Category Archives: Fearless Living

When the Absence of Pain Feels Like a Presence

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Barb| 10 Comments

A little over a year ago, I had my gallbladder out, with happy assurances that the pain that had been interrupting my sleep and my dinners would disappear. But it didn’t. And every night, I would wake up at 4:00 AM in pain.

But I’m a Reiki practitioner, right? I should be able to fix this! I mean, if I can cure my husband’s glaucoma, surely I can take care of a simple belly pain? So last Tuesday, after high-fiving all the way home from the eye clinic (seriously, the pressure in his eye went from 26 down to 18 using nothing but Reiki and how incredibly cool is that????) I thought, dammit, it’s time. I managed to find the right kind of magic and my belly pain disappeared. Yay me, right?

Well, sort of. No more pain. And I was still waking up at 4:00 AM, just as I had been doing for the past two years or so.
At first I thought it was the pain waking me up. But I took a deep breath and, no, it wasn’t there. So I just breathed into whatever it was that was waking me up and eventually relaxed and fell back to sleep.

And I think this experience is common to most people who lose a source of pain. It goes away and leaves behind a space and we don’t really know what to make of that space. So we rush to fill it.

I think this is why a recovering addict has a relapse. Why someone who finally leaves a bad marriage enters into another one. Or, heaven help me, leaves a crap job only to sign up for another (It took awhile, but I think I’ve left that one behind).
Awareness is huge. Knowing that you will feel the absence of pain as a space. Not calling that space emptiness, or worse, a hole. Holding it open, just breathing into it and allowing yourself the time you need to see what it develops into. Being kind to yourself if you have filled it with more pain. It is, after all what we’re used to. It can feel so right.

We set our clocks back on the weekend. And since my body can’t tell the difference between one hour and two, I’ve started waking up at 6:00, which is really close to snuggle time. And eventually the dog wants in and then he’ll need to be taken out for the first walk of the day and any day that starts with the phrase, “Ruffles, walkies?” is pretty much guaranteed to be a good day.

Breathe. Hold the space open. Be kind to yourself.

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Posted in Fearless Living

Relax. You’re Fine. Just The Way You Are.

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Barb| 22 Comments

A few weeks ago, Karen Schulman Dupuis invited me to take part in this year’s Ignite Stratford. So of course I said yes. The title of my presentation was, yes, “Relax. You’re Fine. Just The Way You Are.” A few people have asked me to post the transcript here, which, hey! Easy blog post! The videos will be up on YouTube soon and I’ll post that as well, for those of you who weren’t able to make it out last Thursday night.

Many years ago, while browsing through the Self-Help section of my favourite bookstore, I thought that if I ever wrote one of those things, I’d call it “Relax. You’re Fine. Just the Way You Are.”

Inside would be blank…

And then someone invented blogging, so I did that instead.

As I look around, I am always amazed and saddened by how dissatisfied we are with ourselves. How we enact Get Tough policies against ourselves on an almost daily basis, thinking we need to lose more weight, get more organized, be more successful. We think we need to become perfect when, really? There’s nothing wrong with who we are!

We are, all of us, miraculous.

Alive.

Feeling.

Throbbing with life.

Every single one of us is completely unique. Since the dawn of time, there has never been anyone quite like you. And there will never be another you, ever again.

I say, let that shine and to hell with those last ten pounds!

As a Reiki Practitioner, I get to touch people. And the variety of proportions of people is amazing. Upper arm to lower, arms to legs, left side to right, no one matches. No one is “in proportion”. We are all ourselves – a unique and miraculous measure of humanity.

And in the face of that, notions of correctness and perfection go right out the window.

Perfection and definitions of perfection are an arrogant and frightened attempt to corral the wild wonderfulness of life into something manageable.

Give it up!

Let the wildness and the wonder of it wash over you. Wallow in it. Drink it up and understand that perfection is everywhere. Yes, even in you!

Whether you believe that humanity evolved over time or that we each come straight from the hand of God, isn’t it strange, after your Mother’s been through 97 hours of labour to have you, to then look at her and all the ancestors who formed you and say, “No. It’s OK. I can fix this!”

It’s like looking at a sunset and telling it to try a little less orange next time. Or telling a robin that his song is too high-pitched. Or telling flower that it needs to drop a few petals.

YOU DON’T NEED FIXING!

There are so many better things you can do with your time, your limited, once in all eternity time on this earth.

This is your trip of a lifetime. Do you seriously want to spend it whipping yourself into shape? Forcing yourself up that ladder of success? Feeling bad about yourself?

There are so many more things to see and experience. Stuff to try. Trouble to get into.

Big crazy projects to launch, just to see where they go.

Friends to discover and cherish.

There are babies to snuggle.

Books to read and wine to drink.

Ideas to follow down strange and wonderful tangents for no productive reason, but because they’re interesting.

There are old people to learn from and love (and to mourn when they’re gone).

And dinners to share, during which you tell the stories of the people you’ve known and the ideas you’ve had.

I’m not saying to never make improvements or to let everything slide – humanity jsut isn’t built that way.

Lord knows, I’m a huge improver! I like to keep my house on the cleaner and tidier end of the spectrum. It suits me.

Eating healthy food and getting enough sleep lets me function better so that I can really enjoy the big adventures when they come along.

And, when I’m out walking my dog, I have been known to break into the occasional light run. It feels good and Ruffles loves it.

So jog if you want to. Cut out the junk food if it makes you feel better. Give to a good cause if you really believe in it.

But please, do these things because they bring you joy, because they’re part of the wonderful banquet of life and not because you think you’re loathesome. Because you’re not.

Believe me. You can relax. Because you’re fine. You are SO fine.

Just the way you are.

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Posted in Happy Living

Tagged Relax, self improvement

Never Too Old

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Barb| 22 Comments

Just before we opened the bakery, while Alan and I were in the middle of set-up mayhem, we took a little side-trip to the beach with a friend of ours. We brought some wine and some cheese and crackers. We wiggled our toes in the sand. We dreamed dreams and schemed schemes. It was lovely. And as we were sitting there, watching the sun creep down toward the horizon, the thought floated through my head that, how cool is it that we still get to do this? Because not one of us will see 4o again. And, while it’s not unusual for a bunch of middle-aged types to sit on beaches, it is unusual for people to continue to dream and to risk making those dreams real.

See, we have this idea that there’s a time for that sort of thing and that after awhile you have to stop. You get to a certain age and whatever it is you’re doing, whatever your stage in life, well, it just has to stay that way forever and everandever until you die. We all, I think, have a number in our heads after which we think we’re just supposed to quit dreaming.

But you know what? It’s an illusion. A lie we tell ourselves. An excuse, maybe, so we don’t have to keep on scaring ourselves with these outlandish hopes and risks. Or maybe we’re afraid of looking foolish and it’s one thing to look foolish when you’re young but something entirely different to look foolish AT YOUR AGE.

And so some of us stop. We settle down, we stay safe. We save for a secure retirement. We stop dreaming. We start to grow old.

Or.

We can continue to take chances. We can acknowledge that time, yes, is moving on and we are getting older. I’m turning 5o on Thursday. I just became a great aunt for the ninth time. Alan and I also just spent a helluva lot of money that we didn’t actually have to open a new business. Big risk. We may never retire. We don’t care. We feel more alive, excited and happy these days than we have in a really long time.

The risks are worth it.

Alan and I aren’t the only ones taking chances. A friend of mine got married for the first time at the age of 70. They had two happy years together and then her husband died of esophogeal cancer. She misses him terribly but she doesn’t regret a thing. And how cool is that?

When my siblings were young, my parents signed them (and eventually me) up for piano lessons. My Dad listened to us practising, day after day after day and one day asked the piano teacher if she ever taught adults. She was happy to take him on as a student. My sister and I were secretly horrified. The man was 4o, for heaven’s sake. In our childish view of things, 4o was practically dead and why on earth was he bothering to learn to play piano soooo late in life? Dad lived to be 81. Played his piano right up until he died and loved every minute of it.

When we moved in with her, we talked my mother into replacing her uncomfortable mattress with something more padded and cosy. We had a discussion in the furniture store. Mum felt that it was ridiculous to buy a new mattress at this stage in her life. It would be a waste of money. I said, “Look, if they deliver it and you get even one good night’s sleep on it, it will be totally worth it.” She had four months in the new bed before she had to move into a nursing home. Four months of comfy, restful sleeps. Totally worth it.

I’ve been trying to get my thoughts about this all nice and tight and coherent. It’s not going to work. I’m sleep-deprived and distracted by the many demands of a new business. I’ve left it so long that some of you lovelies have started to worry. Sorry about that, but thank you for your kind messages. You’ve warmed my heart. So I’ll just have to put this out there, a little random and rough around the edges and hope that you can get what I’m trying to say.

Dream big dreams. And never ever stop. Because it’s the cessation of dreaming that makes us old. It’s having nothing to look forward to that shortens our lives. Life is meant to be risky. It’s supposed to be scary and exciting and breathtaking. Even at your age.

***I was very flattered when Maureen Argon asked if she could interview me and take some pictures for Spotlight Toronto. The resulting post flattered me even more. Thanks Maureen!***

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Posted in Fearless Living

Tagged inspiration

Celebrating Garden Lessons

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Barb| 6 Comments

Good lord it’s Friday already!

I’ve been working away on a big, crazy garden project for the last several weeks. It involves digging out all the grass in my front boulevard and planting perennials and other lovely things. I’m alllllmost at the halfway point (I can only give it about an hour a day before my knees start to wobble). And it’s looking… Well, it’s looking like crap, frankly, but that’s the fun of gardening, isn’t it? It’s a collaboration between you and the plants and the soil and the bugs. This is something I’m finally beginning to understand – that it’s not me imposing my will on them, it’s all of us working together to make something wonderful.

And as I start to understand this, I’m learning to step back and listen. I’m learning patience (which if you know me at all, you’ll know is some kind of miracle). Because if you practice patience, if you listen to what it’s telling you, you stand a much better chance of ending up with a lovely, thriving garden filled with happy, healthy plants.

An example: I bought some miniature irises at an auction two years ago and planted them in two different spots out front. The ones that are on the boulevard flowered this year. The ones beside the porch where it’s shady, didn’t. So I transplanted those. They seem happier already.

As if that isn’t enough work and learning for one summer, (or as one of my neighbours said the other day as I was digging and sweating, “Whoa! Now THAT’S a project!!!!”) we’ve also volunteered our backyard to the Stratford Urban Farming Experiment. It’s a brilliant concept. Homeowners offer up their plots of land. Volunteers come out and prepare and plant the beds. The homeowners are in charge of watering, weeding and reporting when things are ready for harvest or if something alarming happens. And then the food is split among the homeowners, the volunteers and the local food bank. I can’t even keep track of how many wins there are in this scenario.

Our garden manager stopped in for a visit the other day. I was nervous about the weeding and wanted someone to tell me what should stay and what should go. She duly pointed out which was which and then asked, “Have you never grown vegetables before?” And I realized that, no, I haven’t, aside from the occasional tomato.

Which, fine, whatever. While I highly recommend getting out and getting your hands in the dirt, learning what a carrot looks like as it starts to poke its tiny fuzzy greenery above ground, learn what plants need and how crazy prolific the earth can be if we just shut up and get out of the way, I also want to say what a difference the name of that group is making in my gardening efforts and in my life. Heather, the woman who started the group will quietly say, “Well, it’s an experiment. So if it doesn’t work…” Which is soooo incredibly freeing!

Now, when I move my plants around, or try making my own mulch by sending my old journals and newspapers through the shredder, leading visitors to ask, “What’s with the confetti?” (love ya, Douglass!) I can relax. Because it’s just an experiment and if it doesn’t work, I’ll clean up the mess and try something else.

This in addition to my Reiki instructor who emphasises that, yes, we move energy, yes we try to help people, but the word she uses over and over again is Play. I play with the energy. I play with the handmade cards that I’m selling. I play outside with my garden. I try experiments. Playfully. It’ll go off in directions I don’t expect. There will be results I can’t forsee. And that’s fine and it’s good and it’s delightful, even the disappointments, because there’s no pressure in play. We expect things to blow up when we run experiments. We know we’ll run another one. We don’t want play to have an end point.

There’s a lot of power in those words, Play and Experiment. I’d like you to try them out in your life and then please let me know what happens.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

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Posted in Happy Living

Tagged celebrations, creativity, Do over

The Kerplunk Theory of Energy Movement part 2

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Barb| 12 Comments

Well hello there! It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. I’ve had a bunch of thoughts running around in my head lately, but none of them would settle down long enough to become an actual post.

I’ve also been doing a lot of gardening – digging all the grass out of my front boulevard and trying to turn it into something pretty and low-maintenance. It’s a hellish amount of work, but it’s coming along and percolating more thoughts for more posts in the future. And you should see my biceps!!!

Anyway…

In part 1 of this ramble I mentioned that I played with the energy in someone’s shoulder and they started to see opportunities where none had been before. That someone was my lovely husband and the opportunities are all the things that needed to come together for him to be able to open a bakery. It’s something he’s been trying to do for nearly three years now and there was always something missing. He could find a space at a reasonable rent, but couldn’t find the ovens he needed. Or he had the ovens, but nowhere to put them. It was really frustrating. Painful at times.

But things have come together. He’s signed the lease on the bake space, has a line on the ovens, places lined up to sell to. And customers lined up drooling and waiting to buy – Alan makes really good bread.

So am I claiming that this all came about through the power of Reiki? Yes, totally, because it makes him roll his eyes every time I do and how fun is that???

Seriously, though. I can’t claim that it’s all down to the Reiki. Alan was doing his homework. He was looking and trying. I just find it really interesting that none of that was moving the dream forward and after a couple of treatments, Presto!

Before you write me off completely, let me tell you what I think might have happened.

Alan has a sore shoulder – an injury that keeps flaring up every time he does ‘this’. We haven’t figured out what ‘this’ is so that he can stop doing it, but an hour on the Reiki table and he feels better. At least until he does ‘this’ again…

Pain depletes our energy really really quickly. Injuries need to heal and that takes energy. Relieving the pain, even for just a little while frees up some of that energy, lets you be more alert, lets you see opportunity, lets you use your problem-solving skills.

Energy interconnects with everything. Is the connection that we can’t see. Is the reason making your shoulder feel better can help your dreams fall into your lap like a ripe plum.

So if your life isn’t moving ahead the way you’d like it to, maybe you could try taking care of the thing that seems inconsequential, but is constantly throbbing away in the background, hurting you and stealing away your energy.