The Dandelion Has My Smile

I have had A LOT of stress in my life the past couple of weeks. Things happened which have triggered my anxiety big time and I am now completely focused on finding ways to make my life less anxiety ridden. I am working hard towards finding the balance I need. Thank God I'm not the obsessive sort :-)

I am reading the book Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh and tonight's reading was titled "The Dandelion Has My Smile."  He writes of being with a friend who has lost their smile, but knows that it is being held by a dandelion until they can find it again. It ends by saying

You only need to breathe consciously one or two times and you will recover your smile. The dandelion is one member of your community of friends. It is there, quite faithful, keeping your smile for you. 
In fact, everything around you is keeping your smile for you. You don't need to feel isolated. You only have to open yourself to the support that is all around you, and in you. Like the friend who saw that her smile was being kept by the dandelion, you can breathe in awareness, and your smile will return. 

I so often forget that I *do* have a support system and that if I keep myself open they will be there for me. Before I have wanted to go hide and lick my wounds and only reappear when I am stronger. This time I am trying to be so much better about opening to the support around me and breathing in the smiles.

Considering the shit storm that was going on around me I remained much calmer than I normally would have. Something is working. I need to keep on truckin'!!!!

Speaking of Butterflies in the Belly...

I came across this picture yesterday online. It seemed fitting:

Due to some pretty unnerving recent events this is pretty much how I feel.

Stress for no reason

I really hate it when I have a day where I'm just anxious. Nothing significant happened today to make me more anxious than say yesterday. And yet today - much more anxiety in my body. Why is that? I know that I'm sitting on the edge of having to make some major life changes that make me scared/anxious/nervous. But what is it about today that makes me feel them more than a different day?

I am looking forward to the day that this gripping fear does not have the power to control my life. Of course in order for that to happen I know there's going to be some pretty epic changes that have to be made.

I am looking forward to the day when life throws me a challenge and I can bravely stand up and meet it instead of wallowing in fear and self doubt.

Namaste

21 Day Meditation Challenge

As someone who has known for a long time that I would benefit from meditation, and yet has always found 101 excuses not to do it I was kind of intrigued by Deepak Chopra's 21 day meditation challenge. I can meditate when I go to Kripalu (not well and not for long periods of time), but I really am quite resistant to the idea of doing it at home. Even though I know it would be a good thing for me. The only time in my life I think I have been successful at meditating and emptying my mind and being open to all that God has to offer is when I'm on the back of a horse. And since I don't see one of those in my near future I need to find something to fill that need until I manage to figure out how to get one of those wonderful creatures back.

But, something interesting that has come out of my Lenten project of doing morning sun salutations and then watching the sun rise with my daughter is the desire to go a little further down this path. I think I'm onto something with regards to balancing my anxiety and meditation just might help that (well, duh!)

Today's mediation was that my body and mind are in perfect balance.

They're Following Their Dharma Part Deux

I was outside this afternoon with my Jenna doing this:

and I realized something. I spend so much time wondering what my dharma is. What is it and how do I follow it? What should I be doing with this life? I realized that I am living my dharma. I am living it and I love it. I love, love, love being at home with my kids. I love watching them turn in to the awesome human beings they are and I love that I get to help guide them on that journey.

Sometimes I get caught up in our societies belief that there is very little value to being a stay at home mom. I get caught being afraid that because I don't have my own source of income that I put myself in a very vulnerable position. I get caught in the feeling that comes with the silence that comes after I say that I stay at home with my kids. 

But, you know what? It is whatI want to be doing. It is what feeds my soul. It brings me such great joy.

I am thankful for that. So incredibly thankful.

Maybe instead of wasting so much time wondering what my dharma is, I need to instead embrace the fact that I am living my dharma and that it is ok to be doing this.  It is after all my dharma and no one else's. It is better to fail or struggle with my own dharma than it is to live and succeed at someone else's!

They're Following Their Dharma

If you could do anything with your life and know you would succeed you would do __________________. My problem right now is I'm not even sure what that is. I know it would in some way involve having horses again. I would be writing. I would be happy. How to put that together into something.... I'm not sure.

This weekend I have been so incredibly fortunate to spend time with people who are living their dharma so fully it's practically oozing out of them.

Friday night we went and saw Bernadette Peters in concert at the Salem Civic Center. When I was young I remember Bernadette Peters being around a lot. For example she was on the Muppets, and I think you know you had really made it in the 70/80s when you were on the Muppet Show. I remembered she had a great voice and I enjoyed watching and listening to her but I don't remember much else. So, I was excited to go listen to her, but it was not like when I was 16 and went and saw Billy Idol.

I was surprised to find we not only were seated at a table on the floor, but we had a table that was in the front row and in the center of that row. Best seats in the house! She came out to start her show and I was impressed with how teeny tiny she was and what awesome shape she was in. Not even 'oh, she looks incredible for her age'. Rather, "wow! She looks incredible for any age!" I was impressed.

Then she started singing. What pipes! I thought getting the chills from listening to someone sing was just something people said to try and impress you. But, it really happens. She was so incredibly moving. It touched me right to the depths of my soul. The emotion that she brought to her songs was heart touching.

After the concert we were lucky enough to go backstage and meet her. Honestly, for me this was a huge test of my anxiety. I was stressed just of the thought of having a panic attack when I met her. But, I survived it and I think the fact that I made myself do something so incredibly far out of my comfort zone made me feel a little stronger in the dance I'm doing with my anxiety. 

Here we are with her. The picture is terrible, but hopefully a better one will be coming soon. It was an honour to be in the presence of someone who is so incredibly talented, and also strong and brave enough to be living their dharma.

This afternoon (Sunday), Jenna and I went to the Chocolate Festival at Hotel Roanoke which was yet another example of people living out their dharma. You could feel the vibe of it when you walked into the room. A group of such different people who were all doing the thing that made their soul sing. You could see it in their work too. Jenna and I fell in love with the chocolate treats from a French chef (quel suprise) who owns a bakery called Our Daily Bread - which we will have to be checking out in the near future.

They were giving out sample of little slices of some of their treats, but somehow Jenna scored an entire raspberry/chocolate heart (it's the first row of red on the table). The entire time we were there, Jenna kept saying it was her absolute favorite. At the end of our time there (aka the time when our tummies started to hurt from chocolate overdose and we knew we needed to come home and lie in a chocolate coma), we had to go back to the chef and tell him how much we had enjoyed their treats. 

It was easy to tell from talking with him how much he loved what he was doing. Simply being around someone who is so happy and so engaged in living a life they love is a heart happy activity. 

What a blessed weekend. 

For the Love of Food

Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of reading about following your dharma. Maybe because I think that some of my anxiety, stress, depression, panic - whatever you want to call it - is caused by my being "stuck". I am discovering that not only can't I follow my dharma while I'm stuck, but I am having a hard time even finding out what my dharma is because I'm so damn stuck.

I do totally appreciate watching and being around people who are following their own dharma. You can see the sparkle in their eye, the joy they exude because they are doing something they are really meant to do.

Last night we dropped off the boy at youth group and realized we had nothing planned for supper and it as 5:30 and the three of us were hungry. About two or three months ago I had seen a write up in the local paper for a Greek style restaurant that had opened up. An itty bitty, puny restaurant that only had 3 stools at the counter, but still - Greek! I drive by the place almost every day and for the last couple of weeks have been craving a falafel. Then I remembered that I had read that they make baklava and my craving was the final incentive we needed to go to the restaurant for supper.

Small it was, but it had a certain charm - probably because the chef seemed so happy. I had my falafel and he mixed together all the ingredients as we waited. Fresh! That makes such a difference in the taste you know.

And, for us it was fun to see how much he enjoyed watching us eat. I had told him that baklava was my favourite dessert and I did a little happy dance while waiting for him to serve it for us. I put my nose in it and took a good, long smell. Oh... it had such a fabulous smell. I was about to dive in when I heard the chef say "No, hold on. Don't eat it until I can see your face. I want to see how much you like it." Then he moved in front of me to watch my dessert experience. I know, it sounds kind of weird, but trust me in the situation it was happening in - it was completely appropriate. I am pretty sure that he was as excited to watch us enjoy his food as we were excited to eat it.

It was, for me, the perfect example of someone who is following his dharma. He already has a successful restaurant running in town, and now he's cooking the kind of food he really wants to cook. You can taste the secret ingredient - love - as he's following his passion.

It makes me start to feel some of the passion in my tummy - along with all those butterflies!

Awakening the ball of anger

When I went to the chiropractor last Monday, I told him that he'd broken me the Friday before and he had to fix it. He was like - oh yeah, I thought I hit some good spots and you were probably going to feel it over the weekend. How bad was it?

I'm like... um... so you knew you had hit something and you didn't warn me??? What??? But I figured that since by Saturday I had been feeling almost like a regular person again and that in general I'm getting so much stronger every day that I would pretend that had never happened and carry on as normal. 

Well, Monday he seemed to have hit my little ball of anger. Apparently it lives in the base of my right hip. It has been living there, quite content, I assume for a number of years. As long as I don't bother it, it does not bother me. It seems to be the place where I stuff all my anger and it has a good old time brewing up some toxic gunk down there. But, when the beast is awakened it does not want to quietly go back to it's confinement. No, it wants to be known and starts screaming.

So, for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning (until I went back to the chiropractor and he calmed it) I was one huge ball of rage. Nothing different had happened, it was simply that I had enough, my rage-storage place was full and it wanted to come out. You see, because I am happy to go off the handle for little things - leaving the toilet seat up, not changing the roll, dog wanting in/out/in/out/in/out - I store up the things that really hurt me and apparently make a nice little home for them in my left hip. Yay for that.

This is not the first time it has happened either. When I was at Kripalu I went to a wonderful restorative yoga class the first day. The instructor said he'd be teaching the gentle yoga class the next morning. At 6:25am I ran screeching down the hallway to make the 6:30 class only to find it was someone else teaching the class. I wasn't overly upset though since any class at Kripalu is a good class. Except for this one apparently. I felt like all he was making us do was bridge pose. I have never been very good at bridge, but it's never been a pose I avoided doing either, simply one that was challenging. But, the more he made us do bridge the madder I got. I could not figure out why I was so pissed off that he kept making us do bridge, but I could not stop myself from getting mad either.

Finally, after about an hour of being really freaking mad, I rolled up my mat, left the class and went for breakfast. I told my roommate how mad I was about that class. She had had a fabulous moderate yoga class - which also made me mad. I really noticed that even though I was not in a bad mood or "mad" (because who can be mad about being at Kripalu) that for that day I said ______ made me really mad a lot (things like the kitchen being closed so I could not get more tea - really big things!).

The next morning I lay in bed at 6:25 going ugh, maybe I should skip this class. Yes the class the evening before was by one of my favorite teachers, and yes I had really enjoyed it, but I was still bitter about the class the morning before. But, I made myself go. I was only there for 3 days and darned if I was going to miss a class due to bad attitude.

And, how happy was I that I had made myself go. My all time favorite teacher was leading the class! I did a little early morning dance of joy and got into the groove of things. Until part way through the class when he asked us to go into bridge pose. And I got really mad. And I was really mad at the instructor for making us do this stupid pose. It was at this time (I'm a little slow) that I realized it was the bridge pose and not the instructor.

Even though I have believed for years that emotions are stored in the body this was the first time I had had an experience quite like this. 

Which you think would have had me prepared for my hip ball of anger that got unleashed this week. But, nope, I am a slow learner. Fortunately the chiropractor has a few techniques up his sleeve to help calm me down which along with my morning yoga helped. But it was really something to experience. I figure since the beast has been awakened now it must be tamed since it's not going to lie dormant anymore and I don't want it sitting like angry gick in my hips. 

This Is The Day That The Lord Has Made

I meet every Sunday morning with a wonderful group of women at church. We are reading the book Disappointment With God. We discuss the reading from the book, talk about our week and make goals to enrich our spiritual life for the upcoming week. 

One of the things we have talked about is God's presence, or the feeling of the lack of it. Is God there? If He is, why can't He just show Himself? Oh wait, He did. Over and over. And then when people either didn't listen or were frightened of Him, He sent His Son because what could be less intimidating than a baby. And still, when that baby grew and preformed miracles, still there were doubters. 

I love hanging out with Jacob and talking about his faith, because he is a true, firm and pure believer. There does not seem to be any room for doubt in his faith in the Lord. A good example is the day we were driving down our hill in the snowstorm. We started to slide and the van was turning backwards and we were heading towards the ravine. I started out calmly "we're ok, it's ok, we're going to be ok", which turned into "we're not ok... oh &%$# we're not ok!!" What was Jacob's reaction during this scare? He sat beside me in the car with his hands on his Action Bible and prayed. I didn't even think of praying until we were safely stopped. 

This year for Lent I am doing two things. I am getting up every morning and doing my sun salutations (some mornings grumbly, but I'm doing them) and then I'm doing what is quickly becoming my favourite part of the day - I stand at a window with Jenna and we watch the sun rise. 

If you have ever doubted that God is out there preforming miracles, look at the beauty and miracle of the sun rising. It has become the grounding and enlightening part of my day - standing there with the girl who literally taught me to stop and smell the flowers and watching this miracle every day.

Interestingly, over the past week I have received reminders from around the world of the beauty of a sunrise (and one sunset).

Here's a sunset that came from Dad:

A sunrise from Mom:

A sunrise from Hawaii thanks to Sophia getting her parents up and going:

And the sunrise from our backyard this morning:

With all this beauty in the world why is it that we as humans keep on doubting our relationship with God? Someone who can create such beauty surely must love us a lot!

I love how over the past few days Mom, Dad, Gill and I have been exchanging sunrise pictures without planning to do so. 

This is the day that the Lord hath made!

Rolex and His Panic Attack

Years ago I was at a horse show with Rolex. I was used to me being a stressed out mess at the shows. But aside from a general case of bad attitude (or strong personality - depending on how I chose to look at it that day) Rolex was generally pretty steady with his personality. He only got stressed by cows and trucks driving by. He was definitely made to be a show horse and not a riding on the ranch horse. As high maintenance as his owner!

Anyway, I was at this show and getting ready - which included having both he and I dressed and clean as well as  often a trip behind the horse trailer so I could toss my cookies before getting on and warming up to go into the ring. This time however, I was standing beside Rolex and holding his lead shank. All of a sudden he started shaking and sweating. Not just a little, but violently. Then he just bolted away from me. Forget that I was holding on to him. The rope got yanked out of my hands and he was off.

Not a good thing at an A circuit show with all the fancy people there. 

We finally managed to catch him, and a friend who boarded her horse at the stables where the show was being held was kind enough to let me use her stall. Once I managed to get the rude, spoiled  (C**ly Sc****gor) girl off the phone to call the vet they were fast to arrive. Woe the days before cell phones when we had to line up for a land line.

Dr Rach looked him over and I can’t remember what he gave him that calmed him down, but he did quickly quiet after the vet arrived. What he did diagnose Rolex with was a selenium deficiency. Apparently there is not enough of that mineral in the Alberta soil and this was a common reaction to not having enough selenium in a horse.

He started on supplements and that was the last time he had a “freak out” - well for that reason anyway. Cows and trucks still made him lose his shit.

When the Ayurvedic doctor at Kripalu suggested I take the CALM magnesium supplement, it made me think of Rolex. What if some of this anxiety I can’t seem to shake is because of a mineral deficiency? Could it possibly be that simple? Nothing for me is ever simple. But I wonder how much of that is because if there are two paths to choose from, not only do I chose the one less travelled, but I chose the one what is covered in blackberry bramble. Seriously.

What I'm *Not* Giving up for Lent

Actually, I have never really been good about giving up anything for Lent. I don't know why I've never done it. It's not even like I didn't feel like I could carry out a commitment for 40 days. Once I set my mind to a project I can pretty much complete anything I put my mind (body and soul) to.

But last Sunday one of the ladies in my spiritual enrichment group (makes it sound all fancy, but pretty much my book club at church - which is fancy in its own way) made a comment about perhaps adding something that would enrich their lives this Lent.

That struck a chord. After all, this is the year of enrichment for Melissa. The year of doing things that make me a better, stronger more fierce Me. And adding something to my daily routine could be a huge step on the road to accomplishing that.

So.... the question then was - what to add? After nixing several grandiose "save the world" type ideas, I settled on something that would just be good for me. That hopefully will make life a little happier not only for me but for the ones I love and care for. Sun Salutations. I pledge to do a series of Sun Salutations every day during Lent. Today I managed to do 5 (on each side) and had to stop. I want to get so that doing 10 is easy.

What are Sun Salutations?  Here's a chart taken from The Yoga Lotus



I don't look anything like the stick people (as of yet), but I'm working on it. Mostly I just wonder how I'm going to get to the next pose without running out of breath.

Why Sun Salutations? Well, it occurred to me as we were doing a modified Sun Salutation at Kripalu how good this flow made my body feel. To add to that, I had just finished reading Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi  and he cured his colitis (which I don't have, thank the Lord) by doing Sun Salutations throughout the day. I do have some wonderfully fun digestive issues brought on by the immense amount of stress I seem to want to carry around though, and am hopeful this will help with that issue.

While they can be a good workout, they are also a fantastic way to balance the body and the mind; to calm your brain while energizing your blood.  Win, win eh?

Mostly though, I like the idea that instead of taking away something negative from my life and focusing on not having and not doing, I am adding something positive and focusing on having, loving and doing. I think it is the right thing for me this year.

Namaste

For Shame! What Nutrition are you Managing!!!

This came to me in an email today:

"I wanted to make everyone aware of a lunch menu change for Wed. Feb. 13. Due to the early dismissal, we will be offering Corn Dog Nuggets in place of the Pigs in a Blanket. We apologize for the change, and any inconvenience it may cause.
thank  you
*theperson'sname*
Nutrition Manager
*ourschool'sname*

This hurts me. I have been to have lunch many times with dear Jenna and the majority of the kids I watch are buying lunch. And these are the choices! Most times I have to ask the kids what they are eating because I can't recognize it as anything. A lot of the time they don't even know what it is themselves. 

For shame! Is this really the best we think our kids deserve? This is the best we can do for them? I don't even know what Corn Dog Nuggets are but assuming they're like regular Corn Dogs, they're switching out one highly processed pile of sludge for another. Why are we ok with this? Then we expect them to march back to class and learn. 

As a firm believer in "you are what you eat" these poor kids don't stand a chance. 

Why is this ok? I don't understand! And I know I'm as bad as the rest of them. I don't let them buy lunch and educate them about why we prefer "home food", but I don't go to the school and raise a stink either. 

I need to figure out a way to change this so it's not ok. So that our kids grow up knowing that eating healthy food is cool! It's yummy too! 

I would be really, truly embarrassed to have my name attached to the title of "nutrition manager" and be offering this sludge as food. Where exactly is the nutrition in this?

Just thinking about this makes my tummy hurt :-(

A Happier Breakfast With the Kids?

This morning was the first morning we had to have "school ready breakfast" at home since I returned from Kripalu. I got back from the most amazing, rejuvenating trip to my sacred place last Thursday morning. I was supposed to be home late Wednesday night, but Mother Nature intervened and kept me on the tarmac in Boston for a few hours and then for the night in Charlotte. Friday She intervened again and kept the kids home for an "unsnow" day here (I think there may have been areas where there was some snow - it missed our mountain though). Monday was a planned day off of school for Parent Teacher Conferences. Since Christmas break the kids have not had a full week of school - but that's a story for another day.

I was sitting in a lecture on Ayurveda last week, frantically taking notes and trying to absorb everything the speaker was saying. She started talking about breakfasts and how different doshas have different breakfast needs. For example, right now my kapha is out of balance and I should be alright actually skipping breakfast. People may die because of it, but apparently this is true. I had been eating steel cut oatmeal every morning prior to the private session I had with an Ayurvedic Practitioner who told me that in fact for my imbalance I should not be eating oats at all. Who knew?

I started thinking about our morning breakfast routine. Sometimes I ask the kids what they want ( I usually try to), sometimes I just end up make them something without their input - oatmeal with peaches, cinnamon and brown sugar, or pancakes and ham, or toast with cheese - something like that. Then if they're chatting, or generally farting around  I end up giving them heck and telling them that they need to eat their breakfast or their brains won't work at school. So, even though they're telling me that they don't want any more I have been making them at least have a few bites to make me happy.

The key there is to make me happy. I have provided them with healthy choices of food they like and then I ride them to tell them how much of it I think they should eat. So I can be happy or satisfied they had enough.

99% of the time I send the kids a homemade lunch, so I know they're having a quality snack and lunch. I don't have to worry they're getting the toxic "food" they serve at the school. So, why am I forcing them to eat, eat, eat. Especially in a culture where we eat too much?

Today I decided to let them guide their own stomachs. Jenna had a toasted cheese sandwich and a hot cocoa (light on the sugar - I love that I can control the sugar in that) . I made her a half sandwich and she got cross at me that I had not made her a whole one. I said that she could eat that one and I would be more than happy to make her another one if she wanted it. She ate about 2/3 of the sandwich and was happy. Jacob picked pancakes and 2 slices of ham. He ate the pancakes and 1 of the slices of ham. The other he made a pacman with.

Again, at first I was going to tell Jacob to stop playing with his food. But I was in a different lecture last week where we did an exercise on mindful eating. We were given a container with almond slivers and raisins in it and were told to pick up one by one the items and feel, smell, truly inspect each piece. Then we put one piece in our mouths and rolled it around our mouths, absorbing how it felt on our tongues, against our mouths etc. Then we slowly chewed it, again really paying attention to what was happening with the tiny morsel as it was chewed and swallowed. We then got out our journals and wrote about how we had eaten this tiny piece of food and all those feelings that we had just experienced. We also shared this with the person next to us.

A pretty big to-do about just one little almond sliver and a raisin eh?

But it really hit home how much mindless eating I can do. If you gave me a tiny handful of almonds and raisins I could very easily throw them in my mouth and chomp them down without really even registering that I was eating them.

As we were having a group discussion after one lady said how interesting it was that from the time they are toddlers we tell our children not to play with their food, yet how much more we had gained from our eating experience by doing just that.

So, I let him play with his ham. I actually thought the pacman was pretty funny.

After all this thought and reflection guess what I did? I forgot to make Jacob's lunch and had to give him money to buy the crap they sell at school. I couldn't believe it. I always make their lunches. Ugh. Baby steps!!!!