I Do Not Want To Be A Lie

As much as I would like to be the kind of person who hears lines of poetry narrating their day-to-day life… I am not. I like poetry, I do.  I even write a rhyming poem for my Christmas card every year (although I hardly think that counts as “serious” poetry). As much as the self-proclaimed “serious” writer in me crumples in shame, I must admit that there is a lot of poetry that I simply do not understand.

I heard a saying once that goes something like this: a failed poet is a short story writer, and a failed short story writer is a novelist. In other words, the sentiments and potentiality for beauty and Truth in the art form of the written word is most distilled, potent, and most difficult to achieve in its most succinct form… a poem. Poetry is difficult to do well because it requires a mastery of language, imagery, and a penetrating sense of the world. It is why the great poets are pure genius. Perhaps this is also the reason I do not understand most of it?

But there are some poems, that when I run across them, feel like I’m looking at someone else’s heart on a page. And although it’s someone else’s heart, they have shown me mine as well. It’s the same with a song. Whenever I am moved to tears by music, inevitably, I will think of an off-handed line spoken by Vince Vaughn’s character in Ron Howard’s comedy The Dilemma. I’ve seen that movie only once. I can’t even tell you the plot, but I have never forgotten the simple truth in this line. Vaughn, in a spurt of nervous banter says,

“People say music is the highest art form. It can go the furthest, the fastest, emotionally.”

What is great music but poetry with an accompaniment? Now I’m just musing on art form. Let’s reign this in. Everyone has recognized good art in their life. A moment of pure emotion brought on my the words, sights, sounds of another human being’s creative powers. Poetry, it all its precision and depth, is thought by many, to be at the top of these creative endeavors.

In middle school I memorized Edgar Allen Poe’s, The Raven, on my own and not as an assignment.  I was enamored by Poe and his dark, brooding rhythms. I loved the way that new word “Nevermore, Nevermore” came after me line after line in increasing terror just like the caw of that raven. After hearing Maya Angelou recite On The Pulse of Morning at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, I sought out a copy and kept it folded in a blue treasure box under lock and key. I don’t know why really, much of it flew right over my head, but I knew it was something beautiful that deserved to be kept somewhere safe. There are certain poems that speak to me in that way. I will not say that I understand them all, but they are beautiful and feel like tiny miracles. I ran across one such poem by Ranier Marie Rilke just this week:

RilkeI can’t make every minute holy.
I don’t want to stand before you
like a thing, shrewd, secretive.
I want my own will, and I want
simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action.
And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times,
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know
secret things or else alone.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to be folded anywhere,
because where I am folded,
there I am a lie.

~Ranier Marie Rilke

This is what I felt inside as I took up a pen and started to write:

I can’t live every moment fully aware. I can’t take the high road in every conversation. I can’t be holy, benevolent, pious, contented and non-reactive in each minute of every day no matter how hard I try. I want to. I want patience to rival Gandhi and compassion to make Mother Theresa proud, but I just can’t. I can not. At least not now. But I don’t want to be ashamed of myself either for not possessing those things. I don’t want hang my head low and beat myself up because I am not perfect and happy and well-behaved in every minute of everyday. I do not. I want to know what I want from this life, and I want to seek out those experiences and the highest Truths with all I have and all that I am. At times when those Truths draws near, when I am pious and benevolent and can quiet my mind long enough to feel the pulse of my life and the holiness in my breath, I want to be  surrounded by wisdom, by goodness and Love. If I cannot have that, I want to be alone. I want to be open. I never want to shut a piece of myself off because it is in the dark places where fear lives. I know that much. And I know that when I am afraid, I am a lie.

I’ve certainly heard of Rilke. When I hear a poem that strikes me as certain and wise, often times, it is Rumi or Rilke who wrote it. I looked around for more on Rilke and found this gem from one of his most famous works, Letters to a Young Poet written in 1908:

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~Ranier Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

And that right there is what this blog seems to be about. Letting go and living in Love and Truth because anything else would be a lie.

The Truth About Constipation and Life

This is about the awful, no-good, terrible night I tried to tell my three-year-old daughter the truth about constipation and life.

It was an impromptu playdate after gymnastics. The kind borne out of three stay-at-home Moms who were facing down the prospect of a typical Monday afternoon of chores like cleaning, laundry and lunch making. It was bathroom cleaning day at my house and sitting around watching my kids play while having a little adult conversation sounded much better than scrubbing toilets. So I quickly eschewed my responsibilities and got on the SUV train toward the mall. There are certain expectations for impromptu playdates and one of them is that it’s completely reasonable to feed your child whatever is immediately available. In this case, it was McDonald’s, Annie’s Pretzel’s and/or Frozen Yogurt because if “yogurt” is in the title, it’s totally acceptable whenever.

We went to Annie’s pretzels. Extra side of unrefrigerated, electric-orange cheese please! When we got home, the tummy rumbles began.

My daughter’s preschool teacher who sees her two days a week for three hours knows her elimination schedule. Her punctuality in the potty department often seems like a miracle to me considering her diet consists of 95% dairy products, but alas, this week was different. After a few days of mild complaints about tummy aches and the lack of productivity, I could sense that today was going to be the day we’d both feel better.

Soon after we got home, I turned my attention toward the procrastinated chores, and turned up the repetitive Momtra every time she said her tummy hurt. “Honey, you need to drink more water, here,” I said while handing her a sippy cup of said water and holding a scrub brush. Without fail, each time I handed her the cup she took the teensiest sip possible and put it aside. The complaints picked up in frequency and urgency. Fed up because, let’s face it, these toilets weren’t scrubbing themselves, I decided to give her some chocolate milk. I knew she’d drink that down in two gulps and I really wanted the Great Poop Drama of 2013 to be over.

Now, I know that dairy is not good for constipation, but so is a bone-dry digestive system. I reasoned that the injection of liquid would outweigh any effects of calcium… and sugar is a diuretic right? Oh how I would come to regret that decision. Fast forward to those magical hours just before bedtime.

“But Mom, every time I push it hurts!”  I explained to her that she had to push through the pain and when she finally poops, it would feel all better. She replied through tears, “Don’t say that Mommy!” Now I’m sitting on the newly cleaned bathroom floor for the 32nd time she has said she has to poop, and for the 32nd time, nothing is happening. Bedtime has come and gone. I’m hand-feeding her grapes, apples and sips of water coaxing her to push harder while she cries in between lower abdominal cramps.

“What honey? I’m just telling you the truth. It’s going to hurt for a second and then it will be over.” Not only advice on constipation, I thought, but on life itself because I never like to miss a “teaching moment.” I consider my most important job to be the bestowing of truth and wisdom onto my three-year-old, particularly in moments of high stress. I’m thoughtful like that.

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Through sobs she says, “Tell me a nicer truth, Mommy!”

I was just about to tell her how many times I’ve cried wanting the very same thing from life, but in the end, after years of experience and hard-earned wisdom under the elastic waistband of these yoga pants, I could share with her the cold, hard truth. The harshest truth. That sometimes life gets constipated and you have to push through the pain until you come out the other side. Only when you’ve done the hard work and endured the pain, will things get better. I wasn’t going to lie to protect her from this simple fact. It was going to hurt for a second, then it would be over.

Two hours, 45 false alarms, 17 grapes, 1/2 an apple, countless sips of water and one warm bath later… she taught me something, too. That just when you think you’ve pushed through the hardest, most painful part… there’s another pile of crap waiting for you and will usually be the result of doing what you want to do, instead of what you need to do.

Imagine, if you will, or don’t because it’s quite grose, the aftermath of a cork finally coming loose on a shaken bottle of champagne and you will have experienced a fraction of what I witnessed with a front row seat. As I sat there with a horrified grimace, all I could think about was the painful irony of the situation. Because of my decision to procrastinate toilet cleaning and because I just didn’t want to make yet ANOTHER peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I fed her unrefrigerated, electric-orange cheese that was now spraying all over the toilet I just cleaned hours before when we finally got home from our playdate all while shewing her away with chocolate milk.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll discuss the importance of hard work and responsibility? Because I’m thoughtful like that.

Parenting. It’s not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach and there is no nicer truth than that. Then again, perhaps we should all relax… and just let it go.

How Do You Choose to Leave Your Children?

209I met him on our last day in Nicaragua in a coffee shop. As I chased down my 17-month-old I heard him say he was the owner of something having to do with yoga. It inspired me to strike up a conversation and when I did, I got a lot more than I imagined. It was a loud and crowded place. He patted the seat next to him for me to join them. He was an endearing man; open and honest right from the jump. Within 30 minutes of meeting him he told me that his wife had left. She’d gone back to the states to pursue a degree in nursing. He said she “hadn’t done anything for herself” and that motherhood hadn’t turned out to be “fulfilling” so she left to “get an education.” She was the yoga instructor at his yoga retreat that is now “restructuring.”

He had a two-year-old girl sitting on his lap with a white-blond, tangled mess of spiral curls. A seven-year-old, brown-eyed boy across the table and a barely dressed five-year-old with the same hair as her sister sitting to his right. Each of them had that perfect, enviable, golden tanned skin with glints of blond hair shining on top. By the end of the conversation he offered us a ride home in his extended cab pickup truck. We all squashed in; him, me, his three kids, my two and my husband. You can get away with things like that in Nicaragua because seat belts are optional as are car seats.

Speaking of seat belts, I had a major revelation regarding them during our 14 day stay in Nicaragua. Did you know that they are not actually for safety? Sure, they provide some sense of security, but the biggest argument for the mandate of seat belts is to keep children who possess endless energy and a lack of social boundaries, contained to a manageable state while operating motor vehicles. If I could bottle up the euphoria I feel the moment both of my children are securely fastened into their five-point harnesses, I would get an hour of QVC primetime and be an instant bizzillionaire.

As a result of this lack in restraint, the 15 minute drive to our place was absolute chaos. The seven-year-old was sitting in between the two front seats which happened to be exactly where the two-year-old wanted to be. She wailed the entire time in unintelligible shrieks as the seven-year-old purposefully blocked her every attempt to see out the window. The father, distracted by driving on roads with no traffic signs and no official traffic rules while having a conversation with my husband amidst five unconfined tornadoes, could not discern the true nature of this deafening conflict. In the relatively short (and by that I mean excrutiatingly endless) drive from the coffee shop to our condo, this endearing, honest father congratulated his son for sitting quietly no less than three times and told the two-year-old that he couldn’t “hear her” because she was screaming. He then launched some loosely veiled threat regarding the loss of “points.”

At one point in the drive the seven-year-old boy looked back at me and I said, “You know what you’re doing. Will you please let your sister see out the window?” He glared and said with a heavy speech impediment, “I don’t whisten to you. I whisten to my Mom and my Dad onwey.”

I tried not to judge. I try very hard to be Ms. Nonjudgy McNojudgerson which is exactly why we agreed to have a “playdate” later that day at their pool.

Little Girl In NicaraguaOn the ride to their place the seven-year-old and the five-year-old sat in the back of the truck because, well, it’s a Third World country and no one bats an eye at such things. This provided a lot more sanity for the people in the cab except for me who kept looking behind my shoulder to make sure they were holding on every time we approached a bump, which, let’s face it, was pretty much the whole time. First, we went into town for ice cream. There were lots of unabashed screaming over how much and how soon everyone would get their ice cream. Essentially, more chaos coupled with mass stickiness and tears. Then we got back in the truck and went to their pool another 15 minutes away which was more chaos combined with the potentiality for drowning.

The moment we got to the pool I asked the seven-year-old where I could find a restroom. He led me to it, then stood in the doorway and snickered at me because I didn’t notice the urinals. He laughed saying, “Ha! Ha! I twicked you!” Over the course of the next hour the kids continued to fight over toys, flotation devices, rules and their father’s attention.

We went back up their house and the two oldest immediately got into a physical fight while I was the only adult in the room. The five-year-old wanted the seven-year-old to leave her bedroom. He wouldn’t leave and she kept yelling at him to do so. It was then that I noticed she had the same speech impediment as her brother. He grabbed her face and began squeezing her head with every ounce of his small, impotent fury. My three-year-old was next to me and I quickly stepped in breaking them up while yelling at them both to stop. When the father rushed in, the seven-year-old flat-out lied about what happened and I excused myself from the room not wanting to further over-step my bounds as a guest.  I heard him take away all their points.

Soon thereafter he banished them to their preferred electronic devices, the boy to the computer, the girl to the television. During the few moments of relative peace that followed, I noticed how hard he was trying. There was a sign above the kitchen table that read:

Rules: 1) We say please and thank you. 2) We talk in normal voices; no shouting. 3) We ask before getting food.

On a dry erase board in the hallway there were the rules to the “point system.” Each child started the day with three points. They needed all three points to be able to watch television or play on the computer.

Again, I tried with every ounce not to judge this situation or act as though I wanted to run out the door as soon as possible. I didn’t want to run because it was chaos. I have two rambunctious toddlers, a pair of geriatric cats, I work a part-time job while going back to school AND I’m in therapy. Chaos is nothing new here. But this chaos felt different. It was sad, angry, desperate chaos. There were huge disproportionate reactions toward minor infractions behind every unstructured, uncontained corner.

I kept looking for a picture of their mother but couldn’t find one. I was left to imagine her face by squinting at her children. I kept thinking about the father’s words about why she left. I certainly understand the need to fulfill your life’s goals. I certainly understand that motherhood is simultaneously much more, and less, than one could ever imagined it would be. I can certainly understand the day-to-day exhaustion and monotony of raising young children, but I also understand that the indescribably bond supersedes all those things. At least for me it does.

Either way, my heart broke for that father. He wanted so badly to do right by his kids and you could see how very much he loved them, but he was clearly in over his head. Heck, Mary Poppins would have been in over her head. My heart broke for those kids. They seemed to be lacking something essential, whether it be their mother or not, and the fact that they were so, so young. I know I’m probably projecting my own sense of “normal” onto this situation, and maybe this is why I can’t stop thinking about it? I feel compelled to understand the most foreign of human places which is partly why we were in Nicaragua.

Life has taught me to proceed with caution when tempted to condemn another person’s circumstances. When I do, I am usually smacked upside the head with how horribly imperfect and flawed I am and mercilessly reminded that I have no right to such condemnations. But each time I look at my children and imagine making the same choice, I can’t help but feel a tad bit judgmental of this mother who I cannot see even when I squint. I know when I feel this way, life is pushing me to reach further for the compassion. I realize that everyone has their reasons for making their life’s choices, and I also know that I only know a fraction of one side of this story. But I keep silently wondering: what was the final straw? What was it in her character or circumstance that made her make this impossible decision? And were the children like that because their mother left, or did the mother leave because her children were like that? Does that even matter?

It seems that no matter how much I try, I can’t understand how someone walks away from them by choice… regardless of how you feel or what you want?

Do you know the other half of this story?

The Beauty of Surrender

Today, I went to a second yoga session on my trip to Nicaragua. It will likely be my last here as we leave for home in a couple of days. It has been an illuminating, exciting and utterly exhausting trip. Caring for two toddlers is a lot of work in perfect conditions with all the tools in place like diaper pales, level sidewalks and regulatory high chairs with seat belts. All things for which I have a new appreciation. Doing all of the same day-to-day tasks here in the remote Third World without these luxuries has been a challenge for sure. A challenge that has stretched my coping abilities to their max.

I’ve yelled at my children more than I would like. I’ve been short with my husband for no reason. I have been too tired to enjoy some of the fun things because there’s just so much damn work to be done everyday. I’m not proud of it, but even on vacation surrounded by immense beauty I can be pissed off.

I needed yoga today to bring me back to myself. To remind me of the important things.

The wind was whipping my hair in the open-air studio. My dingy, borrowed mat flipped up on the edges from time to time. The pigeons congregated and cooed somewhere above me while the sounds of small-town Nicaragua swirled around me in cries, hollers, motors and horns. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” was part of the soundtrack to the practice and somewhere around “…with every breath we drew a hallelujah” I let it all go and I sank into the beautiful space of surrender.

Surrender is beautiful, isn’t it? When we fall on our knees and crumple from the strain of life? When we’re brave enough to admit that we don’t have it all together, that we struggle, that we need help, that even on vacation in paradise we can get pissed off? When we stretch out our arms or join our hands in prayer asking, often begging for love, for peace, for a moment of grace in a hectic world–it is nothing short of a beauty-filled miracle. It’s something that doesn’t come naturally to a controlling, anxiety-ridden, yeller… like me.

But it came. It came with the strength of a thousand wind storms.

I was in the zone, or in yoga speak, ”on my edge” in every pose. My leg went up in wheel. I held crow. I got closer to a head stand than ever before and I stretched farther and deeper than usual… I chatuaronga’d the shit out of that mat. The hour and a half felt like mere moments in time. I was in my breath. I was humbled yet confident; filled with a strong weakness that transformed me from one inhalation to the next. I have been in many yoga classes in the last 10 years but this one will stay with me forever. It shifted me–left an indelible impression on my soul.

The teacher said, “Every breath brings an opportunity for change.” Like a gong this struck a chord deep inside. She is right. With every breath, I can change. With every minute, I can be better– I can come back to myself and all I have to do is surrender… “with every breath a hallelujah.”

Let Go And Trust the Direction of the Wind

There are so many lessons to be learned when traveling to foreign countries, in particular, developing countries. I wrote last week about traveling for the first time as the mother of (and with) young children to Nicaragua. I am still here in Nicaragua as I type this and there is still profound perspective around every unbaby-proofed corner.

Nicaraguan Baby

The second lesson that is hitting me hard is this: Let go and go with the wind.

The wind here blows in all directions, sometimes all at once. We were evicted from the place we planned to stay for the duration of our trip partly because of a veracious wind storm that ripped out a couple of window screens. The main reason we were evicted, was because the owner didn’t understand (nor could he tolerate) children. Although for months he led us to believe otherwise. After my daughter wet the bed (which we’d later discover was because of a UTI) along with other realitively minor infractions considering the environment, like not shutting the windows properly to prevent his curtains from be whipped by the wind, he let us know that we were no longer welcome on the 4th day of our 14-day trip. We were understandably upset by this development as my husband spent months planning our trip and corresponding with the owner to insure the safety and proper environment for our young family. Without notice, at 7am one morning, we were suddenly without lodging in a third world country with two small children and lots of luggage.

We railed against the situation and the owner. We vented and called him names and I wrote a review for his place of business and then edited it a dozen times. We were mad for being blind-sided. We were mad because our much-anticipated vacation wasn’t turning out as we’d hoped.

Luckily, there was space available at an excellent resort community that had great amenities including air-conditioning. We didn’t choose this location from the start because on the top of our checklist of accommodations, we wanted a stunning view, immediate beach access and someone to cook most (if not all) of meals. Although this place has a great view, it did not offer the other two things. This ordeal stole an entire day of our vacation by having to relocate and spend time shopping for food and necessities. Not a fun day with two cranky, sweaty, napless toddlers.  To add to the situation, the Nicaraguan woman we hired to help with our children during days up and quit in the middle of our shopping trip because she had problems at home. At some point later this day, I said to my husband in a moment of frustration: “I’m not having fun anymore!”

It was true. I was exhausted. Things weren’t looking good in the near-term future. All I wanted to do was rest and take a break from all the work and worry. In spite this, I picked up my frustrated, disappointed, tired-ass and took my kids to the pool.

Within 10 minutes of being there, I met the owner of the only yoga studio in the small town of San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua. Within 20 minutes of meeting her, our vacation would turn around significantly. The next morning, I went to my first yoga practice in two weeks at her studio. While there, on my mat, I would hear this lesson with crushing clarity: Let go and trust the wind.

I have said before that yoga is my church. It is where I check-in with myself. It is where I become the best version of me, and it is where I hear God speak, most clearly. As I sat there on my mat waiting to begin, I started to focus on my breath and become present. It was an open-air studio on the second floor and the breeze blew lightly through.

Yoga NicaraguaI lifted my gaze to watch a butterfly struggling against a sheer, black screen. It struggled, fluttering it’s yellow and black wings over and over again into a barrier it could not see. Suddenly, a gust of wind blew it around the screen into the exact direction it wanted to go. In that instant, I knew what I came to Nicaragua to learn more profoundly.

When life isn’t working out the way you planned; when you get kicked out your accommodations (in part because of a wind storm) and then find yourself on the streets of a third world country with two cranky toddlers, four bags of luggage and nowhere to go; trust, and follow the wind. Stop struggling against the Universe, stop arguing with reality, stop putting energy where there are no solutions or peace or love; stop fighting the obstacles in your path. Go with wind and trust that God will be there waiting to lift you around the screens you cannot see, toward the place where the Yoga teacher is waiting; to a better, brighter space where you can fly where you want to go without struggle.

From that moment on, our vacation got better and better. Since we were not beholden to this snake-oil salesman and his place, we were free to move about, wherever.  Because of this, we are now settled into a beautiful place on the most pristine white sand beach in Nicaragua called Coco which is just 45 minutes outside of San Juan Del Sur . Last night, we watched the most dramatic, stunning, outrageous sunset of our lives. Afterward, my little family of four walked on a the soft sand beach laughing, watching tiny crabs scurry about while the horizon over the ocean blazed on in fiery red-orange. My 3-year-old threw her arms out wide and exclaimed, “Everything is so beautiful!”

She was so right. It was beyond beautiful. I wanted to capture it with my new camera but no digital photograph would contain what we were feeling, seeing and experiencing as a family. We were alone, on a remote corner of the world looking into the dying light of day, gazing up at a crisp sliver of a moon and a sky beginning to dust itself with bright, glittering stars. It is a moment my husband and I will never forget and would never have had, had we held on to our disappointments and let that be our guide instead of being, “…Like a feather on the breath of God.’

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Coco Beach Nicaragua

Playa El Coco, Nicaragua, January 2013

Kids in Nicaragua and Mother Eyes

When my husband first said let’s take the kids to Nicaragua, I worried. I saw pictures of the place he wanted to stay and the first thing I worried about was the pool. Next, were all the unbaby-proofed pitfalls waiting around every jagged corner. The worries continued. How well will they travel for that many hours? What about car seats? The kids are so picky; what are they going to eat? Are they going to be able to adapt to the heat, and oh my, what about sunburns, dysentary, bug bites and where is the nearest hospital? On and on it went. Everytime we told someone we were taking the kids to Nicaragua they wanted to know– is it safe?

I’ve been to third-world countries before but this is my first time as a mother of two small children. It might as well be my first time ever because I see the world anew with Mother Eyes.

We brought two car seats; one for my 17-month-old son, and a booster for my 3-year-old-daughter. I worried that the booster wouldn’t be safe enough because she’s 3lbs shy of the weight limit, but we decided it would be best for packing reasons. Speaking of packing, we brought two large suitcases, a large duffle bag to hold the pack-n-play, two back packs and a rolling carry-on. We would be gone for 14 days and we reasoned that we needed all this stuff for our family of four. We brought snacks, toys, electronics, three kinds of diapers (day, night, swim) and clothes upon clothes upon clothes. Between my daughter and I, we have 10 swimsuits.

The drive from the airport in Managua, to the place we’re staying, San Juan del Sur, took 2.5 hours. It was in a “fancy” car which was a early model jeep of some kind with “air conditioning” which was slightly cooler than the muggy 85 degrees outside. The regular seatbelts were rusted and you can forget about those safety latches in the seat crack for attaching car seats. I don’t even think they know those exist. I was sure we were going to get into a head-on collision multiple times on the long drive down a narrow two-lane road. We passed horse-drawn carts, tractors, busses with people hanging out the sides (including children) and tons of rusted out (but functioning) motorcycles and bicycles loaded down with two or three people, including babies.

Nissan truck nicaragua

I’m not sure I saw a single helmet. It makes me feel a little silly worrying about the 3lbs my daughter lacked to be “regulation” for her booster seat because this is how toddlers travel in Nicaragua.

Toddler Nicaragua

With these new Mother Eyes, I can’t stop seeing all the Nicaraguan children and their mothers.

little girl & mom nicaraguaI went to the unairconditioned grocery store were I watched two mothers chat in the narrow aisles. When I passed them with my loud and whiney kids in the wobbly cart, they got quiet and parted letting me pass between them. They smiled and stared a little as I walked by. I couldn’t seem to hold their gaze. I felt shy, spoiled, foreign in every way and I can’t even imagine what they were thinking of my excessive persperation, new blonde highlights and coral painted toenails.

As we walked up and down the balmy aisles of the grocery store we looked for things our kids might eat. As a rule we try to limit their sugar, not only because it’s not good for them, but because my son has an intolerance when he has too much. There wasn’t much we could find. We bought some basic corn flakes, crackers and condensed milk in unrefrigerated cartons, because everything from the orange juice to the jams and cereals were loaded with tons and tons of added sugar and hydrogenated oils. Those things are cheap and work well to preserve and sweeten foods that aren’t that good for you and made to sit on unairconditioned shelves. They do have plenty of tropical fruit here; pinneaple, bananas, watermellons; but vegetables are hard to find and more expensive. Whole wheat bread is non-existent.

toddler boy and mom nicaragua

The woman that comes to the house from 7am-3pm to clean and cook breakfast for us has four children of her own. When we sit down to eat she holds my son and entertains my daughter. She doesn’t speak English but we try to communicate. My husband types into Google translation: “Thank you for helping with our children. We tip well.” Gracias por su atención a nuestros hijos. Nos propina. She smiles and laughs. Before she cleans our rooms I look around at all our stuff and I am embarrassed. I can’t find anything because we brought so much and it’s now strewn from one corner to the next. On top of it all, my daughter only wants to wear the pink swimsuit with the skirt, and my son has slept in the pack-n-play twice because he prefers to sleep next to me. I can’t help but wonder what she thinks of it all while she cleans. Of us. Of me.

I am humbled here. I feel silly for worrying so much about my children and their picky appetites while the children here clearly have so much less. There is perspective around every unbaby-proofed corner. It breaks my heart but I am equally grateful. I’m grateful to see these things; to understand so profoundly exactly what I have in my life.

Because when I look around I don’t just see all that’s different or lacking. I see what is also the same. That these mothers work, shop, cook and clean for their children because they love them as much as I do, mine. They may not have a LeapPad2, non-toxic crayons made in Europe or even car seats, but there is no difference in how we feel or what they would do for their kids. We all want the best for them. We will all worry about them no matter what and we will do our best to provide what we can. Nic- me & kids on hammock

The irony in all this is; the kids are oblivious to our angst. Everywhere, in any language, country and climate, all kids want is to wear is the pink swimsuit, sleep by Mommy, and instead of playing with fancy electronics, throw the scrabble letters around because of the cool sound they make on the tile floors.

Nic- BB morning deck bananagrams

It’s the kids that know how to live this life. It’s the kids everywhere that should teach us how to live. They don’t feel shy or embarrassed or silly around anyone and they don’t need Google to translate anything.

048

Life Puzzles

life puzzlesWe have several wooden, peg puzzles for our children. I started purchasing them when our first child, our daughter, was barely a year old. We have letters, numbers, shapes, colors, animals… you get the picture. I thought it would be a wonderful way to teach my children the basics. My three-year-old has all but abandoned them having tired of the basic puzzles long ago but because of those puzzles, she now associates the letter K with Key, X with X-Ray and T with Daddy’s Tie.

My 16-month-old plays with them regularly. He isn’t proficient enough yet to put them all back together but we do it together, just like I did with his sister. At the end of the day they are inevitably scattered into a pile of mixed up pieces and upturned boards and each night I sit on my knees putting the A back in the Apple slot and matching the blue fish tale with the blue fish head. It’s a nightly chore, like any other. Sometimes pieces go missing for days and I am on the look out for them because if the puzzles don’t have all their pieces and aren’t reassembled, what’s the point of having them? At which point will my son learn how to match the number 5 puzzle piece with the 5 butterflies if the pieces are forever scattered and missing?

My husband, he doesn’t see the point in such nonsense. His answer is to brush all the pieces aside in a heap each night. Sometimes, when he steps on an errant pig peg piece, in a huff he suggests throwing them all away because they make such a mess. He doesn’t understand my logic and why I insist on putting them all back together each night. I can’t ever get him to help me put the puzzles back together, either. It is always my job. And I do it, usually, no matter how tired.

We’ve been together for over 11 years, married for 7 of them. We met when I was 23 and he was 24. Previous to meeting my husband I had a couple of “serious” relationships, but nothing that lasted more than a year. Mostly, it was tragic lineage of one mistake after another but on the bright side; by the time I met Brian, I was pretty sure I knew what I didn’t want and decently sure I knew what I did.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune when he came along. He was everything I’d been looking for and much more. I fell, we moved and then married. Eight years in to our relationship, and four years into our marriage, we had our first child. How could we have ever known what to expect? How does anyone?

Personally, becoming a mother rocked me to my core. I knew it would be hard. I knew it would be wonderful. I knew it would be one of the most important things I would ever do and I knew (logically) that it would “change everything” (or so people liked to advise), but how was I to really know what that meant? How does anyone?

How was I to know that I would become a different person from that girl 11 years ago who was pretty sure of what she didn’t want and only decently sure of what she did? How was I to know that having children would push me to the precipice of all my shortcomings and then throw me into the fire of change? How was I supposed to know that wooden puzzles, writing and women’s issues would become important pieces in my life’s puzzle? How was I supposed to know that in the process of shifting the lens of my life onto a child, it would create such a profound shift in me that I no longer recognized the piece of ground on which I stood?

When we first became a couple we fit together so well. We were two people with the same ideas about the same ideas and what differed, didn’t seem to matter. We wanted the same things about the same things and those were the most important things, so it seemed. But then, the two pieces multiplied and at the same time divided into four. Now the puzzle contains more pieces than available slots and some pieces are missing all-together. Right now, there’s a difference in opinion as to how it should all be put back together.

It’s hard enough to make you want to run away.

But the biggest piece of this puzzle we’re facing, is that no one is doing that. No one is giving up on trying to figure this out. No one is ready to shove all the pieces in a pile and move on. I do know that, and for that, I am grateful.

As for my half of this conundrum; I’m trying to focus on the fact that he knows all these wooden puzzles by heart because he has gotten down on his knees dozens of times to put them back together again with our children. I’m trying to become softer, to fit into places I’ve never been before and learn to mold myself to a new, better shape so that it might complement this new structure because I love this structure.

I won’t stop putting the puzzles back together anytime soon because that’s my job, but I’m also trying to respect the fact that he doesn’t feel the same way. My intuition tells me that all married couples traverse these crossroads at some point in their marriage. There is always a moment (or moments) when you look around at the pieces of your life and have to make hard changes and choices as two how their all going to fit together on the new ground on which you stand. Some puzzles are too hard and all require change.

Right now, we are both being forged by the fires of change and I won’t lie, it hurts. It hurts like hell. There is no definitive answers as to what shape we’re going to be in when we emerge from this crucible but because we’re here together, my hope is that we’ll find a way to fit together again. There are pieces coming together as I write this.

Right now, I’m trying to withstand the heat for the sake of all the things I care about most deeply. I’m trying to put aside the pain and focus on the hand that’s shaping me blow-by-blow because the only way to make something as strong as steel into something softer and more malleable… is with flames and pressure. It’s hard work becoming soft, but I’m trying like hell.

We’re trying like hell. And that’s got to be worth something… right?

I feel good about 2013. I’m hopeful, grateful, blessed and evolving… not giving up, but learning to give in.

Christmas Poem 2012

I am no Dr. Seuss, but my first writings began as rhyming poems. They were Halloween themed and used the words night, fright, delight and sight. I remember that specifically. I wrote so many rhyming poems in the fourth grade, my home-room teacher bought me a three-ring binder to hold them all. I wish I knew where that binder was today. That rhyming skill stuck with me, and now, I can spit out a semi-coherent, 16 stanza, rhythmic, rhyming poem in 30 minutes flat. I do this every Christmas and include it with our Christmas cards. Now that I have a blog, I can share this odd little talent with complete strangers. So, without further adieu:

Never are you reminded of life’s quickness in pace,

As when you see a new slender in your young child’s face.

Brooke has grown into a chatterbox and a thinker; like me.

Brady has proven he’s a mover and a do-er; like he.

Brooke looks a lot like her father- right down to her toes.

Brady resembles my side- in his hair and his nose.

Slow down little ones! You’re making my head spin!

Already, it’s no use, because time always wins.

The challenges this year, have time as their cause,

Not enough, too much, hurry up and press pause.

Therein lies the paradox of this life that we live,

Time moves in all ways, equal take and equal give.

Because the very best of this year was time once again,

Spent loving and cherishing the days that we’re in.

A long weekend in Leavenworth; a cabin in crisp snow,

Just the Lell’s playing Trivia, which I won! (you should know).

A week’s trip to Rainier in July with my folks,

Climbing mountains, watching elk, drinking wine, telling jokes.

Hosting the Keene’s at Thanksgiving; always a treat.

Catching up on our lives, letting our little ones meet.

If it’s not obvious by now, and somehow you don’t know,

Our life spins around these lil’ ones; ‘round and ‘round it all goes.

This rotation, it is precious, and precarious too,

We must be mindful of the moments, in the end, there are few.

If you really want to know the truth of this year?

What has all the sudden become so crystalline clear?

When I thought of having kids, I imagined the lessons I’d teach,

About love and grace, and the stars they would reach.

I thought I knew a whole lot about this thing and that,

That I’d learned the hard stuff; that I’d been there… and come back.

But never could I have fathomed the thing I would find,

That in loving these children… all the lessons would be mine.

Christmas Photo Final

Love & Light

The Lell’s.

We Are All Adam Lanza

In the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary I have witnessed every conceivable reaction. Some want to rage about gun control and security; others want to discuss mental illness. Many want to promote peace and focus on the good. Countless are putting their energy into prayer and espousing religion while others get busy with donations. There are even a few who want retaliation against the NRA. All if it… every. single. last. thing. we are doing is a feeble attempt at making ourselves feel better. They are our personal ways of grieving, coping, looking for answers, explanations, somewhere to place the blame and something to apply a balm for our worst fears come true. All are attempts at control.

I can understand the urge to climb, stand, and die on each of these mountains. I ache to make sense of this random senseless act because I know as humans, if we can contextualize it, if we can fit it neatly inside a label in our heads we can go back to feeling safe again. We can relax a little and cuddle up with a nice, reasonable explanation of why it won’t happen to me.

And then we can all go on ignoring the real issue at hand– the condition of humanity.

Why do we hurt each other, and ourselves? This basic question of self-inflicted human suffering swirls around in my thoughts daily. I ruminate to sleeplessness over human behavior, motivations and masochistic tendencies. My friends frequently implore, “Shannon, stop analyzing everything?!” My reply is always, “Damn it! I wish I could.” These thoughts are second nature to me and it is the fuel for why I write. I know that stories of humanity hold enough power and weight to change the world… hopefully like the one I’m going to tell you now.

My marriage is struggling. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m in therapy. A close relative is falling down the hole of addiction tethered to a spouse and three precious, young children. My 60-something parents lie awake at night, knotted with worry. This was the pain and suffering in my personal life before twenty children and six women were mercilessly murdered by a man whose been described as, “just a kid” an,”ordinary guy” and “seemed normal.”

I’m not saying Adam Lanza was “normal.” For sure there is a degree of mental illness involved, the extent of which has yet to be revealed, but please keep two things in mind: 1) Research suggests that most perpetrators of “rage killings” do not appear to have active psychotic symptoms at the time of the event, and very few have histories of prior contact with mental health services.  It would appear that Adam Lanza did not. And 2)  Mass “rage killings” are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history.

Mental illness aside, doesn’t it make sense to look at what is happening in our society through a much broader lens than mental illness, gun control and/or the prevalence of religion? Aren’t there truths about the human condition that are universal? Things that lead to a collective nodding of heads instead of more battle lines being drawn? Shouldn’t we start by asking the hard questions about our own human condition, first? Maybe, instead of what makes Adam Lanza different from us, we should ask what makes us all like Adam Lanza?

There are parallels in all human suffering. No one is free of heart ache and pain and right now, RIGHT NOW it feels paramount to dig as deep into the root of these things and investigate all possible causes and solutions so that no one else has to die… on mountains, in schools or otherwise.

I’m not talking about the families of the victims. They are victims themselves. I hurt for them physically and emotionally. I am talking about the “painfully shy” Adam Lanza’s, the alcoholic relative insistent upon destroying their life, and yes me, the anger addict struggling to connect with my spouse.

The writing of this essay started before December 14th. It started with this picture of a meth addict. I was compelled to use all my faculties of left-brain creativity and right-brained analytics to discuss what could possibly make a person do something like this to themselves:

face of meth woman

This is a progression picture of a meth addict over six years. It is part of a campaign to create awareness of the physical effects of meth use over time. When I saw these pictures, I did not see the drastic deterioration of a physical person. I saw the drastic deterioration of a human soul.

But then Sandy Hook Elementary happened and I couldn’t help but draw the parallels between what this young woman has done to herself, and what Adam Lanza did to helpless children.

Humanity suffers from the same affliction in varying degrees. Not all of us will commit heinous crimes, be alcoholics, meth-heads or anger addicts; but the same affliction lies at the root of our self-inflicted pain and the urge to self-destruct. The affliction is disconnection.

I have written many times of the light and dark, ups and downs, the yin and yang of life. There is a balance to nature and energy in this world. It is an ancient spiritual wisdom correlated by the laws of science.

In our world today our ability to numb, distract, disconnect and ignore has never been so easy. With the swipe of a finger across the screen of a smartphone we can avoid our lives, have an illusion of connection, while sitting comfortably alone. This ease at which we are able to keep the world at arm’s length behind a screen has had an equal and opposite effect of desperate disconnection from each other and our inner lives and of whatever one calls God.

Sounds almost counter-intuitive right? How have we become so disconnected in a world where it is so easy to connect?

The answer is shame. Shame is a powerful and painful emotion. Shame is what makes us hide, duck, shirk, defer and numb. Never has there been so much to be shameful about when connected to a world that is so big, so glossy, that has so much to desire and so much to compare ourselves to. It’s quite easy to feel hopelessly insignificant and ordinary in this world. Shame is the by-product of one central, core belief we all have in varying degrees about a variety of ideas:

I am not enough.

The reason we feel that we are not enough? We look at this big glossy world and we feel inferior and alone. Lonely. We do not see past what we want to see. We do not recognize the divinity that lies within ALL of us. That divinity that makes us the same; connects us to each other; the part that tells us that we are not alone, never alone; that we are not so different, that we are all basically the same and that we are all loved no matter our flaws. The divinity that tells us that we need to be nothing other than who and what we already are. In a word (that means so may different things to so many people) we are disconnected from God.

This human condition of shame and disconnection is a vicious cycle. It is one that I have traced and re-traced a million times in my life. The more I disconnect, the more I feel alone. The more I feel alone, the more I self-destruct.

In light of what is happening in my own life, and now, in darkness of the events in Newtown, Connecticut, my hyper-active analytic right/left brain kicked into overdrive. I sat down one day, when I should have been doing something else, and what poured out of me was the following flow chart of The Human Condition. It was my attempt to understand my own disconnection and the cycle of toxic thinking that plagues my life, my relatives, the meth-addict you see above, and perhaps, too, the painful shy (i.e. painfully alone) Adam Lanza.

The Human Condition Flow Chart

It has taken me years to come to these conclusions. I could provide a bibliography along with the number of hours spent analyzing human behavior, but would that make this any more, or less true? The true test of its validity does not lie in a text-book but if you can see yourself on this treadmill of pain. If you do, then I welcome you here. I welcome you to connect with me to explore our humanity together. I have worn path after path along these lines and I am trying, with stories, awareness, yoga and seeking a God-centered life to stay connected to my life; to heal my own pain and if I am so honored, help others do the same.

This isn’t about religion. Religion can be a road map to God but it is not the same as God. It’s a road map that has been helpful in my life. But religion does not own the only connections to divinity and anyone who insists their religion is the only way, is continuing to draw lines that divide and disconnect humanity. I’m not interested in that, but I will respect you all the same.

I am also not a professional. I do not have a list of letters behind my name. I am just a person who thinks a lot about people and is willing to share my stories.

daring greatlyI also read a lot of books on the human condition. Lately, I must give credit to someone with an impressive resume whom I’ve been connecting to; the incomparable Brene Brown, Ph.D.  I have watched her Ted talks and I am reading her book, “Daring Greatly.” This woman, she is brilliance. She is the perfect mix of left-brained, creative, compassionate wisdom, and right-brained, structured analysis. This happens to be the exact dialect I speak.

If you are reading this and you can hear me; if you can connect with anything I have written, then know you are one less lonely person and now, so am I. If we can create a collective web of less lonely people, no matter their dialect, no matter their religion, perhaps no one will slip through the cracks again.

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. ~Matthew 7:5

Pain removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. ~C.S. Lewis

All that we are is a result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. ~Buddha

Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom. ~Rumi

And we say Namaste: the divine in me honors the divine in you.