Fortitude

Being vulnerable doesn't ever seem to get easier but does indeed become more of a necessity for me. The title Poetry Prose, Perspective and Practice,  does include the word practice, so this will continue to be my practice of writing about what may be vulnerable and at the same time something meaningful enough to me that I feel the need to share. 

I have been reading "Pluck",  the memoir of Donna Morrissey, a Newfoundland novelist.  In her book, she describes the adversity she and her family faced with a fortitude that was instilled in her as a virtue by both of her parents during her younger years. It becomes clear that fortitude is not enough to navigate her circumstances, and the story shares the heart of what brings her through it.   I had been thinking a lot about her challenges and being overwhelmed with how much she and her family had to deal with in their life.  If fortitude is courage in the face of adversity, they were clearly brimming with it.  It left me questioning how we all continue to have the strength of mind and the will needed to endure and overcome so many of life's challenges as none of us escape them.

The same week I was nearing the end of this novel, I had a conversation with a colleague and friend where we were sharing concern for the numerous difficulties people are facing right now.  I  shared with him my questioning if others were feeling the responsibility of care that we were consumed with.  It was a lengthy conversation and I appreciated his time and insight. One thing that stuck with me was that he said, "but your ok with the hard. I mean dealing with the hard feelings. Most people are using distractions or numbing because they don't want to feel it."

He wouldn't have realized at the time how much I appreciated him seeing this in me as I haven't always been the person who welcomed the hard. I think, like most of us I was always looking to be comfortably uncomfortable.  I have a picture on my fridge which is now part of this post. The picture is there to remind me of a pivotal moment of change in my life. It is a snapshot of myself and my two daughters on a sled in our front yard. The picture is in black and white and represents a time shortly after this photo when the color left my world for a while. I began seeing differences in the development of my two daughters and was sure that my youngest needed an autism diagnosis.  I chased this diagnosis for the next year and a half and the "chase" continued for many years after the diagnosis as well.   I became hypervigilant about everything concerning her care and therapy.  I moved through my days on a mission to bring every possible solution to her challenges. This extended to how I moved through my personal care and relationships as well.  Always moving, fixing, helping, staying one step ahead to avert every crisis big or small.  I suddenly felt the most aloneness I had ever experienced and the biggest weight of responsibility, I assumed one could feel.  Shame and guilt were huge in those days.  Shame for wishing things could be different for my little family,  guilt for not being able to change the subsequent effect all of this would have on my partner and my daughters, and mostly for the uncertainty of how my daughter would navigate a world not made for her.  It was the beginning of my consistent answers of "I'm fine and It's good",  to the questions of concern from friends and relatives. Whether it was real or imagined, I acknowledged the pity and toxic positivity of well-meaning people we encountered, along with a barrage of good-intentioned advice and snippets of google research offered by some of those closest to me. This, I realized aided my construction of the biggest wall I could muster to keep at bay the feeling of being misunderstood and allowing myself to be vulnerable with people who didn't share my experience.  I had grown up in a generation of women that kept their family stories to themselves,  where being vulnerable meant you were weak or flawed in some way.   Everyone thinking they should be able to handle everything on their own and find great pride in doing so.  When I finally found my way through the grief that was presenting in so many other ways, I was able to be present with where I found myself.  There eventually was the realization that if I kept running, I would never be able to find peace of mind.   When I got still finally, I realized that by allowing all of my feelings to be what they were, as well as my reality, the emotions would move through me but  I would not become them. My life was so full of color and my hard was what would make me see this.   It all seems like a lifetime ago and I am now trying to build bridges instead of walls and investing in what matters most.  I think now, I  spend a lot of time with the hard feelings but   I know that having courage does not mean  I  have to try to balance on one foot with my leg in the air for the entirety of my life, as eloquently spoken by Elizabeth Gilbert and realizing this has made room for a whole lot more joy and appreciation for my life.

I share this with you as I would a breath practice from my yoga class. Urging you to breath in saying to yourself, "let" which means to allow the feelings and thoughts to come and to breathe out,  saying to yourself "go" and with that visualizing the release of what comes.  I would share this breath practice because it may help you as it has me.  I am sharing my stories in the same way.  My story is not yours, my hard is just that, my hard, and yours is your hard, and hard will always be part of the human experience but there may be something in our differing stories for each other.   I believe that what we have to offer one another is our lived experiences, our stories. This is really one of the most significant things we have to give.

So coming back to fortitude, its definition, and relevance to our stories.  Maybe fortitude is not just the courage to handle adversity and pain but the courage to ask hard questions, sit with hard feelings, share difficult emotions and conversations that may help us move through adversity and grow from it.  Maybe fortitude is allowing, accepting, and staying present with emotion, resting, and reflecting on experience.  Maybe having fortitude is being brave enough to share your story as did Donna Morrissey.

    

Forget me.. not

This is a story of a woman who is near and dear to my heart.  I met her when I first moved to my community almost 27 years ago.   I was recently sifting through old photographs and stumbled upon a picture of a bouquet of tiny blue flowers I had picked from the backyard and immediately thought of her. These tiny blue flowers that emerged every year in the long grasses, bring with them the perennial memory of our dear neighbor. She offered the seeds for these flowers in a small plastic sandwich bag tied with a twist tie in the early spring of our time living here. This was her way, I would quickly learn as she arrived at our door with a very firm knock and purpose. The flowers were a nice addition to the yard and were of little maintenance as was our relationship that continued to bloom.  These were the first of many gifts of the heart, I now refer to them as.  She would bring grocery bags filled with mesh onion holders, bread ties, cotton from pill bottles, ribbons, cut out pictures from cards, and numerous other recyclables for my daughters to create crafts.  She was truly the number one earth ambassador and a great role model of living lightly on the earth.  Her kindness extended to the girls with special coins at Halloween and welcoming spring gifts of chalk, skipping ropes, and more.  We also received vegetables from her garden and access to her enormous supply of rhubarb plants each summer. 

Initially as a newlywed and then the working mom of two, I may not have always appreciated the gift of Barbara as our neighbor and friend but as the years moved on I saw what a special part of our lives she had become.  It was not only her kind gestures that created this relationship but the sense of community she created for us.  Knowing she and her husband were always looking out for us and later in their aging years, the privilege we had, of looking out for them.  They were our first experience with being a part of a collective of people living in proximity to each other and that being enough to share kindness, and ourselves, reciprocally. 

We are continually connecting as communities of people sharing a feeling of fellowship with others as the result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals which are so important for all of us but when I reflect on memories of Barbara, I see the community that she created as equally if not more necessary for us to thrive and move forward in the places we put down roots and our global communities. We need to be able to share humanity with people that may share nothing more than a plot of land near us. We need to be able to arrive at the physical and metaphorical door of a stranger and offer ourselves to them.  This offering can just be the seeds of  mutual respect and  support,  

Barbara moved away to live closer to her daughter after the death of her husband and last year, she too passed.  I didn't get the opportunity to see her in her final years but  I know that where ever she was she would have been connecting and creating a community for herself and others.  

Coming back to the perennials,  she so gracelessly offered,  I am reminded of one of our last summers as neighbors. Barbara was well into her 80's at the time and joked about how it was harder to remember things.  She asked me if the flowers were still coming up and searched her memory for their name, which neither of us could recall at the time.  I assured her I hadn't yet killed them and she headed back inside her home with a chuckle.   When I stepped back inside, it was only a brief moment before she was knocking at my door.  Barbara was laughing and calling my name. She said," Carolyn, I remember what they are called now, Forget Me Nots !" and we both ended our day with a huge belly laugh.  

Barbara reminds me that it will not be the political structures, sweeping changes, or influential people that will help us rebuild and transform the meaning of community for us to thrive, but it will be you and me standing at the door of a neighbor offering the seeds of our humanity that will change the landscape for all of us. Dearest Barbara, I will forget you not. 

I Am

A few years ago I had the opportunity to take a  year off from my job. Both my partner and I arranged to take the same year as a deferred salary leave.  After the four years of the program, we had the fifth year off, and as the time approached we were full of anticipation for our new adventure.  When I started to share, that in a few months, I would be taking a year off, some people started to ask what I was going to do.  My response of, I don't know yet, didn't sit well with some and when they also realized I would be doing this with my partner, I could sense their genuine concern.  I think a lot had thought I would have a plan to travel or at least a plan of some sort! Many said that they could never take a year off as they would be bored and needed to be busy. Others asked if I was discontent with my job or if I was having health concerns.  I could feel their anxiety about my stepping out of the normalcy realm and there were days that I started to feel it too.  Deep down I was still elated with the possibility of what the year would mean for me and my partner.  I guess my genuine answer of I don't know, really meant  I was going to take this one day at a time. It seemed like such a luxury to not have to know and to have the time to not do anything if I chose to.  Maybe it was my role as a caregiver or that my partner and I had already job shared for close to a decade in the past, that really gave me the insight to know that the wealth of time could never be wasted when you were giving it to yourself.  Edith Egar goes as far as to say that love is a four-letter word spelled, T I M E. So I was really loving myself enough to receive the gift of time. What I didn't realize, is that this year would be a practice of letting go of a lot of the external identity and roles that I had been identifying with when it came to my career and the doing and helping that goes along with that. I was going to have to adapt to or discover who I was without the titles I had given myself, and the service I was to others.

Mantra is a word that I have used a lot in the last decade because of my yoga and mindfulness practice.  In yoga,  the mantra is used to focus the mind for meditation but by definition, the mantra is a statement or slogan that is repeated frequently. One type of mantra used frequently is an I am statement.  I was aware that not all of my mantras were positive and that many would be part of the letting go process of that year.  If I was not saying I am a teacher, I am busy, I am helping, I am needed for XYZ,  I would need to find new mantras for my life not just for this year but for the future as well. Changing roles is a constant in our lives with growing children, evolving relationships, and changing and ending careers. I knew I didn't want to be resistant to any phase of my life.  I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to experience this when I did and I recognize my privilege in being able to do so. 

I have been thinking about what an important part of our lives this breaking down, letting go of, breaking out of roles and identifying with who we are in a different way, is for all of us .  This isn't for just those big external changes but even for the mantras or I am statements we hang on tightly to that are not always good for us or who we really are.   Some of these identities that present as our internal dialogue, are not just limiting but can be harmful to us.   We have them in a loop on repeat in our minds and they are how we identify with our relationships, our bodies, our mistakes, and ultimately our value as a person. These internal roles we give ourselves are the ones that truly matter so we need to be sure they are serving us.  We are not our careers, our possessions, or our output.  Allowing ourselves to think of who we are without all of these things is necessary.  I know for me, that the fear was and is at times, that I won't be worthy, loveable, or belong without all of these external roles and then these become my negative mantras.  What recognizing your mantras can do, is allow you to create ones that remind you of who you are at your core. I like to think of it as creating a hook for your mind on something good. I created a painting a year ago with I am statements covering it.  These were to remind me of who or what I am that really matters. I jokingly referred to it as my wanted poster if anyone was looking for me or what I would want my legacy to be if I had any control over that.  These statements continually change now as I do and some of my more recent ones would be, I am enjoying the empty spaces, I am the person my younger self would be proud of and I am at ease where ever I find myself.  Writing these does not mean you will believe them now or all the time, but finding and repeating words that resonate with you on the inside, not your roles, can help to know that beyond your meat suit, your accomplishments and careers, you are, you are, you are, just as I am, I am, I am, and remembering that before all else we are love.

My Greatest Teachers

I am not sure you could exist in the world right now and not feel the heaviness of circumstance for yourself, your loved ones, or the human collective.  There is no denying that the world is a dumpster fire right now,  as Luvvie  Ajayi Jones, refers to it, and at the same time the most amazing, awe-inspiring mix of love and humanity. It is the exact dichotomy of the human experience at this moment for me and maybe you see it that way as well.  

I have been feeling the heavier "dumpster fire" side of things more strongly in recent days and continuing with mindful practices has been the only way for me to navigate through.  I have also been recalling who and what my greatest teachers have been and looking for any wisdom they could offer to this current reality.

I was thinking of a book I read many years ago called, "All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum. I can remember being touched by the simplified list of things we teach children and how you could apply them to your adult life. Years later, when I began to spend the majority of my time with children in my career, it became more clear to me that we are not the ones imparting wisdom to children and teaching them how to navigate the world, but that they are the ones teaching us if we are open to learning.  The list of childhood rules in this book, however heartwarming,  was really a  specific recipe of contrived adult wisdom, and the real teachers were the kindergarteners themselves. 

I have had the privilege of learning from children most of my adult life and right now, they are the exact source that I believe we all need to look to for wisdom in the current circumstances.   Research shows us that explicit memories can form from age two on but that the majority of people's first memories begin at age seven.   This supports my theory of children as our teachers because it means that, before this age, they haven't developed a cognitive self.  This is to say that they don't have a sense of separateness, they are not identifying with beliefs about their abilities, values, or even their physical characteristics. This leaves them open to a full human experience uninhibited by others and the purest form of wisdom and truth that exists.

Over the years, the children in my life have humbled, challenged, inspired, and helped me to grow. It is like having a mirror held to my face and my actions in every moment that says just maybe there is another way of seeing or doing this.  

When we have children of our own we often think that our role as a parent is also to teach, advise, protect and shape our children into adults but what ends up happening is that they are the ones who do this for us.  So here is what I have been thinking the children of the world can teach us right now. 

1. Be here in the present moment. No one does this better than a young child. 

2. Be resilient. Recover as quickly as a child does from difficulties.

3.  Love through challenges. It has always been amazing and heartbreaking how much love a child has for their families when going through the toughest circumstances.

 4. Question. No one asks "Why" more than young children to learn and understand.

5.  Be vulnerable. Who knows better than a child how to say it like it is for them.

6. Have a good cry, because children know it just feels good to release it all.

7.  Forget and move on quickly. What was a big deal ten minutes ago, may have been fixed with a hug or snack.

8. Play and move your body.  Kids instinctively know that this releases just about everything including stuck emotions.

9.  See the wonder around you. It is always there and if you can't see it, get a child to show you.

10. It's all shiny and brand new if we choose to see it that way. This is found in a child's enthusiasm for life.

11.  Look out for your friends.  No one does this more honestly and authentically than a child.

12. Stay open. Remember when your heart was as big as a child's.

 13. Be flexible. Children adapt better than anyone.

14.   Try,  fail,  try again. Have you ever witnessed a young child unwilling to try?

15.  Trust. Children often have no control over their circumstances or their adults but they continue to trust them.

16.  Be willing to look for new ways of seeing and doing things. A young child doesn't have the box we put ourselves and others in.

If you are open to following the wisdom they are offering us you will keep room for joy throughout these times because it is still there. After all, they are still here, the children, our wisest teachers. 

The Precise Thing

I think I was nine or ten before I realized that writing could be for any other reason than printing spelling words in your campfire notebook. In grade four, I had an innovative teacher for the era and she actually introduced her students to poetry. We read poems and learned specific poetic forms. My first poem was a Haiku that I wrote and illustrated for my mom as a gift.  At this moment I understood the power of words to express myself and I was hooked. 

My next experience with any consistent written form was after reading my favorite childhood novel, Harriet the Spy by  Louise Fitzhugh.  I am sure I am not alone in transforming the campfire notebook into a written collection of clues, as Harriet did, to understand the mystery of the people around me. Then again maybe I am.

From then on writing was always a part of my human experience, expressing myself through written words in journals, letters, and poetry. All of which aided me in escaping an overactive mind.  In my late teens, during the times of what I will describe as Taylor Swift ( Oh how I wish her songs were around back then) and more currently Olivia Rodrigo, style breakups, I filled entire books of heartbreak poetry and coming of age understandings and ramblings. 

Over the next years of marriage, career, and babies, writing was only a few minutes before sleep, jotting down things I was grateful for in my day or a  quick journal entry of special memories I was too afraid to forget.

Being a public school teacher, I was always expressing my creativity and exercising my voice in a multitude of ways, and in the last decade adding writing meditations and yoga practices to the list of my written expression.  In more recent years, I  used writing to help explain, my then seventeen-year-old daughter's, neurodiversity to her through a fairytale.  I wanted her to see herself represented in a story and to show her experience in a positive light.  

Writing has been my voice in problem resolution, in the expression of creativity, and as a keeper of beautiful memories. 

All of this has led me to this moment and the creation of this blog. Not as the next right thing but as Glennon Doyle says, "the precise thing directed to me." I care a whole lot less about semantics, grammar, and others' opinions and I know that my voice, as does yours in whatever way you choose to express yourself, needs to be added to the many dialogues of the world.  As Barbara Kingsolver wrote, "A writer without readers is just a person alone in a room".  That is not to say that you need to write for anyone other than you but others want to hear your unique story and it is as important as the food you eat and the air you breathe to express yourself.  Your people need to experience the fullest version of you that exists from experiences, expression, and art form as a writer, painter, cook, knitter, poet, or however, your story arrives. I am excited to continue to write for an audience of one or maybe more and I am hoping that you will think about reconnecting to an old passion, or as in this case, continue a current one with more tenacity or even begin a new one. To all the stories yet to be written and to raising your own unique voice.

 

Curating our World in Real-Time

One follow on Instagram and the potentiality of a word to make sense of so much for me and maybe for you, led to this post.

With extra time over the holidays, I have been in the habit of checking in on social media a time or two more than I should, and this time, I was surprised to see a friend in real-time had followed me and there was the option to follow them back. This may be a daily occurrence for some but with only a little over a hundred followers and myself following almost seven hundred accounts, this was not the case for me. I realized that most of those following me are accounts I had followed because of content or services of interest to me, whether it was poetry, meditation, yoga, or a product  I could get behind. Even though the people behind these accounts are not my friends, I feel a connection to them and what they represent so I graciously hit the heart button, make comments, and copy meaningful posts to share with my few followers and Facebook friends. 

 Recently I participated in an online offering from an account on Instagram and the woman behind this very influential account, with thousands of followers, referred to herself as being a curator.  By definition, a curator is a keeper or custodian of a collection. A curator needs to be able to recognize whether something is of value or sufficiently important to bring to the collection and whether the object is genuine.  We usually only hear of a curator in terms of a museum or gallery but in this case, she was referring to all of the resources she was bringing to her work from Instagram accounts; of poets, books she had perused, activists she interviewed for her podcasts and the list goes on.  The reason I share this is it made so much sense to me for her but also for what we are all doing on social media.  When we hit that like button, make a comment, or share, we are essentially up-leveling the person behind the account. We have sifted through to find what fits with our collection of worthiness and we are validating their content and ultimately them, as genuine. Our accounts are a conscious or unconscious collection of what or who we value and are representative of where we place our attention on social media and off. 

Now that I realize I too am assuming the role of curator, by holding space to support, the words,  causes, and services of those I follow, I thought about how I could be a curator for myself as well. I have decided to press the metaphorical heart/like button when I follow my own heart whisperings, when I  notice my thoughts but select which ones are genuine and deserving of being followed, and when I continue to make decisions that ensure my well being and care.  I won't stop supporting in the virtual world either but I am thinking that curating for friends, family, and colleagues is more important than ever. What if we bring those likes in the form of encouragement and praise to all efforts witnessed to become more of themselves, to be authentic, vulnerable, and creative? Let's sift through the outer armor to find the real gems buried within ourselves and others because if one thing is for sure, everyone in our lives deserves to have us show up as curators in our relationships.

 Some of you may not even see  how valuable you are in this curating role. You are ensuring care for aging parents,  spouses, children of all ages,  family members with disabilities or mental health challenges, communities, and roles as stewards of the earth.  These are just a few of those needing your heart likes, comments of encouragement, and stepping out courageously to let everyone know we love what they do, who they are, who they are becoming, and how much we believe in their genuine worth.  

All of it

This post started from a conversation that I had with my partner at the beginning of 2021. After being consumed with COVID in a large part of 2020,  I was thinking how I was going to make sense of it in my personal journey and move on into a new year. I was under the naive  assumption that it was not coming with me into another year. This was very reminiscent of how I had started many other new years in the past.  I had been part of every new year beginning being sold to us and engaged with vision boards, setting goals and intentions, feeling like a new year meant transforming myself and my life.  It all felt like work for me and a bit too much like a process of not measuring up to a standard that wasn't mine. I had moved away from taking  on  seeing myself as not enough. Now I was looking more at transforming circumstances for my perfectly imperfect self and stepping away from all of the influence that seemed to be about selling me something that made me not trust who I already was.  So new years day arrived and I very casually  asked my partner what he was taking with him from 2020 and his response was, "All of it".  He explained that although it may sound cliche, the whole year   had so many learning curves and his take away  was really to stay present and open for all of it. 

 His perspective was  not  a popular one in  the culture I had already been disillusioned by that  sells the idea of a new year being a time of letting go,  and starting fresh,  as if somehow, WE are navigating the proverbial ship into a perfect utopia. This is not to say that you shouldn't let go of the things weighing you down whenever they may be, or that you can't bring new intentions into your life but this is a practice we do daily and we won't walk into a new year without heavy things or  with a blank slate. A new year gives us an opportunity to remember  that each day comes to us with new challenges and offers us opportunities to show up for ourselves and others.  We are invited to support one another knowing that  sometimes we will  bring the rock and other times , the feather. 

What if this year, we  decide to take not only ourselves as we are but all of what the year brought to us?  What if we learn from all of it ?  What if we stay  present with the humanity  we  have witnessed , the transformations in the world we  have seen, the reality of the  lack of control evident in our outer circumstances? What if we embrace the beauty of the real connections in our lives and the authenticity that comes from the not knowing and not having all the answers , admitting it and knowing that it is perfectly ok? What if we think of the whole experience of a new year as being given another opportunity to remember who we already are, what we already have in abundance in our lives, to remember  the experiences that have shaped us this year, the people who have shown up for us and to remember how proud we are of ourselves that we keep showing up in all the ways for our self, others and the world. Here's to taking all of us and "all of it" into another year of remembering.