Rocking horses like high horses make no progress

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Louise Gallagher

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress. Alfred A. Montapert

When I was a little girl I had one of those heavy plastic rocking horses that was attached by coils to a metal base that kept the horse grounded. I could sit on my horse, bounce up and down, sideways and front and back. I loved that horse. The motion. The joy of sitting and bouncing and riding.

My rocking horse never made any progress in the physical sense of getting from Point A to B, but I sure could make it ride across plains and continents, oceans and skies. Every time I rode I experienced some new and exciting adventure. I was Annie Oakley, the Lone Ranger and Tonto all dressed up in one. I moved around the world, saving children and dogs and civilisations from sure destruction.

I was powerful.

My rocking horse was my escape from the world in which I lived. The world around me which I didn’t understand, or didn’t make sense, or simply was too complicated to grasp.

As I grew, I had to let go of my rocking horse. Without it, I had to find some other way to escape the world around me — escape being the operative word. I never wanted to get off my horse, so I created a mighty steed within my mind who could transport me away from the world in which I lived into a world that made sense to me. A world that ideally suited me. A world in which I had control. I had power. A world where I was all powerful because, well, I was writing the script. I controlled every scene, every word, every action. I determined who was there, what they did and said and what happened. Cool!

I loved my imaginary worlds when I was a child. They were fun! Problem is, as an adult, escaping into scripted scenes within my head is not an effective way to live my best life yet. Scripted scenes where I control the people, places, actions, scenes and words are not a reflection of the world around me. They are a reflection of what I want to have happen, what I believe could happen — if everyone and everything in my world did what I thought was best, or right, or simply acceptable to me!

And that just ain’t the way the world rocks. Often, the world in my mind becomes a wild ride upon my high horse of self-deception. Armed with my quiver of judgement filled with arrows of complaint, criticism, and condemnation I take aim at gentle hearts and opening minds and pierce balloons of possibility with my conviction that I know what is best for the world around me.

I must admit, I have clung to many a high horse in my adulthood and run roughshod through many a delicate blossom of life unfolding. I have sat upon my mighty stead trampling other people’s feelings and perceptions with the heavy footed destruction of King Kong stomping through New York.

And always, when the ride was over, I have fallen off my high horse in a fit of embarrassed consternation that so much destruction could be created in such a short, wild ride, by me.

High horses, like rocking horses do not get me anywhere other than where I don’t want to be — Eating sawdust in the not so OK Corral of my mind, grovelling in the mud of guilt and disappointment.

The good news is… dismounting from my high horse comes easier now. I am progressing.

I have learned how to keep my quiver of judgements empty. My arrows of criticism, complaints and condemnation sheathed.

Filled with the joy of fearlessly embracing who I am when I let go of clinging to the neck of my high horse, I am free to dance in the lightness of my being human. That fragile condition where peace of heart reigns as long as I let go of my need to control the world around me.

It ain’t always easy. Somedays I want to grab an arrow and shoot right to the heart of what I judge to be someone else’s problem.

That’s when I must remember to breathe. Deeply. And ask, what’s really happening here? What is this world of wonder and beauty asking me to see and know?

In that place of breathing deeply, I open up to all that is possible when I let go of judgement and step fearlessly into Love.

In the scars that bind us, beauty shines. Love grows.

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Louise Gallagher

I couldn’t sleep last night. I’d fallen asleep but a hissing noise pulled me out of slumber. I woke my husband with the question, “What’s that noise?” only to discover, the steam shower had sprung a leak. He went downstairs, turned off the water, came back to bed and promptly fell back to sleep.

I was not so easily lured back into dreamland.

I got up. I read. I surfed the Net. I watched the river flow past.

In my meanderings, I remembered the videos from the inaugural Circles of Hope conference held last November had been posted on Youtube.

Alexis and I have been talking about writing a book about our healing journey together. I wasn’t sure where to begin but seeing as I couldn’t sleep, why not go back to our presentation and start there?

Working on that presentation together was not easy. Alexis and I had to risk delving into the broken places. We had to be willing to hear one another’s pain, and not try to own it, or fix it, or pretend it was all okay. For me, as her mother, there were times when I wanted to call it quits so that I wouldn’t have to hear her words, see her pain, know her anger.

We kept pushing through it. We kept trusting that the tears, the anger, the fear and sorrow were nothing compared to the joy and love we shared.

This is not an easy story to share. I’ve shared it many times. By myself. But working on it with Alexis I realized that while it happened to me, it also happened to my daughters. They too were on that road to hell. They too felt the fear, the horror, the loss.

The story of our journey into hell began with a man who drove up in a red Ferrari. He promised us happily-ever-after and then, like a magician making whatever is before your eyes disappear, he swept away the world as we knew it and turned our lives inside out and upside down.

For my daughters, that journey came at a seminal time in their lives. They were about to embark on their teen years. He promised them a life of ease and fun and laughter. He never warned them about the pain.

On February 26, 2003, 4 and a half years after he drove into our lives, I disappeared from their lives. It would not be until three months later that they learned what happened to me, or that I was even alive.

Healing from the darkness of those days has not been a straight line of that was before, this is after. It has been a journey into pain, sorrow, anger, fear, hurt. Amidst the laughter and joy, there has been blame and shame and sadness and regret; the full gamut of human emotions. And yet, no matter what appeared before us, there was always the thing that flowed between us like a river and carried us through those years to today. Love.

Healing from that relationship has taught me many things. It’s taught me to never give up on myself. To never let go of Love. It’s taught me to speak truth even when I want to hide from it. To be real and present, even when I want to close my eyes to the pain I see in the eyes of those I love. And it has taught me the value of being vulnerable and the healing grace of forgiveness.

I am blessed.

Once upon a time, I did something to my daughters I never imagined I could. I deserted them. Through forgiveness and grace, we have woven the circle of love that is our family back together. In the scars that bind us, beauty shines. Love grows.

On being a mother. A song of Love, forever and always.

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Louise Gallagher

I had no plan to become a mother. No preconceived idea that this would be the penultimate experience of my life. Mostly, I was terrified of the thought that being a mother meant passing along my foibles, faults and follies to an innocent child.

Why would I want to do that?

In fact, if asked whether or not we wanted children, my then husband and I would reply an unequivocal, “No.”

And then it happened. The thing doctors had told me probably was impossible, wasn’t. I became pregnant.

In my newly formed precariously pregnant state my doctor told me I needed to go to bed. For three months.

My friends laughed at me. Is your doctor crazy? No way can you go to bed for three months. You’ll be miserable.

It was the first of many life lessons my unborn child taught me.

No one decides how I go through each experience of my life, except me.

I had no choice about three months of bed rest. I did have a choice about how I experience it.

I could choose to be miserable.

Or…

I chose to fall in love. To lie in bed and savour every moment of new life growing within me and to cherish life around me.

In a journal entry from that time I wrote:

I think about you often. I wonder, what will you be like? What will you do in this world?

You’re very quiet inside me. Your movements are graceful and serene. I imagine your tiny arms and legs, your body suspended, floating in my waters. Yet, sometimes, I can feel you soar. I can hear your body as it ripples across mine, quietly evolving, experiencing the joy of life, protected within my womb.

I can feel you. I am with you. You are with me, where ever I go, whatever I do. We are one in this journey. As you grow and develop, my body grows and develops. As you move, I move. As I move, so too do you.

I mold myself around you to protect you yet must leave you room to grow. For grow you will and I shall have to let you go.

Yet, this journey we share now will bond us for all time. For I am your mother. Mother to you, child of my body. And though I shall never own you, you will always own a part of me.

That was 1985.

My first daughter was born on June 19th, 1986.

I have been a mother for almost 32 years. (And a grandmother for 3 months.)

I would not change a thing. I would not erase a moment, turn a different phrase or take a different step, no matter how painful some of them were.

In this journey of my life, I have done things I want to remember forever, I have done things that, no matter how hard I’ve tried, I cannot forget — and ultimately do not want to because, regardless of what I have done, I have been and will always be, my daughters’ mother.

Being a mother is at the heart of my being present in this life.

Being a mother has taught me what it means to truly, madly, deeply love another, unconditionally, without any expectation of their loving me in return. Loving another is not about getting love back. It’s about creating an enduring circle of love and choosing always to stay in its flow, in darkness and in light.

Being a mother has taught me to trust in the power of my own body to create life and to be life-giving.

It has shown me how deeply I can love, how completely I can surrender, and how absolutely powerless I am over another human being. It has taught me humility.

On June 19th, 1986 I became a mother.

Being a mother has been, and continues to be, a journey into the heart of what matters most to me; to know myself, in all my many facets, and to love myself in every way I am present in this world so that I can be present for those I love, in love, always.

Thank you Alexis and Liseanne for giving me the gift of being your mother. You have taught me that love is always the answer because in your lives I have found my heart’s song. It is a song of Love, forever and always.

And still, she loves. An ode to my mother.

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Louise Gallagher

When I think of my mother, I feel tears well up behind my eyelids. My heart aches.

In August my mother will turn 96.

My mother has always been a beautiful woman. At 95 she still likes to dress up pretty, making sure her jewellry is just so. Recently she bought a big sparkly ring. I commented on its size and how it dwarfed my mothers fingers. My sister told me that mom bought it because it hides the ravages of arthritis on her fingers.

Arthritis has not been kind to my mother.

Her bones are fragile. Brittle. Her joints swollen and distended.

And still, my mother is kind. Gentle.

“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” was one of my mother’s favourite adages.

She also told us to ‘broom the floor’ but that was her native French getting in the way of her English. We used to tease her about it all the time. I wish she could still broom the floor today. I wish she could walk and move with the grace of bones that do not hurt as she moves through the room.

My mother turns 96 in August. She doesn’t walk much anymore. A bad fall. Broken hip. Bones too brittle to hold the pin in place. A wheelchair is her mode of transport these days.

Yet still, her independent streak shines through. She doesn’t like being pushed. She always wants to use her feet to navigate her path.

Kindness has always been important to my mother.

It’s something we share, even though there have been times in my life when I have not been kind to my mother. Okay, maybe a big portion like all my teen years and even into my twenties.

I didn’t understand her and mostly didn’t take the time to get to know her.

I thought our differences kept us apart. Made us different. I was too busy. Too self-involved to step away from my position to find a common ground where we could see the things that bind us include our differences and our similarities.

My mother loves to cook. At least she did when she had a kitchen. Even now, when she goes to my sister’s house, she will help out in the kitchen. It’s something her three daughters share with her. A love of being in the kitchen.

My mother loved to sing. I remember her voice when I was a child. Sweet. Soothing. Comforting. I think I may have even confused her with an angel when I was a little girl.

It is something she’s passed on to me and to my eldest daughter. I love to sing though my daughters will suggest I tone it down, or maybe consider doing it alone. Alexis, my eldest daughter, got my mother’s voice. Alexis reminds me of an angel when she sings too.

My mother was very proud of the work she did. Especially her volunteering. A lifelong member of the Catholic Women’s League, she did things for others, quietly, unassumingly. She never wanted thanks. She just wanted to make a difference, in her quiet way, in someone else’s life.

It’s something she’s taught me. It’s not about doing ‘the big things’. It’s about doing all things with grace, love, care.

My mother turns 96 this August.

Her hands are ravaged by arthritis. Her body riddled with pain, the arthritis searing her joints with its incessant clawing away at the bone.

And still, my mother is kind, gentle, caring.

And still, she loves.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women out there. May kindness light your path. My love fill your heart.

Do you know what is on the other side of fear?

Posted on May 9, 2018 by Louise Gallagher

“The Mighty Bow” Acrylic on Wood Panel – 60″ x 40″ – 2018 Louise Gallagher

I was feeling discombobulated. Anxious. Confused.

A situation at work had been playing on my peace of mind, disrupting my flow. I felt like I had no control. That old stories were being triggered by events in the here and now, and I was at risk of collapsing, helpless, into the past.

I had to find a different perspective, a better point of view.

Since beginning the process last October of buying a new home, getting our old home ready to be sold, renovating this home and living in rental accommodations for three months, I have not spent much time immersed in my creative essence.

Without my studio set up, I had nowhere to create. Or so I told myself.

Immersed in my fear of being stuck in a victim-role, I didn’t realize that the voice inside my head telling me I had no space to create was the same voice of self-defense that had been triggered by the unsettling happenings in my work. It’s nattering at me to dive deep, take cover, hunker down! was also keeping me from seeing the path to letting go of my victim’s voice is always through my creative self-expression.

“PHLOW”
Acrylic on canvas
20″ x 18″
2018 Louise Gallagher

Last week, I stepped back. I took a few days for myself and decided to create space to dive into my creative essence, regardless of not having the drywall up in my studio, or the boxes unpacked, or the right lighting or the other host of excuses I’d been employing to keep me from letting go of my fears.

It was the most healing thing I could have done for myself.

Over three days I created a work space in the middle of the room by pushing boxes to the edges of the room, setting up a table to work on, unpacking essential materials and setting myself up for ‘success’.

I began to paint and in the process of dipping into colour and my creative self, I found myself once again on solid ground. I found myself breathing freely, moving slowly, feeling alive.

Fear lifted. My heart expanded. Grace embraced me.

“It’s okay,” the voice of wisdom within whispered softly. “The river never runs backwards. This too shall pass. Breathe deeply into being present in the gifts of this moment, right now. Let go of fearing the past is now and will be so forever. Open your heart to the gift of Love that flows endlessly in and through you. Breathe.”

And so, I breathed and found myself on the other side of fear in that sacred space where Love flows freely. Heart wide open, I found myself immersed in the knowing that no matter what is going on in the world around me, I am safe in the embrace of Divine Creation.

Namaste.

The art of transforming our human condition

Posted on May 8, 2018 by Louise Gallagher

We live in a world of comparisons. A world where one state of being is measured as better than another simply because of how much one has, or doesn’t have. Where we assume others want what we have because what we have is better than what they’ve got.

Two years ago, my eldest daughter, Alexis, was hired by The Vancouver Opera to facilitate weekly writing workshops at The Kettle Society – a non-profit in Vancouver that provides housing and support for individuals with lived-experience of mental illness, homelessness, and addiction.

For the past two years, she has worked and written alongside people for whom their uniquenesses are considered unwanted differences in a world full of comparisons, leaving them feeling like an ‘other’, an outsider, one of ‘those people.’

On Friday night, I attended the opening performance of Vancouver Opera’s “Requiem for a Lost Girl“. The inspiration behind Requiem is Onalea Gilbertson, a beautiful human being who has dedicated a large portion of her acting and musical career to creating art that bridges the gap between ‘us and them’, creating a world of possibility where the comparison of my state versus yours does not leave one of us feeling less than or ‘other’.

It is not an easy path.

On Friday night, as I sat in the darkened theatre and witnessed the courage and compassion of the 25 members of the Kettle Creek Society read and sing their contributions to Requiem, I felt immersed in the beauty and wonder of our human spirit. I felt hopeful.

Requiem began its journey when its creator, Onalea Gilbertson was just a teenager. In 2009 when Onalea walked into my office and announced, “I want to start a singing group, here.” (the ‘here’ being single adult’s homeless shelter) I couldn’t say no. She had such passion, enthusiasm and heart, and, as I believe we can connect to, heal and restore our sense of self through the arts, I quickly agreed to support her.

For the next year, I watched in awe as Onalea opened space for clients at the shelter to delve into their creative essence and explore their human condition within the context of, not just a homeless shelter, but living in a world of comparisons where your differences mark you as ‘less than’ in our world.

The resulting production of “Two Bit Operation”, the genesis for Requiem, was transformative.

Over the past two years I have lived in awe of my daughter as she navigated creating safe and courageous space for writing and self-expression at The Kettle Society.

On Friday night, I witnessed the outpouring of courage, talent, compassion, humour, honesty, vulnerability that was engendered through the workshops she held alongside the choir workshops held by VOS, and I was in awe. As someone with the Vancouver Opera, the sponsors and funders of the workshops said to me on Friday night, “This whole process has been transformative.”

Throughout the lobby of the theatre where Requiem was held, there was a display of the writings created over the course of the past two years. One person wrote, in answer to the question, “What did being part of Requiem mean to you?”, that they were glad they didn’t let their fear hold them back from participating. Another wrote that they had been searching for something all their lives to help them understand their life, and ‘this’ [being part of the choir and writing group] was that something.

We live in a world of comparisons. But, when I witness the human condition shining with such fervor and authenticity as I did on Friday night, I am reminded of the limitations of comparisons.

When I let go of comparing Requiem in Vancouver versus Calgary 8 years ago, what remains is the beauty, the courage, the heart of everyone who participated. From the professional performers to the non-professionals, from the stagehands to the organizers and all the audience participants, no one left the theatre untouched.

And that is the power of the arts.

Through the arts we can delve into difficult subjects, explore ‘us and them’ to discover there is no comparison to the human spirit expressing itself fearlessly, courageously and authentically.

Kudos to Colleen Maybin and the team at The Vancouver Opera for having the courage to take-on such a production. Kudos to Onalea Gilbertson for having the persistence and brilliance to continue to bring this work into the world in cities everywhere. And, kudos to my daughter for having the compassion and heart to step into this creative space so that others could find their voices and let themselves shine.

Namaste.