The Grace of Change

No Shit, No Flowers

The Wonderful Husband received an generous gift from a landscape design client several months ago: 6 bags of aged, weed-free steer manure. Wow.

A gift, you ask?

Well, yes, in the right context ;-)

Several weeks ago David and I were happily putzing in the garden. One thing led to another, and in two shakes of a mockingbird’s tail (as Mama used to say) we were digging in the front and creating a real garden there for the first time. We transplanted hellebores, violets, and maples from the back garden and, along with still-potted plants David had collected over the years, created a lush new landscape.

What a gorgeous garden we created! As I’m writing this, I’m looking out on a lushness of blossoms: crimson rhodies and azaleas, creamy dogwoods, chartreuse hellebores, purple labrador violets.

We mixed said manure in all the new beds. I’ve never used bagged manure in a garden, and I was surprised to see and smell how, er, recognizable it was.

As I was digging, I remembered a client many years ago in Big Change. Elaine was a gardener, too, and we played with metaphors from nature to help ground her grief and deepen her trust in the cycles of death and rebirth in nature and in life.

One week Elaine came in all smiles, a miracle given the depth of her losses. “Melissa,” she grinned, “I’ve found the key!”

What Doesn't Change, In Change

This is one of my favorite poems to read aloud toward the end of a retreat on big life transitions...

...mmm, I love the hushed and fertile quiet of a group of women listening deeply, with the ears of their hearts, to a good poem.

In a big transition, so much of what we "knew" about the world — our assumptions and beliefs about ourselves, about life, about relationships and others — goes away, never to return again. Given this, it is life-giving to reflect on what doesn't change, that thread you follow no matter what:

THE WAY IT IS

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford

So what is your thread that you don't let go of, despite changes and how hard it might be for others to see? How does it keep you from getting completely lost?

Your Big Yes

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This aliveness is what’s most important to me, and what I most wish — from the very core of my being — for us all.

I don’t know about you, but I regress to toddlerhood when my life falls apart. Those times when the cherished whatever that defines me and gives my life meaning — healthy body, interesting work, kids at home, relationship with someone I love — falls away, usually wrested from my fist tightly wrapped around said cherished whatever.

Noooooooooooo, I say to life/God: no, you can’t have this, it’s MINE. Nooooooooooo, this CAN’T be my life. My life, my good life, my best life, HAS to have (fill in the blank: health, wealth, primary partnership, your own cherished whatever).

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh lordy. This primal NO sucks the juice right out of me. It obliterates both the “wild” and the “precious” from my wild and precious life.

Enter the Big Yes: the no-holds-barred Yes to your own life, with or without your cherished whatevers.

Your Big Yes doesn’t depend on your health, your bank account, or your age.

Big Questions to play with

I just remembered this handout from years ago. I used to give this to participants in transitions retreats I used to lead. I'd hand this out and ask the women to breathe into all of these questions for a few minutes and notice which question most spoke to them. We'd then go around a circle and each woman would ask her favorite question into the Mystery living at the center of our circle, and the center of our lives.

One of the gifts of life transtions is that we get to be like adolescents again.

(Yeah, I know that doesn't feel like much of a gift ;-) ). Remember those all night dishes in high school and college where you talked with your girlfriends about The Meaning of Life? Being in big transition invites us to ask questions of ourselves and our lives we haven't had the time and inclination to ask in a loooong time.

In transition, it's NOT about knowing the answers to the questions.

We can't. The answers will come in their own time. What's important is to simply be with the questions in a soft and curious way.

Writing agin...

Ahum...hmmmhmmmhmmm...ack ack...

What you're hearing is the sound of my writing voice coming back to life. Lots of frogs in my writing throat.

As readers of my now-defunct newsletter know, I stopped writing 18 months ago. I couldn't stand the sound of my own voice any more. All I was writing about was stuff I already knew. I was starting to bore myself silly.

Life's too short for that. So I quit writing. I had just plumb run out of things to say.

No More Secondhand Life

OK, I admit it: I'm a recovering self-help junkie.

My drug of choice was books that told me how to become happier, healthier, thinner, sexier (though I never actually did the programs). I felt comforted to know that if I just worked hard enough, I could make myself over into a loveable, wonderful me.

That changed at around 50. I just got plumb tuckered out from trying so hard to make my inside (and my outside) match up to the expert of the moment's Prescription for a Happy Life. What started engaging me a whole lot more than being the ultimate with-it woman was learning how to nurture and celebrate me. Kinky, marvelously imperfect me.

I remembered the story told by Rabbi Zusya many hundreds of years ago to his students. He said something like, "You know, in the world to come, God's not gonna ask me 'Why were you not Moses?' or 'Why were you not Abraham?' No way. What God's gonna ask me is 'Why were you not Zusya?'"

What a question! What if we ask our sweet selves the same question, not in the hereafter, but now?

OK, I admit it: I'm a recovering self-help junkie.

My drug of choice was books that told me how to become happier, healthier, thinner, sexier (though I never actually did the programs). I felt comforted to know that if I just worked hard enough, I could make myself over into a loveable, wonderful me.

That changed at around 50. I just got plumb tuckered out from trying so hard to make my inside (and my outside) match up to the expert of the moment's Prescription for a Happy Life. What started engaging me a whole lot more than being the ultimate with-it woman was learning how to nurture and celebrate me. Kinky, marvelously imperfect me.

I remembered the story told by Rabbi Zusya many hundreds of years ago to his students. He said something like, "You know, in the world to come, God's not gonna ask me 'Why were you not Moses?' or 'Why were you not Abraham?' No way. What God's gonna ask me is 'Why were you not Zusya?'"

What a question! What if we ask our sweet selves the same question, not in the hereafter, but now?

Meet My Lulu

Sisters, I want to introduce you to one of the original members of our sisterhood. She's been in hiding, but she's coming out now.

I was meeting last week with my spiritual mentor Alexandra. I'm feeling this tiny but growing call to be a sensual, playful wisewoman. (Please don't ask me what this means, though, because I don't have a clue. Yet.) It's like the very beginning of pregnancy, before you've felt the first movement. You know life's in there, but you're taking it on faith.

So here I was telling this wonderful spirited Hungarian nun about how there's so much about crossing the big Five-Oh that's been fabulous: this new confidence, freedom, and creativity. I've never felt so happy, so contented (an entirely new experience for me until 50), so divinely hootless about what others think of me.

BUT

Invitations, Not Resolutions

 I'm trying something new and luscious this year, sisters, and I invite you to play with me.

Here's the deal: I've had it with resolutions (as in New Year's). I'm all for plans and intentions in the right place and time, but with the world so crazy, and so much falling apart around us, I want to find the most pleasureable way to bring more grace and ease into my life.

And resolutions just don't light me up any more. Kinda been there, done that. Trying to resolve myself into flourishing just doesn't work for me, sisters. So here's how I discovered something better:

Thought Weeding

There I was on my couch reading the Moon Guide to Costa Rica. Kabobble the cat curled up in my lap. Late afternoon sun streaming through the big maple outside. Rich smells of Phad Tai being cooked for dinner by David the Wonderful Husband. And Yours Truly dreaming about swimming in tropical waterfall pools in Monteverde...

All of a sudden I was drowning in a choppy ocean of anxiety instead of floating in a forest pool. Kabobble sensed my tension, looked up at me in alarm, and leapt off my lap in search of more tranquil pastures.

Heilige Scheisse! What happened, Batman?

The Pleasure of Your Company

Gals, I’m gonna let you in on a dark n’dirty, non-PC (and that’s “Psychologically Correct” as well as “Politically Correct”) secret...

I started the art class I told y’all I’d do in November. But I couldn’t have done it without...are you ready for this?

The Husband.

Yowza! How unliberated! How codependent! I should be able to go for it on my own, Tiwanda, unleashed in all her mighty glory upon the world, right?