Moon Ceremony

Last night
I sat fireside
At a moon ceremony
Drumming
Singing
Watching
Feeling
Pulsing

And later
as I slept
I dreamed
Settled
Under a warm
White comforter
Next to Nell
And two black kitties.

The voice was clear
It said
It is gone now
The wind has taken it away
Today is fresh
Feel the air
And space
And coolness
In your heart.
You may now,
Exhale.

Shenpa and Text Messages

I am forcing myself these days to become aware of my shenpa - those little emotional hooks that trigger feelings of sadness, or anger, or loneliness. When a feeling like that arises, instead of shoving a yodel in my face, or lighting a cigarette, or pouring a glass of wine, I just sit. And notice it. And try to be curious about it. And sit with it long enough without taking any action other than feeling it. For a bit. Not long. Maybe a couple of minutes. I’m not great at this. I’m a beginner with this shenpa stuff.

This exercise completely goes against my grain. For as long as I can remember, I always believed that one of my greatest talents, or saving graces, depending on how you looked at it- was my ability to take action. To want something and to go after it … with wild abandon. I spent a lot of time believing that it set me apart from the rest that I could feel an urge, then set a goal, and then achieve it - whether that be a job, or a certain man, a new hairdryer, tablecloth, book, car … you get the picture. I don’t ever remember denying myself any pleasure I thought I wanted or needed.

But I am trying to do that now. Why? Because I am trying like hell to be enough for me. I am trying to see all of the urges and hooks that arise in me as needs that I can fulfill in myself, if only I can stop trying to fill them with people and places and things. And the first step is to recognize them … and the next step is to refrain from acting on them … and the third step is to sit in the feeling.

I started thinking about this last night while sitting with my sister and sister in law at a beach house in New Hampshire. We were playing dice at the kitchen table with all the kids under foot. We were laughing and chatting and having a great time. My sister in law started getting text messages from her boss. It is only a small business and my sister in law is only one of two employees. They were innocuous texts. “How are you?” and “Did you get any sun today?” and “Be well! Enjoy!”. But this was not the first night of these text messages. This was the second night in a row of the same kind of “reaching out” messages. And my sister in law responded every time. Why? Because she is nice, and does like her boss, and even more, likes her job. But then she made the comment “She does this ALL the time. It’s night time, she has no relationship with her husband, she probably just poured a glass of wine and she is lonely.” And I had one of those “aha” moments. The kind where you slightly cringe and are filled with simultaneous embarrassment and sadness because you recognize yourself in someone else’s somewhat embarrassing and sad behavior.

Over the last couple of years, I could not even count the number of times I sat alone at night after Nell was sleeping with a glass of wine and my cell phone in hand, texting old boyfriends. Ugh, I could just die at the memories. Sometimes I would try to be thoughtful: “How did your meeting go today? Sometimes I would try to be cheery and cool “Saw an awesome band tonight?” Sometimes I would be downright pathetic “Why don’t you love me anymore?” Yikes is all I can say to that. Cringing is what I am doing right now.

So, sitting at the kitchen table in my sister in law’s beach house last night … I saw me in her boss. I saw one of the huge needs of mine, that has lived in my heart for the last several years, that I looked outside of me to fill. Loneliness and the resulting need to be noticed and desired by a man.

And I committed again - to me - to keep letting these feelings surface - to notice them, to refrain from acting on them, and to sit with them. for a bit.

I do not need a text message back from an old boyfriend to alleviate loneliness and to feel noticed.  I can notice me.  I can sit with my feelings for a bit. Then, and only then, I can pick up a paint brush and open some gesso. I can sit with Willy and Boo and pet them. I can call a real friend. I can play cards with Nell or read aloud to her from our goddess book. I can organize my headbands or weed the garden …. I can do anything I want as long as the end result is a taking care of myself - an act that in the end strengthens me and makes me feel good about me … and demonstrates that I can take care of me in a healthy, strong way.

I am working on being enough - for me.

xo

Balanced Design - Eco Friendly Home Accessories

This is my best friend Mindy’s amazing business. She is at the New York International Gift show starting August 16th. Visit her booth and be sure to check out her website Balanced Design. She is beautiful, talented and hip and …. most importantly, has the most generous and gracious heart.

You will love her as much as I do, I just know it.

xo

Action!

Ready, set ACTION!

Okay, here goes. I have one month left before school begins and a handful of days that are completely work free. I’m done with being sick (throat, fever, cold for the past 9 days.ugh). It has left me feeling far too self-reflective (yes, I think we can all go there too deeply for too long), down in the dumps and fat. But I went to bed last night saying, “Okay, when you wake up tomorrow, you are DONE with it.” Time for action. My bff Mindy always says when you are in a rut, make a “to do” list and just start with the very first item on it. Get off of your ass, put your head down and just DO the very first thing on your list. So, ready, set, ACTION.

Today, I am going to:

1. Make a protein, soy and flaxseed oil shake; CHECK

2. Shower and go to work, CHECK

3. Call Leslie Forsberg back; HALF CHECK - I emailed her.

4. Work for a solid 5 hours; CHECK

5. Go to the post office, mail package to friend and buy CD mailer; CHECK

6. Get a pedicure; CHECK

7. Go to the gym; CHECK

8. Make healthy stuffed peppers for dinner; HALF CHECK - HAD A BASIC GREENS SALAD W. CHICKEN

9. Tonight finish putting together Nell’s friend’s art package for her birthday with some instruction cards on making art journal pages; CHECK

10. Write a letter to my aunt; CHECK AND MAILED and

11. Burn slide show I made with background music of our trip to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival a few weeks ago - onto the CD to send to our friends the Satnicks. NO CHECK, IT IS 8:16 AND I AM DONE FOR THE DAY

It is quite possible that if I do accomplish all of the things today, I will have to consider whether I am bipolar and simply in a manic state … but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now, it’s off to make a shake.

xo

Grow

Growing doesn’t match

it isn’t always pretty

or complete

or logical to anyone else

let alone ourselves.

Growing takes time

and effort

and sometimes, but not always,

some skill

or at least the illusion of it.

Growing never ends up

looking the way

it looked in your head

when you started.

Growing is messy

and frustrating and fun

and layered with

joys and gems

sometimes hidden

sometimes not,

but we each have the choice

and the chance

to grow

on a brand new page

every single day.

xo

Suzi Blu and Nell’s (age 9.5) First Pretty Girl

Mom: What do you think of Suzi Blu?

Nell (age 9 1/2): I think she is the best, craziest art extravaganza person ever.

Mom: Why?

Nell: Cuz it’s her nature. Art and pretty girls come naturally to her.

Mom: Was it fun receiving the kit and making a Pretty Girl painting?

Nell: I thought it was fantastic. really fun. You just take the steps and at the end it all came together. I understood the instructions. She designed them so a one year old could figure it out … if they knew how to read. I learned to tape down my work so it won’t crumple.

Mom: Tell me what you love about your painting?

Nell: I really like the background and how the tissue paper blends in but also gives it an extra punch. I like how some of the tissue paper got wrinkly and isn’t totally flat cuz I got the texture I wanted.

Mom: Is there another Suzi Blu project you’d like to try?

Nell: Yeah, she has a thing on one of her videos where she does a picture then you put beeswaz on it and carve it with these tools. i’d like to try that. First, though, I’ll do more Pretty Girls because she wants you to practice - that’s why there are a few drawings in the kit and you can make more copies if you want.

Mom: Are you going to hang your first Pretty Girl in your room?

Nell: No, I’m gonna give it to my Gramma as a present. I’m sleeping over her house tomorrow.

Just Me

When I was in kindergarten, I fell in love with Charles Gallagher. He fell in love with me, too. A few years later I wrote him a letter in red magic marker telling him I still liked him more than any other boy because he didn’t swear. His Mom always kept that letter, or so I’m told. We were together most of the next twelve years, went to the high school prom together and when we were freshmen in college, we were each other’s first. We continued to see each other …

until I was nineteen, and I fell in love with Steve, a handsome, beautiful soul. He was the best friend I ever had and we married.

Ten years later, I fell out of love with Steve and in love with Jim. At 29, I was a kick ass, size six, black suited, commercial litigator in a mid-sized Boston law firm. I wanted power and money and prestige and an intense senior partner named Jim. I got him.

Jim and I were together 13 years. We raised his two girls together, married, bought and sold homes, went to Paris and had our beautiful Nell together.

And then I discovered that Jim was having an affair and our marriage ended.

Two months after we separated, I began a relationship with a tormented soul who had beautiful long dreadlocks, lived in a trailer in the woods of Maine, and was ten years my junior.

A month after things ended with Ken, I met Dan. He was my on again off again boyfriend for 1 1/2 years. To this day, I can honestly say that no one has ever made me laugh harder. And I have never had such tender feelings for a man who I understood so innately, but who was just so wounded by some very heavy shit that he just could not do it - not even for himself, let alone me.

Two months later, I began a very loosely defined “relationship” with Russ, who god bless him, came into my life to teach me the very lesson I needed to learn - how to be happy alone. If there is anyone on this planet who has this lesson down to a science, it is Russell. He is smart and talented for sure. And he knows how to dig into life, and take the ride of life for all that is is worth - genuinely. He will probably never marry - or have kids - but man, he is sure gonna have fun along the way. He just GETS life … and I applaud and envy him for that. One might argue that he has a skewed vision of the perfect mate, and that he is missing a good chunk of life’s experiences because he clings to certain unreasonable illusions, but man, I’ll tell ya … he knows himself … and for better or worse, he sticks to his beliefs about what he wants and what he doesn’t want … and he never intentionally hurts anyone along his way … he is a good guy. blustery perhaps, but that is part of his charm …

and after all is said and done, here I am

Alone. For the first time since age 5. Forty - FORTY years of being in a relationship. Forty years of hitching my wagon to other’s trains. And for those rare intervals when I was without a man, I was still clinging to the last man, or trying to connect to the next. NEVER in 40 years, shit - that still blows my mind, have I lived without a man.

Until now. And I am here - not attached, not looking, not wanting - because it is exactly where I am supposed to be - alone with just me. Really, I have had it all. I have had intense love, bliss love, lonely love, pathetic and clingy love. Strong love, scary love, mature love and puppy love . I wouldn’t trade a moment of any of that love.

But now, it is time for the hardest love - self love.

Now, I ride my own emotional roller coaster. It is just me. No more illusions of happily ever after. No more dream of growing up, marrying, having a comfortable life and children. Been there. Done that. Over now. And I am 45 years old, pre-menopausal. No more biological kids for me. I am a non-practicing attorney working in a preschool in a small seacoast town raising a spirited, talented daughter who is almost ten. I live paycheck to paycheck and have no savings or retirement funds.

And I have never been so afraid … or felt so much excitement, at the discovery of me. I am great at goal setting. I have never not achieved anything in life that I set out to achieve. But now, I have only one goal. To have no goals. To live my life each day to its fullest. To be in my life as it is. To accept everything just as it is without the need to be anything more, or to have anything more. I want my ordinary days to be brilliant days. because ordinary days ARE brilliant days. Before i move on, I want to happy in each and every moment of my life as it is. without a partner. without illusion. without distraction. I want my life to be a true reflection of me - for me - and no one else.

It is so cliche, but so true. I have ALWAYS defined myself in relation to the man I was with at the time. The helper, the supportive mate, the calm in the midst of the storm, the indispensible one, the caretaker of the soul of the family, the mother, the wife, the temptress, the goddess, the challenger, the hard-ass, the disciplinarian - and now I am none of them, and all of them, but mostly, I am

just me.

Cool Places and People

My friend Jess sent me this link. She warned me it is addictive … and way cool. It is a word challenge game and for every word you guess correctly, the organization donates rice to feed the hungry around the world. She was right on both counts - addictive and way cool. Check out Free Rice!

and I recently discovered Sabrina Ward Harrison and her first book, Spilling Out - The Art of Becoming Yourself. I was inspired to spill a little of myself in today’s journal page.

And finally, have you heard that very catchy tune on the new Dell commercial? Well, it is called Colors by Kira Willey. Nell has memorized the words and is creating drawings inspired by it - like crazy.

Enjoy!

xo

Monday

Shitty and Shameful Monday. I had to deal with that ugly, overwhelming IRS issue - the one where they have informed me that I owe them $13,000.00 like yesterday! So, I sorted and sifted through bank statements and legal papers, old bills and tax returns - trying to assemble info for the accountant who is trying to establish that I was insolvent on October 5, 2006. I would have thought that the task was a no brainer, since I don’t own a home or a vehicle, don’t have any savings or retirement, and pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. But apparently it is more complicated than that and I have to establish that I was insolvent to the extent of the income they are trying to attribute to me. Sigh. This sucks. It’s scary. And overwhelming.

To top off this shitty Monday, I picked up my daughter from camp and was stopped by the police because my car wasn’t registered. News to me! I couldn’t help it. I broke down … in front of my daughter and her little friend. Sobs, big wet tears down to my chin, streaming from my eyes and nose. Just couldn’t take it … not for one more minute. So, my choice was to get towed to my house or have my car impounded. The problem was that I none of my three credit cards had any available credit on them and my bank account was down to $30. - and then, it HIT me. When I visited my Dad last weekend, he had given me a $100. bill to put towards Nell’s camp. I had stuck it in the well in the front seat. So in the midst of a bad situation, it became slightly (and I mean only slightly) better. We were towed home

I jumped on the computer and re-registered my car online ( I did have the $41. available on one of my credit cards for this) and my car became legal again.

Okay, so that’s my pity party and I feel pretty good about having it. Why?

Because it is okay for me to really have a crappy day. It is okay for something inconvenient, overwhelming and upsetting to happen to me and to FEEL inconvenienced, overwhelmed and upset. It is even okay to feel badly for me, for awhile anyway. I have noticed this about myself: I vascillate between being a polly-anna who refuses to dwell in the negative - always seeking out the best in people, opportunities and life circumstances - to being depressed, or maybe not always depressed, but perhaps eating more than I am hungry for, or drinking the second glass of wine when one was just perfect, or smoking, or not getting my ass to the gym, or any number of other habits that don’t serve me in a healthy way. And in looking at these habits of mine, and what triggers them (harkening back to my rediscovery of Pema Chodron and shenpa), I wonder if it is because I need to trade in the extremes for the middle way. I mean, I know where the need to avoid anger, discomfort and pain comes from. It comes from growing up with a mentally ill parent who raged constantly - at his wife, his children, the grocer, the ball player who struck out, the teacher, everyone. EVERYONE … and not all the time, but a lot of the time. I noticed this rage and anger again when I visited my Dad last weekend. Everyone is an asshole or worse yet, someone out to fuck him over. EVERYONE. And each and every time a rant would begin, my stomach would get tied up in knots, my teeth would clench and I would start thinking happy positive thoughts in my head, because I NEVER WANT TO BE LIKE HIM. I don’t want to be negative, or feel badly for myself (cuz I get the whole blessings thing - completely and deeply).

The problem is, I am like him. He is in my blood, my genes, my natural temperament. Not to that extent, but that isn’t the point. I have spent many years proving I am not like my Dad, so much so, that I refused to be angry anymore, refused to be a victim anymore, refused to get riled up by the small stuff. That is all well and good. That is, after all, the goal, right? But I think what I do sometimes - is to just deny, repress, suppress, ignore - a lot of very normal reactions involving anger, fear, hurt and confusion.

And I want to visit them now - when they arise. I want to invite them into my living room, have them sit down with me at my dinner table - and accept them - as normal, human responses- without shame. I want to accept all parts of me with love and compassion.

I have a feeling if I can do this, I will be living the “middle” way. Maybe I will just quietly accept all parts of me without shame, and I will be healthier for it. And, maybe just maybe, I will let myself be overwhelmed for a bit before pushing it away. And then maybe, just maybe, I won’t need to smoke instead of feeling sad … or have a glass of wine instead of feeling lonely … or eat a piece of cake instead of being mad.

Even writing this now, I want to say “get over it … enough already … your life is great … stop wallowing!” because life IS good. But I am going to resist the little voice in me that is embarrassed by these disclosures and feeling like a bad, disrespectful daughter for saying something negative about my Dad who in so many incredible ways is a remarkable and loving man. But I won’t delete this. And I will post it. Because this is a part of me, too.

xo

Mexican Mood

Today’s mood is mellow … and slow … and Mexican. I see a lovely crescent moon … reflecting lavender light over a village of small, stucco homes. Children with dark hair and almond eyes sitting quietly at the feet of their parents … on porches … listening to the night time murmurs. Contentment lives here. and sweetness. hot, languid days. sweaty warm nights. strong smells of herbs and bread and dirt.

The reference to Winnie in my journal page? and her low self-esteem? well, that’s a another story for another day… she isn’t a part of my Mexican village … she just helped me get there.

xo