Category: meditation

Self Compassion

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“You must transform and transcend your unconscious habit of pitying yourself and having feelings of inferiority if you want to grow and feel the experience of your mind reaching into infinity.” – Yogi Bhajan

This past Sunday I loaded up my stroller with all the things we’d need for a morning outing – picnic blanket, food, coats, masks, map for a scavenger hunt we were doing and took my kids down to a local wading pool that is empty this time of year and a great place for my daughter to practice with the new roller skates we’d gotten at a garage sale. We’d been there a few minutes when a dad arrived with three kids, his stroller similarly loaded and all of them riding bikes/trikes. I was idly watching him as he engaged with his kids – 6 yrs, 3 yrs and 18 months. At one point the 3 year old was upset and the dad got down on the ground right in front of the strider bike the kid was riding and talked it out with him. Then the dad turned to me and started talking about being exhausted. The story almost just tumbled out of him – his wife is considerably younger, in grad school and he doesn’t want to spend what could be the last decade of his life exhausted. Although he didn’t look that old to me, I appreciated his candor and his quest to find a way to enjoy this phase of life.

For anyone that is living this part of life with young children or remembers it, you know there is a lot of caretaking to happen. Bathing, toileting, eating, cleaning, reading, planning, communicating, entertaining, regulating emotion – none of these happen for my little people very proficiently quite yet. I had these kids late in life and so intentionally, that there are many days I don’t even question why I spend an 13 straight hours of a weekend day so focused on someone else’s care. I remember the time before I had children when I just had myself and my dog, Biscuit, to care for and I was so incredibly tired of just thinking about myself. I’m delighted to have these bright lights in my life and when it’s so clear that their needs outweigh my own, doesn’t it just make sense to focus on them?

But the balance has possibly tipped too far towards the kids, sometimes just simply as a practical matter. Why wear clean clothes when they will be dirty in 10 minutes? How can I brush my hair properly with one hand while I hold the baby with the other? Do I bother to prepare myself food that I is good for me if no one else will eat? And finally there’s the question of how to work out for my own benefit when I’m already exhausted from exercising my patience.

In my determination to make sure my children are taken care of, I’ve lost regard for myself. That is to say, I don’t even make the list as one of the key people to take care of. I think there is a price to be paid for losing your self-regard, even if it happens only as a practical matter. The consequence of never thinking I am worthy of care is that I start to believe it. In holding them up, I’ve let myself down.

Listening to this dad last weekend, I felt so much compassion for everything on his plate and it was in having his story laid out before me that allowed me to see that I need to extend the same compassion for myself. I’ve been falsely believing that it’s a dichotomy of my kids needs or my needs instead of expanding my pool of compassion to see that we all need care and that includes me.

As we talked and our kids played, a van from the city’s parks and recreation department pulled up with a bunch of toys for the kids to play with – pogo sticks, balls, noodles, the corn hole game and more. It was such a gift to have an hour free from being the entertainment director and a good start to relaxing into compassion for myself. Now I just need a clean shirt and some healthy food.

Hoarding

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“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.” – Erma Bombeck

Once I heard a riff that comedian Paula Poundstone did about buying fruit. She said she never risked it because it was so unpredictable. “What am I going to do, wake my kids up in the middle of the night because the cantaloupe is finally ripe?”

Cracks me up – probably because I resemble that story. I buy the fruit but then I like to just keep it on hand because then I can feel like I have an adequate supply of fresh fruit. Way too often I cut open the watermelon and realize that I “saved” it too long. Good grief! And it’s not just fruit I do it with. I’ll think of a great idea to write about, something that really represents something meaningful in my life — and then not write about it because I’m saving it. I know, dear reader, that you are asking “saving it for what?” Exactly, right! Who knows? With all due respect to proper planning and being prudent, sometimes my type of saving can be the enemy of now!

When I dig deep, I realize that I’m working towards some false sense of safety. If I have things on hand, whether they be fruit or ideas, then maybe, just maybe I can feel that I have enough, that I am enough. The flip side of this isn’t emptiness, it’s lack of faith. I want to have a great idea in my back pocket because just in case I’m called upon, I won’t be without something great to say.

I’ve cut open enough fruit past its prime to start understanding this basic truth of my life. If I’m ever called upon, it will be for an occasion for which I destined for. I’m not arguing the theology of predestination but just generally speaking about the paths that are lives take and while they seem like such a surprise to us, when looking back there is a crazy, logical narrative that can’t be an accident. So, if I’m called upon, I must have faith that what I’ve done leading up to that moment is all the preparation I need.

Often when I feel disconnected from life, it’s when I’m hoarding. I’m safely to the side, practicing for when life calls on me. And whenever I clue in and return to this moment, the one I’m starring in right now, I think of Paula Poundstone and then go get some fruit from the pantry and celebrate with the thunk of the knife announcing the moment at hand.

Finishing

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“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

About six years ago I had coffee with a childhood friend. At the time he had been separated from his wife with whom he shared three teenage kids for about three years and though he said he knew it was over (his wife had a boyfriend), they hadn’t gotten divorced yet. He explained it was of the health insurance but he seemed a little angry and unresolved as well. As a newly divorced person who’d spent some time in that in-between place too, I told him, he had to get divorced. “Why?” he asked. “I can’t explain why” I said “but it matters.”

I was thinking of that conversation the other day when I was unloading the dishwasher. I had done the bottom rack and the silverware but was interrupted by the chaos and flurry of the morning routine with my kids and didn’t finish. When I came back to the sink, there were dishes there, I went to put them in the dishwasher, couldn’t because I hadn’t finished the job and it made me chuckle. A half empty dishwasher is no good to anyone!

Why is it so hard to finish things? Maybe we often get distracted by the noise and the flurry. But I know also with me there’s also the impulse to hedge my bet just in case I change my mind. Or the finality comes with a lump that is hard to accept. I know that was part of my hesitancy to finish the legal filing to get divorced when I went through it – I didn’t want to accept the title and the failure that I felt it conveyed. And now looking back on it ten years later, I see that it wasn’t a failure, but a catapult. I’ve never built one myself but I understand that catapults work when someone cuts the cord.

In the Sound of Music, Maria says, “When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.” I’ve come to think of these alternative doors like an air lock. The next door won’t open until the first is fully closed. The Universe does not know how to help until we clearly commit to the path we are on. Our spirits cannot embody two half lives.

About six months ago my childhood friend wrote me an email that he had gotten divorced. After nearly 10 years being separated he had finally finished. And then about three months after that, he wrote me again to tell me about the new woman he was dating. I felt his happiness and applauded him — and I was also so gratified to know that even when you delay finishing the cycle for so long, it still works once you do.

Time to Grow

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“When you are finished changing, you are finished.” – Benjamin Franklin

I was recently given the opportunity to do some consulting (my day job) for the church for whom my dad was senior pastor when he retired. A chance to do meaningful work for an organization that does amazing job of outreach in the community, racial justice and creating a base for growth for families is right where I want to be. To make it work, I hired a new caregiver for my daughter to come for four hours on the day she has remote school and her brother is in daycare. Naturally, my daughter was nervous on the first day even though she’d met her several times before but she seemingly got past it pretty quickly. Until a couple hours in and I had to leave the house. She bumped her ear on a chair as she was reaching to give me a hug and the tears that came were much bigger than the owie, “You are going to leave?” she whispered tearily.

Ugh, it’s no wonder it feels so hard to consider personal growth and change. My kids are changing at an incredibly rapid pace, the world around us changes but I feel like I’m supposed to stand still in the middle of it all like a statue in order to be that predictable presence, sorta like home base in a game of tag.

I have to consider that I might be the biggest believer in the fact that I cannot change for the sake of my kids. In order to create the consistency that is the cornerstone of their lives and to not be the source of any ruffled feathers, I likely am the most fervent proponent of this belief.

But I know I’m not alone in this. There is a myth from the Trobriand Islands off of New Guinea. In that story, humans were immortal because they could shed their skins and stay young forever. One day a grandmother went to bathe in a river with her granddaughter and while bathing, shed her skin which snagged on a branch. When she returned, her granddaughter didn’t recognize her youthful appearance and was afraid. The grandmother went back to the river, found her old skin and restored her appearance but humans henceforth lost their ability to live forever.

After I reassured my daughter I would be back in two hours, I set her down and resolutely walked down to my car. Then I panicked as I recalculated whether I could do the work without making the change, carving out the additional hours in the evening after I put my kids to bed. I couldn’t and more than that, I shouldn’t because that’s how myths get perpetuated, we pass them on generation after generation. I am fully committed to showing up for my children and the other people in my life – being present, interested, vulnerable and real. When I try to be unchangeable, I feel like I start covering over who I am like a cup that tarnishes so that I diminish my ability to show up. You can’t polish without some rub so even as uncomfortable as it is for me, I’ve committed to some gentle friction as I try to keep growing and changing.

Hey, Listen

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“Please remember, it is what you are that heals, not what you know.” – Carl Jung

My kids and I were driving in the car the other day. My toddler kept saying “Mama?” and I kept answering, “Yes?” and because he still has a limited vocabulary, the conversation would stop there until he said, “Mama?” again a moment later with the same call and response. And then my five-year-old said, “I think he likes it when you answer him. It makes him feel like you are listening to him.” Awww.

But this post isn’t a victory lap celebrating great listening because I can just as readily not listen well. One rainy weekend during a coronavirus era lockdown, it felt as if my five-year-old hadn’t stopped talking, singing or asking something for the entire day. I asked her if we could be silent for 10 minutes and she thought about it and asked, “Why?”

When I listen well, it’s listening from the heart. It feels like a catcher’s mitt that is worn, old and ready to receive. I can listen to hurts, opinions and worries from my kids or friends and gently accept them. In that mode, I can even accept what my inner voice is telling me without struggle.

And when I’m listening from the head, it feels more like a tennis racket. I bounce things back without holding them. When it’s an owie, physical or otherwise, it seems to make them last longer. As if the teller has to dig in to convince me of the wound by describing the size, shape and depth which in the telling makes it larger.

When my kids get hurt, I want to solve what they were doing that caused the injury so they don’t do it again. Or, I want to downplay what I saw as such a minor scrape that couldn’t hurt so much. Even worse, when my daughter apologizes, I tend to use it as an entrée to a lecture on why she shouldn’t have done whatever it is that she did instead of simply saying “thank you, I appreciate that.”

And it’s not just kids, I have the same patterns with friends. Someone apologizes and I jump to say, “It’s no problem.” Or if listening to a hurt, I can rush to put one of my one on the table to somehow try to validate them or maybe prove that I have the right to be there.

I also find it difficult to listen to myself, to listen to my inner voice, that small, insistent voice that tells me I need to get up an hour earlier to mediate, do yoga and write. Or tells me to extend myself to a friend when I’m in a rush. A voice that I’ve come to recognize as part of my Divine path because I will inevitably end up having to listen to it, I just get to choose to do it when it’s a gentle whisper or wait until it’s an insistent bellow.

So, I’ve tried hard to learn to listen with my heart. Sure, there are times I need to engage the head to engage in critical thinking when safety and sanity are at stake but when it comes to hurts, apologies and accomplishments, I find the heart does best. Because it’s great to feel heard and it’s even better to feel heard and held!

Shame Resilience

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“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” – Buddha

Last week when my daughter and I were dropping my son at his daycare, Simon the teacher in the 2’s class was at the check-in table. I was talking to Simon as we did the sign-in and temperature check and then when I went to say good-bye to my son, I distractedly said, “I love you, Simon.” (No, it wasn’t a Freudian slip, I swear). My daughter started to giggle as did I, we waved at my son as he walked away and just slipped out the door laughing.

It was embarrassing to make a mistake in front of my kids. To be clear, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in front of and with my kids but usually privately or before my oldest was socially aware enough to pick up on it. I know from the work of sociologist and researcher Brene Brown how important modeling shame resilience is for kids so that they can see how you can name it, talk about it and survive it instead of keeping it inside where it can percolate for a long time. Just thinking about it and I recall shame that I’ve never given air like the time I was in the toy store with my daughter when she was still in diapers and I overheard one parent say to another, “Someone in here has a poopy diaper.” And it was my kid. <groan>  I still can remember that vividly more than three years later probably because I’ve never talked about it before this post.

Shame resilience was not something that was modeled for me when I was a kid. I had two great parents, my dad who was so likeable and well-intended that it was easy to believe he never suffered and my mom who is such a perfectionist that it’s easy to believe she never did anything wrong. But I remember when I sat my dad to tell his stories when he was in his late 70’s and he told of a story when he had to let go someone on his staff. He’d hired a married couple to play a role in the church my dad was senior pastor of and the husband was noticeably absent. My dad had to let him go and the wife was livid and felt her husband had been terribly mistreated. In the few years that followed she then suffered a miscarriage and her marriage broke up and though those things had no direct relationship to my father, he felt terrible until the end of his days despite the many different ways he tried to apologize over the years.

These were the things we never talked about as a family when we were young. Perhaps that’s too big of an issue to hear about as a kid but it’s the only example I have. So I’m trying to remember that with my kids and stay open to just say a sentence or two. As we left the daycare, I said to my daughter, “That was embarrassing.” She asked why and I said, “Well, I don’t know Simon well enough to love him AND I didn’t properly say good-bye to your brother so I messed up both things.” And then she asked, “What’s embarrassing mean?” It was a great entrée to a little conversation about life. What I said wasn’t wise or big but it was transparent and true which I hope will ventilate my shame and show her how she might endure hers when she feels it.

You Should Say “Thank You”

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

My 5-year-old got a new bike from her grandmother. We intentionally got it bigger because she’s growing so fast but it means she can’t touch the ground while sitting on the seat. So the way she was starting by pushing off with her feet and stopping while sitting on the seat wasn’t working. To help her practice, I was helping her start on the sidewalk out front of our house and then running about 200 feet to the corner and helping her stop. The standard parenting job for kids learning to ride bikes. We were doing it for about a half an hour, I was dripping with sweat when on one of our runs she says over her shoulder, “You should thank me.” And I huffed out the question as I ran, “For what?” She replies “For slowing down so you could catch up.”

If I could have belly laughed while running and out of breath, I would have. But it also rang an interior bell for me – how many times in life have I felt pretty smug for what I was doing and completely missed the big picture of what God was doing?

It reminds me of the time about a year and a half ago when I invited a family I didn’t know to live with me for three months. I wrote about it in my post Power Stance. I was feeling pretty gracious for being willing to open my house when I had a newborn and 4-year-old. But yesterday as I sat talking late into the night with the mom of that family who came this weekend for a quick visit, I realized that it was completely analogous to my daughter on the bike. While I was feeling so self-satisfied, God had been working to give me a lifelong deep friendship with a kind and thoughtful woman who affirms my spiritual nature. Now there’s something I should say “thank you” for!

I assume that it’s a little like riding a bike. Once we learn to balance on two wheels and get some momentum, we gain a whole lot of confidence and freedom. But every once in a while we skid on a patch of gravel and remember to say, “thank you!”  

Day of Rest

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“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Twenty years ago at this time of year I trekked to Everest Base Camp with a couple of my friends who were attempting an Everest summit. It’s a thirty mile trek through beautiful country, crossing over raging rivers on precarious bridges, stopping at little Nepalese villages, staying near Buddhists monasteries with everything (trees, people, commerce) getting sparser and sparser the higher you go. Our rhythm would be to trek one day and rest the next because the climbers needed to let their bodies acclimatize to the thin air.

It was interesting to see what everyone chose to do on the rest day – lie in tents and listen to music or read, try to wash clothes or take a shower if you could find facilities, hike around the local area, go into a little village if one was nearby, play cards, or sit around a tea house table telling stories. It was a day that we weren’t on the move so there was no schedule. I usually would chose some alone time and then some time listening to stories. Amongst mountain guides, especially the ones I was with that trip, the ability to tell stories is nearly as good as their ability to climb.

Thinking back on that trek, I think of not only the amazing adventure and incredible views but the practice of the day of rest. Because we all need that day of rest to restore our spirits and bodies before we can climb again. But at home, the choices are too many and the pace too hectic that I often forget to celebrate the day of rest. So I’m inspired by my choices on that trip – spend a little time alone meditating and then swapping stories with others, even if this time it’s on a blog.

One day at about 15,000 feet of elevation we were trekking to our next camp site when we came across this football sized flat space where rock cairns had been created for people who had died on the mountain. I’m at a loss to explain the intensity of how sacred that place felt. It was, to say the least, an impressive reminder that we will all meet our ultimate resting place and until then, we would be well served to celebrate this sacred life with a day of rest from time to time.

Miracles

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“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

Back when I was engaged to the man who is now my ex-husband, there was one memorable hike that we went on with my parents and we discussed miracles. This conversation happened almost twenty years ago but to the best of my recollection, my soon-to-be husband wanted my dad’s professional opinion as a Presbyterian pastor on why God didn’t do miracles any more. He was sure he’d believe in God if He did some grand gesture. And from what I remember, my dad mostly asked questions like what country would this miracle appear in? And would it have to be certified as a miracle by a recognized authority like the Pope? And what was a gesture that was big enough?

There are so many conversations that I wish I could have with my dad in the six years since he died but recently I’ve been thinking about that one. Because two things have happened recently that I think of as miracles. First is that my refrigerator was leaking water about every 4 days. I looked it up on the internet and came to the conclusion that my defrost evaporation tray was overflowing. The how-to article suggested that I might make sure that the default vent wasn’t covered. I moved some things around, never quite identified where that vent was and it still was leaking. And then it stopped. Miracle, right?

And then my car was leaking oil. It’s 14 -years-old but relatively low mileage. I’ve kept up the maintenance pretty well so I’ve had very few problems with it. But recently a ball rolled under the car and when I fished it out, it had oil on it. So I took the car to the shop where I’d last had the oil changed and they said it was just leftover from the last oil change because someone didn’t wipe it down – until I told them my last oil change was 9 months ago. Then they were confounded. I was never quite convinced that the friendly guy helping me knew how to solve it but he changed out my oil filter for free(!) and not very confidently said that would fix it. It leaked for about a week more. Then it stopped. Miracle, right?

I can suggest more miracles. The birth of my two children. The fact that a COVID vaccination was developed in less than a year. That my clients sometimes pay early just when I need them too. And just overall that as I look back on my life, I’m certain that I get exactly what I need (not what I want which is whole other thing) but just what I need. And of course, even that I can reach out to you, dear reader, over space and time, and talk heart to heart.

I have a guess what my dad would say. That belief doesn’t require proof. He’d acknowledge, as do I, that all of those things have plausible explanations but that miracles are a matter of one’s heart not one’s head. He probably said some version of that almost twenty years ago and I didn’t quite understand it. But I do now and that is a miracle!

The Best Intentions

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“You are a living magnet. What you attract in life is harmony with your dominant thoughts.” – Brian Tracy

I wrote a post about Mother’s Day and in the following days, I was a more joyful parent. It reminds me that my dad told me the same thing about his 40 years as a Presbyterian pastor – if he wrote a sermon about being a better husband, he was more attentive in the weeks following. It’s no surprise that our actions follow our intention. But what surprises me is that knowing that, I don’t set my intentions more carefully.

So I adjusted my early morning routine to include them: stretch, read, meditate and set my intentions. They aren’t complicated: Be present. See everything as a miracle. Practice gratitude. Listen.

And then productivity gets in the way. Somewhere between getting one kid here and the other one’s lunch packed, sitting down at my desk to work on another thing while constantly getting distracted by emails that come in, then back to picking one kid up, answering the doorbell, chatting with a friend that I happen to run into, I don’t think of them at all. The lofty ideals of the day get lost among the myriad of details.

But instead of feeling bad for that, I notice that intentions are like the piece of paper that I write my to-do list on. They aren’t something to check off my list, they are what I’m writing on. They weave together to create a space for whatever it is I choose to do for the day. And if I lose that piece of paper, I can start with a fresh one for the next day!