Little Women and Loving →

The story of Little Women written by Louisa May Alcott has been one of my favourite stories.  A story about four sisters living the trials and victories during the 19th Century. I read the book many years ago when I was a young woman not knowing years later I would be blessed with daughters myself.

I recently watched the latest version of the movie and many of the lines spoken through the characters resonated with the modern woman in the 21st century. 

My favourite line was the attic scene with Jo and her mother.  Jo expressed to her mother if Laurie asked her again for marriage she will yes this time.  Her mother asked “but do you love him?” Jo replied “I care more to be loved than want to be loved.” Mother responded “That is not the same as loving.”  What a beautiful line!  

Loving is free.  It is unconditional.  To desire someone. To care for someone at an unlimited level.  Mindful of where you are in the relationship. Completely supportive of someone. Willingly offer yourself to that person.  It feels absolutely natural. No feeling of hesitation whatsoever. The feeling is extremely sensational. It allows you to become vulnerable. 

My Mother advised my sisters and me to marry someone who loves you more because he will never leave you.  That is not always the case because the feelings of intimate love are not permanent. It changes overtime.  It can move in various directions. You will know only in time. That time is wherever you are at the moment. 

There is also the factor of being hurt from the person you love.  When we love others we want it to be reciprocated. It doesn’t always work that way in many relationships.  To simply love someone and not expect something back in return is the experience of loving. 

Mrs. March gave Jo the opposite advice in romance and love from my own mother.  Take that chance to love someone. To experience the desire for someone. That desire to give yourself to someone fully and not having the confirmation that it will be returned is a fulfiling human experience itself.   

Photo by Irina Iriser on Unsplash

Missing Someone During The Holidays

Missing Someone During The Holidays 

I am enjoying my bowl of Sinigang (Filipino Tamarind Soup) as he sits down to have a chat with me during my lunch break. The conversation starts with holiday meals and eventually moves into a discussion of family members.  

He began to share stories about his Mother and about her passing a few years ago with liver complications.  His openness to share his feelings and emotions with me about his Mother, impressed me. He adored her dearly, a very close relationship between Mother and Son.  She to him was the advisor, someone he console to during troubled times. How she made him delicious soup when he was sick brought giggles to him. Most importantly, he misses her presence.  Her lack of presence during the holiday season is significant to the point where his sadness can lead to his depression. 

This man is one of several people who recently shared their melancholy state with me in recent weeks in the midst of our holiday season.  

You may no longer have the physical experience with your passed loved ones but your relationship with them continues energetically, spiritually if you choose to.  In those moments when you begin to miss them, you are able to connect and communicate with them by simply becoming utterly quiet. You may even choose to have an inner dialogue with them.  You have every once of capacity to communicate with them if your willingness exists. First believe that you have this ability and begin practicing without fear.  

If the dialogue with your passed loved ones does not occur, they will communicate through your five physical senses.  The smell of your favourite dish they used to make or through the sound of music. When you call out for your passed loved one, listen and pay attention. They are always close by. 

It is the most wonderful time of the year for plenty of people.  However, there are many who are experiencing quite the opposite during this time of year.  I remind people, It is perfectly fine to be going through these feelings of sadness and sometimes depression.  It is what you are going through now and it is all part of your human experience.  

A Single Thought

My phone rings at 10:30 in the morning.  It’s my daughter calling from school.

“Hello.”

“Mom, can you pick me up?”

“Why?” “What’s the matter?”

“ I don’t feel good.”  “Can you just pick me up.”

I feel her anxiety through the phone but I ask anyway.  “Are you having an anxiety attack?”

I go through the protocol of seeing the school nurse and the school psychologist with her when anxiety attacks occur.

She desperately replied, “Can you just pick me up.”  “I don’t feel well.”  

I scurried over to the high school.  Within a short time we are in the school psychologist office allowing her to experience the anxiety attack which began in the classroom several minutes prior.  Anxiety attacks can last 10 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes depending on the root of the trigger.

The school psychologist and I sat there watching her.  We did not  touch her, nor did we try to console or comfort her.  We said nothing.  We simply let her have the experience, holding the space she needed as she went through the pain.  I looked across the desk, observing the staff professional.  She’s been through this before, I bet dozens of times guiding students in similar situations.  

Full-blown panic attacks are difficult to watch, especially when it is your kid experiencing it. There was a moment I  wanted to pick her up like the three year old she used to be and make the pain go away but that would be me controlling the situation again.  Besides, she’s a teenager now who wants very little touch these days.  Most importantly, space was what she needed.  We needed to hold space for her while she experienced the attack.

A few minutes had gone by and  I felt the need to give her a reminder.  “Remember to breathe.”  That’s all I said in those moments of letting the pain pass.   Remember to breathe will bring you back to your core.  The breath dissolves the thought which allows the pain to go away and you are back in your center.  It is in our center when we experience no pain.

After is was all over, she was asked what she was thinking about.  Her thought was about the future, a ‘‘what if” situation that will probably never take place but yet that’s where her mind went.  It’s amazing how a single thought can cause a full-blown panic attack.  I am fascinated with thought forms and how powerful they are.  Our thoughts are very powerful and we are unaware of this universal law most times in our lives.  We go about our day, our hours, our minutes without even considering our thoughts.  We do not realize how we unconsciously create experiences in our lives from a single thought.

I often ask my children, “how are your thoughts?”  rather than asking them how they feel because their thoughts create their feelings.  They know and understand this from mindfulness therapy.  As for most of us, mindfulness takes practice, it is a lifetime practice.  For my children, understanding about their thought process is a big step in learning how to manage their anxiety and depression.

Imagine what we can create in our lives when we are conscious, always aware of where our thoughts are.  Unconscious, negative thoughts create mind body pain, the duality of this experience is to be mindful and become conscious.  What would the experience be for us if we are aware at all times of where our thoughts are every day, every hour  and every minute of our lives?

Photo by Levi XU on Unsplash

Too Sick To Get Up

It’s Friday morning and I try again to wake her up.  I wait and see if she is able to get up this morning to go to school.  It is the fifth day she’s missed school this week.  It’s been a week of trying to get her up to send her to school.  The school psychologist has been communicating with me via email everyday this week to help and give me advice in how to get my child up.  Nothing has worked so far.  It’s now Friday and I’ve failed at every attempt.  I’ve come to the conclusion that she really is not able to get up mentally, physically and the spirit in her is allowing this experience for now.  I am too.

I email the school psychologist and share with her my thoughts at the moment.  I ask that we take a break and allow my daughter to heal for now.  Forcing her to get up and attend school is beating the purpose of the healing process.  I suggest to the school psychologist that when she feels better, we’ll try again.  The school psychologist agrees with me.

As I look at my daughter covered underneath the blanket I wonder about the depth of her depression.  I cannot see her wound or whatever it is that keeps her in bed all day.  Depression is hard to look at because you cannot see the wound.  The pain is inside and it must turmoil.

I have asked friends who suffer from depression about the deep experience of this illness.  Why it’s so difficult to get up from bed and days go by not leaving the house.  This is depression, they tell me.  It’s like being stuck in mud and you cannot get out of it because you are so stuck in the thickness of it, explains a friend.  Another describes it as having a castnet over you and you are desperately trying to get out of it.  These metaphors help me understand their experience a bit clearly.  However, I don’t really know what anything is like unless I have experienced it myself.

To help me understand and become compassionate about this illness, I use my imagination.  I imagine my daughter has a broken leg and she simply cannot get up for days.  Her leg is in a cast and she is unable to get up and go to school.  This could take weeks to months to recover from a broken leg.  As in having a broken leg, a healing period is needed with the aid of therapy.  All kinds of therapy including seeing a medical doctor for remedies.   There is something broken in her anatomy and it needs to be healed.

When someone has a broken leg, we do not ask them to get up and function in their lives as they normally would when healthy.   Yet, we seem to be quick to expect those with mental illness to be cured quickly and be up and running around as usual.  

The image of my daughter with a broken leg has helped me shift in how I see depression.  Using this imagery as a tool has allowed me to understand the illness better.  One who suffers from mental illness does not need to be rushed while in the healing process.  I cannot see the bleeding from the wound but I am becoming better at accepting this illness for what it is.  It is mental illness.  As I mentioned in my earlier statement, the infliction is severe and it must be as painful as when one has a severe physical illness.

Remembering September 10th, 2001

I remember September 10th, 2001 as a beautiful late summer day.   My friend and I were having lunch by the fountain listening to live jazz music and cherishing the beauty of it all.  The weather was forecasted with pleasant and mild weather for the week and that Monday was one gorgeous day!  I asked my friend if she wanted to join me again the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, for lunch in the same spot.  I worked from home on Tuesdays and I was scheduled not to come into the office on September 11th.  We agreed to meet again for lunch two days later.  Our planned lunch date for Wednesday, September 12th never happened.

The next day, I had a completely different experience.  The same exact location where I was having lunch and enjoying live music was in the midst of chaos and destruction as the Towers were collapsing.  It was one of the most horrific sight to I have ever witnessed.

It was the first time I experienced a quick and drastic change within a 24 hour span.  One day I am enjoying a fabulous day and the next was a complete destruction.  Although I had been exposed to meditation and mindfulness 11 years prior to that day, it was the very first time I became aware of the importance of being mindful in every situation I am experiencing.  I realized then any life experience could quickly change.

I share this personal story in my workshops since mindfulness is the major aspect in the conversations.  Mindfulness in who we are and where we are at in every moment in our lives.

We never know what the next day brings, or what the next hour will bring.  

I am ever so grateful I made the choice to have lunch outside the Towers on that lovely September day because I had no idea what the next day was to become.  The events of September 11th, 2001 were traumatic, however, my greatest memory of the World Trade Center prior to 9/11 was memorable.

Photo by Emanuele Bresciani on Unsplash

I Dream of Ivanka

Last night I dreamt about Ivanka Trump.  Yes, Ivanka Trump.  I was sitting at a conference table with her and her Father, the 45th President while he was signing some papers.  Yup...more Executive Orders.  Ivanka all of a sudden starts crying, I mean weeping.  She proceeded to share with me how it has been hard for her and if we, the public, only knew what she really goes through on a day to day basis from our continuous criticism.  I then take her hand and held space for her while she continued to express her feelings in the midst of sobbing.  Then I began to hug to her and apologize for all my judgement and criticism towards her and her actions.   This dream felt so real I felt empathy towards her.  I felt it mostly when I awakened from the dream.

Why the dream?  The day before I was applauding a friend’s Facebook post about another negative jab towards the First Daughter.  This dream was a reminder for me to check in with my judgement and criticism of others.  I never really know what people in the public eye are going through behind closed doors.   The Universe always reminds me, in this case through a vivid dream, of the practice of compassion.  To have compassion for people we disagree with or who we think we dislike is a great learning opportunity.

Be Wise With Your Time

The first thing I heard this morning before rolling out of bed was "Be Wise With Your Time" which also means be mindful with my time.  Today is one of those busy days scheduled with meetings and softball practice etc.  We get so caught up in the our laundry list and we continuously go about our day thinking about our To-Do-List which consumes our mind.  When our mind is consumed with thoughts, it consume our energy and we are literally losing time.

 
Every second, every moment counts within your physical experience.  You are human beings living in the physical realm, within a physical environment and within the time experience.  It is not necessary to be caught up in your time frame.  The key to getting through your day and accomplishing everything on that laundry list is to simply be in present time.  When you are in your present time, your mind is clear and not cluttered with unnecessary thoughts.   You flow in time rather than be limited by it.  Furthermore, your daily actions are effortless when you allow yourself to simply be in the moment.