What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Friday Chicken #286: fred astaire in a helmet
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
What worked?
Attentiveness to clues…
Sometimes it is ridiculous how many times something needs to hit me over the head before I pay attention to it.
I went for a walk in the park with Richard and he went on this long crazy tangent about Wappen, which are kind of like a coat of arms or a shield. He talked about it for so long that I finally thought, okay, this has to be a clue.
Then Max mentioned the word pageantry, along with an image, out of nowhere, of… more Wappen.
And then I ran into a design problem that was also an organizational problem. Solved it. With Wappen.
Lots of these moments over the course of this week. Something would come up in a number of different contexts, and then I would need that very thing, which I never would have thought of, and I’d remember it because it had just shown up.
Conducting.
Hit the ground. Close eyes. Wait ten minutes.
Things are better.
Rally is the place where I remember to do this.
Next time I might…
Remember Day 2.
It’s kind of like Day 4.
It is that point in the middle where it starts to feel like everything is going wrong.
It’s just the middle.
This is what happens in the middle. It is because things are changing.
A wise thing a dance teacher said this week.
“It is just not worth it to be afraid of people.”
That was Jon, again.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Extreme low energy. A breath for letting go of things that need to be let go of.
- Websites were down on and off all week. Hackers, blah. Stuff, blah. A breath for maintaining calm.
- So much W while I am trying to let go of W. A breath for how big this is, and how much support I am craving.
- Hormones taking me for a ride. A breath for everything going slower than I want it to.
- Uncovering memories. A breath for presence.
- Scary dreams and more scary dreams. A breath for release.
- Wanting a thing to be done, and it is not done yet. A breath for trusting in All Timing Is Right Timing.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- The upside to exhaustion is that I napped very many naps this week. A breath for permission.
- Svevo was here! Shabbat dinner with Agents Em Dee, Mueller and White, and then Svevo and Noah showed up too. A breath for companionship, and getting time with people I adore.
- Two hour techniques workshop with Jon, my favorite dance teacher. A breath for the pleasure that is floating.
- Dance dance dance dance dance! Country two step is getting easier. Nightclub two step is starting to be fun. Oh, and my favorite dance instructor unceremoniously kicked me and my dance partner up to the intermediate level. And then that turned out to be way easier than I’d been anticipating. A breath for play, my favorite thing.
- Words, creativity and silliness came together to solve a big scary thing for me this week. I have a Blodgett and I am going to meet it! A breath for magic, and a new commitment to reversing an old pattern of self-neglect.
- The best clues! Like when I thought, “Okay, I need a clue about the Blodgett”, and then Agent White drove us right past a place I have never seen or heard of, called Blodgett Dental. Or when a dance instructor suddenly, completely out of the blue, asked me a direct question about my secret non-dance-related wish that no one knows about. A breath for joyful laughter.
- I am totally quitting W! And a bunch of other things that don’t begin with W. And I am doing this by becoming allergic to W, so that it doesn’t even occur to me to do it. Also, so much Bell Time is freed up by not W-ing. A breath for new beginnings and for possibility.
- This week is Rally (Rally!), and Rally is solving lots of things for me. Haha, solving is not even the word. Ten minutes into Rally, and I had a Big Vision about the Playground. Half an hour into Rally and I had an epiphany that made me giggle for about the rest of the evening. I love Rally. A breath for trusting the rabbit holes.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was Operation This Is The Last Hat, and I finished it! It took so much less time than I’d been expecting too. Amazing.
WHAM! BOOM!
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
I had some fire snake superpowers this week…
And I had the superpower of Knowing What Needs To Be Eliminated.
I am the Proprietress of a magical ballroom, and I am not worrying about that either.
Superpowers I want.
Sprprised By Focus and also: Oh I’m Actually Good At Receiving.
Salve.
The salve of good at receiving. Or, as I like to call it, Generously Receiving.
This salve eases the process of letting in good. In a way, it works like a force field strengthener. It only lets in qualities that you want, in amounts that feel safe and comfortable.
And suddenly receiving feels uncomplicated, sweet, simple. It might be my favorite salve right now.
If you are not a salve person (today or in general), you can have this in tea form, pill form, as a bath, 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 via dance class:
Epic Foxtrot Collisions.
It’s a klezmer band, and their new album, Put Your Helmet On, is a smashing success. You’d never guess, but it is actually just one guy…
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
No announcement today! I thought I would be able to share the announcement with you today. Soon, soon.
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. Almost three hundred weeks of this 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.
Wish #236: a different kind of letting go
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
At the very least, useful noticings about my relationship with wanting. It all counts.
♡
What do I want?
It has to do with letting go.
A letting go of something specific.
I am letting something go. I am in the process of letting go. I am wishing for help in letting go.
What do I want?
I want to rename the thing I am letting go of, because the thing itself is not as important as the letting go.
And because I think that will make it easier, for now, to write about.
For now, let’s call it W.
What do I want?
I honestly cannot imagine a world without W.
I was raised by people who W. I live with people who W.
There is unconscious W happening around me all the time, and even if I stop W, there will still be plenty of W.
That’s because it exists in every part of my life, it seems. In this hugely pervasive way, even more so than I’d realized when I decided it was time to let it go.
I have W that comes from the surrounding culture, lineage W, family W.
So I need to find out what it is like to be a W-less person in a W-full world.
What do I want?
To remember that I can do this.
After all, I already live outside of [broader culture], and it works.
I don’t speak, and living quietly doesn’t hinder me even though I spend my days in a world of talkers.
I stopped consuming sugar — 14 years this February! — and I am able to live in a world where sugar is everywhere.
I can do this.
It is just going to take practice. Practice, patience, permission, legitimacy.
What do I want?
I want to find the ways I already know about Not-W.
What is the opposite of W? Alon asked me that this week, and it blew my mind because I didn’t know. I am so steeped in W that I can’t imagine what it is like to not be in it, surrounded by it, believing in it.
And yet, there has to be a part of me who can not-W. A part of me who has let go of W.
What do I want?
I want to find people who have also chosen to live without W.
Like my wonderful uncle Svevo.
I can’t think of anyone else, so I am going to have to be a pioneer here.
What do I want?
I want to play on multiple levels at the same time, the thing I am always talking about:
Physical IRL changes. Energy. Emotions. Thoughts. Intention.
To give myself time.
To fill up on my thank-you heart…
What do I want?
To be patient with the process of letting go of W.
I have spent thirty seven years breathing W, and so this is new. It is going to take some time, and that’s okay.
I want to remember that noticing W is a win. Even though right now it seems like holy shit do I do anything aside from W?
The more I notice, the better.
Without blame, without judgment, without criticism and without W.
Or if those things show up, to remember that they are part of what is leaving as I learn to let go.
And: to give myself a thousand billion trillion sparklepoints, because this is hard.
What do I want?
To rename the mission so it is about what I want instead of about what I don’t want.
To have fun with this, even though it’s hard.
To find the best costumes.
To skip stones.
Where/how do I want to start?
Putting it here. Writing out my wish and what I know about it always helps.
Using the Floop and a playdate.
Trusting that this is the exact right thing to be taking on in the new year.
Anything else coming up?
There are sources of support for this that I don’t know about yet.
Keep paying attention, Havi Bell.
What are the qualities of my wish?
Calm. Steadiness. Peacefulness. Trust. Composure. Delight. Play. Readiness.
And the superpower of opening up space for what I want, and all the superpowers of fire snakes.
What would help me move forward on this? How am I going to play?
Interviewing slightly-future-me who has already made progress on this.
Asking her for advice.
Listing all the ways W currently shows up in my life, so that I can be extra-aware in those situations/interactions.
This week is Rally (Rally!), so I can find clues and treasure there.
Drawing a crown and a heart on my palm. Thinking: Crown. Heart.
What is my clue?
I am a fish.
Anything else?
The upcoming Rallies are G and H.
What else do I want?
Seeds planted without explanation, a mix of secret agent code and silent retreat dreams. Things I’m working on, or might be, someday…
- May Peacefulness Prevail!
- Announcements.
- Everything is getting easier.
- Miracles everywhere.
- Regular gigs at the ballroom, which is also the Spiegelsaal.
- 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 is money for this.
- Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
- Hawaii.
- I am fearless and confident, and I do the brave things and give myself sparklepoints, and it is not even a big deal that I did the brave things but I still get sparklepoints, yay.
This week’s ops?
Finishing the almost-done Last Hat. Operation KNOWINGS.
I’m playing with…
“How is this useful?”
Attenzione! AGENTS.
I am deep in an undercover mission to get better at Gracefully Accepting Thanks. Or: Glowing Receptivity and Being Receptive to Glow.
This mission also resolves a question we get from people a lot, which is “I really, really want to thank you, except I’m not going to buy products and I can’t come to a Rally.” And it is also related to Operation Coming Out Of All The Closets, so I can share some experiences from Then where past-me thought her best survival strategy was not-sharing-how-hard-things-are.
If you would like to support my mission by sharing sweetness and appreciation for any aspect of my work, I would love that. You can do it with the magic of words, through the comments, or add something to Barrington’s Discretionary fund. (Explanation!)
And if the way you are glowing appreciation is quietly in your heart, I like that too. It all counts. ♡
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka a hat that is a door…
My wish had to do with change, and specifically about change towards [SHARING], [COMMUNITY], and [SUSTENANCE]. I am really really glad I wrote it.
This helped me write the HAT, which is very close to done, and it also helped me get really clear on what I want and what I don’t want.
Given how tremendously stuck this has felt over the past several months, big huge astonishing progress!!
Thank you, writing. Thank you, me who asked.
Keep me company?
Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, visions, personal ads. Small or large. In any form you like, there’s no one 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.
Let’s throw some things in the pot! And, as always, Amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.
xox
Friday Chicken #285: how will we know the wisdom that comes from bed
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
What worked?
Talking to Incoming Me.
Incoming me said:
How will we know what the wisdom is that comes from bed if we don’t go to bed?
She was right. I went to bed. It was the correct move.
Having a beacon.
I was having trouble writing something that needed to be brief, clear and infused with love.
Then I remembered that I have already written something like that with the comment zen page.
I kept the page open while I worked, and whenever I got stuck I visited.
Oh yeah, here it is: steady, peaceful, warm, sweet communication. I can do this.
This page was my beacon, and I let it show me what could be.
Finding clues in the Chinese Zodiac.
You know how much I like finding clues. I do. So much.
They are everywhere, in a Dick Tracy lunchbox too. So many that I trip over them.
So this week, I let being a Fire Snake be my clue.
I encountered a lot of things that I don’t like, and some other bits I don’t identify with and wish I did.
What if I had the superpowers of a fire snake? That was how I approached this week.
Next time I might…
Avoid January. Or transform it.
This is related to the Holy Days of Havi Bell.
And, in the meantime, I just want to be able to give myself so much permission and legitimacy.
A wise thing a dance teacher said this week.
Student in class: “I’m afraid of falling on my face and looking stupid.”
Jon: “That’s called a styling. If you fall on your face, use it. Work it. Act like that was what you meant to do, that is your take on this move, and you are rocking it. Who knows, you may have just invented a cool move. The Face Fall. You’ll end up teaching it some day.”
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- I am giving certain things up this year. Concepts. This is harder than I thought it would be. A breath for letting go of things that need to be let go of.
- So exhausted from last week’s travels to The Mitten. Sleeping through the afternoons and missing out (perception! monster-perception!) on the things that need doing. A breath for this deep need of replenishment and recovery.
- Oh man, I find this time of year to be so incredibly annoying. Our whole culture is set up to pretty much guarantee that we will feel bad about not being “done” and “getting done”. This whole push to create and do and change at a time of year when there is no energy for making that happen. A breath for how much I need to separate from the outside world in order to trust my own creative cycles.
- Big LFPs (Ludicrous Fear Popcorns) about so many things. A breath for that.
- The Agent from the other Agency is going through a hard time and I cannot help and I wish I could. A breath for presence with someone else’s process.
- I am ready to be done with many, many things, and I am exactly at that point where I can see them very clearly. A breath for reaching an edge. It’s powerful, and it is a pain.
- Remember how two weeks ago I had problems with door handles? This week it was me and skinned knees. Not metaphorical ones. Literal ones, over and over again. I am all scraped up and everything hurts. A breath for desiring groundedness and soothing salves.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- Wockawocks! I replaced the word problem with wockawock. I also replaced the word bonus with wockawock. I used wockawock as secret agent code for all kinds of words. Wockawocks made everything easier. A breath for creative play and for permission.
- I wrote the thing that I have been Not-Ready-To-Write for the past four months. Well, one of the things. It was big. A breath for movement, glorious movement. And ten billion sparklepoints for me!
- Long luxurious naps that took me (as opposed to me taking them). A breath for the pleasurable aspects of the recovery process.
- Very much delicious food. Richard’s rye bread, fresh from the oven. Brunch at Doug Fir. The exact right pot of tea. A breath for pleasure and the quality of Sustenance.
- I had a wonderful rendezvous with my mentor, and I can feel the ground shifting, in a good way. A breath for being known.
- Dancer me was the happiest this week. So much dancing. Foxtrot. Nightclub two step. Country two step. Hustle. And of course west coast swing. I seriously might be in love with three count hustle. I dream in it now. A breath for movement solving everything, for me.
- I MADE A GIANT PROGRESS! A breath for movement in other forms as well.
- Everything is and is going to be okay. It just is. There were so many small miracles this week, and I know what is true, when I get quiet enough to remember. A breath for knowing and remembering.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was the Remember Ship and the Compass of Knowings. Big big big progress, super happy about it, even as the monsters are yelling doom-doom-doom about how it isn’t done yet.
WHAM! BOOM!
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
The power of just because I am used to worrying as a response to [x] does not mean that this has to be my reaction right now.
Also I am the PROPRIETRESS of a magical ballroom, and I am not worrying about that either.
Superpowers I want.
More of the above.
And also: The power of so much trust it is ridiculous.
Salve.
The salve of so much trust it is ridiculous..
As my uncle Svevo says, the ROI on worry is traditionally extremely low. When this salve comes in contact with your skin, your whole body knows that. You fill up on this KNOWING, that you are held, that things will work out how they work out, and you will be okay, and that there are lots of things you might do (or not do) in this moment, and worrying is not one of them.
Deep steady peacefulness with this salve.
If you are not a salve person (today or in general), you can have this in tea form, pill form, as a bath, 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 via Richard:
Preemptive Cheese.
It is obscure thrash metal from Bulgaria, and it is also: just one guy…
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
Big announcement coming soon about my plans/offerings for the new year, I hope by next week. Are you on the list?
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. Almost three hundred weeks of this 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.
Wish #235: a hat that is a door
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
At the very least, useful noticings about my relationship with wanting. It all counts.
♡
What do I want?
In March it will be NINE YEARS since I started this business.
Eight since I marched into City Hall in San Francisco (not sure if marched is the correct verb, I’m pretty sure it was a fairly tentative march, at best) to make things official. Nine since the vision, which is when I started documenting my material and incorporating it into my teaching.
I’ve been so fortunate, in many ways. Especially-especially to have this remarkable community form around this work.
The people who are drawn here seem to be universally thoughtful, kind, warm, playful and accepting. The culture we have built/revealed here is exceptionally welcoming. I genuinely like everyone who plays here. That is a special and unusual thing.
My thank-you heart is full of appreciation for this.
And, along with the things that are working, I’m also very aware of the things that are not working.
What do I want?
While we enjoyed a few very successful years along the way, the last couple of years have been hard: the big expansion that was a Spectacular Flailure, the breakup with my former mentor, and a cosmically ridiculous amount of painful personal Stuff.
2013 was supposed to be my sabbatical year, and instead it was the year I worked the hardest.
I want to keep doing this work, and…
If I am going to keep doing this work, things need to change, in a big way.
What do I want?
Community. SUSTENANCE and SUSTAINABILITY.
I want to stop doing the thing I’ve done way too much of over the past few years, using the success of one or another part of the business to keep other parts of it on life support.
I want this business to become more democratic: to be held by more people which in turn will allow us to offer things for less money.
And I want to run this like an entirely different kind of organization, the kind that goes, “Okay, we have a budget and we need to make our budget for the year in order to keep providing the beautiful things we provide.”
Mainly I want to devote my time to writing and processing: here and on the Floop.
Ha, I just noticed: each of those things is about [Sharing]. Sharing things that are close to my heart, sharing the carrying of things that need to be carried, sharing in community.
What do I want?
This is so interesting.
The spy who loves me is really, really into sharing. Whenever we make a compass together, he puts [Sharing] in as one of the directions.
Once he said that if he made a thousand compasses, they would all have [Sharing] in them.
I thought at the time that over the course of a thousand compasses, it would never occur to me to add [Sharing]. Not that I am anti-[Sharing], just that it doesn’t occur to me.
The qualities I pretty much always want are things like [Safety], [Sovereignty], [Shelter], [Play]. I also love [Agency], [Delight], [Presence] and [Plenty]. And Freedom. Freedom shows up a lot too.
Over this past year I have been making friends with [Sharing], and now it is the thing I want most.
What do I want?
To remember that Nothing Is Wrong and This Is Good.
To remember that all the best parts of my business emerged from the moment where I reached a limit. I got to a point of “okay, this isn’t working for me”, and that is where beautiful changes came in. Stuff had to break in order to be rebuilt.
And sometimes it didn’t need to break. It just cleared itself out.
The point is, this moment of noticing what isn’t working is useful and important, if I remember.
Otherwise it’s easy to get down about what isn’t working and sucked into the why-like-this.
The not working is good news. The noticing of Not-Working is good news. This is the door to consciously changing how I do things around here.
What do I want?
To be willing to start over if I have to.
To be willing to relinquish any rules I have about how this has to look.
To be willing to walk away from anything, even though I don’t know what that means.
To be willing to stay and love what is, and let it change in whatever way it needs to change.
To be a bell of peacefulness. To radiate trust. To ask smart questions and skip stones.
What do I want?
A new hat. The last hat.
Maybe it is the hat that runs this thing for now into the future. Or maybe it is the hat that shows me this form is done, that leads me to try something else.
What do I want?
Ease. Miracles. Simplicity. Perfect simple solutions.
Where/how do I want to start?
Replenishing Glass of Water. RGW!
Using the Floop and a playdate.
And! I am going to wear the Aspiration of The Me Who Knows Why This Is Wonderful And Trusts That It Is Wonderful Even If She Doesn’t Know Why Yet.
Anything else coming up?
Lately I have experienced many examples of This Wasn’t As Hard/Horrible As I Was Imagining.
So what if I can assume that?
And what if I can actually imagine what it would feel like to believe this is all good news.
What are the qualities of my wish?
Sharing. Steadiness. Peacefulness. Trust. Archways. Pleasure. Play. Glow.
And the superpower of I Can See And Feel That I Am Not Alone.
What would help me move forward on this? How am I going to play?
Wearing the costume of the me who believes. Interviewing her. Finding out what the world looks like through her eyes.
Drawing a crown and a heart on my palm. Thinking: Crown. Heart.
What is my clue?
Last year Monsieur LeBlanc, the agent from the other Agency, stopped doing something that he had been doing for thirty four years.
At the time it seemed crazy, and in retrospect it is completely obvious that this was the right move.
What if my crazy idea is not crazy at all? What if following the thread is useful in and of itself? The reasons can reveal themselves later.
Anything else?
More napping. Sleep holds the answers right now. And if it doesn’t, then my rested mind will.
What else do I want?
Seeds planted without explanation, a mix of secret agent code and silent retreat dreams. Things I’m working on, or might be, someday…
- May Peacefulness Prevail!
- Announcements.
- Everything is getting easier.
- Miracles everywhere.
- Regular gigs at the ballroom, which is also the Spiegelsaal.
- 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 is money for this.
- Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
- Hawaii.
- I am fearless and confident, and I do the brave things and give myself sparklepoints, and it is not even a big deal that I did the brave things but I still get sparklepoints, yay.
This week’s ops?
The Last Hat. Operation Nest of Plentiful Rest. Operation Rewire The Swishes.
I’m playing with…
“How is this useful?”
Attenzione! AGENTS.
I am deep in an undercover mission to get better at Gracefully Accepting Thanks. Or: Glowing Receptivity and Being Receptive to Glow.
This mission also resolves a question we get from people a lot, which is “I really, really want to thank you, except I’m not going to buy products and I can’t come to a Rally.” And it is also related to Operation Coming Out Of All The Closets, so I can share some experiences from Then where past-me thought her best survival strategy was not-sharing-how-hard-things-are.
If you would like to support my mission by sharing sweetness and appreciation for any aspect of my work, I would love that. You can do it with the magic of words, through the comments, or add something to Barrington’s Discretionary fund. (Explanation!)
And if the way you are glowing appreciation is quietly in your heart, I like that too. It all counts. ♡
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka My big dumb mitten visit…
My wish had to do with having ease and support during a hard thing so that the hard thing could be not-as-hard. It worked!
My visit to freezing-cold-Michigan, while physically exhausting, went better than I could have imagined. I feel happy and relieved.
Thank you, writing. Thank you, me who asked.
Keep me company?
You are welcome to drop in with wishes, gwishes, visions, personal ads. Small or large, and in any form you like. There is no right way to do this. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We ask for what we need. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play.
Let’s throw some things in the pot! And, as always, amnesty applies. Leave a wish here any time you want.
xox
Friday Chicken #284: medium-sized miracles
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
What worked?
Gwish-scripting.
Before my visit to the doctor, I spent about ten minutes writing up a description of how it could go, and then I sent it to three friends:
I am calm, grounded and stable. All my interactions are harmonious. I am treated with warmth and respect.
All those things happened. It was good.
Companionship.
My three friends also hummed trust and shelter during my visit.
Just knowing that this was happening helped me feel better.
Clue-searching.
For the duration of my visit to the doctor, I was on high alert, receptive to finding clues.
I found them.
Words.
At the doctor’s office, I wrote TRUST on the palms of my hands, using my finger. I wrote TRUST on the walls of the office until it filled up with trust. I wrote TRUST on my forehead with this whisper-writing.
Words are amazing.
Stand-ins.
I didn’t just do these things for the visit to the doctor, I did them for all the other things.
The doctor visit is a stand-in for everything else.
Next time I might…
Do more of all of the above.
I know what works.
I just don’t always take time to do it unless it seems like This Is An Important Thing That Needs My Immediate Attention.
It makes everything so much better though that I could really do this for everything.
A wise thing a dance teacher said this week.
—-> Even better than saying “leads” and “follows” is saying, “when you’re leading,” and “when you’re following.” Leading is something you do, not something you are. Everyone in the room can be a lead, even if only half of them are leading at that moment. <----
[Applicable to so many things: I am not a ______, I am doing a _____ or practicing ________.]
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Worry. Visiting the doctor threw me for a loop and changed all my plans. A breath for coming back to the front of the V.
- Travel. So much travel. I do not like it. A breath for how absurdly, impossibly hard it can be to take a highly sensitive person and move her from point A to point B.
- My body did not like plane travel or sleeping on couches or being in the cold and snow. A breath for taking care of myself.
- Ohmygod the getting back. For the first flight we got to sit on the runway for 45 minutes. On the second leg, a baby with an exceptionally forceful ear-piercing shriek employed it to full effect for the entire THREE AND A HALF HOUR DURATION OF THE FLIGHT as well as the very long boarding and the seemingly-endless disembarkation. The flight began with a hint of a migraine. By the end I had come absolutely unglued. Once back in PDX (at approximately a million o’clock), I curled up on the carpet in fetal position and cried for a very, very long time. A breath for that.
- Missing the spy who loves me and all my other agents. A breath for craving companionship.
- People I love are unwell, uncomfortable, suffering. A breath for the this too.
- This week involved very little sleep, much staring at the ceiling during hours that should be sleeping hours, and [a word that is like sorrow] about all the undone-work. A breath for needing more rest, in all the different meanings of that sentence.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- My Mitten Visit was so much better/easier than I was expecting. A breath for now is not then.
- I got to spend two days with my brother! A breath for delight and laughter.
- Everything about this week except for the plane ride back was significantly better than I was imagining it would be. A breath for Good Surprises, a superpower I will always associate with Rudi.
- Brunch at the Fleetwood with one of my best friends from high school. A lot has changed in twenty years, but love hasn’t changed. Love has just grown. A breath for love and how it expands.
- So many different people helped me with the Mitten visit in a variety of different ways. A breath for support and treasure.
- The Agent from the Other Agency met me at the airport, let me cry on the floor, poured me into a cab, took me to a safe house, got me into a hot shower, tucked me into bed. A breath for being loved and cared for.
- DANCING! Something clicked for me this week. Or for my body. Jumped up a few levels, and suddenly I can do all these things I couldn’t do before. I can play. I can play! A breath for how thrilled and delighted I am about this, and for dancing until the dance is over.
- Everything is going to be okay. It just is. A breath for knowing and remembering.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was the Big Dumb Mitten Visit, and: SUCCESS.
WHAM! BOOM!
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
The power of This Moment Is Right.
And remembering that I am the PROPRIETRESS of a magical ballroom. This is its own set of superpowers.
Also my father gave me his favorite hat, which was the sweetest thing in the world, so now I have both the superpowers of this hat, and the superpower of receiving sweetness.
Superpowers I want.
The power of I Am Thrilled About How Things Are Working Out.
Salve.
The salve of newness.
Everything is new, renewed, slightly shinier, humming with possibility.
If you are not a salve person (today or in general), you can have this in tea form, pill form, as a bath, 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 via my mom’s medication.
The Rainbow Bridge of Love and Expectations.
And it’s just one guy…
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
Big announcement coming soon about my plans/offerings for the new year, I hope by next week. Are you on the list?
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. Almost three hundred weeks of this 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.