Monday, December 23, 2019

Bounded Holidays with the In-Laws? Really? YES


Just do something. Choose fitness. Choose movement

These statements show so easily the ‘all or nothing’ mentality rooted deeply within me, in the oddest places. Especially odd because I am usually all into the gray-areas of both/and, compassionate perception, in so many other areas. Strikes me this pre-holiday day that there is something ‘here’ for me to name, somehow…

The presenting twinge, internally and externally, is a back muscle Melissa named with a Q and a number. Don’t remember what she said, in that way, but I heard how to care for it this weekend—lacrosse ball on the outside, gently moving in toward the spine; heated seats on in the car. Gentle recovery. Support with core-muscles whenever moving in a way to activate it. Some ibuprofen for the irritation. It’s 70% better already, and I’m impatient. Classic all or nothing there—if I can’t do what I did last Thursday, then I’m not (fill in the blank).

It was an interesting week, body-listening-wise. I could feel a sinus/headcold coming about Tuesday, I think. It’s the normal time for it, post-semester, usually turning into bronchitis right before Christmas. This year, I leaned into the Zicam nasal spray that seemed helpful. And it was. By Friday morning, the symptoms had mostly passed over me. I had had two days of 12- hr Sudafed, to rid myself of the runny-nose symptoms, but I took another that Friday morning, just in case it showed up. I think my experience of movement and exertion is different with antihistamine in my system! A bit shakier, but also adrenalin-like. Note to self…might have pushed into ‘more’ because of it. And yet it was fun to be there for the 'anniversary/Christmas gift card' thing--didn't want to miss anything like that.

The communal web of CrossFit, for my own steadiness—within me, with my body, with others—is an incredibly strong draw. I can see how that can push me into new behaviors to insure that the daily-weekly rhythm remains in tact. I’ve often just let my system weather the headcold, but this time, I tried the strengthen-the-immune-system approach because I didn’t want to not be there. This could translate into being there when my body might benefit from more rest, I can see. And yet…it holds my own heart to the primacy of my own fitness amidst so many other responsibilities that pull at me. I figure it will all balance out, in the end. I work too much, historically, and this insures more balance.

So I could feel the anxiety rise with the twinge injury on Friday, driving around Cincy for my various meetings. I felt like I escaped the headcold, only to land in a back-twinge. My body was speaking more loudly, so I'm listening. I knew it wasn’t wise for me to be anywhere but home, resting, enjoying a holiday weekend with B. 

I felt once again the fragility of my inner-steadiness…rather sweet, actually. I want to be in this new healthy sense of myself for the long haul, learning to trust I won’t forget, or it won’t be taken away, disappear. Something unexpected arises and I fear the rhythm will need to be different, like it will all disappear. More echoes of the old and earliest story in my life: what I need won’t be possible or present for me. It’s such an old storyline, so faint and already restored to a better story, a present story: I know best what I need and can name it with those who will listen, even those who can help me.

So I enjoy the feelings of a post-workout morning, gentle movement and care for what's best for me. I munch my plan-granola with tasty almond butter and unsweetened almond milk, await a friend for coffee at my now-familiar writing hole, and smile into the holidays this week. I know best what I need—even with the in-laws—and can choose to honor it, even name it with those willing to hear. Those who refuse it need not matter in the choices I get to make. Just do something. Choose fitness. Choose movement.

Makes me think this holiday in Minnesota could be different than the food-overwhelm and energetic-grief exhaustion, tending others' energies. Making the egg muffins to take with me; my seed-bread; almond butter; weighted baggies of nuts. Stretching and movement if it feels feasible; rest if not. 

Bounded holiday time with the in-laws? How odd, and how delightful to prepare and insure it too. I wonder what it will feel like, living into the new story with them?

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Entering In...


I remembered to look for the white door, climbing the one flight of stairs up to her space. Incense was present, and the large living room was welcoming. She opened the door, big smile on her face, gave me a hug as I came in. She sat in the chair in the corner, I sat on the couch some distance away, bridged by two ottomans. Spacious. Bounded. Also grounded. She invited a “check-in” and some response to “why me?”, why her, for coaching conversations…?

As I had sat with that invitation from our phone conversation 10 days ago, I had watched myself choose and point to the outer reasons I knew to trust the Nudge here. I had first learned of her two, maybe even three years ago, without clear sense of what to do with knowing about her. The Circle-Way training work she does came at a time when I needed a way into circle that was more spacious than the current community in which I serve, learn, lead. The Fire&Water Leadership work I’ve observed from afar on Facebook resonates with the fire-water journey Lisa and I have been on for over five years now. And especially now, for this path for me seemingly opening outward in various ways: she’s an African-American, a woman, a leadership coach, healer, and spiritual seeker-presence…and more I have yet to learn, experience…Wind Warrior resonated with me…MotherPeace Shaman of Swords, a card I’ve often drawn.

When it comes right down to it, though? The integrative reason I feel drawn to work with her? I love her laugh and I trust her eyes. For all that she’s experienced in her life, in her own body, to have that laugh and the laughing-trickster eyes told my body that she’s a healer-warrior. I know I can learn a lot from her that I need to learn, in ways I need to heal in learning… Knowing this kind of work as I do, I also know I will be bringing stories and healing gifts to her as well. Working with me will nourish something in her or urge new connections in her path too. This is how Great Mystery seems to work with those who are willing…

I still danced in my words, of course. I named the Women Writing for (a) Change ‘spring troubles’, the spaciousness I feel in PeerSpirit/Circle-Way lineages of more ‘open-space technologies’ of gathering.  I named the draw I felt to her Earth-centric work, the elemental approach to our world today and living in energetic terms, spirit-worlds. “And,” I said, “I have a longstanding wound story that I think you might be able to help me re-write, hold differently, be in differently.” I couldn’t even name the one sentence description of my wound-story at first…I danced around it for a while…

Speaking without filter then? I have a long-standing wound story that black women hate me. Many, perhaps even most, have hated or perhaps softer, disliked me. Given the (academic, conceptually-violent) systems I’ve travelled in, I get some of that… I can rationalize this hatred, even understanding dynamics of it within the privileges I receive as a white woman in such pursuits. And I have taken on the pain that is theirs, foolishly trained to believe that such action was helpful for healing. My own patterns with black women are not very healthy…for me or for the various ‘hers’ I’ve encountered. They are healthier than they have ever been, but that’s not saying very much.

A long established pattern in my family of origin creates part of this dynamic: taking on the pain of those around me, to insure my own safety, security, being needed and not neglected. If I could anticipate and tend the pain or sadness or anger of my father, my mother, then my position in the family was secure. In a family conditioned against deep feeling, I was the deep feeling dumping ground, actively welcoming it and drawing it toward myself. This insured a relationship of need and desire with my father, my mother, “being special” with my uncles, the ‘favored one’ of the cousins, etc. (None of which may be as true as all that, but at least a seed of truth is there…).

This woman is writing a book—has been for years now—to offer a journey to freedom for women and men, African-American and White, after centuries of slavery largely untended (in healing ways) in our discourses today. A memory-paraphrase in my receiving of her words: anyone who enslaves another is also enslaved. As I sit with my own wound story, you could describe it in this lens: My ancestors benefitted and were not proactive enough in the horrific dehumanizing machine of slavery, so they and I have been enslaved in some fashion as well. Here, I would say I am enslaved to the anger of black women. Specifically black women, not men. I can speak enough ‘masculine’ that my relationship with black men has been different. It has danced a professional-courtesy and power-politic pattern.

I have my own anger, of course, or have had perhaps. It no longer explodes into rage the way it used to, so I’ve apparently done a lot of the griefwork I’ve needed to do—abandonment of the feminine in my family, emotional neglect, refusal of the body’s sacred wisdom, refusal of deep feeling and the essence of who I am. All of that remains, but now without the rage in me about it. It is this journey that has taught me a lot about anger—its sacred gifting, its power, its potential to warm and to destroy. I can honor the anger of black women and have learned to do so these last several years, as it came my way, directed specifically at me. I can do so from within my own experience.

I can see some ways I’ve been enslaved to that anger—giving it priority over my own safety, my own feelings; shrinking away from its power over me, making my own self small or hidden; taking on its pain, with hopes to participate in healing, in being human together in new and different ways.  None of these patterns is a seed of healthy connection toward wholeness. I shrink, horrified, afraid, and ashamed of our communal history.

There are other ways, liberating ways, that I’ve been able to hold my own center for life-giving being for all of us. Not enslaved then. I remember the mid-career theological faculty workshop that I co-led with a beloved mentor-scholar now teaching up at Yale Divinity School. The leadership team was a black man, Chinese-American woman, black woman, and me, a white woman. Wow did things explode in our two years and some of working together. I learned it was the easiest-hardest leadership job for me: my job became showing up and keeping my mouth and spirit completely shut. No matter what I said, it was not welcomed by the black woman, so the best practice was simply to be present and be quiet. Earning a lot of money to do so. Strange but also strangely satisfying, to honor and receive while holding my own and honoring her from a strategic distance.

I saw the white women scholars in the group degrading themselves in order to be heard in the largely African-American-Puerto-Rican-Cuban group, as a whole. Saying things like, “I know I’m a stupid white woman, but…[asking a question].” I made some foolish mistakes in our journey together too. I got publicly shamed for one of them. But I also knew the way forward was not to degrade myself publicly in order to participate. I apologized, tried to move on. No one is free where one of us has to degrade herself in order to be. I refused the apparently necessary “self-degradation to participate” pattern of the group as a whole. I became more and more voiceless in the group as a whole, but accepted that as a consequence I could live with.

So…even acknowledging then that I could have been holding onto some white fragility or defensiveness, I persisted in holding my own center, honoring my own voice and contributions in my journal-writing (because largely unwelcome out loud). I found ways to honor the anger in the room, the incredible woundedness in the room (which I did not know, could not know as they did), AND not be enslaved to it.

This was actually an incredible gift to me, the workshop leadership years. I saw writ large the inevitable power-politic of academic discourse, academic ‘community.’ It doesn’t really matter who is in control, which race or ethnicity is in the majority, the result is the same because the academic-social-architecture creates the self-and-other-degrading patterns in human beings. Good-hearted human beings, in old-guard structures, will do what has already been done to them. It's inevitable, in my view.

Those workshop years taught me that any new leadership task is to hold different containers, to approach initiation and formation in containers able to integrate and shape open-hearted, surrendering human beings. I know circle is one of those containers.

So yesterday, I entered in to a new stream of listening with a Wind Warrior Trickster-eyed, laughing-wisdom woman… I wonder what we will learn, together?

Friday, December 13, 2019

Honoring the Season...A Muse-ments


Honoring the season…this is what rises for me as I lean into a bit of writing for me. So much has happened in the last four weeks that I struggle to slow down enough to listen to my life, become more deeply conscious of the gifts all around me. Paris was a bit of that amped-up-pace. Brian and I walked 8-10 miles a day, loving it, body fine, exploring and receiving the sights of the City of Light. I was so very blessed to have that extended time with him—a rarity in his life as a pastor—and it was shyly unfamiliar too. We traveled well together and enjoyed who we are becoming, each of us and both of us together. The week of return had three big ‘happenings’ which kept me at the amped-up pace, with great blessing received, in the end.

Deep breath. Pause. Another deep breath. Listening to Tony here at Wholly Grounds, sharing his voice with his friends, companions in the business of it all. Amy quietly making her coffee drinks for customers, smiling and gentle presence for all. I can feel my hunger rising, having forgotten to bring my breakfast snack for post-workout recovery. And my latte with unsweetened coconut milk is delightful, luscious. Not too sweet…

…which is quite different from the Manhattan moment of last night. Funny thing I’ve already shared with my CF family, but…I refused a drink I simply presumed was made poorly. Had the bartender make it twice, standing up for myself, what I desire. Only to realize that he had made it perfectly, normally, both times. My palette is the thing that was different this time. I don’t like Manhattans anymore, it seems! Too sweet. I insisted on paying for both, though I did not drink both. Costly ‘mistake’ which has amused me ever since.

Probably the biggest celebration for me came the night of the CrossFit holiday party, with our silly and serious Superlatives awards. Who is voted to take the most bathroom breaks? Who wins the warmup the most? Most progress? Most mischievous? It was fun suggesting categories for these, and it was fun to vote for various CF friends from across classes. I was not remotely prepared to win an award, however. I’ve never won an award, really, let alone an athletic one in my 50th year. CrossFit Dedication Athlete of the Year? I was touched, stunned, embarrassed (because I’m me, unused to spotlight moments), and deeply grateful. My body journey has been so convoluted, complicated, shame-ridden, self-defeating at times…so to be seen by my CrossFit family in this way…? Speechless and thankful…more than I could ever say.


I’m learning to push through my inherited voices about meat too! At least once a week, I pan-sear and roast a rib-eye steak just for myself, with some eggs usually. It offers a high-protein, lower-carb day for myself, and I’m getting used to feeling worth the effort and special occasion that steak used to be for me. I like having ‘special occasion’ moments for my bodyself like this each week. Steadies something in me.


The reconnection circle with some Women Writing leadership sisters went well, undergirded by all kinds of anxiety, adrenalin, and even distrust in me. I wasn’t sure I would share any of my words with them. My very existence, doing what I am gifted to do, seems to trigger negative and shadow reactivities in two of the three of them. So I try to play small with them—an old pattern that I will begin to refuse gently in the months to come. Yet honoring my desire too, to stay connected, ‘in right relationship’ as we would say in that circle, while still growing, evolving, with what is rising in our own circle communities here. Opening to the More, the beckoning invitations of a restorative wisdom. Hmmm….

Lots of tiny seeds seem to be landing in soil for this next year, toward receiving stories I don’t know but as a privileged white woman probably need to hear. I’m hopeful the soil will be fertile and I will be willing, open, receptive… Part of why I like Wholly Grounds coffee shop is the leadership/business partnership seems to be between two blue-collar-looking white older men and two African-American women, one of whom I know (Amy) more than the other (who usually works afternoons, not mornings when I am here). I have felt nudges to invite stories of the start of the United DMin program, from weighty elders in the African-American streams of leadership there—mostly men, but some women too. I learned of a Civil Rights pilgrimage I could participate in, in August 2-7th 2020, which feels more Led than the retreat practicum I have tentatively expressed interest in for those same dates… And I see a Quanita Roberson next Friday, to explore some possibilities of coaching work with her. African-American woman I learned of well over two years ago now, but a Circle-Way trainer in PeerSpirit lineage who also demonstrates experience and wisdom in shamanistic lineages, healing-work, reconciliation energies in the world… I love her laugh. I am drawn in by her energy and feel I could learn a lot with her, from her. Maybe even heal one of my most damning stories—that strong black women hate me and I can never win with them, even when I do my own work, at the pace that it comes to me.

So…time for breakfast, which is now lunch. A good and blessed season…I am more thankful than I could say.