Monthly Archives: May 2013

“I stuck” ~Brooklyn

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spring-17

That is my two year old granddaughter’s favorite thing to say, “I stuck”.  She will say it whether she is really stuck or not.

Sabbatical…a whole year off from work to stretch my creativity, travel, and explore some of the things I have never had time to do in life. A grand adventure, giving up all your worldly goods and just going with no agenda, no plans, just going wherever the whim strikes you.  Everyone tells me they are jealous and that they wish they could do it.  So why aren’t they?

Because it is damn hard that is why.

Amazingly, I am handling the fear of the unknown pretty well and the ambiguity of it all.  My struggle has come in feelings of worthiness.  What did I do to earn this amazing opportunity?  And it seems like daily, some other wonderful thing is heaped onto me…adding to my guilt about it all and miring me in my inability to embrace it fully.

I am a person who has spent my whole life fighting for everything I have. From being on welfare as an unwed teenage mother to putting myself through college and becoming a tax-paying member of society, I have fought this uphill battle from a place of never having or “being” enough.  My whole life has been focused toward overcoming obstacles.  So now that there aren’t any obstacles, I am stuck.

I guess it is about abundance.  All my life has been life from a deficit and all of a sudden, I have an abundance of everything.  My life is mine to choose what to do and where to go.  I was blessed with intelligence, tenacity, a small amount of courage, and compassion. I have my health, a great job, and people who love me. I can do anything I want.  And that is why I am stuck.

For me, I know how to live a life of scarcity, it is easy to walk that road, it is harder to accept that I have these opportunities and to not feel guilty like I haven’t done anything to deserve them. Or even worse, that I am not worthy of having things work out well for me.  I am struggling with accepting a life of abundance and embracing it.  “I stuck”.

National Coat Night

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I am getting rid of everything I own.  That fact has been paralyzing to me. Well, not everything, a girl can’t part with her gear…one has to have priorities.  But I am trying to take everything else I have an reduce it to 1 bag of clothes and a bike. This is made harder by training for a summit of Kilimanjaro, that in itself takes a bag a clothes.

While I was going through a closet tonight, I realized how many coats I have.  But the shocking part was how many of them that I haven’t worn in the past 2-3 years.  So why do I still have them?  There are people I see on the street in the winter who are in coats not nearly as warm as these are, yet I am hoarding them in my closet.  Why?  And I would bet that most of you have at least one coat like that too.  So why don’t we have a National Coat Night?  One night where we all take 30 minutes and go through our closets and get all the coats we haven’t worn in 2-3 years and donate them. Then they could either go to citizens of this country who are down or their luck or people from other countries who are not so well off as this one. Everyone deserves to be warm.

Just be sure to check the pockets. I found that I have an affinity for chapstick.  There was  some in at least half of the jackets I have.

“Robin, you can TOTALLY do this.” ~Matt

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One of the best gifts I have ever received from the universe is the friendship of Matt.  We are the most unlikely of friends. I met him when I was a 44 year old, recently separated woman.  He was a 19 year old college student and our relationship has never been anything but platonic. I am convinced that every woman, struggling with the crushing emotional loss of a long term relationship needs to find a “Matt”, a kid that can teach her how to play again after a lifetime of responsibility.

Matt challenges me to do things I never would have attempted. He usually prefaces those challenges with “Robin, you can totally do this”.  However, those words usually don’t end well for me.  I am usually upside down or physically in harm’s way with Matt having to save me time and time again. But those words have precipitated some of the great stories of my life.   Stories that end with Matt saying “damn it Robin” :).

The first time I heard those words was when Matt wanted to me to kayak the Wenatchee. We were going to go on this overnight camping trip with a couple of other friends and go kayaking.  I had only been whitewater kayaking twice in my life.  Matt says “Robin you can totally do this. Fat guys in inner tubes and drinking beer do this.”  While that was technically true, Matt failed to mention that the fat guys do that when the Wenatchee is running at 1000 cfs whereas I was going to kayak it when it was above 10,000 cfs.

About 10 minutes into the run and I realized I didn’t belong on that river.  The third time Matt fished me out after I panicked and swam, we were standing on the side of the river and Matt starts explaining what I need to differently. The conversation went like this:  Robin (eerily calm): “I am not getting back in that boat.”  Matt: “It will take you hours to walk out of here.”  Robin (voice rising): “I don’t care if it takes me all damn day, I am not getting back in that boat!” Matt: “You will never get the boat out of here.” Robin (voice getting louder on the edge of hysteria): “The boat can sit right there and rot, I am NOT getting back in that boat!!” Oliver: “Just let her calm down a minute.” Robin (YELLING): “YOU CAN LET ME CALM DOWN ALL YOU WANT, I AM NOT GETTING BACK IN THAT BOAT!!!”  The end of the story, of course, is that, I did get back in the boat and finished the run and at the end Matt says “Damn it Robin.”  I have heard those words a lot in the 6 years that I have been friends with Matt.

I realized from that experience that life is a lot like kayaking.  There are a lot of people who spend their whole lives standing on the banks and watching other people have the fun of the experience.  But the fun starts where the water is moving, just like life starts where the water is moving.  In the moving water is the edge of fear and the unknown, where your heart starts pumping and you realize you are totally alive, focused in the moment.

But sometimes, life gives you rapids, challenging times that upset the peaceful floating along.  Then balance, as well as good paddling skills, become very important. Life is simpler if you keep the boat upright.  But sometimes, the rapids are too strong, life throws something at you that flips you upside down. At that moment, you need to have great self-rescue skills because you are always safer if you can stay in the boat and roll yourself up.  But sometimes, the rapids of life get too big and you have to pull the skirt and swim.  At that moment, you need great safety boaters who will pull you out of the water and get you safely to the shore.  Everyone needs great safety boaters in their lives because we all have times that we can’t do it alone.

And for those of us who are really really lucky, we will have a safety boater in our lives that doesn’t just pull us out, they take the time to convince us to get back in the boat.  Because life happens where the water is moving, it isn’t a spectator sport.  Having someone who will get you to reengage when you want to check out is the greatest gift any of us will ever have.

Thanks Matt for convincing me to get back in the boat.