May - is all about the acceptance

Acceptance

Neither
reaching
for the moon,
nor bound to
the ground.
Happy is
when I
can float
amongst
the stars.


This picture popped into my head one day as a speedy moment of clarity.
You know those!
When everything makes sense for a brief second and then everything feels clumsy and confusing again.
I made the picture to remind myself of that clear moment as it held the key to my experience of happiness.
One of the things I struggle with is change and expectations.
I can ruin an experience because it isn’t what I thought it would be or what I had originally planned.
That can make for an interesting time because life is completely haphazard and entirely built on change.
My teacher in this has been my noisy boy, who also struggles with these.
We talk a lot about transitions (that is the moment between one thing and another thing – yep it’s a thing)
and we talk a lot about expectations and how something might be going sideways because of unknown territory and / or differences in what we thought would happen. My son and I seem to feel more comfortable with a perceived feeling of control in situations, but we are learning how to negotiate our way through this by giving up the reins sometimes. Just as my little girl is teaching me piano, my boy is my lesson in feelings.

When I think back on moments that I haven’t ruined with my sulky face. Times when I have in fact let loose, chilled out, or even (dare I say it), “gone with the flow” – it feels AMAZING! I know I have it in me – I just forget to switch it on and that is my homework for May.

If this sounds in anyway familiar to you I have been playing a game with myself for the last couple of weeks called the Acceptance game. Before I explain I should note that this is not a lesson for passivity. IT isn’t about accepting status quo when status quo is truly affecting you negatively. This is more about times when you are getting in your own way of enjoyment, contentment and just plain chilling to make for a happier day. Ok back to the game. SO here are some prime examples of me.

1. I am getting completely wound up by some random person in life for some perceived thing they have done. Game on. I accept I am getting wound up right now, but I choose not to let this ruin this day.

2. The kids are hyper, I have to cook dinner and there are 6 things spinning through my head about stuff I have to do and I am going to loose my mind. Game on. I accept that all I have to do right now is cook dinner. I choose to not think of these other things I need to do right now.

3. Malaise of mood about weight, work, messiness or my general crappiness at something. I accept I feel crappy right now about (put in issue of the moment) but I choose to do something that makes me uncrappy (like make a picture, drink a tea, take a breath, take a walk, get that washing up finished).

4. Decisions. I am terrible at making decisions especially about things that I don’t really want to think about, but have to in grown up land. Once I make a decision about how I might handle a tricky situation, a business choice or a personal matter, whatever it is I will still churn it over in my mind. If it was a situation I was feeling particularly prickly about then on and on in my head it will go even though I have decided what I am going to do and already taken action. Game on. I accept that I have made my decision and I stand by that decision. I chose now to lay this situation to rest and move on.

It sounds very basic I know, but little, by little something started to shift in me. That heavy weight that joins my ears to my shoulders did actually start to lift. All I was really doing was being a kind person to myself to stop the spiraling, but because I wasn’t spending so much of my day in a spiral I was less tired, less hurt and less burdened. I wasn’t striving to change things, to “fix” these perceived problems, nor was I letting myself be dragged down by them, all I was doing was saying “oh yeah there you are and moving on”.

This is early days of course. Last week the sun was shining, a warm spring had arrived and my mood was lighter. Today a rainy day seems to have taken its toll on me and I can feel the stress rise again bit, by bit. If I can keep up my awareness though, keep up the training of these acceptance muscles of mine, I can still build a resiliency and learn not to freak out so much at change and sudden circumstance. Learn to hang back a bit rather than kick into reactive mode. Become a little more wait and see, rather than fluster and fear of fate. For my noisy boy I can do this so that more and more we will both be just chilling in the stars.

Good luck my friends with your trials of acceptance this month of May. What are the triggers that make you get the board out for your acceptance game?

April - is all about the support

Photo Credit: Devon Gillott Sessions

I close
my eyes
and there
I see,
a patchwork
of the
people who
blanket
me.


One of the things that can happen when we take to our beds is an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. Whether we have isolated ourselves too much or even if we are surrounded by people all the time, we can still feel alone in this. This is the month, when we turn our thoughts to the positive people who are in our life, have been in our lives and those passing miracle, people who pop up out of the blue at just the right time. This is our time to focus on the people who are there for us and have been there for us, to help us see that net of support that is still there; we have just forgotten how to feel it.

I would like us to try a little exercise together. We are going to make a paper quilt. First take a piece of paper and divide it up into squares – just like the cloth pieces of a quilt. The first thing we are going to do is to draw ourselves in one of the squares near the centre. This can have your name, a stick figure, a shape, a swirl – anything that helps you make the mental note of "there I am". Next I want you to start filling the squares around you with anyone that is close to you right now who is a bright spark in your week – a partner, a family member, a friend. Think outside the box too; a kind mum during drop off, a co-worker who makes you laugh, a friendly coffee server or a helpful neighbor. Just keep filling those squares with anyone who comes to mind who has brightened your every day, or your week or your recent months.

Once you have exhausted those squares you are going to move outward and add all those people who you no longer live close to, but who would support you in a heartbeat. Family who live far away, childhood friends, college friends, old work colleagues. Who have you collected in your experiences along the way that have helped to shape your today? Who could you connect with immediately and with ease if you lived closer? Keep on filling those squares.

The next squares are for those people in your life who have been your guardian angels at random stages. I really enjoy remembering these people and once you start you will be amazed at how many angels you have met along the way. They deserve a square in your support network for what they did for you, but they also serve as a reminder that people will pop up in your life over and over to help you at times of need. It has happened before and it will happen again. I have special teachers, a manager of one of my first jobs, people when I travelled who all went above and beyond to help me at different times of my life. Who took a kind interest in me when I needed the guidance and support. These are people who I won’t ever see again, but who made their own special mark on and in me.

This next one is hard, but important. I would like us to fill up more squares that honour and remember the people in our lives we have loved and lost. These people still live inside us and their support when they were here is strongly imbedded, even though it hurts to be reminded. These are the special people in our lives who still play a very important part in this amazing paper fabric that is unfolding.

So lastly, as you look at all these people who have made you, held you by the hand, made you laugh, made you tea and done all the great things that they have done, I want you to also look at some empty squares. These squares are there to symbolise our faith that people do always come to help, support, befriend and love us. We need to make room for our special people of the future.

I hope after this little paper exercise you are feeling a little amazed at who is really in your life!
We may feel by ourselves, but we are far from alone.
We are in fact part of a much bigger picture, that is sewn together with strong threads of support and comfort.
This is our network, these are our people and stitched together they are always there to keep us warm when we need.
Wrap up this month.

Happy April.

March - Is all about the fear...

I listen
calmly
to what
you say.
Then
thank you
kindly
and send
you on
your way.

Ahhh what a dance I can do to avoid this little word FEAR. Today I am away with the family for their ski time. We are staying in a nice hotel room where I have easy access to everything I need (food and drinkies). It is blizzard like outside so I have no desire to go out and there are zero distractions around me. Just me, my keyboard and a piece of paper that has the word FEAR in foreboding capitals. Today is the last day before I am to post this piece, and the resistance is crazy. Never have I left a post until this late in the day, but always have I denied, ignored or run away from FEAR. Before I could possibly sit to write this I have done the dishes, drunk 4 cups of coffee, eaten 8 pieces of chocolate and wondered aloud how early too early is for wine...oh hang on let’s do a Facebook post. Does any of this sound familiar?

Me leaving this post to the last day is completely understandable because, let’s face it, FEAR is sucky. FEAR is a little monster inside me that grows and grows until it sends me to my bed, hiding under the covers. I get so tired from avoiding it, denying it or semi feeling it and shutting it down before it can derail me. FEAR is the monotonous durge of worries and anxieties throughout my daily doings. It is the background murmurs of “are you sure?” and the “what if something terrible happens?” FEAR is sudden tensing as my shoulders meet my ears, yet my brain hasn’t even processed why. FEAR is the small drains and the 3am tsunami that turn into Netflix binges as I drown out the biggies of “you will be alone, you do not matter, you are a sucky person.” Phew ...I know right!

Ignored FEARS get very demanding you know! My escaping and denial coping mechanisms over the years have never worked and the older I get the more energy they take. Then one day, I hit my mid forties and suddenly heard this exasperated voice cry out “seriously Caz..this again? This again??.”

Who the hell was this person...(spoiler alert it was me) ...and doesn’t she make a good point! I am getting too old to let life slip by in a constant tremor. I have too much good stuff going on around me to be distracted all the time by these intense, and icky feelings. ”No!” Wise, weird woman I say “NOT this again, not this again!”

I would now like to introduce you to my word for the year, RESILIENCY. Wrestling with my “what the hell am I going to do with this?” I spied a 4 session class at a local yoga studio called Building Resiliency. Here we adopt a simple yoga and mindful practise of listening to our bodies, our breath and simply “noticing”...not reacting...noticing. Resiliency suddenly became a word of calm strength that helped me to understand fear in a different way.

Resiliency is the friend to fear. Fear is fear not FEAR ..if that makes sense? I was first going to say that resiliency is the armour for fear, but that isn’t right. Fear and resiliency are in a working relationship, not a war with each other. They work together in friendship and support, we need both to be whole. It isn’t so much that fear is my problem, it is that I need to exercise my resiliency to go hand in hand. Then fear won’t freak out so much. Instead of nurturing my fear with quiet and calm attention, I was avoiding and ignoring it, leaving it to grow wild. The moment I can turn this around, my fears should be able to regulate themselves better in the knowledge that l’ve got this.

In it’s own nutty way, my fear is trying to protect me. It is my handy check list, my ”are you sure?” reminder and when it hears me reply “yep, i’ve got this” then it can rest and let the day unfold. My work this month is to build my resiliency, my ‘i’ve got this”, rather than focusing on the fear side. By building on resiliency with a calm, connected strength, I can let these fears rest.


No more can I talk about fear without talking about resiliency.



Thank you for taking the time to read this...I know it is a big one this month and it was a lot to grapple with for me. I wonder what building resiliency looks like for you? What steps could you take to find peace with your fears? We aren’t building walls against our fear anymore...we are reaching out, telling it we understand and “we’ve got this.”