It helped me remember

 “Everything that’s happened in the strip
has happened to me,” he once said.
“That’s why I have all this white hair.”
             Bil Keane, Family Circus

Let’s see what today’s writing prompt is . Write about a memory….

O, I have the perfect one!  I’ve told people about it several times. Now’s my chance. Surely someone has it on the net……No? Then there is my chest of memories downstairs. After all the years I had it taped to my kitchen cabinet, surely, I would have kept it?…..No? A photo album then …. Where could I have kept it?

It was one of those Bil Keane Family Circle cartoons. That strip really seemed to capture moments as a parent. Billy and his sister and brothers got into so much mischief and said the cutest things. But that strip, that one captured it all.

Hmm… where else can I look. I hope it wasn’t in one of those boxes that got tossed. Could it be in the basement of the old house. Surely I didn’t lose it?

There were two panels. The first was a coloured picture of the mom and dad — pulling at their hair, I think. Around the image were small images of the kids and some of their many antics. “When will they ever grow up!” I think the parents were saying.

I remember turning to the picture for empathy remembering the fire in the bathroom garbage can lit by Not Me’s cousin I Didn’t Do It. Or the times they were settled on each end of the couch until they could talk instead of fighting….. Yes, I understood that image.

But the strip didn’t end there. There was the other panel. The mom and dad are sitting in a quiet house. He is reading a newspaper and she is knitting. On the neat as a pin end table between them is a new history. The kids are grown, graduated, married. Around the mom and dad are line drawings of the images so full of colour in the first of the panels. They did grow up.

I remember touching that image and sending up a prayer to remember that no matter what happened these moments when they were young were fleeting. Yes, there would be trouble but there would also be joy — the last first day of school coffee with the girls, and then with the youngest as one by one they entered school, a child’s delight in the new flowers of spring, songs and stories, hearing myself in the embarrassing mimic of their play acting at being grown up.

Now they are grown and their images fill frames on my walls. It is my grandchildren on their visits that fill my space with songs and stories.

In my mind I reach out and touch that worn frayed comic strip one more time where it hangs so I can see it in the business of being home with three small children.

Wait!  I do still have it after all these years.  I didn’t lose it after all. The worn comic strip is right here in my memory.

 

Have fun searching out other old comic strips. And if you find the one I am looking for, let me know.

Here are a few more I like. Keeping them here, so I won’t lose them.

http://familycircus.com/

 

 

Lord, Help me Remember

“No one was there for me. She should just get her act together.”

I had called to ask for a loaf of bread for a woman with an infant son in trauma. The mother of the mother had called me because her daughter had feared the reprisal if she asked for help. As we talked I remembered. Two years ago, that had been me. It had been my child who was crying incessantly because of her own inner trauma. It was me struggling to go on that one more day when sleep was a thing of mystery and I couldn’t even lay my baby on the floor because something was wrong that caused me to fear leaving her alone.

I talked to the grandmother for a while brainstorming ways we could help and then began calling the women in the church. I started with the woman who baked and often shared her bread. Her response shocked me. I hadn’t known her when her children were small and her response of defensive blaming showed me the struggle she must have dealt with then. So I let her have her decision and simply told her mine.

I think because my mother is so good at forgetting, I made a choice somewhere in my life to remember. I also made a choice about what I wanted to do with that remembering.

“When my child was sick no one was there for me even when we were running back and forth for doctor’s appointments and staying in the hospital. No one helped me through the days when she cried and screamed. But I made a choice then. I chose to remember so that maybe someday that memory would help me be there for someone else who felt alone and overwhelmed. No one can go back and change what happened for me then. But I can choose to let it be something I hold in resentment or something to give me the empathy I need to help others. I am choosing empathy. I don’t want anyone else to have to feel as alone as I felt then.”

She made the woman a loaf of bread. Others in the church contributed meals to take one more stress off the young mother and babysat the eldest as she went to the appointments where she found out her infant had a constriction in the bowels that required medical intervention.

We need to remember. When a celebrity dies, there is a reason it gets attention. Our western society is not very welcoming to signs of grief. Unless we are lucky enough to be born in a culture that understands the healthiness of emotions, we are taught to limit our expressions and time frames for grief through subtle and sometimes not so subtle judgments. We are given lists of what is acceptable and not acceptable to express grief about in an open forum. We are “shamed” for grief by comparisons to other areas seen by many as more worthy of our attention.

So we turn to films and books to allow a release of what we hold so deeply inside. Robin gave us many of those memorable roles that helped us feel the balance of pathos and mirth. Now he is gone. The laughter he was able to bring to so many was not enough for him at the end. He knew the power of laughter. He brought it to Christopher Reeves in his hospital bed when life support systems and paralysis replaced his image as Superman. The humour and hope he brought us didn’t disappear because he died. It is a legacy he left behind.

But for those who like me have known depression to the point of entertaining and even acting on thoughts of suicide, and for those who are one the other side of suicide like I am with several key individuals in my life, there is another level of grief that is expressed at this time. We stand with his family as they struggle to hold the balance of his light as they grieve his loss. We grieve the constriction of hope that characterizes the darkest regions of the illness. But there is also another level to the public outpouring of thoughts.

For these moments, we are able to defy the social mores against talking about suicide. We are reawakened to our own aloneness at the times when darkness surrounded us. We are reminded of others we may have pushed away when they needed us. We remember those in our lives who we didn’t know how to help. We remember and our remembrance calls us to respond.

I am a person who began an attempt at suicide but survived. I have now lived almost as many years on this side of the attempt as the years that led to that place of dark hopelessness. I survived. More, I have grown so that I can now make the active choice for life that I could not make then.

In those moments of despair I was not actively thinking of ending my pain. For me, depression skewed the brain into the rationalization that I would be benefitting others by ending my own life. I even went so far as thinking that I would force God’s hand into rejecting me since I had come to believe my existence hurt his kingdom plans.

I can’t even credit myself with making an active choice to not take that action. Even when I heard the words of the song that ultimately reminded me that I wasn’t alone and that God’s love held me, I defiantly took that one more pill even though I was already at a level far beyond what was prescribed. I cleaned up any clues so no one would know to help me if things had turned out differently. And I went to bed saying to God, “Okay, God, it’s up to you. Either I wake up or I don’t”.

I woke up.

Since that time a part of my healing has been finding the forgiveness and compassion to accept the part of me that could make such a choice. That the me of that time thought in terms of finding a way to die that “would not hurt others”, that she believed it was the only way her kids could have the chance of getting a “good mom” didn’t lessen my judgment of myself.  In retrospect, a lessening of the irrationality of the thoughts in that time caused me to want to push that part of me away just as many judgments spouted at present seek to distance from compassion at this time of mourning.

As with the response to the young mother at the beginning of this post, remembering gives me a choice. I do remember the loneliness and judgments. I do remember the experiences in life that brought me to that point.

But in remembering, I have learned compassion. I have learned that not telling my story just perpetuates the loneliness that increases the risk of despair winning the day. I have learned that we all respond to grief in our own way but often don’t even realize how we bend to the cultural mores instead of listening to our own hearts. I have learned that we can’t decide for another how they will respond to our own choices. We can only act with the greatest empathy if we are willing to acknowledge our own pain.

In her post for Sojourners, Carmille Akande says,

 “Relationships are hard. Discipleship is messy. Love takes sacrifice. But I believe it is what Jesus has called for us to do! Jesus had compassion for others. He cared for those who were hurting. He spent time with people. One of my favorite healing stories in the Bible is in Mark 1:40-45. A leper, an outcast of society, came to Jesus for healing. I know because of his condition, no one had time for him. No one offered him a place of belonging. A place where he could feel loved and accepted. No one offered him a sacred place. But, when Jesus saw him, the Bible tells us that he was moved with compassion. Jesus reached out and touched him! He was willing to heal him.

The people we see every day may not have leprosy, but they may have some type of pain. They may be going through a difficult time and need someone to have compassion on them. A place to receive love. A place where someone will listen. A place where they don’t receive scriptural formulas, but a heart poured out for them. Can you be that person? Can you provide a place? Will you be that place?

We are all broken in some way. We all need encouragement from others. Let us all strive to be a sacred, healing presence for others. We will never have all the answers about suicide, but we can certainly start by making time for others — not to lecture them, but to provide a sacred place for pain.”

When events like this cause stirrings of memory or asks me to step out of the comforts of my carefully scripted beliefs, may I have the heart to respond.

Lord, help me remember, not only the pain, but the grace that got me through so that I can live grace into the lives of others.

Lord, help me remember.

 

Some of the blog posts and videos that played a part in informing my thinking:

“Suicide and Pain: What are We Missing?” by Carmille Arkande; blog: Sojourners: Faith in Action for Social Justice, God’s Politics by Jim Wallis and friends; http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/08/13/suicide-and-pain-what-are-we-missing

“Genie You’re Free” by Carol Vinton; blog: Upside Down Grace; http://www.upsidedowngrace.com/2014/08/genie-youre-free.html

“Our Weird Uncle Robin” by John C. O’Keefe; blog: john c. o’keefe; http://johncokeefe.com/2014/08/13/our-weird-uncle-robin/

“Thoughts on Depression, Suicide and Being a Christian” by Nish Weiseth, blog: Nish Weiseth; http://nishweiseth.com/blog/2014/8/thoughts-on-depression-suicide-and-being-a-christian
In which depression is NOT your fault” by Sarah Bessey; blog: Sarah Bessey; http://sarahbessey.com/depression-fault/ (Please note: Sarah is adding to this as she finds other blogs that speak with compassionate voices)

The-Lesson-Barbara-Walters-Learned-from-Christopher-Reeve-Video; http://www.oprah.com/own-master-class/The-Lesson-Barbara-Walters-Learned-from-Christopher-Reeve-Video?playlist_id=52420

What Robin Williams Did for Christopher Reeve That You’ll Never Forget; video from Oprah Winfrey show; http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Robin-Williams-Amazing-Gift-to-Christopher-Reeve-Video?playlist_id=52420

Ironically, I can’t locate the article that spurred this post by mentioning how emotions are shamed. Someone I knew shared it on Facebook. I just want to make sure credit for bringing that thought to my attention comes from elsewhere.

 

To the Young Woman I Met

When I first met you, your smile sparkled as you sought a way to show off the teeshirt advertising the play you just saw. Your enthusiasm and uninhibited willingness to try something new was a brightness in the day. You left me with a smile on my face as you walked away. How I longed for the days when, like you, conversational patter had come so easily. But then I went on enjoying the memory of that moment as I shared my own smile with others.

The day we sat down to talk you surprised me by revealing that the beautiful young woman I see does not see herself as beautiful and special. Sharing a bit of our stories, you asked me how I had made peace with my life. I did not pretend to have it all together, but I can’t pretend to regret my life either. I am still growing. I still have moments of unrest. There is still healing that is in process in my life, but I am at peace with where my life is at.

So I told you I would write you this letter about some of the ways I have made peace with my life.

1) I don’t expect anyone or anything to save me or to do the hard work for me of healing. When you wait for others to do it for you, then you resent what is not done. You feel let down and alone. If you can look in the mirror and tell yourself that you are enough, that you can heal, that you are willing to have the patience with time, the honesty of self-acceptance and the strength to face the things that hurt, healing begins. When I take the responsibility for my own joy in life then whatever I receive from others can be seen as a gift instead of a requirement.

2.) I am thankful for what others bring to my life. It is hard for me to let down the control of my outcomes enough to let others in and to let others help me. It is not easy to release my independence or to accept the word of others that they might come through with the things they offer to do. I have to raise the mirror to my own humanity and face how my own desires to do for others sometimes outstrip my own ability to carry through in order to accept that others may want to support me in ways as well. I will read the signals wrong. We will all make mistakes. But in it all, through giving the benefit of the doubt and through recognizing that a kindness shown is a gift for both giver and recipient, I connect with others. Each connection in turn opens me to the next one.

3.) I accept that the past influences me. I let myself dream toward the future. But I am learning to live in the moment I am in. I am learning to let this be enough just as it is. I am learning to accept and own my feelings as my own and to know that no matter how uncomfortable the feelings of a moment might be, they will not stay that way forever. Yet, I am learning not to take the responsibility to change my feelings. I am learning to take the responsibility to listen to them so that they can teach me what I need to know in that moment of time. It is only in owning my moments that I will live beyond what is past into what is to come. What I do with the moment I live counts.

4.) I am learning that I am what I need to be to live my life. I don’t have to wait for some magical moment or some planet-aligned sequence of events. I don’t have to wait until I have achieved some level of fame, the perfect body ratio, the circle of friends I do long to have. All the things that can be someday are possibility. But their presence or their lack does not decide my life. I am free to make my life what it can be because I am everything I need to be in this moment to move into the next one.

No, it does not fit the social expectations of all that life “should” be, but a life based on “should” is a life that is waiting, not a life that is being lived. I have chosen to live, to grow, to be the person that I am. I have chosen to accept myself as a person in transition without expecting to arrive at some predesignated destination where everything will finally be happy ever after. I have chosen to live in my todays.

And because I have, I was privileged to have those moments of sharing with you, those moments of seeing beyond the mask you have learned to wear to hide the ache you have within. I only hope that the moments we shared enriched your life in some way.

I know you have enriched mine.

A Childlike Spring

Every Sunday evening, I leave a little early for the worship service I attend. My quieting begins outside the doors where spring perennials and bulb plants are unfurling their colours so longed for in the late spring budding.

The anticipation I feel as I walk the path has the characteristics of opening a present. What new bloom or colour will I see. Today is was the uncurling of new ferns, variety in tulip colour and the leaves finally opened on the small trees there.

As I search for each new opening, something in my heart and mind expands into  a feeling like the ripples of my favorite lake gently brushing the shores of my thoughts. A peace settles over me.

Crowned with tree blossoms.

The words of my daughter when she was five come back to me as I walk that path. The day had come. Going out to play in the backyard, Meg’s face shone with joy as she went to each newly opened flower and took in the rosy crabapple tree and white apple blossoms. She ran over to me and with a child’s voice of awe and wonder proclaimed, “God must really love me. He made so many beautiful flowers.” Then she was off to explore again.

Over 25 years has passed since that day yet her face and words still stand clear in my mind. The wonder of a child in spring fills my own heart as I look out and see again the beauty of the earth as it clothes itself in colour.

My mindful gift today is the wonderful array of colour that nature brings into our world and the memories that keep me seeing it through the eyes of a child.

What goes around

We have been circling for years. I met her the year I first got a teaching contract.

It was a class whose teacher had walked out on them and finding a replacement was hard. The school had gone through a transition that summer taking half of the students into a consolidated immersion setting and half of the resource hours. The thing is, they only took a quarter of the resource needs. This class had a third of the students in resource the year before. With a grant they got a part time support person in the class but most of the planning for that person fell to the regular teacher. It was a large class with high needs in all directions. After three substitutes refused to return, they began asking around for someone who could work with a group with behavioral and academic struggles. I was recommended.

What the next months held was the building of a learning community that sought to empower the kids to take more responsibility for their learning. It was a time of innovation for me as a new teacher with my first term. I had been blessed by the opportunity to work in a volunteer project in the past that focused on the diversity of learning needs. I had also taken courses and professional learning opportunities on my own time in the area and helped out in other schools.  I understood the need to begin with the student and let the curriculum be a guide.

She was one of the students in the class. I will leave most of her story untold. What I will say is that she challenged how I assessed by struggling to turn in any paper that had a mistake on it. Finding a way to reach her meant I spent some extra time working with her outside of class time. She wound herself around my heart in the process.

She gave me a cardboard plaque that year which has held a central place in my home since then. Even when it was painful to read, I kept it safe in my memory trunk. The words have even been photographed to be on display at school and at home.

The summer before I started teaching the class I had begun counseling to come to terms with the need to move from my marriage. However, when the time finally came, I still broke down. I had been given the next year’s contract with the same students and it broke my heart to leave them behind while I had to step aside and heal. I was not emotionally stable enough to do the job. Anxiety and depression, to the degree they hit following my separation confuses the routing of thought. The kids needed more than I could give.

Fast forward another 5 years. I was working at emergency shelters for children, a meaningful job but one in which what I could do for the kids from the perspective of a teacher was limited. I loved the closeness with the kids but was troubled by the inability to follow through in their lives once they left our care. Yet I had lost my belief in ever teaching again so I gave my all to what I was doing.

Then I started to dream. In the basement of my inner home I would be quietly sorting the comfortable cushions and chairs in the room when all the sudden one of them would come to life. Instead of running to hide under something, the living creature would crawl up a wall and lodge under a plaque hanging there. It was always the same one. “To a teacher that made a difference”, the plaque given to me by that young girl. The dreams continued until I listened to them. It was time to go back into teaching again.

I would work in the shelters on a part time basis for another year and a half until my shoulder gave out from the lifting, but my resumes and applications were sent in to a couple of divisions within a month of that decision. Within two months of doing so, in 2005, I had my first long-term contract teaching music. Since that time, there were 6 weeks where I did not have a teaching position lined up. The young girl’s words had left their mark taking me back into the career I loved, the career that fit my spirit.

The children had been 9 and 10 years old that year I taught them. After their graduation from high school, several of them became contacts on my social media page. This young girl, now a woman, was among them. I was able to hear when she formed a stable partnership with a young man I have had the pleasure to meet. I was able to celebrate in words with her when her two little ones were born. I even had a chance to share coffee with her in her home soon after she moved to the town where I am teaching.

Today the news was confirmed. Her oldest child, who begins kindergarten next year will coming to our school. As music teacher, I will be teaching her each year. Having her in my school was a choice. Her child will be taking French Immersion so that my once student can have her dream of having her daughter be taught by me. I am touched to know I made enough of a difference that she treasures the idea of her children being in my classes.

My mindful gift today is the privilege we have of making a difference in the life of others. To be truthful though, this student also impacted my life in the times I needed the message she gave me so many years ago. I am looking forward to getting to know, in person, the young woman she has become. Our relationship has come full circle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let it Rain

The world sags under the weight of drenching rains. Bird song competes with the sloshing of tires speeding past on the road. The air is damp and tired. A chill permeates everything. It is not a day to be outdoors, especially when warmer jackets are packed away ready for the coming move. The last day of the long weekend, the beginning of camping for many.

There is a quiet around me as I sit in my home. Memories stirring are pleasant. The smell of wood fire. The slightly whipping crack of the tarp protecting us from the falling rain. My mind captures a moment past when we were just children on a family campout playing a game of cards while we waited for the rain to lift. The fighting and nattering of cousins together is silenced, quieted by the dampness in the air.

Matthew and I get into a game of Crazy Eights that seems to be without end. Back and forth we challenge each other, our earlier arguing forgotten. The curtain falls and the memory ends. This little window flows into other water memories as we forded the shallow stream to the pebbled beach of a small island splitting the stream in two. We imagined there that we were coming upon the place for the first time, natives to this world of rock and greenery, of the gurgling sound of the nearby stream, the gentle brushing of the leaves playing together.

In the spirit of mindfulness I don’t try to push the edges of the memories, nor do I try to untie the timelines. I feel the edges pressing in but I am quiet as I remember this place from childhood. The Duckabush is a place of family memories.

Almost three years ago, I sat with my father and my small computer looking at the pictures from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. My brother had moved to the area and reveled in the lush greenness. As my father sees the pictures he remember the Duckabush and camping trips there.

Andie: Have you all found the Duckabush? This reminds me of those narrow rapids we use to fish and swim in there.

Bill: Walking along the river trail also reminded me of the Duckabush which is about an hour from our house.…

Andie: Dad says “I’ll meet you at the old camping place on the Duckabush at 3:30 on November 11, 2012. Be sure to have a tent for me and fishing equipment and I’ll show you where the best fishing places are.” Dream! Dream! Dream!

There would be no meeting in November. As I typed my dad’s words onto the screen my brother and I both knew that his battle with cancer was nearing its end. More, dementia had scrambled the files of dad’s life so he did not always connect to reality. Yet for all the pain we felt when his dementia turned mean, it gifted him with the ability to remember mixed moments of life for most of his last weeks, surprised when he would see his skin hanging loose around his hungry bones. Those moments  with my brother’s pictures would be a calling card for the gentler side of my dad in the days ahead. He would find peace in remembering.

The weight of the rain hangs heavy in the air but inside the sounds of water bring memories to sit lightly in my heart, memories of a moment full of love, a rekindling from the past. Today, my mindful gift is the falling rain.

* The stream pictures were taken by my brother, Bill.

 

The butterfly jar

It is not easy staying in mindfulness at the moment. My mind is a turmoil past and present. I ride the rapids through the seeming obstacles seeking calmer internal waters.

I turn to my marked up books with thoughts written in margins as well as passages underlined. One of my notes catches my eye: “I am placing these as cocoons in my butterfly jar.” The section is on “Roadblocks to Trust” in a book called Heart Sense by Paula M. Reeves, Ph.D.

But what is a butterfly jar? It comes from a story of my own, a moment in my life when I came face to face with an old memory. It was a time of pain when I could not take the dichotomy of what I felt inside and what I felt I had to live on the outside.  At that place in my life, I did not feel the ability to leave the situation I was in. Yet, to be me within that situation was so painful I did not feel I could live with the tearing inside. I struck out at myself by destroying the box in which I had treasured most my writing from my youth as a symbolic way tried to stop being who I was in order to be able to exist. Others needed me to live and yet I was not at peace with my life.

Totems, LJ Andres, Acrylic

It was almost 20 years before I could look back and weep for that young mother and the pain that caused her to make the chose I made then. On that day a few years ago when I wept for her, my sense of imagery noticed a partially opened door within the house of my soul.

I allowed my imaged self to walk to the door and look within. Pressing back into the corner of the small darkened room with arms tightly wrapped around drawn up knees what that young woman me, head bowed, sorrowful. Surrounding her were many scraps of torn up paper. The coloured pencil flowers at the edge of some of the pieces told me what they were. One of the pages torn up that day long ago had been bordered with those flowers.

I walked into the room and reached my hand out to her. She looked up to me with hope and reached for my hand. As I lifted her to her feet the scattered pieces transformed into a myriad of white butterflies fluttering around our heads, some with the coloured markings of those long ago flowers. Healing tears flowed that day as forgiveness was extended to that part of me who had taken away so many of the mementoes of my youth.

For days when a problem would come, I would image it turning into another butterfly. But the time came when the problems didn’t fly away. I was discouraged until a whisper in my mind explained, “They are still in their cocoons.”

So the butterfly jar was born. The personally decorated jar soon held several tightly rolled post-its as I would write my  self criticisms and roll them up into cocoons. Every now and then I would take the pieces out of the jar and sort them into piles. I would usually find I was saying a similar thing over several times. I would choose the one that best said what that was and roll it back up in the jar. Others I would find held healing and no longer were trapped in cocoons.

After reading the Heart Sense words that day, I bought a mirror and set it facing my butterfly jar as reminder. I will share some of her words with you here:

– Make a list of the ways in which you feel uncertain of yourself or ways in which you feel you can’t trust yourself.
– After you made your list, choose one of the items on it.
Take your mirror and look deeply in your own eyes and ask your heart, “Is this the truth about me?”
– If the answer is “Yes,” ask what you can do about making a change. Imagine that the answer is held within your heart. Go there, listen, and write down whatever you hear. Commit yourself to genuinely try to change. This is not a quick fix. All soulful change takes time, conscious commitment, and a willingness to believe in the outcome.
– If the answer is “No,” then write a commitment to yourself that each and every time you find yourself using that reason to not trust yourself you will stop, turn to your heart, and ask for the courage to remove the roadblock.  (Reeves, Heart Sense)

Perhaps this is a time for making another list and asking the questions I learned. I am thankful for those whose words add thoughtfulness into moments like this when mindful living seems more a practice to learn than a peace to experience.

Today my mindful gift is the books and memories that guide me to my next steps on my journey of mindful living.

 

 

It takes time

Groan! How do I find the gift for today? I woke up feeling so strong, ready to deal with the things I knew the day  would hold. Then a small thing — not finding my keys — dismantled me showing me how thin my veneer of strength was. It has been a while since I had a full blown anxiety attack and I was not impressed with having one for such a small reason. It was hard to remind myself that when something like that happens for a small reason, there is usually something else behind it.

Facing the reality and making the calls I needed, I settled in to do what I could until my mind opened up enough that I could solve the problem. It took some time but I found the keys and was able to get back some of the control that feels so lost when anxiety hits.

But wait! I think I just found my gift! Time.

I am seeing someone to help me develop more strategies and awareness of signals to help me deal with triggers that set off anxiety. Time and support have helped me grow much stronger in coping with and coming out of anxiety and depression. It gives me hope for coming to an end of these episodes.

Thought the first two days  after my last appointment had been difficult, the next 5 days I had been able to do the things I needed to do without the anxiety that affects me in small ways.  Those five days shows me that I am on the right track. Mindfully being present in what is, I am also being able to be mindfully present for the relationships and events that make up each day.

Today, when I felt what was happening inside, I knew enough to call and let the person know who needed to deal with some things today. I was able to get some positive support to pull myself together without being embarrassed or chastised for what I didn’t seem to be able to deal with in those moments. I was given time to do what I needed to do to be more centered inside again.

When I did what I knew — sorting more of what I had scattered around to pack as a means of looking with purpose for my keys I was able to slow my mind and clear it of the blocks. I was able to focus myself one step at a time into what I needed to do to bring down the anxiety to a manageable level. What I found behind the anxiety was grief still being worked through.

It takes time to unwind the cords tying us to the past especially when you are not fully aware of what the cords are that are causing specific reactions inside you. It takes time to read and learn and practice new ways of being that slowly dissipate the strong reactions, opening the closed-in rapids to the calmer flow of thoughts and feelings.

When I take a look behind me and see where I am now, time has been a gift in me bringing healing. Those who are entering my life with an understanding of time’s part in healing have also been gifts to my life.

My mindful gift for today is time.

 

 

Sand Dollar Doves

This comes from childhood memories of walking on the beaches of the Oregon coast. Many a sand dollar found its way into the treasures of the day. This story is simply fiction. I hope you will enjoy.

The shrill calls of the gulls were white noise blocking out the sounds of others around her. She walked down the seaweed littered shore her sandals in hand feeling the cold damp give of the sand beneath her feet.

A record that I am here she thought. Then laughed at the knowledge of waves that would soon wipe her steps away. The smooth white edge of a sand dollar caught her eye. Reaching down to brush off the gritty sand she didn’t notice the little girl watching nearby.

“Watcha find, lady?” She asked. The woman raised her eyes to see the child, feet turned inward with big toes playing a game of which will be on top. The sand coating her legs up to the edge of her knees told the tale of the little girls treasure hunts. Her hands clutched a lumpy towel giving witness to some level of success.

The woman held the perfect sand dollar out to the girl.

“You know there are birds in there, don’t ya?” offered the girl. “If you open it they can fly away.”

The woman smiled, “Well, would you like me to let them fly away?”

The girl looked at the sand dollar and up at the sky. “Nope. Too many gulls. The birds are so small the gulls would eat em like flies. You keep em. Sometimes we need times to fly away. You never know when yours’ll come.”

The woman took a closer look at the girl. Her one piece suit showed the wear of many washings. The dark patch might just be the shadow of her tangled hair hiding her face from the sun. What was this little girls story? Why hadn’t she noticed her as she walked along the beach, but then, she had been lost in thought after all.

“Are you here alone?” The woman found herself asking. “Shouldn’t you be heading back to your family?”

The little girl smiled. “You are my family. Don’t you remember?”

The woman sat back quickly her eyebrows lifting in surprised. Her children were grown and she had surely not seen this child before.

“I… I am sorry, but you have to be mistaken,” she stammered. “I haven’t seen you before.”

“Close your eyes,” was the child enigmatic response. “Maybe that will help you remember.”

The woman was not above a game with a child so playing along she shut her eyes.

“Feel the sand,” said the child, “Rub the edges of the dollar.”

The woman felt something stir inside as the worn edge of the sand dollar rolled beneath her fingers. There was a time long ago when ….

She opened her eyes with a start and stared at the little girl. She knew that suit. She knew that towel. She knew the darkness wasn’t the shadow of her tangled hair. The child she looked at was herself long ago, the time she had wanted to fly away.

“Sometimes we need times to fly away. You never know when yours’ll come.” Repeated the child as she slowly began to fade. “You’ll never know when yours’ll come.”

The woman sat for a long time rubbing the edge of the dollar and remembering. When she finally stood there was a new light in her eyes. She had remembered and now, it was time to let that learning take flight. There was a time to finally let go.

Clutching the sand dollar in her hands she walked back the way she had come. It was time to let the child in her be free. It was time to find her way to a safe place to be. It was time to stop repeating the past.

In her mind’s eye she opened the sand dollar and watched a 1000 doves fly up into the sky.

 

T – Climbing Trees

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
-Wendell Berry-

My two favourite places to study at university were a small alcove up the full stairway to the front doors of our main building and about halfway up the tree on the far edge of our campus block.

Yes, you heard right. In my early twenties it was not unusual for me to be tucked up in my perch alternately studying and viewing the life around me from my hidden aerie. There is something about the world from up high. You can see forever.

Growing up, I can’t number the times in my life a tree was sanctuary to me.  Just the thought of a tree gives a sense of peaceful memory to my heart.

But the trees that drew me the most were the ones I could climb. Always a bit of a closet scrapper, I loved the tussle with hand and footholds to get to that intersection of branches right — up —- there. Sometimes I took an actual book but more often I took their images in my imagination. Tucked in the groove between branches I was the queen of my own castle, the little girl tucked in her secret velvet room or playing in that private garden that nobody knew but me. The birds and squirrels would leave me to my perch while they chittered and twittered their own journeys through those moments of living.

When the closeness of dorm life would leave me needing an energizing break, it was not strange to think I would turn to a tree for peace whenever the weather and the amount of books I needed allowed. Trees have a way of quieting all the noises in my brain so that I can concentrate on what I need to do.

My body is older now and those foot and hand holds often seem made for tinier fingers and toes than mine. The gifts trees give are no less though. The rough texture of the bark, the scampering of busy squirrels, the first defiant signs of spring in the tight leaf buds along the branches, a soft rustling music when breezes caress their leaves, cooling shade and protection from rain, soaring majesty when I am feeling too tied to the ground, songs of birds — the gifts of a tree are endless.

Recently, in one of those gentler days in the long seemingly unending winter just past, I stood near a vine cloaked wall and listened to the birds twittering among the protecting tangle. By watching close I could just catch sight of their flitting bodies. “How I would love to see the birds,” I wished into the air. Suddenly several of the birds flew out and landed on the branches of  a nearby small tree letting me approach close enough to really see them. By giving them a perch the growing tree met the needs of both the birds and my hungry soul.

Maybe that is what makes trees so special. They are a community of belonging simply asking us to let them be.

The poem the quote comes from:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
…
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
-Wendell Berry