It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Going back to the qualities.
When my mother went into hospice, and I was having trouble thinking or making decisions, I turned inward and asked for guidance, and this is what I got:
You can choose story or you can choose steadiness.
I understood this to mean that my reactions are up to me, I can go into the drama of all of it, and spin out into my own complex narrative, or I can be a bell of qualities, breathe qualities, return to qualities.
So I inhaled steadiness and exhaled steadiness until I knew what was best for me, and then I didn’t need to decide anything because I knew.
This week involved many moments in which people wanted to pull me into their drama, or to give me “helpful advice” about how I should be living, and I could feel the desire to go into stories and patterns.
Choosing qualities was the right move, every time.
Sometimes that meant taking a 5MX pause to rest on the floor and feel the qualities around me in all directions of the compass. Sometimes it meant inhaling and exhaling. Sometimes it meant naming the qualities over and over again.
Trust. Release. Love. Receive. Ground. Sovereignty. Glow. Courage.
Steadiness. Steadiness. Steadiness.
Next time I might…
Do that sooner.
And take it to the bath.
Water always helps. For me.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- I miss my mom. It’s weird, because I have never said that sentence in my entire life, and until this last year we didn’t get along. And now she’s gone and I miss her, and I keep picking up postcards to write something to her and I can’t. I mean, I can, it’s just not the same. A breath for this.
- I got vaccinated for the flu, and my body did not like it. I suspect this might be an HSP thing. Three whole days that were mostly spent sitting on the red couch, lethargic, low energy. A breath for the challenges of having a body that is so sensitive to external input. I say thank you for the blessings of that sensitivity, and also sometimes it is so hard. Also more nightmares, though not the awful trauma kind, just the not fun kind. Oh body. A breath for you.
- Whoa! Someone threw some shoes at me, out of nowhere, and I was caught completely off-guard. (Shoe-throwing is when people say hurtful things). These particular shoes managed to hit a bunch of trigger points: Being Misunderstood! Veiled Accusations! Victim Blaming! The implication that Everyone Thinks This About You! All of it wrapped up in that particularly insidious flavor of unsolicited advice, “don’t take this the wrong way, I’m only telling you this for your own good”. A breath for releasing, for being intimately familiar with how abusive communication works, for letting go of everything that is not mine.
- While I feel very strongly that Not Everything Requires a Response (certainly the shoe-thrower doesn’t need a reaction), small-me has a lot of anxiety about being misunderstood. She has a very strong need to Set The Record Straight, and a lot of reminders were needed about how this isn’t where we need to spend our energy. A breath for comfort, may we all have as much of it as we need.
- So very overwhelmed by all the things. A breath for sweetness.
- [Silent retreat on things that are hard]. A breath for trust-more love-more release-more receive-more.
- Still seeing all the ways I relinquish my sovereignty, compromise my desires, neglect to state my preferences, avoid opportunities to treasure myself. For example, a woman at a rumba class accused me of having stolen her seat, and instead of calmly pointing out that the ballroom is full of seats or that in an entire year of dancing there I’d never encountered a culture of saving seats, I immediately rushed off to vacate “her” seat for her, which she then didn’t use for the entire dance because she was dancing. There are so many intriguing things about the mystery of why I do this. May all this unsovereign distorted people-pleasing bullshit reveal the treasure that is here for me. A breath for trust and more trust and even more trust after that.
- Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- Everything moves, eases, changes. The lethargy passed and my energy came back just in time for dancing! A breath for trusting the process.
- A couple of years ago this incident with the shoe-thrower would have thrown me into chaos. There would have been so much pain, hurt and anger to work through. I might even have conceded some of her points and agreed to turn down my glow. Not now. I don’t turn down my glow for anyone. Not anymore. I remembered what Bryan said about how what you don’t feed can’t grow. The part about perceiving that I have been deeply misunderstood is between me and me, the rest is between her and her. I got clear: I am not going to change how I act or how I dress based on someone else’s judgment. And really, this is only a test. I’ve made vocal wishes about living how I want, and glowing boldly. Now someone says they think I need to dial it down? That’s my wish being tested, and it’s up to me to choose something new in the video game. See also: the salve of I Do Not Dim My Spark For Anyone. A breath for clear knowing.
- I said this last week, and it is still true: So much sweetness, tenderness, so much wild ferocious intensity, so much aliveness, such a commitment to life. A breath of thank you for the sweet reminders of the truly vital things in life.
- Beautiful connecting. Adventures in sweetness. Also when I was in a mood and got a surprise hug delivery visit. It took all of five seconds to cheer me up, even though I’d been having Quite The Crappy Day. A breath for all the good.
- I ran an experiment this week that had to do with taking exquisite care of myself and pausing to seed intentions, to notice what I need. On the days when I did this, there was so much more ease and spaciousness, so much more getting things done, not to mention so much less staring into space on the couch. A breath for all the ways that I can bring ease and softening into my life, when I remember that this is an option.
- There was a day I was freaking out so hard, and then Richard did some acupressure on me, and suddenly I flashed on the thought, what if everything is okay? And then it was. A breath for everything being okay, and for remembering.
- Sometimes yoga is magic. One one of the hard days this week, two hours on the floor took me from a mess of tight-fear-anxious pain into feeling like a radiant glowing ball of love and wonder. A breath for the magic of sweet, conscious, intentional breathing.
- Thankfulness. Heart full of love. A sweet wedding reception Friday night. Sleepover in the bouncy castle. I’ve had a lot of great nicknames in my day, but “sweet unicorn” is my new favorite. Ran into old friend K, who gave me tea and made things beautiful. Danielle kidnapped me and took me to have oil rubbed all over my body, she is the best. Operation Tranquility Recovery Magic has been set into motion, and I need this so badly. So much sweetness in my life, so much kindness, so much generosity and permission. So many things are beautiful. Nothing is wrong. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
Operation Clear Bell is still in effect, I am working on The Sultry Speedy Chicken of Sanguine Secret Ops, and I am trusting the fractal flowers. Wham Boom.
Revisiting some wise important words of truth from past-me.
This post from three years ago called Everything has a counterpart. This was helpful to me this week.
Superpowers…
Powers I had this week…
I had the power of Haha This Is A Test This Is Only A Test (it’s just the emergency sovereignty broadcast systems being tested, all is fine), the power of knowing that what I don’t feed can’t grow, the powers of sexy red velvet curtains.
Superpowers I want.
The superpower of Shoes Miss Me By A Mile (thanks Annabelle) and the power of Radiant Glowing Boundaries.
The Salve of extra sweetness.
This salve softens all the things that need softening.
It shows me that tenderness doesn’t have to be raw and vulnerable, tenderness can be an opening into, a sweet releasing and receiving.
This salve renders so many of the false forms of sweetness useless, all the distortions, all the way I search for comfort and sweetness outside myself. With this salve, I can release the need to add sweetening, because I am connected to my own source of sweetness.
Rumi on this:
Find the sweetness in your own heart, then you may find the sweetness in every heart.
When I rub this into my skin, I begin to remember all the sweetness that is available to me in this moment, and then there is even more.
If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is called So Many Sparks. They play sultry lounge music versions of punk rock songs, and it’s actually just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I am still recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, since they are keeping things good around here for me.
So I want to seed a reminder that this is a thing, and it helps, a lot. Not just with calming down in the moment but with building the kind of habits that allow you to change your relationship with whatever is scary or uncomfortable.
I hardly ever recommend these because the page is already many years old and needs rewriting. However, copywriting aside, this is still one of the best things I have ever made, by a lot. I have two boxes in my office full of the sweetest thank you notes from people, and so many of them are for this.
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re on silent retreat. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. We’ve been doing this every week for years now and there still isn’t a right way.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.
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I hope I can hear this guy do a sultry lounge version of Welcome to Paradise. With harmony.
Yay for shoes dodged!
Hey there, week. Are you really ending? Because I think I’m ready to say goodbye to you.
Hard stuff:
–An unbelievably exhausting and disorienting and emotionally challenging Saturday. Its beautiful moments were very very beautiful, but…just…gah.
–Another car has ended its useful life, this time the one that my mother loaned me after my Prius died. The good news is that we still have two vehicles in the household, and the one that wasn’t legal to drive is legal to drive now. The bad news is that neither vehicle is exactly my own, and one of them has some mysterious problems that trouble me.
–Something that I hope will be awesome is taking its sweet time getting there. I am frustrated and impatient.
–[silent retreat]
Good stuff:
–We do still have two vehicles in the household, and they are both functional.
–I made a promising new professional contact.
–Some money came my way just when I needed it. I am grateful.
–Singing, playing, writing.
–Loving and being loved.
I now invoke the superpowers of Radiant Web of Allies and Sweetly Shimmering Sound! <3
Happy Fridy and cluck! so much of this post resonated esp. vacating the chair and bad toxic advice to dampen one’s glow. Grr. That lady sounds like one of the reindeer who wouldn’t let poor Rudolph join in their reindeer games.
such week, but light on sucks:
-my inability to get to work on time or stay focused on tasks is bugging me
-my inability to stay White Flowers likewise. 3 times in one lunation, that makes me feel out of control and lazy and incompetent
-the after-work pattern doesn’t work. too much sinking into facebook or something, MUST shift this.
-in general i lost my bearings in the past week
the good:
-so much, but i really love the feeling of a strong Foundation and random bouts of joy and pleasure
-hints of deep purple, green and ruby
-Samhaintide!
-gorgoeus warm weather
-less fighting among the girls, husband and i getting along
-feeling hooked in. not as much as i’d like, but i’m really piking stuff lately and it makes me happy.
What i want: more time out in nature. nt just the green belt in view of the road and the apartments. real nature.
Cluck.
Deep purple, green, and ruby! <3!
This week I had the superpower of having the right hat.
Next week I would like the superpower of steering conversations toward graciousness, grace-filledness, and fruitfulness.
Hard, vexing, and such:
* So much lashon hara, perpetuated by myself and others. Good God.
* Blatant shenanigans by local secretary of state and school board.
* Encounters with a gatekeeper. I’m not upset about being kept out, but I’m annoyed about wasting my time.
* Work piling up = no paddleboarding
* An all-night cage match between my brain and my ego. Where I intellectually understood that a shoe was not a shoe but emotionally couldn’t let go of how hurt and angry I was about the situation. Least productive all-nighter EVER.
Good, reassuring, etc.:
* New contract! with splendid timing.
* Radish cakes were more like radish glop, but they pleased the other members of the household anyway
* And so did the man tou I impulsively mixed and steamed
* French marigolds still looking great
* Came home to a fixed fence and fixed wheelbarrow.
* Dinner and breakfast with a friend I’ve known for almost thirty years. And his new-to-me girlfriend is awesome.
Sparkly bouquets to all y’all. Shabbat shalom.
Shoes suck.
All feelings are legitimate.
Pebbles, presence, peace…
Pebbles for you, for me, for all who come here. My first chicken:
The hard:
– Oy, the pull of inertia.
– Lack of focus.
– Lack of confidence in my ability to manifest this beautiful dream I have begun manifesting.
– Physical pain, and the fear that it will always be with me.
– Too much time alone this week, I think.
The good:
– I *have* begun manifesting this beautiful dream. And I get to work from home, where it is quiet and peaceful, and the birds sing, and the kitties keep me company.
– Writing makes *everything* better for me, and I get to do as much of it as I want now. I need to do it even more, and just trust that it is as good (or better) a use of my time as the other things the monsters would rather I be doing.
– I can be alone when I like, and I can reach out for contact to treasured family and friends when I need.
– The physical pain is very manageable, when I take care of myself.
– Such gratitude, so much to be grateful for.
What worked, what helps:
– writing
– movement breaks (aka 5MX)
– reaching out
– sunshine – on my skin, not just through a window
– change of scenery
– shake it off
– invoke the superpowers
Superpowers!!! Shamelessly adopting Havi’s practice of capitalizing (because, it’s *necessary* for the superpowers!), here are some I’ve been working with:
– My Pace is Right Timing, and an Object in Motion Stays in Motion
– I Have What I Need Inside Me, and it is Vast and Useful, Wise and Valuable
– My Intuition is Loud and Clear, and Spot-On
– The Do-Over – Everything is Fresh and Sweet-Smelling Again
Thank you for this space, for everyone’s courage and generosity in sharing. Happy Friday, happy weekend!
Natanya! I miss you. And yes, capitalizing really makes a difference with the superpowers, not sure why! Hell yes to My Intuition is Loud and Clear, and Spot-On.
Blowing kisses from SoCal. 🙂
A late Friday chicken. Leaving petals (I told my phone to write pebbles but it wrote petals instead, so I leave petals)
The hard
Physical pain and the way it stays. And the people who won’t give me the medicine at least lets me not wake up at 2 AM.
Worrying that the distraction of the pain is hurting my life. Worrying that it will never go away.
Not being able to figure out what my body is trying to tell me.
All the people saying oh I have too many clients and me wondering why I don’t have too many clients.
Missing a friend but the only time she has to see me is in between errands in Bolivia. And errands in Bolivia are boring to me.
The good
The lady with the scrapie thing and the laser that maybe helped.
The microphone on my phone so that I don’t have to type with my broken arm.
Remembering the lighthouse that is my values and steering my little ship there, through the squalls and banging about and rain.
I like petals too! <3 Onward to the lighthouse!
Oh, good, the week is ending! Yay!
Oh, good — there were good things in the week. Including:
+ that day when I woke up feeling better than I’ve felt in ages and I did all the things!
+ my Monday class; those two sweet ladies who talked with me after class.
+ much less pain.
+ that other day when I did more than I expected to.
+ my massage today; lots of things she’s been working on for ages have gotten better.
+ the MOOC courses I’m doing.
+ the right salve at the right time!
And, oh the suckiness and stupidity of:
– my internet connection is screwy and my browser is jerky.
– days of self-doubt and criticism and depression.
– a monster iguana squatting in the dining room and getting guano all over everything — I can’t touch anything in there now, including the light switch, without smelling the stench.
– MrB’s wound was almost healed and it reopened today.
– someone I wanted to talk to isn’t answering my calls or texts
– I’m kind of fed up with B and C right now, not all that happy with M1 or M2, and don’t really want to see R and CE but I have to anyway.
– my errands haven’t been done and Inowanna so now they are becoming iguanas too.
Happily the week is ending, the day is nearly over, tomorrow is a new day and I get to play with new ways to interact with all of this stuff.
Good wishes and love to all, hugs for the hard, cheering for the good.
Sudden realization of the “epiphanies are stoopid” sort: I don’t play dumb for anyone, and that is a variation of I don’t turn down my glow for anyone. I don’t X for anyone, where X is pretending to be something/someone I am not, or ignoring my experience because someone else might not like it.
Cluck cluck
Some things that have been mysterious and difficult….
* navigating energies, that is, ‘flavours’ of interaction that are not contained in the words or body language or anything else in particular I could point to except in my overall perception of and reaction to them. I have not traditionally been a very ‘energy’ sort of person, but…. there you go. I guess I am now. And it seems I’m still learning how to respond to these energetic impressions in ways that are not totally exhausting. But maybe my responses need to be outsized so I can notice what they are and pay attention and learn what I need to learn. Still, tiring.
* problematic aspects of an amazing practice…. let’s call it Bikram as a proxy. I love the practice (for me) but the problematic aspects of the organisation around it and the types of risks I feel it takes with people engaging with it mean I can’t continue to engage the way I thought maybe I would like to. I’m a bit bummed. I could be part of the change but….. I no wanna. Okay.
* the way I sort my feelings and truth out lately has been through writing it out. And I am not on the Floop this year!! I have other spaces in the meantime but I am feeling nostalgic for the good ship Floop. (Naaaawww…)
* I spent all my money on a retreat and that was okay but now I have no money and I have bills and blaaaaaaaahhh.
* I am extremely out of the habit of Being Productive, which is fine, I’ve been extremely *internally* productive, but now even the most basic daily routines seem to require Deep Thought And Concentration to get through, which is also tiring.
* Obviously, I am tired. Also sleep is screwy so there are nights when I’m unable to sleep until very late, and days where my energy drops suddenly and steeply and there is not enough sleep in the world. I would like this to change. Also, my cycle has been weird and getting weirder for the last six months but the tests showed nothing amiss from a western perspective. It feels like a *lot* more energy than I have available to pursue investigations any further.
* I have a dream and the Realist Monsters are highly disapproving because it is fatuous and naive and bound to end in Doom so Get Real and Get On Without It Because AS IF.
* The boy I was seeing that I sort of love/d (but issues) ended things between us a few weeks ago now. Which is fine and perfect and predictable and fine. *sigh*. If only people saw in themselves the potential that *I* see, and were willing to let the love *in* which would nourish that potential. As yet, still no takers. *siiiiiiiggghhh*. (Lord, bring me someone fully realised in the first place, maybe? Please, thank you, that would be great).
* I don’t know why I can’t be satisfied with the beautiful, normal, perfectly good, satisfactory, ordinary life I have available to lead *right now*. But it seems I can’t, I am hungry for something more, something richer, deeper, more meaningful (to me!)…….. and I don’t know what that is or how to bring it into being and and and…… frustration. And self-judgement for being so fucking up myself I think I’m too good for this beautiful, ordinary life I already have.
* Learning to sit with discomfort, the discomfort of not knowing, the discomfort of trying on new costumes/characters, the discomfort of new costumes/characters having shoes thrown at them, the discomfort of still running old patterns when I think I really probably should have come up with some alternatives by now.
Lots of hard and mysterious things…. A breath for trusting the process and believing this has been decreed by my angel support crew as the quickest, best and most treasure-filled path to ever-deepening love.
Some lovely things…..
* some lovely new friends
* a weekend in the sub-tropics, surrounded by trees, mountain, river and hippies. With excellent food. Yum.
* I have a dream. I am pretty sure I can pursue it. And it would be truly super-awesome to live like that. So… trusting that it is winging its way to me in perfect timing and perfect means. Despite the monster objections. Quack quack quack.
* Feeling less deadened in my feelings towards my kids. That’s nice.
* I cooked two meals this week (as in, actual cooking that involved chopping ingredients and multiple steps, not just shoving something from the freezer in the over and boiling up some frozen vegies). And I made a salad accompaniment on another night. This is a good sign of a) giving a shit, and b) energy. Both of which are improvements on much of the last couple of months.
* shoe-throwing hurt, but didn’t send me into tailspin and immediate reactivity.
* I have clarity around the qualities and standards I hold around the offering of transformational practices. And the kind of interactions I’m interested in being receptive to. They are important things to be clear on.
* my hunger is leading me somewhere good and true, I’m sure. My desire wants great things for me and for the world.
* I believe that all timing is right timing, and I am allowed to let myself be carried by my life, and my only job is to pay attention as hard as I can as often as I can, and that’s enough.
Cluck cluck. <3
Haha bikram is best proxy ever, not that I know what you’re proxying, just: for things that fall into that category. I love it. Blowing kisses!
Hello, week! Hello, chicken!
Challenging:
1. So. Much. Rain. So much humidity and cold and wind and change and so much tending my body needs to handle any of this.
2. Two people have expressed a preference that is *totally fine* for them, and it’s bringing up all kinds of flat-out terror for me. A breath for knowing it’s a distortion when it feels so real, and a breath for knowing I can breathe my way through this, eventually.
3. 24 hour vomiting bug for the wee one. Turns out I’m not really bothered by being thrown up on anymore, but the worry of does-she-have-the-disease-she-might-have-where-vomiting-can-cause-a-coma was a little much. Still, she’s fine and no one else is sick yet and I think I was admirably chill, considering. Everything in our house is covered with drying towels.
4. Less sleep than I need. As always.
5. The last sunny day, when I had such a vision for how it would go, and it didn’t go that way.
6. How actually it was like a flashback to my birthday. So ouch.
7. Still finding terror just basically everywhere. It’s like terror dust bunnies, really. Under and around every piece of furniture, even if you just swept two days ago.
8. I wrote a thing about school that went way deeper than I expected. And it sent me kind of reeling for a day before I got steady again. Now I’m wondering if it’s shareable and if so, if I can handle sharing it. Though I very much appreciate the clarity.
Good:
1. We fixed the metaphor! The metaphor we’ve been working to fix for two years. It just WHOOSH landed. And fixing the metaphor fixes a surprising percentage of everything else.
2. Very good hour with K.
3. Because the metaphor is fixed, things I’ve been actively missing for two years are just happening everywhere, and it’s great.
4. Really good food this week. Just excellent! And the pickiest eater I know said “if I are this at a restaurant I’d recommend it to everyone I know,” and “seriously, this food is so good I’m almost mad. I want to punch all the other food I’ve ever eaten” about something I made! Yay food! Food is the best.
5. Working on Ayurvedic-inspired self-treasuring. Like goat milk with spices before bed each night. It feels like someone loves me to take such good care of me and that someone is me!
6. Also Ayurvedic-inspired keeping of myself to the right temperature. Especially my feet. Toasty feet are essential. And somehow just putting on socks feels deliciously decadent.
7. The vomiting was only a 24 hour thing! Extremely literally! No one else has caught it yet.
8. I got to vote on some issues I actually cared about, things I was excited to see on the ballot.
9. Checking back in with someone I hadn’t seen in a while, it was great to note all the progress I’ve made. A large portion of the challenges I faced when I last met with her are not even on my radar today. I’m just past them. This gives me hope.
Pebbles and love and flowers, for you, and for everyone who might need or want them.
I went dancing for the first time in months yesterday — a beginner class, leading the entire time. It reminded me how lovely it is to go back to basics. I don’t need to be The Most Advanced. Actually, it’s stressful to try to be the most advanced. Playfulness and beginner’s mind. Saying Yes to that.
Thank you, Havi, for this space, and for all the sweetness you scatter.