Farewell 2014

At the end of my 2013 rope, I begged for joy in 2014. I got a lot of it. But as much as I wanted 2014 to be the year of joy... it morphed into something else entirely.

And, I have tried to write a neat and tidy synopsis of what I learned this year, what I want to take away, what I want to carry forward into next year.

But 2014 was messy. Really messy. Not in a bad way, just—messy. I had ups and downs, ups during the downs, downs during the ups—bursts of joy amongst the tears. Burst of tears smack in the middle of joy.

The reality of loss set in. The reality of dreams I no longer get to have also set in. And once it set in—I couldn’t deny it any longer. I couldn’t just change the subject and make it easier or better or more positive.

As much as I wanted 2014 to be about joy… what it ended up being about was acceptance. 

Accepting where I am, who I am, what has happened, what is happening, and what each moment brings. Living in the present has its merits, and acceptance is a big one.

2014 taught me the value of fully living in the present moment. What sucks about living in the present is that it’s hard to go back and ruminate over the year, because I didn’t record a lot of it, except on Facebook or Instagram.

I spent most of the year living day to day instead of trying to capture my thoughts about living day to day.

That’s unusual for me—but it isn’t bad, good, or indifferent. It simply is.

Right now it is like this: I am glad the year is over.

Somehow I feel unjustified in saying that, because it wasn’t a bad year. But it’s my truth, so there you go.

I learned the value of rest this year. I learned the value of letting go. I learned the value of rooting. I learned the value of sitting quietly and doing nothing. I learned the value of sweating buckets in hot yoga.

All that to say—I learned the value of self-care on a level I never knew I could care for me. The reasons I practice self-care have shifted ever-so-slightly, but what’s more impressive is that the depth to which I practice self-care has grown deeper than I ever thought possible.

I have learned to ask my body/mind/spirit/soul what it needs, what it longs for—and whatever the answer, I heed it.

Most of the time, that means slowing down and doing less.

The exhaustion I still feel confounds me. I thought I wouldn’t feel this tired anymore. I thought I would have more of my energy back. I thought…

It doesn’t matter what I thought, because everything I have learned about grief is that it’s different than what you think it is or what you think it’s supposed to be.

And that’s okay.

The end of this year has been quiet—very quiet. And for that, I am thankful. Quiet equates to slow and deliberate—two key pieces to my puzzle of transformation.

I can see and feel myself transforming.

And I know with a certain degree of solidarity that this transformation is my best yet. I am on the cusp of something big, special, and mind-blowingly awesome.

Yes. Amazing things are coming! I wear that belief like a new tattoo. And I smile as the wise words of Carol Lee, who I met this year, ring true in my heart right now.

I asked her, “How do I practice trust?”
She said, “You don’t. You just ‘be.’ Be the observer, and the trust will come.”

Indeed…

Right Now It Is Like This

I first heard that phrase just over a year ago, and it started a whole new phase of evolution in my life.

I heard it from Lucia Horan as she taught a 5rhythms workshop in Dallas. She mentioned who coined the phrase, but I don’t remember.

When I first heard this phrase, it resonated in a way that “It is what it is” can’t and never could. That’s because “It is what it is” has no movement. It implies inertia. Dead weight. Something to complain about.

But “Right now it is like this” has movement. It is grounding. It acknowledges that this moment right here—the present—is all that exists. Perhaps it’s not exactly what I want. Perhaps I feel emotions I don’t like or don’t want to accept.

But those feelings, those emotions, are temporary. They will pass. This phrase helps me accept it—because when I say “Right now,” that means I could (and probably will) feel differently in just a few minutes. That means I can change my perception, change my attitude, and, just like that—shift. Move. Gain forward momentum.

And, the second part, “It is like this,” reminds me to name my feelings. Name the situation. Describe it and what it feels like, so that the next time it comes around, I’ll recognize it faster—which also means I’ll recognize that I can move through it, too.

And in variably, I do—and quickly.

In other words, “Right now it is like this” is empowering.

The tattoo isn't blurry... that's from my camera phone not knowing exactly where to focus. :)

And now I have to share the story about actually getting this phrase tattooed on my arm.

I knew who I wanted to do the lettering. I’d stalked his Instagram for a while, and although I love his lettering, it’s not really “my style” as far as something I would want permanently on my body. But I still felt he was the right guy to do it—so, I went with it.

I was frustrated that day because I was in the middle of the push-pull of trying to open my heart to the man I was dating, yet I kept pulling back (now I know why... *ahem)… I felt out of control, and I was struggling to trust myself (and him). And, he called me out on it—and there I was, in Denton, at the tattoo shop… my heart pounding because I wasn’t sure what would happen with the guy, but I also wanted to make sure this tattoo turned out just right, too.

(Even now as I read over that last paragraph, I’m smiling at my own control issues. I am a “recovering” control freak. Sometimes I fall off the wagon, though…)

I met with Joe (Zombie Joe, aka Joe Chavez) and told him what I wanted—in excruciating detail. He came back up front with a drawing, and I didn’t like it. I made some suggestions of what to change, and he went back to draw it again.

When he came back out, it looked somewhat better, but I still didn’t like it.

He went back to the drawing board a third time and emerged to the front of the shop with a few more drawings.

I still wasn’t happy with the drawing, and I became increasingly frustrated.

I could tell Joe was frustrated, too.

At that point, he had a little “come to Jesus” talk with me. He told me that he was an artist who had won awards all over the world for his lettering. “This is what I do,” he said.

He asked me to just… let him do his thing.

I immediately understood where he was coming from. I agreed. He popped up off the couch—clearly re-energized—and disappeared into the back.

He came back up front a few minutes later with a sly grin on his face.

When he showed me the drawing, I immediately loved it and felt overcome. Tears came to my eyes as I nodded yes and said, “I love it.”

“Really?” He said.

“Yes!”

Later, I thanked him for talking sense into me and I pointed out the irony of the whole thing—with how much I struggled with trying to control the tattoo, when “Right now it is like this” actually helps me differentiate between my emotions and feelings (which I cannot control) vs. how I respond to them and what I do with them (which is within my control).

(And yeah, we had a good laugh about that.)

When I look at this gorgeous, one-of-a-kind scripting on my arm, I can’t help but smile.

Right now, it is like this.

Loving Me, Even When It's Hard

With every bit of progress comes the slightest ease into comfort. At that moment, I know I'm about to be stretched again...

I felt angry all day yesterday, and it was actually in a writing session with a client late in the afternoon when I realized why I was angry.

I’ve spent all this time trying to figure out how to let love in… what love really means to me… and what I realized is that fear still has a tight hold on me when it comes to love.

And now I understand why…

When I was a little girl, there was a lot of turmoil in my house—some of it caused by my sister and a lot of the behavior she engaged in. My sister, being 8 years older than I am, made a lot of mistakes as a teenager. To compensate for that, I tried to be perfect.

That set a precedent, because then it seemed like my family started to expect me to be perfect.

If I wasn’t perfect, my perception was that I wasn’t loved. But if I did everything just right, if I was perfect—then I would be rewarded with love.

That’s a classic codependent mindset, and I’ve worked hard to shake that. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it, until it hit me that I still do this to myself.

If I am not perfect, if I do not act perfectly, if I don’t do everything I want to do (and everything I “should” do) perfectly, then I don’t get love. I don’t get to love myself… I don’t honor and nurture myself, I don’t get to have the good that comes from allowing love into my heart.

In other words—I don’t actually know how to love myself when it’s hard, like when I screw up, or when I am not perfect.

How often are you not perfect? All the time? Every day? Every moment?

Yeah.

So it goes deeper than that, even… because when I’m spilled open—like I am right now, tears streaming down my face as I write—I realize that I actually do love myself. In the moments when I am vulnerable, honest, and real, how can I not love myself? I know in those moments that I am beautiful, worthy, and accepted.

It’s only when I’m trying to force my own hand, trying to be perfect, trying to do it my way (in Pathways terms, “running my numbers”), that I realize I withhold love from myself, until I do it perfectly, and if I can’t do it perfectly, then I somehow manage to love myself a little less..

In the past couple of years, I feel that God has been teaching me how to accept love—from others. First, I had to accept His love. Then I had to learn how to accept it from family… and then friends…  from myself… and finally—a romantic partner.

The big missing piece is how to love myself when it’s hard. When whatever I’m doing doesn’t make a damn bit of sense, when I’m not happy with my behavior, or when I’m not doing something I know I should be doing—in other words, when I’m absolutely imperfect. I'm so quick to beat myself up, which of course plummets me further down the hole. 

That is my challenge, and tonight, it’s a big one.

But, as they say… awareness is the first step. And I got a big ol’ dose of awareness today, that’s for sure.

Words I heard about a year ago spring to mind right now:

“God made me. God doesn’t make mistakes. I am perfectly imperfect.”

Yes, indeed…

I want to teach myself how to love me, even when it's hard. I want to notice the progress I've made, how much sooner I become aware, and then, for crying out loud... move forward. 

Life is just too damn short to beat myself up all the time...

"I'll never finish, so why begin?
...I must be crazy to beat me
I'm letting it go"
  - from "Speak" by Gary Go

I don't know what it looks like or feels like to give myself grace. But now, I want to find out.

Paradigm Shift

Perspective comes in its own time. You can’t rush it, or it won’t be real.

After all of the soul stretching over the last week, a few things occurred to me. I realized that while I’ve been thrown a couple of big things to work on at once, I also have a much faster “recovery time” than I used to. Recovery time meaning, the time after I have the epiphany, to the time when I’m applying tools (new, borrowed, or old) to address the issue.

My “recovery time” used to be months… then weeks, and now—days. Sometimes I can even turn it around within a day.

After realizing that I didn’t know how to receive love, I thought about some tools I gained through a pretty amazing self-improvement course I took last fall. I knew exactly which one would work best, too. I recognized that if I started practicing what I should do (in other words—taking action), I would create a new habit of responding better. And then, I would actually feel better.

Here’s an example…

When someone gives me a compliment, my first instinct is to shrug it off. Sometimes I pretend not to hear it, or I just nod and say thanks—but in my mind, I have already dismissed the compliment with an assumption that the giver didn’t mean it, or he or she has an ulterior motive.

When I started dropping weight, I learned pretty quickly that I needed to get used to receiving compliments. Something was still missing, though. I figured that because I was in transition, and I had lost so much weight, it instantly gave people something nice to say as a way to open a conversation.

I still couldn’t receive kind words at face value.

So, I’m practicing. This goes right back to the value of living in the moment.

I am practicing acknowledging when I have received the gift of a compliment or kind sentiment… and I am practicing really hearing what that person is saying, so that I can actually receive it and accept it as real.

One step at a time—but what’s interesting is that since I have chosen to shift my attitude, I have been inundated with compliments over the last few days.

I have to wonder… how many compliments have I been given, that I never actually received? It’s possible I’ve been inundated with compliments over the last 36 years, but I’ve only truly heard the last handful.

One thing is certain.

In truly hearing those kind words spoken to me, I understand that I am worthy of those words.

And that... is a pretty damn big step.

On Connection and Friendship

Subtitle: An Awkward Post About Being Awkward


I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and to be perfectly honest—I have struggled to stay positive.

I’ve been looking at the mirrors pointing within, and at the moment I find it hard to completely like what I see.

Normally, I’m a happy-go-lucky, laid-back, easily pleased and easily amused woman. I’m caring, and I have a genuine interest in people.

But I long for deep, intimate connection.

I have a deep connection with my husband. I thought about this yesterday, actually—he knows me so well, so thoroughly, that we can literally exchange one look and have a whole conversation. We can talk about hard things and push through difficult issues and come out on the other side of it feeling closer and happier.

My closest friend is another I am strongly connected to. She often articulates what I feel before I can, and we can honestly share anything with each other.


Another close friend is someone I haven't seen in almost two years, but in spite of that, we maintain a close, loving friendship. 


(In fact, I have lots of good out-of-state friends. When we get together, it's as if we were never apart. But it's difficult to maintain that level of intimacy when you see each other once every year or three.)

Those are the only people on the planet who truly get me… the whole me, not just the online side, the Pathways side, the professional side, the everyday side... 

And while I feel truly lucky to have the friends I have, I'd really like to expand that circle of face-to-face friends. I’m searching for deep, ongoing connection with one or two (female) friends. I’ve had it before, with several people, and when we share a moment—it’s truly amazing. The caveat is, I’m a face-to-face type of woman. Connecting face-to-face is exponentially more powerful and meaningful to me than connecting over the phone, through email, or through any other route.

And I’m pretty good at it, too. It’s easy to do whatever’s right in front of my face.

The problem is layered. First...

Follow through.

I get busy. I forget. I think about calling at 11pm, when it’s just not nice to call. And then more time passes, and I feel like an idiot for responding to something or someone a month after the fact.

And I feel horrible about it.

And, while we’re at it—let’s add a few other layers to the puzzle. Because quite frankly, if follow through was the worst of my problems, I think this friend thing would be a lot easier.

I’m awkward when I’m first getting to know someone. Perhaps we’ve had a connection, or perhaps we’ve shared a moment and I think there’s a potential there for us to be good friends.

I am also not a small-talker. I have a hard time having short or less-than-deep conversations with people—especially when we’ve shared an intimate connection at some point.

(That’s not to say I’m all serious. I’m not. In fact, if you see my silly and funny side, that means I trust you.)

When I’ve shared intimacy and depth with someone, I don’t know what to talk about that isn’t intimate and deep. So, I feel awkward, and I act awkward.

And I have a pretty strong feeling that that’s off-putting. It makes the other person feel awkward, and then if we don’t talk about how awkward it is, it’s difficult to push through.

I also tend to act awkward because I struggle with trust—trusting that this person I’m trying to get to know better won’t leave me in the dust. It’s happened before, many times… the worst being my “best friend” from junior high all the way through college up and telling me one day that she never wanted to speak to me again. There were many issues in our relationship, and we had been growing apart over time, but still—it hurt.

Badly.

Deeply.

And for many years after it happened, I wasn’t able to trust any new friend. When she told me off that day, it felt like a divorce. We were fiercely close friends for over 10 years, and the sense of loss was overwhelming.

I don’t ever want to go through it again.

And, let’s add another layer, shall we?

If I have an interaction that doesn’t feel quite right, or if something happens where I end up feeling rejected, I create a lot of judgments about it. Maybe I don’t have to explain this, now that you know about the friend who dumped me, but I tread so carefully—walking on eggshells—because I don’t want to screw up. I don’t want to drive the other person away. I don’t want to demand too much. I don’t want to lose the potential gift of an intimate friendship.

Let me give you a situational example to illustrate...

I call or email Potential Friend A (PFA), leaving some sort of indication that I’d like to get together with her.

I know there’s been some interest in becoming closer friends in the past, so I’m confused when PFA doesn’t return the call or email (or both).

Out of defensiveness, and out of the semi-automatic leap my brain makes to she’s rejected you!, I start to form some pretty harsh judgments, like:

• She doesn’t want to be my friend.
• She doesn’t care.
• She doesn’t like me after all.

And then I turn the judgments on myself:

• I’m not good enough to be her friend.
• I don’t matter to her.
• I’ve been rejected again.

Ridiculous, right? Instead of just following up, and asking a simple question, and keeping the situation simple… I make it infinitely more complicated, so that by the time I actually talk to PFA again, I’m coming from such a place of insecurity that I’m even more awkward than before.

The real irony of all my behavior and the underlying feelings and fears driving my behavior is that they are denying me of the things I really want. And boy, does that suck to realize…

Of course now that I know it, I can work to change it. 


That's the beauty of life, and of working through something hard. 


It's a choice. 

Respect, Acceptance, and Rejection

A few things have happened recently to make me realize that sometimes, I’m a disrespectful ass.

I’ve spent so much time in my life trying to shape my behavior based on what I think other people think about me (see ‘rejection’ tag on this blog), because I wanted so badly to be accepted.

So, when I started to break free from that, and from those hefty chains, I noticed a bit of a swing in the opposite direction: not worrying one bit about how my actions or words affected others, or might come across.

As you might expect, there’s a little bit of backlash to that, especially since I’m still relatively new at this ‘expressing myself’ thing. I’m bound to make mistakes.

I think this issue is two-fold. I’ll attempt to explain…

Issue 1:

Let’s take one of the bad habits I’m trying to break, like being late all the time.

I’ve struggled a lot with being late. All of my friends know that they can expect me to be anywhere from 5-15 minutes late to an in-person meeting.

For some reason, it’s a huge issue for me to be on time, let alone early. I always think I can squeeze in just one more thing before I need to leave. Or, I oversleep or take too long of a shower, and as a result, I’m running late from the get-go. The worst is when I get distracted (oo! shiny!) and lose track of time. I am ADD, after all, and this is one area where I haven't coped well with ADD at all.

I’ve been written up in previous jobs for being late. I’ve been “talked to” about it by other employers.

(I’m fortunate now that my current position doesn’t rely heavily on being in to the office at a specific time. I appreciate that flexibility.)

This is a pretty significant nemesis for me, especially since one of the most important things in my life is volunteering for an organization where the sessions I help with are tightly time-bound. In this realm, I’m actually pretty good about being on time. I slip up now and then, but in the overall scheme of things, I do better about being on time for these sessions than I am for anything else in my life.

And being on time takes a lot of preparation on my part. I pick out my outfit the night before. I get my breakfast ready, waiting right by my purse so it's easy to grab. I get my vitamins packed in my purse. My car keys are actually hooked onto my purse, so I always know where they are. The shoes I’m going to wear are right by the door. Everything is all set so that all I have to do is get up, get ready, and go. In other words, I don’t have to think.

That’s how significant it is. It’s engrained. It’s a problem I’ve struggled with my entire LIFE. So, breaking this cycle isn’t going to be easy.

So, it really stings when it’s brought to my attention that being late is still a big problem. I’m so eager to pat myself on the back for being on time “most” of the time, that I let myself off the hook for the times I’m “only” a few minutes late.

From someone else's perspective, I'm certain that being late reflects poorly on my character. It's disrespectful. It says to the other person or group, "You don't matter as much as I do." 

So, the first issue, in a nutshell: I’ve got a bad habit of some sort that I hate working on, and maybe I’m not even sure how to tackle it. I’m far from an organized person, and the universe has already revealed to me that organization is my priority this year. So, I have a lot of judgments wrapped up around how to work on this habit, how hard it is to break this habit and form a new one in its place, etc.

Basically, I criticize myself so much for having this bad habit that anytime someone else brings it up, it feels like I’m looking at an ugly monster.

Issue 2:

I immediately form judgments about the person who’s on the receiving end of whatever my bad habit is.

The hard truth?

It releases me from accountability, and it helps me justify my feelings. I make myself pay for it in the quiet recesses of my mind and heart, but man it looks ugly when other people see it.

So, for example, when I sent an email to a random person (see previous entry) and got no response… how many judgments were wrapped up in what I posted there? Instead of accepting the situation at face value and assuming it had nothing to do with me, I assumed it had everything to do with me, and I reacted accordingly.

How immature is that?

(Um, that’s a rhetorical question.)

Also, how arrogant is that, to assume that I am the one causing someone else’s universe to be out of whack?

So, these are significant problems. The nice thing is that they’re not as huge as the problems I used to have. Not nearly. But it’s something I’m working on.

I ask for patience and compassion from my friends. 

It’s really weird how rejection/acceptance issues manifest in other ways in my life…