Hello, Sunday Chicken: we are here.
Usually we chicken on Friday, occasionally on Saturday, so this is a first.
I am invoking the superpower of All Timing Is Right Timing, and breathing appreciation for Friday-me and Saturday-me who chose the protocol of applying extreme self-care, because that was a good choice. And I am so glad to be here now.
Also I should tell you that every time I think “wow, I haven’t written the chicken yet and it’s already Sunday”, my mind replaces it with the Katy Perry shoutout: Yo, this goes out to all you kids that still have their cars at the club valet and it’s Tuesday….
Anyway, yay chicken! I need this.
{a breath for being here when we get here}
Thank you, week!
This is the 380th week in a row we are chickening here together….
What worked this week?
Hiring an consultant — it was an inside job!
There was a work thing this week and I really didn’t want to do it. The longer I didn’t do it, the more of it there was, and the deeper I went into frazzled-dread state.
So I hired a consultant, but actually it was Incoming Me in disguise!
The calm, cool, collected Isabel Wild came in with her sexy graceful calm and her elegant grey suit and her superpowers of moonstones and easy positivity mixed with grounded tranquility. She told me what to do and I did it. She dictated notes on how to make things better in the future, and I wrote them down.
The entire Dreaded Mission only took forty minutes with her help, and wasn’t nearly as horrible as I’d been imagining, and was surprisingly not rage-inducing at all. I am going to do this again!
Next time I might…
Release rules and expectations.
Amen to that.
Upcoming biopic if it were based on this week…
Take It To The Bath: The Havi Brooks Story
8 breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- In the month of big waves of heartache since my beautiful lover left on his way, I have been clinging to a story-hope called get through this month, babe, just make it through a month and you will be okay. And while that was a lovely comforting wise message to channel, and yes the pain is slightly less raw-and-ragged now, I still cry every day, multiple times a day. When I hear a song, I feel us sliding into closed dance embrace, beautifully connected. Here I am, still wandering the alleys of denial, needing to believe he will come back for me even though I know he can’t. Someone asked me yesterday, “How is your heart?” And the answer to that is: my heart is big. There is a lot of heart in my heart. A breath for my sweet heart, for longing, for breathing my way through with love.
- The Game Is (Still, Always) Rigged, and the gap between the amount of time there is to do things, and the amount of things that can be done, even when I am wildly efficient and not in pain, has no hope of ever being breached, and yet we live in this culture that believes in the myth of Do All The Things, and we are expected to do all the things, and the disconnect is almost as exhausting as trying to keep up. A breath for Sisyphus saying “you know what, fuck it, the way I roll is by not rolling anymore.”
- Speaking of the game and the rigging of it, I am so done with street harassment, creeps, stares, catcalls, expectations of the availability of my time and attention on the part of men who think they get it on demand. I am generally more about dissolving structures than smashing them, but here is a breath for the sincere wish for a great dismantling, in whatever form, of this way of things.
- Still having trouble adjusting my plans to the early darkness. A breath for figuring out how to be a bird and novembering somewhere with more light.
- I got some useful intel this week that shed some light (ha, shed pun!) on my plans for moving into the shed, and now everything has been postponed six months, probably a very good thing but also…disruptive, and now there are entire categories of new decisions to be revealed/received, new things to learn and figure out, new configurations of plans to be made, and oh wow, this is big. Sometimes it’s big-and-exciting, right now it’s big-and-overwhelming/scary. A breath for trust, deep roots and perfect simple solutions.
- I want to be back on shmita, and right now there I am in seemingly endless work logistics with both the metaphorical ship and the metaphorical chocolate shop. Ha, the ship and the shop! A breath for beautifully trusting the beautiful process, this is the part of the labyrinth where you are closest from the center but it seems as though you are farthest from the center, this is the part where you have to just close your eyes and feel the closeness because what you see is the visual illusion of distance.
- Circling back to the theme of “stories I tell myself that are not true”, I spent a lot of time this week in an old movie about how I Am Not Appreciated. It’s boring and poorly directed and features a lot of over-the-top symbolism, and plays in the background on the bus and during Wednesday night dances. I would like to retire this one. A breath for rewriting, and for remembering the superpower of I get endless rewrites, because I am the director.
- Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. Trust-more love-more release-more receive-more. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week.
8 breaths for the good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- I’d been worried that the November Glums would stick around for all of November (it’s in the name) but they disappeared this week after I followed the wise advice of Incoming Me. A breath for ease, good surprises, tiny liberations, the return of both perspective and joy.
- Solved everything by going out dancing every night. This week was filled with absolutely delicious dancing: blues, waltz, west coast, lindy, foxtrot, cha cha, fusion. I enjoyed playful dances, thoughtful dances, inventive dances, luscious melting butter dances, an unforgettable dance with Marjorie Taylor that took over my body-mind and filled me with the desire to steal her away from her husband so she and I can run away together, I will cook pancakes for breakfast for her, and we will dance under the stars on a wooden boardwalk on an island, do you see what dance can do, transcendent and unpredictable magic. Oh, dance. Oh, the joyful aliveness of presence and play, how did I ever not know what it was like to be able to enter into this vulnerable intimate communication with strangers, where three minutes is enough to invent a completely new language, conjure an entire world inside of which everything glows and feels intuitive and welcoming. A breath for the treasure of dance, and the intensity.
- Went on a tour of sorts because the Vicar told me to, and this rattled some things for me, but in a really good way. I am filled with excitement about all the things I know about how I want to live. A breath of appreciation and delight.
- My fears about lonely sad Halloweeen were unfounded. Jenny and I went to the dance eclectic party, where I learned to never accept a dance with a vampire, but other than that, it was exactly the right thing. A shortage of follows meant I was on my feet for four hours, and it was just the cure for the halloween blues. A breath of thank you.
- The ongoing mission of feeding myself gorgeous sustenance, made for myself — with quality ingredients, is still going beautifully. This is a more intimate practice of self-treasuring than I had realized, and it has wonderful side effects, including the qualities of generosity, grace and play. And of course it is rewriting my former associations with cooking which are from my marriage, and so cooking had been set up in my mind in opposition to freedom. Now I see how nourishment can be liberating. A breath of delight.
- The bitterness of loss is sweetened when the boy who is so far away texts me, “thinking of you as my eyes fall closed, dreaming about your sweetness”. This may be the saddest love story but it has so much beauty and love in it, I can’t help but feel overcome with thankfulness for it. A breath for this.
- Treasure in my life in the form of companions, adventure, warmth, play, delight, laughter, movement, play dates with Marisa, picnics on the rug, dance-friends who make sure I get home safely. A hand-on-heart breath of wonder for the good in my life
- Thankfulness. Everything is okay and so much is good. Nothing is wrong, even when I want to believe it is. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. Thank you for this grand adventure. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
Sparklepoints, superpowers, salve, fake band of the week!
Operations completed and forward movement!
The first phase of the Fountaining op is good to go, Ruby Jewel (not actually a jewel) is happening, huge progress on Sweet Honey, Shed Shed Shed, and Panther Time. Thank you, fractal flowers.
I now bestow upon myself a quintillion sparklepoints, like a Fairground Stripper, and you are welcome to do the same for you.
Superpowers I had this week…
Last week I asked for the superpower of Not Caring What Other People Think, and received it in spades!
Powers I want.
I want the power of total trust in right timing.
The Salve of Remembering How To Relax
Relaxation took me a long time to ease my way into, probably because first I had to learn how to ease into things as a concept. I can’t even tell you how many times someone has, with zero effect, told me to relax a part of my body, only to find that a) I didn’t know how to do that, and b) the request had the opposite effect.
People would say things like “imagine you’re resting on a beach” and I would be thinking about uncomfortable sand in my bathing suit, and getting sunburnt.
Anyway, the discovery that there is an entire world of softening into, slow delicious undoing and untangling, that was revelatory for me, and then even after I knew how to do it, I would still sometimes get so busy (The Game Is Rigged) and so tangled up in my thoughts and experiences, that I would forget all over again, sometimes even forgetting why this was something I wanted.
This salve holds the magical combination of [Rested + Calm] which — here is a secret — is what relaxation actually is.
As it softens into your skin, any previous perceived need to hold things in rigid forms softens as well, and you remember that things are wonderfully self-contained and can hold themselves without you.
This salve goes deep into body-mind and culture, undoing the rigging, dissolving the structures that want to preserve status quo, and inviting in new experiences of sanctuary and softening, pleasure and safe receiving.
It has a marvelous lightness to it, you may find that you want to have dinner on the floor, dance in the dark or surround yourself with flowers…
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is from my partner in crime in southern california:
What Will She Not Care About Next
Their latest album is Sweet Crazy Miracles, and, of course, it’s just one guy.
ANNOUNCEMENT!
We have a Flash Sale! Come to our Flash Sale! The password: sweetdoors
As you know if you’ve hung out here for a while, we offer things pretty rarely, and they are always amazing, so come spark with us!
AND. We might also have a couple spots in a secret Rally coming up very soon. Come play. The password is radiance.
How was your week?
Come play in the comments. Share something from your week, take a breath, or just say hi! No rules, my format doesn’t have to be yours, 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 lovingly refrain from giving advice.
And of course it’s always okay to comment under a made-up name, whether for play and delight, or in the interest of Safety First.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — jump in whenever you like. Blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers too!
Follow
I am pausing for a slow, deep, contented breath. It’s good to be here, on Sunday or any day!
A hard thing this week: some very insidious little monster rumblings. I’m on it, and all shall be well, and yay for the self-fluency to recognize a monster when it whispers.
Many good things happened: safe and pleasant travels, new music to learn, excellent sleep, acts of courage, slow and steady sovereignty. I am here, and being here is lovely.
I now invoke the superpower of Remembering to Use the Salve of Remembering How to Relax. I have a feeling that this will help me in all kinds of amazing ways in the week to come. Thank you. <3
Hello, Chicken!
The Hard:
– Beartime has been extra special destabilizing this month. And painful. And I’m not even to the bleeding part yet.
– I am in an argument about gender neutral pronouns with someone in “authority over me,” and was forbidden to bring it up in a situation in which I wanted to facilitate a discussion about it. I know this person has a good heart, and I’m 90% certain we have the same ultimate goals. I am also definitely convinced that my way of getting there is better and thus am feeling incredibly frustrated at what feels like a curtailing of my freedom/aliveness/effectiveness/etc. And? My stuff is here. I’m working to continue untangling, continue re-presencing, continue the conversation instead of getting self-righteous and shutting up.
– Last Friday I had a big shadow shown to me and Sunday I got to explore that more. Since then, I’m feeling very unsettled about… Many things. Mostly about myself and my intentions, I suppose. Occasionally I forget I’m safe and the feeling balloons into fear for a while.
– So totally over school/homework/the giant project due Thursday. I gave two weeks of superhuman effort and now I have no fucks left, apparently. Which is maybe more good than hard, but there is definitely hard in this feeling of torn-ness. Wanting structure and learning and the many great things that felt like waking up again when I finally went back to school. Disliking all the same things I’ve always disliked (overwork, someone else’s schedule, “authority,” etc) plus not seeing my daughter, which is extra hard.
– Second trip to Bolivia? When? Money? How? Time? More school? A job? Rest? Living femininely in a world with no space for that. Living healthily in a world with no space for that. Noticing and not succumbing to my pattern of “if it’s not perfect I refuse to be involved.” But also seeing the big stinking painful imperfections in the system I’m “supposed” to be involved with. What next, what next, what next?
– How is my kid almost three and still pooping on the floor? I mean, at least she sleeps now and not sleeping is way worse than cleaning up someone’s excrement, but I’m ready for it to stop being either-or.
The Good:
– Forgetting to order more of the drugs that ultimately make me feel better but in the short term make me worse means I got four days of weekend with energy! I only used two of those rebelling against schoolwork, which left two in which to do (some of) the other things I want to do. So pleasant and nourishing.
– First time in my life I’m looking at a possible B grade with something akin to calmness.
– Monsters were loud this week and it was very hard, but I never forgot I was me. A very new experience.
– The interviews I’m ostensibly doing for my big project are actually not even at all secretly for me, and I’ve met amazing women with well-thought-out and well-lived answers to my complicated series of personal life questions. They’re grappling with it too. I’m so grateful to take in their words and ways of being and let all that circulate with the confusion knowing that eventually an answer will pop out.
– I may not be able to discuss gender neutral pronouns with [people], but I did get to help several of them one-on-one with other parts of writing and it was so delicious. Also my feelings on (the importance of breaking bullshit conventions against the use of) gender-neutral pronouns are a lot clearer. I’m trying to do a new way of neither fighting nor submitting. Retaining my beliefs while staying open to another person. I’ve wanted to develop this skill since forever, and here’s a chance to practice.
– Took a health day Thursday and slept and slept. Then rode the bus with my friend, who was wearing a ninja turtle mask and having strong feelings about government privacy invasion. I was not wearing a mask and was having strong feelings of a different variety about meditation. Unexpected and fun.
– Support from my acupuncturist. Support from my husband. Support from my MIL. Good conversation with my brother. Good plans for over break.
– Re-mentioning how nice it was not to even think about homework yesterday and today. Wish I’d given myself that permission on Thursday and had two more days out of it. It’s such a gift to have both the energy to get out of bed and only a few hours of work in a day.
May I continue in this vein, doing things that are a yes. Sometimes school is a big yes. But stopping for a bit when it’s not is just too delicious.
P.S. Havi, we saw you walking and slowed down and shouted at you, then realized that likely the last thing you wanted was a car slowing down and shouting at you. So we drove off but thought delighted and celebratory thoughts in your direction. I forget exactly when this was – last Sunday, maybe? At any rate, much love to you in the times I see you, the times I think I see you (you have several Trimet doppelgängers), and all the time.
Love. Cluck. Little stones.
-o- -o- -o-
Oh I see how the “hiring a consultant” thing would make everything better. I want to try it. I think that my consultant is called Miss Mary Elizabeth Loveday. She is british and matter-of-fact, earthy and large and motherly. She calls me ladybug but not in a patronizing way. Her hugs smell of lavender and bread and the memory of my grandmother. When she enters a room it immediately gets warm and soft and easy to breathe (I’ve been known to fill entire rooms with this weird sticky Cold-Worry-Heaviness lately).
Oh, I know. Maybe Miss Loveday could just stick around to be my escort for the coming week, and unfreeze/unworry my space for me until my Personal Cloud of Comfort and Grace comes back.
Goodbye and thank you, week, and yes to whatever’s coming next.
Goodbye and thank you, hardship and fear and anger and Useful Experience of this week.
Goodbye and thank you, sweetness and delight and hope and comfort of this week.
Thank you, Havi. I, too, need this.
<3 <3 <3
Miss Loveday sounds wonderful! <3
Hello Sunday Chicken! Which I’m having as wonderfully cold left overs on Monday morning.
The Hard:
The waiting. Even I am bored with this refrain.
Too much time with someone who tells the same stories all the time.
The Lovely:
Saw the lovely gentleman on Thursday night. And he left his friends and came over to sit with me and talk until it was time to go. It is such a sweet thing to see someone cross the room and know that it is to come and see you.
Saw the Boy last night. And we are still back to being friends and it is so good. And I can still make him laugh that laugh.
Yoga. Trying things I’d never tried before and realizing “hey, I can get my heel to the top of my head!” and “hey, look, I’m a tortoise and it’s relaxing!” Proof that steady effort every day pays off. Thank you hamstrings for trusting me.
The idea of hiring a consultant. And internal one, of course.
Ola Chickeners! This Chicken turned up at EXACTLY the right moment and reminded me that weeks are just weeks, and we can find the treasure in them and then let go of the rest, and choose to step forward into the NOW which is the NEW.
Thank you for the salve, which I will be using a lot of.
Love, hearts, pebbles to all. xxx
Chicken since the last time:
Hard – October Wolf-feeding Day upset me. More paperwork required to get adequate supplies of wolf food. What I will do next time – start getting out the wolf-food bowl earlier.
More like Hard than Good – Deconstruction/Congruence which felt and sounded a lot like sandpaper.
Good – Bubbles! Haircut! TMI to release cut! Iced tea during the heat! Less heat. Two wishes fulfilled – found the cord to my music that I had misplaced (just in time for the Pledge Drive to be Over) and a TV show that I Never Thought would Go to DVD has been released, and I will be receiving it as a Christmas present from my sister.
Emptied a Box of Iguanas (mainly back into a cage on their shelf) but cleared out a few scales because more current information on them is readily available on the Internet.
Living through the Heat to the Cool. Now, it’s eggnog time!
The Pumpkins. Feeling useful.
The Music Library. Feeling useful. Sparklepoints!
Things is Tight seem to be Easing. Wishes for a job for The Dude.
Clues – Glowing, the next Questing Quality on my compass began the middle of October. I originally typed it yesterday, which came up yestarday, a clue which requires investigation – yes and star. Glowing is November’s quality.
Other clues were Gold and Pumpkin.
The Dude and I realized that attending different churches is freeing for both of us.
Thanks, Rhiannon! Her note on her Mirrorhaven Academy site, “Did you know when a caterpillar enters a chrysalis to change into a butterfly, its whole organism actually liquefies before coming back together?” I hadn’t known this, but was willing to try this organic method instead of the “Plan-Do-Check-Act” method. So I merely Was, especially since it was so hot that I was just sitting and liquefying, anyway.
Glowing + Butterfly = Firefly (which goes through the same process as a caterpillar)
Am applying the Salve to my clenching jaws.
This is my first Chicken! I love the idea of Chicken Amnesty.
The hardest thing I am dealing with right now is deep heartache and dissatisfaction in areas of my personal life. Really tired of having to fight for a spot in the life of someone who clearly doesn’t want me, so branching out and making new friends and reaching out to longstanding ones. Also throwing myself into work — this work always wants me.
I took some huge steps with my Most Important Work this month and last month. Following through in a way I thought I never could. Slowly telling Most Important People about the project, and the response has been great. But since things are going well, I’m thinking… the other shoe has to drop. I have complex PTSD, so I’m not comfortable when things are going well. Have been trying to calm myself with freewriting and yoga.
*Hugs.*
“I get endless rewrites, because I am the director” <3 for this
A breath for the me who is remembering to Be Here Now, not knowing where Here is or when Now is, but remembering to Be.
Jeudi shalom!
What worked? Opting for my first pro manicure ever. Wearing “Serene Green.”
Next time? Pack sneakers.
Very, very mixed:
* A week in a hotel among the haredi
* Having to bring work along. Because it’s fun work and earning more placates the ancestors/monsters. But, having to bring work along. Especially with my partner reminding me that he was lamenting about how much I worked to his colleagues back in 2007, and 1997…
Hard:
* This friggin’ cough, and waiting to hear back from my internist’s office.
* Contractor inattentive to details yet still our best option.
* Flustered-badgered into wayyyy overtipping an underwhelming server. Which Reasonable Me keeps pointing out will shake out in the wash, but ancestors/monsters are still irritated.
* Same with the clerk who shortchanged me by twenty cents.
* Feeling sniped at repeatedly when I’m ill and under pressure. Feeling chided for not paying sufficient attention to others’ requests whilst feeling mine get ignored all the damn time.
* Not feeling I could spare time/energy to try meeting up with acquaintances from another circle, though I very much enjoy their company online.
* The screaming among supremacists and other people who scare me seems even more unapologetically hateful this week.
* There were two occasions this week for which I’d been looking forward to wearing the chai necklace I’m pretty sure I left tucked in the camera bag I chose at the last minute not to bring along.
Good:
* Wedding was terrific!
* As has been meals and drinks with the friends I have seen.
* And sending postcards to friends elsewhere.
* Friend coincidentally getting on the subway car that I was riding in the wrong direction on my way to business meeting.
* 7×20 featuring my work all this week
* New York City is spectacular.
* Conversations with my sweetie, as well as silently watching him sketch plans for the shop.
* It really is rewarding seeing art up close from different angles. Especially the placemats/runners in Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party.
With warm wishes to all y’all.
Mmmmmmm all the superpowers of Serene Green <3 <3 <3