Category Archives: Amazing Women

Day of Rest: I’m Wide Awake

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the sky over my backyard

You may have heard already, but the wilderness northwest of Fort Collins is burning again, 14,000 acres so far, 0% contained, structures burnt, people and animals evacuated from their homes. It started as 2 acres, quickly grew to 200-300, then 5000, and 8000 by the time we went to bed, growing to 14,000 during the night. Just last week, because of other wildfires, the Poudre River ran black with soot and smelled burnt. Today, the sky is brown and there is ash falling. All day, I have felt so sad.

While I was out watering, after our morning walk, I found this Dragonfly clinging to one of my dead roses. They don’t normally stay still for as long as it did, so something must have been wrong, but it was so amazing, the blue and brown, the shimmer and wingspan. And then, on one of my newly blooming gifted plants, a fat bumblebee, similarly still, but beautiful. I wondered if they were somehow dazed by the smoke from the fire.

You know how I get stuck on a song sometimes? Last week it was I Won’t Give Up by Jason Mraz. This weekend it’s been Wide Awake by Katy Perry. I like her a lot, and I won’t apologize for it–just as I adore Pink and Kelly Clarkson, and refuse to feel any shame for it. In plenty of other ways, I have sophisticated musical taste, but there are some songs, some artists that I love without reason or justification–they are simply honest, uncomplicated, real, and I feel their work on the level of my guts, in the pit of my stomach.

When I listen to Wide Awake, I think about how Katy believed in something and it turned out to be wrong, and how bad that feels. You put your faith and energy and love into a situation, and it ends up breaking your heart.

That’s sad, but the grief that follows the mistake, the misstep, the wrong move, the misunderstanding can be precious, can gift you with a clarity impossible through other means. You are hurt, broken, but suddenly wide awake. You know how things are, who you are, and you find you are stronger than you thought, and that you are able to let go of the dream, the promise, the future and the past, the pain, the blame, the guilt, you are able to let go of all of it.

Susan Piver, in her book The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, writes “The heart that is broken has been broken open.” My experience shows this to be true, that the brokenness makes the cracks that let the light in, and being broken, your heart becomes tender and soft in a way it wasn’t before. You become a warrior with a broken heart, the gentlest and most powerful. You are wide awake.

P.S. Kind and gentle reader, if you are like me and get dizzy or carsick easily, don’t try to watch this video. Things are moving too fast, so maybe just listen instead.

Instructions for Living a Life

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Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
~Mary Oliver

This morning, walking the dogs with Eric, I saw: a huge tree that’s been dead for a long time finally fell down (and it was big enough that it certainly went “boom” when it did), a dead beaver carcass, two white tailed deer, one whose tail wasn’t quite working so it might be hurt, one massive turtle still looking for a spot to lay her eggs walking like a tiny dinosaur through the grass by the creek between Wood Duck Pond and the McMurray Ponds (same exact date we saw her last year, so May 31st is now officially Turtle Day), two mini Herons, one of which looked more like a Penguin as he stood on a log fishing (turns out they are actually called a Black Crowned Night Heron), one large Blue Heron in flight over the river that later was heard squawking and flying in the other direction, and finally, a bicycle parade.

I paid attention and was astonished, and I wanted to tell you about it.

Black Crowned Night Heron

I received gifts: access to workshops with amazing women at the World Domination Summit in July (yoga with Marianne Elliott, Writing with Susannah Conway, Book Content Mapping with Cynthia Morris, and Identifying Superpowers with Andrea Scher…holy wow, such amazing women that I so adore, my head/heart might explode), my Kickstarter reward from Danielle Ate the Sandwich arrived, along with her new album, which is every bit as good as I knew it would be, and I found a heart-shaped rock on our walk.

I paid attention and was astonished, and I wanted to tell you about it.

I gave gifts: some were shared words of wisdom and kindness, others were scholarships for Susan Piver’s Open Heart Project Practitioner level, and finally there was my heART exchange project, which I finally finished and mailed to Australia today. I plan to write a post about the process (I didn’t just make something, I learned stuff) once my swap partner receives it.

I paid attention and was astonished, and I wanted to tell you about it.

heART exchange project sneak peek

Tribe: it’s Tribe week in my Unravelling ecourse with Susannah Conway, so I’ve been thinking a lot about that, how we can be a tribe of one even. I spent a little bit of time being a tribe of one, writing and eating lunch while waiting for a friend to arrive so we could be a tribe of two and have a long talk about perfection, art, boundaries, dogs and trust. Then, I spent part of the afternoon having another long talk with another good friend, drinking mango lemonade and eating a blue flower cookie as big as my head. I have amazing women in my life, in my tribe.

I paid attention and was astonished, and I wanted to tell you about it.

Yay Turkey, Split Pea Soup, Root Beer, and a notebook at Red Table.

I’ve had moments of being wholehearted, with myself and others in my tribe. These two quotes from Anne Lamott remind me how wonderful and difficult that is: “The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you will reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in roadrunner mode” and “We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.” I am reminded to slow down, stop doing so much and be.

I paid attention and was astonished, and I wanted to tell you about it.