Telling Stories ~ Module 51: Oneness

I find it a bit unnerving to focus on my thin-skinnedness or my thick-skinnedness. It feels like someone will overhear me and say I am WRONG!!!

Perhaps that is my story?!

One thing I am sure of is that I have made it my Life’s Work to BE both less and more sensitive. To toughen up and all the while BE highly considerate of others.

Those “others” never seemed to HAVE feelings or express them in language I understood. I always felt I was a stranger in a peculiar [and somewhat scary] land.

A message I heard [mayBE it was said only a handful of times] was I Don’t Want To Know About That.

“That” always referred to me, my feelings, my pain, my fear, my deep uncertainty about BEing here at all, and my constant low-grade confusion.

I heard this message at an especially tender time of my Life, BEtween 11 and 16 years of age.

I was very clear about only one thing in those years: I was NOT wanted.

A burden.

An oh well I’ve only got to DO this until you are 18, Now go and leave me alone child in a splintered family of people I Now see through different eyes with a more open heart.

I thought I was broken. Unfixable. Flat-out wrong.

If I spoke of it I was in for exasperated anger, flaring tempers and punishments, and often felt that BEing Me was something I had no idea HOW to BE.

Why did all my parts NOT work “right” like others’ did?!

I never ever felt a sense that what I experienced was something I shared with anyone.

That is the story of my skin. Too thick and too thin, I was never Just Right.

Over the decades since I was that young girl, I’ve learned that I am NOT the only one to have felt this.

To have experienced a deep and lasting sense of BEing outside looking in where I was NOT welcome.

Still, I tend to keep more to myself. I want to connect, sometimes far more than I think anyone could imagine, but I am unwavering in my determination to protect and cherish myself, even if I’m the ONLY ONE who does.

Coping. That’s my skin story. Coping.

Accepting that this is just the way things are.

NOT trusting my own radar.

I often think there is something NOT Right or simply Wrong, but I don’t speak up or take wise, adult actions to sort things out.

I don’t ask for help.

I no longer go to my family members without having dragged myself through hell and back FIRST, and then never without apologies and feeling really ashamed to BE having this “problem” at my age… hoping THIS TIME I might discover I’ve been wrong all along.

They DO, they really REALLY DO like me!!!

I tell myself all the time to expect nothing and to NOT BE surprised when there is nothing. Recent events have borne this out yet again.

I shake my head. I try to snap myself out of it. I “act as if” I’m okay with all this. But living alone it makes it hard to “pass” as okay.

That is far easier when living with others. So I suppose this Life Choice is convenient. A way to seem more thick-skinned.

But…

I am NOT so easy to fool as others.

Plus I don’t encourage myself to BE more thick or less thin in the skin department. I look myself in the eye. And the heart.

I know myself better than that…

Oneness is another kettle of fish entirely. It is something I imagine, envision, hope for, and look for. I rarely see it and I sometimes feel that my seeing it is really stretching myself across a wide chasm.

But I have experienced it.

And much moreso in this year, this A Year With Myself Year.

Each week I have read and resonated with something, oftentimes many somethings.

I have gradually and steadily come to see that others must have similar perspectives to my own. Otherwise, how could they say or write or dream up things that sound so familiar to me?!

Camp was a place, during those difficult years in particular, where I felt what I suppose is Oneness.

I’ve often thought and mayBE even said that Camp saved my Life.

And then there is my son.

How I FEEL about him.

Who he is to me.

Where he came from.

That is a Light shed in a Very Dark Room.

He helps me cope with the skin thing.

He loves me.

As I AM.

As I AM NOT.

He listens. He hears me.

And he shares himself with me. Which is so amazing and BEautiful.

Those are my stories…

...if the world was made of people who could do that...

A YEAR WITH MYSELF MODULE 50: SERVICE

Teaching As a Tool for Changing Yourself and the World

As a teacher and a student of Life, this Module touches me and inspires me in myriad ways, places, and fashions. Even my assumptions about it, picked-off, one at a time and in such gentle ways, teach me much to un-learn as well to re-learn.

The trick for me, for this post, is to say what I most want to At This Moment. I realise I could write reams of posts and journal-ish writing about any one of the Modules.

As a teacher in my Former Real Life, of little children, of adults, of young people and of teenagers, [are these NOT separate categories?!] I know my teacher’s heart. It is distinct and uniquely bent just for me.

As a teacher in my Present Day Real Life one thing that I know is that my motivations are different.

Totally.

And they are exactly the same.

EXACTLY.

As far back as I can remember I was teaching. Teaching my bassett hound to read. Teaching myself to write. Teaching my teachers how to challenge me and help me BEcome a self-driven [NOT hard-driving] girl who could easily evolve into a self-driven woman.

I have had many job titles and positions within organisations and in my own businesses. I have learned to DO things that have zero relevance Now. [and a few that didn’t even THEN, in my opinion ;~D]

I have learned to teach myself how to DO or Learn new things or simply desired things. I wanted to blog  so this year I started that and goodness, Now I have several blogs and I am thinking up what I’d like to try for 2013!!

I have un-learned that grades and outcomes matter. Sure, they matter and always will. BEcause I live in a World which places value on things that I don’t completely get and often don’t agree with at all. What I mean is what and how they matter to me. For me.

Recently I was writing about selling my art. Someone commented back to me about what I wrote and said something so interesting. She said that is why she STOPPED making art. The upkeep, care, and other maintenance our art “product” requires.

I moved quickly past my reaction that I have completely lost my compass, a place I go often when the topic of selling my art comes up, and into the heart of her words.

I saw immediately that her comment was an answer for me. To a prayer. To a wish. To a hope.

To help me understand that the MAKING of my art is the Whole Thing.

Like teaching. The reason I teach is BEcause I CAN. BEcause I am given the opportunity. All the time. Whether it is a “job” description, for any sort of remuneration, or BEcause it is my Purpose in that moment.

I teach BEcause I am alive. Above ground. Breathing in and out.

Today I taught myself to stop BEfore hurting Gracie’s feelings. To see round the corner of what I was about to DO in reaction to what she was choosing to DO, BEing a dog. [even a dog who had a spa day yesterday!!!]

Yesterday I taught myself to keep talking and thinking and processing even though I didn’t get the reaction from someone else that I had got from myself!!!

Every day is an opportunity to teach and re-learn. To un-learn and re-teach. To try and fail. And try again. Or try something else.

Still, Now that I have gone off on a word-bender, I want to come back to the one thing in this moment that most moves me in this Module.

On page 8, left column, near the bottom Tara Sophia Mohr says:

We focus incredible financial and social capital on teaching children how to read, do math, and play sports, but we don’t teach them how to forgive, cope with an argument, react wisely when they are afraid, or manage their own anger – even though we all would probably say our lives would be much better if the world was made of people who could do that.

WOW!!!

This is juicy stuff. This is the heart of WHY I am Here. On Planet Earth. Right Now. As all that I AM and all that I AM NOT.

Hope, Enthusiasm, and Sparks of Possibility

A YEAR WITH MYSELF

MODULE 49: HOPE & ENTHUSIASM

Rekindle Your Inner Spark Over and Over Again

I loved reading this module, especially this past week. I am using December as a Month for Reflection. It really helps to DO so with Hope. And with Enthusiasm. It was refreshing and frankly quite lovely to see that my Inner Spark is well-lit and shining.

Reading caused me to think back on my Life BEfore what I consider “my Life” Now. A longer ago ME. Younger. A bit more fearless. Far less concerned with what other people thought or felt.

Then, almost without realising it, I was locked onto a sensation I can only call a Nor’Easter of Optimism. How it blew in and through and, yes, almost right on by me a couple times.

When I reflect, generally, I have to wade through Regret, Shame, Blame, Resentment, and a significant amount of Quicksand.

This week, reflecting was totally different.

Gentler.

Clearer.

Bolder.

Understanding.

Even forgiving.

I look back on the week and realise its many gifts. And the tremendous surprise I felt when I saw there WERE gifts. That is quite the thing…

Sometimes Life feels ginormous and impossible and frankly, I’d rather go take a nap.

Yet with a splash of Enthusiasm, a couple shakes of Perspective, and Hope, Anything BEcomes Possible…

Lovingkindess... It's What's Essential

A YEAR WITH MYSELF MODULE 48: Lovingkindness

Touching the World with Kindness and Compassion

As someone who loves to invent words, play with their spellings, and oddly capitalise, the word Lovingkindness has held a very special place in my heart.

I heard the word BEfore I read it, and I didn’t know it was [is] a real word with actual dictionary definition status.

Definition of LOVING-KINDNESS

: tender and benevolent affection

First Known Use of LOVING-KINDNESS

1535

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loving-kindness

I spent this week reading, listening, and reading more. I immersed myself in the notion of Lovingkindness and let it steep in me. 

I am finding a comfortable familiarity with it, one deeper than surface and NOT at all glib.

It can BE difficult to BE loving or kind. To some people, to me. For some people, for me. 

And yet what else is there but this?! 

Is there actually a Life to BE lived and cherished where Lovingkindness is NOT central and essential?!

While this module covers many aspects and experiences of Lovingkindness, for me it is the foundation of everything. 

It is where I BEgin and return. 

It is how and why I live Life. 

It is a guiding principle as necessary as Hope.

I’m reconsidering my “positions” on some things in the LIGHT of Lovingkindness. 

[Which is extraordinary all by itself…]

Serenity Whispers Into My Heart

As often happens, Module 47: SERENITY How to Recognize and Use the Elements of Inner Peace and Spirituality of A Year With Myself has caused me to gently slow down, take a little time, perhaps more time than I think I “should BE” taking, to consider and wonder long and easy and deep into these things. To live slowly into their place and purpose for me, NOW, NOT in some remembered Past, nor some imagined Future. Right Now. This moment.

Years in the 12-Step World had me straightaway associating Serenity with Recovery-related things; even if I know perfectly well it applies in ALL of Life… As I took that out to chew on a bit I discovered that for me, Now, Recovery-related is Life-related. Living my Life in Recovery doesn’t translate into must look like what it’s been at other times along my Journey.

I loved this early quote from Randi Buckley in Cigdem Kobu’s Mission Brief on page 2.

The soul speaks by whispering into our heart. Whispers into the heart come when they are ready and they don’t mean we were not clear in our actions, identity or know who we were before them. We evolve and peel back our layers. New layers reveal aspects closer to our core. We weren’t wrong before them but the whispers inform who we are to become.

This perspective is quite empowering, and a “something” with which I resonated. I love the context these words put around the “whispers” that are whispering into my own heart. Especially recently.

It has been sheer JOY to experience each of the modules in AYWM full-on and one after the other. I know I am blessed to have the sort of Time and Life where I can CHOOSE this, and I am deeply and truly glad for having chosen to embrace this Journey through 2012.

New layers are revealed almost daily. They might BE a new way of holding or considering a thing, perhaps one that was painful and difficult for me. Or a sudden lightbulb thought that reveals the “secret” of something I might have considered magical and IMPOSSIBLE.

Whatever form these take, and whichever way I “see” and experience the “whispers” into my Life, I am undone, utterly, with how Serenity flows gently through it all. I am NOT Buddha-glowy and enlightened… I’m just a girl, well, a woman, nearing 60, enJOYing the experience.

Some Reflective Thoughts on My Gratitude Practise, Gratitude, and JOY…

A YEAR WITH MYSELF MODULE 46: JOY AND GRATITUDE

Wholehearted Living Through Joy and Gratitude

http://ayearwithmyself.com/journal-prompt-joy-and-gratitude/

I have long known the benefits of counting my blessings. I just never knew the JOYs of having my own practise where Gratitude is concerned. I might have NOT got this BEcause I had some NOT-so-pretty-to-own thoughtsandfeelings about entitlement. Ahhhhhhh… the E-word.

Six years ago, in late December of 2006, I was living alone in Sedona, Arizona, feeling sore and sad and so confused. My relationship of 12 years was coming apart [though at the time I thought we were apart only temporarily] and it seemed I was desperately trying to herd frogs. This was a time that I remember with much sadness BEcause, frankly, I didn’t have my head OR my heart screwed on right about so many things. I was reacting, trying to force things to fit in the size of the boxes I had. Furthest thing from my mind was Gratitude, Practise, or JOY.

By happenstance and, thanks in large part to Google and my own memory reaching back to 1985, I found a Fellowship for ME. And I found it online. Suddenly I felt less apart, separate, alone, and more a part of. It was weird, for sure, an online fellowship, but hey, it was 2006, progress is, as they say, “all good.” All of the 12-Step “stuff” came back to me, like riding a bicycle. It was sweet. It was also tidy, simple, and Right Where I Was.

And so it came to pass that I was invited into a participatory Gratitude-Sharing Practise. I felt like I’d finally found the right sort and size of boxes, and all those frogs hopped into line.

Well, sort of. I am sure I make it sound much simpler than in fact it was.

Still…

In the BEginning of what is Now a blog called I Love You, Currie & a daily email I send to NOT so many anymore, I was utterly fascinated by this way of sharing and BEing shared with. For a Very Long Time I didn’t even see it as a “practise” just an opportunity to connect. How had I grown so disconnected, isolated, and apart from the World?!

A funny question in that last paragraph. Here I am in the nearly-end of 2012, where everyone is sharing about taking technology breaks, daily, and for whole days… A friend recently “fasted” with her church by staying off Facebook and Twitter. Pretty much every week I read two or three posts that address this new need we’ve come to have “living” as we DO Now, online. Virtually. Electronically…

Sorry I got on that little tangent, but this is definitely a reflective post. ;~D

Anyhow, as I read this week’s module, something happened. Almost straightaway. I felt defensive. I felt “dissed” for my practise. I felt judged.

WOW!!!

So I read it again, aware of myself and my tendencies in the way I have BEcome DOing A Year With Myself these past 46 weeks. I realised again that I automatically go there, to the defensive Currie, the one who thinks that she must BE understood. And I made her a cup of tea…

The thing that “people say” [which people and how they say it will vary for you, mayBE there isn’t even a “THEY” for you like there is for me…] about Gratitude is mostly just hooey. In my NOT-so humble opinion. BEcause, Gratitude, like other practises [meditation, prayer, mindfulness…] is personal. Individual. And really, it’s NOT to BE understood so much as simply experienced.

And so, tea enJOYed, defensive Currie paused. She thought back to where her head and heart and BEing were back in December 2006. She pondered the Journey they’ve been on these past six years. She remembered, like little twinkling lights, the connections and Life rafts her Gratitude Practise has brought her, been for her, and sailed her to, BEtween, and BEyond.

And it was in that moment utterly clear that no matter what any “they” may say, think, or imagine, Gratitude has revived my Life. It has given me a focus. It has reminded me each and every day that it’s neither a thing I DO for others nor for myself. It is a thing with a Life of its own. Somedays I may know about its reach and somedays I don’t even think of it again once it is written, sent, and posted.

There is so much richness and magic in this module’s 25pages. So very much. And what is exceptionally BEautimous to me is that nowhere in it does it prescribe that Gratitude is something to Complete, to DO, or to Achieve. I can’t “get BEhind” in Gratitude. I can’t “catch up” on it.

It is like the breath I just took. Gratitude is simply Me BEing ME…

Forgiveness... It's What I Choose Now

Sometimes I get stuck. Like I've stepped in gum. And trying to get it "fixed" is almost worse than just adapting to it. But stuck is stuck and I really REALLY prefer NOT to BE stuck.

Forgiving is a kind of stuckness. It's like when you're first realising about the gum you stepped in and you're really quickly impossibly MAD that this has happened to YOU!!!

[okay, mayBE that is just something peculiar to me...]

Forgiving is always an option. ALWAYS. I forget this though. Actually, I've spent years without remembering it...

I was outside raking leaves earlier. I was remembering raking leaves in my Life. Remembering a big push thing that the leaves seemed to pop into... Is that a real memory?! I don't know. But it's in there, so what am I going to DO?!

The leaves reminded me of forgiveness, or more accurately, my unwillingness to forgive. I've held on and held fast to BEing "done wrong." To BEing the victim of another's cruelty and unkindness. To the hurt inside me that wouldn't, that I couldn't seem to stop.

What I thought next was how I was generally waiting for someone else to ask me for forgiveness. Like when I was little and thought that husbands had to BE older than wives. That this was a State Law. [yes, I was a wonky little girl with a busy brain] 

Waiting for someone else to change my mind. That's what I was DOing, what I have DONE, nearly all my Life I think...

If I haven't forgiven someone, of course that is BEcause that someone didn't ask me to. Didn't acknowledge out loud and directly their wrongs.

Crazy business this, living inside THIS brain...

All of this is to say that I Now know I've had it wrong. Backwards and inside out and upside down. Those leaves weren't "wrong." I just wanted to rake them up. For me. Period. End of story.

No one thanked me for raking them. Didn't even notice. 

Curious thing, though, Gracie was very happy when I was sweeping the leaves off the patio. She wanted to play "Broom" which has been a favourite game of hers since she was the size of a sack of apples.

Once I started raking she found something I'd picked up the other day on a walk and decided to chew it up some...

So this is Forgiveness. It is DOing what's in front of me. It's NOT about someone else. It is just about ME. 

I could have grown very old waiting for someone to ask for my forgiveness. And you know what else?! Some of the someones I've needed most to forgive aren't even on the planet anymore.

I guess it's simple. Forgiveness is a choice. It is always there. NO. MATTER. WHAT.

I liked this module BEcause it let me sift through a lot of stuff I have thoughtandfelt about forgiving. BEing forgiven. All that... And it gave me more to think on. 

That's always good. Now... to find out if there really is a raking thingie or if I have just made that up like I used to state laws...

Thoughts About Community & Me

A Year With Myself

Module 44: COMMUNITY:Building Your Inner Circle and Enriching Your Ties

In order to be free, I had only to change my thoughts and perceptions about my situation and what I was capable of doing with the resources at my disposal.

~ Tara Lutman Agacayak

Though I wanted to DO any number of things in response to this week’s module, when I sat down to re-read and reflect what was really speaking to me to write about, Tara’s words above practically jumped up off the page insistenting I focus on them.

BEing an agreeable sort with my amusing assortment of muses, I easily capitulated.

First, though, I want to say how clear I am about my Present Life circumstances, largely discovered through this module’s focus on Community[ies]. I have felt like the last one picked, an extra with no place I fit, and oftentimes sorry for myself that my Life is lived largely in Solitude. It’s funny, I seem to have succumbed to the Always-Want-What-I-Don’t-Have Syndrome. When I was living with my partner I longed for time to BE alone. Time for Just ME. Yet when she was off on her own, I simply felt uneasy and afraid. As I BEgan to branch out in my own ways, I always made sure I didn’t cause ripples. Consequently, I wasted a whole lot of precious Right Nows…

This module, along with some other things going on concurrently in my World, revealed a deep and deLIGHTful peace in me. Perhaps I should call it tranquility. And in this lovely state of BEing and Mind I see the depth of JOY in me for Life, My Life, exactly as it IS and as it IS NOT.

I love Community, I cherish the many circles of which I have been a part over my Life’s time. Even Now I often long for deeper connection with others in A Year With Myself. Fortunately, though, I have found places that fit ME Now. Connections that are astounding and real and oh so very ENOUGH.

AND…

I deeply cherish my Solitude. The time I have to DO with as I please. The space where I live, that while tiny and so very different from what I had BEfore, fits me like my smile.

I am NOT disconnected. I am NOT alone. I am NOT lonely. I am Enough. What I have is Enough. What I DO is Enough.

In fact, the community in which I find myself at home, the one that fits me exquisitely is far bigger than could EVER fit in the Wee Cottage and far more diverse than I can wrap my brain around…

Sometimes we learn who and where and what we ARE by knowing what we are NOT, where we are NOT, and what we are NOT. Crazy little system, eh?!

So, on to Tara’s words that are the point of this week’s post.

I spent several of the past 6 years since splitting with my partner looking at what I had lost, what had been taken away from me, and what I hadn’t really wanted to keep but wasn’t actually trying to hang onto. I spent so much time and energy trying to find new places to fit. I wanted to just ease on by the opportunity and fill the missing piece[s] with something else.

Anything else.

The only thing I didn’t DO was try to replace my partner. I haven’t dated or even really thought about another relationship. Oh, well, there was a blink in 2011 where I tried to talk myself into trying something online, but like a very strange and twisted dream, I woke up Very Quickly and let that BE that. A momentary blurring of intention.

I’ve Now moved and created an entire Life for myself and most days I don’t really operate in the tooth-that’s-NOT-there-space her absence left. I no longer want to fill-up what I’d thought “empty” or empty what I thought “over-full” with her and us and the impossible relationship we were trying to keep on Life Support…

I sold my car in April, on a whim, pretty much, and I discover more each day how little I NEED to empty or fill ANYthing. EVER.

I’ve BEcome and am BEcoming someone I really REALLY enJOY knowing and hanging out with. I’ve learned to play well with “others” who, frankly, are all variations on myself. Somedays I am quiet, slow, very introspective. Sometimes in the middle of one of those times I will suddenly start playing with something and get deliciously lost in it for hours.

Without a car to get around, I’ve learned to use the bus, and discovered my Life’s long love of walking. I’ve lost so much excess ME-ness that I Now need clothes much smaller than what I have. But… my budget is very un-wiggly, so I am practising trusting that this matter will sort itself out without ME having to “take it in hand” and “show it HOW” to DO that…

This Year With Myself has been and continues to BE extraordinary. It is my 60^th year. It is so NOT what I’d ever imagined yet is curiously just perfect for me…

I’m learning ways to live within my means and largely have adjusted my thoughts and perceptions to BE more in harmony with the What Is. I chose to let go of a vehicle never ever imagining the possibilities and adventures it would bring to me. Many of which I still only am experiencing in that place where there are no words that make it make sense.

There are many people I would LOVE to BE part of my World, as this module brought me to consider. And yet, there are so many others’ Worlds that I am NOW a part of, and none of it “looks like” what that “looks like” to me. Amazing and deLIGHTfull!!

Trust is one community I am part of Now, that I never was even interested in BEfore. YES. Just Trust. Imagine my surprise…

Enough is another. Oh, how sweet its fragrance.

Play. Write. BEcause I CAN. Three more places I fit, BElong, and spend time.

I have people I wouldn’t know if they were in front of me who are dear and treasured friends.

I spend glorious hours each week reading, enJOYing, and discovering their words, art, and selves. And they, too, find time to read, enJOY, and discover ME.

Imagine that…

I have moments I miss Someone. Someone to hug. Someone wants to and does hug ME. For no reason at all.

So I have learned to hug myself.

It’s an odd community. And it’s mine. Yes indeedie!!!

Sisterhood Ramblings ~ Module 43 A Year With Myself

I never had a sister. And what I know about sisterhood is limited.

I know what I have observed. I know what I think I saw among sisters I knew and grew up with.

And I mostly only know what it is to BE a sister to a brother. And that’s really NOT what I imagine sisterhood looks [or feels] like.

I have had friends. I have had lovers.

These have been something like sisters, but only almost and never quite. The hardest relationships for me are the ones where we’re BEing friends after having been lovers.

The past few years I have BEcome more like a sister would BE, I imagine, to myself. Even if that’s NOT quite what I am, it’s pretty darned close.

I tell myself the truth and stand-by with sufficient patience to help myself absorb that truth. And I’ve stopped lying to myself altogether.

When I fail [which is often] I try to cheer myself on for the effort, the guts, and BEcause it feels much better than kicking myself when I am down. And I’ve stopped replaying my mistakes, sometimes even forgetting them altogether.

I think the good thinks when I think about myself Now. And I’ve stopped playing Devil’s Advocate and Worst-Case Scenario choreographer altogether.

If I am hurt or scared or angry or lonely or fed up or simply having a bit of a mood, I’ve learnt how to give myself space and stay close enough but NOT too close. And I’ve stopped trying to fix or change myself altogether.

MayBE this is what Sisterhood, having a sister, or BEing a sister to a sister would look like. Or mayBE it is just what I think it would BE or look like.

I’m good with NOT knowing. I really don’t need to…

Collaboration… Some Thoughts On Playing Well With Others

Knowing well there is no such thing as falling BEhind in A Year With Myself, I am still glad to have Now caught up with my original pace. I had a daily practise that was working just fine until it didn’t, and along the way from There to Here I have been muddling about far more than I would like to BE.

Module 42: Collaboration. The Joy of Joining Forces with Kindred Spirits. I have to say this one sounded like it would either BE really juicy and inspiring or quite the opposite, for me. Although I am indeed someone who loves working alongside and collaborating with others, I’ve also had some real stickiness and difficulty in this arena.

Let me say straightaway that neither of these outcomes happened. In fact, I found much that was juicy and I found much that hit me sideways, but in both cases this felt completely different than I would have expected.

Here are a few bits that really sing to me.

“… And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in.” Derek Sivers

What a wonderful perspective, truly.

“… I assume people know what’s going on in my head because I always have access to my thoughts… I assume everyone else thinks as I do…” Molly Cantrell Kraig

Never really saw this in quite this way. Brilliant insight.

“… but I will tell you this, bliss matters. Creating and living in joy makes a difference…” Kathy Sprinkle

Indeed. Although way too many times I have settled for creating and living WITHOUT JOY, I can point to where I did with it with far more amazement and Gratitude.

Here’s my take on collaboration. The sort I think this Module is about…

We all have ideas and inspiration and individual insights. Though we might BE at completely opposite ends with one another, the combining of our ideas, inspiration, and individual insights has a wholly separate energy.

Using it for good is collaboration.

What Is Grief?!

Grief is… the price you pay for love…

~ Earl Grollman

Grief is both a mystery to me and an old and well-loved friend. Grief knows me, my ways, how I slip out back doors and hide under the stairway. Grief respects me and I long ago came to have deep respect for Grief.

Emotional Turbulence: Understanding and Navigating Challenging Emotions. This is the title of Module 41 of A Year With Myself. My printed-out copy sits BEside me in a faded purple-ish hue where the grayscale was too worn out to work. It looks weary. And I am weary of it, though it is wise and thought-provoking.

Grief is like that. Worn out AND wise. Mysterious and familiar. And yet the words of Grollman stopped me. Granted I picked and sorted, but that is how I understand. And it is how I navigate. Especially when my emotions are in some turbulence.

Simple. Keeping things simple. This is my intention. Grief doesn’t play simple too well. Grief is more layered and juicy and its ingredients myriad. Still…

The price you pay for love… REALLY?! I think so. Well, this is what my experiences have shown.

I know Life was designed to have time alive and then death. But the price you pay for LOVE?! WOW!!!

I have to say that the one common denominator in all Grief’s guises is that there has been a loss of love. Some losses feel BIGGER where there was MORE love. Some seem more manageable where there was mayBE NOT so much…

The most important thing, though, Grief is a verb. It is a part of living human, BEing human. It is active, has legs to run on and a brain to accommodate.

Even if I completely accept that Grief is part of living AND loving, I don’t find it anymore [or less] enormous and confounding.

It is a little like most things that I DO without thinking, this grieving. Like breathing, I can’t turn it off or regulate it all that much.

Yet like writing, I can focus on it in a certain way [or NOT] and this shifts the experiencing of it.

I can hardly BEgin to enclose my thoughtsandfeelings about Grief, yet I have a sense of more having been revealed and understood.

I think understanding it as the price for love will likely stick with me though...

And that is enough.

Module 40: Connecting My Dots

Love is … a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

~ Brené Brown

“We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks. That's what connects us--that we're all broken, all beautifully imperfect.” 
~ Emilio Estevez

Connection is one of those seemingly simple words with a truckload of meanings. And if our meanings don’t intersect, there’s only disconnection.

I chose these quotes BEcause they equalise one another. I mean, there is a balance in each and a swooping sort of gentle keeping together, in my mind alone perhaps, that they each make sense of for me.

These past six years there has been much composting in me, and only the very slightest of cultivating. In particular where connection is concerned. That is the way of connection for me, I think. Neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. Just what is, what I see when I don’t avert my eyes or my heart.

I hear sometimes some concern that I am “too much alone,” even a bit too enamoured of my solitude. It is how it looks from There I suppose. From Here there is an entirely other sort of perspective.

Over and over and sadly over yet again I have had a loving and wondrous partnership come apart. A bit like Ikea furniture, they may have been too haphazardly put together. I may have simply decided I needed to HAVE a relationship and forgotten the essential connection piece.

After awhile a relationship without true connection grows unsteady and falls apart. As Brené Brown wrote, connection can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them. Does this surprise me to see from Here?! Nope.

Of course, the reason for my over and over and sadly over yet again track record in partnership is 99% about what didn’t exist, that DOES exist Now. Only in me. I can’t speak for anyone else.

I never KNEW what loving ME was. How it looked or spoke or dreamt or sounded. What made it and what hobbled it. The past six years have cleared that up. Yes indeedie!!!

Thus Emilio Estevez’s We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks… What I never saw, until just recently, is that I am a “wonderful, beautiful wreck” and NOT just a big fat mistake with torn paper all round it from vigourous erasing!!

A gorgeous patchwork of optimistic starts and reasonable unfinishednesses.

Brokenness doesn’t fix brokenness, no matter how hard I insisted otherwise. Love finds love where it does, and generally it gravitates to similarities. NOT pointing fingers, mind you, I’m just saying it’s NOT that much of a news flash that my connections have tended to fall apart.

Loving myself requires knowing myself. It’s no wonder I’ve spent so much time alone these past years.

I am too easily distracted, I’ve discovered, and I need TIME to get quiet enough to really hear myself.

Intuition Reflections

 “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives.”
― Albert Einstein

I have been a bit scarce with A Year With Myself the past couple of months.

It happened gradually. Initially I took a break for a couple of weeks.

I came back to it and realised I’d lost momentum.

I tried to get excited again and quickly realised I was pouring a lot of expectation into something without seeing it properly.

I was disappointed. I wanted to feel the way I’d felt as 2012 BEgan. I wanted to feel I was on a Journey and that there were [are] others travelling their Journey too.

I took another week off and then another, to think about that. Funny thing, when I came back to Module 39: POWER OF INTUITION, I quickly saw that I’d started to look down at the pedals.

You know, when you’re learning to ride a bicycle, how it’s NOT wise to look down at the pedals?! For one thing it can make you a little dizzy, for another, it’s just another example of taking your eyes off the road…

As I return, at least to my little blog of this year-long adventure, I find myself less inclined to BE prompted; wanting simply to reflect.

And so it was that I dug out Einstein’s quote. He’s long been a quiet hero of mine.

Intuition isn’t some mysterious commodity that is found, given, or plays peek-a-boo. It’s taking the longer look at what floats up when I am NOT trying.

Intuition is why I get up early and write for a couple of hours each day, FIRST THING. It is also how I made my bedtime 8PM. In just DOing these 2 things for the past 2 years I have changed my whole way of BEing in Life.

Intuition is why I don’t have television, don’t listen to radio, and choose deliberately where to find out about news I’m interested in knowing.

Intuition is why I live minimally. Sparely. More simply than I could ever have imagined wanting to.

Intuition is what lets me work within the context of who and what and how and where I AM. What keeps me from chronic bouts of comparison. What has encouraged me to listen to my own drum beating.

Intuition isn’t out there anymore than my year with myself can only to BE found via A Year With Myself. 

Nobody has my intuition. 

No one can get me to it. 

It’s the truest form of An Inside Job.

I am glad I know this. I am very glad indeed…

Thoughts on Great Work & Cosmic Job Descriptions

My Journey through A Year With Myself has consistently aligned with my Journey with Social Security’s Ticket-to-Work Program. 

I found MODULE 38: GREAT WORK Building An Authentic Strategy for Doing Your Greatest Work deLIGHTfully serendipitous. I think my little sabbatical taken back in August and early September was also timely as it turns out THIS VERY WEEK is the one where I have been asked to recreate my “resume” to BEgin work with my Job Coach.

Sometimes I have BEcome agitated with the time it has taken for all this to get completed and to each next phase. And then, with a simple backward glance, I see that the timing is actually quite wonderful.

Funny how that happens, eh?!

As I have participated online with Lisa Sonora Beam and read her book, The Creative Entrepreneur prior to BEginning A Year With Myself, I was quite inspired to find her Vision Interview full and overflowing with goodness, inspiration, and just the sort of just-in-time and at-the-right-time insights. 

In particular, mindful of her term, Cosmic Job Description, I have found the entire resume dog-and-pony show to BE so much more fun and effective than trying to conform to the standard and dull-as-chalkdust process.

And though there are still parts and pieces that I am attempting to bring into a whole for my meeting with said Job Coach this week, I don’t feel in the least bit at odds with it. This is an extraordinary sweetness for me, she-who-likes-to-BE-prepared.

The “greatest” gift of this glorious intersection: I Now Know Myself. [at least far better than when the two processes BEgan in January] 

AND, I am able to BE straightforward, clear, and concise about the work I am looking for.

What I really want to DO/BE.

Same as I am able to sit down and write this post without feeling the least bit of angst. After 9+ months of posting on my blogs this year I am no longer intimidated or overwhelmed by posting.

This is quite nice. And so different from how I WAS thinking of all this BEfore January.

My GREAT WORK is the work that engages my heart and myriad skills/skillsets to make a difference, no matter how small nor how far-reaching. Like Lisa, I have had a difficult time defining what I DO and have done, writing a bio, or wrapping any of this succinctly inside that simple document the World of Work likes to “have” on someone. A resume…

I have learned through my Year With Myself that I don’t HAVE-TO fit inside someone else’s box. Or DO things someone else’s way. 

My way is good, for me, and I am ENOUGH. As I am. As I am NOT.

Once we believe in ourselves...

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit. ~ e.e. cummings

As I read and pondered on Module 37: Self-Confidence Practical Methods for Building Your Self-Confidence Muscle I was struck time and again by the realisation that rather than someone Trying To Get Someplace, I'm someone Who Has Arrived Somewhere.

To say this was [and still is] a surprise would BE, ummmmmmm… well, understating the obvious.

It occurs to me that I am no longer scurrying and hurrying and all at loose ends. MayBE it is BEing in my 60^th year or mayBE it is just what it is.

Both Vision Interviews were “tiny adventures close to home” for me. Amy Clover returned me to 1986, probably the most Touch And Go If This Hasn’t Killed Me I Think I Am Here For The Long Haul year of my Life. I got intimately acquainted with cognitive BEhavioural therapy that year, something I have carried along with me though NOT something I have always remembered to practise when my need to practise it has been the greatest.

Gratefully, I can Now say Amy’s swift yet gentle nudge in that direction has encouraged me to shift into a new habit of using those tools to write down, writing in pen or pencil, NOT on the computer, much of the noise in my head that just bangs about like a toddler in a kitchen with all the pots and their lids to play with. I have blown right through a few Okay I Am Now Officially In The Zone Of Currie Crazies, finding myself travelling a more tranquil path in what feels like moments, though really it is more like an hour or two… that writing, I am Now remembering, takes a lot of energy, but oh my is it ever worth the effort.

I loved Amy’s philosophy of Empowerment coming from the inside. So often, despite knowing that my thoughts create my Life, I get to thinking about things I KNOW won’t bring me to a happy place, encourage my dreams, or let me BE of Service in the World. The capacity to STOP and empower myself by challenging those runaway thoughts is always there. I suppose, well, I suppose I got lazy and I also wandered far afield from this way of living and BEing.

In Lisa Braithwaite’s interview I was immediately struck by SIMILARITIES. I love when that happens. It seemed for me like I’d passed along a long stretch of highway without seeing anything that looked familiar. As I read her sharing about her panic attacks, yet more than the attacks, her way of accepting and dealing with them as just part of Life, I had one of those moments where I caught myself nodding and smiling as I read. There are aspects of that in MY Life, NOT the same but similar, and my process is simply to accept that as true for me.

One of the most brilliant things Lisa said was that she encourages her clients to embrace their uniqueness. She goes on to say that when you are speaking, publicly, people will judge you, that in fact this is what we DO. It isn’t a “bad thing” and in fact, it is amazing, really, how good it feels to judge and BE judged. I love how this turned me round and made my thinking get a little more sparkly.

Another part of Lisa’s interview that turned my similarities meter up was when she said that we need to BE humble about how much we need to learn. I have noticed in these past few months, since I BEgan participating in various online art challenges, how refreshing it is that no one, including ME, thinks they are “all that” and how no one is running around and saying Me Me Me, look at ME!!!!

Each and every time I participate I am encouraged, inspired, and I LEARN SO MUCH. What’s more, what I share either in my posts or in my comments to others, and oftentimes both, is HOW I am learning and WHAT I am DOing to learn or practise. Just this weekend I received several emails from people who have either asked me more about it, said how what I shared I am DOing has inspired them to try something similar, and gave us a REAL connection. NOT a “good job” and we’re out sort of comment, but a real connection person-to-person.

So Now, back to e.e. cummings’ quote from this module’s Mission Brief. The thing about BElieving in ourselves preceding taking a RISK is utterly spot-on true. NO passing GO, no collecting $200. For way too long I have had that turned the other way.

Amazing…CHC

Some Rambling Thoughts On Getting Things Done

In a perfect World, which I don’t live in, I would have something wise and Grasshopper-ish to add to this. So… living in this World, where oftentimes things are hurtling down the track at such breakneck speed that I run, duck, and cover almost out of habit, let me say only that along with the age-old wisdom I learned in Kindergarten, “when you hold hands with your partner don’t pick your nose,” Thich Nhat Hanh is a mighty wise dude.

In Module 36: Gentle Productivity of A Year With Myself, I was re-introduced to a few insights about Getting Things Done that, frankly, no longer even apply to me. And this is NOT BEcause I don’t live in the same World with other humans who are breathing in and out and living from experience to experience. It IS, however, BEcause I am less concerned with things getting “done” and more apt to shine my light onto the wonder of DOing things.

For instance, I recently started participating in what I am learning are called everything from memes and blog-hops to challenges and prompt-inspired events. Sometimes they are billed as parties. This is, frankly, Very Cool Beans for someone like me. I have always loved taking an idea, suggestion, or gentle nudge and running with it.

I Now have a growing group of people I’ve never met face-to-face who I am engaging with in a meaningful way and they are All Over This Planet!!! It’s NOT that this practise is new-to-me, but what is new is the underlying intention.

It seems that these folks also enJOY a gentle guideline and very specific window of opportunity. And they too have even MORE fun going off to visit and see what others have been up to. And leaving a comment or just an encouraging word. Golly what a difference THAT makes.

They are present or absent without story or excuses. They are full of information and willing to help and literally seem to step right through the Wildly Weird Wacky World called The Internet and sit BEside me right here in the Wee Cottage, guiding me along, encouraging me, and helping me find the questions I need to ask that I don’t know enough to know I need to ask.

This has BEcome my measure of productivity. And this is good. For me. For Now.

I loved the reminders and insights and great suggestions throughout Module 36. I enJOYed the Vision Interviews, in particular Lisa Baldwin’s “best advice to creative women who want to find a gentler path to getting great things done.”

She says, Listen to your self. Trust your own process, even when it’s weird. Be curious about your ways. And do everything you can to sculpt an environment that supports you and your work in the world.

So here’s what I see. Life is a Journey and there is NEVER EVER going to BE that ethereal roadside oasis where we get all of our buttons counted and are deemed “done.” Done isn’t the objective. DOing is. DOing with what brings ME [or YOU, or, hey, mayBE both of us!!! ;~D] JOY and a happy heart.