A few years back I used to have a re-occurring dream where I’d find myself in a room full of people running around in confusion, anger and fear (would have made Freud’s heart palpitate for sure) and at sometime in the midst of all the chaos I’d simply let out one clear note of sound out of my mouth that would end up filling the room which would, of course, make everyone just stop and look at me. And they weren’t so much looking at me as recognizing me because they had dropped their distractions.

I share this dream with you oh dear wonderful readers not to boast about my own greatness but rather to help you to recognize the distractions that you allow to get in the way on your path to greatness.

Through the ages many wise souls have told us over and over again through their stories and songs for us to not be distracted by the gifts of the Giver but to go for the Giver him/it/herself.  I believe that each of us has within us the capacity to be the first special brand of who we are (and there is no one else in the world exactly like you).  All of our gifts come in many shapes, sizes, colors and themes.  What may be one person’s tragedy may be another person’s gift and so on and so forth.  For some reason, a scene from the  movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” when all the different kinds of space ships come out of the sky and fly over our heroes comes to mind.  We are as wide and have as much variety as snowflakes from the sky.

We are so distracted by all the wonders and horrors we have created around us that we cannot see or feel the ultimate greatness within us.

I’m not suggesting that in the middle of a board meeting that’s run amok that you all of a sudden begin singing (although I bet you’d pretty much get the attention of everyone in attendance) but rather for you to notice what and who you are allowing to distract you with their fears etc. from stepping into your own greatness.  I’ve done the two step in and out of what I think is my own special kind of greatness but from what I can remember when I am on my path and plugged into Divine Order, the words that come out of my mouth feel clear, the thoughts coming into my head are singular and with direction and my heart is able to discern wisely with empathy.

What if all of us took one step towards our greatness today, think of what possibilities we could do.

You may be thinking, “first of all Lynn, what the heck do you mean by “systems” much less paradigms”?  Good question!  In this blog, I am using the word system to refer to large institutions, businesses and/or entities who have been using a well worn pattern of offering services or creating products.  I’ve always been a kind of renegade when it comes to bucking various systems; however, in many instances I was my own worst enemy because I allowed my personal unmet needs and wants to get in the way of why a particular system or paradigm was not working for me.   People tend to not listen or adhere to what someone is saying about an outdated/outmoded system when they keep confusing what they haven’t taken care of within with what is not working outside of themselves.

The good thing about getting older is that hopefully you’ve had a chance to work out some of your issues and questions about yourself and the world around you which you can then use to help support your point of view rather than detract from it.  Another thing is time becomes very relevant, even though it has always been true that you only really have the very moment in front of you that you can count, it becomes easier to distinguish where you want to direct your passions and spend your time (the grains of sand seem to be moving faster!)

In a conversation with a good friend who is mentoring/coaching me right now, we were talking about various systems and how they are changing and/or need to change.  In the past five years we have seen many systems seemingly go away and new ones replace them over night (such as the impact of book stores, newspapers and magazines by electronic media).  We also talked about academia.  For the past three years, I’ve been faithfully driving 70 miles twice a week to a college campus to finish up a degree.  I’ve always been a lover of learning and, for the most part, have enjoyed the classes.  Now that I am about 13 classes away from graduating, I’ve become somewhat disillusioned because of the “system” that says even if your someone my age “you have to take two physical education classes” (I run about 27 miles a week)  or you’re put into a large class such as Biology with 150 other students with one teacher and no TAs which then forces the teacher to give multiple choice tests instead of tests that give you the opportunity to show what you’ve learned and not what you crammed to memorize. It’s all about memorization.  My friend and I agreed that large universities like the one I’m going to are about ten years behind what is going on socially.  Surely the reason for memorization (and not comprehension) is outmoded by the sheer aspect that we can look up pretty much any piece of information we need on our PC’s let alone most phones at anytime we wish.

Last semester I had a fantastic professor who has a Ph.D. in Social Work.  She saw my aptitude and leanings and encouraged me to explore changing my major to social work which I seriously considered.  But upon further exploration, I discovered that our school only offered two areas of study and internship under the umbrella of social work which were Child Protective Services (don’t even get me started on the dysfunctionality of that system) and Geriatrics (so nursing homes and assisted living centers).  Both areas were well established systems with entrenched paradigms.  From my experience with both systems as passionate and well intentioned as I may be, if I went into either system over time I would be absorbed like a tar baby into the sludge of yesterday.  Change won’t happen within it will happen by stepping out and creating a whole new way of doing things.  For example, I am hopeful that there is quite a bit more movement to creating intergenerational villages and moving away from traditional nursing homes and assisted living.

I am also hopeful that as more and more of us step out of systems and paradigms all kinds of new and good changes will be created. When you take into consideration the impact of global population growth and how all of us could be living on this here Earth a few years down the road, it becomes apparent that some systems will have to go away and new systems created to take their place in various economies, in ways of doing business and in how we think about ourselves and interact with our world.

It’s either that or annihilation and I’d much rather put my intentions towards creating better ways of living wouldn’t you?

The Roles I’m referring to as in mentor/mentoree/disciple/student or father/mother/child and not those yeasty floury things that you use to mop up sauces!  I believe that the Divine Guidance in my life has a great sense of humor and that many times I just don’t “get” the joke until I’m way inside of what is happening (p.s. I don’t think this is what is meant by an “inside joke”). Perhaps the mysterious has its own form of humor that roams around the bounds of what is understood. In fact, I can almost guarantee it.

For instance, take the case of me because I’ve always been someone who has sought out the mentor/teacher who I could follow and learn from. In my early quest days I would always look for the string in the perspective mentor/teacher’s make-up that I could pull to unravel the truth of the human behind the facade.  You could say that trust was a huge issue with me. In spite of myself, I stumbled upon some really helpful and good mentors and teachers in my life.  Two of them made a huge impact in the direction that my life was headed in my mid-to-late twenties.  One was a long-time therapist who was not only wise and loving but had a great sense of humor. It was this person who started the healing process of my shattered self-esteem.  A few years after my therapist, I met my dear friend who walked me through the ins and outs of co-dependency and its recovery program. That is the friend I’ve blogged about who is under hospice care now. So here are two people who have been very important to me as mentors and guides through life who are now both incapacitated.  I learned earlier this year that my therapist has Alzheimer’s.  This person who had been such a help to me, who held all my stories now has a disease that disables her capacity for remembering (among other things). And then, of course, there is my friend in hsopice.

I realized this afternoon when my hospice friend called me to help “talk her down” from a family drama that she knew she could blow way out of proportion, that our roles had flipped  long before her illness cemented the path she is on now.  Somewhere along the way I had grown up enough that I am able to stand on my own two feet and feel confident about the choices that I have made and continue to make as well as being able to re-gift the experience, strength and hope that has been given to me so generously.   Ultimately, I believe this capacity to learn, heal and give back is what we are all searching for when we look up to someone else.  A healthy mentor/teacher relationship is one that allows for the capacity of growth and expansion and challenges us to step into well-made shoes of experience, understanding and wisdom for our life’s journey.

Listen well to the yearning in your heart, for the keys to the kingdom are locked inside.

Oh? You don’t have a screw up that lives inside of you somewhere? Well, that’s a really great thing you’ve got going there, I hope you feel grateful.  For those of us who do have at least a teeny tiny part of a screw up living inside of us somewhere, this post is about how to look at that part in a different way. Dare I say, even make friends with him/her?

Here’s what I’ve figured out for myself as well as for many people who I have coached with over the years, that part of you that you don’t like listening to the most, those characteristics that flop themselves out into the world when you least expect them, the behaviors that seem to cause you to strut down the path away from your heart’s desire….well all of those pieces may actually be glistening gold underneath all the soot and silt.  Sometimes these things actually came from the naturally good part of us that likes to win, but for whatever reason we choose to ignore the messages, as they come forward and so they get stomped on and tossed aside only to rise again and again and again until we finally will listen to them.

How does this show up in your life?  You could find yourself in a situation where no matter how you looked at it, everything seemed to point towards you failing (which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but that’s for another post!).  Maybe you found yourself having to move out of your home because it was being foreclosed or a job that you had half-halfheartedly taken a couple of years ago was downsizing sweeping you along with it.  In SOME cases (not all) but in some cases, if you are willing to get quiet and honest with yourself, you might hear a faint voice, or notice that you had a “knowing” about your home or job that you are now willing to pay attention to.  Maybe that part of you that you would call a “screw-up” had been trying to tell you from the very beginning of purchasing the home that you didn’t want to buy it. But you let yourself get talked into it because “everyone” who you respected was telling you that it was the right time to buy and that you “should” do it.  Or maybe you accepted that job a couple of years ago when the economy was really tanking and “everyone” around you was saying to take whatever job you could get and be happy but you had an inner knowing from the minute you walked in the door that this job had “yuck” written all over it.

That part of you who you judge to be a screw-up today may actually have been your hero from yesterday….only nobody wants to listen to someone yelling at them (which is what that part of us tends to end up doing in some form or fashion after a long time of not being heard by us).

Make friends with that part of yourself or at least acknowledge that you are paying attention to what it is trying to tell you and that you will take its advice into consideration when making future decisions.  Denying that still small voice inside of us is like pushing an important part of our make-up aside that will somehow make itself heard, seen and known one way or another. Might as well meet it head on and see what it has to say.  Who knows, there may be gold deep down inside of you.

What have you been saying to yourself that you need to listen to right now?

One of my favorite affirmation posts that I receive every morning is from “The Universe” created by Mike Dooley. The standard line that is at the bottom of every post is “thoughts become things…choose the good ones.”  For some of us, choosing the good thoughts are easier said than done.  Some of us may have a brain that is naturally drawn to the shadier aspects of life.  Some of us have been majorly influenced by the environment that we grew up in and/or are living in now.  Still others may have gotten into the habit of looking at life through the pessimist’s lenses for so long that changing our ways from pessimistic to optimistic is too uncomfortable to contemplate much less choose!

What I’ve learned along the way in life from being someone who can either be way over in Valhalla  land in terms of how I consider life or way down inside the bottom of a dark well is that you can choose to get help to reconfigure your receptors. Aha!! You mean I don’t have to do it alone?!   No you don’t!  I’ll never forget the first time I heard my brain communicate an understanding to me about what I was going through in a compassionate way….it felt like I could almost feel the dopamine rising.  Slowly but surely after weeks and weeks of therapy, I was learning how to replace the negative voices in my head with the positive, soothing voice of my therapist.  From this experience I learned that those positive and loving voices certainly felt much better than what I had stuffed my brain full of over the years.  I wanted more of that good time feeling!

From that point on I was drawn to people, words, art, beliefs and science that expressed the positive aspects of life.  I believed that settling into the negative thoughts about myself, other people and life had become such a natural way for me that I knew that I would have to apply effort to choose to seek out positivity.  Over time, choosing the good thoughts has become easier but I apply effort every day to finding support systems through friends, family, affirmations and people I follow that can help pick me up if I stumble.  One of my favorite blogs to read is written by a friend, Mitch Ditkoff, who is the Founder of a company called “Idea Champions” Who writes a blog called, “The Heart of Innovation” .  What I enjoy about Mitch besides his wisdom and ideas is the humor and positivity that is a consistent thread of all his posts.  Surely someone who has seen and continues to see as much of life as Mitch does with the Fortune 1000 companies that he works with, etc. has every reason in the world to have perhaps at least one eye that is jaundiced, but I have yet to experience that from him (here’s an interview with Mitch on my BlogTalkRadio/Hope42Day show).

Choosing good thoughts over bad ones takes about as much effort over time as reaching for a carrot instead of a cookie.  Over time you’ll increase that muscle that chooses good thoughts in your brain from being an atrophied little semi colon gasping for breath against the side of your brain wall to a hearty well-developed cushion that will expand as needed to buffer and bounce away any negative thoughts that threatens to stop you in your tracks from moving forward in your life.

Start now! What good thoughts will you choose to have?

Do you have a loved one in a “skilled nursing facility” or perhaps you may be looking down the end of the road  towards such a place for yourself? Well then you know the “dirty little secret at the end of the road” that most of us don’t talk about and if we do talk about it, the rest of us don’t listen.  It’s just not a very pretty scenario.  And for those of us who have grown up in the U.S., we don’t like to look at many things that aren’t pretty.

Let me be the next one in line to say that a.) I’m going to keep myself very healthy physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially so that I don’t have to depend on outside institutions to take care of me and b.) I’m a huge crusader for creating a different way of aging and living such as small 5-10 home communities with a main dining, living and library room for all to share as well as a separate quarter for nurses and doctors.  I have just enough entrepreneurial blood in me to know that this is one of the next big waves to create and there is a lot of opportunity out there but only have enough energy to create it with friends for ourselves and encourage it to be copied.

Helping a good friend to enter a senior skilled nursing facility this week definitely triggered all my flight or fight responses. She is not happy there, is miserable and wants out. I “knew” from friends and family that have shared such experiences with me in the past that this kind of reaction is par for the course, but it’s one thing to “know” and an entirely other thing to experience it.  Especially when you’re like me and just want everyone to be happy.  I will say that when we went out to the smoking area so that she could enjoy her two cigarettes for the hour (don’t ask…) I met two pretty cool smokers , both about my friend’s age, who were nice and full of information.  My thoughts were confirmed that if anyone could figure out a way around the system, the smokers would.  And they had!  These people seemed happy and had both been at this particular home for about a year.

I know it must be scary to lose the power over yourself physically, mentally and financially by degrees and then to find yourself with what worldly goods you could fit, in a room about as small as the inside of a small suitcase.  Trust me, it’s small but at least it’s private.  I think this is only one way that many end our days because I know others who have created pathways for their end days that fit with who they are and what they are and it is because they were willing to look at the hard truths of life.  Still, it’s one of those dirty little secrets that as a society, especially an American society, we seem to sweep under the rug and not talk about very much.  Now that more and more Boomers are reaching the spot in our lives that we have to pay attention to such things, maybe more voice and impact can be given to how we want to handle the end for ourselves and how we can create a plan.

I, for one, know that I sure want to be in control of the kind of environment and people I surround myself with and enjoy in the twilight years of my life, what about you?

Have you ever found yourself about ready to jump off the proverbial “cliff” complete with your Avenger cape (mine’s red) wafting out from behind you as you peer out from behind your black mask ready to tackle all the problems of someone you care about?  Actually, I may have several sets of capes and masks with various designs to complement the mood of whatever occasion I feel that I must “save”.

I’ve been blogging lately about a good friend of mine who entered hospice care a week ago and thought I was doing pretty well in terms of keeping a good balance between being there for her and being there for me and my life.  And if you compared me to the person I was several years ago and how I would have reacted to this situation with who I am today then you could say that I have been doing a good job.  With that said  however, I am so grateful that I have friends who have known me for awhile who can be there for me and help me to see that I’m not only wearing a rather dashing cape and mask but that I’ve even added a shiny new pair of boots to my clever ensemble!  One friend gently reminded me that there is a whole  hospice (Christopher House in Austin ROCKS!) team who can help my friend and her sons figure out which skilled nursing center that is best for her to relocate to and what “stuff” she wants to take with her as well as which items she wants packed up and stored.  It is more important for me to be there for her as she moves through this stage of her life than for me to get in there and get BUSY (so that really, I don’t have to feel what is going on).    These are precious times that I’ve been given the opportunity to share with my friend and her family and what I really want is to be able to just “be” there with my friend and enjoy  the time we have together.

During our visit today, I wheeled my friend out on to her patio for a cigarette (hey, what are you going to say to someone dying of cancer, “no you can’t smoke because….?!??”) and we sat there studying the mural that had been painted on the wall in front of her room (she’s an artist so I always enjoy hearing her take on things.)  We were trying to place the landscape that had been painted.  She thought it looked like a scene out of West Texas showing the rolling hills and mountains (yep, we have mountains in Texas too!).  There weren’t very many trees painted, but my friend did comment about the few sets of Poplar trees by saying, ‘have you ever noticed that they tend to plant Poplar trees by cemeteries” and I said that I had but I’d also noticed that for some reason people in out of way places, especially those without a whole lot of trees seemed to like line their driveways with Poplar trees from the entrance all the way to their home.  We sat there as she smoked another cigarette and I took another deep breath in appreciation of our friendship and then something on the ground below the mural caught my eye.  It was half of a shell of a little bird’s egg.  It wasn’t quite white but it wasn’t quite any other color I could identify either plus it had strickles (Lynn word meaning a smattering) of brown lines running all over it like little mountain streams.  I picked it up for us to examine.

I’m so glad I that I’d left my cape and mask at home so that I could just hang out with my friend and enjoy our time together instead of worry-warting about what next thing I needed to get done!

Sometimes the best kind of rescuing we can do for another person is just to show up and just “be”.    Where can you just “be” in your life today?

At some point during our life time, most of us will find ourselves immersed in some kind of a “trauma drama”.  What is a “trauma drama”?  My definition of it is when there is some kind of trauma that has happened or is in the process of happening, like a car wreck (both materially and psychologically). This is when many difficult feelings like fear, anger, grief can get ramped up to the top of our emotional scale and we are vulnerable to choosing to jump into the center of the trauma with our own parachute of unmet needs, guilt, and fear to compound what is already occurring.

I’ve been writing about the process of going through the end days of a good friend’s life.  I’m learning that all kinds of choices that we’ve made in our lifetimes come to curl up at the end of our beds when our life is ending.  People we’re in relationship with in our life at that time, will show up with all their love  and good intentions as well as their fears, insecurities and anger.  After a tense afternoon of a “family meeting” to iron out the who, what, where and when for helping my friend with her finances and care, I’m happy to report that I listened to my inner guidance when it told me “you’ve done what you can do today, it is time to leave now” instead of staying to jump into the trauma drama when, after the meeting, my friend learned that a close family member had been less than honest with how they were handling her money.  There would have been a time that I would have not only stayed for the unfolding drama, but I would have thrust myself into a starring role!

Like my good friend and mentor/Coach said to me today,” it’s much easier for us to live in the thick of another person’s life rather than to focus on our own.”  Co-dependency 101.  The balancing act is for us to learn how to show up and be there for someone else as well as showing up for our own lives. Or as my Dad is fond of saying, “to fish or cut bait”.

When you find yourself in a traumatic situation, even if everyone and everything around you is screaming that you are justified to throw in your dripping bag of caca too, this is a choice. You do have the choice to throw gasoline on the fire or not.  The good news about being aware of your need to engage in trauma-drama is that now you are aware of your own stuff that needs to be handled so that you can find a therapist, priest/rabbi/clergyman, sponsor, and/or friend to get it handled.

I don’t know about you, but for me I want to be a vessel to be used by the Divine to help however I can rather than becoming that big ole leaky can of gasoline that I used to be in tough situations.  Learning how to put my energy towards positive things in my life is so much more rewarding!

What trauma-drama can you side-step today?

Turns out there is just a whole lot about dying and living that most of us don’t  learn about in most academic settings.  We tend to learn about the hearty rich part of life and death through our own personal experiences.  One of the best things we can do for each other is to share those kind of experiences. Of course, there is no substitution for the real thing but at least we can create a safe place to explore these mortal topics.

I’ve been blessed with three friends who have allowed me to support them as their days came to an end.  I had never had this experience with my family (thank goodness) partly because everyone is so dispersed that sheer geography gets in the way and partly because we must all be really really lucky!  I’ve written about these friends over the years because it seems that I am still unwrapping gifts and lessons from my time with them.  One of the things I’ve learned about being with someone who is dying, at least as far as pertains to these friends, is to accept that you cannot “fix” them.  That they are going to die and to give them a safe harbor to park their boat and talk about their feelings and thoughts as they ready for their journey home.  It’s such a sacred time right on the edge of this world and the next.  I wonder if this is what babies are trying to tell us about their experience of being born only they don’t have our words yet?

I’m grateful that I’ve cleared away enough of my own inner garbage that I can be there with my friend during this time.  Yesterday during our visitr, her pain level was at about a “6” (1-10) but even more disconcerting was her bi-polar and depression medication not working very well so she was feeling very fragile and very scared.  I’m grateful that we’ve known each other a long time and had talked each other off of many cliffs, so I knew how to talk her down off of this one.  She was worried and sad that she may have offended one of the older CNA’s when she was talking about her son and made a disparaging remark about his confusion and politics which my friend though offended the CNA.  After years of working the 122-steps of AA with my friend, I was able to acknowledge how she felt and that she wanted to make amends where she had done wrong but I was also able to tell her that I was pretty sure that anyone who worked  in this particular hospice setting  that she was in  had probably heard just about everything and was not bothered by it….but even if he was, right now my friend needed to focus on herself and love herself.  Feeling crazy because of the mental meds being off and also being in pain and also in the process of accepting that you’re dying is probably not the best time to rake yourself over the coals because you “may” have said something that offended someone else.  At least it seemed so in my mind.

Some people have asked me how I have been able to show up for this friend day after day, month after month and of course you know I respond with “how can I not?” But even more is that I believe I have been graced with the desire help her. It’s as if there are hundreds of angels on the other side of this earthly veil who are just waiting for us to ask them for help and for us to be willing to be used by them in the process.  Sometimes I feel like I am floating through experiences with the ability to observe what I am going through and wonder how it is happening so smoothly when there really is a big huge chicken s&*t inside  of me who has regularly run away from all kinds of commitments and intimacies in my life.  On the way home from our visit yesterday I put on Zero 7 and cried all the way home.  Cried that my friend is having a tough time right now, cried because I will miss her but also cried because of the searing beauty of life in these moments when we’re asked to expand our hearts.

What we usually don’t learn about the dying process is the outline of love that is filled in by living.

Most of us have heard the reminder about “living in the now” and that the only thing we can really count on is the present moment.  Turns out, these words of wisdom as well as many similar quips are right on.  There is something about being in the presence of a loved one who is dying that really opens up the present of life for me.  Not to sound like “Harold or Maude”  but just to make note of how the shadowy side of life, which is death, certainly has its moments as well.

A very good friend of mine who I’ve known since I was in my early twenties entered hospice care yesterday.  Thank goodness for Hospice and the caregivers who give their time and love to those who have chosen to end their journey of life this way.  This friend of mine has seen me through thick and thin.  From being an absolutely crazy, out of control co-dependent through getting sober off of many things that I used to ingest to help me to get out of all the mounting moments of pain.  When I went to visit my friend this evening, I felt time moving like thick molasses.  She had asked me to grab a few things from her apartment to bring with me which included her nail polish remover. She has always had incredibly beautiful long nails.  I sat there for the first half hour taking the old nail polish off of her nails as we talked about the present, the past and the future.  Just like in meditation, somehow my usual fast moving thoughts had slowed down enough so that I could be fully in the present.  She cried, I cried. We laughed.  When I told her that during my meditation yesterday I just “knew” that she had made this decision, she asked me why I hadn’t told her that she was going down the shoots.  I said, “you are a wonderful, loving lady who is a dear, dear friend but you’re also hard headed as hell and so you had to get here on your own sweet time” and we both laughed and then cried.

She talked about this last year of battling her Lupus and Cancer and how it had felt like she was trying to put round pegs into square holes.  I told her she’d put up quite a good fight.  And reminded her about how many people she has touched and continues to touch.  In fact, a couple of weeks ago she had struck up a conversation with the guy who had delivered flowers to her hospital room and learned that he had her deceased husband’s same first and last name.  They bonded over books very quickly and two week’s later he had chocolate and a teddy bear delivered to her room at the rehab center.  I reminded her about how precious each of these living moments are that we are in now…that these count too, that little miracles continue to pop up all the time if we just notice them.  Like the baby green frog who I startled awake from his safe sleeping post on our coiled up hose the other day. He had been so asleep that I was able to pick him up and spontaneously kiss him on the head.  I put him in the fish pond on top of a lily pad. My friend loved that story. She agreed with me about the precious moments. Like when her major care giver doctor who had been seeing her through chemo had the tough conversation with her about the aggressive cancer, her weak physical condition and helped  her arrive at the decision to enter hospice care.  He hugged her and then cried as he was leaving her room.  She also said after a very tough day of people coming in and out of her room as she readied herself to being moved to hospice she looked up to see the entire Occupational Therapy department who had helped her over the months and years standing in her room to wish her good bye.

Death does suck, don’t get me wrong but I believe that when life gives you a whole cart of manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.  Love your life’s precious moments. Slow down and let it in.