Slowing down outside the comfort zone

Sometimes an opportunity comes your way that from first glance, appears to be a forced hand. You feel as if you have no other option but to take it; staying in the current situation would be far worse in the long run. So, you grab the hand that's offered and fly with it.

Some time passes in this new realm and you are actually rather enjoying it. You are challenged every day to think differently, to work differently, and to behave differently. You are learning and doing things that you thought were far beyond your capabilities. In fact, for much of your adult life, you laughed at the prospect of doing just this kind of work because you believed yourself not to be intelligent enough in the field.

You spent all of your life maybe, preparing for this sharp turn along your journey. Perhaps a lifetime of rushing headlong, of acting first and thinking later, of jumping without looking just wore a soul out and now it's ready to take its time. Certainly, this new direction calls for thinking things through. It might take a little time to get used to but you are fortunate to have the support of some really great people who had the foresight to find the person who would fit, rather than the person with the qualifications.

The only downside is the lack of time for the creative side; writing and theatre have to take a backseat. When you ponder that, you're not as disappointed as you thought you would be. Well, perhaps a little melancholy because you have so many efforts sitting out there waiting for more words to be added. You believe there will be time in the future to revisit but for now, you are content with everything in your life. You are fine and settled and just right with your world and everyone in it.

Time to cruise outside the comfort zone.

Living in Echoes

I read something recently, some piece of advice. I can't for the life of me recall where I saw it and I will have to paraphrase, for I really just have a feel for the meaning as opposed to the words, but it went something like this:


"When we have a memory, particularly a painful one, we tend to live it as it actually just happened, or is happening. We play it out in such a way that we harness the emotions and run around with them which causes the pain to feel as it did when the original event happened. It would serve us better when the memory surfaces (as they always do, there's no way around that) to let it sit and try to feel for it as a jumping off point to something better.  Instead of it being a portal to pain, remember the benefits that came from it, be they immediate or some time after."


Ok, so I totally embellished what was probably just a one sentence affirmation, but you get it, right? I mean, who hasn't ridden that crazy horse time after time?


"Letting it go" isn't an easy thing to do. You can fling it away but it'll come back like the ball attached to the bat. You can hide from it, but it will still be there drumming its fingers on the dining room table waiting for you to continue feasting, dejected, on the scraps of the past.


But, what a concept to be able to see the event, the memory, to view it as if it were a screenshot from a movie. The moment your heart broke when he/she called it quits.  The last evening of your beloved restaurant. The day the realtor stuck a For Sale sign in the front yard of the house you could no longer afford to keep. Anything like that, any hurt moment...grab it and face it, look at it, don't run, don't hide.

Then know where you are right now, who you are, and how far you have journeyed from that moment.

Getting caught in echoes from the past is the easiest, least resistant thing we can do.  If you want to prolong hurt and anger in order to keep searching for answers, or to fool yourself into thinking that there must still be work done before the pain goes away, that is your choice.


Wouldn't it be a more compassionate thing for yourself to see the positive of the now; the benefits of lessons learned, even the most difficult?


Take a deep breath, because those echoes will just keep you in ever decreasing circles, and that's no life for you to be living.

As You Are

My daughter is going swimming with her classmates every Wednesday for the next four weeks.  It stirred memories of a time when I was in my teens, and on a similar outing with my schoolmates. Swimming with classmates wasn't a usual occurrence so being on view to everyone in very little clothing was embarrassing.  I wore a bikini, in which I felt wholly uncomfortable, as if my body was simply a mannequin.  Certainly my soul had shrunk into the darkness of a tilted awareness.

In those days, I was aware only of my pale skin, my thin ankles, of the knobby bones on the backs of my feet, of the bump in my nose, and my hip bones. Parts of me magnified by my peers and reflected onto my already shattered self-esteem. I remember sitting at the side of the pool, arms huddled around my waist in an effort to appear smaller, less noticeable. The only reason I had bought the bikini was because my next door neighbor had one in the same design but in nicer colors; blues and purples. I coveted hers whereas the colors of mine were like true leopard spots and I didn't really like it; I felt exposed.

Growing up, I'd ask my Mum if I was pretty, and she'd always reply that I wasn’t chocolate box pretty, like Lisa Miles, who was classically pretty and popular, but that was it.  No explanation as to what "chocolate box pretty" meant.  It took me a long time to grow into my face; like an ugly duckling. I was never convinced by my Mum’s words. Not that she meant any harm, perhaps she didn't really identify with my teen self. There's a whole story there about generational happenings but I won't go into that.

So, my daughter comes to me this morning in her swimsuit which is a little low cut in the front but is okay for an eight year old. I make sure it still fits since it’s winter and the last time she wore it was in the summer. It fits just fine but she tugs at the top and is concerned about revealing the freckle on her chest. I give her a big hug and tell her that it’s beautiful. That she’s beautiful. From the brown fleck in her iris, to her chest freckle; it all makes her unique and gorgeous. She gives me a big hug and skips away.

Among the benefits of age is wisdom. I’ve grown into myself so much that I’m able to accept the bumps and bony bits as part of me, and I love them because they make up the whole, and that whole is pretty amazing. In a world where judgments lurk in the shadows on magazine covers, or commercials, or on social media, it’s important for my daughter to know that she is wonderful just as she is. She may not be chocolate box pretty but I would never tell her; it would be a chink of doubt in her otherwise fierce soul. She needs to know for herself that she is beautiful no matter what marks or quirks she has, and no matter what her peers may tell her. And if I can help build her esteem then I will tell her truthfully that I think every single cell in her body is absolutely wonderful.

My son is a little harder to convince but I’m working on that.

Shall We Dance?

Like the cunning wolf, Ego hangs out behind the treeline calling all the shots; handling us like puppets. We wonder why we think and say and do the things that we do.

This warrior has been resting on her laurels a fair bit lately, allowing the Soul and Ego fine chances to duke it out but this morning I ripped up their unspoken contract into tiny pieces and decided to begin again.

And that's the wonderful thing; there are no wrong turns or endings; the choice is ours to come and go into and out of the soul. If a warrior has done any prior work, they simply pick up where they left off. There's no feeling of drudgery or having a blank page to fill up once more, because the journey was already started.

There's an anticipation in returning to this phase; feels akin to awakening from hibernation. I look forward to present moments, allowing thoughts without interaction, and quality time on the cushion.

Accepting the wolf and the shadows within is a back and forth dance. And I seem to dance fairly well.