Category Archives: NaBloPoMo

Holding Presence: Patience 2.0

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“In some blog can you give us more what holding patience etc. means? I was trying to explain to Kate (spouse) and [not] sure I was giving a good explanation. [I] would like to do more of this practice.”

Thanks for asking, Patty! I hope I can answer your question tonight.

Last night I debated whether to entitle the post Holding Patience or Holding Presence. I see these practices as intertwined. It’s about mindfulness, applied to our inner struggles and those of others.

Mindfulness is defined by many as being in and with the present moment, whatever and however it is, without judgement or resistance. It’s so much easier said than done, especially when the present moment is uncomfortable, difficult, traumatic, and threatening. Mindfulness is an allowing, an active rather than passive acceptance–a firm, stable, non-adversarial and peaceful presence, not a resignation.

What I meant to convey last night is that when we are present with our difficult emotions, when their intensity feels overwhelming and we cannot find our way out just yet, rather than deny, dismiss, judge, or try to control them, we simply allow them to run their course, however long that takes. It’s okay to observe our feelings and sense how they impact our thoughts, perceptions, reactions, and interactions. Allowing is different from wallowing. To me allowing feels like sitting on the beach and letting the water come and go, noticing how each wave has both its own rhythm and shape and also shares its nature with every other wave that day, at that place in time. Wallowing feels more like throwing myself into the water, fighting to stay upright as the waves come, immersing in them, barely able to gasp for air in between the onslaughts. I’m not sure this analogy is totally accurate–it’s late and I’m a bit fried from the work week. Allowing exercises agency; wallowing does not.

Holding Patience is about Holding Presence over time, allowing things to unfold and emerge on their own pulse. It’s about mindful self-regulation, compassion for self and others, meeting us each and all wherever we are. It’s so abstract, I know. I picture us each on a path, paradoxically each to our own and also shared with one another. Some of us jog, some stroll, some huddle, some stand. Whenever any of us interact, we each attune to the other, adjusting our gait, speed, energy, vibration–to resonate with the other–so not moving at the same speed or intensity, necessarily, but in ways that complement one another and promote each other’s ways of being right now, rather than hindering or opposing them. I imagine a fluid movement of all of us, breathing, attending to ourselves and one another in mutual respect and reverence.

This Holding allows space and time for tension and agitation, allows for these vibrations to dissipate and dampen in their natural course. No forcing, no pressure. This allows easier observation of the evolution of feelings, thoughts, relationships, conclusions, and consequences in context. It’s a paradoxically first hand, experiential awareness along with a detached consideration.

On election day I wrote:
I hold space for us to RAIN the hard feelings, as Tara Brach teaches–Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture–if we want. I can also simply sit (stand, hunch, squat) with us, hold it all with us, be with us. We don’t have to do anything else right now.

This feels like Holding Patience and Presence to me.

From Tara Brach’s website:

The acronym RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness and compassion using the following four steps:

  • Recognize what is happening;
  • Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
  • Investigate with interest and care;
  • Nurture with self-compassion.

Maybe we don’t necessarily have to do it in order. We can Allow before we actually Recognize or name anything. We can Investigate in small bites, over whatever timeline we can tolerate or are able. And we can Nurture ourselves the entire time, holding compassion for ourselves and others. And maybe we don’t have to follow any structure at all–just remembering the concepts themselves can de-escalate our sense of urgency to have everything figured out, tied up, closed, and put behind us.

Does that help? I can barely think straight right now, closing my eyes, feeling for the words from the inside, below the neck. It looks like what I mean. Maybe it will look very different in the morning. Thank you again for asking, Patty. Your engagement allowed me to revisit ideas I had put down after I posted last night. How delightful.

I Hold Presence for Us, my friends, because it helps me stay patient and peaceful.

Holding Connection

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“It’s a beautiful day in Chicago.
“Gratitude stands in front today, sadness pressed right up behind. They hold each other like twin toddlers: Intimate. Knowing. *Connected*.
“Holding.”

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I post photos of a mug by my laptop every weekend. Normally this gives the page a semi-coherent aesthetic of mug shots alternating with blog posts, with occasional other stuff sprinkled in. This month I’m inserting a mug picture when I think of it, to break up the daily blog tiles. The caption above emerged spontaneously today. *happy sigh*

Had a leisurely morning before and after dropping Daughter off at school. Got some work done, then made it to Ethos for the start of a new training block (barbell front foot elevated split squats and pull ups, oh yeah!). Did my first class with Coach Arianna—ROCK STAR. Caught up a little with lovely friend James, then had a wonderful lunch with dear Jacob. Chatted with the beautiful Kasey, picked up a little jar smile for myself on the way out, and felt a good little tingle. I generally do not cry easily, but tears verged more than once on the drive home. Gratitude in front, sadness right behind. I write ad nauseum about the community at Ethos–I promise they do not pay me. It’s just a unique community where relationship is a core value. It is their ethos, expressed right there in their tagline: TRAIN. RECOVER. CONNECT. And let me tell you, they (we) walk the talk. I drive up to 45 minutes each way, three times a week, to commune with these amazingly generous and kind people who hold me in my strengths, my vulnerabilities, my weirdness–in my wholeness.

Today my friends held me in my sadness. They held my heart close and tight. They were so present. I am not happy about a second Trump administration, not at all. But I could accept it on Wednesday. I am confident in our institutions at the moment and I see the slow groundswell of collaborative efforts across the aisle in credible party leaders to uphold them. I see popular legislative efforts across the country to protect the rights I care about. Policy will always be a give and take, one and two steps forward and back ad infinitum. The sadness set in only after seeing repeated expressions of vehement relationship rupture and abandonment, of harsh judgment with complete lack of curiosity and empathy. I see it on both sides (nobody is asking relationally meaningful questions), and more from the left. I understand and empathize with the intense emotions–the shock and disappointment, the outrage, even the hopelessness. I share some of them. But above all, it’s the active, volitional relational desertion, collective or individual, that distresses me most.

In the afternoon I spoke to Jon, my high school classmate, a conservative. We last met at our ten year reunion, 23 years ago. We have stayed connected on Facebook, mainly to discuss our divergent political views. It has always been respectful and loving. He messaged me on Wednesday to ask how I was. He is the friend I wrote about who hugged his tearful colleague after Trump won in 2016. We spoke for an hour and agreed on many more things than we disagreed on–mostly relational, behavioral, and pragmatic things. We held space for the really complex issues. We agreed strongly and wholeheartedly that in the most emotionally charged, most intense disagreements of identity and personal beliefs, that is when and where we must exercise the most attunement, kindness, empathy, and humility–basically the opposite of what we actually do.

So grateful. So sad.

I am okay. I am not surprised or disillusioned, necessarily. I am not hopeless. We are human, and this is how we do under severe stress. Relationship ruptures can be repaired. It is a choice. That does not mean it is easy, and wounds leave scars, some large and disfiguring.

“You got hurt,” Dear Friend said to me so lovingly once, after I attempted to connect to someone and missed. Yes, I got hurt. That can happen when we risk connection. It was worth it. My friends showed me today that every time I have taken this risk, the reward has consistently far outweighed any cost or pain. There is so much pain right now, my friends–it rolls over us like the darkest thundercloud. And it will pass. Throwing away our relationships now will not make it pass any faster, nor make the light any brighter afterward–quite the opposite, I’m convinced.

I Hold Connection for Us, my friends. I hold it like our lives depend on it.
Because they do.

Holding Stories of Humanity

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My intuition knows.

“My TBL is so long, I should only listen to new books.”
“I should listen to my open non-fictions and keep learning–The Fourth Turning, Man’s Search for Meaning, Born Liars.”
“I should start something relevant to now, to help me help, like I Never Thought of it That Way.”

Nope. Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly wins, and it’s all good. I can only engage with this story in this moment, and I know exactly why. My review from earlier this year:

Donnelly retells Beauty and the Beast with astute and imaginative gender role reversal. Such exquisitely clever writing, an intricate and stimulating story, and so many life lessons intertwined and artfully presented–HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
Heroine is nerdy, kind, and complex, caught between her own strong, gifted nature and toxic, choking social norms. Hero steals a reader’s heart with his own one of gold, his fortitude and loyalty. Ancillary characters provide depth and elaboration to the twisty, always engaging story arc–11 hours of audio went by in a flash–I could hardly put it down. I have admired Steve West’s solo full cast performances in books like For Love of Magic and the Queen’s Thief series, but his talents shine forth on even brighter display in this piece more than any other: Men, women, children, and personalities that span all of humanity and our full sweep of emotions, quite literally.
I have purchased the book in print now to annotate and consolidate lessons in self-awareness, self-regulation, effective communication, and emotional integration… All from a reinvented fairy tale. BRAVA!

Sometimes we can approach politics from a new and different angle. Tonight I approach by way of excellent fiction. Thank God for gifted writers like Donnelly, who show us our hearts, traumas, demons, and foibles with compassion, humor, and grace. Fiction’s paradox is that it provides escape and introspection all at once–freeing us from while also bringing us deeper into ourselves. Themes from Beastly Beauty that speak to me in this moment:
-Rigid and destructive assumptions based on convention, expectation, and limited information
-Despair and Hope
-The healing forces of deep, abiding Love
-Faith in self, others, and humanity in general
-To be known in one’s wholeness
-Invention and co-creation
-Urgency for action lest the world as we know it ends
-Collaborating with ‘the enemy’
-The slow turn of trust
-We, together, are the answer

“…Self-awareness, self-regulation, effective communication, and emotional integration…” How many of us think we do these well, and ‘they’ do not? How many of us believe the ‘others’, about half of the voting population, are unworthy humans, willfully, destructively ignorant, and otherwise unfit to wield a vote? We are sure, just based on how they voted, right? Of course this is true, just look at the facts, we insist. We forget that our perceptions are already half formed in advance of information input, and shaped by more than just ‘facts.’

How do our self-delusions of superiority and attitudes of disdain keep us separated, miserable, and collectively utterly dysfunctional? I ask this of myself and us all, my friends, Red and Blue alike. We are all emotional beings with the capacity for reason. Our decisions are emotional at their core, filtered, mitigated, and moderated by rationality, unless and until we get hijacked. Our degrees of awareness and self-regulation are directly proportional to our degrees of intellectual humility, openness to perspectives other than our own and thus openness to change, and the psychological safety for vulnerability provided by those surrounding us.
How well do we provide the latter for one another, even in our own tribes? Try expressing a dissenting view among friends one day and see.

I had meant to recommend this book to you all tonight, even including spoilers to make my case. Again, nope.

I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us all tonight; this one happens to speak deeply to me.
I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us so we may all feel seen, heard, understood, accepted, and loved, no matter who we are, how we voted, or anything else about us.
I Hold Stories of Humanity for Us because these are the stories that save us from and for one another. I hope you find stories that do this for you, too.