Re-do considerations!

There is something intrinsically reminiscent about fall.  I can sit or stand for great lengths of time viewing the leaves changing and feel the temperature of the world shift slowly from the summer heat to a sunny cool fall.  Obtaining a gazed expression while climbing deep into my memory I begin the journey. What is it that was good about this past summer and spring?  I realized there was a great deal of drama and crisis to reflect upon. Graduation, weddings, birthdays, apologies and appreciation given.

The mind races through the memories as if they were sound bites of a few mere seconds with snap shots and emotions wired into each of them.  I felt I hadn't been present enough in those moments. I hadn't given myself more time to sit and relax and relish the souls of those I was around.  I spent so much energy being minutes and days ahead of where I should have been. I often stayed in the future worrying so much I forgot the event and left the unspeakable burden of collecting memories to my unconscious mind.

I missed remembering hugging my son, complimenting my daughters and sincerely just being present in their presence. I forgot how hard I laughed and only remembered how hard I cried.  I spent so much time worrying that I often didn't plan to breathe in life and went into auto pilot burdening my unconscious mind to make sure I was still supporting my physical body's needs.  I was lost in the worry and the thoughts that robbed me of the joy and tenderness I so craved and dreamt of coming in the someday scenarios of "when"!

I want a summer redo! I want a "Do over!" to make things better, to regain my moments, to relish the fragile parts of my life and to admire the moments of super hero strength!  I want  to go back and make sure I actively archive my moments from the summer. Archive them in complete surreal Technicolor and smell-a-vision! I want a redo for the big moments and small moments. I want to redo and save the tokens of affection from my loved ones, from the birthdays and other events that marked time and space for this journey called my life! I want to find the goodie bag with the talismans of wisdom from the quiet moments, sad moments and the happy moments!

I am stepping into today with a stronger sense of self, a greater desire than I have ever had before. I am taking this moment and the coming moments to be more present. I am now, I am the beholder, I am co-creating my reality with my love not my worry or fears! Yes there are second chances at tomorrow but not yesterday. I am taking the chance again each day to be more present and aware and grateful and loving!

The Oracle Inside: Listening to what our soul is saying!

A new morning and I sat waiting for the doctor to come into the examination room. I sat for more than forty minutes waiting, just so he can go over the pre-op details for tomorrow's procedure.  I read text messages and read a few articles in the magazines next to me.  What I didn't due was tell myself this waiting is crazy!  I felt like my time was not being valued. I had a strong indication that I was feeling more irritated as the moments passed by.  I wanted to get up and walk out but knew I couldn't get the procedure done without it.  What more to add to this journey of being a woman in menopause.  Two periods a month was not comfortable. Constantly feeling tired or run down and subject to the pull of the lunar cycle kept me sitting.

I realized I was ready to take my health back into my own hands a while back.  I have more recently decided that we give our western medical industry too much power over our bodies.  We wait for a pill to change our moods, to alleviate our pains and make us forget that our bodies are in need of change and nurturing.  We think that doctors know more about our bodies than we do. What if we sit and listen to our souls, feel their quiet small voice and know that we are alive inside, operating our bodies to fulfill our destinies. There is an inner oracle that is with us every moment and is able to do great things, miracles and even magic!

Once a long time ago, we were able to communicate with our own oracle as a child in simpler times.  Knowing we have a captain to our life, knowing we were more than flesh and bone was an intrinsic part of our young knowledge.  Part of this knowledge also gave us insight into every living creature.  Simple understanding and clarity from a young human. Isn't it remarkable that as young children we can see things so easily and not judge ourselves for not being "enough"?  The idea of being enough is later implanted into our awareness when we gain the skill of comparison. Somehow taught in a scientific way in school or at home. Sameness and differentness becomes our first lens as we are socialized. It is that sameness or differentness that we measure the rest of our lives, our actions, our thoughts, our bodies and our emotions. That is the origin of losing our ability to hear our own inner voice and oracle.  Instead of listening to our own inner oracle we listen to our inner critic and give our power away to an event or an outside source.
Traveling through the years I can recall moments when I participated with a collective hoping to gain great blessings and joys.  Blessings and joy did cross my path and also with it, I stopped listening to my inner oracle, trusting the outside world for my validation and joy.  Giving the power to recognize and measure myself by others.
Reawakening to the gifts and blessings I have had all along has been a scary experience due to the programming.  This reawakening has given me more strength to keep trying harder and harder with each new scary moment.

The Next Big Trick: Letting Go!

Here it is the eve of Labor day and the onset of the upcoming school year. Summer is ending tonight and I am sitting in this season of deep reflection.There isn't any one emotion I haven't already run through in my mind and in my heart.

Happy, that my ten year old returns to school to further challenge his intellect. It has been a lonely summer for him without a vacation.  So a vacation without a vacation is a "stay-cation" and a prison term for a ten year old boy.
Yes, there were a few events to look forward to this summer.  Events such as numerous family birthdays and movies and BBQs with friends.  Sadly they were all at home and with very few little kids his age.  As his Mom I fought the urge to let him wile away the hours playing video games or watching television till an hour melted into four hours upon my return from work.  His older sisters were all too happy to let him melt into the "boob-tube" to keep him from being that ever annoying little brother with countless memorized knock-knock jokes and asking questions he already know the answers for.  We have watched movies together and tried to maintain some sense of politeness when he becomes "Captain Obvious" announcing every written word or stating the obvious in each and every scene change.   There isn't much I can do to protect each and every nerve left by the end of the summer from his annoying boy like habits of picking his nose, grabbing his penis when he is nervous or twirling his already short hair.

It has been a seriously challenging summer for all of us, not just the infamous irritating ten year old boy. I spent the end of June telling and retelling myself that I could actually "do this" private practice and writing thing.  There were so many times people would question me as to why I was insistent about leaving teaching in deaf education.  I was burnt out and stunned by the shrinking pay,  respect and support each of us teachers had endured over the past fifteen years.  I knew I had a superstar inside me my whole life and that some magic needed to come out and it wasn't going to be in the walls of a special education classroom.  Sadly my love for the students and the deep seeded compassion for their life has left me melancholy about not being able to be with them in their school year to celebrate their accomplishments or see their souls emerge each year a bit more valiant and revealed in their own personal journeys.

I gladly welcomed home my middle daughter from her first year away from home at college.  Dorm life was a challenge for her coming from a family such as ours. She struggled from being away from home and yet struggled with being a part of a new community.  She realized how much she was loved and missed by her boyfriend and her family at the end of the school year.  She also realized how much she appreciated home and her family, even if they were nutty most of the time.  I also watch her get her first job and feel the mantle of her choices in adulthood when she was tired and didn't want to go to work after already completing a long shift the day before.  I relished the idea that her feet and lower back ached when she finished her first few days working as a hostess in the local IHOP.  I appreciated her joy when she got her first paycheck for all of her hard work, and yet was told she could pay me back all of the IOUs on her next few paychecks.  Her facial expression was priceless at that moment frozen in my memory forever.  Smart, beautiful, full of integrity and authentic transparency.

I watched my youngest daughter graduate from high school with her freshman year of college already under her belt. I watch and cried as I realized how proud I was to see her feminine power and her authentic identity shine.  I realized how truly powerful she was in her own beauty and in her own skin.  Unapologetic in her world and generation for what she wanted or what she didn't know she wanted as she walked across the graduation stage to participate in the last rite of her public education.  I believe she is such a powerful not to be reckoned with that she can barely see the magnitude of her own spirit and intelligence.  I see in her so many beautiful and powerful things that she will take the world by ear in the next few years.

I sat on the couch across from my ex husband and received the first ever, deeply authentic remorseful apology I had ever encountered in my life.  It was as if he had now been relieved of his mantle to his girls and had realized how harshly he had judged my road and our trials with the impact of his choices.  I had relived all the sadness, joys and trials on that couch in a thirty minute time span that evening after our youngest daughter's graduation. That was so deeply healing and such great closure.

This summer I watched as my oldest daughter get married.  I cried at the misogyny of the event and at the beautiful young woman she had evolved into.  I worried and cried over her keeping her voice and not loosing her passion to be an independent woman in this world.  I was horrified to see how people had judged me and our family at her wedding because we had no longer belonged to the same church as her in-laws.  It all felt like such a head spinning nightmare for me to be reminded of how it felt to be once again "not good enough" after I had worked for the past eight years to undo that terrible inner script and feel powerful and more than enough. It was terrifying to see how easily the shoe slid back on and I had to remember that it was a bad shoe to wear and that it would never allow me to stand in my own power.

The day after the wedding was the hardest of the year.  I drove home alone with an empty car from the wedding in Sacramento California back to Seattle, Washington on my 50th birthday.  I was angry, hurt, sad and confused at life. I cried for what felt like the entire eleven hours straight.  Actually I sincerely believe that I had been crying for the past days, including the days prior to the wedding.  This all seemed so empty, so deeply wrong. Why turn fifty and have lost sight of my joy or perhaps felt I never had any joy, or even worse that I didn't recognize my joy?  I had to maintain my poker face upon my return home to the kids. I was greatly relieved to see all had survived without my supervision and had done a great job at keeping the house in order and their brother out of the dog house.   There was comfort in my typical chaos of home. There was a place a familiar disdain as I crossed into the city boundaries.  I knew even if it wasn't perfect it was familiar. Familiarity is a great fishing spot.  My dear friend, Teri, would always remind me that fishing is good in a predictable place, she would say "Go where the fishing is easy!".  There isn't an easy way to break free. This is the terror barrier that AmyJo Goddard speaks of in her work SPECTRA. Familiarity breeds discontent.

I realized how patriarchal my life had been and deeply ruled by the power given away to men in our society. I realized how much it was important for me to see this imbalance. Could there have been a greater shift in my consciousness than that at such an auspicious time.  Here I was in my prime and power and realized I have been programmed to give that power away and to accept not having control of it in a very deep rich sense.  As if someone had subliminally convinced or hypnotized me to giving over the keys to this luscious Maserati of my body and soul.  With no privilege or say in its use and misuse.

I can see how the years of work in a career driven by male authority figures seemed so mysterious to me. How could I ever have validation and appreciation from them?  Years of living a life without compliments from men in my life that didn't treated me as an equal.  I often wondered how it was that I should actually be able to ever feel good about who I was, or feel good about what my skills and talents could produce.  It wasn't until I was forty years old that my own father told me he was proud of me. It was a moment that knocked me to my knees. It was a moment that he struggled to articulate how in awe he was at my personal power, tenacity and strength and vulnerability.  I cried for days and still tear up while typing now. These are life changers no doubt.  These are the moments that I will hold on to. I will mourn them and celebrate them in their gifts.  The gifts of release, the gift of accepting humanity and understanding society.  I am now gifted with the ability to move on and "Let it go!" for my highest good!

It is easier to say than do and thus makes my next biggest trick...Letting go of the ties that bind me to my old life and beliefs!  Allowing for space to grow and release the scripts that run a muck in my scattered mind of self doubt and confidence.  This is the great challenge in this season of change!