Month: March 2022

My husband and I were out to dinner this weekend. He was telling me about his job interviews. I was relieved to hear he was not going to take the jobs he’d been considering. Not either of them. “Instead, I’d like to take a minimum of two months off,” he said.

I reached my hand across the table and took his. “I’m glad,” I said. “I’m so glad. You deserve it.”

His eyes grew red and welled with tears. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m just so tired.” I held his hand, the moment passed, and I was about to ask him a question when my intuition interrupted. Not now, Polly. Now is not the time. So, I paused and said something else, since I had already opened my mouth. The moment continued smoothly, unspoiled by my initial intended query.

My husband and I continued our conversation, and then he brought up the topic I had wanted to ask him about, brought it up on his own, so that it was no longer a non sequitur but an organic flow in our give-and-take. I thanked my Higher Power for guiding me, because that is what my intuition is, wisdom from my Higher Power guiding my words.

This obedience to the divine is but one way I allow intimacy to blossom between me and another, by pausing, paying attention, and listening, putting my impulses and sometimes even urgency aside to wait a beat. Gentleness presides and hearts open rather than close like a sensitive flower.

This gentle guidance I received is available to all of us, keeping the sacred bond between two people pure just by paying attention.

Even though love is innate and we are born with it in our hearts, we need to be taught how to love one another and ourselves.

I loved myself when I was a young child, but that love was quickly distorted by the sick adults raising me. This world is full of them, wounded people who in turn hurt others. How are we to learn to love when everyone is so wounded?

The Old Testament says God gave Moses the Ten Commandments so that people would have a very simple guide as to how to live their lives, how to comport themselves, how to treat one another. It’s hard being human. We have so many wild impulses. At times we want to hurt, to harm. Why is that? Because we hurt. And so, the cycle continues, on and on.

We must find a teacher and learn to love ourselves and break that cycle.

When I was a homeless teenager, I thought sex was the most important sign of love. So, that’s what I engaged in, and guess what? I suffered. Help was out there, but where? I didn’t know how to find it, and I tried. Does God mean for us to suffer? Maybe we are doing penance for the sins of our past lives. I don’t know. It’s a mystery. Maybe that’s why our lives are so long, so we have a chance, God willing, to make the journey to self-realization.

They say the right teacher comes along when we are ready. Maybe I wasn’t ready when I was a teenager. Maybe I had to suffer and engage in survival sex to work off bad karma. I knew no other way to survive, had no idea how to care for myself, and was not taught by my parents how to do so. They were damaged babies raising more damaged babies.

I was fortunate to find a spiritual teacher, imperfect though she was, but healthy enough to teach me how to love myself, or at least get me started on that path. I surrendered to her completely. Until I didn’t. I surpassed my teacher and became my own person. That is my role now—to be a spiritual teacher, to impart to others what I have learned about loving myself.

And let me tell you, I was at the bottom, wallowing in the dregs of my humanity. But I had not given up on myself entirely. I still had hope that there was some spark of good in me.

With my teacher’s help, I blew on those dying embers and they sparked into life. I have been blowing on them ever since and now they blaze to the heavens in all their magnificence. I am alive and well and praise God with all my heart for the mystery and majesty of living and learning. There is hope. There is always hope. For you, for me, for all of us.

“....Teachers and students need to be 'associate lovers,' helping each other and all living beings touch the goodness, beauty, and truth in themselves. This is the Path of Awakening." From a talk titled ‘The Path of Awakening‘ given at Plum Village on November 20, 1997. It was translated from the Vietnamese by Sister Annabel Laity and edited for publication by Arnie Kotler. You can find the full transcript here.

Hello, dears. Today I read in the paper this question: When fear is trying to get the best of you, continually ask, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

People could shun me. Talk behind my back. Insult me openly. Consider me crazy. Misguided. Hate me. Ridicule me. Be embarrassed for me. For my family. My family will be humiliated and embarrassed by me. I could feel embarrassed and humiliated, regretting my choice to speak out.

When I was sixteen, I engaged in survival sex. That’s often what a teen does when (s)he is homeless, penniless, terrified, hungry, lost, and powerless. (S)he engages in sex in exchange for shelter and food. I write about my experiences in my memoir, NASTY GIRL, so titled because that’s what a psychologist called me when I went to him for help. It’s what the other clients called me in a show of so-called love. “That’s nasty, Polly,” they would say to me on various occasions. I knew I was nasty, that my behavior was nasty. I saw myself as the daughter the rock group The Mothers of Invention lead by Frank Zappa sang about in the song “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It.” I’m going to make her do a nasty on the White House lawn, Zappa sings. Nasty, nasty, nasty. Nasty, nasty, nasty, goes the chorus.

I have since retitled the memoir to A Minor, Unaccompanied. Most importantly, many services are now available to homeless teens. If you are homeless and need shelter, contact: National Safe Place.

So, here’s my quandary. Why write about it?

Because girls, and boys, who engage in survival sex, and who often get lured or trapped into sex trafficking are not nasty. They are wretched. They are miserable. They are in pain, but desperate to survive by the only means available to them.

My experience was 50 years ago. Fifty years, and still, I am hesitant to write about it. What will people say? What will they think? Will they call me a nasty girl all over again?

Because I want others to know how much it hurt, how it hurt, and why it hurt. I want others to know I understand. Whatever you are struggling with, I get it. I don’t hurt anymore, for the most part. Every once in a while, I run into a pocket of pain that I express with surprise, release, and let go. The feeling passes and I am that much stronger. I love myself now. I adore myself. You can adore yourself, too.

But you’ve got to love the pain as well. You have to cherish it and hold it dear. That’s where recovery begins. Until we are able to embrace the pain it will keep us chained. Face your nightmare. Own it, with help. And get free.

"You don't have to like your experience; you simply don't resist it. Resisting your experience is the same as not trusting the movement of true nature -- believing you must control things to ensure movement because you do not experience the larger flow of reality. By not resisting, you don't get stuck or fixed on a particular feeling or concern, so your experience is able to flow and transform more easily and naturally."

"Soul Without Shame--A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within" by Byron Brown

My bed, when it is freshly made looks like a newly opened carton of French vanilla ice cream and I want to scoop out a bite. I am hesitant to sit on such a smooth creamy surface, but I do, even though it hurts a little, that tiny intake of breath like touching hot water. I don’t want to disturb its surface and yet I must.

When I was a girl, I had a friend, Marybeth, who panicked when I sat on her bed. It was my first time in her room. She screamed at me, “What are you doing?” I looked at her as if she were mad. I wasn’t doing anything. What was she talking about? “Get up! Get up! Get up!” she shrieked. Not until she pulled on my arm could I tell from the look on her face she was dead serious.

“What is wrong with you?” I laughed unnerved and wanting to tease my friend.

“I’ll get in trouble,” she insisted. “My mom doesn’t let me sit on the bed.”

“What? That doesn’t make sense,” I said, bouncing back onto her bed.

Marybeth shoved me. “Get off!”

Not two seconds later the bedroom door opens and in walks her mother wearing a dress and apron as if she were auditioning for the part of Mrs. Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver. She may have barged in to see what the commotion was all about, but what she said was, “Marybeth Bianco, how many times have I told you not to sit on your bed?” Mrs. Bianco lifted a corner of the bedspread, vigorously tugged the sheets tight and tucked them under the mattress as if she were in a wrestling match with it. She smoothed the bedspread and folded the edges just so, then stood, hands on hips, victorious but aggrieved.

“I warned you, Marybeth. Never again.”

When she left, Marybeth fumed. “I told you. Now I’m in trouble. My mom’s going to kill me.”

I stared at my friend. “No, she’s not. You didn’t do anything wrong.” But I worried. I had just seen evidence of how crazy Marybeth’s mother was, not knowing back then that her mother wasn’t crazy but probably had severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Which is why I make myself sit on my unblemished bed. And when I stand, impressions of my rump lay in folds. Sometimes I whack them out of place. And sometimes I leave them to make sure I still can.

May all sentient beings enjoy happiness
and the root of happiness.
May we be free from suffering
and the root of suffering.
May we not be separated from the great
happiness devoid of suffering.
May we dwell in the great equanimity free
from passion, aggression, and prejudice.

-- The Four Immeasurables