reaching happiness blog

Quiet and Happy

I live in a quiet house. My husband has a vocal cord disorder that makes it difficult for him to speak for any length of time. For years I've been thinking of this as temporary, but recently I've begun to think of it as a disability, something that you live with and adjust your lifestyle around. We've definitely made adjustments over the years. We write letters to one another. He brings a notepad to the dinner table, and he's gotten very good at miming. Even though I speak just fine, it's weird to have one sided conversations, so I find myself keeping quiet, too. I'm basically an introvert, which turns out to be a good thing.

Other people I know have had to make concessions for maladies that have come with age as well. My sister is living with impaired vision. My brother-in-law has MS. Another sister-in-law lives with almost constant pain. And they simply carry on with their lives. I am inspired by people's ability to live with disability. When you find ways to carry on, you take back your power. You're only as impaired as you think you are. 

My husband used to resist accepting social invitations. Now he just comes along and brings his notepad. It's fun to see how quickly people respond to his thumbs up/ thumbs down manner of interacting. One family decided that they were going to write on notepads, too. Even waitresses get into the spirit of reading his order from a pad. And he's gotten very expressive with his gestures. His natural sense of humor comes out in his mannerisms and his written notes, which I'm very grateful for because I love his sense of humor.

I guess the one thing we can't do is have long philosophical conversations. But how many people do have long philosophical conversations after 24 years of marriage? I tell myself that when he retires he may be able to talk to me more because he won't be using all his voice power at the office. That's something about old age that I can look forward to. There is a sweetness about how we are with one another, what we appreciate because of what we don't have. Life is funny that way. Age makes you lose things, by definition. And as you lose the advantages of youth, you don't take life for granted in the way you used to when you were young. I'm finding that what made me happy then is different from what makes me happy now. But I'm still happy. And I think my husband is, too.

The plum tree outside my window is exploding with fruit. It is so heavy laden that my husband had to prop up a branch so it wouldn't break before the plums were ripe. As I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating one of the super sweet plums and looking out the window at how many more were there to eat, I thought "this is truly a picture of abundance."

I think about abundance often. In my work as a Marriage, Family Therapist and Life Coach I consistently think about attracting abundance to my private practice...an abundance of clients, abundant ideas and good will to share and of course abundant financial success for us all. Increasingly I find myself helping clients and colleagues attract their financial abundance. It is becoming sort of a specialty of mine, probably because I have such an interest in it.

Yesterday in my Adult Ed class at church, we were reminding ourselves of God's promise of abundant resources as an expression of God's abundant love. Some of you may prefer to substitute the word "Source" or "Force" (as in "may the force be with you") for the the word God, but we all get the same idea. Why is it so easy to believe that a plum tree can bring us fruit in abundance and so hard to believe that the Universe can bring us abundant wealth?

I suspect that the difference lies not in the actual amount of plums or dollars available but in our belief about them. When I looked out the window at the plum tree today, I knew that the same force is at work within both, dollars and plums, and we can attract them both equally. Money is just a much more charged concept than plums. My sense of my self, my identity as an ego and a person living in this world, tends to get wrapped up in how much money I have. My ego is not too invested in my plums.

Somehow when our ego, our concept of self, gets over involved or invested we seem to short circuit that force of abundance flowing through. The trick is to see and appreciate the abundance flowing through and know it is larger than our small, personal selves. It is much more helpful to think of a larger "S" Self, connected with God, Force or Source. I'm sure that's what the plum tree does, without even thinking. It is just connected Self. And that's what we can be and are, truly.

You could be eating cat food...

I should be cleaning my house right now (my brother-in-law will be arriving in the morning), but the truth is that I feel like I'm getting a cold, and all I want to do is sit around and do low key Christmasy things. I just finished writing cards and then I turned my attention to this Christmas blog.  As I write, my son is out driving around on his own in my new Prius. He's had his license for a week, and I notice that I've gotten much better at taking his driving in stride over seven days' time. My dog is snoring at my side, which is comforting because on Tuesday the vet said he had a heart condition, and I thought I was going to lose him. It turned out to be his thyroid. I think that's when my immunity dropped, the minute the vet said "it's his heart."

Does that happen to you? When you hear bad news, something that shocks your system, do your reserves lower?  I used to listen to Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit, and I still like to quote her saying, "You can eat cat food if your spirit is in the right place." I've always loved that line. She was talking to her audience of New Age, tofu eating, vegetarians and basically telling them to get their priorities straight...that if they're holding on to grievances or feeling unrest of some sort, tofu isn't really going to help in the long run.

So what am I thinking about Christmas this year? Has my spirit been in the right place? It's been a bustling month as always, and I haven't felt my holiday "click" yet. I've been indulging in worry, about my niece and her social security, my son and his college applications, my son and his driving, my dog and his health...for someone who ascribes to positive psychology and appreciative thinking I sure have been worrying a lot lately. How can the message of Jesus' birth, or light in the darkness help me? Do I really have the faith that all will be well?

I guess that depends on how I define "well." When I get stuck on "well" looking a certain way (for example, is your house decorated as well as you would like?) I can feel my spirit taking a nose dive. When I step back and broaden my perspective and remember that the love is what matters, my spirit comes back up. Personally I like to consider the messages of Christianity more metaphorically than literally, and it seems that the story of Jesus in the stable (or the Hanukkah story of the Jews crossing the desert) definitely didn't start out looking like all would be well. But then it was. In fact, it worked out better than we could have imagined.

I guess that's the message that I want to remember this Christmas. That I can have a little faith that things will work out better than I can imagine. I can't force things to work out, as hard as I might try, but I can relax and allow things to work out. And they will, when all is said and done. They will.

Then the trick will be to not get involved in worrying about something else. But that's a blog for another day.

Joyous Christmas to all of you who celebrate it, and happy holidays to those of you who are just celebrating!

Thoughts on Marriage

My niece is getting married this week. She met her fiance in 9th grade and they started dating on her 14th birthday. Now they're 22 and they won a contest for a "no pay wedding day," probably because their romance is so sweet and inspiring. They've never broken up or wanted to be with anyone else.

I was telling their story to friends the other day and the man said "Why would they want to be married?" I had forgotten that he has chosen not to marry his partner of 22 years, even though they have a child together and own a home. I think of them as married.

It reminds me of visiting my parents with my husband before we were married. It was Christmastime and I was so hoping for a ring. But my husband wasn't ready to make that commitment. I knew we'd be sleeping apart because that was my parents' policy for unmarried people in their home. At the airport when we arrived, my dad said to me "You and Peter will be sleeping in your room." Shocked, I said to him "Dad, we're not married!" (as if he hadn't noticed) He shrugged and said "Some people just seem married."

My friends seem married, but don't choose to be. They say their relationship is better than most of the married people they know, as if marriage would ruin it. My niece and her intended are over the moon that they're finally tying the knot. What's the difference? I don't think the difference is marriage; I think the difference is the people in the marriage, their choices and intentions. I believe my friends would have the same relationship they have now, even if they did marry, because of who they are and what they want together.

I believe a good marriage brings out the best in us, enhances us, makes us more than we would be on our own. In my work as a Marriage, Family Therapist and Life Coach, I often see the results of marriages that have torn people down, diminished them and left them hurting and bitter. Over and over I see and read in the news about people who have so completely lost touch with themselves and the other person that they convince themselves that happiness can only be found outside of their union.

But happiness is an inside job. And deep within, we are all longing to love and be loved. Great marriages grow over time from an ongoing choice to show one other who you really are and find ways to feel fond of what is seen there. And even when you zig and the other zags and sparks fly as a result, you both find ways to come back to being kind and heal the rifts before they become chasms.

I think that people who don't choose marriage find other ways to love and be loved. Personally I love being married. I love living with my best friend, someone who knows me better with each passing year, with whom I have shared almost half of my life. By now we've worked out most of the kinks. He's got my back and I've got his. We aren't completely similar and we each have parts of us that get fed outside the marriage. But when we come home and we climb into bed at night, we know we're with someone we respect and admire, someone who matters. And that means to the world to me.

(This blog was inspired by a quote that I read in Time Magazine ~ "Adultery is not about sex or romance. Ultimately, it is about how little we mean to one another." If you'd like to receive my Quote of the Week, please e-mail me ~ janet@reachinghappiness.com.)

Forgiveness

I've been going through the lessons in A Course in Miracles day by day. Yesterday's message was "Forgiveness is the key to happiness." Even though I was having a perfectly normal, respectable day, my mind inside was starting to make noises along the lines of "you could have done that better; don't be late; you've been eating no carbs for a week and you haven't lost a pound."

I think that's what the Buddhists call the monkey mind - the chatter that the ego creates to keep us from feeling our stillness and our wholeness, or as I like to call it, our holiness. The Course says the ego is an ancient thought that we are separated from God, and it also says that this can't be true. We are never, ever separated from the Source of all Life...we can't be, because we are Life. My friend Steve, who died a few months ago, saw this in his final days. He said something to the effect of "It's all just love." I try to remember what he saw as I attempt to counter the nattering of my human, in the world, physical mind.

Another line from the Course - "The unforgiving mind sees no mistakes, but only sins." I heard that the word sin is an archery term meaning "to miss the mark." I like to think of a mistake as a "missed take." We look at something and miss seeing the love that's there, probably because our perception is so affected by what we expect to see. Our unforgiving mind holds mistakes against the person. It indicts them and declares that the mistake is evidence of who they are, the sum total of their identity. Our minds can get very locked in to this perception.

Yesterday my mind was doing that, about itself. Why? It might have sensed that I was seeking to loosen the lock that my unforgiving mind has on my being. Forgiving doesn't mean condoning everything that happened. Forgiving means looking through what happened and seeing "some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture you hold of it, him or her." (Again, from the Course.)

When I told my husband I was working on holding no grievances, he said "I'm working on untraceable explosive devices." I tend to be serious and spiritual. He's humorous, which I love about him. Humor loosens the lock of our unforgiving mind, too. When we can see humor in a situation we're on our way to forgiving the moment of all its seriousness and allowing that there might be lighter, more loving perceptions worth considering.

Please feel free to comment here. I love comments, and I'd love to send you my Quote of the Week, if you don't get it already. Just e-mail me at janet@reachinghappiness.com. Thanks for reading.

Don't worry; it's benign

Dear God (my journal entries almost always start this way),

Please help me to see social security differently. That's my prayer for the day. I am the representative payee for my disabled niece, and the system is driving me crazy! She can't get the benefits she needs because their computer says she has more money than she does. I can't reach a real person to change it in their computer, even though I spent half an hour on hold yesterday. Checkmate. I'm sure you all have similar situations in your lives, things you need that you appear to be blocked from getting by some cosmic hand being held up, saying "Screw you. We scoff at your request."

But the spiritually seeking part of me thinks " surely that can't be right. There's not a cosmic hand determined to thwart my progress. That's all in my mind (even if everyone else can relate because all our minds agree)."  I can change my mind, which gives me the possibility of changing the results. Thus the prayer "please help me to see this differently." The line that I'm currently studying from A Course in Miracles says "Above all else I want to see." I want to see Jennifer, my niece, as the spirit that she is, not disabled but light-filled. I want to see social security not as a bureaucracy but as a network of people who are ready to help. In another context they could be my friends.

Taking this one step further, A Course in Miracles encourages us to see that everything that happens is not an attack upon us. The other day when I was writing in my journal about a frustration regarding my husband I heard myself think "don't worry; it's benign," and my body relaxed instantly....See it differently. See it as benign, harmless. It can't hurt you. Cosmically it can't hurt you. It may appear to beat up your body (think cancer), but your spirit won't be harmed unless you believe that what is happening is harmful.

That's tricky, if not impossible to do, especially with cancer. It's benign? Yeah right. But what if, when the doctor first pronounced the diagnosis..."cancer, not benign" we could keep the feeling of benign even through the treatments (this is for you, Steve). What if we held in our minds the sweet feeling of being unharmed. I wonder if it would affect our recovery, our cells' ability to create health.

And if the person going through the perceived threat, whatever the threat is, is too immersed in the threat to feel the possibility of benevolence, that's what friends are for. "Whenever two or three are gathered...." Whoever can hold the space, the feeling of no harm on behalf of their loved ones and themselves is superbly helpful. That's really what prayer chains are about...not so much "oh God, please don't make something terrible happen" but more "dear God, thank you for your promise of no harm. Please help me to see how benign this truly is. Please help us to see this differently."

Wish me luck today on my next foray into the network of friends I have there at the social security office...and if you send up a prayer or visualization that all is benign, I bet I'll get better results.Thank you; blessings back to you (and prayers for Steve, too).     ~  Janet

(to return to my website, go to www.reachinghappiness.com and if you'd like to receive my quote of the week, e-mail me at janet@reachinghappiness.com)

Keeping Christmas

This is a journal entry that I wrote last year. I came across it when I was sending cards, and I thought I'd share it with you. My New Year's goal is to start writing blogs once a month again.

Christmas, 2007...What is my gift to the Christ child? My gift is to love my husband when he's taking a nap instead of sitting out here by the tree and the fire with me. My gift is to love the people who send an in your face fundamentalist card with no mention of love. My gift is to love my cat, purring next to me, even though he bites everyone who touches him.

The thing about love is, we just have to do it, not think about it. Just love no matter what. Love and love and love some more, whether we're getting love back or not. Love the way our dogs love us. Love irresponsibly, extravagantly, with abandon.

What would our inner being ~ our non-physical, eternal, all about love, connected to the Christ child, connected to every child, God-self feel about life right now? That all is well.

A sleeping baby, so full of innocence and promise. God came and said "Pay attention to this one. This one is special." Personally, I don't believe it was quite like that. In my belief, God is saying "Pay attention to this one" about all sleeping babies all the time. I believe that God would say "All are special. All are expressions of the Life and Love that I Am." I think Jesus was elevated to Christhood because of how he lived his life. He told us that what he did, we can do also. To let everything fall away but the love. We can do that. To see God within every person, every situation. We can do that. It heals us to do that, to see God in the terrorists and anyone else who feels so far away from love that they think destruction is God's will.

God's will is only love. Jesus the baby was a seedling ready to sprout that message. There is only love. Any other thought is just a mistake...a missed take...a perception that missed something. And even mistakes can't cancel the love. Even if we don't see the love, it's still there. To me, that is the message of Christmas, that we are reminded of every year, during the darkest days of the year.

Blessings to you and those you love this Christmas ~ Janet

My Growing Edge...or you had me at hello?

Okay, I'm out here on my growing edge again. I just spent quite a bit of time and money on a course that teaches me how to market myself with heart. The heart piece drew me in. The first day of the seminar, the leader told us to go out and sell ourselves with heart during our lunch break. And I thought "Are you kidding me? I don't even talk to strangers, much less walk up and offer to coach them." Needless to say I took the "easy" way out and spent my lunch break coaching a fellow attendee who wants to attract a man into her life.

But the next day, with fear and trepidation, I joined my homework partners and scoured the streets and stores, looking for people who might want coaching help. Our assignment that day was to get three people to say no to us...because if we're willing to get a "no" we're more likely to get a "yes." At least it got me talking to strangers. And it turned out to be kind of fun.

I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for this course. To be honest, I really signed up because I have been shy all my life, and I wanted to develop my ability to converse easily with people I don't know. I wanted to put myself in a situation that required me to push past my outer edge. I believe with my whole heart that we are all One Being. So why don't I feel that oneness when I see someone I don't know? Why do I feel shy and awkward and assume that they don't want to talk to me?

As I did the "no" exercise I found out some interesting and touching things about the strangers I met. There was the store clerk who had a tattoo in memory of a sister who had died before the clerk was born. Another woman told me she feels proud of her ability to say "no." She's learned it through life's hard knocks. I really do enjoy people and like hearing their stories. Since I have made a commitment to talk with people out there in the world every day, I am finding out that the minute I notice them and say hello, they give me a little window into their world. That's kind of special.

Whenever I grow, my realizations seem to come in stages. Now that I'm getting better at approaching  people, it has dawned on me that I don't believe people want to hear about me. I would be mortified if I found out that someone experienced me as pushy. Since my personal space is important to me, I am very respectful of another person's space and privacy. So today this is my growing edge...to push myself into the space a little. To trust that they will welcome me; they will feel our oneness and that I will sense how far to enter while remaining respectful.

Whew! Even as I write that I want to backpedal as fast as I can! The shy part of me wants to eat or get busy with something else, like writing this blog. Why? What is it? What am I afraid of?...pause and listen...I am afraid of my limitations showing, right out there in the open. That people will feel my awkwardness and think "What's up with her?" They'll spot my imperfections, maybe before I do and I won't have a chance to cover them. Now that's mortifying. Or is it? In this culture we're not supposed to show our inadequacies. But I am here to say that I find imperfections endearing, when someone has the guts to let them be seen.

And now, with that new awareness, I am ready to go out and enter into the world of strangers again, joining them in what matters to them for just a moment. If my inadequacies show, so be it. Maybe we'll connect. I know I connect better with people who aren't smooth and polished. That's the last thing I want in a salesperson.

So here I go. Sometimes I don't know why I put myself through new challenges like this. But I do know that every time I do, in the end I'm grateful. And I'm grateful to you for listening.           ~ Janet

If you don't receive my Quote of the Week, and you'd like to, please send me an e-mail at janet@reachinghappiness.com.

Summertime and the Living is Retro

Summer has officially started at our house. Yesterday was my son's last day of school. I'm grateful to still have a link to the school year rhythm that I remember so well from my youth. What will I do when he graduates in two years? In so many ways I've been asking myself that question.

Some very dear friends of ours popped in from out of town for a visit this week. They are planning to travel more once their kids are launched. My husband and I have already begun taking more day trips...going back to being the "partners in adventure" that we were when we met. Our son is no longer interested in joining us, but the dog comes along on occasion. I picture us vacationing more, working less, shifting our routines when Chris has gone to college.

It may seem silly to be thinking about this now, when we've got two years to go. I've guess I've always been someone who likes to plan ahead. The thing is, being a mother has been the most cherished aspect of my life, and two years seems like a short time left. I'm grateful that I've retained my professional identity. I feel like I've lived in the best of both worlds, combining part time work with motherhood, but lately I've been savoring my hours at home.This last month Chris has been riding the city bus home from school to save on gas, and after sixteen years of being a mom, all of a sudden I'm playing house.

When I was a girl, I loved to play house. Not very imaginative I know. In my sister's scenarios we were ballerinas who were kidnapped, but when it was my turn we were mommies who would visit the neighbors and have tea. Now that I'm no longer driving Chris home, I've been setting up my work day to be here when he gets here. Sometimes I bake cookies. It's as if I'm living in a Leave it to Beaver world, and it is hitting the spot.

I have friends who are doing the same thing, getting laid off and staying home. When we grew up the feminists had paved the way for us to work, and work we did. Gratefully. But midlife is a time to look at what one hasn't yet done, and I realized that I hadn't stayed home and made cookies for my son when he comes home from school. Not everyone wants to do that, but clearly that was a childhood fantasy of mine. I suspect that I will get restless if I do it for long. I may not even last the summer. And I am still working. I thank the feminists for the choice to do both. But I only have two years left with Chris at home, and I want to soak up every aspect of motherhood that I can. So cookies it is. And maybe lemonade, although he's too old for a stand...his teenage friends will have to come over and guzzle it instead.

I wonder how many other people will find that this economy and gas crisis gives them an unexpected window into a simpler time and an aspect of their personality that may have been overshadowed by our hustle bustle world. If you have a story of retro summertime living, I would love to hear from you.

Camping Out on the Couch

It's been a long time since I've written. Since my last posting all my writing efforts have gone to a brochure, a Christmas letter and a chapter for a book. I've been missing my blog and this subject popped into my head last Friday, which is technically my day "off," but is in fact my "catch up" day. It has become increasingly important to me to be, feel  and stay "caught up." And I've been doing pretty well at it, keeping all the balls in the air...but Friday I couldn't seem to get myself off the couch. After taking my son to school (at "dark thirty" as my friend says) I made my coffee and a piece of toast and just began to camp out. I had my books that inspire me, and I really wanted to meditate. I've been wanting to meditate for a long time, a desire that has become full blown since reading Eat, Pray, Love. I think I long for that kind of time out that she gave herself, without the expense and change in life-style.

So without realizing it, I began a day of camping out on the couch and basically stayed there until I picked up my son. For those of you who are as uncomfortable as I am with such a lack of enterprise, I did get busy then ~ working out at the Y, walking the dog, shopping for groceries, and tying up the loose ends of my business week on the computer. But the majority of my day was spent sitting on the couch doing nothing.

I can't begin to describe the luxury of simply looking out the window at our glorious sycamores! And breathing. I have to say I haven't been successful yet at reaching those states in meditation that I hear about with envy, but I believe I'm getting closer. As I focused on my breathing I noticed that I had an anxious feeling in my chest, around my heart area, that wouldn't go away. So I tried to love it. It was probably because I wasn't doing anything with my day, and I am really programmed to be productive. I actually love feelings of accomplishment. But something in me was telling me to rest, to allow a fallow period, to play hooky. I really think that's why I was able to get so much done later in my day, when my energy is usually spent.

There's something else that I got out of the day, something very valuable. Just spending the day with myself, doing nothing, validated me like never before. Because all the accomplishment validates me the accomplisher, but sitting and breathing validated me. Just me. You know how they say we're human beings, not human doings? I've never really tested that. And I think that's what I was longing for. That's why I subconsciously set aside the time. I could have called this blog "the pause that refreshes." I really was refreshed after that pause, and I really needed that pause after working so diligently to stay "caught up."

I know in the past I've paused without permission...headaches will give us that opportunity, as will colds and flu. Sometimes we lose ourselves in the internet or spend hours in an unplanned conversation with a friend. Usually there are many tasks that tug at the back of our minds during these unexpected pauses and our minds are torn. On the one hand we appreciate the break, and on the other hand we regret it because we are now further behind. That feeling of being torn keeps us from being refreshed.

I guess that's the quality in the Eat, Pray, Love book that I was trying to capture for myself ~ total permission to give myself the luxury of unencumbered time and the knowledge from somewhere inside me that such a gift would be rejuvenating.  Now that I have discovered that I can capture some of the feeling of eating, praying and loving from the sanctuary of my own couch, I thought I'd share that discovery with you. For those of you who are willing to try it, I would love to hear how it goes.