I wonder if there are more fights between [...]]]> It’s that day. The day when single people who think about such things, or even some of us who pretend we don’t, grumble and gripe and pretend to be cynical about love, and those of us in relationships that aren’t perfect do the same.

I wonder if there are more fights between couples than normal on this day, as we take turns disappointing one another by not giving gifts or the right gifts, but not taking our lover to the right restaurants, by not proclaiming our love enough or in the right ways. Boy, what a ridiculous day! And most of us understand that Valentine’s Day is merely an economic tool designed to make money for card companies, candy makers, and flower sellers, but even when we pretend not to care, many of us do.

In my neighborhood, every street corner has sprung up with makeshift booths offering gigantic plush teddy bears in pink, white, and red, bouquets of carnations and roses shipped from Mexico, and piles of pink, white and red heart tchotchkes. I suppose the booths are there for the men who forgot to buy their lady something for the day and are now terrified of her wrath should they come home empty-handed.

But, as we all know, a day is what we make of it. I’ve always loved the heart symbol. I collect them. I have a bag full of heart-shaped rocks that I’ve found. I even have a string of mardi gras beads that are heart-shaped that I found in New Orleans a couple of years ago. Today is the day of the heart symbol. It’s everywhere. Yes, it may be, as one blogger pointed out, also the shape of the engorged hindquarters of a lady baboon in heat (he’s not bitter about Valentine’s Day, though!), but it’s a day – regardless of why it came to be or who benefits financially – where we celebrate love.

Love, as we also all know, is wider than the love between a couple of people who have sex together. We also feel love for our families, friends, pets, plants, the planet. Love is everywhere. It’s in the art we see around us, the music we listen to, and the books we read. No act of creativity comes without love. No act of kindness does, either. So today, can those of us who can see beyond the media and retail hype of this day use the ubiquitous heart symbols to remember to appreciate and generate love of all kinds? Try a smile at a stranger. Try forgiving someone something, just for today. You can pick a fight with them tomorrow. Try letting go of bitterness about yet another “how I met the love of my life” commercial on TV. Try laughter. Try calling someone you’ve been meaning to call for ages, and just asking them how they are (and meaning it.) Create something and dedicate it to love. Just find ways to generate love today. And possibly, that love will last until tomorrow, and the next day, and to the ends of time. But start today.

I love apocalypses. Apocalypsii? There’s something about them. Even though 99% of the people in my social and media circle are talking about this latest apocalypse with tongue firmly in cheek, I find these end-of-the-world scenarios fascinating. The best one was in May, 2011, when I had taken a monthlong [...]]]>

I love apocalypses. Apocalypsii? There’s something about them. Even though 99% of the people in my social and media circle are talking about this latest apocalypse with tongue firmly in cheek, I find these end-of-the-world scenarios fascinating. The best one was in May, 2011, when I had taken a monthlong vacation and rented an apartment in New Orleans. That was the Rapture, do you remember? People were talking about setting shoes and clothes around as if their their wearers had just been transported out of them to some unknown future.

Oh no!! what’s that shaking!!! Oh my Go……………

Just kidding.

Anyway, the apocalypses just seem to channel something in people. We make fun, but there’s something poignant there, too. As if there’s a tiny smidgen of us who thinks it might actually be true. We feel extra special towards the people we care about. We let things go more easily. The impending end of the world, no matter how little we actually believe it, makes us think about the ACTUAL end of the world. It makes us think of death. And of what might happen after death. We argue about it. We post pictures of alpacas (the alpacolypse, get it?)

And even with the humor there’s a sense that if…just if…this is really true, we’re going to appreciate our lives just that much more, even if we convey it in jest. We’re going to tell our friends, families, and partners that we love them, even if only on Facebook. And those sentiments aren’t NOT true just because we don’t really believe the world is going to end tomorrow. They’re true. We just sometimes need a little (fake) impetus to convey those feelings. We pretend we’re kidding, but deep underneath, there’s that little part of us that actually believes. And…what if….

I also think it’s fascinating that humans need to create apocalypsii. That life is such a struggle, that we need to create a rapture to imagine being free of the suffering, a way to feel special. I’m curious: what are the types of people who tend to develop these theories? What sorts of people are drawn to doomsday cults? Is it the belief that there will be a conflict between the forces of good and evil? Is it the belief that we are the good, and we will, finally, at long last, triumph over evil (or at least the people we dislike)?

There’s something primal about the apocalypse. ANY apocalypse. We’re meeting our maker. No matter what we think is going to happen, on some level, we’re facing our lives head on. There will be no more pleasures, no more pain, no more love, and no more hate. This is it, folks. Better make it mean something.

The fact that this latest apocalypse is coming on the winter solstice, and 10 days before new year’s eve, makes it seem even more poignant (even if we pretend we’re not into those things). The wheel of the year is turning. Just like it always is, but most of us pretend not to notice. This year, the Mayan apocalypse, whether or not we believe, puts the turning in front of us: what have you made of yourself this year? In this life? If the world ends tomorrow, what has your life meant?

This is something many of us think of on New Year’s. But this time, the world might end, too. It makes New Year’s resolutions seem kind of paltry, when we think of the fact that the world might end tomorrow. Resolutions? Who cares? But what have we done?

No matter what happens (not that I really believe in the Mayan apocalypse, but just in case…) I wish you and yours a fabulous day. And I, for one, am grateful that this latest apocalypse has finally taught me how to spell the word ‘apocalypse.’

I have this bottle of wine. It’s a pinot noir I bought for $40 a few years back when a friend and I were wine tasting in Napa. It’s  the most I’ve ever spent on a bottle of wine, which is probably what wineries count on during wine tastings. It’s [...]]]>

I have this bottle of wine. It’s a pinot noir I bought for $40 a few years back when a friend and I were wine tasting in Napa. It’s  the most I’ve ever spent on a bottle of wine, which is probably what wineries count on during wine tastings. It’s been in the dark and on its side since I got it. I’ve always had this idea that I’d open it to share with someone special to me: a special lover or boyfriend. Someone who loved me and whom I loved. I bought it after the breakup of a relationship that, though my boyfriend was emotionally abusive and psychologically manipulative, was still devastating. And right before I met a new man, whom I fell for almost immediately but who kept a strange distance from me, even, later, admitting that he was troubled by his own ambivalence about us. The bottle stayed in storage during that relationship. During all the internal drama about whether or not he felt the same towards me as I felt towards him and whether I should stay or go,  it didn’t seem right to bring out this special bottle. This was my “Fuck you, Ambivalence” bottle. And if there’s one thing I learned about ambivalence in that relationship, is that ambivalence begets ambivalence. I didn’t bring out the bottle because hell, if he was ambivalent, why should I risk myself?

Ambivalence, by its very nature, sits in the middle, unwilling to make a choice. To the Buddhists, the Middle Path is the place to be, something to aspire to, which I can understand. Strong opinions make for strong emotions. But ambivalence is also about not really caring which road you take. And after decades of ambivalent romantic relationships, I’m so over ambivalence. I want to have a strong opinion about my relationships, about my path. I want to want to be there. If I’m ambivalent in a situation – if I’d just as soon be painting my toenails, or my kitchen cabinets, as be somewhere – then that’s a sign to me that I need to either move along or rethink how I approach that situation. Ambivalence, in some ways and counter-intuitively, can be exhausting. Haven’t you spent time being bored, and later felt tired out by the experience? Ambivalence, for me, is like that, as if it takes more energy to stay where I am than to move forward. Ambivalence is also lazy. When we’re ambivalent about something, when we really could go either way, we’re settling for ‘comfortable’ over ‘vulnerable.’

Not that I’m never ambivalent; I’m as prone to it as the next person. But lately, the things that I’m ambivalent about have lost their charm, as if I’m just tired of hanging on – to situations, to people – that are there as a backup, in case I need solace. It’s not fair to those people, and it’s certainly not fair to myself. And it’s not that I want to get rid of the people or things that I’m ambivalent about, I just want to be less ambivalent about them. I want to know why I have certain situations in my life, what they give me and what I can offer in return. It’s not ambivalence if you choose, each and every day, to see someone, to get up and go to that job, to do that thing you do, and you choose it mindfully and with purpose. I want a mindful and purposeful existence, not one where anything that washes up on my shores gets to be in my life.

And as for those who are ambivalent about me, well, there are two ways to go: 1) walk away or 2) choose to stay in the situation for a specific reason, whether because I feel I can offer something valuable, or because I take away something valuable. I want to decide, for each of these situations, whether what’s in it for me outweighs the negatives of knowing someone could take me or leave me. It’s never fun to be the one someone’s ambivalent about. But if I know which category to put that situation in, then I won’t expect more than ambivalence from it, at the same time I can be clear about why I’m there.

In a couple of weeks, I’m going up to Portland to be near someone I feel anything but ambivalent about.  Whether wisely or not, I’ve developed strong feelings — the opposite of ambivalence — for him. I’ll travel during the holidays and spend too much money on plane fare in order to be with my sweetie on New Year’s Eve. And it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, which is the thing about having strong feelings. There’s no equivocation. I’m not ambivalent about this trip, or about this person, and I’m bringing my bottle of pinot because it’s time to say fuck you to ambivalence.

For a few months about a year ago, I was really truly happy. I felt creative, I felt happy to have finally let go of a bad relationship, I felt strong, beautiful, and full of life. Then I met someone and we started dating, and things felt juicy, exciting, and invigorating. It was [...]]]>

For a few months about a year ago, I was really truly happy. I felt creative, I felt happy to have finally let go of a bad relationship, I felt strong, beautiful, and full of life. Then I met someone and we started dating, and things felt juicy, exciting, and invigorating. It was like everything was coming together. Then, things between us got strange, he seemed to withdraw, and finally, we broke up. Now life is muddier, more chaotic, and more confusing. The things that made me happy are still around, but the breakup still hurts. For some reason, I’ve lost that confidence that I had a year ago; that glow that I used to carry around feels like it’s sputtering, barely lit.

When things get this way, how do we cope?

Buddhist teachers often say that this place of “I don’t know”, of feeling unmoored and without the normal ground under our feet is actually a blessed place, the place where there is room for new things to come in to our lives, for growth to happen. When everything we think is true is called into question, then we can see the truth underneath the stories we tell ourselves, the truth that change is inevitable and resisting change is at the root of suffering. Ironically, this sounds good when we’re feeling solid, but when we’re in this shaky place, it’s had to hear that the shaky place is where we’re meant to be. We want to do anything to run away from or block the pain. We watch TV, find someone else to sleep with, drink too much, turn to drugs, shop, pick fights, even meditate in order to stop feeling the sensations of not knowing where and who we are, of having our hopes and fantasies — hopes and fantasies that were never true in the first place — dashed.

My coping strategies, the ones I’ve cobbled together through the years for when times are hard, are a combination of letting myself escape, staying mindful of the pain, leaning into the pain when I can, introspection, distraction, and getting help from friends and professionals.

1) Escape: This is where I disagree with certain Buddhist teachers. Escaping is sometimes the right thing to do. If we can be with the discomfort for any amount of time, we’re doing well. So it’s natural and normal and even healthy to sometimes say “You know what, I can’t do this anymore, I have to get away from this.” So when I get in this dark place, I give myself permission to escape in as harmless as way as I can. yes, I’ll watch more TV and movies than normal, I may leave work early every once in awhile, may treat myself to a special food that makes me feel indulgent, or splurge on something I’ve had my eye on.

2) Introspection: writing in my journal, getting into nature, writing blogs, thinking about the situation, even having conversations with myself, are all ways I spend in introspection. This helps me process and also figure out what happened in a particular situation. My brain already tends to over-process and ruminate, so I have to be careful not to spend time ruminating, but to spend the time thinking about the situation, what I learned and giving myself space to feel the feelings, whether grief, anger, resentment, confusion, or despair. If I try to stop myself from feeling these things, I’ll suffer more, but if I give myself the room to feel them, they move through me, a little at a time, and, over time, the pain lessens.

3) Distraction: There are many tedious tasks in my house that I’ve done simply as a way to distract myself from pain. Painting and fix-it projects, organizing and cleaning out the medicine cabinet and linen closet, getting rid of old books, clothes, and knick-knacks that I no longer use, even buying new sheets, window hangings, and a shower curtain to replace old, worn-out ones…these are all things I’ve done in attempts to distract myself from distress. Currently I’m working on building a raised bed for a veggie patch and repotting plants as a way to channel the energy into something positive. The great thing about this type of distraction is that I’ll end up with something to show for my activity, even if I did it in the first place as a way to get away from the pain.

4) Facing the pain: Though this is usually the last thing we want to do, facing these feelings is vital to moving through them. Whenever possible, I encourage myself, gently, to sit with the feelings and to notice how they shift. Have you noticed that pain is never the same twice? Sometimes it feels like we can’t breathe. Sometimes like someone is putting a black hood over our head. Sometimes like we’re drowning. Sometimes it’s the sadness of a bereft little child. Where do you feel it in your body? What are the words that come up? Does the pain have a color? A sound? When things get really bad, I sometimes will imagine my pain as a child in distress and will hold her to me, and hug her.

5) Getting help: Many of us tend to suffer in silence. I often think I should “get over” it more quickly than I am doing. I get impatient, but also afraid of others’ judgments about my healing process. I worry that if I keep talking about it, people will think I’m weak or neurotic. But I’ve learned through the years that we get over it when we’re ready to. So in dark times,  if I’m not already seeing a therapist, I’ll usually go find one or go back to someone I used to see, because it gives me a safe place to process what happened with someone who can offer some insights and who won’t judge me for continuing to need to work through the situation. Other ways I’ve sought professional help have been to find a support group, getting acupuncture and energy work, and getting massages. When we’re going through pain and grief, giving ourselves the room to heal is vital. “Treating” ourselves to professional help – even if just a massage session every few weeks – shows ourselves that we’re worth it. Of course, getting help and support from loved ones is also vital, so whenever possible I let the people close to me know how I’m feeling, even if I’m not sure I’m “supposed” to be feeling that way anymore.

What about you? How do you cope when things get muddy?

It’s already almost April and my goal of writing or publishing a blog post at least every other week has seemingly gone by the wayside. I could rationalize this in any number of ways. My life has changed significantly since I had the idea of publishing this blog, but [...]]]>

It’s already almost April and my goal of writing or publishing a blog post at least every other week has seemingly gone by the wayside. I could rationalize this in any number of ways. My life has changed significantly since I had the idea of publishing this blog, but really I have about the same amount of time as I always had, maybe even more. I’ve been inspired in recent months to shift my life so that I spend more time doing what serves me, and less of what doesn’t serve me. Old habits have gone out of my life, and new people and activities have come in, many of which are – at least most of the time – gently and sweetly encouraging me to push my own boundaries, to be uncomfortable, to take risks. And in this process, along with the wonderment at all the fun new things I’m experiencing, I’ve come up against dark, shadowy places that have been scary and sometimes hard to manage.

One of the decision I made was to lessen my attempts to fill up my hours with activities of which their only purpose was to kill time. This is where I came up against the Void. The Void is what often fills the empty hours, usually riding in on the coattails of loneliness and making itself at home, like a pulsing, sucking, hungry, black hole of need and want, sitting right next to me, telling me that my life is meaningless, and pointing out the things other people seem to have that I don’t. The Void has been my companion for my whole life, so it’s not new, but it’s gotten more vicious recently, perhaps because it feels its grip lessening. The Void gets me sometimes, in a big way, especially at night if I don’t have something planned, and most especially in the middle of the night if I’m having trouble sleeping. But more often, the Void is like a little puppy dog that follows me around that I can basically acknowledge with compassion and ignore. Yes, it’s there, at my feet and a little off to the side, but it’s not really doing anything. It’s not chasing after me or making scary noises. It’s just sitting there, like a big, ugly mushroom.  If I look into it, it’s like peering into a whirling vortex of deep space, like what you can imagine it would look like if a hatch to your spaceship blew off and you were left staring at a deep nothingness that wanted to suck you into it.

As much as I’ve been working recently to make friends with the Void, it makes it hard for me to be creative. Deep insecurity and self-doubt are its most potent weapons at the moment. And, as you can imagine,  these things don’t help the creative process one bit. After wondering for several months now how in the hell to get out of the clutches of this thing to write about things that matter to me, friends suggested that I write about it: write about the Void and how it’s been to be sitting here with it, to be dancing with it. How obvious! Why didn’t I have that idea?

The Void tried to eat me last week. I felt as if I spent almost the whole week in a face-off with it. The turbulent fear – of what? I don’t know: not existing, not being worthwhile, not using this life the best way I can, not being loveable – kept sucking at my face, like a bad kisser. After that week, I was emotionally exhausted. I realized that part of what made me exhausted was that I never asked for help from anyone. I was almost universally stoic, pretending that everything was just fine. The minute I finally reached out to my community, on Thursday morning, I felt better. The Void stopped sucking at me and went off into a corner, to be replaced by connection with people I care about, who hadn’t known that the whole week, I had been in sore need of love.

So this week, I learned (or rather, re-learned) an important lesson when dealing with the Void: it thrives on my tendency to want to be independent and to not cause anybody any problems by asking for help or connection, to not take up any space in the world that I could be criticized for. Taking up space – reaching out, asking for what I want from loved ones – vanquishes the Void until my insecurity levels rise enough – and my quiet, I-can-do-it-all-by-myself temperament takes over long enough — for it to get its teeth in me again.

Of all the choices I’ve made recently to let go of certain things that don’t serve me, this is one of the hardest, this tendency to want to be no trouble to anyone, and hence not to show anyone that I’m hurting. The Void loves it when it can corner me in my own loneliness and latch on like some kind of large leech. But I’m on to it now (until and unless I forget again). When I’m feeling that sucking black hole at my feet, my assignment is to reach out to someone I care for who cares for me. The Void is no match for connection with another living creature.

How about you? is there a tendency that you have that doesn’t actually serve you? What can you do today to start shifting that tendency to something that’s healthier?

Of all the holidays throughout the year, New Year’s is the only one that really resonates with me. There’s something so tender and bright about it, something so hopeful in peoples’ energy, something liminal in the way the light falls. Even though we all know that the concept of [...]]]>

Of all the holidays throughout the year, New Year’s is the only one that really resonates with me. There’s something so tender and bright about it, something so hopeful in peoples’ energy, something liminal in the way the light falls. Even though we all know that the concept of linear time is a human construct, and that the new year falls where it does because we humans decided it does and not due to any earthly or planetary imperative, it still seems full of buoyant hope and new promise to me.

Transition times are like that. Whether they’re personal transitions like a big birthday, the birth of a child, or a death, or more universal ones like the more-or-less globally understood transition from one Roman calendar year to another, they all carry the heavy weight of promise, as well as nostalgia and remembrance for the past, and the shifting uncertainty that, if we pay attention, characterizes all of life. At new year’s we stand on the edge of something new. Even getting into the habit of writing new numerals when we write the date is a transition, a new way of thinking, as simple as it sounds.

Whenever we’re faced with a transition, we risk getting lost in worry about the future or regret about the past. The challenge – as in all of life – is to sit with the not knowing, the uncertainty, and not drift off into reveries about what great things might happen – I might finally get that job or that lover I’ve been after! – worries about what might befall us – this might be the year my mom gets sick – or regrets about what didn’t happen last year – I didn’t meet my goal of losing weight, why can’t I ever seem to do the things I want to do? The new year is a time to think about our intentions, to reflect on the past but not get caught up in it, and also to sit with the boundless energy of the universe from which any and all things can grow. It’s a time to hold the world lightly and not get hung up in a swirl of attachment and aversion.

When any new life form is born, its future is uncertain. The form it will ultimately take will depend on more factors than anyone can know. The new year is like this. We simple can’t know what will happen. Can we be with this not knowing and let the energy of the universe work out its form? Can we watch it unfold with curiosity rather than with trepidation or regret, or with attachment to our desires?

My hope for all of us in this sweet unfolding transition time from one year to the next is to hold space for whatever may arise, and watch our hopes, desires, fears, and regrets as they ebb and flow. Oh, and to spend the time in whatever way serves our spirit. Peace, Laughter, and Insight to you all. Happy New Year!

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Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/neezhom/4321710807/

My yoga teacher is fond of the phrase “It’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect.”  The point of our yoga practice is not to be stunningly beautiful on the mat, have the perfect yoga outfit, or do the yoga poses flawlessly. The point is to keep learning, evolving, and flowing with our experience. Some [...]]]>

My yoga teacher is fond of the phrase “It’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect.”  The point of our yoga practice is not to be stunningly beautiful on the mat, have the perfect yoga outfit, or do the yoga poses flawlessly. The point is to keep learning, evolving, and flowing with our experience. Some days, we’ll be in flow; we won’t fall over in Tree Pose, we won’t struggle to do yet another sun salutation. Some days, we’ll feel grumpy and stiff and our bodies won’t do what they could do perfectly well the day before.  Yoga is a practice, a way to keep present, and to connect with our bodies and minds. There is no ‘goal’ in yoga, no place where you can end up and can then go no further. When we get too good at a particular sequence, when we don’t even have to think about it, it’s time to change things up, to add poses that challenge us to keep growing.

Life is like this.

I’m terrified of making interpersonal mistakes. If I get too emotional and someone sees it, I can feel ashamed for weeks. Sometimes I have to literally bite my tongue to keep from asking, yet again, for reassurance from them that they don’t now despise me for having had an emotional reaction. My practice, then, is working on being comfortable being emotionally open, even when the emotions are uncomfortable. If I didn’t have this particular struggle with having people see this part of me, I wouldn’t need to practice letting go of the shame for having an emotional side of me.

Our struggles are like this. They are our practice. If we didn’t have them, we’d be perfect, and there would be nowhere for us to go. There’d be no reason for us to be here.

It’s hard to remember this when we’re in our difficult places. Just like when we’re in a strenuous yoga pose and all we can think about it how uncomfortable it is and how annoying the yoga teacher is for talking when all we want to do is get out of the pose, when we’re wrapped in our stories and our struggles, we forget to breathe, forget that THIS, this discomfort,  is our practice. All we want is for the discomfort to stop, to get to a pose we like.

For me, yoga has always been more than just a fitness regimen. It’s been about training myself psychologically to be in uncomfortable spaces and to stay there, feeling the sensations but not collapsing under them. I’ve seen myself evolve off of the yoga mat, too, though I’m still nowhere near perfect (as if that were the goal). I’m better at sitting with uncomfortable emotions, better at focusing my attention and re-centering myself. When I fall over, I still struggle with accepting this and being kind about it, but I’m getting better.

Life is a practice, not a pursuit of perfection. When we meet our goals in life, hopefully there will always be more to strive towards. The goal, then, is not really the point. It’s the process that’s the real goal, the practice of learning how to get back to stability and balance in challenging new poses.

How do you use your life as an evolving practice?

After I [...]]]> The other day I was telling a deep-thinking friend about how I just needed to be more comfortable being myself. This is the advice we always hear, isn’t it? In dating, in job interviews, anywhere where we feel someone will judge us. We hear ‘just be yourself and everything will turn out okay.’

After I spoke, my friend, in his deep-thinking way, was silent for a moment, then said “I don’t actually agree with that.”

“What?” Isn’t that what we’re always told we’re supposed to be? Ourselves?

“There are ways that we can be ourselves that don’t serve us,” my friend explained. “Your insecurity doesn’t actually serve you, but that’s part of your self.”

Well, he had a point. After some thought, I realized that the way to be, rather than just ‘ourselves’ is to be our best selves. On dates, we don’t want to be our insecure selves, our angry selves, or our petty selves, though those are all parts of most of us. We want to be our best selves: balanced, open, discerning. In job interviews, we don’t want to be our desperate, insecure, or greedy selves, though those are all parts of most of us, too. We want to be our best selves: intelligent, poised, competent. When people suggest ‘just be yourself’, they aren’t suggesting that we give rein to those parts of our selves that operate as the child in each of us, grasping, acting out, stubborn, and reactive. Though those parts are ourselves just as much as our open, honest, kind, and light-filled selves.

In short, we need to be discerning in the selves that we choose to be. And we need to work with the parts of ourselves that don’t serve us, to find out what they’re trying to tell us so that those parts can dissipate and lose the power they have to derail us, to send us into yet another tailspin.

When I’m my best self, I can still sense the parts of me that are insecure, afraid, controlling, or angry, but those parts aren’t in ascendance. They have very little control over my actions, though they may continue to whisper in my ear. Like a parent with a child who is in need, I can hear their messages and choose not to escalate their emotions, while providing, to the best of my ability, what they need to feel safer.

One of my goals in life is to surround myself with the situations and people that support my best self rather than the ones that inflame the parts of me that don’t serve me. I don’t just want to be myself. I want be a particular sort of self: my BEST self.

What about you? What is your best self, and what are the situations and people that bring it forth? And can you have more of those in your life?

Is it okay for you to take up space, physically, energetically, psychologically, or emotionally? For myself, sometimes the answer is ‘No.’ I’m a very accommodating, flexible, and eager-to-please person. I sometimes I have to consciously hold myself back from doing too much for other people, especially if they [...]]]> By Melissa Kirk

Is it okay for you to take up space, physically, energetically, psychologically, or emotionally? For myself, sometimes the answer is ‘No.’ I’m a very accommodating, flexible, and eager-to-please person. I sometimes I have to consciously hold myself back from doing too much for other people, especially if they are people I want to keep close to me. There’s a little voice inside my head that tells me if I say no to those people, they won’t want to be around me anymore. I can also be absentminded and scattered, temporarily losing things such as glasses, keys or event tickets, because I’m juggling so many things at one time that, literally, one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing.

Last night, I had a ticket to an event that myself and a group of friends were attending. I didn’t want to carry my purse, so I put the ticket, along with my cash and ID, in a travel pouch that I stuffed in my boot. When we got to the venue, amidst the joking about “Does everyone have their ticket?” I looked at my ticket and realized I had brought the ticket for another event. This filled me with such absolute shame, that I just wanted to crawl under a rock. I felt like I had single-handedly inconvenienced everyone else, especially my friend who had to drive me back to his house to get the correct ticket. Everything worked out in the end; we got the ticket and the show wasn’t even close to starting by the time we got to the venue. But throughout the evening I had a horrid, empty feeling, like I was about to be rejected because of my absentmindedness about the ticket. My thinking was that, by inconveniencing my friend, that my worth in his eyes had declined.

As the night went on and I thought about why I was feeling so disturbed by an incident that, after all, wasn’t so uncommon, I had a sudden insight that my feelings were linked to a deepseated sense that it’s not okay for me to take up any energetic space in the world. I saw that my anticipation of abandonment was connected to my feelings that making mistakes and being human automatically meant that I was unworthy of love. By inconveniencing someone — by making any kind of ripple in the world, in other words — I was risking rejection, and rejection would mean that I was worthless. This is also connected to my desire to be seen as accommodating and nonjudgmental, and my difficulty saying ‘no.’ By not taking up space, by not asking for anything that might cost someone else some time or energy, by not inconveniencing anyone and by not making anyone uncomfortable, I try to make myself worthy of love.

This was a powerful insight, one that I’m still pondering. In my personal experience, the people that I respond to are the ones who do take up energetic space, but not in an aggressive or selfish way. The people who are kind but also have strong boundaries, the ones who don’ t hesitate when making a decision or stating an opinion, but who don’t feel the need to use their decisions or opinions to steamroll others. I’ve heard public-speaking coaches  say that, in order to be heard on stage,  the speaker will need to speak louder and stronger than he or she thinks is necessary. Even when we may feel like we’re shouting, we’re usually actually speaking in a normal voice. I think this is true, energetically, also, especially of people like me who feel uncomfortable taking up a lot of energetic space. To take up even a normal level of space, we need to push past our comfort zones, to the point where we feel like we’re way over the boundary of what’s acceptable. For me, that means speaking a little bit more loudly than is comfortable (because I tend to speak quietly), stating my opinions just a little bit more confidently than I actually feel, not apologizing so much, and acting as if it’s okay to make mistakes, even when, inside, I’m cowering in shame.

How about you? Do you feel it’s okay to take up space in your life? How do you see this issue operating in your life?

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image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/holster/250779140/