Why was I protective and bristling about a mention of one of my blog photos?
Why did I want to put a wall up? The large NO shouting in my head.
Upon close inspection of my feelings I can see all the things there. Shame, love, protection.
What is my own shame around this issue? Did I feel, as many women before me have felt, that my grace or sex appeal was the only way in the door? I was made of ingredients not all of my choosing. I didn’t pick the environment, and in truth, had wished to be loved for other things.
But there she is still.
This is the protection of a mother bear. I am the mother bear. We have to love all of our cubs, the brave one and the scrawny one. The obnoxious one and the meek.
And we have to protect and love them, not only in their glorious moments, but when they falter as well.
I have girl cubs, sweet and feisty. I have boy cubs, strong and needy. All of these are mine. All of them need love and acceptance.
Knowing all of your cubs is nearly a half life’s work.
Loving them? A lifetime.
You plant the seed, and cordon off the area. Then you wait. It’s a difficult thing, to wait. I don’t like it particularly.
Especially when I don’t know what’s going to sprout, or even if that was really a seed I planted, or just a little nub of false thinking in the shape of a seed.
Waiting rooms. Ugh.
But you do what you have to do to grow yourself. This takes waiting and patience. I want to leap into every empty space and fill it with activities and emotions and general whirligiging.
But I also know, instinctually, that this will trample the new growth. And I really want to grow.
So I’m taking a lot of space. Attempting to meditate and color big swaths of time with nothing.
Can you take a few minutes each day to make space for the person you want to grow into?
An Inspiring Blog, A Macro Lens, and A Sunday Afternoon
I came across this video. (Scroll down to last vid) It made me want to buy vegetables. It made me want to do a lot of things. Like slow down and look closely. Find the beautiful in the everyday, the love in the details and in the time spent. Simply that.
I received a macro lens for my iphone. I spent Sunday afternoon ‘striding ahead’ with vegetables and letting everything fall away except the task and the love that is in my heart.
Here, A Golden Beet. An Egg. And Vegetable Scraps.
I think I packed 2011 with enough action to last a decade or two. Jumping into not one, but several life transitions. To run around screaming, tearing off my clothes, moving, getting divorced, blowing up identities, is hard. !! But there was a purpose. There was the push from the inside. I’m ready for peace. For coming together. I’m ready to know nothing.
(Loving the rabble rousing life, I’m sure I’ll continue to kick up some dust from time to time. But maybe it will be entertaining. Or sweet.)
My resolution is to become smaller. The more I travel inside, the more the world opens up to me. The slower and more precise the action, the deeper the resonance.
I want to greet my challenges with fearlessness. With acceptance.
My financial crunchiness may lead me to more thoughtfulness. Certainly to more home cooking.
My injuries will help me to continue the more important journey inwards.
My lover’s feelings will nurture my compassion and generosity.
Thank you to everyone who spent a moment here reading, or watching. (Thanks even to you, stranger, who left the comment you are a spoiled bitch on my video. After the initial shock, I said to myself, yeah. I really am sometimes. That’s ok too. And it’s something to think about.)
Let’s welcome 2012 with a soft curiosity. Happy New Year to you all.
In all the obvious outward ways, sure. But the rumblings comes from inside. The ideas and directions that need changing, the shifting that needs to happen in order to stand up as myself is not accomplished in a move, or a new ‘look’ or a different career.
Alternate the outward changes with Inward focus. Spend time listening deeply to the truth that is nestled next to the birth, and the death.
Changing yourself on a consistent basis, shaking up your routine and your ideas might help you to see, to feel, that something holds steady. The little buried truthful you.
Do you let the world dictate your moves?
Or do you Follow a voice from within?
What can you do to become comfortable with altering your views? Yourself? What is the most authentic outward reflection of the truth that you are today? And can this enable you to be more generous with the world?
I am not building a great structure that is called ME. But only letting every little false identity fall away to reveal the simple truth that I came with.
I love all beginnings, despite their anxiousness and their uncertainty, which belong to every commencement. If I have earned a pleasure or a reward, or if I wish that something had not happened: if I doubt the worth of an experience and remain in my past- then I choose to begin at this very second.
Begin what? I begin. I have already thus begun a thousand lives.
Rilke
I love beginnings too. On this first day of the last month of 2012 I am reflective, grateful and filled with hope. It’s been a gigantic year of growth for me. I’m grateful for the new day in which to grow, create, give love and let love wash over me. Each day feels fresh to begin again.
Let’s sniff evergreen and watch skaters. Drink something hot and write notes to people we love.
Happy joyous December to you.
Early morning, East River Ferry, looking south from Williamsburg to the Manhattan Bridge.
What if your greatest contribution to the world (written in the stars) was something small? You colored the frosting that covered the cakes for the people in your town.
You do it with love. You are very good.
Are the small details of the day less important than the distance with which your product travels, the number of hits your website gets, the more someone calls your name? How do you measure your existence?
Is quiet and diminutive less important? Or can you perfect your role in the corps de ballet, knowing that you are part of something grand that sweeps across the stage?
I’d like to slow my life down, to let go of ideas of grandeur and success and find, peacefully, the place I’m most needed. In this place I won’t feel burdened, but only in step with my inner workings. Peaceful. With sparkle.
This, I think, is what you take with you. The way that you spent your time. Not looking to be anointed, acknowledged, popularized, but only feeling your right place.
My frosting is light pink. My cakes are small. My love, part of the universal.
