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 Check-in #35: “Playing chicken” edition
Because it’s Friday AGAIN. And because traditions are important. In which I cover the good stuff and the hard stuff in my week, trying for the non-preachy, non-annoying side of self-reflection.
And you get to join in if you feel like it.
Seems like just last week we were figuring out what happened in our week — oh wait, we were. That’s tradition for you. 🙂
I’m ready for a weekend nap, but there’s still a good chunk of Friday left.
Since I’ll be running around like a madwoman this week, cleaning hysterically for Passover, this may be my last nap for a while. No, scratch that. I insist on napping. There will be napping. Amid the hysteria.
The hard stuff
Cranky!
One of the unfortunate side-effects of physical pain is that my annoyance threshold is perilously low.
Not that the things that are annoying me aren’t legitimately annoying, because they are, but I’m much less equipped to take them in stride.
I can’t tell if I’m less willing to take crap from people or if there’s just more of it, but …
It’s making me a little rant-ey.
Busy!
A lot going on in my business. A lot going on in my conscious, contemplative, complicated “healing process” thingamabob. A lot going on at home.
Add to that my constant requests for my brother or my gentleman friend to help me respond to comments here on the blog, or to scroll for me when I want to read something online …
It’s just hard right now.
The good stuff
Roller Derby!
A couple of killer all-star matches against Seattle, and I didn’t even lose my voice! Though it was close.
Our B all-star team — the “Axles of Annihilation” (!) — destroyed the Rat City B-team 150 to 88. Admittedly, the Seattle team also has a terrific name: “Rain of Terror”, but it didn’t help them.
The showdown between the Rose City Rollers all-stars “Wheels of Justice” and the “Rat City All Stars” was even more tense and agonizing and wonderful.
For one thing, it was the first league-sanctioned match between the two teams ever. Seattle had been ranked 6th nationally, and Portland 12th or so — depending who you asked. The final score was 148 to 134 for Portland. Upset!
Much screaming ensued. Now I have a couple of weeks to recover and get in shape for cheering again.
My duck has a new friend.
As you will recall, last week we had a visit (by iron horse) from my uncle Svevo.
He’s pretty much the best giver-of-presents that I know, so I wasn’t surprised by the jar of homemade pickled string beans or the gigantic bag of potbelly-stove-roasted walnuts.
But he also brought a special present for Selma. It’s a chicken. Not a real one. A toy wind-up chicken who lays vitamins. It’s all very confusing. My duck has a chicken. But it works. Somehow.
Big help for my arms.
I had an amazing craniosacral session with this woman named Cobalt, and it was astonishingly great. She got my arms to start talking to me again, and they’re giving me information like crazy. They still hurt. But at least we’re talking.
Then I was working with Carolyn and her fantastic PSYCH-K stuff. And for the first time, I’m really hopeful and even excited about the changes that are being forced into existence through this experience.
Will share more about this later. Yay! End of tunnel ahoy.
Big crazy system changes.
I’ve brought someone in to work with me at home. Which is crazy, because I’m used to working with virtual assistants and never seeing anyone.
But I need someone to click for me and scroll for me and be another set of hands. It’s forcing me to be super-focused, extra-structured, and just plow through things that need to be done.
So I’m loving it. Loving the systematizing, loving the routine, loving the genius ideas we’re coming up with. Again, we can talk more about this later. For now I’ll just say that this is miraculous and I’m full of new energy for my work.
And … STUISMS of the week.
Stu is my paranoid McCarthy-ist voice-to-text software who takes pleasure in misunderstanding me.
Some of the gems from this week:
- “energetic a little” instead of energetical
- “Procrastination Dissolvable medic” instead of Dissolve-o-Matic
- “prayer geezer” instead of priorities
- “The Smart Mrs.” instead of smartnesses
- “it’s about being president” instead of It’s about being present
- “Dana the Spacey Princess!” instead of Dana the Spicy Princess
- “We can hang out on torture” and “We can hang out on tour there” instead of We can hang out on Twitter
- “By the fact that Africa” instead of by the fact that I freak out
- “Emergency Combing Techniques” instead of Emergency Calming Techniques
But I find Stu’s delightful Freudian slips even more powerful embarrassing:
- “If I let go of my anchor” instead of if I let go of my anger
- “In the heart” instead of in the hard
Come on, Stu. Stop revealing the inner workings of my subconscious, you acetyl!
That’s it for me …
And yes yes yes, of course you can join in my Friday ritual right here in the comments bit if you feel like it.
Yeah? Anything hard and/or good happen in your week?
And, as always, have a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious weekend. And a happy week to come.
Item! I have opinions and recommendations!
A somewhat goofy mini-collection of stuff I’ve been reading, stuff I’ve been thinking about and oh, some completely random crap.
Basically the stuff that never gets mentioned here because I’m not the kind of person who can just make some teeny little point. Not into the whole brevity thing, as the Dude would say.
Actually, I’m under the strict compulsion to write ten pages about anything on my mind. So this is me. Practicing brevity.
Guilty admission: today’s Item! items (man, I love saying that — item items!) are pretty long, all considering. But there aren’t very many of them.
Selma and I have been missing these mini-bitlets collection-of-good-stuff types of posts, now that the hurt-ey arms mean we hardly ever prowl the internets looking for good stuff.
But it seemed like a good way to counteract the latest cycle of ranting followed by personal disclosure followed by ranting and then some more personal disclosure.
Plus, good stuff to read! Good people to start obsessively stalking following and paying attention to! Stuff like that.
Warning: it’s an Item! post. There will be exclamation points. Apologies in advance.
Item! Post No. 15 in an ongoing occasionally-updated unpredictable series that also confuses me, so don’t worry about it.
Item! They named a cafe after my duck!
Well, not really.
But they could have. It will happen one day. You should peek.
A cafe named Selma. Beautiful pictures. Myra Klarman, sweet goofball genius with a camera. What’s not to like?
Item! Thoughts about love and communication and stuff.
Two posts I really appreciated. Both from Kate, whom I finally got to meet in person last week, about a day before she headed back to England.
And she’s absolutely lovely, and next time I hope we’ll get to spend a lazy afternoon alone in a quiet cafe together because we are both decidedly not group-interaction people and our first meeting happened in a large group.
Kate did her introvert-in-a-large-group thing: get really quiet.
I did my introvert-in-a-large-group thing: be obnoxiously charming and tell stories and ask questions and play with my hair so no one will notice that I am an introvert and now I have to interact with a group.
I don’t mean to say that it wasn’t a thoroughly enjoyable evening because it absolutely was and every single person there was wonderful, and I would do it again in a second.
Just that Kate and I definitely need to spend some quality time together when we’re not knee deep in our own patterns and other distractions.
Anyway … long introduction aside, here’s what you should be reading.
Her post on faith, love and doing I thought was very powerful. And this one about communication and the different ways it can go horribly wrong made a fantastic point in a memorable I-get-this-now sort of way. Plus she talks about one of my favorite communication books. Worth a read.
Item! This is my new favorite blog and it’s going to be yours too!
I am loving my friend Janet Bailey’s new Mindful Time Management blog. I’ve been getting on her case waiting excitedly for her to start this thing much the same way that Kelly Parkinson did with me when I started mine.
Not because I’m her friend but because I really, really need the stuff she writes about.
Janet is one of my favorite people ever.
She’s smart, she’s funny, she’s just the right amount of neurotic … and she thinks deeply and carefully about how we interact with our time, where we get stuck and what we might be able to do about it.
I don’t even know which post to link to because they’re all great, but start with the one about pre-deadlines and thinking differently about motivation and make sure you also read the power of the split screen (which is a terrific technique that I’m going to adopt myself as soon as I can type again).
Item! You should spend more time putting crackers on your head!
It’s no secret that I adore Sparky Firepants aka David Billings. That’s Mr. Pants to you. Well, to me. I think I’m the only one who calls him that.
And I finally got to meet him in person too. He came into town and my gentleman friend and I got to spend a lazy late afternoon with him.
I thought this post of his called Be Your Own Bot was fascinating. And moving. And completely thought-provoking. As in, my thoughts! They are still being provoked! I heart Mr. Pants.
Here’s a tiny bit of it:
“It’s funny. We start out in life weird little creatures who put crackers on our heads and yell, “Ga-ZOO ZOO!” just because it strikes us as something we should probably do. We fall down and stay there. Just felt like it. We wear socks on our hands.
As we grow up, other people start defining for us what’s weird and what shouldn’t be done anymore in social situations. It’s not a Shakespearean tragedy. It’s part of life and it’s learning how to function in a world full of people who hesitate to give us money or jobs if we break crackers on our heads. Still, it’s sad to put our crackers away.
You want to keep reading, right?
And while you’re there — if you’re at all someone who appreciates visual gorgeousness and creativity — you should sign up for his Sparky Firepants Monthly Images club and marvel at both his illustrations and his incredible generosity in giving one of them away each month.
Item! Portland is America’s 3rd least wasteful city! Or something.
When I first moved to Portland, the only thing I didn’t madly love about it was the crazy pride.
Seriously, it rivals New York and San Francisco for “ohmygod-we’re-so-great”-ness. Except that, you know, it’s not either of those places or even something that would be mentioned in the same league.
But now I’m part of the cult, organic koolaid and all. And I no longer find it as embarrassing as it probably is.
And one of the many, many things I love about living here is that I’m not the big hippie anymore. The people in my neighborhood are also into composting and growing their own vegetables and eating local, sustainable food and collecting rainwater.
It’s no longer weird here — or even interesting — that we make our own yogurt and cheese, or that we don’t drive or that we boycott box stores. Because it’s Portland.
So it was fun reading this yay, we’re doing it right piece. And thanks to @RyanJLewis who linked to this on Twitter on a day when I was feeling depressed about the general state of the world.
Item! I’m recommending a web designer! Are you her Right People?
I know I already talked about Kate in the first Item! today, but I was on her site and remembered how much I like both her work and her attitude. And her copy.
And since people are always asking me for website design recommendations (and since I don’t generally like to send people to my designer because he’s busy and because I want him to charge enough that you probably won’t be able to afford him) …
… let me mention Kate and her work, which is gorgeous.
And very affordable.
Yes, the number of people who won’t listen to me about raising their prices is astonishing. So you should really hire her before my brilliant logic convinces her.
Here’s what she says on her own website:
I create websites for small businesses and groups, and specialise in socially responsible businesses and alternative or spiritual ventures. Holistic therapists, alternative practitioners, quirky creatives, people forging careers out of hobbies; I love to work with anyone with a dream!
I firmly believe anyone can have a professional, affordable website, and love to help people get their first home on the web.
If that sounds like your thing, take a look.
Item! Black Hockey Jesus!
Yet again the star of my reading-stuff-online life.
I don’t miss a single post he writes on his provocatively-titled genius blog. And I continue to admire him and his funny, bittersweet wordishness.
Actually, I think the word bittersweet was invented for him because everything he writes contains both of those qualities in equal measures.
His piece Frogs is a wonderful musing on blogging itself (the world and the process), as well as a sweet example of how it’s possible be kind, funny, thoughtful, snarky, compassionate, sarcastic, wise and hurting … all at the same time.
And the one about his daughter’s obsession with weiners is one of the funniest essays on parenthood (and identity in general) that I’ve read.
Keep him company.
That is all.
This was way longer than I intended.
Happy reading. Happy Thursday. See you tomorrow for the Friday Chicken!
Everything I’m afraid of.
So I’ve found myself in this uncomfortable pattern lately here on the blog. It’s like I can’t stop alternating between two widely separated points on my personal continuum.
Either I’m letting you spy on my process as I do some deep, personal work on my stuff… or I’m ranting at you about whatever the latest thing is that is currently making me froth at the mouth.
And I suspect that this pattern — like so many of the ones I’m working on right now — has to do with pain.
Partly it’s that dealing with physical pain has seriously lowered my annoyance threshold. But another part of it is that I’m processing my pain here with you.
And now we have to talk about fear.
A couple of people mentioned how relieved they were, while reading my last post about working with my pain, to realize that yeah, I get scared of things too.
I had to think about that, because of course to me it seems as though I do nothing but talk about a. how fear works, b. different ways to interact with it and c. the things that terrify me.
But for whatever reason, maybe it still seems as though I’m over it. So let’s be clear about that. I’m not over it. Fear? I know it pretty well.
And even though I have long conversations with it sometimes, that doesn’t mean it’s lost the ability to scare the living daylights out of me.
What am I afraid of . . . ?
- I am afraid of having to leave Hoppy House.
- I am afraid of getting burnt out in my work and that my arms won’t start working again and that everyone will say “I told you so”.
- I am afraid that my tired, overworked gentleman friend — who already is burnt out — will have to quit his job before my business can fully support us all comfortably.
- I am afraid that I might never get over the death of my friend and the pain that goes with it.
- I am afraid that I will one day get over the death of my friend. That I will forget.
- I am afraid that the next time I go to Berlin I will just stay there and not come back.
- I am afraid of the possibility that I might never heal.
- I’m afraid of remembering things that are repressed and forgotten for a reason.
- I am afraid of the part of me who craves new experiences and I’m afraid of the part of me who craves safety and comfort.
- I am afraid of turning into my parents.
- I am afraid that if I talk candidly about my fear on the blog, some kind, well-meaning people will try to fix it or solve it for me and then I will feel annoyed and resentful. Not that that’s ever happened before.
But I am not impressed by these fears.
Not that I don’t have days that include cowering on the closet floor, because I do and I’m human and it happens.
It’s just that — and this is the biggest thing that’s happened to me around fear in the past five years of having “working on my stuff” as a full-time job — I’ve stopped thinking that having fear says something bad about me.
I still get freaked out. I just don’t get impressed by the fact that I freak out.
Four things I need to say about fear.
Not to preach. Not even to teach. Just to talk out some of what’s in my head.
Fear is legitimate. Always.
The more I fight with it and resist it and struggle with it, the louder it gets.
But every time I remind myself that I’m allowed to be afraid, that it’s temporary and that it’s normal, the easier it is for me to come back down.
It does not matter whether or not you know why it’s there or what it’s about. Giving it the legitimacy to be there is what makes it easier for it to leave.
Fear does not have to be “rational”.
It really doesn’t matter how rational it is. If you’re afraid, you’re afraid. That’s just where you are right now.
Trying to talk yourself out of it (or someone else trying to talk you out of it) generally isn’t going to work until you’ve acknowledged its right to be there.
For example, my fear about having to leave Hoppy House isn’t actually grounded in anything. The owners have no reason to sell right now. No one’s buying in Portland anyway. I could buy it myself probably if I wanted to.
And anyway, there’s time.
All of those things are helpful after I’ve calmed down.
But when I’m right there in the fear, the best thing I can do is give myself permission to have a fit.
That’s when I realize (again) that this isn’t about Hoppy House. It’s about my stuff.
It’s about my history of loss. It’s about having moved countries three times. It’s about grounding and my love-hate relationship with roots.
And then I’m don’t have to be afraid. Or, I’m not so much afraid as curious.
Admitting fear is a strength, not a weakness.
I have a huge crush on Jennifer Louden. And one of the things I love about her is her complete willingness to engage with her stucknesses.
If she wanted to, it would be so easy for her to hide behind the super famous self-help author been-on-Oprah thing. To do the whole “Ah yes, I was once like you too” routine.
But Jen is so cool that she can post about her terror of being outed as a big fake. Which is awesome, because in my mind she’s pretty much one of the only self-help-ey people who isn’t fake.
Case in point: she’s consistently an inspiration to me through reminding us all how human she is and using her vulnerability as a practice. When I can’t put you on a pedestal, it means I have a chance of getting to be where you are too.
We’re teaching together at her Get Your Writing Done While Laughing Your Butt Off and Maybe Crying a Little Too Writer’s Retreat Week this summer in Taos. Am I scared? Oh, totally. I can come up with a hundred things to be afraid of. But I’m also excited.
Because she models the thing I admire most. Knowing what she’s working on and meeting herself there. And I get to watch and learn.
You don’t have to calm down until you want to.
When I was working on my Emergency Calming Techniques kit (or, as Stu, my voice-to-text software calls them, my Emergency Combing Techniques kit), I really didn’t want to call them that.
The way I saw it, when you’re in freakout mode, the last thing you want is someone trying to talk you out of it and make you calm down.
And the product I was designing was all about teaching people the trick to dissolving the fear while still allowing yourself to have it.
So I wanted to call it something like “Letting Yourself Be As Afraid As You Want For As Long As You Want Techniques“.
Which didn’t exactly go over well in the initial uh … market research. Everyone I talked to said “benefits benefits benefits” and I ended up going for catchy.
It still works. I still use it on myself. And I love reading the notes from people who no longer live in anxiety-attack stress-distress-worry mode.
But I still wish I’d had the nerve to give it a name that made it clear that no one is going to make you calm down. And that you’re allowed to just not be in the mood to calm down.
And that you can use it as permission not to calm down.
Yet again, this post is way too long.
I know.
And I still have a hundred other things to say about fear. Luckily, it’s not exactly a topic I’m going to stop writing about.
I’m going to keep having fears. And having a relationship with my fears. And talking to them. And reporting back. And getting scared about what will happen when I report back. And then finding out.
The “I don’t have time for social networking” thing.
Okay, at least four times in the past week or so someone has actually said to me that they don’t have time for “Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and all that stuff.”
Right. All that stuff.
They don’t have time for it.
I have a few things to say about that.
Huh. I can’t wait to hear what your plan is.
I am convinced that these people who “don’t have time” are mostly the same people who come to me wanting to know how to get people to read their blog.
Well, let’s just say that there’s a pretty large overlap in the Venn diagram.
Here’s what they want me to teach them:
How to get traffic. How to get readers. How to get comments. How to remind people that you exist so that they’ll hire you and buy stuff from you.
Uh ….
I can’t help you.
Because normally a big chunk of my answer to all of those things would be: Twitter*.
*If you haven’t read my post about how Twitter actually works, you might want to do that.
But you don’t have time for that. Let’s talk about what you do have time for.
That’s cool. Let’s talk about time.
So I would normally recommend that you spend 5-10 minutes a day on Twitter, but you don’t want to do that.
Let’s see then. So as far as I can tell your other options are:
- Spend half an hour a day leaving smart, insightful comments on other people’s blogs. No, wait. That actually takes longer.
- Spend three hours a week crafting careful, deliberate, strategic letters to other bloggers trying to convince them to let you guest post there. And then another few hours writing said guest posts. No, wait. That actually takes longer.
- Go to two live networking events each week. Let’s see, each thing is probably at least two hours, plus another hour to get there and find parking.
Plus another hour to shower and decide what the hell you’re going to wear. Plus another hour to transfer the contact information from people’s business cards into your [whatever you use for that]. Hmmmm. 8-10 hours a week. I’m going to go out on a limb and say: that actually takes longer.
And there’s no guarantee that any of those people you meet will end up reading your blog or leaving comments or buying stuff from you, so it’s not only a large investment of your time and energy, it’s also a huge risk.
But I get it. Not everyone has five minutes to hang out and goof off online.
Alright. You don’t have to do any of this social networking stuff.
But there’s a catch.
There’s a story my parents delight in telling — despite their complete inability to apply the point of it to their own lives — about me going to the doctor.
I was little. Little enough that my memories of this exist, but only somewhat vaguely. But here’s the story.
I was a strong-willed kid who didn’t like being sick. And refused — vehemently — to take medication. My parents tried every trick in the book and I fought back with new ones.
Eventually, after all of their cajoling and threatening and bargaining didn’t pay off, they took me to the doctor in the hopes that this figure of authority would tell me I had to.
It didn’t quite work the way they wanted it to — I was both vindicated and thwarted.
But it did get the desired effect.
Here’s what the doctor said:
You don’t have to take the medicine. But then you don’t get to complain.
I took the medicine. It was worth it not to have to stop complaining.
You can decide that you’re not interested in being on Twitter. That “all this” social networking stuff is not for you. But you don’t get to complain that nobody reads your blog. You don’t get to complain that people don’t come to your website. And you don’t get to complain that you don’t have any clients or customers.
This metaphor starts to get weird, though, because Twitter is actually not like medicine at all — it’s crazy fun and I would do it if it had no impact on my business at all.
Why it’s important.
I heard Seth Godin say once that you need to have your presence reflected equally in different spaces. Well, he said it in a much more articulate way than that.
The point, though, was that you want to be giving people the same message across the board. Being on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter is a way that you tell people 1. yes, I exist and this is a real thing, and 2. this is who I am and what I do.
It’s about being present and consistent. Which are two of the most important qualities you need (or at least be working on) if you want to get results in pretty much anything.
It’s as true in business as it is in a meditation practice.
How much time it actually takes.
Not. Very. Much.
Obviously, your mileage may vary. But there’s no reason to spend an insane amount of time on “all that stuff”.
And you know what? It’s not even “all that stuff”. These social networking tools or whatever you want to call them are drastically different animals. You don’t have to use all of them. And different people use each one differently.
Let’s talk about how much time it actually takes. Or at least, how much time my duck and I spend on each one.
LinkedIn:
Maybe five minutes a month. I don’t really use it. Some people like it. I’m not one of them. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s about owning your name and owning your brand and showing people that what you do is a real thing.
It is absolutely worth investing at least half an hour or so in writing a good profile. Kelly Parkinson from Copylicious has a terrific post about how not to screw that up.
(You’ll also want to read her post about how she used LinkedIn to get a 41% response rate and six new clients. Uh huh.)
So I’m probably a complete idiot for not using LinkedIn more, but that’s where I am with it.
I only connect with people on LinkedIn when I actually know them well enough that I would recommend them to people in my network. If you’re a blog reader and want to hang out with me, don’t approach me on LinkedIn. Twitter. We can hang out on Twitter. I’d like that.
Facebook:
Between two and five minutes a day, at most. I don’t use Facebook for business, though it does sometimes (accidentally) have that result.
On the other hand, I know lots of people (thinking of Dana the Spicy Princess right now) who use it successfully as a way to stay in touch with clients and customers. Which is great.
Personally, I’m only interested right now in using it to stay in touch with old friends. I connect with people on Facebook when I know them well enough that I don’t mind them seeing pictures of me from fourth grade. For me, it’s more of an intimate space to keep in touch with people I already know really really well.
Again, if you’re a blog reader who wants to hang out with me, not Facebook. Twitter. Let’s get to know each other there for a while.
Twitter.
I love Twitter. I’m only on about 10 minutes a day because I can’t use my arms and I need people to help me do it.
I would pay for Twitter. It is where I goof off. It’s where I complain. It’s where I have fun. It’s where I remember why I do what I do.
Oh, and it’s also where I make about a third of my income.
Don’t get me wrong here. I would still hang out on Twitter if it had zero impact on my business. In fact, I would still be there if it had a negative impact on my business.
Because it’s just that great. It would be totally worth it to me to lose clients and customers by being obnoxious on Twitter.
But here’s what actually happens, I get clients from Twitter. I fill classes on Twitter. The “where did you hear about us?” box in my online shopping cart more often than not says Twitter.
Most of the people who comment here …. friends from Twitter.
But I get it. Who has time for stuff like that?
Oh, time. I have issues with it too. And yet …
You have time to write a noozletter. You have time to deliberate over what typeface you’re going to use on your business cards. You have time to have coffee with that guy you met who maybe knows someone at that one place.
But you don’t have ten minutes for this.
Here’s what I think. It’s pretty hard to be successful online without hanging out there.
It doesn’t have to be a lot — a few minutes a day will do it. Of course you can choose not to. You can decide you don’t have time. You can decide that it’s not your thing. You just can’t hire me. Because the first thing I will do is make you get on Twitter.
Working with pain.
I have been wanting to do some writing about the realizations I’ve had while working on and through the pain in my arms.
It’s just that I keep getting tangled up around how to start.
It’s hard to draw a map of the healing process when you don’t have arms that work.*
*Also — when you’re me and you get kind of grossed out every time someone uses the phrase “healing process”? It’s even harder.
And it’s hardest of all to explain something like this to people who aren’t familiar and/or comfortable with the idea of doing deep, crazy internal work on their stuff.
This is very hard for me to talk about. But I’m going to try to do it anyway.
Steps.
There are a bazillion threads in any “healing process” (I said it again, I know), so I won’t be talking about all of them. I just want to track the understandings that are helping me interact with my pain and rewrite the patterns that are related to it.
I’ve known from the moment it started that this pain had serious emotional components, and that my body — usually my greatest ally in these matters — just didn’t want to talk about it.
Since I’m used to getting a lot of information from my body, this whole “we’re not talking about it” thing was almost as painful as not being able to use my arms.
Following the thread.
What am I holding on to?
The first thread came out of a conversation with my massage therapist. He described the tension in my arms as being like a desperate grip on something.
As those of you who work with my Procrastination Dissolve-o-matic program know, when you’re working on a pattern, any thread can lead you to the heart of the tangle.
So I decided to start my work with questions about this thread:
- What am I holding on to?
- What am I not letting go of yet?
I took these questions into my next acupuncture session as the intention I would set in my heart.*
* Translation for non-tree hugging hippies: I determined to have these questions in the back of my mind while the needles were doing their work.
The very first needle went right into a heart point. I burst into tears and didn’t stop sobbing for forty-five minutes straight.
The information I received:
- There is a part of me that’s afraid that if I let go of my hurt, pain and anger, I’ll forget about it. This part of me thinks I need to keep my pain with me as a reminder.
- And a new understanding: “I’m allowed to have the memory of experience without having to have the pain of it.”
What am I protecting?
I took the new understanding into an intuitive healing session with Hiro Boga, whose work I can’t recommend highly enough.
She had all sorts of mind blowing insights, but the thing that really rang true for me was this:
My arms were covered with heavy, old, rusted armor — cutting into me and weighing me down.
Of course!
I’ve written so much about the way that something intended to protect us (like fear) can actually have the reverse effect. So much of the work I do is somehow related to deconstructing these false forms of protection and connecting to a deeper place of safety.
So now I had new questions, another thread:
- What am I protecting?
- Can I find protection in a new form that doesn’t involve pain?
I took these questions into my next massage session as my private intention — but even though I had planned to tell Chris what I had learned from working with Hiro, for some reason I didn’t.
But it didn’t matter.
He’d already decided we needed to try something new, so he used a technique that involves tapping stones against each other to create deep vibrations in the muscle tissue.
Closing my eyes and listening to the steady rapping of stone on stone, and feeling the emotional resonance of the pain I’m carrying (yes, clearly carrying), I had a fleeting sensation — almost a memory — that my armor felt cared for. That I had found the right blacksmith. And that this was the sound of something really old and stuck letting go.
Who am I protecting?
The next series of realizations were all about the connections between my pain and my defensiveness.
I started uncovering bits and pieces of a pattern where my urge to defend someone triggers a flood of emotion, which in turn leads to frustration and shame over not having a kinder, gentler way to be protective and caring.
This in turn — combined with a serious hot buttered epiphany following a ten minute Shiva Nata practice — gave me a ton of information about my mechanisms of internal criticism.
And how I’ve traditionally dealt with internal and external criticism. Or not.
I shared some of this with my acupuncturist so that we could work on it together, and here is the realization that came from that session:
- My arms hurt because they yearn to help everyone and know they can’t.
Intellectually, I know it’s not possible to help everyone. I know that it is detrimental for me to even try. But my body isn’t there yet.
I felt deep grief and sadness and helplessness … and then I watched them leave me.
“What got you here won’t get you there.”
This was the next realization, and it actually made me laugh.
It’s the name of a book I reviewed a while back, and though I didn’t like it much, that title is brilliant!
Every illness I’ve ever had has come at a point of transition, and every recovery has launched something new and crazy and exciting. I know that I am on the verge of something big. I can feel it.
And at the same time, I know that all of this clearing out is useful. Obviously I’d be a lot happier if it didn’t hurt so much, but I can feel how important this is.
My sense is that I can only become or access this new thing once I’ve cleared out my old patterns of protection and resistance.
They can’t coexist with this new thing — and yay new thing!
Vulnerability is power.
The next insight came to me in meditation.
My new armor will not be armor — the thing that will protect me the most will be openness. Not hiding.
Ironically, this is also something I’ve written about in the blogging therapy series.
I’m experimenting with different ways to apply the concept in my body and in my work. To use light and space instead of metal and chains. To let my relationship with my weaknesses become my strength.
This is about time.
And then … more sessions.
More meditation. More acupuncture. More massage. More Hiro.
The more work I did on this, the clearer it became that the core of this whole thing is time.
Time and my relationship to it.
My hands hurt when I try to slow down my progress, to keep time from flowing the way it wants to.
My latest understanding is that I can be more generous with giving time to myself. That one of the accidental benefits of this pain has been the amount of time I have given to working through it.
That this work is valuable enough that I cannot just give it my morning meditation and my afternoon yoga. That my priorities around time need some attention.
Okay, a lot of attention. My relationship with time… needs time.
In one of my conversations with Hiro, she told me that the thing I am working on needs more time for gestation and that I can stop pushing so much.
My arms are happy to hear that.
When I learned how to drive, my father would sit next to me, his foot madly pumping an invisible brake. That’s what my arms have been doing. Stretching out, full of tension, trying to slow it all down… and at the same time trying to hold and push things into place.
But this is not the time for that. This is the time to wait and breathe and let things happen at their own speed.
This is where I am right now.
Six weeks of insights. It’s a lot.
I don’t think I need to understand it all or be able to fix it all right now. Every time I learn something useful about my pain, I get that much closer closer to releasing the things that block me.
And every time I release a new piece of stuck, I’m making it easier for my body to get well again.
It’s a matter of time. So time is what I’m working on.
A note about comments:
These posts about my meditations and my talking-to-stucknesses are a way for me to let you to hang out in my process-thing. They are not an invitation to tell me what you think I “should” be doing to work through my stuff. They are a way for me to model one possible version of how someone might interact with their stuck.
You’re more than welcome to leave comments about your reactions and about your own stuff and about whatever else comes to mind. Please remember though that this is a highly personal experience that I’m sharing, and that I’m not looking for advice or how-to-ishness. Thanks.