I M Perfect lady

Tag: life

  • Steps towards mine.

    My online conversations with family are so enlightening and disturbing, confusing and clear, and they show me who they are, and how they see me.

     

    What continues to surprise me is that they hold me up to an unattainable standard and then have no standards for themselves or the rest of the folks they spend time with.

     

    Their willingness to hang on to my father and let me go leaves me forever puzzled.

     

    My latest infraction is that I knew my mother wasn’t with my father, but I said it for my benefit, for my stories benefit.

     

    I lie for the benefit of my story?

     

    My story is torrid enough without needing one drop of falseness.  They don’t make Hollywood movies that are as tainted and twisted and long-suffering as mine.

     

    I willingly admitted that I assumed wrong, and that wasn’t believed. 

     

    My mother was in my father’s new town, but refused to see him, she would get dropped off before his house and wait while they delivered ‘stuff’ to him.

     

    She was near, but not with him, sorta like when she is up here.  She is near me, but not with me. 

     

    So what does that mean?

     

    We have not had a reunion any more than they have had a divorce, it seems she lives in between.

     

    Between the ending and a new beginning, a no place.

     

    It seems to me it would be easier to end it once and for all, to complete the relationship to finalize it, like ending a contract, for until then you are nowhere, not married, but not divorced.

     

    Separated with space, living in a hammock between both lands.

     

    Her not being near him hasn’t brought her closer to me, I wonder why? 

     

    Where is she really?

     

    No steps taken to sever or to reunite.

     

    What kind of life is it to live in between, to live in the space that isn’t either side, to be free of making a choice either way?

     

    Isn’t that standing still?

    Undecided?

    Unknowing?

     

    I see her as unchanged, for even if she has left my father’s side, she hasn’t made steps towards mine.

     

     

     

  • Happy 4th of July

    I have one week away from home and all the duties it requires, one week to be a guest on earth, and maybe that is what we need to practice more and more.

     

    I am looking forward to a week with just my husband, a week where we can both be free of other duties as required, a week of just wandering around doing what we love to do, being a kid again, but with a car and money!

     

    Books to read, my journal to write, a camera, a tent, a few chairs, and we are good to go.

     

    Fun to feel free on Independence Day, Happy 4th of July!

     

     

  • The Key

    “Dostoevsky wrote that the best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison. Many of us live this way, not even knowing how desperately we are trapped by the stories we tell to make sense or our experience.  Once these stories are in place, we choose, modify, and twist new experiences to fit our expectations.  What we think of as the “truth” is actually an elaborate and deliberate fiction composed by our minds.  Realizing that our story is really arbitrary, that there are infinite other stories that may be every bit as accurate, opens the prison door of your belief system, allowing you to walk out if you so choose.” 

     Martha Beck, The Joy Diet

     

    What I find so intriguing about denial, the mind and the way our beliefs hold us prisoner in our own lives, is that we don’t know we are in prison, so we don’t try to escape!

     

    This failing to escape keeps us held prisoner.

    Failing to try to climb the prison walls, to challenge our unchanging lives, our unexplored and untried experiences, we sit in our lives never attempting to push out the walls.

     

    I see this as another way to look at denial, when you can’t tell if you’re in the jail or outside.

    As I go about my days, the more choices I have to say yes and to say no is a huge indicator of being in jail or out.

     

    I am astounded that so many believe they are free when they are not.

     

    The ultimate denial is in the fabric of your being; the upbringing and being raised in a belief system that holds you prisoner and you don’t even know it.

     

    Denying you are a prisoner is the key.

     

    The key that locks your life away from you.

     

     

     

  • Keepers of Our Lives!

    Today I watched Chip Conley speaking about measuring what makes life worthwhile on the Ted Conference, www.ted.com

     

    And it has me pondering…

     

    How do we count a good life?

    What do we use as ruler?

    What do you put in the plus column and what is dumped in the minus?

    Does your life ledger hold more assets or liabilities?

     

    My worthwhile column holds so many items too many to count, it is simply overflowing.

     

    What I am finding is that even my minuses make it to the plus column, for they deliver me lessons which turn out to be great gifts in learning how to live a better life.

     

    Measuring life by how I feel, how alive and inspired, how connected and aware I am, are my greatest measurement for worthwhile ness. 

     

    Each day is a new page in the ledger book of Life. 

     

    We move about our days adding and subtracting from each column.

     

    Saying yes or no is how we move about this page, what we spend our time doing, how we engage in the world, who we interact with, where we go and what we do.

     

    We are the pencil and the one who keeps the tally, the scorekeeper of our lives. 

     

    We place the value on things; we decide into which column our life moments will go.

     

    It is finding the silver lining in the clouds of life that keep us from chalking off minuses.

     

    As keepers of our ledgers, we are keepers of our lives!

     

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  • The Girl She Was Meant To Be.

    I found myself seeing myself but with my old perception and then with my new perception could see my old self.

     

    It is like looking in a two-way mirror seeing your self on both sides. 

     

    Amazing to see such contrasts between the two.

     

    It dawned on me that I am a crazy, daring, bold lady, a woman of courage who tossed aside 46 years of rules and regulations to follow her own truth. 

     

    I am in awe of the distance between these two women, and they both are Me.

     

    The lady I used to be didn’t break rules, she followed along obediently even if she didn’t want to, people pleasing was her full time job, and choice making wasn’t her strong suit, her sense of self was gotten from the multitude of labels she covered her self with.

     

    My new lady tossed out all the rulebooks, and set out on her own, using her own body as her guide, for the first time ever.

     

    I remember stating, “It was like I was going to find myself, I didn’t know who I was or even that I was missing.”

     

    And it was the truth.

     

    I left my old me and I walked away, for the old me was a combination of other peoples ideas of me, their needs of me, their wishes of me, I was a me of their dreams, but not of my own.

     

    The old me was built up for reasons that had little or nothing to do with me.  Even if I didn’t know who I was, I knew for sure who I wasn’t.

     

    A child molester once said, “I changed who she would have been,” and he is right.

     

    A little girl who has been molested loses her way, her passions, and her spirit. 

     

    Her life is only about surviving.

     

    In this two-way mirror on my journey I see how the same courage she had to survive, she used to set herself free. 

     

    From the wide view I see a fearlessly bold lady who has taken her life back.  Who will no longer just survive, but she will live.

     

    She will live her own dreams, have her own ideas, make her own wishes and suit her own needs.

     

    Self lovingly at last, she is free to be the girl she was meant to be.

     

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  • The Sunny Side of Life!

    “Nothing we can do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future.”

              Ashleigh Brilliant

     

    Living life forward is all we can do, and the power that lies in each action sets in motion the whole Universe.

     

    Once you start to focus on actions today or in this moment, by simply making one change today, you will begin a momentum that changes the course of your life.

     

    Doing yoga each day has changed my body’s future, the aches and pains are receding, and instead of discovering new things I can no longer do, I am undoing damage of old wounds.

     

    My leg, hip and back have been the area of focus, it seems that there lies years of misuse. 

     

    By continuing through the pain I come out on the sunny side of life!

     

    (Day 140 of doing bikram yoga in a row)

     

  • Universe Plan

    In this month’s O Magazine, “Catherine Price took off for Tokyo with no guidebook and a wacky idea: Let strangers decide every detail of her trip. Four days, 29 brief encounters, one collapsible bicycle, eight octopus balls, 600 flesh-eating fish, one goma fire ceremony, and too much fried food later, she’d discovered the joy in letting go.”

     

    I wonder how many would dare to do this, to just arrive?

     

    To arrive and not know where you are going to eat, sleep and what you are going to do.

     

    It seems that we plan and plan to orchestrate ourselves lives right out of any surprises and wall off any unusual experiences, by needing to know and thus eliminating all unknown avenues.

     

    I wonder if the only surprises we get in life are bad ones, that we don’t even allow ourselves the luxury of delightful surprises by just ambling through life unplanned and stumbling upon an experience we never even heard about, an unplanned Special.

     

    When my husband and I take a road trip, we just head in a certain direction, we have no idea where we will go, what we will do, where we will sleep, what we will eat, we just let what we see decide.

     

    We have happened upon Folk Festivals, Art Fairs, deserted beaches, old fashioned Drive In Theaters, to name a few.

     

    You are more aware, more curious and more inclined to be daring and spontaneous, when you have no map to follow and no guideline to adhere to.

     

    Arrive in each day the same way.  Sure we need to work, but what if we look for differences in our day instead of the same ole same ole? 

     

    When there are spaces, do something different in that space. 

     

    I didn’t know that today I would do yoga in the late afternoon, do lunch with my husband, it seemed my day was flipped around, and I am still fine.

     

    I am fine because I didn’t begin with a guideline.

     

    A guideline is like a string that won’t allow you to venture off the beaten trail; it is like a harness to routine, a rope to hold you back from an exciting life.

     

    I say cut the line and float!

     

    Float along in reality’s river not knowing what is coming around the bend, being comfortable in the unknown and let the Universe plan!

     

  • Reality’s Parade

    While a friend continues each day enduring the affects of cancer treatment, I had told her I would yoga along with her until she was done.

     

    She thought she had until August, and while that seemed a long ways off, I said I would do yoga each day. 

     

    We then found out our finish line was pushed way back until it is now January 2011.

     

    It seems to be a pile of days, a bunch of effort and a hill full of energy needed to make it that far, but if you break it down to this day, this day you can do.

     

    It is a parade of This Days, and if you just focus on this day, this day is way doable, or this moment, and not look so far ahead that you miss this step you are on.

     

    I would love a cool name for “This Day Parade” one that has an interesting phrase, one that suggests we all are on a journey of just this day.

     

    We all are in places in our lives where there are difficulties to face, challenges to overcome and a life to live. 

     

    It just seems to feel better to know you have other souls marching along learning and overcoming their own life lessons, that you are not alone, that it is indeed a life parade.

     

    In the life parade, we need to keep up with the music of reality, to hear the drums of truth, to adhere as life changes direction, after all we are just the participants of Reality’s Parade!

     

     

  • All the Gifts Awareness Brings!

    One hundred and four days into a new habit, the habit of being aware, of being responsible for my response to life, of knowing that I will always get the results I want depending upon my actions.

     

    My actions in the past 104 days has been to do yoga daily, to make it a priority to take care of this body, by giving it my attention, by moving stretching bending and stretching it into becoming more and more flexible and strong.

     

    I can’t get the results I want, without doing the action step.

     

    The action step is to get out of bed, to carve out time and space in my day to work on my body, to begin sculpting it into a new design.

     

    There seems to be only two habits in the world, the mindless effortless sleep habit or the action based awareness.

     

    I am making it a new habit to be aware in all things.

     

    It makes life alive and very responsive and I have the best seat in the house to experience and feel all the gifts awareness brings!

     

     

  • One of a Kind Piece of Life.

    ”At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

     

    Imagine there will never ever be another one of us, ever, who traveled as we traveled, done as we’ve done, lived as we’ve lived, expressed themselves as we have, it is up to us to do ourselves well, for no one is coming behind us to do us better.

     

    This is our only opportunity to be ourselves, this is it, as the saying goes, ‘Life is not a dress rehearsal’.

     

    We don’t get the chance to practice this day, we get one chance to live this day, to express, experience, to feel, to be to engaged in this day, this moment with whom ever it is that happens upon our stage, this is the real deal, right now, we don’t get another chance to live today. 

     

    There is no re-do or do over.  It passes and is forever gone.

     

    We are a one of a kind being living this one day, neither to be repeated ever again. So do it your way, for you are the only one being you!

     

    We are living life without a delete or backspace, once we do it, it is done, so take a pause and put down in your life what it is you want, and make it an expression of you.

     

    Adding the flavor of you wherever you go and leaving a trail, a wisp of you behind.

     

    Like a fragrance from a flower, the scent of spring, or the incredible colors of a sunset, we too carry our own personal one of kind imprint.

     

    Just as fingerprints are unique so are me prints, a one of a kind piece of life!

     

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