Friday, November 8, 2019

Who would you be if your inner critic retired?

I recently returned from a four day women’s meditation retreat. The three women leaders created a safe warm holding space for all of us. I felt the tension I carry in my body around pretense dissipating. I could see my familiar habitual pattern of pretending and presenting a certain version of myself to create an image as a option I had the choice to choose or not. The collaborative leadership style modeled by our three leaders set the stage for all of us to trust our embodied feminine intuitive wisdom in each decision that we made.  Everything was optional in contrast to more traditionally led structured retreats I have previously attended. All decisions from when to get up to what to eat to how  and when to connect with nature became opportunities to mindfully connect with what felt right to me in my body. It was a silent retreat. The leaders spoke and presented instructions, logistics, talks and exercises for us to do in our journals or speaking in pairs. It was winter in the mountains. It was snowy and cold and clear and sunny and gorgeous and toasty warm inside the lodge. We hiked in a silent procession and lay on the rocks in the middle of our hike soaking the sun into our skin.
I love silent retreats because I don’t have to strain to hear anyone. The leaders passed my little microphone that transmits their voices into my hearing aids with such care and compassion. Their kindness brought me to tears as they treated my microphone as a sacred talking stick. When all 25 of us shared at the end the whole group passed my microphone. I was really moved and sobbed gratefully. The love that we all created for each other was palpable, even though most of us were strangers at the start. Women authentically holding each other in curiosity, respect and positive regard is the elixir of the goddess. One talk was about self compassion and we learned about Kilanda  Swahara the always broken goddess who knows her own fragility and strength and doesn’t have to pretend to be perfect.
 I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in this embodied feminine wisdom celebration. I came away with a deeper sense of my power and my humanity with a renewed faith in my ability to love fully. I felt hopeful about the community we created to practice mindfulness and shared love. It was a joy to watch each woman blossom in her own way from the experience of being seen and heard.
One repeating question we asked each other in pairs was Who would you be if your inner critic retired? The process of contemplating that question inspired this poem.

Who would you be if your inner critic retired?

The inner critic is the inner compassionate voice
in the grips of fear.
Embrace the inner critic
Let her bluster and tremble
Hold her in loving kindness
Appreciate her protecting you
Since you were a small child.
Watch her breathe a sigh of relief
And let go into trusting that
You are a grownup now
Who can take care of herself.
She will begin to contemplate retiring,
Content to sit by the river
And sip coconut water.

by Andrea Silver 10/28/2019
with a bow to Jean, Alice and Alicia

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Invitation

I haven’t written a blog in a long time. I have been writing poetry again and would like to share a poem. I bow to Oriah Mountain Dreamer whose poem The Invitation has long been my inspiration.


Invitation

Knowing you is inspiring me to buy skirts,
embracing my juicy female spirit.
Being real with you is inspiring me to write poetry
and to speak truth from my heart,
as medicine in support of awakening.
Stretching toward you and setting boundaries
is inspiring me to pay deep attention to myself,
caring for myself and listening to my own needs
as if my life depended upon it,
which, of course, it does.
The past beckons me to abandon myself,
 play small and people please.
Instead I choose now.
Shaking with terror and excitement,
I sing in my full voice, dance in the moonlight,
howl at the moon, and invite you to join me.

                            Andrea Silver
                           August 3, 2019

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Kindness to strangers

Valentine’s day brought these two experiences of the kindness of strangers and I felt hopeful for myself and for humanity.

1) I was the third car in line waiting at a traffic light at a busy intersection. The driver of car number one gets out of his car and walks back to car number two and talks to the driver. The driver of car number two gets out of his car and motions to me that he will only be a minute. Both drivers push the first car together, the driver steering the car and the other pushing from behind.  The first car starts and the first driver jumps in, thanks the second driver and drives off. The second driver walks back to his car looks at me and I give him a thumbs up. He smiles. They were obviously complete strangers and they both risked and made themselves vulnerable for a stranger. The first driver asked for help from a stranger and the second offered help. In these days of road rage both men risked bravely. As I drove off my heart was warmed by their respective courage and generosity.

2) From there I drove to the grocery store in a light-hearted mood. In line at the check-out I was feeling playful. The person in front of me was buying a few items and ten small wrapped chocolate truffles. I smiled and asked him if he was planning to eat them all. He said no, he was gifting them to others. The cashier, the man buying the truffles and I began to have a nice conversation. When the man was ready to leave he gave the cashier and me both a truffle and said Happy Valentine’s Day. We both thanked him and warmly returned his good wishes. She and I felt connected in our receiving of our gifts. We marveled at his sweet act. Kindness to strangers for no reason is an act of service that ripples out. I later gave my truffle to a friend for dessert. Giving felt as sweet as receiving.

In her children’s book called Cara’s Kindness former Olympic ice skater Krysti Yamaguchi writes
about a group of animal friends who pass on kindnesses to each other. In the story the kindness
circles back to Cara who gets help finding music to dance her solo ice skating performance from a blind friend who gifted her the song he wrote for her. Cara was the one to be kind in the beginning by teaching a terrified friend to skate. It is my grandson’s favorite book. I love that book because it is wise and gently and playfully passes on the deliciousness of giving and receiving kindness.

What if every day could be an opportunity to give and receive kindness? Sometimes it’s as simple as giving another attention or receiving a smile and returning it. Sometimes it’s simply saying thank you to a complement. What about acknowledging someone else’s efforts with a “good job”? I am planning to use my creativity to find ways to give and receive kindness in my daily life. Won’t you join me?


Friday, February 15, 2019

Love is your Super Power

My creative daughter made capes for all my grandsons’ fellow pre-schoolers for Valentine’s Day. They all said, Love is my super power.
What a lovely message for Valentine’s Day. I have been thinking about that message and imagining twenty little boys and girls whizzing around in their lives with that message on their backs.
What if it was true for all of us?
If love is our super power how does that super power show up in our lives? In my life loving myself enough to be authentic and vulnerable about who I really am creates the space and safety for other people to be authentic and vulnerable as well. That is my superpower. Other people can sense that energy in me. I can sense the energy of a person who is willing to be authentic and vulnerable and I  am attracted to that energy. Self-acceptance helps my superpower manifest. Harsh judgement impedes my superpower. Judging myself for my harsh judgement is like my kryptonite. Recognizing when I am judging myself and accepting that I am judging is the antidote to the kryptonite. Rocognition and Acceptance of judgement repairs judgement.
When we are children and we feel strong feelings there is often no support for experiencing, expressing and releasing those feelings. At least that was true for me as a child. My parents weren’t skillful about accepting their own strong feelings and therefore coached me by example in learning to suppress mine. Emotion is energy in motion. If the energy of emotion is experienced it can easily be released. When one of my small grandsons is sobbing and my daughter holds him he usually skips off in a matter of minutes. He has discharged the energy of the pain he is feeling by crying and being comforted and the pain has moved. If the pain isn’t released it begins to take up residency in our bodies. Repeated very painful experiences that are suppressed become trauma that is held in our bodies. Research is showing that the pain of trauma creates physical and emotional symptoms. What if giving ourselves more permission to discharge the emotions of mad, sad, glad and scared allows our super power to manifest?
When it’s not safe to feel our feelings we make up stories about ourselves in lieu of releasing them. I’m not lovable, or there’s something wrong with me are two of my favorite stories. As children we turn these stories into strategies to make the world make sense. I’m not good enough or I’m to blame are two stories a lot of people learned to use on themselves to avoid the lonliness and terror of strong feelings felt alone. For instance children often blame themselves for their parents divorcing. If only I was a better girl, my parents wouldn’t have been so mad at each other. This is a common story that becomes a strategy of needing to be perfect for children who blame themselves for their parents divorse. Children who are supported in feeling all of their own strong feelings about their parents divorcing and clearly reassured that the divorse had nothing to do with anything they did can let go of their self-blame stories or maybe not create them in the first place.
When we notice we are judging ourselves or others we can use our super power of love to recognize the judgement, be kind to ourselves and address the authentic feelings we are having underneath the judgement. When I am judging another person it is often that their differences from me scare me. When I can be with myself and ask myself to be willing to embrace my fear and express the energy of it the fear can release and the judgement can dissolve. When I do this work I am often left with a feeling of connection with the person I was judging. Let’s say I am judging someone for having a large body. Looking underneath, I can feel my own fear about having a large body. I can shake or cry and even share that fear with another person, other than the one I am judging. Then I have used my super power to allow myself to feel connected to the person I was judging. I can see that other people experience pain and pleasure too. Other people are suffering and experiencing joy like I am, too.In this way I can use my super power of love to experience the oneness of all beings. Such a gift. I am grateful for my super power of love and I commit to using it to love myself and others. My intention is to support others in knowing that love is the superpower of all of us. What if  all of us could don our capes and and take as our mission to use our lives to practice our super power of love and heal  ourselves, each other and the planet? What if each of us in our own small and large ways feel good  about ourselves for all the ways we manifest love every day? What if that would grow our love to celebrate ourselves for loving in all the ways we do every day? Do you accept this mission? Nod your head and feel your cape shimmer.