Memory came calling like a souvenir postcard tucked away in the back of a drawer, that is found and read only to be discarded again.

Memory came calling in the form of a bird, A pheasant hen scuttling about our backyard. Beaumont and I spied her at the same time as we came out the back door. I stopped to wonder what it was. Beaumont raced across the  yard to get a closer look.

Not too close. He wasn’t quite sure what this alien being was on his territory.

The pheasant scurried under the edge of the back hedge, darting as quickly as it could into deeper cover. 

 

 Beaumont stood poised at the edge where lawn meets hedge, tail wagging, his entire being fixated on figuring out this trespasser’s purpose or maybe just trying to convince her to play with him.

It was not his first choice to come to me when I called, but I was insistent and he heeded my command. I put him in the house, made sure Marley the Great Cat was also locked inside as well and went back outside to check on ‘the bird’.

I knew she couldn’t fly. She tried that when Beaumont had first approached. 

I called 3-1-1, the City’s information line. They told me to call the Alberta Wildlife Conservation Institute (AWIC).

The lady on the other end of the telephone line suggested ‘the bird’ might have flown into the side of the house and broken its collar bone. Not unusual, she said. Sometimes we can heal them and rehabilitate them.

But first, I had to catch her.

Easier said than done.

When C.C arrived home, I stood in the backyard, armed with towels, trying to fence in ‘the bird’.

Finally, between the two of house and a half hour of moving cautiously, slowly and patiently around the edges of the yard, stalking the wounded bird, he managed to throw a towel over her head and grab her.

“Birds will go completely still if you can get a towel over her head,” the woman at AWIC had told me.

She was right.

There were no volunteers available to come and pick her up so C.C. and I drove her to the animal hospital where someone from AWIC would come and get her later.

And that’s where memory snuck out of the drawer.

It was the same animal hospital where a year ago, C.C. and I took Ellie the Wunder Pooch on her final day.

My eyes still well up at the memory of that day. I still feel the sadness, and the fear.

I didn’t know for sure it would be her last day. I didn’t know for sure what was going to happen when we got there. And I was afraid.

This visit, fear did not accompany me, though sadness crept in for a few moments to remind me of Ellie’s loss.

Time (and the joy of Beaumont) has healed most of the sadness and, it has erased the fear I carried with me on that day.

What I hadn’t realized, until it crept in to taunt me with its unanswerable question, is that it has not been able to vanish all the regret. The regret of ‘what if I’d… reacted sooner, done something else, seen what was wrong…’ The regret that comes with losing a loved one and not being able to change anything that lead up to their leaving.

My rational mind knows, I could not have known, I could not have done, anything different.

My heart still carries some regret and walking into that place where I handed the leash over to a veterinary assistant and watched her walk Ellie into the back nethers of the place, only for her never to come out again, my mind still wonders, ‘what if?’

Carrying the unasnwerable questions silently in my heart, C.C. and filled out the paper work at the desk, left ‘the bird’ and came home.

Beaumont greeted us with his squirms and loving cuddles and in his soft fur and puppy breath laden licks I remembered, ‘what if I’d…’ is just a trick of my mind, a slight of hand of memories thrall calling me to let go of what is so I can be consumed by the past.

There is no room for ‘what if I’d..’ ruminations or  visiting the past in the present. There is only room for celebrating the now, for living in the ‘what is’ and joyfully embracing the love that is ever present when I let go of wishing I could change the past.

There is not one moment of the past that I can change. There is only now.

And in this now, C.C. and I took care of a wounded bird. We took her to safety and gave her over to people who will do their best to care for her.

And when we came home, we were greeted by the present of Beaumont’s love squirming in our arms and reminding us as he does every moment of every day, living in the past, regretting what was, does not create more love and joy in the now. It only takes me back to what I cannot change.

I cannot change the joy Ellie brought into my life for almost 14 years.

I cannot change the memories of her love.

I can change how I see that final day, that last good-bye. I can celebrate the truth of what we had and what we did to care for her when she was no longer able to be in this world with us.

And in those memories are the boundless love, the endless joy and the path to being present with Beaumont today. Because in that joy is the knowing, the past is just a memory. I choose whether it’s a trap, or a gateway to living free of its burden and in Love today.

  There is a place and a time for all things. Yet, so often, I want that place and that time to be of my choosing, not someone else’s or even nature’s or the universe.

Being patient, taking care and allowing what is present for someone else be what is present is one of those great lessons of having a puppy that just keeps repeating itself, again and again

Beaumont is three months old today.  On the weekend, he had lots of opportunity to teach me lessons about life and love and being patient, persistent and optimistic.

I didn’t get them all. Sometimes, I messed up on the lesson.

I’m learning.

  Lesson 1: Having fun is not an interlude from life. It is part of life. Just like with work or any endeavour, it’s important to take time to stop and breathe. And if you happen to be playing with someone else, like your brother Satish, when over-excited, you gotta take a break. Otherwise, like with so many things, fun becomes not so fun and then, fun’s all over!

Lesson 2: Baby, it’s hot out there, chill out. Put your feet up, sit with your feet in a bucket of cold water, or better yet, get a puppy pool and share it with your furry friend. Splashing about is fun, and who cares if the floor gets wet and muddy when you go in the house? That’s why they invented mops.

Lesson 3:  Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Not everyone wants to have their butt sniffed, especially the cat.  

Lesson 4:  When you make a mistake, don’t get all bent out of shape. Begin again. Just because I haven’t done it for awhile, doesn’t mean I’m all house-broken, especially in new and different spaces where other doggies go. Clean up the mess and begin again. Enough said.

We are all human scientists, continually searching for evidence the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves are true.

Last week, an incident occurred that fired a deep-seated lie within me. The details of the incident are not all that important. What is important for me, is my response to what happened.

“See Louise,” the critter voice hissed. “You don’t belong. Nobody wants you. I told you not to trust them. I told you if you let down your guard you’d get hurt. Ha? See. You should’ve known better.”

I knew that my fear I did not belong or was not wanted was not real, but for a moment, it didn’t matter. These are toehold beliefs.  I felt the old familiar ache in my heart. The tears gathering at the back of my eyes. The constriction of my throat.

For a moment, I couldn’t speak.

I swallowed hard and gave my automatic response in times of fear. I smiled and sat there and didn’t say a word.

The critter was on full alert, screaming at me to Dive! Take cover. And above all, “Don’t trust yourself to stay in this place. Don’t trust anyone or anything around you!”

The critter doesn’t believe he’s telling me lies. He sees his job as keeping me safe. Without a thought to the longterm consequences, or to the reality of where I’m at, he compares past events with current and determines the best and quickest route to safety. And then, he madly goes about trying to convince me to heed his advice.

The critter does not see into the future. He can only look back and back there, behind me, is a mess of times when I felt unprotected, unaware, unconscious of my own power.

Not now.

This time, when the critter went into high gear, I slowed down.

I breathed and breathed again.

And here’s the deal.

This all happened in the passing of a few moments. It had little to do with the circumstances I encountered that triggered the critter’s cries to dive and take cover.

It had everything to do with my old path of believing the lies I tell myself when I feel unwanted, insecure, invisible or just simply take what someone else is doing as a measure of my worth.

When I spoke with the individual whose words/actions triggered my unease, they asked me a very important question.

“What’s it going to take for you to know you are loved here Louise?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

And then, I got to thinking about their question.

What’s it going to take?

It’s going to take me making the decision that I am and then, acting as if I believe it’s true – no matter what.

See, that’s the thing about being a scientist. We get to prove what we believe, true or false.

I believe Love is always present.

Yet, in times of stress, my disbelief in Love overwhelms my belief and I become fixated on proving “I am not safe” true.

Most of us do that with our emotions. We find one that works, that seemingly keeps us safe, and then, we bring it out, again and again in similar situations hoping it works, again and again and again. We might have a set or series of different emotional responses to similar situations we incorporate into our being, but always we bring them out, again and again when faced with situations the critter determines are similar to past experiences. Unfortunately, when dealing with our hearts, we don’t tend to look for new ways to respond unless our health, relationships, life is compromised to a point, we have not other choice.

Change or be changed. Find a new path or stay stuck in the fear our deepest fear is true.

I am grateful. I was given the gift of seeing my deepest fear is just a reptilian response that does not serve me well.

Instead of giving into my fears, all I have to do in moments when my fear Love isn’t present is triggered, is to breathe and decide, I believe it is true — and then, spend my time proving myself right.

 

 

 

We all carry scars on our hearts. Those leftover renmants of the wounds and pains inflicted upon our beings when we were too young to understand or decipher the circumstances of life we didn’t understand or couldn’t make sense of.
In our youthful ignorance, we thought the things that happened to us were true, our fault, messages of our worth and took to heart the painful and unkind words or actions of others  to mean, we were unloveable, stupid, undeserving, unworthy.

As we grew into our teens and adulthood, we carried those scars with us, believing that holding onto them would protect us from further pain or hurt. And as we grew, the tissue around the scars hardened until our hearts became a mass of hard knots not even our brightest thinking could unravel.

In desperation, we adapted our behaviour to protect ourselves from our deepseated fear; those harmful words and actions, those wounds we carried, are our truth. That we really are stupid, undeserving, unworthy, unloveable. And to hide our fear it is true, we acted out. We hid behind our masks, those smiles we put in place to disguise our pain, the laughter we wielded like a sword, the anger we carry like a shield, the sadness we inhabit like a cloak to protect us from the chill harsh winds of life.

They are not true. Those thoughts that rifle through your mind, telling you that you do not deserve to be happy, that others are always out to get you, that the universe is not on your side or that nothing good ever happens for you. They are not true.

Just as it is not true that you are unworthy, unloveable, undeserving or stupid.

Those are just the thoughts that formed long ago when life dealt you a harsh blow and you were not old enough to make sense of other people’s nonsense.

We are all deserving and worthy of love. We are all loveable and loving. We are all unique in our own perfectly human way.

It’s just, hurting people hurt people.

When we were young, our parents, those who cared for us, those who taught us and lead us did not know any better than to do what they did to make sense of their worlds. What they did was never about our worth. It was always an expression of how worthy, or unworthy, they felt themselves to be. It was always a statement of what they believed to be true in their life.

We all carry wounds on our hearts. Our job, as adults, is to heal those wounds so that they no longer dictate our actions and limit our capacity to love and find joy in this world of wonder.

Namaste.

coaching at Choices this week. See you Monday.

Life flows.

Everywhere. Every way. Every direction. Filling every space, every nook and cranny with its essence.

We flow with it. Sometimes, we attempt to flow against it. To try to beat its pulse. To pummel its essence into a shape and form that suits us.

And always, life flows.

We are, each and every one of us, part of the flow of life all around. We are not all the flow. We are all our part of its flow.

We can rail against it. We can scream and holler and kick and scream. Or, we can be one with the flow. Allowing the ebbs and flow of our part of it to be our constant companion in grace and ease.

Last night, Beaumont decided his part was to wake up at 2 am. For an hour.

Beaumont’s part means my part changes its course.

We got up together and went out into the backyard and for awhile, became part of night flowing all around us.

It was beautiful. Quiet. Serene. A deep night sky shimmering above filled with stars seen and unseen. The leaves shivered in a sibilant whispery cacophony of song rising on the almost still night air.

I threw Beau’s toy. He chased it and brought it back. Again and again.

Eventually, Beau remembered sleep, or perhaps its call overrode his excitement of being out in the middle of the night. He returned to his kennel, happy and content, and I returned to bed.

it is unusual for Beau to awaken in the middle of the night.

Perhaps, last night he knew there was magic afoot in the back yard.

Perhaps, he knew I needed a reminder of the mystery and magic in the stirrings of the night.

No matter the reason, his awakening gave me the gift of standing in the quiet of the dark listening to the whispering of the leaves in the night.

It was all my part of the flow, because no matter where life leads us, we are all part of the flow. Our own special, unique part. Connected through life. Forever.