Tag Archives: parenting

no one is alone

13 Mar

It got pretty rough going there for a while.  In fact, I think that this latest rough patch is what started me blogging to begin with in November – I was in a tough spot and I had no idea what to do.  This blog helped mirror in words yet another angle to view me at the place I found myself to be.

As the rough patch smooths out a bit now, I feel the inclination to move on quickly with nary a glance behind.   I bet I’m not the only one who feels that pull after challenges pass.  In some ways, moving on seems only good;  now is now another now and the now from before is OVER.  Why navel gaze about the recent past?

This is the view looking behind me on the trail:

evilforest

The reason I can stop here and look back is because ahead of me looks a bit like this:

idyllic pathWhat I most want to say is how damned grateful I am in this moment.  I am so very full of my own blessings, I am spilling out all over the place 🙂  I share this spot on my journey not because I wish to make my experiences some screenplay I’m powering up with self-importance.  My stuff is the same stuff we all have going on, but we don’t always know or remember that in the thick of the dark shadows.

What is clearer now:  There are no nice neat answers!  Anything I try to sum up, doesn’t add up;  I have no clear story to tell.  I am forced to acknowledge, the parts don’t make a whole;  they just are parts, experienced.  Life sucks at math, even simple addition.  Well, life doesn’t; my human interpretation of the math sucks.  Diagnosis at any point of the path is a false concept because in the material plane, all can change in the blink of an eye to something else entirely.

The only thing of relevance is this: we can walk through the dark scary places and again find ourselves in the sun and we are never alone.

I grew up putting on a mask to make me seem together.  I didn’t know you could function another way.

Seen with new eyes is this:  Honest and naked walking is the only way to to go.  Problems that are hidden go on to fester and grow in the shadows.  Speaking the truth, saying what is actually happening, allows nothing to remain hidden.  It matters not if people think we’ve got our shit together, because truth be told, we don’t.    We are only living moment to moment by the grace of god, universe, flow at any point.  Everything can fall apart, and often that is not as pretty as a picture, for all to see.

But I have a feeling, from many points of view, there is nothing more beautiful than the truth:  raw, naked and real!

NO ONE IS ALONE

from Into The Woods – Stephen Sondheim

No one here to guide you

Now you’re on your own

Only me beside you

Still your not alone

No one is alone

Truly

No one is alone

Sometimes people leave you

Half-way through the wood

Others may deceive you

You decide what’s good

You decide alone

But no one is alone

People make mistakes

Father’s, Mother’s

People make mistakes

Holding to their own

Thinking they’re alone

Honor their mistakes

Everybody makes

One another’s terrible mistakes

Witches can be right

Giants can be good

You decide whats right

You decide whats good

Just remember

Someone is on your side

Someone else is not

Well we’re seeing our side

Maybe we forgot

They are not alone

Cause no one is alone

Hard to see the light now

Just don’t let it go

Things will come out right now

We can make it so

Someone is on your side

No one is alone

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not so smart

20 Feb

What I thought was one thing, turns out to be another.

Turns out I’m not so smart. (grin)  I’m right in the middle of another toggle switch moment of realization and change, an oh no, not this! sort of light bulb moment.   I wonder why I’m always the last one to know what is going on right under my nose.

When I am ready to see, I do.

I have ambivalence about writing about this unfolding – in real time – in public.  But more and more,  the boundaries between me and other seem less and less and my story is yours and yours is mine.   So much so that I am not my story, I am not even this IDENTITY, really, though right now I do walk around in this body with the seemingly intense happenings of her now.

This now is a chapter that will be revisited in just the time traveling way I talked about yesterday.  In this storm of now, I often find myself sitting in the EYE and remaining still, but the force winds are off the charts and the weather forecasters look worried.

Water Twist Abstract

Even though my reactivity  has decreased exponentially, the scenes are still spiraling out of control.  I am an observer, a recipient, a rock, an instigator by just existing.  My breath, my face, my tapping toe, anything has been fuel for this fire.  I did not want to see that it was not normal teenage angst.

So here we stand on the cusp of a medical diagnosis – and medication that may help.  In some ways more scary than ever – in some ways relief – in some ways just watching the unfolding show.  I am trying to stay in the open spot that doesn’t forecast what this means any further than today.  I am trying to imagine that anything is possible; I am only responsible for each moment as it comes.

I am sort of a straightforward person.  Bad brain chemistry makes no sense to me.  The sheer illogic of the thoughts and the intelligence and energy of the one in the throws of what I see as incorrect thinking confuse me to no end.  I just keep thinking, just stop thinking this.

In my marriage I was caught in the snare of another’s thinking for years.  I played the role of:  THE ONE WHO RIGHTS THE BOAT.  It took me years to realize that the boat was being tipped on purpose.  The irrational thinking, to me, looks a choice, though I have the doctor’s note that says otherwise.   I know I am wrong in this perception, but from my angle, I feel like I see others get to that crazy-making point we all get to and they go right on in, head first.  Refusing to stop.  Just stop. STOP!

I hope the humor will return for all in this house again soon.

In many ways, I am continually taking a break to see the big picture.  Little me can zoom on out any ol’ time she wants and see that while this may be tough, it isn’t fatal, and even if it were, fatality is inevitable to all of us at some point.  So Okay to everything.   All is well, even in the storm.   Bootstraps pulled up!

This is just one little journey with its own set of challenges.  I send you love and strength and zoomed out views!  And I know you wish me the same.

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Middle Path Dance

10 Feb

Everything I write here is a lie.

And everything I write is true, in the moment I write it.

My head gets stuck on this…but my heart understands the flow of capturing words that seem to represent the loose hold we all have on TRUTH.  I am just experiencing, relating these experiences and allowing the spin of the mind’s wheels to be observed until its rotation loses energy and momentum, and the spin slows.  Sometimes stillness is left.  There, there are no words, no thoughts, no lies.

While still in a body, there is a dance in the middle path.  Between motion and stillness, between silence and noise, between mud and clear water, between pain and joy.

I like peeking into bloggers lives like Caimbeul or seeingm, where my life in constrast seems so different.  We are all leaves dancing in the wind, some have created a gentle breeze in which to reflect for now, and some have chosen seeming stormy volitility within which to make their journey for now, and those roles will certainly shift and change,  but we are all just leaves still being played by the conditions of the weather between our release and landing.

The line in the sand the now moment seemed to call for yesterday was another play of consciousness that was so perfect for me in this middle Path dance.  The dancer doesn’t stop to think, how do I stay upright?  She dances, and in the now moment the movement that comes next flows within her.

The dance of life is no less graceful.  I’m going to tell a potty training story.   I feel like someone should step in and stop me from telling this, but for some reason it perfectly illustrates how this dance can be for me sometimes.

My oldest daughter was late to potty train, and the learning process ended up becoming a very confusing section of the dance.  My gentle manner was tender in her accidents, and supportive of her efforts, and we ended up in a place where I was carrying 10 outfits for her around in my bag, no hyperbole, for all the accidents daily.  And after a good, long while of my gentle support, one night she and I were watching a movie before bedtime together with her on my lap.  I was tired and  when she just chose to pee without trying to get to the bathroom,  the urine falling into my lap was cold and disgusting and it angered me.  I looked her firmly in the eyes and I said, “You will not do this.”  and I went on a verbal speech with quite a bit of angry tones and lines drawn.  Her eyes were wide watching and listening. This moment marked the end of this particular dance.  She was potty trained.  None of the parenting books would have said this was the way to dance this dance, but often my middle path requires marga to express some anger and backbone.

So I will say, there is a great relief in this house today, a new air, so to speak.  A dybbuk was sent packing.

I can see today that a line drawn in the sand allowed us to examine what really lay beneath.  There was a deadline set for solution that mattered for life and death, in my little one’s world.

In this dance,  this marga character is often full of great acceptance.  But I had a moment when I felt the pee in my lap again so to speak, and said, this will not be the air in my house for years on end.  Yesterday was a thrashy and angry dance, lasting 22 hours, with a break for sleeping, and no one knew how it was going to end.

I’ve never been much into Freudian theories, but I knew there was a heavy dose of displacement going on.  Knowing a theory does not bring a solution.  After the thrashing and crying, and anger and sympathy, a final deep buried wound was uncovered, and the flow of universal love seemed to enter in again.

I’m not Pollyanna, here.  This is not the end.  But I feel sure this is a truer turning point than I have seen in a while.  I see how the universe came in to play the music behind our dance, and pulled in players I didn’t even know were available.

On we go.

Heart full of gratitude for the journey that can be a dance, and that there are those whose dances overlap with mine.

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three wee epiphanies

9 Feb

1.  the now moment is such a pregnant place the air fairly sizzles

2.  consciousness does not always speak in a gentle voice.  sometimes, it flows with a firmness, sometimes it flows with a strong voice to say, these are my boundaries, this is what i will do, and it has to say it strongly, all the while the eyeballs are observing from the now, acting of the moment,  allowing what it needs, which may include lines in the sand on an imaginary beach without a horse in the race

3.  blessings on MY head.  sometimes in periods of challenge, i think i say to the universe “bring it on” in a sense, i can take it…but i also see, i  say to the universe, bring it on – let blessings flow;  i can take that too!

 

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We Are All Skywalkers

7 Feb

My brave friend Sheila gifted this to me today.  Halfway through my watching, I realized I wasn’t breathing.

I am a skywalker, bravely out on that wing with the earth fall ever present beneath me, repairing the tire to avoid a crash.

My daughters are skywalkers, going through school, friends, parents, body, culture minefields everyday, with courage.

My students skywalk into my classroom everyday, feeling deployment around the next bend, walking a mile to the bus stop pushing a baby in a stroller-holding the hand of a toddler, sweating out the money for their next meal or living arrangements, hands shaking because they haven’t been in a classroom for years.

You are a skywalker, taking on this life on a planet in a body with thoughts.

We look each other in the eye and recognize what we share out here on the wings, in the wind, with a mission to breath and be.  We take on a body and feel the exhilaration of that dreaded fall from the sky:  in our thoughts, in our muscles, in our jaws, in our spines, in our eyes, in our ears, in our dreams.

So strange it is that there is no sky, there is no ground, there is no fall, and there is no body to be hurt.

Exhale.

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Rough Morning – Vent – Beauty Enters Again

6 Feb

Oh God, save me the ugliness of my own pity party this morning.

My mind state is my own though in this moment, I do shake my head in wonder at the journey I’ve chosen for myself.

I wonder at the energy, pain, and vicious attacks that are relentless from a teen.  Even as I smooth myself, lose my reactivity, words still hurt.  I am to blame for all unhappiness, suffering, failure in her life and she heaps the hurtful words over my head daily.  There is no back up, there is no escape, and in her thoughts I am to be punished relentlessly until I cry uncle, and then it still doesn’t end.  I am so exhausted and defeated and overwhelmed by the volume of this attacking misery.

When I went into labor to give birth to this child, the pain was relentless.  Hours and hours of out-of-body pain (I actually found myself on the ceiling at times), camel backing contractions, and finally my body was torn open from the inside as she and I hung in the state between life and death.  The thrashing and ripping was killing us both.  This is not a tale I tell.  It is very gruesome and difficult, and it took me out of this realm.

I didn’t want to come back.  When I was told of the trials ahead,  I burrowed into the arms of the immense loving one who held me and said it was all too much.  But back I came making a choice to do this life, and yet I do wonder at this thrashing now?  Through these words I type,  I remember.  I was told; I knew it would be tough; I agreed to do this.

I am not reacting anymore, she’s given me that,  and I imagine that I have let go of expecting improvement.  I imagine myself the sturdy oak tree with deep roots that others are clinging to in the damaging winds of emotions.  I imagine there is nothing more asked of me than to remain in my tree body and trust in the roots that we all share.

tree in wind

Jonathan Worthington :: Photos :: Trees blowing in the strong windTrees blowing in the strong wind

I see other families struggle, but ours seems something out of a horror film: words to rip flesh, relentless positioning, love and affection banished forever, though I hold them in an open grab bag for all.  I sit in my still point of this hurricane force winds and know…I can only wash the dishes, grade the papers, pick up the mess, go to bed, wake again to tea, and breath, and stillness in a storm that seems it will not let up.

Here are some words for me this morning:

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Letting it out in words this morning to avoid a mental, pity party.  Sometimes, I’m thinking it helps to let it out, so I can get back to chopping wood and carrying water.  🙂  Posts should come with a warning label…don’t read this!   I hope you heeded my advice and didn’t.  If you did, I send you love and support in your trials, and share an angry thrash dance with you, too!

Here’s my angry day song:

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There Are No Shoulds

4 Feb

Crater_Lake_Crater_Lake_National_Park

My mother and I are different in many surface ways, and if there were a Match.com for mother/daughter relationships, we might not even be paired.  But of course the wisdom of the universe understands a much deeper level than we even know of ourselves, and thus we are paired for reasons beyond simplistic, exterior match ups  – we are paired by our souls.

My mother is a deep, blue body of water.

I discovered this fact my freshman year in college when I was far away from home.  I was a Theatre major, and in theatre one does all sorts of in-class assignments most other majors could never imagine.  One stark and leafless Ohio day, I remember the feel of the cold wood floor under me as we were led through a long, guided mediation that had me fairly far outside my physical body into a realm I never imagined accessible before this day.  We were asked to connect with someone we were closest to in this life.

At that suggestion, I found myself swimming in the deepest, most calming blue waters of my mother – and I knew then and now looking back that I had found her essence.

We may disagree about most things people believe in, join, wear as a labels or identities, etc, but we hardly ever tromp into those places when we talk.

I think it was about 20 years ago, after I was chastizing myself about something,, my mother said to me,  “There are no Shoulds!”  She stopped me cold.  Really?  No Shoulds.  What freedom in those words!  What a gift she gave to me that day!

And since that time, we have said this phrase to each other as often as we needed to hear it.  Sometimes she would forget herself, get lost in the role of MOTHER, and tell me something that she thought I SHOULD do;  then, I would say to her, “There are no shoulds,”  and she would immediately drop the should and say, “You are right.”  The love and detachment in this instant transformation she can make after a daughter’s scolding are a beautiful gift and mirror to me.

From Neil Kramer’s The Unfoldment: The Organic Path to Clarity, Power, and Transformation:  “The outcome of making a wrong decision is often portrayed in the mainstream media as a life-shattering failure.  It is a very binary equation in the unreality of the distortion:  win or lose; black or white.  But reality is not like that.  There is no failure on the spiritual path, other than the temporary postponement of not walking it.

A conscious decision to not do something is as valid as choosing to do something.  One must consider the personal relevance of a thing from one’s own inner core before exercising will.  Contemplate removing should from the process.  There is doing, and there is not doing.  Should doesn’t come into it.  If I feel that it would be good to go and visit my elderly neighbor and help her chop firewood, then I do it.  If I don’t feel that, then I won’t do it.  No should is required.

Should compels people to act from imbalance – from outside their truth.  It is closely allied with public expectation and social standing, which are habitually flawed, as they are mired in the distortion” (95).

The gift we can give to ourselves and to others is releasing the expectations – releasing the shoulds.  That word should should just go away; shouldn’t it?

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The Angry and Peaceful Wolves of Parenting

18 Jan

wolf-wisdom

Parenting is not easy.  I don’t know what I am doing.

The Angry Wolf of this job says, “I will not tolerate this behavior.”  The Angry Wolf says, “My Way or the Highway.”  The Angry Wolf lives in fear of ingratitude, threats to it’s authority, tarnishing of it’s image, mutiny, and failure.

The Peaceful Wolf says,  “Nothing can hurt me.  Nothing can ever diminish me in any way.”

Once this is known – suffering becomes a memory.  The threat disappears like smoke.

I watch myself and see joy, ease, compassion, often, no matter the swirling whirlwind of the suffering that comes to those in my care  from the confusion of growing up in our culture, in our family, with this Mother.

The sticky times are observed as well and I can clearly see where I am attached to some idea that I believe I can be hurt or diminished in some way.  Those incorrect thoughts bring out the Angry Wolf.

The Peaceful Wolf knows that no one owes me anything, ever, no matter what I have given.  Every act on my part is a gift and a service that I give, and nothing can be expected in return.  With the commitments I have freely made, I will serve with pleasure, with no expectation of the reward of appreciation for MY service, no expectation of closeness derived from MY giving, no paybacks, no front of the line, no piggy back rides up the mountain – unless these gifts flow to me from the kindness of another, unexpectedly.

In my observations of myself, I see that when I’m tired or engaging in incorrect thoughts, I can imagine I’m put upon.  In this state of mind, no words even need to be spoken; this mindset is conveyed telepathically and bodily and throws me and others out of synch.

Since I cannot be diminished, ever, all is always good.

In the story, the Peaceful Wolf is fed, so it grows, while the Angry Wolf shrinks from not being fed.  Perhaps the Angry Wolf is swaddled, loved, and absorbed.  Who knows?  I still don’t know what I’m doing.  But this makes sense tonight.

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Spiritual Boot Camp

15 Jan

bootcamp

I signed up.

I must have.

This is what some days look like at spiritual boot camp.

There is something so right on about the recognition that it is now, not in the summer, not after I stop working, not in the next life.  Like this Blog Name (http://awakein365days.com) suggests, this is it.  You’ve got to admire the full blown focus.

In my purse on my catch all little notebook, a Mooji Quote, that had been scribbled in haste, was found just as the floor fell out from under me in 2011 as I left my 20 year marriage.

“Push everything aside; Find out who you are.  The rest will sort itself out.”

Those were the right words to help me adjust to the new groundless state of moving forward; even though, I felt like a quaking mountain of goo at the time.

For a long time I thought that in life people matured and learned and became wiser.  I assumed this to be true. This is not true for a good many people.

I really saw this once in an overheard conversation between two people in their 70’s.  I heard mean gossip, deeply masked pain, and ego feeding codependencies without any shielding so immature, so similar to a middle-school dynamic, that I was shaken and heartbroken for them, for all of us.  We all know these sides of ourselves.  We are this in our forgetting.

These two had been practicing their religion devoutly for their entire lives.  Where was the growth?  Where was the change?    I had that Peggy Lee moment…

My searching began to recognize some souls awakening with humility, grace, humor, and ease.  I began there.

Tangible growth can happen; certain behaviors can fall away for good; that is not all there is.    Not from effort does this come, but by illusions being dropped, for good.

Enlisting.

Something hears you when you make this choice.

Things appear that are needed to help you along the way.  Those two screamers above are not an unfamiliar mirror to me.  My darling daughters in teen years have proven to be the most wonderful sand blasters I could have ever invented.  But just as often, what is sent is soft and gentle: a breeze, a dolphin encounter, a hand-written note.

Some days feel an Everest climb, but then I see the cookies and lemonade at the next plateau and I keep on.

Always it seems less of me there is, the more flow occurs, and the more and more peace I can hold as a space for all of us.  Loving the peace inside, wishing you the same. X!

Here we all are, one by one, waking up !

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The Subtlety of No Agenda

2 Jan

Oh my goodness.  I just stumbled on a teaching much needed at this time.

fridakahlo460

I’ve been in a struggle for many months – which I have alluded to in this blogging expression, but I haven’t wanted to spell it out because the struggle, while mine, is not only mine.  My daughter has had an incorrect thought, from my perspective.  This lens she is looking through is a distorted doozy which has caused her much unhappiness and suffering.  Thoughts of separation do cause suffering.

But what I was not able to see was my agenda here.  I have not been able to fix her thought, correct it, punish it, banish it…The therapist wanted to medicate it.   Living with it expressing itself so aggressively, so painfully everyday for months and months has been exhausting.   Often I was smooth and nonreactive, but fatigue or sticky spots in me got activated and I was reacting largely at times.

I feel so cagey talking about it as “the thought.”  But it is not mine to share in a public way.  Just now on my jog around the block, a metaphorical equivalent occurred to me that might illustrate just why this “thought” is so difficult.  Imagine you are married and your spouse thinks that you are having an affair.  You are not, but nothing you can say or do changes this idea in your spouse.  This is a powerful and dangerous thought to daily, family life.  Every moment is rife with evidence to support the belief –  if you laugh on the phone, arrive late, engage in talk with someone, answer an email…any normal behavior can be interpreted as fuel to feed this incorrect perception.  The accused in this scenario can try to reassure, try to convince, try to walk the straight and narrow, but until the thought is no longer there, life is full of suffering for the believer of that thought.

Some days I think the incorrect thought is gone for good; actually, it seemed to leave for a whole week recently.   I got cocky and relieved and imagined it gone, so that when it reared its ugly head again, well, that is when I tipped the boat over.

I’ve tried everything…why?  I know better, but I have never been faced with such large suffering that I cannot fix, run from, or tolerate.  This only leaves what?

Opening my heart.

And staying there.

Resistance to  this suffering feeds “it” and engages my own ego as well.

Here is a teacher I stumbled across who reflects the subtlety of having no agenda in the face of the ego of another in the delusion of separation.  The practice of being present and totally open in the face of such suffering unlocked a difficult situation for this man.

Rupert Spira shows me here how this “other” that I am judging as incorrect is my own, intimate self.  There is no other than awareness.  Reacting, constricting in any way is judgement.  This is a slow and quiet answering that takes Mr. Spira 13 minutes, but this talk is full of truth for me today.

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