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Walking into the Deep Mystery of Sleep

Sleep has been elusive this past month. First there were the two weeks of jet lag, when I unpacked my bags and waited for all my cells to arrive back home. As I tried to drift off, rich sensory images of the East re-visited me, providing entertainment. But not sleep. I have long had a habit of mining the in-between of re-entry to arrive home with new eyes, to notice what I might have missed before. So my mind has been plenty busy with that a good part of the night.  

This is largely because I immediately realized that my home itself had changed in my absence. The jitteriness all around me was immediately palpable, and this feeling of being on tenterhooks has led up to the election that is taking place as I write. This contagious worry and fear and dread has circulated like an arctic current for the last month, and the hope is that some of it will be alleviated when the polls close tonight.

For me, soothing has come from Medieval mystics, like Julian of Norwich, who famously wrote “all will be well, and all will be well, and all matter of things shall be well.” Except she didn’t write those exact words because she was the first woman to write a book in Middle English. Who knew? What has helped is knowing the world around her was far darker and crazier than ours, and yet her vision was of an unseen future far more hopeful than the plagues and burnings happening all around her.

And then there are visionaries from our time, like Arlie Hochschild, whose interview on On Being has sustained me through this election cycle.

These are the things I remember when I’m writing this, upright in the middle of the day. But the way into sleep is far more mysterious. I wrote this right after my first good night’s sleep, as a way to remember how the back door works. And where the story REALLY begins. It’s a deep story of dreaming, of healing, and of mystery. May you find yours.

 No. Don’t start there. What can dreams tell us anyways?

Some woman. No. Two women following a man climbing a tree.

What? I said: Don’t start there.

Something else beckoned. Some place she could start that was warm.

No. Not warm. Warmer and warmer. Warmest.

Where is that place, a place fit for starting? She wondered aloud this time.

Damn fools in the world, always wanting to get started, she thought, staring up at the faint glow of dark reminders above her head. She had carefully placed them there many years ago as a frazzled young mother, needing a hint, a small spark, some reminder of the dark mysteries just on the other side of the roof.

But now, on her fourth night of lying there flat on her back, she needed not one more freaking reminder of possibilities, mysteries, or anything else. Her brain was already in a lawnmower loop, starting, starting, like someone found the cord to get it going and just kept pulling it again, again, again. What she needed, longed for really, was a way to get herself stopped. To unpull the incessant over-pulled cord of her demanding imagination.

What advice could some dream give me that would resolve this state of affairs? She wondered aloud again. Oops. There she was pulling that same damn cord again.

The cord, the cord, the red cord, tied like a bow, or maybe a fishing hook, dangling just beyond reach. She moved toward it, felt herself sliding down toward the water, shimmying back up, sliding down again.

She let herself drift, and she landed on a raft, a blue, blue raft in a dark grey sea, then holding on to it and bobbing in the warm warm water. The water that held the whale with the warm warm belly, which is where this story really begins.

Shopping for Secrets in Two Worlds

Her oversized suitcase was open: a yawning, yearning invitation. She wanted to fill it with trinkets, with Mardi Gras beads and crow feathers and toys for the children, puzzles and sweets and crayons. They had told her to bring nothing but Tylenol and repellent and filters and probiotics and Pepto-Bismol. All the rest would be hers for a song at the marketplace, they said. 

Why go to a marketplace when all I want is the rarest thing: the silence of no sound, no humming lights, the quiet of my own life? she thought. Why even fill a bag or go to some faraway overpopulated country for that matter? I already know that everything I need is right here. Inside this bubble I call me. In my life as it is. Available.

The silver panel light flickered on at that exact moment. She felt the beckoning of the sleek, square machine, open and ready, offering everything. Her fingers began to itch. All you need to do is cross the room. Tickle the keys. Find the marketplace right here. Easy as that. In no time, new hip packs and bras and wicking socks were on their way. Done.

Four days later, in Kathmandu, the marketplace was all around her, a bazaar as old as a birthing room for a millenia or two, the center of the Tibetan-India trade route. She started out for a walk with friends in Thamel, the old town, with the usual air bubble around her intact. Then two horns converged behind her, having reached a loud agreement that she was wrong, wrong wrong, weaving as she was between rickshaws and motorcycles and people and motorcycles and dogs and motorcycles and broken pavement and motorcycles and still more motorcycles.

Life itself, with all its technicolor terror and magnificence entered her and her private bubble popped. There was nothing to do about it but keep on. Day after day she ventured out into the too-muchness. Her dreams filled up with cacophony and incense and pashmina scarves. She began to long for an escape, and yet still she went forth.

One day she followed the labyrinth of narrow alleyways to the very center and found herself at a bookstore for pilgrims, a site made famous and prosperous by the Hippie Trail of the Sixties. It was deep and tall and stretched back, back , back, filled with esoteric books and tools for the seeker. From what she had heard, it was more humble, more hidden, following the earthquake three years ago. She fumbled around and then requested a title from a small, dark man with wire rim glasses. He nodded, disappeared up, up three flights of stairs. Just when she was about to leave, he returned with a pink paperback. It was a stripped-down version of the beautiful antique illustrated one that she had hoped to find, like the one she had given her own daughter as a teenager. But she had always secretly known that her daughter had never read it, would not. She didn’t find pleasure in long afternoons of reading, preferring to sing and dance instead.

This one was for Preeti, the girl she had come to know only barely, but one whose education she had supported from the other side of the world, one month at a time. She had longed to give her everything. But most of all she dreamed of giving her a way out from the fear and disappointment of her alcoholic stepfather and her sad quiet mother who had escaped with broken teeth and no home or room to claim as her own.

As she paid for the book, The Secret Garden in Nepalthis treasure, she felt right, right right. But when she gave it away she felt even better. A pink, paperback copy of A Secret Garden. Hardly an object to be worshipped and savored, in her country of used book stores and garage sale finds. But Preeti grabbed it, kissed it, refused to offer to loan it to the other children who were already asking. She clung to it in every photo, proudly announcing that it was hers, hers, hers.  

 

Top image by GTMDreams Photos, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license

 

Of Mothers, Daughters, and a Preeti Lama

I used to think that my legacy as a daughter centered on shoes and clothes. But, in all fairness, there is more to the story. Years ago, after my father’s death, my mother started sponsoring little girls in developing countries. Mother never knew that she was a feminist, but it sort of oozed out through the seams of her Midwest life. Letters from Mexico, from India, from points unknown to her festooned her bulletin board and fridge, along with colorful photos of weddings and celebrations. She doted on her girls.

When she had a stroke a year and a half ago, I knew I wanted to continue another of her traditions.  I began to research programs for girls in developing countries. That’s when I came across a troubling TED talk about the tragic consequences of the pressure we put on young girls when we expect them to save the world: see it here. Amy Benson, the speaker, is also a film maker who filmed a promising young female scholar for a year, only to discover that the girl had swallowed rat poison when she couldn’t find a way, as an educated young woman, to fit into her village in Nepal. Some of us pin our hopes on young women from developing countries, but that’s a whole lot of pressure in itself. The kind of support needed to truly prepare these young women to be leaders involves more than an education, I learned. I continued with my research. I later discovered that Amy, the film-maker, did her research, too. She went back to Nepal and sponsored the girl’s two sisters in a program that wraps its arms around the whole child.

So we both landed on Mitrata-Nepal, a small but thorough program founded by a therapist from St. Louis, one child at a time. It provides complete services for their children to enable them to make a leap into leadership once they get their education. Here’s the latest video from Amy. A happy ending. I’ve been donating 10% of every session for the past year to support the foundation. And I’m also sponsoring Preeti Lama, a fourteen-year-old from rural Nepal who is studying in Kathmandu. I’ll be meeting her myself in just a week when I visit her in Nepal. So soon my fridge will be full of exotic photos, too. Johanna Beekman

But this is a story about my own matriarchal lineage, and about finding ways that women can support other women to raise their children up out of poverty. This is where my daughter Johanna comes into the picture. These last months she has been traveling to spread the word about Shakti United, founded this year in the spirit of feminine power and sisterhood. She’s launched a Facebook group, a festival, and several other events with other women, in the spirit of sisterhood. The goal is to celebrate the female voice, literally, with yoga, mantras, chants, and songs. And all of this beauty also helps to support the education for girls in Nepal.

And so…in less than a week, I’ll be in Kathmandu connecting the dots in my lineage as I meet Preeti Lama.  And each of you who I have coached will be there with me there too, in the spirit of strong, committed, caring women.

A Landing Place for the Soul

It’s not too late. Even within the rushing movement of summer, here we are mid-August. Which is still summer. Gosh darn it!

This is what I keep reminding myself as I watch the “doing” pace increase: It’s still summer. The best month for tree-staring. The rest of the season seems to have whirred by like scenes from the bullet train in Japan. Blurred but going somewhere.

But . . . it is still August. Quiet is possible, I remember, even for a few minutes a day. That’s when I find the deeper, quieter parts of myself that I sometimes call my soul. Soul-Retrieval is a “thing” I guess, but I see it as a DIY job. With that in mind, a late summer invocation for your soul.

Remedy for Lost Souls

What if you couldn’t lose your soul?

What if your soul just sometimes lost you?

What if it just couldn’t compete

With the list of what must be done,

Couldn’t be heard

Over the lightspeed whizzing of freeways,

The invisible waves of information,

of entertainment and stimulation

Couldn’t find you, caught as you were

In the death squeeze of entrainment.

What if it’s looking for you right now,

Your soul that is. How would it catch your attention?

Could be a TV commercial or Google Ad would work.

It would have to catch you in the right place, at the right time.

How about making it easier on your poor soul?

Just. Stop.

Spend a day, an afternoon, an hour under a tree. Any tree.

Take nothing but a blanket.

Gaze at the limbs, the teasing blue in the space between branches.

Move in or out of the shade, as needed.

Sigh once. Sigh twice.

Stare at a leaf.

Watch for chipmunks stuffing their cheeks.

Like a bird watcher, quietly wait for a sign.

Silvering light on an aspen leaf will do,

Purple clover or hairy yellow bumble bee.

A patchwork of green and light on the ground around you.

Change on Unseen Levels

I’ve become more and more aware of how change shows up in the last few years, working with dozens of clients and mentoring many of them over an extended period of time.
What one principle emerges from this work? This: Change happens on unseen levels first. I learned early on that focusing on a problem (say, weight loss or clutter clearing) as a first focus just doesn’t usually work. Yes, there may be improvement out front, but it usually doesn’t last. That’s the not-so good news.

Is It Kind To Just Let Yourself Be?

There’s wisdom in the advice to “let yourself be.” As in: to get off of your case, stop pushing/judging/blaming. There’s kindness there.
But when does it stop being kind? When “letting yourself be” means sliding into the same old groove, the patterns that are creating the results that keep you feeling stuck.
“Letting yourself be” isn’t kind if it’s a strategy for avoiding the discomfort that comes from taking action and moving out of your default self. The best way to get unstuck doesn’t always feel kind. It can feel very awkward. It can require staying with whatever’s coming up instead of going robotic in an old tried (but not so true) way.

Default Self, Default Body

I’ve been on a big binge since I returned from Geneen Roth’s residential retreat last week. I’m binging on self-observation, doing deep inquiry into the very archaic patterns I slide into so easily when I’m not paying attention. The one I created when I was almost too young to remember.
My default self has a life of its own. One of the biggest defaults I experience is believing that I made a mistake when I’m confronted with unexpected events. Yesterday I got through half a session with a client who called on the wrong day because I assumed I’d made the mistake. I recovered with time enough to (barely) make it to my strength conditioning class, which was originally on my schedule. Missing this would have been staying with my default body.

Retreating to Advance

When I tell friends I’m going on a retreat, they tend to think of beach walks, massages, “pampering me” time. Or maybe those are the images that get me packed up and out the door. Some retreats are like that, but that’s not the kind I usually choose.

Retreats with a lot of silence and meditation time always bring me home to my own being. So I know the healing powers of quieting the mind in a retreat setting. What I tend to forget is all the resistance of my hyperactive mind. Also the fact that inner work is work. The movement to stillness is usually fraught with the noise of all the annoying thoughts and beliefs that want to be heard and questioned. What I do know from experience is that lasting change begins within, in the silent realm of the unseen. So I have proof that it’s worth it.

During Geneen Roth’s five-day retreat last week I was moved once again by the power of retreating from daily life to discover what I don’t take time to notice in my usual daily flow. Roth eloquently described this magic several times, and I jotted a few things down to remember the next time I believe it’s not worth it to uproot myself and move out of my comfort zone. As I reflect on my experience at this retreat, I find tons of evidence to prove that all the following statements are true. With a capital T. So, from her mouth, here’s a concise list of why I’ll continue to retreat in order to advance toward my true nature.

Married to Amazement: Geneen Roth Retreat

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

These lines by poet Mary Oliver were a theme threading through the retreat with Geneen Roth. Although I’d read the poem many times before, it was a qualitatively different experience to sit with the words, to drop into deep amazement. This morning the state that they invoke feels like the biggest “takeaway” from the event.

From a place of amazement I drop into deep curiosity about what my unique body and self are doing here in this life.

From Boil to Simmer: Retreat Re-entry

As most of my friends and clients know, I just attended a retreat with Geneen Roth, author Women, Food, And God, a book enthusiastically embraced by Oprah on her show last Wednesday, resulting in a #1 best-selling listing.
There is much to share.
And I will, right here, in the next few weeks.
I attended because I just knew I was supposed to, that I was ready really find out what I need to know about my relationship with food AND with Sacred Self. I wanted to accelerate my learning by giving time and attention. I wanted to “discover in a short time what might take months or years to learn.” (Geneen’s words)

Acceptance or Connection?

What’s the difference between a desire for approval (a strategy for gaining acceptance) and a desire for connection? I’ve been sitting with this question during the past week.
Here are some of the what I’ve noticed, in the form of “Questions to Self.”
Where’s my focus? A dead give away. If it’s on others, I’m usually thinking about what they expect of me. Is it on my own sense peace and well-being? It’s connection.

Personalities want something.

I’m reminded this morning of one of Byron Katie’s oft-repeated phrases:

“Personalities don’t love. They want something.”

I’ve been looking at my need for approval and appreciation this month, and this is the refrain that keeps showing up in my mind. When mind is quiet, I’m just simple and present. There’s a space for love to show up, and I love sharing that.
When my “personality” (my social self) runs the show, I do want something. I want others to do what I want them to do so that I can have what I want.

The “Look Good” Religion

I was raised in a traditional religion, but my family had another religion that was more powerful. I call it the Look Goods. As a principal’s daughter in the rural midwest, how I looked and whether I fit in seemed like the bottom line. I can imagine now the beliefs forming in my six-year old head. “Please approve of me,” which carried another assumption: if you did you wouldn’t leave me.”

I would belong. A powerful motivator for a first grader. What did I stand to lose if “they” didn’t approve? Everything. Security. Comfort. So what I did was become inauthentic to gain that approval. I began to do, to dress, to say what I thought would win them over. I became a false version of me.

“Personalities don’t love…they want something” Byron Katie

This week I’ve been noticing when I use my well-honed charm and persuasive personality to get something from other people. Something like approval. Appreciation. Respect. Income.

Something like love. But, I notice, it’s not love. It’s about me. When I put on my “look goods,” I’ve found, I can get the approval I think I crave. But there’s always something missing. I tend to believe, deep down inside, that they’re buying my act. And then I need to keep acting or manipulating to get more of it.

It’s an expensive addiction.