Beginner’s Mind
In Zen Buddhism, Beginner’s Mind refers to “having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would.” (Wikipedia)
Children are a perfect example of living in Beginner’s Mind. They approach every new experience with curiosity and wonder. They have no experience, no expectations. They just show up and try.
As adults, even when we know we are learning something that we don’t know, or attempting to do something we’ve never done, we expect to immediately be good at it.
Often, that expectation of perfection and competence butts up against the deeper knowing that we WON’T be immediately good at it, and so we don’t even make the effort.
How often, as an adult, do you allow yourself to be in a position where you know you won’t be a master? Where you let yourself be taught, encouraged, and allowed to make mistakes? Where you give it your best without having to be perfect?
Several years ago I took a figure drawing class. I had never taken any kind of art class before and had no experience drawing. But I needed to learn about body proportions for some life-sized paper maché figures I wanted to create.
The teacher talked about negative space and movement and I carefully made pencil lines on my newsprint paper. I was easily frustrated, quick to get cranky, and I cried often during the first few lessons because I just couldn’t translate what I saw onto the paper.
And yet I loved the idea of this new way of seeing the human body. So I stuck with it. By the end of the eight weeks, my hand and eyes were making the connection and I even signed up for a second class.
A few years later I wanted to play the cello. The desire seemed to come out of nowhere, but it was a strong calling, so I pursued it. I rented a cello, found a teacher at a local music store and had a lesson every Friday afternoon for an hour.
I had played the alto saxophone and the oboe, both wind instruments, in high school. The cello, a large string instrument, requires the left hand to do one thing while the right hand does another. And the notes are on a completely different staff. I had no idea.
I struggled with the coordination and the foreign scales, transposing the notes from the familiar treble clef to the bass clef. My teacher encouraged me as I squeaked my bow across the strings and finally, I could hear myself improving.
A dislocated finger forced me stop playing after almost a year of lessons, and I actually missed the challenge of getting good at something new.
I remember writing on my I WANT list the year before:
I want to learn something I’ve never done before, even though I know I won’t be very good at it.
I wrote this, KNOWING the uncomfortableness of being a beginner. But also knowing that there is great freedom in being a beginner.
Because you don’t HAVE to know. You don’t have to be brilliant. In fact, you are expected to not be very good.
What if you tried something you’ve never done before and greeted that unknowing, that newness, that imperfection, with curiosity and wonder, without any preconceived expectations of your abilities.
What would you attempt?
Would you bake a peach pie?
Take painting lessons?
Learn how to play a musical instrument?
What if you approached your entire life with Beginner’s Mind?
Please share your ideas by clicking on the Comments below!
[ssba]Too Quiet To Think
It’s too quiet to think!
This is what so many of my clients tell me when I ask them to sit in stillness.
They are uncomfortable. Fidgety. There is nothing to distract them from the silence. Even with all of the scattered thoughts running through their minds, it becomes too quiet to think.
And this is exactly where I am hoping they get.
Because sometimes we need to just STOP THINKING.
Sometimes we need to stop trying to figure things out, stop planning every moment and just BE with our feelings. BE with the void of thought. BE in that sacred space where our deeper knowing can begin speak to us.
I remember one of the first times I sat in a group, practicing meditation. We were listening to a CD of a woman asking us to sit still and just notice everything we thought, felt, imagined, but not stay with any one thought.
She wanted us to let our thoughts float past us, making room for whatever came next. And through it all, she wanted us to be still. Even if we had an itch, we should try not scratch it.
Of course, I immediately felt a tickle on my ear, then under my nose, and all I could focus on was NOT moving, NOT scratching, just BEING still.
And it worked. Several moments passed when I realized that I had, in fact, stopped thinking.
Today, many years later, I love the times when I can sit in stillness and not think.
Thinking is work. Thinking is heavy brain mojo. Thinking can easily become a full-time, over-time job.
But watching my thoughts, detached from them, is peaceful. I don’t have to DO anything about them or with them. I can just notice them and let them go.
And now, after many years of practice, there are often big expanses of space between the thoughts where there is absolutely nothing crowding my mind.
And it is in those empty spaces that a completely new idea will appear, glowing and important, and it fills that silent space with a loud new voice.
This is where creativity lives. This is where our hearts speak. This is where our dreams are born.
So why not try it.
Find a quiet space in your day and just sit for five minutes. You may want to set a timer, otherwise you’ll think you’re done after only 30 seconds.
Just sit and notice your thoughts without getting stuck on any particular idea. Just notice and then let it go. Like clouds in the sky.
Practice this every day and, I promise, it will get easier and less uncomfortable.
Like anything we do, it is the practice, the repeating of a new activity or thought or non-thought, that builds our strength and stamina and brings us to the new level we desire.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can post them below by clicking on the Comments.
[ssba]How Driving At Night Prepares You For Life
“It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
E. L. Doctorow said this about writing, but it’s really about anything in life. You have to trust that things will be revealed as you move forward toward a goal, that there will always be enough light to see what’s in front of you.
But it takes so much courage to step into that unknown, that darkness, to move into that place of not knowing, fully aware that you have no idea what lies ahead.
But you also know that, if you stay where you are, waiting for all of the information, you may never take a single step.
Change happens with one next step in the direction of your desire. Just one, single, full-of-faith movement into the darkness.
Maybe it is making a phone call for more information about a class, or saying hello to a person you’ve had a faraway crush on. Maybe it is sitting down at your keyboard and writing the first sentence.
Just begin.
Take a deep breath and start from where you are.
Take one next step at a time into the darkness.
You can live your whole life this way.
[ssba]Remembering Summer
Ah summer.
The days are long, stretched out in light and heat and possibilities. Especially when you are a kid. For most of us, summer was the best part of the year–no school, playing all day, maybe even going on a family trip.
Even if we didn’t have the ideal childhood, summer offered us a kind of escape. We could disappear into a book or the swimming pool or a favorite hiding place and just be with our own imagination for a while.
Often, remembering those childhood summers can trigger a forgotten dream or remind us of something we’ve always loved.
I grew up on Long Island, the fish shaped peninsula east of New York City that juts into the Atlantic Ocean. My neighborhood was pure suburbia with green lawns and good schools and a mix of Jewish and Catholic families.
Summer meant weekly visits to the library, hours lying on the grassy incline in our front yard, imagining shapes in the clouds, and playing kickball with the neighbor kids in the school playground across the street until bedtime. I was the youngest and always had to leave before the game was over, called in by the on and off flashing of the front porch light, my mother’s silent signal that it was time for me to come home.
When I complained that everyone else could stay out later, she offered me the option of coming in now or not playing at all.
My mother had very clear rules about a lot of things. Homework before play. You have to be well for a full day after being sick before going back to school. And I couldn’t wear shorts until June 21, the official first day of summer. (I wonder if she would have been flexible with the shorts rule if I had grown up in Phoenix.)
Summer was also when we took our annual family vacation. I learned how to read a map on our car trips to Washington DC and the Pennsylvania Amish country. I swam in a lake and caught fireflies in a jar with the daughter of one of my father’s former colleagues in upstate New York. And we always stayed at a Holiday Inn, because kids were free and they had a swimming pool.
Summer was making friends with Beezus and Harriet and Encyclopedia Brown, and standing on my mother’s Hoover upright vacuum cleaner, pretending it was a microphone.
Summer was blowing wishes on dandelions and mowing patterns in the lawn with my father’s push mower. Summer was climbing across the monkey bars, not afraid to let go of one rung to reach the other.
Summer was blue popsicles dripping down my arm and chocolate Carvel ice cream cones dipped in rainbow sprinkles. Summer was getting my hair cut short, like a pixie, and my legs sticking to the vinyl on the backseat of the station wagon.
Summer was sleepover parties with my girlfriends and hours of riding our bikes on the blacktop of the schoolyard, pretending we were teenagers, driving to our own apartments.
Summer was being stuck in traffic coming home from Jones Beach, me in the back seat happily distracted by the smell of the ocean on my arms.
What do you remember about summer?
What were your favorite things to do?
Where did you hang out? Who were your best friends?
Does remembering anything about your childhood summer trigger a dream of something you’d like to be or do now?
I’d love to hear your summer memories. Please share them with me and my readers by clicking the comments below.
[ssba]
Learning to Fish
no pic of fishing, but this says it all
The summer I was six, my father taught me how to fish. We’d leave my mom home and drive out to Robert Moses State Park on the south shore of Long Island, past the swimming beaches to the fishing piers. We’d walk up and down one pier and then the other, watching the fishing people cast their clear lines over the rail and into the water.
I loved the sound of us walking on the wooden boards of the pier, clomp clomp clomping past the men and boys leaning against the wooden rails or sitting in webbed folding chairs, surrounded by buckets and fishing poles and tackle boxes.
My father and I would stop to look in their buckets and ask them what they had. Often we saw flounders and sometimes there was a gray blowfish, still filled with air, lying in the bottom of the bucket. Always there were screeching seagulls perched on the rails and circling overhead. While my father talked to the men I would lean through the rails and watch the colored balls bob on the wavy water.
I was usually the only girl on the pier. There were other kids my age, but only boys. It didn’t bother me and it didn’t seem to bother my father either. He always said that “whatever a man can do, a woman can do instead.”
After several trips to the pier my father said I was ready to fish. We picked a spot away from the other people and set our things down on the wooden planks. My father had his own tackle box. It was green plastic, about the size of a shoe box, with a handle and a silver clasp to keep it closed. Inside were two removable trays with more than a dozen compartments.
My father showed me the hooks and the weights and the colored balls and then picked out a teardrop-shaped weight and slipped it onto the end of his fishing rod.
“Now you need a bobber so you’ll be able to see where your line is.”
I picked a red ball from the box and my father showed me how to slide it on near the weight.
I leaned against the railing and my father stood behind me and put his big hands on top of mine on the smooth cork handle of the rod. “Look behind you and make sure there’s no one near you,” he said. Then slowly, he guided the rod around and behind us, lifting it up and swinging it forward.
The reel made a spinning whirring sound and the bright red bob at the end of the pole flew through the air and landed in the water about thirty feet in front of us.
“Now reel it in and we’ll do it again.”
“But when are we going to start fishing?” I asked.
“When you remember to look around before you swing your pole.”
I turned the spinner until the line was wound back in and we practiced casting together a few more times. Then my father stepped to the side so I could try it by myself. The first few times the weight barely made it over the rail. When I was able to hit the water four times in a row, my father said I was ready to bait my hook.
We had stopped at the bait stand at the pier where my father bought a cup of worms. They were slithering in the plastic container and I refused to touch them. “If you want to fish you’re going to have to get used to the bait.”
I watched him take a small sharp hook out of the tackle box and attach it to the end of my pole. Then he picked a worm out of the container and, as he started to hook it on the end, I had to close my eyes–it was just too disgusting. He handed me the baited pole and I held it as far away from me as possible. I was afraid if I didn’t cast it right, the worm would rub against me.
I looked all around me, then held the pole out from my body and swung it around and up and out. The reel whirred and the red ball landed about twenty feet out in the water. I was fishing!
I stood there next to my father, watching my marker bob on the water. I looked through the slats beneath my sneakered feet, mesmerized by the waves sloshing against the wooden legs of the pier.
I asked my father what made the waves. He started to explain about tides and the moon and gravity.
“Never mind,” I said, watching the tops of the waves disappear under the pier.
I felt a tug on the line.
“Reel it in. Slowly.”
My heart raced as I wound the spinner. When my line finally surfaced I saw that it was just some seaweed. I brought the line in and my father carefully removed the green slime. The worm was gone.
“You need more bait.”
I looked into the wormy container. “I can’t. Do it for me. Please.”
He put another worm on the hook. “Next time we’ll buy plastic worms.”
I cast my line back in and waited. I kept my eyes on the bobber moving up and down in the slapping water and imagined a giant fish eating the worm. I held my hand on the spinner, ready to reel it in. But the seaweed was the only thing I caught that day.
My father and I never caught a fish. But a lot of times I hooked a starfish. I was always squeamish about touching it, but it was so pretty that I did anyway. The tops of it’s five arms were rough and there were rows of hairlike fibers on it’s belly. I’d put it down on the pier and watch to see if it moved but it never did. Then I’d throw it back in the water.
Once I caught one with only four arms. My father said that if a starfish loses an arm it grows a new one. I wanted to take it home so I could watch it grow back but my father said no, it would smell too much. So I threw it back into the water like always.
[ssba]The Magic of Floating
On Friday evening, after I took my meds, I tossed the Frisbee into the pool for Mabel. She’s such a water dog, navigating around the snaking cleaner hose, onto the loveseat and out of the pool. I threw it four or five times and then I was hot enough to go in too.
This is that time of year when the water is cooler than the outside air and I have to ease in, one step at a time. My mind says to go slow but my body pushes forward into the water, the coolness sharp against my bare torso, and then I am in, all the way up to my neck. It only takes a few moments of moving in the water to acclimate to the temperature and feel one with the water.
In the past I would start with laps and stretching and splashing in the water. But I know I need to move slowly, with awareness, and not overdo it. So I dog paddled into the deep end and pretended I was a buoy, my body suspended vertically, floating and lifting with the slight movements of the water.
With each inhale my body lifted, exposing my shoulders, and with each exhale, my body lowered so that the waterline was right at my lips, and I blew bubbles into the water as I pushed the breath out of me. Rising and lowering, I envisioned my spinal disks floating into place. I imagined that the tinglings down my right thigh were on their way out for good.
But when the throbbing started in my butt, I was ready to float. But there was sewer roach on the cleaner hose. Marika and I have a save-all-bugs policy, but I wasn’t willing to scoop him up in my hand. So I picked up the hose and scooted him toward the side of the pool. But he fell off. I maneuvered the hose under water to catch him as he was sinking and he finally grabbed on. I was almost to the edge and he fell off again, but I got him back on before he went too far under. I dropped him on the pool deck and watched.
At first he didn’t move at all, but then his antennas started waving and his head moved and, even without my glasses, I could see the dark of his eye and the serrated fringes on his legs. His underbelly was a radiant golden fan. I said a prayer for him to recover, then scouted for any other bugs I could save before I floated.
I saved three, didn’t save two more. And in between, I kicked my legs even though it hurt. I told myself my body needs to move, to not stay stuck here. And I remembered when I was in the belly of this whole sciatica journey, how I had to scream out loud when I got up from my chair, consciously claiming that I was moving though the pain.
And I decided, in that moment, that I was ready to move through this pain again to whatever is next.
I raced myself around the deep end, breast stroking with my arms, bike peddling with my legs, until I was too sore to continue. And then I floated.
The sensations in my whole right side were magnified in the water – the pressure in my hip, the aching in my butt, the buzzing down my right leg. I kept breathing into the sensations, imagining that the water was neutralizing the electricity. I moved my hands under my thigh, pulsating the water like a massage. And I breathed.
There is something so amazing about being weightless, feeling so held by the water that it is hard to discern where my skin ends and the water begins.
I rested on my back, feeling the evenness between my left and right hips and legs now that the sensations had subsided. I breathed into my whole body, feeling my bare skin rise and lower at the water line.
I rolled about 70 degrees to my right, envisioning my spinal fluid sloshing to new places, healing and lubricating my entire backbone. Then I rolled on my back and rested before turning on my left side to repeat. I settled onto my back again, watching the sky turn clockwise above me as I breathed into my body, feeling it expand and relax as I surrendered a little more to the water.
My ears were underwater so I couldn’t hear the palm fronds brushing against each other in the breeze or the chirps of the sparrows on the seed feeder. I could only hear the water sounds of the pool filter and the power of my own breath.
I thought about a friend who is on fire with her life. She loves her work, is excited about learning more, and she has propelled herself into a realm of great success and connections.
And then I cried, because I want to be excited about my work and my life, too!
I stretched my body long and leaned my head back until the water was up to my hairline and my hair, underwater, floated like a hundred mermaids’ tails. I leaned back even further so that the water covered my forehead, my eyes, my cheeks, my bottom lip, until only my nostrils were exposed. And I was so calm, because I knew I just needed to inhale to raise my body up to keep the water from going into my nose.
The metaphor was not lost on me.
Just breathe. Deep. With faith. And know you will not drown.
And I realized that, until now, I wasn’t ready to breathe that deep, to let go of that much, to move through this place of not knowing what’s next.
Because I hadn’t let go of my own plans, my deep need for control. I hadn’t yet let go of the old dreams I had.
But there in the water, floating and fully supported, I let it all go.
I don’t need to know when I’ll be back at the beach. Or where the money is coming from. Or what my new work is. I don’t need to know if or when Marika will move to California. Or if we’ll live on the road for a year.
I just need to know that I’m on the right path. Right here. Right Now.
That YES! Whatever I want to do/be/have is absolutely possible. And it can be anything, as long as I REALLY believe in it… WOW!!!
I remember being in this place before, in 2008, a year after my heart surgery to remove a benign myxoma. I had no idea what was next, but I knew it was bigger than I had been living.
Within the next 2 years I went to a women’s retreat, got certified as a Life Coach, and then worked with a high level business coach to grow my Mac training business. And that’s how I was able to make the plan to move to the beach.
None of those things had been in my original dream vision, and yet it was exactly what I needed to be and do and have.
Remembering this, I am feeling lighter, hopeful, ready. I am actually excited about the unknown instead of freaking out that I don’t know. Because I know I am on my path and it’s leading me to something wonderful.
And I have less pain!
And so I have started to ask myself those important questions again. What do I really love to do? What knocks my socks off? Who do I love to work with? How do I like to connect with others? How can I best serve?
And how do I want feel?
I don’t need to know the answers right away.
I’m actually enjoying the spaciousness of possibilities, the excitement of exploring and opening, once again, to the questions, knowing, trusting, that amazing things are unfolding.
Comment? Please share below!
[ssba]Finding Home
It’s been TWO YEARS since I left my life in Arizona and moved to the beach. For those of you who don’t know the story, it’s a page turner. And it’s full of lessons for me about faith and letting go and giving up control.
Now, two years later, I am learning the same things, on a deeper level. And re-reading about how I did it inspires me as I begin to manifest my new next dream.
I hope it inspires you somehow, too.
If you like it, please let me know. This is the book I am writing….
“Change comes when your deepest WHY is bolstered with courage, faith and the love and support of friends and family.”
I have been dreaming of living at the beach for more than 15 years. In September, 2010, while working with a high level business coach, I set the intention and began a two year plan to make it happen. I made big changes in my Mac training business so that I could offer virtual training products and services to Mac lovers all over the world.
My original vision had me moving my life and my things from Phoenix to Morro Bay, finding a house with a yard and settling into the community. But, like with most things in life, this transition has been anything but the clear, straight line that I imagined.
I am just back from a week in Morro Bay, looking for my new home to rent. I had contacted several property management places beforehand, but none of them had a listing for my ideal home. They implied that finding a house that accepted dogs might be a challenge, but I didn’t let that dissuade me. I knew there was a house there, ready and waiting for me.
I had written a list of everything I wanted in my new home:
2+ bedrooms, bathtub, stove, fridge, washer/driver hookups, lots of light, a dog friendly yard….
I was looking for a bungalow, but it couldn’t be a dump. And I thought for sure I was wanting to live in North Morro Bay, close to the dog beach.
But when I stood on the beach, waves rolling, dogs romping, I was overwhelmed with sadness and doubt. The place was filled with too many memories of the past. And I wondered if I was really ready for this big leap.
I cried most of that first day. I wrote to friends and was bolstered by their confidence and their love. “…You are there, you are meant to be there, of course you’re gonna cry….You will find your perfect place….Let go, lean in…stay open…BREATHE.”
I talked with the women at the indie bookstore. I had lunch at the vegan restaurant in town and talked with other diners. I asked everyone I met if they knew of a house for rent.
One woman said her neighbors were renters and were moving out next month, that she’d check with them about their rent. Another man said he lived in Los Osos, on the bay side of town, and loved the laid back vibe more than the city feel of Morro Bay.
I was staying in a Casita in Los Osos and I knew what he meant. I too, loved the quiet, sidewalk-less streets, the friendly people, the dog friendly trails along the bay.
That afternoon I called all of the property management places again and still, there was nothing. I was panicking, feeling desperate. I kept checking Craigslist, expanding my search area to include Los Osos, and I even looked at a few houses. But they were too small, or no yard or NO DOGS ALLOWED.
I drove down to the bay and walked along the sand, the air so still and quiet that I could hear the ducks splashing in the water. I watched a man paddle in on his kayak and load it onto a makeshift stroller.
That evening I sat on the deck of the Casita, overlooking the blue bay and listening to the sparrows and ravens calling me to the present moment.
I didn’t know WHERE I was going to live, but I knew it was someplace HERE.
I woke up to a light rain on Wednesday morning. My plan was to NOT house hunt, but to walk, to be out in nature, to let go of the HOW, the WHEN the WHERE and reconnect with my deepest WHY of this big move.
I drove to Montaña de Oro, a wild state park with a beautiful two mile bluff trail overlooking the ocean. I got there just as the drizzle stopped and everything was bursting with color–the bright yellow wildflowers, the greens of the trees, the whitecaps of the waves below.
Other walkers were bundled in fleece and sweatshirts and I was so comfortable in just a shirt and jeans. More important, my lungs were happy. I walked the entire loop, stopping often to just breathe it all in.
I sat outside at a garden cafe and ate a too big a lunch WITH a piece of pecan pie, then came back to the Casita where I wrote for a bit, then had to take a nap outside on the chaise lounge.
Around six I took a walk through the neighborhood, down to the bay. The streets are narrow, the homes a hodge podge of architecture and landscaping. I found a trail around the cuesta inlet, private property where folks rest their kayaks on the pickleweeded shores for easy access into the bay. The trail was right out of my dream. It meandered along the water’s edge, small sanded beach inlets led down to the calm water. 
I met several folks walking with their dogs, off leash. Of course, I said hello, chatted, asked if they knew of anything for rent. We talked about how glorious a place this was.
And just when I was wishing for a log to sit on and just look around, there was a picnic bench and several plastic chairs set up, facing Morro Rock in the distance.
I imagined how happy Laddy would be, walking with me here, sniffing, wandering, casually greeting the other dogs, without the frenzy of the ocean.
I felt the cool, moist air on my arms, the slight breeze coming in off the water. My whole being felt alive and happy.
On the walk back to my Casita a man was standing by his truck on the street and I said hello. He said, “This is Paradise, isn’t it?” We talked about the weather, how he wrote his first book on a Mac Classic and that he taught at the high school Steve Jobs attended a few years after he was there. And of course, I asked him if he knew of anything for rent in the neighborhood. He said, “Well, I might.”
Turns out he owns a second house a few blocks down and he doesn’t NEED to rent it, but he might. He drove me over there and we looked inside.
It’s not a pretty house, but it’s big enough. No real yard, but there is a nice deck in the back. It’s on a busy corner but in this dream neighborhood. And the rent is HALF of what I’d been looking at because he would keep his workshop and motorcycle in the garage and I’d just park on the dirt pad in front. Still, he wasn’t ready to commit, he just kept saying that if I need a backup plan, I have one.
I slept great that night, the first full night of deep sleep since I’d been there. Just knowing I had a backup plan took all of the stress off. It opened me up again.
The next day I saw three houses. And when I walked into the third place, I knew.
It’s funky, spacious and filled with natural light. It has three big bedrooms (yes, I will have a guest room for visitors!), and there’s a big yard for Laddy with a deck and everything else on my wish list.
There’s a huge master bedroom and bathroom upstairs with a deck and a view of Morro Rock and the sand spit, but it’s too great a space to waste on sleeping and getting dressed so it will be my new work room-office-writing space-art studio.
It’s a short mile to the bay and fifteen minutes to the dog beach.
The rent is a little more than I originally planned to spend, but it offers so much room to grow into. And other houses in this price range were so much smaller.
I thought about the man’s backup house, which was just big enough and, in many ways, just like what I am living now, but in a new place.
And I thought about my WHY, and how, sometimes you have to take a risk, a leap.
Sometimes you have to give up the good for great.
This three bedroom house pushes me to my edge, to grow, to expand, to really claim this as my new life. It offers the space to make art, to write, to do bigger work. And visualizing where I will put my furniture, how I will move and live in this space, how Laddy and I will explore the trails and meet new friends makes my whole heart sing.
UPDATE:
The day after I mailed my deposit check, the realtor called to tell me that the current tenants of the dream house had decided not to move.
Now I really DID need a back up plan.
I knew Mr. Back Up Man was on vacation in Texas and wouldn’t be back until the 17th of May, so I just let it go. I shifted my attention to just being in the present moment–working, getting together with friends, just hanging loose since I wouldn’t have an answer for at least three weeks.
I played with the floor plans of his house that I had sketched, imagining my art table in the middle of the oversized master bedroom. My supplies would fill the wall of closets and my iMac would work on the desk in front of the corner window. My bed would be fine in the smaller front room since I only sleep and get dressed in there. And it was almost half the price of the dream house.
This would give me a bigger financial cushion so that I could take a little more time to build up the local Mac business. It seemed like the perfect starter place.
And so I waited to hear.
Click here to read Finding Home, Part 2
What dreams are YOU holding onto? Where can you let go, open up and create space so that it can manifest as it is truly meant to be?
[ssba]From Fallow Fields to Flower Fields
This letting go business is tough.
When we let go of something, how do we know something better will come? What happens if it’s gone forever?
Whenever I start to doubt, I turn to Nature for assurance. Nature seems to be a wonderful reflection for us humans.
In Carlsbad, California there is a place called The Flower Fields where they grow acres and acres of ranunculus. From March through May, the fields are full with every color of flower: red, orange, yellow, white, pink, even purple, as far as you can see.
But after the season, the farm workers harvest the seeds from the remaining crop and plow the fields down. They fumigate all the beds to be sure to kill everything. And they let the soil rest.
Through the winter the fields are empty, colorless, waiting.
In early spring, new seeds are planted by hand, row after row, the workers trusting that the coming year’s crop will bloom as colorful and beautiful as the year before.
While previous harvests strongly support the possibility, there is no guarantee.
But the flowers certainly wouldn’t grow if the farmers didn’t first clear the fields.
It’s the same with us.
We have to let go of the old to make space for the new. We need to sit in that space of fallow fields, allowing our own ground to rest before something new can grow.
A woman in my Living Room Ladies coaching circle is redefining what it means to be an artist. While she has let go of her youthful visions and expectations of an artist’s life, she has no idea what that life could look like now. And she is very uncomfortable with this blank slate.
Because if it’s not what she always thought it was, what is it?
She is in the fallow fields. She has plowed the fields and fumigated the beds and now she must sit and lean into that quiet empty space. Maybe it isn’t yet time to plant the new seeds.
So what can she do? (We all want to be DOING something to move our progress along.)
Well, sometimes the best doing is just Be-ing.
Being able to sit with the thoughts that come up, to calm ourselves when we butt up against our own impatience, to dig deeper into our own soil to reconnect with the reason we want to do this thing in the first place.
She will know when it’s time for planting. She will know what seeds to scatter. She will know how she wants to bloom.
I’d love to hear your comments. Please share them by clicking the comments below.
[ssba]My Mother Never Wore Makeup
In honor of Mother’s Day last Sunday, and what would have been my mom’s 84rd birthday on May 17, I’m re-sharing this post I wrote about my mom shortly after she died in 2010.
It inspired so many people to think of their own mothers and what they knew and didn’t know about them. Several friends wondered how much their own kids knew about them.
Maybe it will inspire you to spend some time today thinking of your own mom.
My Mother Never Wore Makeup
My mother never wore makeup. No eye shadow or mascara, no foundation or blush. A tube of pink coral lipstick could last a whole year in the bottom of her pocketbook, only rolled up out of its gold tube on special occasions, like weddings and PTA meetings.
In her wedding picture, my mother looks like Elinor Donahue, the daughter in Father Knows Best. Her short black hair has a slight wave below the ears, framing her twenty-nine year old face.
My mother never rode a bike, could barely swim. She said she didn’t know how to breathe like a swimmer so, for her swimming test in high school, she held her breath for the entire lap across and back.
My mother didn’t like octopus or squid. She did not like to sit in the sun. She was good at crossword puzzles and Scrabble and those logic games where you have to figure out, if Jane likes cats and Matthew is allergic to dogs, who sits next to Bob in the office.
We’d watch Jeopardy together way back when Art Fleming was the host, and my mom got so many answers right I thought she should be on the show.
She didn’t drink except maybe a single whiskey sour at someone’s bar mitzvah. She didn’t smoke, either, but she sometimes held a friend’s cigarette because she liked the way it felt between her fingers.
My mother had scars from a hysterectomy, a lumpectomy, and the death of her seven year old son from neuroblastoma.
Her favorite ice cream was Baskin Robbins Rocky Road and Burgundy Cherry. She liked the eggrolls with the bumpy wonton wrappers. When she was on the original Weight Watchers with Jean Nidetch, she ordered beef with bean sprouts with no cornstarch at the Chinese restaurant.
My mother could recite entire poems, like Trees and The Wasteland and Casey at the Bat. She played the piano by ear and sang the harmony on Happy Birthday.
She swore by Ivory soap, Prell shampoo, Scott toilet paper and Kleenex tissues. She preferred S&W over Libby’s, Macy’s over Penney’s. She always drove an American car.
My mother didn’t garden or sew or read Ladies Home Journal. She drank Chock Full of Nuts coffee and SweeTouchNee tea. Her standard home cooked meals were hamburgers, salmon latkes and spaghetti and meatballs served with canned LeSeur peas.
She had small hands and AAA narrow feet and her pinky toes curled behind the others, just like mine. She could add three digit numbers in her head and type seventy five words per minute. She edited spreadsheets and newsletters and balanced her checkbook with Quicken, even when she could barely read the numbers in the register.
My mother looked pretty in pink and gray and periwinkle. She preferred elastic waisted pants and skirts and didn’t wear a bra around the house. She usually wore a turtleneck under her blouse – partly because she was cold – but mostly to hide the folds of her neck.
We buried her in the navy velour pants and matching jacket, hood up, with a pink turtleneck underneath. No bra, no makeup, just a hint of lipstick, just like she asked.
What do you remember about your mom? Please share by clicking on the Comments below.
[ssba]The Gifts of a Setback
You may be tired of hearing about my sciatica, but I’m learning so much about myself through this experience. And folks have written, thanking me for verbalizing what they’ve experienced with their own chronic pain.
I was so happy to return to work last week, driving to a client’s house, sitting for two hours and then driving home. I iced between activities and continued my regular stretching on my yoga mat. I was even able to sit comfortably through the entire dinner my Dad made on Saturday night. I still had the neuropathy that felt like a hard waterfall down my thigh for the first few moments after standing up, but I felt good. Strong. Stable. I was even going on short walks with Mabel.
On Thursday I went to my favorite gentle yoga class at Desert Song Yoga. My teacher focused the practice on hip and heart openers. It was like she was talking directly to me, “If you have back issues, pay attention, don’t over do it.” She reminded us to engage the tops of the thighs, to reach from the waist, to exhale, then go a little deeper.
And she guided us into a deep hip opener and said, “Use your breath to release any residual stuff that might be stuck.” I was lying on my back, with my knees hugged deep into my chest. I breathed into my right hip and started to cry. “Breathe in and release,” she said, as tears dripped down my face. “It’s OK to let go.”
I was cautious and attentive with each pose and several times I came out of the pose before everyone else, and rested. And most of all, it was so wonderful to be practicing with my community.
After yoga I had a light lunch, then drove an easy three miles to a client’s house. I sat for two and a half hours in a wooden chair and my butt was talking to me on the way home. When I got home I got in bed and laid on my ice, praying.
On Friday, I woke up in tears. It hurt to stand. It hurt to sit. I had that throbbing aching in my butt again.
But I had a client and I had already rescheduled her twice. I cried on the drive to her house and was so grateful that she had forgotten the appointment. I drove home in tears, shifting and lifting myself off the seat, trying to find the least painful position. I spent the day on heat and ice, getting up to walk every fifteen minutes in between. And I cried.
That night I couldn’t find a comfortable position to sleep. I tried lying flat on my back in bed but my legs hurt. I stretched out on the couch but my back hurt. I ended up sleeping in my office on my yoga mat, on my belly with a pillow under me to take the strain off of my back.
Mabel came in around six in the morning. I got back in bed and told Marika how frustrated I was. And I started crying. I cried about everything – the returning pain, the frustration, missing my Mom, how I didn’t want to have to cancel any more clients. And then I was just wailing, with no thoughts attached, just crying out everything, moving the energy, releasing it, letting it go. I was bawling so loudly that Marika had to leave the room. And I cried about that too. But I understood and I let that go, too.
Healing is not linear. Few things are, really. But we think and imagine and expect things to be.
What this sciatica journey is teaching me is that really, everything passes and nothing stays the same and that being able to live THAT is the key to everything.
That this present moment is here for us to enjoy or not, it’s our choice. So yes, even though in the last eight weeks Marika and I haven’t been able to go anywhere fun, we’ve made our own fun. We sing, we play rhyming word games, we play name that tune with the oldies station. And on the days when it is hard to be together, we get grumpy and cranky and we take our own space.
There’s so much to learn in that, too. That we need to be able to be alone with ourselves even when we are together, so that it’s not as hard when we are apart. And that there are some things I can’t do it for her and she can’t do it for me. But that we can still be there for each other, supporting each other as we do our own work.
Now, instead of asking, what can I do for you, I ask, How can I support you? Sometimes it is by making her a tuna melt sandwich, other times by looking up addresses or calculating numbers. And sometimes it is just me being in the same room while she files her weekly unemployment claim.
And when I am feeling hopeless and frustrated, I just need a squeeze of her hand and for her to remind me that it’s not always going to be like this.
And then I can get up from my ice, walk and move in my body and lift my heart, and say Thank You for all that I am learning, even though it hurts.
And as I walk through the discomfort, I feel the new range of motion in my hips and legs and realize that this is also about learning how I support myself. How, for years, my right hip has been tight and unsteady, forcing my left hip to bear more weight. In the same way that my Mac training is so left brained, and my writing and coaching work is so right brained, now, as my right hip gets stronger, there can be ease and flow in my hips and in my work and in my life.
This setback has given me another opportunity to stop and go deeper, to learn even more about how I move and don’t move through my life. And to realize the blessings that have come from this painful experience. And for that, I am vey grateful.
How do you deal with setbacks? Please share by clicking the Comments below!
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