Thank you for letting me say hello to you.

A young woman in a revealing sundress swooped down as she walked past the stroller and started talking to Liam in a singsong voice, “oh babeee, don’t cry, nothing to be sad about, babeee”. He tucked his chin into his shoulder and rolled his eyes up to me, smiling. Glistening tears still set on his cheeks, rosy from the brisk walk here. I was marveling at how a stranger can calm your baby when he is bored and frustrated with you, stupid parent, and thinking that I needed to figure out the protocol of how to ask young women to come over and play with my son for $10 an hour. She stood up to walk away and the man standing behind me said, “Beautiful baby, what’s his name?” I was still looking at Liam, thinking about how picking up babysitters reminded me of a Seinfeld episode. “How old is he?” the man continued, followed by, “So beautiful, you’re doing a really good job, you can tell.” This is turning into a lovely day, such nice interactions with strangers. So unlike yesterday when I was pulled over by a motorcycle cop who, as far as I could tell, just wanted to show off his mustache. The man waiting to order his coffee stretched out his hand and introduced himself, “I’m Joe, what’s your name?” As soon as I reached out to take his hand I noticed how scruffy he was and how weathered his fingertips were. Oh my, as I glanced down at the duffle bag at his feet, a sudden shift in the kind of conversation I was having. The barista gave me a look and called to the guy, “you want another refill?” in a tone that said hurry up and outta here. I finished shaking his hand and told him my name. He smiled, head down a bit, “Thank you for letting me say hello to you.” He took his refill and headed for the door.

How easy it is to engage in the simplest acts of connection; yet so often we let our initial perceptions of people interfere with an opportunity to interact. I forget that an off-the-cuff moment for me might be meaningful to someone else. We all want simple interactions with strangers, to be seen by other people. And how would it feel if people didn’t let you say hello to them? As I was pondering this reality, and vowing to be better about slowing down to see the people who enter my life every day, I saw this message spray painted on the street:


So easy really.

Right now mama

I’m in a transition and I don’t feel connected to my environment. I am distant and complacent. I’ve been thinking that if I could extract the essence of what brings me happiness, I'd have trail markers to get me back onto the path again; an exercise to provide direction for the next chapter in life. I was trying to narrow the list to 5 moments but we’ll see where there’s overlap:

•Walking and writing around Queen Anne, particularly the fountain near Intiman
•Riding the subway in NY by myself on my 30th birthday
•Working in my apartment office in West Seattle
•Hiking in Patagonia
•Cross country road trip with my girlfriends
•The evening of my 35th Birthday Dinner
•Beachcombing on Lopez Island
•Dance Off Pants Off New Years Eve
•Doe Bay solo retreat

So over the next few days (or at the current writing rate, the next few weeks) I will dissect these occasions. My hope is that by unearthing the core elements that bring me closer to that fire, both creative and warming, I’ll be able to recalibrate. Or at least find a modicum of balance during this time when the baby needs me ALL THE TIME, RIGHT NOW MAMA RIGHT NOW.

Happiness Only Real When Shared

We watched Into the Wild this weekend. I remember being so moved by the book when it came out; I was 24 years old. Watching the movie at 36 gave me new perspective. I went to bed thinking about the relationships we make and break throughout our lives. The feelings of isolation we can feel when surrounded by too many people. There are such elements of naïveté in Chris’s story. It’s tragic really that he wasn’t more prepared because he seems to have been a really great guy, just young and a bit overly confident. He was the type of person who could have come out of the wild and made a significant impact with the rest of his life. Yet perhaps his impact was meant to be made through death. In death he became a beacon, a reminder that there is a raw wildness that exists in each of us, a wildness that most of us are disconnected from, a wildness that we need to find our way back to.

This time as I watched the story unfold a pit formed in my chest. Children make their own choices, they blame you for how you raised them, they die. Sometimes they die. Swirling ache moved from my chest into my shoulders and down to my knees, thinking of all the mothers who have had to let their babies go. I sighed deeply, trying to release this grip of fear, “I don’t know if I can do this. This parenthood thing is going to be too hard.” Slade leaned his head down to my chest and said, “It’s going to be wonderful” and resumed watching the movie. It’s going to be wonderful.

And by the end of the movie I had come full circle. It became clear to me that our babies aren’t really ours; they never really belong to us. Ultimately, our babies belong to another mother who calls each one of us back to her one way or another. Letting go, giving up control, over and over again. We are children of the universe; we belong to no one but her. Deep breath, feel the extent to which we connect. This whole deal is about leaning into the experience, pushing up against life and feeling it intensely. And I’m reminded of a quote from Dawna Markova: “I will not live an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me.” Let the heart break wide open …

Jump

I've just decided I need to jump in and write every coupla days. Not so much editing, it's not like this is going into a major publication. Otherwise I won't get more than one post up a month and that is not satisfying my experiment of writing about philanthropy as it occurs to me on a daily basis. Part of the problem is that I need to be more conscious about it during the day, while changing diapers and going for walks and fixing dinner. It's a little like poetry, finding beauty in the shadows and intricacy in the stillness.

And it's about clearing space. It always comes back to clearing space. I tend to clutter up my brain with inconsequential details in an attempt to avoid being present. This year at home with Liam was supposed to be an opportunity to unclutter, to see my breath and feel the weight of life ticking through me. It's been 8 months ... but what I also need to remind myself is that there are seasons of creativity. I am sowing right now, I am tending to the daily drudgery of doing in order that something will blossom. Yet to get the blossom you have to remain diligent in practice. So this is me stepping into the random abyss that is my mind, a jumbled jambled bramble of thought. Unedited.

Breathe (with thanks to Alexi Murdoch)

I was reminded the other night that the whole world begins and ends with how you treat yourself. I spent last week in California helping my sister with her two week old baby, while also taking care of my 7 month old baby, who decided because he was in a new place he would go back to waking up 3-4x during the night. I came home exhausted with the start of a cold, which over the course of this week has unleashed a fury unlike a cold I’ve had in years, in part because I haven’t been getting the kind of sleep you need to really fight one of these things. Tossing and turning, listening to Liam crying out at random intervals because, yes indeed, he’s now coming down with it, I got up and put on the kettle. The kitchen was quiet, it was 12:30am and every time I swallowed my throat burned and my head filled with snot so that it felt like I was drowning. “I am miserable,” my brain raged, “I am tired and frustrated and I want someone to take care of me right now.” Lower lip puckered, stomping of feet. I sat down on the stool in the kitchen sipping Throat Coat tea and breathing in menthol. My head continued to dial out all of the things I should be doing and all of the things I was failing at, including getting a cold. I plugged into the iPod to block out the brain, like a teenager locking the door on their room and turning up the music. In the quiet of the shadow In the corner of a room Darkness moves upon you Like a cloud across the moon resonates against the cranium making the deep quiet around me all the more palpable. The nuances of the music are thrilling when listened to through earphones. It provides invisibility; you’re inside this bubble looking out with your own sound system. I needed to be reminded that I can get there without going anywhere.

I am alone here, I am always alone. I’m looking around the kitchen in the soft glow of the moonlight and realize that man, I am so loved. I am incredibly privileged to be alive. I came across the thought in some reading recently that people are dying every moment and so many of them would give everything to be you, alive, regardless of your current situation. I have a cold. It will go away tantrum thrower, and you will feel better and it will be Spring and life will go on. I am reminded that how I treat myself is what I am able to project out to others. I calmed my breathing down and finally was able to get some air in and out of my nose. If nothing else, a cold is just a reminder to slow down and take care of myself. Not a reason to get mad at Slade for putting in ear plugs so that he could avoid the cacophony of his family, or to toss and turn with dramatic aplomb to show him how really sick and miserable I am. And I heard the voice, sad and small: be nice to me. This is where everything starts. It’s hard to remember to do this simple thing when you get caught up in the day to day. But day after day, if you aren’t nice to yourself you stop caring. And if you stop caring about yourself there is no way you can care about others. This is the lesson I constantly touch back upon, a buoy bobbing in the water that I bounce against as I race by in my speedboat life. It just doesn’t work any other way.

Good Gracious

An important part of being an everyday philanthropist is graciousness. Being gracious with your time, with your thoughts and with your judgments provides a space that allows opportunities for fresh insight and collaborations to grow. When I was reviewing grant proposals and visiting with nonprofits to evaluate whether we should award funding, I considered myself a guest peering into another world. And beyond making sure there was fiscal responsibility and alignment of their mission to our goals, my job was to be gracious and take on the role of a curious visitor. It becomes easy in positions of power to assume you know more or can do something better, but maintaining a gracious manner reminded me that I didn’t. With graciousness I learned more about my community, could make better connections, and viewed the complexity of the issues through the lens of a shared future.

Setting the stage for graciousness can be taught. In fact, I was at an award ceremony last week to support the Center for Ethical Leadership in Seattle, a nonprofit that builds collective leadership capacity for individuals advancing the common good. Part of their work involves using gracious space as a tool for change. This term resonates strongly with me because it is the way in which I go about my work as a philanthropist: suspending judgment, listening deeply, measuring what matters, and working across boundaries. It was a privilege to be in a room full of people who are creatively challenging the status quo and highlighting the crevices where social justice flourishes. The evening gave face to our common humanity and rekindled my passion for personal and community integrity. Being gracious is a gift that we give to the problems that surround us, and when we are gracious with adversaries it transforms them into stubborn allies. The potential in this is that we do not get the future either party envisioned but rather a creation that could only exist through shared experience. Living with intention and speaking your truth is political; doing so with grace creates the framework for sustainable change.

It’s been a shocking realization that I wouldn’t actually have a lot of time to do the work I want to do once I quit working. I’m finding it pretty challenging to write just one post a week. And it’s more than being constantly busy taking care of Liam during the day … it’s that I just can’t get enough of him. When he’s awake I want to sit on the floor and play. Or ya know, stare into his eyes and try to make him giggle. I haven’t felt like this since I was in high school, lying on my bedroom floor listening to music and daydreaming about my life. It’s fabulous. I’m sitting in the presence of wonder and potential and it feels like I’m being remade from the inside out.

When I left my job people kept saying, but make sure to keep something for yourself, don’t lose yourself in this experience. And although I get it, the importance of not just becoming Liam’s mom or Slade’s wife, something about these comments has been bothering me. I’m the queen of losing myself in an experience. Certainly I need to find balance when I encounter something new, but I don’t dilly dally when I want to throw myself into something; and damnit, I want to lose myself in this. Isn’t that why I quit my job in the first place? I began to hear this little voice and it’s coming through stronger and crisper now that I’m a few weeks out of the office. I only have one opportunity to be completely, naively gaga about my child; to assume that he is the first baby in the whole world in all of time to reach up and twirl my hair while I’m feeding him. And if the days start and end with us staring into each others eyes, well, how many days do I get to do this before he’s running off to join his buddies on the playground. I’ll deal with that reality when it comes. Right now, this is the reality I want to inhabit.

I discovered Brene Brown this week and I’ve found great inspiration on her website. In discussing the importance of connection she said, "Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do." It made me realize that this is my story right now, this relationship with Liam, and I want to delve deep down into the ocean of connection with him. I want to lose myself in it, knowing that by losing myself I will find myself anew. And it takes courage to do this well. I can’t gain nearly as much by holding back a part of myself. What I’m called to do right now is to allow myself to feel this much love and give myself permission to immerse myself in this new story. Wander into the woods without a plan to get out, trusting that I’ll find the way when it’s time.

I wonder why people are afraid of being present in something that is bringing great joy and feels immensely bigger than them. It certainly touches on our fear of losing control. It challenges the way we view time and how we measure success. I also wonder if we’re afraid that we’ll be left behind when that joy transitions or shifts to something else. Brene’s comment made me realize that I have to own this choice and not be afraid of being completely present in each day. She asks how we practice courage in a culture of fear and I see that I can do this by paying attention to the little things that are weaving my story as a woman. In this, I am becoming exactly who I am supposed to be. The wonder and potential I feel with Liam is as much about me as it is about him.