Three years ago today, I wrote my first blog post. I titled it “Beginning,” and talked about a fortune from a cookie that is still, three years later, taped to my computer monitor: “Begin…the rest is easy.” In that first post, I talked about the difficulty of starting, the sadness I felt about how long I’d been stuck, and how it was that I finally woke up — stopped waiting for something to happen and happened.
So much has changed in three years. Dexter got cancer and died, some really painful and pretty awful family stuff happened (things I haven’t shared here because they aren’t my stories to tell), we got Sam and then we got Ringo (my echo dogs), my job at CSU continued to change shape, I went into therapy for my disordered eating, I traveled, I essentially did a second Master’s degree with a curriculum of my own making (ecourses, videos, lectures, books, workshops, and retreats), I found my voice, I found my tribe, I shared my writing in other spaces as well as here, I became a certified yoga teacher, and I got really clear about what I want, what I have to offer.
Just yesterday was a really good example of how different my life is now, three years later. I spent the morning meditating and writing, an interview I did with Andrea Scher for her Morning Mantras class went live (we talked about “No mud, no lotus”), I finished a project at CSU that my department chair said was “one of the most stunning things I have seen,” telling me “I think you’re a genius,” and an open love letter I wrote to Cheryl Strayed that I’d posted…well, she read it and tweeted me about it.
Blogging has given me so much. As I’ve put in the effort, focus, and time, it has returned to me:
A tribe of like-minded people making similar efforts and supporting mine, connection and community
Kind and gentle readers
My own voice — clarity about my truth, a direct relationship with my experience, a way to work with my story
Confidence, as Susan Piver describes it, “the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment”
A public place to practice, which provides accountability and acceptance
Three years has always been a magic number for me. Any time I make a shift, a transition, a move, a change, I know that it will take me three years to get comfortable with it, to settle in. This has always been true for me. The same is so with blogging. I’m comfortable and confident now. I feel like I know what I’m doing, and I can do it with relative ease — I’ve got this.
When I think a little bit ahead,I see a clear path. I don’t mean there are no obstacles, but rather I know where I’m going, feel like I can find where I am on the map, have the right equipment and supplies and support necessary to reach my goal. My most immediate intentions are to finish my Self-Compassion Saturday ebook, begin the real work of putting together the other book I’ve been carrying around, make other offerings, (such as ecourses, in person workshops, classes, and retreats), settling even deeper into my practices, taking the first steps towards becoming a meditation instructor and possibly a coach, and continuing to heal in the places where I’m suffering or stuck. And always, always continuing to blog about my efforts to transform, to rehab my life, to ease suffering in myself and the world.
I’m so grateful to you, kind and gentle reader. Whether you are new here or have been with me the whole three years, your loving witness to my story means so much to me. I adore you.
5. 27 Days: Writing Prompts to Grow Your Powers, for FREE! Here’s an excellent gift you can give YOURSELF for the holidays, 27 Days: Writing Prompts to Grow Your Powers, Laurie Wagner’s 27 Day writing prompt program delivered daily to your inbox. It’s a simple way to keep your writing practice alive during the holidays, and an excellent opportunity to start a practice if you don’t have one. You’re welcome.
6. Architect Bypasses Mortgage Payments, Builds a Tiny Home on My Modern Met. My obsession with tiny houses is not that I want to live in one, (my house is only a little over 1000 square feet, so I’m in a pretty small space already), but that I want something like this in my backyard, to use as a studio, class, guest space.
When we’re speeding along, we violate our own natural rhythms in a way that prevents us from listening to our inner life and being in a resonant field with others. We get tight. We get small. We override our capacity to appreciate beauty, to celebrate, to serve from the heart.
Fear contains powerful messages. When we’re courageous enough to be with what scares us, we can awaken our intuition and create a new path for healing. Whether you’re worried about getting sick, you’re currently dealing with a health issue, or you’re scared and struggling in other areas of your life, don’t judge your fears, invite them to tea.
It’s common to belittle our fears and try to pre-maturely cleanse them away. But just because we’re afraid, doesn’t mean we’re toxic or failing or falling off the spiritual wagon. Fear is one of the many colors in our emotional palette, and it’s often there for a reason. There’s nothing weak or less evolved about being frightened. And guess what, you’re not alone. We’re all scared. No one is fearless.
31. Wisdom from Rumi,
Be crumbled.
So wild flowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different.
Surrender.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
Nobody’s going to do your life for you. You have to do it yourself, whether you’re rich or poor, out of money or raking it in, the beneficiary of ridiculous fortune or terrible injustice. And you have to do it no matter what is true. No matter what is hard. No matter what unjust, sad, sucky things have befallen you. Self-pity is a dead-end road. You make the choice to drive down it. It’s up to you to decide to stay parked there or to turn around and drive out.
“How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?” asks Stanley Kunitz in a poem.
and
Thomas Merton, the great Benedictine monk, captured this paradox succinctly. “Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and heart has turned to stone,” he wrote.
So whatever you believe about homosexuality, keep it to yourself. Instead, try telling a gay kid that you love him and you don’t want him to die. Try inviting her into your church and into your home and into your life. Anything other than that simply doesn’t matter.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 