Margot Potter - life force extraordinare!

Chomping at the bit, waiting for tomorrow's launch of Margot's book, Fifty & other F-Words!  Love this FB post she wrote last week that SO captures this paradigm-shifting, world-tipping femme!

When I opened my book and saw the endpapers, I’m not going to lie, I cried. So many years of being the odd girl out, feeling like the world could never embrace my sharp edges. Never quite fitting in, no matter how hard I tried.

That freckle faced, frizzy haired, translucent skinned little girl, bursting at the seams with enthusiasm. Aching to feel like she belonged. Too loud, too weird, too much! That little girl who spent hours and hours reading wonder filled books where she could escape the sad stuff and ignite her imagination. There she is, from toddler to teen to wild young woman, smiling at me from the past saying, “Finally!”

Finally, I stopped making myself smaller to make other people happy. I stopped trying to meet their expectations and rose to my own occasion. After losing everything, I had nothing left to lose. So, I set myself free.

I am three notches too loud, five notches too sparkly, and aging DISgracefully. And I am just getting started.

No matter what the world may tell you, there is nobody else like you. Embrace your sharp edges and your weird thoughts and your wonderful awkwardness, because that’s where your magic is.

And yes, you are magic.

The empty place

My thanks to Perri Klass for her wonderful article in today's NY Times on being an adult orphan.  Have been giving a lot of thought to the fact that I've been one for over seventeen years.  

Seventeen years since Mom was gone - still doesn't seem possible. Just a few hours before spotting Dr. Klass' tribute to her parents, both gone over thirteen years, had talked with John about the impact of Mom's death at ninety-one.  It was a engaged death - she was sharp as a tack up to the end, answering e-mails from a local college's Psych 101 students. 

That was September 16, 2001.  Part of me still hasn't fully recovered.  The part that always had someone around ready to shoot the breeze, to keep me company as I made dinner, to remember long ago moments & memories. I am still a recovering people person plunged into an isolation that still continues.  

The article brought to mind so many thoughts of Mom, of her always being her, a magnet for family & friends.  The mailbox that's now empty day after day always seemed to hold a card, note or letter for her.  The grandchildren - who barely speak to me now - stopped by every Christmas & usually whenever they were in town.  Mike & Kerry wouldn't have dreamed of being in Bryn Athyn without long, lingering visits to Squirrel Haven.  Peter was a staple.  

It hit me that what I've been trying to do is restore a balance that never existed in the first place.  That the BEST thing is to let those days be those days & let these days be what they are.  That the best way to hunker myself down with friends is simply to be one.  That as long as I live in isolation, the longer I'll be in isolation.  No brainer!

Interesting - started out writing about an empty place, discovered it filled with every sort of wonder.  Gotta love journaling!

The importance of finishing the painting

Reading - devouring - Playing Big sent me back to Point Zero.  The book, not a place.  And to a line (p. 12) that hit me first reading it 12 years ago, smacked me even harder now.

"I expounded on the key importance of always finishing the painting."

At the same time, Michele Cassou "cautioned them again & again to let go of product & embrace process."

Wasn't that contradictory?  If she told her art students to always finish the painting, isn't that focusing on product over process?

Did I even notice that question on my first reading, at fifty-three?

The answer to me does go to the heart of process.  A finished painting is the outcome of a completed - for the moment - process, not the other way around.  It is the doing that matters, not the thing that is created or the action that is done.  

If I had embraced the process of putting together A CREATIVITY JAM for Age Justice, everything that needs to be done would be, all the performers confirmed & locked in, all the artists working like crazy on their artist's statements & waiting for me to pick up their pieces on May 12 or 13. 

BufBut give credit where credit is due - I did focus enough on the process to get the art pieces lined up, several performers on board (that's been way harder than I expected), the sound equipment is good to go & I've figured how to display the artwork without having to hang anything from the ceiling or set on easels.  Yay, me!

So why am I still up 4:54 a.m. after awakening at 4:06, wondering if the place will be packed with guests for the 7:30-9:00 p.m. event or will be virtually empty?  Because even on this project, I've found myself focused too often focused on the thing instead of the flow of making it happen.  Am still prone to delay distraction derailment. 

Breathe deep.  Let go of thinking of the end, focus on fulfilling the means.  Process over product.  On following flow, immersed within it, braving the rapids, contemplating tranquil stretches, paddling like crazy or consciously drifting, staying with it from start to finish.

Always finish the painting, let go of product & embrace process.  

.  

Finding Mom & Mim in the pages of books

Daedalus Books had an amazing deal on Mary Stewart books that swiftly sold out.  So many cherished titles - The Ivy Tree, Airs Above the Ground, Madam Will You Talk?  & - above all - This Rough Magic.  Strangely, no copy of My Brother, Michael, the favorite of all three Lockhart ladies.

Long afternoons replenishing hot cups of tea, devouring Pepperidge Farm sugar cookies & the wondrous adventure of Mary Stewart's adventurous (typically unintentionally) female & male characters, dashing around the British countryside, capitals of Europe & exotic spots along the Mediterranean.

Thinking of Mary Stewart led me to remembering Victoria Holt.  How Mim & I loved those novels!  Mistress of Mellyn, Bride of Pendorric, Menfreya in the Morning.  I haven't thought about them or her many other titles for decades.  We'd wear the paperbacks out with reading & rereading.  Perhaps not great literature, but they captured our imagination.

Mom was never as fond of Victoria Holt as Mim & I.  She loved Rosamunde Pilcher & R.F.Delderfield.  Both Mom & Mim were big fans of Helen MacInnes - Decision at Delphi, The Venetian Affair, Assignment in Brittany.  She didn't appeal to me, although I did learn from her that the 2nd dining room footman or the chauffeur were more likely to be spies than big wig diplomats or government figures.  All it took for Mom to slip over to cozy England was to open up a James Herriott novel - she loved sending them to Jim Peddicord, her veterinarian nephew, when he was just starting out in his practice.

I can always find Mom & Mim in the pages of books.  We loved reading & discussing plot lines.  It felt like there were figures in books who had more reality for us than actual people.  

Going to head downstairs to brew a pot of tea, grab a plate of ginger cookies & settle in for a read.  Now, where did I put Mom's copy of Rebecca?

   

Pachad, Yirah

Tara Mohr talks about two types of fear:  pachad & yirah. 

Pachad is the "over-reactive, irrational fear that stems from worries about what could happen, about the worst-case scenarios we imagine."

On the other hand, yirah is the feeling that sweeps over us when we find ourselves in an more expanded mental/emotional/spiritual place than is our norm.  It's what we experience when we feel a whoosh of unexpected, empowering energies.  It is how we feel finding ourselves in the face of the Divine.

Oh my gosh.  Yes.  

I've identified yirah as negative fear.  It stopped me instead of kicking my butt, it shifted my gears down instead of up.  It did feel scary discovering something divine in ME. 

And, for me, it also felt WRONG.  Although it never made sense to me, I was taught that the Divine is found OUTSIDE of me, that anything that seems to emanate from within is from the hells.  seems divinely inspired & fueled.  Trusting my intuition was similarly demonized.  Literally.  

I offer up thanks for Tara's insights in Playing Big:   "Experiences of sharing one's true voice, honoring one's soulful longings, speaking up for yourself, exposing one's creative self all brings yirah... When we label what we feel in those moments mere 'fear,' we can scare ourselves further, retreat, or go into a patterned reaction to fear (flight or flight).  We can think we have to get away from the uncomfortable, heightened sensation of yirah.  But if in those moments we can say, 'This is yirah,' then we can welcome the gift as what it is:  a sacred gift.  We don't have to do anything about it.  We can appreciate it, feel it.  Most important, we can know it means we are connecting to the divine within and stepping into playing bigger."

I love Erin Geesaman Rabke's comment:  It's so helpful to have that distinction between life-giving awe-fear and lizard-brain fear. I deeply relate to the quaking sort of energy that comes with inhabiting a larger space.  I like renaming it yirah rather than fear - and now I know to follow that thread.  Now, I soothe myself when the pachad is up, to step on it when it's yirah."

Again, from Tara:  "We feel pachad when the ego perceives something it feels will wound the ego's fragile self-concept in some way.  We feel yirah when the ego perceives that something has the potential to bring us into transcendence of the ego."

That's as far as I've gotten - page 71, sixteen pages from chapter's end - yet I had to share this morning's reading.  Two types of fear - pachad protects, yirah expands.  Am blessed ith a new-found power to attach clarifying enlightening empowering language to feelings that well up every day.  To be filled with holy fear that transcends, enlightens & to fear not.

Mohr on my Inner Mentor

Four years ago, a visualization exercise resulted in an unexpected & forever powerful experience.  It was the last day, the last workshop of a my first visit to Omega.  The setting lived up to expectations, the food exceeded them, the people were beyond the beyond. 

Being at Omega was uplifting, but the Friday & Saturday workshops were a let down - nothing life transforming.  I held no great hopes for the Sunday morning closer, something on intuiting.  Dear reader, it shifted everything, made sense of the senseless, is as powerful now as then.

When Tara Mohr mentioned in Playing Big an exercise she offers her readers, I was open to WOW.  It did not disappoint.  The first experience with the exercise was a very modest success, nothing what she'd described as the ideal end.  Wasn't discouraged.  Repeated the visualization in the evening, this time clearing my mind of more distractions & focusing more on the process.  The results responded in kind - clearer details, better sense of location & the other presence.  

It's what's come after - immediately after - that leaves me slack-jawed in wonder.  

After the second visualization exercise, I tucked away my computer & headed up to bed.  The next day, after greeting the world & saying my Namastes, opened up the laptop for a third.  The screen picture has changed from the tranquil seascape of the night before – it was a beautiful picture of the Great Smokies, the very location in my visualization.  Just sat there, stunned.  Over the day, I came to have a deeper & deeper sense of the place, that there was no visible body of water, but that mountain streams burbled throughout the area, gathering in pools of water rather than ponds or lakes.  Yesterday morning, I opened my laptop & the screen had already changed from the mountains to a mountain stream gently cascading down layers of rocks. 

It’s the sort of thing that would seem overly fantastical if I saw it in a movie, but there it was.  And then there was this weekend’s quote from Jen Sincero’s You are a Badass page-a-day calendar.

“If you’re broke as a joke, it’s not about working until you’re half dead to make ends meet and whining about your pathetic situation.  It’s about showing up every day with an excellent attitude, doing your best, leaning back, celebrating what, and steadily working with the grateful expectation and belief that The Universe is sending you a new, more lucrative opportunity.”

Shock & awe – that was an excellent paraphrase of the visualization’s core message!  A reminder that there are more things in heaven & earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. 

When I trust & let go of whatever keeps me earthbound, astonishing doors open. 

My thanks to Omega for my first intro to this phenom, to Tara for taking it as far forward as Omega did backward, to my Inner Mentor for helping me see that I am alreadly star-filled, awake, whole.

An open letter to my Imagination

Dear Imagination:

What an unappreciative clod I have been!  You’ve always wanted to be full partners, but something within me has messed it up.  I spent decades trying to figure it out, without success. But you stuck in there, a creative spark plug that refused to die.

Thank you for your persistence, your belief in possibilities that excited frightened intimidated me, for being patient as I got my head out of the clouds & planted my feet firmly on the ground, swapping my flip flops for a pair of rainbow-colored work boots..

I’ve always wanted to dump dithering, but its allure was too strong to resist.  Am done with a life of great ideas & half-baked follow through.

What happened between us before is in the past.  I spent too many years looking backwards & daydreaming forwards without being right where I am, having a blast with you. Those relatively lack luster days are over.  

I am ready to have the relationship you’ve always wanted, working together in the moment.  Yikes!  That feels scary!  Do I really want to make myself that vulnerable?

Yes.

That is my only answer – yes.  Yes to all of it.  Yes.

“For all that has been – thanks!  For all that will be – YES!”   Dag Hammarskjold's wisdom is rooted in a clear-eyed, active NOW.

Onward - together.  

aha & amen

Just wrote a posting over on All Ages, All Stages about how - in my opinion - the title of Kathleen Dowling Singh's insightful book, The Grace In Aging, should be taken literally, that its wisdom applies across the age spectrum, not just when we are O L D.

A key point, one that I didn't think about until writing the post, was that my current contemplation & study is a natural extension of a practice that started long before hitting my twenties.  My birth faith encourages self reflection from childhood, growing in depth as we edge upward in years; pondering how well our walk matches our talk, how well the life we live is reflective of what is taught in the Bible, so study & contemplation were part of my daily practice early in life.

It wasn't until just a moment ago that I got to wondering how differently I might look at my responsibilities if I believed that Christ died for our sins, that He took them upon Himself & we are saved by believing in Him.  My faith also believes in Christ, but our understanding of the resurrection is radically different than traditional Christian churches.  

My birth faith teaches that Jesus came into a world that was under dire attacks from the hells, attacks so grievous they were beginning to affect the heavens.  In taking on a human form, living with a human nature from his mother but with the spirit of the Divine, being tempted & ultimately overcoming those temptations to be resurrected, He didn't take on the sins of those who believe on Him, but subjugated the hells so that we - through our own actions - CAN be saved.  

It's impossible to imagine how differently my view of everything might have changed had I grown up with the relatively passive faith that believing on Christ will be my salvation.  That is a starting point. Good deeds only have power when they are done from a love of God & because they are what we are meant to do.  Turning away from evil only has power if we shun evils as sins against God.  Yes, those who believe on Christ will be saved, but only when belief is played out in actions that resonate with His teachings. 

That was what I was taught from birth & which I believe a semblance of today.  

Am taking this moment to give a shout-out ~ an aha & amen ~ to being raised in a faith that laid upon its followers the need to be actively involved in salvation, that belief is essential as a starting place, that actions truly do speak louder than words.  It made me think & appreciate, discern the difference between doing things for honor reputation gain & because they are what we are created by the Divine to do.

Praise be!

nasty loop

One of my defining tendencies is doing what I can to figure out what doesn't seem to be working & to put my mind on ways to turn that around.  This has been true from birth, so it is not a quality I've cultivated.  My friends - and especially John - will testify that I'm always looking for things that need tweaking. 

I can say without hesitation that the problems that loomed mega large in my life when I married John have been identified, acknowledged & worked on.  It is my nature.  

My challenge is that a) it can be extremely irksome to others when the situation involves them; b) it can feel extremely one-sided, like I am working on making things better while others just want to not even see what strikes me as dysfunction; c) what do I do when it seems that I've paid attention to things gumming up relationship & others don't, not because they don't care (which is how it feels) but because they just don't see things the same brutal way that I do.  

It drives my siblings nuts.  John can't stop the things he's done since the early days of our courtship, 29+ years ago, because they don't register;  ditto the distress I feel when he does the same thing in exactly the same way.  And I am left either getting into great distress, which is what I did, or recognizing the trigger & not letting it get to me, which works for the first ten minutes & then I get seriously irked because he's being insensitive, uncaring, oblivious to the pain it causes me AND he isn't getting any backlash, which feels profoundly unfair.  

It feels like the nastiest sort of loop - John answers a straight-forward question with a conditioned answer that is neither yes nor no, which irks the daylights out of me because come on man just answer the question, which lurches into me thinking about how grossly insensitive he is to the fact that his wibbly wobbly answers leave me hanging, which at one point created a distressed out backlash from me until I realized that a) it only hurt me because b) my unhappiness just didn't register with him other than irritation that I was upset, so why show my upset since it only makes it worse & doesn't end in a good outcome from him.  

Whew!  It does seem grossly unfair that the best response for both of us & our relationship is for me to suck it up without disrespecting my own hurt, which feels like it works for him at my loss.  Working on working through that.  Relationships are challenging, but worth it.

There is nothing in my way

Really.  There is nothing in my way.  I have the time, the energy, the contacts waiting to be made - wondering why it is taking me so long to take a stab at being EVERYTHING or something close to it.  

There is no reason for me to play small.  My husband wants me to go big, my friends want it, the Universe SERIOUSLY wants it.  

No more dwelling on the past.  Embrace the now.  There is nothing in my way.

Visible, valuable, valued

For eons, this blog's "new post" button seemed invisibled - I couldn't access help at Blogger.com to figure out WHY, so just posted elsewhere.  Was sad to not be able to write as DreamReweaver, but I tend to brutal fatalism, so figured que sera, sera.

But, after reading eight pages into the intro to Tara Mohr's Playing Big, felt driven to check out my previous posts & there - wonder of wonders - as the New Post button, yelling "Hit me! Hit me!"  And here we are, reunited, the perfect place for me to shout to the far corners of the multiple universes, "I LOVE Tara Mohr!" 

Gotta love a 15-year old who notices that all the coming-of-age books assigned by her freshman English curriculum & asks the logical question - "None of them are about girls." - which spearheads a initiative that raises the money to insure that the next freshmen class has a reasonable balance in it coming-of-age experiences.  Tara writes - That was the beginning of what has become a lifelong calling for me: to recognize where women's voices are missing and do what I can, in my corner of the world, to help bring them in.

Two things about Tara that resound within me - three things, actually:

1. She noticed.  She noticed that all the assigned reading was about boys, none of the books were written by women about a feminine awakening.  She brought it up as a reasonable question - I noticed that none of the books are by women, and none of them are about girls coming of age.  It seems... unbalanced.  She questioned rather than attacked. 
2. She heard the profound silence of invisibled voices, which is rare.
3. Her question spurred action - monies were raised outside the school budget, a new curriculum was drawn & and approved, the next freshmen class were taught a balancing of experiences.  Which leads me to a fourth, point that didn't hit me until writing this...
4. Although Tara's question spearheaded the changed, it didn't affect her.  She was a sophomore when the new curriculum rolled out.  And that seems just fine with her. 

Tara noticed the missing female voices, the missing experiences of girls' coming of age.  For all of my life, I've been sensitive to missing voices, to doing what I can to let them know they are heard, that the people behind are seen.  Not a Goody Two-Shoes for doing that, it was just my natural bent, not an option.  

It's probably rooted in my older sister, who felt horrifically invisibled & there was nothing I could do to help.  She felt like she had been Xed out of life & by God no one - especially not a dweebish baby sister - was going to make her feel seen & heard.  Literally to her dying day.  

It's probably rooted in an oldest brother, who clearly felt that his natural voice was subpar, not okay, and spent his life speaking from an assumed self that he apparently felt was closer to his sense of his true self, with the proper lineage, family wealth, status.  His projected voice was harsh, distainful of perceived lessers, edged with self-loathing.

It's probably rooted in a mother whose self was invisibled by a psychotic mother who made herself the center of her middle daughter's universe, an ordeal Mom survived by losing her own voice.  Miracle of miracles, she believed from the first that Dad heard a voice she couldn't, loved it & nurtured it, but she curled back up in her ball of invisible when he died at sixty-two. 

Peter & Mim never did what they might have because... because of reasons I can't begin to fathom.  Hard to be a true self you've disinherited.  To their baby sister, they apparently hadn't a clue who they were & seemed heavily invested in staying that way.

Am proud to say that Mom did become visible to herself, at eighty-eight.  And she found her voice because Peter & Mim chose to not use theirs.  Ironic!  I had primary - more or less sole - responsibility for Mom. She lived with us, none of the other three - all considerably older - sibs were a consistent presence in her life.  I was frazzing.  Wrote to Mike & Kerry, who live in Australia, and left voice messages with Peter & Mim.  Begged for help, was falling apart.  And I made sure Mom heard me leaving the messages.

A few days later, Mom asked if I'd heard back.  There had been no answer -  "Shows what they think of me." 

Will always remember the look on Mom's face, the unfamiliar sound of something resembling spine in her voice, as she answered, "No, it shows what they think of me.  You're doing what you can to help me stay where I am." 

Years of not seeing dropped away & she was finally able to let it register that they just didn't care.  Mom had fought seeing that, fought to hold onto the thin thread of hope that they would allow her to have them in their lives, on their terms, at their convenience.  That hope had driven her life for as long as I had been alive, which had meant invisibling anything that might put her deepest desire in jeopardy.

In that moment, Mom became Tara Mohr realizing that things were... unbalanced.  

Mom never looked back.  She called a psychologist, got help seeing herself.  Not her children, not her own family, not even Dad.  Just herself.  She came to peace with just herself.  As if with a magic wand, she un-invisibled Katharine Reynolds Lockhart, made it okay to be that woman. 

Helping others feel visible, valuable & valued has been my root purpose for as long as I know.  I pretty much flubbed it with my family - Mom sought counseling because of what others didn't say - those three values were at the core of my teaching & corporate world success.  I remember a student, now an adult with adult children, telling me that I'd brought the same quality to babysitting her family as I had to teaching history - "You made us feel engaged."  Noticed.  Visible, valuable, valued.

Thank you, Tara - am just up to page xviii in your intro but already feeling seen, engaged, present.  What a wondrous place to be as I stride out with renewed vigor, refreshed purpose & re-spined determination to brush aside "bouts of insecurity, a sense of overwhelm & confusion about the practical steps to take." (p. xiv)   ONWARD!