Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.

♡

This morning.

This morning I woke up feeling almost euphorically peaceful.

Last night I had a good cry, I was held and loved, I drank orange-pineapple juice and the pineapple bit was extra-kicky.

I giggled, imagining Pineapple as a woman at a party who has more energy than I can handle. Then there was more sweetness, followed by sweet sleep, and then I woke up with what seemed to me to be an impossibly peaceful heart.

Peaceful.

I have put in a lot of hours getting to know the quality of peacefulness. Building intimacy with peacefulness.

People always remark on how peaceful I am, how peaceful my home is, how peaceful the Playground is.

What they don’t know is that this isn’t something that just is.

Peacefulness is something I’ve put crazy amounts of time into cultivating, because I needed it.

Making friends with peacefulness is my answer to PTSD, to the nightmares, to being a fragile, vulnerable, highly sensitive human being who finds many aspects of daily life pretty overwhelming.

Sometimes I’m right there with the peacefulness, sometimes we have to find our way back to each other.

Forget and remember, forget and remember, lose my way and return. I descend to the floor and breathe into it. Hello, floor. Hello, breath. Hello, quiet.

That’s what I need. I get quieter and quieter. I bring myself back. Peacefulness.

Peacefulness.

I do all this work so that I can exude peacefulness, glow peacefulness, give myself peacefulness.

The goal: meet each moment with presence so that I can either be peaceful with it, or notice my reactiveness and make space for that. Which is also a form of peacefulness.

Permission to not be in a peaceful place, understanding that in a given moment I might perceive that I have lost my access to peacefulness, these are gifts that come from peacefulness. Do you see?

This morning, again.

Normally in the morning I have to do things to get back to peaceful.

Often I wake up slightly-to-very overwhelmed about the sheer number of things that seem to need doing, and how they will be done and what if they don’t get done (again!).

I have trained myself to meet these moments, trained myself to focus on rituals of sweetness, the things I do in order to take exquisite care of myself. Partly so that I can function. And partly because that’s how I want to live. Living like this is one of the secret treasures of having been through so much hard.

This morning I woke up and enjoyed the sunlight dancing in the very green tree, the soft hum of the fan, clarity, sweetness, feeling fullness in my opening thank-you heart.

A day of quiet things.

I did a lot of very quiet things today.

Things I normally do not allow myself to do. Or things my There’s No Time monsters categorize as time-wasting.

Of course I have other monsters who say I don’t do enough of these either, so there’s that.

Here is what my day looked like, beginning from peacefulness.

I lit some sage and walked through the house, breathing peacefulness, asking all the things that are done to find their way out.

I smiled at things in my home that delight me. I blew kisses to parts of my home that don’t feel right.

I noticed some things about space, and about my space, and what I want and do not want in my space.

Agent Mueller had brought carnations home and left them in the kitchen, which was interesting. I adore flowers, and Agent Mueller knows this. When the garden has flowers, he brings them in and puts them all over the house, just to make me smile. However he doesn’t like to buy flowers. I suspect these flowers might be a thank-you for having resolved a sticky interpersonal situation the other day with a combination of skill and magic. Yay, flowers.

I much prefer FLOWERS EVERYWHERE to one big bouquet, so I divided the flowers into tiny bottles and vases, and put them everywhere I could think of. Superpower of Flowers Make Everything Better: Activated.

Then I did some bits and pieces of Congruencing, which is what I call organizing, since ugh organizing is the worst (for me), but I like it when things feel harmonious.

This included cleaning the mud from my red sovereignty boots, and dealing with the box of clothing that needs to be hand-washed. Slowly remembering that the process of Adoring My Garments can actually be sexy and fun, if I do it with intention, even though in my mind it gets categorized as a chore. Not a chore.

Then Agent Mueller and I did work-related errands, and then I wrote, and now my body is whispering that it is time for yoga. To the floor to breathe peacefulness.

To breathe love-more trust-more release-more receive-more.

What do I want?

More days like this.

Not just the peacefulness, though: yes please more of that.

More of the kind of doing that is following the instinctive pull of desire. More of this slow, steady, deliberate, appreciation-filled doing.

More of this doing of things that seem like not-doing but are actually changing the look and feel of both my internal and external space.

As I like to say: interior design. Very, very interior.

The instinctive pull. And the following.

I wrote above that I want to be following the instinctive pull of desire.

As I wrote these words, I knew what the pull was in that moment: to tell someone I was thinking about them.

I finished writing the section and then picked up my phone to do this, and there waiting for me was a text from this very person sent a couple minutes earlier:

“Thinking of you. That is all…”

So. What do I want?

More of this please.

More of this peacefulness. More of the doing of not doing. More alignment with what I feel, want and need in each moment. More intention. More of the all the superpowers of that.

What else do I know about this?

Acting from presence leads to more acting from presence.

Acting from panic leads to more acting from panic.

When I am on the panic path, it’s hard to pause and take a breath and allow myself to wander over to the presence-grace-peacefulness path. It can be hard to remember that this is even an option, that any moment can be a hop-skip over to where I want to be.

Here’s what I wrote last week:

I need my wide open heart of curiosity, presence and wonder.

I need to remember that the act of wanting, of being present with heart-desire, is enough. It’s another way I learn about myself and take care of myself.

Love more. Trust more. Release more. Receive more. Practice.

Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?

She: This is the next step.
Me: Not taking steps?
She: Taking the indicated steps, even if they are tiny, or don’t seem to make sense. Presence. Being present with stepping. What comes next does not require leaping. It just requires paying attention.

Clues?

She’s catching attention like a flower in bloom / the night isn’t over until she leaves the room….

The superpower of trusting the voyage.

Last month was the month of receiving, and gracefully receiving gifts. Gracefully receiving my gifts.

Now we’ve turned a page in the calendar and it’s the month of Embarking, with the superpower of trusting the voyage. This feels big.

It also relates to ships, which I love, and which I use as code for the problematic word “relationships”, which I do not love. I like the part about relating. I do not like being in a box, and I do not like the expectations which come along with set forms. I like presence, openness, creativity, wonder, delight, trust and love.

So let’s have more of that. Let’s embark on that. I’m ready to trust the voyage. Ah, what beautiful wishes.

Ongoing wishes.

• Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere.
• I have the best time dancing in my ballroom.
• This doesn’t require my input!
• Ha, it’s so perfect that it turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS
• I have what I need, and I appreciate it. There are resources to do this.
• Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
• I am fearless and confident. I do the brave things, I state my preferences clearly, calmly and easily, and it is not even a big deal, yay.
• I am ready to come into my superpowers, including the superpowers of knowing that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, I Am Okay With Being Seen, receiving gifts that are winging their way to me. See also: The superpower of Everything Enhances My Superpowers. And adds panache.

Things I find helpful when it comes to wishes…

Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.

So. Last week, aka what I want vs what I think I want…

This was a good week for me. I definitely noticed a lot of disconnect between some of my perceived surface wants and what was really going on for me. I also noticed a much deeper trust in my wishes. Letting the qualities of the wish lead me.

Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.

I wish to whisper a whisper about the Monster Manual! It comes paired with the world’s best coloring book, which does so much monster-dissolving magic that even if you wait to try the techniques, you’ll still feel better about everything.

Self-fluency is hard enough, we need ways to to interact with the thoughts-fear-worry-criticism that shuts down creative exploring. And when people get the manual, I am able to me spend more time writing here. So if you don’t need help with monsters, get one for a friend. Or plant a wish that someone gets it for you! And bring people you like to hang out here. The more of us working on our stuff, the better for all of us. ♡

Keep me company?

Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads. In any size/form you like, there’s no right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.

Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play and throw things in the pot! With amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.

Here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: Oh, wow. What beautiful wishes.

xox

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