Belief is EVERYTHING

Our bathroom kitty page-a-day calendar featured an interesting quote yesterday - - "Believe you can & you're halfway there." - from Teddy Roosevelt.


Reading TR's quote roused me to realize my deep belief that people who try to diminish denigrate derail others' sense of self belief commit a crime against humanity, perilously close to true evil.

Snake oil on steroids

Recently, the company who provides security for my computer tried to contact me about a possible security breach.  They sent an e-mail & they called.  BUT both the e-mail & the phone call sounded suspicious & I didn't pay attention.  The phone call was suspect because it was clearly made from a India or some such place, with the caller clearly in a room filled with other people making other calls.

I didn't know that the call was important because I've become so suspicious of such calls.  I've become suspicious that the caller id showing a local number isn't going to be from some far distant call center.

We've learned from Cambridge Analytica what folks with brains instead of butter already knew - that today's technology makes it easy peasy to manipulate our deepest emotions & especially irrational fears for their own ends.  Thanks to the hidden camera stars, we know that they used info we handed over - willingly - to get to know us better than our bestie BFF.

The question I'm facing full on this week isn't "Who do I trust?" or "When do I trust?" but it is "How do I trust - period?"  How do I trust that what I think I believe isn't a fear or prejudice brought to boil by nameless others with a purpose that is not in my best interests?

Realizing we've fully entered the realm of science fiction turned science fact.

Tapping into my Inner Molly

A couple weeks back, a young friend, wife of a former 6th grade student & mother of a lass dear to my heart, posted on Facebook that she would spend her Spring Break (she's a science teacher at our local high school) doing what she loves over that week - clearing & cleaning out her house.

Something in that posting totally clicked with me, which would seem to make no sense if you saw my house.  And I dismissed it as what I'd like to be important to me, but isn't.

Except it turns out that it is.  And, yes - my house is fiercely messy, but in some heavily walled-off section of my heart is a woman who loves order, craves cleanliness & wants to have a warm welcoming home, if only to myself, John & the cats.

I like tidy houses.  Not to the point of being impersonal, but not cluttered, not featuring open spaces piled with stuff. 

Am not expecting miracles, but am willing to kick my own butt, working to get past habits that have my adrenalin dipping in the face of challenge rather than revving up.

The combination of Molly's posting & how I responded to the recent snow storm was eye opening.  I stocked up on junk food, slept in late & did virtually nothing.  And it felt like that was the right thing to do.  The storm triggered me into doing NOTHING.  That does not set well with me.  Am giving myself a year to tap into my Inner Molly & become a person for whom a snow storm triggers delightful images of cranking up great music & doing a deep dive dust  or fridge clean, a basement review & living room lean in.

Molly's post shook me awake to a lifetime of quiet discontent at how I keep house, a chronic low-grade depression that kept me feeling sloggy instead of zoomed. 

Never saw it coming.  And now that I've seen felt acknowledged, can't pretend I don't have an Inner Molly shrieking to be let OUT, to become Deev - whole & happy housekeeper!

Daily Rituals redux

Four years & eight days ago, I was posting on DreamReweaver about a fresh realization of "a deep, forever desire for STRUCTURE."   

And an awareness that something outside of me "distracted discouraged dissuaded" me from change.  Love the last line, which - looking back - was & is my choice ~ ~  "Amazing what your eyes can see & your ears can hear & your heart can feel when you choose liberation over status quo."

Snowball's chance in Heaven!

2014 was the first time I experienced time folding & unfolding on itself.  Before then, I'd had experiences where people who had passed on were very much a part of my moment, but that's a different time mash-up.  In the time sense I'm having today, all the integral parts are - at the same time - distinctly separate & part of a greater whole.

All that I've worked on for all of my life is coming altogether in ways I could never have imagined yet which seem to be all part of a discernible piece that hikes itself back to the past & at the same time reaches forward to far distant dates.  None of it is comprehensible & it all makes complete sense.  To BE more fully & abundantly means paring down, ridding myself of the superfluous that once seemed spare.  It's free falling into a space without a net.  

I would love to take a bow for such surreal leaps, but the truth is that I didn't plan it.  Not any of it.  All I am doing, all I ever did - even when I wasn't aware of it - was to get out of the way of The One who did.  

Sib influence

It's seriously rare to hear about how our siblings influence - for good or ill - our behavior, but I am quite sure that I'm not alone in being way more influence by them than I ever was by my parents.  I like to think that a brother & sister can have an exemplary influence, that their kindness generosity ambition clarity focus inspired others within the family to develop those same traits.  

For lots of reasons, I took on a slew of my sister's self-limiting traits as my own, behaviors attitudes expectations assumptions that were antithetical to my nature.  Once I realized how out of whack they were/are with my life instructions I was born with, got easier to set them aside & latch onto the ones that came with my original plans.  

The past four years have been a time of off-the-charts opportunities, yet I've failed to take any one of them to full completion.  I've left them hanging around, cluttering rather than expanding my life.  Give my things, all of them, a place of their own & keep them there.  The things that have no place, move on. 

"Assure that everything is in its place & time, and your thoughts will be free to engage with what is before you."   (Rabbi Menachen Mendel of Satanov)  YES!  My thoughts have been roaming, they have NOT been engaging with what is before me.  My life is diminished by acting per my nurture instead of harking to my nature.  

Am I brave enough to, as Sister Joan Chittister puts it, "set out to find out for ourselves who we really are, what we know, what we care about, and how to be simply enough for ourselves in the world"?   To take what Rabbi Friedman describes as "a path of discovery," of what matters now" rather than what affixed itself to me through the years.  This "process of connecting to the past through memory, not just keepsakes ... is a powerful way to begin again."

Envisioning a life in which I AM rather than a hodge podge of whatever, cleared out, not only STILL creative, but now able to engage head & heart & hands.  

Am I brave enough to live according to my deep down nature rather than my convenient-in-many ways nurture?  Am I willing to BE, to connect to & engage with every bit of my being?  I'll do it in & through a way that celebrates all I AM.  

Hey - wait a minute!  What happened to the negative sib influence in my life??  Oh yeah - it's up in the title.  Will leave it there & move on.

Curiosity & Compassion - a priceless pair

In addition to gaining their insights & gleaning their inspiration, I get a special something from the life expansionist authors I love & to whom I am forever grateful ~ ~ I get language to hang around the concepts I've harbored yet never had the words to express.

Today, I had the happy coming together of uplifting authors and richly wise material.  Early in the day, I wrote a post that I thought had been inspired by Mark Wolynn's eye opening It Didn't Start With You, a book that thoroughly shook my magnolias on my first reading in 2016, soon after it came out.  

But wait!  Writing a totally different post, on another blog, realized that it had been reading reading Rabbi Dayle Friedman's wondrous Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older, which came out the year earlier, that had opened me up in the first place, pierced me through & through with fresh perspective & unexpected ahas, ready to be thoroughly marinated in Mark Wolynn's w-i-d-e reaching, many generation points of view & impact.

Between the two, an unexpected & - for me - ideal pairing, placed in my hands the two words I've struggled to come up with for lo these many years:  the natural qualities that kept my feet on the ground (even when I felt thorough messed up, insecure & screaming with confusion) were CURIOSITY & COMPASSION.  And I can't think of two qualities that would have driven my sister & older brother more around the bend.  But they worked for me!  Still do.  

Both Mark & Dayle urge people to approach life with curiosity & compassion.  Although I didn't have the language until now to dress those concepts in, they were both very real to me. 

I've always been curious about what made my funk-a-licious family tick - infinitely aggravating to people like Peter, who is the non-questioning sort;  years & years ago, when Mom asked him why he & the others were so unhappy with the person she'd evolved into, it was reported he drew himself up, looked her straight in the eye & declared, "You - ask - questions!", something she honestly never did until her final years.  Up to then, Mom was defensively incurious about her children - she'd found it to be a good protection.  But she discovered that being openly curious was a lot more fun!

What a gracious quality curiosity has, when paired with compassion.  How liberating I have found that duo to be.  To be curious without judgement, to lead from compassion - spirit releasing.  Is curiosity tempered by compassion -or- is compassion deepened through curiosity? Matters not - pair them together & they become the core ingredients of my happy life.

Coming to a place of peace - my amazing family

My best guess is that my curiosity about what makes my family tick started before I could speak, began in the cradle & crib, watching the different personalities interact.  Words were not needed to convey the messed-up dynamics that saddled my parents & sibs with the mess of nerves & neroses that still addles my experience of them.  

Looking at the endless shelves of books on surviving family trauma, can safely guess that we were far from alone in our messed-up-ness.  My gift to the world is sharing my experiences with my truly amazing family to help pierce the false sense of "we are so wretched & other families are so together" - - family funkiness, including varying levels of damaging abuse, unintentional & not, seems more the rule than the exception.    

Where once I was totally absorbed by comprehending the incomprehensible, I now offer up thanks for the incredible education that was mine simply by being part of my family.  And none was a greater teacher than my one & only sister, Mim.

99.9% of those who know the two of us would break into raucous laughter at the suggestion that for almost twenty-five years, my greatest wish was to be just like my sister.  Made sense.  Mim was not only the sun moon stars of my life, but of my parents', too.  Although she registered with most of the world as quiet, withdrawn & self-effacing to the point of self-degradation, Mim was the absolute arbiter of what defined our family & how it functioned.  

Peter might have styled himself a prince who had been switched at birth by hobgoblins, but Mim was the undisputed Head of Household.  Not that any of us saw that - we howled with laughter when Pam, Peter's wife, observed that the family quaked in our boots at her displeasure.  But she nailed it.

Mark Wolynn's book, It Didn't Start With You, helped me nail it - well, at least tack it down a bit better than before.  It's not lost on me that the book that gave me a loving handle on my fetish with figuring out family fault lines came out in after Mim's 2015 passing.  Would I have processed it differently if she hadn't died?  If things associated with her passing hadn't happened?  

One of my friends marvels at the sense of peace I've come to with my family, especially since she had a ring-side seat at the sturm & drang that came before.  When she sighs & wishes she had a similarly healthier experience of her own apparently very together but under the surface whack-a-doodle family, I share my belief that when we remain open to amazing things happening, they usually do - - but it might take time.  And there's no knowing what will trigger the change.

Mim's 07/03/15 passing had an unexpected ZOWIE impact on everything, for reasons I could never have guessed.  It wasn't related in any way to her no longer actively being in my life, although the best of her insights & influence will always be with me.  It wasn't related to working with my niece in Australia to put together Mim's 100% online memorial.  It was because of the stunning things shared that would never have been said while she was alive & which I absolutely positively hungered to hear.  

After a gathering of friends watched the memorial, one of Mim's nearest & dearest suggested we share memories & stories there, instead of at the celebration party.  She kicked off the comments by observing, "What most people don't know about Mim was that she was tough."  I smiled, thinking she meant tough as in emotionally resilient.  Not so.  The friend looked directly at me & said, "Deev, it could not have been easy being her sister."

Never never never did I ever expect to hear those words; never had it occurred to me how it would feel, having those words fall on my ear.  Nothing more, no further build, just a simple acknowledgement that Mim could be unimaginably & intentionally cruel.  

It still astonishes me, hearing those words, having them register as being said, and experiencing something I never imagined ever feeling - a sense of total peace with my sister.  They talk about someone feeling as if a burden had been lifted from their shoulders - that was me hearing those words, words that freed other friends of hers to offer their own comfort at the party, words that would never have been spoken while Mim was alive.  Above all, honest words that were shared with full hearts & great love for my sister, without so much as a smidgen of reproach toward Mim.  A dream come true, on every level.  And, I believe, something that needed to happen before I could read It Didn't Start With You with a clear eye & tender heart. I am not joshing when I question whether I could have heard &  processed its messages until the finite moment in time that it came out in 2016.

Our family's messed up dynamics didn't start with me - and they didn't start with Mim, either.  They didn't start with Mom or Dad, with Gran or Gar.  They arch back over generations, unrecognized & unintentionally perpetuated. 

Almost all of my life, from cradle to late middle age, was spent trying to figure out MY family.  The gift I was given at sixty-four was the simple awareness & acceptance of how family history touches all of us, touches our families & through them our communities, our universe.  

The very thought that gave me such comfort would surely have aggravated & irked Mim.  Just as my core life goal, from a very young age, was seeing myself as an individual yet part of a greater whole, it was clearly critical to Mim to see herself as shriekingly unique, separate unto & of herself.  Maybe separate from herself, a thought I don't understand but which seems like it fits.  

Here's my theory about Mim:  Our parents came with massively damaged histories.  Peter has described our maternal grandmother as the most evil person on earth;  I never heard anything from either Mom nor from my oldest cousin, Peggy, to dispute that description.  When Dad was in his early teens, his adored mother gave birth to a baby who died soon after & she died within days - Dad always said she died of a broken heart, because his father was having an affair with the woman who subsequently became his step-mother.  

It didn't take any convincing for me to accept that both sides of my family is marked by family trauma - who knows how far back it stretches?  Mim had the burden of openly discussed traumas that reached down into her life - - she was the one, not either of her older brothers, sent to keep Gran company.  Mim was not even in her teens & she was thrust into being companion to a twisted woman.  I cannot imagine the damage that did.  But even before that, Mim was emotionally mangled by some sort of abuse - I assume physical, probably sexual - when she was a very little girl.  It was NEVER mentioned, but it didn't take a brainiac to see how my parents & brothers acted & reacted to figure out, nor to be surprised when it was confirmed by another close friend of hers in 2016 - he never knew what happened just that it had - another disclosure that would never have been made if she had still been alive.  

And those are the circumstances that I know about.  Can guarantee that unknown situation upon unknown situation affected my parents & siblings.  My instinct to judge based on what I know is leavened by the knowledge of all that I don't.  

Here's the bottom line for sharing my experiences with my mega messed-up family - - if I can get to the place where I am, anyone can.  If they want.  But it meant giving up issues that were so much a part of my life, setting them aside was a painful wrench I thought twice about doing.  Those issues had, to an incredibly large extent, defined me - who was I without them?  It meant having absolute faith that what could come through experiencing the voluntary pain of setting them aside would be worth the loss, the temporary but very real sense of desolation.  

It can't be rushed.  It can only happen through keeping an open heart.  It will be painful.  Yet coming to this place of peace was worth it.  

Clarity Quest - Week of March 4

My best memory of the week - Yesterday was a bellweather of realizing that where I've longed to be is where we are.  Meeting up with friends at the "Final Four" opening at Artists Gallery (what I would give to have a scarf silk-screened with Jane Adriance art work!), then onto Silverman Gallery, where Rhonda showcased Jean Childs Buzgo (WANT her Porkyard Alley & Lambertville Moonlight IV), then onto The Zen Den to hear Ash & Snow with yet more amigos.  

What I am most grateful for this week - not coming unhinged.

Accomplishments this week that make me smile - enjoying when the coziness when our electricity blew on Wednesday instead of worrying, making John a super yum supper (gas stove). 

A challenge I faced this week - No sign of my cell phone.  Used it as a flashlight & to check the time during the blackout & it has gone walk about.  Will let it surface when it is ready.

Strengths & supports I used to get me through this week - letting the moment be the moment.

A lesson from the past week that I am taking into the next - realizing how deeply connected I am to the Biblical concept of "Here I am" & "Be still & know that I am."  Integrity, alignment, authenticity.  

When is independence NOT? - my amazing family

As I read Chapter 9 - Declaring Interdependence - of Rabbi Dayle Friedman's every-adult-should-read Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older, found myself thinking of my sister, Mim, of how she always held herself to be fiercely independent, how that was how the family saw her - and my oldest brother - throughout my life.  I opened my post on the chapter by describing how, from my mid twenties, she reminded me of the illustration that opens Rudyard Kipling's, The Cat That Walks By Himself.  

As I wrote about Mim, "She was like the semi-feral cat that lets you stroke it – when it likes – and feed it – when it likes – and let it into the house on a nasty night, but who always makes it clear that there are no mutual obligations, that when it’s ready to be gone, gone it will be, without a backward glance or a nano second thought."  

Here's the thing - acting like she could take you or leave you is not the same as being independent, something my parents never seemed to figure out.  Both Mom & Dad seemed mightily impressed & rather awed by Peter & Mim's "independence."  They were challenged at seeing the difference between letting people know you don't give a darn about them & actual independence.  

Peter still sees himself as the personification of independent wheeler dealer.  The place where he lives is moving long-term residents to the 2nd floor, to quarters which he considers inferior to his present digs.  He informed them that the signed agreement allowed him to stay in his preferred room & he was holding them to the bargain.  He was not moving.  They offered him another, even nicer room on his preferred floor.  No - he was not moving.  They offered him a single room, all to himself.  NO!  They offered him a room facing the woods instead of the parking lot.  NO!  They offered him a better television & a more spacious bureau.  He agreed.  When he told me this tale, he was proud of holding firm, squeezing out concession after concession.  

Yes, he got what he wanted, but at the price of - as he acknowledged - getting their backs up.  I'd say that seemed the cherry on the top for him - knowing he'd caused others' aggravation.  I consider that sort of behavior ungracious & uncivil, a far cry from independence.  And the very opposite of what I consider the ultimate civil state between people - interdependence.  

As much as they frustrated me, I was also aware that my sibs' "kiss the ring" behaviors were rooted in lack of confidence rather than extreme self-assurance.  It was clearest in Mim, who worked with disadvantaged children, in part, because she found comfort in them being even more worse off than she was.  An independent person would have tried to raise herself up rather than find others worse than she so as to alleviate her sense of...  whatever.  That is not an observation of mine - - Mim told me, flat out.  Even at the time, some twenty of so years ago, it went straight to my heart, that my brilliant older sister COULD NOT see her own gifts & graces, rejected that others thought highly of her, respected & admired her.  

Independence is NOT having a brilliant idea without doing anything to make it happen, nor is it trash talking people over a cup of coffee & piece of banana cream pie.  That's contempt.  And it's how I defined independence well up into my thirties because it was what was tagged that way by my parents & my sibs.  

A blessing of writing posts is how often new clarity comes as thoughts swirl & jell.  Contempt is the VERY word for what was labeled independence.  "Do what we want or we will freeze you out."  It was why Mom admitted she'd do ANYTHING if it allowed her to hold onto the thin slender thread of hope they'd deign to be part of her life.  

Reality Check:  For independence & jaw-dropping courage, look no further than my mother.  For Mom to pick up the phone & call a psychologist & make an appointment, explaining, "I have no sense of who I am" took acting against her self-deflecting nature & entrenched self-denigrating nurture.  It took independent thought, independent will  & independent intent.  She didn't set up the appointment to score brownie points with me (I no longer cared) & certainly not with my sibs.  She did it knowing that the others might not be happy about her quest for a sense of her true self, the Katharine Reynolds Lockhart that Dad had always seen but was a stranger to herself.  The thing that neither Pete nor Mim nor Mike nor Kerry could wrap their heads around was that Mom did it FOR HERSELF.  She did it because she saw that I was feeling emotionally mangled & finally realized that no one else in the family - not Peter, not Mike, not Mim, not Kerry - was going to lift a finger to help.  


When is independence NOT?  When it is simply contempt - contempt of others possibly disguising contempt of self.  When IS independence the real deal?  When a person accepts his or her self as responsible for their own wholeness.  When they act for their emotional, physical, spiritual good.  When they move past that to acting to help others achieve the same, they've taken the leap from declaring their independence to celebrating interdependence with those around them, with & for a greater good.    

"It's Complicated" to "It's Promising!"

Ah, my relationship with money.  Our family always had a whack-a-doodle back & forth with cold hard cash.   My parents were typical of their generation - - never talked about finances, how to save money, how to increase the money we earned.  They never expected us kids to help pay for our clothing or other non-basic purchases.  Mike was the only one who - once he joined the Navy right after graduation - paid his own way 100%.  Peter seemed to always be asking Dad if he could spare a few (or a lot) bucks.  And Mim, who never seemed to make what most people would consider a decent living wage, spun money out of thin air, attending a 6-week theater workshop in Greenwich Village, attended classes at Penn & three out-of-state colleges, getting her Bachelors from NYU & her MSW from Rutgets.  Yes, my relationship with money was VERY complicated!

Enter Jen Sincero, to set me straight.  Thanks to Jen, money & I have come to a better understanding of each other,  a new appreciation.  Money is frustrated when I don't put it to better use - it's felt underappreciated & disrespected.  "I'm energy, waiting to be put to good use, but she treats me like I'm just so much filthy lucre."  

What can I say.  That's true.  I haven't assigned money the value it deserves.  It's not that I take it for granted, but that I never thought it would give ME a second look.  A snug & secure bank account - that was meant for others.  My head told me that I am meant for financial abundance, my heart embraced the thought of prosperity, but my gut countered with, "Money's just not into you."  And, afraid of trying & being rejected, I disregarded head & heart, went with my gut.  

Took Jen to bring us together, to see the mutually supportive relationship that was always meant to be.  Money was always eager to partner with me;  I was the one who blew it off, who thought I wasn't good enough for it.  

It's still hard.  Part of me still can't fully accept that money is there for me, ready to provide the support I need, to invest in a relationship that brings out the best in both of us & lets us grow & prosper.  My head hears it, my heart accepts, but that pesky gut.  

Relationships aren't easy.  I know that money wants only the best for me, wants to see me feel empowered, wants to help me accomplish all that is possible for me to do.  Money is there for me, now I have to be here for myself.  We've gotten past "it's complicated" to "it's promising" - - time to go for "in a relationship"!

Deev & Money 

4 Evah!

CLARITY QUESTIONS - Week of February 25

My best memory of the week - Going to the Aging 2.0 Philadelphia reboot at Slainte, catty corner to 30th Street Station, seeing friends going in -and- coming out who were as delighted to see us as we were to see them, the amazing mix of people at the whoop-de-doo, the terrific speaker (Brian Duke, former Director of Aging for the Commonwealth of Phila, currently Systems Director/Senior Services, Main Line Health Systems - lives in Washingtons Crossing).  Awesome to know that John & I can take a bow in getting the dormant chapter back up & humming!

What I am most grateful for this week - being at a seriously good place with John.

Accomplishments this week that make me smile - getting the social hall at the Lord's New Church for A Creativity Jam For Age Justice; returning foot snugs & tender intimacy to my relationship with John, which we hadn't realized had drifted away until I had a "Ok,what's happening?" melt-down; taking myself seriously; realizing that Peter sees life through a broken lens; loving the fresh water stream this little goldfish leapt into!

A challenge I faced this week - realizing that something was seriously wrong in my relationship with John, that we'd lost over the past couple years the easy intimacy that had hallmarked our relationship, identifying the problem as the stack of cushions & pillows that he has his feet atop when we sleep, which was the end of the feet snugs that are the best form of tender intimacy & which lead to us cozying up to each other, something long missing.  Last year, I tried sleeping with my feet up at the same level, but it messed up my legs (strange knees).  If the time comes that John HAS to sleep with his feet up, we will find a way to get in our foot snugs.  

Strengths & supports I used to get me through this week - sensing there is a problem that needs addressing, even when I don't have a clue what it is; being open to changing my view of myself & others, putting concern for Peter above being as frustrated by him as he is apparently irritated by me, journaling, being open to new experiences & people, copious reading & writing.

A lesson from the past week that I am taking into the next - this little goldfish leapt out of a toxic, stagnant pool & into a lovely fresh water stream YEARS ago, but kept thinking & talking about the old, gunked up pool instead of happily swimming in the beautiful environment into which she had propelled herself.  Just keep swimming!

The corrision of self-neglect

Over on All Ages, All Stages, I write about my response to & thoughts on a New York Times article by Paula Span on the effect of self-neglect.  The article left me dissatisfied, wondering about the point & curious about what the author thinks can be done in such sad situations.

As the afternoon wore on & the day turned to dusk, what hit home was how corrosive self-neglect is in my own life. Not so much physical self-neglect, although that too - when was the last time I took a walk around the neighborhood, let alone a trek down the Pennypack Trail?  But emotional, productive self-neglect.  

My brain continues its eerie tendency to pause when it shift into high - and I do little to counterbalance, to develop a better response.   The way my adrenalin slumps at moments when it should surge.  My self-limiting trait of coming to a full stop instead of amping up  "Go, girl, go!"  energies.  To let time slip through my fingers rather than transform transient moments into a substantial something.  Self-neglect. 

I couldn't do anything to help my sister or oldest brother out of their physical self-neglect, but I can recognize, acknowledge & bid my own self-neglect, witnessed in my neglect of the wowser things I could be doing, adieu.  

Hello, protect succor aid!