Well, you’ve probably noticed this blog has fizzled to…zero posts per week. Although this is a common thing that happens to blogs, in this case, the fizzling is actually intentional. Because….deception! Ah hem. That is, I realized I deceived myself once again. You see, I’ve wanted to be a writer since 3rd grade, and I’ve written in different capacities since then. My main jam, though, is fiction. And poetry. My plan A has always been to be a writer. You know, when I grow up. Well, in the years following 3rd grade, I became an adult and realized the importance of being able to pay your rent. Because I had yet to earn any money as a writer (despite only submitting work a handful of times), I determined I ought to find another career path. A Plan B career just to do “on the side” of writing until I could earn enough as a writer to support myself. Enter: working as a field staff in wilderness therapy, where I found my other calling as a mental health therapist. This sent me back to school to finish a B…
I’m not sure what tastes better than a big old bite of smug certainty. Go ahead, try to think of something. Chocolate? No. Artisan-roasted coffee? Uh uh (although my best friend does roast some amaaaazing coffee). A field of wildflowers in an alpine meadow? Not even. Watching a hummingbird drink nectar from a wildflower in an alpine meadow while sipping an artisan-roasted coffee and eating fair-trade chocolate? With fresh, organic raspberries? Hmm… that might be about on par with the deliciousness of smug certainty, but I do not believe it surpasses it. Certainty says, “do x and y will happen.” It says, “Do z and q will not happen.” It says, “oh, that bad thing only happened to you (other person/other people/other country) because you did x.” It feels superior because y has happened, because q has not happened, because of doing all the things. You know, the things you are supposed to do? To earn merit in heaven/the mommy forums/your family/your social group/on facebook/in the blogosphere? You know, the things you are not supposed to do? (Which hugely vary depending…
This hack works for any kind of thinking/emotional pattern that you would like to stop. It doesn’t automatically stop, of course, but every time we gain awareness of our thinking, we are no longer entranced into believing everything our thoughts say. And thank God! Because while our thoughts might be brilliant while under the influence of caffeine/good art/excellent music, they can also lead us oh so very astray and make us completely miserable…
I was thinking about my love for my daughters…how fierce it is. How it permeates my being, exists in every particle of their beings, how it made them and grew them and nourishes them. I inhale love on the scent of their skin, their downy hair, their big doe eyes, their drowsy heads on my shoulders. It has made me into a person who sacrifices, who protects, who keeps vigil over sick children with a soft voice and a cool hand to feverish foreheads. It is fierce and present in each moment I breathe, when they are with me as well as when I’m working, pumping milk for my baby and trying to teach my clients about this force I don’t understand, which moves us and molds us. And someday soon, that fierce, tight, protective love will have to move and be molded as well. It will have to soften, open, become pliant and yielding. It will have to become a love that allows, a love that trusts, a love that lets go. I will have to become a person who allows, who trusts, who lets go. That’s the game, isn’…
Awareness is like water. It dissolves everything it touches, immediately or in time. People often refer to this quality as being like a fire, or a furnace, burning up all our illusions. And sometimes it is dramatic like that, painful like that, intense and hot like that. Other times, it’s just like like slow rain. Dissolving stone, dissolving dirt, dissolving me. By awareness, I mean that noticing that notices and observes, without commentary or judgement. A very simple example of how this works is seen in the first meditation technique usually taught to beginners: focus on your breath (or something or other), and when thoughts come by, simply notice them, and label them, “thinking.” If you haven’t tried this before, give it a go. Follow the breath for 3 rounds of inhaling and exhaling. Thoughts popping up? Notice. Try to notice each thought the moment it appears. Label it, “thinking.” Now where did it go? It’s gone. Oh! There it is. It’s back. Now gone again. Ah, there’s a new thought. “Thinking.” Bam. That’s called meditating. It’s also called awareness…
When something terrible happens to someone you love dearly, who most certainly does not deserve it (or to you for that matter) how do you explain it to yourself? How do you prevent yourself from falling into a nihilistic hellhole? If you are like me and most other human beings, it is probably through the stories you tell yourself about why it happened.
So why does bad stuff happen to good people…
…If you were the type who got terribly sick immediately after the last final of the semester literally every semester in college, you might know what I am talking about…
“Becoming a parent brings you this sadness you never would have known otherwise,” said a dear friend to me on the phone, as I pushed my toddler in her stroller through the sharp wind and shushed my newborn baby, who was zipped up inside my coat in her carrier. And I felt that delicious sense of recognition, of discovering someone else feels the way I feel. And while I don’t wish sadness upon my friends, it is incredible to have a peek into someone else’s tangled thoughts and feelings and find they look a little bit like mine. Before I became a parent, people told me that motherhood would open me up to more joy than I thought possible. But no one mentioned it would also hurt—that the hard times would hurt and the joy itself would hurt, in an aching, stretching sort of way. Kind of like the growing pains of childhood, or the opening pains of early labor, when it’s more of a dull ache. Like when I crawl into my toddler’s bed to wake her up in the morning, and she wraps her arms around…
It’s one of the most cliche cliches out there: Just be yourself. I remember being told this once and thinking, “What does that even mean?” and “Yeah, but who exactly is this self that I am supposed to be?” Whether you are in the stage of identity-development of trying to decide on a persona to play or of slowly shedding the many personas/identities/egos you’ve accumulated, not knowing who you are is pretty normal. Furthermore, most of us (myself absolutely included) are so used to playing predefined roles in the majority of interactions that authenticity is hard to even wrap our heads around. Like what would that even look like? If you hate someone, do you have to tell them? Does it mean you shout, “please, leave the sick bastard!” in the middle of a movie theater in response to the heroine’s obviously terrible choice of a romantic partner? Because that’s how you feel? Well, responding authentically “as ourselves” is something that is fluid and cannot be easily defined. Obviously. But obviously, by the fact that I am writing this post, I…
So I am not doing one of my typical, longer article-style posts this week. Here’s why: my site is a bit of a mess. Have you noticed? So rather than pontificating to you all about something-or-other this week, I am going to choose a new WordPress theme and attempt to get it up and running on my site. What this means is my site will hopefully be more attractive and easy-to navigate in the near future. On that note, any tech-savvy individuals or fellow bloggers have recommendations for WordPress blog themes? In the meantime, here are some updates on life lately at Home in Wonderland: I will hit 35 weeks on Wednesday, but who’s counting? At (almost) 35 weeks, (like how I round up the weeks?) the old first-trimester fatigue is back in full-force. I have a significant list of things I am hoping to get done before the little one makes her appearance. I was fortunate to have help organizing the girls’ room from my mom and sister this week. And J did a maternity photo shoot. Here’s a peek: We had a delightful Thanksgiving…