The Grace of Change

Kindness First

I remember the first time anyone suggested that I could be kind to myself, no matter what.

Say what?

I was slumped over in my therapist's office decades ago, too depressed to have brushed my hair that morning. It was an abysmal nadir: physically and emotionally worn out, ill with a serious chronic illness that was sapping my soul, grieving multiple deep losses.

I was a mess.

Honoring Your Own Sabbath

I've been experimenting, and I love what I'm discovering.

Remember the Sabbath? Growing up that meant Sunday School (boring), lunch at my grandmother's (a little less boring), and then sitting around all afternoon (how boring can you get?). Sabbath meant, well, arrgghhhhhhhhhh.........

Fast forward almost a half-century (can that really be so?). Take one boomer woman, frazzled from decades of doing, doing, doing... Marry her off to a guy who actually loves  taking naps (me, I'm an abject failure at it-I actually bought a CD that promised me ultimate 20 minute naps, but I fidgeted my way through it several times and donated it to Goodwill).

Have her realize, one Sunday afternoon when husband is napping and she's washing windows, that she's spent an ungodly amount of her life worshipping at the altar of her to-do list. Even gardening and meditating had become about Getting Stuff Done; plant the bamboo, check. Morning meditation finished, check. Unremitting busyness cramped my spirit and made me cranky.

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:

The Pace of Grace

"No, we can do it ourselves. Why would we need a guide? Let's just hike in and get to the beach."

So I said to The Wonderful Husband and Equally Wonderful Daughter in Costa Rica, the night before our jungle hike through Manuel Antonio National Park to a deserted beach. 

Fortunately for me - and them - I got overruled.

The next morning Miguel, our guide, led us through the jungle. It certainly helped my overruled self that he was so cute. When I whispered this to Elise, I got an exasperated hissed "MOM!" and an eyeroll ... ICK: how can mothers even THINK about cute guys?

Don't Ask the Horse

You know, I thought I was doing fine handling all the stress of the last several months.

Then I had this phone conversation with my friend Alana. In her best girlfriend way (really, how would we ever make it without girlfriends?), she gently suggested that I was a TEENY bit stuck in whining mode.

She told me one of her favorite stories:

Down the road comes this horse, galloping very fast. It appears that the woman on the horse is going somewhere Really Important.

Another woman, standing alongside the road, shouts, “Where are you going?” The first woman, hanging on for dear life, shouts back, “I don’t know! Aaaask the horse!”

Whoa, I thought, in the silence after Alana finished the story. My horse is galloping 90 miles an hour. That horse — my anxieties, my stress, my grief for the world — is definitely in charge, and not exactly taking me home. And making me very cranky and frenetic in the process.

I thanked Alana for the story, and went and sat.

Just sat. Golden Indian summer sunlight filtered down through the Japanese maples in our garden. Kabobble the cat came and curled up on the top of the sofa next to me.

It was quiet, quiet, quiet. I started to quiet down. I realized I’d given the reins over to that horse. And I was the only one who could take them back. Or better yet, dismount.

I decided to take the next weekend, Friday through Sunday, as my own private spa/meditation retreat.

At home. Simple and easy.

I ran the details by The Husband — I’d only do those things that I’d do if I were staying at a retreat cottage somewhere, i.e., washing my own dishes — and let go of everything else. I’d have friendly, minimal contact with David, who could generally pretend I wasn’t there. David gave me a whole-hearted thumbs up (thank you, sweetheart!).

Thursday I went to Whole Foods and picked out three days of delicious deli food. I restocked my Pleasure Basket (What? You say you don’t have a Pleasure Basket by your bed? If not, read about it below this article). I pulled my car into the driveway and said goodbye to it until Monday.

And started my retreat.

Sisters, it was wayyy beyond heavenly. My intention was to reconnect with my own desires and internal rhythms. For three full days, I only did what I felt like, when I felt like it. I meditated. I slept. I read. I ate delicious, nourishing food (that includes chocolate). I did yoga, and plenty of nothing.

During a windstorm on Saturday I walked the wooded trail by my house that winds down to a Puget Sound beach. I stopped for a moment on the trail to look up, and saw hundreds of winged maple seed pods twirling down in the stiff wind. It was like the delight of looking up when it’s snowing, the sweet dizziness of watching flakes emerging from the great empty sky. Only this time, it was spinning samaras (that’s what David tells me they’re called), hundreds of them winging through space and time.

At that moment I knew I had dismounted. That galloping horse, bless its frenetic heart, had left me behind.

I strolled on to the beach and stood with the waves and wind for almost two hours, just being. A seal played in the waves, watching me. I watched back.

I got it that my just-right life, right now, would include a 3-day spa/meditation home retreat once a month, every month. I didn’t think I had the audacity to commit (who me? deserve that?), but I tucked it away as a possibility.

Watching the gulls ride the wind, I thought about how this play of designing a just-right life after 50 takes courage, a taste for improvising, and a sweet bucketload of curiosity. We’re making this up as we go along, sisters.

There’s no blueprint in this poor beleaguered world for living a life of love and pleasure, a life that makes our post-50 toes curl in delight. Ain’t nobody gonna give us permission to create such a life, so we might as well do it ourselves.

And with that I told the seal: Heck. Why the hell not. I am gonna do one 3-day home retreat a month, for as long as my body and soul call for it.

I think the seal smiled.

The next day, snuggled under my comforter on the couch, I read a great line in Life Is A Verb (highly recommended): “The American Revolution was not financed with matching grants from the Crown.”

Woo-hoo! We don’t have to wait for an Official Sanction to live our best, just-right lives. So why not start, right now, this very moment?

* * *

Here it is, Monday morning, and I’m back. And with a lot more to offer other folks in this challenging time, from a place of sweet gratefulness.

The horse, the galloping-fast-to-nowhere-horse, still isn’t here. God knows where she’s gone.

She’ll return, given the present insanity of the world. But when I do get back on that horse (and I’m about 100% sure I will), I know how to dismount once again.

Hey — if you see me careening by, hanging on for dear life, please don’t ask the horse where I’m going.