Anatomy of a Shift
I have been lying on my back for the last two and a half weeks with the most intense episode of sciatica.
I’ve had lower back pain before that has left me on my heating pad for several days. But this sharp, lightening bolt pain that shoots down my leg is like nothing I’ve experienced before.
But then, this place in my life is like nothing I’ve experienced before either.
Yes, it started with some irritated disks, but, with my back already tender, I didn’t slow down. Instead, I must have moved just enough to tweak something in my piriformis, the muscle that stretches across the lower back between the pelvis and the head of the femur. The muscle tightened and shifted my hip in the socket and somewhere in the midst of all of the shifting, my sciatic nerve got caught in the middle.
It was as if all of the things I was dealing with in my life – a shift in my work, the grief that was triggered with the loss of my first best friend, helping Marika find a new job, transitioning to being in Phoenix- all came to a head like a five car pileup on my right butt cheek.
My whole body tightened up against the pain. I couldn’t sit on the toilet without screaming. I had no appetite. I couldn’t even reach across the bed to pet Mabel. And I was barely breathing. As soon as I noticed how shallow my breath was, I was able to breathe a little space into my back and heart.
My yoga teacher says that women hold a lot of emotion in their hips. My hips have been tight since I began practicing in 2004. Since then, my left hip has opened more but my right hip has continued to be resistant to most stretches. Even in the simple pose with my right ankle resting on my left thigh, my hip has always screamed like it would break if I attempted the slightest stretch.
I looked up Louise Hay’s interpretation of sciatica and she believes that it is related to financial fear, which made me laugh, because there I was, lying on my back, cancelling clients, NOT making money, and being advised not to worry about it. But it made sense on a bigger scale as I am redefining my work in the world and feeling unsure that it will support me. I began repeating her suggested affirmation, “I move into my greater good and I am secure and safe.”
And I started talking to the pain, asking what I could learn from it.
The first message came loud and clear-to love the pain. To not resist it or deny it, but to befriend it, to move with it.
And so, when I shifted from sitting to standing, instead of stopping because the pain was going to take me beyond the top of the pain scale, I willed myself to move with it, through it. I figured it was going to hurt either way, so I might as well move faster.
I screamed, I cried, I sang, I prayed, I cursed, any expression to release the pain, all while telling myself that it would be over once I stood up.
And it usually was. But standing for more than a few minutes brought severe cramping down the back of my leg and I had to get back into bed to relieve the pressure.
Lying there, I could feel how bound up every single muscle was in my butt. I breathed in calm and love and release as I laid on my belly with a pillow under me for support, making microscopic flexing movements with my butt cheeks, imagining they were butterfly wings.
I began moving my pelvis, ever so slightly, to see if I could loosen things up. After a day of these gentle movements, I had a little more range of motion in my hips and I began slow, regular stretches to continue the healing.
And what I noticed was that my hip was now moving without that feeling of breaking. I could feel the stretches in the actual muscles for the first time. My butt still ached like hell, but my hip felt free.
I had been seeing my chiropractor since the episode began and he had mentioned that, in addition to the swelling in my disks and the issues in the piriformis, my femur was turned out. It is no wonder I experienced such excruciating pain while it re-situated itself in the socket.
Life is a spiral, and this has been an opportunity to go deeper into the grief I’ve been holding in my hips all of these years. I’m sure it was triggered by the sudden death of my first ever best friend, even though we were only friends online. I had lost the last connection to someone who knew me before my brother died. While I have done years of work making peace with his death, this time I realized I needed to reconnect with my own six year old self who got lost the day he died.
In the midst of all of this personal work, I am also doing a lot of shifting in my businesses. 2014 is the year that I step higher and deeper into Spark the Heart. This is the year I am writing my book and leading retreats and workshops for ready women. This is also the year that I am doing less Mac training.
I am so grateful for the friends who called and emailed and engaged with me on Facebook. And for my Dad who called and checked up on me daily, offering to bring bagels and lox and anything else I might need. And for my friend Geri who came and worked her massage magic on my buttocks. And for Marika, who kept me on heat and ice and fluffed my pillows and made chicken soup, and took over my football duties and put my socks on for me and sang with me and screamed with me and held my hand when I cried.
I am still far from 100%, but walking and standing are much less painful. It is still uncomfortable to sit for very long, with the pressure on my butt, but I’m hoping that tomorrow’s acupuncture will alleviate whatever is still bound up.
Still, it would be so easy to just stay in bed, on my back, no pressures, minimal discomfort. Just like continuing on my life path as it is would be easier, no pressure, just show up and do the work I’ve been doing for the last 28 years. But I know what my body needs most is to move, to stretch, to realign. And that I need to shift into bigger work.
Life is about challenging ourselves to move past what we know and what is comfortable, to find how we can really make a difference and feel that our work matters. Old stories can’t get us there. Old wounds can’t keep us there. We have to unbind ourselves from our old beliefs and hurts, and release them so that we can move forward with grace and ease to whatever is next.
I will continue to move through this journey with faith and an open heart, trusting that I will be financially supported because this is where my real work is.
[ssba]That Attitude of Gratitude
It is springtime in the Arizona desert and, as I drive the streets that line the bases of the mountains, it is as if the whole earth is lit up with the yellows of poppies and brittle bush and marigolds. Bursts of orange African daisies and purple lupine and verbena appear on the roadsides between stretches of sidewalk and graveled hiking trails.
I tell you this because the last time I spent the spring in Phoenix, I couldn’t tell you what was in bloom, or dormant, or what colors appeared anywhere. I wasn’t really present. I was merely here counting the days until I’d be back at the beach.
This time is different. Completely. I am present. Open to what happens each day. And I haven’t even thought about when I’m heading back to the beach.
Because life happens where we are, in the present moment.
It is in the NOW that we hug our friends and feel the love. It’s being here in the moment where we notice the colors popping and feel the intensity of the sun on our skin.
It’s in the present moment that we feel the sadness too. Being here, I notice how much more I miss Laddy. I’ve been crying a lot, feeling his absence. But I lean in and feel the loss, and that’s living in the now, too.
I’m sure I’m experiencing this big shift because, the day before I left the beach, I set the intention to be grateful for my time in Arizona, fully and completely, with no regrets, and with full presence.
I set things up with my time here differently, too. Yes, I came to town primarily to work with clients. But this time I didn’t jam every single day with work. And I have reserved every Thursday morning for my cherished yoga class. I even gave myself an extra half hour between yoga and my afternoon client so that I can languish in the way my body feels after my practice, and enjoy lunch without rushing.
And I haven’t planned a dinner out with a friend every single evening. Instead, I’m staying home some nights enjoying Marika’s home cooking, and stretching out on the couch watching TV.
Even the warm weather hasn’t really get to me, because I was expecting it.
And I find myself saying thank you a lot. Because when we are present we are more able to be grateful for what is.
I am still in awe of this life I have created that allows me to come back to Phoenix where clients greet me with hugging arms, where friends remember my birthday and treat me to delicious meals, where my home away from home is comfortable, familiar and full of love.
Having an attitude of gratitude may seem like just a silly rhyme. But I invite you to try it. Because it really works!
[ssba]Cause For Applause: Replace But’s With YAYS!
I was listening to one of my coaching clients share some of her weekly successes. She had cleaned out an entire closet, paid her bills early and had scheduled a long-overdue manicure for herself.
She was moving so quickly through the list that there was no pause for honoring her accomplishments. And when she did pause, it was to counter the success with a “but I didn’t….”
I had to stop her.
I gave her a big shout out for each of the successes. And I asked her to join me in a big WOOHOO! YAY! I DID THAT! celebration.
And then she said, “Wow, I didn’t even realize how much I’d done.”
Often we are so focused on plowing through our to-do lists that we don’t honor the work we’re doing.
We don’t take the time to celebrate our successes.
We don’t breathe in how good it feels to accomplish something.
No wonder we still feel overwhelmed with what ELSE we have to do.
And when we counter what we HAVE done with a BUT, (yes, I did that BUT I didn’t do the other thing) we are negating ourselves, dishonoring our success, sabotaging our own power.
I asked my client to pay attention to this pattern and, whenever she hears herself say BUT, to stop and take the opportunity to CELEBRATE what she DID do with a big YAY!
She liked the idea.
Later, in our conversation, she started to go down that BUT road and immediately stopped herself mid-sentence. She didn’t YAY, but I could hear her smile.
How often to you celebrate your accomplishments?
How often do you honor what you’ve taken care of, what you’ve done for yourself?
How often do you give yourself a big high-five YEAH???
Click below on Comments to share your successes, your accomplishments, your YAYS!
[ssba]The Friend Who Knew Me
Several weeks ago I found out that my very first childhood friend had suddenly died. Though we hadn’t seen each other since we were thirteen, we’d recently connected on Facebook and the loss struck me deep and hard. She was one of the last friends who knew me as a child, before my brother died.
I met Ellen in nursery school. She had a playhouse fort in her backyard and she liked to play TV tag. We were inseparable.
We both had older brothers. We both had basements. We both had black cleaning ladies who sometimes stayed overnight in their own rooms.
Her mom, Jackie, had a wide, full, white-teeth smile and thick black hair with what seemed like natural curls, but I’d seen her with pink foam rollers in her hair on the morning after a sleepover.
Jackie let me call her by her first name. She never got mad at us. She always answered the phone “yell-o?” She’d hold the receiver in the crook of her neck while she stirred the pot of Spaghettios on the stove. The long curl of the phone cord stretched across the flower-wallpapered kitchen so we’d have to limbo underneath it to get to the table.
Ellen shared her bedroom with her younger sister Nancy, so we mostly played downstairs in the playroom. We gave our Barbies haircuts in the bathroom sink and played dress-up with her father’s suit jackets and Fedora.
The summer that my brother Lenny died, Ellen and her brother Marc and I went to the Young Traveler’s Day Camp together. We did arts and crafts and learned how to swim. I have a photo of us on Silly Hat Day, waiting for the bus in front of their house on Nassau Avenue.
Ellen was smart. Funny. A tomboy to play with. We both had pixie haircuts. We both wore PF Flyers. Her middle name was even Ruth.
She taught me how to ride a two-wheeler. She joined me and my mom on my sixth birthday to see Betsy Palmer in Peter Pan. We sat up in the balcony and we could see the strings that made everyone fly.
Ellen and I went to the same schools, but we were never in the same class. Still, we rode our bikes together and I invited her to all my birthday parties. But by fifth grade she had a different circle of friends. And then I moved to Arizona when I was fourteen and we lost touch completely.
But our moms wrote back and forth, so I knew that Ellen was living in Topanga Canyon and that she had changed how she spelled her name. And later, that she had gotten married, and her new last name was Belinski. My mother gave me her address in Riverside and I wrote her a letter. I was thrilled when she wrote back, a lovely note, how glad she was to hear from me and a bit about her life with Steve and her young daughter.
When the internet came around, she was the first person I searched for. She was now in Santa Barbara and a master gardener. I wrote again, shared about my 10-year relationship with my partner, Marika. And I didn’t hear back.
I couldn’t believe it, but I assumed my being gay was an issue for her. And then, about a year later she wrote me a letter, explaining that no, she was very happy for me, and that she’d been busy with things – that she’d had another baby!
Fast forward to Facebook, and we finally reconnected a few years ago. I loved seeing pictures of her family, her world travels and her paintings. It was fun to post old photos of her for her birthday. And I was glad to be there when she lost her mom to Alzheimer’s, and then her brother to cancer.
During one of our Words with Friends games, I asked Ellyn what she remembered about my own brother’s death. She didn’t remember much, just that he was there, and then he wasn’t. And that everything seemed pretty normal. She felt bad for not being able to tell me more, but I’m sure that her friendship then really did help make me feel pretty normal.
Last year I was going to be near Los Gatos where Ellyn was having an art show. We were both so excited that we were going to see each other after more than 40 years. But my plans changed and we didn’t meet. And we never did make another date.
To be honest, I had some reservations about meeting, I worried that our lives were too different, that we wouldn’t have anything in common. But, after reading everything her friends shared about the Ellyn they knew and loved, I realized that she was the same Ellen who was my best friend when we were five years old. And suddenly my loss was even deeper, because I missed out on having her as a friend in my adult life.
When Ellyn died, I thought I had lost that one-of-a-kind connection to my own childhood. But then I remembered how Ellyn and I had stayed in touch through all those many years of silence and absence. Because as long as I could see her in my mind’s eye and feel the energy of her being, she was with me.
And so, today, when I think I have lost her, I imagine her smiling face, with that wide, full, white-teeth smile, just like her mom. And she is laughing and happy and radiant. Simply radiant.
[ssba]The Year of the Horse
In Chinese tradition, this is the Year of the Horse, a year of galloping forward, of fast victories, unexpected adventure, and surprising romance. No wonder my new friend is a horse.
He lives on the hill right next to Paradise Park. I watched him all last year from afar, and then he was gone. But a few days ago, on my way to the beach, I saw him and I swear, I squealed, out loud, “The horse is back!”
That night, a little before sunset, he was standing about 30 feet away, on the other side of the old, rusted, falling down, barbed wire fence. I held up a carrot and he trotted over. And I realized that he was actually a she. She ate the carrot and then kept licking my hand. I closed my fingers into a ball and she started to nibble me with her gums. I talked to her, out loud and silently, and we looked each other in the eyes. When I walked away, she followed along the fence until she couldn’t see me anymore.
When I thought she was a male I called him Waldo, because he was always so hard to find on the big hill. Now that I know she is a female, maybe I will call her Jessie, for the stripe of gesso paint on her face. I wondered, what do you call that long slope of the head between the eyes and the mouth?
I found several diagrams online that named the parts of the horse, like coronet, at the top of the hoof, and chestnut, a spot behind the forearm. But there was nothing identifying the area between the forelock and the muzzle.
I have had very little experience with horses. I have a picture of me feeding sugar cubes to the milk man’s horse when I was three. When I was seven I went to Rocking Horse Ranch with my uncle and cousin. They rode horses all weekend and I played in the indoor swimming pool.
None of my friends took riding lessons or dreamed of having a pony. The first time I rode a horse was for a friend’s twenty-fifth birthday. I remember the jerky motion and the saddle and the soreness for days after. Since then, I’ve had no contact, nor have I felt any connection or attraction to a horse.
But in the past three months, I’m suddenly very curious about them. I met some a few weekends ago, waiting in their horse trailer in the parking lot at the beach. There were four sleek, brown horses standing against the open-rails of their trailer and I walked up to them. I looked them in eyes, I talked to them through my heart and they made noises I didn’t understand.
And now, this horse has appeared, right outside my big wide windshield. I saw her several times during the day, grazing up near the water tower, then behind and above the trailer directly across from me. And sometimes I don’t see her at all. I’m guessing she’s behind her feed house or on the other side of the hill.
Yesterday, my neighbor Muriel walked over to the fence with her 12 year old son, Ethan. The horse came right up to them so I joined them. Muriel was raised on a farm and she said the horse is young, maybe three, very friendly, social, alert, interested. And she has good teeth.
She showed Ethan and I how to hold our hands with our palms open, so the horse could check us out. “Hold it like a fist and she thinks it’s an apple. Point your finger and she thinks that a carrot.” No wonder she had started to nibble my closed hand the night before.
Later that morning she talked to our neighbor Mark, who knows everything about everyone in town, and it turns out that this is not Waldo, the horse I watched all those months last year. Waldo was 20 and died about eight months ago. This is a new horse, also owned by Marvin, an old-time cowboy who lives in town.
This morning, Ethan was standing at the fence with binoculars, looking toward the horse’s feed house. I assumed he was watching the horse, but when I followed the line from his binoculars, I saw a hawk perched on a tall, lone pole on the hill, near the house.
I went outside and met Ethan on his way back to his house. “What did you see?” I asked. The hawk was no longer on the pole.
“It was a red-tailed hawk. He’s over there.” Ethan pointed to the grove of trees on the bluff. “See the darker tree? He’s at the very top. On the right.”
I found the bird’s silhouette, a sharp protrusion at the top of the ragged outline of the tree.
“Have you seen the horse?” I asked.
“No, not today.”
I scanned the hill for her among the wisps of dried brush, but she wasn’t around.
“So have you named her yet?”
“Well, according to Elise, (his five year old sister), it’s Lucky.”
“My first dog’s name was Lucky.” I said. I’m sure I smiled.
“I got two bags of carrots at the store today for the horse,” I said. “They were only 37¢ each. So if you get permission, I’d love to have you join me in a carrot feeding.”
Ethan’s mom has taught them not to feed other people’s animals, unless you have permission because you never know if there are special circumstances.
And besides, there was a sign.
“So, here’s a question…” I pointed to the worn wooden sign with faded white letters that said Please Don’t Feed The Horse. The top right corner of the wood, including the E in please, was gone.
“So, do we respect the sign? Or, did it apply to the OTHER horse? Can we feed THIS horse? Because this is a different horse?”
Ethan tilted his head toward his left ear and shrugged. “I don’t know.” And I didn’t know either. But I knew that I wanted to.
Later in the afternoon, I was sitting at my picnic table writing and scanning the hill to see if the horse was grazing nearby. Julie, another neighbor, walked by and she knows Marvin, the horse’s owner. She said the reason he doesn’t want people feeding the horse, is so that she doesn’t lean over the fence.
“But she leans over even if I just go up to her,” I said. “And I’m not going to stop doing THAT.”
Julie smiled and said, “Oh, just do it. I won’t tell.”
“Well, still, maybe you can ask him for permission to feed her carrots?” I said. “And can you find out what her name is, too?”
That evening, as the sun disappeared behind Horse Hill, I watched and waited. I had cleaned the RV windshield so I’d have a clear wide view. I felt like a kid, waiting for my new friend to come over and play.
The red-tail was back on the post. And the horse was grazing in a flat patch across from me, about twenty feet away. I ran out with my carrots and called to her from the fence. But her head was down, facing away from me, and she didn’t even notice I was there. I waved my hands. I whistled. I took a bite of the carrot. It was crunchy and sweet.
[ssba]A Simple Game of Questions
There was a fun game going around on Facebook a while back. A friend chose the age for you and you had to reflect back and answer the questions as they related to you at that age, and then also at your current age.
Like most quizzes, the important thing was not to spend too much time thinking of perfect or clever answers, but to simply respond with whatever came up in the moment.
A friend gave me the age of 26:
I was: 26
I lived in: a semi-furnished one bedroom apartment over a garage in Tempe, AZ
I was married to: being single, independent, the best
I drove: a Plymouth Horizon
I feared: nothing
I worked at: Computer Pro, preferring to demo the Apple IIGS and Macs than IBMs and Compaqs
I wanted to be: top salesperson every month and I was
Then, when it came to my current age, I wrote:
I am: 54
I live in: my RV across the street from the ocean in Cayucos, CA
I am married to: my technology
I drive: a blue RAV4 with white flower stickers (it makes people smile and it helped my mom see my car)
I work at: staying present, enjoying what is, keeping my heart open to love, light and compassion
I want to be: in a wonderfully exciting, loving, intimate, heart-sparking relationship
After I hit the POST button, I reread my responses and noticed that my answer about being in a relationship didn’t say if this relationship is with a person, my work, my art, my writing…or what. And that I had somehow omitted what I am afraid of now.
I found both of these things very curious and revealing. And it’s had me thinking about it ever since.
So I invite you to answer these same questions for yourself. Don’t work too hard at the answers. Go with whatever comes up first. See if anything surprises you, reveals something in a new way, gets you thinking about who you are and how you show up in the world.
I was: 26
I lived in:
I was married to:
I drove:
I feared:
I worked at:
I wanted to be:
Then, answer them again, using your current age:
I am:
I live in:
I am married to:
I drive:
I fear:
I work at:
I want to be:
If you’d like, I’d love for you to share your answers by clicking on the Comments below.
[ssba]
Whale Watching: Is There a Metaphor Here?
photo courtesy of subseatours.com
The last time Marika and I went whale watching, we both got seasick. But it was more than twenty years ago. And we both wanted to try. And this time we would take some pharmacist-recommended bonine pills before we went out.
She took two pills with her tortillas and cheese breakfast. I decided I didn’t want to feel spacey, so I put my no-more-nausea- seasickness bands on the pressure-points on my wrists and we headed out.
It was a clear, crisp, blue-sky morning. I bundled up in layers: an under-camisole, brown turtleneck shirt, mid-weight fern green sweatshirt. My top layer, my over-sized blue Morro Bay hoodie that I bought in 1995 was on the seat next to me. I had my knitted hat on and I regretted not bringing gloves.
The boat was a catamaran, like an oversized pontoon, but with two tubular hulls to float the boat instead of one. And it had a motor. The sides of the boat were about four feet high and the deck was open to the sky with five rows of white, wooden benches to sit on. I took the end seat on the left in the second row. Marika sat next to me, on my right.
The water in the bay was smooth and easy as we made our way past the raft of harbor seals toward the harbor. Captain Kevin stopped the boat and the Naturalist, my friend Ruvi from the bird festival, pointed out where to look for the peregrine falcon.
“Three quarters of the way up the rock, do you see the waterfall of guana? Look to the right of that, in the shadow of a rock that looks like a fist.” I borrowed Marika’s binoculars and found him, tall and still, perched in the small crevice.
But looking through the binoculars as the boat rocked was making me immediately uneasy, so I handed them back to Marika and refocused my attention on connecting my body with the rhythm of the water.
Morro Bay Harbor is one of the more dangerous harbors on the Pacific coast. The entrance is narrow, bounded on both sides by high, dark rocks, and big swells can create dangerous conditions in the bowl of the bay.
Last week we joined the other tourists and locals who came to the harbor to watch nine and ten foot waves break over the jetty. Hard-core surfers took their boards out into the swirling surf and people perched themselves on the most inland of the rocks to watch the show.
In fact, the surf was so high that they cancelled the whale watching tour we were supposed to go on last weekend and rescheduled it for today.
I’d been watching the water the past few days on my morning beach walks. The ocean was still more active than usual, but the waves were smaller and slower and there was much less wave action on the horizon.
From my seat on the boat, the waves looked calm and easy. Ruvi came up to me and pointed far out, past Morro Rock. “There are some whitecaps out there, so it may get a little choppy. “Uh oh,” I said. “Why?” he asked. “Do you get seasick?” Marika and I both nodded. “But I’ve got my meds on board, so I’ll be fine,” she said. I turned to her. “OK, can I have one too?” I took two, chewed them as directed, and had a sip of water.
The boat followed a curving route away from the marina, around the corner of the sand spit, between the red and green buoys toward the open ocean. Just past the jetty, the waves became a roller coaster of five foot swells, raising the front of the boat up, then dropping it. I WOOHOOed loudly with the kids in the front row, thinking that being one with the movement would ward off getting seasick.
I screamed and smiled, feeling the water rise and lift us, then fall out from under us. My torso rolled forward, my hips settled back with each swell. The cold wind felt good on my face as we rode the waves toward the horizon.
The boat turned right, cutting across the water, parallel to the coast. The engine at the back of the boat roared over the water sounds as we headed north. The wind kicked up and I pulled my hoodie on with the hood.
“The gray whales are migrating south, from Alaska to Baja in Mexico and pass through the open waters just beyond Morro Bay.” Ruvi stood on the storage box labeled “Adult M Life jackets” and pointed out over the water.
“Watch for spouts,” he said. “ It’ll be like a spray from a garden hose in the air.” We all scanned the endless waters on all sides of the boat. The water was getting choppy and there were small whitecaps where we were headed.
The swells were only a foot or two high, mostly slow, gentle rolls. But they were constant, and coming from all sides now. I took off my hoodie. Even though the wind was blowing cold, I was suddenly feeling warm and flushed.
Ruvi squatted next to me and asked if I was OK. “There’s less movement further back,” he said, pointing to the row of seats behind me. He was right, I felt less of the swaying. But it was too late. I hurried to the back corner of the boat, hung my head over and puked.
He brought me a bottle of water and encouraged me to splash some on my face. It did help. For a while. Until I had to puke again.
I sat back down next to the droning engine. I turned my head into the breeze. I tucked my face down so I couldn’t see everything moving. I tried chanting but couldn’t get past the first line. I looked up to catch glimpses of what everyone was seeing. But mostly I just sat in that back corner and waited for it to be over.
But, we did see gray whales! Three of them traveling together. And there were displays of mating behavior and fluking and we were close enough to see the barnacles on their skin.
It was an unsteady walk back to the car and I was shivering. Marika gave me dry socks when we got home, turned the heat on and I got in bed and slept for three hours.
I was hungry for pretzels when I woke up. Marika and I talked a little about my whole ordeal. “I knew the minute I saw you take your hoodie off that you were in trouble,” she said.
“Thanks for coming back to check on me.” She had spent the last hour of the trip at the back of the boat with me, but still watching all of the whale activity that was happening in the water.
I asked her to tell me what she saw, what it felt like to scan the waters, watching and waiting.
“There were three whales and they were moving so erratically in the water, not swimming in a straight line, so the boat kept moving to find them.” I remembered hearing Ruvi shout out the different positions on the face of a clock. “First they were in front of the boat, then off the right side at 4 o’clock, then they spouted again behind the boat.”
“Males or females?” I asked. “One female and two males. The second male holds the female in position for mating.”
“What did Ruvi say about them swimming with their fin on it’s side?” “That was the mating behavior.”
“WOW!” I’m glad everyone got to see it!” And I was. I didn’t regret the day at all. “Now I know that I don’t do boats,” I said. “And now I know that I can,” Marika said.
I tucked into bed early that night with a hot cup of ginger tea and a check in on Facebook. I had no pictures of whales to share but it was still a very good day.
[ssba]
Showing Up On the Page
I am writing.
Not just blog posts and my Mac tips, but real writing with sturdy nouns and persuasive adjectives, full delicious sentences that appear on the page as if by magic.
Writing that isn’t about making a point or sharing information or already knowing what I want to say.
I’m writing from a deeper, more creative place. And yes, I have a book in the back of my mind, but I’m not writing for it to be a book or published article in a magazine. I’m just writing.
I’ve been making excuses for months, years, really, about why I don’t have the time or the energy for this kind of writing.
But really, WHEN I AM WRITING LIKE THIS I GET ENERGIZED!
Writing is one of my very favorite things to do. I get lost in it. Time has no meaning when I am following a sentence on the page, finding the absolutely perfect way to describe the bending shadows of a tree or how it feels the day after you meet a favorite author.
Some days the sentences come right away and I write several pages. Sometimes it is a slow kindergarten start, and I just rhyme words to oil the machine.
That’s what Maya Angelou does.
She says, “I write until the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”
You see, you have to be willing to show up and be serious. You have to be willing to not know where the story is going. You have to give yourself up to your muse, your guide, your creative spirit. With no expectations of the outcome.
Not knowing. Not needing. Just giving voice to that which needs to speak.
And the words are coming because I’m showing up at a regular time every day, my fingers on the keyboard, open, ready, wanting.
Hanging out with other people who understand this process is great inspiration. Being in the presence of other passionate people is uplifting. Motivating. It truly raises your vibration and calls the words to the page.
I used to think that I had to stop reading when I was writing so that I wouldn’t be distracted, so that my energy wouldn’t get diffused. But really, reading other people’s writing fuels my own love of language. It reminds me even more why I write. And so, for the very first time ever, I am part of a reading group. And it’s true, reading and talking about other people’s writing sparks my own craft.
So what are you ready to show up for?
What do you absolutely love to do?
What is the thing that takes you out of time and space, that energizes you, that you wish you could do for hours without interruption?
What is the thing that sparks your heart and gives you life?
And how are you going to begin?
I’d love to hear your comments. Please share them with me and my readers by clicking on the Comments below.
[ssba]Sitting In Stillness Opens a Heart
“Beautifully Balanced” by Deborah South-McEvoy
Life is funny sometimes.
We tend to avoid what we need and want the most.
And then circumstances happen and we are suddenly faced with exactly what we weren’t able to give to ourselves.
Leaning into it, accepting it, can be a challenge.
But when we are able to be grateful for the experience, magic can happen.
Several weeks ago I tweaked my back (again) and spent five days resting, moving slowly, doing virtually nothing.
I couldn’t walk the dogs or do the laundry or run errands. I couldn’t sit at my computer for very long. I couldn’t do any of the things that I usually do to distract me from my heart work.
But it was such a gift, really, to have my body step in for me and give me what I most needed–time to let go and do nothing.
Because it is in this quiet space of stillness that we can choose to release the struggle and begin to ask, what do we really want.
The weeks leading up to my tweaked back had been very stressful, emotional, and challenging and I was feeling especially agitated, restless, uncertain. I had big choices to make and I had no clarity about anything.
I knew that what I most needed was to let go of all of the struggle and just step away from myself and create some space.
But I was too caught up in it all to do that.
And then I tweaked my back and had all the space in the world.
Now, when I’m not overly stressed, I do have a habit of creating quiet time in my life on a regular basis. And so, when faced with this sudden stillness, I was able to relax into it, grateful, even, for the opportunity, even though it was physically painful.
And in the stillness of not working, not housekeeping, not care taking, I could feel myself letting go of the struggle.
I was taking deeper breaths. I journaled. And I got very clear that I wanted to manifest more opportunities for community creativity in 2011.
Not surprisingly, as soon as I named and claimed this, emails appeared in my Inbox with opportunities to do just that. (Really!)
And I was standing straight again, walking my regular pace. I felt a lightness in my body and so much excitement in my heart for these new possibilities.
Struggle is hard. Stillness can be uncomfortable. But, for me, leaning into that quiet space is the only way to let go and discover what my heart really wants.
So how can you create some quiet stillness in your life?
Here are just a few suggestions. I’d love to hear your ideas.
· practice yoga
· take a long walk in nature
· listen to music without words
· color, doodle, draw without expectation
· take a nap in the middle of the day
· massage your dog or cat
· play an instrument
· lie in the grass and watch the clouds
• go on a weekend retreat
New Year’s Un-Resolutions
Do you begin the year with a list of New Year’s Resolutions? Things you swear you are going to do or not do that will make this year different than all the rest?
And then, just a few weeks into the year, you realize you’ve abandoned your list, slacked off on all of the things you swore would be different this time?
And you feel pretty down on yourself?
Face it, resolutions are a great concept, but they’re usually goal oriented and don’t address HOW to achieve what we want.
Here are some simple suggestions to help you focus more on the HOW of the changes you want to make in your life.
1. Take some time to discover what you really want
2. Be brave and say it out loud
3.Join an online coaching circle
4. Be open to opportunities that may not look like your original vision
5. Do more of what you love
6. Hang out with people you admire
7. Find more balance between your body, mind and spirituality
8. Say NO more often to the things that don’t make your heart sing
9. Say YES more often to what tickles your fancy
10. Imagine yourself already being, doing, having what you desire
Another tactic is to rephrase your resolution.
Instead of lose 20 lbs, how about, make healthier snack choices. This gives you a concrete action step that you can take, a HOW TO for losing weight. It gives you something tangible and real that you can choose to do that supports the results you want.
Every day is a new opportunity to say YES to what we want, what we really want. Every day offers us a chance to choose HOW we can make that possible.
So what do you want to to make happen in your life?
What do you want to manifest in 2026?
I’d love to hear what you’d like to manifest in your life this year. Send me an email and you’ll be doing step #2!
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