Category Archives: DPChallenge

Loneliness Kicked My Achy Breaky Heart

Carl Jung, DPChallenge, Ego, Gratefulness, Life Coach, Self Perception, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recommended Reading Soundtrack:  Transcendental Blues by Steve Earl

When I was young, I remember being in the car with my Mom when the Hall and Oates song “Maneater” was playing on the radio. I was singing along, “Whoa, here she comes. Watch out boy, she’ll ‘chew your BUTT.” Laughter ensued by my mom, of course. If you don’t know that song (and I definitely wouldn’t hold it against you if you haven’t!), there is a reason as to why that was so funny.

Yes, my ears and brain had a few wires crossed and I actually confused the word “butt” with “up.” Oh, the sound of melancholy 80s pop love songs- the turmoil of Madonna in her song “Crazy for You.” Picture me in the back seat of our white Dodge Minivan, afraid at the humble age of 12 of the prospect of being alone for the rest of my life. Alone, alone, ALONE. Really!?

When I started thinking about what my greatest teacher in life has been, my heart met my mind in front of the great Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. All kind of directions were popping up, but I was led to an unexpected place within myself. The thoughts opened the door to the root of my life’s greatest fear, and greatest teacher- the fear of being alone, abandoned, all by my lonesome with my own “Achy Breaky Heart.” The fact that I can’t stand country music makes the fear that much more substantiated.

ive-finally-stopped-running-away-from-golden-hawn

Loneliness, once my mind’s arch enemy, has become my best friend. Without it I could never have seen the truth of who I am- like a mirror on display simultaneously within me and outside of me. It has taught me time and again the opposite- that I am never alone as I exist in everything I feel, perceive around me.

Once, when I was confronting all the reasons I believed no one would want me and I would die as Bridget Jones’ version of a lonely old “spinster,” and eventually be eaten by wild dogs, I was bluntly asked, “Are you crazy?” He continued, this stranger that was deeply involved in one of the most difficult confession sessions I had ever completed, “Why would you ever believe those things about yourself?”

That question turned out to be one that I am grateful for every day. This fear of being alone has led me on a journey of inner knowing, a “wild goose chase” if you will, that I never thought was possible. Through all the “crazy,” the tears, the crippling mental self flagellation, I have come out to the world with the understanding that it was only me, myself and I that could attempt to isolate myself from my truth and the people that operate within it.

reflectionoflightWhat is my truth? That in every laugh, impulsive reaction of every person I find annoying, adore, or look up to- there I am. No, I don’t have multiple personality disorder, but what I do have is a case of being human. The most difficult and awesome part of the experience is that all I see in others is a simple reflection of me.

In the end of the film, While You Were Sleeping, when Bullock’s character Lucy confesses she really is not the fiancé of the man she is about to marry, she explains to mother, father, grandmother, godfather, and sister, that she simply fell in love with not just her fiancé, but ALL of them. And just like that, she was never alone again. Through the fear of my greatest teacher (and many Cure songs of course) I have found a path to loving and appreciating all parts of myself within everyone I encounter. And I am ever abundantly more in love with all aspects of being human, every day.

Finding the Value in the Undervalued

DPChallenge, Life Coach, Perception, Self Perception, , , , , , , ,

It’s New Year’s. I’m celebrating with friends in DC. My DJ husband is spinning records, doing his usual ignore while drinking a bottle of Jack.

turning_midnight

It turns midnight. I’m alone. Another man makes eye contact, and kisses my cheek. I realize I don’t value myself. Another negative self-perception to confront.

value_myself

Age, Impermanence and All That Jazz

Aging, DPChallenge, Ego, Empowerment, Gratefulness, Perception, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 Recommended reading soundtrack:  Explosions in the Sky, “Your Hand In Mine”

“I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time… For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars… And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined our street… Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper… And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand new Firebird… And Janie… And Janie… And… Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me… but it’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst… And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life… You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry… you will someday.” Lester Burnham in the film “American Beauty.”

When I read that quote, when I hear the voice in that quote- no matter how many times- chills run through my body and tears well up in my eyes.  This feeling, although emotional, is an indicator of truth for me.  It epitomizes what the word “age” means to me.  How can we put a value on aging in a culture that markets it as unwanted, something to be resisted?  Every time I find my mind wandering into a fear about aging, I flashback to the version of myself at 21 and I remember how grateful I am to no longer be anywhere in the vicinity of that age.  Kind of like Amanda Peet’s character in the movie “A lot Like Love” (a simple film, yes- but who doesn’t laugh their arse off when she runs into the sliding glass door?) where she is reminded of her punk rock stage in college where she dated angry musicians.    Only I always ended up with drummers.

moonA Time Machine & Magical Spells

Remember Napoleon Dynamite’s brother who can’t let go of his high school football career and is in search of a time travel machine?  I think I would rather endure a Harry Potter spell of vomiting slugs than go back in time.  Especially to high school!  Why?  Because transformation really sweetens the deal in life, and no matter how difficult it gets, I now at least have the emotional tools to deal with things in a more balanced way.  Not everyone has experienced life in the same way- but there is something about age that I just can’t resist deep down.

You Mean I’m going to die?

It is the life, the experience that determines the molding of our belief systems that correlate with our perception of what aging will yield to us.  This includes our infinite potential- all possibilities.  We have a tendency to limit our potential by thinking that age determines something in the abstract about who we are, how we have failed to live up to something that does not even exist.  Do you let expectations about who you are “supposed” to be bring you down, and cloud your enjoyment of life as you age?  Do you remember in your actions that with each day comes the possibility of a life ended?

Sometimes I feel like I am engaged in a race against time. “I have to get this done,” I tell myself.  “If I don’t accomplish this- what will it say about me?  Am I wasting this life?  Am I fulfilling my human purpose to help people and make this world a better place?”  These are all sound questions, but they can get in the way of simply enjoying life as well and seeing how your role unfolds through active, present engagement.  It is the ego’s tendency to put the pressure on, but you can be sure that if you are putting the pressure on yourself to “be” something or “do” something, then you are impeding life’s natural flow and at the same time making yourself miserable.

clock+face+vintage+graphicsfairy6It’s Question Time

Age.  Perhaps the only pressure we should engage in with ourselves as we age should involve the amount of love we hold in our hearts like that balloon that is about to burst- for ourselves and the true beauty of our world as Lester Burnham suggests at the end of his life in American Beauty.

Perhaps we should ask ourselves, when was the last time that we felt “anything but gratitude for every single moment” in our lives and shared that gratitude with those around us?  I am grateful for this moment that I am sharing with you, and hope that together we can approach age as a meaningful gift.   I am also grateful for this opportunity to reflect on my own perception of aging and how it may limit me or empower me to live a life that is engaging and powerful.

A World of Objectification? Maybe.

Carl Jung, Compassion, DPChallenge, Ego, Life Coach, Media, Mind, Perception, , , , , , , , , , ,

“In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day.  What’s the Boy Scout code? Trustworthy. Loyal. Helpful. Friendly. Courteous. Kind. Obedient. Cheerful. Thrifty. Brave. Clean. Reverent. I might be all of those things, at certain moments. But people suspect that whatever good you do, you are faking. You’re that guy.”  Alec Baldwin

You have to love it when someone has just had enough, and instead of sitting on the sidelines, they helplessly try to make their peace with their antagonist.  Especially when it surfaces as a public rant.  The rebellious part of me roots them on, but there is the other part of me that feels sad they were brought to the point of insane expressionism.  One minute you can be feeling light and airy like a painting by Monet, the next minute you feel like you’re being devoured by Saturn in one of Goya’s “Black Paintings.”

We’ve all been there- especially at the end of a relationship that has gone totally downhill.  After long periods of distress with anyone, you reach your breaking point.  It is how you handle those breaking points that can create a defining moment in your life.  You might find yourself hurling a spoon of mashed potatoes at your brother’s face like Kevin in the Wonder Years during a family dinner (insert laughter here!).  Or you might be like Alec Baldwin earlier this week, writing an angry manifesto to the world of media saying “goodbye to the public life”.

Projecting Our Positives and Negatives

human_shadowYes, guilty as charged- I read it.  And, I have to admit, I feel compassion for him.  People who live in the public eye, whether they are “celebrities” or “politicians”, have drawn a tough lot in many ways.  Everything they say or do is scrutinized, judged.  The person that once existed in that shell of a body eventually becomes objectified by a media that has become a constant feeding source for the ego.  They aren’t human beings anymore to the public that reads these stories or checks out their picture in People magazine.  They become a story, an image to laugh at, an image to aspire to- but the human being, the world unto itself, slowly disappears in the words that try to paint a picture about them.  The rabble will project their light and darkness on them and make them become what they want in that moment.  It’s like an energy vampire feeding time.

Remembering Compassion, Remembering We Are Not Objects

compassion-sunday-begins-with-youIn conjunction with this, I recently saw the film about one of our world’s most objectified women- Diana with Naomi Watts, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.  I knew nothing about this film, and saw it on Amazon one night, wondering what the heck it was and its take on her life.  To say the least, it was very well done.  The film showed how difficult the life of Princess Diana became towards the end due to the media, eventually leading to her tragic death.  She developed all of these strategies to get to places without the media’s knowledge, just to do something that we would see as mundane.  Getting a hamburger for her was like obtaining a visa to visit Azerbaijan.

Towards the end of the film, before her fatal car crash, she attempted to eat a meal at her hotel’s restaurant, when a camera flashes from another diner.  She had absolutely no privacy and you could see in Naomi Watts’ performance a shell of a person that had lost the love of her life because she couldn’t avoid the media’s attention.

Alec Baldwin stated in his letter that, “In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day.”  I find this statement fascinating, because it is true that we appear to another as they choose to perceive us.  Yes, we all have “bad” days.  And, yes- we all have “good” days.  That’s because we are all of it- both good and bad.  We never know what a person is going through, how their world may be falling apart or coming together.  Knowing this, it may help us to be more compassionate beings and remember when you do see someone falling apart- that could be me.

My Funny Valentines- A Lumineers Moment

DPChallenge, Gratefulness, Grief, Life Coach, Love, Mindfulness, Stress, , , , , , , , , , , ,

There are moments in our lives when we are given the great privilege to witness a deep, unimaginable love.  It is during such moments that I wish I could bottle it up.  And, whenever I feel a moment of high-test overwhelm or forgetfulness of what is most important in life, I could just pull it off a shelf, remove the top and take a nice deep breath.  Perhaps that is why writing is so important to me, as it gives us that opportunity to hold fast to those moments in our hearts, and share them with the rest of the world in high hopes that it will simply multiply with every reader’s eyes and connecting spirit.  Although, you wouldn’t know it by the unexplainable break I have taken from blogging!

My grandmother, Gertie, holding one of my favorite vocalists, my niece- Shaili.
My grandmother, Gertie, holding one of my favorite vocalists, my niece- Shaili.

But this daily prompt is another perfect opportunity to get back into the game of connecting with the brilliant hearts and minds reading this blog now.  A year ago today, my grandmother, Gertie, passed away after a long life in a place called Long Island.  With her passing I was left with one of those cherished privileges to witness this deep love that I have described, that resulted from a grand moment of togetherness and a mutual experience of grief.  As her funeral occurred over “Valentine’s Day 2013” it would seem uncanny to not take this opportunity to recognize not only my grandmother, but also my entire family, as “My Funny Valentines” this year (I’m allowed more than one Valentine, right?).

It happened at the end.  Bonding through wake after wake, and then the solidifying funeral.  There we all were, hanging out in the living room of my Uncle Joe and Aunt Sue.  My Uncle Joe’s obsession with DVR “cheese” was taking place over the television, and everyone was exhausted eating their desserts after a final meal together.  But there was one gem within his DVR madness- the song “Ho Hey” performed by the Lumineers at the most recent Grammy Award celebration.  My little niece and nephew, who were both 3 and 2 years old at the time, loved to divide the chorus between the two of them.

My 3 year old niece, belting out the words “I belong with you, you belong with me, you’re my sweetheart!”

My 2 year old nephew doing the same with, “Ho!  Hey!  Ho!  Hey!”

We all sang with them in our melancholy and gratefulness, hence that song does not play to this day without the appearance of a tear running down my face.  I love you all, my funny valentines!  And most of all, I thank you grandma, for bringing us together at the end of your life for a smashing moment of enduring love that will flourish in my heart forever.  Just remember, “I belong with you, you belong with me, you’re my sweetheart!”

In the spirit of the infinite space that resides within our hearts, I say let’s just “Rock Big Love” this week anyway, and forget about the hallmark holiday!

I REMEMBER….

Acceptance, Attachment, Awareness, Change, Compassion, DPChallenge, Life, Perception, Stress, , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Childhood Lesson on Life’s Fragility

Thank you Weekly Writing Challenge for drawing out from me another memory that framed the truth of perception for me.

A memory that really affected my perception of the world and its profound fragility came from a car accident I experienced in 4th grade.  It is weird how when you think about one memory, all of a sudden another memory pops up.  Our mind is like a tree, branching out.  One branch growing into another, so subtle and fluid.  Fourth grade was one of those years that really stood out for me with change.  The accident took place right after Christmas.  Me and my brothers were corralled into our family’s little white Toyota Tercel by my Mom to take a trip to the local mall in an effort to exchange some things.  It was a cloudy day and the roads were slick with drizzle from the winter sky.  It was the early 80s- no one had their seat belts on.

“We don’t remember days, we remember moments.”  Cesare Pavese

We lived in the woods of Virginia, so we traveled a lot on these curvy “back roads” as we called them with deep shoulders and no lines.  As we took one of those curves our car hit the shoulder on my side of the car, me in the passenger front seat and my 2 younger brothers in the back. As we hit the shoulder, I grabbed for the dashboard.  It was a futile effort to control a car that now had its own mission.

The only recollection I have “during” the accident was when my face planted into the very dashboard I reached for moments earlier.  I do know that we flipped once, and as we began to flip a second time we hit a telephone pole or power line and this positioned us back on our wheels in someone’s front yard.  I remember my Mother being very scared and crying- hitting the horn repeatedly to get anyone’s attention.  Finally someone passed by, pulled over and was running from house to house to find a phone to call 911.  This was also before cell phones.

drseuss_memories

I remember waiting on the grass in this stranger’s front yard that we passed so many times  for the ambulance.  My brother’s face was bleeding, but mostly I just remember my Mother being overwhelmingly distraught.  There were 2 strong, emotionally charged memories from that experience that I still carry with me.  One was of a kind EMT- I remember him telling jokes to draw out laughter from me and my brothers.  I’m sure they were just as scared as I was.

The other most vivid memory from this ordeal took place at the hospital.  I remember being alone in my little curtained cubicle in the ER, and crying.  My mouth hurt because it had a very big cut behind my bottom lip that needed a lot of stitches.  But also, I felt a lot of stress from being in that accident.  It was kind of like what people experience with PTSD.  I remember someone came in to look at my mouth and placated my crying with a “oh, you’re fine- no big deal- we’ll stitch you up and you’ll be out of here.”  She even laughed at me.  It was awful, and I will never forget that person’s lack of knowledge about the psychological impact of a car accident on a child.  I couldn’t get that image of my Mother out of my head, panicking and crying and yelling for help.  Saying over and over again, “my babies,” with anxiety and fear.

Most children are not fully aware of a world that “lacks control” around that age.  They are just learning- and to see your parent in all their humanity, who you always note to be a leader, a solid foundation in your life- not solid and genuinely scared- is a huge learning experience and really affects your perception of the world.  You are learning that everything is not always the way you think it is and all you thought to be safe and secure can change in the blink of an eye.

When I watched the film, The Impossible, I was very taken aback by the scene where the oldest son sees his mother physically falling apart and realizes for the first time how serious it was, and he didn’t know how to handle it.  She had to refocus him and force him to keep moving or else they would die.  I know my memory is nowhere near as traumatic as this was to that young boy- but in essence, it was very similar and it really affected me watching it.  I only hope that other children who experience similar things will be helped with more kindness and compassion.  Our physical world is very limiting- we never know what someone is feeling deeply inside- we are each a planet unto ourselves.

This is perception and the fragility of our perceptions creates valuable lessons for all of us.  I only hope that we can all continue to remember how sensitive the ego of a child truly is, and their inability to describe where their emotions may be coming from makes their ordeal more traumatizing than it can be for an adult.  With a little TLC, we can make a huge impact on someone’s life without understanding what is going on in their heart or head.  It’s funny. I remember the one person that did care and tried to help me and my brother’s anxieties, as well as the one other person that did nothing.  I learned so much from both of them!