Author: Polly Hansen

One of the things I’ve learned to do in my long marriage of 39 years is ignore my husband. Well, no, not ignore, because I pay attention a great deal. I guess what I mean is to not react to certain things he does or says.

Like the other night when we misunderstood one another as to who was preparing dinner.

So, when at ten minutes before seven I find him banging around in the kitchen and I asked what’s the matter? And he said I thought you were going to cook, I didn’t react. What I thought was H.A.L.T.—hungry, angry, lonely, tired. He was tired and hungry, having worked all day in the yard. I felt a little cringey on the edges, like wilting just a bit and realized I was hungry myself, which tends to make me irritable, and figured it was only a matter of getting food into both our systems.

When I didn’t react, he settled down, apologized and we had a civil and decent meal together.

I’ve learned to let go, to live and let live, to know when something is important and when something is not. My husband and I do common things differently. For example, we load the dishwasher differently. What does it matter if he loads a bowl one way and I do it another? I let it go.

When we were young, we made so many things important that weren’t. Today, we mind our own business, and the business that is ours together we don’t take so seriously. On a day-to-day basis, that sure makes getting along a lot easier.

Only with equanimity can we see that everything that comes into our circle has come to teach us what we need to know.

Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty, p. 62

Yesterday, my husband and I went on an impromptu hike up in the mountains. We came across a flock of monarch butterflies and one species I wasn’t familiar with, a kind of tiger butterfly in tawny spotted golds and browns. It was a shy butterfly and kept its distance, unlike the others that fed on flowers without a care for our presence. This shy one fluttered farther away as I approached until it disappeared and didn’t come back. I regretted disturbing her meal.

I was glad to be wearing my new, sturdy hiking boots on this rocky and sometimes muddy trail. We climbed to the top, and as we descended, we met a family of three, a mother, father, and a young boy climbing up the way we had just come. I noticed the father and mother were wearing flip-flops. At least the boy had on sneakers. I almost exclaimed aloud — you’re hiking in sandals? But I didn’t, thank goodness. My better angels stopped my tongue. As the family passed and I held my tongue, I thanked my wisdom in keeping my thoughts to myself. Instead, I prayed that none of them suffered a twisted ankle or stubbed toe and experienced nothing other than very dirty if perhaps sore feet at the end of the trail.

In the past, I would have said something, having not yet learned my manners. I am grateful for lessons learned. I am thankful I can mind my own business these days.

And I’m still sorry I scared away that butterfly.

Patience. It is difficult to practice it. We want what we want when we want it. Waiting squeezes our immature hearts. The fist of uncertainty complains that it wants answers, resolutions, compliance, and peace immediately.

But the practice of waiting is good for us. Waiting patiently for the changes that take time, waiting for the seed to grow, for the time to be right, for the pendulum to swing. You can’t force time. You can try, but it usually results in cracked bones, broken hearts, and skewed psyches.

I can patiently wait if I believe God has my best interests at heart. I can trust and have faith, saying, God’s got this. Trust Her timing. If the thing I am waiting for doesn’t come to fruition according to my dreams, I must accept God’s wisdom with grace, believing that my expectations were unhealthy. I can trust that whatever came to fruition was for my highest good, even disappointment. That’s difficult to swallow, difficult to accept, but when I do, I am more at peace with myself. I experience serenity.

The dictionary defines patience as: “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”

Without getting angry or upset. Wow, to have that grace and presence of mind. What serenity. What a gift I give to myself and those around me.

One day at a time, let me practice patience. For whatever I may be waiting to happen.

“Sometimes, emptiness is not vacancy, but rather a long gestation. Gestation by ego’s measure is often too long. But, by soul’s measure, the length of the waiting and making within, before what is being created shows on the outside, is ever just right.”

Clariss Pinkola Estés, “Untie the Strong Woman,” p. 33

My husband and I hug each other at least twice a day. Sometimes, if I get up before him, it might be afternoon before we’ll look at each other and say, I don’t think we’ve hugged yet! We fall into each other’s arms and stand there a while, stroking and swaying, nestling into one another and feeling safe and loved.

We haven’t always been like this. There was a time several years ago when I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. I was angry with him. Enraged, actually. I was envious of my son’s studio apartment and wanted one just like it, one where I could be alone and lick my wounds.

But when I thought about leaving Bill, I knew that’s not what I wanted. We bristled in each other’s company for a good long while, like a few years, before my feelings started to change. I realized I still loved him and did not want to live without him.

We learned how to be honest and vulnerable with one another. To let go of trying to control one another. To live and let live. To let go and let God.

Hugs with my husband are like vitamins. They make me feel stronger. Sure, there are moments when we don’t feel like hugging, so we don’t. Those moments are rare, but we honor them. And I think that’s why we grow into wanting them again because we respect ourselves individually and each other.

Hugs are a sign of trust and vulnerability. That’s what makes a marriage work. That’s what makes hugs deliciously revitalizing and sweet. I give you my tender parts, and I accept yours.

Hugs are like prayers. They remind us that we are not alone. Not isolated. Not abandoned. We are united in this world, heart and soul. I pray that you have someone to hug like that; if not, have faith that you will.

I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

What seems wrong to you is right for him.

What is poison to one is honey to someone else….

Say whatever

and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet blasphemy

is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world

is freed.

— Rumi, from Moses and the Shepherd. “The Essential Rumi,” translated by Coleman Barks

I’m sorry to say that humankind’s cruelty got me down yesterday. Last night I couldn’t sleep thinking about it, crying over it, wanting out of this world, of this being human.

Then the sun rose, and I read about more cruelty in the paper and cried some more as I walked the hills. Clouds hovered low over the valley, filling it with a blanket of white as the misty mountains rose above it, soothing and cleansing my heart.

I came home, turned on classical music, and ate a bowl of cereal while listening to Bach.

I will soldier on, for that’s what we have always done. The Book of Genesis, written and compiled nearly three, perhaps four thousand years ago, is full of stories about the cruelty of humankind. We have always been thus. This violence is nothing new. I had hoped we were past all that, but we are not. And so, I accept my fate as a flawed human being and continue to rely on God’s love and guidance, for without it, we, I, are/am utterly lost.

Is that what this world is for—a proving ground over which we must rise like mountain peaks above the mist that clouds our senses, our hearts, our highest selves?

I pray for strength, guidance, acceptance, love, and compassion. I pray for hope. I pray for peace. I pray.

The moment we ask for her,
see her, converse with her, love her--
she gracefully rises up
against all her ropes,
and they burst open whilst
the pins fly in all directions

With much love, some levity, and certainly deep longing, together let us all sit up too,
let us bust through all the ropes
and make all the pins fly too--
untying ourselves as we also untie the Strong Woman.

``````````````````
May it be deeply for you.
May it be so for me, also.
May it be so for all of use, ever.

--Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Once again, even though it’s already won a prize, I am dithering over my memoir — how to get it right, to say what I want to say. My spirit guides say, Just write, Polly; we will help you. And what is it that I want to say? That we all come from dark places, and some of us struggle to survive and thankfully do, and that it is possible to not only thrive but soar.

I don’t know if anyone else will be interested in such a story that starts so dark but gradually, tediously, slowly gets better. Recovery and healing take time. One must be patient to survive and thrive on this green Earth. We are so complicated, so faithless at times, so ornery and selfish and mean. But God shows us compassion and love. How do I know? Because I have a magnificent body with lungs to take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide that feeds the trees, and they, in return, give me oxygen. Because I have feet and bones that take me places, high up in the hills where I can view misty mountains in the distance, sometimes cloud-covered, sometimes smoky, other times serene and dark and soft.

Reliance on a Higher Power is what has healed me. That energy of love and compassion and higher resonance runs through my veins and pulls me up out of my own muck and mire. I love the mystery; I don’t understand it, but I want it like water. I am thirsty for this abundant Divine Energy all around me. I thirst and thirst when I am afraid and lonely and uncertain. Humans can be so vicious, so sick, so weak. I need God’s strength to get by, to survive. I need God’s love and compassion and brilliance to be who I want to be, to be who I Am.

"Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed." 
-- Genesis  19:17

God’s timing. Accepting life on life’s terms. Being grateful for now, this moment with all its precious wisdom. Let go, relax and go with the flow. It’s easy when I’m not in pain. When I feel loved and loving. But when I am in pain, when I feel self-doubt, or clueless, letting go is challenging. I want to force an answer, figure things out on my own. I must accept God’s timing even when, or perhaps most especially, when I am clueless.

I am not quite clueless now because I trust in God, because I have faith. But are faith and expectation the same thing? I must not confuse the two. I want certain things to happen. I expect them to. That’s dangerous, because then I judge my life’s purpose on the outcome, when my life’s purpose is this moment, making it meaningful simply by living it just the way it is. Nothing more.

I must have faith and patience for the changes that take time. I might die not achieving what it is I have wanted to achieve. I might. I don’t know.

I the meantime, I devour this life and all God gives me to enjoy, to ponder, to accept.

You Could Be the Water

By the scent of water alone,
the withered vine comes back to life,
and thus...wherever the land is dry and hard,
you could be the water...

from "Untie the Strong Woman" p. 250 by ClarissaPinkola Estés

Rather than practicing Qi Gong, meditation, and writing a blog post this morning, I took my dogs on a long walk in the foothills. It started to rain. I didn’t have an umbrella or raincoat. It was a light rain and refreshing as I was so hot. It was quiet. We saw hardly anyone. The mountains in the distance were misty and covered in fog. All day I was itching to get here, to reach out to whomever and make a connection, to say, I am here. Where are you? I hope you are okay.

That’s what I’m doing here, why I’m doing this—to share with you that I am okay, fine, and brilliant, and sometimes wretched. I hope you are fine and brilliant as well, and if you are sometimes also wretched, my heart goes out to you. I wish we could be together. And we are, here, in this virtual space.

Peace be with you, my friend.

The way to turn this arrow into a flower is to open our hearts and look at how we try to escape. We can use our pleasure-seeking as an opportunity to observe what we do in the face of pain.

--Pema Chödrön. Comfortable With Uncertainty,  p.41

My husband wanted my homemade cinnamon rolls for Father’s Day. I started them too late Saturday evening to make our rendezvous with the stars up in the mountains. We were planning to drive up to the observatory, a place we’d never been before, but the rolls took precedence. The dough needed time to rise, and by the time I got them rolled out and cut with a piece of thread into spirals like miniature Milky Ways, the sun had long set, and it was too late to start a trek into unknown territory along winding mountain roads.

There will be other times, I thought. The stars will be there for eons beyond my time. I am the one who won’t be here, and neither will my husband be here to enjoy my cinnamon rolls. He was delighted this morning, eating them hot out of the oven glazed with my rich vanilla cream cheese frosting.

I looked longingly at the clear blue sky, thinking how lovely the stars must have been last night, happy for all the amateur astronomers who gazed at nebulas and planets. I would have liked to have seen them. My understanding is that even if you don’t have equipment, an astronomer happily gives you a look through their telescope, so long as you don’t fiddle with the dials.

Instead, we spent a pleasant evening at home watching His Dark Materials on HBO and The Crown on Netflix.

And in the morning, I rose early and sat on the patio reading the Sunday paper, looking up at the deep blue sky, thanking God for this wonderful life — thanking my lucky stars. Next time, I will make sure the real Milky Way takes precedence. I will view its trail before I die and become part of its dust, leaving my imprint in the darkness above, a mystery for all to see and wonder at.

"One can be a father and a virgin also...a person/soul to and within himself, as well as a father who leans out the window of soul and ministers to others in meaningful ways."

from p. 319, Untie the Strong Woman by Clariss Pinkola Estés

My 30-year-old daughter arrived yesterday to visit us here in the mountains. We went for a walk after dinner, and the first thing I said to her was, “Is there anything you want to know about me? Anything you’ve wondered? Any questions you might have?” She gazed at me, open-eyed, frank, totally accepting of the question, not like it came out of left field, confirming that yes, she has wondered; she does have questions. I started by telling her about a Tweet I wrote that got 434 likes, lots of encouraging, supportive comments, and several re-Tweets about surviving survival sex as a homeless teen and how the shame is still alive and that I’m writing about it because the shame belongs elsewhere. My daughter said, “Tell me about that.”

So I did.

Was it too much? For both of us?

Spirit Guides keep telling me, “You did well, Polly. You did well.”

So here I sit on this fine Sunday morning before the sun pops over the mountaintop, enjoying the quiet in the house before everyone gets up, feeling grateful for the guidance I receive from my Loved Ones. They always let me know the right action for my highest good and that of others where it is in my power to help facilitate Essence. I will ask my daughter today, ‘How are you doing? That was a bit much, I know.’ She promised to let me know when the stories I tell are too much. She wants to know me, who I was, the stories that have made me who I am in this physical human form. These stories tell of my spiritual evolution as well, the essence of me. At least, that’s how I think of it, of me. And her. We are a unit, she and I — mother and daughter. And she is her separate self, and I am my separate self.

I want to flow in the spirit of Life, to reach my highest evolution, which will take forever, I guess. I don’t know for sure. But I want to live conscientiously aware of my Being and vibrate with all the energy available to me and do my part in my capacity as mother to help my daughter do the same. And so, I want her to know her roots, where she comes from, who helped bring her into this world and chaperone her for a short while.

The sun has now risen and is pouring golden light onto the dining room table where I write. We are heading into the mountains today to view the peak blooms of the wild rhododendrons.

"All this self-questioning is not meant to be punitive or self-deprecating, but rather in the spirit of the birth of the Light of the World, that is, in the spirit of loving and enlightening our tired, burdened, and stale ways of thinking/acting in the past."

from p. 260 of Untie the Strong Woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD