happy as a pig in....

Spent this weekend visiting my friend, Greg. He operates a lambing and hog operation in northern Vermont and, while I can still smell the poop in my pores, the fine memories will no doubt last longer. I don't want to spend too much time writing tonight but I thought it was time to add a note of update.

My internal weather patterns continued to roll with some storms for a while but March came in like a lion last Monday and since Thursday this week it has been unseasonably warm and sunny. Today I drove with June's sunroof open (and, of course, the check engine light still ablaze). Last Wednesday I moved through a particularly interesting experience with work and I was left buzzing awake through most of the night -- apparently my wiring has become unaccustomed to the excitement and high of doing what I love to do, therapeutically. More to follow on this when I feel more inclination to write about it.

I have stabilized some, it helps to be around tonnes of animals, some of them just a day or two old in the world, others topping over 500 lbs with personality to match. I also got to run a chainsaw (thank you Husqvarna) and cut some felled trees into logs, ....nothing makes me so happy as power tools in the outdoors with sunshine and trees all around.

I'm attaching some shots from the weekend so you might better comprehend why I'm feeling the inclination towards sheep farming.

every day is Sunday

I've been hiding myself, avoiding putting onto this screen some of the deeper parts of myself that are at my surface -- perhaps I don't want to make them more real by sharing them with the people who care about me. Perhaps I don't want to make them more solid by owning these parts more openly. Part of me is reticent to be misunderstood and judged and part of me doesn't want to have you worry about me. Ultimately, I know I'm well -- I'm struggling with some profound dragons but I'm safe.

There has been depression circling my system. I've wondered whether to attribute it to the relative lack of sunlight in New England compared to Colorado in the winter months. I've wondered if it's simply a consequence of having made poor choices and created a life for myself which is not fulfilling nor enjoyable. I've wondered whether I have a chemical imbalance in my brain. Essentially, I've been moving through despondency and greyness. Even as I've avoided bringing my words to this medium, I have been burning through the pages of my journals attempting to discern what is happening in my life. Every now and again I take a walk through the woods and fields as a reprieve from my work and my wrestling and I find a bigger perspective...

It used to be that Sunday mornings were a time when I felt acute pain rise up and confront me; Sunday was the day when the normal schedule of "doing" collapsed and the spaciousness threatened to unhinge me -- where would I focus my attention so that I need not look at my disquiet? During the week I could tackle issues, strive towards goals, distract myself with a social life; essentially I could feel like a 'normal person'. However, when I awoke on Sunday morning the veil would be pulled back on my grief, my pain, the fears and doubts I have about myself and life in general. On Sunday mornings I would get the sense that I was hiding from a core threat to my sanity and it was waiting for me in the dark corners of my psyche.

Since I left "life" as I constructed it in Colorado, I have disavailed myself of many of my usual hiding places. My relationship with my partner provided a great deal of distraction because there were so many issues we were always trying to fix. My work with Monarch was busy and chaotic and provided me with a platform on which I could develop not only my skills but my ego. I earned a higher income which afforded me 'pretty things' and could soothe my inner ache for beauty and filler, at least temporarily.

Conversely, here in northern New Hampshire I spend my time between work at the shelter, walking in the woods, or alone in my home. My work is absurd -- any wish to be good at my job is thwarted by circumstances beyond my control. My salary only covers my basic needs for food, shelter, healthcare, and transportation. I spend 80% of my time completing documentation that no one will ever read and the kids with whom I work don't give a shit about my therapeutic prowess. While I look to my nearby friends Becky and Sue (in Boston area) as social lifelines, I am very lonely for my family in Ontario and for my support system in Colorado.

In fact, I don't even know anymore if I enjoy work as a therapist. I wonder if I didn't simply migrate to the field as a way to avoid my existential and psychological demons; a way to keep myself occupied while hoping to simultaneously construct a sense of self that makes up for my core feeling of being a mess.

So, I fear that I am succombing to self-pity. That was not my wish. While every part of me is screaming to get out of my present circumstances, to somehow intervene in my own life, I know I need to stay and see what is 'here'. When I say 'here', I don't mean New Hampshire, I mean 'Martha'. I have studied addiction and compulsion enough in my life to recognize my own compulsion to move and keep moving -- change something, do something. At least transitioning is a good distraction. As long as I keep altering something on the surface of my life, I'll never have time to attend to the depths and what lurks below. My other compulsion is to be a 'fixer' and this desire to repair something that I perceive is broken connects too fluidly with being a chronic mover and changer. I suppose that as I was striving to amend a faulty family system or offer relief to a suffering client, I was rubbing a salve on my own personal sense of being defective.

The other reason I am resisting the desire to leapfrog on out of these uncomfortable circumstances is that it seems to me that there is integrity in leaning into my own experiences of insanity and depression. In my field of work as well as in my practice of being human I want to foster a practice that there is not sane and insane and that the goal is not the uncompromising pursuit of happiness. I don't want to take a pill for this as our pharmaceutical industry would coach. The least I can do is 'walk my own talk' and be willing to hold my seat through the greeting of my demons. Maybe integrity is only part of it, maybe the other aspect is a belief that true healing requires moving through something rather than moving away from it.

Anyway, I have gotten tired of the sound of falseness in my voice through emails and phonecalls to you. I am tired of pretending because it's creating another layer of suffering in my own experience. How am I? I'm hurting. Many days I am depressed but I know how to put on my clothes and walk into the world, feed myself, clean my home, pay bills. Many moments I am moved to tears by the beauty of this world in its myriad forms. I know how to call a friend and arrange a visit. I am grateful to the intelligence of life that caused a stray cat to wander into my home so that there is someone to look after other than myself. I feel both crazy and courageous.

the waxing and waning affection of the moon for the earth

Ah, Valentine's Day. It's a challenge to hover precariously between cynicism and sappyness for this loaded holiday. On the one hand, how lovely to dedicate a day to celebrating love and the intimacy of connection. On the other, how ridiculous to reinforce the illusion that love is something that can be boxed, bundled, enveloped, or otherwise reserved for couples.

I feel both slopes of slipperyness and myself don't wish to slide down either side without critical thinking. In giving this more thought this morning I began parsing out 'romance' from 'love' in hopes of finding a resolution, at least for another year. 'Romance' feels as though it has been lost to the world of commodities; traded like any other mineral or agricultural product. My sense is that romance becomes focused on form as opposed to space, or in Gestalt terminology a figural manifestation from ground. 'Love' on the other hand resists being captured or contained; it seems as though love finds its essence through movement rather than product -- much like the distinction between 'religion' and 'God.'

When loving (switching the stagnant noun to its active verb) gets lost to romance, I wonder if the illusory sense of security, as reinforced by romance, isn't groped after so as to quell the ultimately disquieting vulnerability and moment-to-moment presence that loving demands. Perhaps there is nothing innately faulty about romance until it is offered as a substitute or salve.

My caveat -- I type this entry alone in my home, except for my cat (now I'm truly freaked out), who offered me no expressions of his undying love on this St. Valentine's Day, unless you count the usual deposit in the litterbox. Maybe this is love in action, cleaning up after someone simply because he's here and I can. And there's something about watching him sleep that reminds me to breathe, slow down, and open up.

My loving to you. May whatever you long for be yours, if only to pass over and puncture your heart momentarily -- not to be restrained, only to be cherished.

the trouble with 3 is it's not a dog

well, it's pyjama time for me, pyjamas with tea, chamomile tea and flannel pj's

the cat, aka "3am wonder," sits on the desk eyeing the mouse

the mouse pretends to be simply an extension of the computer

but "3" knows better; his lion-like eyes don't miss a beat

not a heart beat of the little plastic mouse goes 'boop' without "3" to see

his claws sharp like razors, (so often I have screeched from his greet)

they pulse in and out, in and out, preparing for the meet

perhaps it's jeal-o-see, as he sees me, so tenderlee I release

that little mouse with the long, long tail

and glide it lightlee around the pad.

or is it a plate?

perhaps "3" sees the flesh not as meat but intruder

into what has become a comfee place to sleep.

me, a referee.

This is why it's important for people to get a good night's rest. Otherwise, you start to speak in tongues, slowly slipping away from reality (whatever that is!). So, for those who don't know, a cat wandered into my life and home a little while ago. Not sure whether it's a female or a neutered male but it feels like a "he" and he comes to life at night. Why is this? Further reason for me to be a dog-person. In writing this poem as an email to my sister tonight, the name "3" came to be -- he is so consistent with this wake-up time; afterall, it's a good time to chase a pen around the wooden floor; might as well take a poop; then a pee; then scratch around the litter box until it three-times buried; up and down the stairs to the loft; stand on my back since my head is under the pillow; time to go back to the pen.... you get the point. He offers me no affection but demands love, food, water, and more space on the bed with a yowl. When I'm worked up and emotional from a heartbreaking day at the Shelter, he looks at me as if to say: "Really?! Tell someone who cares. But first, more food."

I've let folks around here know that I'm temporarily looking after a cat who would make a great pet for a cat person. Spread the word. A co-worker is looking for a home for her overly active and under-exercised 90 lb. female bloodhound; I'm thinking we can make a deal.

unveiling the genuine heart of longing

The last hours of 2009 fold into each other as I sit in my small, warm home. The fire has emitted so much heat that I have to prop open a window. The bath took place as the light from the day settled into darkness. I spent much of this final day of the first decade of a new millenium in my PJ's allowing my body to recuperate from a cold I got during Christmas. I ventured out early in the afternoon to take a walk in the woods with my canine friend, Wily -- it felt wrong to finish the year without the forest, without fresh air and movement. The morning was spent doing paperwork to satisfy New Hampshire state requirements for shelter residents. All in all, not a bad balance for a day.

An interesting process has been unfolding in my psyche. My belief system once gravitated towards the quelling of longing. The ultimate basis for this practice was protective in nature; indeed, each of us emerges into this world completely needy and wholly dependent on others to satisfy our physiological and social needs ("food, touch, and movement" as one of my teachers repeats). When our aches and callings are thwarted we learn to shut down or act out as adaptive coping mechanisms -- our little systems go into disassociation with a primal recognition that without 'other' we will perish.

Never have my needs for food, touch, nor movement gone away. As adults these basic tenets of life are translated into the need for genuine human contact, nurturance, and emotion. For many years I fostered my belief that to embody such neediness was a setup for pain and disappointment. In Buddhist literature I caught wind of similar messages around non-attachment. In self-psychology cheerleading I heard the message: "Happiness is not having what you want but wanting what you have." This blended nicely with my Scottish/Canadian/Presbyterian sensibilities of don't be greedy, be grateful.

Indeed, my early-life coping strategy to disassociate and numb myself to my own yearnings got more sophisticated but the strategy was serving the same purpose: essentially, don't long, don't yearn -- this will only invite pain. It got so that I looked to others to discover what I should be wanting and reaching for, as though the communication link to my own innate and unique instrument no longer resonated or harmonized with life moving in and around me. Perhaps I just didn't trust myself anymore to tell me what I wanted. Perhaps this helps me understand how lost I can feel at times with respect to finding a path through life with relationships, geography, and professional journey. So often I have to try something before I realize it simply doesn't "fit" and it makes life a long and sometimes frustrating exercise in the "process of elimination" (as an aside, I just found the phrase 'process of elimination' a hilarious euphemism for pooping). But I digress.

So, my point you ask.... my point is that this final day of 2009 seems like as fine a day as any other to unveil my genuine heart of longing. Being willing to feel my ache takes immense courage because there is a rawness combined with vulnerability. In aching and longing I enter into a dance with the universe in which the awakening feels treacherous and the outcome unknown. As I sat this morning with meditation I heard a young and innocent voice within me speak: "I will give up chocolate if I could simply have another chance to love deeply." I heard this voice clearly because she was unashamed, she was fierce. I began to laugh uncontrollably at the clarity and gumption and unabashed life force in this young Martha offering a deal -- offering to give up her favorite treat in exchange for something more profound, more stirring for her soul.

I know I yearn for a family. I am not focusing on the composition of that family, I only know with conviction and courage that I want to love deeply and get tangled up with a group of people, a partner, a child, a community. I am not covered in Teflon. My veils to yearning only numb me to my basic nature and need to belong, to nurture, to be nurtured. I similarly long for a farm, open spaces, a wild natural world around me to which I can tend. It is easier to recognize my yearning for the natural world because it feels as though it is safer and that I can realize this dream with my own hands. In the past I have attempted to similarly manifest relationships and it has ended badly. In the end, however, I am learning that it is a mistake to focus my attention on the object of my yearning. Rather, the aliveness and rawness lies in the experience of opening to ache in and of itself. It requires me to stay connected to my heart, my senses, the world around me, the depth of soul within me. With genuine longing there is no ground to stand on and nothing to hold.

"The deepest nature of everything is longing...Beneath even the most hardened surfaces longing waits. Great music or poetry will always reach us because our longing loves to be echoed. Neither can we immunize ourselves against love; it knows in spite of us exactly how to whisper our longing awake. It is as if, under the clay of your presence, streams of living water flow."

John O'Donohue, "Eternal Echoes"

Perhaps as you look at a year awaiting your presence you too will consider not so much your willingness to resolve and forsake but how you can deepen into beingness, opening your system to respond more harmoniously to life. If accessing your own ache feels safe, take a hint from me and reach deeper.

week 4, year 1

As 2009 comes to a close, I enter my 4th week working at North Country Shelter in Jefferson, NH. Many have asked, unsurprisingly, how my new job is going. I'm trying to avoid a pat answer or a packaged response. My experience shifts through each day and with each new day, more arises. Let me see if I can cover the good, the bad, the ugly, and the breathtaking...

the kids! some days I want to throttle them, other days I am inspired to new levels of gratitude and awe. They can pack with each other like mean dogs at times (and I generally love dogs) against any adult's attempt to connect or make sense of their craziness. They can also open and trust and put themselves so bravely into my/our care, despite how many times they have been let down and dropped. Their histories are generally heartbreaking and, for many of them, their future prospects are meek. I am accustomed to working with mostly middle to high-income families and the kids I've counseled have had many resources thrown at them. These kids have had some very tough breaks, made some not-so-wise choices, and now are looking at the major task of turning their ship around or heading into the adult legal system. I don't get to work with the parents anymore. I'm not sure it would matter -- these kids have been labeled, the parents for the most part aren't curious about how their parenting planted the seeds for the child's behaviors.

They think I'm weird. Amazingly they put up with me and my continuous requests to make eye contact with me and slow down, "take a breath." They give me space to do my thing and I put up with the ridicule they dish out. I think we're getting along just fine.

The staff. They might think I'm weird too. I sometimes get a bit bossy with my insistence that people stop speaking from the ubiquitous "we" or from the depersonalized "you" and use the always direct and potent "I" when making statements (preferably with fewer than 10 words!). They've begun to lift their eyes up from the floor during meetings and similarly made some eye contact with another human being in the room. I gotta say, the kids are more consistent -- must be something about teaching old dogs new tricks. I love how I see the hearts of my co-workers so clearly, so profoundly. The job is hard, there are few positive reinforcements, there are many thankless moments, thanksless days. And still, most of them show up the next day smiling and working hard for the kids.

The paperwork! F___ Me! I bum myself out with the possibility that it'll be the paperwork that kills me. I can't seem to get ahead. I don't get enough time supporting the staff or working with the kids. Most of my days are spent at my computer. My butt is getting flatter and wider, my skin more pasty.

The commute.... thank God for metal studded tires -- hello! it really snows here in New England. I love it even though I get a bit tensed up coming home in the dark and wind and white, wondering if the person behind me has also discovered the magic of studded tires as they ride my butt towards the next curve in the highway.

As I spent time with family and friends over the last few days (it was Christmas afterall), I did an inventory of my new working experience. Sometimes it feels like this direction makes no logical sense -- I make half of my wages in Colorado, I work more, I am inside almost all the time, I get insulted, disrespected, and ridiculed, etc... But there continues to be an inner knowing about where I am, that everything is just as it needs to be even when I can't see the intelligence of the Universe at play. Some mornings I feel lost. Then I remember to stop judging my experience and simply accept what is and say 'thank you.'

The circumstances of my counseling work at NCS are such that there is little opportunity for me to be a therapist in the usual way I think of myself as one; I don't get to employ tools and tricks from my tickle trunk of skills (Canadian reference to Mr. Dress Up, fyi). I am continuing to relinquish my habitual way of trying to be helpful. I never know if or when I will get to connect with a resident at the shelter, maybe once and never again. At first I was putting an inordinate amount of stress on myself to try and be perfect and efficient with this limitation, stress being the key word -- I was setting myself up for burnout and discouragement -- dis-courage-ment, less heart, less bravery, de-coeur-ager ("courage" coming from the French word for "heart"). With this self-created stress I was going more into my head, more emphasis on diagnosis and assessment and intervention than simply showing up in this moment with only my courage. These folks don't need a therapist, maybe they just want connection during this confusing, chaotic, and crazy time.

From John O'Donohue's "Eternal Echoes":

We need a new psychology to encourage us and liberate us to become full participants in our lives, one that will replace self-watch with self-awakening. We need a rebirth of the self as the sacred temple of mystery and possibility, this demands a new language which is poetic, mystical, and impervious to the radiation of psychologese. We need to rediscover the wise graciousness of spontaneity. The absence of spontaneity unleashes us negatively on ourselves. (p.235)

The photos for this entry -- the first shot is the sunset from my office window as the day wraps up in northern New Hampshire. The beautiful brunette is my office mate, Lynne; she's the Family Service Worker at NCS and, for 16 years, she's trained and supported every staff member and loved every kid. A couple of other shots were taken while I visited my mom and sister over the holiday weekend in Ontario. I particularly liked the red and green buoys which popped up from the water and caught hold of my sense of sight during our Christmas day stroll by the river. This last photo I took driving east on Hwy. 401 from Peterborough towards Montreal on Sunday morning as the sun was rising and shining through the fog and the trees. I like light shining through fog and trees.

be well, my love to you

martha

landing on my feet

Last night I dreamed -- blessed illusion --

that I had a beehive here

in my heart

and that

the golden bees were making

white combs and sweet honey

from my old failures.

- Antonio Machado

(translated by Robert Bly)

My apologies for the lapse in writing. If it's any consolation, even when my writing is not so public, there are private pages in journals which I pour over each morning. For the past couple of weeks I've been acclimating to my new surroundings and my new employment - at times I've felt too at odds with myself to package something for my community of friends and family to view.

In my last entry I wrote about the ache that all this moving and butterflying about was creating in my chest and how I was heartbroken by all the 'goodbyes' that come with change. Change is exciting for my system; I feel alive with the sense of possibility and adventure. At the same time, change is taxing and it brings me up against some of my demons regarding doubt and regret; what-could-have-beens, the roads not taken sometimes haunt me. As I settled into my first few days at work I was overwhelmed with information, new systems, names of people (co-workers and clients), rules, norms, requirements, etc... As I settled into my new home, following 3 months of homelessness, I was holding expectations that my new space would be blissful.

And it is. But it wasn't the first couple of nights as I got to know the quirks of a new space.

My home is a beautiful sublet. It is the home of a couple who have travelled to Florida for the winter and it is filled with their lovely furniture and personal wares. It is heated primarily by a grand woodstove which pumps out the warmth (backed up by a Rinnai propane heater that kicks in automatically). There is a gas cooking range, a refrigerator (recall 'the fridge magnet' - it worked), internet, TV (aka "martha's 2-in-1 energy zapper and depression machine"), and a sleeping loft with a soft bed, feather pillows, new flannel sheets, and a duvet. While there is no shower there is an impressively large tub. And herein lies the beginning of my adventure. For some reason ???? the water supply is not sufficient to fill the bathtub,.... In fact, the hot water runs out in under a minute. Apparently it's on a constant feed heated by a furnace below but it must be a slow heat or low capacity unit. So, last Tuesday night, following a white-knuckle commute from Jefferson to Franconia, I ached for a soak. I realized quickly that this was impossible by pulling on the hot water tank. Forty-five minutes and 8 stock pots of boiling water from the gas range later, I was blissfully soaking in the best and most satisfying bath I've ever built. What a ballet of boiling water and hoping that by the time the next 3 pots were boiled, the water already in the vast tub was not returning to its tepid origins too quickly. I drank 2/3 of a bottle of red wine as I danced back and forth from the cooking range to the bathtub. Afterwards I realized that I should probably drink herbal tea during this process if it's to become a regular affair. Of course, I need all the boiled water I can get for the tub so maybe I'll stick with wine, might have been why I enjoyed my soak so much.

My sublet feels like a home as I sit here on my first Sunday night. I have begun cooking again for the first time in a long time. I am deeply grateful simply to have a roof, warmth, music, soft places to sit and read, and a private place to both fall apart and come back together. As the snow falls endlessly in this small New England town, I am aware of what a luxury it is to have a safe and warm space.

I attached the poem above because I am not alone with my demons and my thoughts of failure. Sometimes, discomfort and disorientation feel simply like darkness and despair. At other times, I feel the ground rise up with an offering for adventure and growth from the same elements of confusion and doubt. Failure to see the light, failure to follow my integrity, failure to choose the good path need not be an end in and of itself. Sometimes it's simply a jumping-off point to a new possibility.

Sometimes one just needs to supplement the hotwater system with a few pots of boiling water and a few glasses of wine, even as your kitchen begins to look like the inner workings of an Italian restaurant.

The image of the rainbow was taken near Jefferson while I was driving to my first day of work. I took it as an auspicious sign of being in the right place at the right time with everything I needed for the ride.