Week 43 | Imagine Yourself Magic | Conjure Up Something You Want to Invite into Your Life

I first discovered this poster during my first visit to a campus bookstore. I was attending a basketball camp at Bradley University in 1990. It's so funny now, but walking into that bookstore was a mind-opening experience. Growing up in Peoria, Illinois, disconnected from the kind of artsy, magical, progressive kinds of things I've always been drawn to, I was psyched to discover that one could find such cool things on a university campus. And we had one of those in our town! Anyway, I hung this very poster with love in every single room I lived in from 8th grade through grad school. Over the years, I also followed the artist/author who made it, SARK, reading many of her books, and then actually got to meet her (with Mere!) in San Francisco 10 years after my discovery of her poster. I have the thing memorized and I find myself over and over thinking of lines from this poster. One that I often find myself mentalizing is "Imagine Yourself Magic." 

And then I was jogging at Palmer Square the other day and I literally ran across this written in the golden leaves of this beautiful season:

I love it when things like that happen. I feel as though the universe just opens up and sends me messages straight from the cosmos. "Yes, universe," I say, "I have not been imagining myself magic enough lately. Thank you."

Week 43
Mantra | Imagine Yourself Magic

Action | Conjure Up Something You Want to Invite into Your Life

You can call SARK's "inspiration line" to listen to an uplifting message, if you'd like:

415 546 3742

(Don't worry. It's just a regular voice mail.)

Here are some of my favorite bits from her current message:

Little by little, you will turn into stars.

Question to ask yourself: Am I resisting this? Or allowing this?

There are more things to learn about than feeling good. So many good things grow in the dark.

"If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day." -Leonard Cohen

Week 41 | Practice Silence | Make an Effort to Stop Talking and Just Listen

Sorry I missed a week. I've been in a blog rut. 

As a therapist, I learned in school about the magic of silence. I can remember how hard it was when I was green to sit and listen and refrain from responding immediately, the way we do in conversation. Over time, I have gotten better and more comfortable with sitting in silence with someone. It is sometimes magical when you are comfortable in your silence, and you can allow someone the space to say what they really need to express. In sessions, I often talk myself through the silence in my mind, saying "wait.. just take a deep breath and wait.." and I've stretched my silent comfort zone a bit farther, only to hear my client start sharing a little more.

I have been sort of practicing more silence in non-therapy conversations lately, but I'd like to be extra mindful of it this week as we head to Arizona for my sister's wedding, which will provide many opportunities for conversation.

Week 41

Mantra: Practice Silence

Action: Make an Effort to Stop Talking and Just Listen

Week 39 | See the Soul | Imagine People as Their Newborn Selves

Okay, okay. So I know I have babies on my mind right now, which is probably why I thought of this week's action. I still struggle with the judgmental part of my shadow that sees the outer shell, or politics, or behaviors of people before seeing their soul, and I don't like that. For me, part of being more mindful is seeing and then connecting with the soul in everyone.

I had to take public trans to work the other day and made this little exercise up while riding on the bus. When I noticed myself making assumptions about a stranger, I forced myself to imagine that person as a newborn. Yes, that also involved some judgment in picturing them, their entry into the world, the reception from their parent(s) as I envisioned it in my imagination. But it was a really effective tool in helping me move away from my judgments. In many cases, it brought tears to my eyes.. the simplicity of the conjured image bringing me directly in touch with these souls on the bus.

I like it. I'm going to try to remember to practice it every day this week. 

Week 39

Mantra | See the Soul

Action | Imagine People as Their Newborn Selves

ps - In an effort to keep this blog from becoming "A Pregnancy of Positive Intention" I am writing a totally separate blog for myself... that is public ... in case anyone wants to follow along my pregnancy. It's http://hopefulafterhellp.blogspot.com/ 

pps - My husband just called me a multi-blogger. Hilarious!

Week 38 | Love Better | Actually ask what you can do to love better

I haven't blogged for the past two weeks. I have gone deep within myself and posting felt too public for what I was experiencing.

Two weeks ago we received ecstatically joyous news, followed quickly by devastating news.

I am pregnant! I am 6 weeks along, due in mid-May, and very excited!

Just as we were settling into our joy and astonishment at having actually conceived the moment we decided to go for it, we got the heart-wrenching news that Brian's best friend in the world has cancer. He is okay. But the news shocked us, and triggered some deep fears.

For the past two weeks I have been acutely aware of the connection between life and death. It was in my last pregnancy, at the end, when I developed HELLP Syndrome, that I was the closest I've ever been to the connection between the two. And now I am there again, in part because of the life growing inside of me, in part because of the death that I averted last time, and in part because of our friend's cancer diagnosis. He's not going to die, already had surgery, and will start chemo and/or radiation very soon. He's going to be fine.

But all of this life and death stuff leads me to think about love, which, to me, is the only thing that really matters. Just as I was thinking about love, how I love, the people I love.. I read an article in Whole Living in which the author asked her family to tell her how she can love them better. I decided to do the same thing to mixed results. First of all, it's kind of an awkward question. And secondly, I'm pretty close with my family and they all sort of responded like I was being ridiculous. In any case, I pledge to do everything from shipping off 4 bottles of lemon ginger echinacea juice to our friends' house in the mountains to "cherishing family harmony," whatever that means. ;)

Week 38 

Mantra | Love Better 

Action | Actually ask what you can do to love better

A Note about Synchronicity

I was thinking back to the post from week 13 and wanted to tell you a little story about the pink t-shirt that arrived synchronistically in the mail.

It was 6 years ago. I was rounding the corner on a long year out of losing Poppy (my grandpa), moving back to the midwest from San Francisco, ending a difficult relationship, living on my own in Chicago, and working full-time at a really crappy job while working the rest of the time at the art center that my best friend and I had opened. Life felt hard. Really hard. I'd been through some things that strained my ability to feel my usual optimism. 

And then I took a trip with one of my best friends to visit another of my best friends in Amsterdam. Something about being with really good friends, riding bikes through those beautiful brick streets, over canals lit by the moon, and amongst lots and lots of other bikes... oh, and there was that exciting Dutch romance.. anyway, the whole experience was an awakening. The kind of awakening that was really a journey back to myself, and my usual state of optimism and synchronistic living. 

Within two months of taking that trip, returning to Chicago to find it gray, stale, frigid and unforgiving, I made up my mind that I needed a huge change. I knew something big was around the corner. I just didn't know what it was yet. So I decided to make the change myself, instead of waiting for synchronicity to do its thing. I made plans to move to Amsterdam to live with my best friend, an idea that was born, of course, out of the great awakening that had taken place there.

And wouldn't you know it? As soon as I had made a definitive plan, and emotionally detached from the gloom that I knew in Chicago, I walked into a drumming bar on a Friday night, and straight into the next chapter of my life, the synchronistic moment that was around the corner.

There was Brian. Living in a similar state of gloom, hoping for his own awakening, his own next chapter. We went out exactly 4 nights later and fell in love in a booth at a restaurant. Just like that.

Six weeks later he took me to "the lake" in Wisconsin to enjoy the holiday weekend and to meet his parents and his entire family of choice, people he had grown up with and loved his whole life. Second moms, second dads, best friends in the universe, more brothers and sisters than I could keep track of. What an incredible bunch!


As nervous as I was to meet all these people at once, I felt the love immediately. I will especially never forget standing in a warm cottage kitchen, watching the love of my life hold his best friend's infant son for the first time. This kitchen, in varying states of loving re-construction since I've known it, and where many a meeting of the babies, and many a long talk about life has taken place ever since, and countless times in the years before me, happens to be the kitchen of Brian's second mom, Judy. 


Judy just so happens to have welcomed me with loving arms, birthday cakes, book recommendations, borrowed cars in the mountains, and many other things, into their greater family. And Judy just so happens to have anonymously sent me a very cute pink shirt back in February that said "Keep calm and carry on," that just so happened to inspire me to blog about synchronicity...

So THAT, my friends, is synchronicity. And it's synchronicity at its best. 

Happy Birthday, Judy!!!!!! Much love!

Week 34 | Tap Into Your Right Brain | Draw with Your Left Hand

Getting harder and harder to keep up with weekly posts.

My right brained-ness is screaming for attention lately. Spending way too much time in a left-brained state of mind.

So..

Week 34

Mantra: Tap Into Your Right Brain

Action: Draw with Your Left Hand

ps - Send me your drawings and I'll post them! (Anonymously if you insist...)

pps - This is loosely related to this week's post, but I LOVE art journaling, and I have been enjoying a blog about the "Ten Coolest Art Therapy Interventions" and really especially liked this post - which got me thinking about the left-handed drawing idea 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-healing-arts/201006/cool-art-therapy-intervention-4-visual-journaling

ppps - If you are left handed, I <3 you, and you should keep drawing with your left hand.

Week 32 | Mantra: Morning Glory | Action: Wake up and Move Toward Joy

Well, I guess walking at a slower pace led to posting at a slower pace this week. Ha! 

It was really nice to slow down and I think last week's action is something I will carry with me when I can be conscious of it. Slowing my pace generalized to driving and other things too, which was really nice. (And safe!)

As much as I try to be conscious of my disposition, I find myself really struggling in the morning more than any other part of the day to be present and positive. I just simply am not a morning person, but having a child who wakes up earlier than I've ever set my alarm has really challenged me. This week has been worse because Bri and I have been up even later as we grapple with our decision about a real estate investment, which then just leads to all sorts of open-ended conversations about our future. It's fun and exhausting at the same time. And I'm definitely waking up crabbier. So, for what's left of the week, and moving into next week, I'd like to focus on being more present and positive in the morning. 

Some day I will be able to sleep past 7am again...

Week 32

Mantra: Morning Glory

Action: Wake up and move toward joy

(by the way, I mean glory as in "a state of absolute happiness, gratification, contentment,etc")

Week 31 | Just Slow Down | Walk at a Slower Pace

I am grateful to live in a place where I walk every day. I love walking. But I often find myself walking quickly, pressured by my mind-clock, which is usually running 10 minutes behind. I remember my first year in grad school when I was assisting an art history professor as part of my work-study program. I hurried through the academic halls balancing a slide carousel atop a heavy stack of books and binders. I almost tripped over the threshold into his office, catching myself just in time to look up and catch his irritated gaze.

"You are always so frantic. Just slow down."

It was kind of mean, the way he said it. But it has always stuck with me. When I notice myself hurrying about, I replay his words, take a deep breath and do as he suggested, slowing myself down. 

This week, I want to put my intention into slowing down my walking pace. This will surely lead to all sorts of slowing down - my breath, my thoughts, my overachiever pace of life. 

Not that I've read the whole thing just yet, but here is an essay written by Thoreau about walking slowly, sauntering. 

Thank you, Dr. Iorio for this week's mantra. 

Week 31 

Mantra | Just Slow Down

Action | Walk at a slower pace

Week 30 | Smile on the Inside | Practice the Taoist "Inner Smile" Technique

Ok, Ok, so the apology letters from last week aren't in the mail box yet, but they will be by tomorrow morning. $5 (half) donation to the Preeclampsia Foundation for half completing my weekly intention.

This week, I'd like to introduce you to the "Inner Smile," a Taoist practice of mindfulness and inner healing. Read more about it and how to do it here:

http://taoism.about.com/od/meditation/ht/inner_smile.htm

After what my organs went through with HELLP Syndrome, I am very curious to discover the impact of this practice. I still feel like my liver, heart and uterus need so much healing energy, as well as the whole of me and all of my parts. ;)

This week's post is short and sweet.. we've had more visitors and our summer energy is very much outward, so sitting at the computer is happening less and less often!! Thanks for being out there!

Week 30 

Mantra | Smile on the Inside

Action | Practice the Taoist "Inner Smile" Technique

Week 29 | Mantra: Accept Fault | Action: Write an Apology Letter

Last week was definitely "breath week." When I went to my acupuncturist she even picked up on that before I told her about my weekly goal. I happen to have a lot of "heat" in me. (Part of it is seriously from being a redhead, mom!) She taught me to let my breath out in a "ha" sound in order to get the heat out of me. I've been doing a lot of that kind of exhale this week, which has been funny to anyone around me. (Btw, Jamie, she also recommended Rescue Remedy, and suggested that I empty the dropper before every use, and set an intention before taking it.) I've also found myself doing more breath work than normal with my clients. Maybe all this breath work will stick and I'll start breathing better on a daily basis. I'm going to keep my alarms on my phone set for 4x/day.

In unrelated news, Brian and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary this weekend. He got us the coolest present! It's a Sonos, which is a genius music system. It's so perfect for us, two people who LOVE music, but who love totally opposite music. I've always let things default to his musical control because we do agree on lots of things like our shared love of bluegrass. But I miss my chick rock and old hippie stuff that drives him nuts. Now we can just click a button on our laptop or his Iphone and switch the music. We've had music playing non-stop ever since he got it hooked up. This thing is awesome! I feel so much happier and more connected in this temporary space.

On to this week's theme... Children have a way of teaching you how to be a better person. That happens all the time with Gavin. Like tonight. We had a big struggle after his bath when we expected him to brush his teeth. It's a non-negotiable for us, so we pushed hard to get the job done. Being that he is in the age of autonomy, he was really mad at our forcefulness about the situation. A few minutes later, he and I were sitting on the floor in his room drawing a "good night picture" on his easel, and out of nowhere, he stopped drawing, looked at me and said, "Mommy, I sorry I fighted you." It was his first true apology. He's two and a half. What a wonderful human being.

And what an inspiration.

As an aside, here's a really creative way to apologize for something that you can't do directly. Thanks to Bri for finding this neat site.

Week 29
Mantra | Accept Fault
Action | Write an Apology Letter (Really mean it.)