Tissue

Your fears are tissue paper thin. I have read it hundreds of times. Your fears are tissue paper thin. I tought I understood.

I was wrong.

I thought that I had faced my fears before. And to an extent I had. But I was still inclined to sit in my small risk-adverse box. So I was obviously afraid of something more.

Your fears are tissue paper thin. Yes! Your fears are, mostly, baseless. Yes! The courage it requires to stand in front of them, to simply inhabit their space, is immense.

I thought it would feel like bravery, to move past my fears. That it would take courage, will, inner fight.

I was wrong.

What it felt like was responsibility. What it felt like was defiance. What it felt like was coming home.

What I havent read in the books is that once you shred that tissue paper, everything changes. Everything.

Obstacles of the past now look like interesting challenges. Impossible looks like a 5 year plan. and playing small feels like I am cheating myself, and the world.

I feel softer, less stressed, less pressured, more gentle & more at home in my own skin. I have less to prove and more power to prove it with. Results are coming easily and I am less attached to how they look.

Your fears are tissue paper thin. Pushing through them changes you to your very soul.

On equanimity

What do you find attractive in a mate? What do you look for in a friend? What quality makes you feel most loved and secure?

Most of us don’t really know. Those of us that do have a ‘feeling’. We call that feeling Love. But we are wrong.

Love is important but as some of us know; Sometimes Love isn’t enough.

Love without loyalty won’t last. Love without faithfulness won’t make you feel secure. Love without strength isn’t powerful enough to let you relax.

Who wants to live the mantra ‘I know they love me but…’? Not me.

I need equanimity.

Flakey, shaky, flighty, moody, chameleon, temperamental, two-faced, inconsistent, indecisive, shifty, insincere, egotistical make me nervous, insecure, restless.

I crave equanimity.

All is well in my world when I know that the people around me love me enough to not be moved by my shit. That they will stand up to me in my own best interest. That they will walk through the valley of hell with me. They will love me even when they don’t like me. Then, I’m safe.

The love I receive is faithful, strong, staunch, sure, grounded & true. Or it simply isn’t enough. Fact.

This is the love I give to my son. I will be here, loving you, come hell or high water, forever. This equanimity holds his world together. I am no different.

Equanimity is the glue that holds my pieces together.

I feel most powerful when

• I forgive
• I rock the balance between assertive and vulnerable
• I accept help before I desperately need it
• I honour my needs
• I indulge my wants- just a little
• I feel my creative juices flowing
• I enact a spiritual truth
• I help a friend in need
• I find the synergy between disparate elements
• I am in tune with my body
• my intuition is clear

Thanks to O magazine and this post for the inspiration

*image credit

Goodbye foundation

Yesterday some of the bloggers I read religiously began “No Makeup Week”. Not as a protest, but as an exploration of beauty, makeup, self-esteem and the status quo. You can read their posts here & here.

Skin care and makeup is a timely subject for me. My skin at the  moment is absolutely radiant. So much so that it is fooling (much to my delight) people around me into believing that I am well rested, healthy and stress free. I am getting comments like ‘Gee pregnancy really agrees with you’ , ‘Look at you, you’re glowing!’ & ‘You look fantastic!’

No, I am not well rested. Yes, I still vomit every day. And I am certainly not walking on sunshine. But you would think so or why else would my skin look so nice? For some reason society has trained us to believe that healthy skin is the holy grail. Skin takes a beating when we are tired, stressed, run-down, not eating well, ill with the flu, on medication, exposed to polluted air. ’Good’ skin is hard to achieve it has become an unconscious barometer of how we are ‘doing’. With the odds against us most of us have given up entirely on healthy skin and instead invest in serums, foundations, concealers, bronzers, primers, shimmers, recovery gels and the list goes on.

Makeup was originally designed to enhance a woman’s natural beauty. Skin care was designed to maintain our natural complexion. Somewhere along the way we learned that a flawless matt finish constituted beautiful skin. At some point we began viewing freckles, lines, god forbid wrinkles as the enemy. And some clever marketer convinced us that to look ‘natural’ we needed 12 different products.

My glowing skin was not inspired by a marketing campaign, a beauty editor or retail therapy. I simply wanted to feel more feminine. I wanted to do something for me. I chose skin care that was natural and that would feed my skin in a deep way.  My whole skin care routine cost less that $70. As a result I am getting no end of compliments (after 1 week of usage), I really do feel more feminine and I have stopped using foundation entirely.

My relationship with makeup changed when I stopped trying to fake my femininity and started to honour it.

*Photo credit

Preparation

The universe has a beautiful way of preparing me for what comes next. An art so beautiful, organic and simple that I miss the clues if I am not paying enough attention.

I have a good idea of what is coming next. I have been pregnant before. I can expect in the next 6 months to be more and more at the mercy of my body as she does what she must to create life. I serve my body as best I can and she goes about the most amazing miracle ever witnessed on earth. For the following 6 months after that I can expect to be at the beck and call of a tiny, pure blob of divinity incarnate as a child. It is not what I am being prepared for that I am listening to. Its the how that has my attention.

I am being reminded to let go of the parts of my life that will not support me in the next 12 months. I am being gently corralled into the mindset of service. I am being asked to let go of my wants, and to follow my needs. I am being nudged, strings are being pulled, the unhelpful are being weeded. The process is slow, gradual, but by no means subtle.

Mother nature is thorough. Everything she does has a clear purpose, and I am content (in my enlightened moments) to accept that I may never understand her purpose for me. But I do understand what mother nature is doing now. The morning sickness is to take my focus from my mental sphere and bring me into my body. The lethargy is to curb my immediate ambitions, to force me to prioritise what I do. The insistent cold that lingers because it cannot be medicated safely is to remind me that the baby comes first. The weakened state of my body that hasn’t the reserves to build little organs and fight an infection is to force me to ask for help. The lost voice is to remind me to witness more and talk less; it is time to go within.

There are no mistakes. We may not know why all the levers are pulled when they are, but we can rest assured they create the perfect conditions to prepare us for what lies beyond.

Are you paying attention? What are you being asked to prepare for?

*image credit

Lemon Tea for the Soul

Weekend meditation: What in you yearns for nurturing?

I have found time and time again that listening is a good thing. The only smart thing to do.

• Listen to your body
• Listen to the whispering voice
• Listen to the yearning
• Listen to the craving
• Listen to the squeaky wheel
• Listen to the part that is asking for nurturing

Ignore your body and you will get sick. Ignore the whisper and you will be unfulfilled. Ignore the yearning and you will be miserable. Ignore the craving and you will be unsatisfied. Ignore the squeaky wheel and it may stop turning all together.

Ignore the part of you that needs nurturing and you will grind to a halt.

Listening is hard, harder than it needs to be. There is so much white noise in our lives, it takes effort to hear through the static. If we don’t listen carefully, intentionally, regularly the message gets louder. Louder; more painful, more urgent, more frantic. The dial is turned up. And up. And up. Until we act. Until the message us undeniable (and your options are few).

Listen to the whisper. Tend to the niggle. Soothe the ache. Oil the squeak.

*image credit

Special permission

I often get warned that a lot of the angst I experience is because I expect too much of people. There is a largely unspoken societal rule that says ‘Don’t expect a lot from others.’ I have seen blog posts dedicated to this exact topic. How much should we expect from friends? How much should you expect from wedding guests, or the guests from the couple? How much is it reasonable to expect grandparents to help with child care?

Everybody has a different agenda. Everybody has competing priorities. Everybody has a schedule that is packed to bursting. Most people want to help you, support you and meet your expectations (I am an optimist). But sometimes, often? it just isn’t possible. So we have learned to expect less. Certainly less that my grandmother could expect from her friends and neighbors when she was my age.

What really pisses me off is when people get upset when you do too much. They start talking about ‘your place’. They start listing off your other obligations. They get defensive. They get suspicious. They get upset.

It makes me wonder what happened to us as a society? What happened to paying it forward? Personal generosity? Helping a neighbour? We are all in for attending a concert for charity. Having money direct debited from our account each month to support the faceless needy. But cooking for the elderly, giving a struggling friend a much needed rest, actually showing up for each other when it counts, well, it seems we need some special permission for that.

I don’t know if it is compassion or pig-headedness, but I won’t be asking for special permission. I won’t be standing by when I could lend a hand, and I won’t be apologising for it either.

Whiplash!

How the hell did I get here? 6 weeks ago I had mental permission not to do any planning. I was relishing the release from engaging in the endless quest to ‘do something’. Instead I was doing what was right in front of me. Aaaah, the path of least resistance, how I love thee.

I spent 6 weeks following my heart. It turns out my heart is a bleeding heart. A bleeding heart that feels compelled to care for those around her regardless of the inconvenience. So in 6 weeks I have gone from resting, plan-free not working towards anything but a healthy pregnancy to having more balls in the air than I can count. Big balls.

The turn around has been so complete and quick I am suffering whiplash from the U-turn.

I am in the process of gestating a baby, figuring out how to best support a gifted toddler who is desperate to go to school, moving my grandmother from her home 2 hours away to a hostel in my area and comparing university degrees for me to start in the next few weeks. The silver lining is that I didn’t intellectually plan any of this.

Even for a control freak like me, the fact that each of these situations arose organically, without guilt or obligation, without pulling strings or orchestrating things is fantastic. To me it means I am still following my heart, doing what is in me to do. Doing what I, in the most real sense, must do. That is a definition of liberation. Loving because love is in me to give. Supporting because support and compassion is in me to give. That is a definition of Bhakti.

I have some friends, dear friends, who also believe it is a definition of burning the candle at both ends. A definition of insanity. My prayer, my meditation, is that if I follow the heart, unflinchingly, without reservation or fear, the universe will support me. I will have all I need to follow through with grace. Amen.

Mind-full

Mindful is an interesting word. We always have a mind-full. It is the nature of the mind to think, to jump from thought to thought.

The biggest gift, and the most fun, to be had in my meditation classes were always the debunking the myths session at the very beginning. Everybody was always so relieved to hear they didn’t have to stop their minds thinking to meditate. People used to laugh out loud when I said your mind will never stop thinking, it is a little playful monkey that jumps from thought to thought never letting go of one until it has a hold of the next. Such was the realisation that working against the mind was futile, indeed insane. Instead we would explore ways to work with the mind, to lure it, to train it, to observe it, to witness it, to harness it and to meet it half way.

I know the experience of preparing for meditation only to realise you are hungry, then realising you skipped lunch because work was crazy, then remembering ‘oh shit!’ I didn’t get to send that email before I left, oh and when I left did I turn my computer screen off? – I am always forgetting to do things like that, then I shouldn’t be too hard on myself all this negative self talk can’t be helpings things, things… things to do, crap am I out of milk? Maybe I should get milk on the way home,  maybe I’ll get up early and have breakfast at that little cafe next door to work, I really love that place, chai tea and raisin toast, my ipod and sunshine - almost like a little meditation. Meditation! Fuck! That is what I am supposed to be doing already…

We always have a mind-full. They key is being aware of what our mind is full of. And, as often as possible emptying the mind except for the thoughts we choose to focus on. The easiest thought to focus on, especially for beginners is;

I am breathing in. I am breathing out.

Whenever your mind wanders, like the cheeky monkey it is, simply return to the thought ‘I am breathing in. I am breathing out.’ Even minutes of this every day will make a difference. Don’t believe me. Please, don’t. I would prefer you try it over the weekend and see for yourself. xxx

Heart V Head

I got a massage this week. It was wonderful and it reminded me just how much I abuse my body and that I need massages on a much more regular basis. It also helped that I have a fantastic massage therapist. Kinda comes with the turf when you administer a Massage College like I did pre-motherhood. But what is extra special is that my therapist was also my kindergarten teacher. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. Once we got over the fact that she had wiped my bottom once upon a time, we became friends. And its nice to have someone remember you from your childhood.

She also has fantastic hands. And a way of relaxing you and keeping you talking about whatever is bugging you without making you feel like she is prying. She asked me the one question I have been skirting around for weeks. If my goal is to have my Nan choose to go into care, why am I working so damn hard to allow her to remain at home?

The question alone bought tears. And laying face down there was not much I could do to stem them flow. Or the realisations. I believe that given enough love and care she will accept gracefully her age. I find it hard to believe that she woman she once was is [entirely] gone, and I feel obliged to honour what her wishes would be. She cared for so many people in her time that I believe I am karma in action – giving back the love and consideration she gave out.

I also want her to be safe and cared for. So my challenge is tempering my heart with my head. And learning to cook smaller batches, the 48 meals I cooked for her this weekend has her freezer packed to bursting.

PS My therapist is Sandra you can find her here.

Weekend Meditation: Bahkti

Love for Love’s sake.

The thought makes me sigh deeply and shiver all over. In a good way. In the best way really.

• Giving because you have it in you to give.
• Caring because you can.
• Tending to the sick, the disadvantaged, your loved ones.
• Serving not from obligation but from joy and love.
• Doing everything you do with love.

If you care cooking dinner, imbue it with love.

If you are playing with your child, concentrate on your love for them in that moment. (Especially when its hard to find.)

If you are cleaning the kitchen, loose the begrudging thoughts and choose to serve those in your family happily.

Ensure your work is a devotion of some kind, to others, to your grand vision.

Whatever you do, do it with love. Not for reward, not for glory, just for love’s sake.

NB: Bhakti Yoga is a complex. And I do not mean any disservice in simplifying it and applying it to the life of a householder, but these days few of us are monks. I certainly am not. As spiritual as I consider myself, I still operate within the normal bounds of society. Though, sometimes escaping to an ashram for days of meditation, yoga and labour sounds like pure bliss. And we need not be monks to dedicate ourselves to love for love’s sake.

The person I let down the most is…

… me

I am pretty good at following through on what I say I’m going to do. If I stuff up, if I forget, if something gets in the way I apologise. I beat away the guilt resolving to do better. For the most part I can be described as ‘reliable’. Actually, I am pretty sure I have primary school report cards tucked away in the garage (yes, I am that sentimental) that say exactly that ‘contentious, reliable and a pleasure to teach’. Yep, I was a teacher’s pet. Until high school. Then I got thrown out of religion class, like, a LOT. But that is a story for another day.

I find it painful, physically and emotionally, to let someone down. Except for me. I seem to be pretty damn good at letting myself down and not feeling a thing. Well, I don’t know that is exactly true. I do feel the faintest hint of betrayal, eroding self-trust and shame BUT I have been systematically numbing myself to those feelings. Obviously, because on some level I think its peachy to keep letting myself down.

Well no more numbing. It isn’t peachy. It sucks.

I tried thinking of the little promises I had made to myself, you know the ones; you say it mentally to yourself and you get a quietly gently excited. Looking forward to doing something for me. Then life gets busy, we get busy, we get distracted, priorities shift, fires need putting out and we just let it go. I don’t acknowledge it most of the time, I don’t apologise, re-schedule, resolve to do better. I just pretend the promise didn’t matter or that it wasn’t a promise at all. I don’t even treat my enemies that way.

So from now on, as much as humanly possible (I am pregnant and have a shocking case of baby brain), I will honour myself & my relationship with myself by honouring my promises to me the way I would honour a promise to you.

PS having said that the new layout and schedule is coming…