When I was in my mid-twenties I lived in Toronto and took the subway to and from work. One day, on my way home, I sat in one of the back-to-back seats that faced the rear of the train. Seated in front of me, in a bank of seats that lined the sidewall of the car, was a person I will never forget.

He was a burly, middle-aged man. If I had to guess, most of his working life had been spent doing heavy, physical labour outside. He was dressed in grey coveralls that zipped up in the front, wore steel-toed boots and sitting on his lap was a black utility-style lunchbox (one I imagined had a full-sized thermos snapped into the upper inner lid). He was covered head to toe in a thick coat of dirt or soot that was most obvious on his exposed hands and face. His presence had slid away from his massive frame in defeat; his gaze never left the floor, his dinner-plate sized hands didn’t move from his lunch box. What I remember the most clearly, were the tears that steadily streamed down his broad face leaving paths in the dirt on his checks. He wasn’t making a spectacle of himself or sobbing. He just continually, quietly cried.

My fairly carefree day shifted into the heavier place he occupied almost immediately; my chest felt like it might explode with grief. I wanted to reach out and hold this stranger’s hand but instead I watched, paralyzed. I didn’t feel like I needed to know the ‘why’ at the time although I have of course often wondered since. I wanted instead, more than anything, to communicate that I cared what was happening to him. I watched him but I didn’t move a muscle. No one else approached him either but I felt like everyone in that subway car had collectively stopped breathing.

I don’t know how many stops it took but eventually this crumbling mountain of a man, reached his destination, got up, shuffled out and I never saw him again.

In life and in friendship we so often have opportunities to participate in the intertwined beauty and fragility of others. Why might we be inclined to do nothing? To fix rather than ‘stand with’? Or to deny the present moment and replace it with a future that we have decided is the only way or a future as we wish it were?

Consider the times when you have chosen your own comfort over someone else’s reality.

When did you not act when you could have? When have you silenced another person through your indifference or with your well-meaning encouragement to ‘get on with things’ and to ‘look at the bright side’? What about when you may have used your own drama as a distraction?

Sometimes the reality of another person’s circumstances is big and heart-splintering. Other times the mundane aches and pains have built up over a lifetime. Either way, being seen as you truly are can be healing and being fully human requires an openness to a complete spectrum of experiences. We have a choice: we can hold onto our comfort and our story or we can show up for others inside their pain. Showing up might mean different things, maybe you are the shoulder, maybe you act as the seeker for a professional support system.

You are more likely to show up for others when you know how to show up for yourself

What happens when you are personally faced with difficult emotions? Do you battle and silence them? Do you brood and stay stuck inside your own story? Do you believe in a cultural narrative that says, ‘healthy and successful people are always happy’?

What if you stopped hassling with difficult emotions altogether and instead became curious about them? Allow them to be. Notice how they feel in your body. Honour them and listen to the information they provide. Difficult emotions are messengers. What is it they want to tell you? Pay attention.

Try this: Remind yourself every single day that you are a human being and that this body you are in is a temporary thing. This is useful information. Right now, place your hand on your own chest and feel your heart beating. Are you doing it? Notice the breath move in and move out. Don’t be in a hurry. As you read this, acknowledge that you are not in charge of your heart beating. You are not in charge of every breathe that moves in and out of your body. You don’t really have a direct say on how effectively your brain functions or if your liver will continue to be up to the task of its important work today. Come home to yourself like this often because the reminder that life is short is valuable in how you show up for what’s in front of you now. You are on borrowed time and so is your best friend, your parents, spouse, lover, children, coworkers, and the random man you might encounter on the subway.

Practice to reach across the divide you create within yourself. Find the tenderness in your own humanity, in your own grasping for joy and the fragile nature of things when joy is evasive. Practice to be with ‘what is’ so that you might also build the capacity to see others as they are. There is no reason why any of us need to be alone on a full train.

“Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.” ~ Plato

Today I wrote a poem for my writing group about pleasure during the restrictions of Covid. The process had me consider how valuable all kinds of discomfort can be.

Most summers I go on 2 or 3 portaging trips with my family. We carry a canoe and all our camping gear between lakes to explore backcountry areas. One of the best (and worst) things about portaging is the intimate encounters with contrast. I enjoy spending time outside most days but there is something about living consecutive days outdoors away from the convenience of home that sharply brings discomfort and pleasure into focus.

Expending energy paddling and hiking, setting up camp and taking a bit longer to make meals outdoors, for example, builds an appetite and sometimes ‘hangry’ companions. All of this also creates conditions for food to taste so incredibly good.

The physical challenge of paddling against the wind or extra long portages shouldering the weight of all the gear makes the reward of seeing a moose, an expanse of water lilies or finding ripe blueberries, exponentially pleasurable.

On one of our trips last summer, we went portaging with some good friends. There was no wind our first night. We explored our little spot looking for fire wood, cooked and ate dinner sitting on some rocks by the shore, saw some turtles and watched the sunset. And then, while we chatted around the fire, the magic evaporated into thick buzzing clouds of hungry mosquitos. Talking had become a hazard because we were literally eating them. We went back to our tents earlier than usual but sleep was illusive in our tent until we finally made the buzzing stop and our tent looked like a crime scene. The feeling of pure luxury that followed is hard to describe. We slept beautifully and gratefully.

On the last day of that same trip we packed up and made the journey back in the pouring rain. I’d made sure my husband and my daughter had a raincoat but realized I forgot my own. Changing into dry clothes in the car after hours in the rain was such a simple and complete happiness. So too was having a hot shower and climbing into clean sheets that night.

Doesn’t discomfort lend all of us opportunities? What about other opposites in your life; Love/Indifference, Courage/Conformity, Solitude/Companionship. Aren’t each sides of the coin crucial to the existence of the coin itself?

Think about an experience in your life that currently bristles you. And then, be on the look out this week for all the ways pleasure is made richer because of it. I would love to hear the discoveries you make that surprise you. Respond in the comments or send me an email.

Here is my poem about the melancholy serpent of Covid restrictions and the implications of everyday pleasures…

When I was four I was given a ‘Scooter’ doll; a character from the Muppets. He wasn’t my favourite personality on The Muppet Show; that honour went to Miss Piggy. I received Scooter for Christmas and even though I was really little I remember wondering, “Why does Santa think I want Scooter?

Well, Santa knew something I didn’t. Almost immediately, Scooter became the doll who I loved with my whole heart. I took him everywhere and snuggled with him every night. He made me laugh. I loved his pliable body and heavy rubber shoes that kept his legs crossed. I loved his fuzzy face with velcro hands that made him seem so expressive and alive. I also appreciated the velcro feature because his eyes were painted onto his glasses and the hands could be used to cover up the view of the blank space where his real eyes might have been.

The summer that followed the Scooter Christmas, I went on a boating trip with my family and Scooter fell overboard. There is no easy way to remember it, he drowned. His shoes that had made me laugh so often (like when I’d hang his ankles over his shoulders) made him go down like a stone. I was devastated. I remember the orange and green hue of his head and shirt fading away into the depths of the water. Rescue efforts were futile. It happened so fast. (He also had no peripheral vision so wouldn’t have seen it coming.) Hoping to console me, my parents bought me a replica which I was convinced looked nothing at all like my Scooter. The replica lived on my toy shelf and not in my heart.

Is the over quoted wisdom of Alfred Lord Tennyson true; “’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?

I believe it is true.

What love have you lost? A spouse, lover, best friend, an opportunity, loss of years passed or a future that will never be, a child, health, a parent, a dream?

Loss can be difficult. When the bloom in your heart is replaced with the heaviness of grief, how can presence possibly be a comfort?

What if comfort isn’t the point? Intentional presence or mindfulness might simply be necessary to heal.

Placing your hurt on the shelf and closing your heart to love can look different for many of us and at different times through the healing process. Do you start new projects or create a schedule to keep your mind and body busy? Do you attempt to replace what was lost with something new? Do you shut down and numb out? Do you faithfully contribute to the theatre in your mind about the past?

What if instead of perpetually pushing away the pain of loss, you moved toward the discomfort instead? What if, some of the time, you moved into the empty void left by the shrivelled bloom with your deliberate and unwavering attention?

Try to let yourself feel into something you have lost, right now. Or carve out quiet time for this intentional purpose. Watch your ‘story’ about the loss emerge but instead of engaging with it, keep coming back to the sensations your loss brings to your body. Feel it. Be with it. Return to it at the same time each day or any time you feel capable. Be relentless and also be kind. What does it have to teach you as it rises and falls away and rises again and falls away again? What did your love teach you?

Maybe, once you have given loss the space to ‘be’, there will come a time that you will recognize how the experience of love and loss has shaped you and how both have left seeds in your heart for flowers.

After a few weeks of the first lockdown last year, my personal variety of ‘weird’ had been liberated. A little bit of my secret-self had abruptly become unencumbered by over-scheduling, high expectations and too many yeses. I had free time and a freer mind for more of the day and since the whole world was turned upside down, weird just didn’t seem so weird.

A couple weeks in, the closet poet and abstainer from most things social media, posted a poem. I wrote and spoke with friends about a lot of things thereafter and I am still allowing myself to share some of the ideas my mind chooses to rest upon, work with and untangle. Sometimes ideas break me wide open and sometimes they mend the broken places. So many thanks to all of you who have shared part of yourselves in response to some of the things I have been writing about the past year. I appreciate you so much.

What is your ‘weird’? I really want to hear about it. Post your ‘weird’ in the comments or send me an email. It can be a word, a phrase or something more. Out yourself today in some small or BIG way. How would you spend your time if money wasn’t a concern? How do you dance with life when no one is watching?

Here is the poem I posted in response to the pandemic almost a full year ago now:

One morning when my daughter was about three we were running late to go somewhere and I was trying to get her ready quickly. She wanted to wear this new hairband with a giant flower on it and when I put it on her I somehow poked her in the eye with one end. She immediately started to scream and I felt instantly sick. After a few minutes when she still couldn’t reopen her eye, I became increasingly afraid of what I would see when her eye finally did open. I’m not sure if it was a look that came across my face or the sound in my voice coaxing her, “please, show me your eye, sweetie…” but between my daughter’s sobs she managed to get out the words, “It’s okay, Mama.”

I’d been forgiven.

Imagine in your own life being capable of forgiveness even when you are still hurting.

Forgiveness = Freedom

Being forgiven by another person is largely out of your hands. You can be sorry, make amends and do better from that moment on but if the person you have wronged is unwilling to forgive, there is nothing you can do to force forgiveness. Does that mean you still need to shoulder the burden until the other person can let go of the past? I don’t think so. Freedom is a choice. Accept your current relationship as a place to move forward from. Leave the past where it is; choose to be free.

Being the one who forgives is also not dependent on the behaviour, choices and perspectives of the other person. That’s because forgiveness isn’t about winning or being right or about receiving an apology. It is also not about condoning poor behaviour or admitting defeat. Forgiveness happens in your mind when you free yourself from your grip on the past and of your belief that someone was not who you hoped. It means that you can start fresh with that person or start fresh without them. It allows every experience to become an opportunity -no matter how painful- to learn.

Forgive? Never.

What about a time when forgiving someone wasn’t even something you could talk about never mind act upon? How did that feel in your body to carry around the weight of such ‘unforgiveness’? How did it exploit your energy that could have been used to cultivate joy? How did that voice in your head keep you rooted in the past by saying, “I can not get over what happened to me,” or “You were not the (parent, spouse, sibling, friend, lover, business partner) I wanted you to be.” How did the refusal to forgive hold you back from responding to life in the present?

‘Unforgiveness’ is exhausting. It is a waste of your resources and doesn’t facilitate personal growth. Holding a grudge against someone else, plotting revenge or replaying the story over and over again in your mind is one of the greatest injustices you can inflict upon yourself.

Think of it this way,

“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” ~ Anne Lamott

So how, oh how, can you forgive even the unforgivable? Therapy might be one way. Meditation may also be a valuable tool. Here are some practices to try…

Recognize the Humanity of Others

There is a meditation that I have worked with for many years that I have found to be valuable. It is a Loving-Kindness Meditation you can practice that could help you recognize the simple truth that you are a beautiful and flawed human being surrounded by other beautiful and flawed human beings. The meditation uses visualization and guided repetition directed toward yourself, a person you love and finally, a person or situation you find difficult.

Try the audio file of the Loving-Kindness Meditation available on the left sidebar of this blog.

A tip: Sometimes when I struggle with directing loving-kindness toward myself, those I love and especially those who I experience as difficult, I will try to imagine the person in my mind’s eye as vulnerable in a way that is relevant to me when I think of them or I visualize the person as a child.

Let Go Enough To Forgive – One Layer at a Time

Since there are some tough nuts to crack on the forgiveness front, here is another practice that I have been exploring that may be useful for you too. Again, I would begin this after you have allowed yourself time to move into a calm, receptive and meditative state. Watch your breath move in and out and gradually release places of tension in your body. Imagine the person you wish to forgive standing opposite to you. If it is possible (but it’s not necessary), imagine you hold both of their hands in yours, make eye contact and smile. Then imagine you say to this person, “I forgive you.” Without needing anything from them in return, continue to say the same words, “I forgive you.” Notice how this feels in your body as you imagine these words directed toward the person you hold in your mind. Watch how you might push this experience of forgiveness away or wander off into a daydream about all the ways you have been wronged. Stay focused on the person and your physical responses. Gently continue if possible, “I forgive you.” Continue without expectation of resolution, only with an open curiosity of how your body responds each time you direct these words toward the mental image of the person you wish to forgive. You might also begin to work with a phrase on your inhalation, “I forgive you,” and a phrase on your exhalation, “I am free.” Continue for as long as you have decided to beforehand. After awhile, when you feel ready, eventually allow the person (opposite to you in your imagination), to fade away from your mind’s eye as though the sun were shining brightly. Allow them to be released from your sight as they dissolve into bright light behind their back. Allow yourself to feel the freedom of forgiveness. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Enjoy the freedom of letting go of some of that weight you have been carrying.

P.S. No lasting or serious injuries of eyeballs were endured if you were worried. Phew. Phew. Phew.

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” ~ Bell Hooks

The image of a cold, winter scene with one silo feels pretty lonely. Solitude isn’t loneliness. Nurturing solitude is not a suggestion to be a silo; to cut yourself off from others. Nor is it a commitment to silo in like-groups. Solitude isn’t the same as independence either because we need each other to grow beyond ourselves.

Solitude can nurture deep and abiding love.

When I was a kid, my family downhill skied most weekends and we usually went away on a bigger ski trip in the spring with other families. I recall a couple who also used to join us on those trips. The man was a good friend of my dad’s and he had grown up in the Alps and had a true passion for skiing. The woman had a very gentle nature, a beautiful laugh, was a gifted artist and she didn’t have any inclination to ski herself. She would get up early and have breakfast with everyone, ride up the gondola to the chalet at the top of the mountain. She’d spend the day wearing cosy clothes by the fire where she’d sketch and read. No one else on those trips took days off or decided not to ski. Accomplished skier or newbie, ideal conditions or not, everyone skied. I recall some of the adults thought her choice made her selfish because her husband loved to ski. There were hushed conversations, “how could she…the poor guy…” What always stood out to me was that he would light up at lunch when he would see her. He was full of his own stories from the slopes and also full of interest and delight in what she’d been up to that morning while he was out skiing. She was the same. They would say ‘goodbye’ after lunch because they truly enjoyed and missed being in each other’s company. They also seemed content to be themselves.

How might acceptance of solitude with the self and for others create space and fertile ground for deep love between and amongst people?

Consider this passage written by Rilke:

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.”

Imagine giving yourself enough space to really know solitude. Think of solitude as time intentionally spent with yourself, hiding less behind busyness, distraction, addiction and increased sensation. Imagine knowing yourself intimately in a way that your compassion wells up so big that you cannot resist in extending this shelter of solitude to others. Imagine loved ones responding in-kind. How might your whole world be different? Interdependent? Interesting and diverse? If you start with yourself, wouldn’t it then be possible to be with others without using them to keep you busy, distracted, addicted and as a source of increased sensation?

Consider how powerful it is to begin within your own solitude; being in the moment as much as possible in your day and taking the opportunity to see what grips you. What feelings grip your body? What repetitive thoughts grip your mind? How might this solitary experience of space allow you to then give space to your child, your beloved, your friend so they can figure out what they like, ideas they hold true, passions they feel inclined to pursue.

Solitude is a place to begin: knowing yourself, loving yourself, being with yourself. Solitude is not a lonely silo. It is a place to gather the resources to gain entry into the art of truly loving another.

“Within the body you are wearing, now inside the bones and beating in the heart,
lives the one you have been searching for but you must stop running away and shake hands, the meeting doesn’t happen without your presence . . .” ~ Robert Hall

Devote a Day to Love

I am often surprised when I hear that someone is opposed to celebrating Valentine’s Day, birthdays or whatever celebration popular culture deems ‘this is the day for…’. I understand the push back at commercialism, the ache for simplicity and authenticity. And yet, days with built-in reminders to honour the loves in our lives are still beautiful opportunities. Use those days to be creative, to make your love visible in not only what you give but in your very way of being.

One of the most beautiful books on loving I know is one by Thich Nhat Hanh called, “True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart”. It is a small book packed full of accessible wisdom that you can take immediately into your life. The first time I read this book, I consumed it in entirety while having a bath. I have since re-read it many times over the years when deep connection has felt illusive. It is a book that serves as a gentle reminder that love begins with the self and that simple practices are sometimes the truest.

Simple, Loving Meditation Practices

Here is one such practice from the book above that might help bridge a formal meditation practice (if you have one) or to begin a practice of Everyday Mindfulness:

When looking at your beloved, for example, you could breathe in – and say in your mind to yourself, ‘I see you,’ and then as you breathe out – you might say again in your mind to yourself. ‘and I am glad for it.’

You could do this when you look at the sunrise, the snow falling, the wind’s movement through the trees, your child sleeping.

Here is another practice from a different book also written by Thich Nhat Hanh called, “Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children”. It is a practice we did as a family when my daughter was quite small and the memory of it still fills me with so much love. Commit to this with anyone you wish to cultivate a deeper connection with. It is a Three-Breath Hugging Meditation:

Begin standing opposite to someone you love and make eye contact and smile. Slowly embrace and on the first inhalation become aware of your breath and say in your mind, ‘I am so grateful I am alive’. Then breathe out. Take your second inhalation and direct your attention to the breath of the person in your arms and say in your mind, “I am so grateful that you are alive’. Then breathe out. Take your third inhalation and say in your mind, ‘I am so grateful to hold you in my arms.’

What Would Valentine’s Day (or any day!) be Without Chocolate? Without Poetry?

Here is a tried and true recipe to make (it says in the recipe that extra chocolate is optional which prompts the question: Is extra chocolate ever ‘optional’?).

I have also selected a couple of poems that you might give to your love this Valentine’s Day:

What She Could Not Tell Him ~ Denise Levertov

I wanted to know all the bones of your spine, all the pores of your skin, tendrils of body hair. To let all of my skin, my hands, ankles, shoulders, breasts, even my shadow, be forever imprinted with whatever of you is forever unknown to me. To cradle your sleep.

Women Who Sleep Outdoors ~ John B. Lee

It seems in the primordial menses of natural night that women who sleep outdoors attend to lunar rhythms as their moon-drawn darkness weeps away from the womb like crimson cloth woven to flow in the slow tidings of heaven’s loom and from the fallopial ache to where meanwhile the vulva swells like the bivalves of a breathing sea life comes away as a half-completed seed under the black sky’s brilliant fecundity of stars as those radiant maps set out the seasons of desire in design.

And how might I place this human heart this velvet clock this soul-sad calendar born beating at the clavicle like a gentle knocking of waves for I am a fathering creature and cannot comprehend circumference or why by that stone’s reflected light those liquid gravities have no equal anima in me. And yet I am completed by the sleeper’s satellite. However long I live I’ll draw one luminous circle from within and love one woman forever.

And finally, one last quote and so much LOVE from me to you, beautiful one, who is reading this…

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi

Having hope is optimism that something desirable will come to fruition. We often think of having hope as a really positive thing. If you want to find an inspirational quote about how to get through difficulty, hope is a word you will bump up against again and again.

What if losing hope, or at least using it, was a more helpful concept?

If you think about it, when you feel hopeful, your desire is just out of reach. When you are ‘hoping’ you are not ‘in the experience of’. Your eye is on the prize in the future. What happens to the tiny miracles unfolding right in front of you? What happens to the opportunities to act in the present when you are invested in hope’s promise for a specific outcome in the future? Are you willing to be complicit with taking the power out of the present moment?

I was asked this week to write something about hope. I initially thought of how optimistic I feel about spring. I always do; the new green, fresh earthy smell, longer days and knowing summer is on the way. I am particularly hopeful with what spring may bring with it this year; renewed freedom and the in-person gatherings I ache for. This is how I planned to write about hope. I then also started to think about how hopeful I was last March too for the same reason.

Gratefully, hope isn’t all I’ve had to sustain me since the spring of 2020; it would have worn very thin by now. I think sometimes this is the advice we are given when things are difficult, “have hope.” The thing is, hope doesn’t keep the person you love alive, it doesn’t get you your job back, or the relationship back. It doesn’t move you into the body you hope for or fill a gaping space of loneliness. Just like motivation isn’t enough to turn your goals into reality….hope isn’t enough to pull you through difficulty. To achieve anything requires a commitment to small steps. It is during those moments when you are present that add up to the hours, days, months and years that you have truly lived. Hope, like goals, help when the reality of the present moment is difficult but so too does acting in the moment and to being alive to the pain of the present in order to heal. Openness to exactly ‘what is’ in your life is an opportunity to let joy walk into the room with you right alongside whatever else you are dealing with.

Hope is overrated but I also believe it is inherently human and undeniably beautiful.

Hope can be a life raft but without a paddle, you’ll just float around. What if every time you feel hope’s pull toward the future, you use it as a signpost for where you intend to go but also as a reminder to steady yourself right where you are so that you make the choice, see the beauty, say the words, listen, taste and touch with your whole heart. Make where you are and who you are enough. Then, start paddling.

This past year I have been thinking a great deal about the importance of self-care. If basic needs like adequate food, shelter and physical safety are secured, what is it that we owe to ourselves and how does that impact others?

In my twenties, I attended my first Yoga Teacher Training Program and it gave me a taste of what it was like to make yoga and meditation part of my life. Initially, the physical part was the only thing I could really integrate on a fairly regular basis. The rest of my life was still a circus with most minutes of the day accounted for across the various jobs and roles I’d willingly taken on. I made a habit of placing myself last on a very long to-do list. Practicing yoga and later daily meditation, only made it on my list because I perceived it as a means to being more through the accomplishment of doing more. Messaging around taking care of myself was very mixed up with words like not-enough, indulgent, lazy and very notably this word: selfish.

Is Self-Care Selfish?

According to the Oxford dictionary selfish is defined as “…lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.”

Let’s take the very first part…”lacking consideration for others,” and be open to the possibility that self-care like adequate sleep, exercise and a healthy diet may be the steadiest path to altruism and further that even the second part of that definition, “concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure,” may also be false when your intention is aligned with helping others and being the force of good in the world. The very practice of filling your own cup could be the very thing that allows you to have anything and everything to give to the world.

My second yoga teacher training program in my thirties was a residential program in rural Mexico. I camped and lived a yoga lifestyle that checked all the self-care boxes that I had never before made a priority. For a full month I slept well, I practised yoga asana for multiple hours a day and we ate simple, unprocessed and healthy food. There were fewer external distractions (no cell service, access to the internet or television), messaging was very positive; we sang, chanted and discussed yoga philosophy. Living in nature, regular meditation and the dynamics of being in community, provided an abundance of self-reflection on destructive story-telling alongside tangible experiences of the unique magic that each of us are capable of. It was a beautiful month.

Then…I went back to my hectic life where none of these values of self-care were supported, never mind celebrated. My time away was both a valuable gift and an experience in what seemed like an unattainable idealism for the real world. I did want to continue filling my cup but I also had responsibilities, bills to pay, dysfunctional relationships to navigate and goals I was excited about meeting. Was self-care a want? Or was it something crucial? If giving back was something I thought was important how much (if anything) was I required to give to myself first?

Decide for Yourself

When you consider self-care, can you get on-board with the basics? Can you see that if you did get eight hours of sleep each night, drank enough water, ate whole-foods including plenty of greens, exercised and spent some time in nature, that you would be starting with a fuller cup each day? If these are not current priorities, take a moment to imagine a life that includes them. How might you be available to others in meaningful ways? How might your willingness to help others increase if you weren’t exhausted, depleted and solely running on caffeine, sugar or alcohol? How might the world benefit from you investing in you?

Recall that second part of the definition of selfish, “concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.” Imagine your cup full of adequate sleep, healthy food, exercise and so on and now add things like: choosing to be with people each day who bring you joy, making laughter a priority, participating in activities that stimulate your mind and both challenge and nurture your body, using acts of kindness as activism, and regularly getting lost in activities because it makes your heart truly happy. Imagine now, how you might contribute to the world when your cup isn’t just full, it is spilling over. Is pleasure selfish then? Are using your talents to secure financial wealth selfish when you leverage opportunities to lift others up, when you support projects that empower, when you have more time and energy available to find creative solutions?

Hasn’t the pandemic been a year-long illustration of how self-care directly results in taking care of others? Keeping yourself healthy contributes to the greater good. Placing value on self-care is a gradual dawning of understanding that our interdependence is crucial for a healthier world. The practice of filling your own cup is the very thing that might allow you to have anything and everything to give to the world.

“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.” 
― Roy T. Bennett

When I was in my twenties I went on a big solo adventure. I started in Fiji, then went to New Zealand and finally to Australia. I spent roughly a month in each place and had the absolute time of my life.

Planning for my trip was a different matter though. I was so full of worry I almost didn’t go. I convinced myself I would never return alive. I was quite certain I was going to die in all kinds of ways that I imagined in excruciating detail. There was a big snowstorm the day of my flight and I secretly hoped I’d be granted one more day at home so I could say a proper ‘goodbye forever’ to everyone I loved (yes, it was all very dramatic). Once I got on the plane, surprisingly, my worry dropped like a stone. And even when I did all kinds of crazy things that would have made any casual observer worry for my safe return, I remained steady, capable and took each moment and each day as it came.

Parenting has been a similar journey. I almost missed out on being a mom because I worried about all kinds of things; mostly that I wasn’t ready, that I hadn’t done enough work on myself to take on raising a child. Since my daughter’s birth, I have worried over so many decisions that I coped with through excessive reading, researching, making endless lists and joining various parent-child groups. There have been some unexpected twists but mostly it has been the adventure of a lifetime. Once I am ‘in it’ whatever the worry was simply becomes insignificant and I recognize that there was no sense in worrying to begin with.

This week for my writing group we were asked to write a poem about the hands of someone we know. The poem that spilled from this prompt has that old stamp of worry all over it and that tells me that I am about to enter a phase where I have a choice: I can exhaust my energy with worry or I can drop the stone now and recognize that I can choose to shift my energy into a continual connection with my daughter, one moment and one day at a time.

What kind of role does worry play in your life? How does it catapult you into story-telling and drama? How does it exhaust your energy reserves? How can you recognize it and shift into moment by moment awareness instead?