What the tides keep at bay
There is a sacredness to the tides, stepping your feet in the waters of the ocean and having it wash away the sand on your feet, only for more sand to be washed back upon them as the waves keep coming back towards you. The ocean's edge has always been a blissful place for me and it hurts my soul to leave it every time. I am a Capricorn, I am drawn towards bodies of water and to the heights of mountains and I wonder sometimes at the seemingly opposite pull of these two places. It is as if my body craves the solitude that exists in both, that my mind needs it and that I am most at peace when I am either dipping my feet in the waters that connect us all or breathing in the pure air of a mountain top.
Every time we go away to either the ocean or the mountains, I can't help but start planning for our next vacation.The next time I will get to dip my feet in the waters that wash everything away and make things new again, whether those waters come from the top of a mountain or the depths of the earth.
Maybe I am just feeling the effects of the full moon, the tides of our lives that pull us in certain directions, that help us to see things that we haven't seen before. The tides clean off the old dust and wash away what we no longer need, tumble us around to smooth out the rough edges and make us new again.
Maybe it is because I just finished reading The Alchemist and it too pulled at my soul. It made me think of the omens in my life and whether or not I always listen to them or am even aware of them. What would happen to this world we live in if we all did that? If we all listened the the Soul of the World and followed the signs it leaves for us. What if we trusted in love and followed our instincts, instead of constantly getting fooled by our fears?
I know this is all a bit trippy, but the last few days and weeks have made me really look at my life, my fears, the things I say to my kids over and over and the messages and fears that I am passing down to them. My daughter wants to be a ballet dancer and I am stressing over this because of my own fears and insecurities and issues about having a "perfect" dancer's body. The stress I am feeling is not about finding the best dance school for her, it is all about me, projecting my own fears of rejection and ridicule onto her. I am killing her dream before it even begins and I know this and I can't stop the panic I feel about it.
Panic and fear.
I have had enough of both in my life as of late and I so want out of this cycle. Being on the island for our holidays gave me that feeling of peace and a quiet in my soul that has not been there for a long time. I laid in the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the panic and fear was washed away. My family was whole and happy and together and I stepped into those waters every day and felt my connection to the earth and both the smallness and infiniteness of my being and my place in this world.
Now to figure out how to replicate that feeling here, at home, in my every day life, before the panic and fear start creeping in again.
n~
so what?
Sometimes you see or hear something and it just speaks to you on so many levels, it's impossible not to share it. Today Mary Lambert is IN MY HEAD! And for some reason, I have a feeling that many of you might feel the same way.
Am I wrong?
I don't care either Mary. Thank you for this!
n~
The clothes that you wear
A few days ago I was in our neighbourhood cafe around dismissal time for the local junior high school. The cafe is frequented by a lot of the neighbourhood kids and that day was no exception. It was one of our first VERY hot days of the summer and slushy drink sales were at an all time high! I was in line behind two teenage girls ordering said slushy drinks and I couldn't help but notice what they were wearing. One had on a tank top and the typical short shorts that one wears when your hips are still narrow and you are mostly legs and the other was wearing a very loose black tank top that had very wide arm openings that went all the way down to her waist and cropped black leggings. Underneath her tank top, she was wearing a sheer black bra. And in my head, two voices started battling it out. One was saying, "OMG! I can totally see ALL of her bra! That is so inappropriate! Why would her mother let her wear that! Stop staring at her bra!"
The other was saying, "Shut up already. It's hot outside and she is obviously very comfortable in what she is wearing. YOU are the only one who seems to have an issue here, get over yourself. You are not the fashion/modesty/appropriateness police, so just get your coffee and move on lady."
You see, I am a product of my society, the culture that I grew up in and in that culture, a woman's body (regardless of her age), and how she dresses it, are for others to comment on, to admire, to admonish, to assess and to judge. As much as I hate to admit this, a part of me did judge and I felt uncomfortable that I could see so much of this girl's underthings and went to that familiar, ingrained place of "has she no shame??".
I then hung my head in my own shame.
..........
This week my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with story after story of young girls being shamed and punished for what they are wearing. Tank tops seem to be causing the most issues, because of those terribly distracting bra straps. Last week, 28 girls (and two boys - just so no one feels the need to point this out and then tell me this was not about gender discrimination) were sent home from a high school in Newfoundland because they wore tank tops to school on a hot day and this was distracting to some of the male students and teachers. A 17-year old was kicked out of her senior prom because her dress-code conforming fingertip length sparkly dress was making a bunch of 40-something dad chaperones feel uncomfortable and a Utah High school decided to arbitrarily photoshop year-book photos of female students who were showing too much skin.
All of this is happening in the wake of Elliot Rodger and the UCSB shooting and numerous posts being written about the insidious levels of sexism and misogyny that exist in our world. We've spent the last few weeks trying to come to grips with this tragedy and the very real fears that #yesallwomen have for themselves in this world that continues to want to make sure that women know their place in it and know how to dress and behave appropriately in that place, and now this. This shaming of teenaged girls. For what?
Having boobs?
And legs?
And skin?
The message here is loud and clear. YOU, oh girls and women of the world, must be ever conscious of your evil, tempting, womanly ways of instilling lustful thoughts in the minds of others (mainly men), by merely existing in this world. You must do this by covering your bodies, because otherwise, what is presented to the world is obviously meant for the taking. Or the judging, or the leering, or the cat-calling, or the grabbing, or the assaulting.
All these dress-code issues are really just thinly-veiled perpetuations of the kind of culture that we live in that blames girls and women for the thoughts and actions of other people. We have a name for that you know. It is called rape culture. It's the line we often hear that goes... "well, if she didn't want people to look at her like that/touch her like that/make rude comments to her like that, she shouldn't dress like that." It's the cop-out that many people default to when they say, "In an ideal world, it wouldn't matter, but we don't live in that world, so just be smarter about what you wear/where you walk/how much you drink, and those things won't happen to you."
The thing is, we are not talking about dangerous alleys in the dead of night here, we are talking about supposedly safe places like the hallways of high schools and parent-chaperoned prom dances and the pages of school yearbooks. And the people who are having issues and condemning these teens for their attire are the grown-ups in these situations. People who are having all kinds of "uncomfortable" feels because they are being turned on by, or disgusted by teenaged girls bodies. So, who exactly is the problem here??
One particular quote from a school board administrator in the Newfoundland case really made me ponder this issue. He said,
"Our focus would be around wearing clothes that's appropriate for a learning environment, making sure that we help students learn that as you transition through school and onto the workplace that the clothes that you wear respects the values of people around you, respects the diversity of the community that we live in ... so it's really about respecting others, as well as respecting yourself," said Pike. {emphasis is mine}
The clothes that you wear must respect the values of the people around you. Hmmmm....
I can see where this statement is true to a certain degree. When my husband and I visited Zanzibar in 2005, I was well aware that the area we were visiting was primarily Muslim. Out of respect for the customs and norms of the local people, I did not go out without covering my arms and legs and with a scarf on hand if I needed it to cover my hair, even when it was well above 30 degrees Celsius. So yes, I admit that there are situations that call for a certain kind of dress code, but the above statement also made me wonder. At what point do people around you respect you as a person, REGARDLESS of what you are wearing? Or is it as Mark Twain said, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."?
Personally, I have to disagree with Mr. Twain on this one. I think that naked people, or naked women to be more exact, have had a big influence on our society. Pick up a magazine, watch TV commercials or browse online for a bit and you will find images of naked women, or parts of a naked woman (because it's not like women are ever portrayed as whole human beings), being used to try to sell you something.
{image credit: Suit Supply}
A constant barrage of images and messages constantly showing us and telling us that any or all of a woman's body is primarily a sexual "thing", makes it hard for society at large to see women as anything else. It is the reason that Facebook and now Instagram too, consider breastfeeding photos nudity and pornography and routinely remove them and ban the users posting them, yet will leave pages like "Big Boobs", which contains photo after photo of breasts in all states of undress, well enough alone. It is blog post after blog post telling women that leggings are not pants, and tumblr and Pinterest sites shaming women with people posting pictures of strangers to illustrate their arbitrary policing of others bodies. It's Robin Thicke thinking it would be "fun" to objectify women in his Blurred Lines video and not understanding why people were upset about that. While so much of this kind of thinking may be commonplace in our world, none of it is OK or acceptable and we should be doing all we can to challenge and change this status quo.
..........
This past weekend in my city it was the 4th Annual Slutwalk, an event that since it's inception in 2009 following remarks from a Toronto law enforcement official that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized", is pushing out the message that there’s nothing a person can ever do to deserve sexual violence. I did not attend the walk this year, but heard from the organizers about a group of angry teenaged girls walking who got all up in the face of a member of a men's rights group protesting the event. I can't help but feel a bit of hope when I hear about things like that or watch videos from the young, bold, and super smart Laci Green, or read Claire's story about her prom experience, or know what Malala Yousafzai is doing for girls all over the world. Girls are speaking up, are saying ENOUGH and fighting back against a culture that is so reluctant to change the status quo. This new generation of young women, of young feminists, are giving me hope and teaching me a few things as well.
Back at the cafe, once the voices in my head had finally had it out with each other and there was a clear winner - I realized how much I still have to learn and UNlearn in this life. My thoughts were my own and I had to own that and admit my own shortcomings in this regard. And I know I have to do something about that. I have to do it for my children, because they are watching me and like the tiny little sponges they are, they are absorbing all the messages I am sending. What I say and do matters more now than it ever has before. And today's message is this: NO, clothes do NOT make the {wo}man, the person she {he} is does.
Now, go ahead, tell me that my bra strap is too distracting for you.... I dare you!
natasha~
the strong one
I have always been the strong one.
The one who rides in and takes charge.
The one who keeps her head in a crisis.
The one who numbs herself and focuses on making sure everyone else is taken care of.
The one who knows all the big words used by the doctors and nurses.
The one who can read the monitors and know what all the numbers mean.
The one who asks the questions that no one else thinks about.
The one who will go to all the appointments and translate what it all means.
The one who will gently help them transition from one way of life to another.
I am the child, who became a mother.
Who is now the grown child standing beside a bed,
stroking her hair, kissing her forehead and taking care of her.
My mother.
And I don't know
if I am
strong enough
for this
just
yet.
Thoughts on a plane.
I woke this morning with little legs intertwined with mine and wispy fine hair tickling my nose. I don't remember what time she came over, but L snuck into our bed once again last night. Not that I really mind though. After all these years of some form of bed-sharing, it has somehow become the norm for us to all figure out how we fit together and sleep.
We are like a little four person jigsaw puzzle and somehow we manage to fit all the pieces together on our queen-sized bed. No small feat, let me tell you! L’s internal alarm clock woke us all up at 6:44 AM as she slid out of the bed and declared to everyone her need to pee.
.....
I joined a yoga class last week. My friend Mandy has a beautiful little studio in her equally beautiful house and has been teaching yoga and meditation for over 15 years. She is the kind of person in whose company you can't help but feel a sense of calm and serenity.
All of this week, amongst the preparation and angst of me going away for four days to MOM 2.0 Summit, all I could think about was going to yoga with Mandy again. Class was this morning and it was a glorious and much needed hour of practice! And I am not just saying that because she gives all of us a neck massage as we lay in our final savasana. I had rushed into the studio after dropping of the kids at school with a raging storm of pre-travel and pre-conference anxiety nestled in my solar plexus and what I can only describe as angry moths (as opposed to butterflies) in my tummy. I set my intention for my practice of 'calming the storm within' and for the next hour I breathed and moved my way to a place of calm waters, glorious sunshine and openness of mind, body and spirit.
Mandy spoke of the Hindu Goddess Shiva, who is known as the destroyer. How destruction is not always a negative thing and that it is often necessary in life in order to clear away the old and make room for new things to flourish. It reminded me of the forest fire video that the kids and I watch at the museum that shows the time-lapsed regrowth of the forest after the devastation and destruction of the fire. There is beauty in this process and it takes looking at it from a little bit of a different angle to see this and to know that the fire had to happen for the life of the forest to be sustained. I started thinking about all of the things/feelings/ways of thinking that we hold on to in our own lives, for whatever reason (safety, habit, tradition), that no longer serve us. Perhaps it is time to let Shiva in to do her thing, so that we can make room for and create the right nurturing environment for new things to take root.
.....
Airports make me nervous. Granted more often than not it is more of an excited nervous, but still it is there. I get anxious about getting there on time, I am worried that I forgot to pack something, I worry about losing my boarding pass and saying goodbye and "please dear God be on the other end" to my checked luggage. I remind myself about a dozen times to go to the bathroom before getting on the plane - because, hello - men and airplane bathrooms - Duh! I start to relax a bit after I've passed through security, which, by the way, is always a special full body pat-down treat when one had metal implants.
The first leg of my trip this weekend is to the Twin Citiies. One of the things I also do when flying is play the "I wonder where they are going" game about all of the other travellers on my flight. I am on a small plane, an E170-CP, that is full to capacity and if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say 75% of the passengers are men who look like they are travelling for work - briefcases, laptops and androids abound. I mention this because I am sitting in the window seat surrounded on all three sides by said business men. Once we were up in the air, I tried to recline my seat and the man behind me got a bit agnry about it and gave me a big, "JESUS, lady"! It seems my comfort was infringing upon his very important newspaper reading. I apologized and brought my seat back upright and then noticed two things that I was doing. One, I was physically making myself smaller, trying not to take up to much space from the 'important' people around me, and two, I had to consciously STOP the self-talk that started in my head about me being "just" the silly little housewife going away to her silly little blogging conference.
That was the moment I pulled out my laptop and started writing. All of the men and women on this plane are doing important things in their lives, of this I have no doubt. And not one of them is without his or her own fears or worries or insecurities (even though some may not be as kind as others).
All of these thoughts have led me to want to set an intention for my time at the Mom 2.014 Summit this weekend and this is it:
I intend to see beyond myself and to recognize the connections we all have to each other. The needs we all have to be seen, to be valued and to know that whatever we choose to "do" for a living, or for a life, is important, is worthwhile and is done as uniquely as we all are ourselves.
.....
Let the conferencing, connecting and celebrating begin!
natasha~
making time for practice
Everything is a practice these days. We must practice gratitude, practice meditating, practice writing (or whatever your creative outlet is), practice our sport/yoga/fitness regime of choice, practice healthy eating, practice drinking more water and on and on.
I know it, you know it, but damn it, sometimes it just feels like NO ONE HAS TIME FOR ALL OF THAT PRACTICING!
In an effort to be a better practitioner of LIFE and all the things in it that give me joy and meaning, I am making a conscious effort to make time to practice some gratitude.
Right here. Right now.
Ok, here goes...
On Sunday, my family let me sleep in until 10 AM. My husband got up with the kids, fed everyone, walked the dog and then they just let me be. I eventually got out of bed, had a nice long shower and meandered out of my room around 10:30AM. It was glorious!
.....
And then, my daughter went into the play room, made 4 animal puppets from a foam craft kit ALL BY HERSELF and proceeded to cast herself and her brother in a puppet show for my enjoyment. I sat back, drank a cup of the new Goddess tea that I picked up at the Make It show and enjoyed my children's imaginations!
.....
Later that day, they asked if we could go to the library, "...the one with the fancy roof Mom." So off we went. I brought my laptop and my notebook and while the kids were off choosing books and playing phonics games on the library computers, I started to write and catch up on some #YearofWriting assignments (I am terribly behind in these!). The funny thing is, I haven't stopped writing since then. Either in the notebook (some things really are just for me) or here on my blog.
.....
Hmmmm.... maybe there is some truth to this practice thing. I'll keep going.
I have a hard time remembering or enjoying drinking 8+ glasses of water a day. So I made a deal with myself. I'll drink more of it IF it is bubbly. I bought a case of San Pellegrino at Costco and for the past few weeks have been happily drinking all the sparkly water I can! And just in case you were wondering, no, it is not bad for me and yes, it is just as hydrating as flat water.
.....
I do not like doing laundry. I will procrastinate doing this task until someone runs out of a critical piece of clothing and then starts asking me about it. I will then reluctantly start the sorting and washing and drying of said clothing. This usually drags out for a few days (Ok, fine, a week or more) and then, just as I have finally folded all the laundry from one week, I have to start on another weeks worth. Yesterday, I did 5 loads of laundry, folded 4 of them, put them away and now only have the towels left to finish folding today. The sense of accomplishment I have over this simple thing is completely ridiculous and yes, it is something that I could get used to. With practice. ;)
.....
OK, I don't want to overdo it here...
I'll keep this up and start a little bit of a weekly #gratitude post because...
PRACTICE!!
with gratitude,
n~
Chasing (choosing) the sun.
It's amazing what spring does to ones soul. With the snow (finally) melting away, the sun shining longer throughout the days and the birds singing louder on the newly budding trees, life all of a sudden just seems more hopeful. That is how I am feeling today.
But first, let me tell you how I got there.
Today I learned something new. It's a phenomenon called negativity bias, and we all have it. Since the beginning of humans actually. In a nutshell, negativity bias is "the psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories. People are much more biased to the avoidance of negative experiences and they tend to behave in ways that will help them avoid these events. With this, humans are much more likely to recall and therefore be influenced by the negative experiences of the past."
One of my family's favourite animated movies of the past year was The Croods and that family's mantra is a perfect illustration of negativity bias at work.
The main character, Eep, starts the movie narrating and sets the stage:
"My name is Eep. And this is my family, the Croods. If you weren't clued in already by the animal skins and sloping foreheads, we're cavemen. Most days we spend in our cave, in the dark. Night after night, day after day. Yep, home sweet home. When we did go out, we struggled to find food in a harsh and hostile world. And I struggled to survive my family. We were the last ones around. There used to be neighbors. Uh, the Gorts, smashed by a mammoth. The Horks, swallowed by a sand snake. The Erfs, mosquito bite. Throgs, common cold. And the Croods, that's us. The Croods made it, because of my dad. He was strong, and he followed the rules. The ones painted on the cave walls. Anything new is bad. Curiosity is bad. Going out at night is bad. Basically, anything fun is bad. Welcome to my world!"
Or very simply, as Thug, the dad, puts it, "Never NOT be afraid."
The problem with negativity bias and this kind of thinking is that the part of our brain that still tends to behave like that of a caveman (the amygdala or "primitive" brain) is wired to go negative and store all of that information for easy access. All our childhood (and adulthood) experiences, both experienced and seen are in there and as a result our brains are programmed to overestimate threats and underestimate opportunities and resources. This all served us very well, way back when food was scarce and the risk of getting eaten by a tiger or smashed by a mammoth were imminent. Nowadays though, this kind of thinking gets us into more trouble than we think. We are a world filled with anxiety, fear and unease. We are constantly being fed a steady diet of negativity, through the news, social media, TV shows and movies. It has gotten to the point that the positive things that happen in our daily lives can seem too small and insignificant when compared to all the terrible/awful/really bad things happening in our big world.
What's even worse than the negativity bias that makes us anxious and afraid of our big world is the smaller, and perhaps even more insidious negativity bias that affects us in our own minds. Some of you know this phenomenon as the bitch in the corner, others know it as the lizard brain, and some call it the little hater. It's that voice in our head that tells us we are not _______ enough. That voice that keeps us from doing or being our wholehearted selves, because of the fear, the doubt and the insecurity that it brings with it.
~~~~~
I started part two of the Brene Brown "Gifts of Imperfection" course this past week and ALL of the homework was centred around creativity and embracing ourselves as creative beings. We even had to print that on a piece of paper and place it where we can see it (and say it) everyday.
See...
And then we had to start to heal our creative wounds. The ones that we heard as kids, the ones that we inflict upon ourselves via our little haters or the ones that we internalize from the world and society around us.
I had some wounds left over from my childhood that I didn't realize still hurt ("You just don't have a dancer's body") and then there are the ones that I hear daily either from myself or that I perceive from others ("You are not the creative/play parent" and the ever present "You are not a writer, you are just a blogger.") Putting the bandages on those wounds seemed silly at first, but choosing the words to heal them was the real medicine.
And that is what it all comes down to in the end.
A choice.
Do I choose to believe the words that wound or the ones that heal? Do I choose to listen to the little haters in my mind or tell them to shut the hell up? Do I choose to live in fear, always with a certain threat level activated or do I choose to push past the fear and negativity and see the positive, no matter how small?
In The Croods, Eep and her family had to change the rules, they had to abandon their fears, reach for the sun and follow it until tomorrow. They had to evolve past the negativity bias in their brains and choose not only to live, but to live with intention. And if animated cavemen can do it, I think I can manage it too.
And that is why I am feeling hopeful today.
Because...
Every Moment is a Choice.
Retreat to the dark cave or reach for the sun?
N~
happy friday
My kids are at a sleep over at Auntie's house. We have late dinner reservations (seriously, it feels SO weird to be eating at 8:30 PM!) and although the weather says otherwise here on the Prairies, it is new Spring blog header day!
And it is Mr. Roger's birthday today and he said some pretty cool things in his day.
Have a fabulous weekend everyone!
n~