Courage to be

Another year begins

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 17:31:00 +0000

The New Year is always a time of reflection of the past and an attempt to guide the future with resolutions and new found (or not so new) intentions. The last few years I had decided to have no goals or intentions because I have always used the intentions as a way to feed my inner critic and start the cycle of failure, disappointment and self criticism. As a goal driven person it was a little unnerving to go without a plan for the year, but then really where had all those prior year plans really gotten me? So I took the risk and I spent the last few years not sure where I was headed and no strict goals but instead I tried to make choices that felt true and right to me. When I started to reflect on this year I felt a little down thinking I had nothing to show for it several steps backwards and no real steps forward. Did I need goals to live a fulfilling life? What was my life path and was I headed in the right direction?

My life did not stop just because I had not made goals or intentions and even though I felt a bit groundless and without direction maybe even a little lost. I wanted to have confidence in my heart and my authentic nature but the voices in my head the voices that I considered "me" were rarely generous or kind towards me. I am thankful for my meditation practice that is more than just mindfulness but about the ethical way to live your life as it helped build my confidence in my heart. The awareness of the perceptions and thoughts that controlled me was like a slap in the face but the longer I sat with them the less they hurt and the more I could really breath deeply into my life. Who would ever think letting go would bring more peace and stability than holding on tight?

Through my meditation I also started to hear what the voices were saying to me and realized that I was stuck in some tapes that played over and over again and they were cruel and difficult to live with. I went back to therapy to face myself and see how I could reprogram my mind to be a kinder gentler self. I had been terrified of becoming a victim of my past, so much so that I cut off and disavowed all the feelings from these old wounds. I could speak of terrible things in my history as if they were someone else's story but even more surprising there was not a drop of empathy or compassion towards the victim. I had protected myself from the stories so fiercely I identified more with the perpetrator always feeling empathy for their troubled ways that would make them do such horrible things while ignoring the victims pain. Leaning in has been hard work basically rewiring my brain to think, feel and perceive things based on new information rather than the worn grooves of experience.

These are the subtle changes that make a life worth living. They do not stand up against things like race medals or adventures travels in the light of a facebook status but they bring a real joy for each moment. Already I have seen unexpected things happen in my life, family come together in ways I never could have imagined and relationships fall apart in ways that were way overdue. I have built more connections and friendships and feel like I am authentically engaged in my life for the first time in a long time. My life looks different than I ever thought it would. I never dreamed I would be alone spending my time meditating, running, writing, practicing guitar and actually happy about it. I stopped running so hard from my life and leaned into it.

I think about 2015 and I know I have quite a year on my hands: leaving my home, finding another and building a new existence and continuing to work on my own self-compassion and learning to be vulnerable. Living is not easy regardless of the year and it is good to dream and to be inspired but I think this year is another year where the only goal is to live as authentically as I can.

ALL THE TRUE VOWS:

All the True Vows

are secret vows,

the ones we speak out loud

are the ones we break.

There is only one life

you can call your own

and a thousand others

you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make

every day with your own body,

don’t turn your face away.

Hold to the truth

at the center of the image

you were born with,

don’t turn your face away...

Remember,

in this place

no one can hear you

and out of the silence

you can make a new promise

it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find out

what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.

Time almost forsook me

and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection

I broke a promise

and spoke

for the first time

after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late

to turn my face again.

Excerpt from ‘All The True Vows'

From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems

Many Rivers Press. ©David Whyte

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 02 Jan 2015 17:15:00 +0000

A grain of a thought that something had to change started during Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted things to feel different. However, you could argue that it is not a new thought for me because if you managed to find the last 20 years of journals and perhaps even in the bowels of this reinvigorated blog I have spent years thinking about changing myself. How can I be good enough to finally be loved? When would I make the *right* decisions? The list was long on the things I needed to do and the reward was always supposed to be love and happiness. Of course I could never *always* make the right decision and my mistakes would lead me to a path of hurt, loneliness and mostly self-hatred. The difference was this was not a thought of how I could change but how I could change towards myself. What if for a whole month I took effort in trying to be kind to myself? What if for the month of December I stood up for me in my bleak disappointments and my rousing victories, I stayed true to me?

I pronounced my intention that I was going to go into 2015 after a month of being gentle and kind as

I would to a friend towards myself. I even made a pack with a friend that we would keep each other on this path and find our way together. The first week was full of shiny bright optimism in my ability to stay true and keep my focus and yet I cannot even remember when I completely forgot about this intention. Somewhere between the first week and today my mind completely dropped my intention and I had almost no recollection of it and my friend and I never spoke of it again. Why did it just disappear and vanish from our many conversations? Why did my mind bury it deep in the recesses of my consciousness?

I could blame the insane two weeks at work or even the break up with my ex for the 5th time but those seem like the days that this practice could have been the most helpful to deal with. There was something different happening though because even in those moments of real emotional distress and challenge I found myself not relying on my old patterns and finding new ways to care for myself. I found myself today writing in my journal and suddenly surprised by the revel of my intention set a mere 29 days ago. In reflecting on the month, I was surprised to find that in many ways my intention although silent and obfuscated from my day to day thoughts has come to fruition. How had something I had lost been working its way through my thoughts and actions into a month that I reengaged with myself? Was the mere thought of the need to change enough to put me on a path that would change the way I thought of myself?

I feel myself needing to clarity and caveat that I am not perfect and doing this all well, but there is not a competition here to be the most generous. I have found myself this month treating myself like a good friend supporting my choices when they were authentic needs and be gentle with myself when I knew they were not. There were weeks of crazy dreams and now I wonder if my subconscious grabbed this intention and took it under ground in hopes of it surviving. I find myself where I wanted to be going into 2015 with a view of myself and my life that is full of joy, curiosity and generosity.

The Dream by Pablo Neruda

Walking on the sands

I decided to leave you.

I was treading a dark clay

that trembled

and I, sinking and coming out,

decided that you should come out

of me, that you were weighing me down

like a cutting stone,

and I worked out your loss

step by step:

to cut your roots,

to release you alone into the wild.

Ah in that minute,

my dear, a dream

with its terrible wings

was covering you.

You felt yourself swallowed by the clay,

and you called to me and I did not come,

you were going, motionless,

without defending yourself

until you were smothered in the quicksand.

Afterwards

my decision encountered your dream,

and from rupture

that was breaking our hearts

we came forth clean again, naked,

loving each other

without dream, without sand,

complete and radiant,

sealed by fire.

he is my heroin

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 00:39:00 +0000

all it takes is one word
my heart heaves
my mind floods
everything disappears

legs are wobbly
dreams forgotten
each breath labored
craving another word

every moment tainted
with what could be
nothing fills the void
i try everything

tainted blood
tainted breath
once hope breathes
all is lost again

History puts a saint in every dream

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 06 Jul 2013 19:34:00 +0000

There was a time I thought I knew who I was and what mattered, as I had these labels and titles that meant something to me and to those that met me, and it felt clear. In the last few years many of the labels have become less important or dropped off completely and I stand here naked and raw unsure how to think of myself or what to tell strangers when I meet them. It is even more than that because the people that used to frame my life with their own labels and titles have left, changed, and no longer contribute to my scaffolding of my person. A friend told me that everything being torn down can make room for a new creation. It is fresh fertile ground that is ripe for the power of my intention.

It is frightening to be a blank slate. It isn't exactly true that I am a blank slate either as I still have responsibilities and financial obligations that keep me grounded and tied to things such as my house and my job, but the rest of me is free to be redefined. I can decide what and who I am. My children are grown and the needs they have for me are not consuming (well except for financially) and my partner and I split up and I have no real family so I am left alone to find the purpose of my life and my time.

I am learning simple things like what to do with my time and how to reach to people for help and friendship. Just the thought when I wake up on Saturday of Who am I ? and What do I want to do? scares the shit out of me. I am terrified I will be alone forever and that my life will become that of a recluse. I am worried about just becoming exhausted and hiding in my house and drinking my way through the years. However I have not done that yet (except for the exhausted part) and am finding my way towards picking up the guitar, volunteering, reading books, starting a new group, walking around town, even this ...writing..as hard as this is. I am often overwhelmed with how much I can do and that I would like to do and wonder how I ever used to feel so bored. It can be too much though and I can easily find myself shrinking back from life and just taking refuge in my home.

I miss my ex-boyfriend and yet when I think of the reality of what it is I long for is not our past relationship reality but the ideal of what could have been between us. He became depressed and I was (AM!) still working on a lifetime of insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. We became paralyzed and worked towards numbing and disengaging from the world rather than leaning in and feeling and embracing our lives. I used to wake up overwhelmed by the time that I had to kill in a day and wondered how I would survive more years just trying to kill weekends for at least another 30+ years. It was a dark place to be. I do really miss someone to share stories with, someone that will hold my hand and tell me it will be ok, and the human connection and contact. I do not know how to reframe all those things into something by myself except not missing them?

How do you stay open, lean in and yet spend so much time alone? How do you find your way to like minded folks when you barely have your own legs under you? How can I be 45 years old and still feel like a child finding my way in this life? Things do not settle, they do not solidify, and I am changing as much as the things around me. I thought when I was a girl that I only had to make it to a certain point and then everything would fall into place but some how it would be easier. The opportunity to wake up every day (EVERY DAY) and experience life fresh is very exciting. How awesome is it that I am not just "dead woman walking" and full of potential? It is such hard work to be aware and live my life with clear intention because it means to me that I own this. This is my world, my experiences and my job to make the most of whatever comes my way. I have to let go of the hope of control or managing what comes up but just the way I engage and move forward.

This was a hard post to write. I still fear and struggle with this new world that I am left with. The emptiness of the house, my bed and yet the fullness of the experience of living. It is going to take some time to feel at home in this new world.

Jailhouse learnings

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 19:45:00 +0000

I am not sure the path that specifically introduced me to or made me think that doing prison volunteer work was for me. I actually struggle a bit with authority, either in the sense that I get frustrated at "following orders" or terrified because I have an innate guilt that they see and know and I am in trouble. Somehow through my buddhist studies I became compelled to want to engage with the world and help other people. I thought about helping people in crisis because well honestly I have spent a bit of my life in real crisis mode and it is something I could relate to. I found Fleet Maul's Path of Freedom program and after taking that program researched a little and found that my local medium security prison had a non-violent communication program starting up.

I should clarify a little about me. I am pretty upper-middle class chick that has had crazy and hard things happen but I have never been in jail or anything close to getting arrested, so there is nothing about prison other than the human experience that I directly relate to. I do know though that there were several points in my life that a slightly different decision and bam! I would have ended up on a very difficult path. For example, I was very close to running away at 13, in fact I had stolen money from my dad, found out the bus schedule to California and had packed some basics. The reason I did not do it? I had some stroke of awareness that I would not survive well or long by myself on the streets and the hardship at my house was better than where I would end up. Maybe the awareness that I barely survived making some bad decisions led me to be more open to this prison population.

It is pretty strange though I have to admit. I went to the Volunteer training at the prison and it was meant to scare you a little and it did. The funny thing was when I was driving up to the prison for the training I became worried they would arrest me once they realized who I was, which is ridiculous. When I parked and got out of my car, it hit me that I was on the grounds of a minimum-security prison and these guys had done something to put them there. Was I going to be attacked, or walk in to the wrong room and all hell would break loose? Fear filled me with what ifs and holy smokes should I be here and once I landed in the volunteer training I thought I would feel better but once I walked in I felt like such a candy striper compared to the other volunteers. I was completely intimidated. They made it very clear during the training that these men were prisoners and had committed crimes and we were not to trust them with personal information or really anything. The guard said "these guys will have the fillings out of your teeth before you know it". The told us things like "we do not negotiate in hostage situations" and "these guys will come to your house after they are out and want help and to live with you if they know who you are". When I walked out of that training, I felt like I had been on an episode of Scared Straight and I tossed and turned all night from a mixture of adrenaline, fear and just being so out of my comfort zone.

The first night of the class, I got there early and was in the room alone with a few of the guys. I

was not sure if they were prisoners or not because they were not wearing uniforms or anything. I realized I had no idea what to expect from the guys or the group. One guy asked me where I lived and I realized my training right away and said "oh near by". I patted myself on the back for about 10 minutes for remembering my training and not divulging personal details. When the guys came in to the class, I was overwhelmed with how normal they all looked and I wondered if I would really have been able to pick them out of a crowd as ex-cons. The class is a participation based class and the thing that struck me the hardest that first night was a sense of desperation from some of them to get out of their situation and how much they missed their lives and families. A few of them were there for only the credit they would get and no interest in what was being taught but quite a few engaged and questioned how you could ever change your reactions to something because it was all so certain. The one thing that was common amongst all their discussion was how each hour dripped by and the best thing about the class was that the day was almost done.

The second night, we learned one of our more vocal and engaged first night participants had been shackled and taken back to the Medium Security prison. He had gotten an in-house tattoo, that is strictly against the rules and set him back tremendously. I could not help but wonder (judge?) why when the week before he had talked about getting back to his children and how much he wanted to get a hold of his anger, why ruin his status for a tattoo? What was so important about that tattoo to risk his future? As the class progressed another guy shared how changing yourself is all well and good but if you do not change the system, he would be forced into behaviors that would keep him oppressed. He went on and on about how kid growing up in a bad neighborhood and no education had no chance to survive any other way that he had. He talked about how he could try to change but what would it matter as long as the world around him was the same. I could not completely disagree but in my privileged way I judged him for not taking more responsibility and blaming society for his ills. The interesting thing about these guys is what they say sticks in your head because their words are laced with something I have felt deep in my soul but I do not have words or language to explain.

During that week after class two things happened to me. One is that I was struggling with the whole drinking too much - eating too much - feeling crappy in the morning distress. I was hit suddenly that this was just the same as my guy who got his tattoo. The things we do that we know will destroy our goals and hopes and yet we do them anyway because it is the groove we know and are comfortable with and risk our future happiness for what seems to be nothing. The second thing was when I was forlorning over a friends 17th wedding anniversary I caught myself blaming my childhood and how I was never really given much of a chance to have a good relationship. Lightening Strike! I blame my external world for my own reactions and choices just as my guy blames society. I judged him but I did not judge me in that same tone in my head. In some ways we are right but in the end we own our experience and have to take ownership of our lives and responsibility regardless of what construct we live in.

The third week the class was a little more fluid and the guys are starting to open up, while some remained determine not to learn anything. The big aha moment for me this week was how difficult it was for us to think of things that we do well. We had to do an exercise where we had to talk about something we had done and the observation versus the facts. We all came up with fairly harsh stories about ourselves. We were are able to criticize and judge ourselves but trying to turn that around into appreciate is very challenging. My other aha was that these guys have never considered that what they think about someone is not true. They assume that they understand what they are feeling and why and that is why they react the way that we do. We all struggle with this and in many ways this is at the heart of my awareness/mindfulness practice. The ability to identify the gap between something that happens and the stories we lay on top of it and try to maybe ask some questions or just realize we do not know everything about what is happening is very hard for all of us to do. I had posted on my facebook "Don't believe everything your mind tells you" and a dear friend replied "Why not? If you cannot trust your mind, who can you trust?" We all struggle so with understanding how many different perspectives are being layers onto every event and there may not be a clear objective reality.

I had to miss this week because I am traveling to work. I am looking forward to going back and seeing the guys because they teach me so much every week. I love telling my friends I cannot go out tonight because I am going to prison. We all laugh, but really their lives are not that funny and while I continue with my life they sit in their cell and just wait for each minute to pass hoping that some day they are free again.

What do you expect?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 22:46:00 +0000

As friends have found I am doing the Little Sister program I got all the questions I expected like why was I doing this and what was the process like but something I did not expect was the stories of "my friend, someone I knew... did that for awhile" stories. The only thing that has been comparable in my life is when I was pregnant and you got the labor stories from other mothers...generally horrific that scared the bejebies out of you. These Big Sister stories they shared were not so frightening but definitely disheartening. Not one of the stories seemed to end well for either the Big or Little Sister and ended with disheartened and disappointed volunteers who did not really get much out of the experience. It made me wonder, what am I hoping to get out of this experience?

Upon honest reflection, I expected to get the good feeling of being a volunteer and helping someone. I expected the girl I was assigned to be thrilled about meeting me and just thinking I was the best thing since sliced bread. The reasons and expectations were a whole lot about what I would get out of it and not much about what my lil sis would experience or get out of it. It made me wonder if the only reason we do things that are seemingly compassionate and altruistic is to prop up our own karma points. Was this really all about me? What could I really offer this girl? The training Big Sister put me through did not really help answer these questions nor did it really prepare me for what it was going to mean to engage with someone who was young and struggling with their life.

When I met my little sister at the first meeting with our match counselor, her grandmother and her and I

the tension and awkwardness was thick in the air. Her mother was sick upstairs and did not come down to meet me. My little was bouncing off the walls; talkative, and only later did I realize she probably had no idea what was really going on. She is 9, turning 10 this weekend, and comes from a very fragmented family. Our first meeting alone was probably the only thing more awkward than the first meeting. We walked to have ice cream - this adult and 9 year old that did not know each other at all, trying to make conversation and find some connection where there was none to be found. We found a fake 1M dollar bill on the ground and I asked her what she would do if it was real. She said she would take her dad, dad's girlfriend and daughter and her Nana to Hawaii to live and buy a big house where everyone could be together. She had not included her mom, step-dad or stepbrother and stepsister. She had a generous heart and a complicated life.

The second meeting went better. We went to the Natural History Museum and I won her over a little letting her pick songs on the car stereo with Spotify and take pictures with my phone. Thank god for technology. However throughout the whole visit she asked if her Nana could join us at different times during the visit. I looked over at her and was able to see her without the expectations of what I would get from this relationship and saw this girl who was confused, nervous, and very uncertain about me. I realized then that me just showing up did not win me any great prize in her eyes. She had been let down before by the likes of me; and worse she had no idea who I was or even why we were spending time together. I sent the pictures to her Nana during the week so they could look at them together. I wanted to make sure that my Little felt her family was involved in what she was doing and she could share it. I won a few points from my Little because our next visit she talked about how they looked at them together. Our next visit we went to the Children's Museum. We wandered around, watched a program, and spent about 2 hours and she seemed to genuinely have a good time. She was going to see her dad after our visit and said it was going to be a really great day. It made me feel good, but you could still sense in the air the awkwardness between us.

Our most recent visit was dinner for her birthday at the Rainforest Cafe. I let her pick from her favorite

Bertucci's, Cheesecake Factory and Rainforest Cafe. I was nervous how it would go because our conversations had been stilted, what do an adult and a 9 year old talk about over dinner? She was thrilled about being there. I let her wander around and check everything out and let her order pretty much everything she wanted...until the end. There is this Birthday Volcano at the Rainforest Cafe that is HUGE and $15. She had cheese sticks and a wrap and had finished neither but what seriously seduced by the volcano and it became an issue. I said she could get something but not that because it was just too big and she would not eat it all, even though she assured me she would. A magic guy came over and did some tricks that made her very excited and then they came out with her small ice cream sundae and sang happy birthday to here. I took a video with my phone and you could see her face gleaming. It was risky because I did not know if the $15 Volcano the make or break of our relationship as we had just started to warm up, but I was not there to buy her friendship.

I shared the video with her family and her Nana said that my Lil was genuinely happy when she came home that night. I am not foolish enough to pat myself on the back and think I am all done and have won the game. However it did make me realize why I was there. This little girl has had a hard time and not many people in her corner and that is why I am spending time with her. I focus on her when no one else does. I provide some fun, some space, an experience for her to make sense of on her own terms. It made me realize the reason I am doing this is because I can provide that relationship. I can be stand strong when she shuts down or doesn't talk to me. This is not about me, this is about her. I cannot expect anything in return but just hope that she gains something. It is not going to be easy or rewarding at times but by sharing my heart and a safe place to be maybe ...just maybe...she will grow a little more confidence in herself and in the world.

Brave New world

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 21:51:00 +0000

I must admit that I am overwhelmed on what to write about and it is creating a logjam of ideas and thoughts in my head. I am lost at where to start and what to write about. I thought about doing an audio recording like a lovely blogger on the IDP website. I talk more than I write but I am trying to change that so I am going to stick to the keys of the computer until I cannot take it any more. There are so many things going on in my life that are new and changing the way I look at the world and I do not really know where to start.

So what is going on? I have started a relationship with a little sister from the Big Sister/Little Sister program. It is at least a year commitment and for the first three months we see them once a week to build a relationship, then move to every other weekend. I have also started working with a teacher of NonViolent Communication at "the Farm" at a Prison near by. The farm is for those that have been moved to minimum or pre-release status. The class is 12 weeks long and there are about 15 guys in the class. I am observing/participating in hopes of being able to teach it. The teacher is also looking to take the class into the Medium Security prison near by which ups the stakes quite a bit. The other big event is that I have broken up with my long-term significant other for what seems like a permanent break (the first breakup did not take) and here I am older, alone and trying to figure out my life. I constantly miss him (or miss having someone) and am working every day to "reframe" my world. There is more that is going on too - uncertainty with my job and career, finishing up my Stanford Compassion Teacher training, my boys are growing up and the house as of August will be completely empty, and all this while I try to answer the big questions about my life - what am I doing and why? What do I want to offer the world? What do I want the world to offer me?

I have learned so much from everything that I am participating in right now. It is opening my world and mind in ways I never really expected and is helping me create a greater commitment to my own life. I did not know what to expect from it but I have received already more than I ever could have imagined.

I am going to create a post for the Little Sister, NVC Class, and Reframing my life alone and keep you updated as the experiences progress. It feels awkward to break them up because there is interdependence between all the experiences and how they are impacting my world view but it is just too much in one post. I cannot imagine how wordy I could get and several pages later....well if you knew me you could imagine.

that moment when you realize

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:36:00 +0000

There is that moment where you realize

despite the assurances your fears are true

Wanted to be wrong

Wanted things to be different

Alone having to live with the pain

Past Trauma re-enacted

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 16:45:00 +0000

What I hear is I love you but I cannot be with you.
What I believe is that you are going to enjoy your life and figure out how I fit in, if I do.
What I feel is rejection at the deepest level of me.
Trying to stay present to the experience and emotion
Am I clinging to love or avoiding the fear of being alone?
Are we learning anything or am i just being destroyed on bit at a time?
Should I let go because of the pain?
Should I hang on because of the love?

i want to let go.
i want to run away
i want to be with you

begin again

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:57:00 +0000

This morning I feel like writing - if only a little bit. I have been lost for so long I am not sure where I am. There were these days where I felt strong and my intention was clear, but I have long since slipped back into the swampland of confusion and indulgence. I can feel the murkiness in my mind and lack the sword of clarity and wisdom or maybe just the strength to hold the sword so I shrink back into the darkness, waiting, unsure.

I feel fractured between the lives of my past and the potential ones in my future. Where is it that I belong? As I move forward, where do I need to exist? Where can I exist? Should I stay still and represent a life that no longer fits but still is important? Should I move away and deny my wants and desires to be near and with those that matter? I feel guilty saying things out loud that are not criminal, not harmful and yet feel like I am betraying my life until now. When am I me versus who I was and are those things really that different?

So much time in my head. I renounce my body. I fight with the me of discipline and virtue and the me of hedonism and indulgence. I have made no progress and yet I have come so very far. I am still alone and still struggling. Perhaps I always will be.

listen and connect

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:39:00 +0000

I have been reading over the last few days many posts and articles about intention and goal setting. I have also been contemplating my own intentions and goals for the upcoming year and where I keep coming back to is to death of my biological father on November 16th, 2012.

My father had a rough childhood but I do not really know anything about because we never talked about it. I know that both my biological mother and father completely self-destructed when they met, got pregnant and had me, their lives changed forever. My father ran away from his entire life the world he knew and disappeared for many years from his entire family. When I met his family, they were scared and sad about his renunciation of his family and their love. His absence was the center of his mother's life and left his sister to clean up and care for the destruction that he left behind.

He returned about 15 years ago and seemed to settle down and reclaim a normal life. He got a good paying job, in a smallish town and a community that adored him. I forget exactly how I was reconnected to him but I was excited to finally get to meet the missing link of my family. I had not really connected on an emotional level with many of them and I thought perhaps he would be different. I thought this would be the familial link i had wanted so desperately in my life.

The first time I met him was for dinner in Las Vegas while I was at a work conference. We had talked a few times and it was interesting but awkward. I was very nervous when we met and I did not show any emotion and acted far away from someone that was excited to meet him. I was understandably cautious. He brought a package of old photos that he showed me with pride and pleasure these pictures of my very early childhood. He spoke of it with fondness and joy in a way I could not really digest. My childhood was not very spectacular either and after seeing the wreckage caused to all the families by my birth and mere existence I could not understand how he could have the sparkle in his eye when recounting this time.

We did not really talk much or see each other because we lived on different coast and had very different lives. I realize now I was angry at him for being so romantic about what I had seen as a very painful period of so many peoples lives. It is strange to me now that thing that upset me most about him was his inability to express the pain of my very life.

I met with him on Father's Day in 2010 with his sister in his home town and it was a very difficult weekend for me. He was a wonderful host taking us around to introducing to his friends and showing us his world. He seemed happy and settled but there was still this tainted view into his version of the past and how we were all interconnected. He refused to go see his mother who was getting older and longed for a glimpse of him. He spoke of the time with my biological mother as if it was an epic love story. He remembered his multiple wives and times in jail with a cowboy outlaw renaissance that was unnerving. Did his life really feel wonderful to him or was he in such denial that he had created a fantasy version of everything?

He wrote haiku poetry and shared it with me but we never talked about it. We never talked about anything. I never asked him about how his memories were so rosy compared to our lives. I never asked him about why he ran away for so very long and how he felt about his new life. He only shared these portraits of his life he displayed for me that had no connection.

He asked me to call him before his death. I did not. I had solidified my belief that he was not good for me and it was too painful. I responded by detaching and ignoring and I felt justified as he was someone I needed to protect myself from. I walked away from him and left him there alone. In November, he took his relatively normal stable life and shook it like a snow globe and once again self-destructed. He first took everything he had and made it impossible to live his life and then when caught against the wall he took his own life. He is gone now and there is once again chaos, pain and destruction in all those who knew him. We are left in the wake wondering what we could have done differently.

Where has it left me? I did not go to the memorial service in his town with his sister this weekend. I did not know him and I do not know if anyone ever did. His family and friends are trying to paint a picture that allows all of this to make sense but there is no view that makes this ok. Where did it leave me? It left me with a strong desire to reconnect, review past assumptions and biases and try to find my way through my own blindness. I can see that the hardness I put around him and others was unnecessary and to let him in and try to reach him on a different level would not have put me at risk.

Reach out. Let go. Connect. This is what in the end his death has taught me. If I can live a more connected life, maybe his pain will be worth something in the end.

Destruction of young girls and romanticism

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 14:31:00 +0000

As I walked out of the show last night my heart felt raw and exposed. It was the day before new years eve and Times Square was jammed with people. I felt the armor pop on and more defensive, frustrated and angry than I do on a normal day. As I walked I became aware of the dichotomy I felt between the open hearted tenderness I felt and the cold loneliness I was allowing to consume me. It reminded me of my theory that the arts really destroyed most little girls version of love and romance. I used to hold this theory to blame for my own failed ability to find love and be happy with it.

I was not allowed to watch "normal" TV as I grew up - PBS or nothing - unless as I often did was able to pull off sneaking some "real" TV. PBS like MTV used to have a very different programming 20 years ago, it was filled with the entertain like the old Fred Astair movies, or musicals like Brigadoon and shows like The Thin Man. My world was filled with these pieces of a "better" time and many many books. My family was not emotional or loving so my entire vocabulary around love and communication came from these stories. I took from these stories while they had loss and disappointment, in the end it always worked out some how, forgiveness, hope and love always seemed to prevail. I remember reading Anna Karenina as a young girl and thinking more about the passion and the love than the desperate ending that ended up destroying her life. I saw only the things I wanted to see which was something I had never felt which were passion, and undying love.

As I grew up I start to realize that I longed for a love, a friend, a relationship, a family that I had seen or read about while growing up. I thought a good life was full of happy endings and that if you were good enough everything would work out for the best in the end. This statement is crazy if you know anything about my life as happy endings rarely came and yet I hung to the hope perhaps clung to it to survive that some day I would find my own place where happy endings and love would flow. I just needed to be good enough to deserve it even though in the movies and books that was never a requirement. Fortunately (or not) life never provided me with a space or people that showed me this dreamy type of love and feeling and that it can only happened when you were able to write your own ending and you can ignore parts of the story you do not like.

What I noticed in the plays I saw over this weekend is that there were no happy endings but yet the characters and stories were still raw with emotion. For the first time I was able to see not only the passion and the love but the heartbreak and the pain. I had room in my mind and heart for both to exist without it destroying the story. I was moved in both plays by how these characters shared and talked and wore their hearts on their sleeves without fear. I saw that this was my new ideal, my new hope to cling to as I long for that life where the people around you are open, generous, loving and comfortable to share how they really feel. For me it is no longer about happy endings but the desire to have open hearts and open minds. The real romantic is able to face their fears, throw down the armor and just feel.

Body in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 15:30:00 +0000

I saw my feet in yoga the other day and I realized how unfamiliar they seemed to me. I could not remember the last time I really looked at my body as my eyes always work to avoid and avert my own gaze. The last few days I have been paying attention and noticing the state of my body to try to bring it more into my sense of self rather than this foreign object in my peripheral self. With every step and breath I tried to pay more attention and am actually amazed at how much my body does for me. How could something so critical to my enjoyment of my life be so neglected and ignored?

So I started at my feet, which I see every day when putting on socks but do not really see. How is that possible? I guess it is just not registering as important anymore as I have seen them for 45 years. I have a lovely tattoo on one foot and the other is plain and white. My feet are in pretty good shape even though the arches often ache and when i wiggle my toes i feel stiff and tight across the top of my feet. They do so much for me and yet their pain I tend to ignore as just part of being feet. As I move up to my legs I remember for a moment the "early years" of shaving my legs. The fear, the often misstep and slicing a little piece of skin off, they were so foreign to me then and now I could shave my legs without any real effort. Through the years I have learned to trust my hands and know where my skin and the razor stops and starts. The skin is white and has various bruises and scars. I used to want to be tan so desperately that I would lay out in the sun with baby oil just trying to cook myself just to end up red, in pain, the peel and then back to very white again. I am lucky my legs have no varicose veins (yet?) and are strong and able.

My knees and ankles have held up well and I have never had surgery or injury. I do notice real pain in my ankles when I start jogging especially if I have not run in awhile. My knees, ankles and hips get stiff and pop and crackle like a bad musical but I have learn to expect that "at my age" but I wonder is it genetics, weight, diet or just the evolution of impermanence? My thighs are triangle shaped from the extra weight that I am carrying. It is surprising how big my thighs are as I do not remember them ever being this wide, but I am on the heavier side of my weight spectrum right now. As a child my mother told me that if your thighs touch that you are fat. I used to spend years in every shower putting my feed together and seeing if my thighs touch and if they did seeing that look on her face of disappointment. All though lately it has been a long time since they did not touch and I have stopped looking but I know the disappointment is there for her (if she still talked to me) and me. With horror I realized the other day that my jeans were so tight they had rubbed a red rash on the inside of my thigh. I felt deep shame and then I immediately erased the thoughts it from my consciousness but the shame remains.

For the squeamish I would stop now, all thought I cannot imagine who would be reading with any interest about this at all. My stomach is a diaster. I am one of the fortunate women (not) who gains weight in her belly (and thighs and ass) so I have this rolling doughy look that is actually uncomfortable when I sit. You add that with my breast that sag down and the whole thing is this rolls and folds of skin jutting out so I could pass for 4-5 month pregnant, maybe less but not by much. I have stretch marks from my 10.5 pound son, scars from my gallbladder removal and from the scars from the three lumps removed from my breast. As I have gained weight my breast have gotten bigger and I am thankful that I was not born with large breast. They are terribly uncomfortable and just lay like saggy water ballons. When sitting down I feel squished together, layers of discomfort, and even breathing seems laborious.

The back of me I cannot see well but what I do see is the back of my thighs and my ass have that cottage cheese cellulite look. My back on the other hand is ordinary white. The freckles I had so pervasively on my back as a child have diminished significantly as I have stopped trying to bake myself alive with baby oil. My shoulders slump as most people these days who spends hours on the computer. I remember my father used to always get on me for my posture and in the morning before school would make me lay on the floor and straight my back and lower back to avoid getting scoliosis. I see these older people walking around the streets completely hunched over and I worry from time to time. To be so limited to never be able to stand up or sit up straight again seems frightening. My shoulders and neck are constantly stiff and feel twangy. I roll my neck and I can hear the grinding of the vertebrae on vertebrae. I do not know if it is my bed, my pillow, my genes, my stress or my inactivity that keeps this constant pain and tension but I have just accepted this feeling as well.

My arms are freckled but more mottled looking that the millions of freckles I used to have. As a kid I would get teased and questions about all my freckles, they would ask me how many freckled did I think I had, try to count them or guess that there were millions. I never really tried to count and was embarrassed of my own skin being so different than all the tan beautifully brown kids. I had a boyfriend tell me I obviously did not want to be tan enough otherwise I would be and when I questioned him how he shrugged but he was convinced it was an attitude issue. I wish I could find him now (not really) and explain melanin. So now they have faded a bit and freckles are no longer misunderstood, I had almost forgotten about how I used to hate them. All I hate now on my arms is that I am starting to see signs of a flabbiness in my arms, the wave good-bye that keeps going. Ugh. On the up side my skin looks younger and healthier rather than many of my age group, I think it is probably because while growing up my father made me always wear long sleeves, long pants, a hat...basically i looked like a muslim in hijab but in jeans and plaid.

My hands are starting to show signs of wrinkles but I like my hands. Lately my thumbs ache so much all the time that I try to not think about my hands. I am convinced that I will be crippled with arthritis and unable to use my hands when I am older - how much older? I think about playing the piano when I look at my hands. It is the grace and the beauty of the music they can create (trust me I am not that good) that elevated my hands into a better place. The ability to touch and feel, brushing my fingers through a loved ones hair, running them across someone's skin, the ability to type all these things make the hands almost the coolest part of the body. What if I really do lose function of my hands? Why am I not working harder to get some sort of help with this constant pain that scares me? I think I just assume these pains are all normal part of the decay of the body.

I have my fathers face and neck which is not a good thing as it means I do not have a single chin, but I do not really have multiple chins either unless I squish my neck down which I think most people see multiple chins when they do that. It is kind of a loose chin that looks sloppy and on the verge of being a double chin. The same is for the eyes, as we always have multiple rings under our eyes no matter how much we sleep. When you are a little girl freckles on your face is so cute, but as I aged and wanted acceptance and to be seen as pretty freckles were something to hide under make up. Now the freckles seem to look like age spots and I cover them to make myself look younger but I am lazy enough that I rarely wear make up so we have kind of come to terms with each other. I used to get comments about my beautiful eyes when I was a child and since then the color seems to have faded. I miss it actually as it was one of the few things that I thought made me special or even pretty - but just the eyes not the rest. My eyes are now a dull average blue gray that makes no real impression and that breaks my heart.

My hair is fine and thinning. Every girl wants long beautiful thick hair as they will tell you all men think that is the definition of a pretty girl. I know I used "all" and I know there are exceptions but really for the most part I think it is true. I had a miscarriage in my 20s that left me almost bald, my father asked me at dinner once if I realized I had a bald spot and with horror I said yes I know. He was shocked that I did not try harder to cover it up but other than wear a hat 24x7 there wasn't much I could do. Since then if I am under stress or physically having troubles with my thyroid or just health in general my hair is the first to abandon ship. I wish I could wear one of those haircuts that were really short but my head and face and even my hair just cannot carry it off well. Even my skull is strange as I have all these bumps and angles that are not natural for a head. I have never asked but I get the sense I was yanked out of my mother with forceps and must have gotten stuck and wrenched out leaving me with a very awkward skull. Can a skull be awkward?

My heart is strong, my lungs are strong, my bones are strong and I am very fortunate that most of me works just like it should. My thyroid was radioactively treated and now I wonder what state it is in. Do I really need my daily medicine? What harm has it caused in my body? I do not feed my body well and my stomach suffers from that the most - other than the weight I put on. I am often suffering from an upset or painful acid stomach. My liver is probably in deep trouble too. I know that the stress has me clench my jaw and my hands at night when I sleep but that is something deep inside me that has always been. My teeth are a diaster and always have been, they feel weak but maybe it is from all the hours of grinding? My senses are holding up for the most part. My hearing is as good as I pay attention and my smell has never been all that but it works fine. My eyes are starting to fail me as I lose my able to see far. I have started wearing my glasses again and am amazed at how much I had been comfortable with not seeing. I had let this vaseline gloss land over my world and it never really bothered me. I find seeing everything in the world both interesting and exhausting.

So in review, my body is amazingly strong and healthy. I am overweight and I can see the impact of it on every part of me. I am fading a bit as my body begins its decay and there is no real stopping it. This disassociation with my body however has made me complacent about some of the things I could probably make better or last longer. I can feel the shame as I look and think about my body and it is hard not to notice the disdain and disapproval I have as I look at the thing that is myself. It is time to appreciate the wonderful things my body lets me do and work on making the awkward, painful and uncomfortable things better. The pain of the decay and impermanence does not need to lead to a premature loss of my self.

body, heart and mind

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:24:00 +0000

Where did I live my mind, body or both? A question asked by the Week Of Inward Looking started by Susan Piver and Patti Digh. It is an exercise looking at the past year with 7 thought leaders, 7 questions in 7 days. The whole question was actually:

Where have I learned and lived in 2012? In my head, in my body, or both? What would living more fully in my body in 2013 bring to me? How can I embody life and learning as I move through this liminal space between now and next? How can I more fully learn from the neck down in 2013

Ok, so I am a thinker and I love to think. I even think about thinking with regular glee. I have never felt comfortable in my own skin, and have always existed in my head. I am clumsy, inflexible with almost no athletic talent at all and avoid looking or thinking about this strange vessel that carries me around. The other day I was at yoga and looking at my feet. I thought to myself - how long has it been since I actually looked at my feet? The key part of that sentence though is actually that I was at a yoga class. I have started to see the mind, body and heart connection. I add the heart to the body because I have realized that being physically engaged with yourself actually helps feel open with other people - at least for me. Perhaps it is just unlocking myself from the mind cave and realizing that my thoughts are not all that defines me.

I am terrible body landlord. I have fought tooth and nail to not know about its existence and necessity and berate myself for my body being incompetent and incapable. It would break my heart to hear anyone talk to another human being the way I talk to myself and especially when talking about my body. The divide between myself is like an epic battle that only I can see happening, imaginary friends at war. I really want to be a total yogini: Skinny, Flexible, Graceful, Strong. I also do not want to be anything like that as I am terrified of the embarrassment, pain and shame of trying to get from where I am to anywhere near "yogini-ness." My mind has wrapped a tight little cocoon of safety around me that the idea of failure or physical exhaustion or pain would be the end - my demise. My mind wooes me with wine, food, pajamas, and everything that keeps me safe, warm and protected.

However there have been moments, where I have seen the light through the thick cocoon. While I wobbled, struggled to keep up, sweat, swore, and managed to not just run out of the room screaming, I have survived to live another day. More powerful than the fact that I did not spontaneously combust upon first sign of failure or get ejected out of the room with everyone laughing at me, it the feeling afterwards when success or failure it is done. Afterwards my heart feels full, elated and alive and that can sometimes feels just as scary as the fear of failure. Too elated, too hyped up, wow I am going to be so awesome - I go from not dying right into an intense overdrive of rockstar mode. I move the bar of survivable failure so I am destined to keep struggling to just believe I can do it. My mind is a dirty fighter as I am sure that is against the rules, I should be thrilled about the progress I make but instead I feel disgusted that I am not a master and never will be. My heart shrinks back, my fear takes over and I have run away from the potential of a cease fire and a life outside the cocoon.

This year was particularly one that was owned by my mind. While I have fought with this yo-yo affect my whole life I feel like through my meditation practice I have a language around what is happening. I have to take this new found awareness sprinkle in some intention, wisdom and compassion and find myself a way to just be who I am - body, heart and mind.

Finding my heart

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:25:00 +0000

Always a struggle for me to write, perhaps someday it will become more fluid and not so arduous and scary to start. As I read comments on articles and posts and see how judgmental and cruel people can be it makes this whole public blog thing much more difficult. Why do I have a public blog and not private one? I tell myself that no one is really reading this and I am pretty uninteresting so it will not really matter to anyone out there. I also pretend it is about technology and the ability to develop my own voice but I could do all that and not publish a single post. There is something about making the decision to put words and thoughts out there that is both frightening and curious. There is something about opening and sharing with the world at play with all of this.

Artist Thomas Sheridan

This weekend I went to an incredible yoga program The Intention of the Heart Practice for the Spiritual Warrior with Amy Sullivan. I am disappointed I did not go to the Fire part of the program because I can only imagine how powerful the two days together would have been. It was a beautifully lead afternoon that had us connect with our heart and thinking about our intentions using the body and journaling. Right now, I am all about trying to get to my heart and set intentions that are true to me instead of just required or goals. What is an intention versus a goal? For me, the difference is the heart and the outcome. I have spent year after year setting goals to accomplish for the next year. Marathon, Learn to Swim, Open Water swimming, all checks. I push myself each year to do something that is hard or will make me a "better" person. This person is never enough and needs to keep growing and accomplishing. This year I started with many goals but I lost the passion for them. I could not see the point of accomplishing these things that in the end do not matter to anyone but me and I did not really care. Nihilism was running rampant in my mind and my life.

However this year I did do a few things that were kind of out of character for me. I signed up for both an IDP Teacher training and Stanford Compassion teacher training with absolutely no idea what would become of it. An activity with no known goal. I have nothing in my current life that can absorb those things easily but yet I felt compelled to do it. It has been hard because I feel so out of place compared to my fellow students. (Compared is a big problem in that sentence but I am working on that too.) IDP program changed my life, but was not an easy peasy change that suddenly made everything better. It made me aware of my nihilism, aware of my heart, aware of a strong desire in me to live a meaningful life. All that awareness is actually crazy painful because there is no longer the ability to be numb without knowing I am trying to numb myself. It is so difficult to crave human connection and the ability to share my heart with others and that they are open-hearted with me. Vulnerable. Exposed. Longing. Now - all I have is now.

The questions in my head for 2013 are

Who do I want to be in this world?
What type of communication and intimacy do I want in my life?
What can I do to make this a better world?
How do I spend my time to live a life that fulfills my intention?
How can I face my demons and keep my intention strong?

They are big questions but I have one life and each moment of time is an opportunity to relieve suffering and bring peace and joy to the world.

That is how the light gets in

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 02:54:00 +0000

I want to write which I think is why this is so hard to do. I have been unable to be with myself ...just in the space of being...for some time now. I have been so afraid to exist, afraid of my very existence, so much so that most nights I have drank myself to sleep to run from the fear of what might happen if -- not sure what the if was but terrifying all the same. There was no relief to be had and every night led to more anxiety that I would somehow perish if I ever felt what was below the surface - if the wall fell down...so would I. Tonight some how there was a crack in the pain and some light found its way into my heart and here I sit sober with myself breathing in the anxiety, the fear and the joy of living all at the same time. I have hope I can find my way back in my own life.

As I have been thinking about my engagement of my own life, I have used the analogy of a movie. I am one of those that hides their eyes in fear and cries when my heart strings have been tugged, basically I lose track of the fact that it is a story that has been carefully scripted and edited and fall into the storyline completely and with total abandon. I am more comfortable losing myself in a movie than I am in my own life. I try so desperately to block and numb the feelings that I have in response to real things in my life dressing them down and deeming them unworthy. I have been running hard and fast from my feelings my whole life which is exhausting and cruel to my very being. I wonder how it all spun out of control and I realized it started as a low moan of angst about the meaning of my life and turned into a screaming wail when my father destroyed his own life and then killed himself. The walls that I felt I had to erect to stay alive were soul crushing. In matters of moments of a few breaths I became lost to myself and my life as I was ill prepared to deal with the level of strong emotions and despair.

Tonight I had an opportunity to share time with my sons and their girlfriends and I saw that they radiated joy. Their lives are not perfect and will not always be happy but they know joy and for that I am thankful as it is a real blessing. We saw a movie tonight and it was gorgeous, full of passion and adventure and there were definitely moments where I was swept away. However tonight there were also a few moments where I revelled in the world that was able to be created so magically in this film. A story with heart and heros, courage and fear and for a moment I could see the world and my own life as just as magical. I thought about the pain and suffering I am feeling and realized I have felt this type of pain before if not more so, what could have changed and why now was it so devastating The thing they do not warn you about when you delve into meditation is that once you have awareness and your heart starts to open to the interconnectedness of the world, you cannot go back. You are left vulnerable where the old patterns and walls feel more like prison than they do salvation. I know my life must have meaning beyond the numbness and heartless world. I know I must help others in the world to be free from their suffering just like me we all want joy and peace. All any of us can do is to try each moment of each day.

Courage to be....maybe

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:41:00 +0000

The glory of the internet is to be able to turn over stones that before were unavailable, inaccessible, unrealizable before and with a single search and a few clicks there you are. Staring at pictures from the family that discarded you, found you unacceptable, and told you to stay away. They look so happy, in fact, they look like an incredibly normal family. My brother looks like my father and my mother looks so much the same even though it has been over 20 years since I laid eyes on her. My father has been gone for a year and I was not even mentioned on his obituary as part of the family, which is right because I was disowned and removed from the family so long ago. For a few minutes, I cannot breathe. There is a moment of clarity and awareness that feels as unreal as it does true; everything I work so hard to do is for them and everything I run from is running from them. While that specifically may not be true, I can feel that my heart that has never survived the trauma of my childhood. Fragile and wounded, I came to that family damaged and they did not understand what they had taken on and created deeper wounds of rejection and fear and nothing ever healed. I have always been proud of how I have survived the insanity in my life and at this very moment I realize survival is not living life.

In the wake of my biological father's horrendous death, I am faced to force that the demons that we have inside us must be healed or they will continue to haunt and taint the life that we try to live. Faced with normalcy and a seemingly happy future, he felt compelled to destroy his life and leave himself with no choices but to take his own life. Am I really living any differently? The destruction I lay upon myself is self-hatred and doubt, unworthiness and an emotionally stunted heart and relationships. I spent so many years surviving, fighting for my life that in the wake of the new solitude and the emptiness I am lost. I named this blog Courage to Be and I am still struggling to find the courage and the heart to really live. I am not sure what it even really means to look beyond the limited and find the spacious luminosity of life.

I have depended on self-reliant untouchable strong me that I loath and continually am disappointed in for so long that I am starting to think that this self definition of myself is the thing I have to let go. The wounds are kept alive by the solidification of the need to stay deeply protected and the fear of what lies beyond. I have to let that me retire from vigilance and protection and then what? Open up - open up to what? What the hell is the point of life beyond surviving? What do you do with the space and emptiness? How can I let go of the me I think I am and let myself be the me I am? What if real me comes out and it is an even worse version of myself than I have imagined. If I do not meet my demons at the door, will they take over my life and destroy everything I have because I can not move forward? What if there is no heart, no courage, even worse what it there is nothing to who I am other than just survival jane mode? I am so afraid and yet I feel like maybe there is hope a glimmer of love? Can I re-engage with my life that is not about necessity and is about living? What does that even mean?

My Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 14:48:00 +0000

There is something between my brain and words being written down that changes the tone, the space even my perceived brilliance of my thoughts. It has been almost a year since I last wrote in this blog, I even started another one but continued to get lost between my thoughts and the typing. It is time to renew the effort once again. The first of these will be difficult, rusty, awkward to produce and there will be no room for grammar or correct sentences just a reopening of my self to myself.

Reading a page from my childhood journal or an entry the last year of this blog and I am haunted by the ghost of unrealized intention. I am struck by the same themes over and over again without any new insight and progress. As my life has evolved I find myself obsessed with the same base desires: eating better, losing weight, exercise, creativity; freedom from the me I do not want to be. Over the last year I have been looking at the gap between feeling and doing and I realize that I have not delved deeper to understand what is the core fear and part of me that both wants these changes and yet cannot commit to them. There must be something below the surface of my mind - my self - that is heavily vested in keeping me in this hamster wheel of suffering of wanting and failing. Is there a part of me struggling for its life - fearing annihilation - if I move beyond the me that fails that struggles that desires to break free? Is there a part of me that has no desire to be anything other than what I am? Why of all the things in this world to want and desire have these simple things been the focus of my emotional distress?

What does that freedom from this vicious circle look like? Can I imagine a me that is not beating herself up about eating right, or cringing at every picture because I am so overweight after all these years of the same brutality? What about a me that has enough space that a creativity creeps into my world allowing me to share with the world more of me? What about a me that is free from the shame and disgust in my inability to move forward? Can I be kind to myself and still not abuse myself? Well this is the journey that I am embarking on.. to realize that the me right now is all I have and the decision the moments in this day - not the last or not the future but this day is all that I am.

Time to learn how to fall in love with myself.

being here

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:54:00 +0000

My heart is shaky and my mind is cruel. I am lost within my own construct of confusion, pain and disappointment. Losing steam or interest or care for where I go next. Lost not wanting to be found. This is all in my mind. None of it real. and yet I feel weighed down and caught in this web and despair. Breathe. Breathe. Another moment passes. Breathe Breathe. Right now notice the cool breeze from the window. The sun shining in my eye. The cat perched watching me watch him. This is the reality. Still here. Breathe. Breathe. Tears stuck inside me. Anger lost its voice and is swallowed whole into the hollowness. Breathe. I can feel my heel pressed against the table, my back sunk into the couch. I hear the cars drive by the house. I do not feel here. I am here but lost to the now. Breathe damn it Breathe. Feel the warmth of the sunbeam on my leg. Stop screaming. My thoughts are empty and yet pregnant with guilt and frustration. breathe. please just breathe. for a moment or two I am here. for a moment or two I see what I do to myself. the rest of the time I am too busy trying to survive. breathe. breathe.

Another proclamation of motivation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:16:00 +0000

January 2, 2012. It feels like the future as I remember Y2K like it was yesterday and was 12 years ago. My sons are both adults (well sort of) and my life has really transformed from where I was and where I am now. Time is a really strange thing - some days seems to crawl by and yet years are flying. I am trying to come into this year fully aware and not making excuses.

I have stopped drinking. I do not think I am an alcoholic in the true sense of the word, but I do use alcohol to avoid the things I really need and want to do. Want is a strong word as I don't really want to exercise and eat right. I really want to eat whatever the hell I want and never lift my ass of the couch, but I don't want to have a muffin top and thigh burn. Funny I have to do something I dont want to do either way and I would rather not be disgusted with myself. Alcohol lets me eat more and exercise less and drown the guilt away of both. So in a sense I am an alcoholic because I am using it against myself. I wish I could drink once in a while but it is like the exercise thing - the day I miss one day - is the day I never start up again. There is something crazy about me that will just hold on to the failure and keep the streak going rather than rise up and start again.

If you have known me or read my blog or anything I have written in the last 10 years - these are not really new thoughts. The desire to break out of bad patterns has been there since - well since I able to reflect on myself. I have see-saw'd on weight and motivation my whole life Sometimes I am successful and then I just erode at my success until I am so far gone I have to punch myself in the face to get back somewhere in the middle. This is the year of the punch in the face. I am working on my Shambhala Warrior Path program, applied to the IDP Meditation Facilitator training, looking at getting started on a master's degree in counseling, volunteering more - maybe a big sister or another program. This is the year without a doubt that I will reclaim my true focus and goals. 2011 was disappointing. I got no where fast. I don't want to walk into another year feeling this way. Now I just have to keep the energy and motivation up.

Dream report

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:24:00 +0000

I had a crazy dream last night. I dreamt that I returned home after being away for a short time that I had been robbed. If could actually remember it correctly I think it was that I came home late and stumbled through the house and then woke up to realize that my house had been robbed. However, it had not just been robbed it had been completely emptied and stripped of everything. There was nothing in the house except my green kitchen table, a very very old refrigerator that I had to put back on the wall as it was hanging off and an old coke machine. I went out to my car and it had its windows broken and everything was out of it as well. I would start thinking about calling the insurance wondering about how I would replace everything, and then would get distracted and wandering through the rooms just staring at the emptiness. It turned out that there had been many robberies in the neighborhood but mine was the only one where they had emptied the house. I went down to check on my old lady neighbor and she looked scared and shaken and said they had taken some things from her house but had not hurt her and not taken everything.

I have lots of repetitive dreams but this one was brand new to me. I am not sure really where I was going with it in my head but maybe all the buddhist readings are getting to me.

A bit of contemplation going down this morning

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:33:00 +0000

Meditation felt like a roller coaster this morning. My mind was so busy with nothing that mattered and I sensed it was like a defensive strategy of my mind. I was so busy with diversion thoughts that I felt very far from the real essence of things. I noticed that all I was about was thinking about problem solving work issues or replaying things that have happened or might happen and it felt disingenuous. It is difficult to not be consumed by these irrelevant strands of thought - the natural activity of the mind. In my meditation practice, we leave our eyes open during the meditation. One of the weirdest things I have experienced is to realize your so lost in thought that you are not even really seeing anymore. It is almost like I am suddenly blind or they have stopped transmitting to my brain. I snap to and wonder where I have been, even though I know I have been on the cushion but really I have been miles and miles away. The eyes turn off when these thoughts take over which makes me wonder what I am missing in my real life when I get so caught up in thought.

I noticed this specifically after listening to my Shambhala Contentment in Everyday Life final class. It was an amazing teaching that I keep going back to and trying to really absorb. My teacher spoke about how we all know there is more to us than the natural activity of the mind, especially once you start to really notice what that natural activity entails. We have a basic distrust of ourselves and how others interact with us because we know that we do not really know who we are. She spoke of accepting that we are more than these thoughts, we are basic goodness and that when you have faith and trust in this fact you are free to be more honest with yourselves and others. "We want to tell the truth and still celebrate who we are" She said we have a natural longing just to know ourselves. I am not sure if this true. As a society we seem to strive to stay numb and asleep at the wheel, and it is still a struggle for me why we go away from ourselves rather than towards.

She taught that we all have a source of wisdom and compassion in our being and it is open and clear, naturally inquisitive, and never fails us. We have to experience a glimpse of this and we do that through self-awareness and on the mat with the contentment and meditation practice. This is why the Buddha sat with himself for so long - to get through the deception to the truth of his being. Once we get a glimpse of this natural wisdom and power, this knowing haunts us and an appetite starts to develop. The more we see of this the more we begin to trust ourselves because we know there is this capacity and faculties to know ourselves. We begin to notice when we are a little arrogant or creating deception or puffing ourselves up on and off the mat and we look for the strength to be more honest and see the truth in what we say and do.

It is funny to me that it comes back to trusting in yourself. I have more trust in others than I do myself. It is easier for me to believe in others because I do not know the same dark secrets I know about myself. My fear of failure and success, my lack of execution and the emotional limitations create a deep sense of distrust in myself. If I cannot trust myself what can I really offer others about myself and the world. Perhaps this is what attracts me to the Shambhala training. The idea that I am basic goodness. The idea that I could experience myself at a deeper level and really know who I am. The idea of an honest real interaction with the world. Something to contemplate.

Grooves

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:04:00 +0000

All this time off and I have done almost nothing. Well that is not entirely true. I have worked a little (maybe more than a little), read some, watched movies and read most of the internet. I am not sure what I feel like I should be doing but time is passing in my life without any real intent. I am often really busy so some down time is not necessarily bad as long as I am living my life and not escaping from life. This time off has given me the space to think more about my current downward spiral, a common phenomenon, and how once again to reenergize myself and propel myself in a different direction. However, the thing I love to do most is to contemplate, strategize and determine the course for a new path. The thing I am never able to do is actually implement and follow through on any of my well designed plans. I am frozen and unable to put in the effort to make the change. Why?

This morning I was reading an article: Why New Years resolutions do not work?

This is how it is with our emotional reactivity to life. Like attracts like. We will actually seek out and even the circumstances of life that will fit into the familiar neural grooves of our limbic brain. It is important that we stress this point: even if a pattern causes us to suffer we will (albeit often unconsciously) thoughts, feelings and actions that are familiar in lieu of the unknown, which to us seems more scary. Hence the saying, “Better the devil you know than the one that you don’t.”

I totally get this from an intellectual perspective. I have taught myself ways to hide and become numb and they are the easiest choice at any given moment. My brain prefers these patterns and prefers firing the neurons through these wide grooves created through years of my heavy use of these habitual patterns. I get that. I get that it takes maximum conscious effort and consistency to create these new patterns and eventually the brain will prefer these grooves instead of the old ones. I get that too. I just cannot hold on to the new groove for even a day.

I find myself swearing to a course of action in the morning but by mid-afternoon I have already started to rationalize and compromise my once steely resolve. I begin to think of tomorrow as the new day and why today does not really matter. I am living my life for the resolve of the next day which leaves today empty and vacant of purpose. Today does not matter is a scary way to live - given it is the only thing that really does matter. I have been struggling with this constant lack of commitment and joined several virtual groups to try to draw motivation. I find myself amazed at the strength and will of these random people, but it has not even tickled a small piece of me into action. The ra-ra and the good stories let me know it can be done, gets me back in planning mode and the I am lost to the action.

The doing, the action is a hard one to solve and not for just me. It really is just doing it but there has to be something that drives and keeps the commitment real. I think the answers to why we hide and want to be numb in the first place are somewhere hidden in the understanding of suffering and ego. I do not quite have my head around how to accept these thoughts as just thoughts, the mind as just another sense with perhaps too much and that the now, the right now is all that really matters.

Reflections

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:37:00 +0000

It is that time of year again where I look back and evaluate, judge and beat myself up for everything I did not accomplish. There is something about a random date of January 1st that gives an illusion of a brand new start another attempt at getting it right. However in the dawn of the new start, I cannot help but look back at the year that is passing underneath me and wonder how did I fare this year? Not very well from the outside - I weigh more, am less healthy, have unclear goals and motivations, and I am actively running away from myself. This is not really surprising as every year the goals are the same and I consistently disappoint myself.

Highlights and lows from this year:

Left my super-stressful job and went to another similar job but with about 1000% times less stress. It cut my commute and the people I work with are much easier, but in the end I struggled with how to use my life better. Still lost on the shores of inaction and avoidance.
Swam in open water - long time fear never quite conquered but managed to deal with the very high anxiety of not drowning. I even managed to go to the pool and swim actual laps.
Reintroduced myself to Shambhala Buddhism which is bringing a new grounding to myself and my life. I had hoped in some ways it would solve my whole lazy unmotivated issues but it is creating an openness and a path I had not seen.
Started working on my plan to get out of my current work into something more meaningful. I made some hard choices and turned down some really interesting opportunities and I think it is the right choice. I am excited and nervous and terrified I will plan this change to death and never step towards the path.
My boys are amazing. I love them more every year. I miss them more too. Their steps into adulthood and away from their mom is heartening and melancholy at the same time. I can see the days ahead where they are lost to me engaged fully in their own lives.
I found out my adoptive father passed away this fall from google. I was not mentioned in the obituary and my last attempt to reconnect that i sent early this year was ignored. It is so very sad to have lost that opportunity to reconcile and has left me with much to contemplate.
Lost all motivation toward running, losing weight, marathons, health, and have been on a see-saw of anxiety of HATING the way I look to HATING the idea of self-discipline and motivation. At a real loss on this one - but that is not anything too new.

2011 in a nutshell. Some highs. Some lows. Heading down a path that is kind of in progress. Each and every day I struggle to stay present and accountable. A few things I am doing in the near term:

more writing as I am trying to get back on that horse again.
meditation and dharma study
contemplation on my self-destructive eating and drinking habits.

Same stuff. Different year.

Push Homework Redo

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:31:00 +0000

I am thinking about my goals and my push goal and it does not set well with me. I feel like I made another list like I do every year where it doesn't really push me to a new place that I want to be. I am also with some of my goals of if they are really things I want to do.

So this was my list.

1. I have run a 4.5 hour marathon

Do I really want to do this? Am I ready to commit to the level of effort that I need to do this? This is time consuming and physically exhausting. I really would like to be able to say I am "real" runner. I think this one has to stay.

2. I have complete a triathlon

This is a definite. I am disappointed with myself for not having this one knocked of this year. These goals are going to take real discipline towards working out.

3. I have lost 15 pounds

This one will happen if I work towards 1 & 2. I don't think weight loss should be my goal. If I am doing the things I want to be doing this will just happen.

4. I meditate every week as a regular practice

This is a keeper.

5. I have paid off my credit card debt

This is a keeper.

6. I have moved into a new home in the city

This is a keeper.

7. I have a regular yoga practice and I can touch my toes

This is a keeper too, even though it feels like a lot to take on yoga, meditation and running/tri. However I think it is a necessary component for my mind/body balance.

8. I have written a short story

I am not sure this one is still real. I talk about writing all the time but I never write. I have a story in my head that I would like to get out. Is this a goal that is really one of my top 10 that I would like to do? I think this might be a keeper but I am on the fence.

9. I have performed a story or poem at an open mic

This is like the short story goal that it is something I would like to do but I am not sure I would put it as my top goal. It is a balance activity that gets me doing something more than just exercise. I am not sure if this is a keeper.

10. I can swim with confidence and no fear of drowning.

This was a lame goal. If I can do a triathlon I can swim. I must have lost steam and just through this down there.

So where do I land:

Push: I have become a teacher or mentor for others to live a better life.

Health Goal: Run a 4.5 Marathon

1. I have run a 4.5 hour marathon
2. I have complete a triathlon
3. I meditate every week as a regular practice
4. I have paid off my credit card debt
5. I have moved into a new home in the city
6. I have a regular yoga practice and I can touch my toes
7. I have performed a story or poem at an open mic
8. I have gone on a vacation with my family.
9. I have become actively engaged with compassion orientated non-profit organization
10. I have become a teacher or mentor for others to live a better life.