Category Archives: Musings

Begin with the end in mind

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I have always found transition times to be challenging. That includes good and bad transitions. It is hard to believe that I ever had the courage to go on sabbatical this past year or to take many of the leaps of faith I have taken throughout my life. So many people think I am this free spirited adventurer. I laugh at that a lot. What no one sees is what is going on in my head.

As I finished sabbatical, I have been blessed with no only a year of amazing adventures, but from many things that have happened to me in the last month alone. I have to admit, I am a little overwhelmed. I have a new grandson who I got to hold before he was even an hour old. My lovely and talented daughter is getting married and I got to see her try on the dress that she will get married in. I have a beautiful new home, a new office and a great new job. I love my students. So why am I overwhelmed?

It is a transition time, and for me, my life has been filled with a lot of negative changes. I can handle those. I expect those. It is almost harder to handle the positive ones, to step in and feel deserving of the wonderful life I have now. I have been in a funk, almost paralyzed to get anything done. Today, I am attempting to change my paralysis and get back to my routine and taking care of myself. In order to do that, I realized, I have to start somewhere, so I am going to start at the beginning.

Over a year ago, I filled 8 boxes with my treasures. Those boxes, my gear, a few clothes, and a rock where the only things I had left. I had given up all my other possessions: house, furniture, dishes, all of it. I stored them in my office and now they are in my garage. Today, right now, it is time to unpack those boxes and face my life. It is time to get unstuck.

Lesson Five: Be who you want to be

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One of the best things about writing this blog has been all the responses I have received from people around the world. Some said “thank you for sharing so openly, it has helped me realize I am not alone”.  Some have told me their stories. Others have asked for advice, questions such as “I am over my head in debt, how do I pay it off” to “I am not happy in my life but I don’t know how to change it, can you help”. I am not qualified to give anyone advice.  I can only tell you how I dealt with similar problems.

10294969_698382016907659_7457378898519029271_oOne of my greatest take-aways from sabbatical is that I don’t just have to be who I think I am.  I can be who I want to be. All my life, I have wanted to be this adventure girl. I wanted to be joyfully spontaneous and just willing to try things on a whim.  I wanted to be athletic and participate in adventure sports such as mountain biking, kayaking, skiing off-piste, paragliding, climbing… you get the idea. I also wanted to be the sophisticated urban dweller and world traveler. I put those dreams aside when I had children and raised my family.  I was responsible, a great high school teacher, a good university professor, a decent mother and wife. I took care of everyone. When I got divorced an moved to Seattle, I was a frumpy, middle class, 44 year old housewife from a small town in North Carolina, and I thought those kind of adventures were behind me.  If you have read this blog, you realize that moving to Seattle was when I met Matt Tony, Ken, Rachel, Shaun, Deloa, Melinda, Rachelle, Keri and so many more great friends.. the list goes on and on here as well as all my friends from the Lounge and my own children, Patrick and Jessica who have cheered me and encouraged me every step of the way.

10569073_10101954846563833_1474996086184191579_nMy friends opened my world and my mind to all the things that were possible, regardless of my age, weight, marital status, debt, … none of that matters.  Those were all excuses to keep me paralyzed to whatever dysfunctional fear I happened to be harboring at the time.  The one single thing I needed to learn was that all I had to do was try.  I didn’t have to be perfect or even successful the first time, or the 27th time, I just had to keep trying.  It didn’t matter if I was laughed at, judged, or taunted. I have learned that those kinds of limiting comments from other people aren’t about me, they are about the shallowness and fears of the person who is uttering them.  I don’t take those kind of comments personally anymore.  I am a different person.  I am the person I have always wanted to be.

I set out on a journey to carve out a new identity.  I thought that meant discovering who I am. It didn’t. I realized that it meant creating who I am.  It is funny, as I have been reflecting on sabbatical and all the years since I moved to Seattle, my train of thought started with “I didn’t”, and “I am not” until about a month ago when trying to write this blog post and I asked myself, “so what HAVE you done?”. It was a perspective altering question.

418994_10101134467475103_715478501_n1397721_10101421659884213_539633773_oI have rolled a kayak, climbed mountains, and jumped off those mountains in both a harness and with a wing on my back.  I have skied through powder, down fall lines, under chairlifts and on glaciers. I have ridden bikes on several continents, in varied conditions with incredible people.  I have ordered great wine and decadent food in restaurants all over the world.  I have met new people everywhere I have gone and listened to their stories, learned about their lives, and shared the fires of the passions that light up their souls.  I gave away all the trappings of my former life, my furniture, clothing, and emotional baggage. I have lived without a home or safety net to return to.  I have fed endangered vultures from my hand both on the ground and while gliding in the air looking out over the Himalayas.  I have traveled alone, with no plan and no itinerary, going where I wanted, seeing what interested me, meeting new people.  I have faced loneliness, fear, isolation, sickness, different cultures, ostracization, and just about every human condition you can imagine.

385537_10100701118874173_1615401034_nWhen I read that list, what is clear to me is that I am not the person that I was anymore.  I am strong, courageous, adventurous, athletic, urban, classy, loving, compassionate, giving, open… in other words, I am the person I have always wanted to be. How did I, a non-athletic, frumpy, boring, small-town, middle-class housewife do it? How did I learn to roll a boat, ski off-piste, order great wine, solo travel, talk to strangers, and give up all my possessions? The answer is simple, I tried.  I set out on a course that was hard and just kept going.  Overcoming obstacles, wanting to quit (many, many times), I learned and grew.  I refused to stay in the dysfunction I was in and did the work necessary to have the life I wanted. Even though that sounds simple, it was the hardest, yet most rewarding thing I have ever done. I have no regrets.

10338864_10203972469536322_8787165062454257996_nBefore I left on sabbatical, I had a chance to change course and stay in Seattle to be able to get the perfect house.  I wanted that house so badly, I almost didn’t go on my journey because of it. The house was just an excuse to hide my fear however. Instead, I listened to my advisors and went on sabbatical anyway knowing that there would be another perfect house when I returned. I have thought of that house many times while I lived my homeless, nomadic life. In the last couple of weeks I started house hunting again.  Guess what?  THE house, the same one, was available and now it is mine.  So for all my worry, I took the chance anyway and walked away from the safe choice. Now I have a house again or at least I will on Sept 15 and not just any house but the house I dreamed of. Until September 15, I am hanging out with my beautiful granddaughters waiting for their brother to come into the world any day now. So at the end of this incredible year, not only am I a new person but I will have a new home, a new job, and a new grandson.

It makes me happy to know that I am setting a great example for my grandchildren that life isn’t about limits, it is about challenging what limits us. Our biggest limitation is believing that we can’t change who we think we are.

Lesson two: Sometimes a woman has to let her garden get out of control to see what sticks

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P1100291Once, when I working on my yard and garden, I apologized for it being a little out of control with new plants springing up everywhere. I am used to gardens being orderly rows, not a chaos of wildflowers growing up everywhere. My friend Deb said “sometimes a woman has to let her garden get out of control to see what likes growing there, to see what sticks.”. And that is sabbatical lesson number two.

My friend Matt has never given me a tangible gift in the 7 years that we have been friends. He has paid for dinner a few times, he tried to pay for a paragliding lesson once but I paid him back, but he has never given me something that I can touch for a present. Simultaneously, he has given me the best gift I have ever received in my life.

1930132_577478386628_7110_nFor most of my life, I strove for perfection. I had goals and expectations for my behavior that were ridiculously high and I met them. There was no space for spontaneity, no time for emotion, no allowance being out of control. People would have described me as dependable, stalwart, and driven. Then my life got divided by zero and life as I knew it fell apart. Throughout the next year as I tried to Band-aid it back together with marriage therapy, I grew more spontaneous, but slowly, in a planned controlled way. I didn’t really understand truly letting go, to not be constrained by standards of polite society. And then, I met Matt.

One of the first times I ever allowed myself to loosen the grip on perfection around Matt was after a Sunday morning kayaking pool session. Matt wanted to go to brunch but I didn’t have any hair ties to contain my wild “Albert Einstein mad-scientist” hair. He said don’t worry about it, just come to brunch. Since it was a new friendship, I was torn between wanting to spend time with my friend but worried about him rejecting me or making fun of me. I decided to trust him and see where it all fell out. So we are sitting at a nice restaurant, outside in the sun, with all the other well-dressed Sunday brunch goers. I am dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and have wet hair. As my hair dried, it got crazier and crazier and I got more and more self-conscious until one moment Matt looks over and says, “you’re hair is so wild, it is awesome”. Gotta love that kid. Hundreds of times in our friendship, that same type of scenario played out. He watched and encouraged me to engage in some of the most outrageous behaviors. And I was always rewarded with his unconditional acceptance.

One way I am outrageous is with all my “woo-woo” theories that I am always coming up with. My friends just roll their eyes when I get started on a new one. For example: I believe in using all of my senses as I walk through life, one of which (often overlooked) is the sense of smell. My theory is that perfume and cologne can kill a relationship. When we get to know someone, one of the things we filter them is through their scent, for example I loved the way my ex smelled. I believe that the problem with perfume and cologne is that they mask our natural scent.  But when you get to know someone and like how they smell with fragrance on, what happens when they aren’t wearing any? Will that change the way you feel in a subtle way?

398075_10100938615998033_716093949_nThe cologne is an example of something we use to mask who we really are. Whether with cologne or outrageous behavior, this is the lesson. I only want people in my life who want to be with the authentic me. I don’t want to have to keep putting on airs or living a farce to be included as someone’s friend. What I have learned is to be myself, to be wild, crazy, and unrestrained. Those who want to be in my life will gravitate toward me, whether I am “perfect” or perfectly crazy. They have to want the whole package. If they don’t, then I move them to the outer periphery. There are only be a few people in my life who can handle my “crazy” and my crazy gives them the freedom to let their vulnerability show in return. Those are the few people I want to find and keep. The rest need to be let go.

Your “crazy” is a filter, it filters out those who want to truly be part of your life from those who only superficially want to be there. We need both kinds of people, but we give our hearts to the people who accept us as we are, authentically in all our crazy glory. I believe there are many people who never allow anyone to be that close to them in their whole lives. They never can give up the control and worry over what society will think of them if they allow their true selves to show. They are too hung up on being criticized and rejected.

One of the great aspects of this lesson is that I have learned not to take rejection personally anymore. When a relationship ends, I can hear Matt’s voice say, “it just wasn’t the right fit, try again”. I realize that not everyone is going to gravitate toward me and that is okay. Let them go be free to find the people they can be authentic with. My self-esteem will still be intact.

201836_965318866313_7885418_oThe gift Matt gave me is in allowing me to see what life looks like when we do let someone in that close. Life changes when we live with that kind of authenticity and whole-heartedness. It is richer, fuller, just more vibrant in every way. I now have a small core group of friends who truly know me and who I can be absolutely outrageous around. I wouldn’t trade them for 1000 superficial friends. I trust my friends love me and care about me always.

So let your garden get out of control and see what sticks. The joy and beauty of your life will open up in ways you never imagined.

Lesson One: The ride doesn’t start until you are ready for it to be over

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As I start on the transition back from sabbatical, I want to reflect a little on the lessons I have learned through this year and then I will finish this blog in September

The kick-off event for sabbatical last year was a 24 hour bike ride to raise money for cancer research and patient support.  This morning, one year and one lifetime later, I find myself again in Indianapolis riding with my friends from Team Collin.  I am a different person.  Sabbatical has change me profoundly.

P1100139I went for a bike ride the other day. I had planned to ride about 40 miles, but it was a beautiful sunny day so I struck out down an unfamiliar route and ended up going about 50 miles and then decided I was tired and would take the bus the rest of the way home. So I was sitting on the bus bench, eating the last snack that I had brought with me when I realized I didn’t have my wallet so I had no money or my bus pass. I was 25 miles from home. I probably could have talked the bus driver into letting me get on the bus but instead, I put my helmet back on and got back on the bike because one of the first lessons I learned on sabbatical is that the real ride doesn’t start until that moment when I am ready for it to be over.

I first learned this lesson emotionally when I gave up all my possessions last year and left Seattle. I was almost paralyzed by fear and wishing I had never decided to go on this crazy adventure. Facing the fear of traveling alone, meeting people who I didn’t know in countries where I didn’t speak the language, travelling with no plans and no reservations, no safety net when something happened, having to make decisions on the fly not knowing if the outcome would be positive or not, I just wanted the ride to end. I wanted to stay home in the safety of the apartment I had lived for the last 3 years. The reality was, I was in a holding pattern, stagnating personally and professionally and needed to make a huge change. That change truly began when I let myself face the challenges, pushed myself physically, intellectually and emotionally further than I ever thought I could go in my life. In the words of the great TerryB, “It is easier to stay in the dysfunction you are in than it is to do the work needed to have the life you want.”   Changes won’t come by just doing the same thing you have been doing over and over and expecting a different result. They happen when you move into the discomfort.

P1100060Physically, intellectually, and emotionally, growth and learning happen when people are pushed out of their comfort zone. There is new research that says that physically, if you do the same exercise at the same intensity without varying it that at some point, your body stops responding. You won’t lose ground on your fitness but you won’t gain it either. As I teacher, I have always known from my own learning and by watching my students struggle that intellectual learning is hard work. Think back to your biggest life lessons, did you learn them because you did something perfectly or because you had to struggle through difficulty? Our greatest challenges give us our biggest lessons. Learning isn’t for the faint of heart. And emotional growth may be the hardest of all. We only grow emotionally when we are pushed beyond the limits of what we thought we could endure.

Seven years ago, I was pushed out of my emotional comfort zone when the man I married and loved with all my heart walked out on me without warning. I was pushed out of my comfort zone again when my father and sister died. And then my when my therapist, who was helping me through all of that, entered into an inappropriate relationship with me. Those situations pushed me to the brink of emotional collapse. However, those events also were the catalysts of the most profound transformation of my life. I wouldn’t wish for them to happen again, but I will not regret where they have brought me.

They call events like that life-altering. The reason for that name is because they actually alter your life (yeah I know that conclusion wasn’t rocket science). The event where you do the same thing every day for 25 years or respond the same way every time you have a conflict isn’t “life-altering”. There are so many people who I listen to who tell me they want to make a change in their lives, they aren’t happy with their circumstances….they aren’t happy in their marriage, with their job, the direction their life is going, etc. The way to change that is simple and yet, at the same time, extraordinarily difficult. If you want to make a change in your life, the only way to do it is to create your life-altering moment. There is no other way. It is at that point of change, that point of discomfort that you are ready for whatever is bothering you in your life to be over, that moment when you are ready for the ride to be over…. that is the moment where the real ride and the hard work begins.

My sabbatical lesson and take-away is that I have learned to appreciate that emotional discomfort that comes in difficult and challenging situations because I know it precipitates learning and growth. That doesn’t mean I like it, but I understand what is about to happen, change is going to occur, life is being divided by zero. I might whine about it still, but the whining is just noise, it isn’t life-stalling paralysis. All of life is embraced, every moment is cherished. The places where I am struggling the most are where the real work needs to happen.

A great analogy to this: You don’t keep repaving a smoothly paved road, you fix the road with the potholes on it. It is the same with your life, you fix the parts that are broken, you don’t just stay on the same smooth path. Life gets interesting on those side roads. And if you never take them, sooner or later life will throw up a detour and you will have no choice but to be forced down the side road. You need to fix the pot holes on those side roads before they become big enough to swallow your vehicle and keep your life stuck in one place.

team collinSo this weekend, I get to hang out with my friends, ride some bikes, raise a little money to kick cancer’s ass. I am a different woman than I was when I was here a year ago. On the road of my life and the development of a new identity, I have fewer pot holes, more miles of paved smooth road, I am stronger physically, mentally, and emotionally than I have been in a very long time.

Forgiveness

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I have come to realize, in order to be free of the sorrow of the past, I have to truly forgive with all my heart. So I enrolled in a 30 day course with Desmond Tutu, a forgiveness challenge of which I am almost at the end. In the course of doing the daily activities, I have realized how far I have already come down the road of forgiveness both for my ex-husband and the former therapist, the protagonists of two devastating events that have defined 7 of the last 8 years of my life. Most of the activities in the challenge I completed easily which showed me how far I have already come. But there came a point where I hit a wall, one made of crumbling emotional bricks. I realized the best part of this challenge was illuminating for me where I was stuck.

northern cascadesOne day, a week or so ago, the activity was a meditation where I was to envision myself in one of my favorite places, a place where I feel safe and which calls to my spirit. I was also tasked with envisioning myself with someone I trusted without reservation. So I envisioned myself sitting at the top of one of the mountains in the Northern Cascades with my friend Matt. The goal of the activity was to tell him my sorrow, to speak the words and tell him the hurt that I had endured and to let it all out. Since I have no secrets from Matt, he has heard the words from me many times, more than he has cared to hear them. He knows all my sorrow, even my darkest secrets that I share with no one else. So the telling of my story during my meditation and envisioning Matt listening was not difficult at all. But what came next was very difficult.

The second part of the meditation was to envision a box. Since I love boxes this was easy for me. If I was ever going to collect anything it would be boxes. I envisioned one of the shaker boxes that my dad made me before he died. Then the meditation called for me to take that story and to put it in this box and to name it The Box of Sorrows. After closing it up, the story sealed, I had to envision handing it to my trusted friend. That was the part where I was just paralyzed for a few moments. I was paralyzed to hand over what I have held onto for so long. But in order to move on, I have to forgive and in order to forgive, I have to first let go.

Matt getting ready to fly

Matt getting ready to fly

So in my mind, I looked into the eyes that I have looked at so many times in the past, eyes of a man I trust with my life, and I handed him the box in my mind. I did what he has always taught me to do when I am scared, I look into his eyes, trust, tell myself I can totally do this, and take the risk. So I held out the box and I just let go. He took the box from me, nodded, got his wing and harness set up and then he jumped and went paragliding down the mountain with my Box of Sorrows… my history and my fears, in his possession. Amazingly, as a mediation, it was like I was actually there. I felt it, deep in my soul, the moment of letting go.

So how did it feel? It was like the ultimate freedom. It was like everything else I have done the past year, letting go of the possessions, the apartment, traveling, changing jobs, all of it was preparing me for that moment. As tightly as I was hanging on, letting go lifted this huge burden I was carrying.

Part of me felt so strongly about it that I had a pang of fear that I had burdened my friend with my box of sorrows. But what I realized is that I already had been burdening him every time I talked about it without being able to let go and move on. Essentially, he had to help me drag that burden around in our friendship all of these years. So even though he had to carry that box down the mountain, he did it without struggle because he finally gets to be free of it also. And besides, he is also the strongest person I know. If anyone can carry that burden for me down the mountain, it is Matt. Then I got to follow, light of heart, centered in my mind and my spirit. It was very powerful.

And yes, I know I will get criticism for how “woo woo” this is. I don’t care. Every culture and religion in the world knows the value of symbolism and visualization so I won’t make any apologies for anything that makes me feel and great as I feel right now.

Strength In What Remains

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I have mentioned before in this blog that the circumstances that divided my life by zero have affected me in many unexpected ways. Realizing how seemingly unconnected events are connected is always fascinating to me and easy for me to see in other people but much harder to see in my own circumstances.

I used to be a voracious reader, both professional and personally. As an academic, reading is preliminary to writing and writing is the key to publications and advancement. In the past 7 years, since my marriage ended and through the years that I was involved with the abusive therapist, I have struggled to read. Why reading should be affected by those circumstances has been difficult to determine, but the result has been the same. I have struggled to read which means also struggling to write and publish in academic journals. I have however, for whatever reason, increased my grant writing skills so there is that.

I have several friends who know about this problem and they have wonderfully tried to help. My friends Tony and Jonathan have recommended books as well as helped me think through academic papers. Tony has co-authored papers with me. It has been a huge help. And I am finally understanding that I may never again read like I once did. I have changed. I am different and it’s okay.

I recently read a book that was recommended to me and it had a profound affect on me. It should be required reading for anyone who has ever had a traumatic incident that they have struggled to recover from, cares about someone in that situation, and for all mental health care workers. It is called Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder and portrays the story of Deo, a survivor of civil war and genocide in Burundi. Deo manages not only to survive but to make his way to the ghettos of New York and, without knowing English, gets a job as a grocery delivery person while living in Central Park. From there, he gets admitted to Columbia and then medical school at Dartmouth and becomes an American citizen before returning to Burundi to start a clinic to provide medicine, nutrition and clean water to a small village.

Deo’s amazing story of resiliency and courage is very profound, but what touched me wasn’t how he was able to come through things perfectly, seemingly without any difficulties because he didn’t. I was touched by his authenticity and imperfection. What touched me was seeing his changing emotions as he struggled with the memories. In his native language that phenomena of being triggered by memories of a traumatic event is called Gusimbura. To gusimbura someone means “that the individual, upon hearing the name of a dead loved one, is forced to relive the suffering and sorrow of that loved one’s death”. The idea is that it isn’t just a memory, the person who is gusimbura’d is actually reliving the events. I think in western psychology it would be called a flashback. But for Deo, it is culturally not acceptable to talk about the death he witnessed. Yet at the same time, as a survivor, it is profoundly necessary for him to bear witness to what happened by talking about it in order to heal the wounds of his soul.

Deo’s transitions between repressing memories and then having them come out in other inappropriate emotions when he was triggered, to facing the memories and seeing his rage and fear, to trying to move on from them explains a lot about the behavior of someone with PTSD. It shows the delicate balance between psychologically needing to remember yet simultaneously, needing to move on and not be caught forever in memories where you are only half alive.

Typically whenever I have read a book like this, the main character will be a person who survived significant trauma and then rose out of it in an exceptional way, seemingly perfectly “whole” and “normal”. What this book showed me is that, for all of us who have gone through trauma, we are irrevocably changed (although I would argue we are still “whole” and “normal”). We can’t go back. We have to find the strength in what remains. Those memories will always be there, like a disease which lives dormant in the central nervous system which comes out in times of stress. However unlike such diseases when society empathizes with the physical suffering of that person, somehow when it is the darker side of our emotions, society sees it as weakness in people and shuns them rather than empathize with them. Deo’s story which is so brutal makes it easy to empathize with him.

When you love or care about someone with PTSD or even just someone who is struggling to move on in their lives, or if you are suffering yourself, realize that sometimes emotions will come up in ways that you can’t anticipate and can be triggered by things that you don’t even realize until later when you are looking back. It can come out in simple ways like fluctuations in someone’s weight, overreactions to seemingly mundane events, substance abuse or more horrifically, in acts of violence. For PTSD sufferers it is imperative to stay as aware as possible, to realize that when you get that feeling in your gut, that churning that something is wrong or your don’t feel good… it is imperative to listen to what your body is telling you.

If you care about someone with PTSD, if the person is reacting in a strange way, don’t take it personally and don’t let their behavior scare you or push you away. The person close to you might not be reacting to you at all, but to a situation or circumstance from their past. I once remember being in a club at Whistler with some friends. All of a sudden, I had to leave, not in 15 or 30 minutes, but right at that immediate moment. I had to be outside. I had two good friends Kaare and Chris that recognized my panic and paid my tab and got my coat out of the coatroom for me while telling our other friends we were leaving. They didn’t judge, they just helped me. My friend Matt has done the same thing for me on countless occasions. I don’t think I have ever said thank you for that. I remember it took me a long time that night at Whistler, even in a roomful of my friends, to realize I was safe. My advice if you care about someone with PTSD is to be aware, be tolerant, just listen and accept them for what they are. Be patient while they find the strength in what remains.

If you get a chance, read the book “Strength in What Remains” by Tracy Kidder and check out Deo’s organization Village Health Works. http://www.villagehealthworks.org/

The Garden

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P1090067My grandfather was a fantastic gardener. He had the cleanest garden, there wasn’t a weed in it. He grew things in the rocky, dry soil of Maine with no landscape fabric, pesticides, modern fertilizer, motorized tillers, or any of the other modern gardening equipment we use today. Pappy gardened organically back when organic wasn’t a “thing”. He did it that way because he was really frugal. I still remember going over to his house with my Dad on a weekend afternoon. I would tell him I was hungry and he would reach down and pull a carrot out of the ground, wash it off under the faucet, and hand it to me. Those still are the best carrots I have ever tasted.

Since I am home, I decided to use some of my sabbatical time to plant a garden. I don’t hope to be as good at it as Pappy was, but I aim to learn. There is something mystical about planting things and watching them grow like magic out of the ground. I often wonder how disconnected from the earth we become when we only have the opportunity to buy food from boxes and Styrofoam trays wrapped in plastic from a grocery store. Everyone should have the opportunity to just stick their hands in the dirt and plant something and watch it grow. 

The other day when skiing, a friend and I were talking a lot about my garden, about what I was going to plant and I told her about my grandfather. At lunch, she ran into an old friend who she had lost touch with. After they chatted for a few moments, my friend and I went back out skiing where she told me the story of what had happened to her friendship with this other person.

She said at one time, they had been best friends. When I asked what had happened between them, she shared a great analogy with me. She said it was like they had together planted a shared garden, in this case, the garden represented their friendship. They would meet at the garden, plant seeds, discuss soil, communicate what needed to be done, share responsibilities and divide up tasks. When one person was busy or having a tough time, the other picked up the slack in the garden of their relationship. They tended the garden of their friendship together every day through their communication which kept the weeds away and the ground fertile. My friend went through a challenging time with a divorce and lots of life changes and it was difficult to be around her at that time. After a while, her friend stopped coming to the garden as often. My friend continued to go there, continued to plant and nourish the relationship, but as time went on, she felt more and more devalued by her friend’s absence. My friend was hurt and finally, she started going to the garden less and less frequently until one day she just stopped. Not too long after that day, her friend came to the garden to find it empty, untended, and overgrown. She called my friend to find out what was up. My friend, although heartbroken, kept her resolve to honor her boundaries and not allow herself to be taken for granted. Her friend decided that the friendship wasn’t worth the effort. They hadn’t seen each other again until the other day when we were skiing.

I loved the analogy of the garden as a relationship. If you have ever gardened before then you know how hard it is. It takes planning, preparation, planting, daily effort, watering, weeding, fertilizing, pest maintenance and harvesting. Gardening isn’t for the faint of heart. But the rewards of the garden, the best tasting most incredible food you have ever eaten, is absolutely worth the effort. It is the same with relationships. It takes communication, effort, shared experiences, mutual value, respect, compassion, caring, and time. Relationships aren’t for the faint of heart either. The rewards however, are priceless. It is the difference between pulling the best tasting carrot from the ground or buying something processed from a box. Both will feed you, but only one nourishes your soul.

The Most Boring Post Club…

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I have been really busy trying to figure out what I am doing with my life now that I am looking at the last half of my sabbatical. My fears and insecurities about my life have made it hard for me to write this blog.  As usual, my incredible friends have given me inspiration where I least expected it, from Facebook.  One of my friends posted a thread asking the question of if/how we know our lives had an impact. At the same time, another one posted in a group that is entitled “The Most Boring Post Club”.  Both of those things made me think pretty deeply about the stories of our lives.

We influence people every day, in every contact we have with them. Those influences aren’t necessarily good and it is important to remember that when we interact with people.  We can be friendly, give someone a smile, say hello, show compassion… or we can hurry along, ignoring someone, being cruel, making fun of people, judging.  I find it interesting that the most judgmental people I know are also those people who see the world around them as a bad place, their lives are never what they want them to be, and their pasts are littered with the emotional wreckage of their interactions with people.  But every day, we have a choice to be who we want to be.  Every day we can make our story and our impact on the world what we want it to be.  It doesn’t have to be a huge thing, it doesn’t have to be anything to do with our job.  It can be as simple as taking time for people, accepting, and understanding.

Enter, the second Facebook post, in a group called the Most Boring Post Club. Facebook is an interesting medium for communication.  I know people who will see this group, read some of the posts, see themselves in something someone posted that is similar to what they post on their own Facebook and think “I am boring”.  And then they will get insecure and change what they are posting to conform to what they think people want from them. Let me go on record right now, people give me grief all the time for what I post on Facebook.  Guess what?  It is MY Facebook page, if people don’t like it, they don’t have to read it.  Unfriend me. Please, it won’t hurt my feelings. I have no desire to make anyone else miserable by forcing them to read my Facebook.

Whether it is in real life or on Facebook, I don’t want to be wasting minutes of my life judging people’s behavior.  My life is short enough as it is, I don’t have time to waste.  Complaining about what someone else is posting on Facebook is wasting my time, what should I care what they post on their page?  There are REAL problems in the world that I can do something about, to have a positive impact on the world. I am not going to worry about whether I am boring to someone, that is a waste of my time.  In fact, if one of my posts makes it to the Most Boring Post Club, then it is a WIN because I just amused a whole group of people!  I might try to post boring stuff from now on, kind of like my campaign to post food pictures on Instagram ever since someone gave me grief about posting food pictures.  Yeah, I know, I don’t play by the “rules” where I conform whenever I am criticized.  I thank Matt for that.

I have said it before and am going to say it again…  be who you are and the people who want to be in your life will gravitate toward the authentic you, because you don’t want people who don’t want you for who you are.  Don’t worry about what other people are doing, what they look like, what they are wearing, eating, or posting on Facebook.  Gravitate toward those people who you like and who like you in return.  And don’t waste one second of the precious seconds of your life worrying about what people think of you or what other people are doing with their own lives.  If you want to have an impact, if you want to influence the world, just be yourself.

For me, I gravitate toward people who can show vulnerability.  That is a critical characteristic of people who I want as my friends.  If they can be vulnerable and show their “crazy” it gives me the freedom to be vulnerable in return. The people who influence me show courage, compassion, loyalty, forgiveness, acceptance, honesty, and who keep their word.  Everyone makes mistakes and has times where they screw up, but the people in my life who couldn’t consistently show those things are gone.  Period.

So post them up folks.  If you are my friend on Facebook, I want to know what you were eating, what your problems are, what you are doing today, what your insecurities are, and what you passions are.  I want to see your pictures and hear about your children and your travels.  I want you to be gloriously boring and amazingly authentic.  That is the way you can influence my life.  And if what I post bothers you, well, maybe you can find some better friends in the Most Boring Post Club.

 

No regrets…just lessons learned

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I was watching a TV show yesterday. For those who don’t know me personally, I haven’t had a TV in a couple of years so watching TV feels like a whole new activity for me.  Anyway, it was a talk show and during the show, they had a twitter feed in the background.  The host was talking about how every experience in our lives can teach us a lesson, so rather than look on those experiences as negative, look on them as lessons.  A viewer tweeted a quote that went something like “instead of being a victim, be a student”. I really like that thought.

I have several friends who have gone through amazingly difficult struggles in their lives. Their lives were divided by zero many times.  Abusive childhoods filled with alcoholic parents, marriages with abusive spouses, dealing with infidelity from someone who made sacred vows to honor and cherish, amputated limbs, quadriplegia from a car accident, death of a child, recovering alcoholics/addicts, cancer, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and so many more.  Most of the people I admire the most have overcome tremendous obstacles, it is what refined their character.  They used those struggles as opportunities to grow, they refused to become victims.  They became students of life instead.  I would say that most of them have the equivalent of a PhD in life lessons.

Then there are the people in life that are mired in what has happened to them, refusing to let it go.  Now, I am not saying that all of us don’t go through that, heaven knows I have had my walk through the dark side of life where I just couldn’t seem to claw my way out of the pit of despair.  It might take awhile, but the trick is to not stay there. And it doesn’t just happen that you come out of it magically on your own, you have to fight for it.

So how is it that some people can make hard choices, do the right thing, feel compassion and forgiveness for those who have wronged them, own up to their mistakes, problem-solve, and move forward while others just wallow, refusing to take responsibility for anything they have done and making the same mistakes over and over again?

I don’t have the answers to those questions only my own ideas.  I believe it has something to do with what the person tweeted… people who can move on and build a better life out of the emotional ruins of trauma are people who are unwilling to stay the victim, instead can morph themselves into learners.  They refuse to take life as it is, just because people believe they should stay down.  They refuse to stick to the stereotypes that people force upon them. They are willing to muck around in the dark times of their lives as a chance to learn.  Why would they do that? Because they don’t want to make the same mistakes, they want to do it better the next time.  I once had someone say to me on an internet forum that “you’d think some of us would learn as we get older, but that isn’t the case”.  Guess what?  Age by itself isn’t a teacher.  Age is only a teacher if you learn the lessons as you go along and do the hard work needed to overcome challenges.

I believe the people who can grow from adversity are people who are willing to reflect on their lives and who have the courage to say when they made a mistake and are willing to make amends.  They aren’t afraid to put themselves out there, to be vulnerable, to risk, to be authentic, and to care.

I was just sitting here at the student union of the amazing university I get to teach at, reflecting on learning as I get ready to be immersed in an incredible professional development program, and I find I am in awe of where I am in my life.  I started to say I was the luckiest human being on the planet, but it isn’t luck. I have learned, that is why I am here.

Soon I will begin my traveling adventures again.  All the experiences I have had, the choices I have made, the people I have met and the obstacles I have overcome have brought me to this place. I have no regrets… just lessons learned.

Title IX – Lessons learned from a book on knitting

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My roommate bought me a book on knitting for Christmas.  I finally got around to reading it last weekend as I was ensconced in a beautiful cabin next to a lake looking out at the snow falling on the cedar trees. The perfect place to not only read a book on knitting but to actually knit.

If you know me then you know I am the most unlikely knitter.  I majored in math, I like sports, and although I come from a family of creative talented craftspeople, I have never gravitated toward making crafts.  I can do a minimal amount of woodworking and in another life, I used to sew.  I do love to cook but my time and energy has been devoted to what are typically seen as “men’s” pursuits… sports, outdoor activities, fixing things, etc. I have spent most of my lifetime in a world where men held power.  Thus for me, activities traditionally thought of as “men’s” were seen as having more value. That is, until the knitting book…

The author of the book talks about her own resistance to knitting, which is seen as a very female gendered activity. She is a woman about my age, having grown up in the era where we watched our older sisters and mothers burn their bras in protest of unequal rights, where we have watched women struggle to get hired or compensated equally to men, and where we watched men get ostracized because they chose professions or clothing that typically belongs to “women”.  So she, like me, resisted what we saw as “women’s” hobbies, or as my brothers would describe as “skirt work”.  But what I realized is that to devalue certain tasks because they are typically thought of as a female activity is the very epitome of anti-feminism and smacks of the idea that only activities that traditionally belong to men have value.  Hence, I started knitting.

Since I started thinking of this, I have had a couple of discussions with people that have really stuck in my psyche.  Both discussions were regarding female athletes “not being as good as men” or women’s sports (for example snowboarding at the Olympics) being perceived as “boring”.  It made me reflect on Title IX, which as first written, didn’t have anything to do with sports at all but that is what it became known for.

Some history (source Wikipedia):  The first person to introduce Title IX in Congress was its author and chief Senate sponsor, Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana.  Bayh was working on the Equal Rights Amendment and abolishing discriminatory treatment based on gender however was having difficulty getting the bill out of committee.  Since the Higher Education Act was on the floor of the Senate already, Bayh introduced an amendment, Title IX which said:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance…

In his remarks on the Senate floor, Bayh said, “We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband, go on to graduate school because they want a more interesting husband, and finally marry, have children, and never work again. The desire of many schools not to waste a ‘man’s place’ on a woman stems from such stereotyped notions. But the facts absolutely contradict these myths about the ‘weaker sex’ and it is time to change our operating assumptions….an equal chance to attend the schools of their choice, to develop the skills they want, and to apply those skills with the knowledge that they will have a fair chance to secure the jobs of their choice with equal pay for equal work”. 

Title IX became law on June 23, 1972.  At that time, less than 2% of women participated in athletics. There were several subsequent attempts to exempt revenue sports from the impact of Title IX (Tower Amendment) and it wasn’t until 1988 when the Civil Rights Restoration Act was passed that it was fully implemented. 1988… By then I was 25 years old and had two children.  1988…this isn’t ancient history, in fact, it is barely history at all.

People still don’t get it.   It isn’t about sports.  When I hear the conversation that women aren’t as “athletic” or that women’s sports don’t have the same excitement, it makes my blood boil. I have actually heard someone recently say that “women have their place” and that it isn’t in sports known as “men’s sports”.  When the Seattle Seahawks won the Superbowl and the press reported that it was the first national championship Seattle had won since the Sonics won the national championship for basketball, they totally disregarded the two National Championships the Seattle Storm has won.  And I repeat…this isn’t about sports… it is about respect.  As much as I love my Seahawks, it makes me want to never give my money or time attending or watching another Hawks game without first giving equal time and respect to the Storm.

Regardless whether you are a man or a woman, whether you stay at home or work a job, if you like or hate sports, if you are conservative or liberal, that isn’t what Title IX is about.  It is about choice.  It is about having the choice and freedom to participate in the activity you want to participate in, go to the school you want to attend, have the same chance to get hired for a job you are qualified for, or to stay home and take care of your family regardless of your gender.  Title IX is about equal rights for all people regardless of gender.  It isn’t about wanting to stay home with your family, there is nothing wrong with that and equal rights doesn’t mean losing that. It is about having a choice.

When I was in high school, women made less than 50 cents for every dollar a man did. Now, that is at 72 cents.  Progress right?  Wrong.  That means for a man who is making $20 a hour that is $800 a week, a little over $40,000 a year… for a woman in that same job, it would be $14.40 an hour or $576 a week which is less than $30,000.  That is a big difference.

It would be really easy to get complacent and say “we have come a long way” or “I am happy with my life now”.  I look at my granddaughters and I want better for them. I don’t want to stop fighting until they have the opportunity to make the same pay for the same job, until they can be a NASCAR driver if they want to without being seen as a “pretty token who actually can’t drive”, until they can get Red Bull to build them their own snowboarding park and sponsor them at the same level they sponsor a male snowboarder.  I want them to know a world where people give credence to their accomplishments, not because they are beautiful or because they wear the right clothes, but because of who they ARE.

So today, if you have a choice in your life to marry the person you want to marry, to go to the school you want to attend if you are qualified, or to participate fully in a sport, then take a moment to thank those of us who are in our 50-70’s who fought for you to have that freedom.  Thank those of us that played sports in skirts because we weren’t allowed to wear shorts but we did it anyway. Ask us about what it was like, our generation won’t be around much longer to fight the battle for you. Take time to thank the men and women who believe the world would be better if we didn’t belittle half of our population. And by the way…you are welcome.

And then do us a favor…don’t stop fighting.  Whether you are a man, woman, a career person or a stay-at-home caregiver… don’t stop fighting until we all have the right to live our best life, unrestricted by gender constraints, unbound, free and equal.  That goes for the man who wants to stay home with his kids while his wife works as well as the woman who doesn’t want kids but wants to be an engineer, or a NASCAR driver, or a snowboarder… and for equity’s sake, stop disparaging women in sports or objectifying them.  Treat them as equal human beings. Please. And go to a women’s sporting event, even if you are bored, just to show your support.  Do it to support all those of us who came before… who have sacrificed and fought so that women can earn $0.72 for every dollar a man does.  And don’t stop fighting even after we are gone.