Month: April 2022

The Serenity Prayer recited at  12-step programs meetings around the world goes like this:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference.”

Here’s the line that is challenging me these days…courage to change the things I can. I can change things about me. That’s it. I can’t change other people. I can’t get people to do things I want them to do or treat me a certain way. But I can speak up and use my voice. I can let people know what I want instead of staying silent. That doesn’t mean I’m going to get what I want, but at least no one has to guess what it is I want. And I certainly don’t have any chance of getting what I want if I don’t ask for it.

I can push myself into situations where I want attention and want to be noticed instead of waiting to be noticed.

The actor Liam Neeson is on the cover of two magazines this month. He is quoted as saying, “You create your own luck. It’s not gonna come to you.”

I’ve known that. Hard work. Persistence. Beat the pavement. Get out there and do what you need to do to make it happen.

But when does the effort evolve into… “And the wisdom to know the difference”?

I don’t know that I’ve arrived there yet with this memoir I’m querying. I’ve gotten nibbles from agents and encouragement, but that is all. No one has said, “I love this! I’d love to be your agent!” Is it back to the drawing board to make the story more palatable for readers? It isn’t a fun book, but it should be engaging and not too difficult to stomach. Who wants that? But the “Tattooist of Auschwitz” by Heather Morris was hard to stomach and yet I couldn’t put it down because I loved the main character and wanted him to survive.

How do I get readers to love the main character in my memoir (guess who?) and want her to survive? Well, I love the main character in my memoir and want her to survive! And she did! And happily so, though it was hard, hard work. Painful, challenging, and oh, so rewarding.

So, I keep plodding on, writing articles, submitting short pieces from the memoir. I believe in this story because it’s about believing in yourself when no one else does. Believing in ourselves is sometimes all that matters. If I believe in me, I can’t make other people believe in me and my work and want to support it. But I believe in it, which is why I keep going.

We matter. We can’t make people believe we matter, but our belief in ourselves is what matters most.

So I’ll keep trying, keep putting myself and my work and my voice out there because I believe in me and what I have to say. That persistence is the key. Courage to change the things I can means courage to keep trying, to not give up. And that’s how I survived. I never gave up. I never quit and said I can’t do this. This being alive thing. I never said, I can’t live anymore. I can’t go on. No, I wanted to survive, to thrive, and I’d like my book to thrive as well. So I’ll keep trying to find an agent who believes in my story as much as I do. I won’t give up.

And the serenity to accept what I cannot change? I accept that I have a mission, and it ain’t over yet. Perhaps I need to accept that the exertion is the journey and to accept that with serenity, and not expect an outcome. Not have a goal. I do, but maybe I should let go of the goal and simply do my best.

Joyous Exertion

The paramita of exertion is connected with joy. In practicing this paramita, like little children learning to walk, we train with eagerness but without a goal. This joyful uplifted energy isn't a matter of luck. ..[W]hen we begin to practice exertion, we see that sometimes we can do it, and sometimes we can't. The question becomes: How do we connect with inspiration? How do we connect with the spark and joy that's available in every moment?"-- Teaching No. 72 from Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chödrön

Sometimes I have difficulty asking my husband for what I need because I don’t yet know what it is I want. I beat around the bush, unable to say even to myself what I need because the words haven’t formed in my mind yet. They lay in my heart like a cautious animal, waiting for a sign that it’s safe to come out.

Let’s just pretend my husband and I were baking cookies together when a lump of dough dropped on the kitchen floor, and he didn’t bend over to pick it up. I waited for him to. When he didn’t, I was uncomfortable. I wanted him to do something, but he didn’t. “I’m just curious,” I said. “How does that make you feel to see the dough on the ground? Does it bother you?”

“Oh, it didn’t register. I’m not going to catch it all the time,” he said.

Well, it had registered with me! But I was trying not to take responsibility for his actions, trying not to tell him what to do.

Later that evening, my husband was reading in bed while I was still puttering around. “Can you come sit for a moment?” he asked, patting the space next to him. “I want to talk about what happened with the dough.”

I rounded the bed and nestled on the edge next to his legs. “Yes, because I want to make amends.”

He looked surprised. “Amends? For what?”

“For not being straight with you. For not telling you I was uncomfortable.”

“Let me go first,” he said. “I’m sorry I was so glib. I shouldn’t have been. It really didn’t bother me about the dough. I didn’t realize it had happened, but I didn’t have to brush you off like that. I could see you were upset.”

I started to tear up but stopped myself. “I felt unsafe. I was afraid one of the dogs might eat it and then they’d get sick and vomit in the night. I remember the last time she ate cookie dough. I don’t want to go through that again.”

And then it hit me what I wanted to ask my husband. What I had wanted to ask all along but didn’t realize I could. But this is what two people who love each other do. They ask each other to make sacrifices. They don’t tell them they must. They just ask and accept the yes or no that comes. But they have the vulnerability to ask.

I have finally learned I am worth taking care of myself.

“This is what I want.” My husband waited patiently with compassionate eyes. “I want you to notice when dough drops and to pick it up right away. Even if it doesn’t bother you or it’s just a tiny lump. I want you to do that so I can feel safe”

My husband nodded as if this was an entirely reasonable request, for which I was relieved and grateful. “I can do that. For both of us. For me, especially, because I should notice. It’s not good for me to not notice.”

We kissed.

“Thank you,” I said. “I feel safer.”

So, taking care of myself means asking for what I need, for what makes me feel safe. Or I need or remove myself from what feels like an unsafe situation, and this marriage is a situation I don’t want to remove myself from.

I have finally learned I am worth taking care of myself; I am worth using my voice and making my needs and wants known, even if they seem absurd. I need to pay attention to the little child whose needs were ignored. And my husband, in this instance, was fine with that. He wants to take care of me, the dogs, and himself, too.

So, it all worked out, and now I can enjoy making cookies with my husband without worrying about dropped dough. I asked for what I needed. He’ll notice and pick up any dough that drops on the floor, and our love, and my safety and comfort continue.

Here’s a thought—don’t take life personally. Don’t take what befalls you as condemnation of your soul. People may be mean, may bully you, single you out for personal attack. But whatever harm they perpetrate on you is a reflection of how they feel about themselves. How you feel about yourself is what matters.

Sure, it is difficult, and feels downright impossible to have faith in ourselves when we are hurting or someone is hurting us, perhaps even hating us.

Growing up in my family, I got the message from my parents that I did not matter. They may not have believed that, but that’s what I picked up subconsciously. When I revealed to them that I was in a sexual relationship with a twenty-five-year-old man in our neighborhood and that I said I loved him, they didn’t do anything. They were overwhelmed. That was just too much, so, life went on as usual. I continued seeing this man. Mandated reporters knew about him, like my pediatrician, who in all fairness hoped my parents would do something, but his hands were tied once they were notified; and the psychologist I saw exactly once for fifteen minutes in his office. He didn’t do anything. My parents didn’t press charges. They didn’t protect or hinder me. The message I got was, “You don’t matter.” I continued seeing this man, becoming more and more miserable as the months and years went by because I couldn’t break away from him. I wanted him to care about me; I wanted to matter to him. I wanted to be somebody in the world. I just went about it in the wrong way and didn’t get proper help for a long time.

But I persevered. I didn’t give up on myself. I was persistent in discovering who I am in this world and where I belong in it, which is with all of you.

We belong to one another. All of us belong to one another. We may feel isolated, damaged, disconnected, like we don’t belong to the human race. But like Carl Jung said, our collective unconscious is like a chain of islands that look like separate entities, but beneath the surface we are all connected. We swim in the waters of divinity.

It’s taken years and decades for me to learn that I do matter and I don’t need to get the world to prove it to me. A dear friend recently shared a realization she had: “I’m valuable just because I am.” I love that statement. Lucky for her she found that wisdom relatively early in life and is now walking in the light of that soul knowledge. It has changed her outlook on life, her attitude towards herself and others. She treats herself with respect and honors the autonomy of others with the dignity they deserve.

My spin on that statement is: “I matter because I am.”

I believe anyone who survives the trauma of birth, who leaves the protective warmth of the womb and explodes into the cold brightness of this world deserves that badge of courage and honor just to have survived. Here we are, no matter what our status or position in life or what we have done with it, we matter. We can’t control what befalls us. We can’t control whether someone rapes us, molests us, bombs us, spits on us, or whether we get cancer or some other horrible disease, or whether our house burns down, or our child dies in a car crash. We can’t control the way people treat us because we were born with skin the color of pale brown sand or black loamy earth. We matter and are beautiful and valuable despite all the ugly horrible, painful things that happen to us in this world.

When our solar system was born suns exploded, planets collided. It was violent and terrible, and yet here we are in this gorgeous solar system of planets floating in orbit around one another in peaceful synchronicity.

This is who we are—family. We may not realize it and treat each other as if we are enemies. But life is long and maybe we’ll use this time on Earth to slowly evolve and eventually to realize we are valuable just because we are. You matter. I matter. We matter to each other. Just because we are.

"Life is a gift for which we are grateful. We gather in community to celebrate the wonders and mysteries of this great gift."--Chalice lighting blessing of the Unitarian Universalist Church

Today, I call on Quan Yin, goddess of compassion, kindness, and mercy, to be me guide, to slow my breathing and be present with me as I meditate. She is my replacement for the years, the decades of doubting and second guessing myself. I let her be for me. I let her think and meditate for me. I am saturated in presence, in this moment of goodness and wholeness. I feel the Qi — life force energy, pouring through me, circulating all around me. I feel my Qi, this gift of the universe of which I am a part, not separate. It.

Even if I slip into second guessing myself today, I know it isn’t important; it doesn’t matter because Qi — life force energy is all there is.

Worry all you like. It doesn’t matter. You could be enjoying instead in blissful awareness how splendid Life is.

Sure, there is heartache, suffering, war, death, cruelty, pain, sadness, despair, grief. All of that.

But there is also love, compassion, kindness, devotion, mercy. I will choose today to focus on these qualities.

May I accept the kindness, compassion, and mercy that is in my heart and all around me. May I accept the possibility of kindness, the essence and potential of it. May I be it.

So mote it be.