Tag: connection

I Believe You

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A few weeks ago as I was making dinner, feeding the animals, and trying to fit in one more work task, my eleven-year-old daughter said something surprising. “I don’t have any friends.” As the person who sits next to where her Apple Watch charges, I wanted to counter with how often her watch buzzes with texts and phone calls.

But parenting has taught me the power of believing people when confess how they feel.

It started with my kids when they were toddlers and told me they had an owie. I believed them. Seeing the curative effect, I learned to extend it to accepting that when someone says they are lonely, scared, happy, hurting, or whatever else they may be feeling, that it’s true.

It doesn’t have to be objectively true or even true over time. But taking what they say at face value for that moment has turned out to be a good place to start.

When I can do it, that is. It’s often inconvenient to believe people when they tell you how they feel. The other night in order to really listen to my daughter it meant having to pause dinner prep, close my laptop, and tell the pets to wait.

In other cases, it sometimes means having to change plans. Or even more disruptive, adjusting a perception of their lives in relation to mine. I have to stop being a fixer because some of the utility of talking people out of their feelings is so that you don’t have to fix it.

On the flip side, I’ve seen the power of being believed. It removes any defensiveness because there is no need to prove the statement. And it often shares the weight of the load. It eases the path because the person who is believed doesn’t have to add feeling unheard to their burden.

Simply for me, it’s moved me from listening with my head to relating with my heart. It opens moments of connection.

Which was the case with my daughter. When I asked her to tell me more about her friends, we figured out that sense showed up because the friend who she was eating second lunch with had a schedule change and was moved to first lunch. My daughter was feeling the loss.

Feelings are sometimes hard to nail down. Finding people who believe you shouldn’t be so hard.

(featured photo from Pexels)

If my work has encouraged, inspired, or helped you try something new, consider supporting it with a small “cup of coffee” donation. Your support helps me keep creating conversations, stories, and resources that cheer people on as they do brave, meaningful work.

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

This is How I Blog Roll

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“Friendship is born when one person says to another, ‘What! You too?’” after all. ‘I assumed I was the only one.’”  – C.S. Lewis

Ten minutes into writing my post for last week’s podcast, I knew I was in trouble. I was writing about all the ways we share experience and knowledge on WordPress and had started a list of the fabulous bloggers I follow and their themes. What I quickly realized was that I could spend all day and still not be able to list all the wonderful blogs I follow. Plus my one-line summary may or may not match their goals or purpose. Does Mark blog about manifesting, mosquitoes or moving? Hmm… all three?

So I’m borrowing a page from Ally Bean and doing a blog roll. Ally was a wonderful connector of people is no longer but is no longer blogging on WordPress (The Spectacled Bean). But her words and impact remain.

In the comments for this post, please leave your blog name, URL, a one or two-line description, and the year you started your blog. Think of it as a dinner party and I’m really excited to introduce you to each other. Don’t even think about hiding in the corner – I will come find you. It’s a fun way to network in this inspiring and generous community. And when you go visit any blog on this list that is new to you, please just let them know that Wynne Leon sent you.

Next week, I’ll publish a final list. Thanks for coming to my dinner party!

(featured photo is from Pexels)

If my work has encouraged, inspired, or helped you try something new, consider supporting it with a small “cup of coffee” donation. Your support helps me keep creating conversations, stories, and resources that cheer people on as they do brave, meaningful work.

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

Please check out the The Life of Try podcast Where trying becomes the spark for personal growth, discovery, and re-invention!

Weaving Our Tapestries of Connection

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“Relations are like electric currents. Wrong connections will give you shocks throughout your life. But the right ones light up your life. ” – unknown

I didn’t realize that I was pulling a loose thread in my life until we landed in France on our recent trip. But I teared up when I was explaining to our friends there that I felt compelled to visit them so that Miss O could know a little bit about what their son’s life was in France. I continued on to say that I believed that it would be easier for their son to come home to start middle school if at least one other friend had seen where he’d been.

Miss O and their older son had been in every class together from ages three through seven when the family moved to France. And then we saw them every summer when they’d come to visit so Mr. D got to know their younger son too.

I didn’t take me long to puzzle out my tears. When my family moved back from the Philippines to the States I was almost seven-years-old. It wasn’t long into trying to make friends at Jefferson Elementary when I heard kids teasingly jeer, “In the Philippines…” I must have started many sentences that way and it got old – for them and for me. Because the two lives were so different.

I didn’t know it was a loose thread all these years later. But I had an inexplicable certainty that I needed to take my family to France to build a bridge for these kids. If my kids could at least see a bit of where these boys had spent four years, perhaps their shift back to school in Seattle could be a bit more integrated.

The parents of these boys told me that one of their sons’ teachers in France counseled them not to talk about their French experience at all with new friends. I understand that advice but also know that we suffer a cramping of spirit when we bottle ourselves up like that.

Then we traveled on from France to our friends in England. Five years ago, this English family moved from London to our street in the States. Our kids went to school together and traveled back and forth between houses in a constant rotation. After four years of life in America it was time for them to move back. They settled into a delightful little village in Southwest England.

We had so much fun visiting our English friends a year after they left Seattle. In one especially poignant moment, I found all the kids huddled around the school yearbook we’d brought for them. The kids were so interested in seeing how everyone looked and hearing stories of what had happened since they’d left. When it was time for us to leave after two nights, there were tears on all sides. The mom of the family told her kids, “See, I told you your American friends would come visit.”

When I heard that, the tears welled up in me again. A feeling overcame me that was similar to when I see stories of long-lost friends reuniting, or blogger friends meeting in person. We are all more connected than we think. And when we honor the threads that bind us, we help complete each other’s tapestries in a beautiful way.

(featured photo from Pexels))

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

Please check out the The Life of Try podcast Where trying becomes the spark for personal growth, discovery, and re-invention!

Creatively Unwinding

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“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.” – Madeleine L’Engle

It’s captivating to watch all the different types of creativity at the beach. Unless someone has found a way to monetize sand castles, I believe what I’m watching is some of the unique ways people use their leisure time.

There are all sorts of way to unwind, aren’t there? Here on this beach in the Pacific Northwest, building forts and sand castles top the list.

Almost nine-year-old Miss O likes to create some version of a crab café every time we come to this beach. It’s got scalloped dishes, seaweed garnish and salt and pepper (sand) shakers made from crab claws.

Others have made beautiful and intricate forts out of driftwood. Some of these structures are so sturdy that they last for months and years between our visits.

Someone else makes driftwood sculptures. And our neighbor on this trip has made a sort of hanging sculpture from the wood on the beach.

When my friend, Katie, was here, she challenged the kids to come up with their own Beach Olympics. Would their event be Shell Shotput or Beach Balance Beam?

As I jot all this down, it reminds me that writing is another activity to add to the list. Not only am I writing this down for a post, but I can also imagine all the poetry, prose, and photography inspired by time away at this place.

I’m struck by how intertwined creativity is in what we do, even when unwinding. Maybe as the quote for this post from Madeleine L’Engle suggests, it’s all part of working towards wholeness.

A Full-Circle Story

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“Be kind to yourself and share it with the world.” – unknown

The other day I opened my door to an older gentleman who was going door-to-door on behalf of Greenpeace. Let’s call him John. He was warm and friendly and told me he’d grown up in this neighborhood and named the elementary school he attended.

As we were talking about plastic in the ocean, he mentioned that he’d just been talking to a neighbor. She wanted to subscribe for an annual payment. She knew she’d remember to do it because the day he came by was her birthday.

Clearly this neighbor had made an impact on his day. He went on to explain that she and her husband invited him in to sit down as they did the paperwork. It gave him some rest for his aching knees.

I hazarded a guess based on the story he’d told me, “Was it Donna and Bruce?”

“Yes,” he laughingly confirmed even though they are two streets away. There are about 25 houses per block in this neighborhood so he must have knocked on about 50 doors between my house and theirs.

So, I told him the story about how I met Donna and Bruce one evening about four years ago. It was early on in the pandemic and my daughter was doing on-line Kindergarten. I was trying to optimize her desk situation. Someone up the street had put a great kids desk out on the curb to give away. I was trying to carry it home with my 5-year-old daughter, my 6-year-old neighbor, and my 1-year-old son in tow.

And then Donna, who I’d never met before, offered to step in and help. Her delightful spirit is just one of the reasons she’s one of my favorite people to run into in the neighborhood.

[The next time I saw Donna after my conversation with John, the Greenpeace guy, I told her that how John told me the story of how her warmth and kindness had made such a difference to him. It was so fun to see her reaction to one of the many touchpoints of positive impact she must deliver in a day.]

After John, the Greenpeace guy left, my kids and I went out for a walk. We came across him sitting on a garden wall on the next street over resting his aching knees. Because of the stories we’d shared, it felt like he was an old friend. We sat down for a moment and chatted with him before we all moved on, still connected by the thread of narrative.

For a story about an a-ha moment Vicki had as a child about the roots of her dad’s big heart, please listen to our Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast: Episode 67: Love the Ones That are Different with Vicki and Wynne

Vicki Atkinson and I are big believers in the power of story – to connect us, to create intergenerational healing, and to make meaning out of the events of our lives. Each episode of our podcast will start with someone telling a story in each episode.

To listen to the podcast, Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts. Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

Cheers and Blessings

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“My friends are the beings through whom God loves me.” – Saint Martin

My friend, Bill, came to visit me a couple of weeks ago. I hadn’t seen him in 10 years and in those years, he got married and has moved to three different countries. I still live in the same house, but over that time, I’ve had two children.”

Needless to say, we had a lot of catching up to do. At first, as Bill was settling his bags in the guest room and talking with my kids, it felt surreal – like paint from one palette had spilled on another. Then when Bill and I went to dinner, it felt like we were working hard to find stories that conveyed the essence and meaning of the lives we live.

I experienced it as practice of the deepest kind of listening. I had to draw from far-back memories of living abroad when I was a kid, and again for a short time in college. And he had to relate experiences he’s had with other parents to try to know the life I’m living. But we both showed up to do that practice and it didn’t seem forced or contrived.

I don’t understand the mechanics of my deep connection to this friend. I wrote about him about a year ago in It’s Love Calling because we usually only speak to each other once every five years or so. Bill and I connected instantly when we met 25 years ago but have not spent a lot of time together in any of the intervening years. The what, how, where, and why of it are completely inexplicable and changeable – only the who stays consistent.

And in between our calls and visits, so much life has happened that it takes conscious effort to pick out the thread of what’s important to say. Yet this weird connection remains vibrant and meaningful.

My conclusion when I talked with Bill last year and wrote was that our connection exists to remind each other that we are lovable without having to perform for it. That there is a Oneness that we can both touch from our disparate lives when we are quiet and still. Somehow this friendship exists as evidence of and a waypoint to it for each other.

I’d add one thing to that conclusion – it’s a gift to have someone so connected yet disconnected come immerse themselves in my life for almost 24 hours. It shows me that every once in a while we receive the gift of being seen from the outside. Someone who knows us and can see our growth – but they have to stay on the outside in order to bestow the gift. I feel the love of God through my friendships, as the quote for this post describes – and every once in a while God makes a special one to deliver perspective as well.

Bill left this note, “Thanks for everything, Wynne. What a pleasure to spend time in your love filled life. Your family is absolutely amazing. Cheers and Blessings.”

Well, I’d probably describe my family as four parts love, one part chaos – and what a gift that he was willing to jump into our chaos to feel and see our love.

As I write this, I still have so many questions about abundant love, connection, and what humans can evoke in each other. But it feels like I have a better sense and shape of the mystery and have extended the notes that I want to cultivate because I’ve written this. It’s expressive writing at its best and if you are interested in the topic, it’s what Vicki Atkinson, Brian Hannon and I discuss on Episode 8 of the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast: Episode 8: Expressive Writing to listen on Anchor. This podcast is also available on Apple, Amazon, Spotify and Pocket Casts by searching for Sharing the Heart of the Matter and new episodes drop every Friday morning.

Please subscribe! Next week’s podcast is Mitch Teemley talking about having the audacity to believe that others want to read, watch or listen to his stories. It’s really good!

Celebrating Connection with Others

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“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Jimi Hendrix

It feels like Valentine’s Day is the holiday that it’s safe to hate. It’s not tied to any major religion so it doesn’t feel like it would be offensive to not like it, it’s overly commercialized and has sappy ads, and eating establishments have taken advantage of the hype to sometimes make it exclusive and expensive.

I would definitely fall in-line with those who poo-poo Valentine’s Day. I have a couple of friends whose birthday is Valentine’s Day and it made it so complicated when they were dating someone new. Do you or do you not go out to celebrate without being inundated by the assumptions and hype?

But helping my kids getting ready for it, especially my 2nd grader, has given me a new appreciation for it. At this age, it’s the only holiday for which they prepare cards for their classmates. For elementary school kids, the imagery is simple so they can easily make heartfelt cards for teachers and adults in their lives. In fact, because it’s such an uncomplicated celebration it makes it pretty accessible.

I understand that it gets more fraught as we grow up. When I was 14-years-old, I burnt the cookies I made for the first guy I “went” with and still delivered them anyway. He, on the other hand, had chocolate and roses for me, which made me feel both great and terrible.

So it seems like Valentine’s Day gets more complicated as we grow up. It becomes wrapped up with what romance is and isn’t, tied up with love languages, and whatever else makes it feel forced and unauthentic. As adults we can add our expectations, and our wonderings about how to navigate the wine and roses appropriately. We over-complicate it with our baggage and memories of how we underperformed (or at least I do).

But working with Miss O as she carefully picked a card from the pile that was what she thought each person in her class would like the best, I reconnected to Valentine’s Day as a simple holiday that celebrates our connection to each other. And well, I love that.

As the quote for this post from Jimi Hendrix says, maybe if we spent a little more time celebrating love, we could collectively move the needle on our divisiveness. I mean that generally speaking, not to add another burden on the expectations of Valentine’s Day.

Happy Valentine’s Day, all!

Creative Restoration aka Mouping

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“Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.” – William Plomer

By the time my kids went back to school on Tuesday of this week, we’d been together for 11 days. Christmas, New Year, a few days at an AirBnB on the coast – all great things. But I imagine like a lot of people, the days without a predictable rhythm, rich foods to eat, and special events have left their mark. The house is a mess, my body is out of whack, and my mind needs some help settling down.

I have a young friend, Alia, who told me she made up a name for creative restoration – mouping. When she’s mouping, she’s drawing, crocheting or doing something else creative but also a little mindless and repetitive.

It reminds me of the advice that scrolling social media is not restorative (why is it that I have such trouble putting the phone down?). But doing something like coloring or my recent favorite, glass mosaics, feels to me much more therapeutic.

Trying to connect the dots on why this might be makes me think of something I learned from Brené Brown: “unexpressed creativity is not benign – it’s malignant.”

Here’s one of the points the Brené makes about what she’s learned about creativity from her research:

“If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act sing – it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning.”

Brené Brown in The Gifts of Imperfection

When I’m in the rush of the holidays, I am spending my time interacting with others at best, and reacting to others at the most exhausting points. But mouping feels like changing the rhythm — moving from ping pong to tai chi. It’s reestablishing the flow of life and balance that exists within me that I’ve suppressed when surrounded by others.

Alia texted me her explanation, “It’s one of my favorite things I’ve done for myself. It doesn’t mean I’m just hanging out when I could be doing other things but is dedicated time to recharging bc that time is just as necessary for me as checking things off a list is. 😊”

I have to say that I’m impressed she’s figured this out at 23-years-old (and actually she started mouping as a teenager) because I’m just now putting my finger on what really works to help renew me. Even Brené didn’t figure it out til she was in her 40’s.

But whenever we figure it out, it’s helpful to know that time mouping is not frivolous but something that helps us cultivate meaning.

Turning Towards

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“Know all the theories. Master all the techniques. But as you touch a human soul be just another human soul.” – Carl Jung

“Guess what?” Miss O says to me and when I reply, she says, “I love you.” It’s a little call and response that I started with her when she was about 4 years-old. But I stopped doing it. She asked me why the other day and I don’t know. Was it because Mr D got older and I didn’t want to leave him out? Or was it because she started to know what I was going to say every time?

These little bids for connection matter according to Drs John and Julie Gottman of the Gottman Institute. They are our ways of turning towards our loved ones and even though the Gottmans primarily focus on partner love relationships, I think it applies to children as well.

On a recent Unlocking Us podcast with Brené Brown, they were talking about their latest book, The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection and Joy, and what caught my attention was how grounded in research their advice is. Not surprisingly since these are the psychologists and researchers who proved their ability to tell if relationships would last and be happy from just 15 minutes of observation with a 90% degree of accuracy.

They made the distinction between turning toward a bid of attention (responding or engaging when your partner says something like “look at that blue jay out the window”), turning away (ignoring) and turning against (responding with something like “why are you interrupting me?”).

In happy relationships, people turn toward their partner’s bids for attention 86% of the time, couples who were not successful only turn toward each other 33% of the time. John Gottman explained the result, “Couples who increase their turning toward wind up having more of a sense of humor about themselves when they are disagreeing with one another, when they are in conflict.”

As Brené Brown summarized “Turning toward gives us a sense of confidence about our togetherness.”

“Love is a practice. It’s more than a feeling. It’s an action. It’s something you do and not something that just happens to you and you need to give and get a daily dose to maintain a healthy and thriving relationship.”

The Love Prescription: Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection and Joy by John Gottman and Julie Gottman

The funny thing about when Miss O does the call and response with me lately is that she gets me almost every time. She says “Guess what?” and my busy head doesn’t anticipate the next part. It’s the surprise that breaks through the momentum of the day.

I can’t remember why I stopped this particular ritual but now that I’ve been reminded, I am delighted to start doing it again. Because what relationship doesn’t need to be grounded in connection and fun?

Open Up, Buttercup

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“Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.” – Maya Angelou

The other day on the carpool home from school, my daughter teed off when her friend said something about being called on in class. “I never get called on in class!” and “I never get to say my ideas!”

Self-pity is the emotion that I have the most trouble with. I think the idea that we should never feel or express self-pity was inculcated in me from an early age. My memory is that it was communicated in statements like “You can join us again when you are feeling more positive.” Or “Can I join the pity party?” or “Toughen up, Buttercup.”

So I think I came by my intolerance of self-pity in myself or others honestly from probably generations of family habits. But a little self-reflection shows me that the complete shutdown in my ability to listen and feel when self-pity appears is neither the person or parent I want to be.

I was mulling this over when I heard a Ten Percent Happier podcast with therapist Dr. Jacob Ham that helped clarify the underlying question. In the course of the conversation the topic of whether you have to love yourself to love another came up. Dr. Ham’s answer was it depends – “It depends if your fear is so great that it inhibits connection to yourself or another.”

While my natural inclination is not to name the feeling as fear, it gets at the heart of the question of solving things in ourselves so they don’t hinder our connection to others. I still have trouble thinking of self-pity as anything useful – but I also know my resistance tells me that it’s inhibiting the Flow of life somewhere and it’s worth a look.

In the car when I was listening to my daughter’s complaints, I could relate that I often see a skewed version of events when I’m tired or not feeling well. In my daughter’s case, I think she was both tired and hungry so I asked if we could come back to it after we filled her tank.

She said it was frustrating not to feel seen at times but after acknowledging that, we made a list of things she wants to do so that she can speak up about her ideas like raising her hand more enthusiastically. We’ll see if it works but I’m just grateful that I held on long enough to participate in the conversation.

(featured photo from Pexels)