Tag: inspiration

Light, Water & Soil

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“People grow when they are loved well. If you want to help others heal, love them without an agenda.” – Mike McHargue

When I picked Miss O up from school the other day she handed me her mystery science project. It was a little plant in a shot size plastic cup. The experiment was for each table of two kids to divide up – one would leave their plant in the light and the other would put their plant in a dark cupboard for a week. They made predictions about what would happen.

Miss O’s plant was a little radish seedling that had been in the dark cupboard for a week so I was surprised to see that it had three little shoots popping through the meager soil. Miss O’s conclusion about why her plant survived the dark cupboard was that it could survive there but not thrive.

As she handed it to me, Miss O said to be really careful. She was super proud that it had survived. And I promptly bumped my hand and spilled it all over the seat. I scooped the little dirt back in, apologizing and trying to restore calm.

Then I handed it back to Miss O in the back seat and she spilled it. Holy cow – if this plant survived, it was going to be a miracle, not science! But I scooped it up once more and when we got home, put a little fresh dirt in, watered it and put it in the windowsill.

All the while I was thinking about the conditions for growth. I hazard to guess that we’ve all been in the dark cupboard for a week. I think I was in there for a couple of years as I went through my divorce and before I found meditation.

But when we make it through, what do we need to really thrive? For me, it’s meditation, sleep, time in nature, playing with my kids, and conversations with deep and thoughtful friends (online or in real life).

I often poison my soil by eating too much sugar and spending too much time in front of a computer but when I balance it out, I can feel my roots growing deeper.

Amazingly, Miss O’s little plant is doing great in the windowsill. If it keeps growing this way, it’s going to need a different container but I suppose we humans do that too as we navigate the different phases of life.

Getting the Best of My Common Sense

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“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” – Bertrand Russell

My 83-year-old mom had a ping pong accident this week. One minute she was playing a game at her senior residence and the next she dove for the ball, fell on a cot-like thing, hit the rail with her back and was injured enough that the firemen, paramedics and ambulance came and she was on her way to the hospital.

She’s out of the hospital now and doing fine. With a couple of cracked ribs and a little bit of bleeding, the injury is painful but nowhere near as serious as it could have been. She’s chalked the whole thing up to “her competitive nature getting the best of her common sense.”

I’m fascinated by that phrase because I can think of any number of things that have gotten the best of my common sense. Usually pride and stubbornness because I’m not particularly competitive. All the times I’ve carried too much (I’m thinking of my post about efficiency), haven’t asked for help, and stayed at something far too long.

And it seems to be passed down in families. The other day Miss O wasn’t feeling well and I asked her if she wanted to cancel anything or take a rest and her answer could have come right from my mouth. “NO! I’m fine, I’ve got this!”

On the other hand, the things I do out of love almost never make common sense. I’m thinking of the time I celebrated my friend Phil’s 400th ascent of Mt Rainier by buying 400 of each his favorite mountaineering provisions. The cough drops and tea bags were fine but the chips and the cookies were quite voluminous so that I ended up delivering 8 storage bins full of stuff.

In honor of my mom, I’m taking a deeper look at what gets the best of my common sense. For the times I extend myself out of love, I’m keeping it. But if I’m extending myself out of duty or pride, I’m going to try to let it go.

Because sometimes when we lunge for things we end up in the hospital. The good thing about taking a dive at a senior residence is that there’s a good portion of the population that can’t remember the gossip. A woman with a great sense of humor but maybe not such a good memory said to my mom when she returned from the hospital, “I heard something about you but now I can’t remember what.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

Keep Small Things Small

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“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” – Toni Morrison

The other day Mr D was upset and Miss O shared the wisdom, “Keep small things small.” I was taken by the phrase and asked her to tell me more after we got past our speed bump.

“It’s something Ms. Park says,” she elaborated providing the example that her second grade teacher, Ms. Park, said it the other day when there was a fly in the classroom. All the kids in the first row were trying to “attack it,” in Miss O’s words and Ms. Park wanted them to settle down. “Keep small things small.”

I thought of the parking problem I had the other day when I was turning around to take the space and someone slid right in. I was on the verge of making it a bigger story about how tough life is when someone made me laugh and I let it go.

It also reminded me of when Mr. D punched his sister in the gut the other day as they were wrestling. She said it hurt and he said he was sorry and they moved on. If they continue to be able to do that, it seems less likely that they’ll create a pattern of feeling disrespected and hurt that has plagued my siblings’ relationship in adulthood.

Keeping small things small speaks to me of airing wounds before they fester, identifying patterns before they become bad habits, stopping the internal dialogue before it goes on a self-critical rampage. It helps nail me to the present before I pile on added layers of time and repetition until whatever it is that is bugging me becomes unrecognizable. It means don’t hurt myself trying to attack a fly, whatever the metaphorical fly may be.

So here’s a new note to self courtesy of classroom 219 and all our brilliant and dedicated teachers: “Keep small things small.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Coming Radiance

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I’m not sure how many of you also followed Martha Hendricks of the White Hair Grace blog so forgive me for introducing someone you might already know. But for anyone who wasn’t, Martha was an 80-year-old blogger with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and sharing the stories of getting old gracefully. She had a lot of roles in her life. In her words, she was “professional classical singer; a Norwegian rosemaler; a pastor. And now a writer. “

I say “was” because she passed away this past August. But not before penning an incredible post that is as much about living as it is dying. So I’m reblogging this beautiful writing from an lovely woman:

whitehairgrace's avatarwhite hair grace

Dear friends, I am Martha’s eldest son posting these final words that mom felt she needed to share. She wrote this post August 12th, but didn’t publish it. My mom passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family this past Sunday, August 21st. She so loved writing this blog and sharing her life with all of you. Thank you all for the joy you gave her. She is with her beloved Dwight once again.

“Learning to be still, to be really still, and let life happen – that stillness becomes radiance.”

Morgan Freeman

My dear readers and followers – Hello again! Surprise!

When I wrote my last blog in May and closed out my White Hair Grace page, I thought that my work of seeking out the miracles of grace had reached a kind of natural conclusion. Of course, the best of intentions meet up with life’s larger plans, and here…

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Taking Risks

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“Sometimes it’s riskier not to take a risk. Sometimes all you’re guaranteeing is that things will stay the same.” – Danny Wallace

A few years ago, a man fell into the crater of Mt. St. Helens while taking a summit picture. He was standing too close to the edge when a huge piece of corniced snow fell off taking him with it.

When I heard the news, I thought, “Oh geez, I probably stood on just corniced snow there too.” On St. Helens, which blew a great deal of its top off when it erupted in 1980, it’s hard to tell where the actual rim is and the pull to look into the crater is powerful.

Taking risks, hopefully wiser ones than that, is the subject of my Wise & Shine post this week: Life: Risky Business.

(featured photo is me on the rim of Mt. St. Helens)

Wind Beneath My Wings

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“There are two types of tired. One that requires rest and one that requires peace.” – unknown

On this past Friday morning it was clear that Mr. D had caught a bug. But his 3-year-old brain hadn’t quite registered that he wasn’t feeling well yet and had big plans to go outside without a coat on to collect rocks and leaves to paint.

Fortunately I had just listened to a great Ten Percent Happier podcast that featured Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University with appointments to Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She was explaining that the primary function of our brain, evolutionarily speaking, is allostasis, “to predict and anticipate the needs of the body and attempt to meet those needs before they arise.” So the brain is trying to determine the salt, glucose and oxygen needs of the body and predictively distribute those resources as appropriate.

Dr. Barrett used the metaphor of body budgeting to expand on this concept. There are activities that expensive: learning new things, experiencing persistent uncertainty, exercising, and stress. And there are some things that are savings deposits: drinking water, sleeping, eating healthy foods. If I understand this metaphor correctly, the brain is trying to balance the budget and needs the deposits to outweigh the spending.

She also added that it’s not only our body that spends the budget but other people influence the system. Others can be a tax that deplete the account or they can be a sale –  they can make things cost less for those around them.

Isn’t that a great idea? And I imagine if you are like me, people spring to mind that tax you as do the ones that make life easier. Now I’m hearing Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Middler. 

That whole image has me inspired not to be a tax, but instead a sale – to make expensive things, biologically speaking, cost less for others. We can support them as they learn, go along when they exercise and pour a glass of water when they need it most. And while we’re at it – we can do it for ourselves, as well.

Which brings me back to Mr. D wanting to go outside. I got him bundled him and we compromised that he’d ride in the stroller. We hadn’t been out for more than 15 minutes when he started really feeling tired and crummy. For the rest of the afternoon, he alternated napping and snuggling on my lap so I had plenty of time to contemplate how children know and accept letting other people help balance their systems.

Yet another thing I’m learning from my kids.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Singing To the Other Side

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“The patterns we perceive are determined by the stories we want to believe.” – John Verndon

Last Friday before school, Mr. D didn’t want to come out of his room. He said there were monsters in the hallway. In a hurry to get the kids fed and ready for school, my plan was just to let him sit on his side of the door until he was ready to come out. But Miss O sat down outside his door and started singing “Do you want to build a snowman?” from the movie Frozen.

I have been reading The Persuaders after hearing a great podcast with Anand Giridharadas on Unlocking Us with Brené Brown and it helped me to see her efforts in a new light. She was meeting Mr. D where he was at, applying the song to the situation at hand.

It seems fitting on this day before mid-term elections to talk about this book in which Giridharadas, a former correspondent for the NY Times, talks about what he sees as the biggest danger to democracy – dismissing each other. When we stop believing that we can have fruitful discussions, we stop talking to each other.

Instead he interviews community organizers who are on the ground working for change and tells their stories of what works. One of the main points being meeting people where they are at – not expecting that we’ll all talk from the same language, perspective and assumptions. From there we can have conversations that move us all along.

Here’s where I admit that I haven’t finished the book. But it makes sense to me that when we are more united because we talk to each other, it’s harder for people to stoke the divide in our politics, whether it be politicians or trolls. Giridharadas spends time detailing what the Russians did with their troll farms in 2016 and I thought it was fascinating that a large part of what they did with their far-left and far-right trolls was to foment disgust about the other side. Much of what they tweeted about wasn’t facts – more like gossip that was like “Can you believe what the other side thinks?”

What I love about what Miss O’s effort is that she didn’t just leave Mr. D sitting on the other side of the door. She didn’t walk away and just leave him alone to do it his way, but instead through a little song that is sweetly sad, made him laugh and want to join in. It took her 44 seconds to get him to come out – I know, because I took a video.

Meeting people where they were at was a special talent of my dad’s as well. On this eighth anniversary of his death, I find it warming to write about how that skill is playing out across generations and if we make an attempt, can make a difference in our communities too.

Do You Want To Build a Snowman?

Do you want to build a snowman?
Come on let’s go and play
I never see you anymore
Come out the door
It’s like you’ve gone away!
We used to be best buddies
And now we’re not
I wish you would tell me why.
Do you want to build a snowman?
It doesn’t have to be a snowman

The Price of Learning

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“Living is the art of getting used to what we didn’t expect.” – Eleanor C. Wood

The other day my friend Katie asked Miss O what she’s been learning in second grade. Miss O said that she’s been learning a lot about coins. Not only the value of each one but adding them up – they are doing a lot of math using coins.

This reminded me of the experiment I tried with Miss O based on a beautiful post written by Chaya Sheela. In the post, When my children were rewarded with the Westminster family, she recounted how her kids learned to save and the bank awarded them with new ceramic pig figurines. Chaya is an experienced and talented teacher as well as beautiful writer so she inspired me to try something new with my kids.

Drawing from her wonderful story, I thought I’d try to create a similar lesson for Miss O about making buying decisions when we went clothes shopping. At the store I told her she had $100 for buying the clothes and shoes she needed. Anything that she didn’t spend of that money was hers to keep and save. My estimate was that she’d spend about $45 on a good pair of sneakers and $45 on clothes and have about $10 left over.

We went through the clothing and it worked. After we calculated the prices out, instead of buying six items, two of which were very similar to things she already had, Miss O decided to buy only four. It reduced the total to about $30 instead of $45.

But then we looked and looked for a pair of sneakers that would fit her narrow foot. And with all the choices, we never found a pair that was just right. I loved that she was being responsible about finding a pair of shoes that would really work and last for the year.

But it meant when we went through checkout and she paid for everything, she pocketed $70. I reminded her many times that she’d have to use that money to buy sneakers when we found a good pair that fit.

Eventually we went to multiple stores, found the right pair and she used the money to pay for them. But she’s been telling people that she pays for her own shoes even since. 😊

So I’d say she’s doing fine in the money and math department. If that’s all they teach in second grade she’s going to do fine and I’m grateful that it’s the school teaching, not me.

However, Mr. D swallowed a penny yesterday so it seems like we are all learning about coins, one way or another.

It Starts Small

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“In some ways, repeated acts of kindness are preferable to solitary, extraordinary and heroic acts of sacrifice.” – Malcolm Gladwell

It was almost exactly three years ago when I invited a family of strangers to come stay with me for an extended period of time. Here’s how it happened. A young woman attending the university near me was hit by a car while she was jogging. It threw her 30 feet onto a walking path and shattered much of the upper left side of her body – shoulder and neck, resulted in a brain injury and the need to fuse her spine to the base of her skull.

The young woman’s mother, Dawn, lived in Minneapolis and immediately flew out to be with her daughter. I’d never met Dawn but she was a friend of a friend and I’d heard she was sleeping first in the hospital room and then on the floor of her daughter’s room during the recovery so I invited her to use my guest bedroom anytime she needed a good night’s sleep.

Dawn came and then the injured young woman’s living situation got complicated, the young woman came to stay as well. Then the young woman’s boyfriend came for a few weeks when he had a break from school. And on some nights her brother who also lived in the area came to stay too.

They’d joke with me, “Who invites a family of people that they don’t know to come stay with them when they have a 4-month-old baby?” And I’d joke back – “To be fair, my son was only 2-months-old when I invited you.”

I recently heard a segment on kindness and sacrifice with Malcolm Gladwell on a Ten Percent Happier podcast that gave me a interesting perspective on why it was do-able to invite this family to live with me and maybe even why I did.

When Malcom Gladwell was in high school, his parents along with about eight others, sponsored three Vietnamese refugees to come live in Southern Ontario. Malcolm remembers this as a magical kind of experience so he went back to talk to those families about it and gather the stories. Here was his take:

“I was struck by how untraumatic the stories were. That nobody gave up their lives to bring in these people. Nobody took on an extra job to support them. No one. It was this kind of lots of people do small acts that added up to something big thing.”

Malcolm Gladwell on Ten Percent Happier

And that matched my experience. First of all, what I did was simple and small – it was just one single woman inviting another single woman to stay when she could. I didn’t invite a family of four strangers to stay with me for ten weeks – I worked up to that.

The second part was that it didn’t require any sacrifice for me. That is to say, Dawn and her kids were self-sufficient and supportive. My guest bedroom and the little nook on the top floor were not being used. More than that, Dawn would hold my baby on her lap every morning while she checked for email and I made breakfast and the whole family provided entertainment for Miss O who at four-years-old was undergoing a major transition of accepting a new brother into the house.

Then Gladwell noted that there was a hereditary component to what his parents had done. Both his mother and father had welcomed in strangers in their respective homes when they were kids and then when his mother went from Jamaica to school in England, she was welcomed in people’s houses. As Gladwell summarized:

“It was thing kind of practice that was being passed down from generation to generation. Not some kind of heroic thing but just what you do as a human being is you welcome strangers into your home. I see that kind of hereditary practice as being a powerful part of how kindness persists in the world. That you see it being modeled and it becomes part of your repertoire of behavior.”

Malcolm Gladwell on Ten Percent Happier

This resonated with me as well because when I was a senior in high school and my dad took a job as a pastor across the state, my best friend’s family invited me to live with them for the year and so I was the recipient of a similar act of kindness.

Gladwell also reflected on the necessity of kindness having to be do-able to be sustainable and spreadable. If we think we have to do huge things to be kind, it’s less likely to happen. Deb from the Closer to the Edge blog has often remarked that its little things that can make such a difference. And that’s how Malcolm Gladwell summarized it as well:

“In some ways, repeated acts of kindness are preferable to solitary, extraordinary and heroic acts of sacrifice.”

Dawn and her family are now an extended part of my family. Incredible people who touched our lives deeply. I got to experience that gift because it started small, it didn’t require sacrifice and was part of my history to welcome and be welcomed into other people’s homes. Apparently that is part of the formula for how kindness catches fire and spreads!

What’s your experience with acts of kindness?

(featured photo is the pile of shoes that would accumulate at my door when I had these guests and it came to symbolize when my house and my heart was full)