A poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
Widening circles
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I will give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and still I don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
We know the winter of Earth as a regular experience. We expect it and prepare for the season though we may not all enjoy the cold and darkness. We have holidays, sweaters, fires, and warm drinks to comfort us along the way. Many of us create a traditional or improvised hearth in our homes to welcome family and friends as additional cheer.
Winter can be felt as more than a seasonal affair for the planet. This post, written for you mid fall, comes alongside reflection on how Jessica and I have allowed a winter in our friendship on more than one occasion. If you’re new to the blog, we are two long time friends who want to connect with you about showing up for life with as much presence and genuine positivity as we can without denying the full scope of our human experience.
We have been away from the blog for some time — a winter, if you a will. When chatting about this and if we wanted to let this space go or continue on, we remembered two distinct winters within our friendship when both of us were going through transitional time periods. When we returned to the friendship it involved a conscious decision to change our expectations around relating through different chapters of life. It also involved a total drop of ego to reach out again after a gap in communication. If you want to restart and/or maintain a friendship (whatever the distance), someone has to take the initiative of reaching out with heartfelt communication to let the other know they’re important to you and that you appreciate having them in your life.
In hindsight Jess and I know that taking big breathers (at one point a year without communication) meant not holding the other to a certain way of being based on what had been. It meant we were allowing decomposition of the old which can be sad, scary, and lonely. We have experienced its potential and beauty though collectively we are not taught to do this intentionally and I can say we were not consciously intentional at the time.
The first winter was in our late teens to early 20s after I had become part of a significant romantic relationship and Jessica had explorations to undertake that were quite different than anything we had been doing together. (Ask her about skydiving sometime.) The second winter was in our mid to late 20s with becoming a mother for me and adjusting to a new life in another part of the country for Jess as she committed to the man that is her husband today. It could seem that these are times when you want to hold a steady connection with your dear friend, but sometimes the opposite is what’s needed most – to let go- to let space do its thing.
Winter is important and necessary. You may even spy small winters within your daily cohabitation with another person and you may witness it with creative projects too. Allowing space for nothingness also allows space for new seeds to grow into new ways of relating, fresh ideas, as well as to appreciate what has changed.
As we work our way back into sharing here with you, we bring along our new ways of being since we last posted. Jessica has spent the time away training as a yoga therapist and is now living in a new location with her family. I have spent the time becoming a certified wellness coach, sound healing facilitator, and teacher of kundalini infused movement and meditation practices. We are looking forward to sharing with you in this next season!
With deep gratitude for you all — Valerie 💫
MIRROR PIECE
Instead of obtaining a mirror,
obtain a person.
Look into him.
Use different people.
Old, young, fat, small, etc.1964 spring
Grapefruit by Yoko Ono
What would happen if you interacted with others as a reflection of you?
What would you notice?
What would you want to see more of and what would you change?
Sending you lots of love in the experience of this exercise. 💕✨
“Enlightenment… a daily practice of being a source of light for oneself and others at any given moment.”
– Enlightened Bodies by Nirmal Lumpkin & Japa Kaur Khalsa
What a wonderful obtainable definition of enlightenment! The practice of living as a source of light is inclusive. Anyone can do this with awareness. It’s not about hurdles or climbing mountains or standing on your head — though, those things may shake up the external environment for you to consider your internal world differently. Living with present moment awareness that you are a light in this world, is enough. You, dear one, are more than enough.
A guided exercise with voice and supportive instrumentation to assist in anchoring light within your being:
7-8 minutes / Headphones recommended
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
A long while ago I took an appointment for a hair cut, wash, and blow dry with a stylist that was new to me. He had lived in a few different countries and spoke with a slight french accent over something else I wasn’t quite sure about. He carried a confident delivery of promises about the haircut he was going to give me – no bones about it:
“This will be the best haircut you’ve ever had.”
“You are going to love this!”
“I am highly trained and know all the latest trends.”
I sat quietly in my chair looking over the straight forward shoulder length image ripped out of a magazine (yep, this was before smart phones) thinking I should have found something more exciting, somehow more exotic and difficult to pull off to match his proclamations.
As he worked his whole body became part of the process, swaying back and forth. When he moved to the front to cut in a cheekbone length layer, he asked, “Would you like to see my special technique?”
I wasn’t sure what that meant but gave him the go ahead anyhow. “Okay. I’d like to see that.”
He showed me away from the face first that he would lift up the hair with one hand and swoop through it with the shears in his other hand at an angle to get “just the right swing”. I remember him saying he did this all the time and it was really the way it should be done. He was so convincing. I felt fine to proceed.
A moment later the knuckles of his left hand met with my nose as he swooped by. Thankfully he was a little less animated close to my face and the force of the special technique was more shocking than it was painful. I sat stunned for a moment before I could react to his apologies and inquiry to my wellbeing to let him know I was indeed alright.
This was absolutely embarrassing for him in that moment, but he picked back up quickly and finished the cut. It did turn out to be a nice haircut and a story that I got a ton of laughs out of with a coworker of mine at the time. She happened to be an art teacher with plenty of scissors around and a dry sense of humor. The special technique brought in many smiles for years to come.
The takeaway? Everything that you experience depends on your degree of allowance and your perception of it in the moment as well as in hindsight. Sometimes the thing that is weird or awkward, embarrassing and maybe painful, or challenging for another reason — is also the thing one person or all involved needed to happen to learn something for the future, to make a change, or maybe just for loads of laughs later which truly is the best possible outcome in my book.
What we see depends mainly on what we look for…
In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.
John Lubbock
What are you drawn to notice initially?
What does your particular perspective allow you to see?
How could that be more inclusive or expansive?
The Poet Dreams of the Mountain
by Mary Oliver
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.
Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior’s world.
— Pema Chödrön
“Always follow your own truth in your own time.” — Frank Perry
You are the key to your best expression. No one else can tell you how to do you better or when something is in right timing for you. Align within before seeking outside yourself. Trust that what’s needed, desired, and/ or ready to be understood will arrive in the way that matches your current grooves when encountered.
Presence and Positivity 