I'll Show You Mine

“Every person has a story with the power to crack you wide open.”

Oprah

We are story tellers at heart, and we see ourselves in one another’s stories.

Why is it then, that we are so reluctant to actually tell our stories? The real ones. The messy ones. The ones that don’t have happy endings. The ones where we still haven’t figured it all out yet. I’m not talking about blurting everything out behind the cyber curtain on some social media platform, but in real life conversations, with real people, in appropriate settings.

When I was writing BLUSH: Women & Wine, it took me a long time to talk openly about my love, and my misuse, of wine. This was partly because I knew that I had my own hard work to do to figure it all out. But it was also because there was some shame connected to the reliance I had on my nightly wine to cope with the stress and painful parts of my life, and fear of what others would think if they knew. Shame and fear keep our stories under our carefully crafted wraps.

One day, in the midst of a catch-up phone conversation with a friend, she asked me what I’d been up to. Without thinking, I blurted out my story of the book I was writing about my relationship with wine, and my use of it as a very classy looking coping mechanism. There was a long, awkward silence on the other end of the phone, and I immediately regretted my impulsive vulnerability. But then she said, “You’re talking about me. But I would have been too embarrassed to talk about it if you hadn’t said something first.”

When it comes to our very human stories that connect us with all the other human stories, why wait?

Let’s be the ones to go first.

Crossing The Ditch

Today Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle and I wandered over to the irrigation ditch behind our house. We are working to expose her to new experiences, while also trusting her sense of timing in exploring each new encounter that is just beyond her comfort zone. Rather than push or rush her, or try to solve her problems for her, we simply invite her to explore the wilderness on the other side of her confidence threshold.

It was a gorgeous sunny day, and once at the ditch, I gave her plenty of leeway on her leash, but not so much that she could turn tail and run from the challenge before her. The bank is grass covered and a bit steep, so I went first. Stepping into the water, I simply stood there and let her get her bearings. She was clearly cautious and curious all at the same time, but curiosity eventually won out. Offering her a treat that coaxed her a few inches closer, she nervously snatched it up, dipped one foot into the water, didn’t like the feeling, and retreated. But not quite as far away as before.

Climbing up the other bank, I continued to leave enough slack in the leash for her to explore her surroundings but not escape. The distance between us was still a bit too far for her, so I returned back into the water, this time holding the treat a bit farther away. Grabbing it, she made a mad dash back up the bank, but by then I was standing on the other side again, with a firm hold on the leash.

Making her way down the bank one more time, she was obviously gauging the distance across the ditch. Clearly, she wanted to get to the other side, she just didn’t want to get her oversized puppy feet wet. Suddenly, with a daring leap, she cleared it, her feet never touching the water.

Go Gracie!

We strolled along the path heading back to the house, still on the far side of the ditch, which meant she had another little stretch of water to negotiate. Finding a new place to cross, we repeated the same basic process, only much quicker as a result of her growing confidence. Wanting to see if she had it in her to stretch herself even further, I continued to step from one side to the other, inviting her to follow. By the end, of our outing, she was splashing her way right through that water to the other side of the ditch.

Go Gracie!

Anytime we challenge ourselves to “cross the ditch”, to stretch the boundaries that have become comfortable and familiar, we are a lot like Gracie.

We don’t like being pushed or rushed as we explore the wilderness on the other side of our confidence threshold.

We need enough room to navigate but not run away from a new challenge.

We need time to get our bearings.

We will probably feel cautious and curious all at once, but given a little time, curiosity has a chance to win out.

We might not like the feeling when we first dip our toe into new water.

We may find ourselves taking a sudden daring leap to the other side, but still not get our feet wet.

And, if we stretch ourselves just a little further, we will eventually find ourselves splashing our way straight through the water to the other side of the ditch.

Go us!

The Dark Night

“The first fingers of light appear on the horizon, and ever so deftly and gradually, they pull the mantle of darkness away from the world.”

John O’Donohue - Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

There are times when life so overwhelms us with grief, pain, fear, and loss that we don’t think we will survive. Some do not, and there is no room for judgement or criticism, only mercy and compassion. I have not inhabited their hearts, only my own, and the only reference I have is my own experience of being plunged into darkness, not knowing when even the faintest glimmer of light will appear.

In those dark nights, we are alone with our own hearts. No matter how much love and support we have surrounding us, no one can make our way for us as we wait for the light to appear. Others may walk with us, but they cannot walk for us. Others may help us bear our burden, but ultimately it is ours to carry. But the treasures of our darkness belong to us. Whatever we discover in the blackness of our night has the capacity to transform us in ways only possible when we have found our way to the dawn of our new day.

In the darkness, while we find ourselves alone, we would do well to remember that we bring with us all of our hard earned resources. Any strength, wisdom, faith, grace, and love that we have accumulated thus far will be our faithful companions, and will sustain us through the night. In her book, Learning To Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor says, “…I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really on one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”

I’ve often wondered if the power that brought the world into being knew that we would need to find hope for a return of the light on a daily basis. That there is a deeper meaning behind the daily cloaking of the world in darkness, so that once again, we can be reminded of the illuminating light that is sure to follow.

In A Heartbeat

Joy resides in the heart.  

Today has me thinking a lot about hearts. A few months ago my husband discovered, kind of by a fluke, that his heart was beating too fast, and somewhat irregularly. Rather than getting its signal from the sinus node, which regulates the heartbeat, his ticker was responding to a different impulse. While not imminently dangerous, in the long term it would be good to take care of it.

Today, he did.

His doctor, a cardiac electrophysiologist, put a catheter up into his heart to locate and shut down the misfiring cells. He’s out of surgery, and we will head home tonight with his heart, once again, responding to the beat of the right drum.

I think joy in our hearts is a lot like that.

We are meant to experience joy deep within, and come wired with an internal signal to regulate the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy that can sustain us even in the midst of our most challenging days. But sometimes we let fear and anxiety, anger and resentment, guilt and shame run amok, and suddenly our hearts are out of whack too. In other words, we allow the wrong impulses to regulate the state of our hearts.

Time to locate and shut down the misfiring messages, and allow our hearts to do what they were designed to do.

Beat with the quiet, steady heartbeat of joy. 

The Hose We Step On

 “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.” Thich Nhat Hanh

If you are anything like me, it is so very easy to get in our own way.  To hang on too tightly. To listen to the voice of fear, and then choose to believe it. To project ourselves into the worst case scenario, and then proceed to live there. Or, as my favorite (ok, my only) brother-in-law irreverently and succinctly puts it, we step on our own hose.  

All of these self-protective maneuvers do one thing, and one thing only. They stop us in our tracks. Hunkered down in our self-made bunkers, imprisoned in the midst of our fear, uncertainty, and desire for control, we forget that we hold the keys to our own freedom. But we are clinging so tightly to our imagined control that our hands aren’t free to grasp them.  

When stuck in our own muck, as my favorite (ok, my one and only) sister says, it’s time to make friends with the truth. It’s time to take stock of exactly where we are, and exactly what we have to work with. Armed with the truth, even if we don’t like it, we can begin to cast our eyes to the necessary road ahead, and as we envision the light at the end of our tunnel, it becomes the beacon towards which we walk. One step at a time, taken as quickly as we can manage and with as much courage as we can muster, we create momentum in the right direction. Add to that a  few trusted souls in our camp, and we are on our way.

The antidote to fear is the truth, and the truth sets us free to take action.

It’s as simple as that, and as hard as it gets.  

Onward. 

Upward. 

Together.