I am happy to say that one of my poems was published by gratefulness.org today.
I wrote the poem when I felt a deep change moving through me, the one where I realized I was being invited to expand my experience of loving rather than believe in death as loss.
Summer Shorts is a weekly short-read in honor of the season, to convey ideas about relationships and life in the blink of an eye.
Out the door I went for my early morning walk, tennis shoes under me, t-shirt and jeans over me, carrying a podcast about soundin my left hand.
After my walk, it was time to feed Jackson (the part-Papillon wonder dog) and take him for his morning outing as well. He ate his breakfast happily, and we set out together.
Summer Shorts is a weekly short-read in honor of the season, to convey ideas about relationships and life in the blink of an eye.
Deliberate change requires more than a sprinkle of our attention.
Making changes asks for all of who we are, everything we’ve got. We must pay attention. We must do things we’ve never done before. We must wake up where we were once asleep.
Do you have romantic ideas about love and partnership, ideas that tug at your heart strings?
Most of us do.
Many romantic ideas are fun and lovely and light-hearted and, in my book, ideas that make life more delightful are probably pretty good ones to keep.
Ideas like… what makes a good Sunday morning together, for instance? Who brings who the morning beverage of choice? Do you go out? Stay home? Is it together time? Or is it separate, do-what-you-want-time?
What makes a good hug or kiss? What qualifies as foreplay, how and when do you give attention to each other? Even the contents of a proper apology, how and when you say I’m sorry, can be part of our romantic ideals about love and partnership.
But there is one common romantic idea that I’d like to challenge because it works against us.
You’re broken down and tired Of living life on a merry go round And you can’t find the fighter But I see it in you so we gonna walk it out And move mountains We gonna walk it out And move mountains
And I’ll rise up I’ll rise like the day I’ll rise up I’ll rise unafraid I’ll rise up And I’ll do it a thousand times again And I’ll rise up High like the waves I’ll rise up In spite of the ache I’ll rise up And I’ll do it a thousand times again
For you For you For you For you
When the silence isn’t quiet And it feels like it’s getting hard to breathe And I know you feel like dying But I promise we’ll take the world to its feet And move mountains Bring it to its feet And move mountains
And I’ll rise up I’ll rise like the day I’ll rise up I’ll rise unafraid I’ll rise up And I’ll do it a thousand times again
For you For you For you For you
All we need, all we need is hope And for that we have each other And for that we have each other And we will rise We will rise We’ll rise, oh, oh We’ll rise
I’ll rise up Rise like the day I’ll rise up In spite of the ache I will rise a thousand times again And we’ll rise up High like the waves We’ll rise up In spite of the ache We’ll rise up And we’ll do it a thousand times again
During this strange time in history, I noticed y’all were tackling all sorts of interesting projects. I decided I needed one, too—something positive to remember the pandemic of 2020 by.
I decided to pay attention to something I had abandoned…
Nope, I’m not cleaning my garage. I am not organizing one single thing. I’m not planting a garden or cleaning up my yard.
Instead, I decided to take care of myself better. This, folks, has made all the difference for me.
With relatively little time and effort on my part, I feel so much better than I did a month ago.
On March 30, I got on the exercise bike and the yoga mat for the first time in a long time, and did 30 minutes each. I liked it so much that I decided to do it every day. But I fell short of that, and changed my commitment to every other day, which felt more manageable, reasonable, and doable.
I also get off the bike after every song, take a couple of sips of water, shake out my legs and arms for a few seconds, and get back on. This makes the bike project a reasonable proposition, too.
Daily walks of any length—by myself, or with my little guy, Jackson—are a fresh air bonus.
My recumbent exercise bike has pulleys to work my upper body while I pedal, which gets my heart rate up fast, and also helps my whole-body strength. It feels good to get up from writing, or doing a consulting session with a client, to do something physically challenging while listening to good music.
After only a month, I feel a sheet of muscles on the front of me I haven’t felt for a very, very long time. Goodness gracious. Who knew they were there. I’ll be posting rippling ab photos soon, I’m sure.
I have no idea what the scales have to say about my bike/yoga project—I don’t care. Paying attention to scales tends to send me sideways, and therefore, I’m ignoring them completely.
But—I LOVE the way I feel! Hang in there, everyone.
Sometimes we ask intimate partners to do for us what is actually ours to do.
We ask our partner to give us the reassurance, love or appreciation we feel is missing in ourselves, with the hope that they will give us what we’re asking for—and then we’ll feel better. They’ll take care of our problem.
But when they do give us what we’re asking for, it can never be enough, because we have insufficient context for what they’ve given. We haven’t build the inner foundation to receive it, hear it, welcome it, believe it. They try to help, but their love for us falls into our void, our black hole, our love bucket with no bottom.
As always, there’s hope. Check out the video below.
