Don't be too loud.
Don't be too smart.
Don't give an opinion, or if you do, give it tentatively.
Don't speak up.
Don't ask questions.
Oh no, don't dare express an emotion, especially if it's painful.
Don't confront.
Don't expect kindness - or respect.
Don't you know it's your job to make everything okay?
Don't lie, unless telling the truth might hurt more.
Don't stand up for yourself.
Don't get your feelings hurt so easily.
And for god's sake, don't ever let them see you cry.
Don't dredge up the past.
Don't talk about the hard stuff.
Don't ask for help - but be there to help when anyone else needs a hand.
Don't play the victim.
Don't acknowledge pain.
Don't love too much and don't expect anything in return.
Don't step on anybody's toes.
Don't live life out loud.
Don't trust your own creativity.
Don't listen to your own soul.
Don't take a risk,
Don't dare to dream.
STOP! Don't listen. Refuse to comply.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
A Moment in Time
Sometimes words cannot capture a moment in time. Maybe words never can really capture the essence of experience. And sometimes, staying with the words gives me an escape hatch from being inside the depths of emotion, connection, feeling. Sometimes words take me to the depths. But I've used them all my life as a shield or a blanket, and I can hide behind them when it serves the purpose of my ego who doesn't really want the real me to be seen.
Words cannot capture the moment in time that was my weekend. The time melts away like the pictures so beautifully formed in the sand mandalas then ritually deconstructed and sent floating down the river. But the images remain. Pictures of community and love and grief and pain and transformation. Deep places honored and held and touched and healed.
I want to wrap words around it to hold on to the experience. But I won't, because I can't. I can only marvel at the transformed place inside of me and carry the memory forward into the next step and the next and the next.
But I will remember hugs and flames, watery depths and laughter, terror and truth. I will hear the music from John Denver and Janice Joplin and Joan Osborne and the beat of tribal drums echoing through my dreams. I will gather my chi. I will walk the labyrinth and wait. My arms and legs will feel the heat of exertion and the cool immersion at the end of the journey.
I will feel arms around me, grounding me, as I look fear in the face. I will draw on the energy wrapped around me in an ever widening spiral. I will take my medicine and take the next step. Because I know I don't walk alone.
And I will carry the transformation, like the river carries the sand from the mandala. Ever shifting the path, meandering from bank to bank, and polishing the rocks under the surface into smooth shining treasures.
And because I have been seen, I can now see. Because love held space for my pain and my joy, I am better able to hold space in love for someone else. In letting go of the fear, I found community. And in the community I found courage. And in the courage, I let go of the fear. And I have been forever changed.
Words cannot capture the moment in time that was my weekend. The time melts away like the pictures so beautifully formed in the sand mandalas then ritually deconstructed and sent floating down the river. But the images remain. Pictures of community and love and grief and pain and transformation. Deep places honored and held and touched and healed.
I want to wrap words around it to hold on to the experience. But I won't, because I can't. I can only marvel at the transformed place inside of me and carry the memory forward into the next step and the next and the next.
But I will remember hugs and flames, watery depths and laughter, terror and truth. I will hear the music from John Denver and Janice Joplin and Joan Osborne and the beat of tribal drums echoing through my dreams. I will gather my chi. I will walk the labyrinth and wait. My arms and legs will feel the heat of exertion and the cool immersion at the end of the journey.
I will feel arms around me, grounding me, as I look fear in the face. I will draw on the energy wrapped around me in an ever widening spiral. I will take my medicine and take the next step. Because I know I don't walk alone.
And I will carry the transformation, like the river carries the sand from the mandala. Ever shifting the path, meandering from bank to bank, and polishing the rocks under the surface into smooth shining treasures.
And because I have been seen, I can now see. Because love held space for my pain and my joy, I am better able to hold space in love for someone else. In letting go of the fear, I found community. And in the community I found courage. And in the courage, I let go of the fear. And I have been forever changed.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
(Over)Reaction
It's amazing what can trigger a reaction to pain long forgotten, things buried and excavated and buried again. Sometimes it only takes a phone call.
This call wasn't from family or a long lost friend. Simply from a business I thought I'd severed ties with a few months ago, calling to inform me that no, I hadn't taken the appropriate steps and had not indeed ended my relationship with them.
The surface level story seems simple. I'd called to cancel, they'd told me no, I needed to come in to either cancel or switch my credit card information, and I'd simply let the card expire. Today they informed me that they were continuing to bill me although they couldn't charge my card, and that they would eventually turn me over to a collection agency - for $98.
The force of my reaction caught even me off guard. Before the ordeal had run it's course for tonight, I was shaking and in tears. Because the REAL reason I didn't go in and cancel, the real reason I was canceling in the first place, was because I'd let something slip instead of dealing with it. I'd let shame and guilt and fear silence me in the moment and afterwards. I'd stood by and let something slide that I needed to speak up about. I felt victimized, and I hid. And the call today took me back to another time and another place where those same feelings overpowered me.
I think the reason I found those emotions so close to the surface today is because I've been listening to stories that remind me and stir those old memories. Stories so horrid and unbelievable that staying detached is almost impossible. Stories that break my heart.
And today, I discovered that my own story is not yet healed. That the compromising of my safety and my voice has wounded me in ways I still don't even comprehend. Those wounds can be medicine for others, but only if I bring them into the light instead of burying them because I'm too afraid to look. I have to heal, a bit at a time, before I can effectively sit with someone else's pain.
The story isn't over yet. I have to face the situation and tell my truth. I should have done it before, and before, and before. There is no easy way out. I tried the hiding, and it didn't work. So now I have to dig deep and find my voice and my power and my center - and speak from that place instead of a place of fear covered by anger. And then, maybe, the next time the phone rings, I won't jump.
This call wasn't from family or a long lost friend. Simply from a business I thought I'd severed ties with a few months ago, calling to inform me that no, I hadn't taken the appropriate steps and had not indeed ended my relationship with them.
The surface level story seems simple. I'd called to cancel, they'd told me no, I needed to come in to either cancel or switch my credit card information, and I'd simply let the card expire. Today they informed me that they were continuing to bill me although they couldn't charge my card, and that they would eventually turn me over to a collection agency - for $98.
The force of my reaction caught even me off guard. Before the ordeal had run it's course for tonight, I was shaking and in tears. Because the REAL reason I didn't go in and cancel, the real reason I was canceling in the first place, was because I'd let something slip instead of dealing with it. I'd let shame and guilt and fear silence me in the moment and afterwards. I'd stood by and let something slide that I needed to speak up about. I felt victimized, and I hid. And the call today took me back to another time and another place where those same feelings overpowered me.
I think the reason I found those emotions so close to the surface today is because I've been listening to stories that remind me and stir those old memories. Stories so horrid and unbelievable that staying detached is almost impossible. Stories that break my heart.
And today, I discovered that my own story is not yet healed. That the compromising of my safety and my voice has wounded me in ways I still don't even comprehend. Those wounds can be medicine for others, but only if I bring them into the light instead of burying them because I'm too afraid to look. I have to heal, a bit at a time, before I can effectively sit with someone else's pain.
The story isn't over yet. I have to face the situation and tell my truth. I should have done it before, and before, and before. There is no easy way out. I tried the hiding, and it didn't work. So now I have to dig deep and find my voice and my power and my center - and speak from that place instead of a place of fear covered by anger. And then, maybe, the next time the phone rings, I won't jump.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Leap of Faith
How much will we risk to follow a dream?
How much courage does it take to let go of the familiar?
Do we value security so much that we can't let ourselves take a chance?
Are we so concerned about status and appearance and looking good that we can't afford to fail?
Where could we be this time next year if we have the courage to leap?
What can we teach about authenticity by living our call?
How much will we risk to follow a dream?
How much courage does it take to let go of the familiar?
Do we value security so much that we can't let ourselves take a chance?
Are we so concerned about status and appearance and looking good that we can't afford to fail?
Where could we be this time next year if we have the courage to leap?
What can we teach about authenticity by living our call?
How much will we risk to follow a dream?
Friday, October 1, 2010
Marking Time
This is my 100th post on the blog. And it's been almost a month since I've written anything. Today seemed like the day to get over this hump. I've been stymied for a myriad of reasons, but I'm going to put something out here today, jumbled and confused as it may be, and move past this logjam in my head and heart. Part of the reason I've put off this post is because 100 posts feels like a milestone that I should mark somehow. I've surfed around, looking at what others have said. I've thought about lists of 100 things. And I've run up against the wall, over and over again.
I've also been busy trying to get the debris from a major storm cleaned up. Wednesday after Labor Day, the interior of Texas experienced the remnants of Hurricane Hermine. The wind blew, it rained hard all day, and by the evening we had a slew of tornadoes that the news team tracked live from a helicopter. It was quite the day. My neighborhood, my home, experienced no damage of any sort. The gardens enjoyed the soaking rain. The whipping wind didn't even knock leaves off the trees full at the ripeness of the end of summer. But my interior process that day matched or even exceeded the weather swirling around me outside - and that's the debris I've been cleaning.
Four years ago in November, I spent a Saturday sitting at the feet of a woman who had a message that turned my world upside down and inside out. She took the box I'd had God, spirituality, soul and self in all my life and blew it completely apart. And then she proceeded to show me how to make a dance floor out of the pieces. That Saturday opened the door for a new direction in my life and my work, a journey to myself, and a process of becoming, each and every day, a little bit more of who I really am. The concrete result of that day was my returning to school the next August, a little over 3 years ago, to get my Masters degree in Counseling. Me, a computer tech, a programmer quickly falling out of touch with the advances in the technical world since staying home with my kids 8 years before, someone who had been told all her life she didn't possess creativity or people skills, someone who had pigeonholed herself into a lifestyle that had me behind the scenes, working on the organizational details, balancing the books, making the schedules. Doing jobs that I was good at, but that didn't resonate with my soul.
I spent the first half of 2007 uncovering and reframing my story. And then in August I started back to school and almost immediately realized that taking all the pieces and putting them back together, looking deep into my own self in learning how to hold space for others, unpacking and un-bandaging old wounds -- all the things the degree was going to require that I hadn't counted on -- was going to require me to find someone to walk through the process with me. The job was too big to do alone. The pieces were too scattered. Some days the pain of self-reflection was simply too much to bear alone. And ultimately, I decided that if I couldn't sit in the chair as a client, I had no business trying to sit in the chair as a therapist. Jeanie - the catalyst and by now a friend and mentor - had been gently pointing me in the direction of Jungian analysis for the better part of a year. Finally, with fear and trembling, I took the plunge and dialed the number she'd given me.
I called on a Friday afternoon, praying I wouldn't get an answer. I didn't. But I left a message. Within just an hour or so, I received a return phone call, and within about 15 minutes, found myself scheduled for a noon appointment on Monday morning. Three years ago today, I sat terrified, across from a stranger, pouring out my story the best I could tell it in an hour. In these past three years, Tess has held every word I've said with grace and created a space to unpack and unearth a self and a soul that I didn't even really know existed. She's become a guide to my dreams, my self, my soul. The hour a week I spend with her touches a numinous place I find nowhere else in my life. She's taught me how to honor my own soul. And now, between the process of analysis and the deep digging required in my program of study, I barely recognize the person that sat in that chair, trembling, three years ago.
During my course of study, and through my work in analysis - I came to grips with the fact that writing is my art. I am a writer. It's my gift, my form of expression, my spiritual process, my liturgy. I can access the deepest parts of myself with a pen and paper, or in front of a computer keyboard. So about a year ago, I started this blog. In 100 posts, I have lost a lot of fear. I've found a voice. I've begun to figure out what works for me and what doesn't. And I've met a handful of treasured companions that are sharing this journey with me.
Then, I graduated in May from my course of study. And through a series of events that I cannot even explain, had a plan in place to start work in September in a position that seemed perfect. With a plan in place, I took the summer off, except for the licensing exam I had to take. My husband and I took our first ever trip to Europe. I enjoyed the summer with my girls. And I anticipated finally getting to do what I'd been dreaming of doing. And then, suddenly, a hurricane.
By the time the storm blew itself out - both literally and metaphorically - my world was re-arranged. The perfect job was no longer in place and I found myself dangling from a tree limb, scrambling to find some solid footing. Since then, things have unfolded so fast and so furiously that I can barely keep up. The synchronicity and connections that have unfolded are simply mind boggling. I've felt loved and supported in ways that defy explanation. I am doing a job that makes my heart sing in the process of meeting the requirements I have to meet for licensing, with help from a group of people who feel like home, like a tribe. And I am awed and humbled by the glimpse I've had into the workings of the universe that I do not begin to comprehend. I'm not usually one to say that God orchestrates events, there is a deterministic flavor to that theology that turns my stomach, especially when it's used to oppress and shame someone. But I cannot deny God in this process. Something bigger than me is afoot here. And all I can do is stand in awe.
So, the debris from the storm is swept up. The tree limbs are stacked neatly waiting recycling. And my world, my heart and soul are swept clean and reveling in the sunshine. It's a 100th post. It's a three year anniversary. And it's a brand new beginning to a journey I cannot even begin to fathom. All I know is that I can't wait to see what's around the next corner. And now, I'm off to work!
I've also been busy trying to get the debris from a major storm cleaned up. Wednesday after Labor Day, the interior of Texas experienced the remnants of Hurricane Hermine. The wind blew, it rained hard all day, and by the evening we had a slew of tornadoes that the news team tracked live from a helicopter. It was quite the day. My neighborhood, my home, experienced no damage of any sort. The gardens enjoyed the soaking rain. The whipping wind didn't even knock leaves off the trees full at the ripeness of the end of summer. But my interior process that day matched or even exceeded the weather swirling around me outside - and that's the debris I've been cleaning.
Four years ago in November, I spent a Saturday sitting at the feet of a woman who had a message that turned my world upside down and inside out. She took the box I'd had God, spirituality, soul and self in all my life and blew it completely apart. And then she proceeded to show me how to make a dance floor out of the pieces. That Saturday opened the door for a new direction in my life and my work, a journey to myself, and a process of becoming, each and every day, a little bit more of who I really am. The concrete result of that day was my returning to school the next August, a little over 3 years ago, to get my Masters degree in Counseling. Me, a computer tech, a programmer quickly falling out of touch with the advances in the technical world since staying home with my kids 8 years before, someone who had been told all her life she didn't possess creativity or people skills, someone who had pigeonholed herself into a lifestyle that had me behind the scenes, working on the organizational details, balancing the books, making the schedules. Doing jobs that I was good at, but that didn't resonate with my soul.
I spent the first half of 2007 uncovering and reframing my story. And then in August I started back to school and almost immediately realized that taking all the pieces and putting them back together, looking deep into my own self in learning how to hold space for others, unpacking and un-bandaging old wounds -- all the things the degree was going to require that I hadn't counted on -- was going to require me to find someone to walk through the process with me. The job was too big to do alone. The pieces were too scattered. Some days the pain of self-reflection was simply too much to bear alone. And ultimately, I decided that if I couldn't sit in the chair as a client, I had no business trying to sit in the chair as a therapist. Jeanie - the catalyst and by now a friend and mentor - had been gently pointing me in the direction of Jungian analysis for the better part of a year. Finally, with fear and trembling, I took the plunge and dialed the number she'd given me.
I called on a Friday afternoon, praying I wouldn't get an answer. I didn't. But I left a message. Within just an hour or so, I received a return phone call, and within about 15 minutes, found myself scheduled for a noon appointment on Monday morning. Three years ago today, I sat terrified, across from a stranger, pouring out my story the best I could tell it in an hour. In these past three years, Tess has held every word I've said with grace and created a space to unpack and unearth a self and a soul that I didn't even really know existed. She's become a guide to my dreams, my self, my soul. The hour a week I spend with her touches a numinous place I find nowhere else in my life. She's taught me how to honor my own soul. And now, between the process of analysis and the deep digging required in my program of study, I barely recognize the person that sat in that chair, trembling, three years ago.
During my course of study, and through my work in analysis - I came to grips with the fact that writing is my art. I am a writer. It's my gift, my form of expression, my spiritual process, my liturgy. I can access the deepest parts of myself with a pen and paper, or in front of a computer keyboard. So about a year ago, I started this blog. In 100 posts, I have lost a lot of fear. I've found a voice. I've begun to figure out what works for me and what doesn't. And I've met a handful of treasured companions that are sharing this journey with me.
Then, I graduated in May from my course of study. And through a series of events that I cannot even explain, had a plan in place to start work in September in a position that seemed perfect. With a plan in place, I took the summer off, except for the licensing exam I had to take. My husband and I took our first ever trip to Europe. I enjoyed the summer with my girls. And I anticipated finally getting to do what I'd been dreaming of doing. And then, suddenly, a hurricane.
By the time the storm blew itself out - both literally and metaphorically - my world was re-arranged. The perfect job was no longer in place and I found myself dangling from a tree limb, scrambling to find some solid footing. Since then, things have unfolded so fast and so furiously that I can barely keep up. The synchronicity and connections that have unfolded are simply mind boggling. I've felt loved and supported in ways that defy explanation. I am doing a job that makes my heart sing in the process of meeting the requirements I have to meet for licensing, with help from a group of people who feel like home, like a tribe. And I am awed and humbled by the glimpse I've had into the workings of the universe that I do not begin to comprehend. I'm not usually one to say that God orchestrates events, there is a deterministic flavor to that theology that turns my stomach, especially when it's used to oppress and shame someone. But I cannot deny God in this process. Something bigger than me is afoot here. And all I can do is stand in awe.
So, the debris from the storm is swept up. The tree limbs are stacked neatly waiting recycling. And my world, my heart and soul are swept clean and reveling in the sunshine. It's a 100th post. It's a three year anniversary. And it's a brand new beginning to a journey I cannot even begin to fathom. All I know is that I can't wait to see what's around the next corner. And now, I'm off to work!
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