I cannot afford for hope to be the attractive flourishes that counteract my occasional doubt. It must be sturdy, dependable, wholly realized--and hard won. The difference between the two is like using ballet slippers when you really need a good pair of rain boots: you start out thinking you can plie your way past a little problem and end up heel-to-knee in crap. Better to start out knowing what you're in for and dress accordingly. Unfortunately, this type of hope is only obtained by use, so don't expect it to show up if you aren't willing to take the risks necessary to gain it. And once you have it, it must be aired: tell others there is reason to have hope and encourage it in them. If kept under wraps, hope suffocates quickly.
-s
Hope
Hope be not a flimsy thing
Hanging by some tender string
A gilded but temporal dream
Suspended o'er a pit
But Hope be shining sword at hip
Torch as close as fingertip
Buccaneer with curling lip
In face of fiery dragon
Hope be truly only such
If borne in trembling maiden's touch
Beneath her bosom firmly clutched
And lending her more valor
For had she not its shape in hand
There would not be the strength to stand
And firmly thus, much can withstand
Though Fear still bloom nearby
Monday, December 3, 2012
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Givers and Takers
List everything you do.
Now list everything you do in which there is a live, dynamic connection of your true self with something or someone outside of you.
Now give yourself a big hug for surviving in a world whose preset is not nurturing to the human spirit.
Big News: We can't make it alone.
"Yeah, I know," you think.
But how does your life reflect that idea?
Does it mean that accepting help makes you a "Taker"? Let me explain.
I grew up the daughter of do-it-yourself parents. My father is an amazing fabricator. My mother is a gifted seamstress and whiz at all things house-holding. While holding a full-time factory job and raising my brother and I, they designed and personally built the country home into which we moved in the winter of 1986. Once there was spring thaw, our family painstakingly planted one thousand tiny pine seedlings into 5 of the 15 acres my parents had decided to convert from cornfield into homestead. There was electricity but no plumbing in the kitchen. The house was heated by wood my father searches out and hand harvests. Many summers were spent growing, canning, or freezing vegetables. In other words, hard work isn't just a catch phrase, it is a core belief going back generations of our family.
So I naturally believed that I can and should do everything that needs to be done. Oh, how wrong I was.
I think the pressure started to get to me right away that first winter. I had ongoing problems with stomachaches, and they started morphing into headaches around my sixth year. 25 years later, I'm still struggling with the need to do it "all by myself" and paying for it with nasty headaches and other chronic pain. It's only because of many hours of conversations with caring, intelligent people that I today recognize I need to lower my expectations and loosen my grip on my imagined obligations. The few things that must be done in life can be done on more flexible terms, without resentment, and in partnership. Dependence on strength from outside myself is the cornerstone of survival. I have much will, but it is not the unconquerable machine of accomplishment I once believed. When I am humble enough to share my life and my needs with others, they are blessed to bless me. This still short-circuits something in my hard-wiring, but when I can slow down enough to choose to override it consciously, I am always glad I reached out.
Maybe you, like I, believe that it's more blessed to give than to receive and this idea of being a "taker" flies in the face of being a "giver". Perhaps you would do well to reconsider. Frame it as a sponsor once did for me: I grow by giving. I cannot give to you unless you are willing to accept. You serve me by asking for help. If all the world were hands ready to feed but there were no hungry mouths, the hands would be useless. If all the world were hungry mouths, there would be a terrible clamor. But if there are hands and mouths, there are purposes for both. And there is no permanence in either role. To refuse to accept ones current position is to deny a great opportunity to grow.
Make a list of the times when you give by opening yourself to be helped, and you may find as I have, that they are also your times of greatest connection. This connected place is where you will thrive.
Now go give. (And take.)
-sk
Now list everything you do in which there is a live, dynamic connection of your true self with something or someone outside of you.
Now give yourself a big hug for surviving in a world whose preset is not nurturing to the human spirit.
Big News: We can't make it alone.
"Yeah, I know," you think.
But how does your life reflect that idea?
Does it mean that accepting help makes you a "Taker"? Let me explain.
I grew up the daughter of do-it-yourself parents. My father is an amazing fabricator. My mother is a gifted seamstress and whiz at all things house-holding. While holding a full-time factory job and raising my brother and I, they designed and personally built the country home into which we moved in the winter of 1986. Once there was spring thaw, our family painstakingly planted one thousand tiny pine seedlings into 5 of the 15 acres my parents had decided to convert from cornfield into homestead. There was electricity but no plumbing in the kitchen. The house was heated by wood my father searches out and hand harvests. Many summers were spent growing, canning, or freezing vegetables. In other words, hard work isn't just a catch phrase, it is a core belief going back generations of our family.
So I naturally believed that I can and should do everything that needs to be done. Oh, how wrong I was.
I think the pressure started to get to me right away that first winter. I had ongoing problems with stomachaches, and they started morphing into headaches around my sixth year. 25 years later, I'm still struggling with the need to do it "all by myself" and paying for it with nasty headaches and other chronic pain. It's only because of many hours of conversations with caring, intelligent people that I today recognize I need to lower my expectations and loosen my grip on my imagined obligations. The few things that must be done in life can be done on more flexible terms, without resentment, and in partnership. Dependence on strength from outside myself is the cornerstone of survival. I have much will, but it is not the unconquerable machine of accomplishment I once believed. When I am humble enough to share my life and my needs with others, they are blessed to bless me. This still short-circuits something in my hard-wiring, but when I can slow down enough to choose to override it consciously, I am always glad I reached out.
Maybe you, like I, believe that it's more blessed to give than to receive and this idea of being a "taker" flies in the face of being a "giver". Perhaps you would do well to reconsider. Frame it as a sponsor once did for me: I grow by giving. I cannot give to you unless you are willing to accept. You serve me by asking for help. If all the world were hands ready to feed but there were no hungry mouths, the hands would be useless. If all the world were hungry mouths, there would be a terrible clamor. But if there are hands and mouths, there are purposes for both. And there is no permanence in either role. To refuse to accept ones current position is to deny a great opportunity to grow.
Make a list of the times when you give by opening yourself to be helped, and you may find as I have, that they are also your times of greatest connection. This connected place is where you will thrive.
Now go give. (And take.)
-sk
Saturday, September 22, 2012
New poem: "Dedicated"
Focus.
If I want to focus, I either need something loud enough to drown out the din in my mind, or I need something quiet enough that I have to hold still to catch it. This is a tricky thing to find, so sometimes I would rather be consumed by something or someone because it's less mental work for me to do. What I allow to consume me can become just as dangerous as the din. But danger isn't always bad: it can be an excellent place to find closeness that won't happen under other circumstances.
Dedicated
If I want to focus, I either need something loud enough to drown out the din in my mind, or I need something quiet enough that I have to hold still to catch it. This is a tricky thing to find, so sometimes I would rather be consumed by something or someone because it's less mental work for me to do. What I allow to consume me can become just as dangerous as the din. But danger isn't always bad: it can be an excellent place to find closeness that won't happen under other circumstances.
Dedicated
Burn me up
With your laser beam eyes
Gravitas can’t be denied
The way you bare your teeth
And breathe in fire
Light up the night sky
Sometimes you're a canary
Sometimes you're a butterfly
For now you are a blacksmith
Pump the billows hot
Lava-glowing embers dance
Beneath your iron-weakening gaze
Swing your hammer down
Forge a bond
That holds deep truth
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Golden Lemons?
If this is the crap in my fan, let me re-purpose it as fertilizer to help me bloom where I'm planted.
these moments, these circumstances: J at low of himself but not yet bottom, my body hurting for all the strain of my mind, longing for intimacy with you and your followers, to love and be loved, safe in you, to find healing, to find connection for my children, to be supported, to have permission internally to be messy without losing myself in hopelessness and unable to cope with my children's lives. Let me find the boundary of my acceptance of the beloved but rejection of the behavior. Protecting, loving, teaching, and guiding my children in a way that shows them health and fullness instead of reaction, fear, and weakness.
lemons.
Hip-hop duo Atmosphere suggests "If life hands you lemons, you paint that sh** gold." I think it denies that lemons are good and have a purpose, though they may be sour on their own. It also perpetuates the false but intoxicating belief that self-will is mightier than any opposition.
If I simply live in compliance with what I believe is the leading of the Spirit, checking myself with the principles of Loving, True, Kind, Necessary, I can rest in assurance that my Higher Power will use my actions according to his plan. After all, he wouldn't be much of a higher power if he couldn't use all actions to his purpose.
The fear for me here is that my wrong actions will cause me to experience more hurt or pain, and further slow my progress towards accomplishment. This seems like a justified fear to me. At times in the past when I've made mistakes, I've had to pay for those things with regret, guilt, punishment, painful consequences, etc. I don't want to make mistakes because it reinforces to me that I can't get stuff right and it cuts into my productive time. Perhaps that's learning: you're more careful to consider what you do so you don't get negative results. But if it becomes crippling, maybe that's the point when you have to just take an action you believe is right and then accept that there will be learning with it.
change.
I want to see good things in my life. I have many good things, and I can focus on them now that I've cut some obligations. to build on those good things and cut away the less-good things will help me keep moving forward.
I've been told that I present a game-face, a composed, held-together face. I don't feel like that's what I do. But I do know I'm really afraid that people will see me as the mess I am, so maybe I construct a front. I don't know. I'm just trying to keep some composure so I can have a strand of professionalism. Messy people don't remain employed. The problem is, my body's falling apart behind the scenes so it doesn't matter how I look, I can't remain employed if I can't function. and more than employed, I can't conduct my life period: parenting, housekeeping, self care, friendships. I guess I have to find a middle ground or a more honest representation. I'm not going to go around looking like crap on purpose so that people don't utilize me, but I also have to give them a clue about my limitations. I've been playing in my head with making this button that proclaims what I can't say out loud to everyone: "Done pretending I have it all together" or "NEW! with Lower Expectations" or "Save those high standards for the next U2 record" or even "Waaaaaay Less than Perfect." Maybe I should just make a disclaimer button: "WARNING: If I commit to anything in your presence, please don't accept it. I am not superhuman, and I am already over-committed. I may be convinced that your project is the exception to this disclaimer, but THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. The fine print: I want to help you but I can't. I hate to disappoint you which is why I say yes instead of no, like I should. Reality says I can't please everyone. I have to live within my resources, so I'm learning to say no."**
If we keep the weeds out of the garden but then crowd the plants, the plants cannot flourish. If we space them appropriately and tend them well, they can grow. If we add "fertilizer", we may think it stinks at first, but as it breaks down in the sunlight with water and time, it will produce a better, bigger, more beautiful result.
Go spend some time in the sunlight and break that sh** down into something useful.
-s
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Life_Gives_You_Lemons,_You_Paint_That_Shit_Gold
**http://www.zazzle.com/no_more_commitments_button-145355132575434427
these moments, these circumstances: J at low of himself but not yet bottom, my body hurting for all the strain of my mind, longing for intimacy with you and your followers, to love and be loved, safe in you, to find healing, to find connection for my children, to be supported, to have permission internally to be messy without losing myself in hopelessness and unable to cope with my children's lives. Let me find the boundary of my acceptance of the beloved but rejection of the behavior. Protecting, loving, teaching, and guiding my children in a way that shows them health and fullness instead of reaction, fear, and weakness.
lemons.
Hip-hop duo Atmosphere suggests "If life hands you lemons, you paint that sh** gold." I think it denies that lemons are good and have a purpose, though they may be sour on their own. It also perpetuates the false but intoxicating belief that self-will is mightier than any opposition.
Let me not lie about the content of my life, covering it over with something more attractive but false. Let me instead accept it as it is, measure out how it can be useful, and fall to the task with gracious dedication instead of rosy denial or grim determination. Let me accept that I cannot control anything outside of myself. I can act according to my will, but that is the point where innumerable variables affect results.
If I simply live in compliance with what I believe is the leading of the Spirit, checking myself with the principles of Loving, True, Kind, Necessary, I can rest in assurance that my Higher Power will use my actions according to his plan. After all, he wouldn't be much of a higher power if he couldn't use all actions to his purpose.
The fear for me here is that my wrong actions will cause me to experience more hurt or pain, and further slow my progress towards accomplishment. This seems like a justified fear to me. At times in the past when I've made mistakes, I've had to pay for those things with regret, guilt, punishment, painful consequences, etc. I don't want to make mistakes because it reinforces to me that I can't get stuff right and it cuts into my productive time. Perhaps that's learning: you're more careful to consider what you do so you don't get negative results. But if it becomes crippling, maybe that's the point when you have to just take an action you believe is right and then accept that there will be learning with it.
change.
I want to see good things in my life. I have many good things, and I can focus on them now that I've cut some obligations. to build on those good things and cut away the less-good things will help me keep moving forward.
I've been told that I present a game-face, a composed, held-together face. I don't feel like that's what I do. But I do know I'm really afraid that people will see me as the mess I am, so maybe I construct a front. I don't know. I'm just trying to keep some composure so I can have a strand of professionalism. Messy people don't remain employed. The problem is, my body's falling apart behind the scenes so it doesn't matter how I look, I can't remain employed if I can't function. and more than employed, I can't conduct my life period: parenting, housekeeping, self care, friendships. I guess I have to find a middle ground or a more honest representation. I'm not going to go around looking like crap on purpose so that people don't utilize me, but I also have to give them a clue about my limitations. I've been playing in my head with making this button that proclaims what I can't say out loud to everyone: "Done pretending I have it all together" or "NEW! with Lower Expectations" or "Save those high standards for the next U2 record" or even "Waaaaaay Less than Perfect." Maybe I should just make a disclaimer button: "WARNING: If I commit to anything in your presence, please don't accept it. I am not superhuman, and I am already over-committed. I may be convinced that your project is the exception to this disclaimer, but THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. The fine print: I want to help you but I can't. I hate to disappoint you which is why I say yes instead of no, like I should. Reality says I can't please everyone. I have to live within my resources, so I'm learning to say no."**
If we keep the weeds out of the garden but then crowd the plants, the plants cannot flourish. If we space them appropriately and tend them well, they can grow. If we add "fertilizer", we may think it stinks at first, but as it breaks down in the sunlight with water and time, it will produce a better, bigger, more beautiful result.
Go spend some time in the sunlight and break that sh** down into something useful.
-s
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Life_Gives_You_Lemons,_You_Paint_That_Shit_Gold
**http://www.zazzle.com/no_more_commitments_button-145355132575434427
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Boundaries and poem: "Growing"
I have this theme of ruining things in my life: really good things. I'm tired of it. I found a really solid book call Boundaries* that I've been working through with a group of close friends, and it's hitting a lot of key points I've never addressed before. It's good, but it doesn't undo the past. The hope I have is for a different today.
-s
Growing
I saw a picture of you today
looking happier than I've seen
and I had the realization
that I was your bottom
It was a time of sadness
you were a kind and listening ear
but I wasn't careful
and I brought you down
I'm sorry for what I destroyed:
a friendship that was good
but not having healthy boundaries
brought it to an end
some lessons are hard to learn
but the pain brings them into focus
not having what we used to
moves me to keep on growing
I am seeking a better future
and today is a better day
though yesterday still haunts me
I'm learning to let go
*If you're interested in making changes, I'd highly recommend it: http://www.cloudtownsend.com/articles/scoop-on-boundaries/
Friday, August 31, 2012
Admissions of a "Facebook Friend"
I've got some terrible things to admit.
I thought social networking was supposed to help me feel supported, but kept finding it caused more problems than it solved. This poem is a response to the realization that the only issues I can address are my own, and admitting the ugly truth gets me a lot further than self pity.
I am grateful the friend who inspired this poem still has me on her friend list, but I'm afraid it's only because she doesn't know. Do you think I should tell her?
-s
The poem was first published in the literary journal 3R: The Rock River Review, Spring 2012 edition.
I thought social networking was supposed to help me feel supported, but kept finding it caused more problems than it solved. This poem is a response to the realization that the only issues I can address are my own, and admitting the ugly truth gets me a lot further than self pity.
I am grateful the friend who inspired this poem still has me on her friend list, but I'm afraid it's only because she doesn't know. Do you think I should tell her?
-s
Facebook Friend
Your life:
a thrilling series of
intense-color photos
smiling children
loving adults
living in present
moment
delighting in here
gorgeous
your eyes green
lips shiny
even pretty when you
sweat
meals with friends
parties with family
photographs of taking
photographs of everyday pleasures
you drive with the
windows down
you live with your soul
open
you laugh with your
mouth wide
and eyes shut tight
my life:
over-calculated status
updates
that wax philosophical
and esoteric
to avoid criticism
and engineer a cool
facade
I am a clenched fist of
fear
looking for just
one way to be
better than
seeing your beauty
brings out my beast
and I am ashamed of
myself
again
The poem was first published in the literary journal 3R: The Rock River Review, Spring 2012 edition.
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