Month: June 2019

The true gift behind a gift

I have a friend who is wonderful at gift-giving. Within her close circle of family and friends, she remembers every birthday, anniversary, holiday, and even gives gifts in-between special events. She may be out shopping, sees something she thinks I would like, picks it up for me, and when I offer heart-felt thanks she quite nonchalantly gives me a dismissive wave of her hand, saying something like “oh, it’s no big deal…I just saw it and thought of you”.

My boyfriend Jim is also great at gift-giving, but he does it a little differently. I came home once from a business trip to find that he had surprised me by stringing Edison lights around my back porch and planted two little bushes in my empty ceramic planters. He always makes the bed on the nights he stays over (which is truly a gift as I often don’t make my bed in the mornings because it seems I’m always running late for work), and he notices little things in and around my home that may need to be repaired, and fixes things often without even being asked.

The definition of a gift, according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, is: something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation. Okay, so that’s a dry definition of a gift as it speaks to the thing, or tangible item that is being given, but what about the thought, the energy, and the emotion behind the gift? Isn’t that what we should consider as the real gift?

I started thinking about this concept of recognizing what really is the “gift behind the gift” after a conversation with my friend Karla. Karla and I met at Starbucks one Sunday morning to sit outside for a catch-up and coffee, and she started telling me stories of her family. She told me about her mother-in-law, who lived in El Salvador, and how as a wedding present her mother-in-law gave her several pounds of fresh, ground coffee. I must have been dismissive in my response to Karla, because she pulled her sunglasses down to the bridge of her nose, looked me directly in the eye, and said, “You don’t understand, she made me the coffee. She knew how much I love coffee, so she actually grew the plants, harvested the beans, then dry-roasted and ground them for me in time to give it to me as a wedding present.” Okay, that was impressive. I remember thinking in awe about how much this woman must have loved Karla to go through all that planning and work in order to gift her with a few pounds of coffee. To me, it was truly a gift from the heart.

The story from Karla shifted my thinking. I started paying closer attention to the energy, thought, and love I was being given whenever I received a gift. What did that person go through, or plan, in order to present me with something nice? And I’m not just talking about purchased gifts. If someone invites me to their home for dinner, I think about what they go through from the moment the invitation is presented to the time of the event and even after the event. They first take the time to negotiate a mutually convenient day and time. Then, there’s energy, time and thought spent on figuring out what to serve for dinner, going to the grocery store and purchasing the items, maybe extra time spent on cleaning the house before my arrival, and setting out the appetizer, plates, utensils, etc. And, when I leave after dinner, there’s time and energy spent to clean the kitchen and load the dishwasher. The gift of being invited over for dinner was not limited to the wonderful meal I enjoyed…it was more the thoughtfulness, the planning, and the loving energy that went into creating the event.

Last February I had the misfortune of having and passing a kidney stone, and to make matters worse, I ended up sick for a week with infection. I was taking four different types of medicine a day to combat pain as well as the infection. My friend Kat, who is an herbalist, was concerned over the potential stress to my already-compromised kidneys by all the prescription medicine I was taking. She made two trips to my home on back-to-back days to bring me herbal supplements to help support the health of my kidneys. I was so sick she didn’t even stay to visit; she just handed me the supplements through my open door, wished me well, then got back into her car to head home.

You may be thinking at this point, “ok, what’s the big deal? She brought you herbal supplements. How is that a gift?” The gift that I received from Kat was her time, thoughtfulness, love and energy directed toward me during a time that I needed it. Kat lives in the next town over from me, and due to traffic, even on a good day, the drive is anywhere from thirty to forty minutes. And, Kat works a full-time job, roughly ten hours a day. So basically, on the two days she drove to my home to bring me the supplements, she first worked her ten-hour day, drove forty minutes to my house to drop off the herbal supplements, and turned right around and drove forty minutes back home. It’s not the supplements I was necessarily gifted with, it was her time, thoughtfulness, and energy.

Since my thinking has shifted and I’ve become more aware of the sometimes-hidden aspects of things that go into receiving a gift from someone, or being the recipient of their kindness, I’ve recognized that gifts are daily dropped in my path to discover. Most everything, if you really think about it, can be recognized as a gift. Recently, the person in front of me at the grocery store who had a cart full of items to be checked out noticed that I only had four items and offered me the place in line in front of them. That’s a gift. They took the time to recognize the difference in what we each were purchasing, and intentionally offered kindness to let me cut in front of the line.  

The next time someone presents you with a gift, or offers you help with something, or does something nice for you, think deeper into what you are receiving. Think about the time, planning, energy, love, thoughtfulness or even sacrifice that goes into what you are receiving. Notice how it magnifies in your awareness what you’ve received by ten or even by one hundred. Pretty awesome, right?

If we open our eyes and our hearts wide enough, it becomes easy to recognize every day more and more little gifts laid along our paths to discover. And the more we recognize these gifts, the more abundant and rich our lives become.

On Liberation & Solitude

There is oftentimes a very definitive moment in time, an exact moment of realization that I believe most of us have experienced, when we realize that things in our life are more fucked-up than we had originally thought. It’s as if all electrical currents in our brain come together at once to flash an internal warning with the sole purpose of providing split-second clarity with the message, “This is fucked up”. This moment of clarity can be both liberating and debilitating, simultaneously.

Liberation occurs when this exact moment of clarity serves to complete the puzzle we have been struggling with. We’ve known something was wrong for perhaps the longest time, whether in a relationship, a job, dealing with a drug addiction, or anything else that no longer serves us to our benefit, but we’ve ignored all the signals. We’ve pushed forward, hell-bent on trying different things, acting in different roles, doing whatever we could think of to try to make a situation work. We’ve looked so hard for the missing piece of the puzzle, whatever it would take to make the picture in our heads intact, whole. And finally, when we experience our moment of clarity, we realize there is no fixing the situation we are living in. What is left is only the knowledge of liberation; the permission we give ourselves to walk away from whatever it is that needs to be released.

The debilitating part comes in immediately after we’ve accepted our liberation. We fall to our knees, looking down the path toward a new direction, knowing the work and potential temporary hardship that is involved in claiming our new state of being, and wonder if we even have the energy to keep going.

I HAVE JUST RECENTLY, within a year of writing this, disembarked from a three-year journey of self-imposed solitude. Not the type of solitude that I’ve read about where monks at times will shut themselves off from the world, living in a cave or other type of shelter, devoid of worldly comforts, spending their time in constant meditation to reach Nirvana. And certainly not the type of solitude that comes from being shot up into space, living in a tin can, for months or years at a time for the benefit and understanding of science. My self-imposed solitude was one where I was required to still live in this world, the physical world, for monetary and responsibility reasons, but I needed time and space to reach inward, inside myself, to figure things out.

I had reached a point, at fifty years old, where I didn’t even know who I was. While I was packing my youngest child, Sara, off to college, I was also going through my second divorce. And so for the first time in decades I was truly alone. No children at home to take care of, no man at home to consider, it was me and only me. Me, myself, and I. And I felt lost. Lost, unprepared, scared, angry, hurt, hopeless, and confused. I felt myself spinning in circles, not knowing what I was supposed to do next. It’s funny how when we spend our entire lives taking care of other people we forget how to take care of ourselves. We forget what our dreams are, we have no idea what our true life purpose is, and we lose a level of creativity that is screaming to be discovered again. I do remember understanding that I now had a blank, clean slate in front of me. I had an open white canvas that I could paint any color I wanted. The trouble was, I didn’t know what colors to choose. I had lost myself so deeply that I couldn’t even articulate what I wanted for my life going forward. I simultaneously felt all the world’s chaos as well as my own extreme inner emptiness.

Automatic pilot, robotic thinking.

I needed time and space to analyze myself, to figure out who I was as an individual, as a woman, as a human being, and as a soul. I wanted so badly to understand what decisions and actions I had taken over the course of my lifetime to bring me to where I was at that very moment in time, what outdated patterns and beliefs I needed to release, and most certainly I needed an understanding of what I wanted my life to look like going forward.

I didn’t start out on my journey of solitude with a preconceived time-frame in mind, it would take as long as it took and not a minute less or more. I was tired physically, emotionally and most certainly spiritually, so I made the decision and the commitment to take the time I needed, and to be brutally honest with myself and leave no stone uncovered in my quest to understand me. And, having just finalized the divorce of my second marriage, I wholeheartedly made the decision to not date or otherwise engage with anyone romantically during this period of discovery.

Looking back now, I can tell you that my process of ‘finding myself’ took close to three years. And during that time, I chose to walk alone along my path in life. I don’t want to give the impression that I truly became a hermit (almost, but my friend Gina may tell you otherwise) because I didn’t totally check out of life. I worked full-time at my job, I built a house, I spent time with my children, select friends, and grandchildren, and I flew to Europe approximately eighteen times during those three years.

You’re probably questioning my definition of solitude after reading my last paragraph, and I understand how it may sound absurd to say that I lived in solitude but yet worked, traveled and spent time with family and friends.  But in all fairness, I think it’s safe to say that the term ‘solitude’ can have a variety of meanings and it all boils down to what degree of solitude we each want to incorporate into our life. For me, it was finding the balance of having to live responsibly in the world outside myself while taking the time I needed to heal myself from within. Spending time alone, preferring time alone actually, was needed to find the essence of myself which I had lost most likely decades ago, and choosing to not incorporate a partner or love interest in my life was necessary in order to eliminate any external distraction that would potentially sway me from my course, or continue in my blindness of allowing someone else’s will or other external influence to dictate who I am, or how I should behave, or what I should sacrifice. I knew I was no longer willing to compromise myself, but at the time I wasn’t sure what that meant or how to become who I really was supposed to be. My answer was to spend as much time alone as possible and to feel what I needed to feel, let my thoughts run rampant as much as necessary until they started to form their own structured order, and to simply become an observer of myself and others. In essence, I wanted to become a student again. A student of life, and more importantly, a student of myself.

I had a burning and insatiable desire to fully understand myself. I know that we’re each responsible to create the life we want through our thoughts, intent and actions. What was my responsibility in where I was at this particular time in my life? What life patterns did I continuously repeat and why? Why did I always end up in abusive relationships? What life lessons was I supposed to be learning, and most importantly, what was I missing? What outdated belief systems did I need to release because they no longer supported my highest good? What am I truly supposed to be doing with my life? I had no answers to my questions, only the internal knowing that I needed to embark on a personal journey to figure things out. I did understand that at times it would be painful, and that there would not be any quick fixes. No magic pills, no genie in a bottle that would magically present me with a new life and a new way of thinking. It was a process, and a road I had to walk alone. In order to grow into who I was supposed to be, in order to create a new, different, and fulfilling life for myself, I had to spend time picking myself apart, analyzing everything, and leaving no stone uncovered before I could put my pieces back together again.

I chose liberation…liberation from myself and for myself. And in doing so, I walked the gauntlet. You know the gauntlet I’m talking about; it’s when we see the invisible line in front of us, knowing that once we step over it, we can never turn back. We can sense the shit storm that’s piling up on either side of us, the shit storm we must walk through in order to reach the clearing on the other side. So, we take a deep breath, gaze at the clearing on the far side, not really knowing what’s waiting for us but hoping like hell it’s better than where we’re coming from, square our shoulders, straighten our spine, and take our first steps into the unknown.

Getting sucked in…(don’t)

There’s a fine line between caring about someone, trying to help them, and getting sucked into their life, their energy, and their drama. I use the term ‘getting sucked into’ quite literally, because it’s different than getting ‘drawn’ into something or someone.

When we’re drawn to something or someone, it usually means there is something about the situation or person that attracts us, or that peaks our curiosity or interest.  We meet someone who exudes positive energy and has a boatload of charisma, and we’re naturally drawn to that person because it just simply feels good to be around them. Or, we hear of a situation or opportunity that peaks our interest and we’re drawn to find out more information. We may be drawn to use our creative talents to paint, write, or sew while others are drawn to nature and spend their time hiking or camping and enjoying the outdoors. We can also be drawn to be of service to others by volunteering or helping people in need in countless other ways.

The important thing to remember about being drawn to something is that when that happens, we retain our individual power. We keep our energy clear and intact.

When we get sucked into something or someone, it’s like being lost in a black hole or a spinning cyclone of chaos. We’ve been sucked into a vortex. And in this state, we lose our power. We lose our power because at the same time it’s being taken from us, we let it willingly slip from our fingers. We lose our energy because it’s literally being sucked from us.

The most common example I can offer is when we’re sucked in by other people. We all have that one friend or family member that seems to always need rescuing. They can’t function on their own, and rely on others to continuously provide direction and a constant source of energy. A.k.a. energy vampires. They literally have the ability to suck the life right out of us. And it doesn’t matter how much advice we offer, they disregard anything and everything we say yet continuously come back to us for more advice. They’ve put themselves into the role of a helpless victim, and blame everything and everyone around them for their situation, yet take no accountability for their own actions that have led them to the very point in their life that is so full of drama. They never apologize, never acknowledge the needs and feelings of others, and never give back to the people who have given them so much in return.

So how do we know when we’ve been sucked into another person’s black hole, or spinning cyclone of chaos? It’s simple: we know by the way we feel. And unfortunately, in these situations, the feeling doesn’t just hit us smack-dab in the face. In truth, it slowly creeps up on us until finally, one day, we wake up and realize that we don’t feel so good. Our energy levels are low, we may have mild depression, and we just feel bad physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We avoid phone calls or contact with this particular person, and our patience and gentle demeanor toward this individual has evaporated into thin air. We feel as if we want to escape. We can no longer stand to be in close proximity to this person.

When we reach the point where we can recognize that we’ve been sucked in, it’s time to take our power back and care for ourself. Sometimes the answer is to remove this person from our life, however, if we’re caught in the vortex of a co-worker or family member, it’s not always easy or appropriate to cut off contact. What we can do, however, is set healthy boundaries. We can set limits of contact and limits of behavior we’re willing to accept. Instead of accepting five phone calls a day from that family member who needs our constant advice (that’s never taken), we can promise ourself that we’ll only accept one phone call a day from this individual. We can use the Do Not Disturb feature on our phone, or set their individual ring tone to silent so we don’t hear the phone ring when they call. We can set limits for ourself of what we’re willing to do for this person, how much money that we’re willing to give, or even whether or not we’ll continue to give advice. We can sit down with a glass of wine, self-reflect, and actually write out what our boundaries are and how we will communicate them and reinforce them. In essence, we create a written contract with ourself.

And in these situations, what we always need to remember is this: We are not responsible for anyone but ourself. We are not responsible for other people’s actions, ideas, words, mistakes, or beliefs. We are not responsible for the consequences of other people’s actions.

Negative Effects of ‘Teaching a Lesson’

Last week I was having lunch in a restaurant close to my office, and I overheard the conversation of four women who were seated at the table next to me. A woman at the table was complaining about an unknown individual; evidently this unfortunate person crossed some type of boundary or failed in some type of action. I don’t know what the situation was, but I heard the woman at the table say, “I’m going to give her a dose of her own medicine”, meaning of course, that she was going to mimic the undesirable behavior in order to, in her mind, either teach the other person a lesson or try to change the other person’s behavior.

 I cringed when I heard this, as I could picture the cycle of negative energy and intent that would be passed back and forth between those two. Nothing about that cycle would teach or heal anything. It would actually cause more harm than good.

Having negative intent or using negative action creates a negative energy vibration which doesn’t “teach” or heal anything. It’s merely an attempt to exert our will over someone else. It becomes a matter of force…it’s an attempt to forcibly change someone else’s behavior. Nothing positive comes from this and nothing is gained other than the continuation of a negative cycle.

This is even more true when withholding is part of the action. For example, saying to ourselves, “I’m not giving this or that to this person in order to teach them a lesson”. Whenever we consciously and deliberately withhold from someone in order to punish, whether it’s our time, our attention, money, support, or whatever it is…we’re creating an intent to harm, and this negative intent will only serve to hurt us energetically in the long run.

We cannot cause harm to another without causing harm to ourselves. It’s all a matter of shared energetic vibration.

What we can do when we’re unhappy with someone’s actions or behavior is to set healthy boundaries. And in doing so, the energy of the event changes. We can say “I honor the space where you are, and I empathize with you, but my boundary is xyz”. When this occurs, the energy shifts away from being negative and instead creates a positive energetic vibration. No more cross contamination of negative energy.

By setting boundaries, the other person may or may not learn from the experience, but that’s not our responsibility. We’re each responsible for ourselves, our own individual path, and what we create for ourselves from each experience. Let others be responsible for themselves.