Skipping to the end

Hi Love!

About a year ago I was walking my dog, trying to unbreak my heart (the news, you guys, the news… but that’s another post), listening to Brené Brown’s latest when I literally stopped in my tracks. Her book is Atlas of the Heart (there’s an accompanying series on HBO of the same name), and it sets out to map out a human’s emotional landscape: what we feel and where we go when we feel it. I was lapping up the last bits of Chapter 8 (Shame, Self-Compassion, Perfectionism, Guilt, Humiliation, Embarrassment), which was juicy and satisfying. Honestly, I’d started to tune out as she started a new chapter beginning with the sense of belonging. Then she brought up Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. Ever heard of that? It rang a bell with me, and as I listened my brain helpfully supplied me with an image that looked something like this.

Basic, right? Seems logical. Yep, cool. Except, wait.

Look.

See it? It’s vertical. That’s when I stopped, literally stopped walking. I’d been focusing at that time on my own awareness around feeling deserving of the good things I want in my life: a thriving career, financial growth, fantastic relationship - the same things most of us want. What I noticed is that, while I can be an electric fairy unicorn at envisioning exactly what I want to bring into my life, I have this thing where I get halfway there and then, I don’t know, something just craps out. I get distracted, sidetracked, or I seem to lose faith or interest. I lose my nerve.

I got some good coaching, and I realized that there is a part of me that is not at all convinced that I deserve these things. Not at all convinced that I have anything of value to offer at all, in fact. I notice it in how I value others’ time over my own. Others’ comfort over my own. Even others’ growth and success over my own. I have no doubts about them, their worthiness, their brilliance, or their deserving, not one. Sooo much safer to support and promote their dreams and longings than to proclaim and commit to my own. My home, my family, my friends, even my clients had been co-opted to some extent to serve as vicarious expressions of my own dreams. The closer I looked, the more I could see the cracks in my self esteem, cracks that make me cringe. The idea of actually repairing them and filling them (as in, prioritizing myself, insisting on my own worth) made me actually squirm.

We all have our programming, this is a big piece of mine: my worth as a woman and a mother is in my giving, my virtue in my sacrifice.

So yeah, now look back at the diagram. I am absurdly lucky, and my physiological needs are abundantly met. Ditto for safety, love, and belonging (mostly). But how did I think I was going to live and play in the tippity top with all of my fabulous plans if the Esteem level is a minefield? (Note: esteem from others isn’t worth much if you don’t esteem yourself. Don’t believe me? Try this on: which do you take more seriously, a compliment or a criticism?) As I say often to my clients: sorry, but we can’t skip to the end. Now I know where my work is.

Where is yours? Are you trying to launch a business but can’t make rent? Are you trying to love and accept your kids and trash-talking yourself all day? There are so many ways that we try to skirt and work around our wobbly parts, whether out of shame, resignation, defeat, or denial. It’s a gorgeous, heroic instinct to aim high, but stop. Just pause for a sec and take inventory. Check in with your needs, one rung at a time.

As always, be well, love wildly, and reach out when you need support. We all do.

Love, Nina

Falling in Love with Yourself

Many years ago I felt trapped in my own dark night of the soul. It felt like being stranded at sea with no wind, stripped of my dreams and illusions, with no discernible direction and no way to get there even if I did. I painted this bleak picture to one of my teachers and mentors and she said simply, “The only way through this is to fall in love with yourself.”

I told her to F- off.

By then, I was too humbled to disbelieve her. Problem was, I did believe her. Something in me knew that this was true, that this is what my broken heart had revealed. Still, I felt I had a higher chance of performing actual brain surgery. The idea of, not just loving myself, but being IN LOVE with myself, seemed the loneliest, most impossible feat from where “I” was, a muddy puddle on the floor. “How?”, I wanted to know. I remember asking that question over and over, for months, then years.

In time, I realized that falling in love with myself was exactly the same as falling in love with anything or anyone else. That falling in love has a pretty predictable trajectory. First, I had to step back from that puddle just far enough to look at it. Give my full attention to the part of me that was broken and liquid and low. Doing that meant that I could see that that puddle wasn’t me, but a part of me. A part of me that was young, and confused, and impossibly dear in her vulnerability. In short, I had to see her.

Next, I had to let in all the compassion and understanding that had been held at bay by my judgement and self-condemnation, my self-righteousness and indignation around all that I had lost. With that compassion and understanding came grieving.

The grieving took a very, very long time.

Friends, let’s just decide to get good at grieving. If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that loss upon loss is an inevitable feature of living as humans in the time-space continuum. Why fight it? Let us grieve beautifully and luxuriously and openly. Let our grief be a prayer of surrender and trust. Let our grief be, in its keening, an embrace of what is. Let our grief be a blessing.

Once the grieving started making room for other things, I noticed that I could fall in love with what I love, and give myself those things. Finding songs to be anthems to my strength and resilience, stories that connected me to what I was becoming. I danced with myself, sang to myself, wrote myself love letters of encouragement, looked at pictures of my old self and both missed her and was proud of how resilient she’d become.

See? I began to crush on myself, little by little. Enchanted with my ideas and my own wonder, engaging with my dreams, prioritizing my creativity and joy, standing up for myself in bigger and bigger ways, until I realized it had happened. This impossible thing! I was falling in love with myself. And the idea of betraying myself became more and more contrary to who I am: a person who is whole.

How can you take baby steps to falling in love with yourself this week? Where are you on this journey - or where do you start? Leave me a comment - I’d love to high-five you.

POEM

Advice Received Upon Solicitation For How To Mend a Broken Heart

Fall in love with the self.

(What?)

Start with the mind and wander its narrow streets.

On a sunny day there is architecture to admire,

Sweet micro gardens, tumbling over high windows,

Cheeky with ideas, lush with curiosity.

But the mind is shifty.

The rooms behind the windows are full of poets and lovers, yes,

But also gossips and cowards,

So easy to trip into dark neighborhoods -

Lurking bullies, and all that.

Safer to turn to the body and admire its

inner conveyances

(The outside of the body is guarded by jackals).

Systems, loosely, delicately tangled,

Like the roots of a forest unified with fungi,

Like a jazz symphony

All the elements flowing regiments:

Fire from the brain

Air from the heart

Earth from the gut

And water

Water everywhere

flowing, glistening, leaking, squirting

The water of the body wastes no syllables:

tears piss sweat blood cum

It has work to do.

Water never rests.

I can admire that.

The body-cosmos!

The moon!

But to fall in love… I know that to be made of thinner,

more gossamer stuff.

I do not fall in love with a body

I do not even fall in love with a mind

I fall in love with a soul. With a mirror of my own.

Fall, and your soul will catch you, promise.

Rest your head in her palm as she cradles your weary heart

Shhhhh, she says,

Shhhhh, I’ve got you.

Just rest, and I will fall in love with you.

Qualifications

So I'm getting really excited about the Spring Retreat in a few weeks. It was one of those things that just popped out almost fully formed - I sat down to work on it over the weekend and it was just there, like a delicious little donut on a vintage plate under glass. I guess it had been pulling itself together under the radar for months and months while I was busy wondering when I would finally be ready, while I was wondering who the hell I am to offer such a thing, while I was wondering who, if not me, would fold all this laundry.

I was talking to my mom yesterday, telling her about it, and about other plans and ideas and events already brewing. I was feeling good, feeling inspired - my mindself was doing that hoppy-punchy- boxing move, you've seen that, right? So I tell my mom about what the retreat is (she's never been to a retreat of any kind), who it's for, what need it's addressing. Basically I'm justifying its right to exist, and I'm just doing this automatically. Like another donut, fully formed, but this one is stale and mealy and frosted with disappointment. And my mom says, simplifying things, trying heroically to understand, 'So it's a retreat about balance?' I answer that, um, that's part of it, sure. 'And you are qualified to teach others about balance exactly how?'

Hehe. 

Yeah...

I took a second. I laughed, because, of course she nailed it. Calling out the Fraud, the little Girl (for a split second I felt maybe 8 years old), the Black Sheep (Nina's doing what now?) - my family is incredibly adept and gathering all these inner characters together to just stare at me from behind my eyes. 

Well, shit, okay. Qualification of my qualifications; I wanted to remind her of all my certifications, all my years of practice, all the books I've read, the seminars I've completed, the podcasts I've listened to, the clients I've helped. Yeah, aaaalllll that. I wanted to enlighten her.

I wanted to lay out for her exactly why I am allowed to be here, why I think I deserve this seat at the table, but I didn't.

Because wait,  this is actually one of the core things I want to bring, right? That you are enough. I am enough. The very best we can offer this world is our whole selves, I know this to be true. I am bringing my gifts and I am bringing my flaws. I do not have to be perfect to teach about honoring our imperfection. I do not have to be perfectly balanced to offer perspectives that bring more balance to others. I'm not selling solutions, I am connecting people to their truth, and that's a lot messier. Every day I understand that a little bit better.

Every year that passes the more aware I am of all that I don't know. The more humbled I feel. I made a New Years' Resolution about 4 years ago to work on being less controlling, and Life was more than happy to provide one experience after another to remind me of all that I cannot possibly control. (Like, really and truly kicked my ass, so be careful with that one!) And yet all that humbling has opened so many doors of truth, of connection, of compassion, and yes, of wisdom. (I tried not to whisper that last one.) And being better at connection, at compassion, at vigilantly checking my judgement, that has made me better at what I do. My flaws, my wounds, and Life's uncanny ability to pull them out, to set them on the table for display, for seeing, for healing: that has been the deepest qualification I have acquired.

One thing I know to be true, what qualifies you to be and offer the world whatever your have, whatever you are, is your heart-led striving to be that. Whatever your imperfections, whatever your setbacks, if you are striving to be true to yourself and to this world, I want you at the table. I'll save you a seat. 

Trajectories

I went wind surfing once when I was about 13, maybe 14. It was with a summer camp that aimed to take middle schoolers on new adventures each day - rock climbing, sailing, horseback riding. This one was at a reservoir in the scorched yellow hills north of Los Angeles. It was probably 100,000 degrees that day.

First, balance. Trying to plant my feet on this floor on the water. To find my center I negotiated the nature of the lake; when I resisted and was rigid, I fell. I feel pretty certain that I fell more than once. I remember a lot of huffing to try to get back on the board, come to standing, breathe, wobble, tense, fall, repeat. Panting, I finally got it: surrender. Go with it. Cool.

The next part was just hard work. Hoisting the rope that held the mast, pulling and pulling with my pencil arms to raise the sail that was submerged and impossibly heavy with water. More panting. Cross bar finally in my hands! Excited, muscles tense, determined. One of the camp counselors called to me and I looked over and had just enough time to register a cheerful thumbs-up before I was in the water again. I feel like this getting my footing, this digging and pulling and recalibrating - I feel like it took many, many attempts. I remember that by the time I had everything sorted out I was the last one on the dock, the other campers scattered little triangles on the lake.

But then there was a breeze. There was! And my sail dipped into it and carved a beautifully straight line away from the dock. Then the breeze was a wind and I started laughing - so beautiful and quiet and free. And competent, damn! I sailed past a few downed compatriots, clawing desperately back onto their boards like wet cats. A flutter of pity, but mostly pride as I was certain I had noticed a hint of awe on their faces as I glided expertly past. I had found the secret! I was the goddess of the lake, no, a warrior goddess! I was wind surfing and it was effortless.

I know. This is the part where I fall. But here's the thing, I don't fall! Instead, ignoring the urgent cries from the dock, I stay my course, strong and true to the end. All the way to the end, in fact, to the wall of the reservoir. Because that was the direction of the wind. And now the dock was really far away, and I was all alone, and there was no more wind.

I remembered this moment while talking to a friend the other day. She was breaking her head trying to figure out why she wasn't further along in her endeavors. Why, when she had worked so hard to finally set a clear goal, when every sign was confirming that yes, this is the right direction, why so many setbacks?

Tacking, I thought. I remembered then, stuck at the wrong side of the lake, that I was supposed to tack, to catch the wind where I could find it and use it to trace a course that would, indirectly, in a wild zig-zag pattern, get me where I needed to go. We do it to get down a steep mountain in the snow. We make the same pattern to stitch a wound together, actually - oh! and to run from crocodiles and wasps! Okay, that was a reach, but still, this was such an a-ha moment for me. My ideals, my vision is so clear, so straight, so logical, surely this is the way my goals will be reached. Surely this is the trajectory of my soul!

Nope. Tacking. Reaching each side with the deep sigh of recognition, as the scenery is not so very changed from when we were here the last time. Oh my God and of course there are moments of smooth sailing and straight flying and the exquisite ecstasy of YES! when all the pieces just fall into place. Gorgeous moments. But, moments.

I made it back to the middle of the lake and there I floundered for what felt like hours. In the end one of the staff had to come get me and tow me back to the dock. Bless him. By far the last one in, I am sorry to report I did not receive a warrior goddess's welcome, and those who had had to wait for me were aloof as we piled back into the camp van.

So exhausted, so spent, so embarrassed. Still, I snuck a smile as I looked out the window of the camp van. Because the warrior goddess? She's me too.

Who the hell do you think you are?

There is a quiet phenomenon unfolding in my circle, one that astounds me in its near universality among the mothers of elementary school children. It will show itself in unexpected moments - dropping off for a play date, standing around the table at a potluck. A couple of weeks ago I bumped up against a mom at the school that I barely knew. I looked at her to apologize for ramming into her and saw it all over her face. I stopped, and asked her if she was okay. That was all she needed, and as she let her guard down she tearfully painted a picture of overwhelm, of exhaustion, of utter joylessness.

She said, 'I don't know who I am anymore.'

Oh. Yeah, I get that. 

She was probably the fifth woman in as many months to express this to me - and I am not even counting clients here. Just women I come across in my life. Maybe this is a secret of motherhood as old and well-kept as afterbirth (always a horrible surprise, even with my third baby!). Maybe our mothers and grandmothers felt this way. Maybe. I should ask them. Still, it feels like this is a side-effect of those of us Gen-Xers who went to college, started careers, then made a left turn to stay home with our babies. Or maybe, like I did, they couldn't figure out who they wanted to be in the world, what they wanted to do with all their competence and intelligence and education, and were relieved to have a family and focus on that instead. So defining. 

Who am I? I'm mom.

So we focused on that. Not just on being mothers, but on being the best mothers. If we were going to stay home, we would be domestic fucking goddesses. We would read about parenting, attend seminars about the special needs of boys/girls in our broken society, conduct deep research about the best diet to feed a hyper child, watch documentaries about the perils of sugar, agonize about schools, about media, about vaccinations, about the correct balance of scheduled activities and free play. We organized potlucks, we attended potlucks, we, collectively, silently, dreaded potlucks. We. Volunteered.

And then our kids were kids, not babies. And they are gorgeous. And they are flawed. And they may need tutoring or counseling or special dietary restrictions. And now our youngest, our babies, are in school and we catch a glimpse of ourselves inadvertently in a supermarket window and it takes a full three seconds to register who that is. To realize that that haggard, puffy-eyed, frowny-faced woman is me.

Ouch.

We are like juiced orange husks - empty and bitter and dry. All of our sweetness, all of our energy, all of our juicy sexy life force - we have poured all of it down the gullets of our families, of our kids. And maybe we're a little less patient now. A little more resentful when there is giggling in the house and we're folding laundry. Stymied and sour when Daddy comes home and just plays with them while we make dinner. This isn't who we want to be.

The problem is, we can't remember who we want to be. Whatever we were super into before we had our all-consuming babies seems so far away now, so irrelevant, so impractical. We can't connect to joy because we can't remember how to connect with ourselves. We have carved out an existence and an identity that is defined almost exclusively by how we relate to and serve these other people. We have lost ourselves completely.

This happened to me four years ago. It was shocking. And it has been a long crawl back to myself - long and messy and expensive and complicated. But it was worth it. Looking for myself I found whole parts of me severed and locked away, parts that I unconsciously assumed would get in the way of fulfilling my mission as a mother. I had to face them. To let them out, to welcome them back, and to face them and their passionate complaints.

This is a process I have been working with for four years, one that I have honed and built upon, and one that I am ready to share. I am building a Spring Retreat to address this, to offer a day of restoration and hope, as we break down the breakdown and embark on a new beginning in the relationship with self. Keep an eye on my events page for more details.

Love, Nina

Listing

I was feeling overwhelmed the other morning. Just swirling, like a fly - all buzz but no landing. So I made a list. Honestly I should just make little word magnets that say LAUNDRY and DISHES and EMAIL and so on, all the things in my life that are never done, never settled, always needling. Then I could just arrange and re-arrange those words on my fridge and spare the paper I use to write those same words over and over each week. But it's the writing that does it - that captures all those floating, nagging tasks and pins them to the page. Then it feels like progress.

Still, listing is a word I love. Something about how the answer is in the question. The listing of a ship, the watery knees of feeling at sea. Listing as a stabilizer, like feet on dry land.

Listing

It could be the answer

to one of those word puzzles

on NPR Sundays

A word that is both the problem

and its own solution

Swaying mental towers

brought to attention in the quiet

confinement of columns and categories

clipboards and checkmarks

A line running though

an endless succession of

deadening upright endeavors

All leaning

All keening

Walled and blotted, a shake of the head

and a steadying breath of wind

lines of ballast on the ocean of the page

Testing, testing

My first blog post and I immediately thought of this picture. I took it in the Umpqua National Forest last winter, and it always reminds me of what it feels like to feel well and truly stuck. The impenetrable knotted nature of that sense - the tangle, the mess, the petrified wheel. A friend of mine once gave me an image of this that struck me. That in these moments, when we feel at a complete loss, it is as though we have walked every possible path to find the way through only to discover that we are met at the end with a towering cliff. Cut off. That's it. Turn back, and start again. This is how we make ourselves crazy, this sweet, stubborn conviction that, if we just think it though again, walk the path again - maybe even another way - that we will get out, get un-stuck, and move forward. Yet each time there's that freakin' cliff. We've sweat, lost sleep, turned ourselves inside out, eaten ALL the ice cream. We cannot bear this labyrinth. There must be something we missed.

But wait. Stop.

Sometimes the cliff is not a barrier, but an invitation. An invitation to surrender - not to self-destruction, but to transformation. Well-worn paths that just don't lead where they used to, ways of being and doing that - just like that - stop working. They are a like an angel's tap on the shoulder. A (usually not-so) gentle nudge to the edge of the cliff. Offering surrender, humility, awe. Asking, but what about your wings?