Turning in...

I fear I may guard myself to my own detriment.

Long ago and long before, my safe place was inside my head - sequestered away in a quiet, comforting mind space. This was my escape.

Unfortunately, I still seek this space when I feel overwhelmed or threatened or afraid - I turn inside, I get quiet and I am virtually unreachable.

I need new tools...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Excerpt from "The Painted Drum"

"life will break you. nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearnings. you have to love. you have to feel. it is the reason you are here on earth. you are here to risk your heart. you are here to be swallowed up. and when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could."--louise erdrich

Thank you to my co-worker for sharing this passage - I never fail to receive exactly what I need, exactly when I need it...timely.

Love will break me. Love will mend me and break me open again - I will taste as many sweet moments as I can.

"Sleeps with Butterflies"

"I don't hold on to the tail of your kite. I'm not like the girls that you've known, but I believe I'm worth coming home to..."

Lyrics from Tori Amos's Sleeps with Butterflies

This song speaks to me because I do not have to grasp you to love you - I want to watch you in this world, to see how you move and if I were to hold on to you too tightly, I obscure my view of your grace.

Thought for my day...

I'm going to take this in stride...I'm going to think before I speak and then even when I do, I will practice conservation of words - just enough to convey how I feel with a fine balance of space for your own.

Communication with a partner, I am finding, is a lot like yoga - the supreme art of paying attention and NOT losing focus to an over-analysis of what I perceive to be wrong, because if the relationship is a healthy one, the focus should be on what IS working, what is RIGHT and the bounty that comes from sharing my life.

Love...

Look for the good...

John Friend encourages his students to 'look for the good' - in life, in practice (asana) - look for the good.

Useful advice worthy of aligning our path...

Perspective.

As I sat down to write this post, initially, it was going to be about the amount of stress in my life and how poorly I have handled the load and some lengthy exposition of how my stress is so much more and so different from all others before...

Four or five sentences in, a co-worker walked into my office, sat in a chair and told me that one of our other directors had lost their husband last night - he was found dead this morning, in their kitchen.

I hit backspace - suddenly my 'troubles' didn't seem so troubling.

In the wake of something so big, I at once felt small.

Instead of another second wasted on spinning my wheels, I gave thanks for my life, my children, my health, my girlfriend, my family - the abundance that is my life.

I may be overwhelmed by the sheer number of reports required of me on a monthly basis but I go home to my children who love me and look forward to seeing me.

I have boxes all over my new apartment with contents that even I am unsure of but I am building a relationship that promises to take me into my future and she's here with me, loving me and adoring me.

My finances are tight but I am able-bodied and wake up healthy every morning with enough food in my fridge and the bills are paid.

We lay down at night, we wake up in the morning - we move through our days and nights, some more careless than others, some more mindful than others.

I hate that it took a someone else's tragedy to realign my life with gratitude.

Her world has been changed.

The hand she reached for across the sidewalk is forever gone.

The warmth she sought from his body in bed every night, no longer.

The 'thing' he used to do will now live on in only her memories.

I get overwhelmed with the details of my living sometimes but those hands I seek are still there, the warmth ever present and the 'thing'...draws me in every time.

My life is beautiful and my cup runneth over.

Reliable Happiness

Happiness = it.

You can count on it.

You can rest in it.

No amount of noise or confusion or unrest or dis-ease can sway you from it.

It belongs to you regardless of circumstance or mood and all reaction is tempered by it's reliability.

I have spent this lifetime, thus far, cultivating my own reliable happiness - so much so, that I'm pretty even keel.

I HAVE WORKED SO HARD FOR THIS...

...because for MOST of my life, I have been a slave to my mind, my emotions and subsequent reactions - I'd see myself lose control and fall out of balance and crash into chaos.

I want to be a witness of my mind and the emotions birthed from stories told there, to be a compassionate observer, to be an able warrior willing to stand strong in the midst of tumult, resistant to the pull.

I will get excited and jump around with silly abandon and I will get cursing-storm angry and yes, I will get can't-get-out-of-bed sad.

But it will be rare and for that, I am grateful - grateful to finally be here, in my skin - in a state of reliable happiness.

This phrase, reliable happiness, is a phrase from Rolf Sovik and I was introduced to it by my yoga teacher as she led us through class.

Once the words left her lips, I had found my mantra - that which summarized my state.

I live from a place of gratitude and equilibrium and I guard that place - I must. I cannot allow threats to this which I have worked so hard far, fought for even.

This life is beautiful - with all of its shades and imperfections, complexities and gifts - this life is beautiful and I want to bask in the richness.

Love for a Child

I am posting this piece of writing that I actually started months ago when I had changed my Facebook profile picture to a baby pic of mine.

In my re-read of the writing, I am moved to share here...in honor of time's complexities, in honor of the unknown and most importantly, in honor of resilience and personal power - something I have cultivated over time.

The post, in its original form:

I just posted a retro picture on my Facebook profile - a baby picture of myself as my father holds me against himself and my mom.

I always instinctively smile when I see this picture and inevitably, a slight sadness follows. I look at that fresh face of mine, those little wide eyes taking it all in, those delicate little hands, one up in a prissy gesture that would come to be my trademark.

I want to hold her for a minute...press that little body next to mine and whisper a truth into her ears that she won't understand until much later in life. I want to meet her eyes and have them never look away - they will do that enough over the course of her life to come.

I want to open the palm of her hand so she knows it is her destiny to receive.

I want to lift her chin, guiding her head up, so she never cowers under the brute forces to come.

I want to tell her that it's not going to be her fault.

I want to tell her that she is worthy and beautiful and I want to plug her ears to the painful contrary that will be waged against her defenseless youth.

I want to shield her body from the various assaults to be mounted against her innocent flesh as manifestations of someone else's shit.

I want to open her heart and fill it with love and trust in something more.

I want to write for her and sing to her an anthem of her grace, her beauty, her strength - so that her pulse only knows this rhythm and with every beat of her heart, another note its ode to her greatness.

This picture...this picture was taken just a few months after I almost died in my mother's arms...I know now, there was too much waiting for me for such a premature ending. Every moment of my life a thread in the greater fabric.

One day I want to look at that picture and not feel sad, or so pulled to rescue that sweet, dear little baby from what I know awaits her.

I've read ahead in the story - she turns out fine. She turns out beautiful and wise and deep and rich but the long road it took to get here catches up with her sometimes and demands reckoning - for all the tears never cried, for all the hurt never felt, for all the screams that never found their way out and for all the times she drew herself in because she didn't trust that she could reach out.

I am a product of my past but I am the ultimate author of this life - THIS belongs to me and now I know.

In hindsight

April was phenomenally busy for me - on top of cultivating a relationship with a woman who re-entered my life with more bang the second time around, I've been event planning and hosting for Sexual Assault Awareness Month...that's what I do by day, *wink*.

I am the Director of the Rape Recovery Team - we serve and partner with survivors of sexual assault. For the month, we wanted to hold several events in the community to raise awareness, educate and ideally make a shift...all in good time.

Life has been hectic to say the least and barely say nothing at all - especially, lest I forget, I am in the process of moving as well...hope to gather the final load of boxes TODAY. I move like I live - by the thread on the seat of my pants. I had movers move the furniture and other heavy stuff and I packed a car load of boxes at a time, took them over, unpacked and returned to fill them again. Sometimes, I just stack them, still full and find another something to fill with my stuff.

If I didn't know better, and perhaps I don't, I would think that I was deliberately trying to drive my own sweet self to lunacy.

Nevertheless, it's coming to a close - that's a wrap folks!

Sexual Assault Awareness Month is over and all boxes of schtuff are ALMOST moved over from the house to my new apartment AND...

...the 'she' of my new budding romance, still loves me and has supported me through it all.

We have had some hard knocks in the last three months - don't get me wrong. We have bickered and stomped away, always to return - we have come face to face with the raw reality of sharing a life with another thinking, breathing human being - one who has their own ideas about everything from the brand of tissue we buy to the purpose (or lack of) missionaries in foreign countries. We have had to compromise and listen and accept and create space for this other person who means so much to our happiness and the path of our life...so that they might have very well become the path of our life.

Love is our greatest masterpiece...at least that's what I'm thinking.

Thank you...

Because I don't say it enough...

Because I have SO much in this world blessing me...

Because every step away is a step toward and every step toward is a new beginning, a rebirth - a step outside of samskara (past seeds or impressions we create with habit).

Thank you.

For life, for love, for breath...

For the hum of energy in the landscape of a well-lived life - the spread of energy as we move in and out of the realm of others.

Thank you.

I am in awe and I am living, breathing gratitude.