If I Asked You To Name All the Things You Love...

Cory looks up, to the camera, hand on heart. The words “If I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take for you to name yourself?” are in the top right of the image. Photo credit: Natosha Via

Happy Valentine's Day!

I've been thinking about the words in the image above for a few days now:

If I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take for you to name yourself? *

If you're like me, the answer is... I don't know how long it would take...depends on the day, hour, minute. I am practicing the art of self-love and self-compassion. It is, like so many things I write, talk, and teach about, a creative practice, an ongoing experiment.

A week ago I was in the third Zoom session of a class to learn a sequence of yoga moves. Before the class, I had had another Zoom meeting, then rushed out to run an errand, and rushed back home for the class. I was wearing jeans that were a little too tight, not ideal for a yoga class, but didn't have time to change if I wanted to arrive on time.

As we started the class with meditation, my mind was still rushing. I noticed my too tight pants. I was a little hungry. I hoped that my cats would come near me for a pet as I saw a few other people's cats do on the screen. I felt the cold air around me in my old and breezy house, as well as the heat of my nearby space heater that I couldn't get positioned quite right. You can probably guess that this was not my most focused meditation.

We finished the meditation and were invited to ask questions about the practice. This was when my bad student tape kicked in. I hadn't watched the previous week's recording and though I had practiced the sequence, I hadn't done so daily as we were encouraged to do. There was no way in hell I was going to admit these grave transgressions. If I didn't ask questions, no one would know just how bad of a student I was.

After a few people asked questions, there was new content teaching and then it was time to practice. I had made it through the first part without anyone finding me out!

Except that this week before doing the sequence we were going to start with the optional prostrations.

Oh, s**t. I had never done the prostrations. I could only guess that they'd been taught in the second class, so since I hadn't watched the recording yet, I hadn't learned them. Maybe I could figure them out by trying to watch while we were moving through them.

Other people's cameras were not positioned in a way that I could see the whole flow of the prostration. I was caught, fully visible on camera, being recorded in my fumbling! I tried to fake my way through and was relieved when we finished and were moving to the safe territory of the familiar sequence.

Then twice as we were going through each part of the sequence, someone helping the primary teacher offered a couple of posture corrections. The person made general statements, not directed at any one person, but I was certain she was talking to me. Caught again!

We finished the sequence and went into a closing meditation. Finally, in those last minutes of class I calmed down, sank into my body, and felt relieved that I had made it through my epic failure.

I write this story now with a smile on my face. On Wednesday I talked to my friend who teaches the class. She said that though she was trying to keep an eye on everyone (I think there are 12 of us), she hadn't noticed that I was struggling. I laughed as I told her that that meant I had done my fake-out well, because I hadn't wanted anyone to see I didn't know what I was doing!

Though that class experience wasn't my favorite, I am incredibly grateful to have had that hour of discomfort. It reminded me of the vulnerability of being a student, of learning something new, and opened my heart wider to the people I work with and how they (some of you) might feel sometimes because an old tape starts playing about the kind of student or person they (you?) are. It reminded me that the best place to start, the only place we can start, is right where we are. It reminded me that the best way to learn is not by pretending that we know something we don't, but by asking questions.

My friend's care when we spoke a couple of days after the class reminded me that I don't have to be the perfect student (whatever that even means) for someone to love me. I don't have to be the perfect anything for someone to love me or for me to love myself. I also know that I want to keep learning, keeping one foot on the ground of humility and placing the other in the sea of self-compassion.

With these things in mind I choose today to name myself, to put myself high on the list of what I love, who I love. My wish for you on this Valentine's Day is that you, too, name yourself as a beloved, placing yourself high on your love list.

*I only noticed my typo (D missing in “would”) after publishing this. I decided to leave it, a choice to love myself even when I misspell a word.)
~~~

If you are a woman, one way you might put yourself high on your love list is by joining Reimagining ME:Mindful Explorations, which starts a week from tomorrow- Tuesday 2/22/22! At its core the program encourages us to practice connecting with ourselves, both with humility and the deepest of self-compassion, to re-member who we are - unique, beautiful, irreplaceable beings in a web of Interbeing with one another. This program brings together practices of Compassionate Communication, creativity, and body awareness. I was going to close the registration today, but am keeping it open. If you're not quite sure and want to try a session before committing, you can register for the first session a la carte.

Practicing Acceptance

Just a few weeks ago I was excited about starting Reimagining ME: Mindful Explorations, a program for women to explore the forgotten, lost, cut-off parts of ourselves and reclaim (or claim for the first time) our Wisdom. A few days ago I started the process...by myself.

In the weeks leading up to the program start, a few women signed up. Hooray! Their enthusiasm fueled my own. Other women expressed their affirmation and interest in the program. Yay! And then one by one, each of these told me that, for one reason or another, the timing just wasn't right. Every time I heard or read the words, it stung. For a few weeks my being had been hanging precariously in the space between hope, defensiveness ("This is a really great program!"), resolve ("I'm going to make this happen!") and impending grief.

As the days went by, it became ever clearer that this program that I had created, that I loved, that I was excited to share again wasn't going to happen this fall. Working with a mentor, I finally accepted what I didn't want to accept. In that acceptance, I allowed myself both to hear the affirmations ("This looks like an amazing program and I want to do it") and the less-welcome parts of the message ("And now's not the right time."). I allowed myself to grieve the present loss. I allowed myself to accept that sometimes, like now, the timing I want is not in sync with the timing of the Universe, or God, or Spirit, or whatever you may call the force that is both beyond us and holding us.

Once I let it sink in and shed some tears (perhaps not as gracefully as I'd have liked), I began to feel some spaciousness within me. "Okay, so if I'm not doing that, what am I doing this fall?"

Here is what I know so far: I am now able to offer time to some family members in a way I wouldn't have been able to if I were facilitating the program. I may now be able to take a class I wouldn't have been able to take. Several pieces of new work have come my way. I can focus on another idea I had to put down for a time.

And I am accompanying myself through the Reimagining ME process in a way that would be difficult if I were both participating and facilitating. I am curious about how this solo journey will affect how I accompany others the next time.

The next time...With the clarity that "not now" isn't the same as "never again," I have looked ahead to 2022, specifically at Mondays, since that's the day I've offered Reimagining ME before. Valentine's Day 2022 is on a Monday.

"Aaaaah, that's it." What better day to enter into a journey of self-love and discovery than Valentine's Day? It feels aligned. When I spoke to those who had signed up for the fall, several said they are equally ready to join me starting in February.

I know it's still possible that the Universe may have other ideas. Only time will tell.

There have been numerous times when I've thought I knew what and when I was going to do something... or when and how something was going to happen... and the plans, without my consent, took a pivot that jolted me back to the awareness that I don't always have the last say. Jobs coming and going. People coming into and out of my life. Trips planned and cancelled. What happened with Reimagining ME is just one more example.

I'm pretty sure all of us have experienced this over and over...and over again in 2020 and 2021.

So what can we do?

We can practice acceptance.

I want to emphasize that acceptance is, in fact, a practice. Perhaps the practice is guided by the Serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Perhaps the practice is guided by this beautiful chant whose words are:

I release control
and surrender to the flow
of love that will heal me.

Acceptance invites us into the humility of admitting that we can only control so much.

Acceptance invites us to test out whether we believe that there is never failure, only lessons (a mantra I adopted after reading adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy).

Acceptance invites us to practice softness through mourning. Miki Kashtan calls it mourning the gap: recognizing and grieving the space that lives between our vision of how we want the world/our lives/something to be and the reality of the world/our lives/something. Mourning connects us to our hearts and often also to other people in ways that resistance does not.

When we have space and allow ourselves to grieve (this space may not be equally afforded to all), we may find that grieving, surrendering to what is, makes space for possibilities we can't see or invite in when we are filling ourselves up with, or armored with, resistance. At the very least, expressing grief and practicing acceptance may offer the relief of release.


How have you responded to unexpected- or perhaps even expected- pivots of life?

When have you been able to practice acceptance during these turns?

When have you resisted?

How did it feel to be in the spaces of acceptance or resistance?

How has allowing grief or "mourning the gap" changed you?

P.S. Though Reimagining ME is no longer a group offering this fall, I do have other workshops and classes coming up. On October 2, I am offering Bridging Divides: Finding Connection in Disconnected Times. In this workshop I'll share strategies for communicating in difficult conversations. We'll have time to discuss the principles and strategies and practice! I have a few other events, too. If you want to know more about them, visit this page.

Also last week, I had the great pleasure of offering a presentation for JustFaith Ministries' 20th Anniversary Celebration: Meeting in the Field: Exploring a Nonviolent Communication Framework. If you're curious about Nonviolent/Compassionate Communication, you can watch the replay of my presentation here (my part starts at 4:30).

Re-writing Those Darn Old Stories

I just wrapped up a 5-week Compassionate Communication class. The last session of the class always focuses on self-empathy. That theme runs throughout the entire class, but we take a whole session at the end to delve into topic and practice. We identify some of the mean messages we tell ourselves- the ones that judge, criticize, shame, and blame. One of my teachers calls it the Path to Self-Destruction, or if taken to its greatest extreme, the Path to Suicide.

Somewhere along the way most of us have internalized unkind messages so deeply that we now hear them in our own voice and we believe them. Even when we develop habits that may serve our well-being (eating healthy foods, getting enough sleep, exercising), we might do them with an undertone of shame, blame, or threat to ourselves.

In the class, after identifying the self-violent messages, we notice the feelings associated with the message and the needs beneath the message. Seeing the needs, we name some strategies, small steps we might take to meet the needs that we’ve uncovered. I’ve noticed that sometimes people identify strategies that are just as unkind as the initial messages they’re working with- those “should,” “have to”, “need to” messages, or straight out demands, “Do this!” The strategies are still coming from a place of self-judgment, rather than self-understanding and compassion. In those cases, we may dig a little deeper into the person’s feelings and needs and then work together to brainstorm other ways to meet the needs that incorporate self-kindness.

In The Artist’s Way, one of the weekly tasks is to work with this (slightly modified) mantra: Treating myself like a precious gift makes me strong. I love this mantra. I use it when I notice myself getting all self-judgy. Recently I found myself in a storm of self-judgment, questioning my value to other people, and deeper than that, my value, period. Then I remembered my mantra. I wrote it in my journal enough times to move me out of the story of unworthiness and stagnation and into one of worthiness, one with a new plot line. In the new story, I was my own hero. I was kind to myself. I remembered that my worth is not dependent on anyone else’s opinions or actions toward me. I took action to meet my needs. I re-wrote the story. It felt good!

The tricky part about these stories is that when we re-write them, we may think we’ve done so with permanent ink. We celebrate! Then we look at the paper to see the ink fading to invisibility, and the old story appearing again.

It may take us by surprise. It may make us weary. “That again?” And we so we do the work again, re-write the story again, perhaps with new plot twists, perhaps with the ones that have been successful before. 

We’re all works in progress. Re-writing the story is an ongoing process. It’s a practice. It’s an experiment. We can do it alone, but I think it’s best when we find the right people to write with, the ones who can support us in becoming our own heroes and to whom we can offer the same.

Shall we write together?