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Imagine that your life is a bowl of soup, that what we put in each day is what our soup will taste like.  We can only expect our soup to taste like what it is we add, nothing more and nothing less! 

 

“What we put in comes out.”  That was the topic on the Dr. Robin Smith program yesterday.

 

During the show a woman calls in and states that she is unable to receive, that for so many years she has been the giver.  We learn that she and her four sisters were children of an alcoholic mom, and they had to take care of themselves, so we learn she was not taught to receive, for no one gave to her.

 

I was amazed that even such a simple thing as receiving is a taught behavior. 

 

If a mother is unable to give, the children are unable to receive, that is simply amazing to me! 

 

In order for a child to relax and be, they have to know that they will be taken care of, they have to have trust.  If not, they take care of themselves and it becomes a life long pattern.

 

I did not know that receiving and trust walked hand and hand. 

 

I did not know that when I was taking care of others, it was all I had to offer….I was taken care of soup!  If you needed things taken care of, call the taken care of soup girl, she will ladle out a bowl of it.

 

What else came up in the program was how if we are not treated as the gifts we are, we don’t know how to be a gift.  If we never received treatment of being a precious person, we are unable to see ourselves as that. 

 

We lose our giftedness.

 

Our soup has no gift inside, like a box of cracker jacks without the prize!

 

As I look back at my old soup recipe I see the ingredients to be lacking me, me, myself and I.

 

I was nowhere in that bowl of soup, yet I was forever giving of myself, perhaps I gave me all away!

 

We all have a soup starter, we all began somewhere, but it is now up to us to add or take it from here.

 

It is time to add the new ingredients that will make you you! It is time to add a dash of this and pinch of that, and little by little you will change the flavor of you. 

 

With understanding your starter kit, you can then make adjustments to balance out the flavors one item at a time.

 

We can only give out what we put in.

 

Put in lots of fun things, exciting things, new things, old things, passionate things, colorful, meaningful, artful, graceful, etc…..make your life a great big exciting bowl of you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am going away today to give my kids a break.  Okay and me too.

 

My husband and I are taking our El Camino, a Tent and bodies weary of being sooooo responsible.  We get to be just two people, enjoying the sights, connected without interruptions, with no schedules to keep, just kids again.  He asked when I would like to come home, I said, “the Fall”…but really just a few days will be enough to balance us all out.

 

We don’t know who is more excited about the separation the kids or us!

 

The weather is bright, the temps a bit cool, but our enthusiasm will cover the rest. 

 

What will we see, hear and taste, where will we go, what will we do?

 

There is a quilt show there, and I will wander around gathering new inspiration and ideas, my Artist self is sooo excited.

 

The rest is open for possibilities we have a general direction but no set plans in all the wide-open spaces on either side of the show.

 

Feeling the excitement, the unknown, dreaming and wondering of what will be there, who knows what opportunities will arise.  We head out and say yes to whatever grabs our attentions and off we go!

 

We are like horses ready to break out of the gate, restrained for just a wee bit too long!  Our inner children are ready to go!

 

A sign to be hung on this site, “Off Exploring!”

 

Time, I am chasing time, time is all that matters, time for this and no time for that, and we have only a little time to finish, time for the next task, time to be done, time to go, time to do this and time to do that.

 

Who is in charge of this? Time?  What is time and who decides the amount of time and when time is running out?

Time seems to overshadow or overrule or eclipse the life in front of it.

 

Time is fleeting, time is racing, time is dragging, time is gone, time. There seems to be a well of time which is either overflowing or empty and it is endless and ever changing illusive a thief a magician, into thin air.

 

If not time, it is the task.  The task it seems takes over for time.

 

It is now time to do the wood, so we race to complete the task in record time.  No breaks, no play and there is not time for nonsensical laughter!  No time for the task is at hand.

 

Tasks and time are the rulers of the earth, and people are running fast behind or speeding ahead endlessly racing to catch up, to finally complete, to gain the edge on time and task!

 

We have lots of construction in our little town, and they have us going backwards where we used to go forwards, down one- way streets going in the wrong direction. Like counter clock wise! 

 

We are being shown a new side of our same little town, the other side of buildings that for years we neglected to see.  We are seeing roads we never traveled on, because they were just a little off the beaten trail.

 

It had me pondering just how much in life is the same?  Where are we just mindlessly following and doing repeatedly without seeing another side?

 

Do we need detours of death and sickness to get us to travel in a new direction, to see things differently, does life give us detours to slow us down, to toss out time and task and see relationships along the way?

 

I can relate to road construction, to ‘slow’ signs, to feeling inept in familiar places, to see things that seem backwards, even if the territory is familiar.

 

Tragedies in life are like construction zones, we have to learn how to navigate heading in a new direction.

 

Construction zones are for improvements and perhaps so are tragedies, they are there to remind us where we are focusing our attentions.

 

I have learned that time and project can’t be as important as individual.  That time will pass without me paying attention to it, it doesn’t need my assistance, it comes and it goes without my direction. 

 

During my inner construction I was given the opportunity to see other sides of many things and that has made improvements in my world. 

 

When you take away time and task what is left in the space?

Who is standing there and what is your relationship?  Drop the titles and see beneath.

 

Who is standing there in time, who are we missing as we focus on time, who is running after time, who is forever ahead of time, who slips away as we chase another task?

 

Is it time we are chasing and losing or is it ourselves?

Did we lose ourselves in time?

Or did we find ourselves just in time.

 

Time fades away in the moment of now, it stops.

 

I am here now one point in time.

Me.

 

Yesterday I learned that a friend of mine died, she had been suffering for many years, gripped in a mad dance of addictions, her abused mind wouldn’t allow a space of peace.

 

When speaking to her in the past many years, she would go backwards to a place in time.  She was the girl that would dare to do things just for shock value, and giggle at your expense, with a twinkle in her eye and a mind that was never still, she was bright beyond, athletic and in love with hockey, so social with a friend on every corner, boys and girls both clamored to be in her presence, for where she went excitement followed.

 

What happens then to a girl with so much, what makes it all turn and take a severe left, what puts out the twinkle in her eye, and little by little she became homeless, the lady on the streets who slept under overpasses, what goes so wrong? 

 

How is it possible to live so many contrasts, it seemed like she experienced all walks of life in this one lifetime. 

 

She went from the most popular the most likely to succeed, to working in neonatal nursery's with the teeniest of babies, a nurse that lovingly cared for others, she excelled at hockey at time when women were first making inroads there.  She was the first to give you what you needed, always.  She was generous even when she had nothing left to give, but to share past memories.

 

What happens that dashes all of her dreams, crashes all of the hopes, and leaves you literally homeless?

 

We talked once about her life in a moment of clarity, and she herself said that pain and pain alone has been her greatest enemy.  Pain or perhaps it was the fear of feeling and getting lost in the pain, so instead she became lost in the haze that covered the pain. 

 

I knew she was a walking talking suffering wound in search of and forever plotting out the next fix to cover it up, like band-aid or pill that magically doused the fire within.

 

Self -inflicted is what I have heard of her illness, that she inflicted this damage on her body and life, that she is the one who controlled that. 

 

Surely that is wrong, for who in their right mind would choose something so hurtful to herself?  Why would you want to lose so much?

 

Was it her intentions to live this life?  Was it a conscious effort to do so?  Are addicts grown out of simple desire for the item they are addicted to?  Like if you eat too much apples you become addicted?

 

What I am more and more convinced of is that the mind is the one addicted, not the body.  The body just happens to be along for the ride.

 

What happens to the soul, when the mind seems to take over the drivers seat? Where is it then?  Does it sit back behind the drunken haze, under the seeping wound, just waiting? 

 

Waiting until the body and mind fall and are rendered useless.

 

Was her life all for naught?  Or was it a life that her soul got to experiences a volume of human existence?  As you look upon her life it was filled to the brim with both the darkness and the light, the brightest and the darkest, beauty and the beast, loving and hating both inside and out.

 

It was truly an amazing life, one that only a few would have the courage to live.  Her stories were enough to scare me like watching and knowing a walking story of intrigue.  What will happen next?

 

If this is the earth school and when you die it is graduation, and when you get to the other side and have a review of how it all went, her review will be a grand event, her learning was far and wide, her review test will be in volumes not in pages.

 

I hope her souls journey was exactly as it was designed, that she met and did all that she was set up to do, and that she passed with flying colors.

 

I will remember her always as one who lived, lived in a large way whether it was surfing in Hawaii to flying around Alaska, to hanging our dirty tights on limb after unsuccessfully navigating a stream in our church clothes, even being homeless in Alaska.

 

To me she is a little girl who lived a life that few could live, a brave girl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The more of our self we own, the less need for enemies to embody our disowned darkness.  Everything is welcomed by the soul.”  Pat B. Allen.

 

People are carrying the dark parts of us?  Who we call our enemies are really folks carrying our darkness, our disowned darkness.  So if we OWN our own darkness, then we will no longer have enemies?

 

Darkness what is darkness?  They are carrying our darkness, what is that?  How do you explain darkness to others, how can a child know what this darkness is?

 

If you showed a child an enemy of yours what would they look like, speak like, act like?  Here is my enemy?

 

How odd this all seems that our enemies are here to bring us a piece of ourselves we lost or disowned.  That seems like a good thing, yet why are we so opposed?

 

Enemies are our friends. Then who are our friends? Enemies?

 

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”  Martin Luther King Jr.

 

I think this is all interesting. 

 

Can it be that silent friends can become our worst enemies?

 

“Enemies will embody our disowned darkness.”

I wonder than what friends embody?  What is their role?

 

Disowned darkness is not that there isn’t darkness within us, there is, but we don’t want to own it and only our enemies are brave enough to show us where we are not!

 

Doesn’t this make sense, for I know that there are many times that I didn’t want to point out to a friend a dark spot along the way.  And I have also experienced losing them when I did.

 

In the end I became the enemy that carried their darkness for them, I became dark and unfriendly, this is amazingly accurate when I look at it.

 

You become the message not just the messenger.

 

Within my family I became the dark sheep, hey is that where the term came from, anyway I became the darkness for speaking the truth of what is.

 

If I was the enemy for speaking the truth, what were their friends telling them?

 

I am way confused on what being friend is now, for it sure seems backwards to me.

 

In my experience, being friendly AND being truthful isn’t seen as one and the same!

 

I literally remember being thrown back when they didn’t want to hear what I had to say!  I was startled when I found myself standing against them as their enemies for speaking of reality.

 

It wasn’t that I was making up stories or telling them lies against what is, I was just standing in a spot and being a commentator of it.  And I became worse then the actual crime.

 

Can a crime be owned or disowned?  It surely seems that way.  But whether you own it or not will it still have happened?

 

When I arrive in front of my family they see me as their enemy, I am the one who is the problem, me.

 

I used to say, “how in the hell am I the problem, me the ‘little girl’ in the molestation, I am the one who has issues, surely this is not right!”

 

I became the darkness, which is what so many little girls become.  They become and are the ‘disowned darkness’.

 

We become the enemies of an otherwise beautiful kind world filled with sunshine and happy deeds, if only we would keep our mouths shut and our darkness to ourselves!

 

We carry their disowned darkness, we the little ones carry their loads for them. 

 

In a letter my mother wrote to me in 2005;

 

 I have Beth’s core love as a daughter for her mother.  I saw her as this beautiful small child.  Blond hair chubby cheeks – sitting on the grass by the side of the house, a schoolgirl working very hard at home and at school a very good sincere child.  Serious beyond her years.  A young adult trying to keep the whole family marching along in line, reaching back to gather up the stragglers.  Stepping up to carry part of the burden of my son’s handicap, to lightening the load for her mother…..

 

In some way I cannot understand with my limited knowledge some where along in her childhood she picked up all the stray, sick, mixed up emotions whirling around our family.  All the emotions and ugly undercurrents I did not see or feel, she did.  As a child she tried to make everything right.  A hopeless task.  The same way I tried to make our family close, loving etc by pasting on false fronts, making excuses for my husband, working harder taking all lacks myself to make the perfect mother perfect family.  (Daughter) you can rest now.  You no longer need to carry this unmanageable load.  I grieve your 46 years but I cannot undo it.  I no longer need your affirmation of your love.  I have it deep inside of me.  Nothing can remove it…..  Forgive me so you can release your soul to soar among the angels.  Always forever, Mom

 

I carried this letter around for a while, it seemed that my mother could see me, yet in the end it was her only seeing my love for her.

 

It was painfully clear that in order to have her love, I had to carry the load, put the load down, so goes the love.

 

Darkness is the only love she knows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the book “Art is the Way of Knowing” by Pat B. Allen.

 

She had a dream about a dead baby bird, then went for a walk and came upon a dead baby bird, and remembered being little and finding a dead little bird in the alley.  She went back to the dead bird and took its picture and put it in a frame and put it in her studio. 

 

The little dead bird ended up representing to her the lost little girl of her childhood.  She had been robbed of being one when she had to be a mother too early since her mother was sickly and died when she was young. 

 

That struck me as being similar to me, although my mother did not die, she needed me to mother instead of being a little girl.  And then my father didn’t treat me as a little girl, but abused me sexually.  I wasn’t anyone’s little girl or even able to be my own little girl.

 

She says to go back and remember what your dreams and wishes when you were 5 or say 7.  I have nothing there?  I can’t remember dreaming, surely I had to, she says to think of childhood toys and favorite activities, places, foods, toys or clothes.  My memory bank seems empty.

 

I had just said to my husband the other day, “I don’t want to be a mother no more, I have been a mother forever.”  And it made me sad. 

 

How interesting this all is!

I felt anxious and crowded and overwhelmed and that my house was so full of mom duties.  Fear arose, then anger.  There was way too much mom roles to be done leaving little time to nurture my little girl. 

 

It gives me great relief it isn’t my kids that I resent.  

 

I do have control over how much time I do the Mom thing and it is up to me to set time aside.

 

To set aside time for all little girls to play, to put down the mother hat or ratty housedress and step into the space of play, in the land of dreams and wishes, of doing what you love, immersed in activities where you forget all the grown-up drudgery, careless of cleanliness and order, playing and experimenting with ideas, childlike.

 

My little girl inside is sighing a happy sigh, quite a worthy opponent for the mother lady. 

 

What a juxtaposition there is inside of me, a weary mother girl and the newly found excited ready to play girl! 

 

What do little girls do? What do they dream and wish, how do they relax and let go, dare to dance like no one is watching, sing loud and out of tune, dress in fashions that suit their fancy regardless of size or shape. How to escape the critical eye of a nonsensical mother?  How to slip away from jobs, duties and daily structure? 

 

Can we send the Mother on vacation, like an extended one?

Isn’t it time for her to runaway, like far far away?

 

What I feared the most has happened, the kids will take over this house!  My little girl may just be leading the charge.

 

As I look backwards from here, I can see my anxiousness for them to grow up so I could retire being a mom and commence with being alone and learning how to play and be me.  Now I can do both.  When I feel myself getting stressed, when I feel myself getting way uptight, we will send the old bat of vacation!

 

I am so overly thankful that I don’t have to be the mom all the time, its darkness was filling up my world, the weight alone was breaking my spirit!

 

The difference in being a mom with the spirit of little girl, compared to just being a Mother, is beyond what words can carry.

 

I am years and years behind in playing and way ahead on the responsibility scale, so it is time to balance things out, it is time to let me learn to play.

 

Learn to be like a child again.  Begin to dream and plant some wishes, try new things and seek new friends, go new places, the world is my playground, dare I play on it?

 

How fun to teach play instead of responsibility!  I think I have drilled that one to the death!

 

Let the Play begin!

 

 

I heard today on Sirius Radio, “The greater the selfishness, the bigger the hurt or wound.  When you are so injured that you can’t see beyond your injuries, it makes you very self-centered.”  It was on the Dr. Robin Smith’s show.

 

It gave me a greater understanding of myself. 

 

I can now see where I am able to see others, to be with others, to focus on not only my needs but theirs as well, that I can even consider the other person is a huge miracle.

 

What is even more amazing is that the more hurt we are the less we focus on the actual wound but instead look around and see others “not tending us”.

 

What had amazed me was my mother’s blindness, how in the greatest turmoil, it was always “what about me?”

 

What about me?  That seemed so childish, so selfish, so not being a grown mom.  Yet this not only explains her actions, but it also shows that she is a deeply injured woman. 

 

She tends not to see the damage of her children let alone herself. 

 

It is hard to see the damaged self, when that is the self you have always been.  It is like tearing apart yourself in hopes of mending yourself, to rip and then fix, it seems an insane thing to do.

 

Somehow I was able to see the wound, to look at it’s origin and how I lived my life as a wounded person, and now have had the chance to heal myself from the inside out.

 

Now that I know the reason for her behavior, it does make sense why it is she is the way she is doing what it is she does.

 

The advice Dr. Robin gave this man was that he had to deal with the relationship in the reality of what it was.  He had to decide to either have a relationship with a self- absorbed woman or begin to grieve for the woman he wanted her to be.

 

And it truly is a grieving process in my experience.  I am not sure if I can remember all the stages of grief or their order, but I know there is anger, bargaining, denial, acceptance and it seems there should be one more, that there were five total.

 

Without really understanding or knowing what I was actually doing I somehow walked through the stages of grief with my mother.  It is like she has passed on.

 

What is comforting for me to know is that I am in agreement with the psychologists.

 

She was just one of many that I had to grieve, that I had to let go of the ideal and grab on to the real and then to let that go. 

 

Two others I had to release in grief came back to town from away.  My husband bumped into one of them, they are in town for the weekend helping another brother with his addition on his home.  Time moves on for them, it is like having the ghost of yesterdays past arrive in live living color.

 

Will I see them, I will if it is in the cards. What will be our interaction? What will I say, what will they?

 

When you have already grieved the loss of who they can’t be, and see them as the injured souls they are, it leaves me in a space of don’t know.

 

I can’t pretend them to be someone they are not, nor can I pretend that are not who they are.  Confusing, I know, I am confused a lot.

 

They are the ghosts of yesterday, the walking dead, the dead relationships in a live body, impossible to interact with?

 

Death usually is the death of the body and then the relationship dies as well, this is a backwards.

 

What we grieve for then is not the loss of the body, for I see bodies but suffer the loss of relationships that were housed in those bodies.

 

It isn’t the bodies of my siblings and parents I miss, I miss being part of their relationships.  The healthy adult me knows that it is for the best to be separate, the little girl, the dreamer, hopeful and wishful still pops up within me.  If only….

 

For now I must quiet the little girl’s voice and over power it with one of wisdom and understanding.  Their wounds are not mine to heal.

 

I must skip on, heading in the direction that will honor me and my pathway, I can only glance but fleetingly at those I lost along the way, it is not good for me to stare too long.

 

As I turn and walk away, I know again what I am leaving behind.  A soul lost in the sea of darkness with a wound screaming for attention, but it is not my attention it needs, it is theirs.  I want them to turn inwards, go deeply within to find their peace, love and joy, it isn’t mine to give, it is theirs to find.

 

“Finders keepers losers weepers!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are on a teeter-totter, when someone’s up the other is down.  Up and down, down and up!

 

Is it a fallacy that parents and children can be on the same page, to think alike and move alike and be one?  Where did I get that from and is it even possible?

 

Just the mechanics of getting along in the space is a task that requires skills in people and attitudes, knowing when to say when and when to remain silent, to forgo present moment happiness and instead focus on a long-term goal. 

 

I wonder in the ‘old days’ how this worked with many generations all living in one house?  Who was the master of that house?  The oldest?  How did it work or was there so much work, they all were too busy working to sit and wonder!

 

The home is the woman’s domain it is her castle, the place where she defines her space by who she is.  How am I defining my space, what is the energy of my castle?

 

What is the ultimate goal that I have?

 

A mother’s work is done when the space is empty.  It is my goal to get them all to leave!  Some how in my mind that made me a bad mother to want them all to leave, like a reluctant hostess eager for the last parting guest to clear the door!

 

It is not because I do not like them, I do, it is not because I do not love them, I do, it is because this is the job of a woman who has to complete her job of being a mom.

 

No wonder they feel that I am pressuring them, I am.  No wonder they feel that I will only be happy when they are all gone, and I will.  That segment of mothering 101 will be done.   My responsibility is over when they are on their own and living a separate life. No wonder there is separation anxiety, there should be.  I will be their mom but we have separate houses!

 

It can twist you up inside.  When a huge part of you is pushing while another part is pulling.  It seems that I cannot relax and make this space comfortable for them for then I fail as a mom, and they will take over my nest!

 

No wonder I am in such a state of flux, I either lose my nest or my kids.  And it seems so heartless to want the nest over the kid’s happiness, their peace and their joy.  Ultimately at the end my life’s mission is to have them in a nest of their own.

 

My love will follow them wherever it is they go, it is because I love them so, I make them go, not because I don’t.

 

With love in my heart, the long-term goal in my sights, I see once again a clear road ahead.

 

The empty nest, an empty nest but for the couple who started this all, my husband and I, alone at last!

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be attentive, involved and inspiring without being overbearing, directive and threatening, how to navigate the tender waters of your children’s lives?  

 

Slipping in with a question can cause tidal waves of distress or just stress and confusion, asking it seems is enough to stir up currents in peaceful waters.  

They are still like calm lazy rivers flowing slowly in a direction unknown to all, steadily moving along in inches, small tiny little inches in a month!

 

My task it seems is to move the river along, yet is it?  My mothering buttons seem to engage as I watch the non-action.  I see no movement and I wonder out loud.  My asking seems to disrupt the peaceful river, like a cannon ball onto the glass surface!

 

The river is indignant, and it splashes on to me!  In the end the river settles back down to its unmoving silent water.  I sit near its banks in total befuddlement!  

Is it possible that there are rapids up ahead to this river, is there something around the bend that I am unaware of?  What is my role here and how can I approach the river that is beneficial for both of us?  

 

Do I stand silently in patience?  Patience, yikes that is so hard for me, silence is another, and non- directing I way fail at.  Be like a large weeping willow tree hanging over the lazy river.

 

What moves the river, what tells the river to go quickly and to make that bend?  Is the Universe using the parents to help move the river?  

 

It seems that the line gets fuzzy as the children turn into young adults the landscape changes, expectations shift, space gets crowded in their lives.  

 

Or is it crowded in mine?  Do I feel the weight of their inner tubes riding along on my back?  I am the lazy river?  Oh I see, I can be the lazy river and let them ride, or I can be the rapids or the waterfalls that kicks them off the tube!

 

I love that I am the river I am the one that I am waiting for again.  It is me, I do have the right to ask how long are you planning on floating along?

 

There is peace in having them all here under our roof, enjoyment in seeing them daily, to hear their laughter as they re-connect, like a prolonged family reunion.

It has been a month long vacation for some, a nice respite from college studies, but for the rest of us this is life.

 

Life as a Mother, it is me that allows them to be as they are, it is me that is the common denominator of how much they contribute or don’t, it is up to me as to how many floating inner tubes I allow on my surface.

  

I am hanging on, when I should be letting go!  Or I let them hang on when they are unsure of where it is that they should go.

  

It seems as parents we are always the ones that have to let go, to stop being the training wheels, the hands that forever hold on to the bike.  

Let go and kick them out of the nest.

 

I remember watching on Planet Earth, the video of teeny little birds floating down many yards and flopping on the ground, some didn’t even survive the fall, being amazed at nature!  That was what was required to learn how to fly!  The nest way up there and in order to get back they had to learn to use their wings.

In order for them to use the wings, they have to leave the nest!

 

Letting go is harder than holding on!

 

Letting go frees both sides!  A successful mother lets go, drops her hands and lets the child steer the bike!  We know that there may be falls mixed in with successful minutes of staying on, and in the end with practice the child learns how to balance on its own! 

 

Learns to be independent and knows self-confidence.

Ironically we teach them to leave us, to set forth on their own.

 

Letting go as a child to become an adult.

 

We were all shaky at first until we learned balance and with practice before long we get the lesson, we successfully navigate a new stage in life.  As long as we are willing to get back on the bike called life!

 

Where this bike will take us, what roads will we travel down, what bumps with toss us off, what sights will thrill us, that is all unknown, what we have to do is just be willing to shove off and balance the best we can!

 

Let go! 

 

Our family watched a movie the other night, “The Boy in the Stripped Pajama’s.”

About two boys during the war in Germany, one boy lived in the work/death camp and the other’s father was a high-ranking soldier in charge of the camp.

Both boys lived in their own worlds following along behind adults and their rules. 

The soldier’s son saw the ‘farm’ out his bedroom window and wondered why all the farmers wore pajamas.  He thought the fence was to keep animals in not people, that they were playing a game with the numbers on their pajamas.

Imagine what life looks like without history and stories.  How much we tell kids in advance to prepare them to know others from our points of view.

Explaining war and religion have to be one of the hardest things to make clear to children.  History of past people and events are dragged into the here and now covering all generations from that moment forward. 

I have my experiences with my family and I have my history with actions felt on both sides.  But my children and husband are in a different place I allowed them their own point of view.

They have my words of my experience, but in the end it is their own experience that matters to them, not mine. And it seems that they are able to continue some social interactions where I am not able.

A psychologist that I had seen a few times in the first year suggested for me to learn how to meet them on a very social level.  To now treat your brothers, sisters and parents like strangers almost, or a person you pass in the grocery store, a person without history and certainly no future hopes.

There seemed to be only two choices, either fight like cats and dogs, or remain aloof with social niceties, neither worked me. 

Our stories of our lives are our lives or so it seems, without the story, we literally are people moving around either standing, sitting or lying down….and as Eckhart Tolle says, there are three states of being, Enthusiasm, Enjoyment or Acceptance.

To accept past behaviors and remain adult about it, to get to the place where you let old dogs lie, is a lofty goal.

Accepting what is and seeing who is in front of you without a past story being narrated in your head is a feat that leaves you breathless.  To stand in the now, speaking of only now, and seeing only now is near impossible.  How do you act like you just met, again? 

Mostly it is your inner expectation.  You have to expect nothing, or no preconceived agenda you just arrive in this moment and then leave that moment behind.  No future and no past.

Deepak Chopra uses dogs as examples of not holding grudges or living in the state of revenge.  If you harm a dog, the dog doesn’t forget, but he doesn’t live in the state of unhappiness until he sees you again. 

What I know of myself is that something inside of me changed, something inside of me moves away from them, something inside me knows to steer me clear and even leaves me without words. 

There is not a war planned nor revenge in the works, there is just me learning how to navigate this new relationship. My children and husband to are learning what to do as well without rules. 

Perhaps it is in allowing others the freedom of choice, we make this world a better place, yet part of me worries that they are interacting with folks who hurt me.  Is the next generation one who can heal old wounds, are they at a new level.

I have no answers.  It seems harboring past ills is not a way forward, social niceties leave out realness, maybe we all just learn to focus on our own behaviors and our inner guiding system, honor our pathway.

I can truly see how wars are started, how wars are fought, how adults pass on our beliefs and injustices to the next generation.  And I can see that we must somehow begin anew again.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”  Ghandi.

Yet I believe it wasn’t me that made the choice for change, it was made for me, I simply followed along. I am being led through this transformation of self, going from darkness into Light.

“All war belongs on paper” is what Byron Katie says.

The war I fought was brought to paper and each and every time when in doubt I wrote it out and each and every time we both were set free.

They were allowed to do as they did, and I was given the choice to now choose again.  I was given free will each and every time, and it allowed them the same.

War would have ensued if we had to be the same.

Peace is finding your own way.

Trusting in your inner voice, your gut instincts and inner knowing. 

War must be trying to control another’s thinking and actions, well their lives.

Freedom comes when we can allow another point of view.

Peace comes when you see that we are all on separate journeys doing the best we can with where we started from and where it is we are going.  To see each person as one who is here for a specific reason and it is not up to us to decide.

“Let it be, there will be an answer, let it be”.  I gave up trying to be God and when things were going in a way I didn’t understand, that song came to mind!

Let it be.