Fathers and Forgiveness

Recently, I heard Ira Glass, who publishes This American Life on National Public Radio, speak at an auditorium in Fort Collins, Colorado. He talked about why the stories he tells are so compelling and move millions of people. In the Q-and-A portion at the end, a woman suggested a story on estranged parents. She estimated that half of the people in the room were currently or had been estranged from at least one parent and wanted to talk about why that was and how it could be remedied, if at all.

Her take was that she wanted to tell her dad what he had done to hurt her so much. Ira wasn't sure about the story, whether it would have enough of an element of surprise to make the cut. As Lacy spoke about her experience, I started to cry. It touched a soft spot, as I had just reconciled with my dad after nine years of silence.

My dad divorced my mom when I was 30 years old and my sister was 17. His inability to have a relationship with me after that, or so I interpreted his behavior, had huge ramifications on my own marriage and my ideas about men in general. I tried to create a new and different relationship with my dad, but it seemed I couldn't connect no matter what I tried. I gave up. He gave up. We stopped speaking.

My sister, who is one of my best friends, continued to have a relationship with my dad throughout the years, mostly through sheer force of will. Over time, she built a friendship not only with him, but with his second wife and my now four-year-old baby brother. I stayed in the loop that way, but was somehow comfortable with the idea that I would never see my dad again.

As my sister earned her Master's degree in psychology, she started to see things in my dad that neither she nor I had seen before. Good things. Great things, even: open-mindedness, kindness, vulnerability. He went through his own trials, including suffering with polymyalgia and losing his job. I could relate--I had dealt with my own health issues and had lost my job four years earlier. I listened to everything she had to say about him with rapt attention.

Last year, my husband left our 20-year partnership. Through several transformational events, including months of weekly psychotherapy, regular yoga practice, bicycling like mad, and meditation, I was born anew. In the difficult process of extracting my life from my husband's--physically, emotionally, intellectually, financially, and spiritually--I learned a beautiful, quiet kind of acceptance of my life and everything in it. I sold my house, moved to an apartment, and began a new career by enrolling in a non-denominational ministry program.

I went from control freak to live-and-let-live, from CPA and business consultant to energy healer. I started dating and was amazed by the big, big world out there. I even befriended my ex-husband. Life was flexible. Life was good. It was time to talk to my dad again.

One sunny Sunday morning this October, I called and asked if it was OK to go up to my dad's house in the mountains to see him and his family that day. On the drive up, I felt completely centered and at peace. I wasn't tied to any particular outcome and was content knowing that I was taking this step toward reconciliation.

Happily, the reunion was a success. I felt welcomed, loved, and loving. No one had any need to talk about blame or hurt or fault. We were all just so glad to see one another, and there were hugs all around. Champagne toasts, lots of catching up, and dinner followed. I gave my baby brother a goodnight hug. On the way home, I stopped at the top of the pass, in the complete darkness, to wonder at the sheer brilliance of millions of stars. I couldn't have been any happier at that moment.

So I wonder, how did holding on to that hurt and blame for all those years serve my highest and best good? How did my dad's fear of conflict serve him? Does it take tragedy in our own lives to learn compassion for others? Does the forgiveness process have to take years of our lives, or is there a spark that we can somehow use to light the flame in others' hearts that allows them to let go and love those who love them?

Happy Solstice! or What a Year Will Bring

Cut to me staring at my computer screen in utter disbelief, exactly one year ago. It was around midnight on the longest day of the year, and the world as I knew it came to an end. My assumptions about love and trust were called into question. My identity, as it had exactly four years earlier when I lost my job, was blown apart.

Slowly, or some might say quickly, I rebuilt. Boy, was I ready for it, too. It was about time I concentrated on fixing me instead of everyone and everything else. I learned a lot in therapy.

Lesson #1: slow down.

Lesson #2: slow is fast.

Lesson #3: the need to fix others masks the need to look inward.

These lessons were what my friend Emily calls two-by-four moments (you know, because you feel like you got hit in the head with a two-inch-by-four-inch piece of wood, which, if you don't know, is also six feet long--let's just say big). And they just kept coming.

I worked hard. I took a close look at parts of me that I would have preferred to leave in the dark. I learned how to let myself feel and not judge those feelings. I learned how to show loving kindness to myself, because if you don't do it for yourself, it's tough to ask it of those around you. Today, I'm just happy that life can be this good. And simple. I love simple.

A supporting sister and best friend are my rocks, and they call me out on my crap when I'm slipping back into the old ways. New friends that I feel like I've known forever keep popping up. I get a big, dopey grin on my face when I think about my kind, loving, patient, fun, funny boyfriend.

I lost 57 pounds. I wish them well on their journey, because I'm not going to go looking for them. I started cooking again--a piece of the old me that I happily reintegrated. A new career called to me, and I'm doing the difficult but fulfilling training to become the best me I can be in that role.

I have a lot of adventures. A community of folks showed up to teach me how to speak the new language of acceptance and peace. The universe takes care of me. I'm in love with the world.

This is bliss.

Ready for a celebration

Already celebrating with my sister

My boyfriend's dog, Lulu, demonstrating my philosophy of life: it's all good; let's just take 'er easy on the couch

Upsy Daisy

Some people are lucky to ever get a flash of knowing, where they can see how interconnected we all are: us to each other on a face-to-face level, us to each other on a super-conscious level, and us to a higher power. Lately, everything is coalescing for me, and I get the sense of knowing more and more continuously. It happens so much that I vibrate at a higher level. I live in that world of connectedness almost all the time now.

I love it here. It's stunningly beautiful. It's warm and bright and happy. It's better than sitting on a rock in the silent desert in the heat of the day. It's better than hearing the birds fly over your tent early in the morning. It's better than floating in a cool pool on a hot day. It's better than seeing a wild animal in its natural habitat before it sees you.

Why is this world of connectedness better than any of those things? Because I can see and feel and hear them any time I want to. Not just remember them, but actually experience them. If you'd told me that a year ago, I'd have told you that you were coo coo for cocoa puffs. Well, I wouldn't have told you to your face, but I'd have thought it for sure.

And now, well, I'm a believer. The more I open my mind to the world and all of its possibilities, the bigger my heart gets. The more my heart expands, the more my soul grows. They keep chasing each other, laughing and tumbling through fields of daisies, like children who never contemplate day's end, or if they do, it's only to give a moment's thought to how much fun they'll have tomorrow. And if I think regretfully of the past, one of them tells a joke that involves chicken feathers. Or asks me what shape I think souls take. Or sends me to kirtan to chant and bliss out.

So here's that shakes out in a workaday world:

I laugh a lot.
I do more of the more meaningful work.
More than ever before, I see all sides of things.
I attract like-minded people into my life.
I learn things at the speed of light.
I forgive easily.

Here's it shakes out in life:

I breathe. Deeply.
I sing my heart out in the car.
I get high on protein, yoga, and endorphins.
I listen to hip-hop music super loud and turn the bass up to get the full effect.
I really feel for the guy who fell off his bar stool at the local divey bar.
I do cookies in unplowed parking lots.
I flirt and watch what happens.

The Power of Positive Thinking

A story called "Emotional Training Helps Kids Fight Depression" aired this morning on National Public Radio. The story opens with an adult man talking about how he's lived with negative self-talk his whole life. After years of cognitive behavioral therapy, he finally replaced the self-flagellation with talk of, "I'll be able to do it better next time."

The interviewer moves to a class full of 10-year-old kids, where the teacher is trying to teach them emotional resilience skills so that they don't spend a lifetime telling themselves they're not good enough. Good enough for what? For whom? Why do we kill the joy in children so early? Programs like Smart-Girl try to mitigate the effects of this social training, but how much permanent change can we effect when the problem is so big? Why, as a society, are we stuck in this endless loop of unfulfilled unhappiness?

Sometimes (and I wish there were more of those times), I feel so connected to the universal consciousness that I float free, blissfully unshackled from the tape in my head. In those moments, I see and know and feel everything and am at peace with it all. The moments don't last long, but I know from conversations with others that I'm lucky to have them at all. Oh, to capture the complex path of neural connections that happens in those moments and be able to repeat them, on command. Maybe scientists should focus on THAT task instead of curing all of the diseases we develop because of stress and constant worry.

But I do my part by being involved with Smart-Girl, curtailing my own recording, and demonstrating for my mentee Consuelo that setbacks are temporary and not to be taken personally. We shall overcome.

The Plight of Women Is News... at Last

I wept when I read the story Saving the World's Women and others published in the special section of The New York Times Magazine this weekend.

I cried not because the stories are so terribly sad, which they are; not because of the heartfelt response by other countries, which is fantastic; and not because it was the first time I had learned about the plight of these women and girls, because it wasn't; but because a major newspaper is finally covering women's issues as a serious problem that we can't just accept as status quo anymore. Because The New York Times is reporting that sexual slavery, rape as a tool of warfare, marrying off 12-year-old girls who are raped and then die in childbirth, honor killings, and genital mutilation are horrifying truths for millions of women around the world, to say nothing of the financial subjugation and lack of education that keep women "in their place."

I wept because I felt the kind of heart-jumping-out-of-my-chest elation that I felt when Barack Obama was elected president: joy, relief, gratitude, and restoration of my faith in humanity. Thank you to all of the journalists and authors who participated and made women's issues news worth reporting.

I promise to do my part by volunteering for organizations that address women's and girls' issues. I pledge to make a difference in one girl's life by sticking by her and showing her that there are options beyond pregnancy and dropping out of school at 15 or 16.

What can you do, what can you pledge, to keep the momentum going?

Back in the Saddle Again

Just before I started driving at 16, a car hit me while I was riding my bike. It wasn't a bad accident, but I couldn't get back on again. Every time I thought about riding, it made me feel kind of sick. It was OK for other people to do it, but not me, no sir, nohow.

As the years wore on, the sick feeling never went away when I thought about riding a bike. Walking became my preferred means of outdoor exercise. "You see more than when you're riding a bike anyway," I'd think, feeling smug as the cyclists whizzed by. I'd point out a particular flower to Gary or Lindsey and stop to smell it. We'd walk down to the pond to see if the turtle was sunning himself on the log. I'd watch how the seasons change the gardens along the many paths I walk: the incremental changes you'd never see if you fly by on a bike.

Then a couple of months ago, my sister bought a bike. My mom and stepdad started riding again, too. We were all talking about it one day, and a switch clicked in my brain. I wanted to ride. I test drove my sister's bike in my Crocs and jammies in the back yard. I knew I wouldn't crash, and I didn't. I knew I could balance, and I did. I knew I could stop, and I did.

I rode for five miles on the Ralston Creek and Clear Creek trails yesterday. As I peddled harder, I felt the thrill of speed. Oh, I'd forgotten how fun this was. Birds and trees and ponds flashed by in seconds. I almost felt guilty, and I stopped a couple of times to look at this waterfall or that bird. But mostly I just took it all in. The smell of the water and the green spaces, the cotton flying up my nose, the bugs bouncing off me, the joy of moving along under my own power.

Perhaps it's a metaphor for the rest of my life, this taking charge of my fear and changing an old belief in the blink of an eye. What would happen if we pushed through that old programming every single day? What would my life look like? What would yours?

In Honor of Valentine's Day

"By day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white of the land, after sunset it has a new circumference--orange, melting upwards into tenderest purple."
-E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

My heart beats faster when I read that sentence. But it wasn't always so. My personality style is ESTJ, which means my natural tendency is to think first and feel later, and to think about facts first and people second. But the stars aligned a few years ago and brought two women into my life who changed me forever: Elizabeth, who shared her art and her big heart with me, and Linda, who was forever asking me crazy-making questions like, "Do you think that will get you what you want?"

I dedicate this quote to you, because I don't know if I could have recognized the beauty in it without you. Though we don't work together anymore and see each other not nearly as often as I would like, you are in my thoughts and in my heart. Love to you and every one of my dear valentines...

Doggie Lovin'

Two years after my Rachel died, another furry friend found us and became part of our family. As I write this, the little brown Chihuahua we named Tomas (pronounced toh-MAHS) sleeps at my feet curled up in a ball.

We grieved terribly when we lost Rachel, and we still feel her presence in so many ways. I could never bring myself to take her photo off of my desk. Just a few days ago, I found some of her fur stuck on the underside of a chair in the basement. We hear her voice when the wind blows through the chimes in the garden, one of her favorite places to be. It was only in the last few months that I could talk about her without crying and feeling the lump in my throat (though I feel it now).

The people who understood my grief best just let me co-exist with it and never pushed me for an answer about when I was going to get another dog. Each one is simply irreplaceable, so it's kind of like asking when you're going to get another husband or parent. As if getting a new one would erase the pain and sadness anyway. The most comforting message of all, the one that stuck with me and gave me hope was this: "Another dog will find you when it's time."

And there he is--Tomas, the little Chihuahua. I'd forgotten what joy a dog brings to your life: gazing into your eyes, the excited wagging of the tail when you come into the room, snoring when sleeping peacefully, playing fetch and learning all the tricks you can teach him, snuggling with you on the couch. I'm happy to wake up to him in the morning and happy to come home to him when I've been away. He's a loving friend and constant companion. He is a joy to me.

The Little Things

My friend Emily and I hold each other accountable for our "daily joys," the little things that we give ourselves to feel happy, alive, and grateful. She loves her morning coffee, good-smelling candles, and organizing her house. The gifts I give myself are eating lunch on the deck, walking in the sunlight, strolling through my garden, and taking the time to cook good food.

Our lives are comprised of millions of moments, each with the potential for joy. What do you give yourself?