My Own Biggest Fan

Cherishing You (From DailyOm.com)

2008-10-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

Falling in Love with Yourself

Many people, in seeking out love, tend to look outward rather than inward. Yet falling in love with yourself can be just as wonderful an experience as falling in love with someone else. While the idea of falling in love with ourselves may be perceived as conceited or selfish, choosing to fall in love with who you are is a powerful act of self-love.

When you fall in love with yourself, you can’t help but experience a wonderful sense of discovery. You begin to look at yourself again through fresh eyes, becoming more attentive to the little details that make you so unique. Once you discover how much there is about you to fall in love with, you can’t help but want to treat yourself as lovingly and respectfully as you would treat anyone who is special to you. You start to give to yourself more because you become more attentive to your own needs and desires.

Choosing to fall in love with yourself is a very personal process that takes time. There is no magic wand you can wave to make this just happen. But there is the magic of your intention and the power of your actions, whether you are taking the time to do the activities you like, speaking to and treating yourself with respect, taking inventory of all your wonderful qualities and accomplishments, or nurturing yourself with plenty of rest and self-care.

When you fall in love with yourself, you begin to see yourself more positively, appreciate your unique outlook on life, and treat yourself in a more nurturing way. In loving yourself, you are acknowledging that you are special and deserving of love. Best of all, you are giving yourself one of the greatest gifts you have to give another. You are giving yourself the gift of your love.

Love is a Contact Sport

2008-07-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

Should we be needing other people to love us too? Won't we be labelled "needy"?

We are sold a lot of buzzwords about needing folks. You might hear these from yourself or your friends, "I am too needy, I am co dependent, I don't know how to self soothe, I don't want to bother you" etc etc. It is so part of our culture which promotes individualism and independence. (Read up on Eastern Cultures if you want a different world view. Mark Epstein's Thoughts Without a Thinker could be a fun one to check out).

That said, I make a t-shirt line of I LOVE ME tees. The premise was more of a metaphysical one but the one thing that is clear to me, is I LOVE ME vibing or not, we still need to feel loved by others. Love heals but not in a vacuum. This is top of mind for me even more as I am learning to parent my first son and re enter my psychotherapy practice after maternity leave.

We humans are herding animals. We need to be in relationship with others to survive. My son needs my love, touch, holding and nurturing to survive and as adults the need for that same stuff never goes away. I still need it. But we do funny stuff, don't we, when we are looking for love and nurturance and reach for it only to have some folks respond with "OOO what is wrong with you?" or "Hello?" Reaching for love often takes us right back to those most vulnerable soft young places that reached for love and no one was there -so reaching as an adult can feel scary. And what's harder is often we need love the most when our behavior may be the most appalling - we get frantic in the reaching process sometimes. Check out Sue Johnson's book "Hold Me Tight". All kinds of interesting research on adult attachment and our need to bond with others.

So what does all this mean for I LOVE ME and the whole concept? It means I LOVE ME isn't all there is. Loving ourselves is often learned by feeling what it feels like to be loved unconditionally. But who knows how to love unconditionally all of the time? Um, no one. No mother is perfect. So we all get hurt at some point. That, then, is where I LOVE ME comes in. We can keep reaching to others as adults because we have praticed and feel we are entitled to be loved rather than that fear-of-not getting it franticness left over from younger times. In fact, when we pratice I LOVE ME we can tolerate when our loved ones can't love us unconditionally all the time without getting frantic about it. I should point out some folks don't even reach for love - they have given up and stay heady and judgemental of us reachers.

Finally, there is the art of giving love and maybe that is the point of the t-shirts. I get reminded of I LOVE ME but ultimately I am practicing "giving" love. There is a huge component to this LOVE thing that is about giving it. When someone reaches to me and I can give it, it feels so great to be alive in those moments yes?

So...love is a contact sport that requires giving and receiving; giving love to our self and others and receiving love from our self and others and we have to do them all - not just one. The practice is called a practice because it is never done perfectly, probably for our whole life, but what a worthwhile pursuit. It is an edgy one for many of us as we walk that edge of vulnerability - vulnerable to reaching and having no one meet us or vulnerable of giving and the other not fully receiving it or letting it in. ...don't take my word for it - try it out. Start your day off tomorrow by throwing your arms up over your head, let your head fall back and grin hugely while you yell out loud "I LOVE ME". Do it again. Then reach out to a loved one and ask to be loved, for a hug, for support...be vulnerable with them. And finally offer your love to someone...be vulnerable again.

How did it go?

When the Five Year Old Takes Over

2008-04-15T21:24:00.001-07:00

I was just on my way to bed. My son fell asleep early tonight and American Idol is now over...yes I am a closet Dave Cook fan...now officially uncloseted. But mostly I was checking out in front of the "boob tube". Kind of funny that we give it that short hand as the TV literally becomes the breast at which some of us go to for soothing.

And so, soothing is the topic. I became aware this weekend, at how, even being an adult woman rounding the corner to 40 and a mother that inside of me still lives the same 5 year old who learned to avoid criticism and relentless teasing by "being the best" and who equates any kind of authority as abusive power mongering. Is that the reality in which I live now...no but all of us unconsciously find the familiar from the past in situations now and respond as if "it were so". The brain just does this...kind of how we were built to protect ourselves from danger.

Because of this brain reality, changing our behaviour amidst old familiar dynamics is slow. Sometimes the finding the past in the present never changes, we simply get better at catching ourselves in the act of bringing that past forward and make different choices. BUT sometimes we forget and we walk around for an hour, a day or a whole weekend as our five-year-old self resonding to a current event as a five year old would and as the events actually took place then and not how it took place now.

You know, those days where you get so emotional about something that the rational part of your brain - if it ever comes on line - says "Whew, this is a rather strong emotion for a small situation". Like a tunnel vision or where all of the air in the room is being breathed through a straw and all of your attention is on the incident that got you so emotionally reactive that nothing else outside that incident can be seen. Somtimes we can feel the familiarity of our own reactivity. "Oh I used to do this exact thing when I was five." Most of the time, unless we have done a huge amount of work on ourselves in therapy or meditation, we don't even notice we are five.

One of the things I have noticed for myself, after years of self-work and working with clients, is these moments grab us when we least expect them and we have most been neglecting our self-care: I LOVE ME meditation, eating well, sleeping well, communing with friends etc. And as a new mom all of those have taken back seat to mothering my son and starting back to the corporate world. And so my own inner five year old got the best of me.

But I saw my way thru and I was reminded of this neat way to practice I LOVE ME. When we find ourselves in these "regressed" or "young" states we can imagine some figure of the ideal parent that lives inside of you/me/us and in those moments where the five-year-old has taken over, that ideal parent steps in to put that five year old in her lap, ask her what is wrong, hold her, rock her and tell her it is OK without telling her to "get over it" or ask "what is wrong with you". Total love and acceptance helps us see our way out of the reactivity...abusive judgement keeps us stuck there. We can't expect friends to do this for us either...it is most powerful and shifting when we can learn to hold the five year old. Just holding the five year old is another way of practicing I LOVE ME and in giving that child part the love and support it needs the air comes back into the room and we can make a better choice at how to respond to the present moment - the adult world.

Next time you find yourself five, try out finding that ideal mother inside of you and put that five year old in your lap and see how your outlook shifts. And for new moms, just because we are moms, our own inner child doesn't disappear...she is still there and the more we practice loving her the more loving we can be with our flesh and bone children. That is what I am finding anyway...

Off to bed.

Back to that Soft Spot with my Ego

2008-03-14T23:47:00.001-07:00

I have been caught up in an old complex of mine this week and in true "traci" fashion I try to solve it with my brain...it is a very very old behavior pattern...stuff I can remember doing at age 5. But the head never seems to be very kind in the way it tries to sort things out or change my behavior...

As I moved thru this material, I was reminded of the "soft spot" discussion from my last blog entry and how to be with this pattern in a soft, compassionate, open-hearted way. To take the whole matter right to the softest part of me and be still and quiet and wait...no solving. I also was reminded how much of this stuff I was struggling against was about my ego...and a teacher of mine sent some of his favorite quotes from Ekart Tolle's latest book ...but even my ego entanglements I can be tender towards. The quotes are provocative and I am reminded that they are to be read with a great deal of compassion towards ourselves and the suffering our egos cause us, not as another standard to use for self judgement...judgement is STILL the work of the go and so we/I chase our tails.

Here is to soft hearted or "soft spotted" awareness of our egoic foibles.

New Earth Quotes:
In a genuine relationship there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever. That alert attention is Presence. It is the prerequisite for any authentic relationship.

The ego always wants something, or if it believes there is nothing to get from the other, it is in a state of utter indifference.

Three predominant states of egoic relationships are: wanting, thwarted wanting (anger, resentment, blaming, complaining) and indifference.

Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that's the ego in you.

It is not about me, It is all about me

2008-02-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

I have not had a chance to write since giving birth to my son, Leif Leander Gantert, on December 22 here in my Half Moon Bay home.

Of course, there is no better teacher in my life than parenting a new born baby and the importance of living "I LOVE ME" for their sake. The funny thing about new little babies is they are still so unformed. They are one big bundle of "present moment" experience. So what I mean when I say, "It is not about me" is that it is easy to project all kinds of our own "shite" onto our infant, personifying them with all kinds of personality traits and assuming cause and effect tied to "me" the parent when in reality, they are just having their own experience and my job is to figure that out.

Simple enough and most people already know this. What is important is that the exact same thing is true about people. Sometimes I can get so completely self absorbed that I assume that someone else's reaction, tone, or even joy is about me when in fact it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with me. To be honest, this is a relief.

What IS "all about me" however, is how I choose to respond to my infant son or to the other person - be it friend, colleague, family member, etc. I often think of Pema Chodron's teachings of the "soft spot". We can take in the joys, sorrows and angers and reactions of others and simply empathize or see the world from their shoes. I always thought I understood what this meant until I had a baby. I intellectualize, so often, in how I empathize with others but with a baby it is literally feeling the cry of your baby and taking it right to the center of your heart, the softest part of you and feeling what it must feel like to have a gassy tummy without any understanding of why this huge tornado is building inside your stomach. It is more than a heady understanding, it is literally taking in the experience, metabolizing it and then turning it in to big hearted empathy rather than heady empathy.

The prerequisite, of course, for big hearted empathy with both babies but especially adults and most especially teens is the ability to tolerate dwelling in our softest parts. It is hard to do that, isn't it? It is for me. I have spent years and years in one spiritual practice or another trying to master this and am still working on it. Being a therapist and now being a mom have been gigantic teachers for inhabiting this place. I will say, there is a huge misconception that somehow this place is a stance of weakness...the eternal doormat...couldn't be farther from the truth. There is so much strength in this quiet, grounded, soft hearted place. Sometimes, the empathy comes in a package of firmer boundaries with an invasive person, but not out of reaction, out of genuine loving kindness.

Practicing the "I LOVE ME" meditation helps remind me to dwell here in my "soft spot" so I can know what is and isn't about me but more importantly so I can really see you. I was discussing with my dad this weekend, Divinity is found at that intersection of human to human authenticity. When we can make contact with another person from our softest places, that is where we find "God". Maybe a good title for the next blog post.

Anyway, here's to meeting you in the soft spot.

Creative Soulful Expression: Means for Authentic Experience

2007-12-13T10:59:00.000-08:00

What an amazing week this week - I felt like I was intervened upon by many different situations and circumstances in one week...ever have one of those where you feel like you smashed in a year's worth of lessons in one week? I am going to munge them all here as they are all connected.

I will continue on with the last two blog posts about living one's truth where ever we are; work, home, social settings and the list goes on. It is so natural to label ourselves for the world and say "this is who I am". Monday night, as women who I have painted with, on and off, for many years closed our painting circle some inspiring conversation was ignited. We used to get together in a little green house heated by a wood burning stove near the ocean, meditate, paint, share, not share, and push the envelope of what it means to create. For our last coming together we discussed the power of our painting to allow us to dis identify with the "labels" of who we are. What would it mean to not put a title on a piece of art, to freely give our art away to leave space for something new, to allow the viewer viewing our art to come up with their own title and experience of the piece? We shared where we were with these questions and how some of us (myself included) still needed to put these labels on our art to say "this is me" or "that was me at that moment in time". I was challenged by another woman in the group to consider letting the art go as a moment passed. Her challenge also got me thinking about this blog and its meaning for me.

Aren't we all, us human beings, just like these paintings? We can give ourselves titles, we can give others titles, we can label our children but in the end each moment is a new experience, new expression, new creation and new ways for our soul to interact/intertwine with the world, with living?

What about community and self expression and self/other confines? It is so scary, isn't it, to not put labels on ourselves and others but remain in the flow of experience and let go of control...the rawness of allowing the experience of emotions, practical needs, primal expression, soulful interaction all of it to arise and then shift into something new or be different moment by moment.

I also have been reading David Whyte's The Heart Aroused - a book about allowing soulfulness into corporate American culture. David Whyte is a poet who is encouraging us all and especially managers to allow for creative soulful expression back into the workplace: the good and the bad of self hood bc it cultivates a sense of "belonging" and community that people are not only loyal to and are fulfilled by but in the end that increases personal and corporate profitability. It is the same theme of creating and allowing the primal, the soulful, the authentic into our work just as in painting and art. How scary though, eh? Can you imagine? Check the book out...it is really great.

But there seems to be no place where we are forced to get in touch with our primal selves, our souls than in childbirth and more doubly, an unmedicated childbirth. I was part of a group of four couples last night all sharing the hope and intention for an unmedicated childbirth but more importantly for a conscious birth, medicated or not. To be totally mindful about the experience, whatever we choose, instead of the experience being dictated by doctors and again, this same thing of soulful, authentic, primal creative expression came up. These intersections between life and death are profound and birth calls the couple to completely surrender to their primal selves in such a profound and challenging way that it is no surprise to me that now culturally we reach for medication to keep this under wraps - to not have to confront the illusion of our being. I get the fear not only of the pain but of surrendering to our bodies and labels of who we are.

How does this all tie in to I LOVE ME? What is the point of creative soulful expression? What do you think?

Minding our Emotional Blood Sugar

2007-11-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

Fully immersed in being 8 months pregnant and having blow ups and stressful days...work being the most challenging place to be a pregnant being. Had a doozy of a day yesterday so thought blog writing would support my angst.

In the midst of this massive shift in everything; identity, relationships etc. life and work continue to go on around me at a seemingly overwhelming pace for me. What I am learning is that sometimes, big life shifts like pregnancy shake up our grounding enough that we look at ways we are moving through life that aren't working for us. The stress of the change either pushes us in the direction of relying on old habits, old beliefs and old negative self talk (which I have been doing of late) -OR- it pushes us more deeply in the direction of our greater truth and authenticity (where my intention is to head).

It isn't just me going thru these shifts so maybe there is something in the stars right now. It seems like many of my close friends are also having big shifts in their lives; be it around romantic relationships, work relationships, family dynamics...thank god for self aware friends who get the process of change and growth and getting stuck sometimes. It was great to talk to a very very old friend and see how we had both been on "auto pilot" thinking we didn't need to be mindful of all the things we have learned in the course of our lives to keep our lives grounded, happy and fulfilling.

I said, "we aren't taking our emotional insulin". I explained to her that I had a glucose monitor to check my insulin after I eat and it had become sort of enjoyable. I was curious and thoughtful about what I was eating and curious the impact what I ate was having on my overall physiology. It occurred to both of us that same idea applied to the state of change we were in.... we needed to be monitoring our emotional blood sugar in the same way.

Of course, I have this added layer of pregnancy hormones that I could use as an excuse for why emotional presence has gone out the door but as a spiritual teacher told me recently...the truth of pregnancy hormones have been my greatest teacher and put me smack in the middle of challenging all the ways I am not living authentically and haven't been for quite some time. Pregnancy has been the ultimate in "in-the-moment" raw authenticity and the experience has made it intolerable for me to not be living in my softness, embodied femininity and in a vocation and community that support these. My teacher challenged me to look at all the ways, however, that I am afraid to live authentically and make friends with this fear first. I suspect on some level this is what many of us do in the midst of change...change evokes fear and an emotional response to it (anger, judgement, sadness). But staying present to the fear and range of responses to it instead of reacting is the challenge for me and my greatest intention.

But how to do that? Answer: take our emotional insulin! Practice I LOVE ME, practice practice practice remaining in open-hearted compassion for self and other thru daily meditation, disconnect from old negative beliefs, excercise, be in nature, focus on gratitude and joy(play) and maybe, just maybe, leave a situation that doesn't lend itself to our living in truth. In all of this, support one another as we practice each of these again and again and again.

Supporting you in your truth,
Traci

Letting the Goodness In

2007-09-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Can't believe it is the middle of September already. Been thinking about "multi tasking" a lot as I had hoped to do less multi tasking now that I don't work on Monday's and Wednesday's but I find my calendar crazy busy and that I have over committed myself to too many things.

Busyness is a sign post for a lot of different things...so I chose to get curious about my busyness and sit with it in an open soft way (after judging myself for it of course). Sometimes I am just busy or I am choosing to take on a lot...it is a bit my nature and I enjoy it. This time around, as I studied what was up, I realized I simply wanted to be nurtured but rather than asking for and letting the nurturing in I nurtured others. But thank goodness to having this little baby growing up big inside of me, my ability to continue to operate under this old paradigm failed miserably. I was just too tired and had to beg out of some commitments. Thankfully to this little baby, I have no choice but to notice and then open to all the things that make it hard to receive nurturance and let the goodness in.

It is interesting to ponder how we come up against this though isn't it? We have lots of different reasons why we set up our lives to give give give rather than lay back and basque in receiving; cultural, religious, familial, gender related, psychological or all of the above. Questions that are useful to ask ourselves;
"where am I great at letting goodness in and where is it hard for me?".
"what beliefs about myself underlie my in ability to let the goodness in?"
"what do i do when I need some goodness but can't let it in? /what behaviors take the place of receiving?"
"what do I imagine would happen if I just received this goodness?"

Interesting and important questions to ponder aren't they? This all relates a lot to the "needs" themes in many of the previous blog posts. The need in particular here is the need for nurturance and the need to let the nurturance and goodness GET IN. That last bit is important bc I have had many instances of getting goodness from folks but could barely tolerate letting it in and have had to continue to work with the above questions. Someone once told me that healing is getting the LOVE to the parts of ourselves that are hard to reach or didn't get enough but like putting Bactine on a cut, it stings at first so we are hesitant to let it reach those parts of ourselves.

Anyway, I think it is a big motivation for why I do "I LOVE ME" shirts and write this blog (although I have been successful at remaining too busy to keep up on). Doing this blog and tees as well as working towards becoming a psychotherapist are all ways to keep these life questions in the foreground for me and to let goodness in for I truly truly believe (and I am the least cheesy "mantra" type person I know) in my heart of hearts that it is from this place of self-love and letting the goodness in that we can then move out into the world and impact the world with our well loved/nurtured/filled-up present selves. The alternative is to move from reaction because we are tired, bitter, scared, and half-full selves. Goodness and self-love become the fuel for everything else in our lives.

Goodness and Love to you...if you can take it.
Traci

Acceptance and Forgiveness

2007-08-06T07:22:00.000-07:00

I started this blog post awhile back and have a zillion different entries ready for the writing but as my painting teacher always said, "never leave a painting unfinished, even if you have to totally paint over the top...keep going".

In working with acceptance and forgiveness I simply want to share what I have learned for myself recently about accepting people for who they are and forgiving people who have hurt us. This is a continuation of an older blog post.

First off, I have learned that acceptance and forgiveness don't necessarily equate to "gee now because I accept you for who you are and forgive you for the past I suddenly want to be in relationship to you." In my life, there have been people who have hurt me and who continue to hurt me and I was in a state of "victimy non-acceptance" that this person will change and I should just hang in there.

But I was wrong. I realized that a prerequisite for me to forgive and let go of my anger, my victim stance, my need to be right and prove them wrong was that I had to choose to have an empowered sense of self that didn't go back for more icky treatment. And the way to do this without baggage is to do so with openness to my own humanity (that I am not any better than the other person), with clarity, however, that I don't want to be treated that way any longer, with genuine (not patronizing) love and empathy for myself the other person and what we both have been thru in our own life experiences to create such a disconnect between us.

My recipe for acceptance and forgiveness=
1. anger immersion until the point that I recognize my anger is about needs
2. articulation and acceptance of my own needs and their inability to be met
3. accepting the other person's limited capacity to meet me as a whole and differentiated adult with needs
4. making a choice of what is and isn't tolerable in this relationship
5. choosing to not go back for more of the intolerable
6. remain open to the possibility things I find intolerable now may not be intolerable later

This recipe was hard won after many years of looking at how I do relationship, working the "non violent communication" protocol by Marshall Rosenberg and a Master's in Psychology. I think the most important piece is not my recipe, for we each will have our own, but that I feel at peace and loving and grateful for all my relationships and that I can now consider them teachers.

Feelings make me/you/us real!

2007-07-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

Hi - Long time no write. I am exactly sixteen and one half weeks pregnant and was suffering the first trimester "stuff" and am only just getting the energy and verve to put out fresh words from my heart on this blog. Ronnen, thanks for the encouragement to write.

For many many years, as I moved from apartment to apartment, I had this wonderful little poem by Sara Holbrook glued to my clock radio...yes a clock radio with tape deck. It was the size of a small Chevy. The poem feels particularly poignant today as Sara is absolutely wonderful at writing from a child's voice with such powerful insight. As I swim in both joyful and painful memories from my own childhood as a result of embarking on motherhood this poem captivates me again and reminds me of how totally pertinent it is for us to honor the truth of our feelings for they are the things which make us real and no matter how cross eyed someone might get when you express your feelings I just want to say for all of us...

YOUR FEELINGS ARE WHAT MAKE YOU REAL AND ANYONE WHO CAN'T HONOR YOUR FEELINGS IS NOT LETTING YOU BE A FULL SELF. SO THIS POEM IS A DECLARATION OF SELF AND OF OUR RIGHT TO LIFE.

Here's the poem and we can chat more after you read it...

Feelings Make Me Real
You are not the boss of me and what I feel inside.
Please don't say,"let's see a smile,"or tell me not to cry.
I am not too sensitive. You think my inside's steel?
You can't tell me how to be,
feelings make me real.

Here is the scoop; We are all feeling things all of the time. Each of us is made up of unique histories upon histories of material that spark individual responses to current day situations. Some of this reaction happens totally consciously, some of it totally unconsciously...some of our responses to things happen instantly and some of them take a while to bubble up. But all of what we feel is real.

The hardest part to understand is how two people who grew up in the same family or who were at the same event or who heard the same conversation can have two different experiences. Our minds tend towards wanting to slice the world up into black and white and if two of us were there inside a family, inside of a conversation or inside of a scene, our experience can still be totally different than others present simply because we are all different. What we often choose to do with that difference between us is say inside that surely one of us is right and one of us is wrong and then shut down to any more dialogue, judge or analyze the other person for their faulty experience or talk ourselves out of our own experience because it is different. Once this happens the chance for intimacy is "bye-bye".

Sometimes there are some really good trade offs for living with the status quo in relationships and limiting the uncensored expression of our feelings - don't get me wrong. While there may not be a ton of self expression of feelings and intimacy, if there is respect, kindness, nurturing, warmth, play, affection, a good pay check and other goods without abuse, criticism, passive aggressiveness, dis empowerment and other ills then it makes sense right? Some emboldened folks might say not even then...censoring myself is never right ... note I am more in your camp but I get why some people do it.

But if all the above ills exist in conjunct with the inability to completely express who we are, what we feel, what our experience is sometimes it is time to re evaluate the relationship. We can either:

a) talk with the person and tell them what you want and need b) walk away c) "a" followed by "b" if they don't respond to "a"

My intention in blogging on this topic and encouraging courageously making contact from our own unique different whole selves is because, in my experience, it makes life wonderful, yummy, and it IS the point. This kind of expression is what allows us to feel connected to something larger, it is what allows us to feel fully alive inside of our skin and on this planet, and it is exciting and challenging and growthful. But my other intention is to point out, some folks just won't meet us in this kind of living and maybe they just aren't our tribe.

Which do you choose: your truth or funky energy?

2007-04-22T23:01:00.000-07:00

The whole needs business from two blog posts ago has been on my mind quite a bit. Really amazing what kind of funky energy we/I generate when we second guess if we are "entitled" to have our needs, boundaries or our "no". If we can be clean and clear and really keep the negative self-talk that says something like "you need to be pleasing to all or you aren't of value" to a minimum then when we actually express our needs it is clearer, cleaner and way more loving towards both parties. Our expression is devoid of the funk because our whole heart is behind our words.

One of the issues that has come up time and time again for me is how much I am willing to share about my I LOVE ME tee business. I get varied responses from folks who ask me to share my suppliers and I express my need to keep some things exclusive. I have learned that this simple act of expressing my need is not such a simple act but the greatest invitation and blessing of doing this I LOVE ME project. It challenges that part of me that believes in order to be part of a community I have to please everyone and never have a no...an old habit I am getting a lot of support breaking. It challenges me to choose my truth over creating funky energy.

To me, it felt clear that before I started creating a business around I LOVE ME tees I had to get clear where my boundaries, where my "yes's" and "no's" were. I am trying to live I LOVE ME in the context of the doing smart business and that means organizing in a particular way around what it is I need in business and around this message. That is not devoid of being in community.

I think what is so amazing and creative and desirable about a supportive community is how you contribute where you choose and you don't in the places you choose not to, you stretch and grow and as a community you create more than you can alone but you also drum up a lot of intimacy. Heartfelt and authentic truth speaking is supported in a nurturing way that deepens not only intimacy but also our sense of aliveness. My intention is to speak clearly from my ground and from my heart in an authentic clear contactful way around my truth and give space and a deeply attentive ear to others to speak theirs as well. To me, this kind of contact is exciting stuff!

What is your truth and how are you choosing to express it?

Ode to my dear friend...

2007-04-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

A dear friend of mine who I admire and respect in so many ways I cannot possibly capture her essence for you here...her courage, honesty, compassion, empathy for others, her anger, her perseverance, and heart is hurting tonight.

And yet she always manages, even in her dark and hurting moments, to speak her truth with so much grace and non-blaming of others. Her authenticity busts my heart wide open as we connect and hang out there in this hard place of old wounds and yet totally dignified self-responsibility. Tonight I am inclined to write her a love letter, a letter of comfort and peace and gratitude for her willingness to be here, on this earth, growing roots down into the soil without evaporating into the spiritual ether even though she is a deeply spiritual woman and without wrangling about in fits and spurts of anger and judgement. She most embodies compassion and inspires me as she busts on through.

I write this down in this blog so publicly because I think many of us feel dark and stuck and those are the times when loving ourselves is the absolute hardest...argh! So perhaps this love note will remind me, you, us how to be towards ourselves in these dark places and every day and it will imprint our hearts as a permanent reminder.

Ode to My Dear Friend

I hear your words, they expand my heart with width and depth and breadth
I know I cannot make the hurts from then or from now go away but I can send
You my love my dear friend, my cherished friend.

You inspire me with your truth, openness and vulnerability.
You inspire me with your anger and shut down places.
You inspire me with your strength to persevere.
You inspire me by letting me in to see it and be with you in all of it.

I hear your history in your words tonight from many moons ago.
I hear and feel that young girl's breath, breathing but hushed in silence.
She can't speak, won't speak because she is sad and mad and all those other things
She can't speak because she is certain someone will tell her she shouldn't be
feeling what she is feeling.
She won't speak because she wants to abandon them before they abandon her.
She is sure she is alone.

I send you a magic blanket to wrap yourself in until you feel you can come out from your silence.
Until then, I will wait, sending you love and trusting that you will come around the bend on this tricky sticky point in the road.
I trust you will find that part of you that knows how to wrap yourself in that blanket and hold you in ways you didn't get back then.
I trust you find that part of you that says "I am on your side no matter what so just lay here and rest until you are ready. I Love You and I always have and always will. I am here and you are not alone."

And your body will relax, your face will soften, your thoughts will diminish and you will speak.
Until then, I will wait, sending you love.

Listening for and then meeting our needs - the ultimate act of I LOVE ME!

2007-04-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

Whew, I must admit, March was an exhausting month where I was not in the flow with myself and gratefully turning the corner into April has been marked by a calm groundedness that I often experience after a turbulent time. Too many things converged and I am integrating them all in this single blog. Two highlights were a meeting with a spiritual teacher to get some perspective on the events going on for me and a pretty insightful night with Marshall Rosenberg who is the founder of Nonviolent Communication.

In all the convergences of the past three weeks, I was reminded that the key ingredients that were missing were self-acceptance and careful attention to my own needs. Even when I did notice that "hey I need to rest" or "hey I need to play with paint" or "hey I need to go be in the trees" I somehow felt obligated to "do" or "go to that party I committed to" or "finish that project at home" or "not get the sleep I need".

I had a clear reminder to no longer water the seeds of my wounding any longer: old beliefs that replay "if you express having needs you will be punished " and "if you aren't performing you have no value". Old stuff ready to be shed from my family system and from the culture which taught me I better do a lot and not have any needs while I was doing it. I am clear I do not want to teach these values to my children. What I was reminded of, from my spiritual teacher, was the way I was working with this psychologically to shed these beliefs- self diagnosing, heady and and on the surface wasn't going to help me. In fact, I was exhausting myself in how I was working on myself - out of step with what I was needing even in shedding these beliefs.

The recipe, I was reminded, was I LOVE ME all over again. A deep loving acceptance of myself which included first accepting how I was relating to my needs, then being "headless" at how I was processing this old wound. I was instructed to move totally from my heart, observing and empathizing with myself and then slowing down to find out what I was needing in that moment and then finally using my voice to compassionately make requests to get my needs met.

It was awkward as I made requests of people around my needs in an open, empathic, soft hearted way. There were moments my own fear that "this person is going to punish me for having a need" reared its ugly head and I had to be with this in a very soft hearted and generous way again and again but it was worth discomfort because, as in my last blog entry, I felt empowered by acknowledging that I DO HAVE NEEDS and I oddly felt closer to the people I was making requests of.

This is not a self centered "I want a new car" set of needs - let me be clear. Marshall Rosenberg has a whole list of needs all us humans share. In fact, he points out a distinct methodology to follow and I highly recommend his book Non Violent Communication if you want a clear way to get your needs met in relationship and to learn to empathize with others. I am a big fan of uber practical and uncannily simple concepts that one can apply and his stuff is just that. What is amazing about actually observing the feelings we are feeling and empathizing with ourselves around our needs and then making requests to get them met is that it is not only a total act of I LOVE ME it is also an act of real intimacy with others.

Marshall talks about how anger and judgement when relating to other people is always about our needs not being met and then teaches how to communicate in a way that both honors the needs of ourselves and of others. I had to laugh and grimace as I reflected on all the times in relationship that I lashed out in anger not realizing that really what was happening is I had a need that wasn't getting met.

Some quotes from Marshall's book that I think will hit a few points for the reader;

"...when the sole energy that motivates us is simply to make life wonderful for others and ourselves than even hard work has an element of play in it."

"[Things not to be motivated by: money, approval, avoiding punishment, avoiding shame, avoiding guilt, duty.]"

"Anger co-opts our energy by directing it toward punishing people rather than meeting our needs."

"We are accustomed to thinking about what's wrong with other people when our needs aren't being fulfilled."

"We have four options when we hear a difficult message from another person: (1) blame ourselves (2)blame others (3) sense our own feelings and needs (4) sense the others' feelings and needs."

"...we are aware that we can never meet our own needs at the expense of others."

In the end, the impact of the last three weeks has been this;
1. I softened to people who have often been very critical of me realizing that what was going on was not about me but some need of theirs that they were struggling to express and get met in those moments. I thought of my mother and all the times she has harshly criticized me over my lifetime and softened imaging all of her needs that were going unmet in those moments of criticism and how it wasn't my fault and isn't about me.

2. I softened to myself recognizing that thru connecting moment by moment, slowly, calmly to my feelings, my body I could identify my needs for meaning, autonomy, spirituality, connectedness and love. It is connecting to these human needs that Marshall says we all share that allows me to live a joyous and fully alive life.

I hope my sharing inspires your own commitment to observing and feeling what it is you need and taking empowered steps to get your needs met in a way that serves yourself and others.
Much Love,
Traci

Women's Empowerment thru Surrender.

2007-03-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

What an odd thing to say isn't it? - That we could be empowered thru surrendering - surrender to our limitations. I have been spending a lot of time with women and talking about the nature of being a woman with friends of mine as I think about motherhood, being a therapist and being in a corporate job. It is interesting how, as women, we can feel obligated to be limitless in energy, we can stifle our own needs in professional environments, with our partners and with our children. Somewhere along the way, we choose to believe we need to be all things to all people.

Sitting eating some greasy spoon Mexican food with a girlfriend and her 20 month-old daughter yesterday, we talked about how, in all of our "doing" and "negating" our own needs, women easily slip into the victim role. We kid ourselves that controlling everything about our children, our jobs, our homes that we somehow are empowered superwomen. But we aren't. We are tired, feel taken advantage of, or are just plain unhappy. We also talked about how parenting seems to really evoke this push to "do" and "be" it all more than other roles.

Ironically, the way out of this victimized role is to surrender to our limitations. We can't do it all or be it all and as we let things fall, it seems, thing around us get picked by other people and voila, we find the support and we get to be ordinary and happy rather than tired superwomen. As we munched away on our tortilla chips, what we both agreed on is how oddly empowering it feels to just surrender to our own limitations...isn't that a funny thing to say?

The jig is up and what a relief it is. It is also a relief to those in relationship to us. Trying to anticipate every need and please every person feels deadening to relationships. How does this impact children if we are trying to meet all their needs before they even know they have them? How will our kids know what hunger feels like if we are feeding them before they ever have the chance to feel their own bodies and hunger? I have been really inspired by friends and neighbors who give a lot of space to their children and partners to grow and explore without infringing on their personal autonomy. They are the ones that are ok if their house gets a little messy or if they aren't doing it right "to onlookers" because they have surrendered to their own limits and they all seem like really happy people. And to those that are run ragged bc they feel they must do and be all I say, "I can empathize" and it is exhausting to watch. "I am choosing to surrender" because surrendering my need to have that illusory control seems like not only an act of personal empowerment but an act of I LOVE ME.

Uncomfortable around gods; at ease around friends.

2007-03-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

At this moment in time something I believe as a therapist and something my own therapist reminds me of is "wounding happens in relationship" and so therefore "healing happens in relationship". I am feeling particularly grateful for my relationships...healing, loving, authentic and sometimes gritty relationships with people who meet me from their own humanity. With grace we each make contact from our truth: strengths and limitations- and how wonderful and healing that kind of authenticity is.

So in gratitude to all the healers in my life; my husband, my friends, the bean, the people I work with in all my jobs, my teachers, my own therapist...here are some quotes from Hugh Prather's Notes to Myself: A cheap $4 book that I got in a box of garage sale books and have now given copies away to many a dear friend. It is a book of small 1 paragraph life lessons, reminders and truisms that Hugh wrote down on his journey. Having the book is like having another healing relationship to add to your stock pile. Check it out if you like...here are some excerpts. Certainly not my favorites...just my favorites tonight.

"When Bruce said he had trouble getting along with his mother, I liked him better. I like a man with faults, especially when he knows it. To err is human-I'm uncomfortable around gods."

"No one is wrong. At most someone is uninformed. If i think an individual is wrong, either I am unaware of something, or the person is. So unless I want to play a superiority game I had best find out what he or she is looking at."

"If I would spend half the time preparing my mind that I do preparing my body, perhaps I would have the ease that my effecting appearance is supposed to produce for me."

"When I was 'religious', at times I got very confusing results when I tried to rely continuously on my intuition to guide me. This suggests to me now that I should use my intuition when it feels appropriate, use meditation when it feels appropriate, use reasoning when it seems natural, and so forth. It is absurdly contradictory to believe I must always rely on my intuition because I have reasoned out that this is best."

"True humor is fun-it does not put down, kid, or mock. It makes people feel wonderful, not separate, different, cut off. True humor has beneath it the understanding that we are all in this together."

With gratitude to you.

Feisty Bitch: Spiritual Creativity and Authenticity

2007-02-17T12:10:00.000-08:00

Holy smokes...what a beautiful day today! I guess I don't feel so much of the feisty bitch part of myself today but I realized in talking to folks from different communities and walks of life how some folks can't identify with this message of "self-love" or "I LOVE ME" bc it feels too mystical, ethereal or cheesy spiritual and for others just straight "spiritual bypassing".

I can relate bc the feisty bitch part of me hates all things spiritually formulaic. At the same time I LOVE ME has peneterated the core of me and I can't deny how surely it has worked to change me forever. Still the disdain for spiritual formulas and automatan language really gets to me.

While I totally believe in the tenants of the movie The Secret, for example, it can push my formulaic automaton button. But my own prickliness doesn't stop me from trying the stuff out. Whenever I am resistant to something, I am always really curious and I have discovered that after growing up in a rather strict organized religion there was a way we were taught to use a particular kind of "god speak" that didn't feel authentic to me - I just hadn't internalized love. Some feel that about the I LOVE ME practice...like if we embrace this practice every other word out of our mouth has to be gratitude, manifest, Love, abundant etc etc. I can say for a fact that isn't my experience. You can be spiritually creative and authentic.

I just read Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love (great book by the way...I think everyone should read it bc it makes this authenticity point so brilliantly!) and she, like me, has to revisit self love over and over as she confronts the selfish, shameful, grudge holding, judgemental, critical, rejecting parts of herself. She has found the only way to get a grip on that kind of "ungrateful, violent, ungenerous thought" is not to "bliss out in meditation" but to actively and painfully love every difficult aspect of her humanity in her meditation...which by the way is what the I LOVE ME meditation that the Rodan Foundation teaches is all about...to love the feisty bitch within ourselves. I think some practices teach us to pretend it isn't there...a recipe, I believe, for depression.

She has a beautiful section in her book where the critic wanted nothing to do with being loved so sure that there was just too much ickiness to love and I will paraphrase the response the loving part of her said to this self-critic, "YOU HAVE NO [FUCKING] IDEA HOW MUCH LOVE I HAVE FOR YOU"!

Like Liz, once I decided to TOTALLY be on my side I can have a good laugh at all the mistakes I have made thru many well-practiced survival "techniques". I find working with myself from self-love and acceptance I move beyond these old learned ways of survival and grow into the new ones more quickly and thus create what I want in my life. I focus on accepting what is true now and then visualizing what I want...the two are important otherwise we abandon the wounded parts of ourself in search for the "spirtual reveal".

So, I say to the other feisty folks, embrace and love your feistiness. Create your own style and language for self-love. You needn't become a spiritual automaton to get this message...

So here is to TOTALLY FUCKING BEING ON YOUR OWN SIDE AND LOVING EVERY LAST DROP OF YOU! Yeah!

When I LOVE ME My Priorities Change

2007-02-05T02:01:00.000-08:00

Howdy! I just had to write a short post as I was walking thru the San Francisco Muni (down near Market and Powell) and there is a billboard add for Hawaiian Airlines I think it is but the caption got me thinking.

It said, "Visit Hawaii and Your Priorities Change". Seeing as I had a rather remarkable week living I LOVE ME and managing to stay incredibly open and self loving and feeling quite victorious in the moment, seeing that billboard gave me a good chuckle. For it was my own priorities that I was bumping up against and I guess they have just changed.

Living and working in collaborative and loving spaces is more important than slave driving myself to make a buck. Sure, I have a certain luxury that gives me some freedom to actually make a choice like this ... I get that, but this week I made a huge shift in priority.

And so I wonder what our community would look like if our priorities were driven by actively - notice I used the word actively - loving who we are? Would we need so many things or need to be as busy as we are? Would we sleep an extra hour a night or eat a little differently? I think it would be very individual for each of us but just imagine walking around and each and every person who we bump in to is whole heartedly accepting him or herself including all of their sometimes vulnerable needs. Relationship in this world becomes about how to honor our own needs and the needs of another and how we lovingly dance with one another in those places where our needs may differ. A bit Utopian but I think it is really good to entertain these kinds of dreams.

Anyway, the end result is I felt strongly that for the month of February, in my t-shirt business to up the anti so-to-speak and give 50% as opposed to my usual 20% of profits to local charities and non-profits. I had so much fun writing my first batch of checks to local non profits...it was just way more fun than using the money for some other personal item. So check them out. www.myownbiggestfan.com

Love to You...and hugs and all that other ooey gooey stuff!

Forgiveness: a continuation of the acceptance theme

2007-01-18T23:54:00.000-08:00

I was just re reading my last blog entry and it touched me all over again. Thought I would share the latest progression of I LOVE ME and how this judgement vs acceptance dance has gotten me down and dirty with the notion of forgiveness.

Not sure I have some wonderful words of wisdom to impart am still in the wonder phase myself and am curious about the monkey of grudges on my own back. It is almost like an old back pack, loaded down and heavy with sharp jagged rocks poking me in the sides, slumping me over, putting creases in my forward as I twist my face into a scowl of disappointment. It sure seems to me that any old trespasses that we don't forgive we carry around waiting for repayment, waiting for that person to be different or waiting for the world to be different because folks in our lives a long time ago were let us down and we can see that that is due to their own human imperfection just like our own. Or at least this is the way I experience all this right now.

Don't get me wrong...anger wasn't an inappropriate emotion to feel and felt move thru but when the anger becomes a grudge...well that is just calling for the remedy of forgiveness and practicing I LOVE ME gives me the patience with myself to get there little by little.

I feel pretty clear forgiveness is for more a gift for me. I get to let go of expectations that are hopeless in their possibility of every coming true and so as I let go, I unhook the other from any obligation but more importantly I begin taking rocks out of the back pack and maybe even one day will take it off.

Whew...I wonder if I will know how to walk being that light? Will the wind just blow me over if I am not clutching after some grudge or expectation to keep me in place? I suspect this fear of what is on the other side of letting go of my hand holds is best melted away by I LOVE ME. I will keep you posted on what is on the other side of the "back pack/ monkey free" journey. The load is already feeling lighter after years of work on myself.

I hope for you the load is light, that I LOVE ME helps you face the fear of what is on the other side of growing up and letting go of old crappola.

I hope you are staying warm and cozy in this cold winter!
Traci

Wild Boars Running Wild!

2007-01-07T23:05:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! Had some log in troubles to the blog site so no posts for awhile. Just a little personal account rather than an academic or philosophical commentary tonight.

Man oh man has my super ego been getting the best of me...you know, that part of yourself that is always pointing out what you or other people are doing wrong - the judge and jury inside your brain. I am really giving I LOVE ME a run for its money as these wild boars run wild in my head trodding all over me. (Metaphor comes from a solo camping trip I did where I came face to face with wild boars).

It is in these times, however, that I see how much growth I have made in my life and it reminds me of the importance of my meditation practice. For it is in meditation that I can calm the wild boars: the thoughts and criticisms and projections my mind makes and it is in meditation that I also settle in to acceptance. A friend of mine and I were talking about this very notion of acceptance sharing our experience of acceptance. Right now for me there is a firm polarity or juxtaposition of judgement vs. acceptance which has been really working me over during the holidays. Judgement of myself and others vs acceptance of myself and others. There are so many parts of myself and subsequently others I like to judge for various reasons and what I am learning is that patterns of thinking or emotions that do nothing but cause suffering are worth getting a handle on. It isn't about making ourselves wrong for being judgemental or whatever else we are being but rather to train our minds, to sit with open attention and get at the root of the root where liberation lies from the suffering our negative thinking has on our hearts, minds and bodies.

Let me tell you though, sitting with judgement is one hot potato. As I sat with this feeling it was so hard for me to unattach to the judgements I felt coming up. I noticed a strong tense anxiety - a kind hurriedness and I realized that that anxiety was a "hurry up let's meditate this feeling away". Well isn't that interesting? I went right into that hurry up feeling like a sky diver speeding towards a target and sunk right into the middle of it. I was shocked at the answers that emerged: the simplicity was that I had to just accept that I was gripped by my own judgement. That was all there was to do was to just notice and accept that "oh I am gripped by judgement right now" and what was remarkable was as soon as I accepted that, I became un attached to my judgments.

What a revelation in the moment. I always worried the opposite would be true...that in my own acceptance of icky things I was doing, I would just do or think those icky things more...it isn't true.

So it is thru acceptance that led to an unattached distance to my reactive emotional state that let me come down. That said, I have had to come back to this memory of acceptance many times over the last several weeks to tame the wild boars but each time it works...I will sure be glad when I do not need to be made a believer time and again but anyway.

I hope you are finding a deepening acceptance of whatever is true for you and not letting the wild boars get you down.

Much Love,
Traci

White Board Intentions

2006-12-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in my last blog post that when I am screening I LOVE ME T-Shirts that I write an intention on my white board to inspire me and meditate on. A friend came over to buy some shirts as she is taking great comfort in wearing them now while she goes thru a difficult transition and she saw my white board intention from the last time I screened and we were both sort of moved by it so I thought I would share it here. I write it sort of "stream of conscious" in 10 seconds with no thought so that what comes is usually most what I need in that moment.

Here it is from 11/25/2006

Trust - all that is happening now is part of a positive evolution of your soul. No need to analyze and dualize right and wrong. Trust life, trust your integrity and

do only this...

LOVE yourself deeply, actively and unabashedly.

Commodotizing I LOVE ME

2006-11-22T21:44:00.000-08:00

I am in the process of beginning a psychotherapy group around our relationship with money and I also have been wondering about how money impacts my "I LOVE ME" t-shirt business that I started in my garage to promote a message of self love. I see myself and those around me so focused on accumulating wealth that takes up a lion share of their mind.

What is enough, I wonder? There is something so big going on here with this money dance that rarely gets explored and I wonder about it. Even the most "spiritual" of folks are chasing - money, a big house, creature comforts. I feel slimed when folks commodotize inspiration, love, healing and spirituality. I remember the pastor at church when I was a little girl had a really fancy Cadillac and I always wondered about that car and what led him to choose it when most of the congregation had so little.

How does money impact meaning and integrity in our work? Struck by the movie, The Secret, I was sad and angry that its prime focus was on the accumulation of wealth as the thing that we should be setting our intentions toward. I am not saying we don't deserve to treat ourself well but that becomes an excuse to not really look at our relationship to money and our own obcession with it. Pausing, I pondered the concept of money and all that it represents for us as human beings: power, self-esteem, safety, a daily purpose, entitlement, distraction, luxuries and the list goes on. A far cry from money's original intent which was to free up time to pursue understanding of life's richer meaning. Perhaps a better resource is Jacob Needleman's Money and the Meaning of Life. Check out this brief interview in this Fast Company Article - http://www.fastcompany.com/online/09/meaning.html or another book I want to pick up and is in the mail now; Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning.

I try not to pass judgement because I am the first to get sucked in but it is hard sometimes as I have also felt really slimed by healers trying to make a buck off me. I am clear, my intention is to remain true to the I LOVE ME message. It is hard to know if I should work with folks whose prime intention is money versus the message. It is hard for me to grapple with those aspects of myself...so it just sit with it.

How very little consideration we pay to the quantity of our life that is consumed by amassing wealth or getting by and how little is spent on the accumulation and cultivation of LOVE. This is what I want to invite those reading this to ponder. I know, I know, it sounds so pollyannaish doesn't it? But seriously, think about it. What is life about? The latest pair of jeans or cool porche or house? or the time to sit and watch the sunset, send a message of love to a friend, or share a hug? I just had a friend quit his job in Hawaii because he had to do something drastic to get on his path. He told me he has had many times in his life where he was penniless and he has no fear of it...I both thought he was nuts and at the same time, totally inspired!

What emotionally and unconciously lives beneath this pursuit of money for each of us and what might we do with our energy if we weren't trying to accumulate wealth or make enough to get by? What does generosity look like anymore? I believe the way we "do" money reveals enourmous amounts about our unconcious fears and desires that with a little attention could free us to make more fulfilling choices and lead amore joyful lives.

The I LOVE ME t-shirt idea was divinely inspired in one of the most intimate and intense spiritual experiences of my life. I was called to be of service to this message of love. It wasn't for my own ego or self importance but a deep and wide expansion of love and peace inside me and in the world at large. The purpose of this blog is to help me keep the message front and center. That said, I LOVE ME is also slowly cracking my own heart wide open and demanding I live this intention of LOVE with deep integrity outside the money dance as best I can.

The pleasure in putting money in its place has started to reveal itself to me. I was just talking to a friend tonight about how pleasurable it is to make the I LOVE ME shirts. I start off by writing an intention for myself on the white board in my garage, something nurturing, while I work with my hands thick in silk screening ink and my screen press, slow and gradual. In this act of creation, presence, movment(sometimes even dancing) and intention of self love there is joy. I suppose I could make more money if I farmed them out to a screener to make but it is the making of the shirts myself that has brought the message home to me. My own courage is growing as I try to to live this depth and joy rather than just marketing it. I continue to muddle thru the intersection of money and I LOVE ME with curiosity and presence wondering where the exploration will take me.

"If I need your approval, I can't see you."

2006-11-12T23:58:00.000-08:00

It is late but it has been so long since I posted anything. I was literally finishing up some paperwork and looking for something on my desk when I found a quote that I wrote down on some random piece of work and serendipitously ran across it tonight.

"If I need your approval, I can't see you" is a really bold reason to practice I LOVE ME. There are so many selfish benefits to gain from practicing I LOVE ME but there are also so many benefits for those in relationship to us.

When we pracitce really loving ourselves, our need to seek approval from relationships goes away and what is left is real fun and relatedness. Some feel that the most healing thing we can do for others is SEE them...something we so rarely give or receive to one another in our busy, money-earning, doing-filled and approval-seeking lives. There is just so much beauty in people that we can actually really see and be inspired by when we have the calm-centeredness that "I LOVE ME" brings about.

One could change that quote and replace the word approval with virtually anything. But don't take my word for it...see for yourself.

To have without holding

2006-10-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

Co-dependence seems to be the theme of the week. Practicing I LOVE ME is hard because when we are immersed in desperation to fill a void inside of ourselves life becomes about filling holes and finding people who will do it and not about being alive and that leads to a whole host of dilemmas many folks seek therapy to resolve.

Many marriages are built on the need to "fill the void". Remember Jerry MacGuire? "You complete me." When we move from our moment to moment experience and notice and nurture all the parts of ourselves - the needy void, the vibrant alive part, the nurturer, the protector - The way we DO relationship shifts. With time, we find we can be more choiceful, tolerate more intimacy, set clear clean boundaries without getting pissed off, discover the miracle of our individuality rather than mind melding with our friends or partners, all of this ultimately feeling way more fulfilling.

The alternative is to try to become what others need us to be so they stick around indefinately to fill voids inside us. That is the cruxt of co-dependence. Usually the other person really digs sticking around filling our voids. They get some security out of it too. But the alternative is so much more challenging and vibrant.

Check out this poem, I think it illustrates this process in romantic relationships, how hard it is and the payoff.

In general, I am a Marge Piercy's fan and this poem in particular.

To have without holding

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snappping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

- Marge Piercy, The Moon is Always Female

Let me tell you how to live your life...

2006-09-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

Whew...how the fu%* should I know the answer to that? I have had a good laugh at myself this week. The people in my life lately, we are all talking at one another, me being the worst culprit, with spiritual quips or heady suggested life advice based on all my wonderful life training...and then the tables turn...and suddenly I get to be the recipient of this "live your life this way" advice-giving and whoa there horsy, my temperature rises. Sure most is just my messy ego getting in the way of receiving what is probably really useful information but there is also something else going on.

I traveled with this woman recently who said the best piece of advice she ever got was from her grandmother who said, "You can't tell nobody nothin'"...and at first I smarted at hearing that coming from my own Pentecostal Christian-ten commandment-background where the way to live your life was all written down. While I have rejected that path, I sometimes wonder how the whole "personal growth" path fills that void or protects me from living my own answers? "Of course you can tell people somethin' and let me tell you how you should love yourself, stop projecting, be present...etc." I say. But it is all do do do do do do do do. Whew, that is a lot of doing and I am tired now. Where has the creativity in muddling through life gone when the answers are already pre-ordained by our guru of the day?

I once went and saw a body worker and after an hour-long interview in which they misquoted half the stuff I told them, they then said they needed to "get all the kinks out of my body so I could show up in my life". After dealing with my initial reactions to this statement all I could think of was, "but I love my kinks". Today I realize I want to be kinked and perhaps that is what is so valuable about the I LOVE ME practice. That in fact, the hard part of life and the real showing up in life involves accepting and loving our kinks and the kinks of others...not processing them out. "Let's love the kinks and see what happens." Now, when I go get massages I ask to please have all my knots left in, no digging them out, just make them feel good, tell them it is ok they are there, and thank them for all the stress they have endured... man it works wonders!

Fitting then, that I wondered what pearls of wisdom I could type up on this blog today. I am muddling...and see the thing is, while I am finding accepting and deepening into this place of muddling not totally familiar, largely uncomfortable, it is also remarkably creative. No answers, no right way to be, no right way to be loving, no right community member to be, no right political activism, no right amount of selfless or selfishness, no right thing to say, no right amount of kinks...just muddling.

I LOVE ME is not, I realize, an act of trying to get somewhere, to achieve some state or for me to tell you how to achieve some state. It is an act of creation ... of creativity as we, as I, allow myself to love my kinks, to tolerate the intensity of life's unknowns and to move as I will in my own creative direction and I realize that that muddling creativity is what this blog is all about.

While I find this muddling through head-space a pre requisite for being a good therapist, today I discovered its value in being a good friend. In accepting and loving my own creative muddler and not having a right answer to give, I could be in a state of total acceptance and inspired awe of my friends' creative head-space and, well, it was just way more fun and intimate! I often find that when myself or others need to espouse answers or give unsolicited advice or wisdom that in those moments it is hard to be with the unknown of the moment or to make intimate contact with the person across from me. But even this attachment to needing to preach or teach is its own kind of muddling through and so I notice it in myself and others and keep on loving.

It is with great intention that I choose to remember the I/Thou in relationship. Perhaps a topic for the next entry.

Am I Entitled?

2006-09-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

This entire year of working with I LOVE ME in my own life has been a massive lesson in entitlement and what that means. It seems to be a theme for much of what is going on for those around me as well. I would like to unpack some of the beliefs about entitlement and what happens when, in fact, we don't "step in" to our own space and claim our rights and the sneaky unconscious ways anger, jealousy, competition, gossip, depression, and even self-hatred can creep in to replace our entitlement to our own needs.

There are many barriers to "I LOVE ME" and entitlement. We might wonder;

"Am I entitled to be that big to actually say out loud that I LOVE ME?"

"Isn't I LOVE ME a little self absorbed or narcissistic?"

"Shouldn't I be putting others first before my self?"

This is a tricky subject because in American culture right now, we are in a time of narcissism and self-absorption; "the ME culture" as pop culture has referred to it. So how could we possibly need a lesson in how to be entitled? Some of the signs of narcissism in varying degrees include arrogance, attention seeking, self-focus, a lack of empathy, etc. But all these defenses are only protection mechanisms so we don't have to feel how much pain exists underneath for having faults or aspects of our personality that might make us unlovable or unpopular to others.

How did this culture of narcissism begin? There are many theories. Philip Cushman written about in last week's post talks about how during the Industrial Revolution and the growth of large cities with no cultural tradition binding the city together there was a feeling of being "lost in the crowd". This brought rise to this notion of personality over character as that which was the prime measure of success. "Personality meant the ability to be attractive to others, to stand out in a crowd." "Personality was shaped by attending to and manipulating others, not by following moral codes or adhering to religious ideals" (Cushman, 64).

Psychological theory says our culture of narcissism has to do with our primary attachment to our caregivers and takes the cause outside the socio political realm and places our own self-esteem issues squarely on the shoulders of the family system and mothers. Psychology often completely bypasses the role of culture. I think both contribute and therefore more weight should not be given to one than another.

That said, what I love about I LOVE ME is you don't necessarily need to understand "WHY" you can just practice and see what happens. And because this whole culture is permeated with the narcissistic after effect of self worth issues each individual who begins to really root him or herself in this new shared tradition of "I LOVE ME" begins to change the culture at large.

Let's get clear, however, on what I mean about entitlement and I LOVE ME by giving an example. Because some forms of entitlement really are the old defenses of filling up the "empty self" that we talked about last week it feels important to distinguish what is what. Entitlement is the belief and action of our right to be alive. To be alive is to be aware of our present time experience and from that what we want and what we need in any given moment and how we meet those needs and wants. We can meet those needs and wants on our own, by putting on a sweater when we are cold, going to bed when we are tired or eating when we are hungry or we may need to express a need to another person like our husband to help in folding laundry.

Here is where the difficulty comes in. Socially, we are taught to put other people's needs before our own. You are considered likable if you take care of others. Women are famous for doing this. So what we have learned to do is to check out and not even notice what we are feeling and experiencing in the moment and do other things to fill our personal selves up in exchange for all the ways we aren’t noticing our own needs throughout the day.

But wait a minute, you say, "I meet people all the time I find incredibly demanding and have no shame about demanding their needs to be met?" The tricky thing about needs is that if we stuff them long enough or if we don't truly believe we are entitled to have and communicate our needs the only other option we have is to get really angry either in reaction to stuffing them or in order to muster the voice to express them. Other people don't get angry, they just plain get depressed because they go into a place of hopeless despair around the possibility of getting their needs met. Others get competitive and some people will gossip to a third party about their needs rather than risking being in conflict with the person they need to talk with.

Conflict - ah yes conflict - this brings up an important point. Sometimes our entitlement is in conflict with someone else's. What do we do then? We have to love ourselves enough to negotiate. The alternative is stuffing our needs out of fear of this kind of discussion which makes way for the feelings we talked about earlier; anger, depression, jealousy, gossip. This is especially rampant among women in our culture. Ironically, if we can muster the courage to really meet another human in their own entitled aliveness you might be surprised to find that rather than the situation being a scary endeavor of butting heads it is an endeavor of intimacy as each person makes his or her needs known. It is hard, I know. Especially if we have had family and social reinforcement that we she never have needs in the first place.

Replacing this old familial and social reinforcement for having no needs is precisely the value of I LOVE ME. Practicing, believing and living self love means checking in with what we are feeling and experiencing in the moment, catching ourselves thinking in old learned ways or projecting feelings onto others and stopping these behaviors, and moving out in the world in a new way from a place of joyful loving entitlement. The analogy I like to give people is the one of a mother to a newborn. Have you noticed how attuned they often are to their infant? They pay attention to every burp, feeding, cry, gurgle and do everything they can to make that baby comfortable out of love. I LOVE ME is like enacting that same level of motherly attentiveness and care for you.

Finally, dealing with the inevitable NO. What happens if we ask a person to move down one chair at the movies and they say ‘no’? This is another really tricky part of having the courage to ask for what we need...hearing no. Often we can feel hurt, angry or disillusioned. This is a part of the asking process. I LOVE ME not only helps us feel entitled to ask but I LOVE ME helps us feel loveable and loved even if someone in the moment says no to our need. It also helps us remain open and empathic to the 'no' we are receiving on the other end.

I realize, as I write this, that this may not leave room for the times in life where it is appropriate to get very vigilant in service of our needs but that discussion is best served for another entry.

Until then, my wish is for all of us all to feel so warmly attentive to our internal experience that we recognize and name what we need and then meet them when possible the same way a mother does for her newborn infant. And my second wish is that we have courage and stay soft in the face of difference and no.

Much Love to You,
Traci

The Empty Self, Culture and I LOVE ME

2006-09-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

As a first blog post it probably makes sense to give a small tidbit of background. Actually, rather than doing that, go to the vision page of MyOwnBiggestFan.com and you can read the history there. I am too eager to get into the thick of things. http://www.myownbiggestfan.com/vision.html

As a psychotherapy intern who is trying to balance my therapy work with a full time corporate job, I set aside Sundays to do psychology reading. Ever the skeptic about the "healing technologies" deployed in psychotherapy I am always fascinated by how culture shapes psychotherapy and even the "I LOVE ME" meditation.

And so this morning, my husband made the eggs while I made the coffee and I sat with my nose in the book, Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy by Philip Cushman. While I like psychology and new age spirituality and all that it has brought to my life, I also have a beginner's mind, a questioning observer or even a Jungian archetypal curiosity when it comes to the field of psychology and the practice of the "I LOVE ME" meditation. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, psychotherapy and new age spirituality are part of the social fabric. Sure not everyone is into this stuff but most folks are aware of it.

Cushman's book (the sixty pages that I am into it) looks at the cultural history of America and the many healing technologies found in the most unexpected places over the course of our history. Our own racism was in a way, a healing technology. Ouch. So it seems a good thing to be aware of how culture impacts our practice of psychotherapy and any other healing modalities, “I LOVE ME” included. He says that psychotherapy can unknowingly be in support of the cultural status quo and wrote the book to not only bring this to light but challenge therapists to examine the macro view of psychology in a larger cultural context.

Cushman ultimately posits that staunch individualism rules the day supported by capitalism and its prerequisite for an empty self that psychotherapy often supports. "...Individualism is itself a Western tradition, a response to economic arrangements, moral understandings, and political constrictions of feudal life" (Cushman, 10). In order for capitalism to function we have to create a rampant consumerism and the best way to do that is support this notion of an empty-self that needs "filling up" and behold we have consumer marketing to help with the "empty self" project. The goal is to get us to spend money on food, alcohol, clothes, cars, expensive parties, etc. Boy am I a sucker!

Going deeper, I wonder how this notion of an empty self impacts how we relate to one another? There was a recent university research report, which studied the nature of friendship in America and the prevalence of lack of a confidant by 25% of Americans. I am really not interested in finding someone or some system to blame, like capitalism or anything else. I just wonder about all this staunch individualism, emptiness and now loneliness as part of our evolutionary process as Americans and how psychotherapy and perhaps "I LOVE ME" is functioning unconsciously in support of the very system that is creating our suffering.

I know for myself, I crave a greater sense of community but without losing my individuality. Perhaps our whole culture is at this watershed moment where we are trying to figure out how to be individuals and community members at the same time. I suspect it is all a largely unconscious movement and a difficult task to achieve holding what, right now, feels like a polarity of self and community, especially seeing as capitalism says that emptytiness=consumerism=money and the impact money has in segregating and splitting our community.

But what do all these pontifications have to do with "I LOVE ME"? The Rodan Foundation's "I LOVE ME" was communicated in trance from a different dimension to members of its church. Me always being the skeptic, I had to try it out before I was sold, and sometimes I am still skeptical. But the practice of the "I LOVE ME" meditation is not just blind spiritual bypassing. I suppose for some it is - they tell themselves "I LOVE ME" so they can feel superior or not have to see the homeless guy outside on the doorstep. In my experience it has given me the tools to explore myself with open curiosity and a sense of humor and slowly as I practice more I want to be open, curious and loving towards others. I want to know what stirs inside me when I see the homeless guy or how I relate to others.

So is "I LOVE ME" in support of this continued "empty self" stuff that keeps us shopping or is it something else? I think it is something else if we intend it to be so. The intention of "I LOVE ME" as I understand it is to change the vibrational frequency of our energy bodies from a fear vibration to a love vibration. That vibratory shift impacts the vibration of the community as a whole. But I also see that it has the potential to fill us up with our own self-love so that we can, if we choose, move out into the world from a place of fullness and make contact with people out of authenticity rather than from the needs of the empty self. This empty self notion not only fuels our consumption but it also fuels our using this message ONLY to spiritual bypass rather than really actively LOVE who we are. I wonder, who is the homeless guy inside of us that we don't want to see...I think "I LOVE ME" helps us be with our own inner “homeless guy” and create a home inside from which we can reach out into our community.

You know, I had a friend come to the launching of my t-shirt company at The Love Awakening Summer Festival this July and I was very curious about her response to the festival. This is a woman and therapist I deeply respect. She works with inner city kids living in the most unloving, abusive and impoverished environments ever. She said to me, " this I LOVE ME stuff is nice for rich white people to feel good about not seeing what is really going on but how does it reach others?" I guess I have taken her comments on as an inspiring challenge. Not out of guilt but again from this place of “I LOVE ME” where I can really explore and be with her question. How does “I LOVE ME” grow beyond the boundaries of my own skin, race and class as a real practice of “I LOVE ME" and "I LOVE MY COMMUNITY” because loving my community is loving me. I don’t totally know how but I have some ideas, some I am beginning to live and others I am just mustering the courage and vision to see.