Friday chicken

Reflecting on both the hard and the good in the week that was…

Hello, week: we are here.

{a breath for being here when we get here}

Thank you, week!

This is the 418th week in a row and I am glad we are chickening here together!

Or “checking in”, if you prefer to enunciate.

What’s been working?

This week I learned something about how when we go into fight-flight-freeze, and the amygdala starts firing danger-danger, this keeps up for twenty minutes? I have no idea how accurate this is, and don’t particularly care, because thinking TWENTY MINUTES is useful for me.

I can get through twenty minutes.

I can alter how I experience these twenty minutes by changing how I am inside of them, and knowing the (theoretical) end point helps me approach everything differently.

Monsters might say that Everything Is Ruined because these twenty minutes affect and consequently Screw Up All The Other Minutes Forever, but actually twenty minutes is a do-able amount of time to come down from a scary moment.

I can breathe and do TRE tremoring, or wrap up in blankets. Or set a timer. Twenty Minutes.

Thinking about twenty minutes helped me feel a bit less like helpless and maybe also a bit more more like superman: sure, we just had a surprise-kryptonite encounter, but we’re only going to be out for this long, and we are getting better at this process.

I might try…

Five minutes of dance practice.

Sometimes I do that thing of oh well I don’t practice because I don’t have an hour. But one song is enough. One song changes things. Back to 5MX!

Naming the days.

I name each day the night before and I love how names change things and also how they become incantations.

This was the week of let’s channel something new and these were the days.

Love the doors. Surprise treasure everywhere. Clarity lands. Incoming. Treasure invites treasure. Real sanctuary. Glamorous AND wild.

Upcoming biopic if it were based on this week…

Mysterious Puddles On The Floor And I’m Okay

If you feel drawn to comment on aspects of my week, I will take love, hearts, breaths, pebbles — I do not need advice or cheering up, though presence and sweetness are always welcome

8 breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.

  1. The toxic cesspool that is the internet (not here), and how gross it gets and how fast, and how I almost always regret looking. Breathing for spaciousness and newness.
  2. The way I experience my world constricting due to creeps. So many streets I won’t walk down because of [scary incident], and then a man came out of an alley near my house and very deliberately crossed to block my path while pulling off his shirt. I think he was just not okay in a lot of ways, and I got away and I get a hundred thousand points retroactively every day forever for practicing Safety First in that moment. But now when I come to Portland and leave my house, I only turn right and not left because I don’t want to be in the part of the neighborhood that comes after left. Do you see? That is the aftermath of the twenty minutes, and it lasts for however long it lasts. A breath.
  3. [Other things I don’t want to talk about] Another breath.
  4. The beautiful faraway cowboy and I went to Portland and he had no time for me and there is nothing even slightly surprising about the fact that this happened, but somehow I forgot what he is like in Portland, and then felt upset with myself for being in this state of being surprised about something unsurprising, and this is the theme of my life since forever. A breath.
  5. Hahaha all the (illusory) plans falling through. As is the nature of plans. Let’s breathe for the new and better (and equally illusory but more fun) plans I don’t know about yet but believe in.
  6. There are missions and ops that need to happen to bring certain forms of Es and Ease, and they are going to take as long as they are going to take, and I am having trouble getting used to this. Also everything is tetris again in the form of “you have to move X and Y to make space for Z but Z is arriving faster than anything can be rearranged. And in the meantime, the mess and noise is putting me in a murderous state of mind that shows me there are boundaries that need attention. And of course the protocol of Extreme Self-Care would help. A breath for me and my beautiful wishes and trust in right timing and laughing at the illusion of wrong-ness.
  7. The ceiling in my secret studio sanctuary is leaking and my favorite armchair is soaking wet, and it does not feel like a sanctuary or like a studio or like a secret. Though it does at least solve the mystery of From Whence This Puddle. A breath for speedy, easy, inexpensive solutions, may they reveal themselves soon.
  8. Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. May peacefulness prevail. 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.

  1. My balance has gotten so good thanks to latest panther training methods. Staying on the balance board for up to thirty minutes. Adding a minute a day. Feeling it in dance — I have so much more control, and better recovery. A breath of gratitude for how good it feels to play.
  2. Fulfilled a big life wish with an elaborate photo shoot that involved dancing in the streets and feeling alternately like a Bond girl, a panther, a model, a bird in a flock at sunset, and an ethereal river nymph queen. A breath.
  3. I had a moment of sad about missing the black and white ball — I didn’t buy a ticket and it sold out, but then my friend’s date canceled last minute and he said “hey are you in town and do you have a black dress?”, and miraculously I was and I did. A breath for the sheer magic of it all, waltzing in the park at sunset, with beautifully dressed friends, indescribable joy. And I got to dance to “let’s Marvin Gaye and get it on” with Marjorie, my forever-crush, who was stunning in her white dress, both of us smiling our faces off, heaven.
  4. Big wild intense sweetness with the beautiful faraway cowboy and a last night together before he took off on his motorcycle, headed to maybe-Wyoming without me. A breath for slowly getting better at goodbyes.
  5. Ever since going on chyrsalis, I have Adrianna’s superpower, the one I have been studying and asking for over and over for what feels like years now, the power of Ah I Have Forgotten How To Worry. And while some parts of this can be frustrating (for example, it turns out all that worry was actually hiding truckloads of resentment and hurt, and now I have to learn about that), all in all I would give a rating of 10/10 to not worrying. It is so marvelously liberating and frees up so much energy for other things, and it makes it easier to see and welcome miracles of all sizes. A breath of thankfulness.
  6. Speaking of things I have finally learned how to do, throwing myself a parade. Self-appreciation is a radical act, and if you need proof of that, try it and see how hard it is to stay present with it! A breath for a hundred thousand retroactive parades. Tiny quiet mouse parades!
  7. Thankfulness. Treasure in the form of the best coincidences, seeing all my favorite people, beach day, detours, adventures, and actual photographic evidence of the fact that my body has figured out what Esther calls “rib anchors” without having to remind myself, aka the superpower of new habits landing in my body. 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.

Superpowers I had this week…

Last week I asked for the powers of powers of opening the doors that need opening and closing the ones that need closing, and being unhesitatingly clear about which is which. Beautiful wishes, and all received.

Powers I want.

More of the same please and also the superpower of Welcoming The Muse.

I am 99% sure that the key to this (for me) is making peace and quiet a priority in my life, which means I also need the superpower of that, so really this is about Crown On, like everything else, so that I can be so clear and grounded in my commitment to giving myself what I need, to the best of my ability in a given moment.

And, along with that, the superpower of deep intense loving self-forgiveness for all the times I can’t do this, or haven’t been able to in the past.

The Salve of Inviting In What Needs To Come In.

These invisible salves are distributed here by way of internet magic. Help yourself! Take it in a bath, as tea, a cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.

This salve is about welcoming, and welcoming is about knowing that you belong. That’s how you welcome things, by welcoming yourself, or making new safe space for you. This is one of those things that falls into the category of “it’s simple but that doesn’t mean it’s easy”, and luckily this salve brings the ease.

Side effects include recognizing what is not important, laughing about things that are ridiculous, and kissing the palms of your hands with wonder and reverence and toddler-like-joy at “look, my hands!”

Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!

My brother and I make up bands, which are all just one guy. The Meme Beach House is the venue.

just-one-guy

This week’s band:

From Whence This Puddle

Their latest album is Murder Versus Cork, and this band is just one guy.

Photo taken just for us in Lubbock, TX by Jesse — thank you!

Announcement time….

The fantastic monster manual is still available in the place that used to be the the shop, and it is enormously useful if you would like to practice being Way Less Impressed with the horrible things that internal critical voices say!

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.

Shabbat shalom.

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!

The Fluent Self