Browsing Tag

fear

Brave, emerge, fear, light, Quotes, Word of the Year

Word for 2012: Emerge

December 30, 2011

“I feel my boots trying to leave the ground, I feel my heart pumping hard. I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” – Mary Oliver

 

“Are you still writing?”

I hadn’t spoken to him in 10 years, but in the 3 minutes we spent on the phone, he asked if I was still writing.

“A little,” I said.

A little?

I still can’t do it. I still feel apologetic when I talk about writing.

Then someone I loved asked me if I actually wanted to be a writer… after all, I don’t act like one.

Do I?  Do I want to be a writer? Do I love writing?  No. I love words. I love words that when strung together have the power to create inspiration and connection.  I love what is possible when you write.

The truth will be evident to anyone who really knows me or who reads this blog occasionally.

The truth is that writing scares me, but it is actually bigger than that:

I scare me.

I can’t just sit down and write for the sake of writing. I could never paint for the sake of painting or cook for the sake of cooking or tidy for the sake of tidying, or exercise for the sake of simply moving my body. In the past, everything with me has had to be a production, the creation of something wonderful or be in some way A BIG DEAL.

So it is no surprise that I just stopped trying. Grown-up life just didn’t have the fireworks that I craved, and feeling that electric every day with no return just creates disappointment. Then, forgetting that I had given up shooting for the moon, I went through hell trying to figure out what was wrong with me and why I wasn’t living up to my own perceived potential.

That’s where 2012 comes in.

Marianne Williamson said: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

It is my light that most frightens me, but I have spent years focusing instead on the darkness.

2012 is about focusing on the light.  Period.  But instead of giving myself more pressure to be, do and feel all at once, 2012 is about emerging.

Emerge for me is traveling the distance between the dark and the light, choosing to step closer to one and farther away from the other.  It’s made up of one choice, one step, one feeling at a time and being patient if those movements take a little while.

I am capable of miracles. I am capable of magic.

…and blinking, I step closer to the light.

xo

Image and Sculpture by Paige Bradley

fear, Musings, Wild Woman

What comes of dabbling

July 26, 2011

“This is what comes from dabbling. You can’t practice witchcraft while you look down your nose at it.” – Aunt Jet, Practical Magic (the movie)

 

conservatory-1When I was a teen-ager I decided I wanted to do yoga.  Typically, rather than go to a class I read a book about it.  The book I chose told me all about the diet and the philosophy and it freaked me out.  Be a vegetarian? Meditate? At 16? You might as well have asked me to go to Mars. What would people think?

When I discovered new age and esoteric bookstores at the age of 17, I would spend hours in them, thumbing through books and wondering what it was that compelled me so.  I’d spend so long in them that the smell would cling to my skin afterwards. I was too nervous to pay attention to that call.  What would people think?

There is a great scene in the movie Practical Magic where Sandra Bullock’s character Sally has caused huge problems by using magic.  Stockard Channing’s character scolds her with the line I have quoted above.  But the only reason that Sally looks down her nose at magic is because she is desperate to fit in – she worries what people will think if she admits who she is.  There is a bit of universal truth in there.  You can’t properly practice anything if you are worried about what people will think.  You can’t embrace your true self if you are also desperate to fit in.  If you are dabbling in something, on some level you have decided not to admit that that is who you are.

On my shelves there are multiple dozens of books with a scrap of paper in them that mark the place where the book got uncomfortable.  The bookmarks show where I stopped growing and stuck with dabbling.  They show the place where it got dirty or scary or wild or raw or sacred or in some other way too much.  So that is where I am going next. It makes perfect sense to me that some of my pathmarkers are bookmarks, because words have always been how I find my way.

xo

(picture of the Practical Magic green house borrowed from hookedonhouses)

Musings, Word of the Year

A Nourished Life

January 9, 2011

“What I’ve found is that our true home is a place of fearlessness in the heart—your heart, my heart, every heart. Furthermore, and much more importantly, home is not some fixed point toward which we aspire; it is steadily expanding state.” – Elena Brower

 

romepostersmeggenge

So far 2011 has not had full participation from me. I have spent the first two weeks of its life full of cold and feeling quite disconnected from the whole thing.  That’s the problem with a new year: if you don’t leap in and take it by the hand and stick with it, you feel like a failure before it is even out of infancy.  But the sun was shining this morning, and I thought I’d give it another try.

Seeking inspiration I started poking around a few blogs.  About half an hour in I realized that I was beginning to feel worse again.  It wasn’t until I got to a colourful blog (which will remain nameless) that sparkling light dawned on this cold-addled brain and I realized that I was doing it again: comparing.

This nameless blogger had made a list of all of the wonderful things she was doing to make sure she was healthy and happy in the new year.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that this list was extensive.  And while I am so happy for her that she is able to cleanse her colon regularly and run miles and do yoga and eat raw vegan food and raise her perfect raw vegan kids, and do a pilgrimage and publish her books and and and, I was not able to pull my head out of my own insecurities enough to just read the list.  All I saw in front of me was: not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.

Opening my email box a few minutes later I was confronted with a sea of ways that I could become good enough if I only gave this person or that company my money.  While I know that there is some wonderful stuff out there, it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate it out because of all of the people wanting to cash in on that culturally pervasive not-good-enough fear.

Thinking about it, there are three things I know for sure:

  • Fear packaged up in a big shiny red bow is still fear.
  • Comparing ourselves to other people’s public sides is extremely dangerous.
  • We will never live up to that unreal ideal.

So here is this blogger’s list of the things she is going to do to be happy and healthy this year:

  1. In every way, every day attempt to choose nourishment.

Yep, that’s it.  On my birthday I chose kindness, for 2011 I chose the focus on my pelt, and if you add those together, it’s all about nourishment of body and soul.  There will be no comparisons, no toxic waste, no fear of not being good enough, and no anger if I don’t manage it. It will be about beginning to see other people as souls also in need of nourishment and getting to know what nourishes me.

And no, I don’t want to buy your box set of DVDs on the subject for $197.00.  But thanks for thinking of me.

xo

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