Mirabai Ceiba’s beautiful song, Ocean, begins with the line, The ocean refuses no river. It  never fails to resonate within my heart, stirring notes of harmony and peace throughout my being.

Just as the ocean embraces every wave, life embraces every being.

It reminds me about life and how I sometimes refuse, or resist, to accept all that life offers, without judging all that life offers.

How sometimes, I desire to carve my path, regardless of life’s terrain and in my willfulness, making my own journey more challenging.

How sometimes, I want to determine my course, regardless of life’s flow, sometimes paddling upstream, sometimes drifting aimlessly in back eddies, steering along tributaries that take me further away from the ocean of life waiting to accept me, exactly the way I am.

And I breathe.

Just as the ocean refuses no river, life refuses no spirit, God refuses no soul. No matter your belief, or colour of skin or size of your bank account or education, there is a sacred place for each of us within this universe. A sacred chant that sings of your beauty, your wonder, your brilliance. It is rising up within you, just as it rises up within me, calling out to your heart to dance free, to spin about and laugh and turn cartwheels. To sit in silence and dream. To leap for joy and be. Just as you are.

The universe refuses no life. And in that knowing is the truth shimmering in every breath we take — It is a sacred knowing that this life, this beauty, this brilliance is mine, and yours and each of ours to live as best we can, as best we allow, in Love.

No matter how small, how big, how rusty or difficult, how tired or weary, how young or old, the universe refuses no life.

The ocean refuses no river.

The open heart refuses no Love. The open mind no truth.

And life refuses no body, not me or you or him or her or them.

Life refuses no life.

In that acceptance, in that awareness is the knowing, deep and profound and healing — We are not alone. We are one with life flowing in the ocean of Love flowing all around.

Namaste.

We all have trigger events. Those moments in time that lurk in memory, stirring up emotions and feelings and thoughts of what might have been, if only, if possibly, if….

For me, one of those trigger events was the day a blue and white police cruiser drove up and two officers got out and arrested the man who was actively engaged in trying to end my life. For several years after that May morning, I would begin to feel the stir of memory calling me, tugging at me, rippling through my thoughts. I would notice my emotions rising to the surface, tears on call, eager to spill out. I would feel anxious, edgy, like anything and everything was too harsh, too bright, too loud, too real, too much.

And then, the day would come and I’d move through it and life would go on. My moving through it wouldn’t always be graceful, in fact, in the first years after that event, my moving through it was often disjointed, filled with tears and sometimes irrational responses to everyday situations.

It was okay. I had to give myself the grace of moving through it in my way — honouring my sorrow, my grief, my fear so that I could come back to the truth of what was real for me that day, in the present. I was alive.

Over time, I came to appreciate trigger points. To view them as opportunities to heal the spaces where unease lived. I came to see them as gifts and to be grateful for the opportunity to heal through them by not avoiding them.

Trigger events come from moments where we have felt extreme joy. They come from moments where we have felt extreme fear, pain, loss.

The joyful ones we make okay to celebrate. Anniversaries. Birthdays. Graduations. New jobs. New beginnings.

The sorrowful ones, the ones that scared us, hurt us, caused us pain, sometimes we try to ignore them, or pretend they’re not real.

But they are.

Very real. Very important to acknowledge, if only because they stir up our emotions and can cause unease and disquiet within if we do not let them out.

What we resist, persists.

When we try to ignore these trigger points, or pretend they shouldn’t matter, or tell ourselves we should be over it and just get on with it, we are denying our hearts and minds the opportunity to face our angst and heal through it.

Emotions buried alive never die.

Emotions allowed to flow, free us to be present in the moment.

For the first few years after I got my life back, I consciously chose to treat myself gently when trigger points awoke. To give myself the tender, loving care I so desperately needed, and deserved.

I couldn’t change the experience of having gone through that relationship. I could change how that experience held onto me today.

And to do that, I had to acknowledge that May 21 was not just any day. It was a day to remember how lost I was, and today I am not because a miracle drove up in a blue and white police car and set me free. I needed to feel it all. To cry. To laugh. To express my anger (lovingly) To live. To Love. And most importantly, to give thanks.

It’s been fourteen years since that police car drove up. I still treasure the miracle of its arrival. I still give thanks for my life today.

I don’t tend to mark the day anymore. Some years, the day arrives, and leaves, before I even notice.

Getting to this point where the day, and those events, no longer trigger eruptions of unease and angst within me required patience, self-compassion, and Love.

It has been a process of acknowledging what was, accepting what cannot be changed, and celebrating what is true each and everyday.

I am free. I am alive. I am grateful.

I cannot change the past. I can give thanks for my beautiful life today.

______________________________________________

JM, this one’s for you my friend. May you know you are loved, safe and cherished.  I am so grateful you are alive!

Do you practice happiness?

You know, consciously cultivate that space within that no matter what is happening in the world ‘out there’, within you, your heart is at ease, your mind peaceful, your body content?

It’s important to practice happiness.

According to the Mayor Clinic, we have to Practice. Practice. Practice. For some of us, happiness levels are naturally set at a higher level. Regardless of where your happiness level is set, you can up it by consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude, deep appreciation of all things and people in your life, maintaining an optimistic point-of-view, finding and living your purpose and living in the moment.

People who have wealth, beauty or less stress are not happier on average than those who don’t enjoy those things. The happiest people are those who practice the cultivation of choices, thoughts and actions that lead to contentment, gratitude and joy. People who practice happiness, no matter their circumstances, are happier. It’s all about your life choices.

This weekend, I practiced happiness through the pursuit of gratitude and compassion, which, according to Dr. Amit Sood of the Global Centre for Resiliency and Well-being and StressFree.org, is the path to happiness.

One of the easiest places for me to practice gratitude and compassion, and thus happiness, is at the park with Beaumont, our two year old Sheepadoodle. His antics, his pure joy never cease to cause me to laugh and to feel light of heart. And consciously picking up his bio-deposits as well as those I come across that others have missed, creates a sense of compassion for the world and my environment. Bonus points on the path to happiness!

For me, another place where gratitude and compassion infuse my entire being with a sense of joy and peace is in the kitchen preparing a meal for guests. On Sunday, I spent the day preparing a meal for family and friends, while C.C. and my youngest daughter, her partner and his father, were at the Shaw Charity Classic Golf Tournament. It was double/double doses of gratitude and compassion. I got to spend the day doing something I love, preparing dinner and setting the table in preparation for guests, all the while knowing my beloved was doing something he loves, watching golf with people he loves. Later, as ten of us sat around the dining room table laughing and sharing stories, I felt the pure sweet nectar of joy filling my heart.

And yesterday, I spent time in my other happy place, my art studio. I painted and listened to music, danced around and laughed as Beaumont kept trying to climb up into my lap whenever I took a break in the easy chair in the corner or sat down in the pink chair to draw at the table.

On my gratitude list last night I wrote, 10 Things I am grateful for this weekend:

1. Spending time with my dear friend KP chatting about life and the creative process over a delicious meal she had prepared.
2. Date night with my beloved.
3. Walks in the park with Beaumont and C.C.
4. Beautiful weather.
5. Spending time in the kitchen cooking for family and friends.
6. Gathering around a table set with candles — because it gets darker earlier I get to use twinkly lights and candles!
7. Chatting at length with  my eldest daughter on the phone. I love our heartfelt conversations.
8. Creating. Creating. Creating. Time in the studio.
9. Standing at the ridge above the river and taking in the beauty and the view.
10. Ending each day in bed beside my beloved.

It was the day after the man who had promised to always love me was arrested.

I sat on the narrow bed in the spare room at my sister’s house and contemplated the entirety of the mess of my life.

I was broken. I was broke. I was undone.

But I was no longer lost. I had been found.

For the final three months of that relationship from hell I had been missing. Disappeared. Gone.

My daughters, my family, friends, no one knew where I was and I wasn’t telling.

He had told me I couldn’t. I didn’t dare disobey him.

When the police arrived that morning of May 21, 2003, I was standing by the river that ran through the property of the guesthouse where we were staying.

I was contemplating how to disappear forever. I imagined unhooking gravity’s hold on my body, letting it fall forward of its own volition to sink beneath the waters and get washed out to sea.

I had lost all will to live and wanted to die. But I could not kill myself. To kill myself would have made a lie of the one truth I clung to. I loved my daughters. I could not take my own life.

Desperately I waited for him to take me out of my misery. I waited to be rescued by death.

And then I was.

Rescued. By life.

I have been thinking about that story lately. It is inevitable. Working in a place where women come in with their children in tow, fleeing a man who has promised to love them and who is hurting them in ways they never imagined possible.

It is inevitable that those memories surface as I watch a woman and her two teenage daughters navigate the uncertain terrain of an emergency shelter and this place called homeless.

It is the part of the journey that people seldom talk about. That place where all pride is stripped away as you face the bitter and unbelievable truth; you are broken and desperately need help.

I was always too proud back then to acknowledge how broken I was. My pride kept me from reaching out for help.

I hid. I pretended. I smiled to hide my fear. My pain. My confusion.

I wanted to be rescued because I did not believe I could save myself.

On that morning after he was arrested so many years ago, I opened a notebook and began to write. It was all I could think of to do to keep from drowning in self-loathing and fear and sorrow and grief and heartbreak.

One of the very first things I wrote so many years ago was, “Now for the hard part. Healing from this mess.”

I remember sitting on my bed, looking down at the pen in my hand and the notebook with its lines blurring through my tears and thinking, “I can’t do this. I don’t know where to start.”

And then a voice from deep inside me whispered. “Yes you can. Begin right here. Begin with what you know. You are alive. With life, anything is possible.”

And it was true.

I was alive and anything was, and is possible.

I gave up on hating myself that very first morning. I gave up on dragging myself through the dirt and muck of the past and gave myself permission to be present in life as it appeared in that moment.

I was still afraid. Still broken. Broke and sad. But I was alive.

And with life, anything is possible.

It is what I want to tell the women I see everyday at the shelter. It is what I want to whisper into the ears of those young girls who sit so still as they whisper together, watching the room of children and parents flow around them.

“You can get through this. Begin right here. You are alive and anything is possible in your life.”

Once upon a time, pride stood in my way.

And then, life rescued me and I found the courage to let go of pride and reach out for help.

I am grateful.

Namaste.

I believe we come into this world with an inherent vision of making our presence in this world a difference-maker. Difference-making is unavoidable. We grow from childhood to adults continually changing our body, mind and understanding of what it means to be human and how we express it. In our growing, our footprint in the world changes the world around us.

There lives within the human heart the desire to to be seen, to be known, to be heard. It stems from our deep desire to make a difference — in our own life, our family’s life, our community, province/state, country, world. We each carry the genesis of this idea and fulfill on it in varying ways. No matter how we bring our difference-making into reality, however, we are all governed by a universal pact, unspoken/unwritten though it be, to ‘do no harm’.

In Bruce Weinstein’s book, Ethical Intelligence, the first principle of living an ethical life is to ‘do no harm’. He goes on to say that if you must do harm, we must take measures to minimize it however we can. He gives the example of having to lay someone off. Do it, he counsels, in a way that retains their dignity, that respects and honours their humanity and reflects well on you and your organization.

Recently, in an effort to do something good for someone, I inadvertently caused them some harm. It wasn’t intentional, harm seldom is when we come from a place of wanting to do good. But, in the act of creating ‘a moment’, I didn’t consider the consequences of some of the aspects to what I was doing and the recipient felt unheard and unseen.

I am 100% accountable for what I do and say and create in the world. I am 100% accountable for my footprint in other people’s lives.

Sometimes, I take a misstep. Sometimes, my actions or words will not sit well with another. While I am not responsible for how another perceives or receives my actions, I am responsible for how I respond when they tell me how my words/actions impacted them.

I can say, “Too bad. Get over it.”

Or, I can ask them to tell me more about how they’re feeling/their response. I can ask questions and listen, deeply, to their answer.

No matter if my words/actions came from a place of grace and love within me, I must resist the temptation to defend my words/actions. I must resist my desire to ‘be right.’

And that isn’t always easy. Particularly when we feel righteous about the ‘goodness’ of our intentions.

Fact is though, whatever I do in this world, it will have an impact on others. I can’t force people to like what I do and say, just as I can’t force them to live the way I want.

I can create space for both of us to have opinions, ideas, thoughts that are honoured, acknowledged, and freely shared without fearing judgement. Because along with the need to ‘do no harm’ is the second aspect of Ethical Intelligence, ‘create better’.

My intent must always be to create better, and when my difference turns up as something that creates discord in someone else’s life, which given I am human it sometimes will, I must commit to acknowledging my misstep, in love for the other and myself.

We all make mistakes. It’s not the mistakes that make the difference. It’s the being accountable for what we’ve done — good and bad, and acknowledging our footprint. To do that we must Turn Up. Pay Attention. Speak our truth. and Stay Unattached to the Outcome.

In my misstep I have taken action. Embraced the opportunity to learn and grow.

It doesn’t mean I won’t take another misstep. I will do my best not to, but it is inevitable I sometimes will. To ensure my missteps don’t become chasms of discord  between myself and others, I must listen, speak my truth and trust the other to speak their truth and hear it without judgement. And, I must trust myself to be committed to stay present in my desire to make differences that ‘do no harm’ and ‘create better’.

It is the best I can do and my best is good enough.

Namaste.

When my daughters were younger we used to play a game as we drove along city streets. “See that man over by the bus stop? The one walking slowly with his shoulders hunched,” I’d ask. “You’ve got sixty seconds to tell the story of what’s happening in his life.”

Quickly, one of them would ‘write’ the story of his life. “He just came from the doctor’s office. He’s worried because the doctor wants him to go for some tests and he’s scared about what they’ll find. Tests always scare him. Even as a kid, he hated tests. ‘Someone’s judging you no matter what you do,’ his mother used to say. ‘Tests just confirm other people’s bad judgement of you,’ she’d add before marking up his homework with her bright red pen. The doctor told him he doesn’t think it’s cancer. He wants the test to rule it out. But the man didn’t hear the ‘not cancer’, all he hears is, ‘I’ve gotta get a test for cancer’. And he’s convinced he’ll fail.”

And we’d drive on with the story weaving itself until we spotted another person who inspired a different story.

Outside my office window at home the world unfolds every day.

A woman walks past my window every morning. The story I tell myself is that she is on her way to work. Dress pants. Coiffed hair. She has a happy step. A lightness to her gait. She steps onto the heels of her feet, rolls forward and bounces up. Her arms swing. The hem of her 3/4 length dark blue coat with shiny brass buttons swings. The large bright blue bag she carries over one shoulder swings with her.

She walks away and the space in front of my window is filled with a woman walking her Cocker Spaniel on the other side of the street. She too is dressed for work from head to ankles. White running shoes encase her feet. She walks as quickly as her old shambling dog can shuffle. He always stops at the corner where the walk from the white house of the man and lady with the red car meets the sidewalk. He always sniffs. She always waits a moment then tugs gently on his leash to get him moving.

An elderly woman walks by. Bright pink coat. Milk white hair spilling out from the edges of her cream coloured hat. It forms a halo around her face as she steps into the sun streaming towards her from the east. She walks quickly. A purposeful stride.

The story I tell myself…Morning exercise to stem the flow of time eating at long lost youth, curbing ages erosion of her well-being. She’s committed to good health. Good eating. Good living.

Outside my window, the world flows by. I like to make up stories about the people in its flow.

Sometimes, most times, I tell myself stories about all the happenings in my life. Sometimes, I’m right. Sometimes, my emotions, my memory, my experiences cast a light on the story I’m telling myself that isn’t true about the other people in my story.

Life is made up of stories.

I can make up a story for anyone, but the real stories that make a difference in my life are the one’s I tell myself that make a difference in how well I pass the time of day loving, caring and being with the ones I love.

The real stories are the one’s I’m willing to tell that bridge the gap between what’s going on, and what I tell myself is going on.

Sometimes, those stories are absurd.

Letting go of the absurd, I get real with  my story. And when I get real with my story, I get real in my life.

The first time I remember feeling the bitter sting of being judged harshly I was eleven years old. We had just moved to a new city in France. It was my first day at my new school. Grade seven. Because of the move we were a week late for the beginning of classes. Groups had been formed. Allegiances made. I walked into the schoolyard that morning feeling like an outsider.

I stood alone, waiting for the bell to ring inviting us in. Not far from me stood a group of girls. They kind of looked like the cool kids and I thought I’d like to be part of their tribe.

I smiled tentatively at one of them and she turned away.

I looked away too, not sure what to do.

They whispered among themselves and I could feel them looking at me, eyeing me up and down. I wanted to say Hi. I wanted to be part of the group. I wanted to make friends but was a little afraid and intimidated by the group. And then, I overheard one of the girls say to another as she glanced at me. “What a snob.”

Ouch.

I remember feeling the sting of those words. I remember thinking, “But you don’t even know me.”

It was a defining moment.

I had a choice to make. Let their judgement of me become my truth, or not. I could retreat behind a wall of resentment and attitude, or, I could step out and be known for who I am, not who others perceived me to be.

I stepped out. I decided to introduce myself to the group and not be the snob they’d judged me to be without even knowing me. (I think I may have also done it out of a bit of ‘spite’ too! How dare you judge me! I’ll show you!)

Stepping into that group I didn’t know that the girl who made the comment would become one of my very best friends. We are still in contact. A few years ago she came to Calgary and we spent a four day weekend catching up on thirty years of living. We had a blast.

And as to my defining moment?

It didn’t have a lot of impact on them. In fact, when my girlfriend and I talked about it later, she barely remembered the moment.

I told her how it was one of my defining moments. How, because I never wanted anyone to think I was a snob, I decided I could not act like one.

For that group, my stepping up first paved the way for them to see I wasn’t being standoffish. I was just feeling intimidated and scared — there I was at a new school, the new kid. They didn’t have to invite me into their group, but once I stepped up and showed myself to be who I was, I made it easy for them to let me in.

I didn’t understand that then. I didn’t see how I could be a threat to them or that they didn’t need to invite me in.

French author, Honore de Balzac wrote, “The more one judges, the less one loves.”

My happiness comes from loving, not judging. From seeking first to understand, before being understood.

When I stand in love and allow compassion for my fellow human beings to be my guide as well as the measurement of my happiness within, the world around me becomes a better place for me to stand in. In Love, anything is possible.

And the best part is…. The less I judge, the more I am buoyed up to live, love, laugh my way through every day!