Tag: love

Waiting for the Big Answers

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“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” – Kahlil Gibran

This was originally published on 8/24/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

My 7-year-old daughter asked me the other day, “You know how I want to be a teenager?” After a pause for me to nod my head she asked, “Do teenagers want to be kids?” I explained that teenagers want to be adults.

This is just the latest of her big questions: Where will I go to college? Who should I marry? How many kids will I have? When we get a dog, will it be so excited to see me every day after school?

And I completely understand because I have big questions of my own: Will I fall in love again? Will I be around to see my kids answer their big questions? And every time I’ve stood at the base of a mountain ready to climb, I’ve always wanted to know, before I’ve even taken the first step, whether or not I’ll summit.

Like my daughter, I want to know how the story ends. Except that I don’t want it to be the end. In the worst moments when I get too attached to how I want it to work out, it makes me anxious and keeps me up at night as my brain tries to cycle through the permutations of how to control things.

In those moments, I’m not a very good Buddheo-Christian. That is to say, I know our spiritual traditions teach us that peace comes when we leave the outcome up to the Universe. As Buddha said, “Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.” Or in the Christian tradition, I think of “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.” (Philippians 4:4). But I have a sports metaphor that helps me settle into the tension.

In 2001 my brother and I gave my dad tickets for the US Open Tennis Tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York. We spent the week together in the great city of New York, eating fabulous meals and watching great tennis.

The pinnacle of our experience was a night match on September 5th between Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. The three of us sat high in the stands watching this amazing quarter-final between two great players: Pete, one of the best servers in tennis, wearing white, Andre one of the best returners in the sport, wearing black. Both were playing their A-game so as the first set unfolded, they each held serve and the set was decided by a tie-breaker that Agassi won. The second set started and again each man held serve but this time, Sampras won the tie-breaker.

One set each, nobody had lost serve and the tension in the stadium was palpable. It felt like whatever allegiances we came in with, no one was sure any longer who to root for because they were both great. The third set continued, both held serve and Sampras won the tie-break.

So it went to the fourth set. Again, they both held serve and we reached the fourth set tie-break. Here’s how Andre Agassi recalls what happens next in his memoir:

“We’ve played three hours, and neither of us has yet broken the other’s serve. It’s after midnight. The fans – 23,000 plus – rise. They won’t let us start the fourth tiebreak. Stomping and clapping, they’re staging their own tiebreak. Before we press on they want to say thanks.”

Open by Andre Agassi

I can remember feeling the tension. I started the match as an Agassi fan but somehow witnessing this great effort, I dropped my expectations and no longer wanted the answer to the big question. And yet it came – Sampras won the 4th set tiebreaker and the match.

That matched happen 6 days before 9/11. Not only did we not know what would happen with the match, but we also had no idea that the biggest terrorist attack on American soil was about to occur and change NYC forever. Had we known, we wouldn’t have sat and watched tennis. The weight of foreknowledge would have crushed us and destroyed my ability to learn the lesson of how to drop expectations and just enjoy the tension.

When I get too impatient and want to know the answers to the big questions, I think of that match. Sometimes we need to stomp and clap to stay right in the moment, relieve the tension and stay open to whatever will happen.

I tell my daughter that any flower that tries to open before its ready will rip. Which is too abstract to mean much to her. So I try to participate in the present with her as much as possible so that it becomes like that match, so exciting that you don’t want it to move on. And I learn the same lesson for myself, again and again.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Gratuitous Noise Appreciation

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“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” – Buddha

The other day I was driving to pick up four-year-old Mr. D from preschool with Cooper the puppy riding shotgun. Coop looked at me and then started making noise like he was a cat spitting up a furball. “Khak, khak,” and then came a terrifying pause after which he let out a huge belch, “Gluuuuuuck” followed by a little cough.

Whew! Of course I told Mr. D about it as soon as he got into the car and he made me imitate the sounds for the next five minutes. It made me laugh and think about Click and Clack, the Magliozzi brothers. Remember their show, Car Talk? And they laughed with such glee as they had people describe what noises their cars were making.

And then writing noises down – isn’t that even more fun?

Like my vacuum who frequently chokes on all the puppy hair and traces of mud. It starts wheezing, “runk, runk, runk” til I clean out the filter.

Or the sound of eight-year-old Miss O practicing her hoverboard. “Wheeeee, ooohh.” Then “Clunk” and “ooof” combined as she stops herself against the wall.

As much as I love (and sometimes am overwhelmed by) the sounds coming from my little family, I usually sit in complete silence after my kids have gone to bed. But the other night, there was a rhythmic, and a little creepy, bomp, bomp bomp coming from the dining room. Upon further investigation, it was a balloon from the day bouncing on an air vent.

Early in the morning when I take the dog for a walk, I’m used to the steady patter of January rain. But the other day, it sounded peculiar. It was a “splonk” and “squitz” so I left my hood off to figure it out. It wasn’t actually raining at the moment, so the noise was the houses, trees, bushes, and wires pooling and then shaking off the recent precipitation in fat bursts.

I immediately start smiling when I hear the epic sound tracks for movies like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Out of Africa. But I love the sound track of my life.

Khak, khak, gluuuuck

Runk, runk, runk

Wheee, ooohh, clunk & ooof

Bomp, bomp, bomp

Splonk, squitz

What does your life sound like these days?

What if we could astound ourselves?

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“If we did all the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” – Thomas Edison

I used to work with someone in IT consulting who had a policy of a four hour minimum. Anytime a client would ask him a question, he’d bill at least four hours. He had reasoning to back it up – that switching tasks was time consuming for him and that he wanted clients to think before contacting him or declaring everything to be an emergency.

He came from a family where his father was very successful, monetarily speaking. And my colleague has also raised sons who seem already poised for financial success.

What stands out for me about this colleague is that he had a healthy amount of self regard – more than most people that I’ve met. Speaking for myself, I was raised in a family where humility was a guiding principle. And I’m grateful that it was.

But WHAT IF we could all be audacious for just a minute? What would you say about your skills, talents, and what makes you special and unique if for a brief period of time you could see them without your humble glasses on? What would you say about yourself if you were your best cheerleader?

Would you remark on your ability to do hard things? Or the talent you have for putting others at ease? Could you commend yourself for all the skills you’ve honed with years of practice and patience? Is there any chance you would see your gifts as ones bestowed upon you by God or whomever else you believe gave you them?

AND if, for just a moment we could do that, would we step into bigger roles and bring our talents to bear for others in a way that we aren’t doing?

There is something to be said for being audacious. It doesn’t have to be only for our financial and personal success. It might mean we would use our talent to its fullest extent.  

What if we could set aside our self-limiting beliefs?

Rose-Colored Glasses

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“You know what’s funny? When you look at someone through rose colored glasses all the red flags just look like flags.”- Wanda Pierce

This was previously published on 7/27/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

A few weeks ago I had plans to take my kids to a wedding in Leavenworth, WA a couple of hours away from where I live. On the day we were to leave, my stomach hurt. I chalked it up to a deli sandwich that I’d eaten the day before and loaded the kids into the car anyway. My only concession was to bring a can of Ginger Ale to calm my stomach but I judged my ability to go and take care of two young children was fine because that was as bad as I was going to feel.

I’m a congenital optimist. That is to say, I don’t work at having an optimistic attitude and it took me at least 40 of my 53 years to figure out how deeply my outlook is colored. And even that is an optimistic estimate because I’m still working it out. There are a few things that my optimism has categorically gotten wrong:

  • Dating: Nothing in common? No problem, I just figure that makes it interesting.
  • Traffic: Despite living in a metro area with consistently bad traffic, I always go with the low end estimate of travel time.
  • Weather: When it’s raining, as it does often in Seattle, I think it’s great because that means it going to stop when I want to go out for a walk.

The Ancient Greeks inscribed “Know thyself” at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. I’ve found that self-awareness to be a powerful tool to help correct for my inclinations. Specifically, to help me peel back the rose colored layer that my mind adds to pretty much every scenario. It helps me to add 15 minutes to my travel time, dress appropriately for the weather and realize that I don’t need to sign up for every date.

Even as I’m optimistic that I’ve learned how to adjust for my optimism, life presents me with new opportunities to be self-aware. As I traveled on that trip with my kids out of town, my stomach pains got worse and I had a couple of sleepless nights crammed in a hotel room with my 2-year-old and 6-year-old. Now I realized my optimism had told me that how sick I was when I first got the symptoms was as bad as it was going to get. Oops!

Fortunately, it wasn’t all that bad and I just needed to power through getting us home safely. And since optimism has signed me up for a lot things I think are going to go great and turn out to require a lot of resolve (I can think of at least 2 mountain climbing trips in this category), I am plenty experienced at powering through.

Mark Twain said, “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.” Maybe that’s because if optimism hasn’t killed us before we reach old age, then it’s poor form if we haven’t figured out that it’s all a trick of the mind. I don’t think my optimism is going to ever go away but when I see it now I laugh and say, “Hi, Old Friend!”

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Monster of My Own Making

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“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you in better living conditions.” – Hafiz

Eight-year-old Miss O told me that she is afraid to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night because she’s scared there could be a thief in my walk-in closet.

I told her about being scared of snakes and lava as a kid. I spent two whole years jumping onto my bed from about six feet out so that the King Cobras wouldn’t get me. I jumped off too.

Miss O thinks her fear is more reasonable than mine was. I asked why a thief would come into the room only to stand in a closet?

Funny how strange other people’s fears are when our own feel so familiar and fitting. May we all learn to shake off the monsters of our own making.

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Dog Ate My Holiday Cards

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“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” – Pema Chӧdrӧn

Cooper, the puppy, ate my holiday cards. Not all of them, thankfully. I managed to send quite a few out before he got into the box. But what really got me, is that he chewed some that I’d already written.

Sheesh! It’s hard enough to get it done in the midst of the holiday season. But then to have to redo some? It kind of derailed me. I’m still finishing up sending them out now.

But what’s more interesting to me than my ability, or lack thereof, to get the task done is HOW it happened that the puppy ate the Christmas cards.

When I go with the kids upstairs to do their bedtime routine, I was leaving Cooper in the family room/kitchen with the doors closed. Dealing with two young ones in that last hour when we are all so tired was all that I could handle. I thought that solution was to keep Cooper out of the mix.

One night after getting the kids to bed, I came back downstairs and Cooper had eaten the Kleenex box. I got out a new one and <doh> put it in the same place.

The next night, he ate the new Kleenex box. So I put the new new box up on the shelf and then gave him a chew to work on when we were upstairs. He ate the chew – and then the napkins in the napkin holder on the table.

Okay, Cooper likes paper. So I removed the napkins from the table. But then the next night he got the holiday cards.

Grrr. At this point I was nearing my wits end. Then a friend that came to stay with us offered, “Maybe it’s separation anxiety.”

I thought that was an interesting idea. So I tried giving Cooper his chew and left the doors open. Guess what? He’s stopped marauding the place. And he doesn’t even come upstairs to mess with our routine. Every once in a while he’ll come to visit, but he’s calm and unbothered.

If I had to count the number of times that I’ve had to learn the lesson to lean in to the problem instead of trying to shut it down or lock it away – well, it’d be a pretty high number. Funny how unintuitive it is to open up as a response to a problem instead of shut down. But it’s equally as amazing at what an effective solution it can be.

Now I just need to train Cooper to help me finish sending my holiday cards.

About Me

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”The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain

The other day I clicked through to the blog of someone that had commented and read their latest post. It was interesting and well-written but I wasn’t sure how to take it. Was it intended to be a little humorous or totally serious? It reminded me of the importance of the about me section of blogs and how we can maybe do better job of filling them out so that readers can more easily sense of who we are.

Here’s what I usually include as a bio. “Wynne Leon is an optimist, an enthusiast of endurance sports and a woman intent in charting her own path. Which is a combination that has led to an unconventional life. When she was younger a life of adventure meant climbing mountains, traveling the world and being an entrepreneur. More recently, it’s been starting a family as a single parent at age 46, having another child at age 50 and adopting a highly-strung kitten, even though she really is a dog person. Her writing projects include technical computer manuals, articles about meditation and parenting, and Finding My Father’s Faith, a memoir about spirituality, solace and her relationship with her beloved father.

I am a member of the Chicago Writer’s Association. For speaking engagements on creativity and AI through the CWA Speaker’s Bureau, please see the 2025 Program Menu.”

I wrote it and then a friend of mine in marketing edited it. It’s more cutesy after that (the bit about the cat while I’m really a dog person) and less factual (who needed to know I have a degree in electrical engineering). It’s okay for when I need a short bio.

But I think we can do a better job of grounding people in our work. So for whoever wants the long version, here it is.

About Me

If I was a dog, I’d be a golden retriever: exuberantly joyful, family-friendly and always up for a walk. But I’ve done a lot of training so I don’t bowl people over with my enthusiasm and optimism. Especially myself. And that’s the key part of my story – that through meditation I’ve learned not to believe everything I think and I return to that every morning when I get up and meditate and then I do it all again.

kids meditating

I write about my kids a lot because I choose to become a single-parent and age 46 and again at 50, but I’m not a writer about parenting. Instead I’m aiming to capture the depth and meaning of life that I get to experience because my kids show me what it is like to be so Close the Source and unapologetically human. I write about what I learn when I look closely and see how they develop as people, as siblings, as my children and as a family. Wrapped in all of that is a core of pure love that I want to enjoy more deeply by sharing.

Spending the last seven years raising kids without a significant other has taught me self-compassion in a way that no relationship or practice ever has. It has also made me so appreciative of the blogging community because this exchange of creativity and companionship is so rich. Especially through the isolation of Covid, I am so grateful for the deep and abiding relationships that I’ve been able to make on this journey of self-discovery.

I’ve listened to my inner God voice for three significant decisions. First to start climbing mountains when I was in my late 20’s. Second to interview and record my dad’s stories which eventually became a book I wrote after he died suddenly in a bike accident and to figure out what made him such a joyful person. And third to have kids as a single person in my mid-forties instead of rushing into a relationship that wasn’t right. In all three, that deep conviction that I was doing what I was meant to do has carried me through the tough moments.

ice at Everest base camp

I am an endurance person. I can dig deep to take small steps with heavy loads on a regular basis. I’ve accepted that I’m not a high-speed athlete. But I have learned that I don’t always have to carry everything with me but instead lean in to what is weighing me down to unpack it and lighten the load.

The Back Story

I’m the youngest of three kids in a family with a dad who was a Presbyterian pastor and a mom who was incredibly smart and might be a CIA spy (now retired). Would there be a better cover for a spy than a pastor’s wife?

My brother is oldest. I adored him growing up and still do. My older sister hated me growing up –resented might be a better word. The lessons I learned from that adverse relationship are so powerful, especially as I parent my children to care for each other. In many ways, my sister was my first teacher about how instructive our wounds can be when we do the work to heal from them.  When my dad suddenly died in a bike accident in 2014, it felt like all her complaints over all the years growing up, bubbled out. We’ve never managed to put it back together.

I’ve been divorced longer (10 years) than I was married (8 years) so it doesn’t feel like much of my story any longer except for two things for which I am so thankful:

  1. Going through divorce, or maybe more specifically the unhappy years of my marriage, drove me to meditation
  2. When I decided that I wanted to have kids post-divorce and I was in my mid-40’s, I didn’t want to rush into a relationship in order to have them. So I choose to have them as a single person instead. I still enthusiastically believe in love and that I’ll one day find the perfectly imperfect man when the time is right.
me with my kids

But because I don’t think often about my marriage, divorce and coming to choose single parenthood, I’ve gathered from some common questions that I get from people I’ve met later in life that I fail to give some proper background. So here are the answers to the questions I get:

  • I got divorced when my husband’s best friend told me about his infidelities. In the aftermath, all my husband wanted to talk about was how his friend betrayed him. And I couldn’t sustain enough outrage to insist we talk about how my husband betrayed me because he could always outdo any dramatic fervor.
  • That was the story I believed until I started meditating. Then in emptying the pockets of grief I realized that I needed to own how badly I wanted out of that marriage that both starved and suffocated me. Starved because my husband needed all the attention and suffocated because he needed all my attention. But in meditation, I discovered how freeing it was to own my part in the end of the marriage – and also a way to practice focusing my mind on the right stories and questions.
  • I had my kids at age 46 and again at age 50 through invitro fertilization. I choose the sperm donor from a bank that provided more complete information that I’ve ever had for anyone that I have dated. Maybe even more than I know for my lifelong friends.

You can find me on Instagram and Twitter: @wynneleon

The Arc of the Moral Universe

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“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think it’s notable when you start learning from your kids. I’m talking about facts and figures, that is. I’ve been learning what it’s like to be human from them all along.

Eight-year-old Miss O loves Martin Luther King, Jr.. She’s been coming home with tidbits about him all this past week. “Did you know that Martin Luther King skipped 9th and 12th grade?” she asked.

Or that he was 39 when he died? That he hadn’t actually written the I have a dream speech? It was a response to a question from someone in the crowd.

But one day she came home this week and said, “It’s so sad what happened to him when he marched.”

I prompted, “What do you mean?”

And she continued, “When he marched, they sprayed them with fire hoses. And some people died because they had dogs attack them.”

“Oh,” I affirmed, “that was awful.”

Miss O was about 4 1/2 years old when Black Lives Matter signs appeared in our neighborhood. She asked me what they were about. When I simplistically explained that black people had been treated unfairly by white people, she paused for a moment and said, “I’m glad I’m peach.”

And now almost four years later, she and her classmates marched three miles in 17 degree weather (and believe me, Seattlites are not prepared for 17 degrees) carrying Black Lives Matters sign. Miss O said they got 172 honks.

I’m not wise enough to know what all of this adds up to. But I believe MLK was right all those many years ago when he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  

Editing That Six-Word Story

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The other day we were holding a family meeting where eight-year-old Miss O and I where hotly debating the next thing to do and I asked four-year-old Mr. D if he had an opinion.

“No, I’m not a good talker,” he replied.

Whoa, there’s a six-word story!

I’m sure with his very verbal older sister and his mom that is fascinated by words, it feels like he can’t get a word in edgewise. Funny thing is that he is interested in following along. I notice that the more we talk, the more still he gets. And then when we least expect it, he pops off with a perfectly positioned sentence like on January 1st when he said, “I told you last year not to step on lava.”

It feels like helping these young people write and change their stories as they grow is one of my biggest responsibilities and honors. In this case, I’m hoping to convince Mr. D that his six-word story is better said as, “I’m not a good talker…yet.”

And for more about six-word stories, please tune in to my podcast with Dr. Victoria Atkinson. We know and love her as our blogging, writing, and podcasting friend. But in this case, she brings all her experience as a therapist, professor, college dean, and author to bear to teach us how potent these little stories can be.

Search for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, and Pocket casts. And please subscribe! Or click here for the show notes and link to listen to the podcast on Anchor.

(featured photo is mine. I offer these six words as a caption: Despite our care, another worm died)

My Love Affair With Words

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“Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out.” – unknown

The other night I was fixing dinner while my seven-year-old daughter was in the family room working on her very first short story. “Momma, how do you spell persevere?” she asked. As I replied, I took in the really sweet scene and thought to myself “there’s another leaf that’s going to stick on my word associations tree.”

Because that’s how my brain likes to work — by creating associations to words. Like with smells or sights, words themselves conjure memories and the older I get, the more associations I have – or in my mental image, leaves on my word tree.

For example, enthusiasm – from en-Theos or with God – reminds me of my beloved father who was a Presbyterian pastor. There isn’t a word that describes his remarkable energy better and I can’t hear it without thinking of him.

Or plethora which is my best friend’s favorite word. And since we’ve been friends since we were seven-years-old, there are a plethora of memories that come to mind when I hear that word, especially of high school when life was abundant in opportunity, boys, and screw ups to learn from.

Then there’s the phrase “pit stop” that with the hard “t” and “p” sounds reminds me of my sister. She used the phrase in a letter she sent to the whole family when we were in 20’s when she was mad at my brother for not breaking off a relationship with one of her friends properly. In trying to smear him for using others as a “pit stop from himself,” she instead attached that phrase in my mind to my image of her, along with “misdirection” for her ability to distract from the work she needs to do.

Plenitude is a recent favorite that comes in accordance with meditation which almost always leaves me with the reminder that at that moment I have enough.

When I first started going to meditation class ten years ago as I was healing from my divorce, there was a bowl of inspirational words on a table to pick from. I kept getting “transformation” and I was so completely tired of it I just want to scream, “Haven’t I changed enough for a life time? Leave me alone.” And fortunately when I vented that thought, I was usually down on my knees in prayer pose and from there could bend to accept more renewal.

Because renewal has a friendly association for me. That means my cup is being refilled and hopefully my energy too. I’m friends with renewal in a way that I will never be with transformation.

“Calibrating sentences” is one of my recent favorites that comes from playwright and writer, Jack Canfora, on a podcast that he did bout the creative process. Isn’t that a beautiful way to measure the weight and balance the best utterances come with? And given that it comes from such a gifted writer, it gives me hope that if I work at it too, I might be able to calibrate a few great sentences in my lifetime.

Fledgling gained new attachment for me when I had kids. Never before had I been able to appreciate the delicate nature of holding newness in my arms combined with the potent desire to provide a platform strong enough to see them take flight.

Bivouac reminds me of my climbing friend, Phil, who is always joking that it’s French for mistake. It’s not, it means a temporary camp without cover according to Oxford languages, but since Phil bivouacked high on Mt. Everest during the climb when he became the first American to climb the North Side of Everest, it’s a well-earned attachment.

Say the word “authentic” and I think of my meditation teacher and friend, Deirdre. It’s the attribute that makes it so she can somehow manage to lead a yoga class and yell, without missing a beat, “Move on, Motherf*$)#^!” out the door at someone she thinks is casing her car.

The word I associate with me three-year-old son is observer. The other day I turned on some kitchen lights I don’t usually use for a house guest. When my son saw them, he took me by hand to show me where other lights of that same type were in the house. He sees the quarter moon and says, “The moon is missing a piece.” And most recently, in one of his most profound observations, we were watching a storm out the window and he said to his sister, “Sshh, I can’t see.”

There’s “constellation” and it reminds me of my brother and one of his favorite songs by the same name by Jack Johnson and Eddie Vedder. It also is attached because my brother is always seeing the patterns in things.

Love has so many associations that it has become cluttered. But dedication, commitment, intimacy, fun, play, expansiveness, laughter, loyalty, selflessness and desire each conjure a particular person or memory in my life so that all together, they jumble into a delicious mix of how love feels to me.

I can’t hear the word “condensation” without thinking of my very verbal daughter. As a four-year-old, someone was telling her he had water forming on the inside of his camper van on cold nights and she responded, “You mean condensation?”

My love of words has infected me so much that for almost any person in my life, I have a word association for them. It makes me wonder that if, by the time I’m really old, if I’m lucky enough that my body perseveres that long, every time I construct a sentence, there will be a memory and person hanging off of it.

Maybe that will be my tree of life and I’ll be able to enjoy each delightful word with the memory that comes with it.

(featured photo from Pexels)