Meeting the moment 2021 #51

This is the last blog post for 2021. In true Dickensian style, it is a year that has seen the best of times and the worst of times. I so appreciate the best of moments and the opportunity to meet the worst of with witnesses and a scaffold of care sometimes completely invisible to me, and often elusive, due to my own amnesia. For many another COVID Christmas seals the deal on naming 2021 as a tough year. Most of my immediate family I connected with via zoom, although I did get to see some of them, we applied socially distanced behaviour and I got another negative PCR result. With some members of the family in a vulnerable health zone, I am a regular to the testing station, as hospital visits and new borns are on the horizon.

The best of moments hold a set of characteristics of warmth, good humour, often at a table, nearly always in the company of women, and where my arrival to the scene is incidental and I am in receipt of the harvest of much that has gone before to enable to even be in the moment. The worst of’s have nearly always been punctuated by pain, retrospective memories or some kind of unpredictable natural phenomena that no one was expecting. They have often been solitary and hidden from the gaze of others and had to find their way out through the intense work of metaphorical massage or exorcising like thought management. Moments that have taken me to heights have been able to be mined for their wealth when I have been impoverished or felt bereft. I seem to have an insatiable appetite for the rich tapestry of goodness to draw on. This wealth, is an abundance of goodness to luxuriously bathe in, as I continue to learn how to receive.

I have been working on my practice, of the discipline of receiving, and testing out little exercises to develop my receiving muscle. This season of gift giving and being thankful for all we have received, provides an opening to develop the practice. Receive has an etymology from Latin, which means to take back, back to the original place. So I have been thinking when I receive something it is a reflection of what is seen, caught in the act of being visible, being called forth and grasped with recognition, being offered to me as a reflection in the mirror. This goes beyond everyday gratitude and is perhaps a pathway to a deeper understanding and experience of being witnessed.

I am deeply grateful to all those who have witnessed me this year. This humble act of solidarity, without judgement and with the generosity of a layer of protection, has helped me over and over again this year. To those who have been in this role for me this past year, my sincere thanks. I know there are many moments you would be able to testify to me sensing my way through, falling towards an insight, burying an anxiety, driving a change, being astonished, feeling enchanted.

In court there a few different types of witnesses, the expert witness, the eye witness, the character witness and the fact witness. I notice that all four types of witnesses have showed up for me this year, and I have also sought them out depending on what I need to be seen or heard. I so appreciate the eye witnesses who have been with me for many decades and where we have such a common language and frame I need only hint at a few words and be seen, heard and understood with no further explanation. I rely on the fact witnesses to keep me leaning in and being realistic, helping me discern the truth, reality and to detect the fake news. The character witnesses reassure me of what they know, have seen and recognise what I have done and remind me of what I am capable of. The expert witness is the one who can offer up a new piece of research, understanding or replace old data with new while not taking away what is there but making sure what is available is more current and solid.

As I leave 2021, knowing the pilgrim path of placing one foot in front of the other, I bow with deep appreciation, to those who have been witnesses to me. I am overwhelmed with the acts of kindness that enable me to practice how to receive.

Thank you to those of you have travelled with me and read this blog across the year. Next year will be the 10th year of writing a weekly blog and I am looking to receive your witness with the same kindness. I would love you to share my posts with others if you find content resonates with you. In 2022 my theme is going to be invisible and visible.

“Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible.”

— Rumi

Photo by Roman Melnychuk on Unsplash

Meeting the Moment 2021 #50

The in-between spaces are the places where we find what we are looking for, although they aren’t often the places we go to look. Just like the white space on a page, that makes the letters stand out, or the dark night sky that holds the shine and twinkle of the stars, that is where clarity lies. The moments where nothing happens, something is still happening and unfolding with and without our consent. Meeting moments of fear and uncertainty take from and definition once you build a container for them to live in. And in turn this allows them to be contained and not bleed or soak into their surroundings. Without the container to hold them, you can feel rudderless or are captured by those fears, leaving any mastery you may have had in the past, making you feel like an inadequate apprentice. Holding them, somehow, gives you permission to put them down, out of sight, or even on the mantle to be shown off as a trophy, triumphantly conquered. Mostly my experience is, without finding them a canister with a lid, you become subject to them. This week has been full of moments where getting fears and anxieties into place elusive, as in the adage of getting the genie back into the bottle. Sure enough they have been profound, consequential moments, not trivial or insignificant, and finding ways for them to be held has required discipline and a kind of stoicism that sends anxiety packing.

It is in these times over the course of my life I have tapped into the courage of people like Nelson Mandela or Malala or women I know who have left violent homes or fled from war torn countries with little or no possessions into a great unknown. Drawing on their inspiration feels a bit like appropriation, but it does help me with perspective and an appreciation of scale.

I am often privileged to listen into and be dropped into conversations when the fears or anxieties of others has taken hold and is getting in the way of moving forward. I was reflecting on some of the key themes from these kind of conversations this year and identifying some trends. Late this week, I wrote about narcissism on LInkedIn, which with around 7000 views, that must have hit a chord and I wasn’t expecting that! I really knew nothing of this phenomena and hadn’t given it a name until about four years ago. In typical Aussie vernacular I had called “big noting” or ” ego centric” or jokingly the “you’re so vain” phenomena with a nod to the Carly Simon song. In the workplace when I saw it, I dealt with it and moved on. I failed however to notice, and I must truly have been asleep, all the things I did to deal with this kind of behaviour on the home front.

In the work place my actions included removing staff when I had that capacity; avoiding people that were vexatious to the spirit: I cut off supply, not giving them an audience and occasionally I fell for the charm. Closer to home though I did things like complicated ‘work arounds’, excluding information, excusing behaviour, making plans and complex sets of arrangements to avoid fallout and just old fashioned avoidance. I was skilled in these behaviours and had a quiver full of self-talk to accommodate what I was in. I had a checklist of reasons to justify what I saw: a fragile ego, lack of confidence and embarrassment of the other person not being able to meet the grade. In a way that was my arrogance operating too perhaps. I certainly felt constrained, on egg shells and retreated into my own world. I now see I had designed a whole operating system to support me.

It is confronting to realise this in retrospect, and in my own reckoning, I see just how much coercive behaviour I was exposed too, which through my steadfast, irrepressible love galvanised in some kind of metaphoric warrior pose, I didn’t interpret the signs that were clearly there. So many signs … there is enough to fill a few therapeutic diaries … and I missed them all or perhaps more accurately applying the love lens I was using, dismissed them all.

I am still waking up and am I suspect it is improving by ability to listen and ask better questions for those sharing their stories with me to name what is happening to them with more accuracy. Creating that container to work with, as a result of this retrospective work, is generating transferable skills which is helping in all kinds of tricky times of my own and to those who share their stories with me.

There is a place inside all of us we can build for our love to stay in tact, our values to be held tightly and our principles strengthened. This place has been built through the tough times, times when we have had to meet moments beyond ourselves, where we found ourselves in in-between spaces and the dark defined the light, and the shadows and fog faded and clarity arrived.

It is at this time of year I begin thinking about what next year’s blog theme will be and the theme of visible and invisible is emerging. It is resonating already with me about what it means to be transparent, to hide and when both of these have their place in our lives. Meeting moments of fear and remembering I have made a place to hold my fears is perhaps a prelude to the emerging 2022 theme.

Photo by Olesya Yemets on Unsplash

Meeting the Moment 2021 #49

I was holding my breath for a couple of days this week, I didn’t know I was, until I breathed out when the news I was hoping for came. Something completely out of my control and nothing I could do. A feeling of dread took hold in the helplessness of it all.

It was a reminder to me of two truths: we are not in the driver’s seat and none of us know what others are really dealing with in their personal lives. Then there is the collision of these two truths, and in my case, it felt like a car skidding in the rain, hoping who ever was driving the car had the ability to get out of the skid. When you are drifting at speed off course and know any sudden brake will make the situation a lot worse, and you aren’t behind the wheel anyhow, going with the conditions is the best option. Being able to do this is highly dependent on your level of fitness for the weather conditions, including the ones that happen without any warning.

Years ago I was flying into the desert of Roxby Downs on a small plane and the skies were glorious. Even though I had been warned that the different temperatures of the air would cause a bumpy landing, the conditions I could see didn’t indicate that to me.  Sure enough though, it was a roller coaster to get to ground. It was all in a day’s work for the pilot, but I was less than impressed with the deceptiveness of the beauty of the sky and land. I was taken by surprise. I couldn’t see everything the pilot could see, the instruments, his experience and the relayed data from the ground enabled him to bring us down safely. It really was, all in a day’s work for him. That day I held my breath too and exhaled completely when I got off the plane.  

What is it that makes me hold my breath? Fear? Lack of trust? Not being in control? Being too attached? This week was a matter of life and death so I am not giving myself a hard time over that. Reflecting on my breathing though has definitely has got me thinking about what I hold onto and how, and when, and why, I breathe out.

When there has been trauma over many years, all that breath holding, rapid, shallow breathing and adrenalin flooding through the body, it is no wonder that learning to breathe is so vital to recovery and well-being. (I called on box breathing more than once in the 48 hours of stress this week, grateful for the practice to be so close at hand.)

When I was a child I had many an asthma attack and the simple act of breathing was central to my ability to get through. I had two near-death experiences before I was 8. My body knows intimately what it feels like to not be able to breathe.

Remember to breathe, put on your oxygen mask first before helping others, take a deep breath – these are all idioms people who know me will hear me say on a pretty regular basis – this week I was reminded how I got these messages and how I needed to apply them to myself once again. It was a very hard way to re-learn them.  Being able to rely on the simplest of acts of the body – to breathe in and out – is a gift and one to be cherished. I have watched many people leave this place, some struggling with their breath, some fighting and gasping, others surrendering.  Meeting the moment by remembering to breathe, is the best advice to manage the rain and the skidding car.

Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash

Meeting the moment 2021 #48

For all the women I know who are told they are “too much”, ‘too loud”, “too smart” too anything, I had a big insight this week for us all. Our excess in whatever it is that others find offensive, is not excess, it is abundance.  

I have memories of a number of occasions being told I was too much of one thing or another.  I had a son who in his youth said I wasn’t dressed well enough, too untidy, to pick him up from kindy, not like the other middle class mothers dolled up for the pick-up. I had a husband who would tell me I was dressed too seductively if I wore a low cut dress, and I was too intense, too smart for my own good and other such comments that were in the privacy behind closed doors. I had a work colleague as a young social worker who told me I was too insistent on justice and needed to loosen up a bit, a boss who said I was too committed to the work … I could do on.  Well now I want to turn all that around. Maybe I was casual and relaxed going to kindy, at ease with my sexuality, just and kind, passionate and confident to find solutions, maybe I lived from abundance and not scarcity?

It has taken me to be in my sixth decade to make a start to get this monkey off my back. I was accused, and there is no other word for it than that, by my husband for getting through in a day three times as much as anyone else and it was tiring him out just watching. I calmly suggested he look away, smoothed the pillow and stopped talking to him about at least two thirds of what I was doing out of his sight. It seemed like an act of compassion.  Friends defined me as a polymath instead of having too much energy, and foes demanded I not go on too fast ahead of them instead of respecting me as a worthy opponent.  I fell under a naming and shaming spell. No prince to kiss and wake me up, no fairy godmother to wave a wand, no lamp to be rubbed, no exotic creature must have its head removed, not all down to me to break this spell and cast myself into a future world where abundance of energy, insight, imagination, justice, and love are adornments to my Self.

I want a world where we can all go beyond our potential, bursting at the seams owning our power. There are all kinds of power – spiritual power, intellectual power, sexual power, creative power, cultural power. There is power you bestow on others and power you give away. There is power you do not even know you have sometimes, like the power of the collective when you get into the ballot box or stand in a rock concert crowd. There is the power you hold inside of you where your voice is totally your own and no one can even hear it except you. This kind of power is often frothing in the throat, trying to get out and getting choked on by anxiety, fear, gaslighting or cowardice.  What threshold of power would you cross if you actually opened your mouth, opened your arms or even your eyes a little wider?  Would you get to the next level? What transformation is beckoning that untamed part of you out into the wild?  These are the questions that have been exercising me this week since I met and celebrated with Amal Alhuwayshil (thank you SheEO for having our orbits cross).

I have an abundant world view, as my default, so how come I was not applying that to myself? I have not always been rewarded or had mutuality alongside of that generosity. Over the years, I have learnt to give and receive and do not see these elements as necessarily mutual or transactional – they can be completely separate acts – more like karma than a ledger. This is an explainer of meeting the moment with Amal this week, and her invitation to go deep into what my Act 3 might look like through an abundancy lens. And what I saw was cornucopia of respect, opportunities to be bolder, wiser, more visible, to mind myself more, to step onto a throne in an orange shirt on a stage with loving fans yelling for more. Modesty transformed into generous and abundance gestures of benevolence, and humility transformed into pride in my achievements. Instead of cheering everyone else on, making enough space to cheer on myself too.  So watch out world, there are more moments to meet and like sap rising in spring, after being damaged in a winter storm, I feel my energy returning.

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Rumi

Photo by Elise Wilcox on Unsplash