Posts Categorized: Family Stress

Surrender, Queen of the Universe

in Confusion to Clarity, Family Stress, Radical Kindness, Surrendering, Winter

Red Queen

I often want things to go my way. Like almost always. After all, I have a bit of life experience to drawn on. I often seem to think that I can predict the future based on this experience. It turns out sometimes I can’t.

Like almost always.

It’s true that my life experience gives me a kind of edge in the wisdom department. I draw on this well daily, hourly. I like to stir that up with a little intuition and a gift for good guesses. Sometimes that’s useful…lots of the time. My inner team calls that the Life Lessons Department.  Its mission is to learn from mistakes and try again.

To lean into the growth that some modicum of maturity has brought and to trust what I have come to know from experience. Read More>>

Only Love Flows

in Family Stress, Noticing, Wordlessness

Heart water splash

This may be the most Most Personal and Private Thing that I have ever shared in a blog. It ‘s about that thin veil between the probable and the improbable. The veil that is only occasionally pierced. It’s about my sister’s suicide, which always seemed too big to write. It’s about the Woo (as in “Woo Woo,” or The Big Mystery).

And it’s about the truth of this world, as I have come to experience it: the incredible Sea of Love that holds us all, no matter what. Read More>>

It’s the Glue

in Confusion to Clarity, Family Stress, Getting Unstuck, Radical Kindness

I recently heard of a Tibetan Rinpoche who said “it’s not the thought. It’s the glue.” Body and mind shouted, YES!

I’ve spent a whole lot of time in the last seven years looking for THE thought that would bring freedom, finding thought after thought that opened the doors of truth. Painful beliefs have a way (only always) of not being true.

But, dang it, some of those doors are pretty determined to slam shut again. It’s as if there is a very viscous and sticky substance that allows them to open just enough to get a peek of possibility, but then pulls them closed. So I’ve been getting curious about that glue, poking a stick in it and then pulling it out and seeing what happens, as I sit in my own inquiry.

Reflections after a Dead Puppy Christmas

in Family Stress, Radical Kindness, Winter

Every year at this time I ask myself the question. “Now where was I?” It’s as if I left “my life” for somebody else’s. Which just might be true, at one level. Always the holidays are full to overflowing with the unexpected. This year my daughter brought home puppies from a rescue mission that had gone awry and we set up an emergency vet clinic here, where we nursed and held half-pound infants, trying desperately to save them from the ravages of Parvo. Only one of 15 made it, and it was happily delivered on Christmas eve. In the middle of all this sadness, carols, games with friends, and the Beatles on Wii were islands of laughter.

Which brings up the big savior: dark humor. I’ve lived long enough to keep in mind the story in family history WHILE going through the tough stuff. This will be the Christmas of the Dead Puppies, and we will laugh. Soon.