practice
February 8, 2017 § 7 Comments
Today the sky emptied its clouds of delicate flurries that made the world feel new and I relished the promise of those first footprints scattered across a perfect canvas. I was reminded of January’s resolve.
So much of creating an intention for the year is inviting conscious action to hopeful expectations with small goals. The first month of the New Year enthusiasm and momentum upended more stagnant routines with the promise of controlled change. The novelty of work feels a bit like play and I approach frustration with curiosity and determination.
Living mindfully has meant rooting myself more firmly to the moment I’m in while still trying to create a plan for my time. This is where the work of practice has been essential to cultivating new choices into stronger habits.
Mindfulness, in practice, has given me a path to simplify larger ideals into smaller actions that nourish my well-being and connectivity. In particular regular exercise, sacred rest, and healthier food. I’ve turned my attention towards a definition of health that embraces a kinder sense of self-care.
When I was ill, this meant rest in place of play. In good health it has meant embracing new physical challenges for greater strength. I’ve become less apologetic in honoring my awareness for those foods that leave me tired or unwell with the same wholeheartedness I embrace those moments of celebration or comfort with food choices that reflect joy. Most importantly, I have begun to indulge in bedtime routines that carve aside time to unravel the day from my night.
Scheduling time to move and be still has created a more “awake” in between the busier rhythms of my day so that I am present among others. I am listening more intentionally and leaving space in my relationships for appreciation; pausing in gratitude rather than dwelling in anxiousness or frustration.
It is an imperfect practice, one that demands flexibility and forgiveness as insistently as routine and accountability. Moment to moment, one choice at a time; mindfully connecting the optimism of New Year’s expectations with the work of daily efforts.
accidentally on purpose
February 4, 2017 § Leave a comment
Last week I suffered ailments of comic proportions. Physically uncomfortable and persistently impatient, I was desperate to exercise against my better judgement. Having only recently gained the momentum of new muscle I was stubbornly determined to rest, productively.
I fell into a compromise that created stillness with a gentler practice of yoga.
It should be noted that I have failed colorfully and inflexibly at previous attempts in more public displays, but this past week was an accident in grace. Small pockets of time with unhurried devotion produced a new relationship with an old beau.
I’m playing at something I love with all the fussy infatuation of novelty in the comfort of well-groomed familiarity. Postures of strength and lines of submission.
More importantly, I am practicing without an audience; there is no mirror to reflect or compare, only presence.
In the uninterrupted attentiveness, there is only the gentlest listening as I open my body and mind moment to moment.
Accidentally, on purpose.
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.
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.
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.
back to basics
December 29, 2016 § 1 Comment
Vacations intentionally tend towards indulgence, time empty of responsibility and ripe with endless possibilities. When we travel, each menu becomes a treasure of choice; I consciously seek out those dishes with fresh ingredients that demand extra care and settle into the pregnant space of anticipation.
I am the same with new environments, surveying my surroundings for beauty with an eagerness toward pleasure and discovery. I observe strangers with the same fascination I delight in nature; mysteries completely immune to my attention.
These are simple personal truths, distant cousins to my tendency toward sad novels or my preference for silence. The everyday truths and vacation indulgences are casualties of distraction; joy lost in the rut of routine and the chaos of false expectations.
Little fears that worry the peacefulness of contentment. Am I succeeding in parenting? Is my partner fulfilled? Gestures of maturity and accountability that overshadow the value of pleasure. Are the rooms tidied, the laundry washed, papers signed and appointments scheduled?
This vacation I’ve ordered my time at home with the same relaxed amusement I so often reserve for travel; creating opportunity for pleasure with the playful insistency too often lost to the day’s demands. Small, selfish gifts of time that make the days longer despite the season.
I’ve let the kids’ bedding remain wrinkled in the chaos of each night’s dreams, looked the other way at the remnants of Christmas gifts that weigh countertops with forgotten clutter.
Instead, I’ve woken early to exercise, squirreled away stolen hours for new books, let the laundry wait, and interrupted our children’s interests with invitations for family time. In another week, when the mechanics of school days disrupt us from the ease of these holiday luxuries, I want to live more mindfully of these basic truths.
It is, after all, a tradition of clean slates and good intentions as we dress the New Year in hope for our best selves.
I’ve not yet drafted a list of goals or settled on my One Little Word. I’m still sounding out the shape of my promise, savoring the space between recognition and choice.
To exercise, breathe, rest, and read.
To play and listen with care and curiosity.
To live mindfully, with gratitude.
It is a return to basic truths and small delights.
borrowed words
December 9, 2016 § 3 Comments
The space between my words are filled with a chaos of gratitude, a noisy contentment that has grounded my presence and busied my thoughts. I’m holding the emptiness of these pages with a borrowed quote to guide me back to this fullness.
“My head is a hive of words that won’t settle.” Virginia Woolf
presence
November 1, 2016 § 3 Comments
As the structure of my days has aligned to accommodate work outside our home, I have become differently mindful of messages that shout quietly in the busier minutes of my day; the often serendipitous hints from an expansive universe that when connected by presence speak to purpose.
Personal invitations in unassuming choices that invite greater consciousness in how I invest my time and conquer distractions. Messages of gratitude and joy that reinforce personal values with lessons in wholehearted presence at work and home, offline.
There is so much grace to the tidy time commitment of my work schedule, an unarguable need that allows me to prioritize my days around my mornings; delegating time for necessities, self and others with a hierarchy of responsibility to essentials over emptiness.
The greatest change was an unintentional vacation from social media that underscored on-line distraction cloaked in real-time attentiveness. My new routine left little time for senseless scrolling. The passive voyeurism that kept me entertained by other’s choices was a hamster wheel of reactivity over ingenuity.
Each day begins with family routines and self-care that allow me to indulge in single-minded attentiveness, offline. As we eat breakfast together and walk to the bus stop I am mindful of these ordinary moments with the same appreciation I then exercise and ready myself for work. The uncomplicated demands are a permission slip for an elegance of simplicity.
At work, the hours away from e-mails and texts have established new boundaries around my time, replacing a false urgency with greater peace. Everything can, and does, wait; there is nothing nearly as urgent as I had allowed myself to believe.
Outside of work, errands have become less an excuse to sustain a distracted restlessness and more an efficient accounting of time. I am using my afternoons in rest or purpose that I might structure my evenings for family and weekends for play. Folding clothes and sifting recipes are no less valuable than time given to a new book or old friend.
There is nothing novel in these personal revelations, it is merely a new attentiveness. Others more eloquent than I have written in greater length on the same subject. Neatly itemized suggestions for greater mindfulness offline are ever-present on-line in cleverly articulated Pins.
I won’t pretend a pledge to forgo online indulgences or pass judgment on others who spend their time differently. My mother would say: everything in moderation.
I can speak only for myself, in this season of my life as I sway with and against distraction for balance. As my days have become fuller, I am finding my choices are becoming more intentional and my practices, simpler… online and off-line.
to my daughter
October 11, 2016 § 5 Comments
This morning, as you finished your last bite of breakfast and I began a second cup of coffee, you told me about an uncomfortable experience at school. A teacher you were secretly certain doesn’t like you.
There were lots of specific details that you tallied as evidence. For a moment I considered asking you to act out the worrisome behavior, but I trust your intuitiveness; you’re pretty good at reading people.
Playing devil’s advocate would only make you second guess yourself and I had a bigger question in mind.
Does it matter?
Beyond respect, can we really expect anyone to like everyone?
No matter how much I love you, it’s possible your teacher doesn’t like you. (Of course, it’s just as possible she does.)
Instead, I asked about your work, if the pace of the teacher’s lectures or expectations had left gaps in your understanding. If liking one another, the relationship you share or don’t, gets in the way of learning. If it is possible to be respectful and fair without posturing an insincere standard of “like.”
It’s a conversation that has kept me thinking all day about my own expectations, of self and others.
On the surface it’s painfully simple to dismiss someone else’s emotions for our own, but it is even more worrisome to twist ourselves into another’s acceptance and loose the shape of our selves. I hope you like yourself.
Love, Mom
what’s in a name
September 23, 2016 § 1 Comment
Mother is my first name, my favorite word.
As a child I wished for another name for self. Marie was my grandmother’s middle name. My middle name, my mother’s. Both wore like ill-fitting hand-me-downs.
I did not yet know that we name children in languages of sentiment and hope. Motherhood has made me mindful of the tenderness with which we gift one another belonging and individuality.
I have also come to understand we are forever becoming the person remembered by a name too small to eclipse a single lifetime.
One word begins a story that strings exceptionally ordinary moments into an extraordinary lifetime.
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