Short and lovely visit with Kathii in Minneapolis…

If the definition of jet setting is getting on a plane to spend less than 24 hours in a city, well then I am jet setting. I am sitting at the airport waiting for a flight to Minneapolis to visit my sister. My flight was schedule for 7 am and I would have been laughing it up by now if Delta had not cancelled the flight. Instead, I land at almost 2pm and get back on a plane tomorrow at 2 to come back. In between promises to be a great time with Kathi who I last saw in July in LA.

Kathi is 3 years younger than me which makes no difference now but certainly did when we were growing up. I got when she was still in high school…me just barely out. We became best friends, talking nearly every day for 26years until my divorce somehow also ended our best friendship. Kathi pretty much kicked me out of her life which I don’t quite understand to this day. However, she is back in, I am back in. Our trip to LA put us there. I was scribing for Marianne Williamson and Kathi came out to help. Somehow we found each other again.

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While the world waits to see just how it will all completely resolve in Egypt, we honor the men and women who stood up courageously, facing their fear and doing it anyway. Peace and love is a force for change.

Okay…I’m back again blogging. Ready to inspire and be inspired. For a while I just couldn’t get here, using the excuse I don’t want to lose the TEDx talk as my first entry for people to see. Even after I posted that video on my blipstudio.com site as well, I continued to use that excuse. The truth is that I was going through some stuff. Not tough stuff, just stuff. And I didn’t want to let it end up on the page, so to speak, until I moved through it and could write about it from the point of view of having done that. So here’s the gist of it…

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Here is my TEDx Asheville talk. It’s funny to me that all I could see at first are the places where I messed up and how I wished I didn’t wear those boots…be who you are, it is so much more than enough Guess we teach what we most need to learn.

The title of this post is the same headline as the secondary headline of Monday’s Asheville Citizen Times. With a great big photo of me. You can read the article online. It was an exceptional experience and one I count as one of life’s best days. I’ve dreamed for years of being on stage and inspiring people. In fact, when I played the game of “when I am taking my last breath, what would I be sorry I never accomplished?” and this was it. My hope is it is the first of many. I was in awe of the people who told me that I inspired them and particularly in awe of the 2 women who had so much emotion it spilled out of their eyes. It is a life worth living to have that ability. That gift. I am careful not to take credit as I do believe it is a gift to have the desire to inspire in that way.

Though I did lead off the evening, what followed were people I am most humbled to be in the company of. Please take some time to watch the livestream. The day before was TEDxNGA, the kid’s version though there was nothing childlike about their talks, other than their innate wisdom pouring through without barrier. A lovely way to be childlike.

Enough said. I’d rather you spent your time checking out the talks. I’ll write more at some point. Big life changes.

For about a month now, my son and his family have been living with me while they find a place of their own after moving here to Asheville from Aspen. It is a dream come true, a miracle to have them here in my town. Two out of my three children now live here with their families. After living alone for most of the last 11 years, it is wonderful to have a houseful. (read previous blog posting…) However…

One little thing changes everything. I’ve been feeling scattered, having shifted my own life around to accommodate their needs. It’s what a mama does. Instead of teaching yoga in my home studio, that studio is now my graphic studio space and I teach my students in a yoga studio downtown. I struggled with this change internally. It felt like I was losing some part of me. Yet after making the change I feel fresh and ready to let my life unfold from here. Change, though sometimes pretty uncomfortable and hard to see the benefit of an unknown outcome, is a catalyst for growth and if we aren’t growing we aren’t living…and vice versa.

I am well aware that back in the 1950’s, I might be a candidate for being put away in a sanitarium. I left my husband of 26 years, moved to a little hippie town in the Blue Ridge mountains, starting smoking pot, flew out to Oregon to adopt a dog, left 90% of my worldly possessions and moved to Arizona to be with my daughter who was pregnant, spent all my money and worried constantly about making more, being attracted to men years younger than myself, becoming a yoga teacher and vegetarian, authoring an inspirational, spiritually-oriented website daring people to dream and live their dreams, doing it myself.

Yep, I might have been committed. Perhaps it is this town in particular but I believe that it is happening everywhere. People are waking up to what has happened to our world under our watch. We are leaving a legacy of crooked politicians, corporations, wars fought for fabricated reasons to achieve a goal of ultimate power. People who have behaved badly. We let them, if we were not one of them.

So now what to do? Do we stand by and shake our heads as oil spews into the Gulf. It is too sad to go into all the ramifications. Who are we to mess with another beings habitat? To not ensure the greatest safeguards to keep their home safe. I read an article that said that during the Bush administration a decision was made not to enforce that upon our offshore oil rigs. It saved the companies several million dollars, and this disaster will cost them many billion, along with the deep guilt and despair. I hope the people of those oil companies and those who enabled them, oh which might include us who fill up our cars with $3 a gallon gasoline and enjoy the freedom that provides.

Where have our voices been? Why have we been so silent to let it get so out of hand? Please wake up. Please. Those of us who have been need you to come along too. We need greater numbers of people who are willing to be considered crazy to go against the norm. The norm is ridding our planet of one species at a time, one ecosystem at a time.

Are you thinking “what can I do about it”? It seems an awesome task to turn this ship around. The Renaissance was only 1000 people. We turned the world around then. We can turn it around now. Please join me and, I’m hoping, millions of others around the planet. Wake up and smell the smothering, burning oil in the Gulf, the blood on the battlefields in cities, towns , villages and neighborhoods all over the world. We are killing each other and those that get in the way of that intention.

So what can we do as individuals? We can speak out. Talk about this with your friends and your neighbors. Start a conversation. What you bought at the mall conversation can wait another day. It’s time to ensure there will be another day for someone somewhere. People are starving and we go to McDonalds and eat food kills our bodies[1].

What stops you? I think about what has stopped me and that is fear of rejection. Fear that my children will think I am insane. Fear that others will consider me someone to fear. A general nature of fear, which I have been shedding over this lifetime. I have held a fear of being found out to be the person I have been trying to hide. No one hides for real, only creates a feeling of distrust for a person who doesn’t seem congruent. Something is off. We are the last ones to see ourselves, which is a pity. Enjoy who you are. Be who you are. It is oh so much more than enough.

Love this talk by Derek Sivers at TED. He says “The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader…”

“Today is the tomorrow you worried about, and all is well.”