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.
Wish 312: easing and
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
Releasing.
This is not going to come as news to anyone but I’ll just say it anyway: lately I have been releasing and releasing and releasing and releasing, and not much else.
I mean, it’s a lot. It’s about as much as I can handle.
Releasing in the form of unanticipated primal scream moments, and releasing in the form of removing physical objects from my space. Even releasing my wishes. Saying lots of goodbyes.
It is the month of Releasing in the year of Releasing, and there is so much to learn to let go of.
Goodbye goodbye.
And thank you.
“Thank you for having been. Thank you for exiting my life. Thank you for being done.”
This has been my mantra lately. It’s what I whisper in my heart to everything.
To the food scraps that I put in the compost bin, to each memory as it comes up or doesn’t, to more papers into the recycling bin, to the early-early-morning nightmares, to phone numbers, to the contents of the flushing toilet…
Goodbye and thank you. And goodbye.
Tangled.
It’s funny how hard this is, this process of releasing.
It’s funny how this is something everyone knows: letting go can be absolutely agonizing, and yet somehow we keep collectively forgetting this over and over, and then being surprised about it.
Possessions get layered with emotional attachment, with fragments of memory and identity and oh-but-what-if.
I know with absolute certainty, for example, that I have zero interest in attending graduate school in this lifetime.
And even if I were to change my mind some day, I’m still pretty sure I don’t need this stack of papers on the table in front of me right now proving that I have a degree in History from Tel Aviv University, and that I apparently also passed an academic German language exam (that I have no memory of taking) qualifying me for god knows what.
None of this is my YES, and yet here I am, reluctant to let these go. Reluctant to let past-me go.
Doors.
“It’s hard to close doors, even if they’re not necessarily ones you’d want to open,” says my lover, who is wise and sweet and often right.
This feels true.
Closing is like admitting out loud that you aren’t going to do the thing you didn’t want to do anyway. And hoping that past-you isn’t listening. Or, really, hoping they know how much you love them.
I still feel great love for the passions, desires and yeses of past me, even as my now-yes changes to meet the present moment.
The closing of the door isn’t a NO to them. It’s a YES to now.
And it’s still hard.
Easing and releasing.
This is the year of releasing but really it is the year of Easing & Releasing.
These go together.
The easing is the softening, the smiling, the recognition that shutting this door is the best possible thing I could do right now.
The easing is when you don’t try to exhale everything, you just let yourself breathe.
The easing is when you allow yourself to be comforted.
The easing is when you say, YES ALL THIS GRIEF HURTS AND THAT MAKES SENSE AND THAT IS OKAY AND I DON’T HAVE TO LIKE IT.
The easing is permission and sweetness, acknowledgment and legitimacy, the hug before the storm and everything that comes after.
Layered.
It’s one hundred degrees in Portland so I’ve been in the basement where the cool air is, going through boxes.
Goodbye, goodbye, bullshit yoga teaching certificates from various trainings over the years: I don’t even believe yoga can be taught, never mind certified.
Though yes, I still secretly teach yoga inside of every blog post I write, just by being and practicing — well, if by yoga we mean “the art and science of slowly and patiently getting to know yourself and meet yourself with love, to the best of your ability”, which of course is what I mean and what I have always meant.
And even if I were to return to “teaching” a physical practice, I wouldn’t need the certificates. In all my years of instructing in multiple countries, no one ever asked what my credentials might be, never mind if there’s proof that I have any.
Let’s not forget either that none of the people issuing these certificates are certified, for added ridiculousness, and also sometimes the certifying organizations they represent don’t even necessarily exist.
Which makes it even funnier that I hold onto them.
Holding.
I have a yoga teaching certificate here signed by the Israeli Yoga Federation Honorary Secretary For The Middle East, President and Founder, etc etc.
Things that make this extra-funny/not-funny-at-all, in no particular order:
- This person hired me to teach yoga at his studio before I had any training at all.
- He made up all of those titles.
- There was no federation. It was just him. He got to be the honorary secretary for the Middle East by going to some yoga conferences with his made-up titles on business cards, and convincing some other organizations that were also mostly self-invented that his made-up thing was a thing too. This was literally a case of just one guy. Fake Band Of The Week: For Your Self-Aggrandizing Pleasure. It’s just one guy.
- It is laughably easy to become president, founder (and honorary secretary!) of pretty much anything you want and then put that on a certificate which no one will ever ask to see.
- This person sexually assaulted me while I was working for him, which, for the record, is not a yogic thing to do*, and also not befitting of someone who (even if only in his mind) represents a) yoga, and b) all of the middle east. Whoosh, goodbye.
- I know all of these things and yet I still hold onto this piece of paper in my basement: how’s that. Realizing this makes me want to burn it, to burn lots of things, to smash all the plates. Whoosh, GOODBYE.
Rituals.
Our culture lacks rituals and resources for grief, for endings. We lack everything when it comes to loss.
My mother died in October, and every once in a while someone asks how I’m doing, but mostly they don’t.
I get it. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, and we just don’t have a way to talk about these things.
All around us people are experiencing loss and trauma, and there are no mechanisms in place for checking in with each other, for taking care of ourselves.
Look at how our culture does holidays, how we exclude the people in the most pain and celebrate the people who either aren’t in pain or are best at hiding it. Look at facebook or twitter or instagram on Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day, etc. We live in a culture that celebrates the haves, and silences the have-nots.
No wonder it’s so damn hard to let go of things. Pain and trauma and hurt get erased in daily life. People post pictures of happy things, and of sandwiches. Not the aching goodbyes.
Hallmark.
And that’s just the grief we do know how to talk about.
But — as far as I know, at least — there’s no Hallmark cards for most of the tough things anyway.
There is no card for “Hey, I heard that your mentor just publicly trashed you after you devoted ten years of your life to promoting his work, that sucks and I am so, so, so sorry, how can I help?”.
There is no card for “I know your giant business venture failed spectacularly and you were left with nothing, and I still love you and want to be supportive, how are you feeling today, can I make you soup and hold your hand while you cry”.
There is no card for “wow, the person we all thought was treasure turned out to be an abusive asshole, so glad he’s out of your life, but that has to be really rough, I love you so much and I’m sorry this happened”.
Of course there isn’t. It’s weird and awkward and what are you going to say.
Whoosh goodbye.
This is a wish about easing and releasing, about finding the grieving rituals that are right for me, about throwing and smashing and letting go, about presence, about enoughness.
I asked my lover if there’s anything he wants to keep, while I’m getting rid of things, maybe for when we build a place in the desert, if we do that.
He said: “You. A bed. That’s it, really.”
I know he only added the part about a bed for my sake. When I met him, he was sleeping in tents and on floors. I’m the princess who needs things like sheets and pillows. But yeah, he’s right. Love, napping, sweetness, falling asleep with my head on his shoulder and his fingers tangled in my hair, that’s enough.
And I say that while fully aware of the nine boxes full of papers, binders and unfinished projects sitting next to me.
Whoosh, goodbye. It isn’t always easy. The releasing needs the easing.
Rituals can be joyful.
I forget this and yet it is true.
There isn’t a one right way to release.
Whoosh goodbye can be so many things. It can be cathartic, it can be loud or quiet, it can be a softening and a surrendering, and it can be an emphatic, unapologetic smashing of plates. It can happen with laughter, with tears, with companionship, with steady knowing, with the superpower of All Timing Is Right Timing.
Whoosh goodbye.
What if…
I am rereading Refuse To Choose by the brilliant Barbara Sher, whom I love so deeply and once promised to let live in my basement when she didn’t know what she would do when she retired.
All the more reason to say whoosh goodbye to those boxes.
I want to share this quote with you:
“When you lose interest in something, you must always consider the possibility that you’ve gotten what you came for; you have completed your mission. … That’s why you lose interest: not because you’re flawed or lazy or unable to focus, but because you’re finished…”
Here’s to the superpower of things being enough, here’s to the superpower of knowing what can go.
Invitation.
You are invited to say WHOOSH GOODBYE to whatever you like, and you do not have to share what that is, unless you happen to feel like it. You are invited to take breaths of easing and releasing. You are invited to make up rituals for grieving, for letting go, for whatever you like.
ALSO! Calendars!
While in the basement, I found some old Fluent Self calendars from 2012 and 2013, ones we couldn’t sell because of things like dirt spots on the back cover. Each has TWELVE delicious qualities (one for each month) along with marvelous superpowers, and gorgeous, inspiring images.
I think these would be great fun for cutting up and Reflecting (shhh, it’s collage), or making Wish Boards of Yes, or choosing qualities to make your own compass.
I will mail one or both calendars to anyone contributing $20 or more to Barrington’s Discretionary Fund this week, just give me an address!
Yay, and then I will recycle what is left, if anything is left, and we are Easing and Releasing together. This feels good to me.
Now.
I am sitting on the couch in my living room, and it is so very hot. Ice packs on rotation. Oh, and I stole the spray bottle of water that my housemate uses to spritz the plants in the kitchen, and every couple minutes I take off my glasses and just go wild with it.
I pretend that the spray bottle is filled with qualities, like the salves in the Friday Chicken.
I am spraying myself with Pleasure, with Sweetness, with divine Comforting.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: You let yourself go on Shmita, and look at all the things you are letting go of that you never thought you would let go of. Maybe Easing is the secret ingredient.
Me: That, and saying WHOOSH GOODBYE.
Clues?
I accidentally wrote EASTING instead of easing and only just caught that.
East is PRESENCE, LOVE, HORIZONS. That’s what I put in the compass.
So. Easting my way into easing means breathing in more of that.
Also it rhymes with Feasting, which is a marvelous form of ritual. What if not all grieving rituals need to be about letting go? Some could be about imbibing, taking in comfort and nourishment, all the healing that comes from receiving. I need to remember this.
The superpower of I am stronger than I think.
We are in June: RELEASE MORE, with the superpower of I am stronger than I think.
I could be reminded of this superpower every day forever, and still be grateful.
Thank you. WHOOSH, GOODBYE. I am stronger than I think.
Things I find helpful for intentions and wishes…
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week aka current ops…
I loved this wish. It helped me stick with things that had a charge for me. It helped me go to bed and say yes to my yes, and hey, I emptied out six gigantic boxes from my basement.
Thank you, process of writing about wishes. Thank you, me who asked.
Keep me company! Or just say hi!
You can deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads, superpowers, qualities, seeds, secret agent code, whatever you’d like, there’s no right way! Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is sharing anything sparked for you.
Comment culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play and throw things in the pot! With amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.
Here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: Oh, wow. What beautiful wishes.
xox
Chicken 361: reasons and plates
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday, for this space, and for being here when we get here.}
And let’s start with an extra breath of joy and appreciation for today’s Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality.
What worked this week?
Asking wise-me to make lists.
For example, Marlena Wild (Incoming Me) wrote a list of nineteen reasons to explain why being exhausted is perfectly understandable, and this helped me out of the blame-shame cycle re not wanting to get off the couch.
And then of course I did finally want to get off the couch, because guilt and shame always intensify stuck, while acknowledgment, permission and legitimacy always ease it.
I also had slightly-wiser-me make a list of possible next steps for Operation Bolthole, as well as a list of What I Would Do Next If Money/Time/Fear Were Not In Play, which was very enlightening, as it always is.
Next time I might…
Choose the easy way.
This week I did a lot of [things that don’t make sense] in the interest of [reasons that make even less sense].
For example, when I landed in PDX, I decided to take public transportation instead of a cab. Even though I’m dealing with chronic pain and exhaustion. And even though I’d been traveling for six hours. And even though a cab wouldn’t have been that expensive.
I’m not even sure what I was thinking. To prove to myself that I could handle it? To placate the monsters who say I’m extravagant?
It ended up taking two hours to get to my house, instead of the twelve minutes it would have taken by taxi.
My love, my love, my love, there is nothing wrong with choosing ease.
I want to remember this, because Wise Me is right.
And the title of my upcoming Biopic if it were based on this week…
Wearing The Same Thing Every Day, So What.. The Havi Brooks Story.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- I am releasing and releasing, and even as I let go of seemingly endless anger cauldrons that I didn’t even know about, I discover more rage and fury with the current state of the world. A breath for presence, for acknowledgment, for legitimacy, for process.
- Tamir Rice would have been thirteen yesterday. Heartbreaking-heartbreaking-heartbreaking. I am done with putting up with apologists, with people still pretending that racism is not a thing. There was someone in my actual house this week trying to tell me that Dylann Roof murdered nine black people because of medication he was taking, not because he was a racist, full of hate and indoctrinated by people with a hate-filled agenda. And you could tell he believed what he was saying. Someone I follow — excuse me: followed — on Instagram ordered a cake for her local (Texas) police department because “After McKinney, it seems like the police aren’t appreciated enough”. A thank you cake? How about donating that cake money towards therapy bills for Dajerria Becton? I have blocked and unfollowed and muted all week, and I cannot take this anymore. So here is a poem called How To Play Dead, and here is We Can’t Have Nothing. A breath for for justice, for grace, for everything that needs to change.
- If you had told me ten years ago that the Supreme Court would okay marriage equality, I wouldn’t have believed you though I would have been delighted at the thought. Now it’s here, and I am delighted. And I am also feeling lots of other feelings. Sad and angry and upset, not just about all the people in this country who are vocally not onboard with love, but with the narrow definition. I will celebrate with a full heart the triumphant joy of “It is so ordered” all day every day, but no, I will not celebrate this toxic bullshit about “nothing is more profound” and “family, sacrifice and fidelity”, these are not the values I want to celebrate. I want Love and Presence and Sweetness and Agency and Inclusivity and Clear, Loving Communication. I keep thinking about the name of Jen Agg’s conference on sexual harassment/abuse in restaurants — Kitchen Bitches: Smashing The Patriarchy One Plate At A Time. Right now I really just want to smash ALL THE PLATES AT ONCE. Yes, I will celebrate this ruling, and no, I don’t find the wording of it beautiful at all. The language makes it clear that equality is meant for binary people in conventional, monogamous relationships.I’m glad it’s here. And I’m going to keep smashing things until we get to a culture which cares about the well-being, happiness and welfare of all people, including those who don’t have or don’t want family, who might be in alternative relationships or open relationships or don’t want to be in relationships at all, for people who don’t want to commit to a gender or to a person, for everyone who wants their own profound and beautiful connections that don’t happen to fit the norm. A breath for plate-smashing. Let’s smash some plates.
- It’s 99 degrees Fahrenheit today, and it’s supposed to be 104 degrees (that’s 40 degrees celsius) tomorrow. I can’t do this and I’m having flashbacks to the worst summers in Tel Aviv. A breath for Now Is Not Then, for ice packs on rotation, for damp clothes, for blackberry smoothies.
- Body is so very exhausted. A breath for all the reasons for this.
- Trying to find solutions to complicated challenges that involve many moving parts. A breath for letting go of Either/Or thinking and discovering new options.
- I miss my lover and I miss having a comforting shoulder to cry on. A breath for this.
- 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.
- After nearly seven weeks of dealing with chronic pain, my body gave me a break for most of the week. I was able to actually focus on other things aside from pain management, which might have something to do all these big feelings I’m now experiencing. A breath for the extraordinary thing that is not being in pain
- When things are hard and I start to hate everything, I remember that this is a normal and understandable reaction to life challenges. Permission softens me, it is the door jam that keeps me open to acceptance, and from there sometimes I even find my way back into my thank you heart of love. There is endless magic in trusting that — really and truly — Nothing Is Wrong: not the anger, not the frustration, not the crying on the couch, it is all okay and I am okay. A breath for me and for this.
- I am back in Portland in my beautiful house and not in the camper-which-makes-everything-fifteen-degrees-hotter. A breath for right timing.
- I had another amazing releasing/healing session with Danielle, which was reason enough to come back to the city. A breath for taking care of myself.
- My lover texts me with warmth and sweetness and affection, listens to my worries and helps me see doors. A breath for the way I smile just thinking about this.
- So much gratitude to past me for embarking on Shmita. A breath of love for this wild adventure.
- Each day I learn more about what I want, and what I do not want. A breath for yes.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. The Supreme Court said YES to marriage equality! Love wins. Grace wins. I have wonderful friends. And cheesy aerobics. And a bowl full of peaches. 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!
I slept, I worked out, I used ten pound weights like a badass, I wrote, I cried. Let’s call that a successful mission and I now award myself a billion sparklepoints. Wham Boom.
Superpowers I had this week…
I had the superpowers of Remain Indoors, Top Level Hiding, and Wearing Everything Purple.
Powers I want.
I want the superpower of trusting in the powers of doing nothing.
The Salve of Couch.
This is a salve for comfort, rest, permission, legitimacy, agency, acknowledgment, presence and grace.
It is a salve of not doing, which is also a wonderful way to get information about what you might want to do, when the time is right.
Marlena: Aw babe of course you don’t want to do anything, it’s ninety nine degrees out. Just keep drinking water, and if you’re drawn to do something do that, and if you aren’t no worries. It is perfectly permissible to just be half-passed out on the couch right now, it will pass.
Me: But everything is still horrible.
Marlena: What if it isn’t?
Me: I don’t get it.
Marlena: What if there is no better way to spend a 99 degree Friday afternoon than as you are right now, sprawled on the couch, catching up on social media, being silly, looking at videos of dancing birds, what if this is great. You already said there’s nothing you’d rather be doing. What if we just give a YES to how things are right now, it doesn’t have to be the perfect way forever, just, what if it’s a good setup for you right now?
Me: Huh. Okay.
This salve makes everything better.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is from Lucky Lola and it’s called The Jim Convention. Their latest album is called Kindred Spear Its. They play reggae versions of Ella Fitzgerald songs, and it’s just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I am recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, aka the thing that keeps me from falling apart. This got me through the 2am panicking this week!
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.
p.s. 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!
Wish 311: current ops
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
Current.
I am in love with the word current, it fills my heart with joy over multiple-meanings, and every time I see my list of Current Ops, I smile so hard.
Current is now: PRESENCE, right here.
Current is electric: POWER, transmitted.
Current is water: FLOW, movement.
So current ops are the projects and dreams and gwishes (goal-wishes!) that are alive, dynamic, moving, being transmitted, in process right now.*
Portland.
I am in Portland right now. It is really good that I am in Portland right now, and I need to remember this because my monsters were very vocally against coming here, and now I am so glad I didn’t listen to them.
The original plan for this week had me near Escalante, Utah. My lover is canyoneering there, spending about nine hours a day doing things that I would not find particularly fun, and I was going to use that time for writing.
Except first the air conditioning stopped working, and then it was kind of working but only when you give it constant attention.
So that didn’t feel like a good plan. Writing for me is a full-immersion activity, not something I can do while one ear listens for specific sounds that may or may not indicate impending doom.
And what really didn’t feel good was knowing that if (when) it stopped working, I’d be roasting in 115 degree heat inside the tiny camper.
Actually, who cares about any of that.
I’m doing it again.
Giving reasons for my not-yes, trying to justify instinct when instinct just is.
Sometimes I forget that it is enough that something is not my yes. That’s all I need to know.
IT IS ENOUGH THAT SOMETHING IS NOT MY YES.
Is that not the point of Operation True Yes and the past three months living on the road? To learn more about what is my yes and what is not my yes. And now I know.
Being in Escalante wasn’t my yes, and I don’t need reasons, I just need to hear my yes. My yes was to get out and my body said get out, and so I left.
Monsters.
I went home to my sweet, peaceful house with its cool cross-breezes and flowers from the garden, and my monsters said, UGH YOU ARE A BIG BABY AND YOU ARE GIVING UP ON ADVENTURE AND YOU ARE BAD AT ADVENTURING AND THIS IS STUPID AND YOU DON’T DESERVE SABBATICAL TIME BECAUSE YOU SCREW EVERYTHING UP AND NOW YOU ARE RUNNING BACK HOME BECAUSE YOU CAN’T HANDLE IT YOU ARE THE WORST.
But they were wrong.
In fact, this might be the best move I’ve ever made.
My body certainly thought so. Once out of the heat and the fear and the stress, my chronic pain actually went on vacation. For the first time in six weeks, my body feels pretty good. I’ve been sleeping well. I feel relieved and peaceful. This was a good call.
Superpower of trusting my yes: ACTIVATE. Superpower of knowing that I chose right: ACTIVATE. Superpower of following my instinct: ACTIVATE. Superpower of I can’t screw this up: ACTIVATE.
Current.
Sometimes it’s hard to follow the thread of my yes, to remember what I love, what I was excited about, why I was excited about it.
Pain makes it worse, as does fear.
Sometimes I need to remember the superpowers. The May superpower of I Take Care of Myself First. The June superpower of I Am Stronger Than I Think. The July superpower of This Is A Badass Way To Live.
And I need to remember that the real mission is taking exquisite care of myself, all the time.
Sometimes the best thing I can do for the mission is take a nap, have a good cry, trust that these are not keeping me from the mission, these are supporting the mission.
Hey, sometimes they might even be the mission.
I am allowed to forget that a hundred times a day, and I am allowed to keep remembering, to stay current, to remember the current.
Ops.
Everything is better with a container.
The monsters helpfully tried to point out that going to Portland was a terrible idea because sixteen days without my lover is no fun, and hiding at home isn’t an adventure, and WHAT IS THE POINT.
Except sixteen days is a container. Sixteen days is a good amount of time for a secret operation. Secret ops!
Sixteen days is a framework in which things can happen, change, heal, be released. Sixteen days is a good way to practice meeting an Incoming me or an aspect of myself that has been ignored or forgotten. Sixteen days of being.
What do I know about this particular op.
It has to do with LESS DOING and MORE BEING.
We could also call this more Tha and less Ha.
Parameters: doing three things a day tops, and at least one of them is a BEING thing like having a nap or a bath or staring into space.
And of course, giving this op to someone else, because a secret identity is a very fun (and useful) way to play.
Marlena Wild is my secret identity for this one. She is fun, and she is really good at Not Caring, which is a thing I need to learn.
Marlena likes:
- Bright colors.
- Standing tall.
- Strappy sandals.
- Cotton headbands.
- Feet on the ground.
- Alchemy in the kitchen (and in the lab, and in the bedroom).
- Orgasms, of course.
- Slow deep breaths.
- Adjusting her invisible crown.
- Treating REST like an extreme sport that she’s both fanatical about and very good at.
- Living downstairs. Loving downstairs.
- Clearing out the bowl.
Being.
I went to see Danielle (Dr. Cornelius) for treatment because she is amazing, and she gave me the homework of “more being than doing”.
More being than doing.
A school of being.
During the session, I had so many memories surface from growing up and being in school.
School was not really a healthy setting for a highly sensitive person. I needed so much recovery time, so much emptying and releasing, and that just didn’t exist, even as a concept.
I remembered, and remembered myself, and made a safe house for me-from-then, and let the entire concept of SCHOOL get tossed into a bonfire.
And then a new school showed up. A school of BEING.
BEE-ing.
It was made from honeycomb and it was also a school of BEE-ing.
This made me laugh.
And it made me think of what Barbara Sher says about honeybees: No one criticizes a honeybee for spending more time or less time on a particular flower. We trust that the honeybee knows what it’s doing. But we torture ourselves with the idea that we “gave up” on projects before they were “completed”. We have to trust our bee-selves and remember that we stayed for as long as there was nectar for us.
So bee-ing is another form of being. Trusting that however much effort I put into something (or decide not to put into something) is enough.
I invoke all the superpowers of honeybees, including trusting that the second I feel done with a flower, I am done with that flower, and I do not need to justify that to anyone.
What is my wish?
I want to let myself be excited about the things I am currently (current!) excited about, and give myself permission to not visit flowers that don’t spark joy for me.
I want to be conscious and playful in how I approach projects.
I want to do less, and then do even less than that, and trust that this is enough.
I want to wear hot pink shorts when I feel like it, and hide when I feel like it, and wait for the current to tell me what is next.
Invitation.
You are invited to make up secret identities! You are invited to name ops, which you are then welcome to ignore and not follow if another flower pulls you instead!
And you are are still welcome to make suggestions on ebooks that you might want me to write, which I might not write, because I am a honeybee.
Now.
My ears are ringing from being out in the world. I feel disoriented and fatigued.
I am practicing the thing that always helps: ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND LEGITIMACY.
This makes sense, even if I don’t know why or how. This is a normal way for a person-who-is-me to react to being in a city again, to loud and unexpected noises, to change, to stress. It is safe to have reactions. It is safe to take care of myself. It is safe to breathe and notice, and to challenge the monster-stories.
Just because the world isn’t built to support highly sensitive people doesn’t mean something is wrong with me for having strong reactions to life.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: Look at these beautiful things that are emerging from Shmita.
Me: But what if I’m just bad at being an adult.
She: You are enough, my love.
Clues?
Bee is the name of a very special person I know, and Honey is the name of a very special person I sometimes am.
The superpower of I am stronger than I think.
We are in June: RELEASE MORE, with the superpower of I am stronger than I think.
This week’s wish is about all of these. Letting go, being a bell, taking care of myself, living in truth.
I will take all the reminders I can get.
Things I find helpful for intentions and wishes…
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
Ongoing wishes.
Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere. Ha, this doesn’t require my input! My business is thriving happily without me. I think like a dancer. It’s so perfect it turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS. I have what I need, and appreciate it. I am fearless and confident. I state my preferences clearly, calmly and easily, no big deal. I am ready to come into my superpowers and receive.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week aka MOHO…
That was a wonderful wish that took me to all kinds of places. For one thing, it got me here, into an op that is about being (and BEE-ing) rather than doing.
Also my lover and I looked at motorhomes and got some ideas for a tiny house, and then went back to the earthship plan, and are generally excited about [building] and [small] and [sustainable].
And moho can also stand for More Honesty, which is what happens when I listen to my body and trust my yes.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I believe the Playground mugs are all sold but you can still acquire a pack of stone skipping cards just send a note and we’ll set it up. Ask Richard for cost/shipping.
Keep me company! Or just say hi!
This is an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads, superpowers, qualities, whatever you’d like, there’s no right way! Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is sharing anything sparked for you.
Comment culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play and throw things in the pot! With amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.
Here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: Oh, wow. What beautiful wishes.
xox
Chicken 360: the first one hundred days
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday, for this space, and for being here when we get here.}
What worked this week?
Asking the magic eight ball online.
Sometimes you just need something to confirm what you already knew but didn’t want to admit that you knew.
Looking at buttmonsters.
Look at those adorable buttmonsters! Look at that adorable tiny couch! Brandi bought these when we closed the Playground, and she sent this picture, and I can’t even stand how cute they are.
Usually it’s squeezing buttmonster butts that cheers me up. This week, just having this picture made things better.
Next time I might…
Rest more.
Always. But especially now. Rest is the door to sovereignty. I can’t feel what I need or stand up for what I know if I’m too worn out to take care of myself.
And the title of my upcoming Biopic if it were based on this week…
Hiding Under The Skylight. The Havi Brooks Story.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- The news is heartbreaking, and it seems like lately it is one gut-wrenching moment after the next. A breath for Charleston, for justice, for naming what needs to be named.
- Chronic pain is back. Five straight days of agony. A breath for presence and for moving through.
- Still so tired. I can do so little right now before becoming completely worn out. A breath for acknowledgment and legitimacy.
- Temperatures in the 90s make it impossible to function, even if I weren’t exhausted and in constant pain. We finally got out of the city where we can run the generator and have air conditioning, but it only works if you are constantly supervising and tinkering. The thought of being in 110 degree heat and having it break down is pretty terrifying, to be honest. And I can’t go into deep focus and writing mode if I need one ear listening at all times for the tiny signs that means the air conditioning unit is unhappy and needs immediate attention or it will stop. A breath for trusting my gut when it says no, this is too much to deal with right now, choose away from this.
- Plans keep changing, and then changing again, and I am in all of my homelessness stuff about Not Knowing Where I Will Be. A breath for remembering that I still have a home and I still have the camper with the beautiful boy, and I am held in love, and Now Is Not Then.
- I just want to be writing. And cooking. And have energy. A breath for this is how it is right now.
- Leaving the beautiful boy tomorrow for sixteen days. I am going to miss him so much. A breath for trusting the magic eight ball, and for trusting what I know and didn’t know that I knew until it was “confirmed” for me.
- 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.
- Gratitude for all this work of releasing. A breath for letting things go.
- I trusted my instinct and stopped taking the probiotics I’d been using to counter the effects of the antibiotics from last week, and the next day my pain went from unbearable and everywhere back to just the pain I’d been used to. Hey, progress. A breath for listening, and for relief.
- I got another session with the healing table. A breath for taking care of myself.
- We left the city and headed for the mountains and the trees, and everything is better. A breath for remembering this.
- My lover strokes my hair and listens and is present and kind and sweet with me, when I am panicking, when I am in pain, when I don’t know what to do, at all times. A breath for treasure: this is treasure.
- Today is 100 days of Shmita. A breath of appreciation for past-me who sent me on this wild adventure.
- Even though I don’t know what the plan is, I like the direction these new possible plans are going. Dreaming of tiny houses, earth ships, labyrinths, home base, building, writing, creating, cooking, resting. A breath for yes.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. Frozen bananas. The Sounders falling apart and getting three red cards, and the Timbers winning 3:1. I made glass cleaner from vinegar, water and lemongrass oil which I happened to have, and it works so much better than commercial cleaner. 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!
I slept for twelve hours one night, I wrote blog posts, I processed pain, I hid when I needed to hide. Let’s call that a successful mission and I now award myself a billion sparklepoints. Wham Boom.
Superpowers I had this week…
I had the superpower of trusting my body, and that was amazing.
Powers I want.
I want the superpower of believing that the decision I just made was wonderfully right, and if it turns out not to be, then finding the aspects that were vital to the mission and feeling happy about all of it.
The Salve of Trusting The Body.
When you put on this salve, it’s a bit like when you put on really high-quality noise-isolating headphones. Everything goes quiet all around you, like sinking into a beautiful pool that exists just for you.
And then you hear the quiet intel that was there all along:
Yes, you need to pee. No, that food is not going to feel good in your body. Yes, second breakfast is actually a great idea. Hmmmm, maybe a fifteen minute nap. Yes, yes, yes, change position. Yes, yes, yes, smell that flower.
You trust and listen, trust and listen, trust and listen. It’s like reuniting with a friend you haven’t seen in too long, and you giggle together and catch up on everything you missed. It feels sweet, familiar, safe and full of love.
When you wear this salve, people will wonder if you are in love.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is The Traveling Mulberries. Their latest album is called Flat Bed Ruckus. They play doowop covers of Dolly Parton songs and it’s just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I am recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, aka the thing that keeps me from falling apart.
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.
p.s. 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!
An airport parking lot filled entirely with French horns.
I am happiest when I am quiet, when everything is quiet, and listen best when there isn’t much visual input. I close my eyes a lot to focus.
I have trouble watching plays — too much going on at once. If I am listening very intently to you, I may turn my head away.
Both my traveling companion and my housemate in Portland find it baffling when they tell me something and I don’t understand it, and the reason is because the radio is on in the background, and I am overwhelmed by sensory input.
All this to say that I am most emphatically an auditory person…
Not only do I orient towards words and sound, but add to this HSP empath, and kind of witchy, and what you get is someone who a) can access more intel than a lot of people, and b) this happens in the form of words.
Sure, sometimes I see and feel things too, like when I found a nest in my ovaries, or the time a wall inside of me melted.
If you’ve read those pieces though or any of my writing, you know that the vast majority of my processing happens through listening, allowing things to be revealed.
Seeing.
Five weeks ago I entered some new internal territory (hello, Year of Releasing) which includes chronic pain, among other things, and another interesting piece to this is that now I am seeing things instead of hearing them.
Today I wanted to share some of what I have seen in the past couple weeks.
The copper bowl in the wrong place.
I was doing a Tami Kent exercise which I learned from Danielle Cornelius. You sort of imagine clearing out your pelvic bowl.
I saw the bowl instead of what would normally happen which would be feeling the bowl and then the bowl would talk to me.
It was a large copper bowl, in a wide open clearing in the forest, and it was in the wrong place, but I didn’t know the right place, and I wasn’t able to do anything with that other than receive it: this isn’t the location. This was the for-now location.
I was sweeping out the bowl with a broom, and the broom and I had a little laugh about how this is kind of like the secret purpose of a witch’s broom: clearing things out. The flying is a disguise. Or maybe flying is another form of clearing things out and releasing.
Wolves.
The wolves came then and circled the bowl. They couldn’t get near it because the bowl is protected, but this felt so very familiar.
Predatory energy. It just is. It’s everywhere and always has been.
I didn’t have to do anything about the wolves because some wise elders, women, from my lineage were there — clear, zero tolerance for bullshit. They just pointed towards the forest, and the wolves immediately slunk away, slightly apologetic, as if they’d already known they weren’t allowed near me or my bowl.
One of the women showed me how to point like that, with authority and a total lack of concern for what the wolves think they want.
You stand very tall, and you get very grounded, and you look both strong and bored at the same time. A comfortable, careless, sovereign knowing: this is no space for you, wolves.
The anger cauldron.
I found a cauldron inside of me and it was boiling anger, and had been for a very long time.
Probably anger about all the constant bullshit I deal with from wolves, past and present and theoretical and just the general culture of that. And the injustice: why is our world built to support the desires of wolves and not the safety and protection of bowls.
It was uncomfortable being home to an anger cauldron. The cauldron was heavy and old, and so many things had boiled down inside of it that it was coated in charred bits of old recipes.
I pointed out that once our bowl finds its right home and I get better at this authoritative pointing thing, we won’t need to cook up anger anymore, and then the cauldron seemed to feel relieved, and it left on its own.
The gazelle and the flower.
A gazelle came by and circled the territory of my right ovary in a loping gait, graceful, powerful, at ease. My left side bloomed with pale pink-purple flowers.
Everything felt calm.
The temple of yes.
It’s an altar of stones by the ocean and it is the place of yes.
I put flowers around it and hung out there for a while.
The ocean was peaceful and spacious and it told me to come back soon.
A conversation with a special table, and then more sights.
A few days later I was getting some physical therapy in Salt Lake City, on a very unusual table.
I asked the table what it wanted to tell me, because clearly it had things to say, and because I am a person who hears things. The Table said:
STOP CARRYING.
Put everything down. No, put everything down. Really and truly everything.
(You can pick it back up later if you choose to, but first you have to experience what it is like to not be holding it.)
Then it asked me to just watch. So I watched.
The table stopped talking, and for the next hour it just delivered images…
First the cages.
Giant wrought iron bird cages and then small ones.
These were guilt. Ha, I just now got the pun. Guilt/gilt.
Normally I would have gotten that right away because I would have received it as a WORD.
This was image, followed by feeling. I saw the cages, a procession of them, and then I knew what they were.
Guilt cages.
The cages demonstrated the uselessness of guilt. It can’t be contained, so you just end up caging yourself. It limits freedom but it doesn’t hold anything in.
The cages understood that they were unnecessary: I let them go, and they let me go.
Stacks of boxes.
Then shame: messy looking cardboard boxes, like moving house, all shapes and sizes.
They were taped up tightly, some with messages scribbled on them. Most of the boxes were falling apart, a little damp, moist, old, ragged. Enough boxes to fill a supermarket.
The thing with shame is that it doesn’t need you to look in the boxes. It’s the not wanting to look that strengthens it. It doesn’t really matter whether you look or not, since lugging the boxes around is a futile pursuit.
I followed the table’s advice, and let the boxes go.
Back to cauldrons.
Once the guilt cages and shame boxes cleared out, I was able to see how much anger I’ve been holding onto.
Cauldrons of all sizes, black, iron. Old potions had been cooked and forgotten, coating the insides.
I didn’t want to let the cauldrons go yet, but then I remembered the part about how I can reclaim anything I want later. The purpose of this was to discover who I am when I am not living on a slow burn of fury at the world for what is and what has been.
The cauldrons marched themselves away when I agreed to let them go.
Let it burn.
What happened next was a series of surprises. I expected the room might get cooler when all my internal cauldrons left me, but it actually got hotter because suddenly there were fires everywhere.
The fires were fear. Forest fires of fear. This made no sense to me, it didn’t fit how I experience fear. And it wasn’t what I thought I would find beneath the anger.
I circled the fires and the fires circled me and I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless.
The Table said: Let them burn themselves out. Don’t feed them, don’t worry about them, don’t be afraid of them (because that’s feeding them). Trust them. Trust their work of burning. And trust that this fire cannot hurt you, it’s just a process of endings.
LET EVERYTHING BURN, said the Table. And so I did.
Once everything was black and charred, a breeze came and lifted it all, and then there was nothing.
That was when the grief came but I didn’t cry.
I sat where the fires had been and let bowls fill with water, and let them empty.
Grief, grief, grief: rituals of releasing.
Then the horns.
After grief was another surprise: Regrets.
They were musical instruments, and there were so many of them. Rows and rows and rows of French horns. Then saxophones and trumpets and drums and all manner of things, but mostly French horns.
Not being played, just placed down. So many of them. Like watching an airport parking lot fill up with instruments.
I saw a house from my memory, and remembered what the regret was.
I wanted to touch the instruments, ask them why, but the purpose of this was to let them go, so I said I LET YOU GO, and an entire airport parking lot of French horns floated away.
Places and roses.
I waited for more emotions to come to me in unlikely shapes, but that part was done.
The table showed me all the physical places in my life where bad or unpleasant or unhappy things have happened, and I was asked to turn these into rose gardens or let them become rose gardens.
It was surprisingly easy, now that I had let everything go.
All I had to do was agree: This space can now become a rose garden.
Four summer camps, six cafes, apartments, book stores, street corners, buses, trains: all rose gardens now.
Then I became a rose garden.
Bowl.
The table told me that my only job from now on is to live in my garden and tend to my garden.
I walked through my garden and in the center was a beautiful elaborate labyrinth made of small stones. And the center of the labyrinth was my copper bowl. It had found its home.
I practiced pointing but there was nothing to point at because wolves don’t know about my garden.
The bowl asked me to wander the garden and remove any machinery or any “gifts”, anything that does not belong there because it is not mine. Things people want me to store for them because they feel safe with me.
I found objects belonging to former clients and internet people and people who have had crushes on me and former bosses and my ex the Spy, and all of it had to go. WHOOSH GOODBYE.
Stop caring.
When the garden was happy because all of the not-belonging-here belongings were cleared out, I sat down next to the bowl and waited for more information.
Here is what came:
STOP CARING
What?! Why? Why would I want to stop caring.
I didn’t understand.
The bowl said, sometimes caring is another form of carrying.
A door into glowing.
The bowl explained how this works. Stop caring means:
- Stop caring what people think.
- Stop caring about how you look.
- Stop caring in the sense of over-empathy with all the bad things, where you feel the pain of the world and it becomes yours, where you get so upset with injustice that you can’t function.
- Stop investing in other people’s opinions, philosophies, judgments.
Caring makes it real, and it’s not real.
It is a beautiful illusion. So stop carrying and stop caring.
Also this means stop caring in the sense of worrying, for example, the way I am currently all worked up about my illness right now This whole experience of pain is just a door to get me centered, grounded and focused downstairs, it is healing all my tendencies to float around in my head.
It is MOVING ME downstairs (a parallel to what is happening in my actual home because The Havi Show is the funniest), and this experience will help me be a better healer, dancer, writer and glowing flowing person.
That’s what the bowl said: Trust. No more carrying/caring. Let yourself care less and be more.
Next.
The treatment ended and I asked the table what is next. It said:
YOU ARE HEALED AND WHOLE.
YOU ARE HEALED AND WHOLE.
YOU ARE HEALED AND WHOLE.
And then after that.
And then that evening I got angry with my lover for the very first time, and then we made up and then we watched a movie, and there was a spectacular releasing of grief, which lasted for hours, undoing and undoing and undoing some more.
And then after that.
I am practicing.
Practicing looking in addition to listening. Noticing if and when I’m carrying/caring too much. Bringing my attention downstairs instead of just living upstairs.
Being curious about what I can put down and how that might feel.
Letting “healed and whole” be an option as a thing that is possible, even when I am in pain and in process and figuring stuff out.
Allowing airport parking lots to fill with French horns, if that is what is needed.
Giving permission for things to move and change, and for me to ease-and-release my way through it, to rest my way through instead of fighting my way through.
What would you like to stop carrying? Come play.
Keep me company!
Anything you would like to set down and let go of: it’s the month of releasing in the year of releasing, this is as good a time as any.
Other things that are welcome: hearts, pebbles, warmth, sweetness, any sparks sparked for you while reading,
As always, this is beautifully safe space, and we are able keep it that way by the intentional practice of not giving advice and not going into care-taking mode. We remember that we all have our stuff, we’re all working on our stuff, it’s a process.
We meet each other (and ourselves) with as much love as we can.