Courageous Moments

For some reason this morning I told a client the story of my mother’s passing. On reflection, it was because this woman had been struggling for twenty years to accept a devastating experience in her life. She hadn’t accepted it twenty years ago and still couldn’t come to terms with it, all these years later. She hated what it had done to her life.

During our conversation, I flashed to my mother’s passing three years ago and decided to tell my client the story. My mother had had a massive heart attack and had lost half her heart. Unable to breathe on her own, she was put on a respirator while we waited for the rest of the family to arrive. My dad wanted to make the decision with all five kids there. So we waited in that limbo space with her, with him, with all of us. When we were all there my dad gave the order to have the tube removed. It took some time for my mother to regain consciousness. When she did, she looked around, blinking, and with a scratchy voice asked, “What happened?”

That moment will live as the defining courageous and humble moment of my life. My dad, my Irish Catholic, not very talkative dad, looked at my mother and spoke without embellishment or elaboration. The clarity defined the moment. “Dorothy, you’re dying.” He let the words hang in the air. I felt myself explode into the grandness of the moment. The immense reality had been spoken. There was no dissonance there.

My mother, trying to grasp it, spoke the question back, “I’m dying?” “Yes, Dorothy, you’re dying. You had a heart attack and you won’t recover.” No “ifs,” “buts,” or any confusion. There it was. The reality of the moment. My father opened us to reality and allowed us to enter this sacred journey with my mother as she left her body.

The story led my client and me into a larger question: How often do we let ourselves be with reality as it is? Mostly we seem to want to change it, alter it, shift it, bargain with it. What courage it takes to be with it. Soften into it. Allow it to be there, talk to us, communicate with us and alter us. My client thanked me for the story. I thanked myself actually. The memory always alters me. The inquiry invites me into quiet reflection. Mostly I thank my father for the courage of his being.

The Mermaid Chair

“I felt amazed at the choosing one had to do, over and over, a million times daily – choosing love, then choosing it again, how loving and being in love could be so different.”

It is as though life is about making those small, moment to moment choices to love to step into that dance. Sue Monk Kidd wrote her novel, The Mermaid Chair about a woman Jessie who travels into her life to re-find what the love that is precious to her. Along the way Jessie dives deeply into herself and begins to dance again, stepping into the dance of the divine running rampant.

“Sometimes I experience God like this Beautiful Nothing…and it seems then as though the whole point of life is just to rest in it. To contemplate it and love it and eventually disappear into it. And then other times it’s just the opposite. God feels like a presence that engorges everything. I come out here, and it seems the divine is running rampant. That the marsh, the whole of Creation, is some dance God is doing, and we’re meant to step into it, that’s all.”

On"Mattering" and Being Aligned

Not being much of a celebrity watcher I had never seen Reese Witherspoon do much until she accepted her Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as June Carter in the movie, Walk The Line. After watching the Academy Awards (which I love since I love seeing people being acknowledged, more than I care about the films) I heard that she was commanding the highest fee (supposedly $29 million) for women in film, equaling that of the top men. In her speech that night, Reese spoke of her parents, "I am so blessed to have my family here tonight. My mother and my father are here. And I just want to say thank you so much for everything, for being so proud of me. It didn't matter if I was making my bed or making a movie. They never hesitated to say how proud they were of me. And that means so very much to a child."

Imagine having someone proud of you for every little thing you did. It's easy to be proud of someone for getting an award or doing something that is obviously successful. It's much harder to remember to be proud of others, or ourselves, for the simple things, like making your bed. I reflect on the lives of most of my clients. They haven't had the experience of someone being consistently proud of them for the big things, let along the little things.

Watching Reese accept her award that night, I could see the "energetic" difference that made in her. She held herself with a certain clarity that was solid and yet clean. Knowing she has a "good" image in the press, I could see why. She looks like someone who doesn't attract "icky" stuff. She seems to radiate goodness and ease and a certain comfort level.

Reese also spoke of the impact her grandmother had on her, "My grandmother was one of the biggest inspirations in my life. She taught me how to be a real woman to have strength and self respect, and to never give those things away. And those are a lot of qualities I saw in June Carter. People used to ask June how she was doing, and she used to say -- "I'm just trying to matter." And I know what she means. You know, I'm just trying to matter, and live a good life and make work that means something to somebody."

How simple that statement is, "I'm just trying to matter." Seeing that desire to matter in Reese combined with the internal, psychological platform of growing up knowing what she does matters to others (like making her bed!) shows up in her energetic alignment. What was/is, so striking is how she has that sense of being completely aligned inside. All the internal pieces line up (hence her ability to command a terrific fee for each movie). The inside lines up with the external reality.

It's so much easier to have that kind of alignment when you had a childhood that laid those positive pieces down. But not having it earlier on doesn't mean we can't have it now! Reese gave us in her speech keys to doing it for ourselves: having our lives matter and being proud of every little thing we do. Sometimes the teachings come in interesting ways!

Finding New Thoughts?

It’s hard to find something to be uplifted about when our minds have been bogged down with negativity for a long time. I saw that this morning as I watched a client this morning come in feeling lousy, heavy, despondant. Having centered myself before she came I wanted some shift to occur and was willing to wait patiently for the opening to support the shift in happening. We explored the anger and hatred that fills her like the tree roots spread deep through her system. Feeling like that how could she change she asked? We tried some techniques to support her shift, especially Internal Family Systems. That worked a little bit.

And then we fell to talking. She expressed how she couldn’t even imagine feeling good each day. She hasn’t felt like that in 20 years. I challenged that thought, after all I knew there were tiny, overlooked moments in every day where she had a laugh or felt a tiny bit better. I told her it only takes seconds built on other seconds for each moment to shift. She had seen the movie, What the Bleep? and loved it. I thought it a handy moment to remind her about Candace Pert’s work and how these little synapse get reinforced with each thought that we have. Each thought builds on the other, sending neurons firing in one direction. The more we repeat the thought the more habituated the synapse are. That path is so familiar and easy. The thoughts come without thinking.

Finding new thoughts can feel more difficult. Thinking about the work of Abraham I suggested we take 20 seconds to feel good. Just 20 seconds. No big deal, I’d help her I told her. I asked her what happens in her body when she imagined her son seeing her feeling good and doing better in life. Relief she says. How’s that feel in your body? Better. Let’s think of other thoughts to help you move in that direction. For the next minute we sat there and felt the relief and the ease and how good it would feel if he saw her that way. Happened easily and effortlessly. Only 60 seconds. Sounds like a miniscule amount of time, but you know, we all know, that when we are feeling bad, shifting those thoughts is not the easiest thing to do.

It’s really the razor’s edge. Shifting our thoughts. Bob Proctor has an excerpt on his website called the Razor’s Edge. He reminds us that there’s can sometimes be not much difference between one person and the other. Often it’s just those little thoughts that over time tip in one direction or the other.

Thinking about that my client told me that she and her son like to watch American Idol. I had actually caught 20 minutes of the show last night so I could be somewhat intelligent about it. They love watching it and seeing what makes the difference between one kid that wins and one that gets told it’s the end of the road. I asked her if she remembered the kid on the show, Kevin Covais, the one that looks nerdy, with the really short, stubby hair and glasses. Ah, yes! She lights up. Her son loves him. Feels that kids is the underdog and identifies with him. I asked her how a kid like that could have such good energy. Right away she’s nodding. She knows exactly what I mean. This kid wouldn’t be on the show without whatever light he has inside him. He feels like such a good kid. Makes you just want to love him.

She got it. I asked her how she felt inside. Relaxed, happy, pleased. Not like she came in. It’s not anything I did. She did it. All she had to do was remember what makes her feel good and expound on it. Second upon second, minute after minute, until it becomre more of a habit than the anger and pain she’s been living with.

She left smiling. Feeling inspired. Gotta say, I did too.
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