How many of you grew up with a workaholic for a parent? How many of you were shown over and over and over again that your stuff, or even family stuff was secondary to the need to excel at work?
It just dawned on me how deeply embedded that belief is in me. Here I've been thinking that because I don't work at a traditional job, and because I don't work at my non traditional work all the time that I couldn't possibly be mistaken for a workaholic...certainly no one would ever label me with that word.
Like everything else, though, being a workaholic starts in the mind. Perfectionism, ambition, drive, passion, dedication...those are all words I've used that kept me from understanding how the early lesson of "work hard, because play is for failures" has shaped the way I think about my purpose, my calling, my family, and how I live my day to day life.
I learned that rest = laziness, unless you've worked yourself to the bone, and now cannot get out of bed for 24 hours.
I learned that letting work go until tomorrow was equivalent to saying no to God's blessings.
I learned that if you have a calling, it should take precedence over every other thing in your life, or even if it's not your calling...work comes first.
Work came before school plays, concerts, birthdays, holidays, and family meals. It came before schoolwork, play, downtime, and it certainly was a higher priority than personal health.
This, among other things, bred an environment of manic stress. It was almost constant.
It also bred a bunch of "hard little workers."
I left my home of origin with a lot to sort out. This work issue, it wasn't so urgent.
I struggled with work, though. I struggled to stay in one job, opting to hop from place to place. Just as they were about to promote me, I'd quit, tell myself I was bored and find something else. Honestly, I was just afraid of getting trapped in what felt like the food/retail management hole. I wanted something different. I wanted to hitch my wagon to a star, but I couldn't reach the stars. I knew I must not be working hard enough.
So I went to work on myself.
The idea that life could flow easily never occurred to me. The idea that the right star would float my way just as soon as I allowed Life to flow through me wasn't even on the register. The idea that all of the pain and trouble would wash its own way out if I were to trust seemed like some quack's flaky "solution" to life's problems. Yeah. Right.
Proactive. That was what I needed to be.
And maybe I did.
Maybe I had to take life by the horns so I could get to a place where I could believe the guiding voice inside without analysis or angst.
Mostly, I think I was just exploring what it feels like to be in control. All the healing, though, happened when I wasn't looking, and in ways I never expected.
As I was healing, my intuition began to take over. Do this, it would say, and when I didn't, I could feel the impact, and when I did....bliss. I began to let go here and there. I began to trust when Life said, "You don't have to be perfect. Take the kids through the drive-thru. It's okay to make yourself comfortable. Don't strain your mind," as much as I trusted directions like, "This woman will guide you through this. You can handle this now. Feed your soul. Go to the woods. Reach out to this person. Start that book. Let go of your old life, leaving everything and everyone that cannot or will not support your new way of being."
Ever so slowly, I have learned to listen, trust, and act in line with my intuition. It never, ever leads me astray.
It is the star I've hitched my wagon to.
Today, it is teaching me, that no matter how important I feel the work is that I'm working on, about a bazillion things are more important than it is. My well-being, tickle time, sunshine, inner peace, my family and home of creation, learning, making space for growth....it goes on and on. I love the work that was laid out before me. It's intense, and it is mine, but it is not all encompassing, and it will happen in its good time.
The real "work" is me, and it is not the work of my childhood. It is not grave, demanding, or worth starving for.
It's the work of nourishment. It is flow and allowance. It's the tending of the Joy Garden. It's the stirring of the Hearth. It's the love of Mama Resource. It's the building of our potential, and it is allowed to be both passive and active. It is Intention and Trust.
It's an ear to listen and a heart to follow.
The rest is not worth being urgent about, because the rest will happen naturally. Your calling, or your Life's work flows naturally from you when you are kindling the Hearth with loving compassion for yourself.
All of those old beliefs seem so flimsy next to these new truths. I'm laying them to rest with profound gratitude...I've come this far with them after all. It's just that, I've found a way that is better for the life I'm creating right now. So, workaholistic-thinking, thank you, and...dissolve in peace.
<3
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
Rolls and Rumbles
Sometimes the only thing that seems appropriate is a thunderstorm. We are experiencing just such a thing right now up here in our hilly region of Michigan.
We used to live in Ohio...the flat part of Ohio that is. The first storm we experienced up here was more than a little unsettling. The thunder doesn't clap and boom and explode the way it does when you live on flat land. It rolls. Rolling thunder. It starts in as a low growl and slowly rolls up and over itself until the undertow draws it back to the steady drone that tends to make itself our soundtrack for entire nights once it shows up.
I woke to its menacing vibration a month or so after we moved here. I'd never heard rolling thunder before. I woke Oliver up.
"What is that noise?" I asked him.
He jolts awake and grabs the bat assuming his "do not fuck with my family" persona. I always feel safe when Oliver is around.
We stay silent and listen to the rumble. We wonder: Tornado?
No, it's not a tornado. We listen to the rise and fall, the auditory sister of the lake's waves only miles away.
As we slowly began to accept that this was thunder here, our new thunder, Oliver drifted off to sleep. I lay awake, not sleeping well for the rest of the night. I kept waiting for the thunder to spend itself with a soul wrenching crash. I kept waiting for the storm to wage its fury on us, but instead it rolled on and on and on; not gentle by any means, but never giving over to the rage to which I was accustomed.
All that night I lay feeling dissatisfied, smolderingly angry, really. Eventually the thunder dissolved away as the storms here seem to do. It lacked closure, like the storm hadn't confronted itself or the cycle it was a part of. It just sort of kept pace. I wouldn't accept it. It was a calculated, tip-toeing storm, and I did not want to be near it. Just rage and get it over with, I thought.
******
Tonight, I didn't notice that the thunder was rolling until I started writing about it. This rolling thunder has woven it's way into my fabric of being. It has taught me that, in fact, it is not disingenuously calculated, rather it is steady, it does not tip-toe, it simply has mastered the art of allowing.
The ebb and flow is an aspect of living. There is no getting around it, and floating amongst the waves is not weak. There can be a time for rage, for crashing and banging and great big releasing, but there is no shame in allowing a slow steady, anchored release. They are equally valid methods of weathering those periods when different aspects of ourselves are charged in opposing ways creating a storm within. One is quick, fierce, striking, and frightening; the other is slow, measured, and utterly painful to bear--like childbirth. We need both. Or at least I do.
For the last year, I have spent intimate time with the rolling thunder that threatened to shake me right off of my foundation. The steady rumble lasted so long that, in fact, the house of cards other people built for me came crashing down bringing me right with it. Fortunately, I've been doing my own building these past years. Just as soon as I stopped trying to save the old, useless dollhouse, I leaned into trusting that there was something real for me already in place and allowed the cards to fall, and then....well, it was like magic. Painful magic.
Every card has a face, a memory, or an object stamped on it. Some have been excruciating to send to the compost heap, and that's not drama talking. With every card that fell, especially those big, difficult ones, I could see more clearly what I'd been building for myself. Four months ago, I thought I was walking on the edge of losing everything I've worked for, i.e. my sanity. Now I know that I simply needed to take time to let go of everything else. I was not prepared to rage last year at this time, or even four months ago. I needed the steady shaking apart of the shelter house that had been stunting my growth and blocking my vision, all while charming me with the empty promise of safety from all the things that frighten me.
For the last three weeks, though, I have raged against the ugliest, most difficult parts of that card house.
Think primal roar. And devastating grief. Finally, the bare bones of emotion that I've been wrestling with for a long while. Cycle those two endlessly, and that has been my month of April.
The perfect recipe for a rip-roaring storm.
******
And you know what happened after I wrote this last night? A big bang crashing Ohio style thunder storm, and a whole lot of release.
Who would have thought?
Anyone else getting shaken up out there?
We used to live in Ohio...the flat part of Ohio that is. The first storm we experienced up here was more than a little unsettling. The thunder doesn't clap and boom and explode the way it does when you live on flat land. It rolls. Rolling thunder. It starts in as a low growl and slowly rolls up and over itself until the undertow draws it back to the steady drone that tends to make itself our soundtrack for entire nights once it shows up.
I woke to its menacing vibration a month or so after we moved here. I'd never heard rolling thunder before. I woke Oliver up.
"What is that noise?" I asked him.
He jolts awake and grabs the bat assuming his "do not fuck with my family" persona. I always feel safe when Oliver is around.
We stay silent and listen to the rumble. We wonder: Tornado?
No, it's not a tornado. We listen to the rise and fall, the auditory sister of the lake's waves only miles away.
As we slowly began to accept that this was thunder here, our new thunder, Oliver drifted off to sleep. I lay awake, not sleeping well for the rest of the night. I kept waiting for the thunder to spend itself with a soul wrenching crash. I kept waiting for the storm to wage its fury on us, but instead it rolled on and on and on; not gentle by any means, but never giving over to the rage to which I was accustomed.
All that night I lay feeling dissatisfied, smolderingly angry, really. Eventually the thunder dissolved away as the storms here seem to do. It lacked closure, like the storm hadn't confronted itself or the cycle it was a part of. It just sort of kept pace. I wouldn't accept it. It was a calculated, tip-toeing storm, and I did not want to be near it. Just rage and get it over with, I thought.
******
Tonight, I didn't notice that the thunder was rolling until I started writing about it. This rolling thunder has woven it's way into my fabric of being. It has taught me that, in fact, it is not disingenuously calculated, rather it is steady, it does not tip-toe, it simply has mastered the art of allowing.
The ebb and flow is an aspect of living. There is no getting around it, and floating amongst the waves is not weak. There can be a time for rage, for crashing and banging and great big releasing, but there is no shame in allowing a slow steady, anchored release. They are equally valid methods of weathering those periods when different aspects of ourselves are charged in opposing ways creating a storm within. One is quick, fierce, striking, and frightening; the other is slow, measured, and utterly painful to bear--like childbirth. We need both. Or at least I do.
For the last year, I have spent intimate time with the rolling thunder that threatened to shake me right off of my foundation. The steady rumble lasted so long that, in fact, the house of cards other people built for me came crashing down bringing me right with it. Fortunately, I've been doing my own building these past years. Just as soon as I stopped trying to save the old, useless dollhouse, I leaned into trusting that there was something real for me already in place and allowed the cards to fall, and then....well, it was like magic. Painful magic.
Every card has a face, a memory, or an object stamped on it. Some have been excruciating to send to the compost heap, and that's not drama talking. With every card that fell, especially those big, difficult ones, I could see more clearly what I'd been building for myself. Four months ago, I thought I was walking on the edge of losing everything I've worked for, i.e. my sanity. Now I know that I simply needed to take time to let go of everything else. I was not prepared to rage last year at this time, or even four months ago. I needed the steady shaking apart of the shelter house that had been stunting my growth and blocking my vision, all while charming me with the empty promise of safety from all the things that frighten me.
For the last three weeks, though, I have raged against the ugliest, most difficult parts of that card house.
Think primal roar. And devastating grief. Finally, the bare bones of emotion that I've been wrestling with for a long while. Cycle those two endlessly, and that has been my month of April.
The perfect recipe for a rip-roaring storm.
******
And you know what happened after I wrote this last night? A big bang crashing Ohio style thunder storm, and a whole lot of release.
Who would have thought?
Anyone else getting shaken up out there?
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Poets Gifts
"Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living
And forthwith found salvation in surrender."
-Robert Frost, The Gift Outright
Surrendering
>>to the place I inhabit right now<<
It's a good place.
I got here. I'll get there, too.
whispered announcements are juicier
I thought about not actually posting this, but I wanted to at least keep the ladies who have shared themselves with this project posted on what I've been doing with their stories. They were so brave in putting themselves out there for others. I can follow their lead and be brave in letting people know what my plans are.
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, and magic in it. Begin it now." ~ GoetheIt's one of my favorite quotes. Beginning things isn't usually difficult for me, but sharing what I'm doing is. I'm a fox. A natural blender inner. I know how to go in cognito with what's really going on for me, but I need to dip my toe in the pool of being more transparant with my work.
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