Tag: inspiration

Planning: The Vacation Edition

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“Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable.” – Winston Churchill

Miss O has been trying to predict the things she’ll tell her kids she didn’t have when she was young.

After watching a video and wishing she could smell what the person was holding up to the screen, eight-year-old Miss O said, “Someday I’ll be telling my kids that back in the day, we couldn’t smell our videos.”

Hey, it’s as good as anything I could come up with. In fact, I’m a terrible prognosticator. But I’m pretty good at figuring out a plan for things as they pop up.

Which made the podcast conversation Vicki and I had with blogger, writer, and planner, Brian Hannon, (Writing from the Heart with Brian) even more fun. Brian told us about how he plans family trips. He comes up with solid options and then his fellow travelers enthusiastically respond.

Well, that’s the idea at least. So, we talked about what it actually looks like to be a planner who is coaxing everyone along.

Brian brought forward the beautiful sense of calm that comes with having something on the horizon to look forward to. And we talked about how to blend planning and spontaneity.

This is a great podcast episode for the beginning of summer. Brian’s fantastic story-telling sparks our juices for how to enjoy our planned and unplanned vacations!

So I know you’ll enjoy the scenic and beautiful places we go when we share the power of story.

Here’s a sneak peek – you’ll love it! But don’t lean in – our videos don’t have any smell…yet!

Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts OR Listen to it from your computer on Anchor Episode 73: Planning It Out with Brian Hannon

Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

Links for this Episode:

Episode 73: Planning It Out with Brian Hannon on Anchor

Two Kinds of People by Brian Hannon

Brian’s blog: Writing from the Heart with Brian

Vicki’s personal blog: Victoria Ponders

Vicki’s recently released book: Surviving Sue

Wynne’s book about her beloved father: Finding My Father’s Faith

Other podcast episodes featuring Brian Hannon:

Episode 58: Creative Heart with Brian Hannon

Episode 44: Hot Tips for Writing About Family with Brian Hannon

Episode 34: How to Write Family Narratives with Brian Hannon

Episode 17: Building a Base with Brian Hannon

Observable Characters

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“Nothing is more painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” – Mary Shelley

“What are you going to be when you grow up?” must be the most frequent question my young kids are asked. For adults that don’t really know them, it’s a good conversation starter. But I think it also indicates how attached our identities are to our work.

It’s what Vicki Atkinson and I talk about in this week’s episode of the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast. Identity at the unemployment office.

One of the fascinating positions that Vicki has held is as a career counselor at the unemployment office. She gives us a glimpse into how the jobs we do become our identity by telling us the stories of some of the people who she coached.

We talk about how being a helper or a boss manifests even when someone is no longer doing that job.

I love Vicki’s powers of observation and ability to draw thru lines – talents that show up when she writes, tells stories, and in the many professional roles she has played.

Here’s a snippet of the podcast where Vicki tells me about the people she met at the unemployment office (with captions so you don’t even have to have the sound on):

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 starts with someone telling a story in each episode.

Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts OR Listen to it from your computer on Anchor Episode 72: Smiles from the Unemployment Office

Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

Links for this Episode:

Episode 72: Smiles from the Unemployment Office on Anchor

Vicki’s personal blog: Victoria Ponders

Vicki’s post: Different is Good

Vicki’s book: Surviving Sue

Wynne’s book about her beloved father: Finding My Father’s Faith

Related podcast episodes:

Episode 71:  Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki

Episode 70: “A” is For Ambivalence with Vicki and Wynne

Episode 69: All You Have To Do Is Ask with Wynne and Vicki

Safety in Stories

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“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So, write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can.” – Neil Gaiman

Three stories that have come up recently in my house…

#1

Four-year-old Mr. D loves telling the story about the parking ticket I recently got outside my mom’s apartment. Even though I have the pay-to-park app on my phone, I choose not to pay thinking we’d only be inside for 15 minutes. It’s a story I’d rather not think about given that I ended up paying $43 instead of the $2, but I have to admit, he’s told it so many times that it’s starting to get funny.

#2

The other day, Mr. D wanted to wear shoes with laces and put them on himself. He got them on and then tied about 10 overhand knots as we drove to school. I heard him in the back seat say, “Yeah, that looks good.”

#3

We bought a small red velvet cake at the grocery store recently. When eight-year-old Miss O had a slice of it, she pushed all the cream cheese frosting to the side. I asked if she didn’t care for it. When she said she didn’t, I swiped up a finger full. “Ugh,” she groaned and then added, “Sorry, didn’t mean to ‘yuck’ your ‘yum.’”

The Point

One of the things that I aim for in my house, is that we can express ourselves without judgment. That is, I want to be the place where the kids can tell their stories without worrying how they land.

The funny thing is that it’s had a bonus effect on me where I have to get to talk about the bonehead mistakes I make (like the parking ticket.) I’ve found it’s helped greatly to learn to not let my inner editor curate only the stories I want to talk about.

The Bonus

When I talk with my dear friend and podcast partner, Vicki, I get the boost of knowing she is a really safe person to tell stories to. Not that I always communicate well the first time, but she is such a good and encouraging listener, she brings out the vulnerable and brave me.

By contrast, in our most recent podcast, Episode 71, Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki, we talk about the unexpected responses we sometimes get to our stories.

I know I’m not alone in being surprised sometimes by how a story is received. We tell about an experience to a person or persons and then are shocked at how it lands. We thought it was funny and they thought it stupid. We thought it was deep and they only appreciate the surface. Whatever it is, it is out of our control for better or worse.

When our inner editor starts curating the content we share, we sometimes short-circuit our ability to be fully seen. So Vicki and I talk about the healing effect of telling our stories, no matter how they land.

Here’s a snippet of the podcast where I tell Vicki about a recent exchange of stories with a long-time friend (6 minutes with subtitles so you don’t have to have the sound on):

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 starts with someone telling a story in each episode.

Search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or Pocket Casts OR Listen to it from your computer on Anchor Episode 71: Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki

Or subscribe to our YouTube channel to see a video clip of each story: @SharingtheHeartoftheMatter.

Episode 71 transcript of the podcast

Links for this Episode:

Episode 71: Catching an Edge with Wynne and Vicki on Anchor

Vicki’s personal blog: Victoria Ponders

Vicki’s recently released book: Surviving Sue

Wynne’s book about her beloved father: Finding My Father’s Faith

(featured photo is Mr. D’s well-tied shoes)

It’s Just Like Riding a Bike

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“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.” – Maya Angelou

Riding bikes with my kids has given me a new appreciation for the learning process. That is to say, I’ve come to see “two steps forward, one step back,” in a more growth-minded way.

I bought eight-year-old Miss O a bigger bike (24 inch wheel) with gears. She hopped on and owned it. It was like she aged five years in that one move because it was bigger and sat her up higher.

As a result, four-your old Mr. D got her old bike, a medium sized bike (18 inch wheel). I moved the training wheels over from his small bike. But even with training wheels, he got a huge boost in confidence and speed from having a bigger sprocket.

We’ve spent the week riding everywhere and in all sorts of conditions. We’ve gone round the block so many times we must have worn a groove. Then one night we rode around our local little lake to get pizza. The next night we went up the hill to get pie. All the while, I’m riding behind Mr. D watching him wobble back and forth before he gains his balance, my fingers crossed that the training wheels will hold.

Then, we got the small bike out of the garage to pass on to another kid in the neighborhood. Mr. D hopped on his old bike, now without training wheels.

I held the back of the small bike for a moment. Before any of us could really think about it, Mr. D took off – riding the bike without training wheels. So, Miss O and I took turns running up and down the block a dozen times holding the seat for the start until Mr. D mastered that too.

All this has made me think of the rhythm of growth. Sometimes you have to go back a step to see how far you’ve gone.

It makes me think of the feeling I get when I go back to the town where I went to high school. With the swirl of old memories all around, it’s easier to see where I’ve grown.

Or when I dust off an old favorite recipe and discover how I’m better at trusting the timing.

Or when I hike a familiar trail and feel the burn of my muscles within the certainty that I can make the summit.

Or when I re-read something I wrote years ago and I can discern how it’s gotten easier to put my authentic self on the page.

Sometimes we have to go back to figure out how much we’ve learned.

In Our Element

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“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung

We rented an AirBnB over the weekend that touted bunk beds in the laundry room. Clearly the charm of this place lay in its location on a beach on Whidbey Island. And that it accepted dogs.

Mr. D has been calmed by water since day one. The babies that don’t like their first bath? Nope, not Mr. D. What did we do for at least an hour on his first day of daycare? Play in water.

I watched him this weekend pouring water with a clam shell for thirty minutes from one hole to another and then back. An incredibly long time for a four-year-old to stay with one focus. If it weren’t for the tide coming in, it looked like he would have done it for hours.

I wonder if we all have an element we are born with that calls to us. For Miss O, it seems to be singing. First mine and my mom’s, and now her own.

If given the option between beaches and mountains, I’d say “mountains.” One step onto a hiking trail and my stress level drops by five notches. Every step gives me further improvement in my mental health, resilience, and sense of humor.

But I’ve spent more time on these rugged beaches of the Pacific NW than mountains since I’ve had kids. And I’ve found the beaches remind me to breathe out all the stale air I hold in. Whether it’s because Mr. D has water and Miss O can sing by the campfire, or because I can walk along the sea and the surf, I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it works magic.

Who cares if the bunk beds are in the laundry room if the location puts us in our element?

(featured photo is mine – Mr. D by the sea)

Lost and Found People

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“The good road and the road of difficulties, you have made me cross; and where they cross, the place is holy.” – Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Medicine Man

The other day I was sitting at the kitchen table with Miss O. One of the 20-somethings in our lives had just shared with us that she was pregnant and Miss O was so excited.

She asked, “Mommy, how did you tell Nana [my mom] that you were pregnant with me?”

I replied, “Well, it wasn’t that much of a surprise with IVF because she knew I went in to have an embryo implanted. Then 10 days later they did a blood test to determine whether I was pregnant. So I think I called her or I texted her.”

Then she surprisingly asked, “And she was happy?”

Trying to figure out the phrasing, I raised an eyebrow and replied. “She was thrilled.”

And then Miss O revealed why she’d asked like that, “Even though Bumpa [my dad] had just died?”

Oohhh, she was putting together the news with the story that she already knew which is that my dad died just as I was getting pregnant with her.

And then, my not quite 9-year-old daughter, replied, “We are the lost and found people.”

Whoa.

I’ve often thought of those months when I was writing a book about my dad, his remarkable life, our connection, and the reward for being open with him when Miss O was in utero. It felt like a dance between birth and death. I was saying good-bye to having him present in life as I waited for Miss O to come. Such a sacred dance.

But Miss O’s comment about lost and found people made me think that maybe we all are. It seems like many new chapters are ushered in after we’ve given something up: a job, a partner, a story we believe about ourself.

And then, when we’ve given it up, we can proceed. Seems like the trick is not to get mired in the lost, so that we keep working towards the found.

We are the lost and found people. I couldn’t be more grateful to my beautiful daughter for pointing that out.

(featured photo is my dad and me when I was 2-years-old)

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.

Endurance Versus Enjoyment

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“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt

This was originally published on 4/26/2023. Heads up – you may have already read this.

I was recently reminded of the time I did a long-distance bike trip on a bike with mountain biking tires. Here’s how that colossal misjudgment came to happen.

The first time I did a really intense workout to prepare for an upcoming mountain climb, my legs were shaking, I thought I’d pass out or throw up, possibly both, and instead I hung in there with the thought, “I can do anything for 20 minutes.”

And I could. So when it came to the next progression in the training, a fast, steep hike, I was equally as wobbly but thought, “I can do anything for a couple of hours.”

By the time it came to actually climb the mountain, I arrived with a 50-pound pack and the mantra, “I can do anything for two days.” I didn’t summit the mountain on that particular attempt but I did prove that I could endure for two days.

So when a friend invited me to do a long-distance bike ride down the California coast and my work schedule meant I could only be on the trip for two days. I thought, “No problem, I can do anything for two days.” It seemed to me that biking is very similar to mountain climbing – takes a lot of leg strength and more importantly, the same endurance muscle.

But I didn’t think long-distance biking was going to be the mainstay of my hobbies so when it came to shipping my bike to the starting point, for reasons of time and money, plus a little ignorance, I just sent my bike that had mountain bike tires. Not super heavy duty, grip the trail mountain biking tires but grippy enough to have a high amount on friction on a paved surface.

By lunch on the first day of the bike trip, my legs were completely gassed. I don’t think I’d experienced that level of fatigue even on the toughest mountain climb I’d done. I made it to the end of the day and then had to immerse myself in an ice bath to have any hope of getting my muscles flushed and restored to ride the second day.

But hey, I can do anything for two days and I made it.

Which is to say, it was a good lesson in endurance. Now when I look at a particular phase with my children that is getting my goat, I think “I can do anything for two years.”

But, and this is a big one for me, I’ve learned that enduring and enjoying are two different things.

On a recent Sunday morning, I was at home with my kids who are now 7 and 3 years old, and they were happily engaged with each other on a project. It left me with 20 minutes of discretionary free time and I was thrilled. As I actually took my time with some self-care, I marveled at the feeling of freedom and enjoyment I was experiencing.

That’s when it hit me. I thought “I can do anything for 20 minutes.” But that’s “anything” said with a sense of wonder and good fortune of an unexpected gift. That’s “anything” that acknowledges the enjoyment that comes with a little lessening of the strictures I tighten around myself. That’s “anything” that remembers that life is to be enjoyed and not just endured.

I’m so good at putting my head down and grinding out the miles to the end of the planned route each day. But it’s completely different training to raise my nostrils to the wind and my eyes to the scenery and notice each mile as it goes by. It’s a practice that is a lot less of a dramatic story tell but instead makes for a story worth telling.

So on Sunday, with a nod to the authors of The Power of Awe, I intentionally savored having unexpected moments to myself and micro-dosed some mindfulness full of gratitude and enjoyment and that made the experience even more impactful.

So I’m entering a new phase of training, one where I’m allowing myself the freedom and unscripted time so “I can do anything for 20 minutes.” I’d like to work up to “I can do anything for 2 days” but I’m taking my workouts slowly.

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.

The Glass is Refillable

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“Only the closed mind is certain.” – Dean Spanley

This was previously published on 9/28/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

I was traveling last week, something I haven’t done without my kids in 7 years. I’d perfectly engineered the school drop-off and transfer to the nanny, filled the fridge with food, done all the laundry, and even unloaded the dishwasher. I thought I had everything well in-hand.

But then I got to the airport and all my planning fell like a stack of cards. My flight was delayed. My transportation to the hotel when I arrived at the destination changed so I needed a last minute rental car. I took a wrong turn and had to back up in a strange car on a dark road. I didn’t know how to navigate New Jersey turnpike tolls and was guessing. I got to the hotel so late that they were no longer serving food so I ended up eating the cup-of-soup noodles you get by pouring hot water over and they are only marginally less chewy than styrofoam. Then as I gave up and just tried to sleep, I could hear a very faint security beep if I lay on my left side so I had to only lie on my right. Anytime I forgot and turned over, I woke up.

I was tired, pissy, disappointed and completely spent.

More than that – I was surprised. My congenital optimism as described in  Rose-Colored Glasses had predicted none of this. When a couple of days later I talked this over with my friend who is a self-proclaimed pessimist, I asked if optimists and pessimists suffer the same amount: optimists from disappointment and pessimists from catastrophizing.

My friend asked something like, “Why can’t you set your expectations differently?” Well, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get that right either. I could imagine how things would go wrong but I doubt I’d be any closer to reality.

“People who wonder if the glass is half empty or full miss the point. The glass is refillable.”

unknown

Refillable – yes! But first I have to empty it of all the bubbly stuff I put in there to begin with. What works for me is to get up every morning and meditate to make friends with uncertainty. That practice of mindfulness helps me to embrace that I have no idea how things are going to unfold, no matter how much I’ve planned…or maybe even more poignantly, how much I’ve dreamed.

Whether we come at it from a perspective that everything is going to be great or that nothing is going to work, the truth remains that we don’t know. Even the people that I’ve met who identify as realists don’t know how something will unfold. Being optimists, pessimists or realists might set the tone of how we feel about the day before us but the mystery of life remains that we can’t predict how life will turn before us.

This brings to me something I heard Franciscan Priest Father Richard Rohr say about certitude.

“The thing called certitude is a product of the enlightenment, and it did so many good things for us, science and medicine but it made us feel that we have a right to something that we really don’t. Our ancient ancestors grew up without expecting that. So they were much more easily able to hold on to mystery in general, God in particular. Whereas we worship workability, predictability, answers – we like answers.

We think we have a right to certitude.”

Father Richard Rohr

With the help of meditation, I come back to knowing that I don’t know and then I feel more able to improvise. When I touch uncertainty, I let go of my plans. When I empty my head and hands of the vision of me being in charge, I more readily accept the mystery unfolding before me.

The glass is refillable. Indeed it is. I concede that it might be my optimism that gets me up and ready to practice refilling it. But whatever it is, I have to work at it every day, meditating in order to make friends with uncertainty in a practice to embrace the mystery again and again.

Meditating on uncertainty on my recent trip helped me enjoy the experience: it wasn’t as I had expected but it had lots of twists and turns that fed me in significant way. That interpretation might sound optimistic but it’s much deeper than that – its meaningful. And isn’t that part of what we ultimately want from life?

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Most Important Work

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“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.” – C. S. Lewis

Sometimes I think Hallmark has it backwards. Take Mother’s Day for example. My kids didn’t do anything to choose me. I, on the other hand, took a very intentional path to become a mom.

From the realization that I wanted to have kids later in life because I cried whenever I saw Princess Kate pregnant with her oldest child nine years ago, to deciding to do it without a partner (for now), then through IVF three times (I had one miscarriage), I made very deliberate choices to parenthood. I couldn’t be more grateful that I’m a mom.

Here’s the top three reasons why:

I’m so much healthier

You didn’t know me before I had kids. I didn’t write in the period of life when I was numbing my feelings with wine every night. Meditation changed that pattern so that I had a different way to irrigate my irritations.

But having kids has given me so much more practice. That’s a funny sentence. I didn’t mean that they give me many more irritations to irrigate but on some days that’s true too.

Mostly I meant that these beautiful and honest beings have shown me what emotional honesty is. By helping them name their emotions, I’ve learned how to name and feel mine too.

Every day is an adventure

I’m a creature of habit. Without kids, I’d have likely continued my pattern – hike every Saturday, do a big trip every two years. Like my trips to Everest Base Camp, climbing the Via Ferrata routes in the Dolomites, or biking from Vermont to Canada to New York – great trips that totaled about two weeks out of every 104.

But with kids – every day is an adventure of curiosity and learning. We rescue bunnies, dig in the dirt, ride bikes, or sell lemonade. I’m learning to be flexible and adventurous on a daily basis instead of a bi-annual one.

Big messy love

Parenting is the messiest form of love I’ve known. Not just sticky hands and faces but so much laundry, picking up detritus, territorial incursions because of changing boundaries, and spilled over spats between siblings.

But it seems to me, that the messiness that makes it stick like Velcro instead of slide off like a glossy surface. It’s proof that nobody is perfect any we love each other anyway. The repetitiveness reminds me how many chances we have to get it right. Over and over we make a mess. And over and over we get to come together and make it right.

The news has all sorts of stories about what isn’t working in this world. But then a day like Mother’s Day comes around and I look at all the people who are trying their best to love wholeheartedly – with young kids, and old kids, and/or other people’s kids. For me it’s a celebration that love wins.