Gone Coachin’ – at Choices

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

I’m off to coach at Choices for the next five days.

Long days, short nights, fast sleeps — and miracles unfolding with every breath.

I’m off to delve into the human spirit taking flight as hearts learn to be free and wild.

I hope your week is as inspiring, uplifting and whole-hearted as I know mine will be.

See you next week.

They’ll always be a next time to do it better.

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

I awoke yesterday from a dream-filled, chaos driven sleep, wondering where all the chaos came from. Guns and revolution. Standing on the ramparts and shaking things up amidst people fighting back, resisting.

My mind was disquieted by the activity of my dreams, by the lingering tendrils of unrest in a world all shook up by the need for peace and its resistance to creating it.

I needed physicality and decided to sweep out the garage. Off I went to the hardware store to pick up some ‘sweeping compound’ and, while I’m at it a couple of more plants for the deck and then, back home to get the work done.

Except, as I got back in my car and started to drive forward out of the spot I was in, because the one in front of me was empty, )(yeah! I don’t have to back out) as I was half way through it a car pulled into the spot I was driving through. The driver sat and waited for me to back up and exit via the spot I’d vacated.

What?

Can’t he see I’m halfway through the spot he’s driving into?

What’s his problem?

I back up.

But…

Rather than back out of my original spot, I decide to go pick up that one more plant I considered getting on my way out of the store, and chose not to simply because I didn’t feel like going back through the till.

Ha! Why let the other driver have my spot where he can simply pull out when he’s ready to go.

I’ll show him!

I pull back into the spot I was vacating, park my car and go back into the store to buy the extra plant (3 actually) and leave. Again.

Definitely not one of my more enlightened moments.

And that’s the thing.

I hope to behave with grace and ease throughout my day.

But, as yesterday morning showed so well, the chaos of my mind can eliminate all hope of my finding the grace in action I seek.

Rather than live my intention, I acted out from a place where all hope was lost of my behaving to my higher good.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.”

I hope my soul is always singing a song of inner peace even when I’m acting out of mental chaos!

There I was, hoping to spend a productive day (it was a beautiful day outside btw) puttering in the back yard and accomplishing a task that needed doing and my head was all intent on teaching me a lesson.

I doubt I showed the other driver anything other than how unreasonable and childish I can be when I am not moving through my day with intention.

What I did learn though is that seeking peace of mind is not the same as hoping I find it.

I must be intentional and clear-headed in all my actions.

Hope may be a feather in my soul, but my actions are the wings upon which my spirit takes flight.

Acting out from my lesser goodness yesterday dampened my spirits for awhile, until I remembered to laugh at myself and say, “Bless him. Forgive me.”

I hope I remember to do it sooner next time I act out because, while I might hope they’ll never be a next time, I know my human condition. It’s always offering up opportunities for me to grow and learn from myself.

And I hope I never forget, the quality of my life and the peace of mind I have, is not based on what others are doing, it’s about what I am doing and how I respond to the world around me.

Day 5: Surrender — the ultimate un-guide. All is what it is.

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

I am sitting in some sort of bleacher amidst a crowd of people. Someone, I think it’s my Grade 2 teacher, tells everyone to split into sides.

But first, we have to go clean up the staff room. There was a party and it’s a mess. Empty trays of cake. Beer bottles. Paper plates and cutlery all over. It’s the beer bottles that get me. We don’t allow alcohol on the premises. Why would there be beer bottles everywhere?

And then, as can only happen in a dream, I’m back at the bleachers sitting on the furthest left hand side of the group on the right. They’re the introverts. I want to be with them.

“But you like people,” someone says to me.

I do! I love people.

I love my alone time too. Being with people too much makes me grouchy, I tell them. I need to find time for me.

Again, as only can happen in a dream, one person is singled out. We are invited to decorate them with reams of ribbons and cloth the organizer gives us.

We begin. She looks rather pretty, I think, but one of our team keeps telling me I can’t put the ribbons around her head. But they look good there, I protest, but to no avail.

Stop it, they say.

The woman we’re wrapping in ribbon keeps moving to the edge of the ledge we’re standing on. She turns to face us. With her back to the void behind her, she steps away from us and closer to the edge.

Stop it, I call out. Stop it. Get away from the edge.

She laughs and steps closer and closer.

I can’t watch. I turn away from where she stands at the edge and close my eyes.

And I awaken.

Surrender.

The delicate balance of holding on/letting go and trusting in the all that is as what it is.

Surrender. The liminal space between the known and unknown. Seen and invisible. Heard and silent. Felt and perceived.

Lean out far enough from what I know and I encounter all I do not know, all that is unknown yet perceived, felt, wished for, dreamed of.

I do not fear the unknown. I fear stepping off the edge. I fear that moment of letting go, releasing where I am and trusting gravity, the universe, myself to hold me safe.

Like flying, it is not being in the air I fear. It is that moment of lifting off, of trusting the shiny silver bullet of metal encasing me to hold me safe as we let go of the earth and take off.

I do not fear the unknown. I fear gravity will let me down.

I breathe.

There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to turn away from.

There is only this moment, right now, where I am safe, exactly the way I am, when I let go of my belief, I am at risk of falling.

There is only this moment, right now, where I am complete, exactly the way I am, when I let go of my belief, I am not whole.

There is only this moment, right now, where I am love, loved and loving, exactly the way I am, when I let go of my belief, I am not worthy.

Surrender.

There is nothing to fear when I let go and surrender to the beauty, majesty and mystery of who I am in a world of wonder and awe.

There is nothing to fear when I surrender my resistance to trusting the Universe to turn up for me. The Universe cannot turn away. It cannot not turn up. It is and in its being it cannot be anything other than what it is. I can choose to see it as a fearful, distrustful and dark place, or I can choose to journey with my eyes and arms and heart wide open to embrace this world of beauty, majesty and mystery shimmering all around me.

Surrender.

All is possible when I leap fearlessly into my resistance of letting go and give in to Love.

********************************************

Surrender — The Ultimate Un-guide. Release. Let go. Breathe.

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

I want to defend. To be loud and clear so that everyone knows, I know that. I know what surrender means. And then I want to show you with my words how smart I am to know that.

I release. I let go. I breathe.

I want to explain. To give you all I know about surrender, how I learnt it, what it means to me.

I release. I let go. I breathe.

I observe.

Oh, look at me. Defending. Getting all defensive when I think people think I don’t know. Getting all engaged when I hear things I know I know.

Breathe.

Surrender is all I know and all I don’t know.

What do I know?

To surrender means not to defend. Not to stand up against. Not to stand up for.

It means to simply be present. To allow. To accept. To stand still within the liminal ground between forces. Bordering ideas. Thoughts. Feelings. Energy…

It’s not just about the battle for, or the battle against. It is about being effortless in the space between.

It’s not about indifference. It’s about accepting there is a difference. A different way. A different path. A knowing.

And the difference is okay. And to live the difference I must let go of living in what I know.

But how can I live beyond what I know if I don’t know what I don’t know?

Now that’s a koan of epic proportions.

And then, I find this waiting for me in my Inbox.

Be still. Stop struggling.
Enter the holy shrine of your heart, and there find peace and joy.
You have always been perfect and you will always be perfect.
There’s absolutely nothing you have to delete or add.~ Robert Adams ~

Sojourners Path

There is nothing to struggle against. Nothing to fight for. Nothing to surrender. Or hold onto.

There is only this place where I am still. Where I stop struggling. Where I enter the holy shrine of my heart.

I release. I let go. I surrender.

***********************

I wrote a new poem yesterday. I followed a link from Lorrie Bowden’s beautiful post, We All Return and was inspired by the words of Michael at Embracing Forever. He writes in his poem Who’s Counting Anyway

Try this:
pretend we’re turtles,
and all of existence our shell.
Every time… every place…
Realize it is all
a most intimate form
of protection.

And I tried it and found myself surrendering to the intimacy of our shared existence. “It is for Forever that we were built,” writes Michael on his ABOUT page. In allowing his words to sink in, the words for We are born forever flowed freely.

Namaste.

On Being a Mother

Posted on May 10, 2015 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 could choose to be miserable. Or not.

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. How will you enjoy entering the 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.

Today, I have been a mother for almost 29 years.

I would not change a thing. I would not erase a moment, turn a different phrase or take a different step.

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.

We the people have spoken. It’s time for change.

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

The ballots were cast. The votes counted. The political landscape of Alberta is different today than it was yesterday. Than it has been for the last 4 decades.

Yesterday, Albertans spoke with every ballot cast.

Yesterday, they said “Enough”.

Enough cronyism. Enough political opportunism and corporate favouritism. Enough of the dynasty.

And like an addict craving one more hit, I could not draw myself away from watching the results on TV. I could not get enough of each political pundit’s viewpoint, the colour coded results showing riding after riding falling under “The Orange Crush”, as media have dubbed the National Democratic Party (NDP) and its charismatic leader, Rachel Notley. I couldn’t quit watching images of cheering crowds chanting “Rachel! Rachel! Rachel!” and the deafening silence of the defeated who had nothing left to say except, “Good-bye”.

Good-bye Progressive Conservatives (PC).

Good-bye Jim Prentice. Your leadership has failed. Your hubris undermined you and the party.

Fear of the unknown is an irrational being. This morning’s headlines are littered with references to economic collapse, departure of business, killing off of the “Alberta advantage.”

What the headlines and politicos forget is, we are resilient. We are entrepreneurial. We are creative.

The NDP are untried, and inexperienced. No one is sure what they will do once they take up the reigns of power. No one knows how they will respond to the financial crisis the collapse of oil prices has brought to provincial coffers, and to the economic fortunes of our province.

What everyone does know is the people of Alberta are still the same people they were yesterday. We still value hard work, stick-to-itness and working together. We still value each other, being good neighbours, taking care of one another. We still value fair pay, fair play and fairness in all our affairs.

The difference today is, political change is here to stay. The status quo has been shaken. The balance of power not just tilted but turned upside down.

With the undoing of the conservative juggernaut that has gripped our political landscape with such totalitarian control no one could foresee the fall of the mighty PCs, there is much unrest amongst those who man the ivory towers and pump the oil and gas that fuels our economy. Where will they go to curry favour? Who will they cosy up to gain political currency?

Uncertainty fosters creativity. It generates new ideas, new ways of doing things, new roads to explore. While the path may be untrod, the future unknown, there is much that we can count on today.

Today, spring blossoms are bursting forth. Grass is turning green. Dandelions poke their heads up from cracks in the sidewalk and along roads and ditches wild flowers are showing their colours. Wheat fields are being ploughed and in the heart of every Albertan beats the hope that this change will bring new growth, new ideas, new possibilities that will bring us closer to creating a great province, for everyone. Not just those who fill the coffers or hold the purse-strings but those who stand on the margins watching the Alberta advantage miss the mark.

Today, the possibility of every Albertan getting a fair chance at change, shimmers on the horizon, calling each of us to continue what this election has shown so clearly. When we speak up, when we raise our voices together and cast our votes, we can and do make a difference.

Sometimes, change can be scary, but a world where change never happens, is even scarier. And with the PCs, change was not on the agenda.

Now it is.

Now, what we must do is keep our voices strong, keep speaking up and keep ensuring our leaders work for us, not the party. We must keep working together, keep building new paths, new ways of being a province where every voice counts, every voice is heard and every voice makes a difference.

We the people have spoken. It’s time for change.

Gratitude and Love live here, always.

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

Even though the Calgary Flames did not win last night, forcing a sixth game on Saturday night, they did not rain on my parade. As C.C. said, “Nothing is morning important than our wedding celebration. Hockey, smockey!”

Okay. So he didn’t really say that, but I know he was thinking it, as were all the other ardent and vocal Flames fans gathered at a local pub last night to watch the game and to begin the wedding celebrations! When I popped in after C.C. and I met with the marriage commissioner, they were completely immersed in the game, sharing laughter and jokes about the imminent end of C.C.’s single status.

Earlier in the day, Alexis and I went with Natalie Winsa, our wedding angel, to do a site visit at Bench 1775, the winery where the wedding will be held tomorrow. Conscious of the weather forecast, we talked about Plan B. None of them all that enticing until Natalie said, what about the entranceway to the Tasting Room?

and voila! A beautiful Plan B, should it be needed.

I’m confident it won’t be. The forecast for today was all showery and cloudy. Yet, here I sit at my writing place, looking out at the unruffled waters of the lake. No wind and few clouds above.

Funny how weather is not all that important to me, until I plan an outdoor wedding. Like so many things in life, the context comes when my plans include things I cannot control, but have an impact on what I’m doing.

Thing is, the weather won’t make our day tomorrow great. We will. All of us gathered together to celebrate love and marriage, family ties and friendship.

And yes, I am excited!

One more day. There’s a party tonight, an Open House C.C and I are hosting here at Therapy Vineyards where we’re staying. The amazing Kasey Alladin is catering, just as he will be at the wedding. While we are either out on the golf course, or touring the vineyards, Natalie and Kasey will be busy setting up the party and laying out the food to welcome us upon our return.

Therapy Guest House is almost full with just one more couple to arrive from New York today. Last night, C.C.’s son and daughter arrived as did dear friends from Calgary. We stayed up late, chatting and sharing a glass of wine and a few sips of Therapy’s incomparable Freudified wine, laughing and talking and telling stories on each other. These are people who have been in our lives for a long, long time. They hold special places in our hearts and journey. Earlier in the afternoon, a couple, along with a friend who had driven in from Calgary, stopped by for a late afternoon visit. We sat on the deck, soaked up the view and the ambience of the place, and gave thanks.

As I check over my lists, tick off more and more To Do’s as DONE, I am grateful.

For C.C., our family and friends who have made this weekend so special.

Gratitude flows all around and I breathe deeply.

Yes, this is life. This is Love. This is beauty.

This is my last post before the wedding tomorrow. How exciting is that!

See you on the other side of marriage.

Much love to all and deep gratitude for your well-wishes and support and encouragement and above all, Love.

And so it begins… the wedding journey

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

And so it begins.

Alexis and I are off to wine country today to get everything in order for the wedding on Saturday. C.C. and my youngest daughter and her boyfriend arrive tomorrow night, as does a friend who is our MC. On Thursday, the four of them will be playing golf while Alexis and I enjoy the last minute visits to the florists and other suppliers for the wedding. Tomorrow is our spa day. Our day to simply savour being amongst the vines, beside the lake, in the sun.

Oh! And I do have to pick up the wedding license!

We had planned on leaving yesterday, but it wasn’t until 4pm yesterday that I finally packed up the last tub of paraphernalia for the wedding, swept out my studio and said, I’m done.

Plus, I still had to pick up my dress from the dress-makers where I’d taken it to have it lined. The fabric is gorgeous but it needed softening on the inside!

It is beautiful, my dress. My lovely and generous friend WC spent countless hours creating and cutting and sewing and unsewing and sewing again to get it just so. For me, every stitch in the skirt speaks of friendship. It is a reminder of how we sew together our different perspectives, our varying experiences and thread together a tapestry of caring and love that lifts and supports us in our lives. It speaks of our human desire to be connected, to be part of something, giving the best of what we have and know to create something out of nothing. Like sewing, friendship is kind of like magic to me. From a flat piece of fabric, wondrous things appear that clothe us in beauty!

The fabric for my skirt is from India, a hand-embroidered silk that whispers stories of elephant rides and gardens bursting with the brilliant hues of marigolds and fuschia and passion flowers and birds flitting amongst the branches of a heavily laden lemon tree.

My mother is from India. She is too frail to make the wedding so my dress is in honour of her. It also makes me think of Ireland where my father is from. When I took it into the dress-maker to have it lined, she suggested adding a small shawl around the neck of my blouse made out of the same fabric as the skirt. It makes me think of the sash an Irish dancer wears to honour her clan. The skirt swishes and sways as if moved by the music of a distant fiddle playing a jig.

Yup. I’m ready.

Everything is done. Everything is ready. All packed up. All set to go.

C.C. is organizing the caravan of cars that will help us get all the boxes and bins to the vineyard. My car today will be filled with two sets of golf clubs, his suitcase, Alexis’ and mine as well as anything else I can fit in!

On Thursday, his son and daughter arrive with their significant others as do my two sisters and one of their husbands and several other friends. Friday, 24 of us are on a wine tour while several others will be teeing off for another round of golf with C.C.

And then, Saturday.

My friend Ula asked me yesterday if I had figured out where everyone would dress and how we’d get to the winery where the wedding is being held.

Oops.

Not yet!

But, I’ve still got four and a half days… 🙂

And oh my. Look at the time!

Gotta go.

I need to finish packing. Last night C.C. looked at the pile of clothes on the loveseat in our bedroom that I’d set out to take with me and suggested I might want to cull it a bit. “You’re only gone a week,” he said, “Not a month.”

Oh? Right.

I don’t need 7 pair of pants, 5 skirts, 8 blouses and 3 sweaters.

But what about the 10 pair of shoes?

I need each one of them, don’t I? Just in case. 🙂

Thank you everyone for the beautiful and heart-warming well-wishes. I carry you and your loving words with me in my heart.

Namaste.

My heart is strong

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

My daughters asked me last night at dinner when I was going to have my meltdown before the wedding.

I don’t have meltdowns, I told them.

And my youngest daughter looked at me with that look of disbelief daughters do so well and asked, “Really mom? What about that night you landed in hospital?”

Children have such unforgiving memories of their parents sometimes.

The night in question was just after I had moved back to Calgary, after the man whose lies and manipulations that almost killed me had sent him to jail.

After a year and a bit in prison, The Parole Board had let me know of his release to a half-way house in Calgary. I was hyper conscious of my surroundings. Working with a security consultant I was, ‘target-hardening’ my home and my life so that we could be safe and live with peace of mind.

But, the fear existed. It lived on the periphery of my thinking, a constant niggling at my mind to ‘be aware’ of everything going on around me. One evening, I had gone to a friend’s for dinner and he had fed me his world famous peach martini’s. I had known this man for many years but on this night, he informed me of his long time affection for me.

I didn’t feel the same way about him and didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I said nothing. He took my silence as an invitation and tried to kiss me.

And that’s when my walls came tumbling down.

I did not want to be kissed. I did not want to be up close and personal with a man. I did not want a man. Period.

Fortunately, he got the message, backed off and walked me home.

Problem was, the dam had burst and I couldn’t get myself together. I cried and shivered and at one point sat on the grass and sobbed. It was as though, after two years of having to deal with not just the spectre of ‘the bad man’ somewhere on the horizon but also my daughters’ fear of his presence coming back into our lives, and my own work of healing the woundedness within me, I broke wide open and let go.

I let go of holding myself and all of it together.

I let go of being strong.

I let go of being the one with all the answers.

I broke.

When my friend got me home I was a mess. Concerned for my well-being, he called 9-1-1. When my address came up in their database, they found my file flagged because of the ‘bad man’s’ release from prison. Respond immediately.When the ambulance and police arrived. I remember continually repeating, “I can’t keep my daughters safe. I can’t keep my daughters safe.”

When they checked their database further, they too grew concerned.

And therein lay the challenge. My fears were real. I wasn’t imagining them or making them up. They were real and I had been trying to pretend that while I knew they were real, I was handling it all.

In my desire to protect my daughters from my fears, I had been holding them in the container of, “I need to do everything I can to keep myself and the girls safe. I can’t predict or control what he will do. I can only take care of us”.

I had done everything to ‘target harden’ our lives. It was my heart that was the problem.

It was broken and I had been carrying the burden of its brokenness alone. I was tired.

When my friend tried to kiss me, my fear of letting down my guard, of letting myself feel again broke through.

It was shortly after that my beautiful friend NR went to Choices and invited me to go too. Thanks to her, the deep and lasting healing of my heart, and my family, began in earnest.

Daughters’ memories are long though. That evening doesn’t resonate in my memory. I only think of it when one of them mentions it — and usually they only speak of it in context to their fears of my falling apart.

Daughters count on the strength and courage of their mothers. They count on them to always be there. To be witness to their daughters’ tears and fears and pain and sorrows, and the good times too.

And we are, but what we don’t show our daughters is how much we carry their tears and fears and pains and sorrows. We don’t show them how our hearts break when theirs are broken. How are arms ache when theirs are left holding nothing but air after a love gone wrong or a dream shattered.

We show our daughters our strength and seldom our moments of weakness.

On that night long ago, I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I let it go. And in the letting go my healing began in earnest and the transformation of the pain into loving and forgiving myself began.

For my daughters, that night has not been transformed into the seminal moment where I saw clearly I had to let go. It remains in their memories as the night mom fell apart.

I am getting married on Saturday. My heart is bursting wide open with joy and love and feeling safe and feeling embraced by this man whom I trust and cherish and know loves and cherishes me.

I’m not planning a meltdown before Saturday. There’s no need because in marrying C.C., in stepping whole-heartedly into our life together, I have nothing to fear. My heart is strong and I am safe.