I was humbled yesterday. Brought to tears by one man’s story.

He’s 47. When he was 2 or 3 days old, he stopped breathing. Oxygen deprivation resulted in Cerebral Palsy.

His movements are jerky but he can walk.

His speech is limited, but he can talk.

My hearing’s okay, he motioned to the crowd who sat listening in awe to his speech at “Let’s Talk Hope” yesterday, a one day conference designed to create conversation, communication and connection on mental health. Organized by the incredible Connie Jakab of Movement with a Message, the day was jam packed with inspiring speakers, performers and attendees.

And then, Sheldon Penner took the stage, or Shel-dog as he likes to be called.

If you’ve wondered what someone with a disability can teach you, believe me, it’s a lot!

Sheldon can’t speak. At least not in the traditional form of speaking to which we were accustomed. Yesterday, Sheldon taught all of us that lack of verbal communication acumen doesn’t mean you can’t communicate.

For 15 minutes, the audience laughed, cried, cheered and sat in absolute silence as the words Sheldon typed on his laptop were projected onto the giant screen behind him.  They sat in silence as they read the words of his pre-loaded powerpoint and they held their breath as the poignancy and truth of his words dug into their hearts and minds.

What hurts me?  Sheldon asked.

People not understanding. People thinking I’m stupid. People judging me.

It was all there, in black and white on his screen. The limitations of we, the able bodied, to cope with someone else’s visible disabilities. Our inability to walk with grace no matter who we encounter.

I was humbled yesterday by a man who cannot speak but whose words touched my soul so deeply, I cried in the light of his beauty, courage and grace.

Thank you Connie Jakab for being such an incredible light in a sometimes dark world. Thank you for sharing your brilliance to create Let’s Talk Hope so that together, we can all see in the dark and shine a little brighter.

My father’s nickname for me was ‘Little One’.

I much preferred it to the one the rest of my family used, “The Brat.” More often than not though, I probably lived down to “The Brat” trying to make myself not feel so small and little.

I don’t remember when I first began to feel like I didn’t fit into my family. That somewhere in the cosmic journey my belonging got tilted into the twilight zone of not being part of the greater whole that made up our familial unit.

I remember though, the day I decided I had to do something about it.

I was in my early twenties. My parents, brother and sister-in-law had come to visit. I had just started my first ‘real job’ and had to work late. I left the key under the mat and told them to make themselves at home until I got there.

When I did get there, my father and brother were well into a bottle of scotch and having a grand time of dissecting my life. Under the liquid courage that buoyed them up, they decided to set me straight as to why my life wasn’t as great as I thought it was, and why I wasn’t that great a person either.

It was not a happy evening. Eventually I told them that if they wanted to talk about me like that they’d have to go stay somewhere else.

They left and went to stay in a hotel.

I lay on the rug in the living room and wept.

I couldn’t understand it. What had I done to them to make them dislike me so much? What was wrong with me?

I began a journey of self-discovery. It would be many, many years before I found answers that I could live with peacefully. In the process though, I discovered the greatest gift of all.

Self-love and acceptance of all of me. Beauty and the beast. Yin and yang. Lightness and darkness. Grace and hubris.

Yesterday, my ego got triggered. In its need to feel good about itself, to defend against what it perceived to be people undermining my worth, it acted out. It became ‘the victim’ and, just like in my twenties when I couldn’t understand why my family would think so poorly of me, in its strident screaming to ‘Dive! Dive! Dive’ for cover, I moved into that place where my vision of myself was clouded by thoughts of, ‘what’s wrong with me?’ and even more damaging to my peace of mind, ‘why don’t they want me? – which is really just an adult translation of my childhood pleading to my siblings ‘why won’t you play with me?’

I am grateful for those moments where I am reminded how quickly ego can leap into the fray and pull me from my centre.

I am grateful for the reminders that open space for me to find my sense of self-worth amidst ego’s assertions It’s not safe here. Run away! Hide! 

In the open space between the fear of “I’m not good enough” and the truth “I am worthy” is that place where I am free to ask myself ‘what’s really going on for me in this situation?’ and listen deeply for the answer within.

Deep within, in the quiet of meditation, in the waters slowly flowing past my window like liquid butter, I breathe into ego’s fears and find my truth shimmering in the light of understanding.

Love is calling me to rise up out of the angst of the there and then into this place where no matter what is happening in the here and now, I am safe in Love’s embrace.

In this space I smile at myself, lovingly, and laugh as I throw my hands up above my hand and exclaim, “Look at me being so human! How fascinating!”

I took an ego trip yesterday. I’ve come back to earth. Come back to the centre of my being present and accepting to all I am, all that is happening without fearing what’s happening will make me less than who I am.

I am a woman of worth, a divine expression of my life lived in the wonder and awe of amazing grace dancing brilliantly in the many facets of its human imperfections.

Namaste

Every morning at 6:45 I hear a screeching noise. It only lasts a second or two. It always makes me smile.

The noise is the sound of bicycle brakes being applied as a rider takes the curve at the top of the hill on the path that curves under the bridge along the river.

It makes me smile because, while I can’t hear the noise of the traffic crossing the bridge, every week-day morning I hear the bicycle rider. His screeching brakes are at a different frequency.

Like conversations.

People say something and I hear something else, or nothing at all. I’m not listening. Or perhaps I’m thinking of something else (like how to argue my point if I don’t want to hear their’s) or it could just be we are speaking different languages, even if we both speak English.

Speakers provide the context through their words. The listener makes the meaning through their context.

Recently, my beloved and I were having a conversation about an issue that is a bit ‘hot’ for both of us. His response didn’t make sense to me. Okay. honestly — I thought his response was stupid. Fortunately, rather than tell him that, or say something else that would have inflamed the situation, I asked for clarification. (I didn’t want to respond too sharply and needed to breathe and listen deeper. A good way to give myself that opportunity is to ask the other person to ‘tell me more or ‘help me understand’ what they mean.)

When he replied, I laughed. Even though I thought we were talking about the same thing, we were actually talking about two different situations. It’s just we’d both assumed the other knew what it was we were discussing. He thought we were talking about something we were going to do and I was talking about something we hadn’t done but had agreed we would do.

It’s easy to get mixed messages, to hear things that are not said or to not hear what is being said or to think the other person knows what you’re talking about even when you haven’t talked about what it is you’re talking about.

As the listener, we make meaning of what the other person said. Sometimes, our meaning-making is different than what they meant. (Okay, almost always because the listener is the one who makes meaning of what they heard and their meaning will always come through what they believe, know, think, feel, see, and perceive.)

I heard the screeching of bicycle brakes this morning and was reminded that what I hear is not always what is being said. Sometimes, the speaker and the listener are not on the same frequency. Sometimes, I’m just not listening to what they’re saying. I’m only hearing what I think and feel about what I hear.

It’s important to tune in to the other to hear what they are saying and to tune out what I think about what they’re saying. To do that I must breathe and seek first to understand.