Short and lovely visit with Kathii in Minneapolis…

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.

I don’t think about the years in between so much but I wonder why we had to come apart as we did. Certainly a lot of life happened in the meantime. The question that makes its rounds in my head is why now? What is happening that brings us back together now? Are we seeing the passing of life? Are we both embracing who we are and that brings us back to those days when we were young and dependent upon the existence of each other?

Life is very interesting from the vantage point of 50 something. It is easier to see how things fit together. I have a greater trust that all works out and that even the so called bad stuff in life is purposeful. We are not in this life alone. We have an effect on others. I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about a man in a town that was decimated by the tsunami in Japan last March. He took over the family bakery business after college, not what he was planning at all. At 54 he watched from high ground as wave after wave plowed over his town. When it all subsided his bakery along with the rest of the town was gone. he is now finding, as he rebuilds, how important his baked goods are for people who are looking for places of comfort, places of home. Not a very earth shattering, world saving kind of work by most accounts. Simply a remembrance of how life once was, giving strength for others to keep going.

We never know how the seemingly small things affect others…until we pay attention. A nod, a smile may be all it takes to change a days experience for someone.

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…Last year was an amazing year with lots of great stuff popping up in it, like the graphic recording work, even doing that for Marianne Williamson. And the TEDx talk. I thought I had finally made it! Woo hoo! And it all seemed to disappear and I wondered “what’s wrong with me?” that I can’t sustain these great things that come into my life. It seemed to be my life story…something great shows up and then it just fades away. I get the big prize and then whoever or whatever figures out it was me that just got that and takes it back. Ooops. Not for her. She doesn’t get that.

That story started in 1st grade, at least in my earliest memory. Sister Alice Mary was giving away gifts at the end of the school year. The girl who Sister loved sat in front of me and we switched places in line. When I got to Sister’s desk, without looking up she handed me a big beautiful box of Blessed Mother stuff. I gasped and felt like I’d just been handed gold. Then…she looked up, saw it was me and took it away, handing me a holy card. Blammo. Proof that I was not worthy of such a great gift. Not good enough.

I then spent the rest of my life finding proof that I was not good enough. Not consciously, it was just the theme. We find proof of our inner most beliefs.

So what to do about that? Change the belief system, which I had thought I did, at least in my head. But some part of that belief lingered apparently, stored in my body. It was moving out because, as similar as everything was, it was also different. Instead of believing that I wasn’t good enough and walking away from all of the gold, I continued to forge ahead. I’d seen the results of me doing my “thing” in public through the TEDx talk and graphic recording gigs. People were definitely inspired, the work was definitely making a difference. I was making a difference. I started to look at what was right with me and put my focus there.

In Marianne Williamson’s book “The Gift of Change” she talks about going into every room of your house, metaphorically. Sitting down in each room and checking it out, seeing what you like and don’t like, open the closets and take a look. In other words, look at yourself and look at your shadow, all those things about us we hide from even ourselves. We’ve all got stuff we don’t like and that’s okay. It’s like sitting in a room of your house, realizing you just don’t like the color of the paint on the walls. Once you admit that, you have a choice to either get another color and paint or just let it be and know that you’ll either paint it someday or you won’t. Now you won’t have to close the door on that room any longer. No more hiding what it is in there you don’t like.

Alrighty…off to a meditation. That and yoga keeps me balanced. Have a great and beautiful day.

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.

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.

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.