Have you ever come home from a trip — or several trips back to back– and you’re in the midst of a ginormous life change which caused you to break into heaving sobs in the middle of your new love’s family reunion (although not in front of the actual family) and you are in must-hold-hands-or-otherwise-always-be-touching love and you keep pinching yourself because you can’t believe you found this relationship and you’re navigating about a million new creative ideas and you’ve started coaching again and holding these wonderful souls tenderly is so thrilling and it’s huge too and your arms are flapping every time you move them because you’ve barely exercised in three weeks and let’s not forget all that pie-chocolate-wine that has made you plump overnight where before you were svelte (or sveltish) and you’re really really tired and you walk in the door after the last of these adventures and there are two dead mice in the traps you set and the smell is shall we say rather strong? And you miss your 14-year-old daughter who didn’t go on the last trip at the last minute but you are also dreading seeing her because her father has not said no to her about getting a third dog (yes, that would be the number 3) even though he cannot have pets at his apartment and he travels a lot and you can feel your arms flapping as you clean up the dead mice but then the love of your life comes in and says, “I’ll do that” and you feel so grateful and tired and then you think what a good chapter for a new comfort book this would make, returning from trips and retreats and adventures and family reunions and feeling really, really OVERWHELMED and like someone put you in a blender on high and.. What could you do at times like these?

Go outside and breathe.

Feel your feet on the floor and your connection to the ground; feel connected to something that is not your own spinning to-do list.

Do a brain dump on Omnifocus or on a big sheet of paper everything you think you have to do.

Do the one thing that is lurking behind you that you don’t want to even admit you need to deal with – for me, right now, it’s the flapping arms.

Color in your art journal for a minute or two; keep it quick and simple.

Start and finish one small task as in sweep the mudroom or empty the dishwasher.

Drink a big glass of water and say to yourself as you do, “I have come home before from trips/vacations/retreats/family reunions and survived and I can choose to push myself relentlessly right now and get myself and everybody around me into a dither and a lather or I can proceed at the pace of loving kindness and put one foot gently in front of the other. It is my choice.”

Call a very helpful friend to talk you down.

Put on uplifting music (I’m a big Krishna Das fan) and declare you will unpack, clean, answer email, etc. until one song is over (or no more than two) and then take a break and do something brief and fun like call a helpful friend to talk you down.

Avoid multi-tasking like you would avoid the guy in the Portland airport who stopped me to tell me how much I looked like LAURA BUSH. Aside from politics, do I really look that old? Did someone dress me in a pant suit when I wasn’t looking?

I’m now going to go do some of the things on this nice list and talk myself back into my life. It’s wild to ride the waves of so much emotion and change, just wild, and I’m glad to be back at this blog, settling into a fruitful loving conversation with each of you – I so treasure your comments. I feel so much hope and anticipation for a creative, stable, and love filled fall.

What do you do to comfort yourself, especially when faced with dead mice?

by farleyj at flicker

The New York Times Sunday magazine did a cover piece this weekend on the falling birth rate in Europe. While my reaction was mostly, “Isn’t this basically good news? Isn’t overpopulation still one of the main strains on our human survival?” the part that made me chortle and sigh was the broad and deeper reason for Europe and Japan and Greece and Thailand’s falling birthrate is… women are fed up. No more second shift, buddy. No more being chained to the house while you have all the fun in the world, no thanks. In countries where women are educated yet society doesn’t support their working after they become mothers, the birth rate is falling– far and fast.

“…women who do more than 75 percent of the housework and child care are less likely to want to have another child than women whose husbands or partners share the load. Put differently, Dutch fathers change more diapers, pick up more kids after soccer practice and clean up the living room more often than Italian fathers; therefore, relative to the population, there are more Dutch babies than Italian babies being born. As Mencarini said, ‘It’s about how much the man participates in child care.’”

This is a personal “glass ceiling” being played out in bedrooms across the world. We’re voting with our wombs– voting for quality of our lives, refusing to give in to a double standard

“rooted in the tradition where the husband earned all the money. Things have changed, not only in Italy and Spain but also in Japan and Korea, but those societies have not yet adjusted. The relationships within households have not adjusted yet.”

We will remake the world to be more gender equal– what the outcome will be may surprise us all.

I’m a Frito Bandito…

Just had to write that. I’m dating myself!

I needed to write to CONNECT. I miss our conversations and yet I feel our connection, us creative thinking heart women webbed around the world, opening and closing with the tide of life.

I’M STILL ALIVE and I’m actually, well, great. And good. Certainly stronger. More even-keeled. Learning heaps. Playing more! As the sun returns to the misty NorthWest, so does my life force.
Being divorced is becoming part of me, it’s truth is being metabolized. For example, when I talked to my neighbor on the ferry Tuesday about my new life without Chris, I felt (mostly) like I was talking about myself and not some alien life force. I’m beginning to feel less like divorce is inconceivable. Oh sure, there are moments when, out of the blue, I wondered who socked me in the solar plexus. I look around but there isn’t nobody there, just the realization that my other half is no longer connected to me. But that’s not true. Our connection, in some very important ways, is richer and clearer than ever. Sitting on either side of our daughter a few weeks ago at her student conference,, we shared one of those parenting looks that said, “Oh my god, she’s such a miracle, don’t you want to eat her up?” and although that look was followed by one of those sad looks, it was not followed by a “I’d be so much happier if you would just…” look. It was not followed by our heart’s shutting down. My friend Ann Cheng said this morning on our walk, “What would it be like to live without any expectations?” (which is probably what enlightenment feels like) and that’s part of the gift of not being married anymore: we can love each other without expectations. No expectation of connection or being on time or getting the taxes done… It’s odd and lonely and freeing. It brings up the question in me, over and over, what do I want or need from another person? Why do I believe a relationship has to look a certain way?

On the creative front, after being dead to even the most remote creative impulse, I can feel the creative heat building in me. It feels exciting and a little scary. All I know right now is that my next creative leg must be:

More collaborative – I want someone(s) to work with in person at least part of the time
More fun – play! Be a voice and conduct for play!
More focused – I want to articulate what self-care is and be an international stand for it; what is the “there there” of my work?
Better supported – asking for and creating systems so I can do all I want to do.

I’ve been considering performance as part of my future. I know I want to become a better speaker and speak more. I may want to do more weekend workshops. I’ve fantasied how much fun it would be to do a TV show– some thing for the new Oprah network! I’m edging toward my novel. I’ve made some art again… Did I mention focus must be part of my new life?

And I’ve been struggling with my days getting eaten up with “stuff,” like today, Lilly is home from school, it’s a holiday and yesterday it was meet a friend for tea. I’m feeling the need to get away for a longer retreat in silence, away from home again. Not sure when that came happen but feeling the need!

So far my retreat looks like nothing I ever thought it would, certainly it doesn’t look particularly special or “sacred,” but I keep reminding myself, “What should it look like?” and “Why should it look any different than it does?” In other words, I’m accepting reality, digging into the rich and sticky and lovely dirt of me, and living the sacred line from Rilke:

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back