My daughter was five years old. We were in Chandler, Arizona traveling on a desert country road. The area was only just beginning to build up so you could still see enough open space and big sky to inspire you to breathe deeply and feel a part of something greater than yourself. As I took it all in a little voice from a booster seat in the back asked, 

“Mommy, do you know if God is a man or a woman?” “

“I don’t think that anyone really knows the answer to that question honey.” 

“I do.” 

She said it confidently, in the way young children sometimes do, with a deep, egoless knowing. She hadn’t asked me because she needed an answer, she’d asked because she wanted to share one.

“God is both. God is a man and a woman. I know because there is a line from my heart to God’s and I can talk to God whenever I want.”

I looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror, eyes full of both innocence and wisdom, an expression of pure earnestness and reassurance on her face. A small enlightened being.

Nothing else needed to be said.

It wasn’t the first time she’d talked to me about God, but it was still surprising. A lapsed Catholic turned agnostic, married to an even further lapsed Catholic who leaned atheist, I hadn’t raised my daughter to be religious. I’d taught her to live the examples Jesus set because they are, in my opinion, a roadmap to being a good human. But even so, I really didn’t talk about Jesus or even God, at all. Catholics are not chapter and verse people. I was taught to strive to live by the teachings of Jesus in a quiet and humble way. To call attention to it was to defeat the purpose. In her five years I’m not sure my daughter had been in a church even five times. Yet she spoke about God with an absolute confidence that rendered me speechless. And it resonated with me in a way that I’d never felt in a church or a temple or a religious gathering. I realized instantly that it made perfect sense that God would be both a man and a woman. And it’s one belief I haven’t wavered in since.

It was around this time that my daughter began having an unusual dialogue with her father. “Daddy”, she’d ask, “are you a boy or a girl”? “I’m a boy.” he’d answer. “No”, she’d say thoughtfully, “you’re a girl-boy-girl”. Sometimes she’d change it to “boy-girl-boy”.  She was lighthearted about it but there was no humor in it, just that quiet, egoless assurance. There was no room for doubt that she knew of what she spoke, a soul older than time in a fairy -like body. I’d read once that Native Americans recognized five genders, but I can assure you that my five year old hadn’t.

Shortly after the gender dialogue began, Arizona banned same sex marriage. My daughter came home from school and said to me: “Girls can’t marry girls here.” I acknowledged that that was true. “It isn’t fair” she stated solemnly. “No it isn’t”, I agreed. Her Dad and I were liberal minded but these topics weren’t on the agenda in our home at the time. We hadn’t so far had the need to raise them, we were mostly absorbed in mundane daily topics. Our child was on a path all her own.

We moved to Delaware a year or so later. I had joined a meditation group and one week I brought my daughter with me. After the meditation portion, members were welcomed to share anything that their mind was occupied with as we learned to allow our thoughts without being consumed by them. One young woman was engaged in a personal identity struggle. She didn’t use pointedly specific language about it, but it was clear that her dilemma surrounded gender and/or sexual identity. I was focused on her as she expressed confusion around figuring out who she was and how to be, when my seven year old leaned in to look this woman straight in the eyes. Again, I heard that gentle, knowing tone as she said, very simply and respectfully to a woman three times her age:

“You should really just be who you are.”

You could have heard a pin drop in that room while a smile spread across the young woman’s face as she nodded in agreement.

 

"Out of the mouths of babes..."

I’ve been thinking about these conversations throughout Pride Month as I see discussions taking place across social media. My daughter, of course, has continued on a path of complete acceptance of every human being she comes across. As far as she is concerned, no discussion should be required. You are who you are and that’s who you should be- unapologetically. 

Imagine a world where we could all rest comfortably in that belief. A world where instead of thinking first in black and white, our default was the entire spectrum. A world where you could just wake up in the morning and be who you are, enjoying the same rights as every one else.

May our "babes" pave rainbow paths across the earth as they step into adulthood. May they make for us all a better world.

For as long as I can remember my mind has made maps for change.  Whether sudden or planned, shifts in my reality result in about five to seven drawn out seconds of stillness as I digest whatever news or new knowledge has presented itself. In those seconds I may feel anything from mildly surprised to stunned, slight sadness to grief, immediate resistance to stoic acceptance. My response time must seem slightly delayed to anyone watching this process. I imagine that delivering news to me must be like typing a web address into your browser and then watching the spinning circle as you wait for it to load.  When that connection is completed, my brain has constructed a new working model and my response is the first step onto the new path. It's a fluid model that will shift as more data is offered, a rough first draft, but it allows me to take immediate action and make real time decisions.  I refer to this operating system as 'coping mode'.

This pandammit, as I have been referring to it after seeing it on social media, has been two years tacked on to the end of what had already been three years of transition for me. I had just finished settling into a new normal that was starting to feel like real life to me when the world's epidemiologists shouted, "plot shift!" and we all started to engage in what felt like the grocery store version of "The Hunger Games".  Instead of enrolling in the local computer classes I'd been eyeing as I focused on career change, I was sewing masks, cooking more than I've ever wanted to, keeping my daughter on track, walking literally a thousand miles across the Brandywine Valley because I am claustrophobic and cannot stay inside for days on end.  I gave more time and attention to the people around me who weren't used to living in Mindful head spaces or adapting to constant change.  "We can do this" I reassured them, needing that reassurance equally as much.  And we did. We are. We're coping as we're adapting, coping as we're adapting, endlessly on repeat. 

The model in my brain has been ever-shifting, like Harry's Marauders Map. People enter and leave its edges according to their own new models. I switch paths in favor of more practical or workable ones as I monitor my daughter's mental health through, what at times, has felt like an untenable amount of transition for any individual, let alone a young teenager. And because social distancing minimized all of our circles and contacts, I often feel wearily aware that I am a single parent managing a household on my own. Normally I reorganize and repurpose this home's spaces in an endless quest for the perfect balance of function and comfort. Recently, though, I've been settling for varying states of semi-organized chaos that for my clutter averse mind are not sustainable. Omicron and the yo-yo of winter's barometer seem to have given new life to migraines and joint pain and general malaise. If I'm not at work I'm trying to be at rest.

And yes, work. In the past I've run toddler classrooms like well-oiled machines. Regardless of what else was happening in my life I'd find comfort in our tiny microcosm of carefully and cheerfully organized consistency. Toddlers thrive on routine in a framework that provides predictability with room for small changes that fit the current day's needs. This school year has not been that. Covid measures and other circumstances beyond my control have meant that my class is also in a coping mode holding pattern. I find the question that I'm asking most often is: "Do you need a hug?". My littles, who have only ever known the pandemic world, are rolling with constant change. I am once more marveling at what capable little humans toddlers can be. But having done this before I know what we're all missing.

I realized this week, that I'm suffering from a healthy case of pandemic fatigue. As a trained Mindfulness coach I know how to ride this out: let myself grieve what was and what isn't, accept my emotions without judging them, practice gratitude for what is wonderful in my life (and there is a lot of wonderful), be patient with the tiny setbacks i'm experiencing in PTSD management, meditate, practice self -care, just generally give myself grace. And above all be honest with myself.

I'm tired of this constantly shifting mental model. I'm ready to install a new operating system. It may be true that life is and always has been about change, that nothing is permanent, that the ability to adapt has always been a necessary life skill; but I don't think that life is meant to be lived in coping mode indefinitely.

I look forward to the day when making maps for change once again becomes an occasional necessity rather than my default mode. I am once again longing for spring. I hope that the warmer months lead us ever closer to the elusive new normal that we've been chasing for the last two years. May we all heal and blossom with the increasing light.

 Heal Them

 

I'd been meditating for about five years when I enrolled in a class where I learned about journeying. I had already found that meditation, for me, held visual experiences akin to interactive films. In this class I was taught to use meditation to find what is known as a power animal and accompany that animal on a journey.  I was beginning that day with an acute need to understand what my purpose on this earth was meant to be. "Please show me what I'm here for" I requested of my animal guide as I descended deeper into meditation.

What I saw can only be described as a desolate landscape, bleak and devoid of color.  All I could see on this vast plane was what appeared to be a dead tree, empty of leaves.  I began to hear a faint melody, a haunting version of "The Sound of Silence".  Never in meditation had I come upon a place so eerie, so seemingly empty of hope. I stared ahead, not moving, confused.

After a while I glanced at the spirit animal that I had learned to trust. It tilted its head gently toward the tree.  As we walked toward it I could see that on the tree a swing hung, motionless, and on the swing was a girl of about 12. She was looking down sadly, hands cupped palms up in her lap.  

I looked at my animal guide again and it nodded.  I got close enough to the girl to see that in her palms she held a heart, broken into several jagged edged pieces. She held it up to me, a silent request.  

"Heal her heart", I heard.  

I placed my hands over her palms and, with the warm glow of faint light, the heart became whole. She held it to her chest with a small smile and began to swing gently.

I looked again at my guide, now standing behind me. "Now what?" I asked. Again the animal nodded it's head in the direction of the tree, "Look", it said quietly.  

I turned to look at the girl again, only now the landscape had shifted, and as far as the eye could see there were bare brittle trees, thousands of them, each with a swing holding a motionless child. 

My breath caught in my throat and my eyes filled with tears as the animal spoke gently to me, "Heal them, heal the broken children." 

My voice breaking with overwhelming sadness, I choked out the words "How... there are too many...how would I possibly do that?"

He answered: "You just begin".

He waited in silent encouragement as I collected myself and started to walk towards another tree.

Seconds later I awoke from the meditation sobbing.

It's been many years since that journey and the vision has haunted me. It has appeared in my mind's eye every time I've considered what to do next with my life. What job should I take? What career should I train for? Who ARE the broken children that were shown to me?

As I continued to practice meditation, began to study Mindfulness, and spoke to many other people living with PTSD and panic attacks, and the other mental health challenges that life can bring, I came to understand what I had seen that day:

We are all the broken children. 

We can all heal and be healed.

Last year I returned to Early Childhood. I found that much of what we practice in our field is unintentionally counter to mindful living.  As I consider the toddlers in my care each day, as I get to know each of them better and make choices about how to speak with them and how to interact with them, as I watch them grow into more independent, more capable preschool aged children, I think about that often. I wonder more readily with each passing month, what could happen if we as a society could get this right for this age group - if we could teach self-love and self-compassion, normalize the whole rainbow of emotions and the expression of them, and send these little ones to Kindergarten as mentally and emotionally prepared as they are academically.  I wonder if we would be giving them the capacity to begin to care for and nurture themselves as readily as they learn to read.

I wonder if the way to heal the broken children is to teach them to heal themselves before they ever have need of healing.

 Before You Burn It All Down....

In June of 1995 I got married in a beautiful Priscilla of Boston wedding gown.  I found it in the first bridal magazine I had ever bought, love at first sight. I'd have bought that gown in a heartbeat without ever even trying it on.

In 2018 my marriage ended.  Among the things that my ex-husband brought to me from our attic was the box that held my wedding gown.  My emotions were still raw then. I looked at the box holding the gown that my mother had had so carefully preserved. I thought of the care she'd taken with all things bridal for me.  I knew that people destroyed their dresses after a divorce.  I knew that "wreck the dress" was a "thing".  I knew that people gleefully burned their dresses as a symbol of a new start. 

 I also knew that none of that was me. "I could give it away", I thought, yet I didn't.

The box took up residence in my basement where I didn't have to see it all the time, where I wouldn't feel pressed to make any decisions. And there it stayed until this past November when my sump pump failed and my basement flooded.

I was already mentally and emotionally exhausted from pandemic living when the waters rose. I just stood there and looked, fighting back tears. My daughter came down to look around.  And that's when she found the box. "What's this?" Her eyes lit up at my response. Shouldn't we open it and check it she asked?  I told her yes, I supposed we should.

She brought it upstairs, tore it open, grinning with sheer delight. "Can I try it on? Please??" 

Why not baby girl. I left the room to let her change and waited for her to call me back in.

When I opened that door again I saw a luminous young lady where I'd so often in the last year seen an anxious teen. "It fits me! I thought it would be dated but it's not, it's beautiful, I love it, can I keep it?!"

Suddenly I was back in the bridal shop with my mother, my grandmothers and my best friend. My grandmothers were mock bickering as was their habit, a habit that I enjoyed thoroughly and miss dearly. I saw my best friend twirling in a parade of bridesmaids gowns, delighted with how she looked in them. I saw my mother fretting over the lowcut illusion neckline, asking the shop owner if we could have more embroidery added, wanting this dress to be absolutely perfect for me.

As my daughter beamed at herself in the mirror turning from side to side to see every angle, I saw my father at the church, happier and prouder than I'd ever seen him. I saw my Uncle Daniel walking towards me with a plate of  hors d'oeuvres, muttering that through all the picture taking someone had to make sure that his goddaughter had something to eat.  I heard my Uncle James laughing about the van he called the refrigerator, that he had rented to drive all my cousins up from Florida in. (I'd give anything to hear that laugh again.) 

I saw my family, all but my father's father, all together for what would be the last time.

My daughter started asking me questions about relationships and marriages, sharing observations and concerns.  She asked if I was sorry I'd gotten married. Without hesitation I explained that, no, I couldn't be. Marriage had made me her mother, and I'd choose that again in a thousand alternate universes were they offered to me. 

On that rainy, gloomy day in November, when I was tired to my very soul, that dress brought my joyful daughter back to me.

So yes, honey, yes you can keep that dress. That dress is love and laughter. That dress is hope and beauty. That dress is the gateway to your birth, your childhood, your bright and boundless future.

It hangs in her closet now. I see it every time I hang clean clothes up for her. I have never been more grateful for a flood in all my life.

To any woman currently worrying over a box holding a wedding dress, I send love and compassion and urge you to do what's right for you. But please, please think twice about the full gamut of memories it holds before burning them all down.

How do we live these moments?

I approached the door to the post office this morning and stopped.  Should I touch the door handle with my bare hand? Cover my hand with my shirt? Run back to my car for a wipe?  I sighed at the dilemma that something as simple as opening a door has become, then I reached out one finger to open it.  I stepped inside and stopped on a red tape line.  I looked ahead and took in the masked line of people ahead of me waiting in silence, the heavy plastic draped in front of the once wide open clerk windows, the postal workers dressed more like they were prepared to draw a blood sample from me than to accept my envelopes of homemade masks.  The other customers and I waited quietly, moving up another six feet to the next red line on the floor as needed, respectful of each other's personal space.  How quickly we've adjusted to the unthinkable.  I took it all in and thought to myself, "yes we've adjusted, we'll continue to adjust, moment to moment".

I've been actively studying and practicing Mindfulness for the last three years.  I completed a program through the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts and developed a passion for practices that I believe have saved my life, that I believe, without exaggeration, could save all of our lives and enrich our experience as human beings.  I embarked on a path motivated by self-interest, on a quest to cure myself.  I thought it was my own path, with it's own definite beginning and, I hoped, it's own definite ending. What I found instead is that the path is an ever widening spiral, that the path is universal, that the path is life itself. In the words of Ram Dass, "We are all just walking each other home."

There are many definitions of Mindfulness, all appropriate, all accurate.  It is the practice of acknowledging, accepting and experiencing our emotions so that we can control them rather than be controlled by them.  It is being awake and alive to the present moment so to experience it in it's entirety.  It is recognizing that the present moment is all that exists right now.  It is the acceptance that nothing is permanent: no situation, no emotion, no thought.

Mindfulness taught me that I could survive any moment, even in suffering, because no moment is forever. I could cry and rage and allow any and every emotion to surface in me with the knowledge that they were all just messengers flowing through me and moving on. Mindfulness made it easy to see that so much of what we humans can get caught up in can be let go. It allowed me to experience the grace and relief of releasing what we cannot possibly control.  Mindfulness demonstrated to me that life is most comfortable, most joyful, most free of worry, when experienced in present moments.  Most importantly, to my PTSD brain, mindfulness whispered, "not everything is life or death".

Now we are here, in this present moment, which happens to be life or death.  How do we handle the present moment when the present moment feels like a post-apocalyptic alternate reality where postal clerks are outfitted to protect themselves from contamination by a deadly virus that is killing people by the thousands?  How do we handle the present moment where the decision to even go to the post office or the grocery store may literally be a life or death one?  How do we control the feelings of anxiety and fear that come and go throughout the day and make it difficult to sleep at night?

We handle them the same as all the other moments.  We breathe, deeply, in and out.  We recognize that we are breathing in and out and take a second to take comfort in that.  We ground ourselves in the here and now - select one object you can see and focus on it, select one sound you can hear and listen to it, select a food or a drink that brings you comfort and taste it, light a candle with a scent that you enjoy and let it fill the room, blanket yourself with something that makes you feel secure.  In this moment we are ok.  We cannot control the future moments of this pandemic, but that is no different than any other day.  We can however root ourselves in THIS moment, and re-root ourselves as many times as we need to.

Be here now.

There will be the thoughts:
What if I get sick?  Well, you'll handle it in the moment that you do.  And you may not get sick.
What if someone I love gets sick?  Well, you'll figure out how to help them in that moment.  And they may not.
What if I run out of food?  You will figure out how to get some if you do.  And you may not.
What if I can't pay my bills?  You will figure out how to defer them if you need to. And you may not have to.
What if, what if, what if, what if....
What if is not now.  What if is not the present moment.  In the present moment you are reading this and you are ok.  You will handle the other moments as they come. Some will be difficult, some will be wonderful. But the vast majority of them will be ok.

In the meantime you will do whatever work you need to do, engage in any pastime that brings you peace, show yourself and those around you kindness and compassion, and allow yourself to experience, without judgement, any emotions that arise.  You will cry, you will laugh, you will get angry. You can live all of those moments. And they will pass.

I mailed the masks I've made and left the post office.  I drove home with the moonroof open to the mild weather.  I took a walk in the sun.  I showered, had something to eat, chatted with a neighbor from twelve feet away, accepted the fact that my teenage daughter had left a note on her door to let her sleep "really, really late" and sat down to write out my thoughts. Those moments were ok.

This moment is ok.

There will be a moment at some point when the post office removes the red tape lines from the floor, when we take off our masks, when we once again wander carefree into a store just to browse at things that we don't need. Those moments will come as surely as these moments will pass. Not even a pandemic is permanent.


Friends, please reach out if you need help with these moments.

Breathe

Souls dance blue whispers through the night

Sea, Moon, Earth, Sky

Lighting their rhyme in the twilight of heaven’s most delicate beauty

Still some dream to know

We too are stardust

   - Christa Rowan

It's funny how places can pull on us.  The desert is calling me lately- jackrabbits and roadrunners, coyotes and sunsets, sage and chollas.  I find myself flashing back to hiking paths and cactus gardens, relentless sunshine and wide open spaces.  Spaces where I could meditate on who and what I was, who and what I'd come here to be.  Spaces where I could dig my bare feet into red gravel dust to feel the energy of the earth and breathe it in.

My grandmother called me a gypsy, always on the move.  Wanderlust is how I used to think of it. It's a beautiful, romantic word but it haunts me with its wistful, bittersweet quality.  It makes me feel as if there is something in me that cannot rest, that I can't be satisfied in a single location.  

I am coming to realize with age that it's not my body that needs to wander, it's my soul. It knows to journey to what feeds it, to what soothes it, to what allows the rest of me the space and ability to breathe.  Sometimes it calls for the colors and breadth of an Arizona desert, others for the rhythmic lapping of gentle waves on Kauai, or, in the greener parts of Delaware the grounding endless roots of a majestic pine tree.  And it's not that it can't be satisfied, it's that its needs are ever-changing as I learn and grow.  

Life is the soul's ultimate change of location.  All the people we've known are inside us. All the places we've been are inside of us.  And often that means that we feel pulled in various directions, faced with endless decisions, crowded with desires, ambitions, obligations, intentions, always wondering what our next move should be. What I am finally realizing is that often the next right move is none it all. Often what we need is just to breathe.

And so when Phoenix or Kauai or Boston are calling I know my soul is pulling on me to access something that I have felt in those places. "Stop" it says, "be still, hear me and breathe".  And I don't have to buy plane tickets, I don't have to relocate again.  

All the places I've been are inside of me, some of which I can't tell you how to get to. Even a scientist who doesn't consider the existence of souls, or how they travel, can tell you that you're made of stardust.  And where on earth do you really need to run to if you consider that you carry stars inside you?  What more could you possibly need to be.

So, breathe, just breathe.

"There's No Use Crying About It"

The castle is in sight -

Weathered and dark but no less a sanctuary.

Bold and strong I take to the path

Old fear trailing behind me like a cape to be untied and cast aside.

I drop it on the forest floor aware that it will slink behind me,

Let it, I think as I forge ahead.

For a while I elude it as I focus on the spires,

Then I trip.

No matter, I'm still moving forward.

But delighting in my misstep the cape glides faster, gaining speed,

Winding around my ankles like a snake it takes me down.

My heart races

"I'll crawl if I have to" I whisper, through deliberate concentrated breaths,

Though I hear it laughing as it looms over me  - 

It's covered my face like a veil before I can rip it away.

Gasping for the cool fresh air near the ground I take it down with me.

Angrily I ball it up and hurl it off the path.

I sit on the ground watching hot tears fall on the gravel -

I'm tired

The path is too long 

I'm tired 

The cape a relentless albatross 

I'm tired

I can lie here and not have to fight anymore 

So. tired.

A voice flying through the night air calls "Momma!"

The princess waiting at the castle.

I pick up my head to look at it,

Beaten and battered and standing tall,

Dark but no less a sanctuary.

Ignoring the tears I stand,

Let them fall,

They bounce off a metal object glowing in moonlight -

Tarnished and dented but no less a crown.

I place it on my head.

Brushing off dirt and gravel I take a step,

Then another

Straight towards the castle.

Weathered and beaten it beckons me.

I'll reach it scarred and battle weary,

Cape at my feet,

But no less a queen.

- Christa Rowan
(With a nod to Halsey)