Begin with the end in mind

Posted on September 30, 2014 by rangotti

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

Posted on August 30, 2014 by rangotti

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.

One 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.

My 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.

I 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.

When 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.

Before 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 Four: Order is Important

Posted on July 18, 2014 by rangotti

Everyone is different. Some people may thrive on chaos and lack of scheduling. Those people aren’t me. Maybe it is the mathematician in me, but I like order, I like planning, and I thrive on having a schedule. That doesn’t mean I am not adventurous or spontaneous, because I am certainly both of those things. There is lots of room in my life for flexibility and changing plans. But I enjoy the planning also.

One of the things I have been most influenced by on this year of self-discovery, is coming to understand that I like things orderly in my life. I like to get up at the same time every day, even on the weekends, I meditate, make my bed, exercise, and then make coffee. Every day. If I don’t, I am kind of floundering all day long, and nothing seems to get accomplished. It is like I didn’t shut yesterday off and I am still in it. I have to have a way to start my day with a routine, no matter where in the world I am. It works for me. It is kind of like resetting my life to a new day. The mistakes of yesterday are past, today I am starting anew. I reset my compass and then embrace the new day.

I also have realized that, although I am not a neat freak, I like order in my environment. As I start owning more possessions again, it makes me anxious. I am looking forward to having a house of my own again, at the same time, I am terrified of having to purchase furniture and decorate it. Clutter makes me crazy. There is peace in order. There is peace in having a small amount of possessions so that I know what I have and where everything is when I am looking for it. At least that is true for me.

One of the major lessons I have learned this year is that I want my life to be about simplicity That goes for the amount of possessions I own as well as where I end up deciding to live. When I lived in a high rise condo, it made my life difficult for the things I love to do. Just getting my bikes out was a huge chore. They were either in the storage unit or in the middle of my living room on the 7th floor and we weren’t allowed to take them in the elevator. Thus every time I rode, which was every day, it was this ordeal. It took a huge commitment on my part. Same with skiing, kayaking, etc. I want my life to be simple. I want a garage where I can work on my own gear, a small townhouse where I don’t have to do yard work but with outdoor space where I can have a container garden. Someplace that is easy to access the roads l love to ride, the water I love to paddle, and the mountain I love to ski on. I haven’t found it yet, but I am closer.

This year I learned that I want to spend less time and resources of my life taking care of “stuff” and have more to devote to taking care of myself and the people I love. Every day I want to practice mindfulness, letting go of attachment, reducing suffering (my own and others) and increasing happiness. I want my life to be about kindness and compassion. For me, I can’t do any of those things from a cluttered environment filled with a bunch of unnecessary stuff, and that includes both physical things as well as intellectual and emotional ones.

So I have this cleared out life. I cleared out my physical possessions, challenged the places where I was emotionally stuck, and got a new job to challenge myself intellectually. Now, how do I put the pieces back together again in a way that is conducive to how I want to live the last 1/3 of my life? That is the question.

Lesson Three: Take Bigger Steps

Posted on July 12, 2014 by rangotti

In Madrid, struggling to figure out who I was and what to hell I was doing in Madrid, I texted Matt and said I was taking two steps forward and three backwards. Matt’s answer, “take bigger steps”. At the time it made me laugh and I thought he was just being funny. I had no idea how profound those words really were until much later.

My plan after leaving Madrid was to travel around Spain and I was just stuck as to where to go and what to see. I hadn’t left the US as a tourist but as a traveler and there is a huge difference. People kept giving me advice as tourists. (go here, see that, do this) but traveling with no definitive itinerary and no plan isn’t the same thing as being a tourist. So I was floundering. Matt’s next words to me were “come to Nepal” which is where he and his lovely girlfriend Amanda happened to be at the time. Lonely and ready to see someone familiar, I threw my stuff together, left Madrid and flew to Katmandu. What I didn’t realize at the time was, I just took a much bigger step. It was a step which, eventually, would propel me forward out of floundering in a major way. My time in Nepal was magic. It was a catalyst for healing my soul, developing my identity, fueling my passion for life, and getting in touch with my spirituality in a profound way.

I didn’t realize how much Nepal had changed me until I got back to Seattle months later. Coming down from the mountaintop experience where I had clarity about my life and all I was seeking, I had to then return to my actual life with its challenges and opportunities. Trying to integrate the new growth with the old life was probably the most difficult period of all of my sabbatical. From January to April, I struggled more than I can ever remember. I would use the word depression but I wasn’t sad, just stymied. I couldn’t figure out where the girl I had left on top of Sarangkot, the girl who did yoga and mediated every day and then climbed mountains for fun, I couldn’t seem to find that girl again. And that is the girl I wanted to be. Instead, with no structure to my days, I was on the couch in my pajamas at 7:30 pm after never even getting dressed all day. I was again moving two steps forward and three back.

It was mid April and I realized I had to take bigger steps. Movement is life and I had to start moving, physically, mentally and emotionally. The next day, I was up at 4 am for meditation, to greet the day, and was at the gym at 5 am. I have started my day the same way on the majority of mornings since. And guess what? That girl that I left on top of Sarangkot? She’s back.

When you are stuck and you feel like you are doing the right things to be on the path you want to walk but you don’t seem to be moving anywhere, take bigger steps. It is funny how that is actually true in so many things. Physically, I had plateaued in my fitness. I added Tabata training to my regular working and that propelled my fitness level upward. Intellectually, I needed a challenge so I changed jobs and jumped into a visualization project that is totally stumping me and, even though it is frustrating, I can’t put it down. It is a huge intellectual challenge for me and I am loving it. Emotionally, pushing myself to go back to therapy after I swore I would never trust another mental health care professional again, was a giant step forward. All these things have helped me get to a place where I am stronger in all those areas than I have ever been in my whole life. It is a great place to be. I feel integrated and whole, that my internal view of who I am meets the external life that I display. It is a pretty awesome place to be.

You don’t have to jump off mountains or get up at 5 am. But you do have to keep moving, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Whatever your challenge is in your life, wherever you feel stuck and can’t figure out what to do, take bigger steps. Do something that will defibrillate that area. Challenge yourself physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Movement is life. Live it.

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

Posted on June 27, 2014 by rangotti

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.

I 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.

Physically, 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.

So 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.

No regrets, just lessons learned…

Posted on June 21, 2014 by rangotti

Sabbatical is almost over. I packed up my office yesterday, part of the final transition to a new office and a new job. It was bittersweet as it brought back all the memories of the hope I had when I took my current job 7 years ago. I decided it was time to start reflecting on this year and the lessons I have learned. I have to say, it has been a great year and I am a different person then when I started. The year was the most challenging yet rewarding time I have ever experienced. I truly have no regrets when I look at where I am right now.

I have had a rough few years transitioning to being single, having an empty nest, paying off a huge debt, moving across the country, learning the culture of a new job and an urban environment, trying to learn how to live for the first time from a place of abundance and making my own choices for my life when I no longer have to care for children/husband/family. For all the times we all say we wish we had no responsibilities, it really isn’t as easy as it sounds. But that is what I had done, freed myself from obligations, and then was adrift trying to figure out how to live my life after a lifetime of taking care of other people. I struggled to learn how to take care of myself.

When I started on sabbatical, I felt like I was stuck in an endless loop of latent emotion in reaction to situations that I saw as personal and professional failures. No matter how hard I tried to move on within the framework of everyday life, reminders of those perceived failures kept cropping up seemingly everywhere I turned. Whether in a photograph, opening a chest and finding my wedding dress, common friends, going through old files, bumping into former students… it just seemed like I was being haunted by a life that was over, a life that had been divided by zero and was undefined.

Given all that, the questions of sabbatical became, how does one get over several traumas happening in a very short time period that shake the entire foundation of your life? How does one start over again from a life undefined? How do you figure out who you want to be and what kind of life you want to live? My friend Matt once said, “Robin, you have to rewrite your hard drive“, so sabbatical became a chance to just wipe it all clean, a whole system reboot. It is a chance that many people long for in their lives but few are privileged to have: a second life.

I got rid of my house, all my stuff that had any emotional attachment to my former life, one by one let go of dependencies I had for emotional support, and just learned to stand on my own. I have no regrets, but lots of lessons learned. Over the next few weeks, I hope to be able to share those lessons and a glimpse of the strong, confident, whole person I have become.

For today, on this beautiful day that is the beginning of summer, I have mountains to climb and bikes to ride so I will leave you with the words and the music that has become the theme song of my year.

Wake Me Up (Avicii)

Feeling my way through the darkness
Guided by a beating heart
I can’t tell where the journey will end
But I know where to start

They tell me I’m too young to understand
They say I’m caught up in a dream
Well life will pass me by if I don’t open up my eyes
Well that’s fine by me

So wake me up when it’s all over
When I’m wiser and I’m older
All this time I was finding myself
And I didn’t know I was lost

I tried carrying the weight of the world
But I only have two hands
Hope I get the chance to travel the world
But I don’t have any plans

Wish that I could stay forever this young
Not afraid to close my eyes
Life’s a game made for everyone
And love is the prize

Forgiveness

Posted on May 24, 2014 by rangotti

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.

One 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

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.

No regrets…just lessons learned

Posted on February 24, 2014 by rangotti

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.

TextMatt.com

Posted on February 19, 2014 by rangotti

I had a lovely meeting with my friend Sally yesterday. She wanted to hear about my sabbatical adventures. I told her about being in Spain and feeling like I was emotionally and mentally going backward and texting my friend Matt and saying “I am taking one step forward and three steps back” to which he replied “take bigger steps forward”. He always knew just what to say to make me laugh and put my issues into perspective. Sally was laughing at the story and said the same thing many of my friends have said. She said “I need a Matt to text when I am struggling”. To which I thought…don’t we all?

So we thought, why not a website? TextMatt.com. Why not indeed? In the absence of such a great website, today, I am trying to channel my inner Matt. There are a few women I can think of that need some Matt wisdom.

To Sally, Jessica, Heather, Rachel, Keri, Amanda, Tracy and all the other young women I know, some that I have spoken with recently. You are young women who are struggling to figure out how to do it all, to love deeply the men and women you care about, risk having and raising children, push forward in careers, struggle with worries about money and how you are going to accomplish everything. You think about the impact you are having on the world around you as you are managing the mundane of everyday life… Here is what Matt would say to you:

Embrace it all. All of those moments, put together like pieces of fabric in a quilt, is what will ultimately make up your life. Love, loss, careers, staying home with babies, cooking, cleaning, saving lives, teaching, jumping out of planes, skiing, getting a dog, playing softball, getting a PhD, going to China… each moment, together with the moments before it and the moment after it, become your life. None of it is wrong and every moment is as important as the last, whether you are cooking dinner, carting kids around, programming software, or marrying the person you love. All of it has value. Stop spending all the time worrying about doing it wrong and just do it. Because whether it is right or wrong, at least you didn’t let the moment pass by, unlived.

Many people live their whole lives refusing to take risks, sitting safely on the sidelines watching their lives go by, fearing the unknown of change, wrapped up in bubble wrap in a state of perfection which, underneath that façade is anything but perfection. They live in an endless struggle of wanting others to believe that their lives are perfect, afraid to show vulnerability, afraid to be real.

Matt would tell you to live a life that is sloppy, messy, and imperfect. Just let it hit you with all the struggles, joys, challenges and opportunities and embrace them all. Find sloppy, messy, and imperfect people to surround yourself with. People who accept you in all your crazy glory. You are strong and will get stronger as you get older. Don’t let anyone make you believe otherwise. Be true to yourself and keep dancing around the kitchen, unrestrained. Be vulnerable, authentic, whole, and wide open… people will think you are batshit crazy because of it, but Matt would say to you… batshit crazy is the best way to live your life.

Love the men and women you love, live the life that makes you happy, and never ever let anyone tell you that you are doing it wrong. Soon, the day will come and you will be looking back across the years at all you have accomplished. You will be watching those children become adults, with struggles of their own. You will be laughing about the adventures you had, remembering the people who have come and gone from your life, and being thankful that you were given this ride on the planet. You will look across your career at the lives you touched and impacted, whether directly through occupations like teaching and nursing, or indirectly through creating clean water or a better living environment of a newly designed house. And you will know that your lives were well-lived. There is no greater joy than that of a well-lived life. That is what Matt would say.

From me: I am so proud of all of you. I am grateful that you all came into my life. You have enriched my life and changed me as a person. I am a better person from knowing all of you. I know that when my time is up on this planet that there will be a generation of strong confident women who are impacting the world around them, making it better for the women and men of the next generation.

Oh, and Matt also says: Just say no to crack.

Title IX – Lessons learned from a book on knitting

Posted on February 13, 2014 by rangotti

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.

Life Divided by Zero

The Journey of Becoming Undefined

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