Ride the Joy Wave

    Our brains and bodies are made up of pathways of neurons, patterns of perceiving, and just as we get used to walking or driving the same route to work or school or the store everyday, we get in the habit of using the same old emotional pathways. There are alternate routes in the outside world, and there are certainly better and more joyful pathways inside of us.

    We have good reasons for having chosen our default brain pathways.  For the most part, they helped us get what we needed or avoid pain most often when we were small and our brains were developing rapidly.  They may have been reinforced or created new later in our lives by traumatic life events or tragic or threatening situations.  They served us well.  We're still alive.  But if you're reading this, a life based on survival isn't cutting it for you anymore.  You're ready for a life that actually feels worth being in.  Maybe even ready for a little bit of joy.

    So, when a feeling that feels good bubbles up - use it.

    Stop everything and feel it.  Smile, laugh, giggle, cry, sigh, breathe it in.  Grin like an idiot. Dance around a little (or a lot). Don't call it silly, don't push it away to get back to "real life." Let this pleasant pathway widen.  Let your brain see the potential of what "real life" could be.  It will probably only last a moment, anyway.  Catch it and let it bury you like a wave.  When the wave passes naturally, let it pass.  Its memory will take its place in your soul's scrapbook, where your brain can study it and bask in the lingering salt spray left behind.  Don't worry, it will come again.

    It will come again because now you've opened up a nice new brain highway, that will become easier and more familiar to travel in the future.  You've tested it for danger and found it strong and sound.  You'll begin gravitating to it naturally.

    Your "good" feeling doesn't have to be joy, or anywhere near it.  There are so many desirable ways to feel.  Rest, comfort, peace, amusement, satisfaction, pride, warmth, or love.  You may be at a point in your life where true joy isn't on your emotional radar.  Something that feels "better" might be a reasonable substitute for what feels "good," such as acceptance, hope, or relief.

    After breaking trail toward better feelings, sometimes our minds will remind us of the reasons we avoided those pathways for so long.  Your joy-wave may be followed by another emotional wave.  It may be sadness, grief, anxiety or fear.  Go ahead and ride this wave, too.  Consider it an emotional purge.  Don't worry that you'll reinforce the old pattern this way - give it the attention it needs or it will follow you insistently until you do.  Once it's been seen and heard, you can know that the old patterns have changed in "real life." Feeling better is safe now.

    And if it's not yet safe to feel better, you're beginning to know the better feeling is worth making time for, worth letting in, worth opening towards.

    Start where you are, and let the joy in.

The Heartbreak of Abortion

    You didn't want a child, certainly not right now.  But you did want pleasure, you did want connection, you did want personal power, choice, sexuality, you did want love.

    Your weak, feminine body has betrayed you. Not just the regular betrayal of monthly bleeding, shame, and pain. Not just the betrayal of the weakness that will never allow you to be as strong, fast, or aggressively respected as the men your world was made for. But now, a terrifying miracle is beginning within you.  You didn't want it.  You don't want to want it now.  It will overturn your life.  It will take away your choices.  It will leave you weaker, slower, poorer.

    You don't want to want it, but a part of you does.  Just as your body begins to nurture this fragile possibility of life, your thoughts and feelings begin to nurture the fragile possibility of motherhhood.  Your hormones shift, bonding you to the idea.  Your body begins to change, so subtly, yet so clearly demanding your attention.  In the recesses of your being, you remember your own gestation, the safety and nourishment of your mother's womb.  The miracle of coming into being, the comfort of mother.  The encodings of your genetics begin to remind you that you were created for this act of creation, just as you were created to love and be loved.

    Could you give up everything for this? Something wonders deep within you.  Could you be the mother you always needed?  

    It's hard enough to be a person on your own in this world.  Harder still to be a woman on your own in this world.  Not much extra to go around.  Extra time, extra money, exra space, extra support, extra joy, attention, availability, love.

    Maybe if you had just a little extra, it could work.  Someone to support you as your foremothers were supported in their creation of life.  Someone to fill your cup, so there was just enough to spill over to a new being.

    But there's no support here for you.  There's stress and shame and weakness.  Love that can't be counted on.  A dismal existence no precious new life deserves.

    No, it can't be done.  You choose termination. You kill the life forming from your own life.  You kill the possibility of motherhood.  You kill your hopes of the adventure you might have experienced.  A surprising grief washes over you for the mother you might have been, the child you might have had, the life you might have lived if you were supported, if womanhood was not weakness, if love was not rare, if the world was not cruel.

    Your body cramps and bleeds.  You're tired and weak and nauseated. Your heart aches.  You don't allow yourself to weep. You hide your pain and bury it deep inside.  You push that foolish weak woman aside. You know you, the killer, have no right to your grief.

    No right to grieve the life gone from you.  No right to grieve the future that might have been, your budding motherhood, the fulfilment of your dna's purpose.

    You're now immoral, hated of God, a murderess, an irresponsible fool.  You hide the truth.  You say you're fine. You work through your gushing injury, or call in for a day. You go back to your lonely life. You hide your loss for a lifetime.

On Living in the Present (and Reclaiming the Moments of Your Life)

 Live in the present - such a simple concept - such a perfect example of how "simple" doesn't equate to "easy."  Here's how it goes.

    Why to live in the present: The present is the time that's real.  The present is where we are.  The present is the point of being, the place where life exists.  The present is the exhilaration of the roller coaster, the moment of orgasm, the crackle of the warm fire, the touch of your lover, the blossoming of a flower, your child's the first giggle. The present is where the adventure of life unfolds.  The present is where joy is experienced.  At the end of our lives, if lives truly flash before our eyes, we'll see that what we call our life is just a series of present moments.

    How to live in the present: be there.  Feel the sweet cool breeze and the hot, sticky sweat.  Bask in your daydream if it gives you pleasure - the present doesn't always have to be physical.  Shed tears of grief when they arise, shed tears of joy and laughter, too. Breathe in the moments, good or bad. Live the adventure.

    You may look back on your past and realize there were presents you wish you'd claimed, but because the joy was mixed with pain, you decided to leave them out of your precious bundle of moments, out of your life story. You suddenly pine for the sweet memories of Grandma's fresh bread, even though you've run away from the pain of rushing her to the hospital and her subsequent death for years.

    Un-presenced parts of our lives lay in wait as memories.  

    Memories have many purposes.  Some are blueprints and instruction manuals, and some are precious jewels set aside to be savored and cherished forever. But many - so many - are actually bits of the present never attended to, lying in wait, clamoring for their turn to take their rightful place as one of the moments of your life.  

So then, when you go to be present, the purity of your present moments is hijacked by the past.  You want to feel the sweetness of the cool breeze, but instead you remember that time in the cool breeze you hid outside listening to your parents fight.  Or maybe you find yourself watching your life from the outside - safely dissociated into the ethers. Maybe your mind doesn't even remember in language, but something in you does remember.  So instead of pleasure you feel inexplicably sad, scared, vulnerable, or just emotional.

    It's okay.  Your present might be being present with the past for a moment, or longer.  You're reclaiming the moments of your life.  Under the painful memories, you'll unearth beautiful ones you thought you lost.  You'll reclaim your present and your life.

On the Bother of Emotions

    It's so easy to say "if it wasn't for emotions getting in the way..." something about life would be better.  I hear this so often.  Relationships would be easier.  People would agree with my personal political views.  People would make good decisions, be kind, et cetera.  Or maybe if it wasn't for emotions, life would just be better.  No suffering, no pain, no heartbreak, no grief.  Darn emotions.

    Well, if it wasn't for emotions, where would be all the beauty of life?  The things that make it feel good, beautiful, worth living?  What would be the purpose of a relationship?  Why would we care about politics?  Why would we care about being kind?  Our minds offer us so much, but they're not the receivers of joy, pleasure, contentment, or love.

    If anything, our minds like to talk us out of those good feelings.  "This can't be love," says the mind, "it doesn't fit the description I was given."  Same with joy, fulfilment, satisfaction, humor.  What the brain does beautifully:  senses what felt good and figures out how to continue or repeat it.  Senses what felt bad and figures out how to avoid or eliminate it.  Weighs and names ambivalence to figure out which categories it goes into and how to prioritize it.  The best business partner the brilliant emotional being could ever have found.  But on its own... floundering for purpose and meaning.

    So I say, if emotions provide me with sadness, frustration, despair, desolation... they also provide me with all the good stuff of life.  So - if I'm gonna do this Life thing, I'll take them, arms open.

Empathy, or How My Anger Makes Me a Better Person

    I thought I was a nice person, so when my estranged husband continued to refuse me visitation with our child to punish me for leaving, I was amazed that I could feel such depths of anger, resentment, hatred, and overall ill-wish.  Emotion possessed me.  I shook involuntarily.  My breath came in coarse uneven bits, like ripping cloth.  My heart pounded.  I saw flashes of color. 

    Eventually I emerged, wondering how in my whole life as myself, I'd never met this terrifying, angry, dangerous person before.  I also felt better, stronger, exhausted, and invigorated.  Instead of feeling trapped, I was ready to make a plan and move forward.  Amazingly, I hadn't moved from the couch, let alone hurt anybody, as I was raised to believe anger forces one to do.

    This uncorking was only the beginning.  My nice-girl self was soon to be repeatedly shocked at the not-niceness buried inside her. Bottled up anger began to flow from me with ferocious passion.  Revealing not a nice woman, but a passionate woman, and maybe a buddingly wise woman.

    Once I journeyed with my best friend, Marie, while feeling over-sheltered and suffocated by my always-present upstairs landlords.  My journey-self set out on a killing spree that no respectable human with a healthy fear of prison would ever allow herself to think of.  At last alone, autonomous, and powerful, amongst only dead neighbors, she relaxed and basked in the sensation of safety.  Back in ordinary reality, my generally sane and prison-fearing self reported this alarming mental excursion to Marie.  An old-soul, rather than offering me disgust and fear, she told me, "well, this is a very safe place to express those feelings."

      I began to allow triggers to take me interesting places.  One took me to the bedroom my husband and I shared long ago, provided me with a knife, and allowed me to make myself an imaginary torturess.  After mentally sleeping in a sticky, warm, red puddle - finally safe and peaceful, I was surprised when his imaginary spirit appeared to my imaginary murderess.  A flood of compassion and forgiveness overtook me.  I put him back together again.  I woke up.  I felt so much better.  The next day he very uncharacteristically texted me and we had a remarkably civil exchange.

    I felt better.  Stable, calm, rational.  Not only had my intense and violent emotions of anger, hatred, rage and bitterness not caused anyone harm, they improved my functioning and mental state.  Somehow, they also increased my feelings of compassion and desire for my terrorizer's well-being, making me less instead of more dangerous.

    I decided to adopt a new strategy with my angry emotions.  Instead of running from and disowning them, I made a practice of allowing my rage to sweep through me and humor myself with whatever abhorrent, volatile, cruel, and/or childish fantasies I wished.  They flooded in at first, like the ocean after a dam finally buckles under its weight.

    Intrigued by my experiences, open-minded old soul that she is, Marie experimented with  and eventually adopted my unconventional strategy.  

    Two years later, Marie works at the local jail. We read an article together from our small-town newspaper.  Attempted murder suspect found guilty.  We discuss violence.  We discuss mental illness.  We discuss punishment and the justice system.  We discuss how our own violent imaginings have taken on subtle unexpected nuance - sometimes our inner vengeance-seeker is satisfied by petty mischief, sometimes by victimless expressions of injustice, like screaming (and screaming and screaming).  How sometimes it requires rash, abrupt violence, and sometimes the infliction of suffering.  We discuss how strange it is that, quite opposite to what we've always been told, these fantasies actually seem to serve a protective function.  Have we actually desensitized ourselves and become terribly dangerous people?

    Marie asserts that she is more soundly grounded in the desire for kindness and compassion than ever.  As a person who has dedicated her life thus far to holding he hands and hearts of the dying, ill, and underserved, this is tremendous commitment, indeed.

    I realize that my imaginary atrocities have in fact made my real-world compassion and empathy comparatively vast. While it's quite a sizeable leap from imaginary violence and cruelty to the actual doing of atrocities, I've come to understand to some degree the kind of fear, anger, pain, powerlessness, and hopelessness that drives real people to commit real violence.  Rather than a monsters, entirely alien from myself, I can only see a people, with a human hearts, beating with the same passions and emotions that as my own.  I can't pretend that I'm "better" than them, that my actions would have been any different, if my life had been theirs.  How can I not care about their suffering, when it must have been so much worse than what seemed unbearable to me?  

    So... do you seek a world of love, peace, and compassion?  A society where we can truly take others as ourselves?  Where we can love the hated, envelop the dispossessed, be our brothers' keepers?  Then don't try to eradicate your anger.  Let it awaken you, purify you, teach you.

Finding Your Beauty

There you are in the mirror, as you are every morning.  Looking average.  Looking tired and puffy.  Looking blemished, wrinkled, age-spotted.  How would life be if you were Helen of Troy, the sort of beauty who men and gods start wars over? Or perhaps if you were just that one girl in the office, who always looks as though the clothes she’s wearing were designed especially for her?  Who looks like she should be on a magazine cover, not down the hall.  Zipping up your makeup bag, you abandon the fantasy.  There you are still, looking like yourself - with makeup.

Understand Why

Despite what we’d like to believe, it wasn’t so long ago that a pretty face helped ensure survival for a woman.  Today, we don’t depend on snaring a mate to provide for and protect us in the world.  Still, valuing physical attractiveness, especially in women, is embedded deep within our evolutionary selves.

Think back to your childhood.  Think of the messages you received around beauty.  When you were pretty were you taken pictures of, shown off, given treats?  Were women of value described as beautiful?  In the movies you watched, what were the heroines like?  Was looking nice associated with love and approval? 

Give yourself permission

It’s okay to want safety. It’s okay to want love and approval.  It’s okay to want beauty. It’s okay to be human. In the quest to be the best human you can be, the first step is humanity.  

Feel compassionately insecure

If you struggle with not feeling beautiful enough, giving yourself permission to wish for beauty is bound to unlock feelings of being unbeautiful and insecure.  It doesn’t feel good, but it isn’t actually a new feeling.  Do you see that it’s been lying under the surface all the time, avoiding being seen?  Now it’s in front of you.  Let yourself feel compassionate toward these feelings, just as you would for a child or best friend who was insecure.  Let yourself feel emotional, know that you’re normal and in good company.  Give yourself a hug.  Now that you can see your feelings, you can start nurturing them into feeling better.  

Create a better standard

Once upon a time, the most beautiful woman a person had seen in his or her life was probably a nice looking girl in the village. She may have had glossy hair and a new dress, but did she wear makeup?  Did she have a curling iron?  She certainly didn’t have a personal trainer, a beautician, or photoshop. Now, instead of comparing ourselves to the other women of our tribe or village or town, we measure ourselves against models and celebrities - people whose full time job is to look beautiful.  And we don’t see one or two of these professional beauties in a lifetime, we see them over and over, everyday. Their superhuman, touched up images are everywhere we look.

So did Helen of Troy look like a model on a magazine cover?  Or could you give her a run for her money freshly showered, dressed your best, glowing with excellent modern nutrition, and a touch of hair serum, coverup and lip gloss?

The primitive human part of you who craves to be seen as beautiful, also evolved to appreciate feminine beauty on a much more true and simple scale. 

Appreciate the beauty in others

Let’s re-learn what beauty really is by appreciating it in others.  You’ve been shown what you “should” think is beautiful your whole life. Now begin discovering what you actually find beautiful.  Look for it in real people. Begin with the beauties of your village.  Think to yourself, “If she were fetching water from the watering hole right now, what would be noticeable?”  Practice re-wiring your concept of feminine beauty by finding a little beauty in every woman you see, not just the ones who look most like the models you were raised to admire.  Remember that the standard of societal beauty varies dramatically by culture and over time, so you can’t depend on external messages to help you understand what authentic beauty truly is. Let yourself slowly discover the rich and varied palette of what looking beautiful really means.

Start with one small thing about yourself

For many of us, it’s easier to appreciate others than ourselves.  It may be easy to appreciate beautiful noses of 100 kinds on other faces, but not your own.  That’s okay.  What’s the one thing about yourself you can truly find beautiful as it is, without convincing yourself too hard?  Are your eyelashes dark?  Are they thick? Do your eyes change color in a mysterious way?  Is your hair soft?  Are your hands delicate?  Are your nails naturally long?  Is your belly button shaped nicely? Do you walk with a bit of a fun sashay? Do you have a warm smile? White teeth?  Is your voice unique? Find one of your bits of beauty and remind yourself of it when you’re feeling compassionately insecure.  Practice saying it to yourself. “I have beautiful eyes.”  

Spend time appreciating the aspects of beauty you personally possess, and let your mind begin learning to see what is in your glass of beauty, rather than what isn’t.  Your security will grow, you’ll gain confidence, and soon you’ll not only look beautiful, but radiate the kind of secure and confident beauty that draws and inspires people.