Author: Polly Hansen

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

We ran into a mama bear and her two cubs on our hike in the mountains yesterday. My husband yelped, “Bear!”

I was in the lead. “Where?”

“Right there, in the bushes.”

Her brown snout, surrounded by black, poked through the leaves. We backed up slowly and sat on two boulders by a trickling creek about 20 feet away. I pulled out my phone and consulted the Internet on what to do when encountering a bear on the trail. I’d read such articles a dozen times, but still, I felt unsure of what to do next.

I often feel unsure about what to do next in life when I sense danger lurking ahead, real or imagined. In this case, we didn’t know how dangerous the situation was. A mama bear will be protective of her cubs. She instructed them to scurry up the tree, and there the two little darlings went. But soon, they came back down. We waited ten minutes. My husband advanced to see if mama bear had moved on. There she was in the same spot, and the two cubs went back up the tree.

The instructions on the Internet were mildly helpful. It said, ‘Don’t make loud noises. Wave your arms slowly. Speak in a low calm voice to assure the bear you don’t mean any harm.’ Well, our two dogs were with us. They bark. On the one hand, they might defend us and scare the bear away if she rushed at us. On the other hand, if we tried to sneak past her and the dogs picked up her scent and snarled, would she attack us from behind?

We waited for another ten minutes when along comes an elderly man with his hiking stick. He didn’t see the bear and walked right past her without a problem. My dog bit him when he held out his hand to greet her. Geez.

It’s good to be cautious when you encounter possible peril. It’s wise to pause and think about the best way to proceed.

We decided to chance it or we could be there until the bear moved and it showed no signs of doing so. The dogs were quiet. So was the bear. That’s the last we saw of it.

Two young women approached us with their yappy dog. “Watch out for the bear and her cubs up ahead,” we warned. The women were excited. I would have been, too, not long ago, but this was my fourth bear encounter. They are big and real and wild and, yes, possibly dangerous. It’s good to be cautious when you encounter possible peril. It’s wise to pause and think about the best way to proceed.

The old hiker walking alone without a care simply enjoying the day was a signal to us that the bear was probably as afraid of us as we were of it, and wanted no trouble.

No one was hurt, not bear, humans, or dogs, so how we handled it worked out fine. There’s no one way to react to hazard. Each situation merits its own approach. Ours in this situation worked just fine.

I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
--Psalm 4

For much of my life I have felt like an outsider, like I didn’t belong to the human race. I remember when I was a teenager, I used to imagine myself floating in outer space, alone in the darkness, seeing stars and planets in the distance. There would be no denying the mystery of existence; I would know I existed because I would be alone, undeniably alone, and that would feel real. Whereas being with people did not feel real to me. I wasn’t sure I existed when I was around people, as if they couldn’t see me. And because I was afraid of other people, I found it easier just to imagine being alone with no one to contradict that reality. Unconsciously, I didn’t think I mattered, not to myself, not to others. I felt safe in my solitary confinement because no one could deny I didn’t belong; there was nothing to belong to. It was easier that way, to think I and other people didn’t exist.

Growing up, I related to the Twilight Zone episode where the little girl falls into the wall and gets lost and wanders around alone, separated from everyone. I hated that feeling, yet knew no way out of it, just like the little girl in the episode. But unlike her, no one came to rescue me and I stayed in that lonely place for decades. That belief that I was isolated and alone instructed my day-to-day interactions with people. I never felt as if I truly belonged anywhere. Everyone else was a member of this club to which I had no membership.

How wonderful to finally believe, in my late fifties, that that I wasn’t alone, that I did belong to the club of humanity, and that I wasn’t crazy. How wonderful to discover others like me who felt this way, also. I didn’t feel isolated anymore. I didn’t feel crazy. I felt normal, like I belonged. I was just fine.

Before I found my people with whom I could feel whole and sane, for about a year or two in my mid-fifties I couldn’t look anyone in the face. The terror of otherness floated to the surface. When I looked at someone it was as if I would look straight into that person’s soul and see their otherness and I and they would freak out. The person would return my paranoia with their eyes. It was as if I had violated them with my intimate stare. In-to-me-see, some people like to say about intimacy, but they don’t mean it. Well, at least not perfect strangers. A store clerk does not want you seeing her most intimate secrets, and yet, it felt to me as if that’s what I was doing, seeing inside people to their most vulnerable selves and it frightened me, because there was nothing between me and the other person — no privacy, no boundary.

I returned to see my therapist after several years absence.

 “I’ve developed this twitch” I said. “I can’t look at people.”

“You can look at me, can’t you?”

“Yes, but I know you. And you know me. You know all the ugly dark things about me. And you still like me.”

I was terrified that if strangers knew about me, about who I was inside, they would be horrified. I no longer felt like I could hide what was on the inside of me. Everyone could see it. I was ugly. A monster. I was frightening, and I ended up frightening everyone I spoke to. Even my adult kids. They terrified me most of all because I thought they didn’t know me, not really, and I had to hide all that I was from them and I couldn’t bear that separation between us. I wanted to be one with them again and I wasn’t. They had grown apart from me. They weren’t mine anymore and that frightened me.

But then someone I loved very much shared with me long-held secrets that shook me to the core. I couldn’t bear dealing with them alone, so I went to get help and met with people who experienced hearing similar secrets from their loved ones. We looked into each other’s eyes and said, this is who I am. And over years of sharing my own deepest, darkest secrets with these people, I gradually began to believe that I was not so different from them, and that perhaps even I belonged to the human race, very much so, in fact. I celebrated that belonging and celebrate it to this day.

I feel one with my brothers and sisters on this planet, no longer separate but able to think of them as beloved. My beloved sister, I hear you. My beloved brother, I see you. I am no longer the worst human being that ever lived. I realize now how grandiose and egotistical that thought was, but that’s how I saw myself. All my life I had felt like the placenta, not the fetus, a thing to be discarded, not fully functioning, not fully formed. What a revelation to find that so many people feel the same way. So many people shared the same experiences of being lost and alone.

That is what binds us together–not our perfection but our imperfections, our brokenness. They make us real to one another. They give us hope that despite our warts and blemishes we are beautiful in marred, imperfect ways. Like kintsugi pottery–the perfect vase broken apart and glued together with gold seams becomes more beautiful than the original perfection. I’m okay with my imperfections and I’m okay with yours. That’s how and why I know I belong now.

Today, I feel my brothers and sisters across the planet and know we belong to one another. The homeless belong even though they are the homeless. Their reality scares me, triggering my fear of being unanchored, of outwardly not belonging anywhere. Homeless people look separated from the rest of us, and they may feel like they don’t belong to the human family, but they do. They do. They are woven into the warp and weft of our human fabric, a part of the whole. We humans cover the earth like a blanket. We belong to this existence. None of us is separate from it. Even those in solitary confinement, we can reach them in our prayers, hold them in our hearts, pray for the suffering.

Nowadays, I like to help others who are in the place I once was, feeling isolated and unreal. I extend an outstretched hand saying, ‘I’ve been where you’ve been. You are not alone.’ I once thought I had to figure out me alone, figure out life alone, figure out God alone. But I don’t. None of us do. Belonging is like swimming in water we can’t see. It is all around us and keeps us alive even when we aren’t aware of it.

When I found others like myself who felt rattled and destroyed by secrets they had heard, I began to feel the water, know the water, love the water. I began to participate in this living dance of life and take the hands of dance partners all around me and say I love you. Not only do you belong, but we belong together. We have all belonged together and just didn’t know it, didn’t live like it.

I suffered for years, blind to the fact that I was surrounded by other suffering souls. A lot of what kept me separate was my pain and fear. I couldn’t contain it and believed it would contaminate all who came near me and repulse them. Not true. Just the opposite, in fact. As I shared, people listened. As they shared, I listened.  Our tears connected us as did our laughter, and it still does.

We belong to one another, that is what I have discovered. We belong to this human family. All of us.

 "On the level of consciousness, The World represents the happy experience of having possibly made the essential step to becoming one's self, and thereby feeling the deep joy of fulfilling our purpose in life. If we no longer consider our horoscope and the difficult constellations to be found there as the evil product of an arbitrary fate, but rather 'remember' what we wanted to contribute with our life to the reconciliation of the exhausting tensions within ourselves and the world, then we can understand the great significance of this card. It shows how with time a well-ordered and purified overall picture is created from the chaos of the difficulties and contradictions that existed from the start."

--XXI The World, from The Tarot Handbook by Hajo Banzhaf

When we are born, some of us arrive in situations where the people tending us don’t have the proper wherewithal to do so. Even if they have the money, they might not have the emotional intelligence it takes to properly care for little ones. It seems particularly cruel to these poor, defenseless little darlings. How does God let it happen?

Perhaps my thinking about God is all wrong. I’m sure it is, for the God I know is loving and kind. So, why then was I, and so many others of us, born to spectacularly inept parents? My mom and dad fed and clothed us and snuggled with us and read us stories, imbued me and my siblings with a love of culture – music, poetry, philosophy, but let us go wild, basically, with very little supervision. My brother, sister and I got into all sorts of trouble – heroin for my brother, dropping out of high school and running away for my sister, and then returning home at the age of 17 with a twenty-three-year-old boyfriend she was allowed to sleep with under our roof. And then there was me, getting into a relationship with a twenty-five-year-old at age 14, and my parents doing nothing to stop it even after they learned about it. And then, of course, there’s my leaving home at age 15, turning 16 on the road and getting my mom to send me a notarized letter saying, “My daughter, age 16, has my permission to travel unaccompanied.” With that letter I crossed the border into Canada with my own 23-year-old boyfriend. (I’d left the other one behind but would come back to him later.)

This mess took quite a bit of time to unravel. And with God’s help it stays unraveled, in a good way. It seems like God drops us into creation and says, “Swim! Because I won’t save you!” Only, She does save us. We learn the tools we need to survive, things like, “What you think of me is none of my business so I will not cater to your whims and desires.” We learn, finally, to take good care of ourselves, and in so doing, we start to have compassion for others. We learn to be kind and considerate, but without giving up our values and dignity.

Being an awakened, conscious soul is delicate work. It means walking a fine line that requires awareness, discipline and balance. I get a lot of help from my friends keeping my head on straight and my heart open and willing to accept life on life’s terms. This means asking for help when I need it, and accepting that I can’t change the world, only me. It means taking the good with the bad, the joy with the pain, the anger with the ecstasy, and not judging any of it. Just living it. Being it, and being grateful, stupendously grateful for all of it.

If life really is eternal, if we have all eternity to learn who or what God is, then what does it matter if we’re born to incompetent parents, even abusive ones? We have forever to figure this out. Isn’t that wonderful? I don’t know about you, but it gives me a sense of serenity and peace knowing that I’m always going to be okay no matter what.

If you want what visible reality
can give, you're an employee.

If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.

Gamble everything for love,
if you're a true human being.

If not, leave
this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn't reach 
into majesty. You set out
to find God, but then you keep
stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.

In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on a bank
are rushing by. What seems

to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world.

"Gamble Everything for Love" -- Rumi
from the 

What is your overall primary spiritual goal in life? Mine is to enjoy being me. To embrace my likes and dislikes, to express myself through words, deeds, and actions, to live with carefree abandon, but also with disciplined reserve. To enjoy being me means not worrying about what other people think of me because it’s none of my business. It means knowing where I stand with myself and God. It means loving myself and being kind to and having compassion for others.

            But in the moment, my primary spiritual goal changes. Let’s say I have just closed my book, turned out the light and snuggled into my pillow when a financial concern pops into my head. Instead of following that thought down the rabbit hole, I remind myself of my primary spiritual goal at that moment, which is resting and going to sleep.

Here’s another example of a present moment spiritual goal. I was looking for a receipt in the kitchen garbage. It was very messy, and I did not enjoy the task. Not finding it, I decided to change the garbage. At first, impatient with the chore, I reminded myself, this is my primary spiritual goal at this moment, changing the garbage. We are swimming in divine essence all of the time, so it doesn’t matter what we do as long as we do it mindfully.

And then I spent a very enjoyable day doing all the things I’ve been wanting to do for weeks — pulling weeds, digging up invasive plants, sweeping the patio, trimming the hedges, pruning the crab apple tree, followed by a shower and Zooming with my women friends from Chicago, my beloved women’s Moon Group with whom I’ve celebrated ritual with for the past thirty years. I enjoyed being me today. I enjoyed my Self. I enjoyed my Life and God’s creation of which I am a part. What more could I ask for?

It’s Mother’s Day. What does it mean to be a mother? I know the mother in my life still holds a gargantuan place in my heart. Even though she was far from a perfect mother, I like her. I always have, even when I hated her.

I recently found the trove of letters we wrote back and forth to each other over the decades once I left home, many handwritten, many typed on an old typewriter. E-mail has destroyed the richness of letter writing, but I make it a point to save all my mom’s emails so that I can go back and read them when she is gone.

            I’ve always wondered about my mom, wondering what she thought about at such and such an age, the age I am now, or was back then in any particular photo. There’s a picture of me and her eating lobster. I’m in my twenties. Her hair is white already, though she’s only in her late forties. I think about who I was at age 48-49. Did she think deep thoughts like I did about who she was and her place in this world? Did she love herself? Know herself? Did she struggle with her sense of purpose and meaning in the world? Her place as my mom?

            I think about my kids and what I mean to them but try not to think about it too much because who they think I am and who I truly am will always be separate. Or will it? It must be. Our kids don’t ever truly know us. They only know the fraction of us that is appropriate to know as our children.

When I pried into my mom’s past wanting to know all about her, know what she thought and felt, what her life was like as a teen, as a young woman living on her own in New York City, I wanted an insight into who raised me. I am perfectly willing to share that with my kids and have in many ways, and in some ways I have not. I still hold up a barrier. If they asked me though, would I tell them? Maybe I’d say, “What is it you want to know?” Yes, I want my kids to know me, if they want to know, if they are curious.

            Being a mother is so terribly complicated. I feel the responsibility of it weigh on me heavily, what I owe these glorious souls who have entered this life through my body. I don’t own them. I don’t own their souls. I released them into this life. They are God’s children now. But still, even as adults I worry about them, want them to be well, to feel fulfilled, to love themselves, to be loved and to love. They do all these things and for that I am happy, gratified, and yet still, I worry, as if I want to protect them from all hardships. But no, they deserve all of life just as I did. I only hope I equipped them with enough tools to get them started and make it on their own and to discover and build their own tools. I believe I have done that.

How can I continue to be a good mom to my adult kids? How can I be there for them now that they no longer need me? They love me freely, and I love them. I guess that is all that is needed at this point. But being a mother is not all that I am and not even who I am. I am a soul, just like everyone else in this world. I am me, and one of the things I have done has been a mother. How amazing is that? I have been a mother. And on this day, the world celebrates us women who have done that. I accept the celebration. I celebrate all of us women, mothers or not. We teach our children to be good stewards of themselves, to be responsible, loving citizens.

Would I still die for them?

In a heartbeat.

I wonder if the need for other people’s approval is a former survival coping mechanism. Maybe we needed approval from the group in pre-historic times because without it we might be kicked out and not be able to survive on our own. But today, if you’re an adolescent girl and don’t wear Uggs will you be ostracized? Yes! By some groups of girls, yes. It hurts like mad. Because it is mad, but you will survive. Or does a part of you die? I don’t know. The meanness of others can cause us to shrivel.

The need for approval is so ingrained in all of us. And if we rebel against the status quo, we find others to rebel with us, like I did as a teen. I found a group of adults that I could feel accepted by. But they were a lot older than me by more than ten years and yet I hung out with them. It was not healthy for me. It was damaging because I was too young. I didn’t have the support and guidance from my parents that I needed and so I floundered trying to find what I wanted, what was right for me.

Today I still struggle with wanting approval. Is what I say and do okay? It’s my impulse to want to be accepted and acceptable. I might not “heart” a Twitter feed if a lot of other people don’t like it, even if I like it. But rather than let other peoples’ opinion be my standard, I strive to seek approval of myself. Myself and my Higher Power. That’s who I really need approval from. All the rest is meaningless when you come right down to it. My soul doesn’t depend on your approval or my mother’s approval, but when I was little, it sure did. And that’s difficult to shake as we grow older. The habit of seeking approval of others.

So I will strive to be gentle with myself. To accept who I am today even if that means I engage in approval seeking. Maybe I will change over time. I already have in many ways.

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