Do you consider yourself a good patient? I certainly do not qualify as a skillful one. I am still haunted by my mother’s always and inevitable dictum, “What did you do to get this cold?”. Following that, she forever would offer the ultimate curse of the 50’s, “Did you go out with wet hair?”. Wet hair had the potential to wipe out my entire generation; as children, it was our 1950’s Armageddon. I was always prompted to own my responsibility in illness, my negligent partnership with those germs. I, the co-instigator, I had helped to create this cold. If I were a better child and made better child-choices, I would not be sick.

Come to think of it, I did go out with wet hair this last Friday, coincidentally the day I did get the cold. It wasn’t exactly wet; perhaps it was damp. It was, more accurately, slightly damp, hardly damp hair. And the temperature was relatively balmy, and I had on hats and gloves and scarves and sweaters and all sorts of wool-ish apparel. Nevertheless, I did get a cold. My mother was right. From beyond her grave, my mother was right. And to pile deception on top of irresponsibility, when asked by my wife if I went out with wet hair, I instantly replied with a boisterous and busy, “No, of course not”.

So, I got a cold. I spent the weekend prone, overdosing on my cocktail of immune strengthening remedies, tempting my grumbling stomach with just one more dose of each. Lying prone, with the remote control bungeed to my hand, as part of my healing process, I found myself strangely compelled to watch hideously bad made-for-Netflix movies. I am a committed Netflix fan; I will always celebrate the streaming process, bringing us instant and ultimate gratification. But, oh, no, these movies I was forced to endure, as if by some internalized collection of mean germs, were hideously bad. Somehow, they were part of my healing process. This is what illness makes me do, throwing viewing discretion to the winds, renouncing choice. Before streaming, daytime television existed as my doorway to healing. Now Netflix streaming is the portal to physical and emotional recovery, offering me deep surrender.

Out of the entire weekend of binge-healing-horrible-streaming movies, the one echo of decency and value was Seeing Allred, a thoughtful documentary about Gloria Allred, the civil rights’ attorney who has specialized in representing women and all victims of injustice and abuse. Although the press has maligned her as a publicity-seeking money-hound, the documentary focused on her commitment to righting injustice, stemming from her personal history of struggle and abuse. Gloria’s career has been dedicated to creating equity for women and insuring legal change for all.

Listening with one ear and watching with one squinted eye, I was awake enough to keep somewhat attentive. One line she said, however, during an interview, riveted me into an actual upright and seated position. She said, as a paraphrase:

In earlier times,

we women hoped and tried to become

a fortunate exception

to the discrimination around us…..

A fortunate exception! I was chilled through with the truth of this insight for me. I have been a fortunate exception to much oppression.

• Unlike so many, I have not had to endure sexual or emotional abuse from men.
• Unlike so many, I have not had to endure workplace discrimination.
• Unlike so many, as a recovering addict, I have not had to endure relapse, although the odds are stacked against me. (Data from the Journal of the American Medical Association tells us between 40% and 60% of people in recovery do relapse.)
• Unlike so many, I have not had to endure the curse of an economically oppressive per diem teaching status until this past year.
• Unlike so many, I have married a woman and live within legal sanction and emotional safety.
• Unlike so many—the list could continue.

Am I simply lucky? Did I pull the right karma cards this lifetime?

How do I live with my blessings in this time-of-trump, this time when those most vulnerable and least fortunate among us are under literal attack?

How do I appreciate what I have, relax into the bounty, while reaching out to those who are bounty-less?

How do I give back that which has been so freely given to me?

How do I assuage my almost-survivor’s-guilt, how do I abide my own entitlement, to be able to show up with more clarity and more purpose for another?

I practice.

I stumble.

I fall.

I feel embarrassed.

I feel privileged.

I show up again.

My Twelve Step program reminds me that more will be revealed.

I’m counting on it.

~~~

Dear Folks, what is your response to these ideas? Entitlement? Service to others? Managing privilege? Please send all responses and ideas onward. I am aruni@rnetworx.com

All blessings!

*Gloria Allred

 

I have lived on the lip

Of insanity, wanting to know the reasons,

Knocking on a door. It opens.

I’ve been knocking from the inside!

Rumi

I have spent this week thinking way too hard about something. Well, to be clear, I’ve been thinking way to hard about some things. Life has called me into an unofficial quasi-leadership role, in a tricky, slippery-slope arena. I’m old enough to have a voice that can speak truth to power, yet, because there are many complicated, moving pieces and many diverse people involved, it occurs as a murky mess to me right now.

I don’t do murky messes all that well.

This blog is not about murky messes nor is it about speaking truth to power. It is about considering; might over- thinking be a habitual, massive smokescreen for us, one that cuts us off from our feelings? Here is a tiny peak into my brain. Do you identify?

I want to understand. I want to understand every single potential thing, before it begins. Before it begins, before I allow myself to feel anything, I want to understand:

• What might happen?
  • Examining every possible iteration, nook and cranny of any, every and all possible twists of discussion of next week’s meeting
• So now what?
  • Creating responses to every possible turn of events that might possibly emerge, my anticipatory anxiety outsmarting reality
• Will you like me?
  • Ah, the truth emerges—so it is all about me after all
• Can I save the day, forever elevated into hero status, by my mere presence?
  • Ahhh, more embarrassing truth.

Suffice to say, friends, I have been one uncomfortable camper this week. I know, I know—how many times have I said it to you: Figuring it out is not a spiritual practice. I know, but…… I run to my mind to dissect what MIGHT be coming up ahead, shielding myself from the wisdom and inevitable integration of my own, brilliant feelings.

What’s the but here, Aruni? What’s the smokescreen, the diversion? What am I not willing to feel? Why am I creating such an effort to avoid just being with my feelings?

I was convinced as a kid, as a bigger kid and younger adult, that I wasn’t smart. My life’s focus was to pretend I was and to hope-beyond-hopes that You (whoever you were) didn’t notice my failings. In groups I would listen to the last person who spoke and try to reframe and repeat that as my contribution. Being stoned did not help clarify my own perspective. (That is the biggest understatement I have ever spoken.)

Passing time has helped. Not being stoned has also helped, another gigantic understatement. Holding a microphone in my work, having the illusion of control, has really helped, too. Yet deep inside of me, (not so deep?) there lives a little girl who is afraid to say her name, because she might stutter. And what would happen then? And then? Then, as the childhood feeling-narrative goes, I would die.

Chances are, I will outlive this meeting next week. Chances are, as I breathe and move, as I pray and relax, I can befriend that little girl, I can love her. I can appreciate her pain and, as the adult, hold her close as I move forward toward this process.

I can trust my own experience.

I can trust my own feelings.

I can trust my own heart.

Just get there, Aruni.

Just show up.

More will be revealed.

As Rumi says, we are on the inside.

We’re knocking from the inside, out.

We are already there.

I can surely struggle less and savor more.

And to this, I am committed.

~~~

Dear friends, to what are you committed today? In what direction this week do you lean, as you move a bit away from struggling, a bit toward savoring? Please keep me posted—aruni@rnetworx.com. And please check out my new program, “Simple Strategies to Struggle Less and Savor More” on my website. Life does not have to be as hard as we make it.

All blessings,
Aruni

If you glanced at my color-coded schedule this week, you might be dizzied by its patchwork, crossword puzzle-like appearance. Life has given me a massive work week, with teaching here, coaching there, teaching elsewhere, writing, blogging, while my computer is having its own personal experience of the moment, separate from my own. I know exactly what I would tell you—breath, relax, one thing at a time. I am practicing that and relaxing fairly well into the fullness of the week. Yet, I look toward Friday afternoon with a giddy gleefulness.

As I moped around the house, I remembered this little meditation book I found at a tag-sale once, Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much, a one-dollar purchase. I never enjoyed them, snobbishly never cozying up to their simplicity. Clearly this week, however, in this pseudo-sketchy-semi-retirement of mine, I recognize myself as a candidate for the topic. I strangely knew exactly where the book was, retrieved it, and opened to its bookmarked page. An old picture fell out. I often use pictures as bookmarks, for no particular reason.

This picture greeted me, me in 1996, uncharacteristically devilish with chicken soup in hand and oh, so painfully young.

I breathe into my own eyes.

I wonder who I thought I was then, this young Aruni.

I know her, yet I don’t; I ponder her moment, what lies behind her, what waits up ahead.

And then I read the perfect quote on the page by Simone de Beauvoir:

One is not born a woman;

One becomes one.

And I realize in a flush of heat that, in these twenty-two (twenty-two!) years, I have become a woman.

How has this happened?

The losses, the heartbreaks, the shifts of behavior that only the flames of time could soften—they grew me the most.

Here are my greatest teachers:

• Outliving my parents, watching them fade and pass as I continue to live my life forward, while theirs are gone from this earth.

I am a woman now—I am.

• Allowing you to be, with so much less compulsive need to change you. Oh, how that freedom has grown me into a new sense of self, totally uninhabitable while I was wildly emmeshed in other people’s experiences.

I am a woman now—I am.

• Striving for approval, proving my worth, pushing for attention—these things lack intensity now, as if some energetic fuel is depleted, missing.

I have so much less to lose now.

I am a woman now—I am.

• Losing the dearest of animal companions, Buzzie the Bird, the three-ounce-cockatiel alpha of my life, and Lucy Doodle, the blond-bombshell-born-to-party-pup, raising them from their babyhood, watching them grow into their feathered and furry splendor, and then witnessing their passing out of life, releasing breath and energy and leaving me alone to myself.

I am a woman now—I am.

I am a grateful woman now, grateful for that book of meditations that I never read, that book of meditations that led me back to 1996 and allowed me to witness my own womanhood. One-dollar, well spent. In 1996.

~~~

May I be healthy.

May I be happy.

May I ride the waves of my life.

May I live in peace, no matter what I’m given.

May you be healthy.

May you be happy.

May you ride the waves of your life.

May you live in peace, no matter what you’re given.
May we be healthy.

May we be happy.

May we ride the waves of our life.

May we live in peace, no matter what we’re given.

~~~

Dearest of Folks, how has your life grown you? What heart-breaks, heart-openings, victories, challenges, what has lifted you into womanhood, into manhood? Please consider and keep me posted. I am aruni@rnetworx.com.

All blessings,
Aruni