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.
Not this and not that.
I’ve been doing a fair amount of Emptying Out lately. Letting things go. Congruencing!
Last week I deleted fifteen blog posts from the drafts folder, because I realized I was never going to do anything with them.
But I kept one. I wrote this post in July, 2010. So, four and a half years ago.
And I think there’s still something to it. I took out a bunch of unnecessary apologizing (hey, at least I’ve learned something over the years), and edited it down a bit, but this is more or less what me-then wanted to say, and me-now thinks she was on to something.
So here you go, a glimpse into what I was thinking about then…
Options.
When we work with the video game technique, what emerges is that there are always options. More than we think we have.
Except we usually don’t see them.
That’s because we’re so used to the familiar ones. The options we usually choose. We see [DO THE USUAL THING!] or [DO THE THING WE DO WHEN WE RESIST THE USUAL THING!], and that’s it.
We don’t see all the doors in between.
Patterns.
So for example…
We think: Okay, we’re either going to grit our teeth and have the awkward horrible confrontation, or leave the situation and never look back. Or both.
We think we’ll probably put up with it until it drives us crazy, or cut all ties and be done. Or both.
We forget there are gaps and spaces, new and unexpected openings, always another way out.
We forget that there’s room.
The space where we have more choices:
There are endless turning points where we can consciously, actively decide to pick none of the above, and choose a new direction.
And specifically, opportunities to choose a middle way, a new way.
No more fight or flight — instead, something that’s not fight, and also not flight.
Not enduring, and also not running away.
Not ignoring, and also not reacting.
Not succumbing, and also not resisting.
Instead: opening to all the possibilities that lie in between those points, as well as all the possibilities beyond them.
Fun paradox!
So we are for the middle ground practice of “not this and not that”.
And we also want to practice exiting the middle, to get to the advanced practice, which is in many ways a return to being beginner. Confusing?
The middle ground we want here combines the qualities of the beginner’s mind (curious, receptive, compassionate), with the advanced practice (knowing we have the power to play with our patterns).
So to be in this beautiful space of middle — this middle ground of revealing previously undiscovered options and choices — requires a mindset that is not of the middle.
What past-me really wanted to say, in her words:
It is hugely important to remember that these spaces of in-between and possibility exist.
These new places are where we can discover wildly unlikely options that took us out of what we usually do, and into uncharted territory of creativity and hilarity and joy.
Consciously choosing not this and not that led to some seriously amazing things.
Why this is useful:
Every single time we interrupt or challenge a pattern, more options become available. They just appear.
And not just for right now. The next time you run into a wall, you’ll already have internalized both the process and the experience of choosing to do something different from what you usually do.
You’ve created space for trying new things, rewriting a patterns, or even just interrupting it for a second. It all counts.
And when one thing is possible, everything is possible.
Sometimes this is kind of terrifying to think about.
Not only is it just easier to go whooshing down the familiar neural pathways, there’s a certain weird comfort in charted territory even when you can’t stand the territory, the devil you know, etc.
We don’t necessarily even want to know about the other options. I mean, possibility can be liberating, and it can also be paralyzing and terrifying.
This is why I talk so much about the importance of safety and sanctuary when we work on our stuff.
Because there’s no point in making room, adding spaciousness and freedom (Very Interior Design!) without containment, without the perception safety.
There’s no point in discovering choices if we don’t feel safe, if we don’t trust our ability to react to those choices.
So … we make space for possibility. But we also carve out safe spaces to curl up and hide in.
Which is also an option that we might not have even known existed, without remembering the principle of not this and not that.
Play with me.
This is a very thinky concept, so I want to just name some of the qualities of Not This And Not That, to get more into the feeling of it:
Trust. Presence. Ease. Play. Sovereignty. Opening. Glowing. Energy.
You are welcome to bring situations from your life (maybe in proxy form!) and brainstorm reactions or next steps that fall into the category of Not This And Not That.
You are welcome to leave hearts, pebbles, smiles, hugs, superpowers.
You are welcome to share anything that was sparked for you.
The only guideline here is that we don’t give each other advice, or analyze each other or go into caretaking mode. Instead we make room for everyone to have their own experience. We all have our stuff, we’re all working on our stuff, it’s a process. We meet ourselves and each other with as much warmth, permission, love, and spaciousness as we can manage.
Hope this was useful, and I’m glad I was able to share something from four and a half years ago. ♡
Wish 288: someone come up with a card for that please
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
I am thinking about releasing and I am thinking about grief.
They go together sometimes.
I am deep in the process of releasing right now, and this is just the beginning.
I am drinking ginger tea and releasing. Rinsing out the mug in the sink and releasing. Curling up with a blanket and a hot water bottle. Releasing.
Here are some of the things I’m releasing:
Clothes, books, ideas, expectations, stories I tell myself, my sense of how long things “should” take, things that are traps, tears.
There is a lot of grief in this releasing.
What do we know about grief?
- Grief is always legitimate.
- I don’t need to know why I’m grieving it now, or even to know what exactly I’m grieving.
- Grieving is about identity. Change means letting things go, and even the most joyful letting go is still a goodbye to some aspect of who you were.
- Our culture does not have mechanisms for really interacting with grief.
- Our culture does not have rituals or containers for acknowledging the very real pain of loss. I’m not just talking about death, the big loss. Also loss of job, dream, relationship, friendship.
- And when there is acknowledgment, it’s someone trying to cheer you up and get you past it, instead of sitting with you and letting you feel what you’re feeling.
- Grief is natural and normal, and it hurts.
- Our lives are filled with busy-ness and streams of incoming information and input. Sometimes it seems like there isn’t even a moment to notice that we are avoiding the grief, never mind to say hello to it and offer it a chair.
What do I know about this.
Sometimes even when the releasing is the best possible releasing, there is pain.
When my beloved mentor broke up with me, I was in shock. It was very sudden, unexpected, public, painful.
Even from inside the deep fog of confusion, inside the slow ache of realizing that there was no way to repair the broken trust between us, I knew that one day I would say thank you for this.
I knew there was treasure in this goodbye, in this releasing, even if I couldn’t see it yet.
It’s been a couple years now, and it doesn’t hurt anywhere near the way it did. The agonizing pain of that day is a simple memory of what was, no longer charged with feeling.
I’ve come to realize that this ending was needed, this releasing was necessary. And since I never would have let go of that connection of my own accord, I needed to be helped out of it.
And: grief is legitimate.
There is no hallmark card for most of the painful things in life.
At least not that I know of.
I definitely didn’t get any cards, and now I kind of want some:
“Hey sorry the person you thought was your biggest supporter turned out to be the opposite of supportive! That sucks! You are AMAZING!”
“Whoa the thing you spent the last ten years working on is not in your life anymore, that has to hurt. I wish I had more than hugs, but here are some hugs! Your dream was special and so are you!”
“Hey, that is so hard that your giant project didn’t work out and you lost everything, just wanted to say that I love you and adore you, and I know you’ll be okay. P.S. You are a great adventuress!”
People tend not to mention the painful things.
They tiptoe around them.
Or they are confused about why you feel sad. Which is weird. Really? Why am I crying right now? I don’t know. Could be anything really. Look at all the things I have lost in the past few years. Look at all the broken pieces.
I’m glad for the releasing, for all the treasure of releasing, and sometimes it still hurts, and the thing that needs to be released is bucketloads of tears.
Or what needs to be released is the idea that I need to be over this.
What is my wish?
To find the joy in releasing. To be peaceful with the presence of grief.
To say thank you with a full heart to everything that is and everything that was.
To give myself endless permission to feel as sad as I happen to feel, for as long as I need to feel it.
To remember that everyone I encounter has also experienced deep losses, that we are all going through this all the time, the loss and the non-acknowledgment.
To do my own acknowledging.
What do I know about this wish?
This afternoon I was at my center, The Playground.
I’ve had this space for nearly five years, can you believe it. And now I am in the process of maybe-probably letting it go. Releasing. And it hurts.
It is right, and it hurts.
I descended to the floor as I have done so many times (thousands!) and closed my eyes and waited. For about ten minutes my thoughts went every which way, and I let them. And then, slowly, my breath became steadier. My thoughts quieted.
And then I heard a sentence, very clearly:
It is safe to love.
It is safe to love.
What I love about this piece of wisdom, from inside me or from the Playground, is how it gets to the heart of grief.
When I’m in the grief, I am also in the fear of future loss, potential loss, what if I feel like this again, what if I lose again.
The reminder here is that nothing is wrong. I made choices from love. I took risks from love, for love. I tried things because of love. And there is more love. It is safe to love. Even if I lost things, people, money, friendships.
I built the Playground from love, with love. It emerged from love, it exists in love. I can let it go with love, from love. I can trust and love again. Love more, trust more.
Everything ends, everything dies, everything reconfigures, and still it is safe to love.
I can’t lose love, because love is inside of me and around me.
Love is not what has been lost. Love is still here.
What do I really want?
To choose from love. To trust love.
To take exquisite care of myself.
To let go of everything that is done, knowing that this is perfect: thank you for being done.
And I want ease-filled solutions, elegant solutions, clear pathways, signs and clues. I want to see with joy-eyes, to feel with my joy-heart.
To say thank you and release, and know that the releasing is treasure.
And, as always, to trust my instincts more. To trust my yes and trust my no, and act on that trust immediately.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: I know you think this isn’t a super fun wish. It’s an important one. It’s going to help you carry your joy with you.
Me: I bring my own joy party! And sometimes my own grief party, apparently.
She: Remember when you worked in the orchards? How happy the trees were when they were pruned back? That was some joyful releasing.
Me: It’s true, they loved it. I liked giving them that attention, that sweetness. That was the best job I’ve ever had.
She: You know why you don’t think about the trees anymore.
Me: Because of [loss] and [other loss].
She: Yup, and yet remembering your relationship with the trees is important. It will take you back to the joy of climbing, the joy of pruning, the communing in quiet, trusting that it is okay to love. Just because the trees are gone now doesn’t mean their love for you is gone.
Clues?
Love the horizons.
The superpower of calm steady trust is mine.
The quality for January on the 2015 Fluent Self calendar is ANCHOR.
With the superpower is Calm Steady Trust Is Mine.
Calm steady trust is exactly what I need for all this releasing. And actually an anchor is useful too. An anchor doesn’t hold things completely still, it allows them to drift slightly with the water.
That is important.
GOOD NEWS!
Do you want your calendar? You can still order one through the Plum Duff sale, assuming supplies last! Password: enter-with-roses
Ongoing wishes.
- Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere.
- I have the best time dancing in my ballroom.
- This doesn’t require my input!
- Ha, it’s so perfect that it turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS
- I have what I need, and I appreciate it. There are resources to do this.
- Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
- I am fearless and confident. I do the brave things, I state my preferences clearly, calmly and easily, and it is not even a big deal, yay.
- I am ready to come into my superpowers, including the superpowers of knowing that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, I Am Okay With Being Seen, receiving gifts that are winging their way to me. See also: The superpower of Everything Enhances My Superpowers. And adds panache.
Things I find helpful when it comes to wishes…
More sweet pauses, yes to the red lights, remember the purple pills, say thank you to the broken pots. Permission. Bright colors. Passion. Costume changes. Stone skipping with incoming me. Dance. Intensity. Writing. Lipstick. My body gets the deciding vote. And, as always, saying thank you in advance.
Give it to the compass: Eight directions, eight qualities, eight breaths.
Trust. Release. Love. Receive. Anchor. Crown. Glow. Boldly.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka Let’s pretend this is about soup…
I’ve been doing pretty well with following my desires, and not hiding intel from myself.
On Wednesday I left a dance that wasn’t fun. On Saturday I was brave and tried something new even though it scared me because I heard the yes.
And I’ve been noticing when I act on intel about what I want, and when I try to hide this intel from myself or from people in my life.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
We are running a giant sale where all the amazing new stuff is HALF OFF RIGHT NOW! Password: enter-with-roses
This was supposed to end tomorrow, except [life stuff] happened and I never got around to emailing the list and telling people about it, which is the nice thing to do. So we’re actually going to extend this. Reprieve!
Good for this next week, assuming supplies last!
♡
Keep me company?
Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads. In any size/form you like, there’s no right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play 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 337: I nearly punched someone, and that is okay because I am a great adventuress
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Legitimacy.
The thing that I am currently feeling, it makes sense.
And there are lots of reasons why I might be feeling that way, and all of them are legitimate. And I also might have forgotten or overlooked very legitimate reasons, and that is legitimate too.
I am allowed to feel this feeling. I am allowed to not like feeling this feeling. I am allowed to not like that I do not like feeling this feeling.
Legitimacy is the one thing I know that genuinely shifts perspective. Actually, it shifts a lot more than perspective.
Anyway, I was able to remember this, and it worked for me.
Going to bed.
Sometimes, often, for me, that is just the thing.
And a lot of times I forget that this is even an option. Occasionally I even forget at night.
Next time I might…
Maybe not make that face?
I was in a dance class, and the teacher demonstrated something with the help of a student. The student misinterpreted a move and made THAT EXACT FACE THAT I ALWAYS MAKE WHEN I SCREW UP.
It’s a mix of apologetic chagrin and “please don’t hate me”, and it’s not particularly attractive, and it doesn’t feel fun, but more than that, I finally understood something about glowing boldly, which has been my big wish these past months.
Makings this face is the opposite of committing to glowing boldly, and suddenly I was able to see just how much I no longer wish to make that face.
It’s not that I wish to not screw up. It’s dance. Dance is improvised play with a thousand rules to remember and another thousand to joyfully break. Dance is alive and always changing. I’m going to fall on my face sometimes.
What I want is to find out what it would be like to respond with a smile. Or with steadiness. Or a steady smile. I am ready to be done with making that face.
For now I am just going to experiment with noticing when I make that face, and thinking something reassuring to myself. You’re doing great, honey. You are trusting and trying.
And maybe I can try a new face. Just an in-between one to break things up for a while. Or I can think MAKE A FACE and laugh.
Anything I can do to interrupt the pattern counts.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Oh sometimes I think I am not made for having an internet job. I can’t handle the energy of it, it is so completely overwhelming. Except then I remember that I am not able to function in a regular person job. A breath for being a highly highly sensitive person.
- Got very overwhelmed by projects. Also overwhelmed by the prospect of figuring out how to take care of house things and overhead for the Playground and the chocolate shop while I am divesting myself of projects for this upcoming year of Shmita and releasing. And oh, sometimes letting things go is so very hard. A breath for presence, trust, and being present with trust.
- I said this last week: I’m ready to leave Portland. I want to be somewhere quiet, peaceful, breathtakingly beautiful. A breath for allowing myself to want what I want, even if this isn’t something I can address quite yet.
- My wonderful uncle Svevo was visiting for the weekend, and one of my big life wishes is more time with Svevo, except I had deadlines and aforementioned projects, and so I chose work over play, for what felt like the thousandth billionth time that this has happened. A breath for making peace with my choices.
- Augh, working out after new years is the worst. The studio is packed full of people, and everyone is being super territorial about space. I found myself wanting to actually punch someone. And then I checked the app that tells me where I’m at in my cycle, and I was NOT anywhere near the nine day period when wanting to punch people is a thing. A breath for hey, babe, you are okay, and for being in [secret undisclosed location] next January in a place where this won’t be an issue.
- Hahahahaha we are back to getting a hundred emails a day. I’ve been on email sabbatical for SIX YEARS, and in general that has worked really well. I mean, I still don’t see these emails. But I know they exist. A breath for this too shall pass, and for better systems in place.
- Various things not working, or maybe just the perception that things don’t work. The printer. Going to a dance and not enjoying myself. Trying to figure things out. A breath for recognizing all the clues that come with discomfort.
- 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.
- I went to a foxtrot class! Twice! So good to be dancing again. Oh how I have missed dance and learning, both of these. A breath for remembering.
- I have been spending very little time in online spaces I used to frequent, using Marie Kondo’s question “does this bring me joy?”, and exiting when the answer is no. Or not entering to begin with. Much excitement about creating new neural pathways. A breath of relief and thank-you.
- Plum Duff! We did a ton of work, and made our once-in-a-while New Stuff And A Sale thing happen. Monsters say we were three months behind, and yet how can that be because it happened this week, which means that was the right time. A breath for all timing is right timing.
- Joy and Sweetness: again, still, more. Napping happily in my lover’s arms. Feeling peaceful and steady. A breath for a full heart, and for closeness, in many forms.
- I have a computer again! And the hard work is paying off. I finished FOUR ebooks, TWO Havi-Announces-A-Thing pages, five blog posts! I cleared out half my closet and also the problem room. A breath for being in the zone.
- I was brave this week and did many brave things and now I get a hundred billion sparklepoints. A breath for trying.
- I was feeling kind of low, and Max said, “Havi, you are a great adventuress! You are! If this were the 19th century, everyone would be reading your biography!”. I cannot even tell you how much this cheered me. I need someone to tell me this a thousand times a day. A breath for trusting this. I am a great adventuress. I can do this.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. Dancing. Figs. People who care about me. Everything is okay. Nothing is wrong. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
Oh wow, everything got done this week, again. All the HATs were finished. I finished editing all twenty six thousand words of the Terpsichore Springs book which went out to its dear readers. Plum Duff went live. Feeling excited. Thank you fractal flowers. More goodies soon, to those waiting patiently for Internalship ebooks, there are three of those being edited! And also: Wham Boom.
Revisiting some wise important words of truth from past-me.
Of course: Sovereignty casserole. It even has a story about flowers.
Superpowers…
Powers I had this week…
I had the power of It Is Safe To Let This Go. And the power of telling someone at dance that he was hurting me on the double turn.
Superpowers I want.
I want again the superpower of the superpower of Things Resolve Themselves In Unexpected And Sometimes Elegant Ways.
And the superpower of Let Go And Do Less.
The Salve of Let Go And Do Less.
I realized this week that if ideas were visible, I’d probably be on one of those shock-value television reality shows about hoarders.
One of my intentions for this new year is “NO MORE PROJECTS!” — picture a picket sign! — and so of course I am being offered wonderful-sounding projects right and left.
When I remember the salve of Let Go And Do Less, I remember to love more trust more. I stop thinking that I am the one in charge, and that if I just finish all the things on my list, somehow everything will be okay.
The salve softens me, it softens everything in me and suddenly I remember that the world is not going to fall apart. If anything, I am going to fall apart if I keep pushing, so I might as well breathe and trust, and focus on doing things that help me do more of that.
The salve of Let Go And Do Less has a subtle sparkly sheen to it. It secretly restores your crown and polishes your jewels. It makes room for perfect simple solutions that you couldn’t see while you were running around trying to make things happen. This salve goes well with tea, and suddenly I remember that there is time for that too…
If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is called A Brumby For A Friend, and I have no idea why. I found it on an orange post-it note in my kitchen, definitely my handwriting. They’re loud and raucous, and clearly Australian. Their latest album is called Clown Water, and it turns out this band is actually just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
GUESS WHAT! The Plum Duff sale is happening right now!
We have new things. We have beautiful, wonderful adventures.
And everything is HALF OFF, so go to the Plum Duff page! Password: enter-with-roses
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re feeling quiet. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. We’ve been doing this every week for years now and there still isn’t a right way. Feel free to leave pebbles (or petals!), hearts, warmth, sweetness. Those always work.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.
The Secret Sword Society
I already told the story of my brother coming home from pre-school and announcing proudly, “I know the S word!”
I love S words.
And I especially love how [s-words] easily turns into swords.
Swords and s-words.
So. <-- Probably my favorite S word.
So let’s do this. Salutations! Welcome to the Secret Society of the S Words.
The Secret Society of the S words.
This is where the S words live.
Where they play. Swordplay and s-word play.
This is where you’ll find Spaciousness and Speediness. Serenity and Spontaneity. Soothing and Shedding. Sincerity and Solidarity. Stretching and Spreading. Sophistication and STAR POWER.
And sparklepoints.
Support and Surrender. Stillness and Summoning. Suppleness and Structure.
Spirit and Source. And the Superpower of remembering that I am Surrounded by Source, I do not have to be Source for other people.
Steady sturdy stability.
Simple sustainable systems and solutions.
The S word is Sovereignty.
Sovereignty is the thing I care most about.
Sovereignty is being UNAPOLOGETICALLY TRUE TO MYSELF.
Sovereignty is showing up as fully myself as I can, being as honest as I can with myself and others about what I need and desire in a given moment, taking care of my various selves and their needs, unapologetically glowing my presence and standing in my strength.
Taking ownership of how I experience, react to, interact with life.
This includes, among other things, knowing and remembering that other people don’t get the power of being responsible for my emotions, because taking care of my emotions and my reactions is my job, as is setting clear boundaries around what is acceptable around me.
It’s that and so much more. I have re-read what I wrote about Sovereignty 101, and it still blows my mind, this concept is so vitally important.
Sexy, sweet, sultry sovereignty.
My lover and I practice something we have named Radical Sovereignty.
Our intention is to be completely honest with ourselves and each other about what we want and need, in all situations. For each of us to take care of our own kingdom. To not contort or hide. To live by the C in all interactions with each other.
To bring all of ourselves to this adventure. To speak truth with sweetness. It is exciting and scary and sexy and vulnerable. Did I mention scary? OHMYGOD. It is not easy, it might even in some ways be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and yet, it also makes everything easier.
It is a softening. And there is something sweet and sexy about letting yourself soften.
Without sovereignty, there can’t be safety in softness. And without sovereignty, the other S-words don’t stand up for themselves. So many sweet S words…
So many sweet S words.
The S Word is SWEETNESS. The S Word is SMILING.
The S Word is SOFTENING. The S Word is SOLIDITY. The S Word is SLOWING DOWN.
The Steadfastness of the Sun. Sudden Sweet Surprises.
The S Word is SERVICE. Serving through being quiet, through modeling instead of teaching.
The S word is Shmita.
I didn’t write this post for a long time. I started, and then I couldn’t do it. And I wondered why.
And then while I was in the desert on my forty three days of Operation Tranquility Recovery Magic, aka the unlikeliest road trip, I had the realization about Shmita.
And then I knew what I had been waiting for. I had been waiting for this S-word.
Shmita means releasing, and so much more than that. Letting the land lie fallow.
This coming year for me is devoted to practicing sovereignty, and also for not doing anything else.
It is my year of not-creating, not-spending, not-planning. Just being. Being and releasing.
And Scene!
The S Word is SAFETY. The S Word is SHELTER. The S Word is SANCTUARY.
The S Word is SECLUSION. The S Word is SECRET OPS. The S Word is SERENDIPITY.
The S Word is SPIRALS. The S Word is SOLO. The S Word is SINGLE. The S Word is SOLIDARITY.
The S Word is STORY. The S Word is SNACKS!
The S Word is SEEDS. The S Word is SEEN. The S Word is SCENE.
And: scene.
More S Words! More S Words!
The S Word is SEXINESS. The S Word is SASS. The S Word is SCENT. The S Word is SPECIAL. The S Word is SWELL. The S Word is SERENADE.
Splendiferous! Syncopate! Soup!
Shiva, the god of destruction and deconstruction, who dances the dance of joy and takes things apart so they can rebuild.
So much sparking!
The S Word is SYLLABUS.
The S Word is SOLITUDE. The S Word is SHADOW.
The S Word is SUSTENANCE. The S Word is SACRED. The S Word is SARONG.
S is also for Sex. Sultry, saucy, scintillating. Splitting and sparking.
It really is spectacular.
The S Word is SACRUM. The S Word is SETTING. The S Word is SLINKY. The S Word is SPECTACULAR. Isn’t it?
The S Word is SEEDING. The S Word is SHARING. The S Word is SYNTHESIS.
The S Word is STRENGTH. And SECURITY.
The S Word is SIGHT. The S Word is SELF and self-care and self-worth and self-actualizing and self-fluency.
S is for SPACE. Sacred space.
S is for SURFACING.
S is for Stimming, which for me is Supportive of Sanity and Serenity.
The S Word is Seasons. And Seasonings. S is for things that Sparkle and Shimmer and Shine. S is for Silliness and for Silence, for Simplicty and Sincerity. For Surfing and for Singing.
The Secret Sword Society. It’s now an actual place!
The Secret Sword Society, aka the Secret S-word Society, is what I am calling the newest incarnation of my private-entrance online community (going on year seven) where we actively practice self-fluency, where we work and play, in companionship and with love.
This is where I work on my stuff.
I am especially excited about this new year, because the focus is going to be on living in sovereignty, and finding ways to live that are sustaining and sustain.
Sovereingty, sweetness, sustenance, sustainability, spaciousness. All the good stuff.
We set sail (sailing, another S word!) on February 28th. Right now admission is half off because of Plum Duff, so take a look at the sail/sale page. Password: enter-with-roses
May it be so! And come play with me.
Thank you, letter S.
If you want to whisper or shout words or sound effects that start with S, go for it.
Add new S words or peek over here for more S-filled riches. Like sacchariferous, salmagundi, saxifragous, scoliograptic, sempervirent and sphygmodic. On a raft!
And of course, if you want to share in any of the qualities and magical words I named here, help yourself.
They work like the salves (S-word!) in the Friday Chicken: there is enough and there is always more.
Whispering loving spells that begin with S, for myself, and for anyone who wants…
Releasing.
Things I have let go of this week.
A grey t-shirt that belonged to a once-upon-a-time lover.
The shirt was old and torn. The former lover is, or was, in Santa Cruz. He found the shirt on a beach once and thought it was lucky, I can’t remember why, and I have nothing but the warmest wishes for him, wherever he is now.
And the shirt. I have the shirt.
2015.
I was texting with a friend this week, a fellow writer, and he asked what my wishes are in this new year. Here they are:
- Sustainable and sustaining.*
- Find out what it’s like to be an eccentric writer who has no other jobs than that, in this year of releasing.
- Discard possessions, people, relationships and habits that do not spark joy.**
- Take amazing care of my body.
- Sleep. Dance. Laugh.
- Wake up in beautiful places.
- Spend more time with my uncle.
- Be filled with praise: thank you thank you thank you.
- Write, and put things I write on the blog, and see what happens. I want the community that gathers around my writing to grow into something bigger and steadier again (see: sustainable and sustaining), but if that isn’t what happens then at least I was brave and shared things with the world, and that is something.
- Forgive and let go.
- Delight in what I have. And if it doesn’t delight, release it or change it.
** Speaking of magic, the revelatory concept of [choose things based on what sparks joy] is from Marie Kondo. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was a spark-filled catalyst of a read for me.
Does it spark joy?
That question is just absolutely mind-boggling to me:
Does this spark joy?
I love (and am slightly terrified by) the idea of this being the measuring stick for everything in my life.
- Do I feel the joy spark? Yes! Great. This stays in my life.
- Do I feel the joy spark? No-but-but-but! Ah, thank you, goodbye.
I mean, take the grey shirt that was given as a gift, first to my ex-lover by the beach, and then given to me by him when we said goodbye for the last time.
Marie says you have to touch it to know. You caress it with your fingers, you smooth it lovingly and fold it with sweetness, and then you know. You either feel the spark or it isn’t there. You can’t pretend when it comes to touch.
You’ll just know.
So I know. No joy is sparked for me from holding this shirt.
The memory linked to the shirt, carried inside the cloth, that sparks joy, but of course — as I realized while I was touching it — I don’t keep it for the memory.
I already have the memory.
The memory is in me.
I remember the moment we met: what I was wearing, the band we weren’t listening to, my forgotten food getting cold. The entirety of that experience: it’s still there. I’m not actually going to forget that day, or the day he gave me the shirt, or how my life shifted in vital ways thanks to that connection.
That’s not why I keep the shirt. It’s just why I think I keep the shirt.
I keep the shirt, I now realize, because I’m afraid.
I’m afraid that if I don’t cling to the fact of its existence, that I won’t have adventure in my life. I won’t have passion and excitement and possibility.
I won’t have someone to tell me what a knockout I am, to whisper sweetness in my ear until I believe again. Which is absurd.
The truth is, even if I didn’t have access to those things right now, holding onto the shirt by keeping it rolled in a ball on the floor in the back of a closet is not so much issuing an invitation for what I want as it is committing a small part of myself to forever pacing back and forth in the dusty rooms of what was.
I kept the shirt to honor the joy sparks, but that’s not the correct way to cultivate joy sparks.
Thank you, me who wanted more joy. Thank you, me who said yes to joy when it came her way. Thank you, Marie, for pointing out that it is time to let this go.
Marie says, “The true purpose of a present is to be received.”
Yes. Of course. And I received all of it, with a full heart, and its work is done.
Goodbye.
Goodbye, shirt.
Thank you for bringing me so much pleasure and sweetness in a moment when I needed both of those more than I could have known.
Thank you for being a reminder of pleasure and sweetness when the moment had passed.
Thank you for showing me that these are qualities I treasure, qualities I want and need in my life. Your work here is done.
Thank you. You are released.
I receive and release, release and receive. This is the flow of life.
My god what a question.
It is a beautifully precise question.
Does it spark joy?!?!?!
A perfect question. A brilliant question. A dangerous question. A wildly subversive question.
It cuts through facades. You can’t pretend with this question.
I have been waking up at 5am each morning thinking about Does This Spark Joy.
Just this concept — that I’m allowed to use joy as the determining factor for what gets to stay in my life — is so completely startling to me that I find myself laughing.
It sinks in deeper, and I laugh. I release and I laugh. I choose based on joy, and I laugh. And sometimes I cry.
Good lord, the reminders I choose to keep around me, the many things in my life that so clearly do not spark any joy for me, and how I surround myself with them.
Does it spark joy? This is a question that makes things very hard and very easy.
On the one hand, I can now get rid of Most Things In My Life, because it turns out that very few of them spark joy…
But do I really want to deal with how naked and vulnerable and empty that is in order to arrive at how sweet, simple and freeing it will be?
That is the thing with asking about joy.
You learn things. Maybe things you didn’t want to know. Maybe things you knew and were hiding from yourself.
There is that beautiful moment of clarity, and then that cold-water-splash of okay I now know something I have known for years, but I think maybe now I have to do something about it.
Passports.
I have no idea why I keep expired passports. Do I think I’m going to forget that I was in Scotland?
Or that I had terrible glasses with black frames that made me look like an irritable librarian?
I also have forty eight shekels and the key to my ex’s mom’s place in Herzliya.
Mysteries of releasing and not-releasing.
My maternal grandfather died when I was three or four.
I have no memories of him, or of what that loss was like for my mother.
My remaining three grandparents all passed away within a year of each other when I was in my early twenties. Both of my parents returned pretty shaken from the uncomfortable experience of dealing with the piles of left-behind possessions, and filled with zeal to empty their own house so that my brother and I would not go through the same.
Their newly-found passion for letting go of things took them as as far as re-organizing the basement, and then fifteen years went by. When my mother died, there were three entire rooms absolutely stuffed with her belongings, with projects in progress.
I like a good project myself. Like my mother, I am a scanner. So I get it. Have you read Barbara Sher’s Refuse To Choose? Read it!
“I imagine there are orderly, well-organized Scanners in the world, but there can’t be very many of them. It’s far more common to hear a Scanner mumbling, “Now, where did I put that lizard?”
But there were other things too. Mysteries. Like, why would my mother have kept her 1984 voter registration card in her jewelry box?
I ask that in all seriousness, and yet much to my surprise I discover that I have four expired passports just sitting here with my winter socks.
More things I have let go of this week. Divesting.
Lingerie that I never wear, given to me by an ex.
A really beautiful wallet that I bought three years ago as a symbol/gift to mark the process of opening my new center, and have never used once.
An old address book from 2004. It had the numbers of two friends who have killed themselves, and the address for where I left [my entire life of the previous ten years in Tel Aviv] when I left for Berlin, thinking I’d only be gone a few months… I still haven’t been back.
A mixtape my brother made me in 1993. A postcard from New York.
Books I only keep to impress people, a category I didn’t know existed until I asked the question about joy. There is no joy in these books for me, so goodbye and thank you for trying to fulfill something I thought was needed.
Sometimes I notice that I keep things given to me (see: lingerie) because the experience of receiving them gave me joy. So really, I already had the joy. Now I’m just dragging along joy shadows because I’m afraid if I don’t hold onto the memory of receiving, I won’t have any more of that particular flavor of joy.
Dragging joy shadows. Time to divest from that pattern as well.
I love the word divesting, it actually comes from the words [removing] and [garments]. So it is a form of undressing, taking off. Removing layers and costumes and pieces of identity that I do not wish to carry anymore.
Making things lighter, and also bringing in light. Illuminating was December’s word, with the superpower of bringing light to the corners.
So of course January is about emptying those corners, saying thank you to everything I found there, and then letting it go.
This is the year of releasing.
Last year was the Year of Emerging & Receiving. The Year before was the Year of Emptying & Replenishing.
This year is the Year of Easing & Releasing. My Shmita year, my time to let things go.
And apparently part of this means learning to allow joy to be the reason to let them go.
To let go joyfully. Or to let go to allow in more joy. Or to let go of any rules I have about how much joy I’m allowed to have.
And then to invite in those things, people and experiences that do spark joy. To welcome joy and make space for it. To say, hello, come in, I am ready for this.
May it be so! And come play with me.
You are welcome to share stories or wishes of your own related to releasing. Or to let go of things that need letting go of. Or to share anything sparked for you here. Or to say hi, leave pebbles or tiny hearts.
This is the safest space I know of on the internet, and we have been able to keep it that way through a very simple practice: we don’t give anyone advice and we don’t try to take care of each other. Instead we make room for each other.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a process. We meet ourselves and each other with as much love as we can.
So come play. I love having company. ♡
postscript!
I am not actually teaching this year because I am on Shmita and letting my fields rest, but if you want to take part in my year of Easing & Releasing, come by the Plum Duff page. Password: enter-with-roses