Tag Archives: new mexico

Abandoning My Abandonment with a Song for You

October 8, 2014Acceptance, Attachment, ForgivenessAbandonment, Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, Alexi Murdoch, Attachment, Autumn, co-dependent, Custody, Divorce, forgiveness, karma, Life, new mexico, Perception, Sam Smith, Self Perception, Stay with Me, The HelpBorn to Be

Recommended Reading Soundtrack: Song for You by Alexi Murdoch on album Four Songs

Autumn is my favorite season in New Mexico. The weather holds a place in my soul as cool contentment, and to top it off, the ABQ International Balloon Fiesta whisks away the hot summer and carries with it sweet relief. As the aspen leaves change to a gleaming yellow on the mountain side and begin their annual transformation, it is also an ideal time in my heart to reflect on any baggage I’ve been carrying around that is also ready to transform and break away into the potential for new growth.

Stay with Me

As I drove to work this morning in bumper to bumper traffic due to the parade of balloons riding the breeze over our roadways, I found myself reluctantly sucked into the song “Stay with Me” by Sam Smith and realized it was time for me to come clean with my greatest fear- abandonment. The thing is, I’ve come to the realization that this time it is not about me feeling abandoned, but the guilt I carry every day for feeling like I abandoned my step-daughter and how that made her feel, with no opportunity to tell her that I am sorry.

What If?

In all the times I have felt alone and abandoned, the thought of causing another human being the same pain is like torture for me. It has been an issue for me my whole life and a major source of my old co-dependency issues. A struggle that pushes and pulls my heart strings, leaving me feeling suspended over an empty ocean. But a wise teacher once told me that when you experience pushing and pulling in your heart, you are not living from your greatest potential, you are living in fear’s shadow of “what if”. My fear has always been rooted in avoiding hurting others, without the realization that people are responsible for managing their own suffering. Yet, when the other person became a child the game changed for me.

I had made the decision to end my marriage because I witnessed how my unhealthy relationship with my step-daughter’s father was affecting her in a negative way and causing her to feel responsible for the management of my own emotional pain. The cycle of the “balancer” was unfolding before my very own “balancer” eyes, and I knew it was unfair to her. She deserved more.

You is kind. You is smart. You is important.

Being shut out from a step-child without any communication is so painful. There is a scene at the end of the film “The Help” when Aibleen is fired and must leave behind her employer’s child who she had been raising for the duration of the child’s life. And she is forced to say goodbye to a little girl, knowing there is no way she can understand why she is leaving. Knowing that she will think Aibleen has abandoned her. The scene captures everything that I felt in having to walk away from my marriage without the opportunity to give consolation to this dear child that had such a profound impact in my life.

I would have done anything to say, “I love you with all my heart, I will always think of you as a daughter, and would be honored to continue to play a role in your life.” But karma did not allow for this gift. And, so it goes.

Now it is time for me to place this unrelenting sadness into the fire of one of those illuminated balloons floating over New Mexico and watch it disappear into the morning sunrise. It is time for me to abandon my abandonment and trust that all the conversations I’ve had in my head and in my dreams with her have somehow reached through time and space and given her peace. Sometimes there is nothing else we can do but let it go in pure, unattached love. This time I shall watch my abandonment float away with a wish that you may know how loved and beautiful you are, always.

So Dear A, in the words of Alexi Murdoch in his “Song For You,”

So today I wrote a song for you
Cause a day can get so long
And I know it’s hard to make it through
When you say there’s something wrong

So I’m trying to put it right
Cause I want to love you with my heart
All this trying has made me tired
And I don’t know even where to start

Maybe that’s a start.

GROUP EXERCISE- Reflections on Owning Your Uncool

In your own quest to live your life from your greatest potential, your Rock Star Self, what is a great fear that you have avoided looking at and accepting? How has this fear prohibited you from living your life from a place of joy, and what opportunities have you chosen not to take because of this fear? This is a moment to seize in your vulnerability, and share with the deepest part of your self that is patiently waiting to connect with you. Embrace your “uncool” and Rock Big Love!

Tourists in The Great Unknown, Unite!

May 21, 2014Change, Fear, Life Coach, Perception, Self PerceptionBelief Systems, Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Fear, Garden State, Life, new mexico, Perception, purposeful perception, Roxette, Self Perception, The ShinsBorn to Be

Recommended Reading Soundtrack: Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall by Coldplay

And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born
Then it’s time to go
And define your destination

Death Cab for Cutie, You are a Tourist

Making choices in our lives about the BIG things- our jobs, relationships, who am I going to be when I wake up in the morning (ha!)- making these choices is not a simple task. As a human, there is always fear to contend with when it comes to those “big” things. It permeates everything around us, like a perfume that has lost its luster and just stinks up the joint by making something that already doesn’t smell so good, something worse.

As I was driving through the vast expanse of New Mexico recently and getting lost in my own heart’s great expanse, I was listening to Death Cab for Cutie singing their rock’n song, “You are a Tourist.” I sang along with their metaphorical lyrics,

“And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born,
Then it’s time to go.”

I thought to myself, “Sure, it’s easy to say that, but to implement big change like that in our lives takes courage and faith in what our heart is telling us.” Following through with those feelings and making changes in our lives does not come without risks and what I would call “mental torture.”

But the thing is, compromising who we are for the sake of not wanting to deal with the “big unknown” just perpetuates our limiting belief systems about ourselves and life’s possibilities. It all comes back to the “great unknown” but there is nothing we can do about the unknown. It is what it is. And, it is easy to get caught in a vicious cycle of judging ourselves for taking that risk because we are programmed to not take the risks that usually increase our personal growth potential exponentially.

I can say this, I’ve never met a person who regretted making the decision to believe in their life’s potential as something greater. When I was driving across the great unknown from Washington DC with my Dad, I was a little scared. I had just quit my job for something “unknown.” I was moving in with 2 new roommates that I really didn’t know. And, I was moving to a state thousands of miles away from my family and friends where I also “didn’t know” anyone. A state that many American citizens still think is a foreign country (I am not kidding!).

My Dad said to me on our cross country journey (the same Dad that doesn’t even like to leave his house and hadn’t been on an airplane since I was born- 30 years prior), “How do you know everything is going to be okay?” All I could say was, “I just know.” Sometimes, it pays to simply open that suitcase of fears we carry around with us every day, and contemplate the origin of our limiting belief systems. Because in all of our ends, our integrity and truth will never lead us astray.

A “Garden State” Moment

Tomorrow is not going to wait for us to make up our mind. No, I’m not going to quote a cheesy pop song by Roxette (still, Listen to Your Heart!). But, if you ever feel a new world burgeoning within you, just think about that moment when Andrew in the film Garden State was handed some music by Albuquerque’s The Shins. And his new friend Sam said, “You’ve got to hear this one song, it will change your life, I swear.” Although a moment like this appears to be outside of us, it is occurring within ourselves. And it is a profound, and motivating experience to behold. This moment, if you run with it, will definitely change your perception not only about yourself and what you are capable of, but will also change your perception about the world around you. Prepare to be launched into the great unknown, only to find what you’ve known all along but were afraid to admit. You are a rock star!

One. Two. Three- GO!

Dear Postal Service, Everything Has Changed!

August 2, 2013Life CoachChange, co-dependent, Creators Project, Empowerment, Life, life coach, new mexico, Self Perception, Some Idealistic Future, The Postal Service, Washington DCBorn to Be

Okay, inspiration comes in many forms. We just need to trust it when it comes, and feel with our heart what we are feeling with an intention of deep listening. What do these feelings want to say? What is this moment revealing for me in the hidden spaces of my heart? Life moves so fast, we forget about those amazing moments where something in us is pushing the envelope of what we “think” we’re supposed to be doing or where we think we’re going in our life.

I just saw this mini documentary on the Postal Service’s tour made by the “Creators Project.” In the beginning they were doing interviews with people outside a venue and someone made a comment that almost passed me by, but fortunately I was actually hearing him. They said how listening to the songs on this tour of their one and only album brought him back to the memories of that time in his life, his “angsty” high school years. He said that some of them were good, and some of them were bad (you could tell it was difficult to experience just by the tone of his voice). As I kept watching and feeling the music, I started experiencing the same thing that this post-angsty dude was talking about!

I fought my tears as I started thinking about when I discovered the Postal Service. It was 2005 and I was going through a major transition in my life. Thinking about moving out west from the only place I really knew, my home, which coincidentally was Washington DC. As I began to process my desire to move, I went through this amazing time in my life where I really discovered myself by being alone after so many years of co-dependency. I began to fall in love myself and what it was to just “be”. I enjoyed every moment I had in those quiet places of my heart.

The album contributed to a major change in my self-perception. Every day I would run and run around this middle school track near my house. Rain or shine- I was out there, feeling the air, listening to the same Postal Service album, listening to my breath change with the moving minutes. I moved to New Mexico, still listening to that same album, adjusting to a new reality where the only thing my mind had was me. I remember during my cross-country drive with my Dad he said to me he couldn’t believe I was doing it, and asked me if I was scared. This was a big deal for my Dad- if you knew him, you’d understand. He didn’t grow up in a household where people talked about their feelings. He also does not like change, and this was BIG change for his daughter, his first child, and for him.

I said I just knew that this was right, and that everything was going to work out. I will never forget his response. He said he wished he could be like me, and be that sure about something so big. I will always be grateful to the Postal Service for that album, and the change it inspired in me as it helped me to learn how to love myself and trust change. And, I will always have that memory of my Father that I will cherish and remember whenever I feel like I just don’t know.

The documentary ended with the song, Some Idealistic Future, where they sang with the audience those words that inspired so much for me, “Everything will change…ooo…ooooo”. Yes, everything has changed, thank goodness!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Illumination

January 11, 2013Buddhism, Compassion, Death, Film, Forgiveness, heart, Life, Love, Meditation, Nature, Reflectionbuddhism, Compassion, death, film, forgiveness, joy, new mexico, peace, poetry, postaday, santa feBorn to Be

Living the light of my heart
On again, off again
My light switch, my ego’s fear
Dancing, illuminated-
Light’s alliteration playing a game of hop-scotch
With each syllable sounding out
A glimmer of hope bounces from my outer to my inner
A sanctuary of joy ready to open widely
If only for a moment
Let there be light, let there be love.

When I took this picture it was my second adventure in New Mexico, only this one was one of those experiences where your heart is hunting kismet. Stopping in Madrid, a small artist community an hour from Santa Fe where they’ve filmed such regal cinema as “Wild Hogs” (just joking on the regal), me and my friend met this local shop owner that had a very open heart. She invited us to go check out a ceremonial place where locals would meet and have drum circles, and walk a labyrinth. When we got there it was like stumbling upon the love of their land in a balanced ritual of Goddess magic. I took this picture as I pondered the imagination that had been infused into the land of New Mexico from its magical past.

The light illuminated these colorful twists of prayer next to some Tibetan prayer flags. Believe it or not, Santa Fe, NM, has a large Tibetan population. The Tibetan scholar and consultant for Scorsese’s film Kundun, Lobsang Lhalungpa, lived in Santa Fe until he passed away due to a drunk driver accident. At his funeral, it was said that when he came to New Mexico and meditated, it was the closest thing to Tibet he had ever experienced in his life, which is why he moved there.

At the funeral ceremony someone said that before he died, he told his wife not to feel anger toward the drunk driver. That we must feel compassion for him. It was an illuminating experience, just as this light in my picture. A room of 400 people were able to create so much compassion in that instant that would again be infused into our land for generations of healing. Even on his death bed he forgave and created a wave of love. I hope that when I pass, my life will end in such a peaceful state as well, cultivated by the compassion and kindness of so many others.