Tag: love

Friendship Though the Ages and Stages

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“Well, you can’t make old friends.” – Zadie Smith

Have you thought back to how you survived middle school? I mean, I think it’s safe to assume anyone that is reading this is past the age of 13. I remember that age as being the start of understanding that there was a whole wide world outside of my family and it involved crushes, hopes and dreams, and weird things happening to my body that I didn’t want to talk about with my mom.

Katie. That’s how I made it through middle school. My dearest friend that I’ve known since age seven. She was over at my house yesterday spending time with me, Miss O, Mr. D and Cooper. I list us all out because we all needed time with her.

She reminds me of a line I got from Mark Nepo in the Book of Awakening. In German, the root of the word friendship means place of high-safety. With old friends, I think that might be especially so because they knew us from before we were anything. We had dreams of what we might become, but now that we’ve hit middle life, we’ve cycled through a lot of different ages and stages, and old friends, like Katie have seen it all.

Because to be friends for this long, I don’t think there’s any way to maintain any artifice. We’ve survived the ups and downs of life as well as testing out the waters of how we meet the world. We’ve had to work out whether we are friendly, trustworthy, and kind – and apologize and make amends when we’ve fallen short.

Watching Katie with my family, I realize that there’s an associative property of friendship. That my little ones trust her as much as I do. Probably because they can sense that ease that comes with old friends. Well, that and because Katie is simply amazing – present, smart, funny, kind, and encouraging.

I think back to my naivety and hopefulness in middle school. It was confusing and emotional as we worked out what came next in life. I’m less naïve now as I know that middle life also brings challenges with family, friends, aging, and loss. But I’m still quite hopeful – probably because I’ve been lucky enough to have a Katie, then and now.

(featured photo is me (left) and Katie (right) – maybe in middle school?)

Friendship Brownies

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“A friend accepts us as we are yet helps us be what we should.” – unknown

This was originally published on 2/9/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

After I wrote that post on Vulnerability last week, I had lunch with my friend Doug. He was the person I mentioned in the post as the friend who’d asked about the blog and then not responded when I shared it with him. Turns out that he’d both read and liked the writing very much but just had forgotten to respond. We had a good laugh about that. Fortunately I’d written another post about him on my personal blog that we could also talk about.

Doug is planning a climb of Mt. Adams with his son this summer. It’s a 12,280 foot mountain in Washington State – tall enough to be a challenge but not technical enough to need a lot of equipment and training. The last time we summitted this mountain was with his daughter about 10 years ago when she was 14 years old.

Doug asked if I remembered what packs we carried between our camp at about 9,000 feet and the summit. He is a meticulous packer and doesn’t carry anything more on his back than necessary.

I have a long history with backpacks – picking them out, carrying them, feeling relieved to take them off. At one point when I was in my thirties and planning a lot of climbing trips, I got one that was almost 6000 cubic inches. I can’t even describe how large that is but suffice it to say that when you have a backpack that big, your friends start believing you have room to carry their stuff.

Which is what happened when we were planning a climb on Mt. Rainier that would take place over Doug’s birthday. His wife asked me if I would carry some brownies up to celebrate Doug’s birthday. It was only after I happily agreed that she told me that Doug said he wouldn’t carry them because he didn’t want that unnecessary weight in his pack.

It is probably all this carrying of loads that makes one of my favorite meditations the one where I imagine I sit down, empty everything out of my pack, look carefully at each thing I’m carrying. When I’m done sorting through the worries, the presumptions, and fears as well as the love, the purpose, the nostalgia, the energy stored for digging deep, I mentally load the pack again with only what I need. I always carry a lighter load after that meditation.

But in thinking about those brownies, I realize that friendship means we are willing to carry things for other people that they won’t carry for themselves.

We hold in our packs a version of our friends at their brightest and most creative that can be shown to them when they are in a slump. We carry memories of the times we laughed, did silly things, failed and succeeded. We store all the depth of the ways we have walked side by side on the path as well as the times we waited at an intersection while they took a detour and vice versa.

Then at just the right moment, we unpack the brownies we’ve carried so far and celebrate our friends. There are some things worth the extra weight and friendship is one of them.

I’ve written about another powerful climbing story on Wise & Shine – Climbing to the Top of the Rankings.

(featured photo is my own – Mt. Elbrus, Russia)

Perfect Moment

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“We love what we attend.” – Mwalimu Imaru

The other day something touched me at a deep level. I’ve been trying to peel back why ever since.

I’d picked four-year-old Mr. D up from preschool and he’d scrambled in the car and closed the door. I’d stopped to talk to a man walking his dog, and so it was a minute or two before I got around to my side of the car and realized Mr. D was crying. He’d tried to do his own seat belt and had gotten frustrated when the thing wouldn’t click. Then he got more frustrated when the belt got tangled as he tried to fix it.

When I opened his door to help, he reached up and with the back of both hands, swiped away the hot, frustrated tears from his eyes.

Something about that gesture just hit me deep down where it counts. I’m not sure I can even put it into words why. To the best of my translation, it’s some combination of the following:

Witnessing the dignity of another person

Gratitude that my kids’ problems are small at this age and I can mostly fix them

Realization of Mr. D’s sudden self-consciousness about crying

Commiseration with how frustrating technology and systems can be

Relating to how fiercely we want to do things for ourselves

The deep gut punch of how much I love my kids.

Whatever it was, it started to change how I think of perfect moments. They may have nothing to do with when we’re smiling and posing for a picture or spending a gazillion dollars on an experience.

I think perfect moments might be when the inside of me meets the inside of another, and in the process learns something real about being human.

With Me Everywhere

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“There is no where you could go that I won’t be with you.” – Moana

In a tradition suggested by a Jewish friend, I burn a Yahrzeit candle every year on the anniversary of my dad’s death. The ritual, as I understand it, is supposed to celebrate our loved ones and bring them close as the candle burns for 24 hours.

I’ve had to modify the tradition slightly since I’ve had kids since Mr. D in particular is fond of blowing out candles. So I light the candle and then hide it around the house until the kids leave. [“Sorry if the candle brings you to the laundry room, Dad.”]

With or without the candle ritual, my dad seems to be especially close at this time of year. The anniversary of his death is November 7th. On November 6th of last year, I received an incredible email from my soon to be dear friend, the amazing, talented, and incredibly wise Vicki Atkinson, with notes from a wonderfully deep read of my book about my dad, Finding My Father’s Faith.

The conversation then went on to be the beginning of our close friendship, even though we’ve never met in person, as well as our partnership in creating the Sharing the Heart of the Matter blog and podcast. But it started with my dad. And Vicki’s incredibly open heart, of course.

And then on November 4th of this year, I got a delightful email from another wonderful blogging friend, Jane Fritz of the Robby Robin’s Journey blog with some great humor. In our email exchange, Jane said, “They made me think of your father, and I never even knew him!”

Two things that strike me about this. [I’d like to make it three because my dad loved having three points in his sermons but I’ll just leave it at two for now.]  

The power of writing is amazing. In these examples provided by Vicki and Jane, they have a sense of my dad because I write about him so often. Putting words around the people we love creates connection to know us and them. Writing about my dad has not only helped me to clarify and cement what I learned from him, but it has also allowed others to meet him, even after his death.

Which is my segue to the next point – death isn’t as final as it seems. Of course I don’t know what happens when our loved ones are beyond the veil, but I can feel times when they are tantalizingly close. I’ll forget it’s the anniversary of my beloved dog Biscuit’s death until I see the golden patch of sunlight on his favorite place to lie that oddly shows up on January 13th, even though sunshine that time of year is not a given.

Or the touch of my dad in these emails from others, bringing him close and making me comprehend that there is no where that I can go that he won’t be with me.

For a post about a way that I found to move through my grief, please see Gratitude versus Greed on the Sharing the Heart of the Matter blog.

I’m Trying To Do Better

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“And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom.” – Anais Nin

In the ten years or so before my dad died, my parents started spending their winters in Tucson. I’d go visit whenever my bones needed drying out, usually in February.

In one of my favorite stories that I tell in my book, on a visit to Tucson three years before my dad died, my mom and I were in the living room and Dad yelled to us from his study, “Isn’t the sunrise beautiful this morning? We are so lucky.”

And Mom yelled back, “Dick, it’s absolutely wonderful!”

I could see my mom wasn’t really paying attention and said to her in a low tone, “It’s okay, Mom, I won’t tell him you didn’t even look.”

Mom replied, “He can’t even see the sunrise from where he’s sitting.”

I love that story because it showcases my dad’s enthusiasm as well as my mom’s delightful ability to go along. But it also reminds me of the flip side of our family. My parents didn’t argue at all when I was growing up. There was no playing Mom off Dad because they were a unified front. Certainly they must have had conflict but they were so good at covering it up or having it out behind closed doors that there was no sign of it in front of the kids.

This is all to say that I suck at communicating hard feelings, and I come by it honestly. It doesn’t help that when I was married, my ex-husband”s response when I told him something I felt or was concerned about that he didn’t want to hear was, “What’s the big deal?”

I’ve worked on this in two ways. First, through meditation, I’m able to better discern what is and isn’t important for me to speak up about and let go of the stuff that isn’t. It’s one of the reasons meditation works for me to irrigate the irritation. Am I irritated because I’m tired, my ego is out of whack, etc.?

And my second way? My children. They provide me a steady flow of boundary-pushing, soul-wearying, things I can’t live with examples that I have to find the words to express. The beautiful thing is that it’s this expansive relationship of love and constancy that’s allowed me to grow into expressing my wounds.

Like last night when Mr. D’s toenail cut into my shin. I said, “ouch.” He said, “Sorry.” I replied, “It’s okay.” And we went on with the night. Such a small thing – but I’m learning the risk the little ones in order to be brave for the big ones.

I adore my dad, as anyone that has read my writing knows. He could manufacture sunshine just like he did that morning in Tucson. His job as a pastor made him very good at carrying everyone else’s hurts. But I’m not sure he ever learned how to express his own.

I’m hoping that I can grow my own willingness to be vulnerable so that I can do that better. I can hear my dad saying to me, “You’ve got this, Kid.”

For more on the topic, please check out my podcast with Dr. Vicki Atkinson about risking disappointment. Please search (and subscribe!) for Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast in Apple, Amazon Music, Spotify or Pocket Casts. Or click here for show notes and a link: Episode 42: Risking Disappointment with Vicki and Wynne

(picture is my own)

Cookie Cutter Faith

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“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

This was originally published on 7/6/2022. Heads up that you may have already read this.

My kids and I went to a wedding out-of-town this past weekend. At the wedding, they gave out fortune cookies. My 6-year-old daughter opened hers and read “You will find a treasure soon.”

The next morning we were driving around looking for an alternative to the planned hike because it was raining. I turned in at a sign that said, “Horseback riding.” It was a holiday weekend and we didn’t have reservations so I didn’t think we’d be able to ride but maybe we could see some horses, my daughter’s favorite animal even though she’d never actually touched one. Yet.

But they booked us for a ride. As my daughter sat atop a big quarter horse named Comanche, I could hear her tell the guide. “I got a fortune cookie and it said that I would find a treasure. It was right – THIS IS MY TREASURE.”

I chuckled but as the weekend went on she repeated the story a few more times adding at the end, “I need another fortune cookie.” I grew a little uneasy. Surely I needed to inject a little reality to this fortune cookie madness.

Wait a minute – one of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein’s “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle.” And I’m clearly on Team Miracle. So why was I feeling the need to put the kibosh on her finding some magic in fortune cookies?

Because I’m a parent and I want her to believe in something more substantial that involves some responsibility and transcendence. Because I don’t want her to be disappointed.

It made me think of all the years that I didn’t discuss my faith with my beloved dad because I feared my spiritual beliefs weren’t religious enough. When I finally found the chutzpah to do it, we had deep and meaningful conversations about life, family and love. And it turned out that life and his 40 years as a pastor had instilled in him a bigger idea than the Presbyterian party line. In the end, he called himself a big tent guy. “In a way I have become less cocky or confident because I thought I had things all figured out early on, but now I know I have general things figured out, but the fact is that we differ in this huge tent of the family of faith on different things.”

And then he went on to paint a picture of how my yoga/meditation/spiritual practice related to his beliefs in a unifying way:

“I’ve thought this often about you and your world with all the disciplines that are so wonderfully therapeutic. It seems to me that Christ is equally as present and could be equally named and known to you. The disciplines in a sense are more along the horizontal level than perhaps the vertical level (reaching up to God) and Christ honors anything that makes us more what God wants us to be.

I am thrilled with what is happening in you in this journey and one of the great benefits is that it brings us closer.  When kids follow in a trail similar to their parents, it creates one more way they can be close and can relate with each other … and in this case relate deeply and lastingly.”

Dick Leon

Thinking back to what I learned from talking with my dad, I think of all the time I didn’t talk about faith because of fear that it wouldn’t measure up. In the end, I realized that no two people see faith in exactly the same way, no matter how unified their theology is. Instead, there’s room in the tent for all of us.

I have faith that my daughter will grow up to experience God in her own nuanced way and I don’t need to fear it will be Fortune Cookie religion. So why not find some magic in it? After all, my fortune was “Your hard work will pay off soon.”

What about you? Do you talk about faith in your family? Do fortune cookies count as miracles?

As a related post to this one, I’ve published a post on the Wise & Shine Blog: Do You Believe In Magic? Do You Write About It?

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Fruits of Our Labor

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“Each life creates endless ripples.” – Frank Herbert

This summer I was idly chatting with the mom of one of Miss O’s school friends at a pool party. Our conversation switched to careers and she mentioned that she is a nurse at the fertility clinic that I used to become pregnant via IVF (in-vitro fertilization). What’s more, she works on the team of Dr. Dudley, my fertility specialist.

When I revealed that, her eyes grew wide. She looked at me for a long moment, she looked at eight-year-old Miss O, she looked at four-year-old Mr. D, she looked back at 54-year-old me, and her eyes were full. She’d never met a baby of one of her patients. Even though I wasn’t directly her patient, it was like seeing the fruit of her labor.

There are times that I forget that I had kids in a non-traditional way. I have no problem talking about it, as I recently did on the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkison. But often it’s just that life right NOW is so busy, I forget about way back then.

Everything is timed to a T in the IVF process. This drug here, that test there, the implantation of the embryo, then a blood draw on day 10 to see if you’re pregnant. If you are, the due date is an exact calculation from the calendar. The fertility clinic, at least in my case, sees you until you are at ten weeks along. Then you transfer to an obstetrician and may never see them again.

One of my dad’s favorite parts of being a pastor was that he felt it was such an honor to be a part of the many sacred moments of people’s life – birth, baptism, marriage, death. To see the whole story.

But my acquaintance, the nurse, usually only gets to see that one part of the story. I remember sending a birth announcement to the fertility clinic when I had my babies. I gather from her wet and twinkling eyes that’s not the same as seeing these kids do a cannonball at a pool party.

There are a lot of times we never see the impact of our life – the way we touch other people with a smile, a question, or a reply. So, I love the stories of the full circle moments when we do get to see the fruits of our labor, even if “those fruits” just got you wet at a pool party. All the better to hide the tears.

For a related story about the IVF process, please see my Heart of the Matter post, The Courage To Try.

(featured photo from Pexels)

All The Secrets

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“Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.” – Mary Tyler Moore

The other day my kids and I were out walking in the neighborhood and ran into two brothers, 11-years-old and 9-years-old, from the English family that has moved in up the street. The older brother did a card trick for Miss O. I wasn’t paying attention to all of it, but there was audience involvement, and even some spelling and counting going on.

When the older brother finished and revealed the chosen card – the right one – the younger brother exclaimed quite proudly in his delightful British accent, “It works nearly every time.”

Which made me laugh. The way he said it so charmingly uncovered that a lot of practice has gone into this particular trick.

And it reminded me that often family members know our secrets and weak points. Hopefully, especially when they are working well, within the context of great love and acceptance.

Speaking of family, I spoke with Vicki on this week’s Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast about how I started my family as a single person. We talk about invitro fertilization, the fears I needed to overcome, the lessons I apply from my dad, and the seven quotes that have helped me change my script from fear to love. Please listen and subscribe on Amazon Music, Apple, Spotify or Pocketcasts to Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast or find it here on WordPress: Episode 40: The Power of Choice with Wynne Leon

(quote comes from the MSW Blog: Being Brave)

The Art of Apology

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“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” – John Steinbeck

This piece was originally posted on 3/9/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

The other night my two-year-old son wanted me to get a step stool out of the closet. As I was lifting it out of the storage space, he reached for it and his littlest pinky finger got pinched in the hinge that connects the sides of the ladder as it opens.

Yikes! I put the step ladder down, scooped him up and said, “I’m so sorry.”

I wanted to say, “But you need to wait til I get it all the way out.” And “That’s why these things are grown-up things.” And probably 15 other things in order to make myself feel better because I very much didn’t like being responsible for an action that pinched his finger.

But I didn’t, because I remember listening to a podcast with psychologist Harriet Lerner on Brené Brown’s Unlocking Us series that was like a master class on apologies. It was 2 years ago and so well done that I still remember some talking points. One being “When ‘but’ is tagged on to an apology, it undoes the sincerity.” If there is a genuine counter point or excuse to the apology, it needs to happen as a separate conversation.

So I looked up some more details from Dr. Lerner’s book, Why Won’t You Apologize: Healing Big Betrayals and Every Day Hurts. She notes there are cultural differences when it comes to apologies. There are also gender differences – males are more likely to be non-apologizers, women are more likely to be over-apologizers. But for anyone trying to craft a sincere apology, here are some pointers she provides of things not to do:

  • Saying I’m sorry you feel that way: These are apologies that don’t address what happened but instead try to target the emotions of the other party.
  • The “IF” apology: I’m sorry IF you thought is a weaselly effort to not own what happened.
  • The mystifying apology: What is it that the apologizer just said? Apologies that usually are too wordy and talk around the issue, leave the other party feeling confused.
  • The apology as instant expectation of forgiveness: I apologize now you must forgive me is a quid pro quo that undermines the apology as a genuine offering and not just a means to an end.
  • Not listening: If we don’t hear the injured party out, they will not feel heard and any apology will fall short of the entire wound.

So what is a good apology? A simple statement expressing remorse for the action we are apologizing for, owning what we did, not taking more that our share of blame (because that comes across as insincere) and not trying to speak to how the other person feels.

Just thumbing this book reminded me of some old wounds that I was surprised to find hadn’t fully healed over because I can still think of the poor apologies I’ve received. The down-played sorry – “I’m sorry that I called you a ‘brat’ when I was feeling crappy” when that wasn’t the word used at all. The blame-shifting excuse: “I was feeling sick, what was I to do?” when someone no-showed/no-called to the birthday party I threw for her. And the non-apology because the person who caused the injury paraded around all his own hurts as a way to claim he couldn’t be responsible for his actions.

And it also brought to mind incidents where I owed an apology and fell short. The little hitches where I still feel a little guilty or ashamed because my actions were thoughtless, careless, or uninformed and I never had the guts to address it properly.

All these memories make the case of how important a good apology is. As Dr. Lerner says, “I believe that tendering an apology, one that is authentic and genuinely felt, helps the other person to feel validated, soothed and cared for and can restore a sense of well-being and integrity to the one who sincerely feels she or he did something wrong. Without the possibility of apology and repair, the inherently flawed experience of being human would feel impossibly tragic.”

This makes me think of one of the best apologies I’ve ever heard. When my friend Jill was feeling tender because something her partner did, he said, “Please tell me what I did so I can never do it again.”

Fortunately having two young kids gives me plenty of opportunity to apologize. Thankfully it’s usually for skinned knees and stubbed toes for which I have no responsibility but am still sorry they happen. Then I get to participate in the healing. As my son said for the pinched finger incident, “Mama, kiss it?” And then we get to continue growing and learning, all the while in relationship to each other.

Saying “I’m sorry” reminds me of the power of keeping it simple. I’ve posted about The Power of Short Sentences on the Wise & Shine blog today.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Forced Flexibility

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“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.” – unknown

I had to get rid of a settee from my bedroom. It was a holdover from my marriage, beautiful but useless. It sat in the corner holding books. But my kids have been arguing at night when we read together about who gets to sit where so I put the settee on the curb with a free sign. It was gone within hours and then I was free to build out a reading space on the floor.

That’s not the only change going on around here. I’ve been shuffling up my morning routine and have landed on feeding and walking the dog before I meditate. It isn’t really how I envisioned my feet hitting the floor. But it works well enough to create the calm I need for my sacred morning time.

I’ve been thinking about these as examples of how I’m being flexible for the beings in my home. But I suspect that I’m the biggest beneficiary of this practice. Left to my own devices, I would do the same routine every day in perpetuity.

But that sameness doesn’t loosen me up so I stiffen over time. It reminds me of the aphorism, “what doesn’t bend, breaks.” I’d like to think I’d bob and weave if I wasn’t being “flexible for the kids” but I’m not so sure.

It’s all part of their plan to keep me young. It’s like yoga for my soul – these exercises that keep my innards loose enough to go with the flow. I get a lot of practice being a tree that will sway with the wind instead of a stick dropped in the mud.

I write this to encourage myself to be flexible. Because I don’t like it much at all. I’m stubborn and dogged by nature and that has taken me far in pushing through to mountain summits and every other metaphorical summit. Yet I see the goodness practicing this acceptance and letting go of what is. It frees me up to create and be the next thing.

(featured photo from Pexels)