Exactly what I need to focus on today.....

Source: yesandyes.org via Laura on Pinterest

Outwaiting Clouds.....

Quite a lot has happened in the last few weeks. I have been at a new job for 2 weeks now, working for a freight forwarding and logistics company. Completely new for me. The first job I've ever had where I can't wear tracksuit pants to work, where I sit at a desk for 8 hours a day and where I don't work weekends. I'm slowly getting used to this though and its nice for now to be in a routine that is more stable, particularly with the little man. I'm also playing hockey again (I can't believe its been 3 and 1/2 years since I last played). Feels great to run around again and push myself, as well as having laughs with the hockey gals.

The main purpose of this post was to share some words of wisdom from Mark Nepo. In particular, I want to dedicate them to my friend Alanna, who I had the pleasure of catching up with for dinner last week. I hadn't seen her in ages and she has been through some extraordinarily difficult times since I saw her last. I hope that in some small way our time together on Thursday night helped ease her burden a little and she felt my love and support. Whilst I don't know what it feels like to lose your mother, I do know what it feels like to lose someone close to you and what it feels like to go through periods in life where it seems everything has turned upside down and nothing feels 'right'. These words resonated with me and Alanna, I hope they comfort you in some way too....

Outwaiting Clouds

The bud in half bloom outwaits the clouds

Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart, and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside. Yet, just because I can't make it to the light today doesn't mean that the light has vanished. In truth, the heart, like the Earth, is continually blanketed by ever-changing atmospheres that come and go between who we are and how we live our days.

So faith, it seems, can be defined as the effort to believe in light when we're covered by clouds, and though it feels like the sun will never come again, the truth is it has never stopped burning its light. In fact, its heat and warmth is burning steadily, right now, on the far side of whatever cloud we are under.

If we could only suspend our judgement when clouded in the heart. For many skepticisms are born from conclusions drawn while unable to see, as if any kind of understanding will prevent the clouds from coming or going, again and again.

But no cloud lasts forever. The Earth and all that grows from it knows this well. So does the heart and everything that grows from it, in spite of all our very understandable pains.

(Taken from "The Book of Awakening" by Mark Nepo)

Life's wild ride....

Holy Moly - what a ride this past few months has been for me. As is the case for everyone at certain times, life throws you a curve ball and you seem to get your butt kicked. And I have sufficiently had my butt kicked, let me tell you. Its not necessarily in a bad way. Its been kicked in the way it does when you weren't anticipating certain things, happenings or feelings arising, and when they do they hit you like a steam train. The catalyst for this for me was finally stopping everything. Perhaps, somewhat naively, I thought that I would stop, create space in my life, then just happily move forward into the next phase. But if I think about everything I have been through in the last 3 or so years, its no surprise really that once I stopped, every emotion, thought or feeling that had been suppressed by the chaos of every day life bubbled to the surface. I know that this was completely necessary, so that I could work through any un-resolved issues and drop excess baggage in order to move into a better place in my life. But knowing that hasn't made it any easier. Its very humbling though to go through these phases, where everything is turned upside down and where you feel as though you are strapped into an out of control ride. All you can do is close your eyes and hold on, trusting that the end of this ride or phase will come (even though in your darkest moments you can't fathom that it ever will).

In the short term, I could have just run away from the pain or feelings (and believe me there were many times when I wanted to). But I knew that they would simply re-surface later and that no matter how hard it was, I needed to deal with what was in front of me. As Mark Nepo says in his Book of Awakening, 'It seems that whatever the door, whatever our fear - be it love or truth or even the prospect of death - we all have this choice, again and again: avoiding that part of our house or opening the door and finding out more about ourselves by waiting until what is dark becomes seeable.'

Whilst I still have a lot of work to do in clearing out the old ways of being and thinking that no longer serve me, I do at least feel like the wild ride is slowing down somewhat. Its still dark but I'm catching more and more glimmers of light and can see that what is dark will become seeable.......

Broken Open.....

I've just started reading "Broken Open" by Elizabeth Lesser. It seems that I have dog eared every page because so much that she writes is speaking to me. I've always been a massive reader but lately I feel like I have been guided to certain books when I'm in book shops. Perhaps my angels or guides or someone is looking out for me and sending me in the direction of books that will help me through this stage of life. Here are some of my favourite snippets so far:

• And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was even more painful than the risk it took to blossom - Anais Nin. Your heart is like the flower. Let it break open. What you want is waiting for you in your own heart. The time has come.


• To be human is to be lost in the woods. None of us arrives here with clear directions on how to get from Point A to Point B without stumbling into the forest of confusion or wrongdoing. Although they are dark and dangerous, it is in the woods that we discover our strengths. We all know people who say their cancer or divorce or bankruptcy was the greatest gift of a lifetime - that until the body, or the heart or the bank was broken, they didn't know who they were, what they felt, or what they wanted. Before their descent into the darkness, they took more than they gave, or they were numb, or full of fear or blame or self pity. In their most broken moments they were brought to their knees; they were humbled; they were opened. And later, as they pulled their lives back together, they discovered a clearer sense of purpose and a new passion for life.


• We can go back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change or we can stay awake and be broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us - secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.


• Albert Einstein warned 'No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it'. In other words, don't try to solve a problem using the same mixed up thinking that got you into the mess in the first place. You will just keep swimming around in tight little circles of indecision and fear.


• Something told me I would not find my way out of this quandary using the same old arguments, but I didn't know where to look for a new perspective. It was as if I was under water, swimming around and around in the darkness. Far above me, beyond the weight of an ocean of worries, a ray of light was pointing in a luminous, new direction, but I was to distracted to notice. I was caught in waves of conflicting questions: Would I ruin my children's lives by getting divorced? Or was it worse for them to live with unhappy parents? Was I a dreamer, looking for an elusive happiness that real life could never deliver? Or were we meant to know the rapture of being alive, even at the cost of breaking the rules?


• How was i to break out of my tight circle of fear into a new consciousness? How did Einstein do it? How did he quiet the admonishing, skeptical voices in his head - the ones barking bad directions - long enough to hear the steady whispers of the universe? How was he able to peer beyond himself and follow the light to more lucid answers?


• The soul comes to earth to learn lessons, not to get married or stay married or to take this job or that job. You have been asking the wrong question. The question is what lesson does your soul want to learn? Do you know?


• Only those who love themselves can love others, and only people who claim their own voice can hear the true song of another.


• The philosopher William James wrote that there are two kinds of people in this world - the Once Born and Twice Born. Once born people do not stray from the familiar territory of who they think they are and what they think is expected of them. If fate pushes them to the edge of Dante's famous dark woods - where the straight way is lost - they turn back. They don't want to learn something new from life's darker lessons. They stay with what seems safe, and what is acceptable to their family and society. They stick to what they already know but don't necessarily want. Once born people may go through life and never even know what lies beyond the woods - or that there are woods at all. A Twice born person pays attention when the soul pokes its head through the clouds of a half lived life. Whether through choice or calamity, the Twice born person goes into the woods, loses the straight way, makes mistakes, suffers loss and confronts that which needs to change within himself in order to live a more genuine and radiant life.


• The journey from Once born to Twice born brings us to a crossroads where the old ways of doing things are no longer working but a better way lies somewhere at the far edge of the woods. We are afraid to step into those woods but even more afraid to turn back. To turn back is one kind of death; to go forward is another. The first kind of death ends in ashes; the second leads to rebirth.


• Twice born people trade the safety of the known for the power of the unknown. Something calls them into the woods, where the straight path vanishes, and there is no turning back, only going through. This is not easy. It is very real and very difficult. To face our shadow - the dragons and hags we have spent a lifetime running away from - is perhaps the most difficult journey we will ever take. But it is there, in the shadows, that we retrieve our hidden parts, learn our lessons, and give birth to the wise and mature self. From my personal experience and from the work I have done with men and women in my workshops, I know the difficulty of the dark journey is matched only by its rewards.

Having some faith....

I've been in hibernation for the past month really. Mind working over time and finding it hard to make sense of where I am right now. So the only thing to do has been to take a few steps back and give myself permission to just exist. Without trying to figure anything out or 'fix' anything. I'm in 'one day at a time' mode. I did want to post my horoscope for today though because it has given me some faith that if I just keep letting things 'be', they will all work out as they need to:

"Confusion about where you want to go and where you want to be is going to ease up once the weekend has been and gone. If you're still trying to work out what really matters to you in the grand scheme of things, then don't burst a brain cell. Just let events continue to unfurl and it should become more and more obvious where and when you need to change things and where things are actually quite fine as they are now. Getting answers to these questions will bring you some luscious and delicious inner peace".

Sounds great!

Still floating along...

Image by Firefox via Flickr

Yes, I have been silent for a while but I'm still here. Floating along, taking one day at a time. Until recently, I felt like I have been dragged under rapids and could not get my head above water. My whole world seemed to be a big mess of confusion and my head was, for the most part, full of anxiety, panic, overwhelm and sadness. Nothing per se has changed with my life situation. I'm still applying for jobs and not knowing where I want to go or what I want to do. But I can feel a slight shift in that I feel, for some periods of time at least, I am managing to come up for air. So you might say, I'm still in the rapids but I've got my life vest on and I can at least keep my head above water to breathe. I still have at least 20 moments every day of gut wrenching panic where my brain kicks in (or probably more my ego) and cries "Where are you? How did you get here? What are you doing? Is this it?" I have no real answers to these questions except to say "I am where I am". I know that sounds very zen like and it may appear that I have complete acceptance of where I am. Let me just say that this is not the case. I have to work every day at reminding myself of this. Of not putting more pressure on myself to figure it all out or to 'fix' this. My head would like to flick a switch right now and have everything move into place. My head feels like it can't go one more day with all these question marks, insecurities, instability, discomfort and emotional ups and downs. But my heart knows this is not the answer. The answer lies in what I discover about myself through this time. And I dare say that all this emptiness has occurred so that there is nothing to hide behind. No juggling of crazy work hours or demands of being a Mum. No spending 2 hours of my day in aggravating traffic getting to and from work etc etc.

What I have discovered so far is that despite my best intentions, my self worth and who I am, have been totally tied up in my work. Without my work and how that defines me, I have no idea who I am. Obviously our self worth is going to be defined to a certain degree by our jobs as this is what we do with the majority of our time. But there is a danger that comes when we can only define ourselves through our work or roles as a mother or partner. When we fail to put aside time to remain in touch with who we are as a person, without the other elements and distractions, we lose ourselves. Being connected to that part of you is what sustains you through all times, good and bad. Your understanding of who you are, and your love for yourself, is the one thing that I feel helps you the most in moving through life. Its the anchor point that helps you maintain stability or balance regardless of what is going on in the world around you.

I know what it is like to find your balance or anchor point. My experience with post natal depression forced me to find it. It wasn't easy to find and took me a while to get there, but eventually I did. And it truly was amazing. To have that sense of peace and of being complete and whole as a person, no matter what was happening around me, was priceless. And it was the gift that post natal depression gave me. So why am I sitting here two and half years later trying to 'find it' again, you ask? Basically, I stopped making that aspect of life a priority. I didn't mean to, and probably didn't even realise I had. But life keeps moving and situations change (God knows just about every part of my life has changed in the past 2 years). Stress, emotional upheaval, tiredness, sadness, work etc are often the things that affect our ability to stay in touch with ourselves and to be able to give ourselves what we need. But the problem is, its through these times that we need that personal anchor and stability the most. We have to make time for ourselves no matter how busy, tired, stressed or happy we are (often when things are going really well in other areas of life it can make you feel like your self love or understanding will just maintain itself, without any sustained input. Not so my friends. We need to fuel that part of ourselves just like we need daily food and water to sustain our physical needs). Also, the things that fill us up will change too but if we don't stay in touch with ourselves we may not realise until its too late. We need to be aware of how to take care of ourselves emotionally and spiritually as this is what enables us to endure the downs (without them being monumental) and enjoy the ups.

So the one thing that is clear to me right now, is that I let my tank run completely and utterly dry. And once you do that it can be very, very difficult to turn things around. I could sit here and beat myself up about letting my life get to this point again. But that will ultimately get me nowhere and waste the precious energy I do have. So instead, I will continue to put one foot in front of the other and seek help to help restore or re-fill my tank and do my best to make sure I never let it get that empty again.

Switching thoughts....

Today I had a moment of deep dark fear where my mind went to a not so great place. Its doing that a lot lately but today was the first time in ages that those thoughts were about my son. I was overwhelmed by fear about not being a good mum, not being enough for him, not being able to give him certain things, making decisions that might negatively affect him etc etc. From a logical perspective I know that all of these concerns are not founded in any reality, but sometimes I find it difficult to get myself out of that head space. And all afternoon I have been thinking 'What would I tell a friend if they came to me and said they had been thinking those things?'. What I would tell them is that loving your children is the most important thing. That they will remember the time they spent with you doing simple things. Like painting at home or chasing you in the park or stories at bedtime. We can't predict what will happen in the future and all you can ask of yourself is to do the best that you can do in each moment and each day. As parents, we will never be perfect. We will get it wrong, make mistakes, have our kids be angry with us - and the list goes on. But if we spend all of our time worrying about the 'what if's', we miss the 'what is'.

And 'what is' for me today was an adorable little being who is the love of my life. Who ran up to me when I picked him up at daycare. Who let me kiss him about a thousand times. Who sat next to me watching Two and a Half Men, Glee ads (his fave) and The Biggest Loser. Who checks my heart with his pretend doctors kit. And who always makes me wonder how I could ever have been so lucky to have a part in making such a wonderful little person.