Remember the scent of the lilacs. How the air just embodied their aroma and drifted it into the windows into my lungs. Remember when they were teeny tiny buds. How 5-year old Lilly marveled at their small size. Little purple bumps bursting from the green. Remember the Easter lilies and this was the first year I got so low to the ground I could actually smell them for the first time. Remember the towering orange iris. Remember the hearty rosebush. Remember the mimosa tree that once stood proud, colorful and fragrant. Now an empty shell. Bare branches. The weakened trunk sways with a gentle push. Remember the dogwood’s white blossoms and Lilly called the neighbor’s pink blossoms “flower snow” as they fell and covered the ground in small piles of soft pink. Remember the woodpecker, the cardinal, the new birds that decided to stop by for a visit. Remember the bunny rabbit, like Old Faithful, arrives around dinner time looking for her evening meal as well. Remember the hawk perched on top of the playset as a squirrel huddled and hid under the child’s chair unmoving and the hawk ever patient. Remember the blue jays that harassed and chased that hawk away and the squirrel that timidly crawled commando style and lived another day. Remember the sweet breeze from the ocean even reaching here not so close to the shore and how I marveled at the salty refreshing air. Remember the first kiss. The special rock overlooking the bay and our life began together. Remember that tender beginning love is still here under the surface. A beloved memory but always here in my heart.
The Unexpected Delight
After morning yoga. After I’ve rearranged the furniture. I’ve cleared out space mental and physical. I welcome the movement, the sighs, the popping joints, the twists, the surprising strength. The mental games that try to take me away from the moment. When I arrive in my mind and body, I find soul full awareness. I am grateful for this body. For the time carved out just for me. There is no shame as my strong thighs hold me upright. The meanness of cultural norms in what a pose should look like what a body should look like. I honorably greet both ends of the spectrum and invite a small smile to my lips as I inhale and clear out the mental clutter once more. The morning birds are making loud short bursts even through the soft rain. They too must meet their needs and feed that hunger. It feeds my soul and theirs to find a shared delight at another glorious day to be on this earth. To occupy the same space. Breathe the same air and each feel free in our own way. Free from shame. Free from stiffness and aches. Feeling strong and in flight as I move my body just like the little birds outside my window. We may not see the sun today but we each welcome its arrival when it greets us once again.
A Million Stars
Whether outside for my daily walk by the river or relaxing by the lake, I bask in the light. If I pause long enough, I see the stars floating and shimmering. A sparkle on the water‘s surface. How I marvel that our sun, too, is a star in its own right. And right here on the still water, the sun is broken into a million stars for all those who gaze upon its reflection. A star right in the middle of the day!
What story does each little flying fireball have? Where is it in its journey as it travels through the galaxy through the great expanse?
It has a life force of its own. A lifecycle of birth and death. Even though the end may be many lifetimes away, as I feel my own ending so far away. My mind can’t fathom an end to my existence.
My smile is bright like its own star. I have a light inside that longs to be bright. Yet afraid to lose too much light, as if there’s a limited supply. My life force too is a cycle and I honor it by appreciating each day as a gift. A wonderful opportunity to learn, to be, to connect, to create.
The world is my oyster who sinks and scurries around at a speed unknown and unseen to the naked eye. The scallop and barnacle have a mystery and story of their own too. The light reflects down to the shallow sea and they marvel and delight in its rays as do I with my bare toes scrunched into the smooth cool sand. I am earthing and unearthing myself like the bird scuttering and flipping over each dead shell on the ground looking for completion.
The wild plum tree
The wild plum tree grew from the earth’s roots stretching its branches towards the sky towards the sun. To taste the fresh ripe flesh was a treasure to behold. The branches swayed to and fro like a rocking pirate ship. It does not nor can it evade the storms. Its very foundation depends on it being rooted. So the tree does what the tree does and the plum is the perfect expression of the tree. Fruit, a gift for you and me. I will taste the ripe fruit with unabashed pleasure and joy. Revel in its juice and as it drips in my hand and through my fingers. A pure delight. I thank the tree, the sun, the rain as I digest and swallow the whole earth in this little plum.
Why are we here?
Why are we here at this moment in time on this small blue green planet?
They say we too are made up of the stars down to the smallest molecule. It can feel so small when the universe is so vast. How can I affect change as such?
What I know is my life has meaning. The answer is always connection. The root is love. So how did I live the answer? I must have lived the question first.
What I didn’t know is I was being led by invisible forces, situations, people and opportunities which became my challenges, my lessons, my guides.
How to live a life well lived and loved is the question. It took me 40+ years to come to the realization and to accept even if the universe is so vast and my actions seem so small and individual, there is a ripple.
If I too am made up of the stars, I have a light inside. A unique heart like an emerald when the light hits it a certain way. I do not know who put it there or where does the light originate from. I can accept that it’s a part of me and we each have our own illuminated hearts beating in our chest. Not so narrow and individually separate. Our hearts can be in rhythm like the collective breath that illuminates the soul.
What is but a moment in time?
What is but a moment in time? This precise moment to be exact. When the child smiles and runs through the grass. When the old folks rock on their rockers. When the mouths of the hungry, the sad, the oppressed, the joyful all open wide in reply. It is frozen in time. For just a moment. Then it is gone. It can never return or be what once was. The hunger, the anger, the weeping and the joy have all moved on too. Like little rebirths and deaths, we go through the days. The events, the thoughts, the feelings are never exactly how they were just a moment ago that’s past. Can we feel it? Can we express and not hide it or smile it away hoping the feeling will once again be buried? It’s a shallow grave. A rug that’s become a mound of unfelt feeling. The rawness like a struck a nerve, although hidden, is quite easily stung. Sparked to right where the emotion began. Yet it may be stronger, expressed and felt differently, it needs to discharge. Energy back to the earth. Back to the grassy edge, the hedges, the puddle, the cloud and the rain. Then we can be truly free. Free to be me and free to be you. Not bogged down by weighty old emotions like baggage of lost voyagers that have long passed on and whose items have fallen out of fashion. Out of use. We can have a rebirth each and every day with each inhale that fills our lungs with the fullness of life.
The interconnected heart
The interconnected heart that beats in me is also fiercely beating in you. We are one even though I am here and you are there. We may be strangers in passing. There is one breath that begins life. So too is there one beating sun that has created the perfect conditions for life. The sunshine is in you and it is in me. We both eat food of this earth that also needed that sunshine to grow and manifest its true nature. My nature is to be present, to smile and appreciate all the gifts in you that too must be in me. We are one, don’t you see? Just as a tree is not alone on its journey from seedling to being fully expressed above our shoulders reaching to that sunshine. There is a tree in me and I am in the tree. My ancestors and their fertile remains helped nourish the earth to create the perfect growing conditions. They’re in this paper that I write to you. They are the components that make me just as they are in you too. We may be strangers as we pass. But we’re more alike than any difference could ever exist. Do you see the sunshine? Do you feel its warm rays? I am here and you are there. But I see and feel it too. We are one, don’t you see? No right or wrong. No this way nor that way. Just one. One breath. One sky. One beating heart.
We all carry a little trauma
I originally published this blog in 2019. I still feel it’s relevant and we all need the reminder of our common suffering.
We all walk around with a little trauma in our back pocket. Sometimes we forget it’s there. Sometimes, unbeknownst to us, we pull it up and it’s in our face without any warning. How we experienced the trauma is individual and unique: what happened, how we dealt with it or didn’t deal with it, our own personal experience of the trauma. We were innocent one moment and then the event rocked us to the core and that is something we all share.
We’d like to pretend it never happened to us. Why talk about such negative things that don’t affect us now? The event shaped us whether we’d like to admit it. We can choose to acknowledge this trauma that we’ve been carrying around for far too long. Perhaps we’ve grown tired and exhausted from the heaviness of that burden. And it has metaphorically created a hole and fell out of our pocket. However it happens, the opportunity lies before us.
Do we quickly scoop it up and bury it once again? Do we distract ourselves and hide it, ignore it or stuff it? Or can we just for a moment accept our common humanity that trauma unfortunately happens. It’s a part of the journey of life. But it doesn’t have to control us any longer. It happened, for sure. It sucks. Who wants to rehash unpleasantries?
But once we acknowledge our common human experience – our trauma – something shifts. Our burden lightens. We see that we are not alone in our suffering. It is okay. We are not justifying what happened, but right now in this moment can we feel safe? Can we take a breath? Can we sit with this feeling for just a few moments?
Here’s what I would like you to do right now. Don’t engage in a dialogue with the trauma. Just be the listener. Write if it helps you to sort out your thoughts on paper. Treat yourself gingerly, with the softness and tenderness as you would a small infant. You were innocent when it happened through no fault. Can you see what “trauma” is showing you? Is there a message? A nugget of wisdom that you can explore?
When you’ve listened to what has to be said, put your hands on your heart and just breathe for a minute. Counting breaths helps. I like to count to 10. One, inhale; one, exhale. Two, inhale; two, exhale, etc. I promise you that any fear, anger, or other strong emotion you feel will dissipate if for just a moment you can let it out. It’s been bottled up for too long.
Seven ways of looking at a notebook
1- Blank smooth pages that drink up the ink. Smudges do not deter. Perfection has no place. Filled or empty, each page has a space and a place.
2- A clean slate. A beginning. A chance to start anew.
3- A Conduit. I connect to my inner wisdom, to inner truth, real or fiction, to my creativity, to you.
4- An alchemist. The notebook takes what is unreal and intangible and makes it real and tangible. My see my words take shape before my eyes.
5- The pages speak my story. My dreams. My words before they form full thought or belief. Just a spark before the utterance.
6- Patient. The notebook sits quietly on the bookshelf, on the desk or tucked inside my bag. Waiting for me. Never rushing or demanding.
7- Healing. Therapy on the page. For my eyes only as I grapple with, dissect, explore, express or create. It is mine alone.
What’s good?
“What’s the good word?” Anthony, my coworker, asked. I paused a beat. Took a breath and thought: what is good right now; right at this moment?
“The sun is out today,“ I said casually. It had been a rainy stretch of days.
“There you go! I knew you had something good to say instead of the grumpy replies I usually get: same shit different day.“
We then talked about framing our perceptions and choosing. Do we choose to see the positive or the negative?
When we’re caught up in the negative chatter, it can feel hopeless. Like we don’t really have a choice. Life is just happening to us and all around us. And we’re just helplessly bouncing around at whatever life throws at us.
It can be hard to change that framework when you’re in the depths of a hurried life, feeling unfulfilled, and sensing lack at every facet of life. Hearing and seeing it as true and never asking if this is all there really is? Is there really not enough?
Scarcity abounds when the media is filled with images depicting lack.
“The world is on fire,“ Jeff said to me in the evening right before bed.
Is it really?
This year the Colorado River and Hoover Dam is dangerously low. Lack of water. Drought. Too many people tapping into a limited resource. Last year California was literally on fire with the great evergreens near Yosemite ignited and raging.
How do we put out the fire? Why is it either raging or empty? Where is the middle? The balance? It must be here somewhere.
In the end, it all comes back to perception. How will I perceive today?
Today I choose to see abundance as my creative words flow. I appreciate my breath, my A/C during this heat wave, my loves enjoying their summer. There’s enough to go to summer camp and take our vacation.
If we look for the good: What can I appreciate now? What is lovely and beautiful? What is the meaning and lesson without being bogged down with the nitty-gritty cycle of scarcity and lack?
I can see potential. Problem-solving becomes easier. And I don’t feel so alone in my suffering or joy.
Healing Insights 