Pink Coyote

Buzz Buzz

The raised beds are in and mostly planted to my delight.  Blogging takes a back seat whenever work with the hands is the priority.  Between massaging at the day spa and digging in the earth, my hands are under serious duress.  They are swollen and sore most mornings and sunburned, too. Anyone know of the magic solution?

I took a restorative yoga class on Sunday.  If you've never done this and your back suffers, I recommend it. I don't know how classes or instructors vary, but we were put in a series of asanas using props under our backs, bums or legs-holding the positions for 10-15 minutes each.  Sometimes it would take 5 of those minutes for the burning in my muscles to stop.  Many positions were like propped up backbends.  It took a day to feel the real benefit-a soft, relaxed back!  Of course, it only lasted about 2 days.  Once I went back to work, I was burning again. 

Spring is fully sprung here, the bees are buzzing, inspiring work and planting.  It doesn't seem like the restful winter season lasted very long!  The work, work, work is never done.  Sometimes it seems this is all our culture knows.  My fantasy is that in generations past, the workloads were offset by regular campfires and conversations, fishing trips and lying in hammocks with lemonade nearby. 

That's why it's called a fantasy, I suppose. 

This quote keeps falling on my path and I want to pay attention to what it means for me:

"Be who you are
and say what you feel
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind."
~Dr. Seuss

Miles got the attention of the yoga instructor at Mommy and Me Yoga yesterday as he perfected his downward facing dog.  This picture was taken when he was in the early stages of working on his form.  I don't know if he picked it up from me or if babies just love this pose!  You can see more adorable yogis in this really cute book.

I traded cd's with a friend last night and scored Neko Case's record Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which I spun all the way home.  Her musical poetry has a way of triggering so many buried emotions in me, sometimes stirring the loneliness at my core.  I love the artwork on the packaging, too.  Tracks Maybe Sparrow and Star Witness stand out.

Today is about moving slowly and thoughtfully, as a shadow looms. 

Grit

I'm so grateful for everyone's comments about self-care.  It takes time for me to learn a new way.  I'm hoping that this topic stays close to me all year and that I don't forget to  stop and nurture myself when I need to, rather than space out and forget that I have to eat or sleep in order to keep going.  It all comes back to living my life in an awakened and aware state-consciousness. 

The word "grit" keeps swimming around in my mind after a friend sent me an article naming grit as one of the most important values to instill in one's child when preparing he or she for a thriving, abundant life.  It was in the context of an article he's writing for his ezine, which I am contribute a bit of writing and some editing to.

I've been thinking about how it is possible that those folks with grit are usually the ones to own the company.  Those lacking grit tend to work as an employee.  The parenting courses that I'm so nuts about discusses fostering curiosity and exploration in your child so that he or she will ask questions, challenge authority and strive for greatness rather than settling for doing what they're told and accepting the ceiling above their heads.  This can seem an abstract concept at times, but for the sake of this post, I'm going to buy into it.

What does grit look like in a person?  Does one who has it manage their emotional, physical and mental lives well?  Do they look overworked?  Do they neglect aspects of their lives in order to focus on a more important goal?  Are they extremely resilient, seldom letting illusions of failure keep them from trying again and again? Is one born with it?  What happens in the early years to inspire or foster grit in the personality?  Do you have it?  What's it like?

I'm itching to know what you have to say!

Big Cheese

What a charmer he already is.

I want to send a huge I MISS YOU out to my regular stops to say that I am yearning to connect in your world.  Alas, the adjustment back into the working world is taking me more time than moving to a new town! 

I want to know how you take care of yourselves during transition.  I need help creating self-care when it is the last thing on my mind.  Please tell me what works for you!

Soothing the Soul

Happy 37 to the amazing B.  I adore you, husband.

Drinking: Tazo Zen-not even original enough to warrant a link, but still a tasty and uplifting green blend.

Favorite T Shirt: Michael Stars thermal elbow tee in a kelly green color I don't see on the website...soft and nurturing on me skin.

Listening: Simple Soul- the folkiest Scotswoman you ever heared.  Soothing to the max, like the nurturing sister you don't have.  Or do have!

Reading: Einstein Never Used Flashcards:How Our Children Really Learn-- and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less.  Play.  I can do it.

The subject of self-care keeps coming up for me.  When I'm in transition (new job, new town & house, etc) I wear it.  You can see it on my face.  I skip meals, get less sleep, write in my journal only once in a while, post fewer blogs!  Taking care of me is something I sometimes don't do very well, it's as if I forget my need to recharge in order to get through my next days tasks.

For years I have counted on this woman to remind me how to take care of myself.  She is a constant source of fresh information about what heals and soothes the soul and lights the creative fire.  I just love calling her a friend and am yearning-LONGING to take another of her retreats.  They absolutely deliver renewal and quietude, much much needed here.  Her Wild Prayers retreat in Sedona in April is calling to me....

Missing your voice,

P

This Quiet Pond

A few weeks ago I posted an entry about healing, one of my usual topics.  I got a few emails asking what it is that I'm so gung-ho about healing.  One person said, "You seem healthy to me!", which I thought was hysterical.  So I thought I'd just mention what it is I'm healing, because it may in fact, be a mystery to more than the brave few who said, What the Hell!?

What I'm healing is my personality.  That must read really strangely.  Because of the work I've been doing and who I've been doing it with (new site up soon), "healing my personality" rolls off the tongue easily for me, though it was a relatively new concept last year. 

It was at that time that I began stage one zillion of seeking answers to my suffering: the inner kind, the kind that affects how I respond to my loved ones, the kind of conflicts and resolutions we have, and also to gain more insight about the feelings my new baby was triggering for me.

I can be seen, nose buried deep in books, (Amazon delivering each day), writing furiously in my journal every moment I get the opportunity, digging deep for the words to tell someone when I've hurt them or been hurt, knowing that there are deeper, unseen reasons for why I am prone to responding patternistically to certain kinds of, ahem,...stimulus. 

So there it is.  I am healing the childhood wounds that caused the negative aspects of my personality to mold and shape into its current form.  I am doing it so I can have better, cleaner relationships with my friends and family and so I don't imprint the things I don't love about myself (anxiety, defensiveness) onto Miles.  I also don't want to imprint my exaggerated, opposite-swinging reactions to the way I was raised on him. 

I do it so I can learn to fight clean, as dirty fighting was modeled for me and I have unconsciously tried to make that work in past relationships.  My passive husband doesn't do that dance, so over a decade ago, we began learning a whole new way.  I am committed to having a clean and fair fight, no matter what.  Another KaPow for patterns and that pesky ego.

I want to take responsibility for M in modeling how to be happy and functional in a relationship.  I don't want him to have to suffer through decades of trying to change himself or to give up and settle for mediocre relationships.  I think of it as my gift to him and those who will love him. 

There are times when I feel so lonely doing this, because it is just a lonely kind of business.  It is one of those many things I've done in my life that can only be done by me. 

This hangs on a the wall in my friend's health food store, The Tree:

"All things change when we do."

I love the promise in that.

Under the Weather

Tractor boy and the rest of the Campbells are sick sicky tonite. 

Will return when sinuses and lungs clear.  Please send steamy, hot eucalyptus thoughts to a very unhappy baby boy.

Mirrors and Frog Hairs

I am really finding my way around this new blog while taking my sweet time, aren't I?

Do my pictures look fuzzy? I think my browser is making them this way, or that I lost resolution in the transfer and I'm now supposed to reload them all again here.  It would help if I was storing all those old photos on this machine!  Alas, they are on a hard drive that is a pain in the ass to hook up and search for 'em...

There is so much happening in my world at the moment.  I'm burning to share it all, but it would produce an extremely long post, so I'll tell you in a nutshell then maybe explain more later.

Last Wednesday I had quite a crazy experience.  I went to a lecture on discipline and got HIT OVER THE HEAD with a lightbulb about my parenting.  I often talk about "blind spots" and how when I'm too close to something I often can't see it.  It takes for someone I trust to see it and give me feedback and THEN I can see it.  I'll just say that that the next day Miles was weaned and walking-two things I was preventing from happening that were all about me and not him.  I couldn't see it.  I was misreading him and projecting my sadness and feelings onto him from my own childhood.  For the balls of a couple of expert friends, I got a safe and honest mirror.  Thank goodness because with him at 17 months old, both of us were suffering a stuckness I couldn't figure out.  I was down to two nursings a day at bedtimes, but he was not sad when I didn't offer him milk at bedtimes.  This is how I knew I'd been believing a lie.  I believed it was going to be this traumatic event for both of us and it wasn't.  I was creating a dependent child and I was oblivious to it.  I think he wanted to individuate months ago, but I was holding on too tightly... This experience showed me that I create realities in my life totally unconsciously even though I make being conscious a huge part of my life's work.  Pass the humble pie, please.  Again.

I am renting a massage space in a day spa here in new town, California as of last Wednesday and I have been running like a mess since then.  I got sick immediately, then Miles did.  I'm excited that he's walking, I'm working in the evenings and cleaning up because the spa is hoppin', everyone who works there is dreamy and everyone who comes in leaves blissed out, I am an independent contractor and make my own hours (and get to write off shoe purchases again :), and we can now dig ourselves out of the debt that having a SAHM gets a family into.  Without sacraficing much time with my boy at all.  What a fantasy come true!

I'm not reading, thinking, or watching many films, but life is finding its way toward balance and I suspect it will take a bit longer before I can report on the finer things.  For today, I quote my dad, "I'm fine as a frog hair split both ways".  Molly Ivins would be proud.