Mindful musings – Mindful Mama

Pain and choice

Trauma causes pain, of that there is no doubt. But trauma therapist and bestselling author Resmaa Menakem says that not all pain is the same and that we get to choose what kind of pain we experience and put out into the world. He explains:

Clean pain is the pain that mends and can build capacity for growth. It’s the pain you feel when you know what to say or do and you really don’t want to say or do it, but you do it anyway, responding from the best parts of yourself. It’s also the pain you experience when you have no idea what to do; when you’re scared or worried about what might happen, and when you step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability.

Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, or denial— it is experienced when you respond from your most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away. This response creates more pain for you and others.

This week I’ve been dealing with a hurt I caused and the backlash it created, and Resmaa’s explanation of pain has been instrumental in guiding how I work through the conflict. I have had to ask myself time and again if I want to put my energy into avoidance and defensiveness or into self-examination and making amends. I knew I would suffer either way, but sitting with the pain instead of lashing out and then owning my mistakes and apologizing instead of pointing out the other’s wrongs has allowed me to metabolize the pain as opposed to perpetuating it.

The concept of clean and dirty pain helps us to navigate personal relationships and tricky situations, but it can also be applied to the collective. In the news recently we’ve heard the POTUS say that he doesn’t want the truth of our nation’s traumatic history of slavery, policing and systemic racism taught in public education. He’s also banned diversity training for federal employees and gone as far as showing public support for racist and chauvinistic hate groups working to suppress.

He is essentially the head of a household saying to his family that what happened in the past must not be discussed, healed or amended. It must be stuffed and denied and the blame for the trauma we all feel must be placed on something outside of us. Absolutely no therapy or healing for anyone.

Modern psychology and ancient wisdom both tell us this is no way to heal and grow.

So many of us are in pain. The good news is that each of us -in so many minute decisions- gets to choose how we will respond to our emotional pain. We can be in pain while avoiding, blaming and denying, or we can be in pain while growing, opening and repairing. Our individual actions can affect the world we live in, choice by choice.

I know what I choose, and I hope that with a little Covid-induced time-out our current leader will choose the kind of pain that leads our nation to growth and reparation.

understanding sameness

I opened up my facebook feed this morning and was greeted with a post from someone I care about mocking the concept of wearing masks. I felt an immediate and visceral reaction to this message of ridicule. It was potent and defensive, but I wasn’t sure if it was anger or hurt.

Confused, I asked myself:

Q: Why do people wear masks?
A: To feel safe and somewhat in control, and to feel like they are protecting those around them.

Q: So, why make fun?
A: This is a defensive reaction, perhaps to a dislike or fear of being told what to do, or a simple disagreement in values and beliefs about how the world should operate.

Upon coming to these conclusions I made a comment to my husband about a person’s desire for a mask being similar to a person’s desire for a gun, both of which are related to the need to feel safe and to protect. I went on to say that one of these objects hurts no one, while the other has the potential to hurt so many. My husband began, don’t make the comparison… or some such similar statement that I really can’t remember because I immediately shut down when he started telling me what to do.

Bingo.

I was in a similarly patterned loop as my friend, who I believe to be a gun-supporter. I got defensive with my shut-down just as she had gotten defensive with her put-down.

So what is my message, my learning, in this discomfort and realization of sameness?

It’s that the universe is nudging me to continue to try to look for connections and similarities between me and the people with whom I disagree, both at home and faraway. Where I believe my husband was attempting to lead me, albeit with bossiness, was to the idea that when I engage in further divisiveness (from a place of supposed superiority) I’m not helping to create the connection and understanding I long for.

As I write, I look up and see on my 2020 vision board:

Being receptive to the view of someone we disagree with is no easy task, but when we approach the situation with a desire to understand our differences [and sameness], we get a better outcome.

I want a better outcome. As well as more joy in the process.

Thus, I commit to being receptive. I commit to observing with curiosity my reactions as well as the reactions of others experiencing my reactions. I commit to imagining how and where we might broach conversations that lead to greater understanding. I commit to increasing connectedness.

I also commit to continuing to speak, even if it my speech isn’t perfected.

Work in joyful progress.

For more shelter-in-place interpretations of my pre-Covid 2020 vision board, please visit @katietwitwrites on instagram.

the still, small voice of love

Holy shit. She’s done it again.

I sat down to prepare for a sophomore conversation call, one in which a guide from the high school meets with my husband, myself and our soon-to-be a Junior son to reflect upon the first half of high school and make goals for the second half. I, of course, had my journal in one hand and a list of questions to contemplate in the other. My son, lounging in front of the TV, had his phone in one hand and a video game controller in the other. I sighed, let him be, and picked up my dinging phone alerting me that new grades had been posted. I don’t always click, but it being so close to the end of the semester and minutes before the reflection call, I did. It wasn’t the course grades that caught my attention, it was the “effort grades”.

B effort!

That lit me up. We’d been home for 8 weeks and school has pretty much been his only obligation! I immediately blasted out a text to him saying that I was feeling disgusted and that I’d prefer lower course grades and A effort to this average display of attention. I followed that up with a tattle call to my husband. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of texting a friend to ask if was I being/expecting too much that I snapped back into real time and space and admitted to myself that I had the answers within, and the yuckiness I was feeling and wanting to discharge was in direct relation to the real conflict at hand: the pressure I was putting on him was the same pressure I’ve been trying so desperately to shake off myself. I was literally planting the same voice in his head that I’ve been trying my damnedest to quiet.

Do more!

Do better!

Prove yourself!

I deleted the text and opened the zoom call. Our talented guide started our conversation with this poem-prayer by Henri Nouwen:

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, “Prove that you are a good person.” Another voice says, “You’d better be ashamed of yourself.” There also is a voice that says, “Nobody really cares about you,” and one that says, “Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.” But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, “You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.” That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

I really appreciate when the universe puts me in my place so quickly and decisively with her magic ways. (I hear you!) And I recommit myself to solitude, silence and a strong determination to listen — to both gentle and not-so-gentle reminders (this one was gentle, thank you) and to my kids when I pause long enough to ask them questions of the “are you okay with this feedback?” sort.

Scrabble squabbles

I was making soup Saturday afternoon when my phone dinged with a text from the depths of the basement.

My soon-to-be 16 year old asked anyone want to play pitch?

Yes! I responded, psyched for the invitation from the handsome basement troll, ready in 15 minutes!

We played cards, followed by family dinner, community dishes (our dishwasher broke), a prohibition-style game of beer pong and then scrabble, said teenager still in the mix, still upstairs away from his lair.

About 30 minutes into the game, he declared he’d had enough. He said he was not having fun anymore and began to put his tiles back in the bag.

No! I screamed. Can’t quit. Only 15 more minutes -you can do it!

I’m done he responded.

You can’t quit, I told him. Or no phone tonight. Or i-pad. (I’d show him who had the power.)

His pleasant demeanor transformed before my eyes. His self-awareness and sovereignty (interpreted by me in that moment as defiance and perhaps if I’d dug a bit deeper- rejection) lit my fuse.

He grew big. I grew bigger. We finished the game.

Was it the same as before he declared he was done?

No.

Was it fun?

No.

Did I go to bed proud of myself?

No.

If I could press redo, would I?

Yes.

I’d say:

I get it honey, family time in teenage time is triple what it is in tender mom time. Thanks so much for the card game invitation, doing the dishes and playing two more games. I realize that is a lot of time and energy.

I also know that your little brother and I are having a blast right now. You hanging out with us means so much. You’ll be able to drive next week, which will provide you more opportunity to be away from the house (post Covid-19 of course), and I feel sad knowing our opportunity for time together diminishes every day, despite it being a normal, natural and vital part of your growing up.

Could you possibly take a little break, grab a snack and come back so we can finish? I’d love for you to demonstrate to your little brother that even if you’re losing or bored you can still finish a commitment you started, especially when quitting affects others. That said, I trust you to know what’s best for you, and if you’re at the end of your rope, I honor that.

——————————————————————————————

This morning I scrolled through my audible library looking for someone to read to me while I vacuumed. I knew exactly what I needed. In Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg reminded me of the following:

Punishment is costly in terms of goodwill. The more we are seen as agents of punishment, the harder it is for others to respond compassionately to our needs. The following questions help us to see why we are unlikely to get what we need using punishment to change people’s behavior.

What do I want this person to do that is different from what he or she is doing? (And why do I want them to do it? What are my needs?)
What do I want this person’s reasons to be for doing what I am requesting?

When I address this second question, I see that my use of punishment and reward (access to electronics) interferes with Max’s ability to do things motivated by a desire to enrich his life or that of his family. I see that I am acting out of alignment with everything I am trying to reteach myself about living my truest life.

I personally don’t want to act out of fear of punishment or rejection, nor do I want any of the humans I am guiding to either. In my haste (and hurt?) I robbed both of us of an opportunity to speak to our needs and our feelings and to practice acting in alignment with them.

Luckily (?), I think we’ll get plenty more opportunities to practice in the next few weeks. Luckily, he’s turning 16 and not 18. Luckily, I am well versed in the art of apology.

What is

My husband and babe #1 travelled to NYC for a basketball tournament that was graciously cancelled mid-game. Thank you NBA and NCAA for being the first leaders of our nation. For saying, we will stop the March madness and we will respond to what is. Thank you for setting a precedent for our president.

My people are back from this hot-zone, and now we are stuck at home together. We made this decision before the CDC advised it.

Some call it social distancing. Some call it physical distancing. I call it a dream come true.

How long has my soul begged for this kind of closeness with my family? The kind not required by a logistically complicated scheduled trip away from all of our duties and distractions, but rather a settling in, a sinking down, a surrender to our humanness. A call to close loops and finish discussions, to not escape to school or work mid-complicated sentence. To not try to fit in familial relationships among all the external obligations. And the world is asking us to do it.

I feel an ancient itch being scratched, an echoey yearning for tribe time, a longing for community collaboration and solidarity, as we relearn together how to work with the natural elements.

Yes, I feel fear. And panic has reached the surface of my body a time or two. But truthfully the undercurrent of fear has been here inside me for so many years. Fear for the earth, fear for the polar bears, fear for the people in poverty living near the sea. Fear for the glaciers and the grandkids, the forests and the furry ones. Fear for all the things we know and don’t address.

I can feel Mother Earth sighing in relief for the little break we’re giving her, and now I don’t feel quite so alone in my fear.

Now maybe we all look at the invisible elephant in the room. Now maybe we talk about the necessity of universal healthcare, of community gardens and converting our tidy blue-grass yards into life-giving earth. Maybe we address how every action we take as individuals ripples through the community, affecting all.

Maybe we embrace our interconnectedness as demonstrated by the constantly-updating live outbreak maps. Maybe we acknowledge as a culture the inevitable end we all face. Maybe with this acknowledgment we choose to live in more life-conscious ways.

I pray and I choose to believe that this virus can raise our consciousness and our health as a vibrant community. All of us have unique ways of contributing and growing, all of us have work to do at home— both inner work and work with our closest people. For all those who continue to do important and life-saving work out in the community: providing food and medicine, caring for the sick and assisting the compromised and the elderly, —thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

Life is hard

This morning at Reading Circle we will conclude our discussion of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In this autobiography of her youth, Maya delivers wisdom niblet after wisdom niblet. The kind of wisdom only gleaned by a young mind with keen observation skills. With poetic clarity she reminds readers again and again what it’s like to navigate the world with only so many years’ experience to draw upon. She paints a vivid picture of the world as she interpreted it as a child, and she does so with such brilliance, insight, poetry and humor that I practically have the entire book underlined.

In the final chapter she describes her mother’s compassionate understanding and ability to allow her baby to struggle and work for what she wants — to become the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Maya explains that Mother understood the perversity of life.

Mother understood, and more importantly, she allowed Maya to discover it too— in her own time and her own way. The comfort with discomfort that Mother displayed (both her own discomfort and that of others) demonstrates her intimate relationship with struggle and hardship as well as her faith in her daughter’s ability to navigate the complex world. Maya learned not to sugar coat life’s hardships, nor succumb to any victimhood thinking.

Unlike Maya, I didn’t grow up black in a world made for whites, nor did I grow up in an age pre-civil and pre-women’s rights. Instead, I grew up a member of the majority in the comfortable suburbs of a small town, in the age of Baby Sitters Club books and the Brady Bunch. I grew up with the Huxtables, the Sievers and the Cleavers. I grew up thinking that all of life’s difficulties could be sorted out in a hundred pages or a half an hour. I grew up thinking that the struggling that comes with being human was an option, and I was failing miserably. I spent my time not observing the people and situations around me like Maya, but instead studying the habits and social norms of actors on television or cookie-cutter characters in children’s books. And I tried my damnedest to emulate perfection. Is it any wonder that I thought there was something inherently wrong with me and my family? We were nothing like what I saw on the tube.

My grown-up attraction to Maya’s tell-it-like-it-is honesty and vulnerability touches the same sweet spot that lit up three years ago at my first appointment with my hairdresser. I can’t remember how I responded to her greeting and “how are you?”, but whatever I said set her off to clucking and repeating,

Life is hard. Oh, life is hard. Honey, life is hard!

No one had ever said that to me before, and in the matter of a moment I felt like I’d landed in a lap I’d always wanted to inhabit. I felt understood. I felt the presence of a truth speaker. I felt connection and the openness that comes with honesty and accepting struggle. With not pretending to have my shit together. There was no judgement of the “you should just be grateful sort”. There was no advice. There was no rescue. Just solidarity. I recall this moment as one of the prominent notches in my personal timeline. I see it as a shifting point for how I want to view the world hard and inhabit spaces.

Like Maya, her mother and my hairdresser, I want to acknowledge that life is hard (maybe the Buddha said something along these lines too?). Like them, I want to offer compassionate empathy while not distracting from or pretending the pain is not there. Most importantly, as Maya demonstrates page after page, no matter how hard life is, it’s also magical and painstakingly beautiful if you’re paying attention, and as humans, we can do hard things.

Gentle metrics of success

Almost five years ago I was asked to define my gentle metrics of success. This was novel to me and an impetus for the personal growth I’ve experienced since then.

This metrics was not to include numbers; no salary, 401k, 529 accounts or any of the normal western world stamps of success like home ownership or leaving a little something behind for the kids, but rather was to approach success from an end-of-life sort of view.

What makes my life successful? How do I know I’ve “made it”?

As I created this metrics, clarity poked her head up out of the depths of fog, pointing me in the direction of my North Star. Most of the items on my list were sensual. None required a fat bank account or proving my worthiness:

A body that is capable of moving, touching and loving,
soft clothing, a warm home, beautiful spaces and textures,
natural and nourishing food from the earth,
deep conversation, social connections and community,
presence in nature with her feels, sights and sounds,
music that moves,
scents that invoke and inspire,
the ability to travel and participate in lens-expanding experiences,
time to reflect and integrate,
the energy to create.

I noticed that a lot of these items on the gentle metrics had to do with pleasure. Growing up with the hard-work ethic of the midwest, smack in the middle of a country settled by puritans, pleasure wasn’t something that was brought up much, nor was the body. In fact, all these “luxuries” that made up my gentle metrics were ideals I held as superfluous, extra, or special treats, as opposed to a way to live.

Work, strive, suffer and save was the unconscious operating model I was using, something I had picked up without noticing along the way. I was living a life of numbers. Slave to the to-do list, clock and mile marker and prone to adding one more class to my schedule or dropping one more penny into the piggy bank.

I can pinpoint this request as a serious pivot-point in my life, leading me to ask such questions as:

Why do I work?
What am I working for?
How do I spend my time?
Who do I want to spend my time with?
Where do I spend my time and how do I leave the spaces I inhabit?

I am so grateful to the wisdom teacher who offered this life-enriching question. I am grateful for recognizing my values and transforming my pace and way of being in the world.

I write this blog to remind myself of both my values and my success, as I still occasionally slip into “am I doing enough, earning enough, offering enough” mentality.

I share this blog to pay it forward. What is your gentle metrics of success?

With humble humanness,

Katie

October play

The end of October is almost here, and I haven’t written a thing to share. Not because nothing is noteworthy, but rather because what I’ve been wanting to write seems a tad too intimate and vulnerable and a tad too woo-woo. But the truth is, this is my favorite October on record. Anxiety still rears its head, and the threat of depression looms like it often does in this tenth month of the year, but this particular October the leaves are extra vibrant and the light more sparkly than I remember. Part of the October magic is due to the perfect climate conditions for color, but part I credit to the playful work I’ve been doing. Three times this week I saw some iteration of

what you did yesterday created today;
what you do today creates tomorrow.

I’d like to think that my actions and self-care rituals over the last few months are playing out now, one of which is setting intentions with the moon.

Super witchy, no?

With the new moon I set intentions for habits I want to cultivate and parts of my personality I want to grow as the moon grows big and fat into fullness.

With the full moon I set intentions for habits I want to drop and thinking patterns and grudges I want to release as the moon shrinks to invisible.

Each day I return to these intentions, and standing in front of the altar I build each fortnight, I light a candle and some incense and read the intentions aloud. Every. Single. Day.

How’s that for some magic?

Being so in tune with my intentions, I can’t help but be more aware of my behaviors and how I create my own reality with the words I choose, the company I keep and the actions I take. Decisions become easier and relationships cleaner.

Being so in tune to the moon, I can’t help but be more aware of my cycle and how my moods and energy levels change with the changing shape of this celestial tracker. Checking in with her on the pre-dawn and pitch black drive to middle school, I feel connection to (and participation with) Mother Nature like I never have before.

Being so in tune with Mother Nature, I can’t help but feel supported as the seasons change. The days are shortening furiously fast, and this year, instead of feeling the dread of winter so solidly, I am finding twinges of excitement in the cracks. I am grateful for the way the sun shifts and the light shimmers through the quivering leaves onto different spots in the house and yard like twinkle lights.

Being so in tune with the light, I can’t help but be drawn closer to the sun-based celebrations. We began celebrating the Winter Solstice at home years ago, as a call for more meaning and connection with the Earth, but this year Samhain (Sa-wen) is on my radar too, the half-way mark between the Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. Like its cousins Halloween, All Saints’ Day and Day of the Dead, Samhain is marked by thinning veils between the land of the living and of those passed, between this reality and those unseen. It’s the season of imagination, divination and magic, the season of celebrating light and dark and the season of co-creating the reality in which we live.

All of this in-tune-ment, intentional attention and Mother Earth support is providing a sense peace that I didn’t know could co-exist with a racing heart, sweaty palms or a deep longing to spend the day in bed. I think the play with the moon and my intentions is helping me to understand the cyclical nature of all things a bit more tangibly. The light grows bright, it goes dim. Feelings arise, (and if I don’t mess with them too much) there they go. And if I focus my intention on my desires often enough, I just may create the playful world I want to inhabit.

Happy magic-making to you.

Boo!

Silence is golden and the purple jeep

I haven’t written about me and Middle in awhile. If I’m going to flip my lid, he’s usually the one to witness the outburst. A former me may have said he’s usually the one to cause the outburst, but poco a poco this old dog is learning new tricks. I pile brag upon brag sharing that earlier this week, after receiving news that left me deflated, defeated and a little mad, I was driving to the designated pick up spot after school and could tell from 100 yards away that Mr. Middle was in a state. I glanced at my phone, accidentally left in do-not-disturb mode and saw that I’d missed a number of calls and a couple of texts asking where I was. Whoopsie, communication failure in the I’ll be 20 minutes late department. I’m not sure how the message wires got crossed, but boy was he bent out of shape. And so was I.

However…

Instead of pretending like I wasn’t, or pretending like I couldn’t tell that he was and going on with my normal “how was your day?” routine, instead of silently scolding myself for not communicating well or scolding him out loud for not listening, I simply let us both be mad. We drove a few miles in complete silence.

And it was fine.

We made our way without a word until a big purple jeep pulled out in front of us. A big purple jeep with a giant peace sign and plates that read NAMASTE. The sighting was enough to pull Mr. Middle out of his funk. He came to life urging me to speed up, wanting to see who was driving the vehicle, which of course I did because who doesn’t want to take a peek at the person driving a lovefest-mobile?

Without a word, our quarrel was over. Our partnership re-established.

I have a feeling that for this “pays to be quiet” lesson to really take hold, I may have to practice it a time or twenty.

Columbine

My family and I recently returned from Colorado, where we hiked, horsebacked and lolly-gagged our way through the mountains. On one of our adventures we came upon a field of these lovely beings, named with the Latin word for dove, Columba.

Neither this image nor the nearly universal symbol of peace comes to mind when I hear “Columbine”. Like most Americans of my generation, instead of a mountain flower, I think of a mass school shooting. Over twenty years ago, on April 20, 1999, our nation was rocked with the first bloody outcry of it’s kind, of a young white population begging for connection and belonging, begging to be truly seen. Two decades later the isolation and separation felt by those two Columbine youth is as rampant as ever, as are mass shootings.

Absolutely we need to address gun control, divisive language and the roots of white supremacy. We need to dialogue, call our representatives and march in the streets. But just as importantly, we also need to sit quietly and examine our personal responsibility in creating and participating in the current culture of our nation.

How are we, as individuals in the greater web, creating spaces of inclusion?

How are we using language of connection?

Where may we unwittingly be using language of separation and difference?

How are we inviting others to eat at our table?

How are we unconsciously telling others to keep out?

How are we cajoling our sons and daughters to speak to what hurts and desires to be seen?

How are we cajoling ourselves?

How are we supporting ourselves, both alone and in community ?

Where and how are we creating feelings of belonging?

Are our feelings of connection created with acts of inclusion or exclusion?

What are the rippling effects?

My dream is that sooner than later the Columbine flower be a national symbol of peace, belonging and the coming together of our nation to address the undercurrent of desperation felt by so many.