remind us to live in the moment and have some fun.

They get us up and out of the house. They make us go for walks. They make us laugh.

On this cold windy November Sunday, I pass many people walking their dogs through a shin deep swish of leaves. Hair blowing in every direction, the dogs don’t care about a chill in the air. It’s good to be out even when the sun isn’t. It’s nice to appreciate the beauty of the day.

We hit a rough patch with problems around the house. Stress over things that I’m not stressed about, but others are, is stressful! Things I would normally not think too much about have given me many bizarrely and unexpected grief filled moments. So much unpredictable oddness.

As if the week wasn’t already energeticly charged.

I leaned heavily into yoga. There’s a wonderful studio and community here. They offered lots of little extras this week. Very much appreciated. Just like pets and windy fall days, and the beginnings of problem resolution.

I’m trying to answer this question because I feel it has a nice message for me today.

I’ve spent money on expensive things before. Lots of times. However I rationalized, I made it make sense. I’m usually pretty frugal and I know it’s not things that will lead to ultimate happiness, but there comes along something, every now and then, that FEELS like happiness.

I indulge myself because, ultimately, I want to give to myself the feeling that I am worth it.

I am worth something.

I am worth more than the every day grind of frugality.

Name that expensive item that I am worth. Is that the question for me?

Did a set of pots and pans help me feel worthy? Did a pair of boots? Is it really true that I felt worth for a little while? If so, for how long? Was the experience worth it?

I must have, and it must have been, but I’m ready for a new question. Can I send myself feelings of worth in other ways? In more lasting, authentic and meaningful ways?

It’s only when I’m feeling off that my worth even comes to mind anymore. Of course I’m worth expensive footwear or kitchen equipment. I don’t need to prove this to myself.

Or do I? Proving worth is an ongoing internal dialog and decision managing system.

My choice to seek joy. To stay open and loving towards everything and everyone is because nothing is worth closing over. Nothing is so important that my state of mind should be sacrificed for. Nothing is worth letting myself be miserable over.

Not one thing. As things try, I am committed to reminding myself of my worth by standing firm and not allowing it. It’s not an item, it’s an action. And I know for certain that I am definitely worth every effort in this direction.

Cheers to openness.

It was commissioned by my favorite nonprofit #kidsforpeace to kick off Kindness Week during lockdown. It was a difficult time.

To see it today, was a surprise. it was more evidence that love is the only response.

In the end, love wins.

Love.

Wins.

It does. Seeing this in action, in the face of everything, is something I hardly have words for.

Kindness, joy, love. I’m watching whole communities doubling down.

I’m overwhelmed. In so many directions. By kindness. By love.

By comforting communities extending light and love to each other. There is strength in that.

I’m seeing it.

I’m feeling it.

I love a good podcast to walk to.

Lately I’ve been grappling with understanding energy. High frequency vibrations which I prefer and lower ones.

You know how twenty people could say something positive, but you get stuck on the one negative comment one person says? Well I guess that’s because lower frequencies have more weight. They stick.

Usually if there’s a disturbance causing pain coming from outside which then gets stuck, it’s because its stuck on something already inside that is being held instead of let go.

If I can get myself to let go, I could be rid of that one thing forever.

Only there are millions of low frequency vibrations out there and inside of us. We don’t get rid of them with distractions or justification.

The suggestion is to feel the discomfort, observe it, let if wash on through until we feel free of it. Then do that again and again and again.

This is I think what was said on the Michael Singer podcast I last listened to.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it. The price of freedom sounds steep.

I do like the concept of relaxing my shoulders. Relaxing my heart. Relaxing into emotion, breathing and letting go.

I’m considering a series of paintings based on the concept of staying open…

I’m doing a lot of painting and not feeling that in-the-flow feeling. In other words I don’t like anything I’m working on

I hope to maybe like something soon…

Meanwhile relaxing and not closing. Or least attempting

Ahh the angst of art

I’ll probably return to just looking for joy for now.

The Untethered Soul again…

I’m attempting to wrap my head around this concept : If I recognize pain as nothing more than ‘disturbing energy’…

He, (Michael Singer, the author), is talking about emotional pain.

If I can get my heart to relax and stay open, when it very much wants to close,

I will be free.

Untethered

When I first read this book many years ago, I think I skimmed over some chapters, preferring to avoid pain, even reading about it.

The idea sounds simple enough while I’m reading, but then suddenly I find myself being ‘energetically disturbed’, and closing, and thinking and trying to figure out how to feel better, and nothing seems to be working.

When I found myself rereading this chapter for the sixth time. Reading what I highlighted, highlighting more, I got the much needed reminder to relax my shoulders, relax my heart, feel the pain without judgement, without justifying and without pacifying myself.

Just letting it bubble up. Breathe and let whatever I can, go. If I can stop fearing the pain, or trying to avoid it. Just feel it, and let it wash through me, I can be free.

This is a tall order. It’s uh, what my first book is about. Strong emotion is how we know we are ‘energetically disturbed’. Breathing through strong emotion is the fastest way to have it wash through and dissipate. It’s the fastest ways to be free of ‘energetic disturbances’ Holding on will affect my own energy and everyone I associate with.

I wear a necklace that reminds me that I want to keep my heart as open and as full of light as possible. My personal circumstances haven’t been ideal, never mind everything that’s happening in the world. I have been studying this heart staying open concept for some time.

It’s HARD

When the book was reviewed in a book club I attended, a few people took issue with how flip the author sounded. They felt he didn’t address large issues or how this applied to REAL problems. Real suffering.

I think we all agreed that we wouldn’t probably recommend it to someone going through a hard time.

But for me, it has been helpful. Falling back, observing my thoughts, feeling my feelings. Doing my best to relax my shoulders and heart and to stay open and loving.

Emotions can run high. They can feel overwhelming. Their job is to let us know when we are energetically disturbed. Just like physical pain alerts us to something being wrong in our bodies, these are our alert systems.

Even so, I want to stay open. I want loving energy to prevail.

Not closing is my new goal.

Do I need time?

It’s funny that I actually do not need more time.

Back when I was a young mom working around the clock I would have said YES! Absolutely!Sleep was in short supply. Meals and laundry ate up huge chunks of my day. How did I do it? I’m not a fan of mundane chores. Routine is not my favorite. At different times I was working in and out of my home. Running, always running.

Today, I love when I have things to do that aren’t in the yard. My job and yoga keep me a little busy. The way chores are drawn out, are endless, never having any urgency, is a different way to live. It’s taken me a while to figure it out and then accept it.

I still balk at routine. I did learn to make chores more satisfying and fast as one with four busy kids might do. But I, from the youngest of ages, was always looking for something way more fun to do when I was done. As in get the room cleaned so I could go outside, (and not to weed or rake)

Getting done was my constant goal. Creativity came after chores. Except when it didn’t. Oh there were those crazy deadline approaching days when life ran amuck until roughly five o’clock when we (I) would run around cleaning up and maybe brushing our hair so it would look like maybe we weren’t goofing off all day. Oh I wasn’t fooling anyone, but a way younger me wanted to be a good wife and mother so supper had to be ready…

I wonder what it would be like if creating was my work. If goofing off making stuff was my actual job. (Oh wait, it was). What if I was born into a creative family? Or I lived with creatives who take art seriously? What if I just started calling my art my work? I mean it’s not like Im watching tv. Art isn’t passive. But it does still feel like everything else is important and nessesary, while painting, drawing, art is not. Plus it’s messy…

I learned that doing art was silly and foolish and a time waster. And made an unnecessary mess. I know it’s not, since it’s what gives me the most satisfaction of anything. I know it’s valid for me in my life.

What you learn as a kid has a funny hold on you, though. Even after making a life and businesses around art, as well as holding a full time art teaching position, and being a professional artist, designer, home stager, I still feel as though I’m goofing off while everyone else is doing serious important work things.

And here I am.

Working all day. Taking a few walking breaks and sprinkler moving breaks, but mostly working.

Thanks to the Untethered Soul I have a new perspective to view my artist self and all the conversations going on in my artist’s head from.

Oh and I forgot the part where I’m not happy with what I’ve been doing. There’s that part too. I’ll look with fresh eyes tomorrow. Today I’m glad to have worked. To have dedicated a full day to this art thing I’m compelled to keep doing.

I guess it’s a good time to observe myself thinking all of that!Hmmm.

I get obsessed over things.

Books, movies, songs, albums, clothes, decor, recipes…

I’ve never figured out why. I can’t control it, and sometimes things even over lap. These come out of what seems like nowhere. Though I don’t live under a rock. something sparks and fuels me.

Oh and if it’s not weird enough that I get obsessed, I, even in the middle of being obsessed, already know they are not the coolest of things to everyone else. But to me? They can’t get any cooler!

I know from experience that whatever ‘it’ is, or “they” are, it will have to run its course. I will have to listen a million times, make a bunch of Amish Dolls and quilts, read the book five times, try countless versions of the recipe or whatever it takes.

Currently, I’ve been reading the book, Untethered Soul. Often. I’ve read it three times in the last five weeks. Which doesn’t feel like enough. So I keep reading and highlighting. Also, unrelated, I’ve been listening to Andrea Botecheli sing Hallelujah and Prince sing Kiss and Let’s Go Crazy on repeat. Doing yoga 7 days a week…

My system is not absorbing the time change very well. I’m feeling almost flu like in the evenings after feeling like I’m starving, then not hungry at all by dinner time. It’s just one hour of a difference, but yikes. I can’t handle it.

The election energy is also snapping around me like that feeling of static electricity in my hair. Remember touching things after swishing across the carpet in socks. It’s as though my body is bracing for shock. I was never a fan of being zapped.

What I really seem to be obsessed with lately, is influencing my own energy. Staying open. Letting go.

I wonder if my inborn ultra sensitivity is picking up on all of the conflicting energies swirling around today. Or maybe it’s just that I fear collective fear. This uncomfortable anticipation is giving me some excellent practice in letting go.

Meanwhile it’s a beautiful day in New England. Record warmth, bright blue skies and spectacularly colored leaves in every direction. Sunshine sparkling off the water. It’s like a movie set.

My plan for the rest of today is just gentleness. Easing through each hour. Eating some food. Reading my book. Breathing.

Watching, observing, my human self feel and think and enjoy a croissant and a too late in the day cup of coffee from a fancy French bakery.

Which feels like seven year old me on a solo trip to Montreal visiting my godmother. Sitting inside her neighbors freezer, with her neighbor’s daughter eating ice cream out of ice cream store size containers. (there were three. THREE.) My new friend didn’t say a thing when she handed me a spoon and I followed as she opened the lid and climbed inside. The freezer. No grownups anywhere to be seen. As much ice cream as we could scoop into our mouths on that hot summer afternoon. Three flavors. Three! We were back outside playing before anyone noticed.

My whipped cream filled croissant, with toasted almonds and generous dusting of powdered sugar, feels decadent and ompulant and in its own way forbidden, or at least on the sly, beside a flirting-with-the-wrong-amount-of-caffeine-at-the-wrong-time-of-day-coffee. This made up a perfectly enjoyable way to spend some of my afternoon.

Open and joyful. Listening to Prince, taking in the colors of fall reflecting with the sun over the water. Breathing in and out…

Know?

Strong words, a sweeping all inclusive generality. Okay, I’ll bite.

I think everyone ‘should’ KNOW: about the physiology of breathing.

If we all knew what could change inside our brains, within our physical bodies and in our thoughts, if we simply stop and pay attention to our own breathing.

Any moment, one deep long breath, in and out, can calm our whole parasympathetic nervous system. It can turn a moment. Practiced regularly, it has the potential to change a life.

Everyone should know that they are several deep breaths away from at least a moment of peace.

I always think I’m a book club person. I love to read. I read fast and I like to talk about books. I’ll read practically anything…

You would think I was a shoe in for this book club construct.

I’ve been a member of book clubs and over the years met some wonderful people through going.

But, as I’ve learned hundreds of times before, it’s weirdly not my thing.

I have to relearn this about myself repeatedly, I guess it’s who I partly am.

I wonder what part of me it is that feels depressed afterward. That’s a question. Also: Who is feeling depressed about what???

I’m letting the depressed feelings just be. I’m oddly homesick, or at least feeling it more thoroughly today. Maybe that’s part of it.

I don’t know. I probably had my hopes up. I need to get better at disappointment. The day was wrought with it. Probably more practice with relaxing into discomfort. Ugh. Chalk it up to another waste of my time. I don’t regret the reading part, just the sunny Sunday afternoon hours I won’t get back.

I would rather admire the moon from where I am, than go there, so no amount of $