destiny at your boot tips

Which way are your boots pointed?

Have you walked the path enough to truly know?

Or have you been stopped at the crossroads wondering,

Considering

Second guessing

 Afraid to venture out of fear of getting lost

Mistaking this road that stretches out before the way your boots are pointed for the right road when really it will be the wrong road.

 How do you know?

You walk. One step, one step, one step…

You will know if you boots are pointed in the direction of your heart’s yearning

 But here is the secret. There is no wrong choice at the crossroads.

 It is not a test, it does not determine worthiness or intellect.

 It pauses you so you can see your soul reaching for form, yearning to move into the world to be made real and be seen by you.

 And so there is no wrong way your boots can point. Just follow and choose this way or that.

 Pause when it gets hard or confusing or the way seems too grand and full of hope or so much like what you most dream of that you can’t quite trust it.

 It is okay to pause. To feel, to know, your choice will lead you one way and not another.

 Just don’t mistake your choosing as the one ultimate chance of achieving your destiny.

 You already, always are, can not not move ever more into your becoming.

 Your boots know this. Trust them. Follow where they point.

dear 2012, i’m a bit nervous about you…

Dear 2012,

Hi, how are you? Nice to meet you. You are so new and fresh and still have the holiday glow about you. I think you are probably a pretty decent sort of year, but I have to be honest. I’m a little nervous about you.

I know you are not 2011, but you look so much alike, and let’s face it, you new years start out all the same. Lots of shiny glitz and noise, promises of new beginnings and wonderful change, only to end up a continuation of what went before. (Don’t argue, that laundry I didn’t do is still in a pile in the corner, and the sweater I’m making, still half done.)You are not so much a new beginning as you are resting point of assessment and course correction. Not so romantic, but true.

I know I shouldn’t bring old baggage into a new relationship, but you see, 2011 was really hard. Dreams ended, relationships went wonky, health was iffy, finances tanked. Course correction is happening but this big old ship is going to take a while to turn around which has you, 2012 still looking a whole lot like 2011.

Yeah, it’s true that, while some relationships when wonky last year, many others were reconnected with and nourished. That was fun and lovely. And sure, I had a big surgery, but I was loved and cared for in surprising ways. Come to think of it, money was scary and nerve racking, but new systems and commitments are making a big difference.

Dreams dieing are always hard and 2011 did in a couple I didn’t even know I had. But you know what 2012? Right at the last moments of 2011 a couple of juicy possibilities opened up, right out of the blue. That was pretty cool.

So, okay, 2011 wasn’t all bad, in fact there was some pretty awesome moments, so your resemblance, 2012, to last year might be all right.

Maybe, just maybe New Year, we can create an alliance, a powerful relationship of hope, trust, honesty and courage. That would be pretty cool don’t you think? I think it would be fun to stretch more, love more freely, bring the mysteries out in the open.

I don’t what to put to much pressure on you or anything, but I think we can do this thing up right.

What do you think? I’m up for it!

I feel much better having this little chat before things get too hot and heavy between us.

I think I might be falling for you 2012.

xo,
Sandi

PS, I don’t believe all that Mayan calender stuff about you, don’t worry. I’m in it for the long haul.

pausing between the years

I think my favorite time of year is this week in between Christmas and New Year’s. The hectic Christmas craziness is over and things slow down for a few days. The Solstice has just passed here in the northern hemisphere. There is the knowing that the light is returning, yet the nights are still long and cold.

It is time for warm tea, hot toddies, reflection and dreaming.

I’m not much into formal year in review assessing nor am I huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. For many these rituals are fun and useful, for me they trigger gremlinly voices of short comings and urgency to fix what is wrong.

And yet, I am pulled to reflect on where I am, and honor what has passed. Not in a grand significant way, more from a space of general musing, a soft focus, dreamy meandering though the past 12 months.

In the next couple of weeks I will do more concrete planing and visioning for the year, but right now I am sinking into this liminal space between the years, letting the magic of the pause between ending and beginning cast its spell.

May you find moments of pause this week to let in the magic that is forming in your life.

 

the power of self-forgivness

Quan Yin reminds us of our deserving of compassion

Have you ever felt like you have messed it all up? That you have made the wrong choices, settled for less, let your fear get the best of you?

Oh, it is so hard. Painful. Embarrassing. It makes you want to hide in a hole, or least hole up in your house watching an America’s Next Top Model marathon convincing yourself it is a profound sociological experiment. (Oh wait, maybe that is just me.)

It is hard to run head first into your own human faults and miss-steps. Those places were you slip into small, petty behavior, don’t give the benefit of the doubt, say something that causes unnecessary pain or are just plain mean.

Maybe you try and justify it but your gut knows the truth.

All of this is part of being human. No matter how much spiritual, self development work you have done. As much as you want to always come from your best, express the light of who you are, sometimes you mess up. You fall short. You screw it up. Sometimes in a really big, ugly way. A way that has consequences. A way that maybe we can not fully fix.

It sucks. It hurts. It can bring you to your knees.

It stings so bad you think that your heart must be ripped wide open and desert’s worth of salt is being shoveled in.

There is responsibility to take, apologies to make, repairs to be done.

There is remorse to feel. Karmic lessons to be learned. Insights to be gained. Growth to allow.

And even though you may feel you are the least deserving of compassion and care, you are actually in most need of and fully deserving of it. From yourself. Be tender in your words to yourself, loving in your attention, respectful of your pain. Be attentive to having your process be healing., not punishing or numbing.

I know this may be the hardest part of all, extending loving compassion and healing actions to yourself when you are feeling so bad about yourself, but do it. Just do it. It will transform you and free you from what otherwise is a prison of regret and shame.

Forgive yourself for messing up. For settling. Being mean. Doing it wrong in all the worst ways.

And then let it go.

Because no matter how bad it is, it is never, ever, never the whole truth about you. Maybe not everyone will see that, but you have got to know it about yourself. Those who love you know it. Let them help.

If you don’t let your mistakes retreat into the past, if you keep them alive as proof that you are not good or worthy, than you give your mistakes, your human imperfection that every single person breathing on this earth has in their unique way, the power to hold your light hostage.

Your light is not a function of your being perfect. It is the divinity and the wisdom of your heart expressing itself. When you hold on to hurt and self judgment you restrict how that light can flow.

It is never the actual mistakes we make that cause us the most pain. It is how we deal with ourselves around those mistakes.

How do I know? Experience. Lots. We all get so many opportunities to dance with our imperfection and how it rubs up against the world around us.

If we are attentive and loving with ourselves the painful mess ups hone our spirit, increase our compassion and empathy, actually sand down the harshness of our judging reactions and scarcity fears.

We, You, become more filled with light, more wise, more honest in the world, more at home in our skin and heart.

Please leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts. What works for you when you are in need of some self-forgiveness?

(Please share)

a thanksgiving wish for you

thankful for fall color

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the States. If we are lucky it is a day where we slow down, enjoy family, friends, and soul nourishing food. (FYI, I wholeheartedly believe that the second, or more!, helpings of potatoes and pie enjoyed in the space celebration and love nourish us more deeply than we know, so savor well!)

It is a time to bring awareness to all the ways in which we are blessed and loved.

Here is my Thanksgiving wish for you. That in the midst of celebrating in what ever way you do, whether with a large group of loved ones or alone (because sometimes we are alone and that is okay) or working so that the rest of us can be home, I want you to take some time to be thankful for You. This is especially important if your holiday is the kind where old triggers, resentments or family drama predictably play out.

You matter, You are important, You are a gift.

You, in all your beauty and imperfection. You, for the way you wake up and choose over and over and over in the course of a day to move forward, handle what is in front of you and love what matters.

You, for the way you don’t always get it right but keep trying and growing anyway.

There is so much to be thankful for. From the way your heart beats and keeps the biological rhythm of your life moving, to the way your heart spiritually expands in love every time it heals form a hurt or extends its love to another. From the way you dream even when disappointment tempts you to stop, to the way you respond in generosity even when it is inconvenient and for no other reason than you care.

I know it can be hard to see sometimes, the way you are amazing and special. We are not that practiced at seeing, let alone expressing thankfulness for ourselves. But do it, try it. I know it is vulnerable and can feel awkward but it will open you up to your life an amazing and honest way.

I deeply want this for you. To know the intimate joy of receiving yourself, acknowledging yourself, You feeling thankful for You.

Please share with someone who deserves some self thankfulness.

May you have a wonderful, warm, abundant Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

 

failing at Art Every Day Month, and what I did about it

Patient Muse

In a rush of optimistic exuberance I jumped into Art Every Day Month. If you don’t know, AEDM is the brilliant creation of Leah Piken Kolidas.  You work on some form of art everyday for the month of November and share what you are up to. It is a wonderful, low stress and creatively nourishing event.

That is unless you ( and of course I really mean me) give this gentle and fun creative structure over to your brutal inner critic and all around inner bully.

Result: Creative Sabotage.

So, yeah, I signed up and had done nothing. Not one, itsy, bitsy, tiny thing in the art making department. The litany of critical, judgmental nastiness of my internal voices had me, quite frankly, caught off guard and had shut me down.

(Can you relate? Hypothetically of course, because when I am in this kind of funk I am convinced I am the only one to ever, ever, ever get stuck like this.)

There are options, of course. I could silently drop out. It is not like there is AEDM police ready to site me for non participation. But to be very honest, this is an old strategy of mine that enforces old limiting beliefs. Beliefs that say I can’t be sustainably creative and, more hurtful, that I give up when things get hard.

It doesn’t matter that I have long and impressive list of when I have risen to a creative challenge and have chosen to stick with something through the hard places. More importantly, it also doesn’t matter that I have given up when creatively blocked and yes, I have given up at times when things got hard. There is plenty of wisdom and foolishness in all of it and life is never, ever a score card.

What is important to know is that when up against the inner bully, true reality does not exist. “Reality” becomes what I believe in that moment and that bully will use every trick she has to twist my “reality” to make me out to be the villain, victim, loser.

-I am weak and untalented.

-I have more important things to do right now.

-I am creatively blocked.

-Tomorrow I will have more free time.

-I don’t really want to.

-I am lazy.

-I have already missed two weeks, I might as well just give up.

-Even if I did something it would be bad anyway. I’d just embarrass myself.

What is often forgotten in these moments of sabotage is the mega-power of Choice. And that my dear Lovelies makes all the difference in what version of reality gets to live as true.

I can go all Pollyanna Sunshine about just choosing something different, putting a happy face on top of the hurt and pain, but frankly when my inner bully has the upper hand that always just pisses me off or overwhelms me to the point of giving up.

What is needed is the type of empowered choice that opens up actions I am willing to take, shuts up the inner bully and gets me closer to what I want. In this case creating in a fun way.

What the heck am I talking about?

Small, little, tiny choices. Tiny. But direct and clear. This is what gives the mega-power to the choice. How? Because it is so small as to fly under the radar of the inner bully. So small that it is easy and not threatening to our nervous, scared or overwhelmed self. So small that action gets taken seemingly with out effort or stuggle. And it is fast. Small choices lead to small actions that lead to progress!

Example: Today I chose to look though fabric. Simple and direct. I chose to not create with paper (something I have been strangely tied to for some reason). I chose to not demand that I make anything.

And then I chose to not feel guilty while I was rediscovering my fabric stash. I could feel guilty laterif I really needed to, but not while I was playing. Direct and clear choice.

Guess what? I started having fun. I started getting inspired, I started playing with combinations of fabric and then I was creating. And that is all I needed to get flow started.

So here is my first Art Every Day Month pos.t You have already met Patient Muse at the beginning of this post. She came though today as I played. A reminder that how ever stuck I feel creatively my inspiration is always there waiting for me to find my way of connection.

( Oh, and I am not choosing to feel gulity about playing all day and not cleaning up the explosion of fabric that has overtaken my office. It is  such a well fought for mess I am going to enjoy it)

you are beautiful, a reminder

You know you are beautiful. Right? You must because it shines so warm and clear.

If you have forgotten I will remind you.

It’s okay to forget, we all do, just know how important it is to remember.

You are beautiful.

I’m not talking about beauty in a fashion magazine way or hip celebrity way. I’m not talking about the born pretty way of beauty.

These are wonderful and you may possess them.

What I see in you is different.

The true beauty that you are, the sacred beauty you hold, draws me in and keeps me engaged. It opens me to the vast mystery of the divine unfolding rightness of life.

This is your beauty.

It is  how you let yourself love what you love.

How you take care of what needs caring.

It is how you let yourself ride the waves of disappointment when things don’t work out.

How you sink into loss you feel might just forever break you, but you slowly allow love buoy you, save you, pull you more wholly (and holy) into yourself.

Even when you don’t your beauty doesn’t fade.

When you resist what you love because it seems too much.

When you ignore what needs your care because you are tired or hurt or don’t have the care to give.

When the loss of what was dear overwhelms you and you block love because to fully feel it would shatter you so completely you think you wouldn’t survive, so feeling broken feels safer.

Here you are beautiful too.

As you are. Walking your journey though life.

You see, being beautiful has no requirements. You came into the world with it, you will leave with it. It is the Universe singing though you with every breathe your lungs push out into the world.

You have no choice but to be an expression of the mystical choir of devotion that allows the world to dance.

Your part is to be who you are. In this moment. Only be who you are.

Beautiful.

Alive.

Happy Holloween!

she’s healthy

like light breaking though clouds, sometimes it just takes a few words to open up a new pardigm

“She’s not like our typical patient. She’s healthy.”

I heard my recovery room nurse say this to whom ever she was talking to in preparation of being transferred to a regular room.

Who me?

I was struck because the last thing I felt in that just-post-surgery moment was healthy. In fact “healthy” is not something I have felt in a long, long time.

The very large fibroid that was removed along with my uterus that was worn out from holding it, had been a drain on my energy and overall well being for at least the last 3 years. That was not the whole reason why the comment surprised me and has stayed with me this past month.

You see, if I am honest I have not felt “healthy” ever. The kind of healthy that is preached from magazine covers, news reports and the whole health and diet industry. You know, the type of healthy that comes from being the right weight and body type with the right BMI. The healthy that demands exercising in the right way, eating just the right amount and type of food with the right super nutrient of the moment. Oh, and having the right numbers for your blood pressure, cholesterol and other medical measures.

I have just never been “right” enough. I am not now or in too long to remember, the “right” weight. I don’t eat my veggies like I should and exercise is, for the most part what I have punished myself with for being over weight, not eating enough veggies and eating too much sugar. As far as blood pressure and the rest, I’ve been pretty okay in that area although I do get the raised eyebrow and the you-know-you-really-should look because, you know, my weight.

Even as I spent the last two plus years working to cure my fibroid by cultivating a more healthy lifestyle, doing all the right healthy things, it didn’t make a big difference in how I felt. Except the acupuncture, that was very helpful. But, I still did not feel “healthy”. And I still had a huge fiboid.

Big personal insight. Doing healthy things does not mean feeling healthy.

“She’s not like our typical patient. She’s healthy.”

This has ushered in a paradigm shift for me. It has had me look at myself with in a bigger context. In comparison to the most of those who end up in an operating room, I’m healthy. But beyond comparing myself to those who are worse off than I am, which is just the flip side of comparing myself to news and magazine health standards, the shift here is in where I have been looking in defining health for myself.

The healthy I have been chasing is a mirage. It may look like it is just up on the horizon and is real, but in truth it shifts and changes as I try ever harder to reach it. It is an illusion in the same what that the Photoshopped models on the cover of the health magazines are.

Health is more than a set of numbers and nutrients. It is more than the cultural in look of the moment or the fad super cure all diet or food.. It is not a dress size or certain blood pressure reading.

 Here are my measures of Health.

Am I happy?

Am I able to express myself in the world the way I want?

Am I loved?

Am I giving love?

I can guarantee that if any of these questions is answered with too deep of a “no” for too long of a time, my health will not be good. I will binge, deprive, obsess in ways that do not serve me. It will show up in tests and measures at my doctor’s office.

So I focus my attention and energy on my happiness, expression and love. It is the secret, my secret, to health.

“She’s not like our typical patient. She’s healthy.”

I can’t speak for this nurse’s other patients, but at that moment, groggy from anesthesia and uncomfortable, I got a clear inkling of my true health. I was safe with a team of people tending to me with concern and kindness. My husband was by my side holding my hand. I was able to laugh at the size of what had been removed with relief and gratitude.

In the past month my feeling of health has grown in new and wonderful ways. I am still far from 100% recovered from my surgery, but I am happy in a way I was not before. Sure I can’t push myself hard all day just yet, but that is a good thing. I can see evidence each day of my body healing, my spirit lifting and my heart opening.

I can say, and believe, that I am Healthy.

letting the body lead

perfectly imperfect, gloriously enough

I am letting my body lead.

 What is true that whether I like it our not she is.

 Always has.

 I am now willing to accept that she has the better way.

 This body, her imperfect perfection, is my carrier though this physical world. She holds every beauty, every trauma.

 She is my gateway to the unseen mysteries of the sacred. Through her I can sense into worlds beyond this one, love beyond measure, magic.

 How can one not be anything less than amazed and devotional?

 And yet I often am, to a punishing degree.

 We are taught to fight against our physical self, trying to make her something she was never meant to be. An exact number number on the scale, a desired clothing size, a certain shape . We are in a battle of more here, less there, different.

 My response to my body’s need for help has too often been annoyance, disappointment, anger, blame, shame.

 I want it to be different. I want my response to my body to be loving, joyous, respectful.

 I want to allow her to bring to me everything my life has to offer.

 I want to receive her.

 Always, not just when it is easy.

 How do I take Holy Reverence to the deepest level of my physical Self?

 How do I, do we, set down the programed way of being, reinforced everywhere, that our bodies are not enough? That they are flawed, must be fixed, changed and hidden? Or that they must be exploited, pushed, stretched beyond health to prove we are worthy?

 I have some ideas, I have some ways I know work.

 But really, all I need to do is listen. Listen to the whispers of my body. Learn the language of her symptoms and her pleasures. It is all Divine communication.

 I am deepening into a kinder way, a more effective way of being with this amazing, perfectly imperfect, my-one-and-only body.

 Hallelujah and Amen.

 Can you relate? What are your thought? Please leave a comment, I would love to know.