It is Friday Saturday and we are here.
{a breath for being here when we get here.}
Thank you, week.
This is the 369th week in a row that we are chickening here together. Pretty great.
What worked this week?
No more deciding!
I’ve stopped using the word DECIDE as a verb, and completed the transition to “I heard and received my decision” instead of “I decided X”.
This reminds me of what Bryan says about yoga: You don’t need to force your body to go anywhere or do anything, you just honor the decisions that are already being made.
I believe in this, I feel the truth of it in the steadiest place of my heart, and yet my language and actions don’t reflect it.
This week I rephrased, even in my head.
I didn’t decide to give myself twenty luxurious minutes in bed in the morning to just languidly stretch and yawn while listening to music. I received the intel from my body that this was necessary, I heard the decision.
I didn’t decide that I don’t have a yes to Kentucky with my lover, even though I feel joyful when I imagine disappearing with the beautiful boy into the spectacular autumn leaves for a couple months.
I heard and received that right now what I want is to do the simplest, easiest thing which is to stay here (with some upgrades), and my whole body relaxed, and then a Perfect Simple Solution just emerged from that.
Next time I might…
Reduce input, and then reduce it even more. NO INPUT!
And by “no input” I mean, I looked something up online because I wanted to know about it, and at the bottom of the page was a promotional link for another article, with the most triggering title, and I wish I hadn’t seen it because my mind has already internalized an image of this horrific thing, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Here’s to this particular form of LESS.
And the title of my upcoming Biopic if it were based on this week…
For The First Time In My Life I Can Feel My Feet! All The Time! The Havi Brooks Story.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Oh, I cried on the bus, which is always awesome. This may also have happened a few different times. A breath for big feelings.
- A number of small incidents of unwanted touching. Not the scary kind, thank god. And I handled it well. But the kind that, while not intended to cause harm, trick my body into thinking I’m dealing with a predator, and then panicked-me finds it difficult to retrieve (or remember the existence of) my buffer phrases and protocols. A man touched my hair on the dance floor while saying he liked my haircut, possibly because he mistakenly thought I am deaf and that I couldn’t understand what he was saying? I don’t care. NO! Another man, trying to learn a hip catch move and probably not ready for an intermediate class, got my butt instead. NO! I get it, leading is hard, and still: NO! Similar thing in the waltz lesson. NO! Guy next to me on the bus who poked me in the ribs to get my attention. NO! Let’s all say it together, Arrested-Development-style: No touching. These people all need to read this book, which I sincerely wish existed so I could hand out copies of it. And possibly also this facetious guide to female body language, though I am not sure they’d get it. A breath for deep roots, radiantly powerful boundaries and for trusting my strong clear no, and for No Touching.
- Remember when the initials AF could have meant anything, and it was a grand adventure? That is a fantastic post with useful self-fluency tools, everyone go re-read it! Anyway, I’m pretty sure right now, AF is all about Adrenal Fatigue. My lover is AF AF, and I am minorly AF-ing, and there’s big healing to be done. A breath for all the superpowers of Taking Exquisite Care of Myself.
- Speaking of people not taking care of themselves, my lover is in a very bad way, and I have been putting up with all kinds of troublesome things (the least of which being that while we currently live in the same city, we only were able to see each other once this week, because his work crises take precedence over food, sleep and love) as just a fact of life because he’s a sovereign being and an adult, and it’s his life and body to ruin if he wants to. Except if I were oh, let’s say a goat herder, raising a baby goat, I wouldn’t agree to this situation, because my sweet, precious tiny goat is worthy and deserving of healthy caretakers. So here’s a mystery: why is it that I don’t believe I am worthy and deserving of people in my life who respect their health and the bodies which house them, and respect me through how they take care of themselves. Clarification #1: I am not about to raise a goat. Clarification #2: I am not advocating telling people what they can eat or how to live, that’s controlling and potentially abusive. Okay, I could keep writing clarifications all day so let’s give my well-meaning monsters a safe room where they can worry about people misunderstanding what I mean, and let’s take a breath. A breath for change, and for glowing sweetness, compassion, understanding and love for him while not neglecting, sacrificing or forgetting about my own needs.
- Oh, and speaking of breathing: Portland air quality is now officially in the “unhealthy for sensitive groups” range, thanks to all the wildfires. This is rough on baby goats and older people and asthmatics and the homeless, and also on HSPs like me. Portland Breathing Situation: fake band of the week? A breath of compassionate for everyone here and especially for everyone in range of the fires, may there be safety (and air) for all who need.
- This comedy sketch accurately sums up for me what Operation True Yes feels like, obviously without an impending wedding or needing to acquire flowers, just the feeling of learning about yes in this intense Shmita year. A breath for deep trust, and for loving my way into true yes.
- Have you been following the HUMANS OF NEW YORK trip to Pakistan, and the story of Syeda Ghulam Fatima who rescues people in bonded labour and her organization? All week I have been thinking about this and other distressing, painful, awful situations in the world, and how the hospital refused to treat her after she was shot (oh, politics and power), and how important it is for us to know about things we don’t know about, and how much it hurts to know these things, and the desire to help and the desire to find the right ways, and the desire to always hold the full truth of knowing that places and people are complicated, and what we hear of them from afar is only one thread in a tapestry. A breath for compassionate witnessing and for all the scattered particles of light.
- 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. May I choose to trust-more love-more release-more receive-more.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- This was a beautiful week, full of beautiful things. I feel more grounded, present, stable, at ease in my body and in my life than I had ever imagined possible. A breath of deep appreciation and gratitude
- I handled all the hard things in new ways! I gave the guy at the dance a very firm, clear lesson in anatomy, all without speaking. I was able to dance with someone else in a way that prevented him from doing the thing I didn’t like, without giving up my frame or sacrificing the grace of the dance. I was gracious and firm and I held my ground without tensing, and all of this is new. A breath for sovereignty, new patterns and wearing my crown.
- I held a steady, clear, honest conversation with my lover about all the things that are not okay, and it was easy and full of affection. A breath for Radical Sovereignty, and for how sweet it is to be in a connection with someone who has the self-fluency skill of Not Making Shit About Them, and the ability to both listen and respond from love. And a breath of thank you, because life is so much easier when it’s not just me bringing that to the table.
- My lover and I went dancing and smiled our faces off, then fell asleep in a tangle of sweetness. A breath for how we are just hot sweet magic.
- A switch flipped in my mind this week, and I am no longer concerned about either of the situations I was hugely upset-flustered-anxious-shaken-destroyed about last week! The first of these now just seems like the treasure of Redirection: I get to do something new. As for the other, I’m fine. However much time I get to enjoy [thing I don’t want to end] is treasure, and if/when it ends for [reasons], I will be okay. This switch-flipping also changed the energy dynamic in everything else, and I feel easy and peaceful, and slightly astonished. I’ll take it! A breath of heart-joy for this glorious steadiness.
- The above wonderful thing is related to all the TRE I have been doing, which is also responsible for how I am sleeping like a baby puppy, and, best of all, I CAN FEEL MY FEET. All the time. Normally when I get tired, stressed, or triggered in any way, I disassociate and lose my ability to feel the lower half of my body, unless parts of it are in pain and then all I feel is pain. This also means that while dancing I lose my axis or footing a lot. I can always fix it quickly because my body has years of yoga, shiva spirals and other balance training. But now I’m not losing my ground to begin with, because I can feel my body all the time. A breath for this beautiful miracle.
- DANCE! Oh! I had the most wonderful time at Waltz Brunch. Then Flash Waltz in the rose garden, one of the most magical things I have experienced. I led three waltzes! I went west coast swing dancing and didn’t go into my stuff. I practiced at home and laughed when I made mistakes. Ohmygod. A breath for all this joy, and for palpable progress.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. Peaches and plums. Warm smiles. Overflowing with gratitude and appreciation, for everything in my life, and for all the magic beans I have been given. Trust. Pleasure. Everything is okay. Nothing is wrong, even when I think it is. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. Thankful for this grand adventure. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
Wham booms, wisdom, superpowers, salve and FBOTW!
Operations completed. Wham boom!
Operation Trust Release Ease is the best thing ever. Still looking into Operations Alternative Shed and Calm Island. Decisions were received. I now award myself a hundred billion sparklepoints. Wham Boom.
Superpowers I had this week…
For the last three weeks I have been asking for the superpowers of Beautifully Anchored, Deeply Trusting, and, of course, I am a Powerful Slinky Very Relaxed Panther.
And they must have arrived (or were always here and have now been revealed) because I had them!
Powers I want.
More of the same, please. And the power of thinking of my body as precious expensive cargo that I treat with magnificent attentiveness and wonderful steadiness.
The Salve of RGW.
RGW is something Marisa and I always say, it stands for Replenishing Glass of Water, which sounds very simple, and yet it is the secret cure for so many things.
The salve of RGW holds all the superpowers of intention, pauses and slowness, all the sweet red lights, shifting perspective, starting new, clearing out, flushing away, transporting, glowing, easing and releasing.
As soon as it touches your skin, you suddenly remember that you want to take care of yourself. Not out of guilt or regret; out of peacefulness. This salve mends broken connections, and helps with exits and with new beginnings.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is from Chloe, it’s called Squashing Myself Needlessly. Their latest album is Out Of My Way. They play trombone covers of blues songs, and apparently it’s just one guy.
And the photo was taken in Lubbock, TX by Jesse! Thank you!
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 don’t give advice.
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!
p.s. If you want to express appreciation and/or go deeper into Self-Fluency…
Come practice Agency and be a secret agent (ha, agency pun!) of self-fluency, and support this blog and Shmita.
The marvelous Monster Manual gives you the sneaky ways I use to get my self-criticism to take a nap or join the circus or become my ally, so I can stay calm and take care of myself. - If you’d just like to express appreciation for concepts and qualities that live here, you can always contribute to Barrington’s Discretionary. (Explanation!)
- And of course, love and support in the form of smiles, hearts, warmth, sharing posts, practicing what we do here: any and all of that is always appreciated!
A deep breath of love from my thank-you heart for everyone who reads. ❦
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Oops, thank you, I forgot to chicken on Thursday when I usually and this is a reminder! A breath for being here when we are here…
Ah, hello, sweet Chicken.
Hard: feeling a lot of performance anxiety about an unfamiliar situation (that turned out to be just fine, yay!).
Good: finding an elegant solution to my daughter’s scheduling dilemma.
What worked? Checking in with my body frequently, giving it food, water, protein.
Next time I might… [silent retreat]
I will now help myself, very gratefully, to some of that salve! Mmmmm, when it interacts with my body chemistry, it smells lemony. Lovely.
Samedi shalom!
What worked: Staying home. Going home. Taking photos.
Next time? Carve the pineapple sooner. Concede that I’m too tired for an experiment as soon as I realize it, as opposed to the ditherama that included taking a box in and out of the freezer three times.
Hard:
* Negotiations: necessary and sometimes fruitful, but time-consuming and sometimes bloody exhausting.
* Social + physical activities vs. logistics
* Domestic stuff, too
* Phone spam. Yarrrrrrgh.
* Hello, old tightrope and tug-of-war rope: it would be counterproductive to push myself so hard that I get sick, and there’s the part of me that will worry myself sick if I don’t solve [v] by [w]. Somewhere in this there is a punchline about being high-strung yet grounded…
Good:
* Being reminded tonight of how freaking incredible it is that poems I put on my blog get read by friends in Massachusetts and Madrid. What absolutely awesome times we live in.
* My best day of handicapping this year (and without having spent too much time on it): every horse I picked in the first five races finished third or better, including 2nd for Cerebral and 1st for Joy.
* I love it when horses with happy names win. 🙂
* Getting home in time to watch part of Roger Federer’s match yesterday.
* Baked mushrooms and summer squash in puff pastry today. My sweetie giving me a thumbs up.
* I do enjoy my work. It’s rewarding to make things better, and lagniappe when someone with high standards tells me I’m a genius. 🙂
Warm wishes to all y’all.
happy saturday and cluck, here we are. This week had so much week in it, good heavens!
what worked this week: barre classes! excellent well tending, seems to be getting easier to hit tht goal. returning to my Ops, again and again, and staying in alignmet with what they are.
the sucks, mostly so much hectic:
-getting horribly harassed by punk kid while driving. a breath for fight-or-flight and lots of compassion for mysefl in the panic and anger that followed.
-the AC broke and i had to get it fixed = time away from work
-unexpected and imo unnecessary meetings at the grade school = time away from work
-oy the money, the cards, the ways things do not get paid down in time for othr things, oh the secretiveness of it, a breath
-a breath and help please for the really bad night with my youngst kid and husband and many breaths for peace and support and kindness
-i gave up a lot of things in to the Lughnasadh fires, and when i do/engage them again, things feel icky. a breath for this, and for the difficulty in letting go
but so much sparkle:
-many things are landing, all at once
-progress on Ops
-movement! i am dancing! i went to barre 3x this week, and loved it. i am ready to level up in this endeavor
-listenign to desire
-being in alignment with my value, with my goals
-today i finished somethign that has been hanging over me for months and months, a breath for that
-the joys of process, a breath for stopping to enjoy the sweet things in life.
It is Saturday and I am back in Portland! Sitting in front of the airport surrounded by luggage and covered by a sleeping toddler. Ah, the magic of phones.
The Hard:
– I spent this last week at a family reunion in Onekama, Michigan.
– And the anxiety was spectacular. It was the anxiety Olympics, and the competition was fierce and anxious and melodramatic and cranky. And despite the *one* goal of my trip being to not compete, I think I may have got the silver.
– I had a complete Corny Fast Suitcase relapse and couldn’t get out of bed for three days. This combined with the crazy diet I’m on meant I had to *talk* about Casual Frenzy Stuff and everyone had a theory and everyone’s theory contained a version of “this is fake” and for some reason I had to hear all these theories while I was too tired to even keep my eyes focused, much less say “go away.”
– Not that I would have said “go away” because I lost any sense of self/boundaries/wants in favor of morphing into some kind of anxiety-and-crankiness elemental.
– And today I’ve been on the road since 5am this time without anything close to adequate food and I want someone to come get me and sweep me home and into bed but with food first except I have to carry the bags and the toddler and there’s no food at our house and it’s midnight. and it’s going to be a long while before I’m home.
– Someone is smoking ten feet from me and my asthmatic baby and I’m stuck here another forty or more minutes because my husband forgot to bring money when he went for the car so he has to come back and start all over again.
– Silent Retreat
– The reasons for this trip are that five people in this part of my family died in the last three years and my great-grandfather’s cottage is being sold and probably torn down and so this was kind of assembling the band of survivors and it felt scraggly and uncertain and there was a lot of crying.
The Good:
– I just spent a week at a family reunion in Onekama, MI.
– That’s the farthest east I’ve ever been!
– We stayed at my great-grandfather’s cottage, which is literally 50 feet from Lake Michigan and about 200 feet from this little lake. Surrounded by trees! We heard porcupine sex and saw bats and the crickets and the birds were like a daily symphony. Not to mention the waves, and hearing them and watching them.
– I got to go on a crazy adventurous sailboat ride that made me so happy I couldn’t stop grinning or join the conversation even when it was about Spanish linguistics. Like flying and riding an elephant at the same time, but on WATER!
– Also went paddle boarding and kayaking and swimming and the wee little who thinks water is her native element got to be in it all the days I was able to get out of bed.
– My brother and his wife are wonderful, and it was fabulous spending time with them.
– My aunt, cousin, and his girlfriend are also great.
– Everyone spent hours entertaining (and enjoying) the wee one, and she was so happy and so were they.
– As always when I travel, despite misery, my world was expanded. I have a lot to chew on going forward.
– I think I made some good progress with the mission of the granite grandfathers. We’ll see how it lands this next week. Somewhat related: I connected to a relative I’ve never really considered before, despite not meeting her. It meant a lot to me.
– We had the most amazing campfire, which was a clue and a healing and very fun.
Farthest east I’ve been *in the USA*
Other than airports in New York and Miami, which I don’t believe count.
Anxiety Olympics. True for my family also. And someone there who is also very gifted in the sub-discipline pessimism. And I know the feeling of suddenly competing even though I don’t want to, weird kind of team spirit.
<3 for the hard and for the good. I love Lake Michigan so much. And my family also competes in the Anxiety Olympics, it's kind of amazing to me how hard it is to abstain even when I'm convinced myself that I'm not participating.
Cluck cluck cluck
The hard:
– being ill. Not properly ill, just ill enough to feel rubbish
– that thing where I can no longer cope with sound and a band that I would otherwise love makes me feel like someone is putting my brain through a sieve
– I am possibly too old to sleep on a roll-mat on someone’s floor
The good:
– I am learning a whole lot more about what makes me ill
– pub with my lovely Guildford people
– one at least of my lovely Guildford people is following me to the ivory tower
– I appear to possess the most flattering dress in the world
Boy, did this week flow by!
The not so great:
– Vacation at my parent’s house is really no vacation at all. I long for a financial situation where we can travel somewhere far from either side of the family.
– Rain, rain, rain… Making us stay inside and hence spend too much time with family than I was comfortable. My dad cannot grasp the concept of “peace and quiet”.
– Respecting other people’s sovereignty is difficult, especially when it means the other person goes out partying and comes home at 8. I can’t grasp how anyone over 30 still finds this meaningful. I’m trying to empathize.
– Out of my 5 vacation days, I’ve spent 2 working because I screwed something up and needed to fix it urgently. The rainy days came handy here.
– I was again dragged into too many conversations that I didn’t want to be a part of past the 5 minute mark, and being female and “nice” I just can’t avoid it and don’t know how to gracefully exit them without having a third party rescue me. My throat is sore and I’m exhausted from talking and head nodding and just paying attention.
– A misunderstanding with a person I respect who I had a difference in opinion with about a third person. We solved it and I hope it’s fine.
The good:
+ Vacation! 3 sunny days of beach time and sipping cool drinks.
+ Sleep, no alarm clock or noisy neighbors. It was a pleasure to sleep in.
+ Seeing some nice people I only see at conventions, conversations I actually want to be a part of.
+ Being present in my body and doing (or not doing) what it needs. Helped so much in situations where my mind went in overdrive.
+ Booked a week in October for my next week off after my events are complete so I can have rest and relax. The year before we moved apartments and that week was hell. This is the first year in a while that I’m not moving anywhere, I get to feel at home and just be.
The superpower I had this week: Slow Down And Breathe, Things Will Not Go To Hell If You Don’t Respond Immediately.
More of this, please!
Oh I like the idea of less input.
The Hard:
I left my office in shambles on Friday and now I have to go in and clean it before Monday.
Humid days make the house smell weird.
The Good:
My office is in shambles because I built a standing desk and don’t have to sit all day anymore.
It’s foggy and gross out so being in my office for a little bit won’t be bad.
Live music with people I love.
Sadness over my writing class ending. Strange to be so attached to my virtual classmates. Or not strange.
The house is gorgeously clean.
Less input about [thing] and it starts to fad from my mind.
<3! I feel inspired by the phrase GORGEOUSLY CLEAN.
Hello Sunday, bye-bye old week, hello new week, may it be a mostly good one for all chickeneers!
The unpleasant stuff:
– It is the second time in a row (and anyway the umpteenth time) that I came out of a weekend with my man, feeling de-engergized and thoroughly frustrated. This fatal triumph of sluggishness made me ignore cherished self-care habits.
– I made plans for next weekend that involve a decision against a decision I had received (thanks Havi, I like this idea of receiving decisions). I ended up booking a flight with an airline I dislike and googling about 7328 hotels and B&Bs and airbnb places until my head was spinning and I wasted hours I should have better spent going for a walk.
– The plan is actually to so something very nice that others would die for but I can sense stress on various levels for me. I wish I had the spontaneity to just go with the flow but I don’t and this causes all kinds of scenarios in my head.
– I heard the most horrendous story about the death of the children of a woman I vaguely know, silent retreat.
The pleasant stuff:
– Monday to Friday I was really good of taking care of myself. Extensive early bird activities: running at 6:15 when the air was still beautiful and crisp, yoga every morning that made me feel “upright”, taking the morning beauty in with my coffee.
– Fun at work and an easy going rythm.
– I surprised people with little acts of kindness and they were graciously received.
– For the first time ever I booked a holiday six months in advance. I looked at three airbnb places and booked one where my gut feeling shouted yes and I keep looking at the photos of the beautiful apartment and I picture the surroundings. I don’t know yet if I will go alone or with someone but I am happy and excited to get to spend a week in a place that I only discovered not long ago and fell in love with.
– As I am unsure what next weekend will be like I made sure I am back in the afternoon on Sunday so that there is a chance for hermit time.
– I booked a TRE session for next week.
– My brother surprised me with a beautiful and creative little souvenir of this summer.
This week I wish for inspiration. Maybe for some techniques on how to find inspiration without becoming overwhelmed. How to recognise it, where to look. Intelligent processing of the feelings around it. And patience. I follow the call when I feel it (sounds like a mixed metaphor but that’s how I experience it), but I think there is a bit before that that I do only by accident. At this point in my process, I need accurate input and I need an incredible amount of space. I’m radically open to possibility and also almost everything is not what I want. Maybe there is a way to use luck, because there are lots of ways in. Maybe waiting and wanting is enough, as long as I’m ready to move as soon as I see it. I don’t know. So, I wish for inspiration, and I wish to learn some things about it, which I can use in the future and share with others.
Ola Chickeners! SO MUCH of a week, but briefly:
The Hard:
– Wow, looks like this is the menopause
– Meanwhile, must be the week for Corny Fast Suitcase relapses, (thanks R. for that new acronym!)
– Slugs ate my garden
– Let’s just say, the title of my upcoming Biopic based on this week: ‘Everything’s Minging and I’m Really Tired: The Sarah Star story’
But, THE GOOD:
– Barry the computer genius has FIXED MY LAPTOP! I’m back online! I can read my fave blogs! I can watch BBC iPlayer! (I may even write a blogpost…)
– 4 of my Best People came round and brought lovely food and warmed my house with me
– Peltor Industrial Ear Defenders continue to Change My Life
– Wow, looks like this is the menopause
This week’s fake band made me laugh good & hard! And I WANT that Penguin book…is it too late to vote for things we’d like Havi to write?
<3<3<3
Hee! I am catching up on old posts and didn’t know I’d inspired the Fake Band of the Week for this one. Huzzah!