great intender
March 21, 2016 § 5 Comments
I’m a great intender of good intentions. If only my thoughts and actions would consistently align. This past week, in the quieter moments of reflective distraction, I returned to my wish for an online atmosphere of simplicity in anticipation of creating change that might realign my actions and intentions for a more genuine representation of self.
Authenticity and integrity are values I endeavor to model with my choices and my distraction online had begun to contradict my desire for a more streamlined consciousness for those individuals and experiences I was enjoying from the periphery of attentiveness. The ease of press, swipe, tap had overshadowed the work of greater connectivity.
Additionally, I was consuming images that fed a mindset of scarcity; homes arranged into personal advertisements for style and photographs that hinted at manically impossible family experiences. Online presences rarely capture the broken pieces of normal days, unless they have been intentionally filtered to counterbalance perfection as a qualification for the ever rising accomplishment of imperfection.
It all felt just a little manipulated and insincere. Add to this the obligation of elaborate chains of commentary and the entire process became a bit exhausting. Sifting through my social media feeds I felt lonely for conversation over coffee and intimate messages outside the public pool of uncertain interpretations.
As someone who naturally prefers a small company of close friends over an elaborate network of acquaintances, my online accounts felt disingenuous to my individuality. Last night I edited my accounts for a new experience; clicking out of relationships and interests until there were only a small number of family and old friends. Then, I logged off.
If limiting the available distractions was a first step, changing the rhythms of my communication is my next endeavor. This week I am practicing a hands-free approach to my days, walking away from those conveniences that promise connection for more mindful presence offline.
spring break
March 18, 2016 § 2 Comments
This past week my family relaxed into time off, at home. From the onset of our week together I wanted desperately to create what we could not escape to; setting our expectations to those we retrieve for travel.
On vacation we plan for patience, anticipate unpredictable disruptions, and tolerate moderate discomfort for the indulgence of extravagant presence. We bring our most comfortable selves and unpack reserves of kindness. It is the thing we save for in anticipation of joy, but it is a destination we too generally dismiss as unattainable in the fast paced demands of work and school days.
Vacation is an idea we too often save for special occasions; a mindset that threatens a belief in scarcity that drives fear over faith.
As we return to routine from the freedom of unstructured demands, I’m holding tightly to a greater awareness of how I divide my attention; where I am gentle with myself and generous with my family. I’m planning more consciously for those relationships that nurture my spirit and those activities that breathe balance into my schedule.
I want to remember how in moments of unexpected frustration we can choose to lean into the temporary discomfort of inconvenience with a perspective that anticipates pleasure. To order my time in a way that I am better able to tend to priorities and to prioritize indulgences of care. I want to expect joy and assume a wealth of opportunity.
living small
March 13, 2016 § 5 Comments
I remember a time before googling was a verb that accounted for answers to last-minute homework assignments, housecleaning foibles, and comparison shopping. The early hours of an online environment of conversations folded into letters.
A time before friends were chosen like teams in gym class; waiting to be accepted and liked then placed in a hierarchy of belonging and popularity among a virtual clique.
There was the briefest moment when most of my online wonderings were messages given to friends, farther reaching than the span of my days.
Over the years, it has become a rabbit hole of squandered minutes and lost hours for which there is not time enough to gamble such loss.
My children are growing too quickly, my dreams demand more of my attention. I have come to a place where I must make my life smaller to live beyond the confines of my habits.
As the ground softens with spring and the trees blossom into a new season of life, I am promising myself a simpler schedule of play; a truer practice of mindfulness.
I’m whittling my online distractions to a more genuine opportunity for connection.
As so many stumble upon the wisdom of Marie Kondo’s elegant system of tidying, I’m considering a similar necessity for organizing my space online to nurture greater joy and purpose.
At present, I have put pen to paper, naming my virtual distractions; the places I log on and the people I follow to better identify my personal investment. The value of beauty and inspiration, insight and education beside emotional outlets of social opportunities.
It would seem simple, but I have found more complicated personal truths. Disingenuous relationships and excessive ideas too vast to be accessible.
They are the places I am passively present and absently inspired.
I have begun to save lost relationships in the same way others cling to old clothing with scraps of sentiment. I have hoarded creativity by neatly naming it into a system of possibility.
This week, in quieter minutes of intentional care and unhurried effort, I am tidying up my online spaces for a new intention of presence and authenticity.
to my daughter
March 10, 2016 § 2 Comments
On your eleventh birthday, you proudly proclaimed yourself eleventeen. Younger sister to a teenage brother, it sometimes seems you were born assuming an equality of age while simultaneously performing a playful demonstration of the very youth you feigned ignorance of experience.
I can remember elementary days, picking up your brother from school while you chased ahead of me in full costume. Parading after the older children with a single-minded purpose of falling into line and assuming a place in their day.
You were fearlessly bold before you were old enough to understand unkindness, to feel different or doubtful. Over the past few years you’ve sometimes struggled to be seen authentically amid the familiarity of sameness.
This year, as you introduced yourself to strangers and set about the task of self in a new setting, I marveled at confident expressions that hinted at your playful nature and creative spirit. When others might have sought the invisibility of a crowd, you moved comfortably in your costume of self.
Bulky orange headphones, outdated for their size, draped at your neck or a borrowed baseball cap worn backwards; torn jeans and weathered boots; sentimental accessories and clothes that are a hodgepodge of comfort and convenience. Just this side of pretty with a carefully casual disinterest in compliments.
I have a sneaking suspicion you will soon outgrow this phase in much the same way you ceased to chase neighborhood sidewalks in stained princess gowns brandishing your brother’s forgotten sword in trade for an astronaut costume with pearls.
Even as I cautiously redirect your attention from a new question of feathers and hair color, I’m secretly smitten by the riddle of style that has become reassuringly familiar for its predictable chaos that is your own.
Love, Mom
family culture
March 3, 2016 § 5 Comments
It began with a sixth grade social studies assignment; innocent questions intended to create an intimate classroom discussion on culture. An exercise familiar across generations for the interpersonal research – facts shaped by stories. A heritage of self in family interviews.
Faith that infers belief, foods that speak to nationalities, traditions that honor sentiment. Easy questions tugged at difficult subjects. Not all family traditions are kind, some truths are more telling.
When I met my husband I imagined our children would inherit his family’s traditions. My childhood holidays were only consistent in their predictable inconsistencies. My mother was poor and my father was unburdened by an obligation to nurture superficial normalcies.
I was honored to accommodate my husband’s experiences; advent chocolates and Saint Nicholas day, an eccentric Easter tradition and a few family recipes. It was a more uncomfortable truth my children remember from the years before we found peace.
For my children there are only hints of heritage in holiday customs or hand-me-down stories. It was a history of substance abuse and greed that were written into the space of traditions. These are the markers that inform my children’s understanding of an entire ancestry of instability.
They are not the answers a teacher would expect and so this week I helped my daughter research a culture she never knew for a more predictable character of diversity. Learning pieces of a past that were impersonal for their irrelevance to our experiences.
Still, I am grateful for the innocent honesty of children. There is no shame to truth-telling; we are not bound to the choices of others. The geography of our experience is not a culture mapped by lines of latitude or longitude.
As a family I hope our faith is one of kindness; there is no denomination that informs the intentions behind our actions. Our food speaks less of heritage and more of health and community around the table. Our traditions are small, artifacts of a culture of playfulness and mindfulness – my favorite the intentional hugs at each goodbye.
These are the answers I hope echo in stories untold years from now when my children’s children fill in the spaces of self.
A legacy of love.
rhythms
March 2, 2016 § 4 Comments
Normal is relative, especially as the seasons change. Dramatic changes in temperature and seasonal colds have created little ripples in our week. As one person heals, another becomes unwell; the patterns of care and caring changing to accommodate shifts in need.
We’re a little tired, overextended, impatient and self-centered. Discomfort does this, it draws us further inside ourselves while exaggerating our perceptions. Inconvenience becomes insurmountable against the scale of ease.
This week I’ve been softening into silence. Moving beyond my strength and relaxing my expectations.
I layer up and force myself, bracing against the wind, to walk our dog; letting the air brush away the germs that seem to follow me. I let the crisp air numb the skin now tender to the touch while burrowing my breath against my scarf.
Warm tea and hot coffee, a new book and an unplanned nap ease the work of extra laundry and interrupted sleep.
I’ve almost become accustomed to this new rhythm of slower paces, but I’m eager for sunshine and wellness. A quicker step and clearer head.
as we are
February 25, 2016 § Leave a comment
Holidays and special occasions tend to build an expectation of extra. A sense that there must be more to a single day than those that came before it or those that might come after.
Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary. The day itself, so many years past, was a day my husband and I performed for others; the days that came after were our own.
Messy days with imperfect demonstrations of love. House projects that lingered over years and complicated experiences of parenting. They were the occasions we chose one another, unceremoniously, with little gestures of care and unplanned joy.
Maybe one day we’ll honeymoon somewhere warm or take an extravagant trip with our children. For now I just want to nest in the life we have created, as we are.
Today I’m wrapping tomorrow in sentiment and gratitude, an unembellished moment to cherish.
defining friendships
February 19, 2016 § 5 Comments
The past six months I have been recklessly uninhibited among our neighbors, quick with a wave or casual conversation, but reserved in nurturing new friendships among my children’s schools.
It was tempting, initially, to volunteer time to school commitments that might nurture invitations to friendship. A little voice with panicked urgency whispered at the importance of such belonging.
Except, without the routine of martyred obligation I realized that years of external demands on my time had exhausted the spirit of generosity behind the busyness. Sadly, it had also revealed that beneath so many polite conversations there were few substantial relationships.
Over the years I had become tired and disconnected from the disingenuousness of school yard politics. I had stood too close to so many casual unkindnesses not to be disheartened by the gossip of grown women.
That is not to say I do not occasionally long for the borrowed belonging. Rather, I have come to a place in my life where genuineness means infinitely more to me than the superficial whimsy of popularity; gone is the grade school eagerness to belong among the security of a chosen few and their coded ramblings or noisy gestures of inclusion.
Less is, infinitely, more.
There is a weightlessness when we forgo pretending for the substance of integrity. Give me those women who live passionately attuned to modesty and are indulgent in an intuitive intelligence. I love my high school girlfriend for the intentionality of her words and comfort of her silence; my college neighbor for the authenticity of her actions and sincerity of her beliefs; my friends in motherhood whose greatest extravagance are a generous heart and steadfast presence of character.
These women, however scattered physically, are my whole and they create a standard of respect and vulnerability that spoil me for the simpler experiences of superficial belonging.
feeling the way
February 17, 2016 § 5 Comments
Last week’s worries were a field of noise. Uncertainties and anxieties that screamed at private insecurities and emotional decisions. It seemed every corner of our family’s days were pulling at my attention for big answers.
Rather than view what wasn’t working from a perspective of need; I decided to begin from a mindset that informed an appreciation for what was possible. I listed what was going well and looked at the good for clues.
Then, borrowing a page from Danielle La Porte’s course work, I asked my loved one’s how they wanted to feel and started mapping the shortest route there.
Passion and joy, purpose and value are ideas our children understand without hesitation; uninhibited truth with an indulgent attention to inspiration. They speak in grand certainties that adults too often caution with worst case scenarios.
So, we dreamed big. Together. Out loud.
I wrote down needs like a grocery list and incorporated requests into an agenda no more complicated than school day class schedules.
Rather than working towards good, we began from someplace better and let that energy create a change that stuck to our actions.
off script
February 11, 2016 § 4 Comments
Last night I had the privilege of watching my daughter’s classmates dress-rehearsal for their 6th grade school play.
There were delightful surprises and scene stealing characters. A meaningful, well-written story with witty one-liners and lessons disguised as puns. It was everything you could wish for opening night, with a few glorious mistakes that stole the show.
In a moment of honest forgetfulness, a main character realized he had lost a line. Center stage, without any distractions, his face processed the revelation and he owned the silence with pitch perfect honesty. He told his parter on stage he had forgotten the line and even asked them directly to “say something.”
The audience’s patience and empathy was as tangible as the actor’s error. We leaned into a moment, completely committed to one another, and I thought:
What if we could all do this in life? Stand center stage to our own experiences and forget ourselves, own our mistakes and move on. Invite others to help while standing tall in humor and humility. Acknowledge the audience without sacrificing self.
Other flubs would follow. Underplayed utterances, small improvisations, hurried lines and voices too quiet or hurried to hear. Colorful strokes of nerves that made the students personalities more amiable than the characters they portrayed. They were, all of them, brave in their own right.
Last, but not least, I want to shine a light on the silent actors who fashioned a beautiful backdrop for the stories acted front and center. Student directors, sound and lighting crews, prop and make-up, set and advertising. Shadows that raced between scenes for weeks to prepare the stage, faces that we didn’t see until curtain call begged a moment’s applause.
Many will remember the handful of stars who stole the spotlight with perfect affectations of difficult accents and seamless character portrayals. I’ll remember the beautiful honesty of imperfect scenes and the whimsical scenery that spoke colorfully of the cast in its entirety.
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