The temptation to hurt another with our story telling…..

Do you ever find yourself blurting out TMI? Yes? Its the glassy-eyed look in the hearer that alerts me that I’ve said too much.

The truth is: People just are not equipped to hear truth and hard things about our journey.

I’ve been drawn to the practice of the Buddhist monks who have lived in Chinese prisons for 10+ years. Their greatest concern was that they would lose their compassion for their captors. These, of course, are the men and women of great inner resolve and who become humble teachers. They do not speak ill of those who tormented them. They do not speak of it.

This is what I’d like to be like. I’d like to not speak ill of someone who has hurt me. I’d like to not need to tell a little snippet, maybe alluding to something, in order to gain interest to tell more. That is slander and it is harmful.

I have started to pay attention to the moments when I am tempted (and oh goodness is it a temptation) to do a smear campaign against someone in order to be seen and heard. Its victimization calling. I pay attention to this because it means that there is a tender weak area in my inner experience, that needs me to take care of it. Otherwise, I would not be tempted to hurt another person by telling a story, however true. I would not be tempted to cop the pose of victim to gain pity or compassion or for someone to say “Wow, you’ve been through a lot.”

I want to have strong inner resolve, like the Buddhist monks, to hold a concern that I might lose my compassion for anyone who has hurt me. They will not speak ill of their captors. I strive to not speak ill of my past.

This is hard work.

Forgive me, if I have spoken ill of you. I meant to, knowing I’d chip away a tiny bit like you chipped away at me. The place of this truth is childish and immature. I know this is not maturity, but it is human. And I am sorry. Forgive me.

When I am able to catch that little wounded critter inside of me, before she speaks through my mouth, I am able to deep breathe her into safety. It is enough that I know my stories. It is enough that truth is real and lived within me. I don’t need to have that truth validated externally. in a way that hurts another person. Nor do I need to pretend all is well. It is enough to acknowledge a difficult time. Like saying “There were hard things in my childhood that I’ve faced and grown from.” or “The job was not a good match for where I am in life.” or “I am in a better place now.”

Very close friends, who know the value of confidentiality are priceless. Spiritual Directors and therapists are also priceless in what they offer. Not their wisdom. Their listening. To you. These are appropriate places to speak your grievances, hurts, pitifulness out loud. Give the little vulnerable critter inside a voice and time. Its like speaking into a vault, into a canyon, into a forest. The void, the vast, the dense will hear and hold. No further hurt will take place.

I am grateful for the forgiveness and understanding that has come my way when I’ve TMI’d about someone. I don’t wish to hurt anyone. This is the growth.

With love and zero judgment to you, and to me,

Amy

No more than we can handle

On my own journey of awareness, it has been a series of things. I’ve written in this space before how it feels like I keep arriving, only to discover that I’ve not arrived at all, and I’m still schlogging up that hill.

Maybe some of you already know this. But I didn’t. This morning, I thought “what if God doesn’t give us more than we handle is not about the trauma, but about the healing process?”

I look at my own process of rising awareness, and it is as plain as day. I could not have handled the things I’m awakening to now, before. In the A.M. (After Marriage) season, i simply wouldn’t have been able to see it.

There were lots of times that I was given some visions that indicated a process. That wasn’t the surprise. We are in process all the time. The surprise was in how freakin’ long this takes. It takes a freakin’ long time. I’m not simply healing from a marriage that was not a marriage (a conclusion that could only be understood after much process), but healing and transformation of a lifetime. All the building blocks that tore me down, that obscured my true self from my own understanding had led to every terrible choice (I did not know some of those choices were terrible), bit by bit.

I don’t think the Sacred is somewhere figuring out the equation of what we can tolerate. What toxic load we can handle until we cave.

I believe the Sacred knows that the human condition is organic and ripe for decay at all times, and we are given secret passage through many things. Some we see. Some we don’t.

I’ve never liked the phrase “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.” My Aunt Delite scoffed in disgust after the death of her beloved husband, my beloved uncle, that enough was enough and who decides how much she can handle? Of course she can handle it all. But really, it was enough.

What if we see life from a different vantage point?

I’m wondering today, and these are just wonderings, if instead of viewing the trauma, the breakage, the decay as the thing God/Universe is offering for us to find our way out of, we accept that just exactly like the oak leaves that bud and grow, fall and decompose, we humans and our situations are the same. Why would we be any different than any other organic creature in this Creation? The difference is that we comprehend things at more complex levels. But I have no doubt the Oak Tree is comprehending its own demise, and each leaf knows its days are numbered as they turn to rust colored crisp. And then the leaf lets go, is wind-blown into fence rows, and provides harbor for some little winter mouse or green sprout of prairie grass.

We are no different. We just think we are a little lower than the angels.

Life hands us trauma: Imperfect health, imperfect family systems, imperfect religion, imperfect brains, imperfect bodies. And we ask why and are let down because it isn’t perfect and we have been hurt. Trust me, I’m not diminishing the hurt, but seriously, it is inevitable. Can we turn our point of view toward the healing? In the cycle of the Oak Leaf, it experiences trauma and new life. It experiences itself and life for something else that comes because of its own decay.

We humans are no different.

I often wonder (lots of wondering) if the biggest trauma isn’t the events of imperfection, but the moments that the presentation that perfection is possible and most people experience it, is known as a lie. It is a lie. And we are all unprepared for it. And we don’t know that our secret hurts that we’ve been told to not tell, have been experienced by so many.

The lie is that life is good and without blemish.

And so, part of the human experience is in the decay, the dimishment, the imperfection, the trauma, the wounding.

And then it is in the healing. When we take to the healing, we do so layer by layer by layer. We talk about peeling back the onion of our pain and covering of your true selves. Let’s change that point of view too. The onion is the healing. And it comes in layers.

Bit by Bit.

Because we cannot handle the healing all in one go.

Maybe, I wonder, the layers would be less if we were taught in adolescence that their wounds are just part of being human and helped them step into healing sooner? It would still be bit by bit. But an adult at age 56 has a lot more layers to uncover.

What if we stop glorifying the ability to handle things, and glorified the healing process before the layers of trauma get out of hand?

I’m just speculating here. You know. But I think I’m on to something.

With love and wonder,

Amy

Not-that-and-yet-this

I marvel at the growth that filled out during my week of absence from my backyard.

There are plants that I don’t know if they are bloomers or weeds. But goodness, they are tall and full. The tomatoes are slowly pickable, small tomatoes; perfect for a splash of taste.

And aren’t we all this? Overrunning our spaces, treats for those who notice, blooming bodaciousness…

We see these things from the outside. From a place that says “I’m not that”. But what if we are seeing the jump of our own root system, that volunteer petunia that shouldn’t come up again but did…unplanted….that climbing vine of morning glory….that name (morning glory, only after coffee)……that is now on the east side of the yard and not just in its western corner…it’s corner of take-over where the burnt-out hostas (too much sun) will provide a throne of stability as they climb climb climb. What if we are a leaf to some other plant, a bloom that comes and goes to some other organic matter.

What if we are part of everything at once?

with love, with you,

Amy

photo: my hand started tomato beauties, whispered to with love and encouragement from germinating seed to planting to each succulent picking.

Yesterday, I bored myself

Yesterday, I was journaling a new thought, an ah-ha, a nugget I didn’t want to lose.

And then, in my periphery of thought I could see a rabbit hole to enter.

It had a theshold that was worn smooth,

because I had been down that specific path before.

Packed dirt at the entrance,

a slight dip where I had placed a foot a thousand times.

I went down it. Mostly because I was nearly finished with what I had begun moments before. Mostly out of habit.

Oh, this was satisfying. It was a retelling (for the thousandth time) of a wrong done to me. I could do this dark, deep hole in my sleep, with the sight of a star mole, able to see beyond the eye.

And I got bored.

In the middle of the hole, the path, the oft-traveled storyline,

I got bored.

Because I’m done with that story.

Oh boredom! Oh freedom! Oh moving on!

There is a modern saying that each time we give a child a screen, we steal their boredom.

I think that each time we fail to witness our own growth, we steal our boredom.

There is a point we rarely reach, in our story telling of pain and very real woe. We’re afraid to tell it too often, or we tell it to the wrong folks who aren’t paying attention and every cell in us feels the neglect, or we feel whiney so we stop.

When we stop the retelling of a painful story, we stop the process. Like watching seeds planted in a hydroponic counter germinator, sprout and grow, and then SNIP we hang it to dry and forget about it, never to be used. We snip the useful right off. We snip the potential down to the nub. We end the growth before it was ready to bolt into a thousand seeded releases.

The point of boredom with your healing is an arrival. Get to the point where you don’t want to hear it one more time. When the dopamine no longer drops, and you slide off your stool and walk away from the journal. Where you put on music to clear your mind and body.

Boredom is the great generator. It says “enough, let’s do something different” in the most healthy ways.

LIstening to you, deeply, and again,

Amy

Bliss, the follow up

(I found this among my drafts from nearly 4 years ago…it was written in September of 2018….and it is the post I was just about to write today)

Still there.

But I want to call it something else now. Because in that moment, it was indeed that feeling after a massage, or after a walk in the rain with your love, or the feeling of fullness after a lovingly made meal with friends.

As time goes on though, I am recognizing it as something more. Something more intrinsic to life. Like good fertilizer. Like breath you don’t have to think about. Like the beating heart that goes on and on each and every day.

But how on earth did I get here? How can you get here?

Time + Action

It is as simple as those two components. How much time or what type of action, I do not know. I can point to fixed points in my life, and I can also see that from the moment I first took breath I was clearing, healing, becoming. At each rising I am both Being and Becoming (as my spiritual director reminds me). It doesn’t stop and there is no rest.

Unless we choose to stop and rest. If you choose this, please do so with a witness, a guide a friend because we risk getting stuck right there. Have an agreement with someone that you’re just going to take a break for a month, a week, a year and then get back to it. Some individuals have stories that are thick and mired and the work is stinkin’ hard. So, go to the beach and soak in that sun then get back to it.

I have a client who takes action as though he can clear all the karmic blocks and restrictions he has accumulated on his soul’s journey. He’d like to do so in this lifetime because he has tasted a flow, the eudaimonian flow of nirvana/heaven to know what comes with release of old wounds and stories. So why not.

i have a client who weeps at the thought that there are multiple lives our souls live because this life has been so hard she doesn’t want to contemplate coming back around for some god-awful reason. So she clears out of desperation to make sense of this life with no hope but to rest.

Both reflect their paths for this life. There is beauty in both. It is my responsibility to hold space for the hopeless client who just wants to get through….so let’s get through and then let’s get through and then let’s get through…..until we start seeing we are in a place of craft and design instead of repair and reconstruction. Like a yard at an abandoned house, where you have to go in with an industrial mower just to see what is what. We cut that grass down till it looks like a hay field. We see where there had been flower gardens or tree stumps. Childrens toys are uncovered alongside wasted cig butts and beer cans. So we clean up those, too. As we do so, we create stories of what life had been like in this home at some point. We look at the overgrown weed beds and decide what to recover because look, there is a hydrangea bush and a forgotten rose bush, or what we just mow down with the next pass, with the plan to seed it all back to grass. Slowly, this abandoned, gnarly, lawn horror reaches a place of the blank canvas.

And the dreaming begins. What if we take down that old tree and plant a Japanese Maple? What if we bring in some mulch around the old steps to create a clean welcome? What if we just go ahead and bring in a dumpster and throw away the refuse and start over?

This is us on our way to bliss. It is the flow of work. It is the realization that we clear to find ourselves, our truest selves, and we dream ourselves back into being.

I’ve employed prayer, guilt, denial (oh, yes, what a big one), protection of the perpetrators of my wounds, forgiveness before I was ready. These all served a place. Mostly just to get started. Loosening of the jar lid. I moved on to spiritual direction where I could speak out loud experiences known only within, taking the sting of them away after a time, vocalizing fear and anger and emotions that contort the face into ugliness in the reliving of ugly things experienced.

At some point, there were monthly massages. for 15 years I received a monthly massage. No indulgence. I believe these served to keep loosening and accepting a body and story I had come to numb out.

At some point, there was a shamanic journey to my lower world, stretching of yoga, soul work, mapacho, and continued methods to turning numb into feelings into release.

And that brings us back to bliss.

This bliss is not a high. It is not a temporary thing (unless I choose that path). It is a new starting point. I am so aware these days of how close bliss is. You won’t see a silly smile on my face to indicate this. What I’m experiencing is internal. And it looks like the following things:

• I am not creating story (OMG this is so HUGE)

• curiosity leads

• past trauma has been released like Fall leaves (yep, I don’t understand it either)

• forgiveness and love are like rivers of living water within me

• a new vantage point has been provided so that I can see from above and within

• explosion of new gifts of self and being

• Being and Becoming is the truth and it is a powerful truth

After the Wounding

How long the process of healing
a flush of purpose propels us into what we think is our new front yard.
New place
New name
New job
New town
and we are in. We are all in
the way we were once all in as kids
at the lake
running down the pier and leaping into the water.

And the work feels great.

We keep marveling at ourselves, our success, our growth. Aren't we amazing? We should write a book. We are in. We are all in
the way we were mid-semester when we realize there is still more semester to go.

And the work feels purposeful.

Then something catches up with us.
A sigh.
Yes, I think its a sigh
from deep inside the lungs, down where the inferior lobe of the right lung is, the furthest away from the heart, the heart that is too full of memory, the bottom bit of lung that that needs a mindful breath in order to fill...

A sigh so deep that it catches in our eyes
without warning.
Grief. We are all in.
And the work feels hard.

For months we keep up the doing and being because if we think too hard we'll break. So we heal like a blister on the tenderest part of the body watching the scab go from fresh to green to hard as nails as new skin forms in sticky newness beneath, and we reach goals and write in our journal "Hey I'm doing so well" and when a friend stops us and asks us how we're really doing we nearly meltdown from the heat of the question and the delicateness of the answer. But we say "Oof, a little emotional, but I'm fine. I'm good." and the smile never reaches above the cheeks, which we brush off when the asker is no longer looking.

Depression is a day, a week, a month in bed. It is also a whisper that our ear hears when its just you and your snoring dog on the couch. A whisper that makes us turn our head and the action lets some truth loose inside and we think "Oh, I'm sad." And then its gone, like a wisp of a barely real thought that also lingers, over there, for quite some time.

If we're lucky, we have a voice that is our balm. A laugh from some other body and vocal cords that raise our spirits. Without knowing. A balm, an elixer, a fixer.

And just like the meditation bell, the reverberation of vibration that rings a tone to awaken the drowsy monk on her cushion, our thoughts move from inside of us to right in front of us, putting a hand out to shake, an introduction, and now a knowing.

We are no longer who we once were. And who we were, was built and shaped by mistakes of others that we believed, and followed and never questioned. Or yes, we questioned but their version made sense to our crooked understanding and to the dents in our brain-logic placed there by untruths and manipulations.

We are no longer who we once were, and we have moved through a desolation, a darkness, or maybe even just a periodic shadowed time,
a hibernation
in order to wake up
and find ourselves truly in a
New place

New name

New job

New town

and we are in. We are all in
the way a baby leaf unfurls from within an older leaf
wanting to have her say.

~amysgallritchie

Fault Lines

I’m not a fan of finding fault.

Oh, I do it. But I’m not a fan of it. Because always, 100% of the time, the fault is not as simple as it seems.

So, what if we think of fault more like a geological fault line? A fault line is a crack in the earth surface. It is a weak point.

YES, I say!

There is fault, weakness, in the human experience. Once a fault is revealed, we’ve just been introduced to the way in for strengthening and resolving what went wrong. In an odd way, this makes a fault the greatest gift for healing, reconciliation, and moving forward with maturity and growth.

That just makes me smile.

Check in with yourself just now: how does it make you feel to consider your faults? Are you wishing to hide them? Point to someone else’s faults to deflect from yours? Does it make you sad? Make you want to hide? Does it make you smile?

What do you want your response to be?

That then is our work. What do you want your response to human-fault to be, your own fault lines, to be? We then work to understand ourselves, our own faults, until we smile because they are no longer monsters under the bed, about to pounce and be revealed.

And you know what? This is the best part….

Once we see our faults as a great gift toward our maturing, we are automatically prone to offer grace when someone else shows their fault lines.

And that is how the world works.

With tremendous hope,

Amy

Billionaires in space

If you had multiple billions of dollars, how would you spend it?

I think heading into space, if you could, is great. With each adventure forward we learn something new. With each push of the outer envelope, we become something new.

I want to ask Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson

• how did it feel when you took off

• what did you think (for real) as you watched the earth recede

• what did you learn about yourself

• what did you learn about the cosmos

• how did this make you a better person, connect you to your fellow humans

I won’t assume these 3 ultra rich men to have learned anything, nor will I assume they did not. Because I’ve heard too many stories of ordinary folks who make under $50k learn so much and so little. Because we are human.

We are human and are driven to distract ourselves from the wounds right in front of us, deep within us. The ones we drag around from one of our own cosmic launches to another. It doesn’t matter that we are not in a space vehicle we’ve funded ourselves. We are on our own adventures on spaceship earth, and we learn so little.

I think it is worthy of judging these three fellows (and I’m not the judging sort) that they are doing this each on their own instead of collaborating. I think it is worthy to judge that none of them have at the same time announced a sweeping plan to save Flint MI water catastrophe, or hunger or pay off all medical debt.

But, what am I doing for Flint, hunger, medical debt? What steps am I launching right where I am to make a difference? I can’t point my finger at anyone.

So, what are your space adventures? Your cosmic launches where you had not imagined you’d go?

• how did it feel when you took off

• what did you think (for real) as you watched your comfort place recede

• what did you learn about yourself

• what did you learn about the cosmos

• how did this make you a better person, connect you to your fellow humans

And maybe, if you had a billion dollars to blow, what would you name your project, and why?

Peace,

Amy

Vacations and self understanding

The Myers-Briggs tells me that I am an extrovert. It is true, that the Jungian understanding is that I get energized in the presence of people. I have always known this. I do my most creative writing at coffee shops where I am at my own table, surrounded by the buzz of others. The energy of individuals studying, friends talking, baristas chatting away is all I need.

As I learn and experiment with what it means to plan and go on vacations as a single, interdependent woman, I am learning that I am a social introvert. I love the idea of spending a long weekend in Asheville, Nashville, Savannah, Denver. But to think about going alone, is a hard stop. I think about my ideal road trip as a rolling vacation of coffee shops and diners along Route 66. Or staying at home. I will go anywhere in the big cities if I have a friend to travel with (vigorous nod to Carrie and Miami). But considering taking an actual vacation by myself? I love the thought of staying in my little vintage home, and exploring coffee shops that I can do in a day’s drive.

Why is this important? Because it is a major identity shift, a huge change in understanding of who I am. And it makes so much sense as to why I’ve been conflicted about vacation plans.

Any time we feel resistance or conflict within ourselves, it is a moment to consider what we are telling ourselves. Journal it out, talk with a friend, go for a walk, tell your dog. I like to take a drive and talk out loud. The clarity that will come, just might be a key on the journey of an authentic life.

When we can step out of the culture flow, out of our own presumption of being, we free ourselves up to a whole world of new possibilities. Like my own story, What I thought of myself is still true, but there is a true story being unveiled. I can embrace the extrovert energizing reality, and the introvert peace that is blooming..

More often than not, AND is the most holy word. Multiple truths can be applied at the same time. Authenticity is an ongoing process of becoming, emerging, evolving.

With you,

Amy

Fast moving sled

One of the things I last wrote to my Beloved Persimmons, was that, basically, come hell or high water I was going to mine this pandemic for all its worth. That was innocently and with great confidence only a few weeks in. We are 10 months in, going on another year.

How did you do?

I should know better than to set myself up for determined growth. It has come careening down a steep hill, like a fast moving sled that has had its runners greased…..

whew.

About 8 months in, there was realization that I wasn’t just going to grow, but to transform. March - August were just about surviving the transitions brought on by a sorrow-filled-yet-illuminating divorce, a pandemic, liminal space of waiting and then an astounding vocational call. There was a bit of whiplash when landing better than I could have imagine. Some grief and guilt came with that. Who am I to even, then, have residual healing when what rose up was a stunning place of vocation, a home, health, proximity to Mom and family? I shushed myself a lot. Be grateful (I was) I said to myself.

September felt like the most normal month in a year. I felt like Amy. Like Amy who was settling in.

October came along and I set a retreat goal (last several years I’ve taken retreat during my birthday week) to revisit old narratives, sayings, beliefs, and see which ones are simply no longer true, or to rewrite what I’m thinking as I continue to morph my self forward. WOW, the first week, on a seemingly normal morning stroll with Alfie-the-dog, the first narrative came blazing down the snow covered hill and crashed into a tree of change: “…I’ve landed in my life.” In a flash, a moment different from the one before it, I was happy. A word that I had not claimed for a heartbreak of time. I was in a life I had not fully claimed before. A degree of the fetters of sorrow and woeful telling just evaporated.

November and December were filled with internal conversations, conversations with my spiritual director, and other partners that just kept me sledding onward. A few more tree crashes of change, back on the sled, keep going to the next one. Music came back into my life, and dancing (!) with abandon, and squats. When my body speaks, it is always interesting.

By now, I’ve learned how to dodge the trees, and just sway the sledding motion through the trees of change without needing to crash. I also am less worried when the crash is inevitable; I know how to get back on the sled and go.

Holy Cow.

And I’m not done. I’m exhausted and startled by the transformation taking place. But it is not done. The next rise, the next little hill for my swift sled reveals something I’ve not considered, or need to consider again. Some of these little hills have sent me soaring, landing with a thud. But the sled keeps going.

Why am I telling you this?

I don’t know. It is what is in me to write today. To honor. To come back to months from now. To come back to months from now and see where I was, and where I’m still heading.

I’d like to end this sledding adventure. I’d like to finally arrive at the lodge where some hot chocolate, a warm fire, a friendly smile awaits. But this trip is long. And I don’t yet know what lodge I’m headed toward.

Beloveds. Your pace through your intentions is set by you.

But if you do not set your own intentions and pace, someone else will. All around us are folks with their own agendas, looking for unintentioned folks who are sleepwalking through their lives. The sleepwalkers will wake up and wonder how they got where they are.

Don’t be a sleepwalker.

Decide if you’re a bobsledder, a nordic skier, booter, underclothed freezing traveler, snowshoer….or if you’re still in your car, running the heater, gas dangerously nearing empty.

What will it be? What will you be if you take charge of your own becoming? A becoming that was set within you before your stardust turned to human flesh? A becoming that has been waiting for you?

Transformation isn’t for everyone. But if it is for you, then let’s get going when most every cell in you is ready to go. Get out of the car and into the adventure.

Always, with you always.

Amy