Another Lesson in Radical Acceptance: A Loooooong Birth Story!

Warning of sorts: This tale includes a lot of details, many of which may strike the reader as boring and unnecessary. I intentionally left them for a few reasons. If my story resonates with that of others and so helps to increase a sense of connection and empathy while decreasing isolation, the extra detail is worth it. At least in my experience, throughout the pregnancy and birth journey too often people neither invite birthing parents* to share their experiences nor demonstrate a willingness to simply listen and witness those stories with compassionate understanding--to hold space for whatever a parent wants to express. Instead of being asked what is happening, too often we are told what we should be doing and how we should be doing it. Assumptions, generalizations, and rapidly drawn conclusions also abound, none of which helps us to feel supported and validated through what is, for many, a challenging process. Moreover, once the baby is born, many people are quick to say, "That was rough, but now you have this beautiful baby! Be grateful! What's wrong with you for not feeling only joy!?" If nothing else, I hope this post can reinforce what I know to be true: suppressing part of our experience so that others can feel comfortable or so we can avoid the difficult chapters of the story does not helps us to heal and learn from suffering. And suffering can be an amazing teacher when we allow it to serve that role. Human beings have the capacity to feel a panoply of emotions all at once and, as poet Danna Faulds instructs, "The only safety lies in letting it all in–the wild and the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success." I'm not sure where to start this story but acknowledging how much effort it took to bring our child into the world, well before her birth, seems too important to leave out. By no stretch of the imagination was she accidental. We needed some extra help to conceive this kiddo. L'il miss emerged from our sixth and final intrauterine insemination (IUI) at a fertility clinic, and two of those IUIs ended in miscarriages. When I found out I was pregnant for a third time, I waited with bated breath for the other shoe to drop. But the weeks kept passing, and the milestones kept piling up--hearing the baby's heartbeat for the first time, completing the first trimester, seeing those tiny legs kick at the 20-week ultrasound. I soon could not deny that this new life just might make it into the world. I'm not sure I took a full breath, however, until we arrived at the third trimester, and I knew our child would likely survive a premature birth.

Around that time, we moved across the country, and I transferred care from an OB/GYN to that of a registered midwife. I dreamed of birthing the baby in the low-stress environment of my own home, surrounded by my loving partner and supportive midwives who view childbirth as a rite of passage, not a medical event, and the birthing parent as a wise collaborator, not a patient who needs to be compliant to be "good." We began to prepare our house for the big day, and I planned for a natural birth the best I could by doing things like participating in a Birthing from Within class and yoga birth workshop. The birthing class, particularly, helped me to identify and confront my fears about the birth process as well as move toward acceptance that our best laid plans rarely turn out as expected. One particularly poignant memory I have from the class is the facilitator splashing black paint on the art projects we were in the process of creating. Our response to this action highlighted how attached we were to a particular outcome and presented an opportunity to be more flexible in our thinking and actions--to accept and surrender to situations beyond our control. She also introduced us to the useful metaphor of the labyrinth. As the Birthing from Within founder explains it,

The labyrinth is an ancient symbol representing our journey through life, ordeals, and transitions. Its single, convoluted pathway begins at the opening, leads directly to the center, and then returns along the same path to the outside again. Walking or finger-tracing a labyrinth invokes a sensation of turning inward, then outward...you could be blindfolded and still reach the center by feeling your way through the path. You don't need to study the path before you enter it. You don't need a birth plan or a cell phone to call for help! There is no time-line and no mistakes. Any and every birth fits within the labyrinth--whether long or short, medical or natural, cesarean or vaginal--or anywhere in between!...In the Labyrinth of Birth, the journey (with its twists and turns) reflects the emotional, spiritual, and social experience of giving birth.

Time seemed to simultaneously slow down and accelerate as my due date, November 11, came and went. Knowing that most first-time parents go over their "estimated due date," I tried to relax and enjoy the time off, as I had just begun maternity leave. I also began following the various counsel I sought out and received about triggering labor, such as going for a strenuous hike.

As 41 weeks approached, I went in for an ultrasound to make sure everything was still functioning well. Turns out my placenta and umbilical cord were still rocking and rolling, and the baby was not in distress. So we marched past the 41st week mark. I went to an acupuncturist for an induction session and my midwife for a membrane sweep (fun, fun!). I had received lots of signals from my body that things were moving in the childbirthing direction, but this visit to the midwife dashed my hopes. The unsuccessful membrane sweep revealed that I looked more like I was 39 weeks pregnant, not 41 weeks and a day.

I began to face the reality that a hospital induction may be necessary, as the medical community and my midwife did not support me going beyond 42 weeks given the potential harm to the baby in that scenario. Of course I did not want to put the baby at risk either and was not exactly feeling stellar--physically or emotionally--by that point (and I won't go into detail about hemorrhoids, but they were definitely and acutely on board as 42 weeks approached). Still, a hospital induction meant throwing out my birth plan and possibly facing the thing I feared most--a pitocin induction that significantly increased the likelihood of needing an epidural and, ultimately, a cesarean section. Starting to feel some desperation, I went to a chiropractor on week 41 day 2 and got adjusted, hoping a more relaxed and aligned pelvis would do the trick.

Within 36 hours of those three interventions, I began to have more consistent, intense contractions throughout the night that arrived every 5 to 8 minutes. I called my parents the morning of 41 weeks and 3 days and asked them to pick up our 11-month-old dog whose presence at the birth would have been a bit too much for everyone, including her.

That evening, I went to my midwife's partner (my midwife had left town for Thanksgiving--another twist in the labyrinth) for a craniosacral session, hoping it would relax my body enough to bring on active labor. But the contractions had already begun to slow down. I was able to get a good night's sleep and relished the rest but once again felt the disappointment of getting my hopes up about an eminent birth. I discovered the term prodromal labor on the Internet and hoped all this preparatory work would mean a faster delivery once I transitioned into active labor. I was in the thick of the labyrinth, feeling the jolt that comes from moving inward toward the center (i.e. childbirth) and then suddenly finding myself at the outward edge again.

At 41 weeks and 5 days, after another night of rough contractions and very little sleep, I went to town on induction strategies, which helped to lift my spirits as only frenetic activity can sometimes do. I returned to the chiropractor and acupuncturist. I also got a non-stress test and was happy to find out the baby was still chilling in my womb. My new midwife gave me another membrane sweep, this time successfully, and reported I was about 2 cm dilated and 50% effaced, which was a bit hard to hear given how exhausted I felt but at least showed some progress. That night, the contractions grew even more intense, to the point that I was on all fours through each one, praying that this not go on another day. But they remained inconsistent, refusing to show the patterned frequency that marks active labor.

At 41 weeks and 6 days, I went back to the acupuncturist for the third and final induction session. I also procured Chinese induction herbs and a homeopathic remedy. I crossed my fingers that these efforts would finally bring about active labor and, more importantly, my daughter. The midwife came over to our house that night to give me a pep talk when the thought of facing another night of frequent, painful contractions seemed overwhelming, particularly since my body had started shaking like a leaf that afternoon. Another craniosacral session calmed me down enough to face the night but active labor did not come.

However, the morning of 42 weeks and 0 days, I felt a surge of energy, recognizing this day was my final chance to have the baby at home. I used a breast pump to try to stimulate active labor and kept drinking my Chinese brew, plugging my nose to get the strong-smelling liquid down the hatch. My partner and I also went to a sports field where I carried my very pregnant belly up and down the bleachers, hoping the stairs would jostle that baby closer to the womb's exit. I had been resisting castor oil as the final non-medical induction strategy because I have a very sensitive system but decided at 11 a.m. that the possibility of avoiding a medical birth still outweighed the potential costs of taking this powerful laxative. I only consumed a tablespoon of that disgusting substance and, 30 minutes later, threw up everything in my system. Utterly deflated, I called the midwife, and she planned to come over for one final prenatal exam before we headed to the hospital. No sooner had I gotten off the phone, I had to run to the bathroom and, lo and behold, active labor commenced! I felt a wave of excitement, believing this was finally the transition I needed to stay at home and finish what I had set out to do. But after an hour, the contractions slowed down and became shorter, once again revealing a false start.

We headed to a hospital that uses nurse midwives that evening. They welcomed me with open arms, and I will forever be indebted to the wonderful staff at Denver Health Medical Center. After checking in, I learned that I could take morphine, which would not harm the baby but would block out the contractions enough for me to get a good night's rest after five days of on and off again labor. Then, the next morning, which happened to be Thanksgiving, I could take cytotek, a much friendlier induction medicine than pitocin. I felt confident I could face active labor after some solid hours of shut eye. As my partner and I joked, I had trained for a marathon, not the Ironman, but I definitely felt like I was in the middle of the latter.

I fell into a deep, dreamy sleep for approximately two hours before the intense contractions started up again. Unfortunately, I had three of them within ten minutes, which took cytotek off the table, as the nurse midwife could not control what happened in my body once I ingested it and did not want to put the baby in danger. Although I had moments that looked like active labor, the contractions were still too variable, and my cervix was opening at a snail's pace. Pitocin was fast becoming the only option to induce active labor, and despair began to sink its teeth into my worn out skin.

Early the morning of week 42 day 1, the nurse midwife messed with my cervix, opening it up a little more and creating a bit of a scare as I dripped blood while walking to the bathroom. The nurse/midwife team put me in the tub to try to help me relax, as my body was shaking nonstop and my energy to move through more contractions was rapidly declining. A new set of nurses and nurse midwives started their shifts, and I reluctantly left the tub to see what my body would do next. I had dilated to 4 cm and was 80% effaced, which was progress to be sure but the road ahead still seemed awfully long. All hands were on deck to help me through each contraction, which continued to be inconsistently spaced apart. I went back into the tub and had some moments of zenned out bliss before we proceeded to the last non-pharmaceutical possibility--inducing active labor via the breast pump. As I watched my body create a bunch of colostrum (something that was actually going right!), my intuition screamed to me that this intervention was not going to do the trick and that I was fast reaching my system's limit to cope with more contractions.

Through tears, I asked if I could get an epidural before pitocin, and the nurse midwife said I could. They warned me that I would have to sit still through contractions for 20 minutes while they set up the epidural, but I found the procedure to be a piece of cake compared to the last 6 days. The relief from the nerve block was immediate, and I finally started to breathe deeply and stop shaking. They waited a little while to see if I would go into active labor. Surprise, surprise, I did not. The long dreaded moment had arrived, and they very slowly and gradually introduced pitocin into my body. All was going well until the pitocin hit 8 ml (22 is the maximum amount they use to induce labor). My water broke, and the poor little baby was hit with both the synthetic oxytocin of the pitocin and the natural oxytocin created by my body. Her heart rate plummeted for several minutes, so they stopped the pitocin and calmly repositioned me until her heart rate became normal again. The nurse midwife proposed starting pitocin again at 4 ml, and I agreed, not realizing how significant the baby's distress had been.

Immediately after they began the 4 ml drip, the baby's heart rate dipped again as my uterus began contracting like crazy. They injected me with something to calm my uterus, stopped the pitocin, and positioned my nearly immobilized lower body in a kneeling position to shove a censor through my cervix and onto the baby's head. Her heart rate sounded like a door knock through this device, and I took solace in the steady, patterned sound. The contractions were starting to break through the epidural, so the anesthesiologist reappeared to administer a bolus of what by then had become known to me as "the good stuff." The nurse midwife wanted to try one last option before turning me over to the surgery team: start the pitocin at 1 ml and see if we could get my cervix to dilate fully. I had been at 6 cm for a few hours at that point but also had been in active labor.

In the meantime, she wanted me to meet with the chief OB and ask her any questions I had about a cesarean birth in the event I needed to go that route. The surgeon was a lovely human being and with every passing minute I surrendered to the outcome I had once dreaded. I clarified to my midwife/nurse team that I was not resisting letting go of my birth plan. Hell, I'd thrown that out the window long ago. I mostly feared the baby would experience trauma on account of the surgery and miss out on what I have come to believe is an important event in a person's life whenever it's possible--pushing their way into the world. My lovely midwife told me we could repair the traumatic effects of a c-section soon after her birth, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then the resident who would be assisting the c-section entered the room. She wanted me to know who was behind the mask once I was in the OR. The anesthesiologist also returned once more to explain to me how he would numb my body for the procedure while I remained conscious. I did my best to utter my sincere gratitude to all of the people who were doing their best to make this experience bearable for me. I also made some requests, including to hold the baby right after the procedure if I could, as the pitocin drip began once again.

We made it to 2 ml of pitocin before the baby's heart rate decelerated yet again. The nurse-midwife said we could try to go up to 3 ml, and I said enough. A new shift of nurse midwives and nurses came on board (round 3!), and everyone began prepping for the surgery. I had been dilated at 6 cm for 6 hours when my parents came in from the waiting room for the grand send-off. My midwife was not allowed to accompany me into surgery, but my partner was. They transferred me to a gurney and told me my partner would join me after they had anesthetized me.

They transferred me once again from a gurney to the operating table, this time removing the sheet from my naked body under some very bright lights. All that covered me were the various tubes and needles protruding from my skin. As the numbing medicine rolled down my back like a waterfall, the staff around me spoke of everyday things like their work schedules. I have never felt so exposed and vulnerable and hope I never have to again. The nurse midwife noticed tears running down my cheeks and grabbed my hand. Soon after my partner arrived and whispered to me how sorry he was as he stroked and kissed my forehead. That moment of grace still brings tears to my eyes.

Being awake while someone opens you up is a strange sensation, to say the least. The surgical staff spoke to me about what they were doing and within just a few minutes, they had pulled the baby from my body. They told my partner he could look over the sheet if he wouldn't pass out but absolutely would not let me see what was going on. They were surprised how in shock the baby was, given how long I had been in labor, and immediately needed to give her oxygen. They took her to the far end of the room, and my partner was allowed to go over and be with her. Though only a few minutes passed in real time, an agonizing eternity took over my landscape. When I heard her cry, I finally took a deep breath and the tears began to flow again, this time streaming a mixture of joy and relief. The surgeon told me she wanted to take the baby to the NICU to give her more oxygen and monitor her for a short time, but I was able to look at this miracle, welcome her to the world, and touch and kiss her cheek before she and my partner left the room again.

After suturing me up--it's also an odd thing to hear someone say, "Now we're putting the uterus back in your body"--the surgical team released me to a recovery room, where I was reunited with my partner and the newly coined Reese Mae. By then, her respiratory system was fully on line, and she has been thriving ever since. Reese was born at 10:26 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day 2015, weighing 7 lbs 10 oz and measuring 21 inches. Words cannot capture the experience of finally getting to meet her, but poetry comes closest as I do the work of moving from the center of the labyrinth back out again. So I leave you with Mary Oliver's "Messenger":

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.

* I intentionally use "birthing parents" rather than "mothers" to honor that individuals with diverse gender identities and expressions birth children and may not identify as a woman or mother. See this blog post for a more in-depth inquiry into this topic.

Old Stories Die Hard

I recently binge-watched Catastrophe, a hilarious sitcom about a 40-year-old woman living in London who becomes pregnant after a brief fling and decides to keep the baby. The show's depiction of the protagonist's interactions with the medical system particularly grabbed me. As I enter week 28 of pregnancy at the age of 39, I've had to draw on every resource I can think of not to resort to the worn-out but still living stories about my inadequacies and defects. Western medicine tends to serve as liquid fuel for these already smoldering narratives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfccan1k2_4

At 39, I qualify for the lucky title of "elderly primigravida" in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases. My "disease" is being over the age of 35 during my first pregnancy, which places me in the "high-risk" category. This experience has helped me to understand just how damaging pathologizing language can be and how many creative resources we need in our lives to prevent, or at least mitigate, that harm. In my case, Western medicine is the primary purveyor of toxic messages, but schools, religious institutions, and many other contexts play their part when it comes to infecting people with the idea that they are defective and/or a danger to our society.

This pregnancy has also strengthened my resolve as a therapist to help people externalize these pejorative voices and replace them with ones that speak of wholeness and insist that our dignity is not up for grabs. That work, as I've learned through the journey toward parenthood, requires a great deal of humility. Despite years of learning, growing, and therapy, a few minutes with an obstetrician brought me straight back to the insecurities of my 16-year-old self.

At that tender time, my family doctor said to me as I stepped off a scale during a routine check up, "Your weight is in the normal range for your height. Don't think you're overweight." Harmless enough if one lives in a vacuum. But I lived in a world where my worth was closely associated with the shape of my body. That scale had a simple metric: thinner = more valuable. Unfortunately, I had little access to resources--internal, human, and otherwise--that directly challenged this narrative during my adolescence. So I began my pursuit of making sure no one ever said to me again, "Don't think you're overweight."

I realized just how vibrant that thin-striving part remains in the second trimester of my "geriatric" pregnancy. The doctor made me go weigh myself a second time, this time under her supervision, to make sure the scale wasn't lying. From her perspective, I had gained too much weight in the previous two months. Despite my "advanced maternal age," I momentarily lost sight of the fact that this was one point of view. Yes, it was the voice of an expert. But a human expert, not an infallible one. I could not see that possibility because a younger part of myself had taken front and center stage, and she was hell-bent on not being called fat.

I went home and, for the first time in my pregnancy, consciously ignored what my body told me, which was to feed it. Even when I awoke in the middle of the night with clear hunger pains, I convinced myself that a little water would do the trick and refused to put more calories in my body. When the alarm went off the next morning, I felt terrible. I've had nausea throughout my pregnancy, but that day the nausea was more intense and accompanied by shakiness and dizziness. I promptly cooked and ate two eggs and headed to my office for my first appointment. Thankfully I arrived a few minutes early, as I immediately ran to the bathroom to violently eject this food from my body. I somehow made it through that work day but was exhausted for several days thereafter. A popped blood vessel in my eye from the intense vomiting marked my shame in resorting to starvation tactics while being tasked with growing a human being within this body.

The therapist with whom I worked would call the interaction with the obstetrician in the weighing room an "uh-oh moment." I came into contact with an authority figure who said and did something that triggered alarm bells. Of course I wish I had paused in that moment and recognized I did not need to go down the well-trodden path of self-loathing, judgment and control. I had other options. Then again, puking my guts out offered a teaching I could not easily ignore.

Since that unfortunate encounter, I moved to Colorado and began seeing a midwife. Such a partnership is not for everyone, and I am not here to evaluate one form of pre-natal care over another. What I can say is that I've been paying a lot of attention to my own signals (thoughts, emotions, and sensations) when I meet with her, and they are ones of ease and contentment rather than anxiety, self-doubt, and self-criticism. We have more of a collaborative relationship that is flexible in nature and very attuned to what is going on in my particular experience and body. Although I regularly face fear-based messages from strangers and loved ones about choosing to birth this baby outside of a medical environment, I'm more committed than ever to listening to my own voice--not the 16-year-old part who desperately wants approval and to achieve some unattainable form of external beauty, but the wise one that knows better than anyone else what is going on within.

For me to hear her, I have to listen inwardly, often and carefully, and inhabit the places that allow me to do so. After all, echoing dens of "uh oh" hamper such listening. So I'm actively seeking out contexts and people that support the presence of a big "s" Self, which Richard Schwartz would characterize as calm, curious, clear, compassionate, confident, creative, courageous, and connected. Living in Colorado, I am lucky to have gorgeous natural spaces at my fingertips and seek them out as often as I can. I also have taken solace in the midwife's perspective on my body's own wisdom: to breastfeed this baby for more than a short time, I am going to need some extra pounds and so my body is doing what it needs to do to prepare itself. I am especially grateful to have a partner who regularly says things like, "You need to feed yourself and that baby," and, "You look beautiful." I am asking the inner critics to step back so I can actually hear that voice and let it in.

Additionally, I have sought out resources like a lovely prenatal yoga class and Kimber Simkins' Full, a memoir that honestly and authentically captures her struggle with disordered eating and self-hate as well as her movement toward self-compassion and love. I particularly liked the rules she decided to make up for herself, which have bolstered my intention to spend more time following my own internal compass:

• First rule: My body is just fine the way it is.
• Second rule: I am allowed to love my body if I choose.
• Third rule: Stop listening to anyone who tells me otherwise. Even if the voice is in my own head.

At the end of the day, I'm doing my best to make peace with my old stories by reminding myself that they originally came into being to help me. I know from observation and experience that resisting them or wishing they would simply go away does not work. In Tara Brach's terms, we need to "tend and befriend" our experience, with openness and curiosity. That is the path to wholeness. Moving through its curves and rough spots continues to be challenging, to say the least. But my Self knows this is the road to radically accepting not only myself but also the baby I'm about to bring into the world.

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

 

A lot of crazy stuff is happening out there right now. While I contemplated this post, a critical voice erupted in my head that sounded something like, "Are you really going to write about your dead cat when the world has so much unaddressed injustice and violence?" Thankfully I snapped to my senses. That is precisely what I am going to do because, at the end of the day, what matters most in this life is making and sustaining connections to this living and dying world. Chopper (aka Choppy and Chopperpants) taught me how to do that and so much more. So this post is a tribute to him--one of my greatest teachers--with photos to boot.

Acceptance

Chopper came to me with no whiskers in the summer of 2004. He and his litter mates had been abandoned by a stream soon after birth and most of his siblings drowned. His living sister chewed off his whiskers during this time so he only had short stubbles on his face when I adopted him from a local rescue organization. Unsurprisingly, this early trauma made Chopper pretty needy. I rarely could sit down without him wanting to be on my lap. Initially I would get frustrated by his insatiable desire for affection and frequent talking, which I interpreted as, "I'm here! Love me!! I'm here!!! Love me!!!!" I found it difficult to accomplish things, like typing papers for graduate school, with him standing on the keyboard.

Over time, however, I came to see him and myself more clearly. When I stopped doing and gave him my full attention, he did not need so much. With a little maneuvering, he could get the touch he craved, and I could still complete the tasks at hand. Perhaps more importantly, he helped me to pause more and observe myself. Frequently, I was caught up in worried thoughts. His furry self (my partner said he was the softest cat in the world) brought me back to the present moment. He reminded me to rest and receive the comfort of his noisy, unremitting purr. When I stopped trying to be somewhere else with someone else, grace came in the form of Chopper, as well as acceptance of and gratitude for what I have in this life, right now.

The Ability to Receive Love

With my former, incessant craving to be and do better, I focused much of my attention on the external world. I should be working harder, loving better, giving more, all to get some desperately sought-after approval and recognition from others. Chopper was not having any of this self-defeating performance. I could be in the foulest mood, and he still gave me the look in the above photo. I often half-joked with my partner that he could never gaze at me the way Chopper did. Try as I might to push him away, like I did with everyone else who got close to me, he just kept coming back with those big green eyes and pawed at my face until I rubbed his chin. He wouldn't even bite my hand unless it was disguised by a blanket. That fierce and gentle love again instigated a pause. Maybe I could lower the fortress I had built to protect myself from rejection and heartache and at least let Chopperpants in. He wouldn't hurt me. And he didn't. With his patient determination (and, admittedly, significant therapy), I learned I was worthy of love and that vulnerability opens the door to intimacy, understanding, and so many other good things.

The Capacity to Stay

Almost three years ago, I found a lump near Chopper's jaw. A biopsy revealed he had Hodgkin's-like lymphoma. The third time a tumor appeared, my vet said he should go to an oncologist. The oncologist tried one kind of chemotherapy. When that stopped working after a couple of months, he tried another, more aggressive (and expensive!) form that required 16 treatments. Chopper hated the car rides across town to the clinic, but he was his perky, kind self once there. Apparently he was the only cat who didn't hiss at and try to bite the veterinary staff during the blood draws.

He lost his whiskers for the second time in his life. When I grabbed my car keys, he would hide. But he endured the treatment to its completion, and we all hoped he would have at least a year of remission. No such luck. Three months later, I was back in the oncologist's office after finding another tumor. The doc said he didn't want to give up yet. We tried a third kind of chemotherapy that I could give him at home. I arranged for him to get the necessary blood work done at a nearby veterinary office, as he began to howl and throw up when we arrived at the oncologist's office. Propelling such anxiety for short spells of remission stopped making sense.

When another tumor reappeared this past May, I called off the chemo and weaned him off the steroids he had been taking. He stopped being afraid of my car keys and resumed being his playful, cheerful, talkative self. He would serenely sit on my lap while the lovely Carrie Donahue put acupuncture needles in his back, and he did not balk at me shoving supplements down his throat twice a day.

Then he began having trouble breathing. We started the steroids again. Another tumor appeared and quickly enveloped his throat and chest. The tumor eventually became infected and made his breathing extremely labored. On January 7, 2015, Carrie came over to our house and euthanized my beloved cat who was, at that point, gasping for air. He died peacefully in my arms, and I am forever grateful to Carrie and thankful I had the resources to let him go in this way, before he could no longer breathe.

Why am I recounting the details of this sad tale? Because I had no idea I could witness such suffering without fleeing the scene (which is my favorite definition of compassion) until I experienced Chopper's prolonged struggle with cancer. I frequently wanted to bury my head in the sand and avoid the painful parts of his illness, but I didn't. I sat with him. I loved the shit out of him. I let him go. I never want to go through this process again with a pet or human being, but now I know that I can. And that makes all the difference. May you rest in peace, sweet Chopper.

to live in this world

you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal; to hold it

against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go

--Mary Oliver

Aspiring to Become Hootless

Recently, I have been wanting a particular thing to happen in my life. And I mean REALLY wanting it. My mindfulness practice continuously teaches me that grasping after desires creates suffering, whereas trusting events to unfold in their own way, at their own pace, generates ease. When we can relax into our life, as it is, we feel more peace and contentment. But this practice of letting go of hoped-for results is no easy task, particularly in the outcomes-obsessed present-day United States. I therefore am consistently on the lookout for tips about approaching life with open palms (i.e. not trying to control everything!). Happily, an acupuncturist  just introduced me to a new concept: becoming hootless.

Hale Dwoskin describes hootlessness as follows:

Hootlessness is when you do not give a hoot whether you achieve a particular goal or not. Contrary to popular belief, you do not attain your goals when you desire them strongly enough. In fact, if you honestly examine your past experiences, you'll discover that most of the goals you've achieved are the ones that you let go of wanting--even if not by choice...When you allow yourself to release to the point where you are hootless about getting your goal, two things may happen. Either you'll find that you abandon the goal altogether and feel lighter because of it, or you'll be much more likely to achieve the goal than you were when you wanted it...The more hootless you feel, the freer you are to enjoy whatever you have in this moment without the usual fear of loss or disappointment.

What hootlessness amounts to in my book is a deep trust in our ability to handle whatever arises in our lives. In short, fear does not run the show, wholeheartedness does. This does not mean NOT having goals. It means relating to our goals in ways that allow us to be present to our lives, the people in it, and our environment. Hootlessness also allows us to approach life more flexibly instead of with a ton of rigid expectations, rules, and regulations. As Dwoskin points out, our wanting mind is often seeking approval, control, security, or separation. When we are able to name what we want and release our hopes and fears about how we are going to get there, space appears and we experience more freedom.

I appreciate Dwoskin's attention to language when we set goals. In his words,

'I allow myself to...,' 'I can...,' or, 'I open myself to...' are good ways to begin a goal in courageousness. 'I have...' is a good way to begin a goal in acceptance. 'I am...' is a good way to begin a goal in peace. These ways of starting a goal statement enable the mind to use its creativity to generate possibilities of how the goal can happen.

Here are a few of his courage-based goal statements that I find particularly useful for clients and myself:

• * I allow myself to feel like I have all the time in the world. (This one challenges the scarcity model dominating U.S. culture.)
• * I allow myself to have a loving relationship that supports me in my freedom and aliveness. (This one frames the setting of boundaries with others as an act of self-care.)
• * I allow myself to love and accept (or forgive myself), no matter what. (Hooray for self-compassion!)
• * I allow myself to be at peace, relaxed in the knowing that all is well and everything is unfolding as it's supposed to be. (Enough said.)

When I follow Dwoskin's advice by being honest with myself about past experiences, I see that desperation and attachment to outcomes were not a central feature of realizing the goals that have been deeply meaningful in my life. For example, during my second year of graduate school, I grew increasingly uncertain about pursuing a doctorate degree, largely because my department did not feel like a good fit for me and my renegade goals. I spoke with my advisor about whether or not to again apply for a fellowship I had unsuccessfully sought the previous year. It would pay for the rest of my schooling and allow me to focus more intently on my studies. She asked if I would choose to stay in the program if I received the fellowship, and I was quick to say "Yes." However, I already had a plan B in place and no longer felt I needed the fellowship to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish vocationally. Lo and behold, I approached the application process much more calmly than I had the year before and had the presence of mind to do a little research about the professors who selected the award recipients so that I better knew my audience. I felt like the essay I submitted authentically represented my academic vision and let go of the outcome. Needless to say, I got the fellowship and ultimately completed the program and my dissertation in ways that honored who I was as well as my commitments to social justice and arts-based research.

In contrast, when I decided to leave academia to pursue becoming a therapist, I did not initially have a job. Increasingly desperate to land work that would pay my bills, I accepted an offer for a position that had a good salary but that was in an organization with which I did not share several core values. Afraid of ongoing unemployment and its financial consequences, I pulled myself out of another job search in which I was a finalist to accept the offer. That second organization had felt like home during the interview process. Less than a year after I took the first job, I was fired. The job was a terrible fit for me, and I had taken several vocal stands against one of the projects the organization was pursuing on ethical grounds. Being fired was a humiliating experience, and, years later, I am still healing from the shame of it.

I do not mean to be polyannaish about hootlessness. Sometimes we've got to do what we've got to do to get by, even if several red flags are smacking us in the face while we do so. But we oftentimes give in to our deepest fears when our wanting mind takes over. We then go about our lives in ways that create a lot of unnecessary suffering. That suffering can be a great teacher, to be sure. Being fired from that job was what my supervisor would call "another fucking growth opportunity" that helped me realize a depth of clarity about my path that I might not have attained without the experience. Going forward, however, I can approach my wants with more awareness about the ties that bind me and, to the best of my ability, release them.

Aspiring to become hootless is akin to what Pema Chodron deems experiencing hopelessness: "giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death." Embracing the uncertainty of life and inevitability of death while pursuing our goals is damn hard. But the benefits of doing so certainly outweigh the costs. The late John O'Donohue captures the fruits of becoming hootless with his beautiful poetry:

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,

Clear in work,

Gracious in awareness,

Courageous in thought,

Generous in love.

Going Home

Describing Bowenian family systems theory, James Bitter wrote,

Bowen taught individuals or couples about triangulation* and then expected them to go back to their family-of-origin to extricate themselves emotionally from these triangular patterns. The purpose of going home again is not to confront family members, or even to establish peace and harmony, but to encourage clients to come to know others in their family as they are.

I recently returned to my childhood town for my twentieth high school reunion. Although this event did not directly involve my family-of-origin, it did involve a kind of "going home again." While I looked forward to discovering the shapes of my classmates' lives, I also entered into that space with a fair amount of trepidation. After all, high school had been a challenging time for me despite my efforts to put on a happy face much of the time. As I performed the role of a high-achieving, engaged student from a "stable family," most of my peers had no idea that I begged my parents to let me leave our huge, competitive, suburban high school or that I struggled with the significant anxiety and depression that accompany perfectionism. I worried that I would face limited and limiting perceptions about who I am, thus feeling like a two-dimensional cardboard cutout of the person I consider myself to have become during the past twenty years. I imagine I was not alone in carrying this fear into the event.

How grateful I was, then, to encounter warm hugs, smiles, and heaps of curiosity about where we each had been during the last two decades. I learned of meandering career pathways, children born and children lost, and relationships that came together and fell apart. For the most part, we weren't there to prove something to each other but, rather, to reconnect with a significant part of our life history and those who contributed to it.

I have learned the hard way that trying to reject our experience is a recipe for suffering. We derive peace and contentment from developing a coherent life story that includes its many chapters, not just the ones we like best or that feel comfortable. As May Benatar eloquently stated,

So many of us have accepted, wholesale, someone else's version of our lives. If you have been told forever that your childhood was idyllic, you might be tempted to go along and not validate some of your own memories, or even your weak suspicions that things were not always perfect...It is truly amazing how much fog, depression, confusion and anxiety begins to lift when the story one narrates starts to be one's own. It needn't be a pretty story or even a wholly accurate story -- just one's own.

The people I encountered at my twenty-year high school reunion reminded me that being the author of our own stories directly and positively correlates with our well-being. I like to joke that I genuinely took back my own narrative in a parking lot a few years back when my dad asked, "You always wanted to be a [MD] doctor, right?" I responded, "No, Dad. I always wanted to be a writer, and I AM a doctor [of the PhD kind]." I needed years to know myself as I am so that I could assume roles I freely chose, such as writer, therapist, and recovering perfectionist instead of professor, striver, and stressball. That work allowed me to enter into my high school reunion speaking as the author of my own story and so feeling less scared than I otherwise would of my peers' projections of me. To the best of my ability, I listened to others' narratives about their own becoming, without assumptions or judgments obstructing my hearing. I am thankful for feeling heard in just this way by so many people that night.

My classmates also reinforced my sense that our ability to trust our experience as it unfolds is essential to feeling freedom and joy. Letting go of limiting beliefs (e.g., my childhood was idyllic) and roles (e.g., the good girl and the high achiever) that we learned from people and contexts outside of ourselves clears the path for such trust to take root. In the poetic words of Kaveri Patel:

Someone is Dying

That someone is me.

Not a 6 month to one year prognosis from a terminal illness, but a letting go of all I have ever known.

I used to believe that fear would save me. Worry just enough, and maybe even sprinkle just a little extra anxiety to convince myself I can control future events.

I know nothing. Except for this moment. Beginner’s Mind, my mind is like an empty page. The words cannot be written, the colors cannot

be painted until the moment arrives.

And when it does, I will know who to be, what to say, what to do. I am on the right path. I wish to let go of all my preconceived notions of what will happen. The only thing I wish to hold onto is trust in this practice.

Good bye old mind. I do not hate you. I do not wish for you to die sooner than you must. You brought me here. I will collect ashes from your pyre, let them scatter with the wind and float on the river.

You will join the earth, as I am born again.

* For those unfamiliar with triangulation and curious about what it is, Bitter did a great job summarizing Bowen's theory: "Bowen (1976) notes that anxiety can easily develop within intimate relationships. Under stressful situations, two people may recruit a third person into the relationship to reduce the anxiety and gain stability. This is called triangulation. Although triangulation may lessen the emotional tension between the two people, the underlying conflict is not addressed and, in the long run, the situation worsens."

Letting Go of the Controls

One of the most useful stories I've heard from Tara Brach centers on pilot Chuck Yeager losing control of his plane. As she wrote,

In his book The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe describes how, in the 1950s, a few highly trained pilots were attempting to fly at altitudes higher than had ever been achieved. The first pilots to face this challenge responded by frantically trying to stabilize their planes when they went out of control. They would apply correction after correction, yet, because they were way out of the earth’s atmosphere, the rules of thermodynamics no longer applied, so the planes just went crazy. The more furiously they manipulated the controls, the wilder the rides became. Screaming helplessly to ground control, “What do I do next?!” the pilots would plunge to their deaths.

This tragic drama occurred several times until one of the pilots, Chuck Yeager, inadvertently struck upon a solution. When his plane began to tumble, Yeager was thrown violently around in the cockpit and knocked out. Unconsciously, he plummeted toward Earth. Seven miles later, the plane re-entered the planet’s denser atmosphere, where standard navigation strategies could be implemented. He steadied the craft and landed. In doing so, he had discovered the only life-saving response that was possible in this desperate situation: don’t do anything. Take your hands off the controls.

It’s the exact same way with us. As Wolfe wrote, “It’s the only solution that you had. You take your hands off the controls.”

Most of the people I meet have areas of our lives that we wish were different--unsatisfactory jobs, health problems, unhappy childhoods, addictions of various kinds, and difficult relationships, to name a few. Until we have practiced taking our hands off the controls in these situations, and so experienced the freedom of living presence that Brach describes, the idea of letting go may seem counter-intuitive if not downright idiotic. After all, we're controlling the situation to bring us a sense of safety and security. To admit we are standing on shaky ground brings up all sorts of scary truths. To control others, the environment, and ourselves is to deflect attention away from our vulnerability as living and dying beings.

The Controller is most palpable in my current life in the arena of my adored cat, Chopper. He's been my sidekick for close to 10 years and diagnosed with cancer for 2 of those. He has valiantly endured numerous unpleasant interventions and countless car trips to the veterinarian, which, as the photo above reveals, are not his preferred activity. But the tumors keep returning, again and again. We are at a juncture, Chopper and I, where the treatments no longer seem to be working and he is giving me numerous behavioral cues that he does not want to keep getting pricked with needles and swallow pills that make him feel lousy. To listen to those signals means I need to let go of the controls and, ultimately, to Chopper.

As I've written previously, animals matter intensely to many U.S. pet owners these days, and I am among them. This cat has accompanied me through moves across the country, relationship beginnings and endings, career changes, and other life transitions, and he has always--and I mean always--greeted me with unconditional love and acceptance. His relatively young age and uncomplicated, endess supply of love makes letting go of him more agonizing; the fact that he cannot tell me in English how he feels about his situation spurs a lot of doubt about my decision-making on his behalf. To stop fighting to save him from his cancer is maddeningly sad and terrifying, as the unknown future may hold physical suffering and deterioration from which I want to protect him and, honestly, do not want to witness. I therefore am grateful for Brach's gentle reminders that staying present to our own and others' lives, even when they include seemingly unendurable pain, opens us to the vastness of love.

In her book True Refuge, Brach tells another story that allowed me to see more clearly the possibilities engendered by presence on journeys of illness and loss. In this narrative, Pam's husband Jerry was dying from lymphoma after a three-year battle against it. Pam was doing everything in her power to keep him alive, and Brach gave her permission to let go of the controls:

"It  sounds like you've been trying really hard to take good care of Jerry...and it's been very busy," she said to Pam. "You've already done so much...but the time for all that kind of activity is over. At this point, you don't have to make anything happen, you don't need to do anything...Just be with him. Let him know your love through the fullness of your presence...In those most difficult moments...you might pause and recognize what you are feeling--the fear or anger or grief--and then inwardly whisper the phrase 'I consent'...All you can do is have the intention to pause, the intention to feel what is going on and 'let be.'"

Pam listened to Brach's advice and called her a month later to let her know that Jerry had died. She also relayed,

"Over those last few weeks I had to keep letting go of all my ideas of how his dying should be and what else I should be doing, and just remind myself to say 'I consent.' At first I was mechanically repeating the words, but after a few days I felt as if my heart  actually started consenting...When all of me was truly consenting to the fear and pain, I knew how to take care of him. I sensed when to whisper words of encouragement or just listen, ways to reassure him with touch...how to sing to him, be quiet with him. How to be with him."

This beautiful story unveils the power and strength of saying yes to our experiences and being with whatever arises. I now understand that if I pay attention to Chopper--really pay attention--I will know what to do, without needing to control the situation. In other words, I can trust the actions that emerged from the intention to be with him through whatever arises. Pam's story also gives me an aspiration for the time I have left not only with my beloved cat but also the other living beings gracing my life. As she said about her final days with Jerry, "In the silence I could see past a sense of 'him' and 'me.' It became clear that we were a field of loving--total openness, warmth, light. He's gone, but that field of loving is always with me. My heart knows that I came home...truly I came home to love."

Going Wild

You will do foolish things,

but do them with enthusiasm.

--Colette

Two weeks ago, I got hitched. I wrote about showing up and letting others see me, imperfections and all, in my last post. My wedding day delivered quite an unexpected opportunity to put these words into practice.

A dreamy outdoor ceremony kicked off the day and involved heart-warming shows of love and support for my partner, our relationship, and me. Because the rain and wind would not quit, we exchanged our vows under a tent that provided an ineffable intimacy.

Thereafter, when the dance floor started hopping, I was way into it. First, I got to rock out to the song I performed in my sixth-grade talent show, Aerosmith and RUN-DMC's "Walk this Way," with a wonderful friend from my Peace Corps days. I also struck out to find my adorable and adored friend who can do the worm. She has pulled off this feat on numerous occasions with amazing precision and grace, and I had requested in advance that she perform her best dance-floor deed on my big day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_UYYPb-Gk

The fact that she is in her early 40s is important to the story because her awesome undulations momentarily contributed to a comparison that was not at all useful: If she can do the worm, I, a 38-year-old woman, can still do the splits. Never mind that I last actualized this exploit several years ago, experienced a fair amount of stress and limited sleep in recent days, and, perhaps most importantly, spent much of the day shivering in the cold. By golly, I was going to do the splits on the dance floor, AND I was going to make sure I made my move in front of the camera. So I tracked down our lovely photographer, and Sharon cheerfully prepared herself for my performance. I went down. Nothing felt good about the movement, but I got up without too much ado. Looking crestfallen, Sharon informed me that she had not captured the Kodak moment.

My chance to practice what I preach had arrived! I could pause. I could listen inwardly and hear my pissed off body say, "Don't you ever do that to me again!" I could heed that voice and resume dancing in a way that honored my body's current state. The show would go on and be just as satisfying without that particular snapshot.

I leapt into the splits with even greater fervor the second time. As I landed, I knew in the farthest reaches of my being that I was done, not only for the night but also for some seeming eternal period of hell. I sort of blacked out for a few minutes after landing on the floor with a horrifying bounce but vaguely remember hobbling to a bag that had pain medication in it and finding my way to a chair on the edge of the dance floor. I tried to be brave and gracious as various loved ones offered me healing words, ice, and, in some cases, drunken, unsolicited advice. Like Cheryl Strayed when she lost her hiking boot on the Pacific Crest Trail, I kept imagining I was the butt of a practical joke. The throbbing pain would cease and desist, and I would resume my merriment. As she wrote, "But no one laughed. No one would. The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted, and it would never give it back." My hamstring was toast. No amount of wishing I could redo my foolish act would miraculously heal my broken body.

Once again, I confronted an opportunity to walk my talk and show myself some compassion. I could replace the inner judge, who had begun to chatter intensely and rapidly about how stupid and ridiculous I was, with lovingkindness blessings like, "May your leg heal quickly. May you feel at ease." I could recognize I made a mistake and repeat to myself the Brene Brown quote I intentionally placed front and center on my website: "Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we're all in this together."

The critic grew louder. I sat in the chair, the blood now drained from my face, still trying to be brave and gracious as the songs I selected for the DJ played on and people continued to rock out within reach of my stationary post. I did not want anyone to suffer with me, but I sure longed to be out there in the heart of it all. When Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" came on, I could no longer could keep the tears in check. My partner and I had crooned to this song on a road trip early in our relationship. When I picked the tune, I envisioned us dancing to it, close and slow, on our big day.  As tears streamed down my face, the internal voice of gloom and doom grew louder: "You not only screwed this up for yourself, you big fat idiot, but you also are ruining the party for the people keeping you company on the sideline."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaA3YZ6QdJU

Happily, my wise aunt appeared on the scene and told me to sock my pride. She is fond of the saying, "My mind is making promises my body can't keep," because she has made some of those promises herself. Her understanding provided a saving grace. A friend found my partner, who was in the other room conversing with cousins he rarely sees, and reported that I needed him. When he arrived, I told him I wanted to go to the emergency room; what I managed to accomplish on the dance floor was no joke.

At this point, my out-of-town father left the reception to get the rented van, located five blocks away at his hotel, so he could drive me to the hospital. My partner's former roommate carried me up and out of the building to wait for the van. Unbeknownst to me, my sister had taken a cab to the 24-hour Walgreens to purchase crutches and appeared with them in hand. My inner critic went hog wild in the face of all this grace. I started apologizing profusely to everyone around me, begging them to go back to the party. "Abandon the wounded bride; leave her to self-made pity party!" I almost shouted (I turn to third-person voice when I am being particularly hard on myself).

To make a long story short, my dad got lost after taking a wrong turn out of the hotel parking lot. The wait for him grew more and more unbearable until my partner and I decided to take a cab by ourselves to the ER--a sort of symbolic separation from our families of origin, although I certainly did not see the irony of our departure at that time. Thankfully, the ER was pretty much empty. The various health providers I ran into appreciated the story about why I had appeared on the scene all gussied up and someone put a warm blanket over me. I almost passed out from relief. I got the prescription-strength drugs I was after and reassurance that although I likely tore my hamstring, the tendon had not appeared to rip away from the bone.

We got back in a cab and headed to the bed and breakfast where my aunts had paid for a beautiful room for our wedding night. The room was located at the top of a winding set of stairs. I surrendered my hope of arriving there. "Let's just go home," I sighed to my partner. We were going to do no such thing he informed me gently. He gingerly hoisted me over his shoulder and carried my whimpering self to our sought-after destination. This feminist never imagined being carried across a threshold on my wedding night. Alas, the universe had other plans for me.

Although in the days that followed, the judge took up her fair share of minutes and hours, I came back to the practices I consistently recommend to my clients. I allowed myself to view my injury as a loss without comparing myself to all the people in the world who have it so much worse than me. Because I named the injury a loss, I could grieve it and move on. Whenever I mustered the presence of mind to do so, I also allowed rather than rejected my moment-to-moment experience, acknowledging, processing, and letting go of the numerous feelings and thoughts that arose. I remembered Tara Brach's phrase, "Where your attention goes, energy flows," and focused my attention on the gratitude I felt for the people who came to my aid without resentment or expectation, only love. I reframed the event as an impassioned moment of glee--a misdirected one, to be sure, but not a tell-tale sign that I sucked as a human being, daughter, sister, friend, and partner. I reread one of my favorite Danna Fauld's poems, "Allow":

There is no controlling life.

Try corralling a lightning bolt,

containing a tornado. Dam a

stream and it will create a new

channel. Resist, and the tide

will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry

you to higher ground. The only

safety lies in letting it all in--

The wild and the weak; fear,

fantasies, failures and success.

When loss rips off the doors of

the heart, or sadness veils your

vision with despair, practice

becomes simply bearing the truth.

In the choice to let go of your

known way of being, the whole

world is revealed to your new eyes.

Turning loving attention toward my experience remains an ever challenging practice. This particular episode continues to represent what one of my mentors calls (and don't read on if swearing offends you) "another fucking growth opportunity." But I am growing. I keep thinking about the many moments during my wedding day when I felt connection, beautifully defined by Brene Brown as "the energy that is created between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment." I am healing, not just my body but also my spirit. Sufficiency is my reality, and I wake up each day aspiring to strengthen my belief in that radically transformative truth.

Reflecting on Quietness

Whoever you are, bear in mind that appearance is not reality. Some people act like extroverts, but the effort costs them energy, authenticity, and even physical health. Others seem aloof or self-contained, but their inner landscapes are rich and full of drama. So the next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet.

― Susan Cain

For several years I have been drawn to the meditative possibilities of quiet. When I was a teacher, I introduced students to the Quaker practice of not speaking unless we could improve upon the silence, particularly when discussing controversial issues. The rationale for this activity was that silence holds rich possibilities for insight and deepened understanding when we allow it to exist; to listen inwardly and hear the voice of wisdom residing there, we often need to get quiet. I found our classroom dialogues to be more intentional and meaningful when students paused and reflected on the quality of their thoughts before speaking. The binary framework of "right" and "wrong" responses also began to dissolve, allowing for more flexible and creative thinking and expression.

We often receive mixed messages on quietness in U.S. society, especially in educational settings. At school, many of us learn to be silent when the instructor is speaking. In contrast, a teacher may dock us participation points if we remain silent during periods when we have been instructed to engage in interactive activities or to raise our hands with the "right" answer. Whether viewed positively or punitively, silence becomes evaluated in such a context. Quiet no longer just is.

As an educator, one of my favorite things to do on the first day of class was to ask students to become curious about their verbal participation. If they felt compelled to speak, and even interrupt their peers, what was that about? Did they fear invisibility if they were not heard? Did they think they had more important things to say than their classmates? Did anxiety drive their need to share their thoughts? Conversely, if they sat back and observed others speaking, did they view this observation as a different kind of participation? Did they fear failure or judgment upon speaking? Did they want to get their thoughts carefully organized in their heads before uttering any words aloud? Once they became aware of their participation style, students could more freely choose how to contribute to the group space. Frequently, those urgent to speak started to sit back and listen more. And in the new space that opened up, those hesitant to speak would risk sharing their ideas with the group more frequently. I've found this same line of inquiry to be particularly useful with couples and other dyads engaged in a talker-quiet one dynamic that really does not work for either of them.

A major barrier to engaging in such open-ended investigations is the high value we place on being a "good talker" in the United States. In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, I appreciate Cain's focus on creating communities where we can share our strengths and talents, without having to sacrifice significant parts of ourselves. As she writes,

Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can. This does not mean aping extroverts; ideas can be shared quietly, they can be communicated in writing, they can be packaged into highly produced lectures, they can be advanced by allies. The trick for introverts is to honor their own styles instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms.

If we can suspend our judgments about what constitutes a "good" personality, presentation, or style, there really is room enough for us all and infinite ways to approach this precious life. What is more, we have so much to learn from each other when we grow curious enough to investigate the reality behind the appearance, whatever that appearance may be. I cannot improve upon the beauty of Mary Oliver's words about honoring our own authenticity and so leave you with "The Journey":

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save.

Journeying toward Radical Acceptance

As I speak with more people about the possibilities created by radical acceptance, I often hear responses like:

"I want to be a new and improved me, not accept the way I am."

"If I accept the way things are, they will never change."

"Acceptance equals passivity, and I'm not interested in being passive. I'm an activist!"

"Are you suggesting I accept abuse, dominance, and oppression!?!?"

In a society that consistently promotes a linear and hierarchical view of success and change, these statements make a lot of sense. The subtle and not-so-subtle messages we often receive from families, schools, and work places are that if you do not strive to progress up some kind of ladder, you will become stuck or, worse, a failure. And probably a lazy one at that!

As a mentor recently reminded me, we in the United States also frequently carry around a deep-seated view of ourselves as defective, in part due to the dominance of the original sin doctrine. Why would we not want to jump onto the treadmill of self-improvement after internalizing the message that we are inherently bad? What I find interesting is that other cultures, such as that of the Tibetan Dalai Lama, believe something very different. In the Dalai Lama's words,

Every sentient being—even insects—have Buddha nature. The seed of Buddha means consciousness, the cognitive power—the seed of enlightenment...All these destructive things can be removed from the mind, so therefore there’s no reason to believe some sentient being cannot become Buddha. So every sentient being has that seed.

I do not mean to idealize other cultures or to heroify the Dalai Lama. Instead, I find a powerful inquiry to be, "What would my life be like if I truly believed it is sacred?" The idea of Buddha nature relates to radical acceptance in that believing our lives are worth cherishing encourages us to come back to the present moment, see it clearly, and jump into it wholeheartedly. In contrast, when we stay focused on all the ways we stink at this life, we experience only a sliver of it.

"So what the heck do I mean by radical acceptance!?" you may be wondering if you have reached this point. I am drawn to Tara Brach's portrayal of radical acceptance. She describes it as the ability to be with our experience--our internal weather systems--and say, "Okay, this is here, right now." This "letting be" does not mean passivity in the face of harm. Rather, it means recognizing that our wish for something different is at odds with the reality that is here. We can still dare to dream about and pursue change in the world when we accept our moment-to-moment experience. We do so, however, with more clarity about the pathways that liberate and revitalize us rather than lead to more battling, struggling, exhaustion and, ultimately, loneliness and despair. Perhaps a concrete example is in order.

When I was graduate student and, later, a university professor, I spent most of my conscious moments observing the inequities of social institutions, including those of the university where I worked. I oftentimes felt depleted, powerless, and less and less capable of getting out of bed in the morning, an action that usually preceded armoring up for another day of battle. When I would notice my fatigue and depression, I would quickly call on my internal judge, often without realizing it. She would admonish, "You are so ungrateful. What is wrong with you!? You lead a charmed life and should appreciate it. Get it together and stop complaining. Nobody likes a complainer, especially one as privileged as you."

Needless to say, this incessantly playing tape of criticism did not bring me fulfillment, joy, peace, or that much sought after productivity. What did transform my life was a consciously made commitment to begin paying attention to what was going on inside of me, no matter what that was. This commitment required a shift in my belief that I could not acknowledge my own suffering because of the social and economic privileges I had inherited. Once I began to soften and open to my own pain, I recognized the underlying belief that had guided many of my days to that point: my life was not worthy of close study. I began to interrupt this story of entrenched deficiency with the behaviors and words I could muster. I placed my hand on my heart, for example, and began to use lovinkindness blessings when I became aware of dis-ease: "May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you live with ease."

Slowly but surely, I began to recognize how much of my life had been lived in my head. I therefore had missed out on establishing and sustaining important human connections as well as experiencing the wonders and fragility of this living and dying world. I let myself grieve those unlived precious moments and, eventually, became more adept at perceiving and responding with friendliness to my internal weather systems. As the willlingness to honor the sacredness of my own life grew, I began to let go of my belief in some very familiar roles, like that of the oppressor and oppressed. Recognizing how often my own nature changed, I found that using shorthand, static categories for others and myself no longer made sense. These labels, or solid identifications, kept me from arriving at a deeper understanding of what makes people and systems tick and responding to them in more skillful ways.

Of course I continue to be a work in progress, but I now understand at an experiential level how honoring my own life has expanded my ability to honor others'. I can say and mean to a client, "What if there is nothing wrong with you and you just need to take off all those coats that are covering up who you are?"

I also wholeheartedly believe that the "boundary to what you can accept is the boundary to your freedom."* As poet Danna Faulds wrote,

Trust the energy that Courses through you Trust, Then take surrender even deeper. Be the energy. Don't push anything away. Follow each Sensation back to its source In vastness and pure presence.

Emerge so new, so fresh that You don't know who you are.

Be the energy and blaze a Trail across the clear night Sky like lightning. Dare to Be your own illumination.**

* This quote came from Tara Brach's talk "Absolute Cooperation with the Inevitable." ** The excerpts from "Trusting Prana" came from Tara Brach's talk "From Story to Presence."