To end homelessness in the future, we must begin with the children today.

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It is a startling fact. At any given time, approximately 1% of children in Alberta will be involved with foster care.

44% of adults experiencing homelessness report having had experience with foster care.

According to a 2009 report by the BC Representative for children and youth, youth in care are 17 times more likely to be hospitalized for mental health issues than the general public. By 21 years of age, 41 percent of children and youth in care will have contact with the criminal justice system, compared to only 6.6 percent of the general population in the same age group.

Put another way, involvement in the foster care system nurtures homelessness, mental health issues, criminal justice interactions and other risky behaviours in children just as we nurture resiliency, self-sufficiency, self-confidence in our children.

To be fair to the people providing foster care, it is not ‘them’ creating the issue. Many wonderful, well-meaning and competent caring people foster children in their homes.

It is more systemic. More foundational. We believe foster care works.

In that belief we overlook the impact lack of permanency has on the child. As reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “Children who have a government as their parent, no matter how well-intentioned or necessary that arrangement is, are often damaged by it… They are damaged because multiple moves to living arrangements with multiple caregivers – no matter how loving the foster parents – do not promote stability, security and attachment, the building blocks every child and youth needs to succeed.”  (Trupin EW, Tarico VS, Low BP, et al. Children on child protective service case-loads: prevalence and nature of serious emotional disturbance. Child Abuse Negl 1993;17-345-55.)

To end homelessness in adults, we must stop fostering it in children.

This thought came top of mind this morning when a girlfriend sent me a link to one of the stories from the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre’s project Shelter from the Storm. I am in awe of this project which was spearheaded by Michael Frisby two years ago. It is powerful, moving and soulful. I wanted to find the times for a concert, Verses vs Homelessness, that is happening this weekend and went to the DI’s website and on the homepage, the video they did of a child’s journey into adulthood, and homelessness, played automatically.

This is a powerful, and haunting, story.

One of the actors is a client of the DI. Has been for way too long. His journey into homelessness began in adulthood with the breakdown of his marriage, an unaddressed addiction and a prolonged journey through self-defeating behaviours that lead him into homelessness. The seeds of that journey were planted in childhood. They may never have sprouted if he had not experienced the breakdown of his marriage and the subsequent loss of his relationship with his child. He may not have known the challenges of homelessness if he hadn’t succumbed to an addiction that has haunted him for years. He once told me, “I hate myself so I drink and once sober, I remember why I hate myself and so, I drink again to forget”.

An emergency shelter should never become a longterm home for anyone. But too often it does. Not because the individual chooses it, but mostly because the other options seem too daunting, too scary, too impossible to even be considered. The man in the video has thought about housing. He’s thought about leaving. He’s thought about moving on. But always, the lure of the familiar calls him back. The community of understanding draws him in. And his fear of what will happen to him beyond the world he has come to know so well, traps him from stepping out.

We don’t know what it’s like to be homeless. We don’t know what happens to someone’s psyche when they lose everything and find themselves in the one place they never imagined they would end up.

We just don’t know.

In Shelter from the Storm, Michael and all the performers share the experience through song and verse and music and story.  They are giving us an insider’s view of the loss and pain and sorrow that is called homelessness.

These are important stories to hear. What’s even more important, is that we stop creating opportunities for these stories to become someone’s life. and that begins with taking care of the children.

To stop homelessness in the future, we need to stop doing the things that foster the growth of it in children today.

What if this limitless world is our home?

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FullSizeRender (95)Do not ask me where I am going
as I travel in this limitless world
where every step I take is my home

~ Dogen ~
Zen, Tao, Chan

What if… we did see every step we take as being in our own home? What if we did see this limitless world as our home. The place we reside. The place that holds us safe, secure, comfortable. That keeps us surrounded by beauty. That supports the flourishing of our lives?

Would you walk differently? Step more lightly? Tread  more gently?

Yesterday, as I got out of my car to take Beaumont for his walk at the park, I opened my door and there beside me on the ground was a pile of cigarette butts. Someone obviously had parked in that spot, pulled out their ashtray and emptied it on the ground.

Later, as Beaumont chased the ball that he insisted I keep throwing for him, I had to keep one eye on the ground to ensure I did not step on leftover evidence of other dog’s presence that owners had not picked up.

On my way home, I stopped at a local cheese shop to pick up delectable morsels for a girlfriend and I to share over a glass of wine. Just outside the shop I spied a discarded wrapper from the sandwich store next door. Someone had omitted to throw it into the cast iron garbage container that stood a few feet away at the edge of the sidewalk.

This is my home. Your home. Our home.

I regularly pick up other dog’s deposits while walking Beaumont. I also pick up litter on the street.

Yes, the original dog owner, the original litterer ‘should’ do it. But if they don’t, who will? Do we not each have a responsibility to take care, to pick up after those who do not?

If I don’t, who will?

The challenge is to pick up with a soft heart. To pick up trash without grumbling beneath my breath about inconsiderate ‘others’ as I complain about having to clean up after them..

To clean up with gratitude for the opportunity to be of service to this world which I call home can be challenging. I want to find the original offender and tell them to ‘do it right’. To quit being slobs. To start taking care of our shared world. Yet, if wherever I travel every step I take is my home, I must find the grace to be at home wherever I am, however the world is around me.

And that includes seeing everyone I meet, everything I encounter as part of my world, a world where I am responsible for the care I take, and give, to keeping my home clean, safe, beautiful and flourishing.

For today, let my mission be to treat all of this limitless world as my home. Let me carry only love in my heart and leave only peace in the wake of every step I take.

Namaste.

Let me only DARE LOVE

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I awaken with tears. I awaken with an ache in my heart, sadness sitting heavy in my bones. I ache. All over. For this world. This earth where violence erupts again and again and for a moment, in the split second of bullets ripping through flesh in some far flung and not so far away corner of our world, I feel helpless, lost, frightened.

And I breathe.

I want to curl up into a ball and ask the world to please stop. To please quit doing these things we do to one another that cause such pain, such horror, such terror.

I want to plead with unseen faces, with bands of men and women gathered together in secret places where their desire to incite terror, inflict pain washes over them in a frenzy to release their pain, their anger, their terror on others. Please stop.

I want to gather my children and tell them to not be afraid, to not lose hope, to not give up on peace, on one another, on their capacity to change this world so desperately in need of changing.

And I breathe.

In moments like these, when violence explodes in a nightclub tearing apart the lives of so many as I lay sleeping, I awaken to my fear that we are too late. We have gone too far down this path of an eye for an eye vengeance multiplying in our streets, our cafes, our markets, our homes. That terror has taken up residence in the hearts and minds of too many of us to be overcome by Love.

Let Love be the way my heart cries out and still, I fear.

And so I breathe.

For today, for this moment right now where I understand so little of the moments others are experiencing that lead them to such dark and violent spaces they only want to lash out, to kill and maim and destroy others. Let me not give up hope. Let me not give into fear. Let me not give up.

Let me only DARE to LOVE.

Let us all who have not succumbed to terror, who have not given in to fear, who will not give into helplessness and the desire to kill one another, let us all DARE to LOVE.

And so I breathe and with each breath I ask for strength. I ask for hope. I ask for courage. To understand. To find compassion. To be forgiving. To be of Peace.

If I can do nothing more in this moment now to change the past, let me change this moment right now through Love. Love is the path to peace. Love is the path to understanding, compassion, kindness, tolerance. It is the way.

Let Love be my way. Let me only DARE LOVE.

Spend Less | 52 Acts of Grace | Week 13

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I didn’t spend any money yesterday, not at a store and not online.

It was a conscious decision, though I almost forgot. Twice. C.C. and I were on our way back from a romp in the park with Beaumont the Sheepadoodle and I almost suggested we stop to grab a favourite coffee. I refrained, just in time.

Later, I was online, looking at some new art supplies and almost clicked. And then I remembered, just in time.

I had chosen to make yesterday my “I will not spend money today, day.” I made myself a latte at home later and the supplies will still be there today, tomorrow, next week, If I truly need them (and given I have a studio full of supplies it is debatable).

We live in a world driven by consumerism. Opportunities to purchase, acquire, get stuff, abound. On TV ads, all over the Internet, on billboards, in magazines. No matter where we look, someone is attempting to cajole us into spending money, to adding to the horde of stuff we already have just so we can have the latest, greatest, biggest, bestest stuff on the block.

Give yourself the grace of a ‘spend-free’ day. Practice choosing not to consume. Build it into your weekly habit and let not spending be part of your consciousness rising full of grace.

What if we change the story?

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I watch three men, sitting alone at the bar watching the hockey game on TV. They don’t look at anyone. They don’t chat with the bartender. They don’t look at each other. They eat, sip their beer, watch the game on the screen in front of them.

I am witnessing these human stories at a pub where I have joined C.C. for dinner until his buddy arrives to watch what they hoped would be the last game of the Stanley Cup.

“Do you think those men are lonely?” I ask my husband of the 3 men at the bar.

“I don’t know,” he replies.

“In the story I make up about them, they are,” I tell him. “See their rounded shoulders. The way they never look at anyone. The way one sits huddled over his food, one arm on the bar’s counter, swooping out and around his plate as though he’s protecting it. Maybe he came from a large family where people grabbed for food and you had to fight for everything you got.

In the story I am writing about the man at the end of the bar, he feels lost, his marriage is broken down, his kids are grown up and he feels like life is avoiding him just as he avoids it.”

I am always making up stories of people’s lives. C.C. smiles and says nothing.

There was a man at the shelter where I used to work. He was like those men at the bar. Lonely. Depressed. His marriage had fallen apart. His kids were grown, their relationship with their father strained. He’d sit at the bar by his condo every night just to feel human connections around him, even though he did his best to avoid them.

One day, a stranger came in and sat beside him. They struck up a conversation. They became friends. A few days later, the stranger whispered into his ear, “You know. I’ve got something in my car that will make you feel way better than that Scotch you’re drinking.” And the man decided to try it. His friend was giving it to him for free. His friend would never hurt him.

That man had a Masters Degree in Education, worked as a High School Counsellor. And still, his loneliness drove him into taking the risk. It wasn’t long before he lost everything, including all connection with his family. He did gain a criminal record. He carries it with him today along with the scars of that five year period of his life when, at 60 years of age, he was so lost he gave up on fighting for himself and gave into the despair of homelessness.

Today, that man’s story is one of loss and hope. Of sadness and possibility.

Everyday we pass people on the street who have stories we have never heard, yet about whom we make up stories based on what we believe homelessness to be all about.

Drugs. Addiction. Crime. Loss. Abuse. Hopelessness. More crime. More drugs.

Yesterday, as I took a walk at noon, I passed a couple sitting on a concrete barrier lining the sidewalk. They were visibly homeless. Pan-handling for change. A woman in front of me stopped, handed them a bag with two sandwiches. She smiled and said, Enjoy! and walked away.

What’s her story I wondered? Did she buy the sandwiches to give away? Would she have to stop again to get one for herself and her boss or co-worker? Does she have a loved one who is lost to the street and this is her way of giving back, of making a difference.

What is the couple’s story? Where do they sleep at night? What brought them to the street?

What’s the story we tell about panhandling? People are just asking for money so they can buy drugs? Why don’t they get a job instead? What’s their problem?

What if we change that story?

What if every outstretched hand was viewed as being extended for help, not money?

What if we view our role as a response to someone asking for help?

What if the stories we told changed everything? What if instead of despair we read hope. Instead of loss, possibility. Instead of homeless, humanity.

What if we stopped believing the stories we think we know and lean into the stories of our hearts where truth is written beneath the wounds we carry. Where truth is known beneath the fears we believe are real.

What if the stories we tell are the stories of our shared human condition? The stories of what make us one humanity, not separate human beings.

Would you change your story if you could see all humanity as you? Would you write a different ending for a world desperately asking for help?

Namaste.

 

 

I Dare You!

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Like steam exploding from a bag of just popped, fresh out of the microwave, popcorn, there have been moments in my life when the only answer to address the issues burbling to the top of my consciousness has been to enter therapy.

The only way out is through.

Several weeks ago, when I stood in front of a mob and felt the heat of the anger they hurled at me burning my skin and searing my psyche, I had the courage to turn my back and walk away. It was all that I could do.

Walking away took me out of immediate danger. In walking away, I claimed my power to decide what is welcome, and what is not wanted, in my life.

The challenge with the deeply buried feelings and emotions that awoke through that encounter, is that they do not have separate from me feet to walk away. They are part of me. They have a voice calling out to be heard.

To find peace, I must listen and give them a safe space to be heard.

It is the gift I give myself to clear away vestiges of unease, voices from the past, spaces of discord lurking unknown, unseen until they rise up, in my psyche.

When the student is willing, the teacher appears.

My inner yearnings, my left-over from childhood trauma feelings of unease are all teachers.

To ignore them, to push them back down discredits the voice of truth that is saying, “Here is the door to freedom. Open it. Let me speak and be heard so you can walk through into the light of knowing your truth fearlessly in the now.”

Creating a safe and courageous space for others to explore their value, their worth, their sense of wonder at who they are, was why I started an art studio in a homeless shelter years ago. It was an act of giving through which I received the gifts of connection, friendship, meaning.

It was why I created a studio in our home so that I could explore my creative expression and release my inner yearnings to be free in the safe and courageous space of my studio.

It is all part of the journey, part of the process, part of growing, learning and becoming me.

Being in therapy is the same kind of gift of a safe and courageous space, only this time, I am gifting myself the space and place to speak up, explore, and discover my sense of wonder and awe of who I am when I let go of carrying messages from the past that do not fit my life today.

There is a part of me that wants to run way, to retreat, to go back to sleep.

But I will not. Cannot.

Truth is calling me back. Freedom is drawing me out.

We all encounter moments when we have to make a choice. To stand and fight. To retreat and hide. To hold ourselves in loving kindness as we walk confidently into the unknown spaces of our psyche willing to listen, feel, know the truth within.

The psyche is an amazing place. It holds memory. Thoughts. Feelings. Emotions. Ideas. It is permeable. Resilient. Strong. It can bend with one thought, leap in one breath, fall in one word. It holds us together. It can tear us apart. It connects us to today, and gives us courage to look into the past and see into tomorrow. And always, it holds us in place. Always, it keeps thinking, knowing, feeling, being what it is. Our friend. Our foe. Our greatest strength. Our weakest link. Our essence of being who we are, however we are, no matter what we are.

My psyche is calling me to let go so I can fly free.

I am heeding its call.

What about you? Are you willing to transform your thinking to set yourself free? Are you willing to take a journey into the unknown to discover all you know about being you?

I invite you to explore your options, or, as my inner child would say, I Dare You!

Namaste.

 

 

 

 

What questions do you ask yourself?

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Do you ask yourself the important questions?

And no. I don’t mean, “What am I going to wear today?” Or, “What will we have for dinner?”

I mean the one’s that keep you engaged, learning and moving forward in life, with life, as you grow more deeply aware of your possibilities, capabilities and impact.

The questions that make you stop and think about your journey, the direction of your next step, the importance of each moment, the value you intentionally bring to the world.

Yup. Those kind of questions.

Dean James Ryan of the Harvard Graduate School of Education told the graduating class that there are 5 essential questions we must all ask ourselves and each other every day.

  1.  Wait what?

This question gives you time to ask for clarification before jumping to conclusions.

2.  I wonder… why? I wonder … if?

Asking, I wonder… helps us retain that essential ingredient in life — curiosity. And asking the ‘if’ helps us explore what can we do.

3.  Couldn’t we at least…?

This is the question we ask to get unstuck. Come to agreement. Find common ground. Get started.

4.  How can I help?

Asking ‘how can I help’, especially when we ask it not from the position of wanting to swoop in and exercise our ‘saviour complex’ but from a humble place, gets us involved and  engaged in making a difference in a way that honours and recognizes the power of each individual to be the masters of their own lives, to have the capacity to make a difference for themselves. Dean Ryan also adds that how we help matters as much as, if not more, than if we help.

5.  What truly matters?

When we ask, ‘what truly matters?’, ‘here’, or ‘to me’, we force ourselves to get to the heart of issues, the heart of our own beliefs and principles. From that place, we can see more clearly, hear more deeply and know more completely what we need to do from a place of humility, not ego. It helps us understand what needs to be done that will truly make a difference, for everyone.

When you wake up each morning, stop and ask yourself, “What truly matters to me today?” The answer may not change what you wear, it could change how you step into your day.

Namaste.

Click here to view Dean James Ryan’s convocation speech. (Scroll down just a bit — it’s on the left hand banner)  Enjoy and be inspired!

 

Just Because | 52 Acts of Grace | Week 12

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One summer, C.C. and I took three of our four almost adult children to New York. One night, after coming out of a broadway musical, I bought a bunch of roses from a street vendor and said to the girls, “Let’s give them away to strangers!”

For the next half hour on the walk to a restaurant where we were meeting friends for a late dinner, we wandered along the streets, approached strangers and said, “Hi. I’m from Canada. I have a rose for you just because.”

Some people were suspicious. Some hesitant. Some embraced the gift without a moment’s thought.

Most people wanted to know why. Why are you giving away a free rose? Some asked, ‘What’s the catch?’ Some looked around suspiciously as if to see if they were on Hidden Camera or some other tv show designed to capture them in awkward moments.

Regardless of their initial response, not one person refused the rose. Not even the police officer we offered it to.

Not one person didn’t smile. Not one person didn’t say thank you!

And everyone walked away laughing and smiling.

We laughed so hard that night and had such fun!

And what I love about it is that even years later, I still smile when I think about not just the people we gave the roses to but about how the girls and I took the opportunity to connect with strangers and create smiles everywhere while C.C. and his son looked on laughing and making sure we weren’t going to get into any trouble. At first both girls (then 18 and 21) were hesitant. But once they saw the joy that was created through the simple act of gifting a rose to a stranger, they jumped right in and played along.

Sprinkle a little joy where ever you go today. Give a loved one, a co-worker, your boss, a stranger, a rose and tell them it’s “Just Because.”

Namaste.

Who’s really the problem here?

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Have you ever noticed how life is constantly offering up opportunities to grow and learn, and how we (at least many of us) constantly resist the opportunities?

Life is doing its job.

Too often, we humans are not.

Instead, we’re busy resisting, ignoring, over-looking the abundance before us in our quest to blame, criticise and condemn others for our lack of happiness, joy, love, peace…

For awhile, without my even realizing it, I had been building up a little pile of resentment around my beloved’s inability to understand me. Now don’t get me wrong, I love C.C. deeply, but sometimes, he just doesn’t get me. Know what I mean? When I say with great enthusiasm, ‘Let’s paint the living room!’ He says, ‘There’s a hockey game on tonight’. When I say, ‘let’s go pick out paint’. He says, ‘After the hockey game is over.’

I mean really. Doesn’t he know painting the living room comes over watching hockey? And seriously? Who cares about a hockey game when we peruse the paint chip aisles salivating over teals and aquas and sunshine yellows?

But here’s the deal.

It is not his job to understand me.

That’s my job. Just as it’s his to understand himself and yours to understand you.

It is no more acceptable for me to ask him to go pick out paint colours when the Stanley Cup finals are on than it is for me to pout and shuffle about, maybe even pull out the vacuum in the middle of the game and ask him to lift his feet so I can vacuum the floor beneath them, especially when Crosby has the puck, just because I don’t like his answer.

And no. But I might have wanted to…

See, here’s the thing. Relationship takes work. And sometimes, I like to tell myself I’m doing all the work while he’s watching hockey.

Quite frankly, that is a lie I am telling myself to build my list of resentments so that I can feel sorry for myself. Just because I can.

The thing about life though is that it is always present, always serving up opportunities to get aware and get growing through whatever is eating at my peace of mind — as long as I am willing to stop blaming others for my unease. As long as I am willing to be 100% accountable for my own experience.

And that is something we humans do not like to do a lot of — be 100% accountable for our own experiences.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you thought something like, “What is their problem?” Or, “If they’d just go ‘A’ to ‘B’ the way I want then everything would be just fine.” Or, “Why do they have to be so …? (fill in the blank)”

C’mon. Be honest with yourself.

Now, change the question. When did you last ask, “What is my problem here?” or, “What if I accept their A to B as not ‘wrong’ but simply different?” or, “What’s in it for me to stay so rigid about …… (fill in the blank). What can I do differently here?”

See, life gives us ample opportunity to grow and learn, to understand ourselves better. Life is filled with abundance. Often, we look at it through eyes focused on the other person’s actions, words, thoughts, while we resist looking at our own. And in our resistance to looking deep within ourselves and being 100% accountable for our own journey, we forget, we have the power to know ourselves deeply and in that knowing, change our lives.

We’d much rather someone else changed theirs.

And so, we look at them and wonder why they don’t understand us, when really, the lack of understanding of us is ours.

Life gave me a beautiful opportunity to look inside myself to find the root of my unease. It was a beautiful gift.Especially because, I like what I found in me!