Tag Archives: Waldport

#Reverb12: Day 13

4 Replies

reverb12

Try

The full prompt: What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2012? What happened when you did/didn’t go for it? (Author: Kaileen Elise)

Next year, I want to try:

  • Once and for all letting go of my food addiction, having a normal and healthy relationship with food, to eating
  • Keeping my heart open, staying awake no matter what
  • Teaching an ecourse
  • Submitting some things for publication (or rather as is more likely, for rejection)
  • A dance class, could be Nia or Zumba, or a “real” dance class
  • Running, again, beginning again
  • Art Journaling

What I wanted to try in 2012, what happened when I did/didn’t go for it:

  • Blogging, maintaining a regular writing practice: totally did it and it was awesome
  • Being more involved: did it, but had to accept and honor the limitations, the special needs of being a HSP and an introvert
  • Eating more mindfully, healthier: there were moments, long stretches of success, of ease, but the past month or so has been difficult, I’ve slipped back into old habits and ways of being, even though they so clearly no longer serve me
  • Life Rehab, retreats and classes and workshops and study and practice: so much transformation (as a caterpillar turns to a butterfly, still the same being but turned to mush and reconfigured, and in the end having grown wings), so much I still want to do, to learn, to be
  • Being myself, wholly and without apology: I still can be timid and unsure, but the realization here is that who I am already is of so much more value than who I was trying so hard to be. I thought if I was perfect, always giving more and doing more, that’s what would make people love me, get my needs met, but it turns out that the simpler option (just being myself) is more loveable than the plastic version. Easier for me + more love = no brainer

Love

The full prompt: What are the things (or people or animals) in this world that you love the most.

My three boys, my little family. I love them with my whole heart.

threeboys

Do-Over

The full prompt: Of the things that happened this year, if you had the chance to do X all over again, what would it be?

This is difficult to answer. There was another prompt at some point that was similar, I think it asked about regrets. I couldn’t really answer that one either because everything that happens to me, everything I do, I see as one step forward, and looking back I can see how they string together to make a map from the place I was to where I am now. In this light, even the missteps, the things that hurt, that generated suffering, the places I stumbled or even fell down, the moments I resisted or wished away–all of them led to here, and how can I say that anything about here is wrong? I just can’t.

For example, Dexter was miserable on the drive to Oregon, really hating all that time in the car, would sometimes shake with it, was panting and unable to relax or rest most of the time. I could say I wish we’d found a sedative or something he could take that would calm him down, keep him comfortable, but what if that made him feel sick, had other side effects? And even if he relaxed or slept on the medication, how could I be sure that he actually felt better about it, had an easier experience?

So, I could say maybe we shouldn’t have even gone to Oregon, but that’s just silly because the month we had there, all the walking and running and playing and napping and hanging out with his people and having visitors, Dexter absolutely loved it. And it turned out to be his last chance to go, and I wouldn’t want to have taken that from him. So you see, even though I wish he hadn’t had such a rough trip there and back, I made the best choice I knew how for him, and to wish for a do-over, well I wouldn’t even know what to wish for exactly.

dexter on the beach, pure joy

dexter on the beach, pure joy

Or another example might be my participation at the World Domination Summit. I could say I wish I could go back and be more involved, more extroverted, attending more events, meeting more people, but would that have really made it a better experience for me? As it was, I took the time alone and apart that I felt I needed, and I did attend things, connected with some amazing people, introduced myself to almost all of the people on my “must meet someday and tell them to their face how much I adore them” list.

My final answer to this prompt would be something I saw posted on Facebook the other day, “With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun. The past has cancelled & buried deep all yesterdays. There let them sleep,” (author unknown).

Favorite Photo of You

The full prompt: “Please post your favourite picture of yourself from 2012, self-portrait or otherwise!” Besottment also included this prompt for Day 15 of Reverb: What was your favourite photo taken OF you and/or the photo you loved best that you took in 2012?

This one is a tie, but what I like about them is the same. They both show me content, somewhere that I love, confident in who I am, no mask. The first is me in Waldport, Oregon this summer, our first week of a month long stay, taken on a rainy morning while wearing my purple fleece robe, having just finished writing a blog post, an image I posted on Instagram.

purplefleecerobeThe second is me at Shambhala Mountain Center during the Fearless Creativity writing and meditation retreat with Susan Piver, the weekend I finally surrendered and claimed “I am a writer,” meant it, knew it was true, confident and content.

smcmecloseup

#Reverb12: Day 4

Leave a reply

reverb12There’s an odd magic happening with the Reverb prompts I’m using. Checking five different lists, one not even from this year, you’d think it would be a random collection of things, but it’s not. As I work my way through, they weave together, connect and support each other, giving a universal answer, telling a single story about the year I’m leaving behind and the one I’m entering into. They reveal things to me I hadn’t considered or seen, give me the space and opportunity to reflect and contemplate. Magic.

Fear

The full prompt is: “When were you most scared? Why? How did you respond? How do you wish you would have responded?” (Author: Mary Churchill).

Two things come immediately to mind: Dexter’s “bloody scare” and the World Domination Summit prefunction of sorts party at Kelly Rae Roberts’s Studio, (I talked about that second one just the other day).

bloodyscare

Before Dexter was diagnosed with cancer, we took him in to have a nasal scope, to rule out something stuck in his nose that might be causing his symptoms, and for a biopsy if they didn’t find a foreign object. It’s always stressful having your dog put under anesthesia, and it’s even more nerve wracking to know that the procedure might find cancer. It ended up being even worse then that, because when they tried to wake Dexter up after, he started hemorrhaging profusely from the biopsy sites (multiple tiny tissue samples that shouldn’t have caused such a bad reaction, but did), and the only way they could stop the bleeding was to sedate him again.

When we went to pick him up later in the day, they wouldn’t let us take him home, and suggested it was probably best if we didn’t try to see him, (we agreed, getting him excited and then leaving him again wouldn’t have helped). We had to leave him with the emergency vet overnight, and when we left him, they weren’t sure what was going to happen, which meant I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. It was one of the worst nights of my life, and I was so scared I could hardly sleep, couldn’t eat, had to force myself to drink anything, felt sick with worry and panic. Things worked out okay (other than the fatal cancer diagnosis), and we now refer to it as “The Bloody Scare.”

P.S. I forgot to answer the last part of the prompt! I reacted by loving Dexter something fierce when he came home, accepting his cancer diagnosis with grace, so happy to have him back, to see him again after not knowing if I would, that instead of resisting his loss, I opened myself completely to it, grateful for whatever time we would have left together.

Place

The full prompt is: “What places anchored you this year? Or were you in search of new places and spaces to call your own and call home? Describe the place you love and why it means so much to you.”

beachgrassWaldport, Oregon. Half my heart lives there. Every other year, we try to plan a month long vacation there, and the rest of the time, I dream about it, miss it. I’m not sure I could ever again live year round with the gray sky and rain of the Pacific Northwest, but it still is home to me. I love everything about it (in my dreams it is always summer)–walking and walking, hiking, looking for shells and agates, gazing at the sky and listening to the waves, eating good food, taking long naps, renting movies at Waldport Video, being at ease, laughing, spending lazy afternoons reading books or listening to the radio. My heart breaks a little when we have to leave it, but I also love my little house in Colorado, my bed, my studio space, my garden, my routine here and my friends.

Music

The full prompt is: “Did you discover a favourite song or musical artist in 2012? What is it? Where did you discover it? Does it hold any special meaning for you? If you do not listen to music, how about your favourite book or author? Or artist across all mediums?”

My favorite new artist is Yuna. Her voice, style, lyrics, sound all are so spot on perfectly lovely. I wrote all about her when I first discovered her, and shared this video.

Beauty

The full prompt is: “How have your standards of beauty shifted in the past year?”

thanksgivingsky08The shift has been from perfection to wabi-sabi. In our culture, if you are a woman, perfection of body means straight and white teeth, skin that is slightly tan but has no wrinkles or blemishes or scars, all over tone, no cellulite, big boobs and small waist, young and fit, blah, blah, blah. Our homes are supposed to look a certain way, our families and children, our relationships and our work, our lives are suppose to look a certain way. We can never measure up to that standard, so in the last year, little by little, I’ve let it go.

I’ve surrendered to the brilliant mess. Things broken and dirty, old and dying, loved and worn, alive and full of joy, imperfect and impermanent. When I talk about beauty, I mean something more like the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which is all about accepting transience, and about knowing what is beautiful is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Something is wabi-sabi if “an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing” and this view “nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect,” (Wikipedia entry on wabi-sabi).

Celebrate

The full prompt is: “How are you going to celebrate your self this festive season?”

eyeiI’m going to honor myself. Ask myself what I want, what I need, what I’m craving, what I’m truly hungry for, what I want to stop doing, what I want to let go of. I am going to ask, really listen, respond. I am going to do what the brilliantly compassionate Sunni Chapman suggested on Facebook today, listen to my heart and be truly, madly, deeply alive:

In the quiet of your heart, lies every answer. Take it up with her first. Mind will always offer a second opinion. Thank it for it’s opinion, and go back to the truth that moves you. If it doesn’t move you, it’s not alive… and all you’ve ever wanted to be was truly, madly, deeply ALIVE.