overcoming – Surprised By Joy

Resilience and The Right Team

July 17, 2024July 17, 2024Posted in inspirationTagged creativity, disappointment, encouragement, inspiration, motivation, overcoming, resilience63 Comments

“Children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care that they get.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

I know it’s bad form to brag about your kids. So I’ll ask for your apology in advance. I want to set the expectations appropriately, and then still do exactly what I want to do. Because I was so inspired by my four-year-old that it seems worth passing along.

Two days ago, I saw my son, Mr. D, pull off an incredible feat of resilience. He went to an Aikido class expecting that he could test for his yellow belt. Not only did he expect this, but he’d told his teachers at school, and we’d gotten my mom to come to the class to watch. Plus his favorite person on the planet, his darling older sister, would be there.

But when he did his practice test, he screwed up the forward rolls. The Sensei is a very good teacher and won’t let anyone take the test until they’ve got it down. So, she let him know before his class started that he wouldn’t be able to test that day.

He lined up for class with his bottom lip quivering and he kept glancing at me to commiserate his disappointment. The crestfallen look on his face was enough that I felt like crying myself. But about halfway through the 50-minute class, he took a deep breath in, squared his shoulders, and visibly moved on from the disappointment.

By the end of class, he was fully participating and laughing. When we went home, he kept practicing the move he messed up. He was still only landing on the correct foot about fifty percent of the time.

Then yesterday morning, he popped up out of bed and wanted to show me his rolls. He thought hard about it, and nailed it. After about a half dozen correct ones, he announced he was ready to test. When we went to Aikido class yesterday afternoon, he stepped up and nailed the test.

Expectation, disappointment, then coming back to earn it – kids do these things in such quick succession that they make it look easy. It makes me wonder if as grown-ups we remember these are part of a cycle. We just have to keep rolling to get through it.

One other thing strikes me. Kids have a whole network of people cheering them on. Teachers, coaches, parents, grandparents, and often even random bystanders will jump in to tell them they’re doing great.

Which makes me wonder if adults have the same. Are we cultivating the friends, partners, colleagues, and mentors that help us continue to be resilient? Are we being those people for others? It might make all the difference.

Sacred Time

August 22, 2022Posted in life lessonsTagged beauty, inspiration, life, overcoming, sacred time50 Comments

“Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller

Early the other morning, my cat came in with something in her mouth. It was so small, I couldn’t see what it was. When she put it down, I tried to pick it up and it fluttered against my hand and I saw a flash of green when it did so I discovered it was a bird. This was only about a week after the cat had brought a baby bunny in and both were during my sacred time, the 90 minutes I have to do yoga, meditate and write before the kids wake up.

I was irritated because I thought she was done with the phase of life of hunting little creatures.

I was distracted because wanted to go back to reading and writing about the precious things of life.

I was annoyed that instead of finding inner peace, I was scrambling around on my hands and knees doing the quiet angry whisper at the cat.

Despite all this, I managed to get the small lump of feathers between a greeting card and a paper towel and I took it outside. I thought it was dead and my plan was to just release it into the bushes off the side of my deck.

As I let go, the small lump of feathers fell for about a foot, then righted itself mid-drop and flew away. It revealed itself as a little hummingbird as it rose higher and higher.

Stunned, I just stood there for a long moment feeling the magic of that flight course through me. It was as if I had the after-image of that free fall into flight burned into my being. I had goosebumps all over.

It was life showing me that no matter what cat has got us in its claws, there’s always a chance that it will let up and we’ll fly away.

And to see it fly was poetry in motion that even as battered as we feel, we can always rise again.

Most importantly, I saw that this was my sacred time. This was the beautiful beat of life coming to me to be witnessed, held and let go.

Quote comes from a Real Life of an MSW post: Overcoming.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Rebranding Exercise

January 21, 2022Posted in meditationTagged dread, family, fear, inspiration, meditation, overcoming, relationships23 Comments

“Sometimes it’s okay if the only thing you remembered to do today was breathe.” – Unknown

Somewhere in the middle of yesterday morning, I realized that, although I was in the middle of a scenario that I dreaded, I was doing fine, in fact better than fine. The scenario: quarantined alone with two kids for days on end, no other grown-ups allowed in for help or distraction, not able to go outside which is both my and my kids’ happy place, feeling sick and trying to work.

It made me wonder – how much energy is wasted imagining dreaded scenarios? They may or may not happen. And this one has taught me, that even when they happen, they don’t feel like I feared they would. In fact, I felt so emboldened by the fact I was facing this nightmare down that I skipped through the rest of the morning.

This sparked a tidbit that I learned many years ago from someone who was researching how we RSVP events that are 1 month or 6 months out. They found that our minds have an image of who we’ll be and how we’ll feel in the future that isn’t accurate. When we respond based on that image, we often don’t predict well whether we’ll want to go. The trick, the research said, was to RSVP as if the event was tomorrow or next weekend. Because we just don’t know how we are going to feel about an event until we are facing it.

Also in my dread, I couldn’t imagine the beautiful difference that how other people would react would make. My friends, neighbors and colleagues have been so supportive and offered to drop off groceries, dinners and things for the kids. And in my imagining, I couldn’t factor in the great community of grown-ups that I’ve found in blogging. Reading other people’s blogs and writing through this has kept me in touch with the big picture reality in such a delightful way (thank you so much!). And finally, my kids have done pretty darn well in this break from normality. They’ve bickered and gotten grumpy but also taken it in stride.

And finally, the fear of the unknown made the idea of the quarantine much scarier than it is. When I fear things, it adds a patina to the image that doesn’t appear in the reality. Dealing with and dreading are two different things. Of course, that is also thankfully because our cases are mild, it gets better and more known each day and now the end is in sight.

The more often I face something I dread, the more I learn to return from that feeling. I think we all leave the present for someone imagined scenario but like just like blinking, we have the chance to clear our vision and return. No need to spend any time in the future – because how I think I will feel when I have to have a tooth drilled, hold a child that is hurt or face disappointment is not how I will actually feel.

And building on the other things I’ve learned this week, I sat my kids down to do a meditation last night after dinner. It worked wonderfully to settle us all into a fun evening routine. They loved it and my 6-year-old especially thought it was great.

So I’m rebranding this quarantine as a meditation retreat.