Tag Archives: radical self-acceptance
22
Oct

Cleaning Up My Act

By • October 22, 2013 • Uncategorized • 15 Comments

i_always_open_my_heart_by_lovelypickle-d4bhvds
I have something to reveal to you. Something that people are always surprised by when they first get to know me: I’m a bit of a mess.

Not my inner world, mind you. Although I’m not perfect, I’ve spent years cultivating clarity, healthy boundaries, integrity, connection with the divine, self-love, patience, empathy, compassion, and many other important inner-world staples.

I’m talking about my outer world. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but my kitchen, for example, is a wreck. There’s a build up of gunk on my electric burners. A spider has made its home in the shelves above my fridge. And there are weeds, I kid you not, growing through the wall underneath my sink. Mostly I keep the cupboard doors closed and pray that the hole in the wall will somehow magically go away. It hasn’t yet, but I keep praying.

But something’s changing. Over the last couple weeks, I’ve had a strong internal impulse to clean up my act.

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18
Sep

After the Flood: How to Heal Collective Trauma

By • September 18, 2013 • Uncategorized • 24 Comments

sunlight through rain 1
Colorado has just lived through a collective trauma. Through it we have learned what is reliable (like community) and what is not (like the roads). One of the most challenging aspects of collective trauma is that there are many people, living side by side, having the same experience from radically different perspectives.

And the gap between those perspectives is sometimes big enough for a car to fall through.

The torrential rains have stopped here in Boulder. And life, for some, is returning to normal. The sun is shining, people are going back to work, and others are ripping up carpets from their basements, or assessing their damages. Stores are open, as are many roads.

But members of our community are still unaccounted for. Lyons and Estes and Jamestown are still underwater, so to speak. And the town of Salina has been destroyed.

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03
Sep

Meaning as Medicine in Chronic Illness: You are What You Believe

By • September 3, 2008 • Uncategorized • 6 Comments

When we develop a chronic illness, our basic way of understanding the world dissolves. At least that how it feels. At least that’s how it felt in my case.

Somewhere in my 2nd year of living with severe multiple chemical sensitivities, I began to feel as if I were in a dying process. Not a physical death (though there were many nights when I wondered if I’d wake up in the morning), but a psychological death. I felt like my way of understanding who I was in relationship to the rest of the world, had been stripped. I was no longer a teacher, or a workshop leader. I was no longer a nature guide, or a healer. Hell, I wasn’t even someone who could buy groceries without feeling like I was going to pass out. I felt purposeless and adrift. Although I was doing everything I could to heal, I wasn’t sure I was someone who was healing. In short, I had begun the descent into the “underworld.”

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16
Aug

There’s No Right Way to Be Sick: How to Befriend Yourself in the Midst of Suffering

By • August 16, 2008 • Uncategorized • Leave a comment

You’ve got to give the inner critic props for its tenacity. You know what I’m talking about, that voice inside that, even when we are flat on our backs with suffering, chimes in with: “Is that all you got?” Even in the midst of our sickness, it eggs us on, saying things like, “If only you were a better person, then you wouldn’t be sick.” or “Come on, stop complaining, get it together,” or my personal favorite: “If you were more spiritual, you would be well by now.”

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