Until Next Year

I have been quiet lately. Not that you've had time to read my posts with all of the holiday chaos that engulfs us. So you probably don't mind. I've been buried under an avalanche of challenges, but have come out the other side, feeling centered and even a tiny smidge excited about the holidays, which is very unusual for me!

I decided to take a break for the rest of 2010. My trauma anniversary came and went and things are good. I feel very present-moment-oriented. In the new year, if all goes as intended, I will continue this blog, but will post monthly instead of weekly. It was just way too much. Too many posts, too many weekly ideas to come up with, and too short of a time to focus on them. If there were any mantras or actions that you really liked this past year, please let me know and I'll work on building on them in the 2011. And I'll be making my donation to the Preeclampsia Foundation after this post. Maybe you'll also consider making a donation to support an organization committed to raising funding for research and awareness for a condition that kills one mother every seven minutes and kills half a million fetuses and newborns every year.

Looking back at my first post, I feel good about where I've ended up with my intentions.. 

I want to really live life. I want to feel and share the love that is all around me. I want to be in the present moment. I want to notice and appreciate the gratitude that fills my heart when I actually stop and notice everything that is good around and within me. These things are what I call living with positive intention. 

I am doing this now. Thank you for your love and support along this journey, and I can't wait to continue on in the new year!

Week 47 | Eat Mindfully | Take Longer to Chew Your Food

Well, since eating has been on my mind excessively for exactly 15 weeks now, and with Thanksgiving coming up this week, I figured it would be good to focus a weekly intention on eating. I have long been aware of the concept of "mindful eating," and I sometimes (inconsistently) do my own version of mindful eating, stopping to pay attention to the food that I'm putting in my mouth - thinking about where it came from, how it tastes, what the texture is.. But I only just now stopped to read information on the website for the Center for Mindful Eating. They say it way better than I would, so I will leave it at that. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! :)

Principles  |  Philosophy  |  Authors

The Center for Mindful Eating has created the Principles of Mindful Eating. These principles are intended to guide professionals who are interested in mindful eating. The Principles of Mindful Eating are free to reproduce and distribute for educational purposes.

The Principles are also available as a PDF to download and print. (The Principles of Mindful Eating - PDF 110kb)

Principles of Mindfulness:
• Mindfulness is deliberately paying attention, non-judgmentally.
• Mindfulness encompasses both internal processes and external environments.
• Mindfulness is being aware of what is present for you mentally, emotionally and physically in each moment.
• With practice, mindfulness cultivates the possibility of freeing yourself of reactive, habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and acting.
• Mindfulness promotes balance, choice, wisdom and acceptance of what is.

Mindful Eating is:
• Allowing yourself to become aware of the positive and nurturing
opportunities that are available through food preparation and consumption by respecting your own inner wisdom.
• Choosing to eat food that is both pleasing to you and nourishing to your body by using all your senses to explore, savor and taste.
• Acknowledging responses to food (likes, neutral or dislikes) without judgment.
• Learning to be aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decision to begin eating and to stop eating.

Someone Who Eats Mindfully:
• Acknowledges that there is no right or wrong way to eat but varying degrees of awareness surrounding the experience of food.
• Accepts that his/her eating experiences are unique.
• Is an individual who by choice, directs his/her awareness to all aspects of food and eating on a moment-by-moment basis.
• Is an individual who looks at the immediate choices and direct experiences associated with food and eating: not to the distant health outcome of that choice.
• Is aware of and reflects on the effects caused by unmindful eating.
• Experiences insight about how he/she can act to achieve specific health goals as he/she becomes more attuned to the direct experience of eating and feelings of health.
• Becomes aware of the interconnection of earth, living beings, and cultural practices and the impact of his/ her food choices has on those systems. 

Week 47 

Mantra | Eat Mindfully 

Action | Take Longer to Chew Your Food

Week 45 | It is Better to Light a Candle than Curse the Darkness

Short but sweet:

The clocks have fallen back. It's dark early. I've heard a lot of complaining, and have participated in some myself. Then I went to my 12 week OB appointment and my doctor was dressed in a beautiful green shalwar and was celebrating Diwali, the "Festival of Lights," which she described as a celebration of lighting up the dark. This takes me back to the wonderful Chinese proverb I have had under the heading of this blog since Week 1.

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

And so it is.

Week 45

Mantra:

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

Action:

Light a candle every night this week and write one positive thought.

Week 44 | Dream On | Write Down Your Dreams When You Wake Up

 OK. This image is another throw-back to my adolescent decor. I borrowed Shel Silverstein's words from the opening of Where the Sidewalk Ends and hung them on my bedroom door.

I recently participated in a workshop about dreaming and it's got me thinking. As an art therapist, I have studied dream analysis and I use dream work in my sessions with clients. I LOVE and believe in this work! But, I have gone back and forth in my personal life with paying close attention to my own dreams, which I usually remember. The night before the workshop, lying in bed, I wondered if I would have especially vivid dreams, knowing I would be going to the workshop in the morning. Having that conscious thought was all it took, and I woke up having had a very complex and meaningful dream that I, of course, shared with the workshop group, gaining invaluable feedback that I continue to mull over during my quiet moments of self-discovery.

In the days before the sleep deprivation that comes from night nursings, and the groggy start to the day with a screaming toddler as an alarm clock, I actually used to jot my dreams down every morning. If you can, I suggest doing this. I miss the practice, and will attempt to write my dreams down every morning this week before getting Gavin out of bed. (He's been pretty content in the mornings lately to play with his "friends,"the 30 stuffed animals he sleeps with.)

Here's a shortcut to the dream process I learned at the recent workshop. (I'll give due credit, but just can't manage to get up and find the folder at this hour.)

1. Give your dream a title.
2. List the feelings that you had about the dream in your waking mind.
3. List any parts of the dream that mirror reality, or that could really happen.
4. List the questions that you have about the dream.
5. Share your dream with a friend and have them offer questions that they have about the dream.. "If it were my dream..."
6. After pondering the dream a little more, come up with a bumper sticker style message.

I'll try to post about one of my dreams this week so you can see how this works, in case this doesn't make sense.

Week 44
Mantra | Dream On
Action | Write Down Your Dreams When You Wake Up


ps - GO VOTE!!!!

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.