The Evolving Homemaker

If you remember last week and my massive list of steps to wellness, you can read it here if you don’t, I feel I need to clear up a few things.  First, the list is not a goal for every single day.  Lots of it I can do everyday, but not all of it.  It was really a road map for my goals and not a checklist of must get done’s, everyday, without fail.  It was a life of habits I wanted to lean into, not jump into blindly only to fail miserably.

Really.  Who want’s to have sex every. single. day? At some point, like day 3, that would just become a chore.  Of course if I asked a man that same question the response might be different.  And I can’t get body work every. single. day. Although I did tell my birthday massage therapist that if I was Oprah, I WOULD do that every day, at bedtime, after a nice long warm bath.  One would sleep like a stinkin’ baby.

So there you have it.  Don’t worry about me.  I am not trying to get to this list in completion and I don’t feel the pressure that all of those things are urgent today.  What is more urgent is trying to get my 5 year old to stop whining at the moment.  That would be equal to an hours worth of yoga in my book.

What I want to touch on today is the Random Acts of Kindness that comes in at #23.  This one is surprisingly easy to do when I am mindful that it is a goal of mine.  Once I made up the list I really was aware of the changes I wanted to be making, and Random Acts of Kindness takes a little more foresight than say, brushing my teeth.  Or does it?

With the awareness that I wanted to find some way to be kind and helpful everyday, everything became an opportunity to do such.  And it didn’t take a lot of money or planning.  It just took being mindful of my surroundings and the realization that every little bit helps the world.  It is like the butterfly who flaps her wings, the intention we have as we go about our days has power beyond that which we can understand.

What type of things am I doing?  Simple things.  One day I walked past a lighter on the ground outside of my car.  I took one step past it and remembered my ‘do good’ aims and turned around and picked it up and put it in the nearest trash can.  Another day in the same lot I picked up some paper trash and did the same.  One day I stopped when my kids were about to drive me crazy and gave one of them a deep, mindful, present hug which changed the dynamic instantly.  One day I remembered I had a dollar in my bag and tipped the gal at Inta Juice.

I know, that seems intuitive like you should do it all the time, but I NEVER have cash, I always use my debit card for everything.  It just so happened that one day there another girl had over charged me and handed me cash back.  So the next time I was there I remembered it and put it in their jar.

These are simple, simple, simple ways in which we send out love to multiply in the universe.  Random Acts of Kindness don’t have to be huge and full of hoopla, they can be small, and will show up to us in a myriad of ways when we are mindful of the world outside our own head.

Now I am off to get coffee.  And if someone is in line behind me I will buy theirs too.  Cause it is Monday, and we sprang ahead this weekend, so lots of us are still in a daze…

OK.  This made me cry this morning…enjoy:

On Friday I had a great lesson in mindfulness.  In fact, I am having the same lesson right at this moment as I sit and type this.  Hard lessons takes lots of awareness to overcome.

On Friday we were gearing up for quite a busy weekend.  My daughter had a dress rehearsal in the early evening, my son and I were going to volunteer for two hours Saturday morning, followed by me needing to get flowers for the little Irish dancer, food for lunch, my husband hoping to get in a motorcycle ride for sanity in between, back to another dress rehearsal by 3 PM, with me volunteering to organize the front end activities of the night, a recital, and then out to dinner with friends.

All day Friday as we were trying to do our school for the day, all I could think about was all the stuff I needed to get done, blush needed to be purchased cause we lost the first one we got, hair done, mascara on, food for dinner, dinner needed to be made probably, the house was a mess, laundry hadn’t been gotten to in some time, directions to the school needed to be found, the girl had to get dressed, we had to get through math, reading, science, history, and I always hope to get to hours where I read to them endless stories of knights, tiger’s, children, other cultures, whatever…

My mind was not on schooling at all.

And guess what happened?

I was a cranky, nervous, uptight Mama.  And school wasn’t fun.  The more I pushed, the more my son pushed back.   “Can we just get this done, done, done,” I am thinking to myself.  What he was probably thinking was, “Ahahaha, she is a crazy women right now, allow me to feed off her energy and be stubborn about my math work today.”

It is the same energy I have right at this moment too.  SO much to get done.  Not a good way to figure out how to make it all come together in sight.  I am writing this post as I am at a bounce play area waiting for friends to arrive!

What is this teaching me?  What about mindfulness can be garnered from a few days of living from a list in my head?

That living in my head, replaying constantly what needs to get done in other moments than the one I am in is no way to live.  It makes me anxious.  Go figure.  It makes me cranky with the kids.  Go figure.  It makes me not very effective at what I am attempting to do in the moment I am actually in.  It makes my nervous system ramp up until I talk and talk and talk and become hyper, hyper, hyper.

The reality is, the moment is perfect to be in.  I love doing school with my kids when I am present with them.  When I am in my head running through my lists it becomes a chore.  I love cooking delicious, healthy food.  When I am in my head ruminating over all the other things that need to get done, not enjoying the slicing and dicing, I resent cooking from scratch with whole foods.  When I am trying to meditate, and the realities of other things that need doing fight for my attention, do I need to even explain that meditating dissolves into chaos of brain activity?

So the lesson for the week?  Breathe.  Come back to the present moment.  Realize there is nothing on the list that is an emergency.  Usually.

My friend has arrived.  I will inhale the life cleansing force that brings me to this moment, allowing myself to enjoy our time together as our children play and get the wintery wiggles out.

Breathe.  There is only this moment.  Enjoy your mindful week.

This is my first Mindful Monday post in some time.  I was practicing being more mindful, just not writing about it.  But this week as I perused so many blogs and talked to so many people, I discovered an underlying theme that many felt over the last month or so like they just needed a stinkin’ break.

Bloggers said they needed a break from the computer, the pressure, not sure that the ideas would keep flowing; myself wondering if I should continue.  Friends said they needed time to themselves, they needed to stop continually showing up for everyone except themselves, they needed rest; myself craving exactly the same.

It only stood out to me because it seemed like such a universal feeling over the last couple of months, that others were finally sharing this past week.

The other thing that stood out was the many ways in which we justified our need, felt guilty over our need, explained our need, pushed our need away and kept plugging along anyway, reduced our need to unimportant, ignored our need, or in any other myriad of ways made our need seem not so…needed.

Why can’t we just say, “I needed a break.”  Period. And leave it at that? Oh, and then actually take one? Why do we continually push our needs, our instincts, our own nourishment to the bottom of the pile under so many to-do’s, others needs, others expectations, our own silly expectations of ourselves?

What I also noticed last week, every time I pulled into my driveway, was my little garden Buddha.  To me he was a metaphor for what I had been hearing from others, and knowing within myself.  Buddha was hibernating too.  The only difference was that he wasn’t making excuses as to why, he wasn’t feeling guilty, he wasn’t worried about what other people were thinking about his little sojourn.  He was buried in two feet of snow, and there nothing he could do about it except poke his little head out as a reminder to me, that it is alright to sit and wait.

Being o.k. with our need for a break once in awhile, we need to be mindful about this.  Our society would have us go and go and go and go, with no time for reflection, inner journey’s, philosophical wanderings, if it had its way.  It is up to us to take care of ourselves.

So next time you need a break, come sit with Buddha in the snow, and know that it is what it is, and the sun will come out again to warm your face when the time is just right.

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I have noticed lately that there is a definite rhythm to when and how I work best.

Last night I was on a cleaning spree after dinner and realized that I actually like to clean best at night.  Sort of a way to wrap up the loose ends of the day.  Or get focused on something that will show instant results after a day filled with plenty of things, none of which show instant results.

I like to sleep in in the morning.  I don’t like to get up early.  I can make myself.  But then I need a nap.  Naps are hard to take when you are a Mom.  Of kids.  Who also have activities in the afternoons.  And since I haven’t had coffee in exactly 36 days, that isn’t going to be helpful anymore.

I like to read before bed.  And nothing else.  It calms me down and rests my brain enough to get a good nights sleep.  It eases me into my zzz’s the way the campfire did for our ancestors.  This way I am not thinking of 100 cool things I want to try that I just saw on Pinterest.  Or all the blog posts I could write.  Or, the pages in the book I should have elaborated on.  Nope, just a bit or a reprieve from my life before lights out.

I enjoy having less on my schedule.  I have been allowing the flurry of activities slowly to dissipate over the last month or so and am just beginning to feel the benefits.  More time for me.  More time for the kids.  I am calmer and not always frazzled trying to get it all in.  And I am finding things I want to do and actually know that I have time to do them now.

I think it has taken another reality check with my health to really stop and ask myself if I am being mindful of what nurtures me or am I ignoring that and plowing through just. to. keep. going.   I am lucky enough to be one that can actually follow her rhythms.  I don’t have to race out to a job at 6 AM.  I don’t have to clean on another persons time table.  Of course my husband would beg to differ…but in reading a book about adrenal fatigue she really suggested that you find your rhythms and stick to them as often as you can.

I think in our society we have so gotten away from the natural rhythm of things.  The seasons.  Our own clocks.  Family time.  We ignore our kids personal rhythms.  We have even dropped away from the rhythm of our own breath.  I know I have.

January is not YET the season of action.  You feel as if you need to move because you have just made a few resolutions you are ready to get started on.  But this time of year is still begging us to remain going within for just a little bit longer.  The days getting longer slowly ease us back into activity, they don’t throw us back in on January 1st because we decide to lose weight, or be more adventurous, or get over our fears.  So maybe, just for now, as we edge out of our winter cocoons, we can take some time to be mindful of what our own natural cycles are and nurture them.  Love them.  Honor them.  Accept them as part of the gift we are to ourselves, and to those around us.

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Obviously my energy this week is on the holiday season upon us.  My shopping is officially done, but I have two knitting projects left to do.  The decorations are done, but there are still a stack of Christmas cards waiting to go out.  Santa is ready to appear, but there are still a ton of sugar cookies to make and decorate to get out to our neighbors, some of whom won’t be with us next year, so I am feeling especially driven to get those finished.   It feels like a gaping whole is about to break open on our little court.

Gifts have been wrapped and passed onto children from our giving tree at church.  Last minute ones have been purchased for a local orphanage, per requested by a giving friend.  But I have this underlying feeling of not giving enough.  Just thinking of all the people who have less this year, who can’t give their kids a simple gift, or even kids who have no idea what a Christmas present is because they have never gotten one.  I am reminded that if 13,000 children die a day in our world from hunger, 78,000 will die between now and Christmas day. There are soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan who are having trouble adjusting to life stateside.  There are people who are losing their homes as we sit comfortably around our tree, filled with presents, heat, and hot cocoa.

For some reason this year I am being shaken by the world we live in.  And I know I cannot do that much on my own to change it.  Maybe I am being shaken because last week as we shopped for the kids at the orphanage my kids were more interested in finding toys they wanted and less about understanding the needs, and the gravity, of what others are going through.  Am I failing in educating them on more than just reading, writing, and arithmetic?

Or is it because we are listening to only Christmas songs on the radio and every time I hear Stevie Wonder begin to belt out “One day at Christmas men won’t be boys, playing with bombs like kids play with toys” I wonder if that will ever be true.  If we will ever really understand “what life is really worth.”  Am I feeling grateful, yet frightened, because so many of my friends, acquaintances, and family have battled the cursed cancer this year, some with great success and some who will not have success and have already left us or will before the next Christmas rolls around?

I pride myself on making this a wonderful time of year for my children, a time they shouldn’t really have to worry, a time to believe in magic, and love, and dreams, and hope for the year that will follow.  For some reason, or all of the reasons above, Mama is just sorta shell shocked this time around.

This week I will be mindful of what a fantastic life I have.  I will be mindful that I cannot buy enough gifts for others to make my heart not break over what it sometimes sees.  I will be mindful that I have a duty to educate my children to see the world outside of their own experiences as part of them and not a separate phenomenon.  I am mindful that I usually get weepy around this time of year, and this time it just has a heavier tone to it.

And I will remember to be joyful and spread holiday cheer all through the year.  Because if I want anything to ever change anywhere for anyone, spreading joy is a simple, mindful, and tangible thing to do. And a lot of times it is really hard to do when we have our own heartache and stresses.

I am reminded of my ministers message last week at service, and for this time of year I can’t think of anything more appropriate to leave you with.  I am paraphrasing, “Make it so when people look at you, when they are in your presence they are seeing the Christ within, the Buddha nature, the God consciousness, whatever you want to call it, in what you do, what you say, and how you are.”

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So, obviously I have taken off some time from this space. I have been contemplating many things regarding my energy spent here, the purpose, whether it was a worthy endeavor and expenditure of my time. I read blog posts of some of my favorite Mama bloggers like Farmama, who in October decided to share with us all that she was leaving the blogoshpere, and the SleepyTime Gal as they grappled with the question of blogging and whether it is time well spent for them.

I have just been ‘seeing how I feel’ about not being in this arena for awhile. I lived life, educated my kids, went away for Thanksgiving, tried the Crazy, Sexy, Diet cleanse AGAIN, only to crash and burn miserably on my face while PMSing.

Guess what?

I miss it. My Mom misses it, which is great too. But as a friend of mine said last week after hearing the news that evidently I am not as healthy as I arrogantly believed I was, that what she thought I needed was “nourishment”. “You need to learn how to nourish yourself,” she said. And I haven’t been able to shake her words since.

What does that look like? Nourishment?

It looks like lots of things to lots of people I am sure. And when is the last time any of has actually taken the time to figure out what that means for us? Deeply? This morning in a twisted, anxiety, depressed state I pulled into the Starbuck’s parking lot after church, grabbed a hot cocoa and a scone, and pulled out a journal I had just bought from a friend. “Motherhood: The shortest and steepest path to enlightenment,” it says on the cover, and started writing.

And I felt better.

Writing is what I do. It is what I like to do. It is how I discover who I am and who I want to be. It is how I vent and how I hope. It is why my husband doesn’t have to have long winded ‘discussions’. It is what clears my mind when it is feeling chaotic and frenetic. It empties me of my questions long enough to be present with my children.  It nourishes me…

So, here I am. Writing again.  And it feels right.  It feels sacred.  It feels like I have nothing to prove, but just someone to be.  From The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, “Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”

Who am I?  I am finding that out, but equally as important as my own work, is yours.  Who are YOU already?  Will YOU become it?

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This weekend I went to a costume Halloween baby shower.  I thought is was the cutest idea ever, come dressed up as a character from your favorite kids book that your are giving to the expectant mother.  I initially thought about getting The Lorax, dressing as a truffula tree.  It would have been so predictable for me.  But then I spent some time perusing the children’s book section at the books store one town over.

Since our bookstore closed of course.

During my outing, I came across the Jon J. Muth section and read all of Zen Shorts as I sat there.  I have always loved this book, we picked ours up at a sale somewhere, I can’t even remember now where, but I decided that instant this would be the book I would get and a panda I would be.

Stillwater.  He is such a sweet panda. And smart.  Or should I say wise?

There are many fantastic kids books out there we have discovered along the way during reading time and long stints at the library, I could have picked any of them.  But what I thought about sitting on the floor of the bookstore, reading all of the ‘zen shorts’ in the book was how often we overlook the importance of teaching children mindfulness.

I can promise I was not taught mindfulness as a child.

I know that some schools are now taking it on, teaching empathy, compassion, and even meditation, but so much of what kids learn they learn from us.  Not all of what they learn, but a lot.  We lead by example, in our stellar moments and the moments that make us want to crawl under the carpet and stay there for a very, very, very long time.

Ahhhh, but the lessons of Zen Shorts, that the magnificent moon is enough, that ‘maybe’ is more realistic than ‘I got this thing all figured out’, and that carrying our burdens around in our minds is a waste of time and energy and it takes us out of the present moment.  These are lessons I want my kids to learn.

At least so they don’t have to struggle to learn them like I do, after my brain is already hardwired to do the complete opposite of each of these meditations.  Something is missing when we spend so much time focusing our children’s attention on what they need to do to ‘succeed’ and not as much time on how to actually live a life less focused on the future and the material but more focused on the simple majesty of now.

Let us be mindful about the importance of teaching our children to be mindful.  It is a valuable lesson that will hopefully keep them grounded in a world that is full of billions of dollars worth of distractions.

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My husband said yesterday, “a good book worth reading is full of lots of different chapters.”

When did he get so smart?  I am giving him the credit, even if he read it somewhere else because, the man mostly reads techie geek blogs and listens to podcasts, he didn’t get it from reading Emerson or Thoreau.  So if some famous person said it before him, just for today let him be brilliant.

We were talking about what constitutes a good life.  For some reason at my beekeeping class last week, I wrote that down on a piece of paper.  I did it because sometimes I have a hard time making commitments cause the grass just might be greener on the other side.  For instance, I have big dreams of traveling to exotic places, experiencing life through the colors, scents, and scenery of far off lands, while writing books along the way.  I also have big dreams of having a homestead, growing our own food, having a horse or two, a house built in the 1800′s, a few beehives, and writing books along the way.

The problem is these dreams don’t really fit well together.  One can travel or one can lay down deep roots into the soil, with the seasons, the needs of the bee’s, and the horses taking center stage.   Yes, you could do a little of one with the other, but you could not make a deep commitment to both.  How to reconcile such apposing hopes?

I don’t know.

But I try to think, as I lay on my deathbed one day, what kind of life will I look back upon and think, “Now THAT was a life well lived?”  I know I will be grateful I took the time to spend with my children, because it is really such a short time.  Beyond that?  I am not really sure.  Learning to be present and mindful?  Traveling to India, Nepal, and Ireland?  Keeping horses, and bee’s, and otherwise trying to live a simple life?  Lots of giving and gratitude?

That is why I like what my husband said so much, I can live this chapter now, as it is, and start another chapter in a year, two, five.  In twenty years, God willing, I can start a completely different chapter that has nothing to do with what I wish for today. Whatever the chapters entail, I can do it with presence, all the while knowing that it isn’t forever…it is for now.  It seems important to also not forget to live each day well, throughout the up’s and down’s, so that all the well lived days together will add up to a lifetime of bestsellers.

I rarely claim to have any answers, but I am thinking part of the journey is just that.  Figuring out for ourselves what it means to live life well.  This is your friendly reminder to be mindful of that this week, or at least this moment.  Do you think about what you will want to look back on at deaths door often?  Or do you rarely give it a thought?  Are you just too bogged down by daily to-do’s and the tasks at hand?  Do you have a plan? Or are you barely managing to get through each day sane? Does notoriety matter?  Or are you thinking more nun-hood in a monastery?  Getting to the top of your career or kissing your babies booboo’s? Working for change in the world?  Learning to breathe in the moment?  All of it?  None of it?

What will constitute for you, a life well lived?

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I try not to be too narcissistic.  I am on Facebook a lot and I blog.  Maybe I am not trying that hard actually, but something occurred to me last week as I was progressing through organizing our lives, our house, and our schedule.

It is really important, as a mother, and whether a working outside the home or inside the home mother, to make sure that the things you decide to spend your time doing leave you feeling enriched and not only mildly amused or down right stressed or disappointed.  This is not to say that doing laundry should feel enriching, I am not suggesting that, although sometimes when I look at it as providing a service to those I love it actually can be.  Truthfully, I just don’t think about it like that most of the times I do laundry…

What I am talking about is when you leave the house to have time to yourself, going to church, a class you might take, a coffee shop break, the bookstore, out with a friend, thrift-ing, exercising, etc. are you really mindful about which ones make you really feel glorious and which ones are sorta ho’ hum?

I wasn’t.

I noticed as I was working away on a schedule that there were things that I do that were not really serving my greatest good at the moment, but sort of like I was doing them out of habit, or guilt, or a sense of should.  As I became more mindful about the fact that not everything could fit into the schedule well, it made me think long and hard about what I really wanted to be doing with my time anyway. A Mom’s time away is limited, it should be deeply rejuvenating.

Obviously there are things we have to do that we don’t want to do.  I am not talking about those things, yes life requires we show up places we don’t necessarily want to be, but what of the time we are choosing?  How mindful are we of how it makes us feel after we are done?

Once the realization hit that I don’t have all the time in the world, I began to think more about what I wanted the time I do have to achieve.  Peace?  Tranquility? Exercise?  Zone out?  Quiet?  Loud?  Spirit nurturing?  Physical nurturing? Healthy? Unhealthy?  Feeding my passions?  Catching up with friends?  Being alone?

Which ones fill me up?  Which ones drain me? Which ones send me home ready to step into my life renewed?  Which ones stress me out, sending me home more worn than when I left?

I don’t have any perfect answers.  There never are any, and I am learning the hard way.  But if we stop and become mindful about where our energies are going it might completely change the look and feel of our lives, that is if we actually change based on what we discover.

Here is a photo of a painting I did a few weekends back at a class a Mom acquaintance of mine teaches.  I am not Van Gogh, however there was something in the process of painting this that was so…meditative, yet frustrating because I somehow wanted some sort of perfection, relaxing, and soul nourishing in the end when I decided it turned out just beautiful anyway.  It was the first time I had ever painted anything like it, but there was something refreshing about trying an activity that was completely outside of my normal domain.  I enjoyed it so I will be doing it again… it will be making it onto my schedule once in awhile!

Anyway, try something new, try something old, do something invigorating, do something peaceful, whatever you do pay attention to how you feel afterwards.  You may be surprised by what you find out about yourself and about the things you have made a priority in your life. I know I was, and continue to be, because this is a journey.

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For the past few weeks my children have been getting whiny.  And they have been fighting.  And they have been throwing temper tantrums when they don’t get their way.  They completely ignore me without threats.  My daughter has been a…difficult one to deal with…to put it nicely.  I have been increasingly stressed out about it and wondering where on earth I have been going so wrong as to have a 7 year old and a 5 year old that seem to be going completely off their rockers.

For twenty minutes last week my daughter screamed at the top of her lungs because I wouldn’t take her to the bathroom at bedtime.  We were all tucked into bed, she is across the hall from the damn thing, she gets set on something and won’t give.  Funny, I was reading How To Talk So Your Kids Will Listen And Listen So Your Kids Will Talk as she is doing this.  I breathed a lot.  And didn’t give in.  She finally fell asleep, but it broke my heart.

I was afraid.  What had I done wrong.  Was she going to be this difficult forever.  Was something wrong with her physically?

My son?  Every time you say, “No, we are not going to watch T.V. right now”, “No, you can’t have a treat”, “No, Mommie is not going to do such and such right now” it was like his body was writhing in pain.  He would start whining and contorting himself like Houdini in a straightjacket. Those moments, I was ready to strap myself into a straightjacket of my own.

“What the hell?” I asked myself over and over, “Where on earth did these people come from and what is my part in this?”  I like to blame myself first most of the time.

On Friday my daughter threw a fit in pubic.  I was mortified.  I was tough on her.  I didn’t know what to do really.  By the time we got to the car and buckled in she was asleep.  I started to wonder.  By the next morning I was ready to call Nanny 911, so I posted a question on the Get Born Facebook page on what on earth I was going to do.  Lots of feedback on varying different advice, from the Starbucks drive-thru, which y’all know I appreciate, to making them do chores, to questions asking if she/they have been going through a transition lately…

Transition?  Holy cow…my kids had been through the ringer with me the last two and a half months, and not once had I stopped to think what it had done to them.  Not once.  I was ready to run away to Moab, Utah last week to become a waitress/yoga instructor, yes this is always my fantasy when things get hard, but what on earth where my kids thinking, feeling, needing?  I was too wrapped up in my own stresses to consider the possibility that they might be feeling like they had lost complete control over their lives too.

I got mindful.  Fast.  I looked at our schedules and what we could take out.  I rearranged things so that our days would look more like the days before and the days after.  I told my husband I would be taking time to do my blogs on the weekends in no uncertain terms so as not to take time during the week to be so distracted.  My attitude changed in an instant, and my daughters sorta did too.  We spent most of Sunday perusing a local farm with friends of ours.  I had a lot of TIME with them.  Quality time, and snuggles on a swing with my little girl.

It isn’t going to be easy bringing them back to a feeling that they can count on things, it will certainly be a bigger struggle with my little gal, but wow what a bit of mindfulness can do.  In an instant I was mindful about my kids emotions, and I will be forever grateful for that moment of insight.  They need me in ways that is sometimes hard for me to show up in, but I am willing, God am I willing, to at least try.

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As I spent last week with my anxiety slowly but surely creeping up, too much energy spent in my head trying to ‘figure it all out’, not eating well due to time constraints, stressing about all that I couldn’t get done, too much energy spent on all the things that had to be done that weren’t getting done at that precise moment, etc. etc. etc,  I was realizing that something soon would have to give.

And that something was probably going to be me.

On Saturday, I was lucky enough to attend an event that really put it all in perspective.  Every September a fabulous gal puts on a Yoga for Congo Women event locally.  Her passion for others suffering is clear, her willingness to do something about it, even more profound.

I spent six years immersing myself in the tragedies of the Democratic Republic of Congo.  To the point that my mind, my spirit, and my body could not take it anymore.  It was as if I didn’t know how to not carry the burdens of my fellow sisters with me.  I didn’t have the capability to separate myself and my life from the horrendous situation that was a reality for so many.

So I stopped.  I had to.  For the sake of personal preservation, I had to pass on my work to new hands.  I stopped reading about horrific circumstances of my fellow human beings around the world.  I stopped reading news articles about the state of the planet.  I stopped spending ever waking moment trying to convince others why they should even give a damn.

Classic burnout.

But Saturday, as we did our yoga poses, breathing deeply as we heard the story of women in the Congo, I found myself being grateful for the reminder.  I needed some perspective on my life at that moment.  Having anxiety means that sometimes your brain takes over and you can’t shut it off.  It wants to run a marathon while you would prefer to just take a nap.

My life has been unexpectedly busy these last few months.  I have a hard time knowing what to do to deal with stress in a healthy way.  My kids need me, my husband needs me, my health needs me, I need me.  I forget to breathe.  I forget to say ‘no’. I forget to eat my veggies and take my vitamins.  I forget that after a time of so much to-do and so much to handle that my body needs a rest.  I forget I need to be mindfully aware about the messages my body is sending.  But after all the worry I have had over the last few months, there is still much I don’t need to worry about…

Today I don’t need to worry about a militia breaking into my house raping me, murdering my husband, cutting my leg off, and force feeding it to my children, killing one of them who refused to eat.  Today I don’t need to worry that as I go about caring for my children, I will need to flee with them to the forest, I won’t slip on the mud as to give time for the Interahamwe to catch up to me, cutting off both of my hands and leaving me to bleed to death.  Today as I educate my little people in the safety of our home, I will not need to worry that my son will be kidnapped and turned into a soldier who will rape and murder too.  I will hug my daughter a bit tighter as I am grateful that at five years old, she will not be gang raped today, as happens to hundreds of thousands of young girls in the Congo.  Girls as young as three months old.

Perspective.  I am grateful this weekend to have been reminded about that.  While my heart will always break for my sisters in the Congo, I think sometimes I forget to be mindfully grateful for all that I do have.  Stress and all.

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I typed up a schedule for the new school year.  It is color coded and everything.  Light green for things Mommy has to do, light pink for the classes my little gal takes, light blue for my husbands commitments, blue for my little boys, black for just the general to-do’s, bright pink for school, green for cello…you get the idea.

It is filled.  The only thing left off the schedule was the poor dogs and walks.  Unless my husband is going to do it, they will be relegated to the weekend probably, or in the dark; AM or PM.

While it was helpful to do the schedule and see exactly how hard it is to fit everything in, allowing me some realization that there is no way to do it all.  Just no way.  This morning it also gave me a great deal of anxiety.

My son woke up at 6 with screaming nightmares.  He wanted to come sleep in the bed and I said alright in my early morning haze.  Except what I didn’t know was that it was 6 at the time and my alarm was going to go off at 6:30 to start my ‘new’ and ‘improved’ life with said schedule.  He didn’t go back to sleep until like 6:20.  I hit the alarm button, with the glum feeling that I was not going to be successful in my first scheduling day.

From the moment I hit the alarm button on, I started playing in my head all the things that were on the list that I probably wasn’t going to get to today seeing as how I had a little boy in my bed that needed to go back to sleep and my new morning rituals were probably not going to be possible in the situation.  I started thinking about the day, all of the stuff that had to get done, how I was going to get my son to the volunteer fair he needed to go to and me to a town an hour away at virtually the same time that I needed to go to.  I worried if I was going to have time to get on the treadmill now as my health has been put to the bottom of the list lately, my meditation was totally out, and can’t really be moved to another time, what we were going to do for our first day of school to ease into the fall, I wondered if I would have time to blog, time to get to the grocery store to get the family something to eat for dinner before I left for my evening of co-working, whether I would get time to clean at all today, and finally as I was feeling so anxious by now I thought about whether I would ever be able to go off the tiny bit of anxiety medication I take because I evidently am still anxious.

And I really want to…

This all leads me to wonder if I am being mindful about my own expectations of myself.  Am I letting others expectations of me cloud my perspective?  I am trying to be some sort of crazy super Mom when I thought I had let those pressures go?  Am I remembering what is important while filling our lives with things to-do?  Like…not having things to do?  Am I able to bring myself back to the present moment with mindfulness and not think about the things farther down on the schedule while I am in the midst of working on a different thing?

Ahhhh, mindfulness about our own expectations of ourselves.  This is maybe something we don’t think about that often, but maybe we should.  After all, we are our own worst critics right?  When we have expectations of ourselves and we don’t meet them, there is but one in our heads that will remind us over and over how we failed.  And I for one fall into the trap of beating myself up when I don’t meet others expectations as well.

I am not giving up on my schedule.  I am just going to be aware of it.  Aware of how it makes me feel.  I am just practicing this week to see if we can even stick to it, it is hopeless, or it will be great and helpful.  But I am also going to be more mindful about my own expectations of myself.  Are they achievable without getting only 4 hours of sleep a night?  Am I just being too lazy and not working fast enough?  What?

And then I am going to be gentle with myself, with whatever information I find out…

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I noticed today, ok last Thursday, myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the kids and raising my voice at them.  I hate it when I do that. There is a lesson to be learned for me in this, for the long haul about how to remain mindful and present with my children.

Usually when I have a poopy day with the kids I berate myself with little sentences from the monkey mind like, “I suck at this.”  “I am the worst Mom on the planet.” “My kids deserve better than me.”  “ARRGGHGHHH…expletive, expletive, expletive.”

Today though, I did something else.  When I was running a few errands tonight, instead of my crappy self mind talk I usually revert too, I sat and thought about when and why I loose my patience.  Is it when they are whining?  How about when they are fighting? Why are they fighting? Is it when I am tired?  When they are tired? Is it when I have too much on my plate? Is it when we have been consistently busy?  Have we lost our rhythm? Have we not had a lot of quality time together recently? Have they had sugar? Have I had sugar?  Are they feeling pushed aside? Are they just missing their Mama? Do we need to read a book?  Get back to a schedule?  Have a day at the zoo?

What gives?

I found that all of the above was true for today.  We have been too busy for my taste, and the taste at least for my little boy who likes rest and recuperation between activities.  We all had sugar, we have lost our typical school year rhythm to a crazy summer, we hadn’t spent any quiet family time together in I don’t know how long.  We have had visitors for a month.  They are incredibly tired and I have too much on my plate, at least today, and I tend to get crazy in my mind thinking of all the things I have to do instead of focusing on the one thing I am doing in the moment.

For now, I think it is useful for my children and our lives together, that I become mindful about what frustrates me, how I can avoid being in short supply of patience, and how I can help them be kind and compassionate too, even when they are void of enough zzzz’s.  Instead of plowing through our normal dynamic during difficult times, why not take a few mindful moments to think about how we got to this impasse instead?  How can I mindfully navigate a solution?  How can I allow myself to put everything aside for a time and sit with them when any one of us is frustrated and work through it.

Why do I ever think the laundry, the dishes, cleaning, blogging, or any other item is more important than that?  The long term lesson for myself and my children could be hugely profound if I can put this into practice.

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“There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind, and there is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind.” ~Buddha

How many times in the last few weeks have you awoken at 3 AM with your mind racing about everything that needs to get done?  The things you need to accomplish, the things you should be doing to make such and such happen, the harvesting and storing that needs to happen like…today, the sugar you shouldn’t have eaten, or the salads you you should be eating instead, wondering if you should have done this or that with the kids, thinking to yourself as you look up to the ceiling, “Damn it. There is a swim party coming up that you are going to have to take your kid to since your husband will be out of town…in an actual swimsuit”, etc. etc. etc?

I have been burdening myself with the monkey mind lately. Yes, creating my own suffering.

It is non-stop.  I have an ever long list of things I get wrapped up thinking about, which causes my body to tense, headaches prevail, anxiety skyrockets, my jaw clenches, and as hard as I try I can’t relax. My ego loves attaching itself to what it thinks it can a-control or b-make happen based on following some specific list of to-do’s, especially early in the morning when it is dark out, the kids are asleep, and I can’t read a book instead.

Funny thing, yesterday my ministers sermon was mostly about this exact problem.  How is it these ministers seem to say EXACTLY what is going on in my life on any given Sunday?  Is it because these issues are actually more universal than we as individuals let on?

From The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle:

“Your mind is an instrument, a tool.  It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down.  As it is, I would say about 80-90 percent of most people people’s  thinking is not only repetitive, and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful.  Observe your mind and you will find this to be true.  It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction.  What characterizes an addiction?  Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you the choice to stop.  It seems stronger than you.  It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.”

I am addicted to the monkey mind at the moment.  The mind that shoots from one thing to the next.  The mind that can’t rest.  The mind that thinks it can control its environment, its future, the outcome, the behavior of the children in its care.  This month has been so busy, that I don’t even feel like I have the time to just ‘be’.  Yet, the practice for me is  yes, how to find the time to be still and meditate, or rest, but also to be able to find some grounding in the daily activities that being a mother require. Some space.  Some breath.

This time next week I will be on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh.  I am going in with no expectations, or trying to anyway, but fully aware that I need this time to work on myself and my mind now, maybe more than ever.  I need to generate awareness in my life daily, mindfulness, peace, otherwise the anxious mind takes over and I am up at 3 AM addicted to my brain activity and trying to ‘figure everything out’. As if.

A friend of mine once said her teacher at a Buddhist university had them put little stickers all over their houses to remind them to be present and breathe, coming back to themselves every time they saw one of the stickers.  I think, this week, I may be buying a pack or two of stickers…as a reminder to be mindful of my monkey mind.

And by this I don’t mean the friendly muffin top, nor the ever growing Buddha’s.  By being mindful of our guts, I am reminding myself to TRUST my gut, and stop second guessing myself.

This post is extremely late thanks to the migraine I woke up with this morning.  This past week was quite stressful, and I have also been sleeping with my little boy who lost his tonsils this past Wednesday.  He is not a good sleeper at all, he awoke multiple times last night pointing to things, talking to me, whimpering in his sleep.  The whole time I am asking him if his throat hurts, does he need his medicine, is he just having a bad dream?

So today, was off to a rough start.  Me taking two Aleve’s hoping for a reprieve, the kids watching T.V. while Mommy just hoped her eye socket wasn’t going to explode. I finally peeled myself off the couch to take a shower, which is sometimes helpful to aid in recovery.  You see, my daughter had a dentist appointment with a new dentist because my husband thought the costs at our old dentist were insane.

My lovely little gal has had teeth issues since she was 2, when we discovered her mouth was full of cavities even though she had been to the dentist every 6 months since she got her first teeth.  She nursed forever, and didn’t want to eat solid foods at all.  The dentist informed us that it happens in about 10% of the cases of babies who are nursed on demand, in conjunction with genetics.

Joy.

So she underwent surgery.  Then I underwent a mission to find the best dentist for the kids I could.  We may need a good dentist a few times after that I knew.  I found a pediatric dentist I loved.  I was happy.  My husband was not happy with the bills.  I could relate, so we switched them to a general, run of the mill, McDonald’s sort of chain office.  Their first appointment was less than stellar.  One of them left crying, and I left pissed because they felt the need to judge my parenting skills based on my desire to support my children in ENJOYING their trip to the dentist.  They actually told me I was an, “enabler”.

I vowed never to go back.  And we didn’t.  Except last week I discovered an abscess on my daughter’s gum.  I pulled out a card that someone had given me for a dentist that I was willing to try.  At least to reduce our cost without having to go to the ‘fast food’ dentist.  He was out of town.  So I went back to the old one, at least to see if it was an abscess and get her on antibiotics.

So today, we tried the new dentist.  It was a disaster.  My daughter wouldn’t even let him look at her.  She wiggled and screamed and kicked and wouldn’t even turn her head around.  Migraine Mamma wasn’t super excited about this show of force, neither was the non-pediatric specialist dentist really entertained by it either. And he was only $10 cheaper than the pediatric specialist.

Finally in the front office the hygienist suggested we just go back to the other dentist, if my daughter was happy there, the cost wasn’t that different, she would open her mouth for that dentist, she said, “It is not worth rocking the boat.”  So our ship sailed from that office.

The whole way home all I could think was I need to have more confidence in my parenting choices.  I chose the right dentist for my kids.  The best dental office I have seen for kids.  And they love the dentist.  The reality is that I know my kids better than anyone else on this planet.  Period.  They have spent the majority of their lives with me.  I see how they interact with people, places, new experience, how they whine and fuss and yell when they are tired, how they warm up to nice people over time.

My husband, on the other hand, has not the same experiences with them.  He hasn’t been to multiple doctors and dentists and hospitals and schools with them.  He doesn’t know there is even a real difference.  It isn’t his fault, it is just our reality.

So this week is a celebration of being mindful of our guts.  In all walks of life.  We have instincts, and those instincts have evolved over a  millennium, not just for the hell of it, but because it serves a purpose.  I had a gut on this one.  I went against it.  I hope, that I will have enough faith in myself not to go against it again.  I have a wealth of experience with my own children.  I can trust I have all the knowledge I need to make the right decisions for them.

Lesson learned.

A few weeks ago, a guest minister at my church told us a funny story that has stuck with me.  She was going for an interview to work with a group of ministers and wedding officiants, right away she new she did not want the job, she wasn’t a person who was going to spend her days making cold calls and soliciting contacts for the whole group.  She went home trying to figure out how she could tell them she didn’t want it, in a nice way of course.

Except a few days later she got an email saying along the lines of, “Thanks for applying, we found someone who would better fit the position and what we are trying to accomplish.”

And guess what her reaction was? I am paraphrasing obviously, but she was upset!  Her ego wanted to be mad and react to the fact that she wasn’t wanted!  After a few hours she realized she was being crazy and she didn’t want the job in the first place and it worked out for the best, but how we all, at least our ego’s,  would be attached to getting news that we were the ones that weren’t wanted.

I tell this story cause it is SO. DAMN. TRUE.

Yesterday was the Run for Congo Women in Denver.  As the race director for the last 4 years, I breathed, sweat, read, marketed, planned, talked about, and thought about Congo and the women of the Democratic Republic of Congo for almost every moment of those four years.  This year, year number 5, as we decided to home school and live a more simple life, trying to eat better, grow our own food, become more present and mindful and peaceful, there wasn’t going to be time for everything.

I handed off my race director status to someone without children, who wants to work for the organization who oversees the event, and who is in the midst of building her carrier and passion for Congo.  The perfect match.  All great news right?

Except…yesterday at the run I didn’t exist.  I didn’t matter.  I was old news and already long forgotten.  Ouch.  For the rest of the day, I really sat with how I was feeling, what the emotions were, what was being brought up for me.  A lot of, “Now I am just a stay at home Mom, which is a highly thankless job, which comes with no praise about what a great job I did today keeping my people alive, well fed, bathed, etc.”  The run was the one day a year where people told me, “Great job.” Also this was followed by a lot of guilt about how I must be selfish not to be devoting such a large amount of time to sisters so far away whose stories are sealed in my psyche forever.

And then it hit me.  The story that was shared a few weeks ago at church.  I was doing the same thing.  My ego was trying to make something out of my new found un-usefulness, unimportant-ness, un-visible-ness.  The reality is that I can’t do the event anymore.  I chose motherhood over this event at this exact moment in time.  I chose to turn my gifts toward sustainability and how I can teach that to my children at the moment.  I wanted to have time to write, which is really what I want to do with my creative energy.  I chose to find space in my life to take care of myself and my health.

This is what I wanted.

Haahahahaha.  Aren’t we SO funny?! This human condition is riddled with moments of narcissism followed by moments of shear realization and brilliance.  I had to go through the exact same doubt and fear as the minister who shared her story did.  I laugh and am so full of joy and excitement and giddiness as I look above my desk at the vision board I made yesterday in celebration of this new chapter in my life.  It is full of pictures of horses, and homesteads, and Buddha, and yoga, and books, and travel, and doggies, and community, and friendships, and creativity, and my spiritual journey.

Today lets think about how mindful we are about what we want in our lives truly, with the depth of our beings, and be graceful about letting go of that which no longer serve a purpose for us.  As difficult as that can be sometimes.

Often I find myself fretting over a myriad of things.

The kids, their education, money, whether anyone is even reading this blog, my household duties, what I am going to wear today, where I am failing on any given day, is the garden weeded, the front yard look presentable, is my marriage going strong, am I a good enough writer, will we be able to retire, am I a good enough friend, have I gotten in my exercise today, have we eaten healthy food, did I yell at the kids, is the house clean enough for a birthday party, were we late, is the car clean, have I paid the bills, oh and that hefty library fee we have collected since my mind is mostly full of all this other stuff, are the kids well rounded, were they well behaved in the grocery store, am I living life to the fullest, will I run out of time, should I be traveling, taking more risks, is being a stay at home Mom enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The worries can envelope me like the darkness of night, bringing along with them, anxiety, nervousness, frustration, fear, the void that is the unknown, lots of time spent living in the near past wishing I had or hadn’t done such and such.  And guess what it gets me?  Nothing.

I get myself worked into a tizzy of trying to control it all when that is a complete impossibility.  I can’t control it all, nor can I do it all, all the time.  I keep thinking to myself if I can just get control of this corner of my life, or that corner of my life, things will be fine.  Life will be good.

Except life is good.  When I stop to breathe.  And feel the oneness and peace in the stillness, I remember that all of the worries and things I am trying to control are just a distraction.  Those aren’t life.  Life is love, life is peace, life is connection.  There is a depth beyond our material concerns.  It is just so damn hard to grasp when our mind is wrapped up in them, even adding our own editorials to what ever just needs to get done.

Three years ago, I would have thought nothing of the constant barrage of such brain activity.  I was a go, go, go kinda girl.  Fill the day with more, more, more to do and my brain with more, more, more to think about.  As I have welcomed, albeit slowly, peace and stillness and mindfulness into my world more contentment comes with it in little glimpses that I want more of.

If instead of getting wrapped up in what I can’t control, most of the time, I spend more time working on being present and mindful and practice meditation, I could realize more often the depth of the truth that when I am dead, most of it will matter not.  Did I spend my life driving myself crazy or spend it at peace, with the kids, in the garden, reading books, writing whatever it is I had to say?  We expend so. much. useless. energy. in our culture.  It is exhausting.  I am not immune.  But I am in practice of a different way, a different path, one that reminds me of what is truly important in a life well lived, for me.

I sat in the parking lot of swim class last week, having my kids dry out in the sun.  Yes, we were out there because I had forgotten to bring them clean clothes to put on after their class.  Another mother oops.

Anyway, as I sat there I was watching all the other Mom’s racing to their kiddos classes, I overheard one Mom say hastily, “I don’t have time for this.”  It stood out to me, as I often am saying that to my own little people.

“Hurry up, we are going to be late.”  “Quickly. Quickly.” Or, “We don’t have time for _______  today.” Feel free to fill in the blank with all the things you tell your kids you don’t have time to do too.  Park play, bike time, etc.

Then at a party last week one Mom, stunned that I homeschool, said, “No, no, I can’t wait for my kids to go to school.”  And I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people say that, “I can’t wait for my kids to be gone for the day.”

I fully understand the sentiment.  There are days I think that too!

Or how often Mom’s, and even myself, have said, “They are driving me NUTS today!”

The thing is, all of these thoughts are shared aloud…in front of children.  Sometimes their own, oftentimes mine as my kiddos are always with me.  And I am not an angel.  I fully admit to saying things in front of my people that I wish I could erase.  Sometimes I am oblivious to give it even a second thought.

I just wonder, what our kids are thinking when they hear these things.  “I don’t want you around?”  “You’re not worth the frustration to me?” “I can’t wait for you to leave most of the day?” “I don’t have time for you?”  “You annoy people?” Wow.  We all know that kids pay more attention than we give them credit for and are much more aware of what is being said than we would like to admit.

I am taking this mindful Monday to try and go as long as I can without saying such things to my babes.  And to also have conversation with them when we hear other people say things about their kids and why those people might feel frustrated just in the moment, but that they really do love their kids.  Mindfulness goes beyond ourselves and takes into account that which we put out to the world.

I know we all want our kids to feel good about themselves, and about their relationships with us.  I am left wondering how often we discount being mindful about our words about them…in front of them.  I am dedicated to becoming mindful about this and trying my darndest to only say positive things about them!  Especially in front of people!

After all, if I don’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all.

*What are your thoughts here?  How often have you caught yourself saying something that if you took time to reflect you might realize your kids probably felt pretty poopy about?  What are your tricks to stopping yourself before complaining about lack of sleep, picky eaters, fighting, etc. at your play dates?

~Dalai Lama

I have been thinking lately, and even more with my Mother’s Day Post yesterday, about motherhood as service.  As someone who was once very outer directed with her service, it has been quite hard to come into the home and feel a tangible value that I am helping the world at all.

But that is such an ego brain take over.  There can be no greater service than taking the job of mother with all seriousness, intention, presence, and mindfulness.  There is no other place where we are asked to give so much and we are required to step up to the challenge daily.  I think that if I can learn to think of this stage of my life as that in which I practiced mindful service to my family, then doing the laundry might not be such a pain in the ass.

In all seriousness, how often are you mindful that doing the dishes is being of service to your family?  How often is stopping the incessant fighting viewed in your mind as service to your children instead of stopping the thing that is annoying you?  Remember, that night you got up six times for your kids while you should have been sleeping?  Yeah, that night, did you think to yourself, “In this moment, this is my act of service?” Or did you think to yourself, “Oh my God, am I ever going to get any sleep?  What could they possibly need NOW?! ARGH!!!!”  When you clean the house for the four-hundreth time in two days, are you thinking service or annoyance?

So that is it this week, motherhood as service.  Today I will see all that I do as an act of service.  I give of myself because I have compassion of my children’s and my husband’s needs.  As the Dalai Lama said,  “The work of a person laboring in some humble occupation is no less relevant to the well-being of society than that of, for example, a doctor, a teacher, a monk, or a nun.”

I would say that the work of a mother is a humble occupation, there are no gold stars, no pay raises, not often even thanks, but it is quite possibly the most relevant job to the well-being of society.  Remembering my mothering as my service, this calms my heart.

“Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.” ~Buddha

Last week I had a conversation with the kiddos at bedtime when they were not settling down and continually interrupting the few moments of quiet my husband and I actually get after they go to sleep.  I was headed to the tub for a relaxing soak and they thought of all kinds of reasons to not lay down, “Can we just see the water?”  “Just a quick look!”  “PLEEEAAAASSSSEEEE!”

Aye, yaye, yaye.

Every night without fail.

Finally I said, “Here is the deal.  Mommy has a cup.” Charade like cup shows up in one hand. “And out of Mommy’s cup, Harley takes some sips, Sedona takes some sips, Daddy takes some sips, Mommy’s friends need to take some sips, fighting takes some sips, laundry, dishes, cleaning, dog vomit, dogs barking, all take some sips.  And then, before you know it, Mommy’s cup doesn’t have any more sips in it!  Now, sometimes a Mommy needs to fill her cup back up so that again, anyone who needs to can take some sips.  I am going to rest in the tub now, quietly, and put some more back into my cup, so that tomorrow there will be enough for you each to take sips from again.”

Off I went.  And to sleep they went.  The next day while my daughter was at gymnastics, my son and I went to the grocery store, on the way back to gymnastics he said, “Mom?  Have we taken any sips yet today?”

I think the point was taken.

One thing I think I do terribly is to read my own emotions and stress and understand when I need to do less, say ‘No’ to some requests for awhile, take baths, read books, rest.  Being mindful of our own needs somehow is difficult when there is so much that continuously needs to get done.  But we must.  A healthy Mommy means a healthy family, not the other way around.

So on Saturday, I was feeling an old spring itch that came often before kids, and often after, yet I didn’t think I could scratch that old itch with kiddos.  A class I had been hoping to take for the first time was canceled, so of course I headed for the bookstore just to peruse and read for a moment since I have had a hard time keeping my eyes open at the end of the day as of late.

And there it came, that overwhelming sense that I needed to do something unexpected today.  I needed to feel as if I could control something, take a risk, sort of, take a chance, do something to feel alive and not monotonous.  So I came home and told my husband to go on a motorcycle ride and then after that I wanted to go somewhere, just for the night, to get away and change our scenery.

So we booked a hotel in Colorado Springs for the night, headed down there at 2 PM on Saturday afternoon with the kids, did some sightseeing on Sunday, and came home.  It was good to feel like I am allowed to partake in some of my dreams and sense of wanderlust that takes over my psyche once and awhile.  God, especially in the spring.

This is a reminder to find what fills our cups as mothers and be mindful about doing that.  It is really easy to say, “Well I used to do such and such when the stress was getting overwhelming, but I have kids now so that doesn’t make any sense.” Why the hell not?  How mindful are you about knowing when to say when and take some time for yourself, or go on some sort of adventure with the whole family? I can say I am often not mindful about that until it is too late and I am floundering under some made up burdens in my head.

This week, be mindful about your cup.  What do you need to bring you back to equilibrium?  What does Mama need to feel like her whole life isn’t about refereeing, housework, and discipline?  Please share where it is you feel ‘off’, or where it shows when you do if any place, and how you go about nurturing yourself back to feeling like you have a bit more to give again.

I have no answer to this one.  It is a continual struggle for me.  Today I would like YOUR input, if anything to start a conversation. How mindful do we need to be about the toys that are brought into our homes?

Dilemma:  Your child wants Star Wars Lego sets, figures, etc. all which contain guns in them.  You don’t want to get him these things for Christmas etc, because you can’t understand why the toy sets must come with them, the kids would think they were awesome even without the guns.  He can’t understand why guns are an issue.  They just look cool.  To you, you know there are children his age around the world carrying guns and will kill people today because they are child soldiers.  To you, guns are not toys.  They are weapons.  You say he can have all the toys if he promises to give you the guns.

I have friends that don’t do any plastic toys.  I have friends that don’t allow princesses, while we have a little girl obsessed with them.  I have friends that allow toy guns and don’t have the same hang-ups as I.  I know people who barely have any toys for their kids and people who have whole rooms dedicated to toys.

I think while I may constantly feel judged about our toys-ok…princesses…that we allow in to our family, because truthfully most of the conversations I hear at parties and within my own community is that princesses suck, especially if they are of the corporate kind-there is no easy way to finagle the world of kids and their wants and interests and still not shove down their throats our wants and interests.

Do I want my daughter to grow up thinking that a prince will come one day and sweep her off her feet and they will live happily ever after without any notion of hard work?

NO.

Do I want my son to grow up thinking guns are toys and they are fun to play with?

NO.

One thing my daughter will learn in her first relationship as she grows up?  Hearts are broken.  People are flawed.  That is a reality that is learned if you are listening.  And should be pretty easy to realize if you pay attention to the undercurrents of your own parents marriage.  The great ones take hard work, kids should know that.

Where do our standards end and our kids interests begin?  Where are we allowed to draw a line in the sand and say, ‘No’ and not be judged by our community?  Or where can we say, ‘Yes’ and hope to not feel the same judgment?  Please know in this discussion, I am not judging the decisions every other parent makes with their kids and what toys come into their homes.  Do I feel bad sometimes when someone says, “Oh, well, we don’t allow princesses in our house” as they walk down the hallway to my daughters room to find it covered in pink and stickers of princesses all over the wall with dresses and shoes in the closet?

Yes.  But that is my own insecurity.

Do I feel bad when I start a conversation yesterday about guns and the toys  my child wants because half of the group wouldn’t allow it and the other half of the group totally does…and everyone gets quiet and doesn’t want to offer their opinion?

Yes.  But that is my own insecurity too.  Because the truth is I feel bad that I won’t allow him to have what he wants.  And I feel bad that my inner being and my connection to the Divine, doesn’t think that guns are toys.  I feel bad that my hearts has to break daily when children are killed in other countries wars thanks to the illegal gun trade in those areas.

When I became a Mom, there was going to be no princesses, no T.V., no sugar, only smart toys, natural toys, cloth diapers-which lasted like two days, I would spend all my time taking them amazing places, only nature walks and not indoor pizza plastic germ infested places, there wouldn’t be clothes from low paid workers overseas…yes, pre-parenting ideals are so lovely aren’t they? But I have planted my feet firmly in the mud on this gun one and am not moving.  But I think it is interesting to go through the steps of really articulating and feeling why I have stuck to my ‘guns’ this time.  I have read no research on the subject of kids, behavior, and guns.  I am just going with my heart on this one and, oh so many other things motherhood begs of us.

So lay it out there for us?  Are you really mindful and careful of the toys that come into your home?  No plastic?  No China?  No princesses?  No guns?  All guns?  All plastic?  Whatever Walmart has on sale?  Only Waldorf natural toys?  Only toys that will make them ‘smart’?  Second hand toys?  No toys? What is your mindfulness strategy when approaching your children’s wants and balancing your own beliefs?

Here we are again, another Mindful Monday has rolled around and I can tell you that this past week may have been my worst performance yet on mindfulness.

Seriously.

I count it as a blessing though that this time I am fully aware of my disastrous downward descent into complete  failure at practicing oneness with the present moment.  Progress I think they call that.

Over the past few weeks, I could feel myself getting more out of control.  It begins as I start to talk to much and too fast and have a higher pitch to my voice.  Then I constantly feel hurried.  And behind.  I cannot catch up.  I don’t know where to start attacking what needs to be done and what to let go of  knowing it can be dealt with later.  Everything takes on a sense of urgency.  I was dropping things last week, making stupid mistakes, forgetting where I left things.  I even missed showing up at the performance for my friends daughter yesterday.  A piano recital.  I was too distracted.

What the hell?

I haven’t done our budget this month or marked my calendar for that which I need to show up to.  I haven’t played WITH the kids and haven’t had time for a healthy peaceful meal.  I am in one place, but riddled with anxiety over all the stuff I have to ‘do’ when I get home, all the errands that need running, all the organizing that needs doing, other places that need getting to.

Breathe.

I don’t know about you, but typically when I begin to get like this I forge ahead and keep going.  So much needs to be done, spring calls forth growth and action in us.  But this flurry of activity for me isn’t mindful, it isn’t aware, it doesn’t feel good.

It feels completely out of control and random.

In fact, so out of control that as I watered the garden this morning, getting myself profusely muddy, I must have stepped in a little something and didn’t even notice.  Afterward, as I sat at gymnastics class trying to take a moment to read, I thought, “Huh, it sorta smells a little like dog poop in here.  I hope it isn’t my clothes.”  After all they were covered in mud.  Except, no, I peered at the bottom of my flip flop and there it was.  Three flattened turds looking up at my grinning.  I went to gymnastics with shit on my shoe.

So what do I do?

Intuitively what needs to be done?  Long hot baths in lavender.  Quiet walks here and there.  Meditation.  Taking time to read books that nourish me.  Committing to time in nature.  Committing to pause.  Pause to breathe, pause to take it all in, momentary pauses to bring myself back into the present, into my body.

I am reading a book called healing right now by Sister Dang Nghiem, a nun at Plum Village.  I am reminded of a part where she speaks about the experiences of our lives like waves. They rise up, come to a point, and then crash.  What we neglect to realize most of the time is that even before the waves begin to form, there is a current under the water that we can’t see.  The same goes for when the wave has crashed, the energy from that wave is still going back out into the ocean continuing.

“I practice recognizing the wave as it descends, so that I won’t be like a drunken person who claims “I’m not drrrunkkk!” or an angry person who shouts, “I’m not angry!” I am learning to be more and more aware of the aftermath and of the peak.  Gradually, I am learning to be aware of the wave before it reaches its peak, and then even before it manifests above the ocean-when the wave is still deep in water, miles and miles back, when it just starts with a thought or a feeling, and when it just starts with an image or a sound.  Of course, I’m also learning to appreciate that a wave does not end as it disappears from the surface, but that it will continue on underneath in order to build up another wave.”

I may have only caught this wave as it crashed.  This anxious, late, forgetting, talking too much, talking too loud, feeling rushed, completely unorganized, panicked about all there is to do, having too much energy I can’t seem to mellow, wave.  But I felt it coming.  I felt it out in the sea, building momentum, and I ignored it thinking it would go away, not get worse.

This too has passed.  And no guilt.  As I finished painting my mailbox yesterday, after knowing that I had missed my friends daughters performance and was repeating to myself, “God I suck.  What a shitty friend. UGH how did this happen?”  I eventually said aloud, “Buddha would have let it go by now.”  The only thing to do is move ahead, creating mindfulness as I go.  What is done is done, no amount of wishing I hadn’t talked so much over the last few weeks will change it.  Each moment we have the choice to stop, and breathe, and come back to the moment.

We choose.  I choose this moment to begin again.

I had an interesting thing happen this weekend.  Well, interesting is relative I suppose, another may have found this ‘thing’ completely fantastic.  Still another might have thought this ‘thing’ was a complete and utter disaster.  I myself found it…a bit in the middle…

My computer has gone completely wonky.  I am not sure what is going on, but for a good 48-72 hours it wouldn’t connect online.  And then when it did, I could get some email, but not all.  I had a hell of a time actually getting to my Google homepage, or dear God Facebook, but for just a moment Saturday morning all was wine and roses.  For like an hour.  Then I was shut out again until this morning.

What I noticed in this absence from mindless, numbing, computer dribble?  Is that I will find other mindless, numbing, dribble to fill that void, and pretty much right away.  In fact, as soon as I realized there was no motion on my desktop at all, except that little arrow that would happily move around, but wouldn’t actually launch anything, a slight flutter of anxiety ensued.

It wasn’t long after complete computer meltdown, that I ate ice cream.  And chocolate.  Nor did it take long before I caught up on my gazillion Oprah shows that have been sitting in my DVR since, yes, September.  I got to take in a bit of Hugh Jackman at midnight, knitting, so thank you Oprah.  I watched actual movies on Netflix and one that actually came in the mail too.  Huh, even Food Network made it in there for an hour or so.  I made lots of progress in the garden.  I ran errands.  Oh and cleaned the house multiple times.

Basically I spent every moment of this weekend doing everything EXCEPT remaining present.

It came to my attention this evening that I feel like I didn’t even have a weekend really.  That I didn’t spend any quality time with my children.  That I spent the time running, at top speed, away from that which is my life.

And that makes me sad.

I had a moment this evening, when I really LOOKED at my son.  The one who so often looks like such a big boy, especially always compared to his younger sister.  The one I ask so much more of because he is ‘older’.  The one I think must be O.K., only because he isn’t screaming at the top of his lungs; that just ain’t his style.  In that moment of presence on my part, I was able to see the truth.  He is just a little boy.  A boy that just desperately wants love and  mindful attention, like each of us.

I was also able to see a more painful truth, that in just this weekend alone, I had successfully pissed thousands of fleeting, beautiful moments away, by not being fully present with him and his sister.  There are no second chances in parenthood, no re-do’s.  This moment is it.

And I repeatedly blow it.  I checked out of mindful parenting.  Of being WITH them.  Of showing up in ways that parenthood asks of us, without running away.  I let myself make excuses that they don’t need me to entertain them ALL the time.  I fool myself to think they don’t need me to BE with them, to listen deeply, to look them in the eye with everything I say, to look them in the eye and hear everything they say, at every second.  A few moments can slide by  here and there and no one would be the wiser…

Except that is not true.  They are the wiser.

As I sit here this evening, trying my darndest not to cry, I am grateful that I was at least mindful enough to realize my habits.  Mindful enough to watch how I would react to not having this handy laptop distraction in my life constantly too.  I take solace in my awareness of checking out from time to time with my kids, only because it begs me to be better.  It reminds me to come home to my mindfulness practice, which I am learning is the gift my babes have to give me.

“Don’t run away to your computer Mama, nor to your food, or your ‘busy’ work.  We are life, we are the moments, we are the marrow, and yes, this. is. it.”  That is what they whisper to me, completely unaware they are doing it, they whisper to me…

I was reminded multiple times this past week about personal suffering, and how much we play a part in creating our own.  This isn’t the kind of suffering that comes when a catastrophe happens in your life, this sort of suffering comes when we aren’t mindful.  Mostly I was reminded because I want more land.  More space. Chickens.  An orchard.  Basically, we are talking more than a vegetable garden.

Problem?

I live in suburbia.

Which I don’t mind for the convenience and closeness to my friends and the kids activities.  The hang up?  Land around me is astronomical.  No joke.  So I have been searching online for land in Idaho, other areas of Colorado, northern California, and Oregon.  I even got sent a listing for Maine.

What does this have to do with suffering?  I have spent a lot of time away from the present moment since the first inclinations of spring appeared.  It happens every spring, without fail.  I plant a few seeds and begin to consider myself a farmer…or something…and get this idea we should be homesteading and having all kinds of baby things running around our feet, not of the human persuasion.  And more than the ‘look at the broccoli sprouts’ persuasion.

What do we get when we spend our time disengaged from the presence of our lives?  Wishing things were different?  Suffering.  And don’t forget that dear friend of suffering, “I’ll be happy when…” who lovingly holds your hand the whole time.

A short list of how I have created my own suffering:

1- Wanting a homestead when I have a pretty good gig for now. I am learning a lot after all.

2- Wishing my kids behavior was any other way than it is in this moment.  It is what it is, so get over your whishin’ Mama.

3- Cringing every time I need to fold laundry.  It is there.  It could be a perfect opportunity for meditation practice, yet I prefer to complain incessantly in my head while I do it instead.

4- Dreaming of more time.  More time?  As if I can create more than 24 hours in a day.  As if, after thirteen hours of raising children, dogs, and folding the damn laundry, I could stay awake for any of those extra hours.

5- Wanting to be a better writer than I am.  A published, more than one article at least, writer.  You know, one who might have written a BOOK or something kind of writer.  Ahhh…the ego loves this sort of crap…it feeds on this like a leech in a rain forest might feed off you.

And wallah.  You have suffering.  Because I have left the present moment, and all the gifts it brings, for living some dream of a life that isn’t mine as it is in this exact moment.

And truth be told?  My life is pretty damn good, and fun, and exciting…well, if you think exciting is checking your raised beds every 20 minutes to see what other seedlings may have broken through the dirt since your last visit…20 minutes ago…my life is WAY exciting.

The congregation at my Unity church yesterday got ripped a new one.  And I am being totally serious about this.  I was having a hard time concentrating at service yesterday, the kids had woken me up all night yet again, I was yawning, I was having longings for small homestead land, dreams of Old English Sheepdogs, a small orchard to have hours of walking meditation in.  I had to keep bringing myself back to hear what was being said.

It is so typical of us to be somewhere else in our minds, while life is happening in front of us.  So typical for me at least.  “When the house is clean, I will begin my path to enlightenment”, I tell myself.  “When the dishes are done, I can allow myself a moment to read”, I think.  “When my urban farm is completely up and running, I will be done…for a while…”, I muse.  Of course, I am a mother, which means nothing is ever done.  Ever. “When I go on retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, I will meditate, and find peace, and be relaxed”, I hope.

Not one of the ‘then’s’ is happening ‘now’. The stuff that is happening now, is of course happening, but my focus is on what the benefit will be later of what I am doing now not what I am doing. Ah, the humanity of it all.  The lessons we have learned a long the way like, “You’re freedom and happiness is for retirement.”  We hear such undercurrents in our society of, “You will be happy when you finally have this…or that…or another thing.” “Hard work is rewarded don’t you know?”  “Plan, plan, plan, finagle, finagle.”  “Study, study, study now so you can get into a good college, later, later, later. The list goes on of the many ways in which we are drawn away from this moment by what we have learned.

It doesn’t bode well when we grow up and find, that this rhetoric is all a bunch of bullshit.

That you can plan, plan, plan all you want for happiness later only to find you have a heart attack at 45 and there is no later.  You can get this thing or that thing or that some other thing, only to find that there is another carrot dangling in the not so far off distance, that will also make you utterly happy-er.  You can work, hard, hard, hard and be diagnosed with breast cancer at 35 and find the future you were working for might no longer be.  Maybe you can study and work hard all you want, only to find that a college degree doesn’t make much difference when unemployment is so high.

Where does that leave us then?

Ah…with the ass ripping.  As I was dreamily away from the moment at church imagining a farm house with a wrap around porch, struggling to come back to the actual moment, my minister got my attention as his voice rose, and his intensity grew.  This is always a sign something important is about to come.  He gets very serious as if he actually wants to yell at us and shake us awake, but there are too many for personal whippings.  I paraphrase, probably badly, but this was the gist:

“If you are not in this moment, you are being SELFISH.  GREEDY.  The majesty of your life is right HERE.  Right NOW.  In THIS moment.  And you are missing it.”

(Before you read this post today, if you haven’t, read this one here.  You will get a better understanding of where I am at this moment.)

I went to see Ruined this weekend with two fabulously passionate friends of mine.  I couldn’t have seen it with anyone else.  They understand the depth of what is happening in Congo, like not many others do.  It takes some knowledge to be socked in the heart with the magnitude that performance achieves.  It takes understanding of the truth of the atrocities to be stunned for days following.  It takes an invisible thread to unite three people who barely know each other in person, and allow them to weep openly, baring what is true in their hearts, and knowing the others are feeling the exact same depth of pain.

It is a mindfulness about humanity.  It is a mindfulness that asks us how we fit into the grand scheme.  How we ourselves are responsible for the suffering of our fellow sisters and humans around the world in so many choices we make a day.

On my way home from the play, and still today, I kept thinking about Eckhart Tolle and a point in A New Earth when talking about the process of awakening he says, “Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they may feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them.  Some feel that they inhabit a no-man’s-land between two worlds.”

I am there.  I am not claiming to be awakened by any means.  Nor that my ego doesn’t raise itself into my daily activities.  But do I clearly feel as if the culture around me is mad?  Yes.  I know I am not alone.  I know there are others out there locked in an existence of shock and inability to understand why the world is operating as it is currently.

One of the reasons the Congo and its war is so hard for me is that, while I can help individuals in the region by sponsoring and raising funds through the Run for Congo and Women for Women International, I feel helpless in my ability to change the fact that the war continues.  The rapes continue.  The murders of children and innocent men continue.

In the days since Saturday, I have been drawn repeatedly to the Reverence For Life training in the Five Mindfulness Trainings and how they would fit into this post about being mindful of the reaches our actions have beyond what we see in front of us.  “Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals.  I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my ways of life.  Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, GREED (emphasis my own), and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.”

Today I am mindful of humanity.  I am mindful that my actions play a part in the dance of universal suffering or the dance of universal peace and safety.  I am pulling the small funds out of the mutual fund we talked about here a few weeks ago officially.  I spoke with my broker on a few occasions, she even sent me a green fund that I had researched before, only it is full of tech companies.

While technology is great, until they can agree on a way to support the nations in which they get their natural resources, I don’t want to be part of the bottom line of investors they are trying to make happy while undercutting the countries and complying in the practices that are happening there by claiming there is nothing they can do.

“I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life.”

It sounds so simple, yet if we really look at our lives closely, it is scary how much of a part we may play. I will do what I can to understand the suffering of my fellow travelers on this journey. I will do what I can in the choices I make to uphold an integrity that honors them and the earth. I cannot be perfect. I understand that I live in a world that uses computers and gasoline and the like. I will have compassion for myself as well. And I will realize that sometimes that is the hardest part.

One thing about motherhood, life probably, but I have only my perspective which is that of a mother, is that it seems like there is not a lot of space.

By space I don’t mean physical space, more rooms, more yard, more of anything.  I am referring to the space in which one can think.  One can be.  One can contemplate, or one can expand a thought for more than 3 seconds without interruption.

I feel sometimes there is a constant sense of overwhelm.  It is so subtle, one could totally miss it.  It isn’t stress per se, but really the sense that I cannot even have thoughts of my own, time of my own, space to be.

My husband gave me the bestest birthday present ever, a night in a hotel suite with a jacuzzi tub, followed by an afternoon massage the next day.  After a relaxing lavender soak, I decided to take a hike on one of my favorite trails between the hotel and the massage.  To smell the earth.  To enjoy one of my favorite past times which I have only done twice since my eldest grew out of the toddler carrier.  To be in nature, smell her, listen to what enlightenment she had to pass on to me that day.  Listen, without needing to respond.

The daily grind is great if you are one that thrives on it, that gets sense of achievement from the to-do checklist being complete.  While I enjoy those little checks too, my mind needs time to just explore, to listen deeply to what my spirit is saying.  My spirit has messages it wants and needs to share which I find hard to hear in between refereeing children fighting, getting snacks for the hungry, bathing, educating, listening to, answering their never ending questions, while they are making music on the bottoms of the dogs bowls with my wooden cooking spoons…

Mindfulness about space.  It is such a theme to my life as of late, I came home from my mini get away, to find this blog post about pilgrimage and motherhood, which you can read here. One of the things which stood out most was this, “Not wanting to vacate or retreat from my daily life, instead I wish for holiness imbibed into my days like the most divine tea leaves seeping their essence into hot water for the perfect cup of tea.  So how to live each day as a sacred journey, a holy day?  How to live each day as a pilgrimage?  Holy.  Beautiful.  Not just functional. Here is the guiding question of my days that are so full of the practical routine of sustaining life and home.”

Eckhart Tolle says, “Inner space consciousness and who you are in your essence are one and the same.  In other words, the form of little things leaves room for inner space.  And it is from inner space, the unconditioned consciousness itself, that true happiness, the joy of Being emanates.  To be aware of little, quiet things, however, you need to be quiet inside.  A high degree of alertness is required.  Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.”

How to do that with constant interruptions of even ones thoughts?

Later, he says, “I am not saying here that helping others, caring for your children, or striving for excellence, in whatever field are not worthwhile things to do.  For many people, they are an important part of their outer purpose, but outer purpose alone is always relative, unstable, and impermanent.  This does not mean that you should not be engaged in those activities.  It means you should connect them to your inner, primary purpose [awakening], so that deeper meaning flows into what you do.”

I want to be a Mom leaving deeper imprints of love on my children than I am now.  A quality of presence which I lack at present in so many incidences.  They are the motivation for which I move toward awakening.  And they are also the daily practice and daily meditation in which that purpose can be explored.

Mothering is not who I am, it is what I do.  As I focus on that primary purpose of presence and sacredness amongst the chaos, space is something I have yet to grasp, if it is even graspable.

Last week, I got in a heated discussion about marijuana and parenting.  The question revolved around whether smoking a j or a bowl after this kids went to bed or to regain ones peace seemed like an o.k. practice to engage in as a parent.

My take?

I think it is lame.  For so many intricate reasons it would take a dissertation to explain.

But this brought up to me a whirlwind of emotions and feelings, way beyond my own opinion about the topic.  I was despised by some on this internet thread as being a judgmental whore.

The whole incident brought me back to my days of really getting in to heated arguments with people about politics, social justice, my idea of right and wrong. And I pissed off a lot of people in my day.  Some who I love very  much, we just don’t happen to agree on things.  One specific response to my thoughts on this topic brought me straight back to my own insecurity about pissing people off.  Offending them.

Because of my intense fear of doing such now, I tend to want to rewind and take back all of my words.  I tell myself to stay neutral, don’t share my opinion, at least without the caveat of ‘it’s just my opinion’ attached, don’t upset the people, don’t challenge their ideas so they doubt their choices and hence, doubt YOUR worthiness as their friend.

OUCH.

After this interaction, I spent the next two days wondering about whether discussions like this are even useful.  Where does my ego end and any semblance of truth begin?  Where does the idea of ‘right speech’ come in?  I am reminded by the Five Mindfulness Trainings, “I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope”. When is discussion useful and when does it spread more inflammatory energy in which the world so doesn’t need right now?  Can you have these discussions and still spread joy, hope, and confidence too?

The amazing minister teaching a class I am taking at Unity right now, based on the book Discover the Power Within You, would say “You are a full-time job”, hence not to worry about and judge what others are doing.  You know, don’t point out the splinter in the others eye when there is a full on giant Sequoya in your own.

It is challenging to me.  The whole process.  I have pulled away from politics, and focused more on my own living for now.  I practice not sharing my opinion at every turn in which the opportunity presents itself, even when I need to try REALLY hard.  I have learned that I need a much stronger spiritual base before I return to helping others in a wider sense.

I also need to be able to listen more without getting emotional, judging, feeling angered.  I need to be able to see things clearly as they are, and not as the injustice that breaks my heart and gets my adrenaline pumping.  As the mindfulness trainings point out, “I know the roots of anger can be found in my own wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and the other person.  I will speak and listen in a way that can help myself and the other person transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations.”

It is a journey we all walk everyday.  It will matter to our collective future in how we decide to take that walk.  I don’t know where or how or when I will jump into the fray again, I do know that my divine spirit will let me know when that time has arrived.

But just for fun, my friend, one who I did piss off on more than a few occasions, sent me this lovely video.  I feel like it challenges us all to take mindful speech, intertwine it with the need for honest speech, and move forward.

Enjoy!

Strange?  Or serendipitous?

Last week I was reading in Nothing To Do Nowhere To Go by Thich Nhat Hanh and this statement, which I underlined, by Master Linji, a Zen Master who lived in China beginning somewhere between 810 and 815, stood out:

“Having nothing to do is the basis of a noble person.  The most noble person is the person who has nothing to do.  The only thing you should avoid is thinking about what you are going to do. All you need to do is be an ordinary person, be sovereign wherever you are and us that place as the seat of awakening.  If you keep thinking about about and calculating how to direct your search to what lies outside of you, you have made a great mistake.”

It is a heavy message so far in this book, that you don’t need to be anyone in particular to have peace.  That there are no aims outside of us that deserve our energy as much as the aims within us.  We keep looking outside for that which will make us happy, over and over again, constantly chasing another carrot once we have attained the first one.  Rarely satisfied, always searching for more, the better job, better house, better car, better marriage, more shoes, more clothes, more beer, more Starbucks, more, more, more.

None of that will work.  Yet we keep trying, and I do too.  Oh God do I try to find peace, happiness, satisfaction, outside of myself.

I digress.  The funny thing about that constant message in this book is the one my minister put up yesterday by Eckhart Tolle from A New Earth:

“If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe.  What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength.  This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave. Instead of trying to be a mountain, teaches the ancient Tao Te Ching, “Be the valley of the universe.”  In this way, you are restored to wholeness and so “all things will come to you.”

Shit.

Evidently I need to be learning this right now, as I struggle with where to balance my Mom-hood with my Me-hood.  Yes, universe, I got it, your bluntness is not lost on me!

Thank goodness for Thich Nhat Hanh’s take on this:

“Even though the true person is the person with nothing to do and nowhere to go, doing nothing and going nowhere takes a lot of joyful practice!”

Joyful practice.  And a lot of it.  That is what this Mama needs this week!

Spill it: Do you find yourself constantly on search for something outside of you?  Constantly distracted from your true self by the plethora of goodies our Western world offers up?  Or, how have you found satisfaction in your life as it is?  What is your take on the idea that there is no need for us to ‘achieve’ as society deems?  That joy actually might come from just the opposite?

Wow.

That is harder than it sounds, mindful investing.

As we begin to explore our financial options as the years wain on, I am pretty disgusted with what I find.  Everyone says, invest in mutual funds right?

How many people are giving thought to the companies and their practices in those said mutual funds?  I was appalled when I looked at the brochure of the funds a small, very, very small, amount of our money is in.  It was incredibly discouraging.  With a call into our adviser, who I have never spoken to before, I could tell if she was closer than 10 states away I would have been able to hear her laughing and snickering from there.

I am crazy, right?

I don’t want to make money off things I have ethical problems with.  I can’t close my eyes and pretend it isn’t there, it is in my heart, and that matters.

So I read Start Late, Finish Rich by David Bach, and to be honest, I skimmed the last few chapters.  It was published in 2005 and a lot has changed since then.  First, it isn’t so easy to get loans on your equity anymore to invest in real estate.  And he was a huge fan of the stock market and compound interests galore.

So where does that leave me?  This crazy lady who wants my husband and I to retire one day, but not if it means suffering of my fellow human beings and the environment I need to breathe, is at a loss.

My adviser is looking into green funds and socially more responsible ones to see what she can find.  I am sure she is still laughing a few hours after my call.  I asked her if other people looked for better funds or not, and her response was, “Well, no, not really.”

So depressing.

If we are going to be mindful about what we eat, where we spend our money, how we exercise, meditate, and live, we have to be mindful about how we invest in our future.  I will keep you posted on this one.  It is breaking my heart, but at the same time I am willing to put in the hours to figure out a better way to plan a retirement.

The ‘inside the box’ way is just not going to work for me.

Ha. As if anything inside the box ever did.

Spill it: How much thought do you give to investing?  How mindful are you about how to secure a future that isn’t working up until the day you die, unless by choice?  Do you have any ideas/connections for someone who is looking for advice and information?

So I went to a party on Saturday.  And of course, judging by my lifestyle as a homeschooler, urban farmer (trying), simplicity mover, attempter at mindfulness, I tend to disagree with so many conversations at such gatherings.

I had an awesome day leading up to it, three hours of drumming at a drum class, weather in the 60′s, I was calm and peaceful and feeling excited about everything.  Spring like weather in January can do that to a girl.

But, I am a nut at gatherings in which I don’t know many people anyway.  Normally I would respond to things I didn’t agree with to show how philosophical and smart I was.  As the years have waned on however, I am learning that arguments/discussions mean nothing.  Most people come up with their own ideas from experience or finding information on their own, not being told what is better and what isn’t.  (Better in your/my opinion anyway)

I have tried in the last year or so, not to jump into such frays.  It is hard.  I majored in Political Science.  We argued.  I read a lot, which makes my ego think it know things.  Which I don’t really cause there is always more to read.

This weekend, when I began to feel myself getting in that mode with the trend of a particular discussion, I got up and changed direction.  I perused a book, then helped a friend with something.  I of course could overhear the conversation continuing, but instead of responding when I had an opinion to share, I sat with my feelings about it.

I asked myself, what my body was feeling.

I breathed.

I then observed that I was angry and had adrenaline flowing through me.

Then I breathed again.

I had to fight my instinct to be right.  Or comment.  Or prove someone wrong.  Instead I took my feelings of how the world should work and watched them float away.

This is new.

Do I want a gold star? No.  I am just so happy that our mindfulness practice together on Monday’s is really causing me to take to task my own life, and helping me lead into a more mindful one.

So next time you want to share your opinion with someone, practice one time, not sharing.  Feel your body.  Why is this thing/issue so important to you?  What are your thoughts doing?  Are your shoulders tense?  Do you feel like you might explode if your opinion doesn’t make it to the table?

Let’s spend the week noticing our reactions in social situations, or with family where those pesky reactions can get even more heated!  And breathe instead of discuss.  Listen instead of talk.

One day, maybe I will be able to listen and discuss with the openness of the Dalai Lama.  Right now I cannot, I am still too stuck in my own ego which totally thinks it is right all the time.  As a teacher once told me, practice makes progress.

Spill it: Do you have trouble not sharing all your thoughts in social gatherings?  Are you a fantastic listener to others?  Are you already mindful of your responses and emotions while in conversations?  Or are you flying by autopilot?

I just got back in from three days in a mountain cabin with my hubby, two kids, and two dogs.  While we were away, I was reading a fantastic book, that I am not going to share the title of just yet, in between board games, card games, adventures in the wind and snow, rollerskating, eating, drinking tea and hot cocoa, etc. etc. etc.

We returned about an hour ago, I proceeded to check email, Facebook, and yahoo email, only to find we hadn’t really missed much.  Not really anything at all.

I am beginning to realize that the pit in my stomach all weekend as I read this particular book may be asking me to change.  And change in a big way.  To become more mindful of the way I live my life on a DAILY BASIS.  Not just when I am away on vacation.

Autopilot is no way to live.

Period.

And it is time for me to become a whole lot more mindful about how I am choosing to live everyday.  I have been making some changes over the last month.  I can feel it.  Deciding to not strap my schedule all the time, making bread, cooking more from scratch; there is change afoot.

But it isn’t enough.  Yet.  There is more to come.

How often do you say, “No” when someone asks you to do something and you feel like you are busy enough, but you want to help so you say, “Yes” instead? How many times a day are you doing something that you don’t really enjoy?  (Laundry happens, that doesn’t count!) How many years of your life have you lived wishing you could do something other than that which you are doing now?

We have a limited amount of time here.  As far as anyone knows anyway.  Even if you do come back, you won’t remember your kids from this round, your life, how you spent your time.  For all intensive purposes, you got one shot at this gig and you are living that shot right this moment…

Are you living your life fully?  The way you have always dreamed it would be?  Are you living as Maya Angelou suggests, “Live your life so that you will not leave too many things undone.” Are you waiting for a distant future you may never see?

I know, from this past year more than any other, there are no guarantees you will live long enough to retire.  That you might too, saddle up to retirement only to find out six months later you have cancer.  That you might not make it there in the first place.  That the life you are living today, this moment, is it.

I don’t know about you, but for me there is a different way.  I will get there one step at a time.  But my gut, my inner guidance, my intuition, God, is asking me to step into a new way of doing things.

I am answering the call.

I, and you, will get off the path we are lead to many times.  But mindful living asks us to just TRY to live a life of greatness that we were meant to live. To listen deeply to our own hearts.  To be mindful about how what we are choosing for our lives each day.

I don’t want you to think I don’t like my life.  I LOVE it.  Mostly.  There are always areas that could use some work, for all of us, but I LOVE being a stay at home Mom.  I LOVE homeschooling the kids.  I LOVE trying to live more simply.  I LOVE trying, emphasis on trying, to urban homestead.  But I also love, love, love the current energy that is coming my way.  The way my heart is opening in ways I never would have guessed 20 years ago, even though these are inclinations I had 20 years ago.  I love that my husband and I are on the same page looking ahead.

Wow.  This mindful Monday has got me thinking…what about you?

Spill it: Do you think I am crazy? Don’t answer that.  How often do you feel out of sorts with the way you are living life, but just can’t quite put your finger on how it should be different?  Or if it should?  Or if YOU are the one that needs to change not your life?

I had a blog post in mind this morning, that had nothing to do with Martin Luther King Jr.  Then I read a quote a friend posted on Facebook, and couldn’t resist being mindful about today.

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy

of this period of social transitionwas not the strident

clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of

the good people.” ~MLK Jr.

Life is a period of social transition.  This quote will be applicable to humanity, for as long as humanity exists.

Be mindful today of the myriad of ways you can make a difference.  With your kids.  With the environment.  Turn off a light not in use.  Drive less.  Make dinner for a friend who is busy, busy, busy.  Call your Mom.  Move to Africa.  Plant a forest.  Meditate. Whatever it is that gets you excited, be mindful today of those that have gone before us, and how you too can make the world a better place, because “We will be the participants in making it so.”

Mindfulness, mindfulness, constant mindfulness is required.  And it is hard.  And it is necessary.

Spill it: Do you give much thought to this day?  Do you feel hopeless about being a positive influence on the world?  Where do your hopes lie in positive change?

Wow.

That is really all I can muster at the moment.

Last night I was in a panic state over my lack of response to a request for a moment of activism on behalf of women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  I had made a promise to a hero of mine, and I wanted to pull through for her…for a moment it felt as if I wouldn’t.

And then another day began, and I discovered an inbox full of questions and willing participants to support the Outcry for Congo action taking place on Facebook this week.  As I sit here tonight, I am stunned.  I am utterly moved by the rally of my friends, husband, and acquaintances in putting themselves out there for something so public and so necessary.

Over 5 million people have died.  And the Congo is but a whisper in the public discourse. Over 3 million women and girls have been violently raped.  And you can forgive yourself for not knowing, cause how would you?

As burnt out, and cynical, and disappointed as I have become lately, I learned a few things this weekend…

Don’t get bogged down in the moments.

Stay ready and in tune to the big picture.

Don’t ever count people out.

Trust those around you.

Have faith.

Standing up for others is hard and scary for all of us.

Keep your mind positive, stop letting the negative muscle in, it so is not worth it.

People are amazing.

Love exists.

Compassion exists.

Hope matters.

You can count on people.

Humanity does show up-in some unbelievable ways.

Stay present.

Stay present.

Stay present.

I have never felt my heart more full than it is at this very moment.  I am not lying.  It feels as if it may burst through my chest and I am going to be very mindful of this beautiful sense of joy that was created by all those in my life.  Just when I may have been feeling so alone, everyone I know just decided to show up. Just. Like. That.

Wow.

Spill it: Have you ever felt burnt out from any sort of action you were taking, only to be revived by those closest to you?  When has your community shown up for you?

P.S. Want to learn more about the Congo?  Visit here.  Want to help in the action?  Visit here for the low down in the right side bar, Lisa Shannon, founder of Run for Congo Women and author of A Thousand Sisters, explains it all there!  Just jump, it is really all we can ever do!

As I was putting socks on my still asleep little boy this morning, something occurred to me that seemed very profound in the moment.

Whenever I am distracted by anything in my head, my ability to  parent well meter quickly falls to the bottom with a resounding *thud*; echo included.

It was brought to my attention when my daughter informed me that Daddy had sent her brother to time out last night for coming into our room yet again.  I recalled my husbands lack of patience last evening, as I sat hunched over my laptop in my closet ‘office’.  I am so NOT pointing fingers here, what I realized as I pulled my little guys socks up over his toes, was that I had been a perfectly impatient parent all of last week.

What WAS it that makes that difference?

My patience and mindfulness go out the window together holding hands, probably singing a little jig and laughing all the way too, as soon as my mind is focused on anything that needs to get done.  Sometimes, most of the time, it isn’t even something that can be taken care of in that moment.

Pie, for example.  Play dates and fresh bread, patent leather shoes, Christmas presents, writing, the laundry.  Any number of those things can sweep my mind away from the moment, and cause me to unleash a totally undeserved outburst onto my children for a totally age appropriate slight.  And for them to feel as if they are furniture in the background of my life instead of the most valuable things they truly are to me.

Because they are.  The most important beings in my life.  How is it so easy for me to put them on the back burner while some other thing takes my attention and leads me into the realm of frustration, anger, anxiety, impatience, and offense.

How dare they fight while I am trying to do dishes?! Offense!  Ugh, do thay have to yell, “Mom!” one more time while I am tyring to get a blog post done?  As if a blog post matters? And their behavior as Mommy slowly begins to check out and forgets to check back in? It totally goes down the tube and I can watch it, fully aware of why it is headed south.

I am not beating myself up here, it was just a true moment of understanding this morning, about how I can miss so many beautiful moments with my children by my complete lack of mindfulness.  So today, let us just practice being mindful as we talk with our kids.  Practice really being in the moment as we play a game with them.  Let’s actually take time to play the game with them without thinking about email or read a whole pile of books, not just one before bed.  Let’s practice looking them in the eye when they are talking to us and not mumbling, “Oh yeah?” as we barely hear them and are focused on the dishes.

If not you, then me.  I obviously need all the practice I can get!

Spill it: Do you find yourself often present with your kids or often distracted?  Does it take real work for you to REALLY be with them, or does it come more naturally for you?  Do you think your patience wains when you have lots on your mind?

Of meditation.

I could be meditating.  I should be meditating.  If I was meditating. When I will be meditating.

Yada, stinkin’ yada.

Sometimes I feel as if meditation is just one more ‘to do’ that I don’t ‘get to’.  It creates such a sense of angst!  Isn’t that ludicrous!

But maybe that is because I know the huge benefit to myself, to my goals, to my children, to my husband, to my strength, to my dreams, to my spirit that meditation is.  When I do it, I am glad I did.  When I don’t…life is ho-hum. I forget the joy in the small things. I completely lose my patience over tiny slights by my children.  I get distracted from that where it is I want to go with my life.  The doldrums take over.  The stress starts to beat me.  I get tired.  My hands grab for more chocolate.  I wonder if ‘this is it’.

I want to meditate.  I know that it brings a clarity to my confusion.

I just don’t.

Meditation isn’t the ONLY way to become mindful.  My friend blogged last week about Motherhood As Spiritual Practice; “Practice at its root is the practice of your most revered state.  Too often there is the notion that a spiritual practice is primarily a yoga practice or prayer practice or meditation practice – and that it lives separate from the rest of our lives.”

There is opportunity to practice in every single moment of every single day.  My minister always likes to say, the key is “Keeping your peace regardless of circumstances.” Yesterday it was, “Keeping your joy regardless of circumstances.” And lord knows that keeping ones peace in every circumstance certainly gives us a lot of moments in which to practice, not a single one of them in the quiet solitude of candlelight and incense.

I am just feeling the need to make a commitment to myself.  To find myself worthy enough for the effort.  A moment in the day to recall how un-serious all the things I seem to make serious really are.  To feel the oneness that is all that is.  A platform from which to launch myself into those circumstances that are life.  A calmer energy.  A stronger sense of self.

Meditation isn’t a magic bullet I don’t think.  After all, what you learn in your own silence must then be brought forth into your daily experience.  As my friend questioned, any kind of mindful practice isn’t something meant for doing removed from our lives, but deeply within our lives instead.

I am ready to begin my meditation journey in earnest.  Not once a week, once a month, or once in a blue moon.  But today, and tomorrow, and the next day too.  Keeping any sort of peace in my world would be that much more realistic an expectation if I ever took a moment for peace, and stillness, and breath in the first place.

Mindfully meditating.  My motto from here on out.  I will begin my journey this evening, after my babes are dreaming, while my husband is reading his Android phone, and quiet has descended into our home.  There, I will take the first step in a journey to deeper meaning and mindfulness.

Spill it: Do you have a meditation practice you keep up with on a daily basis?  Would you like a daily meditation practice, but struggle along with me on commitment? Do you think we can bring mindfulness into our lives richly without a ritual/practice everyday?

Here we are again, another Monday clamors for our attention, yet how to remain present through all that the weeks will inevitably bring.  Especially the next few weeks, as the holidays approach and we begin to be distracted by our to-do lists.

Last week I noticed I was halfway to a neighboring town before I realized that I was driving in a fog of thoughts.  I had driven to where I was at my realization, but I hadn’t DRIVEN there.  I was busy in my head, while my body was responding to that which we call driving by a sort of habitual reflex.

I suddenly pulled myself back into the moment with a start.  I looked at the cars in front of me, but really looked.  I looked at the leaves on the trees around me, their hues of gold and burgundy.  I took in the soft afternoon light that was warming the strands of tall desert grasses that so speaks the West.  I took a breath.  And I wondered…how many things do I do each day that I am not really engaged in at all.

I certainly wasn’t engaged in driving, which doesn’t bode well for the safety of those most precious to me.

Instead I was focused on planning blogs, and creating crafts, and eating healthier, and finding enlightenment without doing any work, how I was going to get off the crack I call Starbucks, and when to clean the house, ideas about homeschooling, and what we would eat for dinner, and, and, and….

Sometimes when I am aware that I am not fully present in the moment, and I stop, and breathe, and feel my actual body, it feels as if my spirit literally comes thumping back into my physical being.   Maybe it is just my awareness that is leaving its normal post sort of hovering at the top of my head obsession about one thought or another, and moving its way back into my chest where it is less distracted. I can actually feel my body again when just a moment ago I was operating from some other awareness that is busy and frenetic and frantic.

I drop into my body.

I can see the leaves.

I can smell the air.

I can feel love.

I can feel the warm breath of the sun on my face.

I can be.

All is well.

Ahhh…if only there was a magic tincture that could pull me back to presence and keep me there all the time.  It is a much more fabulous, alive, deep, reverent place to be.  These inspiring moments where I am living and going forth in my day from my heart center that is so much more of who I am, rather than the moments spent in my mind that worries to much if I am even enough.

Presence, presence…my challenge in this lifetime…

Spill it: Do you find you are mindful about where your mind is most of your days?  Or does it lead you? What tips do you have for keeping ones mind in the present moment?

Last week I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who said gaspingly, “I just don’t have time to read blogs.”

I didn’t take offense to that, she doesn’t read mine, but she doesn’t read anyone’s, it is nothing personal.

But it got me started thinking.  I am often jealous of her because she is constantly on one hike or other with one friend or other.  She goes out rollerblading once a week, which is more than most of us can say.  She still goes to music shows she would like to see.

And some times I think exasperatingly to myself, “I just don’t have time for all of those things.”

For mindful Monday, I thought, why not give a little nod to old man time today.  After all, none of us have an indefinite amount, and I am wondering if we are mindful about the way in which we do use the time we have.

Maybe it isn’t so much that we ‘don’t have time’ to get to all the things we would like to be doing.  Although, I do agree that that is a serious problem, even with myself, there is never enough time to….fill in the blank.  BUT, maybe much of our lack of time is more just how we choose to use our time.

I would much rather curl up with a good book under some warm covers than stay out late going to a show full of people half my age.  That is just me.

I am sure my friend would never imagine writing a blog post, if she had to choose that over a roller-blade outing.

Some more subtle ways time evaporates for us is watching t.v.  or checking email and Facebook.  If I was more mindful of my time, I probably wouldn’t be doing that as often as I do now.  But some people, could value checking email or reading blogs way more than they value a hike in the mountains.

I guess my conversation just really stood out to me as funny because I think we all just like to spend our time differently.

I do think that I for one, after this little light bulb moment, have become more conscientious of how I am spending my time.  I have been checking email and Facebook less.  I have cleaned up the house in hopes that it will mean more time to spend homeschooling the kids with fun activities, not just those that MUST be done.  I am reading more books and watching less T.V.  I am lining up some projects that I really want to get to as the weeks go by.  One at a time.  No rush to get them all done now.  Each it’s own turn and reward.

So maybe, next time any of us want to blurt out, “I just don’t have time for that!” We should step back and re-evaluate where we are spending our time.  It could be that we don’t really want to do such and such.  It could be we don’t value it as much as other things we do.  It could be we waste a bunch of time doing things we won’t be in the grave wishing we had done more of…

Let us be mindful of the time we have.  It is a valuable commodity that can’t be replaced once it is gone.

Spill it: Do you think you are mindful when you do things that you are choosing to spend time doing them?  Are you fully aware when you set yourself to a task, whether it is valuable of your time?

Another mindful Monday is here, and what I have noticed as of late, is that my thoughtfulness and mindfulness seem to have taken a back seat to purchasing.

What the heck?

I have noticed that whenever I think we need something, I go out and get it.  Whenever I need something hot to drink, you know, cause of the cat allergies suffered in the last two weeks, I go and get a drink.  When I discover a new book I want to read, I print a coupon online, then go buy it.  Plus another book I am sure; I find it impossible to go to the bookstore and NOT make a purchase that is unnecessary.

In fact, if I am in a mile radius of a bookstore or coffee seller, it is as if I am a bird migrating.  I have book nerd radar.

And today is November 1st.  You know what that means.  It is time to begin the holiday planning, which consumption seems too often to take center stage.

I was beginning to become quite disgusted with my own self last week, when a fantastic motherhood artist Katie Berggren posted to Facebook a new book she wanted, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life.  And so began a discussion on simplicity living books.

I copied the list and headed for the library, cause of course it would be just atrocious for me to go to the bookstore for such titles.  From the library I got, The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs, Choosing Simplicity by Linda Pierce, and The Circle of Simplicity by Cecile Andrews.  What I didn’t get was The Joy of Less. BUT, I put in a request for the library to get it, and they are purchasing it to add to the collection and I will be first on the list when it comes in!

I knew I had to make a huge change, when last week as we were waiting in line at Starbucks for Mom’s chai tea, my son and daughter threw a conniption fit when I wouldn’t get them something.  My daughter was crying and actually kicked the back of my seat.

Instead of yelling at her, I realized it was the swift kick in the ass that I needed.  Their behavior was my fault.  I had often gotten them snacks at the Bucks.  Somehow they had learned it was a given.  What else had they been learning from me that I never anticipated?

So it is time to simplify again.  I haven’t cracked the books yet, I am in the middle of another fabulous read the library ordered for me!  But I cannot wait to get them started.

I am just trying to remember, there is nothing out there that will make me happy that I can buy.  My opportunity for happiness is already here, it is just a matter of remembering that.

Spill it: How often do you stop and question why you are really buying something?  Do you really NEED all of the stuff you purchase, or is some of it unnecessary and better spent on retirement or a family vacation?

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay was my latest book conquest.  I was excited to read it as it says at the top 30 million copies sold and lots of people I know have at least mentioned it.

I have to say, it wasn’t the most brilliant book I have ever read.  It seemed sort of like many sections were truncated or her ideas jumped from one topic to the next.  It didn’t seem to flow freely and concisely.

But, I still did find that it was a valuable read.  Mostly because I do think it is important to pay attention to our thoughts.  Our thoughts do directly impact the experience we are having.

“If you find yourself saying, “Everyone always does such and such to me, criticizes me, is never there for me, uses me like a doormat, abuses me,” then this is YOUR PATTERN.  There is some thought in you that attracts people who exhibit this behavior.  When you no longer think that way, they will go elsewhere and do that to somebody else.  You will no longer attract them.”

I do think this is true.  When we think we deserve better, we get better.  When we feel we are worthy of more, more is what we get.

“Self approval and self-acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area our lives.”

Easier said than done, Louise. But I admit to practicing and trying to stay on the positive side for myself, and stopping thoughts that might not be conducive to me feeling at all good about myself!

“To spend our time berating ourselves for being too heavy, to feel guilty about every bite of food we eat, to do all the numbers we do on ourselves when we gain weight, is just a waste of time.  Twenty years later we can still be in the same situation because we have not even begun to deal with the real problem.  All that we have done is to make ourselves more frightened and insecure, and then we need more weight for protection.”

Isn’t it so true?  I have been dealing with eating my way through my emotions for almost twenty years.  Yet I am just now beginning to understand the truth to what I am doing when I go to Starbuck’s or the ice cream isle.  Before, I would just tell myself what a loser I was and how I was going to end up on Biggest Loser if I didn’t stop…which never seemed enough of incentive to actually make me stop…

“Part of self acceptance is releasing other people’s opinions.  If I were with you and kept telling you, “You are a purple pig, you are a purple pig.” You would either laugh at me, or get annoyed with me and think I was crazy.  It would be most unlikely that you would think it was true.  Yet many of the things we have chosen to believe about ourselves are just as far out and untrue.”

Yet, how often do we carry things with us for the long term, because someone else said it about us?  I have a handful of things I keep close in my pocket that others have said or thought about me, some from when I was young, some from much more recent encounters.  But I am not a purple pig, so am I really all those other things?

“No person, no place, and no thing has any power over us, for “we” are the only thinkers in our mind.  We create our experiences, our reality, and everyone in it.  When we create peace and harmony and balance in our mind, we will find it in our lives.”

So often, I make everyone else the power in my life.  What my husband thinks, what the other Mom’s at gymnastics think, what family members or strangers in line at the grocery store might be thinking about me in any given moment.  I choose that concern.  They don’t.  I choose to dwell on how I might have handled a situation in public with my kids.  I choose to dwell on the lack of cleanliness in the house.  I choose, I choose, I choose.   A million times a day I choose.

“Cluttered closets mean a cluttered mind.”

I got that one.  And the million times Rafe Esquith mentioned in Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire that we are a constant example to our kids too.  They will do what we do.  My house is cluttered.  Granted, it is small, but we wanted it that way so we didn’t collect a bunch of crap.  My mind is cluttered too, so there ya go.

Last week though, I began the intense process of going through every ounce of closet, drawer, shelf, and floor, to get rid of that which no longer serves us.  It is painstakingly slow, but incredibly worth it for the feeling of clarity it is beginning to give me.

Finally, Louise asks that we tell ourselves all day, everyday, that “I am doing the best that I can.” And that is true.  I AM doing the best that I can at this moment.  And that, is all that I can do.

Spill it: How do you feel about mind over matter?  Do you often even consider the thoughts that are trailing through your mind endlessly?