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.

First Week Home

Last week I resigned from my job to be a full time mama. Of course, as soon as you get pregnant you’re full time, all the time, for the rest of time; but last week I embraced the role of stay at home mom, thereby reducing my job load to one full time position. It feels good. I feel streamlined, like all the pieces are buzzing together rather than randomly bouncing off the walls. Not to make light of the processing that went into actually walking into the president’s office with a resignation letter shaking in my hands. I struggled to justify my desire to stay home after achieving success and great enjoyment from my career. Wasn’t I the culmination of what all those women before me fought for? How could I walk away from an opportunity to lead an organization in order to do laundry, make casseroles and schedule play dates? I felt like I was letting down all the women whose shoulders I stand on, while also making the journey more difficult for the young women rising up behind me.

I had dinner with a girlfriend this week who made the opposite decision, to continue with her career while her husband stays home, and we were discussing the extreme pressure on women with young children regardless of the decision they make about their career. This isn’t a new conversation, certainly, but it is constantly evolving as our society changes and women shift and buck with current trends and family demands. We were both struggling to prove ourselves and not appear too ‘emotional’ with male colleagues, the fine line that defines us. We also wondered at several points in the conversation why women make it so difficult for each other, placing such judgment on the individual choices we make (from breastfeeding, lordy, to childcare). And I was voicing my guilt that I had let down our organization, that now those in positions of hiring might think twice before considering another woman on the cusp of starting a family. It feels like I burned them, although there was really no easy solution: burn them, burn my family, burn myself … burn-out. Ultimately I had to make peace with the fact that all those women before me paved the way for me to have a choice.

Within a few weeks of trying to juggle the demands of work and family I quickly discovered that there was no way I could do it all. I felt selfish voicing this because I recognized that the component that would get lost in the shuffle would not be the career that I loved or the child that I loved, but myself. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice myself to this endeavor and this made the choice feel selfish. I have friends that I believe would echo this sentiment as the reason they decided to return to work, in order to maintain their individuality. The problem lies in the belief that we do have a choice, because the pendulum seems to have swung the other way. Most families nowadays cannot afford to have a stay at home parent even if they want to. So what will it take for our society to value the role a woman (or man) plays in the home? Isn’t there enough documented support that having a family member as the primary caregiver for the first year of life is the ideal situation? What will it take for our nation to get with the program? The paradigm of value itself must shift and I’m not sure how or when this might happen. I know that every choice we make in our life is political and affects the stream of history, so I’m acutely aware that my choice to stay home to raise my son was a political move in my community. I’m just not sure what the repercussions will be. What I do know is that it has given me a whole new level of empathy for working moms, single moms, moms in abusive situations. What will it take for us to place real value on the role of the mother in nurturing the cohesiveness and strength of our communities?

Good Bones

We’ve been researching buying a new house so I’ve been pouring over real estate sites, looking for that sparkler, priced too low for the neighborhood it lives in. A lot of houses in our price range are described as having ‘good bones’. I love this phrase. Basically a nice way of saying, “not much else”, but it makes me want to run to them, step inside the walls and say, ‘I know you!’ I’m certain I could settle into a really nice conversation with these houses, the kind that would build over time and grow with me. Good bones are truly all you need. The structure, the integrity of a thing, is what matters; everything else gets filled in as it comes into relationship with others. I remind myself of this as I approach each house. I’d rather work with what I’ve been given and come up with something unique, than be given perfection and have no where to go.

Coming into relationship with something is spectacular. It pushes you to become more than you were when you met and it doesn’t back down until you have both been transformed. I think of my hodgepodge of friends, all split levels and four squares. I didn’t pick them because they were a complete package but because they had good bones. Together we fill in all the space between and over time this space between becomes a home that we inhabit together. I experienced this when we first moved into our current house. I had never had a yard before and I was overwhelmed with the shrubs and flowers and vegetable garden that needed tending. There were rose bushes that our neighbor would scold me for letting grow over the fence onto the sidewalk but I was hesitant to prune anything for fear I would kill it. Over the course of our first year here I grew more confident and I felt the yard slowly approach me. I could sense a trust growing between us, based on my willingness to listen and observe before imposing my will. I came into relationship with the yard by acting as a steward for its potential.

And so we wait, my husband and I, to find the house that needs a little time to get to know; the house that wants to hunker down for a long conversation and allow us to mortar relationship into the walls. I’m happy for the reminder, a familiar motif, that the only way to create right relationship is to start with a solid foundation.