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One, two, three, one, two, three…. My fellow workshop participants counted off in preparation for our first small group exercise. As the counting reached me, Michael, our workshop leader interrupted: “No, you’re not included.”

I felt as though a rug had been pulled out from beneath my feet. I struggled to control my emotions, my face betraying a mixture of confusion, disbelief, and disappointment, mingled with a vague sense of betrayal.

During planning for the workshop (ironically, the theme was “loss”), my fellow co-organizers had repeated assured me that I could be a full participant throughout the workshop itself. While small group exercises were normally done in triads, their experience had been that an occasional group of four was formed if the overall group size was not divisible by three. However, on that particular morning, Michael appeared unwilling to make an accommodation.

As the triads began their work together, I attempted to regain my equilibrium. I began a stresswell™ spin of the wheel while I tapped into my usual repertoire of stress management skills. I stopped to breathe and shift into coherence. I acknowledged my feelings and released them. I examined my beliefs and judgments about the incident.

Although one of the groups had invited me in as an observer, I found myself continually distracted by feelings of loss and abandonment. I felt fidgety and unable to sit still in a spirit of presence within the small group. Eventually, I was pulled away from the exercise by an administrative task, and decided it would be too disruptive for me to return.

I left the room for a few moments to wash my face and provide some distance from the workshop itself. As the exercise ended, lunch arrived and I realized how hungry I felt.

Conversation during lunch was also awkward. My fellow organizers shared my puzzlement and empathized with my sadness. Yet, I was also aware of wanting to maintain a positive atmosphere for the rest of the participants-even though I still was unsure of my own status for the remainder of the workshop.

A gnawing sadness continued throughout lunch. Tears lingered just beneath the surface and threatened to erupt without notice. I was puzzled by how important it seemed to be for me to actually participate in the workshop.

Finally, lunch was finished, and the group came back together. I learned that Michael had decided to let me participate in the rest of the workshop exercises. That afternoon, we would be take turns telling a story about a loss in our own lives.

I paused for a moment to invite a felt sense of which story might want to be told that afternoon. Ah, along came my sophomore homeroom and English teacher, a nun whose name I could no longer remember. What I did recall, however, was that “Sr. Mary NoName” and I had become fast friends that fall. She was perhaps no more than ten years my senior. I had found myself enjoying our conversations immensely and looked forward to the times we spent together.

Then, one day, she had stopped me as I was leaving homeroom and told me that we could no longer spend time together outside of class. She had offered no explanation as I sensed a door in my heart slam shut. From that day forward, I was invisible to her and I felt shunned.

That afternoon, however, as I told the story to my “listener” within our group of four, I began to see threads linking that long ago experience with the intense feelings that had haunted me just a few hours before. I began to recognize that those threads were linked as well to other losses throughout my life that had included themes of exclusion and abandonment and which had never quite lost their emotional sting.

As part of the workshop exercise, we also had the opportunity to address our listener with whatever words we would wish to say directly to the person we had been telling the story about, as well as offer a blessing to that person. I found myself speaking both to myself as the devastated 15 year old girl and to my beloved teacher, acknowledging the pain she must have felt as well (because I felt sure that the forced separation had not been her choice).

As I spoke, I felt as though I were laying down a heavy burden, that I had carried for so long. And throughout the rest of the workshop, I could feel the healing continue.

Of course, old habits sometimes are reluctant to slip away quite so easily. As a result, in the days following the workshop, I’ve noticed occasional twinges of old, familiar, well-rehearsed feelings of abandonment. Yet, as quickly as the twinges appear, they now disappear with the recognition that the initial hurt has been healed and that I no longer need the protective shield.

Lessons learned? First, that any experience can affect us deeply within all dimensions of our being. Second, that a lingering response to a stressful incident might have deep taproots to an earlier experience that yearns for a transformational healing process. Third, that a “spin of the wheel” may become a three-dimensional spiral of growth and healing that transcends time and space.
Image Credits (unless otherwise noted, all on Flickr (cc) Some Rights Reserved) :
1. Not Like the Others… by greenapplegrenade
2. Wellness Wheel ©2002 by John W Travis and HealthWorld Online (used with permission)
3. parla con me by la bella polenesiana

A Love Letter from Alex (printable/pdf version)

Some days it really pays to sort through old files.  This afternoon, I found a stack of love letters and cards from my late husband.

He wrote an especially beautiful letter at a point during our courtship when I was going through a really rough patch at work.  I thought you might find his words as comforting-and inspirational–as I did.   Both then, and now:

I send you my affection and love to be with you….keep us close together during the trying times….calling on our total energies to help you through….but also call on our combined energies and love when it is time to celebrate at the high times of each day – there should be at least 8 celebrations each day….

1. When you awake…to another day, the purr of a cat, to the sneeze of [the dog], to the song of birds or to the first ray of sunlight.
2. Sipping a cup of tea, munching on a crust of toast, peanut butter or crunching a dry cereal for breakfast.
3. Taking a walk in the out-of-doors regardless of snow, rain, sleet, sun, or cottonwood seeds gliding down to earth, smelling the scents of earth, water, cut grass, sweat of a horse, after shave lotion, fresh dab of perfume or baby oil.
4. Greetings from friends, acquaintances, students, strangers, passer-bys, your own image reflected in a mirror or storefront window.  Surprize….being alive to all which surrounds you each moment in each day.
5. Listening and hearing the sounds of your own voice…talking, yelling, singing, laughing, whispering.
6. Touching…oh so many objects, people, animals, buildings, your car, a flower, a caterpillar, the wine in your goblet, the lips of your lover….your own body….with pride, delight and passion.
7. To be emotional….full range and depth…no limit…full limit…restrained and then abounding…internal and external-Yeah!  Take it in…Give and let it out….Human and Full of Life.
8. To sleep and rest after a fantasy called life which has been experienced….throughout each day.

That my Mary Is what you do!  Each and Every day of your creative and beautiful life.  Celebrate the existence of yourself with each and every living creature-

I too will celebrate life with you….each day and each moment of that day-

I enjoy spending these seconds with you.

*****

Image Credits:

Love Letters by Patricia Lazar on Flickr (cc) Some Rights Reserved

Some days bring us costly lessons. Some lessons simply cost us money.

Today’s lesson came in the form of my monthly telephone bill. As I briefly scanned the bill, I felt (and then heard) the sudden gasp escape from my throat: the amount due was TRIPLE its usual cost!

As I looked further, I discovered that the additional charges stemmed from a business call I had placed last month to the Bahamas. My colleague and I had experienced several delays in making scheduled appointments–due in part to interruptions in her internet-based telephone service, plus we had dismissed her cell phone option as too cost-prohibitive. So, when she gave me a new land-line number to use, I didn’t even think twice. I made the call and we had a productive 60-minute conversation. What I didn’t know at the time was that the call was being billed at my phone company’s “primetime overseas rate.”

Yikes! But also, DUH! I’m so spoiled with my unlimited long distance service plan that I didn’t stop to think that it only covers the US. Plus her phone number “looks” like a regular US number (that is, it doesn’t have any international code prefix to the number).

Once upon a time, I probably would have reacted with anger, frustration and tears, punctuated with feelings of blame and self-loathing for having made such a “stupid” and costly mistake. I might have then railed against the telephone company for what I believed to be exorbitant rates, and/or harbored a lingering, unspoken sense of bitterness toward my colleague for not having “protected” me from my ignorance.

Instead, this morning, I chose to take a deep breath and quietly pay the bill. And, without shame or blame, acknowledged my simple (albeit costly) error in judgment, that was based merely on my not knowing that which I didn’t already know. And then pondered some lessons to be learned from my experience–to help me and others not make a similar mistake in the future.

There are days in life in which we learn costly lessons. And some days in which our lessons simply cost us money.

Learning how to avoid the first type altogether while also minimizing the second is perhaps one of our most important lessons in life.

(note: image from Patrick Q on Flickr)

The lyrics from the old standard, I Won’t Dance have been stuck in my head the past several days.

I won’t dance, don’t ask me. I won’t dance…with you. My heart won’t let my feet do things that they should do.

This past weekend, I received a couple of requests for charitable donations:

• An organic food retailer whose business I try to support was under “house arrest” as part of a non-profit organization’s annual fundraising drive, and so was soliciting “bail” funds to earn her release from jail.
• A dear friend sent an email inviting me to join a walk for another non-profit organization that serves individuals who have the specific disease her son has.

Especially in these hard economic times, it’s difficult to say no to someone in need. As a matter of fact, when I heard that a family I know (with 3 children), who lost all of their belongings when the apartment complex they lived in was destroyed by a (3am!) fire last week, I couldn’t get my checkbook and email notifications going fast enough.

And it’s really not so much about the money or even about turning down an opportunity for a lovely walk with people whose company I would no doubt enjoy.

So what’s the difference–and why does my heart stop me from participating in one instance and not another?

I’m like an ocean wave that’s bumped on the shore, I feel so absolutely stumped on the floor.

Over the past several years, I have come to the decision to stop contributing money or participating in fund-raising activities to disease-oriented organizations. It’s not that I don’t care about the individuals who are affected by any of these specific diseases. It’s more about the fact that we live in a culture that tends to identify and label individuals more by their disease (or other “shortcomings). So much so that we often lose sight of the wondrous being that they are (and continue to be) in spite of their personal challenges.

Ring-a-ding-ding, you’re lovely.

Over the years, my focus has shifted elsewhere. For me, disease is but a “context”, a sub-text in a person’s life. Instead, I try to focus my life and my work on what can be lovely (even if it means looking underneath and around what’s not obviously so).

So now, when someone asks, here’s what I am able to offer (with a light heart and gracious step): a gift certificate for a Basic “Barebones” Stresswell™ Appraisal plus a complimentary coaching session.

You know what? You’re lovely….you’re so lovely….and that’s why I won’t dance.

(note: image from liltree on Flickr)