The Game

The Game

Take a chance

Make the bet

Go all in…

Pick a card

Lay your heart

On the line

I gave you the queen

You were my king

I looked again

You stole my heart

And made me the fool…

You cheated me 

You took my voice

You took my turn

You took my whole damn hand and then some

And Now I’ve folded

It’s your turn to give me reasons 

It’s your turn to give me hope

It’s your turn to pick up the pieces

It’s your turn to watch me go

I played the game and you won it

You were right all along

But you missed one piece

The ace up my sleeve

You can win the game but I’ll always have new cards

Glue and Living On The Front Porch

“Mom - I need some glue so I can glue you to me all the time.”  - Ada, age seven

She’s the most self expressed child I’ve ever had and also the one that needs the most snuggle time.  She also has no idea what it means to share the spotlight. 

She also got upset at me the other day because I asked her to clean her room and brush her teeth and I wouldn’t let her watch TV until she had done so.  Next thing I know she is standing beside the front door with a packed rolling cooler with a defiant look on her face, waiting for me to notice her.  As soon as I gave her my full attention she announced angrily “I’M LIVING ON THE FRONT PORCH FOR A WHILE!”.  I asked her if she’s running away and she replied “No.”.  I teased her “Should I give your bedroom away?”  She yelled at me, “NO!  I’M JUST LIVING ON THE FRONT PORCH FOR A WHILE.” And proceeded to slam the door behind her as she walked out. 

I looked out the front window a few minutes later and she is sitting on the front walkway holding up a hand lettered sign that says HELP!  After dying laughing, I walked out to take some photos of her. 

“Don’t take my picture!” She angrily snapped at me. 

“Why not?  I think we should take a picture of the day you lived on the front porch for a while.”

She thought about it for a minute and replied in a snappy tone “Only if you send it to Grammy Kim.  If SHE were here she would RESCUE ME!”

“What do you have in the cooler?”, I asked.  She opened it. Inside were snacks, some toys, and one of my sweaters (even though it was a warm August day). 

She sat out there for a while and when I checked on her next she was wearing the sweater and eating a banana and a piece of bread spread thick with Nutella. Her hands were messy and Daisy said “You need to wash your hands so it doesn’t get on Mom’s sweater.” To which Ada starts walking to the front flower bed and starts digging with her hands while she says “I know! I’m getting some water to wash them off.”  

It took me a moment to realize SHE IS TRYING TO DIG A WELL!  I tried to keep the laughter in as I told her “I don’t think you’ll find water if you dig a hole here sweetie. You probably want to go in the house and wash them in there.”  

The Nutella must have done the trick because after that she was in a very good mood and, apparently, was done living on the porch. 

Peace

 What am I needing? What am I looking for? 

I want peace.  Peace is a state of mind - a way of being. That peace comes from my own thoughts, my own mindset, my own patterns, my own integrity, and my own emotional regulation.  It is not dictated by outside circumstance, situation, setting or those around me.  I am creating peace regardless of who lives where or what they do. I am my own peace. 

I want softness between us. I want things to be able to be processed through without it feeling like bone on bone.

Things that take away my peace: 

When I martyrize and pretend I need to hold the mirror up, dissect, coach, process, or hold him accountable, or get him to show up BEING/DOING what works for our marriage. 

My own victim mindset. Allowing thoughts to create stories that don’t serve me, or us. 

What supports my peace: 

My own daily grounding in intention and being.

My own daily movement and practices that support my physical health. 

My own daily creative expression. 

My own self regulation practices throughout the day. 

My own responsibility, accountability, and clarity. Naming what is happening vs what I think or feel about what is happening.  

Setting down the protections and safety and filtering through betrayal and abandonment wounds - and reaching intentionally for love and softness with myself and with him instead.  Being intentional about what that softness looks like each day, how I’m watering it and how I’m growing it. 

I also want a fundamental shift in our interaction. I want a fundamental shift that feeds that peace and softness, that feeds responsibility, ownership, and everything that has us be in the octagon.   What exactly would that fundamental shift look like?  Well - I can only control what it looks like for me, be what I want to see, and request for what it looks like from him. 

That looks like: 

Commitment driven interaction.  Feelings, fear, and lack of regulation doesn’t hijack what we are committed to, or agreements being honored. 

Self Accountability. This looks like anything outside e step forward and make the repair and cleanup without being prompted. We learn from our mistakes and then SHIFT our being/doing. We make it a point to know where we once would have pretended not to know. We are courageous and bold where in the past we may have avoided.  

Responsibility.We are in ownership, of our thoughts, feelings, results, and impact.  We never pretend the power lies outside of us.  Blame shifting doesn’t happen, and if it does we own it while we practice this, we own it and clean it up immediately.  We don’t live in defensiveness. We process our own unanswered questions and emotional needs. 

Dancing happens. Consistently. Because the work to be close, clean, and clear between us has already been done. Trust is available. And dancing creates joy.  And I get to dance for myself in movement whether he does or not. 

Perfection vs Possibility — or Compassion

Kyle and I have hit some rough spots over the past couple years as we’ve uncovered some patterns and survival conversations running that we hadn’t always seen before.  With a recent bit of road rash on our journey I have been in the question of how do I know when is enough enough to walk away… knowing a choice like that gets to be powerful - walking INTO something, not away from what I don’t want.  I have been setting myself up with binary options. This or that. Black or white. Suck it up or blow it up. Even when I’m not coming from protection or fear - I am coming from thinking I need to attain an idealistic version of perfection - which I’m seeing is its own form of fear, survival and protection - because even if I don’t think I’m coming from fear/protection - I definitely can’t say I’m coming from a place of compassion or love or joy.   I’m grateful for those  helping me see that today. 

What I’m seeing is that I don’t have to have a choice of walking away or not. It’s never about being, or “when is it enough” or “too much”.  I am not limited in my capacity to be love - and that does not mean accept everything and abandon myself - honoring clear agreements and boundaries is a form of love. Holding the bar high without judgement of capacity is an act of love. 

As I keep wrapping myself up with the same generous amounts of love and care and cherishing and tenderness and COMPASSION I want from him - or anyone else- I will always have enough space standing in love for him - and anyone else - to meet me there.  To choose to do my inner work and stretch to meet each other there is a choice we will or will not make, enough times over that there will be distance and disconnection or there will be accountability, and connection as we work through everything side by side.  There is both infinite possibility - and the perfection comes in the perfect amount of love between us to meet anything together — or the perfect amount of trust in myself to meet anything no matter what.  It isn’t either or. 

If at some point the results say that I am making myself small or shutting downs to be with him - then I get to choose to do that or not. It’s still always about who I’m being. And it’s always VISION - Be Do Have.  I can hold the vision of infinite possibility and beautiful perfection of BEING the perfect amount of me - including in the face of breakdown - because I know who I am and if that’s not who I’m being in that moment it is only because I have stepped into a survival/fear conversation.  That is different than the “perfect ideal” that I’ve been holding as the goal up until now. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk - I am grateful for my infinite capacity to rise again in resilience and love for myself - and for the friends who supported me in creating a beautiful breakthrough in how I’m holding this tonight.  This is the ripple of being in the room - coaching and standing for transformational training - and living it in our lives everyday - standing for oneness and love over and over. 

Ancient Sadness

 From 2024 after Grace

The ancient sadness in me

Is the opening of my depth

The way I love and care

It is the recess to the tapestry 

That connects my heart

To yours

And it isn’t bad

Or wrong

Or even heavy

It is depth

Without weight

Understanding

With empathy

Connection

Without tethering

Love

Without bounds

It is the fuel that feeds

The vibrancy in me.

What is the vibrancy

Full life

Effervescence

Of Who I Am

I am Caring

That shines the light

I am Generous

In creation of energy

Space

And understanding

Loving

With all the colors

Of the rainbow

Beauty

In the perfection of me

An aura of color

That surrounds

I fear what I don’t know. 

And while the fear is natural - it is who I will be when I am healed

And how life may change 

That scares me. 

I am a caring,

Generous

Loving

Leader

That will never change

And those around me will still be 

Who they are. 

Rebuilding

 There are so many beliefs that went in as a child, so many experiences that shaped me, and unfortunately many of them were not conducive to viewing myself as anything other than broken, damaged and wrong.  I am not alone in this - it is after all the way of life that our childhood experiences shape the way we see the world, relationships, and ourselves.  It is the heartache of poverty and abuse, it is the loneliness of that surrounds us even in a crowd, it is the landscape painted with strokes of a faulty brush loaded with colors of complex trauma.  And - it is not a complete picture. It is incomplete to stop at the brush strokes that went down without adding in the details, appreciating the layers, or highlighting the beauty in between. 

Simple isn’t always good and complex definitely doesn’t mean bad, and yet I have often collapsed it as so.  I have seen the parts of me that kept myself safe my staying quiet as weak, wrong, and bad while simultaneously holding the parts of me that speak up powerfully, stand strong even if raging, and keep myself safe by being bigger, louder, and more scary than anything around me as bad and wrong too.  I’ve held myself wrong for not keeping myself safe a decade ago by the same standards that I would view keeping myself safe now - and simultaneously judged myself for keeping myself safe at all and putting up protection instead of standing in love, courage, peace and softness continually.  It’s as though I never give myself an option to win. 

I judge myself for not being free, expressive and letting my passion shine, for not being sunshine and roses and rainbows and that way of BEING loving light and sweetness I adore when I see it — and at the same time I have not trusted others when they are that way and have no connection to it - while holding myself wrong for not being it and them wrong for being it.  I only just today connected that I saw my little brother shamed and abused and hurt for BEING that love, freedom, light and playful sunshine - so why would I have ever given myself space to be that when it clearly was a dangerous way to be.  Up until now I only saw that I didn’t WANT to be like the people who seemed to be that happy go lucky because that way of being is also what was often adopted by some of the people that hurt me.   Not only have I held it wrong but also unsafe… and people wonder why they can’t tell if I just came from a carnival or a funeral. 

There is a silliness about it - a ridiculous standard of who I “should” be that has no grace or compassion or appreciation or thankfulness for who I’ve BEEN. 

Today my therapist encouraged to separate it somewhat, give some space and distance, and see that there are parts of me that needed to keep myself safe with silence, calmness, self shaming and complete seriousness growth and learning.  …. And there are some parts of me that have started to come online with owning my voice and finding the way to be true to me without raging… and there are some parts of me that feel shame at how I did or didn’t handle certain things mostly born of this insistent and unrealistic ideal of how to be the best possible me all the time even though that ideal is changing. 

I have had a sense of not being able to trust myself to know when enough is enough, to not be able to trust myself to keep myself safe, of being ashamed and angry at everything that I have allowed and created and all the ways I haven’t held myself and others safe too.   I have held rage at me, Kyle, Ryan, Mom, Dad, and others for everything else too - at some level. 

Today I give myself another layer back to me. I meet a new layer of myself newly. I hold myself safe and wrapped in love. 

Today I am reinforcing new stories, pictures, and ways of seeing me. 

I trust myself. 

I love myself.

I hold myself safe and cherished. 

I have boundaries and I hold them with love for myself. 

I surround myself with cashmere, softness, warmth, love and support. 

I am learning and always will be. 

There isn’t one part of me that is all or nothing - all powerful or the only truth.  There are parts of me all over the place that get to be loved, held and understood. 

I’m not wrong and neither is anyone else…. I may not be right either. I am me though - and I am the perfect amount of me in every situation. 

I am trustworthy. I am kind. I am loving. I CARE. 

I love me. And that is enough. 

Cashmere

 I was asked to write down what it would feel like to wrap myself up in cashmere instead of protection like I normally do.  Every time I try to write it down I go blank.  

I don’t know what cashmere feels like. Not in a relationship. Not in life. I’ve never been gifted cashmere. I’ve never been gifted that sensuous soft embrace of trust and been held with luxurious care. I’ve never been cherished consistently and protected as priceless and held that way.  I’ve had glimpses of it, brushed my hand against it, and sometimes even had that softness caress my cheek and kiss the back of my neck, just behind my ear.  I’ve seen what I thought was it, reached for it, even worn it - later to find I’d been duped by a fake. The kind that has just enough cashmere to not be outright false but mixed with enough scratchy wool and nylon to disappoint and become itchy at the first sign of heat or sweat from a brisk walk  or exertion.  I’ve worn the sweaters of hope and effort and even commitment and work - just to have it torn to pieces with every stitch of my soul shredded by the sharpened saber of another’s inner wounds. 

I know disappointment. I know how it feels to filter everything through the wounded eyes of betrayal and pain. What I’m not sure of right now is what it feels like to let it all go. To stop trying on the scratchy sweaters others hand me from their wounded past and instead paint myself in perfumes of sweet vanilla and fragrant jasmine, covering my soul with the softest embrace of meticulously hand selected fibers of love, connected by the steady hum of softly clicking knitting needles from the sweetest grandmother whose heart has aged but whose love grew stronger, shored up by the wrinkles of time. 

I’m not sure what it feels like to dress myself in robes of silk in front of mirrors reflecting the infinite beauty of who I am, tenderly caring for me.  I am beauty. I am love. I know it. I trust myself in it, but I am seeing how I haven’t carried myself in it, bathed in it, or wrapped myself up in the scent of it regardless of what paths cross mine each day.

I think I’ve had it twisted somewhere that if I live a life like that, it also means I live in naivety of life without pain, challenges, or sadness.  That a life wrapped in silk and cashmere only exists in blown glass bubble, and since I am not the princess in a fairytale that it really isn’t the life for me. 

But I am the center of the fairytale I create in my mind, regardless whether it is a life lived in clouds of bliss or - as I have currently painted it - filled it with more nonsensical creatures, terrible ogres and twisted lies and betrayal from a prince with a broken heart and whose self betrayal holds him back from holding me in cashmere every day.  I think he sees me as the spiny beast in this sad tale more often than the warrior princess wrapped in shrouds of chain mail and weighed down by the heaviness or the protection she carries, which is more often than not the way I dress myself. Or equally as often, I drape myself in robes of sadness with ash marked brows of haunting pain and shards of broken dreams strewn on the floor around me, feeling trapped, broken and unseen. 

I am neither fairy princess or haunted ghoul.  I am me. And it’s time to wrap me up in the copious amounts of love and care that is within me, savoring the scent of jasmine on the wind, letting my skin soak in the warmth of the sun that surround me when I step out of the concrete walls that have held me safe for so long. 

I can say it - but now, I get to be well practiced in it.  No matter what the price whether charming or foe is being around me. 

So to sum up this exercise of cashmere instead of protection - this is what I see.   That every day I get to embrace me, wrap myself up in the love and care and cherishing that I long for outside of me, hold myself with tenderness and sweet embrace while being authentically and vulnerably me. Trusting myself, holding myself, and staying vulnerable without fear. Letting all the fear go is a stretch because I see how knowing what to fear, what to avoid has kept me safe for so long. But I am no longer a child hiding from her Dad. I am no longer a teenager being disowned for having a voice that said no. I am no longer a woman being used or abused. I am no longer without an army of love around me from people who see me.  I am oceans of complexity and simple simultaneously.  I am love. I am me.