Category: inspiration

Being Different

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“People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.” – Dalai Lama

I’ve only met one other person who intentionally choose to have kids as a single parent. Of course, I’ve heard of plenty, and known a lot of wonderful people who have become single parents because of circumstance, including my dear blog friends. I also know others that think they’d be better off as parents without their partners. Clearly, there are so many ways to do this parenting thing and no matter how we do it, it comes with plenty of challenges.

But back to the story about the woman I met who intentionally became a single parent. I was with my kids at the local wading pool last summer when I started talking to a woman who was there with her five-year-old twin girls. We hadn’t talked long when she revealed that she had chosen to become a single parent at 50-years-old and was just in town for a couple of weeks to visit her mom because she and the twins lived on the East Coast. She also had a 16-year-old son from a previous marriage.

Does it matter to meet people who have made similar life choices? It took me a long time trying everything else that I thought would work to have a family before I moved forward to become a single parent. It felt so vulnerable to have to intentionally walk down this path. As if everyone would know that I was the one that wanted to have kids and I couldn’t hide behind a “shared decision.” I’m laughing as I type this because now I don’t care at all if people know that. Hello? Obvious, please meet irrelevant.

And I thought it would signal that I wasn’t capable of a relationship. Well, that may or may not be true but again, who cares? After all, I created two people that I now have a relationship with so that worry seems beside the point.

But the instinctive social programming to not be different is strong, isn’t it? And I know you all are nodding because I believe there’s something each of us have done differently that caused angst – maybe being a vegetarian in a family of meat eaters, moving away from a family home, being an introvert, being an extrovert, going to college, not going to college, coming out, getting divorced, the list goes on and on.

In the case of meeting this woman who also chose to become a single parent, I’m glad that I didn’t meet her before I choose to have kids because she might have made me more neurotic about walking this path. She kept asking me over and over again, “People in your life didn’t tell you not to do this?” And I answered repeatedly, “Nope.” She was distracted, overwhelmed by her young daughters, and not at peace, like she was in the midst of some battle with naysayers.

I gave her the benefit of the doubt that life was more stressful because she was traveling. I know that without the regular supports of routine and familiarity, being alone with two kids, no matter how you got there, is harder.

But it reminded me we all represent something to someone – whether it be a choice, a lifestyle, a belief, an attitude, or anything else remarkable. Would I recommend choosing single parenthood to everyone? No, for a lot of reasons, including the fact that I adored my dad and I think it would be great if everyone had at least one awesome dad in their life.

But do I want people that I meet to know that parenting, even when, or especially if, you choose it later in life, is full of joy, inspiration, and wonder? Absolutely!

Do I want anyone that I meet to feel a little energy and inspiration for whatever notion inside them tells them to do something in a non-traditional way? For sure!

Do I want to represent the message that there is goodness when we stop caring what other people think and pursue our dreams? Most definitely.

I think about that sometimes when I’m out with my delightful little ones. Who knows who we are going to meet and how we’ll rub off on them. Let’s hope it’s for good.

Speaking of people who inspire for the good, this week Vicki and I got to talk with writer, and blogger, E.A. Wickham on the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast. Elizabeth reveals so much inspiration and wisdom about leading a creative life: Episode 21: A Creative Life with Elizabeth Wickham.

It’s a great episode, please give it a listen and subscribe! Search for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or PocketCasts or click on the link above.

Holding Out for a Hero

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“Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.” – Minor Myers, Jr.

The other day my 6-year-old daughter asked me “What is a hero?” As I stumbled through the words to describe someone who is admirable and inspires us to be better, I wondered if the idea of having heroes resonates as much in our world. Sometimes it feels like we know too much about our public figures these days to pick someone from that realm.

It also made me think of my personal hero, my dad.

It took me years to realize that he was my hero. It wasn’t until I’d traveled enough through life to have failures as well as successes that I started looking closer at my dad who was then in his 70’s. I wanted to try to identify what made him so unstoppably enthusiastic and delightful.

On first glance, it was easy to attribute his goodness to his career as a Presbyterian pastor for 40 years. Certainly that made him a person who worked hard to do good, but there was another equation that underscored who he was. Here’s what I’ve boiled it down to in three points, the number he always used for sermons:

He was dedicated to being useful. For him that meant rolling up his sleeves and pitching in where help was needed. If he came to my house for dinner, he would jump in to do the dishes before the dinner was even served. Sometimes I had to tell him to stand down if I wasn’t actually done with a pot. He’d laugh and look for something else. And that applied to plumbing, tiling, gardening, service projects, whatever he could find.

But he had the gift of making it a two way street because he’d ask for help. When he and my mom were building a cabin in the San Juan islands, he recruit people for “work parties” to clear the land or raise the foundation. Or if you were a member of his church, he’d recruit you for committees and service. And this back and forth made it feel not like his help was charity but that it was community because he wouldn’t hesitate to ask when he needed help.

He loved people. For him that usually meant listening. Although he was a preacher and a very good one, he thought that was a very small part of his job. He loved people for who they were and that included their imperfections too. If I ever asked him about people who he found frustrating, he’d shrug his shoulders and say something like “You never know all that’s going on with someone. We’re all weird and once you accept that, you can just love them anyway.”

He didn’t often give advice but when he did, there was no penalty for not listening. As the pastor who was performing my wedding to my now ex-husband, he sat us down for marriage counseling as he did with everyone he married. He very eloquently described what was wrong with us (my words, not his) because our personal and professional lives were too intertwined. We did nothing to correct this and he did a beautiful job of marrying us anyway.

He was obedient. That was his word for listening to the small voice of God within him. This was the part that most interested and confounded me. He was such a delightful person with many talents and a great attitude so what part did faith play in his life? It took me a long time to come up with an answer I could understand. And that was, he listened to where God led him, he abided by what he thought a Godly life was AND he lived life in partnership with God. He knew when things were above his pay grade and then he turned them over to God. That gave him an enormous amount of comfort and confidence.

My dad died suddenly in a bike accident at age 79. One of his friends eulogized him perfectly as “a battery on feet just looking for someone to jump start.” Fortunately in the years before he died, I’d started developing my own faith and the small voice of God within me led me to ask him questions about his life and record them. It was all part of my hero worship and a such a gift to be able to delve into this man from whom I’d inherited much of his way of looking at the world.

This is what was running through my mind as I answered my daughter about heroes and why we need them. They show us a little bit of the way so we can go further and faster. We stand on the shoulders of those that go before us. Recognizing heroes who resonate most with each of us is one great step forward in knowing what to study. They are part of our stories and give us connection and warmth to the inspiration we glean.

My memoir about my father is available on Amazon: Finding My Father’s Faith

Cultivating Abundance and Perspective

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“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.” – Rumi

When I wrote the post the other day about The Games We Play, Jane Fritz (of the delightful, informative, and inspiring Robby Robin’s Journey blog) posed the question of why kids act that way. We bandied about some ideas like competition, and while I don’t know the answer, it made me observe my kids a little more closely to find some clues.

My completely unscientific survey of my little family, and I’m including myself in these results, reminded me of a couple things – that we don’t come hard-wired with a sense of abundance and that it takes some work to see a bigger picture.

The method that works again and again for me on both these points is to be grateful. And I say again and again because somehow I forget and have to find my way back to my gratitude practice. This makes me think of a quip that Brené Brown made on the subject – that having yoga clothes in her closet didn’t qualify to make her a yogi and neither does knowing the concept of gratitude make her grateful – it has to be practiced.

So, needing to cultivate the feeling of abundance and perspective, here’s my gratitude list today:

Let’s start with the basics – that I’m awake, alive, and typing this.
For the science and people that remind me that it’s also good to write things out longhand sometimes.

I’m grateful that spring has come to our neck of the woods to warm my bones.

That I got to sit in the warm evening last night and watch my kids in their uninhibited nakedness run around the back yard and squirt each other with (warm) water guns.
That they didn’t squirt me.
That when they need a break, they run into my arms, wet, out of breath, and loving life.

For the smell of BBQs coming out for the first time in Spring and wafting into my yard.

That I was able to do yoga this morning and since I was alone, groan and moan through all the tight places in my body.
That doing yoga reminded me of how grateful I am for my body that I often forget to thank for all that it does well.

For my neighbor that has planted an incredible garden of tulips and daffodils so that I slow down and enjoy it every time we go past.

For the neighbor that surprised me with a loving touch on my back at Costco and asked me to grab something from the top shelf. And for the warmth lingered long after the conversation ended.

For the warmth that exists between people.

For friends, near and far, that share their stories and lives with me.
That I get to talk with them about the things I haven’t even begun to process and then receive their wisdom.
That I’ve gotten old enough to be able to receive wisdom.

For the quiet feel of my house early in the morning.
For the way the glow of the candles I light each morning as I meditate makes me feel lit from within.
That I’m able to find peace at least once or twice a day.

For words like momentous and singular that wake me up to my experience.

That words come pretty easily for me.

For the tenor and vibration of male voices, the light touch of female voices, and the joy in young voices.
For my five senses that vie for attention and also allow me to shut my eyes and open my ears for a different experience.

For old friends that remind me of my journey through this life.
For new friends that come with that opportunity of discovery.
For the way we are all connected.

For the joy on my daughter’s face when she learned to whistle this week.

That I can ask Alexa to play Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah anytime I want.

For Jack Canfora’s gratitude list: Dear Lord, Not Another Post on This Blog About Gratitude and  WritingfromtheheartwithBrian’s 100 Things I Love that inspire me.

For the opportunities that I have to keep growing.

For the technology that allowed me and Vicki to have a podcast conversation with blogger, Brenda Harrison, from three different timezones and locations and then post it so that others can be delighted and inspired by her energy and enthusiasm. (Episode 15 of the Sharing the Heart the Matter podcast – listen and subscribe!)

That this blogging journey has allowed me to meet and converse with so many interesting people from all over.

For the hour I’ve spent writing this list and that the power of gratitude will touch me every time I go back to edit it and extend with each comment.

(featured photo from Pexels)

What Am I Training For?

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“Sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near.” – Paulo Coehlo

The summer before I got pregnant with Miss O, I did several long-distance bike trips with my friend, Eric. My first experience with a multi-day trip carrying only what we could stow in the bike packs was a trip where we cycled on a tandem bike from Burlington, Vermont, up into Canada to a small cheesery. Then we cycled back across the border into New York state, along Lake Champlain, rode a ferry across to Vermont, and then finally back to our starting point.

For this trip, I was riding on a tandem bike with Eric – a bike that supposedly Paul Newman once rode – a delightful bit of trivia that didn’t make the beast at all more comfortable. I figured biking was a lot like mountain climbing because it requires leg strength and an endurance mindset. And a sense of humor. Cheryl Oreglia (from the delightful and fun Living in the Gap blog) isn’t exaggerating when she says that everyone’s favorite joke for people on a tandem bike is, “She’s not pedaling.”

On that first day out, we rode for 81.48 miles which was a long day “in the saddle” as cyclists like to call it. When we finally reached our hotel for the night at some city in Vermont, I scooted off the back of the bike like it was on fire. If it wasn’t on fire, then my butt surely was. I followed my delightful teammates up to the registration desk only to find that the hot tub at the hotel was out of order. That was a deal breaker for Carol who was leading this trip.

She said we had to find a new hotel. Envisioning another mile on the bike that day, I think I just about fainted. Fortunately, we found a new place right across the street and I WALKED all the way there. When we went out to dinner, Eric found a metal plate chilling at the salad bar and gave it to me to sit on.

It made for a memorable trip – mostly because I was with a great group of people. But I swear what I remember most is the last half mile of each day as we ground out those last few feet to the blessed places we could rest our bodies for the night. That makes me wonder if I was training for endurance or enjoyment.

It’s the topic of my post for Wise & Shine today: Endurance versus Enjoyment

(all pictures from the bike trip – Vermont – Canada – New York 2014)

It’s the Little Things

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“Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They’re underused.” – Tommy Lee Jones

When I met with Mr. D’s lead preschool teacher for a parent-teacher conference, I asked a general question at the end, “What else can I do to be of help to you?” Her reply was interesting. She said, “Nothing. You already turn on the bathroom light.”

She was referring to an incident from several weeks before. Early in the morning when there is only one teacher in the classroom, they can’t leave the class to go with a child to the bathroom. The teacher stands in the door to the classroom so they can both see the kids in the classroom and the bathroom, but the child has to cross the five or six feet to go to the bathroom themselves.

One day, I was dropping Mr. D off and the teacher was encouraging a child that needed to use the bathroom. His body was antsy but his face was fearful. It didn’t take much to connect the dots that the teacher couldn’t reach the light switch from her position in the doorway and the child was reluctant to walk into a dark bathroom.

So I asked, “Can I turn on the light?”

When she alluded to this incident at our conference, a light came on for me. I drew the only conclusion that makes sense. It doesn’t take much to help.

For great lessons I learned from another teacher in our lives, please check out my Heart of the Matter post: Lessons From An Artist

Catalysts for Change

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“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” – Lao Tzu

I like to joke that any day that I have my kids yelling “run for your lives” by noon is a fun one. My most consistent tool in the bag is having them make baking soda “volcanoes” and then pour vinegar over the top to start the “lava.” Then we yell “run for your lives” and laugh ourselves silly.

I’ve been thinking about catalysts lately. Was the baking soda (Sodium Bicarbonate with a formula of NaHCO3) looking to be changed? Did the vinegar (formula CH 3 COOH) want to catalyze a reaction?  (By the way, I looked up why the reaction happens. According to Stem Mayhem, it is a very common acid-base reaction. The reaction releases carbon dioxide which bubbles up as gas.)

When I did my podcast with my meditation teacher, Deirdre, last week, she talked about transformation as exactly what we need to live our best lives – a process of continued growth into our best selves. In my experience, we aren’t left to do this all by ourselves. Often people (or things) show up to catalyze the change, walk us to the threshold of what we need to learn next, or maybe even join in as we yell “run for your lives.” It’s the topic of my Wise & Shine post this week: Guides for Transformation

Practicing Abundance

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“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.” – Steve Maraboli

When I was in college, I was in a sorority with a lot of young women from well-off families. This wasn’t a stated objective in the recruiting process, as evidenced by the fact that I got in, but probably the result of legacy and connections. If some of my friends asked their parents for money, they’d come back to find $100 bills in their mail slot. They drove new cars – like beautiful convertibles – and they didn’t even have to share them with their siblings.

I was envious of their money. It seemed like they had it so much easier to me.

Thankfully, I’ve gotten over my envy of money. And not because I drive a brand-new car or have piles of $100 bills lying around.

It’s because I’ve moved on to being envious of people with time. I read something the other day about someone who had time to sit in their garden for a half hour and listen to the birds. I loved it except for the envy hangover I got. And my friend, Eric, has been off for the past three weeks driving through Joshua Tree and connecting with friends to do long-distance bike rides down the California Coast. Oh, how I long to have the time for a lengthy workout free of worry of whether it’ll make me too tired to be a good parent.

I’ve already given up cooking anything complicated, doing the dishes, and folding the laundry so what else am I to do?

I can rationalize away my lack of time – justify that I had oodles of time in my 30’s and 40’s when others were raising their kids. But it doesn’t help. Here’s the only cure I’ve found: practicing abundance.

If I can stop looking for a day to do yard work, I open to the possibility of doing it for fifteen minutes and getting some dirt therapy. Especially this time of year when I find it so cathartic to dig out what’s dead to make room for new growth, I get so much benefit when to keep my head down and only focus on the little patch in front of me. When I do, the same healing that comes from digging in to feel our roots arises. I can make a big difference in a small place.

I’d love to have many moments to string together to have lunch with a friend. Sometimes the pressure of knowing I can’t do this with ALL my friends keeps me from reaching out to ANY of my friends. Ridiculous, I know. When I do schedule something with a dear friend, I try to tack an extra 15 minutes on the end. It’s a cushion that rarely matters to the rest of my schedule and helps me feel the luxury of really being there.  

While I rarely feel the burn of a great workout, I’m often sore so it reminds me that I am always doing something. It might not be a lengthy workout that goes from cardio, strength training, and then a little fun interval at the end, but I have plenty of opportunities to exercise something other than my patience. When I’m on the floor playing, I can be intentional about getting up off the floor without pushing off anything. And I can repeat the exercise a few times to get the extra burn. If I’m out walking with young bike riders, I can run along a little bit too. It’s reminding myself to be conscious of the little steps I’m already doing that seems to make a difference.

My abundance practice is not perfect – but as my meditation teacher, Deirdre, says – that’s it’s called a practice, not a perfect. It’s these little things I learn that keep me from moving on to being envious of youth. Because I wouldn’t give up these pearls of wisdom that I’ve picked up along the way to go back.

(featured photo on Pexels)

Speaking of abundance, I’m grateful for all the places that I have to post and interact. This morning, I’ve also published a complementary piece on the Heart of the Matter blog: The Subtle Shaping of Our Brains

Do You Believe In Magic?

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“We are like someone in a very dark night over whom lightning flashes again and again.” – Maimonides

I just finished watching the first three seasons of Arrested Development. The impending change where the show would no longer be available on Netflix finally got me to watch this hilarious and highly -recommended (well, the first three seasons were touted as worth watching) show.

In the show, the eldest brother, Gob, is a magician. A ham-handed, totally inept so his tricks never work, kind of magician. But somehow his character in this show works with all the other characters to make magic of the worth-watching variety.

Do you believe in magic? I mean really believe in magic so that when it comes to getting your deepest desires, something will step in and help along the way?

I don’t. I believe in a lot of things that create magic – being present, finding joy, and counting my blessings to name a few habits that keep me more or less delighted with my life.

And I believe in listening to my inner voice – my God voice or intuition, and then following it. I believe in a Higher Power that I am so grateful to for that inner voice that points me in ways that are bigger and better than I could imagine on my own.

But I think all the work to make life happen is up to me. I don’t think magic will save me, or give me huge leaps to skip over all the steps.

However, I have the feeling that I’m wrong. I have the feeling that magic is happening all around but just on a different pace so that it seems undetectable. Before you think I’ve gone over the bend from watching too many Disney movies (which might also be true), just bear with me.

The other day I was frustrated with a friend – I’d reach a limit of too many bids for connection that had gone unanswered. I’d been totally fine with that for a while because my friend has a lot going on right now but it had reached a tipping point where my heart was starting to feel sore. I was just thinking that I needed to quietly close this door between us when my friend, completely unbidden by me or aware of what I was thinking, sent me a gift.

On Monday, I was working alone at home on a day with no meetings when I suddenly felt disconnected from life around me. I walked to the grocery store, Pictures of You from the Cure was playing on the overhead speakers. As I was dancing down the aisles connecting to memories of my college days, I ran into an old friend.

Or this morning my skin was feeling itchy like it couldn’t stand one more day of winter clothes, and I opened the window to see the blossoms on the tree out front had shown up like magic overnight. (see featured photo)

And my final example is right in this moment when I realized this post, that I thought was completely unconnected to my Wise & Shine post this morning Fear and Courage, is actually completely related in the way that when we acknowledge we are scared, lonely, or fed up, help arrives.

If our lives were a tv show like Arrested Development, the magic would probably be easy to see. But since life doesn’t work that way, it’s up to us to see the magic.

Take Me To Your Leader

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“The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Can you picture the best leader you’ve ever worked for or witnessed? If your experience is anything like mine, I’m guessing that’s a quick question to answer because I think good leaders are fairly rare. People that can competently manage are more common and it seems, at least in the tech industry, the field in which I’ve always worked, that they are often given leadership positions because they can bridge the divide between technology and vision. Against that field, the folks that can really lead shine like stars in a dark sky.

Years ago I was part of a team putting on an event for which Jeff Raikes was the keynote speaker. At the time, Jeff was a senior VP at Microsoft and he’d later go on to be president of Microsoft and then CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. I was a consultant responsible for the technology of the event so not directly or indirectly part of Jeff’s team but we all worked long hours getting the show polished.

Jeff had come in for a rehearsal late one afternoon and then was back the next morning for another practice. At that second practice, someone handed him his script and it didn’t include the edits from the evening before. Jeff exploded, throwing the script, screaming at the person who handed it to him, and then marching off the stage. As immature as it seemed – this was reportedly par for the course for Microsoft whose top management team was filled with people GREAT at speaking to vision but often tantrum-driven managers.

In contrast to that, I’m thinking of my friend, Dave, as the best leader I’ve ever worked for. I’m going by Brené Brown’s definition of a leader, “anyone who holds him or herself accountable for finding potential in people or processes.” Here are some of the things that made Dave stand out for me:

  • He rarely spent any time at his desk. His absences had two benefits. First, they allowed his people to solve their own problems instead of running to him. Those solutions were often better because they were engineered from the inside instead of dictated from the outside.
    Secondly, Dave wasn’t in his office because he spent the majority of his time managing up. Instead of waiting for meetings to deliver news about progress, good and bad, he used regular and informal conversations so nothing was surprising to his management.
  • Dave cared about the growth of his people. So, if someone wanted to try something outside their normal lane, he was all for it. He’d ask how he could help – and not just at the beginning but on an ongoing basis.
  • The most remarkable thing about him was that Dave wasn’t scared. When we encountered setbacks or side discoveries, Dave led from a place of courage. One of his favorite books was Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki. Mixing things up to see what boundaries or mindsets could be torn down seemed to be Dave’s favorite role – and he exceled at it.

As a bonus, Dave is funny and has some of the best aphorisms I’ve ever heard. People or solutions who don’t deliver were “all sizzle and no steak.” And when talking about how to find customers is “looking for someone who had pain and the checkbook in the same pocket.” Dysfunctional teams are “goat rodeos.” And I learned from Dave, goat rodeos are a real thing for young kids to practice their rodeo skills before they graduate to horses. He says, “Once you’ve seen one, they are the perfect analogy for a disastrous team or situation. The goats always win. 🙂 “

It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve worked for Dave but I still think of him fondly and often as the example what we can do when we work from courage instead of fear. And maybe that’s the mark of a true leader – they leave a lasting impression!

I was inspired to write this post after a recent encounter with someone who wasn’t demonstrating leadership skills. It pushed me to wonder – was this person doing his best? I’ve written about that on my Heart of the Matter post today: Doing the Best I Can.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Presently

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“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

This quote from the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, seems like an over-simplification to me but one that still makes me stop and consider. Thankfully we’ve come a long way since the 6th century BC in understanding that anxiety and depression have much deeper causes and roots than a simple tie to time-focus.

However, I take the point that what I’m prone to is living in the future and it robs me of some peace. I tend to march toward it with a single-minded determination that is at best, mindless, and at worst, anxiety-inducing. Getting out of this rut is the topic of my Wise & Shine post: Asking Questions When a Groove Becomes a Rut

(featured photo from Pexels)