body of thought
January 15, 2017 § 2 Comments
It started with an excruciating pain during an unfamiliar exercise. Despite my admonishment of physical resolutions this year, I was swept up in a sudden need to move and threw myself enthusiastically into a new routine.
My efforts at stillness had quietly underscored the way I use movement both for avoidance and empowerment. Restless distractions that allow me to cloak worry in productivity are intimately related to the way I use exercise to purge those feelings I struggle to name.
Yesterday, inventorying for injury in a posture of submission to a very immediate sense of vulnerability, I tested the smallest movements with patience and settled among my thoughts.
Our bodies are great teachers in crises.
My body demanded I identify the harm and tend to the moment at hand. There’s a certain power in naming what hurts, allowing ourselves to speak directly without apology for weakness.
There is also humility in acknowledging what worked once may not serve us now. Freedom in accepting that our needs and abilities change over time.
Images can be deceptive; a body may appear healthy, but hide a deficit of strength. Similarly one can appear weak while exercising great strength.
Lastly, we teach our children as much in good health as we do in injury and sickness. It is natural to tend to another in need, but there are great lessons in self-care.
In those moments of stillness as I tested my body for stability and considered how I had changed, what I might need, and the actions that would best nurture healing, the thoughts I had been circling in movement all week settled into place and I marveled at the way life invites us to presence.
This past week my son wrapped up another academic term with finals. The end of anything brings the beginning of something else and we’ve been chasing significant change with unconventional choices in anticipation of his new term.
There has been great joy in the anticipation of these adjustments, but also remorse and grief for the years I held my son accountable to a pattern of commitments that contradicted his needs for another’s impersonal trajectory of success.
For all my efforts to parent outside the mainstream language of success, I’ve bought into patterns of parenting that conflicted my earliest days of motherhood; days before labels invited comparisons that bred fear and worry. For years I gauged good enough and belonging by unfortunate standards akin to fitting in.
While verbally celebrating my son’s individuality, I was shaping his future with a mass-produced machinery of normal. If A, then B. Never accounting for a factor of C.
There is so much more to this moment. I’ve been gathering my thoughts, privately, trying to decide how to mark this milestone in writing as we embark on a new adventure. It was strange that a physical injury is my introduction to sounding out these changes, but so it is:
Name the harm.
Understand what worked once, may no longer apply.
Recognize that images are deceptive, one can appear weak while exercising great strength.
Our actions speak more loudly than words, our children are listening to our choices.
on presence
January 11, 2017 § 5 Comments
Today’s wind is bitterly cold, uncomfortably so to small patches of exposed skin. It was a day to tidy indoors or disappear into a story, but my dog is immune to the cold and was overdue for a walk. Her needs demanded my attention and so I layered carefully, mindful of the temperature.
It was on this walk, my hair flying wickedly around my hat and scarf, that my companion explored slippery puddles of ice and brittle grass. She understood this was her time and so she savored each minute greedily, her joy as visible as the breath that escaped my scarf.
No matter my discomfort, there was an infectious enthusiasm in my dog’s delight. I began looking in earnest for her next distraction, paying closer attention to the landscape and less to the discomfort of the cold. Halfway home I found my own treasure, easy to miss footprints left in concrete by a small bird.
I was tempted to remove my gloves just to feel the small indentations in the ground, the miracle of something so fragile forever cast in the weight of something whose strength snaked against the bulk of earth beneath it.
Like a child the weather was forgotten for the adventure of discovery. My eyes scanning our surrounding for a new diversion. Returning home I wonder, what magic might we discover beneath our feet if we only pause long enough to find the beauty hidden just under our nose?
strength in softening
January 6, 2017 § 3 Comments
There have been years past when the muscle of January’s resolve was built in rigorous physical effort. I wrestled post-holiday lethargy with exhausting exercise routines and swapped left-over sweets for restrictive meal plans. These were self-imposed limitations; I need hard boundaries and tidy markers of progress to carry me past preventable distraction once the novelty of my interests wear thin.
This year I’ve been exercising a different muscle.
Rather than chase an exterior image of health or pounding the pavement in a new direction, I’ve nestled into the sometimes uncomfortable practice of stillness; breathing into an intention of submission and softening against the hard edges of experiences I cannot control. I expected the generosity of self-care in this practice would make the act of stillness simper, more peaceful.
I was wrong.
In the moments when I am tired or anxious, I move with the hollow muscle memory of a sleep walker; pacing, snacking or reading my way into distraction. Like a child with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar, I see myself caught; breath held, body tense, mind racing to catch up to this particular moment.
I’ve had to turn my routines upside down a little; sometimes, literally, standing on my head to shake up my thoughts. I’ve swapped out coffee for tea and traded speaking for listening. I’ve started stretching when I itch to pace and filling my lungs with slow, intentional breaths when I’m tempted to consume empty calories.
Relaxing my muscles rather than muscling through.
I did not expect there would be so much action in stillness, so much strength in softening.
sharing words
January 2, 2017 § 3 Comments
My daughter is sounding out her One Little Word. Each year I invite both children to join me in my New Year’s practice. Lending them printed pages with rows of words, I challenge them to read the words aloud, to strike through those words that fall flat and create space for those words that whisper recognition.
It is a treasure hunt of sorts, there is magic in scavenging tidy rows of words for suggestions of self; fragments of dreams we see only in our mind’s eye and private hopes, intimate challenges and new habits. More than goal setting, it is a mindset for the days to come.
Last night I came upon my daughter stretched purposefully beside her lists, red pen in hand, striking and circling with a confident flair. Her posture was the same form she uses for drawing and writing, painting and molding clay; her hands moving with the same certainty she shapes thoughts into art.
I looked over her papers, marveling at the key code she had created for her thoughts, the place her marks stopped, and the large circle where she explained her choice.
She landed on one brief word, four letters that held together four other words. I won’t share her word, instead I want to honor some of the words that framed our conversation at bedtime.
The first was seek, so that she might seek out new roads. The next two left me chasing down a pencil to guard her thoughts. Adding my handwriting to her own this is what I transcribed for my daughter:
“Self-love (means) to love who you are and don’t let anyone else say otherwise. Shine so that when other’s don’t feel like they are enough, I can reach out to them.”
Her last word lead to others and we fell into a conversation about the intricacy of our words, the impossibility of a singular choice and the subsequent supporting characters.
Whatever our words, I hope there will be many more late night ramblings. That my children will continue to allow me to guard their words among my own. To share traditions and explore new goals as we support one another in becoming our best selves; collectively and individually.
gratitude remembered
January 1, 2017 § 3 Comments
It is one of the few intentions I have muscled into tradition, the jar of notes we read aloud on New Year’s to remember the year past. A hodgepodge of paper scraps in mismatched handwriting; moments of gratitude we collect over the course of each year.
There’s magic in the happy exclamations of remembering, a current of joy that leaps from page to person as we take turns sounding out one another’s celebrations. The notes are read out of order and without ownership so that each memory becomes a curious discovery.
This year the greater joy came from those misplaced moments. The events and good fortune forgotten on paper that we collectively called into account. The act of reading expanding to accommodate left out Remember When’s.
Small moments and sentimental milestones that map the past in a constellation of family.
show up, surrender
December 31, 2016 § 2 Comments
Last year I choose Wholehearted for my One Little Word practice. It was the thread that bound my thoughts and actions to the quieter language of my heart. I listened more carefully, leapt more intentionally.
There were joyful permission slips and complicated choices. Some understood and where others left vacancies, beautiful opportunities invited change that blossomed into new relationships. It’s been a year of healthier boundaries and greater peace.
This year I found my new word tethered to last year’s promise, Mindfully. The two are almost inseparable in practice. After all, the heart and mind are old friends.
Unlike resolutions of year’s past, these words don’t demand lists; instead they insist on stillness of thought and intention of action. To show up and surrender.
It is a beautiful balance of holding on and letting go. Facing fears head on without distraction and making choices that resonate with a gentler certainty. There is no numbing, discomfort and joy are intimate acquaintances.
The year to come is filled with emotional family milestones and I want to welcome these complicated celebrations with mindfulness for their brevity. These moments are the material of gratitude or remorse, the difference is entirely of our choosing.
Just yesterday my children were babies; someday is a misconception, a beautiful distraction from today.
Of course, there are mechanics to the work of such stillness. Old habits and passive worries interrupt even the best intentions. I’m still learning how to get comfortable with the mess of now to invite the peace of presence.
I’m working on creating habits that nurture this choice and honors my values to better align my actions with my beliefs. In some ways, it is as simple as saying “no” when “yes” feels kinder. Telling an acquaintance that I would rather not connect on social media when I can get to know her in person, over stories and shared time.
It can also mean changing direction in the middle of a complicated trajectory; telling my son I think there’s another path when for years others have guided him in a different direction. Asking him to listen to his heart means modeling that truth with my own actions; those interests and forgotten heart songs.
Some days, it is mundane. Exercising when I would rather escape into a book or resting when the laundry demands attention. More often the magic is in small moments, afternoon dates after sixteen years of marriage and listening to my children rather than informing their choices.
I’m still learning how to balance the woman I aspire to be, Mindfully and Wholeheartedly.
