It Can't Always Be the Same: Rocking the Light AND the Dark and Birthday #46

Lauren & Mallory 2006

Feeling a little verklempt this morning and I'm learning to embrace these melancholy moments because life (the spiritual journey it is!)  is embracing the light and the dark.  You cannot have one without the other.   The dark has frightened me for years and I fought it off to no avail.  I'm learning to embrace my once sworn enemy and welcome it with curiosity and kindness.  This is no easy feat yet the dark makes the light, oh so much sweeter.

I walked the dogs in quiet this morning and in atypical fashion for late July in Louisiana, it was a cool morning.  There are several things on my mind this morning.  I saw that the moving truck that was packed yesterday with my neighbor Lauren's belongings was indeed gone.  She is headed to New Orleans for nursing school.  She babysat for me for the last 9 years!!  I was pregnant with Mallory when we moved into this house in 2005.  Lauren started off as a mother's helper and ended up driving my kids around, the ultimate in a mother's trust.  Lauren is going to rock nursing school! Look out New Orleans.

Katie and Riley 2005 - Ballon Festival

My niece, Katie, will be induced tomorrow to have her first baby.  She was one of Riley's first babysitters.  She was in the room when Riley was born.  It doesn't get much closer than that.  But there is always dark and light.  As in many families, things happen and we don't get along for a spell. Katie and I have moved through that and are on the other side.  I can't wait to meet Baby Boston.  Entering motherhood is an awesome and life changing event.  For me, it was the beginning stirrings of my consciousness journey.  Your children can evolve you like no other. (Thank you Dr. Shefali Tsabary!)  Katie will rock motherhood and be oh so fashionable while doing so!

My kids are starting back to school next week.  Riley will be entering sixth grade and Mallory, the third grade.  I dropped Riley off for her back to school party last night.  She had a purse with money and a phone in her possession!  My stomach turned as she ran off and I drove away.  Middle School.  I am learning to let Riley be who she is and navigate the highs and lows of the brutal middle years.  This is no easy task.    I have to let my own insecurities not be pushed as I'm privileged to listen to hers.  Thank you social media for adding to the drama.  Middle School and puberty were easy enough to navigate before.  Yet...Riley is going to rock Sixth Grade!

On my walk, it hit me that my forty-sixth birthday is in two days.  Birthdays can be like middle school for me, quite the booger.  In the past, reality never met my expectations and I had to learn to adjust.  (I do love birthdays on FB though - it's the bomb!)  I have learned to lower the expectations, take the day in my own hands and plan it myself.  You can't wait around for other people to do what you want to have done in your own life.  I was so caught in the muck of fear that I could not even think of alternatives much less act on them in the first half of my life.

Yet that change and adjustment in my expectation of birthdays (and life!)  has lead to gratitude for the little things:
Like a crisp morning in July! Peace and quiet and birds singing on a dog walk.  The girls sleeping in so I can write.  Annie curled up next to me snoring and making me smile.

I don't have delight every day in these things and that is okay too.  Sometimes I want to cry during my morning dog walk.  That is part of life too.  Embracing that "dark" that comes and being curious about it is making all the difference in my life.

Today, I'm especially thankful for people who have come in my life, and become such a special part of it either by birth or by luck.  I love you guys!  I'm so happy for your new adventures.

I'm grateful that life changes and evolves and I am learning to embrace it instead of being scared by it.

Namaste.

Katie and I on Christmas Day 1984

On The Dark Side

On the dark side is not just a great song from an obscure movie (Eddie and the Cruisers) in the 80's.  It is real.
This is from Jeff Brown: 
In some sense, the word enlightenment is misleading. It is no more about the light than the dark. Resisting the shadow just makes it darker. It is not about becoming continuously blissful. It is about becoming more authentic, more genuinely here. It is about holding the light and the shadow all at once. Perhaps we should call the ultimate goal enrealment—the quest to live in all aspects of reality at once (Be real now)
I don't know who this Jeff Brown is but he has my number.  I somehow thought there would be more peace in this journey or at least a place of equilibrium.  But life has other plans.  The light AND the dark keep coming again and again.  I do have a bad habit of fighting the darkness, the pain, and the shadow. Numbing my pain with food is always a security blanket waiting in the wings to come out.  But slowly and surely, I keep receiving messages about acceptance and not judging and these are the ones that lead to breakthroughs away from that.   
It is about "holding the light and the shadow all at once."  An example:  A summer day home with children, I had my girls (one who wanted to shoot a dance video, the other dying to use her money to buy figurines at the store),  a new dog in training, bills to pay, granite and tile to be chosen for remodeling project, house to clean and I had really icky feelings of being overwhelmed.  I had to stop and accept those feelings because I really wanted to escape them and very quickly.  (I also thought, wow, I hadn't had these in a while.)
So here is the reality, is the world going to end if I don't get the tile picked out today?  Annie who peed on the floor three times will eventually be trained. It's just not happening today.  And while I was waiting for contractor to call, I picked up my daughter's room and that was actually a soothing task.  
Each of my daughters was so excited about their activity and I didn't want to miss their excitement and not be able to engage in a present manner.  We had been working on the video together for several days.  My younger daughter had been pining over the figurines for weeks and she had saved her money. 
Be real now as Jeff Brown says.  I was overwhelmed.  Instead of telling myself I can't handle all of this, I let myself feel the overwhelming feelings as painstaking as it felt and then worked to change my expectations, and let go of the illusion of control.  Being in the present moment and being real is not pleasant, it means accepting the really icky feelings LOVINGLY and letting them go because the light and dark will continue to come.  


It's not the situation at hand, it is really about what we THINK about the situation at hand.