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  • Everything I Have Done…..

    Everything I Have Done…..

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    “Everything you have done until now has prepared you for what is next.”

    When I heard that message shortly after Leah died, I had no idea that it meant EVERYTHING; every little thing that I have ever gone through in my entire life.  I came to that realization after a week of book events in Chicago shortly after my book launched. I kept going back to experiences from my childhood. Things like the difficulties I had with some of the kids in the neighborhood, the hard time I had fitting in at school, the mixed messages I got at home, and the fact that I had a severe stutter.

    I would find myself saying after remembering each memory, “Surely not this too?” And then I would receive the gift of that difficult experience; every, single, time.  It became so that I stopped questioning the events of my life, I knew almost as soon as something came into my awareness what it was there to teach me how it had prepared me for what’s next.

    Does this sound daunting to you?

    It did to me too when I first heard the message.  I wanted it to mean that only the helpful things were what I needed to prepare me for my next. Things like courses I had taken or practices that brought me joy.  I wanted only the “good things” to be my helpers.  If the “bad” things were also there to assist me, that would mean that I would have to pay attention to them, and I didn’t want to do that, any more than you want to do that.  I came to see that “good” and “bad” are labels that we put on our experiences. Yes, some may be more pleasurable, some more difficult, but they are all there to be in service to our awakening; our saying yes to stepping into the fullness of who we are in any given moment.

    One thing that helped me tremendously in navigating my “everythings” was presence.  When I can be present to the feelings that arise in this moment about difficult experiences I can begin to unravel the sticky stories that my head continues to spin about those experiences. Bringing the feelings to my heart to be shifted, further understood, and eventually transmuted. This is the process that I use when I work with grief clients, and it is also the process that I use with every client who is following the breadcrumbs of their “everything” in order to reclaim their lives and live an engaged life. The life you’ve always dreamed of living.

    I’m often asked to describe presence, and I can spend a lot of time talking about what it is. I’ve written a lot about it and have done several videos about it.  Because presence is a direct experience practice, until you experience it for yourself, you will not really know what it is.

    I am offering a Zoom call for you to experience presence. You can register here.

    I will guide you in the present moment awareness practice that I teach my clients and use in my daily life.  Yes, it’s helpful for  grief AND for everything else. (There’s that word again!)

    If you would like to experience presence for yourself and learn how you can begin to incorporate it into your daily life, I invite you to join me on Friday, April 16, 2021 at 1:00 PM Central Time.

    Let me know if you have any questions.

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  • There’s More Than One Way to Get to the Park

    There’s More Than One Way to Get to the Park

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    I’ve been receiving the following message in my morning meditation:

    “Show up unapologetically as yourself in everything that you do.”

    There was a time when that would have sent me down a rabbit hole or into a tailspin. What if “they” don’t like the fullness of who I am?  (Who is this mythical “they” anyway?) What if that’s not really who I am and I am really a fake?  What do you mean you found gifts in your grief journey!!???

    Have you ever had similar thoughts?  What I realized is that those thoughts are just that – thoughts or stories. In the past those stories have kept me from showing up fully as myself. I’ve done a lot of inner work to untangle those stories.  One thing I discovered is that;

    I needed to accept myself fully,

    I needed to accept the gifts that I received on my grief journey,

    I needed to sit with all of those questions that threatened to dismantle me before I felt comfortable bringing the fullness of who I am into my work and into every aspect of my life.

    As I write this I am reminded that there are many ways to achieve our goals, many roads to enlightenment.

    My grief journey was one of those roads for me.  I started down that road a long time ago as I worked to untangle and deconstruct old wounds and learn to live more authentically.  It was my grief journey that provided exactly what I needed when I needed it to continue on that road and step more fully into who I am.

    That reminds me of a story about Leah that I included in my book; There’s More Than One Way to Get to the Park. I’ll share it here for context.

    More Than One Way to Get to the Park

    When Leah was a child, she often did things her own way. When she was reprimanded in school, or compared to others, I didn’t want that to be a damaging experience for her. I wanted to show her that everyone’s experience is valid. She loved to go to the park near our house. The fastest way was a straight shot down 145th street. One day on our way there I took a different route. We started out in the opposite direction and went up and down streets on our way there. Leah kept asking me where we were going, and I said, “To the park.”

    “This is not the way,” she said.

    “Let’s see what happens,” I replied.

    We continued on our way, and soon we arrived at the park. She looked at me with excitement and ran to play. The next few times we went to the park, we took a different route each time. Sometimes it took longer, and we saw things we may not have seen going another way.

    The next time she complained that she was not doing things the way other people were, I told her that just as there was more than one way to get to the park, there was more than one way to learn math, or spelling, or even to get dressed. Then we’d search for a way that worked for her. That seemed to calm her fears that she was different than other people. She eventually learned to embrace her differences, and I am thankful that I was able to help her do it in such a simple way.

    I continue to use this lesson myself. Whenever I question my path, I always remind myself there is more than one way to get to the park and each path is valid.

    When you are questioning your own path, I offer you this wisdom from Leah and me.

    There’s more than one way to get to the park.

    When you take a look at your own life, what are some of the opportunities you have followed as you learned the lessons you needed to learn to become the person you were meant to be?

    Have you ever considered that everything you have experienced in your life have been important to your growth?  I didn’t either until I received the message shortly after Leah died that

    “Everything I experienced up until that point had prepared me for what was coming next.”

    At the time I thought it was only helpful practices like Samyama or other practices that supported me.  As I traveled further down the path of my journey I realized that it meant EVERYTHING, even the most difficult parts of my life.

    At first, I didn’t want to accept that fact.  How could difficult parts of my life serve my growth?  The answer seems obvious to me now, at the time though, I didn’t want to let those painful and difficult parts of me in. I wanted to push them away and concentrate only on the “good” or “positive” parts of my life. What I’ve learned is that all of my experiences, throughout my entire life, contain lessons that are valid for me only, and yours are valid for you.

    In the weeks to follow I’ll be sharing some of my “everything.”  In the mean time, what is your “everything”?

    What parts of your story do you want to hide or run away from?

    What would it be like if you gave all of those parts of yourself a seat at the table and gave them a voice?

    What would they say to you?

    If this sounds scary to you, I understand.  Nothing could strike me with terror more than a part of myself that was difficult to love.  What I learned though is that all parts of ourselves need and want to be met with love.  When I began to listen to the parts of myself that I didn’t want to love because they weren’t as desirable as other parts, I began to heal those parts of myself.

    It’s easy to love yourself when you are having a good hair day.

    What about all of the other times?

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  • Changes

    Changes

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    Here we are in the middle of a year that was supposed to be big.  At the end of 2019 and at the beginning of this year, we all read things like this:

    This is going to be the year that……. (fill in our own blank)

    It is a year of change to be sure, maybe not the change we were planning on or hoping for, and, maybe it is the change we need.  

    There are different kinds of change.


    We change a light bulb.

    We change our clothes, or our hairstyle.

    Those changes are easy. They are done out of necessity as in the light bulb, or a sense of boredom in the case of our hair.

    We may change the way we eat, or our address, or our job.  Now we are entering areas that may need a little more incentive, improvement of our health, or our way of life.

    Change is often looked at with the how easy it is to make, or maybe its how convenient it is for our lives.

    We don’t like to be inconvenienced, and inconvenient change is often pushed aside for another day.

    Up until this year, when we contemplated a change that impacted the world, we, or at least I decided it wasn’t a convenient time. A lot of us have reached a place where convenience or comfort does not enter into our decision to act.

    When we think about change, real change and what that means to us, we are not likely to take the necessary steps to sustain that change unless there are extenuating circumstances.  Like a pandemic, or unanswered killing of black humans. We have been given all that and more this year.

    Grief is like that.

    Grief changes us; it is inconvenient, and painful.

    We don’t like it, and it’s not going away.

    A common response to grief is; “I just want things to be the way they were.”  I’ve heard the same sentiment about the current situation too. In both cases, we are being called to a new normal, to a change in the way we live, the way we respond, the way we love.

    It’s ok to not like it. It’s ok to want to be comfortable. It’s ok to feel all of our feelings, to let them be expressed, and then allow them to help us make the changes that are sustainable, the changes that will change the world, the changes that will call us into the fullness of our being, and give meaning and purpose to our lives and the lives of our neighbors, family and friends, and yes of the world. We may think we are not powerful enough to change the world.

    It’s our world, if we aren’t powerful enough, who is?

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