Lifting the Fog of Shame

Writer’s Block. Inner Critic. Projects start with enthusiasm, then slide into oblivion. Writers know these stories well. We call ourselves lazy, disorganized, silly. There are a million programs and courses claiming to help or cure these afflictions. In my world, the struggle to write is a cue. The root of the issue is shame.

Shame. It is the most insidious of our emotions, a slippery hybrid of rage and grief, replicating quicker than any virus, penetrating more deeply than the sharpest arrow, bearing the weight of a thousand elephants and as hard to pin down as smoke. I feel my shame as fog, maybe because I grew up on Canada’s East Coast, where both shame and fog are part of the landscape and have been for generations: low-lying billows of cloudy moisture that chill summer days into darkened dampness, obscure vision, hide landmarks, and threaten navigation while ruining our hair and our mood.  We learn to live with it. Ah, it’ll burn off by noon, we console ourselves as we don sweaters and wait it out. Over time we learn strategies to navigate when we can barely see the road, and over time, we don’t notice it at all. Can’t change the weather, we shrug. Life goes on.

Like fog over a town, shame roiling through our inner landscape penetrates everywhere and everything, obscures our vision, slows movement to a crawl, dampens desire to do anything except stay warm and dry and wait it out. Unlike fog, though, shame won’t just burn off, lift, or otherwise vanish on its own. We can’t control the weather. We can, however, choose to own the foggy apparitions of shame we carry. Owning the shame as our creation, and a genius one at that, is what invites the fog to lift and WOW, there it is:  a life of warm, sunny clarity, with visibility infinite and energy focused on who we are and can become, rather than creeping around obstacles and reinforcing patterns that keep us swirling in circles, searching and grasping for what is there if we only choose to see it.

What is shame?

To me shame is many things, wears many disguises, is multifunctional and multitasking, as slippery as it is wispy and, like an early morning on a spring ocean, is blinding and chilling to the core. Shame within me is a wailing wilful child, face streaked with tears of frustration, screaming at a world that punishes rather than listens to the knowledge of the universe she embodies and longs to share. Shame is also a lithe seductress, gliding in and around heart and lungs and gut, tingling and inviting, then clenching and wringing the very air and desire from body and mind, blocking the energy that is life, diverting it slightly, connivingly, with whispered stories of  ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘don’t waste your time’ and  ‘how dare you…who do you think you are?’ And shame is a decaying sticky blanket of undigested thoughts and dreams, half-chewed projects, and regurgitated memories, coating and polluting clear quantum energy into halting spurts of festering ooze. In the moment, shame blinds us to our words, our desires, our purpose, diverting or disconnecting our bodies and intellect from the divine signal that we are. In its grip, in any and all of its forms, we forget the divine and infinite being that we are and come to embrace the shame as ‘just who we are,’ if we notice it at all. And that is its most powerful venom: that of becoming normal and unnoticed in our existence, convincing us to shrink and twist ourselves to fit the stories shame continually hisses in our awareness.

Where does shame come from?

Everywhere, starting with the DNA from the parents who conceived you. Their shame, accumulated from their lives and the DNA of their parents, is all handed to you at the moment of conception. Your nervous system grows to it, and collects its own patterns and stories from what you hear in utero, and what you experience at birth and in childhood, all without your awareness or language to express it. As children, we experienced shame as a tool to ensure our compliance. Public scoldings, placed in corners or in hallways to be humiliated, being criticized or called out for missing a question, stepping out of line, being late … in other words, being human. Dare to feel it, to cry at the sadness, to rage at the unfairness, and more shame: what a sissy, big baby, until at some point, there is no more feeling. Numb, detached, hidden. As an adult, we are legally our own person yet internally, we continue to run the patterns of childhood, our training effective, our detachment complete, with reminders to keep us in line. Get over it already. It was in the past. Just move on. And all the while, shame keeps pumping out its poison. No compassion for anyone, especially yourself, who feels, who want to explore the roots of their agony, who want to choose different, do different, and make amends for the damage done by unjust, controlling, narrow-minded regimes. Pick a cause, any cause. Look at the anger, the sadness, the fierceness with which varied and opposing paradigms are ‘right’ and those in disagreement are ‘wrong.’ Oh, not cuddled enough as a child, someone sneers. Dismiss the sheer power of what is running our world into the ground. Shame. Yes, on us as children. Reinforced in us as adults, by us as adults. No clear way forward, no ownership of the internal blinding, festering fog of deceit running our lives.

We all want to be seen, heard, and acknowledged, yet we cannot if we do not first see, hear, and acknowledge ourselves and the truth of our experience. Lacking awareness, or bracing against the slimy blanket of shame, we give over our wants to others, raging for the attention we so rightly deserve, and so wrongly try to wring what we seek from ‘out there’ rather than allowing it to flow from within.

Is there a way out?
Absolutely.

Shame is energy, patterned to stories that, as mentioned, we are born with or acquire through our lives. Processing that energy is owning that we ourselves are divine energy, within and moving through our bodies for the human experience, bodies that are designed to be efficient processors of all energy, including food, thoughts, memories and emotions like shame. Allowing the stories and sensations to move and be digested, rather than avoid or shut them down, is the equivalent of the sun burning off the fog. Within all energy is information, and allowing that information to be processed and integrated both lifts the fog and expands our awareness, our knowledge, our lives as a result. And we create it all.

How do we invite the energy to move?

Generations of information is embedded in a human body. Much of the information is layered with shame, and from a time before we had language to speak it. Quantum TLC ™ (TLC meaning Triggering Life Choices, although Tender Loving Care is also in order for the awesome beings we are!) uses breath, relaxation and awareness of internal cues to engage the body’s natural ability to process energy. QTLC ™ in fact is the only way to digest information stored in the body. The brain cannot move memories stored in the body, so talking it out may help somewhat but in itself is not enough. My awareness, in my body, relaxed into the sensation, breathing and inviting the energy to move…

That screaming child: I listen to her. Acknowledge her. Cuddle her. Tell her she’s safe and smart and it’s OK. She has nothing to be ashamed of. She knew more than the people tasked to train her. And she’s reminding me that I still know more about me than any external system possibly can.

That slinky temptress, whispering promises of safety and contentment that only serve to keep me silent and isolated and on the fast track to an early death from toxic buildup of the energy that I am … I hold her, I thank her, for there was a time when those beliefs helped me survive until I could reconnect with my life. I acknowledge her, and remind her that I need that protection no longer. Internal safety is a superpower. No external force can touch it. Choosing from internal reference is choosing aligned with divine signal. No need to hate them ‘out there’ for who and what they are. Be who I am. Lead and invite by example, not by rage or coercion or manipulation. Be my divine energy in flow.

That decaying, sticky blanket … I pick it up. Examine it inch by inch. Shake it out. Hang it to air in the fresh breeze of awareness. Touch the beliefs deeply embedded in its wisps, hold them, feel them, choose if they continue to serve. There is the chilling dampness of a shameful moment relived, then a release … warmth and tingles, lightness, and a sensation of space … energy and place once filled with blocked energy now open for new, the tightness or sadness or rage also gone, digested as a quantum snack and absorbed for me to use as I choose, rather than mindlessly engaged in a pattern that no longer serves.

I do this now. I will do it again, and again, and again, as layers melt and more layers present, an infinite spiral in the infinite playground that is my life. Shame will always be on my playground. It will no longer be the playground bully. Given the attention it craves without a fight, it is my friend, telling me secrets I keep from myself, showing me shortcuts through the woods and abandoned lots within to where I want to be, giving me a shove or a smack when I need to notice something and in my mindful embrace, shares what it knows and drifts off like fog rising to the sky, revealing a clear path forward.

We can’t change the weather, or anything in the external world. There will always be fog. There will always be shame. We can choose how to use it: to maintain our stories and spin in circles, or to engage the spiral of evolution and plunge in, trusting we know the way. Choice, like internal safety, is also a superpower, along with the knowledge that we cannot get our own life wrong. There is no wrong or right. There just is. Like fog and shame and all we create, including our writing and the process we use to find our words, is both beautiful and genius.

How do I Learn About Quantum TLC ™?

As a CODE Model Coach™, I engage Quantum TLC ™ for my own discoveries and can guide you in learning how to engage it for yourself.

CODE Model™ or Creation Out of Deep Energy™,  and Quantum TLC ™ are part of the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge developed by Louise LeBrun.

Interested in learning more?

Visit
https://wel-systems.com/self-directed-evolution/

This new space for exploration includes articles, audio files, and referrals to CODE Model Coaches™ who can support and guide your journey.

Contact me

I can offer:

  • 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
  • Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into writing and limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
  • Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to write, exploring what lights us up in writing and what challenges us.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Thanks for reading and for showing up!

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

Pen and Punishment: Revisiting history with the power of choice

We are writers. We long to be writers. We wish we had time to write. I’ve been in all categories, and continue to meet folks who share in the joyful angst that is the call of the written word. The unspoken question: if we all want to write so damn badly, why is it so hard to just sit and do it?

Consider this.

When were you first introduced to writing? Was it a kindly teacher who encouraged you to use your imagination, gave you constructive feedback and ample time to finish? If so, you’re probably not even reading this. You are fluently writing your 57th manuscript and wondering why so many writers you know complain and drink so much. For me, writing emerged from me early, too early according to my first public school teacher, who expressly forbid me from writing because five year olds shouldn’t know how to read or write.  I couldn’t help who I was, but I learned very quickly if I didn’t want to be punished, to put down my pencil and do what I was told. Over time, what I was told became who I was. Follow the rules, avoid the punishment.

Ironically, punishment in early schooling often involved writing. Who remembers writing lines? I will not talk in class, written 50 or 100 times. And the drudgery of cursive writing class, getting criticised or even smacked on the hand for Os not properly shaped, As not pointed enough. Grammar class: endless drills on rules (and their gazillion exceptions in the English language) or the classic: write me 500 words on why you should not use the word ‘stupid’ in class, or whatever else transgression warranted punishment.

And punishment was not limited to the classroom. Did you have a diary? Did anyone read that diary, or a journal or letter or note, without your permission? It may have been a bratty sibling, a probing parent, or a nosy friend who entered your private world uninvited and used your words to shame, humiliate or otherwise kill your confidence and your joy.  We learn quickly in moments like that to find safety in hiding one’s words deep inside, especially things intimate and important to you. The thing is, the best writing to read is that which is intimate and authentic. Hard if not impossible to protect and share at the same time.

Then, enter high school and literature and writing become a literal requirement for a high school diploma. Pressure to perform, with zero choice in the topics, titles, or creative output.  Read this book, submit this essay, write this exam or fail, all with the timer ticking, regardless of whether you liked the book or had anything to say about it. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who said they haven’t picked up a book since high school, read little and write even less … people I feel would have much to share with us and the reading world if such an ingrained hatred of the craft wasn’t so deeply embedded.

What about those of us who insist on writing, then harbour the hope like an aching, unresolved, unrequited love?

We are living in a horribly delightful thing called a double bind. Taught that something is wrong when we know in the very cells of our being it is right for us. Trying to live by someone else’s rules when we know congruently in ourselves those rules are best for them, not for us.  Double binds run silently, buried with memories forgotten and feelings dismissed, dampening efforts forward with squirts of negativity that slow us down, make us feel like we’re pushing against something, raise doubts, shake our confidence, and plant the stories that we are wasting time, that it’s too much work, that you’re not any good at this anyway. So, given the opportunity to write, you tell yourself the house needs vacuuming. Maybe you’ll write after the kids go to bed. Or go to college. Or get married. Then there’s grandchildren, so the cycle repeats …

The fact is, the body remembers everything and has no ability to judge what serves and what doesn’t. Only we can do that, we as the divine signal that is us, the essence that is who we are and knows why we are here can take ownership of our lives and choose what we want. If writing emerges as a desire, yet is met with resistance, consider a new pattern of thought. Rather than labelling yourself lazy and trying to push through, consider yourself a genius and allow the resistance. Mindful pause yields wisdom; pushing through yields words on paper and even more resistance as the pattern is repeated.

The good news is, we as writers and as human beings have two important tools at our disposal: awareness and choice.  With these tools, we can create the life we want. It starts with a breath, mindful and relaxed to the base of the spine, inviting and allowing the inner space for whatever surfaces. Chances are, the words you’re searching for are there, under a shameful sticky blanket of memories and feelings from a time past, a person long gone. And you have the choice to stay stuck or to invite the release. It’s more fun than vacuuming. Plus it serves you longer and further, for your writing and anything you want in your life.

And you don’t have to do it alone. The CODE Model™, or Creation Out of Deep Energy™, is something we each can learn and live from, and we live and learn best in connection with others on the journey.

For example, I can offer:

  • 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
  • Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into writing and limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
  • Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to write, exploring what lights us up in writing and what challenges us.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Want to know more about The CODE Model ™?
Read the offerings or reach out to me or any of these awesome women listed below.

Thanks for reading and for showing up!

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about The Code Model ™ and the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge, visit:

Party of One: Going Solo Into The New Year

Tonight we on the Gregorian calendar say farewell to 2023 and hello 2024 … a welcome often given with much food, drink, sparkle and noise. This year, I may do all of these things. The difference will be that I’ll be doing them solo, my first time in 57 New Year’s Eves that I will be by myself.

Why? Curiosity, first and foremost, and behind that, a desire to reclaim and reframe that whole notion of what it means to ‘be alone.’

New Year’s Eve as a kid was the celebration I leaped into with an undercurrent of dread. It meant staying up late, lots of food, sometimes lots of people in the house with talking and music and so much energy … the next morning, it meant cleanup, taking down the tree, and bracing for back to school. The giant letdown after the Christmas season. With university and then my own place, New Year’s became the not-miss celebration with Boyfriend and friends. Then the celebration as newlyweds, and as new parents. On the eve of Y2K my husband and I spent New Year’s Eve watching our year-old son sleep in his crib, ready for whatever the world would sling at us as long as we were together. We spent New Year’s Day watching a Star Trek marathon on the Space Channel (Original series of course), our son taking his meals in his high chair in front of the TV while Captain Kirk saved the universe and wooed assorted lovely aliens all without spilling his coffee. Then, as our brood grew in number and age, New Year’s become a ‘get out of the house’ night for adult company at a restaurant with cloth napkins and no chicken nuggets anywhere on the menu. As the brood left for their own schools and nests, New Year’s again took on the mantle of sadness, heralding an end to the Christmas togetherness, a creeping silence as one by one the rooms emptied and the tree stood bare. Time for another marathon, this time the Annual New Year’s Day Movie Musical Marathon. Starting at 8 am, a stellar lineup of musicals new and vintage, always ending 9-midnight with The Sound of Music. For four years, bleary-eyed, brood and I rose early and gathered upstairs for musicals, while the Die Hard marathon ran in the basement for those drawn to both to float between. Good times, fond memories, creations I am now conscious of evolved to escape, slow down time until a new year beckoned my beloved children back to their own lives and left me to mine and perpetual unanswered questions. Who am I? Who am I choosing to become?

Books. Characters. Stories. Sentences. All layers of creation. What feeds those layers? Space. Movement. Flow of energy as ideas, motivation, inspiration, knowledge. An infinite playground made as small, exclusive, or confining as we choose. This year, in my cottage that is now my home, New Year’s Eve emerged on a choice point: choose down, mourn the fact that my children will all be in their own homes and with their own partners/friends this year, label myself a loser for being alone in a world that conditions me to believe I’m undesireable or otherwise incomplete without a man/woman/intimate partner. No date for the prom. No date for New Year’s. Would be sad if my life was a Hallmark movie. What feels sad to me is the number of people who numb themselves to the pain of their lives created at the denial of themselves to match the conditions, attain the ideal laid out by screenwriters and romance novelists and corporations making money from self-improvement, self-help, and retail therapy. What breaks my heart in this moment are the number of awesome, inspiring people who I would love to spend time with locked in their own stories, their playground now narrow and too small for anyone but those who can perpetuate their illusion of life, playing by the rules that life is something to give over to others’ beliefs and rules, to get through, to sacrifice.

In the past decade of conversing with awesome aware women, of expanding my playground to invite humans like me who know little and feel a lot to rediscover who we are, why we’re here, and what we’re listening to: the voices of others or our own divine voice, I’ve come to realize that the world’s belief of being incomplete without an intimate partner is not wrong … it’s just not the whole truth. Needing a date/boyfriend/girlfriend/partner/significant other or whatever term is preferred to be complete is pitched as that person being a separate individual. In fact, the statement is true when we see that the intimate partner we need and desire is OURSELVES. Intimacy with self: often mentioned right before the pitch to sell this book or that course or this set of inspirational cards with bonus candle. In fact, intimacy with self is both the easiest and toughest thing I have encountered. Try to understand it and my brain ties in knots. Let go and float into the emptiness that is I Don’t Know, that is the fallow field ready for creation, then it is the most powerful place in my universe.

And that is why tonight I am spending the last day of 2023 in my own good company. As I bid farewell to this year of peaks and valleys and challenges and joys, I bid farewell to the voices and stories that keep me cycling down into the past. As the clock strikes midnight I raise my glass in a warm welcome to a new moment where I live, create, and know I am, and am more than I know. Mourning the past, fearing the future, is no fun, and not a way I can live any longer. Being in the present, feeling my feet on the ground, the warmth on my face, the tingles that is me moving through the body that carries me and senses my world … that is what I will be doing tonight, tomorrow, and the day after that.

In performance, solos are the sought-after position, the opportunity to share in your own way, with the backing of your peers in the choir and orchestra. in life, ‘soloists’ draw hissed whispers of being selfish, arrogant showoffs; those living alone are pitied, viewed as victims of circumstance or in need of matchmaking and sadly, too many of us single folk begin to hum along to the tune of victimhood until it becomes familiar. We cling to loss as a trophy, treat space as a prison … accept a date or stay with someone who invites only a small piece of yourself, who you use to deny your full expression of self, because it’s better than being alone. I’ve learned that there is no lonelier place than that where I am separate from myself … my body living a life not of my choosing, while the essence that is me is buried under the static of others’ expectations and beliefs that no longer serve me.

Am I stepping into tonight fearlessly? Hell no … I have no idea what the next moment will bring, or how I will feel when darkness begins to fall, or when I awaken next morning, still solo and my home still quiet. What I know is in the moment I feel me, I feel space, and I cannot get this wrong.

Happy New Year! For all of you I have journeyed with these past months, years and decades: thank you. Your presence continues to enrich my life and the world. For all of you and those I have yet to meet … what awesome experiences might we co-create in 2024? There’s a perpetual question I don’t mind sitting with.

Thank you, for being here, for being you.

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

Cleaning out the Toolbox

We are resourceful creatures … from the time we are born we develop strategies, patterns, and habits to get what we need and want. Somewhere between the dependence of childhood and the independence of adulthood, we too often drop or lose the most important tool for our growth: choice. And in the loss of choice, those strategies, patterns and habits take on lives of their own. What once worked for us, now has us working for them.

My recent NaNoWriMo experience smacked me in the face with this. Halfway into the 30-day challenge, I was frustrated, frantic, and writing gibberish in a feverish  pursuit of what? Online badges and a word count that matched the daily charted average. ACK! and Yuck … I had turned an invitation to embrace the joy of daily writing into a punished pursuit of virtual baubles and praise. An ingrained strategy to write only when necessary, when there was tangible reward, was running me ragged and in the frenzy I forgot my ability to just STOP for God’s sake, breathe, and choose.

Do I benefit from a daily writing practice?
Yes, I do. Sort of. I’ve come to realize I benefit from daily writing PLAY. Practice to me speaks of needing to rely on routine and repetition to improve. In this moment, what I need is space to allow my words to flow, invited and embraced, with a sense of curiosity rather than an eye on the clock and the word count. My strategy of writing when needed: for school, for editors, for assignments earned me a living for years, gave my life purpose and money, the two things I thought were essential to life.  That strategy, however, was developed when I was a child, to get through a world I found baffling because long before I had lost touch of the essence through which it made sense: I had lost touch with ME as divine energy, and the body that processed all I encountered and created. The essence that is ME embraces creation; strategy relies on repetition to succeed. To survive, strategies generate fear of the unknown that, if we are detached and unaware, keep them running long after their serve their purpose. My strategies don’t know or care that I am an adult, that I am no longer five years old in need of the care and praise of adults charting my life. These strategies believe they ARE my life until I stop, breathe, and choose: am I in this moment living MY life?

That said, strategies remain useful tools. Once I’ve chosen MY life, I can employ strategies to build, grow, connect, develop … whatever … to create my chosen life. When the choice is from ME, there is no wrong. When I’m running strategies,  on automatic or avoiding a choice, then I get the same old same old that after a while feels constricting, heavy, frustrating … because I’m no longer creating my life, but seeking to fulfill a pattern that in the absence of choice is running me.

I’ve spent years awakening to the numbness, feeling like I needed to fight it, then feeling like it was too hard, so I allowed the pattern to run. Now, I know thinking it’s hard, that it’s requiring a fight, are strategies on top of the strategy to keep things from moving. Yep, layers upon layers of stories, like patches upon patches to contain a flow straining to dance in the infinite space to which it belongs. Constricting, heavy, frustrating. STOP, pause, breathe, choose … its that easy to release the strategies, one by one. This does require embracing the unknown … allowing movement into the newfound space and not dashing back to the familiar … for in that unknown is where we creatives truly shine, thrive, live.

So while NaNoWriMo for me was a bust from the awards point of view … a few badges, no certificate, no 50,000 words … it was a gleaming success in terms of my awareness, and my appreciation of how I choose to spend my time and how I choose to write this book in progress. It will not be through discipline and practice and word counts and deadlines. I am done with being run by strategy. It will be through mindfully choosing to spend time with my writing, as I would a loved one or a friend, not out of obligation, out of joy.

Space to breathe. The everything else follows. YES to all of that.

Thanks for being here.

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

The Power of Daily Practice

It’s NaNoWriMo, Week 2 … and what a week it has been.

NaNoWriMo is about connecting those writing urges with the physical space and action to write. It was an invitation I was excited to engage in. Writing daily this past week started in joy, was prompted by joy. But it didn’t take long for joy to become chore. I’m good at that. So good and so committed am I to that particular pattern that in the moment I’m blind as to why I do it. I had never thought to question it. Stop to ask the intelligence of it. Query whether this pattern continues to serve me.

Today is the day. This moment is the moment.

That’s often why writing is so intriguing, and then so avoided. Words are a straight line to our signal, our very essence of self and in the daily act of engaging the flow, so much comes to light that was once buried deeply.

I had a full day planned. Morning meeting, lunch meeting, tea meeting, afternoon meeting, all crafted in a careful day to be on the road. Then I awoke before dawn to stomach churning, intestines growling and venting fire like an angry dragon. It was not the shifting fire that awakened me. It was a weather alert on my phone, warning of snow squalls later in the day, at the time I would be driving home. A weather alert that persisted on my home screen, yet failed to show up in my weather app itself. Strange, only when viewed from the left side of the dotted line. From the quantum realm, it all made sense.

I lay in the dark, curled in on my choice point. The stomach churning I was prepared to push through, to watch what I ate and hang close to a bathroom, and the day would unfold as planned. Snow squalls, though, were a trigger. I hold the belief that road travel is to be avoided in bad weather, that I do not belong on a road slogging through blinding snow or rain unless what awaits me is a clear and aligned choice. This weather alert appearing as it did was at just the right time for me to choose: is today the day for me to be on the road? Or is it a day to be listening to my churning gut as it calls for an all stop on the routine, and an all clear on the day ahead in terms of commitments, outcomes, and expectations. Dropping beneath the story of snow or no snow, breathing into the churning and allowing the intelligence in all of it, the choice was clear. All stop. Clear the day and allow it to unfold moment by moment.

I felt my body relax, the congruency of being heard and heeded. I crafted and sent emails, one by one, releasing myself from the commitments of the day. Then I braced against the onslaught of stories. Giving in to my every whim. Lazy. Breaking promises. Flighty. Unreliable. Who was I if not someone I could be counted on to show up?

Who am I, indeed. I am becoming someone who honours her inner cues, surrenders to her divine signal, and keeps her promise to be authentically herself in the moment as it presents. I can be counted on to show up when it is internally aligned with myself. When there is no internal alignment, there is no need for me to be wherever it is I said I would be. There is only the need to maintain patterns and external reference points. Useful to me in an externally-referenced life. Not useful to me in the exploration of an evolving life. Keeping myself in place, running familiar patterns, is like rereading a book. It’s enjoyable when mindfully chosen as an oasis. It’s useful when mindfully present for new lessons that emerge. Otherwise, it’s mindless distraction rooted in the past while hoping for different in the future. No presence in the present. No power. No change.

I am reliable to my emerging awareness, to what I know I know, and what I know I don’t know, trusting in my impulses even when I am unclear where they will lead. Allowing my choice to reschedule my meetings today then allowed awareness of how I was running patterns mindlessly, overlooking my intention to allow space and awareness for creation, to rewire my nervous system and continue in creation of the life I want.

Trying to be in two worlds at once: the world run by my beliefs, and the world I am mindfully creating.

For three days I have felt edgy, disjointed, burning from the inside out. Three days ago, striving to complete my daily writing session, I felt like my head was under a faucet that kept opening, words flowing faster than I could write them. Choking, breathless, panicked, I typed faster and faster until my arms gave out and I screamed in frustration. Sitting there, struggling to breathe, chest clamped and back spasming, I knew this was why I didn’t work on my manuscript, my memoir, the story I’ve been struggling to write for six years. Writing was physically painful, words straining to emerge or streaming out untapped, constipation or diarrhea, both agonizing and disgusting, nothing I wanted to experience. In rare moments I touched my greatness, words gliding in order as imagined, powerful and energizing to write, to read, and to read again. Nailed it. Yet those moments of alignment were fleeting, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and rare. Like a lottery win.

I am divine creator. What did I choose to create?

Victimhood. A constipated, irritable-bowelled victim unwilling to own her power of creativity.

What’s the intelligence in that?

Nailing it streamlines and fast-tracks my evolution, leaving the landscape of my past as a blur behind me, plunging me into a realm infinite and unfamiliar. The ‘I don’t know I don’t know’, where evolution takes flight, where lives unfold in nanoseconds.

Where I’ve long told myself I don’t belong. Like a highway in a snowstorm, I should be off the road and home where it’s cozy. In the realm of I don’t know, I should be out of the void and into my cozy space where I know.

That’s the story running my life, deeply and unchallenged until now.

That’s a story I come face to face with today and choose: does this serve who I am, and who I am becoming?

Coming back to a cozy space …

I sit here in a house I used to own, in an office that was once mine and before that, was the nursery for my children. The nook holding my desk once held a crib, where one by one, my babies slept and grew to toddlers, just in time to make way for a new sibling. Except for the youngest, of course. With her ascension to a ‘big girl room’ the crib was dismantled and the nursery dissolved, shelves once lined with stuffed animals replaced by bookcases, the nook filled with a desk and computer. I am back because this youngest of my babies is turning 19, her ‘big girl room’ now a dorm at university and the world she is mindfully creating. Her bedroom remains in the house for special visits like this one. My new home, our former family cottage, is not home for her, for any of my family. One bedroom, all one person needs, except space for guests, and for all of the things I adore. I am in the process of creating a new space as home. I have blueprints. I have a process. I do not have the money. Holding the construct of money as lacking, I cling in fear to the income streams I have, familiar and predictable. My part-time job, for which the day of meetings was organized. My freelance clients, dependable and a function of intellect, for which I’ve been struggling to finish a project. My own company, available for anything I create … and I create little. I allow a tiny space and flow of energy, heeding the undercurrent that tells me to avoid the unknown and ‘I don’t know’ and preserve that which is known. I can do it all, and then some, if I choose to allow it. What is the intelligence is choosing to block it?

Avoiding the ‘I don’t know.’ Yielding to control. Heeding patterns aged and looped. Keeping me in place. Like the place I love yet is too small to support the life I am creating. I run the story that I cannot afford it, can never afford it. The reality is I haven’t tried. I have not applied for a mortgage or business financing or grant programs that could offer the funding I seek. I have told myself no before they could. I have gone with the known rather than step into the unknown. I have stayed as the person who as identity owns a tiny cottage, rather than inviting who else as the person who creates her dream home.

And in this moment, I have run from that conversation with myself to hide in the physical realm and early family system of being mom in the house where I raised my children, the original nest from which they and I have flown.

Why have I come back? There is intelligence in it. To awaken myself in places where I’m still asleep, to shine light on the habits still running my life from the underside, to be authentically myself not just in the solitude of my own comfortable creation, but everywhere, with everyone, with awareness and ease. Dropping the need to fight for my life in the light of an externally-referenced world. To trust in my internal cues regardless of the choices and chaos embraced by others.

And that means owning how my oasis is in truth a distraction. It hurts to come back to this house. It remains my daughter’s home, but is no longer mine. I feel sad for leaving her, angry that I had to. Returning to this space as a guest, I miss my own home, the flow and ease and joy I find there in living my life unapologetically, moment by moment. Here, in the house, to be with my daughter, is incongruent because my life space is incongruent. I am stuck in the past while bracing against my emerging future, the money talk about my new home a story coating it all. It hurts to be here because I no longer belong here, yet I brace against where I belong. Not that my new house is built or not. Within, in my evolved identity as someone who is reliable and good at my job and loves my children not because I comply with expectations and routines, but because I honour myself every moment of the day and trust myself to be my own best teacher, my own best advocate, my own safety, my own infinite power, no matter what that looks like.

In this moment, it looks like letting go of everything, then choosing mindfully, one by one, what to keep and what to release. Of possessions. Of commitments to organizations. Of beliefs. Of creations.

I created today to sit here with the sensations that wracked my body until I noticed, allowed the space, invited the flow. These are the words. They sit, awaiting my mindful reading, choosing whether to keep or release. This is where I belong. There is congruency in that.

And that, my friends, is the power of words. Not sticks and stones. Not word counts and publication rates. Straight line to who you are and who you can become. If you choose to allow the time to write, read, and listen.

Thanks for reading,

  • Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

 

 

NaNoWriMo: Week 1

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo to those of us who hear the call to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.  For the math lovers, that’s 1,667 words per day. For the goal-driven creators, it’s a playground of milestones and badges and online encouragement. Regardless of what calls you to put words to paper or screen, NaNoWriMo is a unique way to challenge yourself as a writer, build community with like-minded writers, and a simple way to invite fun into your creative process.

So what?

For me, writing has been all about the reward: client affirmation, audience praise, and good ole money. This year, the NaNoWriMo invitation landed differently. I want to write every day just because. This month’s annual initiative is giving me a playground and a reminder to keep that promise to myself. As part of that promise, I’m committed to sharing what I write in this month, lightly edited, mostly unpolished, definitely unplanned until I sit and type. I offer it up with no expectation, simply an affirmation of me doing what I promised to do, no contracts or payment or deadline required.

All the best in your writing journey!

Thanks for reading.

NANOWRIMO Creations 2023: November 1-8
New pieces will be added daily or as completed.

None of us was born to be a victim

Yet we’ve been taught it’s the safest place to be

Such rage in the double bind, friction grinding spirits for generations

And now, the world is raging, and we are ready to kill each other over the last doll at Christmas, the last tree standing in the forest, until we are

Raging against humanity itself, preferring dogs to people, and it’s ok to bomb the entire planet into death just to be right,

The last shall be first, so the Bible says

The first would rather see us all dead than let that happen

Victims, all of us

There is a way out

Reclaim who we are, the divine that is us, the world we truly want to create and not the one we were taught we wanted, deserve or are entitled to

Who wants that? Choice, our own. Responsibility, our own. Evolution, our own.

Can’t sleep and evolve at the same time. Can’t pay others to do it for us. Can’t blame anyone for any of it.

A few of us want that.

Over time, maybe a few of us can wake up a few more. And a few more. We find ourselves, then each other in the dark, and the way grows a little brighter.

We bought a piano for the house in 2003.

A Yamaha, my dream piano.

Not a top of the line. Our son, after all, was only 5.

Not a bottom of the line, after all, I did play a little.

My parents almost bought a Yamaha in 1974. The company was just breaking in to the North American market. Offering a great deal, yet, still a lot of money and for a id who could quit lessons in a month or a year. So, they acquired me a Willis upright grand for $100, a monster of a thing that cracked all the hallway tiles on the slow arduous journey from the truck to my bedroom. That monster got me through 12 years of lessons, and was moved twice more. Once, to the basement rec room. A second time, when my aunt bought it long after I had left home. The mover for years avoided eye contact whenever he met my mother in the grocery store. When contact was unavoidable, he’d look at her pleadingly: you don’t need that thing moved again, do you?

In 2003, I had my Yamaha, and it was the most beautiful instrument I had ever heard. Clear, crisp resonating tones that flowed from the gentlest touch on its snow-white keys, with bass notes that brought tears to your throat. I would have pitted it against any piano in the world. For nearly 20 years, it offered itself up to two young pianists and my occasional plucking.

Then I saw it. Glimpsed it, actually. Cleaning out a storage room in the church hall, I saw a hint of wood behind stacks of boxes. Stored in an alcove, buried by stuff, for God knows how long. A piano, tall and stately despite its shabby surroundings. A few blobs of hardened wax on its top. A thick layer of dust over the exposed keys. How long was it there? No one knew. A volunteer who attended school in what was now the hall remembered a nun who taught music on a piano like it. That was sixty years ago. There had been two pianos in the hall. One was thrown down the stairs, destroyed and carted away as garbage. A similar fate awaited this instrument unless another home could be found for it.

I shouted YES before I could think. There was something about this piano. What was the attraction?

I attempted to put my finger on it. One afternoon, toting a few cleaning supplies and a couple of music books, I picked my way through the storage room and stood, eyeing the wood through the stacks of old books. I shoved aside piles until the entire front was exposed. Rich wood, the colour of honeyed milk chocolate, with ornate carvings along the front and the pedestals. Stunning cabinetry, even if it couldn’t play a note. I pecked away at the hardened wax, used spray cleaner to brighten the keys, applied a bit of polish to the top and front. It looked gorgeous. How did it sound?

I glanced around. The bench or stool had long ago disappeared. I grab a plastic stacking chair, haul myself to the keyboard, touch middle C. The board was a little stiff, and no sound at first. With a little more force, middle C sang, slightly tinny yet recognizable. A quick scale. Not bad. Upper keys were remarkably in tune, given the assumed age of neglect. Then the lower notes. Resonant, crackly like a bass voice long unused, and YIKES, an entire octave in the bass section was wildly out of tune, but with promise, like a choir long neglected, rusty and enthusiastic, ready to perform with a little guidance and attention.

I tugged out my worn book of Christmas carols, the most familiar music I owned. With selective playing in the left hand, the experience was pleasant to both ear and touch. This piano had nothing wrong with it, and despite the neglect seemed willing to give its best.

I flipped down the cover over the keys. Heintzman Upright Grand.

And my new piano. That I knew.

I also knew I had no place for it. Or did I?

I was about to vacate the house with my beloved Yamaha, an evolving transition in an amicable divorce. He would take the house. I would take the cottage in a neighbouring town, a place I loved. A cottage that was 800 square feet. Where would I put a piano the size and weight of this?

A contractor confirmed my floor was solid enough for any piano. A few measurements confirmed ability to move it into the one spot where it would fit, if I removed my entire patio door. YouTube tutorials by my son and his dad had the unit open by the time the movers arrived. In it went, to stand where my couch once sat. The room shrank.

After a few days, it was hard to imagine the room without the piano. I finished polishing it. Flipped up the top, found a serial number. If my online searching is to be trusted, the number matches pianos built in 1896 at the Heintzman factory in Toronto, when the company was still under control of the original Mr. Heintzman, who came from Germany trained as a builder of pianos. One story has him studying with the man who founded Steinway in the United States.

An instrument built in 1896. That alone made it fascinating. And its ornate carpentry.  And ivory keys. I shuddered at that, cringing at the knowledge of majestic elephants slaughtered for their tusks. I couldn’t change the past. Destroying the piano would have made the elephant’s death in vain, an elephant that would have been long dead by now had nature been allowed to take its course. And the keys were in surprisingly good shape for the age and care not received, nothing broken, simply a rich patina of natural shades adding to the unique aura of the instrument.

What about the sound?

A tuner confirmed my crude assessment. There was nothing wrong with this piano that couldn’t be easily fixed. A good tuning. A couple of minor repairs to hammers inside.

And finally, the test. And a realization that this fine instrument has no music holder, no ledge upon which to rest books or sheet music. How do I play without music? I pull over a kitchen chair and run through a scale. My body shivers. I pull out a song, familiar from childhood, and wedge the book best I could between the front of the cabinet and the upturned key cover.

I squint at the notes and play, hesitant. I was out of practice, desperately avoiding wrong notes, until it didn’t matter. The rich bass notes soared through the elegant cabinetry and through my soul, penetrating every cell with energy and release. Bass notes that didn’t just stick in my throat, but moved me to full on tears. If this were any other stringed instrument – a violin or cello, for example, it would be worth thousands of dollars, in its craftmanship and richness of tone. But violins and cellos are portable, easily sold to new owners and transported to new venues. Pianos are built to be stationary, to have the orchestra come to them and that way of life no longer exists. They are given away, ignored or destroyed because they no longer fit into a house, a hall, a life. And that thought moves me to tears far deeper than those evoked by the music. That such a noble instrument could be so summarily discarded because it didn’t fit. How can a life not have room for such beauty, such resonance, such music?

There is a story of a young child racing up and down a beach, tossing starfish and starfish into the water. His grandfather shakes his head, saying ‘why bother? You can’t possibly save them all.’ The boy looks at his grandfather, shrugs and picks up a starfish, ‘Maybe not, but I can save this one.’  I grieved for the piano tossed down the stairs, for all pianos thrown into dumpsters and left to the weather by people with no room for them, no need for them, no awareness of the new life that awaited in keeping or repurposing, rather than demolishing. Such short-sightedness, such frenzy at needing to clean up and clean out. What kind of world does that create for us?

I recently spent some time back in my former house, and I played my beloved Yamaha. In tune and obliging, technically correct yet cool, The notes were shrill, at times hurting my ears; the bass notes still rich, lacking the warm richness of my Heintzman with its hand-crafted attention not only to detail, but the craft itself.   I finished the piece no longer in love with my Yamaha, grateful to it for its service, an evolution not unlike that of the marriage into which it was bought, a marriage now evolved and cooled to gratitude and respect. It was a homecoming on many levels when I returned to my cottage, my piano, my life. I sit down, wedge the sheet music into a spot where I can read most of it, until the breeze from my heater flips it downward and onto the keys. Again. And again, as if telling me Not Happening …

It’s a piece I’ve played for decades. Never from memory. I retrieve the sheets and set them aside, breathe, and play not what I see, but what I know. Parts flow into parts that only one hand moves into parts of complete blankness. I keep going until I reach the end. What came out was gorgeous. What didn’t come out is waiting for another invitation. It becomes my daily practice, playing each night from memory until one night, the entire piece flows, start to finish, my piano resonating richly, my body resonating to match, tears flowing as the notes. The Homecoming, by Canadian composer Hagood Hardy. My piano was home. And now, so was I.

 

Inviting Light Through Wordplay

Ah .. November, month of Remembrance and growing darkness, an end to Daylight Savings and the final march to the shortest day of winter solstice. It invites hibernation in fuzzy sweaters under cozy quilts with steaming mugs of spiced whatevers. It’s also the perfect month to play.

November in the writing world is National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo, the annual invitation to write a minimum of 50,000 words (about 1,700 words a day): rough draft, selected scenes, whatever, as long as it’s your original writing, written during the month. It’s self-directed and self-monitored, so the only one hurt by your cheating is you. The idea is to get you writing, butt in the seat, words on the page, through incentives like virtual badges, online forums, opportunities for in-person write-ins in your community and, of course, bragging rights if you hit the target. It’s a virtual community shouting Woo Hoo, You Got This! As the year grinds to an end and darkness descends, working alone and facing another year without that book started can be more depressing than usual. NaNoWriMo is that virtual community shouting Woo Hoo! You Got This!  

The power of community is infinite, just as each of us stepping into it is infinite. Writing can help us rediscover that, especially in the darkness.

Speaking of community, a writing retreat I was privileged to be part of this past summer has evolved into a monthly online gathering where with a monthly prompt we each craft a piece of our choice to share and discuss with the group.  October’s prompt was working moms. Wow, the scenario that unleashed for me! I dove in with the enthusiasm of a cooped-up grade schooler released into the fresh air of a new playground. Here is the result: part fiction, part memoir, all me. Enjoy!

I remember the first time I was asked: ‘Are you a working mom?

It was a school committee meeting. Annual fundraiser, the first meeting of the year, my first with a school-aged child. Assignment sheets are circulating, ground rules are being laid down by those more experienced members of the group, moms of fourth and fifth graders. As the sheet rounded the turn toward me, the question.

‘Are you a working mom?’

Then the silence, waiting my response.

“Is there any other kind? I replied, genuinely puzzled.

Polite laughter, strained over the growing seeds of impatience. The question is reworded.

“I mean, do you work outside the home?

And there is was. The battle line. Was I a mother who held a career, earned a paycheque, and otherwise fulfilled herself by having others raise her children during office hours?

Or, was I a mother engaged in daily routines of carpools, domestic duties, crafts after school, homemade dessert every night and volunteering as her ultimate lot in life, grasped as fiercely as the schedule for hall monitor and key to the costume closet for the annual school play?

Today’s me would have sighed, set down my pen, cleared my throat, and replied evenly …

For the love of God, can we as women STOP it already? I mean seriously, can we press pause on the consistent teardown of each other and just work together respecting each of us for the awesome beings we are? Why does it matter where I work, if I get paid, and what I do with my day? I chose to be here …  and granted, in this moment, not one of my best choices but hey, we’re all human, right? Now what is it I can help with? Or can I best help by getting the hell out of your way and letting your little hate fest continue unabated?-

However, today’s me at this juncture of my life was more deeply buried than the Oak Island treasure. In fact, in the moment I was asked, I didn’t know what to say. I did both. I was a full-time freelance writer, at times earning as much take-home pay as my government-employed husband,  working with clients from coast to coast. At the same time, I never left the house, phone cradled to my ear with one or more younglings clustered about awaiting snacks or facewashing or buttons done up.  I fit the world’s definition of a working mom. I was also an at-home mom. Straddlng the line. A stupid line at that.

But the then me also straddled the line of independence and fitting in. Knowing who I was and what I wanted, but not wanting to stand out. You know what happens to the tall poppy, some well-meaning person whispered to me once. It gets picked first.

So I shrugged and said, I work from home … letting my voice trail off hoping this was enough to satisfy the waiting panel.

What we mean is, do you bake? Or do you get storebought? We understand some people just do not have the time or talent to bake, and we try to balance out the bake sale table with both.

Of course. I should have known. “I do bake,’ I offered, hesitant on the brink of a realm unknown. Could I measure up to what was clearly impeccable standards?”

‘Wonderful! Came the reply. Smarties or sprinkles?’

Pardon me?

Smarties or sprinkles? It’s nice to have a variety. What do you use to decorate your cupcakes?

The world went black.

From the moment the line on my pee stick turned blue, I embraced the realm of motherhood and the choices that came with it. Breast or bottle, cloth or disposable, TV or no, solids sooner or later … I bobbed and weaved between what the experts claimed, what my baby demanded, and what I felt was right. I soon learned there was a fourth expectation to meet: that of the women collective who built their kingdoms upon the judgement of others, creating intricate mazes of decisions and options that left most in pits of condemnation while they ruled, smiling, from on high.

You bottle fed? So sad. Work outside the home? Must be so stressful for you and for your child.

Meanwhile, in another castle, being at home with your child is sniffed at as letting go, giving in, giving up … and what DO you do all day? Straddling the line, I absorbed all the criticism while consciously pursuing the ideal that we can do it all. Homemade treats for the bake sale! You got it. Client meeting at noon and deadline by the end of the day? Sure. Do handcrafted Valentine cards after school with eldest child while baby and toddler nap? Was going to scrub the bathroom then but no worries, will do that after they all go to bed.

Smarties or sprinkles, though, were the proverbial straw. The condemnation, the demands, the nitpicking were infinite, would never stop, unless I claimed the infinity that was me and allowed my inner truth to surface, unapologetically, and unfuckwithable.

When the blackness lifted and my vision cleared, the conversation had resumed without me. Maybe a second or two had gone by. The assignment sheet was still in front of me. I looked at the pen, then reached for my phone. “So sorry,” I murmured, fake texting my dead aunt’s number, “I have a work emergency.” Half the table nodded. “And my kombucha needs bottling … you know what happens when you miss the window …” The other half of the table murmured assent.

I drove first to the liquor store, then home, where in the silence of a house with a child in school, two in daycare and a ‘vacation day’ notice on my email I popped the cork on a glorious red. Raising my glass as a middle finger to every judgement on the planet, I owned my place … belonging nowhere in a battlefield full of lines … completely at home in a world of my creation, where my children were thriving … whether because of my choices or despite them, well, that they can explore with Oprah when they’re older and I’m dead. For now, I choose life and a good Chianti and savour every second.

That night, I dreamed I was back in the school library, huddled around the committee table, eyes on me as I contemplated … Smarties or sprinkles? In my dream I rise slowly, survey my inquisitors demurely, reply calmly…

Who gives a fuck?

Then I wrap myself in my cape and glide to the door, off to meet my fellow witchy bitchy moms for caffeine and sugar and a good laugh under the light of our awareness and a rare full moon.

I mean, really, Smarties or sprinkles? It would be gummy worms, all the way.

May this November invite you to a rediscovery of play, in words or whatever play feels like to you in the moment. Who knows what awaits?

Thanks for reading,

  • Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

The Power of Salty Surrender

Swimming is one of the few actions that makes my body happy. Swimming in mid-September in northern Nova Scotia takes a special devotion to aquatic bliss. As I stood on the shore in a waning day of summer, one of the few days not boiling or drowning its visitors, waves lapping in a rhythm of dare-ya dare-ya, I pondered how badly I really wanted to swim. Perhaps just savour the sea air, turquoise sky and gently-warmed sand? Maybe wade in, just to my knees? But the body knows what the body knows, that the bright ball of energy that is ME at the base of my spine WANTS TO SWIM … NOW. And with that clarity of thought came the brilliant awareness of how all of this is a metaphor for the process that allowed me to reclaim that clarity in the first place.

The answer is always YES in a quantum energy life.

My beach outing follows my fresh emergence from Decloaking and Living Authentically, a five-day intensive gathering of women seeking to reclaim their essence, reconnect with their bodies, and live their lives as creators of every moment, awareness by awareness, and choice by choice.  A week ago, I may have dipped my toe in the surf, shivered and backed away. I should read, I should enjoy the view, and my standby favourite, I should write, the stories would run.

Today I feel the pull of habits versus truth, habits formed from a childhood of avoiding danger, risk, and mistakes that no longer serve the life of an adult yearning to create, do and be all that is possible, and then some. And today, I allowed the chance to choose differently.

I have spent much of my life standing on the shore of the great expanse that is life itself, admiring it, loving it, longing to float and splash and travel through it, curious about what it held in the depths and beyond the horizon. And, I had made myself content to build sand castles and beach art with whatever drifted to shore, telling myself it was a great life of my choosing while underneath the truth of my experience, compressed and overlooked, slowly turned my skin to stone and my energy to rage. It’s too cold, too dangerous, too much work, too risky, the stories ran as I numbly gathered sand and scavenged the shore for supplies, you’re just fine here, doing what your ancestors did, what everyone around you is doing, proud traditions, hang in there, discipline and dedication will gain you great rewards. As a writer I began to wear thin from all the chatter within. Spinning stories endlessly in life left little energy or enthusiasm for creation of any kind, including those of words. The few pieces I managed to write were squeezed and silenced by an increasing number of stories and habits using everything from deception to outright bullying to ‘protect’ me and the life I had come to know as mine. Until one day, my divine signal within that is actually me shouted ENOUGH and I began to remember parts of me long buried in the sand, started to excavate, dust off, own and release the stories that, out of my awareness, had grabbed the wheel and were running my life.

Conversations like Decloaking put you back in the driver’s seat of your life, and in fact, insist you stay there, minute by minute, choice by choice. No handing off responsibility to a therapist or drug or trusted friend. You are the expert of you. I am the expert of me. Empowering? Absolutely! But in this moment when I’m about to plunge into freezing cold water, well, what the hell do I do now?

I stared at the water, knowing what I know. I braced against it. I’ll freeze. There will be other days. Curl up in the sand with a book and be done with it. I breathe,  feel the warmth of me at the base of my spine, the tingling of anticipation as I imagine the cool caress of the salt water, floating weightless, nowhere to be except in this moment. I wanted it. And I allowed that I could have it. Uncomfortable, maybe. Trust that it’s worth it.

Wading in to my knees was easy. Water creeping up to my waist, hoo boy that’s chilly. I stop, breathe, let the sun warm my back, swirl my hands through the surf to slowly acclimatize. A choice point: go back to the warm sand and embrace half-hearted joy in getting half wet, or breathe, surrender, and invite the full experience I want to unfold.

I breathe, relax into the gentle rocking of the waves, lean back and let the water take me. A brief gasp as the northern surf engulfed me … then an absolute peace. As I swam, I cooled to the water and it warmed to me. I floated, bobbed, felt its strength in supporting me, gave thanks that I live where this expansive and beautiful vista is mine to visit any time.  After a few minutes of bliss, a new truth emerged: it was indeed bloody freakin’ cold. So I  swam to shore, towelled off and lounged on the sand for an hour watching seals bob for lunch and seagulls dot the sky. I was also making connections, feeling how the sensation of surrendering to the momentary shock of the water was very much like surrendering to a new or different story arc, one that may seem to be more work or too risque or headed in an unknown direction. I’m mindful now of how often I brace against writing into the ‘unknown’, where I don’t have deadline and outline and word count clearly laid out, how unwilling I am to feel the momentary darkness of the unknown even though I know that it will lead to something awesome.

It was a perfect afternoon, perfect moment by moment, and a perfection I would not have experienced if I hadn’t trusted what I wanted, surrendered, and opened to whatever happened next.

How many times do we rob ourselves of what we want, of what energizes or inspires or fuels us, because we tell ourselves no, we’re better off without it, that’s weird, no one else is, that’s selfish, it’s scary … Paul Simon sang of 50 ways to leave a lover, while each of us know at least 537 ways to deny ourselves of anything and everything from an extra cookie to the trip of a lifetime because, oh well, this and that, blah blah blah. It’s a life and a choice. Life is swimming in September, relying on my body to know the temperature and conditions rather than a calendar and childhood admonishment that you’ll catch your death ... Trusting yourself is life, every time. There is no more powerful space to write from, or live from.

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

When ‘it’s too soon’ becomes “it’s time”

My labour this long weekend was in my basil patch, surrounded by my most favourite aroma in the world harvesting glossy emerald leaves for pesto and fresh basil lemonade. In the moment there was glorious peace and flow of creation.

Just behind it, though, was the energy straining to move, that would not be denied despite my best efforts to avoid it.  Back to school, back to work, back to autumn …  such sadness it evokes, yet to be grieving, angry, hopeless on such an abundant day seems wrong.  ‘Back to …’anything feels constricting, counterintuitive to me, to anyone knowing they were born to evolve, yet there is a sense of comfort, an image of safety, in returning to what was, even if only in the mind. An avoidance of loss, of danger of death.

And there it is. The pressure in my body, telling me it’s exactly the right time to pause, breathe, and dive straight in to how I hold death.

Labour Day weekend this year doesn’t just bring up my perennial grief at the end of a summer gone too soon. It also marks the 10th anniversary of our purchase of the cottage, a family play space with the ulterior motive of serving as a second address, heralding the slow dissolution of our marriage about to begin. It’s the first weekend of this ‘second address’ being mine, and an ongoing reminder that the card games and beach walks and rainy days spent building Lego are gone in a flurry of children evolving into young adults, with university and careers and their own relationships to play in. Who am I if I am not the mom with a houseful of kids, or even a house?

It’s also been a week of grieving other people’s children, sudden deaths of young adults in their 20s and 30s. There was a time when I would have felt the sadness just enough to fuel a prayer and condolences and a slight curiosity as to how these things happen. Now I find myself on a teeter totter of energy intense and active, on one side grief and fury that rages against a world claiming evolution yet killing our children before it is time, on the other the complete absence of feeling, numb and mutely watching all going on around me as a movie, not engaging, separate from it all.

It’s a choice point of separation that exists only in my mind, that my body says ‘no more.’

Who am I, and who do I become when I get off the teeter totter, the merry-go-round, out of the hellish playground altogether and own all that I feel, everything, nothing, and all in between, to drop the labels and live from what I know rather than what I ‘should’ do, or what is the norm?

I become someone comfortable with death as a part of life, life as a part of death, knowing that life, death and everything in between are labels for the experiences we as divine energy have in human bodies. I become someone who sees life and death becoming currency in the hands of those wanting our trust and our cash for their own selfish uses, terrifying us with stories to sell us products to defy aging, protect us from evil, or earn us a place in eternal life. We come from infinite energy into a human body for an experience on Earth, we return to infinite energy when time on Earth is done. Who would each of us become, what would our world become, if we owned and trusted that there is nothing to earn, no space to buy, no need to measure up, no fears to push down? All we have and all we need is breath, awareness, and the moment we are in to choose, create, and own our creation.

Death is all around us, when I choose to see it. My basil plants, harvested of their leaves, will die, their stalks and roots and the soil that sustained them composted back to the earth. My children will leave this Earth someday. For generations we have been taught how wrong it is, how devastating that children die before their parents. Absolutely it is. But at what age and what stage does loss of a loved one from Earth feel okay? My grandmother was 96 when she died; her death did not feel easy because ‘she lived a good long life’ and it was the ‘natural order of things.’ I miss her keenly, memories slicing like the edge of a knife, until I choose to open to another way to hold death. Not loss, but transition. Her essence returned to the infinity of the divine, still with me and a part of me, as energy rather than her voice and body tangible in front of me. So comforting, soothing as one of her crocheted blankets.

Who wouldn’t choose a blanket to curl up with rather than a knife? Or the scent of basil?

When I forget who I am, a divine signal able to create safety within myself, the only safety there is, I choose the knife, keeping the hurts fresh and the rage on standby. I tell myself stories and cling to memories for fear of allowing energy to move, light to shine, joy to enter, life to expand, for expansion brings me closer to my signal, myself, something I and generations before me was taught to hide, lest we behave dangerously, destroy something or be destroyed.

In the sunshine of awareness, grounded in the moment we’re in, the choice is clear.

Our power is in the moment, in ourselves, lived in the choices we make. I choose to allow the moments of sadness, the moments of fear, knowing that they cannot hurt me, and allowing them to move will free me. I choose to set down the knife and allow the world to shift, to change around me. To smell the basil and smile, not because it grew, but because of what I learn in the letting go.

Feeding Ourselves in the New Millennium

I think about food, a lot: what I’ll eat, when I’ll eat it, how I’ll cook it, where I’ll go to get it. It’s a conversation that is ever present and always available to light me up. I grew up in a family system that orbited around the three mealtimes of morning breakfast, 12 noon lunch and 4:30 pm supper (because my dad’s day shift ended at 4 and it took him 30 minutes to get home), and in an extended family where gatherings were focused around the potluck or barbecue. Food meant fun, celebration, comfort, always available and there when you wanted it.

As an awakening and wizening adult, I’m looking at my interaction with food very differently. The assumption of unlimited abundance and goodness is gone. Environmentally, we are losing ground literally and figuratively as farmland is plowed under for housing developments and remaining soils are leached of nutrients and natural controls for pollution and pests in favour of quick profits via mass production and non-native species. Economically, grocery corporations have never been richer while a growing number of two-salary families struggle to feed themselves. And personally, I have a growing awareness of how much I learned of nourishing myself in childhood was imparted to me for the benefit of others: scheduled meal times to support school and work structures, a diet rich in dairy and wheat and other highly politicized products that today have created a whole host of digestive issues, science that championed processed foods and supplements while dismissing traditional practices, and a one size fits all approach to diet, body type, and ‘healthy weight.’ Heaven forbid, some days I skip a meal because I’m – gasp – not hungry. Other days, I honour my inner hobbit and eat seven (meals, not hobbits) … you know, breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper. My body quite simply doesn’t function the same every day, or the same as yours. Same organs, yes, and maybe even same blood type … but the energy I carry, where I carry it, and how it is digested is unique to each of us.

That is a terrific awareness and a tremendous opportunity, it if wasn’t so damn terrifying. Because the greatest thing we have been fed, and that we have hungrily consumed generation after generation, is, quite frankly, the NEED to be fed, to be guided and instructed and handled by those who know better than us about how our miraculous and individualized bodies work.

Let’s be clear. We DO NOT NEED to be fed.

We NEED TO FEED OURSELVES.

Nourishment for a healthy life goes way beyond proteins and vitamins and dietary fibre. The food we choose to consume is part of nourishment that keeps our body healthy and we as divine godforce engaged with our human experience here on Earth. Our body also needs nourishment of other sources. We need information that challenges, invites, and creates opportunities for exploration and respectful discussion of who we are as individuals and communities, and who we are becoming.  We need conversations and communities that support our exploration and our evolution, not for monetary or political gain but for literal reclamation of who we are and what we are capable of creating when not reproducing patterns and cycles for the benefit of others who would prefer us unchanged, unmoving, unquestioning. We need to reclaim our self-sufficiency and our resourcefulness to grow or find our own sustainable food sources, trustworthy information sources, healing powers, and nourishing communities.

We need to wake up, and I get it, looking around at the violence and natural disasters and shortages and expenses it’s akin to awaking into a nightmare whereas to stay in our own little bubbles, under our own early beliefs, we can pretend the problems are the responsibilities of others, that we have nothing to add or no way to help, that it’s better if we just keep keeping on and stay out of the way while others figure things out.

I’ve done that. There are areas in my life where I still do that, where it feels like I can’t fix the world so why try,  that all is okay in my little cottage so isn’t that good enough? It is good enough, until the world continues to move on and my voice isn’t counted. Curling into a ball, closing your eyes and pretending to be asleep, gives an illusion of safety only until the earth disappears from in under you or you rise one morning with no food on your shelf and nowhere to buy any. Awakening meant taking ownership of my life, creating my life choice by choice, knowing clearly who I am and what I want, saying YES to those people and possibilities that speak to my higher evolution and a resounding NO to those using my fears, my doubts, my training and my history as launchpads for their marketing schemes and profit margins.

We were born with everything we needed internally to create a full and expansive life. Now more than ever, with the chaos outside us, a clear and grounded internal landscape provides the power of awareness, intuition, and change that one by one, community by community, will create lives abundant and sustainable.

How? Who knows? I’m still awakening to my own cues, my own inherent knowledge. That’s where it starts, each of us choosing to wake up and own all of who we are and what we create, not just the slivers that are socially acceptable or easy to offer up.  Artists and social trailblazers have been engaging in this evolution for generations and it is no coincidence that ‘starving artist’ continues to be a reality for many. Today, it’s not only for those seeking to create a great painting or unforgettable song. It’s about each of us standing up and demanding to feed ourselves, owning everything in our awareness and our lives, blaming no one, choosing mindfully, creating always.

Feel impossible? Hopeless?
Breathe and bring your awareness inside you, to the base of your spine.|
It’s akin to putting your hands in cool, rich soil … so many possibilities, waiting for seeds. Intention to words, words to choice, choice to action.

The unique and comprehensive WEL-Systems® body of knowledge offers a powerful new context for personal evolution and change, including articles and audio clips available free of charge to pique your curiosity and invite your exploration of self.

Decloaking and Living Authentically is a conversation that will take you into the much deeper dive of who you are, as the thinker behind it all.
Listen to a free sample here.

As a CODE Model Coach™ I welcome your comments, inquiries and conversations: contact me for an introductory chat

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com