That’s the tag line for this blog/website – Kindly Find Yourself – and it’s a phrase I’m sweetly resonating with right now. It is becoming my little creative beacon.

My friend Eric wrote this in response to me talking to him about Kindly Find Yourself as a retreat/class title:

Kindly – Do this with loving kindness.

Kindly – This is my gentle request that you turn around and find yourself.

Kindly – (with a little more edge in your voice) Stop tying yourself up in the knots of your stories. Find yourself.

For me, the first step in kindly finding myself is letting myself be lost. I feel so ashamed that I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am at 45, almost 46. I like to keep stopping and saying, “It’s okay to feel lost right now because that is how I feel right now. It’s okay to feel bad about feeling lost right now because that’s how I feel. It’s not necessary to beat myself up for feeling lost nor do I feel lost in all domains of my life. This feeling of being lost in my creative work won’t last and even if it does, it’s okay because I am not what I do.”

Speaking of “I am not what I do” am I the only one who wants to run away from the Internet and all social media because it feels so overwhelming? It’s like a demon named Do Everything and Do It Big and Do it Now is biting at my heels ((I just joined FaceBook so that might be part of it). I want to run away . Okay, going to stop and welcome that feeling Demon too… “It’s okay to feel overwhelmed because that’s how I feel. But god, I hate feeling this way. It’s okay I hate feeling this way, I can still feel the feeling.” It really helps if I do this welcoming while relaxing my body or going for a walk or doing some art journaling. Also reading Rumi helps:

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The second thing that helps is reading other people’s journals and blogs and talking to my friend Ann and my beloved Bob so I feel/ see/ know I am not alone in feeling lost, and that most of us do — especially at mid life. I have to remember to reach out and get some of this support when I need it most instead of telling myself I AM THE ONLY ONE FEELING THIS WAY and then not spend all day reading blogs and talking on the phone so that I don’t actually do any creative work because doesn’t feel good.

The third thing that helps is watching happy movies that are smart like Miss Pettigrew Lives for Day and reading books like What It Is by Lynda Barry

Okay, back to kindly finding myself and designing a class and retreats so we can do it together. Love to hear what you are doing to kindly find yourself today!

I’m afraid to blog. I know, that’s sounds a bit absurd but I have been missing writing in this format for months and although I’ve told myself, “Wait until your sabbatical is officially over June 1st” and “Wait until the new blog is up at Comfortqueen.com so you don’t have to import any more text” I know that’s bull hockey.

I’m afraid to write. I’m afraid to create. I have never been so afraid to create, I don’t think, in my life. I’ve become the queen of busy work and I’m pissed at myself.

What am I afraid of?

Do I really care? Naming what I’m afraid of feels so boring and so besides the point. Because the point is: I need to create to live and life doesn’t feel good when I’m not. But one night, when I wasn’t looking, even in the midst of my retreat (more on that later but not this post or I will never push publish) my old nemesis “BE PRODUCTIVE” latched on to me and has been riding me raw ever since.

Developmental psychology posits that when we are destabilized, we regress to the level of development where we last felt stable. Because all development happens in waves, we surge forward or upward into more complex ways of being (think of learning a musical instrument) and then when life presses on us (in positive and negative ways), we fall back (you suddenly can’t remember that chord progression for the life of you). My stress has been overwhelming miraculously positive (I’ve fallen madly in love) . I’m feeling so much joy and letting go in my body and heart — you might think that would translate to wild abandon with pen and paper and ideas and you know what, you be wrong! Feeling so much joy has destabilized me and sent me back to a former, more stable, but much less satisfying way of being creative: be productive, get things done, worry about money, no time to play, etc.

So here I am, writing this to create something. I’ve also been art journaling and making weird messy paintings.

Off to exercise and then family night – yes, blended family dates are happening, he has a 11 year old, the sweetest coolest boy in the universe.

Ah… Breathe, Jen, it’s all going to be okay.

I was on hold with my local clinic about my big toe – which stubbornly is not healing*—when I realized I was hearing a Dan Fogelberg song from my youth. In fact, the song coming over the phone had been the soundtrack for my 16th summer, a time when I was bursting with hopeful itchy angst, stuck between yearning for newness, for life, to be in life yet completely unsure what I wanted from life. As I listened to Dan croon (what a crush I had on him: the original sensitive man!) it struck me that how I felt my Pu16th summer was very similar to how I felt now, some 29 years later, and that Dan’s question was perfect for me – and maybe for you, too. Where do you go when you get to the end of your dreams? (I realize now the station was playing Dan because he died Monday of cancer at 56.)

I’ve run out of dreams. It’s very scary to admit that because in this microcosm culture of personal growth and coaching where I spend a lot of my time, it’s all about possibilities. Declaring, “Hey, I’m tired of growth. I don’t want to live my best life. I just want to curl up and do nothing,” feels so unrealized. It also smacks of the S word-selfish. “Dreams are the food of the soul. In our existence, we often see dreams come undone, yet it is necessary to go on dreaming, otherwise the soul dies and agape does not penetrate it” rhapsodizes novelist Paulo Coelho in his Ode magazine column (January/February 2008). Yes, I say to Paul yes but where does the letting go, cleaning out, dropping-into-nothingness-stage of dreaming fit? In our love affair with self-improvement and efficiency, have we forgotten this aspect? If you and I don’t attend to not dreaming, do we block the ability to conjure truly new dreams? If I lack the courage to peer at my dreams and ask hard questions like:

• What commitment am I willing to make?
• What price am I willing to pay?
• What courage is required of me right now?

(Questions courtesy of The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block)

What is the result? If I lack the stamina to be restfully fallow (say that three times really fast), do my dreams cease being dreams and become should-filled bland heavy nightmares? If I only dream, do my dreams become only delusions?

I believe many of us have gotten to the end of our dreams—I certainly think our American culture has reached the end of something. Partially this may be because we have relentlessly, brutally pushed ourselves. Faster, faster, grab the golden ring! Keep moving, keep buying, keep trying because if you don’t, you’ll be left behind. Our collective well has more than run dry; we’ve pushed clear through to China and out into empty space. Consider our political landscape, our national depression rate, and the number of horror movies leering from the New Movie wall at the video store* as proof positive. We want to dream radical raw dreams, we want to feel desire, we want to believe in new beginnings but we’re too tired from doing, from pushing, and those optimists among us, from dreaming.

Stay tuned for Part 2…