Engineering Wholeness

First, I want to acknowledge that it has been almost a year since I posted, and there is a lot that happened to cause that. I was involved in something larger than myself that took up a lot of my bandwidth, and in the end I spiraled into a depression. For a while, my only way forward was to focus on the task at hand. I am not finished with that work, but the question above has prompted me to think on it at least a little every day since it was asked.

My very first thought when I read that question on Saturday when I got the email about our monthly meeting for business was, loyalty and a fear that I won’t find anywhere else I “belong.” Not a good start.

It has been almost a year since I made bricks for my labyrinth. I make the excuse that I don’t really need to, the moss is nowhere near grown in. I make the case to myself that in the end it just isn’t worth the time or the energy. It is expensive and time consuming and…

But none of that is the truth, I stopped making bricks because the community I was building with the breaking of the China had become painful. People I had allowed into my community had started damaging me. I didn’t want to continue my labyrinth without them, but I also needed to wade through all the work that was resulting in my damage.

So here is the short version, in a matter of months I had these things happen;

• As clerk I had to address an incident of racial bias in the Meeting
• I had a child going off to college
• I had a second child investigating some repressed childhood trauma that was rearing its head
• I had a colleague who could not do her job and it fell to me to take that on
• I had to face interrogation by members of Meeting about why I was handling the incident of racial bias the way I was handling it
• I had to deal with a co-clerk with whom I though I had built communion and trust basically throw me under the bus and stab me in the back
• I had to listen to a group of colleague who wanted a lot of changes demand that things change while offering to do NOTHING
• I had nearly nightly conversations with people who had very strong opinions on what was happening in Meeting
• I had hours of conversation with someone who refused to do the inner work of acknowledging their own racism
• I had hours of conversation with someone who refused to acknowledge that their trauma was NOT everyone’s trauma and they allowed their trauma to dominate how they treated those around them
• I had a lot of people tell me all the things I was doing wrong
• I had to complete my promotion package to senior lecturer
• I had to prepare files and work for our national accreditation board for two of my classes
• I had to deal with yet another semester of COVID accommodations and student excuses
• My partner and son got COVID and threw all of our holiday and travel plans into chaos
• My oldest son hated the college he was attending and decided to transfer to the school his girlfriend was attending after 1 semester
• A million other small things that seem small to others, but were not so small to me…including having to face some of my own repressed trauma and my own inner work on my racial bias (neither of which are easy)

Looking back, I think I held it together remarkably well. But I don’t write that as a way to pat myself on the back, I write that because on September 21, 2021 I wrote my resignation letter as clerk of Meeting (I didn’t send it). My resignation letter basically says, that I cannot continue on in the role of clerk because I feel like I am losing my connection to Meeting.

All the things that bound me to Meeting prior to my time as clerk (shared values, desire for honest community, striving for equity) no longer felt real. The Meeting was fracturing and the stress was real, everyone had an opinion, and only a few of us carried the responsibility. I needed help.

Some gave what they could and I still feel very bound to them, but I am struggling with trust. I don’t trust a number of people in Meeting any longer. I don’t believe in their willingness to do the hard work or provide adequate support to those doing the hard work. People I believed I would trust with my life, I no longer feel that for.

So…what binds me to Meeting? Those few points of Light. Those few souls that I know deeply share my values, whom I value deeply and who value me. I am bound by a desire to hold on to those points of light and hopefully find others as we grow from this experience.

I am bound to Meeting by nothing more than my choice to embrace those points of light rather than let go and walk toward a different point of light.

With that recognition and understanding, I will move forward with the labor on my labyrinth because those points of light are a part of that community as well.

Over the last several months, I have thought a lot about working on the labyrinth. I have even started doing some basic work on it, but it is hard. 248 bricks, 400 square feet of dirt to attempt to grow moss…Who do I think I am? I will NEVER get this done. So…my sometimes overwhelmed self, just doesn’t do anything.

Well…

I do regularly weed my 400 square feet of dirt.

A few weeks ago, J suggested we work on breaking some of the china together, we did. It was nice to sit and talk and break. I found that I enjoyed picking out the pieces that he broke and finding parts I liked.

So, when P and I had to deal with a difficult and painful situation together, I invited her to join me in the breaking of the china. It. Was. Cathartic. We talked, we shared, we laughed, and we transformed some really painful energy into something that is going to become beautiful and meditative. Transforming something painful into something of beauty.

Not only was there real power in working together to break the china, the creation of the labyrinth felt like a community project. It felt good to open my home, my heart, and my work. I don’t have to do this alone. There is something powerful about letting a community join in the creation.

So, tonight, I invited some more friends over and in shared grief, we broke some china.

Let me start by being honest, working on this labyrinth is harder than I expected. Okay, I expected it to be hard (physically and emotionally), but the closer I get to really starting the process, the more I find myself making excuses.

This past week, I finished removing the last of the original weeds (pulling the ones that are resurfacing as well), then yesterday, I put down the paving stones for the center meditation space.

I did my best getting them level and supported. I could have done more, and better. Here’s a truth I am having to revisit with the project that often feels overwhelming; I am doing this for me and me alone. I need to be happy with it. It doesn’t matter if anyone else is pleased, or thinks it is perfect. I am the one that will use and enjoy the labyrinth. This is for me and my pleasure.

This seems so easy, but as a perfectionist, it is often hard for me to remember that I can have “good enough.” I am doing the project. I am succeeding just by taking each step.

And with that, I have also decided that I want a labyrinth I can walk barefoot, so I am hoping to use an Irish/Scottish moss as the primary ground cover.

The best I can say right now, is that I haven’t killed it yet.

Not only does the plan for my success require that I watch for things that I don’t want, I also have to prepare the ground for what I do want. Trying to grow a garden even one that “takes care of itself” requires care and work. It requires time and energy. It sometimes requires testing the soil and adding nutrients.

Real and lasting change only happens when the bed is prepared well and vigilance is practiced. I can’t stop weeding. I can’t stop planting. I have to continue to do the work if I want this garden to succeed.

Yesterday, I talked about how this was going to be a long and slow process, even of just prepping the bed. 30 minutes of what I considered hard work, and only 9 square feet of flattened soil.

I woke up this morning with arms that were a little sore (due to being used in a manner different to what they usually do) and slightly disheartened…this is going to take sooooooo long. But after breakfast and Meeting for Worship, I went to spend another half hour compacting dirt.

I didn’t take a picture, but I nearly cried because in my 9 square feet of “weed free” compacted dirt it looked like there were even more sprouts than yesterday! How can this be? I meticulously removed every green, sprouting thing I saw. I pulled them out root and all. How can there be even more of them?

This is when I am reminded up why I have talked about doing this for almost 10 years and am only now willing to put in the effort. Doing the work of building a garden, working with nature, and demanding that it do as you want is NOT a practice in instant gratification. It is hard, sweaty, and often repetitive work.

My fingers are shaking and my arms are aching as I type this. My muscles are doing work of which they are not accustomed and it hurts. The muscles need time to build and change. This is good pain. Suffering isn’t something to be avoided, it is something to face and work through.

The process of removing things that won’t serve my garden, is also a practice of mindfulness. I have to remember that what I removed yesterday were just the sprouts I could see. These are the ones that have germinated and grown, there are countless other seeds that were embedded in the soil long before today, and the work of removing the unwanted plants in my garden is one that will require me to return to areas I felt were complete.

The work of removing the unwanted sprouts requires constant vigilance because it is a lot easier to remove them when they are young and small. It is much harder when the roots have had a lot of time to develop.

This process is true when I practice mindfulness too. Some days are frustrating because it feels like I have gotten no where, my mind is still racing, my brain just can’t stop, the “weeds” seem to grow faster than I can remove them. Yet, the work of cultivating that space, removing those weeds, is absolutely worth it.

Even with the weeds, the aching arms, the frustration, I do have about 1/4 of my area compacted! Yay!

Last spring, when COVID made being home, the thing to do, I decided I wanted to do some “home” projects. More importantly, I had ideas for my yard. Things I wanted done. I love my house, but the yard has always had potential, it just wasn’t a space I wanted to sit and enjoy. So COVID was going to be my excuse to get out and work in the yard.

Sadly, I am an extrovert with anxiety and depression. The lockdowns hit me harder than expected, I got lonely, depressed and just couldn’t muster the energy to do the work of building the deck, doing the landscaping, filling the hole. This winter, I decided it was worth it for me to hire professionals to do some of the work for me.

I had the landscaper fill it with dirt, but I told them I would do the final work of leveling and stuff because my labyrinth will be made from paving stones that I design and make.

I know I will get frustrated. This is going to take longer than I want. My impatient self will kick in. I will want this done quickly. I will want to rush to the finished project. It will be a trial in patience, but in the end, I think I will grow, I will develop, I will change.

My vision will become a reality that only needs to please me.

Tomorrow, I will pound out another 9 square feet. And find gratitude for the fact that I have the time and energy to do this part of the work myself.

I am waiting for the landscaper to get back with me on a quote for my yard. He is going to level space for the walking labyrinth I am going to build and document. However, to do that work, I am going to have to release the idea I carry of perfection.

For me, there is this idea that in order to be considered “good” at something, I need to make it flawless…it needs to be perfect. The truth I am trying to remind myself of, is that perfect and flawless are not synonymous. Perfect and flawed is a thing.

This idea of perfect <—> flawless is, I think, common. Deep down, I know that there isn’t a connection, but in my mind I hold it very dear.

So, in early December, I asked my husband to get me one of those watercolor subscription boxes for Christmas.

Inside the box lid it says, “You are good at this!” Um…is that supposed to make this less intimidating? You and I both know that I am not going to be good at this.

On 12/29 I finally got up the courage to paint. I started with the first one in the kit, the holiday ornaments. The kit doesn’t just give you the supplies, it also provides a link to a video so you can follow along.

When I turned on the video, I was shocked, the first thing the instructor did was ask us to be kind to ourselves, to just have fun, to just enjoy the painting.

I sat, I followed along, and I painted.

My painting, certainly isn’t flawless. I can point out where I had too much water, where I messed up the color, where my pencil marks were too heavy. But I can also appreciate that for a first attempt, this is pretty good, great actually, and I did have fun doing it.

On 1/2, I tried this one again (the kit has enough supplies for 2 attempts of the same piece). I liked my first attempt better.

Now, I will move on to the snow globe…

All the time, trying to remember that this is all about the journey, finding perfection in the flaws, and releasing my inner creativity. I am doing this, only for me. No one else has to agree that it is perfect.

Every year it seems is the worst of people’s lives. There is always a ton of stuff that seems to have happened to make it just so horrible. Every year, on NYE I see a lot of posts about good riddance to the previous year. This year has been no different.

For some reason, we seem to believe that this year is somehow worse than every other year, and in some ways I can absolutely see that, but my guess is that like most years, we will find reasons to hate 2021.

There are a million and a half things that can go wrong in 2021 and we can spend our time recalling and focusing on the negative sh!t that comes our way. But I am going to let go of a desire to focus on the negative. This year is going to be about appreciating the positive. This year is going to be a year of gratitude.

This year I am going to do my best to welcome the challenges, allow for the messy, say no when I need to, and let go of those things that don’t serve me. This year is about finding the positive (while acknowledging but not focusing on the negative).

So far this holiday season isn’t going quite as planned. It is the first without my aunt and the first I haven’t eaten with my family. It was sort of a bitter day.

I LOVE Christmas. Mostly I love going overboard and demonstrating my love through the act of giving. Giving and Doing are my love languages. I like to try to give people things that they want or need based on my understanding of them. I have really enjoyed the time I have spent thinking about what to do for people.

This year though, I am finding myself loving the buying and wrapping, but also preparing for the disappointment of another holiday where I feel like no one really sees or knows me. The gifts don’t often feel thoughtful or meaningful, they don’t seem to understand my love language. They are things I already know to expect because I have laid it out.

It’s not that I want expensive, actually I would prefer something made from the heart (or better an experience we can have together).

As I sit here this morning, I am enjoying the peace, imagining a beautiful, quiet holiday. I am also preparing for taking the time to think about and understand what this season means to me, and why I need to let go of the expectation of joy at the giving and the expectation of disappointment at feeling unheard and unknown.

Tuesday, I called a friend in tears. I just couldn’t do it. I knew that everything was trying to get me to really step into the unknown, but I just wasn’t ready. I was afraid of finding out that I was wrong. Her question back, “So what if you are ?”

It’s a good question.

One I don’t particularly want to answer.

My biggest fear is that I am a waste of time, energy, space, resources, money. I don’t want to be a drain. At the same time, I can no longer exist at the edge of my truth. I need to be authentically me.

To most people, I think, that they will be tilting their head with that look of confusion, I appear to always be me. Because me is caring, compassionate, understanding…but me is also from the south and that means being polite. It is time for some hard truths, and perhaps it is time to deliver them.

I have a love-hate relationship with Bill Maher. I love what he says, I hate that he is an asshole, but can you speak truth to power without being an asshole? See, that is where I want to be. I want to speak truth without being an asshole. The problem is, that most people don’t listen to someone who is “polite.” I can’t be an asshole, but I have to deliver the hard truths.

The first of these is going to have to be facing my family. Selling off my aunt’s belongings is just a semi-waste of time. No one really wants this junk. It’s not real antiques or silver. There just isn’t a market for it. So, it is time to repurpose it. I have always wanted a walking labyrinth in my yard. I want to build it out of mosaic of my aunt’s china collection.

This is ultimately why I called my friend on Tuesday. I needed the clearer thought of someone who wasn’t wrestling with childhood wounds and honest insight. After our conversation, I started collecting materials.

Now came the hard part…

I have to break the china.

Speaking truth is hard, especially when it so often feels like no one wants truth. People want to hear “their truth.” We live in a world of looking for our confirmation bias. I am one of the least judgmental people I know, but I am still aware of the fact that I often look to sources that support my thoughts rather than looking to see what I can find from elsewhere.

I spent two days, holding out and holding on to those three pieces of my aunt’s life. I warred with the internal parts of me that really wanted to break let go of my own inner critic, fear about what others would think, and well…a lot of anger and disappointment.

Thursday night, I called my friend. “Do you want to be a part of the breaking of the first piece of china?”

“Absolutely.” She stopped what she was doing and joined me via FaceTime to witness (and hold me accountable) to this particular letting go.

Three pieces of china down. Oh so many more to go.

There will be days where this is a step forward, days where I fall back into my fear. But for today, I have let go of at least some of the fear and am stepping into my truth. And a little compassionate honesty.

I have started a new post several times, but how does one admit to their biggest fear? Especially when one can’t figure out how to get past it, and doesn’t really want sympathy for it.

I am smart and self-aware. I know that what my brain thinks and what is actually true are often two very different things. I also know that how I present myself and how society expects me to behave can also be two different things.

It is this, that makes it hard for me to admit my deepest fear to people who actually know me. You see, I know that there is no one who can be inside my head and understand exactly what I am saying. I also know that most people are going to want to express some form of empathy/sympathy and try to tell me that my fear is completely unfounded and of course it isn’t true. But see, that isn’t what I need.

I know that it isn’t true. I know that my deepest fear is completely unfounded, but somewhere along the line I learned it. I have this experiential basis for my understanding that has lead me to keep this fear deeply seeded in the bottom of my heart. I need to be understood. I need to know that it is okay to feel the fear and to feel that I have what it takes to overcome it.

My biggest fear is that I am just waste. That I have no value, no inherent skill, nothing that makes me worth anything. I try to fill the void with all sorts of project ideas (that are good ones), but they aren’t unique or original. I am a copy of hundreds of other ideas, and not even good copies, just mediocre forgeries. So, I quit. I fail to follow through. What’s the point?

Look, I know this isn’t true. My head tells me that this is so false and it shows up regularly, but that doesn’t mean that believe it. My lived experience is that there is always someone who can be a better me. In fact, there is always someone around who does a better job than I do at just about everything I try. I am not a master at any thing, I just collect ideas.

It is hard to continue doing something when it feels like in the end it is just a waste of time, money, and resources.

I am working on it. I know that I have a purpose. I know that in reality there is no one else that is like me. I know that I am the only person who can do what I can do, the way I can do it. I am working on believing it. And I am working on figuring out how to accept myself so that I can better accept the truth of others.