Words Matter

Words matter.
After everything else is stripped away, all you have is your word. You ARE your word.
You can lift someone up with words of encouragement and affirmation. People can be torn down by words of negativity.
Let me say it again - Words matter.
I've been thinking about this for a while now. About how I want to be a light for people. People who are near and dear to me. My kids. My family. My friends. My friends I haven't met yet. Strangers. and even those who are not aligned with my values.
I want to be a safe place for open respectful discussion. In the political world, we probably won't change each others mind. But with respectful discussion, we might understand each other better and gain more compassion than we had before.
Facebook has given me this "out". I get to be social and hide at the same time. Recovering from years of emotional abuse from my father and my second ex-husband was and is a long process. A process that has me facing anxiety when I don't expect it. Social anxiety. and often not knowing or maintaining my own boundaries. I've done an incredible amount of work these past 10 years. I feel safe in my own skin. Safe enough to hold a safe space for others.
I'm going to move away from Facebook as my main source of interaction. I am not giving it up or stepping away. I will utilize it more as a way to show gratitude, event planning, and sharing of my life. But I am no longer going to be scared to pick up the phone and call you instead of messaging. I will encourage live friendships. Spontaneous get togethers.
Let me say it again. Words matter.
I'm supposed to write. So my intention is to show gratitude for those in my life. By showing tribute when I am touched or remember a fond memory. I want you to know that you had an impact on my life.
So do not be surprised when I call you out of the blue and say, "hi, I've been thinking about you. How are you doing?". Because I really want to know. If there's a chance I do not have your phone number, please send it to me via PM.
I am sitting in this sea of gratitude and I am going to do my best to share this gratitude and acknowledge those who have made a difference in my life. Friends, strangers, acquaintances, blasts from the past and even those from a different era.
So, Words Matter. You never know when you are going to say something that affects someone so deeply that you cause a shift in their life.
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was craving deep conversation and my friend Ryan J. Schoenbeck reached out to me via FB. I had slipped back into this space of resentment for not being able to have the mental space to do all the things that feed me. I was feeling guilty for not being the positive light that I wanted to be. Giving my all to my family and dealing with my younger daughter's depression has been all consuming. And I was carrying the guilt for us all. For not having the perfect Beaver Cleaver family. Feeling guilty for not taking care of myself enough to pour from my cup into my family's. And I tried to explain why I'd been avoiding life. Not showing up on the playing field of life by saying, "I've avoided commitments of any type this last 18 months because of my younger daughter's depression."
The response? "Sounds like you've been really committed the last 18 months."
Words matter.
Ryan - there hasn't been a day that's gone by since you said that, that I haven't felt good about myself and the choices and commitments I've made. In one sentence, a shift happened that allowed me the space to breathe. I am so very grateful for you. Connection and sharing is important. Our stories, our feelings, our words. They matter. I will no longer be scared of connection. Or be afraid of the awkwardness of reaching out. People need connection. it makes us stronger and more unified, no matter what our beliefs. And I believe that by sharing, in person or by voice and written word, we can better this world.
A few years ago, my niece was dealing with a bully. So she wrote on FB almost every day about someone and the good they brought into this world. Every time I read one of her posts, I was uplifted and in awe of this young person's wisdom and thought, "what a fabulous idea! I wish I could do that". But the truth was I wished I would do that. I was scared. Scared of connection. I'm not scared anymore.
So I am offering a safe space for discussion and sharing and caring. Let's be kind to each other. Thank you for being a part of my life. I love you all.
Words matter.

Sing Out Loud

Life Share:  Sing out Loud.

It’s been a week since Granny’s passing.  It’s still sort of a dull shock, even though it had been expected for several years.  She was just so full of life that I can’t imagine that she faded away so quickly.  In Landmark, we are constantly working on our integrity.  That everything boils down to our word.  In my last seminar session, it was so clear and simple.  To be in integrity, if I say that I sing or that i’m a singer, then I sing.  It’s that simple.  All the stories in my head about not being good enough or strong enough or making someone listen to me.  They are just stories.  If I say I sing, then to be in integrity, I sing.

The seminar I am currently in is Causing the Miraculous.  Our homework every week is to have a miracle.  If we don’t have a miracle, to be a space for a miracle to happen.  Granny’s death is a miracle.  A sad miracle.  We only experience birth and death once each in our lifetimes.  Other’s birth’s and death’s, yes.  but only once for our own.  And the only thing that connects the two is our lifetime.

I’ve loved to sing my entire life.  It is at the core of my very existence.  I’ve always had trouble with vulnerability, so I never really shared it’s importance to me.  I’d just find avenues to experience sharing it.  A combination of a comment that my father made about him not really liking female singers (translating to me that he would never like my singing) and a choir director/music teacher that was just a terrible fit for me on a personal level spun a story that was so real that it was fact.  I wasn’t good enough and people having to listen to me would be a burden.  I used to think that I had stage fright.  But it was really just this story.  I love to perform on stage and when I can reach inside me beyond this story, i have no stage fright at all.

I gave a song as a gift for one of my closest friends a few years ago and one of the guests came up to me afterwards and she told me that she really enjoyed the song and that she had heard me practicing before the ceremony.  She had no idea that it was a live song.  She thought it was a professional recording.  I was completely dumbfounded and left speechless.  But in that moment, i started to explore why I thought my singing was a burden to others.

The experience came back to me of taking the songs that I had prepared to sing in church over to my Granny’s and performing them for her.  I was scared and convinced that no one really wanted to hear me sing.  That those that listened to me were doing me a favor.  So I sang quietly.  My Granny was having none of that.  She stopped me in the first chorus, exclaiming, “Good grief Girl!  If you are going to sing, you need to sing out loud!”  She was so matter of fact.  I was ready to run away and leave but she wanted to hear me.  So I sang again.  Louder this time.  She gave me confidence.  And it was something that I could share with her, that I shared with very, very few until later in my adult years.

About 8 years ago, I went on a Walk To Emmaus.  Which is one of the most pivotal journey’s i’ve ever been on in my entire life.  I came away from that knowing why I believed in the faith I did and was able to reconcile it and distinguish it from the right wing bible thumping hardcore heaven vs hell Christianity that is so far from the beliefs I hold.  In the ceremony for the last evening, as I walked in to the praise area, the music team was playing a song called “Remember Me”.  It reached right down into my heart and squeezed.  The thought occurred to me in that moment that my granny would love that song.

When my aunt called me and asked if I’d like to sing a song at the funeral, I said yes without a thought.  Of course I would sing because to be in integrity, I sing.  A process that usually takes me at least a couple of weeks to be comfortable enough with a song to sing in front of other people, I had two days.  I hadn’t even heard the song in years.  I’m also an empath.  I soak up the emotions in a space and process it for the universe.  So when I’m in the presence of tears, I shed tears too.  And this was my granny’s funeral, so I also had my own tears to cry.

So I had another miracle.  I closed my eyes and sang to my Granny, just like i was 14.  I remembered all the words, hit the notes and did not break down in tears during the song.  During the 2 days of learning the song, that had not happened.  I also closed my mind off to the story in my head about how I shouldn’t be able to sing while grieving; that I was cold and unfeeling; that I was wrong for having to keep my eyes closed.  I could feel her presence and knew that I was giving a gift to her, to me, to those that loved her.  I was providing a space for those that came to remember her to grieve while at the same time providing a tribute to her and saying my own goodbye.

As part of my Native American ceremony practice, I do something in honor of the person that has passed for a year.  For my father, I ate a butterfinger on the last Friday of every month.  For my Granny what feels right is to sing.  So I am going to sing.  I will learn a new song every week for the next year.  Not to perform and not to be perfect.  Just to have it to sing.  And I’m working on my sharing, so I’ll share the songs with you and why I chose them.  There was no other individual more comfortable in her own skin than my Granny.  She gave me one of the most powerful lessons in life - Sing out loud.

If you've made it to the end of this, thank you so much for letting me share.