Week 5, Day 7 – Rewarding Yourself, Movement Comes

Well although it is not 9 below as it was yesterday, the weather and lack of transportation did not allow me to go to the vehicle that I wanted to go to. In fact, the vehicle I have always had a love affair with does not even exist in Rochester anymore. My favorite one, at least as I have always remembered as a child is in Staten Island, NY. Although I have been on them in other places and especially while living in and touristing in parts of Canada. My fantasy vehicle is a ferry. I love the ferry. I think what I love most about the ferry is that once you have driven on it, you can then park, stop, walk around, and take in the view and appreciate all the beauty around you, the smell of the water, the breeze as it blows through your hair and against your skin. For me, they have always been like these very short cruises. They give me the part of the cruise that I like most, the water and the breeze and the time to relax and meditate without the parts of a cruise that I am not as crazy about
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Week 5, Day 6 -- Prayer

When I was in my pastorate, my prayers varied from my corporal prayers during worship, to prayers that were more individualistically tailored to the person and the situation, yet still a bit more on the formal side. When I am praying for myself, my prayers vary from those said quietly inside my head to those that I say aloud. Pray for me is about me having a personal conversation with the Creator. It is about me stepping out in faith out of a personal agreement between the Creator and myself. Prayer for me is a statement of faith confirming the agreement that I have with the Creator. It is about the agreement that the co-creator is constantly working with me as I work to transform my life and to move from being a spiritual warrior who is working to live her life in a constant state of awareness and transformation. I know that the Creator is with me as I seek to live out the challenge in Romans 12:8, which is one of my favorite scriptures – do not be conformed to the ways of this world, but be transformed in it through the renewing of one’s mind.
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Week 5, Day 5 – Honesty

Not sure that I can remember five situations in which I’ve observed honesty that I admired. One was when my father and I were planning his funeral service. He requested that I paint a realistic picture of him when I spoke about him. He said please tell them I had some noble moments in my life, but for a good part of my life I was a shit. It really struck me how he owned his stuff and did not want to be portrayed as anything other then what he was. A second moment I can remember was actually an action, not a word. Zoë was preparing for surgery and the nurse asked if she wore dentures. Before Zoë could answer, she told her if she did, she would have to take them out. For the first time in our relationship, which at that time was about 3 years, I saw her without her teeth. Funny, but I never knew she had dentures. It was humbling because she made herself vulnerable with me in a way she never had before. It is a moment I will always remember. There was this real honesty that she allowed me to see and experience with her in this moment that transcends description.
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Week 5, Day 4 – Boundaries

Ok, so here is the thing. I have a love hate relationship with the phone. On the one hand I want to be accessible to people, but there are times that I do not feel like talking to a person or people in general. So I make the decision to not pick up the phone. If I am feeling tired or not at a place where I feel that I could be present for a conversation with this person, I feel as if it is more respectful of me to not answer, then to answer and find myself thinking about doing something else. At the same time, I struggle with not being there for people. so I have this internal conflict going on because there are times that I do not want to be disturbed, like when I am journaling or having quality time with Zoë or after 10 pm when I am trying to get ready to unwind and relax for the night. I think part of my conflict comes from releasing the sense that I am on call, which is a remnant from my days of pastoring, to being in a new place in my life.
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Week 5, Day 3 – Self Esteem

Where did the insecurities come from, not sure I know, not sure they just appeared over night, more like this gradual accumulation of internalized messages. It is kind of like that analogy I made once about a coffee cup. When we are born, we are like this brand new coffee cup, but the longer we have it the more we notice the stains and the little tiny cracks and chips and imperfections that gather over time. It is not that the cup went from one condition over night to another, it just happened and then when we begin to see or more appropriately own our stuff then we can begin to do something about it, or at least choose to do something about it. I think for the longest time, I ate my feelings. I ate my words. I was scared to speak what I was feeling because of a fear of abandonment.
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Week 5, Day 2 – Changing Identification

Hmm, ©©©©© ok, it took me a minute to think about what I wanted to say. Not sure I remember anybody in my family ever talking about these things. Not to say they didn’t, but I don’t remember. What I remember most from my parents was this message about love and commitment. That being in a relationship meant that you worked things through, you talked things through. This was a lesson they learned from almost divorcing and then working themselves back together. They learned how to respect each other in a way they had not been able to do before. Of course, part of that had to do with my dad’s drinking and being an alcoholic. Once he sobered up and stopped drinking, they built a completely new relationship and taught me a great deal about unconditional love. It was during my mom’s illness that my dad taught me the most powerful lesson about love. He said that even though my mom did not remember who he was, he remembered who she was and he still loved her.
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Week 5, Day 1 – Beyond Image

There are days that I feel like I am constantly repeating this mantra – don’t take it personally gurl, that is about them, not about you. I found myself chuckling while I was reading the preface to this weeks section when she talked about this woman who “wore her heart on her sleeve.” All of a sudden, I heard a teacher I had briefly this past summer saying the same thing about me. “you greet the world with your heart” she said, “and that is not healthy.” I found myself feeling so shamed for a moment because it felt as if she was saying to me “you are not healthy.” Yet at the same time, I think it is that I am who I am at all times, that others tell me makes them feel as if they can trust me. Are there those who consider me weak – probably? I have ovaries and will stand up and speak out when I need to, but I also think that people should be supported in solving their own problems and challenges. I see it as disrespectful when I try to “fix things” for others as if I am saying “let me do this for you because I know you can’t” and that is not what I want to say.
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Week 4, Day 7 – Rewarding Yourself, the Spirit Grows

So today was field trip day and I could actually do this. I went to the local nurseryJ. The goal was to pay attention to your sensory reaction as you walked up and down the aisles. Intuitively, what do you know about flowers? What does your spirit say about plants that must be planted annually or those that come back every year? How do you respond to the tiny seedlings compared to the larger plants? What does your reaction to seedlings tell you about how you trust? I might have to email Janelle and tell her that her book is California biased. On a cold January day, I was literally one of only 2 customers in the nursery. The other was my partner who went with me. Not many people go to the nursery on a cold winter day and there was very little to interact with. Never the less it was a powerful experience.
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Week 5, Day 6 – Finding Balance

Lol, so I am excited because tomorrow is one of those days where we are supposed to go somewhere outside and reflect and grow and I can actually do that. Excited about my first outside the house thing of the yearJ. Whoo hoo! Ok so the thing that is most speaking to me is this schedule to keep balance in my life. I am pretty disciplined; I always say I have to be because I have so many things on my plate. So maintaining that balance between work and play and family and me is important. my work schedule is fairly routine by now and even my social life has gotten pretty routine – hmm, not such a good thing as I think about it, but with liftline it almost has to be as it is amazingly hard to get something without your three days notice L. Ah, but grateful to have the service back. Excited about going to the garden factory in the middle of winter tomorrow. So maybe that is something I can do, select one day a week when I go somewhere, I have never been before in this city and explore.
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Week 4, Day 5 – Standing Up For What We Believe

Ok, so where do I start. Norma Rae, Freedom Writers, oh so many. But the one that always inspires me is rabbit proof fence. I love the character of Molly Craig. Yeah most of the stories are about real people, but this was a girl who was 14 at the time and traveled with her two cousins 1500 miles to get home after being taken away from her family. The first time I watched the film I remember cheering for her the entire time. There were moments I so understood her indignation. I cannot imagine being fourteen and being taken away from your mother and the only home you have ever known. I guess in that situation I am lucky in that I do not consciously remember my birth or foster parents. I do not consciously remember being moved to the next family. I am sure at some level, those feelings and memories are imprinted, but unlike Molly, I was not old enough to remember. I can’t imagine the indignation of having to have someone I do not know wash me or tell me what to eat or how to pray or how to do anything in my life. I am so grateful for that. I could understand the renaming of Mr. Neville as Mr. Devil as he was the one who destroyed families and lives in what he believed were their best interest as he sought to breed the aborigine out of people. I found myself getting angry at how those in power were making choices for others about when they could go home, when they could buy shoes, when they could see family members. Ok, so Molly didn’t know a lot of these things, but you could still understand how witnessing the abuse and punishment of others who had been taken to Moore River was enough to make her say I am not going to tolerate this. I am not going to conform to their teachings. Where so many of the others who had been taken here conformed, Molly stood up and said no and in her own way, using her own knowledge, her intuition, her spirit, everything she had learned from her mother and the other women in her clan about tracking, hunting and survival she outsmarted everyone for months and found her way home.
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Week 4, Day 4 – Developing Clarity

Maybe it was because I saw the topic for today shortly before I went to bed last night, but I woke up at almost 4 am singing I can see clearly, now the rain is gone in my sleep. So here I am at 4 am writing about clarity. Lol. You have a sense of humor. It is funny how much I hate breathing for granted sometimes. Yet when I focus on my breathing, everything changes. Like the other day when I wanted to share something with Zoë and felt this wave of fear tightening my throat and I heard you remind me to breathe and then I could feel them relax and I was able to speak what was in my heart with peace. Or how when I want to greet a situation with love and the fear side of my personality wants to jump in, I can breathe set fear down and respond in love. Sometimes I just need to remember to breath.
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Week 4, Day 3 – Releasing Overwhelm

The minute I saw this picture, I found myself at peace. I have always felt drawn to pictures of mothers and children. It is not so much that it reminds me of anything in my own life, at least not that I can remember. Maybe that is it. Maybe it is that it reminds me of what I have read about my foster parents and how they used to play with me. It reminds me of being connected to something bigger then me. It reminds me of my relationship with the creator. We are connected. I am part of something bigger then myself, and in some respects, I have my own unique identity, but there is something that connects us. I have never known my birth or foster parents, but there is a connection between us that nothing can separate.
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Week 4, Day 2 – Body Sensations and Intuitions

Premonitions – lol – that is too funny. Hmm. Which ones do I write about? The time I dreamed my brother met his current wife, or when I knew she was pregnant. Or do I write about the time when I heard my former partner writing in her journal while she was a few hundred miles away. Or do I write about how I knew when my best friend’s husband and mother passed away. Or I could write about all the times, when I heard something inside me yelling at me “GET OUT” and I stupidly stayed. Or I could write about the times when I wanted to leave my current relationship, but I kept hearing this voice telling me to sit down and know this was who I was supposed to be with. or the times when I would be looking at the list of who is online and something would tell me I should drop them a quick IM and let them know something and they would be like thanks, I so needed to hear that right now. or the times that I realized that every time I went to this place I could leave the home and be well and be sick by the time I got there I was sick and then by the time I was home again, I was well again. Going there was literally making me sick. Becoming physically ill has only happened to me twice.
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Week 4, Day 1 – Receiving Knowledge Through Our Emotions

Yes, I so get this one. I can definitely think of at least one time in which I felt disappointment. And to be honest, it generally had nothing to do with the other person or persons involved. It was always me. I was the one who was disappointed because I had expected someone to do something, they did not, and then I felt dissed. It was like you know what I expected you to do this because of x, y or z and you did not and then I felt disappointed because I was expecting you to do something. When I started looking at the expectations, I had placed on people and releasing them, I found myself experiencing less disappointment in my life. When I do experience it now, I find it is connected to an expectation that I did not realize I still had. So for me, the best response is to release the expectation and then I am no longer disappointed. Frustration on the other hand – yeah, I know that feeling intimately well
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Week 3, Day 7 – Rewarding yourself, Flowing with the water

I have to laugh on these day 7 days as we are supposed to take ourselves to these outdoor places. However, as it is winter and I have no para-transit services for a few more weeks, I kind of have to improvise and be creative. For today, we were supposed to take ourselves to a body of water and ask the water to pour its wisdom over us. Use streaming to learn from water’s qualities what you need to live with. Cluster about something living in water. Dialogue with the teacher of the water. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Ah well I can kill two birds with one stone and take a shower. I love showers. Turn the lights on, Zoë will yell down the hallway. I love taking showers in the dark at times – ok, so at this point in the day, it is not exactly like dark, but the water sounds differently when I am showering with the lights off then when they are on. Not sure why that is, it just sounds different. Maybe with the lights on I am thinking more about why I am there
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Week 3, Day 6 – Surrender

I have found myself surrendering a lot this past year. I surrendered my pastorate slightly over a year ago. I knew I should have surrendered it a while before, but I was not initially willing to surrender it. I had to release some fears before I was ready to surrender it to the Creator and trust that all was going to be ok. Reflecting on this, I began thinking about my birth parents and how they had to surrender me to the adoption agency and my foster parents who had to surrender me to my birth parents. Surrendering is not always easy. I still have a great deal of love for the people who were and still are a part of that church, yet I knew it was time for me to surrender it to the Creator. I am choosing to believe that my birth parents loved me, yet they surrendered me to the Creator knowing I was going to be ok. During the last week of this journey, I have come to realize there are two things I need to surrender.
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Week 3, Day 5 – Accepting and Reaching for Support

I guess there are all kinds of ways of dialoguing with people. for me, one way is through poetry. I have so many memories of times when I have felt supported and of times when I have supported others. The first person that came to my mind was Mikey. I have no idea where you are right now, but I have never forgotten you. It was 1970 something and my high school sweetheart gave me this ring as an expression of her love and commitment to me. She tragically died in 1975, at the age of 19. More than a decade later, I had very few things in my life that reminded me of our relationship, but I had this ring. It wasn’t anything fancy. It was this cheap little ring with an open heart, but I wore it all the time. That was until this one particular day in 1980 something. I can’t remember the exact year or dates, but what I do remember is this young five-year-old boy. His name was Mikey. What I remember about Mikey was his first day at the summer day camp. It was his first time to be separated from his mom. He was terrified and scared and nothing seemed to keep him from crying
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Week 3, Day 4 – Letting Go of Negativity

I am not so good at creating little ditties, I generally say gurl count your blessings. But I do have this song that carol king sang that I just love. It reminds me to press on because as long as I have my relationship with the Creator then everything is going to be ok. It is called Pocket Money by Carol King. I had to look up the lyrics. It’s funny; I used to sing this song in the 1970’s when she first recorded it. It has been one of those songs that I have sung in my head and to myself for almost 30 years now. Not sure what it is about the song that speaks to me. Maybe it is the reminder that it is all about perspective. no matter how bad I think things are for me, I know somebody else is going through some thing just as challenging, if not more so then me.
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Week 3, Day 3 – Interrupting the Need to Control Others

I just want to give thanks for a new perspective on yesterday. As I was praying about my not having liftline services for a few weeks, I found myself having some new revelations. The first was that this was just going to be about 3 weeks of not being able to go places. However, it was just a few years ago, that I had to spend five months in bed and was in far more pain and on so many more pain medications then I am now. If I could make it through five months, I can surely make it through three weeks. It is all about perspective. Then I began to think about how I had begun to take this liftline service for granted. Is it perfect, NO! There are some real systemic issues with the service. However, I am grateful to even have the service. I guess it took the Creator saying, hmm, see this can be gone like that to make me realize how grateful I am to even have the service. So thank you! It made me realize how often I take things for granted and do not give thanks for them as much as I should. It is like breathing, how often we forget to give thanks for the simple things, like breathing, moving a limb, going to the bathroom independently, taking a shower by ourselves, being able to hold a bottle by ourselves, drink, or eat by ourselves. All of a sudden, I found myself giving thanks for something that yesterday had made me feel frustrated. As I came to think about where the fear was coming from, it was related to my job and not being able to get to school. And then I found myself going gurl, do you not have faith in the Creator. This too will pass and it will all be ok. You have already done every thing you had to do and now it is in the hands of the Creator. So chill and give thanks for even this time. What a difference prayer and meditation can make. Probably the feeling I have to work on the most is
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Week 3, Day 2 – Stopping the Internal Judge

I have been really sitting with these questions for a while, not sure where I wanted to start. But then life kind of answered that for me. I was going to waif for my friends to tell me who I am, but I had a challenging situation today. Well let me say I had a situation today that I allowed to become challenging. I got a letter from the local paratransit agency today informing me that my doctor had not answered one of the questions on the recertification forms, so tomorrow 12/31/2010 will be my last day of services until all the information is received and re-evaluated, which can take up to 3 weeks. Let me just say that my initial feeling was not happy happy joy joy. I couldn’t even get a paratransit ride to take me to the doctor’s office, who by the way is out for the holidays until Monday if I wanted to today. So grateful for my wife, who lovingly offered to take the forms up there and then advocated on my behalf when they started to point out all the information I had failed to give them. So what did I learn about myself today besides I have great taste in partnersJ. I do love my wife. I learned that I could express my anger in a loving and compassionate manner. I am not sure that I really learned anything new, but realized at a more conscious level how much I value my independence. There is a real difference for me between not leaving the house or using my services, and not being able to leave the house because I do not have services. I came to realize how much I enjoy going out and being in the world and knowing my home is a place I come back to and experience love. I learned that I could think clearly in the midst of crisis. I also learned that I could speak and act more out of love for myself and what I needed, then out of fear and frustration around the situation. I could tell that they wanted to come out and take control, but the love part of my personality kept them under control.
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