Archive for category: Consciousness/Thriving

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Living as Though Your Humanity, Mortality, and Divinity Really Matters

Is there anything we take more for granted than life itself? We are alive – what a miracle! But here’s the question – What are you doing with your life?

  • Are you living it on the surface checking off endless to-do lists?
  • When was the last time you had a deep conversation with someone you love or a total stranger?
  • How well do you really know yourself, your family and friends?
  • When was the last time you explored your deepest beliefs about life and death and the spiritual dimension of it all?
  • From where do you draw meaning in your life?

When I was in college, I discovered The I Ching and was particularly fascinated by how this ancient book of oriental wisdom captured the comings and goings and the juxtaposition of joy and sorrow, light and dark, life and death in the human experience. Each movement in the dance of life has embedded within it opportunities and challenges to awaken one’s consciousness to an intuitive wisdom that is woven into the human experience. Yet, how many of us are paying attention to these deep messages of the mysteries of life and death?

Just as our physical muscles require exercise for optimum performance, so too does the part of our consciousness that is capable of perceiving life’s deepest mysteries and lessons. Surely, there are many sensual and delightful pleasures to be enjoyed and disturbing experiences to be avoided living on life’s surface. However, there are dimension of love, spiritual transcendence, compassion, and other rare gifts of life’s bounty that are only accessible to those who seek them and are willing to risk the vulnerability of residing in unfamiliar territory.

I attended a Death Café last week and was struck by how vastly private and diverse our experiences and approaches are to this rarified territory. The fact that seventy strangers showed up to talk about death with each other was a testament to the hunger many of us have to share the richer and deeper parts of ourselves. At my table of six only one person, a woman with stage four metastatic breast cancer had broken the death taboo with her own family with frank discussions about her prognosis and what that meant for them as a family. The rest of us were typical of the society as a whole, silenced on the topic yet hungry for existential meaning. Our conversation was energetic, profound, respectful of differences, and a refreshing opportunity to have others bear witness to our deepest truths and fears. I confess that I have a really strong aversion to the name “Death Café”, but once I got over that the experience itself was deeply enriching.

Our table was like a microcosm of the world at large. One person is living moment to moment with a terminal diagnosis, another is a devout member of a local Bruderhof Christian community, and two had only a vague sense of what they believed. Another discounted any and all beliefs regarding death and/or what happens after death because all is purely speculation from his point of view. I would describe myself as deeply spiritual, but not religious and one who spends a significant amount of time probing, expanding, and uplifting my consciousness. As diverse as our points of view were, there we all were with a shared desire to let total strangers into our private inner worlds to our most passionately held and life affirming and altering beliefs.

Conversations like this with ourselves, our loved ones or total strangers are important because they provide an opportunity for us to claim and affirm what resonates and reverberates as truth within us. This kind of sharing exercises those deeper consciousness muscles so that we can learn to rely upon them as our core strength. Recognizing this inner truth within ourselves serves to guide us in making our daily and life altering decisions in alignment with this inner compass of knowledge and belief. As we share deeply with others, we broaden our horizons and bridge the gap of our otherwise very private inner worlds. Instead of giving each other an airbrushed version of ourselves, we risk the vulnerability of letting others know who we most profoundly know ourselves to be.

In my own life’s journey so far, one of the things that is most precious to me is deeply connecting with another person in such a way that we experience a kind of transcendence into a sacred territory of mutual respect and oneness. Yet, these moments of encounter are very few and far between despite the fact that I have a lot of like-minded friends. I can’t help but wonder why we spend so much of our time disconnected from each other or engaging in right/wrong power struggles rather than both/and transcendence.

A final set of questions:

How deeply do you know yourself?

How deeply do you let your family and friends know you?

How precious are you making the gift of your life?

Are you living as though your humanity, mortality, and divinity really matter? If yes, how? If not, why not and what might you be willing to do differently?

How do you imagine our shared world could be different if we really lived as though our humanity, mortality, and divinity really mattered?

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Radical Transformational Gratitude

Many of us hold in our hearts the desire for, or perhaps even the memory of, a Thanksgiving gathering joyfully sharing a feast of plenty with family and friends where everyone is happy like in the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving image entitled, “Freedom from Want.” Unfortunately, reality often fails to measure up to this ideal. Some of us find ourselves dreading a family holiday gathering where we anticipate being miserably caught in a reenactment of the dysfunctions of our childhood family gatherings. Others, yearning to be with familiar faces and traditions, find themselves adrift far from home either alone or as a guest, perhaps feelings like an outsider, at someone else’s table with unfamiliar traditions.

If you anticipate a Thanksgiving that will fall short of your desires, you are sure to have that experience. This is especially true if your imaginings are focused on the menu and who will or will not be there. If, on the other hand, you focus on the spirit of thanksgiving, which is about being grateful then your focus turns inward to where you have a choice about how you experience whatever your holiday circumstances might be.

What I am suggesting here isn’t a Pollyanna approach, but rather a radical form of gratitude that just might give you a whole new and delightful experience as a powerful creator of your own experience and not the victim of circumstances or the behaviors of others. Be patient. This is a process not a one time fix it solution.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you are spending Thanksgiving with your family and dreading all their questions and judgments about what you are doing with your life because you know your truth will never garner their approval. How have you handled this in the past? Perhaps by creating your best spin on what’s going on with you in advance, or maybe by drinking too much, or physically and/or emotionally isolating yourself, or getting angry, or some other creative attempt to protect yourself from having to feel the pain of their disapproval. What if, instead of dreading their disapproval, you welcomed it as an opportunity to heal the part of you that somehow buys into their disapproval? Think of it as a tug of war that you have the power to dissolve by releasing the tension on your end of the rope.

The key to this approach is to change your own point of view on the situation. Instead of thinking they are wrong and you are being picked on, consider the possibility that this experience is absolutely perfect for you to learn some importantly needed lesson in your life. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to let them have their disapproval of you while being emotionally free of their opinions? How sweet would that be!

What I am proposing here is not easy, but it works. Here are 6 keys to how you can use radical transformational gratitude to be at the cause rather than at the effect of your own experience in any situation.

1. Accept the situation as it is without trying to change it. Imagine that you are establishing a brand new neural pattern in your brain (which you are) so that you can view the situation in an entirely new way, which in turn will give you a different way of experiencing it. So, before gathering with your family, pay attention to your self-talk. Play a game with yourself to identify all the ways that you experience your resistance and dread.

2. Listen to your self-talk and pay attention to your feelings. Notice your expectations (thoughts, and feelings) that are based on the belief that it’s going to be the same old awful experience as in the past.

3. Make a list of all the ways you identify in Step 2. For each one, create a forgiveness statement such as the three following examples:
• I forgive myself for judging myself as the black sheep of the family.
• I forgive myself for judging myself for hating my father for being so critical of me.
• I forgive myself for judging myself for judging my family for rejecting me.
Be as specific as possible in capturing the nature of the disconnect between you and your family. Notice that what you are forgiving is any judgment that you have been creating towards yourself or others. Keep this list handy during your family visit and run these forgiveness statements through your brain whenever you get caught in the old pattern.

4. Play detective with yourself to identify your emotional hook. Ask yourself some of the following questions and create and probe some of your own questions until you find a deeply resonant ‘aha’ within you indicating that you have identified your deeper truth in this situation:
• What’s my emotional payoff in the way I have been experiencing this situation?
• What is the nature of my pain and suffering in this situation?
• What do I really want to be true here and what might I do to create, promote, and allow more of what I want without making others wrong?
With each answer you get, go deeper by asking ‘what’s underneath that?’

5. Close your eyes and do the following gratitude process. One by one, call forward each person you have held responsible for your unhappiness – including yourself. Breathe deeply into your heart and imagine that you are intentionally sending love from your heart to this other person. Looking into their eyes, say ‘My happiness is not dependent upon your approval. I love you. God bless you. Peace, be still.’

6. Assume that this situation is for you and not against you and be grateful that it has presented you with the opportunity to deepen your friendship with yourself.

Notice that the unpleasant situation that you were facing was not something ‘bad’ but rather a perfect opportunity and steppingstone for you to improve your mental and emotional health and wellbeing. Now that’s something to be grateful for!

Happy holidays, everyone.

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Thriving Rather Than Stressing Through Your Holidays

If you are one of those people who dreads the holidays or simply does not want to experience a repeat performance of holidays past, this article is for you.  Preparing for the holidays is not just about eating food, buying presents, and making travel arrangements.  The kind of holiday season you will have is not primarily determined by who you are with, how they behave, and what presents you receive.  

The #1 key to enjoying the holidays is choosing to be an active, conscious participant and not a passive, unconscious victim.

What you do in your inner mental and emotional kingdom will determine whether you suffer through yet another holiday or do your best to ensure that you optimize your chances to have a delightful time.  Blaming and judging others for your dissatisfaction keeps you stuck in your unhappiness.  If you want to create, promote, and allow yourself to sing a different tune this year, you have to get in the driver’s seat to make that happen.

Empower yourself, not others, to determine the quality of your experience.

I remember shopping in Filene’s Basement in Boston once and the memory still makes me giggle while also reminding me of one of life’s most powerful lessons.  A woman asked her friend what she would tell her husband about all the things she was buying.  The friend replied, “I’m just going to tell him the devil made me do it.”  Well, just where was that devil and how is it that he or she had the power to take over that woman’s personal authority and responsibility for her own actions?  Too many of us play victim over the holidays disclaiming responsibility for our actions and experiences.  We tell ourselves we have no will power to resist all the treats and temptations.  We feel sorry for ourselves when we don’t feel loved and cared for by those with whom we share the festivities, or we feel left out because we have no invitations to be anywhere we really want to be.  Often, we think we are the only one in that situation.  When we are with our family, we often revert to the dysfunctional roles we played with each other during our childhood.  Many of us get depressed because this holiday season shows no promise of being wonderful.

What to do?  Here’s a plan to renovate your holiday experience:

Step One: Set a Clear Intention to Give Yourself a Good Holiday Experience:  Don’t commit to trying to do it differently.  Commit to doing it differently.  Make your own needs and happiness important to yourself and commit to doing your very best to take care of yourself.

Step Two: Assess Your Options and Set Realistic Expectations:  If you have been stuck in a rut of feeling obligated to spend your holidays with people you don’t enjoy being with, then your options will be far different from those of someone whose loved one has just died.  Survey your situation.  First ask yourself, “what do I really expect is going to happen this holiday season?”  Be ruthlessly honest with yourself because your expectations are the foundation upon which your experience will be built.  They are self-fulfilling prophecies of what is to come.  It’s kind of insidious, but what we believe to be true has power.  Beliefs function like a screening mechanism whereby we prove ourselves to be right.  If you tell yourself that unpleasant circumstances, situations, and events will repeat themselves, they will – because that’s the only option you believe is available to you.   Alternatively, you can anticipate the challenges and temptations you will encounter, and choose to create a happier holiday as a gift to yourself.

From where you stand right now, what are you anticipating your holiday season to bring your way?  What about it looks good to you and what looks dreadful?  Have you experienced those dreadful things in the past?  How well did you handle them? With 20/20 hindsight and ruthless honesty, do you see anything you might do differently that could yield a better experience for you?  Were you on autopilot reacting to your experiences or were you really staying present in the moment trying different strategies to improve your experience?  If you can’t think of any alternative ways of experiencing the same old challenges, imagine someone you consider to be savvy and outstanding at handling these kinds of situations.  What would he or she do?  Are you willing to step outside your comfort zone and try something new or would you rather just suffer through it all again?

If you are particularly tender-hearted due to the death of a loved one or some other sensitive new experience in your life, be honest with yourself about what you really need.   Maybe everyone else’s well-intended concern for your well-being is more than you can bear right now.  Maybe you’d just like to be alone and let the holidays pass uneventfully.  It’s OK.

Let the filter through which you assess your options be about your true needs rather than any concern for what others might think.  Have the courage to trust your own instincts rather than trying to please others by following tradition or doing what you think they expect.

Step Thee:  Get Creative and Bold: Be proactive.  Here are some of the things you might do differently:

Find a new place to belong.  Think of someone with whom you’d really like to spend the holiday.  Let them know why it would be meaningful to you and ask if it’s possible.  If not, think of someone else.  If you end up with yourself that need not be a lonely option.

Spend the holidays in service to others.  Whose holiday might you make brighter?  Is there an organization in your area that you would like to help?  Is there someone you know who could use your loving kindness?

Consider a feast for one.  Some of my favorite Thanksgiving Day memories are from creating and eating an entire feast for one and having fabulous leftovers for days.

Let the holiday pass uneventfully.  If there is no one available you would really love to be with and don’t want to be bothered with holiday activities, honor that as the right choice and not a “poor me” scenario.

Host your own holiday.  Rather than being someone else’s guest, take the initiative to be the architect of a holiday with you as the host(ess).

Give yourself a lavish holiday for one.  Maybe that means travelling to somewhere exotic or decorating your home over the top and buying yourself lots of presents that you wrap rivaling Martha Stewart’s finest work.

Be with the same people, but do it very differently.  Sometimes, drastic measures are called for.  If you have a family member or fellow participant who treats you as though you are emitting a really bad odor, practice not letting his or her negativity in.  This may take a lot of effort and time to perfect.  Consider new strategies like praying for you both, distracting yourself into being helpful to your host(ess), having meaningful exchanges with others, and minimizing the opportunities for this person’s behavior to infect your experience.  It all helps.  And, you may find it all too tiresome to continue being in this person’s company and decide to go in another direction entirely.

Trust your intuition about what is right for you no matter how different from what other people think you should do.  If you find yourself not experiencing a strong sense of belonging anywhere but with yourself or feel more like an observer of other people’s festivities rather than a real participant, break free of obligations.  Be grateful for being invited, but maybe it’s time to strike out on your own.

The bottom line is to give yourself the holiday experience that is just right for you.  Do what is meaningful to you and be with people who appreciate you.  Some might view this as self-indulgent, but I see it as taking responsibility for warming the cockles of your own sweet heart.  Happy holidays everyone!

 

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

If you would like to suggest a topic for a future blog or ask me to address a particular situation or issue, please email me at judithjohnson@hvc.rr.com

To view a more extensive archive of my articles, visit me on the Huffington Post at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-johnson

 

(Image courtesy of Lindsay Mumma on http://www.trianglecrc.com/blog/holiday-stress/)

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Getting Divorced? What Can You Do For Your Children?

Divorce and what leads up to it are not tidy and polite affairs.  The children who bear witness to the demise of their parents’ marriage inevitably get wounded – some very deeply and invisibly at first.   No matter how old a child is when his/her parents’ divorce occurs, the child learns a life lesson about the shadow side of love and its potential impermanence.  Learning this lesson through the end of your parents’ marriage and perhaps the subsequent re-partnering of either or both parents, is confusing at best and life-threatening for young children who are dependent upon their parents for their very survival.

When we fall in love and marry, many of us have stars in our eyes and fantasize about living happily ever after.  Then reality sets in and tests our ability to fulfill our vows to love, honor and cherish each other through the trials and triumphs of life.  If we lived in a perfect world, love would last and be stronger than all the challenges that tear us apart.   In reality, maintaining a loving relationship takes a lot of commitment, honesty, and vulnerability.  It’s not for the faint of heart.

As a child of divorce, a life coach, and an interfaith minister who officiates at many weddings, I do not think that divorce, in and of itself, is a bad thing.  In fact, I wish my own parents had divorced much earlier than they did which would have spared us from living in a cold war of mixed messages at home that wore a public mask of a perfect family.

When a parent leaves, so does a part of the child – we often hide the vulnerable and innocent parts of ourself to avoid dealing with our feelings and needs.  We lack the personal resources to cope and our parents are too busy fighting, so most of us are left with the options of either expressing or repressing our emotions and fears.  Hiding them is usually a safer bet.

These days most parents are too busy to be as attentive as their child(ren) need them to be when the family is falling apart and the kids are too often left to fend for themselves.  However, this is a crucial time for a child.  No matter how young or grown a child of divorce is, he or she has probably internalized some deep lessons that may remain as an unconscious filter through which he or she experience the rest of their life unless and until becoming aware of those messages and developing a realistic and healthy understanding of  the matter.  The two most dominant messages that kids of divorce internalize are believing that their parents’ divorce is somehow their fault and that love is conditional and might not last.  Let’s take a closer look at both of these messages.

Younger children tend to be more susceptible to thinking the divorce is their fault.  “If only I hadn’t … then Mommy and Daddy would still be together” is what many kids tell themselves.  Some try to “fix” the situation by being on good behavior, imagining that doing so will be all that is needed to bring the parents back together so they can live happily ever after as a family.  Even after the parents are officially divorced and are living separately, many children fantasize about what they can do to get their family back together again. For a child who thinks his or her bad behavior is responsible for the parents splitting up, it makes sense that they think their good behavior might reunite them and that their bad behavior might stave off a new suitor.

The second dark message many children of divorce hear is that love is conditional and does not last.   ‘You loved my Mommy or Daddy, then he/she did something you didn’t like and now you are divorced.  I better be careful or you’ll divorce me too.” We want our children to believe that our love for them is unconditional, but divorcing their other parent gives them a mixed message.

When we internalize the message that love doesn’t last, we learn to protect ourselves from getting hurt by not getting too close to anyone.  We may evolve a survival strategy of avoiding intimacy – especially emotional intimacy as a way to avoid the vulnerability of ever feeling so powerless and devastated again.  We may keep to ourselves or choose to use other people without actually bonding with them.

What can parents do to help their children thrive rather than hide when the family is breaking apart?

• First, don’t assume that reassuring your child that you love him/her is enough.

• Know that no matter how careful you might have been not to fight in front of the children, they saw and heard and felt their family falling apart and had no personal resources to do anything about it.

• Know that no matter whether they act out or put a smile on their face, their world is falling apart too.

• Take lots of time with them to help them draw out their deeper feelings and needs. Talk to them. Listen deeply. Use forms of creative expression to draw out their deeper truth. Go for counseling together. Reach out to their teachers and guidance counselors to help you watch for signs of distress. Check out books and websites on the topic.

• Keep the lines of communication with each child strong and open on a daily basis and keep a loving connection with them throughout their adulthood. Make a commitment with your X to both do this for each child and to not interfere with each other doing so.

• If the child acts out, make sure that your reaction communicates that your love is not conditional based on their behavior – i.e. “I love you and will always love you, but I will not accept that behavior.”

• Never complain to the child about the other parent.

• Never let them see or hear your judgment of the other parent. For the sake of the children, please play nice with your X when coordinating care and decisions regarding the children.

These days most parents are too busy to be as attentive as their child(ren) need them to be when the family is falling apart and the kids are too often left to fend for themselves.  The health and well-being of your children is your responsibility until they are able to take care of themselves.  Pay attention and be sure they feel your love no matter what.

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When Loved Ones Aren’t Very Loving

With the holiday season approaching, this is a good time to take stock of our own behavior in relation to our loved ones. For many of us, gathering with our families and friends for holidays, weddings, funerals and other events is a dreaded experience. Unless we have deeply worked on our own personal growth and/or been blessed with a truly loving and nurturing family, childhood dynamics and family dysfunctions tend to rule the day.

If this is true for you, ask yourself these questions. What role do you tend to play in these dramas? Are you consistently kind to everyone? Or, do you reject certain ones and favor others? Do you hold grudges that have been festering for years. Or are you one who stands by pretending not to see the elephant in the room – one that has perhaps been there for many, many years. Do you strive to truly demonstrate loving kindness for everyone there? In what ways do you contribute to the discord? Do you see yourself as a helpless and innocent victim? Are you someone who thinks you are somehow better than everyone else? What kind of attitude and behaviors do you contribute?

In many families at least one giant elephant of discord sits in the room and there is a silent conspiracy that everyone participates in pretending not to see it or to do anything to get rid of it. Perhaps there is a drug-addicted child, or an alcoholic parent, or a nasty, judgmental sister, a boring uncle, a nerd, or someone you hold a grudge against.

If this kind of thing is true of your family or among your circle of friends, is there something you might do to contribute to healing the situation rather than going along with the same old dysfunctional dynamic? It takes courage to go against the tide – to name the elephant and to initiate efforts to get it out of the room. But, consider the alternative of letting things continue to fester and foregoing the possibility of having a mutually respectful and enjoyable time together.

Consider the following example. I know one family with two sisters and a brother in the middle who have put up with the older sister’s judgments and rejection of the younger sister for decades. Every family gathering is tainted by what Louis Auchincloss so aptly describes as “all the while scarlet thoughts, putrid fantasies, and no love” fills the air. What appears to be happening is that the elder sister feels that her disdain is justified by her judgments of her sister. The brother maintains separate relationships with his sisters and tries to be a good sport and peacemaker gathering everyone together as though unconscious of the feud. Meanwhile, the younger sister having suffered through years of these gatherings, and after making numerous attempts to talk to her sister about healing the discord between them, has withdrawn from family gatherings.

If this kind of drama sounds familiar to you, consider what you might do differently and what is at stake. Why should everyone have to suffer because someone doesn’t like one of the family or group of friends? Why not challenge that person either privately or publicly and let them know that their behavior has negative consequences for everyone else involved? Why not go on record as being unwilling to support this kind of behavior in the future? Ask the person what they are making more important then loving one another. Or, perhaps you could let the apparent victim know that you care about their wellbeing and do not approve of the aggressor’s behavior. The term ‘loved ones’ implies special status – our inner circle. Yet, some of us are kinder to total strangers than to those with whom we share our lives.

As adults we are each responsible and accountable for what we create, promote, and allow in our lives and how our behavior affects others – no matter how justifiable we believe our attitudes and behaviors to be. At the end of the day, we are either contributing to more loving kindness for all involved or more distress and discord. Is there something you might do differently next time to make nothing more important that being loving and kind to one another?

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Can You Trust Yourself?

Trust is an interesting concept — and far more exciting as an action. Trusting yourself involves the willingness and confidence to rely on your own integrity, abilities, and character to meet the challenges of a particular experience, or all of life for that matter. For me, trust is not only a psychological factor, but has a spiritual component as well because God is very much a part of my worldview.

I believe that the ultimate gamble with the greatest potential gain in life is to trust yourself and that in so doing, you gain a level of freedom, authenticity, and peace that is unreachable any other way. Trust requires living in your own skin, recognizing your own authority as the very best arbiter of what is for you and what is not. We may have learned as children to trust and rely upon the authority of others to tell us what to do and when to do it. But there is a profound and authentic inner voice that lies dormant within us all until we start to listen to it and recognize its ability to express our deepest truth and to guide us with the most precise discernment of what will serve our highest good — whether we like it or not. Some call this their “inner” or “true” self, and some suggest this is the spark of the divine that resides in each of us. Either way, just as with physical exercise we are trained to strengthen our core muscles, we must strengthen this core self as well by exercising its voice. That’s how we learn to trust ourselves. Otherwise, we remain at the effect of external sources of authority and simply react to them, usually with the intention of getting their approval or affecting their perception of us in some way.

In my second doctoral dissertation, I focused on the topic of trust because I had become profoundly aware of the fact that whenever I felt out of balance, the bottom line was that I wasn’t trusting myself. As I explored the internal wiring of my consciousness, I discovered something remarkable — my lack of self-trust was so fundamental to my way of being that I was living my life built upon the intention of avoiding pain and suffering. I knew that it was fairly normal to minimize our distress, but my behavior was an all-encompassing way of being whereby I sought to anticipate and avoid perceived sources of suffering.

There was an ironic and fundamental flaw in my approach. In my effort to achieve greater happiness by avoiding pain and suffering, I was actually attracting them to me by focusing upon them rather than on the happiness I sought. I was equating happiness with an absence of pain. In fact, our minds act like great magnets attracting to us what we focus upon, which in turn makes our intentions and focal points self-fulfilling prophecies.

Inherent in my approach was the fact that I neither trusted myself nor God, and so I played God by attempting to write the script of my life. I recognized this as the most pivotal shift I needed to make in my consciousness to improve my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, and I wanted the joy, ease, grace, and abundance that it would bring forth in my life.

So, what about you?

Do you trust yourself?

Do you tend to live at the effect of people and events outside yourself?

Or, alternatively, do you experience yourself as capable of living your life with all its unanticipated twists and turns?

Here are three keys that really helped me make this wonderful transformation of my inner experience. First, I practiced keeping my consciousness focused in the present moment until that became a good habit. This replaced my previous habit of worrying so much about the future. It empowered me to take appropriate action in the only time frame that affords us that opportunity — the present.

Secondly, I observed myself and developed a list of my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual experiences and expressions during the presence or absence of trust in my consciousness. Creating this list helped me to recognize what it looks like and feels like to be trusting — to put flesh on the bones of the concept of trust. For example, I noticed that when I was experiencing trust, I was physically relaxed, comfortable, open, with fluid and graceful movements. In contrast, when lacking trust, I became rigid, tense, stressed, and pushed others away. Mentally, I was not feeling attached to my point of view, worrying, judging others, or avoiding anything. Instead, I was paying attention to what was present and cooperating with it. Emotionally, trust allowed me to go with the flow, confident that I could meet whatever came my way. This was an enormous contrast to my previous experience of anger, fear, agitation, resistance to whatever I did not like, and doubting my ability to be happy in life. Spiritually, trust brought an attunement to the highest good of all concerned and the desire to surrender to “God’s way” rather than demanding “my way.” Rather than playing God, I learned to recognize God’s wisdom and presence in my life.

Finally, I practiced, practiced, and practiced doing more of the things that brought greater trust, and breaking the habit of doing those that did not. I came to believe that there is nothing “wrong” that I have to try to fix. I discovered that trusting is about letting go of “should”s, “have to”s, demands, expectations, fears, illusions, and delusions. The more I surrendered into trust, the more it became my automatic response. Rather than closing down and retreating in response to pain and suffering, I built skills in experiencing them and learning from them. This built my openness and trust that God’s infinite wisdom is present at all times — not just in the experiences that I like.

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The Grace Project: Transforming Our Ideal of Female Beauty

There is not a woman in this country who has been immune to the experience of finding herself falling short of the commercial, albeit airbrushed, ideal of female beauty that bombards us every day. Comparing ourselves to this unreal standard of beauty gives us a sense of being unworthy, a failure, unable to measure up. Many women live with an insidious undercurrent of self-loathing as a result. Many dread seeing a picture of themselves or trying on a bathing suit or undressing before a new lover. Women are encouraged to live with a belief that we are not, and will never be, beautiful unless we “fix” our “imperfections” through diet, exercise, surgery, or Spanx.

Isis Charise, a photographer in Kingston, NY and the founder of The Grace Project, is doing her part to change all that. She has a way of photographing women of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities that provides a doorway for them to access a connection within themselves through which they are able to recognize themselves as beautiful women. Isis facilitates their process of taking ownership of and embodying a deeper, perennial, and more authentic kind of beauty.

In the Grace Project, Isis is bringing her transformational photography to women who have had mastectomies — giving them permission to see themselves as beautiful and whole. She offers her subjects two very powerful metaphors that allow them to see themselves through new eyes. Referencing the Venice de Milo, Isis reminds the women she photographs that this sculpture became even more beautiful after losing its arms to the trauma of history. The other metaphor she shares is the Japanese art of kintsugi, meaning “golden joinery” whereby the cracks of a broken bowl are filled with gold dust and adhesive. Symbolically, the point is not to try to restore something to “as good as new” but rather to incorporate the brokenness into enhanced beauty that is “better than new.” Isis’ subjects are liberated from society’s standard of beauty and are able to see the brokenness of their bodies in a way that has given them a greater power, peacefulness, and beauty.

A recent exhibit of the Grace Project images at the Greene County Council for the Arts demonstrated that these images are also transformational for the viewer. One of the gallery employees shared the story of a burly man who walked into the gallery and was brought to tears by these images. His mother had recently had a double mastectomy and he had never seen what it had done to her body. Several weeks later, his mother ended up in hospital and he was called upon to care for her and dress her. He came back into the gallery to thank them because had he not seen Isis’ images he would never have been prepared to help his mother in such an intimate and nurturing way.

Another man viewing these images said that at first he didn’t even notice that these women’s breasts were scarred or missing. He was captivated by the power of each woman’s presence and initially just saw beautiful pictures of beautiful women.

One of Isis’ subjects is a 58-year old woman currently living with Stage 4 metastatic Breast Cancer. She spoke of her experience facing a bilateral mastectomy. “I had no idea what my body would look like after surgery or what would happen to my body. Someone told me about Isis’s work and I looked at these images of women who looked at peace with their bodies whether they had reconstructed or not. It opened up for me the option of not having reconstructive surgery. I could choose to save my life doing this. I could picture that I would be a whole person afterwards.” On one level, she now views her cancer as a gift saying “somehow through this journey I have reconnected to the part of myself that is the most melike when I was ten or eleven or in my 20s. I have arrived in a powerful place through this journey and the choice to forego reconstruction.”

Another woman wrote to Isis referencing the fact that during her photo shoot she had been referring to her Frankenboob. Seeing her photographs, she had come to realize that her breast sacrificed itself so she could have however many years she has left, and vowed to never use that derogatory term again.

Barbara Sarah is a 21-year Breast Cancer survivor who acknowledged we have come a long way from back in the day when “a breast was only something on a chicken or turkey or robin. It was not a word that we used. Now “breast” has become part of the vocabulary and visually what Isis is doing is dealing with the taboo about looking and witnessing.” Barbara, like many Breast Cancer survivors, has devoted herself to serve others. Nineteen years ago, she founded what is now known as the Oncology Support Program of HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley in New York. The philosophical underpinnings of this group are rooted in Japanese Buddhist psychology focused on being grounded in living in the now, paying attention, being grateful, and living fully in the moment. “I thought that would be a great philosophy for working with cancer patients,” Barbara said. “It’s not just talking about cancer, it’s about how do you live a life with meaning and purpose?”

I am not a woman dealing with Breast Cancer. However, my relationship with my body has been profoundly uplifted by seeing these images. I hope they will give you a better appreciation for how important it is that a woman’s sense of wholeness and beauty come from within her and not be diminished by false external standards.

The images of the Grace Project have the potential to be the new and healthy faces we put on Breast Cancer. Please visit and “like” the Grace website and Facebook.

The Grace Project: Breast Cancer Portraits

View Slideshow Gallery

The project is a not-for-profit 501c3 under the “Artspire” program of the New York Foundation for the Arts.

  • To learn more about Grace Crowd funding campaign before December 31st click here.

 

 

I invite your generosity.

Current Grace Project initiatives that need your support include:

  • Photographing a total of 120 racially and geographically diverse women of all ages who have had mastectomies (25 have been photographed to date). There are many women around the country waiting to be photographed and, unfortunately, the clock is ticking for many of them.
  • Producing two books. One is a collector’s edition of fine art prints. The other is envisioned to be a mass-produced and freely distributed version for which corporate sponsorship is being sought so these images can serve newly diagnosed women as an alternative visual reference to the scary and clinical images they are currently being shown. These images belong in breast cancer resource centers, hospitals, oncology support centers, and the offices of plastic surgeons.
  • Creating a traveling exhibition and pop up gallery throughout the country that can be part of local Breast Cancer awareness events, fund raising walks, foundation galas, or exhibitions at galleries, museums, hospitals, and oncology centers. Isis would like the exhibit to provide a forum for women to talk to each other about Breast Cancer options, issues, and individual choices.

 

Please feel free to contact Isis directly at isisimages@yahoo.com if:

  • you have ideas, connections or comments you would like to share.
  • you are a gallery, museum, or Cancer Support organization interested in scheduling an exhibition.
  • you are a philanthropic, or corporate entity interested in providing funding.
  • you have been moved by these images and would like to share your experience with Isis.

 

Please spread the word and help these images and the Grace Project go viral. What a wonderful gift to us all this holiday season — especially these brave women who have shared their images.
Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.

If you would like to know more about me, please visit my website at http://www.judithjohnson.com

If you would like to suggest a topic for a future blog or ask me to address a particular situation or issue, please email me at judithjohnson@hvc.rr.com

To view my Huffington Post archive click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-johnson


Note: All images in the slide show and video have been provided by Isis Charise who has received a signed model release from all of the women appearing in the photographs.

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There Are Many Ways to Say “I Love You”

Each February, we are bombarded by commercial proddings to prove our love to our sweetheart with the obligatory greeting card, roses, and candy.  For some, the ante is far more expensive and raises year after year.  I think the really lucky sweethearts are those who don’t buy into this external pressure, but rather find little ways to express the love they feel inside for their sweetheart and other loved ones as a way of life.

I’m the kind of person who loves spontaneous gestures of affection – a phone call from a friend who is missing me, or a beautiful bouquet of flowers on a random day from my partner just because he knows I will be delighted.  Don’t give me an obligatory diamond bracelet.  I’d much rather you make it a priority to share quality time together on a regular basis.  Stoke the flame of our love and friendship – invest in our relationship by being a caring and thoughtful partner and communicating your love and needs.  No amount of money spent can do a better job of warming the cockles of my heart.

It is so easy to be consumed by to do lists, work, and other activities and not have much left for those you claim to love the most.  It takes intentional effort in such a complex and busy world to make the expression of your love a priority.

Rather than trying to follow the commercial prescription of how to be a good Valentine, try something new this year.  Make a list of the people you love and treasure most in your life and take the time to think about what gift of love would be most meaningful to each of them.  Do you have an aging parent or dying friend who might treasure some time with you?  Perhaps you have a boss who has been a wonderful mentor and you would like to say “thank you.”  Who has given you your most treasured gifts of friendship and love?  Do they know how much they mean to you?  Don’t make this a one time project, but rather set the intention to improve the quality of your relationships by injecting more of your love into them on an ongoing basis.

There are many ways to say I love you.  The best ones rise out of simply paying attention and allowing creative expressions to emerge from your heart.  The very best ones touch the other person’s heart – the gift is authentically received.  Here’s one of my favorite expressions of “I love you” that I ever experienced.

Hide The Lizard

I don’t recall how the game began.  But, I do remember finding the lizard.  For several of my mother’s final years, we indulged in a few weeks of beachfront July living on the Jersey shore where we had both vacationed as children.  One late afternoon, walking up the beach to the cottage, my feet kicked up a tiny rainbow colored plastic lizard in the sand.  With no visible potential child owner in sight, the inner child in me delighted in my newfound treasure and I accelerated my pace up to the house to show my mother.

After returning to our year round home in a renovated barn in the Hudson Valley of New York, the lizard found its first home with us on a small wooden ledge on the first floor.  At the time, my mother’s mobility was in a period of marked decline and I took on more and more simple daily activities to compensate as seamlessly as possible.  I didn’t want her to do without anything that mattered to her that she could no longer do for herself.  But, she was a proud woman, and as with many of us facing physical decline, it was important to her not to be any more of a burden than necessary.  While, in my snarkiest of moods, I did feel burdened and impatient, mostly, it was a privilege to care for her.  Reluctance to let me know her needs and desires actually made things a bit more challenging for me – not only did I have the new activities to do but, I had to first figure out what they were through careful observation.

There are many ways to show someone your love.  Helping my mom with her daily activities was one, but far more important, was tending to her emotions and sense of self-worth and dignity.  Little things matter a lot for someone who is facing a loss of autonomy.  Hide the Lizard was a spontaneous response to being aware of this with my mom.  It was a game that came into existence and survived simply to say, “I love you very, very much.”

And so, Hide the Lizard was born.  One of us would hide it somewhere in plain sight on the first floor of our home and notify the other that it was her turn to find it.  Sometimes it would be uncanny how something inside you would guide you right to the lizard.  Other times, it might take days at feeling increasingly inept at this invented game while being ever more determined to find the damn lizard, knowing it was right out in plain sight.  Finding it always brought triumphant delight, shortly followed by the challenge of finding a cleaver new home for the lizard.  We giggled, we felt smug when we stumped each other, and thus we comingled our hearts.

There are many ways to say I love you.

I wish you the joy of abundantly expressing your love this Valentine’s Day and every day.

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Are You Letting Your Heart Sing?

As a mentor, I often find myself working on the same bottom line with clients — are you letting your heart sing? This is a powerfully loaded question that deserves some unpacking here.

First, let’s look at what it means to let your heart sing. Think of a time or times when you have been in your glory. It could have been a particular meeting, job, relationship, a song you sang, a book you wrote, or just a humble yet essential moment in your daily life. These moments typically engage a person in the flow of creatively expressing something they are deeply passionate about. It’s as though your body, heart, mind, and soul are in a personal harmonic convergence and you can feel your heart smiling. There is a fulfillment — a sating of a piercing hunger that has been building in your soul.

I’ve come to recognize that my heart sings best when I am experiencing a loving oneness with another — whether someone close to me, a client, or a total stranger. For example, I can be walking down the street and have my eyes meet deeply with the eyes of a stranger for the briefest of moments and zoom past all the things that normally prevent such an essential connection from occurring. My heart also sings when I am effectively being of service and when I am able to communicate well. What about you? What makes your heart sing?

Once you have identified one or several strong examples of you at your best, ask yourself some of the following questions:

  • What did it feel like in your heart? Soul? Mind? Body?
  • How did you know you were in your zone?
  • What were the characteristics of the experience? For example, did certain people, circumstances, forms of expression, or heightened experiences facilitate your reaching the point where your heart was singing?
  • What specifically do you need to be, do, or have to make your heart sing?

Notice the question isn’t is your heart singing? It’s are you letting your heart sing? In this crazy world we live in, very few hearts simply sing anymore. It’s not that it is not important, but rather that we are too busy giving our attention to other matters. We need to make our lives conducive to allowing our song to emerge — even within the simple moments of our everyday lives. So, if your heart rarely or never sings, here are some things you might want to do:

    • Listen deeply to yourself: When our lives are filled with stress and more activities than time, our focus tends to be outward rather than inward. We need to deeply immerse ourselves in quiet contemplation and focus on the urges of our heart and soul. In the absence of such inner grounding, we are likely to live our lives hoping that this person or that job will somehow bring us greater happiness. In other words, we give over the power to yield our happiness to others and we become the recipients of whatever they happen to give to us. This kind of passive living rarely makes our heart sing. It is far more likely to get us to focus on manipulating this other person or situation to yield that nebulous and ill-defined happiness we seek. Our heart’s song comes from a deeper place within us that we must visit and become familiar with to create the pathway for its expression.
    • Be mindful of living from the inside out: In the business of our lives, it is very easy to lose track of our essential self — the part that imagines and dreams about creating, promoting, and allowing our inner yearnings to manifest in our lives. Too often, we find ourselves at the end of our lives with a voluminous bucket list of unfulfilled dreams and desires. If something deep within us keeps seeking our attention and we keep ignoring it, it eventually gets drowned out by the drumbeat of daily life. Then in the quieter days of our life’s end, we have too many regrets. So, take time to listen deeply and to create an energy flow that moves from deep within you outward into expression in your life. This could be as simple as wanting a particular color in your environment or taking the time to call an old friend. We must not only listen to our inner yearnings, we must honor them through action so we can bring them to fulfillment.
    • Dare to sing: Letting your heart sing means making that a priority. It means going for “it” — daring to give expression to your heart’s desire and best vision of what your life could be. Get in the practice of doing at least one thing each day that evokes your soul’s expression. Make that important enough to make it a habit.
    • Set clear intentions: Seeking a vague sense of being happier yields only disappointment with the present. If you want to create more health, wealth, happiness, and inner fulfillment, then you have to be specific with yourself about what exactly you need to do differently to move in the right direction to fulfill your dreams. This year, for example, I have set four very specific intentions for what I want to bring forward in my life. Every day, I affirm those intentions morning and night and challenge myself to spend as much of my time as possible bringing those intentions into reality. If you want your heart to sing, be very clear with yourself about what that involves and don’t try to do it all at once. Set manageable, doable intentions that affirm your willingness to do what it takes to bring them forward in your life.
    • Focus your attention on your intentions: You must breathe life into your intentions through action every day. Don’t wait for someone else to magically appear who will recognize what brings out the best in you and allows your heart to sing. Take ownership of your own life — get in the driver’s seat and go for it!

There is only one you. So, please give voice to your most beautiful inner song and share it with the rest of us.

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The #1 Key to Living and Dying Well

Some of the greatest life wisdom is articulated by the dying.  In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware shares what she has learned about the dying by serving as a caregiver to many.  She notes, “of all of the regrets and lessons shared with me as I sat beside their beds, the regret of not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common one of all.  It was also the one that caused the most frustration, as the client’s realization came too late.”

So, what does it mean to be true to yourself?  A lot of people throw around the term ‘authenticity’ to describe it.  On some level this term suggests that there is a truth that resides within each of us that is unique to our specific being.  It also implies that there is an opportunity to somehow maximize the experience of living our life and meeting our death that involves being attuned to that truth and living a life that is a reflection of that truth.  But, how do we do this?  How is that different from simply living and doing the best we can?  What does it look like?  What does it feel like?

In the process of living, we come to know things about ourselves – experiences we love and those that leave us unengaged.  We discover certain talents, abilities, and inclinations within us.  My favorite food group will always be chocolate, for example, that’s simply not negotiable.  Each of us will have different preferences from the same menu in a restaurant – or the de jour offerings of a given day.  As time goes by, if we pay attention – if we listen to that pure, inner voice that simply says an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ or an emphatic ‘no!’ – we come to learn that that voice seems to have our best interest in mind.  It is not the voice of our ego preferences or greed.  It comes from a far deeper place than that – I sense mine in the area of my solar plexis.

The real challenge is that there are other voices that we hear too and our inner voice of truth often gets lost in the shuffle.  Our insecurities and fears speak to us.  Our wants and desires demand our attention.  Outer influences, norms, and authorities seek our allegiance as well.  What do you do when your parents or teachers – the gods of your youth – are steering you in a direction that doesn’t match your fragile and emerging sense of self?  When outer authorities or social norms insist you do or be something that is in conflict with your sense of who you are, what do you do?  Do you trust the outer authorities, perhaps out of fear of the consequences of not doing so, or do you somehow hold to your inner truth, in spite of the judgment, rejection, and ridicule that might bring upon you?  I know a man who paid a heavy price for following his passion to become a concert pianist when his father insisted he stay in Idaho to tend the family potato farm.  What must it be like for a child who knows he or she is gay to survive and find a path through a family or world that will judge and reject them?  What do you do when you know that how and what you are is likely to never be favored or acceptable to your family or the society you live in – even though you are a good person?

It’s ironic that it’s just not that easy to simply be yourself.  But, maybe therein lies the secret to living and dying well.  The real prize in life is to come to know your very own truth and to learn to be obedient to that truth in a way that does not harm others.  They may not like it, but if we are lucky, we teach them how to love us in spite of our differences.  We teach them to respect our ways of being and to let us be.  You have to be willing to claim the privilege of being yourself in a social context.  It’s not an easy path and typically takes dedication, devotion, endurance, and sometimes the willingness to proceed without the support and understanding of those we love.  It requires listening to inner truth and figuring out how to honor it.  It takes time to develop this inner attunement.  But the prize is a peacefulness, an experience of being who you are rather than resenting yourself and others for what you didn’t get to do or be or have that was essential to you.  To know that you are living your life with obedience to what you know to be your truth may be as good as life gets – especially when you find a community of support of others who are walking to the beat of their own drums as well.

Take a look at your life and ask yourself these questions:

  • If I were to die tomorrow, would I have any regrets?  If so, explore what you could do right now in your life to prevent yourself from reaching the end of your life with those regrets.
  • Is there anyone in your life with whom you are not at peace?  If so, what are you willing to do about that either within yourself or in relationship to that person?
  • Are you at peace with yourself?  If not, what changes could you make to bring yourself to a state of inner peace?

As long as we live, it is never too late to be ourselves and to make peace with our choices and the people in our life (past or present).  So, if you want to live and die really well, befriend, honor, and love yourself madly and deeply.

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