Another year begins

The New Year is always a time of reflection of the past and an attempt to guide the future with resolutions and new found (or not so new) intentions.  The last few years I had decided to have no goals or intentions because I have always used the intentions as a way to feed my inner critic and start the cycle of failure, disappointment and self criticism.  As a goal driven person it was a little unnerving to go without a plan for the year, but then really where had all those prior year plans really gotten me?  So I took the risk and I spent the last few years not sure where I was headed and no strict goals but instead I tried to make choices that felt true and right to me. When I started to reflect on this year I felt a little down thinking I had nothing to show for it several steps backwards and no real steps forward.  Did I need goals to live a fulfilling life?  What was my life path and was I headed in the right direction?

My life did not stop just because I had not made goals or intentions and even though I felt a bit groundless and without direction maybe even a little lost.  I wanted to have confidence in my heart and my authentic nature but the voices in my head the voices that I considered "me" were rarely generous or kind towards me.  I am thankful for my meditation practice that is more than just mindfulness but about the ethical way to live your life as it helped build my confidence in my heart. The awareness of the perceptions and thoughts that controlled me was like a slap in the face but the longer I sat with them the less they hurt and the more I could really breath deeply into my life. Who would ever think letting go would bring more peace and stability than holding on tight?

Through my meditation I also started to hear what the voices were saying to me and realized that I was stuck in some tapes that played over and over again and they were cruel and difficult to live with.  I went back to therapy to face myself and see how I could reprogram my mind to be a kinder gentler self.  I had been terrified of becoming a victim of my past, so much so that I cut off and disavowed all the feelings from these old wounds.   I could speak of terrible things in my history as if they were someone else's story but even more surprising there was not a drop of empathy or compassion towards the victim.  I had protected myself from the stories so fiercely I identified more with the perpetrator always feeling empathy for their troubled ways that would make them do such horrible things while ignoring the victims pain.  Leaning in has been hard work basically rewiring my brain to think, feel and perceive things based on new information rather than the worn grooves of experience.

These are the subtle changes that make a life worth living.  They do not stand up against things like race medals or adventures travels in the light of a facebook status but they bring a real joy for each moment.  Already I have seen unexpected things happen in my life, family come together in ways I never could have imagined and relationships fall apart in ways that were way overdue.  I have built more connections and friendships and feel like I am authentically engaged in my life for the first time in a long time.  My life looks different than I ever thought it would.   I never dreamed I would be alone spending my time meditating, running, writing, practicing guitar and actually happy about it.  I stopped running so hard from my life and leaned into it.

I think about 2015 and I know I have quite a year on my hands: leaving my home, finding another and building a new existence and continuing to work on my own self-compassion and learning to be vulnerable.  Living is not easy regardless of the year and it is good to dream and to be inspired but I think this year is another year where the only goal is to live as authentically as I can.

ALL THE TRUE VOWS:

All the True Vows

are secret vows,

the ones we speak out loud

are the ones we break.

There is only one life 

you can call your own

and a thousand others

you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make

every day with your own body,

don’t turn your face away.

Hold to the truth

at the center of the image

you were born with,

don’t turn your face away...

Remember, 

in this place

no one can hear you

and out of the silence

you can make a new promise

it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find out

what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.

Time almost forsook me

and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection

I broke a promise

and spoke

for the first time

after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late

to turn my face again.

Excerpt from ‘All The True Vows'

From RIVER FLOW: New and Selected Poems

Many Rivers Press. ©David Whyte

A grain of a thought that something had to change started during Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted things to feel different.  However, you could argue that it is not a new thought for me because if you managed to find the last 20 years of journals and perhaps even in the bowels of this reinvigorated blog I have spent years thinking about changing myself.  How can I be good enough to finally be loved?  When would I make the *right* decisions?  The list was long on the things I needed to do and the reward was always supposed to be love and happiness.  Of course I could never *always* make the right decision and my mistakes would lead me to a path of hurt, loneliness and mostly self-hatred.  The difference was this was not a thought of how I could change but how I could change towards myself.   What if for a whole month I took effort in trying to be kind to myself?  What if for the month of December I stood up for me in my bleak disappointments and my rousing victories, I stayed true to me?

I pronounced my intention that I was going to go into 2015 after a month of being gentle and kind as

I would to a friend towards myself.  I even made a pack with a friend that we would keep each other on this path and find our way together.   The first week was full of shiny bright optimism in my ability to stay true and keep my focus and yet I cannot even remember when I completely forgot about this intention.   Somewhere between the first week and today my mind completely dropped my intention and I had almost no recollection of it and my friend and I never spoke of it again.  Why did it just disappear and vanish from our many conversations?  Why did my mind bury it deep in the recesses of my consciousness?

I could blame the insane two weeks at work or even the break up with my ex for the 5th time but those seem like the days that this practice could have been the most helpful to deal with.   There was something different happening though because even in those moments of real emotional distress and challenge I found myself not relying on my old patterns and finding new ways to care for myself.  I found myself today writing in my journal and suddenly surprised by the revel of my intention set a mere 29 days ago.  In reflecting on the month, I was surprised to find that in many ways my intention although silent and obfuscated from my day to day thoughts has come to fruition.  How had something I had lost been working its way through my thoughts and actions into a month that I reengaged with myself?  Was the mere thought of the need to change enough to put me on a path that would change the way I thought of myself?

I feel myself needing to clarity and caveat that I am not perfect and doing this all well, but there is not a competition here to be the most generous.   I have found myself this month treating myself like a good friend supporting my choices when they were authentic needs and be gentle with myself when I knew they were not.  There were weeks of crazy dreams and now I wonder if my subconscious grabbed this intention and took it under ground in hopes of it surviving.   I find myself where I wanted to be going into 2015 with a view of myself and my life that is full of joy, curiosity and generosity.

The Dream by Pablo Neruda

Walking on the sands

I decided to leave you.

I was treading a dark clay

that trembled

and I, sinking and coming out,

decided that you should come out

of me, that you were weighing me down

like a cutting stone,

and I worked out your loss

step by step:

to cut your roots,

to release you alone into the wild.

Ah in that minute,

my dear, a dream

with its terrible wings

was covering you.

You felt yourself swallowed by the clay,

and you called to me and I did not come,

you were going, motionless,

without defending yourself

until you were smothered in the quicksand.

Afterwards

my decision encountered your dream,

and from rupture

that was breaking our hearts

we came forth clean again, naked,

loving each other

without dream, without sand,

complete and radiant,

sealed by fire.

he is my heroin

all it takes is one word
my heart heaves
my mind floods
everything disappears

legs are wobbly
dreams forgotten
each breath labored
craving another word

every moment tainted
with what could be
nothing fills the void
i try everything

tainted blood
tainted breath
once hope breathes
all is lost again

History puts a saint in every dream

There was a time I thought I knew who I was and what mattered, as I had these labels and titles that meant something to me and to those that met me, and it felt clear.  In the last few years many of the labels have become less important or dropped off completely and I stand here naked and raw unsure how to think of myself or what to tell strangers when I meet them.  It is even more than that because the people that used to frame my life with their own labels and titles have left, changed, and no longer contribute to my scaffolding of my person.  A friend told me that everything being torn down can make room for a new creation.  It is fresh fertile ground that is ripe for the power of my intention.

It is frightening to be a blank slate.  It isn't exactly true that I am a blank slate either as I still have responsibilities and financial obligations that keep me grounded and tied to things such as my house and my job, but the rest of me is free to be redefined.  I can decide what and who I am.  My children are grown and the needs they have for me are not consuming (well except for financially) and my partner and I split up and I have no real family so I am left alone to find the purpose of my life and my time.

I am learning simple things like what to do with my time and how to reach to people for help and friendship.  Just the thought when I wake up on Saturday of Who am I ? and What do I want to do? scares the shit out of me.  I am terrified I will be alone forever and that my life will become that of a recluse.  I am worried about just becoming exhausted and hiding in my house and drinking my way through the years.  However I have not done that yet (except for the exhausted part) and am finding my way towards picking up the guitar, volunteering, reading books, starting a new group, walking around town, even this ...writing..as hard as this is.  I am often overwhelmed with how much I can do and that I would like to do and wonder how I ever used to feel so bored.  It can be too much though and I can easily find myself shrinking back from life and just taking refuge in my home.

I miss my ex-boyfriend and yet when I think of the reality of what it is I long for is not our past relationship reality but the ideal of what could have been between us.  He became depressed and I was  (AM!) still working on a lifetime of insecurity and feelings of inadequacy.  We became paralyzed and worked towards numbing and disengaging from the world rather than leaning in and feeling and embracing our lives.  I used to wake up overwhelmed by the time that I had to kill in a day and wondered how I would survive more years just trying to kill weekends for at least another 30+ years.  It was a dark place to be.  I do really miss someone to share stories with, someone that will hold my hand and tell me it will be ok, and the human connection and contact.  I do not know how to reframe all those things into something by myself except not missing them?

How do you stay open, lean in and yet spend so much time alone?  How do you find your way to like minded folks when you barely have your own legs under you?  How can I be 45 years old and still feel like a child finding my way in this life?  Things do not settle, they do not solidify, and I am changing as much as the things around me.  I thought when I was a girl that I only had to make it to a certain point and then everything would fall into place but some how it would be easier.  The opportunity to wake up every day (EVERY DAY) and experience life fresh is very exciting.  How awesome is it that I am not just "dead woman walking" and full of potential?  It is such hard work to be aware and live my life with clear intention because it means to me that I own this.  This is my world, my experiences and my job to make the most of whatever comes my way.  I have to let go of the hope of control or managing what comes up but just the way I engage and move forward.

This was a hard post to write.  I still fear and struggle with this new world that I am left with.  The emptiness of the house, my bed and yet the fullness of the experience of living.  It is going to take some time to feel at home in this new world.

Jailhouse learnings

I am not sure the path that specifically introduced me to or made me think that doing prison volunteer work was for me.  I actually struggle a bit with authority, either in the sense that I get frustrated at "following orders" or terrified because I have an innate guilt that they see and know and I am in trouble.  Somehow through my buddhist studies I became compelled to want to engage with the world and help other people.  I thought about helping people in crisis because well honestly I have spent a bit of my life in real crisis mode and it is something I could relate to.   I found Fleet Maul's Path of Freedom program and after taking that program researched a little and found that my local medium security prison had a non-violent communication program starting up.

I should clarify a little about me.  I am pretty upper-middle class chick that has had crazy and hard things happen but I have never been in jail or anything close to getting arrested, so there is nothing about prison other than the human experience that I directly relate to.  I do know though that there were several points in my life that a slightly different decision and bam! I would have ended up on a very difficult path.   For example, I was very close to running away at 13, in fact I had stolen money from my dad, found out the bus schedule to California and had packed some basics.  The reason I did not do it?  I had some stroke of awareness that I would not survive well or long by myself on the streets and the hardship at my house was better than where I would end up.  Maybe the awareness that I barely survived making some bad decisions led me to be more open to this prison population.

It is pretty strange though I have to admit.  I went to the Volunteer training at the prison and it was meant to scare you a little and it did.  The funny thing was when I was driving up to the prison for the training I became worried they would arrest me once they realized who I was, which is ridiculous.  When I parked and got out of my car, it hit me that I was on the grounds of a minimum-security prison and these guys had done something to put them there.  Was I going to be attacked, or walk in to the wrong room and all hell would break loose?  Fear filled me with what ifs and holy smokes should I be here and  once I landed in the volunteer training I thought I would feel better but once I walked in I felt like such a candy striper compared to the other volunteers.  I was completely intimidated.  They made it very clear during the training that these men were prisoners and had committed crimes and we were not to trust them with personal information or really anything.  The guard said "these guys will have the fillings out of your teeth before you know it".  The told us things like "we do not negotiate in hostage situations" and "these guys will come to your house after they are out and want help and to live with you if they know who you are". When I walked out of that training, I felt like I had been on an episode of Scared Straight and I tossed and turned all night from a mixture of adrenaline, fear and just being so out of my comfort zone.

The first night of the class, I got there early and was in the room alone with a few of the guys.  I

was not sure if they were prisoners or not because they were not wearing uniforms or anything.  I realized I had no idea what to expect from the guys or the group.  One guy asked me where I lived and I realized my training right away and said "oh near by".  I patted myself on the back for about 10 minutes for remembering my training and not divulging personal details.  When the guys came in to the class, I was overwhelmed with how normal they all looked and I wondered if I would really have been able to pick them out of a crowd as ex-cons.  The class is a participation based class and the thing that struck me the hardest that first night was a sense of desperation from some of them to get out of their situation and how much they missed their lives and families.  A few of them were there for only the credit they would get and no interest in what was being taught but quite a few engaged and questioned how you could ever change your reactions to something because it was all so certain.  The one thing that was common amongst all their discussion was how each hour dripped by and the best thing about the class was that the day was almost done.

The second night, we learned one of our more vocal and engaged first night participants had been shackled and taken back to the Medium Security prison.  He had gotten an in-house tattoo, that is strictly against the rules and set him back tremendously.  I could not help but wonder (judge?) why when the week before he had talked about getting back to his children and how much he wanted to get a hold of his anger, why ruin his status for a tattoo?  What was so important about that tattoo to risk his future?  As the class progressed another guy shared how changing yourself is all well and good but if you do not change the system, he would be forced into behaviors that would keep him oppressed.  He went on and on about how kid growing up in a bad neighborhood and no education had no chance to survive any other way that he had.  He talked about how he could try to change but what would it matter as long as the world around him was the same.  I could not completely disagree but in my privileged way I judged him for not taking more responsibility and blaming society for his ills.  The interesting thing about these guys is what they say sticks in your head because their words are laced with something I have felt deep in my soul but I do not have words or language to explain.

During that week after class two things happened to me.  One is that I was struggling with the whole drinking too much - eating too much - feeling crappy in the morning distress.  I was hit suddenly that this was just the same as my guy who got his tattoo.  The things we do that we know will destroy our goals and hopes and yet we do them anyway because it is the groove we know and are comfortable with and risk our future happiness for what seems to be nothing.  The second thing was when I was forlorning over a friends 17th wedding anniversary I caught myself blaming my childhood and how I was never really given much of a chance to have a good relationship.  Lightening Strike!  I blame my external world for my own reactions and choices just as my guy blames society.  I judged him but I did not judge me in that same tone in my head.  In some ways we are right but in the end we own our experience and have to take ownership of our lives and responsibility regardless of what construct we live in.

The third week the class was a little more fluid and the guys are starting to open up, while some remained determine not to learn anything.  The big aha moment for me this week was how difficult it was for us to think of things that we do well.  We had to do an exercise where we had to talk about something we had done and the observation versus the facts.  We all came up with fairly harsh stories about ourselves.  We were are able to criticize and judge ourselves but trying to turn that around into appreciate is very challenging.  My other aha was that these guys have never considered that what they think about someone is not true.  They assume that they understand what they are feeling and why and that is why they react the way that we do.  We all struggle with this and in many ways this is at the heart of my awareness/mindfulness practice.   The ability to identify the gap between something that happens and the stories we lay on top of it and try to maybe ask some questions or just realize we do not know everything about what is happening is very hard for all of us to do.  I had posted on my facebook "Don't believe everything your mind tells you" and a dear friend replied "Why not?  If you cannot trust your mind, who can you trust?" We all struggle so with understanding how many different perspectives are being layers onto every event and there may not be a clear objective reality.

I had to miss this week because I am traveling to work.  I am looking forward to going back and seeing the guys because they teach me so much every week.  I love telling my friends I cannot go out tonight because I am going to prison.  We all laugh, but really their lives are not that funny and while I continue with my life they sit in their cell and just wait for each minute to pass hoping that some day they are free again.

What do you expect?

As friends have found I am doing the Little Sister program I got all the questions I expected like why was I doing this and what was the process like but something I did not expect was the stories of "my friend, someone I knew... did that for awhile" stories.  The only thing that has been comparable in my life is when I was pregnant and you got the labor stories from other mothers...generally horrific that scared the bejebies out of you.  These Big Sister stories they shared were not so frightening but definitely disheartening.  Not one of the stories seemed to end well for either the Big or Little Sister and ended with disheartened and disappointed volunteers who did not really get much out of the experience.  It made me wonder, what am I hoping to get out of this experience?

Upon honest reflection, I expected to get the good feeling of being a volunteer and helping someone.  I expected the girl I was assigned to be thrilled about meeting me and just thinking I was the best thing since sliced bread.  The reasons and expectations were a whole lot about what I would get out of it and not much about what my lil sis would experience or get out of it.  It made me wonder if the only reason we do things that are seemingly compassionate and altruistic is to prop up our own karma points.  Was this really all about me? What could I really offer this girl?  The training Big Sister put me through did not really help answer these questions nor did it really prepare me for what it was going to mean to engage with someone who was young and struggling with their life.

When I met my little sister at the first meeting with our match counselor, her grandmother and her and I

the tension and awkwardness was thick in the air.  Her mother was sick upstairs and did not come down to meet me.  My little was bouncing off the walls; talkative, and only later did I realize she probably had no idea what was really going on.  She is 9, turning 10 this weekend, and comes from a very fragmented family.  Our first meeting alone was probably the only thing more awkward than the first meeting.  We walked to have ice cream - this adult and 9 year old that did not know each other at all, trying to make conversation and find some connection where there was none to be found.  We found a fake 1M dollar bill on the ground and I asked her what she would do if it was real.  She said she would take her dad, dad's girlfriend and daughter and her Nana to Hawaii to live and buy a big house where everyone could be together.  She had not included her mom, step-dad or stepbrother and stepsister.  She had a generous heart and a complicated life.

The second meeting went better.  We went to the Natural History Museum and I won her over a little letting her pick songs on the car stereo with Spotify and take pictures with my phone.  Thank god for technology.  However throughout the whole visit she asked if her Nana could join us at different times during the visit.  I looked over at her and was able to see her without the expectations of what I would get from this relationship and saw this girl who was confused, nervous, and very uncertain about me.  I realized then that me just showing up did not win me any great prize in her eyes.  She had been let down before by the likes of me; and worse she had no idea who I was or even why we were spending time together.  I sent the pictures to her Nana during the week so they could look at them together.  I wanted to make sure that my   Little felt her family was involved in what she was doing and she could share it.  I won a few points from my Little because our next visit she talked about how they looked at them together. Our next visit we went to the Children's Museum.  We wandered around, watched a program, and spent about 2 hours and she seemed to genuinely have a good time.  She was going to see her dad after our visit and said it was going to be a really great day.  It made me feel good, but you could still sense in the air the awkwardness between us. 

Our most recent visit was dinner for her birthday at the Rainforest Cafe.  I let her pick from her favorite

Bertucci's, Cheesecake Factory and Rainforest Cafe.  I was nervous how it would go because our conversations had been stilted, what do an adult and a 9 year old talk about over dinner?  She was thrilled about being there.  I let her wander around and check everything out and let her order pretty much everything she wanted...until the end.   There is this Birthday Volcano at the Rainforest Cafe that is HUGE and $15.  She had cheese sticks and a wrap and had finished neither but what seriously seduced by the volcano and it became an issue.  I said she could get something but not that because it was just too big and she would not eat it all, even though she assured me she would.  A magic guy came over and did some tricks that made her very excited and then they came out with her small ice cream sundae and sang happy birthday to here.  I took a video with my phone and you could see her face gleaming.  It was risky because I did not know if the $15 Volcano the make or break of our relationship as we had just started to warm up, but I was not there to buy her friendship.  

I shared the video with her family and her Nana said that my Lil was genuinely happy when she came home that night.  I am not foolish enough to pat myself on the back and think I am all done and have won the game.  However it did make me realize why I was there.  This little girl has had a hard time and not many people in her corner and that is why I am spending time with her.   I focus on her when no one else does.  I provide some fun, some space, an experience for her to make sense of on her own terms.  It made me realize the reason I am doing this is because I can provide that relationship.  I can be stand strong when she shuts down or doesn't talk to me.  This is not about me, this is about her.  I cannot expect anything in return but just hope that she gains something.  It is not going to be easy or rewarding at times but by sharing my heart and a safe place to be maybe ...just maybe...she will grow a little more confidence in herself and in the world.

Brave New world

I must admit that I am overwhelmed on what to write about and it is creating a logjam of ideas and thoughts in my head.  I am lost at where to start and what to write about.  I thought about doing an audio recording like a lovely blogger on the IDP website.  I talk more than I write but I am trying to change that so I am going to stick to the keys of the computer until I cannot take it any more.  There are so many things going on in my life that are new and changing the way I look at the world and I do not really know where to start.


So what is going on?  I have started a relationship with a little sister from the Big Sister/Little Sister program.  It is at least a year commitment and for the first three months we see them once a week to build a relationship, then move to every other weekend.  I have also started working with a teacher of NonViolent Communication at "the Farm" at a Prison near by.  The farm is for those that have been moved to minimum or pre-release status.  The class is 12 weeks long and there are about 15 guys in the class.  I am observing/participating in hopes of being able to teach it.  The teacher is also looking to take the class into the Medium Security prison near by which ups the stakes quite a bit.  The other big event is that I have broken up with my long-term significant other for what seems like a permanent break (the first breakup did not take) and here I am older, alone and trying to figure out my life.  I constantly miss him (or miss having someone) and am working every day to "reframe" my world.  There is more that is going on too - uncertainty with my job and career, finishing up my Stanford Compassion Teacher training, my boys are growing up and the house as of August will be completely empty, and all this while I try to answer the big questions about my life - what am I doing and why? What do I want to offer the world?  What do I want the world to offer me?

I have learned so much from everything that I am participating in right now.  It is opening my world and mind in ways I never really expected and is helping me create a greater commitment to my own life.  I did not know what to expect from it but I have received already more than I ever could have imagined.

I am going to create a post for the Little Sister, NVC Class, and Reframing my life alone and keep you updated as the experiences progress.  It feels awkward to break them up because there is interdependence between all the experiences and how they are impacting my world view but it is just too much in one post.  I cannot imagine how wordy I could get and several pages later....well if you knew me you could imagine.