Tag: mindfulness

Enjoying the Summer

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“We love because it’s the only true adventure.” – Nikki Giovanni

Summer is coming to an end. It’s the month of August, my nanny had to leave to continue with her work and education, school starts in three weeks and I’m feeling like I have to enjoy this last bit of summer, especially the long days I get to spend with my kids. But I have to work as well. So I feel this tear between should be enjoying and having to get it done. And if I really think about it, I realize that I feel that pull most of the time. I feel like I am supposed to be treasuring these days with my young kids. When I shared this feeling/fear with my friend, Emily, her reply was, “Having the pressure to enjoy everything in parenthood is not very helpful or realistic in my opinion.”

Right! Pressure to enjoy is definitely an oxymoron. Yet on the other side is the advice that I’ve been given so many times, “Enjoy this time, it goes so fast.” I’m old enough to be able to tick off entire decades of my life – my 20’s, 30’s and 40’s have all gone by and yet when I was a kid doesn’t seem all that long ago. Writing it down here I see that enjoying my kids while they are young can bleed into an effort to be the perfect mom. There is a fine line between mindfulness and perfectionism.

I think of every mountain I’ve climbed and what I remember of those trips. The first time I made it to the top of Mt. Rainier at 14,400 feet, I was so cold, I huddled in the lee of some snow and rocks with the other people that were on my rope who were also freezing. I managed to stand long enough to take a picture of a sea of clouds surrounding us and then we headed down. We’d spent 3 days getting to that one spot, spent 15 minutes on top and then carefully started back down. I remember some particulars about the route we took that day, especially the big scary parts but have forgotten most of my footsteps. But the feeling of trying, and of that step where I finally gained the summit, the comradery with teammates, the love of the outdoors, the presence of God in all of it travels with me wherever I go.

This gives me great comfort in my parenting because I think climbing and parenting share similar goals: to survive, to be present so as to take in as much of God’s creation as possible, and to participate in an adventure that changes you. It convinces me that I neither have to remember nor enjoy every moment, just the journey. I suspect that all my kids will remember from this young age is the feeling of it all. If I walk away from this stage of parenting remembering the feeling of trying, snapshots of the big milestones we reached, a deep relationship with my kids, a shared love of the outdoors, and the presence of God throughout it all, I’ll consider it a very successful adventure indeed.

Opening the Door

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“We are rare, not perfect.” – Mark Nepo

As I walked down the stairs this morning to do my morning routine, I look at the security panel on the wall and felt a rush of regret for the incident yesterday when I set the house alarm off. Regardless that it worked out fine as I wrote in my post, I still feel this disgust at myself for doing it. Then I started doing yoga and felt the ache of the pinky toe on my right foot where I broke or dislocated it stubbing it at our friends lake cabin a couple of weekends ago. That pain triggered another round of self-recrimination for not wearing shoes at the lake. It’s not like I was thinking of either of these things or any of the other regrets I come across because I’ve compartmentalized them so I can go on with my “happy” day. But sooner or later, I’ll come across something that sparks the association and I’m chiding myself for these incidents again.

I keep my laundry room door closed most of the time. In these hot summer days when I’m able to cool off the rest of the house at night with open windows, I often forget about the laundry room with its west facing window until I open the door and get blasted with hot, stale air. That is exactly what it feels like to me when I experience these pockets of regret or grief in my life.

This makes me think of when I first started meditating. I had finalized my divorce, thought I was fine and moving on with my life and then I went to Deirdre’s meditation class and spent 90 minutes doing light yoga and breathing. I spent the rest of the day leaking tears. At one point I was out walking my dog and the tears were just streaming down my face and he kept looking at me as if inquiring if I really was okay to be out walking. All those compartmentalized pockets of grief had started to open and I just had to flush them out before life could continue.

So I learned that when I encounter that twinge of regret or self-recrimination that the only thing to do is to breathe into it. Like my laundry room, the heat will eventually start seeping out of it into the rest of the house if it gets hot enough. But I can open the door, let the air flow and mixed with the cool air in the rest of the house it doesn’t raise the temperature much, if at all. I breathe and think of the Chinese Proverb, “He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.”

You Have to be Present to Win

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“I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent Van Gough

When my nieces were in middle school, they went to a charter school that had a lot of fundraising events. At one auction event they invited me to, the older of my two niece’s was selling raffle tickets that were $50 each. That was really expensive but I didn’t have kids at the time, it was for a school and of course, it was my niece selling them so I bought two. The clincher was that, as if often the case with raffles, you had to be present to win.

I think of that phrase a lot in parenting – you have to be present to win. When I bought the raffle tickets I knew I’d never make it to when the raffle was announced, I wasn’t the type of person to stay long enough even before I had kids. Now I don’t have any choice but to see to the end of each day with my kids but I can choose whether or not to be present.

I know that I must not the only parent that takes an extra long time to roll the garbage can to the curb because I’m pausing in the quiet and looking up at the sky. My central nervous system gets overloaded from the activity, amplitude of emotion and state of vigilance so it feels like I can’t stay present one more moment. I just want to check out because I’m spent. My daughter is a master of asking open-ended questions right before bedtime like “What mistakes have you made, Mama?” so my strategy is to just keep things simple with one or two word sentences so I can get to the finish line. But the other night, while I was racing to the end of the day so I could have some grown-up time where I could check out by having a glass of wine or mindlessly scroll through Instagram, something reminded me of “you have to be present to win.”

My daughter was snuggled next to me in bed as I was reading Harry Potter and it was a section where Hagrid was saying that his dad taught him not to be ashamed of who he was and she asked what ashamed was. I explained it’s that feeling of not wanting to talk about something because it makes you feel yucky inside. And she said, “Like Ahti [her aunt that used to nanny for us] taking a job and not being with us any more?”

[Wow, wow, wow] I told her that I was so proud of her for telling me that she felt that way. Then she asked why Ahti had to do it and I explained that it was because she found a perfect job. And she said, “It isn’t because we were too bad and she didn’t want to be with us?”

There are moments when I absolutely need to check out and breathe and I’m trying to learn to give myself grace when I do. But I’m also trying to practice staying present so that when I’m with my kids, I’m truly with my kids. Because unlike when I bought a raffle ticket for my niece’s school, I do care about winning the prize. Not two hours with a lawyer to do estate planning or a wine tasting with five friends, but to be the person my kids trust to help them unpack the burdens they don’t need to carry.

Climbing the Walls

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“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” – Psalm 139:13-14

My daughter went to rock climbing camp this week. And absolutely loved it. The camp is at the gym I’ve climbed at for 20 years so I love being there, climbing there and just walking in there. [Aside: When we walked into the gym the other day, they were playing “I Melt With You” by Modern English and it gave me a moment of realizing how much I missed being places where music was playing in the background. ] I wonder about the unconscious effect that climbing had on her when she was in utero. I only did a bit of low bouldering when I was pregnant, nothing I could fall off or had to wear a harness for even though I was told it was perfectly safe. I stopped when I was about 6 months along and my center of gravity changed but we climbed “together” up until then.

I think of the story of Alison Hargreaves, a British mountain climber. She had an impressive mountain climbing career including summitting Everest on her own and without supplemental oxygen. She solo climbed six great north faces of the Alps including climbing the north face of the Eiger while she was six months pregnant with her first child, Tom. But she received a lot of criticism for climbing when she had young children at home. Much was made of the fact that male climbers aren’t subjected that kind of scrutiny if they are parents. Alison died when a bad storm came in while she was descending from the summit of K2 in 1995. She was 33 years old and her kids were 6 years old and 4 years old.

Her son, Tom Ballard went on to become an acclaimed climber in his own right. He died in bad weather conditions while climbing Nanga Parbat in Pakistan in 2019 at aged 30.

That story fills me with deep grief and also sends me running to do my work. I don’t presume to know anything about the Hargreaves/Ballards other than what I’ve read and I’m not adding judgment to their tragedy but I know things are passed down organically in families. In my family, that was a deep sense of faith and a complete avoidance of conflict. In utero I was hearing my mama’s prayers and daddy’s sermons from within and though it’s taken me a long time to find my own deep sense of faith, I am so grateful for that. The people pleasing/conflict avoidance part has been passed down to me as part of my work.

I love that my daughter loves rock climbing. I’m hoping that climbing together, all the hours I spent meditating and knowing she was a miracle continue to influence her from her time in utero. For all the things I don’t want to pass along, I’m grateful that I’m old enough to be aware of them and mindful enough to be working on them.

Calm and Still

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit” – Aristotle

Bees and I have come to an agreement. I’ll stay still and be calm and they won’t sting me. This agreement has taken a lot of years to broker since when I get stung, I puff up and stay that way, itchy and uncomfortable, for about five days. But I consider it part of my work to breathe deeply and not see them as an enemy.

The agreement went down the drain the other night when a yellow jacket stung my toddler. We were eating outside and they started swarming around. Since he’s just almost two he hasn’t had the chance to do his work and learn to be still and calm. In response to the sting, I wanted to kill them all.

It’s insidious – this ratcheting up of life’s lessons. I’ve come to accept pain as a great teacher, aches as a sign of growth, and to slow down and take life as it comes. But now I see I have so much more to learn about not taking umbrage on my kid’s behalf when pain comes.  This feels especially hard because I think it’s hard to hold other people when they are hurting and I can’t control the pace of how they move through it. In my discomfort, I want to problem solve and be done. It’s also hard because it’s my job to keep my kids safe so it feels like failure.

So all of this swirls as I consider my murderous rage for yellow jackets. My work on being calm and still is never done, I just have more to learn. But I take heart from a great quote I saw last week posted by TheEnglightenedMind622  “Don’t be afraid to start over again. This time, you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from experience.” I sit and try to be grateful for the chance to deepen the lesson and try not see neither bees nor pain as an enemy, not even on my son’s behalf.

Rethinking the Rote

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“Everyone wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change.” – Andrew Cohen

This morning I woke up in my bed for the first time in four days. As the temperatures rose during recent heat wave that enveloped the Pacific NW, I kept lowering our sleeping locales because we don’t have AC. First to the first floor and then as the we kept breaking the record high temperatures and the house barely even cooled at night, down into the basement where my son slept in a storage room and my daughter and I in the garage.

Each move meant small adjustments to the every day routine. Like not being able to empty the recycling or not turning on the tv because it would disturb where my daughter was sleeping. Not restocking the fridge in the evening or doing the dishes because it would disturb where my son was sleeping. Instead I sat out in the garden reading a book. So as we returned to our proper beds last night, I realized how much I do by rote. Small things that I do by habit like grabbing reusable shopping bags on the way to the car became visible when I had to rethink how I do them because the car was parked in the driveway and I used a different door.

Exposing the myriad of things that I do without thinking made me think about how deep my groove is and whether it is providing me efficiency or making me inflexible. It was harder to feel like I was getting things done over these days that were different, probably because I was having to make more decisions. But it was also a chance to make the unconscious conscious and make sure it serves me.

It feels good to be doing things as usual this morning. But I’m also taking away some intentional changes. I don’t need to turn on the tv or do the recycling every night and should instead spend more time sitting out in my garden. Disruption is an amazing teacher.

A Thin Place

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

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

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

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

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

The Current Underneath

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

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

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

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

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

The Choice Between Right and Easy

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“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

In the fourth book of the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the dark wizard Lord Voldemort has returned and the headmaster of Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore says, “Soon we will all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”

I don’t know much about fighting dark wizards but making the choice between what is right and what is easy seems like something that describes the job of parenting. Maybe I’m predisposed to think that because I’m reading Harry Potter out loud to my child but nonetheless here are some of the many choices I think we as parents face:

We have to decide whether or not to teach our children manners or let them discover them at the hands of their maybe less tactful peers.

We have to decide whether to inculcate a sense of respect for nature and resources of the earth or risk ruining the earth for themselves or our grandchildren.

We have to choose between instilling a deep sense of kindness and compassion for others or suffer knowing that we might have added to the aggression of this world.

We have to choose between raising children that have a healthy sense of boundaries and self-worth that they inherited from watching us or let them figure it out on their own perhaps after doing great damage to themselves.

We have to choose between letting our kids spend their days immersed in screen time or engaging with them to foster real experiences and adventures in this world.

And none of these choices is easy because it means we have to walk that walk when we are distracted, tired and want to live our own lives reasonably well. But I find it interesting that the distinction is not between right and wrong but between right and easy because it’s effort not evil that defines the choice.

Speaking for myself, I don’t do perfectly on any of the parenting choices but more often than not I make the hard choice as I know most parents do and have done throughout all the ages. There is some science to support why as I learned when I listened to an interview Nicholas Christakis, the Yale sociologist who studies how we have evolved as a species. His view as laid out in his book Blueprint is that our evolution has come with some uniquely wonderful social features – to love, to teach others, to cooperate. He holds that humans are wired for good which is so inspiring to hear.

Because we aren’t alone in our choices. We have the magic and faith that comes from our relationship with the Divine and we have our connection to each other. In Harry Potter, Dumbledore’s pronouncement about choosing between what is right and what is easy is part of a moving speech about how unity and friendship carries us through the hard choices and hard times. Our connection to everything that is bigger than us powers us through the moments when we have nothing left in the tank. Over and over again we discover we can do hard things – and we do!

Irrigating the Irritation

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“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato

Yesterday my friend John was trying to get a hold of my friend Eric and I was caught in the middle. Eric wasn’t answering so John called me and left a voice mail. Eric’s phone had died and he was temporarily using another number so I texted him on his other phone that John was looking for him. Eric didn’t have John’s number stored in his temporary phone so Eric called me for it. I texted it to Eric and then John called me.

It seemed to go on and on. They called and texted me while I was working, picking up my son from school, out for ice cream, getting the kids ready for the bed. I was irritated. Then I found out John was calling because our friend Joanie was having to put her beloved 15-year-old golden retriever to sleep. My irritation evaporated instantly.

Compassion is such a powerful tool. For years I’ve said that doing meditation in the morning was irrigating my irritations. I hadn’t identified specifically that it was expanding my compassion for my self and others until I was reminded of this “Just Like Me” meditation from by Buddhist monk, Pema Chödrön:

”There’s a practice I like called ‘Just like me.’ You go to a public place and sit there and look around. Traffic jams are very good for this. You zero in on one person and say to yourself things such as Just like me, this person doesn’t want to feel uncomfortable. Just like me, this person loses it sometimes. Just like me, this person doesn’t want to be disliked. Just like me, this person wants to have friends and intimacy.’

“We can’t presume to know exactly what someone else is feeling and thinking, but still we do know a lot about each other. We know that people want to be cared about and don’t want to be hated. We know that most of us are hard on ourselves, that we often get emotionally triggered, but that we want to be of help in some way. We know that, at the most basic level, every living being desires happiness and doesn’t want to suffer.”

Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chödrön

When we do suffer, it is eased by the compassion of others. I remember talking with Joanie after my golden retriever died and because she knew the depth of the heartache, it was of great comfort to me. I am sending that compassion back to her now so the spirit of love, warmth and understanding continues to ripple out. My daughter wants to make a card for Joanie. She suggested a message of “You are the best even though you only have two dogs and one died.” I love the idea but we might fiddle with the wording…