healing

A Blessing for Beauty – John O’Donohue

This week, I’ll invite you to let the words of another bless you. A poem from John O’Donohue.

May the beauty of your life become more visible to you, that you may glimpse your wild divinity.

May the wonders of the earth call you forth from all your small, secret prisons and set your feet free in the pastures of possibilities.

May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.

May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease.

May the angel of memory surprise you in bleak times with new gifts from the harvest of your vanished days.

May you allow no dark hand to quench the candle of hope in your heart.

May you discover a new generosity towards yourself, and encourage yourself to engage your life as a great adventure.

May the outside voices of fear and despair find no echo in you.

May you always trust the urgency and wisdom of your own spirit.

May the shelter and nourishment of all the good you have done, the love you have shown, the suffering you have carried, awaken around you to bless your life a thousand times.

And when love finds the path to your door may you open like the earth to the dawn, and trust your every hidden color towards its nourishment of light.

May you find enough stillness and silence to savor the kiss of God on your soul and delight in the eternity that shaped you, that holds you and calls you.

And may you know that despite confusion, anxiety and emptiness, your name is written in Heaven.

And may you come to see your life as a quiet sacrament of service, which awakens around you a rhythm where doubt gives way to the grace of wonder, where what is awkward and strained can find elegance, and where crippled hope can find wings, and torment enter at last unto the grace of serenity.

May Divine Beauty bless you.

John O’Donohue, from Beauty – The Invisible Embrace

A Desire For Certain Things to Happen

Heading towards the park for my afternoon loop, I let my shoes clack against the warming pavement. As I approached the parking lot I have to cross before reaching the trail, I noticed a black SUV with all the windows down. The back of the large car was full of life being lived – piles of clothes, pots and pans, and belongings were stuffed to the top of the roof. It was clear the owner was in a rough patch, or choosing to live out of their car for whatever reason. And on top of all of the things was a throw pillow with the word “Hope” scrawled across the top. Underneath, the definition: desire for a certain thing to happen.

Curious, I thought to myself, as I wandered from asphalt to gravel, letting my arms soak in a tiny bit of early summer sun.

As I walked, I noticed the green grass, and the thistles, poking their arms through the green with bursts of purple blossom. I’ve always loved thistles – they shouldn’t be beautiful. Their exterior exudes protection and leave-me-alone energy. Yet, for just a few weeks, they invite you in with color and beauty, perhaps suggesting, it’s not all that bad, if you’re observant enough to notice.

A family member is getting surgery this week and I’m nervous. Any time someone I love is at risk, I can feel my heart quake. And I’ve learned the poky energy doesn’t always keep me safe – it just keeps others out. As I watch horrific headlines pour in, and see neighbors needing help, I’m reminded that we need to say aloud – I am scared. We are scared. Help me remember that even thistles bloom. And that hope exists atop the remnants, where the broken belongings are still stacked. We are sacred.

Gratitude oozes from the same place where our bodies need repair – hips or hearts or hands. May we open them and be curious, inviting hope to grace our open fingers. Beautiful things.

I Contain

I’ve been paying attention to how frequently the notifications on my phone go off. I’m addicted to the dopamine hits and I know I’m not alone in this. We’re trained to be responsive, and my phone and its algorithms keep me going in a Pavlov’s dog-type way of being – always curious, lurking, waiting for the next notification to roll in. I’m guilty of checking in at stop lights and being distracted while my toddler pulls on my legs asking to be lifted up. And this week, after very full days with many meetings, and many other forces metaphorically asking to be cared for while I was also distracted, I wonder, who is training who?

The world asks us to move at an incredible pace. And the speed is making me grumpy, feeling like I’m less than, and that if I could type just a little bit faster on my phone then all of my dreams could come true. I made a shift at work recently, attempting to go down in hours. The demands stayed. I haven’t been very successful with my boundaries. The hours still fill. And I’m still split in the disappointing of family, my employer, or myself. Again, this juggling is not a unique problem, but I ask myself, who is leading whom?

This week, we partnered with a client on a one-day workshop to build team trust and improve how they work together. Part of the work requires participants to share their backstories. We sat together in a worn room, with posters teenagers created on the walls. Their hand done drawings of wildflowers drew me in as I listened to tender stories of pain, resilience, coping, and recovery. Gut wrenching examples of what being human calls us to go through. And then, we put the lid back on, and went about our agenda. I think the exercise was successful, revealing new truths about each of the team members in the room. And I find myself wondering, do the humans lead the work, or do the organizations dictate, leaving all the pieces we are often told to keep to ourselves in the dark?

There was one drawing in particular, done in colored pencil shades of yellow and white, of a coned daisy at the end of the season. The petals dipped down, angled away from a source of light. As I sat and listened, I thought, we all contain multitudes. Flowers do too. I tend to think in black and white, in binaries, and make choices on either a or b. And kind coaches remind me, usually, some third option exists. Perhaps this is where the yellow pencil comes in.

I contain multitudes. And perhaps these big questions I’m asking in this season of life will also reveal multiple options. Not just A or B, but some combo in between. And if you can help me put my phone down and choose to exercise instead, maybe i’ll have another epiphany while I let the emails roll in unnoticed. Big questions. Unclear answers. Beautiful things.

An Anniversary – 10 Things Seeking Beauty Has Taught Me

This little blog turns ten this year. Thanks to the archive, I know I wrote 47 posts that first year in 2014. In 2022, after welcoming a new baby, I only wrote twelve. Life, and its demands, have changed a bit. I did write slightly more in 2023, but certainly not at the weekly rate, and I’m not sure what 2024 will have in store. I worry about sharing my free ideas with ChatGPT, and how artists and writers are compromised with the advance of AI. I weigh sleep over exercise, and sending emails over creating new content. Regardless, in this ten year journey, the continued practice of seeking the beautiful as the world continues to grow more connected and more tumultuous has brought a multitude of gifts.

For this first post of 2024, I’m sharing ten things the pursuit of beautiful things has taught me in the last ten years.

  1. The world, perhaps, has always been a little bit messed up. Still, there is joy. Pay attention.
    R.E.M once quipped “It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine.) Since the beginning of time the sky has been falling, things are shifting, and changing. And yes, in the last ten years things have felt bleaker, heavier, and perhaps more important than the previous ten. And I believe, you see what you look for. Turn off the news. Bring cookies to a neighbor. You, too, can create joy. What do you need to do to feel fine?
  2. Hope takes practice.
    Our brains are programmed to seek out the negative. It keeps us safe. I’ve learned, however, in a world that constantly feels dangerous, finding beautiful things keeps me feeling hopeful and optimistic. Hope, for me, is a practice of choosing the good, over and over again. Beauty expands when we seek it repetitively.
  3. Most people are in some type of pain. Expressing it helps.
    Our culture sucks at finding words for difficult experiences. Each of us are suffering in some way and we’re told to keep that pain to ourselves or in quiet rooms where professionals help you problem solve. I’ve found so much community and belonging with people who are able to hold both beauty and pain, side by side, as we work towards healing. I’m not alone.
  4. Awe is an underrated experience.
    How much of life we take for granted. When I really stop to think about all the things that do go right on any given day, I’m filled with awe. Yesterday, I watched my daughter chase bubbles across a winter lawn. Her grasping for tiny purple orbs while squealing with delight brought me back to a grounded place. A tiny human chasing soap. Amazing.
  5. We need each other.
    Americans like to believe we are independent. Grief, Covid, and motherhood have taught me that while our experiences are unique, there are common threads to the human experience that can connect us if we let it. We need each other. We need soup and phone calls and texts and connection. We need reminders that when things are heavy, others can shoulder the weight of both our worlds and the big ol’ world. And when things feel light, we need to invite others to dance with us in the rays of goodness. Beauty expands when it is shared.
  6. Not everyone will grow with you. That’s ok.
    In the last ten years, I changed jobs and I said a lot of good-byes. Co-workers moved on, friends moved, and some family members stopped responding to texts. I made short-term connections and cried when people I thought would stick around didn’t. Not everyone is growing in the same way you are, and that’s ok. This truth doesn’t detract from the beauty individuals bring in different chapters along the way.
  7. Chin Up, dear.
    In times of transition, stress, and distress, it’s easy to get tunnel vision and forget what else is going on that is positive. When I’m feeling bleak, I remind myself to cup my own face and say, “Chin up, dear.” The slight tilt up brings a different perspective at the reminder that while my situation may be less than ideal, somewhere across the way someone else is experiencing great joy. Coffee is being brewed, friends are hugging at airports, babies are being born.
  8. The practice is worthy
    Yes, I have dreams of turning this project into a book, and it would be nice to be discovered. Perhaps all artists want to be found. But, I’ve learned that weekly writing, or as it has devolved to less, is still worthy of existing. I don’t need an agent or a book deal or a long newsletter list for the work to matter. Even if the posts bring in only 54 cents a month. To know the posts meet at least one each week still bring the work worth. The dedication to the project and how it has transformed me is worth enough.
  9. Beauty is often quiet.
    There’s a lot of noise out there. Returning to the beautiful often takes the deliberate choice to turn down the noise and to tune into what you know to be true. Witnessing may require calm. Beauty doesn’t demand attention and it doesn’t yell. It’s in the silence that we may be moved to tears.
  10. Now, more than ever.
    People are so scared. People are so beautiful. Now, more than ever, I believe we can use the pursuit of beautiful things to connect us with compassion and grace. Humans have capacity for both darkness and light. And I believe, when we train ourselves to look for the beautiful, we can change ourselves and in turn, trickle out to change the world.

Here’s to the continued search and however many posts come next.

Melancholy Or ….

On Halloween, I found myself awash in the mixture of my life. As I walked our little downtown’s streets, holding hands with a baby Elmo, I missed my dad with a well-worn, familiar ache. And I looked up to blue skies, and noticed an older gentleman sitting on a bench, holding up a Jack Russel Terrier to his face for a kiss. Golden leaves were falling, and with their descent came another landing truth – we have stepped into grief season.

November is here and with it comes a mixed melancholy of anticipatory grief and chosen celebration. While there are no safe months in grief, I think the reminders and triggers are easier to manage in the window from the day after Father’s Day to, well, maybe today.

We’re talking about smoked turkeys, and who will sit at what table, and how to juggle parties and planned celebrations. And in the busyness that tempts us to brush our feelings under the rug by the fire, are reminders of who won’t be there, gifts that won’t be given, memories of holidays gone-by. I suppose that’s the gift of getting older, the remembering mixed with the space for creating new things.

New neighbors to share soup with while juggling toddlers in costume. New freedom in ordering out rather than filling the counter with boxes of butter and bags of mini marshmallows. New high-chairs at the table and writing gift lists with entries including play food and puzzles. Old leaves fall, and we watch them release, letting them land to be crunched. And, still, there are old men smiling, and dogs waiting for kisses, and a toddler’s laughter takes up more space than we knew to allow.

And in the missing, I’ll add an apron of his to my outfit. Maybe I’ll pour his scotch as we take out boxes of food already prepared in our familiar kitchen, where he once stood bickering with my grandmother about which way was the right way to put a turkey in the oven. I’ll also be kind to myself when I realize, with new waves of small devastation, that they never set foot in my new kitchen.

Grief season is here and with it the choice to pick melancholy or create something new. A beautiful thing.

And …

“What’s with the ampersands?” I asked our client as she sat across from us at a high-top table. After a successful client engagement, this leader told me about her small earrings in the shape of an “And” symbol.

She shared about how in leadership, particularly in public service, we have to live in AND spaces. Choices we make help some AND may harm others. We want communities to thrive AND we don’t have infinite resources to do so. We plan for the future AND respond to the present. She said the symbol has become her mantra, a constant reminder that we often live in the gray.

I’ve been thinking about AND spaces for myself lately. The suffering AND the beauty. Straddling a fence of understanding business needs AND wanting, deep within, to change our environments so humans can be seen and heard. When sharing this frustration with my boss today, he shared, “Maybe we can get off the fence, and find somewhere else to sit instead.”

This week a friend lost a baby. I watched and I prayed with hope and can’t begin to understand why something like that happens. We watched horrible headlines and numb ourselves from the suffering across the world.

AND

I stuffed my kiddo into a puffy pink snowsuit as she ate snow for the first time. Snowflakes fell, flirting with orange pumpkins, and we make plans for costumes, and candy and community gatherings.

We suffer AND we celebrate. We plan AND we respond.

To move beyond survival, and towards thriving, I’m embracing the AND. Both are true.

And this week, the AND space is a beautiful thing.

PS. If you’re wondering how to explore your own AND space, let’s have a conversation. For a limited time I’m offering two coaching sessions for $75 as I work towards my ICF coaching certification. These spots will fill quickly.

43 Months Ago

March 2020 was 43 months ago. We’re all impacted by the countless events that have happened since, and the fear of a virus rooted deep in me. The tendrils started with rumors of China, and I vividly remember the security agent trying to ask me if I’d traveled there when I was trying to get into Cuba. I didn’t understand her English, nor really, the impact of the question.

For 43 months, I avoided the virus, until this week, when I tested positive. I took three tests, just to be sure. When I called my mom to tell her, I started crying. I’m in quarantine, and I’m going to be fine. Sniffles and body aches are the result of vaccines and perhaps blind luck. I don’t know, trying to make since of why things unfold the way they do doesn’t really give me much to go on. My tears were out of fear for others, my baby, my mother, my husband. But too, for the 46 months worth of fear that layered inside of me in the shape of headlines, and collective loss, and a culture that makes sickness our own individual problems to be mended in literal isolation.

I hesitated to write about my experience because most of you, most of us, have already experienced this virus intimately. You’ve had the bug once or twice, or perhaps would rather forget about the terror when we watched Italy shut down, hospitals filled up, schools closed, people died. We all want to move on. But these markers of trauma linger, and in my facing a 43-month old fear, I had to weep.

It’s tempting to switch to platitudes, to the cliche phrases we use when life keeps happening. And a transition to hope or beauty feels weak here, like the wobbly little legs running around my house. With all of this found time, I’m discovering the old way of being in the world isn’t as satisfactory as it once was. Pre-baby, and during the years from 2020-2022, every week brought the choice to read all day, to binge watch some tv, to paint my nails without disruption, to write every week. And then, along came a baby and everything changed.

As the world moved forward, I turned inwards, moving to care taking, and with the pivot, came an elevated pace of tending to the needs of others. I haven’t read a book in months. But, on this bedspread in the upper corner of my house, I’m finishing novels. I’m painting my nails. I’m binge watching hours of television. While I isolate, I hear little steps and giggles, and a man I loved turned into a father attempting bedtime solo. I hear a toddler falling off beds and shouts of hooray and watch the lights turn on and off as days turn into nights. Friends are dropping soup on the stoop and texts come in and my husband I talked on the phone last night, like we did when we were dating. Perhaps the prior years taught me how to be alone. And these recent months, taught me I don’t have to be.

While reading a book all day will continue to be missed, mostly I just want to hug my little one. The old years are gone, and new ones unfold.

To hear little noises of family life, receive help, and let fears release, especially while in quarantine, are beautiful things.

Marks and All

I started listening to a playlist on Spotify titled “Piano for Healing.” In the quiet moments, the melodies bring a bit of peace in the middle of a busy day. And allowing healing energy into my space is welcome as part of a routine.

Healing feels elusive at times – like you can’t quite wrap your arms around it’s finished point. This week baby got a bug bite right between her eyes. The bite swelled, causing her eyes to puff up and I tried calmly to reach out to a doctor – allowing only small moments of panic in this new venture of parenthood. She needed Benadryl, nothing serious, and within a few days, the swelling was gone, leaving only a tiny scab for her to pick at with her raggedy finger nails.

We got out the nail buffer and she seems to go about her days. And still, I think her once perfect baby skin has been disrupted by a mosquito or four. Our entrees into imperfection start young – our chances for suffering and the required healing abound. We move forward – marks remain.

This month I’ve been given the gift of Enneagram coaching with a colleague of mine who is getting certified in the tool. My primary style is a 6 – a loyal skeptic – personalities prone to preventative thinking, emotion, and planning ahead. The word skeptic brought up so many emotions for me – and I asked, in my session, is the root of our primary style a result of nature or nurture, or perhaps the soul work we are here to do on earth? In other words, my little childlike self was concerned, did I come out this way, a bit afraid of the world, or did the situations that life gave me make me a little more hesitant to fully step in the ring? I felt shame for being one who lives with doubt.

My colleague didn’t have an answer, and I’ve been wondering how in service of my own healing, I can use this skepticism to my benefit, rather than a paranoid weakness. In my report, they also said the opposite of doubt is moving towards faith – that skeptics like me can balance our internal anxiety with the turning over of our control. God grant me the serenity …

And in my healing, I unwrap my own fingers, tightly bound, and move them to my heart. My skin is tarnished too, marked with moles my baby likes to point out and pick at as she falls asleep in my arms. Healing is life work. Faith, a pursuit of beautiful things.

So for this week, in honoring my own healing, I raise up the beauty in Benadryl, in self-nurturing and the questions ones ask deep within. Beauty in saying there’s nothing to be ashamed about. Skepticism, too, can be a superpower. Beauty in a baby mouthing ‘mole’ and acceptance that our beautiful bodies tell our stories, marks and all.

Roots and Wings

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When you live in a community for over twenty years, your roots go deep. Mine seep into the backyard porch, winding up the garden trellises and trickle into the kitchen of the house I grew up, past the old, rickety table my dad built into the garage and rest on white wicker bar stools.

When I stand at the island in the kitchen at my mother’s house, I always notice white. The worn white countertops contrast the bright blues and yellows she chose for the walls. Theses colors are the backdrop to my teenage years. The wicker chairs, leaning against the the back of the island, held my tennis bag in high school, and steadied me when my plans for private liberal arts school didn’t go as planned. They watched as my college boyfriend came and went on the weekends, stood present when I came upstairs and told my parents we were talking of getting engaged. They held me up the day Dad died, and sitting wasn’t an option.

I didn’t imagine still using the surface as part of my daily routine in my thirties. What was once filled with school forms, permission slips, a snack or two for me, now holds the Tupperware, rinsed bottles, and grubby pouches covered in the day’s leftover snack for my toddler.

On a summer evening last week, I stood again, at the island, and noticed the white. This time, the surface was covered in take-out boxes and a bag filled with stained baby clothes. We gathered to eat in the rush of a busy week, and I balanced the baby on my hip, trying to get my small family ready to go from Mom’s house back to ours – the drive now so familiar I could walk it in my sleep.

Baby is learning songs now, using her hands to sign “more” when the song we’ve selected isn’t what she had in mind. Playing DJ, she kept us guessing until we got to just the right song. Dylan paired our horrible accompaniment of our voices with Spotify and played “Here Comes the Sun” as we sang along.

Here comes the sun (Doo-d-doo-doo)
Here comes the sun
And I say, “It’s alright”

Baby clapped, her smile big enough to see the newly emerging front teeth she is sprouting. And in that moment, I leaned against the wicker stool once more, roots sinking deeper into the worn wood floors of my youth.

[Verse 1]
Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here

As we sang, both Dad’s presence and absence became magnified in the moment. Seven years is a long time for someone to be absent.

[Chorus]
Here comes the sun (Doo-d-doo-doo)
Here comes the sun
And I say, “It’s alright”

Perhaps he was blessing our post-dinner rush. It’s alright.

We’ve got roots, and they keep me coming back to the place where I grew. Now baby grows there, too.

[Verse 2]
Little darling, the smile’s returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here

We’re smiling. And there’s a new face at the countertop. She’s given us wings. I hope she’ll grow her roots here too. What a beautiful thing.

Meet Me There?
Photo Courtesy of Unsplash

There are scenes in movies at the end of a story arc, when the main character has conquered a challenge and they re-emerge in the world. Encouraging music plays. Resolution is found. 

On Friday, I drove over to the plaza near where I live, parked, and locked my car. If I was the heroine of a movie, the uplifting music would have started up. Perhaps “Walking on Sunshine?” 

The sun was shining on an October afternoon, a slight breeze warranted a sweater, but the rays warmed me as I squinted through sunglasses trying to find a friend. Someone was playing a piano nearby and a baby crawled near its mother. The tinkering sound of moving chairs and chatting people reminded me what being among people in-person actually can be like. Breathing in the fresh air, I was filled with gratitude to be in the light.

In many ways, it feels like I have survived the Covid era, and can now emerge. Perhaps, the tension of the last few years has come to a state of resolve. My baby is no longer a newborn. I’ve remembered how to make eye contact. I even got on a plane. Standing in the plaza that day, watching people swirl around me, I was touched by the goodness of ordinary life. I’ve missed being in the flow. 

At the end of the movie JoJo Rabbit, *spoiler alert*, the main character comes out of hiding and dances in the street. Walking down alleys towards a lunch date, I also felt like dancing. 

Many of you may have been dancing for quite some time. But for me, a sensitive person with an active, anxious mind, the last few years felt threatening. The thought of losing someone again, the fear of getting sick while pregnant, and the weight of passing on an illness to someone I don’t know who may be caring for others all felt like too much. I thought if I just stayed home, if we just followed the rules, nothing bad could happen. 

Life has reminded me, again, that self-preservation is not the key to a fulfilled life. People we love still die. Our friends still suffer. Being present with sorrow, in tune with our achings, will remain a choice. 

This denouement bump may be resolved, but my story still continues. It is time to remove the heavy shoes made of pandemic fears, anchoring me to a recent past filled with fear. Instead, I’ll take up my dancing shoes, and head to the square. Whether we’re weeping or laughing, swaying in sadness or spinning in joy, I can choose to be in the flow. Meet me there, where we can be together? What a beautiful thing.