FINE

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Fall from grace

Keep the face

No one knows

Just don’t show

Spinning mind

Take your time

Fall from grace

Keep the pace

Down you go

Let it flow

Want to hide

Dim the light

Fall from grace

Saltwater face

Head says no

Heart explodes

Walk the line

I am fine

ON THIS DAY >>

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And on the days it burns the most, I write.

Rooted in emotion, my words effortlessly flow.

I release my heart from what it knows.

I find clarity, breathe, and let go.

But on this day, it burns the most of the most.

I can not write; my words ghost my soul.

They spare it from, “I told you so.”

VRATA >>

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I’m studying yoga, and the very first day of our 10 week course, we discussed ”vrata.” Vrata is Sanskrit for vow. This word comes up often in our online studies, as well as the implications of vrata throughout yogic history. We learned that vrata connects inner intentions with outer actions, which is the essence of momentum in life and yoga. Vrata seals an intention and makes it real by speaking it into existence. There is sound value to vrata. I double underlined that phrase in my notes. Sound value. You become what you articulate because vrata gives us direction and empowers us. It has karmic weight, and therefore, has consequences.

A few nights ago, I played a song I hadn’t heard in a long time: “True Companion” by Marc Cohn. His lyrics eloquently describe his vow of companionship, and the melody is equally as beautiful as the meaningful words. The lyrics particularly struck me, but not because they are flowery. It was because they are clearly articulated. He outlines his life-through-death plan with his companion, and airily sings it into existence, giving it sound value, direction, and weight.

The word vow in and of itself has depth. It does not simply imply compliance, but rather a willful, yearning to comply. A promise that means something when you keep it, just like my blog states in a pretty pink banner. Promises are to be kept, but not by begging, coercion or ultimatum. A vow has a sacred connotation. It symbolizes the ultimate commitment to oneself, or to something that has immense meaning and value. But a vow is only meaningful if the desire to keep the promise far exceeds the notion or temptation to dissolve or ignore it.

A vow is risky. It holds more weight than a resolution or a goal. Didn’t stick with your New Year’s Resolution? Fine. Just make a new one next week and try again. Not with a vow. Vows either lead to growth and higher consciousness, or to devastation and failure. Of course the potential growth or failure can ripple into numerous beneficial or detrimental outcomes. It is the ripple that renders a vow risky. Perhaps the ripple is small, and affects only one. Or perhaps it continues well beyond the devolution of the promise, and continues far beyond the act of failure. The detrimental rippling is especially difficult if you are an empath.

Empaths don’t “do,” they “feel.” And they never stop yearning for potential growth, because with growth comes deep feelings. Feelings are like a drug. The deeper the connection, the deeper the feeling, and the empath is fed. Conversely, lack of connection and depth starve an empath. It is a living hell. Starved of emotion or of an outlet to share these feelings with takes training and practice to be able to cope. And just like any loss or withdrawal from a drug, it is debilitating. The biggest drug is of all is hope. Hope is a gift and a curse, just like being an empath is. The gifts of being an empath are the immense capacity to feel, the ability to foster intense emotions and connections simply by watching body language or by touching someone, or even just by reading or hearing something. Each instance is connected to a strong emotion that lasts far beyond than that moment in time. I not only feel the words, but carry them with me. I don’t just feel my emotions, I feel the entirety of emotions from anyone within my radar. I feel emotion connected to the lines on your face when I stare at you, to the feeling of your skin when I touch you, or to the words I read. They all hold weight. The hope drug keeps the possibility of deep connection alive and feeds me.

Thus, the curse is exactly the same. There is no off-switch. You can’t “just get over it” or forget what you heard or saw because they are connected to a strong emotion. It’s a losing battle to even try. Therefore, the gift of a vow is potential nirvana. It is real as soon as it’s spoken because you immediately bind the promise with strong emotions. Consequently, the curse of a dissolved or disrespected vow is the hollowness that will never leave you, because you can’t turn off your innate ability to feel. Strong emotions don’t dissolve just because a promise did. And that’s scary as hell.

A vow is not just a thing to do. It is an appellation of intense emotions and yearnings of the heart and mind. The vow bundles these into a neat package, just like my pretty pink banner. It’s so enticing and alluring, why wouldn’t I commit to a vow again in life? I see the potential I have, and I honor my promises. So I am conflicted. I love and hate the notion of a promise with depth and intensity. I am afraid to try and be left in the dust, loyal to my vow and starved of an outlet. So what is the solution? Make a vow to myself, and keep it. The gift of hope tells me that someday that vow will lead to a gift of light-hearted ease, coupled with heavy intense emotions—both good and bad. I don’t fear those when they live concentrically, I crave them.

So last night, I wrote a vow. It’s a promise to me and my daughters. It’s not as melodic as Marc Cohn’s, but equally as clear and heartfelt. It is direction packaged with intention, and even a little hope. As I wrote it, I thought about the fact that this vow may be the only weighty vow I make again in this life, which is a bit daunting. Nonetheless, I will keep this promise to us and come out ahead of my fears. A vrata has sound value, and is grounded by the weight of truth. Truth is clear, directional, and empowering. I vow to connect my inner intentions and outer actions, which I am speaking into existence.

Finesse The Float >>

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I’m a swimmer, but I don’t surf. However, I imagine surfing takes the same practice, patience, grit, balance, thick skin, and ability to read the water, just like swimming. Great swimmers have a natural feel for the water, and create movement from that.  Great surfers have a natural feel for how the water moves, and create patterns around that. Both take finesse. I bet if I asked which one sounds more exciting and rewarding, most would say surfing. The black line on the bottom of a pool is, in fact, extremely boring. Surfing is inherently risky, and thus, fantastically thrilling, I imagine.  Great Risk=Greater Reward. At least, that’s what we’re taught.  It’s ingrained in us from birth.  We’re praised for taking risks. We’re praised even more for failing—even when it repeatedly hurts—because we might (eventually) get something better.

“Ride it out until you catch that one amazing ride of your life.”

“Go all in, and at all cost.”

“Nothing good comes easy.”

“If it were easy, everyone would do it.”

“Fall down 7, get up 8.”

It’s as though we must grind through the days, and keep crashing, or somehow we don’t deserve the big prize of a better, more fulfilling life.

I’m a swimmer, and I don’t surf. Yet for years, I’ve been trying to get up on my board, and I keep crashing.  I crash in the same set of waves every time. I thought repeated crashing was an inherent part of the journey I was supposed to take, and what I had to endure to reach “better.”

When you surf, you learn to read the waves ahead of time. If it looks gentle and rolling, you take it, but just for practice. And you practice in order to push yourself into something more challenging and worthwhile.  Challenging is exciting and risky. Challenging is committing fully without backing down. Challenging is an adrenaline spike from simultaneous excitement and fear. Challenging is success waiting to happen.

So you swim hard to catch the big one, and it’s sheer elation when you do.  All you remember is that incredible feeling of soaring through the spray. You forget all the falls, the fear, and the pain. It’s like child birth: the most painful, fearful, heart-jerking moments of your life, and once the baby arrives…poof! You feel nothing but elation and wonder why you don’t have 12 more already.  What pain? What were you even afraid of in the first place? This is nothing short of magical.

Or, perhaps you go after that wave and swim hard, but not hard enough. Typical, that’s what you always do. You’re too slow and your timing is off. So you fight to adjust and eventually fall off balance.  At least you tried and didn’t give up like you usually do.

Next time, you swim even harder, but miss it completely and it’s total embarrassment. You were never good enough to catch it, you should have known, but maybe no one noticed your failure. If you were more fit or fierce you would have gotten it. You’d rather crash 1000x than not even come close. Don’t draw attention to yourself, close your eyes and block it out. Try again.

So you wait for the biggest set you’ve seen. But somehow you misread it. You were so focused on proving to yourself that you could do it that you’d forgotten to take into account the surrounding elements: wind, erratic swirling of the sand below, and a break in the wave pattern.  It’s suddenly choppy and inconsistent.  But it’s just water, and you can swim fast, so you decide to go for it even though your gut says not to. You lose focus because it doesn’t feel right. You panic, can’t breathe, and envision an epic crash.

No. Not again. If you listen to your fears, it makes you vulnerable to pain. So, suck it up. You’ll crash and you’ll just get back up and do it as many times as it takes to catch it. Learn to get better.

You tell yourself you’re weak for second-guessing, and that you should be strong enough to adapt to any conditions. You dismiss the sight and feel of choppy water, as well as your stupid intuition, and you replace it with shame.

You are determined not to sit back and watch potential pass by. So you swim even harder to catch the wave, and are sucked into a spinning, dark abyss. You are swirling in slow motion because it’s deja vu. You’ve done this before, knew what was coming, and now it’s your fault. You’re upside down in a whirlpool that you got yourself into. You deserve this. Shame takes over again. 

What if you just stay down there? You wouldn’t disrupt any water and could quietly observe from below. The choppy surface wouldn’t affect you here. No no one would pressure you to try again, judge your failure, or blame you for crashing. No one would even notice.

You almost drown in the feeling-sorry-for-yourself-whirlpool, but the same shaming voice that told you to take the wave (and then to stay underwater) smacks you back into reality. It says you’re even weaker if you can’t figure out a way to get up for air by yourself. And so you do.

You praise yourself for being strong enough to take a risk and make a mistake, rather than praise your intuition that begged you to pause and look around. You buried that intuition long ago that says, “You are good enough just hanging out on your board today.  Observing and absorbing is the experience.” 

Water is hard when you fight it. The bigger the wave, the harder the impact. Most people would say, “Work on your timing.  Read the wave better next time. Get stronger. Fight harder. Someday it’ll just happen because you didn’t give up.” 

So many outlets steer us towards grit and perseverance. Battles are good. Success requires continuous failure and clawing our way to the top. That is celebrated. It’s in our genes: fall down, get back up and learn to walk on your own. We get praised for effort and failure equally. We’re praised even more when we get hurt, and we’re shamed for avoidance or listening to our intuition that tells us to pause and listen to our fears. We’re taught not to use experience as a tool to redirect us away from the same crashing patterns we throw ourselves into.  We’re taught to fight the water, or at the very least to keep trying to surf it.

“That a girl! That wasn’t so bad, and you weren’t afraid! Get up and try again!”

What’s wrong with being afraid when you know how hard that water feels when you crash? What about celebrating the ability to float rather than the ability to endure? We are shamed into thinking we should do more and endure, simply because we can.  In fact, we’re often judged by our capacity “to do” rather than our capacity ”to be” just as we are. I have immense capacity, and I am just beginning to get a feel for how much. But the question is: the capacity for what? To feel and trust the patterns in order to avoid the crash.

Avoidance.  It’s often synonymous with weak or afraid.  On the contrary, avoidance comes from knowledge of past experiences, confidence in who you are in that very moment, and intuition which reminds you that pain doesn’t have to precipitate gain.

Patterns are etched into our minds and bodies through past experience, and yet we still deny our intuition when it attempts to guide us away from crashing.  The ability to feel and learn from patterns is just like having a surfing coach alongside as you analyze the incoming set of waves. The coach reminds you not to take that chance based on what your future goals look like, but rather on what the choppy water feels like in that moment, which forewarns you of ensuing danger.

Coach yourself to take in the whole environment, versus selecting bits and pieces to serve your ego.  Ego shames us for floating.  But the coach says, “Stay here and float, I’ve seen this pattern before and it doesn’t feel right.” How can trusting your experiences be weak?  Perhaps it’s simply a more peaceful way to enjoy the water.

I’m done riding waves, sick of crashing, and disgusted at myself for constantly misreading the environment, or actually, for ignoring the environmental patterns. I’m even more done with convincing myself that I need to do and be more.  Floating and observing is an art. It takes confidence, patience, and practice to be as you are, just like surfing.

Finessing the float is the release of external expectations.  We are taught that great success goes hand-in-hand with great failure and pain, and that failures must be over-corrected if we are to learn from them.  What if failures weren’t followed by a high-five or a “good girl” as positive reinforcement? Would we still chase them? Maybe we would instead allow ourselves to choose a different path, just to feel better.  There is often shame in that choice, which prevents us from choosing ease over grit. Floating means unlearning patterns as well.

Success can be internal, and you have the capacity to determine what that feels like. To me, success feels less like riding a wave and more like following a trickling mountain stream with my eyes. It feels like being enraptured by the sight, sound, and gentle flow that urges me to calmly watch, rather than run towards the rushing water around the next bend. Gentle flow feels like universal peace and love.

So perhaps less is more.  Less competition, less accolades, less money, fewer friends…and fewer crashes.  Maybe more isn’t the end goal after all.  What is the greatest good for ourselves and others?  It’s the release of expectation from every outlet in the universe to strive for more.

So float. You don’t have to ride the waves. You are enough right there, as you feel them. Feel the water, the sky, the wind, and the depths below. Those elements collectively create the big picture, and maybe that’s the goal.

As a swimmer, I used my feel for the water to create flow patterns to move through it.  Although I still have a great feel for the water, I don’t use my skills to surf for a rush.  I simply translate and trust what I observe about the fluid patterns moving towards me, and finesse the float.

GROWING INTO ME >>

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My years are marked by wrinkles and responsibilities. They are 14 and 12. 

My skin folds when I forget to tighten my belly before I look at it. Gravity is not friendly in your 40’s. But my belly is. It gave me two children.

My hands are cracked from dishes and shoveling in arctic temps. My rings no longer fit because my knuckles have gotten bigger. But my hands hold smaller, softer, clingy fingers well—which, by the way, like to try on all of my rings while I sit and watch. 

My hair is expensive. I’m blonde-ish, which hides my gray that I pretend not to have. The silver flashes gently frame my face, like a crown of accomplishment. That crown is invaluable as my accomplishments sleep upstairs in peace.

My jokes and sarcasm have been sidelined in lieu of quiet joy, unimportant and inconsequential to most who know me. Unless you know me.

My presence is less influenced by where I need to be and more influenced by where I find meaning. Being the center of attention is increasingly less appealing, and inversely proportionate to being centered.

As my body shape shifts, so too does my soul. My body grows differently, begging for my mind and soul to stay ahead. So I silence my body and ease my mind a bit more each year so that my soul has room to grow. And it grows louder. It must grow to keep up with the hearts (42, 14 and 12, respectively). So I sit in my body as quietly as I’m capable of in any given moment, and I listen to the hearts. If my body is too loud, I can’t hear the beats, and I’m lost. My mind becomes flat and one-dimensional. And my soul leaks and slowly deflates until I grow quiet enough to repair them both. Then I can hear the distinct beats again.

As I grow into quietness, I feel more at ease and less combative with the universe. 40 is a tipping point.  It’s not a bad place, but you have to let go of the noise in order to connect the beats to your soul. Actually, 40 is the place to be—but only when you’re ready. And when you’re ready, you’ll know, because you’ll hear all the beats. I’m growing. I’m going. My soul is flowing for the beats and me.

2/6/19

I AM A WOMAN>>

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I am not a woman of power, but I am a woman of might.

I am not a woman without fear, but I am a woman who fights for her life.

I am not a tireless woman, but I am endlessly resilient.

I am not a woman with great confidence, but I am a woman with great grit.

And by the way, I am not always a DO-er, SHOW-er, or a BELIEVE-r. But I am a THINK-er, GIVE-er, and a TRY-LIKE-HELL-er.

I am not a woman who shares thoughts freely, but you’ll find me free amongst them.

I am not defined by a single moment, but rather defined by a lifetime.