Do I have to?

I woke up one day last week feeling horrible.  I was aching in my hands, my feet, I could almost feel the skin across my rib cage throbbing with an achy inflammation, and my sacrum was in a knot. Was it something I ate, was it ‘punishment’ for having recently talked about my body feeling so much better?  Was it because I bragged that I would occasionally have a night without good sleep rather than occasionally having a night with good sleep?  

As I sat with my morning tea, I thought “I should listen…do my soul work.”  But I didn’t really feel like it.  In fact, I hadn’t done it for a few days because…well…when things are going great, I don’t feel a great desire to dig deep…or listen to my soul…or to even be quiet enough to find out if things are o.k.  Why bother?  Everything’s good!

Until it’s not.

For so much of my life, I’ve ignored my body.  I have ignored pain and discomfort, but most importantly, I ignored being tired, fatigue…exhaustion.  Always pushing through…always getting the next thing done…always being ‘busy.’ 

Then, a funny thing happened when I entered empty-nest. I could no longer ignore my body.  It was going to have its say.

First, I injured my knee.  All my plans to do so many things with my son before he went to college went right out the window.  All I could do was 'be.'  A beautiful gift, in retrospect, to be with him instead of all that doing.  While healing from that, back pain showed up, then reflux.  Then exhaustion, loss of libido, feeling sadness and grief about entering empty nest - actually trying to reject those feelings because they seemed so wrong when I was so excited for my son.  Quality of sleep?  None.

Then I started doing the work of Mind/Body Coach training.  I’ve believed in the mind/body connection for years, and I was excited to learn the tools to link my mind, body, and soul so they would communicate.  What happened first was ‘the mess,’ as our mentor and teacher, Abigail Steidley, calls it.  As we students started getting familiar with our bodies and listening to our inner wisdom, all hell broke loose for all of us.  For me?  Pain - getting worse, not better!  Losing my voice.  Colds.  Crying, what seemed like ALL.THE.TIME.

Then slowly, while learning and using the tools and understanding the Mind/Body process, the fog and the pain and the sadness/grief started to lift.  I kept exercising, got massages, a new mattress, started paying close attention to my intuition around food, fun, pleasure.  I started resting more...feeling my feelings more…playing more.

Relief!  It was delicious to honor my intuition and my soul messages, living in a more grounded and effortless way.  Life was good.  Sleeping…no exhaustion…no pain.  And this work and it’s results reverberate throughout every aspect of your life.  It was a keeper.

So I knew I needed to check in.  What the heck was going on? This is what I heard…

Rest.  Delicious, real food.  No protein shakes.  Gather evidence (tracking what happens when I follow my inner guidance).  Passion, Fun, Love.  Exercise. Of course.  When I listen, my inner wisdom is consistent, with a few surprises thrown in, here and there.

So…Do I have to?

I may not ‘feel like’ doing this work some days, and that’s ok.  But as a consistent part of my life, my choice is clear for me.  I listen and follow my inner wisdom and stay strong, stay rested, stay nourished, maintain healthy blood sugar levels, and follow my bliss.

It doesn’t get better than that.

It's Better to Give than What?

Caring for family…Friend in trouble… Client in need… Spouse over-worked… Child wants help with homework… Another Mom can’t do carpool... PRESTO!

There we are, the “I’ll-be-there-for-you” women…super-hero giver, offering comfort, advice, support, food…no matter what we are in the middle of, no matter if we, ourselves, are in need….no matter what.

Does this describe you?

You believe it’s better to give than to receive.

You feel great satisfaction in being selfless.

You like to show your love by giving to others.

You get secret comfort from being in control.

You think people will like you.

You have a hard time asking for what you need…for what you want.

This has certainly has been me.  For most of my life.

Consider this…by receiving, you give much

A year ago I had a physical injury – and it brought me to a standstill...enforced stillness.  I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t clean the house, I could not bend my knee...difficulty walking, difficulty standing for long periods, difficulty sleeping without pain unless I was very still.  Some days, I couldn’t even drive.  I couldn't do all the things I had planned to help my son prepare for his move to college - his freshman year!

I.did.not.like. 

I could barely tolerate the mere thought of letting my family do everything that I normally do.

But they were eager.  EAGER to be able to give to me in the way I always gave to them.  EAGER to be able to take care of me for a change - to show, in a different than the usual way, their love for me – their ability to care for and nurture and support me, physically and emotionally.

And that’s when it became crystal clear…

One of the biggest gifts I could give them, and myself, was to let them do this and accept it graciously and with much love.  When I received from them the kind of caring that I am usually the master of, it let them see a side of themselves they liked.  It showed them they are capable of nurturing and supporting in the most basic, physical sense, and it added to their power-base of human-ness.  And it helped me heal in a profound way...many ways.

My ability, reluctantly at first, to receive turned into a gift of love and caring - without any action on my part – for both myself and my family.

The ability to receive can be one of the most loving gifts you can give.  I'm not perfect at it yet.  Far from.  But it's getting easier.

Try it, with sensitivity that it's a new way of being for you, and it may take a little while for you and those who love you to get comfortable with it.

Now...about being able to ask…working on that!  ;-)

Shitty First Draft

THIS...is an experiment - an experiment in writing a shitty first draft of a blog post in which I have not even the glimmer of an idea. What will appear on the paper in the next 30 minutes? What is it like to make yourself write when the spirit is not moving you? Is a shitty first draft like a dress rehearsal? 

How many times are we encouraged (or admonished) to live life now because this is no dress rehearsal?

Do you have ANY idea how many shitty first drafts I've created in the living of my life?

A shitty first draft for a blog post means you get to edit and rewrite and polish until you press the publish button. Then it is a refined and beautiful piece of work...supposedly. People love it, tons of hits on your blog, adoring comments, you feel great - it's a giddy high to get that praise and acknowledgment.

And what have you learned?

A shitty first draft in life means you live in the rough, figuring yourself and others out as you go along. It means a crappy first, second, even third marriage. It means aborting the child from that unwanted teen pregnancy. It means losing friends over thoughtless words. It means being ungrateful and critical in your stance in life and not recognizing any joy or delight. It means being gay but getting married and pretending you are someone you aren't. It means dealing with emotions that are uncomfortable with drugs, alcohol, or food. It means getting cancer when health is your main goal. It means staying in a loveless marriage for convenience sake.

Sometimes we try to refine the shitty first drafts (and second and third) in life by marrying again, by defeating the cancer and living with good food and exercise, by going to rehab to get to the bottom of our addictions so that we don't zone out, by having a second family because you screwed up so badly with the first one.

And what have you learned?

Tons. TONS!

It wasn't pretty. It was sloppy. It was angry, sad, jealous, suicidal, grief-stricken, messed up human life. Even in the refining process, when we should have gotten it right.

But we continue...we make mistakes...we're willing to screw up big time. There will be other losses, un-fixable mistakes, grief and sadness over opportunities eff'd up. (ok...one change for decorum's sake)

And there is brilliance...a brilliance born of being human, of having an innate passion for getting it right...for us...even when our mind is not sure what 'right' means, our heart and spirit guide us to learning more, repeating patterns, experiencing periods of joy and contentment for longer and longer periods of time while honoring every emotion we have for its undying passion to protect and help and guide us. We merge all of our parts into one glorious human package - not edited or rewritten or polished before publication, but committed to finding our own brilliance and refined grace while getting pretty dirty along the way.

Hooray for the SFD - it leads to a life of experience and re-do's and insight and compassion - including compassion for ourselves - and role-modeling and standing strong in our brilliance to keep trying.

Better than polished and wrapped and too pretty to even open.

Are you ready? NO? Great!! Now go PRESS the damn publish button.

Again, a letting go

Grab the Kleenex. When my new friend, Audrey Wilson Andrysick (Audrey Wilson Coaching) sent a few of us mom’s this poem, I started tearing up at the first 3 words.   Lin Eleoff calls this the sappy gene.

Again, for the second year, my son is off to college today.  This time it’s a little different from the first year in that I know I will be fine (the person I was most  worried about the first year, lol!), he will be fine (and he was – more than fine), and that my husband and I will continue on our path of rediscovering the depth of our own relationship – just the two of us again, after so many years of the 3 of us.  But it’s also different because he is moving into his own place with friends…off campus…rent, utility bills, grocery shopping...the next steps to really rocking his own life - adult baby steps.

For all of you who are seeing your children off to Day Care for the first time, Pre-school, Kindergarten, First Grade, High School (you get the picture), enjoy the following poem and remember to enjoy every first – it all goes by very quickly, and soon you will be wondering where the years went.

And for all of you who are seeing your kids off to adult-hood, enjoy and give thanks that you’ve done such a good (enough) job to enable this beautiful transition.

(This poem was originally written by Mary W. Abel and posted in Dear Abby)

Don’t forget the Kleenex.

"Hold fast the summer. It is the beauty of the day and all it contains. The laughter and work and finally the sleep. The quiet. Oh September, do not put your weight upon my mind. For I know he will be going. This son of mine who is now a man — he must go. Time will lace my thoughts with joyous years. The walls will echo his “Hello.” His caring will be around each corner. His tears will be tucked into our memory book. Life calls him beyond our reach — to different walls. New faces, shiny halls, shy smiles, many places. Greater learning — he must go. But wait, before he leaves, be sure he knows you love him. Hide the lump in your throat as you hug him. He will soon be home again — but he will be different. The little boy will have disappeared. How I wished I could take September and shake it, for it came too soon I must look to the beauty of each new day, and silently give thanks."

Reluctant Lover

Technology sucks. This is what I used to think.

For a long time, I’ve complained about technology…how complicated it can be, easier to use a paper calendar, how much it intrudes in our lives.  Really…just a crank about it.  You’d never know I was a software developer in a previous life.

Then it started to slowly change.

I resisted getting a cell phone… if people want to reach me they’ll call the house and leave a message.  But I acquiesced and found a lovely freedom by being able to communicate when I was not home without having to dig for a quarter to use the pay phone – and now pay phones barely exist.

Then it was my idea to get our son a cell phone when he was in the 4^th grade.  It was the year of 9/11, and we were all a little fearful - couldn’t exactly pinpoint the fear all the time, but if we could reach each other, when running late for example, it felt better.

The ability to start my own business as a VA for non-profit organizations was only doable because of PC’s and the internet, cell phones, and knowledge of maintaining websites…and that’s what enabled me to be a work-at-home mom.

Texting?  Oh, I used to get so annoyed when my son would text a friend instead of calling…how were these kids ever going to learn to communicate as humans?  But now I’m hooked… it’s a great way for me to contact my son when the need presents itself, or to text my husband with a list when he offers to stop at the grocery store or for takeout on his way home from work - and now I just text friends to check in and say hi.  Who knew?

Classes on line, forums on the internet, webinars, Facebook, Words with Friends…

…and Skype!  Skype is my absolute favorite.  I truly disliked it when I first tried it with a friend from the UK.  He wouldn’t communicate any other way, though, so I had to sign up and give it a try.  I’m delighted I did because it has meant free computer-to-computer calls to friends all over the world, coaching clients on line, and face-to-face time with our son during his first year of college.

But finally, these past 3 weeks have made it very clear to me that I’ve just been a reluctant lover – trying to resist the inevitable pull of technology’s charms.

After picking up my son up from his first year at college a few weeks ago, he was able to Skype his dad with his iPhone to show him ALL the stuff in the car (Really?  We brought all that down last September?!).  Even though my husband had an unavoidable trip to Belgium that meant he wouldn’t be with us - he could be with us!  How cool is that - driving home while listening to my son having face-time with his dad...

In these last 14 days, I’ve fallen head-over-heels.

I had to make an unexpected trip to Belgium because my husband had emergency eye surgery.  Technology and timing were critical to so many things we were able to do to help him have a more comfortable experience, even though he was a continent and an ocean away…

…from using cell phone texting to find our eye doctor in the states so he could talk to my husband before the surgery, to actually getting here and using my European cell phone to access www.translate.google.com when I don’t know how to say something in French – it’s the best.tool.ever (besides pointing) for a non-linguist like me.  It will actually ‘tell’ me how to say what I want to say.  How amazing is that – to be able to ‘communicate’ in almost any language with the help of that cell phone I resisted so much in the beginning.

And back home, using my computer, writing a blog post, posting an interview, coaching via Skype, staying in touch with friends, family, and neighbors, all at a reasonable cost.

Technology is helping to bring the human race closer, communicate better and more often, make global changes in the world (even toppling dictators), and it’s helping us realize in a concrete physical way that we really are more connected than we ever knew.

But in my own little world of loved-ones all over this globe, it just brings a long overdue smile of delight and contentment to my face, and a feeling of gratefulness in my heart to be so connected whenever the need arises.

I actually feel a little lost now (don’t tell my husband or son), when I don’t have an internet connection or a way to access it.

I’m finally, whole-heartedly, committing to this enchanting seducer I’ve been trying to spurn.

Well…almost whole-heartedy.  TV remotes?   Not so much…but anything could happen!