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How to Navigate This Season of Change and Possibilities
There is a vast difference between willingness and willfulness. Most often willfulness is based on fear. We try to make the world the way we want it by forcing solutions. Compensating for the uncertainty inside us, we become motivated by power instead of participation. Then we find struggles instead of solutions because force is often met with resistance. We stay emotionally hungry yet cannot be fed. We ask for more and more and receive less. Willingness, on the other hand, allows life to show us the way. Gunilla Norris from Becoming Bread It is late October, and the glorious rituals of Fall are in full display. Living in New England means…
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Saying No: An Act of Self-Care and Self-Respect
Imagine a river. Its source is at the top of a mountain. The river travels toward the sea, and its water supply is renewed by rain and melted snow. The river winds through villages and towns, and it becomes strong and plentiful along the way. The people living along the river banks use the water to grow and sustain their crops. They are grateful, but soon, they begin to take the river and its abundance for granted. They have come to believe that the river will be there forever, filled with cool, clean water for them to use and support their lives. Then, slowly, things begin to change. There has been a…
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Continued Lessons on Boundaries and Finding Balance
We are well into June, the garden is blooming, and I have resumed my hand-to-hand combat with the Queen. What is that supposed to mean? You may ask. Allow me to take you back to the beginning. When we bought our house twenty-six years ago, there were no established gardens, and I was still a novice gardener. However, there were mature trees and bushes, an abundance of rosa multiflora (wild rose), an invasive dense shrub, a 90-ft weeping willow, and pachysandra, hostas, and periwinkle growing along the stone walls and near the house. A stream cut across the backyard and into the woodland beyond. The property was wild, beautiful, and brimming…
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The Flow Of Our Days
“The secret heart of time is change and growth.Each new experience that awakens in you adds to your soul and deepens your memory. John O’DohohueExcerpt from Anam Cara This is the summer that followed the year when life as we knew it stopped. After having lived through the last 14 months, it is only natural that there’s an urgency to begin again, to resume life as we knew it. We lived through the darkness of winter. We experienced loss. We learned to navigate contradictions.We opened up to aspects of ourselves that needed to be seen. We found ways to reach out and remind each other that we’re here. We got creative.…
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On Absorbing Joy
Hello everyone, How are you feeling? I just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking of you and sending you all warmth and peace. Today, I’m sitting down to write about something really important and hard to remember as we’re navigating these days of uncertainty and anxiety. For the sake of our own resilience, we need to strengthen our capacity to accept and absorb joy. Sharon Salzberg It’s been getting harder and harder to find our capacity for absorbing joy, hasn’t it? We’re in the midst of a pandemic and there’s no end in sight. People are losing their lives and livelihoods. Then, there’s the election on Tuesday, and emotions…
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You Got Rhythm
My mother loved to dance. She taught me how to listen to and feel the rhythm of the music. “You can’t dance if you don’t have rhythm,” she used to say. She taught me the waltz and the tango and some folk dances. The Flamenco from Spain, the Kalinka and the Cossack from Russia, the Tarantella from Italy, and of course several Greek regional dances. Music and dancing were a big part of my childhood and the main form of entertainment duringfamily gatherings, national holidays, seasonal celebrations, and informal gatherings. Folk music and dancing are deeply rooted in the collective experience of the people in world regions. They tell a story…
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You Can Say No to Self-Blame
The other day, I had a first hand experience of how self-blame is a choice we can live without. I’m pretty sure that, the “multi-taskers” among you, will understand what I mean. Here it goes. The Middle School spring concert day was upon us and the girls were going to perform for last time as middle schoolers. Having been there before, I anticipated a certain level of stress for that afternoon. Regardless, I allowed myself to get distracted throughout the day. As a result, I found myself scrambling to get things done while trying to be, emotionally and physically, available to the girls. It wasn’t long before I became breathless. I…
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Turn on the Light!
On Tuesday evening, I sat to meditate, in honor of the winter solstice. It was my intention to sit still, breathe and be present in that very moment. I prayed for inspiration and guidance for this coming year. What I received was a deep sense of peace and acceptance. I’ll be holding on to this experience and here’s why. I usually drive myself crazy, trying to do it all well and produce the results I think I should. This last year, my focus has been on being mindful and accepting of what is instead of fighting against it. I’ve been focusing on doing what I can and not getting too hung…
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Change Happens!
“Change is as inevitable as rain in the spring. Some of us just put on our raincoats and splash forward.” ~ Amy Bloom Being willing to flow with change isn’t always easy, even when we know that change is fundamental to our growth. Change provides us with opportunities to reflect and evaluate, make adjustments, and open to new possibilities. Whether change happened by choice or not, whether we view it as positive or negative, we’ll have to go through the process of transformation which, at times, can be challenging. Change tests our comfort level with uncertainty. As the old gives way to the new, we enter the “I have no clue…
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Living in Present Time
Abigail Thomas is one of my favorite authors. I read “The Three Dog Life” some time ago, liked her style and what she had to say, and I decided to read all her books. “Thinking About Memoir” is another one of hers and as I was reading through it the other day, I couldn’t help but think of how our personal stories evolve. We go on living our lives, going through the motions, dealing with unexpected events, checking off our to-do lists, and crossing paths with each other. Somehow morning turns into evening and we don’t know where the hours went. Much of life’s richness goes unnoticed. There is a treasure…
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Life Balance! A Myth or a Choice?
Life doesn’t present us with a clear, unobstructed road. On our way, we get potholes, roadblocks, and mudslides. Here and there, our lives spin out of control. We worry about our jobs. Our businesses falter. Our children seem to have grown up overnight and we are not the center of their world anymore. Our parents age and their health fails. We fall out of love. We’re stressed . . . a thousand thoughts racing through our mind . . . no time left for us and us alone. Life is complicated. We can’t possibly divide our lives into neatly separated territories. “Is life balance a myth?” we wonder. “Am I really…
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Workaholic no More: 7 Steps to Transformation
I joined the workforce upon graduating from high school, worked my way through college, and kept going. There are many reasons why I love to work. Not only am I able to support myself – which is extremely important for my self-respect – but I’m also able to channel much of my creativity, knowledge, and passion into a specific direction. Time went on and life gave me plenty of opportunities to adjust my perspective. I found out that, loving work, can also lead to identifying with it so much that it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters in life. Work can become an excuse for not being fully engaged…
