to expectation, just to feel truly listened to and cared about, i discovered what an emotional person i could be. that i'm not so different from my mother :)

and by emotional i don't mean "dramatic" or "unreasonable."

i have always been confused (and irritated) when people claim that reason and emotion are in opposition.

to me, feelings are thoughts, as the reasons why we feel what we do are not separate from the emotion they produce. we can understand and explain our emotions, if given the time and space to do so. sometimes we may not have the words, but that doesn't mean our feelings don't mean something. just because someone else doesn't understand our emotions, doesn't mean we are irrational.

reason and thought are the roots hidden underground, the emotions are the resulting flower we get to see on the surface.

when i learned to cry as an adult, at first i would just laugh when it was time to cry. meaning, while discussing something that tears should have accompanied, i kept giggling.

til one day, the laughter finally gave way to actual tears. and once they started, it was like a dam had burst and i cried at the drop of a hat for about two weeks.

and the best thing about learning to cry is that i felt liberated. i didn't feel ashamed to cry. i didn't feel like i should hide it, or worry if others seemed uncomfortable with my tears. it felt very matter of fact. like the tears had a life of their own, and who was i to stand in their way of expression.

i learned that i love to cry. which doesn't mean i love to feel sad. i'm not a wallower. i'm not morose or depressed even. not anymore. i think learning to cry freely is one thing that helped me stop being depressed. because for me, crying is a release. it's connecting to myself and letting it all go. whereas depression for me is about struggling against yourself and burying the truth of what you feel. it feels wonderful to be able to purely feel and express my true emotion. without organizing it for the sake of another person.

not only that, but i don't always cry from sadness. sometimes i cry when i'm happy, or just plain moved. a song, a film, an interaction. witnessing bravery, beauty, strength, truth. all these things can evoke tears :)

i love my emotions. i love feeling alive and inspired and thrilled and moved and sad and angry.

i still have the greatest difficulty expressing any anger honestly and directly, and even feeling it sometimes. but i'm working on that. if only it were as easy as the tears :)

at the same time, though i love my emotions, i don't want to be completely helpless to them. i think if we're not careful, our emotions can be so strong, they can cloud our perceptions of the situation. our perception of the person we're talking to. because sometimes it is our own script we are playing out. something got triggered. and we get so worked up, we don't take the time to double-check what the person actually meant by what they said. we just get carried away feeling hurt. sure we are seeing everything clearly.

so while i want to give myself the space and self-respect to honestly feel my emotions, and express them...i also want to be able to see everything clearly, and approach my feelings and reactions with inquiry and balance. to be able to see the other person truly, to see myself truly, and to be able to speak my mind ~ which to me means speaking my heart :)

frou frou's let go, put to images from one of my favorite films in the world, wings of desire

confidence

2011-11-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

do you ever feel completely tired of yourself? you hear yourself talking, or look back on what you said or did today and wish you hadn't said or done those things?

i've been feeling that way a lot lately.

if left unchecked, my tendency towards negative self-talk can get out of hand, like my asthma can get when i forget to take my daily antihistimine. i think allergies are a perfect metaphor for insecurities. because with allergies, the body reacts to harmless things as though they are dangerous to the body. just as i tend to overreact to the actions of others and see things far worse than they really are sometimes. really i just need to have a daily dose of emotional antihistimine :)

i know insecurity is one reason why i haven't been able to blog in a long time. often, i feel uncomfortable or embarrassed about what i've put out there.

the other reason i haven't been blogging is that i care too much about the opinions of certain people, and if they don't read or don't like what i write, it's really hard to feel ok about that. hard to feel ok about myself in the face of that.

because it feels like a rejection of me at a core level. because what i'm trying to do is write from my essence.

but i know i'm not the center of the universe. and just because those i care about cannot always be there for me in the way i would like them to be, doesn't mean that they don't care. it's not their job to live up to my expectations. i've been told i expect too much from people.

i listened to pema chodron's audio-cd, "unconditional confidence," last weekend and it was wonderful. what i was most drawn in by and keep thinking of over and over, is that her view on confidence is not thinking you're the best thing on earth, not the superior self-importance i tend to ascribe to confidence. or even a powerful, strong sense of self that feels completely out of my reach.

like the way i perceive susan sarandon :)

which, now that i think about it, it's really fascinating i chose susan sarandon to represent my image of confidence, because she looks just like my grandmother. who died when i was eight. who my mother always upheld as a model of perfection. a strong woman who my mother always looked up to and wanted to be like.

hmm...where does my insecurity come from? and my definition of confidence?

pema chodron says confidence is more about being gentle with yourself. when you find yourself in a pattern of self-hatred or any rigid habitual negative thought pattern, to pause, interrupt that, and start treating yourself with friendliness.

isn't that sweet?

i know i can be too hard on myself, and care too much about what others think. and there it is, in my saying i'm "too" anything.

yes, i care about what people think. yes, i'm emotional. yes, i'm vulnerable.

i want to write. to connect to myself. and share those thoughts in case anyone else out there feels similarly. so that they know they are not alone. and to hopefully help myself and anyone else know that we are ok just the way we are.

~~~
oh my goodness, i went to see if i could find a pema chodron video on this topic, and i found one! here you go:

getting out of our own way

2011-07-02T20:36:00.000-07:00

this is from r.c. gorman~ isn't it beautiful!

i talk a lot about finding "myself" and living in tune with my core and that sort of thing. and while i do believe i have a core self, a true me that i can be aligned with, or in conflict with, and that does seem to affect my overall sense of peace and well-being and how well i can get along with others....

at the same time, i find it appealing to read about the idea of transcending the ego. that there is a "self" i may think is the real me. but that might be an illusion. a combination of a lifetime of experiences in which the world has told me who i am. and sometimes i have subsequently reinforced these messages. or lived my life putting energy towards trying to prove them wrong.

one of my favorite quotes is:

"argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours." ~richard bach.

what that means to me, is that i could live my whole life believing that a certain trait is just part of who i am deep down, even to a self-defeating extent. "oh i can't do x, y or z, even if i wanted to, because i'm this sort of person." but who knows what is possible if we can let go of limiting self-perceptions. it's possible that there is no real me that can be pinned down and explained.

it's possible that thinking too much about my "self" even if it's in ways that seem positive or healthy, like "trying to take care of myself" or "trying to express myself," can sometimes instead make me feel even more disconnected and alienated from those around me. whereas, instead of trying to carve out my own little piece of life, and defend it, i could rise above and just be in the moment with those around me. not having to be any one thing or another. or needing them to be a certain way so that i can be happy, or feel more free. not having to prove anything. just relax and see what happens when this veil of self-scrutiny and self-defense are lifted.

"The third noble truth says that the cessation of suffering is letting go of holding on to ourselves." -Pema Chödrön

music

2011-06-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

i LOVE music. it can bring me out of a stuck state of mind like nothing else. bring me out of myself. or back to myself. help me feel alive. help me remember. so therapeutic.

the other night, i couldn't sleep, and i ended up staying up revising my playlist here on my blog. it was so fun! i added lots of songs i've newly discovered and love.

it amazes me how people can still make new songs. that there seems to be an endless well full of new sounds and emotions to express.

it feels as though as long as humans continue to exist on this earth, there will always be new music...

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou

being mean

2011-06-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

i started therapy again. i hadn't been in awhile and there are some problems i have that i feel like i've never quite worked through no matter the therapy. plus i've always been somewhat disappointed in each therapist i saw previously. two therapists started talking about their own problems more than i'd like. many of them were, what felt like, overly-supportive. i've always wanted to be really challenged. seen-through. called on my b.s. but most of the therpeutic experiences i've had are the "nodding supportive" type.

i might have found a good one this time. in my initial consultation with her, one of the things she said is a primary problem is that i'm "too nice" - that it's written all over my face, in every gesture, in the way i speak and carry myself. she said one of our goals she thinks should be, to make me mean.

i have always had a hard time standing up for myself. saying if i'm having a problem. or if my feelings are hurt. i have found myself going along with others. deferring. being submissive. people-pleasing. even if they are putting me down. i've ended up agreeing with them eventually. as i have chosen people to be close to who really weren't good for me, and taken their side over my own. because i found i could only be with someone who didn't like me so long, before i felt the same way about myself as they did. and i lost myself trying to please them. those were bad matches.

so part of my recent committment in trying to be healthy and authentic and strong, is to continue to try to find out what is my core, and honor that, as i've said in the last post or two.

but it never occurred to me that trying to be "mean" should ever be part of that. i've always hated mean people. and try so hard to be nice. and the world just isn't that simple. people are not always so easy to put into one category or another and that has always been so confusing.

so what i'm thinking, is that while being "mean" might never quite be a goal of mine, i need to reconsider what i think "mean" even is. standing up for myself, risking conflict, risking upsetting or heaven forbid, disappointing or frustrating another person...not walking on eggshells, hemming myself in, watching what i say, trying always to be pleasant and LIKED. instead of allowing myself just to BE. to be human. to say what i need to say. to be honest. and if what i have to say isn't what someone else wants to hear, doean't mean that the world will crash down and they'll take away my blue ribbon at the end of life for not being a "good little girl" for goodness sake.

it doesn't mean i'll ever stop trying to be considerate of how my actions and words effect others, because i'm sure i always will. but not to live my life halfway because i constantly imagine that who i am or what i think will never be good enough for everyone. because why should it be?

this song is hilarious. i love eartha kitt! take the sexuality out of it, and it's so much of how some part of me never even considered feeling, but laughs every time i watch this! :)

Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We're not inherently anything but human.
~Robin Morgan

listening within

2011-06-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

so far this has been a year of challenging decisions. have been in a position more than once of feeling in my gut that i want to turn down an opportunity that really seems like a good idea. it's been really hard to listen deep enough to what i really want, to discern what that even is amidst all the other internal voices, doubts, questions, fears, not to mention all the external input. wishes of others, advice of friends. and finally to find a way to make a decision, which honors my own instincts. to either take the leap and do something that scares me, but feels right. or turn away from something that seems crazy to turn down, but which doesn't truly feel right.

how do you listen clearly and decipher what is best for you? how can you know the truth of what you really want? especially when much of your life has been spent guided from other forces, like the will of others, aiming to please or earn love, or letting fear make your choices for you. sometimes my mind and heart feel so full of fog, i have no idea what i really want.

and i think it's ok either way. because one way or the other you find out if something was right for you. sometimes it might just not be possible to know ahead of time. and going through painful, regretful or disappointing experiences is just one more way we learn.

but meanwhile, i do want to get better at being more in touch with my core.

what inspires you? what makes you feel most alive? closest to yourself? strongest?

"when the mind speaks, which voices do you listen to? to the ones who spin endless mischief on the surface, or to the slower, deeper ones that are always true?" ~unknown

been absent

2011-06-16T21:13:00.000-07:00

frida kahlo, "tree of hope"

i haven't felt like writing here in what feels like a long time. i've felt vulnerable and in need of privacy. needing to withdraw. pulling inwards.

when i first created a blog a few years ago, i made it anonymous. then after one year, i felt uncomfortable with expressing my thoughts that way. i wanted to unite my writing with my daily life and persona, to make my writings known and available to all who knew me.

but now i feel like making this more anonymous again. i think i'm feeling the need to be more obscured. more private. needing a safe space that feels more my own.

i feel like life has presented me with certain challenges. one of which has been how to maintain a connection to who i am, in the midst of relating with others. to live beyond feeling the need to please and feeling that i need to earn love, reassurance and approval.

who would i be if i didn't wait for permission or encouragement to be me? if i didn't require affirmation or approval?

and not just me...but what lies in each of us? how many people are living lives not quite their own? living in a shadow, hemmed in, puzzled, searching, lost, existing most truly in their dreams or hopes, sleepwalking through life, focusing on safety or perfection, instead of risking living with the vital spark of being connected to their core...

by revising my blog, i'm hoping to give myself space to express whatever i feel the need to...without the pressure of needing to live up to anyone else's expectations. because in the face of those, sometimes i lose connection to who i am most deeply...

if you could make a completely honest and accurate self portrait, what would it look like?

parenting and conflict

2011-03-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

from this fantastic site: the incredible years

i have always said i have problems with conflict. for the most part i avoid it at all costs. but the past few years i've been working at getting better at dealing with it. especially once i became a parent. i want so much to model healthy behavior for our daughter. but gosh, conflict is one of the hardest things for me in the world. for example...in grad school, i took a course on conflict resolution, hoping to overcome my problems with conflict (which are mostly that i start to feel like a 5 year old in the face of anger of any kind). i was pregnant at the time, during the course. and we had to do a role play in which i played the HR person at a business who was mediating a conflict between two coworkers. and one woman role-played her angry character so well and she got in my face a little...i burst into tears. everyone was really nice about it. but it was embarrassing.

i have no idea how i got an A in the class. i still feel like i'm woefully inadequate in the face of conflict.

but now i'm getting tons of practice because my daughter is three. they say that the "terrible twos" are nothing compared to the "terrible threes." i don't like to use those phrases though because i don't like to associate the word "terrible" with any child. especially my own. and she's not terrible at all. she's not typically angry either. but we've been sick this week with colds and being sick and tired and cooped up at home doesn't usually bring out the best moods.

teaching her how to appropriately express anger has been a challenge, but it's one i've felt pretty good at so far. but this week was a tough one. i want her to learn self-respect and confidence. i don't want to stifle her or teach her to be ashamed of any emotion. but i also want her to learn empathy and kindness and respect for others. i think children are naturally emotional. and this includes aggression. but i read once, and i love this, that aggression in children is natural, but it is natural the way that tooth decay is natural. if you leave it untended, it will grow like a wild garden.

i think it is my job to teach my daughter "how we do things here." to be not her controller or her boss, as much as her ambassador. of course some days i forget this and find myself getting into verbal power struggles. find myself saying things like, "i need you to do what i say." which seems only inches away from "because i said so."

i love my daughter with all my heart. and i want more than anything to do the best i can for her. to give her the best i have to give. it is hard to know what the right thing to say or do is sometimes, especially when it comes to teaching her how to appropriately express her anger. i feel like i'm on a good track. if she says something in a harsh tone, i try to be patient, put my own ego and hurt feelings aside, we take a deep breath, try to calm down, and i try to tell her another phrase she can say to get her wants or needs met, and that we need to be careful how we use our words. because words can hurt people too.

it's strange though. because on the one hand, i've spent time trying to get to where, as an adult, i can be in charge of my own emotional world. and get past the idea that any of us "make" anyone else feel anything. i don't want to raise my daughter to feel completely responsible for the emotions of others. yet i want to teach her a healthy amount of responsibility and empathy, so that she will be kind and sensitive and aware of the effect her behavior and choices have on other people.

i think part of being a good parent is being able to do what you believe is best for your kid, even if it pisses them off. you have to get past needing their approval. needing them to like you all the time. put up with just having conflict sometimes. and hope that the building blocks you are trying to set up are doing some good.

i try to find balance. figure out when to step back and when to step in. when to just let things be. when to let her figure out things for herself.

it's not her job to let me know if i'm doing mine right. it's only my job to do my best to ensure that she knows that she is deeply loved no matter what she feels or does. and meanwhile, to do what i can to help teach her how we can get along in this world. i hope i do good enough.

authenticity

2011-03-10T07:25:00.001-08:00

i have not felt like posting or being on the computer at all for awhile. i'm not sure what i'm going through. but i've been pulling inwards, in my daily life too. i'm talking on the phone less, answering it less, not reaching out to others as much. i just feel like i don't have the energy. so i've been trying not to over-analyze it and just honor my instincts.

i don't feel bad. i actually feel pretty good lately. i'm engaging in fewer compulsive behaviors. i'm more aware of what i want and need. i have more energy in some ways. just less energy for interacting with others. i'm taking better care of my health. i feel more present and able to be genuinely connected with the few people i am choosing to engage with.

it's strange for me to pull inwards. i love people. love interacting with people i care about. i love reading other's blogs. but i think i've just been feeling overwhelmed and needing, i think, to do some grounding.

but today i decided to do a post. i thought i'd jot down just a few of the things i've been working on this past year. to share with anyone who might read this, as well as to give myself a record. also, i want to share this really cool thing i watched this week!

first of all, here is some of what i've been working on:

1) honoring my instincts. most of my life, i've not been sure what my instincts even are. i've felt disconnected internally to the extent that i'm not sure what is fear, what is instinct, what is thinking myself out of my instincts, etc. sometimes it's felt like when trying to make a decision, there are so many countering internal dialogues, that i'm not sure what the right thing to do is. so i'm working hard on finding out what is my instinct, how to recognize it amongst all the other competing messages i tend to recycle when making choices in my daily life.

2) changing my self-talk. ever since college, i've been aware that i had a very strong negative inner voice. i've been my own worst enemy, had a severe inner critic, a low self-esteem, whatever you want to call it. i was certainly never my own best friend. and for years i told myself i was "working on this." but in the past year i discovered that you can tell yourself you are "working on things" even for years, and never really change. i've also realized that one effect of having negative self-talk all these years was that it gave me a tendency to be drawn to people who would mirror the way i treated myself. drawn to people who didn't like me for who i was, who were critical, minimizing, invalidating, not genuinely loving or accepting. and trying to get acceptance from such people in order to counter the negative way i treated myself made about as much sense as trying to get water from stones.

instead, i'm trying nowadays to not wait for others to treat me the way i most want to be treated. or to spend my energy trying to get them to treat me that way. but to focus on treating myself how i want to be treated. to be accepting. understanding. to speak my voice and continue to strive to be who i really am...daily, in all the choices i make. including who i choose to be close to. i'm finding increasingly i'm drawn to people who are genuine and caring, who are loving and accepting. not only of me, but of themselves.

i heard the other day that the danger of self-esteem is when people esteem themselves when they shouldn't. like when a jerk feels great about themselves. but i think the problem with me has been that i thought badly about myself way more than i deserved. was "shame-prone." it's not that i'm trying to esteem myself no matter what i do, even if i hurt someone. i don't think that's what true self-esteem is about. i think we need to see ourselves accurately. and feel that we are worthy human beings. yet always take responsibility for our actions and the way our behavior affects others. and the difference lies in being able to admit when we have done something wrong - as opposed to feeling deep in our hearts that we don't deserve love unless we earn it.

which brings me the thing i wanted to share today. Brené Brown has a blog that i follow called "ordinary courage" and it's such a great blog. she is a professor in texas who has spent the past 11 years researching vulnerability, perfectionism, shame, compassion, courage, wholeheartedness and authenticity. and now she has a show that's been airing on our local public tv stations, presenting her work. here's an excerpt of her talk. it's great stuff!

i've spent a lot of my life treating people the way i think they want to be treated. struggling to please others. to "make" them happy. trying to earn love. always pushing myself to be a "better" person. but these days i'm trying to redirect my energy. to be more self-accepting. and to be loving to those i care for, yes. but to be more relaxed about it. to be more present with them. to actively listen. instead of scurrying around anxiously trying to "please" them and seeking approval. the thing is, sometimes, what i think will please others isn't actually pleasant for anyone. and the truth is, it wasn't actually making others happy, as much as i always believed it was. it was about trying to prove what a good person i was. trying to prove that i deserved to be loved. that i was ok. and it usually didn't bring me closer to the person, or make them feel genuinely loved or cared for. and didn't make us equal.

so lately, i'm trying moreso just to be here. to relax more. to engage in an authentic way with others. to stop trying so hard. stop pushing myself so much. trying not to worry as much how other people see me or feel about me in order to determine how to feel about myself. to stop looking for my own worth through the eyes of others.

if you want to read more about authenticity and brené brown's work, i included her website above, and here is a pledge to authenticity she wrote. i love this!

i hope to get back up to reading more blogs soon. but please know, if i haven't been by, it's because i just don't have the energy. not because i don't care. i care about each of you and wish you all well!

wishing everyone out there wellness and peace in your hearts. today and always~

"Being extremely honest with oneself is a good exercise."
~Sigmund Freud

remembering

2011-02-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

Marc Chagall, "The Blue House"

my dad died in 2000. i have thought for years that he died at age 53, but this morning i realized that dying in 2000 would have meant he was actually 55, as he was born in 1945. i'm not sure why i've thought he was 53 all these years.

i hadn't thought much about him consciously lately. but for the past few weeks i've had a few random thoughts of him here and there flash through my mind. a saying he used to use. a particular dinnertime memory. nothing bad or upsetting.

then yesterday morning, i craved doughnuts all of a sudden and remembered that sometimes he would make them in our kitchen, so i set about trying to do that. they didn't turn out. i didn't know what i was doing and they were raw on the inside. but it was fun to try.

then i wondered why i was having these moments. and i thought to look at the calendar and realized that tomorrow, that is today, would have been his birthday.

times like these, "anniversaries" i think some people call them, annual markers of significant or potentially triggering events, i try to use these to reflect on where i am today and how much progress i've made.

i'm glad to be able to say that this year, this day is passing without very difficult emotions. the only negative emotion i do have going on lately is some remorse for having shared the dark history of my family over the years. i've had pangs of shame, feelings that i should have kept more to myself.

but i do believe that this is a common symptom in a dysfunctional family. the pressure to keep the family secrets, or keep up appearances that all was well. to me, this is a destructive impulse that is part of the system. i believe shame and secrecy in dysfunctional families serve to maintain the status quo. if no one admits that anything is wrong, no one gets help and nothing changes. year after year. generation after generation.

when i was a child and people asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, all i ever could think i wanted out of life was to be "happy." that's all i ever said i wanted. i had no aspirations for any career. or any material gains. just to be happy.

and that is what i've worked towards.

so whenever i feel any sense of guilt about how much i've "spilled the beans" about my family's problems in my past, i try to tell myself that i'm just feeling an old symptom, and i can let this symptom go. i can honor the needs of the younger me. i can respect that i felt the need to tell things in order to heal. i can respect what i felt i needed to do. even though it isn't the same as what i feel the need to do today.

and seriously, it's not as if i published a memoir and went on talk shows. i told a few trusted friends, and therapists. wrote things in papers at school. there's probably only a handful of people who know the details of my childhood, what i see as "the truth" about my family. and probably only a fraction of those i told even remember the things i shared.

it was for me that i did the telling. i felt a profound and deep need to NOT keep things secret. to defy that lesson i felt i'd been taught, to pretend everything was ok even when it wasn't. i needed to know that i had every right to be upset. that my feelings were valid. that i was ok. that i could heal and grow and move on and not be defined by my past. and part of learning to let go, for me, was to tell it. to tell my truth. so that i could see it for what it was and feel everything i needed to let out, that i'd kept in. so i could finally feel free of it.

and it worked. years of processing and remembering and feeling. of sorting and digging and understanding why i behaved and felt and thought the way i did in my present life. fears i had. difficulties i had relating with others. in learning to trust. in learning to set boundaries.

i'm certainly not finished :) i don't think we ever are. i think part of the meaning of life is to continue to learn from our experiences, and learn how to live in the moment. at least that's part of the meaning i've found for myself.

i'm relieved to see that today, i live in a better place. i don't feel haunted. i don't feel compelled to revist, or to tell all about what i've lived through. i feel more than ever that my life as a child is in the perspective i need it to be in order to function in my current life. it is enough in my memory and consciousness that i can learn from it and do my best to not repeat any harmful patterns. and yet it is resolved enough that it no longer interferes with my life the way it used to.

about "the truth"

what i've learned about "the truth" is that my experience of my childhood is my own. for years i thought i needed the rest of my family to see things the way i did. and for years i spent time and energy confronting them, or avoiding them, trying to get them to see and admit that things were worse than they would admit.

but what i finally learned is that i didn't need their perspective to match my own for me to feel validated. i understand that each person in a family sees things the way they do, and feels things the way they do, from their own unique perspective. and what feels severe to one person, might truly feel "not that bad" to another. we all have our own limits for pain and suffering. and differing perspectives doesn't mean that i'm wrong or that they are. it is just that we are different people.

what can get confusing for survivors of abuse is when they need their abuser to admit what they did wrong. and when you take the risk to actually confront your abuser, and they say, "that's absurd. i never did that to you." that can be one of the most painful and confusing things for a survivor. you might wonder, did i dream it? did it really happen?

i'm happy and very fortunate, that no one was in that much denial in my home. people could admit the problems, but in my case, it was more like "yeah, but why are you so upset about this?"

the experience i have had with a perpetrator denying abuse, has made me think that it might be that sometimes perpetrators may truly not remember what they did. it makes sense that their ego defenses would have acted to suppress that they harmed someone they loved. especially if they were drunk or psychotic at the time they hurt you. people's minds often serve to protect them from pain. and this can include the pain of knowing and admitting how you have hurt others.

so that has brought me solace and peace. knowing that i don't need an abuser to admit what they have done, or apologize, in order for me to know what was true. i don't need their permission, in order to heal. i can see them where they are. and know what was true for me. i can heal and move on without needing anything from them to make that possible. i do not need to depend on them for healing. i am responsible for and capable of my own healing.

about "grief"

leah piken kolidas, "fishing"

what i've learned from the death of my father, about grief, is that just because someone has died, doesn't mean you can't still heal and grow and transform the way you felt about that person. grieving is a process. it's work you can continue even long after the person is gone.

i still think my father was damaged and did harm to his loved ones. but today, i no longer feel the pain i used to when i think of him. i know that his life was the way it was because he never got the healing he needed. for all the ways he was hurt as a child, and as a human being. all the lessons he didn't learn, didn't resolve. he wasn't evil. i see him as a victim who never learned how to be a survivor. who never learned how not to take out his sorrows and pain and disappointment on those he loved and was responsible for. who never learned how to get through life sober, while facing your feelings.

what i learned from him most of all is the importance of never running from pain, never trying to escape or bury it. that we are never as helpless as we may think or feel we are. that life is never just what we are given or where we find ourselves. it's what we can manage to do with what we have, what we can manage to make with where we find ourselves, and what we can learn from where we are and where we've been. to move forward.

i usually apply this quote to my parenting of my own child. but now i realize that why i came to love this quote in the first place is from learning how to liberate myself from my own family of origin.

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."
~Kahlil Gibran

truth

2011-02-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

how do you know what the truth is? in my experience, when i'm in touch with what is true, i feel better, stronger, more centered. but the further away i am from the truth, the more imbalanced, insecure and unsettled i feel. truth, being able to know and tell the truth, has brought me strength in my life and helped me to connect with others.

i think that the truth can be relative for each person. each child growing up in a family has a unique perspective and experience of that family. memories can be influenced by time and emotion, so what we remember from our past, might not correspond to someone else's account of that time, but that doesn't mean we are wrong, or that they are. we may never know for sure what actually happened. but i believe that our subjective experience of reality, our emotional reality, even if it conflicts with what other people say is real or true, needs to be taken seriously.

sometimes it's hard to know what the truth is. when you grow up in a family where everyone said that blue is actually red, this confusion can teach you the habit of constantly doubting and questioning yourself and your perceptions. you can become disconnected from yourself, and out of touch with your own instincts, like being in a cave with no light. unsure which way is out or up, or where the next ledge is you might fall from.

i think there are signs we can learn to recognize when someone else's version of reality is not in line with the truth. people can be absorbed and lost in their own defense mechanisms, like denial and repression. so if they get angry at you for telling the truth as you see it, it might not be that you are wrong, it may be that you are more right than they want to admit. sometimes the anger of others is a sign that we are hitting on the real truth, it just might not be something they are ready to face. they may want to challenge you or get to you to deny what you believe is real, just to help them continue to protect themselves and live in the delusion that everything is just fine the way it is.

but the more we can listen to our own internal voice, to still our mind and filter through the layers of external confusion to find what really feels true for us, the stronger we can become. and telling our truth to another can be one of the most meaningful and powerful experiences in life. in my experience, just knowing something in my head was only part of healing, but being brave and strong enough to tell someone else made everything different. times i've told people something deeply true, and until i told, i had no idea how much emotion was tied up in what i had held inside.

this quote really has meant a lot to me over the years. i think it expresses so well the power you can find in telling your truth, but the frustration that the limits to self-expression can bring, and vulnerability that lies in the need to find the right people to tell. for telling the wrong person your deep, most vulnerable truths, can just add new levels of pain on top of what you felt the need to bury in the first place:

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."
~Stephen King

these days i feel like, after years of trial and error, i finally have a good set of people i know i can trust in my life, if i need to tell someone how i'm "really" doing. people who won't minimize or invalidate my emotions, who can relate to my experience and perspective, who can understand and sometimes even identify, and offer me alternate perspectives to help challenge my viewpoint (but in a non-threatening way). sharing our lives with people who understand us and who we can be our real selves with is part of what i think makes life beautiful. when you share your true heart with someone and they share theirs back, and there just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day for everything you want to say to each other. that is one of the best things in life, to me.

so nowadays, i'm happy to say that i'm no longer in a position so much of trying to find the "right" people to share with, but moreso, my struggle is more about being able to be honest with myself. if something is wrong, sometimes it can take me awhile to admit it. as i still have a tendency to bury emotions that i'm scared to express. but the more i avoid and bury, the worse i feel.

i think of this process as like a wound that needs proper cleaning and airing. if you get a wound, but just try to immediately cover it up and just hope it will go away, likely it will only fester and get worse, and then when you finally get around to trying to tend to it, it will be far more painful and frankly, more messy, than it would have been had you cleaned it properly to begin with.

so my struggle is not just to tell the truth, but to stay in touch with it. to be connected to my instincts and honest emotions. to be able to discern what is real, from what are my fear-based projections. to move beyond my ego defenses in moments of stress and conflict, to remain my authentic self. and on a daily basis, to be able to be in the moment with those around me.

i continue to strive to get better at discerning when it is important to tell the truth, and when not to. how to maintain good boundaries. how to be as good as possible at recognizing who are the right people to share with. and when is the right time to say what i want.

one of the most important things i believe is the importance of allowing my truth to evolve. my understanding of others to grow and develop. to not be locked into any one version of the "truth" or any one perspective of another person or group. to trust in myself when it feels right and important to do so, but to be flexible and brave and open enough to allow for revision of what i believe is true, when alternate viewpoints show me that my perspective needs expanding. and to be able to see things through the eyes of another, with compassion, even when it conflicts with my own view.

this month's expressive arts carnival, hosted by paul over at mind parts, is the following excercise:

Through drawing, painting, photograph or any other visual means, create an image of "your truth." Some ideas you may want to explore are finding your truth, saying your truth, what your truth feels to you, and more. With your entry, also include a couple of sentences saying what the process was like for you.

i have found through these carnivals that i really like making collages. i have never drawn or painted much, and find that the meaning i can express through various photographic images really suits me. here's what i made to express what "truth" means to me:

the images i chose to make this collage represent truth for me in a number of ways. how scary it can be to speak the truth. the power of writing. connecting with the truth as an ongoing process. my tendency towards black and white thinking and my need to step back and see the bigger picture. the truth in my dreams. the importance of emotional truth and confronting pain. the light that each of us has to share in this world, and the power of each person to survive and even flourish no matter our circumstances.

finally, i thought that it would be most truthful of me to choose an actual photo from my life to incorporate in this piece, so the central photo is one i took of an oklahoma road. as driving along the country roads is something that brings me peace and helps me feel connected.

"Feelings or emotions are the universal language and are to be honored. They are the authentic expression of who you are at your deepest place."
~Judith Wright

the self

2011-01-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

i felt conflicted about writing about my "self" today. i have worked so many years on becoming healthier in my self-image and trying to have better self-esteem. but i think even if your goal is mental health, there is still a danger in all this work and introspection of becoming egocentric. and though i think some amount of egocentrism is natural, i have worked throughout my life to keep a balance of a healthy amount of introspection, and the ability to see outside of myself and my life too.

i never wanted to think too much of myself. i used to keep all my thoughts and feelings to myself. sure that no one cared. i used to always wait until someone asked me to speak my heart, and even then, might hold back unconvinced that they actually cared. sometimes poor others have had to pry the truth out of me. it's too bad some people have had to work so hard to reach my authentic self. that my fears and self-doubts kept me from being able to connect openly and easily. this has even cost me some friendships.

having this blog has been an exercise for me in bravery. one more step in learning not to be afraid to let my light shine. to not have to wait to be asked to tell people who i am. to not have to wait for evidence that someone cared first. to celebrate just having a voice. to ask aloud some of the questions of my heart.

i come from a history of being too humble. self-deprecating. painfully insecure. i have spent a lot of time and energy looking outside of myself to feel better. asking others for reassurance about what and who they saw in me. reassurance that i am lovable, accepable and just plain ok. i believe that other people can be so helpful in helping you have an accurate self-image.

but there are dangers in depending on others as your mirror and source for self-worth. for one thing, two different people can see the exact same quality in you and one person would see a flaw, but the other person could see this very same quality as their favorite thing about you.

another danger is that people can't always be there for you. i'm not sure any one person could ever truly know you completely, or always say the perfect thing. we're all human. we all have our own problems we need to deal with. everyone else is doing what they can to make it through their own lives. and it's no one else's full-time job except our own, to solve our own problems.

at least that is what i'm learning. and struggling to achieve. balance within myself. the ability to be my own source of self-worth. to be my own source of stability and confidence. to be able to feel grounded and centered, without needing to anchor to another person in the process.

i still ask for reassurance more than i'd like. and i think it's ok to ask for reassurance. and validation. to confess self-doubts in the hopes that someone else will understand and be able to offer the "i've been there too" salve.

and that is why i don't think asking for reassurance is a selfish act. maybe if you do this with the wrong friend it will feel like it to them. but i think in the best circumstances, sharing our deepest feelings and questions about ourselves, can bring us closer to others. because sharing our deepest self with another sometimes helps them share their deepest self too. it can help both people feel more understood, less alone, and can help us work together on becoming more the people we feel we truly are, and want to be.

this month's expressive arts exercise is to create a self-portrait. i thought i wasn't going to participate this time because i didn't know what i would create, and honestly, i don't think i felt like looking in my internal mirror lately. i think i've been avoiding that. feeling too insecure.

but some recent work has helped me reflect and see where i am today. so i created something to express it.

here is what i learned from this exercise:

i believe that at my core i am a hopeful, optimistic, peaceful person who believes in compassion, understanding and the internal worth of all beings.

i think that whoever we think we are, who we tell ourselves we are, is often far less than who we really are.

i think that sometimes it's easy to get lost in this "I" that we think we are. our persona, or the person other people see us as. but i think it's important we learn to look past what we think are... our limitations. our definitions. our boundaries. to allow ourselves to ask, "what if that's not who i really am?" and realize that the things you've always thought were just "you" really might just be ways you learned to be in order to survive.

i still have trouble expressing myself the way i would like with the people i'm close to. sometimes i hide emotionally, repress what i'm feeling, out of fear. out of wanting to avoid conflict or rock the boat. i'm working hard to overcome my gut reaction towards "flight" and silence. and be authentic in every moment. to face my fears about what the worst that could happen is, and change the way i see conflict. instead of something to be avoided at all costs, it can be something to embrace. something that enriches relationships, brings us in touch with what is true and real, helps us feel stronger.

i still feel small. but i think that it can be good to feel small. it's important to remember that i'm not the only person on this earth. that part of being truly empathetic is being able to put my own self aside and see things through the eyes of the other person.

but i need to be careful about putting myself aside. while important to transcend my ego, it's also vital to not neglect myself and my basic needs. if i need alone-time, or exercise, or time with a friend, it's important i honor that. if i lose touch with what my instincts are telling me, i'm like a ship at sea with no ability to guide myself. i would just float aimlessly about, merciless to the forces at work around me, like the will and emotions and wishes of others.

i am grateful for the friends i've had in my life who have helped me find that connection to myself that i think is vital for self-esteem and growth. without them, i don't know where i'd be.

and now that i'm a mother, i'm more motivated than ever to be the healthiest me i can be.

because i know it's not just about me anymore.

and that's what i've been reminded of most from creating this self-portrait.

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
~Jane Austen

parenting choices

2011-01-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

there is so much pressure i feel as a parent. much i put on myself. but i think a lot comes from my surrounding culture, and some of the messages you get are not only powerful, but conflicting! sometimes it's really hard to feel that what you're doing is what's best for your child and your family as a whole. sometimes it's really hard to know what your own instincts are telling you, amidst all the messages you are receiving from the world around you.

maybe you want your baby to be able to sleep alone? maybe you want to cosleep? maybe you want to put your baby in a crib, but your baby has other plans? maybe you want to stay home and parent, but you cannot afford to? maybe you don't want to use daycare but everyone you know uses some form of daycare or mother's day out program (whether or not they work)? maybe you want to work? maybe your spouse wants to be the parent who stays home? maybe you want to try putting your child in some sort of daycare program but whenever you tried, your child was too scared or sad and every instinct inside you said your child wasn't ready, but other people said not to worry, that "it's ok to let them cry it out. children are resilient." (same advice for teaching the child to sleep alone). even more confusing i think is when you try to leave your child alone, to sleep, or at daycare, or with a babysitter, and you are told that the child's crying is only them being "manipulative."

what does it mean to call a child's emotional displays manipulation? if it is manipulation does that mean the emotion is not genuine or shouldn't be responded to? if the child is throwing a temper tantrum, do you walk away so as to "not reward the behavior with attention" or do you attend to the distressed child to show them that even when their emotions are powerfully negative and they are "out of control" that you will stay by them?

how resilient are children? how does a child develop a healthy capacity for attachment? how easily are abandonment and rejection issues formed in children?

there are parents all over the world in cultures so different from one another, yet i wonder how many of our issues overlap.

i have heard that in many cultures, parents and children co-sleep and the u.s. in particular is thought to be barbaric because parents leave their infants crying alone in another room, so they can learn how to be "independent."

the philosophy of Attachment Parenting addresses these kinds of issues. if you don't already know about attachment parenting, here's their main philosophy:

The long-range vision of Attachment Parenting is to raise children who will become adults with a highly developed capacity for empathy and connection. It eliminates violence as a means for raising children, and ultimately helps to prevent violence in society as a whole.

The essence of Attachment Parenting is about forming and nurturing strong connections between parents and their children. Attachment Parenting challenges us as parents to treat our children with kindness, respect and dignity, and to model in our interactions with them the way we'd like them to interact with others.

from the API website: http://www.attachmentparenting.org/

i think the AP philosophy is wonderful. but i do not judge anyone who chooses to parent differently from me. as long as they are not abusive, of course. i want to do my best for my child, and make the decisions that feel right for my family. and i know that the decisions that feel right for me, would not feel right to someone else. i think we each need to honor and respect our own unique needs. and take care of our families in accordance with our instincts and beliefs.

i'd like to end with a great article i read this morning that got my mind going thinking about all this. and i want to wish everyone out there health and wellness and peace within your families. may we all do our best for our children. and feel good about ourselves. because part of being a good parent, i believe, is learning that we can't be perfect. and modeling self-acceptance. it does our children no good for us to expect perfection from ourselves, to be hard on ourselves. for one thing, this leads to the danger of being perfectionistic towards them, and teaching them that they are only acceptable or lovable when they do things "right." i believe the best we can do for our whole family is to accept each other and ourselves as the human beings we are. we can be messy and confused, and not do everything right (whatever that is), but no matter what, as long as we approach one another with love, acceptance, and positive intent, we'll be doing ok. and i think this goes for how we treat one another out in the world, not just within our own homes.

The Daycare Dilemma
By Jan Hunt, MS

It’s always a dilemma for me to know just how to address the subject of substitute care, because there is such a gap in our culture between the ideal and the possible. Ideally, there would be little need to use substitute care, nor would any mother feel a strong personal need or desire to do so. The reality, of course, is that parenting — the most important job a woman can have — is not valued sufficiently.

No one should ever feel that she is “only a mother” — motherhood should be more highly valued than any other profession. No other job is as critically important; no other job has the potential for improving our world by nurturing the capacity to love and trust others. As Canadian psychiatrist Elliott Barker wrote: “We have to change a lot of established patterns or ways we do things — our priorities — so that nothing gets in the way of attachment in the earliest years. The capacities for trust, empathy, and affection are in fact the central core of what it means to be human, and are indispensable for adults to be able to form lasting, mutually satisfying cooperative relationships with others.”

Our culture not only minimizes the importance of motherhood, it maximizes the desire to consume commercial products, defining success always in economic, rarely in humane or social, terms. There is no question that a mother with a professional career who uses daycare for her children receives far more recognition and respect than the mother who has left a professional job to stay at home with her children — despite the fact that the at-home mom is in a position to contribute far more to society in the long term. If motherhood was valued as highly as it should be, more mothers would choose to stay at home, and more pressure would be put on governments to help provide the means by which this could be done.

Creative solutions can only come about through a deeply-felt need. If everyone understood the critical importance of mothering, there would be fewer daycares and more and better alternative solutions that keep mother and child together. There would be more family centers where mothers with infants and young children could get together with other parents, watching the children as they play together. Families would be given sufficient financial support by the government, and this support would be seen not as a “handout” with all the stigma that welfare has now, but as a wise and critical investment in our future. Everyone would know that motherhood is the single most important profession there is, one that deserves the highest esteem and the highest pay. What kind of society do we have where athletes, movie stars, and CEOs get the highest pay? What kind of society do we have when the professional woman with her children away from her all day enjoys higher esteem than the stay-at-home mother who has the opportunity to nurture a human being, whose personal qualities, positive or negative, will affect all future relationships? Which is the more critical job?

Our vision is too narrow, too immediate, too limited. We see only the present contribution of the professional woman and are blind to the even greater potential contribution of the mother at home. We need to value these mothers now — or our future will look no different than it does at present, with our myriad social problems.

If we really understood the importance of the mother-child bond, we would find those solutions that now seem so elusive and difficult. We would recognize that a young child who has bonded with a particular caregiver, who then disappears from the child’s world, can internalize feelings of rejection and disappointment. We would be committed to finding ways to keep mothers, babies, and young children together. We would provide whatever financial support is needed, and give extensive parenting education to all. We would give greater prestige and sufficient financial support to dedicated stay-at-home mothers. Most of all, we would recognize that repeated separations from the mother can damage the mother-child relationship and create a tragic reluctance in the child to love and trust others in the future. Close bonds of love and trust take time to develop; they take time to maintain.

We would recognize the critical importance of providing paid maternity leave. We would understand that parental care has the most stability. We would build a healthier population and fewer hospitals and prisons. We would strive to learn more about the father-child bond, and give fathers an opportunity to bond early with their child, and to support the mother in the earliest years. We would enjoy a very different and vastly improved society, where compassion and connection were valued and desired more than any other goal or commodity, where a small house filled with love, trust and joy would be valued far higher than the biggest mansion.

This was last week's featured article on The Attached Family online magazine, and there's plenty more to read there. Check out the online magazine (The Attached Family Magazine)

reflecting on progress

2010-12-30T11:53:00.000-08:00

around the new year, i usually like to think about what my resolution will be. my hopes for the new year. make some sort of promise to myself. a goal to aim for. and though i do still want to do that somewhat this year, moreso today i feel an urge to reflect on the roadwork i've completed, instead of the road ahead. how far i've progressed.

one thing that's really struck me recently is realizing how much more secure i feel these days compared to the past. i'm not 100% secure (is anyone?) but i feel much better than in the past. i used to feel really thin-skinned. compliant and eager to please, needing approval. needing permission just to be. unsure of myself. of any value to my existence. i felt small or invisible. that i needed to be this way. that it was important to not take up space.

and felt i felt like i couldn't interact with people who were negative or angry, or self-absorbed, or who were different from me in a way i felt was threatening. i used to feel so afraid, i think because i had so few emotional boundaries or what i like to call, internal shielding. i felt so small and compliant, that being around anyone who was anything other than validating or supportive or encouraging just allowed me to continue to feel invisible or small. negative, argumentative, or self-absorbed people felt so contaminating to me. my fear of conflict was specifically strong when someone was fundamentally different from me and they had a sense of certainty about their views, such that they were confident enough to want to argue with me, i was not afraid of "losing" in the sense of "win-lose" but i was more afraid of losing myself.

arrogant people felt dangerous to me. if someone was opposed to how i was or how i saw the world, if they tried to convince me that my way of seeing things was wrong, instead of being able to "agree to disagree" i used to feel like i was falling apart inside. like instead of just taking my views apart piece by piece, i felt like they were taking me apart. i felt like i was held together with pins that were easily removed. or that my internal world was like a house built on sand. i longed to feel a sense of internal strength, such that no matter what was going on around me, no matter what anyone else was saying, no matter what anyone else thought of me, i would be able to feel strong in myself. to be able to withstand challenge, attack, criticism, or even just someone else's bad mood.

part of what helped me more than anything was honoring the fact that i needed external validation. it was very important for me to give myself time and space in which i allied myself with people who understood me, treated me with respect, and who could agree or at least see things from my point of view, even if it wasn't how they saw things. people who were empathetic. people who could communicate. people with whom i didn't feel diminished or small or unseen. people with whom i felt i could stand up, speak the truth, and they saw me - and even liked me.

having that time, space, and experience with people who "got me" helped me immensely. i feel like the sand my internal structure was built on began to solidify slowly but surely over the years. and now, i feel much less of a need to put distance between myself and those who would challenge me in some way. i no longer feel the fear like i used to feel. i no longer feel the need to have different layers of "protection" and safety in the way i interact with others. i no longer feel as easily affected by the views and feelings of others.

i am intrigued by spirituality and yet have no definite beliefs about anything beyond the physical world that i see around me. yet in examining the way i have felt interacting with people throughout my life, i've often described myself as feeling thin-skinned or feeling like i have no emotional shield, which in terms of energy i have imagined that maybe this is having a "weak aura." i know nothing about auras. or whether there is anything scientific going on with this idea. but i imagine someone with no aura or a weak aura feels their emotional world easily permeated by the energy of others. and looking for an image to accompany this post today, i looked for images of "weak aura" and "strong aura" just to see if i could find a visual representation of how i have felt in my life. having never really read about auras before, i learned a little bit that is quite interesting from this website. and it seems to go along with how i've felt: reiki and aura cleansing

The aura is a subtle energy field that surrounds all matter, including people, animals, trees, plants, rocks and water. Although your spiritual body is invisible to most people it is as real as the physical body. The body’s aura is much like the atmosphere of the earth, growing progressively thinner the further out it goes. It is alive, sensitive and easily affected by the slightest shifts in attitude, mode of thinking, feelings and eating habits.

A person who is positive and healthy will have a strong bright vibrant energy field that expands outwards from the body. In a person that is negative or sick the aura will be weak and have a dull energy field contracting inwards towards the body.

even if there is no such thing as an aura, i think it's not only fun to think about things like this, but i believe it is important to allow ourselves to imagine and express our internal world in ways that make sense to us. whether or not it fits with the way others may view the world. and i can say that it has helped me in my life to envision an aura around me, like a protective barrier, and to envision it growing stronger. and the better my life has gone, the more i've surrounded myself with loving and positive people who are supportive, understanding and encouraging, the more empowered i've felt, the more i've stood up for myself and found a way to speak my truth and be myself, the stronger this "energy field" feels. perhaps other words for this would be my "soul" or my "essence." because the stronger i've felt in myself, the more able i have been to remain feeling composed and safe and intact, no matter what others are saying or feeling, how they behave, or what decisions they make with their own lives.

even if someone is aggressive or imposing, or self-absorbed and takes up a lot of space interpersonally, this does not have to make me feel diminished or invisible. i no longer have to be a mirror, or an absorber. i no longer have to bend in order to make room for them. or make myself small so that they can feel big. i still catch myself doing this sometimes, but it does not compose the majority of my life or interactions the way it used to.

so even if there are no auras, i still find the notion of them beautiful and helpfully descriptive in that they make sense to me in terms of what my internal experience has been in my life. as i have spent time learning to trust my instincts, to trust myself, to believe in myself, and to find people with whom i've felt safe and able to be this true self, and express my true emotions, i feel more of a buffer between me and the world, more of an internal strength at my core...more and more each year i feel stronger, no matter who i'm around~

**one of my favorite songs, "get me" by everything but the girl :) i used to listen to this song years ago and long to be "gotten" ~ to be understood and appreciated for my authentic self. but listening to it now, after years of good experiences with some great people, having experienced being "gotten" so much, i realize something. i am so grateful for the people i've known and loved and felt loved by. but even better now, i feel like i'm to the point now where i need this less from someone else, as i am finally feeling like i can give this validation to myself. and that feels so good...

generosity

2010-12-09T14:26:00.000-08:00

for most of my adult life, i've not considered myself a very generous person. somewhat, but not primarily. but these past months, i've been more giving than before. more giving of my time, my attention, my energy, my things...and it's felt really great!

in the past, i think i spent more time worried about being taken advantage of, or being used...or just being fearful in general and became focused on guarding instead of giving. in many ways. being a pack rat, for example. i'm reluctant to throw things away because i might need them. but moving a few times in my adult life has taught me to begin to let things go. but then this past year especially, i've been letting go of more. and perhaps not coincidentally, have been practicing "letting go" of other things. things like regret. grief. fear. resentment.

and now i find myself feeling more and more open-hearted.

perhaps one thing that's changed for me is that i no longer have difficulty saying no. early on i learned to be a people-pleaser. i felt compelled to do whatever anyone needed or wanted always. i think i believed i needed to be this way in order to be loved. yet at the same time, i somehow had the power to not always be compliant, even though i felt compelled to (what an inner conflict that has been!) but i had an inner resistance towards people i used to call "takers" - people who would be more concerned with what they wanted or needed than with your feelings or needs. who might even manipulate or try to make you feel guilty if you resisted. i still wasn't always good about honoring my own feelings, and there were many times i went against my instincts and gave into what others wanted even if i wasn't ok with it. so i have had to learn to set boundaries. how to say no. how to value my own needs and wants equally with others. but now i know i can say no, and know how to, and know that i do not have to agree to anything i'm not comfortable with...somehow knowing all this, makes it easier to start saying yes.

it is feeling so good to be generous. and the nice thing is, i don't think generosity has to be about money. i think there are plenty of other ways to be generous that don't involve money. like volunteering for that organization has felt so good. (and that has just been one evening a month!) and if they needed extra help with an event and asked for helpers, it has felt so good to help out. not to get paid. not to get a reward of any kind. just because someone needed it. and i think a key element here is that this was something i wanted to do and believed in and enjoyed doing! so it wasn't like i was making myself do something i didn't want just to "be nice." and then a local church was collecting coats for kids for winter, so i asked my friends if they had any extra kids coats and i searched through our closets and together we were able to gather a few bags to take over there. and that felt fantastic! and there are other smaller things, like just listening to someone. really listening, not just waiting for them to stop talking so i can have my turn to say what i need to say (which i can now admit i have done, eek :) or offering a compliment. i did these kinds of things before. but lately, i don't know, i feel like i'm doing this more often.

and again, i think a key element here, is that i'm not making myself do things i don't want to do. the origin of what i'm doing comes from within. i want to do these things.

like the other day, in a store, i was waiting for my phone to be fixed and i saw a woman walk in the shop wearing a beautiful long vest that looked homemade and quilty. it was earthy and looked old and very loved, and i just loved it! so i thought, why not tell her? so i just went up and touched her on the shoulder lightly and said, excuse me, but i just love this! did you make it? and her face lit up and she told me some lengthy explanation about where it had come from that involved her daughter and a small town in new york...it made me smile and i was so glad i had said something and she smiled and thanked me and said i made her day :) and she made mine! and that was so easy! and all this was free and only took a few seconds.

so this is what i'm thinking about today. what it means to be giving...

wishing everyone wellness and peace in your heart~

found at this neat site

"Comfortable With Uncertainty" by Pema Chodron

The essence of generosity is letting go. Pain is always a sign that we are holding on to something - usually ourselves. When we feel unhappy, when we feel inadequate, we get stingy; we hold on tight.

Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can - a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement - we are training in letting go.

There are so many ways to practice generosity. The main point isn't so much what we give, but that we unlock our habit of clinging. A traditional practice is simply to offer an object that we cherish from one hand to the other.

A woman I know decided that whatever she was attached to she'd give away. One man gave money to people begging in the streets every day for six months after the death of his father. It was his way of working with grief. Another woman trained in visualizing giving away whatever she most feared losing.

Giving practice shows us where we're holding back, where we're still clinging. We start with our well-laid plans, but life blows them apart. From a gesture of generosity, true letting go will evolve. Our conventional perspective will begin to change.

The causes of aggression and fear begin to dissolve by themselves when we move past the poverty of holding back and holding on.

The journey of generosity is one of connecting with the wealth of bodhicitta so profoundly that we are willing to begin to give away whatever blocks it. We open ourselves and let ourselves be touched. We build confidence in all-pervasive richness. At the everyday level, we experience it as flexibility and warmth.

happy holidays

2010-12-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

growing up, the holidays were a stressful time of the year. it wasn't that dad got more drunk over the holidays than on any other day of the year, it was that the pressure to be a "normal family" was higher. i have many memories of my mother crying in the kitchen on christmas day, because she never expected life to turn out this way.

once i went away to college, the holidays became a time of facing the pressure to come home for the holidays, and having no desire to. one year i finally decided i'd had enough, and vowed that that year was my last. i realized i did not have to go. that i could make my own new holiday traditions. even if i was by myself. i could be happy. it was not up to me to "save" my family. to play some role. to act anything out. even just to be there.

so i began to make the holidays a time of year that i looked forward to, instead of the other way around.

curiously enough, holidays were never about religion for me. i was raised "christian" but not in any kind of strict, or literal, spiritual sense. it was more the tradition that was emphasized. and any deviation on my part from the norm, was faced more with "why on earth wouldn't you want to do things the way everyone else i know does?" moreso than telling me i would go to hell if i didn't obey. i was never forced to obey. nor was i taught hell or god even existed. i was encouraged to decide for myself what i believed in. and for this i am sincerely grateful to my family.

i was able to grow up without religious abuse. yet i was still aware of all the religious abuse that exists. people who hurt or kill others in the name of religion. religious people, especially religious officials, who are themselves abusive.

and this is the kind of thing that used to repel me away from religion. even the "nice" christians i met would tell me i was lost or try to convert me using various means. i would feel hurt and angry that they didn't even seem to want to just get to know me. instead of try change me. but nowadays i feel different. today if someone told me that i'm lost or that i'm going to hell because i don't believe what they do, I can't imagine feeling hurt anymore. and if someone wanted to convert me, i don't think that would make me feel angry.

because now I am thinking moreso that this behavior is just what some people are taught. and people can't help what they were taught. especially if they were also taught never to question. this is the truth as far as they know. and furthermore, as far as they know, they are sharing something good and important with me. something that is life-saving for them. they think they are helping.

so now i try to imagine what a person's faith must be like from their point of view. i'm trying to be more empathetic. to see how their faith has been built up by what they have been taught over their entire lifetime. how their beliefs may have been shaped by people they respected, loved and trusted. sometimes even by generations of people in their families. their beliefs may have brought them great comfort and strength, and carried them through painful experiences. may have helped them face the death of a loved one, helped them grieve, helped them heal. may have helped them overcome addiction or the effects of abuse.

i no longer see religion as harmful in itself. i see people as capable of horrible harm. and it seems somehow especially horrible when religious people are harmful. because religion is supposed to teach people to be good and kind. but i believe that religion is something that humans use to try to find direction. to try to live the right way. but believing in a religion does not ensure that a person will be able to be good to their fellow humans.

sometimes i think people follow religion in order to try to make up for the harms they do. and this is how a really abusive person could also be really religious. because psychologically, they are so torn. they know deep in their heart how much they harm others, and they want so desperately to be saved. to be good. and maybe they hope if they are just religious enough, this will make up for the pain they've caused others. but instead of trying to control their harmful behaviour, they just "leave it up to god" and keep doing the harmful things, meanwhile hoping and praying that they are truly forgiven, as they've been taught they will be if they only "believe" enough.

but i believe that it doesn't matter really what you believe. it only matters how we treat each other. here and now. how we live our lives. i believe in goodness. in kindness. in sharing. in love. in not harming others. i believe in generosity. and helping. in communication. in honesty. in reciprocity.

i believe we're all in this together and it's our responsibility to figure out how to care for one another.

in my ideal world, children would grow up learning multiple languages, and learning all about the different religions and cultures of the world. no one would be taught at school that they have to be any one way, or that people different from them are wrong. children would be encouraged to be empathetic and kind and curious. to treat each other well. not to bully or abuse. they would be taught to protect each other. and to want to learn more about people who are different from them, instead of to fear them. world peace and tolerance and acceptance would be encouraged.

a curriculum for a classroom in december would include teaching children about the following:

•Ramadan (Muslim) -- Began August 11, ended September 9
•Eid al-Fitr (Muslim) -- September 10
•Saint Nicholas Day (Christian) -- December 6
•Eid'ul-Adha (Muslim) -- November 16
•Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexican) -- December 12
•St. Lucia Day (Swedish) -- December 13
•Hanukkah (Jewish) -- Begins at sundown on December 1 (ends December 9)
•Christmas Day(Christian) -- December 25
•Boxing Day (Australian, Canadian, English, Irish) -- December 26
•Kwanzaa (African American) -- December 26 to January 1
•Omisoka (Japanese) -- December 31
•Epiphany (Christian) -- January 6

this could be so fun! to learn about all the cultures and religions of the world in an embracing and curious way. i do believe in the separation of church and state. but what this means to me is that the state should not be an instrument of teaching people TO be religious. i think banning specific prayer in schools makes sense. but i think all children should be taught about all the religions that exist, in an objective, informative and respectful way. and secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism would be included in this, because every world view should be understood. that way they can learn about one another. this way children can learn not to demonize each other just because we're not all the same.

why can't students learn about all the creation stories of the world along with biology and the theory of evolution? i don't even know how people of faiths besides christianity feel about evolution. is this just a debate within christinity or are their other faiths that have a problem with the idea that we evolved from monkeys? schools could teach: here's what science says...but some religious people believe in creationism and here's what that means...whereas some people believe in evolution as well as have faith, and here's how they explain both working together. and then they could watch "inherit the wind" (the old spencer tracy version) and have a dynamo discussion! :)

different political and economic systems wouldn't be demonized either. instead it would be more like, "oh, they're trying out communism over in that country right now, i wonder how that's going for them." because it seems to me that there isn't really any one particular political or economic system that is in and of itself good for people. it all depends on the people who run it. there can be corruption in any system. we should all know by now that just because something is supposed to be fair and equalizing on the surface, doesn't mean that the citizens of that country will feel that their voice has any legitimate power, or that they have the ability to make a difference in their culture.

i think what matters most is that we all feel safe. safe to speak. safe to love. safe from harm. safe from oppression. able to provide for our families. warm. fed. clothed. clean. and healthy.

the expressive arts carnival, hosted by paul over at mind parts, has an "open" theme this month, so we are allowed to create whatever we want. because it's the holiday season, and holidays for people with dysfunctional families can be such horrible times, i chose to create an image of something that is currently an optimistic part of my life. something i can actually feel grateful to my family of origin for helping me to cultivate by raising me to be open-minded. here's a visual depiction of my spiritual worldview.

for much of my life, when envisioning how i see the spiritual paths of humans on this earth, i've often seen us all as traveling up the same mountain. but on this mountain there are many different established paths available that the people have made. these paths are the different religions. and the nice things about following a path are that you aren't alone and if you fall, someone will be able to help you up. and if you get lost, someone with more experience and wisdom can help guide you.

but i truly believe that no one path is exclusively right. just as no one person is always right. i think we can all learn from one another. each person has a lifetime of wisdom they can share. and each spiritual tradition has wisdom that has evolved within cultures of humans over eras and lifetimes of complex experiences. we can learn from each other if we want to.

so that's part of what the holidays means for me today. it is a time to reflect on how far i've come. on what brings me together with other human beings. it is a time to think about sharing and giving and celebrating being alive on this earth. it is a time to think about all the ways we are different and how much i have to learn about this world and all the people in it.

the spiritual paths we have available are just some of the many paths out there that offer wisdom and guidance. and i am doing my best, at this point in my life, to find the good in them. the good in others. and the good in myself.

wishing everyone in the world a happy holiday season, no matter what you believe or who you are.

"Every piece of the universe, even the tiniest little snow crystal, matters somehow. I have a place in the pattern, and so do you."
~T.A. Barron

expressive arts carnival: exploring barriers

2010-12-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

the november expressive arts carnival is up over at paul's blog, mind parts, here:

walls

i really enjoyed this project and seeing what the other contributors created and how the idea of a wall could be interpreted in so many different ways. the contributions are each fascinating and complex.

for me, i chose to depict an old crumbling wall. here's what i made and wrote about it. i created a crumbling wall because that is how my internal experience of "walls" has begun to feel to me these days. i have spent much of my life being guarded and holding grudges, believing i was protecting myself by cutting people off. the old idea: "hurt me once, shame on you. hurt me twice, shame on me." it's been a life-long process learning how to ensure feeling healthy, happy, safe, while learning how to maintain relationships with people i care about.

my mother is still friends with people she went to grade-school with. i think that is remarkable. and i don't mean casual acquaintance level friendship. i mean she and 3 of her childhood friends all meet up at least once a year and take a trip together. they have been witnesses to the joys and sorrows of one another's lives. they are close and love each other. when my mom spends time with them, she gets emotional and says part of her gets to feel like a kid again.

growing up, i never realized how wonderful my mother is. how many talents she has. how much wisdom she holds. and part of her wisdom is how to get along with people socially. she is kind and generous and gives people the benefit of the doubt. it is from her that i learned empathy, how to put myself in other people's shoes.

but how to cultivate enduring relationships in this world, when people can be hurtful and toxic and cold - that's not something i learned how to do.

currently, i'm trying to see the best in people. to not imagine the worst. to not burn bridges. to maintain positive contact as much as possible. if there's something negative or angry i have that i need to say, to think about it as much as i can, to decide whether it is absolutely necessary to say, and if so, what is the kindest, least inflammatory, and most empathetic way i can put it. but sometimes things don't need to be said to that person. sometimes what is bothering you is more about you than it is the other person. sometimes it is possible to just let things go, and allow the relationship to be protected. because sometimes you are safer than you realize.

i've spent a lot of time putting up walls and living fearfully. but nowadays i'm trying to see what life is like being more trusting. exploring forgiveness and understanding. letting down my shield. opening my heart. embracing the unknown.

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future."
~Paul Boese

recovering from codependency

2010-11-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

i was kidding myself lately by thinking that because i've made progress, that i'm "all better" :)

many things in my life are going really well, many of my relationships have more truth and comfort in them, i feel more security overall, and my self-esteem has been better. i've been feeling really happy.

but i have been reminded lately that healing is a life-long process. and that old behaviors can sometimes easily crop up.

i read something really great about this yesterday, that recovery is like climbing a spiral staircase. and it may feel like we're repeating ourselves or like we're stuck back where we were before, but as long as we're moving forward, we can see that even if it feels like we're back where we were before - we may actually be in the same position, but looking at it from a higher viewpoint.

that helps!

currently for me, the issue is my caretaking behavior. throughout these past few years i've been slowly recognizing that i still caretake in self-defeating ways. in that, if someone i care about is in pain, it feels like part of me goes into hyper-drive. i care so much about them and want to "help" them. i will think about them a lot and worry about them. and try to think of things i can say or share that i think could be of some use. and sometimes i'll send too much energy or information their way. probably more than they want or need :)

and it's good to care, and important to be compassionate. but not to the extent that we feel drained and worn out and become overinvolved. we need to trust other people to be able to take care of themselves, and be wary of getting into rescuer mode. because that just wears us out. and i don't think it actually "helps" the other person much either. sometimes it might even add to their troubles. because now they have to worry about you too, on top of whatever problems they were having already that you wanted to help them with!

when you grew up in a dysfunctional environment, it can be a natural defense to learn to care about others more than yourself, to put their needs above your own, to take responsibility for their feelings. to think that so much is "up to you" - that you have that much power over another, that what you do or say to them might be able to "save" them.

but all of this really just ends up feeling like chasing the wind. and you wind up with an empty cup.

here's a helpful daily meditation on caretaking:

Taking Care of Ourselves

It's healthy, wise, and loving to be considerate and responsive to the feelings and needs of others. That's different from caretaking. Caretaking is a self defeating and, certainly, a relationship defeating behavior - a behavior that backfires and can cause us to feel resentful and victimized - because ultimately, what we feel, want, and need will come to the surface.

Some people seem to invite emotional caretaking. We can learn to refuse the invitation. We can be concerned; we can be loving, when possible; but we can place value on our own needs and feelings too. Part of recovery means learning to pay attention to, and place importance on, what we feel, want, and need, because we begin to see that there are clear, predictable, and usually undesirable consequences when we don't.

Be patient and gentle with yourself as you learn to do this. Be understanding with yourself when you slip back into the old behavior of emotional caretaking and self-neglect.

But stop the cycle today. We do not have to feel responsible for others. We do not have to feel guilty about not feeling responsible for others. We can even learn to let ourselves feel good about taking responsibility for our needs and feelings.

Today, I will evaluate whether I've slipped into my old behavior of taking responsibility for another's feelings and needs, while neglecting my own. I will own my power, right, and responsibility to place value on myself.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

looking up

2010-11-23T06:05:00.000-08:00

when i was little, i remember laying down on our driveway at night by myself and looking up at the stars...

it's amazing how small the world seemed to me as a child. i remember thinking, "when i grow up and go to the moon..." and i would make plans for my future moon trips :) i just assumed that we would travel to the moon as easily as we could fly to texas. the world, and life, felt full of possibility. i felt optimistic and hopeful.

then as i grew up, the world instead began to appear chaotic, confusing, vast, frightening, dark, and dangerous...

i learned all the reasons there were to be afraid of other people in this world. judgement, fear, self-righteousness, arguments, control, abuse, neglect, competition, war.

i learned to take sides, to be self-protective, to feel self-righteous, to be judgemental, to look down on others, to cut people out of my life, to live in fear.

only nowadays, i feel like i'm going through a change. i think i've been working towards this throughout my adult life, but becoming a parent has made this that much stronger.

i'm learning to trust. to see beyond the destructive power of humans to what is good in them. to believe in our future. to believe in possibility. to know that change is possible. that forgiveness doesn't mean that harming others was ever ok. or that people who have harmed others should be permitted to continue. it means we don't have to let the destruction of others define us. we don't have to live our lives in reaction to their harm. we can live our lives fully. we can still hold others accountable for their actions, but this doesn't require that we live in fear and anger. looking for the next harm to come our way. expecting it to.

we can be happy.

we can ask questions instead of feeling sure we know the answers. embrace uncertainty instead of fighting for security and control. live in the moment instead of living in fear.

i want to teach my daughter that we live in a world where there is goodness. where there is hope. there is danger, yes. but that is not all there is. there is so much more to life than just protecting yourself. you can make friends. care for each other. share. be kind. play. talk. create. and love.

this month's expressive arts carnival, hosted by paul over at mind parts, was the following activity:

Draw a wall using any medium, and show what is on one or both sides. Please also write a couple of sentences saying what the process was like for you.

i didn't think i could participate in this one as i had an initial inner aversion to the idea of a wall. i think because of everything i've stated above.

then i realized that i don't have to create an image of a wall that serves as a barrier. i can show a wall how it now feels to me. an old crumbling wall that no longer keeps things out. because there is more to my life now than feeling that way.

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down."
~Robert Frost, Mending Wall

learning

2010-11-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

“I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.” ~Louisa May Alcott

i have been reminded lately that no matter what is going on, you can always look at things in a new way. when you are frustrated, irritated, angry, upset, hurt...instead of only feeling that feeling, you can step back from it and ask yourself some interesting questions like, "what can i learn from this?"

i don't believe in fate myself, but i don't think a lack of belief in predestination means that you can't still perceive each experience of your life as something you can learn from.

we all choose how to look at life, and what we get from each experience, we may just not realize we are making choices. we may not realize the power we have to feel better. that we have it within ourselves to feel better. we do not need the other person to behave somehow else, in order to be happy.

growing up, i always thought that spock was cold. i never liked the vulcan mentality, because i thought that the emphasis on logic was sexist. growing up female, i grew up hearing things like: women are emotional (which somehow meant crazy and silly) but men are logical and rational, and other such nonsense. i remember frequent arguments along my way into adulthood, trying to suss out whether or not there were actually any cognitive differences between men and women, or if these stereotypes were just leftovers from the days where men had to leave the home sphere to go out into the world and work, and women had to stay home and raise the children. back then, i can see why people might have assumed that men and women were inherently different, because their lives did not allow them to travel beyond these narrow limits in how they related to the world and others.

not long ago, women were not allowed to vote, did not tend to go to college (or if they did were often majoring in MRS - i.e. finding a husband). women were treated as hysterics if they had emotional problems, and were expected to live their lives cooking and cleaning and taking care of children, with little left for the complete development of personal identity, imagination, self-expression, fulfillment and self-actualization.

but i did not grow up in that world. it made such little sense to me whenever i would hear people still saying things like men like logic and math and science, and women are emotional and only concerned with relationships. i always thought, aren't we supposed to be beyond that kind of stereotype by now? even when my daughter was one, i took her to a children's learning play school and the teacher actually made a comment like this about our kids.

but the older i got and the more i learned, (and the more star trek i watched :) i realized that men and women are not so different. and neither are humans and vulcans. vulcans are just as emotional as women, i mean, humans, they just have spent centuries training themselves how to manage their emotions, how to live and not be governed by them.

i wonder if vulcan philosophy is not drawing from buddhism and the teachings of practicing detachment to find peace and harmony.

we are all emotional. and there are women who love science and math, and men who don't. i think so much has to do with how you are raised and what is nurtured and modeled in our childhoods. until the day when all children are treated equally in terms of gender, i don't think we'll ever really know what is biologically inherently male or female in terms of personality.

as for logic, i think that thinking and feeling are not two separate things, and that logic is a tool you can use to help navigate through the sometimes murky waters of emotion. but emotions are thoughts, there are reasons for what we feel, we might just not be aware of what they are. what i've learned from buddhism and 12-step programs, is that you can find ways to detach, to take a step back, to find a new perspective on whatever it is you are going through emotionally.

you do not have to feel at the mercy of your whims, you do not have to feel like a leaf blown about in the wind. and this detachment does not mean you divorce yourself from your emotions and become cold, remote, unfeeling and unable to attach to people and be loving. it means to me that you can be loving and connected, just not out of control. and not a mystery to yourself either.

if you're in the midst of an argument with a loved one, for example, your first response in that situation is likely to be an old habit, something you learned long ago. but we can learn to live actively, not reactively, you can look at what you are feeling and how you want to respond, and treat yourself with curiosity instead of impulsively acting out old habits.

you can ask yourself things like:

why am i really feeling this way?
is there another way i can respond that will cause this situation to go differently from how it normally does?
why is it that this behavior of theirs upsets me so much?
what is it i'm REALLY upset about here?
what is really going on with them and how is that different from what i might be projecting?
is there another way i can respond or interpret this that will improve the overall outcome of this situation?

questions like this, i find, help me in moments of strong emotion, to gain a safe distance from what feelings in the past i might have felt helpless to overcome on my own.

so that's what i'm thinking about this week. actions by others that normally "push my buttons" or bring up old feelings of anxiety, rejection and self-doubt, instead of letting myself just feel all those feelings helplessly, i'm trying instead to ask myself, "what can i learn from this?"

we do not have to live out old thought patterns over and over. the same things that bothered me years ago, do not need to be the same things that bother me today. i can look back and say, now i know why that used to bother me, but now it no longer does.

it is not that we should strive to not be emotional, or that reason is in any way superior to emotion. they are both natural parts of our minds, and tools we can use to better navigate our lives and relationships. my emotions tell me when something is wrong, my thoughts can help me understand why, and to figure out what i can do to make myself feel better and get along with others as well as i possibly can.

~On Reason and Passion~
by Kahlil Gibran

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.

But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.

Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.

what i believe

2010-11-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

i was starting to think i was an atheist. that the term agnostic was beginning to be less true, because deep down, i don't actually believe in a god. i never have. so i was starting recently to think that maybe the term atheist was the more true label for me after all. and i felt it was important to not "be in the closet" about it. to let people know how i feel,

not to argue or rock people's boats or challenge anyone's faith or upset anyone.

that has never been my intention.

but instead, just so that i didn't feel so alone. i think the more you keep things to yourself, especially the things that feel most important or essential to you, the less you have the chance to realize you're not alone after all. and i think it underestimates too the ability that you and others have to relate, connect, and respect one another, even if you are different.

but lately, i'm starting to think that agnostic is the correct label for me after all. and that the term atheist doesn't reflect my truth after all.

because for me, and i'm not speaking for all atheists, i think to label your beliefs in a statement of negation is something you better be pretty sure about. and in order to say that i definitely do not believe in something ... i need to be clear on what that something is that i am saying i do not believe in.

and i do not believe in an anthropomorphic deity. but i do not deny the possibility that one exists. it's just never been a part of my experience or reality.

so when i interact with a theist who does have this experience, who believes in god or other supernatural beings in a very real way, to the extent they feel they actually communicate with and have relationships with these beings - i do not feel that they are wrong or foolish or delusional or have been brainwashed. i just feel that they have an experience of life that i do not have.

and that is why i thought i was an atheist. i wanted to express that this has not been my experience.

but it feels false to me now to say i'm an atheist. because the fact is, i have no idea what god is. i know some people think god is a being that created the universe and rules over the earth. but some people think god is loving, while other people think god is punitive and vengeful. some people think that there is one god. others believe there are many. some people believe there is one god and that this is the same god that all the religions see as god, it's just that humans have gotten confused over the centuries and believe that the separate religions reflect different gods or different truths. whereas some people think that the god of their own religion is the only one and true god, and people who do not follow their religion are wrong or lost. or even dangerous.

then some people don't believe in a god that is anthropomorphic at all. that god is not a being. not a he or a she. but moreso that god is a word for a concept. that god is the web of life, the energy or lifeforce that is a part of life itself and connects us all. some people believe god is another word for goodness and love. that god is not something lofty and separate from us in the sky that can love us or condemn us, embrace us or shun us. but that it's something within us all. that to see the god in another person, is to see what is good in them. to understand that we are all of the same fiber. that we are all connected in this way.

and this i do believe in. i believe that there is energy, life, in the plants and animals and humans, and for this reason, we need to take care of one another and of our environment. because we need each other. so we need to make this world a safe place to live. i believe in goodness and kindness and compassion. i believe we need to ensure our own survival and happiness. that it is our responsibility to be caring, to create peace, to be kind to one another, to teach kindness and responsibility to our children and one another, to model this behavior in our daily lives. what we do matters, not because we are being watched or judged or our place in the afterlife depends on it (though perhaps this is true also), but for the very visible fact that everything we do affects everyone else, including ourselves.

so i do believe in something that i think some people call god, i just don't call it god, because i think that word is just too confusing because it is used by so many people to mean so many different things.

so i'm back to calling myself agnostic. but even that label doesn't feel quite right either. because i think the literal definition of agnostic is not only one who is skeptical about whether or not there is a god (true for me), but also one who believes that this knowledge cannot be obtained. that it is impossible to know if there is a god or not.

but how can you believe something is impossible? i think that things like this are not impossible. they just may not have been done yet, or been provable yet. but just because there is no proof, doesn't mean something isn't real. who am i to say that someone else's experience of god isn't real, just because they can't prove it. just because it hasn't been my experience?

the same way i don't think it makes sense for any one person to tell another that their religion is wrong. who are we to judge each other's belief systems?

i think as long as we do our best to get along and not hurt one another, to treat each other with respect, it shouldn't matter if we don't see things the same way. or believe the same things.

i feel like so much of my life has been a process of getting comfortable living with ambiguity. not really feeling like i belong in any one particular group. yet longing to feel that connection and sense of belonging and welcoming that many who seem to clearly fit within a particular group feel.

i identify myself as a human being. i live on this earth. i love being alive and i love other people. i care about what happens to them. i don't want them to hurt and be in pain. and i want to relate and connect to other people. and the fact that i don't see the cosmos in the same way, or have not had the same experience of religion as other people, is getting to the point where it threatens me less and less. i've never been interested in changing people to be more like me. i just wanted to feel seen, accepted and understood.

i believe that the more we approach others with sincerity, empathy, curiosity and compassion, the better off we'll all be. the more we don't underestimate what others bring to the table, what we can learn from each other if we can just find a way to communicate with respect, the closer we'll be to living in harmony.

there's much to learn. and much room to grow. and i don't have much that i'm certain of. but i'm excited to be a student in this school of life :)

"When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently."
~Pema Chödrön (Practicing Peace in Times of War)

from this neat site: clare ultimo, word mandalas

pacifism and patriotism

2010-11-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

i feel somewhat anxious about the last post i wrote, in which i wrote some about pacifism and my feelings about my country. i'm not sure why i worry that this would be particularly angering to anyone. i guess one thing i'm worried about is that people would assume that because i'm committed to non-violence, that this would mean i'm not supportive of soldiers.

while i hate that i live in a world in which there is war, a world where people are grouped up into countries and ethnic groups who are divided and often fight amongst each other, i'm not so foolish and idealistic that i don't see that we do live in reality. that many in this world are not pacifists, and if a whole country proclaimed pacifism, would they be quick to be attacked? would those who seek to destroy and dominate others take advantage of anyone who proclaimed non-violence? i know that there are times when some people feel violence is truly called for. as in self-defense.

but my endless questioning on this matter, is where does that line end?

when does violence to protect yourself from harm end, and instead you have become a perpetrator?

sometimes, and i mean in all areas of our lives, i think that we can be overprotective. that we can be too quick to assume that the other person is out to get us. so we operate from a defensive standpoint. quick to attack at any perceived threat. when perhaps there was no actual threat. perhaps we weren't in any danger at all. and instead of being in danger, we actually created the conflict ourselves, by being so sure there was one to begin with. we made our world into what we believed it was. when in truth, it was safer than we realized.

sometimes of course we are attacked. sometimes it is clear that someone is in fact out to get us. but in that case, is violence and vengence the best response? i tend to believe that violence only begets more violence. and if we continue to respond to violence with more violence, that we'll never see an end. and this world will only continue to be a frightening place to live.

why do so many people believe violence = strength? is pacifism really weak?

i think letting people walk all over you and never standing up for yourself isn't healthy. but i don't think that's what pacifism means. i just think there are other ways to defend yourself and protect yourself besides violence.

my hopes of course are that one day every person on earth would just drop all weapons and embrace one another, take care of each other instead of hating, fighting, abusing or judging...to see that we're all the same. that we all deserve the same freedoms.

the freedom to be who we are, believe what we want, live the way we want, and love who we want, as long as we don't hurt anyone else.

it will always remain my hope that one day we could live in such a world. a world where children don't have to fear their parents, where people didn't have to fear strangers, their neighbors, their husbands, wives, friends, etc.

a world without fear ... can you imagine?

some might say this is just la la land. but, i don't think it is unrealistic to hold onto these ideals. some ways i try to manifest these goals in my own life is that i want to do all i can to contribute good. to help others. to be kind. to resolve the conflicts in my life in a harmonious way - as much as i can. even if i am harmed, to use nonviolent methods to resolve the situation and protect myself. to make amends if i cause harm to others. to learn how to express anger in as direct and kind a way as possible. to be calm and respectful to others, no matter what. to be a loving parent to my daughter, yet also to be able to teach her discipline (the ability to control herself), yet never by harming her.

but about the military, i would never tell a soldier that i think they are wrong for serving their country. i believe every person on this earth deserves compassion, support and understanding and everyone needs to do what they feel is right for them, and right for their families. i can never imagine taking on a job that would include having to fight against others and perhaps even kill them. military, police, etc. i imagine that most people who get involved in these types of jobs do not do this because they would ever want to hurt someone else.

i believe they want to do what is right. that they do their job in order to protect others.

so yes, i'm a pacifist. but in this, what that means to me, is that i'm a supporter of humanity. there are plenty of people who are not pacifists, and they have their reasons for it. but i'm worried my beliefs would make someone angry with me. that they would say i'm a big weakling, that i'm ungrateful and unpatriotic, because at the same time i'm sitting here praising pacifism, i'm also enjoying freedoms and safety that some people in this world do not have. freedoms that people have fought and died to preserve. people who were not pacifists.

i guess what i want to say here tonight is that i mean no disrespect. i certainly appreciate the freedoms i have. and i appreciate anyone who puts their life at risk to protect the lives of others, including me. i would never disrespect that.

i just wish we didn't live in a world where fighting existed. and i do think that you can be patriotic, and be a pacifist. i don't think that arguing for peace and non-violence needs to be interpreted as an attack against anyone or anything. it is only meant as an invitation, as a hope, an ideal, that one day we might be able to solve our problems without guns.

i may be a hippie. i may be an idealist. but please know, that i will do my best to respect you, no matter what you believe in. no matter where you are from. no matter what language you speak. no matter how different from me you are.

found this great old photo of hippies putting flowers in guns in this really fascinating article:
Defending the language with bullets: If you can read this in English, thank a soldier

the walls that divide us

2010-11-02T19:30:00.000-07:00

tonight our dialogue group met for the third time. the topic for this evening's conversation was: what is your unique contribution to the whole?

we discussed what is meant by people being unique. what do we lose by focusing on one another's differences, by putting each other into categories and groups. we discussed what encourages us to feel separate and alienated from one another in this world. and what we can gain by seeing one another as individuals, not just as a faceless bunch of categories and classifications.

one of my favorite poems about encouraging us to see beyond the things that divide us is robert frost's mending wall:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

when i lived in south korea for that one year after college, it was within the first month of my stay that the sept. 11th attacks on the world trade center in the u.s. occurred. i was broken hearted, and cried seeing the footage, and all i could think about were all the sad, terrified, and hurt people, and all the families. what that must have been like for everyone living in new york at that time. and for their loved ones not with them, not knowing if their loved ones had been hurt, or killed.

however, i was not angry. i am not a vengeful person. and ever since i was a child, i've felt so strongly, in my bones, in every fiber of my being, that killing in response to killing just leads to our mutual annihilation. i wrote emails to my friends and family back home, expressing my broken heart about what was happening in the world after 9-11, and my opposition to the invasion of afghanistan and iraq. and i was met with very little mutual understanding from my stateside loved ones. they seemed to think it was because i was abroad, that i wasn't seeing the same news coverage, that i wasn't seeing things the same way they were.

but i don't think it was because i was in korea. i think that is just who i am, that i feel this way. though i think that being in south korea did make me even more sensitive than i already was to how the u.s. was perceived abroad. and the news coverage i was seeing of afghanistan was mostly interviews with villagers, i had very human faces in my mind. all i could think about was all the innocent people who would be hurt. also, in my experience, it was not news to me that the u.s. had enemies. i remember thinking that it was no shock to me that people would be angry with the u.s.

not that this justifies violence or killing. i'm a pacifist through and through, and the heart of what i believe, and the point i'm trying to make here, is that violence is never the answer. though the anger that is there must be addressed, the reasons for the violence must be examined and dealt with.

all over our world, people are divided from one another, between countries, within countries, between neighbors, within families. people have barriers between them, and think that they are so different from one another, and people get so concerned about who is right and who is wrong, and some people act out of pain. some people have been so deeply hurt in so many ways, that sometimes it is so painful, it may feel impossible to see past that hurt. to not want vengence. to believe that there are other ways to solve our problems than by focusing on all the ways we are hurt, or afraid, or different.

part of what we discussed tonight in our small group was, how do you respond to people who do not want to cooperate with you? people who do not want to engage in peaceful dialogue, people who are perhaps aggressive, or resistant, or who push your buttons? what do you do when you feel threatened by someone, or triggered? do you close off all communication? see them as "the enemy"? refuse to engage with them?

i've spent a lot of time in my life relating to others in an all-or-nothing capacity. and it was this very attitude that i felt so hurt and ashamed by when our government took that stance, to claim that there were countries in this world that formed an "axis of evil", and that "either you're with us, or you're against us." and i'm so opposed to these attitudes politically. and yet i've acted that way in my own life. approached others defensively. never wanted to hurt them, but to cut them out of my life completely to ensure my safety, yes. so much so though, that if i didn't feel completely safe and comfortable and like-minded, then i was quick to cut people out, to not give them a chance.

all because i was too afraid. too afraid they wouldn't like me. would challenge me. would try to defeat me or hurt me. would take everything i held dear to my heart, and try to twist it to make me more like them. i felt too fragile to try to engage with people i felt threatened by, people i felt different from, so i chose to not engage with them at all.

and in that way, i created some hurts of my own. i was cold and rejecting.

but what i've been learning this past year is that we don't have to approach people in an all-or-nothing way. that we can have levels and boundaries in the way we relate with others. that we can see the value and dignity of each human being, no matter our race, ethnicity, religion or lack of religion, and any other perceivable or non-percivable difference. as far as i'm concerned, we're all the same in so many ways that are far more important and more basic, and must be relied upon when we're deciding how to treat one another.

however, our pain matters, our anger is valid. if we feel hurt, or encroached upon, or have been abused or oppressed, or taken advantage of, all of this matters, all of this should be addressed. and we should not allow other people to hurt us. to abuse us. but violence and vengence are not the way to go. hurting each other won't solve anything. that just creates more fear. and no matter what, i don't believe it is justified to hurt each other to solve our problems, even if we believe in our hearts that we are doing this for the right reasons, it's never ok to hurt another human being. i believe this with all my heart.

i still struggle to be inclusive in my life. there are people i've deemed it necessary to put up strict boundaries and to keep them separate from my life for my own safety, and the well-being of my family. but i'm trying to learn the difference between when it is necessary to detach with love, and when i'm making decisions based on fear that do not need to be made. not everyone who seems threatening must be kept entirely out of our lives. we can relate with others who push our buttons and upset us, people who are different from us, who we may feel antagonize us or anger us. but that doesn't mean we can't get along with these people.

we can find things we mutually agree upon. we can trust our instincts and take care of ourselves. we can set limits. i was once told, "we teach people how to treat us" and what wisdom there is in this. there are more options available to us, than you're either with us, or you're against us. there are many more levels of understanding and cooperation that we can find in the middle.

and one place to start, and this is what we discussed in our group this evening, is with radical unknowing. basic human respect. and genuine curiousity.

everyone does not have to like us or understand us. we don't have to like or understand others. we don't all have to be best friends. but we don't have to be right all the time either. we don't have to focus all our energy on blame, mistrust, or scapegoating. we don't have to be certain that our way is the right way. we can find a way to trust that even if people are different from us in some fundamental ways, even if this is disturbing to us or seems to invalidate some things that we hold dear and true in our hearts, that there might be other ways we can perceive each other and these differences. there might be other ways we can come to understand each other. that our differences don't have to undermine our ability to relate to one another. that a basic level of human respect and trustworthiness is possible. and must be attempted, if we are to move forward and learn to work together and live in peace and harmony in this world. we must be willing to see the humanity in each other. see the gifts each person has to give. which again doesn't mean we have to include all people in our lives. but even if we choose to keep some people at a distance, we can do so respectfully and with kindness. we can find a way to peacefully coexist.

we can live and let live.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
~Mother Teresa

making a difference

2010-10-23T07:08:00.001-07:00

"A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves."
~Eleanor Roosevelt

a few evenings ago i had the opportunity to listen to a dialogue with a man named dr. george henderson, who has been a leader in our state in many ways, but especially in civil rights. i feel inadequate to convey the wisdom of this person, so i will provide you with a link to his remarks from our city's 2010 celebration of martin luther king, jr.

reading this really does give me the same sense that i have felt whenever i've had the chance to hear dr. henderson talk in person, so i highly recommend taking a look at this if you're interested:

Interfaith Prayer Breakfast
Celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2010
Hosted by Mayor Cindy Rosenthal and the Norman Human Rights Commission
Remarks by Dr. George Henderson

what i felt most struck by the other night, was the value dr. henderson holds for the individual. when you think of a leader, what do you think of? do you think of someone powerful and charismatic? someone with vision and a strong backbone? someone aggressive who doesn't let anything stand in their way?

that may be a version of a leader that some people think is true. but what i've learned of leadership from dr. henderson is so different from those notions. while he does have strength and power, he is not overpowering or intimidating. he's encouraging and soft-spoken. he listens. he seems humble and gentle and caring. he even seemed to remember me from when i took his class years ago at ou, and it's hard to believe he was pretending to remember me, because he seems so sincere. he is warm and he hugged the people he spoke with as he was signing copies of his latest book, race and the university: a memoir, written about here:

Henderson Receives OU Black Alumni Society Trailblazer Award

during the dialogue, we heard discussed some of what he wrote about in his book, about the history of race relations at the university of oklahoma. about what things were like in norman during his life here. about what things were like for his family. about his love for his students, and his dedication to helping each of them realize their potential. this is where the subject of "dialogue" seemed the most relevant.

because his work wasn't about following his own agenda about what needed to change, and imposing it on others. more than anything it seemed to be about listening to his students. learning about what their problems were. and then working to help each of them overcome whatever obstacles stood in their way. we heard about the difference between overt and obvious prejudice, and how that was in some ways easier to fight, compared to the more subtle forms we are more often faced with today.

one of the most meaningful moments for me in the talk, was when he was talking about how vulnerable you feel in dialogue. to open yourself up when talking to someone about something deeply meaningful to you. what a risk you take when you lay your truth out on the line, not knowing how this will go, not sure if you said too much, or if risking your vulnerability will do any good. how you can never know if once you set out on a course, if you will be able even to make it to step two. or if it will take years to get to step two. how change is a process, and though it may feel risky, that this is how we move forward. by opening our hearts to one another, and through honest and open dialogue, work towards greater understanding and compassion with one another, to make life better for everyone.

it isn't about vengence or guilt, or making people "pay" if they've hurt you. it's not about anger, even if you feel angry. we heard about non-violence and the principles of gandhi and martin luther king, jr.

every day since this talk, i've been thinking about pacifism and the power behind the fight for change using love instead of hate. feeling so inspired and reflective of my own history and committment to pacifism. ever since my own childhood, in which i learned that violence and revenge gets you nowhere, and only leads to more hurt. i do not believe in "an eye for an eye." i believe instead this:

"An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind"
~Mahatma Ghandi

life is too short and precious to spend our time hating or trying to even the score. and such a course i believe is neverending. if we were to live our lives trying to enact vengence for all the pain that people have endured, i firmly believe this would only lead to our ultimate annihilation.

and life spent only caring for yourself and your own preservation doesn't feel like enough to me. if each of us spends our whole life looking out only for ourselves, sure that we can trust or depend on no one, how will we ever learn to feel safe and take care of one another? we may try live our lives isolated, but we are not. we are all here in this together, dependent on one another, whether we like it or not. i find the most meaning in doing my best to create positivity in the web of life around me. to nurture loving interaction. to treat others with kindness and compassion. to be open and caring and communicative.

growing up, my mom took me to see films like mississippi burning and the long walk home. this is part of how i learned about the history of the united states in terms of how african americans have been treated. i would cry and cry whenever i learned what white people have done to non-white people in our world (i say non-white on purpose, to include people besides african americans). i grew up in tulsa, which was where a huge race riot erupted in 1921 (read about it here: Tulsa Race Riot), and the booming business district of Greenwood was destroyed, an area which was at the time so prosperous it is considered to have been the Black Wall Street.

as i child, i developed an immense sense of white guilt. i felt so ashamed to live in a world of hatred, bigotry and oppression, because in this world i am part of a race and culture that had treated others so horrifically. i already felt ashamed just being white, but i felt intensely sickened and further internalized this shame when i learned that a member of my own family, a great grandfather i believe, had possibly been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. all i remember is being told that upon his death, someone found what looked like a KKK uniform in his closet. this was one of the most horrific experiences in my life. i think about it often. what did he do when wearing that uniform? did he hurt people? did he terrify people? did he kill someone?

for years, i wanted to become involved in increasing my awareness and contributions to making the world a better place. i wanted to take african american and native american history courses in college, but i was so ashamed, i felt like i had no right even stepping into the room. i wanted to attend our university Black Student Association meetings and Hillel meetings on campus, but again, felt i had no right. that i did not deserve even to breathe near my fellow citizens and students whose races or ethnic groups had been oppressed by my own.

my feelings didn't begin to change until years later, when i journeyed to south korea to live for a year after graduation, to teach english (something else i felt torn about, unsure if what i was doing was actually helpful, or whether or not i was a part of some worldwide assimilation effort). i was sitting in my apartment one day, reading the autobiography of malcolm x, and that afternoon sitting there thinking, it finally dawned on me that my intense shame, guilt and sense of personal responsibilty for the wrongs of my race and cuture - did no one any good. as long as i did nothing with it, it only served to hurt me, and did nothing to help anyone else. guilt and shame can be powerful motivators. but if they only paralyze you, and you're unable to feel dignity and self-respect to the point of being able to act on your beliefs, then you can be the most ethical, loving, accepting member of society, but if you hold everything inside, out of shame, then the bigots and oppressors are still winning. because silence helps no one.

one of my favorite films is Gentleman's Agreement filmed in 1947, just after the end of WW2, it's about anti-semitism in the u.s. gregory peck plays a young single father who moves to a new city to accept a job as a journalist. and his assignment is to write a piece on anti-semitism. he decides since he is new to town, that he will try telling everyone that he is jewish, to see if it changes the way people treat him. it not only changes his life and worldview entirely, his son is subjected to prejudice at school. by the way, i seriously think they should make a remake of this film today, but instead of it being about a man who tells everyone he is jewish to reveal the anti-semitism in our culture, i think it should be about a man who tells everyone he is gay. and instead of his son coming home crying because they called him a "dirty jew," he would come home hurt by the gay bashing of his peers. just the way it happens in our schools today.

one of the most important parts of the film for me, is when the point is made that one of the biggest barriers to overcoming prejudice in our society isn't the loud-mouthed bigots. it's the quiet nice people. the people who would never hurt a soul or utter a slur. because in public, if a loud-mouthed bigot spews hatred, and no one says anything otherwise, all anyone hears is the hatred. everyone else, no matter how sick they feel and how much they disagree with the bigot, if they only sit there in silence, they may as well be agreeing with him. their power and their dissent lay buried under their silence.

so in my own small way, i've tried to do what i can to stand up for what i believe is right, to stand up for those who are abused and oppressed. to stand up against racism and other types of prejudice. to not sit by quietly if something wrong is happening. we don't all have to be civil rights leaders, gaining national attention and changing the world in big ways. we can do our part in our own lives, by not sitting silently while people are hateful in our midst. we can be compassionate and vocal. we can listen to others. we can speak our truth. even if we feel small and quiet. even if we feel scared and our voice shakes.

it's ok if all we do is just a little. because not only is that better than nothing at all, i think each thing we do affects others, and ripples throughout the world.

in inspiration from all these thoughts i have updated my playlist here on my blog, so it now includes some of my favorite peace songs like a change is gonna come, talking about a revolution, why can't we be friends, what's so funny about peace love and understanding, what's going on and one of my all time favorite songs, imagine by john lennon. i also found a beautiful cover of imagine by eva cassidy which i put on there too. i wish i could have found ed mccurdy's "last night i had the strangest dream," performed by simon and garfunkel, but playlist didn't have it available. but i did happen to find it on youtube, so you can enjoy it here if you want:

when i left the dr. henderson talk the other evening, i didn't feel overwhelmed with guilt or heavy with a burden of "shoulds" upon my heart. i felt peaceful. optimistic. encouraged. inspired. and valued. i was moved by the compassion and gentle courage of this person who has worked so hard to make life better for the people he has encountered. a person who believes in the power of each individual to become whatever they have within them to become. and who still takes the time to be sure to know your name and ask you how you're doing.

dr. george henderson

pride

2010-10-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

it's strange, i've been feeling such love for my homestate lately, and have been celebrating the fact that i live here and am finally happy to be doing so...

it's strange that in the midst of this feeling, i would be faced with one of the major areas we are not ok. being that this is a predominantly conservative and christian environment, it's not been the most hospitable place for the glbtq community. we had a city council meeting a few weeks ago, debating whether or not to adopt october as gay history month. and apparently the discussion went on for three hours. and much hate was spoken.

the good news is that the motion passed 7-1. we will be honoring gay history month in october in our city. hooray!!! i'm so proud :)

however, the horrible news is that a young man who attended that meeting committed suicide a few days later. here's the article about it. apparently he'd suffered mistreatment in our local high school and even though the decision passed, which was good news, i'm under the impression that the hateful, oppressive words spoken at the meeting were enough to push him over the edge.

i had a close friend in college whose boyfriend committed suicide. while he had a loving boyfriend and supportive friends, his parents were religious and did not accept him for who he was. and one day we lost him.

he was so smart and funny. his name was sean. i think of him often. and my friend, and how deeply it hurt him to lose his love in such a tragic way.

no one should ever have to go through this.

i first realized i might be gay when i was in high school. i didn't have any gay friends, heck, i really didn't have friends period. so i didn't really know who to talk to about my feelings. so since i worked at the local video store, i decided to rent movies with gay characters. like torch song trilogy and longtime companion. and when i was about 17 i told my mom that i thought i might be gay. to which she cried and said how embarrassed she'd be when she didn't have a photo of me with a husband and kid on her desk at work one day. what would she say to people? and what if i got hurt? she never wanted me to be hurt by anyone, and it's so dangerous for gay people in our culture.

i told her that her worries about "what to tell people" were all about her. that had nothing to do with me. and that if she really wanted me to be healthy and happy, then she should want me to be who i truly am, and not feel the need to hide it or feel ashamed of myself. if who i truly was was completely gay, then the last thing she should ever want would be for me to provide her with a photo of me and a husband for her desk. because that would mean i'm living a lie, and that i would be miserable.

the funny thing is though, that now my mom DOES have a photo of me with my husband and baby on her desk at work.

but i'm not living a lie. i'm truly happy and living an authentic and full life.

but i'm not straight either. i'm monogamous and completely devoted to my husband. some people may have open relationships, or are polyamorous, and that is their business. but i'm not that way. i figure, as long as you are involved in a consenting adult relationship, and being honest with those you're involved with, then i'm not one to judge. what bothers me is when people hurt each other. through infidelity or abuse.

but being gay isn't hurting anyone. it's a valid, healthy, well-adjusted, normal way to be. what is maladjusted is feeling suicidal because you aren't accepted or allowed to be who you are by your family or community. but being gay isn't what makes someone suicidal. homophobia and intolerance and oppression are.

what's strange for me now is how invisible i feel. ever since i became a parent, i became more nervous about being honest with people about who i am. not sure if it's ok. i'm pretty sure the mommy friends i've made are super accepting and would love me no matter what. but now that this suicide has happened in my community, it has jolted me into awareness about who i am and what i feel is my responsibility. to share who i am. to be available if anyone wants to talk or ask me any questions. to be visible. to not be in the closet.

someone on facebook thanked me for being a straight-ally today. and that just jolted me futher into awareness.

i fought so hard for acceptance and visibility in my life. to accept myself for who i was, to live my life in pride. not hiding who i was. not afraid to hold my girlfriend's hand in public. not afraid to tell someone who i was. in college i attended glba meetings. i spoke on panels to classes of students, trying to help dispel myths about the glbtq community. i spent years talking with my mother, trying to get her to the point where she would love and accept me for who i was. helping her move past her own homophobia. and she did get to that point. so by the time i committed to my first serious relationship, with my (now ex) girlfriend, my mom was welcoming and kind and even tried to hug her when she first met her. (which my ex wasn't too thrilled about. ha! go figure.) i marched in pride parades (which were quite small in this state). and i used to love to go dancing at the gay bars in our small gay business district in okc.

i felt out and proud. i came out at work, and drove around with a rainbow sticker on my car. i know not every gay person thinks this type of thing is important. some people don't like labels and believe that who you love is your own business and feel no need to let others know. which is valid, and i think it's every person's choice - to tell others or not.

why i did was because i wanted to feel that it was ok to be who i was. and for me, an important part of this was helping myself be aware of the true acceptance that is out there. distinguishing between my fear and internalized homophobia, and any actual threats i might encounter. but luckily in my case the truth was that most people were far more accepting than i ever realized they would be. i never was abused or taunted. unfortunately i know that is not the case for all people. i feel very fortunate that this was my experience. but being open and talking about it was the only way i could find that out. unless i could freely tell my coworkers that i went to my girlfriend's great-grandma's 90th birthday party celebration that previous weekend, i wasn't sure if i would feel comfortable in the workplace. i wanted to be able to appropriately share the same sorts of things they would. that to me, meant equality. i didn't want to feel that i had to hide who i was out of fear. i wanted people to know me as a human being. which doesn't mean i told everyone at my job. i think you do have to do yourself a favor and do your best to test the waters. try to tell who might be safe to tell. just so you have a support system and feel like you can be yourself.

i'm not advocating everyone tell everyone. you have to do what feels right and safe and best for you and your loved ones. i wish we lived in a world where it was safe for everyone to be completely who they are. for me personally, i wanted to take that chance and i'm glad i did, every time. because people were so accepting overall to me. and that is one of the many things that gives me hope and faith for the future.

our culture has some really confusing messages about gender and sexuality and what is acceptable and "normal." but what i've learned is that people are far more complex and complete than these stereotypes suggest. just because a man is sensitive and empathetic does not mean he's gay. just because a woman is female, doesn't mean she's sensitive and empathetic. women are not necessarily kinder, or more in tune with their emotions, than men. men aren't necessarily emotionally cut off and distant. how emotionally and mentally healthy a person is, really is an individual thing. and who a person is attracted to, really isn't connected to or determined by their gender expression. what matters most i think, is that no matter who you're with, who you love or are friends with, that each of us needs to feel heard, loved, safe, and able to be our complete whole and true self.

i'm not straight. i just happened to fall in love with a man and marry him. which was hard for me too, i must admit. i thought it was so unfair, if gays can't marry, then it seemed so hetero-priviledged of me to take advantage of the fact that we could marry. whereas if he'd been a she, we could not.

but then i thought, we're certainly not brad and angelina, so who will care if WE don't get married? and really, is this a good form of protest anyway? denying yourself something you want, because someone else can't have it? i decided instead to go ahead and marry, despite my fears of marriage, because my partner saw marriage as something beautiful. not something archaic about ownership or inequality. the word "obey" was no where near our marriage ceremony. it wasn't about religion or god for us, being that neither of us are religious. it was just a ceremony declaring openly our love for each other. making even more permanent, something which in my heart i already felt, that we loved each other.

and it doesn't matter if we were men or women, everyone who loves each other should have the right to do this. if they want to. if it matters to them. how does it affect anyone else if gay people want to get married? a declaration of their love. a legal binding contract. how is this anyone else's concern? i do not understand this talk about "the institution of marriage" and how gay people getting married harms it at all. what seems to harm "marriage" (and why human beings would want to protect a concept more than one another is beyond me), but is how lightly people take it. how common divorce is. how common infidelity is. and i don't think divorce or infidelity are horrible things that should be punished. i think more than anything people are sad, confused, hurting and sometimes really directionless when it comes to relationships. having little sense of how to make a relationship work. what to do when the going gets tough. how to feel close when you start to feel alienated from your partner. when the idealism has faded and life's everyday challenges have made everything so much more complicated than they were in the beginning. when things are just real. and not perfect.

i think at that point a lot of people think that they just need someone new. when more often they need to face fears and work through whatever is really going on. because most likely, if they do leave for "greener pastures," the problems in that relationship are going to be ones they take into the new relationship too. because the problems we encounter in our relationships are often the ones we carry with us.

so i don't think gay people are the problem for marriage as an "institution" (still confused by what the heck that even means). if what you really want to encourage in a community is love and companionship, loyalty and committment, wouldn't you want to ENcourage people to marry? to be beacons of hope for the rest of the world? for everyone who ever came from a broken or dysfunctional home, to know that true love and enduring committment is possible? and not because you're afraid of divorce, but because you're truly healthy and lovingly committed?

unfortunately, i think that what's happening in our culture is that people who are opposed to gay people having rights, like marriage or the right to adopt, or hold a job or buy a house without fear of discrimination, is that they just haven't ever really known a gay person. known that gay people are no different than anyone else. that being gay doesn't make you scary or dangerous, or mean that you have no morals. being gay, and being out, takes bravery, because being able to be true to yourself despite what horrible lies people have been taught to believe about you, takes a strength i've not encountered anywhere else in my life.

i think in some ways homophobia is far worse than any other kind of prejudice, because even your own family can turn on you. and hurt you. i've had friends who have been disowned, cut off, cursed, shunned, and have struggled through their youth trying to understand why the people who were supposed to love them most, could turn away from them in fear. when perhaps they needed them most of all because they'd just been brave enough to tell their parents who they truly were.

it's not just about who you love. it's about being able to feel like and be treated like you're just as important and valuable and acceptable as any other human being in this world. being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queer is not a lifestyle. it's not a choice. it's just part of you. and it's a part that doesn't go away when you step out of the door each morning. and it doesn't go away just because you marry someone of the opposite sex. and it doesn't go away even if you do happen to fit into the standardized gender norms of your biological body (meaning if you're a lesbian who just happens to love make-up and other girly things). these gender ideas are so narrow and do not define people. gay people can like sports and make-up and religion and dancing. and they may not. just like everyone else.

i'm proud to be the person i am. i'm a good partner and a good parent, and i'm a loving person in this world. i have strong morals and faith in humankind. i'm kind and i'm determined to do my best to treat every person with dignity and respect. and i hope that one day we get to the point where we can all do this.

there is no reason at all that the young people in this world should ever be bullied, or feel the desire to commit suicide because of how they express who they are, or who they might feel attracted to. there is no excuse for maltreatment of children. for shaming or allowing abuse to go on in schools. it doesn't have to be a matter of your religion, though why on earth people would cling to a few bible versus to justify the maltreatment of anyone, especially a child, is beyond me. when the underlying principle of all religions is love they neighbor, why we wouldn't all cling to this instead?

please let us do that. just love each other. treat each other well. and for goodness sake, if you're homophobic, please do what you can to learn something about what you're afraid of. attend a pflag meeting. watch ellen. heck, watch this excellent documentary:

Straight From The Heart from Garrett Lenoir on Vimeo.

it's one of the best things i've ever seen about acceptance.

thank you to anyone who took the time to read this. wishing everyone wellness and peace in your hearts and lives~

"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people."
~Abraham Joshua Heschel

the soul

2010-10-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

in my journey to become more confident, i've been thinking a lot lately about how to trust myself. how to feel empowered and strong. not depending on others to build me up or reassure me. but to feel that source of strength from within. how to believe in myself and express myself without fear or doubt. how to feel connected to who i truly am, at my core. because when i feel connected to that, i feel so good. i feel optimistic and capable. i feel inspired and that anything is possible. i feel more able to relate well with others. and to feel connected to them.

so i have been reading books on confidence lately. and one called "the little book of confidence" by susan jeffers. and the main thing i'm getting so far is continued reference to connecting to your "higher self."

jeffers writes:

the higher self - inside you is a place filled with joy, creativity, intuition, peace, power, love and all good things. i call it the higher self. whenever in this place, your confidence soars and all seems right with the world.

the lower self - inside you is also a place filled with self-doubt, fear, anger, helplessness, scarcity and all negative things. this is the lower self. whenever in this place, your confidence disappears and all seems wrong with the world.

what's good for me about this view, is that for a long time i've considered myself to be insecure and self-doubting, to have low self-esteem. that these things are just part of who i am. but to think that this is just part of who i am, but that there's another, stronger and more positive part within also that i can connect with. that helps. trying to shed the self-doubt hasn't felt too easy a task. trying to train myself to use positive self-talk has been partially helpful. but to think of myself as having a core part of myself that is positive already is something that feels new. i thought i had to create this. out of thin air, sort of. but to think that it's already there, i've just been disconnected from it, that feels different.

i've had the notion of the core self, or inner child. and tried connecting with this. and that has brought me some peace of mind and strength in some ways, but connecting to my inner child or core self from this perspective, has i think in part also been somewhat encouraging of being past-focused. of thinking too much about how my inner self got suppressed in the first place. which has been a vital part of healing for me. and i would never tell anyone to stop focusing on the past. there is so much healing to be accomplished there. but it got to the point for me where i started to feel stuck there. not sure how to liberate myself beyond that point. for example, sometimes i feel stuck in a childlike place. when other people are angry, or if i'm somewhere new or am around strangers. i can feel like a fearful 5 year old all over again cowering in a corner, or heading off to preschool for the first time.

but i want to get to a new state. not reacting to difficult of challenging situations by feeling like a child. assuming others around me are the capable grown-ups who have it all together. i want to be empowered and connected within. to feel that my core is strong and can withstand a negative environment or the uncertainty of being in a new situation where i don't necessarily know what i'm doing.

when i was in college, i was friends briefly with one of the most confident people i've ever met. and i think that one of the reasons we didn't stay friends was because of the giant divergence in our levels of confidence. i always thought he was repelled by my insecurity. yes, i've long been insecure, but i never felt the need to hide it. to the contrary, i've believed that one way to overcome my insecurities, and to really be strong deep down, is to first be honest and open about my difficulties. that there's true strength in being able to admit vulnerability and be open about what some people consider to be weaknesses.

i've felt confused by people who feel insecure, yet would hide this to give the appearance of strength. people who are afraid of vulnerability. anyone who would put down or look down on others they see as weak. to me, these people are worse off. because they would hurt others, and be unable to be honest about how they feel with those closest to them.

but being able to admit my vulnerability and insecurities alone has not been enough to help me overcome them. i could find others to reassure me. or relate to. people to identify with and experience validation and understanding. but how to move beyond this being a part of my identity. that's where i am trying to go.

and one of the techniques i've encountered, that is supposed to help you connect to your higher self, is affirmations. which i've heard of, of course, but never really tried implementing. to drown out the "chatterbox" of self-doubt, by saying affirmations to yourself. to reaffirm positive, confident thoughts. to incorporate into the thought patterns and hopefully it will get to the point where the positive thoughts become the automatic ones, in place of the self-doubt and fear-based thoughts. and one jeffers mentions is this:

"I am powerful and loving and I have nothing to fear."

how strange this one seemed to me at first. i thought, powerful - yuck! because i have negative associations with power i need to sort out. and i thought, nothing to fear? that's just untrue. there's plenty to fear!

i've no problem telling myself that i'm loving :)

it's these other puzzle pieces i have left to figure out, power and fear. how to embrace a healthy concept of power. that you can be confident, believe in yourself, and yet not be self-righteous or superior. that you can feel strong without needing to see others as weak. and that you can know that fear is an important emotion, not one to be avoided, one that you can learn from and yet not be consumed by it.

that there's another way of being, somewhere in between self-doubt and arrogance. believing in yourself enough that you can speak the truth without a chaser of doubt, or feeling paralyzed by fear. that you can follow your heart and be in touch with your instincts and who you are at your core.

we watched a fascinating film last night called, "cold souls". i highly recommend it! it's about an actor who is troubled by his emotions and is having a hard time disentangling himself from the role he's trying to perform. so he undergoes a procedure to have his soul extracted from his body. it's a witty and funny and thought-provoking movie. but how it resonated with me is that in order to reconnect to his soul, he had to be willing to look within it. something he'd been previously unwilling to do.

so that's what i'm thinking about today and trying to write here. that perhaps that's what confidence is all about. being connected to who you are at your core. and the more we're disconnected from ourselves, the less confident we are. and things than can be damaging to your confidence are anything that helps create blocks within you. being in environments or around others where you don't feel free to express or be yourself. or where your expressions of truth are met with argument or invalidation. the more people around you oppose you or tell you that who you are isn't good enough or what you think it's right, or what you feel isn't real...the more your confidence may be shaken, the more your connection to yourself may become broken. so restroring it, is a matter of creating the conditions within and without that enable that connection to be restored and strengthened.

"A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul."
~Plato

where i am

2010-10-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

i love the fall. i mean i really really do. i look forward to it all year. and when it's here i'm so happy. i go outside more. i feel more energized. i feel more motivated and inspired. as far as i'm concerned, if we could have a long autumn, a nice long winter, a short spring, and then just jump back into autumn, that would be perfect.

this weekend we got to take a short trip to a lodge in a state park. in the mountains! as much as oklahoma has mountains anyway. they aren't the rockies. or the smokies. but they are mountains by my standards. it was beautiful to see the red and gold colors starting to come through on the rocky mountainside. and we found a nice path to walk and saw lots of deer.

growing up, i always wanted to leave oklahoma. i always wanted to move somewhere more liberal. more progressive. somewhere i wouldn't feel so strange, if that could be possible :) but nowadays, i'm happy to be here.

this is my home. this is where my roots are. i've never felt ashamed to live here or to be from here. even though i have always been under the impression that outsiders look down on oklahoma. view this state as a place of backwoods ignorance. a place where people don't aspire to much. a place without many opportunities or resources. a place where people use drugs, beat their wives, abuse their kids, and are obese and ignorant. don't get me wrong, oklahoma is a poor state with real problems. we do have high rates of child abuse, domestic violence, teen pregnancy, and other things like this. but these problems don't make me want to leave. they make me want to stay. to be a part of making things better.

besides, are there places where problems like this are really nonexistent?

this is a conservative state, and is considered the "buckle of the bible belt." these things especially used to make me want to leave, being that i'm a liberal agnostic atheist. (which means that i don't believe in god, but i believe that anything is possible, so i think that people of faith might be aware of something i'm not. which isn't enough to make me believe in god. just motivates me to learn more.)

so growing up, i wanted nothing more than to move somewhere where people were more similar to me. somewhere i wouldn't feel so strange and alone. so alienated. somewhere there wasn't a church on every corner. where i wouldn't have to explain my views. where i would feel understood. and feel like-minded with my peers. somewhere i wouldn't be afraid to be myself.

but i've really been changing a lot these past years. i'm still afraid of the dangers and abuses that people can justify with religion. but i'm moving beyond the standpoint of primarily fear, where i was before.

one of my main goals in life has always been to do all i can to learn how to live in harmony with others, no matter how different we are. and now i feel i'm really getting that chance. now that i know i'm not planning on going anywhere. i'm no longer holding things in, waiting to leave. i'm sinking in my feet. planting my roots. and making friends.

we are all human. we all live on this earth together. just because i don't think the same way as others around me doesn't mean we can't work together, become friends, live near each other and get along and respect and care for one another. so i think i'm learning more about that living here in oklahoma, than i might be, were i living anywhere else. and working towards this in myself, helps feed my hope that one day in this world, we will all be able to treat each other this way. because i know i'm not the only one who cares about this.

so this weekend, i had the opportunity not only to celebrate fall and it's beautiful arrival in my state, i also had the opportunity to explore this state of mine and think about some of the reasons why i love it. oklahoma. this place of my birth.

we drove on her roads. drove through small towns. drove past farmlands. cotton, corn and hay fields. i prefer to take small highways when time allows as opposed to interstates. you see so much more and it's so much better! we saw windmills. we drove past a native american flute festival in a tucked away small mountain town. we drove through a wildlife refuge. we stayed overnight in a restored historic state lodge. took a walk by a lake. and saw the leaves turning.

i think that loving the land where you live in is similar to loving the person you're with. you may get to the point where you think you know all there is to know about them. that life with them has become all it may ever be. but if you do the same things day in and day out, and stop looking beyond the surface. if you stay in familiar patterns and never challenge yourselves by stepping out of your comfort zones. you may never realize that the person you are with is far more complex than you realize. they may even have hidden valleys and mountains that you never knew existed.

another reason i love fall is for all it can symbolize. things like transformation. the life-death-life cycle that everything goes through. how we aren't so different from the trees. because sometimes we go through periods of loss and hibernation, before things can begin again. refreshed and renewed.

sometimes things need to change in order to continue to grow.

here's a little treat for you now :) happy transformation everyone~~~

balance

2010-10-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

i think codependency is basically treating other people as though they are your god. when others are your sole source of love and approval, you look to them for guidance about what is acceptable, for how you need to be. they have all the power over your self-worth. what they say is your doctrine. their acceptance and understanding are required for you to feel your feelings, and believe that you are ok. their moods are your navigation. everything about them dictates your path.

but other people are not god. they are just as imperfect as you are. they are human. they are flawed. they make mistakes.

they are your equals.

but when you're codependent you may not see this. you may think that everyone else has it all together. has it all figured out. that you're the only person confused, insecure and struggling for balance.

but we cannot rely solely on others for our balance. that just keeps us unsteady.

it's up to each of us to be who we are and find our own way. to believe in ourselves. we can share in our growth with others. love each other, be there for each other. even trust each other.

but each of our paths is just that, ours. we must steady ourselves. find our own source of balance within.

Be Who You Are

In recovery; we're learning a new behavior. It's called Be Who You Are.

For some of us, this can be frightening. What would happen if we felt what we felt, said what we wanted, became firm about our beliefs, and valued what we needed? What would happen if we let go of our camouflage of adaptation? What would happen if we owned our power to be ourselves?

Would people still like us? Would they go away? Would they become angry?

There comes a time when we become willing and ready to take that risk. To continue growing, and living with ourselves, we realize we must liberate ourselves. It becomes time to stop allowing ourselves to be so controlled by others and their expectations and be true to ourselves - regardless of the reaction of others.

Before long, we begin to understand. Some people may go away, but the relationship would have ended anyway. Some people stay and love and respect us more for taking the risk of being whom we are. We begin to achieve intimacy, and relationships that work.

We discover that who we are has always been good enough.

Today, I will own my power to be myself.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

speaking up

2010-09-27T19:11:00.000-07:00

this past week, i made some real progress speaking my mind and facing my fears of conflict.

my mom always used to say, "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

i sometimes wonder if this was some sort of curse :) because i've struggled so much in my life with honest self-expression. i've been too afraid of conflict, of angering others, disappointing them, losing them.

over the years, i've worked really hard to become honest. to know myself. to tell the truth to myself, through journals. and in college, i learned to really write. to move past the internal editor and critic. to write what i most needed to say.

but doing this face to face with the people in my life is another matter. especially people i'm close to. for some reason, i find it hardest to be completely honest with them. perhaps because i feel more vulnerable and have the most to lose. i've said what i most needed to at times. but overall, still, that day to day ability to be completely honest with those close to me, to speak up when i had a problem, when something was wrong, or something needed to change, this i have not yet achieved.

this week, however, with more than one person, i said what i needed to say. i told people how i felt, expressed feelings and ideas that were scary to say, potential for conflict. though it was difficult, i managed to hold onto what felt right and true to me. and told them.

things did not always go smoothly, or feel wonderful right away, but overall, it felt so good to be so honest. and things have gone really well with each situation. those relationships are now improved. the changes that needed to be made are being made.

i feel proud of myself. more in tune with myself. stronger. and a bit lighter and more free.

i feel encouraged. i feel grateful. i feel hopeful.

i know this will take practice, and it may never feel "easy." but i've taken another few steps forward on this road. and now those conversations are a part of my experience. i know that i can do this. i just have to keep going.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
~Martin Luther King

talking about diversity

2010-09-25T14:53:00.001-07:00

"Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has."
~Margaret Mead

i had the opportunity to facilitate a small group this morning. the non-profit i recently became involved with conducted a presentation with some university students, on the subject of diversity. the question of the morning was:

what am i willing to believe about others?

the idea was that we all hold stereotypes and prejudices. and this is something that most people probably struggle with to one degree or another. so our point was not to hash out what our prejudices ARE. but instead to try to figure out what we can do to begin to overcome them.

we came up with such tactics as:

- take the first step. interact with people different from you (join groups, talk to that new person, reach out)
- focus on what you have in common as well, on what you share, what makes you both human. it's sometimes too easy to focus on the differences alone and feel distant.
- be kind
- don't just ignore or accept the fact that you're different, appreciate and embrace it. if everyone were the same, there would be no growth or progress. it's from our differences that we will be able to grow and learn. each person must be taken into account, each new viewpoint enables us to move forward together.

i was so excited to be a part of this discussion. i've thought so much about prejudice in society, and within myself, and worked hard to overcome any problems i have with any groups of people. i realized that fear and unknowing were at the root of my problem. that i had to open my heart, put my assumptions aside about how someone would treat me just because of who they were or who i was. to see that we're all human and we're all in this together, regardless of differences in what we believe, who we love, who we vote for, what we look like, how much money we have, how educated we are, or where we're from.

i was really moved and motivated, however, i'd never facilitated a group before. i was really nervous and spent an hour this morning trying to prepare, by sitting in a quiet space, listening to calming music and reading about community and communication. here: writings of margaret wheatley

she's amazing! this article is my favorite so far:

The Place Beyond Fear and Hope

my group seemed somewhat inhibited, and i'm worried i talked more than i should have. i know i can talk too much when i'm excited about a topic, so one of the main things i tried to do was not talk too much. i tried to make sure everyone got the chance to talk, and i tried to ask open-ended questions. but after each person spoke, i tried to echo back what they'd said. i wanted each person to feel heard, but i feel like i was not allowing things just to flow. i asked people who hadn't spoken yet what they thought. perhaps i was trying to control the conversation too much, instead of just letting it happen. i wish i had sat back more and just relaxed and listened more to what they said. just saw what they did and how they handled it. it's hard to know what i might have done differently that might have elicited more enthusiasm or participation. maybe being less nervous myself would have helped :)

but this is how we learn right? by trying new things. stepping out of our comfort zone. learning from our mistakes.

i was so nervous. but why? this is a subject i care so much about, and these students were amazing. i'm sure we had a lot in common and could have had a very stimulating discussion. so what was i so nervous about? was it my lack of experience? shyness? the fact that i was a minority in the room?

but i did it. and i look forward to continuing to improve my communication abilities. i'm working on this in so many ways lately. and this was just one more step along that path. to get better at facing my fears in human interaction. to become more comfortable with silence. with listening. with uncertainty. not knowing for sure what is the right thing to do or say, but not letting that stand in my way of finding a way to connect and learn with someone.

"Every time your heart leaps out and you want to serve better, that's the future, speaking through you."
~Margaret Wheatley

learning faith

2010-09-21T13:31:00.001-07:00

i've worked my way through the 12 steps piecemeal over the years.

i've admitted shortcomings (though first i had to be ok with using terms like shortcomings :), i've made searching and fearless moral inventories, i've admitted to others and to myself my wrongs, i've become willing to make amends and made amends with people, and i've tried to promptly admit when i was wrong.

but there are a number of steps missing here. the ones about a higher power. and what do you have when you're missing those steps? you have a lot of personal inventory and admitting when you're wrong. and taking responsibility for yourself. but you have no way of moving beyond the shortcomings. no way of trusting that things will be ok without your influence.

but without believing in god, how can i interpret the remaining steps in a way that makes sense to me?

i believe that the purpose of the higher power part of the 12-steps is to help us reliquish control. the more we believe that everything is within our power and up to us, the more fearful, anxious and berating of ourselves we can be.

so this past year i've been working on this. trying to come to terms with my feelings about religion. to be at peace with it. and my feelings about religious people. to expand and further my understanding. about others and what all this means to me. how i can interpret it in a way that makes sense and doesn't alienate me from others. i'm working on finding a way to let go. to trust. to have faith. to feel at one with the universe. instead of like a separate and disconnected person, alone, trying to do more than i'm capable of on my own.

i think one helpful step for me has been to admit that there are ways that i am powerless. that there are some things i have no control over. whatsoever.

step one.

as for a higher power, a greater power than myself. i'm not sure what that might mean for me.

reason is one power i've been considering. truth is another.

getting in touch with truth or reason feel like good ways to become grounded in moments where i feel chaos and confusing emotion. this has been so helpful to me this past year.

focusing more on truth and reason has brought me closer to faith. i'm learning to trust that things are probably ok and probably will be ok. that i'm ok. the more i trust that things will be just fine even if i relax and don't worry and fret about it too much, the more i find myself letting go of trying to control everything and just letting things be.

i don't believe in fate or a will greater than my own. so i still don't know how to translate the steps that suggest the higher power do things like "remove" my flaws. i'm still lodged in the mindset that i need to overcome them. that it is within my power, and i'm the only one who can do this.

to attempt to heal my shortcomings, i've tried things like affirmations. creative visualiztion. thinking of myself in positive ways, and believing that a future me is possible, one that can look back on things i struggle with now and say, gosh, i used to struggle with that, but not anymore.

in this world, i tend to think we're all just a giant mess of humans and creatures and this environment all mixed up together. things don't always make sense. the world can be harsh, and cruel. people can be hurtful. there is no reason for this except for the reason that there is pain, and pain makes people do crazy things. we have will and thought and feeling, we react to things, but i believe none of us are destined to always live at the mercy of our feelings, our past, and our learned and habitual responses. we can learn. we can grow. we can cultivate new patterns. we can hope.

i believe there is a way to get along on this earth that is better than other ways. we can live as though the world is against us and as though we have to protect ourselves at all costs, that we have no choice but to be out for ourselves. but i think this is a lonely existence that puts us at odds with others.

my goal and my choice is to do my best to be kind, gentle, cooperative, considerate, communicative, to never be deliberately hurtful to another, to speak the truth quietly and clearly, to know what the truth is, to trust my instincts, to be true to myself. to find a way to live with dignity and self-respect, and bravery, caring for those in my midst as best i can. and not forgetting to care for myself meanwhile. to live in balance.

i'm still not sure how all this translates to a higher power, but these are my thoughts on that subject at this moment.

"Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings."
~Victor Hugo

mercy

2010-09-15T20:50:00.001-07:00

my dad died 10 years ago. it's hard to believe this much time has passed. yet in some ways, it feels like a lifetime ago.

a few.

mid-september is different every year. it's getting easier. today was a good day.

i spent the morning with an old friend from college. i didn't mention what today was. i just enjoyed her company. and enjoyed the day with my daughter.

distance is one thing i've learned helps with grief. i do not need to always think about the past. i can spend time in this moment. today with my loved ones.

each year around this time, i try to reflect on my life and where i am in relation to everything that was.

i've been thinking for hours about what to write here. what do i want to say on this day. after all this time. where am i now? what have i learned?

forgiveness still feels new to me. but i'm slowly working my way through to an understanding of forgiveness that makes sense to me. that feels healing.

forgiveness to me means letting go of resentment and anger. it's not that the anger and resentment aren't justified. just that they serve no purpose anymore except to hurt me and taint my life, my relationships, my future. i used to think that holding onto anger was my right. i felt righteous. i felt strong for being able to be angry in the first place. i felt like i was protecting myself. that holding onto that anger would keep me sharp, alert, that it would help me feel safe and stay safe.

it did not.

i think that forgiveness is only even possible for me now, because i feel like i've healed as much as i have. had space and time and distance. feel safe. expressed a lot. been validated and understood a lot. and now, for the first time in my life, this past year, i have felt ready to begin to set this down and move along. i don't think forgiveness is an instant process. nor do i think it is something you can force yourself to feel. i think it's something you feel ready for. and like grief, i think forgiveness happens in waves. you make progress, then later you get to make a little more. like when tending a wound you need to tend to it multiple times before it can heal completely. you can't rush healing. you do what you can, then you need to step back and leave the wound alone and give time a chance to do it's work.

that's what i've found to be true in my life.

but i believe grief is different for everyone. you can't assume you know what someone else is going through, nor what they need. you cannot assume that you will feel the same way, despite what you may have in common.

in my case, i've always felt rather odd about my grief. because when i tell people my dad is dead (and i don't go out of my way to do this), people always say, "i'm sorry." but my response tends to be, "no, it's a good thing." which is a bit awkward, because i don't want to sound cold or insensitive. but i don't want to be false. and any other response just doesn't feel right to me.

it's good that he's gone because he always wanted to die, and tried to constantly. he suffered so much, and caused much suffering. so finally he got his wish, and got to leave this life behind. and us along with it. and now we're free to go on with our lives. i hope he is at peace now. even if he is only food for worms like he always believed and told us he would be.

so yes, it feels right and healthy to say that i am glad his tragic life ended as early as it did. it feels merciful. that it did not go on any further.

he was 53 when he died. i was 23.

mer·cy (mûrs) n. pl. mer·cies
1. Compassionate treatment, especially of those under one's power; clemency.
2. A disposition to be kind and forgiving: a heart full of mercy.
3. Something for which to be thankful; a blessing: It was a mercy that no one was hurt.
4. Alleviation of distress; relief: Taking in the refugees was an act of mercy.

Idiom: At the mercy of
1. Without any protection against; helpless before: drifting in an open boat, at the mercy of the elements.

accepting who you are today

2010-09-13T09:15:00.001-07:00

i think often of desiderata. here's the whole thing for those of you who haven't encountered this wonderful poem:

Desiderata
-- written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s --

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

though i love the whole thing and feel inspired every time i read this, the phrases that mean the most to me are, do not compare yourself with others, be gentle with yourself, you have a right to be here.

this weekend, i went to a play with an old friend visiting from college. it was a play about physics and the atomic bomb. the play was a discussion between physicists about science, morals, and politics, set in 1941 and after. it was a wonderful play but at times felt very confusing to me. i never did well in physics, or science really at all for that matter, and i've often felt inadequate, yet curious and fascinated by science.

so i love science fiction. perhaps this has been a way for me to explore science in a way that feels accessible to me. star trek, and now the new show on the scifi channel, eureka, are favorites of mine.

and while i've felt rather clever while i watch these shows as i enjoy feeling inspired and want to discuss the thoughts they provoke in me, it became clear to me during that play, that i'm definitely ignorant when it comes to science.

which is fine. but what it brought out in me, are feelings of inferiority, and memories of feeling this way over the years.

i've always felt like a pretty smart person. never thought i was a genius or mensa material. but i was in some accelerated classes in school and making good grades always came somewhat easily to me (except in science).

but these past few years, i've tried to make friends a few times with some other people who are quite accomplished. professors, counselors, people with doctorates, people who have advanced further along in their careers than me. and i feel as though i've got a lot of passion, and a good education, yet compared to them, i feel less than.

i respect and admire them. and i feel like they are grown-ups. and myself, not so much.

one day my daughter will be old enough to recognize when i feel insecure. if she doesn't already. i don't want her to see me feel that way. i want her to grow up with a mom who feels good about herself. who doesn't compare herself to others. who is confident and self-assured.

i never used to care if people had a doctorate. after growing up in the household i did, i always felt like people were more than their education. my dad was an attorney and was pretty intellectually elitist. he acted like everyone was his inferior. he would constantly make fun of everyone he thought was stupid, which included pretty much everyone, but unfortunately also included my mom and brother. some people might consider me "lucky" that i met with his approval. but i don't think i deserve credit for this, nor was it an esteem-building position to hold. instead i was winning the approval of the bad parent. the one who hurt people.

so i feel pretty sensitive to anyone calling other people "stupid" or acting intellectually superior, arrogant, or critical. i always think that each person has their own strengths and types of intelligence, and you never know how someone was raised, what opportunities they had, what they are going through, or what they are capable of deep down.

and my mother and brother are very smart, successful people. my mother especially was proof that there are different kinds of intelligence. yes, my dad was intelligent in some ways, yet socially he was extremely deficient. he didn't know how to get along with others. he was crude and offensive and couldn't hold a job because he was insulting and alienating to others around him, he didn't work hard enough, and couldn't stand to work for people he didn't respect. which again, was everyone. whereas my mom, the one he made fun of all the time, did great at her job, loved it, got along with people, wanted to go to work, believed in herself at work, and had friends. she became the breadwinner of our house. was the stable force in my life. the loving person, who taught me what success can really look like.

yet she too still doesn't have a very good self-esteem. which i guess just goes to show that you can be competent and successful, even if you don't feel that way on the inside.

i have finally found a good set of friends with whom i do feel really comfortable being myself. i don't feel false with them, nor do i feel like i have to "try" with them. i feel like they like me just the way i am. i feel accepted. yet, even with people in my life who do accept me, obviously there are times i do still feel inadequate.

i wonder if staying at home with my daughter has increased my sense of inferiority. or maybe it's because i'm in my thirties now. and am increasingly finding myself faced with people my own age writing books, publishing articles, having their art displayed in galleries, directing films, creating organizations. they are doctors, dentists, professors, writers, award-winners...

it is obvious they are doing something with their lives.

now all of a sudden, i'm feeling like i haven't done much of consequence.

during my college and graduate school years, i worked jobs like personal assistant, office assistant, support person, etc. i always felt comfortable being the support person, the assistant, the person behind the official person. i liked being in the helper role. yet eventually those jobs started to get to me. more and more, year after year, i felt less than.

like at the woman's shelter. i was a support person. and wanted to become an advocate and work more indepth with the women. and i believed i could. yet my boss told me she didn't think i could do it. she thought i was too soft and wouldn't be good when there was conflict, like when we needed to ask women to leave. even though i worked there for years, and did grow in confidence over time, and had faced situations of conflict and had become better able at handling them, she still tended to see me as a passive, conflict-avoidant person who was better off in the role i'd played as support.

there's no shame in being an assistant or a support person. there's no shame in any job. and you can always take pride in doing your best. and if you are happy and fulfilled in your work, no matter what it is, then that is a wonderful thing. and not everyone even gets the choice to find a job that utilizes their potential and taps their talents. some people work their whole lives at jobs that frustrate them or don't feel right for them, jobs that don't express who they are deep down. sometimes that's just life. you do what you can. and you are not inferior, unless you believe yourself to be so, and believe others when they treat you this way.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
~Eleanor Roosevelt

and that's the problem, i think when my boss at the shelter didn't believe in me, i believed in myself less. i never even applied for the advocate position. i figured if she didn't think i could do it, there was no sense applying, as she was my boss. but it goes deeper than that. i always thought if someone believed in me, then i could do anything. yet needing that in the first place, was the problem. because the less people believed in me over time, the less i believed in myself. and probably my lack of confidence, was why they didn't believe in me in the first place. and the cat chases its tail...

another example: i had a professor in college, my feminist women's studies professor at that, who was the person i chose to write my thesis with. and when i went to her to see if my chosen topic was ok, i felt so meek. i was so full of self-doubt and sure that she would say that my idea wasn't smart enough. and my idea was ok, but weeks later, in the middle of class, we were discussing self-esteem and power and she used me as an example. she imitated me being meek and told the class how i'd come to her office that day and asked if my topic was ok. she even used a pitiful little whiny voice, which i sincerely hope was a gross exaggeration.

i felt infuriated and humiliated. and said nothing to defend myself. and to make matters more confusing, she was actually giving me a compliment at the time. saying that i'd "come a long way" since then and was more empowered now.

but i didn't feel like i'd "come a long way" and i felt condescended to and bullied by her behavior. she acted like being meek was such a pathetic and horrible way to be. i have always had that meek side, and a more empowered-feeling inspired part deep down.

in fact i've often been confused by words like strength and power. i was reading in an affirmation book the other day that i am to say to myself "i am powerful." and that felt so odd to me. so i've been thinking about this and why. i think i've felt like it was bad to be strong and powerful. because i think i equate confidence and power, with abuse and arrogance. with superiority and being cruel to people. the people i've encountered in life who are abusive, are people who have been afraid of appearing weak, and have taken advantage of their power by bullying people who are weaker than them. by putting down others to make themselves feel better. by acting superior and self-righteous. and i never wanted to be even close to that. i never wanted to hurt anyone. so i think in my mind, that's why i'm so meek and humble. and why i've never been focused on achievement, or advancement.

it now appears to me that i've held myself back over the years, for fear of becoming a harmful, arrogant person. i feel like i've let my self-doubts and my lack of belief in myself, my submissive meekness, my aversion to being ambitious or authoritative, or in any way in a position of leadership, be too much part of who i am. part of my identity. too much because i've ended up convincing others and myself that i couldn't be more than i am.

so now in my struggle to become more confident, i am recognizing and facing the ways i have felt inferior. i am trying to believe that i am enough as i am. that it is possible to be confident without being arrogant. to be self-assured without being self-righteous. to be strong without becoming hurtful. to realize that there's another kind of confidence and strength. a good kind. the kind that inspires strength and confidence in others too. the kind that wants everyone to succeed. that doesn't build itself on the shoulders of others, but in holding hands. the kind where we build each other up. and where people don't compare themselves to each other and feel lessened, but instead we encourage each other and see ourselves for who we are. and we feel dignity.

i can do more and be more if i want to. but i don't need other people's permission or approval or belief in me before i can. there's nothing wrong with me as i am today. i am smart. i am a good person. i care about the world and others. i do try to contribute to the world, and do try to be a good parent. i may not be as healthy as can be. i may not garden and exercise and cook organic meals from scratch and read the news. but i do try to be kind to others. i try to admit when i'm wrong. and apologize to those i've hurt. i try to be healthy. i try to grow.

i think i can believe in myself. i want to believe in myself.

we are only as limited as we define ourselves to be. we don't have to have limits. we don't have to feel defined. by ourselves or by our perceptions of how others see us. who we are at our core, is often far more than we've let ourselves act out in our lives. sometimes it's more than anyone else realizes. sometimes it's more than we realize. but how the world sees us, how others see us, how we see ourselves even, and what we've accomplished, these are not who we are.

who we are is something more.

it's never too late to express who you are more fully. to pursue and cultivate interests. to tap into the strength and potential that you have inside. to find environments where others share your interests. to find places where you feel fulfilled and inspired. and people with whom you feel like you belong.

but in those times you feel like you don't belong. that's ok too. it's ok to be different. it's ok to be the least educated person in the room. it's ok not to know the right thing to say. to feel awkward and unsure. to put your foot in your mouth. to not understand what people mean by what they say.

and it's ok to not have lived up to your potential.

because potential is a good thing, in and of itself.

“The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.”
~Brian Tracy

breathing, art and solitude

2010-09-11T07:26:00.001-07:00

there's a repeating lesson in my life, which is that sometimes there is a need to turn to inwardly for support.

i have had a tendency to look outside myself to feel better. if i am feeling insecure or negatively about life or myself, i often want to talk with someone, to find a friend who understands, someone who would listen and validate my feelings. or someone who will help me put my doubts aside.

is who i am ok? am i doing this right? is it ok that i said this? feel this way? think this thought?

it almost seems, in essence, i am asking permission to exist.

but others can't always give us this reassurance. maybe they're busy. maybe they have enough going on in their own life. maybe they don't know what to say. maybe what they say doesn't seem enough. but no matter what the situation, the end result is the same...

we're on our own.

the first time i realized that this was not necessarily a bad thing, i was about 14. i was watching "the razor's edge," a film based on the book by W. Somerset Maugham. which is also very good. it's about a man who fought in a war, and returns home traumatized. he finds that everything inside of him has changed. he no longer feels satisfied with the life he had, the goals and plans he had before the war, his relationship no longer seems right. he seems lost. he now wants to travel the world. to learn, to try to understand what life is all about. by the end of the story, he has journeyed to the far east and there's a scene in the film in which he's meditating on a snowy mountaintop. ice crystals are on his face, the fire is dying, and he's been reading the literature he brought, but you can tell by the look on his face that he feels no closer to enlightenment than he did before he ascended the mountain.

then he gets this look on his face. and he stands up and raises his arms in the air. he looks so happy.

then he returns to his fire and starts tearing the pages out of his book and using them to feed the fire and warm his frozen hands.

what this meant to me is that we have what we most need already. if we depend to much outside ourselves for answers, for peace, for guidance, for meaning, for assurance, then we may feel just as lost and cold and isolated as he did up on that mountain.

we can find peace within. we don't have to rely solely outside. though it's good to be able to do that also. it is a wonderful part of life to experience true love and friendship. to find people with whom we feel completely free to be ourselves. and even those with whom we may only feel somewhat comfortable. i'm not sure it matters entirely how other people "make us feel." and that's what i'm getting at.

the idea that no one "makes us feel" anything always used to bother me. i found it so confusing. of course we make each other feel things! this seemed so obvious to me. i suppose that's the heart of codependency. feeling at the mercy or whims of the acceptance and emotions of others. not feeling like it is ok, or even possible to be happy unless those around us like us, approve of us, and are happy themselves.

it's hard for me not to get wrapped up in the moods of others. but what i'm trying to cultivate internally is another way of being. we can be sensitive to those around us, care about them, interact with them, share our lives with them, yet we don't have to live as though we are a ship at sea with no power and they are the wind and the waves. we can build up the strength of our own internal navigation system. get better at using our sails and rudder.

"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." ~Louisa May Alcott

we don't have to feel helpless. we can build up a strong inner core. it's possible, and i think it takes practice, but i do think we can get to the point where healthy interdependency is possible. we can feel good about ourselves even when other people don't like us, don't approve of us, or don't give us what we need when we need it. we can feel confident even when we feel on our own or unusual. we can feel free to be ourselves, even in the absence of external confirmation that who we are is ok.

today i created my piece for this month's expressive arts carnival. this month's assignment was the following:

This is a two part activity. The activity is to draw or paint your breath.

Start when you know you will have quiet time to yourself without distractions. On one sheet of paper, draw or paint your breath in the moment. Then, immediately after, listen to some soothing music (if you want), close your eyes (if it is okay) and focus on your breathing. When you breathe, focus on slow breathing using your diaphragm; inhale through your nose, filling your abdomen and chest and exhale through your mouth. Try to exhale twice as long as you inhale. Do this for a couple minutes and try to relax.

When you are done with the breathing exercise, come back to the drawing and draw your breath again on the other paper.

here's what i made:

the left side is my breath before relaxation. i think it appears muddled and mixed up. it's not a clear picture of anything. just short breaths, going in different directions, different levels of depth. no direction.

but the right side, after the relaxation, really fascinated me that it turned out this way. to actually look like something. i think it looks like a spine. and that was not intentional. i felt after relaxation, that my breathing was more connected, more steady, more pure. less polluted with stress. so that's how i drew it.

what's fascinating is that i've had a history of severe back pain related to stress. i know this because when the stress has not been in my life, when my life has felt more balanced and happy and peaceful, guess what? no back pain :) and lately, this back pain has returning a slight bit. so that's been a clue to myself that i need to take a step back, and relax, and find a way to cultivate more peace in my life.

and what i've been finding, this past year more than anytime before, is that i do have the ability to turn to myself. i can meditate. i can breathe deeply. i can take walks. i can give myself the approval i need. the affirmations and reassurance i need. it doesn't come naturally. it feels at times like i'm trying to learn a new language. learning positive self-talk. because it's not other people's job to silence my inner critic or inner skeptic. they can help me. but if i'm not working internally as well, then they're basically providing only a bandaid on a wound that needs actual medicine. i am the one who most needs to nurture my own self-esteem. if other people are there along the way providing love and friendship, that is wonderful. we can enjoy these connections. but others are not everything.

"People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within."
~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

dialogue group experience - part one

2010-09-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

tonight i had my first group discussion in the organization i've signed up to participate with this fall. it was fascinating! i really love it :)

the purpose of this organization is to practice healthy communication, and then ultimately to facilitate transformation in our communities through utilizing the principles of healthy dialogue.

the guidelines for our discussion tonight were:

1) no fixing, saving or "setting straight" another member of the group. this meant, in my understanding, no judging or trying to interpret or help someone. just letting each person just be. letting whatever they said just sit there in the air.

2) no direct conversation with any other member. our "contributions" (whatever we chose to share in the discussion) were to be thought of as whatever we were throwing into the pot.

3) we were to allow 7-9 seconds of silence in between each share. to avoid the tennis match feeling of conversation, where you can't wait for the other person to finish so that you can jump in and say your thoughts...

and WOW! what a meeting. it felt similar to a 12-step or therapy group in some ways, except the topic of our conversation was not our addicted loved ones or dysfunctional families. it was all about listening. plus, no one cried. but i felt on the verge once, but not because i was sad, but because i was so moved :)

so tonight, we were supposed to share on the topic of listening. the question of the evening was:

what was a time in your life when you really felt listened to?

we discussed the healing power of listening. each of us shared times we've felt really listened to, and how that experience felt, or even transformed our life. and also, some people shared times we've felt distinctly not listened to, or ignored, and how that felt.

the silence between contributions was probably the most challenging part for me. and thus the best part for me :) it was such good practice. such a good exercise in self-discipline. such a good reminder (what my spouse also reminds me of, of the importance of just being there for the other person, being quiet and listening to them too). it's hard for me to do this sometimes because i get SO EXCITED about all the things i am inspired to say, my mind runs a mile a minute, i feel like i'm about to burst. so much energy and enthusiasm. it's hard to contain myself. each person's contribution sent my brain down so many avenues. and yet, as i waited, not just for the 9 seconds to go by, but for each person to get to have their turn, before i could express myself again, i was able to experience talking and listening in new ways.

i was able to think more thoroughly about what i had said and what i wanted to say, and i was able to think more thoroughly about what i was hearing. i was also able to move beyond my tendency towards self-doubt and overanalyzing myself. because the atmosphere was so accepting, i was able to let go of my negative inner chatter and just let things be.

i was reminded tonight of what we gain from listening. when we are the ones doing the talking, often we might say things that we've said before, or thought before, we might be saying nothing new at all, not new for us. and yet there is such a powerful drive to be heard and feel seen and listened to. and that is an important need that i think is valid in wanting to fulfill.

yet when we listen, this is good for us too. because we get the opportunity to really be there for the other person. to learn from them. to just be there. to step outside of ourselves for that time. to connect to someone else. to expand our world in that moment. and perhaps beyond that moment...

it felt like meditation. it felt calming. it was hard to sit still and quiet my mind and just be present for my fellow dialogue participants. but it felt so good to be there for them. to hear their words and get to know them bit by bit through what they chose to share. and it felt really good to speak to them too. to feel listened to and not judged. to see their eye-contact as i spoke to them.

to sit in that atmosphere of quiet acceptance. it felt peaceful. it felt honest and safe and open. just listening and talking.

wow wow wow...

so now i invite you, if you want to share your own response,

what is a time you really felt listened to?

“Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand.”
~Sue Patton Thoele

how to sum up a life in a few words...

2010-09-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

i wrote awhile back that i will be participating this fall as a volunteer with an organization in my community that focuses on using communication to transform the community. specifically, their mission is:

bringing people together. creating a safe space for dialogue. transforming dialogue into action.

i'm super excited to be a part of this. it feels very "me" :)

but this week, as one of our beginning steps introducing ourselves to the organization, each participant is supposed to prepare a short bio of themselves. this will go on the organization's website where they have a page introducing the participants in the program. i'm not one to toot my own horn (i always kept awards and diplomas hidden in closets), and also feel quite challenged to sum myself up in one paragraph, because a few words just don't seem like enough to describe any person.

but i wrote something. it was strange to write about myself in third person too. but anyway here's what i wrote. i've been dying to share it with someone:

Katie is currently a proud full-time parent of her toddler. Before becoming a parent, she graduated with a Masters in Human Relations, with a focus on mental health counseling. Her interests include the prevention and healing of domestic abuse, expressive therapies, especially the use of writing for therapeutic purposes, gender issues and issues affecting the LGBT community, substance abuse recovery, and relationship and communication dynamics in general. Her awareness of the need for healing both at a personal as well as cultural level, originated in her experience growing up in a family where alcoholism existed. Then as an adult, from working in a Battered Women's Shelter, and interning at a Community Mental Health Center. Her awareness of the need for global healing and community began in childhood, and evolved through travels as an adult, living and working in Central America and South Korea. She is an agnostic atheist humanist and loves discussing and learning about religion and philosophy and is passionate about tolerance, communication, mutual respect and understanding. She believes that global change begins with the individual. Last but not least, she loves watching movies, writing, reading non-fiction and memoir, traveling, and most of all, quality time with her husband and daughter, and meaningful conversation with good friends.

i felt good about it after i wrote it. but after a few days, i started to feel a bit panicky. like i had revealed something i didn't want on a public bio. i reread what i'd sent the director and realized that what made me nervous was admitting that i'd grown up in an environment where alcoholism existed.

i'd told my discussion group when we met for the first time the other day. it felt right and appropriate at the time. the purpose of that day was to get to know each other and begin sharing. but now, writing this bio, i began to question if this was something i should put out there.

i thought to myself, i shouldn't admit that. that's too personal. is this boundaried enough? is this the sort of thing people say on a bio? am i being unprofessional?

and so on...

these thoughts ran around through my head. and around and around. my anxiety only began to subside when i realized that had my professional interests involved helping people heal from cancer, and had i grown up with a parent who suffered from cancer, then i would probably include that on a bio, and not feel uncomfortable about that. because it would be relevant. and cancer isn't anything to feel ashamed of.

so why would alcoholism be?

i've long fought with the idea that alcoholism is a disease. whenever my mom would tell me that my dad's drinking was a disease and he couldn't help it, i would usually feel so angry. i always thought it was his fault. his responsibility. maybe he couldn't help becoming an alcoholic. but he had years filled with days in which he could have made a choice to try to do something about it. had he tried to get sober and failed, that would have been different. but as far as i knew he never tried. he never went to therapy. he never went to AA. he just drank and drank and drank. he just wanted to die. he said so all the time. i think everytime he drank, he hoped he wouldn't wake up. that's the way he drank. like he was trying to obliterate everything. and in a way he did. his way of attempting suicide. every day. obliterated so much.

when i was in college, i tried to do an intervention on my own. i talked to a substance abuse counselor and found out that we could secure him a place at a rehab center in a veteran's hospital in our state. he wouldn't have had to pay for a thing. he just had to call and be interested. he called me a nosy bitch. and that was a time i was really trying to be nice to him.

when i was little, there was one night my dad was so drunk and i was crying and miserable. i know i was in grade school, but i'm not sure exactly how old i was. sobbing, i begged my dad to stop drinking. i thought that since he was a lawyer, if i made him sign something, that that would work. so i went to his desk and grabbed a legal pad (that seemed more binding), and wrote "i promise to quit drinking" and made an underline where he was to sign. he drunkenly scrawled his name on the line.

this of course made no difference whatsoever. my mom would beg and plead and pray to god. daily she and i would hunt for his hidden vodka bottles and try to sneak water in to hopefully make our nights easier.

but night after night he would stumble around the house. sometimes falling. sometimes yelling for her. sometimes making us unsafe. sometimes going out drunk driving to get more alcohol. i remember when i started wishing he wouldn't come back. that he could have a crash and only harm himself. that we would be free.

but the night he did finally crash his car and wake up in jail the next morning not remembering his non-injury hit-and-run from the night before, again it made no difference.

at least by that time he'd finally left my mom. i'll always be grateful he left her. i honestly don't think she would have ever left him. no matter how bad he got, she always said that she had taken a vow. and no matter how much he'd betrayed that vow, she never felt ok about divorce. she wanted to honor the promise she made. in sickness and health. until death would they part.

i'm not sure why some part of me feels ashamed and feels like i should not talk about this sort of thing. part of me wants so much to talk about having grown up with experiences like this. with everyone in the world! my mom was always so worried about keeping the family secrets and keeping up appearances, but secrecy always seemed to make everything worse. wasn't it enough we lived that way? but to have to hide it too? as though we had something to be ashamed of? as though we were doing something wrong?

if it really is a disease, like cancer, why should i hide it?

so i want to keep it on my bio. it feels really important. it feels like a part of my life that i want to share with the world. for one thing, because i know it's not just a part of my life. it's a part of so many people's lives. and i hope that in sharing this, that each time i do so, i hope it will help me feel that much less ashamed. because again, why should i be?

. . . in silence might be the privilege of the strong, but it was certainly a danger to the weak. For the things I was prompted to keep silent about were nearly always the things I was ashamed of, which would have been far better aired . . .
~Joanna Field

It has been said, "We are only as sick as the secrets we keep." Our emotional health is hindered, perhaps even jeopardized, each time we hold something within that we need to talk over with others.

Secrets clutter our mind, preventing the stillness within where [we] find answers. Secrets keep us stuck. Our health, emotional and spiritual, depends on our commitment to shared experiences.

Every secret we have and tell someone, frees that person also to be herself and to grow. Sharing experiences relieves us of our shame and invites the forgiveness we must allow ourselves.

Never can we be fully at peace with secrets left untold. Self-revelation cleanses the soul and offers us life.

I will be alert to the opportunities to share myself and cherish the freedom offered.

~from the book Each Day a New Beginning

yesterday and today

2010-08-23T07:18:00.001-07:00

i remember growing up, my alcoholic father would sometimes have, what i considered to be inappropriate, outbursts sometimes, and was easily frustrated. for example, one time, we were sitting in the kitchen and he was starting to prepare dinner, and he couldn't open the box of food he was planning to prepare and all of a sudden he yelled, "goddammit!" and threw the box on the floor. whenever he would have a burst of frustration like this, it always felt out of the blue to me and it always felt so jarring. i would feel instantly upset by what felt to me a sudden flood of negativity and tension into the room. i would feel instantly angry and at the same time helpless because i had no idea what to do about it.

i already had a million other negative feelings wrapped up regarding him, so in the case of the thrown pasta box that day i remember fussing at him, saying something like, "gosh! you're such a child! you realize you're yelling at a box right?" i felt so condescending, so infuriated at him for not being able to control himself or contain his emotions. for being such a mess. for not taking better care of himself and not being a happier person. for not being a better father to us and partner to my mother. for not healing. for ruining our lives with his drinking and his depression. for his inability to express himself in a healthy way and connect with people. to like people or be likable. to hold a steady job. his random sudden outbursts of anger at things, all this and more just felt like giant waves that threatened to knock over my little boat on this turbulent sea i was trying to sail each day in my childhood.

today in my life, i have such a hard time if i think other people are upset with me. and honestly, an even harder time if i'm upset with them. i bottle it up and question and doubt myself. i let resentment, disappointment, anger and hurt feelings build up and i won't say anything, actually feels like i cannot say anything (often feel paralyzed in those moments), but also i think i wait to say something sometimes because i want to wait to make sure i need to. i think part of me hopes that i'll be able to get over it without saying anything. and sometimes, if we can do that, then that might be best.

because sometimes when we're upset at other people, it really has nothing to do with them. here's a great blog post on that topic: when someone else is my problem

but sometimes, things need to be said. relationships need improvement. i firmly believe that part of the problem in relationships (all kinds of relationships) is too much silence. some things should not be kept to yourself. if you don't say what you need to say to the other person, it can just sit there and make a divide grow between you. you may believe you're sucessfully sweeping it under the rug, but instead it sits and festers between you, and the next thing you know, you may feel like strangers sitting side by side.

.....................

here is the approach i'm working towards making ingrained:

1) admit my feelings - to myself, to someone who is safe and understanding, and if i still feel it's necessary, then to the person my feelings involve.

2) accept my feelings - tell myself, "this is how i am feeling, and that is ok." i don't need permission or the understanding of others for what i feel to be acceptable. there are reasons why i feel and act the way i do. and reasons why others think and feel the way they do. i don't have to like it or understand it. feelings just are what they are.

3) detach and try not to take things personally - my reaction and feelings are about me. other's are about them. i don't have to accept someone else's opinion of me as reality if it doesn't feel true. sometimes what i'm feeling and thinking has nothing to do with the other person. sometimes what they are thinking and feeling has nothing to do with me. i can strive to know myself accurately and to connect to others in a genuine way. i don't have to live reactively. we are all separate people. i am not powerless. i can always do something to feel better and be healthy. i can work towards improving my communication ability and developing stronger ego boundaries.

4) patience

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.”
~Anthony Robbins

snapping out of self-pity

2010-08-23T05:55:00.001-07:00

last week i think i was having a bit of a pity party for myself. i didn't invite anyone. there was no cake. and it certainly was no fun.

i hate it when i get wrapped up in self-pity. i mean i think a tad bit is ok. if i stub my toe and go frown to my husband and he gives me a hug, that's really sweet :)

but when i get really down on myself about something, start feeling really sorry for myself, and lose sight of what is good, then i start to remind myself of my dad who was the king of self-pity. and reminding myself of my father is NOT something i enjoy. that's a signal to myself that i'm not doing well at all and need to do something about it quick.

so to change my thinking pattern, and to stop feeling pitiful and helpless (another thing that makes me cringe, to realize i'm feeling like a victim, even if i do my best not to show it to others). i tried to connect to what it was i was actually needing and wanting and just went ahead and tried to make sure to get those needs and wants met.

i feel much better now.

but it's not just about doing things in the external world to feel better. there was also some internal work i needed to be doing.

then i read this today over at livinglifefully.com and that helped bring it all together...

Today's Quotation:

Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world—making the most of one’s best.
~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Today's Meditation:

We all have handicaps, even if we're not confined to wheelchairs or if we don't have highly visible ones. Some of us have great fear in social situations (that would be me!), or we're unable to do things that other people consider normal or simple. There are people with dyslexia who have a hard time reading, and there are people who cannot do simple math equations without some sort of help.

No matter what your handicaps, though, it's important that you focus on your potential, on all the possibilities that are here in your life. You can do virtually anything you want to do in life, as long as you're willing to dedicate yourself to whatever it is. Too many people focus on their limitations, and in doing so they sabotage their potential, never allowing themselves to reach it because they never worked at developing their gifts.

You may be weak in some things, but you're definitely strong in others--we all have our strengths and weaknesses. If we spend so much time worrying about the weaknesses that we never can focus on our strengths, though, we're basically ensuring that we never make the best of our best. By focusing on our strengths, we can learn to compensate for the weaknesses. By focusing on the weaknesses, we never can learn to develop our strengths.

You have great possibilities in this life, and it's up to you to find out what they are and to start developing your strengths so that you can make the absolute most out of your best.

i do tend to focus on the negative too much. which is embarrassing to admit because i used to just recognize that i didn't like that quality in other people. and you know what they say, when you dislike something in someone else, what you might really need is to take a look in the mirror. so true. often when people are critical or misanthropic or pessimistic, it drives me crazy. it took me awhile for me to connect internally and admit the fact that i'm the one with an issue of focusing on the negative. i'm not misanthropic or cynical about the future of humanity. my version of focusing on the negative is that my inner critic goes rampant sometimes and i focus too much on what i see as my own flaws. i will also focus on the problems i think exist in my life and in any of the relationships in my life (currently and sometimes from the past too when i really get going).

and what's frustrating about pessimism is the myopia that is involved. ever tried to cheer up a pessimistic person or encourage someone who is in a spiraling cycle of self-criticism? i have. it can be exhausting and feel so futile. because the change has to come from inside. reassurance from someone else isn't enough to fill the void where that sorrow originates.

sometimes i have to just stop myself and remember that there is a lot of good to see too. and make myself focus on that. so i can start to balance back out. not deny it if i have legitimate negative feelings that need addressing, but make sure i'm not getting closed off to all the necessary good feelings that i need to keep myself stable and grounded and with a clear perspective of reality.

there are things that are good about me. and things that are great in my life and relationships. and the past, well, i can try to learn from it and grow from it as much as possible. but when i find i'm just lingering there in a destructive way, that's when i need to practice letting go and living in the present :)

wishing everyone a peaceful day!

It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.
~Lena Horne

awareness

2010-08-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

i normally don't focus on awards. but i've been honored with one that feels too good not to pass along. paula at becoming myself has passed along an award of awareness. here it is at her other blog on recovery through art:

recovery in art

i'm sorry paula, i was a bit confused before. i didn't realize where the award was posted. i thought she was just passing it along through words :) so i made a picture to go along with it~

but here's the actual award picture. so please feel free to use whatever photo you want if you want to put this on your blog for yourself :)

i feel like i know so many people out there who are inspiring in their awareness in pursuit of their own healing. there are tons of amazing and wonderful people out there and everyday i'm amazed by all the wisdom and bravery i encounter in the world. i don't want to leave anyone out. so please, if you are reading this and you feel like this applies to you too, consider yourself awarded!

here's what awareness means to me~

the first thing i think of is self-awareness. to know why you think and feel and act the way you do. and if you don't know, to want to. to acknowledge and recognize your thoughts and feelings. all of this because without knowing why we do, think and feel what we do, we leave ourselves helpless, we may feel out of control or lost.

this has always been important to me. having witnessed the result of unself-awareness and the damage that can do to you and those around you, from many people i've been close to in my life, i decided long ago that part of being the best person you can be involves introspection and understanding.

here are some great quotes on self-awareness:

Awareness is the first step on the path to change. With awareness, you gain insight into the facets of your life that need balance, the parts of yourself that yearn for calm, and the times and situations in which your heart is tempted to close. Important insights can lead to equally important actions that improve your life exponentially. Bringing an intentional and nonjudgmental awareness to yourself and your environment opens your mind and heart to the best choices available. Such awareness empowers you to make wise, healthy, and mature choices based on real and appropriate needs and desires.
~Sue Patton Thoele

Become aware that you already possess all the inner wisdom, strength, and creativity needed to make your dreams come true. This is hard for most of us to realize because the source of this unlimited personal power is buried so deeply beneath the bills, the car pool, the deadlines, the business trip, and the dirty laundry that we have difficulty accessing it in our daily lives. When we can't access our inner resources, we come to the flawed conclusion that happiness and fulfillment come only from external events. That's because external events usually bring with them some sort of change. . . .We can learn to be the catalysts for our own change. . . .you already possess all you need to be genuinely happy.
~Sarah Ban Breathnach

We all have within us a deep sense of what we need, and what is right and true for us. To access this we need to pay attention to our feelings and our intuition. We need to learn to listen deeply to ourselves and to trust what we hear. And we need to risk acting on what we feel to be true. Even if we make mistakes, we must do this in order to learn and grow.
~Shakti Gawain

but there is also awareness beyond the self. awareness of life beyond the day in day out. beyond our egos. beyond the grocery store and the laundry. beyond jobs and money. we are not alone. we are all here together, in the universe. the world moves along whether or not we are in charge or perfect or making sense. the sun rises and sets and what you do, what you express, what you focus on, what you choose, all of this and more are what make up this life that you are living.

here are some great quotes about awareness beyond the self:

When we are conscious of being part of a wider universe, we can begin to see that what we do matters. Every action we take has a consequence somewhere, whether good or bad. Everything that happens affects a part of the whole body of life. Having this knowledge of being part of something larger may motivate us to contribute to the greater good in whatever ways we can.
~Sallirae Henderson

If I keep my eyes open, I see bugs and snakes and intricate tiny flowers and cool rocks and nice smiles and beautiful architecture and gentle kindness. If I keep my heart young I notice great places to play, nice sunsets, cool hideouts, neat ice formations, and strange and unusual birds and animals. Life is never ordinary. We can make it seem ordinary by closing our eyes and hearts to its wonder, but that's not life's fault. I prefer to notice the little things and then leave them be--never trying to take them with me or preserve them--because that's what life's supposed to be, and that's what makes me happy and keeps away disappointment.
~tom walsh

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility.
~Helen Keller

now here are some amazingly aware folks i'm honored to be in contact with:

Reunited Selves
Becoming myself
Grace was Calling and I Didn't Pick Up
Issue Knitting
Kerro's Korner
Mind Parts
Scattered pieces
Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker
Survivors Can Thrive!

and last but not least, if you are inspired to join in this celebration of awareness, whether or not you want to call it an award :) please feel free to put this photo up in your own blog, and if you want to, express:

what does awareness mean to you?

stinking thinking

2010-08-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

there is a charming phrase for when you get stuck in negative thought patterns - "stinking thinking" :) i love that phrase! for one thing, it makes me chuckle, which i think is one good way start to working out of that rut.

paul over at mind parts hosts an expressive arts carnival and the assignment for this month was:

On a white or black background, choose two (and only two) colors and make a painting that represents where you have been mentally for the past week or so.

i almost didn't contribute this time because i've been staying away from the computer lately. and what i made isn't actually a "painting" which i hope is ok. i am really enjoying doing these collages lately.

but this topic did motivate me and it helped bring into focus how i've been feeling lately, which made me want to go ahead and participate. because it helped me realize how negative, or how stinking :) my thoughts have been lately.

basically, it's been a long summer and i've been feeling like i really needed a break. time just to be by myself. a chance to go do something on my own that would be renewing. help with housework. and not least, quality time with my spouse.

here's the piece i made:

what i discovered lately is that i've been feeling trapped because i'd closed myself up into a tiny box of my own narrow expectations, too much pressure i put on myself, and lack of needed expression and connection to those around me. i was the one with the key to let me out. no one told me to live my life the way i was living it. no one imprisoned me. i'm not like the woman in "the yellow wallpaper" who was locked in her bedroom by her husband, per doctors orders, after going into a postpartum depression. who ended up going mad and thinking that there were women, including herself, trapped behind the images in the yellow wallpaper in her room.

i think a lot about that story and what that means. what becoming a mother for the first time is like for each woman. how do other women really feel? how do they handle it? is it really easy for some women? those who do experience postpartum depression, what is that really about? is it just hormones, or is it a reaction to all the ways that life changes once a baby is born into your life. you love your child of course. but your life and the life of the couple is forever changed, especially if you have no extended family or that village everyone talks about. and if you stay home with your child, when it's just you and your child day in and day out...and everything is up to you and your spouse gets to leave each day and even though they are going to work, it feels like they have a freedom you don't. they get to socialize with others, drive in a car alone. they can stop and run into a store real quick if they need to. but most of all they don't have that terrifying responsibility for those formative years of your child. they get to come home after work and be the "fun" parent. but all the struggles, the potty training, the sickness, the power struggles, this is all your territory. if the child is going to be healthy and emotionally secure, it will be up to you. so if you feel depressed or insecure or fearful or anxious, you'd better figure out a way to resolve that quick, because it could have a negative impact on the child. there's no room for doubt or imperfection, because we're not talking about a cat or a fish here. this is a human being. there's a lot of pressure, and not much help.

but what makes it worse is when help is available and for whatever insane reasons - you just don't reach out and ask for it. you make life harder than it needs to be.

and what makes it more complicated is when you feel guilt on top of everything else. guilt that you're even stressed or complaining at all in the first place. when there are people out there with "real problems." people who can't afford to stay home and parent. who would love to more than anything, but have no choice. at least i have that choice. and there are people who wanted to have a family, but don't or can't. but i do. i have a wonderful family. a loving partner who works hard. and a wonderful child i adore.

i am grateful. very. it's just that sometimes i forget to focus on that.

so what i've been learning is that more than anything, i'm the one with the ability to make my life exactly what i need it to be. i have so much power to help make myself happy. i just need to ask for help. and to learn. and to focus on healthy thinking.

and fostering healthy relationships. relating well with others, being your whole self, pushing past fears, developing that emotional support network. not alienating your spouse if you're lucky enough to have one who cares.

Finding Balance

The goal of recovery is balance - that precious middle ground.

Many of us have gone from one extreme to another: years of taking care of everyone but ourselves, followed by a time of refusing to focus on anyone's needs but our own.

We may have spent years refusing to identify, feel, and deal with our feelings, followed by a period of absolute obsession with every trace of emotional energy that passes through our body.

We may succumb to powerlessness, helplessness, and victimization, then we swing to the other extreme by aggressively wielding power over those around us.

We can learn to give to others while taking responsibility for ourselves. We can learn to take care of our feelings, as well as our physical, mental, and spiritual needs. We can nurture the quiet confidence of owning our power as equals in our relationships with others.

The goal of recovery is balance, but sometimes we get there by going to extremes.

Today, I will be gentle with myself, understanding that sometimes to reach the middle ground of balance, I need to explore the peaks and valleys. Sometimes, the only way I can extricate myself from a valley is to jump high enough to land on a peak, and then slowly ease myself down.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

oh, and one more thing, speaking of moving past feeling helpless and like a victim and finding a way to take your happiness into your own hands, shen over at reunited selves has started a carnival for recovery and 12-step wisdom and the first carnival posted this week. thank you, shen! there's so much wisdom out there to share. i appreciate shen finding a new way of making all this wisdom accessible. here's that carnival for anyone who's interested:

steppers wisdom carnival

asking for what you need

2010-08-14T05:25:00.001-07:00

i took down the last post i wrote because i just didn't feel right about it. i don't like what i was saying and i felt uncomfortable because i don't feel like i really expressed myself clearly.

but i did get the kind comments from shen, jeanette and paula and i wanted to say thank you and i really appreciate what you said.

i think my problem lately is that i haven't been assertive enough about asking for what i need. so i've been trying to change that. to push past being afraid to ask, and push past any other internal obstacles, and just ASK.

the following is from the book The Language of Letting Go

Asking for What We Need

Decide what it is you want and need, and then go to the person you need it from and ask for it.

Sometimes, it takes hard work and much energy to get what we want and need. We have to go through the pains of identifying what we want, then struggle to believe that we deserve it. Then, we may have to experience the disappointment of asking someone, having the person refuse us, and figuring out what to do next.

Sometimes in life, getting what we want and need is not so difficult. Sometimes, all we need to do is ask.

We can go to another person, or our Higher Power, and ask for what we need.

But because of how difficult it can be, at times, to get what we want and need, we may get trapped in the mind set of believing it will always be that difficult. Sometimes, not wanting to go through the hassle, dreading the struggle, or out of fear, we may make getting what we want and need much more difficult than it needs to be.

We may get angry before we ask, deciding that we'll never get what we want, or anticipating the "fight" we'll have to endure. By the time we talk to someone about what we want, we may be so angry that we're demanding, not asking; thus our anger triggers a power play that didn't exist except in our mind.

Or we may get so worked up that we don't ask--or we waste far more energy than necessary fighting with ourselves, only to find out that the other person, or our Higher Power, is happy to give us what we want.

Sometimes, we have to fight and work and wait for what we want and need. Sometimes, we can get it just by asking or stating that this is what we want. Ask. If the answer is no, or not what we want, then we can decide what to do next.

Today, I will not set up a difficult situation that doesn't exist with other people, or my Higher Power, about getting what I want and need. If there is something I need from someone, I will ask first, before I struggle.

p.s. i feel the need to point out that not believing in god has made it somewhat tricky for me to apply 12-step wisdom to my understanding. but i think that no matter what you believe, there is no need to let anything stand in your way of improving your life with the wisdom that is out there in the world. so if you need to translate "higher power" into something that fits better with your worldview, i think that's fine. that's what i'm doing :)

it's ok to say yes :)

2010-08-05T15:06:00.001-07:00

it's ok to ask for what we want and need. and it's ok when people say no.

but it's also ok when they say yes :)

it's ok to take help when it's offered. and not just help. but love, compliments, listening, and anything else we might believe we are better off not needing.

when a friend of mine is sick or her child is sick, i try to offer to help if i can. but people always say no. and i can relate to this. even if there's something i need, if someone offers to help me, i'll almost always say no. i have one friend who i have actually taken up on this offer. someone i've known for years who i don't mind seeing me at my worst :)

but i wonder really what is going on when we are reluctant to accept what we might need from others. even when they offer it.

i think i operate on a default assumption that i'm on my own. believe i'm better off not needing others. i think this is a defense. some part of me thinks it's safer that way. that i'm less likely to be disappointed or hurt if i only depend on myself. however, i end up with an inner conflict. because part of me does want to feel close to others, to be there for them when they need it and to not be all alone when support might feel really empowering and nurturing to me too.

i think this goes back to fear. but there are some people we can depend on. there are people we can trust. who will like us for who we are. who we don't need to please to get them to like us. who won't feel like we're a burden. who can see us at our not so great moments, and still think we're great.

this week i finally asked for some support that i've been feeling like i've been really needing. and would you believe it, i got it! it didn't cause a conflict. i didn't feel like a burden. and they didn't feel burdened. we felt closer and things felt so much better overall.

you know, this might be silly, but i think of something funny in times like these...

i have a couple of items of clothing that i love, but i almost never wear them. because i love them so much and they fit just right and are so comfy, but i don't wear them because, i'm afraid they'll get ruined. what if i rip them or spill something on them?

isn't this silly? i'll deprive myself of wearing an item of clothing, that i love, and one day it might not even fit anymore. i don't let myself just enjoy that piece of cloth.

so on a deeper level, i wonder if the part of me that won't wear my favorite pants, is the same part that won't take up a friend on an offer to be there for me when i need support.

people might not always be there for us, but why say no when it's offered? why not even ask if we need it?

they might say no. they might not be able to be there for us when we want. but how is that worse then never asking at all, never giving them a chance, never allowing them to be close?

people aren't always consistent. someone may be a close part of your life one day, and then a year later you drift apart. life isn't constant or predictable. but i'd rather have a lifetime with a series of close, good experiences with people i feel good around, and not feel dismay or fear at the threat of the distance and solitude that life sometimes brings when it makes other plans ~ than live a guarded, isolated existence with the assurance that no one will ever let me down, reject me or disappoint me.

"The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another."
~Thomas Merton

self-care

2010-08-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

i'll go along for awhile feeling happy and then i'll start to feel sensitive and find myself going through old thinking patterns that do not feel good. sometimes i feel like people i care about take me for granted and don't care about me as much as i care about them. basic consideration, thoughtfulness, giving back, etc.

classic codependency i think. i don't like thinking and feeling this way. it hurts and i start to feel distant and resentful. and i still don't communicate as well as i'd like and this makes it glaringly clear. i don't like keeping tabs or feeling resentful. i don't like comparing what i do to what they do and getting upset when i don't feel like things are "equal." i don't like expecting others to read my mind and feeling hurt when they don't automatically treat me how i want to be treated.

these expectations feel so unrealistic and unfair. i think one reason why i want my mind to be read and my wishes and needs to be anticipated without my having to ask, is because i still have trouble asserting myself and communicating openly, honestly and clearly. part of me thinks, "i shouldn't have to." but that's just ridiculous. i'm sure what the truth is behind that defensive attitude is that i'm just still too afraid to be honest and want others to make things easier for me.

i think the plain truth is - relationships don't always meet our needs. that's just life. people have their own needs and lives to worry about. and that's the problem with codependency, when we focus on taking care of others so much that we neglect ourselves and things get out of balance in our own energy and self-esteem. then when the care doesn't come back our way, we get upset at the people we care for. but that's not the other person's fault. oftentimes, they never asked for us to do so much in the first place.

it doesn't mean that people don't love us when they don't caretake us.

times like these are good reminders that i have myself as my primary resource, and i have more than one person i depend on emotionally. it's not fair to look to one person for everything. and if i feel like someone isn't treating me the way i'd like, that doesn't mean that they're a bad person, that they don't love me, or that they aren't good for me. it only means they aren't fitting my needs at this moment. and while it's wonderful when the people in our lives DO meet our needs and can be there for us the way we need them to be, we can appreciate those moments when they are here, but not expect it to be there all the time. caring for our needs is our job.

this reading from hazelden helped me today:

Being Right

Recovery is not about being right; it's about allowing ourselves to be who we are and accepting others as they are.

That concept can be difficult for many of us if we have lived in systems that functioned on the "right/wrong" justice scale. The person who was right was okay; the person who was wrong was shamed. All value and worth may have depended on being right; to be wrong meant annihilation of self and self-esteem.

In recovery, we are learning how to strive for love in our relationships, not superiority. Yes, we may need to make decisions about people's behavior from time to time. If someone is hurting us, we need to stand up for ourselves. We have a responsibility to set boundaries and take care of ourselves. But we do not need to justify taking care of ourselves by condemning someone else. We can avoid the trap of focusing on others instead of ourselves.

In recovery, we are learning that what we do needs to be right only for us. What others do is their business and needs to be right only for them. It's tempting to rest in the superiority of being right and in analyzing other people's motives and actions, but it's more rewarding to look deeper.

Today, I will remember that I don't have to hide behind being right. I don't have to justify what I want and need with saying something is "right" or "wrong." I can let myself be who I am.

being in the moment

2010-08-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

"HEALING THE INNER CHILD"

Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.
~Robert Fulghum

one of the best things i find healing for my inner child is the time i spend really engaging with my daughter. which is great because it does us both good!

but i don't always find it easy or natural to be in that mode. sometimes i still feel too serious or too "busy" focusing on whatever else i might have in my mind that i think i need to be doing.

but whenever i can snap myself out of that, and just be in the moment with her, life is so much better. when i can just relax and let her lead and participate with her, and not try to control the interaction at all.

one thing that helps me get into the right frame of mind are some of the tv programs and music they play for kids these days. here are two songs/videos that both i and my daughter love.

these songs help me relax, stop worrying, feel happy, and just be...

hope you enjoy!

getting involved

2010-07-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

i am SO excited!!!!

i have signed up to participate as a volunteer this fall in a non-profit organization whose purpose is the following:

[We are] a community engagement organization. A place where deep, meaningful dialogue is taught and encouraged. Through this ongoing dialogue, we train people to listen to each other and to share their opinions about specific issues in ways that respect those with whom they disagree. Then we seek ways, large and small, in our community and beyond to address these important issues.

i feel like i belong here. i haven't begun yet. but i met with someone from the organization this morning to discuss becoming a part of the next dialogue group. and we had a wonderful talk!

i'm so motivated and excited to be a part of this. and to be doing something back in the community.

i feel like i've come a long way from my initial insecurities as a stay-at-home mom. for one thing, i now don't feel ashamed to call myself that. i now no longer feel that staying home to raise my daughter means i'm less of a person. i never liked feeling that way at all, and i never consciously looked down on women who did that. but when i chose this path, some parts of me did feel ashamed (the ultra-responsible part who has had a job since i was 14 - i.e. the hero child, and the feminist part of me who always believed i'd never be "dependent on a man").

over these past two and a half years, i've learned to redefine what it means to me to be a contributing member of society. what it means to be dependent and independent. what it means to do meaningful work. what work means. what it means to be a woman and a feminist.

what it means to have value.

i'm happy being a mother even if that's all i am. i don't feel empty or incomplete or that my life is lacking meaning or importance.

and now, coming from this state of mind, i'm really excited to reach out and reconnect to my community outside of my home sphere. not because i believe that without doing this i have no worth, because i do.

i'm doing this because i want to. because i have the energy and motivation to do this. because it means something to me.

because i care :)

"In our hectic, fast-paced, consumer-driven society, it's common to feel overwhelmed, isolated and alone. Many are re-discovering the healing and empowering role that community can bring to our lives. The sense of belonging we feel when we make the time to take an active role in our communities can give us a deeper sense of meaning and purpose."
~Robert Alan

no more, no less

2010-07-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

i've never tried to express this thought, so please bear with me if this makes little sense.

i have had an issue in my life that i'm not sure i've ever admitted.

i at least have had difficulty with this, and i'm wondering if anyone else has.

it's strange.

but here goes...

on the one hand, i have struggled primarily with feeling insecure, with low self-esteem, really easily critical and hard on myself, excessive humility to an unhealthy extent, and that sort of thing.

but then there's a weird flip-side.

there's a little part of me that really wants to be "special." but i am against thinking too much of myself or holding my head too high, i would never want to feel or act superior or be narcissistic or self-absorbed. so i've fought hard to never be that way.

but whenever i've had evidence in my life that i'm not that special after all, it's tended to really upset me.

socially, starting when i was a child, if i had a friend and then they wanted to be friends with someone else too, i would get really insecure and jealous and either i was right to feel threatened and they were going to ditch me anyway, or in my jealousy i would act in ways that would cause them to replace me with the other friend. because that did happen. i never really knew why i lost friends.

but even as a young adult this was still a problem. i would feel that jealous insecurity that made me fear i could be replaced. so if i felt special to someone, but then found they appreciated someone else as well (and again, we're talking just friends here, not even romantic jealousy, though of course i had that too), i would feel easily hurt, fearing rejection. and it felt like the fact that they cared about someone else somehow meant they cared less about me. or that their care didn't seem to mean as much as i thought it did, because they could care about other people too, perhaps even more than they did me.

it all made me feel that i wasn't that important after all.

i've come a long way from this type of thinking. i feel much better and more secure these days and am ... let me be sure i'm being completely honest here ... yes, i'm now ok with friends of mine having other friends :)

i can even combine friends now :) i used to have what i called satellite friends. one at a time. like i was the hub of a wheel and had only other friends who i would spend time with individually. as a grown up i think i rarely had friends who interacted or even knew each other. for years i just thought i prefered one-to-one interactions. but thinking about this all now in terms of this subject, i realize that this was probably due to insecurity. and i recall that whenever friends of mine were going to meet or intersect, i would often feel really anxious and uncomfortable, almost like i wasn't sure how to function outside of my comfortable one-to-one level i preferred. there seemed to be a feeling that i needed to keep them separate. i hadn't thought until now that this might have been due to an underlying fear of abandonment.

but though i feel comfortable now intermingling friends, and not being number one on my friend's lists, i do still feel pangs of the "needing to be special feeling" sometimes. it's more rare these days, but when it does crop up, it still feels painful. like if i do something that i feel good about, but it doesn't seem like anyone else thinks what i did was that good, then i feel worse about it. i feel less proud. i feel more easily ashamed if i don't get that positive affirmation and reflection from someone else.

it's like there's some infantile part of me that wants everyone to think i'm terrific and if they don't, if i'm not noticed or i'm not seen as that remarkable or special, then i feel like crap.

it's such a bizarre form of extreme thinking, and i feel kind of embarrassed even admitting i want to be liked or thought of as special by others. it sounds narcisisstic and self-important, things i never want to be. and it just feels immature. like i'm a child...

and anytime something makes me feel like a child, i tend to think that means that's where my feeling originates.

i love my mom and she just came to stay with me for a visit yesterday and we had a really good time. i'm so glad she's a part of my life and i'm happy to know her. she's a good person. she was not perfect, but she had many strengths and there is a lot of good that i learned from her. and we are able to talk about the past and i feel like we've come to terms with a lot about what happened. i've been able to be honest with her, and we are close these days and our dynamic is now very positive.

but one thing she did when i was growing up, that i think is probably a typical parent thing to do, is that she always went on about how special me and my brother were. and my dad seemed to think i was special. sounds good so far right? not dysfunctional at all, perhaps?

but none of it felt right. it felt more like they "needed" us to be special. we needed to prove they weren't failures. my mom even said to me on a number of occasions that she knows my brother and i must be meant to do something really important because otherwise why would she have ended up with my father. something good needed to come from that relationship.

so it wasn't that i felt like she saw me at my core and recognized something really special about me in particular. it felt more like i needed to help redeem her life. i needed, by my very existence, to make things right for her.

so every time i've had evidence in real life that i'm not that special after all, that i am just one other human being on this earth who isn't superbly remarkable, and isn't really going to do anything particularly spectacular, sometimes it has felt like there's a hot fire in my chest and i feel ashamed and angry all at once.

it's so weird. and i still really don't know for sure why i've felt that way. but it's one of the best pains i've had. it's felt liberating to discover my mediocrity. to realize that i can accept myself as is. that i don't HAVE to be special. that there are other people who are like me. that i can hear my thoughts and feelings reflected in songs, in movies, in books. i'm not that original.

something feels good about that.

instead of feeling angry at feeling ordinary, i can feel glad i'm a part of a larger whole. that my life is but one thread among all the other strands in this web of life.

i don't have to stand out. i don't have to be that special. and yet, each of us are. i don't feel completely diminished. i feel like i can be myself and find my path, but now with less pressure.

i think another reason it's been good when i've been reminded of my non-specialness. is that when the light doesn't shine on me, it is shining on others and i don't need to take away from anyone else to feel good about myself. i can be happy for others when they have more than me. more love, more friends, more attention, more recognition, more praise, more success, more achievement, more happiness, more ...

it doesn't mean that there's none left for me. that there's not enough to go around. everyone not thinking i'm amazing doesn't mean i'm a failure as a person.

i don't have to be remarkable. my life doesn't have to save or redeem anyone, or give meaning to anyone else's life. i don't have to make this world a better place just by being here, though i'd still like to. but i'm not worthless if i don't do something fantastic. i can just be who i am. do my part to help make the lives of those i love better through my care and attention to them. i can follow my heart and find my own path and voice, but be ok with just being me. the single star in the sky that i am.

no more, no less.

needing self-care

2010-07-22T12:24:00.001-07:00

today is a tough day. yesterday was good, but today i'm going through old negative thinking patterns. this morning, i tried to clean my way out of it. i even cleaned my windows and dusted my blinds, which to be honest, i don't really do. so you get how hard i was trying.

then i tried to socialize my way out of it.

both those things helped. but the problem is deeper than that.

i'm feeling needy, insecure, vulnerable, quick to feel hurt, and down on myself. i feel like i could burst into tears at any moment. and i'm not close to pms time, so i can't blame it on that.

i think i'm aimed too much outside right now. sometimes life reminds me that there's little i can do on the outside to fix what's going on inside. and the more i try to reach outwards for something to help me feel better, the worse i feel.

i think sometimes i am too dependent on external validation. caring too much what other people think of me. not strangers, but people who i feel i show my "real self" to. i think i'm in "feeling easily rejected mode" and there's too much emphasis on being noticed, being cared about, and seen.

i feel like a tree who is focused too much on the sun and not enough on my roots and getting the inner nourishment i need.

i'm trying these days to see the good in my moments of pain. i think in this case it might be good for me when my expectations of others are not met, when i feel hurt and disappointed, because it challenges me to reevaluate my "needs" and those expectations, to focus on being realistic and not childlike in my dependency. to snap me out of self-absorption and self-pity.

i'm also doing my best to think logically in the face of my insecurities these days. and the truth is, people in my life do care about me. but people have their own lives and they are busy and their worlds don't revolve around me.

feeling "let down" today gives me that chance to focus on rebalancing myself and strengthening my core. i need to get back to the place where i can depend on people, but when they aren't there, i can still stand up straight on my own...

i don't know about plants, but i assume what happens when a tree's branches get too long is that if the trunk isn't strong enough, it's a drain on the inner resources of the tree. and that's why we prune, so the core can become stronger and more able to support the parts that reach out and up.

"There's something today that needs to be shed so something new can emerge. Did you know that we prune the apple trees hard from time to time, else the sunlight cannot gain entrance to their centers.

We are not divorced from nature. Often the natural practices that are good for nature, are good for us also."

~Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

loving our flaws

2010-07-12T11:23:00.001-07:00

i wrote my last post on the subject of independence, for the blog carnival against child abuse. here's that post.

the post didn't turn out the way i thought it would. i started off thinking i'd write about how i'd like to be independent of my flaws. then i got carried away thinking about independence and all the things i'm grateful to feel independent from. i really enjoyed thinking and writing about that. and i look forward to the blog carnival to see other ways people feel about the topic of independence.

but i want to get back to the idea of flaws...because i've been thinking a lot about those lately. i'm starting to think they are not necessarily things we need to be independent from.

one of my favorite blogs is "beautiful you." it's about loving and accepting yourself, and your body, as is. i have a link to this wonderful blog on my sidebar. it confronts all the harmful messages we are given in our culture, about how we need to be or look. those that put forth an image of beauty or happiness that we can measure ourselves against, and most of us will fall short by comparison. so we internalize this image and often feel that unless we look like someone else, or have accomplishments, or love, or money, or whatever, that we could never be at peace.

ideals of perfection can do such damage to our self-esteem, to our identities. we may feel we could never be happy or loved - as is. we may endlessly work on trying to change who we are. we may go from diet to diet. we may go from relationship to relationship, looking for love that we think we need in order to feel whole. but in our desperation not to be alone, we may never give ourselves the space, time and emotional nurturing to build ourselves up and find someone deserving of our love. someone who will love us back. we may not get the mental health help we need because we're too ashamed to admit we have a problem. we may feel unable to ask for help, because that would mean we couldn't handle it on our own. we may develop an eating disorder or undergo plastic surgery. we may engage in self-destruction. we may feel numb and disconnected and lost. we may struggle for a sense of control. we may feel terrible every time we look in the mirror. we may burn ourselves out working to death because we feel that we aren't good enough unless we work hard enough.

but when we live this way, it seems to me that our locus of control is outside of ourselves. we believe we have no control over our own happiness and well-being. that something needs to come from the outside. the idea that: if i don't have ____, i'll never be happy. but it doesn't have to be that way. love can start from the inside out. we can be our own source of self-worth.

there's a new website called loveyourflawz.com. the women who started the site talk about how we can all feel beautiful inside and out. flaws and all. we're all unique and have our own special qualities and characteristics. they're what make us special. and if we don't see or hear of other people feeling or acting or being how we are, and even if we do, we can feel ashamed of ourselves for what we perceive as our differences or our flaws. here is the video they have made:

i know there are things about me i'd still like to change. ways i'd like to improve. tendencies i have that don't benefit my overall well-being. like comparing myself to others and always underevaluating myself :) but these days i'm trying to also practice accepting myself right now for who i am. flaws and all. to look at myself in a moment when i'm feeling flawed, and instead of feeling self-hatred and condemnation, i can approach myself with love, curiosity, acceptance, patience and gentleness.

every part of me is a part of what makes me who i am today. each wrinkle and grey hair is evidence of a life lived. every defense mechanism developed for a reason. i do not want to feel ashamed of my life or myself. scars, both physical and emotional, show what we've endured. we can feel pride in our scars. they are not all of who we are, they are proof of what we have survived.

i can work towards change if i want. and i do want to. i enjoy the progress i make. but i think it's best (and more effective) when i feel motivated from self-love. rather than from thinking i need to be different in order to be loved by someone else. being self-accepting seems in itself to help me change. because loving myself means believing i don't deserve to be so hard on myself. i deserve to feel better.

"Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different."
~Stacey Charter

these photos are from the love your flawz website. they have a whole photo gallery of images of people loving their flaws :) inspiring stuff!

confidence

2010-07-10T06:04:00.001-07:00

i've been thinking a lot about confidence lately and what that means. trying to have more of it. i've always thought of myself as having low self-esteem. that that's just part of who i am. but the more i practice healing, the more i am trying to do things like envision myself in the future how i would like to be. to not believe that any particular pieces of me are set in stone, if i would rather they not be.

and maybe i won't ever change that much. but i am noticing some differences as i try this out.

i've always been mystified by people with confidence. how did they get that? are they really insecure and just hide it?

i've never been into hiding my "weaknesses" and honestly have resisted even seeing them as weaknesses. i see vulnerability as a good thing. and the fact that i can admit it and don't feel the need to "put up a strong front" i think is a strength in itself.

at least i'm not trying to hide anything. and what people see is what they get.

but i am tired of feeling self-doubt and insecurity. i worry a lot that i've said the wrong thing or that people won't like me. or that i'm failing and am not as good as i could be. i want my daughter to learn confidence. and while i am loving and supportive and do what i can to help her to believe in herself. i think it's also important that i show her by example what it means to believe in yourself.

i'm sure people build confidence in different ways. for some, achievement and finding love might help them build confidence. but for some people, like me, no matter what you achieve externally, you may never feel that you are good enough. so in that case, i think confidence needs to be built from the inside out. so i'm trying out a few things. thought experiments :)

i try to imagine what confidence feels like. i assume it's the absence of the self-doubt and insecurity. so if i catch myself self-doubting and putting myself down, i try to just STOP. interrupt my thoughts mid-stream, and take a deep breath. to imagine how a confident person would feel. to respond internally with thoughts that counter the inner doubt. self-assurance. logic. emotional distance and perspective. i try to be gentle with myself. to take it easy. to allow myself just to be wherever i am, however i am feeling at that moment. to accept myself. as is. instead of endlessly worrying. and thinking i should have done things differently. to accept my actions. to let go of perfectionism.

i'm not perfect. i still feel insecurity. but i'm trying to diminish its dominance in my thinking pattern. to practice other thought processes to replace the ones that hurt, hinder and interfere. to be at peace.

gaining confidence doesn't mean starting to believe that i do everything right. i know that there are people out there who are more capable than i am. i know that some people will like me but some won't. what confidence means to me today is that all of this is ok. i don't have to panic and worry and fear. i don't have to depend on the acceptance of others. i can be myself and love myself, just as i am. i can fail and make mistakes. i can take life one day at a time. i can focus on what i can do. and work on what i can change.

but i am ok. as i am. in this moment. today. whether or not others think so too.

"What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
~Henry David Thoreau

this is now

2010-07-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

there is an expressive arts carnival hosted by paul at mind parts each month. july's activity is: "Use any visual means to represent, in an abstract way, your experience of all or part of your internal world."

i had to think about this. first, the word abstract threw me. i tend not to do things abstractly. i tend to try to explain everything and be specific. which is why i probably feel the need to write a post to go along with this activity :)

i don't typically paint or draw or take photos to express myself. i prefer to write and speak. growing up, i liked drawing, but i never thought i was good at art. and i never thought i was creative. my favorite kind of drawing to do was tracing. and connect the dots and paint by numbers (poor kid, control was so early on an issue). i remember crying to my grandmother once when i was having trouble coloring inside the lines in my coloring book. it took me years before i realized that that memory i have, of staying with my grandmother in a hotel room, was probably when i was 6, when my dad was in the hospital with a fractured skull from falling down our basement stairs drunk.

my grandmother showed me a trick that day for staying inside the lines. color carefully a dark thick barrier along the line itself, then it's easier to stay inside the "lines" because you've made the line itself so much thicker...

probably a good metaphor in there somewhere. i was just happy i could make my coloring book look perfect. not so messy.

it wasn't until i was an adult that i tried drawing for my self (i.e. not for anyone else). and not according to lines or numbers or rules or expectations. i wanted to see what would come out if i tried to use something other than words to express myself. i had gained so much from applying natalie goldberg's principles of writing to not only my writing, but my life.

here's what she says about writing:

"Don't cross anything out, because that makes space for your inner editor to come in. You are free to write the worst junk in America. After all, when we get on the tennis courts, we don’t expect to be a champion the first day. But somehow with writing, if we don’t write the opening paragraph of War and Peace the first time we sit down with our notebook, we feel we’ve failed."

from this wonderful article.

i love her ideas. they have been exactly what i needed in my life. just pick your pen and write. and keep writing. (or living, or whatever it is). don't let your inner critic silence you. move past whatever rules you were taught about what is "good" or "right" or how you "should" be. find your true heart. your voice. who you really are. let go.

i've tried not to let the idea that, "i'm not creative." get in my way of using creative methods for healing. i decided that i can redefine creativity. it doesn't have to be good or "creative" by anyone else's standards. as far as i'm concerned, we are all creative. we can all make something where there was nothing. express ourselves. take what's inside and bring it out.

what other people think is "good" doesn't matter. truth is what matters. i think if it's true, then it is good. even if no one likes it. even if it doesn't sell :)

so today for the carnival, i tried to think of how i could do this activity without using words. so i chose pictures.

to depict my inner world, i decided to do two collages. (again, i don't know if this is abstract or not, but as far as i know, there is no right or wrong here either :) i made one to depict my inner world as it once was. and one as it is these days. i wanted to show where i've been and to see how far i've come. so here it is:

That Was THEN

This Is NOW

independence

2010-07-04T06:39:00.001-07:00

july's blog carnival against child abuse will focus on the theme of "independence."

because july 4th is independence day in the united states, i was already thinking about this issue. i often like to take this holiday as an opportunity to reflect on where i need more independence in my life, as well as where i'm grateful to feel i've achieved some independence.

when you grow up in a dysfunctional family, you often adopt a sense of self that feels set in stone. you believe this is just who you are. because you learned your survival strategies from such an early age, you often have no idea that you, or life, could be any other way. you may be codependent, a caretaker, a perfectionist, self-centered, a rescuer, self-destructive, insecure, or any number of things.

but it's so liberating when you discover that these things are not YOU. they are not in your nature. you were not born this way. you adapted and developed skills to cope in your environment. to make sense of your world. to survive.

as of this independence day, here's what i'd like more independence from:

insecurity
fear
comparing myself to others
feeling inferior
feeling inadequate
perfectionism
shame
self-doubt
low self-esteem

i've been making good progress this past year by focusing on self-love, acceptance, trust, balance and gratitude. as well as practicing changing my thought patterns using logic, imagination and emotional distancing.

now here is what i'm grateful for regarding independence:

i'm grateful that i am independent of the way i was raised to see women. i don't feel trapped in a narrow idea of what it means to be a woman, a mother, or married to a man. i don't see myself as a sexual object. i think of myself as a complete human being. i'm grateful that i'm not sexist and that i see feminism as humanism, as the empowerment of both men and women to be complete as individuals. i'm grateful i found a partner who feels this way too. that we will raise our daughter this way. i'm grateful to be respected and feel safe in my own home. that i can be myself in my relationship, and am encouraged to speak and share my feelings. that i can have hairy legs and short hair if i want. that i can be pudgy if i want, and still be loved as much as if i were thin.

i'm grateful i am independent of the notion that money or position determines my worth. i'm grateful i can be independent financially. but that my relationship is safe enough that i felt free to choose to become financially interdependent. i'm grateful i can work if i want. but that i can also stay home and help raise our daughter if i want. i'm grateful that i was able to get to the point where i now feel that neither means i'm less of a person. my partner doesn't treat me like i'm less intelligent than him, or less than him in any way. i do not feel worthless, nor do i feel like a burden. i feel that i matter and am contributing to society. i feel that i have dignity, just because i exist. i no longer believe that my self-worth depends on whether or not i earn a wage or have a job. i know that i can and want to. that i have skills, motivation, and the desire to participate in the community. but i know that i'm still a worthwhile human being as a full-time parent. our daughter is growing up with parents who are equals and friends. she will be raised by BOTH parents to believe she can do anything and be anything. she will grow up loved, protected, nurtured and empowered to the best of our ability.

i'm grateful to be independent of addiction and to have a spouse free from it as well. i'm grateful i don't have to worry that my husband will get drunk at night. i'm grateful that my partner understands the difficulties i have faced due to growing up in an alcoholic home. i'm grateful we will provide a balanced, safe, non-addictive environment for our daughter.

i'm grateful that i've learned that i can be independent of who i thought i was growing up. i don't have to be a caretaking, people-pleasing, perfectionist, insecure codependent person. i have choices. it's up to me how i want to feel and engage with others. i can set boundaries. i can choose who i want in my life. i can reconnect to my deeper, higher or core self. i can learn to recognize and trust my instincts. i am not powerless. i'm grateful that i believe that i'm not "determined" or "destined" to be any one way. i'm grateful that i've had the opportunity to practice healing and changing my thought patterns. i'm grateful that i've had the opportunity to undergo therapy and that even without therapy, i can conduct my own recovery.

i'm grateful i know it can be safe to be dependent in life. that i can love and be loved and feel safe. that i can have friends and be close to people with whom i feel safe and comfortable and nurtured and understood and listened to and liked. i'm grateful i can have equal, balanced friendships in which they feel appreciated, encouraged and free to be themselves too. i'm grateful i've met good friends and mentors along the way and that we can share in our journeys. i'm grateful to know i'm not alone in this world, that lots of people have gone through the things i went through, and they are ok. i'm grateful that i learned that i am ok too. and that things can get even better.

i'm so grateful that i know i can choose to be independent of people who are harmful for me. i'm grateful i was able to feel independent from my family of origin. that i know now i can engage with them of my own free will, if i choose to, if i want to. and i don't have to feel unhealthy or play any old role or assume that things have to be any certain way. i'm grateful that in relation to them, i feel free from guilt and obligation and fear and powerlessness. i'm grateful i've been able to set boundaries and feel empowered to make choices. that i know i am the one who gets to decide what is acceptable for my life. i'm grateful i've learned to tell the difference between people who are good for me and those who aren't. and to know i can survive those who aren't.

i'm also grateful that i feel independent spiritually. i know i'm a part of this earth and life as a whole. but i feel that i'm free to explore religion and philosophy and spirituality on my own. i was never forced to believe in anything and always felt free to chart my own course and find out what feels true and right for me. i'm grateful that we will provide this same opportunity for our daughter. i'm grateful that i feel free of a system of belief that encourages shame, guilt and fear. i'm grateful that the belief system that i've developed is inclusive of all humanity and life on earth. i'm grateful that my belief system is tolerant and accepting and that i believe i can build friendships, feel trust, mutual respect, and learn from people who believe differently from me. i'm grateful that i believe that we can learn to live together free from oppression and abuse. i'm grateful i'm an optimist and that i still believe in world peace and hope.

"There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained."
-- W. E. B. DuBois

music therapy

2010-07-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

i don't know what professional music therapists do. but the way i use music to heal is by finding songs that speak my heart.

i made my blog a music playlist tonight, inspired by IK. (and was pleased with my non-techie self for being able to shrink it down to fit in my sidebar :)

this was a walk down memory lane. i tried to think of favorite songs and artists from my whole life. i remembered sitting on my bedroom floor as a teen listening to my parents' old records. i remembered sitting on my bedroom floor in my apartment at college. making tapes for people i cared about. reading the lyrics in the album jackets.

most of the songs i chose for my blog playlist have meant something to me along the way and have been with me for years. others are new inspirations.

tonight i listened to old love songs, songs that soothed me when my heart was broken, or gave me hope when i thought i would never find love. songs that helped me cry when i needed to. when i felt hurt. alone. or when i felt hopeless and overwhelmed about all the darkness i could see in our world. songs that helped me find a voice for anger that i couldn't voice myself. i remember just hearing those songs and dancing around my apartment could make me feel so much better and stronger.

each time in my life that i heard a new song that spoke my heart, it lifted me from wherever i was and helped me feel connected to other people on this planet. hearing people sing tenderly of love gave me hope that there are kind people in the world who are good parents and partners. hearing people sing about healing themselves, this earth and each other helped me feel like that there is hope and this is not such a scary and horrible place to live.

music has helped me feel that there are people out there healing, living, overcoming, hoping, and moving on from the ways life has changed them. and that i could be one too.

we are not alone. we are all in this together. yay music!

the first song on my list is from one of my newest favorite bands, hem. i posted another one of their songs recently. i just can't get enough of them!

here is a video for that song. i hope you enjoy this and any other tunes you might find on my playlist :)

sending warm well wishes out to everyone this evening~~~

Half Acre

I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
And folded in this scrap of paper
Is the land I grew in

Think of every town you've lived in
Every room you lay your head
And what is it that you remember

Do you carry every sadness with you
Every hour your heart was broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you

A man is walking on the highway
A woman stares out at the sea
And light is only now just breaking

So we carry every sadness with us
Every hour our hearts were broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with us

But I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
I am carrying this scrap of paper

That can crack the darkest sky wide open
Every burden taken from me

friendship

2010-07-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

in the past, when cultivating a friendship, i would often worry about "ruining" it. i was sure i would say the wrong thing. and that once the person really got to know me, they would want nothing more to do with me.

and i do still experience an element of anxiety. but i'm happy to say that lately, i feel much better.

the difference is, these days i'm trying to operate with more trust. more self-confidence. more listening to my heart. more thinking logically.

as well as not centering my world around any particular person. when you're codependent, it's like you're in a river with tons of eddies in it. if you don't know what an eddy is, it's where the river has a break from the main current and might even form a swirly whirlpool. usually caused from something in the water, like a rock.

that's how it feels to me being codependent. like a leaf floating along downstream, and all of a sudden, you're not in the main current anymore, you get caught up swirling around in an eddy and you're stuck. and that's how other people can feel. you get wrapped up in them. thinking about them. worrying about them. and you stop moving forward in your own life. they become your focus. they become your center of gravity. your happiness can become dependent on them, or on the quality of that relationship.

so to me, overcoming codependency, is like becoming more ... well, self-propelling. where i can relate with people and enjoy their company, but i don't swirl around them feeling helpless to the power of their current. maybe i'll stop for a chat, and enjoy their company, but i don't get stuck. i don't stay longer than i enjoy. i just keep moving, and hope they do the same for themselves.

and now that i'm worrying and focusing less on anyone in particular, i'm enjoying friendship more.

i'm feeling different. i feel myself enjoying people more. spending time with friends i genuinely love talking to and spending time with. i look forward to seeing them. i feel energized after we talk. and there never seems to be enough time in the day to say all the things we have to say.

it's amazing to me how with some people you can have a neverending conversation...whereas with other people you feel all awkward and closed up inside and have a blank mind and no idea what to say, no idea how to connect.

Rumi on the beauty of spiritually intimate associations:
"It is a sign of intimate friendship
when speech flows freely from the heart;
without intimacy, the flow is blocked."

in the past, i had all kinds of reasons for choosing friendships, not all of which were the healthiest reasons. maybe i would be friends with someone just because they seemed to like me and wanted to be my friend (but it would take me a long time to recognize the feeling wasn't mutual). or i was friends with someone who seemed to need me, someone i felt sorry for, or someone who i could help (this case was sometimes one where neither of us may have genuinely liked each other, or i liked them, but they only seemed to like me for how i made them feel).

these kinds of friendships seem doomed. it is bad for the other person if they like you but you don't genuinely like them in return. it's unhealthy to build friendships where your ego is being served, but no genuine mutual appreciation is taking place. you may think it will improve your insecurity, but you only feel worse. because you're using them. and hurting them. because you can't pretend to like someone convincingly.

we all deserve to be around people who genuinely like being with us, who enjoy our company, who enjoy talking with us. so if we spend time around people out of obligation, or just because they make us feel good, we really aren't doing them any favors. we're depriving both them, and ourselves, of really enjoying a true friendship.

and if you are friends with someone out of pity, that's not good either, because you're not genuinely loving them for who they are. if you love someone and feel pity for them, i don't think that's a problem. but when pity is the only reason...that's a problem.

and if someone seems to like you for what you can do for them, but they don't actually like YOU, you're allowing yourself to be used. this can make you feel drained and sad at the end of the day. you can feel unseen, unloved. they may call you because they need to feel good and they know you can make them feel that way. but then when you hang up, you may realize they didn't even ask how you are. they don't care. and that is a choice you've made, by choosing to remain in the friendship.

we make choices every day. and lately i'm trying harder to do what i want. in the past, either i had no idea what that was, or if i did, i would try really hard to ignore it. because i thought it was selfish to do what you wanted. and i thought selfish was terrible.

but it feels good to do what you want.

especially when what you want is to spend time with someone who feels like a good friend, and they feel the same way about you. that feels really super.

communication

2010-06-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

i think i'm a pretty good communicator these days. i have things to improve, but i have come a long way from where i was. i used to feel painfully awkward socially. and a lot of social anxiety. by the time i was 18, i considered myself "socially avoidant." if there were a lot of people somewhere, i would not go. i think i went to one party in high school in the 9th grade, and that was the last one i went to until college.

i even remember once when i was about 22, i went to stay with some friends and they had some friends of theirs drop by. people i'd never met. i was in the bedroom at the time of their arrival. my friend invited to join them in the living room to meet their friends and hang out. and i was too scared to even leave my room. i did not meet those people that day. amazingly enough, those people are still my friends! they have seen me at many of my worst points and love me anyway, thank goodness for them! :)

nowadays, i am actually fairly comfortable meeting new people and even kind of like it. and i don't usually have a problem engaging with strangers. but even though my anxiety may not be apparent on the surface, it is still there sometimes when i interact with people. i get all sweaty and worry about what i'm saying, what they will think, did i say the wrong thing, etc. i do this in writing too. i may put a comment on someone's blog and feel quite right about it. then later on i may start to feel insecure and question what i wrote and whether or not it was ok and feel really self-conscious.

so i worry about the things i say. but i actually came here today to write about another communication problem i've been dealing with lately.

apparently i'm not always as good of a listener as i would like to think i am.

when talking with people, i want to show them that i care and am interested in what they are saying. i grew up not usually feeling listened to, and so am familiar with the pain of feeling invisible. feeling like people just start talking as though you weren't even saying something and what they say shows they weren't listening to you at all. so as an adult, i've always tried, in a group setting, if i see someone get talked over when they were trying to speak, i always try to ask what they were saying and bring the group's attention back to that person. i want them to know that we want to hear what they have to say too. that they are valuable and interesting just like anyone else.

so i can be a good listener. i'm just not always one. today i was reading on just be real's blog about listening and it brought up so many thoughts that i've been having too.

basically, my husband has told me many times throughout our relationship that there are times i don't listen well. most of our difficulties in our relationship we've only had to talk about once or twice and we overcome them, but for some reason this has continued to come up over and over. i think partly it's because i was holding on too strongly to the self-perception that i was a "good listener" so it has been confusing for me to see how i'm not.

but i see it now. it happens sometimes when i'm in a good mood and my energy level is up. so i'm thinking fast and do not slow down enough to be patient and really focus on what people are saying. also i think what's going on sometimes is anxiety and people-pleasing. i want people to feel listened to, so while they're talking i am really trying to listen and i try to think of questions i could ask to show my interest. or maybe i'm curious about something they have said and want to ask more about it. but i don't always wait for them to finish, especially if i'm excited about what they're talking about. so sometimes i'll just jump in and start to ask my questions. and apparently i tend sometimes to ask a series of yes or no questions, which leaves the person feeling like i'm interviewing them. (actually my husband uses the word interrogate). so instead of just asking an open-ended question and just letting them respond freely i sometimes rush the person with rapid-fire questioning.

it has taken me a lonnng time (ok, 6 years apparently, because that's how long i've been with my husband :) to finally really see what's going on and admit it. i think partly i'm embarrassed too and that's another reason it's taken me so long to admit it. i wanted to think i was such a good communicator. funny how we can hold onto these ego-notions and it will actually prevent us from being the thing we want to think we are.

i think for all this time, our conversations about this were essentially going something like this.

H: i feel like you're not listening to me.

me: but i'm a good listener.

it's kind of funny really. i couldn't even really listen to his trying to tell me i wasn't listening well. i couldn't see how it felt to him. i could only see how i felt, that i was asking questions to show that i'm listening, to show i care, to show my interest. so i didn't see how i could be doing anything wrong. i was focusing so much on my intention and my point of view. it was *really* confusing to me all this time trying to see how my very attempts to show i care and am listening could actually have the opposite effect and make people feel i'm not really listening and further, that i am controlling the conversation.

that was a real a-ha moment for me. that even when we are doing things that we THINK are pleasing and loving, our actions might actually have the opposite effect. regardless of how much we do care and how hard we try.

so i've been practicing trying to stay calm when i'm talking with someone. to practice JUST listening more. trying not to think about all the things i want to say or ask. patience. waiting for them to finish talking. and then i can ask a question if it still seems relevant.

but another thing that has been an a-ha for me, has been to see and finally admit how i can be controlling in conversation. i never thought i was controlling before. because i used to just see controlling as, "bossing people around." it's been really enlightening and helpful to learn about all the other ways we can be controlling. and i am still learning. but now i know that if i find myself thinking, "i was just trying to be nice," this is an indication i might be engaging in controlling behavior.

this is an excerpt from something jbr quoted in the post i linked to above. it is so spot on, i wanted to post it here too.

"Listening should be easy. But it is not. At a minimum, listening means that we have to be quiet. We cannot listen when we are talking. Not talking is the hard part. There are many reasons for this. We prefer talking over listening because it gives us a sense of control. We can control the silences between words by choosing when to talk. Since silences of even a few seconds can cause our anxiety to increase, we fill the silence with words even when we really have nothing to say.

It is a remarkable experience to have someone really listen -- to have someone's undivided attention and interest. When someone listens, they communicate to us on a very deep level that we are valuable. Their listening breaks our isolation and aloneness. And it decreases the fears which come when our thoughts and feelings are confused. Talking out loud in the presence of a person who listens carefully allows us to gain clarity and perspective. Gradually, being listened to can begin to convince us that we are worth someone's attention and worth being loved.

When someone listens with respect and acceptance we are comforted and consoled. Our pain is soothed. Our burden is lightened."

~Dale and Juanita Ryan

progress not perfection

2010-06-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

change is slow.

this doesn't always seem right because we can make such huge changes in our daily lives, without it taking much time. we can meet a new friend, buy a house, quit a job. things done in a moment, that can forever alter the course of our lives.

but the more i think about how it is to change who you are...to change your long-standing internal thought patterns. your habitual reactions. your gut responses. this isn't something you can do overnight.

that's a different kind of change. like how you can't just grow a tree in a day. you start by planting a seed, and you go from there.

and as much as i want to help another person feel good about themselves, this isn't something within my power alone. when someone i care about is being hard on themselves, i quickly jump into protective-rescuer mode. i have struggled in my life with being my own worst enemy. and have worked hard to change this in myself. i still am hard on myself and feel self-doubt and insecurity more than i'd like, but it's much better than in the past.

but i can't stand to hear someone else be hard on themselves. i feel so bad for them. and so angry at the people who made them feel this way in the first place. and coming from having a lot of experience with self-hatred, i feel like i know all too well how painful and inescapable that feels. and i want to help stop them from feeling that way. i want to convince them they are worth loving and don't deserve to treat themselves like that.

but you can't convince other people they are worth love if they don't think so too. i had one friend years ago who was endlessly hard on herself and no matter what i said, nothing ever made a difference. i felt so helpless and sad for her. and it was so wrong, because she was so wonderful! so i wrote a poem about it.

(i can't believe how organized i am! i just went to look in my bookshelf and my system for organizing my writings actually worked. i must have written this 15 years ago. i can't believe i found it in less than a minute!)

the night i missed her call

what did you think
that a few small words
could change
the flow of the tide?

compliments
slide across the surface of her
hard polished solid gold egg
so unreachable, impermeable
yet i fight to break through

to reach in
to where you stab, bruise and pound
curl my arms around
until you understand
that there's no reason.

i realize now that to some extent it is codependent and controlling of me to try to "save" people from themselves. and i wonder sometimes if i go too far when i get into my "protective" mode, and come across as actually being critical. i try never to say "you shouldn't be so hard on yourself." the last thing i want is to sound like i'm condemning them, or that i don't understand.

i want to be supportive and help them see what i see. the beauty i see. that it's a horrible lie that they don't deserve love. that there's nothing worthless or hopeless or broken about them.

i tend not to see people as broken or flawed or hopeless. i think we all have a core underneath it all, underneath the abuses and losses we may have endured, underneath the heartbreaks, underneath our own attempts at self-destruction...

but if i've learned anything, it's that change takes time. and that we are the ones with the most power to help ourselves. i can't convince someone they are lovable if their reaction is going to be to argue with me and find reasons to disbelieve everything i say. (yes, but of course you're going to say that, you're just trying to be nice...)

i spent years trying to depend completely on others, or on things outside of myself (like work) for my self-worth. and lo and behold, nothing was ever enough to convince me i was enough. i still found ways to doubt, to distrust, to fear, to be sure that i would fail. and if someone seemed to love me, it was just a matter of time. they just didn't know me well enough. one day they would see the ugly truth, the real me, and they would run for the hills.

finally i realized i can't depend entirely outside of myself for my sense of self-worth. it's an insecure way to live. and it does nothing to repair the problem at the source. (and i had a really hard time admitting this, but it can be a drain on the people you're depending on, not to mention a strain on the relationship). depending on others for your sense of self-worth is like living in the ocean, having no idea how to swim, and clinging to another swimmer as though they were a life preserver. i needed to start being a source of friendship and self-love too. i needed to learn to swim.

but i've found that the habit of negative self-talk isn't just something you can snap yourself out of. it takes practice. i started years ago trying to cultivate a contrary inner voice. an inner protector. an inner self-nurturer. i feel like this is one of the many things i learned from having a friend with dissociative identity disorder in college, the idea that there can be multiple internal dialogues going on. in my friend's case, that was the way her mind had developed to cope with trauma. i didn't have a fragmented consciousness, but i feel like knowing someone who did helped me realize that the stream of thought running through my head, my own internal dialogue, which i always assumed was just "ME" - was not necessarily who i was at my core. it was other things, my ego, who i thought i was, messages i'd been taught and internalized from parents, peers, the culture, etc. i realized i could change the way i thought, if i just practiced thinking in new ways. and used my imagination.

so if i automatically thought something negative, i would try to recognize it and imagine how i would speak to someone i loved if they were saying something like that about themselves. i didn't love myself then. but i tried to imagine i did. i tried to "fake it until you make it." and one day, i felt my own hard solid gold egg start to relax :) and the internal positive talk started to feel a bit more natural, a bit less like pretending to like myself. and i started to experience a bit of self-love.

i'm not all the way there yet. but i'm doing much better these days.

but on days when i have a hard time and find myself lapsed back into old patterns of thinking and don't feel good about myself, i remind myself of how it feels to try to lose weight.

just going to the store and buying new running shoes and jogging pants doesn't do the trick if they sit in your closet unworn. and putting them on and going around the block once or twice will feel good, but won't shed the pounds. it's not until i keep practicing, day after day, and don't give up, that i will start to see any noticable difference. if i want to drop all the "unnecessary baggage" i've taken on throughout the course of my life in my mind (and body), i have to keep going, keep putting one foot in front of the other.

and be patient with myself.

because you don't lose weight by running a marathon on your first day. no, that would land you in the hospital. we have to be gentle with ourselves. a little bit at a time. each day. practice. until it becomes natural. a new habit.

and the next thing you know, you may be able to look at yourself and think, wow, i used to be really hard on myself. i'm so glad i don't do that anymore...

letting go

2010-06-21T19:31:00.001-07:00

today i'm thinking about the error of believing you know what's good or bad and always trying to see things in those terms...

because you never really know for sure.

There lived an old farmer who had worked on his fields for many, many years. One day, his horse bolted away. His neighbors dropped in to commiserate with him. “What awful luck,” they tut-tutted sympathetically, to which the farmer only replied, “We’ll see.”

Next morning, to everyone’s surprise, the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How amazing is that!” they exclaimed in excitement. The old man replied, “We’ll see.”

A day later, the farmer’s son tried to mount one of the wild horses. He was thrown on the ground and broke his leg. Once more, the neighbors came by to express their sympathies for this stroke of bad luck. “We’ll see,” said the farmer politely.

The next day, the village had some visitors – military officers who had come with the purpose of drafting young men into the army. They passed over the farmer’s son, thanks to his broken leg. The neighbors patted the farmer on his back – how lucky he was to not have his son join the army! “We’ll see,” was all that the farmer said!

In the seed of a mishap lies the potential tree of good fortune.

none of us have a map to the future. we don't know for sure what will bring us pain. or what we will learn from, or be able to withstand. it's logical to do our best to avoid pain. but sometimes, if we live too much that way, we avoid much more than we might realize...

today's wisdom from hazelden:

If we really stopped to think about it, we would be astounded to discover how much of our time is spent trying to avoid pain. We are afraid to say what we think or tell others our needs because we fear rejection. We are afraid to face the pain of our own anger. We are afraid of telling others who we are. When we are afraid of opening up to others for fear they will hurt us, we are not free, we are prisoners of our own fears.

Pain is a natural part of life, and we are gifted with the ability to feel it. Pain teaches us, makes us work harder sometimes, and it helps us appreciate pleasure.

When we accept pain, and stop exhausting ourselves trying to avoid it, we will be free to live life more fully and without so much worry.

How has my own fear limited my freedom?

To be able to invite pain to join in my experience and not have to control my life to avoid pain is such a freedom!
~Christina Baldwin

hope

2010-06-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

there's a new band i love! a friend sent me their cd and i can't stop listening to it. here's one of my favorite songs and the lyrics below...

hope this helps kick off your weekend feeling inspired! it sure makes me feel that way...

Hey, was that you floating past the tree-line?
Hey, was that a feather in your hand?
No I don't mean to ask these questions
No I don't mean to rush your heart
I swear I saw this accidentally
No I don't mean to start

Hey, the rain falls straight into the sidewalk
Hey, the clouds hang heavy in the sky
But I don't want to still believe in
The gravity of solid ground
The world below is not so big
That it can keep us down

We are standing on the rooftops
We are circling like sparrows
We are tiny, we are trembling,
Scared of everything
But the heart is still a red wing

Fly above the houses and the schoolyards
And fly until you cannot feel the Earth
No I don't mean that it's so easy
And I don't mean that it's so small
But the world below is not so mean
That it can make us fall

We are standing on the rooftops
We are circling like sparrows
We are tiny, we are trembling,
Scared of everything
But the heart is still a red wing

**by the way, i was trying to find out what redwing meant and i think it refers to an old song, called "red wing" about a native american woman who lost her love in battle. she continued to love and hope against all the odds. but he did die and her heart was broken. so it's a very sad song. but i think hem's version here is about being able to hope and love and continue to live even though life can be so hard and full of loss and grief. that our heart enables us to go on, and keep flying above the earth~