Tag: family

Self-Care

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“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” – Buddha

Sitting on my meditation cushion today, I started to squirm because my right hip hurt. But I still stayed until finally it occurred to me that there was no honor in enduring the pain. I could meditate while lying on my back and stretching my hip. As I did that, I realized that I do this often – fail at self-care because I believe I am accomplishing something more important.

One of the reasons I’m thinking about this was another great podcast this week. The On Being podcast with Alex Elle. She talked about doing more than surviving this life. She wants to break the cycle in her family where the women just give until there is not one drop left for themselves. The line she said that really caught my attention was, “Choosing to do this work – it doesn’t just heal me, it heals my lineage.”

Wow, that rolls it all into one. If I believe that, and it rang true to me, then I can’t ignore my own care. I can’t martyr myself in the name of raising these two beautiful children because I would be teaching them, among other things, that motherhood is no fun. It makes me rethink my pattern of never going out at night so that I’m always here to put my kids to bed. I think there is a lot of goodness in that but always/never might be a little extreme.

As I stretched the right hip and then the left, I realized that the thing that I am good at is seeking out others stories to inspire me. In podcasts and blog posts, I find so much interesting and thought-provoking material that makes me grow. It gives me hope that I learn to take care of myself in other ways too!

Abundance

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“Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.” – Rainier Maria Rilke

Last night we had a family party to celebrate birthdays for my mom and me. My daughter had very carefully planned what to wear – a pink dress with a delicate white cardigan and was getting dressed when she asked me what her brother was going to wear. When I told her that he was wearing his Hawaiian shirt which is pretty much the only button down shirt he has, she said disappointedly, “Awww, everyone is going to say ‘wow, what a cute baby.’ “

I gulped because there was something so familiar in her small complaint. Doesn’t it always seem like someone else at a party has it easier? Someone who navigates the introductions, conversations and transitions without anxiety. Someone who naturally draws the attention and even if I don’t want to be the center of attention, it’s hard not be just a little bit envious.

This weekend I listened again to the On Being podcast with Krista Tippett and Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis. He made the point that for us to be social, we have to be individual. That is to say, to be able to recognize each other we have to notice the differences between us. Otherwise, the mom feeds the wrong baby or we can’t tell which person is our friend.

But it seems like we pay a price for always noticing differences. It breeds comparison, competition and envy. It fosters the feeling of scarcity because someone else always has more. Speaking personally, it takes a lot of continual work to overcome the system and rest assured that I have enough love, possessions and worth. That might be in a nutshell what drives me back to faith – to find the unity and Divine love that is common to all of us.

I didn’t have any words for my daughter’s comment. I gave her a big hug and we went to the party. She was right, that was exactly what everyone said about her brother. But she made herself useful and got plenty of attention. Better than anything I could say was the experience that there is more than enough love to go around, we just have to show up to feel it.

A Thin Place

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“Nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed even more intensely upon God than friendship.” – Simone Weil

We baked cookies for our neighbor and her husband yesterday. They have been taking 24/7 care of her elderly mom for a week now since she suddenly became sick and unable to care for herself. My daughter made a card for them and we put the card with the cookies and some puzzles and set off to deliver them. My neighbor’s mom only lives around the corner. My daughter wanted to carry the basket and when she handed them over, our neighbor cried. Then I cried.

It was a holy moment, the kind of moment that Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal church calls a thin place where God is just that much closer. The unexpressed weariness and worry in our neighbor met the softness of a kind gesture and out leaked some tears from the River of Life.

I’m completely flummoxed by how to teach faith to my kids. I look back to the Sunday School and all the church activities from my youth and while they were fun, I just didn’t get it and neither did my siblings.  It was only life in it’s raw, humbling way that made me search for the wider current that unites us all. Now I can tell you Christian stories, practice Buddhist-inspired meditation, find God out in nature and read anything deep in order to keep life vital.

So I’ve tried Sunday School for my daughter as a base hoping that it starts the seed that will grow into whatever works for her. But yesterday, witnessing two grown-ups cry over a plate of cookies while the spark of the Divine crackled in the air taught more than 100 Sundays. Even my toddler just stood there smiling watching something he didn’t understand. It reminded me that the unplanned lessons sometimes are the best.

The Current Underneath

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“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton

Last night I was out with my kids as they biked, my 5-year-old on her new big bike and my toddler on an old-school Radio Flyer tricycle. I suggested to my daughter that she go all the way around the block on her bike while my son and I worked best on how to make progress on his trike. This was a new freedom for my daughter, riding away from us on the sidewalk and being on her own for a whole block albeit one she knows well because we walk it all the time. She’d done it several times and was exhilarated by the freedom until the time when she came to the long back straightaway and didn’t see us. My son and I had made enough progress to get around the corner. By the time she got to us, my daughter was scared. I soothed her the best I could and we made our way home. I thought all was good until I asked her to clean up something and she grumped at me. It wasn’t until later that I realized she had some carry-over from being scared.

When I sit on my meditation bolster in the morning, I expect to find peace, happiness and clarity. I am always surprised by the occasions that I find instead a lingering disappointment, anxiety or sadness underneath. I frequently think that I can use my optimism and positivity to pave over the feelings I’m less comfortable with but in those quiet moments they let me know they are still there. I am learning over and over again that I have to feel things all the way through. The worry about a friend going through a hard time or the disappointment that I didn’t get a particular project stay insistent that I acknowledge them before I can settle in to my peace.

This reminds me of a story my meditation teacher told me. She was teaching a 6am yoga class on a dark fall morning. People were settling onto their mats and she was walking around the room quietly talking the class through those opening exercises when she noticed someone outside looking into her car. Without thinking she opened the door to the studio and yelled, “Move on, MotherF*&#$r!” This still cracks me up every time she tells the story but also reminds me that what’s going on in me and around me sometimes has to be acknowledged before I can find peace.

Last night after I’d put my toddler to bed and was sitting with my daughter to read books, we finally got to the feeling of being scared and were able to talk it through and put it to bed too. Then it felt done and we were able to find our quiet and rest.

Drawing Boundaries

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“The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.” – Mother Teresa

Coming back together after a year apart feels like I’m out of practice on some things. Like how to greet people. Is it a hug or fist bump or a nod? But as awkward as those things feel to me as an adult, I’m watching my five-and-a-half year old try to manage them after missing out on about 20% of her life experience in socialization and it feels really big. Like how to navigate the friend who wants to eat her lunch.

My daughter doesn’t eat very fast. Her friend scarfs down her own lunch and then starts in on my daughter’s. My daughter wants to share and has no foresight that she is going to need that fuel or be hungry. Drawing boundaries. It feels like this is one thing that we haven’t had to do during the year of coronavirus.

Drawing boundaries has always evoked for me the idea of two countries dividing territory. But looking it up, I see that there are many different parallels. In mathematics, the drawing of boundaries applies to clearly defining when a theory is supposed to hold. In therapy, it’s the rules that govern the patient/therapist relationship. Abstracting these, drawing boundaries allow us to create predictability in relationships by defining what’s mine and what’s yours.

But I-ing and my-ing is also known in Buddhism to be one of the root causes of spiritual disease. When we start protecting territory, we stop being able to see the Unity that ties us all together. We limit our ability to see ourselves in everyone. We elevate the ego and its importance in relationship to everything else.

Of course I know this intuitively as a parent. When my babies arrived, there was little boundary between those tiny little people and me. The love I was overwhelmed with carried me through feeding, waking, changing diapers, washing clothes with spit up on them with little thought of whether they were cutting in to “my” time or whether “I” had everything I needed. It was all “we.” Now as they get older and take “my” stuff and putting it places that I cannot find, there are some distinct boundaries. But in every moment of tenderness and perspective, I am right back to that beautiful place where they are my heart walking outside my body.

Believing that there are some healthy ways to draw boundaries, I decided to step in to the lunch situation. I figure that we have all have more of a chance of seeing that we are more alike than different when our tanks are full. But I’m hoping that she goes on to solve world hunger so that’s true for everyone.

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!

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!”  

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!

Healing the Divide

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“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

There’s a divide that runs right down the middle of my family of origin – I call it tree people and forest people as inspired by the phrase “Can’t see the forest for the trees.” The tree people are so good at details that they are the ones you want to invite if you need help painting a room or weeding a patch of garden. The forest people are generally better at navigating the ups and downs of life and are the ones you want to invite when you need advice or help troubleshooting a systemic problem. Even with different perspectives, we managed okay until a tree person sued a forest person. Now it’s hard to see that we all stem from the same ground.

So I’ve thought a lot about the root cause (pun intended) about the pain in my family. And when I read the following passage about belonging in Brene Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness, it resonated as the real reason that my family is divided.  

“Even in the context of suffering – poverty, violence, human rights violations – not belong in our families is still one of the most dangerous hurts. That’s because it has the power to break our heart, our spirit, and our sense of self-worth. It broke all three for me. And when those things break, there are only three outcomes, something I’ve borne witness to in my life and in my work:

1. You live in constant pain and seek relief by numbing it and/or inflicting it on others;

2. You deny your pain, and your denial ensures that you pass it on to those around you and down to your children; or

3. You find the courage to own the pain and develop a level of empathy and compassion for yourself and others that allows you to spot hurt in the world in a unique way.

Brene Brown

My dad was a Presbyterian pastor and so the church defined our lives growing up. Amidst all the wonderful things that came with the church community – friendship, values, service and faith, came an unfortunate side effect of an expectation of conformity to an image of a good Christian kid. As the youngest kid, I think the inferred expectation of having to be a living example was much lower or it just didn’t phase me but I imagine that it was harder for my siblings. As such the feeling of not belonging because they didn’t fit the precise mold began early.

I think about this a lot with my kids. As a side effect of being at home together in this year of pandemic, although sometimes feeling cramped, we have enjoyed the luxury of more time building the base of belonging. Now with schools opening up and more activities available, I am both relieved to see my kids start to branch out and concerned with keeping that feeling of deep connection going. I saw some great advice posted by Tina Payne Bryson, co-author of The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity and Resilience in Your Child: “If you are a parent of a baby or toddler, then I have two big tips for you: 1) Delight in your child. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but find time every day to truly delight in them. 2) Take care of yourself. You matter, too.” It’s great advice because when I delight in my kids, I’m present and celebrating who they are and it not only works for my toddler by also my 5-year-old.

I don’t yet know whether my kids are forest people or tree people. Seeing my family’s experience has taught me that I’m willing to work hard to ensure that my kids know that whichever they are, that we inhabit the same ground, stem from the same Earth and are fed from the same soil. We might not see things from the same perspective but I’m betting that if we know we belong together, we will be willing to share our experience, our lives and our delight. Here’s my hope – if I start with my kids then the goodness of healing will ripple out maybe to my family of origin and then beyond.