Gratitude – unabashedly female

May 8, 2016June 29, 2016

She is no longer perfection who fell from her pedestal.

It’s Mother’s Day today here in the US. I woke up thinking of my Mom. She passed away just about eight years ago. Hard to believe I haven’t seen her for that many years.

As I thought about her, I thought of this picture above of the two of us together, in one of those picture booths they had back in the day. We were traveling across the country by car and these picture booths were available at many of the rest stops in the midwest. The rest stops situated on overpasses that graced the highways. My parents had just split up and mom was taking us to visit our grandparents in Michigan. She drove the four of us, my sisters and me, all the way across the country by herself in her 1964 1/2 Bronze-colored Mustang.

I got up and looked at the real pictureÂ and as I looked at it, what struck me, maybe for the first time ever, was her full humanity – the fact that she was just a human being. What struck me was her age – she was 36 years old here. So young to be facing motherhood on her own. She had her parents 2,500 miles away, but she had no siblings. And, she was facing great shame and judgment during a time when single motherhood was very uncommon.

She was just a woman, a young woman, hit hard by infidelity, separation, and divorce.

I could feel this ‘just a woman’ piece for the first time. You know how, as kids, we see our parents as gods? How they seem so much larger than life, as if they are super people with super powers? And in seeing them this way, their love when we get it is magnified like 1,000x? 10,000x? or even a 1,000,000x? And, so are their limitations, wrongdoings, and faults?

I don’t know if that is how you’ve carried your parents’ (especially Mom’s) limitations and wrongdoings, but for so many years I did. They hurt so much.

But seeing her here as this beautiful woman, trying to hold it together while in so much pain, and seeing me next to her, eyes full of love for her and getting my face as close as I could to her face, what has been left of any feelings of not enoughness-of-love fell away. I could see that everything hurt so much because I loved her so much. We do as kids. We love our parents so much because we are still in touch with that purity of love, that innocence of love – until we cannot bear to feel it in a world that’s forgotten it. That was how it worked for me. Perhaps, it was different for you. And, what I see is this underlying way children are, still holding up this huge image of Mom because the love within our hearts is huge and full and without resentment – until it no longer is huge and full and without resentment.

Oh, how I see her now in her humanness. Her frailty and amazing strength to do what she had to do. And, I see my love for her – my big-hearted, shiny-eyed love for her. I just wanted her to be happy and I couldn’t make that happen. I just wanted to be happy and I wanted her to see me happy, and she just couldn’t all the time because of course she was human and doing what we do to get through these lives we are living. Seeing her happy would have made me feel safer during those years.

It feels funny to be writing this at my age – like I should have this all together by now and I didn’t. And, I don’t.

To finally see her in her tenderness, with all of her flaws, trying so hard to keep it together when she probably wanted to just run away from it all, is the greatest gift I could unwrap on this Mother’s Day.

She is no longer perfection who fell from her pedestal. And, neither am I.

November 27, 2013

Gratitude. It’s in the Details.

The morning light that makes its way into my living room is, more often than not, pink.

Each day, the ravens circle outside my living room window, speaking in a language I know in my belly.

My belly skin has a scar that runs across its center from the Hysterectomy I had when I was 29.

For the slightest second, my lips caress the skin of his cheek, and our eyes meet unveiled. We are ‘us’ for just a moment in time.

Time ticks by on my bedroom nightstand.

I pull back the sheets and climb into an empty bed.

I meditate in bed in the early morning hours, sometimes falling back into the deepest sleep when I am done.

I take pictures of flowers for meditation.

There is a beautiful flower shop just down the street.

I walk the steep streets of San Francisco, with homes like walled fortresses.

The wall I am facing holds images and words of things I never want to forget.

My late-husband is always in my heart, even though there are days when he doesn’t cross my mind.

My grandchildren will never know him.

I once remembered everything.

My body heaves with a big sigh.

I see what is here.

I am grateful for this whole life.

March 20, 2012March 21, 2012

Dancing On the Earth’s Skin

â€œThose who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength
that will endure as long as life lasts.Â There is something infinitely healing
in the repeated refrainsÂ of nature — the assurance that dawn comes
after night, and spring after winter.â€Â ~Rachel Carson

Happy first day of Spring.

As I write these words, the birdsong is especially loud outside my living room windows. Sometimes, I write seated on my living room sofa, so I can see look out onto the church garden directly across the street. There are at least a dozen three or four-year olds running around the garden shrieking with delight. So much joy!

Spring has its own particular feeling. It is a time of coming out, blossoming, and growing. We begin to come out into the world, out from our hibernation and into connection and growth.

The natural world calls to me. It soothes me. It enlivens me. It reminds me of what I am.

We are living in a time of deep transformation and the chaos and turbulence that transformation holds. I feel this in my body.

And, as I’ve learned from dancing chaos, if we surrender to it, if we receive what it offers, we are transformed and we release that which no longer serves. The old dies and the new is born.

Our healing lies in our remembrance of our relationship with nature. We are nature. We are not separate from it. And in this remembrance, our relationship with the earth is reawakened and enlivened.

I have become much, much more aware of how much I am given and how little I appreciate it. I can see how much I want, and how little I offer in return.

What does it mean to really live with gratitude for this life? How do we live when we live gratitude?

Look closely at the earth – she is teeming with life. Smell her fragrance. Walk with conscious feet. Maybe even go barefoot! Notice how when your feet kiss the earth, the earth kisses your feet. Touch her in many places, with wonder. Taste the succulence she offers.

Remember the wonder for the earth that you knew when you were a child. If you can’t remember, ask a child to reacquaint you.

It is through her, the earth, that we can finally come to know we belong here, that we are a part of her, a part of each other. Every choice we make impacts the well being of all of life on this precious planet.

My footprint has an impact, has consequences. How awake can my feet be? How much love can they show?

How will my feet dance on the earth’s skin when they offer, to her, what words cannot say?

January 18, 2012January 24, 2012

Are You Breathing?

I am in class, on the dance floor. Stacey, the teacher, begins to weave her magic and invites us to, “Move from the breath.” I instantly breath more deeply. How simple yet powerful is the reminder to breath.

I move.

And, I move.

And, as I move from the breath my movement deepens, my body opens, a simple joy makes itself known.

The breath carries me into the wave: a wave of rhythm, a wave of pleasure, a wave of release, a wave of not knowing…

My body begins to feel like liquid – liquid breath, liquid love, liquid life – and then I soften, open and receive. I receive everything I need to keep moving, for as long as the Spirit moves me.

It isn’t always so simple…or at least I tell myself that is so.Â But if I’ve learned one thing from dancing the 5Rhythms, it is to always come back to the breath.

When life feels hard, come back to the breath.

When I don’t know anything at all, come back to the breath.

When I’m scared shitless, come back to the breath.

When I’m ungrounded, spinning, and caught in one of those circles of drama, come back to the breath.

When I’m joyously alive and feeling on top of the world, come back to the breath.

When I hate what is happening, come back to the breath.

When I’m flowing, come back to the breath.

When I am mad as hell, come back to the breath.

When I have no idea what to do next, come back to the breath.

Whenever, whatever, wherever, whomever, however… come back to the breath.

I’ve found breathing is a supremely sensuous experience.

I am breathing.

I am moving.

I am dancing.

I am alive…and for this, I am grateful.

Photo byÂ bloody marty mix on Flickr |Â Some rights reserved

5Rhythms is the work of Gabrielle Roth.

Pin It

November 9, 2011

Seeing in Silence

“Let your eyes remain empty of interpretation and the seeing will occur in silence.” â€“ Mooji

When the eyes caress, just as a lover takes in the one being loved, an immediacy is known.

I had a very personal and profound experience a few months ago about seeing, really seeing. And, hearing too. This experience took place in Hana, at Hamoa Beach.

I wrote about for an upcoming book, but this experience wanted to be shared sooner. I couldn’t think of a better place to share it than on Teresa Deak‘s new site, Given to Gratitude. So I have.

I’d love for you to click on over to Teresa’s site and read these words, “So Much is Given“.

I’d love to know what you feel…

June 7, 2011June 7, 2011

Always Enough

There is nothing to ‘get’, yet so much to receive.
Life gives willingly when we open our arms
rather than grasping with our hands.

Simple abundance is present in each breath.
Allow it to enfold you and trust it is enough,
For all is given from a dark well of Knowing.

Dine on its splendor and savor its radiance.
Soak up its succulence and open your Heart to its nourishment.
Quench your thirst knowing there is always more to fill your bones.

It may not be what you think you want
And it is exactly what you are thirsting for…
Always enough. Always enough.

December 16, 2010

Dancing on the Edge of Disillusion

In order to fully awaken to the fact that you are nothing but Awakeness itself, you must want to know the truth more than you want to feel secure. ~Adyashanti

Reverb10 Day 14
Prompt: Appreciate. What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in
the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

The persistence of truth.

I’ve come to see that no matter how hard I might try to avoid, bury, ignore, or deny it…truth remains steadfast.

Sometimes, the truth fits with my liking. It’s what I want it to be and I have no trouble at all doing what it asks me to do.

Other times, the truth is the last thing I want to acknowledge. I want it to go away. I want to barter with it. I ask it to compromise, but of course it does not. Of course. It doesn’t have an agenda. It just is. It’s just the ego that has the agenda, and it’s agenda is to stay safe and secure.

The truth just is.

The truth is like a decision that has already been made.

The truth isn’t good or bad. It just is.

The truth doesn’t barter, argue or defend.

The truth doesn’t compromise.

The truth is asking for surrender.

I’m not yet completely there. Close, but not yet there.

What is the truth?

It certainly isn’t what the mind says it is.

There is no ‘my’ truth or ‘your’ truth. There is just truth.

It is what is.

And, in writing this, I can see the power of its unwavering steadfastness.

How do I express gratitude for it? Good question.

Much of the time I don’t express gratitude for it. I’m not grateful at all. I want my safe secure nest, and yet, as Pema Chodron writes, “To be fully alive fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” Continually thrown out, not just thrown out when I feel I’m ready for it.

The bracing against the truth is exhausting, because of truth’s steadfastness. This hanging on, this not wanting to let go into the abyss, it is exhausting, yet it is, the bracing itself, the hanging on, is what gives the ego its sense of existence.

Adyashanti writes:

“What if you let go of every bit of control and every urge that you have, right down to the most infinitesimal urge to control anything, anywhere, including anything that may be happening with you at this moment?Â Imagine that you were able to completely and absolutely give up control on every level.Â If you were able to give up control absolutely, totally, and completely, then you would be a spiritually free being.

This battle of will, this desire of ego to maintain control in the face of the inevitable pull of truth – I appreciate the power of this relationship. It is profound.

There is no good or bad. There is no right or wrong way to be. There is only the ultimate pull of life to wake up to itself.

I can see this dance so clearly. The appearance of me is dancing on the edge of disillusion. This appearance of me fears what might happen to it. This appearance of me can’t be seen or touched or experienced in the same way as life right here. Yet, it’s power is strong. I appreciate the power of its futile dance.

I know that simply writing this post is an act of gratitude. I’ve come to see that everything serves this pull. Everything. Somehow, in acknowledging the frightened parts of the mind, a beautiful relationship is nurtured between the truth and what fears it. The mind is beginning to see it is held in love, in that which has no agenda other than to know itself as itself.