Just three things

I'm in the fog of early winter. Everything seems to be slowing down, winding inward, and at the same time, I'm in a wind tunnel of holiday obligations, out-of-balance children, short days and wet weather. I need peace like I need oxygen right now. I am learning that peace, while seemingly buoyant and pristine, takes a hell of a lot of work. Sleeves rolled up, hands plunged in deep, discipline-to-the-third-degree work. I'm making mistakes. I'm living. And I'm listening to people smarter and older than myself while I do the work.

This morning, while listening to a service from our local Unity church online, I got up and jotted these things down (on the virtue-laden refrigerator): Everyday: Share your gift. Learn something new. Be grateful. 

I don't think the Native American elder speaking at the time that I got up to write this down said exactly this, but I carried his message to my refrigerator and completed the thought as it made sense to me. I'm in the mood to keep things simple. Gratitude rules the roost here. Learning new things keep us moving. Sharing the best pieces, the precious pieces, of myself - that's a tough part of the peace machine. I've got no space to be stingy right now. My little people need me to stretch myself and share. I need me to stretch myself and share. The vapid mouth of The Holidays and Attendant Gloom threatens to swallow me should I refuse.

If I can do these three things in a day, I think it follows I will be a friend to myself, a kind and loving family member, and of service to others.



Here's my gift today: bone broth.  I have been sipping it every morning in place of my usual breakfast these past few weeks. It meets my need for something warm in hand,and it leaves me full for hours. I know there is a larder full of science to tell me all the good things bone broth does for me, but sipping is good enough for me. I feel it. And when all else seems wild in my world, I feel like I'm communing with the otherwise wasted parts of the fine animals we eat. Simple enough. Gratitude.

Need I mention, too, I gave up coffee a few months ago? I miss her, her smell, her taste, her companionship, but I don't miss the disturbed sleep, anxiety, and general edginess. Bone broth isn't so good with heavy cream, but it is a steamy cup of zoom, the heavy-lifting kind of zoom. More like, z-o-o-o-o-m. And my extracellular matrix appreciates it. So there.

I keep it simple. You can find a bazillion recipes that include vegetables and herbs. I add nothing but bones (raw or cooked) or parts - chicken feet, for example, scored from a farmer for a mere nothin' - filtered water and some raw vinegar (about 2 Tbsp per gallon). I cover the bones with the water, turn the crock pot to high, and walk away for 24 hours. I strain the mixture into mason jars, let it cool on the counter, and then freeze or refrigerate. If I'm using cut bones, I pop out the marrow and add it to sauces, stir it into mashed vegetables, or, well, just straight up eat it. The baby adores it. The dog appreciates it. Our cold-weather menu of braises, soups and stews glimmers with it. I scoop the fat that settles on the top of the broth and save it separately in the fridge for frying. I always leave a little fat in the jar, on top of my gelatinous broth, and stir it into the pot when I reheat broth for sipping. I'm convinced this is what keeps me satisfied for hours. A pinch of sea salt into the mug and I'm set.

Set to share my gifts, learn something new, and be grateful.
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What fuels your peace machine and keeps you present when this season gets cracking? Does it even slightly resemble a crock pot full of chicken feet?

Don't believe me

So my friend Molly took matters into her own hands a few months ago and made some serious changes of the Paleo persuasion at her house. This is a woman who had whole wheat bread rising by the fire the first time I came to her home, who's husband brews beer (very, very delicious beer), and who cooks a mean chicken pot pie. Like anyone else in our modern world, changing her approach to cooking, eating, and exercise asked her to make a dramatic pivot.  In the few years I have known her she has been nothing short of authentic, honest, and inspiring in her dedication to her family, her own happiness, and her creativity. Her recent posts about some of the big changes she and her family have experienced are an inspiring testament to what changing your mindset, in a way that is friendly to what you value, can do for you.
Last week I had the privilege of hosting her and her kids for a mid-week meal, and seeing is so believing. Here is a woman who has always struck me as youthful and pretty. But when she stepped up my walkway on Tuesday, I felt like I was looking at her teenage sister, Molly, v.2. The same bright eyes and sweet smile, many sizes smaller, and a glow a mile high.
But:
Don't believe me when I tell you that making sensible changes in your diet, your exercise, your outlook and your sleep has the potential to connect you with vibrant living.
Don't even believe Molly.
Believe yourself.
I hear every day people admonishing themselves for what they perceive to be their failures and short-comings. For some of us it's a lack of motivation, for some it's a ruthless pursuit of sugar, for some it's being short of patience with a loved one - the point being, we, as a race of beings, can always find fault in our own existence.
To my mind, the lifestyle we embrace as a family has everything to do with taking responsibility for our own well-being, questioning conventional wisdom, and trusting our own experiences.  The worst thing that can happen is that we discover something doesn't work for us. I think I've been pretty clear about what the best things are.
In my family's quest for an unconventional but authentically happy life, we've discovered strength and health, ethically acceptable dietary practices, a community of amazing families to support us and love us, and a whole lot of unity. And there is one more thing that I have to say, in spades, I've found: trust.
I trust myself. I trust my decisions, I trust the information I base it on, and I trust that we are doing something that is very, very good for us. I trust that I am enough, that I'm doing enough. This trust translates as belief, faith.
Of course I experience self-doubt. I'm human. But I have a bedrock of experience now, almost like a connection to spiritual energy, that reminds me of the rightness in the world, and how easily I can connect with it if I choose to. After years of  feeling like I was searching, searching, searching, I can finally relax and say: I'm here. And it's a darn good place.

Experience has been my teacher in this place of trust. Holding my tongue, my anger, when I feel like pulling the house down around me. Committing to thirty days of clean eating when I lose my direction and then ticking those days of the calendar until I find balance again, hanging in there one meal at a time sometimes. Carrying on with my life through a week of caffeine withdrawal as I sought to calm my mind and improve my sleep by giving up coffee (it worked, well). Showing up at the gym in the cold, at times I'd rather be curled up with a book or hanging out at home, with injured parts, willing to do the work and accept the limitations of my body's abilities, while testing it against the toughness of my mind. Doing without, and practicing gratitude for what we do have with such whole-heartedness that I hardly notice missing what I once believed to be so essential to daily life. Showing up at co-op meetings, play groups, dinners, sometimes a stranger and sometimes an old friend, to build or strengthen connections and be a part of a whole. Small examples, but practiced daily, sometimes moment by moment, they are all tiny trials that have engendered great trust in where we are today.

As I consider this slightly pagan sense of awe and faith, a few basic practices strike me as essential. Discipline. Forgiveness, mostly of myself (for when discipline lacks). Kindness, once again, mostly directed at myself, and a sense of wonder for the limitlessness I am finding as push my light into dark places and toe the edges of things I haven't even fathomed before.

But don't believe me. Believe yourself, cultivate your own practice. Come up my walkway, a ray of light.
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What helps you trust yourself?

Change your verb

Inspired by Eve Ensler.

Nice thing about living life, about fielding ups and downs, is that I have become patient. When I get stuck, and when I'm working with pain and loss, I know that soon enough, around some unexpected corner, I will get unstuck. Liberated from my glue trap of feeling and experience. So I sit with my yuck and carry on, and thank the wind for my curiosity, which keeps me moving forward, and my children, who demand I show up every day, and my husband, who holds the world up while I am unwilling, and then, eventually, the shift comes, and I'm ready to look forward, and the past and possessions and people - all those things that I allow to consume me until I no longer recognize myself - fade from center stage, and I'm left with the present, and the future, and a good dose of gratitude for this process of growing and changing.

Until tonight, I have been held for a few weeks by the idea of consumption. How I was being used up by my own mind's energy. And how angry it left me that by choosing and allowing my attention to go there, I was cheating those who really do deserve (and want) the best of me. Such a crappy cycle to be in.

And then I listened to good old Eve remind me of my innate ability to wipe out the world of hate with my singular heart of love ("you don't tell the Atlantic Ocean to behave"!)  and I was able to change my verb.

Ever have a bad moment in a dressing room with a mirror? If you are a woman, no matter how regal and strong you are, I'm willing to bet yes. Probably if you are a man, too. Humans have an enormous capacity for not measuring up in their own eyes. I had a day like this on Sunday. A bad moment in a dressing room. But instead of it consuming me, instead of feeling hopeless, fated, depressed and fat, I felt liberated. My eyes gave me an understanding of what's been eating at me. I've been spending so much time giving the best pieces of me to the service of what's nothing short of bullshit it my life, that I have overlooked my most precious possession, my self-hood. The one that is connected to my body, my mind, and my soul. Which makes for a cloudy mind, a grumpy soul, and a body that didn't measure up, to my eyes.

The shit hit the fan with a pair of black workout shorts, size Small.
I put them on. Comfortable. Fine from the front. OK from the side. And I turned around, and looked at my thighs, and I thought: I know I can be better. I've sinned against myself. Bad Girl. Skinny-fat.

Now that's a dicey tirade of self-loathing, and it's dicey to share that I think this way of myself at times. Shouldn't I be just fine the way I am, no matter what I turn around and see? (ideally: yes. And on most days, I'm there. But this was a crisis, the kind that blows a hole in your shit cloud world and blasts you out the other end feeling slightly enlightened).

How many times have I heard in the past two months: you look great, but I haven't been able to absorb it? Because I don't feel great. I don't feel vibrant and strong. I feel defeated and cowed. I feel weak. Sidelined by physical injury, that was true for awhile, but the injury to me heart was what really took its toll. This is what I saw in that mirror: my body is reflecting back to me what is happening in my life. I have slipped low on my priority list. I believed what others said, and allowed their criticism to quiet my own voice, and I buried myself in worry and aimlessness and a million other petty psychic crimes. Just writing that pisses me off. Sometimes a little anger is the perfect push.

So I bought those tiny, tight shorts. I had a semi-catastrophic emotional meltdown, I regrouped, I apologized, I worked out, I made dinner, I carved some pumpkins and enjoyed a few glasses of wine with my husband and my best buddy and my kids. And every day since I have showed up at the gym or in my backyard and am grinding my way through the strength cycle I've been avoiding, oh, for a year. I know where I want to be. I know how to get there. I'm embracing the humility of all I have to learn, all I have lost, and the newness of what my body has to teach me this time. And I'm putting that bad moment with a mirror to good use. Let me be clear: this is not about my body. It's about my body enveloping my soul. Sometimes an inside job can be achieved with some real physical work. Anyone who has engaged in a physical life can attest to the discipline, dark spiritual forests, and total guts it takes to make changes and improvements.

In case you are wondering...the verb isn't buy, it's move. Move against the current of consumption. Move against the wind that is oppressing you. Move in ways you haven't before, on paths you've never dared walk. Move towards the vision in your heart. See the ugly, see that which does not measure up, see the injustice and unkindness of hurt people (perhaps yourself included), and then move forward at all costs.

Forgiveness grows in movement. Movement provides us with fluidity, mental and physical space, and demands that we pay attention to our body and our habitat. I cannot think of a finer medicine.

As I move forward, I reclaim my voice, my vision. I reject an empire that quiets me, that gives me bad moments with a mirror. I vow to take that moment with the mirror and run with it, right into the heart of what it means to be real, messy, wild and alive.
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Tell me your verb. I may need to steal it in the future.