The Benefits of Hibernating

Now that the last box of ornaments have been put away, and the last Christmas cookie eaten, I am free to journey into that wonderful state of being known as hibernation. The bears aren't the only ones who benefit from hunkering down for the winter and going within to dream of spring, sunshine and happy days outdoors. For generations Native Americans took a page from their brother bear's playbook and used the winter to prepare for spring by repairing their gardening and hunting tools and drying seeds to plant.  But they also used the time to sit around the fire and tell stories that gave the little ones the inner tools they would need to know in order to grow into responsible adults while keeping their heritage alive.

We can use our "dream time" in exactly the same way. I make it a point to watch little or no TV (which I have been doing less of as the years pass anyway- except I seem to be hooked on a program called Tiny House Nation). I pick a topic that I've always wanted to learn more about and use the Internet to teach myself about it, or I learn a new skill, or I do some intense journaling while exploring some idea, emotion or belief that I want to work on. I envision how I want my life to work and then explore what I need to do to get there. Living as I now do out in the country, I venture out for church and grocery shopping only and spend a good deal of time watching the drama of a winter in nature unfold outside of my window - who needs TV? I spend more time reading, praying and meditating, and prepare myself good, healthy foods, something I am in need of after the excesses of the holidays. In short, I treat myself as I would a valued guest in my home.

I admit that not everyone can do what I do as I am retired and do not need to go out to a job every day. But even when I was working, I would limit my time outside of the house in winter  to only those things I absolutely needed to do and combined my to-do lists, like grocery shopping on the way home from work, so that I could spend as much time as possible in  my winter "cave." I usually came out of my hibernation in the spring with a leaner, healthier body, a calm and focused brain, and energy to spare as I ventured back out into the sunshine.

So here's to hibernation. Why not give it a try and see what the bears have been enjoying all along!

And so it is.

What Is Mine To Do

I can hardly believe that I am sitting here writing my annual end-of-the-year post already! It seems as if 2014 flew past at lightening speed for the most part, although I know for a fact that there were 8 weeks between June and August when I thought the time was crawling by just to annoy me personally (recovery time from the fall)!

As most of you know, I am not one for New Year's Resolutions, or goal setting, or making promises I won't keep past January. This year especially, I am taking some very good advice and looking back at 2014 to see what I learned, how I grew (or didn't), what is worth taking into the new year with me, and what needs to be left behind. Most of all, I wanted to look at what I experienced at the time as setbacks which, much to my surprise, turned out to be blessings.

A funny thing happened when I took the time to sit down and run the year in review in my head. I suddenly remembered something that I had heard Colette Baron-Reid, the psychic medium and intuitive, say several times in the years I have been following her work: "What is yours will not go past you; what is yours to do will come to you". As I am a firm believer that we need to follow our gut and go with the messages we are sent, I applied that quote to the events in my life this past year and was more than surprised.

For instance, on the negative side of the equation we have the loss of a job in February, and the injuries I sustained in June when I fell (fractured hip and shoulder, surgery to put pins in my hip). At first I could see no way that these things were mine to do. That is, until I looked at what followed. While I was laid up for the entire summer - those 8 weeks that crawled, remember? - I used the time to finally sit down and do what I had been promising myself I would do for years: I put together a book of essays and published it. For someone who told her mother when she was 5 that she was going to write a book, and then took 60 years to do it, it was as if the Universe said, "okay, time for you to do this." Would I have been able to accomplish this while I was out hunting for a new job? Perhaps, but perhaps not. In this instance, I was unable to go job hunting, so I had no choice but to sit and write.

By September it was clear that I would no longer be able to heal completely if I was going to continue to live in a an apartment that was a third floor walk-up. So along came something else that was mine ... a ground floor apartment opened up in the very town I was yearning to move back to. Now instead of walking up stairs, I was walking outside on grass, watching cows in the field, geese on the pond, and blueberries growing on the hillside. What was mine did not go past me.

If I were to make one promise to myself this year, it would be to look twice at everything that comes my way and see if there isn't something there that is mine to do. I'm not talking about an obligation, but rather a idea or an opportunity that calls to me as if to say, "claim me, I'm yours."  Instead of running to get ahead, I think this year I'll just stand still, listen, and see what comes. Ah-h-h! Hear that? It's the sound of me breathing a sigh of contentment.

Happy New Year. May everything that is yours to do come to you with love and joy. And so it is.

The Gift of Hope

There is a picture hanging on the wall of my bedroom that has hung in every bedroom of every house or apartment I've lived in for the past 25 years. The picture is called In Disgrace, and it shows a little girl of about 3 standing in the naughty corner with her loyal puppy sadly at her feet waiting for her to be reprieved. It was given to me by my youngest daughter, now 43, who spent a good deal of her young life in that same position, only her puppies were imaginary friends. Her favorite line to her pretend puppies was," I hope she doesn't forget us here."

Hope is powerful. As long as we have hope, there is no one and nothing that can stop us from believing that there is another way. I have to admit that of all the gifts  I have written about this month, this one was the hardest to do. It is hard to hold on to hope when all of the news is so bad. Every day when we turn on the TV or log on to the computer we are greeted with another tragedy, another horror, another example of man's inhumanity to man. But somewhere in the back of my mind is a saying passed on to me during some crisis in my life that came to me as I sat down at my desk this morning: "As long as the sun comes up tomorrow, there is always hope ... and the sun always comes up tomorrow, so there is always hope." I would add to that a line from that wonderful movie, The Last Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: "It will all work out in the end, and if it hasn't worked out yet, then it's not the end."

The sun will come out tomorrow, and with that gift, we can do anything. Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday filled with love, joy, and the hope for a better world for everyone. It's time to start writing a new story.

And so it is.

The Gift of Giving

Some of the most meaningful gifts I've received over the years were in response to something I gave to someone else. These weren't always the kind of gifts that were wrapped up in paper and ribbons, although some were. The ones I'm speaking of were gifts that touched my heart and changed my life in some way, and all because I had given a piece of myself to others.

One particular gift came to mind recently. Years ago when I was in my early 30's I became a community outreach worker for an inner city church. The church sat in a neighborhood that had fallen on hard times.The area was mostly African American and Latino.  Unemployment was high as was drug and alcohol use, and child abuse or neglect was all too familiar. Along with providing a Mothers' Morning Out program. which gave at-risk women some much needed free time to themselves while we ran a nursery school of sorts, it was my task to visit the elderly in the neighborhood to make sure that they were being taken care of and that their needs were met. I was also trained to offer to pray with them and, more often than not, just be a friendly ear for those who had no one to talk to.

My very first home visit was to a woman named Blanche. That should have been my first clue as Blanche was my mother's name. Blanche lived in a very run down but very well kept little home that she shared with her adult daughter. Her daughter eyed me suspiciously when I knocked on the door, but when I explained that I was from the church down the block and just wanted to visit with Blanche, her eyes softened. She said that her mother would be so pleased to have someone from church to talk to as she could not get out much any more and that she, the daughter, often worked nights and weekends in housekeeping at a local hospital and couldn't take her mother to church. Blanche was 92 years old.

I found her seated in an old tufted armchair. She was the tiniest African American woman I'd ever seen, with snow white hair pulled back in a bun and dressed in a faded but clean cotton house coat. When her daughter explained why I was there, the smile filled her face.

I was so very nervous. I had never done anything like this before despite all of my training. I was suddenly tongue tied. I didn't know what to say to this beautiful lady and didn't want to let her down. I started pulling out brochures about the programs our church was offering and going into my learned speech. But somehow she knew what was going on in my head, and in my heart. She reached over and took my hand in her two small ones and thanked me for coming to visit her. She asked me to tell her about myself, about my children, and the work I was doing in the neighborhood. She then told me all about herself and how grateful she was for her daughter, for taking her in and taking such good care of her. We spoke of her fond memories spending time at church and we prayed together. Before I left, she leaned over and said, "you did very well, dear. You'll do just fine. Just remember to be yourself because that is beautiful enough for anyone."

I cried all the way back to my office. I had gone there to be a comfort to this lady, and she had comforted me. Blanche made me a better person, and all the work I did after that visit came from my authentic self. She passed away peacefully in her sleep a few months later. I was richer for having known her, and the community poorer for having lost her.

Christmas doesn't come in ribbons and paper. It doesn't come in gift cards and parties. It comes wrapped in love and genuine compassion for others, and for every gift of yourself that you give to another, it comes back ten fold. May your gifts be many and, as the song says, "let your heart be light."

And so it is.

The Gift of Fear

What? Fear is a gift? I'm sure you're wondering what's happened to my sanity, but I can assure you that I am quite serious about that statement. Fear can be a gift. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about danger - that's an entirely different thing. If your house is on fire, get out. If the sirens are telling you a twister is coming, head to the basement. If you're being chased by a bull ... well, you get my drift. Danger is that warning you get to take yourself out of its path. Fear, on the other hand, is a choice.

Fear, by definition, is "a very unpleasant or disturbing feeling caused by the presence or imminence of danger; a feeling of disquiet or apprehension." I italicized those words to point out the fact that what we fear is, more often than not, in our minds rather than in our presence. Mark Twain had a great saying ( I am paraphrasing here): "I've experienced many terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." So if fear is about what might happen, how is that a gift?

When we are afraid of something that may happen, we are acknowledging that something is missing in our lives, as in: "What if I'm not good enough? What if I never meet the right man? What if I lose my job? What if I get sick? What if there is an accident?" When we feel fear, it is a signal to us that we are not living in the present moment.  The moment that the feeling of fear creeps up on us, it is a signal to sit with the feeling and ask ourselves if what you fear is really real or the result of something that happened in the past. That's when you can open the gift and realize that there is nothing inside! Right there, in that moment, you can know that you are okay. How? Because you're still here. You managed to survive and, in some cases, even flourish, and you did it all on your own. So what do you have to be afraid of? We let the experiences of our past put us in a cage of fear, but here is the kicker ... the door was never locked. All it takes to walk out of that cage is a thought, and the beautiful thing about thoughts is that they were made to be changed!

So today I am offering you the Gift of Fear, wrapped in my best intentions, and tied up with all of my love. May you always find it empty!

And so it is.

The Gift of Story

Every year for Christmas I give myself a gift. I know that may sound a little selfish, but really, who is more deserving than you of receiving something that speaks to your true, beautiful self? I don't necessarily mean something like a trip to Aruba or a new car (although both would be lovely). I'm talking about a gift that touches the real you, the you that struggles year in and year out to be the best "you" that you can be? One year I gifted myself a sponsorship of a wolf in Idaho. The connection with that animal gave me something more precious than money. Another year I gave myself a DVD set of a weekend workshop with Louise Hay and Cheryl Richardson that also had life-changing results.

This year I thought I would do it a little differently. First, I decided that I would give myself four gifts, one for each of the weeks leading up to Christmas. Second, I decided to share those gifts with all of you, for all of the wonderful gifts you have given me over the years. So, here we go with Gift #1: The Gift of Story.

Where would we be without our stories? Who would we be without our stories? All the experiences, the joys and sorrows, our upbringing, our cultural environment, our illnesses, our losses and our gains. But do all of these things really tell the story of who we are, or are they simply a list of experiences that happened outside of ourselves and our reactions to them? Are we still living our lives in reaction to the things that happened to us in the past? And what kind of a story about ourselves are we passing on to our children and grandchildren as they venture out into the world to write their own stories?

I don't believe that our stories have to be about why we are the way we are, as if it is all about the fault of someone or something else. We can certainly tell a story of how we experienced these things and, good or bad, what we learned from them that can benefit us going forward as we write the next chapter. I would certainly prefer to tell my grandchildren stories of the experiences of my life that touched my authentic self and how that made me a better person. I want them to know what is best about Grandma. I want them to remember holidays filled with magic and cookies, of playing in the snow, of helping them write their letters to Santa. I want them to remember the stories that came from special moments spent together, and about the wisdom about the world that they learned at my side. I'm not tooting my own horn here. I'm writing my story.

So for this week, I give you all the gift of story. You are the author and you can write it any way you want. It doesn't have to be a fairy tale. Even real stories can end with "and she lived happily ever after" if you're the one who is writing it. What will you write?

And so it is.

Thanks For The Ripples

Since everyone in the U.S. is focused on Thanksgiving this week, I'd like to add my thoughts on what I am grateful for. In particular, I want to express my gratitude for all those people who created a ripple, whether they realized it or not,  that reached out and  affected my life in ways I could never have imagined:

To my 6th grade teacher who gave me hundreds of punishment essays to write because I couldn't keep my mouth shut only to discover the writer that I could be but couldn't hear until I was able to sit still and listen.

To Professor McGonigal, a.k.a. Abba, who came into my life for only one day but who planted seeds that have lasted over 30 years when she told me: "You are seeking answers but you haven't asked the right questions yet. Go out into the world and DO something."

To both of my ex-husbands (saving this for another post) who taught me that I was strong enough to stand on my own two feet and that if I was looking for someone to ride in on a white horse to save me, I only had to look in the mirror to find her.

To my children who taught me how to be a parent, and to my grandchildren who helped me get even better at it.

To all of my beautiful animal companions, those still here and those who have moved on, who taught me the true meaning of loyalty, compassion and unconditional love.

.. and to the little girl inside me, the one who is  perpetually 5 years old, who never lets me stop looking for the magic and helps me to see it when it's there.

Most of all, to all my beautiful Vibrant Nation sisters whose ripples touch me each and ever day. Keep 'em coming. Happy Thanksgiving.

And so it is.