Sweet Freedom

Today I was enjoying a typically agile conversation with my 6 year old son (in photo), one that moved swiftly from the topic of Halloween cookies, to icing, to food coloring, to the 4th of July to him asking me..."do we have freedom?" I jumped on this opportunity immediately, stopping what I was doing to look him in the eye and say "yes, we live in a country where we have freedom which is a great thing, but you are also free, in every moment, to make choices that you know are right for you..." I was just getting rolling when he interrupted me to say that wrestlers can take whole handfuls of peanuts and crush them into tiny pieces....(what?????)....I tried to keep the momentum of my speech, but he had moved on. I wanted so badly to tell him, to have him know, that he is free always, to be himself, to choose his own path, to change direction if necessary, to interpret life in a way that will add to, not detract from the world, but I was stopped short. This happens often. I am reminded not to take myself so seriously, and to trust that a seed has been planted. Better yet, that it is my choices, the living of my own life in freedom, that will teach more than any speeches I can make. So we both moved on, freely.

growing up

The quote, "If you think you're enlightened, try spending a week with your family" by Ram Dass has always made me laugh. I find it funny in that way that things are funny when they're so darn true.

I moved from my hometown of Knoxville, TN to Boston when I was 23 and I've never moved back. My sister moved to the West Coast and my brother to Florida, so we are now on opposite ends of the country. My parents divorced soon after I moved, but both still live in Knoxville. My mother is still living in the same house in which we grew up.

I had a wonderful childhood. I had, and have, attentive parents devoted to the well being of their children. My brother, sister and I are very close and travel around to be with each other as much as possible. And still, for years, a trip back home could cause my worst qualities, the ones I had worked hard to rise above, to come right back to the surface. Selfishness, manipulation, the suppression of emotion, stunted communication...I'd feel it coming on and want to flee back to the new world I had created, where I was free to be the better version of myself. The distance made it easy for me to escape the discomfort, but some part of me knew that life would make sure I dealt with it one way or another. Recognizing that our family provides the clearest mirror of our areas for emotional and spiritual growth is confronting, but can be useful. I didn't need therapy, just a commitment to being genuine and open, as opposed to coming from the conditioned reactions of a bratty teenage girl when with my family. So that is what I've been chipping away at for the last decade or so.

I was just in Knoxville to celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday. My brother and my sister and I, no spouses or children, home together again. The first night we all slept at my mothers house, each of us in our childhood bedrooms. That night, before falling asleep, I waited to feel any old unwanted patterns of feeling creeping in, but I only felt happy. And grown up.

photo of us with my dad at his 70th birthday party

Have a Happy Weekend

every object, every being is a jar full of delight. -Rumi


photo from nectar and light

love

I read this quote recently by Jack Johnson:

"it's not about who you love, it's all about - do you love?"

and thought it was great.

I really like Jack Johnson's music, and he's a really cute surfer from Hawaii, and he's setting a great example for environmental practices within the music industry AND he says things like that?!

All dreaminess aside, I thought about his quote all day long and how true it is. Then, while brushing my teeth that night, this thought occurred to me:

Not only that, Jack, it's also about - do you remember you are love??

the tao of horses

Napoleon and Lorenzo at Parsons Field. Photo by Daniele DeBellis

I was so excited when my friend Alexa wrote this for be U:

I have loved horses for as long as I can remember and was recently intrigued to find so many parallels between the premise of the horse psychology books I have been reading and the direction of my inspirational friend Leslie's writings at the University of Be.

Horses offer us the possibility to interact with a live, breathing, challenging mirror that will highlight our true feelings in any given situation. Just as we may choose avatars in the virtual world with characteristics that we feel represent us, horses that we interact with in the 3D world draw our attention to our strengths and weaknesses both in and out of the saddle. By asking us to be present and emotionally congruent from moment to moment we find that we have to be true to ourselves and to what we are feeling at any given time.

At present I'm reading Linda Kohanov's books (www.taoofequus.com) but before going to Arizona for one of her workshops, I decided to try one a little closer to home. I found one in Pennsylvania that offered the chance to work with horses on the ground and with a group. The prospectus said that the pairing of horses and humans results in discoveries about unconscious aspects of one's true self. It also claimed that working with horses can help develop a spiritual awareness as to how we are all inter-related in the universe.

While in Pennsylvania I experienced something I had only previously read about. My room mate was a lovely woman who immediately made an impression upon me as warm, sensitive and funny. Her sense of humor really drew me to her. Underneath that however I felt a sadness in her and she shared with me that her mother had recently passed away. That night, asleep in an unfamiliar dormitory room I dreamt that there was a small bed at the foot of her bed with a tiny, frail, elderly woman asleep in it. When I told my room mate about my dream the next morning she felt that it was her mother, wanting to be close to her.

The next morning we were asked to stand in a circle while three horses moved in and around us. For some, like my room mate, who were not used to horses this was a somewhat intimidating experience. Combined with her feelings of grief about her mother and her feelings of vulnerability around the horses she became upset and withdrew from the circle. The oldest horse moved over towards her and in a protective gesture, stood right in front of her, shielding her from the rest of us and allowed her to grieve privately, while providing a safe and accepting place for her to do so. Her anxiety about the horse disappeared and they stood there for about half an hour silently communicating.

That horse allowed my friend to 'be'. His quiet, steady, non judgemental presence allowed her to drop her defences and just be with her feelings of sadness. He singled her out from a group of fifteen people as someone who needed an accepting mirror and he allowed her to experience herself in a non judgemental way. He let her be true to herself.