Stay with me

Something interesting happens when fear takes over me and I see no way out of a crisis.  I become frozen and unable to move.  This is a terrifying feeling, because it happens at a time when you most need to be taking action.

This is strange, because I can honestly say that if something happened to someone else and they needed help, I would probably jump into action.  So I don't really understand why I am so paralyzed at the moment.

I am working at regaining my strength, but I'm having to reach out to others for support.  I feel like I have no oxygen, and someone else needs to put the oxygen mask on me.  I can keep going and keep working, but I just need some love, encouragement and support.  It is such an odd feeling.  I'm broken, sad, defeated and feel so alone in my predicament.  I'm certain that I am somehow meant to go through this, so that I can better speak and help others who don't know where to begin.

It feels similar to what happens to people when they are choking.  I was trained that if you see someone choking and they get up and go toward the rest room, you should follow them.  People in our culture are so embarrassed when something goes very wrong, that they want to run and hide.  Yet that is when they are in dire need of help from others.  I want to run and hide right now!  Please don't let me disappear.  I'm not dead yet.  I just have to get through this tough spell and get back on my feet.  Stay with me now, and you can be sure I will be there for you in your time of need.

Oh, The Places I've Lived

Since I moved back to Connecticut over 2 years ago, I have sunk deeper and deeper into loneliness and depression.  Yes, there are lots of reasons for me to feel down: caring for my 95 year old mother with dementia, being away from friends, yet another heartbreak, running out of money, disconnection with family, and missing the ocean.  But I have all the tools to keep me positive, living in the moment, making each and every day the best day.  And indeed, my yoga has kept me afloat in many ways.  Yet my spirit feels so weak and tired, and I continue to feel lost and alone.

Lately each day, my friend Roberta posts a beautiful picture of sunrise on the water in Martha's Vineyard. The pictures have lit up my soul and always soothe my pain.  Today after seeing this particularly stunning photo, it finally hit me.  I have been fortunate in my life to live in some really extraordinary places.

Now for the last three years I have lived in apartment complexes in the Manchester area of Connecticut.  Even though my current apartment has trees outside my window, it still doesn't feed my soul enough.  I'm starving for the ocean nearby, the starlit nights, and the stimulation of nature.  If I had never known this beauty, I would not miss it so much.  

I Dreamed About My iPhone

I woke up this morning and realized I had had my first iPhone dream.  I was in some beautiful place in France and couldn't get the camera on my iPhone to work.  I asked this french women at an information booth to help me.  She got it working, but then I couldn't figure out what she had done.  By then there was a long line of people in the information line, and I couldn't wait to talk with her and had to leave.  My friend Sunny was in the dream too.  We had spoken on the phone last night about our upcoming bike trip to Croatia.

So what does my first iPhone dream mean?  I've been thinking a lot lately about how attached I've become to my iPhone. I worry that perhaps I'm addicted in some way.   I think in some ways yes, and in some ways no.  Nothing like this has ever existed before.  I have always had a curious mind, and now every answer to anything I want to know can be found on my iPhone.

I used to wake up in the morning feeling lonely and sometimes depressed.  It was a painful time.  Now I wake up in the morning and I can pick up my iPhone and connect with the world.  I can check in with all the people I care about, and get laughs or inspiration to start my day, like this video shared by my friend June:

This made my smile.

But at the same time I can catch the news and see clips about the tragedies of our world.  The internet can take me to any imaginable place.  This morning it also took me to that sad face of the father who lost his son to a violent attack in California this week.

This made me cry.

And then, in the midst of all the chatter of the world wide web,  I heard with great sadness that the mother of all voices is now quiet.  

Maya Angelou passed away today.  

The last few years, I have written many drafts for my blog but haven't posted them.  So much happened, so many journeys have been taken, so many lessons have been learned.  I moved back to Connecticut, moved my mom to Assisted Living, emptied the family house of 54 years of accumulation, got the house sold, started teaching many yoga classes, had heartbreaks, found love again, said goodbye to my cat Abigail, and on and on.  Now I'm taking a new course called B-School in hopes to get an on-line business going.  I continue to manage mom's life, and at the age of 95 she is still getting herself around on her own two feet.  Her mind is strange, but her spirit is amazing.  I hope to post more blog posts this year, as I continue to dance on the branches of life!!!

Separateness

"A theology of separation has created a society of separation".  I call it the adolescence of humanity.  First we need to find out who we are as individuals and break away on our own, just like we did in our teens and 20's.  I think it's time to start coming back together.  Are you wondering how you can do everything you have to do  all by yourself?  After 10 years of living alone, I know that the next stage of growth is learning to bring my SELF, my gifts, who I am,  to live compatibly with others.  There is no end to the differences we can find if we focus in that way. But each of us is a thread in a beautiful tapestry that is humanity.  When I think of tapestry I think of one of my Facebook friends, Sarah Haskell.  Facebook is a tapestry of our friends.  We get glimpses into the lives of others that we never before had.  We can enjoy the brief connections or go deeper.  Technology is bringing us together in a way that has never before been possible.  What will we do with this opportunity??  Just know that it has the possibility of creating more understanding, tolerance, and peace. The survival and well being of humanity and our beautiful planet depend on it.

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendall Barry

When despair for the World grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound,
in fear of what my life
and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
                                                                                  
                                                                                    — Wendell Berry

STAY!

I woke up after a good night's rest, and once again picked up Geneen Roth's book "Women, Food, and God".  For a while now, I have been stuck on the chapter "Never Underestimate the Inclination to Bolt".  I find many things to do other than reading these days.  I check e-mail, go on-line, make phone calls, watch tv, play scrabble or Words with Friends on my iPad.  Or I create a mess in my kitchen or a mess in my mind. All this to escape the worrying, and the feeling of being frightened out of my mind. Anything to distract me from feeling what I'm feeling these days.  Which is exactly what Geneen's book is about!  Even though the main focus of the book is about weight, it speaks to exactly what is going on with me.  I don't want to feel what I'm feeling, and face what I'm facing, so I distract myself or as she puts it "bolt" from myself.

Many years ago at a workshop with Oriah Mountain Dreamer (you might have read her poem "The Invitation), she took us through a deep meditation to find what she calls "our one word".  The process blew my mind.  As we went deep into an imaginary and beautiful underworld, the word "STAY" kept getting in the way of where my mind was taking me.  I wanted to go back to that meditative beautiful place, but a billboard went up (in my mind) with the word "STAY" on it.  I tried to get around it but couldn't.  Then it hit me, this was my word!!!  But what did it mean???  I wanted some flowery word like: grace, beauty, compassion, love, or peace.  But instead I got "STAY".  I assumed that for me it meant, to stay with myself.  To not runaway from who I am.  But I've continued to run, and probably faster and faster every year.

So, this morning I'm reading Geneen's book. Every line in this chapter speaks to me and then she starts talking about what it means to stay.

"When you stay, you question what you've never questioned:  the you you take yourself to be.  The you who is not your past, not your habits, not your compulsions.  Anything becomes possible.  Even living through extraordinary pain."

We all have ways of bolting from our own lives, with either drugs, alcohol, food, work, sex, money, internet, religion, or denial. We love to distract ourselves by watching other people's lives (reality TV), or obsessing over our kid's lives, or our spouses life, or our friends life.  And of course, a favorite distraction is complaining about what our government is doing wrong, or condemning other people.

Sorry, I didn't mean to get off on a tangent.  But all that we are exposed to is just too much. We can't take it all in.  Every day we hear about terrible things going on in the world.  Prior to the communication revolution, we only knew what was going on in our own little place in the world, and that was enough.  This morning I woke up, turned on my computer to do some writing and I'm faced with the headline "Huge Quake and Tsunami Hit Japan".  I'm immediately devastated by this news. How many people have died??  What is happening with our planet??  I feel helpless.

My problems are so big one moment, and the next moment so small.  As my money disappears, my fear increases and I find that I'm distracting myself rather than going into the fire.  I have to get through this challenging time with my mom, and my finances, and my fears about the World. Yes, I feel embarrassed, stupid, dysfunctional.  Yes, I made many mistakes and could have done things different.  Yes, I've had bad things happen to me, and terrible things happen in our World.  But I am who I am.  Without money I'm still me.  Aren't I?????

As Deepak Chopra tweeted yesterday "The sole cause of death is birth".

I am here on this earth today. I will survive until I die.  I will live my best life today.

I'm sending prayers to all effected by the devastation in Japan.  And sending love to all of you, who walk with me on this sometimes treacherous path of life.  Let's walk towards each other and ourselves, and not run away.