Category: love

Suffering

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

I don’t often think about my ex-husband, for better or for worse. [Yes, that was a marriage joke. 😊] After we divorced, he got married to his third wife. I discovered, once I wasn’t married to him, that I did want kids and had them on my own.

But something I read the other day made me think of something he said fifteen years ago when our marriage was unravelling. “I suffered so much as a kid that I don’t want to suffer any more now.” It was his excuse for not wanting to do the work to figure out the why of his infidelities.

He did suffer as a kid. His parents divorced when he was three years old. His mom remarried a man that ended up going to prison for bank robbery. He was in high school and living with his dad and his dad’s third wife until his dad and step-mom left town in the middle of the night to move 1,000 miles away without telling him because they were in trouble with the IRS.

My ex was a smart kid. He figured it out and managed to work his way through college to create a different life than his parents.

Here’s what I read that made me think of my ex:

“While I am not a victim, I didn’t ask for certain shaping experiences to happen to me. I didn’t ask to be slapped or ridiculed as a boy or to be mistreated by lifelong friends later in life. In truth, If I had experienced different things, I would have different things to say.

What is most healing about bearing witness to things exactly as they are, including my own part in my pain, is that when the voice of the pain fits the pain, there is no room for distortion or illusion. In this way, truth becomes a clean bandage that heals, keeping dirt out of the wound.

To voice things as they are is the nearest medicine.”

— The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have by Mark Nepo

That meditation helped me to understand that the point of cleaning our wounds isn’t to suffer more, it’s to heal at that deeper level.

Here’s the funny thing. In not wanting to do his work, my ex made me want to do mine. He’s right – there’s too much suffering in this world. I was motivated to heal my wounds so I don’t thoughtlessly create others.

(featured photo from Pexels)

You can find me on Instagram @wynneleon and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/

I co-host a storytelling podcast featuring authors and artists with the amazing Vicki Atkinson. To tune in, search for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts (and subscribe) or click here. Or the YouTube channel features videos of our interviews. Please subscribe!

My other projects include work as a CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer), speaking about creativity and AI through the Chicago Writer’s Association, and my book about my journey to find what fueled my dad’s indelible spark and twinkle can be found on Amazon: Finding My Father’s Faith.

The Love You Can’t Wipe Off

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“How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.” – Sigmund Freud

One morning last week, I gave five-year-old Mr. D a kiss on the cheek as he was getting out of the car at school. He turned and said, “Sometimes I wipe your kisses off.” I laughed and then he jumped out of the car and ran to join his class line.

I was still laughing when this retort popped to mind: “Nice try but the mark of love doesn’t wipe away that easily.”

It’s in the clean clothes you have to wear. And packed with the lunch I’ve taken the time to try to balance nutrition with edibility.

It’s with the reading practice we did last night so you can feel more confident today. And in the jobs I let you “help” with to gain a since of accomplishment.

Love is in the echo of you saying “My best mom in the world” when we snuggle on the couch in the morning.

It’s in the tilt of your head when you speak because you know you are worth being listened to.

And it’s in the even-handed way you treat other people and the dog and cat with curiosity and companionship.

We don’t have everything and sometimes butt heads, but love shows up to help smooth out our edges.

Love is in your knowledge that you can tell me that you wipe my kisses off. And that I’ll still keep trying on your way out the door.

The Art of Staying Flexible

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“Blessed are the flexible, for they should not be bent out of shape.” – unknown

The holiday season is over. I swear the collective sigh of relief that we can all get back to our routine is so big as to be palpable.

My dear friend, Katie, whose amazing daughters are grown, came over the other day and we were talking about the highs and lows of this season. The magic, the expectations, the busy-ness, the boredom of the down time, the togetherness. It’s not like the gift of the season comes in a neat package. It’s more like a gift basket put together by a five-year-old and there are some pokey and slimey things in the mix.

When I went to my annual physical with my doctor in early December, I asked her about her sons. She answered that her younger son was home from college on the east coast from Thanksgiving through Christmas. She smiled when she said it was nice, but she was getting a little tired of crumbs on the counter. We had a good chuckle about that.

For me, I wrestle with being flexible enough to go on adventures, to throw the ball around, or to play a game. Often it feels more comfortable to cling to things I need to do. Who am I if I leave dishes in the sink, the crumbs on the table, close my laptop, and start chasing butterflies?

But I’m always rewarded when I set what I’m doing down and participate in the play. I benefit from the magic when the kids share their perspective and fun. Longevity and healthspan expert, Dr. Peter Attia lists socializing as one of the ways to stave off dementia. The complexity of what we do when we interact with others helps to keep our brains well.

So, for everyone who is sipping a cup of tea or coffee and celebrating this week of getting back to normal, please give yourself a pat on the back too. Reading a book given to you that might not be your genre, drinking from a new mug, navigating niceties, trying out the new gadget – all of it helps keep us flexible.

(featured photo is mine – I love the light and dark captured together)

A Fond Farewell

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“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain

I’ve become entranced with a word lately: inkling.

Inkling according to Merriam-Webster is a slight knowledge or vague notion. It comes from Middle English yngkiling meaning “whisper or mention.”

When I think of the inklings I’ve gotten, they relate to the niggling feeling that something is off. I’ve had inklings about big events like when my business partner told me of my ex-husband’s infidelities and right before I was laid off. Kinda like a surprise party when everyone stops talking to you in advance.

And I get inklings about little things like when one of my kids is about to catch a cold. Something isn’t quite right about how they react or eat food and it sets off the radar.

For me, inklings are closely related to the internal God whispers, those insistent notions that seem Divinely inspired. On a recent morning when I meditated, I had the urgent sense that I needed to reach out to our dear blogging friend, Julia Preston.

Later that day, I discovered that she’d passed away the night before at the age of 85. She hadn’t blogged much after her cancer diagnosis but she’s been present in emails and comments in the last few months.

After I published one of my favorite posts about the words I become entranced with, My Love Affair with Words, Julia jokingly asked what word I associated with her. I had no hesitation before responding “luminescent.” Julia glowed with love and light for all. She faced her diagnosis with that same delightful curiosity about what comes next.

Her last blog post hinted about the light and love we all can (and should) tap into. Julia left us with the question in When We Gonna: “When are we gonna turn the world around with the power of our thoughts? When are we gonna create light instead of dark and love instead of fear?“

Julia was laid to rest yesterday. For anyone who has an inkling to do something in her honor, her favorite causes were St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and the ASPCA.

RIP, dear Julia. Your light and love remains!

For more about Julia’s profound impact, please see Vicki Atkinson‘s beautiful reminiscence in Collective Gratitude: The Feast Before the Feast

And Julia’s most recent book is available on Amazon: Voices: Who’s In Charge of the Committee in My Head?

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Preciousness of Life

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“Our life experiences will have resonances within our innermost being, so that we will feel the rapture of being alive.” – Joseph Campbell

The morning after a really rough night’s sleep, I was sipping tea and realized I didn’t like the mug. It was scratchy to my lip and it made my tea taste different. We were staying at a friend’s house on the Washington Peninsula so all the mugs were new to me.

Because I hadn’t slept well, I was more attuned to it. After a dozen sips, I forced myself to go the kitchen and change mugs. The smoothness of the new one made me realize how many sensations go into feeling soothing.

I hadn’t slept well because I realized in the middle of the night that I hadn’t refilled the water reservoir for Rusty the gecko before we’d left home for three nights. I sat up with a pit of dread knowing that without the water misting twice a day to keep his enclosure humid, he’d likely die. The questions swirling of when I last did it and how long he could survive sent me shooting out of bed.

It was our last night of this mini-getaway. It was 3am I was two hours and a ferry ride away from home. There was nothing I could do to help poor Rusty in that moment.

Instead I sat until I unraveled the knot of feelings in my gut. I felt the weight of all the responsibility I carry for keeping things alive. I sensed the thread of how tenuous life can be. I even worked my way to compassion for myself for making mistakes.

I finally went back to sleep feeling how dang precarious this thing called life is.

So when I awoke, I needed that soothing cup of tea. I wonder how often we forget that our time here is limited. Speaking for myself, when I lean in to the knowledge that life ends, it spurs me on to pay attention and drink out of the right cup. To take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others.

There’s a happy end to this story. I emailed my mom and she checked on Rusty. He was out of water – but she refilled it and misted him. He made it. So one other thing – thank goodness for moms!

Certainty for Today

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“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” – Nelson Mandela

My internet browser keeps trying to bait me to find out who I’m voting for 2024 election. It presents headlines from one side or another to see what I’ll click on.

From my point of view, I don’t want to click because I don’t want it to feed me what I want to hear. It’s not that I’m uninterested or uninformed. In these days before this hotly contested election, I’d love to have some certainty. But not at the price of wrong information and expectations that will lead to disappointment.

So instead I’ve made my list of the things I’m fairly certain will happen today:

The sun will rise and set.
That I’ll feel moments of awe, angst, and amusement.

Cooper the dog will put something in his mouth that he’s not supposed to.

And I’ll eat a little or a lot of Halloween candy.

Miss O and Mr. D will make me laugh
and some toys will be played with.

I will not make it through my to-do list.
But I will accomplish enough of my must-love list.

We’ll learn something, spill something, and read something.
One kid, or both, will anger the other and apologies will have to be made.

That amidst the rush and hustle of daily life with a nine-year-old and a five-year-old,
I’ll feel the overwhelming gratitude and love that I was able to choose to have this family
Using IVF.

And that’s why I never needed to open my browser to figure out which way to vote. I voted for Kamala Harris so that other families can choose, if they need to, to have days filled with the same types of certainties I’m likely to have today.

Loving and Learning

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“Life isn’t about getting and having, it’s about giving and being.” – Kevin Kruse

I was chatting with another parent at a party the other night. Let’s call her Casey, because, well, that’s her name. Casey was telling me about spending the night prior sleeping on the floor next to their new puppy’s crate. Since I was fresh off of sleeping on the couch for my puppy when he was getting adjusted, I was nodding along.

Then Casey said that a friend of hers told her she had made a mistake by getting a puppy. The opinion was logical: she laid out all the plans Casey had said she wanted to do like rebuilding her acupuncture practice in a new location and thought the puppy was not conducive to Casey’s goals.

Hmm, is love ever directly conducive to our goals?

Perhaps when it is the goal itself but from my experience, love is the big disruptor that often interrupts our progress on the things we can measure.

I’m thinking of this past weekend when my four-year-old son wanted to sit on my lap as I was writing a post so I switched to typing one-handed.

Or the time 20 years ago when I screwed up a work presentation because my new love wanted to spend time and so I forgot to practice.

And the swollen eyes I had for weeks after I had to say goodbye to my last dog, making it nearly impossible to concentrate or pull myself together.

And yet:

My four-year-old, Mr. D, has been bounding out of bed in the morning to say “hi” to the puppy. I find him with his arm around the dog or the cat as he tries to broker peace for his new best friend. And having a puppy has also made him more organized to keep track of his Bun Bun stuffy so that it stays out of the dog’s sharp teeth.

My eight-year-old daughter, Miss O, has a new way to make friends. We stood outside the school gate this afternoon letting kid after kid pet the puppy while she proudly showed them how she’s trained him to sit. And the puppy is also making her grow up because she’s having to find her inner discipline in order to deliver clear commands to him.

I feel the rumbling at my feet of puppy snores as I type this and feel less alone. I’m also feeling the exhaustion that comes with the extra discernment, communication, and enthusiasm I’m expending to train my kids to train the puppy.

We’re loving and learning. I’m not sure there is anything more conducive to my parenting goals than that. I’ve lost sleep for far less worthy reasons!

What do you think is worth losing sleep for?

But I Love Them Wholeheartedly

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“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.” – Rabindranath Tagore

Kids! They bicker with each other
and leave their shoes around.
Tears flow too easily
usually because they’re low on fuel.

It takes so much work
To make a family work
Keeping their hearts and minds engaged
And bodies well.

But I love them wholeheartedly
And not just when they are sleeping
Curled up with an arm akimbo
And sideways on the bed.

Because there’s a fierceness
Of love and loyalty
When we know we belong together
And commit to making repair

The laughter and dance parties
Curiosity and attentiveness
Is so damn inspiring
That one cannot help but grow

I’m so profoundly proud
Of the effort my kids put in to every day
Really of all of us
Forging a path through all the busy-ness
To the heart of the way

Family has a myriad of definitions
Depending on our point of view
But I’ll keep mine – work and everything
Because there is so much love to do!

The horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad day

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“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” – Pema Chӧdrӧn

On this past Saturday, we had a horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad day.*

Cooper the dog, had some potty accidents that we discovered. A couple that I found and cleaned up first thing in the morning, and a couple that Miss O unceremoniously stumbled upon. Ewww. Apparently, Cooper had GI issues after his surgery to remove the grass from his ear on Thursday.

We found some bugs in our pancake mix.

Then nine-year-old Miss O saw that the vines in Rusty, the crested gecko’s enclosure had fallen down. On closer inspection, we’d been misting too much and the whole enclosure was a swamp. So, instead of our to-do list chores, we spent all morning rehabilitating Rusty’s setup.

[Side note: We called my niece to get some advice. She’s the one who gave us Rusty. Miss O told her that we’d gotten Rusty out of the enclosure by saying, “We executed Rusty.” We quickly clarified that we’d evacuated, not executed, Rusty.]

At a kid’s birthday party, five-year-old Mr. D got hit in the head by a water balloon thrown by an 11-year-old boy who had been spitting in the ballons before hurling them.

Our tap water turned brown.

It was literally one thing after another. Some things caused by us, like Rusty’s enclosure. Some things that were random like the water turning brown. Some things caused by other humans like the water balloon.

There is probably nothing that peeves me more than life messing with my efficiency. I was not in a great mood, but I’ve learned from experience that rough days call for leadership, even when I don’t feel like it.

At one point in the day, Miss O exasperatedly said, “This is awful. I don’t know what to do!”

So, we talked about my dad’s approach to just find the next right thing to do. And we took comfort that what we did have to respond to “life” with was each other. We were doing pretty good job of sticking together.

Then as the kids were getting ready for bed, a huge lightning storm came in. Seattle very rarely gets thunderstorms so this was a rare and incredible show. After they brushed their teeth, we snuggled in my bed with all the curtains open and watched the storm.

It was fitting. On a day that seemed extra “life-y,” to let the storm and rain exhaust itself and pass on through. In that way, we weathered the storm.

(featured photo from Pexels)

*Title is a riff on the children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judy Viorst

Upward Spirals

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“Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” – William Arthur Ward

This was first published on 8/17/2022. I’ve been slowly moving some things I’ve published on other blogs to this one and it’s a great reflective practice for me to remember all the things that touched my heart two years ago – and still do now! Thank you for your patience as I consolidate things if you already read this.

As I was writing my post Good Mood of the Soul, I came across the research that joy and gratitude often result in an upward spiral. The more we focus on gratitude, the easier it is to perceive joy. And when in the midst of joy, we are more open to gratitude.

So here’s the list of things I’m grateful for this week:

For everyone that is willing to read why I am grateful for

That I can still hear the Click and Clack, the Car Talk brothers in the Cars movies.

The quiet way my three-year-old son says, “you are my best mom friend” to me so that I have to lean down to hear. In that position it goes directly from my ear to my heart.

That we have the ability to take pictures with our hearts.

The way it sounds when my daughter says, “I’m thankful for the tooth fairy.” while missing her two front teeth.

For out-of-the blue notes from individuals I admire telling me something I’ve done right.

That I’ve been able to learn, to some degree, how to fix the things that I’ve done wrong.

That broken eggs make food, literal and metaphorical.

For whoever invented yoga pants and made messy hair look sexy, at least on the West Coast. And if that was only in the 90’s and is no longer a thing, for anyone that continues to let me think that.

Speaking of inventions, whoever invented self-sealing water balloons that fill 20 at a time.

That life keeps giving me opportunities to learn that suffering just softens me up for the next great thing.

For every grown-up that showed me what vulnerability looked like when I was a kid.

For every grown-up that shows me what vulnerability is when I’m a grown-up.

For this necklace I bought on a whim and have worn for 20 years that says, “Strength is having a grateful life” and that I have grown into knowing what that means.

Cool sheets on a hot night.

That I have a bed to sleep in.

Green tea on dark mornings.

That connect-the-dots works in art and in life.

For the human traits of kindness, courage and generosity.

For the Divine traits of grace, faith, hope and love.

For the times I’ve been on my knees needing loyalty, courage, generosity, grace, faith, hope and love – and that what I’ve received in those moments has opened me up to knowing what those traits are in my bones.

I am grateful for upward spirals.

What are you grateful for this week? What have you learned about upward spirals?

(featured photo from Pexels)