It was early in the evening of Dec 7, 2009 when I made the decision to drive 45 minutes south of the city to sit with a man whose life was quickly ebbing from his body.

He was a client at the homeless shelter where I used to work. He’d been taken to hospice earlier in the day and wasn’t expected to survive the night.

I’d called the hospice when I got home to check on him, to see if any frontline staff were by his side. I was concerned about my going to be with him. I wasn’t a frontline worker. Wasn’t trained to sit at a dying man’s bedside. I didn’t want to overstep my bounds. Didn’t want to put myself in a position where others might think I didn’t belong.

I decided all of that was ego talk.

A man was dying. He had touched my heart in many ways over the 3 years I’d known him. I did not want him to pass over the threshold to the “5th stage” alone.

And so I went.

James A. Bannerman took his last breath at 12:45 am on December 8th, 2009. I sat and held his hand as he took one last breath in and then no more. His body stilled, his heart quietened and in that intake of breath, his life on this earth ended.

I had wondered earlier in the day yesterday why I was feeling ‘different’, at unease, restless.

And then I was reminded of James.

I’d gone to a meeting to clarify a situation in which I’d been involved in a decision to not be part of a secondary piece to the memorial service being planned for December 21, The Longest Night of the Year. It was a good idea but, without more time and resources being available to do the needed planning to ensure the proposed addition to the event went off well, we could not as an organization support the idea at this time.

I’d made the decision on behalf of the organization in a phone call with someone from another agency who wanted to talk through their concerns with me. That conversation impacted  someone else in a way I had not intended, did not foresee.

They are passionate about this event. They had contributed greatly to its coming into being last year and wanted to make it bigger, better. Their ideas are good. Their commitment inspiring. They were disappointed and expressed their disappointment the only way they knew how.

It was a good reminder. To be compassionate. To be open to fierce conversation. To be thoughtful in all things. Kind in every way.

And I am grateful.

In their words I was reminded of James. Reminded of that sacred moment of sitting in the quiet of a cold winter’s night, holding the hand of a fellow human being as he took his final breath on his journey home to ‘the beyond’ of this life here on earth.

In that memory lives the essence of my belief in our humanity.

There is no us and them. You versus me. We different than thee.

There is only us.

There is only this human journey we all share.

We may come from different sides of the street. We may have experienced different parts of the experience called homelessness, and a host of other human conditions. But in the end, as we take our final breath, as the life force leaves our body, there is only one thing we leave behind, one thing that carries us over the threshold of whatever lies beyond this life on earth.

And that is Love.

I had a moment yesterday where my desire to defend against overrode my need to breathe into being present, compassionate, thoughtful, kind.

Thank you James for teaching me many years ago to put aside my fears, my ego, my desire to be comfortable so that I would remember always to breathe into Love.

Namaste.

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Yesterday, Balroop commented in response to the post about the photo of my mother, “we tend to remember certain moments more vividly and then keep them in our heart. I am glad you looked at this picture. That is how perceptions change.”

Integral Theory teaches that to truly understand something, we must view it from four main quadrants, or realities, made up from our understanding of the Singular, Plural, Interior and Exterior quadrants.

In that photo of my mother, from my singular perspective of, ‘this is my mother’, I have my understanding of our relationship and where I fit in that dynamic. From the Plural, there is ‘our relationship’ and my understanding of it. On an Interior level, there are my feelings, memories, emotions, thoughts and ideas about my mother and our relationship. And the exterior brings in my perspective of seeing that relationship, and that photo, from the outside looking in.

Which all goes to say, as Balroop suggests, perceptions change when we change our position of how we look at something.

I see this a great deal in the homeless-serving sector where I work.

People join our team, coming from an organization outside the sector. People enter this work believing in the possibility of making a difference. Wanting to ‘do good’. Wanting to make their contribution to society count. They carry with them thoughts and ideas, understandings and perceptions of homelessness.

One of the most common forms people use for addressing someone experiencing homelessness, especially if they come into the sector from another field of work, is to use the phrase, The Homeless.

To shift from calling a group, The Homeless, to using the phrase,’ individuals experiencing homelessness’, requires being able to see ‘the label’ as just that. A label.

It is not the person. It is not the group of individuals sharing the common condition of homelessness.

To be able to let go of ‘the label’ requires being able to stand in each quadrant and ask, “Where do I stand in this thought? What preconceived ideas, notions, thoughts, feelings do I bring with me?”

And then, to go through the exercise from the position of the other two main pronouns. “We.” “It.”

For example,

• “Where do ‘we’ stand in this thought. What preconceived ideas, notions, thoughts, feelings do I carry from the ‘we’? The perspective of my learned understandings through societal messages? How does ‘group think’ inform my thinking of it this way?” (societal consciousness, morals, values)
• Where does ‘it’ (the label ‘the homeless’) stand in this thought. What preconceived ideas, notions, thoughts, feelings have I/We instilled into the label that inform my thinking of people experiencing homelessness this way?” (societal consciousness, morals, values)

I am not an Integral Theory master. I do love the science behind it and how it challenges me to not see in black and white or one-dimension but to pull myself out of direct line of sight thinking to seeing the many facets, and dimensions of situations.

In looking at my mother’s photo, I am reminded of the power of memory to hold my thinking in place and limit my being present in my life today. And in the power of that awareness, to expand and deepen my understanding of the limitations of what I am holding onto and its affect on my life today.

Waking up is easy. Awakening to our own power to create lives of meaning, substance, value… that’s a lifelong journey.

In the photo my mother is laughing. Head thrown back, neck arched.

I don’t remember her laughing. I don’t remember her ever being so light of being.

The photo doesn’t lie.

Memory can.

Years ago, I met a woman against whom I’d carried a grudge for many years. My last memory of her was when I was around 16. She was walking down a lane, holding hands with the boy I thought was still my boyfriend.

When I met her again, we were both in our forties. It was at a school reunion and she was sitting with the boy, now a man, as well as another woman who’d been in our class.

The four of us chatted and I told her how I’d carried the memory of the two of them walking hand-in-hand and how it had hurt to know she’d stolen him from me.

“I never dated him,” she said.

The other woman who was chatting with us (she happened to have the same name) jumped into the conversation. “I dated him after you!” she said. “But I never stole him. You’d already broken up.”

Turns out. We had broken up. He just hadn’t told me.

The man in question, sitting between the two women, said nothing. Just shrugged a shoulder, smiled sheepishly and gave his little grin that seemed to say then, as it had said long ago to my teenage heart, “I’m so dang cute, you just gotta luv me.”

At the time, I laughed. Wow. All those years of holding a grudge and I’d had it wrong all along. How fickle and unreliable memory can be!

Looking at the photo of my mother, I wonder how true my memory is of her. Perhaps she was happier than I remember. Perhaps laughter came to her more naturally than the tears I remember.

I hope so. Because, no matter the details, just as the wound of a long ago betrayal weighed heavy in my heart, the image of my mother as being sad and fearful does not sit well in my heart. I’d like to carry the memory of my mother as a woman of light heart. A woman who laughed from the depths of her soul. Who danced long into the night, drinking champagne and flirting with men and spinning circles around the room as she sang some outrageous diddy she made up as she spun, her voice enchanting everyone in the room.

That woman was powerful. That woman never stepped back from her fears. She headed heart first into any storm, fighting for what was right, fighting against what was holding her back from being free. A fierce protector. A bold defender of the one’s she loved.

I saw a photo of my mother. She is the woman I remember. Laughing. Light of heart. Fierce and strong. Free

When my daughters were infants I read some silly stat that said a child hears 100 no’s an hour. (I’m not sure of the actual stat so I made that up — you know… I don’t have time to go look up the real stat because I have to get into my office early to finish off the projects I still have to complete by noon today because I forgot to say, No that’s not doable in that timeframe, when a new project appeared on my desk. 🙂 )

I’m never going to say No to my child, I declared. (And yes, there is a pattern here.)

I proceeded to replace No with a more rational, kinder approach. (I write that smiling and shaking my head in bemusement at my own folly).

The fact is, there were times when No was the appropriate response.

Like when my youngest daughter asked if we could get a pet —  in this case, an Elephant Giraffe. Goat.  After three Nos I settled for Yes on the dog. (I think she outsmarted me on that one but in the end, we all won because the dog we got filled our lives with love and laughter.)

Learning to say No is an important lesson for every child.

Say no to drugs. Abuse. Bullying. Fighting. Lying. Cheating. To inappropriate/nonconsensual sex. Those are all vital lessons we must all learn early to live whole-heartedly and well.

Hearing No. Learning to deal with the No’s of life is also important.

When I was a child and my mother told me No, I inevitably went to my father. He was a much easier mark.

What they didn’t realize is the non-value of that lesson was, if you don’t like the No, go find someone you know will say yes.

Too often, in changing who I asked, I missed the lesson my mother was trying to teach me. That my needs are important, but they can’t come at the expense of other’s not getting their needs met too.

My father, not seeing the big picture of our family dynamics (he was away a lot) didn’t get that often, my requests were to fulfill on my own selfish needs, stated without thought of how it would impact my sisters, brother or the family as a whole.

That lesson I had to learn later in life. Because, no matter what I want, if it impacts someone else’s life in a way that hurts or harms them, it is not a good choice, for anyone.

Often, learning these important lessons as adults is harder than if we’d started to embrace their meaning as children. Like learning another language, the older we get, the brain is not quite so flexible and willing in its capacity to learn new things.

Sometimes, when I look at what is going on in our world today, I wonder if part of the problem is, there are a whole bunch of people out there who did not learn as children the value and importance of knowing that getting what they want does not mean others can’t or don’t get what they want. Or that they matter too.

That compromise is not a win/lose scenario. Compromise only works when it’s a win/win.

That getting everything you want does not give you everything you need to live a prosperous and fulfilling life.

The lessons of childhood are important one’s to remember and employ as adults. The playground bully who continues to be the boardroom tyrant is not leading. He or she is just behaving like a child. A child who has never learned that to get ahead does not mean having it your way, no matter the cost. It means finding a way that makes the best possible at no cost to others.

Namaste.

When I became a mother, I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of mother I wanted to be. I wanted to be kind, caring, loving. I wanted to be the kind of mother that didn’t get caught up in the nitty-gritty of dirty diapers and spilled milk but one who celebrated the miracle of life my daughters represent. One who sang silly songs in the car, danced in the streets with them and lay in the grass beneath trees making up stories about the clouds and all the people walking by and even the dogs and cats too.

I did not want my impression upon their gentle spirits to be a heavy hand of authority, but a light touch of loving guidance filled with caring consideration for their unique selves and their needs to grow into independent, strong, self-determined women.

Today, when I look at my daughters I am in awe of the beauty of their human essence. I am in awe of their kindness, their caring natures, their capacity to stand for what they believe in, to speak up in the face of tyranny, to tear down walls of discord, to build bridges of peace and love and joy. I am in awe and always have been, in their capacity to make my heart feel like it is bursting with joy, that being their mother is the most precious gift I have ever been given.

I believe I was (still am) a good mother. I believe that despite my many mistakes, some big, some small, some ginormous, I am still a good mother.

Not because I did everything right. Believe me, I didn’t.

No. I believe I am a good mother because… Well, just because. I am.

It is a choice.

To believe in myself. Or not.

And, because I can and want to, lovingly let my daughters’ living their lives without my constantly telling them what to do, how to do it and when to do it. I want them to be able to speak be their truth, not mine.

It is perhaps one of the hardest things about being a mother to two amazing women. They have minds of their own, ideas of their own, ways of their own that carve out their own unique paths in this world.

It is not my way, my path. It is theirs and as their mother, my role and responsibility is to honour their ways, their path, their own unique voices so that they can be free to be in this world without fearing my condemnation, criticism and complaints.

As a good mother, my job is to give their words, ideas, dreams space to grow without my interference.

And yet sometimes, I want to beat myself up with the stick of having failed because I fear.

I fear they will not have a world where it is safe to sing freely, dance with abandon, write without caution. I fear this world we are co-creating in all our flawed humanity will spiral down into rigid morality where there is only one path, one way,  — and that is the way of hatred. The path where racism, misogyny, territorialism grows stronger in the voices of those who believe all humans are not created equal, divine and miraculous, rise up and beat down the hearts of those who stand for the truth: We are all one humanity. One human kind. We are all One.